What's the hardest thing about eating a healthy, plant-based diet?
Is it the omnipresent availability of cheap, convenient, unhealthy, hyper-palatable food?
Is it the persistent marketing of that food in our media environments?
Is it the doubts about the science sewn by keto and paleo proponents?
Is it our cultural connections to dishes we can no longer eat?
Is it social pressure from family and friends to "fit in" and not be a joyless fanatic?
Is it the challenge of being a beginner again, learning about new ingredients and cooking techniques?
Is it the voice inside that says you'll never succeed on a diet, so why bother trying again?
Is it our stressful lives?
Different people will have different answers.
From my perspective as a coach who's worked with thousands of people over the past decade, none of these is the central issue.
For proof, just look at the folks who are managing just fine, despite any and all of the above challenges.
We all deal with the constant availability of crap - I can get Snickers Bars at Lowes Home Improvement and Skittles at PetSmart, for crying out loud. But some of us aren't tempted by that smorgasbord, or manage to withstand the temptation and not indulge.
We all are subject to commercials, billboards, social media posts, and PR about bacon, grass-fed beef, and milk mustaches. But not all of us are moved by those ads. I got a spam email today trying to sell me magic chewing gum that would restore my gums overnight, and somehow I managed to resist clicking the link that would surely have infected my computer and put my email address on thousands of "we've got a live one" databases.
And you can say the same about the other factors as well: they are dealbreakers for some, but not for all.
Which means that the big problem, the root cause, the "cause première" (as Google Translate tells me they say in Paris), is something else.