Before Dieting...

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, secrecy, and scarcity thinking. This isn’t about blame. It’s about understanding. Because you can’t change w...

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 Types of Eating . It’s not a diet. It’s a map that helps you see what’s really driving eating, especially...

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 over-catered freedom, Amy’s story shows why long-term weight issues are never just about food. What You’...

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 role of investigative journaling, how it slows you down, brings you back to yourself, and creates a spac...

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 episode, we look at how journal writing becomes the bridge between uncovering your Eating System and underst...

✅ 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 change doesn’t come from forcing behaviour. Women are trained to expect speed and short-term results. Bu...

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 Yo-yo dieting cycle.   Understand how your body's unconscious survival system interprets dietary restrict...

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 inside your Eating System, why it appears suddenly, why it feels automatic, and why it’s one of the b...

🎙️ 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 you through what other women discovered and how you can try it yourself. What You’ll Learn Why your ward...

🎧 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 relationship with food. Her story reveals why diets can’t address the root cause and how uncovering hidd...

In this episode, I explore the hidden lessons learned at family mealtimes. Across thousands of childhood meals, rules about eating, belonging, and control were silently taught and absorbed. Those rules still determine adult eating patterns today, often more powerfully than any diet. By revisiting your early food history, you can begin to see why willpower alone has never been enough and how reclai...

Episode Overview This episode explores how the rules of childhood food culture still shape eating today. Family food culture is more than mealtimes; it’s the unspoken rules, behaviours, and permissions that form the foundations of an eating system. Unless these rules are uncovered, diets can only ever be temporary fixes. Key Messages Family food culture is the invisible set of rules you absorbed a...

Most women measure weight ‘success’ with a single number on the bathroom scale. That single metric is narrow, punishing, and often misleading. In this episode, Bronwyn explains why a range of measures makes progress visible, why SMART goals often backfire in weight cycling, and how to set outcomes that actually match what you want in your life. You’ll hear some goals are imposed from outside (fami...

Questions can change your weight In this episode of Before Dieting , Bronwyn Fletcher explores how blame and shame hold you back from discovering the root cause of your recurring weight. Hear how the way out of this repeating weight cycle comes from the questions you ask. You’ll learn how: blame and shame shuts down inquiry insight comes from asking shame-free and counterintuitive questions asking...

🎧 Podcast Show Notes – Episode 1, Season 2 Title: Food Is Love: Carmela’s Story and the Hidden Systems Beneath Overeating Episode Description: Welcome to Season Two of Before Dieting . I’m your host, Bronwyn Fletcher, and this season we continue identifying the root causes of women’s recurring weight. Causes that diets alone can never fix. In today’s episode, we dive into Carmela’s story. A woman...

When it comes to weight loss, most advice stops at “eat less and move more.” But what if the real reason you can’t lose weight, or keep it off goes much deeper? In this episode of Before Dieting , Bronwyn Fletcher takes a closer look at the eating rules you absorbed in childhood and how they quietly shape your behaviour as an adult. From “finish everything on your plate” to “don’t be greedy,” thes...

🎙️ The Human Face of the Diet Hope and Abandonment Cycle Every time a new diet promises hope, women everywhere tell themselves this time will be different. But it rarely is. In this episode of Before Dieting , Bronwyn Fletcher puts a human face on the diet hope and abandonment cycle by sharing Francine’s raw, everyday story. From the optimism of day one, to the crushing self-talk of ‘failure,’ and...

🎧Weight is a puzzle to solve, not a problem to fix In today's episode, Bronwyn Fletcher helps us ditch the blame, step away from diet culture, and rethink what really causes recurring weight. Forget the old story that says being overweight is just about overeating and needs a simple diet fix. Bronwyn makes the case that diets aren’t one-size-fits-all, and if you’ve ever felt like a diet “failed,”...

✅ 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. Using an iceberg as a visual aid can help us see the hidden layers beneath complex challenges like weight loss. It shows why the obvious solutions of dieting and calorie-cutting, only work temporarily as they don’t address the root cause of exces...

Getting off the diet roller coaster Explore why diets so often begin with intense hope, fueled by marketing and outside influences. Understand how the body's unconscious survival system interprets dietary restriction as starvation, often overpowering conscious willpower and forcing diet abandonment. Learn why abandoning a diet isn't a failure, but instead a predictable outcome driven by biology. D...

Why you need more than a diet In this episode, Bronwyn shares the backstory of the Weighting for Happiness project and the journey she took to uncover what really sits beneath a persistent weight struggle. Drawing from over a thousand honest conversations with women, Bronwyn explains why quick fixes and diets never tell the whole story and introduces the three investigative programs she developed...

The Eight Types of Eating – Seeing the Whole Picture Show Notes Most people think eating comes in two forms, either overeating or dieting. In this episode of Before Dieting , Bronwyn Fletcher introduces the Eight Types of Eating, a framework that makes the invisible visible. From Functional to Relief eating, Bronwyn explains how each type plays a role in your food story, often operating under the...

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 over-catered freedom, Amy’s story shows why long-term weight issues are never just about food. What You’...

In this episode, we meet Karen, a woman determined to lose 20 kilos and desperate for the next ‘right’ diet. But when we mapped out her weight chart, she saw something she’d never noticed before, the connection between life events and the numbers on the scale. What looked like sabotage turned out to be survival. Her eating wasn’t a failure of willpower; it was a system at work. One that had kept h...

✅ Podcast Show Notes Episode Title: Appetite, Hunger and Hungering: Why Knowing the Difference Matters In this bite-sized episode, Bronwyn is joined by Lisa for a conversation that untangles three terms that are often used interchangeably but have very different meanings: hunger , appetite , and hungering . Together, they explore: How hunger is about the body’s need for food How appetite is about...