Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Is perfectionism sabotaging your weight loss? If you’re one of those people that has such high standards that if you don’t meet them, you fall all the way to the bottom and you just give up, this podcast episode is for you.

And I almost wanted to ask the initial question, is your perfectionism sabotaging your weight loss? But I’m not going to say it that way, because there is no such thing as your perfectionism. It is just a trait that you have now or you don’t have, or a pattern that you’re in or you’re not in.

And I want to remind you that you aren’t born a certain way, and you can change that. I’m working on something right now, personally, in the STAY program, and God gave me the thought today, I can rewrite my story. I can rewrite my life. I am not destined to live the same patterns that I’ve been in for the rest of my life, and neither are you.

So keep listening because we’ll talk about how perfectionism tendencies is sabotaging your weight loss and what to do instead. So let’s begin. Let’s just define what perfectionism really is and who you are if you have those perfectionism tendencies.

You aren’t lazy and you aren’t undisciplined. You actually care a lot about doing things very well, so you have very high standards for yourself, and you have high standards for yourself in probably all areas of your life, in being a good friend, a good wife, a good mom, a good daughter, and all the hats that you wear. Even a good Catholic. You want to please God.

You want to take care of your body well. You wanna eat well. You wanna exercise well. You wanna pray well. You wanna just do everything that you do really well. You’re that person that people call on because they know if they ask you to do it, it’s gonna be done the right way, and you always follow through.

But chances are that isn’t the case with all of your weight loss efforts, otherwise you’d be at your healthy weight right now. See, the thing is that you have such high standards, but then when one thing goes wrong, you missed a workout, maybe you ate something that you didn’t plan, you fall short of those very high standards, your own standards, your brain immediately goes to.

“See? I blew it. So you can’t even do this. What’s wrong with you?” Or just the whole, “I’ll start again on Monday,” or, “I’ll start again tomorrow.” And that is the perfectionism spiral. Perfectionism may actually be the one thing that’s causing you to overeat. This is the crazy thing, guys, it’s creating the very behavior that you’re trying to prevent.

You’re trying to not overeat. You’re trying to eat in a way that feels gentle and comfortable and sane, but your perfectionism keeps throwing you down that shame and despair loop. So this is how it looks. Pretty much it starts with a standard, then something happens, and it isn’t really what happens that’s the problem, it’s what you’re making it mean.

So let me dissect that a little bit for you. So it starts with some sort of standard, like I’m not gonna eat sugar, I’m gonna stick to my meal plan, I’m gonna work out five days this week, I’m not gonna eat after dinner, I’m gonna get up and pray every single morning. some sort of standard.

And then you maybe eat the cupcake, you miss a workout, you eat more at dinner than you plan. Maybe you overslept and you miss prayer. And so it isn’t any of those things that’s the problem. The problem is what you’re making it mean about you. Then your brain goes automatically to, “I can’t stick to anything. I have no self-control. I’m so weak. I’m so undisciplined.”

I know this isn’t the way your brain probably sounds in that voice, but that’s the voice that I like to you. “See, I always do this. Why can’t I just get it together?” And from those thoughts, then you’re going to have feelings of disappointment or shame or frustration or despair or defeat or hopelessness. And none of that comes from God. I just want you to see that. None of that comes from the Lord.

But when you feel disappointment, shame, frustration, defeat, and hopelessness, what does your brain want to feel when you’re feeling that way? Okay, so you’re in that pit, and then what does your brain want? Intentional long pause.

Your brain wants relief. It doesn’t wanna feel that way, and so that’s why you eat. That’s why you think, “Oh, well I blew it already,” and you just eat more. And it’s that I blew it already, as crazy as it sounds, it actually gives you relief, and it gives you that permission to say, “Well, I’ll just eat all the things anyway, because I’ll start again tomorrow,” or, “I’ll start again on Monday.”

So we need to clearly see how that spiral goes. You have a standard, something happens where you fall short of it, you make it mean something very big. We catastrophize. Brains are very dramatic.

And because it feels then so heavy, you just want relief, and that’s why you’re eating over it, and then you feel horrible about it, and you create a stricter plan to start tomorrow or Monday. You’re going to try harder. But you guys, do you see that now you’re just setting yourself up? Because then you have this high standard, and you can never live up to that high standard.

You’re going to make falling short a problem, make it mean something, so that then you feel that despair, that hopelessness, that disappointment, and then you want relief, and you eat all the things. And again, we just set ourselves up for the spiral. I want you to see that having high standards aren’t the problem. Wanting to do things well isn’t the problem.

You guys, I work with women all day long in getting what they want, in having goals. God calls us to excellence. God calls us to doing things well. Discipline isn’t the problem. You know, having the concept of I want to stay disciplined to something or committed to something, that’s not a problem. Wanting to take care of yourself isn’t a problem.

Wanting to be a good steward of your body isn’t a problem. I want you to see that wanting to do well isn’t the problem. The problem is what you’re making those high standards mean. When you’re meeting the standards, then you start thinking, “I’m okay. I’m good enough. I’m worthy. I’m disciplined enough. I’m doing this right.”

You’re making your standards and meeting your standards a false god, a measure of your worth. And when we do that, we have so much at stake that when we mess up, if it means that we’re not worthy, if it means that we’re not disciplined, that we’re not good enough, that we’re not okay, that we’re not doing it right, of course it feels like everything is riding on this, that the stakes are so high.

So if you’re at a prayer meeting or you’re at a social at your kid’s school or your grandkid’s school and you eat a cupcake. It’s not just I ate a cupcake. Your brain is thinking, “I ate a cupcake and now I’m undisciplined. Now, I blew it.” But I want you to see that the mistake or the falling short of your standards isn’t a problem, and it isn’t even a mistake. I want you to start questioning that.

So let’s just use the example that I just gave. You’re at your granddaughter or your daughter’s school event, and they have treats, and you have a cupcake. And you think, “Oh, I’d really like to have one.”

And you eat one, and you enjoy it. You sit down, you’re with the other grandparents or parents or your granddaughter or your daughter, and you are eating the cupcake, and you’re just sharing this moment together. And that’s it. What’s the problem with that? Exactly what went wrong in that scenario. Probably nothing. If you knew there were gonna be cupcakes, you probably would have planned it.

But what happened in a brain that has this perfectionism tendency is you have some sort of rule where it’s, “I shouldn’t eat cupcakes. Maybe I’m not going to eat any sugar,” or, “Sugar is bad, and, you know, if I’m serious about losing weight, I don’t eat things like this.” Or something like, “I’m doing really well if I don’t eat cupcakes,” or, “Saying no was the better answer.” It was something like that.

So it was some sort of rule that you have in your brain, and we talked about food rules all day long at Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit in all of our work, and how they’re just false gods. We don’t need to make a food rule a false god.

But if you have those rules and you eat that cupcake, you likely feel like a failure. But I want you to ask yourself, let’s just start questioning these rules. Who made that rule? Does it even matter? Do we need to have that rule? Is one cupcake a problem? Did God tell you you shouldn’t eat cupcakes? Did your doctor? Like, what is the problem here? What’s the problem with one cupcake?

Because the truth is, it’s the mental punishment and that mean girl that comes out after the cupcake that’s creating the problem Okay? So this is usually what it looks like. You go to your daughter or your granddaughter’s school thing, there’s cupcakes, you eat one, even though you had a really good week all week, you still eat one.

It’s Thursday afternoon, and your brain immediately says, “Seriously? You couldn’t even make it through the week? This is why you can’t lose weight. See, you have no self-control.” Okay? See how it’s starting already? Your mean girl voice is coming out. See what you’re making it mean? And then comes the, “Well, I’ve blown it already.”

So then Thursday night you go back home and you eat whatever you want. Maybe you’re standing in the pantry like I used to, double your chocolate chips and your jar of peanut butter. Just because you’re just eating food. Because you blew it, you might as well eat it now before you’re not gonna eat it on Monday or before you not eat it tomorrow.

And then you wake up the next day. Friday morning you wake up, you feel horrible, and you decide, “No, this is the time I’m really gonna get serious. Starting Monday, I’m gonna have no sugar. I’m gonna track everything. I’m gonna stick to the plan. I’m gonna try harder this time.”

But you guys, I want you to hear this. The cupcake wasn’t the problem. You could have eaten the cupcake and gone back home and it would’ve been done. all done. Go back to your plan. And that’s what I always want you to do, just if you get off your plan, that’s no problem. At the next meal, pick up and get back on your plan.

The cupcake didn’t make you overeat at night. It was just one cupcake. It was that mean girl voice and what you were making that cupcake mean that caused the spiral. If we’re even calling the cupcake a mistake, do you see how insignificant and small that is? It’s one dessert.

But what you made it mean in the spiral that came after it was huge. I hope you can see that you’re probably doing this outside of food too. People who have perfectionism tendencies usually have them throughout all areas of their life, and I’ve recently heard that the way you do one thing is how you do everything.

So notice if you have this pattern in other areas. Maybe you decide that you’re going to pray every single morning, or you’re gonna drink more water, or maybe you’re going to start taking a walk after dinner. And then just one day you don’t take the walk. One day you oversleep. And instead of just, “Oh, no big deal. I’ll just adjust. I’ll change the next day.”

Then maybe you just keep continuing to skip prayer ’cause you can’t do it, or you skip the walk, or you don’t bother with the routine or think, “Oh, you know what? Maybe I could walk later. Maybe I could pray later.” You don’t adjust. There’s no pivoting there. Or just, “You know what? I’ll just pick up tomorrow.”

Maybe you missed your rosary or you missed the daily mass that you thought you were going to. Or you knew God wanted you to call somebody and you just didn’t do it. You wanted to send them a thank you note and you just didn’t do it. And simply returning to, “Oh, it’s not the right time. Oh, that didn’t work out today.” You make it mean something about you.

And the perfectionism tendency is, one thing happened and you turn it into something about you. One thing happens, totally neutral, and you turn it into something about you, about your worth, about your discipline, about your follow-through, about your commitment, about your level of desire to actually do what God wants.

And I want us to just take a bird’s-eye view on what the Lord teaches us about perfectionism. Because when we have such high standards, what we’re actually trying to get and what is really underneath perfectionism is a desire to feel a certain way, a desire to feel worthy, a desire to feel validated, accepted, safe, secure, good enough.

It’s that belief that’s running through your brain, that thought that’s running through your brain, and it’s a belief because you practice it so many times. If I can just do everything right then I’ll be okay. Then I’ll feel good about myself. Then I’ll feel safe. Then I’ll feel secure. And that’s why we’re avoiding feeling rejected or unworthy.

We’re trying to not make a mistake because that’s what we’re afraid we will feel. But you have to remember that your worth comes from God. You have to remember that there’s absolutely nothing that you can do today to make you more worthy. There’s nothing that you can do today that could make you less worthy.

Simply because you were created, you are worthy. And I know that’s really stretching your brain and really hard to believe But just believe that is the Lord’s truth. He created you, so you are 100% worthy by existing. 100%.

And I know that if you’re judging yourself, you’re judging other human beings too. I mean, I do the same thing, that if I really get honest with myself, I feel like perhaps I am more worthy than other people because of XYZ, or maybe they’re more worthy because of XYZ, or they’re less worthy.

But we have to remember what the Lord teaches us, and His truth is that we are worthy because we are created, not because of what we do, and not because of all the mistakes that we avoid. And we’re not less worthy by tripping and falling more. We’re not less worthy by having lower standards.

You can’t do enough to be more worthy or do enough to prevent being less worthy. You are enough. Your worthiness doesn’t change by what you do. The problem is that we have distorted that a little bit and believed that our worthiness comes from what we do.

Remember this truth, that you are His, that you are loved, and that you are worthy of care. And what we get to do then is from that place start setting our standards and the way that we act. From that place, that cupcake can just be a cupcake. It doesn’t have to mean anything about you.

So let’s move into what to do when you fall short of those standards. When you make a mistake, because you will make a mistake, friends. Making a mistake is called human. What I like to say is multiplying the mess-up or multiplying the mistake, having that mean girl voice come out and exploding it after, that is only because your brain doesn’t know what else to do.

So let’s talk about what else to do. So the first 30 seconds after you make that mistake, this is what I want you to start doing. We’re not going to implement something new on Monday or the next day. Simply notice it. Notice where your brain wants to make it a problem that you fell short of your own standards.

And I think even just noticing, oh my gosh, I just had a standard. I just had this rule. It’s not God-given. So just notice it. Notice when your brain wants to make it a problem, when your brain’s telling you, “I blew it,” when your brain’s trying to make it bigger than something else, and literally say that, “Oh, I see my brain doing that,” or, “I’m having the thought that this is a problem.”

Or I’m having a thought that this is a mistake, or my brain likes to tell me this all the time, I’m having the thought I shouldn’t eat that. It’s just a thought. It’s not true. It’s not gospel. And once you notice that, then you can go ahead and say, “Well, what is the fact here? And then what am I making it mean?”

And that what am I making it mean is the story. So what is the fact? If we go back to the cupcake example, the cupcake is I ate one cupcake. That’s just the fact. I’ll never lose weight. That’s a story.

Maybe you ate more than you planned at dinner. Well, that’s fact. I’ll never lose weight. I’ll never be able to eat a moderate amount. I’m so weak. I’ll always need food. That’s just a story. I missed my walk. That’s just fact. I would probably say I did not walk today. That feels a little more neutral. I can never stick with anything. See, that’s a story.

So notice the fact and then what the story is. And then, let’s just remember that you are the Lord’s. Like, it’s just not that big of a deal. We post wins a lot in our community, and some of the wins that women post are, you know, they fell short of their standard, and then the next thing that’s the biggest win is they’ll say, “And I didn’t make it a problem. I didn’t make it a problem.”

And when you don’t make it a problem, guess what? You’re not gonna eat over it. If it’s not a problem, then we pick up, we do something differently the next time, and that’s it. And that is the perfectionism tendency spiral interrupted.

And I’ll just tell you, if you have not taken our spiral quiz, you can go to Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit and grab that spiral quiz to see if you are one of these perfectionism spirals. There’s a couple other types, but listen, you know as you’ve been listening to me if this is you.

So let me tell you the end of what to do during those 30 seconds, and then I’ll review that. And then finally, just ask, what’s the next peaceful decision? What’s the next peaceful decision? Not how do I fix this? How do I make up for it? When can I start over? Just what’s the next peaceful decision.

And I usually believe that the next peaceful decision is just to eat normally at the next meal. That’s pretty much it. So in those 30 seconds, we’re just gonna notice what our brain is doing. We’re gonna separate the facts from the story.

I like to say we’re not gonna make it mean anything. Remember that you are worthy. Remembering that this doesn’t have to be a problem. And then just what is the next peaceful decision? And for the majority of women, I just say, “Listen, all you have to do is eat normally at the next meal.”

So I hope you can see that what your life can be like using that same example of you go to your daughter or your granddaughter’s school thing, there’s treats. You have a cupcake that you sit down and you enjoy. You notice your brain wants to make it a problem. And you say, “Wow, I had one cupcake.” What is the fact? I had one cupcake. We don’t have to make it a problem.

You can say, “My brain really wants to believe, oh, I said I wouldn’t have sugar this week. My brain is having the thought I blew the week, that’s interesting, brain.” But is that even true? We want to see that it’s not a problem, that we’re human and that we make mistakes.

What truly is, I think, the highest level of standards is to be able to see yourself make a mistake not make it mean anything, learn something from it if you need to, but be able to eat normally at the next meal. That’s it. And that is how you end that perfectionism spiral.

And that is how you stop sabotaging your weight loss, by simply recognizing what your brain wants to do, interrupt that spiral, notice what the fact is and what your brain is making it mean, and you get to make it mean anything. Like, “That was great. I really enjoyed that time with my granddaughter. Had I known there were gonna be cupcakes, I would have planned it.”

And then eat normally at the next meal. I cannot say that enough. Eat normally at the next meal. Because you do not have to be more driven. Your desire to do well is the problem. When it’s leading you to not have the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

So when we can take doing well and it helps us grow and learn and creates unity and gives us clarity, those are fruits of the Holy Spirit. But when it creates shame and despair and criticism and condemnation, that does not come from God. We’ve got to recognize that messing up is human, and the PhD level thing is to be able to coach our brains to not make it a problem and to pick up, learn from it if there’s something to learn, and move on.

Seriously, it’s that simple, to just move on. And you don’t need another perfect plan. So if you’re trying to lose weight, you do not need another perfect plan. If you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I do this and I’m constantly starting over. I’m either doing really well or I’ve completely blown it and I’m so tired of trying harder.

If that’s you, I want you to hear this. You don’t need another perfect plan, and you don’t need to get better at following someone else’s rules. You just need a completely different approach to weight loss that’s based on your life. And I know you’ve had such a super fun summer and you are ready to get back to routine.

And the truth is that you don’t really know what that routine is because everything that you’ve tried in the past has felt really hard, and that perfectionism in you just doesn’t have the energy to try something that’s hard again. And then that fun spontaneous part of you is not willing to stop living your life just to lose weight.

So I wanna offer you a different way, the Catholic way. I’ve taught nearly 7,000 women how to get to their healthy weight, eating the foods that they love in a way that fits for their life, that works with their vocation, that doesn’t compete with their vocation, that teaches them how to eat the foods that they actually enjoy without overeating them.

I call this weight loss the Catholic way, and I’m giving this all to you free in my workshop so that you can get back to routine and get back on track after a super fun summer. It’s August 28th. The link is going to be in the description of the podcast.

So I hope that you’re there because I know you have been thinking nearly all summer, I can’t wait to get back on track. I can’t wait to get back on track. And you keep thinking, oh, I’m gonna get back on track after whatever the next thing is.

And then the next thing ends, and the next thing comes back up. So it tends to be a whole summer of next things. But I don’t want you to make that a problem because I know your heart is so full right now. I know you got to experience a lot of spontaneity, a lot of fun things in life. You got to reconnect with many people.

And if we look at this the way the Lord looks at it, he says, “I gave you a great summer, didn’t I?” And now I know you’re ready to get back on track. And the way to do that is with him. Not another set of diet rules, especially not somebody else’s rules.

And you don’t wanna use somebody else’s rules because look at the fruits of that. When you follow it, you feel like you’re depriving yourself, and you feel so much restriction. And when you don’t follow it, you feel so much shame and guilt. And none of that comes from God.

So let’s start losing weight and getting to our healthy weight with him in the way that he designed you, in the life that you have, eating the foods that you love. It really stinks when you feel like you have to adjust your life to get to your healthy weight, that you almost have to become a different person. You have to adjust your tastes.

But God didn’t make you that way. He made you, uniquely you, and it’s time to get to your healthy weight in a way that fits for you in this season of your life. So you can go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com to get signed up for the workshop, or you can just click the link in the description.

Okay, everybody, remember at Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit, this is where we keep God as our God, not the scale, not our pant size, not the magic diet. We keep God as our God as we get to our healthy weight.

All right, have a blessed day.