Let me paint you a picture of a scenario I’ve seen countless times as a fitness professional. A client comes to me ready to take action on losing weight and living a healthier lifestyle. They’re highly motivated and eager to lay out their diet plan and workout schedules. During the first few weeks the excitement only builds as they begin to see the scale go down.

But then out of the blue, completely without warning or any indication, they fall off the wagon. If you’ve ever started a diet or workout program and experienced the same thing you’re definitely not alone.

Self-sabotage is very common with a lot of people when they go about making significant lifestyle changes. The important thing to understand is that its change and change can make people do some funny things. In this article I’m going to discuss what causes self-sabotage with weight loss along with some practical ideas on how to overcome the obstacles.

One week you don’t miss an exercise class, your diet is on point and everything is perfect. The next week you binge, skip workouts, and repeatedly cheat on your diet. What’s most perplexing is that you know you’re blowing it but for some reason you can’t stop. It’s as if some unseen force has control over your behavior like you were a puppet on a string. Guilt and thoughts of failure only fuels the negative emotions which perpetuate a steady cycle of negative behavior.

One of the key reasons for this is the feeling of being overwhelmed. This is why I always recommend people to set small goals and build off small successes instead of trying to overhaul their entire lifestyle all at once.

When you allow yourself to become overwhelmed with trying to be perfect all the time you set up faulty expectations. Ultimately you can’t live up to such an unreasonable standard and the proceeding guilt negatively affects your actions.

Other times you’ll also find an actual fear of success. As crazy as this might sound, it’s true. Fear of success often occurs due to negative self-talk from others that still dominate your beliefs and attitude. Maybe it was a spouse that constantly put you down. Maybe it was a parent that told you that you’d always be fat. As sad as this is, the reality is negative input from others can get into your subconscious thoughts and stay there until you replace it with something else.

Realize that your effort in eliminating negative self-talk and negative beliefs from others is an essential part of improving your self-confidence.

You have to in essence reprogram your subconscious thoughts. You’ll develop a higher self-esteem and self-respect slowly but surely as you purposely change your thoughts through positive affirmations and visualization.

Your commitment to eliminate fear of success is a personal choice. When you experience rough times, discouraging words from others or negative self-talk, don’t let yourself get down. Face the challenge and keep moving forward. Believe in yourself and use encouraging self-talk to help you become enthusiastic about changing your behavior and attitude.

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