Dana Cushing Health
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Diet Different™
Dana Cushing, RN | Women’s Weight Loss Speaker & Coach | Helping women 40+ lose weight, calm cravings & protect their metabolic health through the menopause transition, without another extreme diet.
06/23/2026
Feeling blessed. So many birthday celebrations with friends and family, warm wishes, messages, flowers, homemade pizza in the pizza oven, brownies and ice cream.
Guess who had the longest bar hang on my birthday?! ME! Two minutes five seconds!💪🏻💪🏻
Emily and Ella made my day extra special. Time together, out for lunch and a delicious batch of homemade brownies.🤎
Sedric has mastered the ooni pizza oven. Emily gets credit for the dough. Homemade tomato sauce, mozzarella-fresh or shredded, pepperoni, hot honey, pepperoncini😍
Check out that Window pane, I hope I’m remembering that term correctly!😂
Can you even🥰🌸🌸
He is so much fun, such a personality!
Multiple celebrations included out to eat, desserts… Guess what, no starting over on Monday. That is a gift that nobody talks about, and I feel blessed to be able to share it with those who want to transform their health.🥰💜
I had four walks with friends scheduled the week of my birthday. Three out of four happened! When you start Scheduling walk dates rather than drinks… Watch what happens. You can enjoy the drinks too, just make movement your priority.🤗🚶♀️🍷
Celebrating June birthdays with Matt’s family and his sister Cath who has a birthday today!
More ice cream, no guilt.
Matt’s first Father’s Day as a grandpa, my heart might’ve exploded💙 📸- thanks Joe!
So grateful that we were able to spend Father’s Day together with the Barton’s♥️
These two are his favorite—->> Look what happens when I take him away from grandpa Joe… Even grandpa Matt, it’s kind of funny yet-where is the love for grandma?😄
Why did you take me away from my grandpa?
No, really, you’re not as much fun.
Caption this one for me👇🏻👇🏻
I tried😄
51 trips around the sun. Hanging out with my favorite people. Blessed. Thank you for all of the kind messages!
No more keto….
I am a registered nurse. For years I promoted keto. This is why I stopped.
Comment BIRTHDAY if you are a woman over 40, frustrated and exhausted from trying everything to lose weight, and you want to eat carbs. I will send you the link to my free 3 month health and weight loss transformation coaching giveaway.
Throwing together enchiladas last night, and it hit me mid-refried bean schmear that I would have never let myself eat two of these ingredients. That is what got me thinking about this story.
I love teaching, supporting, and coaching women over 40 through health and weight loss transformations, especially the ones sick of starting over who just want to know how to include carbs without gaining weight. But I did not always teach this.
For many years of my nursing career, I promoted keto. I believed it was the only road to weight loss, when the truth is there are many roads to Rome. I was keto myself. I watched it work for women at work and had no reason to question it.
Then I watched the same women I was helping fall back into overindulgence, guilt, and restriction the second they took a bite of birthday cake. One celebration and they were right back in their old patterns.
Removing a food group does not teach anyone anything. It just delays the moment the pattern comes back.
I had to question the thing I had been promoting for years.
Through the research, watching my labs change, and hundreds of women, the picture became clear. The hormonal context at 45 is not what it was at 35. The way the body handles stress is different, the way it responds to restriction is different, and the cumulative weight of years of dieting changes everything.
When you stop fighting that and start eating in a way that matches the body you are in right now, it responds. Quickly.
That moment changed everything for me. I want you to feel healthy, confident, and successful too. It is why I am giving one woman three months of this for free.
Applications close Sunday, June 21 at midnight.
Comment BIRTHDAY and I will send you the link.
Why cutting carbs stopped working for weight loss after age 40.
Trying to lose weight in your 40s comes with years of doing everything right and still not seeing the scale move. And at some point you start assuming you are the problem.
You are not.
The approach that worked in your 30s, keto, low carb, restriction, fasting, was designed for a body with stable estrogen and a metabolism that handles glucose efficiently. That body and this body are not the same.
When estrogen starts to shift, so does the way your body responds to stress. And when stress is elevated, it changes how you reach for food. And the food you eat is information, it either fuels you, keeps your energy steady, and supports how you move, or it leaves you exhausted, foggy, and reaching for more chips. It is a cascade. One thing feeds the next, and cutting carbs harder is not the answer. It is often what keeps the cycle going.
Decades of restriction leave a mark. When the body has been in scarcity long enough, it learns to protect itself. That is not a personal failing. It is what happens.
The shift is not another round of cutting. It is a different approach entirely, one built around your health and weight loss macros, your hormones, your sleep, and your stage of life.
For my 51st birthday I am giving one woman three months of free health and weight loss transformation coaching. Plus partial scholarships for a select group, and a free 7 Day Fat Loss Over 40 Meal Template for every woman who applies.
Applications close Sunday, June 21 at midnight.
Comment BIRTHDAY and I will send you the link.
Your health and weight loss transformation is only four questions away! Don’t be shy, you have sat on the fence for too long💜
If you feel like all you need is macros… I get it. I really do.
And when you’ve been burned by every program, every plan, every fresh start on Monday… it makes sense to want the simplest possible answer.
But here’s what I know after years of working with women over 40:
Macros are a tool. They are not the transformation.
The women I work with aren’t just losing weight.
They’re improving their lab work.
They’re bending over without their stomach rolling over their yoga pants.
They’re eating sweet potatoes again after years of carb fear.
They’re saying yes to birthday cake without a spiral.
That doesn’t happen from a number on a spreadsheet or a food tracking app.
It happens from accountability. From trust and someone who knows your whole picture and stays in it with you.
If you’re searching for your next thing to try… find someone who sees more than your scale weight.
You are worth more than a macro calculator.
💜,
Dana
If you’re a woman over 40 who has been cutting carbs for years and the scale still will not move, this workshop is for you!👇🏻💜
You did not gain 4 pounds from
eating carbs.
Your muscles are refueling, and the scale does not know the difference.
This is where so many women over 40 quit.
Day 5 to Day 8.
You add fruit, oats, potatoes, rice, sourdough, or beans back in after restricting carbs.
Then the scale jumps 2 to 5 pounds, and your brain says:
Carbs are the problem. Restrict again.
When you eat carbs, your body stores some of them as glycogen in your muscles as water.
Research shows each gram of glycogen gets stored with about 3 grams of water.
So when you add carbs back after low carb dieting, the scale can go up before fat loss shows up.
That weight is not automatically fat.
It may be glycogen, water, food volume, fiber, sodium, hormones, or constipation.
The scale cannot separate those things.
It just gives you a number.
And if you do not understand that number, you may quit the plan your body needed.
Carbs give us fuel and fiber. I am loving a golden kiwi as part of my afternoon snack, skin and all.
A golden kiwi has about:
* 12 grams of carbs
* 2 grams of fiber
* 52 calories
* vitamin C
That is a whole food carb that can fit inside a fat loss plan.
Golden kiwifruit contains actinidin, an enzyme studied for protein digestion.
Kiwifruit also contains fiber with water-holding properties, which may help soften stool and support regularity.
So if you have been low carb and feel bloated, backed up, or scared to eat fruit, this matters.
Whole food carbs can bring fiber, potassium, vitamin C, magnesium, prebiotics, and fuel for walking, lifting, mood, sleep, and blood sugar balance.
Carb Confidence is knowing how carbs work in your body so the scale does not make your decisions for you.
The day the scale gets loud, you need to understand physiology, not another low carb restart.
I am teaching the full framework so you can enjoy carbs and lose weight after age 40.
The Carb Confidence Method
Wednesday, June 10
7 PM Eastern
Free 90-minute workshop
Comment CONFIDENT and I will send you the link.
Desperate weight loss
and easy money. That’s what this ad was selling.
This came across my feed today. A company selling peptides, targeting two people at once.
Health coaches who want to make more money. Women who are desperate to lose weight.
It makes my heart rate go up in anger, and makes me a little sad at the same time.
Do I think peptides like GLP-1s have a place?
Yes.
For women dealing with morbid obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, there is a clinical case. I get it. I’m a nurse. I understand the metabolic picture.
Did you know anyone can call themselves a health coach? No license. No degree. No oversight. I don’t understand why so many women are trusting this process.
I am all for utilizing a variety of tools in the toolbox. A tool without context, behavior change, or someone knowledgeable guiding the process is not a solution.
It’s just another thing that happens to you instead of something you build.
I graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1998. I have spent years pursuing continuing education, certifications, and educating myself daily so I can serve my clients well.
The pop-up health coach selling peptides on Instagram should scare you.
Losing weight by skipping the hard work of changing how you eat, how you move, how you think about food doesn’t set you up. It sets you back.
When it’s over, nothing is different.
I’m not saying I’ll never change my mind. I won’t close a door that research hasn’t finished opening.
Right now, things are moving too fast. We don’t have enough data. Desperate women are paying the price while a lot of people profit.
If you’ve been thinking about peptides, I’d love to know. No judgment. I just want you making informed decisions, not impulse ones.
💜,
Dana
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