Specifically, how much of our understanding of weight and healthy living relies on willpower, and how it's the hidden force that sabotages every effort.

We aren't designed as human beings to resist pleasurable foods, even if we know that consuming them will be hard on our psyches and bodies.

My thesis is that reliance on willpower is the underlying cause of lifetimes of dieting failures, weight regain, abandoned plans, and incomplete fitness programs.

To take it a step further: we use it everywhere there's an issue. To improve sleep quality. To order the healthy thing at a restaurant. To make a nourishing meal at home. To resist sugar. To drink less alcohol.

All doomed to failure, because willpower is the wrong tool for the job.

Willpower and, by extension, motivation, are useful for short, goal-oriented jobs. They are woefully inadequate for resisting the onslaught of sugar, alcohol, and food processing our society dishes out. Developing any beneficial practice should not begin with using as much force as possible.

How I know this

For those of you who are new here (welcome), I lost 55 pounds in 2010 and kept it off for the 15+ years since. I lost it at age 40, and I'm now 55. I didn't diet AT ALL to produce these results.

• no tracking
• no caloric restriction
• I ate carbs
• no fasting

I was in perimenopause for the initial loss and subsequently went through my menopause transition. I mention this because it flies in the face of popular understanding of midlife challenges.

I completely gave up on dieting in 2008, and that forced me to understand health in a completely different way.

The piece below (gift link) is what propelled me into national attention and ultimately to found not another diet.

So what does any of that have to do with an 'ownable idea'?

I teach a lot of tools, heuristics, and practices that, in combination, produce a healthy weight but, evaluated individually, look like a mishmash.

And it's been stifling my growth.

• Do I teach about real food cooking? Yes
• Do I teach about food integrity and decoding ultraprocessed foods? Yes
• Do I teach life-navigation tools, heuristics, and practices that produce a healthy weight? Yes
• Do I spot damaging ideas of health in culture and dissect them? Yes
• Do I speak directly to the specific challenges of women entering or in midlife? Yes
• Do I teach people how to use their hunger as a valuable tool? Yes!

I could go on, because there's more.

I practice and teach life engineering, and that's multi-pronged by design. A no-diet, no-drug healthy weight requires an understanding of these ideas practiced together. That's the magic.

But these ideas can feel a bit sprawling without a unifying thesis. That's how my book was starting to look, which negated the whole point of writing it in the first place. I wanted a place where all these ideas made sense in relation to each other. I want reading this book to feel like a deep exhale, not more overwhelm.

Deep research also turned up that my working title was an already well-worn path, littered with books, blog posts, and essays about no-diet weight loss that were, in fact, diets. For obvious reasons, that was not the company I wanted to keep.

So, back to the drawing board for the unifying theory.

Then along came the ownable idea – what was the idea that pulled this together, and territory no one else has trodden.

What makes an idea ownable is the distinctive language you use to make it memorable. The story you tell that shapes what you believe into a message your audience didn't know they needed to hear. The framing that feels fresh yet familiar.

That made it simple (not easy, much like all my work). Then a few more weeks of work to tease out what tied all these ideas together and stood on territory not already covered by a different author.

Willpower.

Here's my thesis for the book

We think summoning willpower is what's needed to lose weight, but that's exactly what keeps us locked into cycles of losing and regaining. Willpower isn't the fuel, it's the warning light. Our reliance on willpower-based strategies is the weakness, not an individual issue.

This book is for you if you've lamented your lack of willpower, blamed your waning motivation (despite having looked for solutions and tried your whole adult life), or thought maybe you "just can't stick to anything."

Those stories are a byproduct of dieting, which is bound for failure and not any sort of truth about you.

My book will help you gain a deeper understanding of what's holding you back.

Not only do you not need willpower, but your daily living shouldn't require it.

That's called life engineering, and I'll explain it in the book. Chapter by chapter, we'll explore sleep, sugar, dieting, what to eat, your hunger, and more through the lens of life engineering as an alternative to summoning willpower.

Are you excited? I am. This approach healed my sense of self, reclaimed my confidence, and brought lasting success, and I can't wait to share it with you.

I need one thing: please vote on your favorite title.

Three covers, one question: which one would make you stop browsing and pick it up? Tap any cover to cast your vote. It takes ten seconds, and I'll send you the results.

Cast my vote →

Voting closes Sunday, September 6.

Take good care,

Rebecca

PS. This is your sign to start weightlifting. I have, and it's helped in all sorts of ways.

PPS. I usually take the month of August off, but I have done a very bad job of that this year. To remedy this, I'm off to camp through the Catskills and Vermont for two weeks. I'll be back online mid-September — and I'll share the title vote results then.