Conquering fear is one of the biggest parts of losing weight, yet one of the things we talk about the least. Way too many of us let our fears get in the way of us continuing to lose weight, or sometimes even starting at all!
In my experience, losing weight is much more of a mental game than it is physical. If you’re currently on your own weight loss journey you’ll know what I mean. Starting a weight loss journey is something new, it’s a huge leap outside of our comfort zone. It requires us to change what we do on a daily basis and challenges our view of the person we believe we are. Every day, we are shedding old layers that once served us, and stepping in to a new version of ourselves.
No wonder it feels scary.
We tend to make our weight loss goals mean something about us as a person, which doesn’t often happen with other goals we have. This is why it can be a lot harder and a bit more challenging. It’s also why those fears can feel a lot more real and a lot more scary.
In this article, I’m going to share the fears that came up for me on my own weight loss journey, and how I was able to work through them to see the results I wanted.
Let’s start with my biggest and most persistent fear…
“I’m worried this won’t work.”
When I first started losing weight, one of my big fears was that I was worried that it wouldn’t work. I was worried that I would put a lot of time and effort into trying to lose weight, and no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t work.
This fear was something that stopped me in so many ways, and it’s held me back from seeing success much sooner.
The problem with a fear like this is, if you really believe that fear and you convince yourself that it’s not going to work, you start to put all your focus on the idea that it might not work. Where your focus goes, energy flows. So naturally, you start to create that result for yourself.
When you genuinely believe something probably won’t work, you stop putting your full effort in because you feel like your effort won’t be rewarded.
I certainly experienced this myself, and it was often subconscious. Looking back, I noticed that I’d often put half the effort in, because I didn’t want to put my full energy into it and then feel embarrassed when it didn’t work.
It’s almost like we create this identity for ourselves of us, where we believe, “I am the person who struggles with weight loss” and so we act as if we are that person, therefore creating the result (or lack-thereof).
An important concept to understand here is the idea that our thoughts create our feelings, which create our behaviours.
And so if your thoughts are centred around the idea that “weight loss is hard,” and you believe that thought without even questioning it, you’re then going to start behaving in ways that confirms that thought to be true. That’s how our brains work – they look for evidence to prove our beliefs to be true.
Unfortunately, this is a pattern many of us get into, myself included. We sabotage ourselves and we don’t ever give ourselves a chance to put the effort in and see what results we can get.
“What will people think when it doesn’t work?”
Another fear that came up for me was, “what will other people think when it doesn’t work?” Particularly because I’ve been in the fitness/health industry for a long time working with clients, so there’s been many times in my life where I felt like I should be in a position that is better than where I was, or I should have it all figured out. I felt like I had all the knowledge, and I could successfully help others, yet I couldn’t make it work for myself.
Fear of judgement from others is something that holds a lot of people back in many areas of life. Worrying about what other people are thinking or what other people might think if it doesn’t work is an interesting one, because it hasn’t even happened yet!
We put a lot of our own precious time and energy into the opinions of other people. The truth is their opinion on your weight loss results has nothing to do with you. If they do have an opinion, it’s more likely to do with them. In fact, it’s 100% to do with them because other people’s thoughts are their own.
You can only control your thoughts. You can only control your effort. And so you putting so much value in the opinions of other people is simply just creating a harder life for you!
Fear is a thought error.
Our brains often tells us stories like “it’s better to not try than it is to try and then fail.” This is a thought error, which means while it can feel true when we’re in the thick of it, when we stop to think about it we realise it’s not true at all. Of course it’s better for you to try and fail than it is for you to sit there and do nothing! This thought is your comfort zone keeping you inside an old thought pattern.
If you go outside of that comfort zone, things are going to be different, and they’re going to be scary. Maybe that some things will fail, but that’s how we learn. And when we’re letting those fears keep us stuck, we’re not allowing ourselves to change or reach our goals.
“I’m worried I’ll lose weight…then put it all back on.”
Another big fear I had when I was losing weight was the fear that I would lose weight, be successful, and then put it all back on. In my head, sometimes that was even worse than not being successful at all! That idea of reaching the goal and then losing everything often stopped me from trying to reach the goal in the first place, which feels silly now.
I’ve spoken to a few people who’ve told me of previous programs that they’ve done where they have lost weight and gained it back, and because it’s happened before they are so scared of it happening again. This is just causing them more frustration and overwhelm because they’re not willing to take that first step because of their fear.
The problem with weight regains isn’t the weight itself, but all the judgment and guilt and shame we put on ourselves when it happens. We make it this big dramatic experience and we make it mean that we’re not disciplined enough, or that we failed, which is simply untrue.
Putting weight on, or regaining weight is a natural a part of life.
There’s no such world where you just lose weight and never, ever gain any of it back. Life happens in constant cycles. There will be times in life where you do put some weight back on. But when you’re confident that you have the skills to be able to lose weight if you want to, then even if you do put weight back on, you’re able to lose it again. It’s not the end of the world.
And beyond that, if you have the skills of self-compassion, of being curious instead of judgmental, being kind to yourself instead of beating yourself up, then when you do regain weight back, it’s not this massive dramatic experience. Because you’re being kind to yourself, you can look back and go, “these are the actions that led me here. This is what happened in my life. This is what I was doing. This is how I was showing up. This is what led to me regaining some weight. That’s okay. Here’s what I’m going to do now moving forward.”
And it’s not as scary when we think about it like that. It’s only scary when, when it comes with all the judgments and the beat downs and all the negative energy of how terrible we are for gaining weight back. That’s what scary! But you can choose to not do it that way this time.
And this is a big reason we teach the things the way we do. We don’t teach people to just lose weight, without teaching them how to have the confidence that they’ll be able to keep it off. To have the confidence that they will be able to lose weight whenever they want to in the future. And to have the confidence of knowing that maintaining weight is a different skill to losing weight, but knowing they have both skills.
Other common fears people have when losing weight:
- “What if it feels really hard?”
- “What if I still don’t like the way I look once I lose weight?”
- “What if I still don’t like my life once I lose weight?”
- “What if I have to use extreme methods to lose weight, then I have to keep doing that to keep the weight off?”
- “What if I don’t have enough discipline or willpower?”
- [insert any other fear you can think of!]
The common thread with ALL of these fears is that we can move past them, and the process for conquering your fears is exactly the same, no matter the sentence.
How to conquer your fears about losing weight
1. Recognise that feeling fear is normal, and to be expected
The first step to conquering fear is to recognise that your fear is normal. Most of us spend a lot of time dwelling on our fears, because we believe we shouldn’t have them or that they are a signal that something is wrong. This is far from the truth, in fact feeling fear is a sign that something is right!
Anyone who’s starting a weight loss journey, anyone who’s on a weight loss journey, anyone who is doing anything that is remotely outside of their comfort zone is experiencing thoughts and fears like this.
Our brains send us fearful thoughts in an effort to keep us safe. So take a second and thank your brain for having your back, but then move on to step two…
2. Question your thoughts
We have to learn how to question our thoughts. What is a fear? It’s a sentence in our brain, which is a thought. The actual circumstance is neutral until we attach a thought to it. Most of the things we’re worried about are things that haven’t even happened yet! So they can’t be facts, even though they may feel true in the moment.
We need to remind ourselves that these thoughts and fears, while a normal thing for our brain to do, are not factual. They are just thoughts. That’s it.
I often find it helpful to ask myself the question, “What else might be true here?” You always have to tell both sides of the story.
When you think about it, there’s always two sides to a story. But at the moment, you’re only telling yourself one side. You’re focused on “What if it doesn’t work? It’s not going to work. It’s going to be hard. What if I put it all back on?” That’s only one side of the story.
Start asking yourself, “What if it does work? What if it’s not hard? What if you don’t put it all back on?”
If you only tell one side of the story, you’re just lying to yourself because you’re leaving out a huge chunk of the truth.
Sometimes it’s helpful to get curious and ask yourself these reverse questions. So if your fear is, “I feel like it’s not going to work.” Then ask yourself, “Ok, but what if it does work?”
If you’re ever feeling fear, the way to move through this is to get curious with everything, which means asking questions.
Another type of question you can ask is the worst case scenario question. For example, if you’re worried it might not work, let’s get real…
“Well, what if it doesn’t work?”
Actually take a moment to play that worst case scenario out. Often we just let ourselves freak out with all the “what if” questions, but we’re not actually sitting down and realistically asking the question. What would that actually look like? What’s the worst case scenario here?
Sometimes you’ll find, if it doesn’t work, that’s just an opportunity for you to go, “okay. That didn’t work. What else could I try? What’s next? What’s something I haven’t tried yet?” It’s not the end of the world. You just try something new! And yet in our brains we spend so much time and energy freaking out about it, when the solution is actually quite simple and the worst case scenario isn’t that bad.
I like to think about it like this: There’s no way for me to fail because I will just keep trying different ways of doing it until I find one that works for me.
There’s a famous quote by Thomas Edison where he says,
“I have not failed 10,000 times. I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”
Thomas Edison
And this is a really, really good way to think about it, because right now you might have 10,000 ways that don’t work. That means you’re so much closer to finding the way that does work for you.
If you do regain weight, all that is is an opportunity to look at your behaviours, and your thoughts, and your life and go, “alright, what led me here? What was I missing? What didn’t work and what can I try now?”
That’s all it is. And when you start getting curious, and you get rid of the judgment, all of a sudden you start to be able to look at these fears and just move through them. You no longer have to let those fears dictate your results.
3. Take a self-compassionate approach
There are three parts to having self-compassion and this is definitely something needed when we are feeling fear.
A) Speak to yourself kindly.
If you’re constantly beating yourself up in your head, you’re not going to feel very good and you’re also not likely to take positive actions. We want to change the conversation that we’re having with ourselves. Talk to yourself, like you would talk to your best friend. You’re not going to hurl abuse at them, you’re going to talk to them in a calm, encouraging way.
When our brains are worried about our own judgment and our own negative beat downs, they’re much more likely to encourage us to avoid even trying. If every time we try, we beat ourselves up for not being perfect, our brain’s going to be like, “well, I don’t want to do that anymore! Let’s stop trying, because if we fail we’re going to beat ourselves up and I’d rather not deal with that…”
So when we do practice that kindness and we speak to ourselves kindly, and we use curiosity instead of judgment, our brains are more likely to help us and we’re more likely to feel open to trying new things.
B) Recognise that everyone feels fear.
The second step to self-compassion is recognize that everyone feels fear. You’re not alone. This is called common humanity. Sometimes it feels like you’re the only person who’s experiencing this, but when you can recognise that everyone at some point is going to experience fear like this, and that there is help out there if you do need it, it starts to feel a little bit more doable and a little less scary.
C) Practice mindfulness.
The third part of self-compassion is mindfulness. Most of us spend our time worrying about what might happen in future or what has already happened in the past, but all we can ever have control over is what’s happening right now in this moment.
When we worry about what might happen, or what has already happened, we’re not actually focused on where we’re at right now. We’re get stuck in this limbo state of fear. We’re not actually doing anything that’s productive and we’re more likely to create the very result we’re trying to steer clear off.
When we’re stuck making up these future “what if” scenarios, we rob ourselves of the chance for us to actually live our life right now.
When we’re focusing on all the fear, what we’re not doing is actually taking action to lose weight now. And what we’re not doing is actually looking after ourselves in the present moment so that we can enjoy our lives and feel good. You can never feel good when you’re stuck either worrying about the past or worrying about what might happen in the future. It’s just never going to work out well when you’re thinking this way
4. Fear is not a reason not to try
Feeling fear is not a reason to quit. And it’s certainly not a reason to not even try. Because if we just quit and stay in our comfort zones whenever we feel scared, we’re not going to ever live our lives!
Fear is not a reason for you not to try and improve your life. We have to take action despite feeling that fear. Because the fear’s never going to go away. No matter how much weight you lose, no matter how successful you are, you’re always going to feel fear.
But the difference between people who see results and people who don’t, is just that the people who see results work through these steps, they remind themselves that it’s normal to feel like this, but ask what else might be true? They ask, “How can I still take action, despite feeling some fear?”
Have a think about what fears are coming up for you while you are losing weight. Work through these steps and ask yourself, “Are these fears really true? What else might be true in this situation? How can I move past these fears and create the life I want?”
And if you are ready to make some changes and to improve your nutrition, mindset, and lifestyle habits, this is what we help our members do inside The Habit Reset, which is our monthly membership site that is specifically designed to help you build habits that work for you.
A big part of building habits and losing weight is working on the mindset side of things. Our mind is often the thing that gets in the way of us actually achieving the results that we want to achieve. But it’s also the very thing that can empower us to take action despite our fears, so that we feel confident that we can continue to keep the results we get. If you are interested in joining us, you can find out more information here.
