How Do You Talk to Yourself about Food, Dieting or your Weight?

Most of my clients who struggle with “emotional overeating”, excessive dieting or who have an eating disorder engage in negative self-talk about food, weight/shape and exercise. Self-talk is that endless chatter in our heads. An example of negative self-talk is “I was bad today...I ate a cookie...I will never lose weight.”

The majority of self-talk is not even accurate! Does eating a cookie really make someone bad? Of course not. Does eating one cookie (even a box of cookies) mean that weight loss is not possible? Of course not.

Negative self-talk is usually not helpful to us. In fact, it often reinforces our unwanted behavior patterns and keeps us “stuck”.

Often people are afraid to give-up the negative self-talk, fearful that something worse is going to happen (For example, gain more weight, feel more out of control, etc.). I believe the exact opposite to be true, that change happens when you stop beating yourself up.

Try taking a more curious stance. For example, “I wonder why I ate a cookie when I was not hungry?”. Being curious about behaviors, thoughts, etc. may provide clues to what the underlying problem is. In the example of overeating, oftentimes people eat to distract themselves from uncomfortable feelings such as sadness, stress, loneliness, inadequacy, etc.

Now what? The first step is to monitor your self-talk. It helps some people to write it down. Then begin to challenge the accuracy of your thoughts. Be curious about your behavior patterns. It will help you learn more about why you make certain choices. This is no small task. Be patient with yourself!