Weight Loss & a Growth Mindset

Developed by Dr. Jessica Yu, Clinical Psychologist

Let’s get real. Losing weight can feel like running through an obstacle course. Losing motivation, a lack of time, maintaining healthy eating habits, and weight loss plateaus can all make long-term weight loss a challenge.

Even once we’ve hit our goals, it’s still a process to maintain healthy habits through the ups and downs of daily life.

Adjusting our mindset can help—especially when we experience low points in our weight loss journey. Let’s get into it.

Weight Loss and Growth Mindset

The weight loss journey is complex and requires an ongoing effort. Those of us with fixed mindsets may view setbacks as failures, or an inability to lose weight.

Alternatively, a growth mindset can help us view the same experience from a place of self-compassion—seeing setbacks as opportunities to recommit to the weight loss journey.

American psychologist, Carol Dweck, developed the concept of Growth and Fixed Mindsets as a way to explain people’s beliefs about the origin of their abilities or skills.

According to Dweck, those with fixed mindsets believe that their abilities and skills are fixed qualities they are born with and cannot change.

On the flipside, people with growth mindsets believe their abilities and skills are the result of hard work, coaching, and persistence. They believe that they can achieve their goals with the right attitude and hard work¹.

One study found growth mindsets are associated with decreased psychological distress and increased active coping². Another study also found growth mindsets to be associated with greater achievement due to the belief that failure is an opportunity to learn and grow³.

Is it possible to cultivate a growth mindset? Absolutely. Let's take a look at how.

Skills to Cultivate a Growth Mindset

In order to cultivate our own growth mindset, we can look to a few evidence-based skills and techniques for guidance.

Be mindful of all-or-nothing thinking.

All-or-nothing thinking can negatively impact our mood and behavior with exaggerated, unhelpful thought patterns. When we engage in this type of thinking, we tend to have a rigid definition of success. It’s either we’ve hit our goal completely, or we deem it a complete failure—with no inbetween.

Once we’ve identified our actions as failures, we tend to give up on our goals. That’s why it’s important to combat all-or-nothing thinking by recognizing when it’s happening, and adjusting our thought process.

Tip: We can Increase our awareness of all-or-nothing thinking by noticing how often we describe our weight loss efforts with words such as “good,” “bad,” “perfect,” “failure,” “always,” and “never.”

Practice self-compassion

Self-compassion is one of our greatest tools against all-or-nothing thinking. Research has shown it’s even more powerful than we might expect: increasing feelings of happiness, optimism, and curiosity—and decreasing anxiety, depression, and fear of failure⁴. Let’s look at some ways we can practice self-compassion.

• Mindfulness

  Staying in the present moment can help us cultivate self-compassion by allowing us to focus on what’s happening in the moment without attaching ourselves to any particular thoughts or feelings⁵. This can help quiet some of the negative self-talk that lurks in our minds. Try a mindfulness exercise or meditation on the Hers app to get started.

• Letting go of perfection

  When it comes to weight loss, it’s easy to become fixated with the number on the scale. Letting go of perfection means letting go of the idea that only one goal matters, and celebrating the small accomplishments. Remember, there are other indicators of progress: increased self-confidence, clothes fitting better, increased energy, and more. Celebrating progress can help increase our motivation for weight loss.

• Talking to ourselves as we’d talk to our friends

  Talking to ourselves as we would talk to our friends is a tried and true psychology technique. We tend to be kinder and gentler to others close to us. When it comes to weight loss, talking to yourself as you would talk to a friend might help you recognize your hard work, effort, and progress.

Be a detective

A growth mindset believes hard work, coaching, and persistence drives the outcome. When we experience a setback, we don’t have to look at it as a failure—but an opportunity to problem solve and grow. Problem solving is a key piece of weight management, and studies have shown it to be significantly associated with weight change⁶.

Practice these problem solving skills:

• Define the problem: In weight loss, the problem may be that we’re not seeing significant enough weight loss, that we’ve stopped losing weight, that we’re having a hard time sticking with a nutrition plan, or that we’re having a hard time getting regular physical activity.

• Brainstorm potential solutions: At this point in problem solving, anything is fair game. Think of anything and everything we could possibly do to solve the problem.

• Think through the pros and cons: Now that we have some ideas on paper, go through the pros and cons of each. Is the solution feasible? Do we have the time, energy, and resources for it? Is it likely to work? Are there any negative consequences associated with it?

• Choose a solution: Choose the solution that makes the most sense after going through the pros and cons.

• Implement the solution: Decide on a plan of action and implement the solution.

• Assess its impact: Monitor whether the solution has worked. If yes, keep implementing it. If not, work through the problem solving steps again and choose a different solution that’s more likely to work.

Leverage social and professional support.

A growth mindset is open to help, feedback, and suggestions. Social and professional support are two ways we can get the kind of feedback we need. For this reason, a majority of weight loss programs include a social component—offering more accountability, healthy competition, and cheerleading to help us go the distance. There are many ways to integrate social and professional support into the weight loss journey:

• We can tell our family and friends about our weight loss goals and ask them to support us in specific ways—helping us maintain our motivation and progress.

• We can openly communicate with our care team about our weight loss treatment. They can help us understand what we’re experiencing, whether treatment needs to be adjusted, or offer other helpful advice.

Nothing says we have to stay in a fixed mindset—in fact, it says quite the opposite. Cultivating a growth mindset takes patience and practice, and can turn into the strongest motivator in our weight loss journeys. When we redirect our thoughts, we can redirect our results.