Before Dieting...

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Podcast by Bronwyn Fletcher

Before Dieting...

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 begin. Not by asking what's wrong with you, but by asking what conditions make this eating necessary. These questions are worth asking before you begin another diet. That's what Before Dieting is here to investigate.

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Latest episodes

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11 August 2026

When One Diet Leads to the Next

What happens after the diet ends can tell you more than the weight loss itself. In this episode, Bronwyn examines the idea of maintenance, the biological response to calorie restriction, and why difficulty keeping weight off can so easily be interpreted as a failure of willpower. Through Vivienne’s story, we see what becomes visible when years of dieting are brought together rather than viewed as separate attempts, and why repeated weight regain needs a different investigation. One question to take away: What have all my previous diets been trying to tell me?

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04 August 2026

The Questions Diets Never Ask

Most women can describe every detail of a diet, how long it lasted, how much weight they lost, and why they think it failed. But very few have ever been shown how to investigate what happened after the diet ended. In this episode, Bronwyn explains why the post‑diet period often contains the most valuable clues about repeated weight regain. Using real questions from listeners, she shows how looking closely at what happened afterwards can reveal patterns, surprises and overlooked evidence that diets never address. You’ll hear why the Weighting for Happiness Project takes a collegial approach to understanding weight regain, combining your lived experience with tools and questions that make those hidden connections easier to see.

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28 July 2026

Weight regain and fear: Why looking more closely can feel so frightening

Weight regain often feels frightening not because we don’t want answers, but because we fear what those answers might demand of us. We’ve been taught that understanding means giving something up. But looking closely can be an act of compassion, not punishment. What if the real question is: What is this eating helping me cope with?

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21 July 2026

Eight Different Reasons We Eat

Most conversations about eating reduce it to two categories: good eating and bad eating. But what if there are many different reasons we eat? In this episode, Bronwyn Fletcher answers a listener's question about the Eight Types of Eating and introduces the framework that underpins many of the conversations on Before Dieting. You'll discover why eating isn't one behaviour with one cause, why understanding the purpose of eating matters, and how recognising different types of eating can change the way you think about repeated weight regain. If you've ever asked yourself, "Why do I eat so differently in different situations?" this episode is for you.

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14 July 2026

Kate’s Story: When Weight Regain Was Telling a Deeper story

In this episode of Before Dieting, Bronwyn explores why so many women can lose weight but struggle to keep it off. Instead of focusing on food or willpower, she looks at the deeper patterns that shape our eating long before any diet begins. You’ll hear Kate’s story, a woman who could lose weight easily, yet felt unexpectedly exposed and unsafe each time she reached a smaller size. Her history revealed that weight regain wasn’t a failure, but a familiar return to protection shaped by her childhood environment. Bronwyn shows how secret eating, emotional safety, and early family dynamics can quietly influence adult weight patterns. When Kate finally understood the structure beneath her cycle, she discovered that the real work wasn’t another diet, but a new way of investigating her own story. This episode invites you to rethink your weight history not as evidence of failure, but as information waiting to be understood. And if you’re ready to explore your own patterns, the Weight and Dieting Diagnostic can help you begin.

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11 July 2026

Before Dieting - Trailer - Why diets fail

Welcome to Before Dieting, the podcast for women who’ve had enough of diets that don’t work and bodies that don’t respond the way they used to. In this short preview episode, host Bronwyn Fletcher introduces what makes this podcast different. With a background in health and a sharp lens from systems thinking, Bronwyn reframes the weight conversation by pulling focus away from blame and food rules—and toward the real reasons weight keeps rebounding. Whether you’re navigating menopause, stuck in the cycle of gain-lose-regain, or just sensing that something deeper is going on with your eating, this podcast will help you uncover what diets never even mention: your personal eating system.

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