Finding pleasure in food after 50 can change everything. Learn why it matters and how to rebuild a peaceful, enjoyable relationship with food.

Do you remember a time when you truly found pleasure in food, not just enjoying a favorite dish now and then, but genuinely feeling satisfied and happy every day when you ate?

For many women, especially after 50, that kind of ease with food feels like a distant memory. Instead of pleasure, eating has become a cycle of restriction, guilt, and frustration.

In this post, we’ll explore why women lose their enjoyment of food, what’s really going on beneath the surface, and practical ways to bring pleasure and peace back to your meals.

One thing I’ve noticed in my six years of coaching women, is that virtually none of them were finding pleasure in eating their food anymore. Food was actually almost like a scary enemy and every day was a struggle to “eat right.”

I see this with clients, friends, families, and women I meet out and about.

Last week, my 93-year old mom was telling me that she needed to watch what she was eating because she had gained some weight. Then last time I talked to her, she was happy that she had lost a couple of pounds.

This doesn’t go away on its own!

What Women do Instead of Eating for Pleasure

If you are a woman, you probably have your own version of what this looks like. As part of my coaching work, I work with your mindset, but I also work with your feelings and how your feelings are expressed in your body.

When women talk about food, eating, and their bodies, here are some of the things I hear:

• I’m a loser
• Nothing I do works
• I can’t have food I like
• Food is dangerous
• I blew it, I might as well blow it the whole way
• This food is bad
• I hate being this size
• Work makes me want to eat
• I just keep going in circles

The feelings women feel are:

• Despair
• Defeated
• Sad
• Angry
• Frustrated
• Overwhelmed
• Confused

And finally here is how it shows up in their lives:

• Hating to go out to eat because they have to figure out what they can eat
• Dreading the holidays and vacations because that means gaining weight
• Overeating during the day or eating too much in the evenings
• Putting off exercise
• Not trying because it’s not going to work anyway
• Planning to start fresh every week or so

So how does this painful cycle get started in the first place?

Why Women Struggle with Food and Eating

I could write a book on why we are so messed up around food but let me assure you, you are not the problem. However, what you think is the problem isn’t really the problem.

Every single woman I talk to, thinks they are the problem and that any problems they have with their body, food, eating, and their weight is because they are doing something wrong.

This isn’t true. What is true, is that all of the pressure to be thin and healthy have created the situation where more women are overweight and sick in some way than ever before.

Instead of creating strong healthy bodies that we can enjoy for a long time, we put ourselves through the misery of diets that do not work long-term, eating too little of real food, and binging and overeating not-so-great food.

Women are miserable on diets. And they are miserable when not on a diet because they continually tell themselves that they should be on a diet.

Instead of food being pleasurable, it is a constant struggle and source of pain.

Let’s change that.

Why This Matters

This isn’t just an abstract issue for me; it’s personal and central to my work.

At heart I believe every woman deserves to be at peace with her body and with food. I’ve written over 50 posts on losing weight, not because I think every women needs to be thin but because I want women to find some peace with food and their bodies.

For the most part, if you look online, all the advice from the major sites and AI is to eat sensibly and exercise.

Yet we all know that that simplified advice just does not work for most women after 50. Our bodies have gone through major hormonal changes and most of us are dealing with insulin resistance and autoimmune diseases.

There is so much incomplete and inaccurate information out there that just keeps women even more stuck. The message is, you are doing it wrong, if only you wouldn’t overeat, you could fix everything in your life.

And when you try your best and fail at losing weight, you are blamed.

Women think the answer is to eat less. However, that is not the entire answer and as long as you keep telling yourself you are the problem then you will stay stuck.

Instead, it’s time to look at the big picture. While you are not to blame because you have done nothing wrong, you also have to take responsibility for yourself now.

This means letting go of the idea that a diet will fix you.

Why Finding Pleasure in Food Matters After 50

One of the things that I love about life coaching is helping women find peace and pleasure with their food.

I have a specific process that I take women through over the course of our time working together.

1. Assess their current eating habits to see what is working and what could be problematic
2. Determine incremental changes to make week by week
3. Celebrate all the wins, including non-scale wins
4. Build up meals and nutrition, while reducing/eliminating snacking and binging

Almost from week one, women stop gaining weight and their confidence increases. Eating for pleasure is often new and a little scary, so instead of just handing women an arbitrary plan, together we create individual solutions that are doable and make sense.

Addressing feelings and triggers

Each week we coach on any feelings, emotions, or triggers that come up. While you may know in your head that you want to lose weight or even need to, 95% of your thoughts and feelings about this are not in your awareness. You literally sabotage yourself without knowing it.

A big part of the work I do, is helping women understand what is really going on. Part of it is the physical nature of food and how our body works. But another part is how our thoughts and emotions affect how and when we eat.

Actions to take

To accomplish this we create actions to take each week to create a sound eating plan. We celebrate anything that went well or any progress you made. All of it, not just what the scale says.

One of the best things about this process is that you shift and change. Once you’ve made a shift through coaching, you can’t unlearn or unknow it. You change your brain so you think more effective thoughts and feel better in general.

Why this is important

These emotional and mental shifts are why finding pleasure in food is so important. It’s not just about your weight; it is about all of you. If food is a constant source of irritation and frustration or deprivation, life just doesn’t feel as good.

You deserve to eat well and feel good about yourself.

Even before they lose weight, my clients feel better and they begin to enjoy food instead of fearing food.

They are able to vacation, get through the holidays, and go through life without needing to use food to numb themselves emotionally.

Miserable dieting will not give you those results. Because depriving yourself of enough food and food you enjoy feels bad. And when your body/mind/spirit revolts and you binge or overeat, you feel even worse.

Simple First Steps to Enjoy Food Again

My process is fairly simple and usually results in stopping your weight gain and helps you feel better.

Eat your meals

One of the best things you can do for yourself in the beginning is to just allow yourself to eat your meals without judging them. Eat foods you like and eat enough that you feel satisfied. My clients always tell me this one thing made the biggest difference to enjoying eating again.

This doesn’t mean pigging out or just eating junk and fast food. It means make some meals with protein, vegetables, and fat and oils.

Eat some real food that tastes good. If you have fast food have it for a meal and call it good. I encourage clients to have things like this once a week or so. This allows for some flexibility.

Be kind to yourself

No matter what happens, don’t punish yourself. When you overeat or binge, just move on and eat your next meal like normal.

At times if you find yourself craving snacks, check in to see if you are hungry. If you are, have a snack. If you are not hungry, check in with yourself and see what it is you need.

Often it is rest, movement, or connection. We often use food to self-soothe, give us energy, or calm us down. Instead of food, you can give yourself what it is you really need.

What more Help?

Finding pleasure in food again isn’t just about what’s on your plate; it’s about how you feel in your body, your mind, and your daily life.

When you stop punishing yourself and start creating real satisfaction around food, everything changes. You deserve to enjoy eating again, to trust yourself, and to feel at peace in your body.

If you want support in making this shift, schedule a free Zoom call and let’s talk about whether life coaching is right for you. Together, we can create a way of eating that feels good and works for you.

The post Why Finding Pleasure in Food Matters After 50 appeared first on My Think Big Life.

If I asked you what causes weight gain, most of you would say, “Eating too much.” That simple answer is so ingrained in us that it sounds true. And sometimes it is. And sometimes it isn’t. Many women carry more weight than they would like, however they do not overeat.

So, what’s going on?

Most of us grew up believing that weight gain happens because we simply eat too much. It sounds logical, it’s what we’ve been told for decades, and it’s often said with authority. But what if that explanation is incomplete or even misleading?

Many women carry extra fat even though they don’t consistently overeat. If you’ve ever felt like you are doing something wrong because the usual rules don’t seem to work for you, this post is going to give you a different way to understand weight, food, and your body.

What Really Causes Weight Gain After 50

There is a big problem with saying that the reason we’re overweight is because we eat too much. If we weigh too much and the reason is we eat too much but can’t seem to change that, then we must be bad in some way.

Amazing women all over the world, think they are bad in some way because they struggle with food, eating, and their bodies.

But what if I told you, that you are working with the wrong premise for weight gain or weight loss?

Let’s look at this differently. By changing how you approach being overweight. Actually, let’s back it up a bit. What does being overweight even mean?

In our modern world we use a few ways to define overweight.

• We look at our weight or size and decide if we are overweight.
• We look at a BMI table and base whether we are overweight on that
• Someone else such as a doctor or a parent have told us we’re overweight

Each of these is somewhat arbitrary though. While just like thinking overeating causes someone to be overweight, each of us can be different sizes or weights and not be overweight. I meet so many women that think they are overweight even though they are in a perfectly normal body.

A higher weight may also be more muscles and more bone density. It’s more useful to look at your body as a whole than as a number on the scale.

When we try to force ourselves into a weight that isn’t actually meant for us or even good for us, we can set up a never-ending cycle of deprivation and overeating.

Instead of arbitrary measures, we could look at ourselves with new eyes. When I think about my own weight, I think about it in terms of functionality and also aesthetics.

I want my body to look and feel great. For me, that means staying within a weight range that feels good. It’s not based on a chart or even what others say is the right size. I also notice how my clothes fit and what my energy levels are like.

Here’s the thing I see all the time. Women are so desperate to chase an unrealistic weight or size that they cycle through not eating enough with eating too much, resulting in too much fat, bad health, and really messed up eating habits.

Instead of working calmly and steadily to have a lovely and functional body, they instead make everything worse for themselves.

But it doesn’t have to be that way!

Why “Eating Too Much” Isn’t the Real Cause of Weight Gain After 50

In general, we gain weight because we take in more energy than our body can use. As we get older, our bad habits catch up with us, making our bodies more efficient at storing fat than in using it for energy.

Most of us were raised with low calorie diets. It was very common for women to go on a 1200-calorie a day diet to lose weight.

And those women were miserable because dieting is miserable. But we were also told that it was worth it. Remember the “nothing feels as good as skinny” rhetoric?

While you absolutely can lose weight on low-calorie diets; science and research are clear about one thing. Losing weight through a diet has virtually no long-term chance of success. Less than 5% of people that lose weight through a diet are able to maintain that loss.

Since the that time, we’ve come back around to understanding that carbohydrates and not fat are what are actually fattening. So, people went on low-carb diets to lose weight. And while effective, these diets didn’t offer long-term success either.

Here’s the thing. Most diets require us to eat in a way that isn’t right for us.

When I was still an occasional dieter, I would have success with diets, love how I felt, and love how my body looked. Yet, I couldn’t maintain my new way of eating no matter how effective it was.

We have forgotten how to just eat food we like in a way that works for our bodies and we’ve become addicted to using non-food foods as substitutes for real food.  

In addition, we eat around the clock. Instead of giving our bodies a chance to digest and process our food, we eat our meals plus snacks. Most people are eating during most of the hours they are awake.

Why Many Women Gain Weight After 50

In short, too many high-carbohydrate foods eaten too often create the perfect storm for continually gaining fat.

I want to be clear here. You don’t have to eat perfectly, all the time. But if you are gaining weight, that will not resolve on its own. You have to make some changes in how you eat.

But first, you need to understand what’s causing that gradual weight gain over the years and why it can be so hard to reverse.

All carbohydrates are broken down into glucose (sugar) in your body. A network of hormones including insulin regulates how that glucose is distributed, used for energy, or stored.

Your body uses some of the glucose right away for energy. If there’s more than it needs, the excess is sent to the liver and stored as glycogen to use later. But the liver has a limited capacity. Once those glycogen stores are full, the remaining excess is converted into fat and stored in fat cells.

When we eat frequently throughout the day, we often take in more energy than we use. Over time, the extra energy gets stored as fat, and our bodies get more efficient at storing fat than using it.

In times of scarcity, this would be helpful, those fat stores would keep us alive. But in a world where food is always available, that stored fat just keeps accumulating.

And this can happen even if it doesn’t feel like you’re overeating.

This is why low-carbohydrate diets can seem like a miracle for a time. You eat plenty and still lose weight. But in the end, they are difficult to maintain and later on your taste for fat combined with going back to too many carbs will cause you to gain weight again.

How to Eat to Lose Fat After 50

You lose fat when you allow your body to use all the glucose in your blood until it is required to use the fat you have in storage.

You can never lose fat unless you create the right conditions for your body to use fat for energy.

So, to lose fat, you do two things:

• Eat enough carbs for energy but not too many
• Give your body time to get into your fat stores for energy

These two things combined, allow you to eat most of the things you like without having to count calories or stress too much.

In my experience, this is the only thing that really works and while I wouldn’t say it’s always easy, it’s definitely not miserable to do.

If your system is operating pretty good, you may only need to start eating all your food at meals, either two or three a day. This alone often stops the gradual weight gain.

How to Lose Fat Naturally After 50

Beyond this, here’s the order I suggest. And you may not need to do them all. I recommend starting as conservative as possible.

Eat all food at mealtime. This means no snacks or eating at night. If this seems daunting, you probably aren’t eating enough at mealtime. As you are retraining your body, eat enough at meals to get you to the next meal. Since you are eating less carbs, add more vegetables and some extra fat like butter or olive oil.

Wait to eat until you are hungry, stop when full. If you have the flexibility to do this, wait to eat until you feel the hunger signals before you eat. This is so beneficial because if you wait to eat until you are hungry, it’s much easier to feel when you are full.

Reduce all added sugars, it’s okay to eliminate for a time if you have a big sweet tooth. Sometimes it is easier to eat no sugar than to have a little bit each day. If you are going to eat sugar, eat it at the end of your meal. You are way less likely to overdo it then. If you wait until you are hungry, you will eat more sugar.

Reduce carbs such as grains which includes pasta, rice, corn, breads, and cereals. I love to use potatoes, winter squash, carrots, beets, and fruit for my high carb foods. They help with energy, taste good, and make meals more satisfying. Plan on having a serving with each meal.

Give your body a long break from eating from last meal of day to first meal of the next. Aim for 13 hours. My body does better when I finish eating by 6 or 7 in the evening. When I wake up, I have about 12 hours fasting already in. It’s fairly easy since you sleep through most of this time.

How to Get Started with These Weight Loss Changes

This may seem overly simple to you or overly complicated depending on your current habits. But I can guarantee this, it’s actually a much simpler way of eating than you have ever done before.

I have a post that lays this all out in order, along with some of the mindset strategies you can use to make this a more enjoyable and effective practice.

When you only have to plan, prep, prepare two or three meals a day, life becomes so much simpler and easier.

This way of eating isn’t a quick fix or a trendy diet; it’s a return to how our bodies are meant to function. When you understand the real reasons behind weight gain, you stop fighting yourself and start working with your body instead of against it.

Give yourself time to learn, experiment, and adjust. The reward is a way of eating that supports your health, simplifies your life, and allows you to feel good in your body for the long term.

The post What Really Causes Weight Gain appeared first on My Think Big Life.

A common question among women is can you heal your relationship with food? Yes, it is possible and the benefits to healing your relationship with food extend beyond losing weight.

For decades, women have been told their weight is a personal failing, the result of laziness or lack of willpower. Yet despite working harder than ever, dieting more than ever, and being more health-conscious than ever, obesity rates continue to climb.

The truth is, the problem is not you, it’s the broken system of dieting, unrealistic expectations, and quick-fix solutions that have left generations of women discouraged and disconnected from their bodies.

The good news? You can use your weight journey as an opportunity to heal not just your body, but your relationship with yourself.

Losing weight or even deciding to maintain your current weight is an opportunity to heal in so many ways including and beyond the physical benefits. 

So often, women are told they need to lose weight, which comes as a surprise, to absolutely no one, who has been told this.

Our excess weight is framed as something we are doing wrong in life or that we are just too lazy to eat less or exercise more.

But have you ever stopped to think why, smart and hard-working women cannot lose weight?

Can it really be that we are all lazy gluttonous women?

The answer is NO. An emphatic NO. Your weight is not because there is something wrong with you.

Obesity and related diseases, have over the past 45 years gone up to at all-time highs now. The problem is much bigger than your habits.

According to the National Institute of Health

• Nearly 1 in 3 adults (30.7%) are overweight
• More than 2 in 5 adults (42.4%) have obesity
• About 1 in 11 adults (9.2%) have severe obesity

If willpower were the solution, we wouldn’t be facing a crisis. Yet today, nearly half of all adults in the U.S. are living with obesity and more women are struggling with their weight than ever before.”

The Problem with Weight Loss for Women

Briefly here are the problems I see:

Low fat and low calorie diets that have been promoted since the fifties have resulted in the greatest increase of weight gain and related diseases. Fat was never the problem but the increase in processed easy-to-eat fast and convenience foods that we snack on all day is a problem.

Grown women are expected to have the bodies of teenagers. We hold ourselves to this vision. Those that are successful at staying very thin, develop their own set of health problems including bone loss and increased cancer diagnosis. Those that continually diet and fail, end up gaining more weight every year.

Dieting is a business and making money is the real goal, not helping women be healthy. Thin does not equal health. You can be thin and very unhealthy, even though you get compliments about your body. But the diet industry doesn’t even really get many of you thin.

We’ve forgotten that we deserve to eat and eat food we like. We’ve been conditioned to think we need to eat too little of low-calorie foods that don’t even taste good. We are completely out of touch with our hunger cues and when our body feels full.

Finally, since all of the above has created a couple of generations of overweight women, I see doctors giving up and prescribing GLP1’s to many women whether it is medically called for or not.

These issues lead to women doing the opposite of healing themselves. While you may believe that being thin will fix everything; it just doesn’t. However, I do understand your desire to lose weight and the frustration that comes when that doesn’t happen.

What I want you to know is that you can use your weight loss journey to heal many parts of yourself that have been ignored or pushed away over the years as well as eating better, understanding your body better, and feeling better.

What Can You Heal?

You can heal the struggling parts of yourself and learn to love all of you maybe for the first time ever.

What do I mean by the struggling parts? All of us have parts of our personality that we approve of. And we also have the parts that we wish would never see the light of day.

The problem with this is that the parts you approve of and let run the show for the most parts, are stuck in a protector mode and is always holding you back in some way.

The parts you’ve pushed away are running things behind the scenes. You may not even be conscious of their influence but they are also trying to keep you safe in their own way.

For example, the part of you that you are conscious of, says, You need to lose weight. Makes sense, of course you do. And yet, it just doesn’t happen despite your best efforts.

An Example of Healing an Eating Pattern

One time I had a client who couldn’t figure out why she ate chocolate every night. Her solution was to have her husband hide it. (You’d be surprised by how many women have people hide food from them.)

We did some work and next thing we knew, she was eating popcorn in the evening. She stopped the popcorn, again by having her husband remove it. And then it was a sudden desire for ice-cream every night.

Can you see how the actual food was not the problem? We had removed hunger as the reason. We removed the idea that certain foods were addictive for her. That left just the time period—evening.

Once we knew there was something about the evening time that needed soothing with food, we could focus on the real problem, which we discovered was that she couldn’t relax in the evening without food.

There was a part of her that believed that stopping, resting, and watching television was dangerous.

It wasn’t actually dangerous but this part of her, believed it was to the extent that to quiet that part, she ate every night just to sooth herself enough that she could sit and enjoy time with her husband.
Maybe for you it’s chips after work, or a nightly glass of wine. For her, it was chocolate. The food itself wasn’t the problem; it was what she needed it to quiet.

The healing came from acknowledging these parts of herself. The part that thought she needed to work 24/7 to feel safe. And the part that wanted to lose weight but didn’t know how. And the part that was trying to hold it all together.

Often, because productivity is considered good and women become successful because of their productivity, they don’t realize how much this idea runs their lives.

Why This is Different Than a Diet

Diets do not heal anything, not even the body. The word diet can simply mean what you eat on a daily basis, but it has also come to mean a period of deprivation of food for the purpose of losing weight.

To lose weight, you do have to make some changes. However, the changes I recommend are rooted in taking care of yourself and loving yourself. Instead of deprivation, I usually recommend eating more at times

The types of food you eat and when you eat is important and makes the whole process easier. Instead of using willpower, I teach women to understand what makes them overeat at times and how to eat more naturally.

My clients love the freedom from worrying about every bit they put into their mouths whether at home or when going out.

As you learn to eat, you heal your body from the inside out. I’m not a doctor or nutritionist but I know a lot about eating and food in general. For the most part though, my clients who do see a knowledgeable doctor or nutritionist, get the same kind of advice about what to eat.

I’m an expert in helping you follow through on the kind of eating that is right for you. I help dissolve problem eating patterns and give you a great foundation for managing your weight forever.

Instead of dieting imagine:

• eating full meals of food you actually enjoy, without guilt.
• dissolving old eating patterns for good, not just for a few weeks.
• trusting your body and yourself more than you ever thought possible

Diets don’t offer a forever solution (you aren’t the problem but you may have habits that are.) but I do and it feels great to finally have the ability to enjoy food again without worrying that it’s going to ruin everything.

Your Next Step

If you’re ready to step off the dieting treadmill and start creating lasting change, I’d love to help. In a free Zoom consultation, we’ll uncover what’s really holding you back and explore how you can heal your eating patterns for good. You don’t have to keep fighting with your body, let’s find a way forward that feels like freedom. Schedule your free zoom consult here.

The post Can You Heal Your Relationship with Food? appeared first on My Think Big Life.

At this point you might not understand why eating less isn’t working for you but that seems to be the only advice out there to help you lose weight.

I’m going to give you a different perspective on what I call the myth of eating less. This tiny statement has created so much damage for women who have been led to believe that it is their appetite that is the problem.

Have you recently been searching for help with an issue that also includes weight gain and been frustrated by the search results that just say something along the lines of “eat less?”

For decades, women have been told the secret to weight loss is simple: just eat less. But this so-called “truth” hasn’t helped us.

Instead, it’s left generations of women stuck in cycles of restriction, guilt, and confusion: struggling with food, battling body image issues, and still carrying more weight than they want.

It’s time to question why we keep following advice that doesn’t work and start looking at what truly helps us feel better in our bodies.

The Myth of Eating Less

Women typically believe that they need to eat less. We’ve heard that since we were teenagers. And we’re still being told this by medical professionals and most of the articles online when we search for help.

Eat less, eat less, eat less, was the constant message for most of us. And if you felt like you were already over-sized the message was even louder. We were punished for having an appetite and eating food we liked.

When I was a teenager, I believed the magazines like Teen and Seventeen that were full of waif-like models who promoted extreme thinness.

Because my very normal and healthy body was not a smaller size, I always felt like I was doing it wrong. I kid you not. Looking back, I would be considered thin now, but back then I felt huge.

I know the pain of spending your days trying to figure out how to eat less so you can finally have a body that society will approve of.

We have so much collective pain over hating our bodies because we are still trying to live up to the ideal of what we thought we were supposed to look like as a teenager.

The myth is that if only we could control our appetites, we could control our bodies, and we’d finally feel okay.

Yet, even after decades we still hold on to that myth and continue to punish ourselves physically and emotionally because our bodies actually do get hungry and we really do need to eat.

I’ve begun describing the work I do as teaching women to eat like you love yourself. I’m not telling you to give up on having a healthy body. I’m just saying it’s time to eat as if you are a person you truly loved and wanted the best for.

Eating less is not the entire answer. Our bodies are way more complex than that. Sometimes you will need to eat more. Sometimes you’ll need to eat differently. But I can almost guarantee you that you don’t need to just eat less.

Why Eating Less Doesn’t Work

When it comes to food and eating, we have a lot of thoughts and feelings. Once upon a time, getting food was almost a full time job. We ate for survival. Up until the last couple of generations, food scarcity was a thing for many people.

My mom grew up in a house that often had food scarcity. There was always something, but a meal could be as little as some toast the school sent home with her mom.

But in the 80+ years since my mom had toast and cocoa for dinner, the world of food has exploded. In her childhood a grocery store might have hundreds of items. These days, depending on the size of the store it can be in the tens of thousands.

Add to that, all the restaurants and fast-food places that sprung up.

But first I’ve got to explain that part of the problem is that what you think you should be doing, just isn’t the right thing.

Forget about survival, most of us are trying to figure out how to avoid eating all the tasty and crave-inducing foods there are. We fight an internal battle every day between what we want to eat and what we should eat.

What Eating Less Looks Like

For the most part, women have been led to believe that they need to eat less at meals. Every diet I was ever on, had portion sizes, that in no way, every satisfied me. It was always either too little food or food I didn’t really enjoy.

I can remember being hungry in a way that felt painful and always wanting more food.

Then there would be overeating and binging to compensate. Not eating enough at meals is a problem not a solution.

What I see by the time clients find me are women who restrict their food intake at meals and overeat or binge at other times. They come to me, hoping that I can help them finally conquer their appetites.

Yes, women believe their appetites and their lack of willpower are the problem and that there is something wrong with them.

Being hungry is seen a fault and women who somehow transcend their hunger are held up as role models for the rest of us.

The problem is painted as if there is something wrong with us rather than we’ve been taught the wrong things.

What Do You Do Instead of Eating Less?

Instead, I teach women how to work with their appetites in a new way. While eating less may cause you to lose weight, you will be in a constant battle with your appetite and hunger. It doesn’t ever feel good.

Plus the eating less isn’t necessarily healthier and for some women even that doesn’t even work after a certain age.

Instead of eating less, you most likely need to eat differently. Your appetite and hunger are a part of you. Your fat is a survival mechanism in your body. You can’t beat them into submission and feel good.

However, you can change how you eat and feel better for doing it. Eating doesn’t have to feel complicated like a crazy puzzle that you can’t figure out.

Forget that nonsense that eating healthy has to be about eating foods you don’t like and eating those foods in tiny quantities. The only thing that will work long-term is eating foods you like and eating enough that you feel good.

The Shift in How We Eat

The surprise for most of my clients is that they need to eat more at their meals. They need to eat more real food. They need to spend more time planning and preparing food. They need to intentionally eat food they like. They need to abandon the idea of needing to eat less.

As you can imagine, this doesn’t happen overnight. And most women are not happy to hear that. Most women want to do less, not more. Not because they are lazy but because they are already doing so much. So, adding meal planning, prep, and time to eat can feel overwhelming.

The solution is not to abandon eating like you love yourself; the solution is to do less in other areas so you have time to take care of yourself.

If that sounds bad, I get that. We see ourselves as indispensable in other areas of our lives, while at the same time abandoning our care of ourselves. This calls for a big shift in your mindset. You must put yourself first. To undo decades of body damage, it really requires a lot of focus on yourself to change.

In my practice, most of my clients are doing too much for other people. They live with partners, but they do almost all the house care, meals, and planning. They prioritize their grown children’s needs over their own needs. And at work, they do their own job plus way more.

So, the goal of eating like you love yourself, requires you to love yourself in such a way as you prioritize your own well-being and self-care.

What Does Eating More Look Like?

The first and most amazing thing happens when you begin eating more at meals. By eating more at meals and eliminating the overeating and binging at other times, you stop gaining weight.

That’s always motivating and surprising to my clients. “Wow, I’m eating good meals and I’m not gaining weight.”

We start by having the client track all her food. Most women under eat at meals and overeat with snacks.

When I first start working with a client, I recommend that they end all snacking as a goal. It can take a few weeks for this to happen. However even before eliminating snacking, I challenge women eat more at their meals.

Snacking can easily double the amount of food we eat in a day without leaving us feeling satisfied. It can seem like we’re always looking for the next thing to eat. And we are!

Yet, when we commit to eating enough food at our meals to feel satisfied, it is much easier to snack less. For most of us, our bodies do better when we feed them enough at meals to go many hours until the next time we eat.

When we eat a meal that fills us up; we generally feel good. Then as the hours go by, our body will gradually become hungry again.

This hunger feels good and is a signal that we’ll need to eat soon but it doesn’t feel like an emergency.

Doing this will usually stop weight gain. We can easily maintain our weight, when we eat meals and don’t snack. This is actually very freeing because we worry less about eating or food in general. We begin to understand and feel the natural rhythms of our hunger and our body.

Here are a couple of posts that can walk you through how to do that and ideas for adjusting how you eat so you can lose weight.

10 Powerful Tips to Lose Weight

7 Tips to Lose Weight After 50

The post Why Eating Less Isn’t Working appeared first on My Think Big Life.

I know many of you want to know how to stop being an emotional eater and I am here to help. I am going to teach you how to use your emotions to eat in a way that feels so much better.

I’ll explain

• How emotions affect the how, when, and why you eat.
• 6 common emotional eating patterns
• How to change these emotional eating patterns

What is An Emotional Eater?

When you think of being an emotional eater; do you automatically think that is a bad thing? Whether we like it or not, emotions always play a part in how we eat.

Most of us imagine a woman overeating her ice-cream or binging on chips when she is upset. This of course does happen at times. Being an emotional eater has a bad reputation, but the truth is we ALL are emotional eaters.

The difference in how we eat though, is how we create and use our feelings when it comes to food.

Our emotions play a huge part of how we eat. Here’s where having a good emotional vocabulary helps. I’m not just talking about eating ice-cream when you feel down. I’m talking about all the hundreds of little ways our emotions come into play.

What we do or don’t do is always because of a feeling we’re having or a feeling we want to have, or a feeling we are trying to avoid.

We believe food can help us create many feelings such as happiness, joy, satisfaction, fun, anticipation. Just thinking about food can be exciting. We give food a lot of power when it comes to how we feel.

We can also use food to avoid feeling things. Sometimes we use food to avoid feeling some uncomfortable feelings such as boredom, sadness, anger, or frustration.

We can use food to avoid feeling the urge or desire to eat something. We can feel overwhelmed with desire and we believe we must eat to get rid of that compulsion.

Food can also be the basis for trying to create feelings. Maybe we use food to feel good about ourselves. If we eat less, we can feel worthy. If we eat this amazing food, we get to feel sophisticated.

Why Avoiding Feelings Only Keeps Us Stuck (And What to Do About It)

Your emotions are the key to finding balance and peace with food.

If you are currently feeling stressed about trying to eat like you think you should and not being able to follow through, I’ve got you.

Feelings can, well feel, so inconvenient at times and every woman I know tries to control her feelings in many unproductive ways, that include avoiding, reacting to, or numbing their feelings.

High on the list of ways to numb our feelings, is using food to do so. The problem with avoiding our feelings is that we keep ourselves stuck because we are trying to resisit something that feels like a problem but actually isn’t.

How We Create Our Actions Through Our Feelings

Everything you do is because of a feeling you want to feel or a feeling you want to avoid.

Per our eating, our feelings are created in our bodies through our beliefs and thoughts and when you learn the skill of identifying these thought-feeling-action patterns it becomes much easier to eat intentionally.

When we understand that we have the power to recognize how we are acting based on a feeling we are experiencing in our bodies.

This may be all new to you but I promise you that it is going to help you eat in a way that supports your goals instead of wondering every day, “What just happened to my plan?”

You’ll start learning this by looking at things that have already happened. Then you’ll begin noticing when it’s happening.

Finally, you’ll catch yourself in the act and be able to do something else if you want.

Here’s a simple example but a common one.

Let’s say you are trying to figure out why, no matter what your best intentions are, you always give in to your evening cravings.

When work and dinner is done and it’s time to relax on the couch with a show, you HAVE TO HAVE a bag of chips and a piece of candy.

You know that’s part of the reason you’ve gained 10 pounds this year but you just can’t stop yourself.

Now let’s slow it down. As a life coach, I listen to my clients describe the above situation. So, I will usually start with having the client slow down the scenario by asking some questions.

When you sat down on the couch, what was going through your mind as you thought about your evening snack?

How did you feel in your body?

Did you notice any feeling?

My client responded with the following:

I kept thinking, “I have to have my chips.” “It just won’t be the same without my chips.” “This is the only time I get to relax; I deserve something special.”

And there it is. “I deserve to have something special.” Of course you do! But in this case, this thought is creating a feeling that leads to you getting up off the couch and getting your chips and candy.

Because you feel deserving.

Now, there is nothing wrong with feeling deserving. It’s just a feeling. And when my client recognized that this was happening underneath or consciousness, she was able to notice when it happened.

Then she just let the thought and feeling be there without going to get the snack. Did it feel uncomfortable at first. It sure did. She also let the discomfort be there. She made it okay to feel deserving and uncomfortable without judgment.

My client then created a new thought and feeling. Instead of saying she deserved a treat, she decided to tell herself that she deserved to feel good. When she talked to herself like that, she felt committed to her plan to not eat at night.

After a short amount of time, the nightly craving just disappeared. Instead of nightly eating, she began to relax with a cup of tea.

I always tell my clients that I will teach them to change problem eating in a way that will eventually make them almost forget that they even had the habit. It really is only uncomfortable for a short time, then it just dissolves.

To help you get started, I want to share some common emotional eating patterns. You may recognize some of these or you might have your own.

Emotional Eating Patterns

In my work, I see many emotional eating patterns over and over with the women I work with. Here are 6 that I see often. My wish is that you can take these examples and start noticing your own patterns.

Remember, none of these feelings are a problem; it’s just that we treat them like a problem to be solved with food. Instead you’ll learn to just feel what is going on within you and then you can decide to act based on what you really want to do.

Boredom

This is one that comes up for me almost daily. I will notice I feel a little bored and I’ll want to have something to eat to relieve it. While, I might have this feeling of boredom and urge to eat, I rarely act on it because I’m really clear on the fact that I don’t eat to relieve boredom.

Instead, I just let the boredom be there, until it passes which is really just a couple of minutes. Once I’ve let the feeling be there, I just get back to doing things that relieve the boredom. And if I’m still a little bored, well, that isn’t the end of the world.

Restlessness

Restlessness is another common emotion that can lead to overeating. Feeling restless can often lead to you standing in front of the pantry trying to figure out the right thing to eat so you feel more settled.

Or maybe you try one food but it doesn’t do the trick, so you try another. Before you know it, you’ve eaten a bunch of crap but you don’t feel any better.

Sometimes you can feel something similar to restlessness. The best way I can explain it is that you have “an itch you need to scratch.”

You’re looking for a food to address a general uneasiness you have.

This is a time to get into your body with gentle movement such as a walk, or stretching, or even something like gardening. I find gentle sustained movement will help settle the body without you trying to chase the restlessness away.

Anger

Who hasn’t eaten out of anger?

Anger is such an interesting feeling. It is just another emotion to be felt but it feels like a special one. We think our anger means something. It does. It means you are telling yourself something.

Now I want to say here, that you can be absolutely correct that someone has done something bad or that a situation is unfair. The problem happens when you hang on to that anger and instead of processing it or dealing with the person or situation, you eat.

Eating soothes you and makes the anger a little more bearable.

As women, we have a taboo against anger. Not many women want to be considered an angry woman. I’ve found that many women think if they “give in” to their anger it will envelop them and that they won’t be able to not be angry.

You might be so afraid of getting angry that you will do anything to avoid it. Eating too much and gaining weight may at some level, feel safer than getting angry.

Here’s what I have found. When you actually allow yourself to be angry, feel it in your body, it processes within a couple of minutes and then you have more peace and clarity.

With peace and clarity, you don’t send the angry text and you don’t dive into a pint of ice-cream. You might even discover that you are also really sad.

Again, sadness doesn’t have to be a problem either. When we let ourselves feel our sadness we might need to acknowledge how some things really are in our lives. I’ve had clients realize that their husbands don’t really love them.

Instead of overeating to deal with this, they acknowledge the sadness. Instead of wishing for their husbands to be different, they deal with their real lives and they don’t use food to feel loved. They begin to love themselves.

My clients tend to be in long-term marriages with grown children and grandchildren, and so far, they’ve all decided to stay in their marriages and create a life they can feel good about.

Instead of having this simmering anger in their bodies, they can feel peaceful and be intentional about what they want. This always creates a better partnership and relationship.

This anger can also show up in work situations. So, substitute co-worker or boss for the partner. It’s okay to feel anger. But the real change comes from processing the anger so you can have calm and clarity instead.

Stress

This feeling is probably no surprise to any of you reading this. Who isn’t feeling stressed these days. Almost every client I’ve worked with felt stressed when they started working with me.

They wear their stress on their faces and in their bodies.

Eating is one way they try to deal with their stress. I believe a lot of stress comes from the thought, “I can’t change this.” Or “If I just work harder, I can get ahead and rest later.”

Neither of those statements is true and over the years you create more stress for yourself.

Forget about bubble baths or massages as a way to solve your stress. The only way to deal with stress is to let yourself really feel it in your body.

When I have my clients do this, they’ll tell me how it feels. It can feel like a rock pressing down on their chest. It can feel like someone choking them. It can feel like their heart is being squeezed.

Sounds fun, right?

When you actually feel what stress is doing in your body, you get more motivated to deal with it. Again, it’s by feeling and letting it process, and giving yourself some breathing room.

When your body feels calmer, you can become more intentional. Instead of eating to feel better; you may start taking a lunch break during the workday. You may decide an hour walk after dinner is better for you than working for an extra hour.

As you experience feeling better, you’ll want more of that. You’ll begin to evaluate requests for your time and energy.

Often as women begin to value their own time and energy, they focus on the essentials of their job and quit doing work that isn’t theirs. Counter-intuitively, they may find themselves getting bonuses, a raise, or even a new job offer.

Longing

What are you longing for? You might know and you might be afraid of knowing. So many women feel stuck in some way and they are aware of a deep longing inside of them.

The problem is that they believe the longing is either wrong or unachievable. When we believe something we desire is either wrong or unachievable, we feel bad in some way. You might feel shame, frustration, or disappointment.

Again, food can be used to compensate for what we want that we think is either wrong or impossible. How do you win, a no-win situation?

You let it be there. You allow yourself to feel the longing and acknowledge that you want what you want. Wanting something isn’t bad. And if it isn’t something that will ultimately be good for you, it’s much better to face it head-on.

For example if you work in a job that you don’t love and you really long to be an artist, you might feel afraid to let yourself long for that kind of work. However, if you let the longing be there and feel it, that’s when you can find some peace.

My coach called this divine discontent. This means that you do feel discontented and that life is calling you forward in some way. You long for something.

Eating may keep this longing at bay but your happiness might be in this longing. It might be calling you to make some changes.

When you make changes from clarity, you see solutions you literally couldn’t see before. Opportunities might appear suddenly. Accepting your longing doesn’t mean blowing up one life for another. It just means you love yourself so much that you trust your desires and aren’t afraid of them.

Coping

I had a client who once she realized that she was using food to cope with her family and work situations, she was able to shift so many eating patterns.

Instead of being able to deal with things, she ate. She gained weight and nothing got better. Once she decided to not use food to cope, she had more energy to deal with her work and family situations.

This didn’t happen overnight but it turned out to be well worth the effort. When food wasn’t being used to cope, actual positive changes began to happen. She changed her beliefs about what was possible in her work and in her family.

She adjusted her work schedule to one that worked better for her. She and her husband went to therapy and through her work with me and her therapist, she strengthened her relationship to her husband.

Instead of coping with her life, she took creative control of it and ended up feeling happier than she had in years.

Happiness, Celebration & Connection

Sometimes we use food to either create or extend positive feelings. The other night I was out with my daughter and her family for dinner. I felt so happy to be with them that I found myself eating more, way more than usual.

And even when I was full, to extend that happy feeling, I ate candy with the girls. I just wanted that happy feeling to last forever.

I’m writing this in hindsight since I didn’t realize at the time that was what I was doing. I don’t feel bad about it but now that I’m aware I do that sometimes, I can decide with more clarity how I want to eat.

We use food to connect with other people through the sharing of meals or special foods that we prepare for each other.

And food is always the highlight of celebrations. In our family we love to celebrate with food and that’s okay.

Here’s where it can be a problem. It’s when we think we are going to have to overeat. Women tend to gain weight over the holidays because they believe the food is going to be a problem.

When you recognize that eating to celebrate, be happy, or connect are emotional patterns of eating, you get to decide what you want to do and what you want to eat.

Instead of eating yourself into a stupor, you concentrate on the feelings of happiness, connection, and celebration. You focus on the people around you, not just the food.

My clients always find that they enjoy the food they choose to eat even more when they don’t have the compulsion to overeat.

Breaking Emotional Eating Patterns

Up until now, you probably thought your way of eating was just the way you are. I hope you can now see that these patterns are really just ingrained habits that you’ve formed to deal with feelings.

One of the things I love about my work is that it isn’t about depriving yourself of food you like. In fact, most women enjoy eating more when they are intentional about it.

And as you remove food as the way you deal with your uncomfortable feelings, you finally begin addressing those issues in your life in a healthy loving way. You don’t make changes because of how you feel in the moment.

In the moment you feel what you feel. Then when you have calm and clarity, you make sound decisions that you now have the energy to follow through on. This creates a fuller richer life rather than a deprived life.

The post How to Stop Being an Emotional Eater appeared first on My Think Big Life.

Is all hope lost if you decide to not take a GLP-1? Not necessarily. What if you don’t want to take a weight loss medication?

These days, it feels like almost everyone is talking about weight loss medications. Maybe your doctor has mentioned them, or you’ve heard friends talk about how much weight they’ve lost. You might be curious, confused, or even feeling pressured.

You might have even tried one and hated the experience.

If you’ve ever thought, “I’m not sure this is right for me” this post is for you.

Why I’m Writing This Post

Over the past year, a good portion of my clients have either left to begin losing weight with GLP-1s or they have been encouraged by their doctors to take them and aren’t sure if it’s right for them.

So, to be clear, I am not saying take them or don’t take them. That is up to you and your medical provider.

I’m not going to even go deep into what they are and how they affect your body.

This post is for women, who have already decided that GLP medication isn’t what they want to do and do not have a strong medical need for it.

What GLP-1s Are

Here is a brief explanation of what GLP-1s are and a little about what is known about them.

GLP-1 medications were developed for people with diabetes and are now being used more widely for weight loss. They change how your body handles hunger, fullness, and digestion.

These medications directly affect your pancreas and your digestive system. You produce more insulin and your digestion slows down.

For some people, they’ve made a big difference.

But they also come with side effects, long-term unknowns, and in many cases, a recommendation to stay on them for life. That’s a big decision and it’s okay to have questions.

What Do You Want?

The truth is, not every woman feels at peace with the idea of this medication and that doesn’t make you wrong or missing out.

You’re allowed to want something different. To listen to your body. To take a different path that supports your long-term health and not just short-term weight loss.

Some of you may have even tried GLP-1s and didn’t like how you felt or they made you feel worse.

Here’s my truth. When I see these women with thin bodies and who also say they are so much happier on the medication, I feel a little nudge of jealousy.

I want it to be easy for me too!

To be honest, at my age and in our current food world, it takes a lot of focus to take care of our bodies and eat right.

That’s my truth and sometimes it is frustrating.

Yet, I also have so much appreciation for my body and what it can do. I feel stronger, more flexible, and balanced than I ever have.

I don’t have a medical reason to take it and I just don’t want to mess with two of my body’s major systems for aesthetics.

Instead, I’ve been working on my fitness, health, eating, and mindset. Body-wise, I decided that I wanted to get into the best shape of my life through the food I eat, how I move my body, and how I think.

I’m not chasing skinny; I’m creating a strong body that will power me through the next few decades.

If I live that long, I want to have an amazing life in my eighties and nineties!

What Can You Do Instead?

I work with women who want to care for their bodies without diets, medication, or shame.

My approach isn’t a quick fix, but it is powerful. It’s built around real food, self-trust, emotional clarity, and habits that work with your body instead of against it.

I call it The Eat Like You Love Your Body Method

My writings on this subject go back 10 years to when I lost some weight after I turned 53. Since then, I’ve probably written 50 – 60 articles about food, eating, and weight loss.

Along with my own experience, I’ve been coaching women for over six years and helping them with how they feel about themselves, their food, and their bodies.

Finally, I have read and researched for well over a decade, trying to understand food and how it affects our bodies.

It’s been a couple of decades since I’ve read books on how to lose weight. My goal is to provide information about how to nurture and support your body.

Not an impossible body standard but your body.

I want you to have real goals, goals that make you feel better and in control. Goals that build confidence.

It’s possible to find joy in eating and also possible to learn how to trust yourself around food and in your body.

You don’t have to figure it all out overnight. Learning about your very own body is a lifetime commitment.

And that’s not a bad thing.

How to Eat Like You Love Your Body

If you’re not sure what’s right for you, I encourage you to pause. You don’t have to rush. You don’t have to override your gut feeling.

There is another path and it begins with trusting that your body isn’t broken. You don’t have to be fixed. You just have to be heard, supported, and guided back to what’s true for you.

That’s what I’m here for.

I was recently dealing with some stubborn belly fat and I had to face all my fears about whether what I write about really works.

When I began this recent journey, I decided that I would be true to my method because I believe in it whole-heartedly.

What I discovered was, it does work. But when we have gotten ourselves into fat-storing mode, it can take some time and attention to turn it around.

Once, I did get my body burning fat again, I could see and feel the differences and it seemed like it switched overnight.

However, it took me a few months to get to that “overnight.”

Resources for Eating Like You Love Your Body

Here are a few of my favorite posts about eating. As you read, you may think it can’t be this simple.

But it is.

What isn’t simple is having the mindset and beliefs to stick with it. It’s kind of boring to not have a snazzy diet.

It isn’t simple to have the “never quit” mindset that is essential.

Finally, it isn’t simple to learn after years of being told you shouldn’t, to TRUST YOURSELF totally.

Here’s some good news. I’m teaching women to eat enough, of foods they like, eat meals, and get as much nutrition as possible.

There is NO downside to doing this. There are no bad side-effects. You got to create your own person way of eating that works for you.

I work one-on-one with women to do this in my private coaching business, Sara Garska Coaching.

If this sounds like something you want to do, let’s talk. I offer complimentary consults to provide clarity and to see if that is a good solution for you.

In the meantime, here are three of my favorite posts on how to eat like you love your body.

10 Powerful Tips to Lose Weight After 50

How to Lose Weight Without Losing Your Mind

Affirmations for Self-Care

The post What If You Don’t Want to Take Weight Loss Medication? appeared first on My Think Big Life.

If you’ve found yourself gaining weight even while doing everything right, you’re not alone. I’m with you and the struggle is real. Here’s how to lose weight without losing your mind.

For women over 50, the old rules just don’t work anymore. Diets feel like punishment, and quick fixes often backfire.

But what if there’s another way? A way that honors your body, helps you feel great in your skin, and doesn’t involve deprivation or lifelong medication?

In this post, I’ll walk you through exactly how I lost weight without losing my mindand how you can too.

10 years ago, I found myself in a smaller body and suddenly feeling cute. At 53, I went from feeling frumpy to being able to wear shorts, dresses and even a bathing suit.

And I had done it without dieting!

I began writing about it and researching more to understand how it had happened. The short answer was I was intermittent fasting and eating light at night.

Those two things combined with my already healthy eating allowed me to lose a couple of sizes and maintain it for 10 years.

A New Type of Fat

Then about six months ago, I gained a little weight. Less than 10 pounds. I wasn’t really concerned at first because I knew I had been eating more bread and sweets over the holidays.

Usually just cutting those foods out would allow my body to lose the extra weight.

Not this time.

The other thing about this weight was that I had a belly that I could not suck in. I had never experienced that before.

In April 2025 I began my journey to understand my body better. I was committed to not going on a diet

I did a lot of reading and explored all the ways in which women get to a point where they can’t lose weight.

I’m not an overeater and I still gained weight and couldn’t lose it. Does that sound familiar?

But I was determined that I would. As summer approached, I bought a few things in bigger sizes that looked cute. I loved the two pairs of shorts I bought that I later bought two more pairs in the next smaller size, which I eventually did switch to.

Spoiler alert, it took about six months for my weight to budge, even doing all the right things. However, almost immediately I was able to stop the gain. This is an incredibly significant step.

This is important to know. So many times, when something we are doing doesn’t result in immediate results we want to give up. But not gaining is actually a great result and a signal that you are heading in the right direction.

But if you give up too early, then what happens can be a cycle of deprivation and gaining even more weight.

Here is what I want you to know. Even if you aren’t losing weight like you want, it is still so important to take care of your overall health.

In my reading on different autoimmune situations, the solutions are always the same.

• Reduce inflammatory foods
• Eat better quality food
• Move your body
• Reduce stress

It’s almost like you can’t go wrong by eating in a supportive and nourishing way.

That all being said, I’m not a doctor. But I also know so many women are frustrated when they are told they need to lose weight and their doctor says the equivalent of eat less and exercise more.

Ladies, that is almost worthless advice and rarely works after 50. We’re already eating less and we are so tired of being told we are eating too much.

So, this post contains the things that I always do to maintain and the things that finally got my weight moving. 

Who I Wrote This Post For

If you feel like you know why you’ve gained weight because of overeating, bad eating habits, or too much snacking, go check out my foundation post about what to do. It’s very detailed and will walk you through all the steps and create the groundwork to lose weight.

10 Powerful Tips to Lose Weight After 50

This post is going to go beyond that and give you some ideas to try if you are already:

• Eating enough at meals and not snacking
• Minimizing processed foods and carbs
• Exercising and moving daily

If you feel like you are doing all the “right” things but it’s not working, this is for YOU!

The Most Important Mindset Adjustment

If you’ve read the post I recommended above, you’ll know that the most important step is to step the intention to lose weight and to keep at it.

So, I did that. And I want to add here in case you aren’t familiar with my work, I absolutely reject dieting, counting calories, calorie deficits, and arbitrary portions.

I want to feel great in my body; not deprived.

Now to be honest, I really got discouraged in this process at the beginning. There were days that I thought it might not work, but I knew with my whole heart that I still did not want to diet or take any medicine.

So, I started with my foundational process and stuck with that. In addition, I changed my workouts, refined a couple of steps, and really really paid attention to my hunger.

Then one day, I was able to wear a size smaller shorts. When I got on the scale, I had lost about five pounds. Once those two things happened, I knew it was working.

But it took five months to get to that point! You need a strong resilient mindset to make that happen.

However, in addition to losing weight, I improved my nutrition, got stronger, and created even more trust in my body.

Look, I know that no one wants to do it the slow way. We want guaranteed results and we want them as fast as possible.

What About GLP-1?

These days, more and more women are being encouraged by doctors, the media, and even friends to consider medications like GLP-1s for weight loss.

If you’ve felt the pressure or have been wondering if this is the only way forward, I want you to know this:

You still get to trust yourself.

There are many women who don’t feel called to take medication because they want to explore what’s possible for their bodies through nourishment, intention, and support.

If that’s you, you are in the right place.

For me, my intention is to live in a healthy body for as long as I can. I’m not just living for today; I am also creating my future body, the body that will be as strong at 80 as it is now.

The bottom line is this. You need to eat and move your body in a way that you can sustain forever. You don’t ever have to be perfect, just consistent.

Let’s dive in!

The Undieted Method: Eat Like You Love Your Body

Let’s start with your mindset and your belief in yourself. For way too long, we have been taught to NOT trust our bodies. For those of us that struggle with weight, we’ve been taught to punish ourselves by dieting.

For the past 10 years, I have been writing about how to eat instead of dieting.

One of the problems is that we have been sold diets for decades. But after decades of trying to manage our weight and health with diets; we are sicker and heavier than ever.

This seems so obvious to me now but for years I was just like everyone else, just trying to find the right way to deprive myself.

Fortunately I was never very good at depriving myself! So, I found workarounds. For example, low carb and intermittent fasting have been very helpful for me. I can eat in a way that feels sustainable and manageable without being uncomfortably hungry.

My work with other women over 50 enlightened my work. I discovered that women in general tend to restrict at meals and overeat by snacking or binging.

Here’s something to think about. The problem IS NOT YOU. The problem is a system that just DOES NOT WORK.

You have probably been on several diets over your life. Some probably worked for a time and when they quit working, you blamed it on yourself.

However, that is a thought-error. Most women are really trying to do it right but what we’re told is the “right way” is always changing.

But what works and has always worked really hasn’t changed.

Once upon a time, food was scarce enough that people couldn’t really overeat like they can now. Our struggle was to get enough food.

Now food is plentiful and the most plentiful of all is food that isn’t really food but is designed to make us crave it more and overeat past our hunger.

Growing up, we ate three meals a day and didn’t snack. We had dessert sometimes and candy was an occasional treat.

It’s not fancy, but if you did only that, you would be in better shape than you probably are now.

Instead, many women try to arbitrarily eat less at meals or smaller portions. They end up hungry and feeling deprived. That can lead to overeating and binging between meals or at night.

This often results in weight gain that feels out-of-control.

How to Eat Like You Love Your Body

For way too long, most of us eat like we hate our bodies and sadly many of you do hate your body. So, we’re going to start this process with a new foundation of loving your body.

No matter what shape you are in, your body deserves love, respect, and compassion.

You deserve to eat foods you like and you deserve to feel satisfied.

You deserve to not be afraid to eat and you deserve not to obsess about everything you eat.

Here’s the deal. You’re going to eat meals of foods you like and you’re going to eat enough that you feel comfortable and satisfied.

You are going to learn to trust yourself, trust your appetite, and trust your body.

What Causes Weight Gain or Weight Loss

Our weight is largely managed by hormones and insulin is the one in charge.

When your body is working well, you’re not constantly gaining or losing weight. Your body uses energy from two sources: the food you’ve recently eaten and your stored body fat.

It switches between the two as needed.

When you are gaining weight, your body is relying too much on the quick energy from food, especially if you are eating a lot of carbohydrates, too often.

When that happens, your body doesn’t need to tap into fat stores.

In fact, it may be storing even more fat because there’s more energy than it can use. Over time, your body may keep storing fat even when you’re eating normally.

When you aren’t constantly flooding your system with quick-burning energy, your body can shift into using stored fat for fuel.

This doesn’t always happen overnight—it can take time to switch from fat-storing mode to fat-burning mode and I’ll go into more detail on how to do that.

Here’s the important thing to know. Instead of thinking about calories and portions, you are going to focus on keeping your blood sugar lower and giving your body time to use up ready energy and access your fat storage.

How to Go From Fat Storing to Maintaining

Step one is to stop gaining weight. I love this as a first goal because it’s relatively easy to do and gives you a win that lets you know you are making a difference with your body.

The long explanation of how to do this is to in my post about how to lose weight after 50.

In short, you eat all your food in two or three meals. You wait to eat until you are hungry. If you start eating when you are hungry, you will know when you are full.

You will give your body enough food to feel satisfied and you will give your body sufficient breaks in eating so that you can tap into your stored fat.

If you begin eating your food in meals and paying attention to your hunger, you will most likely stop gaining weight.

When your weight is steady, you can begin tweaking your meals and the timing of them to become fat-adapted, meaning your body uses your fat for energy.

Eat Your Meals

Most women snack so often, they never get a chance to get to know their own hunger and satiety in a way that helps them manage their weight.

Hunger is actually a really cool part of your system. Most of you are used to hunger that feels bad. This occurs when you don’t eat enough at meals and you feel so hungry a couple of hours later.

When you eat enough at meals, your body has enough energy to feel comfortable for hours. Your hunger will come on gradually letting you know to start planning for your next meal, that you will eat once you are actually hungry.

This kind of hunger feels good. I’ve had clients say that it’s kind of exciting when hunger comes on like this. It does not feel bad at all.

This kind of hunger signals that your body is ready to handle some more food. You won’t overeat because your body will let you know when you’ve had enough.

That hunger is an opportunity for your body to release fat for energy. So, by eating your food at meals, you give your body time to process the food you eat and ideally time to use more fat for energy.

If you are going to have a treat; I recommend eating it with your meal instead of on its own. You’ll eat less of it.

Eat Fewer Carbs

We all need carbohydrates; they are a macro nutrient, meaning they are essential.

However, these days many women eat way too many carbohydrates, too often, and the kind that are not nutritional.

It is well-researched and well-known that carbohydrates are the real fattening food rather than fat. Fat is neutral, in that is does not cause us to gain weight. We think it does because it is often combined with sugar and flour and that IS fattening.

When you are trying to help your body tap into your own fat, you will need to limit your carbohydrates, especially the kind that comes from flour (breads, pasta, cake, cookies, etc.)

You do not need to eliminate all carbs! The general rule is to eat as many low carb foods as you want. I also like to include one higher carb food with at least one meal a day.

This can be a potato, a small serving of rice, some beans or lentils, or some kind of whole grain if you can tolerate it. This really helps with satisfaction, energy, and satiety without driving up your blood sugar too much.

There isn’t one right answer for every woman. This is why I recommend writing down what you eat in a journal. This allows you to see what works and what isn’t working.

Eat Enough Fat and Oils

One of the things that can help is to make sure you get enough fat in your food. When you are switching from eating lots of processed carbs to a diet based on protein and veggies, you will need to eat more fat.

Remember, fat doesn’t cause you to gain weight. It makes food taste better and helps you feel full. Fat is also a macronutrient and is essential to your body.

I also believe it is so good for our skin! Too many carbs and sugar can wreck your skin. However fat is helpful to better looking skin.

My favorite types of fat are butter, olive oil, and avocado oil. These are the types I use the most. I typically use some for cooking my food and I also use some to dress my food with either a sauce or dressing or maybe just some straight oil drizzled on my food.

When I was at my thinnest, I ate a lot of fat. These days I just don’t have the same taste for it and I weigh more. So, I am going to try and be more intentional about adding some fat to my meals.

Have an Eating Window

One of the things that I started doing was paying attention to the timing of when I eat.

You may have heard of intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating.

This means you don’t eat between meals and you give yourself one longer fast every day.

This is much easier than it sounds. Remember, we don’t eat while we sleep, so you already have a daily fast.

Then extend it by not eating after dinner and not eating right away in the morning. My sweet spot is about 14 – 15 hours between my last meal of the day and my first meal of the next day.

If you are eating in the way I recommend above this will be no big deal.

Many people like to have breakfast first thing. If you wake up hungry, honor that. You can get your fast in by finishing dinner early enough to give you a good fast.

Also, you may not need 14 hours or so. Your body may be happy with an easy 12-hour fast. As you practice this way of eating, you’ll get to know what feels best for you.

Another thing you can do is do a 24-hour fast once a week. For me the easiest way to do this is eat dinner and not eat until dinner the next day.

When I do that, I will drink some bone broth. It doesn’t really break the fast and it feels much gentler.

Can It Be This Simple?

Okay, you may have read that and not thought that it was simple at all. However, when you really get into it, you will realize that it is the simplest way ever.

You don’t have to count calories or measure portions. You don’t have to plan snacks or carry them with you all the time.

Hunger isn’t a problem; it’s a pleasure and a signal that your body is getting ready for food again.

You eat less food but you will be getting more nutrients.

You’ll enjoy eating more because you’ll be eating food you enjoy without guilt or worry.

My clients always report that they feel better, have more energy, and joint pain goes away.

Oh, and my clients always look better and more relaxed. You can see the results of this way of eating in their faces.

The best result is that you will feel comfortable and relaxed with food. You’ll eat without guilt. You’ll begin to trust food and your body.

And when you don’t have to worry about food, you can concentrate on other things. Life will feel more exciting and joyful.

Yes, it is this simple and it makes this much of a difference!

The post How to Lose Weight Without Losing Your Mind appeared first on My Think Big Life.

Tired of the constant struggle with food? Learn how to find your joy in eating again by breaking free from cycles of deprivation, overeating, and guilt.

Discover practical steps for a healthier, joyful relationship with food.

Eating really can be joyful again. Here’s how to find joy in eating again.

Most women I talk to are in some cycle of depriving themselves at meals then overeating later; all while telling themselves they’ll do better tomorrow.

I hear about the frustration all the time. Diet culture has led to frustrating cycles of deprivation, overeating, and shame. 

This affects our mental health, health issues, and eating habits. Instead of taking care of your body, you become obsessed with losing weight, even though you aren’t able to figure out how to do that. 

Break Free from the Deprivation and Overeating Cycle

The purpose of this post is to identify your cycle of restricting and overindulging, and how to stop it by creating a balanced eating pattern.

It may seem impossible to have a healthy relationship with food or to find joy in eating, but you can. It is possible to eat without shame and guilt. 

Here’s some perspective. I know most things you’ve read about to this point, indicates that your body is like a machine. Insert this many calories, lose this amount of weight.

We have been convinced that it is all easily under our control if only we just had enough willpower. This is the voice and message of diet culture. 

So, let’s confront that head on.

Have you ever asked yourself why, if it is so easy and uncomplicated, can’t you just lose the weight? You know you are pretty good at just about anything you set your mind to. Yet, this must be really complicated if you can’t do this seemingly easy thing.

That’s because it isn’t easy. Your body was made to keep the weight on and not changes size on a whim. We are literally built to survive food deprivation.

For probably decades, you’ve been focused on restricting or eating less. That was considered healthy. But is it?

We’ve forgotten that the purpose of eating is nourishment for our body. Instead of eating to nourish ourselves, eating becomes a mine field of fear, frustration, anxiety, and binge-eating.

​Eating seems anything but joyful!

Understanding How Your Body Handles Weight

At any given time, you are in one of three states of being.

• You are gaining weight. Even if it’s a couple of pounds a year your body is putting on weight
• If you are maintaining, your weight stays within a range of a few pounds
• Losing weight means your weight is going down, even if it’s very slow

Often women give up their efforts in the between phases. If you are trying to go from gaining to maintaining (which means you have stopped the gain). This is a big deal!

Or they give up when they are successfully maintaining, not gaining, but haven’t begun losing yet.

Frequently we want to go straight from gaining to losing and then we expect to lose on a consistent basis. Diets often help us accomplish this for a while.

However, and I stand by this. If you lose weight eating in a way you can’t sustain, you will gain the weight back. The thrill of thinness is rarely (about 5%) able to sustain a diet way of eating.

Don’t eat in a way that you cannot eat forever.

Where is the Joy in Eating?

I know, so far that all sounds like a bummer.

Most women think the joy is in the thinness or when they get to the losing stage. Instead the joy begins as soon as you:

• Quit the cycle of deprivation and overeating
• Stop over snacking or binging
• Eating enough food to feel satisfied
• Moving your body, resting, and taking care of yourself
• Learning to eat for your body and treating it with love
• Learn to eat at holidays, on vacation, and in restaurants
• No longer see food as good and bad

The joy comes when you feel in control of your eating and your time. Because here is what many of you don’t realize.

To take care of your one and only precious body, you need to devote time and effort to it. And most women need to be able to prioritize themselves.

Honestly this is the toughest part of the process for most women. We totally understand depriving ourselves more or doing harder and harder things.

In my opinion, the toughest part of the process is learning to take care of yourself, trust yourself, and love yourself enough to spend time and effort on yourself.

But when you can do that, you can find joy in eating again. The joy is knowing you can eat what you want in any situation. Your joy isn’t tied to a particular size or number; your joy is in your effort and how you feel about yourself.

Here is how you can find joy in eating again

Focus on Eating Enough, Not Less

In my experience coaching women over the past five years; most women are not overeating all the time. 

What I see the most of is that they under eat at meals, then overeat or binge at other times. So the very first step is to stabilize your meals and eat enough that you feel satisfied.

This is the number one thing, my clients say helps them reduce cravings, overeating, and binging. 

There is something really joyful about allowing yourself to enjoy your meals. Not as a special occasion but each and every day, you eat food you enjoy and you eat enough you feel satisfied.

This step alone does so much good. If you have been gaining weight, this will often stop the gain and allow you to create a foundation.

When you focus on eating nutritious meals, you are better equipped to not snack because of hunger. 

You’ll also be better equipped to resist urges to eat because of boredom or engage in emotional eating. 

Stop Labeling Food as ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’

By seeing food as neutral, rather than categorizing it as good or bad, you can reduce guilt and increase enjoyment when eating.

Food can serve many purposes.

Food is nourishment and what we eat matters. Food can make us feel better or it can make us feel horrible. 

So food itself isn’t good or bad, but it can be helpful to us or not. 

Take ice-cream for example. Joyfully eating a homemade ice-cream cone at a roadside shop is very different from eating a pint of ice cream every night and feeling horrible about it.

There is absolutely a time for treats! 

Another thing I see is thinking about normal food as good or bad. For example butter used to be considered bad for you.

It’s not. Eggs aren’t. A steak isn’t.

Now, you may have reasons to not eat those foods or others but they can definitely be eaten and enjoyed,

On the other hand, how many of you think of salads or rice cakes as good food?

It’s really helpful to think of food as being helpful to you for your health goals or not helpful.

Include more of the helpful foods and save the less-than-helpful foods for a treat now and then.

Learn to Listen to Your Body’s Hunger Signals

Learning how to tune in to your hunger cues, rather than eating out of habit or emotion will be the basis of eating that will help you in so many situations.

This will leadsto a more intuitive and joyful approach to food.

Here’s the thing. Most of us were raised to eat by the clock rather than by hunger. 

To make this worse, because of dieting, we focused on arbitrary portion sizes that left us feeling hungry.

Being hungry leads to snacking around the clock. How many of you leave the table a little unsatisfied and then snack trying to find something to satisfy you,

When youn eat around the clock, you can correctly assess your hunger. But when you eat only at meals, you start your meal hungry and then you can tell when you are full.

Your body is built to do this! 

Being able to feel your hunger and fullness is an important function of your body’s hormones. They may get out-of-whack but you can restore them by waiting to eat until you are hungry and stopping when you feel comfortable.

Prioritize Self-Care and Time for Yourself

I cannot overstate the importance of self-love and the role it plays in building a healthy relationship with food. 

This could include things like resting, moving your body in a way that feels good, and dedicating time for yourself.

Your mental well-being is important.

Many women come to me, hoping for a way to lose weight. They believe that they are overweight because they need to get control of their willpower.

What they actually need to get control of is their life.

I see three things:

• Overworking at their job
• Overdoing for family and friends
• A focus on always being busy

By midlife, many women have decades of overdoing or overworking to the extent they feel bad if they stop to rest.

Taking care of your nutrition requires time and effort devoted to yourself. That can be difficult to hear and understand.

Most of us have no idea how to put ourselves first. We worry about being perceived as lazy or selfish. So we stay in motion so that will never happen.

Or we worry that we will disappoint or let someone down.

My friend, listen up.

In your life long attempt to not be perceived as lazy or selfish and never letting anyone down; you have sacrificed your own health and emotional well-being.

To achieve your best health you have to really put yourself first.

Everyone will be okay. If this is bringing up some anxiety, check out this post. I believe with all my heart that when we take care of ourselves; it is actually better for the other people in our lives.

Practice Mindful Eating in Your Way

I’ve focuses on mindful eating for all of my adult life. What I mean by that, is that I think about what I am putting in my body.

Most of the time I sit at a table to eat. I think about the balance of food not just on the plate in front of me, but in my life overall.

I pay attention to how food makes me feeL. Do I feel better or worse after eating something?

Yes, this does sound like a lot of effort.

Here’s the thing. A couple of generations back, food was not as varied or plentiful. People worked with what they had.

Now we are faced literally with thousands of choices every single day.

Fortunately when you focus on real food; you do eliminate a lot of the confusion.

You don’t need the perfect protein bar or snacks to carry around. You don’t even need recipes most of the time.

It can be as simple as picking a protein, some vegetables, and a couple of tablespoons of healthy fats that sound good to you.

Eat enough that you feel comfortable and satisfied. 

Make Peace with Holidays, Vacations, and Eating Out

Here’s how to feel confident in social eating situations and how to enjoy these moments without feeling stressed or over-indulgent.

When you are eating enough on the regular vacations or special occasions are easier to deal with. 

When you are depriving yourself daily; special occasions may seem like a time to overeat and over indulge.

But when you know with your entire being that you can eat, you don’t need to go overboard on vacation or holidays. Seriously, just treat these meals like all the others.

Eat what you want and eat enough you feel satisfied. Stick to eating at meals.

This allows my clients to enjoy their holidays and not gain weight. They can easily maintain their weight no matter what situation they are in.

How to Find Joy in Eating Again

We’re in this for the long haul. All my clients learn to enjoy eating in a way they haven’t for decades. Eating out is no longer a struggle. They don’t fear food anymore.

Food makes them feel good, not shameful or frustrated.

Eating becomes joyful again. 

f you’re tired of battling the cycle of deprivation and overeating, let’s talk. 

Book a free Zoom consultation with me to see if life coaching is the right path to help you find balance, joy in eating, and a healthier relationship with yourself. 

Your body deserves your time and care. Let’s explore how you can make that happen!

The post How to Find Joy in Eating Again appeared first on My Think Big Life.

I get so tired of seeing so many people saying it’s something you are doing wrong that is the cause of you being overweight.

Here’s why not losing weight after 50 is not your fault most of the time. From working with women who take their health seriously and trying to do the right things, I know that losing weight is not as straight forward as you’ve been led to believe.

I wrote this to explain, why you can’t lose weight after 50 and why it’s not your fault. Our weight is a more complex issue than we’ve been led to believe.

It’s time to give yourself a break and some compassion. I’ve got ideas about what to do in another post, What to Do if You Can’t Lose Weight.

But for now, it’s important to understand why it may actually be almost impossible to lose weight using conventional means.

My solutions do not involve crazy diets. I am the foremost advocate for sane eating, eating enough, and eating food you enjoy. I only promote ideas that can be sustained long term and are good for you.

Being overweight is the result of many factors and of those the least impactful factor is your personal character.

If you keep asking yourself, “Why can’t I lose weight?” then this post will give you some clarity and things to explore.

So many of you spend so much time blaming and hating yourself and I want to help you change that. I know most of you have been trying to do the right thing for decades. But so much information out there just creates more problems and doesn’t really address what does make us gain too much weight.

If you’ve been battling with weight gain that just won’t budge, you’re not alone and it’s not your fault. We’ve been taught for years that dieting is the answer, but the truth is much more complicated.

Here’s Why Diets Fail After 50 

Dieting doesn’t work for the long haul, and it may even make things worse over time. The real problem often lies deeper within our bodies, from hormone imbalances to insulin resistance.

So how do you break the cycle and finally start feeling better, inside and out? Let’s dive in and explore a smarter, healthier way to take control of your weight and your health

Losing weight can be incredibly frustrating, especially when the standard dieting advice just doesn’t work.

The reason many women struggle with weight loss, especially after 50, is due to complex issues like insulin resistance, hormonal imbalances, stress, and autoimmune diseases.

Diets focused solely on calorie reduction and restriction can actually harm your body in the long run. Instead of continuing to follow old advice, it’s important to nourish your body with proper meals, focus on reducing sugar, and address underlying health issues.

This is really important. Even if losing weight is difficult it is very important to take care of your body and health. As bad as it might feel now, if you keep gaining, you are going to feel worse.

Making sustainable changes to how and what you eat, combined with a better understanding of your body’s needs, is key to long-term well-being and achieving a healthier weight.

Why Losing Weight Feels Impossible

There are many reasons why losing weight feels impossible despite your best efforts. Here are some things that you need to be aware of.

We have all grown up in the grip of diet culture. What I mean by this is that we have been told since we were little that thin is better and the way to get thinner is by dieting.

However, study after study shows that dieting is ultimately ineffective. While you could lose weight, the weight is almost always regained and sometimes a little extra.

This isn’t because you suddenly got lazy or are unmotivated. Our bodies are designed to keep a steady weight. We don’t usually gain fast and it is really hard to lose weight.

And as you get older, you may find it’s harder than ever to even lose weight in the first place.

Since I’ve been writing about weight loss; I have always promoted eating food and enough food that you don’t feel miserable.

Because diets that are only calorie deficit are especially insidious. You starve yourself, lose the weight, and then gain it back, adding a little more damage to your body each time.

So, for most of you, trying to lose weight is frustrating, disappointing, and incredibly discouraging.

Now, this is important to hear too.

Even though losing weight is not straightforward like we have been taught, it is still very important to eat nutritious food, stop the gain, and take care of yourself.

What I see instead is women who give up on dieting and also give up on trying to nourish themselves and you continue gaining a little year after year.

I’ve written over 50 posts on what to do instead. I promote eating in a way that nourishes your body and gives you the best chance of losing weight naturally.

However, after your best efforts, and I don’t mean a few weeks of trying, I mean a few months of trying, you may not see any weight loss.

This is no reason to give up. Even women who don’t initially lose weight easily can get these results:

• Less pain
• More energy
• Smaller sized clothes
• Better boundaries (you’d be surprised how often women base their eating on other people in some way or because of other people)

If this is the first post of mine you find, and you want to try a sane way of eating, that will not do more harm, then I recommend reading these three posts to get an idea of what I write and coach on.

10 Tips to Lose Weight After 50

What to Do When You Aren’t Losing Weight

What Stops Sugar Cravings

If you have been trying to lose weight but it’s not budging, here are some other things you can look into.

Why Women Don’t Lose Weight

If you are like most women, you are a long-time dieter who has been obsessed with weight management since you were young. 

So, there are definitely things under your control, which is what the above posts talk about. However, there are body functions that work against you when it comes to losing weight.

But most of these issues are a direct result of modern eating habits and nutrition. I don’t even think that’s your fault. 

We really have grown up with a faulty premise to weight loss. It’s so bad that most doctors will tell you to lose weight and just say some version of “eat less.”

Like we don’t all know that!

Look if anything that was talked about weight-loss wise was helpful, then we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic. From my experience every woman wants to be at a healthy weight and usually has plenty of motivation and desire.

However, the current recommendations of using a low-calorie diet, or a restrictive diet tend to backfire and end up causing us to become less able to lose weight and easier to gain weight.

It’s really unfair and it’s really not your fault.

So What is the Cause of Diet Failure if It’s Not Me?

From everything I have read, our diets, which are often high in sugar and processed grains, lead to a disruption in how our bodies digest and metabolize food.

Instead of being able to use a combination of the food we eat and our fat stores for energy, our body relies only on the food we eat and continues to store more and more fat.

No amount of dieting will fix this and can make a stressed body even more stressed. The problem is insulin resistance and that requires a different approach than just reducing calories.

The only two ways to address this without medication is to lower the amount of sugar and foods that act like sugar that you eat.

Restricting calories will not accomplish this.

The other way, often used in combination with the above is to practice some type of fasting. One type is intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating, which means having a defined eating window and a longer time that you don’t eat. More on that in this post, but I’ll also be talking about this below.

Fasting once or twice a week is another way to help correct insulin resistance. I’m not saying jump into fasting, but much of the world regularly fasts and it can help with insulin resistance.

I believe intermittent fasting has been a key tool in helping me maintain my weight.

Some Common Underlying Issues that Restrict Weight Loss

Hormones

For the most part, women can have trouble losing weight because there are problems with their food-related hormones such as insulin.

If you are looking at pre-diabetes then your weight is also a hormone issue and insulin resistance.

When you have insulin resistance, your body cannot access its own fat stores to use for energy and instead stores excess fat in the liver and then into the fat cells.

Autoimmune diseases

Autoimmune Diseases are common in women over fifty. This can seriously affect your weight and what you do about it. While having a thyroid issue or another type of autoimmune may make losing weight difficult, it’s still worth your effort to eat in a supportive way.

Stress and sleep issues

Most women have a lot of stress in their lives these days. Stress affects our hormones as well and can make it difficult to lose weight.

Lack of sleep is also an issue for many women whether it’s because they don’t have time or they find themselves tossing and turning in the night.

I often find with my clients, they literally don’t have time to lose weight. By that I mean they are living lives that have little room for rest or allowing their bodies to relax.

That always has to be addressed. If you don’t have time to plan, prep, and eat, then it’s really tough to make sustainable changes, adjust behaviors, and take care of your mental health. 

Food sensitivities

Many women have food sensitivities that can lead to easy weight gain. Wheat and/or dairy are two common ones that come to mind.

Do Any of These Sound Like You?

No matter what you are facing, eating in a way that nourishes your body is usually helpful. All of my clients report feeling better when they eat better.

Don’t let not losing weight keep you from taking care of yourself. Nutrition is important. Moving your body is essential. Binge eating and over consuming sugar is hard on your body.

Even though it isn’t fair and it’s discouraging, your long-term success is dependent on you doing the best you can to create a healthy lifestyle. 

Unfortunately many women are told that these problems are their fault and that they need to lose weight to fix it. Again. Your extra weight is a symptom not a moral failing. 

Body fat is a complex body system itself! And it is stubborn in its fight to survive. Honestly it’s like it has a mind of its own.

Every bit of general advice I see online, says to eat less, eat more veggies, and limit processed foods. This is not bad advice but it may not reverse the above problems for women.

How to Get Started 

Feeling better is a worthy goal too! Weight loss may happen at some point, but your body no matter what size deserves to be cared for with good food and enough of it.

Think about it this way, you cannot fix the problem of not being able to lose weight by doing more of the same things that got you into this situation.

You can however eat in a way that supports your body. In general, I always advise three things:

Eat your food at two or three meals a day and no snacking. Wait to eat until you are hungry and stop eating when you feel comfortably full.

Have at least a 12-hour break in eating every day. No food between dinner and your first meal of the day. If you need a small treat, eat it with your meal.

Reduce or eliminate all sugar, sugary foods, and processed grains from your diet.

Those three things are not complicated and they may seem overly simple. But really, was food ever meant to be as complicated as we make it?

Doing these three things always help my clients feel better, have more energy, and stop all weight gain. That’s huge!

When you have a good foundation, you can then look at ways to address the extra weight in a better compassionate way.

I guess the best way I can sum this up is that extra weight is a complex issue especially after 50. While we’ve been told it’s only a matter of not overeating, that is absolutely not true.

Most women I work with need to eat MORE at their meals. Most women need to eat more vegetables, protein, healthy fats, and fiber.

Cutting out stuff without knowing why only keeps the problems getting worse.

Understanding and healing your body will take time. There really are no shortcuts.

Even though it may be discouraging to not be able to lose weight easily, it can also lead you to better health for the rest of your life.

Best Practices for Sustainable Weight Loss

Food choices

The old way diet culture says just eat less and says it doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you are in a calorie deficit.

This has been proved over and over to not be true.

A calorie deficit can actually decrease your metabolism and make you miserable. An arbitrary number of calories teaches you to NOT trust your body. Why in the world would we believe that a set number of calories is right for everyone, every day.

If you engage in restrictive eating, you will be battling willpower and hunger all the time.

You can gain weight even if you aren’t overeating!

So what do you do?

In general, low carbohydrate eating and changing the timing of your eating can help a great deal. 

You could safely eliminate all sugar or flour products and get your carbs from vegetables, fruits, nuts, and beans. 

Most of my clients do not need to do extremely low-carb but most of them do need to eat less processed food and sugar.

So, food choices are important. Too many carbs, especially the ones your body can easily use for energy can cause weight gain. If your body can’t use all this energy, it will store it as fat.

The timing of your eating

For the past 30 years or so, we’ve be told to eat around the clock. Eat your three meals AND have snacks.

This results in a messed up metabolism. Our bodies need breaks in food consumption. That’s the only way our bodies can access their fat stores.

If you keep eating around the clock, your body will only be able to use the food energy and will keep storing the excess as fat.

The foundation of healing this is to begin to limit all your eating to your meals. In my experience most women restrict too much at meals, fall prey to the “portion control” myth. 

Instead, I believe it is better to eat two or three meals a day and eat enough that you feel satisfied, comfortable, and full enough to make it to the next meal.

When you eat like this, it’s pretty easy to not snack or eat at night once you eliminate hunger as a reason to snack.

Working with your emotions

Almost everything we do in life is so that we can feel better.

For what it’s worth, food is probably the primarily way we try to feel better. 

What I’ve seen in my work with women, an obsession with weight and food has become the way women avoid dealing with their actual lives.

Instead of feeling uncomfortable emotions, food is used for comfort and for numbing.

It’s important to realize that this is natural and not a personal failing. However, it doesn’t fix anything in your life and will ultimately make your life more uncomfortable. Instead you end up fat and still unhappy about things.

I hear it all the time. “I have a good life” and you probably do. But is your life today, the way you want your life to be.

Most women are living lives that are so wrapped up in what other people need, that they have lost connection with who they are at heart. 

Lifestyle changes

Believe it or not, your lifestyle can get in the way of being able to lose weight or maintain your weight.

These things can affect your weight:

• Overwork
• Not resting
• Poor sleep or not enough sleep
• Not having fun
• People pleasing

Often when I begin working with a woman, it becomes clear that they are overdoing in some way or another.

They might be working sixty hours a week and feel too exhausted to plan healthy meals.

They might feel it’s lazy to rest or do something pleasant, when there are things still on their to-do list.

They might be catering to partners, children, bosses, or parents leaving them without the energy or time to take care of themselves.

Your lifestyle change is based on where you are neglecting or abandoning yourself. This will make some of you cringe but the only way to change your body in a truly healthy way is to put yourself first.

You heard me. You have to be the priority in your own life.

I know, I know. You’ve been taught that is selfish and bad. 

But is it?

Why in the world should you come last? Your life is just as important as everyone else’s. 

It 100% is. 

For too long, many of you, and I would say most of you, put others first believing this is loving.

It’s not. It’s the most unloving thing you can do sometimes.

(I’m talking about doing to much for grown up adults)

You are saying at an unconscious level you can’t figure this out, do it on your own, or do it correctly. That is NOT loving.

Let everyone else figure out their own lives! 

When you begin to do that, you’ll see people can figure stuff out. You don’t have to do everything.

And you will have more time to take care of your own precious body. 

When Will I Lose Weight?

I don’t know. For sure you can stop the gain with the kind of mindful eating I’ve described. Some women will lose just doing that. 

Other women will need to really pay attention to sugar and carbs. Getting those low enough may prompt your body to access your fat stores.

If you have insulin resistance or an autoimmune disease you may need medical intervention. 

But having a healthy lifestyle is good for you because you can’t get there without addressing your physical, mental, and emotional health.

Do not fall into the trap of thinking if you can’t lose weight easily it’s not worth changing.

This doesn’t even make sense. You can be overweight and feel great. Or you can be overweight and feel miserable.

Here’s the thing, it is harder to figure out your own solution when you feel miserable. It becomes easier when you feel better.

My Goal in Writing This

I want you to feel good. I want you to feel better. 

You cannot hate yourself into losing weight. That never ends well.

When you love yourself and treat yourself kindly, you begin to finally feel better. When you feel better you can make decisions that support your health and wellbeing.

Instead of focusing only on the scale, you focus on so much more!

You discover the parts of your life that are part of the problem and you expand your capacity for feeling good.

When you reach that point, you can play with your diet to figure out what works best for you and your body.

This will change everything my friend!

The post Why Not Losing Weight After 50 Is Not Your Fault appeared first on My Think Big Life.

If your weight won’t budge no matter what you try, you’re not alone—and you’re not doing anything wrong.

Weight loss over 50 can feel like a mystery, but it’s often just your body asking for a new approach. After maintaining my weight successfully for a decade, I found myself gaining again; so I got curious, not panicked.

Here’s what I tried that worked, and what might help you too.

This post addresses the frustrating plateau many women experience when they’re trying to lose weight but nothing seems to work, especially after 50.

Rather than promoting dieting or rigid rules, I emphasize listening to your body, eating in a way that supports your energy and well-being, and experimenting with sustainable habits that feel good to you.

1. Adjust carbohydrate intake, particularly by reducing sugar and processed carbs.
2. Increase fiber and water for satiety and improved digestion.
3. Tweak meal timing and reduce snacking to support hunger hormone regulation.
4. Change up your exercise routine to increase intensity and challenge your body in new ways.
5. Shift more eating to earlier in the day, reducing late-night meals to support metabolism.

Are You Feeling Stuck?

It is so frustrating when you find yourself wanting to lose weight but it just won’t budge! Here are five things to try when you can’t lose weight.

Long-term weight loss isn’t just once and done. As probably all of you know, even the most successful dieting experience ends in weight coming back.

So, I gave up dieting a long time ago! Instead I have focused on nutrition and maintaining a healthy weight for me.

To be clear, if you are already at a healthy weight, this isn’t designed to get you to a skinny weight. 

If you have health problems or an eating disorder, of course work with your health provider. However, these things to try are mostly all just adding more of some kinds of food and cutting back on others.

It’s important to take into account your lifestyle and you own likes and dislikes. There is not one approach that fits all. However, you may find something here that will help you reverse your weight gain.

I don’t advocate for arbitrary portion sizes or fewer calories. For my clients, I teach them to pay attention to their hunger and eat in a way that makes their hunger hormones more effective. 

Why I Am Writing About This

What works for a time may not work for all time. What I wrote about weight loss in my foundation posts, 10 Tips to Lose Weight and 7 Powerful Tips to Lose Weight has worked for almost 10 years for me.

For 10 years from 53 to almost 63, I have been really happy with my body and my relationship with food. Then it wasn’t working as well. So while I didn’t go up to my original weight, I did gain about 10 pounds and a new size in clothing.

When I first wrote this, I had four things I was trying. I am adding one more. You don’t have to try all of these. But you may feel inspired to give one a try and see if it helps.

Adjust Your Carbohydrate Consumption

Carbohydrates are absolutely necessary in your diet. But when you gain some weight quickly, or it’s creeping up, or it just stubbornly sits there; this is the first place I look.

The reason I start with carbohydrates is because you can not be overeating and still gain weight if you are eating too many carbohydrates or the kind that tend to make us gain weight easily.

I recommend writing down everything you eat for a week or so, to see what and when you are eating. Then you can look at your daily foods and see what is happening.

You don’t have to go without carbohydrates!

But you can try some adjustments and see how that works.

Eliminate sweets

I love a nice chocolate or other sweet treat after lunch or dinner. But having a small piece of dark chocolate is not the same as having a cookie or piece of cake.

When I was looking at what had changed for me, I realized that I was eating more sweets and larger portions. My one or two pieces of candy after one meal, had become full-size candy or a piece of cake daily.

You can eliminate all sugar treats safely–we get plenty of sugar without them. 

Some of you will deal with sugar cravings. Here is something to keep in mind. Having cravings is not a terminal state. They will go down if you stick with it.

The fact that you have cravings is a signal that you are eating too many anyway or that they have an emotional function in your life.

The answer is not to give up! The answer is to not eat sugar-based treats and bulk up your meals with healthier and filling foods.

I have a great post on how to handle sugar cravings and that can help too.

If you aren’t ready to get rid of all the sugar, try having just a little something along with or after your meals.

Don’t have it as a snack. Having it with your meals usually means you eat less of it since you should be full and satisfied.

This alone may help your weight budge. As an added bonus, most of my clients are also thrilled because they feel better and have less pain. Yes, too much sugar can cause pain.

Eliminate sugary beverages

I was working with a client whose weight was being stubborn. When we went over her food intake I noticed a couple of times a day, she was having tea.

When I asked her to check the can, she was shocked to see how much extra sugar she was adding to her daily intake.

There’s nothing wrong with tea, but when it’s adding 50 grams a sugar to your day, it can cause weight gain. 

So the usual culprits are fancy coffee drinks, sweet tea, sodas, cocktails, and even so-called healthy carbonated drinks. 

Watch your bread, pasta, crackers, cereal, and chips 

I grew up eating all these kinds of food with each and every meal. It wasn’t a problem for an active child and we stuck to only eating at meals.

However, once I was in my fifties, I intentionally began eating less of these foods. All through my forties and early fifties I weighed more and wore much bigger clothes.

Because of digestive problems, I totally eliminated wheat products which at that time, included all breads and pastas.

A few months ago, I began eating more bread. I had discovered sour dough bread and I loved it! In addition, I was baking and tasting more sweet treats.

The result was that my body gained weight quickly. It was fun putting it on, but once on it ws difficult to budge, which is how this article came about.

At the moment I am limiting my eating of bread or pasta to once or twice a week. 

Carbs you can enjoy

There are so many delicious sources of carbohydrates!

​All vegetables and fruits have carbs. You don’t have to stick to only low carb vegetables and fruits. 

I try to include a variety including higher carb vegetables and fruits daily. These help fill me up, satisfy me, and give me energy.

While some people swear by extremely low carb, I am not one of those people. I need a little higher carb food every day.

So, I get these by eating potatoes, winter squash, carrots, and beets, as well as different fruits.

If you want to track carbs by grams, most of my clients find that keeping total daily carbohydrates to under 100 grams is helpful. 

This is not medical advice, but by keeping your carbs lower, ideally you are also keeping your blood sugar levels lower.

Weight gain does come from higher blood sugar levels, so keeping them lower by not eating super high carb processed food can really help in the long run. 

Of all your eating habits, I think making the switch from centering meals around high carb processed foods such as pasta and bread to a more vegetable-based diet can make a big difference.

How to feel satisfied when eating lower carb

The simple answer is to eat more of other things such as vegetables, healthy fats such as olive oil and by adding higher fat foods such as avocados.

Increasing fiber as you’ll read below also helps. Also make sure you are eating enough protein with each meal.

Eating enough to feel full and satisfied is a huge help in not being vulnerable to cravings.

Add Fiber and Water to Your Diet

One of the things I decided to try was making sure I was getting enough fiber and water. Estimates for optimum fiber intake is 25 to 32 grams of fiber per day for women.

I wanted to get my fiber intake up there through food and without supplements. 

When adding fiber to your diet, you also want to make sure you are drinking enough water. I consider myself someone who drinks plenty of water, but I also wanted to make sure I was getting enough.

There are many opinions on this and it can be confusing. 

In general, women require about 12 cups of water a day total. This takes into account your other liquids and even the water in your food.

So, how much plain water do you need and why?

According to NIH, they recommend about eight cups and except for medical reasons such as a kidney stone, that should be adequate.

Eight cups is 4 pints/2 quarts. The best way to make sure you are getting that amount of water is to fill up your container in the morning and make sure you drink it all.

It is possible to drink too much water but if you drink a few extra cups per day, it shouldn’t be a problem. So, two quarts NOT two gallons. 

For me, increasing my fiber and water resulted in me naturally getting more fruits and vegetables and I lost three pounds without effort over the first two weeks.

I have a post called How to Increase Your Fiber Naturally that details what I did to increase my fiber every single day. 

Play With the Timing of Your Meals and Food Intake

When I begin working with a new client, the thing I see the most often is that these women are eating too little at their meals and snacking too much throughout the day and in the evenings.

I always recommend eating enough at a meal so you can go easily for about five hours until the next one. (unless you have a reason not too)

Along side that I also recommend eliminating snacking. 

I know, we’ve been on this portion control thing at meals. But that leaves most women hungry and susceptible to cravings between meals and at night.

It’s estimated that snacking can easily double your daily calories. So, by eliminating snacking, you can effortlessly reduce your calories. 

Another thing to try is to not eat after dinner. This is an easy way to have a 12-hour break in eating.

My sweet spot for maintaining my weight is 12-14 hours from dinner to my first meal of the day. I’ll still have milk in my coffess. I’m not hungry when I wake up but around 10 or so, I like to break my fast. 

However, if I’ve been gaining then I extend my morning fast and I’m a little stricter. I’ll drink my coffee black and go for 15-17 hours without eating.

It’s really not as bad as it sounds since I am used to not eating in the evening and I sleep through much of the fast.

This is a really easy way to nudge your body to lose weight, since you are sleeping for most of it. Sometimes this change alone will help you lose weight.

In the beginning, it will take some trial and error to eat enough at meals. If you find yourself getting hungry between times, definitely eat something.

If you have to eat a snack, then make it like a mini meal. Don’t eat sugar or foods high in carbs. Have some protein, vegetables, and healthy fat. Think of it like a mini meal rather than a snack. 

Think peanut butter and celery. Or an apple with almond butter. Or a hard boiled egg or two with some veggies. Another option would be to have a small portion of a left over meal.

Here’s how to get started with intermittent fasting if you want more information about this.

Change up Your Exercise

I love to exercise and do so most days as I’ve been doing for over forty years. The reason I love exercise and stick to it is that I have always chosen activities that I enjoy (for the most part).

The change I made recently was to increase the intensity of some of my workouts.

If you don’t exercise at all–then the thing to try is get moving. Take walks or do some at-home workouts. Commit to at least 15-minutes a day to get started. 

If you are already working out, change it up a bit.

For me, I do a variety of fusion exercises such as barre, ballet, pilates, and yoga plus walking outside or in my home.

This has helped me maintain my weight my entire adult life. 

However, I decided to change it up recently. To get more intensity I added a couple of step workouts to my week. I loved step workouts back in the day.

I still love them and they push me to work my muscles in a different way and the intensity is naturally higher with the step. I am also adding some more weight bearing exercise.

If you are an outdoor walker, here are ways to increase the intensity of your walks. An easy way if it’s available is to add hills to your walks.

In general, you can increase intensity by working out longer, using more weight, or working harder during a workout.

You don’t have to go crazy but it’s something to play with. In the long run, you want to workout consistently. So find ways that feel good but push you a little.

Eat More Earlier in Day and Stop Eating Earlier

This is another timing hint and the newest thing I want to try.

When I first lost my weight I wrote about it in an early post called Can You Lose Weight After 50? This was my very first post about weight loss, eating, and food.

What I had discovered was that one of the significant reasons I was able to lose weight was that I was eating lighter in the evenings.

This has continued to be a core foundation.

However, life happens and as the years went by, I began eating less in mornings and eating heavier and later at night.

The idea is to eat breakfast. Intermittent fasting has been so helpful over the years. I’ll still have that break in eating but it will begin earlier in the evening and finish earlier the next day.

Four Things to Try When You Can’t Lose Weight

I never look at weight loss as the only goal when eating and moving. It’s important to focus on nutrients and your metabolism when making decisions about your diet.

While I am not a doctor, most of my clients find that eating this way improves their markers. By not focusing on calorie intake or portion sizes, you instead focus on how food makes you feel and how it affects your body.

So, while you may not love the idea of eliminating sugar at first, I can almost guarantee, you will love how you feel when you do.

Because this is not just about eliminating food, it’s about eating more food and more satisfying food. A big part of my work is helping women eliminate problem eating, so they can focus on other things. 

Maybe that is the best part of all of this. When food isn’t controlling your life, you can actually focus on your life.

The post 4 Things to Try When You Can’t Lose Weight appeared first on My Think Big Life.