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.

Why is it so Hard to Lose Weight?

Trying to lose weight can be extremely frustrating, especially when the idea behind losing weight is so simple. All you have to do is eat less and exercise more, apparently, yet if it was that easy there would definitely be fewer overweight and obese individuals than there currently are! As it is, most people struggle to lose weight because it is hard to become more regimented with your eating and exercise habits when you're used to eating whatever you feel like and lazing around. Losing weight really shouldn't be that hard, in theory, but it is clearly something many people are struggling with.

It doesn't help when you put yourself on the strictest diet possible, believing this will help you to shed the pounds extra fast. You end up going on an extremely low-calorie diet that barely provides you with any energy, so that you find yourself walking around like a zombie. When you don't have any energy, you are liable to snap at anyone who does something to annoy you, which doesn't take much, and it is much more difficult to concentrate. You feel low and when this is the case you can find yourself drawn to stodgy, calorific, comforting food, even though this means breaking with your diet.

Indeed, comfort eating is something many people struggle with, because it is difficult to stay in control of your calorie intake when you are worried about something else or feeling sad. When you're down, you feel as though you're going to remain fat whatever you do and so you basically give up. You beat yourself up for falling off the wagon and struggle to get back on, but sometimes you just don't think that it's worth it and so go back to the familiar old habits that caused you to gain weight in the first place. You may be unhappy with your size, but you feel powerless to change it and so just eat to make yourself feel better.

As well as emotional eating, people's lifestyles can make weight loss harder, especially when you don't have time to calorie count or exercise. If you find that there are not enough hours in the day, you may not feel like cooking a proper meal when you get home and so you may just pick up some fast food on the way home or nibble on junk food to keep yourself satisfied. You can quite easily consume too many calories when your diet consists primarily of junk food. The situation is only exacerbated when you fail to get enough exercise to justify the number of calories you consume.

It can therefore be hard to lose weight when you have a set of habits that have become so entrenched that you can't imagine doing anything differently, particularly in relation to diet and exercise. However, that doesn't mean you have to give up on your weight loss aims. It does mean, though, that you have to be prepared to tackle the issues that make it hard for you to reduce your calorie consumption and increase your calorie expenditure, so that you can build up a calorie deficit and lose weight consistently.