Ep. 229 Coping Skills to Overcome the Biggest Saboteurs of Midlife Weight Loss—and Decrease Anxiety & Stress

Do you keep setting weight-loss goals in midlife only to feel derailed by self-criticism, slipups, or emotional eating?
You’re not alone—these struggles are common in midlife and say nothing about your motivation or worth.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1.     How common internal saboteurs quietly undermine midlife weight loss

2.     Why shifting from pressure and perfection to a more compassionate, abundant mindset helps you stay consistent and resilient

3.     Practical coping skills that support midlife weight loss while also decreasing anxiety and stress along the way

🎧 Take 12 minutes to learn coping skills that help you overcome midlife weight-loss obstacles and feel calmer and more supported—you’re worth it.

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover coping skills to successfully deal with the most common saboteurs that derail midlife weight loss. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, the podcast where you and I tackle stress and anxiety in midlife so you can stop feeling like crap, feel more present at home, and thrive at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over 50,000 hours of therapy sessions and 32 years of teaching practical science-backed mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. This week we're looking at New Year's resolutions through the lens of the abundant life mindset. Not the good life mindset. The good life tells you to fix yourself fast, push harder. Chase your younger body, and measure your success by perfection. The abundant life tells you something very different. You're worthy now. Change is a process, not a race. Be patient. Use your midlife wisdom. Not pressure so you can make new habits stick. Yes. If you have lived this many years, why not really use Yes. If you have made it to midlife, why not cash in and all that you have learned so far? If you have made it to midlife, why not try? Hey, you're in midlife. Why not use the wisdom that you have earned whether you use medication? Before we begin, let me say something about the obvious Weight loss. Medications are all the rage today. Before we begin, let me address the obvious. We're living in an era of incredible. We're living in an era of weight loss medications. You might be thinking, I don't need this episode, but whether you use medication. Don't use medication or can't use medication. The abundant mindset still matters because no drug replaces emotional skills, nervous system regulation, or a compassionate and insightful relationship with food. So today we're continuing our conversation on weight loss. So today we're continuing the conversation on weight loss and midlife by looking at the four biggest obstacles that sabotage your progress and more importantly. And more importantly, the coping skills that help you move through them with clarity instead of shame or avoidance. In this episode, you'll discover why your Inner critic gets louder during weight loss and how abundant thinking softens it. How curiosity, not self-judgment, keeps you moving forward after slipups? Why slow, steady change works better in midlife and the science that proves it, and how to and how to navigate emotional eating using tools that calm your brain and your body. But before we, but before we. Before we begin, let's, before we begin in, before we begin, let's check in on how you did with Monday's Inner Challenge. Monday's Inner Challenge was simple and powerful. Choose one small eating behavior that supports your midlife body and track it for the next week. Examples included, eat a real life breakfast, drink water before coffee. Drink water early and often. Add a protein to breakfast and lunch. Reduce restaurant meals by one per week, or next time you're in the grocery or gas station, look at the or the next time you're in the grocery or gas station. Look at the food with new eyes. Notice how the system is built to get you to eat too much. Whatever you choose, put it somewhere visible. And the last part of the Inner Challenge was whatever you choose, put it somewhere visible, perhaps on a Post-it note. I know you don't want to track it, but please, you're in midlife. You know that what we keep track, you know that what we keep track of, we seldom lose. So don't lose your resolution to lose weight. Celebrate consistency, not perfection. So today we're gonna look at the four obstacles that sabotage weight loss and what to do instead. Obstacle number one, the Inner critic that says, you'll never stick with this. Why even try? I. This voice gets loud, fast. It shows up the minute change feels uncomfortable or slow. And here's the thing, there is truth in the critic's logic. If you're approaching weight loss through the good life mindset, if your expectation is. Lose weight fast. Reclaim your 25-year-old body, never slip up, push through until exhaustion, then yes, you won't stick with it because none of us can sustain that, but through the abundant. But using the abundant mindset, weight loss shifts from a sprint to a process, it becomes something you grow into, not something you force. And here's the most powerful way that I have ever come across, and here is a powerful and here is a po. And here's a powerful way to soften the critic While strengthening your confidence, try running a mental movie. Picture yourself turning down a second, helping or that extra slice of pizza or that bowl of ice cream. Close your eyes and run a movie. Of saying no to one of those things, you'll feel the resistance in your body. That little internal, Ugh. I don't wanna say no. Of course you'll feel it. That's normal. Now replay the movie again, but this time add one supportive detail. You see yourself saying no, and instead you get up. You make a, and instead you get up and make a cup of your favorite tea or you cuddle with your pet, or you go and sit somewhere cozy. Now run it one more time. You say no, you say no. You get tea, or you cuddle and you feel a small surge of pride. A moment that says, I can do this. Using the mental movie is one of the most effective ways to work with your Inner critic. You rehearse the version of a, you're basically rehearsing the version of yourself you want to become. So when the real moment arrives, your brain is already practiced success. The mental movie. The mental movie helps to tie your goals to worthiness, patience, curiosity, and compassion, so you can stick with the changes because you're working with yourself. This helps you stick with your changes because you're working with yourself, not against yourself. Let's move on to obstacle number two. You know that little voice inside of you that says, see, you blew it again. So why continue? This is the voice of the all or nothing good life, and it's ruthless. I want you now. Now try something different. Imagine saying those same words to someone you love. You wouldn't, you'd make room for the human. You'd make room for being human. You'd make room for the cookie or the slip. You'd make room for the cookie or the slip or the moment you forgot to track. The abundant mindset invites you to do the same. The abundant mindset invites you to do the same for yourself, one cookie, or even five. It doesn't end anything. It's just information, and this is where curiosity becomes your superpower instead of judging yourself. Ask what was going on with me that made eating feel necessary in that moment? Maybe you were tired, maybe stressed or angry, maybe lonely, maybe hungry because you skipped breakfast again. This type of Monday morning quarterback, this type of Monday morning quarterbacking is probably the unsung hero of not only football, but weight loss. It helps you. It helps you to understand the dynamics behind your behavior and explore what you can do differently. It's not shame, it's insight, and insight moves you forward. My own goal this year is to eat an afternoon snack. Ideally, pumpkin oats, ideally overnight. Oats, I. My own goal right now is to eat an afternoon snack because I need it, and I am terrible at remembering to do it. My plan was to bring overnight oats every day to work. That worked for three days, and then on the fourth day. I ran out of them my first thought, no oats, no snack, classic, all or nothing. But then I caught myself. That's the good life talking. So I grabbed a banana and a handful of almonds, not my favorite, not perfect, but enough to keep my blood sugar steady so I wouldn't walk through the front door, and so I wouldn't walk through the front door at the end of. But enough to keep my blood sugar steady so I wouldn't walk through my front door starving and binge at dinner. That's abundant thinking, not perfect, but protective. A small, supportive choice that moves your body toward calm instead of chaos. A small supportive choice that moves your body towards calm instead of chaos. Obstacle number three. Oh, this is so slow. Let's just forget it. This sabotaging thought comes up in every client I've worked with every single one. Face it. We live in a culture of quick fixes, but the abundant mindset honors something, patience, reality, and physiology. The science is clear. Slow weight loss is more sustainable, especially in midlife. I recently worked with someone who stepped on the scale after two weeks of steady, consistent effort and saw only one pound change. She felt defeated, but then she noticed something else. Her energy was better. Her sleep was steadier. Her mind was clearer and her afternoon cravings were quieter. The scale moved slowly, but her life was improving quickly. Slow wasn't failure. It was working. Why? Because your metabolism, your hormones, your stress load, and your responsibilities are not the same as when you were 25. Fast aggressive approaches overwhelm your nervous system. Gentle, steady change supports it. Abundance says, slow isn't failure. Slow is wisdom. And that leads me to our fourth obstacle. Food helps me deal with the stress. You know what it is? Food helps me deal with the stress of my life. This one is big and understandable. There's a reason emotional eating feels effective. Because it is the most fascinating, the most fascinating piece of trivia that I ever learned as a therapist was that digestion temporarily dampened, was that digestion temporarily dampens emotional intensity. Your body literally shifts resources towards the stomach and away from emotional processing. So yes, eating can make you feel less sad, less lonely, less overwhelmed. For about 10 minutes, but the long term, you never get what you truly need. This is where science meets coping skills. Most emotions peak and begin to settle within 90 seconds. If you don't feed them with more thoughts. No, especially if you don't feed them with more thoughts. So when stressor sadness hits and you feel the pull towards food. Pause, no notice and name. Tame and aim name. I'm anxious, I'm lonely. I'm overwhelmed. Naming it signals to brain that you're safe enough to notice. Tame use, breath, grounding, or gentle touch to help your nervous system settle. Ground your feet, put your, put your hands over your heart and just breathe or take a blanket and just feel its soft, coziness, and tame. Oh, no. Name, I'm anxious. I'm lonely. I'm overwhelmed. Naming it signals to the brain. You're safe enough to notice tame use, breath, grounding, or gentle touch to help your nervous system. Settle. Aim, ask. What do I actually need to do right now? A little movement, a glass of water, rest connection, set a boundary, or just take a calming time out. This is coping. Not numbing. This is abundant, not reactive. And if you want more support with emotional eating, revisit the episode six and seven. Where I go deeper into how, where I go deeper into these emotional regulation tools. And if you want more support with emotional eating, revisit the EPIs. And if you want more support with emotional eating, revisit episode six and seven, or episode 180 3 where we go deep, where I go deeper into how to use my emotional regulation tools. In this episode, you discovered why your Inner critic gets loud during weight loss, and how abundant thinking and a mental movie can soften it. Why Curiosity not judgment helps you recover after slipups. Why Slow, steady change works best in midlife and is backed by science and how to manage stress driven and how to manage stress driven eating using name. And how to manage and how to manage stress driven eating, using notice name, tame a name. Let's face it, one of the most challenging parts of our, let's face it, one of the most challenging parts of being alive today is really figuring out how to use food to fuel our body and to keep us well and healthy. I really don't know a person who doesn't have to really create an infrastructure. I don't really know anyone. I don't really know anyone in midlife that doesn't have to pay some attention to this very important coping skill. Remember, you are not alone. You are not behind. You're actually becoming. Thanks for listening.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 15:20

And I'll be back on Monday with more creating midlife calm.