I hope you had a fantastic weekend.
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is how often we assume that the only thing standing between us and better health is willpower. More discipline. More grind. But the longer I do this work, the more I realize that’s not actually what separates the people who transform from the people who stay stuck. It’s something much quieter than that, and it starts with a question most people never think to ask themselves.
I was talking to a physician recently who lost over 70 pounds. He’s board-certified in internal medicine and lifestyle medicine, and for years he was treating patients for heart attacks, strokes, and complications of diabetes while simultaneously heading down the exact same path himself. He had pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and he didn’t even want to step on a scale because of what he knew it would say. He knew better. He was literally the person in the room telling other people to eat healthier and exercise. And yet none of that knowledge was showing up in his own life.
What changed wasn’t a new diet plan or a 75-day challenge. It was his wife looking at him one night and saying, “How is it fair that the people you supposedly love the most get the worst version of you?” That question forced him to actually stop and look at himself. Not to fix everything overnight, but to get honest about what was happening. He started a 10-minute meditation practice in his car at the end of each workday, just breathing before walking through the front door. Within a few weeks, his wife noticed he was more present. He could actually play with his kids without carrying the entire weight of the day on his shoulders. And that small practice of awareness, of paying attention to what he was feeling and why, became the foundation for everything that followed.
There’s an equation I come back to constantly: E + R = O. Event plus Response equals Outcome. Most people live in a constant state of reaction where something happens, they react, and the outcome just happens to them. There’s no space in between, no pause, no actual choice. But when you cultivate even a small amount of awareness, you create that space. You start to notice that you’re reaching for food because you’re stressed, not because you’re hungry. You notice that you’re skipping the gym because you associate it with punishment, not because you don’t have time. This is where real change lives. Not in the plan. In the pause.
The other thing he did that I think is really worth sharing is how he approached food. He didn’t go from a standard American diet to 100% whole food plant-based overnight. He started with one day a week, just Mondays, for a full year. Did it move the needle on his bloodwork? No. But it did something more important. It built familiarity. He learned which meals he actually enjoyed. He discovered that the tofu spring rolls in his hospital cafeteria tasted better than the shrimp ones he’d been eating for years, he just never tried them.
When he eventually committed to three straight weeks of eating this way, his resting heart rate dropped from the 80s to the 50s, his LDL dropped 40 points, and he lost 10 pounds. And for the first time, the weight loss wasn’t the goal, it was a side effect of finally taking care of himself. That distinction matters more than people realize. When you chase weight loss as the primary goal, you’ll do unsustainable things to get there. But when you chase how you want to feel, the weight loss follows, and it actually stays.
The same thing applies to exercise, and he shared something that really stuck with me. He had a patient who kept starting and stopping at the gym, so instead of prescribing workouts, he just asked the guy what he actually enjoyed doing there. The answer? Sitting in the sauna. So that became the goal. Go to the gym and sit in the sauna for 15 minutes.
It sounds almost ridiculous, but that man now works out four to five times a week. He started showing up for the sauna, and eventually thought, well, I’m already here, maybe I’ll do a quick workout first. Over time the positive associations built. He started feeling good before, during, and after the workout, and once that happened, he didn’t need motivation anymore. He just wanted to go. This is what I mean when I talk about consistency before optimization. Most people try to design the perfect workout split before they’ve even built the habit of showing up three times a week. They’re trying to optimize something that doesn’t exist yet. Build the standard first, make movement a part of your life that you genuinely look forward to, and then start tweaking the details.
He uses a framework with his patients called RACK, which stands for Roots, Awareness, and Kindness, and I think it’s worth breaking down because it maps perfectly onto what we teach our clients.
Roots is your why, but not the distant aspirational kind like “I want to be around for my grandkids.” Those are real, but they don’t get you out of bed on a Tuesday morning. What does is the immediate feeling. How do you want to feel today? Less pain. More energy. More ease. More control. That’s the root that actually holds when life gets hard.
Awareness is the pause we already talked about, creating enough space to notice what’s driving your choices instead of just reacting to everything on autopilot. And Kindness is how you make the change stick. Not through punishment, not through restriction, but through choices that are good for you, that you enjoy, and that feel good while you’re doing them. When a change meets all three of those criteria, you don’t need willpower to keep doing it because you actually want to.
Most people have been punishing themselves into change their whole lives. Starving, over-exercising, beating themselves up for falling off track, and then wondering why it never sticks. It doesn’t stick because humans move toward what feels good and away from what feels bad. That’s not a weakness. That’s just how we’re built. So stop trying to fight your nature and start working with it.
I hope this helps to serve you on your journey.
Sincerely,
Maxime Sigouin
PS. Every month, through our coaching business I donate to support a cancer patient on their journey. This month we're supporting Judson https://gofund.me/b3af3c00e