4 reasons your brain fights every diet you try, and the hidden variable that actually determines your results
The weight loss variable no one is talking about
Hey it’s Rick :)
As many of you know, I’m very focused on an identity first approach.
I believe the key to optimizing every aspect of your life is in learning to manage your identities.
So, I’ve been working diligently creating a new course, The Identity Architect.
To be honest, it’s going to be an incredible journey for those people who have the courage and determination to face it.
It won’t be for those people who are new to self-improvement or who are unwilling to put in the necessary work. But just know, for anyone who wants to take the journey I will be helping and guiding you every step of the way.
There won’t be any time limit on this course and it will teach you a highly valuable skill. Learning to deal with your identities at the core.
I’ll let you know more as we get closer to launching this powerful course. It might very well be my most important work ever.
You’ve done the hard things.
You’ve counted calories until the numbers blurred together and dragged yourself to the gym when every cell in your body said stay in bed. You’ve said no to the bread, the wine, the birthday cake, the Thursday night takeout you used to look forward to all week.
And it worked. For a while.
Then it stopped working. Not because you stopped trying, but because something inside you pulled the whole thing back to where it started. Like a rubber band stretched to its limit, then released.
You blamed yourself. You called it a lack of discipline, maybe willpower, maybe something you couldn’t quite name but were sure other people possessed.
Here’s what I need you to hear: that pullback was a neurological event. Your brain did exactly what it was designed to do. And until you understand the variable running the show, you’ll keep cycling through the same pattern.
Your brain runs on identity, not willpower
Most weight loss programs target habits. Track your food. Hit your macros. Move more, eat less. Those programs aren’t wrong, exactly. They’re just incomplete. They’re targeting the bottom of the stack when the real variable sits at the top.
Your brain runs a hierarchy: identity drives mindset, mindset shapes beliefs, beliefs determine habits, and habits produce outcomes. Everything flows downhill from identity.
“I’m a healthy person” generates a different cascade than “I’m someone who struggles with my body.” The first makes daily walks and balanced meals feel obvious. The second makes those same behaviors feel like a performance.
Willpower is exhausting because it operates in your prefrontal cortex, the conscious, effortful part of your brain.
That part fatigues. It gets depleted by stress, poor sleep, decision-making, emotional strain. The identity mechanisms running underneath? Automatic. They don’t tire. They run 24 hours a day at zero cost.
You’ve been trying to hold a door shut while a hydraulic system pushes from the other side. You were never going to win that fight.
Your brain treats your current identity as fact
Here’s where the neuroscience gets uncomfortable.
Your brain is a prediction machine. Neuroscientist Anil Seth describes your sense of self as a “controlled hallucination,” a model your brain constructs and then defends like it’s reality. Your brain doesn’t just hold your identity. It maintains it through five mechanisms working nonstop.
Confirmation bias filters your perception so you notice evidence that confirms who you think you are and miss what contradicts it.
Self-consistent behavior drives you to act in ways that validate the current identity, even when it hurts you. Your brain edits your memories to keep the story coherent. The people around you reinforce the pattern by expecting you to stay the same.
And underneath all of it, your identity thermostat keeps pulling you back to baseline.
So when you lost the weight and then gained it back? Your identity’s set point corrected the outcome. The weight dropped below what the identity allowed, so the system dragged it back.
Two people, same plan, completely different results
Picture two people. Same age. Same access to groceries, gyms, and information. One of them runs the identity “I’m a healthy person.” The other runs “I’m someone who struggles with my weight.”
Person A doesn’t need much willpower. That identity generates a mindset (”health is built through small, consistent choices”), which generates beliefs (”my body responds to care”), which generates habits (daily walks, cooking most meals, consistent sleep). Everything flows downstream with no white-knuckling required.
Person B could follow Person A’s exact plan. Same meals, same gym schedule, same sleep routine. For a few weeks, it might even work. But Person B’s identity is still running contradictory software underneath. The moment life gets hard, the habits crack because nothing below is holding them up.
The identity running the plan was the variable the whole time.
This is the piece the diet industry will never tell you, because it can’t be packaged into a 21-day challenge or a meal prep subscription. The people who seem to “just get it” don’t have more discipline. They have a different prediction running at the top of the stack. And that prediction is something you can change.
What actually changes identity (it’s not what Instagram tells you)
Positive affirmations can backfire. Research shows that when your identity contradicts what you’re affirming, the gap between “I am confident and healthy” and what your brain believes creates a mismatch your brain resolves by doubling down on the negative self-view.
Vision boards and raw motivation can’t touch this level either.
What works is something neuroscientists call a prediction error: an experience that contradicts what your brain expects to be true about you.
When reality clashes with the brain’s model in a way that’s emotionally significant, self-relevant, and repeated, the brain doesn’t dismiss it. It updates. The prediction changes. And when the prediction changes, everything downstream reorganizes.
Old beliefs start to feel silly. New habits feel natural instead of forced, and outcomes shift as a byproduct of a mindset that no longer needs to be manufactured.
This is the documented mechanism behind every form of lasting change, from therapy to transformative experiences. It’s also a learnable skill.
Change what your brain predicts about who you are, and the behaviors that used to require a death grip start happening on their own.
Your brain has been keeping you consistent with an identity that no longer serves you. Not because it’s broken. Because it’s doing exactly what it was built to do.
So the real question is whether you’re willing to stop fighting the prediction and start changing it.
P.S. If this reframed something for you, forward it to a friend who’s been stuck in the willpower trap. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can give someone is a new explanation for why the old plans kept failing.