If you haven’t attempted to lose weight, then you probably know many people who have. For the moment, just pretend that you only know one person who has tried to lose weight (and failed). Now, imagine that every adult in the world only knows one person who has done so. That’s a lot of people. You will find a wide collection of reasons for this and combinations thereof.
There may be health issues that complicate the need for exercise, physical reasons that contribute to it, emotional reasons, or just fear. With so many reasons for failure, many people engage in a bit of self-sabotage that ensures failure is the only outcome. Sadly, most of us do it subconsciously.
You have boarded the weight loss train and you’re feeling great. It means changing almost everything about your lifestyle, but you’re doing it. You’re losing weight steadily, you feel better, you are proud of your progress. You’re walking a little straighter, there’s a swagger in your step. Then it stops. Why?
Here’s why.
You’re Afraid of Success
With success comes change. Your life will be very different when you achieve any type of success. Ultimately, there’s a price to pay when you obtain that success. Success comes with a new set of responsibilities. You don’t even know that you’re afraid of success. Your brain is fueling this fear and it manifests in different ways. You think about your past failures and start to believe that you don’t deserve to succeed.
Success means hard word. Yes, because once you achieve something you have something to lose. You did the hard work to succeed and now the hard work amplifies. We are subconsciously resistant to change, but success brings that change and increases the workload. The thing about change is it’s unknown.
We’re comfortable doing what we’re doing, we know how to lead our lives the way we’ve been doing it. What comes with the change? Instead of finding out, we engage in a bit of self-sabotage.
It’s easier to sabotage yourself when you don’t have a substantial reason for trying to do what you’re doing. You can talk yourself out of doing the hard work if you can’t answer your own questions as to why you need to change.
You Believe You’re Not Worth It
Well, you are. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing you’re not worth it. Especially after you’ve experienced failure. Imagine for a moment, an all-powerful being has appeared in front of you. They want to strike a deal. If you can just lose all that weight and keep it off, your family will live long, healthy, happy lives. It’s easy to imagine yourself losing the weight when you’re doing it to protect the people that you love, isn’t it? Well, aren’t you worth it? Isn’t your health valuable? Doesn’t your life matter?
You refuse to believe this to be true because you look in the mirror and you don’t like what you see. You see your weight as a weakness, yet you can’t flex your muscles to “fix” yourself. You can’t stand to look at pictures of yourself. It hurts. When you’re forced into group photos you hide yourself behind other people.
You treat yourself like an unwanted piece of bubblegum stuck to your shoe. Nothing is worse than going somewhere special and having to find an outfit for it. So, you punish yourself actively for that weight gain. This cycle will continue as long as you allow yourself to self-sabotage, all because you bought the lie that you’re not worth it. Don’t punish yourself, don’t self-sabotage.