How To Overcome Self-Sabotage Behaviors And Achieve Your Wellness Goals

By Natalya Vasquez

www.bridalbootcampsandiego.com

It’s Sunday night. You’ve spent the weekend indulging in food and drinks that were off limits all week and now you’re oddly feeling guilty. On Monday, you committed to feeling better physically and mentally, and that meant a new fitness regime and meal plan. This was your 700th attempt at starting a plan on Monday, and you were absolutely convinced that this Monday would be different. For four days, you did great. You ate on plan and got your workouts in. You even posted a “Never miss a Monday” photo on Instagram. Then Friday rolled around, your drive started wavering, and the office donuts began to call your name. So after a couple of hours of circling the donut box like a hungry shark and arguing with yourself about whether or not to have one, you decided to reward yourself. It would have been fine if that’s where it stopped, but you kept celebrating your newfound food freedom by eating and drinking whatever you wanted for the rest of the weekend and pretending that the stroll to the fridge met your daily steps quota. By the end of the weekend, remorse and guilt settled in, and you physically felt worse than you did several days ago.

Isn’t it ironic that after a few days of honoring your body, you not only opted out of the commitment that you made to yourself, but also somehow convinced yourself that the weekend indulgences would make you happier? In reality, you quit on yourself. But if feeling great is what we all want, then why do we give up so easily and so frequently?

In the wellness space, self-sabotage is a common behavior that prevents us from reaching our goals. It’s easy to prioritize health for a couple of days, but when staying on track gets more difficult, it’s easy to tell yourself “I don’t care” and revert back to old habits. The problem however, is that you do care. You’ve always cared. You’ll care this Sunday and every Sunday for the rest of your life until you figure out why you’re self-sabotaging your goals because you’re tired of not feeling great and you know that you’re capable of being both happy and healthy.

While it’s extremely important to hold yourself accountable for behaviors that aren’t serving you, it’s also critical to look at areas where you can improve your wellness plan.

Here are ten common behaviors that frequently result in self-sabotage and ways to squash them before they derail you from meeting your goals:

Eating too little:

1,200 calories is not enough energy to fuel a toddler, why would it be enough to sustain an adult? If you’re basing your calorie needs on what a fitness application or online calculator tells you, keep in mind that these calculations do not factor in the variables that make up your unique physiology. When you eat extremely low-calorie, you’re setting yourself up to binge later because your body is starved. Remember, most diets, regardless of whether they’re paleo, keto, Whole 30, or other, capitalize off of less calories. They allow you to lose weight because you’re eating less in general.

Solution: Work with a professional that specializes in reverse dieting (eating more) and is willing to look at you as an individual, and not a data entry in an app. The professional should look at daily activity, sleep, stress levels, and hormones to determine your calorie needs.

Eliminating carbs:

Carbohydrates come in a variety of forms, including grains, fruits, and vegetables, and they provide essential nutrients to the body. When you demonize carbs (or any other food group), you perpetuate diet fads and enable a poor relationship with food. Your goal should be to look at food as fuel; food is not the enemy. Eliminating entire food groups can also lead to binging, which is counterproductive to weight loss.

Solution: Try the 80/20 principle. Eat healthy, unprocessed foods 80% of the time, and incorporate the less healthy food and alcohol for 20% of your meals. This could be broken up into daily or weekly treats. The idea behind this principle is that if you incorporate some of the foods you love daily or weekly, it won’t lead to binging because they’re not forbidden.

Spending hours doing cardio:

If you want to appear toned, you need to incorporate resistance training. Doing large amounts of cardio will tell your body to conserve energy, so your body will become more efficient at burning fewer calories. On the contrary, what you probably want is to be able to eat more food, workout less, and look toned (not skinny).

Solution: Incorporate weights and bands into your workouts to build muscle. When you strive for strength and not thinness, you set yourself up for long-term success. Remember, you can’t out train a bad diet. No amount of cardio will make up for years of malnourishing your body.

Not paying attention to serving sizes:

While counting calories or macros and measuring food isn’t for everyone, I do encourage people to learn what a serving size looks like. You’d be surprised to see what one tablespoon of peanut butter or a serving of nuts or cheese actually is (hint, it’s not half the jar of nut butter or a block of cheese).

Solution: Spend a few days journaling what you eat and measure out foods that are dense in calories (nuts, cheese, oil, etc.) so that you have an idea of what you’re consuming. Track and measure foods for a short period of time to build an understanding of your calorie intake.

Not planning meals ahead of time:

Meal planning doesn’t have to look like asparagus and tilapia in Tupperware containers. It should however require some planning so that you don’t end up licking the inside of a potato chip bag after a 10 hour work day. While you may have the best of intentions, we all know that after a long day, the last thing we want to do is plan and prepare a healthy meal.

Solution: Set aside a couple of hours on a weekend to plan for the week. Plan your meals and snacks and do any prep work you can over the weekend like chopping up vegetables or cooking a large batch of protein to quickly use in a salad, wrap, or bowl. Focus on building meals that have a balanced ratio of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates and a variety of colors. If food is aesthetically pleasing, you’re more likely to enjoy it.

Thinking that fasting is the best way to lose weight:

Fasting can be great spiritual and anti-aging tools (when done properly), however, fasting 12-20 hours alone each day won’t result in weight loss if you’re eating the same amount of calories as you did prior to fasting.

Solution: Eat when you’re hungry. Yes, that’s easier said than done, especially when many of us use food to deal with our emotions, but learning to feel and not eat your emotions is one of the most beneficial behaviors you can adopt on your wellness journey.

Using the scale as the only measure for progress:

The scale is one of many tools to measure progress, but should be used with other tools. Stress, carbohydrate and water intake, menstrual cycles, and sleep quality can all affect the number on the scale. Daily fluctuations are normal.

Solution: Weigh yourself no more than once a week and incorporate other measurement tools like how clothes fit or a body fat scale to gauge progress.

Not asking yourself if losing weight will make you happy:

Confidence doesn’t come from weight loss. If you think that being a couple of sizes smaller will make you happy, you’re mistaken. The joy you get from putting on smaller jeans is fleeting, but the sadness or pain you felt before losing weight will follow you until you deal with the underlying issues.

Solution: Wellness and health should not feel like punishment. Prioritize health in a sustainable way and allow your body to reach its set-point. You’ll be a lot happier in a body that not only feels great and moves well, but is also able to participate in celebrations that center around food.

Comparing yourself to other people:

How many times have you felt great about your progress until you compared yourself to someone else? You are unique and you have your own circumstances that drive your success.

Solution: Comparison is the thief of joy. You have your own path to walk and lessons to learn. Cheer on your friends and family for their victories, and then stay focused on your own journey.

Telling yourself that you’re too old or too out of shape to start:

Everyone has a day one. If you believe you can’t, you won’t. However, if you tell yourself that you can, you will.

Solution: Instead of feeding yourself self-limiting beliefs, look to inspirational individuals with similar stories or starting points that have reached their goals and use them as expanders for your own potential.

The majority of these behaviors are influenced by factors that are likely unsustainable for you. Yes, your friend, aunty, or coworker may have had great success fasting or eating keto, but will it work for you? Any time you are tempted to pursue a fad diet, slow down and ask yourself how long you can keep up with it, especially when major life events happen. If you can’t eat or exercise a particular way for the rest of your life, then as soon as you go back to old habits, so will the weight. Finding a balanced approach to wellness is key.

Instead of committing to a new diet and exercise plan every Monday, commit to honoring yourself and your choices daily. Evaluate the reasons why you’re starting a new plan and whether it will be feasible for you in the long-run. It’s time to get off the hamster wheel of failed diet and exercise plans, and get on the journey of wellness. When you feel great, you do great, and the world needs your greatness.

Natalya Vasquez is a certified personal trainer based in San Diego, CA and the owner of Bridal Bootcamp San Diego. While she works with a diverse population, she specializes in bridal bootcamps, and pre/post-natal training. She is the author of "Dieting Reinvented...Just Kidding," a book intended to empower individuals through education, and sustainable nutrition and exercise principles. You can follow her on IG @bridal_bootcamp_sandiego or visit her website www.bridalbootcampsandiego.com