Life's Curveballs: The Weight-Loss Shift You Need

In this episode, Teresa opens up about the all-too-familiar weight loss struggle—and how impatience can sabotage even our best intentions. As a private fitness coach and former athlete competitor, she’s seen the emotional toll of yo-yo dieting firsthand—and lived it too, especially through the weight gain and hormonal changes brought on by menopause.

With personal stories and real talk, Teresa explores why quick fixes fail, why mindset matters, and how to stop starting over. She shares practical, sustainable tips to help you stay consistent—like identifying your why, setting realistic goals, making smart nutrition choices, moving your body regularly, and celebrating small wins without guilt.

If you’re frustrated, stuck, or feeling like you’re doing everything “right” and still not seeing progress—this episode is for you. Because lasting change isn’t just about what you eat or how you move. It’s about how you think, how you show up for yourself, and how willing you are to play the long game.

Thank you for tuning in! I truly appreciate every single listener—whether you’re here for the first time or have been with me from the start.

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Transcript

0:45

Hi everyone and welcome to the show. I'm so glad we have this time together. Today I'm diving into a topic that will likely hit home For many of you, this is something we've all attempted once in our life. Maybe we've succeeded. Maybe we didn't see results fast enough, so we gave up because we're so damn impatient. Most of us give up because we're not seeing the changes fast enough. We get frustrated. We throw in the towel only to repeat this over and over again because 95% of men and women. Fail at this. Can you guess what this topic is? We're talking about weight struggles, the kind you feel when your jeans won't button. You know when you lay on a bed and you suck in your belly as hard as you can to get your jeans zipped up and buttoned, and then when you sit up, it spills over the waistband like a muffin top. You're desperately trying to stuff it back into your jeans like you're kneading dough. And your leggings become your everyday uniform.'cause let's face it, they're stretchy, forgiving, they don't judge and you can just keep on eating. I am only laughing at this because I have been there. I know how hard it is to be in a situation when you're either pissed about the way you look or you might be in complete tears. I've been both, I lived in my leggings for two years straight. I didn't even look at a pair of jeans. Why would I? It was just a reminder of how far I had drifted from feeling good in my body. Did you know that 56% of women list weight loss is the top New Year's Eve goal? I'm sure it's not surprising to most of us. I don't even know how many times I tried that. I became much more aggressive than starting a new diet in January. I started my diet every Monday. I would eat clean during the week and then the weekend would come and it was like all rules went out the door and entire week of dieting just blew up in flames. And I'd say to myself. No problem. I'll just start again on Monday and that cycle would start over and over again. That's not even a strategy. It's insanity. Have you done that where you've started a diet every Monday? It's exhausting and if you didn't know this, it slows down your metabolism when you yo-yo diet restarting your diet isn't just physical, it's very emotional. There's this shame spiral that starts with, I've been good all week and ends with God. Why can't I just stick to this? It's promising yourself I'll be good tomorrow while secretly dreading stepping on the scale. Do you wanna know a secret about scales? They don't lie. They are very transparent. They tell us the truth and show us exactly what we've been up to. They know when we've been naughty and so do we. It's April, and while it marks the start of spring. It's also the unofficial kickoff of diet season. After months of cozy comfort, food oversight sweaters and I our go-to leggings, winter hibernation can leave us feeling bloated, sluggish, eating more than we planned, and we liked being cozy and sitting on the couch every night. Now it's April and summer's right around the corner. This is the cue to scramble to undo all the damage that we did during those winter months. Or maybe you've just been yo-yo dieting for such a long time. This is normal every April and may. You crank up the dieting. It can mess with your head, especially if you've been stuck in the same cycle year after year. Have you promised yourself, this is the last time it's gonna be so different. And you get tired of all these false starts, it's not just about how you look, it's about how you feel. Imagine. Falling off your diet every weekend and Monday comes and you jump on the scale. only to go batshit crazy because the number is not revealing the number you want to see. It's revealing what you just did over the weekend, and we get so mad. My boyfriend will say, why are you mad? What is going on with you so early in the morning?'cause I always weigh myself first thing in the morning, no clothes on. Gotta make sure I'm at my ultra lightest and I'm like, oh my God, I gained weight. He's like, really? Are you surprised after what you did over the weekend? I guess I shouldn't be, but we do it to ourselves, right? When you're eating like crap and gaining weight, you feel it in every part of you. You're heavy, not just physically, but mentally. You feel sluggish, bloated. Your skin is a complete mess. And it's like you're dragging around cinder blocks every day feels a little bit harder. But let's rewind for a minute. I'm gonna share some fun facts. Back in high school, I was an aerobics instructor at a private fitness club. And picture this, I had giant permed hair, my Jane Fonda leotard, tights, and leg warmers on, if you know Jane Fonda, when she used to teach her classes on VHS tapes, picture it. It's like an eighties party and I owned that look. Owned it. My love for fitness never left me from those Jane Fonda days. Even after having kids, it stuck with me. I eventually became a private fitness coach. I was helping others through their weight loss journeys. I created custom workout plans and actually worked out with all of my clients. Talk about skin in the game? We did it together and I put personal meal plans together for them based on the goals that they were trying to achieve, and it was one of the most rewarding. Experiences I've had because you get to watch people grow stronger their confidence go up, see their bodies change, and it's so fulfilling to help them lose weight. But here is the twist. Even with over a decade of being a fitness coach, I found myself completely blindsided by a full blown food obsession that took over my life. Do you wanna know what the culprit was? Menopause. And if you're in it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you're not, just wait because it is like a wrecking ball in many different ways. When menopause walked into my life, I turned into a food obsessed maniac. I'm talking full on. Mindless eating, and it wasn't like I was living off junk food. I was still having my protein and vegetables probably more carbs than I should have been, but it didn't matter what I was eating, I was eating volumes of food. I could take down a clean meal like it was a competitive sport. I just wanted more food, it's no wonder that I gained 20 pounds. I knew what to do. I knew how to lose weight. I'd done it for other people. I always stayed fit because I had all the tools in my toolbox, but this time I just couldn't do it. The food noise was constant. I'd never experienced anything like that. It was waking up to what's for breakfast? What are you gonna have for a snack? What's for lunch? What are you gonna have for a snack? What's for dinner? What are you gonna snack on? On the couch? I watched the weight creep up on my friends who were in menopause. All of us were eating more than we ever had, and my hormones had completely shifted. I wasn't in control. I really felt like I was possessed and it didn't help that I was traveling week over week for work and my desire to work out. Went down the drain, and that was even crazier because you're talking about somebody who not only was a fitness coach, but who was a former bodybuilding competitor. Long before menopause. Back in 2011, while I was going through my divorce, I wanted to do something for myself, and I always had a desire to be a competitor. Getting that lean and sculpted takes a next level commitment. It really does. It's a strict training schedule and very specific diet with a lot of restrictions. There's no alcohol, sugar, bad carbs. I went all in. I signed up, I got a coach. I trained seven days a week, and I worked out five days a week at 5:00 AM with my team. These were all women who were competing I got up on stage looking like a bronze disco ball and my extra dark spray tan. And I placed forth in my very first competition. It was an amazing feeling to achieve that in five months. Have you ever felt like your diet forced you into isolation? Like you needed to stay home just to avoid the forbidden foods or alcohol, and suddenly the things that once brought you joy start to feel off limits and you feel lonely? That was me for quite some time. I avoided social gatherings because I didn't trust myself around the food everything felt like a temptation and that isolation. Became brutal. If you're in that place right now, trying to lose weight, feeling anxious about going out because you're scared you'll eat everything in sight. I get it. I really do. Eventually I told myself, you need to start adapting. You can't keep staying at home. I started bringing my own meals to friends' houses, and to dinner parties. I packed up my little plastic container, which I called my Bento box, and I took it to my friend's houses. That allowed me to stay connected. My people matter just as much as my goals. What I'm trying to tell you is don't lock yourself up at home. If you're on a diet you can go out to dinner, yes, you have to be disciplined. Go to a quality restaurant that serves quality food so you can get a nice piece of fish. Grilled chicken. You could even have a lean steak with some vegetables. Ask them to hold the butter on those vegetables always ask for salad dressing on the side. Salad dressing is loaded with calories. Weight loss is a struggle for everyone. Trainers, athletes, bodybuilders, everyone. Maybe something happened to us and we start eating more than usual. If you see someone who's fit, just know that's not by accident, they're disciplined, they move their body regularly, and they eat what I call quality food. So let's fast forward to today. I. Menopause and that great mystery of what the hell happened to my waistline. Let me tell you, menopause doesn't just gently tap the brakes on a woman's metabolism. It slams them on like you're about to hit something. Your midsection starts to get softer and thicker. That's the reality. And here I was with my background. I knew what to do and I tried everything and then all of a sudden I started to notice that my girlfriends who were packing on the lbs, like I was, were looking like hotty ties. And I'm like, how the fuck are they doing that? They must be starving themselves. They must be eating salads only. Nope. They were all using a secret weapon called GLP one. Don't judge ladies because if you're struggling with your weight, it works and it's not cheating. Cheating is what I was doing every Friday through Sunday before I jumped back on the diet on Monday. This is a helper that curbs your appetite so you can gain control of the volume of food that you're eating. I had so much food noise in my head. I just couldn't stop it. When I got on the GLP one all that noise stopped. I saw a nurse practitioner at a med spa. I. She did a complete physical on me. They took blood work went in pretty scared because I've got quite a health history. If you've been tuning in, you know this and I have bad reactions to many drugs, after consulting with her for our first appointment I thought, worst thing that could happen, I have my first injection. Things don't go great, and I don't do it anymore. She gave me a measured amount of injections. Every month and monitored me. You can't just wing it on a GLP one. See a doctor or a registered nurse to monitor you. I am not a very big person to begin with, but 20 pounds on me was pretty hefty. I lost 22 pounds in about five months. It came off relatively slow. The more you have to lose, the faster it comes off. I didn't lose muscle mass. I ate all the right nutrients to keep my muscle on and continued to work out. They give you a card that tells you exactly what to eat. In order to lose weight and keep your muscle on. You don't have to be going through menopause to struggle with your weight or decide if you're gonna go on a GLP one. These weight struggles hit at any age, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, stress. Emotional eating, lack of time to cook your meals or work out, no consistency in your routines. All of that shit adds up and you will gain weight. I no longer have that food obsession. I eat three meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Quality food. What does that mean? We make. Everything that we eat. I am not Susie Homemaker by any means, we're all really busy. A lot of us have jobs. We don't have the luxury to be in the kitchen for hours we eat chicken, tofu, and bison, and we make all kinds of stuff out of it. A lot of the prepping happens in the morning, I don't cook all my meat in one swoop. I can't stand cooking like five days of meat and having it in the fridge. I did it for so long as a competitor, I want it to be as fresh as possible, we cook it in the air fryer. At night, we cook what we want to eat, or if we're not traveling, we'll cook a couple extra pieces and have dinner, lunch, and maybe dinner the next night, but that's it. We eat a lot of salmon. We have an excellent dry rub that we put on it, we eat rice we eat couscous. We don't eat cheese and crackers, chips, all that snacky bullshit stuff. If I need to have a snack, I'll have half a vegan bar. Those macro bars are my favorite and I love them because they're made with a lot of good ingredients. Or maybe I'll slice up half an apple with a teaspoon of peanut butter. Here's something to know if you're gonna have snacks, make sure it has a protein with it. So many people grab carbs. Or cheese. Make sure you're eating the combination together and don't eat carbohydrates like breads and crackers and shit like that by itself. There are hundreds if not thousands of diets out there, and I'm sure we've all tried at least one or two, of these keto, low carb, low fat, high protein, whole 30 calorie counting, intermittent fasting, plant-based diets. It goes on and on, makes me dizzy just saying it, I think the best diet is the one that fits in your lifestyle. I have had clients come to me, I've done a full assessment on. Their current eating style and instead of saying, you can't have any of these I replaced them with healthier choices. I've watched women lose weight with just those small tweaks. If you pick something that is so incredibly restrictive and your lifestyle is busy and on the go, it's gonna be very challenging to stick to that diet. I. Unless you have something that's fitting into your lifestyle Let's get into some real talk about the things that you can do to feel better in your body and achieve your weight loss goals. If you have a pen, a pencil or notebook you can take some notes. The first thing you wanna write in that notebook is your why. Why do you want to lose weight? Is it just to fit into some jeans hanging in your closet that you haven't worn in a long time? That's fine, I want you to go deeper. It has to have a deeper meaning in order for you to stick to it. How do you wanna feel once you achieve your goal? Are you looking to feel stronger? What's your goal? Be very realistic. What weight are you trying to get to? Don't go for a goal that's so far out of bounds that you get frustrated because it's unachievable, what has prevented you from losing weight every time you've tried? If you don't know the answer right now, think about it. Take some time. If it takes a couple of days, that's fine. Don't get started until you're clear on all of these things. I'll tell you the reason why I kept falling off. Diets in the past if I wasn't losing enough weight I would say, fuck it. It was me. I got in my own way. If that's the case for you two, that's okay. Be honest. This is your weight loss journey. This is for you and this is to help you do it once and for all. If you don't ask yourself these things and you go pick a diet, I guarantee you're not gonna be able to stick to it. You have no purpose, and that's what we're doing. We're creating a purpose. There's more than just tracking. The weight when you're dieting. We hit peaks and valleys you could go an entire week, maybe even two, without losing weight. You hit a plateau, and this is where most of us say, and maybe this is your, this is what prevents me. I don't see the weight come off, so I jump off the scale and say, fuck it, I'm not losing weight you'll need a measuring tape. I also recommend getting a smart scale. The one I have is Wise, WYZE. You download the app, and when you jump on the scale, you click on the app and it tracks your muscle mass, your weight, body mass, and a whole bunch of other stuff. So those days when you're not losing weight, get out your measuring tape. Because I guarantee you will see something changing. Measure your chest, your waist, and your hips, and you'll see something starts to give when the scale is not. I also recommend taking pictures. Wear a sports bra and a pair of shorts so you can see where that change is happening. Take a picture of the front, of the side week over week you'll start to see the success. You can see those changes happening. The other tip is get support. Get a coach, a trainer, a nutritionist, a friend, somebody that can hold you accountable. Accountability is huge. When I was on GLP one, I was being held accountable. I had to weigh in every month. That keeps you on track. People go to Weight Watchers. It's a great community because you've got groups of people sharing their stories and you can jump on the scale, so you're held accountable. They write your weight down week, over week, and for some reason, when someone else is tracking your weight, you don't wanna disappoint them, so you stick to the diet. If you hire a trainer, know that all trainers in the gym are just going to train you. They're not gonna write you a meal plan, so don't expect that they work for a gym and they are there to train you. Not all trainers are equal. If you tell your front desk at the gym that you want a trainer, they're automatically gonna assign somebody to you. You're paying for it. You should interview all their trainers to find the trainer that is most in line with what you're trying to achieve. Have you ever seen those trainers when you're at the gym where they're just staring at their client while they're doing their reps and then they mosey over to the next machine and there's no interaction? You don't want that person. You want the one who's pushing you so hard, you wanna fire'em. Those are the good ones. If there's a couple trainers in the gym, talk to all of'em. The next tip, move your body. We were just talking about the gym. You don't have to train for a marathon. You don't have to lift weights. You don't have to go into a bodybuilding sport unless you want to. You could just walk your 10,000 steps every day. Don't underestimate some of the things that are available to you for free. There are hundreds of YouTube fitness classes out there. I follow about 20 different fitness instructors, and honestly, it's the best way to keep things interesting for me if I don't feel like going to the gym. Maybe you have a mini gym in your house or some large area where you can jump in on one of those classes and you can hit pause if you need to take a break. There's some good things about those classes. They're free. If you don't know where to start they have all levels of classes they have beginner, intermediate, and advance. Pick the one that fits your fitness level. If GLP one is an option and you wanna explore it, there's no shame, no judgment, it's not cheating. It's a support tool, and it's worth the conversation with your doctor or a registered nurse. And finally, celebrate the small wins. Seriously, don't wait until you hit your goal weight to feel proud of yourself. Celebrate the genes that zip up a little easier. Buy yourself flowers, light that candle. Treat yourself to a massage. Whatever it is, be proud of yourself. Because every bit of progress counts. This is not just about food. It's about your mindset, your hormones, your habits, your life. You are not just changing your body, you're rebuilding your relationship with yourself and with food. That's powerful and it deserves to be celebrated. I'm not talking about a celebration that sets you back with a cheeseburger and fries that leave you feeling worse later because let's be real, that fuck it mentality, it's not worth it. Don't do that to yourself. I hope you're walking away from this feeling a little less frustrated, maybe even a little more hopeful or inspired Now you've got a fresh page in your notebook and a fresh start in your mindset. Whether you're just starting or hitting, restart, do it in a way that actually works for you. Give yourself that gift and I'll be right here cheering you on every step of the way. If you could use some help creating a realistic workout plan, or if you want a second set of eyes on your current approach to eating. I. I've got you. Just scroll down to the show description, tap, send us a text, and tell me what you're working on. I'd be honored to support you and help you find a plan that fits your life and your goals. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. And hey, if you've got a friend who's navigating weight loss. Or just needs a little motivation, share this episode with them. Until next time.