Life In the Green Room: I'm Mentally Exhausted from Trying to Lose Weight!

So for this 6 week challenge I have decided to research and learn about the mental blocks that surround you when trying to lose weight. Then I want to develop some tools or tricks to help me off the road of self-sabotage. For the most part, I know what to do. I may not know the amount of proteins in different foods, but I get that eating cleaner foods in healthy portions and exercising will get me in the right direction. However, there is always a part of me that is getting in the way.

There is a chapter or concept in the Stephen Covey book about 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The concept is if you have to cut down a tree in 4 hours, spend 3 sharpening your saw. I know this is not an exact quote, but you can get the point. I am trying to figure out the equivalent of the saw for losing weight. I am very suspicious that the saw is tied to your mental game.

For me, just brute forcing will power, is not the answer. This absolutely works in the short term, but then you crack. And then you feel bad b/c you cracked and the self-sabotage begins & you are worse off from when you started.

So, how do we get in front of this!

For my initial round of research I learned a lot about how the mental blocks are real and need to be dealt with. I’m hoping to get deeper in how to fix them next week.

Here are some of the common mental blocks (I feel like I have a challenge with all of them!)

Will Power is not a long term plan
You cannot think your diet is temporary
The all or nothing attitude is lethal
The can’t have negative thoughts (vs. don’t want) will set you up for failure
If/when I cheat, I am a bad person(http://mikeandsuzie.com/6-reasons-weight-loss-diet-isnt-working/)

"Cut the mental fat, and that will lead to cutting the waistline fat," says Pamela Peeke, MD, author of Fit to Live. I’m totally on board! Now I just have to figure out how to cut the mental fat!

A few relevant tips I have found so far, that I will explore in more detail:

Focus on what you can add vs. what you can take away. Ok, I like that, restrictions can make me start to panic. I can think about adding healthy (& delicious) foods. I can rely more tricks like, you can eat X, but you have to eat a serving of raw veggies first etc.
Replace a bad habit with a good habit. Conceptually this one seems great! Execution will be the trick. One example was when you find yourself standing in front of the fridge or the pantry, go for a walk instead. Sounds great…. Can I actually do this?? I will be exploring this further.
Do some searching on the type of eater you are and find the diet lifestyle that matches. Hmmm. Are you a Compulsive eater, Impulsive eater, emotional eater?? Yes, Yes & Yes. So I should follow all the diets? Not sure on this one…
Understand Why you eat this way? Love it! Now I just need to know HOW to understand my why into unhealthy relationship with food and eating habits.

This is a great start on the mental block. Over the coming weeks I’ll dive deeper into this topic so I can hopefully learn about how to get in front of the mental block.

Do you have any great tips about how you recognize a mental block? How about how you have overcome one? Please share! Help the rest of us out!