Calorie Deficit University

How To Change Your Mind: Cognitive Distortions That Prevent Fat Loss

Lex Babb

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Included in this episode:

Predisposed outlooks we see in the world around us. 

  1. Patterns of thinking or beliefs 
  2. Tendencies that are inaccurate or untrue 
  3. The potential to inflict psychological harm 
  4. Admitting you have false beliefs and distorted thoughts may be terrifying but no good comes from relieving these facilities daily. 
  5. Cognitive reframing/restructuring 
    1. Modifying behavior and core belief systems 
    2. More positive and productive thoughts 
  6. Types of Cognitive Distortions: 
    1. Polarization of thoughts: a person creates acute thoughts surrounding polar opposite groups and ignores median steps with unrealistic proportions. Ex: thinking in extremes. “I’m never going to lose weight because I am broken/my metabolism is broken” 
    2. Selective filtration: the one affected eliminates all positive events and deflects the attention to only the negative. They take comfort in the negative. Only sees their failure and considers their life a mess. They revisit the scenarios in their life that they fear the most/feel the most negative. 
      1. Time consuming and keeps you from seeing the small wins necessary to take you from step to step in the weight loss process. 
      2. “When I was little I was bullied for being overweight and that affects my body image to this day. I will continue to be criticized for my body whether I do the criticizing or others do it. No matter what, I am constantly thinking about my body and how negative the experience is to live in my own skin”. 
    3. Overgeneralization: the one negative incident will become the normal ending for all other situations. They think something bad will happen every time, over and over again. No agency over outcomes. “I’ve never been able to lose weight so why would I be able to now”. No hope. 
    4. Demand and perfectionism: inflexible and strict ideas of how other people and things ought to be. “The journey should be going this way or I should lose weight every day or I should have more progress than I do”. They find something wrong in everything 
      1. Consequence of this is feeling guilty and having low self esteem. Shame. They always fall short of their expectations. Leading to anger of the process. 
  7. How to manage these cognitive disorders: 
    1. Identify the thought, look for the alternative thinking, analyze the productivity of your thoughts. 
    2. They are just habits of thinking patterns that generally get set when you are young in response to negative events. Just change the habit of the pattern to change the outcome of the thought. “Cognitive Restructuring”. 
      1. Examine the evidence for the claim your thought makes and work backwards. 
      2. Is this true? Am I being negative right now? Are these just big feelings right now? 
      3. Find a new perspective/change your mind/gather more information. 


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