weight loss over forty

I was always waiting for a moment of clarity – an Aha! – in which everything would become clear to me. I would know the path forward to overcome food obsession, overeating, bingeing, purging.

In that moment, I would know what I needed to do. I would know what life would look like moving forward. It would be inspiring. Motivating. (Interesting to note that none of my visions of the future included struggle. Somehow, I would one day wake up as a super human being and nothing would be hard.) I had a vision of what recovery was supposed to be like, what change was supposed to be like, but the plan for getting there was always hazy. I had a sense that I could achieve it, but not concrete steps to take.

If creating your own food protocol and plans still feels overwhelming and intimidating to you, start small. Choose one meal to begin. Generally speaking, the easiest one is probably breakfast. If you’ve been eating breakfast bars and drinking breakfast shakes, or you’ve been running through fast food windows for egg sandwiches and deep-fried hash browns, that could be the place to start.

Ask yourself: What do I want for breakfast that will nourish and give me energy, and is easy to prepare?

Make a list.

Then make a decision: What are you going to have for breakfast this week, Monday through Friday? (Leave the weekends off for now.)

Write it all down.
Post it – keep it visible.
Then prep for it.
Eat the breakfasts you’ve planned. (Not the breakfasts you want instead, in the moment, when you just don’t feel like eating what you planned and prepped.)
This is how you build trust with yourself.

Don’t worry about the other meals. Don’t be in a hurry.
Get your breakfasts down.
Do this for one week, two weeks, one month. Whatever it takes.
You’re building trust. You have your own back.

When you begin a new diet, you feel empowered.
“Yes!” you say, “I’ve got this. This time, I’m going to make it work.”

You shop for the foods you will eat. 

You prepare dishes and meals ahead of time.

You tell your family and friends what you’re doing. 

You might even build a support system to help you along. 

This is all good stuff. No doubt.

You are psyched. 

You follow the plan. 

You lose weight. 

People might even begin to notice the changes. 

Yes, yes, yes, this is it. 

You’re on a roll, in a flow state.

Then one day, it’s not so easy anymore. The flow has stopped. 

You find that you don’t want to eat what you’ve been eating. 

You want to have what everyone else is having instead. 

You’re tired. 

Just this once… you’ll have something else. 

Then there’s just one more time, and you’ll get back on track after. 

But there’s always another just this once. 

You’re bewildered and panicky. 

What’s going on? 

You loved what you were doing… how you were eating and taking care of yourself.

It’s seemingly gone, evaporated.

This was the way things rolled out for me over and over again on my decades-long quest to overcome overeating, emotional eating, binge eating, and weight gain. I don’t even know anymore how many times I found myself confused, demoralized, and desperate to recreate what I knew (thought) was the solution to the (food, eating, me) problem. 

Here’s what I discovered and want you to know:

First, it’s normal that it gets hard.

In that space between my circumstances and thoughts and my responses, I was frantic, agitated, full of despair, and wanting nothing more than to be elsewhere. My response was to numb out with food. I left very little room in that space for calm, peace, contemplation and reflection. My goal was to move out of that space as quickly as I possibly could.

Over the past several years now, I have worked to cultivate a new space.
In this new space, I pause and I breathe. Slow, gentle, deep breaths.
There is no rush, no emergency.
In this new space, I have an abundance of compassion for myself.
In this new space, I show up to simply be, feel, and listen.
In this new space, I slow down and check in with kindness. and examine what has triggered me.
In this new space, I release judgment. I choose to allow, accept, and embrace emotion rather than resist and make it bigger.

In this new space, I ask myself, “What do I really need right now? How can I best support myself?”

Then I listen for the response.

We attach so much of our self-worth to our ability to suck it up and lose weight for the sole purpose of having a smaller body.

It’s exhausting. And misguided.

The purpose of food and eating is to create and maintain optimal health.
The purpose of food is not to punish and reward ourselves.

But that is what we have come to expect in our diet culture. We are either being good, restricting, and losing weight, or we are being bad, overeating, and gaining weight.

We have learned not to trust ourselves with food and eating, and to instead look to outside sources of expertise because, surely, we don’t know what we are doing.

But we do know. We’ve always known.

I know this might come across as cheesy, but sustainable weight loss really begins with love.

Last night, I was thinking about all the things I want to share with my clients – the benefits of no sugar, no flour, intermittent fasting, rebalancing insulin levels, creating a protocol and planning meals, creating a new mindset and understanding thought work and self-coaching, learning how to experience all emotions, creating healthy habits, and taking beautiful care of oneself. All. The. Things.

As I was thinking about these things, it quietly dawned on me. It all begins with love. Heaps and heaps of love.

Mistakes mean you’re a human being.
Learning from mistakes means you’re evolving.
Figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t, one day, one step, one mistake at a time is growth.

Mistakes move you forward.