Legacy Transformation Coaching Week 6

 In this week's episode Corinne tackles one of the most misunderstood topics in women's health — calorie awareness. And it is not what you think. This is not about counting every number or eating less. It is about understanding what food actually does in your body. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

This week we cover:

Why calorie awareness is one of the most significant breakthroughs women experience in this program — and why it has nothing to do with restriction

The volume eating concept — how whole foods let you eat more while consuming fewer calories, with real visual comparisons that will change the way you see your plate

Bites, licks and picks — the unconscious eating habits that quietly add up and how to bring awareness to them without guilt or judgment

Liquid calories revisited — the drinks that are working against you and the smarter swaps that still feel like a treat

Smart food swaps — practical alternatives that give you more satisfaction for fewer calories

Self-sabotage — what is really driving it, and a powerful mirror exercise to help you uncover the answers

Your action steps for the week — food diary specificity, the Share Your Sabotage exercise, and checking in with your hunger scale

This episode is one of the most eye-opening in the program. Come ready to see your food choices in a completely new way.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey team, welcome to week six. Can you believe we're six weeks in? So massive congrats for making it this far. Be proud of the fact that you're still showing up and hopefully you're starting to feel the benefits of those habits that you're shifting. Even if you can't quite measure it yet, your habits are forming, the thinking is changing, and just trust that that is the work and that you're doing it. So this week I want to share something that really changes the way that women see food, and it really is one of my favorite topics in the whole program. And I think a lot of you are probably going to resonate with it too, and hopefully it will be a bit of an aha moment for you. So this week we're going to chat about calorie awareness. And what I want to just be clear on from the start is that this isn't a lesson about how to count calories, but it is about understanding them. And there is a very big difference. So let's get into it. So for our health track this week, we're looking at volume eating. Why you can eat more food, feel more satisfied, and still be moving towards your goals. We're also going to look at why women who struggle most are often the ones that eat the least. And as always, be sure to read all the details in this week's content within the app as it unfolds. So here's something that I want you to sit with. Have you ever eaten something, like a handful of crackers or a couple of squares of chocolates, maybe a small bowl of chips, and found that you were still hungry 10 minutes later? Maybe even hungrier. And on the flip side, have you ever had a huge bowl of salad with chicken and roasted vegetables, avocado, and then felt truly and deeply satisfied, not just for an hour, but for three or four hours. That's not a coincidence and it's not willpower. It's how your body is designed to work. Your brain signals for you to stop eating based on two things. It's the stretch receptors in your stomach, they respond to the volume and the nutrient receptors, which respond to protein, fiber, the micronutrients. So when both of these signals are satisfied, you feel full. When neither is satisfied, even if you've consumed plenty of calories, you want more. Your body is still not satisfied because the stretch receptors and the nutrient receptors haven't had their needs met, and so the body signals for you to continue eating. And this is the fundamental problem with highly processed foods. They are designed to be calorie dense and volume poor. A small handful of chips, a tiny chocolate bar, a coffee with full cream milk and a muffin. These things stack up calories fast without triggering your fullness signals, which is why it's genuinely hard to stop eating them. Not because you lack control, but because the signals aren't being met. Now here's the flip side, and this is the part I love. It's very difficult to overeat whole plant-based foods and lean protein. It's not impossible, but it is very difficult because these foods are volume rich and nutrient dense. They fill your stomach, they satisfy your nutrient receptors, and they keep you full for hours. And the calorie count of these foods is often surprisingly low, so you can eat large volumes of it. Now let me give you a visual to help illustrate this, and you can see this in your Health Track lesson within the app, but also within your booklet and in your resources folder. You'll find the food volume versus calorie comparison sheet. So let's start with the 300 calories. On one plate, you've got a plain cheeseburger, bun, beef patty, cheese, ketchup, mustard pickles, done. On the other plate, you've got 100 grams of grilled chicken, a cup of broccoli, half a cup of green beans, carrot, capsicum, a cup of spinach, and a drizzle of olive oil. All the same calories. But what I really want you to see is the volume difference. You could never eat that much food in one sitting and still be hungry. But you could eat that cheeseburger and easily want another one. And it scales up. 500 calories gets you a huge tuna salad with mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, capsicum, mushroom, balsamic dressing, or a single quarter pounder. That's it, just the burger. And when we look at what 700 calories looks like on the plate, you're talking about three generous bowls of chicken, chickpeas, mixed salad with steamed vegetables, or a cheeseburger and large fries. 900 calories is an entire spread of chicken, tuna, chickpeas, roasted vegetables, lean steak, or a quarter pounder and large fries. And here's the thing that really lands. And here's the one that I hope truly lands it for you. Just under 1500 calories, we're gonna get Greek yogurt with berries, a tuna salad, a chicken salad, steamed vegetables, hummus and veggies, lean steak with roasted vegetables, fruit and cottage cheese. Basically a full day of food. That or two quarter pounders and a large fries, which comes just under 1,500 calories on its own. So that is the shift. Caloriewareness isn't about eating less, it's about eating more of the right things. We're not saying you need to eat bland vegetables with no sauces or dressings or condiments. We want you to make your food tasty and enjoyable. However, uh this worksheet is simply about seeing how much food you can actually eat when it when you're choosing from whole foods with lean protein sources. You never have to eat less food, we just have to switch the amounts and the quantities and making sure that we're getting enough volume and enough nutrition to meet the stretch receptors in our stomach as well as the nutrient receptors in our stomach, so that we're not walking around being hungry all the time. And one more point I'd want to bring home here is that tracking accurately and measuring quantities, it does matter. For example, a tablespoon of peanut butter sounds small, but depending on how generous that tablespoon is, it can weigh anywhere anywhere between 10 and 30 grams. My husband's tablespoons of peanut butter are ginormous and they're definitely 30 grams plus. So that difference accounts for anywhere between 50 and 200 calories. So that's 140 calorie difference from one tablespoon of peanut butter to another. So this is why tracking your food accurately, if you are using MyFitness Pal, you do need to spend some time actually measuring and weighing your food until you can get really confident that you can eyeball it and you know what 10 grams looks like. And it's not to obsess over every number, but it's to build that awareness. When you start to actually pay attention to what's going on, the patterns start to emerge. And those patterns are where the coaching conversation really begins. It's when you start to trust yourself because you know what your food is made up of and how it's meeting your needs and it's in line with your goals. If you're tracking with my fitness pal or a food diary, that's brilliant. I want you to keep going with that. If you've been a little bit loose with it, it's time to sort of get a bit more focused now and to really commit to getting accuracy because that does matter. If you're under-recording what you're eating, it's going to be showing in your data entries. You may not be seeing the weight drop as much as you would like to. And that's because you're forgetting to record accurately and you might be miscalculating by hundreds of calories a day. If you're having an extra 10 grams of peanut butter, if you're having the lit the licks and the bites of the kids' snacks, you're having a piece, a handful of chips here and there, you could easily have had two or three hundred calories more than what we were planning or what we were targeting. And a little quick note while we're on this, if you are interested in taking your tracking to the next level, then a set of kitchen scales is generally one of the best investments that you can make. They cost around $10 at Kmart or any supermarket, and make sure you get some digital ones, but they can take the guesswork out of the portions completely. They're not essential, but if you want precision and to more accurately be able to predict your weight loss journey and to be more accurately able to hit your targets, then I would definitely say it's worth the investment. And one more thing to touch on for your health track this week is the bites and the licks and the picks that fly under the radar. We talked about liquid calories in week four, and this is the food equivalent. It's the little taste while you're cooking, it's the handful of kids' chips while you're packing their lunch box, or the bite of their donut, the three crackers you grab before you make dinner, the handful of MMs or the chocolate at work. These things don't feel like eating, but they are calories and they do add up. 50 calories here and there, by the end of the day, you've consumed maybe three, four hundred calories that you didn't even register and that never made it into your food diary. And this is the key here awareness. It's the tool. It's not about restriction, but it is about noticing and having awareness around what you're eating and eating more consciously. When we eat more consciously, we can decide whether it's worth it and we can plan for it accordingly. Now, let's move on to your mindset track for this week. And this one does feel a little confronting at times, but it's in a really empowering way. Your mindset lesson this week is about self-sabotage, and it really is worth reading in full and going through the exercise in full because it does go deep and it does have a really positive, empowering impact on you when you take this seriously. But for now, here's what I want to touch on. So we've spent six weeks now talking about what to eat, how to move, how to set up your environment, and yet most of us know someone, maybe ourselves, who has all the knowledge and still can't quite get there consistently. They start well, they have a great week, and then something happens and they undo it all. Why do we sabotage ourselves? And it really is a question worth asking yourself honestly. And the answer is almost never about food. Sometimes it's about fear, fear of what success might look like, fear of standing out, fear of change. Sometimes it's a deep-seated belief that we're not someone who can maintain this. Sometimes it's comfort because the familiar pattern, even when it's not serving us, feels safe and comfortable. The mirror exercise in your action track this week is one of the most powerful tools that you can use in this program to help uncover this for yourself. And I'd really encourage you to do it properly, on your own, and with enough time to let it work. It can feel a little uncomfortable, but that's okay. That discomfort is information, it's part of the process. And when you know why you sabotage, you again become conscious of it and you can address it. Again, without awareness, we can't change. Awareness is the key to change. So when it stays unconscious, it just keeps that program running. So your action track for this week has two things. First, your food diary this week, and I want you to be a little bit more specific. Don't just write down chicken and salad, write how much chicken, what went in the salad, how much dressing, what type of dressing. The more specific you are, the more we can actually help you. So pay attention as well to the bites and the licks and the picks. All those little tastes add up. And like we said, they don't feel like eating, but they are included in your daily calorie count. Secondly, let's do the share your sabotage exercise. This is in your action track lesson in the app, and I want you to try and make some time to do it this week. Don't just read it, find a private moment, stand in front of the mirror, set the timer for three minutes minimum, and look yourself in the eye and talk out loud through those questions. I'll share them with you now. What are you doing to sabotage your results? Why are you doing it? How does it make you feel when you sabotage yourself? What are you afraid of? Keep talking. Even if it feels uncomfortable or like you're rambling, the answers often come after the resistance goes. So write down what comes up for you, and if you want to share it in your check-in, we as coaches would absolutely love to hear it. This is one of the most valuable conversations that we have because it's that aha moment for you where you realize that you are in the driving seat and that you are aware enough to be able to override old patterns, old ways of thinking that no longer align with the future vision that you have for yourself. So that's it for today, team. Congratulations on being six weeks in. You're more than halfway. And the real work, the internal work, that's really starting to deepen now. So make sure you listen to it, make sure you lean in, because this is where lasting change actually happens. Starts from within. Keep building, and I'll see you in the next lesson.