Losing Weight Doesn’t Fix Behaviors – Why Weight Regain Happens

I want to start today with something that might sound a little controversial.
If you’ve been losing and regaining the same 20, 30, 50, or even 100 pounds over and over again, your problem isn’t that you don’t know how to lose weight.
You already know how to lose weight.

In fact, I’d argue that’s not your problem at all. Your problem is that you don’t know how to keep it off. And before you think I’m criticizing you, I’m not.

Nobody teaches us how to keep weight off. We’re taught how to follow a diet. We’re taught how about calories.

We’re taught how to count points, carbs, or macros. But we’re almost never taught how to become the kind of person who maintains a healthy weight. That’s a completely different skill set.

Here’s the reality: a calorie deficit is required to lose body fat. That’s just physiology. But a calorie deficit doesn’t teach you how to navigate vacations, stressful weeks at work, emotional eating, weekends, holidays, or what to do when life inevitably gets messy.

It doesn’t change perfectionism. It doesn’t improve your relationship with food. It doesn’t teach you consistency. It doesn’t help you build self-trust. And that’s exactly why so many women feel like they’re doing everything “right,” only to find themselves back at square one at some point.

So, if you’ve ever found yourself saying: “I know exactly what I need to do… why can’t I just do it?” This episode is for you.

Today, we’re talking about the difference between losing weight and becoming the woman who never has to lose it again. Because if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you already know a calorie deficit is how you lose body fat.

That’s physiology. We can’t argue with it. But here’s the question I want you to think about: If math is the answer, why do so many women lose weight… only to gain it back?

If the strategy worked, why are millions of women starting over every Monday, every January, or after every vacation? The answer is simple. You’re not failing.

You’re just using a strategy that was designed to help you lose weight. Not a strategy designed to help you transform your behaviors and keep the weight off. Those are two completely different problems.

Every woman I talk to knows how to lose weight. Most of them have done it multiple times. The problem isn’t losing weight. The problem is what happens when you’re no longer actively dieting. You don’t just have a weight loss problem. You have a weight maintenance problem. And those require completely different skill sets.

This might upset some people, but the way you lose fat is always through a calorie deficit. You have to consume fewer calories than you’re expending for a temporary period of time to lose body fat. And many women know that. But math doesn’t solve a behavioral problem. It won’t change your behaviors with food just because you have that knowledge.

This is the difference between knowledge and application. If you have self-sabotaging behaviors, emotional eating patterns, coping mechanisms with food, how you deal with life causes you to do things with food and exercise that aren’t healthy, you’ve normalized a bad relationship with food, you’re always trying to fix yourself, you’re a perfectionist and get hung up on not checking boxes perfectly. Those behaviors have nothing to do with knowing that calories in and calories out are important. Duh.

Math doesn’t solve the behavioral issues. There are many women struggling and suffering and there’s nobody who knows how to help them with something that is deeper than eating more protein and fiber and knowing how many calories to eat. That’s why I do what I do and how I do it. I see many women attempting to solve layers of behavior issues and mindset issues with math and weight loss.

Many women tell me. I had so much success on Optavia. I had so much success on WW, keto, whatever named diet. The problem is your behaviors and mindset with food were never addressed. You just went on a diet, and diets and calorie numbers do not solve our behaviors and mindset with food. Diets also don’t teach us skills with food.

If I told you how much protein you need to aim for daily, I’m sure you can do it on easy days. But on hard days, when life is more challenging and stressful, you will get frustrated and will use it as evidence against yourself.

The truth is you don’t have the skills yet to know how to eat protein on the days you are getting up at 5am for a flight, when you go on vacation, when you’re running out the door for an appointment and don’t have time for breakfast, on the nights when you have to take your child to urgent care.

Those are all skills you build and the only way you build those skills sets is by going through those events and learning. You have to allow yourself to learn.

Some women are beating themselves up, thinking there’s something wrong with them, thinking they need more willpower, thinking they should be further along. The truth is you are basing that on quick-fix diet strategies that are not meant for you to keep weight loss results long-term.

So, what I want you to know today is that you are not failing at weight loss. You are not broken. You are not lazy. You are not undisciplined. You need a strategy that’s made for lasting weight loss and feeling normal with food and that is very different than just going on a diet or following a calorie number.

It’s going to take building a new way of living and thinking. It’s going to take building things gradually. It’s going to take behavior modifications. It’s going to take thinking through things differently. It’s going to take learning how to react differently, learning how to show up for yourself differently, learning how to treat yourself differently.

There’s a lot that’s different with a true lifestyle transformation approach versus here’s your calorie and protein numbers.

Women want to feel better, want to improve their overall health, want to feel normal with food, want to stop engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors, are exhausted losing the same weight over and over again only to gain it back, and they want to stop doing what they’ve done for years and decades. It’s a lifestyle issue not a surface level quick fix.

I get messages from women all the time asking me for protein and calorie numbers. I listen to your podcast, and it makes sense. Where can I get my numbers? This is exactly what I’m talking about. Many of you still think this is a math problem.

You have years of a bad relationship with food, years of all or nothing mentality, years of emotional eating and stress coping mechanisms with food, years of an inner critic and deep-rooted self-limiting beliefs, years of chaotic eating with no structure and routine around meals.

Yet we always think I just need to go on a diet.

I thought that too when I was 215 pounds. A diet doesn’t solve behaviors and mindsets. Knowing a protein or calorie number doesn’t fix your behaviors.

Modifying your behaviors, backed by psychology make changes last forever.
I consistently see clients come in to work with me who have a goal weight but at some point, that shifts into them telling me I am becoming a person who has values that are congruent with the goal of getting healthier and fitter.

The body composition just becomes a natural byproduct of becoming someone who has the identity of a fitter and healthier person. There is no tactical formula you can deploy without learning skills and modifying behaviors that will lead to sustainable results. It doesn’t exist.

A lot of women I coach are excelling in their careers, excelling as a spouse, excelling as a mother. But their health is constantly plaguing them and while they’re serving everyone else and showing up for everyone else, their presence is robbed by this problem not being solved.

They’re afraid to take pictures. They don’t like themselves. They resent their bodies. They’re worried about what others think of them. They’re judging themselves. They’re worried about what they’re eating.

Most women think it’s do, have, be. Do the calorie deficit, have the weight loss, become the healthier and fitter person. It’s not. It’s be, do have. You have to become the person who does the behaviors that align with the outcome you want, and the outcome has to become second nature. I know what to do. I trust myself to do it. I do it because it’s who I am.

The only way you become the person who has the behaviors of someone who is healthier and fitter is through practice and repetition and that takes times. Like if you were learning to speak German or learning how to play the piano.

Those are skills that take time to practice and develop, and you must mess a lot of things up to learn and get better get better at those skills. The behaviors of a healthier and fitter person to achieve lasting change requires a lot of mess ups.

I made thousands of mistakes in my health journey and that is what has helped me build the behaviors and skills that have allowed me to maintain an 80-pound weight loss for 17 years. That didn’t happen because I followed a calorie number or protein number. That happened because I changed my behaviors and built skills that took years for me to develop.

Many women look at the mistakes or challenges in their journey and use it as evidence against themselves as to why it’s not possible for them to change. It’s just something you have not learned or figured out yet. You don’t have the skills yet.

The women who succeed at long-term transformation learn that challenges are just skills you are still learning to figure out. Those who are not successful give up because they choose to see it as a deficiency about themselves, and that is a choice. You are choosing to see yourself in that way.

If you’ve done this for a long time and you’ve tried a lot of approaches and you’re not able to get results and sustain them, then did you fix the behaviors and mindsets or did you only focus on the weight loss and math? 

There are a lot of women who are really struggling and suffering and there’s nobody out there who knows how to help them with something that is much deeper than eating more protein and hitting a calorie deficit number. That’s why I do, what I do, and how I do it.

There’s nothing out there that addresses the behavioral and psychological issues a lot of women face. And I don’t mean you’re crazy. I mean we as humans have blind spots.

And many of us grew up in families where our parents were working and we were raising ourselves and so we don’t know how to regulate ourselves.

Our parents were burnt out from working and gave us food to soothe so we learned at a young age, this is just how you deal with your feelings, and that cascades throughout your life. Or you had a mom who was always on Weight Watchers or doing Atkins or Beach Body or whatever.

Maybe even putting you on the diet with her. So, at a very young age, we learn our body aesthetics are very important. My body determines my value and self-esteem so then you try to control. You try to fix yourself and then when it doesn’t go the way you want it to go because life happens, you internalize that because other women could do and you should be able to. Therefore, you just believe your broken.

The other weight loss programs and coaches you see out there they’re not talking about the stuff I’m talking about. Why? Because it’s hard to market. It’s easy to market a 30-day fix or a 3-month weight loss program to erase your belly fat. They’re quick, give you a dopamine fix and then you crash and burn.

Anything pursued for the sole purpose of vanity and not transformation is not going to be sustainable. It’s going to be rigid, restrictive, probably overly aggressive, will likely create issues around your relationship with food and eventually you get burnt out.

You get to your goal then go back to old habits and then you don’t like where that puts you so then you run back to dieting again. I’m not interested in helping women just diet lose weight.

I’m interested in helping women transform and the process that people go through that supports their long-term health, quality of life, peace of mind and not ever having to lose weight again. Like that is the goal.

If you’re going to lose weight, do it once, do it right and be done. Build the skills, gain the knowledge, get the experience and get support so you can learn so that you know no matter what happens in your life, you know how to manage your weight and health long-term.

If you’re the kind of person who wants to bypass that stuff and get to the weight loss part and the calories, you’re not going to be a good fit for what I do.

If you’re someone who cares about setting a good example for your kids, you don’t want them to deal with the body image issues you did growing up, you want to feel normal around food, feel better about your body image and you care about your long-term health outcomes then this is the place for you.

When it comes to behavior change, there’s unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence and conscious competence and unconscious competence. That’s the path of change. The women who do best are in conscious incompetence.

They know they have a problem. They’re aware of it and aware of things they’re doing to sabotage, but they don’t quite understand why they’re doing it. They’re willing and receptive to objective feedback to figure it out so that they can change it.

If someone is in unconscious incompetence where, as an example, someone will swear they’re in a calorie deficit and not losing weight. The data is right in front of them that 10 out of 30 days a month they are in a deficit and 20 days they’re not. Yet, they will convince themselves they are in a calorie deficit and not losing weight. That’s unfortunate because you cannot be taking in less energy than your body expends and not lose weight. It’s not factually feasible. That’s unconscious incompetence.

Recently, I was talking to a woman who has a harsh inner critic, a pattern of unhealthy eating behaviors with food, starting over on Monday and really struggling. I said to her what do you think the consequences will be of these issues not being solved.

She was like I’ll be okay. I’ll just stay like this. Nothing will get worse, and that’s unfortunate because it will get worse. The reality is nobody gets better when they’re struggling with food, health and weight. You have to proactively pursue real skills.

Skills to regulate emotions, regulate hunger, deal with cravings and emotional eating. How many of you stress eat? Lonely eat? Reward eat? Angry eat? Fill uncomfortable emotions with foods? Most of the women I work with do those things.

That’s the root of the behaviors with food. The symptom is the emotional eating and the food. Your weight is a symptom of all that. Those behaviors have to be addressed otherwise nothing changes long-term. Same thing for those who go on GLP-1s. Some of my clients are on them so I am not against them.

But if you don’t also address your lifestyle in conjunction with the medication and you come off the medication thinking you will maintain, there is no long-term weight maintenance without adjusting your behaviors. You can’t inject new behaviors or a new lifestyle.

I hear all the time. I had so much success with Optavia. I had a lot of success with Weight Watchers, Keto, HCG, and when you say you had success, but you gained all the weight back. You did not have success.

That would be like saying I got a million-dollar inheritance and blew all my money, but I was successful. No, you weren’t successful because you didn’t manage your money well. I’m not saying this to mean, rather for you to realize the truth. If you didn’t sustain it, it wasn’t successful.

But circling back to the path from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence. I’m talking about people who are oblivious to the fact they have a problem. This is how most people exist until they have a health problem and a light bulb moment where they’re like oh, I have a problem, I need to do something about this or I’m going to suffer.

So, people tend to be oblivious to their food and weight problems, and it’s normalized in our culture to eat and drink all the time, work long hours and never exercise. Snack all the time, eat out all the time, order door dash frequently, sit on phones and scroll. It’s very dopaminergic. And this isn’t your fault.

Nobody teaches us nutrition and exercise skills to maintain good health and like I said it’s normalized in our society. So, instead of blaming yourself for what you don’t know, recognize that the reason that you stay in this position where you don’t understand how to solve the problem is because of your lack of knowledge in behavior change. It’s not due to lack of a protein number or calorie number.

Most people never make a change until something bad happens and they become aware. This is conscious incompetence. I’m putting myself in a compromised position. Once you become problem aware, this is called pre-contemplation where you begin to gather information.

This is why a lot of people beat themselves up and say I know what to do, but I’m not doing it. Knowledge is what we gather in pre-contemplation. We consume all this knowledge and information. Then especially if you’ve lost and regained the weight over and over again, there’s this fear of, I have to do this right because I’ve done it wrong so many times.

I’m worried about pursuing this again because I know the pain of not being able to sustain the weight loss and changes, the pain of regressing back to old habits, regaining the weight and ending up in a worse place. Now I have a bad relationship with food and hate exercising because of what I’ve put my body through.

You have all this concern coming from a good place, but we procrastinate on doing anything because we’re afraid, we will do the wrong thing. This is where pre-contemplation can be a form of procrastination.

Telling yourself you need more information or you need to understand something more or you look for others to confirm that you’re doing the right things because you’re afraid of making the wrong decisions.

We all do this. It’s a normal part of change. But at what point do you reconcile the fact that the things you’ve done before that didn’t work and accepting that they didn’t work otherwise you wouldn’t be in this position?

That’s not a judgement of you. That’s recognizing you’re not the problem. But how much more information do you have to consume in order to work on the behaviors and skills you need?

Maybe there’s not a lot of self-trust because of the things you’ve tried so there’s this gap of I want to do it, but I don’t trust myself to follow through. This is where getting help is the best place for you to be.

Because then you don’t have to deal with the mental anxiety of well what about this? What I do about this? Is this right? How do I adjust this? What happens when this thing happens? What’s the right amount of food? Is this food okay? How much should I be eating? Am I eating enough?

All of that is just going to create more procrastination, and there’s no judgement from me. I’ve worked with a lot of people who deal with these issues. But the only way to get out of these issues is to go through it. If you don’t trust yourself to take the first step, find someone you trust who can help you cultivate these skills.

But when you become problem aware, you have to decide – if you’re somebody who’s been wanting to lose weight, how long have you been struggling with weight and food? How much information have you consumed? And out of all the information you’ve consumed, how much of it have you actually applied and built skills around over time?

If the answer is, I know a lot of the things but I always find an excuse as to why it’s not the right time, why it’s not the right day, why there’s other things more important, why I need to show up for others and put myself on the backburner, why I keep procrastinating then I really hope you realize that this is not a capability issue.

It’s that you’re afraid to commit or outsource support to someone else or you have insecurities and judgements about yourself and where you’re at, which is valid but living there is keeping you stuck. I’m not saying you have to come to me. I’m saying do your research and find the support right for you.

Make sure you’re actually getting support from people who actually will get to the root of the problems and not stay on the surface level with numbers because that will just keep you stuck reliving this pattern for years when you’ve already wasted enough time trying to figure this out.

When you work with somebody, this is the conscious competence phase which is the longest, most frustrating and difficult piece of change. I’ll just give an example of what I mean. When you start working with someone like me, you will spend time learning skills. Let’s take nutrition skills as an example. One nutrition skill set is learning about your macronutrient groups, protein, fiber, fat and how to put balanced meals together.

Because you don’t know how to eat a certain amount of protein and fiber or where your fat is coming from, guess what? You have to learn and you have to practice doing that with meals. That is frustrating and time consuming and naturally humans are lazy and we live in a very convenient world.

So, when you get into this where you are learning – that is psychologically demanding to retain information and pay attention to new information as you are practicing new skills that are reflective of the goal that you want. This is a long period of time.

Like we go to school for 12 years and college for four years. That’s a long time of learning skills. This is no different because if your goal is to sustain long-term weight loss transformation, skill development requires education and learning.

That means you need to not only give yourself enough time to just apply the things because you’re trying to lose body fat, but to gain the knowledge and build the skill set and practice applying the skills so that you can sustain it forever.

That takes times and that is why I don’t do a 3-month program. If I’m going to promise you an outcome, you’re going to have to give me your time so that I feel good about the fact that I know you’ve learned, you’ve applied, you comprehend, you’ve built the skills and you know how to keep them.

It is not an overnight process. It is a long period of time. It’s probably a year of your time minimum. Most of my clients are with me 18 months or longer.

If that’s not interesting to you, then you have to be honest about the fact that transformation doesn’t matter to you. Because that’s the conscious competence phase. I’m learning. I’m applying. I’m making mistakes. I have support to check me and give me insight and objective feedback, help me make decisions.

Again, lacking knowledge or skills doesn’t make you a deficient person. That would be like telling someone they’re uninformed or ignorant because they don’t know how to speak German when they lack knowledge and skills in that language. What you know is going on a diet.

What you don’t know is fixing the behaviors you have with food. Your choice is staying where you’re at right now where you lack the knowledge and skills around behavior change or getting the support to help you. Staying uninformed is a choice.

Then you get to the place of unconscious competence. This is the place where you naturally walk regularly. Naturally eat protein. Don’t have to worry about holidays, vacations, anniversaries, eating out because you know how to do those things without tracking, without checking your calories you just know how to maintain the skills and habits to support your body composition.

No restriction, no coping with food, no good of bad or off-limits foods or forbidden foods. Because you’ve done it long enough, you built the skills and you understand it. The only way you get there is obtaining the knowledge you don’t have yet in behavior modification and having the patience and commitment to see it through.

That is my goal for every woman. If you can give yourself the time and have the patience to work through the process, you’ll be done with dieting.

It will be a transformation you can sustain and live with without all the stress, overwhelm and frustration. But it does take time to acquire the right knowledge, develop the skills and habits to support that. Anyone who tells you this is an 8-month fix is lying to you. Real change takes time.

You need to do it step by step building a foundation of skills habits and unraveling beliefs at the same time.

So, when I’m working with someone on developing new behaviors and skills, we don’t make lofty commitments and huge changes at once. 85% or more of New Year’s resolutioners probably fail two weeks into January because the commitments they’re making are too lofty and unrealistic.

For instance, if someone is walking 2000 steps a day, I’m not going to tell them to set a goal of 10,000 steps a day. If someone’s only consuming 30 grams of protein daily, I’m not going to say you need t hit 150. That will set someone up to fail. I’m going to meet that person where they are in the process and gather data first to see where they’re at. This is what personalization looks like.

If someone throws these lofty goals at you without knowing anything about your time constraints lifestyle, thinking patterns, relationship with food, how do you oscillate from the week to the weekend, what are your food preferences, what are your time constraints are, what your schedule looks like, do you have 4 kids three of which are special needs, or do you have no kids and you’re an empty nester.

All these things play a role in helping you build a way of living that’s sustainable. You have to construct this bit by bit by bit and that’s how what I do with client. I help you set small milestones based on what you’re already doing now and that may seem like I’m purposely slowing down the process and I’m not.

Would you rather have a house that was built in a week and rushed, or would you rather have a house that took a little bit longer to build that has a very strong foundation and can withstand a hurricane? I think we’d all choose the latter logically but a lot of times going about body transformation people think they can assemble this thing at the same pace of a diet.

If you look at your career, you’ve built that career through years of trial and error and lessons and milestones and mistakes and now you have this foundation of knowledge that you’re confident with in your career.

Your career and expertise in that area did not get build in 8 months. You have to build your health that same way so yes, when we’re doing this it may seem slow at first, but it withstands life’s unpredictable nature.

We all get smacked in the face with life. Stress, vacations, holidays, work, kids, illness—life is going to happen whether you’re trying to lose weight or not. The difference is whether you’ve built a foundation that can withstand those storms. Think about a house.

A house that’s been built methodically on a strong foundation doesn’t crumble every time a storm rolls through. It bends a little, maybe it needs a few repairs, but it stays standing.

That’s exactly how I think about lasting weight loss. So, what does that actually look like when I’m working with you? Let’s use breakfast as an example. Maybe our first focus is simply eating a breakfast with enough protein and fiber and consistently tracking that one meal. For a few weeks, that’s all we’re working on.
Is it oatmeal with protein and fruit? Yogurt with cereal and berries? An English muffin with eggs and cheese? Protein pancakes? We brainstorm ideas using the nutrition guidelines I give you, then you experiment.

You figure out what you actually enjoy, what keeps you full, what works on busy weekdays, on weekends, or when you’re eating out. We’re not trying to perfect your entire diet overnight. We’re building one skill. And we don’t move on until that skill feels natural.

Because if I told you to eat 120 grams of protein every day, get 4 to 6 servings of fruits and vegetables, walk 10,000 steps, strength train three days a week, drink more water, and track everything you eat, you’d probably do it…for a little while. Then life would happen. Work would get stressful. Your kids would need something. You’d travel. You’d get sick. You’d miss a workout or two.

And instead of seeing that as a normal part of life, you’d use it as evidence that you’ve failed again. I’d actually be setting you up to reinforce the very beliefs we’re trying to change. That’s why we go slow. Going slow isn’t slowing your progress. It’s how you build results that last.

Every small promise you keep to yourself becomes evidence that you’re capable. Every skill you master becomes another brick in your foundation. Over time, you stop relying on motivation or willpower because you’ve built habits that fit your real life. And that’s really the point I want to leave you with today.

A calorie deficit can help you lose body fat. But it can’t teach you consistency.

It can’t teach you how to navigate stress. It can’t change your relationship with food. It can’t build self-trust.

Those are skills. And when you take the time to build those skills, weight loss stops feeling like something you have to keep starting over. It simply becomes how you live.

I hope today’s episode gave you a different perspective on why losing weight and keeping it off are two very different challenges and why you don’t need another diet. You need the skills that make healthy eating and movement sustainable for the rest of your life.

If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love for you to listen to some of the client weight loss interviews here on the podcast. You’ll hear firsthand what it was like for these women to stop chasing diets and start building the habits, mindset, and confidence that finally helped them create lasting change.

Also, if you would leave a 5-star review on the podcast so other women can find it too. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll talk to you soon!