Dr. Sarah Stombaugh:
This is Dr. Sarah Stombaugh and you are listening to the Conquer Your Weight Podcast.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Conquer Your Weight Podcast, where you will learn to understand your mind and body so you can achieve long-term weight loss. Here’s your host, obesity medicine physician, and life coach, Dr. Sarah Stombaugh.

Dr. Sarah Stombaugh:
Today, we are talking about all or nothing thinking. This is one of the most common challenges that I see come up in someone’s weight loss journey. And when you are able to break free from that, it is absolutely life-changing. And honestly, one of the most important things that we need to conquer in order to move forward with long-term weight loss. So many people have had the experience of failed diets or they’re on a diet, they’re sticking to it a hundred percent, and it really feels awful. There’s a lot of resistance, there’s a lot of temptation. It feels like you’re just white knuckling through the whole thing and sometimes days of that or weeks of that or months of that. And then when you finally let go and you stop following it so rigidly, it feels like everything just comes rushing back, both a lot of the stress and all the food choices and most awfully the weight, which can be so frustrating when you’ve seen significant weight loss only to see it come rush back on your body.

And we see this a lot of times even just in our day-to-day, the relationship that we have with food and the relationship we have with our bodies, with our brains, with ourselves even. So today we’re going to talk about how this all or nothing black or white mindset comes up in a setting of weight loss. And most importantly, how do you work past that? How do you learn to navigate challenges? How do you learn to navigate when you’ve had a food choice that is not in line with your goals? Today’s episode is going to give you the skillset that you need in order to break free from that all or nothing thinking and move forward to find long-term weight loss success. Now, this is one in a series of eight episodes where we are talking about the psychology of weight loss. And this is a series that I’m really, really excited about because regardless of where you are in your weight journey, this is such an important thing to maybe learn for the first time or even to revisit to help guide you on your way.

We are talking about understanding what is your purpose, what is your why for wanting to lose weight? How do you accomplish that? How do you get through setbacks, get through some of the psychology that makes it difficult for you to stick to your long-term weight loss goals? How do you see those identity shifts that will start to happen during your weight loss change and start to make changes that allow you to really feel aligned and reconnected with your body? So the best way for you to get those updates is to subscribe here to my YouTube channel. So it’d be so appreciative if you could do that and share this episode by channel with others. I just launched this YouTube channel a couple of months ago and it has been so, so fun to watch it grow. For those who are listening on the podcast side, you know I’ve had that for a while and if you join me there, I so appreciate you there as well.

Thank you for following me. Thank you for your listenership and I love supporting you all in your weight loss journey. So thank you for finding me here. Now, if you are looking for a doctor to support you in your weight, I would be so happy to be that person. I see patients in person in Charlottesville, Virginia and throughout the states of Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia by telemedicine. So if you are in one of those states, reach out at www.sarahstombaughmd.com and I would love to learn more about you, connect with you and see if I can support you as your doctor in the weight loss journey. If you are outside of one of those states, I do have an amazing program called The GLP Guide. This is a program designed to support you alongside your weight loss journey so that you have the tips, the tricks, the tools, most importantly, that you need to be successful in your weight journey.

So that program you can find on my website as well will have all of those links in the show notes of this episode. So let’s go ahead and dive into this all or nothing thinking. Now you’ve probably already thought of some examples of how this shows up in your life, but I want to go through some of the things that I see when I’m having conversations with my patients about what they’re experiencing and how it’s showing up for them. So a lot of times in the context of food, for example, this turns into maybe at a specific meal, you make a food choice that you wouldn’t necessarily make. It might not be really within your control. You might be in a setting where there’s only one food choice available and let’s say it’s pizza and you’re like, “Okay, I had pizza. I’m feeling really bad about that. I wasn’t supposed to eat pizza on my weight loss journey. And now that I’ve eaten pizza, does it really matter if I eat dessert?” Now, a lot of times it’s not that exact thought process. We’re not having all the way through it, but it’s like, “You know what? It doesn’t even matter.This is already a bad meal. This is already an unhealthy bad meal. I’ve already made bad choices.” Major air quotes if you’re listening to the audio only version of this, but I’ve already made bad choices at this meal. So does it matter if I have a soda, if I have two glasses of wine or if I have a dessert or maybe all of the above, this meal is already sort of wasted, so let me just go ahead and have the dessert, have the beverages, whatever it looks like. It might be, okay, I don’t have time.

I planned a workout. I planned to be at the gym for 60 minutes and my work meeting went long. I had a commitment with a friend or a family member that went way over. I overset my alarm clock and I have 10 minutes that I could possibly do something. So if I can’t get to the gym and do my full workout, well, it’s just not going to happen today. And you might even be thinking, oh, hey, I’ll get back to it tomorrow, but you just go ahead and skip the workout even though you could have gotten in a 10-minute workout, for example. It might look like seeing the weight increase on the scale. So maybe things have been going along really well. You feel like you’ve been making choices that feel aligned with your goals. You’re feeling really confident. You step on the scale and it’s up by two pounds and you’re like, oh my gosh, I have been doing all of the things.

I’m trying so hard and the scale is just going up, so does it even matter? And then that can be a time where people feel like they really fall off of their plan because they’re just not seeing the effect that they had wanted to. We can see this come up with special occasions. So this is very common where you’re getting together with friends, maybe it’s a holiday, you’re going to a birthday party celebration, you’re going on vacation and the whole thing going without a plan and it’s like, okay, I’m on vacation, it’s going to be special and it’s like it’s going to be good, it’s going to be bad. And we make this decision or worse yet, we don’t really even make a decision about it. We just sort of let things happen to us. So this is very, very common that this comes up in your weight loss journey and our brains love structure.

So a lot of times it is easy for a diet program, for example, to focus on a very regimented set of rules. And so you will see this. If you find any sort of diet out there, it’s the ketogenic diet. Well, the way that you produce ketosis is that you’re eating a high fat diet. It’s a very low carbohydrate diet. There might be very specific carbohydrate recommendations like 25 grams of carbohydrate or 50 grams of carbohydrate throughout the entire day. There might be recommendations of, okay, you go get ketone strips and you’re going to test your urine and see if you’re in ketosis. You might be on a plan on the other side that’s a macro plan where it says, okay, you’re eating this number of macros and so you need this grams of carbohydrate and this grams of protein and this grams of fat and you’re weighing your food and it’s very structured or someone says whatever it is.

Every single diet has these rules then of what the diet are. And our brains like that. Our brains like programs, our brains like structure. One of the biggest challenges though is that a lot of times we are striving for perfection. And stick with me here because it’s not that you shouldn’t be striving for excellence in your life, but we set a bar that is completely unattainable. Sometimes we have this idea that someone who is thin or someone who’s naturally thin, maybe someone who’s an athlete, someone who maybe we look at their body and we admire it and we think, oh my gosh, they look so good. They look so strong. I wish my body looked like that. And then we imagine what that person is doing. And a lot of times we have this very false idea of what is going on in their life.

We imagine that, oh my gosh, I bet that people, she only eats eggs and fruit for breakfast and she only has salad with lean protein on it for dinner and she only has fish with roasted veggies or salad for lunch and fish and roasted veggies for dinner and she never or he never has alcohol or he never has dessert and he never has a cheat day. She always eats 100% in line with her goals all of the time. And if I want my body to look that way, then I also have to eat 100% sort of perfect. I have to do this thing exactly perfectly. And this is where one of the biggest challenges comes up because designing a meal plan that doesn’t look perfect can feel very uncomfortable. Some people are like, how could I lose weight if I ever eat dessert? How could I lose weight if I’m not following this very rigid structure?

And what I want to invite you is that long-term weight loss is going to require changing your relationship with food. A lot of times I will meet people who have decided I’m going to have zero dessert. I’m having zero added sugar, for example. So they’ll make that decision, they’ll make that and they’ll implement it into their life and they’ll say, I’m not having any added sugar. But then over the course of the week, they are given, there’s a scone at breakfast at a work meeting one day, they go to a birthday party and they have a few bites of dessert. And at the end of the week, let’s say that’s all they did, one scone and let’s say four bites of a chocolate cake. At the end of the week, they feel really badly about themselves because the goal, remember they set out that their goal was that they were having no added sugar and now they’ve had two separate opportunities over the week where they ate added sugar and they walk away feeling like a huge failure.

And especially if maybe weight loss isn’t going as quickly as they want to or maybe it is and they just feel badly because they had some added sugar. The reality is a single scone and a few bites of dessert over the course of a week actually probably aligns with what could be a healthy weight loss plan. Now it’s going to be in balance with other things that you’re deciding to do. But the sad thing is this person, if they decided there’s going to be none of it, and now I’ve had some, even if it’s a very appropriate amount, I think by most people’s standards, they walk away feeling like a failure. And so we can, instead of just the goal always being perfection, we can look at what does it mean instead to be mostly in line with our goals or more importantly, how do we make a plan where we can be 100% in line with our goals, but our goals aren’t 100% perfection?

So hear me out on this. So this is something like maybe over the weekend, for example, you’re making a meal plan, maybe you’re sitting down with your family, you’re making your grocery list, you’re looking at what does this week have in store for me? Are there any challenges that are going to come up? Are there any special occasions that I want to celebrate? How do I want to handle this week? Now, if that person, for example, on Sunday night, they’re looking at their next seven days ahead of them and they’re saying, well, Wednesday we’re having this work party at breakfast time and I know they always bring scones from that special bakery in town and on Saturday night it’s my husband’s birthday and we’re going out with friends and I know we’ll probably order dessert. If they had looked at the entire week and said, you know what?

These are the other meals that I’m planning, but I’d like to plan to have two sweet treats, two things with added sugar in them. I’m going to have this scone or whatever pastry, maybe they don’t know it’s exactly going to be scone, but I’m going to have a pastry when I’m at that work event and I’m going to have some dessert when I’m at my husband’s birthday celebration and those are the two desserts that I’m planning for this week. The thing that happens for that person is that at the end of the week, they’ve still made the exact same decision. So if we have person A who decided I’m not having any of it, the end of the week they had those two things and person B, who beginning of the week they decided, hey, yes, I’m going to have two desserts this week. And at the end of the week they had those two desserts.

At the end of the week, those two people have made the exact same caloric decisions. They have consumed, let’s say the exact same things, the exact same calories. There is nothing different in terms of the input into their body and the effect that that will have on their weight loss journey, for example. And what is 100% true is that person B, the person who decided in advance that I’m having those two desserts, they are going to fare so much better in the long term because at the end of the week, what they get to do is they get to celebrate that they were in line with their goals. And what that does is it rebuilds and repairs the relationship that we have with ourself, the trust that we have that we are going to make the best decisions for our needs, for our wants, for what our body and what our goals are.

That person has rebuilt, repaired and maintained that relationship that they have with themselves where person A is just beating themselves up and is much more likely in the future to make decisions that are less and less in line with their goals. And so when we look at making the plan, I will generally advise people that 80 to 90% of the time we want your decisions to be decisions that you would feel super proud of. You’re going to come to your visit with me and you’re going to say, I ate this and I ate this and I ate this. And the other 10 to 20% of the time that you have eaten off of plan, but in a very intentional way. And so some of those foods can be incorporated in, but in a very intentional way. Now, sometimes we will have certain food items that really feel like kryptonite for us.

They could be these really significant trigger foods, and it may make sense to limit those for a period of time and to work through with a mental health professional, with someone who’s experienced in that, with how do I reestablish this relationship with a certain type of food? That’s something we do in our medical practice fairly often. Sometimes even in the context of an appointment, a patient and I will share a dessert or each have two servings of it and working through what does it look like to consume this food item and how is it feeling in my body and how do I rethink about my relationship with this? So if there is a food that you’re like, if I have one of those, I’m going to have a hundred of them and I don’t feel safe doing this on my own, absolutely get support in working through that.

But for a lot of people, making that plan ahead of time, planning to be 80 to 90% in line with your goals, this is where you are going to meet that long-term consistency, that long-term benefit. And we get to practice this over time because life is not perfect in any arena of your life. I’m sure you’ve experienced that there are some ups and there are some downs. And you may have heard me say it before, but I think this is one of the most important things is that when you make a decision that is not fully in line with what you had planned, with what you had meant to do, to go and really examine that, to take a step back and look at it. Imagine you’re sitting down in a movie theater, you’re watching the scene play out in front of you, and you’re really going through the fine tooth comb.

You’re really evaluating what was that experience and what would I do differently? If you’re feeling guilt, if you’re feeling shame, let’s dive into that and look at it. What happened? Why did it happen? And then most importantly, if you got a redo, you could go back and be in the exact same situation. Other people could say and do the exact same things. Remember, we cannot change other people. We can only change ourselves and the decisions we make. What would you do given a redo in the situation? And the most amazing news is that we often find ourselves in similar type of situations, whether it’s a certain type of event, whether it’s around certain types of people, we will find ourselves in similar situations in the future and we really get an opportunity to learn from it. And that is the sweet, sweet spot because on one end of the spectrum, we kind of beat ourselves up.

We could feel that shame and that guilt and just feel awful, which a lot of times, because we thought we should be aiming for perfection, this shame, this guilt, this awful feeling that comes up just drives making decisions less and less in line with our goals so we can sit in that place of really beating ourselves up. On the other extreme, we can be almost too nice to ourself or really passive about it and just like, oh, whatever, no big deal, won’t do it next time. But I’m going to tell you, you probably will actually do the exact same thing next time if you don’t stop and examine. And recognizing that there are certain situations that feel really triggering, certain foods, certain people, that can be really challenging. But the good news is that you can get a redo in a lot of this. And so I want you to notice where this is coming up, whether it’s in the context of maybe you ate a lunch that’s not in line with your goals and it’s like, oh, today doesn’t matter.

I’ve already kind of blown today or beating yourselves up like, I’m feeling shame, I failed, I’m terrible, I’m an awful person, talking yourself in awful language. What is the next best choice that you can make? So looking forward, don’t just say like, okay, how do I fix today? Ask, what’s my next best decision? So if lunch wasn’t ideal, what can I eat at dinner that’s going to make me help balance out today and help get me back on track? Didn’t get in that 60-minute workout that you had planned because you overslept? Okay, well you have time for a 10-minute walk. What’s the next best decision that I can make? We talked about this also, what is redefining success? It’s not 100% in line with your goals. It’s that how do you learn to connect with your body, set realistic and lovable goals for yourself, and then work towards meeting those?

And this is something that we do every single day in our medical practice because my goal is not just to give you, these are the exact foods that you eat or the exact exercise that you do. We will make those type of recommendations. But what is so, so much more important is how you think about yourself, you think about your food choices, you think about all of those things, and we will help support you so that you can make those choices that feel most in line with your goals. If you have struggled with all or nothing thinking in the past, I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. If you have any comments or questions, I would love for you to leave those in the comment section. We engage with all of our viewers, and so it would be so valuable for us to help answer those questions for you. We’d be so honored to support you in your weight loss journey in this way. Thank you for subscribing and liking today’s video. We’ll see you all in the next one.