Do you really need to have a ‘rock bottom’ moment?

Have you ever experienced a ‘rock bottom’ moment?

A point in your life where you've realised you can’t keep living a certain way or tolerating certain things.

The sense of shame, despair and all-round unhappiness becomes so overwhelming that you can’t imagine being in a worse situation.

Some people say that reaching ‘rock bottom’ can fuel you to achieve things beyond what you’d ever do otherwise.

It’s inspiring to watch people rebuild their lives from the ground up as if reaching rock bottom led them to having so much passion and dedication to their achievements afterwards.

I think that’s why shows like ‘The Biggest Loser’ were so addictive to watch. We wanted these contestants to follow that process because it gave hope to the rest of us.

We wanted to see these people who had hit their rock bottom claw their way out of a battle with their bodies and leave the show triumphantly displaying toned biceps and running medals.

We all thought, ‘Wow, look at what you can achieve when you really put your mind to it!’

And - ‘I guess I just need Jillian Michaels in my ear telling me it’s going to take 90 minutes on the treadmill to burn off that Snickers bar every time I crave something’. 

When we saw the contestants at the end, with the emotional background music, happy tears and shocked gasps from family members upon their reveal, the message that we got from ‘The Biggest Loser’ was that sometimes you need to have that ‘rock bottom’ moment to push you into finally making change. 

You need to constantly be reminded of the discomfort and pain that the ‘old you’ experienced to avoid falling back into old habits. You need that slap-in-the-face reality check, that health scare reminder, that unflattering photo of you, that snarky comment about your size - to force you into action.

But no matter how painful the process is - how much you struggle during that battle with hunger, cravings, forcing yourself to get to the gym every day, turning down social events - it pales in comparison to the pain of staying in a body that you feel ashamed of.

We use this logic when we nit-pick and criticise our bodies and/or spiral into shame after an episode of over-eating or eating ‘off plan’. We think if we keep reminding ourselves of our unhappiness, we’ll be more likely to take action and do something.

Except I want to pause here and ask you - has this kind of approach worked for you?

There have been studies following ‘The Biggest Loser’ contestants after they have finished the show. The majority of contestants gain most of the weight they have lost back, and often more. 

People who have gastric bypass surgery also have a very high percentage of re-gaining weight which they have lost in the years after the surgery.

If you asked me, I would almost guarantee that none of these people would have wanted to regain that weight, or done so intentionally. 

I think that the reasons why people regain weight after losing it tend to be multi-factorial. 

However, I don’t think that you could ever say that these people just ‘didn’t want it badly enough’.

I think the fact that so many contestants from ‘The Biggest Loser’ didn’t maintain their weight loss is proof that this kind of drill-sergeant, negative-reinforcement approach doesn’t lead to long-lasting behaviour change.

I think that it often backfires in the sense that by making the process so hard and so extreme, it becomes far too daunting to go back to and try again once the weight begins creeping up again - most people would probably just prefer to live their lives normally, even if it does mean (shock horror) being in a bigger body. 

As an alternative, I like the process outlined in the book ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear for how to change your behaviours in ways that stick. One of the points he touches on is reframing your thoughts to match the identity of who you want to become. So, instead of calling yourself ‘lazy’ or ‘gluttonous’, learn to think of yourself as someone who ‘likes taking care of their body’ and ‘feels peace around food’ - or whatever identity you feel as though you’d like to embody more.

I’ve certainly found this process to work for me at different stages of my life where I’ve wanted different things.

I found that beating myself up and going around in circles in my head about why I’m a failure, why I’m useless and why I can’t ever get it right never resulted in me getting anything that I wanted.

Wallowing in shame, as Brené Brown explains in many of her books, might help us become more aware of actions that are holding us back in life, but it doesn’t inspire us to take action.

Do you think you might be doing the same thing?

On that note, is a rock bottom moment a necessary part of a fulfilling life?

And if you have had a rock bottom moment, whilst I agree that it can be a powerful motivator - I think it can also leave us with wounds and negative inner monologues that take conscious awareness to continuously soothe and heal from as we learn to separate what is real and what is anxiety. 

Instead of romanticising pain and rock bottom moments, we need to recognise their downsides and understand that lasting change also requires mental shifts towards a more positive/neutral way of thinking.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

Lx