Why Self-Doubt Can Make Weight Loss Harder

Self-doubt is bound to make weight loss harder, because if you don't believe in yourself how can you take positive steps in your life that will help you to lose weight? Unfortunately, being overweight can sometimes erode your confidence and leave you questioning whether you are really able to do anything to transform your life. You may have been bullied about your weight, which has undermined your self-esteem, so that in some ways food becomes more than just a distraction – something comforting and tasty – it also becomes a way of punishing yourself.

You alternate between calorie restriction and binge eating, so that your weight goes up and down on a regular basis. Each time you go on a diet you try to stay positive and believe that this is the time you will actually keep the weight off. However, before long you find yourself cheating on your diet, eating things you're apparently not allowed. You feel guilty for breaking your diet and feel that you've let yourself and others down. To make yourself better you just eat some more, knowing that this is only going to make the situation worse.

You try to tell yourself that you don't really care any more, because you feel so down about the situation. Instead of looking at where you've gone wrong and trying to take a different approach to your weight loss, you simply blame yourself for being weak-willed and lacking the tenacity required to succeed. The reality, however, is that if you put yourself on a restrictive diet there is a very good chance you won't be able to keep it up for long. You're not alone in struggling with weight loss, as there are plenty of other people also taking a similar approach and failing.

When self-doubt creeps in, though, you become convinced that everyone else seems to be able to stay slim without much difficulty and that you're the odd one out. You tell yourself that you're going to fail and then take action which makes failure more likely. You then use this apparent failure to berate yourself, which only leaves you feeling worse about the situation and reaching for chocolate or some other calorific treat to make yourself feel better.

Since self-doubt can make weight loss harder it therefore makes sense to actually have some self-belief and to be positive about your chances of success. Losing weight is tough, anyway, and so starting off with a negative attitude clearly isn't going to help you achieve your weight-loss goal. You may have struggled to control your weight in the past, but that doesn't mean you can't do so in the future, as long as you are prepared to take action and retain a sense of optimism about your chances of success.