Want a Healthy Weight? Check Your Self-Talk

Have you been using an app or online program to help you lose weight or create a healthier lifestyle? Such tools can help you track progress and provide valuable support. However, it’s easy to overlook a powerful influence on success: your self-talk as you interpret and use this information.

If you’ve been having trouble starting or maintaining healthier eating habits and lifestyle choices, maybe a change in the way you talk to yourself should be your first target.

The good news is that if critical or whiny thoughts are getting in the way of the lifestyle you seek, you have the power to change those thoughts. For some people, changing patterns of self-talk may take the help of a mental health professional, but for many of us, focused attention can go a long way to help us turn from our own worst enemy to our own best friend.

Listen Objectively

Words you use create the thoughts that lead to a self-image that either supports or challenges your efforts at behavior change. A variety of harmful self-talk habits can get in the way of creating a healthy lifestyle. Here are three of the most common that clients in my nutrition counseling practice have encountered. Do any sound familiar to you?

Your Inner Perfectionist

The Perfectionist pushes you to set goals that at first glance might seem smart – If you’re going to change, why not aim for the best? For example, your Inner Perfectionist might:

♦ keep referring to a goal weight that represents your weight in high school, even if that was 20 years and 60 pounds ago

♦ push for a resolution of zero sweets, even though you’ve gradually slipped into soft drinks and cookies or some other dessert virtually every day of the week

♦ target an hour of exercise daily, even though you currently think about it daily but actually take a 15-minute walk about once a week.

Some Inner Perfectionists are reaching for standards based on the latest fad diet or what some celebrity advocates. Yet even when the goals represent research-based recommendations for good health, if they are too far from your current habits, and from the skills and support you have to implement them, then they are not likely to be reached…at least not yet. It then becomes one more in a long list the Perfectionist keeps of your “failures”.

Instead: Successful behavior change programs encourage people to set SMART goals.

• S – Specific – Not “eat healthy”, but “eat ___ cups of vegetables” or “drink a cup of unsweetened tea or a glass of water with lunch and at my afternoon break”
• M – Measurable – Not just “more often”; and not an assumption of “always”. Choose how often you intend to reach that target, or identify some other way that you will be able to define success.
• A – Achievable – Consider your current habits and what will be an exciting challenge, but one that is reachable even if it’s not a “perfect” day.
• R – Relevant – By now, this goal may seem like a small step, but choose a small step that you see as part of a path leading to something important to you. Maybe that’s bringing energy to get through the day without needing to nap before fixing dinner…or improved fitness to enjoy an activity that you currently can’t manage…or reducing risk of cancer, heart disease or whatever other aspect of health matters to you.
• T – Time-based – Not “someday”. Set a time when you can reasonably be prepared to start, and by when you want to be successfully living your new habit on a regular basis.

Yes, with high-calorie, low-nutrient food and opportunities to be sedentary all day widely available, you may need some “restraint” to make healthy choices. Long-term success, however, seems greater with less rigid and more Flexible Restraint.

Your Inner Critic

The Critic rattles off all your unhealthy food choices, criticizes your body shape, points out what you neglected to do, and reminds you of all your mistakes. Worse, these comments tend to be expressed with words and tone that you would never consider using to someone you love:

♦ “You messed up AGAIN. You’ll never _________.” Generalizations take one event and make a prediction that things will always be that way, with no vision of potential to learn and grow.

♦ “You are so _________.” (Many options to fill in the blank, but not kind ones.)

♦ “You ALWAYS ________.” Filtering out any steps toward success, the Critic notices only what doesn’t go well and comments from people that could be interpreted as derogatory. What a contrast from what I’m reading in a biography of Teddy Roosevelt. He kept a daily diary, yet reportedly noted mainly successes; during periods that something wasn’t going well, he didn’t write about it.

Some experts say the Critic’s negative thoughts are more likely to arise when people try to live by overly-restrictive rules. Americans tend to go on and off many diets throughout their lives. Even when you stop a diet, the rules may stick in your mind. After multiple diets, you could end up with quite a list of rules, perhaps including some that conflict with one another.

As inappropriate or unfair as The Critic’s words may be, when these words are repeated over and over, we often come to accept them as truth. Rather than spurring you on to healthy changes, these thoughts instead tend to set you up for continued lack of success, because that’s exactly what you expect.

Instead: Try to catch the Critic as soon as you hear the negative chatter starting. Listen for the words and listen to the tone. Ask if this is how you’d talk to your best friend or child. Step back from the thoughts, perhaps counting to 10 while you focus on deep breathing. Or take a moment to write down what the Critic just said, then cross it out and re-phrase the statement in a way that correctly and non-judgmentally states what happened. What would you say to an ashamed or distraught friend?

Your Inner Whiner

The Whiner sees barriers and focuses on why the healthy habits you’re trying to develop are too hard and why this is not any fun. You might hear:

♦ “Food that’s good for you never tastes good. And it’s too expensive.”

♦ “Unhealthy food is everywhere I go, and I want to eat whatever I want, whenever I get the urge.”

♦ “Why should I have to give up the food I love, or miss spending every evening eating in front of the TV? Why should I try a new activity if my friends don’t?”

If the goals you’re setting are too difficult, courtesy of your Inner Perfectionist, then the Whiner may have a point. Go back and work on setting SMART goals. The good news is that healthful food can be seasoned with delicious herbs, spices and other flavorings. Physical activity can be energizing and fun. And perfectly “normal” people with busy lives and limited budgets do find ways to create healthy lifestyles that work for them.

Instead: Studies show a factor that commonly separates the people who successfully lose weight and maintain a healthy weight, or who adopt healthy eating and physical activity habits, from those who do not is this: those who successfully change have better problem-solving skills. In other words, it’s not about waiting for barriers to disappear, but being able to identify the barriers you face and create solutions.

• If you don’t know how to shop for and prepare healthy meals, learn how. Stop turning to your usual cooking shows, websites and magazines. See the Resource list below to help you start on a quest to find healthful food you love.
• Try out some beginner group classes in a few different types of physical activity that are new to you, like yoga, salsa dancing, Zumba, or tennis. Some people might prefer to start with a TV program or DVD from the library, though while you gain privacy, you miss the chance to meet others seeking new habits and to get personalized help.
• If you’re overwhelmed, try an online program that helps you learn skills and set reasonable goals each week, like the American Institute for Cancer Research’s Healthy10 Challenge.

Your Inner Wisdom

Most of us, at least by adulthood, have accumulated life experiences from which we have developed some wisdom. We’ve seen that perfectionism is a harsh standard. We know we feel better about doing something we choose, something we decide to do, rather than something we should do.

For most of us, I suspect the problem in our self-talk is not that we need more wisdom, but that we need to find a way to listen more often as our Inner Wisdom speaks.