How lose weight without Calorie Counting

The Women's Weight Loss Summit had me as a guest speaker recently!

🔥Grab my 7-Day meal guide here->https://bit.ly/7Daymealguide

Here's the interview.

I went all in on why So many women struggle to lose weight.

You will love this if you are a truth seeker.

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You can find me here:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-fearon/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GregDFearon

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Weight Lost for Women Over 50 masterclass series. Greg Barron is here with me. Hey Greg.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hey, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Wonderful to have you here. So Greg is the coach that helps ambitious women drop body fat and fix their mindset around loving who you are. He has 20 years in nutrition coaching and fitness with a background in women's health and functional medicine. So he is here to tell us how to love yourself and lose weight without counting calories. So welcome, Greg Farron. So happy to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Awesome to be here. Looking forward to this one. It's going to be fun.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

I am, yeah. So I love hearing this story of how my speakers get got to what you're doing now. So can you tell us a little bit about your background and how did you get into this?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

So I'll keep it nice and short, but um about 11 or 12, I was a bit of a chubby kid. And then puberty happened and I became athletic. I could run and I could do all of that stuff. However, my mum and my two sisters, I saw that they were always struggling with their weight, and that kind of led me in a path of I wanted to understand just how the body worked more, you know, and it obviously helped my sports and stuff as well. So I went and did a degree in sports science. But the big frustration was is that being the older brother and the son, you can't coach family, it just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

They hate it, they hate it, yeah. And they turned it around on you. If you have anything that might be a slight unhealthy, you can't have that.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yeah, you're you're you're the you're the expert. Why are you eating some chips or some fries? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I went and did my sports science degree, and then I actually ended up going into kind of management leadership roles. Um, so that helped me to understand people very much. Okay. Um and then eventually I ended up in the NHS where I used to run gynecology, maternity, endocrinology, rheumatology, a whole load of other oldies. So that helped me spend a lot of time with some world-class physicians so I can understand hormones and all of that stuff. I've also done some functional nutrition and functional medicine training, as well as all of my personal training, mindset, everything else that I've been doing for all these years. So I've got a bit of a I've got a bit of a CV for sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

A little bit. So that is how you got into this industry here. So why is love the answer to weight loss?

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Oh, this is a deep topic. So let me phrase this first of all. There is a lot of you know self-love going around the world right now. You know, you can open up TikTok and someone's talking about self-love. But let's take it back to health first, okay? Because health is the ultimate in self-love. I'll let that one land for a second. So if health is the ultimate in self-love, and that being mental and physical health, the definition of health is the absence of injury or dis-ease. And most injury, illness, and dis ease is driven by how we treat our bodies.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

So if we're if we're suffering with with our weight, for example, there is a good chance that somewhere along the line, yes, something traumatic may have happened. Totally agree. Women have had childbirth, stressful lives. I totally get that. But the real self-love would be to put yourself in a position that you can work and your body works in the most efficient way possible. That is true self-love. What we do nowadays is we medicate, we don't give self-love, we medicate with food. And we'll say stories to ourselves which are oh yeah, I deserve some ice cream because I feel a bit sad about what happened with the boss at work today. Or I'm arguing with the husband, so I deserve you know, some chocolate as self-love, and actually, that's actually medication, not true self-love.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Good point. So, what actually is holding women over 50 back from sticking to a so-called diet?

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Well, first of all, is we we are built on stories. We are built on the stories that we've created for years and years and years and years. And for a lot of the women that I work with, a lot of women have seen their mums, yo-yo diet, you know, Jane Fonda do the grapevine, um, Rosemary Connolly, Weight Watchers, they've tried all of these things. So, first of all, let's get into the point that the word diet isn't a bad thing. It's our stories around the word diet that are the problem. Because let's be honest, diet just means what you eat habitually. So everyone on this planet is on a diet right now. So when you release that and actually start thinking about that way, you're like, oh, actually, I have a diet, and that diet is either leading me in a path to be fit, well, energized, function properly, or it's going the opposite way. So I'm overeating, it's leading me to things like diabetes, other metabolic conditions, etc., inflammation, all of that stuff. So the word diet, first of all, if we can learn to disarm that word, because when we embarked on these diets, we had a story, and often that story was I need to lose weight fast because um fast looks like success. That success because we're always trying to please people is what drives us to try unsustainable diet strategies. Because in our logical brain, we know that the chicken and broccoli diet is unsustainable. We know it. The minute we do it, we know it. However, the need to look good for friends, look good for family, to show that you're a success means that we try an unsustainable method. And we know it. We know, but by day four, when we're when we wake up and we can see chocolate bars after after four days on the chicken and broccoli diet, we know that it's not sustainable.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah, but we can visually see them in our heads, like yeah, we wake up.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

You see chocolate angels around the room going on. So the those we often, and this is a big thing for women as well. We look for love in the accolades that people give us. So, hey Cherie, oh my god, you look amazing! What did you do? Oh, I'm now getting validation, I'm getting some self-love, and I'm gonna say, Well, you know what, Greg? I did the syrup maple diet and I lost seven pounds in a week. Look at me, and we know we take that as love because it's affection coming our way because we haven't mastered the actual art of loving ourselves in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Interesting, very interesting. So, what should a woman over 50 be eating to lose weight? What do you suggest? The human diet, like simple as that.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

We overcomplicate this stuff because we are looking for saviors in fasting, paleo, keto, low carb. Ultimately, the human body works pretty much the same in both sexes. Let's be honest, it does. We take food in, the stomach breaks it down, nutrients go into our blood, insulin comes along, puts it into cells. If there is too much energy, because we know that insulin cannot create fat, don't get me started on the hormone issue. That's a whole nother subject. I'll come back to that maybe. We know that if we have too much, because let's be honest, and this is gonna be a really hard thing to hear, but a lot of the ladies listening to this will have suffered some bullying at school at some time. Maybe because of their weight. So actually, as a kid, we already knew that if I ate too much, I would maybe be bullied for my weight. So obviously, because we're sad, we then go for more food to medicate. Yeah, but we knew as kids and it's in our cartoons and everything, that the kid that had too much food was the overweight kid. We knew that. So now we get to adult age and we're trying to escape all of these old stories. We look for other things to justify uh uh our potential failures before. Oh Greg, you know what? It's my hormones. Okay, awesome. Which hormone is it? Leptin, adipenectin, insulin, adapterin, human growth hormone, testosterone, which one is it? Aldosterone, etogen, progesterone, which one is it? Most women don't know. But what happens is this I don't want to look at myself deeply and understand my own habits because I'm scared. Because in that story, I'm a failure, I'm not very good at stuff. Someone on TikTok comes along with hey, the reason you can't lose weight is not because of calories in, calories out, it's because of insulin. Oh, got it. So it's not my fault, even though I ate the food, it's not my fault, it's my insulin. So that means I'm now not feeling like a failure. So then you can try this low-carb diet, blah blah blah blah blah. Which then becomes unsustainable and leads you back to then scrolling on Instagram looking for another diet method. The circle, just back and around. I read us, I read a read a stat the other day that the average person has tried something like 167 fad diets.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Oh, that's a high number. 167. Oh. And I suppose the older you get, the the you know, the more we age, we that number goes up, of course, because if we can't find the answer, we keep trying, right? So so why do okay, help me with this part because you you always hear this 1200 calories. Why why do women hate calories?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Because calories represents to them restriction, deprivation, starving yourself to look good for other people back in the day. Okay, so this is this is this is the very cycle we were younger, maybe teenage years, maybe in our 20s, 30s, whenever. We go on the cauliflower diet because we're told, or we try to just live on chicken, broccoli, and lettuce. We give up or we break it at Thursday. We start on Monday, we break up on Thursday with it, and we just dive into pizza, chocolate, ice cream because we're tired, we're mentally fatigued, and we need to medicate. Keep doing this, and then we're on diet number 45 here. We then look back and we're like, well, it's that calories monster. That calories thing has been driving the narrative. So therefore, I hate calories now.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Oh, okay. It again it leads back to the story around what it is, whatever it is. This in this instance, it's the calorie and the story that you have with the calorie. And everyone always throws, they always tell me, every client tells me, Oh, it's I need 1200 calories. I'm like, no, no, no, no. You know, we're not limiting it 1200 calories, that's a restriction.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Because humans love familiarity. I lost weight over six weeks on 1200 calories or 800 calories. I'm gonna go back and do that again. Rather than I'm gonna I'm gonna hang out around 1800 calories, be satisfied, move more, have more energy, not want to kill the family every week because I'm not hungry, angry, lethargic. Hangry, yeah, because you're hangry, yeah, yeah. It means I can have a Krispy Kreme now and again. That feels scary to do that. That feels scary to actually be nourished, energized, because in your head, the story is I have to suffer, I have to, it has to be hard, it has to be a badge of honor. I have to go to my friends and say, Yeah, I worked really hard because we're looking for love and success and adulation. Because somewhere in our lives, somewhere we didn't have that.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

There's the psychology piece.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

You gotta suffer. I've got to be a martyr to it.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Because it's always gotta be a struggle. That is interesting, Greg. It's always gonna be a struggle, always has to be a struggle. So those are some of the mindset woes that women of all ages are having. Of all ages, not just women over 50. I mean, we're we you know, this is designed for women over 50, whether you're 50, 60, 70, 80, even 90, right? But you can even in your 40s, right? But women everywhere. That is so interesting, the struggle. Because if we we want the attention when we look good, right? But then we want the attention as we're struggling through it too, to get there. Oh, I'm working so hard.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Well, if we look at life in general, it's almost a badge of honor to struggle. Oh, I I worked 75 hours this week. Oh, you know what, girlfriend? I worked 85 hours this week. Oh, I worked 95 and I did overtime. So if we listen, we can hear every time that we are looking for the struggle rather than saying, hey, do you know what? I've been losing body fat. I tracked my calories, and I know I know I'm gonna go and tell people how to do it without tracking calories. I track my calories, and I've been eating about 800 calories, and I've been full. I've been going to restaurants, I've been having your takeaway with the hubby, I feel energized, my gym workouts are awesome. Because this is what happens, and this has happened to so many of my clients. They come and work with me, they leave me in amazing shape. Their friends who are trying to lose weight question how they did it. And I'm sure the ladies, if any of you have you know lost some weight, got into good shape, you've had this where you've lost the weight, your friends say, How did you do it? You say, Well, I was I ate some protein, I ate some vegetables, some fats. I had about what you know, 1,600-700 calories, I trained three or four times a week and walked more, and I went to sleep on time. And they dismiss it and then start telling you how you should be doing it. And I know everyone listening to this podcast or this uh summit has has had that, and I'm sure you've had it before, Shrey, right? How did you lose the weight? Well, I just did these four or five things. Okay, well, I read yesterday that you should do the low-carb diet. This is what I'm gonna do. Instead of going line, I just follow the template. But no, I want to struggle. Oh, I need to do it by myself. That's another one for women, and this comes up in everyday life. You know, oh, I won't make the kids do any um of the housework, I must do it. Yeah, and this is gonna blow people's minds, and it's not connected, but you'll see how it's connected. If you go on social media, many women are talking about their other halves not helping around the house. This happens because of this. When we're growing up, we see things happen. Our generation probably saw our mums do lots of, or moms, the Americans, sorry. Um, okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

We saw we we have people from all over the world on here, Greg. So however, you know, you're in the United Kingdom, right? Yes, you're in the UK, so you you you say it how you want to say it because everybody, you know, we have other speakers from there too.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

It's just that my American clients, they always correct me and I'm like, I'm not gonna so what we've grown up with, we've seen maybe our mums, you know, doing lots of work around the house, doing everything around the house, while the husband maybe goes to work and comes home and sits on the sofa, relaxes. We then have kids, and we start to copy exactly what they do, but then the kids don't get involved because they just mirror what they see. But we're blatant, but then so what we're doing is we're just creating generations of people that won't help mum around the house. So I have to do it on my own, gotta do it on my own, I've got to do the weight loss on my own. I won't get help because I don't feel I deserve to get help, I shouldn't invest in getting help. How many times have, and the I'm asking the listening, the listeners, and the watchers, how many times have you said, Do you know what I'm gonna get help with my health? And then decided not to because you feel like A, you don't deserve it, or B, I can do it on my own.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Or you're feeling selfish if you do it for yourself and take care of yourself, exactly, then I'm being selfish, and then I feel guilty. Yeah, because why should I do that for me? I I have kids that I should be doing that for, or a husband, or a partner.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Exactly. So then what we're doing is we're teaching the next generation, if you have kids, that they should try and do everything by themselves, that they don't deserve to be happy and healthy, because it because they can see you struggle, they see everything you do. Your kids, kids are terrible like that. They see every little thing you might not think they see it, they see it, they see you tired, they see it, they see you trying to adjust your clothes all the time and not feeling comfortable, they see that, and they think that's normal because you're not role modeling the behavior saying, Hey kids, you know what? I need help with this stuff, I'm gonna go hire somebody to help me because I've got to do it on my own.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Very good. The you know, in this generation, like my mom stayed home and did all of the work. Dad was the provider, right? Mom did everything at home, so yeah, I can see that as you're telling that story. I'm like, yeah, it's exactly where that comes from. And not just myself. I always I always use myself as examples because it's just easy, right? Because I can relate to a lot of things, and so I can see some of the viewers probably going, oh yeah, mom was a stay stay-at-home mom. Some women started getting in the workforce, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

But my dad had go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead, good dad. I was just saying, my dad asked her to stay home with us kids after she went to college for two years. She was gonna be a teacher and then decided to stay home with us kids.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

See how it happens? And then you try and do everything on your own. The housework. So when I when I talk to clients, and I one of my first questions often is, is how does your house work? How do you what what chores do the kids have? And my clients are thinking, I thought I was going to get a nutrition plan. We'll come to that, but I want to know how your house works. Does your do your kids have chores? Do they have regular tasks that mean that you're not stressed all the time? Oh, actually. And then the light bulbs start going off, and then they come back and say, Greg, I've re-vamped my household, I'm happier, I feel better, I have time to exercise for me, I'm eating better, I'm a better partner, I have more energy for the kids.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Yeah, and you've lowered your stress because you're not doing all the things.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

And then all of a sudden you started to eat better. So in all of this, here's the thing. But we're not looking at the emotional and the energetic side of it.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Got it.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

So because we just love because we love to see tactics. What food should I be eating? I guarantee that 99% of people know what to eat. Everyone.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Yeah.

unknown 23:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Most of the women watching this know what they need to do.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

And it's easy to go into tactical mode, right? All right, so I'm that's it today. I'm gonna start with my protein. I'm gonna get my protein shake. I'm gonna get to the gym. Okay. But how is your environment shaped? What's your stress like? What's your what's your emotional needs? How much sleep are you getting? Do you move are you ready to move your body with intention, not to lose weight, but for a bigger purpose? So one of the first things I start clients with is we don't goal set, we dream set. Everyone's like, what dream set? Like, well, here's the thing. If there is no emotional connection to what you really want, because let's be honest, nobody really wants to lose weight.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Okay, go into that more.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Everyone wants to feel loved, attractive, safe, energized, happy. Nobody, whenever clients come to work with me, they never mention the scale weight ever again. They never they say, Greg, I'm strong, I can get into clothes, I'm doing I'm getting promotions at work. And I say, I thought you came to me to lose weight. I love that. Yeah, and then they're like, Oh, but my whole life has changed, and as a result of my whole whole life changing, I now love myself to nourish myself right, to move with intention, sleep properly, and not to do everything all the time. And this is why we fail. We keep going for the tactic because the tactic works short term. Yeah, I'm gonna eat more protein. How much how much protein do I need to eat each day? Like, I've had that question on repeat. And I'm like, well, here's my first question. What stops you from eating protein? I don't have time. Okay, awesome. What's the reason for not having time? Because I'm doing this, this, and this. Okay, awesome. Should we have a look at your calendar and see how we can look at your day to allow you to spend some time to make sure you've got the right food? Or should we not just get a meal delivery company to sort your food out for you? I can do that. Yes, you can do that. Oh, but that's cheating. No, it's not because we got this martyrdom to come again. Yeah. And if you're a woman who let's say you earn a hundred dollars an hour for your job, let's just we've got this thing tied up in well, if I cook every day, if I clean every day, that makes me a good woman. That's that's what happens. That is what happens for men, it's slightly different. Being a man is slightly different, but that's what we have. If I spend hours and hours with the kids, that makes me a good mum. Actually, you being happy, energized, healthy, uh teaches the kids how to do the same. Because that's the role of a parent. A tigress doesn't take the kids hunting, she goes off and hunts and brings it off back for the kids. And maybe, maybe they might play with they might have a baby. I'm sorry for the vegans, they might have a baby there where she'll teach them how to hunt, but all the time she's just teaching them, teaching, teaching, teaching. So they can then see how to hunt. So she might walk off and say, Stay here, but watch what I do. That's that's parenting. Sitting at home, just being with the child isn't always real parenting. Something I learned with my son, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah, and the the modeling that you're doing is educating, they like you said earlier in the interview, they pick up on everything, they're watching, they're watching everything you do, and even my um two-year-old granddaughter, all of a sudden she's she repeated somebody the other day and it was like, Whoa, where'd you get that from? You know, like seriously, like, okay, guys, we gotta clean it back up again.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Yeah, they hear everything. If you don't think they heard it, they heard it. They heard that you sleep every night, they heard that your skin, they see that your skin isn't always best because you're not hydrated, they see all of that. So, our goal as parents for me is to make sure they have the best start, and I can only give them the best start by being the role model.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Perfect. Perfect. I love that. So thank you for sharing all of this wisdom today, Greg. This is awesome. So you have a free guide for the viewers, my seven-day fat loss food guide. Can you tell us a little bit about that, please?

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Yeah, it's basically a tool that you know, a few of the ladies that come to work with me grabbed it before they came to work with me. They lost eight to ten pounds on it, and it just gives you a simple structure. Eat fruit, vegetables, eat protein at every meal with some amazing recipes as well. And if you follow it, you'll start to see results. I'm gonna caveat it right now.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

The ish, the the big thing is is it it's great on paper, but it is a tactic. So everyone go, grab it, download it, it's awesome. But there's always the other bit missing, which is the deeper work that we have to do on ourselves that supports the tactic. So it's an awesome guide. And every client I I've given it to or who's downloaded it before they've come to work with me, got great results. But it's it's a kickstart. But yeah, have had it.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Yeah, it's a it's a great way to get started, right? And the link is below the video for everyone watching. All you have to do is click it and and sign up for it. So you also have a bonus valued at$99, the five steps you need to lose weight masterclass. That's for anyone that signs up for the VIP All Access Pass, which means you purchase the recordings of our masterclass series. So can you tell us a little bit about this? About the bonus?

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Yeah, of course I can. So that was a masterclass to just break down the five steps simply, first of all, that people need to go through to get the result that they really want. Love that. And the beauty of it is you can apply it to every year of your life. Because that's the beauty.

unknown 30:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

How you do one thing is how you do everything.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

That is true. So, any last piece of advice or actual step you want to leave the viewers with today, Greg?

SPEAKER_00 31:06

I've got so many. I'm gonna go over a couple and I'm gonna be short, sharp, and sweet.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Calories matter. I don't care whether you count them or not. Okay, but overindulgence of food and underindulgence of food is not self-love.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Number two, how you do one thing is how you do everything. So if you're not taking your health seriously, or you have where you you know you're doing it once or twice, and you know, you know, you do the six weeks and then you stop. I guarantee that you're doing it in other areas of your life. So you're doing it in your business. This is why you don't have consistent income, or you're doing a relationship, which is why you have arguments with your partner or the kids every once in a while, because you haven't equalized it and made it part of you. Now, that's a whole nother conversation about making all of this part of you. It's a whole deeper level conversation. Um, and also just the last thing is before we look at all of the things like hormones and all the rest of it, let's check in with self and just say, Am I doing the things that my body will love? So, am I sleeping properly? Am I drinking water? Am I moving intentionally daily? That doesn't necessarily mean a hard gym workout every day, but get your heart rate up daily. Am I spending time in quietness for me, reading a book, doing us, doing suduko, meditation, tai chi, yoga, whatever? And am I just ask myself the question am I really giving myself real love or am I giving myself medication? Because when you start looking at give yourself medication, all of these things pop up on TikTok and tell you that you know, it's your hormones, it's your insulin, it's it's you're doing too much cardio, you know, in your heart, and if you look there, you'll find the answer. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Love that. Yep. Look into your heart. So wonderful advice. So for those of you tuning in, check out Greg's free seven-day fat loss guide. The link is below the video, along with his website, his social media, his ways to get a hold of Greg. Again, it's below the video. And then the VIP bonus from Greg is the five steps you need to lose weight masterclass. If you purchase the VIP, you not only get Greg's, you get all of the speaker bonuses worth over$2,500. So be sure to tune back in to the rest of our Weight Loss for Women Over 50 masterclass series. Thank you so much for joining us. And thank you, Greg Farrin. This has been awesome.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Thank you very much for having me.