How to Stop Food Noise in Perimenopause

Let me ask you something. What if the food noise, the constant mental chatter about what you ate, what you shouldn't have eaten, what you're going to eat next, like, what if that wasn't a problem? What if that was not a hunger problem? What if it's not even a hormone problem? What if it's something to do with your nervous system and your nervous system is doing exactly what it was trained to do and the fix has nothing to do with the GLP-1 or another meal plan? I want you to stay with me because by the end of this episode, You're going to understand exactly why your brain will not shut off around food and the 4 things that actually have to change for it to stop. Ah, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

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, Luxxifer, I need you to listen to me and I need you to listen to me very, very closely. Food noise is not a hunger problem. It is not a discipline problem. And I know this is going to land differently for some of you. It is not primarily a hormone problem either. Here's the thing I need you to understand. The women who struggle most with food noise are not the ones who, like, don't care. They are the ones who care too much. They're the opposite, the ones who are, like, caring too, too much, but using the wrong tools as they're trying to take care of the food noise. Now, listen, you have been trained very well by the diet industry to make food the center of your mental universe. I get it. Been there, done that. How do you think Stop Dieting Forever came into fruition, right? It was based off of decades of me trying to quiet the food noise, or back in the day, I used to just call it mind drama. So we've been trained to track our stuff, log it, calculate it, calories in, calories out. Macro percentages, earn this workout or earn this treat, avoid this food, this is good food, this is bad food, stay away from this, this is going to kill you, like all of the things. We have been trained very well by the diet industry to have these mental patterns in our head that create food noise. And we repeat this cycle whenever we're on a weight loss plan and it stops working. So let's be clear. The system, the weight loss system, the diet industry, whatever you want to call it, it is not designed to set you free. That's what I do. But everything else that you see in general media, it is not designed to set you free. It is a system designed to keep you dependent. It is a system designed to keep you on the weight loss struggle bus. So I don't want you to be like, okay, I just have to lose weight. I don't want you to just have the goal to hit this number. And to just lose weight, but then you spend the rest of your life trying to manage this food noise in your head. The goal that I have for you is for you to become the woman who keeps the weight off and then barely thinks about food and how that affects what you're eating. And almost every program, weight loss program, weight loss drug, including GLP-1s that you see on the market, is only going to take you to that first destination. Right? The one that is designed to keep you dependent. Now, I am not a GLP-1 hater. In fact, I think it's a great support tool, and we're going to talk a little bit more about GLP-1s as we go through this really, really, really important filter that I want to teach you. Okay, so today I want to give you something that you can use before even this episode ends. As you listen to it, you're going to be like, oh yes, This is what I need to work on. This is what I need to change. It is called the ROOT, and it is a 4-part filter that I developed after years of studying women and weight loss and coaching women around weight loss. And even including my own story, I kept watching the same things happen, right? This especially happened to me. I would do the work, I would lose the weight. Because I could follow a plan, but then my life would resume. I'd go on vacation, get a job promotion, end up going, you know, to a different company or a different city or a different project, and everything would change. And then the weight would come back, not because I failed, but because my plan at that time had only checked one box when four of these boxes of this filter needed to be checked. So here's what I want you to do today. As I— as you listen to this podcast and you listen to me and I'm walking you through each part of this filter, this decision filter, I want you to think about your current plan. What is your current weight loss plan that you're trying to do right now? Or if you're not doing anything and you're trying to find the motivation and you're listening to me like, okay, she's talking about stop dieting forever. I need her to motivate me to get started again. I want you to think about the last plan that you tried, the last weight loss plan, and honestly ask, did your plan address the things that I'm going to talk about today? Yes or no? And by the time we're done, you're going to know exactly where your gap is. Because y'all, I am a consultant by profession, and I solve problems. I'm creating this decision filter for you to analyze what you're doing or what you did before to show you exactly what wasn't working and why you haven't been able to reach your goal. And I can tell you right now, I already know 99.9% of y'all, the gap is going to be in the same 2 or 3 places every single time. And if I'm wrong, I want you to email me or send me a DM on Instagram and tell me that I was wrong. Okay. Here's, again, I'm going to give you 4 filters. Here's the first one. It is body. Body, right? And you're thinking, all right, Jennifer, I'm eating the protein, I'm drinking my water, I'm getting my steps in, and nothing is changing. Now, if that sentence, if you resonate with that, and I know a lot of you do, I want you to stay right here because this is not a motivation problem. This is a precision problem, okay? The first part of the filter is what I'm calling BODY, B-O-D-Y. And yes, this is the box that most weight loss programs check because they teach you how to count calories. They teach you how to calculate your TDEE and your RMR and your macros, and it creates meal plans for you. And all of those things, right? And that is real. Those things actually matter, especially after 40 when your hormones and your minerals and your metabolism are operating in a completely different environment than they were at 30. But here's what most plans miss. A plan that is built for a generic body, a cookie-cutter plan that is built for a cookie-cutter body is going to give you generic results. And listen, girlfriend, you are not generic. You do not have a generic body. You are a woman in midlife with specific hormonal patterns, specific mineral deficiencies, and metabolic shifts that require precision. Not buying a plan off of Instagram or asking ChatGPT to put something together for you. That's just guessing. Doing all the things and still getting no results is not evidence that your body is broken. Really, it is evidence that the plan was built for somebody else's body, not your body. And this is for my, my LuxeLifers who are on GLP-1s, because I know a lot of you are, or you're considering one, or maybe you're coming off of one. GLP medications are what I consider a body layer tool. And that is not criticism, it is a category. Again, I am not a GLP-1 hater. I actually am absorbing all of the research that's coming out about GLP-1s and how beneficial it can be for people's bodies, especially women in perimenopause. Ooh, and we match that with HRT. Like, the studies are amazing. We'll talk about that later. But it is a tool. It is not the full solution. Okay, your GLP-1 is going to suppress your appetite. It's going to slow your digestion. And for some women, it's going to create a window of relief, quiesce that food noise, right? So it makes the other work possible. But here's what a GLP-1 cannot do. It cannot build your capacity to feel discomfort. It cannot construct certainty. It cannot create a daily practice for you. And we're going to talk a little bit more about all of those things. What they do is they quiet the food noise chemically. And when the medication stops, if you choose to stop taking it, or if you're just like, "I don't know if I want to stay on this for the rest of my life," when the medication stops, there are 3 other boxes that we're going to talk about today that are still empty, and the food noise comes back. Right? Oprah famously went on some show. I forgot who she was being interviewed by. And she was like, I stopped taking my weight loss drug, my GLP-1. And she ended up gaining 20 pounds. She said all of a sudden the food noise came back. She was like, first it was 5 pounds. And it was 8 pounds. And it was 10 pounds. Next thing you know, it was 20 pounds. And so then she was like, I got to get back on it. And I'm like, Oprah was only focusing on this one filter, the body filter. So treating this, uh, body, your vessel, as one solution, as one whole solution, it is not the whole thing. It is not the whole kit and caboodle. A foundation without a structure on top is just a slab of concrete. So I want you to think about your last program or the weight loss program that you're on now. Did it account for where your hormones are right now? Did it go beyond generic macros into what your specific body needs? Did it teach you how to understand the messages that your body is constantly sending you? I always say your body is always sending you text messages, and if something's off, something is off, and we need to pay attention to it and figure out what it is, because your body's natural state is well-being, right? Your body's natural state is well— is a state of well-being. And when you have these chronic issues of like sleep apnea and GI distress and brain fog and night sweats, like all of that stuff means your body's like, hey, we're not in well-being anymore. Like we're a little off, we're a little unbalanced. Could you listen to this text message I'm sending you right now and help me do something about it? Most programs don't teach you how to read those text messages. And I do. All right, so that's filter number 1. Filter number 2 is capacity. And this is when you're thinking like, I just need something to take the edge off at the end of the day. My nighttime snackers, this one is for you. My after-work stress snackers, this one is for you. Because let's be real about what that idea really is, that thought is of like, I just need something to take the edge off at the end of the day. Or I just need something a little bit sweet after I eat a meal. It is not about food. It is not about drinking your favorite wine at the end of the day. It is about the fact that by the end of the day, girlfriend, you have nothing left. Nothing left in your tank. You are spent. And the fastest, easiest way to feel better is something in your hand and something in your mouth. That is not a weakness. That is your nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do, and that is the direct cause of food noise, y'all. That is the trigger for the food noise engine to, "Grrr, let's go!" And it is the part of the filter where most weight loss programs completely abandon you. Here's the thing, your nervous system was acclimated to chronic stress, right? Your nervous system has been acclimated to chronic stress. And that is not something is wrong with you. That is not a character flaw. This is something that I had to understand for myself as well. It is biology. When you have spent years managing stress, operating at a very high level, producing a lot, taking care of a lot of people, working when you're exhausted, feeling overwhelmed and saying, "Oh, that's okay," and not doing anything about it. And unmet needs and meeting your unmet needs with food, your nervous system gets acclimated to that and it stops registering that as a problem because you were not reading the message that your body was sending you. And that becomes your default and it becomes comfortable even though it's costing you everything and it's not something that you actually want. It becomes your norm and you get used to it. And food noise is what that sounds like from the inside. So let's talk about capacity. Capacity is your ability to feel discomfort without food becoming the solution, right? And I wanna name specifically what that discomfort looks like because it's not some airy fairy, like esoteric gray thing that I'm talking about, some abstract thing. It looks like you saying no to the birthday cake at the office party and sitting in the awkwardness of being the only person not eating it. It looks like you going out with your girlfriends and they're like, hey girl, I got— I ordered you your favorite cocktail. And you're like, no thank you, I'll have sparkling water with lemon, please. It looks like telling someone that you cannot help them with something because you have committed to being in bed by 9:30 and you helping them is going to mess that up. Feeling the discomfort of their disappointment and not immediately wanting to fix it is cap— it takes capacity, right? It takes capacity to feel uncomfortable when your people-pleasing ways are used to saying, yes, I can help you. Yes, I'll do that. Right? Capacity looks like you coming off of a really brutal work call where your boss has laid into you. Or one of your team members was like really upset and it upset you, and you not going straight to the pantry because you are building the capacity to feel that stress in your body without needing food to discharge it, right? It's like overriding your people-pleasing patterns and tolerating the feeling of having to say no. That, my friend, is capacity. That is some grown woman ish right there. It is capacity. It's not willpower. It's not you being mean. It is a skill that builds because willpower is a resource that depletes. It goes away. Willpower is not finite. It disappears. But capacity is a muscle that you have to build. So every time that you pause before you reach for your snack and you sit in that discomfort for that moment, you are building your capacity. Right? You are expanding that ability to feel uncomfortable in the moment. And when you do that, and every time you do that throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the month, you are becoming the woman whose nervous system does not require food or wine or alcohol to regulate itself. Right? And when that shift happens, the food noise begins to quiet. Not because you're restricting, but because food stops doing that job. So here's a common mistake that I see a lot of y'all making when you're trying to lose weight. You're trying to manage the food noise at the food level, right? So you give yourself more rules of like, not eating past 4:37 PM. I am not eating sugar. I am only, you know, drinking juice for 3 days. Like, you give yourself more rules, more restrictions, You try to track more, and that only addresses the symptom. Capacity, expanding your capacity, addresses the source, right? It gets to the root, y'all. So I want you to think about your current weight loss plan or the last one that you did. Did it give you any tools for the discomfort that is not physical hunger, right? Did it help you address people-pleasing tendencies? Did it help you with emotional regulation, or you know, that stress that ends up with your head in the snack cabinet in the pantry? Be honest. Keep it real, right? This is always the most important one. OK, so we've talked about body. We've talked about capacity. Let's talk about filter number 3, certainty. And this sounds like, I've tried. I've tried. I've tried so many things, Jennifer. I have tried so many things to lose weight. And nothing has worked long-term. So I'm listening to you, but I don't know how what you're saying is going to be any different because I have a very clear path, a lot of evidence that I cannot lose weight and keep it off, right? I hear this on almost every single weight loss consultation that I do. I know that voice. It sounds like it's different. It sounds different from different people, but I know the root cause of it because I was there as well. I want you to know that that thought is not you being pessimistic. It's not you being depressed. It is not you having a bad attitude. It is a well-developed muscle. It is a story. It is a strong story that you have been telling yourself for a really long time. And the problem is the story is the wrong story. So every time a plan didn't work, every time the weight came back that you lost, every time that you you had to start over at the beginning of the month, your brain filed that away as evidence, and you didn't know what was happening, so you couldn't stop it, right? You were collecting evidence that you cannot lose weight. You were collecting evidence that your body just doesn't respond like everybody else's. Something must be wrong with your body. You were collecting evidence that sustainable weight loss and being able to live a normal life in a quote unquote normal body is available for everybody else, but not for me, right? And now that evidence comes up, it bubbles up, it fires automatically. The moment you were like, oh, I think I'm going to try something new, your brain, your body brain is like, uh-uh, remember what happened the last time you tried to cut out carbohydrates? Remember the last time you and so-and-so decided you were going to lose 10 pounds in 24 hours? Right? Remember the last time you thought you were going to go hard at Orange Theory Fitness? You were going to go 4 days, 5 days a week. Remember what happened? Yeah, your bratty brain has collected— that is, is the part of your mind that has collected every failure and will present them to you loudly, loudly, like on a megaphone, at the very exact moment where you are trying to elevate and do something different. Listen to me, your bratty brain does not speak the truth. It is just a pattern, and patterns can be interrupted, but only through practice and not through motivation. So stop depending and waiting on, oh, I just need to be motivated. Oh, I just need to, you know, feel like I want to do this again. Certainty is a muscle, y'all. It is built the same way that every other muscle is built. Through consistent, repetitive effort over time, even when it's uncomfortable, especially when it's uncomfortable, because that is when certainty grows. Every time your bratty brain tries to sow the seed of doubt in your motivation or try to sow the seed of doubt in your, um, in your wanting to do something different for yourself, we gotta clap back. Certainty is the clap back. To your bratty brain. So here's what that looks like in practice. Every single week, no matter what the scale says, whether it goes up, whether it goes down, whether it didn't move, like whatever happens, and you show up to a coaching call and someone helps you manage your mind around that result, not just the number, but the story that you're telling yourself about the number, the doubt that crept in on Tuesday and the ice cream that you ended up having on Wednesday. And the bratty brain story on the megaphone that was telling you, hey, what you're doing isn't working, girl, right? Week by week, rep by rep, certainty happens when you come and you keep showing up and you keep going, right? You build the muscle of staying on course when everything in you wants you to quit. That is why coaching, weekly coaching, can be a game changer as you're building this muscle of certainty, you don't have to depend on yourself to try to build this muscle. You don't have to depend on yourself to clap back to your bratty brain. So the common mistake that I see a lot of y'all making is that you think you need to be motivated to carry you through the doubt. And listen, motivation gets real, real small the more evidence that you have that what you're doing isn't gonna work, right? The louder that the doubt is. Motivation is only available when things are going well. When it's like a fresh new week and a fresh new day, you're like, okay, today's going to be a great day. I'm going to, I'm going to buy my healthy lunch. I'm going to drink my water. I'm going to go for a walk at noon. But by 8:30, you have a flat tire on your way to work. You're late for your 9 o'clock meeting. By the time you get to your 9 o'clock meeting, you don't have the project that you said you were going to have done. And everybody on your team is disappointed at you, and you're looking at— they're all looking at you on Zoom, like, and by 10 o'clock, you're like, where is the Snickers bar? Let me go to Starbucks. Let me go get some sugar, some caffeine, a treat. I need to use food because I don't like feeling this uncomfortable feeling. Okay. So certainty is what keeps you going when motivation is not there. And when you just have one of those days. So I want you to think about your current program or the last weight loss attempt that you went through. Did your coach coach you on your mindset every single week, or did it just give you a plan and leave you there alone to deal with your doubt? Like, you go figure it out. If it was the latter, then your certainty muscle was never touched. Your certainty muscle is just over there, weak. And lonely, it's like, hey, I really want to be stronger. Can you work me, please? Can you work me? And without certainty, your bratty brain is going to win every single time because it is loud. Okay, here is the fourth filter, and it is practice. And it sounds like y'all come to me and you say, I don't have enough time for one more thing on my to-do list. I'm already overwhelmed. Like, Jennifer, I hear you. Your clients are getting results, but you're telling me I got to do all this stuff. I don't have time to do everything already, and you're asking me to do more. I'm already overwhelmed. Listen, I hear you. I get it. I know what overwhelm feels like as well. And if the daily practice of whatever your last weight loss program was that you tried gave you a required hour of like, you tried to do med— morning meditation for, you know, an hour, or you tried to do breathwork, or you tried to like go to— oh my goodness, do a 2-hour workout, y'all. I was— it was a couple years ago. I was going, I was doing a 2-hour workout. I was getting up at 4 AM. I was, I was committed. I was going to the gym. Um, it was an hour strength training and an hour of cardio every single day. And I was getting up at 4 AM. To do it in order so I can start my workday. Okay? I'm not talking about that, right? This is what I want you to hear. I already know that you're busy, and I already know that you can't do 8 million things in order for you to sustainably lose weight and keep it off. So I always like to keep things simple. K-I-S, keep it simple. And I want you to choose the one thing that makes everything else in your day lighter, right? That one big domino that if you knock that one over, like, it's just going to make everything a little bit easier. And literally, it takes 30 minutes a day total. This is what I've been teaching my clients to do since 1865, right? 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the evening. That's what you start with. Because in the morning, before the day gets loud, You open up your planner. I have the 90-Day Daily Planner built specifically for you. You don't have to think about, what do I write now? I have what? And just answer the question. Turn the page, answer the question, write down the things that need to be written down, and turn the page and keep going. Set your timer for 15 minutes and go, right? You're going to review your 2.0 identity statement. You're going to do a brain dump of whatever is sitting in your head, what you're worried about. And you're going to be checking in with how you're actually feeling. You're looking at, okay, what did I— what am I planning to eat today? It's not rocket science, y'all. It's giving yourself 15 minutes to change your identity. Checking in 15 minutes in the morning and then 15 minutes in the evening, whether that's your transition window. I've talked about that before on the podcast, of that time between work and when you get home, because that's when that food noise gets the loudest, when you have that work stress all built up all day. And the next thing you know, You're on your way home. Oh, Chick-fil-A. There we go. Or you get home and you're like, ooh, refrigerator full of food. Let me just start eating stuff as I get dinner prepared. So 15 minutes in the evening, you do it again. You reflect on the day, you coach yourself on what came up, you close the loop. And in 30 minutes a day, your identity can shift every single day, just like that. So what those 30 minutes are actually doing is building your capacity, that same muscle that we just talked about. Every morning when you sit with your brain dump, instead of avoiding it, you are practicing feeling discomfort. Every evening when you reflect on a hard day, instead of numbing out on the couch with Cheetos and Doritos, you are practicing feeling discomfort. And over time, that practice grows your ability to tolerate what used to send you straight to the pantry. And when that capacity grows, the food noise, y'all, it gets quiet. The emotional eating decreases and the weight starts to release. So this daily practice is not separate from weight loss. It is the mechanism. And I have to be— I mean, I got to keep it real with y'all. Like, I have those moments too where my fat girl brain turns on. And it's like, "Oh, we need something to eat right now." But I'm so used to hearing that, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, no, that's emotional hunger. This is not true physical hunger." The food noise, which used to be like really loud, it's like a whisper in the background. I don't even like pay it any attention anymore. I'm just like, "Oh, yeah, no, I already know what this is." So I want you to think about your current plan or the last weight loss plan that you did, right? We're running it through the filter. Did it give you a daily structure realistic enough to sustain on a crazy Tuesday or a wacky Wednesday? Something that took minutes and not hours. Something that kept you connected to your identity and not just your calorie count, right? Something that you can do that will still help you move the needle with your weight, whether you went to the gym or not, whether you got your 10,000 steps in or not. Like this here. Shifting your identity is the big domino that's going to give you the weight loss results that you want so you can lose the weight and keep it off. So I know I went over a lot. I said a lot. We'll talk about this in future episodes, but I want to go over the full filter, right? It's 4 parts: body, capacity, certainty, practice. Most programs, they only focus on the body, right? And a very specific slim area of the body, which is like calories in, calories out. That's it. Very few weight loss programs address all 4 in a deliberate, sequenced way around specific gaps, especially that are specific to you and your lifestyle, your job, your family, like your career, your business. All of those things is filter your body capacity, certainty, practice are all revolve around you and your life. No other weight loss program is going to help you with these things that are specific and custom to you. Because here's what I want you to understand. The food noise that I'm talking about in this episode, and I know what food noise sounds like. I know how annoying it is. I know how all-consuming it can be. The food noise that you came, that you are hearing and experiencing right now doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you. It just means that you are under-resourced, right? It just means that you don't have the capacity to handle uncomfortable feeling. You don't know how to create certainty when all your brain is like, girl, we gonna fail again, seriously. And you don't have a daily practice to keep you rooted in your core why, why you even want to lose this weight and keep it off. You're under-resourced. Not the same thing. So let's bring it all the way back to where we started. You came into this episode asking how to stop food noise in perimenopause without another medication, without another meal plan, without another program that works for 6 weeks and then it falls apart. The answer is what I'm calling the ROOT, right? These 4 parts working together. A body plan built for your actual biology, like looking at your labs, Looking at your minerals, looking at all of those things specific to you, capacity to feel discomfort without food managing it for you. And then the certainty that keeps you going when your bratty brain is like, girl, no, you cannot do this, right? Creating that— it's strengthening that certainty muscle that clouds out all of the doubt. In an instant. That is the skill that needs to be practiced. And speaking of practice, having a daily practice that shifts your identity in 30 minutes a day or less. That is how you stop the food noise, not by controlling food more tightly, but by needing it less. Hey, I want to share with you real quick one of my clients and how the 4 filters helped her to lose 22 pounds. But before we do that, I want to take a quick break. If you are getting value from this episode, or you're like, whoa, Jennifer, you said a lot here, like, I need you to break it down for me, I want to make sure that you actually use what you are hearing, because there is a big difference between consuming content and implementing it. And that gap is why I created the Stop Dieting Forever Friday newsletter. So every week I take that week's podcast episode and we go a little bit deeper. You get the core weight loss takeaway. You may get a few reflection prompts to create real awareness. You may get a quiz to help you figure out where you are, um, like today, where you are in the process. Um, every week is going to be a little bit different and every week you're going to get one clear next step that you can apply immediately. No, like, fluff, just focused guidance to help you stop the emotional eating, build the habits that actually stick, and lose weight without dieting. So I want you to think of it as, like, your personal action guide for everything we talk about on this show. And if you are already listening, this is how you can make it work for you. So go join my email club. Go to jenniferdent.com/emailclub. The link is in the show notes. It's literally where I send my best content. My most exclusive content goes to my VIPs in my email club. It's completely free, so go to jenniferdent.com/emailclub and you will get your first Stop Dieting Forever Friday this coming Friday. All right, back to the episode. All right, I want to share a quick case study, um, of one of my private clients because her story is the perfect illustration of why food noise doesn't just go away with a plan. But she's down 22 pounds and she's still losing weight. We're still working together. So she came to me a couple months ago and she's tried everything. She knew what to eat. She had lost weight before, but she gained weight during COVID and wasn't able to lose that weight. So knowing what to do was not her problem. So on the body side of things, one of the first things that we did is run an, uh, HTMA test, a hair trace mineral analysis test. And so that tests your mineral levels and gives us a read on how your metabolism is actually functioning. So we got her test done. I do the test results myself. Her results showed that she was a fast oxidizer, which means she was operating in a chronic stress state. And she was burning through the minerals faster than she could replenish them. So when we got her on the right minerals to support her body, I did a full nutrition review, 14 days of looking at everything that she was eating. And what I found was that she was actually undereating. She was eating very clean, like a lot of you probably do. Too many vegetables, not enough protein, and just not enough food overall. It was like that bird eating mentality. So I told her like, hey, you gotta eat some more. She did, and she lost weight. Like, we were even prepared for her weight loss to stall because we were increasing her protein, and it didn't. Her body actually was like, hey, this is exactly what we needed, and she continued to release weight. So this is what happens when you stop guessing and you start working with the actual data from your body. When we looked at her capacity, She told me she used to come home from every family trip with a suitcase full of food, right? Good old home cooking from, from home. Instead of bringing home a whole suitcase full of food, she literally brought two things home for her son. That was it. Nothing else. And so when I was like, okay, so what was different about this trip versus trips before in the past? And so when I asked her why, she said, I just asked myself, Who do I want to be? So she was working on that identity statement, and she realized her old self was the one that brings home a suitcase full of sweet treats. But the person that she was working on becoming, she didn't do that anymore. So she brought something home for her son, and that was it. And she didn't have to make that decision through willpower. She did it because she was stepping into her new identity. So when we look at her certainty, right? That this was— this is the big thing that we really had to work on because every single week she would come to the call convinced she was failing. She was convinced it wasn't working fast enough. And I would look at her data. We would calculate her weekly weight average. And every single week, except for one week during the holidays, she would lose weight, but her brain kept preparing herself for failure because she had built an entire story on failure out of just old experiences. And so we did the internal work. I always say you cannot move forward if you're looking in the rearview mirror. That's a quote by Bishop T.D. Jakes. And so what she was trying to do was trying to become her 2.0 self, but she kept referring to all this past failure. So we had to do the hard coaching every single week to build this unwavering knowing, this certainty that, and the trust in the process that what she was doing was actually working. And that was huge for her, huge. And then on practice, finding the practice, she journaled every single day. I gave her an opportunity to rediscover journaling. And she had a core why that was deeper than just wanting to be smaller, just wanting to lose weight. And she had some really tough weeks, and her daily practice, it fell off to the side, as these things happen. And the weeks where she wasn't journaling as consistently, her weight loss was a little bit smaller. The weeks where she did more journaling and she did process the bigger emotions, her weight loss was a lot bigger. So we were collecting that data and we saw the trend and it was like, wow, okay, so this is a practice that really, really works for you. So her food noise got quieter, not because she restricted more, but because all 4 of these filters, these, these areas were working together. She's not on a GLP-1. She is in perimenopause. She is a busy mom of 3. And so it wasn't that she had to chemically change her brain, but she just had to put these 4 components together. And here's what I want you to hear if you are currently on a GLP-1 or you're considering one, that this is the work that needs to be done while your food noise is quiet, right? While you have chemically altered your brain to quiet the food noise, which no shame, like that's a great thing. Take advantage of the quietness. And do this work, right? Work on, uh, get your work on your body, work on your capacity, work on your certainty. Because if you decide to come off, you need to be certain that your body, you know exactly what to do, right? Develop that practice to help you lock into your future self identity. I said a lot today and we're going to dissect a lot of these components in future episodes, but this is the root. If you're not doing all 4 of these things, if you're not focusing on body, capacity, certainty, and practice, then you are not going to be able to lose weight and keep it off. I'm sorry. That's just how it's going to happen. So here's what I want you to do before, before you go to the next podcast, write down the 4 parts: body, capacity, certainty, practice, and put an honest checkmark. Next to everyone that needs to be addressed, right? Everyone that is missing, and not in theory, in practice, right? This is your diagnostic. This is where you start. And you can do that today, whether or not you work with me ever, okay? But here's what I want you to understand about why my clients get such great results and why I work differently. Most programs, give you a plan. And I know this because I tried them all. I was like, I just need to find the right plan for my body and then everything will be great. Hahaha. Guess what? I wasted decades trying to find the right plan. What I needed, and now what I offer my clients, is not a plan. It is a transformation. A plan gets you results. The transformation makes sure those results are permanent. Not because you, you stop eating sugar or you become a vegan or you become a carnivore, not because you're just changing what you eat, but you are changing who you are in your relationship to your body, your food, and yourself. And that is some grown woman-ish. And if you're looking for a cutesy little 30-day, 45, 6-week plan, go ask ChatGPT. But if you're ready for the deep transformational work that will free you from food noise forever, you need to come talk to me, right? You need the precision. You need to stop guessing why your body isn't cooperating and start solving the actual problem. The gap between doing everything right and, and still not seeing results, all of that goes away because I know exactly how to diagnose what is missing. So the next step for you is to book a weight loss consultation with me. It's a conversation, right? My program is called Forever Well Private Weight Loss and Life Coaching. I want you to book a call with me. The link is in the show notes. We will look at your history. We will run it through this filter together. We will get clear on exactly what you have been doing and what you have not been doing. And we're going to fill that gap and tell you the exact next steps of what you need to do to stop dieting forever so you can live forever well. Come to the call. Be honest because that is the only requirement. And if this episode gave you something real to think about today, I want you to share it with your girls, share it with your squad, share it with a woman who needs to hear it because she is out there. She is exhausted. She is frustrated. She is tired. She is convinced something is wrong with her. She doesn't know she has other choices. She needs to know that her plan was incomplete. That is it. Not her. All right, y'all. Live luxe, and I will see you in the next episode.

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