✅ Most women think weight change is about discipline, motivation or the right diet plan.

While these help, there’s more to it.

In this week’s episode of Before Dieting, I answer a question from Michelle about the four stages of change in the Weighting for Happiness® Project and why permanent change doesn’t come from forcing behaviour.

Women are trained to expect speed and short-term results. But recurring weight patterns don’t begin in a week, and they don’t change in a week. They change when women uncover the system that has been driving their eating for years.

There is a predictable sequence women move through when real change is happening:

Awareness → Insight → Realisation → Knowing.

These stages explain why diets only produce temporary results and why women who have struggled for decades often say, ‘I finally understand what’s been driving my weight.’

When women uncover their Eating System:

• clarity replaces confusion
• conscious choice replaces willpower and
• eating stops being controlled by the system so sensible diet plans can work

If you work with women in weight-related care or nutrition, this episode gives you an insider’s view of what systems change really looks like.

🎧 Listen to the episode: The Four Stages of Change (7minutes)

🔗 Download the FREE 4 Stages Cheat Sheet at Free Resource and if you have any questions, you can email me at bronwyn@weightingforhappiness.com.au

Yo-yo dieting explained - and it's not a failure of willpower

I've included a resource links at the end of these notes that enables you to map out your dieting model.

In this episode, I explore why diets so often begin with intense hope, fueled by marketing and outside influences. The classic Yo-yo dieting cycle.

Understand how your body's unconscious survival system interprets dietary restriction as starvation, often overpowering conscious willpower and forcing diet abandonment.

Learn why abandoning a diet isn't a personal failure, but instead is a predictable outcome driven by your biology.

Discover the phenomenon of weight "overshoot," where post-diet weight regain often exceeds the starting point because of slowed metabolism and increased fat storage

Hear why "low and slow" is key to lasting weight changes and how learning from past cycles, rather than forgetting them, can help break the pattern.

Key takeaway:

Sustainable progress requires working with your body's system, not trying to override it. Consulting a qualified dietician may help set up an approach that works in harmony with your biology.

Resource Links

Visit the resources page for a copy of the Diet Hope and Abandonment Cycle diagram and explore the Weight and Dieting History Program for deeper insights.

Free download Yo-yo dieting explained

Read my Blog Post about how Yoyo dieting is explained through the Diet Hope and Abandonment Cycle

Any questions you'd like me to answer in future podcasts, please email me

hello@weightingforhappiness.com.au

In this episode of Before Dieting, I answer a question from listener Karla about relief eating. An eating pattern many women have but almost no one is comfortable talking about. Relief eating is often mistaken for “bingeing”, but it’s something very different.

You’ll learn how relief eating works inside your Eating System, why it appears suddenly, why it feels automatic, and why it’s one of the biggest contributors to weight regain.

We walk through the three stages, so you can start recognising your own patterns with curiosity instead of shame.

🎧 WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN

If you’ve ever wondered how you can start the day with a green smoothie and end it inhaling a block of chocolate, this episode finally explains why in simple, honest terms. It does this without blame or shame, and gives you a reframe on autopilot eating you’ve never been given before.

⭐ KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Relief eating isn’t bingeing

The word binge isn’t helpful and carries judgement. Relief eating is a system response, not a personal failure.

2. Relief eating begins with an emotional disturbance

It starts with hungering, a body-level disturbance that signals emotional imbalance.

3. The system takes over

During the eating phase, the behaviour feels automatic because your Eating System is trying to stabilise you.

4. Relief eating can be avoided

By recognising the signs of hungering non-food solutions can be employed.

Please leave a review or send me an email hello@weightingforhappiness.com.au with any feedback

🎙️ The Weight of Clothes: What Your Wardrobe Reveals About Your Weight Story

In this episode, I’m sharing an exercise I’ve done with many women, one that turned out to reveal far more than any of us expected.

It’s called The Weight of Clothes, though really, it’s a wardrobe exercise. I’ll walk you through what other women discovered and how you can try it yourself.

What You’ll Learn

• • Why your wardrobe can act as a mirror for your weight history.
  • How clothing sizes reveal unspoken rules about body trust and control.
  • Why so many women keep clothes from the past, present, and future, and what that says about dieting patterns.
  • How multiple clothing sizes can reflect the diet–hope–abandonment cycle.
  • Two questions to help you move from evidence to insight:
  1. What emotions are attached to your smallest and largest sizes?
  2. What would happen if you let go of clothes that don’t fit?

Key Message:

This isn’t about decluttering, it’s about seeing what your wardrobe shows you about how your eating system works. Because you can’t change what you can’t see.

🎧 If this episode resonated with you, please share it or rate the podcast so other women can find it. You can learn more at weightingforhappiness.com.au

🎧 Episode Overview

In this episode of Before Dieting, I bring the concept of family food culture to life through one woman’s story.

Ingrid’s lifelong struggle with weight wasn’t about willpower or discipline, it was about an invisible eating system that began in childhood and shaped her adult relationship with food.

Her story reveals why diets can’t address the root cause and how uncovering hidden food rules can help women finally regain agency over their eating.

✨ Key Takeaways

1. Diets can’t defeat invisible systems.

Ingrid’s experience shows that eating isn’t just about food, it’s about emotional wiring formed through years of family rules. When those subconscious systems collide with diet rules, the diet never wins.

2. Childhood access and agency create lifelong patterns.

Ingrid grew up with no choice over what or when to eat. Once she gained freedom, her eating became open-ended, a pendulum swing from restriction to overindulgence. Those early experiences still drive her food choices today.

3. Relief eating isn’t bingeing.

Her nightly secret sweets weren’t about greed or lack of control. They were a form of relief, a way to deal with emotion and reclaim a sense of autonomy after years of living by someone else’s rules.

4. Real change begins with awareness, not restriction.

Ingrid’s progress didn’t start with another diet. It started when she recognised her eating system, learned to name emotions, and began rebuilding missing skills.

💡 Why It Matters

This story highlights a truth many women share: weight struggles are not failures of discipline, but the natural outcome of unseen systems running in the background. When you uncover the rules that govern your eating, you can finally stop fighting them and start rewriting them.

In this episode, I explore the hidden lessons learned at family mealtimes. Across thousands of childhood meals, rules about eating, belonging, and control were silently taught and absorbed. Those rules still determine adult eating patterns today, often more powerfully than any diet.

By revisiting your early food history, you can begin to see why willpower alone has never been enough and how reclaiming awareness of your family food culture is the first step to restoring agency over what and how you eat.

Key Points

• Family food culture describes the unspoken rules and behaviours you learned around food in childhood.
• The “family dining table” is a metaphor for wherever food and family came together.
• An average of 4,000 childhood meals created and reinforced lifelong eating rules.
• The setup, seating, and atmosphere of those meals carried messages about hierarchy, safety, and belonging.

These deeply embedded systems often conflict with diet rules, making long-term weight change impossible without understanding them first.

Takeaway

A diet can change what you eat for a while, but it can’t undo the 4,000 meals that trained your eating system. Once you recognise where your rules began, you can start choosing which ones still deserve a place at your table.

If you have a question, leave a comment or email me directly at bronwyn@weightingforhappiness.com.au

Episode Overview

This episode explores how the rules of childhood food culture still shape eating today. Family food culture is more than mealtimes; it’s the unspoken rules, behaviours, and permissions that form the foundations of an eating system. Unless these rules are uncovered, diets can only ever be temporary fixes.

Key Messages

• • Family food culture is the invisible set of rules you absorbed around food in childhood.
  • These rules were learned through meals, role models, and permissions, not consciously chosen.
  • Childhood experiences of food access and agency leave lasting consequences.
  • Access is about freedom: could you open the fridge, make toast, or snack without asking?
  • Agency is about choice: could you refuse food or ask for something different?
  • Lack of food autonomy often leads to patterns like overeating, hoarding, or never trusting hunger signals.
  • Memories of your childhood kitchen hold clues: was it warm and welcoming, or a place of control?
  • Today’s struggles with food, overeating, anxiety when food runs low, or over-catering, are echoes of those early rules.
  • Real change isn’t about another diet; it’s about recognising and reworking the system you inherited.

If you like to ask a question or make a comment about the any episode of Before Dieting… you can email me at bronwyn@weightingforhappiness.com.au

Cheers

Bronwyn