Are you failing ahead of time?
This is common amongst women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome who are trying to get on a healthier eating plan or lose weight. Most of us have tried what feels like a bajillion things in the past that haven’t worked or that we haven’t been able to stick to.
Because of this, we tend to build up a belief that “things don’t work” and we also learn to do anything to avoid feeling disappointed again (or feeling like a failure).
But, the ONLY way to achieve your weight loss/health goal is by being willing to fail over and over and over and learning from each of them. I call this failing forward. This is different from failing ahead of time.
Let me distinguish the difference between failing forward and failing ahead of time……
Let’s say you are following a protocol and you eat one of those giant long john donuts after church.
Failing forward would be saying: oops, I wonder why I did that? Let me try and understand what drove me to eat that? What was I thinking right before I ate it? How was I feeling? What can I do to avoid that from happening next Sunday?
Failing ahead of time would be doing one of the following things listed below. .
These are all the ways we fail ahead of time:
Giving up
We think it’s not supposed to be challenging, and let our primitive brain (the part that seeks comfort) take over, and we give up. We feel relieved at that moment and go back to our comfort zone. But soon after, we feel even worse! We become even more uncomfortable than we were before because we end up gaining the weight back, feeling like crap, and then the self-loathing cycle continues.
Not taking action
We fall into this one when we’re too afraid we’ll take action and fail, so we just don’t start. We’re essentially deciding to live out our worst-case scenario in order to avoid disappointment. We’re just disappointing ourselves ahead of time. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when we think about it, yet so many people do this.
Being an all-or-nothing person
When you say you’re an all-or-nothing person, you are essentially saying you are a perfectionist. Perfectionists don’t get results because anytime they make a mistake they give up on themselves. And if you want to lose weight, you have to be willing to make mistakes and learn from them…not beat yourself up and quit. People tell me they are all-or-nothing like they’re just reporting the news. But here’s what I want to offer…being all-or-nothing is a CHOICE. You get to choose if you want to give up every time you make a little mistake or if you want to have the courage to just love yourself and move on.
Overeating even more
“I already ate half the fries, so I might as well finish.” You know how this story ends up playing out. We’re essentially catching a “fail” and then choosing to fail more on purpose (fail/mistake/pattern…
Not following through with your commitments to yourself
Do you often tell yourself you’re going to do one thing, and then go against your own word? This has to do with your relationship with yourself more than anything. Building that self-trust and honoring your own word is one of the key skills I help my clients get good at. Developing this skill will improve every area of your life, and will be a key factor in your ability to lose weight.
Changing your mind
When things get hard, do you change your mind? Set a new goal that seems more “doable?” Change diets. Tell yourself it’s not working after just one month. Decide you don’t want to invest any more money on it? Changing your mind and indulging in confusion will keep you STUCK!
Making excuses
This is one of the top ways we fail ahead of time. We justify why we couldn’t stay on our protocol at that work meeting. We tell ourselves it’s too hard on vacation. We blame our busy lives, our kids, our husbands. “After I pay off my debt,” “once I get settled in,” “once I feel more motivated”…I hear these excuses all of the time. When we do this, we aren’t taking responsibility for what we want- and we won’t get it either!
Staying Confused
Confusion is an indulgent emotion. That means there’s no upside to being confused. If you tend to stay in confusion, research mode, searching for solutions before trying, then you are just failing ahead of time. The ONLY way to figure out if something works is to go for it. To take action, to try it on. Being confused does nothing for us and it’s totally optional.
Beating yourself up
Beating yourself up for sure never work. It will ALWAYS perpetuate the negative cycle you’re beating yourself up about. If you beat yourself up for overeating, you’re going to feel ashamed, and then go overeat some more to try and cope with that shame. That’s really how it works. When you make a mistake or have a “fail,” I recommend moving into compassion. Getting curious about WHY you did what you did. Not by getting mad or frustrated, but curious. It will help you change your habits and behaviors rather than perpetuating them.
The ONLY way to change your life, become a healthier version of yourself, and lose the weight is to STOP failing ahead of time. You MUST change your relationship with mistakes. You have be ok with failing. It’s part of the journey. Failing AHEAD OF TIME is NOT part of the journey.
SO KEEP FAILING FORWARD…but not in advance!
In health & happiness,
Jamie