Fat loss and habit change are hard. I mean really hard. Like nail bitting, colorful word vocabulary using, and wanting to throw in the towel kind of hard.
That doesn’t mean it’s impossible! When you want to change, like REALLY change your habits to loose fat, get off medications, improve your overall health and live a better life, understand that it’s not all glitter and rainbows.
However, having the tools to address the obstacles that will inevitably cross your path will leave you feeling empowered to keep making progress to look and feel how you want. To help, I’m going to share 4 common mindset traps that sabotage fat loss success and prevent many from living their best life.
Trap #1) Avoiding the struggle and believing there is a pain free way to change your eating habits.
Like I mentioned, this shit is hard. When choosing to be on fat loss path you constantly have to make decisions of what is best for you. That means saying NO to things you might want to do.
NO to the night out at the bar.
NO to the cookie bake-a-thon you do with your friends.
NO to Chinese food take out.
NO to accidentally having 6 glasses of wine.
NO to the second helping when your already full.
This hurts, because there can be a feeling of missing out or depriving your self or the guilt placed on you by others. These feelings are real, but by living a life avoiding discomfort, we choose to walk blindly into habits and choices that don’t serve us.
The struggle and discomfort is real in a fat loss journey. Really Real. But it might not be “NO” forever. Just right now in this moment, for your goals, for your health and longevity.
Struggling to do it alone and need help nailing your fitness and fat loss goals?
Trap #2) You’re not willing to process the consequences of your actions.
Let me ask you a question…
“Are you willing to have hard conversations with those in your life to tell them what you NEED from them in form of support and boundaries?”
No? Then you must understand there are consequences. You can’t get mad when family pressures you into more servings at the family dinner, or your spouse ‘seeming’ unsupportive and constantly bringing junk food into the house.
If you’re ok with the consequences of this action, then travel on my friend, but if NOT, don’t stick your head in the sand.
“Are you willing to give up comforts such as “pizza and netflix night” with your BFF every Friday?”
No? That’s A-OK but perhaps theres a way to modify the amount of pizza, type of food, or find a more active thing you can do together. Otherwise a binge night on pizza every week will create slower progress.
“Are you willing to put effort and energy into REALLY tracking your food intake? Not half ass-ing it, but REALLY tracking?”
No? Then chances are you’re not being accurate in your food intake. This is NOT because you don’t give a shit, it’s because tracking accurately isn’t easy. But if you’re not willing to sacrifice some energy and time to doing this then a fat loss journey could be more difficult.
Note: I understand that tracking calories/macros can be triggers for those with emotional eating and disordered eating histories. My personal and professional belief is that hardcore tracking isn’t appropriate or helpful in these instances.
If you’re not being honest about what the consequence of your choices are then this mindset trap is a very deep hole.
Trap #3) You’re not consistently being honest about the choices you make.
As you know, there are consequences to all actions we take. If you choose to stick your head in the sand and not be honest about how accurately you track your food, or honest about the food portions sizes you’re consuming, or the amount of fast food, salt, and sugar you consume then these will be huge speed bumps on your journey to fat loss.
By nailing your portion sizes during the week and choosing to not be aware of your food consumption on the weekend could lead to slow progress, plateaus or weight gain.
The important thing to understand is that consistency is key and we ALL have ‘one of those days’. You just have to be aware of it, learn from it, and keep doing your best to get 1% better every day.
#4) You’re too busy looking at the end goal and not taking it day by day.
Fat loss is a journey. It’s ok to have goals or end points that help to steer to your fat loss journey or provide some motivation to kick start the journey, but if we consistency have our focus on what we think we should look like and feel like in the end, then we are missing win after win after win in the day to day.
You might miss these successes:
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Choosing to pass on second helpings when you weren’t hungry.
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Feeling satisfied from the protein packed snack you chose to bring with you.
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Needing to wear your belt a couple notches tighter to hold up those pants that don’t quite fit anymore.
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Finding a vegetable that you ACTUALLY like to add to your life.
They seem small, because they are, but each one is building on the other to get you closer to your goals and end point. By focusing on these smaller successes we get to celebrate on the daily for nailing it instead of consistently thinking about what we don’t have yet.
WRAPPING IT UP
It’s not JUST about calorie in calorie out ratios for fat loss (although that is a SUPER important piece). For a successful and long term fat loss journey you need to understand and deal with the hard stuff, the uncomfortable stuff and the mindset traps around nutrition and fat loss.
I hope these tools will empower you to make the best choices for YOU on your journey. I believe in you and I’m here to help.
Learn more about how to nail your fat loss goals, schedule a time to come visit!
Lindsay is the co-founder and First Lady of First Guess Fitness as well as the head nutrition coach in our FOODCAMP™ Nutrition coaching program. Lindsay implements a body-positive strategy to help each member and coaching client NAIL their health and nutrition goals. She’s also a SUPER mom and is a pre- and post-natal coach for all things fitness.