Healthy thinking is a way to help you stay well by changing how you think. It's based on research that shows that you can change how you think. And how you think affects how you feel and act.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy, also called CBT, is a type of therapy that is often used to help people think in a healthy way. CBT can help you learn to replace negative thoughts with accurate, encouraging ones. These negative thoughts are sometimes called irrational or automatic thoughts.

Working on your own or with a counselor, you can practice these three steps:

• Stop. Notice your thoughts. When you notice a negative thought, stop it in its tracks and write it down.
• Ask. Look at that thought and ask yourself whether it is helpful or unhelpful right now.
• Choose. Choose a new, more accurate thought to replace the negative one.

The goal is to have accurate, encouraging thoughts come naturally. It may take some time to change the way you think. So you will need to practice healthy thinking every day.

Continue to Why?

Healthy thinking—along with healthy eating and being active—can help some people reach a healthy weight. It can help you stay on track when you have a slip-up. And it can keep you from getting discouraged.

Say you've been limiting your portions and eating more vegetables and fruit. But you go to a party one night and eat several slices of pizza and a big piece of cake. All the way home, you get angry at yourself for eating so much. "I don't know why I bother trying to lose weight. I have no will power. I might as well forget about it."

The more you talk in a negative way to yourself, the harder it is to stay focused on all the good changes you've made. The negative thinking makes you feel bad. And that can lead to having more slip-ups and more bad thoughts about yourself. It's a cycle that's hard to break.

But with practice, you can retrain your brain. After all, you weren't born telling yourself negative things. You learned how to do it. So there's no reason you can't teach your brain to unlearn it and replace negative thinking with more helpful thoughts.

Healthy thinking is good for your health in other ways. If you feel bad about yourself, you could feel anxious or depressed. Healthy thinking also can help you handle stress better. Many people eat too much because they are stressed.

Too much stress can raise your blood pressure and make your heart work harder, which can increase your risk for a heart attack. Stress also can weaken your immune system, which can make you more open to infection and disease.

Continue to How?

Notice and stop your thoughts

The first step is to notice and stop your negative thoughts or "self-talk." Self-talk is what you think and believe about yourself and your experiences. It's like a running commentary in your head. Your self-talk may be rational and helpful. Or it may be negative and not helpful.

Ask about your thoughts

The next step is to ask yourself whether your thoughts are helpful or unhelpful. Look at what you're saying to yourself. Does the evidence support your negative thought? Some of your self-talk may be true. Or it may be partly true but exaggerated. There are several kinds of irrational thoughts. Here are a few types:

• Focusing on the negative: This is sometimes called filtering. You filter out the good and focus only on the bad. You don't give yourself credit for the good things you do. Example: "I ruined my eating plan this week by having so much pizza tonight." Reality: Did you keep to your eating plan most of the week? If you did, then you're not giving yourself credit for all the great things you did that week.
• Should: People sometimes have set ideas about how they "should" act. If you hear yourself saying that you or other people "should," "ought to," or "have to" do something, then you might be setting yourself up to feel bad. Example: "I should never have pizza or dessert." Reality: If you really don't ever want to have pizza or dessert again, that's fine. But many people find a way to work those foods into their eating plan and stay at a healthy weight. They try to have a flexible eating plan.
• Overgeneralizing: This is taking one example and saying it's true for everything. Look for words such as "never" and "always." Example: "I can never stick with an exercise plan." Reality: Have you ever made a vow to exercise and stuck to it? If you did it before, you can do it again. And even if you weren't able to do it in the past, that doesn't mean you can't stay with plan in the future.
• All-or-nothing thinking: This is also called black-or-white thinking. Example: "If I can't stay on my eating plan all the time, I'll just give up." Reality: Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. One slip-up doesn't mean you can't get back to your plan the next day.

Choose your thoughts

The next step is to choose an accurate, helpful thought to replace the unhelpful one.

Keeping a journal of your thoughts is one of the best ways to practice stopping, asking, and choosing your thoughts. It makes you aware of your self-talk. Write down any negative or unhelpful thoughts you had during the day. If you think you might not remember them at the end of your day, keep a notepad with you so that you can write down thoughts as they occur. Then write down helpful messages to correct the negative thoughts.

If you do this every day, helpful thoughts will soon come naturally.

But there may be some truth in some of your negative thoughts. You may have some things you want to work on. If you didn't perform as well as you would like on something, write that down. You can work on a plan to correct or improve that area.

If you want, you also can write down what kind of irrational thought you had. Your journal entries might look something like this:

Thought diary

Stop your negative thought	Ask what type of negative thought you had	Choose an accurate, helpful thought
"I ruined my eating plan by having so much pizza tonight."	Focusing on the negative	"I wish I didn't eat so much pizza. But it's only one meal. I stayed on my eating plan really well the rest of the week."
"I should never have pizza or dessert."	Should	"Having dessert or pizza now and then is okay if it's part of my eating plan."
"I can never stick with an exercise plan."	Overgeneralizing	"I've had some problems sticking with an exercise plan in the past. But that doesn't mean I can't do it in the future. I've made other changes in my life."
"If I can't lose 10 pounds this month, then I'm going to give up this eating plan."	All or nothing	"I'm going to try to set a realistic goal. It may be a smaller goal than before, but I'm still working toward a healthy weight."

Continue to Where?

Now that you have read this information, you are ready to practice healthy thinking to help you manage your weight.

If you would like more information on how to stop negative thoughts, see the topic:

Stop Negative Thoughts: Getting Started.

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