Hi! I’m Donna Reish, IF teacher, weight loss coach, blogger, and half of “The Minus 220 Pound Pair” as my husband and I have lost over 220 pounds together (160 of that in the past couple of years through the Weight Loss Lifestyle habits and strategies I teach!). 

Self-Integrity is at the basis of every change we want in our lives—physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, spiritually, productively….it is the core to why we don’t do what we say we will do—and why we do, do what we say we will do!

Most of us call self-integrity by another name: willpower. We think we just don’t have the willpower to do what we tell ourselves we will do.

And there’s some truth to the fact that we often don’t have the willpower to carry out what we say we will do….but willpower isn’t the only cause of our self-integrity lack.

Last week, in Episode #19 of Think-Feel-Eat, I described a few enemies of self-integrity (what we make past failures mean; perfectionism; not breaking things down {habit formation skills lacking}; relying on willpower; and not deciding ahead of time).

(For more understanding of willpower, see my Weight Loss Lifestyle broadcasts #60 and #61.)

In this week’s episode, I bring good news! Tools!

Tools we can use in our lives and skills we can develop to become the kind of person is filled with self-integrity—the kind of person who does what we say we will do. Yay us!
These tools counteract the enemies of self-integrity and put us on the path to food control, business growth, daily disciplines, relationship nurturing, and much more.
I present a few general tools like Thought Work, sleep, automaticity, and craving reducers.

Then I have created a derivative of BJ Fogg’s (Tiny Habits) ABC’s of Habit Formation by combining his ABC, my experience with attachments and minimum baselines through homeschooling for thirty-two years, and an early teacher (Gregg Harris) in the homeschooling world’s Attachment Approach (Fogg calls this Anchor). This tool works—and I am so excited to present it to you!

20 Self Integrity Part II of II (Tools for Self Integrity—Including the ABC Approach!)

A. Review Why We Don’t Do What We Tell Ourselves We Will Do

1. Past failures—what we make them mean
2. Perfectionism
3. Not breaking things down (habit formation)
4. Relying on willpower (Weight Loss Lifestyle 60 and 61)
5. Not deciding ahead of time (today’s tools will help this!)

B. Misc. Tools That Will Make a Difference!

1. Thoughts (Perfect Storm #7)
2. Sleep can refill willpower stores (Weight Loss Lifestyle 42)
3. Automaticity

a. Schedules
b. Repeating same foods

4. Reducing cravings

a. TFE 7, 8, and 9
b. Extend the time between super seductive foods

C. The ABC’s of Self-Integrity

1. Three little steps that the above enemies of self-integrity often diminish
2. Questions/ABC aspect from BJ Fogg Tiny Habits book
3. My introduction to the first two steps from Gregg Harris in The Advanced Homeschooling Workshop
4. The C—Celebration

a. Many used to say that this was actually “Consequences”—the outcome of doing A and B.
b. Researchers now believe that it isn’t the outcome that drives us to create habits and to stay in self integrity
c. We are driven to change behaviors through Feelings

i. Celebration (step three) intensifies and emphasizes positive feelings related to our self integrity
ii. Celebration gives us a built in opportunity to feel the feeling that will help us to continue to build that habit/be in self integrity

D. Get More Help!

1. The Perfect Storm of Weight Loss teaches the steps to create your own protocol and bring together all aspects of weight loss
2. Willpower Part I and II
3. Intermittentfastingcourse.com
4. Sign up for a free consult call to see if weigh/time management/life coaching with me would help you meet your goals! Donnareish.com/coachingpackages
5. Pick-a-Protocol 16, 17, and 18

Hi! I’m Donna Reish, IF teacher, weight loss coach, blogger, and half of “The Minus 220 Pound Pair” as my husband and I have lost over 220 pounds together (160 of that in the past couple of years through the Weight Loss Lifestyle habits and strategies I teach!).

The next two episodes’ contents have been life changing for me! And I am happy to present them to you to help you change your life as well.

Not doing what we tell ourselves we will do is probably the greatest thief of our dreams and future life. And yet we do that over and over—and then scratch our heads in bewilderment as to why we don’t do what we tell ourselves we will do.

Come to find out, it isn’t our fault.

In Episode 19 of Think-Feel-Eat, I present several enemies of self-integrity. The bare bones of why we don’t do what we tell ourselves we will do.

(See Weight Loss Lifestyle #60 and #61 for my two Willpower Episodes….super empowering to know why we don’t have the willpower we think we should!)

These range from trusting willpower to get us through to being too vague to waiting until we are in the moment (and using our toddler brains to guide us!).

The good news is that all of these are over-come-able!

We can have self-integrity. And when we do, it will change our lives!

Self-integrity will change our size, weight, health, muscles, food, time management, relationships, home care, self care, work, and more!

As always, I have a full, detailed outline, an audio, and a video version. Start gaining self-integrity today!

Find all of my episodes, outlines, and articles for my two weekly broadcasts:

(1)  Weight Loss Lifestyle broadcast (formerly Donna’s Intermittent Fasting Broadcast)

(2)  Think-Feel-Eat broadcast 

Sign up for my free webinar: intermittentfastingwebinar.com

TFE 19 Outline Self Integrity Part I of II (Why We Don’t Keep Our Word to Ourselves)

A. Defining and Understanding Self-Integrity

1. Definition: the quality of being truthful and honest with yourself, of intentionally aligning personal behaviors and actions to be congruently aligned with your own values and goals.  It requires a commitment to align ourselves to stay consistent with personal values so that we do what we tell ourselves we will do.

2. Difficult because we are not answering to anyone but ourselves

3. Event people who are amazing in integrity with others often are not with themselves.

4.  Self Integrity covers every area of our lives!!

a. Weight

b. Drugs/alcohol/nicotine

c. Pornography

d. Business/scheduling work

e. Family

f. Marriage

g. Shopping

B. Enemies of Self-Integrity

1. Thoughts about our past failures/Negative Self Talk

a. Thoughts about our past failures

i.  When we bring in our past inconsistencies and lack of self-integrity, we can’t move into self integrity even with tools.

ii.  Thoughts and words spoken like “I never do what I say I will do” or “I’ll probably just skip things this time too” or “I can never stay on an eating protocol, so I will probably do that again” will keep us from moving forward even if we do have the tools and the understanding of the processWords/thoughts about the hiddenness of self-integrity

b. Words/thoughts about the hiddenness of self-integrity

i. Nobody will know

ii. Must get to where we want to do it for us—that even if we were the only ones who know, we still want to do it

iii.  In the meantime, we have to believe that when we don’t do what we say, it does matter (health, weight, income, time, etc)—that this thing I said I would do but now don’t want to do will truly affect me.

iv. Better Thought: My past self made this great plan for my current self!

 2. Perfectionism

a.  “Believing your life would be better if you were perfect and thus, should strive for that”

b.  The way we deal with unmet perfectionism is to give up entirely—if we can’t do it perfectly, we just won’t do it.

c.  It is common sense that five minutes of exercise is better than nothing or that staying on a protocol 75% of the time is better than not at all, but when we are stuck in perfectionism, we can’t think that through

d.  Creates a vicious cycle: tomorrow I will do it perfectly; then we don’t; we beat ourselves up/belittle ourselves; we get relief by planning to d it perfectly the next time; rinse and repeat.

e. Perfectionism will be the biggest roadblock to our using the ABC tool by Fogg/Harris

f.  A change a month yielded 360 changes for us over a 30+ year period of time!!!

3. Not breaking goals down/biting off too much 

a. Often related to perfectionism

b. Sometimes we can’t see the little steps it takes to get to a big goal

c. Other times the little steps do not feel like they will get us there

d.  We believe we should “play big or go home”

e. My bladder exercises—break it down because didn’t see how I could add another thing to my day.

4. Relying on willpower

a. When we don’t plan ahead and make decisions ahead of time, we leave the weight of any changes in our lives (or any self integrity issues) on the part of the brain that is ill-equipped to make those decisions and carry out the goals in our life

b.  The amount, type, and intensity of willpower that is needed to do some things for some people are nearly impossible to override/sustain

c.  Research shows we spend four hours per day resisting temptations

d.  We have a willpower gap—the number of instances we need willpower is greater than the amount of willpower we have in any given day

e. See Weight Loss Lifestyles Episodes 60 and 61 for extensive willpower teaching.

5. Not planning/deciding ahead of time

a. Prefrontal cortex vs. toddler brain

b.  Decision making processes are those done ahead, not in the moment

c.  In the moment relies on willpower, which we are often short of

C. Get More Help!

1. The Perfect Storm of Weight Loss teaches the steps to create your own protocol and bring together all aspects of weight loss

2.  Willpower Part I and II 

3. Sign up for a free consult call to see if weight/time management/life coaching with me would help you meet your goals!