Try a reality check

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What's your most powerful weight-loss tool? Your mind. Beyond making right-for-you eating choices and moving in ways that you enjoy, what you think plays a key role in your success on WW. That's because what you think about an event or situation determines how you feel, and how you feel determines what you do. If your thought is a productive, helpful one, you’ll feel good, and your behaviour will reflect that mental and emotional stance.

The thing is, as your Weekly points out, we often react in ways that are anything but helpful, especially after something we regret. Maybe you went over your daily SmartPoints® by a lot. You might think, “Ugh, I blew it. I'll never lose weight” or “I can’t believe I messed up again. I should just throw in the towel.” Over time, such thoughts can harden into a pattern of unhelpful thinking that can make your journey more difficult.

But you can identify and shift these thoughts to helpful ones that can change how you feel, in turn helping you act in ways that get you closer to your goals. For perspective, imagine you’ve made a wrong turn while driving to visit a friend who lives 100 km away. Would you think, “Wow, I’ve ruined my whole trip and now I’m stuck going the wrong way.”? Not very likely. You know that frame of mind wouldn’t get you where you want to be. And the same applies to your wellness and weight loss journey.

The first step to changing your thinking is learning how to recognize an unhelpful thought. To do this, work backward from an action you realize wasn’t productive or helpful. Ask yourself what feeling or emotion propelled you to the action. And then zero in on the thought that led to that feeling. Once you’ve ID’d that thought, give it a reality check—at WW we call it “facts or friends.”

Ask yourself

1. Whether there are facts that make your thought true or

2. what a friend would say in response to your thought. Then you can shift to a helpful thought that can restart your progress.

Here’s a before-and-after example:

Unhelpful thought: “I always get stuck at work on the nights I have my yoga class. I might as well stop signing up for the class.”

Helpful thought: “It’s a bummer that I got stuck at work tonight, but I’ve made it to yoga plenty of times. I’m going to sign up for next week and tell my coworkers I have to leave on time.”

The more often you notice an unhelpful thought and shift to a more helpful thought, the more automatic helpful thoughts will become.