How Perfectionism is Sabotaging Your Weight Loss

A shout out to all the perfectionists out there! You know who you are!

• It drives you crazy to see a typo in the article or post you’re reading.
• You’ll spend hours working on something until you get it just right.
• You can’t stand when things are not neat and orderly.
• You’ve been known to iron your bedsheets.

There are a lot of worse things you could be, right? Of course, but did you know that a spirit of perfectionism also sabotages your weight loss goals?

See if you recognize any of these patterns:

• You spend time and money coming up with the proper strategy to lose weight but never takes action or stick with it.
• You’re always “getting ready to get ready” but again have trouble with execution.
• Health becomes another stress as you can get caught up counting calories and tracking instead of focusing on the actual goal of losing weight.
• You can get obsessive about eating and exercising.
• You can go from the extreme of being disciplined to bingeing, and as a result, you don’t stick to your plan.
• You set unrealistic weight-loss goals and standards.
• You beat up on yourself a lot.

Any of these sound familiar? If so, the solution is to understand what’s at the root of your perfectionism, and the answer may surprise you.

It’s a fear!

Yes, deep down inside, perfectionists fear that they are not good enough and feel like they are unable to please anyone—including themselves, so they just keep trying harder and harder.

A healthier approach is to understand that although God does call us to walk in excellence, it is a difference from perfectionism. Perfectionism says, “I must be the best.” Whereas excellence says, “I want God’s best for my life.”

A few strategies you could try to help you manage your perfectionism is to:

Practice creating realistic expectations instead of setting unachievable realistic goals.

But even deeper than your goals is your need to understand God’s gift of grace and know that He loves you and accepts you just the way you are.

Fear shows up in our health and weight releasing journey is so many ways. It looks like procrastination, excuse-making, blaming, and even illness! But once you understand how fear shows up for you, then you can learn to let it go and give it over to God. If you want to know the steps to help you move past the fears that are keeping you stuck, be sure to check out our newest course:  Fear-LESS.

Here’s to fearless living!