How to Heal Your Relationship With Food for Weight Loss After 40 | 67

Have you ever found yourself standing in the kitchen late at night, reaching for food even though you're not physically hungry? Do you struggle with emotional eating, food guilt, binge eating, or constant food noise that makes weight loss after 40 feel impossible?

If so, this episode is for you.

In this episode of The Weight Loss in Midlife Podcast, we're talking about one of the most overlooked pieces of sustainable weight loss for women over 40: healing your relationship with food.

The truth is, cravings are rarely the real problem. Emotional eating, binge eating, stress eating, and food obsession are often symptoms of something much deeper. If you've spent years trying diets, counting calories, cutting carbs, or relying on willpower without lasting success, it's time to address the root cause.

You'll learn why food isn't your enemy, how diet culture has shaped the way many women think about eating, and why changing your identity—not just your meal plan—is the key to lasting fat loss in midlife.

Whether you're navigating perimenopause, menopause, hormonal weight gain, emotional eating, food cravings, or simply feeling stuck after 40, this episode will help you build a healthier mindset around food so you can finally lose weight without guilt or restriction.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

✔ Why food noise is a symptom—not the real problem

✔ How to heal your relationship with food after years of dieting

✔ The difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger

✔ Why emotional eating isn't a lack of willpower

✔ How stress and emotions affect cravings and overeating

✔ How to stop labeling foods as "good" or "bad"

✔ Why restriction often leads to binge eating

✔ Practical strategies to overcome emotional eating

✔ The identity shift that makes healthy habits last

✔ How to lose weight after 40 without another restrictive diet

Hey Beautiful!

If you’re ready to stop the diet cycle and finally lose fat, join the Weight Loss in Midlife Method HERE.

Let’s build something that actually holds up when life gets busy.

FREEBIE: What to Eat After 40 for Fat Loss 

FREEBIE: How to Set Your Macros

Join the Weight Loss in Midlife Facebook Community here.

And don’t forget to hit follow so you never miss a new episode when it drops. Thanks for being here. I’m always cheering you on.

Send me a message at hello@jenniferpeeke.com.

If this episode hit home, I would love it if you shared it with a friend who needs to hear it. And if you haven't left a review yet, it takes 30 seconds, and it means the world. It helps more women find this show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What I want you to hear right now is that you are more than that number on a scale. You're a person with a heart of gold, a story, and a whole lot more depth than any habit can ever define. This is your space to begin taking back what is rightfully yours, your health, your peace, and your happiness. I know it feels like the food is always calling your name. I want to help you get out of the habit of thinking that because that habit can keep you stuck for a very long time. I know this firsthand. So today let's take one step away from that old thinking that has you stuck in a weight loss cycle of yo-yo dieting, restricting shame and guilt. If you know that your cravings are the symptoms and not the actual root of the problem when it's coming to that food noise and that binge eating and the cravings, you are already ahead of the game, already ahead of most women. Because the biggest mistake I see is believing that all these things that you're hearing in your mind are the food problem. And when you believe it's a food problem, the real problem that you're having stays hidden. This is a sneaky, subconscious habit. And here's the truth: there is a root cause. Most women have never been told exist, and even fewer have been told how to heal it. That's exactly what I want to change today. Instead of managing what's on your plate, I want to help you discover what's underneath it because that is where the real work begins and where the real freedom in food and living your best life is. That is where weight loss starts. Most of us have spent so long trying to change ourselves from the outside, and we never stop to learn who we are on the inside first. That's the one missing piece that changes everything for you. Today we're looking at the inner work that needs to be done. So put on your earbuds, take in a deep breath, and let's prioritize the best version of you. Hey, beautiful, and welcome to Weight Loss in Midlife, where we ditch the diet cycle and finally lose fat, build muscle, and feel confident again. I'm Jennifer, a certified women's coach who's been where you are, stuck in the all-or-nothing cycle, navigating midlife changes and wondering why what used to work doesn't anymore. After years of restriction and burnout, I found a better way. Built on macros, mindset, and muscles. Each week, I'll share the strategies to help you lose fat, boost your metabolism, and build lasting strength and confidence. Let's dive into today's episode. Hey, beautiful, welcome back to the Weight Loss in Midlife Podcast, the show for busy women in midlife who want to finally lose fat for good, feel confident, and have the energy to live their best life. But before we dive into today's episode, I want to ask you something. How many times have you started over that Monday, that first of the month, right after vacation? How many times have you told yourself this time will be different? And then by Wednesday, you're standing in the kitchen at nine o'clock wondering what happened. I know that feeling. The guilt that shows up after, the quiet voice that says, says, everyone else seems to figure this out, and I can't do it. Here's what I want you to hear today. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not lazy, you're not broken, you don't have a willpower problem. You have an approach problem, and your body in midlife is operating by a completely different set of rules than it did when you were 25. And that's exactly why I built the weight loss in midlife method. My proven real framework walks you through the weight loss journey. It's not a diet, it is not a meal plan with an expiration date. It is a private coaching that helps you reframe the thoughts you keep getting stuck in, eating in a way that actually fits your life, and taking action that works with your schedule that you actually have and built around results that last long after we stop working together. So if you're done starting over and ready to lose weight the real way, I would love to work with you. Head to jenniferpeak.com backslash coaching. And I also put the link in the show notes. Now let's get into today's episode. I want you to sit with something for just a second. How many times have you started over? A new plan? A new Monday? A new version of you that was finally going to get it right? And how many times did that version of you come with a list of conditions, a list of restrictions? I will be happy when I lose the weight. I will feel confident when I can fit into those genes. I will stop being so hard on myself once I prove I can stick to something. It starts to feel like the list of hoops you jumped through just to love yourself endlessly. And here's what nobody talks about. Your love for yourself has to become unconditional. Because when self-acceptance becomes a reward for changing, you're never actually going to get there. There's always another goal, another number, another version of you that feels just out of reach. And in the meantime, the women you, the woman that you are right now, the one doing the work, the one fighting the cravings, the one showing up despite everything else that's going on in her life. She goes completely unseen. She becomes invisible and she will never exist as long as you keep telling her how unimportant she is. So today I want to offer you a different idea. What if self-acceptance is not the finish line? What if it's the starting line? What if it is the reason so many plans fail? Isn't because you lack discipline or willpower or you knowing what to do, but because you're trying to build a new life on a foundation of not being good enough yet. You cannot build something lasting for a long period of time on a foundation of shame, on a foundation of guilt, on a foundation of spiraling. You cannot hate yourself into a body that you love. Every woman I've worked with who's had a real lasting shift, not just a number on the scale, but a true change in how she lives and feels and does for herself, it started the same way. She stopped waiting to be worthy. She decided that the woman she is today, the one who struggles, the one who starts over, deserves care, deserves compassion right now, right where she is. Not someday, not when the time is perfect, but now. So before I get into the three pieces of the inner work I want to talk about today, I want to leave you with one shift to carry through all of these points. Most women have been taught that self-acceptance is the reward, something you finally get to feel once you've earned it in some way, in enough good days, in enough discipline, in enough proof, in the weight loss, in the number on the scale. But what if it actually works the other way? What if accepting exactly where you are right now isn't permission to stay there? What if it's the only foundation strong enough to build something different on? You cannot build something lasting on top of shame or guilt. So before we talk about the inner work that you need to start with, I want you to know this. The woman sitting here right now, doing the work, listening to this podcast, trying over and over again, she is not a problem you need to fix before your real life starts. She gets to be cared for today, right now. And from that place, everything I'm about to share with you is going to land differently. So let's start with the first piece. The point one is healing your relationship with food. Let's look at the root cause of why you have a negative relationship with the food in the first place. Most women have been trying to manage their food on their plate for years without ever asking what's underneath the reason why they feel this way. That's where the real work is going to begin. It is called food noise, that constant hum of thinking about food, eating a meal and thinking about what that next meal is going to be in between meals, thinking about the food that you can have, or the food that you're going to eat at dinner, or the food that you ate and you just feel so guilty about it, the cravings, feeling controlled by it. That noise you're constantly hearing is not random noise. And it isn't a willpower problem with your mind. It's a sign that there's a root cause to the noise that's just never been addressed. For example, we're all born with a naturally positive relationship with food, right? Hand a hungry toddler a donut, and she's not worried about the calories or how she's going to look in her genes. She just eats it and loves it. Ask a kid to eat when they're playing, and they will refuse to eat, and they'll tell you that they're just not hungry. The relationship starts to mutate as we get older and we get into different relationships with food from our experiences that we have as as we grow up, the way that we're taught to eat, the way that our families eat, the foods that we eat. And sometimes, as young as middle or high school, that diet culture is a huge part of why our relationship with food changes. And this is starting to happen sooner than later now. And it's happening more often because now we're bombarded with social media. We're bombarded with influencers telling us how to eat, how to lose weight, how to restrict, more cardio, whatever it is that they are doing on their feed. We try those same things. I've been there. I've saved so many Instagram reels of women and all the things that they are they're doing to lose weight, and they're all different. So I would just sit there and in sheer panic and not know which one to pick, which one was going to help me, which one was going to be the best one for me. So think about the magazines that we grew up on telling us that carbs are bad, sugar is bad, eating hardly anything is the way to look like those airbrushed models on the covers of those magazines. Have a salad with nothing but vegetables for dinner is how we lose weight and look good. That is what we grew up on, that's what we learned. And now it's all over social media and it's in our face more often throughout the day. So hear me on this. This doesn't have to turn into something extreme to still be worth healing. You don't have to be in crisis for the inner work to matter. And you could be, and it can be just the little things that you tell yourself about the food that you eat, like how you shouldn't have eaten that. Why did you eat so much? Why did you eat the entire sleeve of cookies when you know you shouldn't have had any because they're bad? Labeling food as good and bad, spiraling because you ate something that wasn't good for you. So why the inner work on healing your relationship with food is actually very important. When your relationship with food is negative, it's not just about the weight that you gain or lose. It can actually put you at risk for nutrient deficiencies and even bone density issues down the road as we age. It could cost you joy. It could cost you your presence in the moment and the ease in your actual life. When you can't trust yourself around food, it takes the joy out of your life and the things you do. So instead of being present, you're thinking about what you're going to eat, what you ate already, and how you're going to eat your next meal or the next week or how you're going to change to make things better because of the way you just ate. Food isn't meant to be just fuel. It's how we connect. It's a first date, it's a birthday, it's comfort for someone who's grieving, or how we celebrate or show love. When your relationship is with food is strained, you're not just missing out on the nutrients, you're missing out on the connection that comes with the food. An unhealthy relationship with food looks like obsessive thoughts about calories and weight, restrictive and unstainable diets that you put yourself through, fasting as a way to control your weight, binge eating or compulsive eating, guilt and shame around certain foods that you eat, feeling powerless around food, and constantly comparing your eating to everyone else's. If any of those sound familiar, I want you to hear me. You are not broken and you're not alone. Many, many women struggle with these seams, thoughts, and feelings. So here's some language shift I want you to make. Here's the mistake I see all the time: calling bread a bad food, going to great lengths to avoid carbs because of something you saw on social media. I did it. I've been there and I've totally changed the way I think. In reality, carbs are so good for your body. They are your body's preferred source of energy. So cutting out that one food group isn't going to make you lose weight. It's actually going to be detrimental, especially for somebody who is lifting heavy like myself. Without those carbs, I can't get through my workouts. I can't continue to lift heavier and progress in my weights if I'm not eating enough carbs and getting that energy into me. Foods have a purpose in your life, not just in weight loss, but how you feel, how you function, how we think. I want you to start thinking of carbs as energizers, vegetables as support, proteins, as builders, and fats as protectors of your hormones, of your body, because healthy fats let your hormones thrive and help your immune system fight off infection. And the protein rebuilds the muscle that you're losing as you go through perimenopause and into menopause. You're working so hard for. There is no good food and no bad food. There's just food. When the food becomes neutral, it stops being so enamorating and so enticing for you to have to have. When it's off limits, you crave it and want it more. One of the best things you could do for yourself is throw out the scale and ditch that diet culture. Stop following the influencers who are telling you to cut these carbs, to do more cardio, to do the detoxes. Those things are not helping you. That doesn't mean ignoring your progress. It means eliminating the negative things that are reinforcing the behavior that's not working for you right now. Get off of social media where there are so many conflicting messages about food. One post says to cut carbs. The next post says to drink a detox drink. The next post says cut sugar out and fast for 18 hours. These mixed messages are so loud and they are so confusing and they are not helping you to live your best life, to feel your best, to feel energized. Instead of thinking about restriction, think about what you can add. If your breakfast is oatmeal with brown sugar, ask how you can make it more balanced by adding fiber, by adding protein, by adding a healthy fat. That nutrition, by addition, instead of taking things away, is going to help you focus on adding healthier options to meals instead of taking foods away, is going to be a great place to start. And then you can build on that. You need to learn what is healthy, what is going to work for your body. Focus on getting whole nourishing foods about 80% of the time. And generally enjoy what you love the other 20%, with zero guilt attached to it. So if you're at a birthday party and you know you're going to have birthday cake, enjoy it. Sit there in the moment with no distractions and enjoy every bite. The more you think of this as a consistent practice instead of something you need to be perfect at, the easier it becomes. You are not going to be perfect at eating. It's impossible. So you need to understand that. So here are some practical tips that you can use to heal. Practice mindfulness when you eat. Actually, notice how the food smells, how it tastes, how it feels. Make it an experience instead of something that you're doing on autopilot, that you're just sitting down, scrolling through your phone and eating, and you don't even remember eating what it was that you just ate. Next one, stop using food as your only coping mechanism. It was never built to fix the stress, the anxiety, the loneliness in your life. Those needs need to come from somewhere else. They need to be satisfied by something else. Next one, ditch the all-or-nothing mentality. Focus on a variety of eating in moderation instead of a list of rules. Also, relearn how to listen to your hunger and fullness cues. This is so important. Eat when you're hungry. Make sure when you go to put something in your mouth, pause for five seconds and just ask yourself, am I hungry right now? Or am I just feeling stressed? Am I just lonely? If I'm just picking up food to cope with something that I'm feeling, don't do it. Find another way to cope, go for a walk. Do some journaling. Read a good book. And then stop when you're full and actually eat what you're enjoying. If you get to the point where you still have half of the food on your plate and you're full, stop eating. Push the plate away. The next one is challenge the negative self-talk. Trade, I'm not good enough, or I'm too fat for words like I am worthy of love and respect. I am doing the best that I can. I am going to continue to work on this. And if you had a rough day and didn't make the most nutrient optimal choices when you ate your food, you don't need to spiral. You just say to yourself, Maybe I didn't make the best choice today, but I was really busy and that was enough. And my next meal, I'm going to choose to add the protein, the healthy fibers, the healthy fats. You don't have to do this alone. You can lean on friends, you can lean on family members, a therapist, a nutritionist, a coach, whoever helps you feel supported instead of isolating because you're not alone. And a peaceful relationship with food looks like trusting your body enough to nourish it consistently. So it's no longer operating in this type of emergency mode. And when it's not in emergency mode, you're free to have any food you want because nothing is being restricted into this frenzy where you feel like you need to eat it all because you're not going to be allowed to eat it next week. There is no good food or bad food. There's just food. The war ends the moment you stop fighting it. All right, point two. That was a long one, is your emotional regulation and why the emotional regulation. Emotions cause us to eat, and eating causes us to have emotions. So that's that spiral where you're feeling stressed out from your day. You come home and you binge on the Oreo cookies. And then comes this shame, comes the guilt, comes the why did I just do that? I know better. And then the spiral just keeps going and you find something else to make your guilt and your shame feel better. So most of these emotions are negative because they come after a spiral or a binge. And you feel guilty and you feel ashamed and you tell yourself you're a failure. It becomes this habit loop. And most of us have never been taught how to step out of this loop. If you're someone who eats your feelings or you can't stop stress eating, I want you to know exactly why because there is nothing wrong with you. You just need to learn how to stop. Biologically, stress, anger, and sadness, they're going to increase your cortisol, and cortisol enhances your appetite. That is normal. That is the way our bodies work. And our our um and it also tells our brains to crave sugary, fatty foods when your cortisol is raised. Your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do. So you eat the cookies, the ice cream, the chips, the chocolate. And for a short period of time, it does feel good. It gives you that dopamine hit. And that's why we keep doing it, because we get that dopamine hit. It numbs the emotion and you feel good until you don't, until the guilt and the shame come along. So psychology, negative emotions are uncomfortable. So we look to get as far away from those emotions as we can. Food gives us that immediate hit of a pleasure that masks those feelings that we don't want to feel. Even if it's just for a moment, we don't need to feel those negative emotions. So you eat the cookies, the ice cream, the chips. Some people can cheer themselves up with one chocolate bar and they can stop there. That is good for them. But for a lot of us, for a lot of women, one isn't going to be enough to quiet the feeling that we're feeling. And that turns into the binge on a whole variety of foods. That difference comes down to things like your dieting history, your body image, your personality, even genetics. There's not one simple answer here, which means there's nothing to be ashamed of. It's something that you need to look at as data and learn and see how it can be fixed or you can get out of that habit loop. What you need to learn how to do is being able to tell emotional hunger from physical hunger. So emotional hunger hits you fast. Physical hunger builds gradually over the day. Emotional hunger is going to pull you towards specific foods that you normally restrict, like those cookies or the ice cream. But physical hunger wants something nutrient-dense that gives you real energy, like maybe an apple with some peanut butter. Emotional hunger is never quite satisfied. It wants more because eating was never going to fix the actual problem. It wasn't going to stop your anxiety. It's not going to stop the stress. Your emotions were craving something else, like relief from the stress, connection to replace the loneliness, or sitting down with a good book because you're exhausted. Physical hunger, on the other hand, is satisfied once you have eaten enough. And eating something healthy satisfies that type of physical hunger. Emotional hunger leads to mindless eating. Thinking about how often you're in front of the TV, hand in the popcorn bowl, and before you know it, the whole bowl of popcorn is gone and you don't even remember eating it at all. That's emotional hunger. And you're putting it on autopilot. So here's my two-step in the moment tool. Step one, recognize what's happening without judging yourself for it. The second you realize that the only reason you're reaching for the food right now is an uncomfortable emotion, you're already one step closer to overcoming that. If you can write down a word or a sentence describing what you're feeling, judgment doesn't serve you here, so don't judge yourself. It just adds shame and guilt on top of what you're already feeling. So instead, ask yourself I am a human going through something stressful, and I'm dealing with it in a very human way. All right, step two find an emotional solution for the emotional problem. Stress responds to breathing exercise. Or even a quiet walk. Loneliness is going to respond to calling or texting or chatting with someone that you love. And sadness responds to a gratitude list or something that makes you laugh. Boredom is going to respond to finishing a project or losing yourself in a really good book. And I love psychological thrillers. Anxiety responds to confiding in a friend, spending time with a pet that you love, or even reaching out to a therapist that you might have. So replacing food with one of these is a really good way to overcome emotional eating when you're noticing that you're doing it. And I want you to know following through is hard work and it's going to take time. It's not something that you're going to perfect the first time you try it. It feels like one step forward today, and then tomorrow you take two steps back because you end up eating the cookies instead of texting a friend or reading the book or going for the walk. And that's okay. Be patient. Give yourself grace. This is a process, but I promise you, you start this, it is so worth it. Food was never the problem here. It was always the messenger. And once you start listening to the message, instead of eating it, everything starts to change. All right. The next one I feel so wholeheartedly about, and that is an identity shift. So the framework for this is even after you lose the weight, you can still identify as the heavier version of yourself. The version that gains 10 pounds just looking at the carbs, the version of you that still identifies as an overweight woman. Your identity works like a thermostat. It regulates your whole life by whatever it's set to, whatever it's set to. Identity drives action and action drives results. You take care of your kids because you identify as a good mom. You brush your teeth because you take pride in oral health. It's never just about willpower, it's always about your identity underneath it all. So picture a palm tree, which is my absolute favorite tree. I wish I could sit under one every day. Your identity is the root system. Everything else stems from that. Your actions are the trunk and the branches that grow from those roots. Your results are the fruit or the coconuts and leaves, are simply what those actions eventually produce. If you want to fix the fruit, you have to address the roots. If the roots aren't being nourished, everything else up the tree is going to be affected. And a palm tree with a good root system can withstand a hurricane. The roots grow into the powerful trunk and the branches, and the thick leaves grow from the trunk. When the storm hits, those trees stand tall, they stand strong and they survive. Who you believe you are is the foundation of weight loss. That's what dictates everything else, especially subconsciously. Your day-to-day actions run on autopilot. And autopilopilot is going to be set by your identity. You are doing things every day, like brushing your teeth, getting dressed, eating breakfast, getting your kids to school, getting your kids to a practice, doing the laundry. You don't even think about those. You do everything on autopilot because you know you're doing it every day. It's your habits. So if you're only working on the result or the actions to get to that result without looking at what the identity of yourself is underneath, it's going to make the results very hard to reach. If there's one thing I tell every woman pursuing a health goal, it's this you have to believe you're capable of getting there before you actually get there. You have to start showing up as the woman who has this handled before you even fully become who she is. Sustainable change isn't just about new habits or routines. It's about a real shift in how you see yourself. When you start viewing yourself as someone who is a healthy, active woman, the choices you make and the actions you start to take naturally line up. So when you decide to go on a holiday, you pick a destination, right? But that doesn't actually take you there. You still have to plan it, book the time off, buy the tickets, pack the suitcase. And even to do that, you have already to be the kind of person who can plan and follow through and do all those things, or you'll end up staying somewhere local and familiar instead of taking that vacation that you want. That's exactly how identity either empowers your goals or holds them back. If fat is who you are, then who are you without that? Losing the weight can feel like losing your whole sense of self. And that is exactly what pulls so many women right back to their old weight or worse. I'm not saying you can't acknowledge where you are right now. That's not the issue. The issue is that the language that you're using, I'm fat, and that's that. This is who I am, doesn't leave room for any negotiations. It sets you up to stop trying before you even get started. I want you to grab a pen and paper and write down the things you've been saying about yourself. Some of these are hidden under the surface, so take your time, really think about it. You might have to just go throughout the day, use your note on your phone, and just type it in as you hear yourself giving your identifying as to who you are. You might even ask someone else close to you if they ever noticed you talking down about yourself. The ones I hear most from women I work with are I'm lazy, my parents are fat, so it's no surprise that I am. I hate exercising. I've never been a runner, I can't cook, I'm too busy, I'm just not an athletic person. I'm weak and I lack willpower. For each one of you, you wrote down, ask yourself three questions. Is this really true? Can I find evidence that counteracts what I'm saying? And how can I change the language to something more empowering? Let's say you wrote, I hate exercising. Maybe you remember a Sunday you actually loved kicking a ball around with your family. That becomes, I like being active with people I enjoy spending time with. That one shifts opens a whole new set of choices. Finding something that you can do with other people if that's what you notice that you enjoy. Here's how this plays out. Decide you're not a runner. Skip the run, and you're just collecting more evidence for the old identity that you are not a runner. Decide you're someone who runs every Saturday morning and suddenly you're joining a local running group for accountability, getting your gear ready Friday night before the Saturday morning gets there. Getting excited about beating your own personal best. Every run becomes a vote for who you are becoming. Or picture this: it's your friend's birthday. There's cake on the table. She offers you a slice. No, thank you. I'm trying to lose fat. Sounds like someone fighting herself. But no, thank you, I don't eat refined sugar anymore. Sounds like someone who's already knowing who she is becoming. Same moment, just a completely different identity behind it. So here are some great tools. Try the mirror exercise. After you brush your teeth tonight, look at yourself and say three kind things. Nothing about your looks required. A strength, something you're proud of, a piece of who you are. There's a real beautiful person under all those insecurities that you've been telling yourself for years. Try to visualize the moment. I've used this before, some of my biggest, highest pressure moments in my own life. It calms you down every time. Picture yourself and your life exactly as it is now. Then picture another version, how you want to feel, what you're doing, who you're with, what your days actually look like. If you can see the new you, you can become her. Your identity doesn't change because you snap your fingers. It's not going to happen overnight. It happens in tiny steps that you accumulate over time. Every workout that you do is a vote or a path for becoming an athlete. Every page you write is a vote or a path to becoming that writer. Every healthy meal that you eat is the vote or the path for becoming a healthier person. This is why the goal itself matters. Not losing weight, but becoming a healthier person. Not to run the marathon, but becoming a runner. Not to read one book, but becoming a reader. It can even be smaller than food entirely. Becoming someone who doesn't feel the need to finish everything on her plate or can have snacks on her desk without eating the whole thing. These are just small ways that you can shift your identity. Think about two people quitting smoking. One says, no thanks, I've quit, and is still identifying as a smoker and resisting a craving. The other says, no thanks, I'm a non-smoker because her identity has already shifted. She has become the non-smoker. The second woman is the one who stays smoke-free. The same is true for you and your food. Most approaches only ever touch the outcome, the number on the scale or the process, the diet plan itself. They never touch the identity. And that's exactly why we revert to the core identity you have been telling yourself for years. The second life gets hard. Doing work takes time. You need to be patient because it takes years and in most cases decades to build your current habits that you have now. So you have to be patient. All right, let's look at these action steps. This week I just want you to pick one of these things. One, eat one meal today without labeling a single thing on your plate as good or bad. Just notice how that feels. Two, the next time you reach for food, you're not actually hungry for, pause and name the emotion that you're feeling and what you're really feeling, and decide if there's something else you can do to meet that need. And number three, write down one belief you've been carrying about who you are and write one piece of evidence that proves it is not true. All right, here's what I want you to walk away with because this was a long one. And these are so many things that are on my heart that I really just wanted to share with you. This was never about having another meal plan. It's about healing your relationship with the food, learning to feel your feelings instead of eating them and becoming the woman whose identity already matches the life she wants. You are not the woman who can't stick to anything. You are a woman who has been trying in a body in a life that needed a completely different approach. This isn't your a one-time fix. It's undoing years of old conditioning. And that's exactly the work that we can do together inside my weight loss and midlife method using my real framework. It's an eight-week coaching program. My weight loss and midlife method was built for exactly where you are right now in this moment. My real framework walks you through the weight loss that is sustainable and allows you to live the life that you love. If you are ready to stop starting over, head to jenniferpeak.com backslash coaching, and I would love to meet you there. Thank you for listening and for choosing to invest in your health today and in your future. These small moments of care are what build real confidence and lasting strength so you can live your best life. All right, ladies, remember that you are so beautiful and you are so strong. Until next time, keep showing up for yourself, keep celebrating those small wins. And remember, one choice, one change, one meal at a time. I hope you have an amazing week. Before you go, I have one quick favor to ask. If this episode empowered you, it would mean so much to me if you could help spread the word so more women can use that to build muscles and feel unbelievably strong and competent. The best way to do this is to break three. It takes just ten seconds. You're working with exactly what you got here. And that last week is going up here, and up and next week, one week on the middle.