When you love yourself now and forgive yourself for your past weight loss failures, you can move on and live in the present.
Your power is in the present, and it is here that you can make healthy changes that will affect your future. By loving yourself as you are now, you can get into a positive space and make positive progress with your weight loss and fitness goals.
So what can you do if you’re at that point where you’ve experienced success losing weight followed by regaining what you lost, and there is still a part of you that is holding out hope that you can succeed long term? What you can start with is forgiving yourself.
Forgive yourself for overeating, forgive yourself for regaining weight you previously lost, forgive yourself for holding your past actions against yourself today. The past is the past and there isn’t anything you can do about it now. You can choose to learn from it but you can also let it go. What matters is what you do today. You can choose to love yourself today, just as you are, which includes forgiving yourself for any perceived weight loss failures in your past.
If you have repeatedly lost weight and then regained it (plus some!) throughout your lifetime, done diet after diet, and if you have been on this roller coaster for years, you can see how you could really get down by even thinking about the prospect of losing weight yet again.
After so many repeated weight loss successes followed by weight regains, you might just reach the point where you don’t even want to try anymore. This is because all of these failures have affected your mindset and you now have a mindset that is programmed more in the direction of fear and failure than it is programmed in the direction of “Yes, I can do it! It’s easy to lose weight, all I have to do is DO it by living healthy and fit!”
When your mindset is not 100% behind you (which means you are All Systems GO – no self-doubts) then even the smallest of actions to lose weight will feel like struggle. All of your past failures have added up, and it’s important you forgive yourself for them now.
Another good step to take right now is to move towards a weight loss mindset. It will be much easier for you to forgive yourself for your past actions when you take decisive action today to get a weight loss mindset. It’s your mindset that either makes weight loss easy, or like the hardest thing on Earth.
Take a first step towards a weight loss mindset by grabbing my FREE 5-day E-course now!
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JoLynn,
Very interesting post re. forgiveness. Actually, this is sometimes done with women who suffer from EDs like anorexia – they are encouraged to look at themselves in the mirror and say things like, “I forgive you” or “It’s not your fault” — typically these phrases are in reference to something that happened in the past, looking a certain way (beautiful young girl who got lots of attention, for example.) Very inspiring tip.
I have long been convinced of the importance of a proper mental attitude toward weight-loss. Great ideas, JoLynn!
I love your blog. What a great idea! Keep up the awesome work.
Love & Gratitude,
Tina
Think Simple. Be Decisive.
~ Productivity, Motivation & Happiness
Hi everyone!
@Leslie, thanks! I’m not very familiar with anorexia, but I do know that it takes place in the mind, just like overweight does (well, everything in life begins with a thought). Isn’t anorexia about perfectionism, too? I can see how mirror work (and self-love and forgiveness) would be very beneficial in the healing process.
@Steve, thanks! You’re right, a large portion of food and weight issues start with your thinking, at least that’s what I’ve experienced.
@Tina Su, thank you very much!
🙂