Your Lifestyle Is Your Medicine
“Your Life Style Is Your Medicine” is a podcast that focuses on how a person's lifestyle can be the key to health and happiness. Routed in the principles of lifestyle medicine, Ed Paget, osteopath, and exercise scientist, interviews area-specific experts on how lifestyle impacts well-being, focusing on purpose, physical activity, nutrition, sleep, and stress, which could lead to a longer, happier life. Edward now runs immersive lifestyle medicine retreats, with the purpose of helping others take back control of their lives to live longer and healthier.
Your Lifestyle Is Your Medicine
Weight Loss and Menopause with Lisa Franz
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Menopause weight gain can feel unfair, confusing, and strangely stubborn, especially when you swear you’re “not eating that much.” We go straight at that frustration and separate myth from physiology with nutrition and fitness coach Lisa France, founder of Nutrition Coaching and Life, joining me for a clear-eyed conversation about sustainable fat loss for real life.
We unpack why crash diets and extreme restriction often backfire, how your body adapts by conserving energy and amplifying hunger, and why “ending a diet” without a plan can set you up for rapid regain. Lisa explains what a moderate calorie deficit looks like, how to find your maintenance calories, and why gradually increasing calories after a fat-loss phase matters for long-term results. We also dig into calorie tracking as an education tool, not a forever rule, plus the role of protein for satiety, muscle retention, and healthy aging.
Then we zoom in on the menopause transition. Lisa shares what current research suggests about changes in metabolic rate, fat distribution toward the midsection, and the challenge of building or keeping lean mass, along with a grounded reminder: the basics still apply. Sleep, stress, resistance training, daily movement, fiber, and alcohol intake can become the difference-makers because the body is simply less forgiving. If tracking isn’t your thing, we talk Mediterranean-style eating as a practical, evidence-based template.
We close with an honest look at hyper-palatable processed foods, compulsive eating, and low-cost strategies that help you feel full again by leaning on whole foods, hydration, and smart movement. If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it.
Midlife Stress And Weight Creep
SPEAKER_01Late 40s, uh 50s, you're maybe in a career, you'll begin to peak in your career, or your teenagers are getting older. Uh, life changes are happening outside of your control, and it's stressful. Then you have your your change in hormones, and it's easy to let other things go. The exercise goes, the nutrition goes, the sleep goes, and then you go to the doctor or the nutritionist, you say, I can't lose weight.
SPEAKER_00The alcohol does play a big role. I think I mean we need to acknowledge that it is a toxin, and maybe in your 20s and 30s, your body was just able to um pump that out of your body pretty quickly and then take care of fat metabolism and all the rest of it. And now maybe your liver is not functioning as well, you're not eating enough cruciferous vegetables, you're not eating enough fiber to support your liver and all these kinds of things.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Your Lifestyle Is Your Medicine podcast, where we do deep dives into topics of mind, body, and spirit, foods, conversations, your hear, practical advice, and effective strategies to improve your health and ultimately add health span to your lifespan. I'm Ed Pagett. I'm an osteopath and exercise physiologist with a special interest in longevity. Today's guest is Lisa France. She is a nutrition and fitness coach and the founder of Nutrition, Coaching and Life. She helps women, particularly during menopause, lose weight and build lasting habits without restrictive diets. Her approach combines evidence-based nutrition, exercise strategies, and practical tools that fit into real life. In this conversation today, we talked about myths about losing weight, what the science says about losing weight, and when a person, when a woman in particular, goes into menopause, is there actually a change in the way she can lose weight and what can she do about it? We also round out the conversation with an interesting discussion on people who are obese and they're battling like compulsory eating disorders, whether that comes from themselves or whether it comes from the food they eat, the hyper-palatable foods, encouraging them to eat more. She offers some really effective strategies to help with that. So, Lisa, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here today and hopefully add some value to your listeners.
SPEAKER_01Well, exactly. Let's talk about my listeners. So, what I want people to come away from this podcast with is uh an understanding of weight loss, uh, the factors that can prevent weight loss, and especially in women, how that might change the older they get with menopause. But before we get into the nitty-gritty of that, I just want you to give uh our listeners just a brief outline of who you are and why are you talking on this subject.
SPEAKER_00Right. So, yeah, as you mentioned, my name is Lisa. I am a full-time nutrition coach, fitness coach as well, but nutrition is about 80-90% of what I do really. Um, and I have made it my mission to teach others that with the right knowledge, you can lead a life where you feel great in your body and also at the same time enjoy your life. Because I, for a really long time, used to believe that it has to be one or the other in the sense of going through some restrictive diets or really saying no completely to carbs or whatever else it might have been, or having a body that I love and feel good in. And I was in that struggle for quite some time, and I know a lot of people are in the struggle right now, or have been in the struggle, and I just have made it my mission to teach people that life can be enjoyed through food, because food can enrich and should enrich our lives and not be something that we're preoccupying ourselves with all the time, feeling guilty about, feeling gross about, or just simply being afraid of.
Why Restrictive Diets Backfire
SPEAKER_01Well, this is such an interesting topic because it's one that I don't think I can speak with much authority on. I I like I seem to be blessed with uh one of those metabolisms, and maybe we can talk about whether or not that's true. Uh, but I do exercise every day and I don't eat very much compared to a lot of my colleagues. And maybe that's the secret, but it's not sort of a conscious thing. Um, so I want to to discuss a little bit with um you about restrictive diets, and you mentioned that, and I think it's becoming more um aware there's more awareness around this in the mainstream media that if you go on a restrictive diet, it does something that makes you actually gain more weight when you come off it. Let's can we talk about that?
A Sustainable Fat Loss Strategy
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, and that's one of the uh one of the big things I love talking about because unfortunately I am working with and have worked with many women especially who have gone through years and years of yo-yo dieting. And that's exactly um what we're talking about here. We're going on something super restrictive, and by restrictive, I personally mean something where I'm cutting out an entire food group, even though I might love things like bread or whatever, I'm saying no to carbs completely, um, where I am perhaps even dropping super low in calories. Let's just say maybe technically your body needs 2,000 calories to maintain their weight, and some uh people just drastically go on a 1200 calorie diet or a liquid juice diet or something like this. So anytime we're exposing ourselves to something like this, a few things happen physiologically. Number one, um after a while, not you know, let's say if you do this for three days or even a week or two, that's a different story. But after a while, your body is recognizing, hey, there is a little bit of an energy shortage. So I'm going to simply go into kind of I call it standby mode. So kind of like if you unplug your laptop from its power source, after a while, it's going to be a little bit dimmer, it's going to not run the backup processes and all these things. And that's happening with our body as well, in the sense of hormones are not optimized as much anymore. You're maybe not fidgeting as much anymore because your body is recognizing I need to preserve the energy or conserve energy. And so that's that's on a physiological level, number one. Number two, you're going to get increased hunger signals because your body wants you to go out and find more food. You're becoming more ravenous, maybe a little bit more irritable. All these things are so many things happening. On another level, when we are restricting ourselves too much from something and for a long amount of time, for many people, the desire to have said thing actually increases. I don't know about you, but like if someone tells me you can't have that, I want it, I want it even more. Like it doesn't even matter if I don't even want that that much. And so those two things together, um and you hit your dieting endpoint, suddenly you're switching back into, oh, I can have everything, and you have all these increased hunger signals where your body is telling you to stock up because maybe there is another hunger period coming. So if you simply go back to intuitive eating or to your previous eating habits, you're not just going to gain the weight back. Your body actually tells you to eat more than what you had before because it wants to have sort of an insurance policy, a little bit of extra cushion in case there's another hunger period coming, and then adding the psychological part of it where you're like, oh, I haven't had this in forever, I'm gonna make the most of it. So suddenly, um, if you have the opportunity to eat a slice of cake, maybe previously would have eaten one, now you're one at one two. So that's that those are two those are two things that are really making it difficult um to keep weight off if we're not going about it in a strategic way. Um and I uh I I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to talk about like how we can go about it in a strategic way because um yo-yo dieting or seeing people gain the weight back is one of the things that hurts me as a nutrition coach the most. That's something I say to everybody I started working with is my goal is that you are at the same goal weight that we have set in five years and ten years or wherever you want to be, but not that you're just gaining it all back within three months or so. So um but some tips to go about it in a more strategic way and to keep the weight off, actually, would be to A, do a more sustainable and more moderate diet. So not slashing the calories by 50%, not cutting something out completely that you actually really um enjoy and can't see yourself living without in in five years. Because if you're somebody who says, I really don't actually enjoy carbs that much, I can I love being on a low carb diet even in five years and ten years. That's a different story. But the majority of people are gonna want to have a piece of a slice of pizza when they go on date night or have a piece of brownie when they're at their uh daughter's birthday party. So for those people, I want to teach them how to incorporate things in moderation where you don't feel guilty and you don't gain five kilos or pounds overnight, basically. So that's the first point being going into a moderate calorie deficit, so just something like five to maybe 20% maximum. And of course, in order to know what that is for you, I always recommend to anybody to figure out what your maintenance calories actually are. And maintenance calories means the same amount of calories going in as going out. So how much energy does your body actually need to maintain its current body weight? Most people have no idea about that, and they simply say, I'm gonna eat less, or I'm going to go keto, paleo, vegan, whatever, and cutting something out. But if we can logically go about it and know, okay, my body requires 2,200 calories to maintain its current weight, um, that now I'm going to reduce that by 10%. So going into, I don't know, um 1900 and something calories, then we can be a lot more uh logical about it. And when we hit a weight loss plateau down the road, we can specifically or more um directly say how where we're basically pulling a little bit more from. So again, moderate calorie deficit. The second part being making sure that we're actually eating the things that we're enjoying. But yes, of course, 80 to 90 percent of that those should be whole foods that satiate us, that nourish our body, that really um fuel the exercise that we're doing, if we're doing any when we should be doing any, or we should be doing some. Um, so all that's the second point of it, because if we're starving ourselves completely and we're training at the same time, we're more prone to injuries, we're not having as much energy in the gym, we're not getting that much out of our workouts, and chances also that we are losing more weight from lean body mass rather than from fat mass. And of course, we don't want that. We don't want to look skinny fat at the end of our diet. So, in order to keep the weight off, actually, um, I would also set a specific timeline and not just say, Oh, I want to lose weight. That's super vague. Some people or most people have a rough number in mind as well, where they're like, okay, I want to lose 50 pounds, but they don't know how long it should take me, hypothetically in a sustainable way to get there. And that depends on how much weight you have to lose. But um, I generally or very vaguely speaking would say that something of maybe a pound per week maximum is is kind of a rate that we could aim for. If you have much more, if you have quite a bit of weight to lose, let's say 50 pounds plus, then it it's probably gonna be a little bit more per week. If you're already pretty lean and you just want to lose 15, 20 pounds, it's probably gonna be a little bit less. So that gives someone realistic expectations because if you have 50 pounds to lose, that technically means a whole year. And in that whole year, we haven't even calculated in holidays or vacations. So we should take strategic diet breaks as well. We should be strategic about vacations and so on, also. And then the last part, and that's probably the most important and most often missed part when it comes to keeping the weight off, is to not just end the diet, as I was saying, and going to going back to your previous habit habits, and also not to just keep the calories low, because that's something I see very often, where people are just terrified and afraid of adding or eating more once they have gotten to their goal weight. And then, of course, that exposes you to more hormonal issues, to more uh metabolism metabolic issues, etc. And so, if uh or when we get to our goal weight, we should really increase our calories gradually, strategically again to that maintenance place, so that we are quote unquote plugging the power back into the laptop and your body can start running the backup processes again and so on, and the metabolism increases again. But if we're simply from one day to another, going from 1200 calories back to 2000 and something, obviously your body doesn't really know what to do with that. So, again, we need to be strategic about that.
Calorie Tracking Without Obsession
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like that. So basically, you're you're putting the smart principles behind weight loss in a specific, measurable, uh achievable, you know, like if someone comes to see you and they're 200 pounds, they want to lose uh 100 pounds, like, well, you know, is that really what's good for your body? Uh relevant, um, same, and then uh time-based, and at the end of the time-based, putting a plan in for it to be uh manageable going forward. So I think that's brilliant. But you mentioned sort of calories quite a lot there, and there are some nutritionists, uh, and I'm gonna put my my opinion forward on this as well before before you answer, who think you shouldn't um count calories, that nutrient you know, um diets or nutrition should be more what it looks like on the plate. Personally, um I think that if you don't know how many calories are in a certain type of food, you've messive errors in estimating the amount of calories in your plate. Um, but I think their argument is to say we don't want people obsessing about calories because that could drive people down the road of like some sort of eating disorder. What do you think?
SPEAKER_00I I think those are some great points, and I think um neither one of those is is completely right or wrong. So I do believe having the education and knowledge around calories is incredibly helpful. Um and I will explain why also, because for example, I used to believe I just need to eat clean, I just need to eat well, and I should be looking great and feeling great. Neither of those things were the case. Um, partly because, for example, I was eating three eggs and salmon and some seeds and avocado and whatever for breakfast, and I thought, oh, this is a great healthy breakfast. When I started recording or tracking how much that actually is, it turns out this is like a 900-calorie breakfast for someone my size. That's nearly half of my daily calorie requirements. But I just thought, this is healthy, why not have like I can have all of this? Or um I see people basically pouring half a cup or a cup of olive oil over their salad, and you're like, okay, did you know that that was just like 800 calories in olive oil only? And you're surprised that you're putting on weight. So I think that's a big error where we just think, like, well, it's healthy. I can have as much of that as we as I want. And so if we start tracking calories, we learn, okay, this is actually a low calorie food, this is actually a high calorie food, and we can manage it a lot more more logically in that sense. And again, going back to the relationship with food as well, for me, it has helped me incorporate certain things without guilt. So I I was I was just attributing um any like any carbs was just something something negative. Like even at one point I thought fruit was was terrible, or something like potatoes, because it's carbs, and carbs are inherently bad. And then I learned, okay, well, actually, if I have these two potatoes, that's less calories than um the handful of nuts that I was not afraid of. So, like, why why am I why that just didn't make sense anymore afterwards? And I think the the other part where it can be really helpful is to help us ensure that we're eating enough protein as a whole, in terms of uh population. We eat not enough protein and too many carbs and fats, of course, especially processed carbs and fats. And the majority of people would benefit a lot from eating more protein, um, especially if they want to lose weight, because protein is the least likely macronutrient to be stored as body fat. It's the most satiating macronutrient. It helps us with all our tissues. It's not just for people that want to look bulky and big and muscular. It helps us with our connective tissues, our skin, our nails, like literally anything. Um, and it also helps us um with mental health. Like there is a lot of positive connections from protein to just in general how we're feeling. And we I I personally, again, like going back to some examples, I used to think peanut butter is a great protein source. And then I started tracking and was like, oh, okay, this tablespoon of peanut butter for like 200 calories actually only has like three grams of protein. Whereas if I eat the same amount of calories from chicken or from Greek yogurt, um, I get way more protein from that. So for me, the tracking really is mostly educational. Now, do I think that everybody needs to be counting calories all the time for the rest of their lives? Absolutely not. I do think that there are people that are more prone to obsessing over certain things. Um, and I think uh the important thing is also to know that even if we're recording it, even if we are weighing things out, those are just best estimated guesses, right? Nobody really knows 100%. Oh, today I burned 2,035 calories, even though my calorie tracker said so, but those things are super inaccurate anyway. Um when we don't know this one apple might have 40 calories and the other one 60, depends on how sweet they are, ripe they are. So I don't want people to get hung up on things, but like roughly knowing, okay, in order to maintain my weight, I need between 2,000 and 2,300 calories. I think that can be really helpful for somebody. Um, so I would say the majority of people, the vast majority of people, are going to benefit from recording their food for two to three months. And I do say two to three months because there is a big learning curve associated with that. Initially, when you start tracking, you even just have a harder time finding the food items in the library, or you might not um you might not benefit from being able to learn how to how to eyeball things. And I think that's a big, big um plus from weighing things out because um after those two, three months, you're gonna know, okay, roughly this portion size of protein gives me 30 30 grams of of protein, or like this portion, this this palm size of of chicken is gonna give me 30 grams of protein. So there is a learning curve associated with that, and that's why I say two to three months. I don't think people will benefit a lot from it if they just do it for two to three days.
Weighing Food And Best Apps
SPEAKER_01That's that's longer than than I thought, but it makes sense with the learning curve because I feel like most people generally eat the same things, you know. It's like the breakfast is generally going to be the same, lunch, depending on their lifestyle, generally the same. It's the dinner that varies, you know. It's weird that people can eat the same thing for lunch every day, but they wouldn't dream of eating the same thing for dinner every day. I always yeah, you know, once they know roughly what they're eating and they're not obsessing per day, they're maybe thinking per week. Like that's how I recommend people say, like, you know, you know, it doesn't matter if you ate a little bit more one day, but over the week, did you roughly expand the same amount of calories as you're bringing in? But I do have a question for you. It's one that's that that's puzzled me. If you're weighing your food, let's say you're weighing rice, do you wear it cooked or dry?
SPEAKER_00The thing that I usually say to clients is whatever is most convenient to you, raw is slightly or or dry is slightly more accurate than simply because um we don't know how much water exactly the rice is absorbing, or how you know, like some people cook it a bit more, some people a little bit less. But um, as with everything, practicality and adherence comes first. So if let's say your partner always cooks for you and you don't want to be awkward and say, like, hey, can you weigh this out before you cook it for me? Um by all means, like weigh it out when the rice is cooked and when the chicken breast is cooked. And the important thing just is that you search for the thing that you are weighing out. So don't just search for like any search engine, like Google and whatever, all these calorie trackers they work the same way. So if you search for chicken breast, raw, um, skinless, you're gonna get a bet better or more accurate result than if you just put in chicken. Because that, you know, that could be the wing that could be cooked, that could be not cooked. And same with the rice, if you type in jasmine rice steamed or jasmine rice uncooked, um, whichever, however, you weigh. But technically, hypothetically, if we want to do it as accurately as possible, raw most of the time is more accurate.
SPEAKER_01Do you have a preferred um calorie, not counterbook, but uh uh an AI that you use to track the calories?
What Menopause Changes In The Body
SPEAKER_00Um, I personally use my fitness pal. Now that is um not necessarily because I believe it's the best one. It's simply because I have uh started using it in 2016 and I'm used to it. And and uh as a coach, it has a great feature that I can befriend my clients. And so I can look in their food diary. And uh they can share that with me. Whereas I don't believe that's possible with some of the other apps. Um, I I I think that technically they're all kind of the same. Um, other ones like chronometer, they show you a little bit more detail when it comes to micronutrients. So if you're someone who's like, oh, I want to make sure I'm getting enough iron, I'm getting enough vitamin B, etc., that might uh display a little bit more information on that.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well that that's gonna bring us on to um, you know, my probably the population that I work with most, and that is women in uh perimenopause or menopause. Because everything you've said up till now, I can see, you know, 30-year-olds or 20-year-olds nodding along, going, Oh, yeah, that makes sense. No crush dieting, okay, smart goals for diet. But then there's gonna be this group of ladies who are just shaking their head going, nah, I don't eat anything. Yet every month I seem to gain weight. So let's explore whether or not that is actually true. And what's been your experience working with people who are in their menopause?
SPEAKER_00Well, Ed, I'll tell you from my um previous interviews with some of the leading fat loss experts, because uh one of them who's uh become a good friend of mine, his name is Dr. Bill Campbell, and he literally has dedicated his um research at the University of Florida to uh fat loss initially, and he has switched a few years ago to fat loss in menopausal or in the in women in the menopause transition, is how he frames it. Um and he has basically so far, anyway. I mean, this is ongoing research, as you and I both know. This is a topic which unfortunately is um reasonably new and being explored and being more openly talked about. Um, but pretty much what he has uh found is that yes, it's not in women's heads. There is actually really changes in terms of metabolic rate and more importantly in terms of fat and muscle distribution happening during the menopause transition. So um we don't know specifically why. We can say yes, it comes down to hormonal changes, but what exactly and why and so on, that's hard to say. But anybody listening who feels that way, um, we're not dismissing uh you and not just saying like, no, it really always is just calories in, calories out. You're lying when you're not losing weight on 1200 calories and so on. That's absolutely not a right. Um, he has found that yes, indeed, women are more likely to store body fat or shift body fat storage to the midsection in particular, so around the organs, around the more visceral fat, which unfortunately is not the fat that we want. Um, and that during that time also we either lose more lean body mass or we're just having a harder time to put muscle mass on if that is our desire and if we're training for that in the right way. Um, so yes, that is a certain fact. But what he has also stated several times, and I've I've had him on my podcast and I've uh spoken to him in other interviews and read his research and other people's research as well. Uh and what he keeps on re-emphasizing is that the basics still apply, and we cannot dismiss them. So if you are listening to this and you're A, not sleeping right, you're cutting down sleep or ignoring sleep as a priority, you're B, not moving your body, and dismissing exercise, especially also resistance training or walking as something beneficial, and C, your food quality is all over the place, and you are consuming quite a bit of alcohol, especially on a regular basis, those are the things we need to address first and really put into place. Because what um really seems to be happening, and that this is just as much from my personal coaching experience as it is from these conversations, is that the body is simply becoming a lot less forgiving during that time than what it was in your 20s, in your 30s, or maybe early 40s. So maybe then you got away with sleeping five hours on average. Maybe then you got away with um drinking alcohol every night, even if it's just a glass of wine and even if it fit into your calories. Maybe then you got away with um uh having more of these yo-yo times where you're super restrictive sometime and then overeating on other times and so on. Now your body is just saying, like, nope, I'm not having it anymore. You get your shit in in a row, you take care of me, you uh make sure that I'm sleeping seven to eight hours a night, you make sure that I'm getting my fiber, you're you make sure I'm getting my micronutrients, and I really don't like you drinking that alcohol, so you either you cut it out or you really reduce it. Otherwise, I'm not responding to anything anymore. This is kind of the feedback and what I have observed, but I have also observed that yes, if if the woman um says, okay, I'm gonna really make sure I'm dialing all these things in, and I am taking lovingly taking care of my body over this time, um, that yes, you can lose body fat during that time. And yes, you can build muscle or like improve your physique during that time. It's not a doom and gloom. Um, what he, uh Dr. Bill Campbell has also um found in some of his research is really also indeed that many women, not all, but many women do feel better um with hormone replacement therapy during this time. The there is gonna be a huge range here. Some women are gonna say, I feel much worse. Other women obviously don't just don't want it in. That's totally fine. Um, but I would encourage anybody who does feel like I'm no longer, I don't feel like myself, I've I don't know what's going on with me to at least have a conversation with a practitioner that you can trust. And um, yeah, you know, and making informed decisions, that's really what it comes down to. Again, though, the basics need to be in place, even hormone therapy replacement therapy. Um, if you just don't care about your lifestyle, dismiss stress, dismiss sleep, dismiss food quality, is not going to help you a lot if it just simply taking a few pills or a patch or whatever else it might be.
Sleep Stress Alcohol And HRT
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree. There's an interesting story I had from a friend of mine. He's uh sells houses, he's a realtor, and the couple to buy in the house came with then an EMF monitor, right? So the um like electric um sorry, electric magnetic frequency monitor, right? And they were going around the house, they're like, oh, the EMFs in this room a little bit high, the EMFs of this room a little bit high, and they decided not to buy the house. And that's their prerogative. But I was like, do these people sleep optimally every day? Is their diet tuned in? Do they do they drink the purest water they possibly can? Do they have a breath work practice or meditation practice? And they've done all that, and now they're worried about EMFs, or are they jumping straight to the EMF and I think that's what happens with a lot of people, especially you know, at that age, you know, late 40s, uh 50s, you're maybe in a career, you're beginning to peak in your career, or your teenagers are getting older. Uh life changes are happening outside of your control, and it's stressful. And then you have your your change in hormones, and it's easy to let other things go. The exercise goes, the nutrition goes, the sleep goes. And then you go to the doctor or the nutritionist, you say, I can't lose weight. Yeah, let's look at the foundation.
Mediterranean Style Eating Explained
SPEAKER_00Um Yeah, and like I totally agree. I that is really the one quote-unquote profile of people that I do find um blaming their hormones pretty quickly, quite often, where we're like, okay, let's paddle this back. Yes, you're you're correct, but we do need to really work on these uh foundations. Um on top of that, the alcohol does play a big role. I think. I mean, we need to acknowledge that it is a toxin, and maybe in your 20s and 30s, your body was just able to um pump that out of your body pretty quickly and then take care of fat metabolism and all the rest of it. And now maybe your liver is not functioning as well, you're not eating enough cruciferous vegetables, you're not eating enough fiber to support your liver and all these kinds of things, and you and you're having those that habitual glass of wine that I see so often. Um that really is the issue. And and often the women, the women that I speak to, they say, Well, I've I've had this habitual glass of wine for like the last 15 years, or I've but I fit it into my calorie budget. And then going to your point of like, is a calories, is calories the only thing? No, it's really not. At that time, again, your body becomes less forgiving. There's another quote-unquote profile, I will say, where I see uh women struggle with the menopause transition, and that again is uh the woman that has been um over dieting or really dieting for years and years on end, like yo-yoing or not, and over-exercising as well. Um, because uh at some point, and and that might just coincide with that menopause transition, at some point the body is also just like, this is too much stress. I'm no longer responding to the things that used to work for me in this sense, either. Because often we think or we say, um, oh, but I used to do this diet, or I used to just do that exercise, and it worked really well for me, and then suddenly I look the way that I want it to look. And I've done this several times and it was always fine. Yeah, but now your body is different. Again, your body's not so forgiving anymore. So, in those cases, it is actually more about adding food in, taking care of your body in that sense, um, and reducing the exercise intensity perhaps for a while to your point of like stress management because hard exercise, if we're doing all this high intensity training, and on top of that, we're working 40 hours or more per week, and on top of that, we have those stressful teenagers and so on, and that's a lot of stress for your body. So those are like the two kind of like kind of opposing profiles, um, but very, very common ones. And again, to go into Dr. Bill Campbell's research as well, he has done um a study where, or yeah, a study where they looked specifically also into what kind of eating style, I don't want to call it diet, but eating style is really most beneficial during this time if someone doesn't want to track their calories. And they have found that really eating somewhere which we might call a Mediterranean, I'm not gonna say diet, I'm gonna say eating style, that is very beneficial for women in the menopause transition. So if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't want to track my calories, and how give me some practical tips, that would be something to look into. So by Mediterranean style eating, I would say lots of vegetables, obviously, lots of fruit, so fiber is a big one. Fiber is really really, really a big one. Healthy fats from olive oil, from nuts, from avocado, from um uh fish, for example, as well, fatty fish or regular fish as well. Um, so so if we're thinking about the Mediterranean, a healthy Mediterranean diet, of course, you can also eat turmazou and pizza and pasta and call it Mediterranean diet, but that's not what I'm referring to. So, yeah, if we think about a Mediterranean style eating, um, that is also includes some healthy grains and um just in general could could be a little bit of a guideline if someone is completely lost.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I actually listened to the podcast you did with Dr. Bill Campbell, and I thought it was fascinating. He did those, well, he did a uh uh study, I believe, where they restricted people's calories right down to 500 and then brought them back up again. And then he went the other end and he found uh women who were habitual exercises, like they had a long history of exercising, and increased their calories. And I think he's doing that research, or he's he's doing the process. And then, yeah, then they came to the conclusion of the Mediterranean diet, which is interesting because I just did a podcast with uh with a guy called um Chris McCaskill. He laid out at the moment um all the research from epidemiological studies throughout the world, uh, Ansel Keyes, Seven Country Study, and so on. And it comes down to the Mediterranean diet, and he contrasts that to the influencers who promote different, you know, the carnivore diet or different more extreme diets. And then uh I didn't know this, that Ansel Keys uh actually wrote a book called The Mediterranean diet.
SPEAKER_00Oh, interesting. I did not know that either.
SPEAKER_01From from his Seven Country study, that was the book he wrote. Uh, and if people say that he was promoting a vegan diet or he had this agenda, no, he's actually the guy who put the Mediterranean diet on the map. Interesting.
SPEAKER_00Which I didn't, I mean his research is very scrutinized these days, I guess also, because it was kind of laid out in the wrong way. But yeah, uh, that's interesting to hear. Thank you for teaching me something today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I find it fascinating. It comes, it comes back around to, you know, like like the what you said, like a sensible diet approach. And and I mentioned this in the podcast with him. I've done nutritional courses with all sorts of different people, and their credentials are fantastic, their client base is fantastic, but their message is just kind of the same as everyone. It's boring. And that's why the the Mediterranean diet, in my opinion, doesn't get a huge amount of traction because it's not some ripped dude standing on a beach saying, Oh, need protein, or some you know, super um, super sort of ripped woman who's like, I've been vegan for 20 years. You know, those diets catch the eye, or those or those influence, right? I should say, catch the eye. And what they say is sound bite worthy. But when you look at um, you know, the people who are in the trenches helping everyday people and they say, Well, it's you know, you gotta be balanced, eat some healthy fats, eat some grains, people that they don't want that. They want a quick fix, and the quick fix is not the way forward.
Consistency Through Weekends And Holidays
SPEAKER_00Yeah, unfortunately, you're so right that those the basic topics of sleep, of stress management, breathing techniques, techniques, etc., of hydration, like even if as I'm just saying, this is like someone's probably falling asleep because it doesn't sound very interesting, but that is what it comes down to. I think what people are really struggling with, and again, another super unsexy topic is consistency. Because again, like to the point of yo-yoing and being too aggressive and so on, but let's say, even if we have found this right approach in terms of a moderate, sustainable, good way of eating, life happens. And unfortunately, we often pretend that this is a big surprise, but we should really plan for the plan not to work out, like, or we should plan for uh the weekend to come around, we should plan for the holidays to come around. And unfortunately, so often the mindset, and this is where the mind really is an important piece, the mindset is I'm gonna start back up January 1st. I'm gonna start back up after this. I'm gonna instead of thinking, what are some strategies I could employ to enjoy the holidays, but at the same time uh come out of the holidays not feeling guilty, um, not having 10 pounds more on my hips, not having to do or thinking I have to do something extreme, and literally just continuing on with my life. And that is what I want people to work on as well. And I think that's where uh the art of coaching, and it doesn't have to be me or another nutrition coach, but any kind of can also be a fitness coach, can be an accountability partner. But um, having having some kind of hand holding or someone who walks with you can come in really, really handful, helpful because that encourages you to A, think ahead and and plan ahead, and B reflect on your errors, because we all make errors and we all learn, and then progress from them. So, for example, think about your previous Christmases. What why did you put on 10 pounds? Oh, yeah, it was just too much, but the food was in front of me, and there were food pushers, and I couldn't say no. Okay, let's dig into this. Yes, you can say no. You always have the power. You're the only person putting food in your mouth, as far as I'm aware. And even if the food is in front of you, no one's forcing you to eat all of that. But how can we go about it more strategically? Oh, okay, or like I want to have weekly date night, I'm I'm just gonna call it a cheat day. I don't like um people calling this something a cheat day. Um, are there days or meals where you have more calories than you probably anticipate? Yeah, absolutely. That's fine. But if we're talking about it in a cheat day or as a cheat day, we're automatically clicking like I'm off the diet or I'm off plan. I'm I mean, nobody would say, like, oh, I have a cheat weekend, I'm cheating on my wife, that's totally fine. Or maybe some people do, but in in in uh the most cases, I don't think that that is part of the general agreement. So let's look at nutrition in the same way and just think everything, every moment counts. Um, that doesn't mean you need to be perfect, no, but if you put in 80% effort all the time, you're gonna get a lot further than if you put in 100%, 30%, 100%, no percent, 100%, 5%. Like that, that is where people are really having um an issue, in my opinion. And unfortunately, modern society and the media and so on, they don't portray that as a nice message either. It's always like, here is a ton of food you should be eating, and yeah, it's okay to get back to whatever you want to do on January 1st or after this and that date.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree. I've been coaching people in one way or another for 25 years, and and I feel like there's no such thing as a perfect month. And a lot of people, if they're really working hard to stick to a diet or an exercise regime or something like that, once they fall off, like they get, you know, they're off the wagon, so to speak, they find it really hard to get back on. And I always try and coach people and say, look, tomorrow's another day. Like, yes, today was today, but that doesn't mean all the hard work from last week is messed up. Let's just move on and start again tomorrow morning. And uh and it's difficult. It's not, I don't think it's really human nature. I think it's human nature to go all or nothing, uh, because that's what I see.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, I I think uh you're absolutely right that there is a physiological component to that as well, where we're like, okay, I need to make the most of this right now. Because back in the day it used to be like that. You found a tree with ripe fruit, heck yeah, you were making the most of it. You killed a bison or whatever, heck yeah, you made the most of it. You didn't say, like, I'm gonna save this for in three weeks' time because by then it might be rotten. So, so that that that's a really good point. Um, but nonetheless, um, I believe, and I would say I know from personal experience and also from experience with clients, that it is something we can truly practice. And for that, like practicing moderation all the time is um is a good stepping stone. So, I mean, going to back to the point of um including or three. In fact, I don't even want it today. I'm gonna just have one or something like that. And so the chocolate loses its appeal, but at the same time, you also learn that right, it's it's cool. I can go for date night and have a glass of wine on occasion because it's something special, and share a dessert with my husband. And I don't need to go bonkers when I come home and rate the fridge and eat the whole tub of ice cream as well. It can be one or the other. And and of course, we take that whole same mentality into a holiday with us, into the the all-you-can eat buffet on vacation. And then you simply know how to say stop when you've had enough and not when you're completely full. Because I truly want people to stop eating when they're satiated, when they're 80% with quote unquote full, and not when they're like, oh, okay, I can't move anymore, or I'm I'm feeling so full. That's not what we should be doing.
Hyper-Palatable Foods And Compulsive Eating
SPEAKER_01Yeah, interesting. I might have to try that because I I have a relationship with chocolate that means I like to eat it all. But I think I tell myself, I say, Well, I've been an um an amateur athlete all my life. I'm very competitive. I wish start what I finish, even if it is an ultramarathon. And so when I start a chocolate bar, I'm like, this is just my character. I'm gonna but I don't have it in the house. That that's that's my solution. I just don't have it in the house. There's another thing that we are coming up against more recently is this rise in uh hyperpalatable foods, foods that don't make us feel satiated. You you mentioned they stop when you feel satiated. But the food companies have uh you know figured out ways to make us consume more because that's in their interests of selling more product, and I get that, but it involves adding a bit of salt, adding a bit of fat, uh, which increases the calories for us. And we had we now have uh an obesity epidemic, especially in the US. So, what would you advise to people who um well I'm gonna give you an example? There's people who might be listening to this who uh don't have much money and podcasts are free, so they can listen to podcasts, they have much money, they can't afford a coach, they can't afford to go to the gym, they are obese, and yet they can't stop eating.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a very unfortunately common scenario, and and it is unfortunate how the food industry is really taken advantage of people here because even if we want to rely on our own nature and quote unquote intuitively eat or something like this, as you mentioned, our senses are basically overwritten and they're putting all their technology and but I don't know how many researchers into figuring out how to hack our brains, our physiology. So you're absolutely right. Um I would say if the person that is in the scenario can for a while mostly eat foods that have one ingredient or are minimally processed, you're going to rewire your taste buds and you're going to feel a lot more satiated. So by whole foods or by those foods, I mean things that either have no Packaging, let's just say like broccoli, like potatoes or whatever, or are packaged like a piece of meat, um, eggs, those sorts of things, or are minimally processed like oats, rice, rice crackers, uh yogurt, those kinds of things. If you if you don't even count the calories and all this, this what I've been talking about earlier, but you really just eat those foods, it's going to be really difficult to over-overeat. Yes, of course, I also said some healthy foods are higher in calories than others, like nuts and so on, and nut butters and oils and so on. But if you literally just eat um less processed things for a while, you're going to almost be hypersensitive to the foods that are really full of sodium and sugar and so on. Um, and uh the thing about these foods is your stomach needs to do a lot more of the processing because it hasn't been pre-processed by machines yet. So that's going to keep you fuller. And that's also what I say to my clients who want to lose weight. In a weight loss phase, we don't just want to eat less. We don't just like the whole thing, there was, I think it was a diet at some point that was just like eat 50 or something like that, meaning eat 50% of what you ate before and literally just the half half of whatever you were eating. But of course, that also means you eat half of the protein and you feel double as hungry. So we don't want to do that. You want to um in instead, it makes a big difference if let's say you're eating 400 calories from a Mars bar or it or two, or if you're eating 400 calories of a huge plate of salad with some chicken and maybe a little bit of egg and some seeds on top of that. Even if you just picture that, one takes up very little space in your stomach and the other one quite a bit. And the one needs to be still quite a bit processed, and the other one basically goes right through you. So if we're thinking about, I want to eat for food volume, I want to eat um little amount of calories for a big pile in most cases. Vegetables are almost always going to be on top of the list there, especially if you have like greens and things like cucumber and tomatoes that are full of water as well, because that's the other part. Being hydrated and well hydrated with um good hydration, so not just caffeinated and um full with sodas that's basically the opposite of what we do want to do. We don't want to drink our calories because again, that's gonna be very, very little satiating. Your body doesn't need to do any processing there. So cutting out, um, drinking your calories and instead making sure you're hydrating with electrolytes or just plain water or tea or herbal tea or whatever you like, kombucha as well. Those are some good ways to feel fuller on top of mostly eating whole foods. And then actually, what's also been shown to help us um just regulate our appetite more, and of course, that doesn't help us um overwrite those smart people in the food industry, but exercise in and of itself um has been shown to just help us with or our bodies with appetite regulation better. There is a bit of a J-shaped curve there, so over-exercising is gonna make us quite hungry, also. We don't necessarily want that. But let's say an hour a day of some kind of movement is going to help you regulate your appetite a lot better. But the main, main, main point really is making sure the majority of your food is not processed or hardly processed at all. That would be that would be a very simple way of actually consuming less calories.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love it. And avoid the uh the gym paradox, I call it, where you go, the gym, you're like, yeah, I worked out. I'm gonna eat uh I'm gonna eat an extra whatever donut or something afterwards. And I see that so often, people go, oh, yeah. And then you end up eating more, and then you end up not losing any weight because you're just eating more calories than you should be.
SPEAKER_00Well, and unfortunately, technology there is not is is not our friend there either, because um, those exercise trackers that I we touched on earlier, they really tend to be so inaccurate. Okay, yeah, they have updates and progress uh from time to time, and some are more accurate than others. For example, I do believe the like the garments and and the especially the ones that have like a chest strap, they're a little bit more accurate than just your wrist held uh wrist devices. Um, but nonetheless, some studies have shown that some of these trackers are up to 80% inaccurate in um, yeah, like literally up to 80% in um uh quote-unquote calculating your energy expenditure. And I mean it makes sense because they don't really know how lean are you, like how much muscle mass do you have. They might ask you for how old you are if they're a little bit more advanced, but some of them don't even do that. Like, you know, if you jump on a treadmill and it just tells you after 20 minutes you burned 400 calories, very unlikely. I mean, I wish that would be easier, but um, so yeah, if if you do an exercise class and you think, oh, I burned 1,200 calories, no, you didn't. I'm sorry, no, you didn't, even if you did CrossFit, no, you didn't. So don't rely on those trackers. Uh, that would be uh when it comes to uh eating food back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I remember being at university, uh, did I did exercise physiology and sports science, and we had to walk around with this thing, I think it was called a Douglas bag, and you breathed into it and you had to collect a certain amount of carbon dioxide, and then they worked out your um metabolic rate from the amount of carbon dioxide you blew off. And they said that this is the only way to do it. I mean, God, this was you know my study years ago, but but I think that those sort of um science-based sort of um sort of lab-based studies are what everything else is based off, and so it's extrapolated by some sort of algorithm, and then the accuracy of the algorithm breaks down when it comes to the individual.
SPEAKER_00Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I mean that the those uh measures, or of course, in a metabolic ward or something like that, where you literally live in the chamber and they uh again through the oxygen are able to absorb absorb that, but uh otherwise, no, just your average Joe 50 pound or$50 watch, or even an apple watch is not going to detect that very accurately.
Retraining Taste Buds And Closing
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I think we've got a really clear sort of message here that even if uh people are struggling with obesity, they're struggling with um sort of uh almost compulsive eating, that if they can shift their um eating habits to whole foods, they can rewire almost their taste buds so that what was once uh not sweet, you know, like some fruits, people don't even taste the sweetness in those, becomes sweet again. And then that becomes more satiating to them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's absolutely right. I think um where that's often most um easily recognizable if someone has to go on a low sodium diet because prescribed by their doctor or whatever, and then they eat some, eat out, eat something really salty, like or maybe a sushi place or like something, you know, where they put just a ton of sodium in there. It's almost like, oh wow, this is oversalty. You can absolutely train your taste buds for something. And what I will say on that point though, or on that note though, is sometimes people also think like eating healthy is boring because of that reason, but that is not right. I'm not saying you should eat flavorless. We can add flavor in many ways. It doesn't have to be with a ton of creamy sauces and oil and dressings. No, we can add a lot of flavor with herbs, with seasonings, with low-calorie condiments, like maybe sribacha sauce or um some mustard or things like that, or even lemon can drizzled over a salad, can add a ton of flavor. Um, and you don't have to go quote unquote cold turkey. You don't need to go from only eating the broccoli when there is a half a cup of cheese and cream over it to just eating it steamed. That doesn't have to be the case. You can make taste, make make things pretty tasty these days with in an air fryer, with a little bit of olive spray and some nice herbs sprinkled over it. That can taste incredible. You just need to find some methods that make things a little bit tastier in a lower calorie version for you. But yes, certainly taste buds are very, very adaptable and um thankfully they also change just generally over the course of our lives, but we need to move them into the right direction.
SPEAKER_01This has been fantastic, very eye-opening and hopefully useful to my listeners as well. Lisa, how will a person find out more about you if they're interested in your work?
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, so uh first of all, I want to say thank you so much for having me on Ed. It's been a pleasure, and I truly think your endeavor of sharing all information, not just of your own practice, but information across the board with your clients or anybody who wants to listen is amazing. So thank you for putting that out into the world. And my company name is Nutrition Coaching and Life. Um, that's also where people can find me on Instagram, on YouTube, on LinkedIn, and my podcast is called the Nutrition and Life Podcast. And yeah, if you have been listening to this and you've enjoyed our conversation, then drop me a line or something like that, even just saying, like, hey, this was cool, or if you have any feedback otherwise, I love uh hearing from listeners. And um, yeah, I just really want to encourage anybody to not settle for a body that they don't feel good in, to not put it off because we're not getting any younger, and um your body is the only body that you have, and certain things are not replaceable or reversible. Um so you need to take action now, and you too deserve to have a body that you love, that you feel comfortable in, and that you live a life in that you truly love. Um, so take action today.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Lisa. Thank you for joining me in my conversation with Lisa. Now, if you've enjoyed listening to learning from this podcast, please, please, please, please, please leave a comment, a five-star review if you're so inclined, and some sort of interaction with me. So if you're watching this on YouTube, put a comment down below. Or if you're listening to this on one of the podcast apps, just please take a second to comment because the more you comment, the more it really helps get the algorithm interested in this content and help spread that to more people. Remember, if you want my direct help, you can reach out to me via my email, ed at edpaget.com, or visit my website, edpaget.com. And once you're there, you can read a little bit more about how I can help you make your lifestyle your medicine.