When you make the decision to lose weight, you probably think about cutting calories, reducing fat or carbohydrates and increasing your daily exercise. While these are all excellent strategies for getting rid of those excess pounds and many doctors recommend them, we continue to be a country plagued by obesity and the health problems that are associated with it. This leads us to the conclusion that diet and exercise alone are often not enough.

To understand why cognitive behavioral therapy helps people to lose weight, it is first important to understand the strategies a therapist will use when including it in a treatment plan.

Setting Goals for Weight Loss
The first step in losing weight is to learn how to set goals. While this might seem simple, goals involve more than just stating that you would like to lose 20 pounds or lower your blood pressure. They should include both short-term and long-term ambitions and be clear, concise and easily obtainable. In cognitive behavioral therapy, the psychotherapist asks you what you hope to gain from treatment and from your weight loss plan and helps you to design goals that are specific and attainable. The therapist also checks in with you during sessions to gather important feedback about your progress and help you to make any necessary modifications that will result in improved outcomes.

Increasing Positive Expectations
After you have set clear and concise goals, it is next important to boost self-belief. For weight loss to be effective, you will learn believe that your weight loss plan will work and understand the skills you already have to take the necessary steps to make it happen. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps you to realize that unhelpful thoughts exist and replace them with more useful ones. It also provides you with strategies that can be used when your mind begins to wander back to negativity and mental exercises to practice every day that help you to stay positive. Changing how you think naturally lends to increased hopefulness about the future, and it causes many clients to begin to believe that they are capable of moving forward toward a new level of health, making it easier for them to ultimately reach their weight loss goals.

Changing How You Act and React
In addition to changing how you think about yourself and your ability to lose weight, CBT also helps you to focus on altering the behaviors that have previously sabotaged your diet and exercise plans. This involves self-monitoring your own individual experiences and recognizing barriers, physical cues that you are heading toward a setback and challenges that have been standing in the way of your success. Your therapist may recommend that you keep a food and exercise log or journal about daily thoughts and feelings. This information is then shared during sessions, helping you to recognize the barriers you are faced with and think through ways in which you can change your behaviors and cause different, more positive outcomes.

Feedback and Your Ability to Lose Weight
Cognitive behavioral therapy for weight loss is typically short term, and many clients only attend sessions for a few months before seeing results. During this time, your therapist acts as an external measuring stick by providing you with feedback about your progress, thoughts, actions and goals. This type of support is quite motivating and helps many to maintain expectations that are both ambitious and realistic.

Over the years, I’ve found that there are some questions that I’ve asked time and again about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and how it works. Thought I’d share them with you- please comment if there are others you’d like me to address in future blogs!

WHAT IS COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (CBT)?

The theory behind cognitive behavioral therapy is that the relationship between thoughts, behaviors and feelings dictates how we function. By identifying unhelpful thoughts or habits and replacing them with more helpful messages, positive changes are created.

Other modalities under the CBT umbrella are: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Therapy (CT), Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and Integrative Couples Behavior Therapy (ICBT).

IS CBT A GOOD FIT FOR MY NEEDS?

Research has established that cognitive therapy is useful for a large array of issues such as depression and anxiety, phobias, obsessive compulsive disorder, insomnia and pain management. Trauma-focused CBT has been proven effective for PTSD and is used in many counseling programs.

WHAT IS THE RESEARCH REGARDING CBT’S EFFECTIVENESS?

Ongoing and substantial work continues to reflect efficacy for a multitude of mental health issues. Funded by the National Institute of Health, a review of the research on identified therapeutic approaches asserts cognitive behavioral therapy is is one of the most effective interventions for short and long-term benefits.

The Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Review of Meta-analyses (2012)

HOW DOES CBT HELP ME IN THE LONG TERM?

The reason that cognitive therapy fares so well in long-term studies is that it provides tools that the client can generalize to future challenges. Most people report finding that using the techniques in other aspects of their life becomes quite natural after practice.

HOW LONG UNTIL I SEE RESULTS?

When you see a cognitive behavioral therapist, you and the clinician work as a team to help you change your presenting problems. The more you work outside of the sessions by doing your homework, the faster you will make improvements. Many clients report a shift within the first week.

WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COGNITIVE THERAPY AND HYPNOSIS?

Aaron Beck, the father of cognitive behavioral therapy, has endorsed the use of hypnotherapy along with CBT. Integrating the two can ‘amplify’ the healthy thoughts and behaviors that the client and psychotherapist have identified as target goals.

Our thoughts and feelings are powerful- how you perceive your world has a strong impact on our body chemistry. Established studies have shown cognitive therapy works at least as well as antidepressants in helping people with mild to moderate depression!

The goal of cognitive therapy is learning to recognize then correct negative automatic thoughts and core beliefs. Over time, the client will be able to discover and correct deeply held but unhelpful cognitions that contribute to the issues that are holding them back. The underlying premise of CT is that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are deeply influenced by one another. Shifts in just one aspect of this triad can effectively reduce the negative patterns and build a powerful, more effective way of functioning.

There are lots of fun and fast ways to see how our behavior, thoughts and feelings intermingle- one of my favorites is the 'Power Pose'. Amy Cuddy, a professor at Harvard Business School, discovered that posing like Wonder Woman or Superman for two minutes will rapidly increase your confidence....give it a whirl!