All-or-nothing thinking

Are you guilty of this? I mean, you establish a goal. For example: I will not eat after 8 pm. Sounds petty clear and at first glance quite doable. 8 pm is not 5 pm, there is not so much time left to go to bed, but you know that it is your critical time when you are likely to fail. The whole day goes by reasonably well, you have had your dinner, and… those stupid thoughts start creeping in. There is ice cream in the freezer. NO! OK, but do you remember the cookies you bought the other day? NO! The list goes on…

You keep fighting that demon. You really try. You do your best. You are in front of the TV trying to concentrate on the movie but your mind is elsewhere. It is scanning everything there is at home that you prohibited yourself from eating. Then your better half brings some chips. Omg, the smell… heaven on earth. You still try, but your willpower is at the end. Fine! You decide to have a handful, a little is not that bad. 

And then, before you know it, you have the large bag on your lap and you finish it all. And this is exactly when the inner critics step in and start: you are useless, you are a failure, you are good do nothing, you failed again, you have no willpower, you will never stop eating like a pig, you are disgusting… that’s… bad…

And the next step? You get angry at yourself, you go to the kitchen and you bring everything you said you wouldn’t eat. You spread it around you and you eat until you are sick. (Lucky me, I never got to this point, but yes, I had these snaccidents as well.) 

The pattern of thinking you have just activated goes: I have already failed, so no matter how much I eat now, I have messed up anyway. All or nothing. I execute the plan perfectly or anything goes. 

The thing is people who are fighting their food demons, are extremely strict and demanding of themselves. Some of the goals they set are reasonable and realistic. Some of them are from another planet. I remember a friend of mine who was counting 18 spaghetti to boil, thinking that she would be able to survive on that whole day. Crazy right? I found her at 3 am sitting in front of an open fridge eating salami and crying 😥

Our eating habits are the result of many years of better or worse decisions, our habits, what we brought from home, and our culture. Many factors influence us a lot about what and how we eat. It took decades to establish, so it is not likely that we make a single decision and we will turn it all over overnight. This will not happen. This is crystal clear. Sooner or later we fail and I mean miserably fail. And it inevitably leads to our doubting about ourselves, undermining our ability to change for the better, to reach our goals. 

First of all, why are we so incredibly harsh on ourselves? I don’t think we are like this to any other human being. So why are we punishing ourselves this much? It makes no sense. We can become our worst critics and our self-talk a nasty nagging friend we have to live within our head. I mean, would you keep in touch with a friend like this in real life? Let’s be honest here. If your inner critic was a real person and pretended they were your closest friend – would you keep them or would you send them… let’s call it far away and never come back? I think the latter is very much likely. 

So why are we talking to yourself this way? We don’t like it, it is good to nothing, and what is more, it is completely counterproductive. What if accepting where we are, and what our body looks like right now and acknowledging that there must be something done about it, is a good starting stepping stone? The first step to the unknown, that will likely lead us to a better place. 

I can hear you: it is not working? Sure it is not. You can’t kill your inner critic on the spot, but you can start distancing yourself from them a little. I gave her a name. Mari. 😀yes, in my case it is a woman, a nasty nagging middle-aged madame perfect who used to make sure that she would bury any dream and any attempt of anything I might have even thought of.

It took me a lot of time and a lot of effort to stop listening to her. She can be very convincing! And no, even after such a long time, she is not dead. At all! She loves to reappear, all of a sudden, especially when I have a not-so-great day when I feel down when something doesn’t go great. I just learned to shut her up. 

I have read somewhere that change is simple, but not easy. And I completely agree with this. It is very simple to decide to change your life around, it is basically what you will do with bariatric surgery, but it is not easy. You know what to do, how much to eat and when, what to do, what to abandon altogether. It is simple seeing it on a sheet of paper. It is crystal clear.

But living it? That i a very different story. When you go out with your girl-friends to have a coffee and everybody is having that great looking cake with it, and you have coffee with milk and a sweetener, and you watch them munching on the cake. You have it in front of you, so close, smelling so nicely. No, it will not happen. That is another level, right?

How about starting with SMALL changes? I had a whole year to prepare myself for the surgery. That time it looked like an eternity, it was really frustrating, and I wanted to have it now now now. But you know what? I am grateful that I had this much time, so I could work little by little on all the changes that were important to make. Small steps, sometimes literally baby steps, but when added all together, they made a huge change. And I still didn’t have the surgery at that point. It helped me a ton. Adding here, stopping doing something, putting a little less of this, topping up the protein, trying a new healthier recipe, what is this veggie anyway? You can imagine what I am talking about. 

We are functioning on habits. If we start changing them little by little, these changes are much more likely to stick. And in time they are like a snowball. You start slow, but in time, you can get very far. This is how you make the necessary adjustments and start seeing the results. It is small, it doesn’t hurt that much.

If you are used to eating 4 donuts for breakfast, can you eat 3 and add an apple the next week? I am pretty sure that it is a very doable change. Is it perfect? No, obviously. But you are starting somehow. That is what counts. If I put in front of you overnight oats with chia… I really don’t think that you will enjoy it anyhow. Most likely you won’t even eat that. And if you will, all you are going to do is keep thinking about your donuts. You may keep sticking to this for a week, maybe not even that long. And you won’t be eating 4 donuts, but 6 because you have suffered a lot before. Sounds familiar? 

Making small changes makes it much more doable and easy for us to keep those changes. We are not so likely to typically fail, and it grows our self-esteem. If I can do this, I will sure be able to do that. The changes start making a chain. And what was once your weekly goal is now an autopilot behavior.  This is what you want. You forget that you used to work on something as your goal, it stuck with you. And you can start focusing on something new.

Make a few changes every week one or two. But don’t skip. Focus on the change, make sure you did it right, and at the end, you can reward yourself (not by food, you’re not a dog 😏). Buying a new nail polish? Why not! And it lasts longer than food.

Are you the type of person who likes games? Go for it! Make a chart and tick every day when you have completed your goal. Every 10/15/you decide days, you will reward yourself. Make it a game, it will motivate you. 

What if I fail? It can happen. Life happens and sometimes, we simply can’t fulfill everything 100%. What happens? Basically nothing. If it is only one day. Forgive yourself and keep going. No one is perfect. Even the most organized people sometimes fail. As I say, no kitty died in the process, so all is fine, and let’s go on. As long as you haven’t given up and you keep going, all is fine.

Losing weight is no single big attempt, you lose it, and that is it. It is no sprint-like discipline, it is a very long marathon. For us, who have been fighting the weight our whole life, it is seriously forever. The most important is to decide and start. Once you have started, you are on the way, and let’s see where it will take you. To the surgery? Will you be able to lose it by yourself? Will you reach one goal and decide that it is ok like this? Great! But don’t give up!

If you don’t like starting over, don’t give up. You have done this many times before, right? Remember: it is the small change that is likely to stick. But I am not seeing any results if I am doing it this slow! Sure, and have you gained all that weight over a weekend or over a decade? This! So start where you are and be consistent. That is the only way of getting where you want to be. It is slow, it is a process. Eventually, you will get there. But I repeat: start and don’t quit 🙂