61: Why I’m Done Dieting After This Year

In this episode, Jody shares the gym interaction that shifted her entire sense of identity — a moment where someone saw her not as the woman who lost 165 pounds, but as the woman who trains. She reflects on her five-year journey of rebuilding her relationship with food, closing the skills gap that kept her stuck, and breaking the cycle of chronic dieting. This episode highlights what it looks like to finally step into a body you’re not trying to change — and why that peace is possible for anyone willing to build the right skills. 

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Transcript

Welcome to How to Eat Cake on a Diet — a podcast for women who are tired of starting over, fed up with food rules, and ready to lose weight in a way that actually fits real life.

I’m Jody, and I’ve been there. I’ve lost over 165 pounds, tried the extremes, and learned firsthand that success doesn’t come from perfection — it comes from consistency.

This podcast isn’t about cutting out everything you love. It’s not about chasing the next diet.

It’s about learning how to eat in a way that fits your goals and your life — without guilt, without shame, and without starting over every Monday.

I want to start today's episode by telling you about something that happened to me at the gym the other day. How one single interaction shifted the way I saw myself.

I was finishing my workout, doing one of those brutal “finishers” they make you do at the end of a lifting session. I had dumbbells on the floor, doing burpee push-ups on the weights, absolutely smoked, sweat dripping, arms shaking.

I finished my round and stood up, catching my breath, and this younger girl, maybe early 20s, walked straight over to me. And she said, “Your arms are amazing. How did you get them like that?”

Just matter-of-fact. No hesitation. Completely genuine.

And I started telling her about my lifting split, how often I train, how long I’ve been doing it. But here’s the part that floored me:

Not once — not for one second — did I think to tell her that I had lost over 165 pounds.

Not once. Which is really crazy because that's what I always tell people, that's part of my narrative, that's who I am. A person who was 330 pounds and lost 165 pounds. 

But in that moment, I wasn’t showing up as the woman who used to weigh over 330 pounds.

I wasn’t showing up as the woman who used to binge at night.

I wasn’t showing up as the woman who dieted herself into the ground for decades.

I was showing up as the woman who had been in the gym 5, sometimes 6 days a week for the last 18 months.

The woman who shows up.

The woman who lifts.

The woman who trains.

The woman she was literally looking at.

And something about that clicked so deeply.

Sometimes you can dig so deep, for so long, that you end up becoming a completely different person on the other side. And sometimes, you don’t notice it until someone else sees you — the current you — and confirms it.

That moment felt like someone holding up a mirror and saying,

“This is who you are now.”

It was such a good, grounding, emotional feeling.

Not because she complimented my arms — though, listen, I wasn’t mad about that — but because for the first time in my life, I realized my identity had actually shifted.

I wasn’t acting like the old version of me.

I wasn’t telling a weight-loss story to explain my presence.

I wasn’t proving anything.

I was simply the woman who trains.

And that identity didn’t come from dieting.

It didn’t come from restriction.

It didn’t come from punishment.

It came from showing up.

Over and over.

For years.

That’s what I want for you.

Not just the weight loss — the identity shift. The moment where you realize you’re no longer pretending to be the person you want to become… you ARE her.

And that moment made me reflect on where this journey really started.

Every January takes me back to 2020 — the year everything changed.

And it didn’t start with a resolution. I didn’t wake up January 1st with a big plan.

I actually didn’t start until January 7th.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t even very hopeful.

It was more like, I can’t live like this anymore — but I have to try something.

I remember the heaviness of that moment. Not just the physical weight — but the mental weight of every failed attempt, every Monday start-over, every time I thought “maybe this time,” and it wasn’t.

The truth is, I wanted relief.

Not just weight loss — relief.

I had spent $13,000 on weight loss surgery in 2016, lost 80 pounds, and gained over half back by 2019. Imagine the headspace of paying that amount of money to lose 40 pounds. The shame. The confusion. The heartbreak.

I felt exhausted — exhausted from trying, exhausted from failing, exhausted from carrying my entire dieting history on my back.

So on January 7th, 2020, I started with one thought:

I’m just going to try. One more time. But differently.

What I didn’t know then was that the problem wasn’t me.

It wasn’t motivation or discipline or willpower.

It was a skills gap.

I didn’t know how to feed myself.

I didn’t know how to stay full.

I didn’t know how to manage my appetite.

I didn’t know how to eat foods I loved without spiraling.

I didn’t know how to build meals that actually kept me satisfied.

I didn’t know my patterns.

I didn’t know my triggers.

I didn’t understand my hunger or my emotions or my habits.

No one had taught me any of that.

So that first year, I dove in.

And the only rule I gave myself was: calories.

What am I hungry for, and how can I fit it? That one question changed my life.

I treated it like a second job — honestly, like a hobby. And the skill set that came out of that year is the reason I’m here today.

I tracked my calories every day.

I weighed myself every day.

I wrote down the binges.

I wrote down the days I went over.

I wrote down everything.

I didn’t do any movement for the first four or five months — and I don’t regret that. I needed every ounce of my energy to figure out how to eat. Eventually walking changed my life, but not yet. I had to start with food.

By the end of that year, I lost 74 pounds.

I went from 246 to 172. Then a few months later 165.

I hit my goal — or one of them.

But the next few years were messy.

I chased 150 like it was a magic number.

I dieted and lost.

I binged and regained.

I yo-yoed.

I struggled more than I expected to.

My binging started to get out of control again, and that’s when I found the book Brain Over Binge by Katherine Hansen. It introduced the idea that maybe the problem wasn’t food. Maybe it was my brain. My wiring. My habits. My dopamine. My reward system.

So I started asking “why” on repeat.

Why do I binge at night?

Why do I fall apart the week before my period?

Why did I get to 330 pounds in the first place?

Why didn’t weight loss surgery fix it?

Why do I think about food the way I do?

And every one of those questions became an episode of this podcast.

This last year — this podcast era — has been the year I’ve grown the most emotionally and psychologically. I learned about dopamine, habit loops, relief-seeking, wanting versus liking, nighttime urges, the rot List that saved my bingeing, and the weird ways stress and scarcity affect appetite.

Then there was the training shift.

I stopped F45 and Orangetheory — with total gratitude, because those places created a 330-pound athlete in me. They taught me how to pick up weights. How to push myself. How to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

But for the last 18 months, I’ve been lifting consistently. And it has completely remade my body.

I weigh about what I did after that first year… but now I’m a size 6 instead of an 8.

I have more muscle.

A different shape.

A stronger metabolism.

A calmer nervous system.

A deeper confidence.

Everything finally came together.

And I want the same thing for you.

I want you to know you’re not supposed to be good at this at first.

You’re not supposed to have it all figured out.

You’re not supposed to get it perfect.

You need skills.

You need curiosity.

You need patience.

You need practice.

I promise you — it’s not in the fasting.

It’s not in the cold plunges.

It’s not in the supplements.

It’s not in the hacks.

It’s in the measured work of learning how to keep yourself full.

How to build a meal.

How to pre-track.

How to manage your appetite.

How to calm your brain.

How to lift.

How to walk.

How to rest and not quit on yourself.

And that brings me to the thing I’ve been thinking about the most as I head into this next year.

I’ve realized something I never expected to learn: I don’t know how to exist in a body I’m not trying to change.

I’ve never done that before. Ever.

My entire adult life has been one long project — one long checklist, one long “what do I fix next loop. And in a really strange way, dieting became its own kind of habit loop. A way to create relief. A way to create structure. A way to feel in control.

If I didn’t like something in my life, I could focus on dieting.

If things felt chaotic, I could control my calories.

If I felt overwhelmed, I could chase a number.

It gave me a sense of progress, even when the progress was coming from punishment.

And now, I’m faced with the question:

Who am I if I’m not dieting?

Who am I if I’m not trying to get smaller?

Who am I if I’m not chasing a goal weight?

Who am I if there’s nothing left to “fix”?

Because that identity — the identity of someone always in pursuit of shrinking — has been with me for decades. It’s familiar. It’s predictable. It feels like safety, even when it’s misery.

But if I’m being honest, that’s not the identity I want anymore.

And that’s the work I have to do next year.

Real work. Hard work. Deep work.

Because it is going to be very, very hard for me to exist in a body I’m not trying to change.

I’ve never done it.

It feels like stepping off a cliff.

It feels like taking away the one coping mechanism I mastered.

But I know it’s the right thing.

I know it’s time.

So here’s my plan for January 1st:

Whatever I weigh on that day — that’s the number I’m maintaining.

I’m not dieting past it.

I’m not chasing 150.

I’m not pulling myself through another cycle.

My goal next year is completely different from any year before:

To eat as many calories as I can while maintianing my weight.

To lift as heavy as I can.

To build the strongest version of myself.

To finally see what a well-fed, well-trained, well-cared-for me actually looks like.

Not the restricted me.

Not the exhausted me.

Not the dieting me.

The nourished me.

The grounded me.

The athletic me.

The version of me that girl at the gym saw — clearly, without hesitation.

That’s the chapter I’m stepping into.

And honestly?

I’m excited and terrified at the same time.

But I’m ready.

And I want to show you that this is possible.

Not just weight loss — but stepping into a new identity and actually living there.

And here’s the other piece I want to be honest about.

I have never been more satisfied with my body aesthetically than I am right now.

Truly. I can fit into anything within reason. I don’t have outfit panic anymore. I don’t have to shop at one single store because nothing else fits. I can grab jeans, dresses, workout clothes — and they all work. And that alone used to feel impossible for most of my life.

Do I have loose skin?

Oh yeah. Absolutely.

Arms, breasts, stomach — all the classic places. And yeah, someday I would love to get some of that addressed surgically. It would add to the aesthetics, and I’m not ashamed to say that.

But I’ve also made peace with the fact that loose skin doesn’t erase the win.

Loose skin doesn’t mean failure.

Loose skin doesn’t mean I didn’t “finish.”

Loose skin means I lived through something.

Loose skin means I worked for something.

Loose skin means I won.

And the truth is, I’m okay with how I look right now.

I could stop dieting right this second and be done.

But I don’t have the capacity to do that yet.

Not emotionally.

Not mentally.

Not behaviorally.

So yes — I’m going to diet until January 1st.

If I had a coach I trusted with my life, I know that coach would say:

“You’re done. You’ve won. Be done.”

And I want to honor that.

I want to step into maintenance because it actually makes sense — not because I hit an arbitrary number on a scale.

Chasing a number is pointless when what you really want is:

To zip the jeans.

To feel comfortable in your clothes.

To go to an event without feeling miserable in your body.

To not be limited in where you can shop.

To not spend years staring at yourself and wishing you could just live normally for once.

I don’t have those issues anymore.

I put in the work and I won.

But here’s the part that’s so hard to admit:

It will never feel like enough if I stay in dieting mode.

If I hit 150, will it become 145 next?

Am I going to chase a new number every year until I’m 60? 70?

That’s the whole reason I started this in the first place.

I wanted off the roller coaster.

I wanted peace.

I wanted relief.

Which is why this next year is so important for me.

And I’m going to need accountability.

Real accountability.

So I’m saying this out loud:

If you see me dieting this year — call me out.

Text me.

Email me.

Message me.

Ask me what the hell I’m doing.

Because what I want — truly want — is to learn how to exist in the body I’ve built.

To trust that it’s enough.

To live in it, not constantly try to fix it.

And that’s the work I’m committing to.

And that is why I love counting calories, eating protein, walking, and lifting weights. Because inside that approach — the one I teach — there is an exit strategy.

There is no exit strategy in keto.

There is no exit strategy in Whole30.

There is no exit strategy in 75 Hard or juice cleanses or detoxes or anything that forces you to white-knuckle your way through life.

Those plans don’t teach you how to live.

They teach you how to survive.

But calorie awareness?

Protein?

Fiber?

Movement?

Strength?

Those are the skills that carry you for the rest of your life. Those are the skills you can keep forever. Those are the skills that let you walk away from dieting and still keep your results.

I’ve put in work year after year after year — and I deserve to be done.

All that effort, all that practice, all that discipline, all that sacrifice… it led me here.

And I want that for you too.

And here’s the beautiful part: you don’t have to take ten years like I did.

I created an entire podcast to guide you, to shortcut the learning curve, to help you close the skills gap faster than I ever did.

All you have to do now is exactly what I had to do:

Practice.

Fail.

Practice again.

Fail again.

Get better.

Fail.

Get better.

Practice.

Keep going.

Never — ever — give up.

Because we need the best version of you.

Your family needs the best version of you.

And most importantly, you deserve to experience the best version of yourself.

Someday you might find yourself in the gym, just living your life, doing the work, and someone might walk up to you, look at you, and see that version of you before you even see her yourself.

And in that moment, everything you’ve practiced — everything you’ve struggled through, everything you’ve rebuilt, everything you’ve healed — will come back to you in the best possible way.

And you’ll realize:

You can finally rest.

You can finally stop chasing.

You can finally get off the rollercoaster.

And you can finally enjoy the life — and the body — you’ve worked so hard to build.

That's my wish for both of us.

 And remember —

You don’t need to earn your worth by shrinking your body.

You don’t need to start over on Monday.

Just show up.

Keep showing up.

Because weight loss works — when you do the work.

I’m Jody, and this is How to Eat Cake on a Diet.

I’ll see you in the next episode.