Fed up with the relentless cycle of weight loss and regain? Say goodbye to the frustration as we uncover the transformative power of lifestyle changes over temporary diet fixes. I'm Amy White, your navigator through the maze of health and wellness, and in this episode, I delve into why ditching calorie counting for long-term habits is the ultimate game-changer for maintaining your health goals. You'll learn how traditional dieting can sabotage your metabolism and muscles, plus the strategies to flip the script towards nourishing your body and sustaining your ideal weight.
Imagine your body as a trusty companion, ready to join you in life's adventures, be it a spontaneous trip or simply carrying groceries without a strain. This episode isn't just about shedding pounds; it's about fortifying your health and syncing your physical capabilities with your ambitions. I'll share invaluable insights on how to enhance gut health, rev up your energy, and keep your metabolism firing on all cylinders with smart food choices. Tune in and embrace the path to becoming lean and staying strong, where every meal and movement leads you closer to a balanced, vibrant life.
Fed up with the relentless cycle of weight loss and regain? Say goodbye to the frustration as we uncover the transformative power of lifestyle changes over temporary diet fixes. I'm Amy White, your navigator through the maze of health and wellness, and in this episode, I delve into why ditching calorie counting for long-term habits is the ultimate game-changer for maintaining your health goals. You'll learn how traditional dieting can sabotage your metabolism and muscles, plus the strategies to flip the script towards nourishing your body and sustaining your ideal weight.
Imagine your body as a trusty companion, ready to join you in life's adventures, be it a spontaneous trip or simply carrying groceries without a strain. This episode isn't just about shedding pounds; it's about fortifying your health and syncing your physical capabilities with your ambitions. I'll share invaluable insights on how to enhance gut health, rev up your energy, and keep your metabolism firing on all cylinders with smart food choices. Tune in and embrace the path to becoming lean and staying strong, where every meal and movement leads you closer to a balanced, vibrant life.
I'm your host, board-certified holistic nutritionist and professional life coach, amy White. The purpose of this podcast is to share information that you can use to become leaner, stronger and healthier by losing weight, shedding inches, maintaining muscle and managing your mind, all while living your normal busy life in this modern, sugar-filled world. Hello, and here we are at episode four of the Simplicity of Wellness podcast. Today, I want to talk about the difference between dieting and lifestyle change. I want you to lose weight for the last time. I want you to be getting leaner, stronger and healthier, and in order to do that, I think it's really important to understand the difference between what dieting is doing to your body versus what lifestyle changes do for your body.
Speaker 1:
Let's start with dieting. Dieting is short-term. I want you to think of a dieting as something short-term. It's something that you start. You have a finish line. You're often white-knuckling your way to that finish line and then, once you get to the finish line, it's this sense of relief and oh my gosh, I did it and whew, I'm glad that's over. And then you sort of jump back into the things that you always did, the way you always used to do them, which will create a result that you always used to have. Even if dieting did create a new result, if what you did to get that result isn't sustainable, then you will fall back into old habits and you will create your past result, which is gaining the weight back. So I'm going to break down dieting for a minute. So dieting, as I said, it's a start and a finish type of a thing. It's that yo-yo right, you get started, you do it, you finish, relax, it all comes back. You get started, you do it, you finish, you relax, it all comes back. It's just that up and down roller coaster of yo-yo, weight gain loss.
Speaker 1:
Typically, with a traditional dieting mindset, it's restriction and traditionally that restriction has been calorie cutting. You're going to cut your calories, you're going to lose that weight on the scale and then everything's going to be great. What happens when there is that type of calorie restriction? It tends to lead to deprivation. So now you're feeling chronically hungry and you're having a lot of cravings because you're forcing yourself to cut calories. Your body is now looking for that food and fuel which it's not getting and you're hungry. So you're feeling deprived because you're hungry but you're forcing yourself not to eat. Typically, you will see the scale start to go down. So you're thinking it's working. I'm going to keep doing this. I'm totally going to hit my goal.
Speaker 1:
The problem is when there's restriction, calorie deprivation and you're focused on the scale, often what's happening is you're losing muscle mass. You're not actually being strategic about how you're losing that weight, it's just a number on the scale. You're losing weight. When you lose muscle mass, your metabolism does slow down. Muscle is your organ of longevity. Muscle is the biggest organ in your body and it is the biggest calorie burner. So when you have less muscle, you're burning less calories at rest. You're going to hit that finish line because you've been restricting, you've been dealing with the hunger, you've been just ignoring it. You're pushing through, you're white-knuckling it. You're going to get there.
Speaker 1:
You get that number down on the scale, no idea really how or what's been going on in your body the fact that you've lost muscle mass. You're so excited because you hit your goal and then you relax. A lot of times it's that thought like I just can't wait. I can't wait till this is over. I am so excited to have that my favorite pizza or go and have those cocktails with my friends or whatever it is that you were depriving yourself of that. You missed so much, so kind of getting back to your normal patterns, normal habits, normal food. And all of a sudden now the scale starts going up again. Maybe you've experienced this I hope you haven't, but perhaps you have. The scale goes up, you've gained weight and now you're just like, okay, well, I guess it's time to go on a new dieting thing. We're going to start over, no problem.
Speaker 1:
And then now it's actually harder to lose the weight. And not only that. Very likely you gained more weight than you even lost. This is all because of that lack of muscle mass. You lost that mass. You lost your body's ability to burn calories at the rate that you used to burn them. Yet you went back to your old habits and foods and ate the way you used to eat, and now your body's not managing that food the way it used to because you've lost muscle mass. So the biggest problem with dieting and not actually being strategic about how you're losing the weight and what's happening with your body is you're not correcting the root cause imbalance. Carrying extra weight around, gaining weight. It's a symptom of a body out of balance. So you haven't actually tried to deal with the imbalance. You're just dealing with the symptom, and in doing so, you've changed your body composition. You now have more fat and less muscle, and your metabolism has slowed down. So now everything is harder and you're still on that roller coaster.
Speaker 1:
So now let's flip the script and let's talk about lifestyle changes, as opposed to restrictive, calorie cutting, deprivation, dieting. When you decide you're done with dieting and you want to focus on making lifestyle changes, this is when you're starting to get strategic about how you plan to lose weight, or rather, bring your body into balance. Everybody wants to lose weight once. They want to lose it for the last time. That one and done. That's what we all want. However, historically we know that's so difficult because you lose it and you gain it. So now let's stop talking about dieting and let's talk about lifestyle changes. To me, lifestyle changes mean that you're making adjustments and how you're living your life, so that the way you live your life now supports the weight, size, shape, strength, health that you want. That's what lifestyle change is all about.
Speaker 1:
And when I say strategic, it means that, instead of chasing a number on the scale, you're now looking at the root cause issues why am I having sugar cravings? Why am I hungry all the time? Why do I never feel full? Why am I exhausted during the day? Why am I having lousy sleep? Why is my mood all over the place? Those are the questions that you want to get curious about. Why is this happening?
Speaker 1:
Metabolic imbalance is what I would say. That's what I teach my clients. When the hormones that control your metabolism so they control your hunger, they control how full you feel, they control your sugar cravings, they control your ability to access and burn onboard fuel, which is body fat when those hormones are out of balance, everything feels really difficult because you feel out of control around food. The first thing that I like to do with clients and that I think you should address, is figuring out how to bring your metabolic hormones into balance. By doing that, everything else gets so much easier. When your metabolic hormones are in balance, hunger is not an emergency. Food becomes something that you can manage very comfortably. You don't have to restrict calories to the point where you're feeling hungry and deprived all the time because you're actually eating food that keeps you full for such a good amount of time that, overall, in a day, you're eating less than you used to eat, but feeling fuller.
Speaker 1:
This is what happens when we focus on bringing those metabolic hormones into balance, and that is the root cause problem. By addressing that root cause issue now, you're going to get leaner, stronger and healthier. You're going to keep your metabolism humming. You're going to be able to maintain how you feel, how you look, how your body's moving. All of that becomes so much easier. Lifestyle change means that you're making small adjustments to your normal life so that what you do on a regular day that feels easy and natural is actually supporting the body and the health that you want. What you do every day, the food you eat, how you move your body, your normal structure, actually supports that perfect size and shape and health that you want.
Speaker 1:
You're not constantly chasing a number on a scale anymore. You're very stable and balanced. You know exactly how to maintain that balance. When you're in balance, you actually can eat anything you want because you understand how to stay in balance. You understand your personal tolerance level for any kind of food. You can eat an Oreo because you know how many Oreos you can eat in a day, in a week, in a month, without messing up your metabolic balance. You know exactly what your tolerance level is for everything.
Speaker 1:
There's never a surprise. You never get on the scale and are like, oh my gosh, I have no idea how I gained five pounds or 10 pounds. You will absolutely know how you gained five or 10 pounds. The beauty of that is you will also know how to bring yourself back into balance, how to shed those pounds that you are hanging on to, based on whatever it was that you did. That's my favorite part about lifestyle change and living in balance is there's no surprises. If you get on the scale and it says you've lost some weight, or you get on the scale and it says you gained some weight, it's not like, ah, this big shock. It's like, oh, I know exactly what's going on and I know exactly how to fix it. So guess what that means? It means you go on vacation and you have a great time. You may come home and be totally in balance. You may come home and have gained a little bit of weight, but you had a great time and you're just like, yeah, it was totally worth it, because it's not a problem, because I now am back to my normal schedule, doing my normal things that support my normal healthy weight, my normal health overall. So I will be right back to feeling like my normal self again in a few days. It's not a problem, it's not an emergency. Everything has gone wrong.
Speaker 1:
When you bring those metabolic hormones into balance, your energy goes up, your sleep gets better, your mood improves, you eat less naturally, you don't crave sugar, you're less hungry. You're eating two to three meals a day, feeling very full and satisfied, typically going for maybe even five hours between those meals. You're not snacking. You're managing and maintaining your muscle mass. You're not cutting calories to the point where your body's burning the house down. It's using onboard fuel properly. It's using your excess body fat as fuel. It's not tearing up your muscle. Your metabolism is humming. It's something else that makes managing and maintaining your ideal shape, size, energy level very easy.
Speaker 1:
Your clothes start to get loose. It's not a number on the scale. You're losing fat, and when you lose fat you lose inches. You shed inches. Your waist gets smaller, your pants fit better. Your bra gets too big. Your tops get nice and loose.
Speaker 1:
The scale does catch up, but when you're making lifestyle changes, you're going to see body composition changes before the scale really tells you the total story. You're going to notice that your clothes are more comfortable. You're going to notice that your energy is way up. You're going to notice that your mood has improved. You're going to notice that your appetite is calm and you're not as hungry and that you can walk by a plate of chocolate chip cookies and think they look delicious. But you know what? I'm just not in the mood. That's what you're going to notice the most. You're going to have body composition changes. You're going to have metabolic hormone changes. The scale will catch up, but pay attention to those non-scale changes. Lifestyle is you taking control of how you want to feel, how you want to look and how you want to age? You get to decide how you want to feel, look and age.
Speaker 1:
For me, that means leaner, stronger, healthier. I want to be independent. I want to be able to move really well. I want to be able to travel on a whim. If something comes up, I want to be able to say yes. I don't want to have to worry about my body not being able to keep up with what my brain wants to do. I want us to be on the same page. I want to be able to say yes whenever I want to be able to carry my own groceries. I want to be able to move furniture. I want to be able to pick up my grandkids.
Speaker 1:
To me, it's so important to bring and keep my body in balance and then start managing my strength and health as I'm getting older. I hope that made sense. I hope you got the feel for the difference between restrictive dieting and what that can do to your body, because it's not strategic, it's just a number on the scale versus lifestyle changes. That's strategic. That's when you're thinking, okay, how do I get leaner, stronger and healthier? Yes, if you have weight to lose, lifestyle changes Getting leaner means you will look different.
Speaker 1:
You will get smaller, you will shed inches and very likely shed pounds on the scale, but you'll be doing it in the right way. You'll be turning up your metabolism instead of turning it down. So then, maintaining that weight, that weight loss, for the last time becomes a real life thing. I'll see you in the next episode. Have you ever said to yourself I wish someone would just tell me what to eat? If so, today is your day. Go to the show notes and click the link your Healthy Kitchen what to Eat to download the Start a Food List that I share with all of my angry to healthy weight loss clients. These are the foods that will calm your gut, eliminate the bloat, boost your energy and shift you into a fat burner. This list is your first step toward body balance and weight loss for the last time.