3 Ways to Stay Consistent with Weight Loss Long Enough to See Results

You know exactly what you should eat. You know how to move and when you need to move your body. You know stress is sabotaging your sleep. So why can't you just do it consistently? Here's the wild thing, y'all. The problem isn't that there's something wrong with you, or you just don't have the chutzpah to be disciplined. The real issue is that you're trying to be consistent with a plan that was designed for someone else's body, someone else's life, and someone else's identity. And that is why it keeps Hey y'all, I'm Jennifer Dent-Brown. This is Stop Dieting Forever. Let's talk about why your consistency problem isn't actually a consistency problem at all. Let's get into it. Girl, if you're tired of losing the same 20 pounds over and over and over again, listen up. For years, I thought something was wrong with me. I kept promising this time would be different, only to find myself stress eating at the kitchen counter after a long stressful day. I thought the problem was my body. I thought the problem was the diet I was on or my lack of discipline. But the truth? The real problem wasn't what I was doing. It was who I was being. When I finally stopped trying to fix my weight and started transforming my identity, everything changed. No more starting over on Monday. No more food guilt. No more feeling like I was fighting against myself. And now that's exactly what I help my clients do. Welcome to Stop Dieting Forever, the podcast that helps you break free from self-sabotage, rewire your mindset, and reinvent yourself into the healthy, confident woman that you crave to be. I'm your host, Jennifer Dent-Brown, certified life and weight loss coach, and I'm here to show you how to finally stop dieting forever. You ready? Let's dive in. Okay, you know I like to keep it real, so let's keep it real right now. Every Monday you're telling yourself, okay, this is the week. You've got your meal plan, you've got your workout schedule, maybe you even have your, your lunches prepared ahead of time. But what happens by Wednesday afternoon? You are elbow deep in office stress, you're in your co-worker's candy bowl pulling out the little mini Reese's, and you're wondering like, why can't you just what you say you're going to do. But here's what I need you to hear from me, my friend. Nothing has gone wrong. This is one of my favorite thoughts. When I feel like the world is on fire and I am just drowning in Problemville, I will tell myself, hand on heart, nothing has gone wrong. The entire concept of you staying consistent is actually setting you up to fail. Because consistency is not a personality trait that you either have or you don't have. This is not about willpower, and it's not about you just trying harder or just making yourself do it. Consistency is what happens naturally when there's 3 things that align. When your plan matches your actual biology, your body, it fits your real life, and most importantly, it matches who you are becoming and not who you used to be. Can I get an amen? So most of my women, most of my Luxe Lifers who are over 40 are trying to be consistent with strategies that work perfectly when you were 25, right, before you had kids and when you were in your old identity as someone who could just push through. And now you wonder why it's not working. Yes, friend, that is why it's not working. So I want to introduce you to this concept that I call the body life identity Consistency Framework. And when one of these three elements is off, your brain is going to resist consistency like it is trying to save your life, because in a way it kind of, like, kind of sort of is. That's what your brain is designed to do. So let's break down each piece of this concept and show you exactly where your consistency is breaking down. The first part is your body. Does this plan work with your actual body? Now, your body may be in perimenopause, or maybe you're postmenopausal, and it is fundamentally different than what it was at 30. Your insulin response has changed, your cortisol patterns are different, your sleep architecture is not the same, because if you're waking up at 2 AM every single night, that's not because of the moon. Right, the cycle of the moon. It is because of your hormones. So why are you trying to be consistent with a nutrition plan designed for a body that you no longer have, my dear? This is bio-individuality in action. So what I used to eat when I was 35— I used to love eating quinoa bowls, I used to love eating bread, Ezekiel bread, sourdough toast, even sweet potatoes— and I had to completely restructure that in my fees, not because these foods are inherently bad because they're not. They're actually pretty good for most people, but because my body's response to them changed, so I had to move them out of my energy foods to my fun foods, and I had to find slower-digesting carbs that actually sustained my energy without the crash at the age in which I am in my perimenopausal body. So here's the biggest mistake that a lot of you all are making. You're thinking, well, if I just try harder, right? If I just like cross my fingers, hope and pray that I'm going to be able to follow my schedule on Monday. You think that that's going to work. You think that your body is going to respond the way that it should. And your body doesn't read calorie counts on MyFitnessPal. It doesn't care what worked for your friend. It's only going to respond to your hormones, your insulin sensitivity, and your stress levels, and your sleep quality. So when you're trying to be consistent, with foods that now spike your blood sugar, with foods that tank your energy at 3 PM in the afternoon and leave you starving by the time you get to dinner at 7. When you're trying to be consistent with these things that used to work for you before, your body is now going to override your willpower and your perfectly detailed plan every single time. And that is not a consistency problem. That is not something wrong with you. That is simply a body problem. It is a biology problem. So what I want you to do is I want you to start paying attention to how the foods that you're eating, how do they make you feel? Let's forget about the label. Let's forget about, you know, what the research says about this particular food. Forget about whether you think it's healthy or not. And I want you to just keep note for like 2 weeks, 14 days. I always like to give my clients, do an experiment for 14 days. You can do anything for 14 days and ask yourself these questions. Which food sustained my energy for 3 to 4 hours after I consumed them? Which foods left me hungry an hour later? What things made me crave sugar in the middle of the afternoon? And what helped me sleep versus what disrupted my sleep? Now, this is your data. When you collect this data and take these notes for the next 14 days, this belongs to you and your body. Not a generic meal plan, not something that I'm saying, oh yeah, you should eat that, you should definitely not eat that. Not work for somebody else. Because when your nutrition matches your biology, your consistency becomes so much much easier because you're not fighting your body the entire time. Got it? Good. All right, let's look at part 2. Hey, hey, quick break to tell you about something new. If you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, okay, Jennifer, but how do I actually do this in my real life? I hear you. That is why I am launching Stop Dieting Forever Friday, a weekly newsletter that's basically the extended of this podcast. Every Friday, you're going to get the practical takeaways, reflection prompts, the behind the scenes of how I'm using this in my life, and one step that you can actually use from this week's episode. I want you to think of it as your implementation guide, less consuming content and more transforming your life. It is free. It is in your inbox every single Friday. And honestly, it's the difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it. You can go sign up at jenniferdent.com/emailclub. That's jenniferdent.com/emailclub, and you are in for Stop Dieting Forever Friday. All right, back to the episode. This is your life. Does this plan work with your actual life? So, you know, it's crazy, right? Most of y'all are trying to be consistent, and I love you all so much, and I love doing my consultations with you all for my programs and my coaching. But you all are trying to be consistent with the plan that requires meal prep on Sundays. Oh, but you forgot that you travel for work every single week, right? You're trying to be consistent with your 6 AM workouts, but you forgot to mention that you're up with hot flashes half the night every single night. You're trying to be consistent with cooking these separate meals from your family because nobody else wants to eat your grilled chicken and steamed broccoli, and you forget that you have 5 people, 5 different mouths to feed in your family, right? You're trying to be consistent with a plan that causes you to not go out to any social events, not allow you to go to any restaurants, and so all you can do is just be inside of your home because that is the perfect condition for you to lose weight. Here's the thing, my friend, your life is not going to get less busy. Like, it just isn't. Unless you decide you're going to leave everything that you have right now and go off the grid and go, you know, throw your phone in the river and go out in the forest somewhere, your life is not going to get less busy. Your schedule is not going to magically become predictable. You need a plan that works in the chaos and not one that only works under perfect conditions. I remember when I was at the height of my career and I was traveling to different cities for work every single week. And I remember I was like, I just need to get back— we used to call in consulting on the beach. So when you were not assigned on a project, when you were in between projects, we would have a time where you got to work from home and that would be considered you were on the beach. And I felt like that was the only time that I could be consistent with my eating. I could be consistent with my workouts because The conditions were right, but when I had to travel for work, I was eating in the airport, eating at hotels. I was traveling every single week on Monday, going to a different city and coming back home on Thursdays. And I felt like everything was just out of my control. So what changed for me after 14, 15, 16 years of traveling for work, I had to come up with my own grown woman standards when it was time for me to pack up my suitcase and travel for work. So, what was that for me? I had to plan my nutrition around what was actually available on the road. I never left it up to myself to try to figure it out in the airport. Because remember, traveling by air is kind of stressful. And then you have to add work stress on top of that. Oh my goodness. I remember one of my most annoying managers was in Philadelphia. We used to travel together for our programs and we used to travel on Sundays. And I'm just like, listen, I just want to relax. I want to just put on my headphones and we'll start work when we get to the destination. But she would see me in the airport at the gate and she would pull out her laptop and we would sit down and we would start doing work. And I— that used to make me so mad. So think about the travel stress layered on top of that was the work stress. So I never figured out like what I was going to eat. And when I was in the airport, when I was already stressed out, when I was on site for work, I created these rules for myself. I had a no dessert, 2-drink max rule every single day. I skipped the snacks because in these conference rooms and conferences I used to work with, snacks were everywhere. It's just a plethora of snacks all day, every day. I used to skip the snacks and I piled on the protein during meal times so I wouldn't be tempted to eat the snacks, and the protein would help keep my energy high and my brain fog free. And so I was consistent because I implemented those grown woman standards. I created a plan that fit my real life at that moment and not some fantasy version of like what I could only do when I was at home. The mistake that you all make a lot is thinking that you need to change your entire life to fit the plan, and that is 100% backwards. The plan needs to fit your life. So if you are a mom and you're shuttling your kids to this activity, this activity, this, this activity, your nutrition strategy needs to work in the car. If you work nights, For all of my medical workers out there, my shift workers, your eating window needs to match your actual schedule and not some ideal 8 AM to 6 PM timeline when half of that time you are actually asleep. And so let's talk about the biggest LifeFit failure: plans that require you to be a completely different person in a social situation. You know what I'm talking about. You're like, all right, I gotta go to the social event, I gotta go to this party, I have to go to this dinner event, I have to go to this client event, whatever it is, I have to go to this fundraising event, whatever it is. And you're like, all right, I'm gonna go in there and tonight I am not going to drink, knowing that you are good for 2, 3, 4, 5 glasses of wine on a good night. But today you're saying, uh-uh, I'm not going to drink. Or you go into the dinner and you say, all right, I'm just going to order the salad, I'm not going to have any bread, and I'm going to say no to dessert. Sounds good, right? But how's that working for you? Are you being consistent or are you forcing yourself through sheer effort until you inevitably break? Stop setting yourself up for failure. And I know the social situations are tricky. Family dinners, client dinners, client lunches, fundraising activities, church events. I know the, the, Social events are tricky. So I've created a Social Eating Success Guide that I give to every single one of my clients that they use to walk them through exactly what they're going to do before they walk in the door of that event. So they already have their grown woman standards already set up before they go into that event. So what I want you to do when it comes to making sure your plan works with your actual life, I want you to go ahead and map out your actual week. And not the week that you wish you're gonna have, right? Map out your actual week. Don't put in your calendar that you're gonna wake up at 5:00 AM to go to the gym if your actual week, you're really getting up at 8:00. Don't do that. Don't do that to yourself. What are the non-negotiables? When are you actually home? When do you have the decision fatigue that you need to make decisions ahead of time before that brain fog and decision fatigue sets in? When are you most vulnerable to grabbing whatever's easy, right? I talked about me being in the airport and traveling for work. Like, me deciding what I'm going to eat at the airport is a hell no, because you would have— I would be at the bar with a margarita on one side and a plate of nachos on the other, crunching, crunching, crunching away, worrying about this flight, worrying about this work trip. So I want you to ask yourself those questions, and then I want you to design an approach, a nutrition approach that works with these realities. Maybe you need a grab-and-go breakfast option because your mornings are chaotic. Maybe you need something that you can easily eat in the car and that won't find you hitting up the Dunkin' or the Starbucks on the way after dropping the kids off from school. Maybe you need a strategy for your business lunches that doesn't involve you awkwardly pulling out Tupperware or measuring your food at the table, right? Maybe you need fun foods that are built into your Friday night and you plan that on a Monday because that's part of your actual life instead of waiting until Friday where done from the week, you're tired, you have decision fatigue, and your partner was like, let's go get pizza. And you're like, oh my God, yes, let's go get some pizza and some beer. Consistency is not about perfection. It is about having a plan that is sustainable in your real messy, unpredictable life. And let's look at the third part of this concept: identity. So we've talked about body, we've talked about life, now we're talking about identity. Does this match who you're becoming? So this is a piece that nobody talks about. No weight loss program, no nutritionist, no dietitian, no weight loss clinic— nobody's talking to you about your identity. And this is the reason why you can have the perfect plan for your body and your biology and your life, and you still will still eff it up. You will still not be consistent. You are not trying to be the old you who could eat whatever you want and stay thin. You're not trying to be the one who has endless energy to power through. What you're doing, and what I want you to focus on, is that you're becoming your 2.0 identity. You're becoming the woman who uses food as fuel and not entertainment. You're the one who is becoming the woman who prioritizes sleep because she knows it is a non-negotiable. And you are becoming the woman who says no to the things that don't serve her, and you ain't gotta tell nobody why. Why you are saying no. There's no guilt and there's no explanation. But if your actions are still coming from your old identity, your people-pleasing identity, your stress-eating identity, the woman who puts everyone else first identity, you're going to keep self-sabotaging no matter how good your plan is on paper. Your identity is everything. This is going to seal the deal, y'all. Your old identity says, I just need to be disciplined. I should have willpower. I should just eat less. I should be able to push through, right? You're just shoulding on yourselves. We talked about this today in our Learn and Lose identity upgrade call. You are just shoulding on yourselves. How many times are you speaking to yourself and you're saying, I should do this. I should know this. I shouldn't have to do this. I should just do this. You are shoulding on yourself and you need to stop it. Right? That is your old identity. We are leaving her behind. Your grown woman error, your 2.0 identity, she says, my body needs specific things to function optimally, and I make decisions based on data and not guilt. And I'm not being difficult when I say no, I'm just being intentional. Thank you. Do you see the difference? Do you feel the difference? One identity is about restriction and shame, and the other identity is about becoming someone who makes different choices because she values different things. That, my friend, is you and your grown woman error. I had a client years ago. She kept falling off of her plan every single weekend when she would visit her mom for family dinner. We'd get her dialed in, she'd be doing great, and then she would spend Sunday at her mom's house with her brothers and her families, and she would come back completely derailed. Her problem wasn't willpower, because during the week she was great. Saturdays she was great. The problem was her identity conflict. As soon as she stepped in her mama's house, she was playing the role of the daughter who needs to be accommodating. She was playing the role of the daughter who eats whatever she served because she didn't want to say no to anyone. She didn't want to make waves. And she was playing the role of the younger sister who was the common bait for her older brother's teasing. Now mind you, this woman is 40s, some things just never change. When you walk into that old environment, some things never change. What we had to do was establish her 2.0 identity and develop the, the, the thought patterns that she needed to have when she walked into her mama's house in her grown woman identity. So this is the identity of the woman who walks into her mama's house and makes food choices based on how she feels and not, not based off of how she wants her mother to feel. So once we worked on bringing her new identity into this relationship as daughter and sister, everything changed. She could show up at her mama's house and maintain her energy eating plan because it wasn't about the food anymore. It was about who she was becoming. But the mistake that I see so many of you all do is trying to be consistent with behaviors that don't match your evolving identity. You're trying to become someone who prioritizes her health. You're trying to become that gym girly. You're trying to become that health girly, but you're still taking on everyone else's stress. You're trying to become someone who uses food as fuel, but you're still eating your feelings when work gets overwhelming and your boss gives you some critical feedback, some criticism. Your actions and your identity, they have to align. Otherwise, you'll always revert back to old patterns when things get hard. So I want you to ask yourself, who is the woman who maintains her health long-term? Who is she? Who is the woman that maintains her health long-term? I want you to answer the question. What does she value? How does she make decisions? What does she say yes to? What does she say no to? So I want you to start making decisions from that identity. You got to answer the questions first, but then once you have your answers, I want you to start making quest— decisions from that identity, even even when it feels uncomfortable. And y'all, it's going to feel uncomfortable because your 1.0 identity is going to be like, whoa, what are you doing here? Like, what, what is happening? Like, calm down. And your bratty brain is going to start to get really loud and try to keep you thinking in your 1.0 identity. This is when you gotta have some courage. You gotta have some courage. You gotta step into your, your big girl panties and put on those grown woman standards and be grounded in your decisions, even when people are surprised by your choices, even when old identity is screaming at you that you're being difficult or high maintenance and you should be doing this, you shouldn't be doing that, right? It's starting to shit on you again. So this isn't about you becoming someone else, right? This is not you like transforming into, I don't know, a vampire or something, or a witch or something crazy. This is about you becoming the version of you that your current choices right now are preventing you from That version of you is already in existence because it's in your mind. That vision, that healthy person vision you have for yourself, it's already there because you've already decided this is what you want. You just have to bridge the gap of getting from where you are right now to that vision of who you want to become. And that is your identity. That is your identity. Okay. So this framework, the Body Life Identity Framework, it's exactly what I walk my clients through in private coaching in my Forever Well private coaching container. Because here is what I have learned after coaching with oogabs of women since 2014 on weight loss, on weight loss, on how to lose weight. You already know what to do. There is a plethora of information out there on the internet. ChatGPT can be your fitness coach, like it can give you meal plans. That is not the problem. The issue is figuring out what actually works for your body that fits your life no matter what stage you're in and aligns with who you are becoming. And that is why I start every single private client relationship with comprehensive lab work, because we need to know what is happening with your hormones. We need to know what's happening with your insulin response, and we need to know your functional wellness gaps that standard testing from your primary care physician that they're and then from there we're going to design a nutrition approach that works with your biology and not against it. And then we work on that identity piece, because this isn't about another, you know, 12-week transformation. This is about you becoming the woman who maintains her health for the rest of her life. So here's what I want you to do, whether you ever work with me or not. I want you to stop trying to be consistent with a plan that doesn't match your biology, doesn't fit your life, your schedule, or it doesn't align with who you are becoming. And that is not a you problem, that is a plan problem. So I want you to start gathering your own data. I want you to start paying attention to how these foods are making you feel. I want you to look at where your real life creates friction with your current approach, and I want you to be honest with yourself. Keep it real, y'all. Keep it real with yourself. Are these choices coming from my old identity or my 2.0 identity. And if you're like, whoa, Jennifer, that sounds good, but I need some help in figuring this out. If you are tired of the cycle and you are ready to actually understand why you self-sabotage, you can book a call with me. We'll look at what's really going on and see if Forever Well private coaching is the right fit for you. But regardless, I want you to stop blaming yourself for not being consistent. I want you to start questioning whether you're trying to be consistent with the wrong damn plan. All right, y'all, live luxe, and I will see you in the next episode.