The Psychology of Weight Loss

When it comes to the psychology of weight loss, what if the reason you keep struggling isn’t because you can’t lose weight… but because you can’t keep it off?

Most women over 35 don’t actually have a weight loss problem. They have a weight gain problem that’s happening during their “normal life,” when they’re not dieting.

Every time you stop restricting, counting, cutting carbs, skipping meals, or doing the latest plan, the weight slowly creeps back on. That’s not a failure of willpower. That’s a lifestyle that was never built to support the body you want.

In this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode, I break down the pattern I’ve seen after 11 years as a nutritionist, helping over 1,000 women, and the one I lived myself when I was 215 pounds. Diet. Lose weight. Go back to normal. Regain. Repeat.

The issue isn’t that diets don’t work. It’s that they never teach you how to eat like a normal person in a way you can sustain for decades.

Until your “normal life” changes, you’ll stay stuck chasing the next fix!

If you’re tired of starting over, tired of extreme plans, and ready to understand the deeper psychology behind lasting weight loss, this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode will completely shift how you see your struggle.

Because sustainable weight loss isn’t about going harder, it’s about building a new normal you actually enjoy living in!

In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:

• Why Weight Gain (not weight loss) is the Real Problem for Women 35+
• The First Psychology of Weight Loss Mindset Shift
• The Second (Most Important) Psychology Principle of Weight Loss
• What it Actually Takes to Maintain Weight Loss for Decades

Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify or Amazon Music

Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes

• Why Smart Women Struggle With Weight Loss
• Maintaining Weight Loss – Maria’s Weight Journey
• Eating Healthy Foods is Preventing Weight Loss
• Calorie Counting Your Way To No Where
• Why You Keep Regaining Weight

Why Fat Loss Feels Harder After 35 & What Actually Works Now

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The Psychology of Weight Loss Podcast Transcript

You don’t have a weight loss problem. You have a weight gaining problem when you are living your normal life not on a diet. Anytime you’re not severely restricting your calories and starving, cutting out foods like carbs, going back to keto going back to Weight Watchers for the 20th time, doing Optavia, or a shake program or fasting.

Anytime you’re not on a strict diet and severely restricting yourself, you are actively gaining weight in your normal day-to-day life.

That is not a weight loss problem that is a weight gain problem.

You can lose weight doing any mainstream diet, but you can’t keep it off because they don’t teach you how to eat like a normal person. You do that diet, you lose weight, then you go back to your normal life and regain the weight and are back to searching for a diet to lose weight.

Your normal life and how you’re living your normal life is causing you to gain weight slowly overtime. That is not a weight loss problem. That is a weight gaining problem.

When I was 215 pounds, I always thought if I could just stick it out long enough on a diet, I could lose weight and go back to my normal life. It never dawned on me when I was 215 pounds that it was my normal life that was the real issue.

I’ve been a nutritionist for 11 years I’ve helped over 1000 women over 35 and I lost 80 pounds 17 years ago. This is a pattern I’ve seen in myself as well as many of the clients that I’ve worked with throughout the years.

Always thinking this is a weight loss problem and then searching for a diet plan to quickly fix my weight loss problem. I was living in a diet lifestyle.

Diet then go back to normal. Diet then go back to normal. Most women over 35 are doing the same. They’re living that a diet lifestyle. Like dieting, restricting and starving has become part of your lifestyle.

You’re always gaining weight when you’re living your normal life and then you’re always trying to lose weight by going on some diet so you’re just in this pattern of constantly chasing diets and trends and different things.

You’re never really getting to a place where you’re healthy and you have healthy behaviors with food and exercise and you’re not really addressing the root cause of your weight gain which is how you’re living your normal life, and until you really dig into that you keep living the dieters lifestyle.

This is where the first piece of the psychology of weight loss comes in because you must accept that the way that you’re living your normal life must change because it’s causing weight gain slowly overtime, and in order to maintain weight loss forever, you must accept you can’t go back to the lifestyle that caused the weight gain.

Most women miss this because they’re like oh, my God I feel so bad I wanna be un-fat right now get me un-fat I’ll do whatever it takes to get un-fat! So, you do whatever extreme thing for like 3 months or 6 months to get un-fat, but then you go back to your normal life then you’re slowly gaining weight back.

If you want to become leaner, healthier, age well and stay there forever, there’s has to be an acceptance that you can’t go back to your normal life that caused that weight gain. I know that acceptance is hard because when I was 215 pounds, I had to come to this acceptance too.

Here’s the second psychology piece of weight loss and this is the most important part to listen to. If you want to be healthy the rest of your life and maintain weight loss the rest of your life, you can’t approach changing your lifestyle by doing the same diet tricks you’ve always done.

When I begin working with new clients, I always see them revert to their diet mentality and try to repeat the same things that don’t work. I catch them on this and gently question them to get them to think differently.

Here’s a few examples just from new clients who began working with me this year.

One of my clients has dieted her entire life and she told me every time she starts a diet; she eats hard boiled eggs for breakfast. Her normal lifestyle is getting a McDonald’s egg sandwich. I asked her “do you like eating hard boiled eggs for breakfast.” She told me “well, that’s what I always eat when I’m trying to lose weight, but no, not really.”

That is exactly why my client has struggled to lose weight because her approach is extreme. She had no idea she was doing this until I pointed this out.

You see this is what so many of you are struggling. You are taking healthy foods and acting like an extreme dieter. You have an unhealthy behavior with healthy foods. You’re not building a way of eating that is normal and that is enjoyable.

Yes, a hard-boiled egg is a healthy food, but first that’s not a meal and second, that is too extreme of a change from a McDonald’s egg sandwich.

Remember you have a weight gaining problem so if you are taking healthy foods then trying to crash diet using healthy foods it’s only a matter of time before you get sick of that and you return to your normal life where you are slowly gaining weight.

You need to build a way of eating based on your own personal preferences. This is what I help my clients with along with un-dieting their brain because they just think this is normal.

Again, because you’re still thinking this is a weight loss problem. You’re not seeing it’s a weight gaining problem and that you need to build a way of eating that you enjoy so you can stick with it the next 20, 30 or more years of your life.

As a side note, the same client I coached her on eating pizza, and you know what she told me? That she always quit eating pizza every time she was trying to lose weight and how she realized with our coaching that she couldn’t do that anymore.

Right, because unless you’re going to give up pizza for the rest of your life, how will you ever know how to eat it to stay thin and healthy the rest of your life?

These are new skills you learn when you go on a weight loss journey that help you build a healthy lifestyle. This is exactly what I teach my clients and help them with.

Most women are experts in cutting foods out like pizza, and then when you do eat pizza you feel guilty. By cutting it out, you are saying this food is wrong.

And when you feel guilty because you think you did something wrong, you overeat and you are more likely to backslide into unhealthy habits with food, which is why it’s so important to build things like pizza into your plan. Should you eat pizza every day? No, you are smart enough to know that. Just like you’re smart enough not to feed your children pizza every day.

If you want to master a healthy lifestyle so that you can get weight loss results and maintain weight loss results forever, then you must build the skill of including foods you enjoy and building a way of eating you enjoy. No diet will teach you that skill.

That is what nutritionists like me are trained in, helping people make sustainable changes like this.

Here’s another example. One of my clients told me that she thought she should cut out her after dinner snack. I asked her “do you enjoy having a snack after dinner” and she told me “well, actually I do.”

This is another example of diet mentality and trying to manipulate foods instead of building a structured way of eating that can work for you long-term. I explained to my client how if the goal is to have an enjoyable way of eating forever that we shouldn’t cut things out that bring her joy.

She realized she needs to work on building that snack after dinner into her plan. Cutting out was her still acting like a dieter, but she didn’t realize that was what she was doing until I asked if it was something that she enjoyed.

This is exactly why so many of you are struggling. You’re going on the diet, so you go to the extreme with food. You do not recognize that you’re still in that diet mentality.

You go to this extreme place to lose weight but then you go back to your normal way of living and eating at some point and you’re back to slowly gaining weight over time.

The number one thing to understand is you can’t keep repeating those old dieting patterns. You want to build a lifestyle with an enjoyable eating structure based on your personal preferences.

Not just go on a diet. Not play tricks with foods and cut things out. Not just count calories.

This is why women struggle with calorie counting because they’re still in that dieter’s mindset and taking these extreme approaches with healthy foods.

No mainstream diet will teach you how to build a way of eating based on your personal preferences. A lot of diets out there have healthy foods in them, which is exactly why they are misleading because they’re not sustainable.

If you’re following a diet with a name or one that tells you what to eat and what to count out, I guarantee it won’t teach you how to build a way of eating you can stick to so that you can become leaner and healthier and stay there forever.

Remember you don’t have a weight loss problem. You have a weight gaining issue when you’re not on a diet and you’re living your normal life.

Your normal life and how you look at feeding your body and approaching losing weight needs adjusting.

So, your homework is to audit your normal life when you are not dieting. How active you are? Are you mostly in a seated position all day and on the weekends? Are you mostly sitting all winter long?

You can’t become a leaner, healthier person and stay there if your lifestyle is sitting on the couch all weekend because it’s cold outside. Finding a solution to move your body even when it’s cold out is something you must do to get leaner and healthier and stay there.

How are you feeding your body? Do you eat actual meals or are you eating single foods? Are you eating enough lean protein and fiber over the course of most days?

By evaluating how you live your normal life, you will find clues about what is causing weight gain. These are the areas you want to improve upon step-by-step without being a crazy dieter.

When I was 215, I was living the chair-to-chair lifestyle. Relocating from chair-to-chair all day long. During the summer I was sitting even more because in Phoenix it’s too hot outside. I had to find solutions to move my body in the summer because outdoors wasn’t an option.

I was barely eating anything for breakfast and lunch and then overeating late at night. I wasn’t intentional at all about how I ate. I was just eating erratically.

Oh, it’s lunch! What am I eating? Then I would just grab whatever was easiest like some random snack. I never put any forethought into what I was eating.

When I began losing 80 pounds, I began with a 10-minute walk and built the skill of doing that 10-minute walk daily for many weeks. I didn’t change anything else. That was the only habit I worked on.

Over time, I gradually increased how much I was walking and as I did that, I started adding more lean protein, fruits and veggies and fiber to my meals. I never cut any foods out.

In fact, I made sure I included a cookie with lunch and included a snack after dinner. I budgeted for it within my calories and planned for it. I was intentional and I built a way of eating that works for me to where it became my new normal.

I built a new normal lifestyle and that is what has allowed me to maintain an 80-pound weight loss for 17 years.

Ok friends, that’s all I have for you today! Remember weight loss is not the problem. Weight gain when you’re not on a diet, living your normal life is the problem.