How Your Beliefs About You Are Causing Weight Gain, and 5 Steps to Creating New Beliefs That Produce Weight Maintenance Success

Most of my clients come to me because they have had numerous successful attempts at reaching their goal weight, but they have not been successful with maintaining their desired weight. One of the biggest obstacles I find standing in my clients’ way is their beliefs about themselves and their ability to keep the weight off.

My new client, Jen, began working with me, because after her third successful effort to reach her goal weight, dropping over 50 lbs., she was beginning to see the scale creep up again. Jen was determined, with my help, to end her weight cycling pattern for good. In our session together, she told me how this was her third time losing weight, and then she proceeded to share her beliefs about herself that I see shared in so many of my maintenance clients. Jen said, “I’ve been doing this work for so long, and I just keep failing—what’s the point in doing this work again, I’m just going to fail again. It feels like a fact completely proven by my weight loss and weight gain history, and the last four days.”

Jen, like so many, was looking to her past to define herself, and use those beliefs as evidence for why the weight gain she saw over the last four days meant she was a failure, and destined to be overweight. A huge problem occurs when we are stuck in our current life looking at our past to define who we are. From this past-focused place, we can only recreate our past. Our brain has tons of information to process every day, and since it can’t take in the whole world, it scans for what you’ve taught it is important to focus on. When Jen shared her thought, “…I’m just going to fail again,” I asked her how that thought made her feel, and she replied, “doubt and frustration,” both of which we can all agree don’t feel great. To avoid feeling the negative emotion, Jen would then overeat, and overeating resulted in weight gain. The resulting weight gain created evidence for Jen’s past-focused thought that she was, “…going to fail again,” proving her weight cycling history (past) true, and creating a loop so many of my clients fall into:

Past-focused thought → Feel doubt (or some other form of negative emotion) → Avoid the negative emotion by overeating → Client’s result of overeating is gaining weight (providing evidence for client’s past-focused thought) → Loop repeats.

So how do we break this cycle of looking to our past to determine our current life? How do we let go of these beliefs about ourselves?

We have to learn to believe new things. We have to turn our attention away from the past and redirect it to the future. We need to ask ourselves, “Who can I be?” instead of asking, “Who am I?” If you want to create a different future, then you have to create something that doesn’t exist in your past. This means all of your current thoughts are useless when it comes to creating a new future. You have to believe something you’ve never believed before.

The most amazing thing I learned in my coaching studies is there are no rules about what you can believe—you can believe anything you want to believe. What?? Beliefs are nothing more than a thought we have practiced and repeated, and decided and accepted as TRUE. These practiced and repeated thoughts come to us so naturally that they feel like a truth. This doesn’t make our thought true—it just makes you believe it is true. Truth is not something that exists outside of us—it is a decision. Truths are choices, and separating our beliefs (truths) from facts makes this easier to understand.

Example of facts:

• When I stepped on the scale this morning, it read, “150 lbs.”

• Talenti’s Coffee Chocolate Chip Gelato has 36g of carbohydrate in a 2/3 cup serving.

Examples of these facts’ truths:

• I weigh too much.

• I can’t control how much Talenti’s Coffee Chocolate Chip Gelato I will eat in a sitting.

We choose to believe 150 lbs. is weighing too much. We choose to believe that we can’t control how much gelato we consume. Neither are FACTS, instead they are beliefs we have decided and accepted as true. Truths depend on our perspective and experience. Facts are pieces of data—they can be tested and checked.

How do we believe something we don’t yet believe? The short answer is practice and repetition. Your current thoughts you have practiced over and over intentionally or not. This doesn’t mean they’re true—it just means you have decided they are true.

We get to decide what we want to make facts mean…best news ever! I love Deepak Chopra’s quote, “Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.” Current beliefs derived from our past can only recreate the past. We must become aware of these limiting beliefs and choose a new belief, something we’ve never believed before, in order to create a new future. For my weight maintenance clients who want to end a history of weight cycling and become a person who maintains their goal weight for a lifetime, we work together to choose new beliefs to create long-term success.

5 Steps to Creating New Beliefs That Produce Weight Maintenance Success:

1. Bring awareness to your current limiting beliefs about your weight maintenance success.

• Write down your thoughts on a piece of paper. Don’t filter or edit yourself. Just get it all out. What are you doing wrong? What mistakes are you making? How are you sabotaging yourself?

2. Read over what you wrote down.

• How do you feel when you read over your thoughts? You probably feel doubt, ashamed, guilty, anxious, or sad.

• These feelings aren’t pleasant, and they’re counter-productive to your weight maintenance success.

3. Decide what you want to believe.

• One good way to start coming-up with thoughts that feel better is to imagine what you would say to a friend who was struggling with the same thing as you.

• Brainstorm at least 3 things you would say to a friend in the same situation or about the same topic:

1. ______________________________________________________________

2. ______________________________________________________________

3. ______________________________________________________________

• Can you believe any of the three sentences you wrote above?

• If yes, fantastic! Pick the sentence you believe, and move on to Step 5.

• If no, then that’s fine—move on to Step 4.

4. It may be necessary to ease into a new thought if none of the sentences in Step 3 resonated with you.

• Write down 2 thoughts that inch your way towards your ultimate belief.

• For example, if you would tell a friend, “I have confidence in you, and know you will keep the weight off permanently this time,” but you don’t believe that about yourself, can you believe, “I am becoming someone who believes I can maintain my weight?”

5. Practice thinking this new thought repeatedly throughout your day until it becomes your new, automatic thought.

• Set an alarm on your phone to stop and deliberately think your new thought multiple times per day.

Some example thoughts that have worked for clients are:

• “I am becoming someone who believes she is meant to weigh 130 lbs.”

• “I am becoming someone who believes she is meant to be thin.”

• “Maintaining weight isn’t easy, and that’s okay because I can do hard things.”

What beliefs are holding you back from maintaining your goal weight? What past-focused thoughts are keeping you in the weight cycling loop?

If left to its own devices, the brain will always choose old thoughts over new ones unless survival is at stake. Increase your awareness of your current thoughts and the results those thoughts are creating. If you don’t like your current results, deliberately choose your new thoughts. Don’t be a prisoner of your past, become aware of your programmed facts versus your beliefs, and choose new beliefs that serve you.

If you’d like to take this work to a deeper level, sign up for a free 30 minute consultation with me to see if my weight maintenance program, “3 to Free™” is right for you. In my program we take a deep dive into topics like beliefs, desire, deprivation, emotional management, diet mentality, understanding hunger, intermittent fasting, relationship with yourself and others, self-confidence, and many more, and apply these topics to your life so you may understand yourself and the results you are creating. From the knowledge and self-awareness you will gain, you will have the skills, tools, and self-confidence to maintain your goal weight for a lifetime, and finally turn your focus to new goals and creating your best life!