EMOTIONAL Regulation

When Your Emotions Affect What You Have Available

In the previous section, we spent a lot of time talking about emotional eating.

And there was a reason I wanted to start there.

Because for many of us, food is one of the easiest places to actually see the effect our emotions can have on our behaviour.

You've had a horrible day and you reach for food.

You're overwhelmed and suddenly the things you intended to do feel much harder.

You're upset and the walk you planned doesn't happen.

You're stressed and the takeaway feels easier than making the meal you'd planned.

You're emotionally exhausted and you think:

I just can't be bothered tonight.

Then perhaps afterwards you look at the behaviour and judge yourself for it.

Why didn't I just make the meal?

Why couldn't I just go for the walk?

Why do I always do this when I'm stressed?

And if enough of those moments happen, perhaps eventually:

This is why I can never keep the weight off.

But now we know to look at that slightly differently.

Because we're not only asking whether you're capable of making the meal, going for the walk or following whatever approach you're using to lose weight.

We're asking:

What was affecting your capacity in that moment?

And our emotions can be a huge part of that answer.

That's why emotional regulation matters within a weight-regain pattern.

Not because I think you need to become calm all the time.

God, no.

And not because difficult emotions somehow prevent weight loss.

They don't.

We're human.

We're supposed to have emotions.

Anger.

Sadness.

Frustration.

Fear.

Disappointment.

Grief.

Jealousy.

Loneliness.

Anxiety.

Overwhelm.

Even those emotions we sometimes wish we didn't have are part of being human.

Emotional regulation isn't about getting rid of them.

It isn't about becoming more positive.

And it definitely isn't about learning how to shove difficult feelings down so efficiently that nobody, including you, knows they're there.

It's about what happens when those feelings arrive.

How strongly they affect us.

How long we stay caught inside them.

What we do in response to them.

And how we're able to support ourselves while we're experiencing them.

I didn't understand that for a very long time.

I thought I was either coping or I wasn't.

And if I wasn't coping particularly well, I generally thought I needed to pull myself together.

But I had lots of ways of responding to emotions without really recognising them as emotional responses.

Food was obviously one.

But there were others.

I'd overthink.

Replay conversations.

Withdraw.

Become frustrated.

Look for distraction.

Try to push feelings away.

Sometimes I'd keep myself busy.

Sometimes I'd want comfort.

Sometimes I'd feel completely overwhelmed by something that, on another day, I might have handled perfectly well.

And that's where capacity helped me understand something important again.

The emotion wasn't happening in a separate little compartment while the rest of me carried on unaffected.

It was asking something of me.

Think about a day when something has really upset you.

Perhaps you've had an argument with your partner.

You're worried about one of your children.

Something has happened at work.

You're waiting for news.

You're frightened about money.

Someone has hurt you.

Or perhaps there isn't one enormous thing.

You're just emotionally bloody knackered.

You can still know what you intended to do that day.

The knowledge hasn't disappeared.

But part of your attention is somewhere else.

You're thinking about what happened.

Thinking about what might happen.

Replaying something.

Trying not to think about something.

Feeling the emotion physically.

Perhaps you're tense.

Restless.

Heavy.

On edge.

Unable to settle.

And you're still expected to make decisions, manage your life, deal with other people and follow through on all the things you'd planned to do.

That emotion has entered the environment in which those behaviours are happening.

And that matters.

Because emotional regulation isn't only relevant when somebody reaches for food.

It can affect the whole chain of behaviours that help us sustain change.

Whether we cook.

Whether we shop.

Whether we move our bodies.

Whether we sleep.

Whether we plan.

Whether we follow through.

Whether we can pause before reacting.

Whether one difficult moment stays one difficult moment or becomes:

Stuff it. I'll start again Monday.

This was one of the things I had missed for years.

I'd been looking at the end behaviour.

I hadn't gone for the walk.

I'd ordered the takeaway.

I'd eaten the chocolate.

I'd abandoned the plan for the weekend.

And then I'd judged that behaviour as evidence of my capability.

But I hadn't looked at what I was trying to carry while making those decisions.

That's not an excuse.

And I want to keep making that distinction throughout this book.

Understanding what affects our behaviour doesn't remove our responsibility for it.

It gives us something useful to work with.

Because if every difficult emotion automatically becomes:

I just need to be more disciplined,

we haven't learned anything about what actually happened.

And if the only strategy we have for managing difficult feelings is to suppress them, escape them, distract ourselves from them or wait until they become unbearable, we're asking ourselves to sustain change while using an enormous amount of capacity simply trying to cope with how we feel.

That's where regulation becomes important.

Regulation is not:

How do I stop feeling this?

It's closer to:

How do I support myself while I'm feeling this so that the emotion doesn't have to take over everything else?

And I think that's a much more realistic goal.

Because there will always be difficult days.

There will always be people who piss us off.

There will be arguments.

Loss.

Stress.

Disappointment.

Hormonal days where everything seems to hit differently.

Times when life changes without asking whether it fits conveniently into our plans.

We cannot build lasting change on the assumption that eventually life will calm down enough for us to become consistent.

I think I spent years doing some version of that.

I'll get back on track when things settle down.

But something always happens eventually.

Because that's life.

So if sustaining weight loss requires us to keep supporting our behaviours through real life, then part of that has to involve learning how to move through emotions without every difficult feeling costing us quite so much.

Not perfectly.

Not without ever reacting.

Not without ever having days where everything goes completely tits up.

But with more ways to support ourselves when it does.

And this is where emotional regulation started to mean something very different to me.

It wasn't about controlling my emotions.

It was about increasing what I could do with them.

Notice them.

Name them.

Understand them.

Allow them.

Reduce their intensity when I needed to.

Respond to what they were actually asking for.

And create enough space that an emotion didn't always have to decide what happened next.

Because emotions can influence behaviour.

But they don't have to dictate it.

And the more ways we have to support ourselves through difficult emotional states, the less capacity we may need to spend fighting, suppressing or escaping them.

That gives us something back.

More space.

More choice.

More ability to pause.

More capacity to continue supporting ourselves even when life isn't particularly easy.

And when we're talking about breaking a regain pattern, that matters enormously.

Because we're no longer trying to become women who can follow a weight-loss plan only when we're feeling motivated, organised, rested and emotionally okay.

We're learning how to support the woman who has to live the rest of our life.

And she is going to have feelings.

Lots of them.

So rather than asking her to stop having them, we're going to help her become better supported through them.

That's where emotional regulation begins.

Recognising When Feelings Start Driving the Moment

One of the first things I had to learn about emotional regulation was how to recognise when I was no longer simply feeling an emotion.

I was reacting from it.

Because those are not always the same thing.

You can feel angry without sending the message you'll regret ten minutes later.

You can feel disappointed without deciding the whole day is ruined.

You can feel anxious without spending the next three hours mentally preparing for every possible outcome.

You can feel overwhelmed without automatically abandoning everything you'd planned.

But when an emotion becomes intense enough, it can start narrowing the space between what we feel and what we do next.

And sometimes we don't even realise that's happening.

We just react.

Perhaps you've had a difficult conversation and suddenly you don't want to do anything you'd planned.

Maybe you're irritated, so you snap at somebody.

Then feel guilty about snapping.

Then you're even more emotionally drained than you were before.

Perhaps you're worried about something and find yourself checking your phone over and over again.

Replaying conversations.

Searching for reassurance.

Thinking about the same situation from every possible angle.

Or perhaps overwhelm looks completely different for you.

You shut down.

You avoid things.

You put them off.

You know exactly what needs doing, but somehow you can't seem to make yourself start.

Maybe everything suddenly feels like too much effort.

Cooking.

Shopping.

Walking.

Answering messages.

Making decisions.

Even things that would normally feel fairly easy.

And then you look at yourself and think:

What is wrong with me today?

That question used to come up for me a lot.

Because there were times when I could handle something absolutely fine.

And other times when something relatively small felt enormous.

Same woman.

But not necessarily the same amount available.

That's the capacity piece again.

If you're already carrying stress, tiredness, worry, emotional hurt, mental load or twenty other things that have been asking something of you all day, it makes sense that the next thing can hit differently.

That doesn't mean the emotion is unreasonable.

And it doesn't mean you're being dramatic.

It means context matters.

A glass can hold water perfectly well.

Until it's already almost full.

Then one more splash sends it over the edge.

I think that's how I used to experience a lot of my emotions without understanding what was happening.

I'd judge the final reaction.

The snapping.

The eating.

The withdrawing.

The procrastinating.

The stuff it moment.

But I wasn't looking at how full the glass already was.

And that matters when we're trying to understand a regain pattern.

Because sometimes the behaviour that takes us away from what we intended isn't really about that single moment at all.

The takeaway on Friday night might be the visible choice.

But perhaps the week leading up to it involved poor sleep, an argument, worrying about money, running around after everyone else, working late and barely having five minutes to yourself.

Then Friday arrives.

You open the fridge.

And think:

Absolutely not.

From the outside, that can look like inconsistency.

From inside the actual experience, there may be a woman whose capacity has been gradually reducing all week.

That doesn't mean ordering the takeaway was inevitable.

It means the choice happened within a context.

And once we understand the context, we can start doing something much more useful than blaming ourselves for the end result.

We can start learning our signs.

Because emotional overload rarely begins at the point where everything falls apart.

There are usually clues earlier.

For me, I might start overthinking more.

Little things would irritate me.

I'd become less patient.

I'd find it harder to switch off.

Things I'd normally deal with quite easily would start feeling like another bloody thing on the list.

I might feel tension in my body.

Restlessness.

A heaviness.

That feeling of wanting everybody to leave me alone for five minutes.

And sometimes I'd become very busy.

That might sound strange.

But doing more can be just as much a response to emotional discomfort as shutting down.

Keep moving.

Keep doing.

Keep solving.

Keep thinking.

Don't stop long enough to actually notice how you feel.

Other people may recognise the opposite.

You go quiet.

Withdraw.

Scroll.

Sit there knowing what you need to do but feeling completely unable to begin.

Or maybe you become more reactive.

Everything feels personal.

Small annoyances feel enormous.

You feel as though your patience has completely disappeared.

None of those automatically mean you're emotionally dysregulated every time they happen.

We're not trying to diagnose every bad mood.

We're learning our patterns.

Because the earlier you recognise that your emotional state is changing, the more opportunity you have to support yourself before the intensity starts making decisions for you.

That was a big shift for me.

Previously, I usually waited until I was already struggling badly and then tried to control whatever behaviour came next.

Don't eat.

Don't snap.

Don't give up.

Don't cancel.

Don't sit down.

Don't be lazy.

Don't overreact.

Everything was happening at the behaviour end.

But emotional regulation asks us to notice what is happening earlier.

I'm becoming overwhelmed.

I'm more irritable than usual.

I'm replaying that conversation again.

Everything feels harder today.

I'm holding a lot of tension.

I'm starting to want to escape from everything.

That awareness doesn't instantly fix the emotion.

But it does give us information.

And information creates options.

Maybe I need to stop adding things to the day.

Maybe I need ten quiet minutes before I answer anybody.

Maybe I need to move.

Maybe I need to speak to somebody.

Maybe I need to actually deal with the thing I'm worrying about instead of rehearsing it in my head for six hours.

Maybe I need rest.

Maybe I need to lower today's expectations slightly instead of expecting exactly the same output from myself regardless of what I'm carrying.

And sometimes I might simply need to acknowledge:

I'm having a really difficult day.

Not fix it.

Not turn it positive.

Just stop pretending it isn't affecting me.

Because one thing I eventually realised was that trying not to feel an emotion can require capacity too.

Pushing it down.

Trying not to think about it.

Distracting myself every time it appears.

Keeping ridiculously busy.

Pretending I'm fine.

All of that can still leave the emotion running quietly in the background.

And then I'm wondering why I feel mentally exhausted.

That doesn't mean we need to sit and analyse every feeling for hours either.

There's a middle ground.

Regulation isn't suppression.

But it isn't drowning in every emotion either.

It's being able to recognise:

This is what I'm feeling.

This is affecting me.

What would help me move through it rather than automatically react from it?

And this is where we start creating more space.

Between anger and the message.

Between overwhelm and giving up.

Between disappointment and I've ruined everything.

Between stress and whatever familiar response normally comes next.

That space can be tiny at first.

Sometimes only long enough to think:

Hang on. I'm reacting.

But that's enough to begin.

Because every time we recognise the state before automatically following it, we create another possible direction.

And that's one of the ways emotional regulation can begin strengthening capacity.

We're not using all of our energy trying to suppress what we feel.

We're not waiting until the emotion becomes so intense that the only available response feels automatic.

We're noticing sooner.

Supporting ourselves sooner.

And giving ourselves more chance of making the next decision from the whole picture, rather than only from the emotion we're inside.

That doesn't mean you'll always make the choice you'd hoped to make.

Neither do I.

But we're moving away from:

My feelings took over, therefore I failed.

And towards:

My emotional state affected my capacity. What can I learn about how I respond when that happens?

That's a much more useful question.

And the next part is learning what to actually do with an emotion once you've noticed it.

Because recognising how you feel is important.

But if nobody has ever taught you how to support yourself through the feeling, awareness alone can leave you thinking:

Okay. I'm overwhelmed.

Now what?

That's where we're going next.

Supporting the Feeling Without Letting It Run the Show

So what do we actually do once we've recognised that an emotion is affecting us?

Because notice your feelings sounds lovely.

But when you're furious, overwhelmed, anxious, hurt or so emotionally exhausted that you want to tell the entire world to piss off, simply noticing it doesn't necessarily feel particularly useful.

I needed something more practical than that.

And one of the biggest things I had to unlearn was the idea that emotional regulation meant making the emotion disappear.

Because if that's the goal, we've immediately created another battle.

I shouldn't feel like this.

I need to calm down.

Why am I still upset?

I should be over this by now.

Now we're experiencing the original emotion and judging ourselves for having it.

Which isn't exactly reducing the emotional load.

For me, regulation became much simpler when I stopped asking:

How do I get rid of this feeling?

And started asking:

What would help me carry this feeling differently?

Sometimes that meant reducing its intensity.

Sometimes it meant understanding what it was trying to tell me.

Sometimes it meant doing absolutely nothing about it for a little while and allowing myself to feel pissed off.

Because not every emotion needs an intervention.

Sometimes you're angry because somebody behaved badly.

Sometimes you're sad because something sad happened.

Sometimes you're disappointed because you cared about something and it didn't work out.

Those feelings aren't problems that need fixing.

But even when an emotion is completely understandable, we can still support ourselves through it.

And this is where I started thinking about regulation as having more than one option.

Because previously, when I felt uncomfortable, some of my options were fairly predictable.

Eat.

Distract myself.

Overthink it.

Push it down.

Keep busy.

Withdraw.

React.

And when we only have a small number of familiar responses available, we're much more likely to return to them when our capacity is already stretched.

That's another reason expanding our emotional responses matters to the regain pattern.

We're not only trying to stop one behaviour.

We're giving ourselves more places to go when life feels difficult.

And sometimes regulation begins with something incredibly basic.

Your body.

Because emotions aren't only thoughts.

We can feel them physically too.

The tight chest.

The clenched jaw.

The shoulders somewhere near our ears.

The restless feeling where you can't settle.

The heaviness where everything feels like effort.

That horrible knot in your stomach.

Sometimes I would be mentally trying to talk myself out of feeling stressed while my entire body was basically shouting:

Mate, we are stressed.

So rather than immediately trying to reason with myself, I learned that sometimes it helped to start there.

Slow the breathing slightly.

Drop my shoulders.

Unclench my jaw.

Stand up and move.

Go outside.

Stretch.

Walk.

Put music on.

Run cool water over my hands or face.

Change the environment I'm sitting in.

None of those things solve the reason I'm upset.

And that's important.

If somebody has annoyed me, breathing slowly doesn't suddenly make them less annoying.

Unfortunately. 😂

What it can do is lower the intensity enough for me to decide what I want to do with the situation.

And that's the point.

Not perfect calm.

More choice.

Because there is a big difference between responding to something while you're at a seven out of ten emotionally and responding while you're at a ten.

Sometimes we don't need to feel completely fine.

We just need enough space to think again.

Other times, what helps isn't physical at all.

It's expression.

Talking to somebody.

Writing down what you're thinking.

Crying.

Saying out loud:

I'm actually really hurt by this.

For years, I sometimes tried to skip that part.

I wanted to move directly from feeling something uncomfortable to not feeling it anymore.

But emotions don't always work to our preferred timetable.

And I've found there can be something surprisingly relieving about accurately acknowledging what's there.

I'm angry.

I'm frightened.

I'm embarrassed.

I'm disappointed.

I'm overwhelmed.

I'm lonely.

Not:

I shouldn't be.

Just:

I am.

That doesn't mean we have to sit inside the feeling all day.

It means we're no longer spending additional energy pretending it isn't there.

And once I've recognised the emotion, another question can become useful:

What is this feeling asking for?

Not necessarily what it is demanding.

Those are different things.

Anger might be demanding that you send the message immediately.

But what might actually be needed is a boundary.

Overwhelm might be screaming:

I can't do any of this.

But perhaps what you need is to reduce what you're expecting from yourself today.

Loneliness might create the urge to withdraw even further.

But what you may actually need is connection.

Anxiety might demand that you think about the situation for another four hours until you've somehow predicted every possible outcome.

But perhaps what you need is information.

Or reassurance.

Or to accept that right now you simply don't know.

Exhaustion might look like:

I can't be bothered.

When what your body is actually asking for is rest.

That question helped me move from reacting to an emotion towards responding to the need underneath it.

And no, we won't always be able to meet the need immediately.

Sometimes the thing upsetting us can't be changed.

Sometimes the person we need something from cannot or will not give it.

Sometimes there isn't a neat solution.

Emotional regulation isn't about pretending every feeling comes with a little instruction manual.

But even when we can't change the situation, we can often change the way we support ourselves while we're inside it.

And that support can be incredibly ordinary.

Sometimes I need twenty minutes alone.

Sometimes I need to walk.

Sometimes I need somebody to listen without trying to fix it.

Sometimes I need to stop working.

Sometimes I need to eat a proper meal because I'm emotional and bloody hungry, which is never a particularly useful combination.

Sometimes I need sleep.

Sometimes I need to write something down because my brain has been carrying it in circles.

Sometimes I need to do something enjoyable.

And sometimes I need to accept that today isn't going to be my most productive day ever and stop behaving as though every day needs to be.

That's part of capacity too.

Supporting capacity doesn't always mean increasing how much we can push through.

Sometimes it means recognising when we're asking too much from what we currently have available.

And I think that's particularly important in weight loss.

Because there's a temptation to believe that supporting ourselves always means doing the behaviour we'd originally planned.

I said I'd cook, so I have to cook.

I said I'd exercise, so I need to exercise.

I said I'd stick to this exactly, so anything else means I've failed.

But sometimes the most supportive response is adapting.

Maybe you planned to cook from scratch and tonight you choose the easiest balanced meal you can throw together.

Maybe you planned an hour's walk and you've got twenty minutes available.

Maybe you planned a gym session and your body genuinely needs rest.

Maybe today isn't about doing everything.

Maybe it's about not turning a difficult day into abandoning yourself completely.

That distinction became huge for me.

Because previously there were only two settings.

Do it properly.

Or don't do it.

And if I couldn't do it properly, I could easily drift towards:

What's the point?

But when I started thinking about capacity, another option appeared.

What can I realistically support today?

That's emotional regulation meeting behaviour.

Not pretending the emotion doesn't exist.

Not allowing it to automatically decide everything either.

Adapting around the reality of what I'm carrying.

And that's a very different way of sustaining change.

Because if our only version of consistency works when we have plenty of emotional capacity available, it's going to be incredibly vulnerable whenever life gets difficult.

But if we can learn to recognise what we're carrying, regulate the intensity where possible and adapt our response without abandoning ourselves, then difficult days don't have to automatically become the beginning of another drift away.

Sometimes the win is the planned behaviour.

Sometimes the win is the adapted behaviour.

And sometimes the win is simply:

Today was bloody hard and I didn't make it harder by attacking myself for being human.

All of those can protect capacity.

And I think this is one of the most important distinctions within emotional regulation.

The goal isn't always to feel better.

Sometimes the goal is simply to respond better to the fact that we don't feel good.

Because there will be emotions we can't breathe away.

Problems a walk won't solve.

Losses that need grieving.

Situations that take time.

What we can gradually strengthen is our ability to stay with ourselves while we move through them.

To notice sooner.

Support ourselves earlier.

Reduce unnecessary intensity where we can.

Meet the need underneath the emotion where that's possible.

Adapt when our capacity is genuinely lower.

And then make the next choice from there.

That's very different from demanding that we simply pull ourselves together.

And it's one of the ways we start changing the conditions that can feed a regain pattern.

Because we're no longer relying on life staying emotionally easy enough for us to keep doing what we know.

We're increasing the number of ways we can support ourselves when it isn't.

And now that we understand what regulation can look like, I want to give you something practical you can begin using in those moments.

Not something complicated.

Not something you have to do perfectly.

Just a simple way of pausing, recognising what's happening and deciding what support might help before the emotion automatically decides what happens next.

Self-Led Practice:

The Emotional Regulation Pause

This practice is for the moments when you notice that an emotion is starting to affect how you're responding.

You might be overwhelmed.

Angry.

Anxious.

Upset.

Mentally overloaded.

Or simply at that point where everything feels like too bloody much.

The aim isn't to make the feeling disappear.

And it isn't to force yourself into the “right” behaviour.

It's to create enough space between the emotion and the reaction that you have more choice about what happens next.

Step One: Pause If you can, stop for a moment.

Not for half an hour.

Not until you've completely calmed down.

Just long enough to interrupt the momentum.

Sometimes even sixty seconds can help.

You might sit down.

Stand still.

Step into another room.

Go outside.

Put the phone down.

Whatever creates a small break between what you're feeling and whatever you were about to do next.

And remind yourself:

I don't have to react to this immediately.

That doesn't mean the situation doesn't matter.

It simply means you don't have to solve it from the most emotionally intense point of the experience.

Step Two: Notice What Your Body Is Doing Before you start trying to think your way through the situation, notice your body.

Are your shoulders tense?

Is your jaw clenched?

Does your chest feel tight?

Is there a knot in your stomach?

Do you feel restless?

Heavy?

On edge?

Sometimes our body tells us we're overwhelmed before our thoughts have fully caught up.

So give it a little support.

Take a slower breath in.

Then breathe out slightly more slowly than you breathed in.

Repeat that a few times if it feels comfortable.

Let your shoulders drop.

Unclench your jaw.

Put your feet on the floor.

Notice the chair beneath you.

The sounds around you.

The air on your skin.

We're not trying to make everything peaceful.

We're just bringing some of your attention back into the present moment.

Step Three: Name What You're Feeling Now ask:

What am I actually feeling?

Don't worry about getting the perfect word.

Maybe it's anger.

Hurt.

Fear.

Frustration.

Embarrassment.

Loneliness.

Overwhelm.

Disappointment.

Maybe it's several things at once.

Or maybe all you've got is:

I feel like shit.

That's still information.

The purpose of naming the emotion isn't to analyse yourself.

It's to separate:

Something is wrong with me.

from:

I'm experiencing something difficult right now.

Those are very different statements.

And once we can see the emotion as something we're experiencing, rather than something that defines us or proves something about us, it can become easier to decide how we want to respond to it.

Step Four: Ask What the Feeling Is Asking For Now ask yourself:

What do I need right now?

Not:

What should I do?

Not:

What would the perfect version of me do?

And not:

How do I make myself get back on track?

What would actually support you?

Perhaps it's space.

Rest.

Movement.

A conversation.

Food.

Sleep.

Fresh air.

A boundary.

Reassurance.

Information.

A cry.

A laugh.

A shower.

Ten minutes where nobody needs anything from you.

Perhaps you need to deal with something you've been avoiding.

Or perhaps you simply need to accept that you can't solve this situation today.

Sometimes we know what we need.

Sometimes we don't.

That's okay.

The question itself begins moving us away from reaction and towards support.

Step Five: Reduce the Intensity, Not Necessarily the Emotion If the feeling still feels intense, choose one small thing that might lower it slightly.

Walk.

Stretch.

Put music on.

Step outside.

Run cool water over your hands.

Write down what is circling in your head.

Message someone.

Sit quietly for a few minutes.

Take a few more slow breaths.

You don't need to go from ten out of ten to zero.

Sometimes ten to eight is enough.

Because even a small reduction in intensity can create more space for choice.

And that's the point of regulation.

Not perfect calm.

Enough space to respond.

Step Six: Ask What You Can Realistically Support Today Now bring the question back to your capacity.

What can I realistically support from where I am right now?

Maybe you can still do exactly what you'd planned.

Great.

Maybe you need to adapt it.

Instead of cooking from scratch, you choose something simple.

Instead of the gym, you walk.

Instead of an hour, you do twenty minutes.

Instead of completing everything on your list, you decide what actually matters today.

And sometimes you may decide that rest is genuinely the most supportive option.

The important thing is that you're making the decision consciously.

Not automatically abandoning yourself because the day became difficult.

This is where emotional regulation becomes part of breaking a regain pattern.

Because difficult emotions no longer have to mean:

Everything's gone wrong, so I'll start again later.

They can mean:

My capacity is different today. How do I keep supporting myself within that?

That's a completely different response.

Step Seven: Decide What Happens Next Now ask:

What is my next supportive choice?

Only the next one.

Not tomorrow.

Not Monday.

Not how you're going to fix the whole week.

The next choice.

Maybe it's making something to eat.

Going for a walk.

Having a rest.

Sending the message once you've calmed down.

Not sending it at all.

Getting an early night.

Asking somebody for help.

Or simply carrying on with your day.

The emotion may still be there.

That's okay.

You're not waiting for yourself to feel perfect before you're allowed to support yourself.

You're learning that you can feel something difficult and still have choice.

And that's the skill we're strengthening.

Afterwards If the moment didn't go the way you'd hoped, don't turn this practice into another reason to criticise yourself.

Maybe you reacted first and remembered afterwards.

That counts.

Maybe you noticed halfway through.

That counts too.

Maybe you paused and still made a choice you later wish you'd made differently.

There's still something to learn.

Ask:

What was happening for me?

What signs did I notice?

What helped, even slightly?

What might I recognise earlier next time?

Because emotional regulation isn't built by perfectly handling every difficult moment.

It's built through repeated moments of noticing, supporting and responding.

Sometimes before the reaction.

Sometimes during it.

Sometimes afterwards.

And over time, that awareness gives you more opportunities to catch the pattern sooner.

More opportunities to protect your capacity.

More opportunities to stop one difficult emotional moment becoming the beginning of another drift away from yourself.

That's what we're practising.

Not becoming less emotional.

Becoming better supported through the emotions we already have.

Guided Practice:

Creating Space Between Emotion and Reaction

The self-led practice you've just worked through is something you can use in everyday life.

In the middle of the difficult day.

After the argument.

When you notice yourself becoming overwhelmed.

When you're irritated, anxious, emotionally exhausted or simply feeling as though your capacity is disappearing by the minute.

But I also wanted to give you an opportunity to practise regulation when you're not already in the middle of trying to manage everything.

Because that's something I came to understand about emotional regulation too.

We don't only have to practise it once we're struggling.

We can create experiences of slowing down, settling and supporting ourselves at other times as well.

And the more familiar those responses become, the more available they can feel when we actually need them.

That's why I've included a guided practice alongside this section.

The purpose isn't to teach you how to never react emotionally again.

I'd be selling you absolute nonsense if I promised that.

You'll still get angry.

You'll still feel overwhelmed.

You'll still have days when somebody says the wrong thing at exactly the wrong moment and you can practically feel your last nerve packing its bags.

The goal is different.

We're practising the ability to notice activation and create some space around it.

Space to breathe.

Space to settle physically.

Space to recognise what you're feeling.

Space to allow the emotional intensity to soften enough that another response becomes possible.

Because when we're emotionally flooded, everything can feel urgent.

The thought feels urgent.

The feeling feels urgent.

The need to do something about it feels urgent.

Send the message.

Eat the food.

Cancel everything.

Solve the problem immediately.

Replay the conversation.

Make the decision.

React.

And sometimes the most useful thing we can do is create a moment where we don't have to do any of those things yet.

Not forever.

Just yet.

That pause matters because emotional regulation isn't about suppressing the response.

It's about helping ourselves move from automatic reaction towards intentional response.

And sometimes we need our body involved in that process too.

You may already have noticed that emotions don't only live in your thoughts.

Stress can sit in your shoulders.

Anger can clench your jaw.

Anxiety can tighten your chest.

Overwhelm can make your whole body feel restless or heavy.

So the guided practice gives you an opportunity to work with both.

Mind and body.

You'll be guided to slow down.

Notice what you're holding physically.

Allow some of that tension to soften.

Return your attention to the present moment.

And create enough internal space to ask the question we've already started using:

What would support me right now?

That question matters to me because it's so different from the questions I spent years asking myself.

Why am I reacting like this?

Why can't I cope?

What is wrong with me?

Why can't I just pull myself together?

Those questions usually added something else for me to carry.

The supportive question gives me somewhere useful to go.

And sometimes what you need will become obvious.

Sometimes it won't.

That's okay.

The practice doesn't require you to solve the emotion.

It's simply helping you experience what it feels like to support yourself while the emotion exists.

That is a skill.

And like most skills, it can become more familiar through repetition.

You may want to use the guided practice when you notice you've had a particularly stressful day.

Before bed when your mind is still racing.

After something has emotionally knocked you.

During a period where you feel more reactive than usual.

Or simply occasionally as a way of creating some recovery before you reach the point where everything feels too much.

You don't have to wait until you're at breaking point.

That's another thing I had to learn.

For years, I often treated support like something I was only allowed once I had completely run out of capacity.

Keep going.

Keep pushing.

Keep managing.

And then eventually:

Right, I can't do this anymore.

But emotional regulation can also be preventative.

A few minutes of recovery before the glass is overflowing.

A pause before the irritation becomes an argument.

Rest before exhaustion turns into I can't be bothered with any of it.

Support before you desperately need rescuing from the way you feel.

That is another way we begin protecting capacity.

Not only by becoming better at handling difficult moments once they arrive.

But by creating more opportunities for recovery in between them.

And again, this practice isn't mandatory.

None of the practices in this book are.

Use the tools that genuinely support you.

Return to the ones that feel useful.

Leave what doesn't.

I don't want this transformation becoming another enormous list of things you now think you should be doing perfectly.

That would rather defeat the point.

The practice is simply here as another option.

Another way of strengthening the space between emotion and reaction.

Another way of giving your mind and body an experience of support rather than pressure.

And another way of gradually building the emotional capacity that can help you sustain change when real life inevitably gets messy.

Click below to access the guided practice.

When Life Is Already Asking Too Much of You

We've just explored emotional regulation and how individual emotions can affect what we have available in a particular moment.

But sometimes it isn't one emotion.

It isn't one argument.

One disappointment.

One difficult day.

Sometimes it's everything.

Work.

Children.

Relationships.

Money.

Appointments.

Messages that need answering.

Things that need organising.

People who need something from you.

Things you're worrying about.

Things you're trying not to worry about.

The washing.

The shopping.

The form you've been meaning to fill in for three weeks.

And somewhere amongst all of that, you're also trying to lose weight.

You're trying to think about what you're eating.

Plan meals.

Shop.

Cook.

Move your body.

Sleep enough.

Drink enough.

Remember whatever else you've decided you're going to do differently this time.

And then you wonder why something that felt relatively manageable three weeks ago suddenly feels so much harder.

This is where I think understanding capacity changes the conversation again.

Because when we're looking at a regain pattern, stress and overwhelm aren't just things happening in the background of our lives.

They're part of the environment in which we're trying to sustain our behaviours.

And they ask something of us.

Mental capacity.

Emotional capacity.

Physical energy.

Attention.

Decision-making.

Patience.

Time.

Sometimes lots of them at once.

I spent years treating all of those things as though they shouldn't affect my ability to lose weight.

I'd decided what I was going to do.

So surely I should just do it.

Regardless of what else was happening.

And when I couldn't maintain the same level of effort through every version of my life, I called myself inconsistent.

But I wasn't living the same day over and over again.

My capacity wasn't the same every day either.

There were times when life was relatively calm.

I had more mental space.

More energy.

More time.

More patience.

Planning meals didn't feel particularly difficult.

Cooking didn't feel like another job.

Going for a walk didn't require an internal committee meeting first.

And then there were periods where life was asking far more of me.

I was stressed.

Tired.

Thinking about ten things at once.

Trying to solve problems.

Looking after other people.

Carrying responsibilities.

And suddenly the exact same behaviours required more effort.

That distinction matters.

Because the behaviour hadn't necessarily become more difficult.

I had less available for it.

And I think a lot of women know this experience without necessarily having had language for it.

You can cope with the children asking you questions perfectly well most days.

Then one evening you're cooking, the phone is ringing, somebody needs something for tomorrow that they've only just remembered to tell you about, you've had a shit day at work and somebody asks you one completely innocent question.

And internally you're thinking:

If one more person speaks to me, I may actually lose my mind.

It's not necessarily the question.

It's everything that came before it.

The glass we talked about earlier is already full.

And stress works like that too.

It accumulates.

Sometimes gradually enough that we don't even notice how much we're carrying.

That's something from my own life I understand far better now.

I could be functioning.

Working.

Looking after my family.

Sorting things out.

Getting things done.

From the outside, I probably looked perfectly capable.

And I was capable.

But being capable of carrying something doesn't mean carrying it has no cost.

That's a really important distinction.

Women can become incredibly good at functioning under pressure.

We can get so used to being the one who remembers.

The one who organises.

The one who sorts it.

The one everybody asks.

The one who keeps going.

That eventually we stop recognising the amount of capacity all of that is using.

It just feels like life.

And I think that's why overwhelm can sometimes be misunderstood.

We imagine it should look dramatic.

Crying on the kitchen floor.

Unable to function.

Everything falling apart.

And sometimes it does.

But sometimes overwhelm looks incredibly functional.

You're still doing everything.

You're just doing everything with absolutely nothing left.

You're getting through the day.

But you're irritable.

You're exhausted.

You're making quicker decisions because you haven't got the energy to think about them.

You're putting things off.

You're looking for relief wherever you can find it.

You're saying:

I'll do it tomorrow.

More often.

And the behaviours you're trying to sustain begin quietly sliding down the priority list.

Not because you've suddenly stopped caring.

Because something has to give.

This is where that regain pattern can begin so quietly that we barely notice it happening.

Maybe you don't suddenly abandon everything.

You just stop planning quite as much.

You start grabbing whatever is easiest.

You miss one walk.

Then another.

You're sleeping badly, so you're more tired.

You're tired, so cooking feels harder.

You feel behind with everything, so taking time for yourself starts feeling almost selfish.

You keep telling yourself you'll get back to it when things calm down.

And gradually, some of the behaviours that were supporting your weight loss become harder to maintain.

Then perhaps the weight begins creeping back.

And what do we tend to blame?

Our consistency.

I've done it again.

Why can't I stick to anything?

I was doing so well.

But if we only look at the behaviour, we miss what was happening around it.

Your capacity may have been being chipped away long before the behaviour changed.

That's why I don't think the answer to overwhelm is simply becoming better at pushing through it.

Because many of us are already brilliant at pushing through.

Sometimes too good.

We keep going until our body or mind eventually says:

Nope.

And then we judge ourselves for stopping.

I had to start asking a very different question.

Not:

How can I make myself keep doing everything?

But:

What is taking from my capacity right now?

That's a very different question.

Because sometimes there is something we can change.

Sometimes we're carrying responsibilities that don't actually need to be ours.

Sometimes we're saying yes when we desperately want to say no.

Sometimes we're trying to maintain standards that nobody except us is demanding.

Sometimes we're doing something the hardest possible way because that's how we've always done it.

Sometimes we're mentally carrying things that aren't even happening yet.

And sometimes life is genuinely just difficult.

There are seasons where there isn't a clever boundary, breathing technique or productivity hack that's going to make everything easy.

Someone is ill.

You're grieving.

Money is tight.

Your relationship is struggling.

Work is horrendous.

You're caring for somebody.

You may be raising children while trying to keep seventeen other plates spinning.

We need to leave room for that reality too.

Because capacity isn't about pretending we can optimise our way out of being human.

Sometimes the load genuinely is heavy.

And in those periods, supporting capacity may mean changing what we're asking of ourselves.

That's something I wish I'd understood much earlier.

Because I used to think consistency meant doing the same thing regardless of circumstances.

Now I see it very differently.

Sometimes consistency is adapting the behaviour so I can continue supporting myself within the capacity I actually have.

Not the capacity I wish I had.

Not the capacity I had last month.

Not the capacity I think I should have.

What I have today.

And that's important for breaking a regain pattern.

Because if your approach only works when life is calm, your sleep is good, nobody needs anything from you and you have plenty of time and energy available, then eventually life is going to expose the problem.

Not because you failed.

Because the approach had no room for your capacity to change.

What we're building instead is flexibility.

The ability to recognise:

Life is asking more of me right now.

And then respond with:

So how do I keep supporting myself without expecting exactly the same from myself?

That might mean simpler meals.

Shorter movement.

Asking for help.

Dropping something that genuinely doesn't matter.

Protecting some time.

Saying no.

Resting.

Reducing decisions.

Making things easier before you're completely overwhelmed.

And sometimes simply recognising that you are carrying a lot.

Because there's a strange thing that can happen when we finally acknowledge that.

We stop adding the extra weight of:

And I should be coping better.

That's one load we don't need.

And this is where I want us to go next.

Because before we start deciding how to support your capacity when life is demanding more from you, we need to see where it's actually going.

Not just the obvious things.

The quiet drains too.

The things you've become so used to carrying that you barely count them anymore.

Because sometimes increasing capacity isn't about finding more energy.

Sometimes it's about recognising where the energy you already have is going.

And deciding whether all of those things still deserve quite so much of it.

Where Is Your Capacity Going?

Once I started thinking about stress in terms of capacity, I began noticing something I hadn't really considered before.

I knew when I was really stressed.

I knew when something major was happening.

What I hadn't been paying attention to were all the smaller things taking little bits from me throughout the day.

Because capacity doesn't only get used by the enormous things.

Sometimes it's death by a thousand tiny demands.

Remembering something for somebody else.

Making another decision.

An email you haven't replied to.

A conversation you're still thinking about.

Something you've agreed to do but don't really have time for.

The appointment you need to make.

The thing you need to buy.

The bill you need to sort out.

The housework you can see every time you walk into the room.

The work you didn't finish yesterday.

The favour somebody has asked you for.

Something you're worrying might happen next week.

Individually, none of those things necessarily feels enormous.

But they don't necessarily arrive individually.

And this is where I started to understand mental load differently too.

Because there is a difference between physically doing something and mentally carrying it.

You might not be doing the food shopping right now.

But you're remembering that it needs doing.

You might not be dealing with that problem at work right now.

But part of your mind is still turning it over.

You might not be having the difficult conversation right now.

But you've already had it seventeen times in your head.

You might have ten things you need to do later, and although you're technically sitting down, your brain hasn't particularly joined you.

That's still asking something of you.

And if you have children, caring responsibilities, a demanding job, a business, family commitments, relationship pressures or simply a lot going on, there can be an extraordinary amount happening inside your head that nobody else can see.

Sometimes you don't even see it yourself anymore.

Because you've become so used to carrying it.

I certainly had.

I was very good at getting things done.

And for a long time, I saw that purely as a strength.

In many ways, it is.

But I eventually realised there was another side to it.

Being able to carry a lot made it very easy for me to keep adding more.

I'd fit one more thing in.

Take responsibility for something else.

Think about the next problem.

Work a little longer.

Push something I needed further down the list because something else felt more urgent.

And because I was still functioning, I didn't necessarily recognise that my capacity was reducing.

I thought struggling meant not coping.

But you can be coping and depleted at the same time.

You can be getting everything done and have very little left for yourself.

You can be productive and overwhelmed.

You can be capable and still be carrying more than your current capacity can comfortably support.

That was an important distinction for me.

Because if I only noticed stress when I reached the point of:

I can't cope anymore,

I'd missed everything that happened before it.

And those quieter drains mattered to my regain pattern too.

Because weight-loss behaviours don't exist outside the rest of our lives.

They need somewhere to fit.

Meal planning requires thought.

Shopping requires time.

Cooking requires some amount of physical and mental effort.

Movement requires time and energy.

Making choices requires attention.

Changing habits requires us to notice what we're doing.

Even remembering that we're trying to do something differently requires something from us.

So if twenty other things are already competing for those same resources, it makes sense that some behaviours can begin feeling harder.

Again, not impossible.

Harder.

And I think that difference is important.

Because I don't want capacity to become another version of:

Well, I'm stressed, so there's nothing I can do.

That's not what we're saying.

We're saying:

I'm stressed. Something is using more of my capacity. What can I understand or change so that I can support myself through it?

Sometimes that means looking at what we can remove.

And I know that's easier said than done.

We can't just delete our jobs, responsibilities, financial commitments or the people we love because we'd quite like a quieter week.

Some demands are simply part of life.

But not every demand is equally fixed.

And I found it useful to start separating them.

There were things I genuinely had to do.

Things I had chosen to do.

Things I had agreed to do.

Things I thought I should do.

Things I was doing because I'd always done them.

Things I was doing because it felt easier than asking somebody else.

Things I was doing because I didn't want to disappoint anyone.

And things I was mentally carrying that didn't actually require anything from me at that moment.

Those are not all the same thing.

Yet when they're all sitting in your head together, they can feel like one enormous list called:

Everything I have to do.

That's where I started getting curious rather than simply trying to become more efficient.

Because sometimes we respond to overload by trying to squeeze even more out of ourselves.

A better planner.

A better routine.

A more organised diary.

Wake up earlier.

Work faster.

Become more productive.

And those things can absolutely help.

I love something that makes my life easier.

But organisation can't solve every capacity problem.

If the issue is that you're carrying too much, becoming more efficient at carrying too much doesn't necessarily address the load.

Sometimes we need to look at the load itself.

What actually needs my attention?

What can wait?

What could be made easier?

What am I doing from habit rather than necessity?

What am I holding myself to that simply isn't important right now?

Where could somebody else help?

What am I saying yes to when I don't have the capacity for it?

What am I continuing to think about when there is genuinely nothing I can do about it today?

And one I still find particularly useful:

What am I making harder than it needs to be?

That one can be surprisingly revealing.

Because I used to have ideas about what doing things “properly” looked like.

A proper meal.

A proper workout.

A productive day.

A clean house.

A good mum.

A successful businesswoman.

A successful weight-loss attempt.

And sometimes those standards were creating work that didn't actually need to exist.

This is where supporting capacity can look almost boringly practical.

Buy the pre-chopped vegetables.

Have three ridiculously easy meals you can make without thinking.

Put something off that genuinely can wait.

Ask somebody else to do the thing they are perfectly capable of doing themselves.

Turn the notifications off.

Say:

I can't do that this week.

Stop trying to solve next Thursday on Monday morning.

Sometimes reducing the load by ten per cent is more useful than trying to somehow manufacture another fifty per cent of capacity.

And I think there's something else worth saying here.

Reducing unnecessary demands isn't laziness.

Making something easier isn't cheating.

Asking for help isn't evidence that you can't cope.

And protecting your capacity doesn't mean constructing a life where nothing difficult ever happens.

It means recognising that your capacity is a resource.

And if we're now asking what helps us sustain change rather than only what helps us lose weight, how we use that resource matters.

Because the goal isn't to preserve every ounce of capacity purely so we can spend it on weight loss either.

That would miss the point entirely.

You need capacity for your life.

For relationships.

Work.

Fun.

Rest.

Problems.

Opportunities.

Things that matter to you.

And yes, for the behaviours that support your health and the changes you're trying to make.

We're looking at the whole woman.

Not trying to make weight loss the full-time job around which everything else must revolve.

For me, that was part of moving away from the cycle I'd been stuck in.

Instead of asking:

How do I force weight loss into my life regardless of what else is happening?

I could start asking:

How do I build ways of supporting myself that can actually live alongside my life?

That question has a very different future attached to it.

Because when we begin noticing where our capacity is going, we can stop treating every reduction in capacity as another failure of discipline.

We can become more intentional about what we're carrying.

What we can reduce.

What needs adapting.

What needs support.

And what genuinely deserves our energy.

So before we move any further, I want to give you a chance to look at your own life in exactly that way.

Not to judge how much you're doing.

Not to tell you to drop all your responsibilities.

And definitely not to hand you another list of things you now need to manage.

Just to make the invisible visible.

Because you can't make an informed decision about your capacity if you can't see what is currently asking something of it.

And sometimes seeing it written down is the first moment you realise:

Oh.

No wonder I've felt like I have nothing left.

Self-Led Practice:

Your Capacity Audit

Take a piece of paper, use your journal, or open the notes on your phone.

And start with one question:

What is currently asking something of me?

Don't edit your answer.

And don't only write down the big things.

Write down everything that's taking up physical, mental or emotional space.

Work.

Home.

Relationships.

Family.

If you have children, anything you're currently carrying for them.

Caring responsibilities.

Money.

Health.

Appointments.

Decisions.

Things you need to organise.

Things you're worried about.

Unfinished jobs.

Conversations.

Commitments.

Things you're avoiding.

Things you're trying to remember.

Things that keep popping back into your head.

Anything that feels as though it has a little tab open somewhere in your brain.

Get it out of your head and onto the page.

Then look at what you've written.

And instead of asking:

How do I get all of this done?

I want you to ask something different.

What does each of these things actually need from me?

Some will need action.

Some will need time.

Some may need a decision.

Some might need help.

Some can be simplified.

Some can wait.

Some might need a boundary.

And some may not need anything from you at all right now, even though your mind has been repeatedly giving them your attention.

Then ask:

What could I make easier?

What could I ask for help with?

What doesn't need to happen yet?

What am I doing because I think I should rather than because it genuinely matters?

What am I giving capacity to that I cannot actually change today?

And finally:

Where do I need to protect some capacity for myself?

You don't need to completely reorganise your life after doing this.

Choose one thing.

One unnecessary demand you can remove.

One thing you can simplify.

One thing you can postpone.

One thing you can ask somebody else to help with.

One boundary you need to consider.

Or one place where you can stop demanding quite so much from yourself.

Because we're not trying to create unlimited capacity.

None of us has that.

We're learning to recognise the capacity we have, understand what is affecting it and become more intentional about how we support it.

And every time you do that, you're doing something very different from simply telling yourself to try harder.

You're creating conditions that make continuing more possible.

Not only when life is easy.

But through the changing reality of your life.

And that is exactly what we're going to need if we're going to build something you can sustain.

When Weight Loss Becomes Another Demand

There was another part of this I eventually had to look at too.

Because when I started asking what was taking from my capacity, I realised something slightly uncomfortable.

Sometimes weight loss itself was on the list.

Because weight loss can inherently feel stressful when the approach we're trying to follow is demanding more from us than we currently have available.

And for years, that was often exactly how I approached it.

Starting another weight-loss attempt meant adding an enormous number of new demands to a life that was already full.

Suddenly I had more things to think about.

What am I eating?

How much am I eating?

Have I planned tomorrow?

Have I got the right food in?

Have I exercised enough?

What does the scale say?

Am I doing well?

Have I messed up?

Should I have eaten that?

How am I going to manage the weekend?

And because I'd spent years believing that my problem was consistency, I often responded by creating even more rules.

More monitoring.

More pressure.

More things I needed to get right.

I thought that was what commitment looked like.

But looking back, there were times when I'd effectively taken an already busy life and added another part-time job called losing weight.

And then wondered why I eventually became exhausted by it.

This matters when we're talking about capacity and regain.

Because if the way we're trying to lose weight continually requires enormous amounts of mental and emotional capacity, we have to ask what happens when life needs some of that capacity back.

Perhaps you've experienced this yourself.

At the beginning, you have energy for it.

You're thinking about your meals.

You're planning.

You're organised.

You're motivated.

Maybe you're tracking something.

You're reading labels.

You're looking for recipes.

You're fitting movement into your week.

And for a while, that level of attention feels manageable.

Then life happens.

Work becomes busier.

You're sleeping badly.

Something happens in your relationship.

If you have children, perhaps they need more from you for a while.

Someone you care about needs support.

Money becomes stressful.

You're ill.

You're tired.

Or perhaps nothing dramatic happens at all.

You simply can't maintain that level of focus forever.

And suddenly weight loss is competing with everything else for your attention.

This is where I think some approaches can accidentally make the regain pattern harder to escape.

Because if success depends on maintaining the highest level of effort indefinitely, then a reduction in effort can begin to look like failure.

You stop tracking everything.

You don't plan as carefully.

You miss some workouts.

Meals become simpler.

Your attention moves elsewhere.

And instead of thinking:

My capacity has changed. How do I adapt what I'm doing?

We can think:

I'm slipping.

That thought can carry a lot of emotional weight.

Because if you've regained weight before, I'm slipping might not feel like a neutral observation.

It can feel like the beginning of something you already know.

Here we go again.

I'm losing motivation.

I knew I wouldn't keep this up.

I'm going to put it all back on.

And now we've added fear to the situation too.

The very history we're trying not to repeat can become another source of stress.

Strict rules.

Restriction.

Food guilt.

Harsh self-criticism.

The pressure to “be good.”

The fear of failure.

Obsessing over every choice.

All of those things can create more internal pressure.

And that matters when we're looking at capacity.

Because imagine what happens when the thing you're doing to improve your health also becomes another source of stress.

You're stressed about work.

Stressed about money.

Stressed about something happening at home.

And now you're stressed because you ate a biscuit.

That's not particularly helpful.

Neither is spending an evening worrying that you haven't exercised enough.

Or stepping on the scales and allowing one number to determine your emotional state for the rest of the day.

Or feeling guilty while eating something you enjoy.

Or believing every deviation from the plan means you're moving backwards.

Weight loss can start taking up an extraordinary amount of mental space.

I know it did for me.

And the irony is that I thought thinking about it constantly meant I was taking it seriously.

But there is a difference between being committed to something and being consumed by it.

I didn't want to spend the rest of my life thinking about losing weight.

I wanted to live in a way that allowed me to sustain the changes I'd made without them requiring the centre stage of my attention forever.

That became an important test for me.

Not only:

Can I do this?

But:

Can this eventually become part of my life without taking over my life?

Because remember what we're trying to solve now.

Not whether you can create weight loss for a period of time.

You may already have proved that.

We're looking at what helps you sustain change through the rest of your life.

And anything we're expecting ourselves to sustain needs to survive periods where it cannot have our full attention.

That's why I started looking differently at simplicity.

Previously, simple could feel like I wasn't trying hard enough.

Surely transformation required more.

More effort.

More discipline.

More rules.

More optimisation.

But sometimes simplicity is exactly what protects capacity.

Meals you don't have to think about very much.

Movement that can flex around your life.

A way of eating that doesn't require you to mentally calculate every decision.

Options for busy days.

Options for exhausted days.

Options for holidays.

Options for celebrations.

Options for the weeks where everything is going beautifully.

And options for the weeks where it absolutely isn't.

Because your approach needs somewhere to go when your capacity changes.

This is one of the reasons I'm not interested in giving you another rigid set of rules and calling that transformation.

Rules can tell you what to do.

They cannot predict the circumstances in which you'll need to do it.

And your circumstances will change.

Your capacity will change.

Your needs will change.

There may be periods where you want more structure.

There may be periods where you need less.

There may be times when you have plenty of energy to cook and plan.

And times when the most supportive thing you can do is make the easiest reasonable choice available and get on with your evening.

That's not inconsistency.

That's adaptation.

And adaptation is going to become incredibly important throughout this transformation.

Because lasting change can't require you to remain the same woman, with the same energy, the same circumstances and the same capacity every day for the rest of your life.

None of us can promise that.

What we can do is build ways of responding when things change.

That means noticing when weight loss itself has started consuming more capacity than it needs to.

Have I created too many rules?

Am I thinking about food all day?

Am I putting pressure on myself to do everything perfectly?

Does one unplanned choice create guilt for the rest of the day?

Am I trying to maintain something that only works when I have enormous amounts of time and focus available?

Am I making this harder than it actually needs to be?

Those aren't questions designed to make us care less about our goals.

They're questions that help us build something capable of lasting beyond the initial burst of motivation.

Because I eventually realised I didn't need to become more obsessed with losing weight.

I needed to become better at living in a way that supported the woman I wanted to be.

And those are not the same thing.

One keeps weight loss at the centre of your life.

The other allows the behaviours supporting your health to gradually become part of your life.

That shift protects capacity.

But there is another side of stress and overwhelm that I think we need to explore before we leave this area.

Because sometimes the pressure we're carrying isn't coming from our diary.

Or our responsibilities.

Or even from the way we're approaching weight loss.

Sometimes it comes from the way our mind and body have learned to respond to pressure itself.

You can remove things from the list and still find it difficult to switch off.

You can finally sit down and still feel restless.

You can have nothing urgent happening and still feel as though you should be doing something.

You can be physically safe and still feel internally braced.

And sometimes you've been functioning like that for so long that you don't even recognise it as stress anymore.

It simply feels normal.

That's where we need to start talking about the nervous system.

When High Alert Starts to Feel Normal

We've talked about the things that can take from our capacity.

But there is another layer to stress that I think is really important to understand.

Because stress isn't only something we experience in our thoughts.

Our body responds to it too.

And sometimes that response has been happening for so long that we don't even recognise it anymore.

We just think:

This is me.

I'm an overthinker.

I've always been a worrier.

I can't switch off.

I'm just somebody who needs to be busy.

I'm terrible at relaxing.

I always expect the worst.

But what if some of the things you've accepted as simply being part of your personality are also patterns your mind and body have learned?

That was a huge realisation for me.

Because looking back, I can see how much of my life I spent in some version of high alert.

I would replay conversations long after they'd finished.

Analyse situations repeatedly.

Mentally rehearse things that hadn't happened yet.

Prepare responses to possible problems.

Expect disappointment before it arrived.

And find it incredibly difficult to completely switch off, even when there wasn't actually anything I needed to be doing.

Somewhere along the way, staying prepared had started to feel safer than putting my guard down.

And that's the strange thing about living in a state of high alert.

It doesn't necessarily announce itself.

You don't wake up one morning with a notification saying:

Congratulations. Your nervous system is now permanently stressed.

It can happen gradually.

A little more worry.

A little more responsibility.

A difficult period.

Another difficult period.

More pressure.

Less recovery.

More things to think about.

More things to deal with.

Until eventually being slightly braced for whatever comes next feels completely ordinary.

For some women, stress is obvious.

They know they're stressed.

They can feel it.

For others, it can look remarkably like functioning.

You're dependable.

You think ahead.

You anticipate what might go wrong.

You organise.

You plan.

You solve problems.

You keep everything moving.

Maybe you're the person everyone describes as someone who “just gets on with it.”

And you might be incredibly good at all of those things.

But being good at functioning under pressure doesn't mean your body isn't experiencing the pressure.

That's where the nervous system comes in.

Your nervous system is constantly responding to information from both around you and within you.

One of its jobs is protection.

Most of us have heard of the fight-or-flight response.

If the brain detects danger, the body prepares us to respond.

Heart rate can increase.

Breathing can change.

Attention can narrow.

Energy is redirected towards dealing with whatever the system believes requires our immediate attention.

That's incredibly useful if you're genuinely in danger.

We want that system.

The complication is that our nervous system doesn't only respond to somebody chasing us down the street.

Modern threats can be emotional.

Psychological.

Social.

Financial.

Relational.

And sometimes the threat isn't even something happening right now.

It can be something we're anticipating.

Something we're remembering.

Something we're repeatedly imagining.

Something we're worried might happen.

The body can still respond to that stress.

And when those responses happen repeatedly, high alert can begin to become familiar.

You might notice it physically.

Tension in your shoulders.

A clenched jaw.

Shallow breathing.

Restlessness.

Difficulty sleeping.

Feeling constantly on edge.

Or you might notice it through behaviour.

Always needing to do something.

Finding it difficult to sit still without feeling guilty.

Overthinking.

Overworking.

Procrastinating when everything becomes too much.

Trying to control everything.

Avoiding things.

People-pleasing.

Snapping more easily than you normally would.

Looking for something that will give you a moment of relief.

And this is where I want to be careful with the language we're using.

Because I'm not suggesting every time you procrastinate, get irritated or worry about something that your nervous system is dysregulated.

We're human.

We do all of those things.

And we're not trying to turn normal human behaviour into a diagnosis.

We're simply becoming curious about patterns.

Especially patterns that happen repeatedly.

Because our protective responses don't always look the way we imagine they will.

Fight can look like anger, irritability, defensiveness or a strong need to regain control.

Flight can look like constant busyness, overworking, overthinking, perfectionism or always searching for the next solution.

Freeze can look like procrastination, avoidance, indecision, numbness or that incredibly frustrating experience of knowing what you want to do but feeling completely unable to get yourself moving.

And another response you may have heard described as fawn can show up as people-pleasing, avoiding conflict, seeking approval, struggling with boundaries or continually putting everybody else's needs before your own.

And suddenly some behaviours we judge ourselves incredibly harshly for can look a little different.

Maybe:

Why am I so lazy?

becomes:

Why do I seem to shut down when everything feels too much?

Maybe:

Why can't I just relax?

becomes:

What makes slowing down feel so uncomfortable for me?

Maybe:

Why do I always have to control everything?

becomes:

What feels difficult about not knowing what happens next?

Maybe:

Why can't I ever say no?

becomes:

What am I afraid might happen if I disappoint somebody?

We're not making excuses for the behaviour.

We're understanding it.

And as we've already established throughout this journey, those are not the same thing.

Because once we understand what a behaviour may be doing for us, we have somewhere useful to begin changing it.

These responses aren't character flaws.

They're attempts at protection.

At some point, your mind or body may have learned that a particular response helped you navigate stress, uncertainty, relationships, pressure or difficult experiences.

The problem isn't that humans have protective responses.

We need them.

The problem is when we remain prepared for danger long after the immediate danger has gone.

When we're constantly waiting for the next problem.

The next difficult conversation.

The next disappointment.

The next thing we're going to have to deal with.

When we carry yesterday's worries, today's responsibilities and tomorrow's possible problems simultaneously.

That takes capacity.

Quite a lot of it.

Because some of your mental and emotional resources are continually being used to stay prepared.

And now bring that back to the regain pattern we've been exploring.

Imagine trying to consistently make intentional choices while your system is already using a significant amount of capacity managing stress.

Imagine trying to build new habits while part of your attention is continually scanning for what needs dealing with next.

Imagine asking yourself to patiently plan, prepare, pause and make considered decisions when internally your system is shouting:

Just get me through today.

And then imagine interpreting the struggle to do those things as evidence that you aren't disciplined enough.

We're back to the same mistake.

Questioning capability without looking at capacity.

This is also why relief can become so appealing when we're stressed.

Food can provide relief.

So can scrolling.

Shopping.

Alcohol.

Avoidance.

Watching television.

Going to bed.

Keeping ourselves endlessly busy.

There are countless ways human beings try to change how they feel.

We've already explored this in depth with emotional eating.

So we're not going to turn nervous-system regulation into another way of blaming food.

Food isn't the problem we're trying to manufacture here.

We're looking at the state from which some of our behaviours happen.

Because when we're calm and have more capacity available, we may have more space between an urge and our response.

When we're exhausted, overwhelmed and highly activated, that space can become much smaller.

And that can help explain something women often find incredibly confusing.

Why could I handle this last week but not today?

Why did that choice feel easy yesterday and impossible tonight?

Why do I know exactly what I want to do but sometimes feel as though I can't access it?

Your capability hasn't disappeared.

The state you're trying to access it from may have changed.

That's why nervous-system regulation belongs in a conversation about sustainable weight loss.

Not because calming your nervous system magically causes weight loss.

It doesn't.

And I don't want us turning regulation into another wellness promise where breathing exercises somehow replace nutrition, movement or the physical science involved in losing weight.

They don't.

We're talking about something different.

We're talking about supporting the conditions in which you're trying to consistently apply those things.

Because when your system is under prolonged pressure, sleep can be affected, emotional resilience can become lower, cravings or the desire for quick relief may feel stronger, and pausing before reacting can become more difficult.

All of that can affect capacity.

And suddenly nervous-system regulation isn't some completely separate wellbeing subject we've bolted onto weight loss.

It connects directly back to the question we've been asking from the beginning:

What affects my ability to keep doing the things I already know how to do?

For some women, chronic stress and a nervous system that has become very accustomed to high alert may be one piece of that answer.

And there's something I find incredibly hopeful about understanding this.

Familiar doesn't mean permanent.

A learned state isn't necessarily a fixed state.

Just as our system can become accustomed to activation, we can also begin giving it more experiences of slowing down.

Recovery.

Support.

Safety.

Rest.

Moments where nothing needs solving.

Moments where we notice ourselves bracing and allow ourselves to soften.

Not by forcing ourselves to relax.

If you've ever been extremely stressed and had somebody tell you to “just relax”, you'll know how wonderfully useless that can be.

We practise it.

Gradually.

And that is where nervous-system regulation becomes something practical.

Not another thing you have to perfect.

Not another job.

And certainly not another reason to criticise yourself because apparently you're now failing at relaxing too.

It's learning to recognise the state you're in.

Understanding what might be happening.

And giving your mind and body more opportunities to experience something different.

Because if high alert has become familiar, we're not trying to rip the alarm system out.

We're helping it learn that it doesn't need to be ringing all the time.

And that's where we're going next.

Helping Your System Come Out of High Alert

Once I understood that high alert could become familiar, the next question was obvious.

How do I actually change it?

Because understanding that my nervous system had learned to stay prepared was useful.

But I didn't want to spend the rest of my life simply observing myself being stressed.

And this is where I think nervous-system regulation can sometimes become unnecessarily complicated.

There are endless techniques.

Breathing methods.

Grounding exercises.

Meditation.

Movement.

Tapping.

Cold water.

Yoga.

Visualisation.

Relaxation practices.

And many of those things can be genuinely useful.

I use several of them myself.

But regulation isn't one particular technique.

It's not something you either know how to do or don't.

And it certainly isn't something you need to perform perfectly.

For me, the bigger shift was understanding what I was actually trying to create.

More moments where my mind and body weren't being asked to stay on alert.

More opportunities for recovery.

More experiences of:

Nothing needs dealing with right now.

That might sound incredibly simple.

But if you've spent years thinking ahead, worrying, solving, organising, anticipating and carrying responsibility, doing nothing can feel strangely uncomfortable.

You finally sit down.

And immediately remember something.

So you get back up.

You try to watch television.

But you're also scrolling through your phone.

Thinking about tomorrow.

Answering messages.

Mentally writing a list.

Maybe you decide to have an early night and then spend forty minutes lying there thinking about everything you need to do the following day.

Technically, you've stopped.

Your mind hasn't.

I recognised that in myself.

And I realised I needed to stop thinking of recovery as simply the absence of work.

Because you can stop working without actually recovering.

You can sit on the sofa while mentally carrying the entire week.

You can go on holiday and spend half of it checking what is happening at home.

You can have an evening to yourself and fill every second of it with stimulation.

Physical rest and nervous-system recovery aren't always the same thing.

Sometimes recovery is allowing the system to receive the message:

For this moment, I am okay.

There is nothing I need to solve.

I can stop preparing.

Not forever.

Just now.

And this is important because our nervous system learns through experience.

We can intellectually know we're safe and still feel tense.

We can tell ourselves:

There's nothing to worry about.

And continue worrying.

So I stopped expecting one reassuring thought to undo years of being braced.

Instead, I began thinking in terms of repeated experiences.

Small moments.

Often ordinary ones.

A walk without trying to solve anything in my head.

Sitting outside for ten minutes.

Listening to music.

Breathing slowly.

Stretching.

Having a shower and actually being in the shower rather than conducting tomorrow's planning meeting in my head.

Talking to somebody who makes me feel safe.

Laughing.

Being somewhere I feel comfortable.

Putting my phone down.

Doing something creative.

Resting before I was completely exhausted.

Allowing myself to enjoy something without immediately thinking about what I should be doing next.

None of those things looks particularly revolutionary.

That's the point.

We're not trying to create one enormous moment where your nervous system suddenly becomes permanently regulated.

We're creating more moments of recovery within ordinary life.

And those moments matter because stress and recovery work together.

Stress isn't automatically the problem.

We're designed to respond to stress.

Sometimes stress helps us focus.

Respond.

Take action.

Protect ourselves.

Get something important done.

The difficulty comes when there is activation after activation after activation without enough opportunity to come back down again.

That's when high alert can start feeling like the baseline.

So supporting the nervous system isn't about creating a life with no stress.

That isn't realistic.

It's about creating more movement between activation and recovery.

Stress happens.

We respond.

And then, where possible, we allow ourselves to come back.

That last part was something I hadn't been particularly good at.

I could deal with one problem and immediately move onto the next one.

Finish one task and think about another.

Get through a difficult week and use the weekend catching up on everything I hadn't managed during it.

There was very little:

That's done. I can stop now.

And when we talk about capacity, recovery matters enormously.

Because capacity isn't only affected by what we're spending.

It's also affected by whether we're giving ourselves opportunities to replenish anything.

Imagine your phone battery.

You can become incredibly skilled at running it on twenty per cent.

Close some apps.

Turn the brightness down.

Use it carefully.

Make it last.

Useful skills.

But at some point, plugging the thing in helps.

We're not machines, and human capacity is obviously more complicated than a phone battery.

But the principle helped me.

I could become better at managing low capacity.

And I also needed to become better at supporting recovery.

That meant noticing something else too.

Sometimes I was waiting for permission to rest.

Once everything was done.

Once everybody else was okay.

Once the house was sorted.

Once work was finished.

Once I'd earned it.

The problem with that arrangement is that life rarely reaches a point where absolutely everything is finished.

There is always something else you could do.

So recovery has to become something we're willing to make room for while life is still happening.

And I know that can feel uncomfortable.

Especially if you're used to being productive.

Or needed.

Or responsible.

You might sit down and immediately hear:

I should be doing something.

But that thought doesn't necessarily mean you need to get up.

Sometimes it simply tells you how accustomed you've become to doing.

And this is where we can begin practising something different.

Not forcing relaxation.

Not demanding that you suddenly become someone who meditates peacefully for forty-five minutes every morning.

Just creating little signals of slowing down.

Sometimes through the body.

A longer exhale.

Dropping your shoulders.

Unclenching your jaw.

Gentle movement.

Stretching.

Walking.

Sometimes through your environment.

Lowering stimulation.

Putting the phone away.

Going somewhere quieter.

Getting outside.

Sometimes through the mind.

Writing down what you're trying to remember so you don't have to keep rehearsing it.

Telling yourself:

I don't need to solve that tonight.

Bringing your attention back from tomorrow to what is actually happening now.

And sometimes through connection.

Talking.

Laughing.

Being with somebody around whom you don't feel as though you need to perform, manage or hold everything together.

There isn't one correct regulation tool.

And different things may help at different times.

Sometimes I need movement.

Sometimes quiet.

Sometimes breathing.

Sometimes distraction is actually useful.

Sometimes I need to talk.

Sometimes I absolutely do not want anybody talking to me.

The skill is gradually learning:

What helps my system soften?

And:

What looks like rest but actually keeps me activated?

That's a useful distinction too.

Because sometimes we reach for something because it feels like switching off, but afterwards we don't actually feel restored.

An hour of scrolling might distract me.

That doesn't necessarily mean I've recovered.

Hours of overthinking while lying in bed certainly isn't rest simply because I'm horizontal.

And again, we're not trying to make rules about what you should and shouldn't do.

We're observing effects.

Does this leave me feeling more settled?

More present?

More supported?

Or am I still carrying exactly the same level of activation afterwards?

That information helps.

Because the goal isn't to become brilliant at relaxation.

It's to become better at recognising what supports recovery for you.

And this connects directly to the regain pattern.

If part of your capacity has continually been used staying prepared, solving, worrying, reacting or trying to hold everything together, creating recovery gives some of that capacity somewhere to return.

Not so you can immediately spend every recovered ounce on being “good” at weight loss.

But so your life isn't continually running at the edge of what you have available.

Because the more stretched we become, the harder it can be to pause.

Think.

Plan.

Adapt.

Regulate emotion.

And make choices from somewhere other than:

I just need the easiest possible thing right now.

Sometimes the easiest thing will still be exactly what you choose.

That's fine.

We're not trying to eliminate convenience or comfort.

We're trying to reduce the number of times our choices are being made from complete depletion.

And that's a very different goal.

So I want to give you a simple practice for this.

Not something you only use when you're overwhelmed.

Something you can also use when you're okay.

Because one of the most useful things we can do is stop waiting until the nervous system is shouting before we offer it any support.

Self-Led Practice:

The Recovery Check-In

At some point during your day, pause for a moment.

You don't need a particular time.

You don't need to set up a perfect environment.

Just stop long enough to ask:

What state am I in right now?

Maybe you feel calm.

Maybe you're slightly tense.

Maybe your mind is busy.

Maybe you're irritated.

Maybe you're exhausted.

Maybe you realise you've been rushing for hours.

Don't judge the answer.

Just notice it.

Then check your body.

Your jaw.

Your shoulders.

Your chest.

Your stomach.

Your breathing.

Are you holding tension anywhere?

Again, you don't need to fix it.

Notice first.

Then ask:

Do I need more activation or more recovery right now?

Because regulation doesn't always mean calming down.

Sometimes you're flat, tired or stuck and movement might help.

Sometimes you're highly activated and slowing down may be more supportive.

Listen to what your current state is actually asking for.

If you need recovery, ask:

What is the smallest thing I could do right now that might help my system soften?

A few slower breaths.

Two minutes outside.

Stretching.

Making a drink and actually sitting down to drink it.

Putting your phone away.

Walking.

Closing your eyes for a moment.

Writing something down so your brain can stop holding it.

Music.

Quiet.

Connection.

Whatever feels appropriate.

Then give yourself that moment without requiring it to completely change how you feel.

You aren't trying to achieve calm.

You're giving your system an experience of support.

And afterwards, simply notice:

Do I feel any different?

Maybe you feel significantly calmer.

Maybe only slightly.

Maybe not at all.

That's okay.

We're learning what works for you.

And if you begin doing this occasionally through the day, you may start recognising your state earlier.

Before the tension becomes overwhelm.

Before tired becomes completely depleted.

Before:

I've got loads to do.

becomes:

I can't deal with any of it.

That's where this becomes preventative.

We're creating recovery before we desperately need it.

And over time, those small moments can begin challenging an old pattern.

The pattern that says:

Keep going until everything is done.

And replacing it with something much more sustainable:

I can keep going and still allow myself to recover along the way.

Because that's what we need for real life.

Not a nervous system that never becomes stressed.

A nervous system that is given opportunities to come back.

And the more familiar that becomes, the less high alert has to feel like the only state you know.

Recognising Your Protective Patterns

Once I started understanding the nervous system, something else began making much more sense.

Why stress didn't always make me behave in the same way.

Sometimes pressure made me want to take control of everything.

Sometimes it made me ridiculously busy.

Sometimes I wanted to avoid everything.

Sometimes I would procrastinate even though I knew perfectly well what needed doing.

And sometimes I found myself putting everybody else's needs ahead of my own, then wondering why I had nothing left.

Those responses can look completely different from one another.

But they can all be ways our system tries to protect us when something feels difficult, uncertain, overwhelming or unsafe.

And this matters to the regain pattern because every protective response can affect capacity differently.

It can also affect the behaviours we're trying to sustain.

So I want to look at the four responses we've already briefly introduced in a little more depth.

Not so you can decide:

Right, I'm a freeze person.

Or:

I'm definitely fawn.

We're far more complicated than that.

You may recognise several.

You may respond differently depending on the situation.

And you may recognise some of these strongly and others hardly at all.

We're not putting ourselves into boxes.

We're looking for patterns.

Fight Fight is the response most people probably recognise most easily.

Something feels threatening, frustrating or out of control and the system prepares to push back.

But fight doesn't necessarily mean physically fighting anybody.

In everyday life it can look like irritation.

Anger.

Defensiveness.

Snapping more easily.

Feeling as though everyone is getting on your nerves.

Or becoming intensely focused on getting control back.

And that last one can show up around weight loss too.

Something hasn't gone the way you wanted.

The scales haven't moved.

You've eaten differently from how you'd planned.

You've missed some exercise.

You feel as though things are slipping.

So you tighten everything.

More rules.

More restriction.

More control.

Right. That's it.

No more messing around.

I'm getting strict again.

For me, that could feel incredibly productive.

I was taking action.

I was fixing the problem.

But sometimes I wasn't responding from calm reflection.

I was reacting to the discomfort of feeling out of control.

And when control becomes the response to stress, the approach we create can demand even more capacity from us.

Now there are more rules to follow.

More things to monitor.

More opportunities to feel as though we've failed.

And more pressure inside an already pressured system.

So if you recognise fight, the question isn't:

How do I stop getting angry?

It might be:

What am I trying to regain control of right now?

And:

Does this actually need controlling, or do I need support while I tolerate some uncertainty?

That's very different.

Flight Flight can be much harder to recognise because it can look incredibly productive.

Keep moving.

Keep doing.

Keep fixing.

Stay busy.

Work harder.

Think more.

Find another answer.

Make another plan.

Research another approach.

Start another project.

If I keep moving, perhaps I won't have to sit with whatever feels uncomfortable underneath it.

And I recognise this one very well.

There have been times in my life when slowing down felt harder than continuing.

Because when you're doing something, you're occupied.

There's a direction.

There's something to solve.

But constant doing can quietly use an enormous amount of capacity.

Especially when the mind joins in.

Overthinking.

Replaying.

Planning.

Predicting.

Trying to work out every possible outcome.

Perfectionism can sit here too.

If I can get everything exactly right, perhaps nothing can go wrong.

And again, bring that back to weight loss.

Flight can look like continually searching for the next solution.

Another plan.

Another diet.

Another method.

Another thing you've discovered online that you're certain might finally be the answer.

Sometimes learning something new is useful.

Of course it is.

But sometimes searching itself becomes the pattern.

We're continually trying to escape the discomfort of not having everything solved yet.

And all of that thinking, doing and searching uses capacity.

So if you recognise flight, you might ask:

What am I trying to get away from by staying so busy?

Or simply:

What happens inside me when I stop?

That can be incredibly revealing.

Freeze Freeze is the one I think many women can judge themselves most harshly for.

Because freeze can look like doing nothing.

You know what needs doing.

You may genuinely want to do it.

And still feel completely unable to begin.

You sit there.

Put it off.

Scroll.

Avoid.

Think about starting.

Feel overwhelmed by starting.

Then judge yourself for not starting.

Maybe you've experienced it with everyday life.

The email you can't seem to answer.

The phone call you've been putting off.

The room that feels too overwhelming to tackle.

The decision you keep avoiding.

And maybe you've experienced it with weight loss too.

You know you wanted to shop differently.

You know you planned to walk.

You know there are foods you wanted to prepare.

You know what you said you'd do.

But you just can't seem to get yourself moving.

And then comes:

I'm so lazy.

Why can't I just get on with it?

Other people manage.

But sometimes what looks like lack of motivation can happen when the system feels overwhelmed.

Too many demands.

Too many decisions.

Too much pressure.

And instead of moving towards action, everything seems to stop.

That doesn't mean every time we procrastinate we're having a nervous-system response.

Sometimes we simply don't fancy doing something.

Again, we're looking for patterns.

But if you repeatedly find that the more overwhelmed you become, the less able you feel to begin anything, that's useful information.

Because piling more pressure onto freeze rarely makes the situation feel easier.

Come on.

Get a grip.

Stop being lazy.

You've wasted enough time already.

Now we're overwhelmed and being attacked by our own thoughts at the same time.

Not particularly helpful.

Sometimes freeze needs the opposite.

Make the thing smaller.

Remove decisions.

Choose one step.

Not:

I need to sort my eating out.

But:

I'm going to make lunch.

Not:

I need to get back into exercise.

But:

I'm going outside for ten minutes.

Not:

I need to sort my entire life out.

But:

What's the next thing?

Reducing the size of the demand can make action feel more available again.

Fawn And then there's fawn.

I think this one deserves particular attention because it can hide behind being a lovely person.

Caring.

Helpful.

Reliable.

Easy-going.

The person who doesn't want to cause trouble.

The person who says:

It's fine.

Even when it isn't particularly fine.

Fawn is about creating safety through keeping other people happy.

Avoiding conflict.

Seeking approval.

Making sure everybody else is okay.

Struggling to say no.

Putting other people's needs first.

And caring about other people isn't a problem.

I wouldn't want us to turn kindness into pathology.

The question is what it costs you.

Because there is a difference between:

I want to help.

and:

I don't feel able to say no.

A difference between:

Their feelings matter to me.

and:

I feel responsible for their feelings.

A difference between supporting somebody and continually abandoning yourself to keep everybody else comfortable.

And that can have an enormous capacity cost.

You've agreed to something you didn't have time for.

You don't want to disappoint somebody.

You avoid asking for help because you don't want to inconvenience anyone.

You take on more because it feels easier than dealing with somebody else's reaction if you don't.

You finally get a moment for yourself and then give it away because somebody else needs something.

Then perhaps at the end of the day, you're exhausted and wondering why the things you intended to do for yourself didn't happen.

Again.

And that can feed straight back into the regain story.

I never prioritise myself.

I can't stay consistent.

I always give up.

But perhaps there was more happening than that.

Perhaps your capacity was continually being given away before you ever got to the behaviour you're now judging.

And that gives us somewhere very different to look.

Boundaries.

Asking for help.

Allowing somebody to be mildly disappointed without immediately believing you've done something wrong.

Recognising that somebody else's need doesn't automatically become your responsibility.

And learning that looking after yourself doesn't require neglecting anybody else.

Sometimes it simply means you are finally included in the group of people you care for.

You Might Move Between Them One thing I don't want you to do after reading this is start monitoring yourself all day for signs of fight, flight, freeze and fawn.

That would be exhausting in itself.

These are simply useful ways of recognising what can happen when we're under pressure.

And you may move between them.

You might spend all week in flight.

Working.

Doing.

Solving.

Keeping yourself moving.

Then become completely overwhelmed and freeze.

Maybe you're usually someone who keeps the peace, then eventually reach the end of your capacity and snap.

Perhaps uncertainty makes you try to control everything in one situation and avoid everything in another.

Human behaviour isn't neat.

And that's okay.

The useful question isn't:

Which one am I?

It's:

What do I tend to do when I feel under pressure?

Because once we can recognise that, we can start responding earlier.

And once again, that matters to capacity.

Fight may consume capacity through conflict, control and internal tension.

Flight through constant thinking, doing and searching.

Freeze by making action feel harder when we're already overloaded.

Fawn by continually giving our time, energy and attention away.

Different responses.

Same important question:

What is this asking of me?

And then:

What might support me instead?

This is the part that changes the conversation.

Because previously I could look at these behaviours and turn them into personality judgements.

Controlling.

Obsessive.

Lazy.

Weak.

Too sensitive.

Can't say no.

But judgement didn't help me change anything.

Understanding the pattern did.

Not because understanding means accepting every behaviour forever.

It means we stop trying to change behaviour without understanding what is driving it.

And that's exactly what we've been doing throughout this transformation.

We're not only looking at what you do.

We're looking at the conditions from which you do it.

Because those conditions can affect capacity.

And capacity can affect how available your supportive behaviours feel.

Which means protective patterns can quietly become another part of a regain cycle without you ever realising they're connected to weight at all.

That's the important bit.

Nobody needs to teach you fight, flight, freeze and fawn so you can collect four new psychological labels.

You need to understand what they may look like in your actual life.

And what you can do when you recognise them.

Self-Led Practice:

What Do I Do Under Pressure?

Think about a recent period when you felt particularly stressed, overwhelmed or emotionally stretched.

Not necessarily the worst thing that's ever happened to you.

Just something recent enough that you can remember how you responded.

Then ask yourself:

What did I actually do when I felt under pressure?

Did I become more irritated or controlling?

Did I try to fix everything immediately?

Did I make stricter rules for myself?

Did I become incredibly busy?

Did I overthink?

Research?

Plan?

Keep moving?

Did I avoid things?

Procrastinate?

Feel stuck?

Know what needed doing but struggle to start?

Did I say yes when I wanted to say no?

Put somebody else first when I genuinely didn't have the capacity?

Avoid a boundary because you didn't want to upset somebody?

Don't worry about deciding which response it “belongs” to.

We're interested in you.

Now ask:

What did that response give me in the moment?

Maybe control made you feel safer.

Busyness stopped you thinking.

Avoidance gave you temporary relief.

People-pleasing reduced the chance of conflict.

There is usually a reason a response became useful.

Then ask:

What did it cost me afterwards?

Time?

Energy?

Mental space?

Sleep?

Resentment?

More pressure?

Less capacity for yourself?

And finally:

What could support me differently next time?

Maybe fight needs a pause before tightening the rules.

Maybe flight needs permission to stop solving.

Maybe freeze needs the next step made smaller.

Maybe fawn needs a boundary.

You don't need to change your entire stress response today.

We're simply adding another moment of choice.

Instead of:

This is just what I'm like.

We begin with:

This is something I sometimes do when I'm under pressure.

And then:

What would support me differently?

That's the shift.

Not removing the system that learned to protect you.

Helping it discover that protection can take more than one form.

And sometimes the most protective thing you can do now is no longer the thing that protected you then.

When Your Capacity Changes, Your Plan Needs to Change Too

There was another mistake I made for years.

I expected myself to have the same capacity every day.

Same expectations.

Same standards.

Same plan.

Regardless of what else was happening in my life.

If I'd decided I was going to cook a particular meal, exercise, get my steps in or do something else that supported my weight loss, then that was what I expected myself to do.

It didn't really matter whether I'd slept brilliantly or barely slept at all.

Whether work was quiet or chaotic.

Whether I felt emotionally okay or had something going on that was taking up half of my mental bandwidth.

Whether I had plenty of time or was trying to squeeze twelve things into three hours.

The plan was the plan.

And if I couldn't follow it?

I thought the problem was me.

I need to be more disciplined.

I need to stop making excuses.

I need to be more consistent.

But my capacity wasn't consistent.

Because nobody's is.

And once I understood that, I realised something that now seems incredibly obvious.

If my available capacity changes, but the demands of my weight-loss approach don't, eventually there are going to be days when the plan asks for more than I have available.

That isn't an excuse.

It's maths.

And I think this is one of the places where traditional weight-loss thinking can become incredibly unforgiving.

We're often encouraged to create the ideal routine.

The meal plan.

The exercise schedule.

The shopping routine.

The food preparation.

The habits.

Then success becomes measured by how consistently we can repeat them.

But life doesn't consistently provide the same conditions.

Some weeks are relatively easy.

Others are chaos.

Sometimes you're sleeping well.

Sometimes you're not.

Sometimes work is manageable.

Sometimes it's relentless.

Sometimes your relationships feel supportive.

Sometimes something happens that takes up enormous emotional space.

You might be caring for somebody.

Supporting family or friends.

Dealing with financial pressure.

Moving house.

Going through a relationship change.

Starting a new job.

Grieving.

Managing appointments.

Trying to meet deadlines.

Or simply going through one of those periods where absolutely everything seems to happen at once.

And yet so many of us have been trying to follow a weight-loss approach designed as though none of that exists.

Then when our behaviour changes under pressure, we blame ourselves.

This was a huge shift for me.

Because I stopped asking:

How do I make myself follow the plan no matter what?

And started asking:

How can the plan adapt to the capacity I actually have?

That question changed everything.

Because sustainable doesn't mean:

I can do this when life is going well.

It means:

This has somewhere to go when life isn't.

The All-or-Nothing Capacity Trap

I used to have two versions of weight loss.

Doing it properly.

Or not doing it.

There wasn't much in between.

If I was doing it properly, I could be incredibly committed.

I'd plan.

Prepare.

Exercise.

Think ahead.

Make supportive choices.

Do everything I believed I was supposed to do.

But when life became harder and I couldn't maintain that version, I didn't naturally reduce the demand.

I dropped the whole thing.

And I know I'm not alone in that.

Maybe your usual plan is cooking from scratch.

Then you're exhausted one evening and don't have the capacity.

Instead of having an easier meal that still supports you, the thought becomes:

Stuff it. I'll start again tomorrow.

Maybe you normally exercise for an hour.

You only have twenty minutes.

So twenty minutes somehow feels pointless.

Maybe you've been following your eating plan perfectly.

Then you eat something you hadn't intended to.

And rather than that being one choice within an entire day, it becomes:

I've ruined it now.

That isn't just all-or-nothing thinking around food.

It can also be all-or-nothing thinking around capacity.

If I can't do my best version, there's no point doing a smaller version.

But the smaller version is often exactly what protects continuity.

And continuity matters enormously when we're trying to change a regain pattern.

Because the regain cycle has so often been built around extremes.

Fully on.

Fully off.

Strict.

Then nothing.

Trying incredibly hard.

Then feeling as though we've failed.

Starting.

Stopping.

Restarting.

What if there was somewhere else to go?

Not backwards.

Not off the plan.

Just down a gear.

Your Supportive Behaviours Can Have More Than One Version

This was something I had to learn.

A supportive behaviour doesn't have to look exactly the same every time for it to count.

Take food.

On a high-capacity day, maybe you genuinely enjoy cooking.

You've shopped.

You've got time.

You've got the mental space to think about what you want.

Great.

On a lower-capacity day, perhaps dinner is something incredibly simple.

Something from the freezer.

A ready-prepared option.

Something you can throw together in five minutes.

A sandwich and something on the side.

Whatever works for you.

The point isn't that one meal is nutritionally identical to another.

It's that your ability to support yourself hasn't disappeared simply because your capacity has changed.

Movement can work the same way.

Maybe your high-capacity version is going to the gym.

Your medium-capacity version is a walk.

Your low-capacity version might be five or ten minutes of movement.

And sometimes your lowest-capacity version is rest.

Because there will be days when rest is more supportive than forcing exercise into an exhausted body.

That's not failure either.

It's responding to what is actually happening.

And this is why I don't want you to turn capacity into another set of rules.

We're not creating:

I must do at least ten minutes.

That's just another rigid demand wearing different clothes.

We're creating options.

A way to ask:

What is available to me today?

Rather than:

Why can't I do what I could do yesterday?

Capacity-Aware Doesn't Mean Always Choosing the Easiest Option

This is important.

Because understanding capacity isn't about automatically lowering expectations every time something feels difficult.

Sometimes we have more available than we initially think.

Sometimes we don't feel like doing something and doing it anyway feels fantastic afterwards.

Sometimes the supportive choice genuinely is to push ourselves a little.

Capacity awareness isn't:

I don't fancy it, therefore I can't.

It's learning to distinguish between:

This requires effort.

and:

This is asking for resources I genuinely don't have available right now.

Those aren't always easy to tell apart.

And you won't always get it right.

Neither do I.

But the more you begin noticing your own patterns, the easier it becomes to recognise the difference.

You start noticing what depletion feels like for you.

What overwhelm feels like.

What avoidance feels like.

What ordinary reluctance feels like.

What genuine exhaustion feels like.

And instead of automatically responding with either:

Force yourself.

or:

Forget it.

you have another option.

Adapt.

That's the bit I had been missing.

The Minimum Isn't the Goal

I also want to make something very clear.

Your lower-capacity version isn't the new target.

If you can comfortably do more and want to do more, brilliant.

Do more.

We're not trying to make your life smaller.

We're making your approach flexible enough to survive your actual life.

That's different.

Think of it as gears.

You don't buy a car with several gears because you intend to spend your entire journey in first.

You have them because different conditions require different responses.

Your weight-loss approach can work like that too.

Sometimes you're cruising.

Sometimes you need to slow down.

Sometimes you're climbing a hill.

Sometimes you need to stop.

But none of those things means you've abandoned the journey.

And I think that distinction is incredibly important for women who have spent years believing every change in pace means they're slipping backwards.

It doesn't.

Sometimes changing pace is precisely how you keep going.

This Is Where Capacity Changes the Regain Pattern

This is the part I wish I'd understood years ago.

The problem wasn't simply that stressful periods happened.

Stressful periods are going to happen.

The problem was that my weight-loss approach often had nowhere for them to go.

It worked while I could meet its demands.

Then my capacity dropped.

The demands stayed the same.

My ability to meet them reduced.

I interpreted that as failure.

That created more stress, disappointment and self-criticism.

And eventually I disengaged.

Then, when I felt ready again, I restarted.

Usually with another demanding plan.

And the cycle began again.

No wonder I kept regaining.

I had been taught how to follow a weight-loss plan.

I hadn't been taught how to adapt one when my life changed.

And if something is supposed to become part of your life, it has to be able to change shape inside your life.

That's what we're building now.

Not the perfect version of you.

Not the version who always has enough time, energy, motivation and emotional bandwidth.

You.

On good days.

Busy days.

Stressful days.

Low-energy days.

Days when you feel completely on top of things.

And days when getting through the basics is enough.

Because all of those versions of you live your life.

So all of them need somewhere to exist within your transformation.

Self-Led Practice:

Build Your Capacity Gears

Choose one or two behaviours that currently support you.

It could be preparing meals.

Movement.

Shopping.

Planning.

Taking time to regulate.

Anything that regularly requires some of your capacity.

Now create three possible versions.

Higher Capacity

What does this look like when you have plenty available?

Maybe you cook something you enjoy.

Go to the gym.

Prepare food for the next few days.

Take a longer walk.

Whatever your version is.

Medium Capacity

What could the same area look like when life is busier?

Perhaps you simplify the meal.

Shorten the workout.

Buy some convenient foods.

Choose something that requires fewer decisions.

Lower Capacity

What could support you when you have very little available?

Something from the freezer.

A simple ready-made meal.

Five minutes outside.

Rest.

Asking somebody else to help.

Removing something from your list altogether.

There is no correct answer.

And these aren't rules you now have to follow.

You're simply creating options before you need them.

Because it's much easier to choose an easier version when you're overwhelmed if you've already decided that easier versions count.

Then the next time your capacity changes, instead of thinking:

I can't do this today.

Try asking:

Which version of this can I support today?

And if the answer genuinely is:

None of them. I need to rest.

Then that's information too.

The purpose isn't to keep squeezing weight loss into every last inch of available capacity.

It's to create a way of living that doesn't collapse every time capacity changes.

Because perhaps consistency was never supposed to mean doing the same thing every day.

Perhaps real consistency is staying connected to yourself even when what you're capable of doing changes.

And that is a very different way of moving forward.

When You're Carrying More Than Is Yours

Once I started thinking about capacity differently, I became much more interested in where mine was actually going.

Because sometimes the answer was obvious.

Work.

Responsibilities.

Poor sleep.

Stress.

Life.

But sometimes I was using enormous amounts of capacity on things I'd never really considered demands at all.

Other people's problems.

Other people's feelings.

Other people's expectations.

Things I'd agreed to when I didn't really want to.

Things I felt responsible for that weren't actually mine to fix.

Things I was doing because it felt easier to do them myself.

Things I was worrying about on somebody else's behalf.

And an absolutely enormous amount of thinking.

That last one matters.

Because mental load isn't only about how many things you physically do.

It's also everything you're carrying around in your head.

Remembering.

Planning.

Anticipating.

Checking.

Organising.

Following up.

Thinking ahead.

Making sure something doesn't get forgotten.

Making sure somebody else is okay.

Thinking about what needs doing tomorrow while you're doing what needs doing today.

You can be sitting perfectly still and carrying an enormous load.

And I think this is particularly easy to miss when you've become very good at carrying it.

You cope.

You manage.

You sort things out.

People rely on you.

You become the person who remembers.

The person who organises.

The person who thinks ahead.

The person who notices what needs doing before anybody else does.

And eventually you might not even question whether you should be carrying all of it.

You just do.

Until somebody asks you to add one more tiny thing and you want to scream.

Not because the thing they've asked is particularly unreasonable.

But because they can't see the forty-seven invisible things you're already holding.

I think a lot of women know that feeling.

And then, because we don't necessarily recognise everything we're carrying as a demand on capacity, we can judge ourselves for struggling with something that looks relatively small.

Why am I finding this so difficult?

Why can't I cope?

Why am I so irritable?

Why can't I get myself organised?

Sometimes the answer isn't that the thing in front of you is particularly difficult.

It's that it arrived when there wasn't much capacity left.

The Invisible Cost of Always Being Available

There was another part of this I had to become much more aware of too.

How available I made myself.

Because being available doesn't only mean physically doing things for people.

You can be emotionally available.

Mentally available.

Contactable.

Interruptible.

Ready to respond.

Ready to help.

Ready to solve.

Ready to rearrange yourself.

And if that's become normal, saying no can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.

Maybe you worry you'll upset somebody.

Maybe you don't want to appear selfish.

Maybe you think:

It'll only take me five minutes.

Maybe you're so used to being the reliable one that disappointing somebody feels completely out of character.

Maybe asking somebody else to do something feels harder than simply doing it yourself.

Or maybe you don't even consciously decide.

Someone asks.

You say yes.

And five minutes later you're thinking:

Why did I agree to that?

I have definitely done that.

And then I'd be irritated that I had too much to do.

As though somebody had broken into my diary and secretly put it there.

Sometimes they hadn't.

I'd put it there.

That was uncomfortable to acknowledge.

But also incredibly useful.

Because if everything affecting my capacity was always somebody else's fault, I didn't have much power to change it.

Sometimes I genuinely couldn't remove the demand.

But sometimes I could.

I just hadn't.

And that's where responsibility becomes empowering rather than blaming.

Not:

This is all my fault.

But:

Is there anything here I have some influence over?

Because if there is, that's good news.

Over-Responsibility Has a Capacity Cost

This is where I think over-responsibility deserves a closer look.

Because sometimes we don't simply take responsibility for our own part.

We take responsibility for the outcome.

For whether everybody is happy.

Whether something works.

Whether somebody is disappointed.

Whether someone remembers.

Whether they make a good decision.

Whether they follow through.

Whether the atmosphere is okay.

Whether there is conflict.

Whether everybody has what they need.

And that's an impossible job.

Because now your emotional state can become attached to things you don't completely control.

Someone else is unhappy.

You need to fix it.

Someone makes a choice you disagree with.

You worry about it.

Someone has a problem.

Your brain starts solving it before they've even asked you to.

Something might go wrong.

You begin mentally preparing for it.

And suddenly your mind is doing unpaid overtime for situations that aren't even yours.

That uses capacity.

And it can happen so automatically that you don't realise you're doing it.

This is where one question became incredibly useful for me:

Is this actually mine?

My problem?

My decision?

My responsibility?

My action to take?

Sometimes the answer is yes.

And then I deal with it.

Sometimes the answer is partly.

Maybe I have a role, but I'm not responsible for the entire outcome.

And sometimes the answer is:

No.

I care about it.

But it isn't mine to carry.

Those are two very different things.

And Then We Try to Find Capacity for Ourselves

Now bring all of this back to weight regain.

Because this is where the connection becomes important.

Imagine spending the day carrying your responsibilities, somebody else's problem, three things you've agreed to but didn't really have time for, a conversation you're replaying, tomorrow's mental to-do list and the emotional responsibility of keeping everybody around you okay.

Then evening arrives.

And now you're supposed to access the capacity to plan.

Cook.

Exercise.

Make considered choices.

Regulate your emotions.

Prepare for tomorrow.

And somehow do all of that consistently.

If you struggle, it's incredibly easy to conclude:

I never prioritise myself.

Maybe.

But I think we need to go one step further.

Why is there so little of you left by the time you get to yourself?

That's a much more useful question.

Because telling a woman to “prioritise herself” without looking at everything consuming her capacity doesn't necessarily help her do it.

She may already desperately want to.

The issue might be that she's reaching herself at the end of the queue with almost nothing left.

And if that's happening repeatedly, it isn't difficult to see how it can contribute to a regain pattern.

Not because boundaries cause weight gain.

Not because helping other people is bad for you.

But because sustainable behaviour requires some capacity.

And if your capacity is continually being spent elsewhere, the behaviours you're trying to sustain have to compete for what's left.

Once again, we're not looking at a failure of capability.

We're looking at the conditions surrounding it.

Sometimes Increasing Capacity Means Removing Something

This was another important shift for me.

When I first thought about increasing capacity, my instinct was to think about what I needed to add.

More relaxation.

More self-care.

More planning.

More regulation.

More helpful habits.

But sometimes increasing available capacity isn't about adding anything.

It's about removing something.

One unnecessary commitment.

One responsibility that can be shared.

One expectation you've placed on yourself.

One thing you're doing out of guilt.

One problem you've accidentally adopted from somebody else.

One standard that doesn't actually need to be that high.

One automatic yes that could have been a no.

One task somebody else is perfectly capable of doing.

And I love this because the last thing an overwhelmed woman needs is a twelve-step routine for becoming less overwhelmed.

Sometimes we don't need another thing to do.

We need fewer things requiring us.

That doesn't mean we can simply remove every source of stress from our lives.

Of course we can't.

There will always be responsibilities we choose to carry.

And responsibilities we don't get much choice about.

But the fact that we can't change everything doesn't mean we shouldn't look at anything.

That's another all-or-nothing trap.

We look for where we do have influence.

And sometimes freeing even a small amount of capacity changes how the rest of the day feels.

Self-Led Practice:

Is This Mine to Carry?

I want you to think about what you're currently carrying.

Not only what you're physically doing.

What you're mentally carrying too.

The things you're remembering.

Worrying about.

Planning.

Managing.

Anticipating.

Fixing.

The people you're trying to keep happy.

The things you've agreed to.

The things you feel responsible for.

You don't need to create a perfect list.

Just notice what comes to mind.

Then take each one and ask:

Is this actually mine to carry?

If it is, ask:

Does all of it need to be mine?

Could somebody help?

Could something be shared?

Could the standard change?

Could it be simplified?

Could it wait?

If it isn't yours, ask:

Why am I carrying it?

Maybe you care.

Maybe you're worried.

Maybe you don't trust somebody else to deal with it.

Maybe you want to prevent conflict.

Maybe saying no feels uncomfortable.

Maybe carrying it has simply become a habit.

You don't have to immediately drop everything you've identified.

We're building awareness first.

Then ask one final question:

What could I put down?

One thing.

Not your entire life.

One thing that doesn't need your capacity today.

Maybe that's saying no.

Maybe it's asking for help.

Maybe it's leaving something until tomorrow.

Maybe it's allowing somebody else to solve their own problem.

Maybe it's deciding that good enough really is good enough.

Maybe it's recognising:

I care about this, but I don't control it.

Then notice what happens.

Because sometimes protecting capacity isn't another practice you have to squeeze into your day.

Sometimes the practice is deciding that something else doesn't get to take that capacity in the first place.

And that isn't selfish.

It's recognising something we should probably have acknowledged much earlier.

You are a person within your own life too.

Your needs don't only become legitimate once everybody else's have been met.

And creating space for yourself isn't taking something away from everyone else.

Sometimes it's what allows you to keep showing up for the things and people that genuinely matter without continually disappearing from your own list.

The Cortisol Conversation

Stress Doesn't Have to Look Dramatic

When we think about stress, we often think about the big things.

Bereavement.

Financial difficulties.

Relationship problems.

Work pressure.

Illness.

Major life changes.

And of course those things can create enormous stress.

But stress doesn't always arrive as one huge event.

Sometimes it accumulates.

Poor sleep.

Constant worrying.

Overthinking.

Perfectionism.

People-pleasing.

Unrealistic expectations.

Emotional burdens.

Chronic overwhelm.

Never quite switching off.

Being permanently contactable.

Trying to keep everybody happy.

Trying to keep everything under control.

One thing on its own might not feel particularly significant.

But we're not only interested in each demand individually.

We're interested in the total load.

Because your body doesn't neatly categorise everything into:

Real stress.

Minor stress.

Not worth bothering about.

It responds to demand.

Pressure.

Challenge.

The need to adapt.

And this is another reason the idea of capacity became so important to me.

Because it gave me a way of understanding the cumulative effect of life.

One difficult conversation might be manageable.

One poor night's sleep might be manageable.

A busy day might be manageable.

Something going wrong might be manageable.

But put several of those things together and we're asking something very different of ourselves.

What Prolonged Stress Can Affect

This is where I want us to stay grounded.

Because I don't want to replace:

Everything is calories.

with:

Everything is cortisol.

Neither gives us the whole picture.

Prolonged stress can affect things that matter enormously when we're trying to look after ourselves.

Sleep.

Energy.

Mood.

Concentration.

Emotional resilience.

Recovery.

And you can probably already see where capacity comes in.

If you're sleeping badly, you may have less available the following day.

If you're mentally exhausted from worrying, that's capacity being used.

If your emotional resilience is lower, something you might normally handle quite easily can suddenly feel enormous.

If you're tired and overwhelmed, the ability to pause, plan, prepare and make considered decisions can feel harder.

And depending on the person, stress can affect appetite too.

Some people want to eat more when they're stressed.

Some crave particular foods.

Some lose their appetite completely.

Some barely think about food while the stressful situation is happening, then feel ravenous later.

We don't all respond in exactly the same way.

That's important.

We're not trying to give you another formula where:

Stress = cortisol = weight gain.

We're understanding that prolonged stress can change the internal conditions from which you're trying to maintain your behaviour.

That's much more useful.

Cortisol Isn't Secretly Sabotaging You

I really want to emphasise this.

Because women already have enough reasons to believe their bodies are working against them.

You don't need another one.

Your body isn't releasing cortisol because it's trying to sabotage your weight loss.

It's responding to demand.

That's its job.

And I think that distinction matters psychologically too.

Because once cortisol becomes something we're frightened of, we can start monitoring ourselves for stress.

I'm stressed.

My cortisol must be high.

That's why I'm struggling.

I need to get my cortisol down.

And suddenly nervous-system regulation becomes another thing to get right.

Another performance.

Another reason to panic when life gets difficult.

Which completely misses the point.

Regulation isn't about achieving some permanently calm state where nothing bothers you.

You're allowed to be stressed.

You're allowed to have difficult days.

You're allowed to worry.

You're allowed to get angry.

You're allowed to go through periods where life feels like a lot.

We're not trying to remove normal human emotion so that your body becomes acceptable for weight loss.

We're trying to support recovery.

That's different.

This Is Where Cortisol Connects to the Regain Pattern

This is the bit that matters for the journey we're on.

Not because cortisol secretly makes you regain weight.

But because prolonged stress can change the conditions in which you're trying to sustain the behaviours that supported your weight loss.

You may be sleeping less well.

Feeling more tired.

Carrying more mentally.

Finding it harder to pause.

Having less emotional resilience.

Recovering less effectively.

And suddenly the same behaviours can require more from a capacity that already has less available.

That's the connection.

Stress doesn't remove your capability.

It can affect the capacity you're trying to access it from.

And if you've never been taught to recognise that, the change in behaviour can be easy to misinterpret.

I've lost motivation.

I'm slipping.

I can't stay consistent.

I'm doing it again.

But perhaps the better question is:

What has changed in the conditions around me?

Because if stress has increased and recovery has reduced, your capacity may have changed before your behaviour did.

And that gives us somewhere useful to look.

Not:

How do I fix my cortisol?

But:

What is contributing to my overall stress load, and where could I support recovery?

That is much more practical.

And much less frightening.

Self-Led Practice:

What's Adding to My Stress Load?

Rather than trying to work out whether your cortisol is “high”, I want you to do something far more useful.

Look at the demands currently surrounding you.

Ask yourself:

What is creating stress in my life at the moment?

Start with the obvious things.

Work.

Money.

Relationships.

Health concerns.

Responsibilities.

Family.

Major life events.

Then look at the quieter things.

Poor sleep.

Overthinking.

Constant notifications.

Trying to remember everything.

Perfectionism.

People-pleasing.

A lack of downtime.

Always rushing.

Never really switching off.

Putting pressure on yourself.

Then look at what you've written and ask:

What can I change?

What can I reduce?

What can I get support with?

What can I approach differently?

What genuinely can't be changed right now?

That last category matters too.

Because sometimes the answer isn't to remove the stressor.

Sometimes the situation is simply hard.

And during those periods, supporting capacity may mean reducing unnecessary demands elsewhere.

Making things simpler.

Protecting recovery.

Asking for help.

Lowering expectations temporarily.

Giving yourself more room.

Then choose one thing.

Not ten.

One.

One unnecessary demand you could reduce.

One thing you could make easier.

One opportunity for recovery.

One expectation you could loosen.

One thing you could ask for help with.

Because we're not trying to “fix your cortisol.”

We're trying to create conditions that support you.

And that's a much more useful place to begin.

Where We Go Next

By now, I hope you're beginning to see emotional regulation differently.

Not as learning how to stay calm all the time, control every emotion or somehow become unaffected by the things happening in your life.

But as developing more ways to support yourself through what you feel.

To recognise when stress, overwhelm or difficult emotions are placing greater demands on your capacity.

To understand what's happening within your mind and nervous system.

And to have more ways to regulate, respond and create space before those feelings automatically determine what happens next.

But there's another part of our emotional wellbeing that became incredibly important for me to understand.

Because sometimes it isn't only what we're dealing with right now that's asking something of us.

Sometimes we're still carrying things that happened weeks, months or even years ago.

Hurt.

Grief.

Resentment.

Guilt.

Regret.

Worry.

Experiences we thought we'd moved on from, but which still seem to take up emotional space somewhere inside us.

For a long time, I never considered what any of that had to do with my capacity.

After all, some of it had happened years before.

And absolutely none of it appeared on any weight-loss plan I'd ever followed.

But once I started understanding how much our emotional lives can ask of us, I began to realise that it wasn't only the emotions I was experiencing in the moment that mattered.

What I was still carrying mattered too.

And that led me to one of the most important shifts I made in the way I understood myself.

Maybe I wasn't broken.

Maybe I was burdened.

And there's an enormous difference between the two.

That's what we're going to explore next.

CONTINUE TO EMOTIONAL WEIGHT

Welcome/Home Page

Core Area 1- Emotional Wellbeing Main Page