Author: Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN

“I’ve tried everything and nothing has worked. ”

I hear this all the time. But, often, when we really peel back the layers, it turns out that they haven’t tried anything at all. Not really.

Here’s how it usually goes down:

You decide to eat more mindfully or cut out after dinner snacking or exercise before work.  You make a plan and schedule it all in. And that’s where the effort peaks.

Maybe you stick to the plan for a day or 3.  And then, you start to hit some resistance. You get impatient. It’s hard and it’s not working yet. So you conclude that it’s not for you and start looking for the next thing.

When we continually jump from thing to thing, and don’t stick with anything long enough to get results, we get nowhere. We say we’ve tried everything and nothing works. But in reality, we’ve tried nothing.

The only way to get results that last is to permanently change your behavior. And true behavior change takes sustained effort.  Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be extreme or excruciating effort. Just sustained.

And it’s not a matter of picking the best strategy or approach.  Take 100 steps on any path and you’ll be much closer to your destination than taking the first 10 steps on 10 different paths.

So, the next time you commit to a positive change or action, no matter how small, commit to staying the course. Give yourself time to actually create and reinforce that new habit pattern. (They say creating a habit takes 21 days but it depends on the habit. You know it’s a habit when you no longer have to decide whether or not to do it. )

Give that new behavior time to bear fruit before deciding that something else will work better.

“Something else” won’t work better.  The things you stick with are going to be the things that work or, at the very least, lead you to the things that work.

It’s natural to want more of something you’re enjoying. And yet it’s worth cultivating the ability to “savor and then stop.” For example, I REALLY enjoy my morning cup of coffee. I usually drink it out on the front porch (weather permitting), listening to the birds. That 20 minutes is one of my favorite parts of the whole day.

Often, as I’m getting near the end of my cup, I have the urge to make a second cup. To extend the pleasure for a few more minutes. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with not giving in to this urge.

I drink my coffee black, so it’s not like I save any calories by skipping the second cup. But I realize that it’s the same mental habit that leads me to pour a second glass of wine or eat a second brownie. “This is so good…must have more.”

Skipping that second cup of coffee (which never actually tastes as good as the first, anyway) is a way of reinforcing a different habit: enjoying just one of something to the last crumb or drop and then moving on to the next activity–which, in this case, is my morning walk. Win/Win.

“I basically eat healthy but  ______  is my weakness.”

Chocolate.
Junk food.
Chips.
Beer.

It doesn’t really matter what you fill the blank in with. The idea is that you’re pretty disciplined. Except for this one thing.

Your kryptonite.  That one thing that strips you of your strength, your reason, your free will. You’re simply powerless to resist it.

When we declare something to be our “kryptonite” we’re essentially absolving ourselves of responsibility. If you’re powerless, then how can you possibly be held accountable for your actions?

Yet, we still get to maintain our self-identity as “someone who eats healthy.”  I mean, Superman was still Superman, right?

I call BS.

You might like chocolate.

A lot.

And there’s no reason you can’t enjoy chocolate! But you are still in charge of how much and how often you decide to indulge.

And if your choices around chocolate (or chips, or beer, or whatever) are leading to results that you’re not happy with, guess who has the power to choose a different result?

The next time you hear yourself saying, “__________ is my weakness,”  I want you to stop yourself, mid-sentence. Instead of giving yourself permission to self-sabotage by abdicating responsibility, try replacing that thought with something more true.

“If I’m not careful, I can really overdo it with _________.”

or

“If I ate as much of __________ as I wanted to, I would not be happy with the result.”

Then, take back your power.  You get to choose what you really want…both for the short-term and the long-term.

Maybe you’ll have a piece of chocolate.  Maybe, this time, you won’t. But chocolate is not the one calling the shots. You are.

Kryptonite has met its match.

“Too much freedom makes me feel out of control”

Can you relate? We THINK we just want someone to tell us what to do. To set rules and limits for us to obey. Which works…until it doesn’t.

We confuse having someone else making all the decisions with being “in control.” Having the freedom to make choices (for better or worse) feels scary…at first.

But hear this: When you have no freedom, you are not in control. Having freedom is what puts you in control.

We’ve been talking lately about the many choices that we get to make about what, whether, and how much to eat, and working on making these choices more intentional.  But I want to caution you against framing these choices in terms of Want vs. Should.

“I really WANT to have a bowl of ice cream. But I SHOULD say no.”

This is a lose-lose scenario!   If you give in and have what you want, you feel bad for not doing what you should.  And if you stick to your guns and do what you should, you don’t get to have what you want.
If this is how you are setting up your choices, your whole day becomes a depressing and exhausting series of decisions that either lead to guilt or deprivation.  Who wants to live like that?

As you’re considering what to choose, avoid loaded words like want, need, should, and shouldn’t. Focus instead on the fact that you have options, and that each option has pros and cons.

“I could have a bowl of ice cream. Or I could have a piece of fruit instead.”

“I can have ice cream tonight or I can look forward to that as a treat at the end of the week.”

“I can have two scoops or I can have one scoop.”

“I could eat ice cream until I feel better or I could take a walk and see if I can find a way through this feeling that doesn’t move me away from my goals.”

Consider what you get from each.  How much and what kind of satisfaction or pleasure would you get? How long will that last? (5 minutes? 10?) How will you feel after that? (Stronger? Calmer? Regretful?) How long will THAT feeling last? (A day? A Lifetime?)

Even the difference between saying “I get to make so many choices every day!” instead of “I have to make so many choices every day” can be so empowering.

This week, I invite you listen to your self-talk a little more carefully.  Instead of setting yourself up for a lose/lose situation, see if you can frame your choices in terms of which presents the more meaningful win.

It’s easy to blame a lack of motivation for our lack of progress. But maybe this is a bit of an excuse. Especially if we are nurturing a fantasy that being motivated to change means that change will be effortless. It won’t be.

Finding your motivation isn’t like attaching a motor to your bike so that you can zoom up a hill without even pedaling. It’s more like finding a lower gear on your bike that makes the pedals a bit easier to push when you hit that hill. But pedaling is still required.

Being motivated doesn’t actually spare you the need to take action. It just makes taking (consistent) action a little easier.

See also:  https://member.weighless.life/being-willing-to-do-what-it-takes/

One reason that diets don’t work is that they rely too much on willpower.

Willpower is like a muscle: it can get fatigued.

In the Weighless program, we don’t count on willpower as the main ingredient for success. Instead, we develop an entire suite of strategies to keep us moving in the right direction even when our willpower fails.

Here are three tips for relying on strategies other than willpower to make healthy changes.

1. Use positive redirection. 

When we’re trying to make healthy changes, we often focus exclusively on what we need to stop eating – fast food, candy, soda, chips.

When we instead of focus on what we want to eat more of, our brains relax a bit and we feel less deprived.

Instead of swearing off dessert, why not splurge on some particularly luscious fruit to enjoy after dinner? Instead of forking your way through a boring pile of lettuce and cucumbers, make your lunchtime salad something to look forward to by topping it with some fresh avocado or a few shrimp. If you’re trying to wean yourself off that nightly glass of wine, be sure to have some sparkling water on hand to sip on instead. Put it in a nice glass and garnish it with a sprig of fresh mint, dash of bitters, or wedge of lime.

Using positive redirection is a lot more fun than white-knuckling your way through a diet that requires a ton of willpower.

2. Have a plan.

It’s a lot easier to stick to your healthy eating plan if you actually have a plan! It’s easy to set the intention in the morning of “eating healthy” that day – but then things can quickly go downhill when you impulsively order a giant muffin with your coffee, work through lunch, and order pizza for dinner because you’re starving when you get home.

Tonight, take a minute to think about your schedule for tomorrow and plan what you’ll eat. Pack a salad or container of soup to take for lunch, thaw some chicken to cook for dinner. Or, if cooking isn’t your thing, decide in advance where you’ll order lunch and what you’ll have, and where you’ll pick up dinner.  You’ll almost certainly make better choices ahead of time than you will in the heat of the moment.

3. Keep it simple.

For some reason, when we make up our mind to lose weight or get in shape, we’re often attracted to complicated regimens that have lots of very specific rules and requirements. Subconsciously, we seem to believe that the more elaborate the program — and the bigger the departure from our current habits — the more likely it is to be the one that finally works.

This is a trap!

The bigger the departure from our normal routine, the more likely we are to crash and burn.

In the Weighless Program, we start where we are and make small, sustainable changes to our routines and behaviors, gradually building the lifestyle and habits that lead to weighing less. We suggest you take the same approach!!

One of our members recently shared a Weighless victory… followed by a stumble that many of us know all too well.  Do you recognize this pattern?

“I just got back from a trip to New Orleans. The last time we went it was a  disaster of gluttony and excess. I gained weight, and also felt horrible. This time, I vowed, would be different. I posted notes saying QUALITY NOT QUANTITY all over my house for the week before we left.  On the trip, I ate everything I wanted to but small amounts of the less healthy stuff and I felt fantastic when we got back. Even better, I weighed the same when we got home as when I left. I was feeling very proud of myself!

Can you relate?  I know I can!

Last year, for example, I spent a month producing two podcasts a week instead of my usual one. It was an intense push. But I was really motivated. I really wanted to create a bit of a buffer for myself so that if something came up (a professional opportunity, a family emergency, whatever) I would have more flexibility.

And I succeeded in getting myself four weeks ahead!  But then, over the course of the next three months, I proceeded to blow my lead.  A week would somehow slip by without me recording a new podcast.  Not because something important came up.  Simply because my vision (and therefore my plan) for success only extended to getting ahead. It didn’t include staying ahead.

Don’t blow your lead

As any gymnast or ice skater will tell you, training for (and visualizing) the jump always includes training for the landing.

I had a solid plan for how I was going to research, write, and record two podcasts a week.  I scheduled work sessions into my calendar and I stuck to them. Triple Salchow! The problem was that I failed to make any schedule for the weeks that followed.  As a result, I failed to stick the landing.

So let’s say you set an intention to get through the holidays or a vacation without gaining weight. (In weeks 20 and 46, we teach specific strategies for enjoying holidays, vacations, and special occasions without sacrificing your progress.) You put together your plan. You execute it like a champ.

You’ve done the triple salchow. Now all you need to do is stick the landing.

If you see the last day of your vacation or a holiday season or crossing the finish line of that race as the end of your “challenge,” it’s easy for things to fall apart in the aftermath.

Instead, as you plan to navigate the challenge, include the week after the trip or event in that vision.  Have a couple of healthy meals in the freezer so that you have good options available when you get back.  Get out your calendar and schedule in some exercise for the week after you get home.  Make sure you get back into the rhythm of your regular healthy habits. Stick that landing!

What challenges or goals are you planning for right now? What’s the plan for sticking the landing?