26. How does self-efficacy affect my weight loss journey?

We are covering self-efficacy today, which is basically your belief in your ability to do something. We covered:

• What does good self-efficacy look like (and not-so-good self-efficacy)
• The ADHD connection
• The weight loss connection
• Specific ways your self-efficacy might affect weight loss as someone with ADHD
• How to develop self-efficacy

It might not be something that you have considered before, but it has a really deep impact on your life! As always let me know what you think and how it might be affecting you in your journey. 

I'd love to hear from you! You can connect with me in the following ways:

Instagram: @thejennwatts
Email: jennifer@jenniferwatts.ca

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Your feedback helps me continue to create content that supports you on your journey.

I'd love to know if there's something you want to hear more about or if you want to let me know about your own experiences with ADHD and weight loss.

Transcript

Hey everyone.

Welcome to today's episode. I'm going to apologize in advance. I have a bit of a cold, got it from the kids somehow, I think. So I'm a little bit scratchy of a throat. So I apologize if I cough or sound hoarse or anything like that. I think I'm probably going to be fine, but just wanted to give that little disclosure. 

Okay. For today's episode, I want to talk about self efficacy.  And you probably heard that word before, but maybe don't really know exactly what it means. And I honestly cannot remember how I got onto this topic. I've been thinking about it  for the last week or so, but I don't know what triggered it.  So if it was a conversation I had with somebody, if it was something that I read, I'm not sure.

Actually, you know what? It was probably from a book. I probably heard it in an audio book.  Regardless, I started digging because I knew there was something there when it comes to weight loss and ADHD and all of this stuff. And sure enough, like, light bulb moments for me on how this is all woven and connected.

And  it really just reflects my own experience and things that I see in people that I coach and just people that I talk to. So let's get into it.  So what even is self efficacy? It's Basically, your belief in your ability to complete something, to complete a task or a goal. You're, like, how you, what do you think about whether you could do something or not?

And it's become, I didn't know this until I started digging around, but I guess it's become a pretty, it's a widely studied topic in psychology, because it virtually affects everything, every part of your life. There's one man that I found His name came up repeatedly in the stuff that I would look up.

His name is Albert Bandura. He was a social cognitive psychologist. He's passed away now. But he was involved in a lot of the studies that I came across from the 70s and stuff. And he was Apparently, yeah, apparently one of the most influential psychologists in history.  Sidebar, he's Canadian.  I saw that he went to UBC, University of British Columbia.

So  yay. But anyways,  he really demonstrated in his in a lot of his work, he did a lot of work on self efficacy and basically just that it determines what goals we pursue, how we accomplish those goals, and then how we reflect on our own performance. So it's like the whole cycle of all of the big or little things that you do in your life.

And Like, when we think about this concept, like anybody, we can all identify things that we want to change, things that we want to achieve, like goals that we might have, all of that sort of stuff. That's really easy, typically to come up with. But  we also know that like actually doing it, like putting that into action and working towards that goal is like, it's not as simple, it's a whole other thing.

And self efficacy. really matters here, because if you believe that's something you can do, um, it's hard to get the wheels even into motion if you've already predetermined that that's not something you can do if you have low self self efficacy. So  that's I have, this is, a lot of this I found online.

This is not me coming up with these things, but Some of the characteristics of somebody who has poor self efficacy is that you might avoid challenging tasks, you might believe that, harder or more difficult tasks and situations are like beyond your capabilities, you might focus on your failings and the negative outcomes of things in your life, you could quickly lose confidence in your abilities,  It also the whole concept of learned helplessness, you've probably heard of this, but that is the opposite of self efficacy.

Learned helplessness is basically just, like, giving up rather than looking for other opportunities and just constantly thinking oh, I can't do it.  Anyways, those are all indications that you might have poor self efficacy. But somebody who has  good self efficacy is more likely to be somebody who has you're more interested in the activities that you participate in.

You have a stronger  sense of commitment to the things that you do. You recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments. And You view challenging problems as tasks that you can master. It's like challenge accepted, as opposed to oh my god, I could never do that. So I think it's pretty clear, and it's probably, I would guess, like a spectrum of where you might be.

It's not poor or good self efficacy. It's like a range. And I bet you, too, in, in like different aspects of your life, like when I think about myself, I imagine I can think of different areas of my life where I might have poor self efficacy and others where I might have, Hi, self efficacy.

And it, it definitely changes too over the course of your life. It's malleable for sure. It's not like a set in stone thing.  We'll talk about this later, but it is the only way it's set in stone is if you won't look at it and acknowledge it. But anyways we'll talk about that later.  So what,  The ADHD connection here, I think, is really important to address because I did come across a few studies that show that adults with ADHD tend to have lower self efficacy. 

And  I don't want you to think that's it. Let's not have learned helplessness around this. Let's not have a fixed mindset around this. Okay? This is just an opportunity for us to acknowledge that this is one of those areas where we might face challenges. And a lot of this has to do with with your experiences growing up, like your childhood experiences, maybe the way you were parented, maybe your experiences at school, like so many different things go into your self efficacy.

But the ADHD factor, I think you can probably imagine from  the way that your life went differently because of ADHD could impact the self efficacy. It's not like you have ADHD, therefore you have self efficacy. It's like the effects of being somebody with ADHD could lead to also the effects of self efficacy. 

I hope that makes sense. But, The other things like I saw one psychologist talking about how people with ADHD might have lower self efficacy due to feeling stigmatized. But you also feel, just feeling like you can't follow through on things. Essentially like the impact of your ADHD symptoms.

over a lifetime. Really? That just impacts your self efficacy. But, this is a big but.  If my kids hear this podcast episode, they're going to love that.  Big but. Oh my god, what's wrong with me? Okay, back to what I was talking about. If this is the whole crux of it, right? Is that if We don't develop the awareness around these things if we don't even notice, acknowledge, understand that this is a thing that affects us, then we can't change it, right?

Yes, maybe it feels a little bit like, oh, that sucks that I'm probably gonna have lower self efficacy because I have ADHD.  Aren't you glad to know that? Because if we know these things, then we can make change.  And it's not just because you have ADHD, you definitely have lower self efficacy and you can change it.

Yeah, let's just not have a low self efficacy attitude about potentially having low self efficacy.  Because we can totally change it. I think of examples.  of this, because I just, I love hearing stories  to put these things into place in my mind, so I understand it. So when thinking about, I'm sure you can think of examples in your own life with self efficacy, but one thing I thought of is even just like thinking back to my kids learning how to ride bikes.

Like my son  didn't ride a bike for quite a while. And he he was a bit embarrassed about it. And then there was the pandemic. So it affected it as well. Because, and I don't know, but he didn't for a long time. And then he really just thought I just he just can't do it.  And we couldn't even get him to try different things and stuff like that.

But, as soon as he saw his sister just take off and start writing, then it was like,  I think he realized that it was a possibility that he could learn how to do it. And he did eventually do it. But that's just a good example of your thoughts about it determining a thing.

whether you can actually achieve it and follow through on the little steps that you have to do to achieve something. And even for myself, I was thinking of examples and the one that comes to mind is doing things around the house and not just day to day things. More fixing things and home improvement type stuff and DIY things.

Because I I remember needing to switch out a light fixture at our house, and this was probably 12 or 13 years ago,  and I mentioned it to my little sister. She was not little, she's four years younger than me, and she's like, Oh, I'll do it, and she came over and changed the light fixture, and I was like, what? 

You could just do that? And it totally blew my mind. She comes over with her little bag of power tools. I was, like, blown away. And I it's it wasn't that I thought myself incapable. It's almost like it didn't even occur to me that I could do things like that.  And  still for a long time after that whole incident,  didn't think I could do things like that.

But then once I started trying it Oh my gosh, I was like, the minute that I used a power drill,  I was unstoppable, you guys.  Now I just do it all the time. I change light fixtures. I can do minor renovations that don't involve like plumbing or like deep electrical work. And now even, we're actually going to be you know, doing a sort of DIY renovation.

We have like a little office thing outside off of the shop in our yard. And we're going to do some of that this summer. Like I, I'm excited to try these things, to try putting in flooring and like that kind of stuff. So that is like a huge 180 for me. And I'm sure there's things in your own life where you can see that.

So anyways, that was just the example that came to mind, but let's talk about What, so we talked about the ADHD connection, but let's talk about the weight loss connection when it comes to self efficacy. So I found, I actually found quite a few studies on this, but what's really interesting is that it almost seems like they've been like trying to study it, but they can't, like they can't quite get there with the scientific side of things.

And I can see why. So let me just read you something from one of the studies that I read. So it said, Self efficacy has been widely studied as a psychosocial correlate and predictor of changes in weight and weight related behaviors. In fact, it has often been viewed as an essential target for change in behavioral weight loss interventions. 

So  it's like they,  they know that it has an impact, but they even said right in this study that it's difficult to actually study and prove it, mostly because everybody's baseline is different, right? So there's not like an across the board, every human has this like starting point of self efficacy. 

So it's really subjective. So they know this and there's been so much studying. And like I said earlier, it's like a really hot topic in psychology and it's been studied so much, but it's really difficult especially as it relates to weight loss and weight related behaviors  to actually like. 

zero in and target down and correlate, right? So they know that it has an impact, but there's not like numerical specific study results from this. And another thing to consider with this when it comes to weight loss is that it's not  so much that self efficacy itself, like having good self efficacy means you'll be able to lose weight it's not a direct connection between the two, it seems, right?

It's that the self efficacy affects your behaviors, whether you do them, whether you think you can do them, whether you follow through with them, and then that is what in turn affects your weight loss. So it's more with weight loss being the potential outcome or the goal that you might have the behaviors in between Or what's going to lead you there or not, and the self efficacy is going to matter about whether you actually execute the behaviors and develop them, it really does matter. I'm going to read you another quote from a study. Sorry guys, if this is like science mumbo jumbo.  I was just having this conversation with my mom actually a few days ago that cause she's, she works in microbiology and she like loves science and stuff. And I'm like, those words like go, they just will not stay in my head.

Like I, I know all the lyrics to like every song ever from the late eighties,  90s, early 2000s, but I cannot remember scientific terms and they're like, I'm like falling asleep just listening to them. So anyways,  sorry about this, but this, so this was a scientific report that was in nature. com and it was actually from just from last year, from May 2023.

And the title of it was low eating self efficacy is associated with unfavorable eating behavior tendencies among individuals with overweight and obesity. So that was the name of the report, but here, let me read you this quote and. Just bear with me. So it says many individuals with overweight and obesity do not receive the counseling they require.

Despite a high number of often successful weight loss attempts, long term weight loss maintenance remains a remarkable challenge. Energy restriction and self control methods can lead to clinically significant weight loss results in the short run, but these tools can rarely help an individual to achieve sustained weight loss.

It has been suggested that the success in long term weight management depends primarily on psychological and behavioral aspects  to develop effective and individualized methods for sustaining weight management, we need to further understand the link between psychological factors and eating behavior tendencies. 

Okay, that's the end of the quote. But I just, I can't stress that one part enough, like that success in long term weight management depends primarily on psychological and behavioral aspects. And self efficacy is a big part of that. And No wonder just going on a diet, or following some macro plan, or just robotically going through the motions with this,  doesn't lead to sustained change.

Like it says here, that can for sure in the short run, you're going to lose weight, but the success in the long term depends on these psychological and behavioral factors. components, right? So  I just, I read these things and I'm like, no wonder you guys, no wonder. And I just want to  reaffirm to everybody that it doesn't work for these there's so many other reasons why, but if we cannot just ignore these aspects of it, we cannot ignore the psychological and the behavioral components.

Okay.  I'm going to calm down so I can keep  going. Okay I want to talk now, I totally forgot at the beginning to tell you guys like all the different things I was going to talk about. So let me just give you a rundown of what's left. I'm going to talk about ways that, that all of this, like the self efficacy might affect women with ADHD when it comes to weight loss.

I'm going to talk about how to develop self efficacy according to Albert Bandera, and I'm going to talk about how to work on your self efficacy. Just as a woman with ADHD, just based on other things that I saw. Okay, let's get back to it. So  here are some of the challenges that like impacting your self efficacy as a woman or, anybody really with ADHD when it comes to weight loss.

So  number one is like repeated failures. So often like you've tried so many different diets and exercise plans and like you, often we end up with these This whole history of attempts and in quote unquote failures and some of it is, might be, like, the ADHD factors that make things a little bit harder, and then we, which leads to not seeing success with it, and then it happens again and it happens again and it happens again, and then it's almost like we've built this bank of evidence that we're just not capable.

So of course you're going to have low self, a sense of low self efficacy when it comes to these kind of things, because we just. Based on that evidence shows that future attempts at this are just like not going to work. So there's that part of it.  Also, just like having inconsistent routines, like,  when we have these sort of executive function impairments from ADHD, That can affect how we develop our routines and stuff like that, which can help, can sometimes contribute to feeling like, sticking to a plan is hard.

And then that makes us feel like we're inadequate. And then we just don't feel confident about being able to follow through. And then that adds to that, pile of repeated failures that I talked about before. These are little things that really affect really drill down on how we feel about ourselves, which therefore leads to this lower self advocacy.

The third thing that, I have four things here, I never said the number, but the third one is just our naturally impulsive behavior. That can, when we have sporadic eating and, our habits that we're trying to work on are not, they're all over the place because of other factors.

But that leads to inconsistency with, weight loss and weight gain, and then that means things are unpredictable and that sort of grinds away, too, at our belief in ourselves, right? And then number four is just the negative self talk and criticism, because we oh, we fall into that so easily, and sometimes it's been so prominent for so long that we don't even really realize how bad it is.

But yeah, women with ADHD, we just have our internal criticism. There's also external criticism, especially when, if you're somebody who is overweight or struggles with obesity and, or has obesity, I should say. And, You deal with the external impact of that, things that people might say or not say about it to you and that grinds away, too, at our, not only our self efficacy, but our self esteem and that just reinforces that negative self talk, and it just make it harder to break out of these patterns, right?

I don't want to sound negative, like I,  I want to point out all these things to you so that you can see, whoa hey, that does affect me that way. And I do experience that. And maybe that's why I'm, I speak so negatively to myself. Or maybe that's why I think I have all these like repeated failures and that, that affects whether or not I feel like I can even try again.

So this is all just to help you to acknowledge it, because if we don't look at it, we cannot change it. Right? Let's talk about how to actually work on your self efficacy and bring yourself, further along on the spectrum so that you're moving in some of the areas where you might feel like it's low, that you can bring it up a little bit.

So I want to talk about the ways that A lot of the ways of developing self efficacy according to Albert, did I call him Anthony before? I don't know. His name is Albert.  Albert Bandura. So there were four main ways that he had pointed out as ways to develop self efficacy. So the first one, which he actually said is the single most effective way is experience, like mastery, like being able to master things.

So this really helps you to create like a strong sense of belief in yourself. And this is not like, you can't just choose like really easy things to master all the time because then if it's too easy and it doesn't require, actually require a lot of work or like perseverance, then  When you do face challenges, you'll probably just fall back into that negative thinking about yourself, but  just even about the example that I talked about before about me with the DIY stuff mastering those things, and I'm not saying I'm, like, Tim the tool man Taylor or something like I'm not like amazing but I did develop this skit these skills that I thought I was completely incapable of before and that sense of Fulfillment from that.

Oh my gosh, the impact on that is amazing So and that ripples out into other areas of your life. So mastering things  is  It's just great. It just has such a big impact. And I can see why he might have said that, or why he did say that's the most effective way to create belief in yourself. The second one is observing others.

So noticing other people following through and succeeding that can help to increase your own belief in your abilities. And what actually really matters is,  how closely the person that you're observing, like how close they are to your self the different things about you. For instance as me, as a woman in my 40s who's a mom observing somebody else who is maybe in their 40s and has children it really mirrors me.

Seeing somebody, really succeed, who's like that, can totally help us to believe that we could like, Hey, maybe I could do that too kind of thing. And I think, what's really interesting about this is that I think that's why I know I love reading, I always have over all the years reading like weight loss success stories.

Do you remember how People magazine, I don't know if they still do this, but they would always have the one with all these different people that had lost weight, and I used to love reading those, and even just looking at stuff like that online or hearing, hearing stories of other people overcoming challenges and actually succeeding when it came to weight loss, though, that totally fuels me.

And I think yeah, I just think that I totally understand why this is a big one.  Okay, the third thing is seeking positive affirmations. So getting positive feedback can like really help you to work on your sense of self efficacy. So if you're getting feedback from friends or family or like people that you respect,  that can really help, but you have to be careful too because, in seeking out the feedback, and I know a lot of us don't really want to ask people for feedback, but also Don't ask somebody for feedback if there's somebody that might be like I don't know.

You don't want to get that negative feedback in there too, but seeking out positive affirmation from other people can be really impactful.  Especially if you're, like, lucky enough to have somebody in your life who just offers that to you unprompted and resist the urge to be like, no, or to deny.

When somebody tells you something good we got to work on that. I guess I'm speaking to myself. But the fourth one that he talks about is paying attention to your thoughts and emotions. And this is something I talk about all the time, you guys. But think about if you feel nervous about something or anxious, you might just jump straight to say you have to speak in front of a crowd.

That's my nightmare. I shouldn't say that.  It's really nervous about that. Or anxious or whatever, and then you might immediately think I just can't do that. I cannot do that. But instead, if you just notice that thought came into your head, because we can't control a lot of the time the thoughts that come into our head, but we can control how we react to it, right?

And so if you instead notice that thought, and then  the feeling that happens from that and you're like, oh, okay. Maybe if you take that extra step of understanding why you think that and be compassionate with yourself about it, then you can move through it better than just immediately going to Nope!

I can't do this! So those are the kind of things that can help you to slowly build up that resiliency, is by paying attention to your thoughts and your emotions. So those were the four that Bandera talked about. I have five other ones that I, cobbled together  in research and stuff about, more specifically as it relates to women with ADHD, especially like pursuing weight loss.

So  setting achievable goals, that's number one, like as a way to build this self efficacy. Because if you have, yes, of course you can have big goals. And like I said earlier, it's really easy for all of us to pinpoint the goals that we want to achieve. But If you break it down into smaller, more manageable things, then what happens is If you can, even if it's like super small, and I know I, I see this even in my clients a real resistance to very small steps, because it's easy to think what's the point of that?

But if you do follow through on the little goal, Then you have that reinforcement to yourself, they're like, oh, I actually did do something, and then you get little ones built up, and then they slowly become bigger, and they slowly have a bigger impact. So yeah, setting achievable goals can have a really great effect on that.

Those little victories can really boost your confidence. Number two is developing routines. Like consistent routines. I still really struggle with the word consistency, you guys. Continuity? I don't know. But developing routines. Women with ADHD especially. Developing structure in your day to day routines.

And your meals and the movement that you're doing. And by having that, it in a backwards way helps to, with those, the executive function stuff that we talked about before, that the poor time management, and planning challenges. If you're building these small, structure of routine that you can actually do that actually applies to your own life,  that can help to lessen the impact of, the executive function stuff, which can then help you to feel like you can actually do things. 

Number three is mindfulness and self compassion. I'm never, there is never going to be a time when the solution isn't mindfulness in some capacity, right?  But sorry, I just have to adjust my leg. It just, this helps with so many different things, right? Mindfulness helps you to pay attention and notice the thoughts that are coming up and the feelings that you're having from them.

And then when you treat those with self compassion, you can move through it better. And then you can actually start to do things instead of just giving up on yourself, which we so naturally do. And there's nothing wrong with you that happens. It's very normal. Okay. Number four was support systems.

So if you have a supportive community that understands you, your specific challenges, especially as it relates to ADHD and the minutiae and the quirks and all of that stuff that can really impact how we do things that somebody a neurotypical person just straight up wouldn't understand. 

By no fault of their own, but having somebody who really understands has a huge impact. Then you're gonna get that sort of encouragement and reinforcement. Which is, like we talked about before, the positive affirmation. But peer support groups, coaching, this is really where coaching can be so effective.

And I, I don't say this to be like, come be my client. But the, all of this stuff is why coaching, It can be so impactful for people because  I started thinking of the Kacey Musgraves song Rainbow. I could cry every time I hear that song, you guys, but if, like in that song where she says, if you could see what I see, Oh my God, I feel like I could just start crying.

But that's what I feel so much with like my clients. I'm like, if only you could see like what I see in you but having support systems can make a really big difference. Therapy can really help with that too, right? But even just having an accountability group, having a friend that supports you, any of that.

And then the last thing is making sure that you're tailoring what you're doing to your ADHD. So if you have come up with a plan or some strategies, especially for your weight loss,  you have to make sure that they, Incorporate like your ADHD symptoms and how those affect you and work with those things and do the little things that you maybe do in your life that really help you like  using alarms or reminders or whatever it is, everybody's so different, but this can really help you to feel like you're more in control of what's happening and that helps to build that self efficacy.

So anyhow I just yeah. It all goes to show that these things really have an impact. Things like coaching for sure, but also like just paying attention to the thoughts that you're having and Just remember, I know I say it all the time, but I gotta keep repeating it. If you don't look at these things and become aware of them, then you can't change them.

So now, here you go, I'm gifting you with some awareness around self efficacy, because this can have such a big impact, and I really want that for you. I really want that for you. Anyhow, of course, now I've talked way longer than I wanted to. I've been trying to keep my episodes to 15 minutes and I'm, like, more than double that.

I apologize for the length, but I just, I get really excited about these things, you guys. Anyhow, that is all I have for today. I hope you have had a great week. I hope you have a great weekend and I will talk to you next week.