Psychological tricks to help you lose weight
September 6, 2019
Learning how to feel normal around food and achieve your natural weight can be a complex process. Why can’t we simply decided to stop eating chocolate and just do it?!
If you’re pulling your hair out over self-sabotaging patterns (i.e. giving into sugar cravings after dinner), trust us, we all get it! What frustrates many people trying to lose weight is why changing one’s eating habits is so darn hard. Because let’s face it – when things get hard – we give up.
So here are some things you can do today, to help master the psychological blocks to weight loss.
Quit Dieting
First and foremost you need to quit the “lose weight fast” diets. Eating well and exercise should be used for overall health, not for weight loss.
Plus, once you’re off your diet and have lost weight, you might revert back to eating poorly ultimately regain the kgs.
This is why our program focuses on long-term eating habits and repairing your gut health. This is the best way to lose weight and keep it off, the healthy way.
Revisit what you know about weight loss
The easiest way to think of weight loss is energy balance. Energy balance is the difference between your energy input—or the number of calories that you put into your body—vs your energy output, or the number of calories you burn each day.
Some people refer to the energy balance equation as the “calories in, calories out” equation.
To lose weight you want a negative energy balance, that is, the number of calories that you put into your body is less than the number of calories you burn each day. This is also known as calorie deficit.
If you’ve ever heard the saying, “weight loss is 80% nutrition, 20% exercise” it’s true. Decreasing calorie intake is much more effective than increasing physical activity to achieve weight loss. If you want to achieve a 300 calorie energy deficit you can run in the park for 5kms or not eat a packet of potato chips. It’s as simple as that.
Positive self-talk
Tell yourself you love taking care of yourself. Your thoughts will determine your behaviour, which in turn, will determine your results. And if you learn how to control your thoughts through positive self-talk, you will also learn to control your actions, which will lead you to the results you seek.
Start (respectfully) wasting food
Many people keep eating when they are full simply because they have psychological blocks when it comes to wasting food.
Simple rules of weight loss. Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full. If that means throwing out the last few mouthfuls, so be it. Or, ask for a container and take it with you for later (when you’re hungry again).
Love your guts xx
