Struggling to lose weight? Your mindset might be the issue. Here’s why your mindset is impacting your weight loss, and what to do about it.
We often speak to women in their 40s and 50s who are looking to drop a dress size or two, but they’re struggling to see any movement with their weight. They’re trying all the plans and programmes which worked for them in their 20s, but stepping on the scales at the end of the week and seeing zero movement.
One of the main reasons this happens is down to the physical and hormonal changes that women go through as they get older. This can make it easier to gain weight around the middle and more difficult to lose it again with normal dieting.
The good news is that there’s a quick and easy way to escape from this situation!
Today, we’re going to discuss mindset, and how this can impact your weight loss efforts. You can also listen to this discussion on our podcast. Let’s get to it.
Perfectionism mindset
All-or-nothing thinking can lead to people having unrealistic expectations of what it takes to be fit and healthy. One “bad” day or bad choice, and they feel like they’ve failed. This easily leads to some people giving up, undoing all their hard work, and going back to square one.
These people see progress like a light switch. In reality, it’s a sliding scale, like a dimmer switch!
To succeed, you just need to be pretty good consistently. See it like a dimmer switch, and turn it up when your schedule is less full-on, and turn it down a bit when life gets busy.
Short-term thinking
Diet culture has taught people to want to achieve fitness results in a ridiculously short time-frame, like losing a stone in four weeks. Whilst we have seen this happen, it’s rare, and most people don’t give themselves and their body enough time to achieve their goals.
This leads to too much pressure. One bad week causes you to feels like a failure, which means you give up, go back to your old habits, and put all the weight back on.
Plus, it’s also terrible for you as you get older and your hormones change. So, you won’t be able to see those rapid results from a crash diet like you may have been able to in your 20s or 30s.
Our clients typically lose 1-2lbs per week, but they do it consistently in a sustainable way! This means they can keep it up long-term.
Limiting beliefs
Everyone has limiting beliefs, but for most people these go unchecked. They’re trying to deal with them all on their own, and can really prevent people from achieving their goals.
Maybe it’s thinking “I deserve a treat” after a hard day of work, which can lead to treating yourself almost every day with wine, crisps or chocolate, undoing any hard work of eating well or exercising.
Or maybe it’s thinking “I’m never going to be slim, so what’s the point” after seeing the scales stay the same, despite being really good all week.
The thing is, these thoughts are not necessarily true. Just because we’ve worked hard, that doesn’t necessarily mean we deserve a treat, but we were probably taught this by our parents, friends or partner, which leads to a bad habit.
Just because you haven’t lost weight in one week, that doesn’t mean you’re never going to be slim. Everyone we work with, even those who lose up to 6 stone or more, have weeks where they don’t lose weight – even though they’ve been consistent.
On our own it’s very hard to see past these limiting beliefs. That’s why it’s so important to have the right support and tools to shift these limiting beliefs, otherwise you’ll keep sabotaging your progress.
Most people just assume these thoughts are true, and act on them without thinking, sabotaging any chances of success. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Inside our Fit Over 40 program we use a tool called the Thought Transformer to neutralise these kinds of limiting beliefs.
Waiting to feel motivated for for things to be perfect
Most people want to wait to feel motivated to take action. But motivation is just that – a FEELING! The feeling of motivation comes from action; we create it, it doesn’t just happen by some miracle.
Most people have it the wrong way around!
If you waited to feel motivated – you’d probably never start. But if you start – you’ll feel better, and that will start to create the motivation.
Once you start to see results the motivation will build. Then, the more you repeat these actions, they will become habits, and you won’t need to rely on motivation any more to stay consistent. That’s exactly what we teach people on our program.
To find out more about how Trinity can help you see the results you deserve, click here!
