When it comes to any change generally and to weight loss in particular, our subconscious can be very creative in avoiding such a change. Our subconscious wants to keep the status quo. Change is not welcome…habit is.
How many times have you decided not to eat your favorite sweet food for a month, and three days later you suddenly found yourself buying exactly that and then eating it?
How often did it feel like your steering wheel was automatically taking a detour to the next fast food restaurant?
How many times did you decide to exercise three to four times a week and then something came into your way? You thought, “Well, what does it matter. It’s just once.” But then something else came up, the weather wasn’t to your liking, your child looked like he might get a cold…and then there was the point where you realized that you haven’t been to the gym for two weeks and now you have lost all your motivation?
Don’t we all know such situations?
First of all, these are all signs that you are doing something wrong and got off track.
Secondly, these are all signs that you are dominated by your poor habits.
And there is a third reason I’ll get back to in a minute. But first I have to take a short detour with this topic.
In 37 years of being a weight loss coach and by working with over 10,000 persons I have seen it a thousand times that especially women tend to self-sabotage their weight loss process. They start with great motivation and begin to lose weight. Then they tell you that they need a break, don’t have enough money, don’t have any time, or worse, they simply disappear without saying a word.
One of my current members recently had some great success simply by following the daily action steps in my free Facebook group. Then Christmas came, New Year came, now we are two weeks into the new year and she almost disappeared.
Shortly before Christmas we talked on the phone and I realized that she was very close to a major breakthrough in her weight loss progress. It seemed like she was just inches away from the next breakthrough. And then we didn’t hear from her for weeks.
So what happened?
The subconscious mind takes over and is trying everything in its power to set you right back to where you were before.
This is happening a million times every day and it’s happening even more now during the month of January.
People are so used to follow their likings that they don’t realize how they are sabotaging their own goals. They feel something inside they can’t name or allocate and instantly follow these emotions. It’s like being on the way to something good, then another thing comes your way that looks even more interesting you follow that like a dog follows a new smell. They don’t realize that someone else – a minor authority that should not be allowed to dominate their lives – is slightly and slowly taking the wheel into it’s hands and they are losing control. They have given up the wheel and are now on autopilot that can bring them literally anywhere but to their desired goal.
This is the power of habit. And habits are a great way to move you away from what you really want. They are the easiest thing to use for self-sabotage.
But how do you know whether you are sabotaging your own goals?
Here are 30 signs of self-sabotage:
- Not feeling alike.
- Feeling that you don’t have the time and that something else is more important.
- Something else caught your attention.
- Stopping the goal achievement process alltogether.
- Using excuses (no money, no time, to hard, can’t, this is not for me, etc.).
- Being unreachable.
- Starting something new.
- Being afraid of becoming emotional.
- Avoiding to deal with your own circumstances.
- Overplanning.
- Lack of commitment.
- Using labels for your current situation, the program you’re currently in or for the coach or trainer.
- Labelling yourself (I’m this or that and hence this isn’t for me).
- Wondering if things might be going to well and easy and you might be disappointed at some point.
- Self-doubt.
- Unknown fear of the new situation you wanted in the first place.
- Feeling not to deserve this.
- Self-doubt (Can I do this? What if I’ll fail again?)
- I look fine the way I am. I don’t really need to lose weight.
- Becoming bored with the process.
- Feeling inadequate.
- Initiating conflicts.
- Being out of focus.
- Compare yourself with others.
- Questioning your purpose.
- Critisizing.
- Procrastination (I’ll do it later, I don’t have time right now or I need a break first).
- Resistance.
- Perfectionism.
- Quitting.
Self-sabotage is a behavior or thought pattern that is holding you back and preventing you from achieving what you want and from doing what you have decided to do. There is nothing that has killed more dreams and goal achievement processes than self-sabotage.
And here is the big problem.
Most people begin to sabotage themselves shortly before a major breakthrough!
That means that they are on the right path but are afraid of their new self. When they stop the process and give in to their self destructive behavior, they stop a process that had the potential to be a success. Then, a few years down the road they realize that they once wanted to lose weight and still haven’t achieved their goal.
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That’s the moment when they have to go back to step number one and start all over again.
May this not be you!
May you have enough wisdom and self-reflection to understand when you are sabotaging your own weight loss goal.
May you have enough stamina to follow through with your weight loss process to the very end….no matter what, no matter how, and no matter how long it will take. Following through with the current process is still shorter than having to start all over again…of course, provided that you are on the right path. (Please also see article “http://www.angelabuhri.com/if-youre-struggling-with-losing-weight-youre-doing-something-wrong/”)
Following through with the current process is still shorter than quitting and then having to start all over again.
May you love yourself enough to allow yourself to overcome all obstacles and stumbling blocks and follow through with your weight loss process to the very end and be wise enough to ask for help when needed.
The first step of overcoming self-sabotaging behavior is by being AWARE of, by being honest in self-reflection. Vision yourself being slim. Ask for help.
Then check back on your bigger WHY – the reason WHY you wanted to lose weight in the first place. At this point it may also help to go deeper with your WHY, away from your own person to a bigger purpose.
Understand what’s going on subconsciously and forgive yourself. Maybe you are obese for a long time and your extra fat has been serving as kind of a protective shield around you; now you have no idea how you’re going to feel as a slim person and how to protect that new you.
Be prepared. Everybody gets to a difficult point no matter the goal. No goal achievement process goes only smooth and linear. Understand that when there will be the time when you want to run away, hide, take a break or quit, that you might be just inches away from a major breakthrough. Especially during this month this will happen to millions of women. Some of them are really on the wrong route and need to make some shifts and others are already on the right path and don’t realize it.
Everybody needs help with their WHY and with overcoming their self-sabotaging pattern; you are not different from the rest of us. Be real to yourself and admit that you need help. In my Facebook group 4 Pillars of Lasting Weight Loss For Women you can get that kind of assistance from other members and from myself. Or you can hire me for a one-on-one coaching session which is always the fastest way to any goal. During these sessions we work very concentrated and focused on the TRANSFORMATION of habits and self-sabotage behavior.
Just be smarter than your subconscious mind and use it to your advantage.
Happy slimming!
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Is your health and weight loss goal worth five to fifteen minutes of your time every day?
If you want to learn a process that leads you to constant weight loss success by baby stepping, check out my Facebook group.
You can get a feeling for the 4 Pillars of Weight Loss process for free. Simply join my closed Facebook group where you can go through the process by taking tiny daily baby steps completely stress free and still make tremendous progress.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4pillarsoflastingweightloss
Flies constantly buzz around on the glass just moving millimeters trying to miraculously move through the glass to freedom, and this goes on for days. Sometimes they fly up and then fly very quickly toward the glass in an attempt to break through it. They just never seem to get tired from trying. Of course they are attracted by the light that is on the other side. But they don’t realize that there is no direct way through the glass. All they would have to do is crawling or flying around the window frame and they would be free. But no, even when you help them, they refuse to take that little hurdle around the window frame and then be free.
Henceforward my friend’s “What if…?” stuck with me, and each time I felt discouraged I thought, “What if there is a solution I don’t know yet?” One day I received an unsolicited email which described my problem word by word in their headline. Usually I move these emails to my spam folder immediately, but then something stopped my hand with the mouse and I started reading. On their website they explained exactly my problem and shared how they solve the issue (and no, I never discussed this dilemma with anybody by email so that Google could send me the right ads). It was about a method of a group of European dentists who are practicing in Bulgaria no dentist in my own country knew about or was brave enough to try.
Was it a detour? Only at the first sight. At the end it turned out to be much faster than any other solution I knew, and despite of the flight still less than half the price I would have had to pay in Switzerland for a solution that was not acceptable, and way better and more reliable than anything else. That “detour” turned out to be the fastest way possible to my desired goal. On top of that it was a wonderful experience to fly over the Carpatian Mountains and to have a one-week vacation with a view of the Black Ocean.
When you are on the WRONG path, you can run as fast as you want; you can be as disciplined and frantic as you can; you can be totally determined to achieve your goal but you will still NEVER arrive because it’s the wrong road. On the other hand, if you are on the RIGHT road toward your goal, you can walk as slowly as you want, you can take baby steps, you can even crawl and still achieve your destination. Depending on how fast you move forward it will take longer or faster to reach your goal, but it is certain that you will reach it one day because you are on the right road. On the other hand, when you’re on the WRONG route you will just never get there, no matter what.
Or can you finally open up your mind and ask yourself, “What if there is another, faster, better and healthier solution I just never took into consideration?” 
The second time I really struggled a lot was with my self-growth business in the 1980s. I was a single mom and I wanted to be with my daughter as much as possible. So I decided to build my own home-based coaching, seminar, and public speaking business. I did all right from the get go and we were lucky enough to always have some food on the table. And though some months I couldn’t pay my bills, I could always pay them the next month. However, I was never able to save any money for my daughter’s college or buy some special things like new furniture, a car, or nice clothes. It was just enough for what we really needed. And I was trying really, really hard.
The interesting thing is that it took other coaches like Marianne Williamson, Geneen Roth, and Jon Gabriel more than a decade to come up with similar solutions, but all of them only offer parts of what I have found. What I was allowed to “download” from the Universe back then is still true today and I still teach these same principles in all of my workshops, seminars, and programs. And I am very surprised that I am still one of very few holistic weight loss coaches who can do that kind of work.
Because I know that so many women have been struggling with their weight for years and just don’t seem to be able to find a way to lose their weight for good. They are all on a completely wrong route. With a small mindset shift and a new weight loss strategy, their weight struggle could end almost instantly. 
It’s the letting go that is a very important part of your weight loss process. 
Since I have talked about the diet approach many times, I want to make this short. Dieting is against the body’s own nature and therefore can’t work long term. Going on a diet can give you some short term results but the weight will come back after a while. Depending on how many diets you have been trying or will choose to try, the constant up and down usually goes on for years and the person will eventually come to a point where she will resignate and give up all weight loss attempts.
Exercise alone has never been a fast tactic. Although exercise should always be part of a sensible weight loss strategy, it’s far from being fast nor maintainable. You can jog for an hour every day and 365 days and you may not even lose a pound. Believe me, I did it and that was the results. Zero weight loss.
Like with any diet, at the beginning you may lose a lot of weight very quickly. But after a while you will gain it back because you didn’t take your body’s nature into consideration. You can’t fool your body.
In my humble opinion this is the most stupid way of losing weight, and any doctor who offers that kind of surgeries should be put in jail for a long time. Gastric surgery is slow murder.
Hypnoses is a great method and I personally use several kinds of hypnoses in my coaching and therapy practice.
Although a healthy lifestyle ABSOLUTELY has to be part of a maintainable weight loss strategy, by itself it’s not a fast method and very often not even a lasting solution. The healthy lifestyle approach looks at weight issues exclusively from the physical standpoint and that’s never enough to make losing weight to last. Inner causes will not be transformed. 
My 4 Pillar system takes the whole person, the whole being into consideration. We are body, mind AND spirit. We can’t solve a problem just on the physical level by ignoring the other parts of our beings.
Changing your diet may bring you a step ahead.
To make it easier for you, I have created a Facebook page with daily tiny baby steps that build up on momentum. Each step takes between 5 and 15 minutes. And if you follow these steps every day at the same time, soon your momentum will begin to snow ball and you will experience what one of my members is experience. 
Maintainable weight loss begins in your head
Thirdly, your current weight is another number that sticks to your subconscious mind and whenever you go on a diet, your subconscious mind will do everything to get back to that number. It’s like with your air conditioner. When you set it to a certain degree, the system will constantly adjust the temperature. When it gets warmer than you chose, the system will cool down; when the room gets colder, the system will heat up. It’s the same with your weight because your body doesn’t understand that you want to get rid of that extra weight and it will always bounce back unless you eliminate the real causes. 
Therefore my friend, patience is one of the first attributes you will need for your maintainable weight loss success. We are talking about a long-term goal here. We are not talking about a few weeks or months, we are talking about your healthy LIFE….a maintainable healthy lifestyle you can easily follow through with for the rest of your life without starving and without stress. 
“You could eat the best foods every day, but if you don’t exercise, you are not going to be healthy. Or you could eat the best food, and you could exercise an hour a day, but if your thoughts are always negative, if you are always harboring thoughts of doubt, worry, anger, guilt, jealousy, helplessness and hopelessness, there is no way you’re ever going to be vibrantly healthy.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
You may moan about the fact that losing weight for good is a little bit more complex than just dieting. But as soon as you realize how much more effective a weight loss strategy is than dieting, you will begin to love it. It’s not complicated and – again – it can happen by taking baby steps and simple changes. Besides, what is fast about yo-yoing? 
The truth is, my friend, that you are never going to get to your desired achievement in your life until you have some self-discipline. And by that, Dr. Susan recommends to “…following through on what you say you are going to do.”
We deserve to feel powerful and under control, we deserve the best food, and we deserve to be slim and healthy.
Many women feel like the victim of a cruel fate, of poor genes, or habits they can’t control. Such an attitude makes it very hard to be successful with any maintainable weight loss method.
When you look at all the commercials on TV and the advertisements in magazines and newspapers, the advertisers are trying to tell you that they have a miracle pill, powder or potion, and we’ve come to believe that things outside ourselves are the keys to health and well-being. And whatever you are suffering from, be it headache, constipation, sleepless nights, diarrhea, indigestion, skin rashes, high blood pressure, weight gain–you fill in the blank-you then first try to self-medicate before going to the doctor. Thus, we have become a self-medicating society or world because we don’t really understand how our body is trying to communicate with us, trying to give us the correct answers for a healthy, slim, long, and happy life. And because we are impatient and want instant relief without taking care of the body’s needs first, we make matters worse by going the wrong route. 
“So each of us needs to be reminded that we are magnificently equipped to meet life’s problems when supplied with the simple and easily obtainable requisites of health,” Dr. Susan recommends. So we’ve got to realize that our human body is remarkable and a wonderful feedback machine.