20 Best Weight Loss & Wellness Affirmations at The Holy Mess

If you’ve ever struggled with losing weight, you know that the biggest battle isn’t just with food. The challenge starts with your thoughts. Weight loss affirmations are a powerful way to reframe your mindset, build confidence, and overcome self-doubt.

Instead of telling yourself, “I’ll never lose this weight,” what if you said, “I am a success story in progress”?

Below, you’ll discover simple, faith-based affirmations to transform your weight loss journey from frustration to success. If you’re feeling a bit skeptical, that’s okay. I was at first, too. Read on to learn how this can work for you.

Key Take-Aways

1. Affirmations rewire your thinking for weight loss success. The words you repeatedly tell yourself guide your actions. Choosing positive affirmations over negative self-talk creates new, healthier mental pathways.
2. Faith and mindset are critical in the weight loss journey. Trust God’s plan and embrace slow miracles rather than expecting instant results.
3. Practical affirmations build healthy habits. Statements like “I will follow my food plan today” and “I commit to honest tracking” reinforce daily accountability and long-term success.

How to Use Weight Loss Affirmations

Affirmations are truth statements.

Here are examples:

• I can do hard things.
• My mess becomes my message.
• I will follow my food plan today.

If you’ve struggled with your weight for a long time, you’ve probably told yourself lies like:

• I can’t lose weight no matter what I try.
• I have no willpower.
• I’ll never lose this weight. Why bother?

You might have said these things to yourself hundreds or even thousands of times. That’s created a pathway in your brain, like a well-worn trail through a grassy field.

Thinking and speaking the truth creates a new path. Trust me, the new path is the one you want to be on.

I respect if you think affirmations are cheesy and not your thing. Commit to give them a try for a week and see what happens.

I encourage you to choose one affirmation to start and write or speak it out loud daily. I like using printable cards to remind me of the new paths I’m creating in my mind.

20 Incredible Powerful Weight Loss Affirmations

Here are twenty valuable affirmations to guide you to change your thoughts about your weight loss journey.

1. I can do hard things.

We often dismiss our struggles as not that bad or tell ourselves that other people have it worse. While it’s important to be grateful to improve our attitude, it’s also true that hard things are still hard.

Instead of dismissing your weight issues as not very difficult, be honest about them. Losing weight in today’s culture IS hard, but you are strong. You can do hard things.

Think of the struggles you have overcome, like:

• surviving the loss of a loved one
• raising children
• dealing with health issues for yourself or someone you love
• advocating for someone who needs it
• recovery from surgery
• goals you’ve achieved

You’ve done those challenging things, proving that you’ve got the strength inside you. You can reach your weight loss goals, too.

Click here for Bible verses about doing hard things.

2. My mess becomes my message.

The Holy Mess sometimes receives emails and messages from people offended by our website’s name. Isn’t it sacrilegious to say holy + mess?

The word holy means set apart for God. Give God your life, including your struggles, messes, and mistakes, and He will turn them around to use for His good and His glory.

This is what your mess becomes your message is all about.

For most of my life, I was a binge eater, a compulsive eater, and a secret eater. I had so much shame and despair about my food problems.

Yet God took that darkest, most embarrassing, shameful part of my life and turned it into something amazing that has helped thousands of people.

If God could take my mess and make it my message, He can do the same thing in your life, too.

3. I accept slow miracles.

Have you ever prayed for a weight loss miracle? I sure have. For years, I prayed that God would heal me, and it felt like my prayers were going unanswered.

I wanted God to heal me on my timeline, which is instantaneous. Can you relate?

Maybe healing will be instant for you (and I pray that it is!). My healing came in teeny, tiny steps. I like to say it was a slow, boring miracle. After working with thousands of women on weight loss journeys, I can tell you that’s what I see most often for them, too.

If you need a weight loss miracle, will you allow God to work on His timetable, even if it’s different from the speed you want?

4. Sit and savor.

For most of my life, I was a grazer. I ate whatever came along. When I walked through the kitchen, I grabbed a handful of candy from a co-worker’s desk jar and a handful of potato chips. I also took lots of tastes while cooking.

These BLTs (Bites, Licks, and Tastes) didn’t seem to count, but my body was counting whether I was or not.

Use the affirmation “I eat sitting down” to remind yourself to pay attention to your food and how it makes your body feel when you eat it.

5. Overeating is NOT fun.

I used to overeat for fun. I looked forward to huge restaurant meals, splurging on all my favorites and the holidays, and secretly eating batches of cookie dough.

I was overeating for fun. But when I started to pay attention, I realized that overeating is NOT fun. Eating until I felt sick and stuffed ruined vacations and romantic date nights. Drifting through the holidays in a food coma is not savoring the season.

Changing this takes practice because you must stop eating before feeling full. Use this affirmation to help you stop eating at the very first sign of fullness.

6. When I’m eating, I only eat.

People who have food issues have this curious behavior. We think about food all the time, except when we are eating. Then, we distract ourselves from the sensory experience and zone out instead of enjoying the behavior we so looked forward to.

Part of my weight loss journey was learning to eat mindfully, which means sitting and savoring my food. At first, it was extremely uncomfortable.

After years of grazing, snacking, and eating in front of the TV, reading, or scrolling through my phone, I felt incredibly uncomfortable when I tried to sit and savor my food.

I had to put my phone in another room so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at it! But with practice, I could calm myself down enough to pay attention to my food and listen to my body’s signals that I was satisfied.

7. I am a success story.

When it comes to your weight, you might tell yourself that you are a big, fat failure.

For most of my life, I felt like a failure because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get control of my food issues.

You may feel like this type of thinking is justified, but it’s not serving you. Putting yourself down only digs you deeper into an emotional hole.

Instead, focus on the ways you are successful. Celebrate the wins. Pay attention to NSVs (Non-Scale Victories).

8. I will follow my food plan today.

During our 3-day meal plan and 30-day group weight loss experiences, we encourage members to pre-track what they eat the next day. An affirmation we often use is “I will follow my food plan today.” It’s simple yet meaningful.

Instead of giving in to the cravings of our toddler voice, we make an adult decision to plan for what we will eat. Then, we commit to stick to it.

9. Progress, not perfection.

What’s one way you can make this week better than last week? Focus on a tiny, realistic change. Instead of grandiose ideas that lead to overwhelming, choose one small habit for your focus.

I tell myself to do a SSIS (So Small It’s Stupid) task that will push me toward my goals. Sometimes, it’s as minor as getting out my tennis shoes (to remind me to take a walk tomorrow) or writing a task on my calendar. Yes, it’s a tiny step, but it’s something, and something is better than nothing.

10. No matter what, I won’t quit.

Have you ever had a weight gain and said to yourself, “Forget this. I’m giving up on weight loss! It’s too hard.”

I have done that countless times over my life. Imagine how much sooner I could have reached my goal weight if I had stuck with it.

Commit yourself that no matter what, you won’t quit. Get back on track, and don’t give up, no matter how frustrating.

11. Adult me drives the car.

When you are about to give in to a food craving, ask yourself if you are using the toddler or adult part of your brain to make a decision.

The primitive part of your brain (toddler voice) continually pushes you to food as part of your body’s survival mechanism. Your thinking brain (adult voice) plans for the future and makes logical decisions. When you want to overeat, ask yourself if your toddler or adult voice motivates you.

There’s nothing wrong with either part of your brain, but just like you don’t want a child driving a car, you don’t want your toddler brain in control of your choices.

12. Think like a scientist.

Thinking like a scientist means stepping back from emotion and considering your weigh-in results as if you were looking at a test tube in a laboratory. Why did you get the results that you did? Use this helpful information to make decisions as you move forward.

The scale gives you data. Step back and think like a scientist.

The scale doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t mean anything about your character, willpower, or self-control. It’s just data.

13. I am worthy of nourishment.

You are worthy of high-quality food and enough daily calories. When you under-eat, your body protects you by driving you to overeat and binge.

Eat plenty of healthy food. Americas are overfed and undernourished. Forced starvation never works long-term.

Click here to read more about nourishing your body without turning to food.

14. My worth is not my weight.

The number on the scale does not define your worth. You are a beautiful, amazing, talented woman worthy of your place in this world, and nothing that happens on the scale changes that truth.

You are worthy of being here because you ARE here. God chose you for this time and place, and He never makes mistakes.

15. I enjoy planned treats, guilt-free.

When I decided to focus on weight loss in the past, I tried to give up all treats, fast food, and junk food. Managing these foods felt way too tricky, if not impossible. If I had an opened box of doughnuts or chips, it didn’t last long because I would eat it until it was gone.

I felt addicted to food. Getting rid of it seemed like the only possible solution.

Yet, giving up these foods didn’t work long-term, either. Food isn’t like other addictive substances. A person can abstain from cocaine or alcohol for the rest of their lives, but you can’t give up food.

If you can relate, check out The Holy Mess Treat Box method, where I teach a systematic, realistic method for managing treats and trigger foods.

16. I can be trusted around treat foods.

Can you enjoy treat foods during weight loss? Is it possible to eat junk foods like chips, candy, and chocolate without being triggered to binge, overeat, or finish the whole bag?

Nothing magical happens at goal weight.

• If you plan ever to eat cake again, you need to learn how to eat cake now.
• If you plan ever to eat potato chips again, it’s best to learn to manage potato chips now.

The number one mistake I see people make is being overly restrictive with food. They drastically cut back on calories, food groups, and treats and then binge on them later, especially at night and on the weekends.

This is a step-by-step, safe method to teach yourself how to systematically manage treat foods in a healthy way.

Click here for more help with trigger foods and finding food freedom.

17. I commit to ugly tracking.

I was the perfect tracker for many years of my weight loss journey.

Except when I wasn’t.

If you looked at my food logs, you would quickly figure out when I was off with my food choices because my tracker was blank on those days.

We all want “pretty” food logs. We want the WW blue dots. We want My Fitness Pal to say we are within our calorie range.

When I committed to honest tracking – no matter what, I had to own up to what I call “ugly tracking.” Ugly tracking is when you go over your points or calories, but at least you are honest about it.

Track that 100-point day.

Record the 1,500-calorie DQ blizzard.

Guess what? Your phone won’t blow up.

Here’s what happens: When you commit to ugly (aka honest) tracking, you see patterns. You recognize unhealthy behaviors. Then, you can change them.

18. I am forgiven, not perfect.

Release perfection because it is not serving you.

Perfection pushes you away from your goal weight, while forgiveness moves you toward it. When you get off track, get back on track fast.

Perfectionism is a form of pride.  A perfectionist clings to a false sense of looking good to themselves and others by doing everything just right.

Instead, focus on forgiving others and yourself. Forgiving yourself is accepting God’s forgiveness for you.

19. I just haven’t learned that yet.

When you encounter snags during your weight loss journey, such as tempting food situations, slipping back to old patterns, or life drama, remember that these are normal stressors that happen to everyone.

Don’t quit. Remind yourself that tough times are to be expected. You haven’t learned how to navigate these situations yet, but the more you practice, the more skilled you will become. Quitting won’t fix it.

20. God is using food to heal me.

For most of my life, I was caught on a roller coaster of over-restricting my food intake (in the name of “health” and “dieting”) and then overeating or binging later. Up and down this went.

When I finally learned the balance of eating enough but not too much, which I now teach in our weight loss membership with the structure of SAFE eating, my whole life shifted to a healthier place.

God used food to heal my food problems. Isn’t that amazing? I believe God will work this miracle in your life, too.

Which affirmation is most powerful for you? Tell us in the comments below.

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How to Nourish Your Body Without Turning to Food – by LaNette Whiteside

20 Bible Verses for Weight Loss – what God’s Word says about your food choices

Mindful Eating Affirmations for Christian Women – by LaNette Whiteside