The 4 biggest fat loss mistakes I see moms make

If you've been trying to lose weight but feel like you're doing everything right and still not seeing results, today's episode is for you. Because after coaching hundreds of moms, I've noticed the same few nutrition mistakes show up over and over again and the crazy part is most moms think these habits are helping them lose weight.

I’ve actually made all of these mistakes in my own health + fitness journey and looking back I can ironically see these were the exact things holding me back from seeing results, although they felt productive in the moment.

And that's why I wanted to talk about this today. Because these aren't mistakes made by women who don't care. They're usually made by women who care A LOT.

You’re trying to lose weight.
You’re working to be healthier.
You’re READY to feel better in your body.

But somewhere along the way we've been taught that the way to lose weight is to eat less, ignore our hunger, and use as much willpower as possible.

So today I want to save you years of frustration by sharing the biggest nutrition mistakes I see moms making and exactly what I'd do instead.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friend, welcome back to Stronger Within, the podcast for women who are done chasing quick fixes and are ready to build real strength and lasting change from the inside out. I'm your host, Christy Magri, and here we talk about becoming Stronger Within in your body, your mindset, and the daily habits that shape your life. If you're ready to build a body and life you feel confident in for good, you're in the right place. I am actually re-recording this episode. I recorded this earlier today, but I was in, you remember, fancy studio number two, which is my car, but now Chloe is done with dance, and so I no longer record in the car during her dance sessions. But my husband stayed home from work today because he wasn't feeling well, so I went to the library to get some work done. But long story short, the library study rooms that I typically work in, they're very echoey, and that is like the worst possible place to get recording for the podcast. So I sit in my car to do that, but there was like a parade going on across the street, and then they were emptying out the bin full of books that people drop off overnight, and like there were just so many noises, and I was listening back to the recording, and I was like, I have to re-record that. So, needless to say, I am so excited to have my own office officially this month. I cannot wait. Like, you have no idea how excited I am. I am already planning out which desks we're gonna get, so it's gonna be a shared office. My husband also has his computer with his setup, so I'm gonna get us each the same desk and I'm gonna make mine super girly and make his a little more manly, but I'm gonna do standing desks uh and then I'm gonna be able to put my walking pad underneath, and I want to get a new computer, so I primarily obviously work from my laptop. It's the only computer I have, it's either my laptop or my phone, but I obviously don't have a desk or anywhere to put my computer, so most times, like right now, I'm literally sitting on my couch. This is my office for the day, or I have my makes makeshift desk walking pad situation I've set up, which is basically we have I wish I could show, I gotta record like the space we live in to show you guys. I haven't really like shown where we live. It's like two rooms, it's like the living room, and then there's the kitchen, and off the kitchen is the bathroom and the two bedrooms. It's very small, but anyways, in one section of the main living area, we have a big table, and under there I have my walking pad, and then I put one of our step stools on the table. So that's basically my standing desk, anyways. I forget where I was going with that. Oh, I want to get a desktop computer, so I plan to get a pink iMac. Is that what they're called? I don't know, the Macs, the Apple Macs that are desktops, you know what I'm talking about, hopefully. But, anyways, I'm just like thinking about my vision and bringing this office space to life, and it's just gonna feel so unreal. That is probably one of the top things that I'm excited for with this move of like, oh my gosh, we get to move into a space that is big enough where I have an office. Finally, after six years of being in business, I I've never had my own office space, so I'm really excited for that. And I'm planning on getting like a cute futon for anybody that wants to stay over, potentially ever visiting, and then I'll be able to sit there and record like my talking headreels. So yeah, I'll I'll stop rambling about the office setup now. But anyways, I was just saying I'm here to re-record because that recording was not okay. So let's dive into today's episode. If you have been trying to lose weight and you feel like you're doing everything right, but you're not seeing results, today's episode is for you because after coaching, oh my gosh, I it has to be over 500 now. Women that I've worked with over the last six years, I have noticed the same few nutrition mistakes pop up again and again. And the crazy part about it is that most moms and women think that these habits are actually helping them lose weight, they feel productive, and I've actually made all of these mistakes in my own health and fitness journey, and looking back, I can see ironically, they were the exact things holding me back, but again, in the moment they felt very productive, and that's why I want to talk about this today because you're not making these mistakes because you don't care. In fact, you're making these mistakes because of the exact opposite, because you care a lot. You want to lose weight, you want to be healthier, you're determined to feel better in your body, but somewhere along the way, you have been taught that in order to lose weight, you need to eat less, ignore your hunger, and just muster up as much willpower as possible, cut out your favorite foods, limit carbs, all of these crazy restrictive rules that we have been taught. And so today I want to save you more wasted time, save you more frustration, and we are gonna be going through the top nutrition mistakes that I see moms make when they are trying to lose weight. So let's start off strong with mistake number one, and that is eating as little as possible. So while it is true that you need to eat less calories than you are burning in a day to lose fat, most moms actually take it too far and then they swing the complete opposite way. So if you have weight to lose, then that means that at some point in your journey you have overeaten above your maintenance calories. It's not possible to gain weight without eating over maintenance, meaning you're in a calorie surplus. But now that you want to lose weight, you completely swing to the other side of the pendulum, you drop calories like crazy, and you end up restricting way too hard too fast. So maybe you are skipping breakfast or lunch, you're saving calories, you're eating extremely low calorie, you are cutting carbs super low, you're ignoring hunger. And somewhere along the way, we have been taught, especially as women, less food equals faster results. And again, while a piece of this is true, yes, you do need to eat less food to lose weight. You need to make sure that you're not dropping your calories too low. And this is where I always say that moving more and eating less is not a strategy. We need to make sure that we are appropriately assigning your macros and your calories so that we can make sure you are eating in an appropriate calorie deficit. The problem is when you're dropping calories too low, your body is going to fight you. Your body is built for survival. Your body is extremely smart, and when your body does not feel like it is getting enough fuel, it's gonna start to hold on to body fat. You're gonna get hungry, you're gonna get tired and hangry, you're gonna be snapping at your kids, your cravings are gonna spike, you're gonna end up in the cycle where you do really good during the week, but then by the weekend you're ravenous and you want to eat everything you avoided during the week, or maybe end of day after the kids are in bed. And the worst part of this whole cycle is that you start to blame yourself when this happens. When really this could have all been avoided by eating enough. And I think back to my journey when I was postpartum with Carter, and I remember when I worked at the gym when I was personal training, I worked very early shifts. Sometimes my first client was as early as 5 a.m. So my alarm would go off at 4 15, I would get ready, make the 15-minute drive to the gym, and I would immediately crack open my energy drink. Wouldn't eat anything all morning. Typically, my shift would end between 10 and 11 a.m. and I would jump straight into a workout, would drink more caffeine, I would usually take a scoop of pre-workout. Keep in mind I have not eaten anything all morning, and I would basically force myself to wait until noon to eat anything. And then when I finally did eat, didn't matter how big the meal was, I felt like I couldn't stop myself from eating once I started. And it kind of reminds me back to when I would drink and I had a bad relationship with alcohol. It was like I couldn't just had have one drink. I had to have like five, six, seven, eight. Like it was like once you start, you can't stop, sort of feeling. And so I while I am saying this, there is strategic fasting. I am a big believer that fasting has a lot of benefits when done in the right way, when you have a healthy relationship with food. This was not that for me. I was, you know, fasting, skipping meals, and doing it in all the wrong ways. And so, you know, I have worked with, like I said, over it has to be over 500 women in the last six plus years. I cannot even tell you how many food blogs I have reviewed where a mom has barely eaten anything by 4 p.m. and then she ends up binging later at night. It is such a common situation, and so remember that weight loss is not about eating as little as possible. It's really about creating a strategic calorie deficit while still fueling your body enough to function. So an easy calculation for this: take your current body weight, multiply it by 14, subtract two to 500 calories, and that is your starting deficit calories. However, I do not recommend going into a deficit until you fix your relationship with food and you've tracked consistently at maintenance calories for at least 30 days. Diving into mistake number two, and that is letting hunger decide what you eat. One of the biggest differences between moms who stay consistent and find it fairly easy and hit their macros daily, and the moms who struggle, it all comes down to planning. Most moms wait until they're starving to decide what they're gonna eat, or you're winging your food decisions all day long, and then you're hoping to make good decisions while you're busy. You, I know it's summertime right now, but like during the school year, for example, you're packing school lunches, you're dropping the kids off, you have so many different things going on. Maybe you're overwhelmed, you're exhausted, you're hungry. That is a recipe for disaster. This is where you skip meals or you eat something that doesn't have enough protein or you swing through the drive-through, right? It's not that you're you're missing a meal or you're making a bad choice, it's that you literally set yourself up to make decisions from a place of desperation later. I used to do this myself. I didn't really start meal planning until I believe when I was postpartum with Chloe. That is when I really got into it and saw what a big difference it makes. And I have been in so many situations where I have gotten so hungry that everything sounds good and I'm snacking on everything while I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna eat for my actual meal. Then by the time I've actually made my actual meal, I've probably eaten like 500 calories worth of snacks. We've all been there, so there's no shame. But you do not need like this Pinterest perfect meal prep or you know, to place certain foods off limits. You are way overcomplicating it. All you need is a plan that works for you in every season, every realistic day of motherhood, depending on, you know, if it's summertime or the school year, it could look different, but you need some sort of simplified meal planning framework so you walk into every week and every day knowing exactly what you are going to eat. You need to start treating yourself as though you are the CEO of your own life, which you quite literally are, and you need to start treating your goals that way. You need to start treating your own goals as seriously as you treat your job because if you didn't treat your job that way, you would get fired, right? Start treating your goals that way. Why do you treat it as a negotiable? Something that's up for negotiation. You need to have weekly meetings with yourself. So, for example, my weekly meal planning day is typically Saturday, giving me some buffer room there. So typically I will meal plan like Saturday morning. I'll take a look at what we have in the house. I pull out my meal planning document, which all of my clients receive access to. Um, I also share my meal plan with all my clients every week in the Strong as a Mother group chat. Information on that is in the show notes if you want to learn about how we can work together. But what I do is I start out with my dinners because that is that takes more of the brain power. So I'm like, let me figure out dinners first because there I'm coming up with four to five dinner different ideas, and then I'm working my way backwards into planning lunches, breakfasts, and then snacks. I usually like to make like a little sweet treat or something too. So the other piece of this is that I keep it very simple when it comes to planning meals, and I have an entire episode about the meal planning process, but we make tacos almost every single week. So I know guaranteed some variation of like a taco or a crunch wrap or something is gonna be on our meal plan. My kids like it, we like it. Um my husband probably gets sick of it if you ask him, but I don't mind. I could eat the same thing all day long. I do one of the low-carb tortillas and then I put hard shell in it, some queso ground beef, corn, cheese, taco bell, mild sauce, my favorite. I could eat that like for every meal and never get sick of it. But, anyways, so let's say that I plan tacos on a Tuesday, taco Tuesday, right? I know that typically when we make tacos for dinner, I have leftovers on, you know, the following day. So when it comes to planning my lunches, I'll say, okay, Wednesday I'm gonna plan to make a taco or a taco bowl or a taco salad or whatever I want to do. Typically Monday and Tuesday for lunches, I'll try to meal prep something quick on Sunday. I don't like to have food that is more than like two to three days old. So typically if I meal prep a lunch on Sunday, it only really lasts me two days. So Monday and Tuesday, I would maybe I do like a chicken salad or something like that. I plug that in Monday and Tuesday, and then you know, Thursday, Friday, you know, I'll come up with another different lunch idea. Maybe I make a dinner that I'm guaranteed to have leftovers again. Breakfast is always very simple, so lately it's been some variation of overnight oats. So I've done banana bread, birthday cake, um, chocolate chip, cookie dough, what uh what other ones have I done recently? Um, blueberry lemon cheesecake. Oh, that one is so good. I love doing pumpkin in the fall. I cannot wait for that. That is my favorite. So I'll do that, you know. Again, maybe I'll meal prep that Sunday that lasts me a few days, and then the second half of the week. If you know, we're gonna see if you're an OG here. I'm gonna give you two seconds to figure out what I make what I'm having for breakfast if it's not that. If you guessed, a peanut butter and jelly English muffin with a protein shake, you are right. I have been eating that almost every single day since I was postpartum with Chloe. Lately, actually, to be fair, I've been doing it on a on a rice cake instead of English muffin. Uh otherwise, I really love the gluten-free English muffins from Trader Joe's. I'm really going down a rabbit hole right now with my meal planning framework. But the point being, I never walk into any day not knowing what I'm gonna eat. In fact, I'm taking the time to log it all before I walk into the day. Because from an energy standpoint, I'm gonna have to log it either way. Whether I log it as the day goes on or I log it at the beginning of the day. I actually recorded the other day like a screen recording of how long it took me to pre-log my entire day's worth of food, a minute and 50 seconds. Okay, not even two minutes. You're telling me you're not willing to take, even if it takes you 10 minutes, 10 minutes of your time to plan everything so you don't have to second guess your decisions. You can open up your fridge, and even if you have to actually put the meal together, you know exactly what you're gonna have so that you can hit your macros without question, so that you can fit in a sweet tree or a fun tree if you want it. This is why macros and planning ahead is so key. So the goal is not to be extreme here, but to remove the decision fatigue, automate the healthy decisions, that's what's gonna keep you consistent. Moving into point number three, which is not prioritizing protein. So calories are important, protein is just as important, and most clients that come to work with me in the beginning are under fueling on protein, it is very common. And when we think about meals for moms, a lot of times, you know, in the morning it's like a piece of toast with coffee or a salad with like barely any protein in it, or you know, a handful of crackers for a snack, and then a huge dinner. And protein is usually an afterthought, but protein is the nutrient doing the heavy lifting when it comes to fullness, which is obviously very important in a calorie deficit. If you're starving, it's gonna be very hard to adhere to your macros. Muscle retention, we're seeing with the GLP ones right now, people are, you know, their hunger is going away, and so now they're not eating enough, especially not enough protein, they're losing muscle mass, they are, you know, losing their hair. Muscle is not just important for what we look like, but also, you know, as we age, how we're able to move. It's truly an epidemic right now with people being on these medications and losing muscle mass. I shared this with my client from a few uh months ago that she shared with me, but that she was on a vacation with her girlfriends and none of them could lift their suitcases, and they were all on the shot. And it's like we're not like in our 80s or even 70s or 60s here, like we should be able to lift our our dang suitcases on vacation. Like, that is not a good situation. So we want to make sure that in a calorie deficit we are preserving our muscle mass. Also, remembering the more muscle your body has on it, the more calories your body naturally burns each day. And if you want that toned, defined look that is built through building muscle. The other reasons why protein is important, fat loss, like I just said, having more muscle makes it easier, makes it easier to adhere to your calorie deficit, and then recovery, blood sugar, stability, there are so many reasons why protein is important. So when we think about building our meals, building a balanced meal, I want you to think about having 30 grams of protein per meal. So start paying attention. If you're not already, start logging your food in my fitness pal and start looking at where you're landing. And typically I say for clients or for anybody learning from me, the first step is not to go in and implement all the changes and be perfect and do everything perfectly. The first step is truly just awareness. Like that is phase one of my Forever Fit Mama method. It's like, let's see what kind of uh patterns we have, let's even see how much we're eating right now before we jump into changing everything overnight. Awareness is truly the first step. And so um, I do have a high protein meal idea guide. If you want a copy of that, just DM me over on Instagram Protein Ideas and I will send that over to you. If you are a client of mine, you have access to that. But instead of focusing on in order to eat or in order to lose weight, I need to eat less, instead, focus on how can I fuel myself better, how can I make protein, how can I eat smarter and better. Moving into the last mistake, and that is that thinking weight loss has to feel miserable. So many moms I talk to, especially moms that have come into my programs, they have tried like everything under the sun to lose weight, and most of the things that they tried do feel miserable. Maybe not the first few days, first few weeks, first few months, but over time it got to feel that way because you know, we are taught to do these fad diets. Cut this, don't eat this, this food rule. And when we feel constantly deprived, when we put food on this pedestal, when we feel out of control around food, or we make food a really big deal, that's not sustainable. And so maybe it gets you results in the short term, but then you struggle to keep the weight off. And I see this so often, right? We see success, we lose weight, and then we rebound and we revert back to old habits. Because if our fat loss approach does not allow for eating the same food as our family, enjoying vacations, and a win on vacation is not maybe it's not losing weight, but maybe it's being more mindful, maintaining progress, not coming back five to ten pounds up on the scale. Being able to enjoy date nights with your husband and not stressing out about, you know, I'm not gonna be able to hit my macros, or how am I gonna navigate this meal out, or the birthday cake at your kid's birthday party, or camping, or any sort of social interaction that comes up on the weekend. Successful fat loss requires a lifestyle change where this is how you are meant to live your life, and we are not meant to live our life in these extreme, restrictive ways. My dog is having a dream, he's crying over on the couch. But we should not feel like we have to sacrifice our lives, especially our lives as moms, guys. When we look back at these years of our lives, we want to remember these moments and memories with our kids. We don't want our every thought to be about food. I even look back to when I was postpartum with Carter and I was really struggling. So I had him in October of 2019, and then it was like boom, holiday season. There was um Halloween a week after his birthday, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and I remember still having a bad relationship with food during that time. Also um struggling with my weight, obviously, because I had just had him. That was when I was my heaviest, hating the pictures that I was in. I actually just got some inspiration while talking through this. I'm gonna share those on my story today. Um, and when I look back at those first holidays with him, that's what I think about. That's really sad to me to think that those memories are clouded by what I looked like or what I ate or what I didn't eat. I don't know about you, but I am not willing to settle for a version of motherhood that involves that. And so our goal is to create a lifestyle that we don't have to live our life like that. So, to recap these four mistakes and why they matter, mistake number one is eating too little, this creates hunger, ruins your metabolism, you need to put yourself in a slight, appropriate caloric deficit. Mistake number two is not planning, this creates poor decisions, a lot of decision fatigue. We need to automate the healthy decision. Mistake number three is not prioritizing protein, this makes hunger harder to manage. We might be losing muscle mass, making fat loss harder in the end. And mistake number four is believing that suffering is required to lose fat. This keeps you stuck in this constant cycle of the quick fix, weight loss not being sustainable when really we want to create that lifestyle change. If there is one thing I hope you take away from today's episode, it is that the goal is not to eat less, but to learn how to support your body better. And so many moms are stuck in this cycle of working really hard, eating less, and wondering why the heck does consistency feel so hard. But when you learned that consistency is not built through deprivation, it is built through nourishment and caring for your body, eating enough, prioritizing protein, planning ahead, creating habits that actually fit your life as a mom, all the things we talked about today, everything changes because then you learn how to build this lifestyle where the results are a byproduct of the life that you are living. If this episode gave you an aha moment today, I would love if you shared it. You can screenshot it, uh share it to your Instagram story, tag me at ChristyFit, leave a review for me, or share it with a mom friend who might need to hear this. Thank you for spending this time with me. And until I see you back for next week's episode, keep becoming stronger within.