A lot of my patients tell me they want to stop thinking about food. What they will or will not eat. The calories in their food. Whether they are hungry enough to eat. They want to think about other more important things instead. They want to be more present in their life: listening to their partners when they talk to them, to be in their life, to let food just be food.
Here's what I want you to ask yourself today. If you could free up that space that you are thinking about food and weight loss, the exercise that you need to do, what would you think about? What other things would you like to think about, to focus on? What non-food things do you want to enjoy daily? Maybe ask yourself about what you want to do this week, friends you want to see, places you want to go? You have a choice about the thoughts you engage with, the thoughts you choose to focus your attention on. You don't have to engage with every food thought your mind throws at you.
Or ask yourself if thinking about food allows you to avoid something. Maybe these thoughts about food are a way to "escape" something? Maybe they allow you to ignore other things in your life, and instead think about what you will or will not eat, the number on the scale, the exercise that you may or may not do. Maybe these thoughts are a safety blanket.