This post first appeared in Spirit-Filled Sundays, the weekly newsletter from Weight Loss God’s Way.
There are three sentences I want you to stop saying. Not because they are unkind, and not because they are untrue exactly. Because every one of them is doing the opposite of what you think it is doing.
1. “I just need to…”
I just need to get to the gym. I just need to stop procrastinating. I just need to do better. The word doing the damage is just. It tells you the distance between where you are and where you want to be is one small act of effort. If the distance were that small, you would have crossed it years ago. You have not crossed it because it was never a matter of effort, and every time you say just, you walk away believing the problem is minor and you are the one who is failing to handle it.
2. “Once and for all.”
This one I have said out loud in my own kitchen. More than once.
Years ago, after a binge, I made a vow. No more sugar. Not a little less, not most days. Never again. I meant it with my whole heart and I held it for a while, and I felt strong the entire time I was holding it.
Then the holidays came. And I did not simply return to sugar. I ate more of it than I had before the vow.
3. “Starting Monday.”
Starting Monday, starting the first of the month, starting after the wedding. It gives you the feeling of having begun without requiring you to change one thing today. You get the relief of a decision and none of the cost of it, and Sunday night you get to feel committed while you eat like someone who is not.
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All three are declarations. Not one of them is a practice. |
Now let me tell you what was actually happening in my kitchen, because for a long time I got it wrong.
I thought the holidays broke my vow. They did not. The vow was never a surrender. It was a postponement. Somewhere underneath, I knew the sugar was coming back. I was not letting it go. I was saving it up.
There is a name for this. It is called an Intermittent Reward, and it simply means this: you can give something up for a good long while as long as some part of you knows you are getting it back. That is what makes the giving up feel so easy at first. You were never letting it go. You were putting it down for a bit.
That is why the holidays were worse than the binge that started the whole thing. I had not fallen off anything. I had been waiting the entire time.
And that, more than anything else I know, is what keeps a woman in the cycle. You lose weight for a season. You do well, sometimes beautifully. Then something happens — an illness, an injury, a holiday, a celebration, a hard month — and the whole thing goes out the window, and you land somewhere worse than where you started. Then you blame your discipline and make the vow again.
It was never your discipline. If you know me, you know sugar was a no-go zone — right up until it was not. That is how it goes. You give something up for a season, and then the season ends and all bets are off.
In almost forty years of doing this work, I have never met a woman who lacked the will to make the vow. I have met hundreds who made it beautifully, over and over, for decades. The vow was never the missing piece. The vow was the pattern.
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A plan is something you follow. A principle is something you live by. |
A plan asks something of your future. It demands that every Tuesday from here forward cooperate, and Tuesdays do not cooperate. So you save up, you collect, and you start over.
A principle asks nothing of your future. It only asks about this meal, so there is nothing to wait for and nothing to get back. You cannot fail a principle. You can only stop practicing it, and then practice it again at the very next meal.
As I walked into the Chinese buffet a couple of weeks ago, I thought about how much that used to terrify me. A buffet was permission to get my money’s worth, to eat as much as I possibly could because I had paid for it, and to walk out uncomfortable and ashamed and already promising myself Monday. Can you relate?
Two weeks ago I walked in and I simply knew which food was mine. That is all. My food is my food. My son eats differently than I do, and his plate is exactly right for a young, physically active man. It was never mine, so nothing was being taken from me. There was no vow at the door, nothing to negotiate, nothing to count, and nothing I was quietly waiting to get back. I ate, I enjoyed it, and I left.
Principles travel. Plans break.
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Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. Luke 9:23 |
Read that one word again. Daily.
Jesus was speaking to people who wanted to follow Him, and He was telling them plainly what following Him would cost. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. And He did not say do it once, at the moment you decide. He said daily. He knew that a person who decides one time is not still deciding on Thursday, so He built the whole thing around repeating it rather than around meaning it hard enough on day one.
That is discipleship. And what is true of following Him is true of how we care for these bodies He gave us. Daily is the harder ask, and it is the only one that has ever held.
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This Month’s Practice Eating As An Act of Honor Weight Loss God’s Way is a weight loss guide, and we change small habits one or two at a time. That is The Breakthrough Method — no vows, no overhauls, one principle practiced until it holds. Your one step this week: catch yourself saying one of the three. You will say one of them. Notice it when you do, and then, instead of making the declaration, practice a principle. One whole-food meal today. That is the swap — a promise about the future traded for something you actually do at this meal. |
If you break it on Wednesday, you have not failed anything. There is nothing to fail. You practice again at the next meal, the same way you would pick up a prayer you forgot to pray.
Imagine what happens to a woman who is not quietly waiting for anything to come back. She stops dreading the wedding. She stops bracing for the holidays. She walks into the buffet and it is just lunch.
That is not willpower. That is freedom, and it is available to you.
Tired of diets and ready for principles you can actually live by? The Breakthrough Method is our process for getting free of this cycle, and it moves through five stages. The free assessment shows you where you are in the five stages right now, and what to practice first.
