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How to Handle a Lapse During Your Weight Loss Journey
| Posted on Jul 22, 2011 |
Weight loss, eating healthy, and becoming more physically active can be difficult. You do great for a while, but it’s easy to fall back into unhealthy habits. False starts, slips, screw-ups, mistakes, lapses, giving in, a weak moment; whatever we call them they happen to all of us, derailing weight loss efforts. Few of us are able to change behavior without a setback. The important point is not that they happen, but how you respond that will determine your long term success. Christina has been on the weight loss roller coaster for several years. She adopts a restrictive diet plan and loses a number of pounds over a few months. But overtime, she feels deprived of her favorite foods and eventually has a lapse. After a lapse, she feels guilty and defeated. Christina feels so bad that she gets a pint of ice cream to help her feel better. This snowballs and eventually she is back to the poor diet habits that lead to her weight gain in the first place. Christina’s mistake was not the initial slip, but how she dealt with that weak moment.
The first thing to do after a lapse is to forgive yourself. Calling yourself weak doesn’t help. It can even make things worse by decreasing your self esteem and lowering your confidence in achieving your goals. Remember that a lapse does not make you weak or a bad person. What it does mean is that you are human, and as we all know too well, we aren’t perfect.
A lapse should be looked at as an opportunity to learn how to avoid the situation in the future. Why did the lapse occur? Often it is not one thing, but a series of decisions, that, by themselves, may not have seemed important. Taken together, however, led to a poor choice.
Some questions you might ask yourself are:
- Was there a temptation that was overwhelming? How can you avoid that temptation next time?
- Was there an avoidable trigger?
- Could you have been better prepared?
- Were you overconfident or courting temptation?
A lapse can be a great learning opportunity. It can increase the strength of your commitment and contribute to your long term success.
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All articles on Achieve-Life.com are written by board certified physicians.
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