Why Weight? Start Now!

Have you ever come home from holiday feeling like you've undone months of good work in a few days? I recently spent a week in Taupō with nine family members, aged 11 to 85, for my sister's 50th. My goal wasn't weight loss. It was simply to come home the same weight – and I did, without separate meals or missing out on the fun.

In this episode, I share the exact holiday eating strategies I use to maintain my weight while travelling. After 25 years of low carb eating and weight maintenance, I've learned that holidays are the perfect place to prove you can keep your results for life. If you're a woman over 40 who wants a sustainable way to stop holiday weight gain, keep your blood sugar stable and stay on track without dieting, this one's for you.

What You'll Learn

Why strict diets fall apart on holiday, and why low carb eating travels so well

How to set a maintenance goal before you go

The breakfast strategy that sets up every holiday day for success

My go-to emergency protein snack, and why it lives in my handbag

How putting protein first keeps cravings and blood sugar in check

How to make pre-dinner nibbles work for you in a group

Why skipping grazing matters more than any single meal

Simple ways to handle comments about what you're eating

Why a drinks plan and a "first meal home" plan protect your momentum

Your One Action to Start Now

Got a trip coming up? Grab a piece of paper and write down three things: your goal for the holiday, what you'll eat for breakfast, and your emergency backup snack. Stick it somewhere you'll see it. That one bit of planning could make this your most successful holiday yet.

Connect With Me

Find out more about Why Weight Academy at whyweightacademy.com

Fab Freebie: my five day low carb meal plan plus five dinner recipes

Foundations of Fat Loss, my four week program for women over 35

There are 12 weeks left until Christmas. If you’re tempted to write off the rest of 2026 and “start again in January,” this episode is for you. Twelve weeks is long enough to change how your clothes fit, how you sleep, how your blood sugars behave and how you feel walking into the room on Christmas Day.

In this spring reset, I walk you through revisiting your January goal, choosing one clear goal for the last quarter, and six simple weight loss habits I use with my clients to finish the year strong. None of them need a gym. I also share the Christmas trip that kept me going when I first started losing weight, and set you a free seven-day challenge so you can start today.

If you’re a woman over 40 who’s frustrated with slow progress, working on your blood sugar balance or following a low carb lifestyle, this is your chance to reset, refocus and move forward.

What You’ll Learn

Why 12 weeks is plenty of time to lose weight before Christmas and improve health markers like HbA1c

How to check whether your January goal is still right for you, and when to change it

The Christmas Day visualisation that makes your goal feel real

How a daily food plan and a five-minute morning check-in stop the 4pm snack attack

How a five-minute walk after meals helps lower your blood sugar

What metabolic shake-up days are and how they help your body stop adapting

How to stop weekend weight gain undoing your good week

Key Moments

Why this time of year can go either way, and how the urgency works in your favour

Revisiting your January goal: is the number still relevant?

Picturing Christmas Day and narrowing it down to one goal

My story: the Christmas trip home to New Zealand that kept me going at the gym

Why spring makes it easier: longer days, warmer weather and lighter food

The six actions: a morning food plan, five minutes with yourself, two litres of water, a five-minute walk after meals, two shake-up days a week and nailing the weekend

Bonus tips: clean out the pantry, have a default breakfast and lunch, weigh consistently and don’t let one meal become a bad day

The seven-day spring reset challenge

The 10-week Christmas Countdown inside Why Weight Academy, starting Friday 16 October

The One Action You Can Do to Start Now

Write down one goal you want to reach by Christmas Day and put it somewhere you’ll see it every morning. Then start the seven-day spring reset challenge, and each night ask yourself, “Did I do what I said I would do today?”

Resources Mentioned

Find out more about Why Weight Academy: www.whyweightacademy.com

Have you got stubborn fat on your legs or hips that won't shift, no matter how much weight you lose? This week I'm talking with Patty from New Jersey. She was eating around 900 calories a day and the scales wouldn't move. She went on to lose 85 pounds (nearly 40 kilos), then spent another five years finding out why her legs still weren't changing. The answer was lipedema, a fat disorder many women live with for years without a diagnosis.

Patty shares how she stopped undereating, used an elimination diet to find her inflammation triggers, and now lives almost pain-free without chasing perfection. She's also honest about what diet and exercise can and can't do for lipedema fat. If you've been told to "just eat less and move more" and felt it wasn't the whole story, this episode is for you.

What You'll Learn

The early signs of lipedema Patty noticed from age 12, like lumps on her outer thighs and hooded knees

Why 900 calories a day stalled her weight loss, and how eating more (around 1,700) got the scales moving again

How daily weighing taught her about normal fluctuations instead of giving up

How an elimination diet showed that "healthy" foods like tomatoes, peppers and gluten were driving her inflammation

The honest truth: her changes reduced inflammation and pain, but not the lipedema fat itself

Simple daily habits for lipedema, from calf raises and ankle pumps to rebounding and compression

Why staying on track is focus, not obsession, and how putting yourself first changes your relationship with food

Key Moments

The 2020 Father's Day photo that made Patty decide to take things into her own hands

The 4-pound jump after a salmon dinner that once would have made her quit

Posting a swimsuit photo in a fitness Facebook group, and the stranger who said "look up lipedema"

Realising her fingers could bend again once the inflammation came down

Why Patty refuses to say she "reversed" her lipedema

Her before-and-after photo trick for nights out

What she'd tell her younger self

The One Action You Can Do to Start Now

Set aside one hour this week to plan. Write down your meals, when you'll move, and one small mindset habit, like 20 minutes in the car with the radio off, just you and your thoughts. Patty and I both swear by this. When you've planned, you feel in control, and that's where consistency starts.

Links

Follow Patty: https://www.facebook.com/pattyunfinished

Patty's elimination diet journal (Amazon): CLICK HERE

Work with me: www.whyweightacademy.com

Get my Freebie: 5 day low carb meal plan and recipes

Show Notes

White bread, butter, Marmite and a handful of potato chips. That was my lunch one stressful afternoon recently, and that is not exactly on my food plan!

In this episode I share the honest story of an emotional eating slip-up: what triggered it, why stress eating can still catch you years into weight loss maintenance, and why this time it didn’t turn into a weekend binge and a “start again Monday” cycle. If you’re a woman who’s ever felt like one bad day ruined your progress, this one’s for you. Keeping weight off long term comes down to how fast you get back on track, and that’s a skill you can practise.

What You’ll Learn

How stress, cortisol and an overloaded day can send you straight to the pantry, even when you’re not hungry

The two pairs of shoes: stepping into your future self while your old habits wait by the door

Why one slip-up doesn’t undo your progress, and the story that turns 300 calories into 3,000

The one number worth tracking on your weight loss journey: how long it takes you to get back on track

My quick get back on track plan for the moment you find yourself in the pantry

How low carb comfort options let you emotionally eat without derailing your progress

Key Moments

New shoes, old shoes and becoming your future self

Old me versus me now: same sandwich, completely different outcome

Why the damage lives in the story you tell yourself about the eating

Stop counting perfect days and start measuring your recovery time

The quick get back on track plan

Maintenance as a series of quick recoveries

One Action to Start Now

Put your new shoes back on right now. If you’ve had a slip-up, you don’t need to wait for tomorrow, Monday or next week. Your next meal is your fresh start, so carry on with your day and keep those shoes on for as long as you can.

Connect With Me

Find out more about Why Weight Academy at whyweightacademy.com

Fab Freebie: my five day low carb meal plan plus five dinner recipes

Foundations of Fat Loss, my four week program for women over 35

How many times have you lost the same ten kilos? Not how many kilos in total, but how many times you’ve lost them and ended up right back where you started.

After 15 years of coaching busy women and 25 years of keeping 30 kilos off myself, I can tell you that losing weight and keeping weight off are two completely different skills. Only one of them ever gets taught. That’s why most weight loss advice stops at the food, and why the weight keeps coming back.

In this episode I walk you through my Why Weight framework, the three pillars I build all of my coaching around. Nutrition, which for me means low carb eating that keeps your blood sugars steady. Purpose, the why that still holds up on a wet Tuesday when there’s chocolate in the cupboard. And mindset, the tools that get you through an off plan moment without losing a month to it.

I also share the moment in my apartment in Japan, 25 years ago, that became the purpose I’ve never let go of.

If you know exactly what to do but you don’t do it, this one is for you.

What You'll Learn

Why the most disciplined women in the weight loss phase are often the fastest to regain

What the all or nothing habit is, and why maintenance lives in the middle ground

Why steady blood sugar is the goal that makes low carb eating work long term

How to dig underneath "I want to lose weight" to find a why that actually holds

The simple daily mindset practices that keep you on track on the hard days

What goes wrong when one of the three pillars is missing, and how to spot which one is yours

Key Moments

Why more information has never been the missing piece

The three legged stool: nutrition, purpose, mindset

Three low carb meals, one snack if you need it, and no other rules

The bikini, the mirror, and the promise I made myself in Japan

What "I know exactly what to do, I just don’t do it" is really telling you

Three ways this falls apart when a pillar is missing

One Action to Start Now

Grab a piece of paper and write down three words: nutrition, purpose, mindset. Give each one a score out of ten for how solid it feels today. Be honest, and notice that you probably know your lowest score before you finish writing.

Under that lowest one, write a single sentence. One small thing you could do this week to move that number up by a single point. Not five things. One.

If your lowest score was purpose or mindset, you’ve just found out why the diets haven’t stuck.

Links & Resources

Why Weight Academy: whyweightacademy.com

Foundations of Fat Loss

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