Consistency
When Consistency Fades
Have you ever started a new eating plan feeling completely committed, convinced that this time would be different?
You clear the cupboards.
You write the shopping list.
You buy all the right foods.
You tell yourself, "I've got this."
And for a while, you really do.
Then life happens.
Work becomes stressful.
The children need you.
You're exhausted.
Something unexpected throws your week off course.
Or perhaps nothing particularly dramatic happens at all.
You just slowly drift away from the routine you'd worked so hard to build.
Maybe you've found yourself saying,
"I was doing so well."
"I don't know what happened."
"Why can't I just stick to it?"
Perhaps you've had days where one biscuit became a binge.
One takeaway became an entire weekend.
One missed workout became,
"I'll start again on Monday."
Maybe you've managed to stay consistent for weeks, only to feel as though one difficult day wiped out all the progress you'd made.
Or perhaps you've looked around at other women reaching their goals, watched them collecting awards at slimming groups, or seen them celebrating their success online, and quietly found yourself wondering...
"How do they seem able to stick at it?"
"Why does consistency seem to come so naturally to them?"
"What have they got that I haven't?"
You've probably promised yourself you'll try harder next time.
Be more disciplined.
Stay more focused.
Stop giving in.
And every time you struggled to stay consistent, you blamed yourself.
You told yourself you just weren't committed enough.
That you lacked willpower.
That if you wanted it badly enough, you'd simply stick to it.
If any of that feels familiar, I want you to know you're certainly not alone.
My Story
For years, I genuinely believed consistency was something you either had or you didn't.
Every Monday felt like a fresh start.
I'd be completely committed.
I'd tell myself, "This is it."
"This time I'm going to stick to it."
Then something would happen.
I'd have a stressful day.
I'd eat something that wasn't part of my plan.
I'd miss a workout.
And somehow, one moment would become a week.
Sometimes longer.
I remember countless times sitting in my slimming group, being asked where I'd gone wrong that week.
The answer always seemed to come back to the same thing.
"You just need to be more consistent."
I heard those words over and over again.
Be more consistent.
Stay on track.
Stick to the plan.
The problem was, nobody ever explained what consistency actually was.
It was spoken about as though it was a switch I should have been able to turn on.
As though some people simply had it, and others didn't.
So every time I struggled, I blamed myself.
I told myself I wasn't disciplined enough.
I wasn't committed enough.
I just needed to try harder.
Looking back now, I can see why I believed that.
Because everyone was telling me the outcome.
Nobody was showing me how that outcome was created.
Why This Contributes to Weight Regain
One of the hardest things about struggling with consistency is that it often isn't one decision that pulls you away from your goal.
It's what happens afterwards.
You have one meal that wasn't part of your plan.
You miss a workout.
You have a stressful day and reach for food.
None of things, on their own, determine whether you'll regain weight.
What often makes the difference is what happens next.
When consistency feels fragile, one difficult moment can quickly become several.
One meal becomes the rest of the day.
One day becomes the weekend.
The weekend becomes, "I'll start again on Monday."
Before you know it, weeks have passed and you're left wondering how you ended up back where you started.
For many women, this becomes the cycle that feels impossible to escape.
Not because they don't know what to eat.
Not because they don't want it badly enough.
But because they spend so much time trying to get back on track that they never understand what keeps pulling them off it in the first place.
Over time, that cycle can become exhausting.
Every new attempt brings hope.
Every setback brings disappointment.
Every promise to start again carries a little more pressure than the last.
Eventually, many women stop trusting themselves.
Not because they aren't capable of change.
But because they've experienced so many cycles of starting with determination and ending with frustration that they begin expecting it to happen again.
It's understandable why that would affect your confidence.
It's understandable why each new attempt can feel a little heavier than the one before.
And it's understandable why so many women eventually come to believe they simply aren't consistent people.
Why You've Struggled
For years, I believed consistency was something you either had or you didn't.
I'd heard the same advice over and over again.
"You just need to be more consistent."
Looking back now, I think one of the most powerful words in that sentence is the one we hardly notice.
Just.
Just be more consistent.
Just stick to it.
Just stop eating.
Just have more willpower.
Just stay on track.
The word just makes it sound so simple.
As though consistency is a choice.
A decision.
A switch you simply haven't turned on yet.
So every time you can't "just" do it, it's understandable that you come to one conclusion.
"The problem must be me."
But I'd like you to think back over your own journey for a moment.
Have there ever been times when you have been consistent?
Perhaps for a few weeks.
Perhaps for a few months.
Maybe even longer.
If the answer is yes, then that tells us something really important.
It tells us you can be consistent.
So perhaps the question isn't,
"Why can't I stay consistent?"
Perhaps the better question is,
"What changed?"
Maybe work became busier.
Maybe you stopped sleeping well.
Perhaps life became more stressful.
Food noise became louder again.
Emotional eating crept back in.
You stopped planning your meals because you simply didn't have the time or energy.
You missed a few walks.
The routine that had been supporting you slowly started to disappear.
None of those things mean you suddenly became an inconsistent person.
They simply mean that, little by little, the things that had been supporting your consistency started to change.
That was one of the biggest breakthroughs I ever had.
I'd spent years believing consistency was one thing.
One skill.
One decision.
One personality trait that other women seemed to have and I didn't.
But consistency isn't one thing.
It's made up of many different things working together.
It's built from your habits.
Your routines.
Your emotional wellbeing.
Your energy.
Your environment.
Your beliefs.
The relationship you have with food.
The amount of food noise you're experiencing.
The way you respond when life doesn't go to plan.
Imagine trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle without all of the pieces.
You might spend hours trying to make the picture fit.
You'd probably turn the same pieces around again and again, convinced you were doing something wrong.
Eventually, you might even decide you just weren't very good at puzzles.
But the truth is...
You never had everything you needed to complete the picture.
Looking back now, that's exactly how consistency felt to me.
Everyone kept telling me to create the finished picture.
Nobody ever explained that the finished picture was made up of lots of different pieces.
No wonder I struggled.
I wasn't failing because I couldn't "just" be consistent.
I was trying to create an outcome without ever understanding what created it in the first place.
And I think that's an incredibly important difference.
Because if consistency isn't something you're born with...
If it's something that's gradually built from lots of different pieces...
Then it isn't something you either have or don't have.
It's something that can be built.
And if life knocks one of those pieces out of place for a while...
It doesn't mean you've failed.
It simply means one part of the picture needs your attention again.
What This Understanding Meant For Me
Understanding this completely changed the way I looked at every weight loss attempt I'd ever made.
For years, I'd seen my journey as proof that I couldn't stay consistent.
Now I saw something completely different.
I saw periods where I had been consistent.
I saw times when I'd shown commitment.
Times when I'd planned ahead.
Times when I'd made choices that moved me closer to the life I wanted.
Instead of seeing those periods as failures because they didn't last forever, I started asking myself a different question.
"What was helping me to stay consistent then?"
And just as importantly...
"What changed?"
That simple change in thinking lifted a huge weight from my shoulders.
Because I stopped seeing consistency as something I either had or didn't have.
I started seeing it as something that was being influenced by lots of different parts of my life.
When consistency faded, I no longer automatically blamed myself.
Instead, I became curious.
Was I overwhelmed?
Was I stressed?
Had food noise become louder again?
Had emotional eating crept back in?
Had I stopped creating the routines that had been quietly supporting me?
For the first time, I wasn't looking at myself as the problem.
I was looking at what had changed around me.
And that led me in a completely different direction.
Instead of spending all my energy trying to become a more consistent person, I started trying to understand the things that created consistency in the first place.
That became the focus of everything I learnt from that point onwards.
Not because I'd found one missing piece.
But because I finally understood that lasting consistency is built from many different pieces working together.
That understanding gave me something I'd never had before.
Not another burst of motivation.
Not another promise that this time would be different.
It gave me hope.
Because if consistency wasn't a personality trait...
If it was something that could be built...
Then perhaps I hadn't been failing all those years after all.
Perhaps I'd simply been trying to complete the picture without understanding what the picture was made of.
Before We Move On..
Now that you understand consistency differently, I hope you're beginning to see a pattern.
So many of the struggles you've blamed yourself for over the years haven't been caused by a lack of willpower.
They've often been the result of understanding only part of the picture.
The more I began to understand my own journey, the more I realised there were other things I'd accepted as facts about myself that weren't facts at all.
I'd simply believed them for so long that I'd stopped questioning them.
Looking back now, I can see how much those beliefs shaped the way I spoke to myself every single day.
At the time, I thought those thoughts were helping me.
I had no idea they were quietly keeping me stuck.
Let's explore another reason you've struggled.