Every January starts with renewed hope, new meal plans, and gym subscriptions, but somehow ends in frustration, guilt, and the feeling that you are the problem. Don’t believe that feeling. In today’s episode, I’m unpacking why New Year’s resolutions and diets fail at such staggering rates and why it has nothing to do with willpower or discipline. 

I walk you through what’s really happening inside your brain when you try to make big changes all at once, and why “self-sabotage” is actually self-preservation. We talk about why restriction always leads to rebellion, why perfection guarantees burnout, and why weight loss can’t be the goal if you truly want sustainable health.

Plus, I introduce the concept of the 1% shift. This is how you stop starting over, build trust with your body, and finally create a lifestyle that lasts without rules, extremes, or falling off a wagon that never existed in the first place.

Conclusion:

You are not broken. You don’t need more willpower. You need a different approach. When you stop trying to change everything at once and start building trust with your body, consistency becomes possible. Let this be the year you stop starting over and finally build something that lasts.

In This Episode:

00:00 Introduction

02:13 Why New Year's resolutions and diets fail

05:53 Building a healthy relationship with your body

09:51 How the brain responds to change

14:39 The power of small changes and a strong why

17:12 Morning routine for successful behavior change

Mentioned in the Episode:

Carrie’s morning time guide: https://www.carrielupoli.com/morning  

Carrie’s Instagram page:  https://www.instagram.com/carrie_lupoli/

Join the waiting list for Carrie’s upcoming book, From Corset to Crown!

Sign up here: https://www.carrielupoli.com/corsettocrown   

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Other Related Episodes: 

Looking for more tips to optimize your health? Listen to these episodes:

• The Truth About Midlife Health: The Real Reason You Can’t Stay Consistent
• The Missing Piece in Your Health Journey

Transcript: 

[00:00:00] Carrie Lupoli: So every January starts with hope, right? Because it's a new year, new year, new you. But how is it that it always seems to end with frustration, guilt, and this quiet little belief that you are the problem? What if you're not? What if the reason why you can't stay consistent or struggle with consistency has nothing to do with willpower, but everything to do with how your brain is designed to keep you safe?

[00:00:24] Carrie Lupoli: Today. On this episode, I'm going to unpack why those diet resolutions fail, why dieting itself has a 90% failure rate regardless of the time of year you try one. And why? What we call self-sabotage is actually your brain trying to protect you. I'm gonna show you how with a simple 1% shift, you can actually stop starting over, over, and over and over again, and finally build something that lasts.

[00:00:53] Carrie Lupoli: No rules, no extremes, no more falling off because there is no wagon to fall off of. So let's [00:01:00] dig in.

[00:01:03] Carrie Lupoli: So it's this time every year that. I get calls from media always asking me the same things. Can you come on and talk about New Year's resolutions, weight loss goals, and how you can finally stick with them this year? I mean, it's like year after year after year. I know that it's coming, and I, it's just so interesting to me because the truth is nothing magical happens on January 1st.

[00:01:30] Carrie Lupoli: Nothing magical happens when you say, I start the diet on Monday, but yet. It's sort of this trendy thing. It's kind of a marketing campaign by diet industries that makes us feel like, okay, we have to start, the diet starts in the new year, new year, new me. And the reason why media outlets are coming to people like me to do segments on how they can really make them stick is because it's very interesting to people.

[00:01:59] Carrie Lupoli: It is very [00:02:00] popular to say, okay, here are my New Year's resolutions. But we also know that the reason why they're asking me to come on their shows or to be quoted about how do we make it stick, is because people don't make it stick. The statistics are staggering on success when it comes to quote-unquote New Year's resolutions.

[00:02:21] Carrie Lupoli: Gyms are the busiest. It's like it's literally their Super Bowl in January, but by mid-February, the gyms are almost empty. And so what's really going on, and whenever I'm on these shows, it's funny because I don't give the whole like basic info that most other nutritionists give. I really do talk about going.

[00:02:45] Carrie Lupoli: Anti-establishment, if you will. I joke that I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist when it comes to the diet industry, the weight loss industry, our pharmaceutical industry, our healthcare system, which is really our sick care system. The insurance system, like the [00:03:00] whole thing, is stacked against us and every year.

[00:03:03] Carrie Lupoli: We are being marketed to around this new diet, this new trend. I mean, right now we're talking about the fact that the weight loss shot has now come out with a weight loss pill, and this could be the like little scaffolding that people need so they don't have to be in the shot forever. They could then move to the pill, and I'm like, that's not the answer.

[00:03:24] Carrie Lupoli: But we know what the problem is because this is why I'm on these shows. How do you help make it stick? Well, it's like the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So what we end up doing is we think that a new diet, a new weight-loss technique, is going to be the thing that's different, because we don't wanna have the definition of insanity tagged to us all the time.

[00:03:47] Carrie Lupoli: But what we don't understand is every single diet is essentially the same, and it's like a different sheep in wolf's clothing. No, a different wolf in sheep's clothing. I always mess that up. It's the same thing if it revolves [00:04:00] around rules being restrictive, having to be perfect. I mean, think about it. If the thing that you're starting for the new year you could not do while you were on vacation, you could not do while life.

[00:04:15] Carrie Lupoli: Life is crazy, literally, you have to have life. Perfect. Well, because nothing magical happens January 1st. What ends up occurring is at life, shows up, life, lifes, and when has it ever been? Perfect. It hasn't. So we enter into it with false reality and these. Increasingly impossible expectations that life has to be perfect in order for us to be able to do this.

[00:04:42] Carrie Lupoli: I mean, how many people will say, I'm meal prepping on Sundays, but then, like, your kid gets sick, and you can't get to the grocery store on Sundays. Well, the whole thing falls apart then, right? Or you're on a diet, but then your best friend is in town, and she wants to go out for dinner with you. Well, then [00:05:00] you can't do the diet while you go out to dinner with your friend.

[00:05:03] Carrie Lupoli: So now the diet's off. I'm just gonna start again on Monday. This is why 90% of diets fail long-term. And resolutions that are based on diets will follow that same statistic. See, what we need are tools, not rules, and every single one of these resolutions that we try have a set of rules, and at first it feels good.

[00:05:24] Carrie Lupoli: It's like maybe we print out the meal plan. And we're like, we're gonna have this meal plan, and this is, I'm gonna have kale and chicken every day for the rest of my life, and I can do it this time. I really mean it this time. I really want to be able to finish the year feeling like, you know, I, I'm toned up, I'm healthy, it won't work.

[00:05:44] Carrie Lupoli: It. It's just never gonna work because these meal plans, these rules, these scripts are for someone else's life that literally doesn't exist. Restriction will always trigger obsession, and rules will always trigger rebellion. The [00:06:00] all-or-nothing mindset will absolutely guarantee burnout. So we have to do something different in order to actually get something different.

[00:06:08] Carrie Lupoli: You thinking right now that I am like my mindset? Is strong, like, I really know I need this and want this. It very often comes from a place of frustration with our body, or we have just thrown out the baby with the bath water for the entire month of, like, at least half of November and all of December, and now I'm like, oh my gosh, I feel like so gross.

[00:06:33] Carrie Lupoli: I have to get back on. So we enter into what we say is a lifestyle. What we say we want is actually to be able to become healthy. But what that means is we want to actually live a healthy lifestyle, but we do it for the wrong reasons, and we enter into this like idea of a better relationship with food in our bodies by hating our bodies.

[00:06:59] Carrie Lupoli: We [00:07:00] walk into this relationship frustrated with it. So, uh, if you walk into a relationship frustrated with the person, you're not gonna get very far. You've got to come to a common ground. You've got to have trust. Trust comes from positive interactions consistently over time. So instead of being like, I wanna lose weight, we've got to start thinking about this as I wanna build trust with my body.

[00:07:27] Carrie Lupoli: I wanna build a strong relationship with my body so that it can continue to serve me well into my years. Weight loss can't be the goal. Weight loss is a byproduct of a healthy body. If you need to lose weight, but let's be honest, a lot of us really want the feeling of energy, of confidence, of freedom, of peace when it comes to food and our choices.

[00:07:54] Carrie Lupoli: We wanna feel present and focused. We wanna not hurt. What we [00:08:00] really want is what we think the weight loss goal is going to give us. But it never does because, first of all, that number is just like this arbitrary number that we have put so much meaning into. And what if we are like one pound away of it?

[00:08:15] Carrie Lupoli: Like, it's like I gotta reach my goal, but what is that goal? If the goal is health, then the number doesn't really matter. There are so many other measures of health. And truly a number on scale. Not only is it not a strong measure of health, but it is literally arbitrary. It is like, um, why did you pick that number out of there?

[00:08:36] Carrie Lupoli: Well, that's the number I felt the most confident of. Like when? Well, when I was 20. Okay. You're 50 now. And our bodies are supposed to change as we get older. Also. Were you dieting back then? Because I know so many women that are like, I wish I was happy with my body back then. I wish that I realized I wasn't actually overweight then.

[00:08:57] Carrie Lupoli: It's like without a strong relationship, [00:09:00] we're never gonna be happy with what we have. But also the whole concept of weight, it's like that's actually not in our control. It really isn't a weight goal, even a goal around our blood work. Those are outcome goals, and I really want us to focus on behavior goals.

[00:09:18] Carrie Lupoli: What are the behaviors that will eventually get me to an outcome? The behaviors that will get me to a lifestyle that I say I wanna leave. How I lose weight has to be how I maintain it. How I show up today has to be how I show up tomorrow and the next day. I'm not going to just become healthy if I am not acting healthy now.

[00:09:34] Carrie Lupoli: So the first thing is, what does a healthy. Person. Actually, let's even take it another step for further, what is the healthiest version of me? Do say, think, and believe. That's the blueprint, that's the goal. That's the north star, because the other stuff is byproducts. Another thing that we have to remember as we start a new year is simply the word new.

[00:09:58] Carrie Lupoli: New [00:10:00] is like a swear word to your brain. It's like a curse word. It is the N word. Your brain does not like new. Your brain struggles when you introduce something new to it because it likes familiar. I always talk about the difference between self-comfort and self-care. Self-care moves us forward. Self-comfort keeps us stuck, safe, and comfortable.

[00:10:29] Carrie Lupoli: We like comfort. I have the sweater on because it is one of the most comfortable, like self-soothing, warmest sweaters that I own. And as we were talking about the new year, it's like the wintertime. It's like it just felt so comfortable and cozy. We love that. And when we start a new year and decide we're gonna do this new resolution, and we're gonna like go to the gym and, and meal prep and eat kale and chicken and do all these things [00:11:00] because we have a why that is not centered in real meaning.

[00:11:05] Carrie Lupoli: But also because we are throwing everything at our brain that it's not used to all at once. It doesn't look at all of that new stuff as good. Our brain looks at it as unfamiliar, and so if you've ever felt like you, you self-sabotage, you know what to do, you just don't do it. It's actually not around sabotage.

[00:11:26] Carrie Lupoli: This is what's so incredible as a behavior specialist and as a person that really works on changing our behaviors for the long term. Our brain goes to what it's familiar with. And so I always think about it like an elastic band. I always have an elastic band on me, right? Like an elastic band stretches.

[00:11:41] Carrie Lupoli: But it always wants to go back to its original position. That is innately how we are as humans. And so if you are. Stretch is going to the gym on a regular basis. It's eating KA and chicken, which you shouldn't just be eating KA and chicken, right? But if it's like focusing on healthy, clean, [00:12:00] whole unprocessed foods, thinking about like, how do I feel my body correctly?

[00:12:04] Carrie Lupoli: Like how, like all of these pieces. It might feel good at firs,t being stretched, but after a little while, while your brain catches up, and he is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is all brand new stuf,f and we don't like it. New is unfamiliar. Unfamiliar is scary. Scary means we don't want to do it. Think about it.

[00:12:24] Carrie Lupoli: If you go to a party and you're not gonna know anybody and you've never been at this house before, you're gonna probably try to find a whole bunch of reasons not to go because it feels new and scary. So then what do you do? Oh, I don't really feel like going, oh, I gotta get up early in the morning. Uh, and, and you just find ways to talk yourself out of it.

[00:12:41] Carrie Lupoli: We do this subconsciously with our own brains, with our own bodies. Let's say you join a gym and it's 20 minutes away, but it feels like it's okay. I can actually listen to podcasts on my way. But you're now listening to podcasts, you're going to the gym, you're waking up earlier. All of this is new. And when your brain recognizes it, it will start [00:13:00] to say, wait a minute.

[00:13:01] Carrie Lupoli: You know the gym is kind of far. It's a little expensive. You could just work out at home. Or maybe just miss today because it's you. You have so much to do today. That 20 minutes there and back is just a waste of time. You start to unconsciously question the changes that you make. Why? Because it doesn't feel safe.

[00:13:23] Carrie Lupoli: It feels unfamiliar. Unfamiliar feels uncomfortable, and your brain, your body, your whole being is trying to keep you safe. So self-sabotage is not actually self-sabotage, it's self-preservation. And we are trying to protect ourselves. It's like going up to a hot stove and be like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's hot.

[00:13:43] Carrie Lupoli: Okay, we're not gonna touch that stove again. We know it's hot. You're, you're. The body wants to protect you. Just like when we, uh, I'm all about blood sugar stabilization, and when we spike our blood sugar, our body releases all sorts [00:14:00] of the glucose that can't store in the two little places it needs to store it in, has to store it somewhere else.

[00:14:05] Carrie Lupoli: So it actually protects us by creating fat cells and storing that in fat cells. It, it actually starts to, um. Do things to try to protect us, but actually, it hurts us in the long run. And so that's like self-sabotage. It's self-preservation. It's like these big dramatic changes trigger resistance, not motivation.

[00:14:27] Carrie Lupoli: The brain's job is safety. It is not health. It doesn't recognize that you're on a planet. It doesn't know that it's a new year, new you. It just sees anything new as a threat. So how do we get past that? Well, that's where the 1% solution really comes in, having a change that actually sticks for reasons that actually matter.

[00:14:53] Carrie Lupoli: So we, we have to get into a strong why. This can't be about a number on a scale that we can't control. This has to be [00:15:00] about something deeper. What is a healthiest version of you? Do say, think, and believe. And why is that important? Why does it matter? Because let's face it, when it's just a weight loss goal, and it's Monday night in your home, and you're stressed, and there's chocolate cake on the counter, when your goal is weight loss, and you say, screw it, I'm not gonna lose 40 pounds by tomorrow.

[00:15:18] Carrie Lupoli: I'm just gonna have the cake. That's what ends up happening. But if you actually say, I wanna build trust with my body, I wanna look at my body like I look at any other relationship, how do I show up in relationships to be able to convince that person that I'm a trustworthy person? I show up consistently over time.

[00:15:39] Carrie Lupoli: And if that is more of your goal of your why, then you're going to show up for yourself in a different way. But now. Instead of doing everything at once, which your brain is gonna just react to negatively, it doesn't. It makes sense why nothing has stuck before. Why diets will never work. First of all, our bodies were not meant to be [00:16:00] deprived, but also like we try to do it all at once.

[00:16:03] Carrie Lupoli: We're all or nothing. We have this perfectionist mindset. The brain will accept small, repeatable change. 1% just doing one thing differently. Tomorrow we'll feel safe enough to repeat over and over and over again. And then you almost are tricking your brain into consistency. That consistency is built through trust, not pressure.

[00:16:24] Carrie Lupoli: And small changes compound faster than people expect. We just think we have to throw the whole kitchen sink at it when all in all, reality, we just need to have a little, the faucet on with a little drip over time. BJ Fogg wrote the book Tiny Habits, and he builds on this principle so strategically in his book.

[00:16:47] Carrie Lupoli: And the question is often, well, once you kind of get yourself into like one habit, how do you know it's time to uplevel the human being wants to continuously improve. Continuous improvement is part of who we [00:17:00] are, but when it gets to be too much, too fast, we pull back. So it's about dancing, this little dance with human psychology, human behavior that gives us what we say we want.

[00:17:12] Carrie Lupoli: Now I will also say that in order to be able to recognize how to do a 1%, how to stay focused on what really matters with what you want and why you want it, we have to be self-aware, and that self-awareness can come when we actually have a staff meeting with ourselves every day. And that's why morning time to me is the most important time.

[00:17:31] Carrie Lupoli: It gives us a chance to reset and realign every day to have a literal staff meeting with yourself to be able to talk through. Who you are, what you want, why you want it. Get your intentionality, really strong. Review the day before. What went well, what didn't? No guilt, just data. How are we gonna show up differently today and then meet again tomorrow, and then review.

[00:17:54] Carrie Lupoli: You can never fall that far off the track. If you know that you are showing [00:18:00] up every single day to have a staff meeting with yourself. You are reflecting, you are revising, and you are showing up. Four reasons that actually matter. So do you see, I didn't say I want you to go grocery shopping and buy apples and oranges and eat more lean protein.

[00:18:18] Carrie Lupoli: Yes, there is a strategy around how to fuel your body correctly, but that won't matter if you don't actually have a strong Why understand that self-sabotage is really self-preservation, and it's caused because we have these big dramatic changes that trigger resistance. And in order to get past that is really recognizing that consistency over time builds trust, and we need to do it at 1% increments.

[00:18:44] Carrie Lupoli: In order to reflect on all of this, we need to get ourselves up just 15 minutes earlier and have a meaningful morning time. This is why I go live on Instagram every morning to learn more about morning time and the structure that I suggest people go in with it. You can actually, [00:19:00] we'll put a link here, for I have a whole morning time guide, but also make sure you go follow me on Instagram.

[00:19:05] Carrie Lupoli: I'm at Carrie Napoli, and that will give you the structure every single day with me. You can always watch it on repeat, but I am dripping 1% empowered mindsets every day, so that over time it adds up big. In fact, I call it a hundred days of 1% because 1% a day for a hundred days is a hundred percent, but then.

[00:19:27] Carrie Lupoli: If we don't stick with it, just like any other relationship, we have to continue to cultivate it. We show up again and again and again and again. So this is a very different way. You know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. What I am talking about here is actually the opposite of what you've probably been doing up until now.

[00:19:48] Carrie Lupoli: So let's get you into a space that really gives you the opportunity to do what you say you want to do to get what you say you want to get, [00:20:00] and to do it in a way. That likely disrupts everything that you've been taught from the diet industry, the weight loss industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the healthcare industry, the insurance, like all of it.

[00:20:12] Carrie Lupoli: They're telling you to go find the quick fix, do this, take the drug that's not health. Let's get you to understanding what is the healthiest version of you. Do say, I think and believe, and let's get a plan around that. Happy New Year.