Ep 21 - Ten Truths About Weight Loss

Have you been researching how to lose weight and get fit? Does all the conflicting information around have your head spinning in confusion?   In this episode we break down what TRULY matters for weight loss and where you should spend your energies and efforts to get results.  We also provide easy lifestyle and mindset tips to incorporate these truths into your life.  If you love learning about the math and science of weight loss, this podcast episode is for you!

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:08

Welcome to the Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30 Podcast. I'm Joe. And I'm Allison and we're your co hosts and the founders of Couture Fitness and Lifestyle Coaching. We're on a quest to help women design lives they love and bodies they adore. We were fed up with the dieting industry and decided to create something different. We're starting a calories up revolution where women are nourished, their metabolisms are healed and their bodies and brains start working for them in the battle against weight loss. If you feel like your metabolism is wrecked, and you want to lose weight once and for all you are in the right place. Well, hello, everyone. Um, you have both Joe and Alison this morning, and today we're going to talk about some hard truths about weight loss. Before we get into that though, I do want to talk to you about enrollment for our July metabolic makeover program. We are currently enrolling for that program, we only open four times a year at the beginning of each quarter. So that means that July is the beginning of a new quarter. So we'll be opening then, if you want to work with us make sure that you reserve a spot we sold out in our April program and we have a lot of people on our waitlist, we frankly don't have enough spots to be able to even take everyone on our waitlist. So I dissipate that we'll be in a sold out situation again. So again, make sure that you reserve your spot, you do that by going to our website at your fitness coaching.com to the work with us page, and then choosing you know whether you want to work with us for 12 weeks, six months or a year. Another option, if you have some questions is that you could schedule a consult call with us, we'll have a link to that in the show notes. And we'd be happy to talk to you about the approach we would take with working with you and I might talk about that a little bit more at the end of this podcast. But yes, we are enrolling right now. So if you want to work with us, make sure you get your spot reserved before we sell out. So like I mentioned today, we're going to be talking about 10 truths about weight loss. And I think this is important because there if you just go to Instagram or Facebook or Google weight loss, there's a lot of head spinning confusing, frankly, crazy stuff out there. And I think it's really helpful to know what truly matters for weight loss and was what is going to get you results. A lot of the truths that we're going to talk about are not popular in the mainstream diet industry, but But we'll always give it to you straight and give you the straight scoop. We won't sugarcoat anything for you. And the truth is that and you know, in terms of losing weight and keeping weight off for good. So I would call that like a year or two years, you know that you've you've lost weight, and you've been able to maintain that weight for a period of years, the numbers are pretty dismal. And that just speaks to you know, losing it losing weight is its work. And it takes a lot of intention and discipline. And you definitely want to have a good strategy going into it. And we can speak to this firsthand. Can't we all listen, I know you are in the middle of a small little cutting phase. And I just entered a longer three month dieting phase to get ready for a fitness competition. So it's not easy, isn't it? It's not easy. It's not fun. And I know what I need to do to make results happen. But even you know, even when I'm doing the right things, the progress just come slow. And we're going to talk about that too. So yeah, I mean, it's just you just got to put in the work. Yeah, the best that you can do is control the inputs, your body is going to do what it's going to do you you cannot will your body to lose weight, it doesn't work that way. And so what you really have control over are the inputs that you give your body. Okay, so let's just get straight into these truths. Allison, what's, what's the first trait to talk about? Alright, so the first one I have on my list is that weight loss is really just a math and numbers game. So if you want to lose weight, you just simply have to create an energy imbalance, it's really kind of just a math equation. So the energy coming in has to be less than the energy going out. The problem with this math equation is that there's some wildcards, here, the energy going out is not always going to be constant. And what I mean by that, when I say the energy going out, it means your body is going your metabolism is going to adapt. We talked about that a lot on this podcast, obviously. But that is definitely something that will kind of make this a little bit trickier than just trying to, you know, say, Oh, well, you know, here's how many calories I should be eating, and here's how many I should eat to lose weight, and I'll just eat this forevermore, and all this weight is going to come off at exactly the rate that I want it to and it's not ever that simple, because of the fact that your body is going to adapt to your new calorie levels. Some other wildcards that can be thrown in there if you have anything off with your hormones or your thyroid or even your digestive health that can definitely impact weight loss as well. So I know there's some very, you know, some of the popular diets right now are things like intermittent fasting keto, paleo, and these plans. They're just not rooted in math and all they're doing they're just a nice way to dress up what they're doing is and that's getting you into caloric deficit, if you're not in a deficit, none of those plans are going to have you losing weight. If you are eating keto, but you're still eating as much food as you were before or even more, even though you're eating keto, you're probably not going to lose any real weight. Sure, you might lose a little bit of water weight initially by cutting out carbs, but you're not going to lose weight, they're just a way to get you into that deficit, often, they won't really keep you there. And that's why a lot of these diets, they might work in the beginning, but they really tend to not work well, long term. And these definitely don't take into account those wildcards that I mentioned, they're not going to help you adjust to your metabolism adapting upwards and downwards. So that's really, you know, one of the biggest truths, it's just a numbers game. So Joe, do you have any good news or tips related to this? Well, since it is a math equation, what we know from studies done on people who have lost and kept off weight is that what how they are successful is they have some means of knowing and monitoring their energy inputs. So that means the energy coming in when you know, you know how many calories you're ingesting, it means that you gives you the ability to manipulate it. So this is basically the pillar cornerstone of our program. And we have our clients track using my fitness pal or a similar app. And I think that this is just something a fact that you have to try and make peace with. Tracking and counting calories has really gotten a bad rap. Some people say it causes eating disorders, I think what you think about it may cause some disordered behaviors or disordered eating. But just knowing what you're taking in on a daily basis is not disordered. And again, it's just something to make peace with. It takes only a few minutes a day, I think we all have this fantasy that we can eat some sort of super food or take a pill and the weights magically going to come off. That doesn't work that's not rooted in math. But I think if you gave it a try, and if you tried tracking your food, you might be surprised at how easy it is, and really how good it feels to have knowledge and information. Because after all, knowledge is power. So I think this is just something you have to come to terms with and build into your life. The analogy I use is like you want to know how much money you're making no, you would never take a job not knowing what the salary is. And you would not be able to manage your household budget if you had no idea how much revenue was coming in. This is similar, we talk in terms of giving people calorie and macronutrient budgets, but you have to know some you have to know what the intake is to be able to manipulate anything, or to be able to plan anything. So again, this is the approach we take. And I really, I think that there are probably other coaches who use some other method of helping women lose weight, I don't know how they do it. And it's not what we know how to do. So for our clients, at least, this is just something they have to come to terms with. Yeah, and I would just add, if you don't know what you're eating, you really don't know how to change what you're eating in order to make, you know, changes to your body. Some people need to actually be eating more, and some people need to be eating less. And if you're not sure what you're eating, you don't really know what you need to do. It's not for everyone, it's not as simple as well, I'm just going to eat less, that is not always the case. So yeah, just tracking is a really, really good first step and a good way to stay on track. Yeah. And I again, it is it is what people who have lost and kept weight off do. So if you want to be successful by like them, then you need to adopt some of the habits that they have. Yeah, and you make a really good point. Like I always try to explain to clients, like if you have no idea how much you're eating. Another analogy would be like if you came to us and said, I want to go to California, but you have no idea. If you're in Kansas, Montana, Texas, you know how you get to California could be very different depending on where you're starting off, but you wouldn't just get in the car and start driving. To me. That's what just going on a diet without having any idea where you're starting is like it's not going to be very successful, and you're probably going to end up lost and frustrated. That's a good analogy. Yes, very true. Okay, I'm gonna get into Truth Number two, weight loss takes time, I think it always takes more time than you want it to to lose weight and change your body composition. And honestly, if you were losing a pound a week, that is what I would consider to be really, really good progress. And I know that sometimes doesn't feel fast enough. But that is really good progress. If you are losing true body fat. Sure, you can lose water a little bit quickly. But that's just going to come right back on once you know your your body is no longer dehydrated. And this assumes that you start the process eating enough and that you can immediately go into a caloric deficit, which is a whole nother topic that we talked about specifically in episode two if you want to listen to that one, but yeah, weight loss is going to take time, it's probably going to take a lot longer than you hope. I know if you have 40 or 50 or more pounds to lose. This can probably feel really daunting, but I think just knowing that it's going to take some time is helpful. So you're not discouraged when you don't lose 10 pounds a week, the first month of your diet. So Joe, do you have some tips for Dealing with being patient with weight loss. Yeah, I mean, again, I think this is just something you have to find a way to do is be patient. And one way you do that is avoid fixating on the scale, people who tend to do that tend to be very desperate. And they get very fixated with a number on the scale, they're not actually even tracking any other data points. And they become singularly obsessed with getting the weight off now, and I can tell you to a client, all that does is delay the process because they think it's not working, if it's not going fast enough, and then they don't do the things that are necessary to change their body composition, and or lose weight. The other thing is that you have to understand that, you know, the scale is just one data point, depending on how you sort of have to kick off your weight loss journey. And this dovetails to a point you make if you're not eating enough calories that we can put you into a calorie deficit. Strangely enough, your weight loss journey is not going to start off with the first focus being to lose weight, we've talked about this, I think it's an episode two about you're going to have to prime your body for fat loss. But while you're doing that, you can still be doing all the things you know, having good nutrition, exercising in the way that we prescribed, getting lots of movement. And even if the number on the scale isn't moving, you can still be making a lot of progress and be making changes to your body composition. You just have to trust the process. And frankly, learn to fall in love with the lifestyle. That's what I would advise most, that's going to take you a lot further than just getting obsessed and fixated on the number on the scale and whether it's moving fast enough. Absolutely. Okay, the Truth Number Three about weight loss that I have is you have to be consistent. This does not mean that you have to be perfect, I am definitely not perfect. I don't think any of our successful clients are perfect and are hitting their macros down to the gram every single day, that would just be nearly impossible. But you do have to be consistent, and you have to be more consistent than you probably thought you would have to be most people if they're left to their own devices, they just aren't consistent in their day to day caloric intake, we often see people coming to us maybe with really low calories during weekdays and maybe really high calories on the weekends are just a constant up and down day over day. And our bodies crave consistency when it comes to weight loss. Once we start consistently nourishing our bodies, we might even be shocked at how well they respond. Practicing consistency is much more effective than just doing some really extreme diet or exercise plan that you're not going to stick with that usually just results in injury or abandoning it all together. And compliance on those is basically nearly impossible. So Joe, do you have any tips for people to stay consistent? Yeah, I think for most people, what consistency means is getting a handle on weekends, and social and eating, social eating and drinking. And what you need to accept is that there is always going, there's never going to be like a 12 or 24 week, or I don't know six month period of your life where you're not going to have a weekend, or some sort of social events. So you're going to have to learn how to manage those events. Now we do address this in our program, we do group coaching on those topics. That's kind of a serenity prayer thing that is something that you're going to have to accept and like come to terms that there's no universe where weekends can be a free for all and you can still lose weight doesn't mean that you can't enjoy some social eating and drinking, but you need a plan and a strategy. And we see it over and over again, how easily can vary, you can be very, very good, like Monday through Thursday. And by good I mean like hitting your targets, you know, eating well, having good nutrition, doing what you need to do in the gym, and then erase all of those successes by not being consistent during the weekend. So you know, I have a technical term for this, this letting the weekends get away from you, I call it farting around and we see it I mean, you can very easily lose weight and then regain it all during the weekend by farting around. So what I would say is just you gotta you got to learn to be consistent, more consistent than you ever thought necessary, then you will have success. And I would add this doesn't mean you can't have fun on the weekends. It doesn't mean you can't have a drink or you can't have pizza or dessert. You just need to think about which What do you really want. Do you want to have, you know, five beers and half of a pizza and that brownie, you can't have all of them but maybe you can have the beer for you know if the rest of your food is healthy. Or maybe you can have the pizza if the rest of your day is healthy. So it really just takes intention, it doesn't mean that you cannot have fun and still enjoy some of your favorite foods. Okay, so here's number four weight loss can be boring. So if you're trying to lose weight food might have to not become a huge source of entertainment for you anymore. You might mean that you're eating more of the same things day in and day out. That's not to say you have to eat the same things in my opinion. It's just easier to say alright, I'm just going to eat this everyday for breakfast and everyday for this for lunch. And then maybe dinner will change up from an exercise perspective, we also prescribe a lot of resistance training and walking, you're going to be doing a lot of these exercises over and over. And this just goes back to consistency, this is what's going to give you the best results, maybe it's not going to be new and exciting every day. But that's what's gonna get you the results. So Joe, do you have any tips for dealing with the fact that weight loss can be kind of boring beginning to sound like a broken record, but again, acceptance. If you're someone who entertains yourself with a lot of eating out and social eating and drinking, you might have to find some alternative forms of entertainment, it doesn't mean that you can't eat out or ever have a drink with a friend, if you are working towards a weight loss goal. But again, you know, people who really tend to struggle with this, or people that like this is kind of their primary means of entertainment, losing weight is work, it's not meant to be entertainment. But what this doesn't mean that this is not totally doable, it's just that you're going to have to change some of your habits and your lifestyle. But I think that you will completely grow and evolve as a person. If you can make peace with this truth and stop using food and drinking as a primary means of entertainment on the exercise. You know, we were gonna talk about this more in a minute, but like, oh, I don't just go in and lifting the same weights, that's boring. Well, again, I don't know that working out is meant to be a source of entertainment either, you know, for a certain period of time, it serves a different purpose. So I would kind of consider it as like, this is the medicine that you need to take to get the results you want. That may not sound that much fun. It may be boring for a short period of time, but you will get through it. It's definitely Okay, so my truth number five, nutrition really matters. You can work really hard in the gym. But if your nutrition is not dialed in, you are just not going to see the results that you want. Nutrition matters the most. When it comes to weight loss, it matters more than exercise. And we talked about this, we talked about how the body adapts really quickly to things like cardio in a different episode. But nutrition really is king when it comes to changing your body. eating enough protein really matters for also when it comes to your nutrition. And then going back to that energy balance equation that we talked about earlier, it's almost impossible to create that by exercise alone, you cannot out exercise a bad diet. And this really goes both ways. If you're eating too much, you cannot do enough exercise to make up for that. And also, if you're eating too little, you are still not going to be getting the results you want. So if you're under eating, and you're hoping that you're going to be building muscle, it's just not going to happen, you have to be eating enough. So it's kind of like a Goldilocks formula, you've got to get it just right. You can't be you know, eating too much or too little. So Joe, do you have any nutrition tips related to this? Yeah, I think the good news here is that if you can get your nutrition dialed in now a lot of people are going to hear that and think restriction, I need to eat less, or I need to cut out carbs. That's not what we're talking about. We're just we're talking about getting it calibrated in a manner that is going to set you up for success that for some people, that means eating more. For some people, that means eating less. But if you can get it calibrated, the chances are very high that you're going to have a lot more energy and feel a lot better. I would say to a client, there's not one client, I can think of that we haven't improved the quality of their nutrition when they have come to work with us. This is the one thing that Foamex is almost everyone is you know getting their nutrition dialed in. So I would just say stop fighting it. This is definitely an area where you may not know best and maybe even get a coach to help you get it dialed in. It's I think it is very hard to do on your own unless you know a lot and have been around the block on this. But you could start by educating yourself about nutrition adequacy, I would focus that more on you know, your educational efforts on nutrition and protein adequacy versus just eating whole foods, organic foods or something really understand what adequate nutrition looks like for an adult woman or man, and what protein adequacy looks like, then I would say started addressing it and start leveling up your nutrition. I think embracing this truth can be a real quality of life enhancer. If you think about it, nutrition is our kind of base energy source. So if you have good nutrition, you are going to have great energy and I think you are just going to have a real improvement overall of your quality of life. Yep, I agree. Okay, Truth Number Six. And I think this is going to be the hardest truth of all for a lot of people alcohol can sabotage your progress. It can absolutely sabotage your weight loss. The truth is that the majority of calories on any given day if you want to be losing body fat need to come from real food, not liquid, not alcohol calories. And so it might kind of sound ridiculous, but if you're only eating 1300 1400 1500 calories a day and you're drinking two glasses of wine, that's really not great nutrition. Alcohol itself, its own macronutrient it's very different than protein different than carbs is different than fats. Our bodies actually can't store it. So if you are having a meal along with alcohol your body is first going to work on detoxing your body of that alcohol before it even begins to burn through the food that you're eating, making you store even more body fat, if you're going to have, you know, a big meal with lots of alcohol, um, it also really does not have any nutritional value, it is a carcinogenic and it is we call it expensive calorically, it's, they tend to be very high in calories, it's definitely not filling in from our experience, what we see and what we advise clients, usually three to four drinks a week is where you want to be or less if you want to lose weight. And we are not saying you have to stop drinking, if you want to lose weight, that is not true. You just have to know that if you want this to work long term, you may need to cut back a bit and having 10 drinks a week is probably not going to get you to your goal. And like I said, this is this might be the hardest truth of all, for some of you to hear. But it is still a truth. So Joe, what alcohol tips do you have? Well, again, broken record time acceptance, stop fighting this, there is never going to be a world where you can drink whatever you want, and however much you want and lose weight. That's just not reality. I think a lot of people come to us thinking that we're going to give them some magical drink concoction of like just vodka and club soda or something that they can drink in unlimited quantities and still lose weight. That's not That's not reality, that drink does not exist, you have to learn how to manage your alcohol consumption. And I think you know, most people that I've coached at least say like, Well, yeah, I'm just drink, they're drinking in response to anxiety and boredom. And so you're going to have to find and learn another way to deal with his emotions, this totally can be done. And if you do this, you are going to evolve as a person. And probably you know, this is again, going to be another quality of life enhancer. And actually, most people that I coach on this topic, they know that the drinking is getting in the way of their weight loss, they just think they have no choice. They don't know how to change it, they don't think they can change. They think they're beholden to alcohol. And I'm not talking about alcoholics or anything. These are just normal people who just be like, they need a glass of wine every night to deal with the pressure of the day or their life or whatever you don't, you can learn other habits to deal with your anxiety and to manage your life, you just sort of have to make that choice. And you have to decide to make the weight loss a priority over alcohol use. And this, this is the hard truth. I always feel a little bit sad when people hire us. And there's like, tell me how to manage the drinking. And I'm like you just don't drink. We have no special recipe, we cannot change the properties of alcohol, you have to learn to deal with yourself and your I manage your life in a different way. And Joe, I've heard you coach people before. And one thing I really love that you have said is you should love your reasons for doing it. So if you know, you're going out with some girlfriends that you haven't seen in a while, and you're like, Yep, I'm going to have two drinks tonight. And I'm going to have a great time with them. That's great as long as you love your reason. And you've planned for it. And you are happy about those two drinks that you're going to have. I think that is great. But you might not love your reasons. If you just come home every night have a have a glass of wine all by yourself because you're depressed about something you may not love your reason for drinking that. And so I think it comes down to you know, love your reasons. And don't drink out of habit drink because you want to for like a special occasion or something. Yeah, totally agree. Okay, so Truth Number seven, this one, we've heard a lot about food, this one is more related to exercise. And it is that muscle really does matter. And how you move your body really does matter. All of our programs, no matter what we have our clients doing some sort of strength training, usually two to four times per week, it's very customized to the client, but everybody is doing some form of strength training. As we get older, we if we're not doing something to combat this, we will be losing muscle mass. And that is in turn going to be slowing down your metabolism unless you are, like I just mentioned strength training to prevent that. Or even maybe put on more muscle, it's really important to keep muscle on your body as you get older. And just dieting is going to further accelerate that process of burning your muscle off. And so yes, you might lose some weight if you just die it and just do cardio, but it's going to be harder to keep it off because you're also losing muscle. And sadly, cardio and resistance training are not equal when it comes to weight loss. So Joe, can you talk a little bit more about this? Yeah, so I've had many conversations with I would say potential clients that just say well, I'm just someone who prefers running to lifting weights kind of all it can almost be like a religious I don't mean like in true religion but like some people's running and cardio is like a real religion to them. And you know, I'm just not someone who lifts weights I'm a runner, blah, blah blah. Let's not make this a moral or preference issue. The truth is that you can learn to love anything if you love running like we have clients who love running, we help them keep it in but we also incorporate the resistance training. This is a gospel truth. I would swear on the Bible to this cardio and resistance training are absolutely not equal for weight loss, you will get very different results. And so you need to accept that reality. If you want to not lift the weights, then you are going to suffer the consequence of that. Now, I will say I think any movement is better than no movement. And so if you're like, if the choice is between jogging around the block and laying on the couch, I would probably advise jogging around the block, you know, this is just again, you just need to quit fighting this truth and accept it and kind of like we just talked about with alcohol, like your reasons for whatever, whether you choose to do it or not. I think the great news is that every we have lots of women in particular, that tell us they want to get toned, they want to turn up their arms, they want to turn up their legs, they want to turn up their stomachs. Well, actually, you can't like spot reduce fat, like you can't like remove, just say like, I'm gonna die it and I've got all the muscle or all the fat is going to come off my belly, you can't do that. But you can kind of choose to enhance certain body parts by lifting. So if you want like some sort of targeted, if you're trying to target a body part, the way you're going to do that is by lifting weights. And then the really, really good news is that if you start doing some resistance training, the results may not be as fast as if you incorporate a bunch of jogging, if you weren't jogging before, like you probably would get a little more weight loss at the beginning from the jogging. But if you can incorporate the resistance training into your life, your body is going to start burning more calories at rest, without you doing anything. So I think that makes a really good case for doing resistance training. Yeah, and I'm just going to add, I feel like I'm always trash talking. Cardio, I don't think cardio is bad. I think too much cardio can be bad. But I will say almost all of the clients who come to us tell us that one of their goals is to tighten up or tone up and achieve a tone look, you're not going to get that by just go by just running you can you can run and run and run, you are not going to get that title. And look, you actually might go the other way, if you just keep running and running and running. So yeah, that's just a hard truth that you're you're going to have to do some sort of strength training if you really want to change your body and change it for the long term. Okay, Truth Number Eight. If it's not healthy, it's not worth it. So what we're talking about here is just crazy, Crash dieting, like the 1200 calorie diet or anything extreme, if you're eating, let's just say 1500 calories or less than that and you're not losing weight, it is not worth it to go down to 1000 or 1100 or 1200 calories a day simply to lose weight, it's going to get you into a really, really bad place, you're probably going to gain back all of the weight you lost and then some and you're going to be left with a crappy metabolism after that. So what we do, and this is a cornerstone of our program is helping you lose weight in a healthy calorie range. And then we want to show you how to keep yourself in a healthy calorie range after you get the weight off. And so for most clients, this is not a quick fix, but it is sustainable, and it will bring lasting body composition changes, which is ultimately what I think most people want. So Joe, do you have any tips related to this? Yeah, I think you really have to begin with the end in mind. All that, you know, desperate, like get the weight off now at any cost is that is only going to delay or exacerbate your situation. So you really have to ask yourself, do you want to spend the rest of your life if you're contemplating one of these crash diets? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life eating 1200 calories a day or less, have the weight creep right back on and still not have a physique that you want. And then you know if you've done that when you want to lose weight have zero means of doing so because you are already so low calorie or do you want to choose a path that gives you good energy, healthy muscle and body composition and be able to eat within a flexible calorie range. Honestly, this is what most clients tell us that they want. And you do not accomplish this by going on a crazy crash diet, you have to start with adequately nourishing your body moving in a way that is effective for long term strength and improved body composition and then go from there. But I do think you will be shocked at how your body will respond if you start this process by nourishing it and sort of investing in it in this way. This is really the good news. Like your body will like it and you will probably get better than results. If you tried. Even if you could stick to the crash diet, you're probably gonna get better results nourishing your body and treating it well than doing one of these crazy fad diets. No one is so desperate that they have to do this. You know one? Yeah. And I love that begin with the end in mind. Because I think usually, you know the way a lot of people get themselves into these situations where they're stuck at these low calories and still can't lose weight. We're only thinking about the short term. I mean, we're just thinking I want to get this weight off and I want to get it off now. I don't care what I have to do to make it work they don't think about well, what are you actually doing to your body and how are you going to keep this weight off and do you really want to be starving on 1200 calories a day for the rest of your life? Probably not. So I love that tip. okay too. Number nine, you have to do the hard work. So even if you hire a coach who is telling you what to do, you still have to do the work yourself. A good coach is absolutely going to simplify and prioritize things for you and lay out a solid plan for you. But even the most amazing coach cannot do the work for you. So weight loss is always going to require intention, discipline and some work. And there's just no way around it. But I would say that good health is the best wealth that there is. And it is worth that hard work. You have anything to add to that. And yeah, I think if you can look at this, as you know, weight loss is a gateway drug, you will learn so many skills, you will surprise yourself with how disciplined you can be. And it is the thing that I think is the hardest thing for a lot of people to figure out. We work with a lot of women who are very, very successful professionally. And this is like the one thing that they feel like they have failed out and just cannot figure out and they are not failures, most of them have just been fed a lot of really confusing information. But if you can figure this out, and you can employ the discipline and intention, you can probably figure out anything out. I always say like get your health in order and guess what your finances are probably going to get an order, you're probably going to be a better parent. So you know, dive in. I do think weight loss is hard. It's made even harder, like I said, because there's all this confusing information out there as to what to do. But it is a solvable problem. And it just takes a good plan, some discipline, patience and a little bit of elbow grease. There's no doubt about that. But I say, you know, imagine if you didn't ever have to worry about your weight or your health ever again. And you just knew you were doing the things that you needed to do to maintain a healthy weight. You liked how your body looked? You liked how you felt. And this was just not a worry. That would be pretty amazing. I think I think most people would say that. That's pretty amazing. And like you said, the best wealth is health. And it's totally worth the hard work. I can't think of anything. That's, you know, other than maybe parenting, which is hard work as well. I can't think of anything else that is more worth it. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we are finally at Truth Number 10, which is you need to just get out of your own way. So honestly, this is why most people fail at weight loss. They can't get out of their own way. They can't be consistent. They struggle with telling themselves no, they refuse to make a plan. They refuse to get intentional with their nutrition, they have a lot of excuses. The biggest lie out there, I think is I don't have time. And most of these are just rooted in self limiting beliefs. Our most successful clients are also very successful in their careers. They're great parents, they have full social lives, they have not abandoned the rest of their life just to lose weight. But what they have done is taken responsibility for their health and made it a priority and made it fit into their lifestyle. What else do you have to say about this one? Yeah, I think this is like some of the other ones you need to take responsibility for your health. No one else can do it for you. And when you do that, you really take risk to stop making excuses. This is a real opportunity for personal growth. So what I say is, you know, instead of ruminating and brainstorming all the reasons why you can't get it together, why this is going to be so hard why you hate meal planning, where you're a terrible cook. You know why you can't follow a meal plan, look for the possibility. Ask yourself questions more like how can I make this easy? How can I make this fun? How can I make this really simple? How can I find time for this, what we focus on tends to multiply and I'm telling you, if you dwell in your own drama and obstacles, that is what you will have more drama, self doubt and obstacles. And if you focus on the solution, that is what you will get. But yes, I totally agree with you. I mean, actually, in most things, whether that's starting a business, definitely in weight loss, people get in their own way. And if they could just kind of remove all of their resistance, I guess you would say do what their coaches tell them to do. It's always funny to me, like we have this conversation every quarter with our clients. If your coach is telling you to make a meal plan, make a meal plan that you need to go make a meal plan if your coach is telling you to set aside five to 10 minutes a day, to come up with a plan for tomorrow as to when you're going to fit your workouts in and what you're going to eat, set aside the five to 10 minutes a day to do that. You need to be coachable, and you need to be able to take direction. And that's the case for everyone. So that's where growth comes from. And again, totally worth it. So these are our truth. As I said, we don't we don't sugarcoat things that come to our fitness, we will give it to you straight. What I will say is I do think that losing weight is hard work. Now, we always hear from clients like Oh, I know what to do, but I'm not doing it and all of the weight loss industry will tell you like it's so simple that you know what to do to lose weight. And frankly, I don't think that's true. I think it is pretty nuanced and especially with those wildcards that we talked about in terms of like your adaptable metabolism and hormone and thyroid and digestive health like it can be really complex and frankly most of what the mainstream diet spews out is terrible advice. So if you want some help All any of this resonated with you and you think you are someone who could track your food and My Fitness Pal is interested in doing resistance training two or three times a work week, isn't interested in addressing some of these mindset issues of like, you know, only having four drinks a week or figuring out how to manage your alcohol consumption and really addressing some of the self limiting beliefs and obstacles that might have gotten in the way of your weight loss attempts earlier, we would definitely love to chat with you. I think the next step would be to schedule a console call with us. There'll be a link in the show notes for you to do so it will give you an honest assessment. I've heard from clients that we've done assessments with that have gotten on calls with us like, wow, those ladies know what they're talking about. And they're not kidding around. I guess maybe if you're ready, I wouldn't call it tough love. We're very kind. If you want kind of an honest approach and a no sugarcoating of how this is going to look for you get on our waitlist and schedule a consult call with us. We'd love to talk to you and they are free. So you are welcome to pick our brains about what we think is going on and what is needed for you to actually get on your weight loss path. So I think that's all we have for our hard truths. Okay, so you're dieting right now, Allison? Number one, how's it going? And what favorite foods are you still able to fit in lots of favorite foods, you know, I'm being I'll be totally honest, I am not being 100% compliance, I really only wanted to lose a couple pounds and the weight comes off really slow when you've only got a couple pounds to lose, which I totally recognize. And I knew it'd be the case. But I have given myself a few, admittedly too many what I'm calling refeed days. So progress is going slow, but it is it is definitely going like I can the scale is moving. And I can tell I can just feel that I'm a little bit tighter. And so I'm actually still fitting in quite a few yummy foods, but one of my favorites. It's really yummy, but it's really really healthy and really low in calories. So I think I made it up actually, this was a couple years ago when I was prepping for a bodybuilding show. I really wanted pizza. And so I was like how can I have that pizza tastes without you know eating I can sure I can fit in a slice of pizza but it just doesn't fill me up enough and I don't want to waste my calories on too much pizza. So I made up this cauliflower crust pizza. And what I do is I take rice cauliflower, so I just buy that frozen from the grocery store and I'm very bad about measuring when I make recipe so I just put a bunch of that in the bottom of a glass container that I can cook in the oven with. So I put a bunch of called rice cauliflower down and then I added a half serving of Kodiak cakes mix and then I put some seasonings in there I usually just do like Italian seasoning and a little bit of salt and then I cover that with egg whites just carton egg whites and mix it all together. And then I bake it in my air fryer for about 15 minutes and it makes this hard crust it really doesn't even taste like cauliflower. My kids even like it so that tells you it really doesn't taste like cauliflower. And then on top of it I take a laughing cow cheese which if you have not had laughing cow cheese, they are my favorite. They have so much flavor. They only have 35 calories in a slice. So I smear one laughing cow cheese all over the top of that already baked crust. Then I put some tomato sauce over that. And then I put down some turkey pepperonis and it is just like eating a big piece of pizza posted about this in our Facebook group our boost your metabolism after age 30 Facebook group the other day, but that is probably my favorite meal right now. So what about you you are done cutting but probably in the reverse process. So what are you enjoying? Well, actually, I'm trying to kind of we have a photoshoot coming up. So I'm trying to kind of rein it in just a little bit. But actually, I was listening to a podcast of Another is another macros coach that I follow. And he talked about how this concept of having these anchor meals so like if you've had kind of a weekend off or you're on vacation or something, having a meal that you come back to that is like a good healthy meal full of protein that like it kind of signals your brain that like you're back on track. And so I've been working on that this week. So I have been making for breakfast toast and then egg whites and Canadian bacon and I don't know why but I am kind of obsessed with Canadian bacon right now. So good egg whites and so I've kind of been making this Canadian bacon egg white toast sandwich. So that's what I've been enjoying lately and it is a ton of protein and like a really satiating way to start the day off. So that's what I've been enjoying lately, but Canadian bacon big fan of, you know, keeps for a long time and it's just something different that you know, I don't think we think of when we're turning thinking of different lean protein ideas. So my cauliflower pizza, yes, you could have like a pineapple Hawaiian. Yeah, but I do think if you are dieting I think coming up with a pizza alternative. I do and I'll maybe I'll talk about this in a future podcast. I have a different way that I do pizza when I'm cutting. But I think it's really good to get that pizza fix in a way that doesn't You blow things out of the water and I've gotten to the point where I don't even crave. I mean, like if I make myself one of my pizzas, I don't know, I don't really sit around thinking about pizza all that much, especially if I know I can have something that tastes like pizza to me. Yeah, I don't either. I actually had I my girls on the last day of school, which just happened a few days ago, they each had some friends over so I ordered a bunch of Casey's pizzas, which are my favorite. And then I was hungry when they came. And I knew there was no way I was not going to eat a piece of that. What I did is I made a really big salad. And I had that first so I wasn't starving. And I wasn't scarfing my pizza down and then I tried to save or my pizza, but I did have a very big slice of sausage pizza, and it hit the spot. And I'm very happy that I had it. But I'm also happy I didn't gorge myself on, you know, three slices of pizza either. So it's all about balance. Yeah, it probably wouldn't have like two reasons for gorging going. No, I would have been very mad at myself if I would have been three slices of pizza. Okay, well, that's what we have for you today. And we will see you next time. Thanks, everyone, everyone. That's what we've got for you today about how you can invest in your metabolism and start losing weight by eating more and exercising less. Trust us you aren't too old and it's never too late. If you want to learn more about this topic, head over to our Facebook group, Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30. You can also follow us on Instagram or Facebook at Couture Fitness Coaching. 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