Why You Can't Stay Consistent (And Why That's Not Actually the Problem)

Every Sunday night, I used to pack my suitcase and feel this wave of guilt wash over me.

I'd overeaten again during the weekend. Now I was about to spend another week eating hotel food and fast food on the road. Multi-day training programs, train the trainer sessions, speaking events. That was my work. That was my life.

And I kept telling myself the same thing: "I'll never be able to lose weight until I stop traveling."

But here's the thing. I wasn't going to stop traveling.

So I kept trying to force myself to be consistent with a nutrition plan designed for someone who's home every Sunday doing meal prep. Someone with a predictable schedule. Someone whose life looked nothing like mine.

No amount of willpower was going to make that work.

Because the problem wasn't my discipline. The problem was I was trying to be consistent with the wrong damn plan.

You Don't Have a Consistency Problem

Let me tell you what I see happening with the women I work with.

Every Monday morning, you tell yourself this is the week. You've got your meal plan. Your workout schedule. Maybe you've even batch prepped your lunches.

By Wednesday afternoon, you're elbow deep in the office candy bowl pulling out the little mini Reese's cups.

And you're wondering what's wrong with you.

But here's what I need you to hear from me. Nothing has gone wrong.

The entire concept of "staying consistent" is actually setting you up to fail.

Consistency is not a personality trait that you either have or don't have. It's not about willpower. It's not about just trying harder or finding an accountability partner or making yourself do it.

Consistency is what happens naturally when three things align.

When your plan matches your actual biology. When it fits your real life. And most importantly, when it matches who you are becoming, not who you used to be.

Most of the women I work with who are over 40 are trying to be consistent with strategies that worked perfectly when they were 25. Before they had kids. When they were in their old identity as someone who could just push through.

And now they wonder why it's not working.

Your Body Is Not the Same Body

Let's talk about the first piece. Your body.

Does this plan work with your actual body?

Your body in perimenopause or postmenopause is fundamentally different than what it was at 30. Your insulin response has changed. Your cortisol patterns are different. Your sleep architecture is not the same.

So why are you trying to be consistent with a nutrition plan designed for a body that you no longer have?

This is what I mean when I talk about bio-individuality.

What I used to eat when I was 35, I loved eating quinoa bowls. I used to love eating bread. Ezekiel bread, sourdough toast, even sweet potatoes. And I had to completely restructure that in my 50s.

Not because these foods are inherently bad. They're not. They're actually pretty good for most people.

But because my body's response to them changed.

So I had to move them out of my energy foods to my fun foods. And I had to find slower digesting carbs that actually sustained my energy without the crash at the age I am now in my perimenopausal body.

Here's the biggest mistake I see you making.

You're thinking, well, if I just try harder, right? If I just cross my fingers and hope and pray that I'm going to be able to follow my schedule on Monday, you think that's going to work. You think that your body is going to respond the way that it should.

Your body doesn't read calorie counts on MyFitnessPal. It doesn't care what worked for your friend.

It's only going to respond to your hormones, your insulin sensitivity, your stress levels, and your sleep quality.

So when you're trying to be consistent with foods that now spike your blood sugar, with foods that tank your energy at 3pm in the afternoon and leave you starving by the time you get to dinner at seven, your body is going to override your willpower and your perfectly detailed plan every single time.

That is not a consistency problem. That is not something wrong with you. That is simply a biology problem.

Your Plan Doesn't Fit Your Actual Life

Let me ask you something.

Are you trying to be consistent with a plan that requires meal prep on Sundays, but you forgot that you travel for work every single week?

Are you trying to be consistent with your 6am workouts, but you forgot to mention that you're up with hot flashes half the night, every single night?

Are you trying to be consistent with cooking these separate meals from your family because nobody else wants to eat your grilled chicken and steamed broccoli? And you forget that you have five people, five different mouths to feed in your family?

Are you trying to be consistent with a plan that doesn't allow you to go out to any social events, doesn't allow you to go to any restaurants? And so all you can do is be inside of your home because that is the perfect condition for you to lose weight?

Here's the thing. Your life is not going to get less busy.

Your schedule is not going to magically become predictable. You need a plan that works in the chaos, not one that only works under perfect conditions.

When I was at the height of my career and I was traveling to different cities for work every single week, I felt like the only time I could be consistent with my eating was when I wasn't assigned on a project. When I was in between projects working from home. That's when the conditions were right.

But when I had to travel for work, I was eating in the airport, eating at hotels. I was traveling every single week on Monday, going to a different city and coming back home on Thursdays. And I felt like everything was just out of my control.

So what changed for me after 14, 15, 16 years of traveling for work?

I had to come up with my own grown woman standards.

I had to plan my nutrition around what was actually available on the road. I never left it up to myself to try to figure it out in the airport. Because traveling by air is kind of stressful. And then you have to add work stress on top of that?

When I was on site for work, I created these rules for myself. I had a no dessert, two drink max rule every single day. I skipped the snacks because in these conference rooms, snacks were everywhere. All day, every day. I skipped the snacks and I piled on the protein during meal times so I wouldn't be tempted to eat the snacks. And the protein would help keep my energy high and my brain fog free.

I was consistent because I implemented those grown woman standards. I created a plan that fit my real life at that moment and not some fantasy version of what I could only do when I was at home.

The mistake you're making is thinking that you need to change your entire life to fit the plan.

That is backwards.

The plan needs to fit your life.

If you are a mom and you're shuttling your kids to this activity, this activity, this activity, your nutrition strategy needs to work in the car.

If you work nights, if you're a shift worker, your eating window needs to match your actual schedule and not some ideal 8am to 6pm timeline when half of that time you are actually asleep.

Let's talk about the biggest life fit failure. Plans that require you to be a completely different person in a social situation.

You know what I'm talking about. You're like, all right, I got to go to this social event. I got to go to this party. I have to go to this dinner event, this client event, this fundraising event. And you're like, all right, I'm going to go in there and tonight I am not going to drink, knowing that you are good for two, three, four, five glasses of wine on a good night. But today you're saying you're not going to drink.

Or you go into the dinner and you say, all right, I'm just going to order the salad. I'm not going to have any bread and I'm going to say no to dessert.

Sounds good, right?

But how's that working for you? Are you being consistent or are you forcing yourself through sheer effort until you inevitably break?

Stop setting yourself up for failure.

I know the social situations are tricky. Family dinners, client dinners, client lunches, fundraising activities, church events. I know the social events are tricky.

So I've created a social eating success guide that I give to every single one of my clients that they use to walk them through exactly what they're going to do before they walk in the door of that event. So they already have their grown woman standards already set up before they go into that event.

Map out your actual week. Not the week that you wish you're going to have. Map out your actual week.

Don't put in your calendar that you're going to wake up at 5am to go to the gym if in your actual week you're really getting up at eight. Don't do that. Don't do that to yourself.

What are the non-negotiables? When are you actually home? When do you have the decision fatigue that you need to make decisions ahead of time before that brain fog and decision fatigue sets in? When are you most vulnerable to grabbing whatever's easy?

Then I want you to design a nutrition approach that works with these realities.

Maybe you need a grab and go breakfast option because your mornings are chaotic. Maybe you need something that you can easily eat in the car. Maybe you need a strategy for your business lunches that doesn't involve you awkwardly pulling out Tupperware or measuring your food at the table. Maybe you need fun foods that are built into your Friday night and you plan that on a Monday because that's part of your actual life.

Consistency is not about perfection. It is about having a plan that is sustainable in your real, messy, unpredictable life.

The Identity Piece Nobody Talks About

This is the piece that nobody talks about. No weight loss program, no nutritionist, no dietitian, no weight loss clinic. Nobody's talking to you about your identity.

And this is the reason why you can have the perfect plan for your body and your biology and your life. And you will still mess it up. You will still not be consistent.

You are not trying to be the old you who could eat whatever you want and stay thin. You're not trying to be the one who has endless energy to power through.

What I want you to focus on is that you are becoming your 2.0 identity.

You're becoming the woman who uses food as fuel and not entertainment. You're the one who is becoming the woman who prioritizes sleep because she knows it is a non-negotiable. And you are becoming the woman who says no to the things that don't serve her. And you don't have to tell nobody why you're saying no. There's no guilt and there's no explanation.

But if your actions are still coming from your old identity, your people pleasing identity, your stress eating identity, that woman who puts everyone else first identity, you're going to keep self-sabotaging no matter how good your plan is on paper.

Your old identity says, I just need to be disciplined. I should have willpower. I should just eat less. I should be able to push through.

You're just shoulding on yourself.

Your grown woman era, your 2.0 identity, she says my body needs specific things to function optimally and I make decisions based on data and not guilt. And I'm not being difficult when I say no. I'm just being intentional.

Do you see the difference? Do you feel the difference?

One is about restriction and shame. The other is about becoming someone who makes different choices because she values different things.

I had a client years ago. She kept falling off of her plan every single weekend when she would visit her mom for family dinner.

We'd get her dialed in. She'd be doing great. And then she would spend Sunday at her mom's house with her brothers and their families, and she would come back completely derailed.

Her problem wasn't willpower. Because during the week she was great. Saturday she was great.

The problem was her identity conflict.

As soon as she stepped in her mama's house, she was playing the role of the daughter who needs to be accommodating. She was playing the role of the daughter who eats whatever is served because she didn't want to say no to anyone. She didn't want to make waves. And she was playing the role of the younger sister who was the common target for her older brother's teasing.

Mind you, this woman is in her 40s. But some things just never change when you walk into that old environment.

What we had to do was establish her 2.0 identity and develop the process and the thought process and the thought patterns that she needed to have when she walked into her mama's house in her grown woman identity.

This is the identity of the woman who walks into her mama's house and makes food choices based on how she feels and not based on how she wants her mother to feel.

Once we worked on bringing her new identity into this relationship as daughter and sister, everything changed.

She could show up at her mama's house and maintain her energy eating plan because it wasn't about the food anymore. It was about who she was becoming.

The mistake I see so many of you doing is trying to be consistent with behaviors that don't match your evolving identity.

You're trying to become someone who prioritizes her health. You're trying to become that gym girly. You're trying to become that health girly. But you're still taking on everyone else's stress.

You're trying to become someone who uses food as fuel, but you're still eating your feelings when work gets overwhelming and your boss gives you some critical feedback.

Your actions and your identity have to align. Otherwise, you'll always revert back to old patterns when things get hard.

Who is the woman who maintains her health long term? Who is she?

I want you to answer the question. What does she value? How does she make decisions? What does she say yes to? What does she say no to?

I want you to start making decisions from that identity. You've got to answer the questions first. But then once you have your answers, I want you to start making decisions from that identity.

Even when it feels uncomfortable. And it's going to feel uncomfortable because your 1.0 identity is going to be like, whoa, what are you doing here? What is happening? Calm down. And your bratty brain is going to start to get really loud and try to keep you thinking in your 1.0 identity.

This is when you've got to have some courage. You've got to step into your big girl panties and put on those grown woman standards.

Be grounded in your decisions. Even when people are surprised by your choices. Even when your old identity is screaming at you that you're being difficult or high maintenance and you should be doing this, you shouldn't be doing that. It's starting to should on you again.

This isn't about you becoming someone else. This is not you transforming into a vampire or something or a witch or something crazy.

This is about you becoming the version of you that your current choices right now are preventing you from being.

That version of you is already in existence because it's in your mind. That vision, that healthy person vision you have for yourself is already there because you've already decided this is what you want.

You just have to bridge the gap of getting from where you are right now to that vision of who you want to become. And that is your identity.

Start Here

So here's what I want you to do, whether you ever work with me or not.

Stop trying to be consistent with a plan that doesn't match your biology, doesn't fit your life, your schedule, or it doesn't align with who you are becoming.

That is not a you problem. That is a plan problem.

I want you to start gathering your own data. I want you to start paying attention to how these foods are making you feel.

For the next 14 days, ask yourself these questions. What foods gave me energy? What foods sustained my energy for three to four hours after I consumed them? Which foods left me hungry an hour later? What foods made me crave sugar in the middle of the afternoon? And what helped me sleep versus what disrupted my sleep?

This is your data. This belongs to you and your body. Not a generic meal plan. Not something that I'm saying yeah, you should eat that, you should definitely not eat that. Not what worked for somebody else.

When your nutrition matches your biology, your consistency becomes so much easier because you're not fighting your body the entire time.

I want you to look at where your real life creates friction with your current approach.

And I want you to be honest with yourself. Keep it real. Are these choices coming from my old identity or my 2.0 identity? Are these choices coming from my current set of thinking, my current self, or my 2.0 identity?

Stop blaming yourself for not being consistent.

Start questioning whether you're trying to be consistent with the wrong damn plan.

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