Let's Be Healthy Latinas!

95. The Real Reason You Can't Stick to Your Health Goals (Hint: It's Not Willpower)

• Naihomy Jerez • Episode 95

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Willpower isn't the magic solution for achieving health goals that many believe it to be. It's a limited resource that eventually becomes depleted, leaving us without a backup plan when our determination runs out.

• Willpower is defined as control exerted to do something or restrain impulses
• According to psychological science, willpower is a limited resource capable of being depleted
• Career demands, stress, poor sleep, knowledge gaps, and hormonal shifts all sabotage health goals
• Your environment—including the people around you, your schedule, home setup, and mindset—significantly impacts success
• Start with just 1-2 small changes rather than overwhelming yourself with a complete lifestyle overhaul
• Habit stack by pairing new healthy behaviors with established daily routines
• Pay attention to how new habits make you feel to build motivation through positive feedback
• Sustainable health happens when you design systems that make healthy choices easier than unhealthy ones

If you're tired of relying on willpower alone, book a free consultation call with the link below to learn how personalized coaching can help you create sustainable health systems.

Thank you so much for listening!


Speaker 1:

Hello friends, welcome back to the podcast. Today I'm going to touch on a topic that we have all thought it is the one and only thing that we need to hit our health goals. It's just, it's this, just one thing, and that is willpower. And I am here to tell you that that is not the only thing that we need, although it might be helpful sometimes. But I feel like just relying on willpower and making it mean so much about you and your willpower and how you don't have none and therefore this is why you cannot accomplish your health goals, it's kind of setting you up for failure in the long term. So first I went down this rabbit hole of what does willpower actually mean? Can we get a definition please? So, according to Merriam-Webster, willpower means control exerted to do something or restrained impulses. Isn't that funny? Like you exert is like. Doesn't that feel restrictive already? Like you control exerted to do something, so you're putting out this energy to do this one thing or you're also, at the same time, restraining yourself from doing other things. That doesn't feel too good, but anyway, I thought that that was not good enough. So then I went ahead and did some more digging and I found this article from the American Psychological Association that is titled what you Need to Know About Willpower the Psychological Science of Self-Control, and then they have this subtitle underneath that says with more self-control, would we all eat right, exercise regularly, avoid drugs and alcohol, save for retirement, stop procrastinating and achieve all sorts of noble goals? That is a great question because we all assume is willpower. So I'm not going to read you the article, don't worry. But at the end they have this section called defining willpower, and at first I'm going to read it to you. They have one, two, three, four, five bullets on defining it, and in the last bullet we're going to see why willpower as a long-term strategy for your health goals is never going to work and you make it mean so much about you, okay, so I quote, I'm reading directly from this article.

Speaker 1:

We have many common names for willpower determination, drive, resolve, self-discipline, self-control but psychologists characterize willpower or self-control in more specific ways. According to most psychological scientists, willpower can be defined as the ability to delay gratification, resisting short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. This is me now talking, isn't this? It right here? Like, oh, I'm not going to eat the ice cream, I'm not going to eat that dessert, I'm not going to have that pizza because this is short-term temptation, right, and if we eat this ice cream, this pizza, this cupcake, whatever, it's not going to allow me to lose weight in the long term. So willpower, bullet point one.

Speaker 1:

Here's bullet two the capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling or impulse. Again, everybody around you is getting dessert, or everybody around you is grabbing a drink, right, and you have to override the feeling or impulse of not doing that yourself, and maybe this was common behavior for you. Especially, I think this happens when we're around other people and we must have the capacity to do that. Willpower Bullet number three the ability to employ a cool cognitive system of behavior rather than a hot emotional system. Again, going back to self-control, you're making these decisions cool as a cucumber, not super hot and emotional over something that's going on. Remaining your cool under stress, remaining your cool when someone says something mean remaining cool when you're around all of your favorite drinks, foods, family members, things like that.

Speaker 1:

Number four conscious, effortful regulation of the self by the self, of the self by the self, and that's the part that gets us the most most of the time, because it is us being able to stick to our decision, regardless of what pressures are around us. And this is including your own brain, because your own brain it is so loud, our brains are so loud, and your brain is the first one that would be like hey friends, you know we love some Oreos, you know they taste great, hey friend, one glass of wine is not an issue, hey friend, like right. So it's you almost managing yourself and also you managing yourself around other people, and it needs to be, as they say, a conscious, effortful and conscious effort to do this all the time introspective. When you kind of are disconnected from how you feel, who you are, then it is really hard to make conscious efforts to regulate yourself, whether that's regulating your emotions or regulating habits, behavior, skills that you want to put in place for your health and wellness. You want to put in place for your health and wellness.

Speaker 1:

Now, the very last definition that they give here, and why willpower is not a long-term, let's say, solution for you to meet your health and wellness goals is because this is the definition a limited resource capable of being depleted. Let me read that one more time. Okay, let's read that one more time. A limited resource capable of being depleted. Okay, the resource you become depleted, when you are trying so incredibly hard and you think and believe that you can just have endless amounts of willpower for a long time in a sustainable way that you do not burn yourself out, okay. And this is where we're getting at, where a lot of times we blame ourselves and we punish ourselves oh, we don't have willpower, we can never stick to anything that, that, that, that.

Speaker 1:

But we do not realize that willpower is maybe a little push, a little impulse, a little uh, what's it called? Like when you're in a trampoline, like I think it's kind of like impulse, right, like a little little push, you know, when you're learning how to ride a bike and somebody, just you know, gives you this little push, a little headstart, that's all it is. And we do not plan for what's going to happen when this willpower runs out. And I am sure you have CVS size receipts as to when your willpower has completely depleted. You do not know how to replenish it and then you quit, or you feel bad about yourself, or you think it's not for you. You beat yourself up because you believe that you should have just had willpower for end of time, okay, and that is just not the case. So what do we do? What do we do then? Why is this showing up in that way? Let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

So, now that we know that willpower is a limited source that can be depleted and we see this every single time you make a New Year's resolution you start off strong and then you trail off. We see this every single Monday, where you say you're going to start and then by Wednesday, you're beating yourself up. We see this every single time you join a challenge for a specific amount of time and when the challenge is over, you're over too right. So, aside from that, there's also so many, let's say, obstacles that may be sabotaging your health goals and your willpower that you don't know about. Okay, you don't know how big of an impact it places on you, because we assume that the willpower is separate and individual from the rest of our lives. But newsflash, you are. You all the time. You are in your body all the time. You still need to meet your needs all the time.

Speaker 1:

So when we're not taking into consideration other things that may involuntarily be interfering with our willpower or with our goals, then it's really easy to just continue to blame ourselves. So, first of all, let's go through what are some of the things that can be interfering, that are obstacles to our health goals, that we don't realize and willpower is not going to do much when it comes to these things. Sometimes it's your career. I named this as number one because careers stress, like overall stress, right, whether it's family stress, career stress, relationship stress all of these things really interfere with our health goals and I think that career takes up so much of that, so much of that space, because we're in it every day, because we're in it for survival, while we just need money, right, we're in this capitalistic, because we're in it for survival. Well, we just need money, right, we're in this capitalistic society. Let's place that as the umbrella here. Shall we, shall, we place capitalism as the umbrella and then everything else under that. So our career, which we might want to grow in, there might be microaggressions happening. You might be doing the job of three people. So when we're not taking an accurate kind of picture of how we're going to meet our health goals within the career that we have, or how we're going to set some boundaries to make our health goals a priority, then that's one thing that's going to quickly dissolve your willpower and feel like you can't do it because your career is so demanding, you don't have the time, you don't have the space. You're really exhausted. So figuring out how career and whatever you have to do to meet your health goals are going to coexist is really important.

Speaker 1:

We already spoke about stress, right? Another thing is sleep that oftentimes gets in the way. These are things that we need to resolve, for Are you going to bed late? What is your sleep hygiene like? How long are you at work for? Do you have young children? That you don't have much control over your sleep? Trust me, I'm a mom of two. I know Sometimes it's not up to us how much we're sleeping. Okay. So these are things that can really affect us.

Speaker 1:

Another thing is not knowing what you don't know knowledge gaps Okay. So if we're in this space and you're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea about how career affects me, how stress affects me, sleep affects me, and how I have to solve for these things and kind of integrate it into my health plan, health goal plans, then you just don't know what you don't know. Filling in those knowledge gaps is extremely important and this is actually something. Well, all of the above, but filling in the knowledge gaps is a lot of what I do with my clients and one-on-one food and hormone health coaching, and is one of the reasons why they get to be wildly successful with their health goals and sustain their progress for years and years and years, because they are now knowledgeable, not only about learning more about themselves and being introspective and connected to themselves, like I said in the first part, but also how to meet their needs with the resources they have around them. I was just coaching one of my clients today because we're coming up on three months of working together and she traveled. She went on vacation and we got to see how she's integrating all the pieces where she used her knowledge right, the stuff that we've learned. She used her introspection, what her body needed and how she felt, and she also, because of her knowledge and knowing how she felt, she was able to use her environment, what was around her, to meet her needs. So filling in those knowledge gaps can really be helpful for you. And then the last thing that really sabotages it feels like it's sabotaging our health goals a lot of times and you're like, wtf, what is happening, because this used to work before and now it doesn't is our hormones Again, another piece of knowledge that my clients and I work so deeply on, because, as females, we go through so many cycles of hormonal shifts whether we want to or not, voluntarily or involuntarily that we need to understand how to align our health habits, our skills, to the health goals that we want.

Speaker 1:

Because you might have the same goal that you had in your 20s, in your early 30s, and you knew like, you made a few changes and you hit them. And now you're in your late 30s and your 40s and you're like what the fuck is happening? Like what is happening? Why is this not working? And it's because of our hormone shifts, right? Not only are hormones affected by our stress levels, our sleep, how we're eating, but aside from that, it just happens. Right. As females, we start to menstruate. As females, we have the choice of having a baby or not, right? So if you've been through pregnancy, if you've been through postpartum, that's another wild hormone shifts happening. And whether you've had a baby or not, every female goes through perimenopause and menopause.

Speaker 1:

So, learning how to adjust your knowledge base, your skill sets, your habits, not freaking willpower that is not going to get you through this journey, okay Is everything else is so important because your hormones will give you. What's that stuff that the young kids say a one, two and a side piece, a one, two, whatever they will come for you, okay, but it doesn't mean that there are not any habits or skills or tools out there that are not going to support you along the way, and my clients and I speak a lot about what tools are out there to support us during this season of our lives. All right, so another thing that may be holding you back here that you think is just willpower is your environment and how you set up your environment for either success or failure, and by your environment I also mean yourself and your mind. Okay, yourself and your mind.

Speaker 1:

So what are some environmental factors that may be interfering with your health goals? That you assume is just willpower. And number one this might sound rude, but it is the people that are around you. Okay, there's this stat right, I don't know where it comes from, but is a stat that say you're the average of the five people who are around you, and they say this when it comes to relationships, and if a friend divorces, then your X amount times higher maybe you will divorce. It just happens with everything and it also happens with your health and wellness journey and what the people around you are doing. So maybe it's not getting rid of all your friends and everybody you love, but it is adding on, adding on to a community who is aligned and wanting to meet health goals, so that you have people who understand you, where you can be seen when you won't be judged, who understand and have the mindset of doing that.

Speaker 1:

But we also want to be careful, because what I often find is that we outsource our wellness to other people. Well, if my friend goes to the gym, then I'll go to the gym. My friend doesn't want to go to the gym, so I won't go to the gym. My friend wants to eat this and I don't want to eat that. Let me tell you something we need to take accountability for ourselves, because our health is not someone else's health. Okay, our health, your personal health, is not someone else's health. And I always love to consider friends or whoever's joining us our spouse, our partner, whoever as the cherry on top. And by that I mean that if your partner or your friend or whoever decides to join you, then that's so cute, that's the cherry on top, but it does not mean that you're not the whole Sunday, it doesn't mean that because they can't make it to whatever it is that y'all are doing the eating style, the gym, whatever it is that you don't go if you've already decided to go, right Like, you, still show up for yourself, because there's going to be those times where someone is not feeling well, their kid is sick, they have other responsibilities.

Speaker 1:

They just need a little bit more rest, and that might not be what you also need. Need a little bit more rest, and that might not be what you also need. So you still need to show up other things in your environment that might set you up for success or failure when it comes to your health journey and your health goals. That does not have to do with billpower is how you set up your schedule, the boundaries that you set right, uh, when? When you're going to get up, when you're going to do certain things. So just know that a lot of times when I'm working with my clients, we go through our schedules or their schedule together to see where they're going to fit these things in, and it can be as simple as when are you going to have more water? Okay, when are you going to have that snack? What time? What time does it make sense for you to get a workout in? When can you go for a walk? And it's not as complicated as it seems, because we're kind of going at it together and there usually is so much space for you to do these things. But you don't realize it, and that's the advantage of having me on your team and supporting you and helping you find and create these spaces where it doesn't feel overwhelming or like a lot of extra work.

Speaker 1:

With that said, another thing that gets in the way is how you set up your home. What are you bringing into your home? What distractions do you have in your home? What do you want to use your home for? Who are you having in your home? Those are other things that can set you up or set you back from your health goals, and it's more than you think. It's not just having a cookie stash or some ice cream in the freezer. It's a lot more than that when it comes to your health and wellness that you might not be thinking about.

Speaker 1:

And the last thing, as I mentioned, your environment has to do with your mind too. So how do you address the thoughts that come up when they're so loud when they're like, oh, I don't want to do this, this is so hard, this doesn't taste the same, uh, I'm going to have to do this. Like there's so many excuses or thoughts about how things are going to go or not go, or how hard it feels that can really hold us back or push us forward. So, aside from willpower, right, is these thoughts in our mind that might be setting us up for success or failure, and that, again, is something that we go through in one-on-one food and hormone health coaching, where we really start to identify what the brain is telling you about these new things that you're incorporating in your routine and how are they actually making you feel. Why are you doing that and creating new amounts of evidence based on love and curiosity and patience, so that you can start to create new thoughts? Right, and how do you actually want to think and what is the purpose and the point of you doing all this? So that we can offer your brain some safety and that you're not wild and crazy for wanting to do all this that you actually might be feeling so dang good this might be feeling so good, and because your mind has just been stuck on this thought of I don't do this or this doesn't work for me. We're not able to bridge that gap and see that, okay. So I want to offer you three ways that you can start making healthier automatic choices with not so much effort. Right, so that you can start looking at the difference between the willpower and setting yourself up for success when the willpower is depleted. Okay, don't worry, it comes and goes, but we need to set up strategies outside of that so that you're able to sustain the actions that you're doing past the willpower phase. So number one is you love to overwhelm yourself, right? We are just a perfectionist bunch over here. Zero to a hundred, all or nothing, black or white. We're going to add some color and some sparkle to this, okay, because that does not work either.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing I'm going to say is choose one to two things to start off with and then build on. We're not going to do it all at once. We're not going to make perfect meal plans and go to the gym seven days a week and go to meditation and do the sauna. No, let's cut all that out, please. We're going to choose one or two things. You want to start with one thing learn how to hydrate, learn how to drink more water. That is it. You want to do? Another thing eat three meals a day. Learn to eat, actually pause and eat and have meals instead of just snack, snack, snack, snack, snack. That's not what I mean. I don't mean snack every two hours, I mean have a meal, at least two a day, please, like two formal meals if you can, and that is going to start you off on a path to start to feel better. And this is something that you can 100% lean on or build on as time goes on. But what happens is when you feel so absolutely depleted, low energy, not good in your body, foggy mind it's hard to do anything else. All right, and you can even use technology to help you, like setting an alarm. Please don't ignore your alarms, okay, your reminders that to fill up your water bottle, to move your body a little bit when you go to the bathroom, so on and so forth. So start with that, okay.

Speaker 1:

Another thing I'm going to recommend is to habit stack. I don't know if y'all have read Atomic Habits, but let me tell you I was so offended when I read Atomic Habits because I had never read that book before, and then I was like this is exactly the process I do with my clients, and no wonder they're so successful. All right, but of course this guy wrote a book about it. So whatever, but habit stacking can work in your favor.

Speaker 1:

You don't need to create this whole separate schedule for yourself. You can just intertwine it and weave it in to your daily activities that you're doing throughout the day so that it is easier to remember. Because when you pair this new habit with an habit that's already established, you might be more successful down the road. So maybe you go walk your dog every morning and maybe, while you're walking your dog, you drink a bottle of water, maybe I mean, there's certain things you might be doing every day. Every day you might be showering. Every day you might be brushing your teeth. I hope you know. So maybe you say that while you're in the shower, you're going to think remember, your brain has a lot to do with shower. You're going to think remember, your brain has a lot to do with this. You're going to think about who is that person you want to become, what was hard about the day, and so on and so forth. Right, we start to build these habits throughout the day.

Speaker 1:

What do you do when you're at work? What do you do when you're at home? What do you do when you're on vacation? And that starts to be so incredibly helpful. Okay, and I'm not going to give you more than that. Oh, I know, I said three.

Speaker 1:

The last thing is that I want you to focus on is how do you feel? Again, we're so disconnected from our bodies and we don't understand, we don't build that bridge as to how our actions really impact and affect how we feel. So I want you to start building that connection of how do you feel when you have more water, how do you feel when you're actually feeding yourself? How does it feel when you do this new habit, with a habit that's already established and your habit stacking, because then you start to build evidence and proof for yourself that what you're doing is actually not as hard as you thought and you feel amazing, so much better than when you're not doing it. So that alone starts to encourage you to continue to do those actions, because you're actually loving how you feel.

Speaker 1:

All right, so this is exactly what I support my clients with Understanding that willpower will not get you very far and building a sustainable system around that, around your environment, around your brain, around your group of friends. What happens when you are in these different environments and like I help my client do is building and weaving this three-part system of how do you feel, what's the knowledge that you have and what's the environment that you're in, and how do you come up with a choice and a decision to meet that based on your goals. All right, and this is especially important to be so personalized. The way I work is directly one-on-one with you and we create this together. It's not this cookie cutter plan that I just hand out to all my clients. We really personalize it to you and your lifestyle and what you need, because that's how we get it to stick. Everybody's obstacles are so different and what derails you might not be what derails someone else. So it's really important that in working one-on-one together, we identify your specific barriers and create a system that works with your lifestyle, not against it. You don't want to feel like you're consistently on the struggle bus, like moving in the right direction. So this personalized approach is why my clients see lasting results.

Speaker 1:

I want you to know that sustainable health changes happen when you design your environment and your systems to make healthier choices easier than unhealthy ones. And again, when we build and build on the knowledge gaps, when we fill those knowledge gaps, when we start to understand, when you start to understand how you're feeling in your body, then you don't need to rely on willpower all the time to fight against your own circumstances. Your circumstances are what they are and when we learn to work with them and you don't make it just about you being so strong, trying to like, avoid things and include things that just really does not work for you, things that just really does not work for you, then it just becomes so much more pleasurable to be on this health journey and to meet your health goals, because you're actually going to see what is working for you, what is in line for you. So, again, if you know that you just rely on willpower and as soon as it runs out, you are left out in the dust, you're left out in the middle of nowhere and you have no idea where to turn, I'm going to invite you to book a free consultation call with the link in the show notes. Free consultation call with the link in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

It is exactly why my clients are so successful and I can talk to my clients who I've worked with two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, and they still are applying their habits, they still have all their tools in place, they still are keeping their results and building on their goals and their health journey along the way and why they still feel so incredibly well in your body.

Speaker 1:

You can find success when you create supportive systems and environments and stop beating yourself up for not being quote unquote strong enough. And part of the supportive systems and environments is working with someone who sees you, who understands your cultural background, who understands generational traumas okay who lives in a capitalistic society herself, who is a mom, who experiences hormone shifts as well, and who is deep, deep, deep into this research right and can help you fill those knowledge gaps and can help you see that you actually really can show up for yourself in this way. It's just that you may not know what you don't know, and that is exactly what I'm here to support you with. So I cannot wait to talk to you. I cannot wait to see you and one-on-one food and hormone health coaching, and I will talk to y'all on the next episode. Bye.