Topics: Weight Loss Journey, Healthy Lifestyle, How to Stop Yo Yo Dieting

Weight Loss Journey | Here’s why a healthy lifestyle is NOT about the numbers…

What if your weight never affected your confidence again?

Think about it…

even when we’ve made peace with our bodies, weight has a sneaky way of creeping back in—through Instagram scrolls, offhand comments, or that tireless voice in our head. And suddenly, you’re pulled back into the weight loss obsession you swore you’d left behind.

If you’ve ever felt stuck on the scale, guilty around food, or wondered how to stop yo-yo dieting, this one’s for you.

TIMESTAMPS

00:02 – Why Your Weight Loss Journey Keeps You Running Circles
06:45 – The Biggest Loser & What Actually Works Against You in Weight Loss
14:20 – How to Stop Yo-Yo Dieting & Boost Mindful Eating
22:05 – Building a Healthy Lifestyle Without Numbers or Shame Motivation
30:40 – Building Confidence the Non-Diet Way

Listen in and discover:

• Why shame never works for weight loss motivation: and how to rethink the way you talk about your body
• How to stop yo-yo dieting: by healing your relationship with food instead of cutting more calories or avoiding your favourite foods.
• Health without numbers: what it feels like to live in a body you care for—without letting the scale control your confidence.

Build a body image that empowers you, not punishes you.

🎧 Listen for a life where your worth is never measured in pounds or kilos. It starts now…

LISTEN TO NEXT
Episode: Your Body is NOT the Problem (ep #313)

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MORE ON THIS NON-DIET HEALTHY LIFESTYLE PODCAST EPISODE

“It is impossible to shame yourself into the body you want.”.” — Chardét Ryel

• Your Relationship with Food Matters – Freedom starts when you heal how you connect with food.
• Shame Doesn’t Work – Real change comes from compassion and positive reinforcement, not guilt.
• Health Without Numbers – True health is energy and balance, not the scale.
• Find Your Deeper Why – Lasting change comes when health is tied to meaning, not weight.
• Confidence Beyond the Scale – Your worth doesn’t rise or fall with a number.

What if your weight never touched your confidence again?

It’s a big question, I know. Because even when you’ve found some peace with your body, weight has this sneaky way of creeping back in. One quick scroll on Instagram. A comment from a friend or family member. A pair of jeans that suddenly fits differently. And suddenly, you’re back in that old loop—doubting yourself, calculating, judging, and wondering if you need to start yet another diet.

This cycle is exhausting. It’s also one of the biggest reasons so many women struggle to feel truly at home in their bodies.
But here’s the thing: health doesn’t live on the scale. And the pursuit of weight loss at all costs might actually be the very thing holding you back from a balanced, empowered, and healthy lifestyle.

The Problem With Shame in Your Weight Loss Journey

When you think about your own weight loss journey, how often has it been driven by guilt? By shaming yourself into a smaller body, into the punishing workout, into cutting food you actually enjoy?

For years, that was my reality. I thought if I was just strict enough, if I just held myself accountable with harsh words, I’d finally get the body I wanted. But it never worked for long.

Here’s the truth: It is impossible to shame yourself into the body you want.

Shame is one of the lowest motivators we have. It can push you for a short time, but it never leads to long-term change. Instead, it fuels anxiety, fear, and obsession—exactly the opposite of what you want when building a healthy relationship with your body.

The real transformation comes from positive reinforcement, from celebrating small wins, and from learning to connect with your body in empowering ways.

Why Weight Loss Keeps Failing Us

For decades, we’ve been told that losing weight should be the ultimate goal of health. Shows like The Biggest Loser made it seem like dramatic weight loss through extreme measures was not only possible but admirable.

But here’s the part no one wanted to talk about: many of the contestants gained all the weight back. And not because they weren’t disciplined enough—but because no one taught them how to relate to food, movement, and self-care in sustainable ways.

That’s the danger of focusing only on the weight loss journey. It keeps you trapped in numbers, chasing results that don’t stick, and measuring your success by something that can fluctuate daily.

The truth is, weight is not the whole picture of health. In fact, when it becomes the main focus, it overshadows the very habits that could actually make you feel strong, confident, and at ease in your body.

How to Stop Yo-Yo Dieting

So how do you step out of the cycle? How do you stop yo yo dieting when it feels like the only way you’ve ever known to manage your body?
It starts with this shift: your relationship with food matters more than the food itself.

If food is your only coping mechanism for stress, sadness, or boredom, no diet in the world will ever work for long. Restriction just makes the craving stronger. Shame just makes the spiral deeper.

But when you begin to see food as one of many ways to care for yourself, the cycle begins to loosen its grip. You realize that eating isn’t about control or punishment—it’s about nourishment, pleasure, and balance. And that’s where freedom lives.
Breaking free from yo-yo dieting doesn’t mean giving up on health. It means letting go of the quick fixes that keep you stuck and finding consistent, compassionate ways to support your body.

No Numbers – A True Healthy Lifestyle

Here’s something radical: The weight loss is a byproduct of the health journey—it is not the purpose.

Read that again.

When you focus on health—the kind that comes from movement you enjoy, food that fuels you, rest that restores you—your body naturally finds more balance. Sometimes that results in weight loss, sometimes it doesn’t. But either way, you feel stronger, calmer, more alive.

That’s what a healthy lifestyle is really about. Not the number on the scale. Not the size of your jeans. Not whether your body matches a narrow standard of beauty.

Health without numbers is possible. And when you experience it, you’ll never want to go back to obsessing over metrics that don’t define your worth.

Confidence Beyond the Scale

Imagine this: you gain a few pounds, or your body changes because life happens—and it doesn’t touch your confidence.

You still wear what you love. You still take up space. You still show up fully in your relationships, work, and dreams.

That’s the kind of confidence that comes from decoupling your self-worth from your weight. It’s the confidence that says: I am more than a number.

And it’s available to you. Not when you’ve reached some mythical “goal weight,” but right now—when you decide that your worth is measured by your strength, your joy, and the way you live your life.

The Bigger Why & An Invitation

One of the most important shifts I’ve seen in my own life, and in the lives of the women I coach, is connecting health to something deeper.
When people sustain change, it’s not because they were disciplined enough to count calories forever. It’s because they found a “why” that went beyond weight loss.

Maybe it’s the energy to play with your kids. Maybe it’s the confidence to step on a stage. Maybe it’s the joy of discovering a form of movement you actually love.

That deeper why is what keeps you going when life throws challenges your way. It’s what grounds you in resilience when old patterns threaten to creep back in. And it’s what makes health feel less like a burden and more like a gift.

Your weight doesn’t get to run the show anymore.

You deserve a healthy lifestyle that empowers you, not one that punishes you. You deserve to stop yo-yo dieting and finally step into a way of living that feels sustainable and free. And you deserve confidence that no scale can take away.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about freedom.

So let me leave you with this question: What would your life look like if your weight never touched your confidence again?

If you’re ready to explore these shifts more deeply, tune into the full episode of the Feel Good Nakd podcast, where I share the practices and stories behind each of these mindset changes. It’s not about chasing weight loss—it’s about reclaiming your power, your health, and your joy.

Full Transcript on Weight Loss Journey and Healthy Lifestyle with Chardét Ryel

Chardet Ryel (00:02)
Get ready to feel good naked. I’m your host, Sade, and if you’re here right now, it means that you are ready to strip away all the crap, all the rules holding you back from feeling good in your body, in your mind, and in your life. Let’s get into it.

It doesn’t matter how much confidence you start to feel in different areas of your life. The one thing that can often keep hitting you again and again that feels overwhelming is weight. And I wish that weren’t the case. I wish that I never had to talk about weight on this podcast again. However, I know that so many people listening of so many ages, so many of you are

constantly feeling this pressure, even when you feel like you’ve found that inner confidence or you feel like you’ve made peace with your body, it can keep coming up. It could be as simple as you see something on Instagram or it could be someone says something to you. And again, this issue of weight comes up, especially for women. It’s just nonstop. And maybe you’ve had a really stressful time. Maybe you’ve had a child.

Maybe you have had a work promotion or demotion. It doesn’t matter what it is. We are constantly brought back to weight. And so the goal in this episode is really to help you think about it differently. It’s not to tell you to not be healthy, just to get you to think about the way we see weight and how it hampers so much of our health. I know you don’t hear that often from the fitness world.

but it is just something I’ve seen again and again after 12 years coaching many, many women on how to find health in their lives. So let’s start. I’m going to share with you three different things that really shift for you when you start thinking about these. They are three things that will help you to come back to this idea of body acceptance, still pursuing health without obsessing about

The numbers, not an easy thing to do, I know. These are daily practices, but three things you can do that I have seen have worked again and again for so many other women. You might have seen that they have this Netflix documentary series on The Biggest Loser. Some of you will be too young to remember that, but it was basically a reality TV show where they had people who were on there to lose weight very quickly and quite frankly, quite…

unsustainably and dangerously. But that was the era of super stick thin. It was the era of body shaming. And it was really normal back then to have something like that, as much as I hate to say it, because you watch it 20 years later, whatever it is, and it’s horrible to see these scenes. But it brought in for me all the things that make weight gain happen more and make weight loss harder.

The first thing to think about is there is no amount, no amount of shaming that you can do to shift your body. Not in the long run. It is impossible for you to shame yourself into the body you want because you will always walk that precipice. Even if you think you get there, you will always walk that line of being terrified of losing it. When I was watching this

Documentary series the part that I remember really thinking is awful even watching this as a teenager back then was the yelling and the screaming the trainers Screaming at these people who really hadn’t been working out for who knows how long they’re just getting started back into it And they’re trying their best and they’re putting through Workouts that I am not even doing now as someone who has been a trainer

and they’re screaming at them and saying horrible, horrible things. There was one person who I remember she said to one of the participants, she was on the treadmill, this coach, and she goes, you need to do this. Think about your father who’s on the other treadmill, because it was one of the pair ones where you have mother, daughter, or couples. And she was saying, think of your dad. He’s going to die there if he doesn’t see that he’s inspired by you. That kind of shaming, that kind of hurt.

that makes someone break down and cry, that kind of military thing, maybe that works for going to war? That does not work for making you find any peace and ease in your body. It really astounded me some of this stuff because, for example, they had some winners on there who gained back all of the weight that they had lost, which was significant amount.

Now it’s not everybody, there’s hundreds of people who’ve gone through that show. I’m sure many of them maintain the results. You have to look a little bit deeper about why is that happening? And a huge part of it is this shaming. What do you do when no one is there to watch you around the food? What do you do when no one’s there to force you to do the exercise? You haven’t created any sort of

positive motivation to go do this stuff, which is a lot more powerful. Example here is recent one. I was on this retreat. It was a wellness retreat. I’m not going to go into too much detail because it was a very healing and private experience, I think. But what I realized from it is in preparation, they ask you to do a very simple diet.

The idea is that you’re almost like preparing yourself monk-like style for the experience. And so you do things like cut out processed food, cut out dairy, cut out meat, cut out salt, cut out sugar. It’s not for you to lose weight at all. That is not even close to the intention. It again is just preparing your body, so to speak, to be in a state of balance and calm before the retreat. And I would never have done this before.

Even as someone who I feel like I have a lot of willpower, but I never would have done this before. Even in my biggest diet days, I never ever would have cut all that stuff out. I just wouldn’t have done it. For the motivation of what? It makes me thinner? No. I like salt. I like some sugar. But I was prepared to do it for this and I did it for almost two weeks. And the reason was I knew that it would make my experience more fulfilling when it came to the retreat. That

positive motivator was much more than any sort of shaming, screaming, internal thoughts could have been for me. And so when you think about your health journey, not even your weight loss journey, because it is not weight loss journey, I almost think about it like this. And this is an amazing metaphor to help your amazing analogy. I started taking, you’re going to think she has a mind like, where is it going? I started taking singing lessons because I just, I wanted to…

be more in touch with my voice. It’s not to be a musician or anything like that. And when I went, the instructor told me something that really stuck with me and it relates so much to weight loss and health, which is this. She said, I’m not teaching you to sing. I am teaching you how to breathe better. And by a result of that, understanding how to use your breath from the diaphragm, moving breath, you will be able to sing. This is the exact same thing with

our health journey that we just forget about, which is the weight loss can and often does happen when you are learning how to focus on the health, which is all those habits that come with it from mindset to food to fitness. The weight loss is a byproduct of the health journey. It is not the main purpose. And we get that so opposite. We get it so opposite that we just chase

the weight loss and we focus so much on the small amount of pounds we’ve gained and we weigh ourselves every day, every week, in our bathroom or wherever you keep your scale. When the whole thing is not even for you to think about weight, it’s for you to think about health. And if you were doing that, things would shift for you. Now, I never promise that you’re going to get this dream body. I don’t even like the phrasing of dream body, as you know.

There’s in fact a series which I’ll connect in the show notes, which is all about intuitive fitness, nutrition, etc. I think that’s a great one to follow up on this afterwards. But I’m not suggesting that you do all this and immediately the dream body comes. Some of you might not even lose weight focusing on the house, but you are going to feel better in your body. And isn’t that the ultimate goal for the singing example? If she said to me,

we’re going to focus on your singing and I never really learned and understood how to breathe, then I would never be able to sing well. In fact, that was my biggest challenge in almost four decades of nearly 40. I have never been able to sing well because I haven’t been able to understand the breathing. Weird as a speaker, right? So it’s changed so much for me to understand that this is a lot deeper than what we chase.

And likewise, when you think about the deeper connection to what you’re doing, the shaming thing is not it. Shaming is one of the lowest forms of motivation for someone over the long term. It is one of the least effective ways to make any substantial shift in your life. So whether you are going to a trainer who’s shaming you every day, which please stop, or you’re shaming yourself, it is not going to take you where you want to go.

It is one of the least effective ways to find transformation. Think about this. Are you in an environment where you’re being shamed? Sometimes, you know, there’s some fitness classes where as much as we love them, there’s a lot of language that tears you down. And you have to think about, that have an impact on me? The other part of this is when you think about the way you speak to yourself,

How often are you using shaming things to motivate yourself to do the healthy habit? Whenever you’re making decisions from a place of shame, you are not making them from a place of power. That goes for everything in your life, from your relationships to your health. I tried the shame route for many years. I think I’ve told you here, I was pretty good at it. I was able to do seven years.

of shaming myself into being quote unquote healthy. Healthy, probably not. Thin, thinner, yes. But in those seven years, there was a lot of frustration. There was a lot of body hate and judgment. There was a lot of missing out on things that I wish I could go back and participate in, things like weddings, things like going out. There was a lot of confidence that I struggled with.

because I was so obsessed on body image instead of really noticing how powerful I was inside, how powerful you are inside. So yeah, I did seven years overall, but at what cost? The second thing to think about to really bring this in, remember I said I’d help you with three mindset shifts, all kind of influenced by this experience of going back and watching this crazy show that somehow had millions and millions of fans. The second thing is this.

You will find the most healthy results and the most transformation when you shift the way you relate to food. That is the biggest thing. I like to promote movement and exercise because it connects you to your body. However, it really is nutrition that makes the biggest difference, but it’s not enough to just go for the nutrition. it were, none of us would be struggling. The weight loss industry wouldn’t be one of the top performing in the world. It’s what’s underneath.

the nutrition. What is my relationship to food? Is it something that is my one and only comforting source? If I get sad, upset, angry, stressed, is it my only tool to go to? Sometimes it’s going to be one, sure, but is it my only one? It’s just like if you think about it in your life, you never want to have just one person that you are co-dependent on for everything. It’s not fair to them and it’s not fair to you.

The idea is that you’re able to have multiple ways to satisfy your emotional needs, including from yourself. It is the same way with how we relate to food. And when I watched this series that had a lot of cutbacks and flashes and clips from the original Biggest Loser, there were these horrific challenges, which back then horrified me. Now I just even, I almost wanted to fast forward.

where they would put these people who struggled with food in rooms filled with food and have temptation challenges where they would need to do things like move donuts around into a pyramid with their mouth. Not only is that disgusting to me from a standpoint of just basic humanity, making people into entertainment, it’s also, think about this, not only are you not addressing any of their relationship with food, you are making it worse. You are emphasizing

that they cannot have it, that it is bad, that they shouldn’t. And in no part of this series was there anyone, no psychologist, et cetera, to help them relate to food, to think about how do I respond to food? Because if you solve this one piece, you solve everything. Everything else becomes easier. And when I look back and I see the journey that I had, and I’ll often say when I was in my

I went to Brazil, I saw a different body type, wider thighs, hips, bum, like me, and it made me accept myself more. It’s not as if overnight I was healed. There were still moments where I would slip back into my eating disorder, which was orthorexia, being super restrictive into binging. And I remember one time where I was in new relationship and for our anniversary we had made

chocolates at home together. They needed to refrigerate overnight. And the next day I ate 20 of the 25. And it was hard as hell for me to stop at 20. And it was the case of I didn’t have the ability to stop myself. And at this time I was heavy into workouts still. I was still trying to get out of dieting.

And it was still the fact that I couldn’t understand how to relate to food because if I had understood that I would know the reason I did that is because I hadn’t been eating properly for two days and I was stressed and I had no other way to calm down. It was a survival impulse. But see, when you don’t know that, you can’t respond well. So thinking about for you, how are you relating to food? What does food solve for you?

If you can do that, you can start to find other ways. And I’m not saying it’s an overnight journey, especially for some of you that have struggled for a long time. I’m not saying that, but this is something that no dieting book will ever give you or tell you. And it is the most important thing for you to get out of the yo-yo dieting cycle. Relationship to food. Now, the third thing that comes to mind about really finding more

compassion for yourself and embracing health but not making it about all the numbers is figuring out what can be your more impactful closer connection to the healthy world. What is it? And I’ll give you more context here. So for example, when I looked at the stock you series and I saw the people who maintain their weight loss and the people who didn’t, something that stuck out for me quite well.

is not that the program was so efficient, not that the people who gained it back were failures, not at all, because I already told you two big things that were not covered in it that are really essential to health. What stuck out for me is the ones who were able to maintain, they had found a deeper connection to health and fitness. So they had, for example, one woman who became a runner, she really loved running. For her, that became the connection.

It wasn’t just about losing the weight. was about the feeling for the others. There was two sisters. They got to go around spreading a message to empower others. That became a huge thing they did traveling around the U.S. explaining, talking about this. That’s a deeper connection to health. So for you, the same thing goes. What is the deeper connection you can find?

It can start as simple as, what is the movement that I really love or think I would love? And going for that. It can deepen more into things like we always say this. Does it make you a more active parent? Does it make you a more energetic person? Does it make you feel better? These things are essential. This deeper connection to health, needs to be about

more because what happens is throughout your life and you’ve probably already saw this, you will have setbacks where you potentially will gain weight because life. When that happens, you have the choice to revert back to everything you said you wouldn’t do anymore dieting wise or to go into why am I interested in this health in the first place? What is the thing that I stopped doing that I need to go back to? What is the reason why I’m doing this? You can say it’s your why, but it’s more than that.

It’s finding that for you, these movements, this health is about more. For me, it’s strength. I want to be as strong as I possibly can be. I love being able to do things that so many women have been told they can’t. I mean, that’s true anyways, but especially in fitness, I love it. I love doing that. For me, that is the bigger thing, the empowerment feeling. And it’s not to say you’ll never feel upset when you feel like you’ve gained weight or something doesn’t fit anymore.

It’s just to say that your reason for doing it becomes so much bigger that these trivial things do not hold you back. They are small, tiny inconveniences. Imagine that feeling. Imagine if you did put on some weight and it didn’t affect your confidence. It didn’t affect the way you showed up. It didn’t stop you from continuing to be healthy or to get upset or guilty or run back to food again and again. Imagine that. So for you, what can that be?

What can that thing be? What is something that you want this for really? Because it’s not enough to say, just want to lose the weight. It’s not enough to shame yourself. It’s not enough to say, well, I just don’t want to feel like crap. Really think about more than this, bigger than this. What is beyond that? What is beyond that? And then you start to find a way to really bring yourself into more.

wellness and health and balance. And maybe for you that looks totally different than what I share, what I do, what you thought. But that’s okay. I hope when you hear these things, these ideas that one, shame is not the answer, it’s the lowest motivator on the totem pole. Two, you really need to shift the relationship with food to open the gate to everything else. And three, different reason.

why you value fitness and health. Something beyond just numbers, beyond just the way you look. What can that be for you? For some of you, you’re former athletes. That’s an amazing connection to look back into. What did you do then that you could do again? For some of you, you’re not active at all, but what’s something you’re intrigued by, something you want to try, something you want to do? I always think about Zumba and how it was so powerful and so successful.

because it allow people of all shapes and sizes to come into a room and just feel good. And there hadn’t been that many things like that. So what is it for you? Remember, if you wanna go a little bit deeper than this, you can listen to the series on intuitive fitness, intuitive nutrition. I will link it in the show notes. So you can just click on Spotify or Apple. You’ll see it in the description there in the episode. And it will start to give you more

action steps to take here. I know that you will find your way, especially if you listen all the way through here. You are committed to this and you can do it. Just open your mind to the idea that maybe it looks a little different. And I will see you in the next one.

Follow Feel Good Naked in your favorite listening app. And if you’ve enjoyed the lessons that you have found here, check out my book, Seven Steps to Feel Good Naked, Health and Body Confidence Without Dieting. I guide you through how to create gentle nutrition, movement that works for you, self-care you can do even when you’re busy. This is how you make a roadmap to health without all the struggle.

You can find a link to the book in the show notes or you can go to feelgoodnaked.com, Naked Without the E.