PODCAST · health
Before Dieting...
by Bronwyn Fletcher
Investigating Weight Regain Before You Try to Fix It.If you've spent years losing weight, regaining it, and wondering why the same pattern keeps repeating, this podcast is for you.Before Dieting is an investigative podcast from the Weighting for Happiness Project. Using women's experiences as a starting point, each episode investigates a different part of the weight ecosystem, revealing connections between seemingly unrelated experiences and the way we eat.Each episode replaces judgement with understanding, helping you see familiar experiences in a completely different way.The Weighting for Happiness Project is built on one simple distinction:Weight loss and weight regain are different problems.Many women have proved they can lose weight. The unanswered question is what keeps recreating the same pattern. Before Dieting exists to investigate that question. Whether you've tried countless diets or you're simply tired of blaming yourself, this podcast offers a different place to b
Episodes
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The Family Food Culture Behind Weight Regain
What happens when losing weight changes how you fit into your own family? For Carmela, food was at the heart of family life. After her father left, her mother brought her two daughters together through cooking, baking and generous meals. That closeness continued into adulthood, with Friday night...
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Kelli's Story: When Criticism Becomes Part of the Weight Regain Problem
What happens when losing weight becomes as much about stopping other people's criticism as changing your weight? Kelli had been dealing with weight criticism since childhood. At fifteen, she began dieting after a boy told her he would date her if she lost weight. Years later, after having two...
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Judith's story - Relief Eating vs Comfort Eating
Judith was good at dieting. An engineer by profession, she liked order, research and understanding how things worked. She could learn the rules of a diet and apply considerable discipline to following them. What she couldn't understand was why relief eating kept returning. From the outside, the...
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Melissa's Story - When chocolate is the Solution not the Problem.
In today’s episode, you’ll hear Melissa’s food story and the insight she gained from examining her long-term weight struggle, using the iceberg model. “Chocolate wasn’t and isn’t her problem; it is her solution. As a child it was the only comfort in a home that was never safe. And now as an adult...
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Weight Regain: The Frame We’re Using Is Too Small - Amy's Story
What does a thirteen-year-old secretly taking food from the pantry tell us about her eating? On its own, it seems easy to explain. But Amy’s story changes as more information comes into view. She remembers being constantly hungry. Her food was restricted from childhood. Her dinner was served on a...
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If You’re Only Looking at Your Last Diet, You’re Missing the Story
Karen described herself as a “great diet starter”. She had tried Weight Watchers twice, intermittent fasting, meal replacements and so many other diets she could no longer remember their names. More recently, she had stopped eating breakfast, hoping that removing a meal would make losing weight...
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Weight Regain: Looking Beyond Calories and Willpower
For the next eight episodes of Before Dieting, Bronwyn is taking a closer look at women’s experiences of eating and repeated weight regain, using stories women have shared with her over the years. These are the parts of women’s food and weight stories that rarely make it into conversations about...
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SMART Goals and Weight Regain
Weight goals can look remarkably clear. Lose ten kilos. Get back to 70 kilos. Fit into a particular clothing size. Free download: Weight Goal Worksheet to discover your weight goals and how they work https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-goal-worksheet But a precise weight goal doesn’t...
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Repeated Weight Regain Is a Complex Problem
Repeated Weight Regain Is a Complex Problem Not all problems behave in the same way. Some are simple, some are complicated, and some are complex. The distinction matters because the type of problem determines the kind of solution that is likely to work. Repeated weight regain has the...
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Interview with Lanette Helene - Pilates and being in your body
Pilates, body awareness and getting back into your body Download the free instructional sheet here or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/Pilates What does it actually mean to be in your body? In this episode, I’m joined by experienced Pilates practitioner...
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When One Diet Leads to the Next
Weight-loss programs spend a lot of time telling us how to lose weight. Far less attention is given to what happens afterwards. The usual language is maintenance: you’ve lost the weight, now the job is to keep it off. But that framing can hide an important part of the picture. Your biology…
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The Questions Diets Never Ask
Show Notes: You can read the accompanying Blog here or copy and paste the Link below: Blog post for episode In Today's episode: Most women know how to investigate a diet. They can tell you how long it lasted, how...
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Weight regain and fear: Why looking more closely can feel so frightening
Weight regain and fear: Why looking more closely can feel so frightening If you've ever found yourself putting off looking more deeply at your weight regain, I don't think it's because you don't want to understand it. Most women I've spoken to have spent years searching for answers. They've read...
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Eight Different Reasons We Eat
Before Dieting... Episode 53 Why do we eat? It sounds like a simple question, but the answer is rarely straightforward. In this episode of Before Dieting, Bronwyn responds to a listener's question about the Eight Types of Eating. Rather than looking at eating as simply "good" or "bad," she...
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Kate’s Story: When Weight Regain Was Telling a Deeper story
When Weight Regain Returns You to Safety. Kate’s story and the pattern that food alone could not explain. Season 3 Episode 52. Kate knew how to lose weight. She had done it many times. What she could not explain was why reaching a lower weight left her feeling frightened, exposed and unprotected,...
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Before Dieting - Trailer - Why diets fail
Before Dieting... Most women who regain weight are not beginners. They have followed diets, changed their eating, lost weight and proved they can do it. But knowing how to lose weight and understanding why the weight keeps coming back are two different problems. Before Dieting is the podcast from...
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Why Diets Fail - Childhood Food Access and your Eating Blueprint.
Childhood Food Access: When you weren’t allowed to choose. Episode overview Most women assume that as adults they should know what ‘enough’ food looks like. But portion confidence, stopping cues, and self-trust don’t appear automatically. They’re built through early experiences of choice,...
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Why Diets Fail - Childhood Food Access and your Eating Blueprint.
Podcast Episode 50 - Show Notes The real drivers of weight gain start in childhood, long before dieting ever entered the picture. In this episode we explore Childhood Food Access. This is the autonomy you had (or didn’t have) to obtaining food outside regular meals, and how it shape lifelong...
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Eating systems explain a woman's weight regain - Moira's story
Ready to investigate your own blueprint? The Weight Ecosystem is the first diagnostic in the Weighting for Happiness Project. It steps back from food and helps you examine the wider conditions your weight and health sit within before moving on to the deeper patterns that shape eating. Click here…
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When Junk Food Isn’t the Problem: Sylvie’s weight regain food story
Resources for you in with this Podcast Download the Four Layers Model that explains Sylvie's story: Four Layers Infographic: or copy and paste https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/4-layers-behind-eating Begin identifying your own Blueprint; start with my first Diagnostic: ‘Understanding your...
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The Four Layers Behind Weight Regain
Diets tell you what to eat. Understanding the Four Layers Behind Eating explains why. 🔦 Download your free comprehensive Infographic, "The 4 Layers of Weight Regain" here https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/4-layers-of-eating 🔦You can read my Blog for this Podcast here...
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Definitions and Boundaries to solve recurring weight gain
The weight regain boundary problem The Weight Ecosystem link I reference in the episode that can start your weight regain solution. Today we look at: Why do weight regain explanations begin and end with calories? In this episode Bronwyn introduces one of the foundational ideas behind the…
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The Hidden Logic of Relief Eating
Why does relief eating feel so overpowering, secretive and difficult to interrupt? In this episode of Before Dieting, Bronwyn Fletcher explores relief eating through the lens of systems thinking. Instead of framing eating as a simple problem of willpower or self-control, this episode examines how...
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When Weight Regain Is Really About the Life You’re Living
Soraya spent years believing her weight problem was about food. Like many women with recurring weight regain, she became highly skilled at dieting, cycling between strict calorie restriction during the week and overeating on weekends. On the surface, the explanation seemed obvious: she lacked...
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Midlife weight gain: The Role of Trust in Weight Regain
Maggie’s story doesn’t start with food. It starts with trust. In this episode, you’ll hear how a lifetime of dieting and weight regain can sit on top of something far less visible; a loss of trust that began long before any diet was introduced. Maggie has built a highly controlled way of eating.…
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Weight regain isn’t solved with better eating habits
If you’ve been trying to fix your weight with better habits, this episode explains why that approach keeps failing. Last week, we introduced the idea that systems are not habits. This week, we go deeper. Because once you understand that your eating is a system, not a set of individual behaviours…
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Systems Are Not Habits: Why Weight Regain Keeps Happening
Understand your recurring weight by starting with Your Weight Ecosystem diagnostic. ✅ SHOW NOTES When women say ‘I just need better eating habits,’ it sounds logical. But what if that assumption is the problem? In this episode, Bronwyn challenges one of the most widely accepted ideas in weight...
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Body Fat and Weight Regain: What Your Eating System Is Really Doing
In this episode, Bronwyn challenges one of the most entrenched beliefs in weight loss: that body fat is simply the result of overeating. Instead, she introduces a systems thinking perspective that reframes body fat as functional. Not passive. Not accidental. But part of an eating system that may…
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Why Weight Keeps Coming Back: The Hidden Problem with Simple Stories
Most women can explain their weight problem in a sentence. ‘I’m an emotional eater.’ ‘I’ve got a sweet tooth.’ ‘I just need more discipline.’ These explanations feel true. But they’re often only telling part of the story. In this episode, we look at the difference between the facts of your weight...
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Childhood Food Agency: When you weren’t allowed to choose.
Childhood Food Agency: When you weren’t allowed to choose. Episode overview Most women assume that as adults they should know what ‘enough’ food looks like. But portion confidence, stopping cues, and self-trust don’t appear automatically. They’re built through early experiences of choice,...
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Why Diets Fail-Childhood Food Access and the Eating System.
Podcast Episode 37 - Show Notes The real drivers of weight gain start in childhood, long before dieting ever entered the picture. In this episode we explore Childhood Food Access. This is the autonomy you had (or didn’t have) to obtaining food outside regular meals, and how it shape lifelong...
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How Childhood Food Rules Drive Weight Regain
How Childhood Food Rules Drive Weight Regain ✅ Katherine wasn’t allowed to eat between meals. ✅ Fiona wasn’t allowed to ask for food at all. ✅ Different families. ✅ Different rules. ✅ Same result - both girls lived with hunger, and both learned to solve it in secret. In this episode I explain how...
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Why Nicole Eats Chocolate at Night, The Eating System Behind Weight Regain
Nicole starts her day with a green smoothie and ends it eating chocolate bars she hides in the laundry cupboard. She wants to lose weight, she knows what to eat, and she follows the same plan every weekday. So, why does she keep repeating this pattern? In this episode, Bronwyn explains how weight...
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Why Being Good at Dieting Doesn’t Stop Weight Regain - Lia’s Story
Why Being Good at Dieting Doesn’t Stop Weight Regain - Lia’s Story In this episode of Before Dieting, I explore a question that perplexes most women: If I lose weight, how do I stop it coming back? Through Lia’s story, I explain how weight regain often has far less to do with willpower and far…
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Food Story vs Eating System: The Real Root Cause of Weight Regain
In this first episode of a ten-part series, I unpack the food story and eating system of Donna, a woman in her late forties who has struggled with weight regain for decades. Donna knows how to lose weight. She has done it repeatedly. Weight Watchers. Keto. Calorie-controlled meals. Even 400...
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What causes weight regain
In this episode, I set the container for the next ten stories. Ten women between 40 and 60. ✔️ Multiple rounds of weight regain. ✔️ No eating disorders. ✔️ No dramatic pathology. ✔️ No extreme cases. Just the repeating pattern. ✔️They have all dieted. ✔️ They understand healthy eating. ✔️They…
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Systems Thinking vs Therapy
Systems Thinking Isn’t Therapy; It’s the Diagnostic Layer to solving weight regain When weight keeps returning, the default assumption is often psychological. That the problem is low willpower or self-sabotage. But what if the issue isn’t purely emotional? In this episode, I explain the…
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Listener Questions on Access, Agency, and Shame
The last three episodes on childhood food access, agency, and Alison’s story prompted a strong response. Many of the questions that came in weren’t about definitions. They were about recognition. In this episode, Bronwyn responds to those questions and stays with what Alison’s story brought up…
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Allison's Story - What happens when food Access and Agency are missing
Alison’s story traces how a tightly controlled childhood around food quietly evolved into adult weight gain, dieting, and a powerful shame system and how understanding that story changed everything. Through her experience, we see why “you eat what you’re given” can turn into years of fighting…
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Childhood Food Agency: When you weren’t allowed to choose.
Most women assume that as adults they should know what ‘enough’ food looks like. But portion confidence, stopping cues, and self-trust don’t appear automatically. They’re built through early experiences of choice, permission, and authority at the table. In this episode we explore Agency: who...
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Childhood Food Access: When you weren’t allowed to eat.
The real drivers of weight gain start in childhood, long before dieting ever entered the picture. In this episode we explore Childhood Food Access. This is the autonomy you had (or didn’t have) to obtaining food outside regular meals, and how it shapes lifelong patterns like urgency eating,...
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The 8 types of eating and their impact on your weight
Most women with a long history of dieting and weight regain end up trapped in binary thinking: good food vs bad food, dieting vs overeating. It’s simple, but it’s also the reason the cycle keeps repeating. In this episode, I introduce a systems-thinking model that breaks the binary: the Eight…
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What diets won't solve
Summary: In this episode, you’ll meet Amy, a woman who’s spent over half her life trying to lose weight. Using systems thinking, we explore how her relationship with food was shaped by childhood experiences, family dynamics, and unspoken rules about appetite and body size. From stolen snacks to...
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Emotional Literacy: The Second Essential Skill for Breaking the Weight-Regain Cycle
Emotional Literacy: The Second Essential Skill for Breaking the Weight-Regain Cycle that connects you with your body In this episode of Before Dieting, I continue with part two on the essential skills women need when they’re stuck in a repeating weight pattern. Last week’s episode explored the…
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The Bridge Between Insight and Change
When women struggle with recurring weight patterns, it’s rarely because they don’t know enough about weight loss. The real challenge is making sense of what’s happening behind the eating, the patterns, the rules, and the emotions that shape decisions long before food is involved. In today’s...
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The Four Stages of Change (And Why Fast Results Never Last)
✅ Most women think weight change is about discipline, motivation or the right diet plan. While these help, there’s more to it. In this week’s episode of Before Dieting, I answer a question from Michelle about the four stages of change in the Weighting for Happiness® Project and why permanent…
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Yo-yo dieting is not a failure of willpower
Yo-yo dieting explained - and it's not a failure of willpower I've included a resource links at the end of these notes that enables you to map out your dieting model. In this episode, I explore why diets so often begin with intense hope, fueled by marketing and outside influences. The classic…
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Relief Eating: The type of eating no one talks about
In this episode of Before Dieting, I answer a question from listener Karla about relief eating. An eating pattern many women have but almost no one is comfortable talking about. Relief eating is often mistaken for “bingeing”, but it’s something very different. You’ll learn how relief eating works...
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The weight of clothes
🎙️ The Weight of Clothes: What Your Wardrobe Reveals About Your Weight Story In this episode, I’m sharing an exercise I’ve done with many women, one that turned out to reveal far more than any of us expected. It’s called The Weight of Clothes, though really, it’s a wardrobe exercise. I’ll walk…
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Family Food Culture - Part 3 - Ingrid's story
🎧 Episode Overview In this episode of Before Dieting, I bring the concept of family food culture to life through one woman’s story. Ingrid’s lifelong struggle with weight wasn’t about willpower or discipline, it was about an invisible eating system that began in childhood and shaped her adult...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Investigating Weight Regain Before You Try to Fix It.If you've spent years losing weight, regaining it, and wondering why the same pattern keeps repeating, this podcast is for you.Before Dieting is an investigative podcast from the Weighting for Happiness Project. Using women's experiences as a starting point, each episode investigates a different part of the weight ecosystem, revealing connections between seemingly unrelated experiences and the way we eat.Each episode replaces judgement with understanding, helping you see familiar experiences in a completely different way.The Weighting for Happiness Project is built on one simple distinction:Weight loss and weight regain are different problems.Many women have proved they can lose weight. The unanswered question is what keeps recreating the same pattern. Before Dieting exists to investigate that question. Whether you've tried countless diets or you're simply tired of blaming yourself, this podcast offers a different place to b
HOSTED BY
Bronwyn Fletcher
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How many episodes does Before Dieting... have?
Before Dieting... currently has 65 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Before Dieting... about?
Investigating Weight Regain Before You Try to Fix It.If you've spent years losing weight, regaining it, and wondering why the same pattern keeps repeating, this podcast is for you.Before Dieting is an investigative podcast from the Weighting for Happiness Project. Using women's experiences as a...
How often does Before Dieting... release new episodes?
Before Dieting... has 65 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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You can listen to Before Dieting... on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
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Before Dieting... is created and hosted by Bronwyn Fletcher.
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