Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to Filter Free Friday podcast. My name is Brittany Williams and this is the podcast to remind you that the distance between the life that you want to live and the life that you're currently living isn't nearly as big as you think. How the hell are you Friday? First of all, if you're in the United States, it is a three-day weekend. I just love having a podcast that lands on a three-day weekend because I just feel like a certain percentage of my listeners are generally in a good mood. Even for those of us who don't have a three-day weekend. I mean, I do have a three-day weekend. I I am going on vacation this week, but usually I work on Saturdays. That's the day that I teach in-person fitness. So look, I just get excited about the weekend, even though for me, ironically, like that's actually a day, the one day of the week that I work outside of the house, but I still just get excited for the vibe. Okay. So if you're vibing going into Labor Day, then great. Back to school here in the United States, kids are either back in school or they're going to be back in school depending on on where you live it's just a week of change okay for all of us myself included blake starts daycare next week okay on tuesday i need you to send me some good mojo good vibes for my girl okay and we're not sending her up for success i want to be very clear about this because we are going to new hampshire this week so i'm recording this on a monday we leave on wednesday of the week that you're listening to this. If you're listening to it on a Friday, it came out. And then we get back from New Hampshire at midnight, at midnight on Tuesday night, sorry, Monday night, excuse me. And she starts daycare the next morning. So definitely not setting up Homegirl for success between jet lag and just lack of sleep. But we booked this trip before we knew she was going to daycare. So it what are you going to do? She's not going to go for a full day. We're going to ease her in on purpose because like one, again, the jet lag, I think her nap's going to hit much earlier in the day than the daycare schedule would allow for. And then she also is just going to be a hot mess express. Yes, we all are coming off of vacation. So I need you to send me some good vibes, but you know, I'll keep you guys updated. This weekend, this past weekend, I had a full social calendar. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm the kind of person that and I've always been this way but now with a kid I'm even more so this way I can handle one big thing on my calendar per weekend okay I'm not going out on Friday and Saturday oh I'm having people over on Sunday cool that means I'm not doing anything on Friday or Saturday I get one thing one thing on the calendar, like in the evenings, okay? Like maybe I'll do like a play date or something here or there during the day, but like I can't handle consecutive days of things. Things may organically happen, but I'm not scheduling multiple things in a weekend in advance except for this weekend where things just, the stars collided, the schedule's getting real booked and busy in September and this was the only thing situation this is the only weekend where like I'm like I got multiple things I had a friend's like birthday party slash like house warming party and then I had on Friday and then I had dinner with some of my Portland crew ride or dies from when I taught bought we all taught bar together back in the day and I had that on Saturday. And then on Sunday, flip around, and on Sunday morning, I met one of my girlfriends for a play date at the park with Blake. When I tell you, I missed Friday and Saturday bedtime routine. First of all, as a mom, that crushes me on the inside because there's nothing in this world I love more than the snuggles at bedtime routine. Like, I live for just pre-sleep Blake because she's just so cuddly and so cute. But I just I'm just shocked that I did that many things this weekend. Like my nanny walked in today and she was like, you know, how was your weekend? I'm like, girl, I actually did something this weekend. OK, are you proud of me? Because I love the house. I'm such a homebody. I am just and it's a little unhealthy working from home and being a homebody because you just live and you just experience your home. But I'm trying to be better. trying to get out more trying to do things not just live in these four walls um but yeah i i need a i need a week off after after three events in one weekend and then to turn around and to fly on wednesday with blake which hopefully won't be as much of a terror as it was when we went to italy please again send me i need vibes i need i need to be all the good mojo for the next like two weeks okay if you got any good mojo that you can spare please send it my way that is a desperate Okay, between the flights, daycare, we're buckling up for a bumpy couple weeks, but hopefully not. Okay, hopefully not. Hopefully it'll be easy and good. Today's podcast is a topic that a listener asked me a question and she asked if I could do podcast topic on it. And I was like, yes, always. If you have a question, if you have a specific topic you'd like me to discuss, this is the second one in a row where I've done this, but just the requests have been rolling in. So it makes my life easy because because I love talking about things that you actually want to hear about. If not, I'm just going to fill the time with shit that I think is either funny or important. But you may not find it funny nor important. So if there is something specific, please let me know. But I think that this topic that you brought up is like super important and relevant to everyone and is something that like I think all of us, especially women, deal with at some point in time and it's around nutrition and dieting. And I think to first kind of level set where I'm coming from in this conversation, I think I have a very stereotypical relationship with food as a millennial. I am 36, you know, grew up in the 90s and early 2000s and just I think a lot of us have some disordered eating habits left over from the very toxic days of how we talk about women's bodies, how we talk about food, and the diet culture of the 90s, right? Like if you grew up during that time frame, you'd know exactly what I'm talking about and I don't have to necessarily go into it, but I do want to maybe... put a disclaimer I think at the beginning of this podcast that like I haven't figured it out myself like I know how to be quote unquote healthy I as a fitness trainer and someone certified in this health and fitness space know what I should be doing I understand the steps on how to lose fat gain muscle do all of the things but that doesn't actually make it any easier for me to implement said things and I feel like throughout my 20s before I became a fitness trainer and became better educated on this topic I very much saw calories as like this evil thing to be avoided now I was pretty good at balancing it like I like I remember in college like you know if I was gonna go out that night and I didn't go out all the time because i was a student athlete so a lot of times we were competing um but if there was a weekend where i was gonna like drink heavily i remember like i would eat a salad for dinner that day which like ironically is probably the worst thing that you have before a night of heavy drinking because like that's a not a lot of calories it just and it's just like it's just not it's Salads and alcohol, not the best combinations to set yourself up for like feeling good and like lasting throughout the night. But I did it. I remember that I did it because I was like, well, I'm going to have such a high calorie intake today because the amount of alcohol that I'm consuming. So I'm going to have a super low calorie intake with my salad. And I definitely did not under eat in college, like as a collegiate athlete who was running. you know, 70 to 75 miles a week. I was constantly hungry. Carbs were my absolute best friends. I mean, I was pounding food because I was burning so many calories, but there still was those moments of unhealthy pattern, pattern, patterning, patterning. There were unhealthy patterns that like I think I just always felt like less was more. And if I was hungry, I ate. But I always was kind of thinking of like my general day or week and constantly trying to like make it as light less, as little calories as I could while being satiated, right? Like I still wanted to be full in college because again, I was running so much. Once I, and I needed to perform and I never have, I always knew that I needed to be well fed in order to perform at the highest level. And I was performing at an extremely high level. So like, I'm very thankful because I don't think all long distance runners in a competitive space can say that. So I thankful I'm thankful that I, you know, didn't have too many issues in college. Coming out of college, I definitely became obsessed with being the smallest version of me being skinny and having a low body fat. And everything that I did all set up like I remember like I cut out I wasn't vegan at this time I have gone vegan in my life but that was not for like body composition purposes by any means but I do feel like I cut out like a good amount of carbs and a good amount of proteins like meats i should say like true traditional meats um in like the name of health for for what reason who knows i probably read like some cosmopolitan magazine that recommended something but i remember for some reason this sticks into my mind so much um there's this i think it's called like suka sucka i can't remember what the exact name of is but it like some country has this like garbanzo bean bread that's really good and it's made out of garbanzo bean flour garbanzo bean flour is super expensive and this is like when I'm like fresh out of college it wasn't like I was rolling in the dough by any means I mean I think I was still mom was still helping me like pay the rent do you know what I'm saying like that time of my life and I feel like I just was like, oh, I'm only going to eat garbanzo bean flour. Like I'm not going to have regular bread anymore. I'm just going to have garbanzo bean flour because because it's a bean and it's not bread, it's going to be healthier. Like and I just remember spending stupid amount of money on garbanzo bean flour and a stupid amount of time because I remember it took a long time to make this bread. So every Sunday I would like make it. It's not like a bread. It was more of like a pita or like a flat bread kind of experience. And I would make a bunch of it on Sunday and then have it for the week. That was kind of my mindset. I feel like through most of my 20s, it wasn't like, oh, I'm calorie counting, even though I have had a phase of that. And we will talk about that. Like it was more of just like I constantly was saying here are bad foods, here are good foods. And what are the healthy swaps? This or that? Do you remember that phase where like this or that foods was really big? I feel like that was kind of right around the time that Instagram was first coming up. There was I think it literally was like a book or like a company. I think like maybe like Men's Health did it or something. And it was like this. or that and like it's like you had to pick which one was more was healthier for you and like instead of eating the Snickers bar you should eat this you know um and like I definitely subscribe to that mentality so I wasn't not eating a lot of food I wasn't um I wasn't necessarily starving myself or in a calorie counting or restriction mindset, but I was constantly looking at the menu and saying like, okay, can I get the, you know, gluten-free bread? Not because I am celiac or need gluten, have any sort of gluten intolerance. I have just been programmed to think that if I eat less gluten, I'll be quote unquote healthier, which ain't the case. So I've kind of come out of the other side of that I think it's hard um when I have dealt with IBS for a long time so I did go on an elimination diet in 2020 2020 2021 2020 um kind of around that time frame um so I do have actual a lot of bloating and a lot of digestion issues that I have to be mindful of and I think that a lot of us who do have things like IBS and bloating and and even if you don't necessarily have a title for what the problem is you just know that you kind of have general stomach issues it causes you to pay attention to what you're eating and i think sometimes some of us are unfortunately predestined predestined predetermined predetermined anyways we are predetermined i can't think of what the word is i think that's the word i'm looking for um to nitpick The minute I am forced to pay attention to what I am eating for any reason, again, doesn't even have to be quote unquote health or losing weight, I get obsessive, right? I don't know how to, like, and that's why calorie counting didn't work for me because like, I don't know how to just calorie count and use it as a tool, even though that's 100% what I'm going to, my suggestion is going to be to you today in this, like I'm going to give you a couple different solutions and I think that that is a good one, but that does not work for my personality. If I count calories, I'm going to obsess over it. I'm going to make it a game. I'm going to make it a competition. I'm going to obsess and I'm going to see like, okay, if I eat one ounce block of cheese, what happens? But if I make it 0.8 ounces, oh, I can save calories here and I'm pulling out my my scale and I'm like trying to find ways to like gamify my food and like make it a game of like how can I fit in the max amount of food that I want in to hit this arbitrary number of calories a calculator has spit out at me like I can't just take those numbers for face value and not feel like shit about myself when I go over the number that that calculator says that I should that's my personality do I think calorie counting can be a a massive tool, absolutely. But I want you to know, as again, as a disclaimer for this entire podcast episode, as we talk about diets and nutrition and fat loss specifically, I'm coming at this, I think, from a healthy point of view in the sense that I generally eat pretty healthy, okay? I have my vices, right? Is vice the right word? You guys, I'm recording this in the morning, and y'all know my brain is half off in the morning. So if I say the wrong word, if I say red when I mean to say blue, I need you to just roll with me, okay? Just roll. Like, oh, she meant to say that when she said this. Speaking of, this or that. Like, just know that we're just rolling with it today, okay? Because we'll never finish the podcast if I try to stop and find the right words for everything at, you know, 9 o'clock in the morning. So I... See, now I've lost my thought. Oh, I generally eat, I think, relatively healthy. I love vegetables and I forced vegetables upon myself, luckily, in my late 20s and early 30s so that I would like love them. Like that's literally why I went vegetarian and vegan for, so I was vegan for like eight months, not very long. It was too hard to maintain. And then I was a vegetarian for, I think like, I'm going to guess three or four years. and uh the like the sole reason i did it was one i watched a documentary that like demonized the meat industry so i was like oh my god i this is like all the problems in the world are because of meat they're not but that's what this documentary said so i was like scared shitless into it but then once i kind of was like okay i'm not scared anymore i stuck with it because i was like but i want to find ways of incorporating more vegetables into my diet because i know that once i have a kid it's going to be like mac and cheese and like chicken nuggets all the time and if i can like get myself to love vegetables now in my 20s and in early 30s when it's easy um easier because I'm just feeding myself and living by myself and cooking for one um maybe I'll have set myself up for success you know down the road and I can say now looking back over the past decade I absolutely did that I had a pretty um you know, not veggie forward diet in the past. And now I definitely have a veggie forward diet. I do eat everything now. Meat, fish, you name it, I'll eat it. I really don't have any like rules, regulations of things that I don't eat. There are things that I will try to not eat a lot of because of my IBS. But even then, my quote unquote trigger foods for my IBS, I still eat all the time. I just kind of either A, know that I'm going to have a stomach ache, right? Like I just deal with the consequences. And I just try to be smart about it. I try not to eat a lot of triggers all in one meal. I try to not eat a lot of triggers on my consecutive days. So I don't hold myself back from literally anything. But I do try to be smart about how I pace– out certain triggers um that trigger my digestive issues um my constipation ain't nobody I'm not going to go into depths about it but just know that your girl sometimes goes a few days without going okay and it's not comfortable for me or anyone all right so um That's just where I'm at. So I just want to kind of leave that as my very long 20 minute long disclaimer so that you kind of understand where I'm coming from. I'm not coming from my high horse talking down to you. I'm coming from a, I probably could use this podcast too because, you know, I still have to consciously, you know, stop myself from overeating. I'm the sort of person where you can't, if I have a bag of chips, perfect example, I had some Sour Patch Kids and some of those troll-y, you know, sour worm straws things I ate two bags in a sitting one a bag of Sour Patch Kids and a bag of those crawler thingies I think they're like a thousand calories each and they probably have like 500 grams of sugar per bag and I still went to town on both of them because that's my personality I'm zero to a hundred with things and so I can be very good and not have those sorts of things in the house but if they are in the house I'm going balls to the wall I'm eating all of it and I've kind of just let myself do it I know that sounds like, maybe that's not the best advice, but like, Every third week, I crave Sour Patch Kids because that's just like my thing. And I will go to the store and I'll get a bag and I'll eat the entire bag. Like even though the serving is like one and a half kids. You know, kind of like how they talk about like the average family has 1.78 kids or 2.63 kids. That's me. The average serving of a Sour Patch Kid box is 2.6 children. 2.6 Sour Patch Kids. But I eat the whole thing, which is like, you know, 700 of them. And then I have a stomachache afterwards and I'm like hopped up on sugar and dehydrated and then the next day I'm like okay that was that it happens and I have just found such peace with that so that's my way of saying I need this as much as you do just because I know the answers to the test doesn't mean that I'm getting an A plus on the test in my real life in IRL okay I guess in IRL is not it should just be IRL that's duplicate anyways the question that the follower asked was specifically was my thoughts on keto diet, calorie counting, macro counting, and just all of the different ways that one can diet, can lose weight, can lose fat, all of the things. And there's so many different ways that I can take this, but I think there's a few first big things that I want you to know. When someone is generally trying to lose weight, I like to use the term fat loss because generally when you step on a kist, scale, it is just giving you one flat number. It's not telling you, you know, if you're 150 pounds, it's not telling you that you have 100 pounds of fat and 50 pounds of muscle or 50 pounds of fat and 100 pounds of muscle. It's just telling you that you're 150 pounds. And so I think what's important for people to know is that muscle is absolutely crucial for longevity and for health. A certain amount of fat, especially as a woman, is also crucial for for longevity and health but what's what can change is the um ratios between the two and i'm not um certified or um um an expert to tell you what your ratio should be so if you want to know what your ratios are what your specific numbers are go find a professional to do that um But I can tell you that generally we want to maintain as much muscle as we can. And again, there is a minimum amount of fat that absolutely is necessary for a function of your organs and your body and for everyday life. So why I don't like considering weight loss is because that you could lose a lot of weight, but you could use lose, excuse me, you could lose a lot of muscle and that would be counterintuitive to improving improving your health. So when we're thinking about losing, I want you to think about losing fat. And that's a conscious effort, a conscious change that I made when I, maybe I'm going to say four years ago, I, when I was talking online about weight loss, I changed my language to be fat loss because I want people to be very intentional that you're not just trying to stand on a scale. If you have a body composition goal, for whatever reason, it could be You kind of just want to look good, but it also could be that you're overweight or obese and you absolutely need to lose the weight for your life. Okay, you are fighting for your life for health reasons. Either one of those things are valid. That's fine. I would say one is more important than the other, of course, but they're both valid reasons for wanting to have fat loss. But what I don't want to push people to do is to step onto a scale and that number, the number that they weigh, be indicative of success. because it is not. More often than not, if you are trying to lose weight, you are trying to lose fat while maintain or grow your muscle. A scale, at least most scales, do not... tell you that or show you how to do that accurately, okay? So I specifically would, if I say weight loss in this podcast, because it's hard to be perfect all the time, just know that I very much mean fat loss here, okay? And again, it's something that I try really hard to not say weight loss online and I try my hardest to say fat loss. I think what's important for people to know is that the way weight To lose fat is in a calorie deficit. And this means that the calories that you burn throughout your day, through a variety of reasons, which we'll talk about, is higher than the amount of calories that you consume. So you are burning more than you are putting back in, hence the deficit situation. I think most of us generally know that. That's it, period, hard stop. There's not, like all diets that work, work because they put you in a calorie deficit. I'm gonna say that again. All diets that work, work because they put you in a calorie deficit. That is how you lose fat. and weight, again, if we're being honest, okay? There are ways to specifically lose fat and not muscle, and we might talk about that here today, but that's not specifically what this is. But you've got to be in a calorie deficit. And all of these different diets that exist, low carb, keto, macro counting, calorie counting, whatever it is, I guess even though you can macro count, calorie count, and not be dieting, so like they're kind of in their own little bucket, but All the different diets that are geared towards getting you to lose fat are simply different ways in which you can go about being in a caloric deficit. OK, that's like saying I want to get to my mom's house right now from Portland. I want to go to San Antonio, Texas. There are 50 different ways I could get there. I could take a train. I could drive. I could probably drive 50 different routes. I could take a plane. I could take a bike. OK, I could walk. There are a lot of different ways that I could get from point A to point B. be are some ways better than others sure for some okay I would generally say if you're gonna drive right I would say for most people the most direct route would probably be the best right from Portland to San Antonio but let's say you've always wanted to stop at the Grand Canyon that's like your big thing it's been your life goal a bucket list item I gotta see the Grand Canyon before I die well let you want to know what's on between Portland and Texas the Grand Canyon kind of that's a bad example but Okay, we're going with it. Okay, we're here. It would be smart of you to stop by the Grand Canyon on the way. That would work for you. That would be a good idea. because that's important for you. And it's a goal of yours to see the Grand Canyon. So hell yeah, maybe it might tack on a couple days or two. It might not be the most efficient way to get from Portland to San Antonio, Texas, but it's a damn good way for you because it is super important for you to get to the Grand Canyon. Diets are the exact same way, okay? Some people wanna do it by intermittent fasting. Some people wanna do it by keto. Some people wanna do it low carb, high protein, whatever. And I can't sit here and tell you one is better than the other, even though I certainly do think some are better than others, if we're being honest. That's not what we're here to talk about. I'm not going to talk about each individual diet today. What I think is important for you to know is that different diets are all doing the same thing. They're just doing it in different ways. So you've got to decide if you want to do one of these diets or if you're researching one of these diets, what is best for me? What is something that I can actually maintain and achieve and be successful with? And what is something that I can actually love myself during the process? Because if a diet requires you to cut out everything that you love in life and you're absolutely effing miserable while you eat your bland chicken and sweet potatoes and celery, when all you want is Chipotle, like I'm just saying there probably is a diet where Chipotle fits in quite well. Chipotle is a chain of fast Mexican, Tex-Mex Mexican burrito bowls, for those of you who may not know what Chipotle is. I just, I want you to recognize that keto may work for your friend Sally super well, but she's decided on her trip from Portland to San Antonio that she's going to take a train. And you may hate trains, okay? You may want to fly. And so for you, even though keto worked really well for her, you were going to try something else because that works best for you. You know, Sally, she's afraid of planes. OK, she's going to hyperventilate and vomit that entire flight. OK, she heard Blake's going to be on the flight and she's going to be crying the whole way. So she's like, you know what? I'm not going to fly from Portland to San Antonio today. I'm going to train. But for you, you're like, you know what? I've got my earphones. I'm fine if Blake's crying the whole time. I love planes. OK, I want to be up in the clouds. I'm not scared of flying. So for you, it probably would be smart for you to take a plane. because you're gonna get there faster than train. I can tell you that for sure, crying baby or not. So you can't look at what your friends are doing. You've gotta look at your life and what said diet is asking you to do because that's gonna allow you to be consistent. It's the same thing with your workouts. You have to find something that you can maintain because even if a diet is super strict and it works and you are losing fat at a healthy rate, if you cannot maintain it, it's for nothing. Okay, it's literally, if you can lose four pounds in a month, cool, great, pat on the back. But when you gain eight pounds the next month, like what was that for? You made a sacrifice yourself. for I don't want to say for nothing because I mean maybe you learn some things about yourself it's not for it's not for literally nothing but like the goal isn't to just hit a number the goal isn't just to look self sexy the goal is to be healthy long term to love ourselves long term to be able to look in the mirror and not nitpick us and again notice that that has nothing to do with a number you may be overweight obese and be able to look in the mirror and absolutely effing love yourself And I say, damn, hell yeah, go on with your bad self because I truly believe I subscribe to the fact that love is more and loving yourself. is more important than any number thing that your doctor thinks is important for you to do because you're at high risk of diabetes or high blood pressure or you're going to have a heart attack, whatever. I don't want any of those things for you. But first and foremost, I want you to love yourself. So you've got to pick a nutrition management, you know, paradigm that's going to allow you that is going to keep self-love on the table. OK, I got a little off on a tangent there with my self-love. The point I'm trying to make is all diets do the exact same thing they try to get you into a caloric deficit i think intermittent fasting is a perfect example of of showing you this okay um so well i gotta compare it to something i suppose so like a low carb diet right carbs um tend to be uh more caloric than say well i should say um your breads, your pastas, your sweets, your whatever, tend to be more caloric than a salad. Well, let me actually tell you something. You want to know what a salad is? It's a hell of a bunch of carbs. Vegetables are carbs, okay? Oh, goodness. Okay, so I think that's another thing that always makes me LOL when people are like, oh, I'm on a low-carb diet. I'm like, no, you're on a low-bread diet, Sally. as you sit here eating your broccoli. Broccoli is mainly a carb, okay? It is a carb. So just, we need to all be clear, okay? Anyways, that's another aside. So if you look at something like a low-carb diet, what it is doing is telling you to take one of the essential macronutrients, which there are three, fats, proteins, and carbs. Technically, alcohol is also a macronutrient, but it is not, not essential. Okay, I know you think that glass of red wine a day keeps the doctor away, but it doesn't. There's a little tough love there for you, okay? So protein, fats, and carbs. A low-carb diet basically is going to limit you eating one of those macronutrients because you're limiting those macronutrients. Again, you're eating less food, which will put you into a caloric deficit. If you look at something like intermittent fasting, it's not going to put a guardrail on types of foods you can eat, but it's going to put guardrails on when you can eat. So you're eating less food simply because you aren't eating for as long of a period of time. OK, generally, if you let's see here, most people are awake for 16 hours. I mean, give or take. Okay, we're rolling with that number. If you give yourself a 16-hour window to eat versus a 10-hour or 8-hour window to eat, you're probably going to eat less. You're not just going to stuff yourself in those 8, 10 hours. You're not just going to go balls to the wall and in half the time eat the amount of food you would in 16 hours. That is how intermittent fasting works. People want to say, oh, it starts off your stomach with all of this bullshit. Bullshit. You want to know what intermittent fasting does? It just shortens your amount of time to eat. And so you generally eat less. If you only give yourself eight hours to eat instead of 16, you're going to eat less. But I find most people are also cranky as fuck. Excuse my language. But like intermittent fasting might work for you. And it might be a really easy way for you to provide guardrails around when you can eat. But generally, every person who's ever stepped into my life who is intermittent fasting from a fitness perspective, I should say, like I'm training people who have been intermittent fasting, they lack a pep in their step. They lack an ability to like progress, I think. And again, this is not this part, this piece right here that I'm sharing you is more antidotal than it is science. But I just can tell that their body is hungry and is malnourished and needs more food in order to lift heavier weights, to run faster, right? Whatever I'm asking you to do in said workout. So yeah, you're achieving a calorie deficit because you're giving yourself less time to eat. I'm not gonna sit here and say that is better or worse for you than omitting carbs from your diet It's two different ways to get from Portland to San Antonio. One is to eat less carbs. One is to eat less hours. You're eating less. Do you see that? Do you see that common thread? All diets have a common thread and they're asking you to eat less. because that is how you get into a caloric deficit. I think it's really, really important. I think that there are some diets that are completely unhealthy. I do think that the keto diet is something that no one needs to be on. It doesn't make any sense why we need to put healthy, normal bodies into a ketosis state. It doesn't make any sense to me. There are absolutely populations where the keto diet makes sense, but I think that that needs to be determined by A medical doctor. Okay. Do I think that the low carb diet is a good idea? Absolutely not. Carbs are essential. Do you want to know how you get energy in your day? You eat a carb. You wake up and you put carbs in your mouth. Okay. So the concept of wanting to limit carbs I think is silly to me. I think there are people who also do like low sugar diets and they think they start to demonize foods like strawberries. Do you want to know what's not needing to be demonized in your life? Strawberries. The sugar in a strawberry strawberry is not gonna like cause you to be fat unless you're eating an insane amount of strawberries which speaking of eating a lot of berries if you have a toddler I hope you got a budget for a berries because the berry budget needs to be high. Blake plows through some berries these days. So I think it's super important to recognize there are different ways to get to the journey. I cannot tell you what's the best way for you, but I think that when you're looking at different ways to try to lose fat, I need you to think of your ability to sustain this. I need to think about your ability to not demonize certain foods. I think that can be very unhealthy to think that i have to admit dessert i cannot have ice cream i cannot have dairy that is a very slippery slope that i think i think that Certain populations, sure, do need to do that. Again, IBS is one of them. If dairy makes you bloat, if it makes you sick, that may be something that you need to omit, but you're omitting it because of how you feel. You're not omitting it based off of the number on the scale or because you think that not eating dairy is going to make you lose fat, okay? I think what's really interesting is that we can't use health as an excuse for unhealthy obsession And that's really where I was, like I said, in my 20s was where I was obsessing over the fact that bread was bad for me. And so I was swapping in a really expensive garbanzo bean flour because it was a healthier, air quotes there, healthier option. And in my head, if I just chose all the healthier options, I would be skinny, I would have a six pack, my biceps will be will be popping, and I would look cute and the boys would love me and I'd get a promotion and all the things that I'm just so you know, that's not what happened. And that did not work that way. So I think it's really important for you to make sure if you are going down this path of trying to be a healthier person, that you don't start to develop unhealthy obsessions or unhealthy habits. in the name of health. It's backwards. It's funny to me, some people, another perfect example, I was talking to someone that I know and she was saying she's having a hard time losing weight and she had gone vegan. And she's like, I don't understand. Like I've cut out all of these bad foods and I'm a vegan. Why am I not losing weight? And I go, well, walk me through your day. Walk me through a typical meal. And one of the things that she said for lunch, she's like, well, I have a salad for lunch, which again, the salad, ooh, ah, the epitome of health in the 90s. You have a salad, you know. And sure, it's got great vegetables, so much nutrients for you. Wonderful. Bundavar. Love it. You've got the tomatoes. You've got the cucumbers. Oh, love it. The crisp green kale. Love a leafy green. Love that for you. You want to know what she was also putting into the salad? An olive oil-based dressing, feta cheese, avocado. Okay? I mean, let me in on something. All three of those things are predominantly fats. Fats are the most caloric of the three things. macronutrients, okay? That does not mean that they are bad for you. Fats are super important. Eating fats do not make you fat. I should have started there because that's like a basic, okay? Eating fats don't make you fat. But if you're trying to lose fat, and in this case, maybe I should say lose weight because it gets... When we're talking about fat as a macronutrient, it can get really complicated and confusing if I'm also talking about fat as like the thing that's on your body. So if you're trying to lose weight. But she's loading this salad with a ton. Like she was eating, I think, like a whole avocado on this salad. And she was putting... feta cheese again and olive oil and i'm just like all of those things are so important they are so rich in in macronutrients uh and micronutrients like they're just an avocado is excellent but a whole avocado hold on let's look up what's the calorie whole avocado whole oh jesus whole avocado calories Oh, this says 240 calories, but that's actually, I'm surprised. I'm going to, I was going to guess more, but two, we'll just say 240 calories. It's, it's majority of which is going to be fat. Let's see here. Yeah. 22 grams of fat, 13 grams of carbs, three grams of protein, 22 grams of fat. So she's sitting here and she's eating these really, really caloric calories is what I'm getting at. Um, and what I told her is you've, You've told yourself that if you eat salads all of the time that you will lose fat. But the way to lose fat is to be in a caloric deficit. It has nothing to do with salads. You could eat Snickers all day long. But if you eat just the right amount of Snickers, you will be in a caloric deficit and you would lose weight. You also would lose a lot of other things because you need more nutrients than what a Snickers is going to provide you. But technically, you could... You could technically just eat Snickers and hit all of your calories, maybe not your macronutrients, but your calories. And so I was just showing her where like you can't just eat healthy and eat salads and not pay attention to calories at all because it is important. Okay, again, calorie counting is a tool to help you get there. Some diets just cover up that calorie counting tool as something else and they manipulate all of the different things that they can do to get you to eat less without having to calorie count, right? Think intermittent fasting, they're shortening your window to eat. So you probably don't even have to calorie count because you're not eating as much as your everyday average person because you've shortened the period of time. Well, you don't need to calorie count. You ain't gonna eat as much because you're hungry. So I was like, you can't just eat what you think are healthy foods and expect fat loss because you're ignoring calories. Same thing is you cannot just count calories and ignore calories. healthy foods, foods that are going to give you antioxidants and nutrients and a balanced macronutrient profile and expect to be healthy. You may lose fat, but you will most likely also lose muscle. You will lose the nutrients in your body that make it work at its best. You might be tired. You might develop sickness easier. You might have immune issues. You might be having to go to the doctor because a slew of issues, okay? You've got to pay attention to both. And I think that it was an aha moment for her. Like, man, you're right. Like, I have just said, if it's in a salad, if it's in a salad, it's fine. And like, for some reason, we demonize avocado when it's got a bowl of chips next to it. Suddenly, that's bad. But avocado on a salad, well, that's healthy. Well, fun fact, it's an avocado. It's the same thing. It's just how you're balancing out how much of the avocado you eat, what you're pairing it with. It's so complicated. And that's why diet and nutrition is so hard, especially when you're looking to lose weight. weight because and that's why everyone just flees to exercise and that's where I come in and a ton of people are just like I you know there are two ways that I can if the goal is to lose fat then I'm sitting here and telling you you have to burn more calories than you eat and everyone hears that and says great I'm gonna burn a shit ton of calories because I don't want to have to focus on my diet and my nutrition because it's really freaking hard for all the reasons that just laid out there's not one set thing to do it's not it's something that you have to do throughout the day you have to think about your nutrition throughout the 16 hours a day that you work or that you're awake excuse me but you only really have to think of your of your workout like 30 minutes to an hour a day you know five to six days a week like that sounds way better i would much rather focus on that than something that i have to focus on 24 7 Yeah, I don't blame you. But that's where I want to talk about something called TDEE, total daily energy expenditure. So we are going to put all that on a shelf. We'll come back to this diet, nutrition, and calories in and calories out in a second. I need to explain to you how your body burns calories. I think it's really important to understand that. And this is something that when I've explained it to people... people have like this oh shit moment and i also explain it to people and it suddenly makes my job feel not very important because the moral of the end of the story is going to be that exercise isn't actually that important when it comes to your health shocker what oh my god she said it But it's true, okay? Total daily energy expenditure. How much energy you use throughout the day. Another fancy way of saying calories burned. It comes down to four things. Your BMR, your basal metabolic rate. I'll explain what all these things are. Your TEF, which is thermal effect of food. Your NEAT, N-E-A-T. Your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And your EAT, your exercise activity thermogenesis. BMR, which is your basal metabolic rate. uh is basically how many calories you burn just being you if you were to be a lazy sack of potatoes like i say laying on the couch all day long how many calories would you burn just to keep yourself alive you're not moving you're not doing anything you are just hanging out okay it is you know the day after thanksgiving the day before christmas and you just turn on those the christmas story and you and elf and you know dr seuss the grinch still christmas and you just let it ride you just lay on that couch and you just watch tv all day how You would burn calories doing that, okay? Because your body is doing things. It's keeping you alive. That little ticker in your heart is tickering, and that burns calories, okay? Your basal metabolic rate is just how many calories you burn at a rested state. That accounts for 70%, give or take, of course, everyone's different, of your total daily energy expenditure per 70% so I'm talking that this is I should say your basal metabolic rate is not something that you can control it's out of your control 70% of how much calories what happens with your metabolism what happens in your body you cannot control so when you think about calories burned Know that 70% of it is just out. It's just, it just is. Okay. Does this number and rate change over time? Yes. Things like pregnancy are going to change it. Things like disease and like, yes, I'm not saying that it is set for your whole life. but it's not something that you can consciously say, oh, I'm gonna work on changing my BMR today, all right? So 70% of it, we're not even gonna discuss right now because you can't even control it, okay? So that leaves us with 30% when it comes to your calories burned throughout a day, your total daily expenditure that we can impact, we can kind of control. Well, not even because the next one you can't control either, which is 10%, which is your thermal effect of food. That is basically how many calories you burn eating and digesting your food because that does take a lot of calories. I remember once reading, probably again in Cosmopolitan Magazine, I do love Cosmo, I don't mean to hate on it, but it does have some questionable food suggestions, that like eating a cucumber was like a negative calorie food because it burned, eating a calorie, eating a cucumber, excuse me, burned more calories than it put in. Okay, that kind of thought process is the thermal effect of food, just how much calories you burn eating. So 80%, that's 10% of that total, the total daily energy expenditure. So 80%, we can't even control. So let's just put that all on the shelf. We're not even gonna talk about it because you can't even control that. And leaves us with NEAT and EAT. which is ironic that one of them is eat and we're talking about food. Non-energy activity thermogenesis and exercise activity thermogenesis. So we're going to split them up and just call them exercise and non-exercise activity. Non-exercise activity is all the movement that you do throughout your day that is not exercise. Exercise. You didn't start your Garmin watch and say, okay, I'm exercising. You didn't lace up your shoes and say, okay, I'm exercising. I'm talking going up and down the stairs in your house. I'm talking walking to your car. I'm talking, you know, getting up and getting down off of the toilet. I'm talking wiping your ass. I'm talking brushing your teeth. All of the movements that we do throughout the day that is not exercise. That is what non-exercise activity is. Exercise activity is the, again, 30 to 60 minutes, however long, that you are actively exercising with an intention of exercising, okay? So that's the difference. Going for a walk, walking a dog, that would be exercise. Walking to your car would be non-exercise, but both are walking. This is where people are always mind-blown. When it comes to your total daily energy expenditure, how many calories you're burning, 15%. goes to non-exercise activity, and 5% goes to exercise activity. So in the grand scheme of everything that makes an impact, on what burns calories in your life, your non-exercise activity accounts for three times more calories burned than your exercise. Do you want to know why, hun? Because you're working out for one hour in a 24 hour day. So yeah, I would think, let's call it a 16 hour day because you're getting good sleep because you listen to my sleep podcast. The 15 hours that you're awake, you're burning more calories than you do in the one hour a day that you work out unless you ran like a marathon today. Okay. Have you ever thought about that? Everyone thinks that the solution to burning calories is to doing a certain workout. You will burn so many more calories if you just get up off your lazy ass and you move more throughout the day. Period. Hard stop. Do I want you to exercise? No. Absolutely. There are so many freaking benefits. You're not going to gain muscle. We're talking about fat loss in this podcast episode, but just as an aside, you're not going to gain muscle by never exercising. And we need you to gain muscle because muscle helps you burn fat. It helps keep that ratio. Okay. And that's important, but I can only talk about so many topics in one podcast episode. But I need you to continue to exercise more days than not. I need you to strength train. I need you to not be afraid of lifting heavy. That doesn't mean you have to have a barbell. It can be dumbbells. That's absolutely fine. But I need you to exercise because there's a laundry list of benefits that exercise provides. But when we're just talking about fat loss in a vacuum, okay, this little Petri dish, which is not realistic because we don't live in a vacuum, all these factors are always hitting us together in unison. But when it comes to fat loss, okay, The activity that you do outside of your workouts throughout the day, throughout your week, throughout the year will have so much more impact in your ability, your body's ability to burn calories and to lose fat than what you do in your workout. so I always tell people I would much rather if fat loss is your goal especially if you are in that group of people who are losing fat because your doctor is telling you that you're borderline diabetic you are borderline whatever okay well there's you know all the list of things the things that scare us unhealthy things that come for us as we get older and you're overweight or you're obese I don't want you to focus on what exercise I have to do I want you to find something that you enjoy because losing weight is not always an enjoyable process okay but if I can find you an exercise that you just think is fun for 30 minutes well great because I have found some self-love some joy in your day for 30 minutes because the other 15 and a half hours that you're awake may not be so fun because you're having to focus on nutrition like I talked about it's easier to focus on exercise than nutrition because one is done for a short period of time and one is done all day long and so I think that That, to wrap all of that up, I'm going to go through the numbers again, your basal metabolic rate and your thermal effective food is 80% of the amount of calories that you burn, and you can't impact that. That leaves us with 20% left, 15% of that. is impacted by your movement throughout the day. And 5% of it is impacted by that little workout that you do when you open the sweat app and you roll out your yoga mat and you pull out your dumbbells and you do your thing. Okay. So when it comes to fat loss, when you look at calories in calories burned, I don't want you to think, well, I'm going to run today because it burns more calories. Sure. Running does burn more calories than strength training. It does. But the amount more that it burns is so insignificant compared to the total amount of calories that you burn and that you consume throughout your day. That we can get into these unhealthy mindsets. And again, this is as someone who used to be in this mindset. Well, if I just run a lot, I'll just be burning so many calories. Well, you want to know what also happens when you run a lot? You get really freaking hungry because you do go into a calorie deficit. But more often than not, you will start to eat more. If you are running more, because your body has to do it in order to perform in order to get out of bed in the morning, you're going to have to eat more. So being in a calorie deficit and running is actually really freaking hard to do. And I think good nutritionists, good dietitians, people who are with clients who need to lose weight, you will often hear them say that they don't recommend just doing cardio, because you'll burn, you will burn, like I said, more calories doing cardio than you will strength training but it becomes so hard to stay in a lower calorie expense not expenditure a calorie amount that you're eating right it becomes harder to limit the amount of calories that you're eating when you are at a high calorie expenditure it becomes difficult and one is easier to control than the other like I just said you can only control 20% of the calories that you burn but you can control 100% of the calories that you eat So instead of making it hard for yourself because you're going to be really freaking hungry, if you just don't burn as many calories, you can kind of help like you can help yourself not be so miserable, not be so miserable. That's the that's the word hungry. No one wants to be hungry. Even if you want to lose fat, no one wants to be hungry. And I think that your hunger is not a sign that you're doing it right. Oh, I wish someone told me that when I was 22. Hunger is not a sign that you have chosen the right foods to eat today and that you chose the right exercise today. Hunger is a sign that your body needs something and you need to listen. The perfect diet should minimize your hunger still. That's still important, okay? And I used to subscribe to this, but hunger is a sign that I'm doing it right because that means I'm in a calorie deficit. Now look, are you going to go through the entire day never hungry or should be satiated the entire time? No. But you shouldn't be in this perpetual state of yearning, of misery. of just sitting there dreaming about food. That's not health. Health is a balance of all of the things. And again, your happiness is on that table as part of that balance. And if you're not happy, then I don't know if the diet's worth it. Again, unless we have a severe health issue that we're trying to avoid, the impending doom is coming, you see it. And you're like, okay, I'm gonna take some short-term unhappiness so that I don't die, okay? Approved. Okay, I'll allow that. Like, you don't need my permission, but approved on that. All right. But I think the majority of us aren't in those situations. I really think that those are two things I really want people to take away is diets are just fancy ways of saying you have to burn a calorie deficit. And then You need to move more in your every day. That is what you can control when it comes to calories burn. Your exercise is absolutely a piece of it. I'm not saying that that 5% isn't important. I'm just saying it's not the only thing. You can't sit on your butt all day and then exercise for 30 minutes a day and think that that's enough. It's not enough. Your body needs to move. I don't know if you know, but we as humans weren't born to sit on a chair at a computer. We were born to gallivant and run and loincloths out and about. Having our babies in caves and breastfeeding as a social entity, not one-on-one sitting connected to a pump. I'm just saying that's not what we were born to do. Okay, I don't know what we were born to do, but it definitely wasn't being connected to a pump. I can promise you that. Promise. Promise. I'm letting my own opinions fall in. You guys know that I don't love. I loved pumping because it kept my kid alive and it kept my kid happy, but I don't love pumping. Those are the two biggest things I want you to take away. Now, when it comes to calorie counting and macro counting, it may seem like you get all this information and you're like, okay, great. So I just need to make sure I'm calorie counting because then that's when I know. And this is the piece where I don't have all of the answers because I continue to fail at it in my own life. So I'm going to say this because I know it's what needs to be said, but I don't have all the solutions. And that is calorie counting should be a tool. It should be something that you use to educate yourself on your life, but it should not be the Bible for how you act. It should not be, well, I only am going to do this because my calories say that, okay? It should just be one tool on the tool belt that you use to build the house that is your life, but it's not the only tool. You ain't going to build a good house if the only tool you have is a hammer, okay? And your calorie counting is that hammer. I don't know how to build a house, but I can tell you, you're probably going to need a saw, okay? You're probably going to need a hammer. You're probably going to need, what are some other tools? A wrench? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I don't build houses. But I can tell you, you can't build a house with just a hammer. I can promise you that, okay? Don't go into trying to be your healthiest self and think that your calorie counter, your calculator that you've got, Whatever you're using, don't think that that is the only tool that you use. Well, I can't have X, Y, and Z because the calculator says that I can't. It doesn't fit into my calories. That's where unhealthy habits start because that's not true. That one tool doesn't also keep in mind, are you happy? Are you able to enjoy your kid's fifth birthday party cake because you deserve it because you're a mom and you've been working your ass off and you got your kid to five years old and you deserve to be celebrated as much as that kid does. So you deserve the freaking piece of cake. I don't care that your calorie counter today says that you don't deserve that piece of cake. Mama, you deserve the cake. You deserve the whole cake, not just a piece. The calorie counter is never going to tell you that. You use it as a tool. What the calorie counter is going to say is, hey, you ate a whole cake today because you deserved it. You went over your calories. For the rest of the week, we're going to maybe eat a little less calories. I don't hate that. I don't hate that. But what I hate is when people use it like I have to live by this number every single day. And there, I think, are healthier ways to do calorie counting than looking at it daily. Maybe look at it over a week period of time. Like there are things that you can do. to make calorie counting a little less toxic when it comes to your mental health um so i'm not against calorie counting i just want to be clear i think that people should do it for periods of time i think that it should be something that maybe you do for a month so that you learn what your normal routines are like and maybe you can shine light to where some of the uh Areas are in your habits that can make change, right? If you're eating a whole avocado on your salad for both lunch and dinner, that macro counting is probably going to tell you, yo, you're really heavy in fats, but you're not heavy enough in protein. And that's probably why you're, you're hungry all the time because you need protein to be satiated, to feel full. Okay. It's not just about how much volume you eat. It's got to be also the right macronutrients. So when I think about macronutrients and calorie counting, I think they can be important tools. When I recommend them to people, I recommend them for periods of time. I don't think it should be something that you live that way. You should not be having to calorie count for forever. It should be something that You learn, wow, I'm really eating all of my calories at breakfast or by 10 a.m., maybe those first couple snacks. And then I really am like starving myself when it comes to lunch and dinner. And I should probably maybe try to find a better balance that I'm not so hungry, you know, going into night or maybe you're skipping lunch and then you're so hungry going into dinner that you tend to overeat and you tend to binge dessert after dinner. Right. These are the sorts of things that calorie counting can help you see. macro counting can do the same thing it can kind of pinpoint where you're maybe not balanced and I think that you take those learnings after a set period of time and then you go imply them into your life and you may need to calorie count or macro count during those periods but then you go live your life you shouldn't be stuck chained chained up in the guardrails of the calorie counting and the macro counting again that's where I have struggled in the past because I've calorie counted and it's been very hard to not feel shackled to what the calculator tells me I should eat today. I have struggled with that, but I know that a lot of people are super, super successful with it. I do think it's something that if you're serious about this, if this is something that you really need to achieve in your life for whatever reason, I highly recommend reaching out to a dietician or nutritionist so that you're not doing it alone. I think that that will help having the right person with you, the right support can help you not lose yourself to some of the toxic mental health traps that can happen with calorie counting. I think one other tool that I still use and I can use healthfully, healthfully without falling prey to the toxicity is counting protein. And I think that especially for women, well, I know we aren't eating enough protein. Generally to build muscle, you need about one gram per pound of fat, sorry, per pound of body weight to gain muscle. That's a lot of protein. I'm just gonna say it now. OK, that means if you're 150 pounds, 150 grams of protein is a lot of protein. I think more realistically, most of us should fall who have goals of working out and you're lifting weights. I think having a goal of like 0.8 grams per pound is 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight is more realistic.
UNKNOWN:OK.
SPEAKER_00:And so many women are below that. I'm pretty for sure the United States recommended amount is 0.3 grams per pound of body weight, which is way low. I mean, that's way too low. As a fitness trainer, I would not recommend that to anyone. No one. And so I think what happens is that Women start to track their protein, just their protein. I don't think you have to track anything else. And you will have your eyes opened to how little protein you truly are eating. Again, not everyone, but the majority of women. And I think that if you did nothing else in your diet, nothing else, but just try to eat more protein. And all you did was track your protein. It would absolutely support a lot of your goals, whether that's fat loss, whether that's muscle gain, because protein is going to help you gain muscle. It's also going to help you stay satiated, full. And one thing about being in a calorie deficit that's really hard is that, like I said, you're going to get hungry. So doing what you can do to stay full longer, to make it to the next meal, to the next snack is excellent. And, you know, Protein is going to help you get there. And so that's one tool that, I mean, you can use MyFitnessPal. That's usually not, this isn't an ad, but that's, I think, an app that I have used in the past when I was calorie counting, when I have macro counted. It's a super easy to use platform app. I think that– and it's an accurate platform. It's a well-respected platform. I think that just tracking your calorie– sorry, just tracking your proteins can be a really healthy way of starting your healthy journey. If you're reading this or hearing this and you're like, oh, my God, Brittany, I'm overwhelmed. You're just making everything sound so negative, so, oh, my God, I don't even know what to do. First of all, I'm sorry because that's not my intent. But that's where I would recommend starting. is two things that i anyone who's just coming to me saying like i want to be healthier i want to do on it doesn't matter what you want to do but the answer is is i want to insert the something that you want to change about your body or your life as it relates to health or fitness there's two things that i always recommend one find an exercise that you freaking love and you can be consistent with we will eventually get you to do an exercise that aligns with the goals of that your goals, right? Because certain exercises are going to help you do certain things. We'll get there. But to start, I just want you to be consistent with an exercise that you love. I want you to wake up and look forward to whatever that workout is. And two, I want you to eat more protein. Most populations of women need more protein. Not all. There are some people who need not to eat more protein, but that is such a minority and such a niche that I can't worry about those people right now. You got to know who you are. Okay. And if you have any questions, you talk to your doctor. All right. At the end of the day. the medical have a medical staff that can help support you um if you feel like you fall into an outlier group that's it guys i know it's a lot and i know it can be discouraging because there's so much misinformation out there There's so much misinformation out there. And there's so many nooks and crannies to all of this that you can explore and that you can learn. And there's so many people telling you that this is what worked for them. And it's unfortunately one thing in life that isn't one size fits all. So you got to take everything that someone tells you, well, this worked for me. And you've got to put it through a filter. How did that diet put them into a caloric deficit? Or how did that diet exercise change in their lifestyle allow them to move more throughout their day because if you weren't exercising at all and then you suddenly do add an exercise that is going to make a big difference okay but then eventually if you just exercise for forever i've been exercising for as long as i can remember my exercise if i'm trying to like lose fat working out isn't really going to be a tool for me to lose fat because i'm used to it I have a kind of a baseline, so to speak. And so I think that that's how you got to start when people are coming into you, when you start reading different things, when you start hearing things, even listening to this podcast, put a filter on of how does this apply to my life? Is this something that I can sustain long term? Is this something that I can do while maintaining my mental health, while maintaining myself, while love, while eating a piece of chocolate cake or two or three at my kids, you know, fifth birthday? Because these are all things that we need to be able to do. Don't put health at the pinnacle of your life and sacrifice happiness. Okay? It can be done. I'm not saying it's easy. I know it's hard and it's complex. But for some of us, it's absolutely necessary. Like I said, there are some camps where losing fat is the absolute necessity in order to keep you on this earth for longer. And we want that. We want you around. All right. But you've got to do it in a way that supports you and your body. I don't want to say in a healthy way because that sounds like, I don't know, like not the right thing to say. Oh, Lord, guys, it's it's hard. It's nutrition is so hard. It's funny. I just filmed a reel that I'll post at some point about how like I have not been really in the mood to eat vegetables, even though I just went on this whole like I am holier than thou rant about how much I eat vegetables. I have been bad at it the past few weeks. I've just been busy. There's been like a lot going on. And for whatever reason, when I'm busy, the last thing I want to do is chop vegetables. So I've just been buying the big ass container of spinach and then eating an obscene amount of sauteed spinach. So I literally just put water in the pan and then I put a shit ton of spinach on top and I let it just like saute down and whittle down into a tiny little amount. And then I just shove it in my mouth and then I move go about my day. Like I mean I eat my lunch like like I literally like in the reel that I filmed I had a burger. and chips and then i sauteed down all this this spinach because i was like i know that my body needs the macronutrients of the spinach and i'm probably not going to get a complete macronutrient profile from just burger and chips so i'm going to eat all this spinach i'm just shove it in my my mouth does it taste great no but i can get a shit ton of spinach down in like three seconds if i wilt it down and then i'm going to enjoy my chips and my burger um And it's that balance. It's that balance that it's so hard to find. But I really want you to think about it. If this is something that's important to you and your health is important to me. And I think we talk a lot about mental health on this podcast and physical health, too. I am a fitness trainer at the end of the day. But one is not more important than the other. And I think that may be the most biggest takeaway. of today's podcast is no matter how you decide to lose fat, if that is a goal of yours, I don't want you to lose your happiness with the fat, okay? Skinny is not happiness. You know, what's that saying? There's nothing is, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Well, that's bullshit. That's not right. You should be able to be happy and love your body and be able to go to the doctor and not feel like he's gonna rep or she's gonna reprimand you for being overweight, okay? try to find routines and solutions in your life that keep all of those things on the table that's all she wrote that's all she wrote this is a long podcast but i knew it would be i knew it would be um okay guys i again any good vibes that you have any good vibes that you have please send my way On Wednesday, when I'm flying, I got Portland to Boston. It's going to be rough, but we're going to make it. We're going to make it. It's going to be fine. And then the week after that, going to daycare after landing at midnight. So fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. You guys are amazing. Don't forget to rate, review, subscribe to the podcast. Share with a friend, especially a topic like this. I think if you have a good friend who has just been trying every diet or has been feeling like they aren't supported or have been lost in the mixed messaging, maybe this is a podcast to share with them. I think that there's a lot of toxic messaging out in the world and one of the best things that you can do for your friends and family is help them feel supported in a non-toxic way. And hopefully you feel like this podcast is non-toxic because that is certainly my number one goal. Um, yeah. And I hope you have a wonderful, happy filter free Friday.