The Big Secret to Fat Loss!

Who can relate to one of these??

It’s been a long week, you get to Thursday evening and arrive home having been drenched by the torrential rain outside. You’ve had a tough day at work and still have a presentation to finish for tomorrow and to top it all off, you open up your mail you have a huge heating bill you weren’t expecting. You open the fridge feeling cold, overwhelmed and pissed off and see a chilled bottle of wine staring at you….SOLD!! Before you know it your 1 bottle in and you’re calorie target, eating plans and goals of losing 3 stone temporarily seem like a distant memory!

Or maybe you can relate to this scenario? You’ve reached the weekend and wake up feeling knackered from a bad night’s sleep, in a negative mood about your job and slightly anxious about meeting up with your friends tonight for dinner. You’re not sure what you should wear as you still haven’t managed to lose the weight you want to yet and don’t feel great about your appearance. You get ready and eventually find something you are semi comfortable in and turn up to dinner with the thought of choosing something that meets your new diet plan. However after seeing your friends and how good you think they look and hearing about all their current career successes your anxiety and overall negative mood starts to take over. Before you know it, you’re tucking into your order of the biggest burger and chips you could get your hands on….with extra sides!

We have absolutely all been there! And it’s not to say that every now and then a drink and a good meal with friends is exactly what’s called for and should be enjoyed. However, the problem lies when your emotions are ruling the roost and governing all your decisions. This suddenly makes losing body fat 10 times harder, as your ability to make the choices needed to get you to your end goal are compromised. You are essentially setting yourself up to fail.

If we revisit the first scenario, we can see that this person (let’s call them Jim!) was feeling overworked, overwhelmed, cold and angry! Instead of recognising this and using a healthy coping mechanism to deal with these, can you see how Jim used alcohol to temporarily escape these feelings and feel better. This choice however will then lead to a rubbish night’s sleep, an even tougher day at work nursing a hangover, feelings of regret having moved away from his fat loss goals and potentially then another evening of food and drink choices governed by these now even stronger feelings of stress and regret!

You can see how it’s very easy to get stuck in this cycle and potentially why so many people fail in the quest to lose body fat. So what’s the answer?! The first step is identifying that these patterns of behaviour exist. Can you think back to when you last went off plan or felt out of control with your decision making? Can you remember how you were feeling? Were you stressed, anxious, tired etc?

Once we can start to see that these patterns of behaviour exist and the emotions we might be feeling at that time, we can start to think about better ways of dealing with them. In relation to fat loss the more negative behaviours might be things like binge eating, alcohol, mindless grazing, over eating or processed foods in an attempt to feel better. There are so many things we can do instead of these that will have the same positive impact to our feelings but won’t come with the negative ones afterwards (think hangover, sore stomach, regret!). They also have the added bonus of helping us move towards our fat loss goals instead of away from them!

Here are just a few ideas of a long list of things you could try instead;

Do a workout or activity that you enjoy

Listen to music

Take a bath

Go for a walk

Call a friend

Play with the dog/pet!

Listen to a podcast

Meditate

Cook and prepare a more complex meal (feeling of accomplishment!)

Get out in nature

Essentially any activity that helps counter the emotion you are experiencing and positively impacts your mood.

To wrap this up the point I’m trying to make here is if we continually make choices controlled from our emotional state then in relation to fat loss our progress will always be limited. If however we can start to identify these feelings, accept their existence and start to deal with these emotions in a more positive way, then we take our control back and the possibilities for progress are endless!