The Simplicity of Wellness Podcast
The Simplicity of Wellness podcast is about learning how to bring your body into balance so that you get leaner, stronger and healthier as you age. Each week I'll share thoughts and ideas that help my clients build the self-awareness, self-confidence and self-reliance to lose weight, shed inches, manage muscle mass and master their mind so that they can stop dieting and enjoy living at their healthy weight with optimal wellness.
The Simplicity of Wellness Podcast
Your Food Bliss Point: The Perfect Combination of Protein, Fat & Carbs For You
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Unlock the secret to transforming your nutrition and weight management approach with the concept of the "food bliss point." Discover how anchoring your diet with 40% protein can revolutionize how you balance carbs and fats, tailored to meet your unique body and lifestyle needs. This episode promises to help you break free from the relentless cycle of bingeing and restricting, guiding you toward a sustainable, joyous way of eating. I’ll walk you through pinpointing your personal bliss point, a game-changing strategy to manage hunger, avoid food emergencies, and make empowered, mindful food choices.
As we approach the festive season, delve into how your food bliss point can shift with your goals, supporting both weight loss and a healthy lifestyle. Whether you're maintaining your weight or fueling an energy-demanding lifestyle, food freedom is about meeting your nutritional needs without sacrificing pleasure. My coaching program is designed to help you navigate this journey, enabling you to become leaner, stronger, and healthier. It's time to embrace a harmonious balance between joy and progress, and take charge of your wellness journey today.
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Welcome to the Simplicity of Wellness podcast. I'm your host, board-certified holistic nutritionist and professional life coach, amy White. The purpose of this podcast is to share information that you can use to become leaner, stronger and healthier by losing weight, shedding inches, maintaining muscle and managing your mind, all while living your normal busy life in this modern, sugar-filled world.
Speaker 2:Hello Simplifiers. In the previous podcast episode I talked a lot about protein and how, when included in your diet properly, it's a game-changer for weight loss. But it's not just about protein. It's using protein as the anchor to dial in your carbs and fats so that you can lose weight without the binge restrict cycle that often happens with traditional restrictive dieting. Today I'm going to talk about finding your personal food bliss point.
Speaker 2:Your bliss point is the point at which your healthy diet feels right. You feel balanced and you're not thinking about building in cheat days. Your appetite is calm and easy to satisfy. You don't have food emergencies. A food emergency is that surprise moment when you're hit with demanding hunger. That needs to be taken care of immediately, because all you can think about is food. But worse, you know if you don't get some food, you're going to have a full-blown adult temper tantrum. That is a food emergency, going from zero to a hundred in the blink of an eye. You're not hungry, but then you're so hungry you can't even function. I call this going from red to green. It's grabbing whatever you can get your hands on as fast as you can and then also eating it as fast as you can. It's you feeling controlled by food.
Speaker 2:When you're living at your food bliss point, your hunger hits as a suggestion. You have a thought about food and you wonder when was the last time you ate. You check the time and realize it's been about four hours. You don't panic because you're not overly hungry. You're starting to get hungry. This gives you time to decide when and what you want to eat. This is you having control over food. You're calm. You think about what you'd like to eat. You make choices based on how you want to feel and what your body goals are. Your food bliss point is the perfect combination of protein, fats and carbs for you. You feel good, your appetite is calm, your cravings are soothed, your energy is up and your mood feels stable. Your bliss point can, and likely will, change as your goals change. For example, if you have a weight loss goal, the combination of protein, carbs and fats that create that sense of food bliss that makes weight loss feel easy will be different than the combination of those macros when you hit your maintenance phase.
Speaker 2:I want you to think of a U-shaped curve. This curve is your healthy diet weight loss curve. Your weight loss sweet spot will be at the top of this curve, the left side and the right side will be weight loss misery. Since this is a weight loss U-curve and we're shooting for the sweet spot at the top of the curve, you're going to anchor your protein macro so that you're getting 40% of your calories from protein. That means that 60% of your calories will be coming from carbs and fats. Your weight loss food bliss point will be how these macros are divided up to best suit your body. We know that protein is set. It's anchored as 40% of your calories. How you distribute your carbs and fats will be how you dial in your unique food bliss point. Your body is different from my body, your mom's body, your best friend's body, so the combination of carbs and fats that works best for you and your body will be unique.
Speaker 2:When your combination of protein, carbs and fats is out of balance for your goals and body needs, you'll find that you don't feel great and weight loss will feel really hard. This is why, when most people jump into fad dieting trends, they don't get results. The parameters of the dieting trend don't line up with what your body wants and needs to feel best. When you think of your healthy weight loss U-shaped curve, those dieting trends are likely pushing you to either left or right of your food bliss sweet spot. If you're on the left side of the curve, you're likely not getting enough protein. The average American lives on this side of the curve, with only 14% of their calories coming from protein. That means that 86% of their calories are coming from carbs and fats high calorie, lower nutrient foods, foods that encourage us to overeat. Research has shown that the human body is designed with a protein requirement and that the human body will upregulate appetite to overeat calories in an attempt to get that protein. When a person only gets 14% or less of their calories as protein, they are dialed in to maximum fat gain because their body is overeating in its search for protein.
Speaker 2:The left side of the healthy weight loss U curve shows up as an appetite that's never satisfied. So you're always hungry and eating. Lots of cravings for foods that are high in sugar and fat chocolate, nuts, cheese, ice cream, pastries, a lethargic type of low energy that makes you feel checked out and want to nap and, of course, weight gain. The right side of the curve is too much, too much protein. If you're a person who thinks oh, if getting 40% of my calories from protein is good, then 50 or 60% of my calories as protein is even better. You're wrong. Too much protein will crowd out carbs and fats, pushing you off your food bliss point. When you don't get the carbs and fats your body needs, you're not getting enough calories to keep your body functioning properly. When this happens, you'll notice that your appetite isn't as satisfied and you feel hungry. So now you're back to relying on willpower to try to make good food choices. You're craving foods high in sugar and fat, those chocolate, nuts, cheese, ice cream, pastries. You're frustrated because you're tired. You're confused because you're doing everything right but it feels really hard and you're not seeing any progress In both situations.
Speaker 2:Being on the left side of your healthy weight loss U-curve or the right side, you're dealing with that dieting misery, hunger, deprivation, fatigue, mood swings, which is pushing you back to the binge restrict yo-yo cycle that kills consistency and results. The first thing you want to do so that you can begin to settle into your weight loss food bliss point at the top of that U-curve is set your protein goal so that you're getting 40% of your calories from protein on average. I stress on average, because it's not about a single day. Your protein intake will fluctuate. Your appetite will fluctuate. This is normal and to be expected. Some days you'll hit less than 40% of calories from protein. Other days you'll eat more. The daily numbers aren't as important as the average. Look at seven days and average out your macros and calories so you can see what you're doing on average. What is your normal? Your bliss point will have a percent of calories from carbs and fats that feels really good to you.
Speaker 2:For me, I tend toward higher fat than carbs. Not surprising, because I like fattier cuts of meat. I like ribeye steak over a filet. I like chicken thighs more than chicken breast. I like salmon over whitefish. I like bone-in fattier pork chops over lean loin chops.
Speaker 2:I have clients who lean more toward the carbs, either in a savory or a sweet way. Again, this is unique to them. My client, who has a taste for sweet, enjoys a type of yogurt that's very high in sugar. If she ate this yogurt by the cup, it wouldn't work for her weight loss goals. It would be too much and push her in the wrong direction. She enjoys this yogurt in small servings that work for her body and satisfy her taste for sweet. Her personal metrics show that this works for her. Her appetite is satisfied, her cravings are calm, her weight loss has been consistent. This is one of the foods that she has found that helps her dial in her food bliss point. Now she doesn't need this super sugary sweet yogurt. Sometimes she has some sweet potato and that satisfies her sense of sweet rather than the yogurt. I have another client that also leans heavier, with carbs than fat, but in her case it's more about savory carbs like potatoes. For me personally, my body's carb needs tend to be satisfied by a little bit of fruit, leafy greens and other crunchy salad vegetables.
Speaker 2:The takeaway here is, if you notice that you're not feeling balanced, your appetite is more demanding than you'd like it to be, you're not feeling fully in control of cravings for snacks and treats, or maybe you're noticing that your daytime energy isn't great and you're feeling kind of moody, this all indicates that you need to check in on what's going on with your food. What are you eating most of the time? Are your, some of the time, or even rarely, foods sneaking in as, most of the time, foods? We're moving into the holiday season, which is when the foods that we eat sometimes, or even rarely, can easily sneak in and get eaten a lot more often than we realize. Where are things out of balance for you? Is your protein too low or too high? Do you need more carbs or more fat? Are your sometimes or rarely foods in rotation as most of the time foods? Be aware of how you want to feel. Think about your metrics. What's going on with your appetite? What are your cravings like? How's your mood? What's your energy like? How has sleep been? How is your stress? Are these metrics dialed in the way you want them to be? If not, what do you need to change to get what you want?
Speaker 2:At the very beginning, I said your food bliss point will likely change as you change. Your bliss point for weight loss will have a specific combination of protein, carbs and fats that allow you to lose weight in a consistent and comfortable way. When you get to the point of maintaining your new healthy weight, the combination of protein, fats and carbs will shift to create your maintenance bliss point, a point where you easily maintain your weight with a sense of food freedom. For example, when you're maintaining your weight, you'll anchor your protein at less than 40% of calories. This will increase the amount of carbs and fats you include. Another example a professional athlete will have a food bliss point that leans toward very high calories because they'll want to hit a protein goal to maintain and build muscle, but also need more carbs and fats to allow for the level of energy they need to support their lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Knowing how to manage your food to hit your personal bliss point is food freedom. It's eating all foods in a way that work for your body. Food freedom is the goal for every one of my clients. My coaching program takes my clients to a place where they understand food and their body so that they know how to eat for the body and life they want. There are two ways to work with me as a private hangry to healthy coaching client or as a hangry to healthy group client. My hangry to healthy holiday group coaching program is open now. Enrollment for my holiday group closes November 1st, this coming Friday.
Speaker 2:If you'd like help learning how to work with your body so that you can dial in your food bliss point for weight loss and beyond, now is the perfect time to join me as a client. There's no reason to wait until January to start working on your health and body goals. November and December is the perfect time to do this because you'll find that you can feel great and enjoy the holidays, all while losing weight. I'll see you in the next episode. Do you like the idea of eating for the body you want? Is there a piece of you that's eager to learn how to become leaner, stronger and healthier without having to overhaul your entire life? If this is you, then you're in luck, because this is what I do. I can help you reconnect and work with your body so that you can enjoy the body, comfort and confidence you deserve, eating foods you love. Click the free consult link in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about where you are, what you want and how you can get there.
