48. Lifestyle Changes: Beyond Calories – The Multi-Pronged Approach to Weight Loss

Ready to ditch calorie counting and unlock the secrets to sustainable weight loss? In this episode of Weight Loss Made Simple, Dr. Stacy Heimburger dives into the multi-pronged approach to holistic weight loss. Discover why focusing on more than just calories is essential for long-term success. We explore the impact of psychological stress, the role of quality sleep, the importance of nutrient-dense foods, effective physical activity, and building a supportive network. Tune in to learn how integrating these lifestyle changes can transform your weight loss journey and overall wellness.

References:

1. Psychological Stress and Obesity - A. M. C. Farrow, E. E. White, A. M. Jacobs, Physiology & Behavior, October 2003
2. Sleep and Obesity - M. G. Knutson, L. L. Van Cauter, Current Diabetes Reports, April 2006
3. Nutrient-Dense Foods and Weight Management - K. L. Hlebowicz, E. D. Solomon, M. M. Mitchell, Nutrients, August 2019
4. Physical Activity and Weight Loss - C. S. Albright, R. D. Thompson, G. T. Wright, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, August 2008
5. Stress Management and Weight Loss - J. K. Smith, R. S. Peterson, L. T. Morgan, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, April 2011

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.

Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Dr. Stacy Heimburger, and today I want to talk about lifestyle changes. OK, everyone talks about lifestyle, right? That is the first thing everyone wants you to change when you’re trying to lose weight, and it’s a very holistic approach. I like it, but a lot of people don’t really understand what lifestyle change means. They think about losing weight and they think about counting calories, going to the gym a lot, and they don’t always take a look at sort of the whole picture.

In medicine, we talk about lifestyle changes, and I feel like we didn’t really get good training on that either, so we don’t always have a lot to tell people about lifestyle changes. However, this holistic approach is really important for sustainable weight loss because there are many aspects of our lives that either can support our goals or take away from them. So, I want to share my thoughts on this multi-pronged approach to wellness and weight loss. I think this is really important with the GLP-1s out there. I am a fan of those medications, but everyone has a tendency to forget that all those studies were done with lifestyle changes. OK, so it wasn’t just take the medicine and eat less of the bad food. It was take the medicine, don’t be as hungry, and start implementing lifestyle changes when it’s a little bit easier.

So, it’s about increasing our nutrition and making it high nutrient-dense foods. It’s about moving our bodies and worrying about our muscle health. It’s about taking the time to understand why we’re eating and how to deal with psychological stress. It’s about getting good sleep. It’s about drinking lots of water. OK, so let’s take each one of these and just talk for a second.

I want to talk about nutrition first because it’s the one everyone starts with. When we think about nutrition and weight loss, everyone immediately starts to worry about calories, or we start to separate foods into good foods and bad foods. Most of us have a lot of past programming about what diet food is, what foods are essential to losing weight, and what foods we will never lose weight if we eat. There are just a lot of rules around food.

I think it’s helpful, especially for women moving into their 40s and 50s, that we kind of start to think about macronutrients. So, full disclosure, I do not count macros, but I love when people do. I think it can be really helpful. I worry about nutrient-dense foods, and I worry about protein and fiber. OK, so that’s macronutrients. Protein, right, as we age, we lose muscle mass. Muscle mass—our muscle is what generates our energy. That’s our basal metabolic rate we want to maintain, if not build, muscle as much as we can. It’s pretty hard for women to get bulky. You have to be kind of genetically predisposed to that, so I think weightlifting got a real bad rap in the 80s and 90s and women were kind of scared to do it. But as we age, there really is no better way or no other way to maintain or build muscle other than some sort of resistance training.

Meaning you need to take your muscles to the edge, right? We need them to hypertrophy. We need them to grow, right? We need them to be so exhausted that they need to fill themselves with more proteins and repair. We’re not going to do that by just adding a little bit of resistance training. I love going to Pilates. More intense resistance training lets get some weights, compound movements. That muscle takes nutrition; it takes protein. Most women are not getting near enough protein or nutrition consistently.

That’s the nutrition recommendation. If you want to lose weight, we grow up with just don’t eat, eat less, eat a salad, right? Just eat vegetables, sometimes fruits—OK, sometimes fruits are not OK. Don’t eat carbs. We want nutrient-dense foods. We need our vegetables, we need our protein, we need our whole grains, and we need our fruits. Fruits, vegetables, protein, whole grains—that is going to support your weight loss and your overall health. That’s what we need for muscle building and maintenance. We want to live forever; muscle is our organ of longevity. It’s not calorie counting. So that’s nutrition.

I also want to talk about physical activity and movement. That’s the other prong. We need to move because it feels good. We need to move for longevity and overall health. We need to keep our muscles and bones strong. OK, so we’re not going to the gym to do eight hours of cardio because we ate a bagel. OK, we’re going to the gym to build healthy bones and muscles. This is where we find an activity we like and we do it. And if we can add some resistance training, we need to do that. So if you like to dance, dance with some hand weights. There are lots of people, who are not me, that go deep dive into what you need to build muscles as a post-menopausal woman. I highly recommend them. Dr. Gabrielle Lyons is one of them, Dr. Stacy Sims teaches high-performance athletes. They are all about the nutrition and muscle building, so I would not be your best resource, but I love listening to them.

Let’s talk about our psychological stress management system. We have got to figure out a way to stop emotionally eating. It is very difficult to do that when we are like an ostrich with our head in the ground when it comes to our emotions. And all of our emotions come from our thoughts. What are our thoughts? We’re not going to get this piece right. You get stressed out by your coworker every single day because we haven’t learned how to manage that relationship in our mind, and you have to have a glass of wine when you get home to deal with it. It is not going to be helpful long-term. As soon as you’re ready to drink a bottle and shove everything you can find—ice cream, chips, everything else—in your face because you’ve been stressed out all day. We need to manage the stress, and that’s not the people; that’s not the kids. Right? Tips and tricks—managing our reaction to them.

The coach comes in with tips and tricks. I try to share on the podcast. This is the work I do with my clients. We’re going to do some of this work in small groups for my October Dropper Pumpkin Challenge. This is the piece that everyone is missing; it’s the part that’s hard to write down and follow. This is not a diet plan or workout plan. This is understanding what individually is getting you stuck in your brain and having someone help you undo that. We’ve got to remove that piece or learn that piece, especially for anyone who’s on GLP-1 medications and eventually wants to come off. Caveat being I don’t think anyone needs to come off. I think these have been studied relatively long-term, and I think they’re probably fine. So, I’m not saying you need to come off; I’m saying there are a lot of people who want to come off, maybe just financially because you don’t want to be on them forever since they’re pretty expensive if your insurance isn’t paying for them. If you don’t figure out this emotional psychological stress management system, that’s going to be a problem.

So, that’s coaching, and I think it’s a big piece. Sleep—we have to sleep. We have to drink water. That is the holistic weight loss plan. It’s not just nutrition and physicality. It is psychological; it is sleep quality; it is hydration. OK, it’s five pieces, and we can get those working in tandem. It’s amazing how easy it is to reach your goals. So, I’ve got lots of stuff on my website, lots of things about nutrition, and I have to break them up. I’ve got some nutrition pieces; I’m coaching. This is going to come out at the perfect time—October. I do a month-long free challenge. This year is going to be the last year I offer it for free. I’m with you all month and we talk about all of these things. Tips and tricks—not too much over our system, but we have to get all of these things tightened up if we want to reach our goals and sustain our health and wellness. We want to be our best as long as possible; we’ve got to worry about all five pieces.

All right, I encourage you to assess what’s going on in your five spheres or five areas of lifestyle. See where you need help and reach out to me. I will try and help wherever I can. Holistic weight loss—people throw that word around. It means the whole piece, right? It’s not just about calories or macros or getting a trainer. You can’t do one piece without looking at the rest. Right? We’re not going to get our nutrition sorted if we haven’t slept well, if we’re not drinking enough water, and none of those things come together if we can’t figure out how to manage our stress.

If this has been helpful, as always, please don’t forget to subscribe and review. And if this spurred something for you, please drop me an email. I would love to hear from you at support@sugarfreemd.com. Until next week, bye.