Do you often criticize yourself for your overeating and overweight?
This is a common pattern for those who do not have a weight loss mindset. You criticize yourself because you overeat and then you go eat some more food because you feel bad about “beating yourself up” and then you criticize yourself even more for overeating again (and for the number on the scale!).
Loving yourself isn’t about criticism and blame, it is about forgiving yourself for indulging in unhealthy habits and recognizing that you have done the best you could at that time. If criticism of your overeating and weight gain worked, then you wouldn’t have any problem with either your weight or your health today.
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Great post and I agree wholeheartedly.
Eating healthy is great and a necessary part to lose weight, but my opinion is that you should eat healthy only about 85-90% of the time.
The only 10-15% of the time, it’s FINE to eat a little snack and you shouldn’t criticize yourself for it!
Great post!
Jeremy
http://www.fitness-made-fun.com
Hi Jeremy, thanks for your compliments!
If you don’t have any problems at all with food addictions such as addiction to sugar, flour, unhealthy fats (fried foods), salt, or any other ingredients, and if you can successfully eat foods containing those ingredients in moderation, then I suppose that you could eat something like that once in a while. It’s my experience however, that “one is never enough” and when I indulge in processed, low-energy, non-nutritive foods, I just end up wanting more and more.
Again though, if you don’t have a problem with that and those ingredients don’t give you cravings or cause overeating, then you might not have an issue with food and overweight anyway! 😉 Then the main concern would be eating a healthy diet of whole foods to live a life of high energy. 🙂
I definitely agree that even if you eat unhealthy foods that criticizing yourself for it won’t help you change the behavior, nor will it help change overeating.
Yes, I wish more women did learn how to love themselves instead of criticizing themselves so much (myself included). Magazines, movies, and television are so full of stick-thin women, we forget that is not healthy or normal. Most of them are that way because they are always hungry, living on drugs and cigarettes, and unhealthy. I once had a friend who was a model and was so gorgeous, but her main food groups were diet coke, cigarettes, and diet pills. All of my guy friends thought she was so pretty on the outside, but I knew how unhealthy she was on the inside. Whenever I have a reality check with myself and remember that, I feel OK that I am 10 pounds heavier than I want to be.
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Hi Emily,
Oh, you bring up such a wonderful point being that you had a close friend living an unhealthy lifestyle, but a friend who if other women saw her in a magazine they’d want to look like her!
You know what’s funny though, is that you don’t even need to starve yourself to lose weigh. This is off the topic of self-criticism but just wanted to mention that if one eats whole foods, non-processed, eats in balance and every couple of hours, you can easily lose weight and not starve yourself.
Anyway, I heartily agree with you that there is way too much self-criticism in our Universe, thanks for sharing in your comment, I appreciate it! 🙂