Lose Weight Permanently
You’ve spent excessive amounts of time, energy, and resources attempting to eat healthy and lose weight.
Needless to say, you’re spent. You’re ready to move on from that approach. I’m here to teach you how.
In this hour masterclass, you’ll learn what’s preventing you from creating the weight loss you want, along with what’s necessary to solve for healthy eating and weight loss for the very last time.
FREE MASTERCLASS
without tracking and planning
Jul 1
Honest Truths: Discipline Is Not Willpower
Struggling to establish consistent follow-through with healthy eating?
If you’ve been striving to maintain firm discipline with your eating habits but ultimately falling short each time, it’s time to rethink what true discipline with food will mean for you.
In this episode, we’re diving deep into the true meaning of discipline — where it’s not about strict rules or perfect follow-through, but about building certainty, stability, and acceptance with how you show up.
You’ll discover:
→ Why traditional views of discipline might be holding you back from following through sustainably.
→ How to redefine discipline to feel empowered and stable, rather than restricted and pressured.
→ The key emotional energies that establish a sustainable relationship with healthy eating.
→ Why discipline and “good performance” with healthy eating are not one and the same.
The truth is, discipline wasn’t meant to require harsh willpower; it’s an opportunity to begin nurturing yourself towards the eating habits you want effectively.
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Here are some extra resources to go along with this episode:
- Weight Loss Without Tracking (podcast)
- People Pleasing Eating (podcast)
- Stop Overeating (free course)
- Own Your Eating Habits (coaching)
Episode Transcript
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast today. I am happy you’re here with me before we get into today’s episode. I want to announce that starting today, I am hosting a free five day challenge called solve your food struggles in five days. days. So this means from Monday, July 1st through Friday, July 5th, you’re going to join me and we will workshop, we’ll coach and discover how to solve your food struggles for good.
So during the challenge, we will have five days of workshopping together. On day one, we’re going to end the on track off track dieting cycle. Day two, we will establish self discipline. Discipline with food day three will lower cravings without relying on willpower day four. You’re going to learn to enjoy your favorite foods without overeating.
And then day five, you will let weight loss be simple. So I’m so excited to offer this to you. We’re going to have so much fun and really you’re going to gain the clarity and momentum you need to make really meaningful progress now [00:01:00] towards solving these food struggles for good. So. If you are with us, I’m so excited to have you.
It’s not too late to register. You can go to Katrentis. com forward slash challenge. And we kick off today, Monday at 2 PM Eastern time. So do not miss it. All right. So getting into today’s episode, I am sharing an honest truth today. And if you saw the title, it’s all about how discipline is not the answer.
So a lot of the women I coach, you may relate to this as well. We really pride ourselves in being disciplined or we see the value in being disciplined. We really put it on a pedestal. And a lot of us are having a relationship. to discipline that is not sustainable for the eating habits or the weight loss you want.
So in this episode, I really want to clarify how you will need to see discipline to have the results you want. So we’re going to unpack all of that. And this is actually one of [00:02:00] my favorite topics. Now, where the problem comes in is that you want to have control with food, right? So you want to be disciplined and follow through because logically, you know, that’s.
Certain actions with food are required to create the weight loss you want, but what’s not being considered yet is how you’re emotionally fueling those actions that are necessary. So the manner of thinking and energy you’re consistently having day to day when it comes to creating that discipline. With healthy eating.
So being disciplined is defined officially as showing a controlled form of behavior or way of working. And this is the ideal result you want to create with healthy eating, right? You want to be in control. You want to take actions in the way that you know are useful with food. And this is what I teach women to an extent.
So the women in my programs, they do learn how to create food control, no matter the [00:03:00] circumstances. in their lives. However, what we tend to do as high achieving women is take the concept of being disciplined to the extreme of perfection, where we’ll believe that to be disciplined with healthy eating is to never miss a day.
For example, being disciplined means to never overeat, to never fall off track. And what I want to offer you today is that discipline is not willpower. Or more accurately, true stable discipline with food does not require willpower. So I’m going to help you define discipline with healthy eating more usefully and accurately in this area of your life.
Because here’s what discipline. isn’t my friends. It’s not perfection. It’s not rule following. It’s not shaming. It’s not judging yourself when you don’t follow through. It’s not viewing yourself as disobedient where you need to pressure yourself to follow through. And [00:04:00] it’s not having a low regard for yourself.
Here’s what being disciplined is. Being disciplined is certainty, stability, clarity, acceptance, responsibility, simplicity, all without shame, judgment, or punishment. And while accepting that to be human, that It means perfection will never be an option. Okay, so when you identify as being disciplined in a useful way, it simply means you hold yourself and your goal in a high regard, and you’re resourceful from that place.
You take actions from your best intentions to eat healthy and reach your happy weight. And when you have a misstep or setback in that journey, You proactively evaluate it and move forward from this disciplined mindset. Now I will repeat, being disciplined does not mean perfection ever. It’s so important to really sit with this fact y’all, because [00:05:00] so many of us will have convinced ourselves that we are different perhaps and that we are more capable and that if we just know what to do, we can do things perfectly.
And. To be frank, that is just completely dismissing the fact that you have a human brain, and it is not designed for us to follow through perfectly. So I really want you to process the fact that
being disciplined will never mean perfection. And if that’s true, then how will we need to see discipline, right? Because it’s less about the outcome of always following through and never making a mistake. Being disciplined with food is more about how you see yourself and how you see your goal. So it’s that energy that you show up with.
What I want you to know is all of the women who go through my program and achieve their goals, They are not exempt from the same amount of failures that someone is having who’s not achieving their goal. In fact, the women who achieve their [00:06:00] goal the most efficiently in my programs have collected And it’s from a place of discipline because they’re holding themselves and their goal in a high regard, right?
So it really has nothing to do with good performance. It has to do with prioritization and taking action. So I want you to start defining discipline based on your energy, based on an emotion you feel.
I know this is a very different perspective, but it’s one I invite you to try on. I want you to consider the thoughts you think that allow you to feel disciplined. And when I talk about discipline as a feeling, It will often feel solid, unshakable, and sustainable. To discipline yourself different thing entirely, at least in terms of how most of us are thinking about it.
Disciplining yourself is coming up with a method of healthy eating, [00:07:00] convincing yourself you’ll just indefinitely follow through with it, use a ton of willpower to force yourself, then think if you don’t keep Following that approach, you just must not be disciplined enough. And this is shame. For most of you, when you think of disciplining yourself, this is what you’re doing.
You are adding shame to the mix.
Okay, let’s go back to the original question I asked here. Consider what thoughts you would think to feel the emotion of discipline. And I think the feeling of discipline is similar to Feeling empowered, certainty, assurance, responsibility. Some thoughts I hear often from my clients when we coach on this.
So these are thoughts that put them into useful discipline energy. I’m willing to give this the time it needs. I’m figuring this out now. I have what I need. I know what to do. I have the resources to find the answers I need. I can make a choice for my goal, no matter what. I can always make [00:08:00] this work. So notice how thoughts like these can create a grounded, stable, empowered feeling such as discipline, but the pressure and expectations aren’t there.
The thoughts are not fluffy. They’re really, really solid. Now, not all thoughts are created equal. I just want to say, so what thoughts are useful to others might not be useful for you personally and vice versa. That’s so okay. But I just more want you to have a picture of how to see discipline differently so you can decide how you will need to approach it in your journey to healthy eating and weight loss.
When it comes to healthy eating and weight loss, it’s a result you want to create sustainably and permanently, which means the emotional energy you put towards it must be sustainable as well. Harsh discipline where you force yourself to perform through your actions and quote unquote, Discipline yourself will not be sustainable, and you will know this if you have tried.
Alternatively, discipline in the form of a stable, [00:09:00] grounded, emotional experience created by your thoughts is sustainable. And that is the game changer, my friends. So, some perspective that I hope is helpful for today. Again, do not forget to join us in our free Solve Your Food Struggles in Five days challenge.
It is going to be epic and I am so excited to see you there. Go to Katrentis. com forward slash challenge to register. All right, my friends, I hope you have a great rest of your day and I’ll talk to you soon.
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Kat Rentas, Healthy Eating Coach
Hey there! I'm Kat Rentas. I’m a certified life and health coach for women who believes that eating healthy should feel simple and sustainable. I teach hundreds of high-performing women to change their eating habits without the overwhelm. Want to change your eating habits in a way that is aligned with your needs, preferences, and goals? You’re in the right place. You can read my full story here.
