Never Diet Again with Max Lowery
Tired of losing weight only to gain it back? Sick of feeling out of control around food? Welcome to The Never Diet Again Podcast Weight Loss Coach - Max Lowery. If you’re a woman over 40 who’s tried every diet, struggled with cravings, or felt stuck in an endless cycle of overeating and guilt—this podcast is for you. Max shares real, no-BS strategies to help you lose weight without restrictive diets, punishing workouts, or obsessing over every bite.
Each episode dives deep into what actually works for lasting fat loss—so you can stop dieting for good, regain control, and feel confident in your body again.
Ready to break free? Hit play and let’s get started.
Never Diet Again with Max Lowery
#81 The Right Time Is a Myth: Here’s Why You’re Really Delaying Change
Still Waiting for the ‘Right Time’? It’s Costing You More Than You Think…
How many times have you told yourself:
👉 “I’ll start when life calms down.”
👉 “Once the kids are older, I’ll focus on me.”
👉 “Next month, when things are less chaotic...”
But here’s the brutal truth: life won’t slow down and if you keep waiting, nothing changes.
In this powerful episode of the Never Diet Again podcast, we’re calling out the most damaging belief holding women back from real, lasting transformation: waiting for perfect conditions.
You’ll discover:
⚠️ Why “I don’t have time” is ego resistance in disguise
⚠️ How waiting keeps you stuck in discomfort disguised as safety
⚠️ The emotional and psychological toll of doing nothing
⚠️ Why perfection is a fantasy, and the real path is messy, imperfect action
If you’re a busy woman over 40 juggling work, family, hormones, and stress, this episode will hit you hard, in the best way. You don’t need more willpower. You don’t need a new meal plan.
You need a new mindset.
Learn how to break free from the “someday” trap, take small consistent action (even in chaos), and finally become the woman who follows through—even on her busiest days.
Watch my The Cravings & Fat-Burning Masterclass: https://www.neverdietagainmethod.uk/register-podcast
Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/max.lowery/
Book a Food Freedom Breakthrough Call: https://www.neverdietagainmethod.uk/call-ig
You keep telling yourself you'll start when things calm down, when work slows down, when the kids are older, when you've got more headspace. But let me ask you this: when has life ever truly calmed down? Because in reality, life doesn't get easier. You just get better at managing it. And waiting for the right time to start changing your habits, your health, your relationship with food is exactly what's been keeping you stuck. Most of the women I speak to are running on empty. They're holding everything together, their careers, families, homes, and still trying to convince themselves that once things settle down, then they'll finally focus on themselves. But that moment never comes. And this episode isn't about time management, it's about truth management. Because deep down, you don't need more time. You need to stop waiting for permission to put yourself first. How do you create a life that allows you to lose weight, eat the foods that you love, and sustain the results? Over the last 10 years, I've helped thousands of people do exactly that. I'm Max Lowry. I'm an author, personal trainer, and weight loss coach. In this podcast, I'm going to share my top tips and tricks from within my one-on-one coaching program. It's my goal to give you the tools and the understanding so that you never diet again. Almost every woman I've ever coached has said these same words. I just need to get through this month. What most people don't realize is that this passion runs much deeper than a busy schedule. It's not that life is too full, it's that your mind is wired to keep you in what's familiar, even if that familiar place is uncomfortable. Because the moment you tell yourself now isn't the right time, your brain rewards yourself with relief. That tiny hit of calm, that moment of I'll deal with it later, is your nervous system coming back to safety. It feels logical, responsible, even mature. But what's actually happening is a psychological protection mechanism. Your brain's number one job is homeostasis to keep things stable and predictable. It doesn't care if you're happy, it cares if you're safe. So the second you consider changing something meaningful, your eating habits, your routines, your emotional coping patterns, your brain detects instability. And instability triggers something called ego resistance. Your ego is who you currently believe you are. It's your self-image and your identity. If you see yourself as strong, competent, reliable, and the one that gets things done for everyone else, your ego will fight like hell to preserve that identity. Because real change doesn't just challenge your habits, it challenges your identity. That's why women who are successful in so many areas of life often struggle with this. It's not because you're lazy or unmotivated, it's because this area threatens the version of you that you've spent years becoming. So when that identity feels threatened, your mind looks for an escape. It creates a story that sounds rational. Work is too busy right now. I'll start after the holidays. It's not that bad. This is what psychologists call avoidance coping, which means you avoid discomfort, uncertainty, or perceived failure by postponing action. You're not consciously choosing to delay, you're unconsciously choosing safety over growth. And the irony is it doesn't feel like avoidance. It feels like you're being sensible. And that's the ego's brilliance. It disguises fear as logic. There's also a deeper layer to this, something called cognitive dissonance. This is the tension you feel when your actions and your self-image don't match. For example, if you think of yourself as disciplined and capable, but your behavior around food or your consistency doesn't reflect that, your brain experiences psychological discomfort. To relieve that discomfort, it has two choices change the behavior or change the story. And for most people, changing the story is easier. So you tell yourself, it's not the right time, I just need to be in the right headspace, and the discomfort fades, but just temporarily. That's how the brain maintains short-term comfort at the cost of long-term fulfillment. This is also where emotional minimization comes in, another deeply ingrained habit. You downplay how bad it really feels because acknowledging it fully would mean facing the internal contradiction. So you normalize it, you laugh about it, you tell yourself everybody feels like this, it's just middle age, it's not that bad. But every time you minimize your pain, you disconnect from your motivation to change. Because change only happens when the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change. So if you numb the discomfort, you remove the drive. And that's exactly what the right time narrative does. It numb discomfort by postponing it. It lets you stay in your comfort zone, which is psychologically safe but emotionally suffocating. There's a well-known concept in behavioral psychology called the comfort zone paradox. The more you prioritize comfort in the short term, the more discomfort you create in the long term. Avoiding action now leads to more frustration, more guilt, and loss of self-trust later. That's why so many women I speak to describe feeling stuck, unmotivated, and confused about why they can't seem to follow through, even though they feel like they know what they need to do. It's not a knowledge gap, it's a safety mechanism. Your mind has linked change with threat. So it resists, not because it wants to fail, but because it's trying to protect your current sense of stability. And the more capable you are, the stronger this resistance becomes. Because your identity, the I can handle it part, has been built on control, achievement, and holding it together. So any change that feels uncertain or vulnerable gets pushed away. But here's the truth: the pattern doesn't protect you, it traps you in a vicious cycle. You keep waiting for life to calm down, for work to ease, for energy to return, for clarity to arrive, but you never get there. Because the external world will never align until your internal world changes. And that shift begins when you recognize that the right time isn't coming. Because the issue isn't time, it's tolerance. Your tolerance for discomfort, for imperfection, for vulnerability. Once you increase that tolerance by taking one small action when it feels inconvenient, the resistance starts to dissolve. That's when you realize the very thing you've been avoiding, the uncertainty, the effort, the messiness, is the bridge to freedom. The thing is, once you understand how your brain resists change, you can start to see the real trap. Because what keeps most women stuck isn't just the resistance, it's the belief that success requires perfect conditions. You've been taught to believe that if you can't do it perfectly, it's not worth doing at all. That's the all or nothing mindset, one of the most destructive patterns in behavior change. It sounds like this. If I can't track every calorie, what's the point? If I can't commit to the gym five days a week, I'll start next month. If I slip up once, I've ruined it. And it's this exact belief that keeps you waiting for the mythical perfect time. And let's be honest for a second. For most of the women I work with, life is never calm. It's 6 a.m. alarms, school runs, back-to-back meetings, managing teams or clients, thinking about what's for dinner, trying to get steps in, replying to messages, paying the bills, planning the next family event, and collapsing on the sofa at 9 p.m., wondering where the day went. Then you add in hormones, perimenopause, energy dips, a glass of wine to unwind, and somewhere in that chaos, you're meant to overhaul your eating, start exercising consistently, and stay motivated. So of course it feels impossible. And here's the problem. Diet culture has reinforced the idea that transformation requires a total life takeover. You've been conditioned to believe that you need to track every calorie, cut out sugar and carbs, weigh yourself every day, exercise seven days a week, never eat out, drink wine, or have dessert. That's not how it is. That's essentially punishment disguised as discipline. So what happens? You try to do it perfectly for two weeks, then life gets in the way, someone's ill, work explodes, you miss a workout, and instantly your brain says, see, you failed. This is the all or nothing cycle that leads straight back to waiting for the next perfect start. But the truth is, the only way you'll ever see lasting results is by learning how to succeed inside your real life, not outside it. Because life isn't going to pause. The children won't stop needing you, work won't stop being demanding, and the unexpected, the stress, the travel, the holidays, the hormones will always show up. So the question isn't when will life calm down? It's who do I need to become to stay consistent when life is stressful? That's exactly how we help our clients. We teach them how to make progress in the chaos. And one of our clients, Ellen, is a perfect example of this. When she started, she was a mum of three children under five, returning to work as a GP after maternity leave. Sleep deprived, constantly multitasking, and convinced that now was the worst possible time to focus on herself. She actually said in our first call, Max, I don't know how I could possibly fit this in. But instead of trying to make her do more, we helped her do less, but better. We stripped away everything unnecessary. And here's how we did it. Firstly, we offloaded decision making. Every week she received clear, structured instructions. No calorie counting, no obsessing over numbers, no endless meal prep. That removed the mental clutter and gave her something most women don't have clarity. Secondly, we focus on the minimum effective dose. Instead of chasing perfection, we asked her, what's the smallest set of actions that could create momentum? What's the minimum you can do? And for her, that was three proper meals per day. She got as many steps in as she could and she started to practice awareness around emotional eating triggers instead of fighting them. And thirdly, we reframed progress around consistency, not intensity. Because consistency beats intensity every single day. Some days she hit 100%. Some days she hit 60%, but she showed up, and that's what mattered. And here's what happened. In 90 days, Ellen lost 44 pounds while struggling three kids, returning to work, and going on three holidays. No starvation, no obsession, no perfect time. And how does she do that? Because she stopped waiting for ideal conditions and learned how to navigate the real ones. We built her habits around the reality of her life, not the fantasy of a clear schedule. When she traveled, she had a simple plan. When she was exhausted, she practiced the minimum effective dose instead of giving up entirely. When stress hit, she used reflection tools to identify emotional triggers rather than defaulting to food. The result wasn't just fat loss, it was food freedom. And that's what I want you to take away from this. You don't get results by escaping your life. You get results by learning how to work with it. Once you stop chasing perfect conditions, you start building the identity of someone who adapts, someone who shows up anyway. And that's when everything changes. Ellen is just one example of thousands of women we have worked with. Now let's look at the other side of the coin. What actually happens when you keep waiting for that perfect moment? Because the cost is not abstract. And the reason I know this is because I hear it multiple times a day, every single day, with women who are thinking of working with us. It touches every aspect of their life and it compounds over time. And just for a disclaimer, I'm about to go in quite hard here. So prepare yourself. Because there's an emotional cost. Waiting feels safe for a week, then it becomes heavy. You wake up already behind, promising yourself you'll be good today, then breaking that promise by 4 p.m. The guilt hits, then the I will start Monday script rolls in. You look in the mirror and the first thought is criticism. You are smart and capable in other areas of your life, yet this one thing makes you feel like a failure. You avoid photos or jump to the back. Holidays mean dread around swimsuits, not memories with family. Nighttime becomes food plus Netflix to numb out. You say you deserve a treat because the day was hard, then you punish yourself for it. Emotionally, the price is self-trust. Every delay is a tiny vote that you say you cannot rely on yourself. Over months, that becomes a story, and that story becomes your identity. Then we have the psychological cost. This is the mental load no one sees. Constant food noise. Should I eat? Should I wait? Have I ruined it? What's the point? A loop that steals focus from work, family, and creativity. All and nothing thinking gets louder. If you can't hit 10 out of 10, you swing to 2 out of 10, one missed workout becomes a missed week. Cognitive dissonance. You see yourself as disciplined and successful, but your actions do not match in this one area. The tension drains your energy, so you choose short-term comfort again. Learned helplessness creeps in. After enough false starts, you stop believing effort matters. That belief is the real block, not the knowledge. Psychologically, the price is attention and confidence. Your mind is a tug of war between who you are at work and how you feel within your body. Then we have the physical cost. Your body essentially keeps the score. Energy crashes mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Cravings follow the roller coaster. Metabolic inflexibility increases. The more you rely on quick carbs to get through the day, the more your body asks for them. You get stuck in sugar burning mode. Muscle slowly declines because strength work is always the first thing to go when life gets busy. Less muscle means fewer calories burned at rest and compromise long-term health and mobility. Sleep quality drops. Wine helps you fall asleep but fragments the night. You wake up feeling wired and tired, which fuels the next day's cravings. Perimenopause shifts fat storage to the midsection and waiting makes it harder. The longer you wait, the more effort is needed later. Physically, the price is your energy and your health. The longer you wait, the worse it gets. We have the social costs. This touches relationships and daily life. You say no to invites that involve food or clothes that feel revealing. You shrink your world to avoid discomfort. Date night becomes a negotiation with yourself. Eat perfectly and feel deprived, or enjoy the meal and feel guilty. Neither is freedom. With your kids, you worry you are modeling body hate or diet rules. You do not want them to inherit this, yet the pattern repeats on autopilot. Work events are harder, low energy, low confidence, and more self-consciousness when all eyes are on you. And socially, the price is connection. You protect yourself from judgment and end up feeling isolated. And then there's a time and money cost. Another season passes, clothes still do not fit, the camera still stays off, and you tell yourself the next quarter will be different. Money leaks into quick fixes, juice cleanses, powders, apps, low calorie snacks, delivery when you're too tired to cook. None of it solves the root cause. Really quick one for me, guys. I don't run ads on this podcast, and I do aim to give you as many high-value tips and tricks as I can for free. All I ask in return is that you help me spread the word. That way I can help as many people as I can to never die again. The way to do that is to rate, review, and share this podcast. A review will only take 30 seconds, but it would mean the world to me, but more importantly, it could help change the life of someone else. And I know this has been intense. I'm going in very hard here and I'm doing it deliberately because this is what I hear every single day. Not from one woman, but from thousands over the last 12 years. Smart, successful, loving women who are quietly falling apart behind the scenes, who hold it all together for everyone else while slowly losing trust in themselves, who tell me they wake up exhausted, go to bed guilty, and feel like they're failing at the one thing they should be able to control, their own body. I've heard the tears, I've read the messages at midnight, I've seen the shame and frustration in women who have achieved everything else in life except peace with their food and their bodies. And I need you to know this isn't just about weight loss. This is about the emotional, psychological, and physical toll that being stuck in this cycle takes. That's why I do what I do. Because helping women break out of this loop, helping them feel strong, calm, and in control again is one of the most rewarding things I've ever experienced. Seeing someone like Ellen go from hopeless to empowered, that's exactly what keeps me doing this every single day. So the good news is change doesn't require your life to look different. It requires you to approach it differently. Most people think getting results means doing more, more workouts, more tracking, more willpower. But after coaching over a thousand women, I can tell you confidently, the women who get the best results are the ones who learn to simplify. They do less, but they do it consistently. Because the real work isn't about adding more rules, it's about removing the chaos, the guesswork, and the guilt that have been weighing you down for years. So what does it actually take to get results? First, structure. Not a rigid all or nothing plan, but clear frameworks that take the thinking out of it. Most of the women I work with are already decision fatigued before the day even starts. So we simplify food into easy, repeatable patterns, not meal plans or calorie counting, but principles that you can apply to any situation. For example, three very simple habits that we incorporate with our clients are eat three balanced meals per day to stabilize energy and hunger. Eliminate snacking and anchor your meals around protein and vegetables and real food, not perfection. When food decisions become automatic, your brain gets space back and that space becomes freedom. Second, guidance and accountability, because information alone doesn't change lives. If it did, you'd already have everything you want. We help our clients incorporate habits that are easy, sustainable, enjoyable, and fit into their busy hectic lives. We walk them through our three-step system, which we call the Never Diet Again method. We reset their metabolism so their body learns to burn fat for fuel instead of being dependent on sugar. We help them rewire their habits and their emotional triggers so they stop reacting to emotions and life with food. We help them realign their identity so they become the type of person who follows through long after the coaching ends. If you want to understand more about our three-step system, click the link below to get access to our cravings and fat loss masterclass. It's 100% free. And thirdly, we do psychological coaching because if your mindset doesn't change, your behavior never will. We help you identify the thought patterns that keep you stuck, the perfectionism, the guilt, the emotional eating, and replace them with new mental habits. You'll start to recognize when your brain is lying to you. You'll learn how to pause, reflect, and choose differently without willpower or restriction. Clients often say things like, it's like I finally understand myself. I'm not fighting my brain anymore. That's the rewire part, the moment control comes back. And fourth, you need support and community. Most women try to do this alone because they think asking for help means weakness. But isolation is one of the biggest predictors of failure. Inside the community, you're surrounded by women just like you. Busy professionals, mums, caregivers, business owners, all navigating real life. It's not a diet group. It's a group of women learning how to rebuild self-trust. When you see someone else win, hitting steps, handling stress, or managing a setback, you start to believe you can do it too. So getting long-term success isn't about restriction or punishment. It's about support, structure, and space. No weigh in shame, no meal plans, no macros, no calorie counting, no one size fits all approach. Instead, it's being guided on how to enjoy holiday and still make progress, how you can have a glass of wine and not feel guilty, how you can miss a workout and not spiral. Because success isn't about being perfect, it's about being consistent enough for long enough to see results. And when you learn how to build results in the middle of real life, you don't just change your habits, you change who you are. Because the last thing transformation isn't about food or fitness, it's about identity. Most women believe they need to do more to get results, but the real shift happens when you start to become someone new. You spent years, maybe decades, reinforcing an identity built on survival. The woman who keeps everyone else afloat. The woman who can't stop, the woman who's always fine, the woman who knows what to do, but just can't seem to stay consistent. This identity is built from repetition. The same thoughts, behaviors, and emotional loops repeated so many times they become truth. I always fall off track. I'm good for a few weeks, then life gets in the way. I just need more time, more willpower, more control. That's not who you are, that's who you've practiced being. And the moment you realize that, everything changes. There's a concept in behavioral psychology called self-concept consistency. It means your brain is wired to act in ways that match how you see yourself. So if deep down you see yourself as someone who always struggles with food, your subconscious will keep proving you right, even when you consciously want something different. That's why diets and short-term fixes never last. They try to change behavior without changing identity. You might have new habits for a while, but your old self-image eventually pulls you back to square one. To create lasting change, you have to build a new identity. One small, consistent action at a time. Every time you walk instead of scroll, every time you pause before eating out of stress, every time you choose compassion instead of self-criticism, you're casting a new vote for your future self. It's not the size of the action that matters, it's the identity you're reinforcing with each choice. When my clients stop waiting for perfect timing and start showing up, even imperfectly, they begin to build trust with themselves. That trust becomes confidence. That confidence becomes identity. They go from saying, I need someone to keep me accountable, to I'm the kind of woman who does what she says she'll do. That's the real win. Not the number on the scale, but the quiet confidence that says, I've got me. Because when you build that kind of self-trust, you can handle anything. Work stress doesn't derail you, holidays don't undo you, emotional days don't define you. You've changed from the inside out. And what's incredible is how this shift spreads into other areas of your life. When you rebuild self-trust, your energy changes. You start showing up differently at work in your relationships with your children. You become more patient, more assertive, more peaceful. You stop trying to control everything and start leading by example. Other clients tell me that their children are eating better without them having to say a word, or that their husbands say they seem calmer and happier. That's not luck, that's alignment. You stop living it in conflict with yourself and that peace radiates outward. The new identity isn't built on perfection. It's built on integrity, doing what you said you would even when it's inconvenient. It's built on flexibility, adapting when life throws challenges instead of abandoning yourself. It's built on compassion, understanding that discipline and self-kindness can coexist. And that identity, that's unshakable. It's not something a diet can give you. It's something you build for repetition, awareness, and support. So if you've been waiting for the right time, hear this. You don't need more time, you don't need to be perfect, you don't need to start over. You just need to start showing up for the person you want to become right now in the middle of your messy, busy, stressful life. Because the right time isn't coming, but the right you is waiting. Because the truth is, most people spend years waiting for the perfect time. They wait for the life to calm down, for work to ease, for motivation to appear. But the women who change, the ones who actually lose the weight, calm the food noise, and feel at peace in their bodies, they don't wait. They decide. They decide that life is always going to be busy. They decide that they can build change in the middle of chaos. They decide that their well-being is no longer negotiable. And once that decision is made, everything else starts to align. Because taking action doesn't just move you forward, it changes how you see yourself. It's the moment you stop living in reaction and start living in creation. If you take one thing from this episode, let it be this. You don't find time, you make it. You don't need the perfect plan, you need the courage to start small and stay consistent. You don't need to fix everything, just begin. The first walk, the first mindful meal, the first time you pause before reacting. Each small act is proof that you are capable even now. So if this episode hit home, if you recognize yourself in what I described, don't just nod and move on. Use that as a spark of awareness to take one small step today. The biggest and most powerful step you can take is to book in for a food freedom breakthrough call with me, where we'll talk about what's really holding you back, and I'll map out exactly how we can help you reset, rewire, and realign. All you need to do is click the link below and find a time that suits. If you're not ready for that, you can literally just send me a message on Instagram, tell me what you're struggling with, and I can send you a load of free resources which will be relevant to you. I will personally reply. That is me in the DMs. Either way, do something today because every time you act, you strengthen the identity of the woman who follows through. And that's the version of you who's already on her way.