You Didn’t Fall Off the Wagon… You Lowered Your Standards

If you’ve been telling yourself you’ve “fallen off track” this year, this episode is for you.

In this raw, honest conversation, I open up about my own struggle to find my groove again in the new year and the uncomfortable truth I had to face along the way.

Most women don’t derail their progress with one big mistake.

They quietly loosen their standards.

A skipped habit here.
A little negotiation there.
A plan that slowly becomes optional.

By the end of the week, they feel flat, frustrated, and disappointed, but can’t pinpoint what went wrong.

In this episode, I break down:
 • Why “falling off the wagon” is usually a myth
 • How lowered standards quietly sabotage weight loss and self-trust
 • The difference between motivation problems and containment problems
 • Why midweek is where identity either holds or leaks
 • How emotional eating sneaks back in through micro permissions
 • What to do when you feel off track without doing anything extreme
 • How to raise your standards again without punishment, restriction, or a full reset

This isn’t about being harder on yourself.
It’s about being more honest with yourself.

If you’ve been blaming motivation, hormones, or willpower, this episode will help you see the real issue and fix it before another week slips away.

Get Kylie's exact weight loss Blueprint
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BOMBSHELL BLUEPRINT WEIGHT LOSS FOR EMOTIONAL EATERS

Transcript

What is up you gorgeous, fabulous creatures and welcome to another episode of the Losing It podcast. You're here with Kylie Pax, Australia's emotional eating coach. We are kicking out two episodes a week at the moment, honey.

And whilst it's a bigger commitment, obviously on my part, I am so excited about it because I know we're reaching more women. A lot more of you having contacted me and saying that twice a week is helping you so much. It's giving you that extra kick up the booty that you need for getting through that midweek slump.

And I am going to talk to you today about something that is real and raw. I'm always normally the kick-ass coach that's giving you the hard words, stop mucking around, get your act together, get your shit together is what you hear from me. But I also want to remind you, I'm just a person just like you.

(0:47 - 1:36)

I go through all the same highs and lows. And I feel like lately, even though the sun is shining, we're in the middle of summer and everything is amazing here in my little corner of the world. I am really struggling with my eating at the moment and my self-discipline.

I mean, I'm not running crazy. But what I am struggling to get back on board with is my movement, my exercise. I've joined the gym.

I've only been a couple of times. I'm now questioning my sanity. Why did I even do that? But I want to bring this to the fore today because I want you to know that it's very normal.

The new year doesn't click over a new mindset. It doesn't. Habits click over a new mindset.

Consistency clicks over a new mindset. And so I just did some journaling this morning because I truly got sick and tired of my own bullshit. And I thought this just has to change.

(1:36 - 5:46)

So I'm going to share with you a little journal entry that I did earlier this morning. It's not something I would normally do, but it is a process that I find very helpful to kind of almost coach myself through a situation when I'm struggling to see how to move forward. So this morning, I gave myself a little prompt and I asked if I truly stopped BSing myself, then what is the truth behind why I won't take consistent action? Because I know this is the thing we all struggle with the most.

Like, I want to be consistent going back to the gym, not just once or twice and then tell myself I'll start again next week. Now, I want to preface this before I tell you what else I wrote. I want to preface this by saying, yes, I have been very, very busy lately.

And we've been in the back end every single day of the brand new website. It's going to make your weight loss XXL easier. You won't believe what's coming once I drop it for you.

It's like, oh my God, how did you know what I needed? It's like, as if I wouldn't know what you need. I fucking am you. You hear me today confessing my struggles.

I am you. Of course I know what you need. So I can use all the excuses under the sun.

We've all got them. I can say, well, I'm very busy and these other things are a priority. And yes, I am busy and they are a priority, but it doesn't mean that they wipe out everything else that matters in my life.

It certainly doesn't mean that I put myself last. And that's what we tend to do as women. We think everybody else and everything else is very important and we'll be okay if we let ourselves slide for a few days.

But actually it's not true. Every time you do that, you are reinforcing to your brain that you are the quitter. You are the person who really doesn't matter in life.

And everything else, again, as I say, everything else and everyone else is way more important than you. Oh my God, every alarm in the sun going, let's just mutate though. No, we won't mutate them.

We'll mute them. So this is what I actually wrote down this morning and I hope you find this helpful. Feel free to message me anytime over on Insta.

I'm more than happy to share more prompts with you. If you struggle to come up with prompts I'm sure we'll give a bunch of them to you. But this was me this morning when I really got fed up with my own BS.

And I thought if I truly, truly stopped BSing myself, what is the truth behind why I won't take consistent action? Here's what came out first. And I want to remind you, you're thinking, would you just get on with it? I want to remind you that whatever comes out first is the BS. It is the BS.

So here's what came out first. The reason I won't do this is because once I take consistent action, I will no longer be able to relax or enjoy myself or eat chocolate. And I'll never be able to eat anything good again.

And I'll always be hungry. I'll always be hungry. And that's just shit is what I wrote.

And even as I was writing it, I wanted to stop mid-sentence because I thought what absolute garbage. I know it's rubbish, but this is what my subconscious was believing. So I then switched gears and just got really mad about the whole situation.

I wrote down, I'm just mad that this has to be so fucking hard all the time. Why does weight loss require so much fucking effort? I actually swapped pen colours because I like to feel like one pen colour might represent my BS thoughts. Now here's the voice of sanity coming in.

But doesn't it equally require effort to wake up each day and tell yourself that you're okay with living a life that is subpar? Hiding behind moo-moos, not wanting to leave the house. Like doesn't that require effort too to rev yourself up every single Monday and try and convince yourself that you're really going to do it this time. And even though it's only 7am in the morning and you're already wondering what delusional idiot decided this would be a good idea.

Doesn't that take effort as well? Now let's jump forward to the end of the year because only one of two scenarios can unfold here. Either I'm going to put in effort and lose weight and I'll end the year feeling so fucking proud of myself. Or that's option A. Or there's going to be option B because there's always a flip side.

Or I put in the effort to stay as I am and exhibit the inertia of a sloth and end this year 15 kilos heavier, more sad, more depressed, more upset, more miserable with myself and frantically promising that next year is going to be the one. Next year will be the time that it's all going to change and be different. Only one of these can become my reality.

(5:47 - 6:54)

So I either have to decide do I want to pay now or do I want to pay later. But sooner or later I'm going to have to pay. I can either pay up front right now by getting my ass to the gym and being consistent, by saying no to myself when I really want to say yes or equally saying yes when I really want to say no.

But I can't have it both ways. I can't sit around eating chocolate and avoiding the gym, paying the fees, but avoiding actually going and end this year in my best, vibrant, hottest, happiest, healthiest body. The two cannot go together.

It's like oil and water. Never gonna mix honey. So I now get to make the decision of do I want to grit my teeth and pay up front.

Wouldn't you rather pay up front? It's almost like buying a car and then buy a beautiful new car. Okay. Something that you absolutely love.

I don't know. I'm just going to pick something. So you go out there and get a Mercedes.

I don't know. I didn't care about a Mercedes. Let's just say you buy a G-Wagon.

I hear they're very popular. So you go buy a G-Wagon. I mean, this thing is amazing and cost you a fortune, but you're going to pay it off over the next 10 years.

(6:54 - 11:18)

Now, within the first 12 months, let's say you trash your G-Wagon. It's a piece of crap now. And then you have an accident and write it off.

But honey, the finance company doesn't give a shit. You still have to pay the cost of that G-Wagon. So whatever that might be, 250K, you've now got this wild ass debt and you don't even have a good G-Wagon to get around him.

Well, that's you with your damn body. You're out there trashing it, turning it into a piece of crap that's barely worth a dollar and you still have to pay the price. Wouldn't you rather be paying the price and having a vehicle to get around in that is actually gorgeous and hot and sexy and people stare when you take it down the street? I mean, I know I would.

So I have to look at myself now and think, I put in the effort last year. What is the difference between this year and last? So here is the changes that I'm going to be making because you're thinking, Miley's in the confessional today. What's going on? Here's the changes that I'm going to be making over the coming weeks.

I'm going to take you on the journey with me because I know already, I mean, I'm not going to fool myself and be like, yay, my biggest hype squad and tell myself this is going to be a piece of cake. I wish, honey. If I could sit around and eat cake all day, your girl would be very happy.

It's not going to be no piece of cake. I'm going to start by re-anchoring my basics. I lowered my standards and wandered too far off course.

It's fine for you to sit down, enjoy the moment, have your celebrations. You know, I lost 18 kilos. Good girl.

I did freaking amazing. Good for me. But I drifted away from my basics.

So they now have to be re-anchored. So they now have to be re-anchored. I'm not talking about a reset or a detox, nothing extreme.

That's ridiculous. And that's only going to send me onto a big ass binge. I'm talking about revisiting and grounding back in my fundamentals, planning my meals, stopping eating at 80%, no grazing throughout the day.

The second thing I'm going to do is stop the bullshit negotiation with myself. You decide once each morning. You don't decide a thousand times through the day.

Decision fatigue is your worst enemy when you are trying to lose weight. The main reason that we end up binging or overeating or caving into our cravings is because we can't stand the constant negotiation that's going on in our head. So we eat just to shut the conversation down.

You decide once and it's first thing in the morning, not in the afternoon, not at nighttime when you're tired. First thing in the morning, I step into the character of who I intend to be that day. So just in the same way that any actor is only going to get paid their $3 million or whatever they get paid, I don't know, their $30 million for an acting role if they execute that role with precision.

Likewise, I'm only going to reap the rewards if I execute my role with precision. That means I decide who I am and how I'm going to be, how I'm going to act, and the decisions I'm going to make. And I do that first thing in the morning, one time.

Then I follow through without debate or negotiation for the rest of the day. Follow your plan, not your mood. The decision fatigue is what is draining you.

It's not discipline that's draining you. It's decision fatigue. The next thing I'm going to do is contain my danger windows.

Now, you already know when you drift off plan, whether it's the afternoons or the evenings, it's definitely when you're tired. For me, nighttime is always going to be my witching hour. So I need to protect that window instead of pretending that A, it doesn't exist, or that B, I can just grit my teeth and work my way through it.

That's not going to happen. So I need to ask myself in my ideal identity, that version of me that is hot and thin and lean and toned and amazing and so confident and just loving every aspect of life, what would she be doing at night? Would she be sitting there going, I really want to eat this chocolate, but I better not, and then getting mad and hating it and then eating it in the end anyway? No, I don't think so. She would be out there doing something constructive to make her life better, not draining her brain and making it worse.

She'd probably be out there doing some exercise or taking a short walk around the block after she'd had dinner. She would potentially be walking along the beach. I mean, I live at the freaking beach.

I don't even go down there, but she would be doing something to empower herself and lead her forward, not drain her energy and suck her backwards. The last thing I'm going to do is reestablish my self-trust. Now, how do I do that? That is, unfortunately, not a decision.

That takes evidence and follow through. You have to build the receipts if you want to build your self-trust. So that means following through on my first three points.

(11:18 - 12:48)

I can't rebuild self-trust without showing that I actually do the things I say I'm going to do. The goal here is not for me to get everything perfect. The goal here is for me to end the week knowing that I did not abandon myself again.

That's how momentum is built. It's done quietly. It's done in the boring ass daily decisions, but it's also done with power because it completely rewrites your DNA and changes who you are from the inside out.

Honeys, I just want to remind you today if this episode hit, it's probably because you recognize yourself a little bit in this drift. And I just want to put it out there for you as well. You're not failing.

If you're feeling the same as me, it's probably because you've been loosening your standards and you didn't even potentially realize it. You don't need a reset. You don't need to start a fancy new diet.

What you need is containment. And sitting here in the middle of the week where I am right now, this is where progress for most of us goes to die. But it's also the place in the week where your identity is either decided or broken.

So I'm going to finish this week like the woman that I want to be, not the woman that I fear I am becoming. Not the one who keeps starting over. And I hope that if this helped you today, then please go ahead, hit like or subscribe.

There's no like on this podcast. I don't know where I think I am. Please feel free to hit subscribe or leave me a review.

I would be ever so grateful to hear from you. Because if like me, you're sitting around thinking, I don't know. I don't know why I keep drifting.

I don't know why I can't get my shit together. I really thought this year was going to be different. Well, now you know.

(12:48 - 13:36)

It's not a someone else or something else problem. It's an identity issue. Always was, always will be.

And when you decide the persona that you're going to step into this year, there's no rush. We have a whole year to create this together. But when you decide who she is, how she lives, what her standards are, and then you step into the role of that person, that's truly when you've got what it takes.

I'm sending you tremendous amounts of love. Can't wait to see you again next week. I promise I'll give you some updates.

Until then, gorgeous ones, bye for now. Thank you so much for tuning in. Remember to shimmy your butt over to KyliePax.com and join me inside of the bombshell blueprint so you can stop emotional eating and start losing your way now.

You'll also find helpful notes and resources inside my past podcast that will help you lose your weight without losing your sanity. I will see you next week.