Of course you want to get consistent with your weight loss habits. Everybody knows that consistency is key. But omg, consistency is SO hard, and right now you’re wondering if you should just throw in the towel. My friend, if you’re struggling with consistency, this episode is for you, because today I’m sharing three reasons why you can’t get consistent and exactly what to do about them.
Hello, hello my ambitious menopausal friend, and welcome to the podcast. I am so glad you’re here today, because this is a topic I think a lot of people struggle with unnecessarily.
I know everybody and their weight loss coach tells you how you’ve gotta be consistent to reach your goals, and we all sort of acknowledge, like “Yeah, consistency is hard,” but nobody talks about why it’s so hard or what to do about it, other than using willpower or self-discipline.
Right now, you’re looking around at your lack of consistency and you’re either blaming circumstances or you’re blaming yourself, or - this is what most of us do - you’re blaming both.
For some habits, usually the ones that are universally acknowledged as “difficult,” like eating to your calorie target or getting to bed on time, you’ll blame circumstances. You’re telling yourself things like, “Life is just crazy right now so I can’t eat the same amount every day,” or, “Work is so stressful, and I’m just doing what I can to survive,” or, “My schedule is all over the map right now, but I’ll figure it out when things slow down.”
And for other habits, usually the ones that seem like they ought to be easy, like drinking all your water, or the ones that seem obviously good for your health in general like exercising, oh, you’re happy to blame yourself for that. You’ll heap on the judgment, telling yourself things like, “This is so simple, I must be a complete idiot to not even be able to drink water,” or “I could lose weight if I wasn’t such a lazy bum.”
No matter if you’re blaming circumstances or yourself or both, I’m sure you’ve noticed that all that blame and shame is actually just keeping you stuck where you are. And everybody and their weight loss coach is happy to agree with you, and give you all their tips and tricks for time hacking or overcoming laziness.
But, my friend, even though I am a weight loss coach, I’m definitely not “everybody,” and the solution I’m sharing with you today is going to crack your mindset wide open *and* solve your consistency problems.
Because the problem isn’t your crazy schedule or your character. The real problem is your unspoken, undefined, and largely unconscious (or at least subconscious) expectations of what consistency is “supposed to” look like.
Yes, what I’m saying is that you have mindset blocks about consistency.
So, let’s explore that. Here are three super common mindset reasons why you can’t get consistent.
Reason Number One Why You Can’t Get Consistent is that you’re trying to be consistent with something you’ve never done before.
I know this one sounds kind of funny, because at least three of your weight loss habits – eating, drinking, and sleeping – are things you’re already doing every single day, just not necessarily in a way that will get you weight loss results.
But even with actions that you’re already performing daily, when you ask yourself to do them differently, you’re making a guess about the future. You literally have no idea how it’s going to pan out.
Let me say that again, because nobody believes me the first time they hear it: you’re making a guess, and you actually cannot know the future. It’s just a guess.
You know how you WANT it to go – you want it to be seamless, and easy, and like you don’t even have to think about it. And you think it SHOULD be seamless and easy, because for heaven’s sake, you’ve been eating and drinking and sleeping since the day you were born!
And your brain is pretty convinced that it CAN predict the future, because that’s one of its most interesting and important functions, is modeling the past and making a prediction, and it’s often quite good at it. But all that means is that your brain is good at GUESSING.
But the reality here is that when you first start doing anything, of course it’s going to be bumpy and awkward and… inconsistent.
Because you really don’t know what you can do until you do it.
What most of us do, though, is make a ridiculous, better than best case scenario prediction about starting a new habit – like, “I’m going to start tracking my calories tomorrow with a brand new app I’ve never used before and eat a different number of calories than I’m used to, and it’s going to feel easy and amazing, and I won’t have any frustration or difficulty, and I’m going to meet that calorie target right on the money from the very first day.”
And then, when that goes to hell in a handbasket before you’re even finished with breakfast, you judge judge judge yourself for not being perfect, and within the week, you’ve given up counting calories because you, and I quote, “can’t get consistent” with it.
The fix here is surprisingly simple, and you even have two choices. Number one, you gather some data first, to see what you’re currently doing, so you can make a slightly more accurate guess about the future.
Or number two, you get completely onboard with the fact that you’re making a guess.
Either way, you’re unblocking your mindset about consistency from “I will achieve absolute perfection with no deviations” and shifting into a new mindset of “I’m making a guess and I’m willing to see how it goes and make adjustments from there.”
Notice how much better that feels. It’s not that you can’t get consistent, it’s that you’re actively working on it right now.
Reason Number Two Why You Can’t Get Consistent is that you don’t really want to be consistent.
Believe me, as the creator of The 5-0 Method, a free weight loss guide for women over 50 that tells you exactly, prescriptively, down to the detail, what you should be doing to lose weight – I’m well aware of what you think you have to do to lose weight.
But what do you want to do to lose weight?
Here’s why I ask: it’s virtually impossible to get consistent with something you don’t actually want to do.
For short periods of time, you can absolutely use willpower to do your weight loss tasks. You know what this is like. You force yourself to eat your calories, you command yourself to exercise, you make yourself drink and sleep and journal. Everything is joyless and soul-sucking, but you’re getting it done!
And even over the long haul, you can pressure yourself with obligation or guilt to stick with it, but you’re miserable the entire time. Every day, you’re wishing you could just put something on your plate and eat like everybody else, but you tell yourself that if you don’t weigh and measure everything, you’ll blow up like a balloon.
The whole reason you want to lose weight is to feel happy and confident and free. And my job, as your weight loss mindset coach – I even have this as my tagline on my website – I help you lose weight without feeling like you’re on a diet.
Willpower, obligation, guilt, and pressure are all diet feelings. And it’s kind of ironic, because from the outside, your behaviors will all look really consistent.
Your friends and family will all comment on how they wish they had your discipline and how lucky you are to be able to be so consistent.
But inside, you won’t believe you’re consistent. Because you’ll hear the constant mental struggle, and you’ll only feel the drudgery and the work that you’re putting in.
And the worst part of this one is that even though you’re hitting your targets day after day after day, you’re still not losing weight. And then it turns into a vicious cycle, where you’re berating yourself and you’re picking apart every food you eat, every minute of sleep you didn’t get, and every ounce of water over or under your target, because you can’t, and I quote, “get consistent enough.”
The fix here is simple, and I actually gave you some foreshadowing on this one: ask yourself what you really WANT. What feels pleasurable?
Quick note to the aside, lots of you right now are yelling at me through your earbuds, “But Pahla, if I do what I really want, I’ll eat ice cream all day and gain a hundred pounds! I can’t do what I want!”
And I assure you that’s not really true. Think for a moment what it would really feel like to eat ice cream all day. You’d get that furry feeling on your teeth and that gummy, thick feeling on your tongue. Your body would feel over-sugared and overstuffed and agitated. Your brain would be foggy, you’d feel lethargic. It wouldn’t be pleasurable AT ALL.
You don’t actually want to eat ice cream all day.
It’s far more likely that you’d like to eat a mix of delicious sugary foods and vegetables and meats (if you eat meat) and grains (if you eat grains). And you’d probably love to eat an amount that feels not too empty and not too full. You would deeply enjoy having energy without feeling jittery.
Asking yourself what you want unblocks your mindset about consistency from “I have to do these tasks, and I have to do them perfectly” and shifts your mindset into “I want to eat and drink and sleep and move in ways that feel comfortable and pleasurable.”
Feel how different that is. You’re not obligated to be consistent, you want to be.
Reason Number Three Why You Can’t Get Consistent is that your definition of consistent is too rigid.
Over the years of being a weight loss coach, I have fielded hundreds of questions from women who wondered if they’d still be able to lose weight if they didn’t exercise at the exact same time every day. Or if they’d have trouble losing weight if their calories were off by three or four from day to day.
Not three or four hundred, but literally three or four.
And listen, I’m not judging these questions, because I’m the first to admit that this particular mindset block was mine. Longtime listeners and followers will remember older versions of The 5-0 Method where I recommended meeting your calorie target within 25 calories in either direction. So, yeah, of course I got questions like this.
In my defense, I wrote that original version of The 5-0 Method before I was a life coach, and even though it included some rudimentary elements of mindset work, it was very willpower and self-discipline driven.
It was very “be 100% consistent with your calories no matter what” driven.
So, my friend, if you take anything away from this podcast today, let it be this: you can always learn something new and change your mindset. Just like me.
You and I have both been socialized with very all-or-nothing thinking, and it’s also our brain’s default to think in a binary way. So we grew up believing that consistency meant something very rigid, very fixed, and – this is the part that we all get hung up on – of the highest quality or standard.
But none of that is true.
The actual definition of consistency, according to Merriam-Webster, is “agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole.”
Being consistent means that you agree with and behave like yourself.
So here’s the simple fix: define what YOUR consistency looks like, and then decide that you’re going to uphold that definition.
When you define your weight loss habits for yourself, you are unblocking your mindset about consistency from “I have to do these exact, perfect things in this exact and perfect way,” and shifting into the mindset of “I define myself and my consistency.”
Feel how different that is. It’s not that consistency is some standard “out there” that you’re supposed to meet, but that it’s inside of you to define and live in ways that suit you best.
This was pretty mind-blowing stuff today, wasn’t it? Not only is consistency the key to getting what you want, but you, my friend, are 100% capable of getting consistent when you change your mindset about it.
And if you want some help taking this mindset-changing concept out into the real world and executing on it, here’s your invitation to join the Get Your GOAL membership where we do exactly that.
When you join, you get immediate access to a video learning library that includes a Masterclass and workshop that walks you step by step through defining exactly what, when, where, how, and how much you’ll do each of your weight loss tasks so you can guarantee your consistency.
There’s a link in the show notes to learn more about the Get Your GOAL group anywhere you’re listening.
Thank you so much for joining me today, my friend – I’ll talk to you again soon!
