One of the more common questions that people ask has to do with willpower. A lot of people say things like, “Oh man, I would love to get in shape and get rid of this extra body fat, but I just don’t have any willpower. I see chocolate chip cookies, and I reach for them without even realizing it. And before I even know, I’ve gobbled down half a dozen of these amazing cookies. I just don’t have any willpower!”

Have you ever heard somebody say something like that? Have you ever said something like that?

What do you do if you just don’t feel like you have enough willpower to be able to release weight long-term? There are two things that have to do with that.

#1 Willpower will only get you so far. You can only go off of sheer willpower for a short period of time. Unless you are crazy disciplined, and naturally self-motivated, willpower is going to fail you at some point in time. The reason why is because there are four levels of motivation.

The first answer to that is replace your willpower with what we call “Why-Power.”

There are 4 Levels of Motivation: 

Level 1: Doing things at a social level of motivation. Which is doing things because we “should,” or it’s expected of us. People are counting on us. Maybe our spouse decided that we were gonna go on a diet. These are things we do, not because we want to, but it’s like, “Well, I should do that,” or, “I guess I really should avoid that brownie.” “I really should stop eating this cookie.” “I really should wake up an hour early and go jogging. 

There’s something not very pleasant about the word “should.” It’s just not a fun word. It’s not a happy word. Like, “I really should do that, but I don’t want to, that’s just something I should do.” 

That is what most people think of when they think about willpower. “OK, I really should just will my way through this diet.” “I really should get to the gym.” This doesn’t last.

That was one of my problems when I first started my journey. I would set my New Year’s resolutions, my weight resolutions, that I would say, “OK, this is my year. I’m gonna finally get under 200 lbs. I’m gonna finally get back to my ideal weight.” Then, I would go to the gym, and my motivation would last about 3 weeks. That was if I was really going strong.

Usually, it wouldn’t even last that long. Then my willpower began to wear off, and I would end up going to the gym, and about 5-10 minutes into my workout I would just go, “I don’t want to be here,” and I would leave.

Because I was motivated at a social level, I thought, “Well I should go to the gym,” but I didn’t really want to, I wouldn’t go back to the gym for about a week or two. By that time, I would finally “wake up” and say, “what did I just do?” And I would stand on the scale, and my weight would be right back up to where it had been. I had sabotaged myself.

Have you ever sabotaged yourself? Well, it would happen to me. And that’s what happens when you just try to willpower your way through this at a social level. 

Level #2 is the Consequence level of motivation. That is doing something to either gain a reward, or avoid a punishment or some type of negative consequence.

A lot of people try to release weight at a consequence level. They have that major medical scare, right? Their doctor tells them, “Hey, you’d better drop these 50 lbs otherwise something crazy drastic is going to happen.” They don’t want that to happen, so that’s kind of their wake-up call.

For some people, that’s great. Some people need that really massive negative consequence if they don’t change, or they need some sort of major positive consequence if they do change.

Some people are like, “Ooh, I really want to look good in my bathing suit when I go on this cruise in three months,” or, “My wedding’s coming up, and I really want to look good in my tux (or wedding dress).” They want to gain some sort of reward for dropping the weight, or for doing whatever it is they are hoping to do. 

Unfortunately, these two levels of motivation don’t last. Usually once the challenges hit, they hit a plateau in their weight, maybe they go to someone’s party and they’re serving their favorite treat. That’s when the willpower wears off, and that’s when the sabotage begins to take place.

What we want to do is replace our willpower with Why-Power. Lead with one of the top two levels of motivation.

Level #3 is the Agent level, doing something because you genuinely want to. You enjoy it. You love it.

Why do most people eat ice-cream?  Do people eat ice-cream because, “Well, I really should eat that ice-cream. I mean, my boss is counting on me to eat this whole tub of ice-cream.” No, of course not!

Did their parents say, “Now, you eat that whole tub of ice-cream or you get no broccoli”? No, are you kidding me? We eat ice-cream because we enjoy ice-cream, or at least I do. I love ice-cream. It’s one of my favorite desserts, right? People eat ice-cream at an agent level, in most cases, because we genuinely love ice-cream. We enjoy it.

What if that process of slimming down could be very enjoyable? What if we could get to the point where we absolutely love going to the gym? We find exercises and workouts that we wake up in the morning excited saying, “I can’t wait to get to the gym!” and then actually do that. What kind of difference would that make?

Level #4, the top level, is the Charity level of motivation: doing something out of genuine pure love. Love for yourself, love for the people that you’re here to serve. Love for family, children, and grandkids.

You want to be around for them as long as possible. You want to be able to pick up your kids, or grandkids, and play with them. You have this genuine love.

That’s the level of motivation that mothers go through when they do natural childbirth. They go through all this time of, in a lot of cases immense pain and agony, because they genuinely love this child that they haven’t even physically met yet (because the child’s been in their body for 9 months, right, but you get what I’m saying). 

Replacing your willpower with Why-power can make all the difference.

Tool #1, leading with the Agent and Charity level motivation and then just reinforcing with the social and consequence level motivators.

Not that the bottom two are bad, it’s just again you want to lead with the Agent and Charity-level motivation and then reinforce it with the other two motivators.

That’s where accountability partners come in. That’s where setting rewards and consequences for yourself for completing your workouts. That’s where those can come in.

Again, it’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that you lead with the top-level motivation, and reinforce it with the other two levels of motivation. That’s the first tool.

Tool #2 Is being able to retrain your brain utilizing a tool called Neurolinguistic Programming. NLP is a way to literally retrain your brain to automatically work for you, instead of against you.

Now some people might say, “Wait a second, that sounds like mind control!” OK, if you’re putting in your own suggestions, that’s not mind control, that’s just retraining your brain. Most people’s brains are “trained” to automatically work against them instead of for them.

Here’s the reason why: It’s scientifically proven that the subconscious mind, by design, has the main purpose to keep us alive. If it deems anything as a threat or something that’s going to be painful, it’s designed to try to avoid that to keep us alive.

When we start to get rid of body fat, the subconscious mind believes that process is going to be a threat to us. So the subconscious mind automatically puts up these flags and goes, “wait a second, we aren’t humanly designed to release this extra fat, we are designed to put on extra body fat in case of a famine, in case hunters can’t go out and get food,” that’s what the subconscious mind is designed for.

Again, it’s great that it keeps up alive, but at the same time, it’s not so great if we want to thrive. Does that make sense?

NeuroLinguistic Programming is a way to retrain our minds in order to work for us, instead of against us.

Going back to my example of going to the gym. This happened for years and years, and I would always start and fail, start and fail, start and fail these diet and exercise plans because my subconscious mind was designed to sabotage my progress.

It wasn’t until I learned NLP, (in 2017 I certified as an NLP practitioner), that I decided, “Hey, I’ve helped all these other people with NLP, why not use it on myself?” I thought, “Oh, there’s an idea. OK, let’s try this.” 

There are several different types of NLP. Some of them are for replacing negative habits with positive ones. One NLP tool you can use where you can actually retrain your brain in about 2-3 minutes to dislike foods that you no longer want to like.

For example, do you have that one food that if you could just stop eating that one food you know you would drop weight like crazy? You can actually do that with NLP. Like I said, it only takes like 2-3 minutes, and you can literally retrain your brain to no longer like that food. That way it’s not a temptation any more. That is one of the things I did.

I also had to retrain my brain to automatically finish things whenever I start them.

When I was getting started, I wanted to build up as much momentum as possible, so I would do really long workouts. Some people do really well with high-intensity, short duration. My body, at least as I was getting started, did really well with low-intensity, but very long duration. I would do sometimes 2-3 hours of cardio at a time, usually on the elliptical machine or the treadmill.

As you can imagine, this got pretty old pretty fast. And there would be times I’d think, “Is it time to quit yet?” I’d look at the clock and see, “No we’re only ten minutes in. Ugghh, I’ve still got an hour and fifty minutes of this, just today. Come on!”

Utilizing NLP, I was able to retrain my brain that I am a finisher, and that I finish literally everything that I start. Ever since then, I have never once cut a workout short, ever. It’s been well over a year, and over 75 lbs later, and it has made all the difference.

If you’ve never expereinced NLP, we have some NLP tools and resources available in our Enjoy Yourself Thin group. Just ask about it, or you can send me a private message, and I can tell you a little more about it.

I can show you where you can go. I can refer you to an NLP practitioner in your area. Obviously you can come talk to myself, or one of the other NLP practitioners in my company, Fell Well Live Well.

Or if you come in for one of our Metabolism Weight Reduction Assessments, we can actually test and see what forms of NLP your body will respond the best to, and where you can go from there.

Again, whether you choose to do that with us, or you can choose to work with an NLP practitioner by you. It can make such a difference for you. It has for me.

Again, those are the two tools. If you feel like you lack willpower:

#1 Replace your willpower with Why-Power.

#2 Utilize NLP to make that process automatic.

I love that word automatic because that’s what NLP does, it makes it automatic. Instead of you automatically reaching for that cookie, brownie, soda, or whatever it is, you retrain your brain utilizing NLP to automatically reach for that glass of water.

Instead of stressing, you automatically go for a walk around the block, or do 20 jumping jacks, whatever it is that you want to automatically do to replace your negative habits. 

Again, Why-Power instead of willpower, NLP to make the process automatic. Begin your transformation today.

As always, if you haven’t joined the Enjoy Yourself Thin Facebook group, make sure to do so. Make sure to invite your friends to join. It’s totally free.

We have amazing content that we’re releasing on a regular basis, almost every day. It’s an amazing support group, and there’s a chance to win cash prizes. We are giving away $1000 in cash prizes to some of our winners, and that could be you! Love you, thanks so much!

Watch, “How to Lose Weight When You Have No Willpower” on YouTube.