Most of us tend to adhere to the outdated Cartesian principle that motivation is first-person transparent: that is, that we all know why we do what we do, despite the considerable evidence that this is not always true.
David Livingstone Smith, Why We Lie
Each day a woman somewhere decides that she needs to go on a diet. Yet she truly has no idea why she needs to go on a diet in the first place, thus ensuring her eventual failure.
A woman does not ask herself the question, “What’s in it for me?” when considering a diet. Nevertheless, a woman will eagerly lose weight for her wedding day, a high school reunion, or even a job interview.
Nowhere in this reasoning are the woman, herself, and her specific needs. What happens after the wedding, or the reunion, or when she skims a magazine filled with size-two models? All the motivation and “want-to” is sapped out of her.
As author Malcolm Gladwell suggests in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, psychological cues prime people to make specific choices unconsciously. But too often, women are unaware of the psychological cues that trigger their every day decisions regarding diet and exercise. This ignorance of their subconscious motives for dieting causes dieting failure for women.