Self-compassion

Self-compassion means meeting yourself in difficult moments with the same warmth you would show a good friend – instead of with your inner critic. The psychologist Kristin Neff describes three building blocks: kindness instead of self-judgement, the knowledge that failure is part of being human, and mindfulness – noticing the feeling without drowning in it.

Many people believe that being strict with themselves is necessary to keep going. Research suggests rather the opposite. If you berate yourself after a slip (“I'm so undisciplined”), you're more likely to keep eating, because shame triggers the need for comfort. If you speak to yourself kindly instead (“That was a hard day, tomorrow I'll carry on”), you often get back on track faster. In an experiment at Duke University in the US (Adams and Leary, 2007), women who usually kept a strict eye on their eating went on to eat fewer sweets after a doughnut if they had first heard a short, kind sentence: everyone eats something unplanned now and then – no reason to be hard on yourself.

How to practise it: when you catch yourself scolding yourself, ask what you would say to a friend in the same situation – and say exactly that to yourself. Name the feeling (“I'm disappointed right now”) and remind yourself that almost everyone experiences setbacks when losing weight. Place a hand on your chest; it sounds odd, but according to studies it can dampen the body's stress response.

Self-compassion isn't self-pity or letting yourself off the hook – it's the foundation for carrying on at all. For families: children learn the tone they'll later use with themselves from the way their parents talk about themselves. If you criticise your own body in front of the mirror, you pass that on. If you say, “My body carries me every day, and I take good care of it,” you pass that on too.