“I’ve ruined it now. I might as well just give up.” If you’ve ever said those words to yourself — after eating something “off plan,” missing a workout, or having a bad day — you’re not alone. And you’re not weak. You’re stuck in one of the most common and destructive thinking patterns there is: all-or-nothing thinking.

I see this pattern in almost every woman I work with. The ones who are the most driven, the most determined, the most desperate to “get it right” — they’re almost always the ones trapped in this cycle. Because all-or-nothing thinking doesn’t come from laziness. It comes from perfectionism. And perfectionism, when it comes to health and weight loss, is one of the biggest obstacles you’ll ever face.

What all-or-nothing thinking looks like

All-or-nothing thinking — sometimes called black-and-white thinking — is exactly what it sounds like. Everything is either perfect or it’s a disaster. You’re either “on it” or you’ve “fallen off the wagon.” There’s no middle ground. No room for grey.

In practice, it shows up in ways like this:

  • You eat a biscuit at 11am and decide the whole day is “ruined,” so you eat whatever you want for the rest of the day because you’ll “start again tomorrow”
  • You miss a Monday gym session and write off the entire week — “I’ll start fresh next Monday”
  • You follow a plan rigidly for three weeks, have one indulgent weekend, and quit entirely
  • You eat perfectly all week but “let yourself go” at the weekend, swinging between restriction and excess
  • You set an ambitious goal (exercise five times a week, cut all sugar, drink three litres of water daily), and when you inevitably can’t maintain it perfectly, you abandon the whole thing

The underlying belief is always the same: if I can’t do it perfectly, there’s no point doing it at all.

Why perfectionists struggle most with weight loss

This might sound counterintuitive. Surely perfectionists, with all their discipline and drive, should be the best at managing their weight? In theory, yes. In reality, the opposite is true.

Perfectionism sets you up for failure because it creates standards that are impossible to maintain. Nobody eats perfectly every day. Nobody exercises every day without fail. Nobody gets eight hours of sleep every single night. Life doesn’t work that way. Children get ill, work gets stressful, plans change, energy fluctuates, and sometimes you just really want a takeaway on a Friday night.

When your standard is perfection, any deviation feels like failure. And once you’ve “failed,” the perfectionist brain doesn’t say never mind, get back on track tomorrow. It says see? You can’t do it. You always do this. What’s the point?

And then the binge begins. Not because you’re hungry. Not because you lack knowledge. But because the emotional weight of perceived failure triggers a cascade of comfort-seeking behaviour. You eat to soothe the disappointment. You eat because if today’s already “ruined,” you might as well enjoy it. You eat because starting again on Monday gives you a clean slate — a fresh hit of that perfectionist motivation.

And so the cycle continues. Restriction. Slip. Shame. Binge. Guilt. “I’ll start again on Monday.” Restriction. Slip. Over and over and over.

One meal doesn’t undo anything. One missed workout doesn’t erase a week. Consistency beats perfection, every time.

The Monday mindset: “I’ll start again next week”

I call this the Monday Mindset, and it’s one of the most telling signs of all-or-nothing thinking. The idea that you need a clean starting point — a Monday, a first of the month, a “new year, new me” — to begin making positive changes.

Here’s what the Monday Mindset actually does: it gives you permission to abandon your wellbeing for the rest of the week. “I’ll start again on Monday” becomes a free pass to eat everything in sight between now and then. It turns Wednesday into a write-off and the weekend into a last supper.

But Monday never works the way you imagine it will. Monday rolls around and you’re bloated from the weekend, tired, guilty, and starting from a place of punishment rather than self-care. The motivation lasts a few days, maybe a week, and then something disrupts it. And back you go.

The antidote to the Monday Mindset isn’t more discipline on Mondays. It’s letting go of the idea that you need a perfect starting point at all. You can make your next good choice right now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Right now, in whatever imperfect, messy moment you’re in.

One meal doesn’t undo anything

Let me put this in perspective with some simple maths.

You eat roughly 21 meals a week. If 18 of those meals are nourishing and balanced, and three of them are indulgent, you’ve eaten well 85% of the time. That’s excellent. That’s more than enough for your body to thrive. No single meal — not even a spectacularly indulgent one — can undo the good work of the other twenty.

The same is true for exercise. If you planned four sessions this week and only managed two, that’s two sessions your body benefited from. Two sessions of strength building, cardiovascular health, mood regulation, and metabolic support. The fact that you didn’t do four doesn’t erase the value of the two you did.

All-or-nothing thinking tells you that two out of four is failure. Reality says it’s two more than zero. And consistently doing two when life is busy beats doing four for one perfect week followed by three weeks of nothing.

This is what I mean when I talk about sustainable change. It’s not about perfect weeks. It’s about mostly-good-enough weeks, strung together over months and years.

Building self-compassion (not more discipline)

If you recognise yourself in what I’ve described so far, I want you to hear this: the answer is not more discipline. You have plenty of discipline. The answer is self-compassion.

Self-compassion means treating yourself the way you’d treat a friend. When a friend tells you she ate a whole pizza and feels terrible about it, you don’t say “well, you’ve completely blown it now, you’d better start again next Monday.” You say “one pizza doesn’t matter, you’re doing great, just have a good meal tomorrow.”

Why can’t you say that to yourself?

Self-compassion isn’t soft. It isn’t letting yourself off the hook. It’s actually the harder path, because it requires you to sit with imperfection rather than retreating into the comfortable extremes of either rigid control or total abandonment.

Research consistently shows that self-compassion — not self-criticism — is what drives sustainable behaviour change. People who respond to setbacks with kindness rather than judgement are more likely to get back on track quickly. They spend less time in the shame spiral and more time taking positive action.

Discipline gets you started. Self-compassion keeps you going.

The 80/20 reality of sustainable change

Here’s a framework that helps many of my clients: the 80/20 approach. Not as a strict rule — that would defeat the point — but as a general guideline.

Aim to make choices that support your health about 80% of the time. The other 20%? That’s life. That’s birthday cake, Friday night wine, Sunday brunch with friends, the chocolate bar you fancied on a Wednesday afternoon. It’s not “cheating.” It’s being human.

The 80/20 approach works because it removes the pressure of perfection while still maintaining enough consistency for your body to respond positively. It allows you to enjoy food, participate in social occasions, honour cravings without guilt, and still move steadily towards your goals.

Compare that with the all-or-nothing approach, which is typically 100% perfect for a few days or weeks, followed by 0% for the rest. Over a month, the person who’s been consistent at 80% has done far more for their body than the person who swung between extremes.

Small wins compound: why consistency beats perfection

I’m a big believer in the power of small wins. Not dramatic overhauls, not complete lifestyle transformations overnight, but small, boring, unglamorous changes that compound over time.

Adding a portion of protein to your breakfast. Drinking one extra glass of water. Walking for 15 minutes after lunch. Going to bed 20 minutes earlier. These don’t feel significant in the moment. Nobody posts about them on social media. But stack them up over three months, six months, a year, and the cumulative effect is profound.

This is how real transformation happens. Not in a blaze of Monday motivation, but in the quiet, daily commitment to doing slightly better than yesterday. Not perfect. Just slightly better.

And here’s the beautiful thing about small wins: they build evidence. Every time you make a good choice, you create a tiny piece of proof that you can do this. Over time, that evidence accumulates until it shifts your identity. You stop being someone who “always fails at this” and become someone who consistently shows up for herself. Not perfectly. Not spectacularly. But reliably.

You don’t need to be perfect. You need to be consistent. And those two things are very, very different.

If this article has resonated with you — if you’ve recognised the patterns, the Monday restarts, the perfectionism that keeps you stuck — I want you to know that breaking free is possible. It doesn’t happen overnight. It requires unlearning years of conditioning. But it’s one of the most liberating things you’ll ever do.

In F.L.A.M.E, mindset work is a core part of the programme — not an afterthought. Because I’ve seen, over and over again, that the reason diets fail isn’t the food. It’s the thinking. Change the thinking, and everything else follows.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. And let go of the rest.