Ep #140: Break the Backtracking Cycle: How to Maintain Weight Loss Success

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #140. If you’ve reached your weight loss goal, only to turn around and backtrack, let’s talk about why that happens and what to do about it.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland.

Hey, how are you? What’s new, what’s good? So what’s good here, we are gonna pull apart what’s going on when you’re doing well, following your plan, seeing success, and then you go backwards. So very simply, I wanna help you pull apart why when you lose weight or even hit your goal weight, you turn around and overeat and undo it.

So I knew I had to write this episode when I had two client sessions back to back where this exact situation came up. So both of these clients have been doing really well implementing habits to build a healthier lifestyle. So they both came to me with a goal of creating better habits and wanting to lose weight. And they both have been doing just that.

In our sessions, we’ve been taking a slow, steady approach and layering habits one at a time, and it’s been working. And it was so interesting to me that in both situations, for both my clients, they noted that they’ve made some pretty big wins that resulted in weight loss.

So the first client, she shared that she got to a new low in her weight that she had not seen since before 2017. And she was super proud of herself as she should be. And then a few days later, after she hit this new low, she was out and got some ice cream. And that is no big deal, right? It’s ice cream, not a big deal.

She had been practicing having a bite of dessert and letting that be enough. And on this particular day, she decided, well, I’m just gonna have this ice cream. But then that ice cream turned into other treats. It turned into more desserts and sweets over the remainder of the weekend and her one bite plan went out the window. And so by the end of the weekend, she was not feeling great.

Then when we were talking through this and debriefing about her weekend, I just paid attention. I listened to what she described. I listened to her words. And some of the things that she said were really helpful for me as her coach.

So she said, I saw a number on the scale I hadn’t seen in years, and I thought to myself, I can relax now. I can eat something I’ve been deprived of. And that opened the door for us to have a conversation about her approach, how she was looking at her success, her response to her success, and how she saw the work that she did to get there. And I’ll explain more about this as we get farther in.

And then literally in the next hour, I was having almost the exact same conversation with another client. So she too has made a number of changes to her habits to support a healthy lifestyle. So she started including more protein in her diet. She came up with a system of go-to meals. She had a planned snack in between her transition from work to coming home and shuttling her kids all over. And she started really dialing in on her all-or-nothing thinking.

And then one day she got on the scale and she saw a number that she hadn’t seen for quite a while. And her exact words were, I got here, I can relax. And it happened to be that she was heading into a weekend full of parties and birthday celebrations, and she told herself, that was a good number, I can eat cake now.

And again, I just listened to her talk through her thought process, and it opened the door to a really good conversation about what happens when she hits her goals. Because honestly, while these two conversations happened back-to-back, I cannot tell you how many times this has come up for my clients. It’s a common sequence of events, and that cycle goes like this.

So you work hard, you make great progress, and maybe you see weight loss or you start to build muscle. And then almost instinctively you think, I’m good, I can relax, I’m taking a break, I don’t have to be so strict, I deserve to celebrate, I can reign it in if I regain too much. And it’s this cycle, which is super common, but it’s this cycle that has the potential to lead you on a downward spiral backwards towards your old habits.

So is it self-sabotage? Is it justification? Or is it something else entirely? And that is where we’re gonna go today.

We are going to dive in and explore why, when you’re making progress, or why when you’ve hit your goals, you turn around and undo it. Then we’re gonna talk about why this is hurting you. And it’s hurting you from more than just a health perspective, okay? And then most importantly, we’re gonna talk about how to break this cycle.

I want you to recognize when you’re going backwards on your goals so you can stop it in its tracks and stay consistent. And I’ve got some ideas for how to do that. So first, let’s start by identifying what’s really going on here when you make progress only to turn around and backtrack because you’ve made progress.

So is this self-sabotage? Well let’s talk about what self-sabotage actually is, especially in the context of the habit of healthy eating. So I think of self-sabotage as a subconscious resistance to long-term success. It’s doing things that undermine your own goals or success. So eating cake after you’ve hit a new low on the scale, as an example.

And it’s so interesting because self-sabotage is a pattern where you undo your progress even when you logically want to keep going and keep making progress. Self-sabotage runs directly counter to your goal. But what’s so interesting about self-sabotage is that you’re doing it to yourself.

It’s almost like you flipped a switch and after weeks or months of making progress and moving forward, a switch flips and you go in the complete opposite direction from your goals. And the question that naturally follows here is why? Why would someone self-sabotage?

Why would you change your life and change your habits and eat more protein and cut back on processed food and have more veggies, only to turn around and go on a food bender? Well, first, you may have a fear of maintaining the success you have.

If you have struggled with your habits or if you have struggled with your weight loss for years and now you’ve finally gotten to your goal, you may be nervous about what comes next. If you have yo-yoed and gained and lost the same 10 or 20 or more pounds for decades, well, then it only makes sense that keeping your weight off might feel unfamiliar and unsustainable. So remember that your brain likes what is familiar and comfortable.

So if you have a long history of losing and regaining weight, your brain remembers that. So when you get to your goal and when things are working out in your favor, your brain might start to freak out on you.

You may start thinking to yourself, well, how long until I blow it? How long before I mess up again and gain it all back? Because if that’s what you’ve done before, you can rest assured your brain will go there and entertain that possibility again. So your brain will naturally want to revert because that’s what it’s always done.

Or you may self-sabotage because you have not yet adopted the identity that aligns with your behaviors. So if you still see yourself as someone who struggles with her weight, or if you still see yourself as an unhealthy person, or if you still see yourself as someone who cannot keep weight off, then that is the identity that you will live into.

Remember what we know about identity. Whatever you believe about yourself is what you will go out into the world and prove true. So if you do not believe that you’re someone who can lose weight and keep it off and maintain healthy eating habits, your success will be temporary.

And this is why working on your identity and working on what you believe about yourself is so, so important. Honestly, it’s just as important as working on the habits themselves and what you put on your plate and in your mouth, because you cannot live a new life built with the same identity as your old life.

So if you still see yourself as someone who struggles with her weight, it will be really easy to backtrack and regain the weight. And what that also means is that if you want to identify as a healthy person, or if you want to identify as someone who is able to maintain a healthy weight, you have to practice believing that about yourself. And more importantly, you have to act in a way that aligns with that belief. Meaning you have to continue to eat healthy. You continue to make choices that keep you at a weight where you feel good.

So it’s a cycle. Your actions support your identity and your identity informs your actions. So we need to make sure that your actions are lining up with the kind of person you wanna be. And another reason you might self-sabotage is because there is comfort in old habits. This may be stating the obvious, but change is hard.

Adopting new habits and sticking with them is hard. If you’re used to going out and eating treats or if you typically don’t think twice about whether or not to get ice cream because it’s the weekend, well, it’s gonna feel hard when you shake that up. And your brain will feel it and it will remind you of that. Even though the new habits you’re building are helping you in the long term, your brain doesn’t really care about that and it just wants the ice cream already because that’s what it knows and that’s what you’ve always done.

So it can be really easy to go back to old habits that bring us comfort because that’s what your brain wants. It wants what it knows, and that’s the ice cream. So if you find yourself repeatedly undoing your progress, despite wanting to keep it, you may be engaging in self-sabotage for one or more of those reasons.

Now, let’s contrast self-sabotage to justification because while they often go hand-in-hand, they’re different. Justification is when you offer yourself a logical excuse that makes your decision feel reasonable in the moment. You’re giving yourself a reason for doing something. And when you’ve made significant progress towards your goals, that is a prime time for the justifications to start surfacing.

And it makes sense. You’ve proven to yourself that you’re capable of change. You’ve proven that you’re in control of yourself. You’ve got evidence of success. And when this happens, these are some of the most common justifications that come up. You might be thinking, I’ve been good for so long, I deserve this. This one weekend, or this one dinner, or this one party, this won’t hurt. Or this one, which comes up all the time. I know how to lose the weight, so if I regain a little, I can just lose it again, no big deal.

So this one is by far the most common justification that comes up when you’ve made a lot of progress or when you’ve reached your goal. And this one is sneaky and especially challenging, so I wanna break this one down for you. So at first go, it seems totally reasonable to think to yourself, hey, I’ve already lost the weight, I got this.

So if I gain a little bit, it’s no big deal, I can just turn it up on my habits and lose the weight again. It might seem logical and reasonable and maybe even empowering to think that way, right? If you’ve successfully lost the weight before, why wouldn’t you be able to turn around and do it again?

But here is why believing this justification can be a total trap. When you think, “No big deal, I can just re-lose it”, what you’re doing is removing the urgency or immediacy out of your decisions in the moment. It also takes away accountability because it makes regaining your weight seem temporary and it minimizes it so that it’s not a big deal.

And so why is this even a problem? Well, remember that weight regain rarely happens all at once. You do not gain five pounds overnight after eating your ice cream, right? The regain is gradual. But often, by the time you realize that you’ve been relaxing too much and need to tighten things up and get back on track, you may be up 10 or more pounds.

So thinking to yourself, “I can just lose it again,” minimizes the progress you’ve made, and it makes the small regains feel harmless. But those small regains add up and they add up fast. So it’s not a big deal in the moment, but it actually is because all of those decisions that are “no big deal” add up.

And then plus, don’t forget about the metabolic implications of gaining and losing the same weight over and over again. That cycle of gaining and losing, it wreaks havoc on your metabolism and it makes it harder to keep the weight off once you do lose it. The hit to your metabolism is real and the more you do this and regain and re-lose the same weight, the more your metabolism suffers.

And physiology aside, the mental toll that regaining and re-losing the same five or 10 pounds has can be exhausting. And last, believing this justification puts an enormous amount of pressure on your future self to clean up what your present self creates. When you tell yourself, “Hey, it’s no big deal. If I regain and can’t fit into my pants, I can just lose it again,” that is putting the onus on your future self to be able to take that weight off.

But remember that your future self is gonna be busy, stressed, tired, and dealing with a full life just like the present you is. So do you really want to add the stress of re-losing weight to your future self’s to-do list? I don’t think so. So think about how hard the current you had to work to take the weight off in the first place. Do you really want to pass it on to the future you two or three months from now? No.

So with that in mind, what if instead of deciding, “I can fix this later,” you consider for yourself, how can I make choices now that my future self will actually thank me for? And I know this is not easy. This takes work. It takes staying engaged with yourself. It takes staying off autopilot. But honestly, that’s what this kind of work is gonna require of you. There is no point at which you just hang it up and say, “All done.”

I would love to tell you that there’s a finish line and you don’t have to think about the consequences of your choices anymore, but that magical time does not exist for any of us. If you want to maintain your habits and maintain the progress you’ve made, you don’t get to just turn off. The choices are still there for you to make every day. And if you’re always negotiating with yourself and putting the work off for later, you’re really not in control. Instead, you’re rationalizing your way out of your own progress.

So, so far, we’ve looked at whether backtracking is self-sabotage, justification, or maybe both. But could it be something else? Could it be the arrival fallacy? So I wanna highlight this specifically because it’s a huge mindset trap that can completely shift how you view your progress.

So the arrival fallacy is the mistaken belief that reaching a specific goal will bring lasting happiness, fulfillment, or satisfaction. So it’s the idea that once you hit a big milestone, whether that’s a lower number on the scale, a certain level of fitness, or some other health goal, that everything will feel different, better, complete. But that is not how it works. So in the context of weight loss, the arrival fallacy is thinking that once you reach your goal weight, life will somehow be transformed. But then you get there and nothing magical happens.

You step on the scale, you see a number you’ve been working really hard for, and that’s it. It’s just a number. Your daily stressors, responsibilities, and challenges, they’re all still there. Your work stress is still there. Your family dynamics have not changed. Life is still life, but now you just weigh less. And this realization can be disorienting.

Instead of feeling accomplished and motivated to maintain your progress, you might feel a little let down or even disappointed. And you might think, is this all there is? Now what? And if the goal itself didn’t deliver the lasting happiness that you expected, it’s easy to lose motivation and slip back into your old habits.

So why does this happen? Well, it’s because true success isn’t about reaching the goal. It’s in learning to enjoy the process that gets you there. If you only see your habits as a temporary means to an end, those habits won’t stick. If you grind through a restrictive diet, pushing through misery just to hit a certain number on the scale, you’re going to be tempted to abandon those habits the moment you reach your goal.

This is why joy in the process matters. Yep, I said it, joy. And here’s why. This is your life we’re talking about. If you’re gonna put in the effort to change your habits, those changes need to be realistic, sustainable, and fulfilling. They need to be things you actually want to do for the long haul, because there is no finish line in this journey. Even when you hit your goal, you’re not done. Maintaining progress requires the same habits that created it in the first place. And that is exactly why it’s essential to build habits you can live with, not ones you’re just enduring until you reach your goal.

If your approach is miserable, it’s not going to last. But if you find joy in the way you eat, move, and take care of yourself, you won’t feel the need to relax or take a break from your progress. You’ll simply be living in a way that keeps you feeling good. So the goal is not just hitting a number on the scale, but learning to live in a way that keeps you feeling good for the long haul, for life.

Now that we’ve talked about the possible causes of backtracking, let’s talk about their impact. Let’s talk about how thinking, I got here, now I can relax. Let’s talk about the consequences of this pattern of thinking and how this might play out for you in real time.

So first, as you can imagine, deciding I got here, I can relax now. That is putting you on a super slippery slope. This is opening the door to a path that you may not wanna take. And it’s most likely going to be subtle. It can start with one thing, like ice cream, or it might be something small, like I’ll just take a break this weekend. And in the moment, that one choice in isolation doesn’t seem like a big deal. It doesn’t really matter. But I will argue, in fact, that it does matter.

So if you remember a few weeks ago, I put out a podcast about how the little things don’t matter, but they actually do. I had a number of people reach out after that episode, so I think I struck a nerve with that one, but in a good way. And the point I want to bring out today is that we can do a really great job of convincing ourselves that this one little thing doesn’t really matter, but that’s not really true. Each choice or each little thing that you think doesn’t really matter actually lowers your resistance to the next choice.

It’s like what my client shared. She started out with ice cream and didn’t think it would be a big deal. But that ice cream set off a cascade that led to more desserts, more treats, and more sugar than she planned. She said she finished the weekend feeling gross because it was way more sugar than she had had in months. And it started with one decision. I did it. I got here. I can relax. And that opened the door for her to do it over and over again.

So even though it might seem like no big deal in the moment, which is true, it isn’t a big deal in the moment. It becomes a big deal when it leads to more and more decisions that are not in line with your plan. It’s the compounding effect of multiple small choices that all add up and that’s when it becomes a problem.

Alright, so beyond the slippery slope that can happen when you decide to relax on your habits. Let’s not forget about the very real mental and physical impact this has.

And again, I’ll refer back to my client. Her word was gross. She said the weekend ended, she got back to her plan and ate what she planned, but she said when she ate her cabbage, it tasted super bland. In fact, she said most of the healthy foods that she went back to eating tasted bland, which makes sense. After an ultra processed food bender, you can expect that foods like fruit, veggies, and protein are probably gonna taste different.

So you may not feel at your best physically. You may feel bloated. You may feel sluggish. You may be dragging for a bit, your energy level may not be so great. And yes, food can do that to you. Think about how you feel after you eat a ton of sweets or candy or dessert or greasy fast food. How do you feel? Probably not so great, right?

So if you backtrack and start loosening up on what you’re eating, you’re probably gonna feel it physically, but you’re also gonna feel it mentally. So please remember, this is not about the ice cream. It is not about the cookies or the cake or whatever little thing you decided on. There’s a bigger issue at stake here, And that is the inevitable frustration, guilt, and second guessing of yourself that happens when you reach your goal and turn around and backtrack.

This may be where the negative self-talk shows up in full force. If you have a history of regaining and re-losing the same weight, this is prime time for all kinds of negative self-talk to surface. You might start thinking to yourself, see, I knew this was only temporary. I can’t stick to things. There’s no way I’m going to keep this weight off. This was a fluke. This is all for nothing. And you may start to spiral.

And honestly, that spiral will have more of a negative impact than any one dish of ice cream will have. So the issue here is not the food. That honestly is secondary. Instead the issue here is the mental gymnastics that often follow after you’ve made choices that set you back. So we need to find a way for you to recover ASAP without it becoming a downward spiral. And I’ll get some more on how to do that in just a few minutes.

And another consequence of backtracking after you’ve hit your goals is that it can erode the relationship that you built with yourself when you created the healthy habits that got you to your goal in the first place. I talked about the cycle that is so common with habit change. It’s on again, off again. You work hard, you make progress, then you relax too much to the point that you undo your progress, Then you start over, rinse and repeat.

And again, while the physical damage is real and you’ll see a hit to your metabolism, there’s something much bigger at stake here, and that is your self-trust. The more you repeat this on again, off again cycle, the more you weaken your ability to maintain success, and the less you will trust yourself to maintain what you have created. And it makes sense. If you regularly cycle between being all in and letting loose, it’s gonna be hard to establish an identity of someone who follows through. It’s gonna be hard to truly live into the identity of a healthy person because you’re flipping back and forth.

So it’s not just about the choice. It’s not just about the weight regain. It’s about the message that you’re sending to your brain about who you are and who you’re becoming by your actions. But when your actions are inconsistent, your brain’s gonna have a hard time believing that you’re serious about changing your habits, changing your identity, and changing your life.

And again, what this all adds up to is this essential take-home. Weight loss is not just about the scale. It’s about building and maintaining self-trust that you can be consistent with your habits and that you can keep your results. And that matters way more than any one number on the scale.

All right, so now that we’ve talked through why you might backtrack and the impact of backtracking, let’s talk about what to do instead. I’ve got a number of different mindset shifts and tools to consider here to help you with this so that you don’t have to keep running through the cycle of working hard, making progress, and undoing progress.

So first, If you want to break this cycle, one of the most powerful things you can do is change the way you see yourself. I’m talking about identity here. I will repeat this until forever, but what I do with my clients is not about dieting.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m not a weight coach, I’m a life coach. And that’s because real lasting change is not just about what you eat, it’s about how you think about yourself. And that’s the key shift. Instead of seeing yourself as someone who is on a diet, you need to start seeing yourself as someone who simply lives a healthy lifestyle.

Do you see the difference here? It’s huge. When you’re someone on a diet, that implies a temporary effort, something with a start and a finish. You go on a diet, you go off a diet. It’s like flipping a switch, but that’s not what we’re doing here. This isn’t about going on or off anything. This is about changing your life. And that shift starts in your mind. It’s your mindset. It means practicing a new way of thinking. This is just how I eat. This is just how I take care of myself. And not because you’re forcing it. Not because you’re on some rigid plan, but because this is who you are becoming through your actions.

If you don’t actively work on adopting this mindset, your success will be temporary because your identity drives your actions and your actions reinforce your identity. So if you still see yourself as someone who struggles, you’ll keep proving that true. But if you start seeing yourself as a healthy person, someone who follows through, who makes choices that supports her wellbeing, then that is who you’ll become. This isn’t optional. If you want lasting change, you have to shift your identity to match it. This is non-negotiable.

The next thing you can do is redefine what relaxing actually means when it comes to your habits. Because here’s the thing, taking a break doesn’t have to mean going completely off the rails. So whether it’s a dinner out, a vacation, or a birthday party, you get to decide in advance what that looks like so you don’t end up undoing the progress you’ve worked so hard for.

So I want to get back to something my client said because it really struck me and it led me to this point of redefining relaxing. When she was telling me about the ice cream she ate, she said, “I can finally have something I’ve been deprived of.” And that’s where we zoned in.

Because the idea here is that changing your habits is not meant to leave you feeling deprived. So I’ll share something I commonly say to my clients. Nothing is off limits, okay? Nothing is off limits. So if you want cake, you have the cake. If you want ice cream, you can have ice cream. And the real question here is how much indulgence actually works for you?

Because here’s what happens when you tell yourself certain foods are completely off limits. Then you create an all or nothing mindset. You either resist with white knuckling and muster willpower, or you give in and go all out. But the reality is you can have whatever you want, but having whatever you want, whenever you want, will not get you to your goals.

So the shift here is learning to make decisions from a place of empowerment instead of from a place of restriction. So instead of thinking, I really want this but I can’t have it, you shift to I choose to have this, or I choose not to have this. One mindset leaves you feeling deprived. The other leaves you feeling empowered and in control.

And the second piece is practicing moderation. If you love ice cream, then part of the work is learning how to enjoy it without it turning into a free-for-all. And the more you practice this, the more you practice allowing yourself to have the foods you enjoy without spiraling, the easier it becomes.

So when you combine these two things, changing how you think about food and learning to indulge without overdoing it, relaxing is going to look very different. It no longer means letting go of all your habits. Instead, it becomes a natural, intentional part of your lifestyle. And that’s what actually leads to stability, which is what we’re aiming for.

And another tool you can use is to decide your boundaries ahead of time. My goal is that you eat foods you enjoy and that you learn how to eat them in a way that works into your life and keeps you on track towards your health and fitness goals. So that means we have to find a way for you to enjoy foods without going off the chain. And one way you can do that is to make your decision ahead of time. Decide in advance what you’re going to do once you meet your goal. So for example, if you decide that you want dessert, make that choice, but give yourself some guardrails around it.

You can decide, if I want dessert, I’ll have it, and I’ll have one serving, and I’ll get on with my life. That’s it. Make the decision in advance. And this is just another place where having a plan will help you. When you decide in advance how you’re going to treat yourself, then the next step is practicing following through. Planning ahead removes the impulse decision-making.

So imagine what it would feel like to have hit your goal and then head to a family party that same day. What would it feel like to tell yourself, all right, I’m gonna have a piece of birthday cake, it’s going to be delicious, and I’m gonna eat that one piece, and then I will move on. Imagine what that would feel like versus walking into your party thinking, all right, I can relax, I can eat cake now without any plan in place. The outcomes are going to be different here.

So please do yourself a favor, think ahead, think about how you wanna feel at the end of that party and make some decisions ahead of time so you’re not caught off guard when someone offers you a second piece of cake or a cookie or a scoop of ice cream or a glass of wine. Be prepared.

Next, another approach here is to decide on a different reward. So we haven’t talked about this yet, but what’s really going on here is that when you make progress and then you use that as a reason to relax and ease up, it’s like you’re using food as a reward. You’re rewarding your progress with food, which is essentially what we’re trying to undo in the first place.

So instead, I would encourage you to find another way of rewarding your progress that does not involve food. If you step on the scale and see a number you haven’t seen in a while and you want to celebrate it, by all means do that.

Acknowledge the work you’ve done, but consider if food is how you want to celebrate. What if you got yourself a new outfit, a new piece of workout gear, or a massage, or a new book. There are loads and loads of ways to celebrate your successes that do not involve food. So I encourage you to find something that makes sense for you.

And another consideration when you hit your goal without resorting to backtracking is to acknowledge the many other victories that come along with your weight loss.

So things like more energy, improved consistency, discipline, and improved relationship with food. And let’s not forget self-advocacy. Acknowledge all of those wins too. And yes, I get it. These measures are not as easy to quantify as a number on the scale, but honestly, these are more important. They will stay with you way longer than any one number on the scale will. Okay? So please do not discount your non-scale victories.

I want you to call upon them when you find yourself thinking, “All right, I can relax now.” Because what happens when you do relax and you backtrack? Not only will your weight loss go backwards, but so will the other benefits that you got in the process too. Your consistency weakens, your energy goes down, your belief in your ability to follow through also goes down. So it’s not just your weight that goes backwards. The non-scale wins also go backwards.

But the more you can recall these, and the more you can remind yourself of the wins that you have worked so hard for, the more you might think twice before backpedaling. And this is exactly why it’s so important to reframe the way that you think about progress. Because when you shift your focus from just the number on the scale to all the other benefits that you’ve gained, your consistency, your energy, your ability to follow through, it changes the way you see your habits. It makes it easier to stay engaged instead of falling into the “I can relax now” trap.

And last, this brings me to the last concept, playing the long game. Because the reality is this work that you’re doing is not about short-term wins. Instead, it’s about creating a lifestyle that actually lasts. Remember, progress is not something you achieve, it’s something you sustain. So the goal is not that you eat a certain way and hang on and white-knuckle it for as long as necessary to get to your goal weight only to relax because you’ve arrived.

No, the goal is not to arrive anywhere. Instead, the goal is to build a collection of habits that become your lifestyle and that those habits are behaviors you actually want to maintain. We have to re-examine how you’re looking at your choices and your progress in the context of building a new lifestyle.

Because as long as you think that once you’ve hit your goal weight, you’ve arrived, then you’ll always struggle with the, I-can-relax-now trap. And honestly, even thinking I can relax, that implies tension and it implies force, but that is not the way you want to build your new lifestyle. Okay, it’s not about forcing yourself into anything to the point that you need to relax. Do you see that? I don’t want this to be tense and strained and hard and forced for you.

So no, I’m also not saying this is gonna be a cakewalk. To be clear, changing your habits is hard, but if you adjust your mindset to go with it, then it will not feel as strained. If you remind yourself that you are exerting free will and you can choose whatever you want, but you’re in fact making choices that align with what a healthy person would do, then it will feel different. It will feel less like coercion and more like empowerment. And that is how I want you to be making your food decisions, from a place of empowerment.

So that when you reach your goal, it doesn’t feel like it’s been such a slog to get there. It doesn’t feel so tense. And in turn, you’ll feel less of a need to relax in the first place. Because in reality, the choices you made that got you to your goal are designed to be with you for life. That’s how you create a new lifestyle.

So there it is. We just went over why you tell yourself you can relax once you hit your goal, the consequences of this type of thinking, and what you can do about it. So if you’ve been caught in the cycle of making progress, then loosening up, and then having to start over, please know you are not alone. This is such a common challenge, but it’s also one that you can absolutely break free from.

It starts with shifting your mindset from seeing healthy habits as temporary to seeing them as part of who you are. And when you do that, you won’t feel the need to relax because you’re already living in a way that feels both healthy and sustainable. That right there, that is the goal. And if you want help with this, let’s talk. When you coach with me, you’ll build habits that stay with you for the long haul.

Check out my website, send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact, and let’s talk about how to create habits that you don’t need to take a break from. Thank you again for hanging out with me, and I’ll catch you again next week.

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You’ll also find strength training tips to help you train smarter and see real results. My goal is to help you get strong and this strength-training guide will help you do it. Go to CarrieHollandMD.com/build strength and check it out.

Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.