How Can Behavioral Counseling Help Me Lose Weight?

Weight loss is often boiled down to a single, simple suggestion: Eat less and move more (for the rest of your life). This concept may be fundamentally true, but for many people, the reality of successful long-term weight control is more complex.

That’s because, in addition to diet and exercise, your weight is also shaped by:

• Genetic body predispositions
• Gender (hormonal influences)
• Age and baseline metabolism
• Stress levels and sleep quality
• Cultural or familial food norms

Another major facet of weight control? Your emotions, thought patterns, and behaviors. In this month’s blog, our team at Nova Physician Wellness Center explains how your mindset affects your diet and exercise habits (for better or worse), and how behavioral weight loss counseling can help you take charge of those patterns to advance your efforts.

Behavioral counseling for weight loss

Dietary advice and exercise planning are two central pillars of every medical weight loss program. Transforming this informed guidance into positive, sustained action requires a third support pillar in the form of behavioral counseling, which aims to help you:

• Track food intake and physical activity
• Monitor food-related thoughts and emotions
• Identify external cues and emotional triggers
• Challenge and replace negative thoughts 
• Cultivate positive thinking and self-beliefs
• Establish healthier, more mindful food habits 

These strategies also help you cope with inevitable weight loss challenges more effectively so a minor setback won’t send you into a major weight gain relapse. 

Components of behavioral counseling

Long-term weight loss success depends on identifying and addressing the interconnected variables at play in weight management struggles. This often includes underlying emotional, mental, and behavioral patterns related to food. 

Behavioral counseling addresses these patterns in five areas: 

1. Goal setting 

How much weight would you like to lose? What kind of physical activity do you enjoy? Where does your diet shine, and where does it fall short?

Your counselor helps you set clear, measurable, and achievable goals for weight loss as well as supporting lifestyle and behavioral changes. This includes realistic weight loss objectives (weekly, monthly, and long-term) along with daily calorie targets, specific dietary guidance, and personalized exercise plans. 

2. Self-monitoring

A cornerstone of the behavioral therapy approach, self-monitoring teaches you how to track your physical activity, food intake, and weight — along with any related thoughts and feelings — to increase awareness of your food-related emotions and behavioral patterns.

A daily diary reveals your routines and habits in greater detail, making it easier to identify areas for improvement, like mindless eating triggers (i.e., boredom, stress) or environmental cues for inactivity (i.e., inclement weather).

3. Identifying obstacles 

Stress, anxiety, depression, and self-criticism are common obstacles to weight loss. Other diet-derailing barriers include insufficient sleep, sedentary workdays, and lack of support.  

Such obstacles serve as a springboard into unhealthy coping mechanisms like giving in to comfort food cravings, emotional eating in the absence of hunger, or even skipped meals that lead to overeating later.

4. Obstacle management

Once you’ve identified your obstacles, you learn ways to modify or remove them. You may address negative thinking and emotional patterns through:

Cognitive restructuring

This strategy teaches you to challenge your negative thoughts and beliefs about food, body image, and self-worth, and replace them with more positive, helpful ones.

Stress relief

Find healthy ways to manage stress and prevent stress-induced eating. Deep breathing and meditation can be helpful, but the ultimate stress-reliever — exercise — can help you relax, sleep better, and lose weight.

Healthier self-coping

When faced with strong, persistent emotions like boredom, sadness, or anxiety, turn to food-free activities like calling a friend, engaging in a hobby, or listening to music.

5. Shifting behaviors

As you address adverse cognitive patterns, you’ll also take steps to shift the problematic behaviors they can cause. You might benefit from: 

Stimulus control

Modify your environment to reduce your exposure to unhealthy food cues, so you can foster healthier eating behaviors with less resistance. This may involve keeping tempting snacks out of the house, or laying out your exercise clothes the night before an early morning workout.

Mindful eating

Reduce mindless snacking and increase meal satisfaction through mindful eating, which asks you to notice the taste, aroma, and texture of every food you eat. And by eating more slowly, you learn to recognize feelings of fullness and become less likely to overeat.

Problem-solving

Plan ahead and develop strategies to navigate high-risk situations (i.e., social events, stressful times) so you won’t revert to bad habits. For example, you might eat a healthy meal before a party, so you won’t be ravenous when you arrive.

Empowering your weight loss efforts

By helping you recognize and modify negative emotions, counterproductive thought patterns, and mindless food-related habits, behavioral counseling empowers you with the practical skills and strategies you need to achieve healthy, sustainable weight loss.

To learn more, schedule a visit online or by phone at Nova Physician Wellness Center in Fairfax, Lansdowne, Vienna, Arlington, or Charlottesville, Virginia, today.