Vicious Cycle and how it may be hindering your success.

Vicious Cycle

Have you ever noticed a repetitive, nagging voice in your head, chattering incessantly about your weight? Maybe it obsesses with guilt-ridden thoughts over what you’ve just eaten, or maybe it’s laser-focused on why your body isn’t the “right” size, catching every possible reflection of itself as you walk around the house.

If the voice inside your head isn’t speaking to you with kindness, it’s likely to turn into a vicious cycle that does more damage than good in your weight loss journey.

Here’s how the vicious cycle works:

• You’re preoccupied with thoughts of food, your weight, and the relationship between the two. This causes stress (emotional and physical).
• You overeat because you’re stressed, or you under-eat to overcompensate, which eventually leads to overeating. You lose control over your food intake.
• You feel guilt and shame.
• Then you again obsess with thoughts about food and your weight.
• Rinse and repeat.

Sound familiar?

If so, you’re not alone – scientific studies have shown that one dominant factor contributing to weight loss struggles is this exact vicious cycle.

The shame part is especially powerful, and can be intensified by outside factors, including societal prejudices, lack of support from friends/family, lack of support from primary care physicians, having grown up with a hypercritical parent, etc.

Ways Out of the Vicious Cycle

What’s the way out of this cycle? The overarching answer is mindfulness, or put more simply, presence.

During the vicious cycle, you’re anxious about the future (preoccupied with what you’ll eat or what you can’t eat, how much weight you have to lose, etc.) and depressed/shamed about the past (upset about how much you ate, the quality of food you ate/drank, etc.)

The key to escaping this cycle is being mindful – being focused solely on the present.

There are a number of resources included below to help you begin and amplify your mindfulness practice, including meditations, books and podcasts. Note, though, that being mindful can be part of your every moment, every day. One of my favorite authors, Eckhart Tolle, wrote this quote:

"For example, [when] you wash your hands, feel the water. Smell the soap. Becoming acutely conscious of sense perception means looking, hearing, touching. It brings you into the present moment."

It’s about treating each moment as precious, rather than as a means to an end. Enjoy the process of chopping vegetables, of washing your body in the shower, etc. with your full presence.

Besides incorporating presence in your everyday life, as Tolle recommends, there are some other ways that mindfulness can help you escape from this vicious cycle:

• Focus on input, not output goals. Input goals are things you have complete control over, like going for a walk 5x a week; output goals are things you only have partial control over, like your weight itself (which is partially determined by factors out of your control). If you focus solely on the inputs, you’re much more likely to have optimized outputs. For example, you can go to a wine tasting, or have a glorious meal with friends that’s “off plan,” but before and afterwards, be completely present, focusing on your inputs (e.g. continuing to accomplish your weekly walking goal). This is in contrast to what you might have otherwise done if you weren’t present – you might have punished yourself before or afterward for going off plan, which would have taken you right back into the vicious cycle.
• Consider moving daily weigh-ins to weekly. This allows you to be more present with your inputs and feel less triggered by the output (what you actually weigh). You’ll be less likely to punish or treat yourself based on what you see on the scale that morning. This is exactly how a healthy lifestyle should be – you do the same actions every day (more or less) without letting daily numbers dictate how you act. If the scale is too much of a trigger, moving weigh-ins to weekly is a great improvement to presence.

Mindfulness Resources

The resources below are all focused on mindfulness, which will help you continue to break ties to the vicious cycle of weight struggles.

• Blog post: what is mindfulness
• Blog post: how can mindfulness help my weight loss journey
• Books and podcasts
• Untethered Soul by Michael Singer (with accompanying book club event!)
• A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
• 10% Happier podcast by Dan Harris
• Meditation resources
• Blog post: meditation roundup
• Insight Timer -- completely free for all meditations.
• SimpleHabit, -- free for any meditation 5 min or less.

What else would you add to this list? Share your favorite resources in comments below! If you need more one-on-one guidance, reach out to us directly – we’d love to help.

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.