Perfectionism Can Sabotage Weight Loss — Here’s How to Shift Your Thinking

Perfectionism can often rear its ugly head when you’re trying to lose weight, manifesting itself in many different ways. Do you speak harshly to yourself when you eat more than you intended? Or never celebrate your wins? These are types of perfectionism habits that make it harder to achieve your weight loss goals. 

The good news is that you can learn to shift your mindset and behavior to avoid sabotaging your success. Below, experts explain the different ways perfectionism can show up on your weight loss journey and give tips on how to stop it in its tracks.

How Perfectionism Can Sabotage Your Weight Loss

Perfectionists often set unrealistic goals around weight loss, such as wanting to lose a certain amount of weight quickly or trying to eat clean and healthy 100 percent of the time. Goals like this may lead to unhealthy behaviors such as crash diets and excessive exercise, which Kim Shapira, RD, a celebrity dietitian, nutritional therapist, and author of This Is What You’re Really Hungry For, says can cause nutrient deficiencies, muscle loss, dehydration, and metabolic slowdowns that ultimately cause greater weight gain. 

Uma Naidoo, MD, nutritional and lifestyle psychiatry director at Massachusetts General Hospital and author of This Is Your Brain on Food, agrees. “Not sticking with healthy behaviors automatically impedes progress,” says Dr. Naidoo. “Crash diets or ultra-strict behaviors often lead to paradoxically worse outcomes.” (1)

To make matters worse, when those unrealistic goals aren’t met, it can result in low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and stress, making people abandon their weight loss efforts altogether, according to Shapira. It can also lead to critical self-talk, which “chips away at our self-esteem and self-efficacy toward putting in actionable steps toward our goals,” says Naidoo. “It has also been shown to negatively impact cognitive function.” (2)

Dismissing your weight loss wins is another way perfectionism can show up. Perfectionists tend to dismiss any sign of success, thinking small amounts of progress aren’t “good enough.” But in reality, those baby steps add up to big results over time and are worth celebrating. “When we celebrate [our wins], we stay connected to what is important to us, and it helps us stay intentional,” Shapira says. “Without celebrations, we may forget how far we have come, which could lead to negative self-talk and criticism.” Celebration also helps reinforce healthy behaviors and motivates us to continue on the path, Naidoo adds.

So where do these perfectionist behaviors originate? According to Shapira, they are often rooted in the past. “Trauma and bad experiences can lead us all to subconsciously sabotage ourselves to protect us from potential discomfort and pain,” she says. This leads to a fear-based mindset that perpetuates self-sabotaging behaviors, thus impeding our progress and making weight loss harder. 

How Can a Perfectionist Lose Weight?

The answer to this question is to change your approach by focusing on habits that support your journey. Here are three strategies that experts recommend. 

1. Focus on Slow and Steady Progress

Overcoming perfectionism on your weight loss journey requires switching from a “lose weight quick” mindset to one that values slow and steady progress. In other words, throw unrealistic goals out the window. “Consistency and balance are key,” Naidoo says. One study found that small changes alone — defined as increasing daily step count by 2,000 or decreasing daily calories by 100 — are enough to prevent weight gain for two years. (3) 

Shapira seconds this advice. “Changing your lifestyle takes time and must be progressive,” she says. “Small changes equal tremendous results when consistently and routinely applied to everyday life. This will allow your body to thrive.”

Also, understand that progress does not mean being perfect. If you feel like you made a “mistake” on your weight loss journey (maybe you indulged in junk food, for instance), don’t beat yourself up for it. Instead, focus on the next small, healthy choice and continue moving forward toward your goals. Slow and steady is the name of the game.  

2. Incorporate the Good Instead of Cutting Out the Bad

Perfectionists also tend to be black-or-white, all-or-nothing types of thinkers, Shapira says. For example, that may look like cutting out all the “bad” food from your diet. 

Instead, think about adding more of the “good” food, as this helps you focus on incorporating and maintaining healthy habits versus trying to be perfect — which is an impossible task. “For example, add in one handful of greens to your day through a smoothie, a side salad, or a stir-fry,” says Naidoo. “Adding in greens actually helps to improve our brain’s function as we age (4), among the innumerable other benefits including [those from] folate and fiber, which keep us full for longer.”

3. Practice Mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness helps you unlearn the perfectionist mindset by putting space between a self-sabotaging thought and an action, Shapira says. For instance, a negative emotion or a hard day may trigger you to eat for comfort even if your body isn’t communicating hunger. Being mindful in those moments encourages you to check in with what your body needs. “Learning to listen to your body and paying attention to hunger are the keys to losing weight and maintaining weight loss,” Shapira says. (5)

Another way to apply mindfulness to your weight loss journey is to eat slowly. “By starting with half of our normal portion and eating that first half slowly, taking about 15 minutes, we give our bodies a chance to tell our minds we have had enough,” Shapira explains. “The hormone leptin kicks in after about 15 minutes of eating to say we are safe and we are fueled. This will then allow our bodies to stop storing food as fat and start giving up what is stored. (6) It moves from fear to trust, and so will our minds.” 

Editorial Sources and Fact-Checking

1. Tomiyama AJ, Mann T, Vinas D, et al. Low-Calorie Dieting Increases Cortisol. Psychosomatic Medicine. May 2010.
2. Kim Ju., Kwon JH, Kim Jo., et al. The Effects of Positive or Negative Self-Talk on the Alteration of Brain Functional Connectivity by Performing Cognitive Tasks. Scientific Reports. July 21, 2021.
3. Ross R, Latimer-Cheung AE, Day A, et al. A Small Change Approach to Prevent Long-Term Weight Gain in Adults With Overweight and Obesity: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Canadian Medical Association Journal. March 7, 2022.
4. Morris MC, Wang Y, Barnes L, et al. Nutrients and Bioactives in Green Leafy Vegetables and Cognitive Decline: Prospective Study. Neurology. January 16, 2018.
5. Parmar RM, Can AS. Physiology, Appetite and Weight Regulation. StatPearls. August 29, 2022.
6. Mendoza-Herrera K, Florio AA, Moore M, et al. The Leptin System and Diet: A Mini Review of the Current Evidence. Frontiers in Endocrinology. November 24, 2021.