From Brain Fog to Clarity: A Life Coaching Client's Journey Through Weight Loss and Divorce
Client Story: Brain Fog to Clarity | Jo Renshaw Life Coach, Brighton
At 46, Claudia could not see the metaphorical road ahead of her. She described it as brain fog so thick that a woman who had spent her life being capable, responsible, and quietly self-sufficient suddenly had no idea where her own life was going.
"I'm supposed to be a responsible adult," she says, "and I have no clue where I'm going. This is really scary."
Two years, one coaching relationship, with a life coach for women in their 40s, and two seismic life changes later - a 10-kilo perimenopause weight loss and reversed insulin resistance, and the decision to end her marriage - that fog has lifted. This is her midlife coaching client story, in her words.
"I thought I had the tools"
Claudia didn't come to coaching as a blank slate. She'd read the books, watched the YouTube videos, and understood the theory. What she didn't have was someone to help her actually use any of it.
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"I had a great toolkit," she says, "but if you try and build a table and you've got great tools, but the one tool you need is not there, you can do what you want, but it's going to be messy."
She'd tried free counselling once before, years earlier, as a full-time mum who recognised signs of depression and anxiety in herself and was frightened of what it might mean for her children. She self-referred and waited a year for an appointment.
"I could feel she wasn't present," Claudia says of the counsellor she eventually saw. "She was there to tick the boxes and do whatever was necessary... after that appointment, I thought, this is not working for me. This is absolutely useless."
What she actually needed
Ask Claudia what made the difference this time, and she doesn't talk about frameworks or strategy. She talks about being held.
What was your favourite thing about working together?
"Finally being heard and having an advocate. Having a professional to have my back, who really understands my story and who helps me find answers and solutions that actually work for my specific situation."
It's a theme she returns to again and again - the difference between being comforted and being helped. Friends and family, she says, love you, but they're also tangled up in your life, seeing it through their own lens, and often can't handle it when the emotion that comes with real change shows up.
"Family members can tell you a lot of things and it can cause a lot of emotional release, but the directing of it is what a friend and family member often cannot provide... working with you, I always knew no matter what comes out of me, it's okay."
She names this as generational. Her mother, she says, was a woman who bottled everything up, who never once took a day in bed no matter how ill or exhausted she was and who made everyone around her feel the weight of that suffering without ever naming it.
"I've only learned in the last 10 years how to speak emotion," Claudia says. "How much talking about emotion is necessary for you to actually make progress and move on that has really come out in our coaching sessions."
The weight loss in mid-life: 10 kilos, and a lot more than that
Claudia had spent decades associating weight loss with suffering. As a child, her mother spoke to her teachers to control what and how much she ate and the result was a lifelong self-consciousness around food that followed her into adulthood.
"I always felt haunted by other people when eating," she says. "I found myself actually taking my plate and going to another room, finding all sorts of excuses why I needed to eat separate and away from my family."
The insulin resistance and perimenopause connection
By the time she started coaching, she was dealing with symptoms doctors had flagged as diabetes and insulin resistance compounded by perimenopause. Sugar crashes at 2pm that left her unable to think in front of a classroom full of children. A sense of "impending doom" if she didn't eat immediately.
Tell me about the weight loss.
"I lost 10 kilos in eight weeks and I never thought it was possible, because everything I associate with weight loss is excruciating suffering... but focusing on protein and fibre and healthy fats has made a huge difference. Now I feel fuller for longer. I've got 80% of my energy back."
The physical change is only part of it. What's changed underneath is her relationship to scarcity itself.
"Right now, my fridge looks very bare and empty. But it doesn't send me into fear of survival anymore. It's no longer a death sentence, opening the fridge. So what? It's empty. We can get through this."
The divorce: breaking a family pattern
A four generation pattern
Claudia can trace the pattern back generations. At least four women in her family tree stayed in marriages that made them unhappy . Women who, in her words, "married to just meet the expectations of society." She remembers being twelve years old, listening to her own mother complain about her father, and asking the obvious question: why not just leave?
"She said it's because of me. If we got divorced, our finances would look really lousy and I wouldn't be able to do horse riding, choir, arts, music... but she never dared that step."
Claudia had always resisted the institution of marriage itself, marrying only years into her relationship, and only once she realised that if anything happened to her, being unmarried would complicate things for her children. It was never a fairy tale.
What did coaching give you around the divorce that you didn't already have?
"I thought I'd done all the emotional work. But it's the difficult conversations, moving from being a wife who's acting like this is all good, to being the one who is getting a divorce, is a very different game. Working with you really helped me find what I needed to walk through that successfully."
"The fearless Shaolin warrior has arrived"
Has your self-concept changed since you started this work?
"Hell yes. I am taking no more BS from anyone, and I am tidying up my act - family, work, relationships. Together, we unleashed the fearless Shaolin warrior! She has arrived and she is ready to face anything."
What's your superpower now?
"Saying NO and standing firmly in my truth, even if it's uncomfortable for others. Because I know that my path and my truth is mine alone and is not for others to understand. I'm no longer scared to disappoint, and it is not necessary or my job to explain myself."
The two results, the body, the marriage, aren't separate stories to Claudia. They're the same story, told twice.
"How we do one thing is how we do everything," her coach Jo Renshaw-Thomlinson reflected on their final call. Claudia agreed instantly. "I can see my path much more clearly than before. I was in brain fog before. I couldn't see the path ahead of me. And starting with the weight was a good point. Everything else followed after that."
If you're on the fence about working with a Life Coach
Claudia has one message for anyone weighing whether coaching is worth the investment, financial or otherwise:
"It's your comfort brain tricking you. It wants to stay in familiar and comfortable mode. It's a lie. Don't listen to it... You don't have to do it all at once. You are the captain. One little move at a time, and you decide where the ship is going."
And to anyone considering working with Jo specifically:
"Go for it. It's worth every penny, every minute. Be prepared for a fair amount of discomfort, but see this as a good sign, a precursor to positive change, progress and success."
Ready to find your own clear path?
Claudia's story isn't unusual for the women I work with — successful, capable, quietly holding it all together on the outside, and still stuck somewhere they can't quite name. If any part of her story sounds familiar, the first step isn't a decision. It's a conversation.
Let's talk about where you're at, what's keeping you stuck, and whether coaching is the right next move for you.
This blog is inspired by the work I do with my clients during sessions, and brought to you in partnership with AI.
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