Taking a psychological approach to eating could mean never having to diet again.
If you’ve tried numerous strategies to losing weight with little effect, taking a psychological approach to eating may help you to achieve tangible results, as Boudicca Fox-Leonard of the Daily Telegraph explains.
You know what you need to do to lose weight but you don’t know how to do it. No matter how many articles you’ve read saying what, when and how much to eat, it can be hard advice to swallow.
Perhaps you’ve flirted with fasting, fermented foods and fitbits only to circle back around to where you are today: which, post-Christmas, is likely to be staring at the bottom of a box of Roses searching for your willpower.
If you’ve exhausted every diet then it might be time to change something more fundamental - your mind. Taking a psychological approach to eating could mean never having to diet again.
Whatever our best intentions might be, understanding that as humans we’re programmed to do what feels best in the moment, what is easiest and most pleasurable and most convivial, could be the real reason you can never say no to a second helping. Overcoming this hard-wiring is like rewriting thousands of years of evolution.
Food plays a complicated role in our lives. Without it we’d starve. When, though, did you last feel genuine hunger? That connection between hunger and eating is very much severed for many people.
Instead, we eat for connection, happiness, sadness and out of habit. It is when our proportion of these becomes unbalanced that we can find ourselves prey to temptation.
”When we feel negative emotions or stress, it increases the cortisol levels in our body, resulting in our bodies requiring more energy to function - which can make it all too easy to reach for foods that contain fat, sugar and salt. This type of eating tends to change the way we feel or distracts us from our negative feelings,” says Lisa Gunn, mental health prevention lead at Nuffield Health.
“This process can become automatic over time and become an unhelpful habit or coping mechanism.”
The good news is, there is an approach that can help, with easy steps towards making a real change to your weight.
If you are reading this article eager to learn more about how you can change your own psychology, then you’ve already taken the first step towards changing your mindset.
”It’s hard to change something if you don’t see it happening. And that’s the crux of what we try to do,” says Andreas Michaelides, chief of psychology at the US-based weight loss app Noom.
He has seen the impact a psychologically based approach can have, over one that focuses on calorie counting, or exercise-logging.
Michaelides explains that there are four stages of change.
Pre-contemplation, where you’re not even thinking of doing anything.
Contemplation, which is where many people will be after a season of excesses.
Preparation, where you’re psyching yourself up to make a change.
And finally, the action stage.
”Knowing these stages of change exist is important because you might be one today and another the next. We all cycle through these stages on a day-to-day basis,” explains Michaelides.
If you are reading for a friend or family member who is in blissful pre-contemplation, the best you can do to help somebody is getting them to think about it, says Michaelides.
Although just as you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, you can’t force someone into the contemplation stage.
”Highlighting someone’s eating patterns could cause them to feel shame or embarrassment and even create a disconnect in your relationship with them. Unless you have a really in-depth understanding of their issues, it’s also easy to misunderstand the causes of their emotional eating and jump to unhelpful conclusions,” says Gunn.
Instead, she says, it’s better to share some of your own experiences of times you have used food to soothe emotions or talk about your own goals to improve your eating habits.
This can open up the conversation and encourage them to share their own experiences.
“You could also ask a friend to help you to be accountable to your goals, which in turn can encourage them to consider their own habits and potentially seek support if needed.”
If you want to make a change, before you dive in ask yourself why you want to eat more healthily. You might want to be fitter and healthier, but why does health matter to you? If it’s because you want to live to be 85, then ask yourself, why do you want to live longer?
Digging out what Michaelides calls Your Big Picture (YBP) might be like having a conversation with a 5-year-old, but if you keep asking “Why?” you’ll eventually hit upon the golden ticket to change: purpose.
This technique is what Michaelides does to find what matters to people and what their values are.
Eating healthily because “I should” is probably not a strong reason to overcome those day-to-day stresses.
”Connecting purpose gives day-to-day things a lot more context. We find that people who have more defined YBPs do much better than those who don’t flesh it out as much.”
Your YBP is in focus, but keeping it in the foreground when life throws up frustrations is going to need strategic planning.
A diet might work in perfect conditions but can be derailed by circumstance; a friend’s birthday party; the desire to make a loved one happy; a stressful day at work; sheer love of chocolate cake.
”It’s about knowing how to advocate for yourself,” says Michaelides. “As well as preserving relationships while still meeting your needs.”
Scenario one: at your workplace there are always biscuits and it’s always somebody’s birthday. That’s an environment that Michaelides calls “incongruent with your goals”.
You need strategies to navigate tricky situations. Have a stock polite refusal at the tip of your tongue or a healthy snack in your drawer on standby. Small strategies will save you from regrettable in-the-moment decisions.
Saying “no” to a food pusher and temptation isn’t easy, but this is where keeping YBP in mind can help you to respectfully decline.
Scenario two: you have a pattern of emotional eating that’s triggered by negative emotions. A tricky day at work can lead you to eat food at night you later regret. This is a pattern you need to visualise and anticipate.
“Trying to solve that problem while you’re on your way home won’t work. Instead you need a contingency plan.”
It could be ensuring you have a healthy meal waiting for you at home, or that you have a route home that takes you by healthier options.
“We’re coming back to looking at the pattern and ways that are personal to you to break that pattern,” says Michaelides.
Scenario three: When spending time with a family member who shows their love with food, first and foremost in importance is planning.
“When you’re caught off guard you’ll give in,” says Michaelides.
However if someone gives us love and receives love through food, saying “I don’t want your cake” might also be saying “I don’t love you”.
“Not what you intend, but how it might be interpreted.”
Ahead of time, think of ways to bypass that situation while still giving the love that person might need in that moment.
“Also saying, ‘No thank you’ over and over, like a script, does work.”
And if you fail in any of these scenarios?
“That’s OK, but think about it afterwards and what you could do differently next time.”
These patterns of behaviour are cycles that we repeat and meaningful change won’t happen until we break them. But that can’t be done without engaging and identifying the problems.
“Identify the why and then work out what works for you so that you can sustain it,” says Michaelides.
Awareness is key, says Gunn.
Before you start eating, try to determine whether you are eating to satisfy hunger or to satisfy an emotion.
“Look for patterns - notice when you increase or limit your food intake. Triggers can also be internal from your thoughts or in response to external stressors. Ask yourself: ‘What situations, and what kinds of food do I tend to go for?”’
Changing an association that’s deeply embedded in your brain is difficult. Losing weight - or not - can be riddled with shame; the sense of failure associated with dieting is painful. Try to develop an internal dialogue that is helpful.
“Develop a strong relationship with yourself mirrored by an internal dialogue,” says Michaelides.
Taking a compassionate approach will have unanticipated changes that are outside of weight loss.
”Having a strategy for when we ‘veer off course’ from our healthy eating plan is just as important as the plan itself,” says Dr Rupy Aujla, author of Dr Rupy Cooks.
“Self-compassion prevents us from spiralling into shame and negative self-talk that can push us further from our goals by eroding our self-esteem and motivation.”
Wherever you are in your journey to break behaviour patterns and find sustainable habits, ask yourself: what does success look like, above and beyond a number on a scale?”
Dealing with an autoimmune condition stopped Elizabeth Gregory going to the gym regularly.
Meanwhile, stressful days at work meant the 39-year-old priest from Bristol found herself in a vicious cycle of eating to deal with her emotions, then feeling guilty for doing so.
Her wake-up call was the death of two cousins who were a similiar age to her and she decided to try Noom’s psychological approach.
”I started to identify and understand what was going on in my head, and why I was eating to deal with my emotions. I realised I’m not just awfully greedy: I learnt that I’d been feeling out of control and eating as a response to external triggers rather than physical hunger.
”I also realised that I am not alone in dealing with this type of eating. Once I became more aware of what I was feeling mentally and the ‘why’ behind my actions, I was able to build new habits and behaviours.”
Gregory lost 38kg, and while there are fluctuations in her weight now, she says: “I am completely OK with it, and that is so liberating. It’s healthy to have this leeway that allows me to live my life.”
Another key takeaway for Gregory was knowing that exercise does not have to mean the gym.
”I go for a half hour walk every day, and if I find work too busy, I just ensure I am keeping my steps up, incorporating them into my lifestyle where I can. I love to get fresh air!”
Fuelling her body correctly has also had a positive impact on her autoimmune issues.
”I still have flare-ups, but they are fewer and farther between, and I don’t feel like I have contributed to them.”
She says: “It’s so easy in life to make excuses, and we all do it, but just become aware of how you are navigating yourself. Take that awareness and don’t be so hard on yourself.”
The Noom Mindset: Learn the Science, Lose the Weight (Headline Home, $40)
NY Times: This water workout offers high-intensity training with less strain.