Self-Confidence

There’s one topic that almost invariably comes up in my mindfulness coaching sessions with weight loss patients at Sound Medical Weight Loss.

Can you guess what that topic is?

It’s not food, or exercise, or mirrors.

It’s self-confidence.

Self-confidence often comes up at the beginning of sessions, especially when patients share some of their stories of how they got to their current weight. These memories can include lack of self-confidence brought on by bullying, trauma, abuse, or even simply negative self image. It’s an all-too-familiar vicious cycle, with a chicken-and-egg origin. We may not know which came first, but there’s a snowball effect caused by negative emotions and low self-confidence, numbed and/or comforted by unhealthy food, which causes weight gain, and then even lower self-confidence. Rinse and repeat.

The good news? Self-confidence is also the antidote to this vicious cycle. Said differently, improving your self-confidence will help your weight loss journey.

How to

First, it’s worth discussing the how to – the specifics of building self-confidence, especially when it may feel like you’ve tried everything. Here are our tried-and-true tips and tricks:

• Have 2-4 daily habits that you do every single day, no exception. These should be habits that are solely for you; bring you energy (vs. deplete it); and barely feel like a stretch what you’re doing today. Check out the blog post on daily habits for more on this; and another blog post for how this looks in practice.
• Focus solely on the inputs. This goes for your goals (weight loss and elsewhere in your life) and anything else you’re focused on. Check out this blog post for more on inputs vs. outputs.
• Get mindful. Meditate, do mindful movement, use A.I.N., get mindfulness in your life. It will help your weight loss, your self-confidence and your life.
• Create – and use – your personal mantra. This is a powerful way to remind yourself of what you’re capable of, how far you’ve come in your life, and how strong you truly are. Here’s a link to my favorite way to create a highly personalized mantra.

This was a quick overview, but an important one. Now that you’re armed with that list, let’s move on to the three ways boosting your self-confidence can help shed your excess weight – and self-sabotaging habits – for good.

No more deprivation

As your self-confidence builds, you’ll begin to notice the voice in your head shift from a deprivation tone to one of love and concern.

For example, if your spouse offers you half of his morning donut and you decline because it’s not on plan, the voice in your head in the past might have thought, “I shouldn’t have that because I don’t deserve to. I’m too big. I haven’t lost enough weight. Only people who are thin and look good and are healthy can eat that way.”

That’s the inner voice of a person with low self-confidence. As you begin to build it, you’ll notice your inner voice change. You’ll no longer think about deprivation – about how you don’t deserve the donut – but instead about how you actually deserve MORE. How you deserve health, a long life, comfort, etc. When you turn down that donut half, it’ll feel like you’re turning down something you don’t want because it’s not in line with what’s best for you.

You-time activities

Ever notice how, when your self-confidence is at a low, all of the activities that you typically love doing come to a screeching halt?

That’s because self-confidence gives you the energy chase after things that make you feel good in enduring ways. When you lack that confidence, you don’t pursue those activities as hard or as often, which can cause you to descend further into a spiral. There’s a misconception that things that feel good and are good for us are things that we just naturally “want” to do. No. We also need energy – mental, physical, emotional – as well as confidence – to go after them.

Get back on that spiral, but this time, go upward. As you work on your self-confidence, you’ll begin to re-gain the energy to do the activities that bring you even more energy. That energy will boost your self-confidence further, and you’ll do even more. Yes, you may see your weight loss begin to take off like a rocket booster, but what’s more important are the changes you’ll begin to see within.

Esteem

If the self-confidence term bugs you, think of it simply as self-esteem.

When we have high self-esteem, that means we hold ourselves in high esteem – that we care for and nurture ourselves. We do this for ourselves, but not just for our spirits – we also do so for our bodies. Self-esteem would have us holistically nurture our bodies through eating well, exercising, staying hydrated, and diving deeply into our particular needs.

Did you know?

If you are in our 3- or 6-month weight loss program, you are eligible for one free 30-minute mindfulness coaching session. Give us a call today to book your free session!

Sarah Eno is passionate about supporting healthy lifestyle and mindset change. She graduated in Functional Nutrition in 2016. She has supported hundreds of individuals to a health-promoting lifestyle and believes that everyone has the opportunity to experience health. Sarah is a wife and mom of 3 boys. She loves cross-country skiing, yoga, her Peloton, and does fashion runway part-time.