I work with so many clients who have been dieting off and on, for most of their life in a lot of cases. And they’re so frustrated and sick of it.

You know, I hear this over and over again, “I’ve lost and gained the same 20 pounds over and over again for the past 10 years.”
You get a new diet. You’re really excited about it. You’re motivated. You’re totally on board. You go for it. It’s working. You’re losing weight. You’re feeling better. And then the diet is working until it’s not. For some reason, the diet stops working. You start falling back into old habits. You start eating things that you have cut out for quite a while and you end up gaining all the weight back, maybe even a little bit more. And that’s just so hard. There’s so much shame and embarrassment involved because you’re blaming yourself, you feel like you failed.

But it isn’t you that failed. It’s the diet that failed because most diets are a setup for failure. 99% of diets fail. I want to show you how you can stop starting over and over again and losing and gaining over and over again. I’m going to share with you the top three dieting mistakes, how to avoid them, and how to make your healthy diet and lifestyle stick for the rest of your life.

#1 – Diets are extremely overwhelming.

How many times have you started some kind of diet or fitness plan, bought a book, and you have all this information to digest. You have to learn all about what they want you to eat and what they don’t want you to eat – how many calories, how many carbs, how many this or that. And it’s so many changes to make all at once. You almost don’t even know where to start, and fitting it in to your busy day is just overwhelming. It feels like your whole day is just focused around food, around planning and shopping and cooking and counting and recording, all that work. And that is just not sustainable. If you have a super busy schedule and you want to add all this exercise and healthy eating on top of everything that you’re already doing, you may be able to white knuckle it for a little while, but you end up exhausted.
And that’s one of the things. The reasons that you start falling off, it’s just too much to take in all at once. You need to take it one step at a time – baby steps. You may not like the sound of that because I know you want to lose the weight and you want it gone yesterday. But think about it, how many times have you tried this over and over again? And how is that working for you? So it’s time to change the mindset and realize that weight loss is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. So start making these positive changes in small ways. And once you get into the habit, it becomes a regular part of your routine. You add on the next step and this makes it feel like you’re not depriving yourself so much because it’s not all or nothing.

It’s not like just one day you’re on a diet. And then the next day, you’re not on a diet. So we’re going to avoid that black and white thinking. We’re going to take it gradually. Start by implementing one positive thing and then build onto that. Think about it – if you made a 1% positive change per week, that adds up to 52% change by the end of a year. And that adds up to a huge difference! You have to take it slow because that’s the only way that you’re going to stick with it. When you start with something that’s overwhelming and it’s miserable, miserable is not sustainable. So keep that in your mind.

#2 – Most diets are absolutely miserable.

I coach my clients never to start any kind of health plan that they aren’t willing to live with forever. So if the food is yucky, you’re not enjoying it, or if you’re cutting out huge food groups, like all carbs and sugar, that is not a way that you can live forever. You’re just going to feel deprived and think about it. If you wake up in the morning and you tell yourself, okay, I’m not eating any carbs all day today, you have that in your mind. No carbs, no carbs. So you’re focusing on exactly where you don’t want to go.

Focus on where you do want to go. I had a yoga instructor one time who liked to tell stories while we were holding really difficult yoga poses. So right when we were in a plank or something, you know, really difficult, she would tell us a story to kind of get our minds off of it. And she started telling a story about her son who was doing a defensive driving course. And the instructor said to him, if you see an obstacle up ahead on the road and you want to avoid it, don’t look at the obstacle, look where you want to go instead. It’s such a different mindset. It’s such a different way of thinking from what we have been taught all these years, and it’s moving you in a positive direction. It’s helping you think about what you need to add in. And it’s not about being perfect. It’s not about, I’m never going to have sugar again for the rest of my life, because that is not sustainable. That is miserable. I like to focus on what I call the 80/20 rule. So 80% of the time you’re eating healthy. You are maintaining your healthy habits. And 20% of the time is reserved for indulgences. If you are going to a birthday party, you’re going to have some cake and ice cream. If you’re on vacation, you’re definitely going to have a few extra cocktails or whatever that may be. But 80% of the time, you’re following your healthy habits. And that’s a really good balance. That is a way of realizing that it’s a lifestyle you can live forever because you’re feeling good.

#3 – Diets neglect the mindset and emotional component.

Mindset and emotions are key to making healthy habits stick because you have to get to the root of the issue. Why are you in the place that you are today? Because if you don’t work that out, you’re going to continue this cycle. Are you stress eating? Are you emotional eating? What is going on? Are you going for a snack late at night after you’ve had dinner? Why is that? What are you actually needing to be filled up with? What is this void that you’re trying to fill? Are you feeling lonely? Are you feeling sad? Are there emotional issues that you’ve been neglecting and are trying to come up, but they don’t feel good and they’re uncomfortable, so you’re pushing them back down with food?

Overeating and being overweight isn’t the actual problem, it’s a symptom of the problem. So if you’re overweight, if you’re overeating, what is the actual problem? And sometimes you have to kind of reverse engineer. You have to take a little bit of a deep dive and you have to stop in the moment and think about  it. That’s one of the things that I work with my clients on extensively, because that is one of the things that’s going to make your diet actually work, and your healthy lifestyle actually stick. Work through some of the deeper issues and move forward – be healthy, happy, confident and strong, and know that you’re enough and that you’re worth it.