Speaker 1: 0:02

If you're a whiny snowflake that can't handle the truth, is offended by the word fuck and about 37 uses of it in different forms gets ass hurt. When you hear someone speak the absolute, real and raw truth, you should leave Like right now. This is Shut Up and Choose, the podcast where we cut through the shit and get real about weight loss, life and everything in between. We get into the nitty gritty of making small, smart choices that add up to big results. From what's on your plate to how you approach life's challenges. We'll explore how the simple act of choosing differently can transform your health, your mindset and your entire freaking life. So if you're ready to cut through the bullshit and start making some real changes, then buckle up and shut up, because we're about to choose our way to a healthier, happier life. This is Shut Up and Choose. Let's do this Now. Your host, jonathan Ressler.

Speaker 2: 1:13

Welcome back to Shut Up and Choose the podcast, where we cut the noise and the nonsense and all that bullshit that the internet and all those Instagram and TikTok gurus have thrown at you. Telling you, one week, eat this Next week hey, we were wrong. Don't eat this. Telling you, one week, eat this Next week hey, we were wrong. Don't eat this. Eat that. There's so much bullshit out there and the truth of the matter is losing weight is easy. People get pissed when I say it, but losing weight is easy if you know how to do it. And it's not a diet and it's not some strict plan. It's the mental side of the game. It's knowing what triggers you. It's knowing how to lose weight. That makes it easier.

Speaker 2: 1:49

I talk to clients every day and one of my clients or one of my new clients, I should say said to me I was doing so well and then I just fell off. That probably sounds familiar to a lot of you. Of course it does. It's the most overused phrase in the weight loss world, right up there with I just need to get back on track and I'll start Monday. Let me say this loud and clear you didn't fall off. Your plan just fell apart because it was built for a fantasy version of your life, not the one that you're actually living. And that's what we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 2: 2:24

Again, this episode is not about shaming you for fucking up again. It's not about blaming you for being undisciplined or lazy. It's about exposing the real reason. You keep ending up in the same frustrating cycle of on or off, or good or bad, or in it or fuck it. Now here's the truth. You don't have a willpower problem. You have a system design problem. The diet industry has fed you this idea that success is about trying harder, that if you just woke up earlier or meal prep better or found your why one more time, you'd finally stick with it. I'm calling bullshit on that. Trying harder doesn't fix a broken system. It just burns you out faster. So, if we look at it, what actually causes people to fall off? So I'm going to break it down for you.

Speaker 2: 3:14

First, your plan was too rigid. It worked until the second. Your kid got sick, or your boss dropped a last minute meeting on you, or your energy dipped below 100. Or maybe you had no backup. You missed one workout or made one off-plan meal choice and you had no idea what to do next? Another one is you made one mistake and it turned into a weekend spiral. I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me, happened to people that I coach. It's crazy. So you made one mistake and it turns into a weekend spiral, all because your mindset is wired for perfection or failure, and no in between.

Speaker 2: 3:50

And if that sounds harsh, well good, because you're not here for sugarcoated bullshit. You're here because you want to stop playing the game of stop start on off all in and then all out. And I'm here to tell you you absolutely can, but only if you're willing to stop blaming yourself and start fixing the actual problem the system that can't survive your real life. That's the problem the system that can't survive your real life. In this episode, I'm going to break it down for you why falling off isn't a failure. It's a feedback looper. In this episode, I'm going to break it down for you why falling off isn't a failure. It's a feedback looper how to spot your patterns and build, bounce back into the plan and what you need to change. So this is the last time you ever have to start over. So let's cut the noise, burn the perfectionism and build something that really sticks, even when life doesn't.

Speaker 2: 4:43

So the first thing I want to talk about is this thing called the lie of willpower. If trying harder worked, you'd be there by now. Let's just call this out from the jump. Willpower is the biggest scam in the weight loss world. It's right up there with detox teas, waist trainers and those annoying influencers who swear they just love kale. Now, bunch of fucking liars and scammers. Willpower gets sold to you like it's a character trait, something you either have or you don't, something you should just tap into when things get hard, as if it's some magical reserve of discipline hiding behind your gallbladder. I had my gallbladder out, so it wouldn't be hiding behind mine. Maybe that's why I didn't have discipline. I don't know. But here's the truth that most coaches, trainers and diet plans won't say. They just won't say it. You don't need more willpower, you need fewer moments that require it. Willpower is a finite resource. It runs out, it burns out, it gets weaker.

Speaker 2: 5:39

When you're tired, stressed, distracted, overwhelmed or emotionally tapped out which, for being honest, that's like Tuesday you know what I mean. Every time you fall off, you tell yourself I just need to be more disciplined. Every time you say that, you're reinforcing a false belief that the only thing standing between you and success is your own moral weakness. That's a bunch of shit. You're not failing because you're weak. You're failing because you're trying to brute force your way through chaos instead of building a system that works with it. Let me tell you willpower will never be to skip lunch and low blood sugar. It'll never be to stressful day and zero emotional bandwidth. It'll never be to an unplanned dinner invite. It'll never beat an unplanned dinner invite. It'll never beat a 6 am alarm after only four hours of sleep. And it'll never beat a pantry full of cookies and no plan for dinner. But systems can. Routines, defaults, automation these are the tools that make progress inevitable. Not because you're stronger, but because you've removed the decision fatigue that's been crushing.

Speaker 2: 6:45

You See, what you think is a discipline problem is actually a design problem. So let's say you're trying to eat better and your strategy looks something like this Okay, rely on motivation in the morning. Hope you don't get too busy to eat lunch. Promise yourself you'll figure something out for dinner. Keep snacks in the house for the kids. Feel guilty for being tempted and try to white-knuckle your way past cravings. That's not a strategy, man. That's a setup. You've built a plan that demands super human focus every single day. Of course you're exhausted. Of course you crack. Of course you're exhausted. Of course you crack. Of course you binge watch Netflix with chips at 1030 while Googling Eat healthy meals. It's crazy. You're not weak, you're unprepared, because willpower is not a plan, it's a temporary patch.

Speaker 2: 7:40

So let's talk about decision fatigue, because this is where the willpower myth really falls apart. The average adult makes about 35,000 decisions every day from what time to wake up, what to wear, how to respond to that decision, nasty email every single one drains just a little bit of the battery. So by the time you're staring at the fridge at 6, 45 or 7 o'clock trying to choose between a chicken salad and a frozen pizza, you're done. The battery is toast. If you're depending on willpower at that point, game over. The pizza wins every time.

Speaker 2: 8:17

But if your dinner is already prepped, or or your go-to meal is ready in five minutes, or you made a Tuesday equals stir fry night rule that requires zero thinking, then you don't need willpower. You just need to follow the blueprint and that's the shift. It's making fewer decisions, not better ones. High performers don't make better decisions, they make fewer decisions. They design their environment. To reduce friction. They set defaults, they automate what they can, so they're not relying on discipline 24-7.

Speaker 2: 8:50

Here's, I guess, what that looks like in the real world. It's leaving your water bottle by your coffee machine. It's packing the same three lunches on rotation, so lunch is a non-decision. It's having a walking meeting instead of forcing yourself to find time to work out. It's grocery shopping with a default list those items that you must have in the house, and I'm not talking about the cookies here. It's meal prepping the boring meals. And when I say meal prepping, I don't mean making it in fucking Tupperware and storing it in the kitchen. I mean knowing that you have the ingredients to make something easy, and not making those Instagram meals. Every one of those is a system that replaces the need for willpower. And guess what? They work, because willpower isn't scalable, but systems are.

Speaker 2: 9:38

So let's take a step back and think about your life. If you're running a business, raising kids, managing stress, working long hours, you already have decision overload baked into your day. You don't need one more thing to manage. You need things that manage you. So if your entire weight loss plan requires you to be on your game every single day, you don't have a plan, you have a fantasy. You need something that works like when you're tired, when you're traveling, when you're bored, when your mood sucks, when your schedule blows up and when your motivation is just MIA. That's a system that's sustainable and that's what wins long term system that's sustainable and that's what wins long term. If your progress depends on willpower, your failure is just one bad day away. So stop blaming yourself for falling off. Start looking at the system that put you in a position where willpower is the only thing holding it all together. And if that system sucks, fix the system, not yourself. So I guess that brings me to this next point, which is the real culprit is fragile systems.

Speaker 2: 10:48

When your plan didn't fail, it collapsed under pressure because it was never built to handle life. So let's say that quiet part out loud. It's not you, it's your plan. I know the diet industry doesn't want you to believe that, but that's the fact. It's not you, it's your plan. I know the diet industry doesn't want you to believe that, but that's the fact. It's not you, it's your plan.

Speaker 2: 11:03

If your strategy only works when your calendar's empty, your energy is high and your fridge is stocked and your motivation is just fucking peaking. Then you don't have a strategy. You have a delicate house of Tupperware and dreams. And the second your kid gets sick, your boss drops a deadline, your sleep gets fucked or someone invites you to dinner boom, the whole thing goes up in flames faster than your leftover chicken and broccoli.

Speaker 2: 11:30

Everybody wants to wait for the perfect conditions. Here's what most people do, and this probably sounds familiar to you. They wait for the mythical perfect week to start. They prep 15 meals, they write a schedule that requires Olympic level discipline, they commit to daily workouts, zero sugar, full hydration, eight hours of sleep and daily journaling for like three days. Then life does what it always does it shows up messy, unpredictable, loud and late. The kids need to ride, the boss needs a favor. You sleep like shit. You skip a workout, you chow down on some fast food and suddenly you're off. But you didn't fall off. You walked a tightrope and called it a sidewalk.

Speaker 2: 12:11

Your plan wasn't too ambitious, it was too brittle and a rigid plan is a fragile plan. Let's get that concept burned into your brain. Rigid systems break. Flexible systems, bend and bounce. Rigid is things like this I have to work out at 6 am or the whole day is ruined. Or if I eat off plan once the meal is blown, or if I can't prep all my meals, I might as well order pizza when a flexible plan says hey, if I miss my workout, I'll walk at lunch, if dinner's off plan, I'll prioritize water and a good night's sleep, and if I don't have my ideal meal prep, I'll default to one of my backup options. Do you see the difference there? The first version shatters, the second life hits you, it just falls to pieces. The second version adapts, it survives, and survival is the secret to consistency.

Speaker 2: 13:05

Another thing that should piss you off is that fragile plans teach obedience, not autonomy. That's where the diet really fucks you over. Most diet plans don't teach you how to think. They teach you how to follow. As long as the conditions are controlled, eat this, not that I mean. We've all heard that Do these workouts. Track everything to the gram. Don't ask questions, just do it.

Speaker 2: 13:27

And when that structure inevitably gets interrupted, you're left with zero skills to adapt. You don't know how to pivot. You don't know how to eat at a restaurant. You don't know how to bounce back after a bad night of sleep or an emotional day. So what do you do? You give up, not because you're weak, but because your system has no flexibility. Your failure wasn't a lack of willpower, it was a lack of design.

Speaker 2: 13:52

I love when people tell me they're off track, because I tell them no, you're not off track, you just hit real life. Let's define, or redefine, what off-track really means. If your plan has no built-in wiggle room, if one unexpected dinner invite or missed workout means you start over Monday, then the problem is not your lack of discipline, it's that your track is too damn narrow. Your system should expect disruption. It should include fallbacks. It should be built like a trampoline, not a tightrope, because real progress doesn't come from the perfect weeks, it comes from the messy ones, where you still show up anyway. I would say to you build a resilient system that can take a hit. And here's what a resilient system looks like.

Speaker 2: 14:38

You have habit tiers. You have your ideal, your functional and your survival. You don't ghost your habits, you just kind of scale them to your day. You have fallback meals, those meals that are easy to make, they're quick to make and they're always available. So they're always available and they're low effort options. You have flexible workouts and for me, I was never about going to the gym. But if the gym is out, you walk. If you can't walk, you stretch. If you can't stretch, you breathe deeply and drink some water. It's that simple. You have a mental reset question what can I do? Right now that supports me just a little. When your plan can adapt, you stop quitting, you stop starting over and you stop living that all-or-nothing mode and you finally start to build momentum, the real kind. So if your habits only work when life is calm, they're not habits, they're hobbies. Let that sink in, because the real culprit behind your inconsistency isn't you, it's the brittle, unrealistic, diet-fueled system that was never built for your life in the first place.

Speaker 2: 15:42

So what's next? We're going to look at the patterns that keep you stuck and how to interrupt them before they become your identity. Look, you don't need another diet, you need to break the fucking loop, right? Let's not pretend that every slip up is some isolated, mysterious event. You didn't randomly binge. You didn't accidentally fall off. You didn't suddenly wake up 40 pounds heavier. You followed a pattern. You've been following that pattern and unless you call it out and break it, you'll keep living it. So this is not about discipline, it's about awareness, because once you spot the pattern, you can change it, but as long as you keep calling it a problem, you'll keep playing the victim. So let's talk about the pattern loop.

Speaker 2: 16:23

Most people live in a cycle that looks something like this, and we've all been there. First you get motivated, you feel fed up. Maybe your pants don't fit, maybe you saw a picture of yourself you didn't love. Whatever it is, you decide that's it, I'm changing. Then you go all in. You clean out the pantry, you buy a plan, you swear carbs and plan to work out six days a week. You're fucking pumped man. You're perfect for three days, maybe a week. Then life happens. Something throws you off a stressful day, bad sleep, dinner out, someone brings cookie to work and you slip. Then we hit. The next step is the shame spiral. You tell yourself you blew it, so you eat more. You skip the workout, you wait for Monday, you avoid the mirrors.

Speaker 1: 17:09

Guilty.

Speaker 2: 17:10

Avoid thinking. You just ghost your habits and then the next step is restart, eventually Get fed up again and the loop starts all over. Sound familiar? Yeah, that's not a willpower issue. That's a systematic identity loop and every time you repeat it it gets stronger, because patterns repeat until you interrupt them. The problem is never just the bad day. The problem is your reaction to the bad day, the beliefs that you attach to it. Like I already fucked up, I might as well keep going or I'll be good tomorrow. I just need a clean slate. Those aren't neutral thoughts. They're trigger phrases that keep the pattern alive. So let's shift that. Instead of judging behavior, start spotting the sequence. Ask what's the chain of events that always leads me to falling off? Maybe it starts with skipping breakfast, or maybe it's drinking too much coffee and forgetting to eat lunch. Maybe it's working too late and deciding to treat yourself because you're exhausted, or maybe it's not getting enough sleep, craving sugar, skipping your walk, benching at night. You're not broken. You're really predictable. And the good news is and predictable means fixable. So you got to figure out what identity you want to have, because identity reinforcement equals stuck behavior.

Speaker 2: 18:31

Here's where it gets deeper. Your patterns reinforce your identity. I always mess up on the weekends. Or I'm just an emotional eater, or I do great things until I get stressed, or I can't have chips in the house. I have no control. I've said mine was I'm incapable of making good food decisions. If you say something enough times, it becomes a belief, live in enough times and it becomes your identity. At that point it's not just the habit, it's who you think you are, and when that identity gets triggered, guess what you do? You behave in a way that confirms it. So what do we do instead? We build new loops confirms it. So what do we do instead? We build new loops, ones that interrupt the spiral and reinforce a new identity.

Speaker 2: 19:10

So here's three practical tools to start breaking your default loop. Number one is the pattern journal. For three or five days, really notice what time you ate, how you felt before and after and what triggered your off-track behavior, whether it's an emotion, environment, so whatever, you'll see the pattern fast and once you see it, you won't be able to unsee it. The second thing is the next best choice rule. When you slip, when you fuck up, immediately ask what would the next best version of me do right now? That might mean water, take a walk, a better choice for your next meal. It kills the all or nothing trap right on the spot. And then the third thing is you have to have a mini bounce back plan. Build a default recovery ritual you follow every time you slip up. So drink water, and drink water ASAP. Move, take a walk for five or 10 minutes and reset mentally. Say something like I made a choice and I'm making a better one now, and repeat that three-step bounce back every time you fall into old patterns and eventually the bounce back becomes your new baseline. So you don't need more discipline, you need fewer repeats.

Speaker 2: 20:21

This isn't about avoiding the mess. It's about refusing to live on autopilot in a loop that you were honestly never meant to stay in. Your old patterns are loud, they're familiar, they're comfortable, even when they fucking suck. But you're not here for comfort, you're here for change. And change happens the moment you stop saying I blew it again and start asking what's the loop I'm stuck in and how do I break it? So now I'm going to tell you how to build bounce back into your system so you don't fall off. You bounce forward.

Speaker 2: 20:53

So, I guess, build the bounce back in your.

Speaker 2: 20:56

You don't need a reset. You need a recovery plan. Welcome to the part where we stop pretending your life is ever going to be perfectly in sync with your goals. It won't be. That's not negative, it's not defeatist. That's just reality. And if your plan doesn't account for that, it's not a plan, it's a setup. So let me break that down for you.

Speaker 2: 21:16

You don't fail because you make mistakes. You fail because you don't know what to do after the mistake. You binge, then ghost your habits, you miss a workout, then you're right off the week. You're thrown off once and assume you have to start all over. And the truth is you don't. You just need to build a bounce back into your system on purpose and ahead of time. So the bounce back principle is pretty simple.

Speaker 2: 21:39

The people who succeed long-term in weight loss don't have fewer setbacks. They're just faster at recovering. They don't spiral and they eat something off plan. They don't have fewer setbacks. They're just faster at recovering. They don't spiral and they eat something off the plan. They don't use a missed workout as an excuse to disappear for a month and they don't let one decision dictate their next seven. Why? Because they've practiced bouncing back. It's not motivation, it's not inspiration. It's a skill and, like any skill, it's trainable. Consistency isn't about never fucking up. It's about not letting one bad moment become a bad week. Your bounce back muscle gets stronger the more you use it. So let me show you how to build that.

Speaker 2: 22:20

Number one is create a bounce back protocol. This is your emergency plan, your fire drill. You don't wait until the kitchen is inflamed to figure out where the extinguisher is, and the same goes here. Here's your simple three-step protocol. Number one first thing is hydrate 12 to 16 ounces of water Right now. It signals a reset. Number two is move. Get five or 10 minutes of light movement. Again, it could be walking, stretching, breathing, it doesn't matter. Just shift your energy. And three is decide what's your next best meal, your next best small win, your next best decision, and do it. This isn't about making up for it. You're never going to make up for it. It's about getting back into motion quickly. The longer you wait to bounce, the heavier the shame gets.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Second thing you need to do is change the language. Words are power and most of the time, your language is quietly sabotaging you. I blew it. You hear me say this all the time. No, you didn't. You made one choice. I'll start over Monday. Or you could restart right now. Or I fell off, or maybe your plan never had a bounce back build, so here's your upgrade that didn't serve me. But what does? One choice off plan doesn't undo the 27 that I got right, or I know how to recover. So I will Repeat those phrases out loud, write them down, tattoo them on your soul if you need, but your brain listens to what your mouth says, so feed it wisely.

Speaker 2: 23:46

The next thing is you have to build some habit tiers right, because not all days are created equal. So stop expecting the same performance from yourself on every single day. Build your habits and tiers right. So maybe your ideal day is a full workout, balanced meals, hydration, journaling, steps, great. But maybe on a busy day it's a short walk, decent meals, water and an early bedtime, and maybe on your shitty dumpster fire day, hydration, deep breaths and no guilt. If you can't hit your ideal day, you drop to the busy day. If that's too much, you drop to the dumpster fire day, but you never drop to zero. What that does is it removes the all or nothing thinking that leads to ghosting your goals completely.

Speaker 2: 24:31

I've talked about this quite a bit, but the next step is you have to install some environmental anchors right. Environment beats intention every time. If your space makes healthy choices harder, it's not a willpower problem. It's a setup problem. Set visual and tactile and structural anchors that help you to bounce back without thinking so. Keep your water bottle out where you can see it. Leave your walking shoes by the door. Post your bounce back protocol in your fridge. Prep a few fallout meals weekly. Don't wait for perfection. Your environment should make the right. Next choice.

Speaker 2: 25:01

The reason most people can't bounce back they tie mistakes to their identity. I suck at this. I'm a binge eater. I always fall. It's time to flip that. You're not someone trying to lose weight. You're someone who lives differently now. You're someone who gets thrown off and knows how to pivot. So instead of I fail again trying, I'm the kind of person who keeps going. Or I'm someone who owns their choices and makes new ones fast. I don't need to be perfect, I need forward, because every time you recover quickly, you cast a vote for that new identity.

Speaker 2: 25:33

The last one is practice right. Don't perform. You're going to fuck up. You're going to overeat. You're going to miss workouts. You're going to say, ah, fuck it, I hate this. That's part of it, but it's not the end.

Speaker 2: 25:44

Bounce back is the bridge from intention to identity. It's the daily gritty proof that you're different now, not because you're perfect, but because you come back faster. So practice, practice a bounce back plan for your next slip up before it happens. Rehearse that script in your head and visualize what you'll do when life smacks you in the face because it's going to. So the goal isn't perfection, it's resilience on demand.

Speaker 2: 26:11

If you don't know how to come back, you'll always think you need to start over. You don't need to restart your whole plan every time life happens. You need to build a plan that expects life to happen and still moves forward anyway. So no more ghosting, no more shame spouts, no more Mondays. Just bounce every time.

Speaker 2: 26:30

All right, in this little wrap-up, I'm going to show you how to take all this and implement it without overwhelm, without overthinking and without waiting for one more day. So let's get brutally honest here for a minute. You don't need another Monday, you don't need another plan, and you don't need a Pinterest perfect grocery list or a second fridge full of prepped salmon and guilt. What you need is resilience. What you need is a system that doesn't collapse the second your schedule does, because that's what this entire episode was about. Willpower is a lie. It runs out. It burns you out. It was never meant to carry the whole load. Fragile systems they break. If your plan can't survive stress, exhaustion in your real life, then it was doom from the starts. Patterns run the show.

Speaker 2: 27:18

You're not randomly falling off. You're stuck in a repeat loop and until you spot it, you keep living it. And bounce back is the skill you're missing. Not discipline, not motivation, not inspiration, not punishment, just the ability to recover quickly and move the fuck on. So here's the hard truth. You don't need to be perfect. You do need to be more practiced at getting back on track without the drama, because the people who succeed at this, they still mess up. They still have days when the plan flies out the window. They just don't let it define them. They bounce over and over until it's automatic.

Speaker 2: 27:56

So now you build the bounce back system into your life. You hydrate, you move, you decide your next best choice. You let one choice be just one choice, not a death sentence. You're going to rewrite your language. I'm not off, I'm adjusting. That didn't help me. But the next move will. I know how to recover. Watch me. You set your systems. You have your tiered habits, your environmental anchors, your identity. That says I live differently. Now you stop waiting for motivation and you stop demanding perfection and you stop letting one moment erase all your effort. So if your success depends on everything going right, it's not success, it's a fantasy. If you want freedom. Build a foundation that works when things go wrong, because life will never stop being chaotic, but you can stop being at the mercy of it.

Speaker 2: 28:46

So if you want to see how I bounce forward and manage to lose 140 pounds and keep it off for over two years, you can get my book on Amazon. It's called the same thing as this podcast, shut Up and Choose. We're an Amazon bestseller. People write me emails, tell me how it changed their life. Again, it's available on Amazon. I also have a, if you're more of a visual learner, I have a video course called the Effortless Weight Loss Academy. It's 23 short videos, about five to seven minutes each. You can watch the whole thing in about two hours, but it really dives into the mental side of weight loss, because I do believe the mental side is the most powerful side. 90% is what happens in your head and 10% is everything else.

Speaker 2: 29:22

You can get that at learnshutupandchoosecom. That's learnshutupandchoosecom, that's learnshutupandchoosecom. So that's all I got for today. All I can say is, if your system can't withstand real life, then you don't have a system. You got a farce, you got a setup, you got bullshit. You have to choose what works for you, which leads me to the way I end every single episode, which is the only thing left for you to do is shut up and choose.

Speaker 1: 29:51

You've been listening to Shut Up and Choose. Jonathan's passion is to share his journey of shedding 130 pounds in less than a year without any of the usual gimmicks no diets, no pills. And we'll let you in on a little secret no fucking gym. And guess what? You can do it too. We hope you enjoyed the show. We had a fucking blast. If you did, make sure to like, rate and review. We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, find Jonathan on Instagram at JonathanWrestlerBocaRaton. Until next time, shut up and choose.