How To Be More Disciplined With Losing Fat

The most disciplined people in the world don't rely on willpower or motivation. They've hacked their own mind so discipline feels automatic and it almost gives them an unfair advantage. In this video, I'm going to give you 10 strategies I've used to help over 25,000 clients and myself go from inconsistent and frustrated to basically unstoppable and never falling off track. And these will be exact tactics to make discipline feel effortless and even addictive. And by the end of the video, you'll know how to make discipline your default too. So let's dive into the first hack. Hack number 1, stop relying on motivation. You have to first understand discipline isn't about feeling motivated. It's about making motivation irrelevant. Most people think the reason they can't stay disciplined is because they're not motivated enough. So they wait for the perfect day, the perfect mood, the perfect burst of inspiration. But here's the truth. Motivation is a feeling. And just like any other feeling, it comes and it goes. You're not happy all the time and you're not sad all the time. You're not frustrated all the time and you're not excited all the time. You're not gonna be motivated all the time either. And this is why you think your discipline keeps collapsing the moment you don't feel like it or don't want to do something. You've probably heard this before, but it's worth saying again: discipline is like brushing your teeth. You don't wake up every day and say, am I motivated to brush my teeth today? You just do it, or I hope to God you just do it, because it's already decided that's what you do no matter how you feel. And that's what real discipline looks like. It's automatic. And here's some tactics to make motivation irrelevant and make discipline automatic. Number 1: decide in advance. Pick 1 to 2 non-negotiables you will stick to every day no matter what. And I would make these non-negotiables something you know you can stick with no matter how unmotivated you are. Number 2, attach it to a trigger. For example, you change into your gym clothes after you have your morning coffee, or you take your supplements right after you drink a protein shake. This trigger removes the thinking and allows you to make discipline more automatic. And number 3, Keep the streak alive. Track how many days in a row you have consistently stuck with those non-negotiables because your brain will see that and it will want to keep going. And if you keep doing something for long enough, eventually that's when it just becomes a habit in who you are and what you do. And trust me, I've coached over 25,000 clients through this exact shift, and it's the difference between people who transform in people who consistently quit. And by the way, if you need a free 25-day fat loss program to kickstart your journey, click the link in the description of this video. Now you might be thinking, okay, I'll just brute force my way through discipline every single day. But here's the thing, willpower and white-knuckling your way through is incredibly overrated. If you're relying on willpower, you're setting yourself up to fail. Which brings me to hack number 2. Hack number 2, set up your environment to win by default. Your environment beats willpower every single time, so set it up to make discipline more automatic. Most people keep themselves surrounded by temptation and distraction and then wonder why they keep falling off track. They stock their pantry with junk food, they change into their PJs and watch Netflix before they've gotten their workout done, or they're on their phone late at night, which causes them to not wake up the next morning to go work out. You can't expect to win if you're playing on hard mode. Imagine trying to swim upstream against a current. That would probably be exhausting, right? Now imagine if you just turn around and let the current carry you forward. That's what happens when you decide to set up your environment to work with your goals and support your goals. It carries you forward without the extra effort to try to use all of your willpower to stay on track. Here's a few ways you can set up your environment to make discipline feel so easy. Number 1, remove friction from good habits. If you want to work out early in the morning, lay out your clothes the night before. If you want to eat more clean and healthy, make sure you grocery shop for that and potentially meal prep a day or 2 ahead of time to make it so you can just open the fridge, grab your meal prep, heat it up, and eat it versus either not having the food or having to create everything from scratch. And number 2, add friction to the bad habits. If you're tempted by junk food or specific trigger foods, don't keep them in the house. If you waste time on social media, set up blockers on your phone that limit how long you can use it. And number 3, surround yourself with cues for your goals. Set up your water bottle on your desk right next to you when you're working so you can see it. Make the lock screen on your phone your progress pictures or your why to why you want to lose weight and get in shape. Keeping your goals visible will make discipline so much more easier. These are things I've used with thousands of our online coaching clients, and it works every single time. For example, one of our clients, Felicia, made one massive change, but it's simple. She just made her grocery shopping order different than what she was doing before. She no longer bought the trigger foods. She mapped out what she wanted to eat each week, and it made so much of a simpler process to stay on track than having to try to use willpower every night to not eat the chips or cookies. And that's how powerful your environment is. It almost decides for you. So stop trying to swim upstream every day and instead let your environment carry you forward and make it easier. Now, with your environment set up, you're probably going to feel unstoppable. But there's another trap most people fall into with their discipline. They don't give themselves an end date. So every day feels like a grind that's never going to end. And that's why most people quit. Which brings me to hack number 3. Hack number 3, set a specific timeline to create urgency and momentum. Discipline dies when the finish line seems invisible. So give yourself a deadline to create urgency and make progress feel real. Most people say, I just want to eat clean and work out more, but for how long? With no timeline, every day feels the same, and it's easy to think, eh, who cares, it's one skipped day, I have forever. Or they think, oh my god, I have to do this for I don't even know how long. This is so overwhelming. I do not want to keep doing this. And both those reasons causes people to go off track and not have discipline. It's like driving without a destination. You just keep going until eventually you run out of gas. But when you plug a destination into the GPS, you can say, okay, I got 30 more minutes, I can make it. So here's how to set a timeline that can supercharge your discipline. Number 1, pick a short-term sprint. Commit to a timeline that feels doable but also meaningful. You're not going to see progress in a day or two. But for example, a lot of our clients, we will set up 4-week, 6-week, 8-week challenges for them where it's a long enough period of time to make progress. And it's still a bit of a challenge, but it's not 12 months from now that would then demotivate them and not cause them to stay on track. Number 2, put it on the calendar. Literally grab a calendar and circle the end date. And every day that goes by, you can check off whether you hit your goals and hit your calories and hit your workouts that day, or if you didn't. And then in that 4-week, 6-week, 8-week span, you can see how many days are you hitting versus not hitting your goals. And this in and of itself will build discipline. And the third part, review and assess. When the timeline ends, assess your progress and then set the next one and see what you might have to change and see what, what you might keep the same, because you might not be able to lose all 40 pounds in 4 weeks. But it's not about losing 40 pounds in 4 weeks or 6 weeks. It's just about keeping yourself going and keeping yourself disciplined. For example, one of our clients, Nick, joined one of our 8-week coaching challenges, and you can see the amount of progress he made. And it's because during that 8 weeks, he was so locked in, he was so mentally disciplined. He knew there was a start date and an end date, which allowed him to work hard. He is still a client of ours to this day, and he's still making great progress, but that initial 8-week period was massive. So stop telling yourself this is forever and give yourself a finish line to chase. That's how you stay disciplined without burning out and stack wins over wins that eventually will become habits. So now that you've got a finish line to aim for and you're stacking up wins fast, here's the mistake I see people make. People get so focused on the grind, they forget to celebrate their progress in a way that doesn't take them off track. And that's what we'll talk about in the next hack. Hack number 4: Set up mini celebrations that reinforce your goals. What gets rewarded gets repeated. So you need to celebrate your progress in ways that actually fuel your discipline instead of destroying it. Most people either don't reward themselves at all, or they pick a reward that wipes out their progress. I hit my workouts this week, so I'll just binge all weekend. That's like filling up your gas tank, but then poking holes in it to celebrate. We had a client one time named Sarah who was incredible at sticking with her plan, hitting her calories, getting her workouts in. But every time she'd hit a big milestone like 10, 15, 20 pounds down, she always seemed to undo some of that progress by celebrating in the wrong way. She'd say things like, Eric, I worked really hard, I deserve this. But every time she undid some of her progress, she felt bad about it and like she was starting over. So we sat down and came up with a mini celebration list, and these were simple things like if she was consistent for 4 weeks, she would buy a whole brand new gym outfit. If she was consistent for 6 weeks, She would treat herself to a spa day. Whatever the celebration was, it was about reinforcing the positive behavior, which is important because that will make you want to keep going, but it didn't take away from her progress. And so how you can make sure to do this in the right way is match your reward to your goal. If you're working on your health, reward yourself for things that support that, like new clothes if you want to fit into your clothes better, self-care like a massage, or even just a day where you chill and relax, or some sort of trip or experience. Number 2, you have to celebrate milestones along the way, not just the end goal. Because if your end goal is to lose 50 pounds and the only time you can celebrate is when you lose that 50 pounds, that could take you 8 months, 12 months, 15 months, and it's very hard for most people to stick with something over the long run if if you only celebrate 12 months from now. And number 3, plan the rewards ahead of time. Just like when we said if you have an end date, you give yourself a timeline, you have something to work towards. Combined with that timeline, pair that up with some sort of reward so you know what you're working towards. Now, celebrating your wins in the right way is a game changer, but this one mindset mistake can quietly ruin all of your progress, and it's way more common than you think. If you've ever said, I just can't stay disciplined because of insert excuse here, you're falling into the trap of hack number 5. Hack number 5: stop taking the victim mentality. The fastest way to kill your discipline is by believing you don't have control, because as long as it's somebody else's or something else's fault, you'll never take responsibility for the solution. We all know the phrases, I'm just too busy, I've got bad genetics, work is stressful right now, I don't have the time. And here's the harsh truth: those might feel true, and it might make you feel better in the moment, but they're the reason that is keeping you stuck. When you blame external things for why you can't stay disciplined, you give away your power. And nothing destroys discipline faster than feeling powerless. One of our clients, Lewis, came to us, and he's a very busy guy. He owns a couple different businesses, he takes care of his family, and initially he was using the excuses of he didn't have time, he was under too much stress, he didn't have time to carve out for meal prep or eating healthier cooking. But eventually we helped him flip the script of instead of looking for excuses why he can't, he started looking for reasons Why he can. Because if you look for excuses to why you can't, you're always gonna find those. On the flip side, if you look for reasons why you can, you're also going to find those. Where you put your mental energy and effort, where you look, that's what's gonna come back to you. And ever since we started doing that, he's been able to find time here and there to get his meal prep in or get his walks or get his workouts. And as you saw, He's seen incredible progress. So how to shift out of the victim mentality? Number 1, you have to replace I can't because with how can I despite. Like we said, stop looking for reasons why you can't and start finding reasons why you can. Number 2, you have to own your decisions. No more I don't have time. Be honest, you're choosing not to make the time and you can choose differently. And number 3, celebrate those small wins to build confidence. Every time you prove to yourself you can, the victim mentality gets quieter. You can't control everything that happens to you, but you can control your response and your actions. The day you stop blaming and the day you start owning is the day discipline actually sticks, and it becomes so much easier. So now, once you ditch the victim mentality and take full ownership, There's one more thing quietly sabotaging your discipline that almost nobody notices, and it's actually not about you. It's about who you're letting influence you every single day. Hack number 6: surround yourself with people on the same path. You can't expect to stay disciplined if you're surrounded by people who don't care about their goals, because like we said, discipline isn't just about willpower, it's about your environment. And your environment includes the people around you. Think about it. You're trying to hit your calories, but your friends keep inviting you for alcohol out and going out for fast food. You're committing to early morning workouts, but your partner stays up watching Netflix until 2 AM. You're trying to stay positive and focused, but everybody around you is complaining, making excuses, taking the victim mentality. You don't rise to the level of your goals, you sink to the level of the people around you. One of our clients, Kathy, really struggled with this. She would do great all week, but then the weekend rolled around, and because her friends had different goals than what Kathy did, it was hard sometimes for her to stay on track. Now, I'm not saying you have to get rid of all of your friends or just hang out and be a loner by yourself. But what I am saying is maybe you hang out with some of these people less, or when you hang out with them, make it centered around health and fitness and activity— hiking, biking— not just centered around eating fast food, drinking alcohol, and staying out late. That's exactly what Kathy did and was one of the reasons why she was able to make such great progress in our online coaching. So how to align your circle with your goals? Number one, you have to audit your circle. You've probably heard you are the sum of the 5 people around you. Think about the 5 people you spend the most time with, you interact with the most, talk to the most. Are those people helping you reach your goals or making it harder? Number 2, you're gonna have to have some hard conversations and let the people around you know the goals that you're working towards and that you're not going to let them throw you off track. You're gonna do what you need to do to reach those goals, and if they don't like it, that's on them, not on you. But it is on you to have the conversation. And number 3, actively seek out a supportive environment— friends, family, coworker, hiring a coach. One of the main reasons our online coaching clients tell us that their journey becomes easier when they hire us is because we're talking to them multiple times throughout the week, We're supporting them on their goals, we're helping them make adjustments to their plan, and it makes the journey so much easier. So if you are interested in working with an expert coach on my team, click the link in the description of this video so we can get to learn a bit more about you and your goals and see if our program could be a good fit to help you out. Now, once you surround yourself with the right people, there's one sneaky thing that can wreck all of your discipline. Even if your plan is perfect, and even if your circle is strong, and that's letting your emotions take the wheel. Hack number 7: stop letting your emotions drive the car. Your emotions are allowed to sit in the passenger seat, but they cannot drive the car. Discipline means showing up on the days even when you don't feel like it. And this is where so many people get stuck, if I'm being honest. You feel tired, so you skip the workout. You feel stressed, So you overeat. You feel unmotivated, so you procrastinate. If you're waiting for your feelings to align before you take action, you're gonna be waiting forever. We have a client named Joe who struggled with this. He thought he had to always be motivated, and if something came up in his day that caused him to be upset or stressed or anxious, he would let that emotion then dictate dictate his actions, which led to overeating, which led to skipping workouts, skipping walks. And he always would start and stop and start and stop. But recently, over one of our 8-week challenges that he joined, he was able to control his emotions. He has emotions just like you have emotions. We all have emotions. We're not robots. But the emotions sit in the passenger seat. You can acknowledge them, but you do not let them affect your actions that you take on a daily basis. And through Joe really working at this, he lost over 20 pounds in those 8 weeks and didn't overeat once. So here's how to keep emotions in their place. Number 1, stop negotiating with yourself. Decide ahead of time what you're going to do and stick with it no matter how you feel. Think about this like if you were signing a contract to a house that you bought. If you sign the contract, you turned it in. You can't go back a month later and say, oh no, I don't want to pay my mortgage anymore. You've already signed the contract. It's a done deal. You can't negotiate with yourself. Number 2, have a fallback plan. So on the days when you don't feel like it, this is why it's important to have those daily non- non-negotiables that we talked about earlier, because if you can fall back to those no matter what, then you will build that discipline and stay on track. And number 3, separate your feelings from actions. And you can say out loud, I don't feel like going to the gym today, I'm too tired, I don't feel like cooking a healthy dinner. That can be true, but you can still go to the gym and you can still cook a healthy dinner. Because just because you feel a certain way doesn't mean you have to act a certain way. Your emotions are a part of the journey. You're not gonna not have them. But if you let them drive the car, don't be surprised when you crash. And once you stop letting your emotions drive the car, there's one more lever you can pull that will almost guarantee you'll follow through even when you want to quit. Because here's the truth: the more you've got at stake, the more disciplined you'll become. Hack number 8: put more skin in the game. Discipline skyrockets when you have something or someone counting on you. When it costs you more to quit, you stop giving yourself that option. Most people set goals that are quite frankly easy to back out of. I'll try my best, I'll eat healthy when I go out to eat. But if you feel like it and you skip, there's no real consequences. There's no accountability and no urgency. And to no surprise, this is why most people quit when they get put into a difficult situation. One of our clients, Cindy, struggled with committing to her goals. Every Monday she'd restart her diet and then come Friday rolls around, she was off track for the weekend. And truthfully, that's why she ended up joining our online coaching program. Because it made her put more skin in the game. She knew she was gonna have somebody checking in on her every single week. If she didn't get her workouts, if she didn't stick to her calories, one of our coaches that she was working with was gonna call her out on it. And that's what she needed to get herself in the right direction. Now, if you want to sign up for online coaching, there's gonna be a link in the description of the video. You can certainly apply for our coaching, but even if you don't do that, you have to find a way to put more skin in the game. Maybe it's if you don't go get your workout this week, you can't go out to eat on the weekends. If you don't get your daily steps, you can't go buy yourself the new clothes. Put some sort of skin in the game to make it harder to not do the things you know you need to do. And some other tactics on this would be number one, make it public. Put it out there, whether it's with a coach or your family or your friends or your social media following, because when it's public, you will be on the burner more. Number 2, put up a bet. If you do stick with it, you're gonna win this. If you don't stick with it, you're gonna have to give up this. And number 3, like I mentioned, hire a coach, join a group, start some sort of accountability challenge. Do something so that it's not just yourself, because when it's just yourself, it's so much easier to back out of it. So once you've gotten some accountability and real skin in the game, there's still one more trap you need to avoid. Because even with the best intentions, life has a way of getting in the way. And if you don't see this coming, you'll use it as one of your excuses. Hack number 9, win the day before life gets in the way. The later in the day that you wait to do the things you said you would do, The more excuses life can hand you. Discipline sometimes isn't about finding time, it's about making the time the first priority. Every day starts with good intentions. I'll work out after work, I'll prep the dinner later tonight. But then meetings run long, your kid gets sick and you got to pick them up, you get tired, you don't feel like it, and then it's, well, I'll just do it tomorrow. Tomorrow turns into next week, and next week turns into never. One of our clients, Zach, used to have a lot of trouble getting his workouts in, especially later in the day after work, because there was just more things that came up. He's a dad, he works full-time. So what did he start doing? Waking up earlier in the morning and getting his workout in before he even went to work, because that way there was nothing else during the day that could get in the way of him getting his workout in. And so some tactics on this are: number 1, schedule your non- non-negotiables first, whether it's your workout, your steps, your meal prep. It doesn't have to be all in the morning, but at the very least, get a head start on it. Number 2, prep the night before. This way, when you wake up, it makes it easier to get into the flow of things. And number 3, do the hardest things first, because you in the morning, when you're fresh and you're woken up and it's the first thing that happens, versus later in the day when you're exhausted, you're usually not gonna do it later in the day when you're exhausted. And once you've mastered owning the most important things first, there's one more trap. And honestly, if you're watching this video, you're already falling into this trap. Hack number 10: stop consuming, start doing. You don't get disciplined by watching discipline. You don't get results about binge-watching videos of results. At some point, you have to put the phone down and do the damn thing. I get it. It feels good to watch videos like this. You get a little bit motivated. You feel like you're gonna have a good plan, but nothing actually changes. Why? Because watching videos and making a plan is safe, but actually taking action—that's uncomfortable. Actually making a commitment—that's also uncomfortable. And the truth is. There's no perfect plan. There's no perfect moment, and you're never gonna feel ready. One of our online coaching clients, Jessica, followed me for years. She would watch these videos. She would nod along and be like, Eric, you have such great information. But she wasn't doing anything. And if she was doing it, it was for a couple of days or a couple of weeks if she was lucky, and then she would fall off track again. Until finally one day she said, screw it, I'm just gonna join. And now she's down over 40 pounds. She's the most consistent she's ever been in her life. And now Jessica is down over 40 pounds. She's the most consistent she's ever been. And it's all because eventually you just have to take action. So if you're watching this, stop looking for more information. You know what to do. Eat healthier, meal prep, work out. You've watched this video about all these good tactics. Go take action on it. Because at the end of the day, building discipline doesn't come from thinking about it, it comes from actually doing it. And watching this video was a great first step, but if you really want to level up your discipline, your results, and your confidence, you can click the link in the description below to learn more about our one-on-one online coaching program. We'll take out all the guesswork for you, build you a plan, and get you paired up with a one-on-one coach to hold you accountable every step of the way. And in the meantime, you can actually watch this video next on how to turn your motivation into long-term discipline. So click this video here and I'll see you in a minute.