Here are 21 Non-Diet Motivation Quotes to help you shift your mindset away from the typical “Just Do It” weight loss motivation and into something entirely new.
I call these the ‘Non-Diet’ quotes because they promote the opposite mentality of traditional weight loss quotes.
The quotes in each image stand alone, so I don’t explain what the quotes mean in the text that follows each one. Instead, I add a few comments to help you think more about the quote.
Enjoy!
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Quote #1
Often, we are harsh with ourselves when we use the “Just Do It” mentality. When you say “Just Do It” to yourself, can you hear the harshness of this phrase?
This thinking, where you force yourself to do something you don’t want to do, impacts us in many areas of life besides health.
- We don’t get an A on the test and then beat ourselves up for not studying hard enough.
- We don’t live up to our high standards and consider ourselves failures
- If we fall or make a mistake, it’s our fault and our responsibility.
Quote #2
You may have yelled at yourself internally after making a mistake.
This is so ingrained that you may feel scared once you drop such strict, rigid thinking.
Kindness and gentleness may feel strange or ineffective.
Likewise, dieting has been their companion for millions of people for years.
Friends have been made over dieting, and it’s become a part of you and your identity.
Giving dieting up (and the subtle forms of dieting like clean eating) is scary, but it’s worth it. It would be best to make small, repeated efforts in the right direction away from your traditional weight loss mumbo jumbo. It’s never too late to get going!
Quote #3
It is scary to stop judging yourself based on your eating performance. But again, it’s never too late to get started! Just one step at a time. Tiny, repeated efforts to gradually change your mind are the key.
Often, we have deeply ingrained beliefs about food that involve rules and performance. Instead of making small, repeated efforts, we try all at once to be perfect or lose weight fast.
We follow rules that promise such results.
Follow those rules, and you are supposed to be ‘healthy.’ Eat too much or the wrong food, and you are ‘bad’ for breaking the rule.
Everyone has a set of different rules. Some people are more strict; others are more lenient.
What matters is how you react to ‘breaking’ the rules. If you are too attached to your food rules, you will stress out when you think you failed.
For example, you may have a rule to have no more than 1500 calories daily. Yet if you go over 1500 calories, you may freak out and eat way more than you would have otherwise.
If you stop judging yourself on your performance, you may overeat, but you won’t freak out and punish yourself because you’re not rigidly following rules.
Quote #4
If you could talk to your stomach and ask it, “What rules do you have?” How do you think your stomach would respond?
Your stomach wouldn’t say anything! Right?
All these “Just Do It” rules around food make us crazy!
These rules are always moralistic. Do this, don’t do that. You’re good if you, damned if you don’t.
We need to stop this black-and-white type of thinking.
Now, as we discussed earlier, this is scary. It isn’t easy to release control.
Quote #5
It feels weird when you first start to transition out of the typical “Just Do It” weight loss motivation quote nonsense.
You have to remember that dieting and intentional weight loss don’t work if you feel lightheaded or dizzy.
I know celebrities like Adele are losing weight, but the diet approach usually doesn’t work long-term. For example, Oprah lost a lot of weight, too, and gained it all back.
What’s your experience with intentional weight loss? Does it work for you? Or does it lead to binge eating?
Or does trying to control your food inevitably lead to failure and losing control around food?
What if you stopped trying to control your food in the first place?
What would help you shift and stop trying to ‘be good’ around food?
Quote #6
What if guilt and shame were not ruling you?
Guilt and shame make people feel bad after they ‘break’ a “Just Do It” food rule.
But what if when you ‘broke’ a food rule, you didn’t let yourself feel guilty?
People usually feel bad, and then they ‘try harder.’
They learn a new set of weight loss rules and try again.
Of course, again, they fail, feel guilty, and gain back the weight.
But what if there was no guilt in the first place? What if you would believe in yourself even if you ate a particular food?
How would removing guilt around food change your relationship with food?
Besides, isn’t guilt just a leftover childhood remnant that no longer serves you?
Maybe you learned to feel guilty around food as a kid or young adult because a doctor or parent modeled this behavior for you.
But is food an excellent way to evaluate your true self?
Overeating food is not a crime, so why feel guilty? The guilt is just from your past and is not your authentic self.
Quote #7
Quote #8
Much of this journey is about unlearning.
That’s why it’s so scary.
You are returning to your natural body and letting go of the artificial rules within your mind.’
These rules and beliefs are things we typically learned growing up. Now, they cover our true selves.
To find your true self, you need to adventure into the unknown.
Letting go of the rules and conditioning is possible because you don’t need these rules in the first place.
Your body contains all the wisdom you need. Perhaps you need to unlearn some stuff before believing in yourself after failure.
Quote #9
It may not be easy to trust your body in the beginning.
Remember, you have learned and obeyed particular rules around food for your entire life.
These rules and diets have promised big rewards like a thin body or happiness, but they have lied.
Seeing the truth makes it easier to relinquish these “Just Do It” rules and return to your body.
But still, there will be resistance. You’ll want to return to your old self.
But is your old self the message you are truly meant to exemplify?
When you think about the quality of your life when you follow external rules instead of listening to your inner wisdom, is it worth it?
If the external rules have you calorie counting, do you want to be calorie counting all along the way to your deathbed?
Can you turn around and take care of your body a different way?
Quote #10
What if you used rules to manage your food just because you can?
People often turn to control their food because the rest of their lives are falling apart.
For example, you can’t control your boss, co-workers, or significant other …
But you can exert an iron grip over food and “Just Do It” (until you snap inevitably and lose control).
When you start to give up the “Just Do It” mentality around food …
You realize this has been your approach to Life (and it might not work well!).
The hard part is letting go of what you have done nearly every day. Letting go of the familiar.
But you know that feeling when you feel like quitting your diet or food-management rules?
That feeling is trying to get you to make small efforts to move in the other right direction towards what is known as intuitive eating.
Quote #11
What if it was time to stop lying to yourself?
How would you respond if you stopped pretending the next celebrity diet would get you the results?
And what if you stopped pretending your restrictive eating was in alignment with your standards, even though you were not getting healthier?
Or what if you stopped beating the crap out of yourself for every little mistake?
Can you see your bullshit and not judge yourself for your bullshit?
You can realize your past actions have misled you without being hard on yourself.
It’s never too late to make small, repeated efforts to let go of your past behaviors.
Quote #12
How would you treat the most worthy being in the universe?
If God was at your dinner table, how would you speak to her, him, or it?
Would you yell? Be impatient? Ridicule? Doubt? Feel like quitting?
It’s time we all started treating ourselves like Gods, like divine beings.
And no-nonsense either … there is nobody more worthy of your love than giving love to yourself.
Being able to give love to yourself is the foundation of well-being.
Quote #13
Isn’t this funny?
We’re talking about self-love, but when the diet fails, we hate ourselves.
But the diet is to blame! The rules are to blame!
If you got into a car with a broken wheel and then the wheel didn’t work and caused you to crash, would you get mad at the car?
You wouldn’t get mad at the car! You would never drive that broken car again!
But diets are different for whatever reason. We fail at one diet and blame ourselves, and then we go on with another.
That’s like blaming the broken car for crashing. But the fractured vehicle was going to crash anyway!
Quote #14
It’s pretty silly to blame ourselves for losing control over food.
Aren’t the pass-or-fail rules the real culprits?
Would you see a surgeon with a 5% success rate?
So why do we diet and try to lose weight when it’s only a 5% success rate, and when you ‘fail,’ then you gain weight and feel guilty?
Let’s stop the nonsense!
Quote #15
It can be hard to see clearly.
If you are a bigger person, you often are judged because of your size.
When you are judged and slighted because of your size, it becomes easier to think ‘you are your body’.
And it’s true, part of you is your body.
But is thinking to yourself, “I am fat,” really that accurate?
Indeed, you are more than your fat. You might be a parent, boyfriend, girlfriend, friend, poet, artist, lover, or creator.
If you say you are fat, you must also say, “I am fat, and I am also an artist.” Or whatever else you are.
To think of it another way, consider how you view your fingernails.
Your fingernails come and go without any upset mind or emotions. What would it be like if you saw your body this way?
Quote #16
One way we stay trapped in judgment toward our bodies and minds is by eating food that’s considered either “good” or “bad.”
Vegetables are good; brownies are bad.
If you eat a brownie, you are deficient. If you eat a vegetable, you are good.
Can you see that this is the same type of thinking that most people have about weight loss and food?
We need to let go of judgments around food and stop thinking of food in terms of black and white, good or bad.
Quote #17
As you let go of judgment towards your body, food, and life …
You start to cultivate the opposite mindset, which is a growth mindset.
The growth mindset sees failure as an opportunity.
Here’s a common question I’ll ask my clients when they admit to a binge (and after I validate their feelings to make sure they know I’m not judging them) …
“What did the binge teach you?”
What can you do differently next time?
Instead of thinking you’re a miserable failure, can you see this setback as temporary?
Now, you’ll repeat this mistake unless you learn!
So think gently: what can you do differently next time?
This is how you let go of judgment and perfectionist thinking.
Quote #18
Are you confused yet?
Is it okay to be confused?
Let it be okay to be confused.
Don’t try to search for the correct answer immediately.
There will always be someone telling you the correct answer. Venus Williams will tell you one thing about how she only eats one candy every month, and another diet will tell you another thing.
They remove your confusion and give you certainty. But they are giving you their certainty, not your own.
That’s why you are confused and uncertain: external advice contradicts itself.
Therefore, you must learn to think compassionately for yourself by gently making small, repeated efforts.
The first step towards compassionate thinking is realizing it’s okay to be confused or uncertain. There’s nothing wrong with you.
Quote #19
Coming back to Growth Mindset …..
Can you allow for confusion and uncertainty while you try something new?
Try intuitive eating. Go with an open mind.
Let yourself be confused and uncertain.
Let yourself make mistakes.
From this attitude of allowance and openness, can you then adjust?
Can you forgive yourself for not being perfect and realize that mistakes are part of the learning process?
All you have to do is learn and try again a little more intelligently next time.
