Welcome to Lose For Life™
Midlife
INTRODUCTION
If you're here, I'm guessing this isn't the first time you've thought about losing weight.
It may not even be the first time you've successfully lost it.
Perhaps you've followed diets, joined slimming groups, changed the way you eat, exercised, tracked, planned, started again and promised yourself more than once that this time would be different.
And perhaps some of those things worked.
You lost weight.
Maybe you lost a significant amount of weight.
Maybe you proved to yourself more than once that you were capable of losing it.
But somewhere along the way, something changed.
Things that had felt easier became harder.
Behaviours you thought you'd left behind returned.
One difficult day became several.
You found yourself saying you'd get back to it tomorrow.
Or Monday.
Or after the weekend.
Or when life settled down.
And eventually, perhaps you found yourself needing to lose weight again.
But now, you've reached another stage of your life.
And perhaps some of the things you've experienced before don't feel quite the same anymore.
Maybe losing weight feels harder than it used to.
Maybe your appetite feels different.
Your sleep has changed.
Your energy isn't as predictable.
Stress seems to affect you differently.
Your body feels different.
Or perhaps behaviours you've struggled with before seem harder to manage or recover from than they once did.
You may have found yourself wondering whether it's your age.
Your hormones.
Perimenopause or menopause.
Your metabolism.
Your lifestyle.
Or whether you're simply finding it harder to do the things you used to be able to do.
And when you already have a history of losing weight and regaining it, that can leave you with a whole new set of questions.
I knew the experience of losing and regaining weight incredibly well long before I reached this stage of my own life.
For years, every time I regained weight, I treated it as another weight-loss problem.
I thought I needed more discipline.
More motivation.
A better mindset.
More consistency.
Maybe I needed a different diet, a different plan or simply another fresh start.
So that was where I kept returning.
Back to losing weight.
Back to what I should eat.
Back to what I shouldn't eat.
Back to exercise.
Back to trying harder.
Back to promising myself that this time I would stick to it.
And for a long time, I never really questioned why I kept finding myself there.
I just assumed the answer was that I hadn't done it well enough the time before.
Reaching midlife doesn't erase that history.
But it can add another layer to the questions you're already asking about it.
And that's why Lose For Life begins differently.
Not because the physical principles involved in losing weight don't matter.
They do.
We aren't going to pretend otherwise.
And not because every change you experience in midlife can or should be explained by hormones.
It can't.
But I don't want to begin this transformation by simply giving you another set of instructions and asking you to follow them.
Especially if you've spent years knowing many of those instructions already.
I want us to begin somewhere else.
With understanding.
Because before we can meaningfully change something, I believe we need to understand what we're actually trying to change.
And that means that before we look forward, I'm going to ask you to look back.
Not only at what's happening now.
But at the history that brought you here.
Not so that we can dwell on everything that went wrong.
And not so that we can pick apart every decision you've ever made around food or weight.
We're going to look back because your history contains information.
There may be things you've experienced repeatedly without ever recognising their significance.
There may be questions you've spent years answering in one particular way.
There may be things you've interpreted as evidence about who you are or what you're capable of.
And there may now be changes in your life, body or circumstances that have added another layer to experiences that were already there.
I know that was true for me.
And when I finally started looking at my own history differently, I began seeing things I had overlooked for years.
That understanding became the foundation for everything I changed afterwards.
So before I ask you to change anything, that's where I want us to begin.
This Is a Transformation You Participate In
Lose For Life has been designed as more than something you simply read.
It is a guided transformation combining reading, reflection, practical work and guided experiences.
There will be things I want you to read slowly.
Things I want you to think about.
Questions I want you to consider.
Ideas you may want to return to later.
Sometimes you'll be reading.
Sometimes you'll be reflecting.
Sometimes you'll be writing.
Sometimes you'll be practising something in your everyday life.
And sometimes I want you to be able to stop reading completely, stop trying to remember what you're supposed to do next and simply listen while I guide you.
That's why Lose For Life includes both self-led and guided experiences as part of the transformation.
They aren't bonuses or extras.
They're part of how Lose For Life has been designed to be experienced.
I'll guide you through the journey as we go, so you won't need to work out what you're supposed to be doing or what comes next.
All I want you to do is move through it with me.
And that brings me to something I'd like you to have before we begin.
Your Lose For Life Notebook
I'd like you to keep a notebook with you throughout this transformation.
It doesn't need to be anything special.
If you love a beautiful new notebook and want an excuse to buy one, consider this your excuse.
If you've got an old notebook sitting in a drawer with six used pages and absolutely no idea what you originally bought it for, that will work too.
I'm not precious. Use whatever you'll actually use.
Because I'm not asking you to keep a notebook so I can give you pages and pages of homework.
I'm asking you to keep one because there will be moments throughout Lose For Life when something lands.
You recognise yourself in something.
You remember an experience you'd forgotten about.
You notice something you've been doing for years.
A question occurs to you.
Something suddenly makes sense.
Or you realise that something you've believed about yourself might deserve another look.
I want you to have somewhere to put those things.
There will also be times when I deliberately ask you to stop and reflect on your own experience.
Because although I'll be sharing plenty of mine throughout this transformation, Lose For Life isn't about learning my story.
My story helps me show you what I discovered.
Your story is where we discover what that means for you.
So use your notebook however it serves you.
Write pages if you need to.
Write three words if that's enough.
Make a mess.
Cross things out.
Come back later.
There is no prize for the neatest Lose For Life notebook.
And nobody is going to mark it.
This is your space to think, notice, question, explore and keep hold of the things you don't want to lose as we move through the transformation.
A Note About the Practices
Throughout Lose For Life, you'll also encounter different practices.
Some will be self-led.
I'll give you something specific to explore, questions to work through or a process to follow, and you'll take yourself through it.
Your notebook will often be useful here.
Other practices will be guided.
Those have a different purpose.
There are times when reading a set of instructions and then trying to remember them while you're doing the practice would get in the way of the experience itself.
So for those practices, I'll guide you.
You'll be able to stop reading, listen and follow along without needing to think about what comes next.
As we move further through Lose For Life, you'll also learn practical tools and ways of working with some of the things we uncover.
I'll introduce those when they're relevant.
You don't need to learn a whole system before you've even begun.
And you don't need to complete any practice perfectly.
There isn't a correct emotional response you're supposed to have.
There isn't a profound realisation you need to produce.
And you don't need to force something to feel meaningful simply because I've included it.
Sometimes something will land immediately.
Sometimes you may realise its significance later.
Sometimes a practice may show you something unexpected.
And sometimes it may simply give you ten minutes to stop and pay attention to something you usually move straight past.
The purpose isn't performance.
It's participation.
Because I don't only want you to intellectually understand the things we're going to explore together.
Where appropriate, I want to give you opportunities to work with them too.
You may also be someone who wants to understand more about a practice before you participate in it.
That's absolutely fine.
I've created a separate place where you can learn more about the different types of practices used throughout Lose For Life, what they are designed to support, the principles behind them and what you can expect when you encounter them.
Again, this is optional.
You don't need to understand the theory behind every practice before you take part, and I'll always explain what we're doing when we reach one.
But if you'd feel more comfortable knowing more before you participate, you can explore that here.
If You Like to Know the Why
There's something else I want you to know before we begin.
Lose For Life hasn't been built around one theory, one technique or one approach.
The transformation you're about to move through has been informed by behavioural science, neuroscience, behaviour-change and therapeutic approaches, alongside my professional training and experience and my own lived experience of losing weight, regaining it and eventually changing the things that had kept me stuck for years.
For this Midlife pathway, we'll also consider the changes and circumstances that can become relevant through midlife, including the years around perimenopause and menopause, where they matter to what we're exploring.
But I've made a deliberate choice about how I teach it.
I've written Lose For Life in human terms.
I don't believe you should need to understand the technical language behind behaviour, learning, emotion, habits, the nervous system or the changes that can happen through midlife before you can understand your own experience and begin working with it.
So throughout the transformation, I'll explain what you need to know in a way that helps you recognise it in your own life and understand why it matters to what we're doing.
You don't need to learn the science before you begin.
But I also know that some people love knowing what's happening underneath the surface.
You may want to understand more about the research and theory that have informed Lose For Life.
You may want to know why we're approaching something in a particular way.
You may want to explore more of the evidence around weight, behaviour and midlife.
Or you may simply be someone who likes to know, "Okay, but what's actually going on here?"
If that's you, I've created a separate place where you can explore the science and evidence behind Lose For Life in more depth.
It's completely optional.
You don't need to read it before beginning, and you won't be at a disadvantage if you don't.
I've deliberately built the understanding you need into the transformation itself.
But if knowing more about the science and evidence helps you feel informed about the process you're about to take part in, you can explore it here.
Move Through This at Your Own Pace
There is no prize for finishing Lose For Life quickly either.
This isn't something I want you racing through because you're desperate to get to the part where I finally tell you what to eat.
I promise we'll get there.
But there's a reason we're beginning where we are.
You may move through some sections quickly because they feel immediately familiar.
Others may make you stop.
You may want to sit with something for a while.
You may want to write about it.
You may want to come back to it the following day.
There may also be sections that don't feel particularly relevant to you.
That's okay.
This is your transformation.
You don't have to relate to every experience I describe for the overall understanding to be valuable.
And you don't need to recognise every experience commonly associated with midlife, perimenopause or menopause for this pathway to be relevant to you.
Occasionally, something that doesn't initially sound like you may still help you understand another part of your experience.
So I would encourage curiosity.
Not pressure.
You don't need to do Lose For Life perfectly.
In fact, as we continue, you'll understand why I don't want perfection to become the standard by which you judge how well you're doing here.
For now, just begin.
Your Lose For Life Journey
Lose For Life will take you through a series of stages.
I'm deliberately not going to tell you everything you're going to discover before you discover it.
There are things I want you to have the opportunity to recognise in your own experience before I give them a name.
So while you'll always be able to see where you are in the transformation and where you're going next, there are parts of the journey that we'll uncover together when the time is right.
You'll find the full contents for your Lose For Life transformation below.
[BUTTON: View Full Transformation Contents]
And we're going to begin with the part that everything else will build from.
Part One: Understanding
Part One has been designed as one continuous journey, with each section building on and leading into the next.
You'll find a navigation menu throughout, so if you want to return to a particular section later, you can easily find your way back to it.
But the first time through, I'd encourage you to begin at the beginning and allow the journey to unfold in order.
I'm deliberately not going to tell you exactly what you're going to discover.
You don't need the terminology yet.
You don't need to know what I'm looking for.
And I don't want to give you the answers and then ask you to find evidence for them.
I want you to have the opportunity to recognise your own experience first.
We're going to look at your weight-loss history.
Not only at what's happening now, but at what was happening before midlife too.
At what happened when things were going well.
At what happened when things became harder.
At some of the things that may have happened repeatedly.
At what else may have been going on in your life at the time.
At what may feel different now.
And at what you may have come to believe those experiences said about you.
I'll share my own history with you as we go.
Not because I expect yours to look like mine.
But because my own questions were where this work began.
And I'm going to use what I discovered through mine to help you begin investigating yours.
You don't need to arrive at Part One knowing what is connected to midlife and what isn't.
You don't need to work out whether something is your hormones, your age, your circumstances or something else.
And you don't need to prepare.
You just need your notebook and a willingness to look.
When you're ready, let's begin.