You’re Not Broken: The Real Reason Weight Loss Feels Impossible (and How to Finally Get Relief)

To the outside world, I looked like the ultimate weight loss success story. I lost 100 pounds and maintained it for years. I ran 5Ks, then triathlons. I had arrived.

Behind the scenes, it was a different story. For years, I was still secretly binge eating, obsessing over food, and stuck in the same emotional eating patterns that had haunted me for decades.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing everything right but still can’t lose weight, you’re not alone. In this article, I’m sharing the real story of why weight loss felt impossible for me (even after years of success), what finally helped me break free from the restrict-overeating cycle, and how you can find food peace, too.

Achieving a 100 Pound Weight Loss…for 5 Minutes

I’ve been honest about my journey of losing 100 pounds. It involved therapy, conquering emotional eating, accepting God’s compassion and grace, and facing up to self-sabotage.

My “before” life included…

• taking care of everyone else while ignoring myself, and self-sacrificing to a fault
• binging and compulsively overeating to the point of feeling sick
• running to food when my emotions got too big to handle

With therapy and by God’s grace, I learned to approach food in a healthier way. It was a slow miracle.

A complicated “after”…

After I lost 80 pounds, I hit a years-long plateau. Like, 15 YEARS long.

By sheer willpower, I lost enough weight to reach 100 pounds gone, but I couldn’t stay there. Within a few weeks, I regained 20 pounds, which made me feel like a failure.

Yes, eighty pounds gone was a huge accomplishment. I felt significantly better, and my habits were healthier. Yet I knew my relationship with food was not where I wanted it to be.

Heart Check with Sara: People told me I should appreciate what I had achieved, but I was deeply unsatisfied. I was so close to my goal, yet it was always just outside my reach. Deep down, there was more. I was still engaging in unhealthy food behaviors that were not okay. Here I was, leading other people in weight loss. How could I admit that I was still struggling? I felt like a fraud.

Extreme Exercise is Not the Answer

Having grown up watching shows like The Biggest Loser, I was taught that extreme exercise was the solution to any weight problems. If you were overweight, it was because you weren’t working out enough.

So I pushed harder and harder, but you can’t outrun your fork.

Exercise filled a void when the scale stopped moving. Fitness gave me other goals to pursue. People complimented me again. I might not be fast, but I could go far, and that gave me a sense of success.

I started with walking, then jogging (“wogging” was a more appropriate term) 5Ks, then half-marathons.

Eventually, I joined a women’s triathlon team, then completed a 200-mile distance cycling event for charity and a Half-Ironman.

These were good years! I made friends in the fitness world and found self-confidence.

Yet I continued to struggle with my weight, and being involved in body-focused sports perpetuated the issues. I was still the plus-sized athlete.

The intense exercise burned calories, but it also drove my appetite through the roof. I felt like I was on a never-ending hamster wheel of restriction and then overeating. I was rarely satisfied, and food was forever on my mind.

I will never forget the night before a triathlon at a get-together for the athletes, when a friend of a friend looked at my stomach and said, “How great that they allow pregnant women to race!” (I wasn’t pregnant.) How could this humiliation be my “after” success story?

Heart Talk with Sara: What I was too ashamed to share then: I was still binge eating. The behavior had improved, but it never completely went away. I thought about food continually and was hungry a lot. I went off the rails most weekends and holidays, and when I went off, I went WAY off. I was exhausted. And bitter. I regretted not having weight loss surgery, because a lifetime of working this hard felt like torture.

Food Problems Will Follow You

The thing about food issues is that they follow you everywhere you go. There’s no taking a vacation or running away from them.

Our family was living through an incredibly tough season of parenting our son with extreme mental health and behavioral needs. Our marriage and ministry suffered.

Ultimately, my husband, who is a pastor, took a call to a new church in New York. This meant a life-altering cross-country move away from the only home our five children had ever known.

We struggled to fit into a new environment. I was lonely, sad, and grieving the loss of many things. Turning to food for comfort didn’t feel optional – it felt necessary to survive.

When my weight reached a (post-weight loss) high of 180 pounds, I knew I had to make a change. I was back in the overweight category. (As a weight loss coach, I felt like even more of a fraud and failure, trying to hide my hips and stomach in photos.) I returned to Weight Watchers, once again tracking what I was eating, starting meals with veggies, and putting an end to my “I’m grieving, I can eat anything I want” attitude.

Turning Points and Reality Checks

Facing the Hard Truth

Right before we left Colorado, I was part of a research study for people maintaining weight loss. The doctor heading the study became my mentor and advocate, and she wasn’t afraid to tell me the truth, like the fact that my eating binges and weekend splurges were the reason I couldn’t reach my goal weight (not a faulty metabolism).

I saw what the doctor was saying, but I still clung to denial. I was convinced that I had to eat less than other people, or I would gain weight. I couldn’t see how that very behavior was the root of my problems.

Practicing What I Preach

My business partner at the time and I were rewriting the curriculum for our Christian Weight Loss program, Faithful Finish Lines. As part of the process, we strictly followed our own weight loss guidelines along with our beta test group.

We introduced the concept of pre-tracking and following your plan exactly. I was shocked when I started to lose weight. I thought I was the unicorn with a broken metabolism.

Even though I had preached basic weight loss practices for years, I wasn’t fully following them…until I did.

Heart Check with Sara: People with weight problems have denial problems, and I was no exception. I was blinded to my eating behaviors, convinced it was bad genes, my body getting back to a set-point, or other reasons outside my control.

The Solution Was in Front of Me All Along

The answer to stepping off the weight loss roller coaster, easing the food noise, and finding a healthier relationship with food was straightforward yet incredibly difficult: eat more.

I know that eating more might seem like a dream come true for those of us who are chronic dieters, but it sent me into a panic. I felt like I just couldn’t eat more.

• Eating more meant weight gain.
• Eating more meant less calories/points later for when I really needed them, like at night before bed.
• Eating more was for other people, not me, with my broken metabolism. I was destined for a life of food misery.

But I also knew I couldn’t keep going like I was, so I was willing to try. (I had tried everything else, so why not prove people wrong?)

This wasn’t an instant solution. Instead, it required a gradual shift of eating more during the day, and less at night before bed or on the weekends.

I moved from the wild roller coaster of food restriction and binges to my food intake looking more like a rolling river, with a few ups and downs, but mostly steady.

• I ate bigger, healthier breakfasts.
• I started eating real lunches – no more skimpy turkey sandwiches on diet bread.
• I got to splurge on a real dessert sometimes instead of a diet fudge bar.

I went back to therapy to work on my bitterness. I learned that my high food interest and awareness are likely genetic, and there’s nothing wrong with me.

I’ve come to accept that I need firm boundaries around food, and that’s not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of strength.

Last year, I became a certified Binge Eating Recovery Coach. I was shocked when the trainer told us that most women need at least 2,000 calories per day, and more if they exercise.

I gained deep knowledge on how to recognize undereating, which later leads to overeating and binge eating.

I grieved the fact that in a land of plenty, so many of us are starving ourselves…and this can be true even if you are overweight.

Heart Check with Sara: Women tell me they lack self-control or willpower, but often the opposite is true. Overweight women have so much self-control that they manage to live hungry for days, weeks, or years…until their body’s primal hunger takes over. The cycle continues, and the shame increases – but a solution is right there for the taking.

The Biggest Weight Loss Mistake I See

I’ve introduced other women to what I learned, especially in our 30-day weight loss challenges and our membership, where I saw women posting daily food logs with anorexic-like eating patterns (that looked all too familiar).

As a weight loss coach, the ultimate irony is that undereating is the biggest weight loss mistake I see, and I see it daily.

Our food supply, which is rich with addictive, ultra-processed foods, plus our lonely yet busy lifestyle, makes it incredibly easy to fall into unhealthy food patterns.

Weight loss shots like GLP-1s are one possible solution to the food noise, but they aren’t the only way. Weight loss meds are one tool in the weight loss toolbox, but whether you choose to use them or not, fixing your food habits is still necessary.

If you’ve felt stuck, overwhelmed, or like a weight loss failure, this is a solution you won’t want to miss:

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight and still felt stuck, this is for you.

I’m thrilled to offer you this brand-new weight loss experience: S.A.F.E. Eating course (Level 1 of The Holy Mess Success Path).

A Done-With-You Workshop Experience

Inside this powerful course, you will learn:

1. Fix Your Struggle: Why Weight Loss Feels So Hard (and the Solution No One’s Telling You)
2. Fix Your Willpower: A Daily Routine That Works (Even When Motivation Fails)
3. Fix Your Stuck Scale: Why You’re Not Losing Weight (Even When You Do Everything Right)
4. Fix Your Mealtime Overwhelm: Eat Healthy (Without the Stress or Guesswork)
5. Fix Your Holiday Weight Gain: Enjoy the Season (without January Regret)

Here’s What We’re Fixing (And Why It Finally Works)

Inside these live, interactive Zoom workshops (NO social media or tech skills required), you’ll tackle what’s really keeping you stuck:

• The food noise and constant mental tug-of-war…and how to end it for good.
• The belief that you just need more willpower…when something else is the solution (and we show you what it is).
• The overwhelm of tracking, planning, and still plateauing…and what makes it easier right from the start.
• The on-again, off-again cycle that wears you out…and how to finally step off the roller coaster once and for all.

This isn’t another plan. It’s the fix for what’s been broken, so you can finally get to your goal weight. And stay there forever. Click here to join us.