Fat Loss Is Simple But Not Easy - Why Midlife Weight Loss Is Hard

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Fat loss is simple but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Especially in midlife, many women feel frustrated, confused, and convinced that something must be wrong with them because the same diets and strategies that once worked no longer do.

If that sounds familiar, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because dieting taught you the wrong framework.

In this episode, I share why the “boring basics” of fat loss still apply at any age, and why mindset, stress, emotions, and all-or-nothing thinking are what truly derail progress.

Drawing from my own 80-pound weight loss and years of coaching midlife women as a nutritionist, this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode digs into why weight loss becomes sustainable only when you stop chasing an outcome and start building a lifestyle you can live with long term.

If you’ve been searching for the missing piece, the secret to weight loss, or the next plan, this conversation is the shift you need.

Because lasting fat loss isn’t about being thinner. It’s about becoming the person who values her health, shows up for herself, and knows how to stay consistent even when life gets hard.

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

Why fat loss is simple in theory, but hard in practice
The “boring basics” that actually drive fat loss at any age
How mindset, stress, and emotions sabotage consistency
Why all-or-nothing thinking keeps you stuck in the diet cycle
The difference between dieting and building a sustainable lifestyle
How midlife hormones affect fat loss and what they don’t change
Why weight loss success starts with identity, not willpower

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

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Fat Loss Is Simple But Not Easy Podcast Transcript

Today I want to talk to you about why fat loss is simple, but not easy. As someone who tried to lose weight approximately 3,000 times before finally losing 80 pounds and now keeping it off 16 years.

Here’s the difference between the 2,999 times I tried to lose weight and the one time that it stuck. I stopped thinking about weight loss as an aesthetic goal, and I started thinking about it as I want to become this person.

Yes, that person is smaller physically however the difference was that when I was 215 pounds, I felt tired, sore, low energy, lethargic, bloated, out of breath, unhappy, depressed and I was using food and alcohol to cope with all those feelings. Here’s what changed.

One day I had a realization that the person that I wanted to be the person that I admired, was jealous of, not only was she smaller than me but that was a symptom of her lifestyle.

Her lifestyle is active. Her lifestyle is joyful. Her lifestyle is full of movement and activity and reaching goals and setting new goals and meeting them and having integrity with herself. Showing up for herself.

Like when she says I’m going for a walk. She does it. Or when she says I’m going to the gym today. She does it. Or when she says I’m prioritizing eating my protein today. She does it.

I had spent a lot of years doing things and making lifestyle choices that made me feel crappy. Things that led me further and further away from that woman that I wanted to become.

So, my advice to you if you’re starting your health journey or you’re interested in changing your life or you find yourself jealous of other people who are losing weight and maybe those people are skinny it’s not the thinness that you want. It’s the lifestyle that you want. It’s how they feel that you want.

My advice to you is you don’t have to be thin to start living the life that you want. So today start practicing and behaving in a way of that ultimate version of yourself that you want to become.

Eventually that will lead you to becoming the person that you want to be. You know the saying, fake it until you make it? Yeah, that’s exactly what you have to do. Start acting right now today like you are someone who is fit.

You are someone who is healthy. You are someone who values movement, exercise and prioritizing nutrients and paying attention to their calories. Be the person you want to become.

You clean your home because you value having a clean home. You go to work because you value having an income and stability. You take care of your car because you value having a car. You have to begin looking at your health as something you value.

Not just a body that needs to be thinner or skinny. I know before I began my weight journey I always thought of exercise and eating some healthy foods as an all or nothing. I’m either good or I’m bad. If I’m bad, I start over Monday.

I always thought of it as a chore to do healthy habits, and because I thought of it as a chore, I was inconsistent, and I was never really committed. Of course, I was smart I understand the value of exercise and the value of eating healthy foods, but I didn’t really understand the value of how doing those things could really change my quality of life.

It’s crazy to think when I was 215 pounds and in my late 20’s I felt lethargic, sluggish and had bad energy and I thought that was normal. Now I’m almost 48 and I feel better now, stronger now, more energy now than I ever did in my 20’s.

This week one of my clients said to me I can’t believe how much better I’m feeling prioritizing my protein, fiber and steps. I didn’t realize how bad I was feeling. I think many people think it’s normal, especially as they age, to feel sluggish, tired all the time, have bad energy and feel lethargic.

It is not normal to feel that way and that is where I’m saying the quality of your life can greatly improve by working step-by-step on these adding these simple boring basic habits to your life.

I don’t know about you, but when I was 215 pounds, I didn’t see the value of doing them. I viewed them as a chore, a drag and a punishment. I didn’t understand how much the quality of my life would be improved with the boring basics, which is a good segway into our discussion today.

To lose fat, you need to do the boring basics. The boring basics are eating in a calorie deficit, weighing your food, tracking your food, getting movement otherwise known as steps, taking measurements to measure fat loss, strength training, and prioritizing your protein and fiber.

In theory, those boring basics are simple, but your all or nothing mindset, negative self-talk your emotions, mood, hormones, relationship with food, food noise, self-sabotaging patterns, your beliefs in your ability to change, your beliefs about weight loss and food, your identify…

How you see yourself, whether or not you’re eating in a sustainable way until you’re 85+. All of that will get in the way of you doing the boring basics to lose fat because fat loss is simple, but not easy.

The stuff you need to do to lose weight is the easy part. It’s how you think that is the hard part. Your mindset is the biggest challenge when it comes to losing weight permanently.

That’s why I want to talk to you today about why fat loss is simple but not easy and the deeper issue that make the boring basics not so easy.

I think a lot of midlife women are searching for what they’re missing to lose weight and what they don’t realize is they’re missing the internal work. The real work inside of yourself that your lifestyle and food is a symptom of.

Just like in my journey I had to work on my identity. I had to practice daily envisioning that fit version of myself who valued movement and valued eating higher quality foods.

I stopped focusing so much on searching for the hack or what I was missing to lose weight. In fact, I stopped focusing on the goal of losing weight altogether. I focused on creating the lifestyle I wanted.

I think women struggle with creating the lifestyle they want because of all or nothing thinking. If you are someone who has struggled with your weight, I guarantee that the way you see taking care of yourself is very black and white.

So, when you imagine someone who is healthy and fit, you image rigidity and restriction and deprivation and no room for fun or vacations or relaxation. That right there is the problem because no healthy and fit person lives their life that way.

That means how you think must shift away from that dichotomous thinking. Someone who is truly healthy and fit has balance. They don’t think they’ve ruined everything if they go away on vacation and don’t exercise and eat more or different things than they do when they’re at home.

They immediately come home and jump back into their routine recognizing it’s all about balance. Because someone who freaks out about those things is not truly healthy and fit. They are obsessed.

Someone who is truly healthy and fit doesn’t go to a restaurant and pick the healthiest thing on the menu. They pick what they want that will satisfy them and they figure out how to add to it what they need and how to balance it.

They don’t go into the restaurant with thinking I’m being good today. The I’m being good or I’m being bad is a dieter’s mentality. Someone who is healthy and fit does not think I’m being good or I’m being bad.

So yes, the steps to lose fat are simple, but not easy because if you are someone who has all or nothing thinking around your habits or maybe you don’t value quality habits, or maybe you struggle with the good and bad food mentality.

Maybe you struggle with talking negatively towards yourself or maybe you struggle with showing up for yourself and having integrity and trust with yourself following through or maybe you struggle because you deprive and starve yourself each time you attempt a deficit. All of that is actually what makes fat loss really hard.

Let me give you an example from something that happened with a client to further illustrate this. One of my clients was taking care of her mother. She’s had a few surgeries and after this most recent surgery, her mom fell and had some other complications.

This led to my client feeling frustrated and stressed. When she felt frustrated and stressed, she began telling herself “I can’t handle this, I don’t know why I’m bothering to do this anymore, I’m probably never going to get there, I’ve been doing this for a year, I’ve only lost 15 pounds so far, it’s going to take me forever, I should probably quit because this feels impossible.”

This is so normal and common. Something happens in our life which makes us feel frustrated and stressed and then we tell ourselves these negative things. I call it stinky thinking.

Something happens which leads to this negative thinking and negative self-talk and then you feel unmotivated and hopeless. Why should I bother?

This is a self-sabotaging behavior pattern that people get trapped in and it happened to my client which led her into thinking all these terrible, demoralizing things about herself. I asked her if she remembered where she was a year ago at this time and she was like no I don’t.

I reminded her that last year she was struggling to include protein with her breakfast regularly or eat a breakfast at all and she was like yeah, that’s not even a big deal for me anymore.

And I said last year at this time, you were also struggling to track your food consistently. She was like yeah, now I’ve been consistently tracking my food for 6 months.

As I was reminding her where she was last year at this time, she realized she had forgotten all the progress she made. In the moment of feeling frustrated and stressed about her mother, she wiped out all her progress.

Honestly, I see this time and again. Stress and emotions cause women to spiral out of control, and they erase all the progress they’ve made which leads them wanting to give up. It’s like you lose the ability to be rational in those moments.

That is a not fat loss problem. That is an emotional problem. That is a how I handle stress and emotions problem.

So many women are trying to lose weight doing these unhealthy diets or what I call, diet tricks. You’re manipulating foods, cutting foods, fasting and doing all these diet circus tricks to lose weight or you’re searching for a plan to lose weight, but you don’t realize you could never follow that until you are 85+ years old.

That is one of my rules. If you cannot follow a way of eating until you are 85+ years old, then you shouldn’t be doing that diet because you won’t be able to sustain it.

It’s being consistent with the boring basics that you are missing and the reason you are not consistent with the basics is because of how you are handling stress and emotions, your mindset, your relationship with food and how you are talking to yourself.

I see it day in and day out.

When we get stressed, our brains want to give us relief, so the immediate habit brain response is to go oh, you’re stressed. Let’s take a break and not go for a walk today.

Or let’s take a break and eat like a jerk and drink alcohol like we’re in college. Or let’s not track our food. It’s relief from the stress.

So, when my client started telling herself these nasty, horrible things she was telling herself it was because she was looking for relief from the stressful situation with her mother.

None of those nasty, horrible things she was saying to herself were truthful. And when I coached her on this, she was able to see how much progress she made and how her brain cancelled out all that progress in her moment of stress.

The problem wasn’t food or tracking calories or walking or the types of foods she should eat or calories.

The problem was how she was handling stress and emotions, how she was talking to herself and how all that made her feel unmotivated. You cannot out diet any of that.

You cannot out calorie count that. That is not a food or calorie problem. Yet, that is what most midlife women are focusing on. It’s a symptom of a deeper problem. You must dig deeper.

So yes, while eating in a calorie deficit to lose body fat is simple. It’s this stuff, this everyday life stuff, that gets in your way of you being consistent with the boring basics.

And if you don’t have a coach in your corner who’s going to help you shift your mindset and dig deeper to figure out the real problem, you may find yourself very inconsistent with the boring basics and calorie counting your way to nowhere and just feeling like what’s wrong with me.

I should be able to go for a walk. I should be able to track my food. Why can’t I get it together?

It’s because the boring basics are simple in theory, but hard in practice to be consistent because of this type of mental, mindset things that throw you off and make you feel like this broken person. This is why having a good coach is so valuable.

Also, if you have a bad relationship with food – you eat a cookie and think you ruined everything and throw yourself off into an emotional spiral thinking you were bad and you have to start over Monday, your coach is going to help you with that too.

Your coach is going to help with that all or nothing thinking. Thinking you always must eat perfectly healthy foods, or you won’t lose fat.

By the way, that is the most unhelpful way to go about losing weight. Depriving yourself of anything you love because you think you can only eat healthy foods to lose fat or else.

It’s always funny to me how we as humans have this all or nothing mindset with food because nowhere in our real lives do we do this. Like you don’t bring home a carton of eggs and find two broken eggs and get mad and throw out the entire carton of eggs. You don’t get mad at your boss and quit your job.

We do not act that way in real life, but we do act all or nothing with fitness and nutrition because traditional diets teach us we must be good or bad to succeed. Fat loss is simple, but not easy when you have done diets. Dieting is not the same as losing weight in a healthy and sustainable way.

So, consider getting help and support instead of thinking there’s something wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a normal human, with normal thoughts and feelings, and self-sabotage, and self-sabotage is simply a way for your brain to protect you from fear.

The fear of the unknown keeps many people stuck. Where you are now is predictable. Where you want to go is unknown and sometimes women freak themselves out thinking well, what will I have to do once I do lose weight.

How will I ever keep it off? I’ve never kept it off before. Why will this time be different? I’ll put in all this time, effort and money only to feel disappointed in myself again.

This is why working with a quality coach or nutritionist who can help you work through these fears and sabotaging patterns is key because losing fat is simple when you’re consistent with the boring basics, but it’s not easy because of all this stuff.

Let’s discuss another thing that makes fat loss not easy – midlife, perimenopause, menopause. The typical midlife women who message me on social media will say that the boring basics don’t work. Nothing works to lose weight because I’m in menopause.

Or do the boring basics really apply in perimenopause? I’ve tried that for a few weeks, and it doesn’t work.

Someone sent me a message like this last week, and I explained to her that hormones don’t stop you from losing weight. Hormones impact energy balance and the symptoms of midlife make it hard to do the boring basics.

Lack of sleep, poor energy, mood, joint pain, basically not feeling like yourself. That stuff makes eating in a calorie deficit consistently and walking consistently and prioritizing protein and fiber consistently really hard.

But hormones don’t stop weight loss. No one is exempt from the laws of physiology that govern your weight. Things like thyroid hormone impact your basal metabolic rate, but very little. We are talking 100 calories at most that you are burning less than someone who has a normal thyroid.

People’s metabolisms decrease almost negligibly as they age. After the age of 40 about 1% per decade which is 37-45 calories per day. If you can’t eat 37 or 45 calories less per day or burn 37 to 45 calories more per day, then it’s likely something in your lifestyle needs adjusting.

But I get it, there’s a lot of messaging online that makes us women feel like we’re broken and I personally don’t like that messaging because it is so disempowering for women.

Fat loss is still the boring basics even in midlife. The boring basics always apply because the only way you are a living and breathing human is energy balance. You may not be burning much energy because you’ve lost muscle mass, and you may be moving less.

As your kids get older, you are moving less. You’re not carrying them around anymore. That is all energy you are no longer expending. So, as we age, we tend to move less and we continue eating the same way, and this is how people gain weight.

On top of that, if you’re sleeping poorly and you’re moving less due to lack of sleep and you’re more tired, you may be eating more food than you realize to compensate for that. People eat more food when they’re tired and have low energy. Most of the time unconsciously.

Also, most midlife women typically have a worst body composition by the time they hit midlife. That’s from losing weight and regaining weight from dieting. When you lose weight, you lose some muscle. When you regain weight, you don’t regain that muscle so essentially, you gain a worst body composition.

That is why chronic dieting makes fat loss harder over time. Likewise, if you just have not been exercising for decades of your life and you are out of shape, then yes, over time your body composition has gotten worse from not doing that lifestyle habit.

So, it’s not that losing fat doesn’t work anymore or your hormones are stopping you from losing weight, it’s that your body composition is worst, your basal metabolic rate is a bit lower and the symptoms of hormones shifting makes the boring basics harder.

So, you can see how in midlife the changes in your lifestyle, muscle mass, activity, diet history and current body composition can really merge with these hormonal symptoms to make you feel like nothing you do works anymore.

But that’s not true and that mindset only makes you feel defeated. You can lose weight during midlife, but you need to empower yourself. The steps to lose fat, even in midlife, are still the same. Once I explained this to the woman I was talking to, she got it.

What I tell my clients is get help with managing the symptoms from a doctor. Menopause.org is a good resource to find a doctor near you. Managing the symptoms is key because if your symptoms are bad then yes, being consistent with the boring basics will be tough.

It’s not that in midlife you need to diet in a completely different way. It’s not that in midlife your body can’t handle sugar. It’s not that in midlife calories and energy balance no longer applies. It’s not that you’re broken or that it’s impossible. All false. The boring basics still apply.

It is possible for you to lose fat during this phase of life. It’s that your symptoms and current body composition make it a bit harder to lose fat along with your mindset. When you are in midlife, you face all the same mindset issues I described earlier.

You are not immune to any of that. In fact, you likely face those same mindset issues I mentioned earlier maybe even in a greater way because your lack of sleep, poor energy and mood.

Why should I bother, nothing works for me, this is so slow, I’m too far gone. Talking to yourself like a jerk will make the boring basics very hard, and you start to believe that nothing works for you, slip into all or nothing and you begin to self-sabotage in various ways.

I have never worked with a client who was doing all the boring basics the right way and not losing weight who was not self-sabotaging. They were self-sabotaging and that was the cause of them not losing weight. This is why having a coach is so valuable.

I think a lot of people think coaching is someone giving them numbers and seeing how good they can be, but it’s not.

Coaching is about helping you with your relationship with food, building a sustainable and doable plan that includes your favorite foods, getting out of the all or nothing mindset and starting over Monday, building consistent lifestyle habits over time, shifting negative beliefs and reframing negative self-talk and learning to navigate real life stress like my client that I mentioned earlier.

The reality is as your parents age; you may find yourself caregiving and working and doing the boring basics. Fat loss is simple, but the implementation of the boring basics is not easy. But here’s the truth. You are smart. You are capable.

You have accomplished things in your life. You can figure it out. Keep it simple. Do not overwhelm yourself and get a coach if you need to. Coaching is about helping you with these things so you can build a lifestyle. Not just diet so you can lose weight only to regain weight later on.

Remember what I said earlier. You want the lifestyle. Don’t think what do I have to do to lose ten pounds. Think about what steps do I need to take to build the lifestyle I want.

Because if you want change, then you must change and that starts with you changing how you look at this. The biggest barrier to building the lifestyle you want and doing the boring basics is your mindset, how you view food and your body, your relationship with food, how you talk to yourself and how you treat yourself.

There is no diet on the planet that can fix that. There is no calorie number that can fix that. There is no food or meal plan that can fix that. That is an inside job because yes, fat loss is simple, but it is not easy.

Yes, fat loss requires a calorie deficit, but it is much more than calories in and calories out because food quality, the nutrients you eat, your relationship with food, how you view food, your diet history, your muscle mass, activity level, mindset, self-talk all factor into that calorie deficit and whether or not you’re building a lifestyle vs. just dieting.

A client of mine who’s 60 who is losing weight eating 2000 calories (yes, that is her deficit) after two years of not being able to lose a single pound referred a friend to me.

She told her friend some of the things she was doing like weighing her food, tracking her food, eating enough protein and fiber and steps. Her friend said “ugh, that sounds miserable.” The issue is many are living in a diet prison and not realizing it.

You’re not free right now. You are struggling with food. The way to achieving the freedom and peace and lifestyle you want is on the other side of you learning what your body needs and digging into the deeper issues like your all or nothing mindset, bad relationship with food, deprivation mindset – thinking you should starve yourself, negative self-talk, and how you treat yourself.

All of that work sounds miserable when you are on the other side, but what you don’t realize is you are living in a place where you beat yourself up, talk like a jerk to yourself and feel guilty when you’re not eating perfectly healthy, depriving and starving yourself and doing things perfectly day in and day.

That is not a place of freedom and peace!

Taking the time to learn how to build a lifestyle that works for you with the help of coach is going to be a skillset you will have with you for the rest of your life, and you will continue to refine them beyond midlife nutrition coaching.

Once you learn the skills, you will also never fall victim to another diet. You will get to a place where you’ll look at your friends and family doing these strange things with food to lose weight and you’ll realize how far you’ve come and how you’re so grateful that you’re no longer scared to have ice cream with your kids.

You’re no longer scared of eating fruit or oatmeal. You’re no longer starving yourself and believing that’s healthy or normal. You’re in a place where you are free to enjoy food and make empowering choices.

The freedom you want comes with learning and you changing and that freedom is what many of you are looking for, but your fear of failing gets in the way. Many sabotage themselves because your brain goes well, I’m getting by right now.

If I do this, I’ll probably fail. I’ll probably disappoint myself and even if I do lose weight, I’ll probably never be able to keep it off. Imagine telling your child to not apply to college because they’ll probably fail or flunk out.

You would never say that to your child. But you are saying this to yourself and that reflects the terrible mindset you have about yourself and how you mistreat yourself and that tells me exactly why you are stuck.

You get freedom when you face your fear, and the irony is you are already failing by not taking action and staying stuck in a mental prison of deprivation and feeling guilty. So yes, the steps to losing fat are simple.

The mental gymnastics makes it hard. That’s what a coach helps you with and if you are ready to do that work, I’m here when you are ready. Schedule a free nutrition consultation and let’s talk about how I can support you in your healthy journey!