5. All-or-Nothing Thinking

"Suppose you step on the scales after you get out of the shower and the news is not good. If your internal dialogue tells you, "I gained weight again. All my attempts are useless," you're engaging in all-or-nothing thinking. You're saying to yourself that the situations, cir****tances, events, and results in your life are all good or all bad, black or white, with no shades of gray in between. That dialogue, with all of its self-defeating messages, is particularly damaging because it can reactivate unwanted behavior. Look at it this way: you have dinner one night with your family and decide to have a small piece of pie for dessert - that's fine, but then your internal dialogue kicks in, and you say, "What the heck, I've blown my diet. I might as well eat the whole pie." With an all-or-nothing conversation with yourself, you entertain thoughts that because you ate a piece of pie, all was lost, so you might as well go from a bite to a full-blown binge. It is this type of distorted self talk that often precedes addictive replapses among alcoholics, drug addicts and overeaters."