Unfortunately, that hasn't resulted in helpful information for women and their weight. Instead, it's turned into an echo chamber reinforcing gender stereotypes and bad science. Because of that, what's marketed to us are menopause hairsprays and gummies that somehow (through wishful thinking and fairy dust) solve belly fat. 

Google 'is menopause making me...' and the full list of midlife travails pops right up; weight, irritability, mood, fatigue, and more. But is menopause itself the root cause of the issue? This is important to distinguish; otherwise, you're trying to solve (or medicate) the wrong problem. 

If you’re in your 40s or 50s and are now the heaviest you’ve ever been, you might be wondering if menopause is the real culprit for your midlife weight gain. That's a fair question. It does seem to be more difficult as time goes on.

And, menopause brings some real changes! Hair, skin, mood, and all sorts of issues can crop up, but the question at hand is: Is menopause making me fat? This is the one we're going to tackle so you can make real progress on handling this important issue.

 Host Rebecca Thomas is herself in menopause, and her program clients are in some stage of perimenopause or transitioning through, so this topic is of particular interest. It turns out there's good research on the topic of menopause and metabolism to draw on.

Join Rebecca as she explores menopause weight gain, offers some new ways to think about this challenging but natural life transition, and introduces the idea that listening to your body can open up one of the happiest times in your life. 

If you decide to listen.

Get access to our FREE e-booklet right now with the exact steps we teach in our programs. 

Take action on your healthy weight -> https://www.notanotherdiet.co/thehungerpractice

Resources:

Intuitive Eating has a pretty sexy premise, you can eat whatever you want without rules or constraints. You can also skip quality judgments, meaning there are no good or bad foods (something referred to as the moralizing of food).  The idea is that food will lose its power if you stop trying to demonize or restrict it.

But is peace with food a purely mindset, or is the issue considerably more complex? And what if you actually do want to lose weight?   

Intuitive Eating falls prey to the same bad thinking as diet culture; that you can outthink highly processed foods (which is now most food) despite all evidence to the contrary. It also disregards the role of environment in what and how often you eat.   And, is putting guardrails around your eating the same thing as restricting your food?  

To be fair, IF isn't a weight loss method (although more than a few dieticians hint that you can reduce body size using this approach), but it relies on some similar mythology as diet culture, and that's worth dissecting. 

Get access to our FREE e-booklet right now with the exact steps we teach in our programs. 

Take action on your healthy weight -> https://www.notanotherdiet.co/thehungerpractice

Put another way, willpower-based methods manufacture shame by ensuring failure.

The common understanding is that you and I have free will to make 'healthy choices,' and if we don't, that's the failure. There's just one problem, that's dead wrong. 

If you've secretly wondered why it's so much easier for other people to eat moderately and don't understand why you continue to struggle, this is a must-listen episode. 

This better and more nuanced approach to understanding willpower and what you can reasonably ask of yourself is how you can finally understand what's upending you. 

Join Rebecca as she dismantles the notion of applying 'will' to weight loss and what to focus on instead for results that last a lifetime.

Get access to our FREE e-booklet right now with the exact steps we teach in our programs. 

Take action on your healthy weight -> https://www.notanotherdiet.co/thehungerpractice

Resources

It's all over the news, friends are taking it, and it's now offered alongside Botox at med spas. It's come up in group coaching in our main program. Hell, even our founder briefly considered what these drugs would do for her!

If you're trying to deal with chronic weight gain, it's impossible not to consider these drugs. The immediacy of the weight loss is pretty compelling. And yet, it's pretty serious business to inject yourself with a medication. So, how do you think through what you're really doing? What do you need to consider?

This episode is devoted to the questions that can bring clarity to the larger role Ozempic is playing in our lives (and culture at large). 

There's no medical advice (that's between you and your doctor). Think of this episode as food for thought coupled with some disadvantages that aren't immediately obvious about taking Ozempic for weight loss.

Get access to our FREE e-booklet right now with the exact steps we teach in our programs. 

Take action on your healthy weight -> https://www.notanotherdiet.co/thehungerpractice

Resources: 

Modern food is designed to tinker with your satiation and self-control (and then we blame ourselves).

In this episode, Rebecca dives into food processing and understanding its effect on satiation, metabolic health, and weight. 

A few questions about you and food: 

If you answered yes to any of those questions, I want you to know there's nothing wrong with you. You're experiencing the side effects of what modern food is designed to do.

Fact: 90% of all the brands you see on the shelves are owned by ten companies. This is what's meant as Big Food.

Big food's goal: sales through hyper palatability.

Your goal: eat naturally and have that produce a healthy weight.

Ultra-processing (stripping food of its beneficial and protective nature) makes up 60% of all food consumed, and its effects can be seen everywhere. Diabetes, obesity, and chronic disease. 

The problem is that we're so steeped in food processing that they've become normalized. But, they are what's standing between you and a healthy weight.

Get access to our FREE e-booklet right now with the exact steps we teach in our programs. 

Take action on your healthy weight -> https://www.notanotherdiet.co/thehungerpractice

In this episode, I delve into the actual effects of calorie counting (and, by extension, food tracking) on our psyches, behavior, mental health, and weight.

Tracking calories is a diet culture answer to deal with the effects of food processing. It’s an artificial boundary designed to make you eat less–temporarily. 

This practice leads people to believe there’s something wrong with their hunger or bodies as the weight returns (or they can’t deal with the restrictions anymore). Restricting food by simply forcing yourself to eat less can't ever be sustainable, but we return again and again to a damaging system.

Calorie counting creates erroneous conclusions about food and movement based on how few calories are consumed or how many calories are burned. This is why even when you're not dieting, you might be evaluating the world through the lens of calories. 

And that is where the harm begins. Grab your ear pods and tune in for an illuminating listen about the real effects of this outdated practice.

Get access to our FREE e-booklet right now with the exact steps we teach in our programs. 

Take action on your healthy weight -> https://www.notanotherdiet.co/thehungerpractice

It's taken as gospel that the road to weight loss is knowing your calorie expenditure and intake. So, why does this practice fail to deliver a stable, healthy weight?

Rates of regain are a staggering 90% or more. And that's if you can sustain it.

If you've struggled with weight, you've cycled in and out of these counting schemes. 

Calories have turned into organizing principles on how we deal with food, our activities (does this burn a lot of calories?), and, ultimately, how we conduct our lives.

"This is more or less the central myth of the Western diet. The word “myth” here doesn’t necessarily mean that calories aren’t real. It just means that calories are a story around which we organize our Western beliefs and values — just like ancient societies that had their own culture-shaping myths about why it rained and which spiritual beings ran the show." From The Calorie Myth.

How did this happen, and why does it persist?

In the 1960s, companies figured out how the calories might be useful in dealing with rising food processing. Since then, calorie counting has been trotted out as 'the' solution to weight and endures to this day. Every app relies on some version; doctors suggest it, nutritionists counsel it, and online bros can't wait to lecture you about calorie deficits. 

In this and the following episodes, we explore these two questions.

What does it do to our enjoyment of life and food to turn our lives into counting exercises to lose weight?

This a two-part episode. First, we explore how calorie counting was invented, who benefits from the practice, and the underlying assumptions behind its efficacy. Next, we talk about the real-world impact of buying into this food, movement, and weight approach.

You'll Learn:
Secret #1
The exact way to make healthy eating a breeze—without relying on willpower (or motivation) at ALL.
Secret #2
How to spot what’s really sabotaging your self-control (and keeping you STUCK) without having to go on another diet.
Secret #3
How to ENJOY your food–without measuring, weighing, or counting a thing and still lose weight!

A process rooted in gentle permanence creates joy and makes weight loss self-sustaining.  

Since losing 55 pounds over thirteen years ago, Rebecca has made a careful study of why this approach finally worked.

It's a world away from dieting, and once you've gone through it, weight loss is no longer a struggle but an outcome.  

If you've never had that experience, it's time to grab your earbuds and tune in. In this episode, Rebecca goes into the nuts and bolts of sustainable weight loss and exactly how it's different from deprivation-based methods.

Once you have clarity, it'll be hard to convince yourself to diet again.

Get access to our FREE e-booklet right now with the exact steps we teach in our programs. 

Take action on your healthy weight -> https://www.notanotherdiet.co/thehungerpractice

This episode will help you understand the diet schemes you've tried to make work and why they really failed. We often conflate dieting with weight loss, but the two are not the same, and you don't have to do one (dieting) to get the other (weight loss).

This matters because dieting leads to weight regain, boomerang eating, and poor self-esteem. Even worse, it wastes your time when you could be making real progress,

But how do you know what's actually a diet? Diet companies hire expert marketers who tell you they aren't a diet when they are.

You need a fresh way to evaluate what's being offered to you. Join us in this episode where founder Rebecca Thomas lists one by one the red flags you need to know to spot a diet.

If you have a friend struggling with a diet right now, send them this episode!

You'll Learn:
Secret #1
The exact way to make healthy eating a breeze—without relying on willpower (or motivation) at ALL.
Secret #2
How to spot what’s really sabotaging your self-control (and keeping you STUCK) without having to go on another diet.
Secret #3
How to ENJOY your food–without measuring, weighing, or counting a thing and still lose weight!

Do you ever wish someone would just say what the thing is between you and lasting weight loss?

Show me the obstacle isn't the craziest request (especially if it's been epically frustrating), but even if you get an answer, it probably won't help. The question is faulty. 

In our first episode of Season One: Free Yourself, Rebecca dives into a recent conversation that asked her just that. Listen to her answer and how that question traps us into more diets.

Plus, hear her story of diet failures and wobbly shoes that spanned two decades of struggle. Those experiences made her finally reject diet culture and forge an entirely new way forward, one that endures to this day. 

Get access to our FREE e-booklet right now with the exact steps we teach in our programs. 

Take action on your healthy weight -> https://www.notanotherdiet.co/thehungerpractice