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Why The "Diet Starts On Monday" Mentality Will Always Fail You · Your Strongest Body

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: You are listening to your strongest body.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Betsy Foster, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and certified nutrition coach.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I've worked as a personal trainer for over a decade, helping people build strength, speed, muscles, as well as a deep appreciation for their bodies and confidence that helps them live their life to the fullest.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness, nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Hello, hello, welcome back to your strongest body.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, thanks for listening.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Today we are talking about how the quote unquote diet starts on Monday.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Mentality is always going to fail you, it is always going to lead you astray, and while it is so tempting and while it is culturally just ingrained in our mind and it is our autopilot kind of action, it is what is constantly getting in the way of your progress.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: It is sabotaging you before you even start.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: So what do I mean by this?
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: So there is you know some people gave it the title the diet starts on Monday description, and that is to describe this kind of thinking where you're going to overhaul your whole life or start your restrictive diet or start your extreme fitness plan on Monday, meaning that on Friday, saturday, sunday, or let's say you're at Tuesday.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: You don't have to begin those behaviors until then and you are magically going to become this different person who's able to accomplish these things.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't start till Monday.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: So have at it now, go all out, and then you know it can.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: All your life can change on Monday.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It's a really common form of thinking.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: That is why it got a its own name.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: You might have seen it in some of like anti diet sort of information or content that's out there, even just sort of like nutritionists sharing that sort of warning.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: But also you might see it in people's content that's about being going wild on the weekends.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: So it's really common form of thinking.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: It is how we have societally and culturally at least here from what I can see from the United States it's how we approach health and fitness.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: It is the idea that we can transform on a Monday.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: That Monday promises something new and there's something lovely about that.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: There's something lovely to the idea that you can start anew.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: The challenge here is that it is magical thinking.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: It's magical thinking and people do it with diets, with nutrition, but also with their fitness, with any sort of productivity trait they're trying to take on.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: This is a really common form of thinking that magically, on Monday, I will be a different person who is able to do X, y and Z, and so I give myself permission now to go to the far extreme, as well as because I know that I will be restricting myself or pushing myself in some way, starting on Monday.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: My behavior before Monday is grabbing the last of this, binging on certain things or not even asking my body to move because I'm going to start my extreme fitness plan on Monday.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Let's think this through from a sort of Example scenario.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: So let's say you are, you are gonna start a you know I'll call it quote-unquote clean eating diet on Monday and you are going to start working out every day for 60 minutes every day.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: You're gonna start on Monday.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: So let's imagine, right now it's Sunday morning.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Sunday morning, you have got to figure out Everything you need to get ready for Monday.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: You start to develop this stress about having all these pieces together.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: As you are meal prepping, as you are Lining up your workout clothes, all of these things, you are snacking on anything you aren't going to include in your diet, and you are, you haven't fit in Movement and you're putting all this stuff together.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of hope, but there's also a lot of behavior that's like let me get it in now because I won't be able to do it before.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Maybe you feel really hungover because on Saturday night you went out and you went hard because you know that on Monday You're gonna start this.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: So then you start on Monday.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you it is going well at 7 30 am.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: You've enjoyed the breakfast that you prepared.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: It is going well.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: At 12 30 you actually remembered to bring the Food from home.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: That went well and you make it to the gym and get your workout in Monday was a success.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: You had the dinner you wanted.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: You got to bed early, perfect.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Tuesday morning you wake up.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: That breakfast is working again.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: You get to work Meeting popped up and you realize you forgot your lunch.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: So you don't have time to go home to get that prepared lunch.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: So you got to order lunch.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: All right, well, I can find something that works for me.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: You make that work.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Not exactly what you wanted, but it's fine.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Get to five o'clock and, oh man, something came up.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: You have to stay a little late at work.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: You don't get to your workout.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: All right, not the end of the world, but it's fine.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: You have some social gathering that you have to go to.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: That evening you have a little bit of something that you didn't want to.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: You stay up a little late.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Wednesday morning rolls around.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Wednesday is the Prepared breakfast is not appealing as much.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: You think about how you missed the workout yesterday.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: You're not gonna go unless you can get the full 60 minutes.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: So you don't do it and two other things popped up and the week starts to unravel.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: More things happen, more of that general likes life stress occurs and Suddenly you get to Thursday morning and you're like it did not happen for me this week.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: All those things didn't happen.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I failed that's kind of language You're using.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I failed, I did, it didn't work and Now I'm just gonna like whatever, I'll start again on Monday.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Diet starts on Monday and then from Thursday To Sunday night, you have now given yourself again this unconditional permission, but this unconditional permission that has a condition attached on Monday it's it's going away.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: The permission you're giving yourself is going away on Monday.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: So you have a a Need to get it all in now.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: That cycle continues, and whether it continues every week or whether you have three successful weeks and it happens on the fourth week.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: It happens because you've set unrealistic Expectations.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: You've put everything on that magical thinking of shifting who you are and what you do on Monday, so you take on way too many changes at once and then you're leaning into something that's far too restrictive and forcing you To.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Whenever you have a moment, whenever you give yourself that mental break, whenever you say I now have permission, but I only have it for a little while you are, you're gonna run with it, you're gonna sleep in, you're going to Eat a bunch of food that you don't really that you're gonna tell yourself you can't have starting Monday.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: You're gonna drink a bunch of things You're gonna say you can't have until Monday.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: That is how you trap yourself in this constant cycle of having to start over, having to start over.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: You put so much pressure on Monday.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: No wonder Sundays have the scariest, whether or not you six, you do that one week or every other week or whatever it may be.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: You put so much pressure on those days and you make those weekend days feel like your only time to let loose, let go, whereas if you think about it more, with less restrictive behaviors, with more small habit changes over time and with treating every day a little bit more similarly to the day before, you're allowing yourself to have a good blend of those things and you're not asking yourself to reinvent who you are, what you do, your identity every Monday.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: That's so, so hard, that's so hard and it really promotes going wild, going off the rails, letting loose on those other days.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: We want to get to a place where our health and fitness decisions coexist with our decisions that include pleasure and fun, and that they live in a place that overlaps, so that we have some of that every day.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Because, also, mondays are always already hard enough.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Why would you want to take all the joy out of your life every single Monday?
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: In fact, I think there are lots of opportunities to actually have some of your most pleasurable foods on Monday or have a thing that you're looking forward to on Monday, so that it helps to take off the edge of having to feel like you need to be quote unquote healthy or quote unquote on your game on Monday.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: There's got to be less of a distinction in some of those days.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: So here, if you find yourself and you may find yourself falling into this trap a little less to the extreme, but you realize that you're putting all of your new behaviors, all of your new change, attaching it to the pressure of Monday.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: I want to tell you I want you to do two things.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: One, I want you to get rid of the idea that you need to change more than one thing at a time.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: I know, trust me, I know this is a really hard thing to ask you to do, because that magical transformation that someone's showing you on the internet or that someone is showing their three weeks and I look wildly different, or three weeks and I'm the strongest person you've ever met, it's unrealistic and it's very hard to maintain.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Maybe there are circumstances where you need that quick fix, but those quick fixes don't tend to have long-term success.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: So when I tell you you can only do one thing at a time, I know you're saying but this is going to take forever.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: But if it takes forever and lasts forever, isn't that better?
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Would you rather have it work this time than have to start again every single Monday?
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: And let's be serious If you do that all-or-nothing approach, you restrict, you start on Monday, you go wild on the weekends.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Those wild weekends begin to accumulate more than you think.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: They're adding on All the quote-unquote good you're doing on Monday through Wednesday is not offsetting all of the extremes you're going to on Friday, saturday and Sunday, and I mean that both nutritionally but also exercise-wise, also stress-wise, all of those things.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: If you're living in those two extremes, I'm going to tell you which extreme is going to win most of the time, and that is the one where pleasure reigns supreme and it's taking, it's adding a bunch of calories, it's stealing a bunch of energy.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Not saying that you can't have those things, but you do it differently if you're restricting, if there is a promise of restriction in the future versus a balance of letting these things coexist, without one being bad and one being good, about finding ways to make your life feel the best and most supportive for yourself.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: So I want you to think about one small thing at a time.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: It is entirely reasonable for you to think that you're going to take on a new behavior or a new habit, but we're going to do one at a time, and then I'm going to throw something out to you that is going to feel possibly monumental slash.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: You've never, no one's ever, told you this before.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: And if they have, great.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I want you to take on that new habit on a Friday or a Saturday.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: I want you to take on that new habit on a Friday or a Saturday.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Two reasons why.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: One, it is not a Monday, so it does not bring it, or a Sunday.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Bring in this mentality of like we're starting fresh, we're starting over.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: It does not, it's not attached to your most routine day.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: It's attached to your probably least routine days.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: If you work a typical Monday through Friday work schedule.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: It's also reminding you.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: If you start on those days, you're learning how to incorporate them.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: On the days where the most Off the plan you could get or the most Throw it all out the window you could be, lots of people are laced up and doing so much stuff and I and I say restricting they're restricting themselves Monday through Thursday and they're losing it, like I said, between Friday and Sunday.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Can you live your best Friday life a A life where you do go to the happy hour or you do stay out a little late, or you do go out to dinner that night, but you also Incorporate that habit that is really easy to make work on a Monday but is harder to make work on a Friday.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Start those habits on the weekend.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Begin to train your brain and body to see those weekend days as just other days.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: They are not good days or bad days.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I mean they're great when you get to spend them with the people you love and things like that.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: You don't have to go to work, but they're not Let me just go wild because I have to be quote-unquote good on Monday.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: So these are the two things.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: If we're going to leave that diet starts on Monday mentality behind.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: We've got to start thinking about change that we are incorporating into our lives as one change at a time, one small.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: I can do it.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Change at a time.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: And We've got to take the Monday or the Sunday night of it away.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Try incorporating these new single habits on either a Friday or a Saturday, even a Thursday.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: If Thursday is the ladies night for you, whatever that might be, what day do you feel like you start to Lose the energy or excitement to keep that going?
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: What day feels like it's in competition with Some of the healthier choices that you think you're making?
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: See if you can make those on that day and find a marriage between fun and pleasure and socializing and Still maintaining the things you want in order to reach your goals.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: All right, let me know what you think.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Let me know if this is helpful.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: You can always chat with me, betsy, at be foster strong, comm or on Instagram at foster underscore strength.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you for all the shares that we've had recently with that giveaway.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you for the reviews and the ratings on Apple Podcasts.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: If you haven't, and you would like to, I would so appreciate you sharing that, going down and rating or writing a review.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: And Until next time, go build your strongest body and I'll talk to you soon.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Bye.