Shame is not motivating. Do you hear me? Shame is not a good motivator for changing human behavior.
Don't believe me? Ask any psychologist, including Brene Brown.
The first thing I tell my clients is that step one is to release ourselves from any shame we feel about our bodies, our weight, our inability to lose weight, or our weight regain.
Then most people cry. I understand; I have cried about this in the past, too.
Before we can truly make the life changes needed for sustainable weight loss, we need to love ourselves. This is hard to do if we hate our bodies.
Yet many people continue to use shame to try and get people to lose weight. Magazines shame us, sometimes our family shames us, sometimes the medical community shames us (but if your provider does, get a new provider). Sometimes nobody means to shame us, but we just feel shame, because we know the world wants us to be smaller.
If you feel ashamed, you do things like eat in secret, or hide the evidence of what you ate from loved ones, or lie. None of these are healthy habits. (I know; I've done them all.)
Step one is not easy. But it's necessary. We need to release ourselves from shame. Then we can start to change our thinking and our behavior and become healthier people, from inside out.
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