Episode 29: Dietitian Approved Weight Loss Strategies (Realistic & Sustainable!)
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Episode Transcription
Participant #1:
I'm Emily and I'm Hannah. We are best friends and dietitians. We have a goal of challenging nutrition, misinformation and fitness trends with an evidencebased approach. Each episode we will dish up our thoughts about the latest facts on on a popular health related topic. Where are the upbeat dietitians?
Participant #1:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the upbeat Dietitians podcast. Hello, everyone. Welcome back. Today's episode is going to be all about us breaking down weight loss, which we probably didn't ever think we'd actually be doing. But here we are. We're going to be breaking down those sustainable strategies for weight loss because we always talk about what doesn't work for weight loss, what you shouldn't do. And today we're going to give a lot of tips and tricks and advice on what actually does work if you have weight loss goals, which leads me right into the first point, actually, is that you're allowed to want to lose weight. You're allowed to want to change the way your body looks. That's called body autonomy. However, I highly recommend putting weight loss on the back burner and really making the focus more about building these sustainable behavior changes because you have a lot more control over those. Then you do the number on the scale. So that's what we're going to be going over today. Absolutely. And one of the biggest things that we always preach in almost any episode that weight loss comes up in your weight or reaching a goal. Weight will not make you happy or it's not going to get rid of any other issues or problems that you have going on in your life. I've heard so many times be like, oh, I'll be so much happier. I'll be so much prettier. I'll be so much more like, well put together once I lose £20 and trust me and trust us, you will have the same exact problems now and then losing £20 is not going to get rid of those problems. There's a lot more that obviously there's a lot of, like, self esteem, body positivity things to work on, stuff like that and a specific number on the scale. This one factor is not going to turn your entire life around as much as it might be nice if life was that simple. But life is not that simple. Life is not that simple. No, so kind of. One of the biggest things we always talk about again is we just want to really reiterate that we want you to focus more on non scale victories rather than the number on the scale. And this is like how your clothes fit, how your energy is throughout the day, how you personally feel in your own body because the number on the scale is not going to be in a constant decline. It fluctuates every day. And even with weight loss, you might not see a decline immediately. Sometimes you do need to lose weight before you can. Sometimes you need to gain weight before you can lose weight. And Additionally, with weight loss, something I work with a lot of my patients with, and I'm sure Hannah has so much additional knowledge you can add, since this is kind of her forte is even if your goals are weight loss, you don't need a scale to measure your progress because there are so many other contributing factors we can focus on, like those non scale victories. So if you don't want to have a scale in your house and it's something really toxic and you have a really poor relationship with feel free to get rid of it. You don't need to keep that in your house, and if you don't want to completely get rid of it, just door in the back of a closet somewhere where it's not as easily accessible and you might not be tempted to weigh yourself frequently. Yeah, I work in a weight loss clinic where our goal is weight loss for these people that come to visit us. And I've had plenty of patients that I've encouraged them to throw the scale away. I know our goal is weight loss, but it's not helping you at all. You're just getting discouraged and never goes up a pound, which is so normal. I see anywhere from, like, I don't know, eight to twelve patients a day give or take. And I've never seen someone's weight loss graph just like shoot down. Every single person has their ups has their down. The fluctuations are always part of it. It's just not realistic. And if you do have that straight downhill slope really quickly losing weight, your chances of getting that weight back are very high because you probably lost it in a way that was just not realistic or sustainable for you. So yes, I definitely reiterate that throw the scale away. If it's not helping you. Even if you are wanting to lose weight, you don't have to be so focused on the scale if it's only making your journey more uncomfortable and stressful for you. Exactly. So to kind of get to the fun part, which we all know why you're kind of here today. You want to know, Emily? Hannah, what can I actually do? Like you telling me I don't need to focus on weight loss, but we are here to provide you with what you want. That is some sustainable and realistic tips that will not only help you kind of with your nutrition journey overall, but also specifically for weight loss. So kind of when the first one start off with is we want to make sure that we're including a protein fat and or some type of healthy protein fiber. Healthy protein fat. Healthy fiber. Yes, that is a combination starting off strong as opposed to the unhealthy fiber. I know my eyes play tricks on me, but yes, by doing so by adding these three components or at least one of these components that any eating occurrence you're allowing your body to feel full for a longer period of time. And this will also help stabilize your blood sugar levels, because especially if you're nearly starving yourself, you could be going into, like, shipping to the Hypoglycemic range, where the body actually will resist any type of weight loss when you're putting it under that much stress. And Additionally, we don't want you to feel like you're dying of hunger when you're trying to lose weight. So that's why we really want you to combine these components into your meal so that you feel full and satisfied for longer periods of time. Yeah. I always tell people that if your body is really focused on trying to manage your wacky roller coaster blood sugar levels, it's kind of a very hard time working with you on weight loss. It's kind of like a personification of what actually happens. But our body has a hard time allowing weight loss if your blood sugars are just all over the place. So getting in that protein fiber, healthy fat every eating period will help to stabilize those blood sugars. And along with that, it can be very helpful to eat every three to 4 hours. I think we discussed that in the Intermittent Fasting episode as well, but this also really helps with those stable blood sugars, and it prevents you from overeating later in the day, because if you say don't eat breakfast and you don't eat your first meal till noon, you're pretty likely to spend that afternoon overeating and overcompensating for not getting enough intake throughout the earlier part of the day. So trying to get in food, which includes protein, fiber and or healthy fat at each of those meals every three to 4 hours will be key. Exactly. And kind of I feel like something that a lot of people experience is like, oh, I was so good throughout the day and they had a salad and a piece of fruit and then they're like, but after 08:00 p.m. I just been so many carb heavy or like fatty foods, and I don't know what to do by eating every three to 4 hours. This will help reduce that chance of you binging at night because you won't feel as hungry in the evening. Yeah, that happens all the time. Everyone's always so proud of themselves for, like, not eating all day, but then it always backfires every single time. Yeah. Let yourself eat throughout the day. It'll only help you eating more will help you to eat less. So our next point is dipping into that fitness portion because this is a nutrition and fitness podcast. The next component kind of focus on with weight loss is incorporating more resistance training into your exercise regime. Resistance training is essentially like weightlifting stuff like that to kind of help you build muscle mass, because when you have more muscle mass on you, you're actually going to increase your metabolic rate over time. So that's why it's really awesome you will not get bulky. As we discussed. I think on a past episode with Damian, you can go check that out. The exercise professional episode one of those. But look out for Damian. Michael. He's the guest on that one. Yes, but by building more muscle, you're going to increase that metabolic rate and that will in turn help you lose weight over time. You don't need to kill yourself with Cardio. We don't want you to do that. Yeah, I don't recommend it. It'll just burn you out. And honestly, it might make your metabolism adapt even more to that lower level. It's just not a good thing. All right. Our next little point here is about food diaries, which are I feel very controversial amongst dietitians in terms of calorie counting, we all really enjoy them for like, if you are doing the FODMAP diet and you have to see what foods you tolerate and that kind of stuff, they can be really helpful. But in terms of calorie counting and food diaries, I feel like it's pretty controversial amongst even US dietitians. And the reason is my understanding of why it's so controversial is because it can be a very slippery slope into disordered eating habits for a lot of people, but not always. It is so dependent on the person and the reason why they're using it and their attitude towards using it. It can be a really good tool for a lot of people, especially people who are maybe just starting out and don't really have a good grasp on how many calories are in these certain snacks and meals and that kind of stuff. And it really is a learning tool more so than the lifeline where you're just dependent on it. And you have a freak out if you don't put in your meal exactly right in my fitness pal. And I always tell my patients and clients that if we are going to use a food diary together, I'm not going to allow them to use it until 95 years old. The goal is to just use it for a short time to help them learn what they need to learn, and then we'll eventually learn how to get away from it. And they can just maintain those habits long term. So if you do use a food diary for calorie counting, it can be very helpful for some because the amount of calories you eat, I mean, it really does dictate what your weight is going to look like, but that is a very oversimplified way of thinking about weight loss. Just calories in calories out. There's so much more to it than that. So as you can see, I am kind of wishy washy on the subject because it really is dependent on the person. There are some who can use it and do very well with it, and if they do, they shouldn't do it long term. And there are others who really should just be clear of it because again, it can be a very slippery slope. I agree. I think I'm definitely on the side of the spectrum. That's much more like anti tracking, just because a lot of, like, what I focus on improved, like, not that they're saying there's obviously nothing wrong with either reviews. It's just like what we focus on more as a dietitian, but I'm much more focused on, like, the mental health aspect. So that's where, like, if I ever had any of my patients check, I have it only for, like, one to two days. And I'm like, delete the app. Get rid of it because they kind of know when working with me like, we're going to work. We're not going to do this. Yeah, but you can totally go to, like, if that's your jam, though. There's dietitians out there that will utilize food diaries more. Yeah, they kind of swerve by them, and their clients love that. And I feel like most of dietitians who do encourage using them are very good about finding the balance between using it as a good tool, but not being obsessed with it. And that's usually where people go wrong with using them. Absolutely. Our next point is kind of not, I would say an everyday technique to implement, but just kind of more of a mindset for you to have is we don't really want you to strive for a weight loss 365 days a year, one you will get burnt out your entire year, which can turn into many years, which could potentially turn into, like, half your life for a lot of people. Where if you're striving for weight loss, you're just constantly trying to put yourself in a caloric deficit, trying to work on these other factors, trying to sometimes compensate with exercise. And not only is that really hard on your mental health, where it feels like your entire life, you're trying to achieve this weight loss and it's never happening. Your body is going to get so burnt out if you're maintaining those strategies for a long period of time. So it's okay. And we highly encourage you to allow periods of maintenance where the body can kind of adjust to where it's at. Right now, you shouldn't gain weight unless your initial management styles were very extreme. For instance, like a bad diet. If you go back to normal eating, there's a very high chance you'll gain the weight back. But by doing sustainable changes like this, you shouldn't gain all that weight back. Every person is different. So I could be completely wrong with you. Specifically, everyone's body reacts differently, but if you're doing it in a slow and sustainable way, you should be okay. But give your body a break. It doesn't want to lose weight all year. Yeah, and that actually is a good segue into the next point, which is a question that I get asked a lot, which is like, how much should I actually expect to lose if I am following these weight loss tips. And I hate answering this question because every single person is so different. But I know myself personally, I want hard data, tell me what I should do, what I should expect. And so I will say a good average sustainable weight loss goal is anywhere from I didn't say like a half a pound to £2 a week. And again, that is an average. It will look different even for you week to week, but also from every single person that will look different. There will be weeks that you might lose three or four weeks that you gain a couple. And that is just like part of the system. As we said earlier, no one's weight loss graph ever just like, goes straight down. That's just not how it works. So anyway, that number, I say with caution because again, every single person is different, but that is usually a good goal for most people. If you do want to have a number in mind, anything more than that, like on average, if you're losing, like £10 a week routinely, that is likely not going to last. So not only will it Plateau, but it will also not last in terms of you getting the weight back because you might have been doing it in unsustainable ways. And then you also risk losing muscle mass if you are losing weight too quickly, which is no Bueno for the metabolism because we want to, as Emily said earlier, have plenty of muscle mass to help keep our metabolism up and running in tip top shape. Next point is kind of another lifestyle change we recommend is we want to make sure you're getting the seven to 9 hours of sleep every night. Sleep is such a strong component and kind of our overall health and especially with the regulation of our hunger, hormones and other hormones in general. It kind of allows you to reset throughout the night. It allows the body to rest, kind of alleviate that stress. It's been in all day, and if you are kind of depriving yourself asleep, it can play a huge part in your weight loss journey and kind of the efficiency behind what everything is going on, and especially if you have noticed it's really late at night and you're feeling really hungry and you eat really close to bedtime. Have you ever noticed that you have trouble falling asleep? You have trouble staying asleep. That's because your blood sugar is kind of trying to figure yourself out. And typically when we're eating, we're going to be awake for a bit longer. But by eating so close to when you're sleeping, that really messes up a lot of the hormones. Your body is kind of trying to get all those incoming glucose under control and can disrupt your sleep schedule as well. So I typically recommend people don't need two to 3 hours before bedtime and I don't know what you recommend. I'd love to hear from you. But that's kind of my advice I give out. Yeah, I always say it really depends. Like, I take it situation situation because everyone always asks that too. That's a good point. Everyone always asks, like, Am I allowed to eat past 07:00 or is it going to all turn to fat? And if that's the question, then I'm like, no, you can eat past whatever time you want, as long as you don't find that it disrupts your sleep or causes, like, acid reflux or anything. So I always tell the person, pay attention. Like, if you do eat pretty close to bed, just make sure you see if it does play any role. But I think two to 3 hours is a good piece of advice. I also want to point out, too, that I know myself if I don't sleep well the next day, I just feel like super snacky. And so that's another reason why sleep is so important. I think for weight loss is like, if you don't sleep well, perhaps the next day you just feel like you're never satisfied no matter how much or what you eat. That's kind of like a personal thing. I've heard some patients say that too, but I just feel like the munchies come on strong if you get, like, 4 hours of sleep. Absolutely. All right. One last little bullet point for you, one last tip that we have for you. And it kind of goes along with the sleep, actually, because, well, I'll leave by saying that it is managing your stress. And stress can look like not getting enough sleep. But stress can also look like work, stress, school stress. It can look like the stress of doing three hour hit workout seven days a week. That is a big stressor to our body. But in general, having that chronic stress can lead to elevated cortisol, which is our stress hormone, and that can increase our appetite in those cravings as well, which of course, can negatively impact our weight loss goals and make it harder for us to manage our intake kind of similarly, along with that, when we do feel stressed, we often have a hard time making good decisions in terms of food. And sometimes emotional eating can come along with that. And as I'm sure we've said before, perhaps in, like, the intuitive eating episode, emotional eating can be okay to a point as long as you realize it's not going to fix the problem. And that goes with stress eating, too. So if you're eating just because you're stressed do realize that that's not going to fix the stress, you really do need to figure out other ways to cope with stress and other feelings that you have. If that's a struggle for you. Exactly. This is something I really like asking people, do you have good stress management techniques? And I would say 50% of the time they do 50% of the time. They're like, oh, I just kind of pushed through. I'm like, this is something really important that not only for weight loss, but also general health. Like stress impacts our health so much in every way possible. Like, I swear, every chronic condition, it's like increased risk under, like, high levels of stress for a long period of time. So whenever I learned about that, I remember in schools like, oh my gosh, I'm going to get every condition because I'm so stressed. But like, meditation is really awesome for stress. Breathing exercises are super simple. You can find them on YouTube. The call Math is available as well. Additionally, like, going on walks is a low intensity stress leaving activity as well as exercise. Exercise is kind of sometimes I like to put a little asterisk next to that because I'm like, let's not abuse exercise where we're kind of pushing ourselves to feel numb and nothing at all because we're putting our body to a different type of stress. And that's not going to help. But it's kind of really also like reading, listening to music, just like going outside and being in the sun that impacts our stress levels as well. It's kind of just figuring out what's works for you and actively doing something about it because I feel like this is kind of not nutritionally. This is a societal rant. I'm quite positive. I've gone on these before. Society teaches us to just push through, and it emphasizes overworking and like, burning yourself out. And that's not healthy. We need to stop romanticizing. That because life is short. You should not spend your entire life working or like being under high levels of stress and being miserable. Like, this is your life. You have the power to do something about it. There are things that are within our power. Those are things that are not. But stress management is something that if you don't have any good stress management techniques, I highly recommend that you find something that works for you because even the smallest things in the morning. I've heard that people have done meditation for ten to 15 minutes every morning, and it's changed their life. So just really finding kind of something that works for you and consciously making efforts to change your stress levels, because in turn, this could help you with weight loss. And also this could help you just be a happier person overall. Yeah. Preach, preach, end of rant, end of rant anyway, off the box. It's so true, though. Stress is like part of I feel like every single person's life. In my notes at work, we have a place to put barriers that patients have, and almost every single person I put stress in there, which is sad, but it proves our point very well. Yeah.
Participant #1:
Okay. So those are our tips, guys. We hope that those feel more realistic than, say, like cutting out carbs or only eating two days a week. Or. I don't know, there's thousands of fad diets out there, whichever one you've done the most recently but seems more sustainable than that because there are just a ton of issues with bad diets and especially with weight loss. That's usually the goal of doing them is weight loss. They're just not sustainable. They are often so restrictive. They have a lot of random rules, usually that don't really make a lot of sense. Like keto, for example, tune into the episode if you want to hear about our thoughts on keto, people who do these diets often don't maintain the weight loss. I have so many situations I can think of with patients and clients that have told me the diet they've done and how they're at their heaviest weight than ever after doing those diets, people often gain all the weight back within two years, if not sooner than that. So truly sustainable. Weight loss will coincide with realistic and maintainable changes. It's the way to go.
Participant #1:
This is not a fad diet episode, but we like to have kind of final thoughts for what we'd love for you to take away from this. If you didn't take anything away, we're about to talk about. We hope something resonated with you. But Additionally, if you are struggling with weight loss, it is so important that you work with a dietitian who has the proper training and qualifications to do so. There's so much that goes into weight loss in the discussion of weight losses we talked about like haze. We've talked about intuitive eating. We talked about societies like perception of weight loss and how the diet industry always pushes for the weight loss agenda. There's so much that goes into it than just telling someone this is how many calories you should eat or this is how many macros you should eat every day. Dietitians have that counseling and behavioral health background so they can effectively help you make individualistic changes to your life that will actually benefit you rather than just giving you a number to focus on and telling you to track. Yeah.
Participant #1:
If you couldn't tell what I was hinting at. One of the biggest things we've seen with especially influencers where they preach weight loss. And they are health coaches or nutrition coaches or whatever lifestyle coaches, whatever they want to call themselves. And if they use their own testimonial as kind of their qualification like, look at me. I lost £60 in two months. Therefore, I am qualified to give nutrition advice
Participant #1:
respectfully. No, just because I personally know how to speed up my like as a runner, I know how to make myself run faster with my training. That does not mean I'm qualified to go coach like a collegiate team of track and field. Absolutely not. I do not have the qualifications and I do not have the educational background or even experience or anything. So just remember whenever you're seeing those, like four or four and after posts are like transformation posts. That's such a big thing with companies. They're like, join our transformation, and then they show you all these coaches that have lost weight, and then they're like, going to be your weight loss coach. Just keep that in mind that you don't know what they did to change their lifestyle to get weight loss. You don't even know if that's accurate. What they're showing you just another big thing. Like, they could tell you they lost in that amount of time. That could be a complete lie. It could be photoshopped. There are so many things that go into social media is fake. I've been realizing that more and more as I've been on Tik Tokyo, we've all known this, but it's kind of the deeper you go in. You're like, wow, no one's real on me. You can't trust anything you see, like, anything at all. No. So just keep that in mind when you're scrolling through Instagram, scrolling through TikTok. Whatever else is really
Participant #1:
Facebook. Maybe if you're in your 30s. Yeah. Facebook, YouTube, YouTube, just keep that in mind. And then kind of just re emphasizing sustainable, small changes are the way to go. You might not see the progress as quickly as you'd like, but it's important to keep in mind with weight loss. It's not something that can be done in one week or two weeks. Yeah. Depending on how much weight you're going to lose, and even then, it can take, like, at least a month. It could take three months. It could take six months. This is not something that as much as we know you don't want to hear it. It is not something that will be a quick fix overnight or a couple of weeks. It's something that really you kind of need to put in the dedication over a longer period of time, and then you have the struggle of maintaining it, too. That's another battle you have to fight once you get to your goal. Weight, whatever that is, whatever feels good for you, you then have to keep those habits going forever instead of going back to whatever it was in the past that led to you being at a weight you didn't feel comfortable at. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I would say one last thing on this is again, I want to reiterate that. I know weight loss is very controversial and depending what communities you are in, I don't know if you guys follow other dietitians or whoever else other health professionals, but it is very controversial, especially now with, like, Emily said, Hayes and intuitive eating and all of that. And there are even some dietitians who will not even touch on weight loss. And I totally get that because we have seen time and time again that weight loss is not always sustainable for a lot of people. The weight does often come back. But I do want to just make the point that if you do want to lose weight, that is okay. But like we said, throughout this entire episode, make sure you're just going about it in the right way by working with a dietitian and really focusing on fixing or not fixing, making changes to your habits. That's the biggest thing. Instead of just doing fat diets, I think those are the ones that we obviously want to steer clear from. Absolutely
Participant #1:
cool. So that wraps up kind of this episode. But as always, we have to end on a pod note, which is our bonus question. And this week's bonus question is, what is the proper way to make a PB and J sandwich? Well, I take the floor. I feel like for you, I'm a little concerned, and I can't even look you in the eye talking about peanut butter, since you apparently don't like it that much. But whatever. I'll tell you what I do, because I actually eat these. Okay, here's what I do. If you guys want to know what kind of peanut butter we like, or at least what I like, what episode was that? I don't even remember. I'm throwing a lot of shit at you. I'm sorry. We've talked about peanut butter multiple times. I don't know. Look back, listen to all of them. You'll figure it out eventually.
Participant #1:
Yeah. Okay. Anyway, actually, I mix it up between creamy and crunchy, but that's not the question. Okay, so I get my two slices of bread. I like to toast them. I just like that it adds more texture. If I toast it, I know I toast it, and then I have two utensils to spread stuff. I don't like using the same one because then you get, like, peanut butter in the jelly jar or jelly in the peanut butter jar. Wash two utensils. I just put them in the dishwasher, so it's fine. It takes up like, a centimeter of space. You don't get to make judgments on this because you don't even like peanut butter. So what do you know? The buzz? I automatically lose this question. Did I take this question or did you? Because I feel like if I picked it just to be mean to you, that says a lot about me, but I swear, I didn't think about all this when I picked the question. Okay. Anyway, I toast my bread, I put it on a plate, and then I usually get a butter knife, and I spread the peanut butter on one side on the one slice, and then on the other slice, I get either a spoon or a butter knife. Spoons are just easier to scoop the jelly out, because if you like, get a knife and get the jelly out, it slides all over the knife and you can't get a good hunk of jelly. So I like to use a spoon on the jelly on the other slice of bread, and then Bam, put them together, PB and J, and then I slice it down the middle, not diagonally. Interesting. Okay. Are you ready? So when I choose to eat peanut butter and jellies, which is like once a year, maybe. Or like once every two years. It's typically when I'm hiking, and that's a really easy thing to bring. I'll do creamy peanut butter, even though I know in the question I said chunky peanut butter, but that's how I like it on, like, peanut butter, toast or waffles. But if it's a sandwich, I like creamy peanut butter, but I'll do creamy peanut butter with a knife and whatever bread I so desire. I'm not really that picky me neither. And then I'll scrape my knife and I'll stick it into the jelly jar. Oh, that's how you guys do it. But then what I do is I tilt the jelly or the jam jar, so I just had to push it out. Okay. That's good, because it tips off. Yeah. I like the Berry jams. Sometimes I'll add fresh berries, too. I'll do a jelly and I'll add berries, for example. That's really good. It sounds so good. Yeah. I cut mine diagonally, though. I am a child, I feel like no matter how you cut it, if you cut it, it's kind of childish and juvenile. It makes it taste better sometimes. Only they didn't do it in, like, fours. That's what I'm feeling really wild. I love to cut wraps in half, too. It's just so much more fun. Like a restaurant. Eat the middle of a wrap. That first bite is, like the actual middle of it, not the button. You can see it. So it's like, next. Yeah. Aesthetically can't say that word. It's pleasing to look at. Yes. Cool. And that's how you do a PB. And J. Okay, well, thank you guys so much for listening. As always, we hope that you learn something new. Took something from this.
Participant #1:
Wow. Outros are hard. I feel like you always do them. And now I have to do it today, and I'll say, all right, I'm just going to keep it short then, so I don't make myself look like a real crazy person. Thank you guys for listening. We will see you in the next one. All right. Bye, everyone. Bye.
