Ep. 2 - Prime Your Body For Fat Loss

In this episode we discuss the math and science of weight loss.  Despite what the mainstream dieting industry tells you, not every body is ready for fat loss.  We discuss what makes a diet successful and provide six tips to prime your body for a fat loss phase.

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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. Hey, Alison, what's up with you this week? What's new with you? Well, I am actually getting ready to go on a trip with just my husband tomorrow. It's kind of a belated anniversary trip, our anniversary was like four months ago. But we're going to go hiking in Zion, so neither of us have ever been. But our anniversary came up this past summer, we had nothing planned. And so I told my husband, I was like, Hey, we should do something for our anniversary. And I am always the person who plans our vacations. So I said, Why don't you plan a trip for just the two of us this time. And he did. And he did a really good job planning. So we're actually leaving tomorrow. Um, it'll be a five, five day trip. But the two end days are basically just travel day. So we'll have three full days to go hiking in Zion. And I think we're going to go up to Bryce Canyon as well, because they're only an hour apart. And we are not bringing the kids. We mentioned on our first episode, I think that I have three girls and I in laws are amazing. And they live five minutes away from us now. And they are going to be watching our kids for us. So they're in good hands. I'll miss them. But it's, it'll be very nice to have a break from them. So that's the biggest thing going on with me. What about you? Well, that sounds amazing. And like he did do a great job. I'm jealous. So we are just winding down from ball sports over at my house. My daughter's volleyball season wrapped up a couple of weeks ago and my son's cross country season wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. And so we are just enjoying not going anywhere during the evenings. And it's wonderful. We kind of have that going on to for like another three weeks. Yeah, basketball. Basketball will fire right up for my son, but we're in the downtime all we have it. It is nice. Yeah. Okay, so today we're going to talk about when your body is ready to lose weight. I think that there's a widespread belief that when a person decides to lose weight, that they'll change a few things or make some changes or maybe go on even a diet and voila, the weight will start coming off. But in reality, what we've seen is not everyone who wants to lose weight is in a spot, that their body will cooperate and start burning fat. So Allison, what are your thoughts about this, and what is the science of losing weight, and is everyone who just wants to lose weight ready to lose weight. So definitely not. There are obviously a lot of people who want to lose weight at any given time. And so I'm going to put people into two groups here. So I think we have our people who want to lose weight, and they, they try to stick to some sort of plan and they just, they just struggle being compliant. So obviously, if you're not going to be able to be compliant, you you are going to have a hard time losing weight. We all know that though. That's not news to anybody. Right? If you if you can't stick to a plan, and you're overeating, and you're not exercising at all, you're probably not going to lose weight. But there's this whole other group of people. And I think most people don't know that this is really a thing. And we know this very, very well because we we've lived this ourselves and we see clients who are in this bucket very frequently of people who they want to lose weight, they might cut their calories, they might try to stick with some sort of diet plan. And even though they are being very compliance, they're not they're not cheating, they're they are truly doing everything that they that they should be doing in their bodies just aren't losing weight. And I know that that probably just sounds foreign to a lot of people like well, all you need to do to lose weight is is eat less and move more and you'll just lose weight. It's so simple. And I can tell you definitively that that is just not true. So, obviously if you are somebody who you're overeating, you're not exercising if you start to eat a more appropriate amount and you start exercising, you will lose weight that is where the The move more and eat less will actually work. But if your body is not ready for that, it's not going to lose weight. And so what do I mean by not being ready, if you're not eating enough, your body will not lose weight on a diet. And I know that again, that probably sounds crazy to people, but you have to be, you have to be eating enough for your body to know that it's okay to let go of body fat losing weight, it's really just a it's just a mathematical equation. And I'm going to give you some examples here that I think will help explain this a little bit more, you need to have somewhere to cut from. So if you come to us, and you're eating, let's just say 1200 calories, that seems to be a very popular amount for women to think they need to eat if they need to lose weight that that 1200 Calorie number. If you're eating 1200 calories, and you're not losing weight, you can't come to us and say okay, I'm you know, I'm eating 1200 calories, and I want to lose 20 pounds, we have we have nowhere to pull from your calories are already so low. If we try to cut them further one, you probably won't be able to stick with it because you're gonna be hungry and miserable. But even if you can, your body is going to it's going to fight you. And so if somebody comes to us, there are definitely people who come to work with us who are, you know, they're eating enough, and we're able to cut their calories right away. And they have great success on a diet, we have lots of examples of people who, you know, they come to us, they were maybe overeating a bit and we cut their calories in a very methodical way we don't cut them too low, we start them out as high as we can. And they lose weight, honestly, just really, really easily. But we have lots and lots of clients, I would say at least 50% of our clients are in this other bucket that I've talked about where they're not eating enough. And they they may have not been eating enough for months or even years, some people have said they have literally been dieting off and on their entire adult life basically. So let me give you an example. And I think this will make more sense. So we had a client who came to us and she tracks she wasn't she was tracking her food occasionally. But she she would track her food. And she told us she was eating about 1100 calories a day, which is extremely low. And she said okay, I know I'm under eating, she actually was she was very knowledgeable. Most people don't even know they're under eating, but she knew she was under eating. And she said, Okay, I want to lose 10 pounds. And then you can help me get my calories back up to a healthy level. And we said, Absolutely not, you're not eating nearly enough. If we do that, not only will your body not respond because your body is in, I kind of hate this term, but it's in starvation mode, it knows that you're not feeding it enough, and that it has to store every morsel that you give it as fat. So you're not only will you not have good results, if we try to cut your calories any further, we will hurt your metabolism even more, your metabolism gets very used to the amount of food that you're giving it. So if you're if you've been giving your body 1200 calories for the past year, your body is used to that and it has slowed down the rate that it burns fat, all day no matter what you're doing, in order to keep itself alive. So even if you are running, let's say if you're eating 1200 calories a day and you're going on a run every day, you're still burning far fewer calories during that run, because your body is just trying to hold on to everything it can and not burn anything because it wants to keep you alive. All that that's that's a long way to say even if you want to lose weight and you are compliant, and you're not, quote cheating on your diet, your body truly just might not be ready because it is you're just not feeding it enough. And it might not respond. So what do you do with that client that that's eating 1200 calories and wants to lose 10 pounds, and then they'll start eating more. So what we would tell them is we would say first we have to prime your body for fat loss by going on what we call a reverse diet. And that is just basically the opposite of what most people think of when they think of a diet. So when you think of a diet, you probably think of eating less, but a reverse diet, you're doing the opposite. And so in a very methodical, usually pretty slow manner. We help those clients get their food up into a healthy range. And we consider a healthy range for females to be somewhere between 18 120 400 calories. Most women fall into that range where they can maintain a weight that they are happy with a healthy weight in that calorie range. And so what we do with these clients is we just slowly start bumping up their food until we get them in that range. And they respond in a variety of ways. We've had lots of clients who actually lose weight. We have some who maintain their weight. A lot of these clients who who maintain their weight actually lose inches and tighten up a lot even though they're the scale doesn't change. Some people gain a little bit of weight no Nobody ever gains as much weight as they fear they're going to though, I think it surprises everybody, when they when they do a reverse diet that they either lose weight or stay the same or they they gain just a little bit. And so what this is doing this is priming their body to go into a fat loss phase. And so once their body knows that, okay, you're feeding me enough, you're not starving me anymore, it will actually respond when we eventually cut calories. And I say, eventually, you don't just get your calories up and immediately come back down, you have to stay there for a while and let your body know that you're not starving it anymore. So that's how we would handle somebody who was not in a good spot to cut calories when they came to us. Can you talk a little more about the math involved in losing weight? So how many calories do you have to cut from someone's caloric intake to actually get a body into like a fat loss phase? Is it like a couple 100? Yeah, usually somewhere, maybe, maybe 300 or 400, less than what they were eating before is where we might start somebody. So if you come to us eating, let's say 1900 calories, you can probably lose weight on 15 or 1600 calories pretty, pretty steadily. If you're, if you come to us eating 2500 calories, we can probably start your fat loss phase at 2000 calories. And you will probably lose weight pretty easily on 2000 calories, which sounds like that is a lot of food, actually. So that's kind of the math on that. And then I talked about the metabolic adaptations, your body will get used to different calorie levels. So you might be able to start your fat loss phase, let's say it's 1700 calories, but your body will eventually adapt to that. And you might have to go a little bit lower and a little bit lower to keep seeing results. So that's that's kind of the simple math of how we would look at that. And what do you think would happen if you cut calories for someone who was came to us eating like say a woman eating 1500 calories a day 1500 is tough, I would say it's it's still under eating, I actually at 1500 calories for about five years. And it did not go well, which that's a whole nother story that I will talk about on other podcast episodes. But if somebody was eating 1500 calories, they really don't have enough of a what we call a runway to cut from. I mean, you could you could cut somebody down to 1100 calories, and they might lose a little little bit of weight, but it wouldn't be worth it because their metabolism would would slow down even further, eventually their body would start to fight them, they would be at a point pretty quickly, I would say where even they wouldn't even be losing weight on 1200 calories. And we just have to do that whole process that I just talked about that reversing them back up to a healthy level, we would just have to do that anyway. So if somebody came to us and said, I eat about I eat 1500 calories a day, but I'm not losing any weight on that amount. And I've been eating that for the past year. But I really want to lose 10 more pounds, we would first we would still have to reverse diet them. So I hear a lot of people say, well, the only time I ever lost weight was doing keto or some really restrictive diet. Do you think it's actually that diet that allowed them to lose weight or what was going on before they embarked on that diet, like we talked about, it's really just a math equation, how you get there, it really doesn't matter. keto is not magic, they were they had to just have been in a caloric deficit. And by cutting out carbs. Sure, that's one way to do it, you can cut out all of your carbs. And you know, you can eat less and you will lose weight, you could also go about it a different way, you could just cut your calories and you will still lose weight. There's nothing magical about one particular diet that you did. The reason you might think that one diet worked so well for you, is because if you if you did that diet when your body was in a good place metabolically, it probably worked really well. The first time you ever tried to lose weight. And so everybody who's listening, just think back to the first time you ever tried to lose weight if you actually stuck to whatever plan you were you were trying to do, whether it was just counting your your macros or your calories or something else, you probably lost weight really easily. I know I did. That's why they lost weight. It's not that keto is magic or some other specific diet is magical. It's just that their body was in a good spot. And so a lot of people will come to us and say, Well, I lost weight when I did keto, but then I gained it all back and then some and now my body won't lose weight. Even if I try keto. It's because they've gotten their their body to a bad spot metabolically and they don't realize that they first have to get out of that spot. So yeah, nothing magical about any of these popular diets. Again, it's all about math and science. So I assume if someone has 20 3040 or more pounds to lose, that means that they're probably overeating and ready to enter a fat loss phase. Is that true? So you would think so I think that's probably what 99% of the population believes that's what I would have believed up until probably 10 years ago. But that is not true, believe it or not. So just because somebody has, like you said 20 Even 50 or more people pounds to lose does not mean that they are just over eating. We've had a lot of clients actually who come to us who say I want to lose 50, you know, 40 or 50 pounds. And then we asked them, you know, what have you been eating, we have a detailed questionnaire that we have all of our clients fill out before they work with us. And some of them are eating in that 1200 calorie range. And so we have to tell them, like, look, we know you want to get this weight off so badly, but we just our first step has to be priming your body for for fat loss. And I know this is this is an area that is not really there's not a lot of research on this, I'm hoping in the next 10 to 20 years, there will be there will be more My theory is that it doesn't, it doesn't have the same public health problem as somebody who's just simply drastically over eating and not exercising at all, but it is still a problem. So there's definitely been some research on this in the in the bodybuilding world, which is Joe and I have background in that we both competed in bodybuilding and we've had bodybuilding coaches and we follow a lot of the some of the the science and the research in the bodybuilding world. And there has actually been research to show that basically, the more times you tried to diet, the harder of a time your body will have to lose fat. So no, you really can't just say, okay, that person over there, they've got you know, 50 pounds to lose, they're probably just eating too much and not exercising. That is I can tell you, that is not always the case, you cannot just look at somebody and know whether they are overeating, under eating, over exercising under exercising. I know that sounds crazy, but it is true. What does it even mean to be under eating, I mean, and I always thought that was a good thing to eat less rather than more. So obviously, I would say we all know that it's bad to be drastically over eating, especially if we're over eating just crap like, you know, Twinkies and candy and pizza and doughnuts like we all know that that's not good. But under eating actually can have a lot of bad consequences, as well. So number one, if you're under eating, you're probably just not getting enough nutrients, it's really hard to get in the micronutrients, like the the vitamins and minerals that you need to get if you are if you're under eating. First of all, there can be a lot of side effects you might have for digestion, you can eventually if you're a female, you can lose your period, lots of bad things can happen with if you're under eating, we consider anybody who if they come to us, and they're not eating in what we consider to be our healthy range. For a female of 1800 to 2400 calories, I would consider that to be under eating and anybody who's under that we would have them reverse diet before we would we would cut their calories. So that's the range for women men can actually eat quite a bit more, we have a male client who started out losing weight on 2500 calories a day, he was probably eating somewhere closer to two 3000. And so men are sadly for us women, men can just they can eat a lot more than we can. So that's what I would consider under eating something that's not in that 1800 to 2400 calorie range. That's where you want to be for most of the year. Sure, you can go lower some of the time. And I do as well if I have a specific short term goal, but I spend at least nine months of the year in that healthy range. And that's where we want all of our clients meet as well. So you're saying that someone who is overweight could possibly be under eating? That's that's still kind of blowing my mind a little. Yeah, I mean, it's so true and often. So yes, we have people who maybe have just been under eating for the sustained period of time. But what's actually worse, and I think this is probably a little bit more common. So you might have someone who who goes on a really restrictive diet, and let's say they do it for you know, two or three months, they can, let's say they do keto. I'm just gonna use keto as an example. So somebody might do keto for two or three months. And let's say they lose 20 pounds. But then after you know, after their two or three months is up, they're ready to eat carbs again, because who wouldn't be ready to eat carbs again, so they start eating a little bit more normal, and they pack all the weight back on and as soon as all that weight comes back on, they're in a worse spot than they were before because not only has all of their weight come back on but their body is now metabolically used to eating less. And so one of the worst things you can be doing I'll give you another example of this is just being on a calorie rollercoaster. So we have again we see people a lot who they're trying to be they call it good maybe during the week where they're eating like 1200 calories a day being really strict with their food choices probably eating really low carb because carbs are you know they're they've been demonized recently so that it's more common right now anyway for people to be cutting out a lot of their carbs and so that person might be eating 1200 calories a day on the weekdays but then on the weekend they are going out to brunch and drinking you know multiple alcoholic beverages and maybe they're going way way over that 1200 calories on the weekends, it's very easy honestly, to put away at least 2500 calories, if you're going out to eat, if you're drinking, if you're telling yourself Well, I was good all week. So I've saved up all these calories, and I can have them on the weekend. That is probably the worst spot you can get yourself into your body is used to what you're doing during the week, it thinks, Okay, you're starving me. So I'm going to say, I'm going to hold on to everything you give me as fat. And when you get to the weekend, where you're actually feeding it quite a bit of food, it probably is holding on to all of that as fat because it knows that when the when Monday comes around that you're not going to feed it enough again. And so yes, you can be overweight, and under eating. And honestly, a lot of people, they probably they might just not know that they're under eating, especially women, I think women are just told just eat less and don't eat carbs, and don't eat sugar and don't eat dairy and don't eat gluten. And it's like, well, what's left to eat after all of that. So they might think they're they're doing everything, right, because they're eating organic produce, and they're avoiding things like bread or white potatoes, they can still be under eating, if even if they don't know we've had clients come to us, you say who have said, Wow, I didn't even realize that I was eating that little. And when we have them track a couple of sample days of food. They're eating 1000 1200 calories. And they honestly just they didn't even realize it. Yeah, we've definitely seen that, haven't we where a client will come to work with us. We ask them how much they're eating. They tell us Oh 2020 200 calories. And then when we actually have them track their food. It's like 1000 calories. Mm hmm. Yeah, I know, one client had said that she would just fill up on diet soda. And so she wasn't she's like, I wasn't even hungry. I didn't really think about it. Like I was just not hungry, because I would drink diet soda all day. And a lot of these women are actually drastically under eating protein as well. Like they're they're under eating in general, but they're not eating nearly enough protein on top of all of that. So I know that there are a lot of calculators online and other places where you can punch your numbers in and it will tell you how much to eat, do you use those to determine whether someone is under eating? No, and I am not a fan of calculators at all. A lot of the very popular ones will tell women that okay, you want to lose weight, eat 1200 calories a day. And that is not what anybody needs right away. Most people can lose weight on much, much more than that. So that's one reason why I hate calculators. But the main reason I dislike calculators is because they they don't factor in what you were doing before. And that is the number one thing we look at when determining what to set somebodies nutrition out when they come to work for us. So if somebody's eating, I gave this example earlier, let's say you're eating 2500 calories a day, you do not need to cut down to 1200 calories a day to lose weight, your body will lose weight on 2000 calories a day. So there's one example if you're over eating, don't stop, don't put yourself on a 1200 calorie a day diet. Conversely, if you're somebody who was eating, let's say you were under eating 12, and you were eating 1200 calories a day and you put your information in and a calculator tells you well you should be losing one to two pounds a week by eating 1200 calories a day. That will not happen either. Because your body has adapted to those low calories. And therefore we have to we have to get your body used to more food first. So calories or calculators are honestly not very helpful. One thing you could look at that that is a little bit helpful is to look at what your BMR is. It's just your basal metabolic rate. And that's what you the calories you burn simply by doing nothing just by being alive and breathing and your heart beating. And honestly a lot of women who we talk to and work with are not even eating at their BMR. And the reason they're still alive is because that metabolic adaptation their body has adapted by burning far fewer calories in everything that they do in order to stay alive. Yeah, I know I was in that spot. You know, I think my BMR is somewhere around 1600 calories. And I was eating 1500 calories for years and didn't think anything of it. Oh yeah, I was eating well, I think a lot of people do. I did the same thing. I mentioned earlier that I ate 1500 calories or 15 1600 calories a day for like five years because I wanted to lose weight as a teenager not that I needed to really lose weight anyway. But I I did I wanted to and so I was like okay, I'll eat 1500 calories a day because that's what the the teen magazine said to do. And I never reversed the backup. I just thought well this is what I have to eat. Now to look like this. I would say I was extremely active. I played a lot of sports. I started working out like consciously working out like running and lifting weights. When I was just 16 years old. I should have been eating far over 2000 calories a day. And I was I basically was starving myself for five years straight. And not only did I cause all kinds of hormonal problems for myself by doing that, but I gained back Very, very slowly, all of the weight that I lost, and then some, even though I was sticking to those 1500 calories because my metabolism was shot. So yeah, I mean, the BMR is one calculator that you could look at. But otherwise, that is definitely not something we would use to determine how much somebody should be eating. It truly is about what you were doing before. That's the biggest factor in setting somebody calories. Okay, I want to go back to something because, you know, if you went on Instagram, I swear I see it like five times a day, the various fitness experts on there will say, you know, if someone's tells you that you're under eating, but you're overweight, that's a big crock, you're just eating more than you think you are. You're not tracking your food and, you know, run the other way, if someone tells you to do a reverse diet, so and that's just not a thing that no one could possibly be overweight and under eating. What do you say to that? I say they're wrong. And like I said, I know there's not a lot of scientific research out there about about this, there is some you can look up. I know Layne Norton, he's very popular in the the body will building world. He's a PhD who has done research on metabolic adaptation. Hopefully, like I said, more more people will do some research on this. So we can, you know, show that yes, this really is a thing. And it is certainly possible that, you know, somebody thinks they're eating really well. And if they're not tracking their food, they really truly might be overeating and not realizing it. That is definitely possible. Because when you're not tracking little things just add up that you don't realize, I like m&ms And so like, I might eat a few m&ms Here and there, it would be really easy to not even realize I was eating those. But since I do track my food, I put them in there and I know I'm eating them. But it would be easy to to eat like 200 calories a day of m&ms did not know. So yes, that might actually be true for some people. But we know it is also very, very true that you can be under eating and still have weight to lose. Like I said, there's a little bit of research out there. But we see this all the time, I would say half of our clients fall into this camp, like sure we have people who they you know, they just need help with a solid plan and they need to cut their calories. But at least 50% of our clients are of this sort right here where they're under eating and their metabolism has adapted and they have tried diet after diet after diet and none of them are working and they just they don't realize what the reason for that is because they've been dieting the people who lose weight the easiest are the ones who have never really dieted before. Yeah, I think if someone were to ask me the most surprising thing that I've learned or experience, since we started our business, it's that it's that the hordes of women that come to us who are eating 1100 calories running, you know, five, six times a week, and, you know, would like to lose 3040 50 pounds not because you know, you wouldn't look at them. And guess what they were had that lifestyle. And they think like that, it's because they're putting cream in their coffee or eating a piece of toast in the morning that you know, they can't get the 20 or 30 pounds off. So if you are in that spot, it's not the creamer or the toast. There are other things going on. But I've been really surprised how many clients that we've gotten and I agree with you, it's been about half who are chronically under eating and just are not in a spot where their body is going to let them go into a fat loss phase. Okay, so here's my next question for you. If we are if someone determines that they're, they're eating too little and not ready to go into a fat loss phase, does that mean that they should not implement or practice the lifestyle habits that we tell our clients to begin engaging in so eating, you know, quality nutrition, resistance training, getting active getting some steps in is if they do those things? Does that mean just nothing's going to happen to their body if they're not ready to lose fat? No, and now actually, I would say it's even more important for those people to start really focusing on their on their nutrition. So for one reason, I think it's, it is so much harder mentally to to do this type to focus on your fitness and nutrition. When you know you're not going to be losing weight quickly and immediately if you need to reverse diet I would say that's when that is it's more important to work with a good coach on that than it is to just cut your calories anybody can tell you, anybody can cut your calories that's easy. And mentally it's not hard either like you know, okay if I you know if my body's in a good spot and I cut my calories, I'm going to lose weight and you get that instant gratification. This is definitely a delayed gratification here but you we definitely see you definitely will still see changes. So if you are in this spot where you need to first you know get your metabolism back on track by eating more we often see And I mentioned this earlier, who maybe they're not losing any weight, and they might not lose weight for six months, like, they might just have to say, Okay, I am spending the six months working on my metabolic health before I can safely cut my calories. And so they might not see the scale move at all. But we often will see these women lose inches, they might tighten up and say, Wow, I look so different. Even though the scale hasn't changed, I look different. My clothes fit differently. I'm stronger, I actually have energy, my digestion is better than it's ever been. So no, it's certainly not a waste. It's It's honestly more important to do that work, even though you're not seeing results. And it can be really frustrating. But it's so so important to do that, you know, you might not see the scale go down for six plus months, it's so so important to still implement those healthy habits, like you said, weight training, getting your steps eating enough food, getting enough protein in quality nutrition. Yes, spitting in some fun foods to is important for your mental health. Yeah, so it's still really important. Yeah. And what I would say is, this is a great time to break up with that scale, the scale is really all it is, is just an easily cheap obtainable data point as to maybe a few things going on in your body, but it is not a measure of your self worth. And this would be a great time to really measure your self worth by how you're treating your body and the healthy habits that you are establishing. So I say, you know, if you if you are in a situation where you need to reverse diet and start investing in some quality nutrition and adequate nutrition, use this as a time to break up with the scale. Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. I think that's a good tip. And we've had clients who came who have come to us very, very desperate to lose weight, we've had the Hard Talk with them that we have to have, and then 12 weeks in or so they are like, screw the scale. I feel so amazing. You know, I do want to lose weight eventually. But I feel so much better than I did. And then I realized I could that this has been worth it. Mm hmm. Okay, so do you have if someone is in a situation where you know, maybe their body is not ready for fat loss, do you what tips do you have to prime your body for weight loss? Alright, so I've got I've got six tips to do just that to prime your body for fat loss. So number one is just being aware of how much you're eating, but most people probably have no idea. So if you are a female and you're eating somewhere below 1500 calories, you really need to work on getting your food up. If you are a male and you're eating below 2000 calories, you need to work on getting your food up. And so get into that healthy range that we talked about earlier. If you're a female, get into that 1800 to 2400 calorie range. So that's the first just you know, being aware of how much you're eating. And if you're not eating a good amount, make sure you start doing so number to smooth out the calorie rollercoasters. We talked about this earlier how bad that can be. So just kind of try to be a little more consistent. Don't try to starve yourself during the week because you know, you want to eat more on the weekends and actually does a lot more harm than good. So just try to be a little bit more consistent. Number three, try to get in enough protein. The amount of protein you need, it really depends on the person it depends on how much muscle mass you have can actually depend on your age, you actually need a little more protein as you get older Believe it or not, but I would say as a very general rule try to get in at least 100 grams of protein a day and to be doing that you probably need to get be getting in protein at three meals and maybe even an additional high protein snack on top of that if you want to hit that 100 grams a day. Alright, number four is do some resistance training. So really, I you know lifting weights, that's the that's the number one thing that we would have somebody do start lifting weights at least two days a week. Any muscle that you can add to your body will boost your metabolism I promise you females who are afraid of looking bulky. I promise you that does not just accidentally happen. Joe and I have been lifting weights for years I've actually been lifting weights since I was 16 and I am almost 40 and I am not bulky so do not be afraid of that it doesn't happen accidentally people who have a lot of muscle on them have worked very very hard for a very long time to add that muscle and some of them are using steroids to so you can not accidentally get too bulky I will promise you that so adding some resistance training. Number five, if you are doing too much cardio, especially intense cardio, you need to cut that back. So if you're doing more than four hours of cardio a day, put that back and I'm not saying don't be active like walking I mean walking is a great form of exercise. That's kind of really the all I do now for my own personal cardio is just set a step goal. I never hop on like a cardio machine like I used to do. So if you're doing a lot of cardio, and a lot of it is more intense cardio, put some of that back, it's really stressing out your body and hindering your progress, believe it or not. And then the last thing number six, just stop doing anything extreme. If you were cutting out food groups for any reason, besides a legitimate health reason, just stop just stop being extreme. Your body needs to be healthy and nourished and know that it's not being starved if it wants to be ready to lose weight. So those are my six tips to prime your body for fat loss. And so how can people figure out if their body is ready for fat loss or if some time needs to be spent on getting ready for a fat loss phase by focusing on those things you just mentioned? So I've got I've got two different ways. So between now and December 15, we're actually going to be providing free metabolic assessments, you can go to our website, www couture fitness coaching COMM And sign up, you'll fill out a detailed questionnaire, and we will actually look at your answers and write you back and let you know whether you're in a good spot or not whether you could you know embark on a fat loss journey right away or if you need to do some of this work first before you prime your body for that. And then we also occasionally will do some metabolic health q&a, where you can just come on and ask us questions. And so if you want to ask us questions about your metabolic health, be on the lookout for information about those that we do periodically as well. Okay, sounds good. All this talk about food has me hungry? What fun foods or macros are you enjoying these days? Well, a lot of things because I like I mentioned earlier, I spend most of the year eating about 2000 calories a day. And the only time I don't is usually right before summer when I try to lose just a couple pounds maybe for the summer. So I'm putting in a lot of fun foods I would say in the past week, and these are going to sound really bad. I promise I eat a lot of vegetables and protein I really do and a lot of fruit. But I also make sure at the end of the day when I'm on these this 2000 calories to fit into dessert every single night after dinner. So I went to Trader Joe's for the first time in like two years a week ago because I needed to get out of my food rut of eating the same things all the time. And I found these little ice cream cookies and cream ice cream Bondville. So I've been having those. And then actually at Costco. I was at Costco the other day and found these Jira, Delhi, chocolate lava cakes. And so we made those last night and we share those as a family and they were amazing, but I love chocolate. So my favorite foods are always going to skew towards chocolate. What about you what have you been having lately? That's been yummy. I'm still working on the Halloween candy. So I am I usually have a piece of it after lunch and after dinner. So that's what I've been enjoying and once a week or so it's fall so I really love a good old fashioned so I've been through those Yeah, once or twice. Yes, you can drink alcohol and not you know you can still meet your your physique goals and still drink alcohol. That is true moderation. Moderation is the key. Okay, that's what we've got for you today. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Bye. 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. And if you want to work with us, join us for our next 12 weeks session.