If you feel like you know WHAT to do when it comes to losing body fat, but you aren’t seeing results, this episode is for you. It’s incredibly common for women to come to me, frustrated, because they’re either working their asses off without results OR they can’t seem to align their actions with their goals. I’ve been there!
In this episode, I cover:
Feedback? Questions? Comments? Head on over to Instagram and let me know in my DMs!
SLA Waitlist
FREE TRAINING
COURSES
Follow me on Tiktok: @jessiemgolden
Subscribe to my Youtube channel
If you feel like you know WHAT to do when it comes to losing body fat, but you aren’t seeing results, this episode is for you. It’s incredibly common for women to come to me, frustrated, because they’re either working their asses off without results OR they can’t seem to align their actions with their goals. I’ve been there!
In this episode, I cover:
Feedback? Questions? Comments? Head on over to Instagram and let me know in my DMs!
SLA Waitlist
FREE TRAINING
COURSES
Follow me on Tiktok: @jessiemgolden
Subscribe to my Youtube channel
[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Jesse Golden podcast. It is officially the new year. We are in the first day of 2024 when I'm recording this. And I am so excited about the month ahead. We are. Some fun things planned for me in terms of personal travel, won't be a ton. I'm trying to reign it in a little bit because I've been feeling a little run down with all the traveling I've been doing over the holidays, but. I do have a hard time saying no to travel. With two adventures with people I really love and adore.
So we'll see what comes of that. But my word for the year is nourished. I shared this on Instagram. Definitely go check it out. If. You're interested in kind of how I chose that word. And. To be fully transparent. I've done this whole word thing so many times in the past, and I was not prepared to actually hold myself accountable to that word. I think I had trust.
I had surrender at all these words. And then I [00:01:00] just did not at all focus on the action that would be required in order to facilitate that word. So. I, I would like to say it goes without saying, but I was not aware of this. I did not focus on this. I was kind of just. Manifesting just focused on, okay.
Let's airy fairy. This thing is going to come into my life. I'm going to trust. I'm going to surrender a blah, blah, blah, whatever my word was. And unless we are crystal clear on how we're going to get uncomfortable, how we are going to have to change our behavior in order to align with whatever the word is.
If this is something you do as well, then we might as well not even choose one. Because it is going to be uncomfortable. Change is uncomfortable. If there's one thing I could send you into the new year with it is. View discomfort when you're changing her patterns as a beautiful thing, because our brains do not like change and it's, we're going to have that feeling in our gut. When we get those butterflies or. That tight feeling for me, it's usually my chest or my solar [00:02:00] plexus.
When I'm doing something new and uncomfortable. And as long as it's in alignment with your ultimate goal and your values, it is a good thing. And now I embrace it because I know, okay, this is good. This means I'm making progress. Discomfort means progress, which means I'm getting closer. To the version of myself that I want to become. And if weight loss of changing your body, if physique change is on your agenda for 2024, that's what we're going to be talking about in the episode today. And if that's not your thing, if that kind of gets you riled up, if you're really focused on your relationship with food and tuning out, all things, weight loss, I love that for you. Just skip over the next couple of episodes.
We're going to be covering more fat loss, weight loss topics before the opening of sustainably lean academy and just a couple of weeks. So. Do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself, but we are going to be talking about. Why women, so many women come to me saying I know what to do when it comes to losing weight, I know the things to [00:03:00] do, but I'm just not getting the results or the doors will open to SLA. And they'll say no, no, no.
I can do it on my own. And then they are fine for a month and then they go into, okay, shit, nothing's actually happening. And. This happens for several reasons. We're going to run through those today. So number one. Is, you may think that, you know, the right things to do, but what you actually think is the right approach is misinformation.
And I fell into this for a very long time. I was. Convinced I would have stood up in front of a jury, put my hand on the Bible and said, I know how to lose weight. I know what it takes. And I didn't have a clue. And it was not because I was trying to be some Galavant who is spreading misinformation or just someone who is so passionate about fooling people.
No, I genuinely, with every bone in my body believed what I was saying. And I believed [00:04:00] that carbohydrates were the source of all week came. I believed that. Eating any processed foods automatically lead to weight gain. I didn't understand energy balance. So the common ones that I see here are sugar is bad. I can tell pretty quickly if someone's using foods like good and bad food. That they're in that mindset of, okay.
Some foods inherently cause weight gain and some don't and that's not true. Avoiding all processed foods is another one. So if people are saying, oh, all I have to do is eat clean. Usually they're going to struggle because that is also not true. I was eating quote unquote, clean. For many, many years.
And I actually ended up getting heavier. I was eating a lot of fat.
Cardio. So cardio is not something that inherently leads to weight loss. It can, but we also have the constraint energy. The fact, which means that beyond a certain point, and this is usually for high amounts of cardio, but beyond a certain point. Other components of our energy output, our calories out, start to [00:05:00] downregulate because our metabolisms are brilliant. They don't want us to be burning energy, Willy nilly.
If we had to let's say, run a marathon back in the day when resources were scarce, then we needed to conserve energy in other ways. So our body downregulates other systems in the body in order to accomplish that. But. Even that aside. Cardio by itself does not inherently lead to weight loss. A calorie deficit is what leads to weight loss, cardio may or may not help you get into a calorie deficit. This coincides with exercising a lot.
I thought when I was doing. Ton of it was really big into what people call hit, which is actually just circuit training workouts, where you just did not stop moving. You know, you do it for 30 minutes and you'd move from one exercise to the next, very minimal rest. And I would be pouring sweat. And so exhausted. Breathing so hard.
And I thought, oh, working this hard and exercising a lot. Automatically leads to weight loss. I just thought that's how it [00:06:00] worked. And that is also not true. When I first started focusing on my relationship with food, I actually was shocked because I lost weight without even focusing on it. And all I did was go to a yoga class three times a week. That's all he did.
And that was the first. Enlightening moment for me when I realized, oh, I think I have everything all wrong about how weight loss actually works. Another one. And this is when I fell into was it's all about carps. The insulin obesity hypothesis, and this is still mind-boggling Lee. So pervasive that you cannot gain weight unless you're eating carbohydrates.
And the only way to lose weight is to reduce carbohydrates. And that is not true. In research, those who go on low carb diets, see a bigger decrease on the scale initially. And so this gets people really excited to say, oh my gosh, I lost 10 pounds in the first two weeks. The reason this happens is because carbohydrates hold water in the body. So that is an initial loss of water.
And if you [00:07:00] were losing that much weight for most people, the, the heavier you get, then this tends to not be as true, but for most people. Uh, if you've lost that much weight. In a short amount of time, then you're losing a lot of muscle mass. At the same time as well. So we don't want to just say, oh, fast weight loss is a good thing. But it is not all about carbs Quito. All of these low carb diets, that is not true.
Can they help you for some people, they help you regulate your appetite. Better than maybe other ways of eating shore, then that can lead to you being in a calorie deficit spontaneously without you having to focus on it. Then great, but I still want you to know, because that might not work for you forever. And that what led to you losing that weight? And we're talking weight in terms of body fat here.
Not that initial water loss is a calorie deficit. It's really important to understand that. I also see this a lot with the biohacking people where they just think that, oh, calorie deficit is just too mainstream that, you know, mainstream medicine [00:08:00] just doesn't know what's actually going on. That it's all these other things, you know, the. I love a cold plunge in a sauna.
Don't get me wrong, but it tends to be that whole sphere where it's about supplements and it's about eat these fat burning foods and cut out these foods. And this is the key to making your metabolism super skyrocketed and on fire and all that stuff is just a waste of your fucking time. If you want to do that. For your health and wellbeing, and that makes you feel good.
That's amazing. I love it. I partake in these things at times, too. But when it comes to losing weight, which is what we're talking about here, just tune all of that shit out. 200 hours, unless all these things help you get into a calorie deficit in a way that feels really good to you mentally and physically, and allows you to sustain that. Over a period of time and then easily come back out into maintaining those results. That it's got to go.
It just delete it from your brain.
The next thing is you have the basics down about a calorie deficit. So a lot of women are like, I get it. It's calorie [00:09:00] deficit, but they don't understand the intricacies of the metabolism and how to adjust their strategy. And this one took me a very, very long time to learn. And I think this is one of the biggest missing pieces I see in the industry.
This is why we're seeing now so many women saying, oh, I started Pilates and I lost 20 pounds. Because they were adapting to their stress levels. To the demands that we're placing, they started to even the scale where their stress bucket. Was not so damn full. So their appetite became our regulated. There's nothing magical about Pilates. Now there's other things.
Some people might have an adaptive metabolism more than others, so everybody's going to respond differently. Of course, we have a bell curve. But everyone's going to respond differently to a calorie deficit, meaning that some people's metabolisms adopt more quickly, but the good thing is, and a lot of people say, well, I gained weight.
If I look at a piece of cake, but I can never lose weight. That's not true. It works in both directions, [00:10:00] meaning that if your body adapts really quickly. When you're cutting calories and it adopts really quickly when you're increasing calories. So you will need to know how to adjust. If you do have an adaptive metabolism, some people do. Adjusting with a plateau.
So what happens when your tablet ism adjusts? This is a normal thing. Very very normal thing as you decrease calories and eventually things down-regulate, and this is separate from your body weight, just decreasing. So you require fewer calories because your body weighs less, less energy requirements. But adjusting with a plateau to continue to see results.
So it's not just, oh, let me just set it to a 300 calorie deficit and then that's all I need to worry about for the whole time, if it were that easy. Then people won't have a problem with it. Right? Of course, once they accept that it is. A calorie deficit and the aforementioned misinformation is out of the picture.
Now what happens also, do you know how to adjust when you have poor [00:11:00] biofeedback? We need to know how to adjust that. There are many times would I have jumped out of a fat loss phase early because my biofeedback was speaking to me in a way that said we are under too much stress. This combined with all the stressors I had going on in my life. I know what happens when things are pushed too far and it is so vitally important that you heed that warning. Otherwise your body is going to push back even harder. And that's when we see a lot of changes with appetite, really intense cravings, you start to feel like shit, you feel like your energy is extremely low. Well that's because your body is brilliant and it doesn't want to be in danger. And is your approach customized to you?
So, yes. Like I said, calorie deficit, especially if you don't want to track. Having an approach that is customized to you based on the way you already love to live your life in moderation. Is so important and that makes the whole calorie deficit, this whole process. So, so much easier. I promise once [00:12:00] you understand how this whole puzzle works. You're going to be like, wow. I don't have to stress about this shit at all for the rest of my life. Because they understand how things actually work, how my body actually works, how my mind responds to these things, my nervous system. And you put the whole pizza together. The whole pie. And you have a customized strategy that you're like, oh, I can eat the way that I love to eat.
I can go have donuts with my kids on Sunday. I know how to maintain. My results and I can go in and out of fat loss as they choose. Let's say you get pregnant and then you gain weight or health issues, or for whatever reason you gain weight after you lose it. Then great, no stress at all. I was able to sit at my higher weight when I gained 30 pounds and feel completely at ease about it because I knew exactly what to do to lose it. I just had to be really, really patient. Really patient with the timing. There were many times where I sat at that higher weight intentionally. For six plus months, because I [00:13:00] knew that I had to be ready. In order to get into it.
But I was at ease. I was Stressless because I knew when the time came. It was just a matter of time. And there's such, such peace in that.
The next reason. That you might not be getting results. Despite knowing what to do is that you're impatient. As fuck. So many women are so used to the results from fad dieting, from the extremes that if they don't lose 20 pounds in the first month, then, oh my God, this isn't working. This approach is broken. If you're losing two pounds in a month, which for a small woman, You know who let's say, a woman weighs 130 pounds, two pounds in a month. That's not a bad rate of weight loss, especially if it's something that you want to just easily integrate into your day to day life. And I don't know if this person had perhaps. Lost 20 pounds previously, things like Quito, where you can lose weight very quickly.
Remember it's that water weight? Essentially expectations are skewed. [00:14:00] And this leads people to thinking, oh my gosh. I'm broken. This doesn't work. No one is exempt. From the law of thermodynamics. This is physics. Calories is a unit of measurement of energy. And calories in versus calories out. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
It's going somewhere. None of us are exempt from it. It's just impossible. So now we need to know the nuances, like I mentioned, In the second part, right? Do you have an adaptive metabolism adjusting with a plateau because everyone's going to respond a little bit differently. But most women are just incredibly impatient and they really unrealistic expectations that come along with a sustainable approach.
They're used to the fad diet, extreme approach. So, what I would invite you to do is give it at least three weeks. To re a really, really solid consistency before you start to adjust your strategy before you start to say, okay, things aren't working, which even if things are not quote unquote working again, the [00:15:00] sense of peace should come with it.
You're not an exception to the law of thermodynamics, the law of physics of the universe. So you just need to give it time and know how to adjust. That's all it is. Is this just a simple experiment and math equation? And once you know how to adjust based on the feedback that you're getting. Easy peasy.
There's no need to panic at all. You might feel a little bit more deprived or not be having as many fun. Food's throughout the week. And of course we all would like to have our cake and eat it too. Sometimes we need to buckle down a little bit, but you can still get the results that you want. You just have to be. Having a growth mindset and be patient. Patients patients, patients.
That's one of the biggest attributes I see of women who are successful in SLA.
Number four is you're not ready mentally or physically. So you keep quote unquote self sabotaging. And I'm saying that in quotes, because I hate the word self-sabotage, it's really just self protection. There's a very good reason why we do what we do. We don't want to hurt our chances [00:16:00] of getting what we want.
It's just our brain. Our subconscious is coming up with these defense mechanisms because it's afraid it's trying to protect us, which. Thank you animal parts of ourselves, but. We need to make sure that we are actually ready. Mentally or physically and. I want to be so crystal clear if you are even remotely interested in SLA or getting leaner intentionally. And 2024, if your relationship with food is not solid. Do not do it.
Truly heed the warning, do not do it. Play the long game. I've had so many women by SLA and they come to me months later and they say, I actually wasn't ready. And I realized that because I am very clear at the beginning of SLA. As well. So they listened to me, they realize, okay, this actually isn't gonna work because I don't have the foundation of a mentally healthy relationship with food. Down yet. So they go spend the time, do it come back and everything is so much easier.
[00:17:00] Everything clicks. But don't jump the gun because I promise things are not going to work for you. So if you have a poor relationship with food, if you have an all or nothing mentality, You have habits where. You're going apeshit over the weekends or in the evenings, but during the day you're really restrictive and everything about food is super stressful. Then pause. Focus on that first. And you might see great physical results from just focusing on consistency and treating yourself really, really well. If your habits alert are all over the place.
Some women have really erotic habits, but they don't have the really stressful component and negative association with food and their body. And weight-loss, it's just simply, they're not focused on really treating themselves well. And so we want to get that dialed in first again, we cover this in the beginning of SLA as well. Make sure that your baseline habits are solid.
Otherwise you have a foundation that you're not gonna be able to return to, and if you wanna maintain your results. The truth is, is you have to have a lifestyle that is [00:18:00] healthy. There's no way around that. And healthy lifestyle can be a moderate lifestyle for most people. And that degree of moderation will look different. Depending on how lean someone wants to remain. But absolutely your lifestyle needs to be consistent.
It needs to have great healthy habits. So that you have longevity a for your health. But also to maintain the results on term, otherwise, why even go through the trouble of losing weight, if you're just going to say, fuck it, and then not have any maintenance afterwards. There's no point in putting yourself through that stress or your body.
You might also not be ready if it's a really stressful time in your life. So emotional stress can be super impactful. On our metabolisms in the sense that we might notice a huge spike in our appetite, just inability to recover, sleep. Those things all can create a really big mess when it comes to our ability to sustain a calorie deficit. Especially when you add [00:19:00] exercise on top of that, if you're pushing yourself in the gym, it can be a lot for your body to recover from your nervous system to recover from.
So be mindful of that. Am I actually in a position right now to lose weight. And there's a caveat here because I've had many women and clients come to me and say, I'm, Hey, I'm a busy career woman who has children and things are never going to be low stress. I'm never going to be going to Bali. Like I did last year. And be able to chill on a beach and that's not what I'm talking about here. Number one, our relationship to the stress is super important, but if you have good habits in place, which I recommend you get going. And you can really focus on stress management during a deficit. And not pile on.
Okay. I'm going to go all or nothing and pretend I'm. You know, going into the Navy seal training because I want to lose fat. Yeah. You're going to burn out and you're going to be stuck and that cycle, but if you can approach fat loss, this is why I say make fat loss chill again. Fat loss can be a chill [00:20:00] approach. Great.
You can do this. If you have life stress, I have life stress. I get it. I now have a little thing, a little crazy ass puppy that I have to take care of. And she does take up a lot more of my day. Then my previous just lottie.lifestyle. Did I am an entrepreneur? I don't eat unless I kill something, right.
That is the life of an entrepreneur. I am completely reliant on myself to make money and feed myself. And make a living. There's stress that comes along with that. Right. But if we can manage our stress with the approach that we're taking to. So the amount of the calorie deficit. The aggressiveness or lack thereof of the calorie deficit, the type of exercise that we're doing, the duration of the exercise, all of these things can contribute to our ability to sustain a calorie deficit.
But if you are in a state of stress where let's say you just had a big death in your family or a job loss or something that's really, really stressful for you, then just consider now [00:21:00] might not be the right time to be focusing on something like losing weight.
Another big part of this, though, that I see is desperation due to poor body image. I can. Sense it from a mile away. When I see someone mid AMS or someone who slips through the cracks and comes into SLA and they are frantic. When things are not going perfectly smoothly, because like I said, it's all an experiment.
We have the basic principles and then we need to experiment and adjust to get to the end goal. But you will. Get to the end goal. You will, it's just a matter of sticking with it. But that desperate energy will repel the results. You will be in a state of panic. You will not be thinking clearly. You're typically going to be eating a lot more women don't realize this, that often when they're so attached to an outcome it's like with dating. You're so eager to go after the guy. That when he's not texting back, you're checking your phone every five seconds.
He picks up on that energy and he's like, Ooh, this is a little knee for me. [00:22:00] I want something that's a little bit more secure. Doesn't feel safe, right? The same thing. Your brain does the same thing when it comes to weight loss. There's that lack of safety. So we really want to make sure that it's coming from a place of, Hey. I'm good where I am. I got myself right where I am.
This is just something that is a preference for me. I'm not willing to violate my boundaries. Which is really important message to send your brain as well. You're not going to go back into the slippery slope of doing all this. Sketchy shit. When it comes to food and dieting, you're going to take really good care of yourself. And you're going to show up with love and confidence and self-respect, regardless of the way your body looks go at it from that foundation.
And it is a fucking game changer. Okay. Number five is, and this is really interesting. One guys is the goal. Isn't really what you want. Deep down.
Now, this is something that I, I love to see it. And I know people invest in SLA, but it's still their [00:23:00] revelation once they get into it. And this doesn't happen very often. But when it does is I've had women get in there and say, you know, and this is because I give so much permission at the beginning of the course of. Make sure that this is an alignment with your values.
That's what's most important to me. And you might realize, okay, I wanted, I did a month of fat loss and then I realized, Hmm. Other life priorities came up that are way more important to me. And then you take a break, but some women find, oh, I actually don't give a shit about changing my body. I thought, because I was just so used to that being a goal. I thought I wanted to change my body. But when it comes down to it, I don't actually give a fuck. And that is glorious.
That is fine. So it might not be in alignment with your values. Could be one option. Might not be the right time for you. You're just like, okay, it's just not in alignment with all the other priorities I have going on in my life. This is just not it. Give yourself that permission. It's fine. Don't pay attention to what the Instagirls telling you.
Who's saying if you really want it, you'll do it. No matter what. [00:24:00] Tune it out. You get to do what you want. You're an adult. You might be too comfortable with where you are in the sense that okay. You could shift your lifestyle a little bit for a couple months to go into a fat loss period. But deep down and you're like, ah, I don't really want to change anything about my lifestyle.
I'm comfortable. And for whatever reason, you don't want to make some of those sacrifices. That's fine, but if you are hearing this and you're saying, well, no, I do actually want to get leaner. Then you need to accept that there are going to be some sacrifices and there's going to be a little bit of discomfort that might come along with that. And that is okay.
That acceptance is important.
And the payoff of what you want might not be great enough to change your habits. And this is a big one. I see where they get into the nitty gritty of getting leaner and they realize. I mean, is anything really going to change in my life if I lose these 10 pounds and they start to consider it and they say, No. Okay then maybe I [00:25:00] don't really want to do it.
You know, if someone is going is losing 50 pounds, a hundred pounds, which I have. Certainly have clients who are in the process of, or I've done that. Then that can absolutely be life-changing for a variety of reasons for them when it comes to their overall wellbeing. And in that sense, they are very motivated. For those reasons. But when I find that women are doing it more for those vanity purposes, then it can just be like, Hmm, nothing's really going to change in my life.
So I realized, do I actually want this. And that's something to absolutely. Consider.
So these are the top five reasons that I see for my ladies who come to me saying I know how to do it, but I'm just not. Getting the results that I want. It could be. Just a mental behavioral shifts that we need to make that. Okay. Maybe the payoff is actually worth it, or we need to make it so that your brain. Arrives at the place where the payoff is worth it. It may not be in [00:26:00] alignment with your values.
Okay. So these are more of the behavioral shifts could be that you just are following misinformation and you think, you know exactly what to do. And this is no shade because I've been there myself. But you're following someone who's telling you bullshit.
You might have the basics down of a calorie deficit, but you're missing the metabolism piece, which is so vitally important to understand guys. That it was the missing puzzle piece for me for so long. You could also just be impatient as hell and your mindset needs to be adjusted and you need to have some sticktuitiveness. And some more realistic expectations. Because fad dieting land. And desperation land or long gone.
We're beyond that. Okay. So. If you would like to join me inside of SLA or learn more about sustainably lean academy, I will be opening it up and I'm going to be offering a VIP group option, which I am very excited about this around. That will include a group community, and I'm going to limit the number of spots so that it's an intimate group.
I want it to be much more high [00:27:00] touch. So the ladies can feel like they're actually in a group with other ladies and myself. The doors will be opening later in January. So if you want to get on the wait list for that, I will only be offering. The special early bird price for those on the wait list this time, then you're going to need to click the link in the show notes to be sure to get on the wait list, to be notified. Of that very special, early bird price. Let me know what stuck out to you most in this episode pop on over to instagram and let me know and i hope you all have had such a beautiful start to your new year and we'll see you in the next episode