Most people who set out to lose weight fail.

They fail, but not because they didn’t have the willpower to stick to their plan or because life got in the way.

It’s common to tell yourself sob stories like, “I just don’t have the willpower,” “I have no self-control,” “I’m around too much temptation,” “Everyone around me, my family/friends/spouse eat unhealthily so I end up doing the same,” “I love food too much,” or “I’m too lazy to work out.” However, the reality is that these are just the surface level reasons as to why you’re unable to achieve what you want.

The core, underlying reality as to why you fail is because the majority of your focus and energy is on the wrong thing.

It is so easy to believe that the only two aspects of the weight loss process that you need to pay attention to are your diet and workout regimen. It’s tempting to think that the most important questions to answer are what you should eat, what you should avoid like the plague, and when you need to eat. To focus on what workout you should do, whether you need to add strength to your routine, or whether you should maximize cardiovascular exercises.

While diet and movement are the foundational aspects of setting a weight loss plan, because they govern your energy intake versus expenditure, they shouldn’t be the things that take up most of your energy.

Your diet and workout should be something that you intuitively like to follow, that’s aligned with your goals in a realistic manner, that’s already set up as a non-negotiable part of your daily routine, and that runs on autopilot.

The areas where you should actually devote the majority of your energy and focus to are your mindset, emotions, and energetic state.

Think about it for a minute. The reason you binge-ate isn’t because you don’t have self-control—it’s because in a given moment, your emotions got the better of you and drove you to it. Emotional management was necessary in this situation.

The reason you skipped that workout isn’t because you’re lazy; it’s because you felt low and didn’t nurture your energetic state. Once you master living in an open, self-loving vibration, and pay attention to being active throughout the day with small steps, you won’t feel as sluggish and bogged down in your body, and you’ll feel purposeful about your exercise regimen. You’ll actually feel like moving your body rather than telling yourself, “I’m too tired to work out now.”

The reason you keep telling yourself, “Let me eat everything I want today, and I’ll start my diet again tomorrow or on Monday,” is because mentally you have perfectionist tendencies. It’s either all or nothing. You need to work on your mindset and relaxing this habit, knowing that progress is always better than perfection.

You reach out for those foods you know you’re not supposed to in a social situation because in your subconscious mind you still think of yourself as a fat person rather than a fit person. You succumb to temptation, because deep down you feel weak and believe food controls you, rather than the other way around.

You need to work at cultivating a healthier mindset about who you are before any sustainable change around eating can happen.

How can you pay more attention to your mind, emotions, and energy to get the results that you want?

You first realize that what you believe about yourself is who you will become. The way to hone into the right mindset is to affirm that you are fit, beautiful, stunning, amazing, and whatever else you are striving to be, rather than constantly telling yourself that you have tons of weight to lose and that you’re not good enough. Go from criticizing yourself to complimenting yourself regularly.

Instead of beating yourself up for missing one workout, tell yourself how amazing you are for working out four times this week, and that your body needed a day off, so you took it. Work on telling yourself that you can do this rather than you can’t. Talk to yourself the way you would speak to someone you love. Pay careful attention to your internal inner dialogue, because that is literally the stemming point of change. Change how you talk to yourself, and watch your actions consequently change.

The other aspect about mindset is to examine your recurring habits. Do you exhibit perfectionist, all-or-nothing behaviors? Allow some room for error and know that every single person who has been on a weight loss journey has slipped up at some point or another. Don’t let one act of perceived sabotage allow you to sabotage your whole day, week, or month. Give yourself the permission to be human—because guess what? You are.

Work at your emotions and actively manage them. Any process of change, especially changing your body, brings up so many uncomfortable emotions. Process this and take the time to meditate over your feelings, giving them full permission to be part of your experience. Realize that just because you had a bad day doesn’t mean you need to abuse your body by overeating. Using food isn’t a healthy outlet to deal with your emotions, and once you consciously shift your focus into managing your state, you’ll improve your effectiveness.

The way to work at your energetic state is to live in a vibration of self-love, even when its hard and you don’t like the way you look and feel. Engage in activities like yoga to clear out stuck or old energy, get up from your desk every hour to induce movement, splash your face with cold water a few times each day to immediately change your state. Stretch and feel open and expanded rather than contracted. Allow yourself to be in a dynamic state of change, and feel it for all that it is.

Once you approach this with more mindfulness, you’re less likely to go back to your old ways that don’t serve your greatest good.