Why Willpower Won't Help Weight Loss at Midlife
Willpower doesn't help you lose weight. You might be surprised to hear me saying that because so many of the professional midlife women I work with say things like, if I only had more willpower, I could reach my weight loss goal, and I'm willing to bet that you've had that thought too. I know I once did. In today's video, I'll explain why willpower doesn't help you lose weight, and I'll be sharing one of the biggest tools I teach my clients to use instead that actually works for lasting weight loss. Hi, I'm Kristen Tinker, food addiction and weight loss expert.
Jessica was able to break free from sugar WITHOUT willpower!
My client Jessica fell into the same willpower trap before working with me. She kicked off her weight loss journey with my five day sugar detox program and then she continued working with me on her weight loss goals. Jessica shared my energy level is through the roof.
I've been working 10 to 12 hours the last few days and I haven't done that in 10 years. I feel great. I don't need to chug coffee all day long just to keep me going. How great is that?
Willpower is not a good strategy for weight loss because you run out of it quickly!
As a successful corporate woman at midlife, you might already have tried to find extra willpower for staying on track. You might even feel empowered on most days to keep those less healthy foods totally out of your diet. Or maybe you're using other dieting methods like banning certain foods or food groups using specific eating rules, removing carbs for a keto diet or limiting the time that you eat to just certain hours, maybe some intermittent fasting, but what you might not realize is that each of those decisions that you make about food from the moment you wake up are actually rooted in willpower and you might not know that willpower is in fact like a muscle.
You only have so much of it before it wears out completely. Now this is what I call the willpower gap and it explains why you can be so good all day long, maybe even eating the right foods in the right quantities until the afternoon or the evening hits and you've completely exhausted your willpower, which makes it hard and sometimes completely impossible to stick to your goals for permanent weight loss. Coming up next, I'll explain why the willpower gap is such a problem when you're trying to lose weight and also what to do instead of trying to use willpower for weight loss at midlife, it really does not work.
But first, if you notice that you're struggling and you're feeling like you need to just find more willpower to stay on track and you want more than just this video to help you so that you can start to reach your permanent weight loss at midlife, just click on the link below to join my Free Crush Your Cravings Program.
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The Willpower Gap and What You Need to Know About It.
Let's talk about why this willpower gap is such a problem when you're trying to lose weight because again, it really doesn't work. The willpower gap actually starts to grow when you have one little thought. It's what I call a red light trigger about a less healthy food or maybe a drink such as that cookie in the break room or the five o'clock glass of wine that you're already dreaming about at lunchtime or even before you start to think about it and your brain will start to create stories and beliefs about why you need it.
Maybe you've had a hard day. Maybe your kids yelled at you this morning on the way to school. Maybe you didn't have a chance to eat lunch today, or maybe you just feel like you spend so much time taking care of everyone else that you deserve it. Sound familiar, but please know that your brain offers you all kinds of silly inaccurate thoughts and you don't have to believe every unhelpful thought that your brain offers you. The pleasure center of your brain creates all kinds of stories that sound legitimate about why you need cookies, donuts, diet Coke, and more. What's especially important is that once the regions of your brain that have been conditioned to remember that unhelpful, inaccurate thought and the excuses they receive a pleasurable reward, also known as a hit of the happy hormones, your brain will work especially hard to convince you to move towards the reward.
You see, pleasure and movement are both driven by dopamine, so your brain will compulsively, fondle automatic negative thoughts or ants and excuses just scheming for ways to make sure that you get that cookie from the break room or the glass of wine while making dinner tonight. Has this ever happened to you? I know it did for me until I figured out how to work this through to success. Please comment, willpower gap below. If you've ever tried a diet and then ran out of willpower, I can promise you that you are not alone in this. It's common with every single one of my clients and it was with me too until I figured out a system. I can personally remember relying on willpower when I used to count calories by
Drinking Diet Coke and living off of pretzels, but inside my body I was totally miserable trying to get through my day without even eating and hoping to stay on track, just drinking more diet Cokes to feel full. Drop a note in the comments with willpower gap if you've ever been stuck and just wishing that you could feel stronger around less healthy foods with more willpower. Now, I'm about to share with you one of the biggest tools I teach my clients that actually works for permanent weight loss instead of trying to use more willpower. Willpower does not stand a chance when you use my two step approach to jumpstart your permanent weight loss. Imagine that you no longer rely on willpower and hope and you stay on track for good.
Use this 2-Step Process instead of Using Willpower to Reach Your Weight Loss Goal.
Step one, I want you to start noticing your automatic negative thoughts or those ants I mentioned.
Those above this will look like and sound like thoughts and excuses, just scheming for ways to make sure that you get the cookie from the break room or that glass of wine while making dinner or pretty much any other thought that ultimately does not serve your goal of permanent weight loss. Here's what that sounds like. Let's take a common thought such as happy hour just won't be fun. If I'm not eating chips and salsa, ask yourself, is it 100% true that I can't have fun at happy hour without chips and salsa? I'm just betting that that's actually not true. I'm betting you can have a plan in advance and if you enjoy the atmosphere and the people that you're seeing, which let's be honest, that's the real reason that you agreed to meet your friends in the first place, that you can still have fun at happy hour even without chips and salsa or guacamole for that fact.
I bet you'd agree that it's no fun when your clothes don't fit the next morning because you don't stick to your plan by eating fun foods or drinks either. It's actually fun. The real fun happens when you walk into your closet 365 days of the year and you get excited to get dressed because everything fits the same every day and they make you feel good no matter what you put on. It's fun when you meet your friends and aren't distracted with negative self-talk and worried about how you look and how you feel. See, we just think food tastes good and brings fun into our lives, but neither of those thoughts are 100% confidently true thoughts and the same thing when you say, I have no time to exercise or even meal plan. If you can ask yourself, is that 100% true, you can begin to challenge your thoughts to see where those ants, the automatic negative thoughts are starting to sneak in and get in your way.
Now, step two is the second question to make sure that your thoughts are accurate, ask yourself what is the opposite more accurate thought. This is super simple and it's super powerful because the opposite of any negative thought is basically always more true. Please note that when you are choosing an opposite thought, this can go three ways. It can be an opposite thought about the situation, an opposite thought about yourself or an opposite thought about another person. So if we take our example above of happy or won't be fun without chips and salsa, well, what's the opposite? More accurate thought? Here it is. Happy hour will be fun without chips and salsa, and it's actually really true If you normally plow through a ton of chips and salsa at happy hour and then you leave feeling bloated and lethargic, probably guilty too. This time when you leave without feeling that way, it will actually be a whole lot more fun for you.
Long-term fitting in your clothes and feeling good about yourself, not that short-term lived taste of the chips and the salsa sounds like a whole lot of fun to me. Now, our second thought from earlier was, I don't have time to exercise or to meal plan. What's the opposite? More accurate thought to that. It sounds like this. I do have time to exercise and meal plan. I do have time to choose my daily priorities in life because let's be honest, you do even if it's just five minutes to do some squats and lunges or maybe some wall pushups in your office or in the form of taking the stairs instead of the elevator. It's still exercise and it still counts, and that thought of I do have time to exercise really supports your permanent weight loss goals and the person you're trying to become. Same thing with, I don't have time to make a meal plan.
I hear that one a lot. What's the opposite? More accurate thought. Here it is. I do have time to jot a basic meal plan on a scratch piece of paper at night before bed because again, let's just be honest. The issue is not with meal planning. We don't meal plan for a day of eating because there's actually anxiety about writing a perfectly healthy plan and then not sticking to it. See, you do have time to write a meal plan and to choose your daily priorities in life. See how this works. It all comes down to asking yourself those two simple questions when you hear thoughts that are just triggering those cravings or not supporting your weight loss goals, but you have to listen to your thoughts, my friends, is my thought 100% confidently true? That's question number one. And then question number two, what's the opposite, more accurate thought?
The Daily Kill Your ANTS tool takes just minutes to help you stay on track!
Watch how this two-step process called the Daily Kill your Ants tool can disrupt your automatic negative thoughts and it can make a huge difference in your health, happiness, and weight loss. I promise. The work you do on your thoughts has the power to change life, but you do have to practice to be healthy. You don't need to manage sugar temptations and cravings using extraordinary levels of willpower, starvation or restrictions. No gimmicks. You just need to be on the lookout for those sneaky thoughts that plant seeds to sabotage your success. You have to get good at listening to those thoughts and pushing back. Once you hear those sneaky thoughts, you can start taking actions to stay on track. These are the tips and tools I share with you in my programs so that you don't have to white knuckle your way through the day using huge amounts of willpower so that you can lose weight permanently.
So I mentioned before my Free Crush Your Cravings program earlier in this video, and I want to tell you about it again in case you missed it. In this program we work on killing those ants, the automatic negative thoughts like crazy. When you sign up for this free program, you also get the Daily Kill Your ANTS tool, which includes examples of the most common automatic negative thoughts, those ants that creep in that cause my clients to get stuck in a yo-yo dieting cycle of craving food, emotionally eating and overeating, and the tool helps you find the more accurate thoughts that will actually serve you on your weight loss journey. Those are the accurate thoughts that have permanent weight loss behind them. The work we do in this free program can be added to your busy corporate life in just seconds, which will help you conquer any craving that you encounter in your day, whether that's the boardroom with that box of donuts or a catered lunch. Click right here to learn more about the Free Crush Your Cravings program.
If you've learned something new in this video and I hope you have about how my different approach to weight loss can help you if you're sick of the dieting rollercoaster or if you're just feeling inspired by what I've shared today, click on the subscribe button and click to like this video so that I can continue sharing my different approach to weight loss with other professional corporate midlife women just like you. I hope you'll get started today. Now, I know many of my midlife corporate women are worried about how to balance your hormones, so right now you can check out this next video: ”Foods to Balance Hormones at Midlife for Weight Loss.” It's another good one.