Why Do Most Healthy Eating Plans Fail After a Few Weeks?

Why do most healthy eating plans fail after a few weeks? How much time you got? Where to even begin? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say: because… they suck? But you probably want a few more specifics than that. Alrighty then, onward.

Zero strategies, tactics, or tricks to avoid deprivation

For starters, most healthy eating plans don’t deploy any real strategies to avoid deprivation feelings. This is a huge deal. You have to avoid deprivation feelings with fanatical zeal. Because you know that initial burst of inspiration you feel when you start a new eating plan? Yeah, that. absolutely will fade away. 

That’s why, if you’re trying to become a healthy eater—for good—you have to use every sneaky, underhanded trick in the book to avoid feeling deprived at every step of the way. 

There are ways to do this. They’re not rocket science. For example, find your new healthy dishes before you “get rid of” any of your old unfriendly foods. Obvious stuff. But most healthy eating plans don’t use these tactics, because most healthy “eating plans” are actually just repackaged “diets.” Diets with some flouncy window dressing. And diets, as we all know by now, are train wrecks.

They got no inner game

Second, the popular healthy eating plans almost always ignore the inner game. That is, they hardly ever give people techniques to tame the psychological challenges of eating healthfully. And for a lot of people, that’s like 90% of the problem. Food and eating are very emotional things. To ignore that and just give people a bunch of recipes and menu plans is not a strategy, it’s a list.

Mediocrity doesn’t work either

The third reason most healthy eating plans fail is head-explodingly counterintuitive—the exact opposite of what you’d think. It’s that those plans don’t guide people to eat healthy enough.

I know how it seems. It seems like the healthier the way of eating, the harder it is. Of course it does. The less shitty hippie bunny food the better, right? More flexing, more cheating, and more officially approved nachos equals “easier,” right?

Actually, and weirdly enough, no. Wrong. 

The biggest secret in health land

The bizarre truth is that, for many people, wildly regenerative eating—which I define as about 90% of your diet being fresh, whole, unrefined plant foods—is actually easier than more mediocre healthy eating approaches. Here are four reasons why.

1) Feeling obnoxiously healthy—vibrant, radiant, glowy, all of that—is addicting. You have no idea. And that has a funny way of inspiring you to stick with your wildly regenerative eating.

2) Your body gets freakishly sensitive. When you do a more moderate healthy eating plan, say the Mediterranean Diet, you can “cheat” all you want and basically feel fine. 

But when you’re a wildly regenerative eater, your body gets so squeaky clean inside that it gets very sensitive. That means when you indulge in dubious foods you feel like you got run over by a fleet of Mac trucks. This works like a charm to keep you merrily on the path. You’d be amazed.

3) When you eat absurd quantities of fresh, whole, plant foods, you literally start to crave fresh, whole, plant foods. It’s a self-perpetuating system. 

Eat tons of dark leafy greens and you start craving dark leafy greens. And so forth. It’s the craziest damn thing, but it’s a very real phenomenon, and one I exploit ruthlessly when I coach people.

4) The adventure. For some people, plunging right into the deep end of new endeavors unleashes a fun, adventurous energy. Like when people find themselves unexpectedly getting into marathons or triathlons or lion taming. Like I said… for some people. Not many. Definitely the minority. But it happens.

Dude, where’s my system?

Okay, what I’m now about to say is going to be shamelessly self-serving, but it also happens to be the truth. The most fundamental reason that most healthy eating plans fail is because they aren’t systems. They aren’t anything close to systems. And to really become a wildly regenerative eater in the real world, most people need a system.

As luck would have it, I spent 25 years creating just such a system. I call it the Wildly Regenerative Eating system. It’s made up of 9 primary tactics, the pillars of the system, and a ton of other cool little hints, hacks, and tips. And it’s all designed to do two things:

1) Transition you into a wildly regenerative way of eating.

2) Keep you transitioned. Until your dying day (you’ll still die).

Dumb hard versus smart hard

Am I saying my system will make it easy for you to become, and stay, a wildly regenerative eater for the rest of your life?

Goodness, no. 

Eminently doable, even for super busy people? Yes. 

Massively user-friendly? Yup. 

Bigly successful for most people? Indeed. 

Wise, leveraged, and enjoyable? Yes, yes, and yes! 

But no, not always easy.

Becoming—and staying—a wildly regenerative eater can, at times, be hard. That’s just the way it is.

The thing is, there are two totally different kinds of “hard.” There’s dumb hard, and there’s smart hard. Almost everyone who tries to change their diet does dumb hard. 

Dumb hard means…

• They choose the wrong strategies (or no strategies at all).

• They have zero tactics to avoid deprivation.

• They do nothing to shift their mindset, attittudes, beliefs, and stories.

• They put nothing in place for when all their motivation evaporates five or six months (or weeks) down the line (which it definitely will).

• They have no clue which are the key habits to build.

So they take some arbitrary, randomly-chosen action steps—and then they just scrinch up their faces and ball up their fists and “try really hard to do them.” Things do not tend to end well.

Smart hard is a totally different animal… 

…and a totally different experience. Smart hard means that some of the steps require—yes—a bit of work. You do actually have to do some stuff to become a lifelong wildly regenerative eater.

But here’s the thing…

• When you know that the actions you’re taking are the wisest ones and that they deliver ginormous benefits

• When you know they are smart, targeted, leveraged, and road-tested

• When you know they are powerfully moving you in the exact direction you want to go—eating for radiant health…

…well then those actions feel deeply satisfying. When you’re doing the right hard things, the smart hard things, as part of a solid system, the whole thing just feels totally different. You’re in a flow. Even if, on some days, it feels hard. It feels good hard. Meanwhile, you’re also eating like a glowy, solar-powered, superhero of the sun. That’s a pretty good deal.

Thanks for tuning in. Don’t be a stranger.