Weight Loss: How to Reset Your Brain for Success

We’ve all been there — after a month of being “good” on your New Year’s diet, you attend a party (mask on, of course) for the big game that’s bursting with treats.

Suddenly, corn chips and chili dip are calling your name, and you can’t concentrate on the game because you’re spending all of your mental energy trying to avoid those tempting treats.

When you finally give in, you feel guilt, shame and lowered self-esteem.

Combine these feelings with the idea that since you’ve blown your diet, you might as well eat more before you go back to being “good” tomorrow, and you have weight gain.

So, how can you get rid of the guilt and reset your brain to make smart choices?

Dietitian Anna Taylor, MS, RD, LD, CDCES, and bariatric behavioral health expert Leslie Heinberg, PhD, talk about how to change your thinking around dieting.

What happens when we diet

Dieting may seem like a great New Year’s resolution, but when we limit how much we eat, it can affect our body in ways we didn’t predict.

“Several things happen in our bodies when we restrict our food intake,” says Taylor. “We know that our metabolism slows, and the hormones that regulate our feelings of hunger and fullness get out of whack. You end up overeating, not because you are bad or weak, but because your body is doing everything it can to get out of your self-imposed famine.”

Even when you’re not actively on a diet plan, your dieting mindset can cause you to eat more and gain weight. You may eat more than you normally would, anticipating that soon, you’ll be back on a restrictive diet.

“From an evolutionary perspective, our bodies are more tuned to survive in times of famine,” Taylor says. “The body of the yo-yo dieter is accustomed to having random times of food shortage or restriction. Therefore, the body strives to eat and store more overall. The human body does not like to lose weight, so it fights back.”

Shifting your dieting perspective

Several studies have shown that restrictive dieting ultimately leads to weight gain, not weight loss. But studies have also shown that self-esteem can predict dieting outcomes.

“When you work on reducing your guilt and shame around food and better body image acceptance, you tend to develop better eating habits over the long term,” says Dr. Heinberg.

A dieting mindset also tells you that your food decisions reflect on your worth as a person.

You are eating “bad” foods, so you must be a bad or weak or unworthy person. This can perpetuate a cycle of emotional eating that adds excess weight, reduces self-esteem and is tough to end.

How to reset your dieting mindset

Work on stopping the negative thoughts in your head and adopt these tips to encourage a better relationship with food and eating healthy.

• Don’t tell yourself certain foods are “bad.” Focus on how a food makes your body feel, not on whether it fits in with the current diet fad. “Healthy foods give us more energy and tend to make us feel better,” Taylor says. “Even something like ice cream can fit into this framework. You know if you order a triple scoop you’re going to feel sluggish afterwards, so you stick to a junior scoop and enjoy every bite. Over time, that leads to better health.”
• Don’t subtract from your eating — add to it. “Restriction has the opposite effect we want it to have, so if we focus on adding foods that make us feel good — vegetables and fruits that help digestion, whole grains and proteins that keep us fuller, longer — then we are not so obsessed with what we are not eating,” Dr. Heinberg says. “Restriction also leads us to feel overly hungry later and lose self-control. Don’t restrict as a way of making up for less-than-ideal eating. It will just set the stage for a future binge.”
• Limit your negative self-talk. “When we tie our self-worth so directly to our food choices and combine that with a restrictive diet, we’re setting ourselves up to fail and feel guilty, which in turn produces overeating behaviors and then more guilt,” Dr. Heinberg says. Write down positive changes that you’re making each day (like drinking more water or taking walks) in a journal, and stop using the words “good” and “bad” to describe your food choices — and yourself.

Ultimately, what works for weight loss in the long-term is small, incremental changes to your overall eating patterns. And the less you focus on restricting and categorizing foods and the more you focus on creating healthy behaviors around food and exercise, the healthier your body — and mind — will be.