The Shift

Author: Gary Foster, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

I’LL LOSE WEIGHT BY CHANGING THE WAY I EAT THINK

Shifting Your Mindset

This book is about losing weight and getting healthier, make no mistake. But it’s not about what
to eat. It’s not a diet book. There are no recipes, no sample weeks of meals, no food
recommendations or restrictions, no claims about which foods will make you gain fat or shed it.
Does that surprise you? When people are on a weight-loss journey, their first consideration is
usually something like, What should I eat? What CAN I eat? Low-fat, high-fat, low-carb, high--
protein, low-sodium, low-cal, high-fiber, Mediterranean, vegetarian, vegan, keto? Diet A or diet
B? (Or diet C–Z?) I’ve seen this whether at WW (formerly Weight Watchers®), where I speak to
members face to face or virtually at workshops around the country and the world, or among the
thousands of people I have treated in group or individual settings, or among those I have just met
who learn what my profession is. Everyone is focused on what and how to eat. I get questions
like, Can you really eat bacon and lose weight? Should I eat certain foods in combination?
What’s better, avocado or kale? What foods start my metabolism in the morning? What are the
top five foods for weight loss? I heard about [fill-in latest fad diet]—what do you think? People
often want to be told what to eat.

Yet most people don’t need me, or anyone, to script a meticulous moment-by-moment, meal-by--
meal eating plan for them. When given a food choice (eat this or eat that), people generally know
which is healthier. This banana (big, small, whatever) or that banana split? Deep-fried or baked?
More times than not, it’s clear. Sure, with a few foods, like dark chocolate or coconut oil, it’s not
quite so obvious how beneficial or not they are for our health. For the most part, though, we
know.

NAME THE HEALTHIER FOOD1

1. (a) ground beef (b) chicken breast

2. (a) whole wheat pasta (b) white rice
3. (a) banana bread (b) banana
4. (a) potato chips (b) orange
5. (a) roasted potatoes (b) french fries
6. (a) grilled fish (b) fried fish
7. (a) half and half (b) 2 percent milk
8. (a) oatmeal (b) pancakes

1. (1) b, (2) a, (3) b, (4) b, (5) a, (6) a, (7) b, (8) a.

Despite this awareness, when people want to lose weight they focus on food, assuming there’s
something they haven’t learned that an expert needs to tell them.

I get it. At the start of my career as a clinical health psychologist focused on obesity treatment, I
assumed the same thing—food first, food last. But what I learned time and again through my
work with my amazing patients was this: What you eat and how much, along with levels of
activity, may seem to be all that count in weight loss, and they do count, of course—but without
another crucial component, they will not add up to long-term weight-loss success.

That component is your mindset. How you think.

Look at mindset as having two parts: how you think about yourself and how you think about the
journey you’re on.

The ideal way to think about yourself is to accept you as you are now; a great way to do that is to
practice self-compassion (the subject of chapter 1). The ideal way to think about the journey is to
think realistically, flexibly, and with the big picture in mind; one way to do that is by identifying
and countering unhelpful thoughts (the subject of chapter 2).

Let me share how I became convinced that mindset is critical for any successful weight-loss
journey, and why, without the proper mindset, any success will be fleeting.

After majoring in psychology in college, I wanted to head straight to graduate school to become
a practicing psychologist, but I wasn’t 100 percent sure of my path. My advisor suggested that I
first learn about the field, by doing research with psychologists. I looked for jobs at the
University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, about forty-five minutes from my home, and two
positions caught my interest. The first was helping a researcher in family dynamics to better
understand how family interactions impacted medical conditions like asthma, diabetes, and
others. I’ve had type 1 diabetes since I was six years old, so the idea intrigued me. But the job
involved watching and coding videotapes of family therapy sessions for eight hours a day. That
didn’t speak to me.

The second position was in the area of obesity: A research group at Penn was focused on better
understanding its causes and treatments. The work caught my attention, as did the way it was
being conducted. Still, when I was offered the position with the obesity research group, I felt it
was largely serendipity to find myself in that world. I had no previous interest in or meaningful
knowledge of weight loss or obesity. I myself hadn’t struggled with those issues. My mom was
overweight but not in a way that made a great impact on me or, as far as I could tell, on her.
Back then, the prevalence of obesity in the United States was roughly 15 percent, not the 42
percent it is today. I confess with some shame that when I started in the field, I, like so many,
held a simplistic, frankly prejudiced view of people who struggled with weight. Concepts like
“willpower” and “discipline” were never far from mind. I wince to think I could ever have
harbored such a misguided, hurtful, scientifically insupportable view.
Fortunately, it was knocked out of me in a hurry. My early work at Penn involved doing weigh-
ins, evaluations, and interviews. I asked people about their eating and activity patterns. Our
patients were bravely taking part in studies that evaluated a variety of ways— diet, medication,
surgery, behavioral methods—to improve short- and long-term weight loss, as well as manage
the multiple medical conditions associated with excess weight. One study measured the benefit
of a low-cal diet versus an extremely low-cal diet; another, the Atkins diet versus a lower-fat
diet; another, the effect of behavior modification versus medication versus a com- bination of
both; and so on. My interest and passion in the field grew profoundly. Why? I realized how
much I enjoyed helping people who were struggling with their weight. I admired their
persistence, courage, and openness to change. At that point in my career, I was hopeful that some
mix of diet, a certain type of physical activity, and behavioral techniques like goal-setting and
self-monitoring could improve success, in the short and long term.
My understanding of the field grew with my one-on-one work at Penn, as well as my extensive
reading of giants in the field, several of whom were right there on our faculty, and whom I was
fortunate to converse with and learn from—in particular, Tom Wadden, Kelly Brownell, and the
late Albert “Mickey” Stunkard. Tom and Kelly are psychologists; Mickey was a psychiatrist.
They helped me begin to understand that things were not as simple as they appeared. I was
captivated by everything from the emerging science around genetics and fat cells to the potential
benefits of surgery to advances in behavior therapy to the impact of school environments on
childhood obesity. I grew increasingly aware of the pervasive, persistent, pernicious weight-
based discrimination and stigma that so many people experience. The book that affected me most
deeply, both personally and professionally, was Mickey’s The Pain of Obesity. In it, he
describes, poignantly and painfully, the cultural norms that make us feel entitled to judge the
(supposedly weak) character of those who have obesity. He provides examples of family, friends,
health care providers, teachers, colleagues, strangers—all of us— propagating notions that are
not merely untrue, but unjust and inhumane.
During my time as a researcher, it became increasingly clear to me that those who were most
successful at losing weight and keeping it off were not necessarily the ones who recorded every
morsel they ate or movement they made, or who lost weight almost every week, or who attended
every session or followed the plan perfectly. No, the indicator that most correlated with success
was their perspective. Did they have their “head in the right place”? Did they have a “helpful
mindset”? Did they think in a way that allowed them to deal with setbacks and “stay in the
game”? When life got in the way, did they have strategies to help them cope and continue on the
journey?

Mindset mattered, enormously. When people came back years later to check in with me, I saw it
even more clearly: Those who had been the most successful had changed the way they thought,
not just about the journey but about themselves. Yes, their eating and activity had changed, but it
was their mindset that made those changes stick.
I’d like to say it once more: Their mindset mattered. Mindset is the biggest influencer of our
daily choices and our long-term success.

I got the sense that the work I was doing early in my career had the potential to change people’s
lives, and I was and am immensely grateful for that. My two most significant takeaways from
that unique opportunity: 1) many people (as previously mentioned) have harsh, ill-informed
views about those who live with overweight or obesity and 2) science-based approaches can
make a very positive impact. Those two insights are why I’ve stayed in a field that I more or less
happened upon accidentally some three decades ago. In the years since, I have published, with
the help of many esteemed col- leagues, more than 250 scientific papers on ways to better
understand, prevent, and treat obesity.

The book in your hands, then, is not about what you eat but the thinking that influences what,
how much, and when you eat. To reach your weight-loss goals, what’s in your head is just as
important as what’s on your plate. When you learn how to manage your mindset, eating and
activity become easier. When those happen, other elements of wellness often fall into place. Yes,
the right mindset is critical for the weight-loss journey, but learning how to think about the
journey and yourself pays dividends on other life journeys, too, like work or relationships. Its
effects are profound and go well be- yond what can be measured on a scale.
If changing your thinking sounds daunting, I hear you. We have so many thoughts a day—some
estimates say 70,000, though the data to support that are sparse. A recent study using
sophisticated methods for assessing brain activity suggests the number is just above 6,000 per
day. Either way, that’s a lot of thoughts! Words and sentences and images pop into your head as
you go about your life, from an observation about your dog’s sleeping position or how your left
elbow feels slightly sore to a question about when your car is next due for service to a concern
about your mother’s schedule for the day—as well as thousands of other thoughts, trivial and
consequential, brand-new and repetitious. It’s like a rushing river—so how are you supposed to
pause the flow long enough to be aware of the way you think, much less stop it or reroute it? On
top of which, so many of your thoughts are automatic, coming without your even realizing it.
Let me assure you: You will not have to examine all your thoughts, or even most. Changing your
thinking in the service of losing weight and improving your wellness does not require your
whole life to be un- packed, reworked, and monitored. The simple, proven techniques in this
book can help you tune in to your thoughts at select moments during your day or week and shift
to a more helpful perspective. Once you get the hang of it, some days and even weeks will go by
without your needing to focus intentionally on your thinking. That “new normal” mindset will
become habitual. And that includes mindset shifts that effectively manage the single most
common derailer of any weight-loss journey: setbacks.
A brief word about setbacks.

The vexing twists and turns of a journey happen to 100 percent of us, at some point along the
way. Usually at many, many points. Progress in any area of life rarely, if ever, moves in a
straight line. Have you ever lost the same amount of weight week after week after week? Do you
eat the same things, in the same amount, every week? Come to think of it, have you been on any
journey—wellness or life improvement or really anything with a significant goal—like that?
None of us has. Setbacks happen. Maybe you gained a few pounds after a fun vacation. Or had a
day where you ended up eating way more than you wanted. Or your weight loss stalled even
though you ate precisely what you planned to that entire week. It happens.

Yet “diet mentality” is so often hostile to the presence and humanness of setbacks. Diet mentality
is often characterized by—or not-so-subtly encourages— all-or-none thinking; an “I’m either
dieting or I’m not dieting” worldview; dramatic and often unrealistic goals; and, perhaps most
damaging of all, harsh treatment of yourself after a setback. That’s why diets do not produce
long-term change. They’re only about what you eat. But success also needs to be about what you
think. Changing those diet-based thinking styles to produce long-term change is a lot of what this
book is about.
Here’s the exciting upside to setbacks: If you can learn to manage them, then you’re more than
half- way to success. And the skills in these pages become more powerful when you hit a snag.
They help you think in ways that get you back on track. You’ll learn skills like recognizing an
unhelpful thought and having an effective, at-the-ready counter for it, and developing aware-
ness of your thinking style and altering thoughts that aren’t serving you well. Armed with the
research- backed, mindset-shifting skills in the following seven chapters, you’ll know when your
thinking is interfering with your progress and what to do about it, so it’s working for you, not
against you.

Some skills are repeated across the various mindset shifts described in the following chapters,
though they’re tailored to meet the individual problem explained in that chapter. You don’t need
to learn all of the skills in this book, or even most of them, to succeed. The select few that really
speak to you should do it. You can master them so they become second nature and so that they
help with more than just managing your weight. These mindset shifts can help lift your mood,
make it easier to build toward any goal using small steps, focus on a more accurate picture of
“reality,” and provide non-eating ways to cope with emotions like stress, frustration, sadness,
and boredom.
I’m not promising you perfection, some blissful, straight trajectory to your desired weight-loss
goal. I’m not telling you “My way is the right way!” or “Nothing can stop you!” or any of the
other cheerleading platitudes that characterize so many dubiously credible books and
infomercials on weight loss. I can absolutely promise you meaningful progress if you follow the
techniques in this book because they are based on ex- tensive research.

The book is organized around seven mindset shifts. Chapter 1 covers the most fundamental shift
of all: self-compassion. This is the cornerstone of a successful long-term journey; it enables and
amplifies all the other shifts.

Chapter 2 covers the power of various unhelpful thinking styles to hinder progress, and how to
counter them and develop more helpful ones.

Chapter 3 debunks the myth that large, dramatic goals are motivating and effective, and
advocates in- stead for reasonable, specific goals that can be met, and fuel habit formation.

Chapter 4 describes the benefits of leveraging your strengths rather than trying to fix your
weaknesses—a fundamental premise of positive psychology. Shifting to a strength-first mindset
has powerful effects on how you view yourself and the journey.
Chapter 5 addresses body image, its determinants, and the pervasive weight- and shape-based
stigma that so many people experience, and which plays a role in their (negative) body image.
This chapter focuses on learning to value your body, as is.
Chapter 6 addresses how you can best obtain the support you need from others around you.
There are no awards given for going it alone; you deserve to get the support you need.

Chapter 7 covers some of the determinants of happiness—perhaps unexpected—and the

importance of the practice of gratitude in overall health and well- being.

Each chapter is grounded in science and my experience of over thirty years working in the field.
As a psychologist focused on behavior change, I believe in the importance of not just what and
why but, most importantly, how: how to get it done. How to make change happen. Therefore,
each chapter ends with multiple techniques to help you shift your mindset. I have also included
some valuable resources for each of the mindset themes.

Throughout the book are also sections called “My Shift,” stories by people, in their own words,
who made the shift.

In writing the book, I was also fortunate to sit down for meaningful conversations with many of
the world’s leading researchers in approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and
positive psychology, and in areas such as goal setting, self-compassion, character strengths, body
image, weight management, and more. These esteemed women and men have done pioneering
research and clinical work, and I am grateful to include some of their insights in these pages.
Mindset matters. How you think is the key component to lasting weight loss. If your mindset is
not working for you, then you’ll want to shift it. In the following pages, you’ll learn how.

From The Shift: 7 Powerful Mindset Changes for Lasting Weight Loss, by Gary Foster, PhD.
Copyright ©2021 by the author, and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.