I get lots of questions about why I recommend easing into healthy eating, into changing your lifestyle to a healthier one. Because it appears as if by doing it my way, it’s like peeling the Bandaid off slowly and painfully instead of ripping it off and getting the pain over with quickly.

There’s some truth to that. Doing it my way — taking it slowly and going at a pace that you can handle so that the new ways become “the way” instead of foreign concepts you superimpose on your life — is more painful than leaping into a new lifestyle because it draws out the process a bit. You’re aware that you’re in transition between your old life and the new, healthy (and wonderful) one longer. And transition’s the tough part. I’m the first to admit it.

But here’s the deal:

What most people fail to notice is that plunging in only works for a small percentage of those who try to change their lifestyles.

In the last 2 months, I can’t count the number of my newsletter subscribers, Inner Circle members and private clients who’ve suffered needlessly because they’ve compared themselves to another person’s progress in losing weight, changing their way of eating, getting healthier and happier.

Some of those people you may be comparing yourself to who are faster to progress were just 100% committed mentally and physically from day 1, so they had it “easier” in a way — in that once you’ve made the decision, it is immensely easier to get there more quickly.

Some of them are just wired differently. My husband can jump right into new things and stick with them, whereas I need time to warm up to the idea, put a toe in the water, think through putting that toe in the water, plunge a little deeper, contemplate things some more, and so on until the idea becomes a part of who I am. (This has gotten to be a much faster process for me since changing my lifestyle for the first time to a healthy one — it’s an ability that can improve, but I’ve yet to come up with an active way to speed up this process other than just keep “practicing” changing your life. At some point, your brain finally figures out you’re not going to die :) if you do something bold and new and scary and stops turning on the panic response at the drop of a hat.) But they write entire books on such subjects related to child development, so the point is that there are a lot of us change-resistant folks out there, and much of it is inborn and not some sort of character flaw or bad habit.

I’ve had women compare themselves to me because I lost 53 lbs. in less than a year, so if they lose weight more slowly, they feel like they’re failing (or failing me as their coach). Forget about it! Our bodies work at the pace they work, and we can only change what we’re individually able to change at a time. My own mother loses weight at a completely different pace than I do, so who’s to say that you’re doing something wrong if it takes you longer to drop the weight? And bear in mind that I lost all that weight by initially easing in and then simply regularly tweaking what I eat. I tweak what I eat now! I tweak my workouts now! I learn new things about every important aspect of my lifestyle — health, happiness, motivation, success, business, coaching, you name it — all the time!

Where I’m going with all this

When you look for the simple, fast answer — changing your lifestyle overnight to a healthier one, for example — if you’re ready, it will work for you. But if you’re not, and in my experience most people are not (or else everyone would follow through on those pesky New Year’s resolutions and there wouldn’t be an epidemic weight loss issue in this country), you need a different tactic.

And part of that involves understanding that just as if you were interested in becoming an overnight success about anything (say, in business via a get-rich-quick scheme), when it comes to healthy living, rather than trying to “cheat” your way to the finish line without any effort while hoping to reap all the rewards, the best pathway to success here is one that is laid slowly and methodically in a way that you learn and improve as you go and  you lay a solid, stable foundation for where you are, where you’re going and where you want to be 3 months down the line, 6 months down the line, a year down the line. (I used to be a quick-fix-chaser myself, and I’ve learned that quick fixes simply don’t exist for the big stuff for most people, myself included.)

Certainly at times you may race ahead and notice quantum leaps rather than the baby steps you’ve made previously. But initially, especially right at the start, especially as you’re working through underlying issues that are holding you back from dealing with, say, emotional issues that have you connected to food in an unhealthy way, it isn’t going to be easy.

Every day you struggle mentally with how hard it is, how hard your life it, it’s going to feel harder. Every single day. Every minute. Harder. Don’t for a moment underestimate the power of the mind.

And remarkably, if you just admit that it may be a slow, sometimes tough battle to change your lifestyle, acknowledge that it took a lot to teach you the unhealthy habits so it’s not going to be a cakewalk — no pun intended! — to create the new ones (recognizing that it will be difficult, at least sometimes, rather than wrestling with why it has to be hard for you– see the distinction?), suddenly the whole thing feels easier. It’s like by admitting you might have to work hard at times, you suddenly, well, don’t anymore. Or at least the work doesn’t feel like work and becomes something, if not joyful, then at least enjoyable and therefore not a struggle at all. So everything just flows.

I am not saying it is easy to lose weight if you’ve always struggled with it. Indeed, it was probably the hardest thing I’d ever done to date when I did it myself. And I am not saying that it is a constant, painful battle either.

There are going to be good days and bad ones, and the more you resist the bad ones, the times when you do have to dip into your bucket of willpower, the less willpower you’ll have because you’ll be using up your mental reserves resisting, complaining, feeling frustrated.

What I recommend

If this has resonated with you, I recommend you think about easing into healthy eating from whatever point you’re at now, not expecting yourself to eat perfectly, work out perfectly, be a “perfect person” pursuing a healthy lifestyle immediately if it’s been hurting you when you mess up sometimes. Give yourself permission to make mistakes and get right back on track.

I recommend you stop comparing yourself to other people, period. It’s a soul killer, and you’re always going to find someone that you don’t feel you measure up to, guaranteed. Just compete against yourself to see how well you can do, to see if you can beat last week’s results or eat even more healthfully than you did last month or last year. And give yourself a break in weeks when you’re stressed out and need just to coast until you can concentrate again on your weight and health goals. If you don’t get in an ounce or two of kale, the world won’t come to an end. Just do your best, strive mostly to improve over time, and you’ll do fine.

And my last recommendation is this: Consider that all things worth having in life that are good require effort, time and patience (love, kids, education, careers, you name it). It doesn’t mean you have to wait forever. It doesn’t mean you have to work yourself so hard all the time that you’re exhausted physically or mentally. It just means that creating a new life is not easy. There will be some stress. There will be some frustration. You’ll learn things along the way about yourself that annoy you, that you admire, and everything in between. And if you stay focused on the end result and not the frustration of day-to-day tasks, all the effort will seem, well, more effortless. And you’ll get there sooner and be happier when you arrive!