126. You’re Not Behind. You’re in a Season.

Every March, I see the same thing.

Energy feels lower. Motivation dips. The novelty of January goals fades. And women start telling themselves they’re lazy… or behind.

But winter isn’t laziness. It’s biology.

In this episode, I walk you through what’s actually happening this time of year — how reduced sunlight affects your circadian rhythm, dopamine, mood, and momentum. We talk about why your nervous system naturally shifts into conservation mode, and how the real damage isn’t the slowdown — it’s the judgment that follows.

If you’ve been stuck in the cycle of:

Winter slump → self-criticism → aggressive restart → burnout → repeat…

This conversation will help you step out of it.

You don’t need a detox.
You don’t need punishment.
You need perspective — and steady consistency.

🌸 If you’re ready for a gentle reset instead of another dramatic restart, join us for the 21-Day Spring Challenge:

www.sugarfreemd.com/springchallenge26

You’re not behind.
You’re in a season.
And seasons change.

Free 2-Pound Plan Call!
Want to jump start your weight loss? Schedule a free call where Dr. Stacy Heimburger will work with you to create a personalized plan to lose 2 pounds in one week, factoring in your unique circumstances, challenges, and aspirations. Schedule now! www.sugarfreemd.com/2pound

This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

All right, everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I'm Dr. Stacy Heimburger, and this is Weight Loss Made Simple. Today I want to talk to you about something because every March, around this time, I kind of see the same thing, and I feel it too, right? We feel a little behind. We feel a little tired. We maybe don't have as much motivation. Our energy just is not there, right?

So before September, things felt a little bit easier, and it kind of starts in September like this. We start this wave of low energy, and we get this little spike in January where you make these resolutions and you set some goals and things seem to be going okay. And then around this time, the novelty of that has worn off. Maybe we're a little bit bored. Maybe we're doing amazing in our routine but, you know, it's not new and exciting. And so our brain interprets that as just like “born,” as my seven-year-old says, right?

And so we have this little dip in motivation, and maybe it's still gray outside. The weather is not really with us, and we just feel blah, right? And there's some version of this that I hear all the time, and we start to internalize that as being lazy.

And so what I want to tell you is that this sort of winter slump is not laziness. It is just biology, okay? So we are going to interpret winter as not a character flaw. Winter is a season. And this feeling of low energy and low motivation is a season. It is not a character judgment. It is not a flaw. It is just a season.

Our body is not really designed to perform all out, all the time, for an entire year, right? There are seasons to everything. Bears hibernate, right? Expecting our bodies and our brain and our motivation and all these things to be exactly the same all year round is really unreasonable. And when we set ourselves up for that, we are setting ourselves up to feel failure.

And if you have done nothing with me these last few months, what we are trying to do this year is really stop that idea of failure. Because the spiral that that creates, the shame spiral, the internal dialogue that then leads to over-restriction and more failures, right, like more of not being able to stick with it, this evidence that our brain gathers can be really detrimental. It kind of increases our cortisol, it makes us feel really bad, and we get into this fight-or-flight, and it all leads to us quitting.

And then we have to keep restarting instead of just staying consistent.

So March in our membership is all about consistency, and we have talked about this concept a lot: if we can still do a little bit, if we can keep doing our bare minimums, then we don't have to feel that, right? So we don't have to get into that spiral of shaming ourselves, feeling like we're quitting, and then restarting, and that whole cortisol nervous system freak-out. We don't want to do any of that.

So if we've been doing really well with that, we can still feel a little bored, right? Our body is having a natural dip. The season is having a change. Maybe we're staying the same, but we're having this dip of boredom. Maybe we haven't been doing what our goals are, and we're just feeling really behind.

And so I want to talk you through some of what's happening physiologically and mentally today so that we can decide what we're going to do about that, if we need to do anything about it at all. This is not a detox or this big restart or reset. Our next challenge is coming up, but it's more this idea of, hey, we've had a season, and now we get to decide what we're going to do.

So let's talk about physiologically what’s happening with us in the winter. When we don't have as much sunlight—forget the fact that lots of people can have seasonal depression—sunlight regulates our circadian rhythm. That's our sleep-wake cycle. So if that's kind of knocked out of whack, then it can really influence everything.

We've talked before about how important sleep is to our hunger hormones and everything else, but messing with our sleep can really start a lot of downstream effects that are detrimental to our overall health and just our ability to stay consistent with either our weight loss or keeping us consistent at a healthy weight.

So sleep—do not underestimate how important that is. Just recognize that this season of time, this winter where it's not nice and sunny and warm all the time, is having an effect on that. And you really can't do anything about that unless you want to seasonally go live somewhere else for the winter, which maybe that's everyone's dream.

But again, this is not a character flaw. This is just happening, and it's totally normal.

We have less daylight, less light exposure. We're inside more. Maybe our outdoor activities that we really love to do are inaccessible to us right now, right? It's really hard to go for a walk if it's snowing outside or there's two feet of snow outside, or it's Louisiana winter and it rains all the time.

We maybe aren't as social as we were. So there's a decrease in our social interaction as well.

All of these things—now we're messing with our sleep-wake cycle, we're messing with our cortisol rhythm, we're messing with our dopamine and serotonin. Those are the things we get from exercise and from being connected to people. They're all getting a little bit out of whack.

So that is important to understand. This is not something we're doing. This is not us not being tough enough. This is just what's happening around us.

Less sunlight, less dopamine—which is our motivation neurotransmitter. Less serotonin—that's our mood stabilizer. It changes our melatonin, which is our sleep rhythm. So our nervous system is gently shifting us, because of all of those things, into this conservation mode. Just like bears go hibernate, it's the same idea.

Historically, winter has always been this time to store, slow down, conserve energy. We moved less. We rested more. We stayed closer to home. That's evolution, right? And our brain is still wired for that.

So all of this to say, this is not a willpower or motivation problem. This is just human evolution and how we're wired.

Modern life does not care about any of those things. We don't have extra time for our deadlines. Expectations don't change that much. If anything, there's more on our plates during this time. There is no hibernation from our duties and our life. Life—living in the wild—does not care that our body is wired for hibernation at this point.

So I just want you to recognize this mismatch of what's going on with our brain and our body that is hardwired, and why we might be interpreting that as an “us” problem. That's not an us problem. That is not an internal “we are bad or wrong.” We are not lazy.

Your body is not designed to perform identical output 365 days a year. Our body is designed to have seasons, these lulls. Our biology is telling us it is time to rest. So we cannot judge ourselves for that. We have to plan. We have to know that's normal and make a plan.

No judgment. We're going to understand that's happening, and now we can work around it.

So let's talk about the second layer, which is the negative self-talk that happens. We have this thing that's biologically happening to us, which is a neutral circumstance for all my coaches out there. It's a neutral circumstance that, hey, it's a season that's different and our body is acting differently.

But then we have all these thoughts about it. All these judgments. That's the cognitive piece. This is our self-talk. These are all these little thoughts running through our brain.

We're moving less. We're outside less. We're starting to see fewer visual cues of our progress. It's hard to see what's going on with your body when it's wrapped up in coats and sweaters.

Our momentum slows a little bit, and our brain starts filling in the blanks.

I'm behind.
I should have done more by now.
Other people are ahead of me.
I'm lazy.
It's not working.
I've totally failed already.
I haven't followed any of my goals.
I haven't done anything I was supposed to do on my calendar for my health.
See, I can't stick with anything.

This is what's happening.

Winter isn't the problem. Winter is a season. All these things happening in our body aren't the problem. It's all the negative self-talk we assign to it.

Because what happens then is when we have all these thoughts that we're not doing enough, that we're behind, that we're failing, that we're bad, our cortisol ramps up. We start thinking we've failed. Our body wants to not feel those things, so it wants to stop everything and do a hard reset. Then we internalize that as a willpower or motivation problem. I'm flawed. I need to be harder on myself.

That's where we get behaviors that are very punishing and even more unrealistic than what we initially started with. Then we stop walking completely. We stop planning. We're eating comfort food. We're scrolling more. We're disengaging more.

Not because we're not capable.

But because judgment has drained our motivation faster than the season of winter ever could.

The problem isn't winter. It's our judgment about the changes and about our progress that puts us in a hard stop.

So what do we need to do?

Understand the pattern.

Winter slowdown.
Self-judgment.
“Forget it.”
Aggressive restart.
Burnout.
Repeat.

Then March comes. The sun comes out. We panic. I’ve got to fix everything.

Super restriction.
Download a new plan.
Buy new supplements.
Track obsessively.

It’s fueled by shame.

And shame does not sustain behavior.

The intensity fades. We’re tired. We’re hungry. We’re resentful. Life happens. It starts again.

So we don't need a detox. We don't need a restart. We don't need punishment. We need perspective.

Winter did not ruin us. It slowed us down a little bit, as it should. It’s a time to rest and rejuvenate. Blanket up in that little cocoon so that spring comes and we can butterfly out.

There’s a season for everything.

March inside the membership is about consistency. Just keep going.

We don't have to be all in and super aggressive. We don't need to fix everything. We don't need to make up for lost time. There is no lost time. We have our whole lives. We are not behind.

Consistency over intensity.

Eat some protein at breakfast.
Walk a little bit.
Go to bed a little bit earlier.
Drink extra water.
Lift something heavy a couple of times a week.
Keep your bare minimum anchors: nutrition, movement, calm.

Think of this as preparing the soil. Or the final stages of the cocoon.

We don’t yell at dead grass in winter that it’s not growing. We understand that’s a season. The soil will get what it needs, and it will bloom.

We don’t scream at seeds to grow.

We don’t yell at the butterfly for still being in the cocoon.

Let’s treat our bodies the same way.

Our winter body does not need punishment. It needs gentle momentum. It needs to know it’s getting what it needs.

That’s what I want for you.

We do have a spring challenge coming up. I’m doing four seasonal challenges this year. This is not restrictive. Not a 14-day cleanse. It’s 21 days. We’ll have amazing guest coaches. We’ll talk about letting go, decluttering, rebuilding, making a plan for summer.

If you want to join, I would love that.

It’s www.sugarfreemd.com/springchallenge26.

I’ll make sure it’s in the show notes.

If you’ve been waiting for the right time, this is it.

Remember: you are not behind. We are just in a season. Our body wants to restore and prepare for the next season.

Judgment is not what it needs. Shame is not sustainable.

Every single thing on this planet needs time to rest and restore.

That’s the season.

We’re coming out of it soon.

You’re not behind. Everything is fine.

I will talk to you next week.

Steady thoughts. Clear thoughts. Winter is not a character flaw.

We’re going to get through it.

And go sign up for the spring challenge.

All right, y’all. See you next week.