How To Use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy To Help You Lose Weight

If you have had problems losing weight in the past then CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) will probably be able to help you. The theory behind CBT for Weight Loss is that problems with sticking to a diet plan begin in your head. Your beliefs, thoughts and feelings create your habits and behavior which in turn create your results. So it stands to reason that if you want to alter the results you are getting in life, ie. you are overweight and unable to take control of your diet and you want to be in control of your eating and lose weight, then you first need to alter your beliefs, thoughts and feelings surrounding the issue of weight loss. So how do we go about doing that?

What is CBT

There are a number of behavior modification therapies that you can easily learn and practice yourself. The most effective technologies are Hypnotherapy, NLP and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Either used separately or in combination, in this article I want to give you a basic outline of how CBT can help you lose weight.

CBT is about balancing your thinking. Habitual dieters tend towards all or nothing thinking or catastrophising around the issue of food and whether or not they have been following their diet plan perfectly. The refrain 'well I've ruined my diet now so I might as well eat what I like and start again on Monday' is a common one and a cause many extra pounds of fat gained, particularly when it happens every week. CBT provides you with the tools to moderate your thinking so that perhaps eating one piece of chocolate does not have you throwing in the towel and going on a crazy binge.

CBT advocates approaching dieting as a project, very often you will find highly successful men a women who are able to achieve most things they set their minds to fall down when it comes to dieting, this is because of sabotaging thoughts and behavior surrounding food. If we become acutely aware of these thoughts whenever we are tempted to sabotage our diets then the likelihood of successful sticking to the diet and losing weight is massively increased.

Losing Weight the CBT way.

1. First of all you need to consider why you want to lose weight, get it straight in your head that you are doing it for the right reasons. List all the benefits of losing weight as the appear to you, why is it so important for you to lose the weight? How much better will you feel? Will it increase your confidence and self esteem? Will it be great to get up in the morning and not have to struggle to find something the wear? Will you really enjoy buying new clothes or fitting into your old ones? Will it relieve health problems and general aches and pains you suffer with? Find some really compelling reasons to lose weight and then write them down on a index card that you can carry around with you.

Whenever you are tempted to give up on your diet take the card out and read it to yourself, you can replace the sabotaging thought and behavior with your compelling reasons for losing the weight. This is a very simple yet extremely powerful strategy.

2. Carefully select a diet that you know is suitable for you. Not a crash diet that it is probably impossible for anyone with a normal life to stick to, not some crazy celebrity diet, (remember, when celebrities do these hard diets they have person trainers on hand, they have time to spend 4 hours in the gym every day, they can hire a chef to cook their meals for them). Select a balanced healthy diet, either chose to make up your own and count the calories or follow a diet set out for you, or choose something like weight-watchers.

Pay attention to what you are thinking when choosing your diet, for example an impulsive or unhelpful thought would be 'I want to drop 10 pounds in one week so I'll go for an 800 calorie a day diet', this would be very difficult and unhealthy to stick with, and you have probably tried this in the past without success. More helpful and balanced would be ' I'm looking for something that I can enjoy and do long-term, I'm planning to lose weight at the rate of about 2lbs per week so this time next year I will be my ideal weight.' Really focus on what you are thinking, it is all about making decisions, you can decide now to select a diet that will help you or you can sabotage your success and repeat previous unsuccessful dieting behavior and select and impossible diet.

Catching your unhelpful thoughts before you act upon them is a skill that will become more and more natural the more you practice it.

3. Organize, your home, kitchen, office so that it is a supportive environment, for example having candy bars in the cupboard calling to you just makes life more difficult, throw them out.

4. Deal with hunger. Most of us are in the fortunate position of being able to eat whenever we like, whether we are hungry or not, we often instantly react to the slightest feeling of hunger by grabbing the first available food, usually high fat snacks to satisfy that felling of hunger. Many of us have now got to the point where we are unable to differentiate between real physical hunger or simply a desire to eat something. It is important to practice this feeling of hunger and not instantly reacting by eating something. If you have eaten a healthy breakfast, it is highly unlikely that you will really need to eat before lunchtime, however most people who have problems with dieting tend to feel really intense hunger pains which inevitably drives them to overeat. CBT is about being aware of your thoughts and feelings and focusing on them, you can be aware that you may be feeling hungry but you know that you do not physically require food, so rather than caving in to the craving you can deliberate divert your attention from your feelings of hunger on to something. Hunger rapidly subsides when your attention is focussed on something else. It would be helpful to devise a list of distractions that you could use in advance.

5. Plan your day. It is difficult to stick to a plan when you don't have one. When writing out your plan in a food diary, be aware of what you are thinking. Do you resent having to do this extra work? Are you thinking you'll never be able to this? become aware of any sabotaging thoughts and read your index card with the list of compelling reasons to lose weight - this will keep your motivation to succeed high. If everything does not go to exactly to plan, don't beat yourself up, simply say 'Oh Well' and carry on, one of the biggest reasons people are unable to lose weight is this tendency to give up when the slightest hiccup occurs, you don't have to be perfect.

6. Learn to recognize sabotaging thoughts, thoughts are simply thoughts they are not absolute truths. Write down sabotaging thoughts and helpful replies and carry these around with you so you are never stuck for what to do.

Examples of sabotaging thoughts: "I've had a hard day, I deserve a treat, I'll eat less tomorrow", this is simply you trying to justify a lapse.
Becoming aware of these sabotaging thoughts and what decision you should make based on your goals and you list of compelling reasons to lose weight is at the heart of taking back control of your eating.

Everything you do is based on decisions, usually, as unsuccessful dieters we make decisions based on impulse or emotion, but by breaking it down and stopping to analyze thoughts at the time they occur you will finally be able to succeed in your desire to lose weight and really take control of your eating and your life.

by Dianne R Maurer
Weight Loss Success Coach