The Defeated Quitter

I recall watching a documentary on a study done on weight loss and dieting (it was 60 Minutes or 20/20, can't recall). Researchers wanted to determine the chief factor of why some people succeed at dieting while others fail. They studied hundreds of dieters who were all following numerous different diets.

They determined that it was not the type of diet these individuals were following, since there are umpteen million diet plans out there, each one proclaiming to be more successful than the next. The determining factor in success was so fundamentally simple as to be laughable.

Those who succeeded did so because they kept going. They simply never quit. That's it. 

No other factor was identified as essential to success. 

There was no special diet, no metabolic equation, no type of food restriction or diet plan (low carb, no carb, high carb, paleo, Mediterranean, grape fruit, nuts and berries, vegan, etc, etc, etc) that insured results. Those who succeeded achieved their goals simply because they never gave up. They kept at it, sometimes years, until the desired goal was attained and, by then, the lifestyle had become hard-wired into the grey matter insuring it would endure and success could be maintained and magnified into further success that generated an ongoing momentum resulting in success in other areas of their lives besides dieting.

Clearly, this applies to any goal you seek to achieve or any habit you seek to terminate. Success is contingent upon your relentless fortitude to get up and KEEP GOING after the fall and absolutely no factor or ingredient matters as much as the demand NOT to quit.

You can say that developing and engaging a plan for change (recovery plan) is crucial and I would agree. However, many people develop extensive plans for change and quit entirely on the first slip up (relapse). They experience mind-numbing discouragement magnified by their impatience for results. Their relapses result in surrender and defeat and not in the desire to plug up the holes in their recovery plan and press onward

I worked with an individual whose attempt to achieve her desired weight and body type was so maladaptive and chaotic that frequent failures (relapses) resulted in short-term hospitalizations for suicidal thoughts. Every relapse resulted in her spiraling into week long binge episodes with rampant self-loathing hatred, fueling more binges, which then demanded she seek to finally abstain from it all, only to relapse and binge once again. This went on for years, seriously impeding her quality of life, her relationships and her mental health.

When she met with me I explained the study on diets and how relapse was a chief factor in every success story. I explained how she needed to incorporate relapse as crucial to her recovery and, rather than to quit (and binge), use it to engage momentum by allowing relapses to be brief episodes that fuel moving forward rather than fuel giving up.

She began accepting her relapses and that made all the difference to her capacity for change.

When her vigilance and motivation were low, she had the two slices of pizza, but rather than persecute herself for weeks after (binge), she was able to re-engage her recovery program and get back on track the very next day, as opposed to binging for days after. She stepped up her gym routine and slowly, after weeks began to see positive results.

Over a few weeks, her demeanor changed from one of the defeated quitter, to one of accepting that relapse is a part of recovery. Soon her relapses became more and more spaced out until eventually relapses lost their status and became rewards. She would go weeks without a relapse and then one day reward herself with a fatty food, only to resume her recovery program the next day (this may work with food, but is clearly not advisable with other addictions that require other forms of reward).

Success incorporates episodes of failure. By accepting these episodes as inevitable, over time, they will become brief, until eventually success is attained, all relapses cease, and a new goal is engaged because the motivation sparks further momentum to achieving other goals.

Every recovery plan must accept and plan for relapses and that planning should seek to make them brief episodes useful in reinforcing the inevitability of ultimate success and not reasons of ultimate defeat.