I want to start by saying something that might feel uncomfortable, but honest.
Most women don't talk to themselves the way they would ever talk to someone they love.
They are harsh, critical, dismissive, and sometimes downright mean.
And what's tricky is that many women believe this is helpful.
They believe that being hard on themselves is discipline.
or supposed accountability.
That if they stop talking down to themselves, they'll get lazy.
That kindness will…
lead to quitting. But here's the truth.
Talking down to yourself doesn't create change. It creates fear.
And fear never leads to sustainable weight loss.
Today, we're going to talk about why negative soft talk shows up.
Why it feels productive, and how to change it without swinging to…
fake positivity, or letting yourself off the hook.
For a lot of women, harsh self-talk feels like responsibility.
It sounds like I should know better.
What is wrong with me? It's like this sense of over-responsibility. I can't believe I did that again.
And underneath those thoughts is often this belief.
If I don't stay on top of myself,
I'll fail. I'll never lose weight.
So, self-talk becomes a form of control.
A way to scare yourself into behaving. And maybe at some point that worked. At least temporarily.
But here's the cost. When your inner voice is harsh, your nervous system doesn't feel safe.
And when you don't feel safe, you don't learn.
You protect. Harsh self-talk doesn't create motivation. It creates shame.
urgency, all-or-nothing, perfection-seeking,
thinking.
Avoidance. And it narrows your ability to think clearly.
So instead of curiosity, you get panic.
And instead of problem solving, you quit.
This is why so many women feel stuck in cycles of try hard, mess up, beat themselves up.
Rebel or give up, and then start over. Not because they're undisciplined, but because the internal environment
They're trying to change in,
is so unsafe.
This is an important distinction. Accountability sounds like, that didn't go the way I hoped. What can I learn?
But attack, that sounds like, see? You can't do anything right.
Accountability, it keeps you engaged, and attack
It shuts you down, and many women confuse those two.
They think kindness means lowering your standards.
They think curiosity means excuses.
But curiosity is how growth actually happens.
Here's something I see all the time. Women are afraid that if they stop being hard on themselves,
they'll just stop trying altogether.
So they cling to harsh self-talk because it feels like effort.
feels like they're doing something.
to keep going. But effort doesn't equal effectiveness.
Talking down to yourself might feel like you're doing something, but what you're really doing is creating pressure, not progress.
And pressure might move things temporarily, but it doesn't last.
Changing how you talk to yourself does not mean ignoring mistakes.
Pretending things don't matter.
Telling yourself everything is fine when it's not.
It means telling the whole story.
Not just the part that punishes you.
Right? Because that's the part we usually focus on. So instead of, I didn't eat the way I planned.
I always mess this up. It becomes, I didn't eat the way I planned.
And I'm learning what works.
Instead of, I skipped the workout, I must be lazy.
I'm so lazy.
It becomes something that sounds a little more like, I skipped the workout and I still care about my health.
Um, maybe instead of, this feels uncomfortable…
I'm probably, for sure, failing.
It becomes, this feels uncomfortable, and…
I'm capable of figuring it out.
That one word, and, it changes everything.
Because it allows effort and imperfection to exist.
All at the same time.
When your self-talk is safer, you recover faster. You spiral less.
You keep going, not because you lowered expectations, but because you stopped scaring yourself every time that you're human. We're entitled to some human moments.
And this matters deeply for weight loss.
Because sustainable change requires repetition, and repetition requires safety.
This is one of the biggest shifts women make in coaching. They don't magically stop having critical thoughts.
But they stop believing them.
They learn how to respond instead of attack.
And when that happens, food feels calmer.
Decisions feel easier, and setbacks
Stop feeling catastrophic.
Weight loss becomes something you participate in, not something you survive.
Here's something simple you can try this week. When you notice thatarsh self-talk,
Pause and ask, what would it sound like if I were to tell the whole story?
listen to yourself after you've made a mistake. That is usually where the attack shows up. And then add an and.
You're not letting yourself off the hook. You're telling the truth more completely.
That's how learning stays possible.
This episode closes the loop on everything we've talked about this month.
Self-trust, emotional needs,
Confidence, regardless of the scale.
none of those can exist if your inner voice is constantly tearing you down.
You cannot build trust in an environment that feels unsafe.
And your self-talk is the environment where sustainable weight loss happens.
If you've been talking down to yourself in the name of discipline, or supposed accountability,
I want you to consider this.
What if the thing holding you back isn't a lack of toughness?
But a lack of safety.
You don't need to become kinder overnight, either.
You just need to stop attacking yourself while you're learning something.
If you want to help creating a safer internal environment, one that actually supports change.
That's exactly the work I do with women.
Not by silencing your thoughts.
But by changing how much power they have.
