Are you overthinking your weight loss?
Are you overthinking your weight loss?
Viewing our health and fitness as a problem to solve leads to overthinking and a cycle of rigor and inactivity. Shift towards mindfulness and sustainable habits for long-term success.
One thing I became very aware of leading into my weight loss and fitness journey is how often I would find myself lost in my head, trying to figure everything out, trying to solve the problem of what I perceived to be wrong with me. I would have endless thoughts, like a hamster on a wheel.
In the case of my health, the problem was that I weighed over 300 pounds.
I would ruminate on how to solve the problem. It consumed me.
Losing 140 pounds taught me something important:
I do not have all the answers, nor do I have to figure them out…
I become lost in my thoughts when trying to find all the answers—I am not present. I bypass my feelings and what is going on around me. I reject the current moment through avoidance.
My ego thinks it has all the answers. It believes it can “fix” me.
My ego is not open to feedback, only confirmation of its narrow view of the world and me. My ego looks for happiness tomorrow, next week, month, and year. The answer to my happiness is somewhere in the future, somewhere else.
My ego stands by to hijack me at a moment's notice. It will latch on to anything, even my perception of my awareness.
Getting off the hamster wheel.
How have I learned to manage my tendency to overthink, keep my ego in check, and get out of the cycle of overthinking?
First, I’ve learned to bring awareness to this tendency—to become good at noticing that my mind feels like a hamster on the wheel.
Second, I’ve learned to remember that “I am not a problem to solve.”
Finally, I find stillness in meditation and breathwork.
Example mediation for creating calmness and presence:
I close my eyes, breathe, and feel what's happening inside. I pick a feeling in my body and bring my complete attention to it. With my deep attention on the feeling, I open my eyes and fix my gaze on an object. Finally, focusing on the feeling and my gaze on the object, I listen to the sounds around me and pick a sound to focus on. If thoughts creep into my mind, I refocus my attention on the feeling, the object, and the sound.
Learning to find stillness and bring awareness to my overthinking has allowed me to create the internal space to heal the parts of myself I learned to view as something I needed to fix, including my health and fitness.
It has also enabled me to see the trap of the overthinking, overdoing cycle.
The overthinking, overdoing trap.
When we overthink our health and fitness, we treat ourselves as a problem to solve. We are trying to fix what we perceive as wrong.
When we overthink our health and fitness, we tend to take a go-big or go-home approach to fitness—we end up on the hamster wheel.
I did this for years.
The go-big or go-home approach to fitness is a setup for failure for the typical person.
You would be much better served by picking an activity or plan you can consistently do for 365 days than trying to grind your way through 75 days of rigorous pain to force yourself to accomplish some arbitrary goal.
This is not to say you shouldn’t do the 75-day hard if that’s where your edge is; if your intention is right, go for it!
However, in the past, my intention was superficial every time I attempted to take on a challenge like that. It was the magic bullet that would fix what was wrong with me—I was overthinking my weight loss and treating myself as a problem to solve.
I took on countless diets and fitness challenges, looking for the golden ticket to health.
What has changed in the past two years of my weight loss and fitness journey is that I am no longer looking to fix what I perceive as wrong—I’m bringing awareness to my habit of overthinking my fitness.
Questions I ask myself often to bring awareness to my overthinking:
Question 1: What am I trying to fix? What is driving me to numb out or push myself to extremes?
Question 2: What do I need to let go of to accept these parts of myself that drive me to numb out or push myself to extremes?
Question 3: What are these parts of me trying to communicate? What is the unmet need?
These questions always lead me to this realization and question:
If I accept that my triggers with food and my instinct to respond to shame with controlling behaviors will always be present for me—what do I need to do differently so that I can respond rather than react to those triggers?
Changing the game.
I realized something huge at some point during my journey.
I was playing the wrong game my whole life.
Before this journey, my game was: “How do I never become triggered to numb out with food again and control myself to be healthy at all times?”
The game I am playing now is:
How fast can I become aware that I am triggered in a way that wants me to numb out with food or feeling shame that is evoking my controlling behaviors—When I realize that I am triggered to numb out or feeling the internal pressure to push myself I can respond in that space I’ve created with love and compassion.
Often, the most loving action I can take is not taking the next bite of food or trying to push myself harder but taking the next slow, deliberate breath.
Closing thoughts
I will close today with a note I shared with my brothers in the Man Talks Alliance in February 2022. It was a moment of reflection following my morning meditation, and I realized that my tendency to overthink wasn’t fixing anything; instead, it was leaving me dysregulated.
Figuring it out leaves me dysregulated.
February 23, 2022
This morning, my thinker was busy. I had an unsettling dream last night, and my thinker went to work trying to figure it out. My morning was filled with thoughts of potential meaning.
During my breathwork, I created some space between myself and these thoughts.
I witnessed the little boy [in me] trying to figure it out.
After my breathwork, I sat in stillness, feeling in, but then I got caught again in the loop of trying to figure out the meaning of my dream. As I became aware of my thoughts, I heard all the voices in my head at once… It was chaos, and then suddenly clarity…
“The act of figuring it out creates dysregulation in me…”
My dreams and thoughts just are, and I can just let them be. When I let myself get pulled in to figure them out, I am jumping in the river and being carried away. I am no longer in the present moment and no longer grounded on the shore. My thinking triggers a cascade of emotions, and in response, all my protectors show up to save me [from my self-created problem]…
It makes sense that a part of me would want to figure it all out. I can see that little boy, alone and scared, trying to figure out what to do [about his mom’s alcoholism]…
My job is to calm and comfort that part of me and let him know it's safe now. We don’t have to have all the answers.
A note on parts work from Psychology Today:
KEY POINTS
Parts Work is a therapeutic lens that assumes that each of us has many different parts to our minds and psyches.
Parts Work helps us generate new, creative solutions to internal problems we’re facing.
Parts Work can help us understand the unique topography of our internal psychological landscape.