WHY DISCIPLINE, MOTIVATION, AND WILLPOWER ARE BULLSHIT

· INTRODUCTION ·

WELL DONE, YOUNG GRASSHOPPER. YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE ESSENTIAL step of getting your head out of your ass when it comes to weight loss. Now, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. This is like the part in The Karate Kid when Mr. Miyagi finally teaches Danielsan how to do some freaking karate, after he’s been waxing the damn car all summer.

Are you ready for me to unleash the New Revolutionary Secret to Long-Term Weight Loss, Vibrant Health, and Everlasting Happiness (patent pending)?

Drum rolllllllllllll…

Eat your vegetables.

Get enough exercise.

Get enough sleep.

Wait a second. Why did you just throw this book across the room? Are you telling me you already knew that?! Well, duh. You’ve always known exactly what you need to do to get healthy. And I don’t even mean in a fucking Yoda “the answer lies within” kind of way. I mean there was probably a poster in your kindergarten classroom that broke that gripping health-and-wellness story.

It’s not that we don’t know what to do. We need to admit that we just don’t know how to make ourselves DO IT consistently for the long term. Remember how I mentioned that behavior change is hard?

Check it out:

Twenty-five percent of people abandon their New Year’s resolutions after just one week.
An overwhelming 60 percent of people have bailed on their resolution by February.
The average person will make the same damn resolution five times without success.

And it’s not that people don’t want to change! I know people who would rather lose weight than be sent on an around-the-world cruise with John Stamos. (That’s everyone else’s fantasy too, right?) But they still can’t make themselves stick to it. It’s not that they aren’t motivated. Motivation has nothing to do with it. Studies show that even after a heart attack, only 14 percent of patients make any lasting changes around eating or exercise.

What the hell is going on? Are we just the most disgusting, weak-willed life-forms who can’t get our shit together, even though our very lives might depend on it? Nope. But we are going about it all ass backward. We try:

Discipline: Strict rules about what we can and can’t do/eat/drink. We vilify certain food groups or eating after 8:00 p.m. or whatever the current trend is.

Motivation: We make a Fitspo Pinterest board, we sign up for an expensive gym, and we make a bet with our friend that we’ll have to donate to the Men Who Have Perms Foundation if we eat a pie.

Willpower: We force ourselves to get out of bed and work out, and we give ourselves harsh talks in the mirror. We swear to all that is holy that we will NOT try that new hipster artisanal hot dog place that just opened up. Nope. Not happening. Not even if it damn well kills us.

But here is the problem with self-discipline, motivation, and willpower: they take a lot out of you. All those rules and mental shenanigans? That is a major life suck. Oh sure, it might feel kind of fun at first…like when you first decide that you are going sugar free and you rip your cupboards open and purge all the evil sugar that lies within and triumphantly post on Instagram about it, and the first few times you get to announce your new sugar-free status to all your friends and how good you are feeling.

Then fast-forward six weeks when you are stuck in traffic on a hot day, hangry and stressed with a screaming baby in the back seat, and the only food in the car is a box of Girl Scout cookies. Chances are you are going to be all outta Fs for that whole sugar-free thing.

The truth is that we have better things to do than make Being Sugar Free our new full-time job, so as soon as the rush is over and something else happens that requires your attention and energy (say, I don’t know…work, kids, living your GD life), you won’t have anything left to execute your discipline, motivation, and willpower. And you will fall off the wagon. Or—more specifically—into the Girl Scout cookies, which can lead into a Fuckit spiral that causes that extra bit of weight gain that statistically follows each one of these cycles. (More on the Fuckits later.)

If you want to make weight loss work for real life, if you want to create a body you are so proud of and have energy to spare, you need to make it as effortless and automated as brushing your teeth…as picking up your phone when you get a text…as covering your mouth when you cough.

You don’t need more discipline, motivation, or willpower.

You need better habits.

Aristotle is often quoted as saying: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not so much an act but a habit.”

Notice the operative word here is “EXCELLENCE.” Aristotle isn’t talking about boring-ass status quo here. The word habits may evoke rote tasks like Mr. Rogers changing into his cardigan when he gets home, or your dad reminding you to check the oil in your car every time you fill up. But when my man Aristotle said excellence is a habit, he was talking about kicking some serious ass at life.

The problem is when we think of serious ass kickers, it looks like their success came in a series of “big breaks.” Let’s take Madonna for example. (Because who doesn’t want to be Madonna?) This is what her success might look like to us:

Total unknown → Got a big break with “Holiday” → Desperately sought Susan → Married another celebrity, Sean Penn → “True Blue”/“Like a Prayer” = huge hits → Evita → “Ray of Light” → Highest grossing female artist of all time

But instead, it looks like this:

Madonna worked her fucking ass off every day from 1982 until today. Period.

There’s actually an article in Psychology Today claiming that Madonna practices her craft harder than any other celebrity, allowing her to access a state of “superfluidity.” Her grueling rehearsal habit puts her actions on autopilot, which frees up her conscious brain to respond and interact with the audience. Madonna doesn’t have to think about when she is supposed to kick her left leg and when she is supposed to grab her crotch. That magic just happens.

The breakout bestselling author has a daily writing habit, but we don’t hear about it until it’s a bestseller. Professional basketball players have shot hundreds of hoops every day for years. Michael Phelps practiced swimming every day—even on Christmas Day. You might think he pretty much has that front crawl nailed and dude could afford to take a day off. But no—the reason he excels is because of his habits.

We love the idea of a having big, dramatic weight loss and then wiping our hands on our jeans and being done with that project, but that’s just not how success works. Success is the culmination of every single day when you take a tiny step toward what you want. It really doesn’t happen in one dramatic episode.

Ever wonder why they’ve never had a Biggest Loser reunion show? Because it would showcase this:

Expecting to go on a strict diet, lose a ton of weight, and then just maintain that weight loss is about as unrealistic and statistically unlikely as your retirement plan being to win the lottery, quit your job, and live off the interest. It’s a great fantasy, but a pretty dumb plan.

So let’s get smart. Having good habits is the health equivalent of a sensible financial plan that involves saving a little bit every day and then letting the compound interest do its freaking job. And if you are thinking that habits and compound interest don’t sound very sexy and exciting, let me remind you of what happens with compound interest: it’s when you get interest on the interest. So yeah—at first the growth is slow and it seems like nothing is happening, and then all of a sudden the results kick in and you are pretty much Scrooge McDuck doing laps in a swimming pool full of Benjamins.

I don’t know about you, but I find that chart sexy as all hell when it comes to finances. And let me tell you—it’s pretty damn exciting to see the same pattern with your fitness results. You just make small changes to your everyday behaviors, and at first it seems like nothing is happening and then you hit the tipping point and you are pretty much Jennifer Lopez. (Or, you know, you feel just like her. Because remember: it’s really a feeling that you are looking for.) That’s the kind of compound effect that’s going to happen with your fitness when you start to apply the 7 Habits of Highly Healthy Motherfuckers that I’m going to teach you.

Here’s the best part: compound interest works without you having to think about it. And that’s exactly why habits work so well. They don’t require any extra effort or brain space. Because Madonna has the habit of practicing her craft every single day, she has all sorts of mental space left to focus on other important stuff, like pissing off religious groups and cultivating a British accent.

Once you’ve got your healthy habits nailed, you will have a smokin’-hot body, more energy than you ever wanted, and all the brain space you want to focus on your job, your relationship, starting your heavy metal band, whatever you want to do with your one precious life on this earth. That isn’t worrying about fucking sugar.

Ready to start creating those habits?