What do your diet and your favourite super hero movie have in common? This is going to change the way you think of diets forever and be the shift YOU need to create lasting weight loss in your body.

But let’s back up a bit. The word diet drums up thoughts of deprivation, frustration, suffering, and restriction. Perhaps you’ve even thought, “That diet didn’t work for me,” or “I’ve tried every diet and I just can’t lose weight”. After working with hundreds of women to help them lose weight, I can tell you, it has nothing to do with the actual diet.

Our mentality about diets needs to change and I’m going to tell you why every diet DOES work, and more importantly HOW to make it work for you.

(Side note: I also have a comprehensive blueprint that outlines the step by step checklist you need to go through to help you execute your weight loss plan. You can get that here.)

…In every story there is a hero and a villain.

When you decide to lose weight and pick the diet you are certain is going to have you rocking the body you feel confident in, you subconsciously set yourself up as the hero and the diet as the villain. This becomes apparent when the diet either “stops working”, or becomes “too hard”, and you take a break and gain back all the weight you lost.

You tell yourself, “That diet didn’t work for me. It’s the diet's fault”. Instead of taking responsibility and addressing the real issue of what happened, we make our diet the villain and blame it for our lack of results and frustrations.

I’d like to offer an alternative option - what if we took responsibility for our results and explored the possibility that the diet DID work and that wasn’t why we got stuck? If we use our logical brains, that know the same diet can work for other people, so it has the potential to work for you too. If you are struggling with your weight, it might be because you regularly overeat to manage your emotions. To solve this, you go on a diet to lose weight.

Let’s take a closer look at what actually happens when you go on a diet. You feel deprived, restricted, uncomfortable, fear of missing out, bored, restless and perhaps tired. You blame the diet for those feelings of struggle and discomfort… but is it the diet that is causing those feelings? Perhaps not.

TRUTH TIME: Going on a diet stops you from eating more than you actually need. When you remove overeating as an option, you are not able to dull your feelings with food and it reveals what is REALLY going on emotionally. Instead of dealing with those feelings, we grit our teeth and attempt to willpower through the really uncomfortable moments until we hit our goal. This only works for so long, because it is exhausting and miserable. Eventually, we get sick and tired of white knuckling our way through life, so we go off the diet and start overeating again and gain the weight back.

You associate those negative feelings with the DIET instead of the fact that you have stopped overeating. Instead of using the diet as a tool to help you uncover what is going on emotionally, you turn it into the villain and begin working against it. To compound this problem, we use our failed attempt at losing weight to support your belief that you “can’t lose weight,” and “diets don’t work.”

The problem is NOT the diet - the diet works just fine. It is revealing the reason you have gained the weight in the first place, which usually comes down to an emotional struggle we have yet to resolve within ourselves.

So what is the solution? We need to change the temporary nature with which we treat diets. We need to explore the idea that diets aren’t only for losing weight and instead commit to the idea as a lifestyle change we can sustain.

Creating a long term solution for this diet mentality comes down to three things:

#1: Follow the protocol as it is prescribed. Stop making changes and creating loopholes to modify it and make it easier. Complete it. You are capable of doing hard things.

#2: Stop choosing to believe that you are entitled to instant results within the first month because you are putting yourself on a “diet”. Are you willing to be patient for results?

#3: Practice experiencing and processing the emotions that come up when you stop overeating. Instead of using willpower to struggle and fight against your feelings, let your resistance down and experience them. Resisting them is exhausting and the fastest way to find yourself emotionally eating again, upset with another diet that “didn’t work”.

You can experience this boredom or deprivation that comes up and overcome it. Relax into the feeling and stop fighting it. It’s just a feeling and it can’t harm you. The most amazing part? It passes. This feeling WILL pass. Discover a world where you can thrive without overeating AND manage your emotional well being.

I challenge you to resist the temptation to blame the diet this time and identify what you might have done differently and why it truly didn’t work.

Embrace the idea that if you process the emotions that are coming up when you stop overeating, you can lose the extra weight and keep it off permanently.

What might happen if you just experienced the deprivation and boredom? What might happen if you no longer had to worry about being overweight ever again? Jump over to our free She Takes Action Community and get involved in the conversation.

The possibilities for your life begin now.

(Check out the video I did on this topic below!)