All or Nothing Diet Mentality: How to Break Free

Today we’re talking about the all or nothing mindset. So let me paint the picture and let me know if this is something you have done because I see a lot of women doing it, and a lot of my clients have done this before coming to me.

And if you have or are doing this, just know we all have, and it’s okay. Okay, so here’s the scenario: you’re ready to lose weight.

So what do you do? You get a personal trainer. You buy a program online, join their private Facebook group. You get a meal plan or something. You start some kind of diet, right? And then you get the material. You read it over, and you’re looking over all the rules for that diet. And you start thinking about things you’re no longer allowed to have, or the things you’re going to have to do in order to follow that plan, and as you’re doing that, you’re feeling really excited and motivated. You’re like, yeah, I’m gonna follow this plan. This is gonna be the plan that turns the table for me.

I can do this. So you go to the grocery store. You prep your food, get your workout clothes ready, and meanwhile you’re thinking, “I just have to follow the rules from this plan, and I’ll be successful. I have the rules. I have the program. I know what to do. This should be easy.

So you do that right for three, four days, maybe even two weeks, but then something in life happens. Something happens, and you fall off the wagon. You break the rules. You had some kind of life setback, and what happens to your mindset when you’re always following those rules of those programs, and then you break them, is that you feel like you failed, right?

I sure know that I have felt that way in the past. You feel like you either have to get it back on track, or just kind of keep going backwards and doing the same thing you’re doing and forget about the plan. And for one, I never let my clients say back on track.

By the way, because there’s there’s no such thing. It’s a lifestyle, a true transformation, a true lasting weight loss is a lifestyle. There’s no back on track when you’re in a lifestyle.

So when you’re in that mindset and taking that approach to losing weight of following all the program rules perfectly, and then something happens, and then you break them, you’re living in what I call the all mindset, otherwise known as perfectionism, and you’re doing everything perfectly according to your plan, that’s the all mindset, and I’m sure you have heard the phrase before: all or nothing mindset, and that’s what we’re talking about here. You’re either all in on that diet plan, or you’re doing nothing.

So here’s the thing: you’re following the plan, doing everything perfectly, and feeling great, and then life throws you a curveball, and now you’re in that nothing mindset.

You’re off track, and what do you do when you’re off track?

I don’t know about you, but in the past, I’ve eaten all the foods I wasn’t supposed to have: wine, sugar, flour, chips, pizza-you go all out eating everything. It’s it’s just everything, right? And you stop moving, you stop exercising, you start stressing more, and and then suddenly, as you’re eating more and more of those foods that you know you shouldn’t be eating, you stop showing up in the Facebook group of the plan you were supposed to follow. You stop opening your weekly meal plans. You stop responding to your trainer or coach’s emails. You literally disappear, and you stay in the nothing mindset until the pain and misery of being in that nothing place gets so uncomfortable that you decide you have to start again, or you put on a new pair of pants and they were tight, or you saw a picture of yourself and you felt embarrassed.

So then you swing back into the all mindset and you start the old program over again, or you start searching for a new one because the old one obviously didn’t work, right?

So in either case, you start over again. You go from the all to the none, back to the all, and you try to muscle your way through that new plan, thinking you just need more willpower, more strength, and then eventually, what happens?

Something in life happens, and you swing back to the nothing mindset. It’s kind of like a pendulum swing, going back and forth and back and forth, and it’s exhausting. I mean, how many of you can relate to what I’m saying? That your life is a pendulum of going back and forth and back and forth, and it doesn’t feel good swinging back and forth between all and nothing all the time, right? It’s exhausting. I know. I did it forever until I was 35. In fact, so you’re not alone.

And here’s the thing: this is the real problem of why women over 35 can’t lose weight: the all or nothing mindset. It’s not the food. It’s not the exercise. It’s not the calories or the macros or whatever. It’s the mindset, that idea that you just need to check the boxes and follow the rules and be perfect to get there.

And if you’re struggling with this, here’s what you need.

You need to be in the middle, in the gray zone, not in the black and white, in the gray zone. And this is what I teach my clients. And here’s what has to happen for you to get there: you have to stop thinking everything is either all or nothing. You have to stop thinking it has to be perfect. Guys, we’re not perfect humans. This is why you keep getting stuck. You need to be in the middle, in the gray zone, where you’re doing enough to get the results, but you have enough ease and wiggle room built in that you can still live a normal life, where it’s okay for you to have a dessert or a pizza or a holiday cookie or to only work out three days a week or drink a glass of wine.

You know what’s different about my approach with my clients is that you call the shots.

I’m guiding you and steering you in that right direction, and I’m busting those diet myths and telling you what you need to focus on, so you can really drown out all the noise out there. And this is a huge mindset shift for many women.

One of my clients recently asked me about pizza, and I said, “Yeah, let’s talk about pizza, because you know who doesn’t love a good pizza, right?

And I said to her, “Here’s what I recommend you do if you want to eat pizza with your family. And she was totally blown away because she thought I was gonna just tell her she couldn’t eat pizza.

I said to her, “Are you willing to live the rest of your life without pizza? And she was like, “No.

It’s just so refreshing to have somebody teach me how to eat pizza instead of what everyone says is to restrict it. So I don’t know about you guys, but eating pizza, cookies, having a glass of wine is something I want to be able to have in my life from time to time.

And you know, if you’re okay giving those things up for the rest of your life, and that’s something that works for you, that’s that’s awesome. Keep doing it if it’s working for you.

But if you’re not learning the skills to deal with these real life scenarios, and it’s just black or white in your mind, pizza or no pizza, it’s going to be really hard to keep the weight off for good.

Most people feel really out of sorts with this because they’ve never had someone give them this flexible structure with their eating or explain to them ideas of meals that might actually work for them and give them to them as examples.

For some people, that actually makes them so uncomfortable because they’re so used to the strict rules and all the mindset of you know just being in that all place.

They’re not comfortable with critically thinking about their behaviors and being more self-aware and paying attention to the thoughts that they’re having and the habits that they’re just doing on autopilot all the time, to them that sounds like so much work. Ugh! I already have to change the way I eat to get the results that I want, and now you’re telling me I have to think about all this other stuff too.

Ugh! Nothing because I ate pizza, so I might as well just eat everything else that I want for the next two months, right?

So you know, weight loss is confusing, and there’s so much noise out there and confusion out there about how to approach weight loss.

And the reason there’s so much noise and confusion is because every person is different, and there’s no one solution that meets everyone’s needs. This is why so many people are really attracted to keto because it’s simple, cut carbs, nothing else. It’s just cut carbs, right? And we can really wrap our brains around simple, right?

But then what happens when you have to travel for work, or one of your kids gets sick, or your car breaks down, and you can’t do it. You get stressed. You get a craving, and we all know when we crave things, we don’t crave carrots and apples.

We crave starches and sugars and flours. You know all those foods our brains really love when we’re stressed out. Now, you just ate all those things, and you just broke keto’s rules of no carbs, and you swung back into that nothing mindset.

Right?

Living in the gray zone is so much easier and more realistic for every lifestyle, but that means you have to do more work up front to figure out how to be in that lifestyle. What really works for you, and if you do that upfront work, you’re able to stay in that gray zone much easier, and that’s how you keep the weight off.

I see women a lot who have done Weight Watchers, and they have gained the weight back, and it’s always because they were really, really good at following the points, and they got to their weight goal.

But then after they gained all the weight back because they never learned the skills to deal with real life scenarios and what to do when they’re confronted with foods like pizza.

What I want you to understand is that the things it takes to get to that gray zone are much simpler than you think they are.

You know, I constantly receive messages from women asking me, you know, about cravings and they want a sugar detox, or asking me how they can break up with sugar and give it up, and my question is, do you really want to give up sugar?

I mean, be honest with yourself. Do you really want to give up sugar?

I don’t know anybody that really wants to do that for life. But here’s the thing: if you’re eating enough protein and veggies and fiber 80 to 90% of the time, a little sugar here and there is fine. It should be part of your lifestyle.

If you’re giving up sugar, you’re in that all mindset, which means giving up everything. Not eating pizza, avoiding sugar and flour and wine 100% of the time, and eliminating carbs and grains.

Like, why are people giving up these things? I I don’t understand why people are giving up things like grains and carbs because they’re high fiber and they help you lose weight.

So it doesn’t make sense to me unless there’s a medical reason. You know, weight gain comes from eating too many calories and from metabolic hormonal Imbalances, grains, carbs, pizza, sugar-they didn’t cause you to gain weight on their own. It was from eating more food than your body needs.

Taking a hormones-first approach to nutrition to balance metabolic hormones and being in a slight calorie deficit are the two basic things you need to lose weight.

And I’m not talking about reproductive hormones. I’m talking about insulin, leptin, gremlin, cortisol. These are the hormones that prevent you from overeating, having low energy, and craving certain foods. These hormones are controlled by eating the right kind of foods and lifestyle choices like sleep and stress, and you know I do hear from women a lot that it’s my thyroid that’s causing me to be overweight.

And I will tell you, these metabolic hormones-insulin, left, and granulin cortisol-all influence your thyroid. So you get these hormones in check. Guess what? Your thyroid starts operating a lot better because everything in the body works together, and at the core, these hormones are the key.

There’s five pillars to weight loss. I teach my clients: balance, metabolic hormones, nutrition, movement, getting the right support and accountability, and mindset.

Mindset being getting out of the all or nothing, and when you get these five things right, you no longer battle cravings or swing back and forth between the all or nothing mindset.

And my clients are always amazed when they start working with me that they no longer feel the urge to dive into the office candy jar, or eat all the cookies that they baked on the weekend with the kids, and this usually happens within two weeks. That’s how quickly you can turn this around, and they’re always totally amazed.

Guys, this is the power of balanced metabolic hormones, the power of the right nutrition, movement, support, and mindset, and it’s also the power of getting out of that all-or-nothing mindset. Oh, and here’s the other piece of this: you actually have to enjoy what you’re eating to live in that gray zone.

To live this weight loss lifestyle forever, you have to enjoy all the foods you’re eating. You can’t muscle your way through it and eat a bunch of things just to eat them.

You know, I had a client recently who really did not like eggs, and she just told me there’s no way I can eat eggs or protein for breakfast because I just hate eggs. And so we talked about a few ways to make her eggs taste better, along with some other options that were egg-free.

And what we discovered was number one, she wasn’t seasoning her eggs, and she was using cooking spray. Okay, throw out the cooking spray. Gross. The number one way to kill egg friends is to use cooking spray, and there’s actually calories in cooking spray, so be very careful with that.

So she added a little bit of cheese to her eggs, and now she loves them.

It’s the smallest little change that totally shifted the eggs for her. So that’s part of the work you have to do to create the lifestyle to be in the gray zone: is making these small adjustments. Listen, I don’t like cheese in my eggs. That’s my personal preference.

But guess what? This client, she does. She likes cheese in her eggs, and that’s what works for her. And she’s down 20 pounds in three months, and it’s working. And that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter that she’s not following how I like to eat. She’s following how she likes to eat, and she is determining what that is, not me. I’m just guiding her.

So if you’re looking for someone to figure it out for you, or to give you the exact rules or the perfect meal plan, it’s not going to work. You’re just going to keep swinging between that all-or-nothing mindset. That’s not what you want. You want to be in that gray zone. You want the place where you can eat pizza, wine, sugar.

I love those things, and let me tell you, when you get your metabolic hormones and your nutrition and everything else aligned, you don’t crave those things constantly the way you do when you’re overweight, listen.

You are the only person who can truly be an expert on you. No one else.

Find the powerful guide who is going to teach you the lifestyle that works for you, so you can be in that gray zone. I’ll talk to you soon.

Hey, if you enjoyed this podcast, you have to come check out my free weight loss class. It’s the five steps to lasting weight loss, how hormones impact weight loss, and the truth about lasting weight loss without relying on willpower, workouts, or deprivation.

Click the link in the show notes to watch that free class today. And if you are a woman over 35 with 20 to 50 or more pounds to lose, schedule a free weight loss breakthrough session with me after you watch that class. And let’s talk about your 20 to 50 or more pound weight loss plan. plan