5 Ways You Sabotage Your Weight Loss & How to Overcome Them

Discover the 5 ways you sabotage your weight loss and learn how to overcome them to achieve lasting results and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

I have sabotaged my own weight loss in many ways, specifically in 4 of the 5 ways I will be introducing to you today. 

Can we still lose weight even if we sabotage ourselves? Yes, because we can overcome self-sabotage.

My highest weight was 349 pounds. You will read more about my struggles and overcoming throughout the article, but I have lost 145 pounds, while still having periods of self-sabotage. There is a way to overcome this self-abuse.

Yes, it is self-abuse. I sabotaged my own health journey, this was abusing my journey. 

God wants me to treat the body He gave me with dignity and love.

He didn’t give me the body of pain and dysfunction that I had, that all came from my own poor choices.

Have you ever wondered how you could be thankful for a body that doesn’t allow you to do what you would like, such as walking without pain; and a body that suffers with high blood pressure and diabetes and maybe countless other ailments?

God didn’t give us these dysfunctions. He made our bodies in His image. 

“So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.”

Genesis 1: 27

Then He gave us free will. For me, free will has been my downfall. I needed to find freedom in Christ to make decisions that honor Him.

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;  you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies”.

1 Corinthians 6: 19-20

The 5 self-sabotages we will discuss in this article are ignoring emotional eating, having unrealistic expectations, lack of consistency, overestimating exercise, negative self-talk and having a negative mindset.

Guess which one I did not do and see if you are correct by the end of this article.

1. Ignoring Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is eating for any reason other than hunger. 

I never thought I was an emotional eater. 

I wouldn’t eat when incredibly sad or angry. But I did eat when I was bored or when I wanted to celebrate a birthday or out on an adventure. 

This is also emotional eating. I ignored this for a long time; always stating that I was not an emotional eater.

As we have all heard said, the first step to solving a problem is to recognize there is a problem. 

Triggers for Emotional Eating.

This is not an exhaustive list of triggers, you may have experienced triggers not on this list, but these are some common ones. In this section, we will discuss the triggers, later we will explore strategies to overcome triggers and emotional eating.

Stress

We all experience stress and stress is not always bad. 

If you are going to give a big speech to a large crowd, that produces stress and that stress can lead to you preparing better to be ready for your speech. 

When stress becomes overbearing, that is when our fight or flight kicks in and some may overeat to avoid (flight) what needs to be done.

The Holy Mess writes in this article about how to overcome stress eating. It is a wonderful article and The Holy Mess is a resource that I recommend you bookmark and visit often. 

Boredom

My achilles heel. If you are a person who likes to be busy or at least moving at all times, having nothing to do just produces stress, which makes you want to reach for something to do. 

Nothing better than reaching for those candies or chips and keeping your hands and mouth busy – or so I used to think. 

There are better ways to stop being bored and there are always ways to let yourself be bored and be okay with it. We will discuss these later.

Anger

When we are angry, many of us want to get even, to strike out (fight). 

Sometimes our anger can be at ourselves and we punish ourselves by eating the 1000 calories extra that we weren’t supposed to. Many times we do this unconsciously. 

Some of us may get out a bag of cheese puffs and start eating and just forget we are eating, while we try to extinguish the big red hole anger produces.

Depression

If you experience clinical depression please seek help. You will need more than an eating strategy. 

If you eat when you are sad, it may be that you are lonely and need a companion. 

For me, food was my companion. Food was my best friend. It was always there when I needed it and always, for a couple minutes, made me feel better. 

The problem was that it always brought on guilt, shame and weight.

Anxiety

Again if you are experiencing clinical anxiety, please seek help.

For some people, being anxious about meeting someone or taking a test can be calmed through food. We will often reach for high sugar and high fat foods to release serotonin and decrease anxiety.  

Fear

As you read here, you will notice a pattern. The pattern is to use food to take away a negative feeling. 

To replace a negative feeling/circumstance with a positive tasting and serotonin/dopamine releasing food. 

Fear is a feeling we want to avoid, so when it comes up we stuff it down with food, usually high fat and high sugar. 

Irregular meal timing

I still have this issue from time to time. 

As long as I stay on my typical schedule, I do better. But once I go on vacation or just go out for the day or have too many meetings that interfere with my schedule I give myself permission to just eat when and what I can. 

Usually my when is often and my what is foods I would not choose when being health conscious. This is common for many people.

Strategies to identify and manage emotional eating:

We have recognized the problem through examining some common triggers for emotional eating, now what are some strategies to overcome emotional eating self-sabotage.

Mindful eating practices.

I set myself up for success now. The Holy Mess has this free printable to help you set yourself up for success as well.

Before eating (anything) I pray and ask God if this is what my body needs. I then ask Him to have the food bless my body and not harm it. 

At that point I track the food I am about to eat in my tracker. I also pretrack and just confirm before I eat. I use MyFitnessPal, but there are many apps to choose from including writing your food choices with paper and pen. 

Once all of this is done, I then eat. 

It ensures that I am not eating quickly out of habit or reacting to an emotion and grabbing something without thinking. 

When I eat I stay present and enjoy every bite of food. I try to limit distractions, but am not always great at this. 

Emotional awareness and journaling

One great benefit of using paper and pen when tracking is that when you track your food you can also write how you are feeling and determine patterns of foods you reach for when experiencing negative emotions. 

You can go back over time to see if there is a pattern that when you felt a certain way you always grabbed a sweet, high fat, or salty food. You can then choose to  process your emotions with God instead of food. 

One technique I used was that each time I felt bored I would get up and walk around the house and pray (trying this for 10 minutes). Over time this became a habit and now, for the most part, I will reach for a walk rather than a sweet.

Seeking support from a community or counselor

If you feel you may have an eating disorder, please seek help from an expert in the field. 

You may have an addiction and/or habit of always eating a particular food and a counselor can help you to change your habits. 

A community of like believers with similar values will help support you, encourage you and keep you accountable. 

I recommend the Free Christian Weight Loss Community for Women. This is a great group of Christian women who support each other through their individual health journeys with administrator help, videos, and support.

2. Unrealistic Expectations

Have you ever begun a weight loss program and your goal is to lose 30 pounds in 2 or 3 months? 

Sounds doable. But is it? 

A healthy weight loss is 1-2 pounds per week. If you start out needing to lose 100 pounds or more in the beginning you may lose more than 2 pounds per week, but it will quickly get to 1-2 pounds per week.

Then we all have stalls or slight gains, it is just the way the body works. 

So, if you look at a 4 week month and lose 1-2 pounds per week you are looking at losing 4-8 pounds and that doesn’t count the stall or slight gain one week. 

In 3 months that is 12 – 24 pounds. Count in a slight gain or stall and realistically you may lose 15 pounds in 3 months. 

Oh, wait, then you need to consider your age and activity level. 

If you move each day for 30 minutes and are under age 40, you may lose a little more, like maybe 20 pounds in 3 months. 

If you don’t move much and are over age 40, you may lose a little less, like maybe 10 pounds in 3 months.

Wow, it doesn’t seem worth it does it? 

All the hard work you will put in, all the denying of wants for 10 -20  pounds gone in 3 months. 

If you are a person who has 15 pounds to lose, this may seem doable, except the closer you get to goal the slower the weight loss typically goes.

For these practical reasons, I always had unrealistic expectations. 

With 145+ pounds to lose, saying I would lose maybe 20 pounds in 3 months was so hurtful. 

I would tell myself and others that would listen to me, that I was going to do what many others can’t. I was going to lose 15-20 pounds a month and continue that loss until my weight was gone. 

This would motivate me until I would lose 4 pounds after 2 weeks and realize I would never hit my expectations. 

I would figure, “why bother” and eat. 

I even told myself outloud one time that I was meant to be fat and it was just the way it was. I might as well enjoy myself. I did, I went on a tangent of all my favorite foods.

It was no accident that I ended up at 349 pounds. I ate my way there. 

I had to come to terms with the fact that I could do nothing and die early or I could do something and live. Just something, not all or nothing. 

The importance of setting SMART GOALS

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals. They are goals we can measure and see our progress.

I had a weight goal, which I really wish I didn’t need. I’d love to focus on other things besides weight, but for me I had to have that weight goal.

Even needing the weight goal, the goals that worked the best for me were the habit goals. Goals about my calories, protein, water, walking, and tracking.

One goal I still have today is – “I will track every bite I take in MyFitnessPal including accurate measurements every day of the week from Monday through Sunday.” 

• It is specific, I can measure if I tracked all my bites and if I have accurate measurements of each food item, 
• It is achievable. This goal doesn’t say how much I can eat, just to track it all. 
• It is relevant because if I track I can look at this as data and see what has to change to get different results; 
• it is time bound, it must be done by sunday. 

There are weeks that I didn’t meet this goal and usually those weeks were not as successful.

One more goal I have is – “I will drink at least 48 ounces of water (can add no calorie flavoring) each day.” 

This is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. 

I used to say 64 ounces, because honestly I should do 64+ ounces, but it wasn’t achievable yet. I had to get to a consistent 48 ounces before I increased the number of ounces. 

Tips for setting realistic weight loss expectations:

Everybody is different. Our bodies are also different; we all have our own natural rhythms and limitations. We need to get to know our body’s needs and wants.

After years of tracking and analyzing, I have found that my body will lose weight between 1200 and 1500 calories with movement, not strenuous exercise. 

My body holds weight when I do full-out exercise. It lets weight go when I walk or swim or do very short bouts of strength training. This may not work for you, but for me through years of tracking I have found this to be the case.

I know that if I crave salt, it means I need more hydration. I know if I crave sweets I typically need and want fruits and veggies. 

It has taken studying my tracking and data over years to find this out, and there are times my body will still change and surprise me. 

I have learned that my realistic weight loss is 4-6 pounds per month, if I am not in a stall. 

I still hate admitting that, it just doesn’t seem like much weight to lose in a whole month. 

I have 25 pounds to lose right now and if I only focus on my weight goal I have 6 months to go. That is a long time to wait, especially being in an immediate gratification society.

How do you feel when you calculate how much weight you have to lose and how much time it will realistically take? 

This is a great place to go join the free Christian Weight Loss Community for Women and tell them how this makes you feel and ask for support.

Right now I am in a stall that has lasted 6 months. Yes, 6 months. I have gone up and down the same 3 pounds in those 6 months.

Why haven’t I given up? Some days I do, but then I turn to God. I pray for His guidance and help and I just keep up the habits. 

Each habit goal that I succeed with each week, I celebrate. 

It is hard work to keep up good habits and we can all do hard things 

“I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

Philippians 4:13

Celebrate every small victory, they do lead to large victories.

The most difficult strategy is patiences and persistence.

Keep celebrating the victories and adding more habit goals. The weight will come off in time.

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:”

Ecclesiastes 3:1

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Ecclesiastes 3:11

3. Lack of Consistency

Consistency is key, and an area I constantly struggle with. 

You may not lose weight one week or even may gain a little. It could be water weight, it could be hormones, it could be unexplainable; but if you are consistently following your healthy habits, the weight will come off.

When you are consistent, your healthy choices become habits. You do them without even thinking, much like brushing your teeth.

Some of my healthy choices have become habits such as meal prepping every weekend. 

If I have a weekend where I don’t or can’t meal prep I feel out-of-sorts, this is a habit I do and love being prepared. 

I have a high protein breakfast every day, this is part of my meal prep. I reach for my breakfast every morning as a habit now. 

Last weekend my family and I had plans. We discussed the night before that we were going out for breakfast to start our day out. I was excited about eating out for breakfast. 

In the morning, I woke up, went to the fridge, grabbed my high protein overnight oats and started to eat. It is my habit now. I didn’t eat out, but sat with my family at breakfast and had a great time. 

So with all these positives that come from consistency, why aren’t we all consistent? Why aren’t I always consistent?

Common reasons for lack of consistency

These are common reasons and your reason may not be on here, but you can start from this list.

Busy schedules

Our society is so busy now, that we often don’t stop for anything. 

You may have meetings all day and not be able to eat until the afternoon, by then you are so hungry and eat more than you need and grab the quickest thing available, maybe a vending machine food.

You may be a mom of several little ones and chasing and cleaning up after them all day, you just feel you deserve to sit and enjoy a chocolate bar or ice cream. 

It is important for us to work into our plans, backup schedules. What happens if the day is so busy that we can’t maintain our schedule? 

Lack of motivation

Something I have learned is that motivation is not a feeling. Yes, we can feel motivated, but it doesn’t last. 

Motivation is a choice. Choose to be motivated, choose to do what needs to be done whether you are motivated or not. It is not easy, but there will be big rewards.

You may be at the point where you feel you’ve been consistent for a month and only lost 4 pounds. Why do all that work for just 4 pounds? This is where a mindshift comes into play, which we will talk about later in the article. 

Distractions and temptations

In today’s world there are so many distractions. 

Have you ever sat in front of the television watching a movie or your favorite show and taken the bag of popcorn with you. 

You know you’ll just have 1 cup and why dirty a bowl to separate out 1 cup. 

You start watching and before you know it the popcorn is gone. You may even look around the room wondering who took it, I’ve done this. 

You could also be involved in a project and you know your schedule says to eat now, but you just need 15 more minutes to finish. 

3 hours later, you are finished and starving. You don’t have time to make the tuna you had planned so you quickly grab the bag of chips and a beef stick. 

How to build and maintain consistency

We have looked at some common reasons for lack of consistency and now let’s turn our attention to ways we can build and maintain consistency.

Creating a structured routine

I created a paper schedule in the beginning, writing out my meal plan and my movement times and what I would be doing. 

In the beginning I basically wrote out a step-by-step what my day would be like. This technique aligns with my personality. 

Now I have a meal plan that includes what I will eat for my breakfasts, lunches, and snacks for the week. I prepare these on Saturday or Sunday for the upcoming week. 

On a separate card I put what dinners will be for the week and I post this on the refrigerator, so that my family sees what we are having for dinner and doesn’t have to ask me each day. 

I write out my movement plan, but am still in process of making this consistent as excuses raise their ugly heads a lot in this area for me. 

I work in an office, so my movement plan right now is to walk a loop in my building including stairs two times during the day. 

This way I can walk when I am between work items. If I put down that I will walk at 10:00 am and 2:00 pm and I’m busy at 10:00 am I would skip it, so writing 2 times a day works better for me. 

If you have not planned ahead, try to plan your day a day ahead. 

Tonight write out what you will eat tomorrow and how you will move. Remember our SMART goals – be specific, make sure it is achievable and include times. 

Your plan should include the times of day you will eat and move, what and how much you will eat at each time and what movement and how much/long you will move. 

Once you have created your plan, follow it as a blueprint. Once this becomes consistent, then you can plan flexibility into your plan. The Holy Mess has sample meal plans on her site. 

You can plan to have this or that for lunch, you can eat not exactly at 1:00pm, but 3-4 hours after you first ate. You can also include backup plans.

Accountability partners or groups

Accountability groups/partners can work for diet choices and for movement. 

There are various types of groups. You can do challenges, individually within a support group or as a group. The challenge can be focused on foods or movement or both. 

There is a fall exercise transformation group going on with Get Fit With Ashley, that starts on September 27, 2024. She has many other group challenges as well. 

There may be days that you don’t feel like doing anything, but you wouldn’t want to let an accountability group down. 

If you can find a group that gives victory points to a whole small group based on each member that may work well because you really wouldn’t want your group to suffer if you didn’t follow your habits. 

This may also be difficult, because there may be some in the group who could be unkind if a life circumstance came up.

I have found that I love the Free Christian Weight Loss Community for Women. It is easily accessible and you can ask for what you need. Every person on this site that I have read is kind, supportive, and helpful.

If you want a one to one accountability partner, ask for one and you’ll probably get multiple people willing to fill that role. 

Utilizing technology and apps for reminders and tracking

I use MyFitnessPal, the free version. 

It is easy and convenient. I track my day ahead of time and then do any changes throughout the day that I need to. 

I don’t like to make changes so it helps me to stay on track, because I know if I have this one extra thing, I need to go add it and my day has already been calculated for what works for me.

4. Overestimating Exercise

Well, if you guessed that I didn’t do this self-sabotage, you would be correct. 

I haven’t used exercise to lose weight, in fact when I discovered that weight loss is 80% what you eat I was happy, because maybe I could eat so well that I wouldn’t need to exercise. But I found I still need movement.

I do have a friend that has sabotaged herself with this quite often. 

We would go to lunch together and she’d order a dessert. I would ask how she fit that in her plan, not out of judgment, but because we were doing this together and I wanted to know how I could have it too.

She would tell me that she’d do extra exercise that night to make up for the dessert. 

Because we promised to share information with each other. I brought in a chart about exercise and calories burned to our next luncheon.

If you were to order a dessert at Olive Garden the calories could be about 750 (I looked up the chocolate cake). 

According to the chart for 30 minutes at 170 pounds (which she was at the time) she would burn about 280 calories. 

She would basically have to do that exercise bike an hour and half continually at a moderate speed to burn the calories of that chocolate cake. 

That doesn’t count burning any other calories of the day, that is just for that cake. And that is only to break even. 

It also doesn’t take into account what the sugar is doing to the body in doses found in a chocolate cake with frosting, or the fact that 5-10 dollars was just spent on one piece of cake.

Exercise alone cannot produce weight loss. 

So, was I correct, that because of this I didn’t need to exercise? No. There needs to be a balance between diet and exercise.

The relationship between diet and exercise in weight loss.

As I mentioned 80% of weight loss is diet, but that means 20% is exercise. Exercise is needed to help with weight loss, it is the steady partner to diet.

Food choices provide the calorie deficit. 

Yes, you will burn calories with exercise, but that should not be the focus. Calorie deficit is less calories in than your body needs to burn so that it then burns fat in storage and you lose weight. 

If you are an avid exerciser figure in some of the calories you burn so that you can eat to provide nutrition and energy for your exercise, but if you are a person, like myself, who just moves throughout the day, don’t figure in your calories burned from exercise, let your movement just be a bonus of burning some calories.

Strength training will help preserve muscle mass while losing fat, which is important for boosting metabolism, especially important as we age.

Exercise can also be an appetite suppressant. 

You need to discover your body’s rhythm and needs; we all have unique bodies. Some people find that a lot of cardio will make them very hungry, while others find that a lot of strength training will increase hunger. 

Improved body composition is my target right now. After losing 145 pounds, my body looks like a melting candle. The exercise will not get rid of loose skin, but strength training can help to fill the loose skin out some. 

Also after being 349 pounds, having high blood pressure, heart disease, fatty liver, and borderline diabetes, movement now helps me to strengthen my heart and keep these diseases away.

Both diet and exercise contribute to improved mood, reduced stress, and increased self-esteem, which can support weight loss goals.

Making exercise an act of worship can help you move closer to God. Diet can be included as you pray for your meals, thank God and honor Him with your body.

So, we now know the benefits of proper diet and exercise, how do we balance the two?

Effective ways to balance exercise and diet:

Include in your meal plan, what movement you will do and when. We write down what we will eat, but often will say, “I’ll get to the gym, or take a walk, when I can today”.

We need to do exercise as an appointment along with eating as planned.

If you are like me you will need to do exercise prep as well. 

I prepare meals to have everything ready and quick so that I don’t have excuses to grab unhealthy items. 

For exercise, I have to have the weights out and a video prepped to start the next morning for strength training. 

For walking, I now walk my granddaughter to the bus stop every morning (a 5 minute walk each way). I also have a reminder card on my desk to walk 2 times during the work day and each time I check off my walk as I complete the task. It is one of my work tasks.

If I plan to walk on the weekend, I will have my pants and sneakers ready to just slip into and I will write down what time I will do this walk.

With these suggestions you can put an emphasis on both diet and exercise, balancing the two.

You will have days that are high stress or just days you are in crisis; on these days you want to balance both in the simplest of ways.

When in crisis, you may not be able to plan and track. 

At this time, have one serving of what you eat. Even if you want a brownie, have one serving only, enjoy it and move on. 

For exercise, get up and move. This may mean just walking in place as you watch a TV program or walking to the store. Just move your body.

Hopefully, crisis times only happen once in a while and just maintaining an adequate balance will help.

5. Negative Self-Talk and Mindset

Negative self-talk can take over and sabotage all efforts. 

As I have mentioned earlier in this article, there were times that I would tell myself that 4 pounds a month was not worth all the effort needed to lose weight and what happened? I ended up eating more and more and those 4 pounds were back on and so were many other pounds.

We all have negative messages in our minds. Messages that say we are not good enough or we can’t do this or we are not worth it. 

It isn’t easy to change these messages; we need God to help us.

Each time I have a negative message start to play, I state, “I can do hard things”.

“I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.”

Philippians 4:13

and “I am strong”. 

“But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Corinthians 12: 9-10

The Power of Positive Affirmations and Self-Compassion.

Our bodies and minds are connected. 

Our thoughts and emotions influence our physical health including our weight. This is why it is so critical to use positive affirmations to overcome our negative self-talk.

We all need to build self-compassion. 

I am sure you are very compassionate toward others and give them grace and even guidance when you can. We need to turn that compassion on ourselves and see us as God sees us.

“For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139: 13-16

You are wonderfully made. You are a work of art, created by God.

Techniques to cultivate a positive mindset:

Positive affirmations can create a positive mindset and can bring you out of negative self-talk.

I have posted on my wall at home scriptures of who I am in God.

I also write out affirmations on index cards and post them on my walls, refrigerator, and desk. 

I love this scripture and often use this as a daily affirmation:

“For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”

2 Timothy 1:7

I lean into this scripture and thank God for the Spirit He gave me and ask Him for strength in guidance on how to use this Spirit. 

I do daily devotions as well. Some I have used are Joyce Meyer and SoVeryBlessed. 

When we surround ourselves with positive messages, positive people, and positive environments it is easier to adopt positive mindsets.

You can do this. 

The picture on the left is me at almost 349 pounds. The picture on the right is me after losing 145 pounds and riding a camel for the first time in my life, because I was finally at a weight that I was allowed on the camel.

FAQ’s About Weight Loss Sabotage

More Christian Weight Loss Tips For You:

The Importance of Exercise in Maintaining Your Weight Loss

What Does God Say About Food And Eating? A Biblical Guide

How to Stop Binging on Sweets— From Cravings to Control