It’s Not You, It’s the Diet

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Full Episode Transcript:

It’s Not You, It’s the Diet

Hey there career women, thanks for joining me today. I’m going to be sharing 3 big reasons why you might be having a tough time sticking with your diet, meal plan, diet plan, healthy eating plan, whatever you call it that you’re currently trying to adhere to.

And I’m going to tell you right now just as the title says, it’s not you, it’s the diet. Meaning, if you’re having a tough time with it, it doesn’t mean anything about you as a person, your strengths, your weaknesses.

It’s actually more about how our human brains are wired and the diet itself.

The purpose of doing this episode is for you to get that clarity that there’s nothing wrong with you. You aren’t weak. You don’t need more willpower.

And I fear that if you continue feeling badly about not being able to stick to any sort of diet or food plan, you’re going to make it mean something about you and completely give up on your hopes and dreams of having a healthier body and mind.

Okay, so I’m going to touch on these three different reasons that it may feel hard to stick with your diet, and I’m going to be intentional about the order of each of these, because one sort of leads to the next.

And if you’re not familiar with me, I’m Kate, I’m an eating habits and weight loss coach for career women.

My philosophy is that you can lose weight and keep it off by weakening any unhealthy eating habits that you currently have, and creating the new healthier eating habits and other weight loss habits that will help you to lose weight and keep it off.

It’s all about skills, using a blend of strategy based on behavioral science, plus thoughts and emotions. (I’ll touch a little more on that at the end.)

Because how we think determines how we feel and how we feel determines what we do or don’t do. So how you think and feel is a huge part of your eating habit and weight loss success.

Alright, so this first reason why it’s not you, it’s the diet has to do with the human brain. More specifically, the primitive brain and the motivational triad.

Without getting too science-y on you, I will just summarize this. The primitive brain is the part of the brain that is wired for survival. Its main purpose is to keep you alive long enough to reproduce, to keep the human species alive.

To be successful with that, it was built to be motivated by pleasure, the avoidance of pain or discomfort, and the conservation of energy. That’s the motivational triad.

So those three things are essentially the objectives of the human brain so that it can meet its main objective which is survival of the species.

Now, because of that motivational triad, our human brains are going to want to eat sweet, salty, savory, fatty, crunchy foods for increased pleasure.

We’re going to want to avoid exercise and even cooking, to conserve energy and sometimes also avoid discomfort. We’re going to want the easier option, the quicker option, to avoid discomfort and conserve energy.

We’re also going to want to avoid uncomfortable emotions and an easy way to do that is with food.

Your primitive brain will try very hard to increase pleasure, avoid discomfort, and conserve energy, even if you have good intentions and have health or weight loss goals.

So when you’re trying to decrease sweets and fried foods and follow a diet plan that entails very healthy foods, that switch may be something that your primitive brain says “no way” to.

Also, the primitive brain is all about habits. Habits are just things that you’ve done over and over again, that your brain is actually able to put on autopilot to conserve energy. Remember, conserving energy is part of that motivational triad.

So oftentimes, because of that habit part of the brain, you’re almost going against the grain if you’re trying to eat something very different than what you’re normally eating.

As you can see, the primitive brain is making it difficult, so it does not mean anything about you specifically if you’re having difficulty sticking to a diet or sticking to healthy eating.

Now, there are ways around this. Luckily, with the field of behavioral science, there are things that have been figured out about the brain and about habits that we can do to help break habits. Also to help form new habits.

So as a certified habit coach, this is part of the way that I help my clients. We can actually do things on a motivational triad level that assist with that habit portion of it. One of the big things is to make it as easy as possible to do something. And there are ways of doing that.

This is going to lead right into the next reason why it’s not you, it’s the diet and this is because diets, or any other healthy eating plan oftentimes has too big of changes.

Even if it doesn’t seem like it when you look at it initially, if you’re having a difficult time with it, it means that it’s still too big of changes.

And that’s not because of anything about you, but again this goes back to that primitive brain and the habits that it has already developed due to that motivational triad.

Your brain tries its hardest to keep you doing the same thing, because it feels that that is safe, and it also conserves energy. It wants to keep everything on a habit loop, which is called a neural pathway.

So anything that is different than what you’ve been doing for quite a while, which could be months or years, will be more difficult for you to do.

Take note that I said more difficult, but definitely not impossible. And again, that’s thanks to the world of behavioral science.

Now, for a moment I just want you to think about past diets or even if you weren’t on a specific diet, past changes that you’ve tried to make with your eating. Especially if you were changing your eating or going on a diet to lose weight.

Now we know that it’s enjoyable to see the number on the scale go down, and especially enjoyable to see the number on the scale go down quickly, but in order to do that, oftentimes big changes need to be made in the amount of daily calories. Which is not great.

When you focus on decreasing your daily calorie intake by a lot, that means you’re making pretty big changes to what you normally eat during the day and those changes might not be the best changes for you.

For example, if you are cutting so many calories at a certain point of your day and you’re feeling overly hungry, you’re going to be more likely to then overeat at the next meal. Or just grab something you really didn’t want to be eating, but were desperate.

Instead, how I help my clients to decrease calories naturally and lose weight naturally, is teach them skills to utilize so that they don’t ever feel overly hungry and certainly don’t feel deprived.

That way, it fits seamlessly into your day and it doesn’t seem challenging at all. It’s not uncomfortable at all.

And remember, because our brains like to avoid discomfort, my intention as a coach is to help you to avoid discomfort of making too big of changes or feeling hungry or deprived or any of that. I want to set you up for success as much as possible.

This brings me to the third big reason of why it’s not you, it’s the diet, and that is because diets and food plans address the thoughts and feelings behind our actions and inactions.

This is the biggest reason why it’s not you, it’s the diet. That’s because diets just tell you what to eat, when and how much, without addressing the thoughts and emotions that just naturally come up in life.

Because they always do, and they’re supposed to. We’re thinking beings. And we’re supposed to feel emotions. So if you’re having a tough time sticking to certain actions, let’s find problem-solve. There is always a feeling behind the action or inaction, so finding the feeling is helpful.

Then, there are things you can do with the feeling (another skill I teach clients). One of which is to find the thought making you feel that way. And from there, there are lots of things you can do with the thought.

Sometimes, it’s a circumstance, like only a 10-minute lunch break. If that’s the case, we problem-solve for the circumstance of the 10-minute lunch break.

So, diets and just trying to change the actions, change either what or how much you eat without addressing thoughts and feelings, or even other underlying issues, such as some circumstances, are what makes it very difficult to stick to a diet or a healthy eating plan on your own.

So here’s another problem. The problem is thinking that you need to go on a diet or eat certain foods to lose weight. This is not true.

You can actually lose weight and be a healthier eater, with some skills that help to break unhealthy eating behaviors and habits, more easily form new healthier eating habits and other weight loss habits, so that you can maintain those changes for the rest of your life. If you want to of course.

Since it’s learning skills, you can apply those skills and still eat the things that you enjoy eating if you want to continue eating them.

If you want to feel like you’re able to go out to dinner and have dessert, skills enable you to do so while feeling completely in control, being satisfied by flavor and experience, not pure volume, and by keeping balance throughout the week.

You want to be able to feel like you can eat “normally.” You don’t have to feel like you are counting calories, feeling hungry all the time, depriving yourself. You don’t have to feel like you need to be perfect all the time either.

And you certainly don’t need to eat the healthiest foods on earth.

I don’t and I maintain my healthy eating behaviors or habits and easily maintain my weight. There is no internal dilemma going on in my brain about what or how much to eat. I just naturally eat what’s right for my body now.

And that is the result that I can help you get through coaching together. To learn skills and develop new habits you’ll have with you for life.  So you naturally eat what’s right for your body, so that you don’t have to worry about it.

You can lose weight and keep it off, and feel so much better than you currently do, physically and emotionally.

If that resonates with you, I invite you to book a free consultation with me. You’ll feel clarity about your next steps, empowered, and see just how doable it is to have the results you want. The link to book the free consult is below. Thanks for listening and if you enjoyed this episode, please give it a 5-star rating!