168: What Tracking Revealed to My Clients About Their Diets

What if dieting was actually easier than you thought?

When the women in my Summer Shape Up coaching group started tracking what they ate, every one of them spotted something they hadn't noticed before. One was already doing keto AND intermittent fasting, was already losing weight, and tracking STILL revealed something important about her diet she was missing.

In this short episode I share their real discoveries and why tracking might be the most useful thing you've never tried.

Enjoy the show!

Resources Mentioned:

Midlife Fat Loss Formula

POD167 | My Workouts Stopped Working at 49: Here's How I Fixed It

Monthly Membership

Lift-IT! 10-Day Beginner Intro to Strength Training ($27)

Transcript

168: What Tracking Revealed to My Clients About Their Diets


 [00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today, I wanted to give a quick update on what's going on in the Summer Shape Up group coaching program when we're doing strength training and fat loss at the same time.
The thing that fascinates me time and time again is that when women finally start to track what they're eating, their eyes are always opened to something that they are doing, right?
We haven't even gotten to the point where they're tracking super strictly and religiously, so they've just been getting used to the tracking thing, because tracking in a very strict manner, it does take some discipline. I actually taught them this week how to use AI to do the calculations for you, because that just saves so much [00:01:00] time not having to plug it into one of the, fat loss apps. Anyway, so you immediately start to notice things like one of the women is doing a keto diet, and she is doing intermittent fasting plus keto already.
All right? So this is, this is kind of on top of it. But what it has revealed to her, A, is that maybe, her calorie deficit is too strict right now. She's losing over a couple pounds a week, which is a very quick rate of loss, so definitely good that now she's adding in the strength training to try to hold onto the muscle as she loses the weight.
But you know, in keto, what you're trying to do is eat protein and fat, and not really carbs. And- In order to hold onto your muscle, you need to be eating a lot of protein and strength training. Those are the two keys to holding onto muscle when [00:02:00] you're in a calorie deficit. So she has noticed that she's actually not eating enough protein. Which means that most of her calories right now are from fat. Good fats, but still not enough protein so she's now going to be tweaking that, to try to really hold onto her muscle as she completes her weight loss journey, because we want her to be losing fat, not weight, right?
And then another woman in the group, her eyes were really opened to how much you actually need to eat in order to get in the amount of protein that you should get in in a day, which would be a minimum of 100 grams of protein, and preferably one gram per pound of body weight, especially if you're in a calorie deficit or trying to build muscle, and in midlife or beyond, because our bodies are not so good at taking in , and making [00:03:00] use of, the protein that we eat.
And this is something that I was not aware of five, six years ago, is that when you eat a piece of chicken, it's not like you can just count that whole piece of chicken as protein, right? It's only about 20% of the weight of that chicken that's protein. So you need to actually eat a lot of protein-rich foods to get in enough protein in a day.
So anyway, this all to say that really have you tracked ever, what you've been eating? Because it is so eye-opening, so eye-opening, and often there can be, like, simple things that you are doing in your day or in your week or easy substitutions you could make that will really reduce the amount of calories that you're eating so that you can stop the weight gain. If you notice that you're gradually gaining weight, then you might just have a few little [00:04:00] habits that you need to, you know, just cut back on. Or it might be that you can swap something out For example, for me, I noticed that, okay, cheese. You know, of course, cheese has a lot of calories per slice. So swap that out with turkey. Or, for example, I eat a meat sauce, so it's a ground beef with tomato sauce almost every day for lunch. And then I just change what pasta I eat with it. But if I'm in a calorie deficit, then I swap the pasta out for potato. I can get twice as much potato for the same amount of calories, so I will feel more full from that exact same amount of calories, that I'm eating for lunch, and that is gonna make it so much easier to stay in a calorie deficit, right? Okay. So anyway, I just wanted to share that because I think it can be a [00:05:00] huge benefit if you are trying to lose weight or if you're trying to avoid gaining weight. Really, just do the tracking for a little while. And if you need help, if you are like, "I don't know how to track," you know, "Uh, and what is that AI thing that you were just talking about that could help me?" I have those in my Midlife Fat Loss Formula, and that will teach you the whole system, help you also, if you wanna start losing weight, then to how to set up your calorie deficit. But even if you are already on a weight loss program, like the first woman that I mentioned, this kind of tracking, this careful tracking can be really important for making sure that you're holding onto your muscle, i.e., eating enough protein as you, lose the weight, 'cause you want to lose fat, not muscle, not bone density, but fat.
 I will see you next week. Happy training.