What does a thirteen-year-old secretly taking food from the pantry tell us about her eating?

On its own, it seems easy to explain. But Amy’s story changes as more information comes into view. She remembers being constantly hungry. Her food was restricted from childhood. Her dinner was served on a plate barely bigger than a saucer. She wasn’t given pocket money because of concerns she would spend it on food. Then, at eighteen, she left home determined that nobody would ever tell her what she could and couldn’t eat again.

The secret eating hasn’t changed. What changes is the frame around it, and with that, what becomes available to explain it.

In Episode 62 of Before Dieting, Bronwyn uses Amy’s story to introduce an important idea from systems thinking: the boundary we draw around a problem determines what information we include in our investigation and what we leave outside it.

Weight regain is usually examined within a very tight frame: what was eaten, how much was eaten, whether the diet was followed and when it stopped. Those facts matter, but they can describe what happened without explaining the eating that produced it.

Amy’s story shows why putting more context around eating can change an explanation without changing a single fact.

In this episode:

• • Why apparently straightforward eating behaviour can become less straightforward when more context is included
  • What Amy’s childhood hunger, food restriction and limited access to food add to the story of her secret eating
  • Why food freedom at eighteen meant something different when viewed alongside what came before it
  • How a systems-thinking boundary determines what becomes available for explanation
  • Why widening the frame doesn’t mean calories become irrelevant
  • The important difference between describing eating and explaining it
  • Why a factual account of weight regain isn’t necessarily a sufficient explanation

Start with Understanding Your Weight Ecosystem: If Before Dieting has you thinking there’s more to your story than calories in and out, the Weight Ecosystem gives you the questions and pathway to begin reframing your weight regain.

Start with Understanding Your Weight Ecosystem: If Before Dieting has you thinking there’s more to your story than calories in and out, Understanding Your Weight Ecosystem gives you the questions and pathway to begin reframing your own weight regain. Or copy and paste the link below:

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic

Read the Blog or copy and paste the link below:

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/weight-regain-the-frame-is-too-small

Karen described herself as a “great diet starter”.

She had tried Weight Watchers twice, intermittent fasting, meal replacements and so many other diets she could no longer remember their names. More recently, she had stopped eating breakfast, hoping that removing a meal would make losing weight easier.

Some days, after skipping breakfast, she found herself at the vending machine at work buying two or three chocolate bars to get through to dinner.

Karen was approaching fifty and the diets she had previously relied on to lose a few kilos were no longer producing the same results. Perimenopause seemed the obvious explanation.

She wanted to lose a persistent 20 kilograms and she felt increasingly urgent about doing it. Her mother was living with complications from type 2 diabetes and Karen was worried about where her own weight might take her.

There was plenty of information available about what Karen was doing now. We could have tracked her food, calories, weight or the chocolate bars from the vending machine.

But Karen didn’t have a tracking problem. She had decades of weight and dieting history that she had never looked at as a whole.

In this episode of Before Dieting, I look at the difference between tracking what is happening now and charting what has happened across time.

The most recent diet gives us a snapshot. A weight and dieting history gives us a different view, one that can reveal repetition, changes and turning points that are difficult to see when each attempt is treated as a separate event.

Karen thought the important question was why her diets had stopped working as she approached fifty.

Going back through her history raised a different one: how long had this pattern actually been developing?

If you have spent years starting diets, losing weight and eventually starting again, your history isn’t irrelevant information from the past. It may contain some of the most useful evidence you have.

In this episode:

• Why the latest diet gives us only a snapshot of a repeating problem

• Karen’s long history of dieting and her persistent 20 kilograms

• What happened when skipping breakfast collided with the working day

• Why Karen attributed her changing results to perimenopause

• The difference between tracking calories, food and weight and charting a history across time

• What becomes visible when individual weight-loss attempts are viewed together

• Why going back through your weight and dieting history can change the problem you think you are trying to solve

Start with your Weight & Dieting History

• • If you have regained weight more than once, you already have a history worth examining. The Weight & Dieting History diagnostic gives you a structured way to bring that evidence together so you can see the pattern across time rather than judging another attempt in isolation.

OR

Copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-and-diet-history-diagnostic

Read the Blog or copy and paste the link below:

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/looking-at-your-last-diet-your-missing-the-story

For the next eight episodes of Before Dieting, Bronwyn is taking a closer look at women’s experiences of eating and repeated weight regain, using stories women have shared with her over the years.

These are the parts of women’s food and weight stories that rarely make it into conversations about weight loss: hiding and sneaking food, eating late at night when no one else is around, feeling torn between wanting to lose weight and desperately wanting the relief that eating can provide.

Using a systems-thinking lens, Bronwyn will examine what surrounds these experiences, what repeats and what becomes visible when more of a woman’s life is put back around her eating. The aim isn’t to turn each story into a neat explanation. It’s to resist jumping to conclusions before there is enough evidence to support them.

Because after years of losing and regaining weight, I fell off the wagon or I know what to do, I just don’t do it simply isn’t enough of an explanation. There is much more to investigate.

If Before Dieting has started to loosen the idea that your weight is simply about calories and dieting, start turning some of this thinking towards your own story with the Weight Ecosystem. Or copy/paste the link below:

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic

If you prefer you can read my Blog or copy and paste the link below:

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/repeated-weight-regain-looking-beyond-calories-and-willpower

Weight goals can look remarkably clear. Lose ten kilos. Get back to 70 kilos. Fit into a particular clothing size.

Free download: Weight Goal Worksheet to discover your weight goals and how they work

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-goal-worksheet

But a precise weight goal doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve clearly defined the problem we’re trying to solve.

In this episode of Before Dieting, Bronwyn looks at what can sit underneath a numerical weight goal, from wanting greater confidence or better health to hoping weight loss will change how we feel about our body. Once those outcomes become attached to a number on the scales, very different problems can start to look as though they have the same solution.

The episode also examines SMART goals and an important limitation: making a goal more specific and measurable can make it more precise, but it can’t tell us whether we’re solving the right problem. When repeated weight regain is a complex problem, reducing it to a numerical target can make a simple solution, usually another diet, look more appropriate than it really is.

Before deciding what the next number on the scales should be, this episode offers a different place to begin: understanding what you actually expect weight loss to change, and whether weight loss can deliver it.

Looking to solve a complex weight regain problem, take a look at how seeing your weight ecosystem can assist. or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic

Repeated Weight Regain Is a Complex Problem

Not all problems behave in the same way.

Some are simple, some are complicated, and some are complex. The distinction matters because the type of problem determines the kind of solution that is likely to work.

Repeated weight regain has the characteristics of a complex problem. It isn't simply that there are many factors involved. Those factors interact, and attempts to change one part can alter the conditions surrounding another.

This becomes particularly important when weight loss and regain have happened more than once. Each attempt becomes part of the history brought to the next, turning what can look like another isolated weight problem into a repeating pattern.

In this episode of Before Dieting, Bronwyn uses the three types of problems to show why repeated weight regain needs a different problem-solving approach, and why understanding the problem needs to come before choosing another solution.

In this episode:

• • The difference between simple, complicated and complex problems
  • What makes a problem complex
  • Why recurrence changes the nature of a weight problem
  • How previous attempts become part of the problem being investigated
  • Why complex problems require a different approach to solving them

Weight regain isn't a simple overeating problem with a simple dieting solution.

Free download: The Three Types of Problems Cheat Sheet provides a quick visual guide to the distinctions discussed in this episode. or copy and paste the link: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/pod-asset

Read my Blog Article here or copy and paste the link: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/solving-repeated-weight-regain

Download the free instructional sheet here or copy and paste the link below:

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/Pilates

What does it actually mean to be in your body?

In this episode, I’m joined by experienced Pilates practitioner Lanette Helene to explore body awareness, movement and the physical patterns women accumulate over time.

This isn't about Pilates for weight loss. We talk about why women can become disconnected from their bodies, how midlife and menopause can change movement, strength and mobility, and why simply stretching tighter muscles isn't always the answer.

Lanette also explains what Pilates actually is, why it treats the body as an interconnected system, what to look for when choosing a Pilates studio, and some simple things you can do to improve body awareness in everyday life.

Four takeaways

• • Your body works as a whole. A problem in one area may be connected to what is happening elsewhere.
  • Body awareness can be rebuilt. Precise attention to breathing and movement can reconnect you with parts of your body you've stopped noticing.
  • Midlife changes what your body needs. Movement, mobility and strength become increasingly important.
  • Good instruction matters. If you're new to Pilates, Lanette recommends beginning with individual assessment and instruction.

Lanette shares a simple Toe Scrunch exercise for working the feet, toes and ankles. Download the free instructional sheet here or copy and paste the link below:

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/Pilates

To visit Pilates Canberra, or copy and paste the link below:

https://www.pilatescanberra.com.au/

Read the Blog here: or copy and paste the link below:

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/back-in-your-body

Weight-loss programs spend a lot of time telling us how to lose weight. Far less attention is given to what happens afterwards.

The usual language is maintenance: you’ve lost the weight, now the job is to keep it off. But that framing can hide an important part of the picture. Your biology doesn’t simply move into a new phase because the diet does.

In this episode of Before Dieting, I look at what can happen when calorie restriction ends, why the maintenance phase can shift responsibility for weight regain back onto the woman, and why the period after a diet contains information worth investigating.

I also share Vivienne’s story. After two decades of dieting, she knew she was good at starting diets but had trouble sticking with them. Her solution was to choose diets that promised increasingly fast results, until she found herself considering a five-day water diet.

When Vivienne stopped looking at each diet as a separate event and brought them together, a pattern became visible. Her previous dieting experiences were influencing what she chose to do next.

In this episode

• • Why the term maintenance deserves closer examination
  • What calorie restriction can ask of a biological system
  • The holding-your-breath metaphor and what it can tell us about biological responses to restriction
  • Why difficulty maintaining weight loss isn't explained simply by willpower
  • How one dieting experience can influence the diet chosen next
  • What Vivienne discovered when she stopped looking at her diets separately
  • Why repeated weight regain needs to be investigated as a pattern
  • How your dieting history can become evidence rather than a record of successes and failures

Something to think about

Rather than asking what you should do differently on your next diet, consider your previous diets together:

What have all my previous diets been trying to tell me?

The diets you finished, the ones you abandoned, how restrictive they became, how long you could stay on them and what happened afterwards may reveal far more than any single diet viewed on its own.

Next week

Before Dieting welcomes its first guest.

I’ll be in conversation with Lanette Helene, owner of Canberra Pilates, talking about something I hear from many women living with repeated weight regain: feeling disconnected from their bodies.

Our conversation ranges across midlife, balance, flexibility and practical ways to stay connected with your body as you get older. Lanette also shares some simple exercises you can try yourself, starting with your feet.

It’s a longer episode than the usual Before Dieting monologue and the first of our occasional guest conversations.

Read my Blog:

Show Notes:

You can read the accompanying Blog here or copy and paste the Link below:

Blog post for episode

In Today's episode:

Most women know how to investigate a diet.

They can tell you how long it lasted, how much weight they lost and why they think it failed.

But very few have ever been shown how to investigate what happened after the diet ended.

In this episode, Bronwyn explores why the period after a diet can hold some of the most valuable clues to understanding repeated weight regain.

Using questions from two listeners, she introduces a different line of inquiry. Rather than judging another diet as a success or failure, she explains how looking more closely at what happened afterwards can reveal patterns, unexpected experiences and overlooked evidence that help explain why the cycle keeps repeating.

You'll also hear why the Weighting for Happiness Project takes a collegial approach to understanding repeated weight regain. Your lived experience provides one kind of knowledge. Weighting for Happiness provides questions, tools and ways of organising that experience so the patterns become easier to see.

Together, those different perspectives create a fuller understanding than either could achieve alone.

Today's Investigation

Before your next diet, spend some time investigating the one you've just finished.

Instead of asking only,

"Did the diet work?"

try asking,

• • What happened after the diet ended?
  • What patterns kept repeating?
  • What surprised me?
  • What did this experience teach me about the way I eat?

Sometimes the clues you've been searching for aren't hidden in the diet itself.

They're waiting in what happened afterwards.

In This Episode we examine:

• • Why conversations about weight regain often feel much harder than conversations about weight loss.
  • Why the period after a diet deserves as much attention as the diet itself.
  • The different questions Weighting for Happiness asks once a diet has finished.
  • How repeated patterns often become visible only when you look back over several dieting attempts.
  • Why rushing straight to the next diet can mean overlooking valuable evidence.
  • Why one woman's experience after weight loss can be completely different from another's.
  • How unexpected feelings after weight loss can become important clues rather than something to dismiss.
  • Why understanding repeated weight regain begins with investigation rather than judgement.

Key Takeaway

Repeated weight regain is rarely explained by a single event, decision or diet.

It's usually the result of many experiences that have gradually become connected over the course of a lifetime.

Understanding those connections begins by asking different questions.

We'd Love to Hear From You

Many episodes of Before Dieting begin with questions from listeners.

If today's episode has sparked a question of your own, I'd love to hear from you.

[email protected]

DM Me on LinkedIn

While I can't answer every question individually, many of them become the starting point for future episodes because, if you're asking it, chances are many other women are wondering the same thing too.

Weight regain and fear: Why looking more closely can feel so frightening

If you've ever found yourself putting off looking more deeply at your weight regain, I don't think it's because you don't want to understand it. Most women I've spoken to have spent years searching for answers. They've read books, followed diets, listened to podcasts and promised themselves that this time will be different. That doesn't sound like someone who isn't interested in change.

What I think is happening is much more understandable.

Looking more closely can feel risky because we've been taught that if we discover what's causing our weight regain, we'll immediately have to stop doing it. If the answer is chocolate, we have to give up chocolate. If it's eating late at night, we have to stop eating late at night. Understanding has become tied to giving something up.

But what if that isn't the purpose of investigation at all?

What if the purpose is simply to understand what your eating has been doing for you? Not so you can judge it, but so you can finally see why it has been so difficult to change.

That single shift turns investigation from something threatening into something useful. Instead of asking, "Why don't I stop?" you begin asking, "What problem is this eating solving?" They're very different questions and will lead you to very different places.

So, before you start another diet, perhaps spend a moment with one question instead.

What are you afraid you might find if you looked more closely at your weight regain?

You can read my Blog post here or, on Apple, copy and paste the link below

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/weight-regain-and-fear

For answers you can start here or, on Apple, copy and paste the link below:

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-and-diet-history-diagnostic

OR

If you have any questions, please email me at: [email protected]

#weightregain, #emotioneating, #overeating, #foodrules, #eatingsystem, #womenshealth,

#midlifewomen, #dieting, #weightlossafter40, #dietcycle, #menopauseweightgain,

#psychologyofeating, #beforedieting, #reliefeating, #comforteating, #emotionaleating, #8eatingtypes

Before Dieting... Episode 53

Why do we eat?

It sounds like a simple question, but the answer is rarely straightforward.

In this episode of Before Dieting, Bronwyn responds to a listener's question about the Eight Types of Eating. Rather than looking at eating as simply "good" or "bad," she introduces a different way of thinking: eating is purposeful.

This episode is an overview of the Eight Types of Eating, the framework that sits behind many of the stories explored throughout the podcast. You'll discover why eating isn't one behaviour with one cause, but many different behaviours serving different purposes.

Bronwyn introduces:

• Functional Eating
• Secondary Eating
• Dieting
• Restricted Eating
• Social Eating
• Comfort Eating
• Relief Eating
• Conscious Eating

Along the way, she explains why understanding why you're eating is far more useful than judging what you're eating.

If you've ever wondered why your eating can feel completely different from one situation to the next, this episode provides a practical map for understanding your own eating patterns.

Key Takeaways

• • Eating isn't one behaviour with one cause. Different types of eating serve different purposes, and recognising those differences is an important part of understanding repeated weight regain.
  • The purpose of eating matters more than the behaviour itself. The same food can serve very different functions depending on the situation, whether it's nourishment, comfort, social connection or emotional relief.
  • The goal isn't perfect eating. The goal is conscious eating, where you know what you're choosing, why you're choosing it, and no longer feel driven by your eating.

If this resonates, start with the Weight Ecosystem diagnostic.

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/diagnostics/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic

Please subscribe to this Podcast and leave a rating, so other women can find it.

If you know any other woman who is struggling with weight regain, please pass this on.

If you have any questions, please email me or copy and paste the link below

[email protected]

If this resonates, start with the Weight Ecosystem diagnostic or copy and paste the link below:

https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/diagnostics/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic

==========================================================

#weightregain, #emotioneating, #overeating, #foodrules, #eatingsystem, #womenshealth,

#midlifewomen, #dieting, #weightlossafter40, #dietcycle, #menopauseweightgain,

#psychologyofeating, #beforedieting, #reliefeating, #comforteating, #emotionaleating, #8eatingtypes