Fail Your Way to Diet Success [Here’s How]

Fail Your Way to Diet Success [Here’s How]

Video | Think Once, Do Twice | When You’re Hungry, Eat | Stop Trying to Change Things

“To learn to succeed, you must first learn to fail.” ~Michael Jordan 

“Failure is success in progress.” ~Unknown

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” ~Truman Capote

You’ve likely heard sayings like this before that put failure in a positive light and make it look like a good thing to experience. But, when your goal is to improve your diet for better health or weight control, failure feels like a burden that is, at its best, a waste of time and, at its worst, a health risk. 

What we don’t see from these brief inspirational quotes is that there are right ways and wrong ways to fail. This blog post shares how to fail your way to diet success. 

Fail Your Way to Diet Success – At-A-Glance


  • Think Once, Do Twice. You will make mistakes, but mistakes born out of action carry with them practical lessons.
  • When You’re Hungry, Eat (Hunger-Satisfying Foods). Avoid the refined carbs troublemakers and focus on protein, fat, and non-starchy vegetables. When you do, you will naturally think about food less and eat less. 
  • Stop Trying to Change Things. You’ll be surprised how much energy you gain.

Fail Your Way to Diet Success [Here’s How] (Video)

In this video, you’ll learn…

  • How I have observed and learned from the process of failure over the years.
  • Three ways to fail correctly!
  • Examples and helpful tips relating to each of the three ways.

Failure is Not Fun

No one likes to fail, yet I would say most of us can point to examples in our lives when a perceived failure turned into a blessing or at least a valuable learning experience.

But when all we have to go on is a catchy phrase like “Failure is success in progress,” we are left wondering what exactly that means. 

Is it just a numbers game where if we fail enough times, things will magically turn around? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. 

After 12 years of making health and diet-related videos and running weight loss programs, I’ve read thousands of comments and observed patterns in how people take action, react to obstacles, and fall into habit loops that show me there are right and wrong ways to fail. So, let’s take a look. 

Fail The Right Way #1: Think Once, Do Twice

The first way to fail your way to diet success is to think once and do twice. This is a guaranteed way to fail because you are going to get started even though you have some unanswered questions. But you’ll find that failing this way teaches you something because you took action. 

We live in a world where learning is easy to do. But you want to make sure that you’re not confusing learning with doing. Watching a video is learning. Reading a book is learning. Eating different foods for the rest of today is doing. 

Think Once, Do Twice

When it comes to changing your eating habits, you must experience it to understand it. When you do that, you discover what works and doesn’t work for your lifestyle, and you can make corrections to your plan that work for you. 

Of course, I am not telling you to jump in with reckless abandon. You still have to be mindful of health issues and family dynamics, and you still need to have a grasp on what to do. But remind yourself that overanalysis is paralysis, and get started. 

Fail The Right Way # 2: When You’re Hungry, Eat (Hunger-Satisfying Foods)

One mindset I often see is that hunger, while uncomfortable, is a necessary part of the game when it comes to dieting. With that perspective, our only response to hunger is to use willpower and muscle through it. 

This sets up the second way to fail your way to diet success, which is when you’re hungry, eat. 

I say this is a way to fail, but it is more of a perceived failure because it goes against thoughts, beliefs, or actions we’ve established as to how things should be done.

Now, with that said, this one is tricky because you have to be careful with your food choices. There are foods that stimulate hunger and those that satisfy hunger. 

If you eat hunger-stimulating foods, you will always be hungry, and your diet will not get off the ground. To fail the right way, when you are hungry, eat hunger-satisfying foods. 

Protein and fat are two nutrients that satisfy hunger. Non-starchy vegetables provide a lot of volume, keeping you feeling full longer.  

Foods that stimulate hunger are quick-digesting carbs. In the video within this blog post, I share an excerpt from the television show Man vs. Food.

The premise of the show is that the host travels to different American restaurants, taking on their eating challenges. In one episode, the host traveled to a creamery in San Francisco to take on their Kitchen Sink Challenge.

To succeed, he had to eat an enormous sundae, and when I say enormous, I’m not kidding. Only four people before him were able to eat the whole thing. He became the fifth to meet the challenge, but he did it in a very unusual way. 

Halfway through the sundae, he started to struggle. Instead of giving up, he ordered a plate of french fries. 

Those hot and salty fries were enough of a contrast to the cold, creamy ice cream to restimulate his appetite, and he was able to finish the sundae and the fries. 

Ice cream and french fries are extreme examples of quick-digesting foods. But the list is much longer and includes foods that aren’t as obvious, like pasta, bread, cereal, and crackers. 

These refined foods light up the pleasure center of your brain, making it hard to stop eating them. They also spike and crash your blood sugar, making you hungry soon after eating them. 

Fail The Right Way # 2: When You’re Hungry, Eat (Hunger-Satisfying Foods)

Now, it is good to have boundaries when you have a specific goal, like weight loss, and for this “eat when you are hungry” strategy to work for you, you want to understand the difference between true hunger, where your body needs food, and false hunger, which is more of a desire to eat. If you aren’t sure how to tell the difference, see my blog post titled Hunger – When to Eat | When to Fast.

But with that understanding, give yourself permission to eat hunger-satisfying foods when you are hungry, and you avoid the frustration of fighting hunger. That is a game-changer, and you’ll find that you naturally think about food less often and eat less because hunger and cravings are under control. 

If you want a list of hunger-satisfying foods, I have one that you can download for free. It contains 100 low-carb foods that contain protein and fat and non-starchy vegetables, so you have a full list to start eating from.

Fail The Right Way #3: Stop Trying to Change Things

Did you ever find yourself saying, I’ll be successful when… 

For instance, I’ll be successful “when the holidays are over,” “when my husband gets on board with the diet,” “when my coworkers stop bringing in snacks,” or “when addictive foods get outlawed.”

There are a lot of things that look like obstacles, so it’s common to think they must change so I can change. But the reality is that you’ll find success when you stop trying to change things. 

Many of the things we wish would change are out of our control. The holidays happen, loved ones aren’t always on board, people love us with food, and fast food and processed foods are not going away. 

When you put a lot of energy into wishing these things were different, you feel drained and frustrated, and motivation is hard to come by. 

Stop Trying to Change Things

Changing your way of eating takes focus and effort because you are shopping differently, learning new recipes, and shaking up old routines. Those tasks require energy. If you are draining all of your energy by wanting these things to change, you are making your journey much harder than it has to be. 

Takeaway

So there you have it: three ways to fail yourself to diet success. I call them failures because they go against thoughts, beliefs, or actions that we’ve established as the way things should be done.

To recap: 

Number One: Think Once, Do Twice. You will make mistakes, but mistakes born out of action carry with them practical lessons. 

Number Two: When You’re Hungry, Eat Hunger-Satisfying Foods. Avoid the refined carbs troublemakers and focus on protein, fat, and non-starchy vegetables. When you do, you will naturally think about food less and eat less. 

Number Three: Stop Trying to Change Things. You’ll be surprised how much energy you gain.

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful week!

About the Author

Becky Gillaspy, DC, is the author of The Intermittent Fasting Guide and Cookbook and Zero Sugar / One Month. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with research honors from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1991.

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