39. Embracing Imperfection in Weight Loss: Why Efforts don’t have to be perfect

Discover why embracing imperfection can lead to sustainable weight loss success in Episode 39 of 'Weight Loss Made Simple.' Dr. Stacy Heimburger explores how the pursuit of perfection often derails progress, offering insights backed by psychological studies. Learn to shift from an all-or-nothing mindset to celebrating progress, not perfection, and maintaining motivation with self-compassion and mindful planning. Tune in for practical strategies to stay committed on your weight loss journey. Don't miss out—listen now!

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.

Transcript

Are you tired of feeling like one mistake ruins your entire weight loss journey for the day? In this episode, I want to dive into why perfection is not necessary for progress and how it can actually hurt us. Welcome back to the podcast. I want to tackle this idea of perfection. When I work with my clients, I see this really get in the way of their progress. Lots of times, we have done some crazy weight-loss thing in the past and had success. And then, with this recall bias, this hindsight bias, our brain is telling us we did it perfectly right, 'Oh, back in the day when I followed my plan 100% and I did this exercise 100%, I was successful.' I promise you that no one is perfect. No one is 100% perfect. The idea that we have to be perfect in our weight loss efforts to be successful is just garbage. Most of us will lose weight with like 75% effort. What ends up happening is we’re chugging along, and we’re doing fine, and then we have one little mistake, and then our brain starts to shit all over us for making a mistake. And then we go off the rails and we go face down in some food because we are feeling a lot of uncomfortable feelings about how we’re a failure and how this will never work. But it actually has nothing to do with the little mistake. It’s that the little mistake leads to this spiral that then puts us where we are just going hogwild, and we kind of are giving up. This concept has been talked about as a mini quit or quitting ahead of time, whatever you want to call it. We have one little slip-up, and instead of just acknowledging it and moving on, we go off the deep end, and then we think, 'I didn’t do anything. I ruined it,' and we just give up. I see this present itself that we will be chugging along at an amazing effort of like 85-90%, and then my clients are on the phone with me, and we’ll talk about what their week was like, and they’ll tell me they had an awful week. And when I really ask them about it, it turns out they had a great week, but their brain is not letting them enjoy the success of the 85% and wants to focus on the 15% that wasn’t perfect. And if you do that week after week after week, you’re gonna stop. You’re gonna give up. You’re not gonna keep going. If every week all I’m doing is focusing on the 15% of the time that I didn’t do it perfectly, and my brain will not let me see the 85% of the time I did great, I’m just beating myself up every week, and nobody wants to beat up every week, so at some point, it’s not worth it, even if I’ve been seeing some success. I will discount that success. My brain will discount the weight loss on the scale because it’s focusing on the one time a week I ate a cookie, that makes me weak and that I’m a failure and I’ll never be successful. We think we have to be perfect, and we have this all-or-nothing mindset. We can get really frustrated with ourselves, and we can really start to think that there’s a problem with us and that we are doing it wrong and we will never be successful, and then we just stop and we abandon our efforts. And then the part of our brain has evidence that it was right, 'See, I knew that was gonna happen. You just couldn’t buckle down. You just couldn’t be dedicated. Couldn’t have the willpower. I knew this was gonna fail.' The times we were doing awesome, sticking to our plan, we were starting to strengthen the self-concept that we have that we do what we say we’re gonna do, which is really the metaskill behind any goal achievement but specifically weight loss. If I write down my plan for the day and I have proven myself over and over again that I do what I say, if I write it down, I do it. I strengthen the skill of doing what I say I’m gonna do and doing what I write down. When I have faith in that skill, anything I write down is achievable, right? If I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I write it down, it’s happening, that’s the skill, that’s the secret, that’s gonna make every single goal easy to achieve, but we don’t have that mentality. The time I skip something on my calendar and all my brain wants to focus on, 'Trust, I have that I’m gonna do what I say I’m gonna do,' these moments, we can make this whole thing less stressful. We all know what stress will be more motivated with kindness after a setback and then we can bounce back away from weight loss. Let’s just sort of, we’re trying to be more productive. Let’s go back to our calendar. If I miss something on my calendar, let’s do not make that the end of the world. Most of us would just be like, 'Okay, just put it on for next week,' or 'I’ve got five minutes. Let me see if I can knock it out, right?' A task on our calendar does not immediately make us think that we are flawed and awful and unable to achieve results, unable to be productive because we missed one task on our calendar. That doesn’t happen. But if we have one on our food plan or one exercise plan because that’s related to weight loss, we are to ourselves as awful, unable to achieve it. Why do you think that is? Because everyone tells us weight loss is very hard, right? Weight loss is so hard, so heavy, so big that doesn’t feel heavy. The temperature being low, like, there’s not as high temperature. I miss something on my calendar. It’s not a big deal. There’s a lot that’s higher temperature, right? It’s much heavier, and we make it that we are inherently flawed and broken. Big deal. The big deal is when we spiral out of control because we make one cookie mean that we’re terrible people. If I ever get to pick something up, and that’s a task on my account, I just pick it up the next day like, 'Oh, when you make a pick-up order, they give you more than one day. They understand that not everybody gets to everything they say they’re gonna do all the time, and we’re very compassionate with ourselves if we run out of time to get our order, but we have zero compassion for ourselves if we said we weren’t. That we have to let go of all that. I really like to do that. My clients are focusing on what we are doing right. Full disclosure. I use a lot in my planner. I sort of get that part of my brain. I give it a little bit of an outlet, but I like my clients to do this, too. We make ourselves a star. Can we use checkmarks? Like some visual representation of all the things we did during the day, focusing on what we did wrong. The fact is our brain is going to focus on what we missed. So we have to actively focus on what we did right to balance it out, focusing on progress rather than perfection. You guys see it all the time. I use it as a bunch of my post. Progress, not perfection. It’s not just something cute to write down. There’s actually studies that show that focusing on progress is very effective in maintaining our effort and motivating us to keep going. Something like it’s not bumper sticker. It’s real. We have to focus on progress. We have to focus on what we did right. Inherently, it’s going to tell us what we did wrong. There’s a reason for it. It’s not just being an asshole. There is a reason that our brain does that. We just don’t need to do that. We don’t need to know we failed, not gonna kick us out. Not gonna get eaten by a sabertooth tiger. Okay. But because we understand how our brain works and we understand that our brain is going to do that for us. It is going to show us what we have done wrong. We have to actively find ways to visually show ourselves what we have done right. This will help shift our focus from the short-term slip-up to all the things we’re doing right for our long-term success. It helps us stay committed. This mindset shift will help you be more resilient. It will help you stay motivated. It will help you stay committed. So, I want you to remember, we are not trying to be perfect. The journey to a healthier you is not about being perfect. It is absolutely about persistence and self-compassion. So, I want you to find a way to mark your progress, mark all the things you’ve done right during the day, make your brain focus on that. See it so that it knows it’s real. Don’t worry about the setbacks. Nobody is 100% perfect. We do not need to have success. We do have to keep going to have success. Just keep going. Your goal. Will be the only way you don’t succeed as if you quit, and if you’re constantly focusing on the amount of times that you didn’t get it right, you want to quit because it feels bad. Progress, not perfection. It is proven. That is the key here. That is what’s gonna help you stay motivated. Help you stay committed. Hope you reach your goals. Alright, my love. I will see you next week. Thank you so much. If this was helpful, please share with a friend. Until then, I’ll talk to you later. Bye.

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