Why Does the Weight Keep Coming Back After a Diet?

Nikkiey: The work that actually matters isn't the 30-day challenge. It's in what happens afterwards. It's in what you repeat when no one's watching you. It's who you are becoming underneath that process. Let's go.

Episode number 278. Today, guys, I want to talk about what I spoke on to a group of individuals about a week and a half ago in Washington, D.C. I was called by a friend to speak in a female-led industry, cybersecurity, as the health and fitness segment, because we all know that in that world, everybody can focus on decoding a bug for 10 hours straight, but people treat a 10-minute walk like it's a luxury.

So I want to talk about what I just talked to them about: creating habits. Y'all know I'm big on the habit mindset. I talked about Atomic Habits to those groups of people, and that's what I want to bring into today's episode. I think it gets straight to the root of why many people feel stuck. Many people feel stuck for a multitude of different variables despite trying everything under the sun. But I think the root cause is getting the habits to align with where you want to go.

You guys know I talk about how it's not about who you are right now. It's about the person that you are becoming. So let's just get into it. What I said to them was, most people don't have a weight loss or fat loss problem. The majority of people have a keep-it-off problem. And the reason people feel stuck in that loop isn't because they're broken. It's because maybe they've never built the habits to make the result they're seeking over and over and over again.

They don't have the habits to make that result sustainable. Because let's be real, and I'm sure you guys have been here. I know the thousands of women we've coached inside of WarriorBabe have been here. You've heard it on the WarriorBabe success interviews that have been dropping on this podcast over the last couple of months. People can drop 10 to 15 pounds pretty quickly if they restrict hard enough. And you've probably done that, right?

Anybody can go on some 30-day challenge. Anybody can cut carbs out. Anybody can go grab some TikTok detox tea. People can skip meals and be good. And sure, it works for a minute. But then life happens. Stress comes back. A vacation happens. A hard week at work happens. A breakup happens.

And boom. What turned into a 30-day challenge, or maybe you getting the results you wanted, resorts back to ground zero. It resorts back to where you were before you started the 30-day challenge. You're off track again. Everything you lost comes right back, and sometimes even more. And it's not because you're weak. It's not because you're broken. It's not because something's wrong with you. It's because you were chasing a result without building the habits to actually keep the result.

What I realized is that's a really important thing to talk on. You guys know I'm really big on talking about that. We really hammer it home inside the WarriorBabe program. But nobody really teaches on that part. The work that actually matters isn't the 30-day challenge. It's in what happens afterwards. It's in what you repeat when no one's watching you. It's who you are becoming underneath that process. It's not about going in and finding the next quick fix.

Everyone's so attached to the end result. They don't realize what's happening in those 30 days for themselves, right? The hard truth is, if your habits don't change, your results won't last, period. End of story. End the podcast there, right? It's not about the motivation, because you guys know I've said over and over and over again, motivation is fleeting.

Motivation ebbs and flows. Motivation is a feeling. You're not always going to feel motivated about doing something. You're going to feel motivated when you start something out of the gate. But I guarantee you by week three, week four, that motivation is not going to be there. What needs to be worked on is your structure. It's about your discipline. It's about your ownership. It's about being honest with yourself about whether your daily actions actually match the goals you keep talking about. I've seen this with thousands of women.

The ones who succeed are not perfect by any means, but you know what they are? They're very consistent. They've built systems that make the follow-through automatic. And what I've seen in a lot of these women, especially the women in these success stories y'all have been listening to, is they've upgraded their identity. Because habits aren't just about what you do. They are who you become, literally.

So I gave this group five specific habits that will build a bulletproof you. That was my day two topic, and I want to share those with you guys. They come from 10 years of being in this space, eight years coaching women, and the last seven, eight years building a team behind the scenes, 70 amazing coaches on our squad who, dude, coach way better than me.

So if you guys love what you're hearing in these episodes, just think about that on steroids inside of WarriorBabe. Not actually saying you need to be on steroids. You're getting a coach that is just absolutely incredible. So anyway, speaking to the habits I shared with them, I'm going to go through the five of them with you. The first one is what I just tapped into, which is identity. You don't need another checklist of things to be following.

You don't need to wake up and be like, I need to have my water, I need to prep my meal, I need to work out today. While those are important, you need a new standard for how you live, and it starts with your identity. Every time you log your food, even if it's messy, because out of the gate it's going to be messy. Like I told these guys, track your food for seven days and don't try to be perfect. Just do what you normally do. It's going to help you have very keen data on how you're actually eating.

So it's going to be messy. But every time you log that food, every time you go to the gym when you don't want to, every time you make a choice that aligns with your goal instead of your excuses, you are reinforcing the identity of someone who follows through. You are reinforcing the identity of someone who is healthy. You are reinforcing the identity of someone who is fit. The old you would say, oh, I'll try to get my workout in today. Oh, I'll try to log my food.

I'll try to meal prep. That is the old you. But do you see that "I'll try"? Guess what follows after that? The way you say, I'll try to make it happen, basically what you're telling yourself is, oh, this isn't a priority for me. This isn't as serious. I don't need to make this something that needs to happen for me. Or, like what I was telling the people at the conference: I'm too busy to work out.

Well, guess what action is going to follow? You're not going to go work out. But the new you, a new identity that you have to be reinforcing every single day, and that comes with discipline, that comes with structure, says: I execute. I am someone who works out. I am someone who plans my workout, follows through and gets it done, even if I don't feel like it. Because guess what? Not every single day are you going to feel like it. Or, I am somebody who eats healthy.

I am someone who drinks my water. I am someone who gets eight hours of sleep. A couple of people, immediately when I got off stage, were forming a line, and they loved the conversation about habits. One woman I talked to said, I have a really hard time creating habits. How can I create habits? And I said, that right there, you saying that you have a really hard time creating habits, is the identity you're living in right now. So of course it's going to be really hard for you to create new habits.

So I said, you don't need to go work out. You don't need to track your food right now. You don't need to try and get healthy. You don't even need to focus on eating or drinking your water. What you need to focus on is waking up tomorrow morning and reinforcing that you are an individual who creates habits. Literally, that mindset, that narrative, needs to be rewired, reprogrammed and reinforced. And I said, you're going to have to do this for months on end.

But just do it for the next seven days. You're going to wake up tomorrow morning and say, I am someone who can create healthy habits that will help me live a fit lifestyle. I just want you to say that for the next seven days, every time you wake up. And then that gets embedded in you.

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Because if you're somebody who, on a day-to-day basis, feels like you're falling off every time life gets stressful, you're constantly starting over, you feel like you're not the kind of person who stays consistent, you need to create these kinds of statements that anchor you to who you want to become, not who you are right now. I told them, if you're feeling a type of way because you're sitting behind a computer all day and it's really hard to put a focus on your health and fitness and get into working out and eating better, well, guess what?

It's not about who you are right now. It's about who you are becoming. And what needs to change is not only the actions you take on a daily basis, but also the narrative you say to yourself. So it's, I am someone who tracks my meals. I said on stage, guys, this is just my lifestyle now. But granted, 10 years ago, I had to do this. I had to reinforce this mentality and these actions on a daily basis to prove that I am this type of person. I am someone who finishes what I start.

There's what James Clear says in Atomic Habits, which I highly recommend if you haven't read it yet. Download it on audio, or if you like the hard copy because you like the physical reading aspect, just go get it right now. In that book he says, and I'm going to butcher it, that when you start doing these habits on a daily basis, it's a vote for the future. It's a vote for the person you are becoming. And it's so true.

Okay. So that's the first habit I talked about and dove in with them on. The second thing is obviously a habit you guys know needs to be implemented. If you want to change your body, if you want to change your energy, if you want to change your metabolism, you have to lift. You have to do strength training, period. Strength training isn't just about getting toned, quote unquote. Toned is building muscle and decreasing the body fat around it so it's more exposed on your physical body and you see more lean muscle mass. That's what toned is.

The only way you get that is by strength training. It's about building the engine that drives your results. So if you're doing tons of cardio but you're still feeling soft, or if you're doing tons of cardio and losing weight but you look like a skinnier, fatter version of yourself, if you're still feeling exhausted but you're not seeing any change, if you have a fear of lifting because you don't want to get too bulky, my friends, you need to switch the type of output you're doing in the gym.

You don't need to get rid of cardio, but you don't need to do as much. And you need to incorporate strength training if you're not already. I asked the room to raise their hands: Who does strength training? Who does cardio? And who prioritizes cardio over the amount of strength training they do? A lot of people raised their hands. So focus on three full-body sessions a week.

Focus on progressive overload. If you guys don't know progressive overload, go to themacrohour.com and use the find button. If you're on your computer, that is; I don't know how to do it on a cell phone. Type in progressive overload. I have multiple episodes on what progressive overload is. Track this. Track your strength like you track your nutrition. Are you getting stronger on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis? Muscle equals protection for your bones, for your hormone balance, for your long-term fat burn.

What I told them is, muscle is your metabolic currency. It is your body's armor. So make sure you're incorporating it.

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All right, let's get back to the show. The third thing I talked about, and I can't stress this one enough: if you've been eating low calorie for years and you're still not seeing the results you want, first of all, your metabolism isn't broken. It's just down-regulated. Your body is so smart, you guys. If it's been living in survival mode, it's going to continue to hold on to fat.

Say you've been eating only a thousand or eleven hundred calories. I asked how many people in the room knew how many calories they eat, and someone yelled out, no one. And that's fair. That's valid. But just think, you're probably only consuming a thousand, eleven hundred calories on a daily basis. That is what a toddler needs to consume on a regular basis. Your body's smart. It's like, dude, I'm living in survival mode. I don't know if this person's going to give me more food.

So it just starts holding on to it. A lot of people come into a program saying, I want to lose weight, which means a calorie deficit, going into a cut. Before you even think about doing a cut, what we need to do is make your body feel safe again. We need to retrain it. This is something we specifically talk about inside of WarriorBabe, the retrain process. WarriorBabes know what I'm talking about. If you don't, what we do is find out your maintenance number.

We find out what you're eating now, and we try to close the gap over a weekly, monthly basis to get you closer to that maintenance number. That's to make your metabolism feel safe, and so you recognize hunger cues, which is your metabolism waking up. It's basically rebuilding what's been broken. I shouldn't say broken. Rebuilding what has not had the attention it needs to feel strong.

So if you're somebody who has low energy, poor sleep, constant cravings, if you're quote unquote eating healthy but seeing zero change, or you've plateaued your progress no matter how much cardio or tracking you're doing, then this is something you need. You need to slowly increase your calories to maintenance. You need a WarriorBabe coach to help you do it so you don't butcher the process, overthink the process or think you're doing something wrong, because you will. You'll question every step of the way if you do it by yourself.

Or maybe you're somebody who's been in the game for a long time and you know what I'm talking about, so you can just start doing this if you feel the ways I just described. You need to prioritize your protein, and prioritize it consistently. You need to replace cardio with strength training. And you need to focus on your biofeedback: your sleep, your mood, your digestion, your energy. You can't force a depleted system to burn fat. You have to rebuild trust with your body first.

So that was the third habit I talked about. The fourth one, you guys have heard me talk about over and over and over again. It's my favorite thing to talk on: discipline over motivation. Motivation is fleeting. It is a feeling. Discipline is an action. If you are relying solely on being in the mood to follow through, my friend, you are so screwed. If you are relying on, hey, I'm going to work out later if I feel like it, you're screwed.

You need to focus on building your discipline muscle, which means when those feelings come up, you act despite how you feel and you show up no matter what. That is what I attribute 99.9 percent of my success to: I have really good discipline. So if you're somebody who joins a program and you're hella motivated out of the gate, and then by week three or four you start ghosting your goals.

If you're beating yourself up or falling off, if you're waiting to feel ready, you need to pre-decide your actions before your emotions get involved. So if you're like, I'm going to work out in the morning if I feel like it, you need to decide the night before: I am going to wake up in the morning and work out. Done. Then when you get to the morning and you're like, oh, I don't feel like doing it, your discipline is going to tap in. You're going to feel it. It's going to talk to you, like, dude, I made this promise to myself last night that I was going to get it done.

And that's where you need to follow through. When that voice in your head says, you made this promise to yourself, that's your discipline talking to you. Don't let the feeling of I don't feel like working out right now win. Set these non-negotiables for yourself and show up regardless. Discipline isn't a punishment. I don't want you to think of it like that. It is literally self-respect. And it's literally the bridge between your goals and your reality.

So focus on being disciplined over being motivated. And the last thing I threw at them was the non-negotiable stack, which is five habits that are simple, but they work. They're the backbone of every single transformation I've ever coached, and that our coaches have ever coached. I call it the stack. First, I would say waking up with a morning win. What can you start your day off with where you're in control? Is it a walk? Is it getting 10K steps?

Is it going to the gym and working out? Is it meditating? Is it drinking your water? Is it journaling? What can you get a morning win out of, right out of the gate? It puts you in that dopamine effect of, I started my day off with this win and I'm in control for the rest of the day. The second thing is protein at every meal: 25 to 35 grams of protein at every single meal. The third thing is lifting at least three to four times a week.

The fourth thing is tracking something, whether it's your food, your non-scale victories, your sleep, following through on your weekly check-ins with your coach, or your weights inside the gym. Track something. And the last one, and these are all non-negotiables: morning win, protein at every meal, lift three to four times a week, track something, and get seven to eight hours of sleep.

And an added bonus to the stack is not having your phone in front of your face before you go to bed. No screens before bed. It's going to allow for more efficient sleep. So if you're somebody who's feeling overwhelmed, if you're trying to do everything at once, if you're somebody who constantly keeps starting over on Monday, then lock in one of these things in the stack. Just one. Start with one, lock it in, and then continue to stack these over time. Again, you don't need a new plan.

Even though I just gave you a checklist, and while that's important, it's more about the habits you need to repeat over and over and over again until those habits become who you are. Okay, so a little twist to today's episode: I want to leave you with a challenge. This week, I want you to pick one habit. Lock it in for seven days. No skipping, no excuses. Whether it's hitting your protein, getting to the gym three times, tracking your meals or going to bed on time, just start and then follow through.

This is where you're going to prove to yourself that you can do this. Do that for seven days, 14 days, and then stack another one in. Because it isn't about doing more. It's about doing the right things with more consistency. And over time, even though this may all sound boring, when you do things consistently over time, everything's going to start to change. Your body's going to change. Your mindset's going to sharpen. Your identity is going to level up.

So do this for yourself at the end of the day, because that's the most important aspect of everything: the way you show up in your relationships, at your job, for your family, for your kids, for your friends. It all starts with you. You have to secure that first before you can even worry about anything else. Okay? So I want to know. Tag me, tag The WarriorBabe Show.

What is the one habit you're going to focus on for the next week coming out of this episode? That's great, we're on a Monday. So if you're somebody who starts on Mondays, here we go. This is your challenge. Just tag The WarriorBabe Show, tag Nikkiey Stott. What is the one habit you're going to commit to? I want to see you hold that promise to yourself. So on a daily basis, continue to tag us, me and The WarriorBabe Show, and I want to cheer you guys on. Okay? I hope you guys found this episode helpful.

Go do it. Go lock it in. I love you guys, and I will see you in the next episode.

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