Weight Loss Tips: Handling Slips with Self-Compassion

​Hey everyone, it's Dr Angela here!

I have a question for you. What happened the last time you slipped? Did you beat yourself up? Did you hide in shame? What was going on in your head? That's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk to you about self-compassion.

So if you don't know me, I'm a board certified weight loss specialist practicing in Olympia, Washington and I am the founder and creator of Journey Beyond Weight Loss, an online program designed to help people lose weight and keep it off.

So all people slip at some time, and I see it so frequently. Somebody will come in with their proverbial tail between their legs. They just feel so ashamed because they slipped up and they didn't want to come back and see us. They feel terrible about themselves and they can't believe it happened, especially if they've been doing really, really well for quite a long time and they've just been really beating themselves up.

I want to teach you what to do when that happens and what I'm going to teach you are the skills of self-compassion. This is based on research that was done by Dr. Kristin Neff and her partner, Dr. Christopher Garner. They've got a whole website on self-compassion which is awesome. The three skills of self-compassionate I'm going to teach you today are mindfulness, shared humanity and kindness. I'm going to unpack that and I need to explain first you what's going on in your brain. So here's what's happening.

There is a primitive part of your brain that is responding to threats and your brain perceives this slip as a threat. So the primitive brain has mechanisms to fight off threats. In the old days it was predators, right? So the proverbial saber tooth tiger? The brain is getting ready to either fight, flee, run, like hack or freeze.

Now you may have heard of fight or flight, but you might not realize that 'freeze' is also one of the options - hold still in place. So fight, flight, or freeze. What happens is today, most threats that occur are not threats, physical threats from outside of us. They are threats - to our self esteem! And so we end up turning that fight, flight, or freeze response inwards to ourselves. So the fight becomes self-criticism. The flee becomes isolation and hiding, and the freeze becomes rumination. So we're thinking these self-degrading thoughts and they're ruminating in our head. So we want to use higher levels of our brain to counteract that reptilian basic threat defense response. Here's what you do.

The first thing you are going to do is to become mindful. So what does that mean? Name the feeling that you're feeling! So for example, maybe you're feeling frustrated, maybe you're feeling disappointed, maybe you're feeling angry, whatever the feeling is, you want to name the feeling. I feel frustrated because I slipped. One thing I want to say is that slips are really common. It is so hard when you live in this country. I was at a diabetes conference recently and you know what they served for snacks? Bagels - at a diabetes conference! You know what they served us for lunch? It was a beautiful chicken salad, but it had a roll in it and it had a chocolate ganache kind of thing with a mint mouse. I mean - if they can't get it right at a diabetes conference, it's really hard! So you're gonna slip! The question is how do you feel? You want to make sure that you NAME that feeling. You say, 'I feel ________ because I slipped." You're not going to be allowing yourself to ruminate in these 'I'm a failure' kinds of thoughts! You will be able to say “I feel frustrated because I slipped,” and NOT “I am a failure.” So that's step one.

Step two is to remind yourself of your common humanity. All people struggle. You're a human being. You're here on a path of growth. All people have hard times and all people struggle. You are not alone in this, okay? It is super important to understand that. Reach out for connection with another human soul - however that may be. You could get on the phone, you could get in on our wonderful Sugar and Flour Buster Society. There's so much supportive stuff going on in Sugar and Flour Busters! I absolutely love it. It just warms my heart to see how people are really supporting each other there. So reaching out for connection instead of isolating.

The third piece is self-kindness. So you want to treat yourself like your own best friend. You want to become an inner ally rather than an inner enemy. How would you treat your best friend if he or she was struggling with slips? Treat yourself the same way! Always give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Now, if you grew up with a harsh critical parent, it's entirely possible that all of this stuff might be really foreign to you and it might feel like a little bit crazy. So many of us had parents who were also parenting us from the primitive reptilian parts of their brain. They were critical and they were harsh. Now we don't want to blame them for that because they didn't know any better. But what you do need to understand is that if you were raised with a harsh critical parent, your easiest response right now, your number one response, is going to be to go into that self-criticism. And so becoming compassionate with yourself is going to take some practice. Be aware of that! It's a learning process. Remember, these critical voices just make matters worse for us. They can keep us paralyzed in shame and guilt. It’s time to let them go!

So what are you going to do the next time you slip? Just a reminder, number one - name your feeling. What am I feeling? Number two - reach out for connection. Remind yourself that you're a human being. Don't let yourself isolate, reach out. And number three is going to be very, very kind. Treat yourself like you would treat your own best friend.

So leave me some comments below this video. Let me know how you're doing with this. And if you have any questions, let me know that. If you want more weight loss tips, I've got a free guide called the Three Biggest Weight Loss Mistakes and that link is below. Feel free to download that and enjoy!

Be kind to yourself. Be compassionate with yourself. And oh, by the way, I do also want you to know, some people worry that if they're too kind to themselves, that they'll end up just giving themselves excuses when they slip up. They'll end up failing because they just are tolerating bad behavior in themselves. I want you to know the research does NOT bear that out. The research shows that people who are truly kind with themselves are the ones who are able to sustain these longterm changes that are necessary in order to lose weight and keep it off. And the research shows that people who are really harsh and judgmental and critical with themselves, they're the ones who give up. Okay? So again, self-compassionate is a huge key.

All right, so I'll talk to you next time. Have a great time and I'll see you later. Bye. Bye.

To Your Health,

Dr Angela.