Coach Mel Joy Foley

Coach Mel Joy Foley We don't accept 'it's just aging' as an answer here.

Certified Wellness Coach helping women 35+ burn stubborn fat, ease perimenopause symptoms, and fall in love with the reflection in the mirror—using comfort food and soul-fueling workouts.

09/05/2026

We got really f*cking good at beginning. Twelve years of school, training hard on a fresh start every year will do that.

Like me, you probably were never explicitly taught how to keep going without that fresh start cycle on repeat. And on a weight loss and health journey, nobody taught us what to do when the notebook wasn’t fresh anymore…

When we missed Tuesday’s workout
Dinner plans went out the window because of a late game
The scale went up when we were doing everything “right”
The workout plan of the day feels miserable because your sleep was trash the night before

But another fresh start after any of these just gets you really good at beginning and really sh*tty at continuing. Practicing week 1 on repeat instead of learning to live through week 7, 15,...

And if nothing changes, next September looks exactly like this one. Same dopamine hit with a fresh start, but also the same weight to lose, same pledge to move more, and same hope that this time’s gonna be different.

Most programs are created to get you started. Mine’s built for the opposite problem. What happens after week 7, after the holiday, the injury, the bad night of sleep. That’s the part I teach.

And building skill, putting in the reps, and self-trust kick the need for fresh starts out the window.
This series is the stuff we were never taught that led to Iall the school-girl rules and fresh starts on repeat that followed us right into our grown-ass relationships with food, exercise, and weight.

👉🏽 Give me a follow. For the next few weeks I’ll be here dropping strategies to get past week 7.

xx,
Mel

09/04/2026

Aaand, with perimenopausal overstimulation, anxiety, and overthinking mind, lifting heavy and that proprioceptive input (think weighted blanket) scratches the itch that bodyweight just can’t reach

Those perimenopause symptoms ramp up when:
-my schedule changes
-I’m away from home
-I’m coordinating everyone’s wants & needs
-the day is unpredictable
-I’m in the car
-I’m overtired

…..so basically every summer vacation.

My travel dumbbells (aka my Emotional Support Dumbbells) are my fix.

🎁 If summer travel knocks your sideways, comment TRAVEL and I’ll send you my free Summer Strength Workouts with links to my ESD (like ESA but not animals, they’re dumbbells) included.

And if we haven’t met yet…
👋🏼Hi, I’m Mel, a certified health and fitness coach who’s living perimenopause right along with you. I’m the kind of woman who travels with a dumbbell that can hold 50lbs of water because clearly that's what emotional regulation looks like in midlife.

Around here you’ll find strength training that’s doable even on vacation, comfort food that helps you hit your goals, perimenopause strategy without scaring you into buying a bunch of crap, and alotta convos about still showing up for YOU through it all.

Safe travels, strong glutes, and may your emotional support dumbbell always clear TSA.
Mel Joy 😘

💬 Comment or message me “CAKE” for the recipe designed for midlife women who are just trying to keep their bodies from b...
09/03/2026

💬 Comment or message me “CAKE” for the recipe designed for midlife women who are just trying to keep their bodies from blowing up in the midst of “the change”.

You’re feeling verrrrry snacky…… 😵‍💫
You don’t know what you want but you want sweeeet…. 😵‍💫

Walk this way….all green lights and “go” today…
Walk right to the 💬 comments or my DMs and drop a “CAKE”.
Cuz I’ve got the solution.

14.7g protein | 8.3g fiber | 167 calories
FOR 1/8th OF A 2-LAYER CAKE!

Which is why you don’t need a reason to eat this cake,
Unless it’s to hit your protein and fiber goals for day,
Or shut your sweet tooth up for a minute.

This cake recipe isn’t meant to save for birthdays or some celebration.
It’s not some version of the guest towels or the soap that’s only for display.
It’s the every day recipe that ALSO blows the minds 🤯 of guests at any party.
That is if you want to share….

💬 Comment or drop me a message with “CAKE” and my Mel-bot will deliver you the recipe!

Cheers to eating the damn cake,
Mel xx

p.s. If we haven’t met yet, hi. 👋🏼👋🏾 I’m Mel, certified fat loss and fitness coach who grew up on Little Debbie snacks, diet soda, and buttered mashed potatoes with gravy and corn were the veggies I’d tolerate. Recipes I’ve revamped like this one are how I finally lost the weight in 2016 and kept it off ‘til today. Glad you’re here. 🫶🏽

09/02/2026

She definitely didn’t expect this when she messaged me on that Thursday… ♥️

This is one of my favorite coaching wins
(and a coaching win is ACTUALLY a client win…)
Which had nothing to do with pounds.

My client said, “As long as the boys had a good supper, I’d just stand there and eat the levovers from the bottom of the pan and ‘think, well, that’s good enough for me.’”

🙋🏽Are you finishing what’s left on your kiddo’s plate instead of fixing yourself your own?
🙋🏽skipping a meal because “it’s not worth the effort just for me”?
🙋🏽grabbing bites while cleaning up after cooking instead of sitting down?
🙋🏽waiting until later to eat and then wondering why you’re exhausted?
(Because these aren’t really food choices. They’re signals about whose needs get the airtime.)

Not my client.
Within a week working together, her resolve to focus attention on herself was turned up.

She created her own plate with intention…in fact, she made them beautiful. She photographed them. They became works of art. But even more important, the foods she used to build the plate became intentional. They were evidence of her unyielding commitment to give her body what it wanted.

And her body? It said, “thank you.” And, “you’re welcome.”

It said thank you by:
→ giving her sustained energy throughout the day
→ recomp that led to smaller pant sizes, wedding rings that could be removed for the first time in years, cheekbones emerging, a waistline that reappeared, a watch that fit more comfortably
→ a sky-high blood pressure dropping to normal levels

Not all clients focus on creating a beautiful plate of food.
But NONE are spending a bunch of time keeping calories under a certain number.
It’s exactly the kind of work we do inside the Start & Stay Started Academy.
You’re used to putting yourself last on your own list….if you make the list.
Let’s change that in a way that’s sustainable.

If this hit closer than you expected, you’re exactly who I work with. This is your invitation into the Start & Stay Started Academy.

DM me START if you want support building this kind of care into your everyday life.

xx,
Coach Mel Joy

09/01/2026

Ice cream, cereal, bread, cake, cheesecake, cookies, chips, pizza…

The bottom line for foods not “making me fat” is being in a calorie deficit. Period.

What you work into a calorie deficit can help you feel full, energized, satisfied, and like you’ve got the cheat code.

Or you can be miserable in a calorie deficit.

But either way, all food has nutrients.

If you don’t know how to work every food into your lifestyle and still lose weight, that’s exactly what I do with you.

IRL?

One of my clients tracked her food on Halloween and for dinner simply listed Snickers bar.
She still hit her protein goal for the day and stayed in a calorie deficit.
She didn’t feel ashamed or hide it.
The next day she wasn’t craving a Snickers bar either.
The women I work with are not eating food they don’t crave and they aren’t shelving their food favorites.

If we haven’t met yet,
👋🏼Hi, I’m Mel. 46 y/o perimenopausal woman who ate the cereal, the pizza, and the dessert and kept the weight off for over a decade while doing it. I coach only the women who are absolutely done with being told what they cannot have.

📲Stick around if you see the influencer squirrels of “should” “don’t” and other bs that leaves you more confused than you started. I keep it simple and focused on the only things that actually matter for weight loss here.

✋🏽If you’re done cutting the foods you love and know you need someone to help you understand how to keep them in your diet TO lose weight,
💬comment or DM me “START” and I’ll message you. That’s exactly what we build together.

Snickers bars for life,
xx Mel

09/01/2026

…but not in a creepy way 😂
but, yes, pretty much immediately I’m thinking of my 1:1 clients who are ready to lose weight for good

I’m thinking about the brand new client who says she’s lost weight before but she had to give up the Italian bread and pasta, only lost with lots of restrictions, and surviving on very little food and vacuum-sealed packaged “fuelings”
→ She tells me what she actually loves and my brain is ten steps ahead figuring out all the ways we’re putting those foods back on her play WHILE she loses weight…I’m like giddy thinking about it

I’m thinking about the client who has dinner out tonight and is worried she’ll “mess up”
→ I’m already figuring out how dinner fits her goals INSTEAD of her goals ruining dinner

The one whose scale jumped up 2 pounds and I know her brain is trying to turn this into a failure
→ I’m flashing to her data, ready to pull numbers that point to the truth…that she hasn’t eaten the calories for that to be fat, so it’s water, not pooping, or something else

The one traveling this week who is anxious that she’ll stop working out and fall off for good
→ I’m using all I know about the trip schedule, location, her normal and building a program just for her

The one who sent me a meal she LOVES but has been terrified that eating it would f*ck all her progress
→ My brain is figuring out how we can Mel-ify it and make it still taste good

The one who finally made a decision around food without asking me what I thought first.
👆🏽Especially this client.

Because none of my thoughts about clients is how to make them follow my plan.
I’m thinking about how to coach them until they’re so damn good at making decisions for:
✔️ THEIR own body
✔️ THEIR own food and
✔️ THEIR own life
👆🏽 THOSE are the whole damn point

If you’re looking for someone in the weeds with you long enough to teach you how to make calls for yourself…
👋🏼 Hi. I’ve probably already thought about you this morning.

💬 DM me START and I’ll send you the application. Let’s see if you’d be a good match for my fat loss and fitness coach.

xx Mel

08/31/2026

….tell me, which woman are you? Send me your number and I’ll send you a custom strategy to use TODAY.

And, if we haven’t met yet…

👋🏼I’m Mel, a 46-year-old perimenopausal woman who loves food and no longer tries to hide it or change it to lose weight. As a certified health & fitness coach, I show other women how to lose weight WHILE they keep loving food. I lived through allllll the diet culture eras and I refuse to put another woman through any of it again.

📲 Around here you’ll find weight loss strategies that stick because you aren’t required to deny yourself from what you love, perimenopause-informed fitness, ways to quiet food noise, and tools to stay consistent….like forever (it’s been over a decade for this chronic quitter 🙋🏼‍♀️).

💬Don’t forget to comment or DM the number that hit home and I’ll send you a custom strategy to implement today to give a middle finger to diet culture that still creeps into your day.

xx Coach Mel Joy

08/28/2026

Peri/menopausal women trying to lose weight have spent thousands on meal delivery, points programs, and AI coaching that all fall apart the second they ask one question…

I’ve had women come to me after paying for:
-meal delivery services
-vacuum-sealed fake food
-AI, impersonal canned response “coaching”
-meals logged and labeled with a vague rating of “green, yellow, red”
-cookie-cutter nutrition lessons
-points
….and every single one of them eventually had to answer the same question:

👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
“But what am I supposed to eat when this ends?”

Those plans helped them lose weight…to start with.

But they didn’t love what they were eating.
They were miserable.

And, after working with me, that ‘s the question my clients never have to ask again.

This cake? It isn’t me “cheating” and I’m not worried about having it around the house.
It’s not a reward or a treat.
I’ll be eating a slice as a part of my lunch any day I’m craving it.

Because it’s a recipe I built to support my goals because I understand what ingredients do.

If we haven’t met yet…
👋🏼Hi, I’m Mel, the women’s fat loss & fitness coach who lost weight over 10 years ago and who has kept it off because I learned how to build meals around what I actually love. I teach women how to do the same so after 90 days they don’t need me, another coach, an expensive meal plan….just themselves to keep getting results.

If you’re going to invest in something,
I’d rather help you invest in skill and strategy
you’ll use every day for the rest of your life,
not another box of meals you’ll eventually stop ordering.
We know the second the boxes stop showing up, so will the results.

💬Comment or DM me “START” and I’ll send you everything you need to get started.

xx Coach Mel

🎁For a taste test comment “FREE” and I’ll get you started with my milkshake recipe!

08/27/2026

The difference between every plan my clients and I have tried before
and what I teach isn’t the pizza.

It finally understanding why the pizza works.

If we haen’t met, hi. 👋🏼
I’m Mel, 46 y/o who grew up on Little Debbie, never played sports, and kept the weight off for over a decade eating pizza and everything else the plans told me to give up. I coach women who are done being tied to expensive plans, ready to learn how to do the damn thing themselves…for free.

For anyone who’s curious…this entire half pizza is:
🍕 466 cals
🍕 77g protein

I don’t coach women into buying expensive pre-portioned meals.
I don’t coach women into buying food that doesn’t taste like real food.
I don’t coach women by giving them vague information like this meal is a green, yellow, or red meal.
Or vague points that don’t answer the real question about protein and fiber.
I don’t coach women into pretending they don’t love pizza.

I coach women to build meals using foods they’d actually choose whether they were trying to lose weight or not.

I don’t want you to be dependent on a box that shows up every Tuesday.
I don’t want going out to dinner to feel like eating in the wild.
I don’t want the unexpected to leave you without any choices you know will align with your goals.

If your weight loss only works because someone else portions your food,
what happens when the box stops showing up?

I’ll help you understand food so well, the options for what you eat are endless.
And you’ll be so damn confident that all the posts telling you this weird sh*t that you “should” do to lose weight will be noise you laugh at and walk the f away from.

Ready? Comment or DM me “START” and let’s go!
xx Mel

08/26/2026

I’m not trying to go hard on vacation, but I do want to come home feeling grounded in myself. And this setup is my sanity nook.

And exactly why I created the Somewhere to Land: Summer Strength Series for midlife women.

It’s movement designed for the unpredictability of summer.
It’s a stash of movements, strategy, and a couple of pieces of equipment that you can run with in a hotel room, by the lake, in the pool, at the campsite.

It’s a grounded place to land in the midst of whatever a summer day brings.

I paired the free Summer Strength Series with my Core4 Movement Decision Tool so you have a way to keep moving during summer chaos AND a way to decide WHAT kind of movement your body is up for day to day.

Comment or DM me “SUMMER” and I’ll send it to ya!

Still claiming a corner of the room this summer,
Coach Mel Joy xoxo

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37201-37250

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