Stop using food as a way to cope with the hard things in your life and learn to recognize why you’re self-sabotaging

I cannot even begin to tell you how many women I have seen on Instagram, just this week, posting a picture of a salad and saying “I’m going to start eating healthy, we’ll see how long it lasts” and I remember saying the same thing. I would crush it for a week or two but then something would inevitably throw me off my healthy eating plans.

I would feel stressed out and run to the pantry to grab the Oreos. I would go to a birthday party and have a few cupcakes. After a great week of healthy eating,  I would tell myself, “I deserve to indulge this weekend.” and I’d eat all the things I’d been craving all week.

Whatever the situation was, the next day I would hop on the scale and be so disappointed with the number that I saw and I’d tell myself that I had failed again. I would give up on healthy eating and just go back to my old habits of eating whatever sounded good or whatever my emotions dictated.

I was so frustrated with that cycle but I didn’t know why it was happening or how to break it.

It took me a few years, but I finally realized that I was actually sabotaging myself when I used food as a comfort or reward. Once I made that connection, I was finally able to break the cycle!

You can break that cycle too, once you realize why you’re sabotaging yourself, how you’re sabotaging yourself and what to do instead. Having this level of awareness may just be the thing that helps you break through the diet walls and helps you live the healthy life of your dreams. 

When things get too good we self-sabotage

Plain and simple, the reason you self-sabotage is because you’re uncomfortable being happy.

It sounds so dumb, I know, but when we feel like things are too good in our lives, we subconsciously believe that we don’t deserve to be that happy or to have it so good. So, without even realizing it, we sabotage our success so that we are in a comfortable spot.

This even applies to the good habits we’re trying to create! Starting to eat healthier or exercise will make us uncomfortable. The brain will find any reason to try and keep us at a comfortable spot, even when logically we know it’s not where we want to be! 

We also self-sabotage to protect ourselves from failure. We can’t fail a diet if we never start one! We can’t fail at working out if we chose to stop going to the gym. These changes would be good for us if we stuck with them, but they run the risk of failure, and failure is scary.

One way or another we self-sabotage to make things more comfortable or easier for ourselves. 

How to overcome your self-sabotage

If you want to stop sabotaging yourself, then you need to do three things: identify how you self-sabotage, celebrate your wins and look for the good. These three things can help you recognize your efforts at sabotage and stop them so that you can achieve your health and weight loss goals.

Identify how you self-sabotage

The first step is to identify how we self-sabotage because if we don’t know what we’re doing, we simply can’t stop it!

Most of my clients use food as a way to self-sabotage. But they disguise it by saying they’re rewarding themselves for a job well done.

I talked about it earlier, but you tell yourself that you “deserve” to eat dessert, to have a few drinks, to eat out the entire day because you’ve worked hard all week. 

The problem is that we don’t work on our health so that we can eat foods that don’t serve us. We focus on our health because we deserve to be healthy, to feel good, to live as long as possible. 

We earn what we have. We reap what we sow.

If you want to be healthy, you have to earn it. If you want to eat whatever you want, then you have to accept the consequences of those choices.

Learn to recognize, not just the actions you take, but the thoughts behind those actions because those thoughts are the seeds of self-sabotage. When you can stop the thought, you’ll finally learn to stop the self-sabotage.

Celebrate your wins instead of your losses

Now that you know how you sabotage yourself, it’s time to put a stop to it! I have found that what we celebrate we replicate. This can go either way. If you celebrate or focus on, the bad things, then you’re going to repeat them. But if you celebrate the things you do well, then you’re going to replicate those actions instead.

One tool I use with my clients is writing down a win for the week. It’s so easy to point out what we’ve done wrong, especially when it comes to our food choices, but that doesn’t serve us! Instead of asking my clients what went wrong this week, I ask what went right! What was their win for the week? When we recognize the good things we’ve done, we feel empowered and we keep doing those things.

After asking about a win for the week, I ask my clients if there was anything they could have done better. This question allows us to pinpoint where we’re struggling so that we can improve. It’s not a question intended to make you feel bad, but to analyze what you could do to set yourself up for more success.

Finally, I ask my clients what was fun about their week! Weight loss and health can be very serious topics, but if we forget to have fun with our food, we begin to resent it! Enjoying our food also keeps us from sabotaging ourselves. If you have a fun food, or a food you enjoy every day, then you’re less likely to go off and binge. It’s one of the reasons I love macro tracking and flexible dieting. You can have fun food every day and still live a very healthy life. 

Focus your energy on the good instead of the bad

Finally, I want you to know that you get to choose where your focus and energy go. If you want to avoid self-sabotage, then you need to choose to focus your energy on the good aspects of your health. 

One way I do this is by saying “I get to” instead of “I have to.” I wake up early in the morning so that I can start my day the way I want to before my kids need me. If the second my alarm went off I said, “I have to get up now.” My day would be miserable before it even started because “having” to do something usually means it’s a decision we aren’t making for ourselves. However, when we say, “I get to wake up and start my day on my terms!” we change the feeling around the activity! 

You can apply this to your food choices or your exercise habits. “I get to eat these veggies that will give me the nutrients that keep me healthy!” “I get to move my body and get stronger by going to the gym!” These “I get to” examples breathe so much more life into you than saying “I have to” because it’s a choice you are making for yourself!

Ultimately, the only way you can stop self-sabotage is to realize that you are worthy of living an exceptional life. You deserve to be healthy and to be happy. Once you make that mindset shift, you’ll have an easier time sticking to your food boundaries because you are finally ready to live that kind of life.

If you need help working through self-sabotage, then my Macros Made Easy program is the perfect fit! In Macros Made Easy, you’ll learn what you need to eat to be healthy, and how to change your thinking so that you can stick to your goals. Schedule a free discovery call with me to see if you’re ready for this program!

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