The Slimming World survey of 1,722 slimmers found that 98% have experienced a slip-up when trying to lose weight, going off-track in a way that they worried would affect their weight loss journey. However, it’s how people feel about themselves after a lapse that’s most crucial to long-term slimming success, with the survey showing that while self-criticism often leads to comfort eating and giving up completely, when people learn to be kind to themselves they quickly get back to healthy eating and they lose weight and keep it off.
After going off-track on a past diet, many respondents said they had felt that they were ‘weak’ (68%), ‘a failure’ (65%), ‘disgusting’ (42%) or ‘stupid’ (36%), with only a small proportion seeing themselves as ‘human’ (14%) or ‘determined’ (5%). While 84% said they had typically been critical of themselves in this way after a lapse, only nine per cent said they would have been similarly harsh with someone else in their position.
The survey showed that being self-critical after a lapse had an impact on people’s behaviour and weight. In response to negative feelings after going off-track on a past diet, many respondents turned to food for comfort (50%) or even gave up completely (34%) and only 6% got back on-track by the end of the next day. In the weeks following a lapse, 78% were unsuccessful at losing weight as a result of this behaviour, with at least 47% gaining weight.
For the last two years, Slimming World has been working with the University of Derby and the Compassionate Mind Foundation, looking at how developing tools to help people be more reassuring to themselves, and to calm their inner critic, can help them to better manage their eating behaviour for the long term. The new survey shows that since attending weekly group support sessions, Slimming World members have typically learned to reduce how critical they are of themselves when things go wrong and have instead become more self-reassuring, leading to healthier behaviours after a lapse.
More respondents now saw themselves as ‘human’ (46%) and ‘determined’ (45%), than ‘weak’ (36%) and like ‘a failure’ (27%). As a result, rather than taking comfort in food, most now got straight back to making healthier choices (58%), even more got back to eating healthily by the end of the next day (64%) and the vast majority lost weight in the weeks following the lapse (84%).
And while slimmers in general had learned to become less self-critical as a result of group support, the survey found that those who had learned to be most self-reassuring achieved the best results. Far more likely to see themselves as human (64%) and determined (74%) after a lapse than as weak (5%) or a failure (2%), these ‘self-reassurers’ were found to be the least likely to comfort eat (two per cent), the most likely to get back to healthy eating before the end of the next day (82%) and the most likely to lose weight and keep it off (81%). This suggests that the more people are able to reassure themselves with positive thoughts rather than beating themselves up after a lapse, the more quickly they get back to eating healthily and the more likely they are to lose weight for the long-term.
Professor James Stubbs from Slimming World and the University of Derby says: “When we’re trying to lose weight it’s inevitable that, on occasion, life will get in the way. It’s often how we respond emotionally to going off-track that dictates whether we recover quickly or whether the lapse leads to us giving up completely.
“Our research shows that we’re often very hard on ourselves after a lapse and, far from being motivating, this can actually knock our confidence even further. We need to learn to treat ourselves as we would a best friend, in a way that’s encouraging, supportive and without blame – this is called self-kindness. Most of the survey respondents agreed that they would never be as critical of someone else who had gone off-track as they are of themselves and we need to help people learn from that.
“We also need to remember that lots of people struggle with their weight and lapse, it’s human nature. Realising that you’re not alone in this can help you to be kinder to yourself when things go wrong. That’s one reason that group support is so effective, as by sharing problems and solutions with other people, you realise you’re really not alone and you have a network of people like you who really understand and care, to help pick you back up when things go wrong. After all, things will often go wrong, and learning to cope with lapses is key to successful weight loss in the long-term.”