"Get Real or Stay the Same!"

I personally take an extremely self-conpassionate approach.

I'll ask myself: "why has it been hard for me to behave in a way that is consistent with my goals?"

I'll identify the legitimate barriers and do something to address them. I always give myself the benefit of the doubt that I'm not stupid and I'm not lazy, so if I'm not able to achieve a goal I set for myself, then there has to be a good reason, and I'm smart enough to figure out how to work around it.

Too busy to eat healthy?
-Figure out how to make healthy eating the easiest, laziest option

Too stressed?
-Get a good therapist and learn healthier coping strategies
-Read a book about setting better boundaries

Too hard to resist snacking?
-Keep really convenient healthy snacks on hand, don't keep any other snacks in the house
-Learn some cognitive techniques for redirecting compulsive/intrusive thoughts

Easily overwhelmed?
-Start with teeny, tiny incremental changes that are comfortable and build on them step by step

My goal actually *IS* to make my ideal lifestyle the easiest and most pleasant option. If it isn't, that's not a failure of discipline, that's a failure in my systems.

If my plan depends on consistent, on-going discipline, then I know that plan is going to fail because I can't sustain indefinite discipline. I don't have the time, energy, or emotional resources to do that. I'm way too tired and way too stressed, which is how I got obese in the first place.

Whenever I know what I want to be doing and I consistently fail to do so, my job is to identify the unmet need that is driving the behaviour I don't want, and to find a better way to meet that need.

If snacks and wine are how I'm managing my already high stress, I can't just take away my main stress management options and expect things to go well. The stress will win in the end, it always doesn

This is how I lost weight and how I maintain it, because now it's always the easiest and most pleasant option. So doing something less optimal would take effort.

I'm basically too tired and lazy to regain the weight. Lol.

Incidentally, my spouse also lost 30lbs without even trying just because of the way I engineered our lifestyle and eating, and he hates when our routine is messed up at all because it's inconvenient and annoying. If we travel, by the end of the week he's whining to get back to our normal routine.

It took me an entire year to engineer our lives this way. It wasn't an overnight thing, and I'm always trying out new optimizing techniques when I see that a routine has changed or isn't working as well.

I hurt my wrist and suddenly batch cooking large casseroles was uncomfortable from lifting large dishes in and out of the oven. I stopped batch cooking casseroles unless my spouse was around to help with that specific step. I'm just not going to do something if I dread doing it. Not gonna happen.

Really, I just make fewer large casseroles now and make a lot more curries instead. Because I also hate having to coordinate my schedule with my spouse. Again, it's annoying, so I just don't do it, lol.

So my advice is to really listen to yourself. Care deeply about *why* you struggle to change your lifestyle. And try to work with those struggles to engineer a path forward that is easier and more comfortable and highly compatible with your particular stresses, demands, and capacities.