How an all or nothing mindset stops you from losing weight

You want to lose weight, so you go on a diet. Now this is a strict diet that you will definitely lose weight if you stick to it. One day you can’t help it and you fall off the diet, and the thinking is, oh no, Stuff it, I have failed, so I will eat what I want now and enjoy it. So you go full out. But, you want to lose weight, so you go back on a diet again. You are either all in, or all out. There is no middle ground. This is how the all-or-nothing mindset stops you from losing weight. 

What is an all-or-nothing mindset?

When we have an all-or-nothing mindset we see the world as polarised opposites, mostly in extremes. This is known as a cognitive distortion. A cognitive distortion is a biased thought pattern, mostly negatively on how we see ourselves, the world, and our environment. These distorted thoughts cause us to behave in a way that aligns with the belief. Yet these distorted thoughts, an all-or-nothing mindset stops you from losing weight. 

Examples of an all-or-nothing mindset is: 

• We are either a success or a failure. 
• Our diet is either going brilliantly, or if we eat anything we are not allowed we have failed.
• We can't have any cookies, or we will eat the whole bag. 
• We eat really well during the week and stick to our diet religiously, but at the weekends, we go all out and binge out.
• We are either good or bad, depending on what we eat. 

What causes our all-or-nothing mindset around weight loss

Growing up we take on our parents' and caregivers' beliefs because our brains have not yet developed the ability to think critically. We take anything said to us as children as gospel. We see the world through those around us and believe what they say. 

For example, my daughter lost a tooth and believed the fairy came in the night, took the tooth, and left her money. She believes in Father Christmas. Our brains have not developed enough to question or challenge these beliefs.

As we grow older, we start adopting our friends' beliefs. It serves us well to stay in packs and groups. Thinking differently from our peers could outcast us. This is disastrous as a teenager. If you have or have had a teenager you know how important it is to them to be the same as their friends.

Life can be challenging and hard when we do not have a pack, a group, a community, a family, or a partner supporting us in day-to-day life. This could have been the difference between life and death in our caveman days. 

As we develop into adults, our brain constantly tries to make sense of things. But by now we are living with the filters set for us in our childhood. It is like seeing the world through a kaleidoscope. Only we don’t know we are seeing it that way. We believe what we see is the truth, so we don’t know to question or challenge it. 

These beliefs create self-fulfilling prophecies for us. If we believe something to be true, we then behave as if it is true and therefore it becomes true, which strengthens our belief that it must be true. 

For example, The belief is ‘I can’t stick to a diet, so therefore I have failed’. You stick to a diet for two weeks, you believe if you eat something not on the diet you will have failed. You do eat something not included in the diet, proving to yourself that you have failed. 

Why do we have an all-or-nothing mindset?

Our lives can be busy and often hectic. We are hardwired to survive. If we had to think of every minute detail, we would be overwhelmed just doing the simplest tasks. This would hamper us in gaining sustenance and getting our needs met. This could mean we die. So our brain does us a favour and makes shortcuts for us. It is a survival and evolutionary adaption to streamline our thinking process.

These shortcuts speed up our thinking so much that we do not even realise we have had these thoughts. They do not register in the conscious brain. We can look at something and easily make an assumption without using our brain power. It helps us make decisions easier and go through life on automatic pilot, saving much-needed energy. 

Only the unconscious part of our brain doesn't know whether a shortcut is healthy for us or not. All the unconscious knows is the pattern works because so far we are still alive. 

How the all-or-nothing mindset stops us from losing weight

We know that our thoughts lead to our behaviours. So all-or-nothing thoughts can lead us to patterns of behaviours that replicate these all-or-nothing thoughts. 

Having an all-or-nothing mindset, causes us to be polarised in our eating. It creates extremes for us. Any extreme behaviour is hard to sustain. It creates an environment for us to see ourselves in a negative light.

If I refer back to the self-fulfilling prophecy that I mentioned earlier. When we believe something to be true, our unconscious will find the evidence for us that that belief is true. For example, if you believe you fail at diets, then that is what you will see. Let's remember that failure is subjective. So whether or not you do fail is open to interpretation. 

With an all-or-nothing mindset, our beliefs are at the end of the spectrum. So what we see depending on our beliefs is:

• We fail at sticking to healthy eating.
• Not being able to control ourselves around food, we indulge when we have a day off from a diet.
• We can’t stop at one cookie, so we have them all. 

None of this is sustainable, it does not allow for any flexibility which can stop any progress. With this mindset, any progress is dismissed as not being enough which forces us to either stop, because why bother it doesn’t make any difference, or we have to be perfect, so we never get started. 

This way of thinking can cause a slow downward spiral as each result of a behaviour, re-enforces our negative belief, which causes us to continue with the behaviour that is stopping us from moving forward. We are stuck in a loop.  

These behaviours and beliefs can also cause us to feel negatively about ourselves, which leads to a lowering of our confidence and can lead to anxiety and depressive feelings. 

For example with the belief ‘ I can’t stick to a diet, so therefore I have failed.’ We go on a diet, we don’t stick to it, we believe we have failed. The feeling that we have failed time and time again comes with anxiety, a sense of shame and that we are failures. 

Feeling like this, how motivated would you feel to start eating healthier? My guess is not a lot. 

How do we overcome the all-or-nothing thinking to help us lose weight? 

The trick is to find the balance, the grey in between and learn to move in between those points. 

Try these tips to escape the all-or-nothing mindset that stops you from losing weight.

1. Awareness

To make any change we must first become aware of our behaviours and patterns. This takes quite a lot of observation and practising mindfulness, which is being aware of not just behaviour but the thoughts, reasoning and emotions behind it. 

2. Take notes

Some people find it helpful to write down the behaviours and thoughts they notice around food. For instance, noticing that you can’t just have one of something. If you’re going to diet, do you have to do it properly? Writing it down, thinking about it, asking questions like - Why? Who says I have to? What would it mean if I did, or didn’t? It can help you to go deeper into your thoughts. 

3. What do you get from the all-or-nothing mindset?

Examining your thoughts and feelings can help us to start looking for, what is known as secondary gain. This is an emotional benefit, regardless of whether the behaviour is beneficial or not. An example is eating chocolate. We all know that it is not great for you, but it feels good so we keep eating it. The secondary gain is the feel-good feeling. 

What is your secondary gain from the two ends of your eating spectrum? What do you get out of restriction/dieting/not allowing yourself? And what do you get out of eating full out, indulging yourself and or not caring what you eat? 

4. A scale

The all-or-nothing mindset falls into a spectrum as we have discussed. For example, hard dieting at one end and gorging full out on the other. Write your spectrum on a piece of paper. So you have the two extremes at opposite ends. Then think of all the small points and thoughts in the middle. This opens up the possibility of other ways of being. 

Example: Restricting, allowing one nice food, allowing one nice food a day, eating dessert, gorging.

5. The cause and why

As you get underneath your all-or-nothing mindset, what is the reason you have adopted this strategy? Are there other areas in your life where you have this way of thinking? What is the purpose? 

There is normally a positive intention behind it. For example, you have a lot of weight to lose and you want to lose it. You don’t want to lose a few pounds, you want to lose at least a few stones so going easy is not going to fix it. 

Seeing ourselves in this position of setting an expectation that we have a lot to do, pushes us into setting higher expectations for ourselves and wanting to achieve more. 

6. Little and often

There are many tales of how little and often wins the day. The famous story of the hare and tortoise springs to mind. There is no rush to weight loss. It is a marathon, not a sprint. We want to change for the long term, not just the short term. Set small goals so that every day you are doing a small action. This could be as small as eating an apple instead of a slice of toast. 

How hypnotherapy can help you to lose the all-or-nothing mindset

1. An objective view

Quite often, we may not recognise our thinking patterns and how they hinder our progress. The therapist acts as an objective person who can see your behaviours and thoughts in a way you can’t. This helps you to become aware. 

2. Open to possibilities

We are often stuck in a thinking loop, like the self-fulfilling prophecy I have mentioned above. To get out of it, it helps to think of other possibilities. We often can’t do it on our own because we are stuck in our way of thinking. The therapist helps you to consider other possibilities. 

3. Squashing objections

We get stuck in our way of thinking and if someone does suggest something different to us, we have good reasons why we can’t do it. Why that would not work for us. This stops us from moving forward and keeps us stuck. The therapist will help you examine these reasons so you can move out of your own way. 

4. Relax

The hypnotherapist helps not only our bodies to relax but our minds to relax. Stress can keep us stuck in our way of thinking. Relaxing our minds opens up our unconscious to being open to suggestions and possibilities. This is not about the therapist implanting their ideas, this is about allowing you to be open to your own ideas. 

Remembering slogans, like Rome was not built in a day and a supermarket’ slogan ‘every little helps’, can keep us moving forward slowly. Knowing that any action however small is helpful and good enough.