The Payoffs to Staying Overweight & Why We Self-Sabotage
In my recent vlog I spoke about the payoffs for not losing weight, if you missed it you can view it here.
While there’s a payoff to losing weight and feeling great, there are also payoffs for staying overweight. While this may seem counterintuitive at first, when we stop to ponder this for a while we can begin to see exactly why not changing is easier than changing. By going deeper still, we begin to see there many reasons for not changing, not losing weight and staying exactly where we are and these are why our subconscious mind derails our weight loss efforts.
The truth is there are many payoffs to being overweight, and if you find it hard to start or stick with a diet, then you are experiencing that first hand.
You may feel fatigued, bloated and experience great frustration trying to find clothes that ‘look good’, and you may not be feeling the best about yourself, which can affect many areas of your life, so you may be thinking ‘how could there be a payoff for that?’ Yet not changing, provides a great level of comfort and security. Is it more comfortable to ‘stay the same’, to be able to check out of life because you feel too tired? That’s a payoff, and as destructive as it sounds payoffs are the reasons we self-sabotage.
Comfort and security are one of our most essential human needs, to be able to feel certain about things is the major driver of comfort eaters. When things throw us even slightly out of our comfort zone, it can trigger a stress/comfort overeating response. So the payoff to not changing becomes the self-soothing of comfort eating.
There are other payoffs such as not having to play with the kids, instead, you might leave this up to your partner while you sit on the sidelines and enjoy a ‘break’, or you can hide behind a lack of self-confidence and therefore not have to go for that much-desired promotion at work. Sometimes being overweight prevents us from ‘putting ourselves out there’ and the payoff is that if we don’t ‘risk’ being disappointed if we don’t’ get what we want.
Using our weight as a barrier or an excuse protects us in more ways than one. Being overweight can quite literally ‘protect’ us from trying to live the life we truly want and leads us toward self-sabotage. It’s safer to stay overweight its many excuses than to risk living life differently.
The trick to overcoming your self-saboteur is to explore the negative payoffs in detail. Be really honest and delve into all the reasons why you shouldn’t change; ‘I don’t want to lose weight because then I might have to open myself up to finding love and that scares me’ for example.
As we lose our weight, it unravels all those excuses we had for not taking action in the past. Getting clear on what your negative payoffs are is crucial before you start your weight loss journey. If you are not aware, you won’t know how to spot a moment of sabotage before or as it occurs.
Once you are aware, you will be able to get through those moments as they come up and work through the layers of emotions that are holding you back from your goals. A very powerful exercise I give my clients is to write down 10 reasons (although 20 is better) for NOT starting a diet, losing weight or changing.
By acknowledging these reasons, we start to take back control of our mind and that is what the Mindswitch programme is all about; unraveling the neuro nets of our brain and rewiring them towards more empowering beliefs so you can live the life you truly want.
Lots of love, Deborah x
