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You're listening to episode number 12 of the fat fueLled female podcast.
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Welcome to the fat fueled female podcast. I'm your host, Marja Chow, a holistic nutritionist, personal trainer and proud dog mama of two. I am obsessed with helping women achieve their goals, feel confident in their skin, and become empowered health advocates. This podcast is designed to help ambitious women thrive on a low carb, high fat lifestyle. So tune in each week as we talk all aspects of nutrition, improving your fitness, enhancing your mindset so that you can take inspired action and live your best life all starting from the inside out. So let's get started podcast. So happy to have you here with me today.
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As we go over such an important topic, why cutting calories to lose weight is some of the worst advice you can take.
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Now most people think that you have to eat less to lose weight. But that may be one of the biggest myths in the weight loss industry. And I understand why you would think that as mainstream media suggests you have to be in a calorie deficit for weight loss to be successful. A
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nd many weight loss programs entire protocol is based on participants eating low calorie diets like Dr. Bernstein, I think I think participants ate like 800 to 1000 calories, or the HCG diet. I know participants eat anywhere from like 500 to 800 on that as well.
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And that is just crazy, because that drastically lowers your metabolic health and your metabolic function.
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So you know, like, let me ask you, has there been a time in your life, where you followed a really low calorie intake, where you had to white knuckle it through the hunger pains, with less than optimal results to show for all the suffering you had to go through?
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If cutting calories was all we needed, then what an everyone who cut their calories lose the weight they wanted. And even if you were to lose weight by eating less, how many times has the weight just come back?
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Clearly, only reducing calories by itself isn't the answer. In fact, if you keep on holding on to this belief that it's all about restriction and cutting calories. Y
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our metabolic health can be affected by slowing every biological process down. This is referred to as metabolic adaptation. It's not a good thing, it's not a bad thing.
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It's just our bodies adapt to the amount of food that is coming in, our body adapts to the environment. So if you are consistently eating 1000 calories, your body is consistent to running off of and burning through 1000.
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Or if you're eating 3000 your body becomes consistent and efficient at operating and running off of 3000 calories.
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So if you keep on holding on to this belief, you can actually increase body fat because you're eating so low and most people can't sustain running off of 500 600 700 1000 1100 1200 calories.
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That what happens is when you eat a lot of the times it's like you over indulge because your body is like screaming for nutrients screaming for food.
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And then you can pack the pounds on relatively quickly. If you keep with this cycle of like overindulging emotionally eating or even binge eating.
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And you know, when you just are focusing on calories, there's so much mental and emotional distress that goes along with continuously dieting and restricting food.
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But there is one thing that almost everyone who has lost weight and been successful at keeping it off has focused on and that is reducing inflammation in the body by eating a lot of high quality fats.
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Fats unlike carbohydrates, they provide long, sustainable energy. They keep you feeling full, they don't spike your blood sugar so your energy is more stable.
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I give this analogy to clients. When you eat carbs every meal, your your energy and your blood sugar can be like a wild roller coaster going up and down, up and down.
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Whereas when you consume more fats and proteins, your energy and your blood sugar is like the toddler the toddler rollercoaster. It's like these little like small little peaks and valleys but it's nothing dramatic and extreme, like a really scary roller coaster.
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Now think of the show The Biggest Loser Right, contestants lost massive amounts of weight by eating a low like a low really low calorie intake, and especially for how active they were, and how big these participants were, when starting, like when starting their health and weight loss journeys, right.
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Like, I remember watching that show. And I remember participants are eating like 1200 1300 1400 calories, and it's like, and they were exercising multiple times a day.
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And when you look at those participants, when the show was over, and they went back to their regular lives, a lot of the contestants gain the weight back plus more. And it's because participants followed really low calorie, low fat diets.
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And a lot of the times why people fall off the quote unquote wagon, and can't stick with their health protocol is because the methodology, the diet, how you're setting the person up, isn't sustainable in the first place.
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You know, you can't expect to thrive and feel your best if you're continuously stripping the body from nutrients.
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So instead of looking at only calories and food, you got to look at digestibility foods that reduce inflammation, you know, anti nutrients, foods that actually affect the absorption of minerals.
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I like to give this analogy, think of your body as a beautiful, intrinsic chemistry lab doing so many things over a basic calculator, which only has one function.
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So holding on to this belief that weight loss is only about reducing calories, will cause many women to jump from diet to diet, where starting fresh on Monday is this regular occurrence. And what I refer to as the weight loss circle of frustration.
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And unfortunately, you can't diet through a faulty metabolism, and inflamed body and expect to get results that last.
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Remember, instead of looking at only the calories and food, let's look at food quality.
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Food is medicine, a medicine is food, and how high quality fats can curb appetite and reduce inflammation.
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You get healthy by eating high quality fats, better quality foods, and losing weight will be a RESULT of reducing inflammation and having better health.
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In my signature coaching program, the fat fuelled female method, there is a 3 part framework clients go through Foundation, Fasting and Fuel up. And that brings women from having that dieters mindset into having freedom over food, a healthy metabolism with results that last.
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So phase one, the foundational phase is exactly what it sounds like. It's foundational. It's like when you build a house, you need to have a strong base, a strong framework to create a sturdy home that lasts you need to pour the concrete down.
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You can't pour sand and straw and expect that your house is going to last for years or decades or it's going to be able to withstand different weather conditions like it won't if you build your hose with sand and straw.
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So many women, when they're committed to losing weight, they're like, Yep, I'm ready. Here we go. Here we go. The first thing many women do is they slash the calories.
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And this can be a temporary solution. But it's really dependent on your metabolic health, where your starting point is, and it's going to be so different from person to person.
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If you were to put, you know, your weight loss goals in an app like My Fitness Pal, your activity level, how much you currently weigh, the app is going to spit out a generic number for you.
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And for many women, it's going to be under what I found your total daily energy expenditure. And that is basically how much energy how much calories you should approximately be eating a day.
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So although an app might give you a number A). it may be way low and B) it doesn't take into consideration with how much food you are actually eating.
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For example, say say when you input all this information, it says you should be eating 2000 calories, but you're eating like 1000 calories. Obviously that It's not going to be a great starting point, because that's not even where you are.
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So the problem is, for many women, what I found is many women are under eating, they are like, we have just been like conditioned and programmed to think that less food is better.
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And the less we eat, the closer to our results we will get. And, you know, this way of thinking is so backwards. And I use to think like this for years. And so I understand why many, many women get caught in the cycle of just reducing, reducing, reducing reducing their food.
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So in the foundational phase 1 you know, I teach, I explain and teach women how to set their macronutrients. So your carbs, proteins and fats in a way that works with your metabolism in the long run.
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So your body works for you and not against you, you have to make sure you are eating enough food before you decide to reduce your calories and go into a calorie deficit.
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For example, if you're eating 1200 calories, you're like, Okay, I'm gonna go into a calorie deficit. It's like, where are you going?
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How are you going to survive and thrive, you're just going to survive, and I'm going to thrive on like 800 calories.
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And when you do that, you disrupt so many signals, from your brain, to your body with your hunger, hormones, everything.
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So when you go into these extreme calorie deficits, you really are doing more harm on your body, your metabolism, and your mindset in the long run.
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So in my three part framework, the fat fueled female method, it's a rinse and repeat system. So you can go through the program and understand what these numbers mean, how to adjust them, and I get it macros and tracking is not something many people want to do forever.
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And I agree, like, it's not if someone tells you, hey, you got to track your food forever. It's like what that's like a, like a part time job, right?
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But what I have found is tracking your food will help you with your progress, and understand your nutrition and your body so much more. And it'll give you education around nutrition.
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I explained it like this, when you first are learning to ride a bike you have your training wheels on. And then when you can balance and steer and you feel confident, you get rid of those training wheels. and off you go.
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I always say it's really hard to improve what you can't measure or can't see. So tracking, you use it for a certain amount of time you do inventory on yourself, you get some data, and then you decide where you want to move forward from that.
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So if you're not going to be like 90% of people, yeah, 90% of people who lose weight, gain it back plus more in approximately 18 months. So if you're not going to be like 90% of the people who lose the weight begin to back, then, you know, you need to have a different approach.
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It's not just about cutting calories. And if you're working with a coach or looking at nutrition program, and the program is solely based just on calories, and there is no teaching about food quality ingredients, and it's not about sustainable weight loss, I would run the other way.
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Because we as a society are great at losing weight, we're just not great at keeping it off. So I would be very skeptical about joining any program pr working with any nutritionist or coach whose main factor is only calories.
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So are you gonna be the type of person that you know looks at weight loss and food is merely a numbers game and spends so much of your time going for the low calorie nutrient void foods that make you feel like garbage?
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Or are you going to be the type of person that puts in the time to restore your health? Again, when women are committed to losing weight, they're like why is the weight not coming off fast enough and healthy weight loss is not like lose 10 pounds in 10 days.
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I say healthy weight loss is around 1 to 2.5 pounds Max and that's more on the higher end per week right and every body is different. If you have more weight to lose, you generally will lose weight quicker than someone who has like the last 10 pounds to lose, right?
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So stoplooking at food as nearly a numbers game and your weight loss journey as a numbers game look at it as nourishment, life force to get results that last.
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So that is everything for today's episode. If you feel you want some extra support with your nutrition and health journey, feel free to join my private Facebook group the fat fuelled female method on Facebook. I will leave the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Have a freaking fabulous day and I will catch you next week.
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Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. And if you feel you got some extra value from this episode, it would mean the world to me. If you could head over to Apple podcasts or whatever service you're listening to this podcast on. Drop a five star review. Let me know your thoughts in the show. Doing this really helps more people like yourself by the podcast. And if you're not already following me on social media right now is the time you can find me on Instagram at Marja Chow for all your nutrition tips, tricks and inspiration or visit my website at fatfuelledfemale.com where you can download my free seven day keto meal plan with recipes. Thanks so much for tuning in and I will catch you next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
