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
You Pick: Lean & Tight or Skinny & Squishy
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Experience the transformative power of focusing on fat loss rather than the relentless pursuit of lower numbers on the scale. In this episode of the Simplicity of Wellness podcast, I share the journey of a remarkable client in her 50s who, despite her health and wellness background, struggled with those stubborn 10 pounds. Through our collaboration, we prioritized muscle preservation while targeting fat loss, leading to a leaner, more defined figure that friends and family noticed—often before the scale confirmed the results. By addressing the common pitfalls of traditional dieting, we show how maintaining muscle can boost metabolism and prevent the frustrating cycle of weight gain and loss.
Explore the vital shift towards mindful metrics for true health and happiness. Moving beyond the scale, we delve into assessing sleep quality, energy levels, hunger, and how your clothes fit—all indicators of your well-being. These insights empower you to make informed choices, ensuring gradual, sustainable progress without a drastic lifestyle overhaul. Whether you're aiming for a fitter body or an energized life, this episode promises a guide to achieving your goals enjoyably. Plus, I'm offering a free consultation to help tailor this journey to your unique needs, so you can truly embrace the body and life you desire.
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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. Hello, simplifiers, I received a message from a client the other day that I wanted to share for a couple of reasons. One, I want you to get a glimpse of the happiness and excitement that you get when the things you're doing to manage your weight and improve your health actually work. Two, I want to highlight a few specific things my client said in this message. And three, I want to explain how healthy weight loss works and why it's so noticeable.
Speaker 1:Let me start by giving you a bit of this client's story. She is in the health and wellness field, but even with her background, she was struggling with her own weight. She told me that she was carrying about 10 pounds more than what felt good to her. She'd been trying to shed this weight, but it just wouldn't budge. No matter what she did to lose the weight, it would just come back. She's in her early fifties and decided she needed help. She wanted to get rid of the 10 pounds before it became 15 or even 20 pounds. Here's the thing Even coaches need coaches. Being in the health and wellness field and being brilliant at helping other people doesn't mean you will be brilliant at helping yourself. There's a thing about being so close to a problem that can make it impossible to see the solution. A coach friend of mine put it this way you can't read the label from inside the jar. For all of these reasons, this coach reached out to me because my specialty is weight loss for mature women, women in perimenopause and beyond. On November 1st she sent me this message. I can wear my skinny jeans. Well, I'm probably about a pound of fat away from being as comfortable. On November 1st she sent me this message. She was impressed and I was happy she noticed. My client goes on to say typically they say people don't notice until you lose 20 pounds. I'm still trying to reach my 10 pound mark, but I haven't weighed myself in a week, so maybe I'm there. That was the whole message. She was very excited. There were lots of exclamation points and smiley emojis. A few specific things I want to pull out of this message. Number one this client is in her 50s and she's rocking skinny jeans. She's awesome. Number two she said I have about one more pound of fat to lose, not weight. Number three she was happy that her coworker noticed her weight loss but thought it was strange because she had heard that weight loss isn't something other people notice unless someone loses about 20 pounds or more, and she had only lost about 10 pounds.
Speaker 1:Traditional weight loss is all about pounds on the bathroom scale. My clients know it's fat they're working to lose, not weight. In general. The change they want is with body composition, the ratio between how much fat they have versus how much muscle they have. Muscle and fat are different. When you compare one pound of muscle to one pound of fat, you will see that the muscle is smaller than the fat. It's more compact and tighter looking. That's what we want with weight loss to be smaller. But the fat it's more compact and tighter looking. That's what we want with weight loss to be smaller but also tighter.
Speaker 1:This client has learned how to lose fat, not just weight. Yes, the number on the bathroom scale is dropping, but the real change is happening before her eyes and evidently the eyes of the people. She knows, when you change your body in a healthy way, you lose fat while holding on to muscle. You get leaner and tighter and this type of change is noticeable even when the number on the scale hasn't had a big drop. You can change the entire look of your body and drop several sizes and clothes without your scale weight changing at all.
Speaker 1:Another client of mine is a power lifter and she's experiencing the body composition change without the scale change. She's losing fat but also increasing her muscle mass, so her weight is the same but her clothes are too big. She described this to me as looking like a little girl trying on her mom's clothes. When you lose fat and increase muscle, you can be very weight stable but much leaner and trimmer. Visually You'll notice this because your clothes get looser and even too big. Your friends will notice too, but at first they'll know you look great but not be able to really put their finger on what's different. My client's coworker was able to see what was different because she noticed that my client's jeans were very baggy. Baggy jeans means weight loss. I have another client who described fat loss as finally being able to see what had been hiding under the layer of fat she'd been carrying around for years.
Speaker 1:When you change your body in an unhealthy and an unsustainable way traditional, very low calorie crash dieting, for example you lose fat, but you also lose muscle. I believe this is why weight loss from traditional dieting isn't noticeable until after 20 or more pounds are lost. The fat is still there. It gets looser and squishier, but it's still what's visible. After about 20 or more pounds, a person will likely look physically smaller, and that is noticeable. Unfortunately, as you shed muscle, you're less likely to look fit and tight. You may look smaller, but you'll still look squishy Not what we want to see in the mirror. Weight loss is supposed to make us look better. Everyone wants to look good naked.
Speaker 1:There's a bigger problem with the muscle loss from traditional dieting. When you burn off your muscle, you're burning down your metabolic house. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn at rest. Muscle is a calorie burning machine. This is why traditional dieting or unhealthy weight loss creates a yo-yo pattern of loss, then gain. As you lose muscle, you lose the ability to burn the amount of calories you used to burn.
Speaker 1:What you used to eat that kept your weight stable will now be too much and cause you to actually gain weight. You cut your calories, suffer with hunger and out of control cravings, but you continue to deny yourself because you see the scale shifting. The pounds are coming off. You hit your goal weight. You go back to doing what you used to do to maintain your weight. You're eating your normal food in moderation so that you don't gain the weight back, but before long you notice that you are once again gaining weight. You're confused and frustrated because you're doing what you used to do the same things that maintained your weight before your diet, but now it's not working. Regular life is causing you to gain weight. This is because of muscle loss. You're stuck in a yo-yo pattern. You lost muscle as part of your weight loss. Your body burns fewer calories than it used to in a day. What you used to eat to maintain your weight is now too much, causing you to gain weight. It takes some time to truly believe you're putting on weight and before you know it, you've put on more weight than you even lost. The cycle begins again.
Speaker 1:Traditional, low-calorie, restrictive dieting tends to destroy lean muscle because there's no attention to where calories are coming from. The body doesn't get the nutrients it needs to maintain a strong muscular foundation. Without the calories and nutrients to function properly, your body will cannibalize itself to stay alive. It will destroy muscle to get what it needs to function. Healthy body change as fat loss is a product of what you choose to eat. Prioritize the nutrients your body needs and your body will optimize function. Excess fat isn't optimal. Your body wants to get rid of that fat just as much as you do. Yes, calories matter, but when you're eating calories from the right foods, your body uses those calories efficiently, reducing what needs to be stored as fat. The right foods encourage your body to shed fat while maintaining muscle.
Speaker 1:My client is experiencing body change as fat loss. She's getting leaner, not skinnier. Remember, one pound of fat is a lot bigger than one pound of muscle. As my client shed the fat, it was very visibly noticeable to her and to other people. The best part Her reality is so much better than just weight loss. The body composition change is what's causing her to have more energy, fit into her favorite clothes and like what she sees in the mirror. She's now food confident. She knows how to enjoy food in a way that works for her body. This is what allowed her to get the results she wanted, but it's also what will make it easy for her to keep those results.
Speaker 1:Healthy weight loss keeps your metabolism humming your food. What you eat doesn't cause you to gain weight. It keeps you fit and healthy. Maintaining your weight feels easy because it is. You and your body are working as a team. You give your body what it needs and in return, you get what you want. No excessive hunger, uncontrolled cravings, lack of energy or mood swings. You feel good and you look good.
Speaker 1:Let's end this episode with a question. You look the way you want. You like what you see in the mirror. You feel confident naked. Your clothes are the size you like and they fit the way you like. You feel good. You have a good mood, your appetite is easily satisfied, your body is comfortable and you have great energy. As a bonus, the blood work your doctor ran came back with a gold star.
Speaker 1:If all of this was your reality, would you care what the number on the scale said?
Speaker 1:Remember, your clothes fit better than ever.
Speaker 1:You like what you see in the mirror.
Speaker 1:Your health is amazing. Would you care what the scale said? I don't think you would. So today, stop worrying so much about what the scale says and start looking at these other metrics that are so much more meaningful when it comes to enjoying your life. Check in on how you feel, how you're sleeping, what your hunger is like, if you're craving things or not, how your energy is during the day, how your clothes are fitting. If these metrics are lining up the way you want them to, then keep doing what you're doing. If not, then you need to figure out what you need to do differently so that you get what you want.
Speaker 1:A different result will require different action. Pick one thing and work on that. Once you've made progress, move to the next thing. If you're not sure where to start, go back and listen to some of my previous podcast episodes. If you want a more personal assessment, click the link in the podcast notes to book a free consult. All right, have a great week and I will be back 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. Let's talk about where you are, what you want and how you can get there.
