Weight loss blocked?  Learn how to unblock your weight loss with the secrets of the shame cycle.

When we set a diet or exercise goal or plan, spoiler alert, we are human, and we ARE going to mess up from time to time.

 Many of us will then beat ourselves up with the belief that shaming ourselves is the right way to get us back on track.

Indeed, isn’t this what we were taught as kids?

 If we did something wrong, we got yelled at.  Perhaps we were even physically hit (if you call it spanking, that somehow makes it ok, right?). 

Punishment and shame were supposed to make us behave better in the future.  Having learned this from adults as children, consequently we do the same thing mentally to ourselves to try to correct our behavior.

 The problem is, mentally berating ourselves with negative self-talk (like “you shouldn’t have eaten that”, or “you are so lazy, why did you skip your workout”) makes us feel awful.

 For those of us who are emotional eaters, you probably are in the habit of EATING to make yourself feel better.  Obviously, this whole cycle may be running below your conscious awareness.

The Pattern of the Shame Cycle

 Here's the pattern that keeps weight loss blocked: 

First, we eat something that’s not part of our plan.  Next, we make ourselves feel terrible by criticizing ourselves.  Then we go and eat a cookie to cheer ourselves up (often without consciously realizing what we are doing). Finally ,we yell at ourselves for eating a cookie, and then we feel terrible again.

 See what’s happening here? It’s an unending loop.  The shame cycle is part of why we have such negative associations with trying to lose weight. This process feels terrible.

How to Break the Cycle to Clear Weight Loss Blocks

 Instead of getting into this shame cycle, the best thing to do is treat that one off exception to our plan as exactly what it was – a one off exception to our plan. If we want, we can take the incident to our coach.  A certified weight loss coach can help us understand what the thinking was that lead to the exception.  When we understand why we did what we did,  we can learn from the exception and make a better choice next time.

 Got off track?  Let that mistake go and just get right back on track.

 What happened at lunch today does not need to have any effect on what we do at dinner tonight.

We haven’t “ruined the whole day”.

We don’t need to wait until Monday to start over.

We just reset in this moment and go back to our plan.

Break the shame cycle and succeed.

Want to learn more about how to break the shame cycle and clear weight loss blocks?  Schedule a free initial consultation.  Contact information is available at https://lisaduke.net/contact-me