If you’ve ever felt like your body changed overnight after 40 and nothing seems to “work” anymore, you’re not alone. The truth is, it’s not your fault. In this episode, I’m exposing the five biggest lies the diet industry still wants you to believe and what really works for lasting health.

The $150 billion industry, with a 90% failure rate, has fed women with decades of misinformation that’s kept them trapped in diet culture. From believing that weight loss equals health to obsessing over calories and goal weights, I share why these outdated beliefs are keeping you stuck.

I also share real stories from clients who transformed their lives not through restriction, but by learning how to balance their blood sugar, rebuild trust with their bodies, and redefine what “working” truly means. If you’re tired of chasing diets that leave you feeling defeated, I will help you reclaim your health, confidence, and freedom.

Conclusion:

It’s time to stop believing the lies that diets sell us and start rewriting the rules of health. When you focus on thriving, not restricting, you’ll finally experience the energy, balance, and confidence you’ve been chasing for years. Remember: if you want something different, you’ve got to do something different.

In This Episode:

00:00 Introduction

03:51 #1 The diet works for me concept

07:11 #2 Focusing on weight loss, not health

10:17 #3 Tracking your food and calorie intake

16:35 #4 You need a goal weight to measure progress

20:52 #5 You need a meal plan

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Your kids are watching and copying your beliefs about nutrition, health, and weight loss. Join our community and learn how to teach kids blood sugar balance for long-term health.

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Other Related Episodes: 

Looking for more tips to optimize health without dietary restrictions? Listen to these episodes:

• Why Calorie Counting Is Actually Making You Gain Weight
• 7 Things That Make Women Overeat

Transcript: 

[00:00:00] Carrie Lupoli: You've been lied to for decades. Women over 40 have been fed the same tired advice about weight loss, and it's not only wrong, it's keeping you stuck. So in today's episode, I'm breaking down the five myths that diet industry still wants you to believe and what actually works when your hormones, metabolism, and mindset.

[00:00:18] Carrie Lupoli: Start to change.

[00:00:22] Carrie Lupoli: Okay, y'all. I am feeling a little salty today, and I had to, I had, I have to let it out. I did a live event last night and I was with hundreds and hundreds of women who were all talking about the same misguided beliefs that they have been told for decades. And when I asked these women, how long have you been dieting or obsessing about food in your body?

[00:00:52] Carrie Lupoli: The decades that people admitted to it was just so heartbreaking because it was [00:01:00] not just five, 10 years, which is bad enough. But 20, 30, 40 years. So the majority of the women that I was with were over 40, and I realized there are so many lies that women over 40 still believe about weight loss. And today I have to unpack five of them.

[00:01:22] Carrie Lupoli: I mean, I, I think I could say 50 to be honest with you, but. We're gonna talk about the top five that I am, just like I, I, I just am over it and I just need all of us to be over it as well because we're not doing ourselves any service. I was talking about a story around one of my clients named Jen, who, when she came to me, she was over 300 pounds.

[00:01:42] Carrie Lupoli: She was diabetic and she was in literally dieted around diabetes. She had been on every single diet known to man, including gastric bypass, and yet still there she was over 300 [00:02:00] pounds and. Most importantly, like weight gain and stubborn weight loss is a symptom. Is a symptom of something else going on, and we keep going after weight loss.

[00:02:13] Carrie Lupoli: We keep being told lies and a whole bunch of BS about weight that we. Are just so we're confused, but we, this is, this is the biggest piece about this. We continue to believe them because deep in our soul, we believe that the problem is us. And so the weight loss industry has us kind of the stronghold on us, and they can tell us anything they want and we keep believing them.

[00:02:46] Carrie Lupoli: Uh, when I did my TEDx in South Africa, I was, uh, really focused on the weight loss industry and in my research I was like, it's $150 billion a year industry projected to grow to a $300 billion a year, [00:03:00] one in just five years with a 90% failure rate. And I say that all the time because I'm like the 90% failure rate.

[00:03:08] Carrie Lupoli: It is so genius that they have us believing that we are the problem. And we keep going back for more. And so today I'm going to unpack five lies that women over 40 still believe about weight loss. And so let's just dig into it because I'm just, I'm, I'm feeling so inspired by these women's stories and I spent an hour and a half with them and I just.

[00:03:34] Carrie Lupoli: I'm in a place now where I'm like, I just need to, I need to consolidate. I actually went to bed last night just sort of writing some of my thoughts and I was like, I gotta record. I gotta record this today. I gotta do it. So I got my notebook that I took while I, that I wrote in while I was in bed last night, and so let's.

[00:03:50] Carrie Lupoli: Dig into this. So the first one is this concept of working. This is what I heard a ton of times yesterday. Well, the diet worked for me until [00:04:00] I hit a certain age or until I hit menopause, and then diets don't work anymore. She hit menopause. And so that's the first one we need to unpack because what I need us to recognize and really think about is what is our definition of working mean?

[00:04:14] Carrie Lupoli: What does it mean? Because I don't think we unpack, I don't think we go one layer deep. We just talk about it working. I actually saw a post recently of a nutrition coaching company, a really, really big one, that talked about results and guaranteeing. Results. Now I know I can guarantee results with my clients, but are we on the same page about re what results mean?

[00:04:39] Carrie Lupoli: Because just losing weight does not necessarily mean you're gonna fix all the other things that are actually the things we're struggling with. If weight gain is a symptom of health and hormones, then just losing weight. Is only getting rid of one of the symptoms. And so we need [00:05:00] to redefine what working means and, and let's be really clear diets, anything that has to do with restriction, I always say what thrives in a deficit?

[00:05:06] Carrie Lupoli: Diets work. They work exactly the way they're designed to work. You're restricting, you're depriving, you're putting, putting your body at a deficit in order to lose a little bit of weight. But I know plenty of skinny, unhealthy people. People with cancer that lose weight are not healthy, and so we have to stop associating something, working solely with weight loss.

[00:05:35] Carrie Lupoli: Now, weight loss is one of the byproducts of having your body truly in homeostasis, in imbalance, but if that's our definition of working well, then you could just go starve yourself. Literally, just go starve yourself. And, and that will work. But the reason why the diet industry, the weight loss industry, have a 90% failure rate is because it's designed to work for a short term, [00:06:00] quote unquote work, right?

[00:06:01] Carrie Lupoli: Designed to let you lose weight for a little bit. Make you feel excited. And the younger you are, the easier it is to do that. But every single time you're doing that, you're actually throwing off your hormones. You're throwing off your metabolism, you're throwing off your, uh, cellular function. You're throwing off your metabolic balance and, and function.

[00:06:18] Carrie Lupoli: It, I mean it, you're throwing off so many things. So it's not just, it's not menopause that's causes the problem. It's the years and years of cycling through this yo-yo process that is throwing your body so out of whack that now your hormones are so jacked up. Yes, you might be in menopause, but the hormonal imbalance has been caused by all the years of dieting, and that's one of the pieces of the puzzle that we just don't understand.

[00:06:44] Carrie Lupoli: So I need us to redefine what working means. And it is a myth to think that a diet works just because you lose weight. Diet works. It's based in science, but it's not designed for your body to thrive. So instead, we need to be thinking about what will allow me to [00:07:00] thrive. Thrive in my life, in my lifestyle, in my work, in my balance, in my stress, in every aspect of my life.

[00:07:10] Carrie Lupoli: Okay, number two. This sort of goes along with number one, but I have to have to say this because this is the biggest thing and when women work with me in my private practice, we have ways that we can work with people kind of at a larger scale. But for me to be able to work with women and my coaches directly, I have a private practice and, uh.

[00:07:33] Carrie Lupoli: Uh, we have, we do a phone call with a woman first because we gotta get, get a sense of where they are. If they're like, I have to lose weight to be confident, I have to lose weight for a wedding. I'm like, listen, if you're not willing to actually have a commitment to you, I mean, that's why I'm wearing a hat that you love yourself too much to not show up for yourself, to not learn how to show up for yourself, not how to learn, how to be the healthiest version of yourself that I, you're not ready [00:08:00] for me yet.

[00:08:00] Carrie Lupoli: You're just not, and I don't want you to come to me too soon before you're ready because it, it's not gonna stick. And then you're gonna feel like it didn't quote unquote work. So this second myth is around the concept of weight loss. Because focusing on weight does not mean you are focusing on health.

[00:08:21] Carrie Lupoli: And when I say to women, this is a, the, this is the question I'm gonna ask you. What do you want? Do you want weight loss or do you want health? Because with one, you'll get none with the other, you'll get both. Guaranteed because you've already done the weight loss thing. Jed, who I told you about, she was going after weight loss her whole life, and when she came to me, she could barely walk up the stairs.

[00:08:42] Carrie Lupoli: She was 300 pounds and diabetic. Now she goes to the gym every single morning at five o'clock. She is. Unbelievably fit and toned because she loves herself because she focused on becoming the healthiest version of herself, [00:09:00] and it becomes a natural byproduct when that is happening. So the myth that we should focus on weight is one that women over 40 just keep going after.

[00:09:13] Carrie Lupoli: But I know why at the weight loss industry wants you to believe that you need them. I mean, think about this. You have you, you could tell me you've tried every diet. The average woman starts and stops six diets a year, times out by 40 years. It's crazy. I have a woman that in her forties came to me and she said she had done 50 diets in her life.

[00:09:34] Carrie Lupoli: Before she came to me, so I get it right. You think you've tried it all. So what's next? Weight loss shots. 'cause you've already tried it all. And that's what your doctor talks about. And it's about weight loss. Weight loss, weight loss. Well, what if you actually shifted to becoming the healthiest version of your s.

[00:09:49] Carrie Lupoli: Self focusing instead of the BS that they teach you. The BS that you really need. Your belief systems, get them in check. Behavioral science, understanding why you do what you do, and [00:10:00] blood sugar, understanding that that's your body's love language, love language. And when you do all three of those and you focus on health in a sustainable way, I, I mean that then real makes you realize, oh, maybe I haven't tried it all.

[00:10:16] Carrie Lupoli: Right. All right. Number three, the myth that you have to track your food or your calories in order to be successful. I see this all the time on social media and I, I literally, it's like I want to comment on, uh, and I do sometimes comment, but other times I'm like, I'm just gonna start a fight and I don't feel like starting a fight, so I'm not gonna do it because everybody, every like nutritionist in the world, unless they were certified by me and my certification program believes in calories.

[00:10:43] Carrie Lupoli: And some of them may say like, no, we don't wanna track, and things like that. A lot of times people in the intuitive eating world talk about that, but they don't really give you a solid plan on how to fuel your body. It's more like intuitively. And I used to joke that when I was pregnant, if I was doing intuitive eating, I just [00:11:00] intuitively would've wanted a Big Mac all the time, uh, because that's what I wanted when I was pregnant.

[00:11:05] Carrie Lupoli: So three questions you have to ask yourself before starting any nutritional advice one. Is it based in science design for your body to thrive? Two. Can you do it for the rest of your life? Can you, can you enter in all the food that you've been eating in an app or in a notebook for the rest of your life?

[00:11:19] Carrie Lupoli: Karen Lynn, who was one of my clients, is not one of my coaches, is, uh, she had 10 years of food journals every single day for 10 years. What is that? 365 times 10. It's like a lot of math. But that's a lot of writing, and I think how much more could she have done with her time if she wasn't doing that? By the time when she first came to me, she, she just like Jen, she couldn't walk upstairs.

[00:11:42] Carrie Lupoli: She had dieted away to disease, but she'd written every freaking piece of food down that she had eaten. She, we, we got her to throw away her journals, throw away the scale. She went and met with her doctor and she's. Not only down like a hundred pounds, but she goes to CrossFit every day. She literally is the [00:12:00] epitome of the healthiest version of herself, and she doesn't know how many calories she eats and she doesn't track any of her food.

[00:12:05] Carrie Lupoli: It's a myth, you guys. It's a myth. The third question that you have to ask yourself before starting any nutritional advice is, would you let your kids do it? Would you let your kids track the food that they eat? No. So why are you doing it? And, and let's be honest, like I get so mad, I, I realize I've been getting really mad about this lately.

[00:12:24] Carrie Lupoli: My kids started talking about calories when they were five and six years old. And I have taken so much blame for that. I have taken so much like just personal defeat over being like the worst mom ever because I was like, I swear to, we done got, 'cause I was like, I swear talking about galleries. I swear this was.

[00:12:39] Carrie Lupoli: And I realized like, well, first of all, of course they were talking about calories. 'cause that was all I knew. And you can't teach what you don't know. You can't transfer what you don't have. You can't teach a new belief if your belief is stuck in a certain way. And so I didn't like teach my kids about calories, but clearly I exuded conversa.

[00:12:58] Carrie Lupoli: Like I, I, I, [00:13:00] I feel like I sweat out the conversation of calories. They, they knew it so. But this is what really bothers me about it. Where, where people are like, oh, that's terrible. That's so terrible. That would be terrible to have your kids talk about calories. That would be terrible to have your kids track their food.

[00:13:17] Carrie Lupoli: Oh, oh, oh, okay. So why are we doing it? Why is that what we teach women to do? Um, because if. Kids shouldn't do it. Well then what age is it appropriate? Like do I wait until my daughter's 16 to have her start tracking calories or do I do it when she's 21? Like is there an age limit that makes sense to start talking about destructive concepts like calories?

[00:13:44] Carrie Lupoli: Or should we actually all be centered around the concepts of loving our body, showing up for ourselves, understanding how our body actually functions, recognizing the difference between health and weight, and the concept of [00:14:00] consistency like discipline. Diets don't allow us to be disciplined because it's like an all or nothing kind of mentality.

[00:14:08] Carrie Lupoli: Is that how we want our kids growing up? Well, what are we supposed to teach our kids? Like choose an apple over a candy bar that's, that's not gonna cut it in the long term. You know that because it didn't cut it for you and then you had a resort to tracking all your food. You don't have to track your food.

[00:14:23] Carrie Lupoli: It is a complete and total myth if you are eating in the way that I teach my clients, right? We call it PFC three. It's, it's. Trademarked, it's a registered trademark. Uh, it's proven over decades of the work that I have done with Mark McDonald and think about it, a protein, fat, and carb every three hours.

[00:14:42] Carrie Lupoli: If your kids could learn protein, fat, and carbs and what they were, a lot of women I talk to have no idea that an apple is a carb, right? They only think about bread and donuts and things like that. Those are carbs too. We don't know enough about food, but if we eat a protein, fat and carb, our, our hormones don't have to do all sorts of work trying to balance it blood sugar on [00:15:00] its own, and we're always ready to eat satisfied, ready to eat, satisfied.

[00:15:03] Carrie Lupoli: We're eating about every three hours and we know how to pair our food. Do you have to be perfect? No. You have to be intentional. You have to serve your body more than you serve your soul. But you should absolutely serve your soul. Can you imagine if our kids knew that? That's why I'm working on PFC Pals, a nutritional literacy program for kids.

[00:15:21] Carrie Lupoli: You know, we're still teaching kids the fricking food pyramid. I just saw the food pyramid on a loaf of bread the other day in the grocery store, and I'm like, well, of course, because the bread, the bread manufacturers want you to believe in the food pyramid because that's more sales for them. But that's what we, I saw, I saw a poster in a school the other day about it.

[00:15:40] Carrie Lupoli: I'm like, oh my gosh. No wonder we have childhood obesity at the highest rate ever. 38% of teenagers are pre-diabetic. Like, what? So now we're gonna go after weight loss for them. No, we're gonna go after health. But you can't teach it if you don't know it. And so tracking all your food is not healthy. It's just not healthy.

[00:15:58] Carrie Lupoli: It's not healthy for your [00:16:00] life. So we gotta stop doing that. We gotta learn how to balance our blood sugar. PFC three, focus on that. That is going to give you everything that you need. You can actually go, we haven't released a book yet or the curriculum yet that we're gonna be launching to schools and, uh, grocery stores and homeschooling and, and homes.

[00:16:19] Carrie Lupoli: But if you go on Instagram, PFC Pals, we just literally launched it. We are still working with the illustrators. The stories are amazing. The learning opportunities are gonna be so incredible. So go and go and do that. That's gonna help you too. Okay? Number four, without a goal weight, you have no measure of progress.

[00:16:39] Carrie Lupoli: Another myth that we have been told and we've just continued to be lied to by the diet and weight loss industry, a goal weight is never gonna get you there. First of all, here's, I'm gonna tell you something that is like mind blowing. You cannot control your weight. How this is another, this is another way that they have bamboozled us into [00:17:00] believing that we are wrong, that we have done something wrong, that is our fault, our lack of willpower, and you can't reach your goal weight.

[00:17:07] Carrie Lupoli: A goal weight has, that's like saying I have a goal of no more than five rainy days in the month. Like essentially it's kind of the same thing now. Not exactly, because at the end of the day, that is an outcome goal. Weight loss is a symptom of health and hormones, and one of the outcomes of actually taking a hold of your health, becoming the healthiest version of yourself from the inside, and the out will result in weight loss if your body.

[00:17:35] Carrie Lupoli: Needs to lose weight. When you get to your optimal health, you're gonna get to your optimal weight. I don't know what that is. You don't know what that is. Your doctor doesn't know what that is. The BMI scale, forget that. That is absolutely stupid, but nobody a, knows your goal weight and B. You have to recognize, especially as you get older, it may not be the number you have in your head.

[00:17:56] Carrie Lupoli: Just because you were a certain weight when you were 20 doesn't a mean you were [00:18:00] healthy 'cause you were probably on a diet then too. It also doesn't mean that is the optimal weight for you today as a 40, 56-year-old woman. So going for the goal weight A doesn't even make sense because you're throwing mud at the wall, but B, you don't have control over it.

[00:18:14] Carrie Lupoli: It's an outcome goal. That is an outcome. You only have control over your behaviors that those behaviors that should get you to an outcome. So if your behaviors are going to McDonald's every day, well then you're never gonna reach your outcome goal of losing weight. You just won't. But if you have a behavior that says, I am going to show up for myself, uh, like.

[00:18:38] Carrie Lupoli: Five days a week and doing strength training, I am going to eat PF C3 balanced. Um, I'm, I'm gonna serve my body more than I serve my soul. Those are behavior goals. Uh, think about it like if you say, I have a goal of having no cavities, okay. Right. Okay. But how are you going to do that? Like your [00:19:00] goal of having no categories, uh, categories, calories is kind of out of your control.

[00:19:05] Carrie Lupoli: You can only control the actions that have been proven to get you to the place of not having calories. Oh my gosh. It's like my brain is not having cavities, but. Uh, at the end of the day, it's really about your own daily dental hygiene. And that's what this let's just throw at the goal weight. Let's just throw at the scale, because the scale, let's be honest, you stand on that scale, it will make or break your day.

[00:19:27] Carrie Lupoli: And if it's not what you think it should be, it can ruin your entire week. You know, if you're gaining weight or you're losing weight, why do you need that number? Why? The only number that I even focus on at all is the number on my barbell, like the weight I'm lifting in the gym. That tells me if I'm getting stronger.

[00:19:47] Carrie Lupoli: That tells me if I'm making progress. The scale does not. Do you have more energy? Are you sleeping longer? There's so many other measures of progress that would allow you to know if you were getting [00:20:00] healthier. Are your clothes fitting differently? Like skin, the joint pain? I have a client, Jen, who had hip bursitis and she was like, and in one month it was gone.

[00:20:11] Carrie Lupoli: It was gone. I have another client, Anne, who within two weeks went off the depression medication she had been on for 25 years. When you focus on the weight and the scale and think about goal weight. You then lose the ability to see all the other measures of product, of progress. It's like when somebody loses one of their senses, like say the sense, sense of sight, suddenly their hearing is so much more enhanced, right?

[00:20:36] Carrie Lupoli: It's like that if you lose the need and the, and the concept of a, a number on a scale, you are suddenly forced to open your mind and heart to all the other areas of progress. You're so much more self-aware. You're so much more in tune with what's going on in your body inside and out. All right, the last one.

[00:20:55] Carrie Lupoli: This is what I get all the time. Carrie, I look, listen, Carrie, I know that you talk a lot about like [00:21:00] learning how to love yourself and digging in and, and, and doing work now, like showing up for yourself in morning time and stuff like that. But honestly, I, I just need a meal plan. I just need you to tell me what to eat.

[00:21:10] Carrie Lupoli: And I'm like, um, I'm not your girl. I can tell you what to eat, but it's not gonna matter. I've worked with thousands and thousands of people and in fact, like around the first year that I started working with people around nutrition, I worked with 250 women and I told them what to eat. I gave them a meal plan.

[00:21:28] Carrie Lupoli: I, I didn't need to work with them very long 'cause it's not hard. That's like the easiest piece. Every one of my clients were like, that's the thing that's eluded me for my whole life. And that's actually the thing that's really simple. You don't need a meal plan. You need an education. You need to understand how to fly your own plane.

[00:21:43] Carrie Lupoli: I want you to think about your body like a plane. For too long, you've been the passenger in your own plane, having no idea how to fly it. A meal plan is like a script, somebody else's script for your life. And your life is not a script. A meal plan only works if you like all the foods and your life is perfect.

[00:21:59] Carrie Lupoli: Well, do you [00:22:00] like all the foods and is your life perfect? No. Well then a meal plan's not gonna work. You need to learn about your body. What it needs, why you do the things you do, how you show up consistently, what your beliefs are that are impacting your actions. What your behavior is, is your behavioral needs are the triggers, your personality that are impacting your actual actions.

[00:22:19] Carrie Lupoli: And you need to understand not just the physiology of human body, but the physiology. Your body. You need to become the pilot of your own plan. You need to learn how to actually fly it. And so a meal plan will never put you in the cockpit. It will always keep you in the passenger seat. But imagine when you were on vacation, when you were having a crazy time at work, when you are like having major changes in your life, like the birth of a new baby, getting married, having grandkids moving.

[00:22:50] Carrie Lupoli: You need to be able to shuck and jive to be able to adjust because your life is never going to be a script, certainly not somebody else's [00:23:00] script. And you know it's not your own because things curve, balls happen all the time. So we have this misconception that a meal plan is going to fix it all to a bunch of bs.

[00:23:10] Carrie Lupoli: I'd never give a woman just a meal plan. Do they have a plan? Yes. They know it, they learn it, they understand it. They can speak to it so intensely that they could teach it. So what does that mean? That means there's five things, and I could name, like I said, 50, but five things that if we could just stop believing right now, we could make so much more progress.

[00:23:32] Carrie Lupoli: Number one, working. What does it mean when something is working? Number two, focusing on weight instead of health. Number three, feeling like you need to track all your food or your calories or your macros. Number four, goal weight. Get rid of it. Focus on a behavior goal, and number five that you need a meal plan.

[00:23:52] Carrie Lupoli: Let's work together to unveil the. [00:24:00] Craziness in the BS of the diet industry. Share this episode. Subscribe to our channel and let's literally disrupt everything we've been told about weight loss, confidence, and say, and self-worth. Because when you love yourself too much to not show up for yourself, it changes everything.

[00:24:19] Carrie Lupoli: And if you want something different, you gotta do something different. So go ahead and do that and, uh, comment. I'd love to hear about what you think about this.