5 Self-Discipline Hacks To Reach Your Weight Loss Goals

Do you want to become a more disciplined person?

Now you might be thinking the answer is building consistent habits, but that's not it, it's something different and it's hidden in plain sight.

In the book, The Power Of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, he discusses a study in Scotland in the 1990’s involving patients of knee replacement surgeries.

Now, if you know anything about this type of surgery, you will know that movement and physical rehabilitation is crucial almost immediately after the surgery is done if the patient is going to fully recover their mobility.

But there's a problem, moving after a knee replacement is agonizing, it's incredibly painful. And for that reason, a lot of people who get this type of surgery never fully recover.

So the psychologist took about 60 of these patients and had them write down specific detailed plans on paper of how they were going to go about their recovery.

And something remarkable happened.

The patients who actually wrote down a plan for what they were going to do are much more likely to do it and push through the pain when it came.

And another favorite example was a man who committed to walking to the bus stop every day to meet his wife as she came home from work.

And that right there is the key to self-discipline.

It's hidden in plain sight in that example, and in interactions that we have with people every single day.

The key is accountability, you could also call it duty, the obligations we have to each other.

When your boss tells you to be at work at a specific time, you are there at a specific time because your boss is relying on you.

When a child you take care of needs to be picked up from school you do it because they are relying on you.

But what about our personal goals?

What about that consistent healthy diet you’ve been wanting to keep, or the workout routine you're trying to stick to?

With these personal goals, there's nobody else really relying on us.

So we can't really tap accountability to improve our self-discipline, can we?

Well, actually we can.

And in this post, we're going to explore a model called: 

The Five Levels Of Self-Discipline.

Each level in this model has to do with a different type of accountability that can be applied to improve your levels of self-discipline.

Four levels in this model have to do with our relationships to other people.

And they are the most powerful levels, but the first one is worth mentioning as well.

#1 Accountability To Yourself

Every time we make a plan, every time we sit down and write out a task or add something to our calendar or decide to do something,

We are essentially trying to hold our future selves accountable. 

Here are the two steps to create self-accountability.

#1 -  Write down what you're going to do.

#2   Be specific about it.

Write down exactly what you are  going to do and what conditions may cause you to fail.

This last part is also echoed in Seth Godin's excellent book, "The Dip".

When he talks about how marathoners often decide what will cause them to quit before they start the race.

That way they are pre-committing to the conditions that would cause them to drop out, and when the discomfort hits later on in the marathon, maybe 18 or 19 miles in they'll know, I committed to other conditions that would make me quit this is not one of them, therefore, I'm going to push through.

#2 - Accountability To Others

This is the first level where we introduce relationships to other people and in doing so, the accountability becomes so much more powerful because we are a social species.

So while accountability to yourself can be useful when somebody else is holding your feet to the fire, that is so, so much better.

Now, level two is the most casual one in this category.

And it involves introducing an accountability partner into the mix.

An accountability partner is somebody who likes you or cares about you, cares about your goals and your progress, and will put in the effort

to make sure that you're doing what you said you were going to do, who actually checks up on you.

This is a more rare person than you might think. And a lot of people fall into a common pitfall where they go around telling all their friends and family about a goal that they have, assuming that these people will hold them accountable.

But what actually happens is they end up sabotaging themselves due to something called a social reality.

This is when you feel like you have actually made some progress on your goal, due to the praise you receive from other people after you tell them about it. You feel like something has happened but in reality, no progress has been made.

And research has found that people who talk about their goals tend to practice less and quit more often.

So in general, you shouldn't go around talking about your goals because you want to avoid these social realities.

But the exception here is that if you can find somebody who will actually act as an accountability partner, telling them about your goal and having them hold you accountable can be very powerful.

#3 - Coach/Mentor

Now, if you don't have somebody in your life who can act as a great accountability partner, you can always move up to level three, which is to hire a coach or a teacher.

Coaches and teachers are essentially professional accountability partners and they bring some additional benefits to the table. A great coach is somebody who has the expertise in the thing that you wanna learn. They can either do it themselves now, they're at the level you're trying to get to, or they were at that level at one point in their lives and have the experience they can lean on to teach you to get there.

But they also have experience with teaching. And this is really a true skill area unto its own.

So a great coach is somebody with both the expertise and the teaching ability, but also someone who is invested in your success.

And this is what separates a great coach from a mere good one. Somebody who actually cares about you making progress.

Now there are actually platforms out there where you can hire coaches for surprisingly affordable rates.

Coach.me is one of them. But great coaches in our experience often cost a good amount of money.

So this is something where you may wanna look for an accountability partner first and then move up to coaching when you have the means or when you're very serious about making progress.

#4 - Joining a Support Group

Now, level four is a whole different ball game than levels two and three, because, with accountability partners and coaches, these people are exerting effort to give you the accountability you need for your personal goals.

Level four involves joining a team or a group or an organization so that your personal goal becomes aligned with a common goal.

And in doing so, you now have other people who are relying on you to do your part, and this makes the accountability so much more powerful.

So if your personal goal is fitness and weight loss, you can join our Instagram community and stay motivated seeing other community members progress and share your results and experience to help support others on their fitness journeys.

#5 - Leadership

Now, instead of being part of a team and having people rely on you just to do your part, now you've stepped up into a leadership role and everyone is relying on you to guide them as well. When you're a leader, accountability is at its highest point, but also the responsibility and the consequences for failure are as well.

So these are the five levels of self-discipline as they pertain to accountability.

Accountability to yourself, to partners, to coaches and teachers, to teams, and to people beneath you when you were in leadership positions.

If you want to start with becoming more self-disciplined, but struggle with getting started, we have an exciting new all-natural solution that helps support your focus and motivation on your self-discipline journey.