“I just want to lose five more pounds.”
When you focus on the scale instead of on how you feel, you “forget to honor and respect your body for how it helps you live a life you enjoy right now,” says associate marriage and family therapist Summer Forlenza. If you want to set goals for yourself, she says you should “focus attention on health-promoting behaviors instead of weight loss” to “develop a much healthier mindset.”
“I’m so fat!”
If you’re using the F word to refer to your body in a negative way, it’s time to eliminate it from your vocabulary. “Since ‘fat’ has such a negative connotation in our society, it now means things such as lazy, ugly, unintelligent, etc. So, if you’re calling yourself ‘fat’ [in a negative way], you’re also calling yourself these other negative things,” explains clinical psychologist Kimberly Daniels, PsyD. “This is extremely damaging to your self-esteem. It translates to, ‘I’m not good enough. I need to be different than I am.'”