Ep #135: Why Diets Don’t Work and What to Do Instead

This is a Strong is a Mindset podcast, episode number 135. If your diet isn’t working, let’s find out why, and let’s fix 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 going to talk about reasons why your diet might not be working. If you have tried multiple diets, or if you are someone who swears up and down that nothing works for you, then I hope this episode will help you.

So I’ve had a number of clients lately, a number of new clients who have started working with me. And while their stories are different, I noticed a common theme among them. They all shared a common underlying belief, and that belief is nothing works. I had one woman in particular who shared an extensive, very long list of all the diets and programs she’s tried, including Noom, keto, intermittent fasting, macro counting, then calorie counting in MyFitnessPal, and everything in between with no luck.

And she said what I have heard so many women say before her. The diet works for a little while, maybe a few weeks or a few months at most, and then the weight comes back.

So if you can relate and have been through countless diets and programs only to end up right back where you started, let’s troubleshoot. And that is what we’re gonna do today. I’m going to walk you through some of the most common reasons your diet isn’t working. So see if one or if multiple of these reasons apply to you. And then of course, we’re gonna talk about what to do about it.

My goal for today is to help you get really clear on some of the most common pitfalls that could be tripping you up in your diet. And then I want to empower you to make choices that make sense for you where you are right now in your life so that your diet lasts. The goal is not to see how much misery you can tolerate. The goal is not to make this overly difficult or complicated. Instead, the goal is to make your diet something that is subtle, unobtrusive, uncomplicated, and it just fits into your life.

And honestly, of the many issues I have helped clients address, that would be one of the biggest. Sometimes you let your diet get so big that it takes over your life. And honestly, it’s not surprising. Think about it. How many people do you know who are keto or who are whole food plant-based or who do intermittent fasting? And how do you know this?

Okay, so I’m totally generalizing here, but often we know who’s doing what because in our world, it’s not uncommon to identify by your diet. So whether that’s vegetarian, vegan, keto, intermittent fasting, or some shade in between. Sometimes you take your diet to such a level that you not only identify with it, but you over identify with it. And sometimes you over identify with it to a point that it gets in the way and your diet gets in the way of your life.

So when you are leaving a vacation early because you can’t find anything that fits in with your meal plan, or when you are starving yourself at a party because there is nothing there that fits into your food rules, these are both true stories. These are both true situations that my clients have brought to our sessions. So when you’re turning your life upside down and inside out to make it work with your diet, well, we need to talk about that.

When your diet is getting in the way of you living your life, then we’ve got a problem. And that is exactly what we’re trying to avoid. My goal is to help you find a way of eating that fits into your life, not the other way around, okay? If your diet is going to work, it has to fit into your life because the idea is that over time, that diet is going to become your lifestyle, okay? It’s going to become a habit and part of who you are. And the way you eat just operates in the background. It’s not such a big deal. You don’t have to spend so much time and energy and brain space worrying about how you’re gonna find the right macro split at the local restaurant while you’re on vacation. Your diet just fits into your life and it’s not such an ordeal. It’s not such a project, all right?

So let’s talk about this. I’ve pared it down to some of the most common reasons that your diet isn’t working and what you can do about it. Okay, so let’s go. So first, let’s talk about the diet itself. There are a number of common things that come up that make it hard for you to stick with the diet. So let’s pull them apart.

First and most common by far is that you’re not following your diet because that diet is too restrictive. So this is where you do something extreme, like cut out an entire food group or restrict the time you can eat to a window that just does not work for your life or restrict your calories so low that you get hangry. And I point all of these out because they’re all different shades of restriction.

And you may be hearing this and thinking, yep, I know, restriction does not work. But I bring it up time and time again because too many people try to strong arm your way through restricting yourself only to crash and burn. So I will keep saying this as much as I need to because it is just that important. If your diet is too restrictive, it is not gonna work for the long haul.

So you may be able to get by for a few weeks of not eating carbs or giving up pizza or chocolate. Or if you try intermittent fasting, you may find that you can do it for a few weeks. But again, if this diet does not fit into your life. it is not gonna last. And then what happens is that you end up going from one extreme to the other. You cut out so much and the stress of restricting either what you eat, how much you eat, or when you eat gets to be too much and then you rebound.

And then when you do rebound, it’s not a little one. Instead, your rebound is a doozy because you’ve been overly hungry for too long and when you do finally crack, your body sends all kinds of signals to overeat and it becomes an ugly, vicious cycle. You restrict yourself too hard, you can’t sustain it, and then you quit because it’s too much and you rebound in a big way and overeat until you can’t stand it and then start the cycle all over again. It’s so common, it’s predictable, and it’s avoidable. It’s avoidable by choosing a diet that is not overly restrictive and does not cut out all of the foods that you enjoy. And it makes sense for your life and your schedule and includes enough calories so that you don’t get hangry. Okay?

Another reason that your diet may not be working is if that diet is not appropriate for you. So this is when you take a one-size-fits-all approach, which generally does not work because the diet you choose has to meet your own unique individual needs.

So as an example, say your friend decides to start a vegan diet and she loses a ton of weight eating tempeh, tofu, lentils, fruit, and veggies. So then you decide for yourself, well, if my friend became a vegan and she lost a ton of weight, I can try that too. But what if it doesn’t work for you? What if you are someone who does better with meat? What if all those beans make you bloated? What if you feel better and stay fuller longer with animal-based protein? What if your workouts are better and you find that you put on more muscle when you include lean animal protein in your diet? Then what?

Or what if you decide that because half your coworkers are doing intermittent fasting and they’re all losing weight, you should try it too? So you restrict your eating to an eight hour window and you try it and you are hungry. And I would say this is a common roadblock I have coached many of my clients through.

I have had clients who have tried intermittent fasting two, three, or more times, and it works for a brief period while she musters her willpower to make it to the start of her eating window. But over time, she gets more and more hungry and finds that by the time her eating window opens, she’s overdoing it.

And this is especially true if you are an early morning exerciser. So for some of you, early morning exercise means you’re up at the crack of dawn. But if you set an eating window that starts at 11 or noon, you may find that you’re overly hungry by the time that eating window opens. Now, if this works for you and you don’t get hungry, fine. But what I’ve seen more often than not is the opposite. Combining a legit early morning workout with intermittent fasting that starts later in the day sets you up for significant hunger. And so for some of you, this just does not work.

And the point here is that you are not meant to fit your diet into a pre-cut mold, okay? Do not feel that you have to be vegan because it’s the cool thing to do and everyone under the sun is telling you about their whole food plant-based vegan diet. Do not feel compelled to commit to an intermittent fasting approach when you like breakfast or you have early morning workouts that leave you hungry by 10. Do not feel like you have to fit into the mold of a certain particular diet because when you try to follow a diet that does not fit into your life, meaning it does not take into account your schedule, your workouts, your food preferences, and your tastes, you’re going to find it hard to stick with that diet for the long haul.

So this is why I do not promote a one-size-fits-all diet plan. You need a diet that is unique to you. So if you like seitan, eat seitan, but that does not mean you can’t eat chicken too. You can eat plant-based foods and you can eat meat. The vegan police, they’re not coming for you, okay? Your diet does not have to have a name or a title and you do not have to identify by your diet, okay? Instead, we have to find whatever way of eating works for you and your unique needs. And when you do that, which will be through trial and error, let me be clear, you will find that it is a whole lot easier to stick with it, okay? You’re not shoving yourself into a vegan box if you like meat, that is not gonna work, okay? So next, another reason your diet may not work is when you are overly focused on calories, but you’re not looking at where those calories are coming from. And so often when this happens, you end up eating a diet that is not balanced from a nutritional perspective.

So I’ve seen this play out a few different ways. So first and very commonly, this shows up as you skipping out on entire food groups altogether, like carbs or fat. This is when you operate under the false belief that carbs or fat are the enemy and you respond by leaving them out of your diet altogether. But carbs and fat are not your enemy.

So instead of ignoring or vilifying food groups, this is where you can get choosy. You can be choosy about the carbs or the fats that you eat. So this means you choose whole, unprocessed carbs like fruit, veggies, potato, quinoa, brown rice instead of refined white carbs like pasta or bread. Or for fats, you choose healthy fats like olive oil, whole eggs, nuts, nut butters, or fatty fish like salmon instead of super fatty cuts of red meat or ultra processed foods like chips and cookies that have fat and sugar pumped into them for flavor. So there’s a difference, okay? Not all carbs are the same. Not all proteins and fats are the same. So get choosy about which ones you have in your diet and you’ll create a balanced diet that still meets your needs nutritionally without eliminating whole food groups.

Or another way I see this play out is when you zone in and only eat foods that are super low in calories. So maybe you eat fruit and veggies, which is great, but you avoid foods that are higher in calories like certain lean proteins or healthy fats because you’ve decided that they are too high in calories. But then when you do that, your overall intake may be too low and you can end up missing out on the satiety that fiber and lean protein and healthy fats give you.

So yes, the amount of calories you take in matters. What matters just as much, if not more, is the nutrient quality of the calories that you’re taking in. So I talk all the time about high volume, low calorie foods. Those are things that you can eat a lot of and they don’t contribute a lot to your overall caloric intake. So those are things like fruit, veggies, low fat cottage cheese, even oatmeal. And those are foods where you can eat a decent volume and they don’t pack on a ton of calories. And while those are an important component of your diet, they should be balanced with lean proteins, whole grains, and healthy fats. Because even though those foods may be more calorically dense, that’s okay. You need both. We’re not aiming for a volumetrics diet here. It’s a balance of both. High-volume, low-calorie foods plus low-volume, high-calorie foods that deliver on protein and fiber and nutrients.

Because remember, you can lose weight on a diet of largely ultra-processed foods or a diet made-up of mostly restaurant or takeout food, but that is not going to deliver much from a nutritional standpoint.

You’ll be eating mostly low volume, high calorie foods, and that’s not going to amount to too much food overall, and it’s probably not gonna give you the vitamins, the minerals, the nutrients, or the fiber you need. And again, the underlying theme in each of these scenarios is a focus on calories without considering where those calories are coming from or the makeup of those calories. And it’s really not one or the other, it’s both. Calories are important, but nutrient quality is just as important. you wanna maximize and get the most out of your food, both from a volume and a nutrition perspective.

All right, and last, another reason that the diet itself may be the reason it’s not working is when your diet makes promises that sound too good to be true. Because in reality, if it sounds too good to be true, it is, and it’s not gonna last. So I get really disheartened when I see stuff on social media promising that you will lose 10 pounds in a week, or when I see ads for gummies and shakes that promise the pounds will just melt away. I get asked about this stuff all the time. And while I don’t wanna trash talk anything, I do think that plans and programs and systems that promise drastic results are setting you up for a serious failure.

So often, these programs that sound too good to be true are a combination of the last three things we just talked about. They are too restrictive, they are one-size-fits-all, and they are not nutritionally balanced. So when you take a diet and add all three of those qualities to it, the outcome is generally not sustainable. You may be able to stick with it for a few weeks and you may see drastic weight loss, but the problem is the methods you use to get to that drastic weight loss are not compatible with real life for the longterm. And that’s when it becomes unsustainable and you quit because it’s too much. And that’s when you rebound and gain the weight back. And honestly, that is even more damaging both physically and mentally than never having lost the weight in the first place.

So please hear me, there is no pill or shake or system that circumvents the work. It would be awesome if there was a magic bullet, but there isn’t. Do not be fooled into believing that a diet that promises extreme results is going to last. It won’t, okay? You cannot shortcut this. If it sounds too good to be true, it is, okay?

So to review, your diet may be the reason your plan is not working for a number of reasons. The diet may be too restrictive or it may be one-size-fits-all that does not take into account your unique needs, or it only looks at calories without looking at food quality, or it makes empty promises that are too good to be true.

All right, so now that we’ve talked through the ways the diet itself may be contributing to it not working, let’s talk about your mindset. So there are a number of common themes that come up, and I wanna pull these apart for you. So now we’re looking beyond your diet, and now we’re looking at your brain and your mindset around your diet to see how that might be tripping you up. So first would be all or nothing thinking. Honestly, of every single factor I have talked about or will talk about in this episode, this is it. This is honestly the one that is hurting you the most. I would say that 95% or maybe even more of the clients that I have worked with have let all or nothing thinking get in their way.

So all or nothing thinking at its most basic level is when you let one mistake or one unhealthy food decision mean that your diet is ruined. This is where you have one chocolate chip cookie when you plan to have none, and you let that one cookie turn into three cookies, followed by ice cream, followed by a burger and fries for dinner, followed by waffles and a mimosa on Sunday, followed by I’ll start over again on Monday and reset.

So this happens so very commonly, especially in relation to following your diet on the weekends. It’s a shade of perfectionism with the motto of, if I can’t do it perfectly, why bother? It is very much black and white. You’re either all in eating 100% on point or you’re off the chain and there is no in between. So when you expect nothing less than perfection, you create an impossible standard for yourself that neither you nor any other human is able to uphold. You create a tremendous amount of pressure for yourself that feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop and it feels terrible.

So when you approach your diet with an all or nothing view and then you mess up, even if it’s only once and even if it’s only in a small way, it’s enough for you to give up entirely often under the guise of, well, if I can’t do it perfectly, I might as well mess up even more and go all out. It might as well thinking. You have one mess up and then you think to yourself, well, since I ate this pizza and blew it, might as well keep going and have the ice cream too. you let one mess up be a reason to keep messing up.

And what this does is cheat you of all the small wins that you have along the way. When you’re an all or nothing thinker, you may not appreciate the progress that you are making because you’re so caught up in the mess ups you’ve had. All or nothing thinking robs you of the successes of small wins because you’re too busy focusing on the pizza you had when you didn’t plan for it.

So instead of acknowledging all the positive choices you made for yourself, like loading your plate with veggies instead of French fries or skipping ice cream after dinner because you’re not hungry and you know that it’s a habit. Instead, you beat yourself up for the pizza and let that be a reason to throw in the towel.

And because of this, all or nothing thinking keeps you focused on the short-term instead of the long-term gains that are so essential to making your diet work. All or nothing thinking is short-sighted. When you are so focused on immediate perfection instead of long-term lifestyle change, then it would make sense that one misstep would totally throw you off because all you see is today and what is right in front of you. You get sidetracked by the handfuls of tips that you had and let that be a reason to give up altogether instead of letting that be a reason to ask yourself, what would I do differently next time?

So instead of being an all or nothing thinker, I would encourage you to practice allowing for and accepting imperfection. Ooh, I know, just saying the words, accept imperfection. That may not sit well with some of you, but the more you practice this And the more you practice recovering from your mistakes as quickly as possible, without it turning into a food bender, the easier it will be to make your diet something that lasts for the long haul.

All right, another way that your mindset can keep your diet from working is when you rely solely on external motivation to keep you going. So this can show up in a couple ways. The first way I see this play out is when you use something like an event, such as a wedding, a class reunion, or a vacation, for example, as the sole reason to stick to your diet. And while there is nothing wrong with having an external motivator to get you going, the problem happens when that event comes and goes. What do you do when your vacation is over? Or your reunion weekend ends? My question to this will always be, and then what? Meaning, what do you do next? When there isn’t an event, or a dress, or a swimsuit, or a race to keep you dialed in, then what do you do in order to stick with your plan? How do you maintain consistency with your diet once the thing you were working for has come and gone?

Okay, and another example of this is when you rely on other people’s approval to know whether or not you are succeeding. So this is seeking external validation for the work that you’re doing instead of giving it to yourself. I see this come up all the time. And when you require external validation or approval from someone else in order to know that you’ve done a good job, that is a setup for failure.

So again, while there is nothing wrong with wanting other people to approve of you, it becomes a problem when that need for external validation prevents you from validating yourself. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, but no amount of external validation will ever be enough if you have not given it to yourself first.

So I had a client who had lost a significant amount of weight to the point that she needed to buy clothes a few sizes smaller. And it was summertime and she went on a girl’s trip with some of her friends over a long weekend and she came back and was really bothered that none of her friends either noticed or said anything to her about her weight loss. She was really thrown off by this and it really upset her.

So we had to do some deep diving here and start pulling this apart. We had to figure out why her friend’s recognition was so important to her. And to put this into context, this woman was a rockstar. She was a full-time working parent. Two of her three children had special needs. She was back in school working towards an advanced degree and she was doing all the things. She’s working full-time, then coming home to her second shift of parenting full-time, getting kids where they need to be, getting everyone fed, and finding time for her own homework and studying.

So she was not new to working hard. But the fact that no one was calling out the work she was doing on her weight loss was getting to her and causing her to question, why bother? And what this led to was the realization that she used many of her achievements, including her weight loss, as a way of being accepted, both by her mom and by her friends. She had a complicated relationship with her mom and many of her successes were tied back to her desire for approval from her mom. And this need for approval carried over into her relationships with her friends. And so she felt that in order to be accepted, she needed to be acknowledged for the work that she had done in order to lose her weight.

So I just asked her to take a step back and asked if she acknowledged for herself the work that she had done, not just in her weight loss, but in all the other parts of her life. I asked if she validated herself. And as you might imagine, her answer was no. So that was where we had work to do. And so we spent a lot of time in subsequent sessions talking about what that meant. We talked about what it meant for her to give herself validation because she was new to it. And if it’s new or foreign to you as well, let’s talk about this for a second.

So validating yourself means acknowledging, accepting, and most importantly, valuing your thoughts, feelings, and experiences without the need for anyone else’s approval or reassurance, okay? So it means giving yourself permission to feel and think the way you do, that’s it. And you treat those feelings as valid and important regardless of how other people might perceive them.

Okay, this is so, so, so important. So self-validation means that you don’t wait for someone else to tell you the way to go in order to feel proud of the work that you did. You’re not holding out for someone to notice that you are three sizes smaller than the last time you saw each other, and you’re not waiting for her to congratulate you for it. It’s not making your feelings or your self-confidence dependent upon whether someone else notices the work you’ve done.

Instead, when you validate yourself, you acknowledge and congratulate yourself too. You don’t wait to get it from other people. You take care of yourself first by doing the work and second, by acknowledging yourself for that work. And then what happens is that people’s opinions and congratulation and acknowledgement become less and less important. And the work becomes something that you do for you and you alone.

So in essence, you are giving yourself what you need, and that is essential. All right, and next, another way your mindset is likely getting in the way of you sticking with your diet is if you have unrealistic expectations. And I will keep this simple. It is not realistic to expect drastic, dramatic weight loss in a short time using extreme measures. But that doesn’t stop you from having unrealistic expectations anyway.

We live in a world where you can get anything you want delivered to your door within one to two days. We also live in a world where we are being sold on empty promises that offer to change your life and get you thin in no time. So add to that, we as a species are impatient. We want what we want and we want it now. So all of this makes sense when it adds up to you feeling super impatient and frustrated when your results are slow to come. You may balk at a rate of a half a pound to one pound of weight loss per week. When in reality, you should be high-fiving yourself because that represents amazing progress. You may find yourself impatient and you may start to question if the diet you chose is the right one because it’s not delivering results fast enough. This comes up all the time.

So I’ll start working with a client and she’ll put some changes to her diet in place. She’ll start prioritizing protein at her meals. She’ll make it a point to get half her plate loaded with veggies at lunch and dinner. And she’ll do this for one month. And after that one month, she’ll wonder why she hasn’t lost more weight.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve run into this, but here’s the thing. In the grand scheme of things, two weeks or four weeks of eating lean protein and veggies, That is great. And please acknowledge the work that you’ve done in that month. But at the same time, the hard truth is that it’s gonna take longer and it’s gonna take months and months and really years of consistency in order to see change. And I just wanna be completely honest and transparent with you. If you are looking to change your life, change your habits and change your diet to lose weight, we’re talking long-term here. We’re talking about slow, small, but sustainable progress. And for many people, that could take years to achieve.

Two weeks or one month of eating in a calorie deficit, well, that is most definitely something, and you should be proud of that. That is not enough to undo decades of eating what. wherever you want. That is not enough to undo years of eating more calories than you need. And I know that may be oversimplifying, but I want you to be prepared that this takes a while. Building sustainable habits and determining a diet that helps you get to the weight you want, that takes time. Because we need to find something that is going to work for you for the long term.

It does not help if you hurry up and lose a ton of weight when you’ve done it in such a way that you can’t sustain it and end up regaining all the weight that you lost. That is even more frustrating. So it’s really important to be realistic with yourself about what to expect from your rate of weight loss.

So for some of you, that may be a half a pound per week. For others, it may be a pound per week. Maybe it’s a pound a month. And if you’re thinking, oh my God, that’s way too slow, I hear you. But the reality is, weight loss is never a linear trajectory straight downward. I wish it was, but for most of us, it looks like a roller coaster. And I want you to be prepared for that. I want you to manage expectations and realize that long lasting weight loss takes months or really years to sustain.

And because of this, it becomes really, really important to identify and highlight your non-scale victories along the way, because the scale is not always going to read in your favor, and that can be insanely frustrating. So on the days when the scale is not showing you a number you like, what else can you be proud of? Are you sleeping better? Are you feeling less winded? Are you crushing your workouts and building muscle? Do you feel better by eating whole, real unprocessed foods instead of ultra processed stuff? What else is there? And I encourage you to look for those non-scale victories because there really is so much more going on besides weight loss when you do the legit work of changing your habits, okay? All right, so now that we’ve talked about how both the diet itself and your mindset might be contributing to your diet not working, let’s talk about the last factor that’s likely contributing and that is your lifestyle. So one of the biggest roadblocks that gets in your way is when you don’t see changing your diet as a true legitimate lifestyle change. Instead, you may view your diet as a means to an end. I eat this way and then I lose weight. I have this salad for dinner and then I lose weight. It becomes a transaction. And this is the case for so many one-size-fits-all diets that you might’ve tried in the past and this is what contributes to their failure.

Many, if not most diets will tell you what to eat and what not to eat, and will promise that if you just follow along and follow the rules of the diet, the pounds will melt right off. But they don’t go much beyond that. So think about it. Keto in reality is fairly simple. Eat 50 grams of carbs or less per day to put your body into ketosis and you will lose weight. Intermittent fasting, also fairly straightforward. You choose your eating window and you eat only during that time and you will lose weight. Or if you choose a vegan diet, eat zero animal products, and you will lose weight. Do this, do that, and the weight comes off.

But while it seems fairly straightforward and most diets will tell you what to eat and what not to eat, there is something missing. These diets do not teach you how to eat, meaning they don’t teach you how to think so that your diet becomes sustainable. The keto diet does not address what to do when you want your grandma’s homemade sourdough bread that she made just for you. Intermittent fasting does not address what to do when you’re invited to a breakfast meeting at your favorite brunch place, but that meeting is hours before your eating window opens. A vegan diet does not address what to do when you want an amazing piece of fish that you caught yourself on vacation.

And beyond that, these diets don’t teach you how to plan. They don’t teach you how to manage cravings and urges. They don’t teach you how to manage your stress instead of eating it. They don’t teach you what to do if you have a long history of emotional eating. Most diets will tell you what to eat and what not to eat, and that’s all you’ve got.

So if you have not made this diet your lifestyle and you haven’t made your diet a habit, what happens is you end up relying on willpower to muster your way through. And this is when you start white knuckling it and that does not feel good. When all you’ve got is a set of rules, like eat this, don’t eat that, or eat at this time, you’ve got nothing to guide you when it gets hard. You just have actions and outcomes. Eat this, don’t eat that, and you lose weight. But it is not that simple.

So instead of focusing on the diet itself, like choosing keto or committing to an eight-hour eating window or swearing off all animal products, what if instead you focused on habits? Habits are your system. Habits are not your outcome. Instead, they are your process, and there’s a big difference there.

Sometimes when you choose a diet, you create a set of rules for yourself that is too strict, too extreme, and too much for you to follow all at once. But what if instead of getting so caught up in the number of carbs you’re eating, what if instead you decided to focus on filling your plate at least half full with veggies every day? Or what if instead you decided that you’re gonna spend 10 minutes on Sunday writing out your meals for the week so you know what you’re gonna have for dinner every night of your busy work week?

Or what if you decided that you’re gonna prepare two proteins on your day off so you’ve got them ready to go for the week ahead? What if you decided to focus on actually feeling your stress all the way through instead of eating in response to it? What if you decided to practice learning what your hunger and satiety cues are and eat according to those?

So do you see the difference here? The difference is focusing on your habits versus focusing on your diet. And if you’re gonna choose one, I would offer that you choose to focus on your habits. And here’s why. When you focus on your habits versus focusing on the diet itself, then you are drilling it down to the smallest behaviors that you can do repeatedly to move yourself forward. And that is your process.

When you focus on your habits, you practice taking action repeatedly so that it becomes your new lifestyle. So instead of being overly fixated on eating within a certain timeframe, instead you get really good at eating veggies with dinner. Instead of counting carbs and going back and forth as to whether or not to have bread, you practice following through on the meal plan you’ve written for yourself and getting really good at honoring what you say you’re going to do.

And what comes of this? What skills do you gain by focusing on your habits instead of focusing on the diet itself? You get lots of things like improved thinking. You get consistency, discipline, troubleshooting, planning, time management.

So when you focus on building habits, instead of focusing on the grams of carbs that you’re eating or what time it is and if your eating window has opened, that is when you build a foundation for change. That’s when you’re using a different part of your brain to think differently. Because my goal here is not that you find your next diet. There should be no next in this equation. Instead, the idea is that you find a way of eating that becomes your lifestyle.

Again, your diet should fit into your life in a way that becomes automatic and it becomes a habit. And this is instead of holding yourself to a diet that does not work for you while you try to strong arm your way through it so you can hurry up and lose the weight already.

So there is a big, big difference between taking prescribed action that comes from a cookie cutter diet plan versus taking action that comes from your own engaged thinking. You are not a robot. You are not a machine. You are not simply following instructions here. You are a thinking, feeling, being, and your diet needs to reflect that.

So you can’t just do it, you have to think. You have to consider what lifestyle changes you’re committed to making. You have to think about the behaviors that you’re actually willing to change. You have to think about whether you’re ready and willing to try and fail and try again in order to make a serious, true, legit lifestyle change, because your diet will not work if you do not make it a lifestyle. This is so much more than following instructions, okay?

So once again, it comes back to your thinking, as it always does. It does not matter if you’ve got five pounds to lose or if you’ve got 55 pounds to lose. The end result in your success is going to depend on how you think about the process.

So if you think to yourself, okay, going back to intermittent fasting again is what will get me back into smaller pants, that’s not gonna work. Or if you think to yourself, I can give up carbs if it means I drop 10 pounds, not gonna work. Or if you think, sure, I can learn to love tempeh when you really hate it, when you prefer eggs, not gonna cut it.

So if your diet isn’t working, take a step back and really think about why that might be the case. Is it too restrictive? Is it not designed for your unique needs? Is it the latest fad that cuts out foods that you love? Or is it that your mindset is working against you? Are you an all or nothing thinker? Do you rely on external motivators like events or people, but don’t have a reserve of internal motivation to keep you moving forward? Do you have unrealistic expectations about your rate of progress? And last, are you ready to make your changes into a new lifestyle? What is it for you?

So if your diet isn’t working, I hope this episode has given you some clarity as to why that might be. And whether it’s the diet itself, your mindset, or the way your lifestyle supports or does not support your goals, remember that no matter what is getting in the way of your diet working, your change starts with awareness. You cannot change your life without awareness, okay? My goal is to help you find a way of eating that fits into your life, aligns with your preferences, and feels sustainable for the longterm, because that is the only way the diet is going to work.

So take a second and think to yourself, what is one small adjustment that you can make to align your actions with your goals? So maybe it’s dialing in on your tendency towards all-or-nothing thinking and practicing getting right back to your plan after a misstep. Or maybe it’s planning one or two meals ahead of time to prevent decision fatigue. Or maybe it’s asking yourself, how hungry am I? Before you start eating your meals. So you’ve got an idea of how hungry you actually are before you start eating.

So whatever it is, pick something. You do not have to overhaul your diet right here, right now. Instead, try something. The smaller, the better. because that one small shift may be the step that starts turning things around for you, all right?

And if you want help with this, let’s go. When you coach with me, you will choose habits that fit into your life and you make them your lifestyle while we build the mindset to back it up. Check out my website, send me a message at www.Carriehollandmd.com/contact, and let’s talk about how changing your habits and changing your thinking will change your life, all right?

Thank you again for hanging out with me. I’ll catch you again next week. Hey, if you’re looking for your next great read, I’ve got you covered. Head over to CarrieHollandMD.com/books and download my list of most favorite reads. I’ve got two collections waiting for you. One is all about work-life balance. The other is a collection of books that have changed my life. I’ve referenced many of these books in the podcast, and now you can access those titles all in one place.

Again, that’s CarrieHollandMD.com/books. Check it out and find your next great read. 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.