You Don’t Need Another Weight Loss Coach

You need someone who understands what it actually feels like to live your life while you’re trying to change it.

Photo by Andre Tan on Unsplash

I think we have made weight loss far more complicated than it needs to be.

Not because there isn’t a lot to learn. There is. There are medications and calories and protein and movement and sleep and hormones and stress and side effects and plateaus and a thousand opinions about what you should or shouldn’t be doing. The internet has made sure of that.

But somewhere along the way, we started confusing information with actually knowing how to live.

And that is what I keep coming back to.

I started my own weight-loss journey in 2023 with a lot of hope and almost no guidance. Three years and 75 pounds later, I am still on the medication, still have more weight I want to lose, and still think about this stuff almost every day. Not because I am obsessed with weight loss, but because living through it for this long has changed the way I think about it.

I don’t want to spend the next several years becoming really good at losing weight while being absolutely miserable in the process.

I want to know how to live a good life while I lose it.

That distinction is pretty much the foundation for everything I share here.

And it is probably the biggest thing I believe about weight loss.

I don’t think you should have to hate yourself to want to change.

There is this weird idea that if you are unhappy with your body, you must either learn to love every inch of it exactly as it is or admit that you hate yourself.

I don’t buy that.

You can look at your life and think, I want something to be different, without making the conclusion that there is something fundamentally wrong with you.

I can be grateful for my body and still want to lose weight. I can appreciate what my body has carried me through and still want to change how it feels to live in it. I can take care of myself because I love myself, not because I have decided I am finally worthy of taking care of.

You are allowed to want to change without making yourself the enemy.

That matters because I don’t want weight loss to become another reason to be cruel to yourself.

There is already enough of that.

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I don’t think your life should be put on hold until you reach your goal.

This might be the part of my philosophy that I feel most strongly about.

I don’t want you waiting until you lose 30 pounds to buy the clothes you actually like. I don’t want you avoiding pictures because you don’t look like the version of yourself you have decided you’re allowed to see. I don’t want you turning down dinner with your friends because you are afraid one meal will somehow undo months of progress.

And I really don’t want you waking up every Monday thinking, Okay, this is the week I finally get serious.

Because your life is happening on the other days too.

There will be birthdays and vacations and pizza nights and stressful work weeks and random Tuesday evenings when you have absolutely no desire to prepare a perfectly balanced meal. There will be days when you make the choice you wanted to make and days when you don’t.

That isn’t evidence that the plan failed. That’s just what being a person looks like.

The goal, at least for me, isn’t to create a life that makes weight loss easy. It’s to create a way of losing weight that can survive my actual life.

That is a very different thing.

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I believe GLP1 is a tool. You are the plan.

This is something I have said so many times that it has basically become part of my vocabulary, but the longer I am on this medication, the more I believe it.

Medication can change the experience of weight loss dramatically. It can make things possible that felt nearly impossible before. It can quiet food noise, change appetite, make a calorie deficit more manageable and give someone a completely different starting point.

But the medication isn’t living your life.

You are.

You are still the person deciding what kind of relationship you want with food. You are still figuring out how to move your body in a way you can sustain. You are still learning what happens when the scale doesn’t cooperate. You are still going to have stressful weeks and holidays and vacations and moments where you eat something because it sounded really good and not because it fit neatly into the plan.

The medication doesn’t make any of those things disappear.

And I don’t think it should have to.

GLP1 can be the tool.

It doesn’t have to become your entire identity.

That is why I don’t want everything I create to be about medication.

I want to talk about the person using the tool.

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I don’t believe the scale gets to decide whether you had a good week.

I have lost enough weight to know that the scale can tell you something useful and still tell you absolutely nothing about how you are doing.

Sometimes it goes down.

Sometimes it goes up.

Sometimes it stays exactly where it is while you start questioning every decision you have made since Tuesday.

And sometimes you do everything you think you are supposed to do and wake up to a number that makes you stare at the scale like it has personally betrayed you.

I have been there.

But the longer I do this, the more I understand that the scale is data, not a verdict.

It is one measurement.

It cannot tell you whether you showed up for yourself. It cannot tell you whether you handled a hard week differently than you would have a year ago. It cannot tell you whether your clothes fit differently, whether you are stronger, whether food feels less chaotic, whether you are sleeping better, whether you are more comfortable moving through the world.

And it certainly cannot tell you whether you are allowed to be proud.

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I think we need to get much better at celebrating the middle.

The beginning gets a lot of attention.

The beginning has before pictures and starting weights and new medication and new routines and that feeling of this is it, this time I’m really doing it.

The end gets attention too. Goal weight. Before and after. Smaller clothes. The dramatic reveal.

But most of the journey isn’t the beginning or the end.

Most of it is the middle.

It is the weeks where nothing particularly exciting happens. It is figuring out what works for you. It is changing your expectations. It is dealing with a stall. It is realizing the thing that worked six months ago doesn’t necessarily work the same way now. It is continuing even when there is no dramatic transformation happening in front of you.

This is the part I think we underestimate.

A lot of weight loss is incredibly boring.

And boring doesn’t mean bad.

You don’t have to be constantly impressed by your progress for your progress to be real.

Sometimes success is simply that you didn’t quit.

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I don’t think there is one respectable way to lose weight.

This is another thing I have become pretty passionate about.

I don’t care whether you are using a GLP1 or not. I don’t care whether you track every calorie or prefer a more intuitive approach. I don’t care whether you love strength training or would rather take a walk while listening to a podcast. I don’t care whether you have lost five pounds or 105.

I care that you are figuring out how to take care of yourself in a way that you can actually live with.

Because the internet loves a purity test.

» Natural versus medication.

» Tracking versus not tracking.

» Low carb versus high carb.

» Cardio versus lifting.

» Discipline versus balance.

There is always somebody ready to explain why the way you’re doing it isn’t the right way.

I am much more interested in what actually works for you.

Not what looks impressive on the internet.

Not what makes the best transformation video.

Not what someone can maintain for twelve days when they are highly motivated.

What can you still do when you’re tired?

What can you still do when work is insane?

What can you still do when you go out to dinner?

What can you still do six months from now?

That is the stuff I care about.

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And I don’t think you have to earn your life at the end of the journey.

This is probably where all of these ideas come together for me.

I don’t want you spending two years thinking, I’ll do that when I lose the weight.

• I’ll buy the clothes when I lose the weight.

• I’ll take the pictures when I lose the weight.

• I’ll go on the trip when I lose the weight.

• I’ll feel confident when I lose the weight.

• I’ll finally let myself enjoy my body when I lose the weight.

What if you don’t?

Not because you shouldn’t lose weight. If losing weight is something you want for yourself, you are allowed to want it.

But what if you stop making the future version of yourself responsible for giving you permission to enjoy the present one?

That doesn’t mean giving up on your goals.

It means refusing to make your goals the price of admission for your own life.

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So, I guess this is what I am really trying to build here.

Not another place where you come to get yelled at about protein.

Not another set of rules.

Not another list of foods you are allowed to eat.

Not another challenge that makes you feel like you failed because you had a bad weekend.

And definitely not another corner of the internet where everyone pretends weight loss is simple as long as you have enough discipline.

I want this to be a place where we can take weight loss seriously without taking ourselves so damn seriously.

A place where we can talk about the scale and food and medication and movement and sleep and stress and recovery, but also talk about the ridiculous parts of being a human being who is trying to change her life while still having a life.

A place where you can be proud of losing five pounds. Where you can be frustrated about gaining two. Where you can admit you don’t know what you’re doing. Where you can celebrate a non-scale victory.

A place where you can be proud of losing five pounds, frustrated about gaining two, admit you don’t know what you’re doing, celebrate a non-scale victory, have a really good week, or have a really shitty one.

And where none of those things require you to start over.

You don’t need another weight loss coach.

You need somewhere to keep showing up.

That’s what Girl Code Daily is.

It’s the place inside this publication where we actually do this together. Paid members get the Monday reset, Wednesday check-in, Friday wins, Sunday weigh-in, monthly challenges, conversations, and all the stuff that happens in between.

It’s not a course you have to complete.

It’s not another plan you can fail.

It’s a place to come back to.

If this philosophy sounds like the way you want to approach your own weight-loss journey, come join us.

JOIN GIRL CODE DAILY →

And if you’re not ready for that yet, that’s okay too. Stay here. Read the free posts. Listen to the podcast. Let me be the voice in your inbox reminding you that you don’t have to make weight loss your entire life in order to make progress.

Weight loss is something I am doing.

It is not the only thing I am.

And I think there is a lot of freedom in remembering that.

Nyk