Avoid Starting Over in January with Weight Loss – Defeating All Or Nothing Holiday Thinking

If you’re already telling yourself you’ll “start over in January with weight loss,” this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode is a must listen!

The holidays aren’t the reason you feel off track with your weight-loss goals. It’s the all-or-nothing thinking that sneaks in this time of year. One cookie becomes “I blew it,” one party becomes “why bother,” and suddenly December feels like a lost cause.

What if one simple, yet powerful mindset shift could change all of that?

In this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode, I’m sharing a powerful way to enjoy the holidays without restricting yourself, without starting over in January, and without sabotaging the progress you’ve already made.

You’ll learn why perfection is actually the thing holding you back — and how focusing on what you can control will move you forward faster than any diet rule ever has.

If you’re ready to break the “good/bad,” “on/off,” “start over Monday” cycle for good, this is the episode you don’t want to miss!

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

• The Most Powerful Mindset Shift
• The Donut Example
• Difference Between A Healthy Person’s Mindset vs a Dieter’s Mindset
• Shifting How You Look at Progress Over the Holidays to the Big Picture

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

Weight Loss Blind Spots Workshop for Midlife Women

Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes

• Why You’re Not Seeing Results – You Have Blind Spots
• Shifting Your Mindset for Losing Weight During The Holidays
• Your Holiday Weight Loss Mindset
• Hidden Ways You Sabotage Weight Loss

How to Avoid Starting Over in January with Weight Loss Podcast Transcript

Today, we’re talking about staying on with your weight-loss and health journey during the the holidays. Between family gatherings, travel, food traditions, and treats around every corner, it can feel like staying on track or losing weight is next impossible unless you restrict yourself or say no to everything.

But here’s the truth: you don’t need to deprive yourself or miss out to stay on track. In fact, deprivation always backfires. And you CAN have the foods you enjoy and lose weight too.

Today, I’m giving you a simple, powerful mindset shift — a trick — that lets you enjoy the holidays and keep your goals intact.

First, let’s talk about why restriction doesn’t work. Most people approach the holidays thinking:

• “I have to be good.”
• “I just won’t eat dessert.”
• “I’ll skip meals so I can save calories for the big event.”

But here’s the problem:

Restriction creates rebound. When you tell yourself you can’t have something, your brain becomes obsessed with it. Scarcity drives your cravings.

This leads to the restrict → binge → guilt cycle. And that cycle is what derails people — not the holidays itself. So, let’s break that cycle.

You can eat ANY food and lose weight. If someone has told you – you can’t eat bread, cookies or treats and lose weight. They are lying to you. If you’re telling yourself, you can’t eat those foods, you’re lying to yourself. I guarantee you can.

Of course, everyone knows that if your diet is filled entirely of those foods, it’s not healthy. But the goal is not to cut them out and restrict them. That’s all or nothing thinking.

The goal is to have a healthy balance, and that is done by making reasonable choices and determining what is truly worth it to you.

The problem many of us face when trying to lose weight is our all or nothing thinking. We start a diet and think about how good we must be. We start off the week with this thinking and yes, for a few days we’re “good.”

Then Thursday comes and someone brings donuts into the office, and we think how much we really want a donut. Mentally we’re battling ourselves. Saying I shouldn’t have that. I’m trying to lose weight. I’ve been so good all week.

Eventually, we give into the donut rationalizing that we’ve been good, that we deserve it or that it’s just one donut and won’t matter.

But then we eat the donut and the mental spiral happens. We X out all the successes and things we did well Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. In our brains that one donut erased all that progress, which is crazy.

So then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday the screw it mentality takes over, and we ignore our goals. Why should I bother? There’s something wrong with me. I have no control around these foods.

We may even think – I’m just addicted to sugar. Once I start, I just can’t stop.

This is a dieter’s mentality, and it is a blind spot for many midlife women. You may have made 20 good choices Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday but then erased that progress over 1 donut.

The other 20 good choices are where progress will come from, but we don’t think like that when we are overweight. We focus on what’s wrong with us for eating the donut.

The problem is restricting and telling yourself you can’t have it or shouldn’t have it will lead to you overeating it.  

The irony is if you had a friend come tell you they made 20 good choices but then had 1 donut and told you – why should I bother, I’m a failure, I can’t do this, I can’t get make good choices – what do you think you would say to that friend?

I highly doubt you would not say yes, you’re a failure, you shouldn’t bother losing weight. You just can’t make good choices. What’s wrong with you that you wanted that donut? Give up losing weight friend.

No – you would never tell your friend that!!! You would tell your friend that the one donut does not erase all the 20 other things they did well.

The donut example is what happens for midlife women during the holiday season. Because you still think like a dieter. You still think in this dichotomous – black and white thinking. Trust me, this used to be me.

When I was 215 pounds, this is exactly how I used to think. My mindset was always I had to be perfect, have the perfect circumstances and have no temptations, and if I ever veered off the perfection track, I was a failure.

That’s because I was always thinking perfection was what it took to get healthy and losing weight. The truth is perfection is not what it takes. In fact, trying to achieve perfection is setting you up to fail.

So, the most powerful trick to making weight loss progress during the holidays is realizing that your all or nothing mindset must change.

You can no longer tell yourself and believe that you have ruined everything when one unplanned thing happens or an unexpected choice and use it as a reason to give up on yourself.

Today is December 1^st – you have 31 days until December. There’s Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, New Years Day – those are only 4 meals out of what’s 31 times 3 meals a day – 93 meals. That’s only 4 meals out of 93.

Let’s say you have a few parties. So, 3 or 4 meals out at parties. That means 8 meals out of 93. That means you have 85 meals where you can make different choices that help you with your goal. Your mindset needs to focus on the 85 meals you CAN do well and make choices that align with your health goals.

But what most of us do who are struggling with our weight, is we focus on the 8 meals we can’t control. That is not how a healthy person thinks. A healthy person does not think to themselves well I shouldn’t try to take care of myself because 8 out of 93 meals are going to be out of my control and I can’t be perfect.

A healthy person thinks I’m going to focus on the 85 meals I can control and let the other meals be whatever it is and make reasonable choices, but 8 meals that are different than my normal meals don’t ruin my health or cause me to gain weight.

You see the whole reason you go on a weight loss journey is to get healthy, right? I know what a concept! Weight loss is not about the foods you’re eating. Your weight is merely a reflection of how you’ve been living your life so if you want to lose weight, you have to change how you’re living your life.

How you move, how you feed your body, how you show up for yourself, how you deal with life challenges, how you deal with stress and emotions, your relationship with food and yourself.

Always focusing on controlling your weight, controlling the scale, controlling food, and putting rules on food does not change how you have been living your life. It changes nothing. You are not changing when you do that.

If your goal is to lose weight to improve your health then, adopting this powerful shift in your mindset is the most important thing you can do for yourself.

You could be making progress and losing weight with those other 85 meals and march into January without thinking about how bloated and gross you feel and how you need to cut out sugar, lose 20 pounds in 6 weeks and how rigid, strict and good you need to be. That’s your dieter mentality.

Someone who’s healthy never thinks that way. Think how great it would feel to not feel like you’re starting over in January and feeling guilty over choices during the holiday season. People who are healthy don’t think about starting over in January and how they need to buckle down.

They simply get back to their regular routine and meals, recognizing that the 8-10 off meals or days that were different don’t ruin their health. It’s the other 85 meals and other 27ish days that matter more.

There are so many midlife women who still think this way, and they don’t realize their all or nothing mentality is what is preventing them from losing weight. It’s a blind spot. I’ve been coaching midlife women for 11 years as my full-time job and this is one of many blind spots I’ve seen as a coach over and over again.

Like I said, I used to think this way when I was 215 pounds. This is exactly how I used to think about losing weight so no shame if this is you. We all think this way because diets we’ve done have made us think in this black and white mentality about our habits.

Think about WW – they give you a green or red with your points.

That instills this thinking that you succeeded or failed that day. Noom does the same thing, and other calorie tracking apps do this as well. You succeeded or failed and when you think you failed, you want to throw in the towel.

This is why if you are tracking calories before correcting your all or nothing mentality, you may find yourself struggling because your dieter’s mentality will always highlight your fails more than your successes, and like the example of the 8 holiday meals vs. 85 meals you focus on the 8 meals and how you failed with those 8 meals vs. the 85 you did mostly well.

This is a blind spot for midlife women and why so many women don’t even try to lose weight or do anything positive for their health during the holidays. You may not realize this is a blind spot for you. You just think this is what it takes to lose weight from all the diets you’ve done.

One of my clients who’s in her 50’s began working with me last December of 2024 – she told me last month she didn’t realize all her blind spots were causing her weight not to budge.

When we first met, she told me she was doing everything right, but weight wasn’t budging. Counting her calories and exercising, but her sugar cravings were out of control, and her weight wouldn’t budge.

She legitimately believed she was doing everything right. Fast forward a year later and my client has lost almost 20 pounds, and she doesn’t have the intense sugar cravings.

My client told me in our coaching call before Thanksgiving that she looks back to how she really believed she was doing everything right but now understands where her blind spots were.

Things she just didn’t realize were causing her weight not to budge. One of her blind spots was what I shared with you today – her dieter’s mindset that she got from WW and other diets she’s done.

You see we’ve all been conditioned to think about weight loss as just eat less. I succeeded or failed. But that’s not how a healthy person lives. There’s much more nuance to weight loss than just eat less.

Please understand if your weight is not budging and you feel like you’re doing everything right, that it is very likely you, like my client have blind spots too. Things you’re just not seeing on your own or realizing are getting in the way.

I have a self-paced 3-part video workshop on weight loss blind spots for midlife women and how to fix them. So, if your weight is not budging grab the link to the blind spots workshop in the show notes so I can begin helping you right now.

My client started last December and if you are listening to this thinking you need to wait until January to work on this, that’s your dieter’s mentality talking. That’s not how a healthy person talks. Imagine if you began your health journey now in December, how different you would feel in January.

No more feeling guilty for what you ate during the holidays. No extreme food rules. No crazy exercise routine or sugar free plans. Just normal eating. That is what’s possible for you with the right support, plan and guidance.

And if you say “I know what to do, I’m just not doing it.” It’s because you don’t have a plan for how to reach your goals. It’s one thing to know what to do. It’s another to put it into action and without a plan, overwhelm which paralyzes you from doing anything or knowing what to focus on or where to start.

I will give you a plan, so you know for YOU exactly where to start, where to focus your efforts that are your biggest bang for your buck, how to make small, impactful changes that are simple to add to your life and that you feel good about. I can help you.

Stop waiting to get weight loss help. You are the most important project of your life. I hope you have a great holiday season and I’ll talk to you soon!