When we contemplate losing some weight, we think of various things. “What diet should I go on? I’d best go and join the gym. Maybe I’ll buy one of those Joe Wicks books; that should get me lean”. Every decision you appear to be making is centred around something external, not even part of your body. A diet. A gym. A book. A celebrity.
These are all common thoughts, but they’re not necessarily the best place to start. You see, we skip the crucial, free parts, which are the internal parts. Internal parts consist of our mindset, our feelings, and our desires. In this article, I will show you just how important one of these internal parts is and why you should begin by focusing on your mindset.
Do you have the mindset needed to lose weight? I guess we’re about to find out.
You might have just read the above question and thought, “Mindset. To lose weight. What a load of rubbish!” but bear with me as this article might just be the information you need to succeed on your weight loss journey.
More often than not, we identify the training plan we’re following or the diet selected as the reason why we succeed or fail at hitting our weight target. When people succeed, they praise the training plan or diet they followed, tell everyone just how amazing it is, and recommend it to everyone.
Yet, when another person follows the same training plan or diet, they’re unsuccessful and consider the training plan or diet as the issue. They stop following that particular exercise or diet plan and move on to the next one.
So if one person succeeds and one fails, can it really be the exercise or diet plan they followed that either helped or hindered their progress?
Could it be something within them that’s causing them to receive completely different results? Could it be their mindset?
Now, don’t worry, the last thing I wish to do is call you a failure. Ultimately, there are plenty of terrible, unhealthy, and impossible training plans and diets out there. It’s not your fault you’ve been unsuccessful, and generally, we only hear the thoughts of the ravers of the diet plan or training routines. This can sometimes be as little as 2% of the participants.
This article aims to open your mind and help you discover something you never knew about yourself. By identifying traits about your personality and mindset, you’re in a much more powerful position to succeed in the future.
I’ve got a task for you
Read the following four sentences, and write down whether you agree or disagree with each of them :
You are a certain kind of person, and there is not much that can be done to really change that.
No matter what kind of person you are, you can always change substantially.
You can do things differently, but the important parts of who you are can’t really be changed.
You can always change basic things about the kind of person you are.
If you agree with statements 1 & 3, you’re someone who has a ‘fixed mindset’.
If you agree with statements 2 & 4, you tend to have a growth mindset.
If you agree with both 1 & 2, you’re confused.
Fixed mindset
People who have a fixed mindset believe that their abilities are static. Maybe you believe you’re a pretty good exerciser, an average eater, and a wonderful planner. With a fixed mindset, you believe you may get a little bit better or worse at those skills, but your abilities reflect the way you’re wired. Your behaviour then is a good representation of your natural ability, just as the swirled and sniffed first taste of wine is a good representation of the bottle you’ve bought.
If you’re someone with a fixed mindset, you tend to avoid challenges because if you fail, you fear that others will see your failure as an indication of your true ability and see you as a loser. You feel threatened by negative feedback because it seems as if the critics are saying they’re better than you, positioning themselves at a level of natural ability higher than yours. You try not to be seen exerting too much effort (people who are really good don’t need to try that hard right?).
Growth mindset
People with a growth mindset believe abilities are like muscles – they can be built up with practice. That is, with concerted effort, you can improve your eating habits, manage your cravings or exercise in an effective way. With a growth mindset, you tend to accept more challenges despite the risk of failure.
You seek out challenges in your life and are more inclined to accept constructive criticism because, ultimately, it makes you better. By criticism, I mean reflecting on your previous actions and discovering how you can improve in the future. You want to learn and be better at the things you’re currently not so good at.
You may not be as good as others right now, but you’re thinking long-term, in a tortoise versus hare kind of way. The bigger picture is what you see, not the here and now.
Fixed versus Growth: Which are you?
To reach your full potential, you need a growth mindset.
A growth mindset will make you more successful at almost anything. That’s because people with a growth mindset – those who stretch themselves, take risks, accept feedback, and take the long-term view – can’t help but progress in their lives, health, and weight loss journey. Once you become aware of these concepts, you spot the fixed mindset everywhere.
Look at how we praise our children – you’re so smart and good at maths. Your child believes that these are talents that they’re naturally good at. This encourages the child to believe that they don’t need to try very hard as they don’t need to improve.
Regardless of your current position, you can continually improve. Clients tell me they will never be ‘good’ at sports because they aren’t coordinated. When I ask why they believe this, I’m told that their parents told them this when they were younger. The issue here is that they are 40 years old and still believe it. Therefore, they never tried to be good at sports because they had a fixed mindset.
My mum told me throughout my childhood that I can’t sing. Does that mean that I can’t improve in the future? I may never be Michael Buble, but I can certainly be a better singer than I was previously.
We are forever placed in either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ categories. It’s either others around us or ourselves that put us in these categories. These categories are what we’re apparently never allowed to leave. That’s fuel for the fixed mindset. You can improve at something you’re apparently ‘bad’ at, and at the same time, your talents can deteriorate if you don’t keep working on areas of which you’re apparently ‘good’ at.
A growth mindset compliments and praises effort rather than natural skill. I’m proud of how hard you worked in your exercise session and how you’ve planned your weekly meals. By focusing on effort rather than ‘natural’ skills, you believe you can be better, improve, and achieve your goal. You begin to take the actions needed to move forward and evolve as a person.
Can people with a fixed mindset learn to adopt a growth mindset?
The growth mindset can be taught, and it can change your life. To create and sustain change, you’ve got to act more like a coach and less like a scorekeeper. This is why I provide you with the tools and structure to ‘Be Your Own Coach’ in my online weight loss course and coaching. I will be your coach throughout the course or your initial sessions; however, once you’ve completed the course or coaching sessions, you will be your own coach. You will feel empowered and in control of your own journey and your weight.
Here are three things that you must adopt a growth mindset.
Real change, the kind that sticks and creates sustainable results, is often three steps forward and two steps back.
Failure happens, some big and some small. You must understand that failure is part of success.
If you persist with your journey, even if it looks like failure in the middle, it eventually emerges with a growing sense of positive momentum.
The above statements may appear negative, yet that’s the paradox of the growth mindset. Although they seem to draw attention to failure and encourage us to seek out failure, the growth mindset is unflaggingly optimistic. We will struggle, we will fail, we will be knocked down—but throughout, we’ll get better, and we will succeed in the end.
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