You were doing great.

Losing weight. Following your plan. Feeling like, “Okay, maybe I’ve finally figured this out.”

Then life happened.

Your schedule changed. Work got stressful. Someone got sick.

And suddenly, you’re overeating again. Momentum? Gone.

If you’ve ever felt like every time things get hard, you fall off track and have to start all over… you’re not alone.

In this episode, I coach my client Andrea through this exact struggle—and show her what’s really going on.

It’s not about discipline. It’s not about motivation.

It’s about feeling safe when things get unpredictable.

And once you fix that, you don’t have to keep starting over every time life gets messy.

Welcome back everybody. You know that feeling when you finally get in rhythm with your weight, you're making a lot of good choices. You feel like you've got some tablets established, you pretty much feel in control of things, and then bam, life goes to shit. You have a sudden schedule change, stress at work picks up your kids, get sick, maybe a parent falls ill, it just feels like everything was going so good and then suddenly everything feels like it's on fire and before you know it, you're just eating your way through it. And the reason why you're eating your way through it is because you just think, I can't deal with all of this right now. And then when the time comes to start again, you always feel like, fuck me, I have to start back at square one. Well, you are not alone. My client, Andrea, she felt the same way, and that is exactly what's been happening to her.  

She does really good in her weight loss when her life is predictable, when it's smooth, but the second things change or they don't go the way she thinks they should. She feels off balance. She feels like she can't handle things and then her overeating comes right back in to save the day. If you've ever felt like your life needs to be perfect in order for you to lose weight, or if you've ever felt like your life always throws the monkey wrench into any type of weight loss program you start today. This is a special episode just for you. You're going to hear me talk with Andrea. We're going to go through why this keeps happening to her, but more importantly, how is Andrea going to stop letting life and it's normal ups and downs be the reason that she puts weight loss on the back burner. So listen in and if you listen to this and you think, I really need to work on this, this is my answer to losing weight for the last time, I want you to join me. Just go to no bs weight loss.com/join and get signed up today because you could be in the seat just like Andrea and you could be one of my no BS women who gets exclusive access to coaching like this that changes everything in weight loss. All right, Andrea, what you need coaching on.  

Hi Karen. I need help following the four basics when life shakes up, which for me is about every 12 weeks. I'm an instructor at college and my classes change every year and every quarter, which is about 12 weeks. This last quarter, which started in January, I actually had a shakeup about midway through What I've noticed and this, I've been a member for four years and I've been a teacher all this four years. What I've noticed is whenever that shakeup happens, I may be gain two or three pounds, but then I spend time losing that and at that moment I lose a lot of momentum and I think I have an old shitty that shows up and says, well, why do you even bother? What's the point?  

Well, that's so funny that your brain, here's my question. You want to have better question? Yeah, we know why you bother. You know why you bother. Here's the reason I really want to want to fucking lose weight, and the desire is never going away until I hit my goal. We can just say like, oh, shitty. Here's why we bother, and we can throw that away, but you need the good question, which is why do I eat over something highly predictable? It always happens. It's not new, it's not shocking. It really shouldn't be earth shattering. It's literally happens every 12 weeks. I can almost set my watch to it.  

Yeah, well, what I've noticed is it becomes, I write a plan, but it becomes grabby. I'll say, I'll get really good breakfast and lunch and then at dinner maybe I'll come home at four o'clock and I'll be a little hungry and instead of eating a dinner, I'll have a bite here, a snack there. I'm lucky we know the  

Pattern. I'm not worried I don't give shit if you're eating down a golden corral every fucking day, my question is, is why do you eat? Why are you eating over something that's normal in your life? You're calling it a shakeup, and I'm like, I don't know. It's been four years. Every quarter it happens To me, that would be like saying, you're not going to believe it. I fucking woke up again this morning. I mean, I'm like almost 51, and I had woke up every day and I'm shocked by it every day. I was kind of thinking today was the day I was just going to sleep for 24 hours. I think  

I've never saw it as predictable. I've always thought, well, it's so much different because my schedule changes.  

Oh my God, your schedule changes. I mean for sure alert the media. Let's get donuts. Why is that so hard for you? It's like it's your job, right?  

Yeah.  

Your schedule's supposed to change every quarter. It predictably changes  

Every quarter, and I  

Still, you make it mean to where you need to eat. Why does it stress you that something that always happens  

That I make it mean that there's something wrong with me, that it is a problem every quarter. I guess I make it mean that I make it difficult and it's not, it's difficult. In fact, working with Lizzie, I've noticed that when I've had losses, it's always been because I've made it easy. I make it easy for myself to follow the four basics by setting myself  

Up. Why is your, first of all, this is what I want. Now, I was being dramatic and funny with you to get your attention, but it is, there's nothing wrong with you. Here's what I think has happened. I think you have described it as a shakeup for so long and whatever you make a shakeup mean. A shakeup means what to you  

That I'm not safe.  

I'm not safe. Why are you not safe? When the quarter changes and your routine is different,  

I am looking for the patterns and they're gone. What I usually am comfortable with, yeah, I find it. In fact, looking over my data is when I noticed that this was happening and just, I don't know. I think I'm scared. I'm like unsure what to expect. So what are scared of? I'm scared.  

You think about it for a second. I want to make sure everybody hears this because everybody's wanting you to do a quarterly protocol. The problem with the quarterly protocol is that if she's scared, it doesn't matter what the protocol is. When we're scared, we won't implement it. So what we need is we might need a new protocol, but only after we feel safe. If I had to guess, what happens is the shakeup happens. You get scared that you won't be able to handle it or whatever's happening there, and then when you get used to the new schedule, suddenly I can lose the two to three pounds. Suddenly I can follow my plans and stuff, not for any reason other than your brain is freaking out. When routines change, it's creating a sense of something's really wrong and it's in that we have to change so that we don't need to eat.  

We don't need to soothe, we don't need to take the edge off. We don't need to eat a jackass until our brain is like, okay. We always lose motivation because eventually we get used to things and then we just have to do them. Your brain is waiting for that moment. Your brain is like, I just want to get to the part where we're used to it. Whereas some people are like, I don't want to get to the part where we're used to it because then I freak out and this is half of you are in her boat, half of you are with Andrea. It's like, I want routine. I want to be able to count on things. I feel really safe when everything is just so I can operate in just so, and then the other half is when it's just so I'm a disaster pants. I need excitement. I need drama to operate because everybody's nervous system is just wired differently. Yours is wired to routine. So let's figure out why you're scared. When the quarter flips and you have a new routine, what are you so scared of? What do you think is going to happen  

That I can't predict what's going to happen? What you said? I've never thought of it that way, but I do like the predictability. I grew up in a very chaotic home and I always thought that predictable. I know what's going to happen when I show up because in a lot of my life I've not been able to predict what's happening, but at least I can kind of guess. And so as an adult, I've really sought that. I want a routine. I want to know what time I'm showing up to work this morning. I want to know kind of what's going to happen. I think that  

When things aren't predictable, it doesn't feel safe.  

No,  

And you want control and you're probably eating until you feel your sense of control again,  

And it dampers down the, like you've, we talk about the inner voice, the inner critic. It dampers her down a little bit. She's scared. She's a scared kid,  

So she's scared. What is she saying when it's a new schedule? Oh my god, we're not even a hundred percent sure when we got a bleep. Well, you're probably, actually, this is one of the things I would guess is that if you were able to just kind of breathe and say, I'm just feeling scared right now, and let it run its course a little bit, give yourself two minutes of saying, I'm just scared right now. I don't like changes in routine. This is my pattern, and you kind of breathe through it. I bet you do know when you're supposed to be places. I do. I mean usually they don't just give you like, here's your new schedule. We left all the times blank. What we need you to do is spend a few weeks guessing and when you get it right, you'll know when you're supposed to be there.  

You're exactly right. And it's funny because other ways I can predict it and I'll be like, oh, this is going to be a stressful week and I can do what you said. I'll take a minute or two in the morning and just breathe through it and look at my day and go, yeah, it might be a little shaky, but this is what I expect. It's that first two weeks probably of every quarter where I just kind of go, God, I don't know what's going to happen and I do. But again,  

It's kind of reminding yourself that, but here's what I want to challenge you with. How many times and let's just take the last year. Okay. If you had to count how many times has something that you can't predict happened and you didn't figure it out, it was a catastrophe.  

Zero. Absolutely zero. I mean, it's what I'm good at. I'm a nurse. We figure it out.  

I  

Can take any time. That's good to know. Yeah,  

That's good to know. For your sense of safety that to start redefining that things don't need to be predictable in order to be safe anymore, that when you were a child it was not safe and that part of you, I'm a real big believer in talking to the little part of us, so when you're feeling that anxiety, when you're feeling that panic and that fear and stuff, taking a few moments to say, this is the part of me that unpredictability wasn't safe as a child, but I'm also grown now and I want to let the child in me know you can relax. I'm going to handle things for you. Somebody should have helped you back then and because no one could, I'm going to help you. Now we are actually really good at handling unpredictable things now. We just don't like it because of our past experience.  

It's very different than not liking it and feeling unsafe. If we could get you to go from feeling unsafe up to, I'm just having a nervous system reaction and I don't like that, that would be an immediate level up. We don't even have to go to feeling safe. We don't have to go to feeling great. We don't have to go to feeling confident we have to any of that to get exponentially feeling better. Nothing worse than feeling unsafe. It is the worst when they talk about the, I think there's seven, for lack of a better way to say it, like the seven deadly feelings. It's the ones that we avoid the plague. That sense of unsafeness is right there at the top, and so you just want to remind yourself there is a part of me that feels like it used to, that's wanting predictability really bad, and what I really want to teach myself is that I don't need a lot of predictability anymore. I actually handle changes very well, very well. In fact, for four years, every time my schedule changed, the worst thing that happened is I gained three pounds and lost it.  

I know. I really appreciate perspective. It's  

Helpful. Yeah, but in our minds we're like, coach need help. I got a terrible thing happening. Me, it's a catastrophe every 12 weeks and I gained three pounds and then I go to, I'll never lose weight. It's like our brains love. Our brains are like fucking as the world turns. They used to be my favorite soap opera of all time. In fact, I wish they'd bring that shit back. I'd watch it, but it is like, and we just have to remember, it's like our brain acts like a soap opera, but we are really not in a soap opera. We're in a really boring novel.  

Change happens every quarter. I need to remind myself I actually do way better in these situations than I give myself credit for. I just feel really unsafe. I understand where that's coming from. It's coming from my childhood, and we don't outgrow those things. Those are not things that I don't want anybody sitting around thinking they should have outgrown this or whatever. No, we don't outgrow things. We have to heal them and we have to heal them by having these conversations with ourselves. We don't just get better all at once. We have to go through and we have to have these conversations and we have to think about things and we have to prepare for the next quarter and be like, Hey, this quarter I want to do a little better than the last quarter. I want to really practice creating safety for myself and telling myself I'm more resilient than I think I am sometimes, and if you focus on that, I don't even think you have to focus so much on the eating.  

The eating is only really popping its head up when it gets jacked up by our thoughts, by our old patterns. That's why so much of the weight loss gets real simple. When we fix these things, we've removed the trigger and then there's going to be some stuff that's habit every now and then that comes up, and so we have to be patient during those periods. We have to work through those things. It's like a big mix of stuff, but through all of it, what I really want all of you to hear is weight loss can be a lot easier when we're working on the right things, when we're not just trying to yell at ourself to stop when we're not just creating protocol after protocol after protocol and trying to do a protocol when we feel highly unsafe, that that's when weight loss is hard. It feels like you're forcing yourself to do things and it's because you are. You're going against what's happening inside you. So now we're going to pay more attention to what's happening on the inside of us. We're going to work with that and heal that, and then everything else gets a lot easier.  

Okay. That was very helpful. Thank you so much. I start a new quarter in just a couple of weeks, so I want to have, if I could work on it now as we finish up and as things transition, I think it'll be really helpful. I'm a journaler now and I'm a planner now, and all those things seemed out of my control before and working with you the last four years have just changed all of that, and I think I would've just kept gaining if I hadn't met you, I lost 25 pounds, joined Queen Club, had a slight regain, have kind of figured that out and I'm going back down the scale, but I wouldn't be in a totally different place and a totally different person without you. I appreciate and the tools you guys provide, it's just been very helpful. Thank you so much.