“I have no willpower”: why that is almost never the problem

If you have tried to look after yourself many times and always given up, the problem most likely was not your willpower but the plan: almost all of them are built to last weeks, not years. One that only holds up while you grit your teeth is badly designed: nobody grits their teeth for two years.

I have been a nurse for more than fourteen years and I have heard «the thing is, I have no willpower» hundreds of times. It is almost always said by someone who has proved the opposite: they have raised children, worked shifts, got harder things done than giving up bread.

Why do I always give up after three weeks?

Because what you abandon is almost never the goal: it is the method.

In what I see, two or three weeks is what enthusiasm alone will carry: a diet that takes away everything you like and training that leaves you wrecked. After that, no.

It is not a failure of character: it happens to anyone, and the odd thing would be the opposite.

And there is a trap almost nobody mentions: guilt. One slip breaks nothing — one meal does not move an HbA1c — but «well, I have ruined it now, what does it matter» does: it turns one meal into three weeks.

So what actually goes wrong?

In what I see, it is almost always one of these four. None of them has anything to do with wanting it enough:

• The plan did not fit your life. Your hours, your job, who cooks at home. If it forces you to cook separately, it lasts as long as the rest of the household’s patience.
• Nobody watching. With no one to tell your week to, the bad week turns into the bad month without anyone noticing, you least of all.
• You were chasing the result, not the process. If only the scales count, two flat weeks — completely normal — look like failure, and that is where people give up.
• Everything at once, from day one. Cut out bread, join a gym and sleep eight hours, starting Monday.

And what if it does not work for me this time either?

It is the most honest question, and the one I am asked most. I will not tell you it is impossible, but there are three things I can stand behind.

If I think I cannot help you, I will tell you in the first conversation and that is the end of it. I would rather not take you on than take you on and have you drop out in three weeks.

3 monthsis how long HbA1c takes to reflect a new life: by around the third month there is a blood test that can prove you right. It is not a promise.

And there are things that do not depend on either of us: I will tell you those too.

What almost everybody thinks before calling

These sentences have been said to me so many times that I have them written down. If you have thought any of them, you are not odd: you are the norm.

And if none of this has convinced you

That is fine. There is one thing you can do today without talking to me and without leaving me your email: understand what your last blood test says. If you want to tell me about it afterwards, I am here.