2 Huge reasons why being a perfectionist is hurting your weight loss
My name is Krista, and I am a recovering perfectionist. As a perfectionist, I used to think that if I couldn’t do things perfectly, then they weren’t worth doing. And if I absolutely had to do something, then I had to be the best. This all-or-nothing, good or bad attitude didn’t ever seem to serve me. In fact., my perfectionism started to impact my health because I either had to be an overzealous health nut who couldn’t make a mistake or I just wouldn’t care about my health at all.
In my overzealous phases, I got stuck doing fad diets or eating only 1200 calories a day. When I didn’t care at all, I would eat all my feelings and then hate myself for it. It wasn’t until I learned about macro tracking and really worked on my mindset that I realized my perfectionist ways were the reason I couldn’t lose weight or keep it off.
The most frustrating part for me, as a perfectionist, was that I was doing everything “right” and I still wasn’t getting the results I wanted! But, the truth is that I wasn’t doing everything “right.” My perfectionist attitude kept me only focused on the things I could do well and anything I was bad at or couldn't do perfectly, I ignored.
I see perfectionism throw a lot of my Macros Made Easy Mamas off too. They want to be perfect. They believe that in order to hit their weight loss goals they have to do everything 100%.
While it’s great to strive to be good at something, weight loss doesn’t require perfection. Sometimes holding so tight to that need to be perfect can actually keep you stuck.
The biggest reason perfectionism hurts weight loss is that it prioritizes unawareness over accountability. The secret to losing weight is that weight loss doesn’t require perfection. Weight loss requires awareness and accountability.
Perfectionists would rather be unaware than imperfect
Most mamas are unaware of what their food is costing them. I don’t mean that you don’t know what you spend on groceries each week; I mean, that you aren’t aware of the nutritional toll each thing you put in your mouth has.
Food has a nutritional cost. If you want to eat a balanced diet, have the energy to keep up with your kids, and still lose weight, then you need to know how much food you can eat each day.
Sometimes, it helps to think of your nutritional budget like your grocery budget. If you set a grocery budget of $200 a week, but you’re spending $500 a week, you’re going to run out of money.
In order to have enough money at the end of the month, you need to learn what you’re spending all that money on and make cuts to rebalance your budget.
It’s the same for your food! If you start to pay attention to what you’re eating and you realize that you’re eating too much each day, you can figure out where to make cuts.
Perfectionists struggle with nutritional awareness even more because once they become aware, they have to do something about it. They can’t handle being “bad” so they have two options:
Change your ways
Stay unaware
Change is hard. It requires knowledge and work and if you don’t feel like you have the time or resources to change, you usually opt to stay unaware.
But being unaware is what got you to the point you’re at right now and it’s time to ask, “Is this working for you?” If it’s not, then you have to stop clinging to perfection and be brave enough to make mistakes!
Being aware of your “mistakes” will make you uncomfortable, but change comes through the discomfort. If you’re struggling with this part of your weight loss journey, take time to reframe what you’re doing.
Remind yourself that, you may not be perfect right now, but you’re slowing down and creating awareness around your health so that you can improve it. You won’t always feel this way.
Knowing that this stage is temporary can help you feel better about yourself. Another trick you can use is to think back to a time when you were learning something new. How long did it take before you felt confident? You survived that and now you’re a pro at it, the same is true of your food awareness.
Appearing perfect is more important to perfectionists than being accountable
The most important part of weight loss is being accountable for our actions. I always say, what you measure, you can manage. If you aren’t measuring what you’re doing, then you can’t be accountable for it!
I have my clients use a spreadsheet to track their food, weight, sleep and exercise each week. If you hit the goal, the box turns green. If you got close it turns yellow and if you’re too far off it turns red. The point of this system is to give my clients, and myself, a quick view of how well they’re hitting their macro numbers.
But over time, I’ve seen some people struggle with the system, especially my type-A, perfectionist clients. Sometimes, they prioritize getting green boxes over being accountable.
One client, Rebekah, is a self-proclaimed perfectionist and she shared that she would fall into the perfection over accountability trap.
“It took me a while to realize that as much as I liked getting green boxes if I wasn’t honest with my food, I was the only person who was hurt.
Occasionally I’ll forget to track a food or mistrack something, and I have two options. I can ignore it and pretend like I hit my numbers perfectly, or I can go back in and fix it and have one day of yellow or red boxes.
The yellow and red boxes don’t hurt me, they just show that I’m human and I make mistakes. But green boxes that aren’t supposed to be green do hurt me because the scale will go up and we can’t understand why.
Being perfect doesn’t help me if it’s not my true effort. I’ve learned that I’d rather understand why the scale is going up, or why my body is reacting a different way, than pretend everything is fine.”
Like Rebekah learned, being accountable can help you understand why you’re not losing weight.
Your weight, your body measurements, and your food journals are simply feedback. They are all tools we use to understand what is going on with your body and if the plan we are following is working.
To understand how everything is working together we need honest feedback and accurate information. This is where your accountability comes into play. As long as you are honest about your information we can create a weight loss plan that works for you!
One of the most empowering things I’ve done for myself is to let go of my perfectionism. When I stepped out of the black and white thinking, I was able to see that my nutrition and health weren’t determined by “good” and “bad.” Instead, my health was about how I felt. How it worked in my life. And that gave me back so much power!
Don’t let perfectionism stand in your way anymore! Schedule a free discovery call with me to learn how to change the way you think and feel about food, the scale and yourself so that you can lose weight while still enjoying your life!
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