Why You Can't Lose Weight After 40 (It's Not Food)

What if I told you the only reason that you are still struggling with your weight has nothing to do with what's on your plate and what you're putting in your mouth? I mean, you've tracked the macros, you've done the meal prep, you know what to eat, and you are still stuck. Listen, my friend, the missing piece is not your food plan. It is something that the diet industry never talks about, and once you understand it, losing weight after 40 gets a whole lot simpler. Today in this episode I'm going to introduce you to something called primary food versus secondary food, and I'm going to show you exactly why feeding this first is what finally moves the scale especially if you're a woman over 40. Let's get into this episode! Ah-oo-hoo-hoo-hee! Girl, if you're tired of losing the same 20 pounds 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 I'm here to show you how to finally stop dieting forever. You ready? Let's dive in. Listen, I know that you are not struggling with your weight because you lack discipline. I mean, you're probably one of the most disciplined people I know. You get up every morning, you go to work, you handle your business, you take care of human beings, adults, children, pets. You are doing it at all, a lack of discipline is not your problem. You're struggling because you are depleted in a way that no meal plan can fix. No exercise plan can fix. Not even a GLP-1 can fix this. So when women over 40 are starving for real connection, I'm talking about healthy relationships, community, belonging, food becomes a substitute. It becomes the comfort. It becomes the reward. It's like the only thing that is just for you after a really long day at work. And nobody in the diet industry is talking about this thing. Now, listen, there are two things that are happening at the same time for women in this season of life when you're over 40. I mean, first of all, obviously your hormones, the declining estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, they just don't affect your weight. They affect your mood. Your reactivity, and your capacity to connect with other human beings. I mean, women in perimenopause can find themselves snapping at people that they really do love, right? Snapping at the, at the kids, pulling back from friendships that have meant a lot to you over the years. And you begin isolating without really fully understanding why. And when those relationships that you've had for decades begin to erode, the hunger for connection gets louder. And that's when food answers the call. The other thing that I see that is happening in my clients' lives and also happened to me is just your life in general. Like, this is the season of midlife where everyone needs something from you, your kids, your aging parents, the team you manage at work, your own ambition, your clients. Like, the list is long and you are at the bottom of it. And when your days are built around other people's priorities, there is no room left for relationships and community that actually nourish your soul. And so what do you do? You fill the gap the only way that feels easy and available. You eat. So we're going to take a quick break. And when I come back, I'm going to give you a 3-step solution you can use this week. No overhaul required, no new program, just 3 intentional moves that you can do to start feeding what food never could. So you've been rocking with me for a while, you've been listening to the Stop Dieting Forever podcast, or maybe you're new and you're like, this is interesting, this sounds like something I've never heard before, how can I work with Jennifer? Well, here's the thing about Forever Well private weight loss and life coaching, there is no cookie cutter plan here. Every client that works with me gets a custom approach built around her body, her hormones, her life, and her identity. Because a plan that worked for someone else's body at 35 isn't going to work for you and your body at the age of 48, right? So here's what I want for you. I want you to be able to lose up to 10 pounds in your first 6 weeks of working with me with a plan built specifically for your body after the age of 40. And then we keep going. You keep going until the results that you want stop being something that you have to maintain and they become something that you just simply are. That is what Forever Well delivers. So if you are ready to stop dieting forever and you are ready to live forever well and become the woman who doesn't have to worry about her weight anymore, I want you to go to jenniferdent.com/workwithme to see the different ways that you can work with me. All right, let's get back to this episode. Okay. So let's just recap. We talked very quickly about why this problem exists, right? We've got our hormonal things happening. And the second thing, we just have our very full packed life where everybody wants a piece of us and we are at the bottom of our priority list. So how do we manage that? How do we deal with our hormones and deal with the responsibilities of life. I want to teach you about primary food. Primary food. Primary food is what really truly nourishes our bodies. Now, I'm not talking about what you're putting in your mouth. I'm not talking about what's on your plate, but I'm talking about what feeds your life. It feeds your soul. Healthy relationships, regular movement, doing work that you love, having some sort of spiritual connection, community, going to a place where people are like you and they I understand you, belonging, right? We all know what that feels like. And then we have secondary food. Secondary food is just ordinary food, right? It's the protein, it's the macros, it's the carbohydrates, it's the sugar. And when your primary food is full, right, the thing that truly nourishes you, secondary food finds its rightful place, right? That nourishes your body and that's all it needs to do. But when the primary food is deficient, because we're so focused on other people and other things, we're missing out on the things that really mean something to us. Secondary food becomes our comfort. It becomes an easy distraction. It becomes a reward. It becomes an easy way to relief this like discomfort that we're feeling, the angst and the anxiety that we're feeling. And it becomes our best friend, right? The food becomes our best friend, our favorite snacks, our favorite treats, our favorite high-protein comfort foods. That becomes our nourishment instead of trying to find something from the primary food that really nourishes us. So here's the thing that I want you to take away from this episode. This solution is not about, oh, I got to find a new meal plan. Oh, I got to figure out how to get more protein into my day. This is what I want you to do. It's a an audit, right? It's an audit. I want you to just take a minute and look at your life and see the balance of your primary food versus your secondary food. So 3 steps. Step 1, audit your primary food. Ask yourself very, very honestly and say, do I have community or do I have just contacts, right? Do I have relationships where I can truly depend on someone? Not just see them, like not just text them, but you know that ride or die person that you can call and know that they will show up for you no matter what. You know, we should all have that one friend or that two friends where you can call them up and be like, girl, and they'd be like, hold on for a second. Let me close my office door. What do you need? What's happening? Right. If you don't have that, I want you to write this down, right? No judgment. Just data. I don't have community. I have contacts. Write that down as step 1. Step 2, I want you to define what nourishing relationships looks like for you now. Not 10 years ago, not 20 years ago, not 30 years ago when you were in college or high school, not the friendships you had before you had the kids, before the promotion, before you moved to another state. I want you to think about what does a nourishing relationship look like for you right now, where you are in your life, right? What kind of woman do you want in your corner? And what does it feel like to be around her? And when I was thinking about this topic, and actually I did a mini training on this inside my group program, Learn and Lose, and I was thinking about like the relationships that I had in college and how our primary food was full because of you're in college. We have so many relationships. And I remember I went to Hampton University for undergraduate and greeting your friends was normal to give them a hug. You would see people on campus and you would say, hey girl, and you would give them a hug. You would see like your fellow classmates, or we had like big brothers and big sisters. You would see them and you would always greet them with a hug. And that was the norm. That was what we did. When is the last time you hugged your friends? When is the last time that you were in a place where you could just love on the people that you really care about? So you've got to define what a nourishing relationship looks like for you now. Okay. And here's the last step. I want you to take a first step this week. I want you to think about who you can reach out to that you want to develop a nourishing relationship with. Invite them out for coffee, invite them to do a tea chat or a coffee chat on Zoom. Just one intentional reach out. And I'm not talking about networking of like, oh, what do you do? And how can I help you? And how can you help me help you? No, I'm not talking about networking. I'm talking about true community, right? That is it. Not a whole new social life. Just, just reaching out to one person and saying, hey, You know, I think we have something in common. Do you want to meet me for a matcha at the coffee shop? Do you want to, or reconnect with someone that you used to have a relationship with that you haven't been in contact with and say, hey girl, it's been a minute. Let's set up some, let us, let's set up some time to connect. As I was mentioning, I was doing a training, a mini training on this, and we're having this discussion inside our group program, Learn and Lose, on our weekly identity upgrade calls. Now, the identity upgrade calls. Are not just like everybody comes to Zoom and say, okay, what do you need coaching on? Because that's very traditional with other coaching programs. You have to come to the call ready for something to be coached on something. What I like to do is I like to do a little bit of like a mini teaching or training or something, something that I've seen coming up in the call, the one-on-one calls that I have with my private clients, or just trends that I see on social media, what people are talking about, what people are struggling about. In groups or in threads. And so I did a little mini training where I taught this concept of primary food versus secondary food. And it was just so random and it touched every single person in that group. And one of the women in my group who was on that call, she shared something that was like, oh, okay, this is, this was, this was a perfect topic. I'm glad I listened to God. Like, this is a topic that people needed to hear. She had recognized— she was sharing a story about a friendship that she was going through, a friendship breakup. And she recognized that there were yellow flags in this friendship early on. Like something just felt a little off, but she ignored them because, you know, you wanted to give this relationship a chance. She wanted to see the best in this person. And honestly, like, we've all done that, whether it comes to like a romantic partner or a friendship. Now fast forward, I'm teaching this concept of like connection and friendship, and she just started crying because this friendship had run its course. And when it ended, she found herself asking like, how do I even pick a new friend now? Like, I'm in my thirties. Like, what does that even look like? What does having a good relationship look like for me at this stage in my life? And here's what she did. Instead of waiting for the perfect relationship to appear, she made two plans that week. She invited one woman out that she had been going, uh, she goes to church with. She invited her out for brunch because she's been meaning to get to know her better. And then she invited another person out to just run errands, right? No pressure, no expectations, just showing up and seeing what was there. That is primary food in action. And let me just, let me just back up a little bit and share with you why I wanted to share this concept on the podcast and why I wanted to bring it to my identity upgrade call, um, inside Learn and Lose, because I had been seeing kind of like this trend of women in my age group and their in their early 50s, late 40s, who have kind of abandoned their old friendships, right? Or, or they haven't made any new friendships since college. And then they just rolled right into like having a family and getting married and like climbing the corporate ladder. And so, they never made time to really develop and connect with new people at this stage in their life. Like, Yeah, they were, you know, connections with their kids' parents, right? They— that was kind of like a forced interaction with people, but no like solid, like, girl, I need your help right now. Somebody's gonna drop everything and go to where they are. And I'm just seeing like the, the, um, what's the word I'm thinking of? Ripple effect of not having a squad, not having a true connection at this age in your life. I another really dear friend of mine, went to college together and she moved. She was relocated to Texas for her job, climbing the corporate ladder, doing her thing, like amazing. And she got married, had a child, never took the time to cultivate relationships in her new city. Now, you know, you got your work friends. Okay. That's fine. Um, moved her mom to come live with them. Well, her mom recently passed and she calls me and just sobbing, like just sobbing. And I felt so terrible. And I was like, who's there with you? Because mind you, I live in, if you don't know, I live in Philadelphia. She's in Texas. I'm in Pennsylvania. She's just, she's like a good 1,500 miles away. And I'm like, who's with you? Who, like, besides your husband, who's, who's with you? There wasn't anyone. There wasn't anyone in her, in her city. So this is why another reason why I wanted to really talk about friendships and how important they are to have that primary food, specifically the healthy relationships. So another story, uh, I went on a retreat at the beginning of this year. It was a business retreat, professional retreat. With about 10 women and we had the best time. Like, these are women that I did not know. I knew some of them from like, you know, being in different, uh, business groups and masterminds, but I didn't know any of them closely. And we were away in Mexico for 5 days and we just had such a good time. And we were all like, before the trip, we were all in a WhatsApp chat together. And afterwards we were like texting each other pictures and everything. And then all of a all of a sudden it was like nothing. We all went back to our, our cities, our homes. We all went back to our businesses and everything just kind of like quieted down. And so I was like, you know what? I am going to cultivate these relationships that I began on this trip. So I sent every single woman a personal message and I was like, hey, love connecting with you. I'd love to catch up. Let's keep in touch. Here's a link. Let's find some time to talk. One of the women that I met on the retreat, her name is Simone. She booked her call and it was on a Friday afternoon at like 5 o'clock. And I was tired and I was like halfway hoping that she was going to cancel the call because I was like, I don't really feel like, you know, getting on Zoom right now. I just want to end my day. But nope, she didn't cancel. So I showed up, she showed up, and she was very honest with me. She was like, I am tired because I had been watching her on social media. She was in the middle of a massive launch, like her biggest launch to date. And she was like, I almost canceled this call, but she was like, I believe in community. I believe in connection. And so I'm just— she's like, I just was like, I'm just going to show up. And so our call was scheduled for 30 minutes. We ended up chit-chatting it up for like an hour. And by the end of the call, we had exchanged phone numbers. Like she was more energetic. I was more energetic. And she actually told me later that she used me reaching out to everybody as an example with her own clients to show them what it looks like to invest in relationships instead of just hoping and wishing and like, oh, it's so hard to make friendships as an adult. It's so hard. Nobody like— everybody's so busy. All it takes is like a quick, like, hey, do you want to connect for 30 minutes? That's it. That's the energy you need. You don't have to wait. You just reach out. Just take that first step. Now, I always want to address my friends who are on a GLP-1, and this is what I have seen happening because I've been having a lot of conversations, a lot of consultations with women who have been on a GLP-1, who are off it, who are still on it now, and this is what I see happening. GLP-1, it suppresses your appetite. You lose some weight. Yay! But it does not touch the primary food deficiency. So the emotional eating can still show up just in different forms at different moments because the underlying hunger was never about food in the first place. And here's something else that I want to talk about that a lot of people are not talking about. Yes, there's a ton of people on social media talking about like showing videos of them giving themselves the injection and they're talking about their GLP-1 experience and all the things. But there's a lot of y'all who are taking this shot in secret, right? Who are doing it very, very quietly, not telling anyone. And listen, I understand you don't need to tell everybody your business, but I want you to think about what that secrecy is costing you. I have a good friend, one of my oldest and dearest friends who was in our, like, sister squad WhatsApp chat. She lost 75 pounds on a GLP-1 and did not tell us for a year. She's in California, I'm across the country in Pennsylvania. We're all kind of scattered, but most of us are on the East Coast. She did not tell us for a year that she was on a GLP-1, and she's like, oh, by the way, I lost 75 pounds. We were like, Oh my God. And we were thrilled for her. But when I think about her life, she relocated from Philadelphia to California for her job. She never really built a local community there because she had her husband, she had her daughter, she had her mother-in-law, like she had her, her life, her life was busy. She was climbing the ranks at her job. She was taking care of the elderly folk, taking care of her kids, being a spouse. She was doing her life and didn't have time to cultivate new relationships in that city. So here's the great thing is like the GLP-1 worked wonderfully for her. She's down 75 pounds, but she's still carrying something that no medication can address. So if you are taking a shot in isolation, this episode is your invitation to stop doing this alone. Because I'm a weight loss coach, right? She never mentioned it to me. So I'm just like thinking about a whole year she's been losing weight, 75 pounds. She's been going through all of the stages of using a GLP-1 to lose weight and didn't tell anyone. And didn't tell anyone. So I know what you're thinking right now. You're like, Jennifer, that's all good. I ain't got time to be reaching out to make some new friends. But again, I want you to just mention Simone, right? She was like in the middle of a massive launch for her business. She was tired. Like she came to the call and she was tired. I could tell, I was like, oh, she's not really wanting to talk much, but like she was literally going to cancel our call Friday, 5 o'clock, nothing left in her tank, but she showed up anyway. And an hour later, she walks away feeling connected and seen in a way that her to-do list doesn't deliver, right? So primary food does not require a lot of time. It requires intention. One step, one coffee, one message, one lunch date. That's it. That is your assignment for this week. I want you to do an audit this week. I want you to pull out a piece of paper. I want you to ask yourself, do I have community or do I just have contacts? And then I want you to take one step towards creating something real. And before I let you go, I want you to sit with this for a second. When you start prioritizing primary food, when you stop running around on empty and start feeding what actually sustains you, Here is what gets added to your life. Energy doesn't require caffeine to, to fake, right? Relationships are where you can exhale and just be yourself. Just like Simone came in that call dead ass tired. But by the end of our connect, our time connecting, we were laughing, we were joking. She was energized. She was just being herself. When you prioritize primary food, a sense of belonging that makes you want to take better care of your body because you find you feel like, oh, I'm worth it, right? That is one of the benefits of prioritizing primary food. And then you're no longer trying to find joy tied into food. You're no longer looking to— in your Starbucks app thinking like, ooh, I want to treat myself today to a lavender caramel macchiato, whatever, whatever, right? All the things that Starbucks— all the fun foods that Starbucks gives You're not looking for joy in your fast food app. You're already feeling the effects of the joy because of the connection. And another benefit when you start prioritizing primary food is that a version of yourself that loses weight, not because you're suffering through it and like feeling terrible while you're losing weight, but because finally you feel truly nourished and food just becomes secondary. Secondary food just becomes secondary, like for real, for real. And here's what it takes away: that late night reaching for something to fill a void that you can't name, that isolation that looks like, oh, I'm so busy, I'm being productive, but really you're just avoiding feeling lonely, right? You're always doing something for someone else because you can't sit down with your own self because you don't have anyone to connect with. Right. It takes away those friendships that you stayed in too long because you were afraid that there was nothing better there waiting. It takes away that exhausting cycle of starting over every Monday because food was doing a job that it was never designed to do. So this is what we are building together. And this is y'all, this is what I have been doing for a long time. And for years, women have told me I have a gift for this, like pulling together remarkable women and creating space places where something real happens. Before I became a coach, I was an event planner. I was like a social butterfly in the young professional space in Philadelphia. I used to do weekly networking events. I used to host business speed networking events. I was, I was con— I was connecting people. I was a people connector and I loved it. I loved it. So, I just took that energy into my coaching business, and I attracted some amazing women. I mean, we get on the Zoom screen together. It's just like connect to connect, connect. I mean, yes, we're all working on the same goals. All of my clients are wanting to lose weight, but they're all like, they're just good people, just good energy. So I have seen my clients become besties. I have seen like my clients who have businesses become clients of like my clients. Like I've seen the beauty that happens in community and I've watched women walk into my Zoom room in my coaching programs as strangers and leave as part of something that they didn't even know that they were missing. And so now I'm taking this knack for creating community online and I'm taking it off Zoom. And so the first stop is called the Luxe Life Table. In Fort Lauderdale on April 12th. Yes, y'all, we're gonna meet in real life, IRL, and I'm calling it the Luxe Life Table. On April 12th, we will be gathering at the Four Seasons on the beach because I love the beach. I love being by the water. It's going to be an intimate group, it's going to be intentional, and it's going to be a table full of women who are done doing this alone. This is not a networking event. You don't need to bring your business cards. This is literally primary food. It is connection. It is nourishment. It is just soul love. And I want you to come hungry for connection and leave full with what you have experienced in that time. So if you're in the Fort Lauderdale area, South Florida area, or you can get yourself over to Fort Lauderdale on April 12th, I want you to go grab your seat now at jenniferdent.com/april. That is where you can sign up and you can have a seat at the Luxe Life table now. And if you're ready to go all the way in, y'all, all the way in, I have curated my first international retreat and it is called Exhale. Mm-hmm. And it's going to be in Tulum, Mexico in January of 2027. I mean, this isn't like, you know, your average— this is a Luxe Life retreat, y'all. So I'm arranging private chef meals designed around our hormones, luxury accommodations on the beach, breathwork sessions, cultural experiences, a lot of laughter, some tequila, and a small group of intentional women who are ready to exhale, right? So this retreat is already 75% sold out at the time of this recording. I have 2 spots left. So if that is calling to you and you're like, oh, I need to exhale, I wanna be a part of this. I want you to go grab the link in the show notes and book a retreat interest call with me. So there's a link in the show notes. You're gonna book a call and click that you're interested in the retreat. Don't wait. Like I said, as of this recording, there were 2 spots left. So I gave you a whole bunch of links. I gave you a whole bunch of things to do. Everything is in the show notes. The Fort Lauderdale event, the Luxe Life table. I'm so excited about that one. The Tulum retreat happening in 2027. Forever Well, if you'd like to apply to be my next one-on-one client and the Stop Dieting Forever Friday newsletter, which I don't think I've mentioned yet, but if you're new to the podcast, Stop Dieting Forever Friday is a weekly newsletter that I send out that is a complement of the podcast episode this week. So something that takes you just a level deeper than what I talked about in today's podcast, you will find in the newsletter. So you've got to join my email club to get that into your inbox. Go to jenniferdent.com/emailclub to join the club. So everything you need, y'all. Everything you need is waiting for you there. All right. I have talked a lot, but I really, really, really, as I close out this episode, I see an epidemic of women in their 40s and 50s who have given everything to raising their kids, now taking care of their parents, trying to climb up the corporate wheel or wheel the ladder, um, build businesses. And have neglected friendships, neglected the close friendship. Now we always, all of us probably have like that one person or two, like, you know, we've been friends forever and you could pick up the phone and when you get together, you just pick up where you left off. If you have that, that is a blessing. But for those of you who don't have that in your life, I am creating these experiences in person that maybe you can meet your person. Maybe you can meet someone who is working on how to— trying to figure out how to stop dieting forever. You can meet that person who is also, you know, has some of the same likes and dislikes that you have and is looking for connection. So I got you. I got you. As always, I got you. So go check out the show notes, check out all the links. We also have a link now. Which you can submit feedback to us on that episode. If there's something that you want to hear me talk about some more, or you just want to tell me how much you love me, you can do that as well. There's a link to do that. But as always, share, share, share this podcast with everyone you know, because the more that you share, the more people who know that this work is here and that they can actually stop dieting forever so you can go on to live forever well. They will be forever grateful for you for sharing this with them. All right, y'all, live luxe, and I will see you in the next episode. Did you love today's episode? Are you loving this podcast? Then you are 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 going to 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-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 jenniferdent.com/emailclub to get Forever Well. All right, live luxe, and I'll see you in the next episode.