09/18/2026
I was reading an article about menopausal belly fat today and for the first half of it I kept thinking, finally, someone is making sense! Because so much of what I was reading is what I've been talking to my clients about for years.
It was talking about the relationship between stress, cortisol and weight, particularly postmenopause, and why continually eating less and exercising more isn't the answer. It was looking beyond food and calories and talking about what else is going on, and I was thinking YES! This is exactly the conversation we need to be having.
And then I got halfway down the page and wanted to scream. Because after all of that, the answer was... intermittent fasting. Take the quiz, find your fasting schedule, buy the programme.
And I just thought, nooooooo! You were so close!
Because we'd taken this really interesting conversation about why constantly trying harder to lose weight may actually be contributing to the problem, and turned it straight back into another way to try harder to lose weight.
When I was in Mexico a few weeks ago, staying at an all-inclusive resort, I began to notice my clothes were feeling looser. By the time I got home, I'd dropped a dress size.
And here's the interesting part. I ate delicious, full-plate meals, and I really enjoyed them! I certainly wasn't trying to lose weight while on holiday. In fact, I haven't deliberately tried to lose weight for almost 10 years.
Breakfast might be scrambled eggs with delicious mushrooms cooked in cream, melted cheese spooned over the top, bacon or sausage, and sometimes gluten-free toast with butter and jam. (I only avoid gluten because my energy and mood are much better without it, so I stay right away from it.)
Lunch and dinner followed a similar theme. I'd scan the whole buffet first, see what I really fancied, and then create a balanced meal from it. I ate three really good meals every day and barely snacked in between (well, aside from a few piña coladas here and there 😄).
At home I have ADHD (unfortunately it comes on holiday with me too 😁), and I'm not a lover of preparing food just for myself. I tend to nibble and snack at times, even when the food might appear healthy, and I rarely sit down to a hearty plateful at lunchtime. I've tried, and it's simply hard for me to cook a full meal and then sit down and eat it by myself. (That's why I love leftovers for lunch!)
In Mexico the food was tasty and it was right there, so I filled my plate. I actually ate considerably more food than I normally eat at home, but because I'd eaten a satisfying meal, I wasn't looking for something else to eat an hour later. I'd take a nice, easy walk along the beach after breakfast, but otherwise I was simply enjoying my holiday with Henry.
There's nothing inherently wrong with intermittent fasting. When I look at how I naturally ate on holiday — three satisfying meals with plenty of space between them — in a roundabout way it actually looks quite similar. But the goal was completely different.
In Beyond Weight I talk about understanding our natural bio-circadian rhythm. A mild to moderate breakfast gets our internal furnace going, a larger lunch provides fuel for the afternoon, and a small to moderate dinner a few hours before bed gives our body time to digest before we sleep. Because we've eaten proper, balanced, satisfying meals, we're also far less likely to need to keep snacking in between.
We're working with what our bodies are naturally designed to do, but the focus is on creating energy for life rather than diminishing energy to shrink our bodies.
We're not going without food to shrink a body we don't like, adding even more stress — and potentially more cortisol — in the process. We're eating in a way that's designed to give us enough energy and vitality for living our life.
And this is where I think we need to start questioning what the constant pursuit of weight loss is actually doing to us.
For so many of my clients, weight-loss goals literally run the show. Even when we're not consciously thinking about them, there can be years, even decades, of beliefs running quietly in the background: I need to lose weight. I'll feel better about myself when I'm thinner. I can't trust myself around food. If I stop controlling what I eat, I'll get bigger.
Those thoughts and beliefs can create stress too. So the very thing we're pursuing because we believe it will make us feel better may actually be adding to the stress and cortisol we're trying to reduce.
What if we turned the goal around? Instead of trying to lose weight so we'll have more energy, what if we focus on creating more energy? Eating enough, nourishing ourselves, sleeping, moving, resting and working on the beliefs that have kept us fighting with food and our bodies.
Weight loss isn't running the show. Living is.
None of this means weight doesn't matter to us, or that we have to pretend we wouldn't like our clothes to fit differently. It means weight doesn't have to be the thing that everything else is working towards.
And I'm certainly not suggesting that a big pile of creamy, cheesy mushrooms for breakfast is the secret we've all been missing! 😄 I'm simply fascinated that I was eating plenty of satisfying food, resting, having fun and getting on with the business of living my life... and my clothes got looser anyway.
Maybe we don't always need another weight-loss goal. Maybe we need more living goals.
And that, really, is what Beyond Weight has always been about.
