Weight Loss Mindset

You’re halfway off the sofa before you realise you’re thinking about the chocolate in the cupboard again.
In this episode, Rick Taylar looks at what can make that urge feel so strong after 40, from a rushed lunch to broken sleep and routines you’ve repeated for years.
He guides you through a short urge-surfing practice and offers a question to take into your next evening: “What happened before this?”
Important points mentioned
1. Hunger and a craving can arrive together. You can need dinner and still want a particular food. If you’re hungry, go ahead and eat.
2. Familiar routines can cue a craving. If you often have toast while watching television, switching on the TV can bring toast to mind before you’ve decided whether you want any.
3. Look back over the day. Poor sleep, stress and a long gap between meals are worth noticing. Perimenopause can also affect appetite, and the experience varies from person to person.
4. Give the food your attention. Put your phone down for a bite. Notice how it tastes and whether it gives you the pleasure you were looking for.
5. Practise noticing the urge. Feel where it shows up in your body, rate it from one to ten and check again after a few breaths. Give yourself room to choose even if the feeling stays strong.
6. Make one change before the usual craving hits. Pack lunch if you keep missing it, or have something ready to heat if you usually come home too hungry to cook.
Do this!
Pick one craving that keeps coming up this week. When it arrives, ask, “What happened before this?” Jot down what you remember and what you chose to do. Use what you notice to make one small change the next day.
References
* The Psychology of Food Cravings: The Role of Food Deprivation
* Clinical Review: Menopause Hormone Therapy in Weight Management
* The Menopause Society — Weight Gain and Midlife Women
* Effects of Sleep Restriction on Metabolism-Related Parameters in Healthy Adults
* Sleep, Health, and Metabolism in Midlife Women and Menopause
* Mindfulness and Craving: Effects and Mechanisms
* Mindful Eating: What We Know So Far
* Eating Behavior in Menopausal Women
* Northwestern Medicine — Managing Urges and Cravings
* US Department of Veterans Affairs — Urge Surfing
* Effects of Mindfulness-Based Interventions on Food Craving in Adults
* NIDDK — Keep Active and Eat Healthy
* MedlinePlus — Beans and Legumes
* NIDDK — Diagnosis and Treatment of Binge Eating Disorder


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“I’m an emotional eater.” “I always regain it.” “I just love food too much.”
Say these things often enough and they can start to feel like facts. In this guided episode, Rick helps you examine the descriptions you carry into every meal and see how they shape what you expect from yourself. Bring a pen as we explore the question “Who am I around food?” and rewrite one familiar sentence into something you can believe and use.
Important points covered
* How a description becomes an instruction. Repeated identity labels can shape your expectations and make familiar eating patterns feel inevitable.
* Catching the words you barely notice. Use simple writing prompts to uncover your own scripts, paying attention to words like “always”, “can’t”, and “that’s just me”.
* Looking beneath the label. Examine a specific eating experience to see what was happening, including missed meals, pressure at home, or a need for comfort.
* Finding what your story leaves out. Look for real exceptions that help you question sweeping conclusions about yourself.
* Writing a sentence you can believe. Replace a fixed label with an honest description and a direction for change, such as “I’m learning to notice when I need relief”.
* Giving the new words a place in your life. Picture a practical response in a familiar situation, and learn how to return without self-criticism when the old words resurface.
If you’re ready to stop letting old labels decide what comes next, subscribe to The Weight Loss Mindset membership.
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We’re people who come back.



Get full access to The Weight Loss Mindset at news.weightlossmindset.co/subscribe

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You’re driving home, and there’s a warm paper bag on the passenger seat. You can’t find the moment you decided to stop for it.
This episode goes looking for that missing moment. Between the urge and the bite there’s a gap about one breath wide, and every eating decision we make passes through it. Most diets try to fix that moment with a bigger plan, and a bigger plan was never in the car with you.
In about 8 minutes, we run the Gap Practice together. It’s 4 small moves that take 10 seconds and work at the exact moment a craving shows up. The fourth move surprises people, because it’s the opposite of what every diet ever told you.
In this episode
* The smallest thing you’ll do all day
* The paper bag on the passenger seat
* Why going big the next morning keeps failing
* The gap, and the 4 moves of the Gap Practice
* Why a 10-second tool gets used when bigger plans don’t
* Where to get the framework, and the rest of The Shift
Get the Gap Practice framework (free)
The 4 moves are on a single page. Print it, and stick it where the cravings find you.
https://wlm.my/shift
About The Shift
This episode is a sample of The Shift, my audio series of short episodes. Each one carries one idea and one small framework you can use the same day. There are more than 30 so far, covering the inner critic, stress eating, why evenings come apart, and what changed after 40. Two new ones arrive every week.
A subscription is $37 $29.60 a year for the whole library, plus every new episode and framework as it lands. It works out to about a dime a day.
https://wlm.my/link
The gap is always there. We live in it now.

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In 1985, Dr. Vincent Felitti noticed something strange at his San Diego obesity clinic. The patients who dropped out were the ones losing weight. When he asked why, he uncovered a link between childhood trauma and adult weight gain that grew into the Adverse Childhood Experiences study.
In this episode, Rick explains why the weight can start as a form of protection, and which kinds of help have the strongest track record.
Important points
* Some of Felitti’s patients regained weight after they started getting unwanted attention, because the weight had been helping them feel safe.
* The ACE study followed more than 17,000 adults and linked childhood abuse and neglect to a long list of adult health problems, including obesity.
* Diets that treat weight as a willpower problem skip the most important question, and the shame that follows each failed attempt keeps the cycle going.
* One question to ask with curiosity: “What is this weight protecting me from?”
* For deeper trauma, look for a therapist trained in trauma-focused approaches such as cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure, trauma-focused CBT, or EMDR. If binge eating is part of the picture, ask about CBT for binge eating.
* For lighter wounds and everyday stress, mindfulness practices like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction can help. If your history is heavy, do this work alongside a therapist.
Your next step
If this episode stirred up something heavy, please reach out to someone you trust or a therapist who works with trauma.
When you’re ready to build the identity that no longer needs the armor, everything Rick teaches is at https://weightlossmindset.co/subscribe.

The Weight Loss Mindset is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



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You’ve counted the calories. You’ve done keto. You’ve fasted for months. And most dieters still watch the weight come back, then blame themselves for it. This episode explains why that regain was never a character flaw. It’s biology and identity doing exactly what they’re wired to do. And once you see the mechanism, you can finally step off the loop.
In this episode:
* The slingshot effect. The tighter the restriction, the harder the rebound. Deprivation builds tension that doesn’t fade. It releases, usually as a binge. That’s physics, not weakness.
* Your hormones are playing defense. After weight loss, ghrelin (hunger) rises and leptin (fullness) drops. Your metabolism slows too. You feel hungrier and less satisfied while trying harder than ever. Your body is defending a familiar weight.
* Willpower is the wrong tool. The diet industry sold you the idea that you just need to want it badly enough. But gripping harder against biology is like holding a beach ball underwater. Eventually it shoots back up.
* Reset the thermostat, stop opening windows. Diets are open windows: temporary change, then the room drifts back. Identity is the thermostat. Shift who you believe you are, and your choices start lining up without the daily fight.
* Scientists, not Judges. Shame after a slip-up does more damage than the slip-up itself. A scientist doesn’t scold the data. We get curious, learn, and adjust the next experiment.
* Turning down the food noise. That constant mental chatter about food has triggers: boredom, fatigue, stress, guilt, and restriction itself. Regular meals, real sleep, and eating with attention give your brain fewer reasons to sound the alarm. The goal is a neutral relationship with food, where nothing on your plate is “good” or “bad.”
This is the escape route.
Every week, I send out the thinking behind this show to people who are done being a victim to their brain. No meal plans. No shame. Just the identity work that makes the weight stop coming back.
If you’re ready to be the cause instead of the effect, the door is open: weightlossmindset.co/subscribe

The Weight Loss Mindset is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



Get full access to The Weight Loss Mindset at news.weightlossmindset.co/subscribe

Get full access to The Weight Loss Mindset at news.weightlossmindset.co/subscribe