Before Dieting...

What does a thirteen-year-old secretly taking food from the pantry tell us about her eating?On its own, it seems easy to explain. But Amy’s story changes as more information comes into view. She remembers being constantly hungry. Her food was restricted from childhood. Her dinner was served on a plate barely bigger than a saucer. She wasn’t given pocket money because of concerns she would spend it on food. Then, at eighteen, she left home determined that nobody would ever tell her what she could and couldn’t eat again.The secret eating hasn’t changed. What changes is the frame around it, and with that, what becomes available to explain it.In Episode 62 of Before Dieting, Bronwyn uses Amy’s story to introduce an important idea from systems thinking: the boundary we draw around a problem determines what information we include in our investigation and what we leave outside it.Weight regain is usually examined within a very tight frame: what was eaten, how much was eaten, whether the diet was followed and when it stopped. Those facts matter, but they can describe what happened without explaining the eating that produced it.Amy’s story shows why putting more context around eating can change an explanation without changing a single fact.In this episode:Why apparently straightforward eating behaviour can become less straightforward when more context is included What Amy’s childhood hunger, food restriction and limited access to food add to the story of her secret eating Why food freedom at eighteen meant something different when viewed alongside what came before it How a systems-thinking boundary determines what becomes available for explanation Why widening the frame doesn’t mean calories become irrelevant The important difference between describing eating and explaining it Why a factual account of weight regain isn’t necessarily a sufficient explanation Start with Understanding Your Weight Ecosystem: If Before Dieting has you thinking there’s more to your story than calories in and out, the Weight Ecosystem gives you the questions and pathway to begin reframing your weight regain.Start with Understanding Your Weight Ecosystem: If Before Dieting has you thinking there’s more to your story than calories in and out, Understanding Your Weight Ecosystem gives you the questions and pathway to begin reframing your own weight regain. Or copy and paste the link below:https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic Read the Blog or copy and paste the link below:https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/weight-regain-the-frame-is-too-small

Karen described herself as a “great diet starter”.She had tried Weight Watchers twice, intermittent fasting, meal replacements and so many other diets she could no longer remember their names. More recently, she had stopped eating breakfast, hoping that removing a meal would make losing weight easier.Some days, after skipping breakfast, she found herself at the vending machine at work buying two or three chocolate bars to get through to dinner.Karen was approaching fifty and the diets she had previously relied on to lose a few kilos were no longer producing the same results. Perimenopause seemed the obvious explanation.She wanted to lose a persistent 20 kilograms and she felt increasingly urgent about doing it. Her mother was living with complications from type 2 diabetes and Karen was worried about where her own weight might take her.There was plenty of information available about what Karen was doing now. We could have tracked her food, calories, weight or the chocolate bars from the vending machine.But Karen didn’t have a tracking problem. She had decades of weight and dieting history that she had never looked at as a whole.In this episode of Before Dieting, I look at the difference between tracking what is happening now and charting what has happened across time.The most recent diet gives us a snapshot. A weight and dieting history gives us a different view, one that can reveal repetition, changes and turning points that are difficult to see when each attempt is treated as a separate event.Karen thought the important question was why her diets had stopped working as she approached fifty.Going back through her history raised a different one: how long had this pattern actually been developing?If you have spent years starting diets, losing weight and eventually starting again, your history isn’t irrelevant information from the past. It may contain some of the most useful evidence you have.In this episode:• Why the latest diet gives us only a snapshot of a repeating problem• Karen’s long history of dieting and her persistent 20 kilograms• What happened when skipping breakfast collided with the working day• Why Karen attributed her changing results to perimenopause• The difference between tracking calories, food and weight and charting a history across time• What becomes visible when individual weight-loss attempts are viewed together• Why going back through your weight and dieting history can change the problem you think you are trying to solveStart with your Weight & Dieting HistoryIf you have regained weight more than once, you already have a history worth examining. The Weight & Dieting History diagnostic gives you a structured way to bring that evidence together so you can see the pattern across time rather than judging another attempt in isolation.ORCopy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-and-diet-history-diagnosticRead the Blog or copy and paste the link below:https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/looking-at-your-last-diet-your-missing-the-story

For the next eight episodes of Before Dieting, Bronwyn is taking a closer look at women’s experiences of eating and repeated weight regain, using stories women have shared with her over the years.These are the parts of women’s food and weight stories that rarely make it into conversations about weight loss: hiding and sneaking food, eating late at night when no one else is around, feeling torn between wanting to lose weight and desperately wanting the relief that eating can provide.Using a systems-thinking lens, Bronwyn will examine what surrounds these experiences, what repeats and what becomes visible when more of a woman’s life is put back around her eating. The aim isn’t to turn each story into a neat explanation. It’s to resist jumping to conclusions before there is enough evidence to support them.Because after years of losing and regaining weight, I fell off the wagon or I know what to do, I just don’t do it simply isn’t enough of an explanation. There is much more to investigate.If Before Dieting has started to loosen the idea that your weight is simply about calories and dieting, start turning some of this thinking towards your own story with the Weight Ecosystem. Or copy/paste the link below:https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-ecosystem-diagnosticIf you prefer you can read my Blog or copy and paste the link below:https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/repeated-weight-regain-looking-beyond-calories-and-willpower

Weight goals can look remarkably clear. Lose ten kilos. Get back to 70 kilos. Fit into a particular clothing size.Free download: Weight Goal Worksheet to discover your weight goals and how they workhttps://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-goal-worksheetBut a precise weight goal doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve clearly defined the problem we’re trying to solve.In this episode of Before Dieting, Bronwyn looks at what can sit underneath a numerical weight goal, from wanting greater confidence or better health to hoping weight loss will change how we feel about our body. Once those outcomes become attached to a number on the scales, very different problems can start to look as though they have the same solution.The episode also examines SMART goals and an important limitation: making a goal more specific and measurable can make it more precise, but it can’t tell us whether we’re solving the right problem. When repeated weight regain is a complex problem, reducing it to a numerical target can make a simple solution, usually another diet, look more appropriate than it really is.Before deciding what the next number on the scales should be, this episode offers a different place to begin: understanding what you actually expect weight loss to change, and whether weight loss can deliver it.Looking to solve a complex weight regain problem, take a look at how seeing your weight ecosystem can assist. or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic

Repeated Weight Regain Is a Complex ProblemNot all problems behave in the same way.Some are simple, some are complicated, and some are complex. The distinction matters because the type of problem determines the kind of solution that is likely to work.Repeated weight regain has the characteristics of a complex problem. It isn't simply that there are many factors involved. Those factors interact, and attempts to change one part can alter the conditions surrounding another.This becomes particularly important when weight loss and regain have happened more than once. Each attempt becomes part of the history brought to the next, turning what can look like another isolated weight problem into a repeating pattern.In this episode of Before Dieting, Bronwyn uses the three types of problems to show why repeated weight regain needs a different problem-solving approach, and why understanding the problem needs to come before choosing another solution.In this episode:The difference between simple, complicated and complex problemsWhat makes a problem complexWhy recurrence changes the nature of a weight problemHow previous attempts become part of the problem being investigatedWhy complex problems require a different approach to solving themWeight regain isn't a simple overeating problem with a simple dieting solution.Free download: The Three Types of Problems Cheat Sheet provides a quick visual guide to the distinctions discussed in this episode. or copy and paste the link: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/pod-assetRead my Blog Article here or copy and paste the link: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/solving-repeated-weight-regain