Do you have been trying to lose weight for a while and you don’t see any results? You have been struggling with your diet and exercise and you can’t lose even one pound? Probably you are facing any kind of psychological trouble that is forbidding you to lose weight.
Dealing with excessive weight can be tough, your self-esteem is low, and the struggle gets worse day by day. Besides, excessive weight is a condition that leads to a lot of diseases that put your healthy at risk if you don’t control it.
We want to help you in this challenge in the many ways has we can, therefore we present you the 5 psychological reasons why you can’t lose weight. This way you can identify your problem and try to fight it better.
1. You are Looking for Instant Gratification – You Need Quick Results to Keep Motivated
The looking for instant results is the main reason that leads people to give up easily on their strategy to lose weight. Most people are familiar with the concept of “Yo-yo Diet” in which basically you have quick results on losing weight but easily recover the initial weight. In this cases people actually do fell motivated when they lose all the weight they wanted in a short period of time, the problem is that this dieting is dangerous for the body and you can easily return to your original form, leading to an extra demotivation on having long term results.
Healthy weight loss requires work, sacrifice and commitment. The results will take longer to show up, but they will also stay longer. Work hard on your objective, the harder it is to achieve, the longer it will be kept.
2. You are Unable to Control Your Impulses
Human impulses, part of the primary behavior, are other important reason that keeps of loosing those extra pounds you have on you. Imagine this situation, you have already taken your meal, you are already full, and you don’t need any extra food to fulfil your needs but then someone offers you some more food. You even might joke that you have no self-control and always end up having that little extra bite that won’t hurt anyone. The problem is when this goes to far and you end up having an excessive and unnecessary amount of food on your own.
So, to help you keeping your weight managed you should always try to control your impulses when it comes to over-eating to avoid an excessive intake that will lead to gaining weight.
3. Your Willpower has been Depleted
As human beings we fail, sometimes our willpower is not enough when we need it. Maybe because we are stressed, we don’t sleep well or enough, we have our daily frustrations and problems that are deeply affecting us, and we will end up giving up on something even without noticing, and most of the times is our diet. You feel sad and frustrated, you need something to comfort you and that makes you feel better and most of the time you’ll end up looking for food to comfort you. This might be the main reason for those crazy night cravings that you end up following.
We recommend you look for ways to relieve your stress, like sports, yoga, a night out with friends, anything that makes you feel better and helps you reduce those needs.
4. You Drink too Much
When people drink too much they get less inhibited when they drink a little more. Imagine that one day you go out with your friends, you go to a bar or a restaurant and you start ordering drinks. In less than you expect you’ll end up drinking too much and start craving the bar’s accessible food to feel satisfied. You don’t need to be drunk for this to happen, you only need to have a few drinks and when you notice you have already broken your diet and you have eating things you shouldn’t.
Avoid drinking alcoholic drinks, they may lead you to make poor choices.
5. Your Mind is Playing Tricks on You
There are two ways in which your mind might be playing tricks on you. The first one is called by psychologists “self-licensing”, this situation is characterized by rewarding yourself when you feel you have been doing well on your diet and exercise plans (“I’ve been doing so well that I deserve being rewarded for it”). In this situation people tend to exaggerate on the reward, ending up defeating some progress that has been made in the past. It’s true that to feel motivated you might need a little reward to keep on going, but to avoid excess you should define goals and a celebration that doesn’t compromise all the work that has been done in the past. We recommend you celebrate legitimate achievements, this way you’ll keep motivated to go further.
The other way your mind is playing tricks on you is by breaking some rules due to cravings. Imagine that you are on a diet and suddenly you have the desire of eating something you shouldn’t, and you end up eating it any way to make you feel better. Once might not be that problematic, the problem is that when you start repeating this process and end up giving up on your diet progressively. Since you have broken the rules once you’ll have the tendency to keep doing it until there is no diet at all and all that you have achieved is already gone.
Keep strong and define your objectives, if you know you are going to a party and you could end up eating something you shouldn’t eat at home before leaving, this way you’ll feel full and with no desire to eat. You’ll probably crave for sweet or salty treats, on this we recommend you too look for healthy recipes that won’t warm your diet and keep your weight balanced.
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