In this special Valentine's Day episode of "Weight Loss Made Simple," Dr. Stacy Heimburger delves into the powerful impact of self-compassion versus tough love in your weight loss journey. Discover how common tough love phrases like "no pain, no gain" and "you're not trying hard enough" can actually hinder your progress. Learn how negative self-talk affects motivation and why self-compassion is the key to lasting success. Dr. Stacy shares practical strategies to transform your inner dialogue and embrace self-care on your path to a healthier you. Tune in for valuable insights on achieving your weight loss goals with kindness and mindfulness.
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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.
Hello everyone and welcome to a special Valentine’s Day edition of Weight Loss Made Simple today I want to tackle a topic in our weight loss journey about this idea of tough love, and the impact that that can have versus self compassion. It is almost an old wives tale if you ask me at this point that tough love is motivating but it shocks me how many of my clients really feel like this will work. This is something we’ve all tried at some point maybe we even got tough love messaging about our weight loss from our peers our friends are family, and maybe it even seemed to work at some point in the past knowing what I know now and how our thoughts create our feelings and those are what create our actions I’m more convinced than ever that tough love sabotages or weight loss goals so I wanna walk you through this today cause I think it’s pretty important And I thought Valentine’s Day would be an appropriate time to talk about it so we’ve all heard some common tough love statements no pain no gain you’re not trying hard enough. No excuses just results you have to sacrifice for progress. Failure is not an option. I just need more willpower. I just need to be more disciplined, I’m just weak I need to be strong and resist temptations. Let me tell you about what negative self-talk can do. There’s actually some pretty well-researched. Peer-reviewed articles about this very topic and how it deals specifically with motivation. Self-critics are less self-motivated that means their goals are less tied to their interest and their personal feelings or meanings than true for anyone else so what that means is that self-criticism Will lower our self-motivation and that obviously is negatively associated with goal progress OK so that research study now I can’t see where that came from that research was published all the way back in 2007 that’s September 2007 research trial so they found self-criticism Leads to rumination and procrastination and so any goal progress is just lost so we have to consider changing our internal or autonomous motivation if we want to reach our goals another study where they actually went in and taught people compassionate mind training OK so these are people who are highly self-critical Which led to high shame OK so they had some chronic difficulty with self-acceptance self-worth OK they went in and did a two-hour session 12 times teaching them compassionate mind training you’re getting like 15 minutes a week from me right I’m trying to help with this compassionate mind training Showed significant reductions and depression, anxiety, self-criticism, shame, and feeling inferior which led to you can guess it better motivation and more success at goal progress OK let’s go back to what we’ve been learning the last couple of weeks about the model and I’ll show you how some of these tough love things play out if we have the thought don’t be weak, just resist temptations you might feel guilt right you feel guilty for giving into Temptations or cravings. You might feel pressure like a lot of pressure to consistently resist temptations resistance can feel very tight. OK your actions are gonna come from that or not joyful let’s go stick to your plan right if we’re feeling pressure and guilt and tight, we’re likely going to overindulge our brain doesn’t like that feeling it wants to stop it. It wants to hit the easy button and get some food or some drink. OK it might work temporarily and over restrict. We might over restrict and response to these feelings, but that’s unsustainable and we’re gonna end up binging later, no pain no gain anxiety frustration absolutely make me feel that makes me feel anxious. If you’re feeling anxious or you’re feeling frustrated those are not feelings that are going to drive actions of sticking to your meal plan sticking to your exercise plan slightly going to lead to some self-punishment, some overexertion, ignoring pain signals overeating, I remember let’s talk about pain for one second pain specifically physical pain can lead to overeating after my hip surgery a couple of years ago. I was in a lot of pain and I just felt the buzz in my body. OK I think it was high cortisol racing around OK will have to do an episode on cortisol cortisol is going to lead to overeating. It’s going to increase your desire for sugary foods is going to interrupt your sleep. It’s going to just wreck with all of your hunger hormones, so there’s that with cortisol and then this physical pain I found myself overeating at night when I stopped and did a model I found the thought was I just need a break? I had been in pain all day long. I was trying to work so I couldn’t take medicine and I would get to the end of the day and the thought was I just want a break And that led to reading right my brain was like I know how to do that I know how to take a break from pain we get some dopamine from some food right now and it hit the easy button so physical pain if we’re overexerting ourselves in our exercise because we have a thought no pain no gain guess what’s gonna happen by the end of the day maybe not day one maybe not two we are going to overeat You’re not trying hard enough what a poisonous thought I challenge you to tell me that thinking the thought you’re not trying hard enough leads to any positive feeling that would lead you to positive, motivating type actions. I dare you please you would be the unicorn of all unicorns saying to yourself, you’re not trying hard enough will lead to shame and adequacy, you will 100% overeat you will not be motivated stick to your meal plan. You will not do something nice for yourself like planning dinners for the week you won’t do any of that cause you’re gonna be feeling like a piece of crap cause you’re telling yourself you’re not trying hard enough. I think you get the sequence the negative self-talk or not motivation tough love is not going to get you to your goal it does not work. I’ve just told you exactly why, so what are we do about it if we’ve been trying this tough love for a while it’s gonna be what comes up first it’s not a problem we just have to recognize it and change it so when we have some of these thoughts that we’ve thought so many times Way to change them is to break it a little bit right? I finally thought that we thought all the time or 1 million times they feel very solid to me so very visual they feel like a brick so we want to do is take that brick, and start chipping some holes in it And a way that I like to do that is that we add on like a little qualifier at the end so if the thought is you’re not trying hard enough we could say something like when that comes up you’re not trying hard enough but I’m trying something new OK so this very rigid you’re not trying hard enough. We just have the word but but I’m trying something new. I’m trying something new feels much lighter feels much more motivating like I’m willing I’m willing to try something I’m willing to do something nice for myself. I’m willing to meal plan. I’m willing to go to the gym, you’re not trying hard enough does not feel that way but just adding that little qualifier but I’m learning anyway but I’m willing to try sometimes I like to interrupt it and say I used to think that the truth is I am trying hard enough and then maybe I need to go into my brain and ask my brain all the way I’ve been trying and make a little list so what we’re doing in that example is that we’re taking that brick thought and then we’re really checking in is that true if it’s not 100% true we want to figure out let’s debunk it right so if I have the thought you’re not trying hard enough and I’m trying to motivate myself it’s not gonna work but if I take that thought you’re not trying hard enough and I really think about it That’s never 100% true and so we need to start chipping away at the validity of that statement. We need to find the false in that statement and we do that by making a list of all the way I am trying that’s not true. I’m listening to Stacy‘s podcast. I’m making a meal plan. I’m paying attention to this spot am trying. I am trying hard and will see if it’s enough and but are the two best words at the end of some of the sentences, right it’s not true that I’m not trying hard enough. I am trying and we’ll see if it’s enough I’ll keep trying until it is enough, OK South love is very motivating when we do this work and feel worthy of love we can start looking at the actions we want to take to lose weight as something that is nice and loving for ourselves. OK I’m not restricting how much I eat I’m only giving my body what it needs, which is much nicer to my body than overfeeding, I am not going to the gym to no pain no gain myself into fitness. I’m going to the gym because it feels good to move my body and I wanna be able to walk when I’m 75 and so what a nice thing that I’m doing for myself, we have to counteract self criticism with self-care. We have to examine our self critical, tough love statements we need to add a qualifier or just debunk them and change them into something that’s nice for us, if we are confused about what to eat instead of thinking I need to be hungry what’s punishing what’s tough love here is the salad tough love I’ll pick that we need to think what would feel best in my body what would give me fuel what would feel good what won’t make my stomach hurt later if that’s a salad and that’s what we eat we have to flip the script on this research shows self criticism will interfere with your goal progress research shows compassionate, self talk will help get you to your goal. It will help with your goal progress so we’re gonna hear these negative self talk things we’re going to try and go to tough love because it’s what we’ve known but you have now learned here today that will not work so when we hear it, we change it we we replace self criticism with self-love we go from blocking our goal progress to enhancing our chances of reaching our goal and we do that all by asking ourselves. What’s the most loving thing I can do for myself today so I hope this was helpful for you on Valentine’s Day. Be your best Valentine because you are amazing and when you hear these little negative thoughts, just tell him to shut up OK self criticism we’re gonna turn it to self love. We are going to get to our goal away because it’s what we deserve. Please have a most loving week and I will talk to you next time thanks bye