5 Deceptive Weight Loss Myths That Lead To Emotional Overeating
Last Updated on 01/01/2022 by Nicky
Weight Loss Myths That Lead To Emotional Eating
Having trouble losing weight? It could be because you believe these 5 weight loss myths. Keep reading to find out what they are.
What would it be like to go on a diet and actually lose weight and keep it off?
Unfortunately, many people have not experienced this because 95% of diets fail. However, you can be in that 5% of diets that don’t fail.
How, you ask?
Well, one of the biggest mistakes that people make is thinking that weight loss is just about your body.
This is simply false.
Sustainable weight loss is more about your mindset and mental & emotional state.
Think about it.
What is it that tells you to get up and workout and not sit all day?
Your mind.
What is it that tells you to eat a carrot and not a brownie?
Your mind.
We have to be mentally & emotionally prepared to lose weight if we want long term success.
Below I discuss 5 mental blocks that can keep you from losing weight and lead to emotional eating.
These are some of the same mental blocks that I had to overcome in order to lose 65 pounds so I know they work.
I’ll be discussing this and more.
I also have a free weight loss resource library that you can gain access to if you sign up for the HAYC list so be on the lookout for that as well.
This post contains affiliate links to products that will help you on your life journey. I get a commission if you buy from these links but I only recommend products that I have confidence in or use.
What Is Emotional Eating?
According to this article on Helpguide.org “Emotional eating is using food to make yourself feel better—to fill emotional needs, rather than your stomach.”
In other words, we can often use food to fill an emotional hurt, wound, or gap in our lives.
But since that’s not what food is designed to do, we often have to overeat in order to see if maybe eventually that piece of cake or pizza will fulfill or emotional needs.
It doesn’t help that eating in itself is a pleasurable activity which makes us think that maybe it will work at alleviating the hurt that we might feel in our hearts.
But it doesn’t. And oftentimes, emotional eating leads to overeating.
And not just overeating but overeating unhealthy junk foods that make us gain weight and feel miserable.
This is where the problem lies with us who want to lose weight. I struggle with this too.
Wanting to lose weight but wanting comfort foods and foods that are not healthy. So now that we know what emotional eating is.
Now let’s look at some of the weight loss myths that lead to emotional eating.
5 Weight Loss Myths That Lead To Emotional Eating
1) You think you can lose weight on your own.
Most weight loss advice is like, eat smaller portions, eat more fruits and vegetables blah blah blah as if all we needed was just more knowledge about what to eat and what not to eat and we would be good to go.
But they skip over a very important step because weight loss is not just about overeating.
What they are really trying to cure, in most cases is not the problem but a symptom of the problem.
Eating too much usually starts as a coping mechanism to deal with something painful that happened to you.
No, this is not the case for everyone.
But (some people have underlying medical conditions that affect their weight) if that is the reason why you need to be honest with yourself and deal with those emotions that cause you to eat like you do (sorry if this sounds harsh).
Ever heard the saying that it’s not what your eating but what’s eating you?
Is it trite and cliche?
Yes.
But is it true…yes.
So how do you deal with those emotions especially if you’ve kept them buried for years and years?
My advice would be to book an appointment with a counselor and I agree with that (obviously I agree with my own advice).
However, if you are scared to death of therapy like I was, I highly recommend online therapy.
The online therapy platform that I’ve used the most is online-therapy.com.
Using this platform and getting feedback from a real therapist really helped me have a breakthrough from some of the negative emotions I was stewing in.
Do not underestimate how much of a difference getting out of your own head can make.
It can be painful to bring up past feelings that haven’t been properly dealt with. But online-therapy.com provides a safe place for you to do it.
If you believe that the reason you overeat is due to negative emotions, please don’t hesitate to get help.
Click To Learn More About Onine-Therapy.com!
I write more about emotional overeating and weight loss in my book Steadfast, which you can look at here.
2) You keep saying you’ll start tomorrow.
There used to be some commercial that said stress causes weight gain (or prevents weight loss) because it produces the hormone called cortisol which causes belly fat.
They were selling some kind of weight loss supplement which they said would decrease cortisol and thereby make you lose weight.
Now I wasn’t really thinking about whether or not the supplement worked but I did squawk at the idea that stress caused you to hold fat around your belly.
I thought they were just trying to sell me something.
Please pardon my ignorance because further research and many subsequent articles later and I now know that what they were saying is true (still don’t know if that supplement works though).
This is helpful information.
Usually, when people talk about stress they talk about things like stress from your children, stress at work, or stress from some other relationship.
But do you know what causes me stress and I bet it does for you too?
Procrastination.
I hear you saying “Ummm, why does procrastination cause stress? You is crazy” (hopefully your grammar is better than that).
I hear you.
Allow me to explain.
When you procrastinate doing something you know you should be doing, it weighs (no pun intended) on your mind.
You think about it all the time. It hangs over your head. It puts pressure on your chest and shoulders.
But what does this have to do with weight loss? I’m glad you asked that question.
If you think about losing weight all the time but you don’t do it, are you not just engaging in a form of procrastination?
You are not being proactive or moving forward.
You are just being stagnant…wading in self-doubt and insecurity.
Instead of saying I’ll start my diet lifestyle change tomorrow, decide to make one small positive change today.
Drink more water, get more steps on your Fitbit than you did yesterday.
Just do at least one thing today to start moving in the right healthy direction.
3) You believe losing weight will make you happy.
Don’t listen to silly Nutrisystem commercials who act like all of life will be grand once you lose weight.
Girl, please (and guys too)!
That is a lie if I ever heard one. Believe me. Losing weight won’t make you happy. It can make you physically healthier.
But being thin does not make you happy.
It’s important to know this because if you believe losing weight makes you happy, when you lose weight and find out that happiness has not found you, you might not be motivated to keep the weight off.
4) You listen to every new weight loss and diet study that you see on tv.
You cannot listen to every new weight loss study that comes out.
Why?
Because you’ll go mad, I say, mad.
Think about it.
You have the books like Wheat Belly saying don’t eat grains at all (perhaps a slight exaggeration) then you have vegans saying grains are perfectly healthy for you and that meat is bad for you.
What does this tell us?
That the science behind these diets are in no way definitive and that every group has its own studies, its own philosophies, its own agenda.
You could go crazy trying to make sense of it all. That’s why u should listen to your body and how it reacts to certain foods.
There’s no one particular diet that works for everyone ( although I do think everyone would benefit from eating less junk ie processed “foods”… I use that term loosely”).
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5) You don’t know how to find one weight loss plan or idea and stick to it.
This point kinda piggybacks off of the last point.
Just walk through it with me.
Everyone who is selling a diet product or program makes it sound like this one diet is the perfect diet for everyone.
And of course, they would say that because they want you to buy it.
In truth, it’s a lie.
I always give a side-eye to these “this one diet will fit all people” salesmen.
Prime example, vegans make veganism sound so good. They can make it seem like the only diet that everyone should be following.
Veganism sounded so good that I used to have a strange fascination with it. I’m not sure why.
Maybe it’s because its mind-boggling that anyone could find joy in a diet that restrictive.
Plus, the What I Ate Today Videos | Vegan are kinda hypnotizing.
But I know veganism is not feasible for me and for a lot of people.’
There are some lies I will tell myself.
I’m not going to eat dessert during the week” or I’m going to follow this carb cycling diet and eat 5-6 small meals for the rest of my life” are just a few lies that come to mind, that I’ve told.
However, “I’m going vegan” is one lie I can’t tell.
When I go without meat for a significant amount of time, I feel weak, sluggish, unable to concentrate, and unsatisfied.
Perhaps those symptoms would wear off once my body got used to it but I’ve never gone without meat long enough to find out.
Why am I telling ya’ll this?
Because it’s important to listen to what your body is telling you.
I don’t want you to get suckered into a diet that will not work for your body’s specific needs.
Part of the reason why it can be so hard to lose weight is because there’s always a new diet trend that a doctor or nutritionist is saying we must follow.
If I didn’t have a strong sense of who I was and what my body needs, I could be going from one diet to another.
I could be trying veganism one day and keto the next.
But because I have a strong sense of who I am and what my needs are, I don’t get (too) caught up in whatever the hot new diet of the day is.
I know that my favorite dieting philosophy is in the book The French Don’t Diet book and I basically just stick with that.
Are Weight Loss Myths Causing You To Emotionally Overeat
If you know that you haven’t lost weight because you are dealing with emotional blockages, then my advice would be to get help from someone outside of yourself.
I highly recommend online-therapy.com because I’ve used it myself and I know that it works.
However, there are all kinds of ways to get help.
The YMCA has support groups and there’s regular therapy as well.
I can’t state enough how helpful it is to get help from someone else on your weight loss journey.
Prayer is also a huge help which I will discuss more in future posts.
I hope this has been helpful.
Wait…But before you go…
Download Free Weight Loss Printables To Help You Lose Weight Faster!
If you want to lose weight then you will need some tools to help you track your progress;
I want to help you do this so I created a resource library with free weight loss printables inside to help lose weight for good!
This is what free weight loss printables are in my resource library
– Healthy Meals On The Go (Healthy Popular Restaurant Meal Options Guide)
– Healthy Grocery List Printable
You can gain access to all of them in my free Weight Loss resource library.
Just click below and enter your email address, I will send the password and link to the library to your inbox.
Click here to gain exclusive & free access to HAYC’s Weight Loss Resource Library!
Click to check out the helpful resources suggested in this post:
online-therapy.com
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