Get Out of Your Own Way: Cognitive Strategies to Stop Sabotaging Your Weight Loss

Today I want to talk about one of the most powerful tools we have for achieving lasting weight loss and a healthy relationship with food: our mind. So much of the battle takes place between our ears through the thoughts we have and the stories we tell ourselves.

If we want to successfully pursue intuitive eating and break ingrained habits of emotional eating or overeating, we must become aware of our internal dialog and the cognitive patterns that can sabotage our efforts. The good news is that we can re-train our minds by implementing cognitive strategies.

The first strategy is to challenge the irrational thoughts and harsh self-talk that so often arise around food and our bodies.

How many times have you thought to yourself "I'm so disgusting for eating that" or "I have no willpower"? These thoughts are not only unproductive, they're downright inaccurate. We must learn to speak to ourselves with kindness and compassion.

One way to do this is through thought-stopping - as soon as you notice a negative thought stream, envision a stop sign and force yourself to replace it with an affirmation like "I had a lapse, but I'm getting right back on track because I'm committed to my goals."

The second cognitive strategy is to reframe cravings and urges in a different light. So often we build them up as these monumental things we cannot possibly resist. But what if instead, we viewed them as temporary "brain storms"? Cravings are physiological events in the brain that arise due to learned patterns, but they will always pass whether we act on them or not.

When you notice a craving, name it and remind yourself "This is just a brain storm of old neural pathways firing. It will pass in 10-15 minutes if I don't react and feed it." Taking this more detached view allows you to ride it out until it subsides.

Finally, when you find yourself in the grips of a serious craving or about to make an impulsive food choice, force yourself to slow down and make a pros and cons list. What are the benefits of indulging in that food? Maybe some temporary taste enjoyment or emotional comfort.

But what are the costs? Guilt, self-judgement, throwing off your nutrition for the day, derailing your weight loss progress? Is that short-term reward really worth it? Going through this deliberate process breaks the conditioned patterns and allows you to make a more conscious decision aligned with your goals.

These cognitive strategies take practice, but they give you power over your thoughts rather than letting your thoughts control you. You can interrupt those automatic self-sabotaging narratives and retrain your mind for success in intuitive eating.

Our minds can be our biggest saboteurs when it comes to food and our bodies. But they can also be our strongest allies if we work on cognitive strategies like thought-stopping, reframing cravings as temporary storms, and using pros and cons lists. I encourage all of you to start implementing these strategies as a powerful tool in your intuitive eating journey. You've got this!