A Lesson About Willpower

Sydney Milson, ND
Oct 2
3 min read

Well, it's really a story about my own lesson with will power.

I quickly fell in love with pushing myself and the feeling of accomplishment that came after a tough CrossFit workout at the age of 14.

To this day, there’s nothing (for me) that flips a bad mood, clears my head, or fires me up like a hard workout.

I’ve always been a go-getter outside of the gym too. I like taking on too much, dreaming too big, doing it all. And for most of my life, I believed that if I just put my head down and worked really hard, good things would happen. And honestly? They mostly did.

So naturally, I assumed weight loss worked the same way. If you wanted it badly enough, you’d just try harder. Push harder. Stick with it.

Until I learned that it doesn’t work like that at all. Willpower doesn’t work in weight loss.

I never saw myself working in weight loss. But here I am.

And to be honest, the area of weight loss has far less to do with weight itself than most people think.

Weight impacts us all in some way:

• Medically, through excess dysfunctional adipose tissue that can affect metabolic health.

• Socially, through the constant pressure to be this size or that size.

• In health care, where weight can change the care you receive.

• In everyday life, shaping how people see your competence.

• And maybe most importantly, in how you see yourself.

But what if it didn’t have to? What if you could let go of the shame, guilt, and struggle — simply by understanding how you got here?

Did you know up to 80% of body size is genetically predetermined?

We don’t look at someone else and say:

“If I just tried harder, maybe I’d be as tall as them.”

“If I just had more willpower, maybe my eyes would be as bright as theirs.”

That would sound absurd, right?

But when it comes to weight, we do say:

“If I just tried harder, I’d be slim, small, or shaped like them.”

That’s the trap. We blame ourselves for something that is deeply rooted in biology.

Through my Obesity and Metabolic Health Fellowship with Dr. Ashley White, MD, I’ve learned and unlearned so much about the real science of weight — the physiological, psychological, and environmental factors that all play a role.

It’s not as simple as move more, eat less. Oversimplified advice like that keeps people stuck in weight cycling, trapped in self-blame, asking: “Why can’t I do this?”

That’s why I created For You: Beyond the Scale.

This program is for you if you:

Want to stop wasting your precious energy, life force, and joy blaming yourself for not being “successful” with weight loss.
Want to enjoy dinner out with friends without spiraling into guilt and restriction the next day.
Want to be an example of health, joy, and self-love for your kids, who are watching how you talk about your body.
Want to finally understand your body and your biology — so you can stop fighting it and start working with it.