When you are overweight and you look in the mirror you think how confident you could be if you would be slimmer. But anyone who ever lost more than couple of pounds knows that confidence doesn’t come with a smaller figure on the scale. Losing weight is not enough to gain confidence. No matter how much fat you lose, that feeling of confidence is not going to show up. There are multiple reasons for this, but only three of them are universal: no matter who you are and where you are, here are the three reasons why losing weight doesn’t makes you more confident. And how to fix them!
You don’t know what confidence looks like anymore
You’ve been overweight for years on end and now you’ve took up a three steps diet and you’ve lost 50 pounds. When you look in the mirror you should be seeing a confident, beautiful women. But you still see that person who feels terrible about herself. This is because most people who lose lots of weight have been overweight for a long time. They forgot how it is to feel confident. They don’t see themselves as fit and healthy persons, even if they are now fit and healthy. If you’ve been overweight for a long time, you’ve learned to obsess over certain body parts you hate.
The “cure” for this is taking the conscious decision to love yourself more. When you look in the mirror, say something nice about yourself, like “I love how my bottom looks in these jeans.” In time, this will help you restore your confidence.
You still see that layer of fat
After a person loses weight, they need a lot of time to actually become aware of the fact that the extra layer of fat is not there anymore. After losing weight, people continue to see themselves overweight, just like people who suffered amputations continue to feel their severed limb; they continue to walk like overweight people and think like overweight people. This is best seen when buying clothes: looking at a clothing item, you will probably think it doesn’t fit you, even if it does.
To fight this, you need to remind yourself every time you enter a room that you are now rid of all the extra fat and you need to enjoy your new life.
You are still not happy with yourself
After losing 10 pounds, you may think you could lose 20 or 30 pounds. It’s in human nature to feel you could do more. But this also makes you hopelessly unhappy and prevents you from gaining any confidence. To be able to move on and evolve on emotional level you need to be able to recognize your success. Yes, you could lose 30 pounds, but let’s celebrate the fact you just lost 20 pounds. Learn to love yourself right now, in order to be able to love yourself later on.
Losing weight is not a start and end process; it’s a continuous journey, which has its ups and downs. As you learned to exist with an extra layer of fat, you need to learn how to be slim again. In time, you will be happy and confident, just how you deserve.