Avoiding Discomfort in Weight Loss Journey

Are You Avoiding Discomfort In Your Weight Journey

Something I’ve noticed is women avoiding doing things when it’s hard or uncomfortable. Let me give you a few examples.

My grandkids came into town for the weekend, so I didn’t track my food because it was too hard. I went to a restaurant and didn’t know how to track so I didn’t track my food because it was too hard. I had a stressful day at work, so I didn’t walk. I was stressed today and stopped tracking my food because it was too hard.

Do you see the theme here? Every time life is hard or stressful or you are in a situation that is outside your comfort zone, you stop and do nothing.

In order to lose weight and keep it off forever, you must learn to do something vs. nothing. You must learn to push yourself in the moments where it is harder to things even if you cannot do them perfectly or like you normally do them.

Avoiding the hard moments is teaching you to give up anytime life throws you some resistance. That is teaching you to not believe in yourself, not trust yourself and always fear failing.

The moments where it is hard is where you learn the most and build resiliency. Without pushing yourself to do something rather than nothing in those harder moments is why you are stuck. It’s also what sets apart the people who lose weight and keep it off vs. those who remain spinning their wheels.

Feeling Uncomfortable Is Learning

The uncomfortable moments you are avoiding are sabotaging you. Those difficult moments teach you how to get some steps instead of no steps, or how to track your food taking your best guess. Those little things are setting you up to maintain your weight loss.

Not doing those little things when it is harder, means you have no skills to do them to keep weight off long-term. In order to reach your goal and be healthy long-term, your mindset of ditching your habits everytime life is hard has to change.

Do you stop brushing your teeth when life is stressful? Probably not. Eating your protein, eating your fiber, eating in the right portion sizes for you, getting steps, resistance training – these are all habits of health and it’s crazy that they’re always the first thing people stop doing when life happens.

Listen to the full Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode about getting out of your comfort zone to lose weight. Lot of great mindset shifts in this episode to help you think differently about your journey!

In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:

• Why Avoiding The Moments Where It Is Hard Is Keeping You Stuck
• Shifting Your Mindset Regarding Hard Moments From Being Bad To Learning
• What Sets Apart Those Who Lose Weight Permanently vs. Those Who Spin Their Wheels
• Why Something Is Better Than Nothing
• How Your Mindset Needs To Shift To Reach Your Goal
• Thinking Differently About Your Weight Journey

Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify or Amazon Music

Related Episodes For This Episode

• Building Trust In Yourself In Your Weight Journey
• Annual Diet Hamster Wheel

Avoiding Discomfort In Your Weight Loss Journey Podcast Transcript

Hello friends! I hope you’re doing well. Wow – summer is flying by! August is a few days away and soon it will be fall. Then the holidays and then January all over again.

I think one thing that happens for a lot of women during the summer is that you kind of want to have fun and check out so you’re not paying attention too much to your health habits.

Then summer ends and you’re like oh no, I had too much fun this summer and I don’t like the way I look and feel I need to get back on track.

So, then you’re back in weight loss mode until the holidays and then the holidays are here and you’re off track again until January when you’re back in weight loss mode. That’s the cycle most people live in. Every year. For decades. Living in this cycle is not normal!

I know because that used to be me and that is the cycle many of my clients are in when they come work with me. In fact, I have an entire podcast episode where I talk about the annual diet cycle women are on and how to stop it.

It is episode 95 – the costly summer dieter’s mistake. You may want to go listen to that episode, and honestly this is going to fit in well with our discussion today because today I want to talk to you about a common pitfall that midlife women get trapped in during their health and weight journey and it’s avoiding discomfort.

Before we head into our discussion, I want to let you know that I am going to be taking fewer clients from now through the end of this year. I have a website that is 11 years old and needs my attention.

So, if you have been considering one-to-one weight loss coaching schedule a consultation with me because I’m going to be doing fewer consultations from now until the end of the year.

In January 2026, I will be making more consultations available. If you are a previous client who wants needs help on something, just email me. You don’t need to setup a consultation.  

Now let’s talk about discomfort and why avoiding discomfort is sabotaging you in your weight loss journey. I’ve coached 1,000 midlife women over the course of 11 years and something I’ve noticed frequently is women avoiding doing things when it’s hard. Let me give you a few examples.

My grandkids came into town for the weekend, so I didn’t track my food because it was too hard. I went to a restaurant and didn’t know how to track so I didn’t track my food because it was too hard. I had a hard day, so I didn’t walk. I was stressed with work and tracking my food and getting a walk was too hard.

Are you seeing the theme here? You’re always dropping your habits when it’s hard. You’re avoiding doing something because it is hard.

My question is why do you think it should be easy? You are literally learning how to take care of your health. Why would you think learning something new should be easy?

Could you imagine if your kid came home from school and said I didn’t do any of my math homework because it was too hard? You would probably suggest to them that they do the math problems they could finish on their own then ask for help on the rest.

So, instead of doing nothing, do something and that should absolutely be your mentality. Something is always better than nothing. Take eating out. I see this all the time with clients.

They say Megan I went out to eat but I didn’t know how to track so I didn’t track my food. That would be no different than your child saying they did zero math homework.

When you eat out you track what you can, or you take your best guess and move on. You’re never going to know with 100% certainty with restaurant food, but having some data is always better than no data. Having some math homework is better than no math homework. That needs to be your mindset.

You see many of you still look at your health habits like walking, eating protein and fiber, strength training as only a means to losing weight so when you encounter resistance, or something feels harder than normal you don’t do anything. That mindset needs to change.

These habits are for you to be healthy, feel your best, be your best at work and show up better as a partner and parent. Losing weight is simply a by-product of taking care of your health.

Many individuals still identify as someone is not healthy. They identify as someone who is unreliable. Do you identify as someone who takes care of their oral health? Your teeth would rot and fall out if you didn’t.

This is why you brush your teeth no matter what is happening in your life. You don’t stop brushing your teeth because your grandkids come to town for the weekend. It takes the same amount of time to track your food as it does to brush your teeth.

It shouldn’t matter that your grandkids are in town. But you don’t look at it that way. The difference is that you still look at these habits as something you must do to lose weight. You don’t look at it as your body getting weaker and deteriorating because you’re not taking care of your health.

So, in these moments when it is harder to do the habits you justify not doing them because you’re like well, I’ll work on weight loss later. I’m okay where I’m at right now. I can put this off. Except when you do that, you’re reinforcing the identify of you being someone who never takes care of their health.

You’re also eroding the trust within yourself. You literally stop believing in yourself that you are going to follow through and be reliable.

I spoke about this in the last episode where I said if you had a friend who you always made plans with and they were constantly blowing you off, eventually that friendship would dimmish because you would not trust that your friend was reliable. That is what you are doing to yourself in your weight journey and not realizing how detrimental it is.

Now you already feel unreliable to yourself, you already have evidence probably of failing diets in the past, you identify as someone who never takes care of their health and now you see you stop doing things when the going gets tough.

What do you think psychologically that does to your motivation to continue going? What do you think that does to your consistency and how does that impact your results?

It means you are going to be very unmotivated, be inconsistent and results will be minimal at best. But that is not truly what you want for yourself.

That means in the times when it is hard. When you encounter resistance. When you are uncomfortable. You must do something. You don’t need to do it perfectly. You don’t need to be 100% accurate. You need to do something. Something vs. nothing. That must be your mentality.

You are missing out on all the opportunities for you to grow and get better at doing the habits you are trying to build when you avoid the times when it is hard. How will you ever figure out how to get steps if you don’t force yourself to do something on the days when you have added stress?

How will you ever maintain weight loss long-term if you don’t track at a restaurant? Chances are high you’re going to have more stressful days.

Chances are you are going to eat out at a restaurant again someday and likely you eat a lot of the same foods at the restaurants you go to. How will ever know the proper portion size for you if you don’t go through the hard right now and track what you eat?

When my life is extra stressful, I double down on my nutrition and fitness so I can be at my highest self. I never ever quit taking care of myself first.

I figure out how to reprioritize my schedule, delegate to others, ask for help, how to do the best I can and fit in something vs. nothing. Honestly, this is what sets apart I believe the people who achieve their goals vs. those who spin their wheels – avoiding the hard.

The hard is where you build resiliency. The hard times are where you learn how to pivot and make easier meals. The hard is where you build your confidence that you can juggle your life while taking care of your health.

The hard is where you will make mistakes, but you’re never going to learn unless you go through something hard and say well that didn’t work. What am I going to do the next time that situation happens?

Avoiding the hard is sabotaging you. Discomfort is where we grow. Growth comes with discomfort and these normal life situations like going to a BBQ, going to a restaurant, kids getting sick, a parent getting injured, someone passing away, grandkids coming to visit, work stress, house stress, family drama – none of that is ever going to stop.

That means you must learn how to navigate these real-life situations instead of quitting taking care of yourself first.

Like when my father passed away two years ago, I didn’t stop eating protein. I didn’t stop going on walks. I kept doing those things the best I could and not doing those things would have set me up to feel worse.

You are going to encounter hard situations in your journey. Situations that feel harder than when you are at home or just when life is calm.

Those uncomfortable situations where you are outside your comfort zone are the learning opportunities. Those are most often the times when women stop, quit and do nothing because it’s too hard.

Why would you think it should be easy? You’re not going to learn how to do it unless you make yourself uncomfortable and force yourself to do it. You go on a weekend trip with your girlfriends, force yourself to track your food.

Force yourself to take your best guess. Most of us want to avoid the discomfort of doing that. But going through the discomfort is exactly what you need to do to get to where you want to be.

Taking the easy way out is never going to serve you and in fact, you will find yourself frustrated and playing the mental gymnastics of why am I like this? Why do I always do this? Why don’t I have the results that I want?

The answer is simple. Because you only do things when it’s easy. You have to push yourself to do things when it’s hard. You have to build resiliency.  That’s the only way you get there.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place to not track your food like going on a European vacation for two weeks. But the examples I’m sharing with you today are all examples of where you need to push through the hard.

You won’t learn if you’re only doing things when they’re easy and by avoiding the hard you reenforcing the identify within you that you are someone who doesn’t take care of themselves. You are a flaky friend. You are unreliable. You are not trustworthy.

You are chipping away at your belief in yourself, your confidence and eroding the relationship you have with yourself. That right there is way more important than the weight you lose because that is your mental health and self-esteem that takes the hit.

Only doing things when it feels easy or feels convenient won’t get you there and there are consequences to your mental health, self-image and self-esteem.

You have to push yourself when it’s hard to do something rather than doing nothing. You have to push yourself when it’s inconvenient to do something rather than doing nothing. You have to push yourself outside of your comfort zone to get to where you want to go and that is true of any goal you have in life.

A lot of women will dismiss what I’m saying but this is why you are stuck, and once you embrace getting outside your comfort zone it will get you unstuck.  Because avoiding discomfort, avoiding the hard is exactly what is keeping you stuck.