Why Relying on Discipline to Lose Weight Is a Recipe for Disaster

I hear this sort of thing all the time when I'm talking to people about losing weight.

"Ben, I start off really motivated, I'm eating well, going to the gym, making all the right choices and everything's going brilliantly. Then after a few weeks I start losing interest, the old habits creep back in and before I know it I've put the weight back on. I know what I need to do, I just haven't got the discipline to stick to it."

And usually, by the time they've finished telling me this, they've already decided that they're the problem. They're lazy, they've got no willpower, they're useless at sticking to anything, and if they could just give themselves a good kick up the backside, everything would be fine.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that personal responsibility doesn't matter, because of course it does. Ultimately, you're the one making the decisions about what you eat and whether you exercise, and nobody can make those decisions for you.

But I do think we've got a rather strange obsession with discipline when it comes to losing weight, almost as though the ability to resist a packet of biscuits at nine o'clock on a Friday evening is some sort of measure of your worth as a human being.

And the problem with relying on discipline is that, sooner or later, you're going to have a day when you really can't be bothered.

Which is why I think there's a much better way of approaching things.

Discipline is useful, but planning is usually more useful

Imagine you're at work and somebody's organised one of those all-you-can-eat buffets for lunch. You know the ones, sandwiches cut into triangles, sausage rolls, crisps, cakes and enough beige food to keep Iceland in business for the next decade.

You've decided you're going to lose weight, so you tell yourself that you'll be sensible and just have a little bit of everything.

Which sounds perfectly reasonable until lunchtime arrives, you've been in meetings all morning, you skipped breakfast because you were running late, and you've got the shakes because you're so hungry.

At that point, you're relying almost entirely on willpower to make the decisions you intended to make earlier.

Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a sausage roll or a slice of cake, and you can certainly lose weight while enjoying both. But if you're regularly finding yourself eating much more than you intended, it's worth looking at what happened before you got there.

Perhaps having a decent breakfast would have helped, or maybe you could have planned your lunch around the buffet rather than arriving absolutely starving and hoping for the best.

You've not suddenly become a more disciplined person; you've simply made the situation easier to manage.

The same applies to exercise. If you plan to finish a long day at work and somehow summon the enthusiasm to go to the gym, you're making life unnecessarily difficult for yourself, particularly if you've spent the last eight hours dealing with people who have apparently made it their personal mission to test your patience.

Having your gym bag packed, knowing what workout you're doing and arranging to meet somebody can make a big difference, because you've already taken care of several decisions before you get to the point where you'd rather go home.

And that's really what I mean by intentional planning. Rather than constantly relying on yourself to make the right decision in the moment, you think about the situations you're likely to face and make those decisions a little easier beforehand.

Why quick-fix diets make everything harder

One of the things that fascinates me about weight loss is how often people approach it as though they're preparing for some sort of military operation.

They decide they're going to lose a stone, and within approximately eleven minutes they've thrown away the chocolate, banned bread from the house, cancelled their social life and committed to exercising six days a week.

It's Monday, and they're absolutely flying... They're eating salads, drinking water, going for walks and feeling like a completely different person.

By Thursday they're telling everyone how brilliant they feel, and by the following Monday they've already started planning what clothes they're going to buy when they've lost all the weight.

Then, inevitably, something happens.

Perhaps the scales haven't moved for a few days, despite them doing everything they think they should be doing. Maybe they've had a stressful week, or they're simply getting fed up with eating meals that leave them wanting more... much more.

And then suddenly the whole thing starts becoming much harder.

The trouble with really restrictive diets is that you're often relying on discipline to tolerate an approach you don't particularly enjoy, in the hope that you'll reach your goal quickly enough that you won't have to keep doing it for very long.

But what happens when you reach your goal? Or when the weight loss slows down, which it almost certainly will at some point?

If you've spent the previous six weeks avoiding everything you enjoy, there's a pretty good chance those foods are going to start looking increasingly appealing.

Before you know it, you're standing in the kitchen eating Ferrero Rochers, wondering how you've managed to ruin everything again.

Except you haven't ruined anything... you've eaten some chocolate.

The bigger problem is that you've created a situation where eating chocolate feels like failing, and once you've decided you've failed, it's very easy to convince yourself that you might as well carry on eating whatever you want until Monday.

I've seen people repeat this cycle for years, sometimes losing the same stone over and over again, and every time they blame themselves for not having enough discipline.

But perhaps the problem isn't their discipline at all... perhaps it's the approach they're trying to follow.

Before blaming yourself, look at what's actually happening

Something I spend quite a lot of time doing with clients is looking at the gap between what they intend to do and what actually happens.

Someone might tell me they want to exercise four times a week, which sounds perfectly reasonable until we start looking at their schedule and discover they've got two children, a demanding job, a partner who works shifts and approximately seventeen other commitments that all seem to happen on the same three evenings.

Now, we could put four gym sessions into their programme and tell them they need to be disciplined enough to complete them, but I suspect we'd both know how that's likely to end.

Instead, I'd rather work out what they can realistically manage, even if that means starting with two sessions and building from there.

And if those sessions keep getting missed, I want to know why.

Are they too long? Are they at the wrong time? Does the person actually enjoy what they're doing? Are they exhausted by the time they're supposed to train, or are they avoiding the gym because they don't feel confident using the equipment?

These things matter, because the solution depends on the problem.

Telling somebody to be more disciplined when they're struggling because their routine doesn't fit their life is about as useful as telling somebody who's lost their car keys to look harder.

Technically, yes, they probably need to find their keys, but that's not particularly helpful advice.

And it's exactly the same with food.

The Monster Munch problem

Let's imagine you've decided to lose weight and one of your goals is to stop ordering takeaways during the week.

You've had a decent breakfast, but work gets busy, and you don't really have time for lunch. By the time you get home, it's nearly seven o'clock, you're absolutely starving, and there's nothing in the fridge that resembles an actual meal.

There is, however, a packet of Monster Munch in the cupboard and a takeaway menu that arrived through the letterbox approximately thirty seconds after you got home.

Now, you could tell yourself to be disciplined, ignore the takeaway menu and somehow create a nutritious dinner out of half an onion and some cheese.

Or you could look at why you keep ending up in that situation.

Perhaps having a proper lunch would stop you getting quite so hungry in the evening.

Maybe keeping a couple of easy meals in the freezer would help, or you could prepare something in the slow cooker before leaving for work.

None of those things is particularly revolutionary, and I'm certainly not expecting a Nobel Prize for suggesting somebody buys a few convenient meals.

But these are the sorts of small changes that can make an enormous difference over time.

You're changing the circumstances that make a particular behaviour difficult, rather than expecting yourself to overcome those circumstances through sheer determination every single evening.

Of course, there will still be times when you fancy a takeaway, and that's fine. The point isn't to remove every opportunity to eat something you enjoy; it's to stop ending up in situations where you feel like you've got very little choice.

You don't need to change everything at once

Another thing I'd encourage you to think about is how much you're trying to change at the same time.

If you're currently doing very little exercise, eating irregular meals, drinking most evenings and struggling with your sleep, you could probably identify quite a few things that might benefit from some attention.

But that doesn't mean you need to tackle all of them right this second.

In fact, trying to do everything at once often creates so much extra work that people struggle to maintain any of it.

I sometimes compare this to training in the gym, because nobody would expect somebody who's never lifted weights before to walk in and bench press 100kg on their first day.

Well, I say nobody. There are always a few interesting characters in the gym.

But generally, you'd start with something manageable, practise, gradually increase the challenge and give yourself time to improve.

Changing your eating habits can work in a similar way.

If you regularly skip lunch and end up eating everything in sight when you get home, perhaps that's the first thing we work on. We don't necessarily need to change your breakfast, ban chocolate, introduce meal preparation and start weighing every ingredient at the same time.

We could just focus on making lunch a bit more substantial and see what happens, and once that becomes easier, we can look at something else.

The aim is to gradually build a way of eating and exercising that works for you, rather than spending a few weeks trying to live like somebody with completely different circumstances.

What about those days when everything goes wrong?

Because they will happen, regardless of how well you plan.

You'll get ill, work will be stressful, the kids will need something, you'll go on holiday, or you'll simply have a day when exercise is the last thing you want to do.

And sometimes you'll eat more than you intended because the food was lovely and you fancied another helping.

That's life.

What interests me is what happens afterwards, because this is often where people get themselves into trouble.

If you miss a workout, do you simply carry on with the next one, or do you decide you've failed and abandon the entire week?

If you have a big meal on Saturday, do you return to your normal eating habits on Sunday, or do you decide the weekend's ruined and spend the next 36 hours eating everything that isn't nailed down?

It's worth paying attention to those reactions, particularly if you find yourself repeatedly starting over.

I don't think people need to become completely indifferent to their choices, and there are times when it's useful to recognise that something you've done isn't helping you achieve your goals.

But recognising that something needs changing is very different from deciding you're hopeless because you ate a packet of biscuits.

If the same problems keep cropping up, I'd much rather we look at what's causing them and work out what to do differently next time.

That might mean changing your routine, making your diet less restrictive, finding better ways to manage stress or adjusting your expectations.

And sometimes it means accepting that you're a human being who occasionally makes decisions that aren't entirely consistent with your long-term goals.

Welcome to the club.

So, how do you become more disciplined?

This is where I'd probably approach things a little differently from what you might expect.

Rather than trying to turn yourself into somebody with extraordinary levels of self-control, I'd start by identifying one thing you're struggling to do consistently and working out how to make it easier.

If you want to walk more, perhaps you arrange a regular walk with a friend, take a short break at lunchtime, or gradually increase your daily steps from wherever you're starting now.

If you want to train regularly, perhaps you choose two sessions you can realistically manage, rather than committing to five because that's what somebody on Instagram says you should be doing.

And if you're struggling with your food choices, look at when those difficulties happen and what might help you deal with them.

Over time, you may find that some of these things require less conscious effort because they've become part of your normal routine.

You don't need to spend every evening debating whether to exercise if you've already got a routine that works for you, and you don't need to constantly fight the temptation to order a takeaway if you've got food available that you actually enjoy eating.

There will still be occasions when you need to make an effort, of course, and discipline can certainly help with that.

I just don't think it should be doing all the heavy lifting.

One last thing

If you've spent years trying to lose weight and repeatedly finding yourself back where you started, I can understand why you'd be frustrated.

It's particularly difficult when you know what you want to achieve and feel as though you should be capable of doing it, but for whatever reason you keep struggling to follow through.

However, before you decide that you simply haven't got enough discipline, I'd encourage you to have a proper look at what you're asking yourself to do.

Does your plan fit your life? Are you trying to change too much at once? Are you relying on motivation to get you through situations that you could have planned for, and what tends to happen when things don't go the way you expected?

Those are the sorts of questions I ask when I'm coaching somebody, because the answers usually tell us far more than whether somebody thinks they're disciplined.

And quite often, a few sensible adjustments can make things considerably easier.

You still have to do the work, obviously. I'm a Personal Trainer, not a magician, although I imagine the latter would be considerably more lucrative.

But there's no reason to make that work harder than it needs to be.

Need some help figuring out what's getting in the way?

I'm Ben, a Personal Trainer and Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist based in Hinckley, Leicestershire.

I offer face-to-face personal training in Hinckley and 1:1 online coaching for people who want to improve their fitness, strength, nutrition and everyday habits.

My approach is to work out what you want to achieve, understand what's making it difficult and then build something around you, rather than expecting you to fit your life around somebody else's idea of the perfect plan.

With online coaching, that includes personalised training, regular contact and ongoing support, so we can make adjustments as things change and work through any difficulties along the way.

If you'd like to know more, you can read about my 1:1 online coaching or send me a message and we can have a chat.