Updated: December 12, 2023
Episode 129 How to Talk to Yourself to Lose Weight
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Positive Self Talk for Weight Loss
In quiet moments, many of us have ugly conversations with ourselves. It leads to BUSYING ourselves into exhaustion. We fill our days with things trying to escape our worst enemy…the voice in our head that I call Fat Girl Thinking.
I see a lot of my podcast listeners binge at 8 pm. Why? When they are alone they can’t stand the judgment of themselves. They sit on the couch intending not to eat.
Next up? They think about food. If they don’t eat they start thinking of their failures, they imagine never getting to their goals, and they beat themselves up for being overweight to begin with. Then they give in and eat more just to shut off the inner critic.
Does this sound like you:
- You are tired of being your own personal punching bag,
- You overeat to feel better,
- You have a hard time thinking you can ever love yourself?
Then you suffer from ‘Fat Girl Thinking’ and changing how you talk to yourself will help your mindset and help your ability to lose weight and keep it off.
In my this podcast episode of Losing 100 Pounds with Corinne, I’m going to help you understand what’s going on with you and what to do about it.
What is Fat Girl Thinking?
Fat girl thinking is that inner voice that is harsh, is a victim, calls you names, it’s the heavy negativity inside of you. It helps you to justify overeating because you’re already overweight.
You’re never going to find a magic plan that fixes you without addressing how you talk to yourself. The first step is to figure out what you are actually thinking about weight loss. Once you realize the mess of thoughts in your head, don’t judge them. Everyone has error thoughts. Don’t be afraid of what you’ll uncover. Don’t judge yourself for having the thoughts, to begin with.
Then, learn not to judge what you think.
Discover your Fat Girl Thinking
- Write down your thoughts about losing weight. This will bring to the surface what you’ve always been thinking that has caused you to eat.
- Tell and ask yourself, ‘This is just stuff I’m thinking. Do I want to keep this thought or not?”
When you’re willing to listen to what you think, you’re now willing to decide what you think. Just because you think it, doesn’t mean you have to believe it. If you think “I’m fat” you can instead choose to think “I’m Corinne [fill in your name]”. When you’re willing to hear what you’re thinking, you start to hear the little things you choose to eat over.
How does Fat Girl Thinking Effect Your Weightloss?
If you’ve spent all day thinking negatively about how other people are behaving and you’re hard on yourself, of course, you’re going to overeat. When we’re not working on our own thinking, it’s much easier to judge everyone else.
We have to start understanding what we’re currently thinking and going through it and deciding what’s worth keeping and what’s not and not judging ourselves for it and put in things that will make us feel better each day. The urges are much easier to manage and happen less frequently when we manage our minds.
When you clean up some of your fat girl thinking happening during the day, you’ll want to eat less at 8pm!
When you have an overeat, look back over your day to see where you may have created the perfect storm to respond with food.
When you’re upset, it’s not a sign to escape that feeling, but to stop and figure out why you’re upset and sit with it. You have to think better things even if it doesn’t feel natural at first. Your brain is like a computer. Over time, you can reprogram it, but you have to be willing to put in the energy and effort. With enough time, energy, effort, and community you can change.
It took one of my No BS Weightloss Coaches, Kathy, a while to get to the point where she could hear what she was saying and know she needed to correct it.
Give yourself compassion for some of the thoughts that come up and move on. Decide they aren’t the truth anymore.
If you ignore what you’re thinking, you’re going to get the same shitty results you’ve always had. If you don’t like the current results in your life, you probably have thought errors you need to work on. You need to think about what you think about, rather than thinking things and letting it play out.
Actions to Increase Positive Self Talk
- Focus on small, lasting changes over time
- Go to bed exhausted because you spent the day working to think better thoughts
- Keep doing your positive thinking and small habits over and over again
- Create a positive support system around you
For more tips on how to change your Fat Girl Thinking and replace it with positive self talk, take my Losing For Life Kickstart free video course.
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast
“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl