Yo Yo Dieting: How I Stopped and Lost 35 Pounds

I never imagined that it was possible to be a midlife woman and feeling confident in a body that I loved and that I could walk into my closet and get dressed without any drama because all of my clothes fit perfectly on my body all year long. I had yo-yo dieted my whole life and no amount of Jenny Craig or drinking Diet Coke to stay full was working for me to reach and to stay at my goal weight. But here I am at midlife, at my goal weight, and in the best shape of my life. Now, in today's video, I'm going to share how I personally lost 35 pounds and how I've kept it off for decades, even with midlife hormones, and yes, even with a demanding schedule as a mom and as a business owner. So you're in good hands.

Hi, I’m Kristen Tinker, Food Addiction & Weight Loss Expert

I've helped hundreds of corporate successful midlife women to lose weight by getting to the bottom of why they overeat instead of just going on another diet.

I've done this work in my own life and I do this work with my clients too. Now, let's start here. I thought it was impossible to stop yo-yo dieting and to have a body that is leaner and more defined at midlife than the body I had in my twenties and my thirties. I'll share the steps I took and that you can take to lose weight for the last time. If you want to get my latest videos designed to help you overcome food addiction and lose weight permanently, even at midlife, all while you have a busy demanding corporate job, be sure to hit the subscribe button when you watch the video so you can get access to more tools and more help for weight loss.

My Secret Food Addiction

I can still remember when I was stuck in a pattern of yo-yo dieting and carrying around extra weight. It was pretty uncomfortable. I would smile in photos, but I really just wanted to hide and sometimes I did. I can personally remember when I would force a calorie deficit by starving myself, by kicking off my day with an iced coffee to get me through to lunch. Then I would be drinking Diet Coke and living off of pretzels in the afternoon. I would give my stomach the feeling of fullness using the Diet Coke.

But what started out as just one 12 ounce can of Diet Coke quickly became two daily cans of Diet Coke. Then I was drinking two 20 ounce bottles of Diet Coke as my addiction to weight loss and to Diet Coke just escalated during this yo-yo dieting phase. I was able to lose weight, but my body and my relationship with food suffered. I was hungry all the time and I couldn't sustain my weight loss and my body hurt. I ran marathons just so I could burn off even more calories, and even with my hard marathon training, I actually couldn't get faster because I was focused so much on calories when my body really needed nutrients to function well, but it's actually more than that.

See, I wasn't consuming any healing nutrients to keep my cells healthy, but also the toxic substances in Diet Coke iced coffee and pretzels were actually hurting my body and even my brain. They made my brain think that these drinks and foods like the sugar and the iced coffee and the processed ingredients in the Diet Coke and even the pretzels were actually critical to my survival. See, it tricked my brain, so my cravings increased and so did the addictive habit to have Diet Coke with me at all times. The health of your brain and your body rely on the foods you eat, the drinks you drink, and even the lifestyle that you choose. It took me years to figure out that simple truth, but it's a fundamental truth and it's actually the first step to permanent weight loss. How I finally lost 35 pounds and I stopped yo-yo dieting, was to remove the processed nutrient less addictive foods from my diet because our bodies require real whole foods and not too much of them.

If you notice that you're struggling with eating or drinking certain foods that you can't seem to get out of your diet and you want more than just this video to help you reach permanent weight loss at midlife, just click on the link below to join my Free Crush Your Cravings program. Now that's free to everybody. In this program, you'll get a free five day video series to help you crush any craving that pops up, including for Diet Coke.

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What Happens When You Eat Sugar & Other Addictive Foods

Now, moving on to the next thing, the second step to keep in mind to stop Yoyo dieting and to lose weight for good, and that is that the more sugar you eat, the more sugar that you crave. It truly is an up and down yo-yo effect. Mastering this has helped me keep 35 pounds off for decades.

I mentioned how iced coffee pretzels, and especially Diet Coke were addictive habits in my life. You need to know that certain foods are absolutely addictive. That might be hard to believe because food is necessary to our lives, and yet when used in the wrong ways, any behavior can be addictive, including just the act of eating. But nobody has an addiction for eating kale, and that was true for me too. See, I was addicted to Diet Coke in particular because it gave me pleasure. It made me happy, so I craved it all day long. It made me feel in control with freedom, and each time I drank it, I got more short-term pleasure. Yet it came with long-term consequences, like terrible cramps in my belly. I ran slower during training and while running marathons also. But really I felt lots of brain fog and I was constantly distracted with thoughts about how I could have an excuse to go out and buy more diet Coke. My brain was just occupied. Now, that was part of the addiction cycle for me. I never bought Diet Coke and brought it into the house.

I tried to keep it hidden and secret because I looked healthy to everyone and I didn't want to ruin their image of me. So drinking Diet Coke also came with lots of shame as food addictions always do because I was drinking a lot of Diet Coke in secret. So I started to think of myself as a bad person and an imposter in life, especially as a health coach. With my experience now as a food addiction and weight loss expert, I now understand why I stayed in that addictive pattern for so long that just kept me yo-yo dieting and not reaching my weight loss or fitness goals, and I certainly didn't run faster. We don't think of food as being addictive, but it certainly can be, and especially the ones that contain raw processed sugar, fake chemically produced sugar and white processed flour, iced coffee pretzels, and Diet Coke, just as I described above, are perfect examples of all of this.

These foods contain concentrated, refined, and processed sugar, so they trigger your insulin to be released in your body, making you crave and want more sugar in this addictive pattern while the parts of your brain that put the brakes on poor choices and the part of your brain that obsesses about food is totally unsupported. Food addiction might look a bit different for you, but the imprint on your body and your brain are exactly the same. Maybe it's that morning vente vanilla latte at Starbucks followed by a morning bagel with cream cheese in the break room, or maybe it's that afternoon snack or candy that you just roam around the office visiting with friends to find. They might give you short-term pleasure, but each of these foods and drink examples also increase your cravings, making you minimize or ignore the long-term consequences just like I did, and then unable to stop eating or drinking each and every one, the chemicals and sugars and flavored coffee and the white processed flour in the bagel hijack your insulin and create a huge hit of pleasure hormones in your brain, including dopamine and serotonin.

Now, these hormones cause you to think that you cannot live without the foods that boost your happiness, that calm in your brain and stimulate you to get focused on work, but your brain takes note and it holds onto that thought that you can't live without them. You can't live without the white processed sugar and the flour as well as fake, chemically produced foods, including artificial sweeteners, and then your brain is just going to ask you for the more sugar you eat, the more sugar you crave. Now your thoughts and your belief system are altered with this, which we'll talk about next. So watch until the end because I'm going to be sharing the most powerful and lasting weight loss step that will allow you to stop yo-yo dieting for good. By letting go of the idea that you have to find more motivation or willpower, you don't.

The Importance of Your Brain and Thoughts for Sustained Weight Loss

There's one more thing that we haven't talked about yet that was also very critical to my success, and it will be for yours too, and that is to understand why certain foods drinks in your lifestyle play such an important role in your life. If you've seen some of my other videos, I have a totally different approach to weight loss, and that includes the importance of your thoughts in every single action you take towards achieving your weight loss goal. As a professional woman at midlife, your brain creates stories and beliefs about why you need the food or drinks that have become so addictive in your life. But remember, most midlife women do not wake up thinking they're addicted to food or drinks. I didn't either. I get it, and that's because my brain offered all kinds of silly, inaccurate thoughts and belief systems about why I needed and deserved Diet Coke, and I believed every one of them. I can remember running marathons, and the minute I finished 26.2 miles at the end and had a medal in my hand to prove my accomplishment, I headed for the food and drinks free to runners, to refuel and actively sought out my beloved Diet Coke Truth be known.

I had a whole story about why I deserved a Diet Coke, why I needed a Diet Coke, and even why it was good for me, which is utterly ludicrous. There's seriously nothing about a Diet Coke that is deserved, needed, or even good for a runner to refuel and run faster. But my Diet Coke habit had become a routine because I drank it consistently both after a race or really anytime I completed anything hard, stressful, or challenging during any given day, my Diet Coke habit had become an automatic routine because I also had the thoughts for so long about how I deserved it, why I needed it, and how good it was for me that my thoughts became a belief system. I thought it so many times, and that automatic belief system then became my identity. I was the Diet Coke girl. So when Coca-Cola developed the slogan to put names on the single serving bottles of soda, they knew exactly what they were after me.

More people like me who were happy to develop habits, routines, and automatic choices to drink soda as a part of their belief system and identity, this works until it doesn't. I really wasn't Diet Coke for any better reason than weight loss and calorie restriction, as well as feelings of control and freedom in my life, but I had all kinds of other motivational reasons that I had developed, and not one of them supported my real goal to run faster, to be lean and healthy, or to set a great role model for our three children, or even to live a long life, a high quality of life, and to be pain-free. It took reaching my pain point of excruciating hip pain, terrible gut pains, slower running paces, and the total shame and humiliation of finding excuses to run errands so I could go by more diet Coke, and then that embarrassment of carrying a Diet Coke bottle around like an adult pacifier, hiding it in my purse to realize then it was time to do the hard work.

And isn't that the point? Our brains resist change. Our brains resist doing the hard work to move out of automatic thoughts and belief systems for doing the same old things without much effort because truth be known, it takes a lot of work to plan healthy recovery protein shakes after a race than it does just to grab that free diet Coke and feel the instant happiness and pleasure and gratification of drinking yet another indulgent soda. Back to the point, change is hard. Your brain has to rewire itself around a whole new paradigm of accurate thoughts, and it likes to fight you every step of the way. That's precisely why you know, need to start or stop doing any given behavior like drinking a daily coffee house drink or eating Chick-fil-A fries, or even drinking a nightly glass of wine while you make dinner, but it feels like mission impossible.

I remember. So this third element is what ultimately helped me reach my weight loss goal of 35 pounds lost, and then keep it off in a healthy, nourishing way. I had to understand why certain foods drinks in your lifestyle play such an important role in your life, and then learn how to question with compassion and dissolve those reasons and stories. You don't have to believe every unhelpful thought that your brain offers you. The pleasure center of your brain just creates all kinds of legitimate thoughts, belief systems, and stories about why you need cookies, donuts, diet Coke, and more. What's especially important is that once the regions of your brain that have been conditioned to remember that unhelpful, inaccurate thought and the excuses they receive a pleasurable reward, that your brain will work especially hard to convince you to move towards the pleasure that you've labeled now as addictive permanent weight loss is possible.

I’m At My Goal Weight At Midlife - and You Can Reach It Too!

Even in midlife, I was able to kickstart and maintain a 35 pound weight loss decades ago using these three steps. Your food addiction might not be to Diet Coke. Maybe it's sweets, fast food or alcohol. It doesn't really matter what it is that you're consuming or doing. If it's keeping you stuck in a yo-yo cycle and stuck in life and not helping you achieve your weight loss goals, it's time to address that today. I help professional women at midlife lose weight and keep it off permanently so they'll never need another diet. I help them do this by learning what to fuel their body with for the best nutrition possible, how to master the daily challenge of eating more sugar and then craving more sugar, and then examining and breaking down what role the food and the drinks play in that cycle and how it's preventing you from losing weight.

I'm going to bet that you're like most of my clients, and you've tried over a dozen different diets in your life. I did too. Now, if that hasn't worked for you, it's time for a different approach. Every woman deserves to walk into her closet and feel comfortable in her body. You can do it too. Now, I mentioned previously my free crusher cravings program earlier in this video, and I want to tell you about it again just in case you missed it. The work we do in this free program gives you a simple two-step system that you can add to your busy corporate life in just seconds, which will help you conquer any craving that you encounter in your day, whether that's the boardroom with that box of bagels or donuts, or even the catered lunch that's in the break room. Click here to learn more about the Free Crush Your Cravings program. 

And one of the questions that I get asked most often is what foods to eat to lose weight and to balance hormones. And if you're wondering that too, you can check out the next video, which is called Foods to Balance Hormones at Midlife for Weight Loss.