You've tried so many diets, you've lost count.
You stocked the fridge with nothing but healthy snacks (read: cucumber).
Downloaded a calorie tracker.
Meal-prepped on a Sunday like a woman with a plan.
And for two, maybe three weeks — it worked. You were in the flow. You finally felt in control of what you were eating.
Then something happened. A hectic week at work. A birthday. A few nights of rubbish sleep.
It threw you off.
You couldn't prep your meals, so you grabbed a quick sandwich from a café. Well, there's no point tracking the rest of the day now, is there…
A colleague brought cake into the office. You had a slice. Then a biscuit with your afternoon coffee. Then a bit of chocolate. It's basically a cheat day at this point anyway…
And just like that, you're back to square one. Frustrated. A bit guilty. Asking yourself: why can't I just do this? What am I doing wrong?
If any of this sounds familiar, this one's for you. Because I'm going to tell you something that every woman who has ever been on a diet needs to hear. Something the diet industry works very hard to keep from you:
There is nothing wrong with you.
The diet failed. Not you.
And there are some very specific reasons why diets almost always fail. Once you understand them, the way you think about all of this will change for good.
The Number One Reason Diets Don't Work
Most diets and meal plans are built around short-term results. And yes, it would be brilliant if you could build your dream body in eight weeks — but what happens after those eight weeks?
Have you actually learnt which foods give you sustained energy?
Do you know how to put together a balanced meal when you're out and about, tired, or short on time?
Usually not.
Most diets focus entirely on what you are and aren't allowed to eat.
They pay absolutely no attention to what happens in your brain when you're trying to learn new eating behaviour. And that's exactly where the problem lies.
When you start a diet, you're often asked to overhaul your entire way of eating overnight. New foods, a different eating rhythm, new ways of cooking. All at once.
That takes an enormous amount of mental energy. You have to constantly override your old, ingrained habits, keep making good decisions, and keep convincing yourself that this diet will eventually deliver results. Hopefully.
But the results don't come straight away. Not after two weeks either.
You might feel slightly better — but is it really worth it? Often, your old behaviours are so deeply rooted that it starts to feel like the diet isn't going to give you anything back.
That little voice in your head gets louder and louder. And the moment an opportunity arises to slip back into your old ways, you take it.
You're back in your comfort zone.
Diets that change your entire eating pattern and assume you'll keep making good decisions, even when you're tired or stressed, are set up to fail.
What they're really asking you to do is fight yourself.
Your old eating habits exist for a reason. They serve a function.
If you've always reached for snacks when you're stressed, and now you're supposed to eat carrots instead... that doesn't give you the same thing. Your brain notices immediately.
That voice in your head starts shouting: Where's my dopamine hit? I want to feel better. I need something sweet. You can ignore it once. Maybe even for a whole week. But eventually, you'll give in.
It makes complete sense that it feels so hard to stick to a strict diet, doesn't it?
Real, lasting change in your eating habits, and therefore your weight, works like this:
Making new eating behaviour attractive and easy → Repeat it → Habit formation → Identity
How do you actually apply this in daily life? Here's how, in five clear steps.
Step 1: Don't Change Too Much at Once
Following a diet is fine, as long as you keep it close to your current lifestyle. Start with an audit of your existing eating habits: track what you eat for three days. Write down everything, honestly, and build as realistic a picture as possible of what you actually eat day-to-day. If you start making different choices during the audit, you'll skew the data and get a false read on your baseline.
Once you have a clear picture, decide what you want to change first. A few examples:
- More structure around eating: keep the same foods, but introduce three to five fixed eating moments throughout the day.
- Eating less (or more) of something specific: cutting back on fizzy drinks, coffee, or alcohol, for instance, or adding more vegetables or fruit. Start small. Never liked veggies? Start with one portion a day. Used to drink six coffees? Cut back to four.
- More fibre or more water
- Adding vegetables to your lunch
- Larger, more varied meals: so you're less peckish between them and can avoid that mid-afternoon slump
Step 2: Make It Attractive and Easy
As I mentioned, all our eating behaviours serve a function. Take some time to explore what yours actually are. If you notice that you want to eat whenever you're doing something boring — but when you're genuinely engaged and feeling good, you're not actually hungry (no rumbling stomach, no low energy, no irritability) — then it's likely you're using snacking to make the boredom more bearable. Your brain wants a dopamine hit and it's looking for it in food.
Once you've mapped those associations, you can start replacing the old behaviour with something new. Something that still feels rewarding and is easy to do.
If it's not attractive, the pull towards the old behaviour will be stronger than your intention to do the new one. Our brains always look for the path of least resistance.
If it's not easy, your brain will also push you back towards what it knows. The new behaviour costs too much energy. And your brain doesn't want that!
A practical example: instead of reaching for a whole bag of crisps when you're doing something dull, you put a small handful on a plate alongside some carrot sticks and hummus. You're still meeting the need (you're still getting that little treat) but you're eating far fewer crisps than you would have otherwise. Make it easy by keeping the carrots and hummus in the fridge. From there, you can gradually reduce the crisps and work towards just having the veg when you need something to get you through a tedious task.
Step 3: Set Up Your Environment to Work for You
Your behaviour is shaped by two things: who you are as a person (the habits you've built over the years) and the environment you're in. Your surroundings have an enormous influence on the choices you make, especially around food. It could be the people around you and what they eat, what's sitting in your cupboard, what's available at work, the type of grocery stores you visit, and many more.
So make the healthier choice the easier choice. Buy healthier snacks and put them where you can actually see them.
You can also create visible cues around your home: little notes with your goal written on them, dotted around in the places where you need a nudge most. It sounds simple, but it's proven to work.
Step 4: Plan for the Hard Days with a Minimum Version of Your Plan
I call this my non-negotiable: the absolute minimum I can realistically stick to on days that go nothing like I planned. Having this worked out in advance stops all-or-nothing thinking from kicking in when your plans change last-minute, or when you're just not feeling yourself; stressed, sleep-deprived, or both at once.
To work out your non-negotiable, look at your goal alongside your actual weekly schedule. Then ask yourself: what is a genuinely realistic version of my goal for a week like this?
A few examples:
Example 1: Slammed at work. In this situation, I'd look at what my main goal is. Let's say it's fat loss. I'd make food my priority that week and take the pressure off my training. When it comes to fat loss, nutrition is the most important lever: workouts can take a back seat for now. I'd look critically at how I'm spending my time and figure out if there's a window — even a small one — to prepare balanced meals and do a food shop. Could I scroll a little less in the evenings? Could I stop at the supermarket on the way home rather than making a separate trip?
Example 2: A birthday, social event, or party. Here, I'd start by setting expectations: what do I actually want from this occasion, with my goal in mind? What feels right for me, as the person I want to be? Personally, even when I'm in a fat-loss phase, I give myself a slice of birthday cake or some nibbles at a party. I just make sure I've had a proper, filling meal beforehand so I don't arrive starving. Because when your blood sugar is low, portion control goes completely out the window. I eat the things I genuinely love, rather than mindlessly grazing on everything in front of me. I mix less-healthy snacks with better ones: veg with hummus, some fruit. And I consider the bigger picture: maybe I've had a slightly lighter lunch earlier in the day to leave a bit of room. Afterwards, I go straight back to my normal routine. I do not feel guilty or punish myself for snacking, because it was very intentional. It fits into a healthy lifestyle.
Example 3: Stress or the days around your period. These are exactly the days when letting go of all-or-nothing thinking matters most. What's your goal, and how can you work towards it while being a bit gentler with yourself? One way that works well is allowing slightly more comfort food on days like these. If you're really craving something sweet, make yourself a proper, satisfying snack rather than half a chocolate bar. Ask yourself: which of these is actually more filling?
- Half a bar of chocolate
- A piece of chocolate with Greek yoghurt (I usually get the 5% fat), blueberries, almonds, and a sprinkle of cinnamon
After the half-bar of chocolate, you'll probably just want more. You can't stop thinking about it, and if it's sitting in the cupboard, it's going to get finished. Compare that to the second option: you're still getting the chocolate, but you're also getting healthy fats, fibre, vitamins, and protein. Your blood sugar doesn't spike as sharply, so you're not immediately craving something sweet again. And you've spent a bit more time eating it, which means your brain gets the signal: we've been eating for a while now, we're satisfied.
Step 5: Keep the Bigger Picture in Sight
Working towards a goal takes time, and it comes with ups and downs. Especially when a goal is food-related, whether that's fat loss or building muscle. There are so many factors involved in your progress: your environment, your mood, how hard you're being on yourself, what you're eating, your work, your training, your history with diets, your overall health... And so on.
Most diets completely ignore all of this. They just tell you what you can and can't eat. And that, as you now know, is exactly why they don't work.
When you feel overwhelmed, or feel like your progress isn't happening fast enough, the most useful thing you can do is zoom out. Your weight fluctuates from day to day.
Your body image does too, and it's heavily influenced by the mood you're in on any given day. Try not to fixate on the number on the scales.
As long as you keep pulling the right levers: small changes, making new behaviour attractive and easy, repeating it until it becomes a habit, and eventually an identity, you'll get there.
You don't need a fancy diet. Anyone can lose weight fast by white-knuckling an extreme restrictive diet plan, but the weight almost always comes back, and then some.
Focus on the long term. Make small changes. That's how you build a life where you feel good in your body and in control of your choices around food, for good.
And yes, that absolutely includes letting yourself enjoy the things you genuinely love. A slice of birthday cake, a good cheese toastie. That's not "off track", but having a genuinely healthy lifestyle.
If this is the kind of approach you've been looking for: one that actually fits around your real life, without banning entire food groups or pretending you don't have a job and a social life, then Health Code: The Complete Collection might be exactly what you need next. It covers all of this in much more depth: habits formation, mindset changes, nutrition, and the practical tools to make it stick.
You can get the full bundle, including the Nutrition Guide, Workout Guide, and Lifestyle Planner, for £37 as an e-book or £47 in paperback. Get your copy here →