10 Negative Thought Patterns and How to Change Them for Weight Loss and Health

In this article:

• Your attitude matters when it comes to making healthy choices.
• Turning negative thoughts into helpful ones can make healthy choices easier so you can achieve your goals.
• Here are common negative patterns and ways to change them into helpful thoughts.
• Lark can support your goals and help you stay motivated as you make progress towards your health and weight loss goals with or without GLP-1s as you log food, get tips for eating healthier, and make small changes that can turn into healthy habits.
  

Change your thinking, and you may get a whole lot more out of your efforts to live a healthy life. Research shows that positive psychology can improve health outcomes. Here’s why having a positive mindset is important, and how you can practice being positive by identifying negative thoughts and replacing them with helpful ones.

Background on Positive Thinking

A well-known saying is, “If you think you can, you’re right, and if you think you can’t, you’re right.” This is largely true when it comes to your ability to make choices that improve your health and support a healthy weight. You’re more likely to be able to engage in healthy behaviors if you think you can, and you’re less likely to live healthy if you think you can’t.

Some people are naturally positive, but everyone can work on developing a more positive mindset that supports health and weight goals.

Here is how you can work on becoming more positive, confident, and effective in your thinking.

• Identify negative thought patterns
• Stop and think
• Replace the negative thought with a helpful thought
  

Here are several common negative thought patterns, examples of when they might occur, and how you might replace them with helpful thoughts.

1. All-Or-Nothing

All-or-nothing thinking may occur when you view situations in extremes. In this pattern, you may think that if something is imperfect, the whole thing is a failure. For example, if you have a piece of bacon at breakfast and hadn’t planned to, you might decide there’s no point in eating healthy the rest of the day. In this example, all-or-nothing thinking could even lead you to skip exercising because “there’s no point” in trying because the day is “already ruined.”

A more helpful thought is that a bit is better than nothing. In the example of having bacon at breakfast, a helpful thought might be, “I enjoyed the bacon, and I can eat healthy the rest of the day.”

Another example of something being better than nothing might be running out of time for a long trip to the gym, but still going for a 15-minute walk and getting in at least some activity.

2. Filtering

In mental filtering, you ignore the positive aspects of a situation and only see the negatives. An example might be if you eat according to your plan for most of the week, but go out with friends and share their chips and dip. A thought with negative filtering might be, “I ruined the whole week.”

A more helpful thought might be, “I did great most of the week, so I know I can make good choices regularly.”

3. Catastrophizing

Catastrophizing is a form of extreme thinking in which you expect the worst possible outcome, often when it’s unlikely to happen. An example of catastrophic thinking might be if the scale shows that you’ve gained weight for 1-2 weeks when your goal is to lose or maintain weight. A negative thought might be, “I’m gaining back everything I lost, so I’ll just give up.”

A more helpful thought might be, “I’ve worked hard to get where I’m at, and I can go back and look at what I’m eating to make sure I’m still on track.”

4. Labeling

Labeling involves assigning negative attributes to yourself or others, which can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you skip a workout and decide that, “I’m lazy,” for example, you might act that way and continue to skip workouts.

A more helpful thought may be, “I skipped that workout because I needed to take care of another obligation, and I’ll be sure to set aside time for my workout tomorrow.”

5. Generalizing

Generalizing means applying the results of a single event to all events. An example might be if you get so busy on the weekend that you don’t prepare a nutritious stew and some frozen breakfast sandwiches for the week ahead, and you end up eating out more times during that week. A generalizing thought might be, “I can’t do what it takes to eat well.”

A more helpful thought might be, “I’ll schedule meal prep time for next weekend and purchase some frozen vegetables and veggie burgers so there’s always something healthy to eat.”

6. Personalization

With personalization, you blame external factors like other people or situations for your choices. A common example might be, “I can’t lose weight because my children need snack foods in the house and I can’t resist eating them.”

A more helpful thought might be, “I can decide which snack foods are in the house because I do the grocery shopping. If I decide to bring in foods that I don’t want to eat, I can put them out of sight in the back of the pantry, wrap tape around the packages so it’s harder to open them, and have grapes in the freezer, baby carrots in the fridge, and seaweed snacks in the pantry. I’ll always have a healthier snack option.”

7. Emotional Reasoning

Emotional reasoning happens when your emotions dictate your perception of reality, even if the facts indicate otherwise. An example of emotional reasoning is, “It’s so hard to make healthy choices. I’ll never be able to manage my weight and continue to make good choices, so I’ll give up.”

A more helpful thought might be based on facts. For example, “It’s hard to make healthy choices, but I’m losing weight and my blood sugar has gone down. Maybe I can find an exercise buddy and ask for help with cooking so that a healthy lifestyle is easier.”

8. “Should” Statements

“Should” statements express expectations, and they can lead to feelings of guilt or failure. You may feel pressure from yourself or someone like a doctor. For example, “I should eat more vegetables,” is a “should” statement.

A more positive statement expressing something similar is, “I want to try having a cup of baby carrots and half an ounce of chips tomorrow for my snack to see if I feel more satisfied and proud.” The new statement turns the desired action - eating more vegetables - into something you “want” to do instead of “should” do, and makes it more appealing and less of a chore.

9. Jumping to Conclusions

When you jump to conclusions, you make assumptions without enough evidence. Your assumptions could turn out to be wrong, and this can have negative effects on relationships, behavior choices, and other factors that impact health and weight.

One example might be if you’re eating out with friends and they suggest you order sweet and sour chicken with chow mein noodles, which can be high in calories, carbs, and fat. If you’re jumping to conclusions, you might think, “They aren’t taking my healthy intentions seriously.” You might then decide not to go out with those friends anymore, which harms your relationship.

A more helpful thought when they suggest ordering sweet and sour chicken with chow mein noodles might be, “That sounds delicious, but I’m going to stick to my plan and order broccoli chicken and mixed vegetables. I’ll remind my friends that I’m making different choices now and I’m glad we could be at a restaurant where healthy options are available.”

10. Minimizing Positives

When you minimize positives, you downplay the impact of positives and instead focus on negatives. It can be demoralizing and demotivating, leading to giving up. An example might be if you achieve a 10-lb weight loss with an overall goal of losing 40 lb, and you think, “I’ve worked so hard and accomplished so little. I’ll never hit my goal.”

A more helpful thought focuses on the positives. You might think, “I’ve lost 10 lb while learning new skills and strategies. I can keep using what I’ve learned to lose more weight and hit my goal. It may take a while, but it took a while to put on the extra weight in the first place!”

How Lark Can Help

Practicing a positive mindset can help you reach your weight and health goals. Lark can help you make positive choices on a daily basis. Your Lark coach is available 24/7 for encouragement, coaching, and lifestyle tracking. Lark can help you make healthy choices and establish habits that fit into your lifestyle so you can lose weight and keep it off with or without GLP-1 medications.

Click here to see if you may be eligible to join Lark today!

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