Here’s something you might not know. The diet industry has a good reason for wanting to keep you fat and miserable. If diets or meal replacements or pills or supplements actually produced sustainable long-term weight loss, then they’d lose a customer. These products, plus your white-knuckle willpower, can produce temporary results, but it only lasts until you stop using it. So unless you’ve decided to live the rest of your life on that diet, drinking the shakes and/or taking the pills, your results will only last as long as your willpower does.
The diet industry only survives if you keep spending money. It’s in their best interest to provide you with temporary results that get you all excited and motivated. Then when real life smacks you in the face and the excitement or newness wears off, you start backsliding into your old habits and before you know it, you’re demoralized and feeling like a failure again. So what do you do? You go looking for the next quick-fix that’s going to solve all your problems. You get excited about the next new solution that you find and you dive in with your resurrected willpower, vowing to really stick with it and make it work this time. And the cycle repeats itself. On and on with the same result every time.
As long as you’re overweight and miserable, you’ll keep endlessly searching for the “One True Answer”. The Holy Grail. The one magical diet or supplement that’s going to make your dreams come true. The short-term rush of initial success (which is usually just water-loss anyway) provides the thrill and excitement that we’re looking for. So when the excitement wears off, we lose our committment and then we go looking for the next thing. The intermittent reward of the initial weight loss is a powerful motivator. Scientists have actually done experiments with rats to prove this. Rats who pressed a button and got a reward every time were actually LESS motivated to keep performing this behavior compared to rats who pressed a button and only got rewarded sometimes. The rats who couldn’t predict their reward would stand there pushing that button for hours at a time. If you want proof that intermittent reward is just as motivating for humans, go to a casino and watch the people at the slot machines.
As long as you’re going from one diet or pill or shake to the next, looking for that short-term rush of excitement, the diet industry is raking up your money. As long as you’re unsatisfied, you’ll keep seeking and spending and that’s exactly where they want you to stay. But what’s the common denominator? It’s not the diet or the shake or the pill. It’s us, never really learning to change our basic habits. You know… the habits that got us overweight and miserable in the first place.
Willpower is a limited resource. And so is your ability to keep doing something you find unpleasant. So what’s the long-term solution? In order for weight loss to be sustainable and permanent, you have to keep doing whatever you did to lose the weight for the rest of your life. So you’d better be sure that you’re willing to keep it up forever, and that you actually find it enjoyable. Our brains are hard-wired to repeat behaviors that get rewarded, and to avoid things that we find unpleasant. So while you’re telling yourself that counting points is a pain, or cutting out bread and sugar means you’re missing out, you can only keep it up until you run out of willpower. Finding a way to enjoy and look forward to the changes you make is the key to creating sustainable long-term results.
So stop letting the diet industry drain you of your money and your happiness. Work on changing your mindset and creating small, gradual changes that you can maintain for life. That’s the secret to losing weight without struggle or deprivation.
Want to hear more about this, and how it can work for you and your lifestyle? Schedule your free consult call today and I’ll help you. See you soon!
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