Motivation To Eat Healthier – You DON’T Need It!

You don’t need it.

You probably clicked on this looking for some motivational content. I mean, motivation is everything. Right? At least, that’s what everyone says.

One quick search on YouTube and you get 22 million hits on the word motivation. Everyone including their dog has something to say about it.

Now, you probably already have all these great ideas in your head about what you’re gonna do once you finally have your dream body. But if you feel like you need motivation to eat healthier and exercise to help you get you started, you’re doing it wrong.

In this video, I’m gonna explain why motivation to eat healthier is garbage and what to do instead.

Motivation to eat healthier is garbage

Let’s use people making New Years Resolutions for example. A quick search on Google on the term “New Year’s resolution” and you get over 500 million hits. That is mind blowing! But not surprising. Everybody wants to start fresh and finally get after their goals at the beginning of the year, right? It’s finally time to make a change because that’s when your motivation to eat healthier is sky high.

New year, new me. Right? My question is, what were all these people doing during the other 364 days of the year?

Why wait so long? Why wait until January 1st?

Here’s a couple of interesting stats for you. Did you know that over one-third of resolutions don’t make it past the end of January? And only 8% of people actually keep their New Year’s resolutions. Which means that it has a 92% failure rate. Not even one in ten make it. I’m not big on gambling, but those aren’t very good odds.

Why you shouldn’t rely on motivation and will power

Why? Because people rely solely on motivation and will power to power them through their goals. And that’s great. The problem is, we only have a finite amount of it. Then it runs out. And that’s when things start to get interesting.

Think about it. When your motivation juices are running high, it’s easy to get things done. It’s the easiest part. It’s all puppies, rainbows, and unicorns flying around. But what happens when your motivation runs dry after a few days or after a few weeks?

Here’s how it usually goes for a lot of people. It’s January 1st. You’re running high on motivation to eat healthier. You’re finally ready to lose weight and get after that elusive six pack. So you look up the “best” diet on the Internet or whatever fad diet is popular right now.

You start buying $10 cold pressed juice. By the way, who in their right mind pays $10 for juice?? You buy new gym clothes. You sign up for a 1 year gym membership because it came with a free bag and a water bottle. That’s how they get you, right? It’s all about the free shitty gym bag and water bottle. You’re already thinking about booking a trip to Mexico to show off your summer body. Things are going great.

You only have a finite amount of motivation

But then one day, you’re just having one of those really bad days. You know, everybody has them.

Maybe you had a long day at work and your boss yelled at you. Or maybe somebody brought treats to the office. Your dog somehow ate your favourite workout shirt. You know, you just don’t feel like going to the gym after work. And this eats away your will power. All of a sudden, it’s not so easy to stick to your diet anymore. You start getting demotivated, and this is the beginning of the end. This is when people start to fall off the wagon.

The next day, you start going out for lunch instead of eating your home cooked meal. You make your way to the kitchen office more often because that’s where the free donuts are stashed. You start to find every reason on the planet to skip the gym because you’re just not feeling motivated that day. That cheat meal you had for lunch turns into a cheat day which quickly turns into two cheat days.

Next thing you know, you’re having a cheat week and you’re completely off the wagon and you’re back to square one.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever found yourself in that situation before. By the way, if you wanna know how to get back on track after a cheat meal, check out the video below.

This is why you shouldn’t rely on sheer motivation and willpower alone.

Listen, everyone has good days and bad days. Your actions shouldn’t always just be dictated by how motivated you’re feeling that day. Here is the plain honest truth about it.

Nobody’s gonna feel sorry for you that you’re having a crappy day, and you have no willpower, and you just wanna eat a tub of ben and jerry’s to make yourself feel better. It’s what you do on the days when you don’t feel like sticking to your plan that matters the most. That’s when it really counts.

Life happens. I get it. I really do. We all have stuff to deal with. But that’s where discipline and having a proven plan to follow comes in. Discipline is knowing the difference between what you want now and what you want the most.

The importance of being disciplined

Being disciplined comes from having a strong ‘Why?‘. Why are you doing this to begin with? What’s your biggest reason for wanting to change?

Personally, my ‘Why?’ came to me during a time when I got laid off from my my engineering job and my girlfriend at that time dumped me. Talk about a perfect storm. I felt sorry for myself and over time, I just got to a point where I got sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. So I changed.

What about you? What’s your ‘Why?’ I’d love to know.

Being disciplined repeatedly over time develops consistency, and consistency brings results. Let me repeat. Consistency and staying disciplined over time is what gets you results. Not the motivational video that you’ve seen a thousand times. This part is so important that even if you have the best diet and the best workouts on the planet. But if you’re not disciplined and you don’t stay consistent, you’re not gonna get sustainable results.

For example, you didn’t sleep well the night before and you’re not having a good start to your day. Maybe you got a flat tire on your way to work. That’s a pretty easy excuse to just eat crap and start over tomorrow, right? We’re so emotionally attached to food, it’s not even funny. We love to use food to make ourselves feel better. And hey, there’s always tomorrow, right?

But it’s what you do today despite how you feel that will eventually bring the results you want. That’s where discipline and consistency come into play. You can’t have one bad moment ruin your day. You’re better than that.

Change takes time

Here’s a very important concept that you need to understand. Change takes time. Getting a six pack is a process, but the most important part IS the process. The execution is where the magic happens. Learn to love the journey. There’s always a lesson to be learned in every situation.

I mean, it probably took you months, if not years, to get to where you’re at today. Right? So you shouldn’t expect to just change completely overnight. I mean that doesn’t even make any sense. There’s no shortcut to all of this. There just isn’t.

What you wanna do is strive to be better every day, not just at the beginning of the year when you make your New Year’s resolutions. And stop watching that motivational video for the 100th time. You don’t need it.

You’ll gonna learn and progress so much faster if you just take action, make adjustments, and figure things out along the way. Are you gonna mess up? Probably. But that’s okay. It’s better than getting stuck in research mode and not taking any action. Focus on progress over perfection.

Just remember, you don’t need any more motivation. What you need is a solid plan and the knowledge to act regardless of how motivated you are.

As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!