On the one hand, of course you want to be done dieting because who wants all that restriction and anxiety? But on the other hand, you’re pretty sure you have to diet to lose all the weight you want to after menopause. But you don’t have to feel like you’re on a diet at all (in fact it’s the exact opposite). So today, I’m sharing exactly WHY and HOW I stopped dieting, while I was losing weight for the last time in my 50s.
Hello, hello GOALfriend, and welcome to the podcast. If there’s one thing I want you to take away from any contact you have with me – whether it’s this podcast, or seeing me on social media, or working with me inside the Get Your GOAL membership – it’s this: you never have to feel like you’re on a diet, just because you’re losing weight.
Feeling like you’re on a diet is optional, and the truth of it is that you’re far more likely to be successful at losing weight and maintaining it for life when what you feel is amazing.
So, today I’m sharing four ways I used to feel like I was on a diet and exactly what I did to stop dieting and start loving, trusting, understanding, and believing in myself instead.
Let’s dive in.
WHY I STOPPED DIETING REASON NUMBER ONE: I was sick and tired of constantly worrying about when, where, and what I was going to eat next. I used to spend so much time thinking about food, and I hated it. I suspect that you can relate to this, because it’s one of the most common complaints I hear from other menopausal women who want to be done dieting, but also want to lose weight.
It feels like your whole day and at least ninety percent of your brain power is focused on what you’re going to eat, and how much of it will fit into your calorie target, and when you’ll be able to eat. Plus there are the worries about what if you can’t figure out the calories or what if you get too hungry or what if you don’t get to eat what you want or how will you make it all work if you’re out of your regular routine?
I felt the exact same way.
SO HERE’S HOW I PUT A STOP TO THE WORRY ABOUT EATING: I started making intentional decisions ahead of time about when, where, how, and how much I was going to eat. And I’m pretty sure that when I say that, it sounds like I had a super rigid structure, with schedules and timetables and rules and checks and balances.
But I promise, it was nothing like that! I actually gave myself a really loose framework with lots of wiggle room. The important part of this wasn't the rigidity (or lack thereof) of what I was doing, but the fact that the decisions themselves were MADE. For me, indecision is stressful, so having an intention ahead of time felt like I could take a deep breath.
Here’s a really specific example of how I think about breakfast now, versus how I used to think about breakfast when I was dieting. My daily work schedule fluctuates quite a bit, with different times for coaching calls, mastermind meetings, tasks that need to get done, and a variety of household “stuff” like taking my mom to the doctor or meeting my accountant.
Now that my husband is retired, I don’t really pay attention to his schedule (because he doesn’t really have one), but I do like to see my son in the morning before he leaves for work at 5:30.
Back in the day, I used to wake up at the same time as my husband and kids, and all four of us would be running around, trying to get ready for the day, arguing about who would shower first and who could get on the treadmill and who had to run to the grocery store because we always seemed to be out of milk or bananas or eggs.
It was constant chaos, and – hello, socialized misogyny – I invariably put myself last and attended to everybody else’s needs first. So I would find myself starving and unshowered at 10 am (which isn’t late unless you get up at 3 am like I do), with less time than I wanted for a workout and scrambling to get on my work calls on time.
But when I stopped dieting, I started taking responsibility for getting my own needs met in a way that, yes, still included compromise, but never had me in a bundle of worry and anxiety about how I was going to squeeze it all in.
I took a look at my calendar and recognized that even though every day was different from each other, they repeated in the same pattern each week. So I made a Monday plan to exercise early and eat early to get on my early work calls, but I showered later in the day.
On Tuesdays, my workout came a little later, but was quickly followed by breakfast and a shower, because my work calls weren’t until later in the afternoon. Wednesdays had a late workout, late breakfast and late shower, and Thursday and Friday were similar to Monday, but started about an hour later.
Weekends were less structured, but I truly enjoy exercising, eating, and showering early in the day, so I did that.
I simplified my routine by choosing one breakfast that I would eat every day, which also made shopping easier. Every day had its own rhythm and its own timing, but all the decisions were made ahead of time, so everything felt easy.
Now, let me clarify very quickly that I am not recommending that you do what I do. You don’t need to wake up early or eat the same thing every day. Those were MY decisions that worked for ME. What I’m suggesting is the act of making decisions ahead of time in ways that reduce your worry and anxiety.
Inside the Get Your GOAL membership, I have an entire Masterclass called “Peaceful Parameters” that walks you through this entire decision-making process, one question at a time. Rather than getting overwhelmed trying to figure it all out, this class keeps you focused on what you want to do and what feels doable right now.
Oh, and another quick note: you probably noticed that making what was essentially one decision about my breakfast actually helped me make decisions about my sleep routine and my daily workouts, too! Yes. Lining up your intentions in one area often helps you get them in line other places, too, which makes all of weight loss that much simpler.
WHY I STOPPED DIETING REASON NUMBER TWO: I desperately wanted to stop beating myself up for my mistakes. Because I did that a lot. Like, there was a constant stream of what amounted to verbal abuse in my head all day long. Maybe you can relate?
You start the day with good intentions but somewhere around 3 pm the wheels start coming off the bus. You find yourself snacking before dinner and skipping your workout, forgetting to drink your water and then you’re reading a good book and – oh, crap – you should have been in bed 45 minutes ago, you big dumb dummy. Why can’t you ever get it right? You’re never going to lose weight if you keep screwing it up like this.
Oh, my friend. I hear you.
SO HERE’S HOW I PUT A STOP TO THE NEGATIVE SELF TALK: I started having my own back no matter what happened, even when (especially when!) I found myself doing something I didn’t intend, like overeating or staying up too late. I learned how to stop wasting time on feeling guilty or beating myself up or pretending to “give myself grace” (while not-so-secretly feeling guilty and beating myself up anyway), and got straight to understanding what happened.
I will never forget the first time I heard about the cognitive-behavioral thought model that explains why we do things. (This is a concept I explained in an episode of the podcast titled The Wheel, and I highly recommend you go listen to that one next. The short version is that everything starts with you, with your thought. That thought creates your feeling, and that feeling drives your actions, which eventually gets you a result that’s a direct reflection of your original thought.)
What this all means is that unintentional behavior has an explanation. It’s never because you’re stupid or lazy or bad at life. If you find yourself doing something you didn’t mean to do, it’s because you had a THOUGHT that created a FEELING that drove that ACTION.
That’s it!
There’s literally – and I’m using that word correctly – literally never a reason to beat yourself up. Because there’s always an explanation. It’s always just a thought to find, or a feeling to feel.
And this is, hands down, some of the best and most productive work we do inside the Get Your GOAL group. Laying aside the judgments and monkey chatter in your head is not a matter of trying to be positive all the time, and there’s actually a series of really simple journaling prompts that can help you get to the root of unintentional behavior that I share in the asynchronous video courses.
Which ties in pretty neatly with the next thing.
WHY I STOPPED DIETING REASON NUMBER THREE: I was so frustrated with my inconsistency. And let me be very specific here: when I was losing weight for the last time a few years ago in my early 50s, I absolutely, positively could not get consistent with my water, and it vexed me.
Here I was, with all my decisions made beforehand, a spacious routine in place, a process for figuring out why I would behave unintentionally, and yet… I would get to the end of the day more often than not with only about 2/3rds of my water target onboard.
What. The. Eff?
I’m gonna guess that you have some experience with this kind of thing, too. Inside the Get Your GOAL membership, I frequently coach about consistency because it’s something we all work on.
SO HERE’S HOW I STOPPED BEING FRUSTRATED WITH MY INCONSISTENCY: I started journaling to understand myself better. Every single day, because, truth be told, my brain and my body are endlessly fascinating to me, and I love solving mysteries.
Note to the aside, this is why I have a degree in Criminology. There were many years when I wanted to be a detective with the FBI, and no it’s not a coincidence that this was when The X-Files tv show was super popular.
Anyway, here’s what I want to point out about this particular dieting issue. Notice the wording of my solution. I didn’t stop being inconsistent. I stopped being frustrated with my inconsistency.
I didn’t solve this problem by making myself DO something different, I solved this problem by thinking (and therefore feeling) differently about it.
Instead of coming to my journal determined to find a solution so I could make myself drink all my water, I showed up every day curious about what was going to come out of my pen. To this day, I’m still not 100% consistent with my water (though I am about 95% these days, which is significantly better than the 40% I used to be), but I’m endlessly curious about what else I might uncover to get that last 5%.
I’m not creating frustration for myself by thinking that I should be drinking my water, or that I should have already figured this out, or that this should be easier for me because I’m a weight loss life coach, for heaven’s sake, and I do this for a living.
Nope. I’m a human being with a human brain, and I still have subconscious thoughts that stop me from drinking water sometimes. I’ll find ‘em one of these days, I’m sure. And if I don’t, that’s okay, too.
I have the result I want on the scale, and I have the result I want in terms of not feeling frustrated all the time. Which brings me to two important points: first, you can absolutely get to your goal weight without being 100% consistent with your weight loss habits.
And second, you can still have “diet thinking” long after you’ve gotten the results you want, so it’s never too late to examine with your journal what’s going on in your head.
WHY I STOPPED DIETING REASON NUMBER FOUR: I really wanted to stop counting calories. If there’s one thing that gets misunderstood about The 5-0 Method, which is my free weight loss guide for women over 50, it’s this.
In The 5-0 Method, I recommend counting calories so that you can be sure you’re eating in the slight caloric deficit your body needs to lose weight, but it’s not intended as a long-term strategy or for maintenance.
Rather, I think about it like having training wheels on while you learn to ride a bike, because I always knew that I wanted to be done counting calories eventually.
SO HERE’S HOW I STOPPED COUNTING CALORIES: I started paying attention to my body’s communication. Which was really tough at first, because she is so much quieter than my brain’s loud chatter!
Over time, I learned the subtle ways she tells me that she’s tired or worried or hungry or that “something isn’t right.” I started to notice the almost imperceptible signs and cues she gives me about when I’ve had enough or done too much or need a little more.
Before I was in the thick of things with menopause, I had been eating intuitively and maintaining my weight for years without a problem. I had a routine and I had an open line of communication with my body to change that routine, as needed, when she asked me to.
But then my periods started getting wonky, and my sleep got disrupted, and my sister died, and my kids went off to college, and my workouts started to sap the life out of me, and I couldn’t stop gaining weight, and suddenly I was anxious all the time and it really, truly felt like the body I had loved and cherished in my 40s was now my mortal enemy, bent on destroying everything I loved in the world.
And yes, I was that dramatic about it. It felt like the worst betrayal of my life, like I wasn’t even safe inside my own skin.
I lost my hunger signals, I lost my satiety signals, I lost my tiredness signals and my full of energy signals. Basically, my brain and my body – to quote Ross from Friends – were on a break.
So, there was a time when counting calories was the lifeline I needed. It turned out that I had been pretty radically unintentionally undereating. So counting calories and eating the right amount for the first time in months or maybe years helped me regulate my food intake when I couldn’t hear what my body was asking for.
I know lots of women want to be done counting calories because they hate counting calories, but that wasn’t how I saw it. It’s not that I loved counting calories, but rather that it helped me pay attention and get in touch with my newly menopausal body.
It turned out, she needed different fueling than my pre-menopausal body. She needed a different sleep routine, a different exercise routine, and a different water routine, too. But I wouldn’t have heard any of that if I hadn’t counted calories for a while.
When I stopped counting calories, it wasn’t because I couldn’t stand to do it one more minute, it was because I felt 100% trust and belief in my ability to hear what my body was asking for and follow through on it with love. When I stopped counting calories, I was really and truly done with dieting.
My friend, when I stopped dieting and started making intentional decisions, having my own back, journaling to understand myself, and listening to my body’s communication – I set myself free from worry, frustration, judgment and restriction. It’s been one of the nicest things I’ve ever done for myself, and I can teach you how to do it, too. Download The 5-0 Method, my free weight loss guide for women over 50, and let’s go.
Thank you so much for listening. I’ll talk to you again soon!
