“I need more willpower!”
This week’s blog post is for you if you’ve found yourself saying you just need more willpower to reach your health goals. Whether you want to eat better, get fitter, or lose weight. You think you just need the willpower to stick it out until you get to your target. Then you can stop & that’s that…
Except it’s not!
This dieting mentality is holding you back.
Whatever you do to lose the weight you have to do FOREVER! Or you’ll just pile it ALL back on again! Especially if you do something drastic to lose the weight FAST. Then you’ll probably put on even more weight than you lost…
You need to make changes that will last forever. Changes to your everyday habits that you can turn into new habits for life. Also, you need to want to change. It’s no good punishing yourself doing something too strict. You’re setting yourself up to fail!
Only you can decide what YOU are going to do.
Only you can do it & keep at it.
This is why I teach you to:
- Motivate yourself – so you can keep it all going.
- Be aware of your own habits – so you know what to tweak.
- Hold yourself accountable – coz it’s your goal, your life.
This is what’s going to help you make those changes and turn them into habits you can stick to without the need for ‘willpower’. Forget trying to find the perfect diet, focus on building the skills that will help you change your day-to-day behaviour once and for all. This is what will make the difference.
Let’s look at what I call the 3 essential self-skills for building habits for life
Self-motivation
Forget stressing yourself out with ‘needing more willpower’. Instead focus on building self-motivation.
Motivation simply means the reason behind everything we do. It isn’t necessarily about being enthusiastic or self-disciplined. There’s a reason why you follow the same habits you’ve always done – usually because it’s easy, you’re used to it and it feels comfortable.
So when you want to make changes, you need to get clear on what your goal is and why you want to get there. Self-motivation is about deeply connecting with that ‘why’ and using it to drive you to keep making the changes until they become engrained and replace your old habits.
Ask yourself – is your goal clear and specific? Can you list as many reasons as possible why you want to get there? Then reflect on whether those reasons are important enough to you.
Are your reasons for changing, more important than staying the same as you are now?
Self-awareness
What most people do is they jump straight to following a diet plan if they want to eat better or lose weight. But it’s too different to their normal habits so they struggle to stick to it for long. What I recommend is making small tweaks to your normal eating habits so it’s more sustainable. It’s more likely to fit in with your lifestyle if it doesn’t feel like you’re doing anything different.
If you want to make changes, you’re going to need to be aware of what you’re doing in the first place. Not just your eating habits, but your exercising habits and also your thinking patterns. It’s time to get really honest with yourself about what you’re doing, but without judgement.
If you want to be different, you have to do different
If you don’t know how you could make changes you’re always going to struggle with this. I know that sounds harsh, but if you don’t think you can change anything, then you’re not going to be any different.
To be more aware of your eating habits and thinking patterns, simply write it down. Every time you eat or drink something, write it down on a notepad or on an app on your phone (avoid those that monitor Calories, that’s not what we’re doing here!). Try asking yourself ‘what am I saying to myself?’ To notice your thinking patterns as well as your eating habits. Remember this is just so you can get a clear picture of what you’re doing so you can look for where you could tweak things. It’s an observation exercise, NOT about beating yourself up!
Self-accountability
This is the hardest self-skill for a lot of people. It’s about recognising that nobody else can do it for you. Only you can make the changes and keep those changes going. I always found this a tough session when I used to run NHS workshops on this topic. Nobody wants to be blamed or shamed – but that’s NOT what this is about!
Self-accountability is about looking at where you can take responsibility. It’s about being proactive; looking for what you can do in any situation. There’s always going to be things in life that are out of our control – like what other people say or do, the weather and world affairs. It’s easy to focus on what you can’t change and end up staying stuck. I’m not saying it’s your fault if you do this, it’s just a habit you’ve slipped into. But if all you ever do is focus on what you’re worried about, instead of what you can do about it, then you’re always going to feel powerless.
It’s time to take a step back and ask yourself “What can I do about this?”
When you look for the things you CAN have an influence over then you feel more in control. You’ll feel more confident and happier with yourself.
Unless you can pay someone to hold you accountable for the rest of your life, you’re going to need to be able to do it yourself.
Which self-skill do you need to focus on first?
Remember all of these skills take practice and of course I’m here if you need help with this.
Need help to ditch dieting forever?
Want to eat normally again AND lose weight healthily? While still enjoying the cake & chocolate? Hell yes!
I will help you ditch dieting forever, either with my 1-2-1 support. Or if you prefer to work independently, you will learn all the skills I teach my 1-2-1 clients, on my ‘No More Diets’ online course.
Freebies!
My Weekly Round-up! AKA; what I’ve been up to recently…
- This week’s blog post was brought to you buy the old faithful Early Grey and loads of drinks of water as I’ve been nursing a bit of a sore throat this week – not sure if it’s a cold or hay-fever though…
- In case you didn’t notice, I skipped sharing a blog post last week. Sorry if you missed me, it was half term so I had Genevieve home from school and I just wasn’t organised enough to write one. I was too busy going on playdates, doing craft at the library and standing around at the park! There was also quite a bit of bee saving too – it went chilly so there were quite a few tired bees we had to scoop off the ground and find flowers to put them on.
- We managed to walk up hill 9 of our 22 Hills in 2022 family challenge at the start of half term. The hill was called Helmeth Hill, it was covered in massive old oak trees. The walk up was fairly standard, but the walk down the other side was hilarious! It was pretty steep and the soil was really loose for a big chunk of the route so we had to slide down on our bums! Giggles all the way down from all three of us!
- We didn’t do anything to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee – we’re not religious or patriotic. But we did have a pretty busy bank holiday weekend. We had meals with both sets of parents, met a friend to follow the local ‘comic trail’ around town then went to see a ska punk band play live. First time in years we’ve been to see live music and it was fab. We also went to visit friends in Liverpool too. Life hasn’t been this action-packed in quite some time – lol!
- Things I’ve watched: I binged ‘Heartstopper in a few days, it’s a really sweet little LGBT teen love story. We’ve caught up with season 4 of ‘Stranger Things’, which was really good, but I’ll admit I did NOT like all the bone-breaking – bleurgh!!! I absolutely LOVED the film ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ – wow what an epic film. Apart from the bits with the hotdog fingers – NOPE! I’m saying nothing else about it, you have to see it to believe it.
- Bird Nerd Report: I saw so many goldfinches last week, mostly around the area where my parents live! There was even one in our front garden – yay, they’re one of my faves. I also saw a jay and a kingfisher down by the brook this week – another two of my faves. Today was all about the woodpeckers I saw at least 3!
