How to Become Unrecognizable in 2026

Here's what no one's going to tell you about your New Year's resolution. If you do what you did last January, you're going to get what you got last February— disappointed, frustrated, and you're right back where you started. But here's the thing, friend, becoming unrecognizable in 2026 has nothing to do with willpower, meal planning, workouts, the amount of protein that you're eating, or even motivation. It has everything to do with 5 decisions most women women over 40 never make. And one of them is going to sound like it has nothing to do with weight loss, but I promise you it does. Like, literally, my client cleaned her living room and lost 10 pounds. I'm not even kidding. Let me explain. 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. Hey, LuxeLifer. So, you know, I like to keep it real, and so I'm going to keep it real today, and it may be uncomfortable for you, but if you are over 40 and you are still trying to lose weight the same way you did when you were 30, this is not you lacking discipline. What you're lacking is data. Most women think that they need more willpower, more time, more motivation, more restriction. But here's what nobody has been telling you, but I'm going to tell you. Your body changed the rules on you somewhere between the ages of like 37 and 50, and you're still trying to play by your old rule book. And you know what I see all the time when I have these consultations with women just like you? I've talked to women who have tried everything. I'm talking about keto, Whole30, intermittent fasting, macro counting, walking 10,000 steps a day. And yeah, maybe it worked for a minute, but then it stopped. And so now you're here getting ready to go into 2026 wondering if you're supposed to like accept this body that you're in that doesn't even feel like yours anymore and just say, you know, this is just where I am. I'm supposed to accept this is how it is now. No, that is not your truth. And it's not that nothing works. It's the approach that worked before doesn't address what's actually happening in your body now. So what you did 10 years ago to lose 25 pounds isn't going to work now because your hormones aren't the same. Your stress levels are not the same. Your metabolism is not the same. Your stress response isn't the same. Your career, your job, your family life is not the same as it was 10 years ago. So if you want to become unrecognizable in 2026, I mean, like genuinely transformed, not just 10 pounds lighter by February before you gain it back by March. I'm saying like you need to start addressing the actual variables now now and not the surface ones, not the ones that you think you need to be addressing. So in this episode, I'm going to give you 5 decisions— 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that's it— that you need to make in the first 90 days of this new year. And if you make these 5 decisions, trust me, you will not recognize yourself by summer. Not because you're taking some magic shot or, or you're doing some amazing 30-day challenge. It's going to be because because you will finally be working with your body instead of working against it. So let's get into it. So here's how this works. Each of these 5 decisions that I'm going to talk about in this episode addresses a very specific variable that's keeping you stuck. Most women are going to be focusing on changing their food and trying to exercise more, which matters, of course. Like, don't get me wrong, those things are important. They're missing the foundational pieces that make food and exercise actually work for your body after the age of 40. Decision number 1, go get your lab work done ASAP. Here's what drives me crazy. Y'all will spend $200 on a new workout program or a weekly meal delivery service, but you won't spend $99 to actually find out what's happening inside of your body. You know what I hear all the time? Jennifer, I'm doing everything right, but nothing is working. And so when I say, have you had your labs done recently? Crickets, right? Or even worse, they're like, yeah, I had my labs done when I went to go see my primary care physician. My doctor said everything is fine. Let me, let me tell you a really, really important secret. What fine means to most doctors means you're not dying, right? Your TSH is 4.2. To them, that's fine. It's in range. Never mind that the optimal for weight loss is actually under 2. Your fasting glucose is 99. Your doctor's gonna say, oh, that's fine. Never mind that you are 1 point away from being pre-diabetic. So your doctor is looking at your labs, they're looking for disease. When I look at your labs, I'm looking for optimization, and there is a massive difference. Now, here's something that's gonna make you really mad, but I have been having these conversations with so many women, and when I talk to them about hormone replacement therapy, they are like terrified. But here's the ironic thing. Y'all have spent 20+ years on birth control without blinking. So I wanna just be really real with this because this is gonna be a major game changer for you if this is how you've been thinking. Birth control has 10 times the clot risk of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, otherwise known as HRT. Birth control tanks your testosterone, it disrupts your thyroid function, and it shuts down your own estrogen and progesterone production. Doctors will hand out birth control like Skittles for every hormonal issue that they see that their patients have. They don't do labs. They're not monitoring what's happening with your hormones. There's no concern. But when you finally need hormones to protect your brains and your bones and your heart and your metabolism in perimenopause, suddenly They are fearmongering you out of the very therapy that could repair the damage that birth control helped to create. Does that make sense to you? So this is why you need to know your numbers, because your doctor's version of fine may be keeping you fat, exhausted, and hormonally wrecked while they'll tell you something else. I just say, oh, go eat less, exercise more, or even worse, like my doctor told me I need to do a better job of taking vacation time. So here's what I want you to do in the first 90 days of 2026. I want you to get a comprehensive metabolic panel that includes— now go, go get your pen, piece of paper, pull out your notes on your app, on your phone, pull out your Notes app on your phone and write this down. You want to get a comprehensive metabolic panel that includes a full thyroid panel. Not just TSH. You need to look at your free T3, your free T4, and your reverse T3, and your thyroid antibodies. This matters because birth control and perimenopause both disrupt thyroid function. And if your thyroid is not optimal, you're not going to be able to lose weight no matter what you do. So your body literally cannot mobilize fat efficiently with a sluggish thyroid. Your comprehensive metabolic panel needs to include your fasting glucose and your hemoglobin A1C. Now, this is super important because you need to know if you are insulin resistant. Uh, ironically, I didn't know what insulin resistance was until my numbers came back kind of funky, and I'll talk about that in a second. But this is the biggest factor in whether you can lose that fat around your belly. And here's the thing, these— again, these numbers can look totally normal while you are still becoming insulin resistant, which is why you also need to make sure that you are looking at your fasting insulin. You need to look at your fasting insulin number. This matters because you can have normal blood sugar but high insulin. That means your body is working overtime to keep your sugar normal, and it's storing everything as fat in the process. And this is, this is the baseline of metabolic dysfunction. The next thing you need to make sure you're get— being tested for is your vitamin D, your B12, and your ferritin. Now, deficiencies. I think most of us are familiar with vitamin D, right? A lot of us probably are taking vitamin D supplements. Deficiencies in these three areas can impact your energy, your metabolism, and your ability to build muscle, which is important over the age of 40. If your ferritin numbers are low, just looking at that number alone, it can tank your thyroid function, and that can be causing chronic fatigue. We also need to be looking at your lipids. So this is not just for your heart health, but cholesterol is the building block of all of your hormones. So if your cholesterol is too low, your body's not going to be able to make enough of the hormones. Plus, the pattern of your lipids will tell you more about your insulin resistance. And here's the, the last one that you wanna make sure that's included in your metabolic panel. You wanna make sure that you are getting your numbers for your sex hormones if you are in perimenopause or menopause. So what are your sex hormones? I'm talking about your estradiol, your progesterone, your testosterone, your total and free numbers, and your DHEA. So this is really important because you need to know where you are hormonally. Are you in early perimenopause with estrogen dominance? Are you in late perimenopause with crashing estrogen? Are you in menopause with no estrogen? So each phase requires a different strategy and you can't just eat less and move more, you know, moving, try to figuring out this whole hormonal crisis that is happening as you get older. Now, you can say, all right, I'm going to go to my doctor. I'm going to ask for these panels. And they may or may not give you what you're asking for because they are not necessarily trained in looking at all of these things. Again, your traditional doctor is looking for disease. They're not looking to optimize your health. Now, if you didn't know, you don't have to depend on your doctor to get these— this information. You can order these labs yourself. Online for under $300, and you don't need a doctor's permission to know what's happening in your own body. Or, and this is what I do with my private clients, you work with a functional medicine provider who runs comprehensive panels and knows how to optimize them, not just get you in range. So I am a huge believer in collecting data and This is one of the principles of the Stop Dieting Forever method is you collect your data and that's how you make decisions about what you do to lose weight, to optimize your health and your wellness. So let me tell you my story because I'm not just teaching you this, like this is my experience living with perimenopause. So in February of 2024, I ran my labs. My fasting insulin came back at 6.8. My primary care physician, my doctor, she would've said, okay, that's fine. It's in normal range. The lab range goes up to like 25 or something ridiculous because those ranges are based off of data done decades ago off of men. They don't take into consideration a woman's body. But here's what I know in just studying this and trying to understand what the heck was happening in, in my body. Anything over 5 indicates insulin resistance is starting, right? So, again, my fasting insulin was 6.8. So, insulin resistance was happening. It was brewing. It was going on. And so, the optimal range, what you want to look for, is anywhere from 2 to 4. So, even though my blood sugar looked fine, even though my A1C was fine, my body was already starting to work harder than it needed to, to manage my blood sugar. Which means I was on the path to storing everything I ate as fat, especially around my midsection. And that's exactly what was happening. And I was like, WTF is going on? I'm eating the same way that I've always eaten, right? The same way that I eat to— when I lost 30 pounds over a decade ago, and I've kept it off for 11 years, eating the same way. And all of a sudden, I'm getting fat and my stomach is getting fatter. So, as I began to understand insulin resistance, blood sugar management, which is— which looks different after the age of 40, I started to make some changes, not massive crazy changes, but I was very strategic based on what this data was telling me. I prioritized protein. We're going to talk about that a little bit more in decision number 3. I adjusted my meal timing. I changed my carbohydrates, what type of carbohydrates I was eating. I worked on my sleep and my stress because cortisol drives insulin resistance. I added very specific supplements to improve my insulin sensitivity, and I stopped trying to do so much high-intensity cardio at that time because that was spiking my cortisol and I became a walker. I started walking a lot. 4 months later, in June of 2024, I tested again. My fasting insulin went from 6.8 down to 5.6. Now, that's a 1.2 drop, and you may think that doesn't sound like much, right? But that drop meant that my body was becoming more insulin sensitive. And it was requiring less insulin to do the same job. And I was like, ah, sucks. We are moving in the right direction. So the work, the changes that I had been doing, I now see this is working. Keep doing the same thing. So that's metabolic repair that was happening and not just weight loss. And by the way, I was not losing weight in that time period at all, but I was preparing my body to be able to release the weight. Now, I kept going. I kept doing the same things. I kept the protein high. I focused more on slow carbs. I kept my meal timing strategic. And I really, really, really put a lot of effort into stress management because that is a huge piece that your doctor definitely is not going to talk to you about. It's like my doctor said, oh, you just do a better job of going on vacation. Like, what? And so by the time October of 2025 came around, almost 2 years from that first test, my fasting insulin is 4.8. So that was my most recent test. Fasting insulin was 4.8. So I went from 6.8 down to 4.8. Now, that is a functionally optimal number, and that's the number where your body can actually begin to burn fat efficiently. This is when the food noise quiets down, the cravings quiet down, and you're not battling sugar cravings at 9 o'clock. And for me, it was like after every single meal, I needed something sweet-suede. All right. So this is a point where your energy is more stable. I wasn't taking naps in the afternoon anymore, and I felt so much better. I feel so much better, but here's what I want you to take away from my story. If I had only run those labs once and my doctor said, oh, you're fine at 6.8, I would've kept struggling for the next year until I went back to my doctor. And at that point, I probably would have been in trouble. And I would have thought, okay, something is wrong with me. My doctor said I'm fine, but clearly I'm not fine. No, but it wasn't me that was the problem. It was my metabolic health. And I couldn't see that without this data. And so those labs gave me a roadmap. They showed me what was actually happening inside my body so I could address the root cause and not just keep restricting my calories or making sure I go to the gym 5 days a week and hoping for a different result. And so this is why I am so adamant about comprehensive labs, because you might be fine by conventional standards when your metabolism is quietly becoming more insulin resistant every year. And by the time your fasting glucose is high enough for your doctor to care, you've been struggling to lose weight for almost a decade. So, for those of you who are signing up for these programs online where you can just get hormone replacement therapy and you can get a GLP-1 just based off of your symptoms, you wanna make sure that you are getting your lab work done as well. And you need to have someone looking at your lab work to tell you where you are. Otherwise, you're just gonna be taking these things and you don't know if they're working. So this is what I see over and over and over and over again. We get our labs done, we depend on our doctors, our doctors say, oh, everything is fine, and then you just say, okay, well, my doctor said everything's fine. So here's what I want you to do instead. Make sure you get a copy of your results, look at the ranges, research optimal ranges for weight loss and metabolic health, and not just the normal ranges. Use ChatGPT. I actually put all of my labs in ChatGPT in a project. And so I'm able to see summaries of my health over time. Now, when you look at the ranges for metabolic health, and if something is at the high or low end of normal, I want you to say, ooh, that's a yellow flag. OK? That's not you being fine, but it's not optimal. And so we're always wanting to look for optimal. Another mistake that you might be making is you might be thinking that you can't get bioidentical HRT or that it's dangerous. The studies that scare everyone about HRT are from the early 2000s, over 25 years ago, and they use synthetic hormones like birth control, not bioidentical hormones. Bioidentical hormones, actual estrogen, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, they have a completely different risk profile. And if your doctor will not run comprehensive labs or will not consider HRT when it's appropriate, I want you to find a functional medicine doctor who will. This is your health, it is not theirs. And look, I get it, running labs, it costs money. But let me ask you this, my friend: how much have you spent on programs and weight loss meal subscription supplements and meal plans and gym memberships over the past 5 years? I spent $150 on that first comprehensive panel and a session with a functional medicine practitioner. Best $150 I ever spent. Now, I was like shocked when I got the results because I was like, but wait a second, what is happening? But it gave me the data to understand what was happening in my body instead of me spinning my wheels trying to figure out and guess like, We know what, what is happening. So here's what I do now with my clients. I am like adamant about this, and this is new for me as I'm expanding my scope of coaching. In addition to the life and the health coaching, I've partnered with a telehealth company to be able to run comprehensive functional panels, not just the basics, but we're going to be diving deep into your thyroid, your insulin, your inflammation markers, your hormones, nutrient deficiencies, all of because when you can see what's happening, you can fix it. But if you're just guessing, you're going to keep doing what you've always been doing and keep getting what you've always been getting. And I don't want that for you anymore. So that's your first decision. Number 1, go get your lab work done ASAP. Decision number 2, clear your clutter. Now, this is the one that sounds like it has nothing to do with weight loss, and that's exactly why most of y'all have never made this connection. And here's what I want you to understand. How you do one thing is how you do everything. If your bedroom is cluttered, your food decisions are probably cluttered. If your kitchen counter is covered in junk, your meal planning is probably chaotic. If you can't find your workout clothes because they're in a pile somewhere with clean or dirty laundry, You're probably not working out consistently, right? This external chaos that you are experiencing is really a mirror of your internal chaos, and you cannot create sustainable transformation in one area of your life while everything else is falling apart. Let me tell you about one of my clients. She came to me having regained 20 of the 40 pounds that she had lost. Now, she was a previous group member client. and she had lost 40 pounds and she messaged me and she was like, perimenopause, OMG, what is happening right now? She was frustrated. She was feeling out of control. She felt like her body was being taken over by aliens and she was getting increasingly depressed. You probably can relate to this story. She's 48. She's pre-diabetic for the first time. Her blood pressure is creeping up, her visceral fat was at 13 when it should have been under 11. And she knows what to do. She was an avid walker, avid worker outer, loved going to F45. Like, she was in the best shape of her life when she left my group program. So she's not new to this. She had lost 40 pounds before, but all of a sudden she regained half of it and she couldn't figure out why. So we're a few weeks into coaching. And I'm asking her about her home environment. And she finally admits, she's like, I'm living in clutter. My bedroom is a mess. The living room is chaos. And I know I need to fix it, but I'm just not in control anymore, even though I know that I can be. And this is where everything clicked for her. The clutter in her home was showing up in her food decisions. She told me about this one day at work. They were making lemon cookies in the break break room. Somebody had brought them in and she had spent the entire day thinking about that cookie. Should she eat it? Maybe someone else will eat it. Maybe she should move it to the main kitchen so other people could have it. So she felt bad for the coworker who brought them in. What if nobody ate the cookies? You know, typical people pleaser. So finally, by 3:00 PM, her decision filter was like, all right, if it's still there by 3, then I'm going to eat and she did. Not because she was hungry, but because she had spent so much mental energy on that one thing, she just wanted it gone so she could stop thinking about that darn cookie. This is what we call food noise, my friend. It's mental clutter, and it was directly connected to the physical clutter in her home. So we created an identity statement for her, which, you know, it's not a to-do list. It's not a cleaning schedule. It was literally an identity statement. And she wrote— she came up with this herself. She wrote, I am no longer available for living and existing in clutter. I now choose to be more organized as a woman who delights in a clean, clutter-free home. I move like someone done with temporary fixes. I am breaking generational chaos. Y'all, right? I hit you right there. And I am creating a warm haven for my family and friends because that's who I am now. Now I have a template for the identity statement that I give my clients, and this is what she created. She called a family meeting that same night. Her, her two daughters were teenagers, her sister who was staying with her, her nephew, and then she read them that statement. She printed it out. She posted it all over the house, on the refrigerator, in the living room, in her bedroom. And then she led her family in a cleaning party, which I loved that idea. They tackled the living room and the family room together. They made it a thing. They ordered food as a reward. They turned on music, and they made it fun. Now, here's what I love about this story. All of them kept the house clean for the entire 3 months that we were working together privately. They kept that house clean. Her teenage daughters started cleaning their own rooms without being asked. Her sister had an emotional breakthrough about her own clutter patterns and started addressing them. And then the whole family started reading that identity statement and responding to it. So my client said when she hears her identity statement, because part of the work that we do with the identity statement is that you are repeating it to yourself. You're training your brain to believe and know this new identity. So she would say like, when I hear it, it just makes me smile. And then everybody else would read it and now they see it and they get it. And there wasn't a whole bunch of pushback. There wasn't a whole bunch of like, oh, I don't want to feel like cleaning up. She didn't have to feel like a drill sergeant anymore. And everybody's like, yes, we want this peaceful space. Her daughters were excited to invite their friends over. And so my client, because she went through this identity with the clutter in her home, she stopped spending all of this mental energy on food noise, right? Things like the cookie in the break room at work didn't control her anymore. Because when your external environment is clean and organized, your internal environment follows. Now, my client ended up losing 10 pounds over those 3 months, but most importantly, she broke through that 180-pound threshold that had been haunting her. She ended up maintaining her muscle mass because she got an InBody scan. She rated excellent on her body composition. And she completely shifted her identity from someone living in chaos to someone who creates a warm haven for her family. And her family adopted her lead. They followed her lead. And that's that generational chaotic pattern that she broke. Now that is the power of addressing the environment. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to look around. Be honest. Pick one space. Doesn't need to be your whole house, but you know that one space that you're just like, oh, when I get time, I'm going to get this place organized. It could be that corner in your bedroom where you just have stuff piled up. It could be your kitchen counter. It could be your car. Y'all know you like to store stuff in your car, in your trunk. It could be your closet. I want you to clear it out completely. Like put time in your calendar to clear it out completely. Everything off the surfaces, wipe them down, and only put back what belongs there and what you use regularly. I don't want you to just clean it. I want you to create an identity statement like my client did. Make it about who you are becoming, not just what you're cleaning. That space is a reflection of your identity, and I want you to write that identity down. An example could be, I create environments that support my health, not sabotage it. You could write down, um, I am done with clutter in my space and in my mind, and I'm choosing clarity and calm. You could say something like, I'm a woman who lives in a peaceful, organized home because that's the environment where I thrive. Y'all know, or maybe you don't know. If you don't know, I'mma tell you, I am a a fan of Post-it notes. I have Post-it notes everywhere with thoughts that I want to train my brain to believe. I have them on my bathroom mirror. I have them on my computer right now. I have them on the mirror. I have them on my scale. I have them everywhere because I need a visual reminder of like, oh, right, this is who I'm becoming. So I want you to take that statement. Post it where you're going to see it, read it every day, and then I want you to decide you're going to maintain that clean space for 30 days, no exceptions. Because again, here's, here's the secret in doing this: the act of maintaining a clear space is going to train your brain to maintain clean eating habits. Same discipline, same consistency, same identity shift. So if you can keep your kitchen keep your counter clear for 30 days, you can keep your food choices clear for 30 days. It's the same skill. It's the same skill. Now, the women who successfully lose weight and keep it off, they're not just focusing on changing their food. They've changed their environment. They changed who they are as a woman in this world. Because again, your environment, it shapes your behavior. So if you walk into a clean, organized kitchen, you're more likely to meal prep. If you walk into chaos, dishes in the sink, you know, trash needs to be taken out, everything is kind of chaotic in the refrigerator, you're more likely to be like, you know what, we're getting takeout today. Let's get the Grubhub app. If your bedroom is your sanctuary, you're going to sleep better. So better sleep equals better hormone regulation, which equals easier weight loss. So this is one thing that my client said to me that really, really stuck. She said this one-on-one coaching, because she was in the group before and then we did private coaching for 3 months. She said this one-on-one coaching uncovered things that never would've been uncovered in a group setting. Never. She said it felt like therapy. Because I was helping her uncover things that she didn't even associate with her weight loss journey. But now she can see how interrelated it is. So this is what I'm trying to show you here, my friend. Your weight isn't just about food. It's about everything. It's about your life. And the sooner you address the everything, the faster the weight comes off and it stays off. So that is decision number 2, clear your clutter. Decision number 3, I want you to prioritize protein like your metabolism depends on it, because it does. Now, here's what a lot of y'all are doing over the age of 40. You're literally eating only 50 to 70 grams of protein a day, maybe less. And then you're wondering why you can't lose weight, why you're tired all the time, why that you— why you lose 10 pounds and your body still looks like mush. Do you know why? Because your body's actively losing muscle and you're not losing just fat. Because after the age of 40, you lose 3 to 8% of your muscle mass per decade if you're not doing something actively to preserve it. And muscle is your metabolic engine. Less muscle equals slower metabolism, which means it's harder to lose weight. And it's easier to gain it back. So this is what you may not know, but you cannot preserve muscle on 50 grams of protein a day. You think, you know, you're eating light, you're only eating 1,200 calories a day, but you cannot keep your muscle mass eating 50 to 70 grams of protein a day. You just can't. Your body literally will cannibalize your muscles and maintain everything else. and then you wonder why the scale goes down, but you still look the same because you lost muscle, my dear, and you lost water, but you are not losing fat. And, and nobody wants to be skinny fat. Like, I know I don't. So here's a formula for protein because a lot of y'all come to me and you're like, well, how much protein am I supposed to eat? What am I supposed to do? Here's a formula. Keep it real simple. 1 gram of protein per pound of your goal body weight. So if you currently weigh 200 pounds and your goal weight is 170 pounds, you want to be consuming 170 grams of protein, anywhere between like 160 to 170 grams of protein a day minimum. And before you're like, whoa, that is way too much, let me actually tell you what that looks like. Too much is eating 30 grams at breakfast, 20 grams at lunch, and then skipping dinner, and then telling yourself you're starving at 9:00 PM and then eating every single carbohydrate you can get your hands on. Your body can only use about 30 to 40 grams of protein at a time for muscle synthesis. The rest gets used for energy or stored. So if you eat 100 grams in one meal, you're not really getting the full benefit. So, what I want you to do is start spreading it out throughout the day. You want to be consuming 30 to 40 grams per meal, 3 to 4 times a day. And so, you need to understand what does 30 to 40 grams of protein look like for you? For an example, breakfast is 3 to 4 eggs or Greek yogurt with protein powder. Lunch could be a chicken breast, which is the size of your hand, maybe 5 ounces, or salmon, or ground turkey, or tuna fish, canned tuna, canned salmon. Dinner, same thing, palm-sized portion of protein. One of the things I love to do is I drink matcha tea every single morning. I add collagen powder to it, which is about 18 grams of protein per serving. I add a little bit of whole milk to it, which adds another 8 grams of protein. And then I also add 2 scoops of Protein Aminos, which is about another 8— ooh, let me do— I think it's like 18 grams of protein that my body uses. So I get that just from drinking my favorite beverage in the morning. It's not complicated, but it requires planning. So you're going to have to get a scale, a food scale if you don't have one, and you're going to have to to understand what 30 to 40 grams of protein looks like for you and plan your meals accordingly. Back to my client who I mentioned before, my clutter client, my clutter success story. One of the other takeaways that we, um, discovered in her coaching was the protein focus because she was a light protein eater and she wasn't really paying attention to how much protein she was eating. So when I did a nutrition review for her, I was like, you got to focus on eating more protein. And what happened was she began to focus on that. And she knew, she said, that's the biggest driver of her maintaining her muscle. That's why when she had her, her, her InBody scan, her body composition change was great because she maintained her muscle mass and she grew more muscle. And she knew that was going to help her get the fat off. Protein is a non-negotiable if you're over 40 and you want to become unrecognizable in 2026. And that's what I noticed with my own fasting insulin story, right? When I prioritize protein, especially first thing in the morning, my blood sugar stayed stable. I wasn't on this blood sugar roller coaster that drives insulin resistance. So protein first thing in the morning with my, my matcha, my Protein Matcha, which I love, signals to my body, okay, we got plenty of resources. I don't need to hoard everything as fat. And it sets the tone for the entire day. Now, common mistakes that y'all make because you grew up in the '80s and you grew up as calorie counters. Stop counting your calories. Forget about your calories. I want you to flip it. I want you to focus on your protein grams, hit your protein target, and then you worry about everything else. Because if you can hit 120 grams of protein, you're probably not going to have room for a bunch of junk because protein will naturally crow out the crap. Now, don't fall into the trap of eating protein chocolate and protein, whatever the marketing companies come up with. Or don't wait till the end of the day to try to get all your protein at dinner, right? Don't just have a salad for lunch and then have a huge steak for dinner. Again, your body can only use about 40 grams of protein at a time for muscle synthesis. So another mistake is thinking that you can't eat a whole bunch of protein because it's too expensive or too hard. Listen, Greek yogurt— I eat Greek yogurt almost every day— is cheap. Cottage cheese is cheap. Eggs are cheap. Canned tuna is cheap. Rotisserie chicken, ground turkey— you don't need grass-fed or organic everything. You need quality, adequate protein. Make it easy. Batch cook. Make meal prep in 3-day blocks. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. Keep the same meals on repeat. You don't need to be a restaurant, right? You not. And you don't need variety every single day. All right. Decision number 4, stop daily weighing and start weekly averaging. So let me ask you a question. Have you ever had a great week of eating? And then you stepped on the scale on Friday and it went up, and then you spiraled. This isn't working. Nothing works for me. Why do I even bother? Yeah, I see this all the time. Here's the thing. Your daily weight is not your fat mass, right? It's water, it's food volume, it's inflammation, it's hormones, it's sodium, it's sleep, it's stress. It's where you are in your cycle if you still have one. All of it affects that number. So you can drink a margarita on Saturday night, wake up 3 pounds heavier on Sunday, and freak out. But it's not 3 pounds of fat, friend. It's water, right? Salt and alcohol cause water retention, and your body holds onto it for 3 to 7 days while it processes everything. So sometimes you can have a— go out to dinner on Friday night, and that weight won't show up until Monday morning. So if you're only looking at that one weight, you think you failed and you make your decisions based off of failing, quote unquote failing, right, on water weight and not actual progress. And this is the reason why so many women quit in February. They see a spike, they're like, I've been so good in January. And then you see a spike, you panic. And what do you do? You restrict harder or you backfire. You say, eff it. And you give up entirely. So here's what I want you to do to be unrecognizable in 2026. Here's your strategy. You're going to weigh yourself every single day, but you're not going to freak out about daily fluctuations, right? You're going to look at this number as data. And instead, I want you to average your weight for the week and use your averages as your progress. So let's say Monday through Sunday, your weights are 182, 184, 183, 185, 182, 180, 181. Your average weight is going to be 182.4 pounds. Next week, you do the same thing. You weigh in every single day, and your average comes out to be 182 pounds. Well, look at that. You're down 0.4 pounds with your weekly average. That's the progress that I want you to look at. Even though you had days where your weight went all the way up to 185, your average still went down. Do you see? Can you see how this changes everything? You're not reacting to daily— a daily number. You're looking at the trend. So you can— what I teach my clients is let's write it down, right? In the planners that they get, there is space for them to write down their daily weights and average it every single week. We calculate the weekly average. We make a note of the Monday weight and the lowest weight of that week, and you can clearly see the trend. Or you can use an app like Happy Scale. You can use a spreadsheet, a Google Doc, whatever it is. Weigh yourself every morning, log it. Don't freak out, you're just collecting data. And then only look at the weekly average. That is your real number. So one of my clients learned this the hard way. She went to Belize on vacation, she came back, got on the scale, and it was 185.6 pounds. Now, she had been hovering around 181, 184 for weeks, and suddenly she's all the way up 4, 4 or 5 pounds up from her baseline. Her old 1.0 self would have freaked out. She would have panicked. She would have been like, oh my God, you know, she would have gone into hardcore restriction mode. She would have over-exercised. She would have— or she would said, screw it, shit, I ruined it, I messed up, pass me the lemon cookies. But my 2.0 version of my client, she observed what was happening. She was like, okay, I've been on a plane for 6 hours, my body's holding weight, I'm peeing a lot more than usual, I drank alcohol while I was on vacation, I ate more sodium, let me maintain my baseline habits the habits, right, of what I was doing before I left and see what happens. She didn't panic. She didn't crash her calories. She didn't punish herself with extra cardio. She just kept doing what she knew worked, focusing on protein, getting her walks in, moving her body, and maintaining her baseline habits. One week later, she was down to 177 pounds. She dropped 8.5 pounds of water. In one week. Her body released it naturally once all that inflammation settled down. And she broke through that 180-pound barrier, which was a psychological threshold for her because it had been haunting her for months. She could not get out of the 180s. And so for her, this whole process allowed her to understand that the scale is just data. It was not judgment that she lost control on vacation or that she needed to panic because she was all the way up to 185. Instead, she trusted the process. She leaned into her 2.0 identity, and her body rewarded her for it. So in 2026, if you want to become unrecognizable, you've got to have a better relationship with the scale because it's going to determine whether you quit or you keep going. And if you keep treating every daily fluctuation as a success or a failure, you're going to be on a freaking emotional roller coaster. And emotional roller coasters lead to emotional eating, y'all. So stop freaking out about that data that you're collecting every single day. And for those of you who are afraid to get on the scale, this is where your identity change— the shift needs to happen because the scale is an inanimate object. The number is neutral. And if you're going to allow a number to scare you, then where else are you allowing numbers to scare you? Are you not looking at your bank statements? Are you not looking Are you not looking at your credit score? What other numbers are you afraid of? Again, how you do one thing is how you do everything. So let's start with the scale. Let's start with, with not being afraid of that number. All right, y'all, rolling into decision number 5. I want you to hire help, but I'm going to teach you how to choose the right help. Now, this is something I see over and over and over again. I have the consultations with women who are like, I need help, but I feel like I shouldn't need help because I, I like to be in control. I've always been able to do this by myself. And you've probably tried to lose weight on your own multiple times, but yet here you are still listening to this podcast trying to stop dieting forever. And listen, I love that you're here. I'm not trying to say that to be mean. I'm saying it because it's true. Continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different result is a definition of what? And sanity. But here's where it starts to get tricky, because not all help is equal. And choosing the wrong type of help in order to become unrecognizable in 2026 is just as bad as trying to do it yourself. And I see thou— women spending thousands of dollars on programs that didn't work for them. They come to me, they're like, well, I tried this and I tried that, and I work with this person that did this. And it's not because the programs are bad, it's because the program wasn't right for their situation. Let me tell you, let me tell you what I mean. Let me break it down for you for a second. I want you to think about it like this. If you're dealing with one or two variables with your health, like you just need accountability and you need a plan, right? You know what to do and you know what's working. You just need someone to keep you on track and you need a little plan to follow. Group programs, they work great. Great, right? I have a group program, it's called Learn and Lose. The curriculum handles the average case, but here's what makes you complex. If you have multiple failed attempts at trying to do the same approach, right, it means your body has adapted. You have metabolic adaptation, which is the same thing that used to work doesn't work anymore. So you're doing the exact same thing you did 10 years ago, but it ain't working. That makes you complex. Additionally, hormonal issues over 40, there's— we gotta get those labs done, right? Thyroid problems, elevated cortisol, you're in perimenopause, you're in menopause, that makes you complex. Your medical history, PCOS, diabetes, Hashimoto's disease, autoimmune conditions, any chronic health conditions makes you complex. You have more variables to deal with. You might be on medications, antidepressants, steroids, beta blockers, birth control, all of those things. Or you may have severe emotional eating patterns or disordered eating history that you have not addressed. If food is your coping mechanism for stress, anxiety, and trauma, that makes you complex. The more complex your situation, the more that you need someone analyzing your specific data and not teaching you— not teaching just the average. Right, curriculum. So I want you to think about it like this: taxes. If you have a simple tax return, W-2, standard deduction, maybe a kid or two, TurboTax is fine. Yay for TurboTax! You follow the prompts, you plug in the numbers, in an hour you're done. But if you have multiple businesses, investments, rental properties, deductions across 3 states, 1099s, contractor income, them, you need to hire a CPA looking at your specific situation, someone who understands the nuances, someone who can say, based on your circumstances, here's what we need to do differently. Yeah, my friend, the same principle with weight loss after 40. So group programs are phenomenal. Learn and Lose, I highly recommend it, right? Group programs are phenomenal if you're relatively healthy with no major metabolic issues, your labs are actually optimal, not just fine. You're new to structured nutrition, you need education. There's a number of women that I've talked to have never had a weight issue until now, and they just need to figure out the basics. They need somebody to teach them what to do. Group programs are great if you're motivated and you can implement on your own, you're good at following a plan, you're good at showing up, and you just like community and accountability. Part— being part of a group fires Learn and Lose, you get the curriculum, you get a community, you get a general roadmap, you get a planner. And for a lot of women, that is enough. My Learn and Lose group program has helped dozens of women lose weight and keep it off, and it works. But private coaching is necessary if you— again, you've tried multiple approaches and nothing is stuck. You've done Weight Watchers, you've done keto, you've done Whole30, you've done macro counting, maybe you've even done a GLP-1, and that hasn't worked. One of my private clients came to me having done Ozempic. She didn't lose a pound. Wasn't because the, the, the, the GLP wasn't working. It was because she was still emotionally eating. She had complex hormonal issues and metabolic issues that we needed to address first. You need someone analyzing your data and adjusting your weekly plan, and that's what happens as a private client. Not every other week in a group setting, but I'm talking about real-time adjustments based on what's happening. Private coaching might be necessary for you if you have emotional eating patterns that require deeper work, not just, here's a food plan, go have at it. Private coaching is necessary if you want someone to connect the dots between your labs, your symptoms, your, your history, your results, someone who can see the full picture of you. Now, here's the difference. In a group program, you're learning the system. In private coaching, someone is applying the system to your specific situation and adjusting it as you go. So how do you decide? I want you to ask yourself, am I a simple case or am I a complex case? Be honest, because hiring the wrong level of support is why so many women keep investing in programs that don't work. If you are complex and you have lots of different variables and you keep buying the $200 to $300 $600 six-week group programs, you're going to keep getting average results because you need someone looking at your specific data, adjusting it in real time. But here's the thing that nobody wants to address and nobody wants to hear: private coaching costs more. Think about sending your child to a public school versus a private school. Of course private coaching costs You're getting customized attention. You're getting comprehensive lab analysis. You're getting weekly adjustments. You're getting unlimited access to someone who knows your situation, your job situation, your family situation, your finances. So let's talk about the actual cost. If you keep spending $200 to $500 on a group program that doesn't work, And you do that every quarter because you keep starting over. How much are you actually spending? So, let's do the math. $300 per program times 4 a year is like $1,200 annually with no lasting results. And you're right back where you started every single time. And if anything, you have now deepened this belief that something is wrong with you and you can't lose weight. Wait, or you can invest in private coaching once. You can solve the actual problem. You can build sustainable habits and move on with your life. And that's the math that nobody thinks about, because what is the cost of not solving this? Another year of feeling, feeling uncomfortable in your body. Another year of looking at clothes in your closet that you cannot wear anymore. Another year of avoiding photos. Another year of your health markers getting worse until you were actually There is a cost to waiting and it's not just financial. So if you're listening to this and thinking, I'm definitely a complex case, I need private coaching, then let's talk. So if you wanna have a conversation about whether private coaching is right for you, I want you to go to my website, jenniferdent.com/consult and book a consultation call. And on that call, call. We're going to talk about your situation, and I will tell you honestly whether you are a simple case or a complex, complex case. And I will tell you whether private coaching is the right fit or if my group program would actually serve you better. Because here's what I know after years of doing this work: becoming unrecognizable in 2026 is absolutely possible. I mean, looking at my own self from where I am now, from where I was last year, completely different. You just need the right strategy, the right support, and the willingness to do things differently than you've done before. So that's the 5-part decision framework: get your labs done, clear your clutter, prioritize protein, average your weekly weight, and hire the right help. Those are the 5 decisions that are going to make you unrecognizable by the summer. And here's the thing, this is the exact work I do with my private clients. We uncover the patterns that keep you stuck. We focus on protein and muscle preservation because I'm not just interested in you losing weight. I want you to change your body composition. I want you to feel strong. I want you to maintain this for life. We are tracking your weekly averages, not your daily fluctuations, so you can stay sane and make decisions based on the data and not the noise. And we do the deep identity work that group programs can't touch because transformation at this level isn't about following a meal plan. It's about uncovering what's really going on psychologically, emotionally, environmentally, and addressing all of it. And this is why my private clients get those identity shifts, those results that last, because we're not putting a bandaid on a surface symptom. We're actually solving the problem. So, that sounds like what you need, go to jenniferdent.com/consult and book a call. Because here's my commitment to you, I am not interested in taking your money if I can't help you. I only want to work with people that I know I can help. And sometimes that's the group program. Sometimes that's private coaching. Sometimes it's neither. Sometimes you just need to implement what you learned in this episode and then check back in 6 months. And I'm okay with any of those outcomes as long as you are moving forward. All right, friend, I know this was a long episode, but hopefully this is going to set you off on the right path for 2026. I want you to make those 5 decisions and actually make them. Don't just think about it. Don't just, don't just say, okay, that makes sense. No, I want you to take action this week. Go get your lab scheduled. Go pick one space to declutter. Put it on your calendar. Calculate that protein target and hit it tomorrow. Start tracking your weight daily and doing your weekly averages. Decide if you are a simple case or a complex case and get the right level of support so you can be unrecognizable by summer. I promise you, if you do these things, you're gonna look in the mirror by July and be like, yes, I'm so happy. I'm so happy. All right, y'all, live luxe, and I will see you in the next episode. Happy New Year. Did you love today's episode? Are you loving this podcast? Then you're going to love Forever Well, which is my exclusive newsletter where I break down how to stop self-sabotaging your weight loss and reinvent yourself into the healthy, grown-ass, confident woman you know you want to be. Girl, each week I'm gonna send you bold insights, real talk because, you know, I like to keep it real, and strategies that you can actually use to start your diet diet-free lifestyle straight to your inbox. Subscribe now at jenniferdent.com/emailclub or find the link in the show notes and start your reinvention today. Oh, and if you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review because it helps more women just like you find this life-changing work. All right, y'all, head on over to Jennifer www.luxuredent.com/emailclub to get Forever Well. All right, live luxe, and I'll see you in the next episode.