A New Perspective on Failure

What do you do when you slip and eat junk? Many of us go into a spiral of discouragement and shame that leads us to want to quit our work at getting healthy again. Marchelle and I say, hey, let's stop this now! Let's develop a new way to think about our "fails" so that we can stay the course and keep losing our weight!

Some of this weeks episode highlights are:

5:08 Failures will lead people to quit. And the reason that they quit is because they make the failure mean something about them. It isn't a failure to meet the intended objective that caused them to quit. It was the thought that something was wrong with them that led them to quit trying.

13:51 I'm going to say something really interesting. I would venture to say that the more you fail, and fail with a perspective of learning and curiosity, the better you're going to do in the long run.

14:39 The minute they slip up, they're going to label themselves a failure and they're not going to learn anything. And before they know it, they will have gained all their weight back because they will get discouraged from one slip. Okay. So I say, fail away. I say, appreciate your failures. Be curious about your failures, fail, fail, fail, learn, learn, learn, grow, grow, grow. This is what's going to give you what you need to lose weight and keep it off.

--- Full Raw Transcription Below ---

Dr. Angela Zechmann (00:00):

You are listening to the, keep the weight off podcast with Dr. Angela episode number 37.

Introduction (00:07):

Welcome to the, keep the weight off podcast, where we bust all the dieting myths and discovered not just how to lose weight, but more importantly, how to keep it off. We go way beyond the food and we use science and psychology to give you strategies that work. And now your host, Dr. Angela Zechmann.

Dr. Angela Zechmann (00:27):

Hey everyone. And welcome back. So last week we were talking about emotional eating. And one of the things that we talked about, how, is how we can really have this tendency to judge ourselves when we fail. So we have our intended eating plan, and then we end up doing something and we end up not following our intended eating plan. And then we end up in this cycle of judgment. And what I'm doing right now is I'm working really hard in our membership, in our Journey Beyond Weight Loss membership, to help all of our students develop the right mindset for lasting weight loss. And right now we're in the early stages. And I think it's super, super important to make sure that our thinking is correct about what we're doing. And so one of the things that will happen for people as they embark on their weight loss journey is that they hit these stumbling blocks and they slip up and they eat something that they didn't plan to eat. And what I want our listeners to know is that what actually happened does not matter. What does matte, is what you choose to think about what happened and how that's going to drive your next action. Because, what happens if you hit a stumbling block, what happens for you, Marchelle?

Marchelle (02:05):

Well, first of all, I just want to say, this is what I love so much about you. That is so different than any other weight loss program that I personally have ever joined in on is that you never hear about what to do. If you fail, it's like, eat this, do this, and that's it. And we all fail. We're human. So I love that. We're learning about how to handle these situations in life, because we all slip, we all fail and we need to know how to keep going.

Dr. Angela Zechmann (02:40):

Yeah, exactly.

Marchelle (02:42):

Because I know that I have gotten up with a plan in the morning and then by the evening, I'm like, wait, what did I do? I love that we're talking about this because we all experience it. Especially if, you know, you're really trying to go from not having a lot of boundaries to really being diligent about you know, about your, your eating. So there's a lot that happens in between. There's a lot of…

Dr. Angela Zechmann (03:12):

So the question becomes, how do you handle failure? And when you develop a really good answer to this question in the midst of your weight loss journey, you can then apply these skills to any other failures that you might have in life. And guess what? Your life is going to expand almost like magic. It's just an awesome process. So again, as I always say, the weight loss journey is training ground for life. So who's ready for an expansive life? I'm asking all of you or listening to this podcast, if you are ready for an expansive life, it depends on how you handle failure. So I want to unpack it. Okay. So most of us were told as children that if we failed at something, that this is a big problem and that we had done something wrong. So we were trained to want to get A's and B's in school.

Dr. Angela Zechmann (04:10):

We were trained that failure is not acceptable. But what is failure actually? Think about that for a minute. What does it mean to fail? Wikipedia, Google, Wikipedia says that failure is the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success. And the Oxford dictionary says failure is the omission of an expected or required action. So if you take these definitions and you sort of combine them, failure essentially means that we omitted an action and did not meet our intended objective. Okay? So in weight loss, this might show up as eating something we didn't intend to eat, or perhaps you're not, you're not losing fat as quickly as you'd intended. Okay. Now here's the question, because oftentimes these failures will lead people to quit. And the reason that they quit is because they make the failure mean something about them.

Dr. Angela Zechmann (05:25):

So for example, they may have this thought, I guess there's something wrong with me. And this thought leads them to feel discouraged. And this feeling of discouragement leads them to quit trying. Okay. So I want to point out here that it isn't a failure to meet the intended objective that caused them to quit. It was the thought that something was wrong with them that led them to quit trying, because that thought led to feel discouraged. So here is my question for all of us. What if failure does not mean that something's going wrong? What if failure is a part of the process? So think about that for a minute. And I want to compare it with a baby. That's learning how to walk. He stands up. His objective is to walk across the room. He stands up, he tries to take a step and then he falls down.

Dr. Angela Zechmann (06:33):

He failed at his intended objective, right? Now, I want to ask you has anything gone wrong? Is the baby just going to decide I guess I'm a failure. I guess I just can't do this. I guess I'm just going to crawl for the rest of my life, right? Of course not. That's not going to happen. Why? Because nothing's gone wrong. Nothing's wrong. What happens is that he gets back up and in getting back up, he develops more strength and more balance. And each time he tries and falls and gets back up, he develops more strength and more balance. And then one day he's got enough strength and enough balance that he can walk. Now in the beginning, he's not walking very well. He's toddling around. That's why they call them toddlers. But the more he practices, the better he gets until one day, he's an expert walker. And then before you know it, he's running away from you and he's hiding inside the clothing racks at stores. And generally just driving you crazy and making you wonder why you encouraged him to learn to walk in the first place. I experienced this as a mother, right? Did your kids ever do that? Do they ever go hide in the clothing racks at stores?

Marchelle (07:56):

Once they can learn how to walk for very long, they just ran,

Dr. Angela Zechmann (08:02):

Oh God. Yeah. You're just like, oh, sheesh why did I encourage them to, to walk? She was crawling again. I could keep much better track of them then. So let's think about this. And let's apply this to your weight loss journey. You're going to have times where you fail. You're going to omit an action. You're going to not meet your intended objective. Does that mean that something has gone wrong? Absolutely not. It means that you're learning. So let's say you had made this decision that you're going, not going to eat after 8:00 PM, but you did. You failed at your intended objective of not eating after 8:00 PM. The question to ask next is what do you make that mean? What thoughts do you think about that failure? Do you think this is just too hard? I guess I just can't do it. Well, this is sure to lead to a feeling of discouragement that's going to cause you to want to quit.

Marchelle (09:08):

That's kind of happened to me sometimes. Like when we first started this, when I first started working on myself, started this journey I was, well, of course I hadn't experienced Journey Beyond Weight Loss, which has been a blessing in my life because it has helped me deal with all the crap that's going on in my mind outside of just, you know, what I'm supposed to eat. But like I remember it first, I would really like get down on myself and I just can't do this. You know, this is, this is too much. I would become resentful. Like why, you know, why can't I just eat? Like, you know, like what I want. And I, I would just dwell on that and all of the, you know, the negative talk and, and that didn't get me anywhere, you know, then I would come to you and then you would talk me off the ledge and you would, you know, fill me with a bunch of positive encouragement.

Marchelle (09:59):

And then after a while, then you taught me how to fill myself with positive encouragement when I would fail or not meet my expectations. So, you know, now I just had, you know, this since July, I went to, you know, you guys all know this. I went to Mexico on a vacation. And from that point on, from that Mexican vacation, I was in a really a really vulnerable time because I was at a very, very good weight. And I went to Mexico and I allowed myself to tell myself well, you, you know, even if you gained like five pounds, you're fine. You know, you're, you're really comfortable. It's okay to have that. And you're at an all-inclusive and that just started this whole mindset of, you know, it's okay if you do this. And it's it's okay. And then I went up on the scale, like 15 pounds in a month and a half, and I, and it happened so quickly.

Marchelle (10:58):

You guys, it was just, I felt so free at first. Like I don't, I don't have to think anymore. I can just do what I want. And that really like led me to, like I'd said this really quick weight gain. And then I had to just stop and say, you know, like, what am I doing? And because I have the tools that I learned from you, Angela, and Journey Beyond Weight Loss, I know now, like how to deal with that. And I didn't just because I could have let that go for 40 pounds. You know, I've done that before where I got to a great place. And then once I fell off or I, I just gave up trying or whatever happened then I just gained everything back and then some, and I've heard this story a lot from our patients, you know, that once, you know, once I stopped and not only did I gain everything back, but then I just felt horrible and so shamed and that, so that used to be the case for me.

Marchelle (11:53):

But I've learned these tools of failure that I don't do that anymore. Like, I'm the able to catch myself in that, in that mindset of like all the negative talk and, oh, just give up, you can't do this and you're broken. And you know, you're not like everybody else and you're way worse and nobody would understand you - all these things. And so I, now I have these fantastic tools of it. It's in your it's in our minds to be able to talk to ourselves in this, in this way that we can pull ourselves up out of these. Well, I guess I don't like to even call them failures because it is such a learning experience. I mean, even that part of it is a learning experience because now I know so much more about myself and my triggers and, you know, emotional eating and all of that. So so that's my input on that. I've learned so much about myself just because I'm really, I mean, it's all you have to really work on the emotions. You have to work on your head beyond just learning what to eat.

Dr. Angela Zechmann (12:59):

Yes. Yeah. There's so much that has to happen in your head when you're going, when you're navigating a successful weight loss journey, it's all about the thoughts that you think. So let's say you do have a fail and you think, instead of thinking, this is too hard, I guess I just can't do it. And that's leading to discouragement and, and quitting you think instead, this is actually part of the process. I wonder what I can learn so that I can avoid it next time. What causes, what kind of feeling do you have if you have that thought 'this is part of the process.' I wonder what I can learn. You have a feeling of curiosity. So instead of thinking that this is just too hard, and I guess I just can't do it, which leads to this feeling of discouragement and puts you at risk of quitting.

Dr. Angela Zechmann (13:51):

Let's say you were to have the thought, 'this is part of the process.' I wonder what I can learn from the slip so I can avoid it next time. That leads to a feeling of curiosity, right? And this curiosity is going to lead you towards growth and expansion, not beating yourself up. Now, I'm going to say something really interesting. I would venture to say that the more you fail and fail with a perspective of learning and curiosity, the better you're going to do in the long run. Because I always worry about these people who are perfect for months and months and months on end, you know, them Marchelle. I know them, we see it! Because I know exactly what's going to happen. The minute they, they slip up, they're going to label themselves a failure and they're not going to learn anything. And before they know it, they will have gained all their weight back because they will get discouraged from one slip. Okay. So I say, fail away. I say, appreciate your failures. Be curious about your failures, fail, fail, fail, learn, learn, learn, grow, grow, grow. This is what's going to give you what you need to lose weight and keep it off. Okay. So that's a totally different perspective about failure. Don't you think?

Marchelle (15:24):

And just to add, to like what I said before, you know, the very first time that this happened to me and I went through the, you know, the sugar detox and I didn't have a whole lot of tools because, you know, I hadn't done this for very long. The first thing that I, that I slipped, I remember, you know, being in the negative self-talk and really feeling bad about myself and then coming to you. And you've really helped me, you know, like remember, you know, to talk to myself a certain way and that I can go back. And these are the tools that I could use to get back there. And then this last time, the, you know, when I went on vacation, I instead of, you know, dwelling in the negative self-talk and feeling really bad about myself, I remembered what I had to do to restart.

Marchelle (16:07):

And so I quickly, you know, once I pulled myself up out of it and got up off the floor, I remembered, you know, okay, go right back to that five day sugar and flour detox, you know, talking to myself in a positive way. You know, writing stuff down and journaling learning to sit with my, you know, all these things that I've learned. It was, it was really easy for me to pick back up and start over. So having tools in your toolbox is amazing because then you know how to restart again. And it's a lot easier every time I do it, it's this is the third time that I had to do the sugar and flour detox. And I….

Dr. Angela Zechmann (16:45):

Think you're probably going to have to do it again someday.

Marchelle (16:50):

I know that that's how I got to do. That's what I know. I know, Hey, if this happens, I got a plan. Yeah. Or when I'm ready to, you know, fix whatever's going on with me. Yeah,

Dr. Angela Zechmann (17:02):

Exactly. Yup. So let's sum it all up. I want all of us to take a whole new perspective on our fails. Let's appreciate our fails. So you can't get better at anything if you're not willing to fail. So let's be willing to fail because when you're trying new things and you fail at them, you're evolving and you're expanding. So let's be willing to stick our necks out, try new things and fail our way to success. The truth is that the more willing you are to fail at anything, the more likely you are to succeed. Okay. Does that make sense?

Marchelle (17:46):

Yes it does.

Dr. Angela Zechmann (17:46):

Hopefully make sense. So that is all for this week. We'll see all of you next week. And in the meantime, fail, fail, fail, and see what you learn when you fail. Take care of everyone. Bye.

Marchelle (17:59):

Goodbye, everybody.

Closing (18:00):

Hey, if you really want to lose weight and keep it off for good, your next step is to sign up for Dr. Angela's free weight loss course, where you're going to learn everything you need to get started on your weight loss journey, the right way. Just head over to JourneyBeyondWeightLoss.com/freecourse to sign up. Also, it would be awesome if you could take a few moments and write a review on iTunes. Thanks! And we'll see you in Journey Beyond Weight Loss.

Dr. Angela

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