Weight Loss Setbacks: Tips for Healthy Comebacks

Weight loss setbacks can be discouraging, can’t they?

You have stuck to your plan. The nutrition is on point. You have crushed your three exercise sessions a week.

Yet somehow, the scales haven’t shifted the way that you hoped.

How do you respond to weight loss setbacks?

If we are trying to lose excess weight so that we can improve our health, a weekly weigh-in is quite an emotional time.

If we are successful, we can feel really happy, and it will improve our confidence.

When the weight doesn’t shift, or it goes up, we can feel like a failure.

When we feel we have failed, we will respond emotionally to this. Do any of the following resonate with you?

• Speaking cruel words to yourself.

• Skipping workouts.

• Emotional eating.

• Giving up on the programme.

What is your emotional response?

When you can pinpoint your emotional response to disappointment, this will help you to move forward with any weight loss setbacks you may face.

My emotional response is always my insecurity of not feeling like I am enough. I have been known to comfort eat when my insecurity is triggered.

If I feel like I can’t succeed, I will also consider giving up on my health goals. Although it has been a few years since this happened, in my younger years, weight loss setbacks would cause me to give up, saying that it is “not worth it anymore.”

So I can put a plan in place, knowing that this is my trigger.

Once you have been honest with yourself about your trigger, you can begin to follow these steps, and get back to successfully losing weight.

Be Kind to Yourself in weight loss setbacks

When we are confronted with disappointment or a setback, it is very easy to place blame on someone.

Maybe you can blame anyone who offered you certain food.

Perhaps if you have a personal trainer, they didn’t set you challenging enough exercises for fat loss.

But most likely, you are going to blame yourself.

Can I share with you some words that will help you?

Most fitness trainers won’t talk this way, but I like to use different lingo.

“You have not failed.”

When we use such strong language on ourselves repeatedly, we begin to believe the words.

After all, words have power.

Your self worth isn’t in the number on a scale anyway.

If you weigh in and the number isn’t what you hoped it would be, why not speak over yourself with positive words, which will empower you as you set and try again.

“I can do this!” “I’m not a failure. This is a minor setback that I can overcome.” “I am a good parent, and a kind person.”

What positive words do you need to speak over yourself?

Review the last week

Once we have taken the first step, it is time to take a couple of practical actions that will help us get back on track.

There are a few things worth honestly reviewing in the previous week or two, that can have an effect on our weight loss goals.

• Did I give my best in the exercises that I performed?

• Is there anything in my nutrition that I haven’t accounted for?

With our exercises, we may not have given 100%, or even performed all of our exercises.

With our nutrition, we may have eaten larger portions of our food, or had condiments that we did take into account.

For example, if we had an omelette and decided to add ketchup to it over a 7-day period.

Let me repeat this to you: “If this is true for you, you have not failed.”

It may be that you have not adjusted your plan after losing a lot of weight, but still having more to go.

Making adjustments to our programme is really important, and leads us perfectly to our next step.

Make appropriate changes

When we hit a wall in our weight loss and health goals, it is good to make little adjustments to help us continue to succeed.

This could be changes to our nutrition plan, or exercise plan.

The first questions to ask yourself are:

• Where was I when I started my weight loss journey?

• What is different now?

If nothing has changed, it may be worth investing some money on a personal trainer, who can help you to improve your overall health.

If you are able to pinpoint differences between who you were at the start, and who you are now, there are some little modifications that you can make:

• Consider nutritional changes (If you weigh less than you did at the start of your journey, you will need to review how many calories you are taking in)

• Consider a change in your workout plan (If your exercises are not as challenging as they were at the start, some little tweaks can help you with this)

Need some help with making changes to your programme? I am taking on new clients in my online coaching. Why not fill in this short form for a free consultation.

Weight Loss Setbacks can help us in the long run

Helping to develop resilience in our weight loss journey can help us in reaching the goal post.

Living healthy however, is not for a season. It should integrate into a lifestyle that is sustainable.

Your worth is not the number on a scale.

Your worth is who you are as a person, and the investment you make into your children.

Losing weight is an introduction to living a healthy lifestyle, one that helps us by increasing mental clarity and energy, and benefits our families in their dependence on us.

You’ve got this my friend!

Strength, love, and peace,

Dan

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