The Unsexy Truth About Fat Loss

We break down the biggest misconceptions about fat loss and explain why a calorie deficit can be safe and effective when it is structured, not extreme. We also share the unsexy basics that make fat loss sustainable: maintenance phases, enough carbs and fats, solid training, real sleep, and simpler meals you can repeat. 

Apply for 1:1 Health Coaching

Transcript

Why Fat Loss Feels Confusing

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, guys, and welcome back to the podcast. Today I wanted to make this episode on the common misconceptions about fat loss and just how there's so many women who are under the impression that fat loss is not sustainable, that if they're in a calorie-restricted period for too long, that their hormones will get messed up. There is just so much nuance and myths behind fat loss, a calorie deficit, and all of the things that go into weight loss. So I want to clear up the air as a functional health coach, as a past bodybuilder who knows what it takes to lose a significant amount of body fat, especially not even coming from a high body fat percentage. Now, let me just preface. Right now, I am currently striving to lose about 10 to 15 pounds. I've lost nine pounds. I think I've got about five to six more to go, is kind of my goal. And I already started at a lower body fat percentage. I didn't, I didn't haven't got a DEXA scan, but my goal is to get a DEXA scan. But just from looking at me, you can see that I'm already not a person that has a ton of fat to lose. If it was just the average eye, the typical eye looking at it now from my own standpoint, I would be like, oh my gosh, I have a lot of fat to lose, but I don't. And so therefore, me going into a calorie deficit is I'm probably gonna have to go into more of a deeper deficit than somebody who has way more fat to lose because they already have so much energy stored in their body through fat, if that makes sense. So say the more overweight you are, you're gonna have more energy stores to tap into, meaning you can eat probably more than you think and lose fat. Or if you've been in a dieting phase for so long, your body now adapts to that baseline metabolism. For example, say I am I start my calorie deficit at 1900 calories, okay, cool. I lose a couple pounds, then I plateau. All right, I bring them down to 1800 calories, cool, I lose a couple pounds, plateau again, bring them down to 1700, lose some more plateau. You get what I'm saying. The more that you lose, the more that your body is going to adapt because this is your new baseline. You have less mass on you, therefore less energy stores. And so this is why you should not be dieting all of the time. This is why you do need to have structured phases where you are in a maintenance phase and not just in a calorie deficit. And I see so many women crash diet way too hard. This is why I have women that who work with me in a rival wellness who we do a year because, and most people they stay with me for two, three years more than that, because they do know that it goes in phases, especially for the women who do have 50 to 100 pounds to lose. What were to happen if I brought their calories down all the way to 1200? What happens is they would plateau and it would either be they need to take a diet break and go back up to maintenance in May. Yes, you may gain a couple pounds, but you're not going to gain all that weight back. And so it is important to know that if you do want to lose weight, you are going to have to take things in phases. You are going to have to bring your calories back up for a period of time so that you don't have to dig yourself into a deeper hole. That's when the thyroid issues, when we see hypothyroidism, that's when that starts to come into play. That's when we start to see decline in estrogen and progesterone. I've seen this in myself just from doing low-carb diets. My estrogen has plummeted significantly. Your testosterone goes down, your libido comes down. And so this is why it is in very it is very important that you do take fat loss through cycles and that you do get into a maintenance phase. I always say that maintenance is the goal. You should not be strictly in a calorie deficit all the time. And this is why it's important to understand these things. And so, for one, either get a coach or for two, listen to this, take the knowledge and apply it. But I highly, highly recommend if you're somebody that does want to maintain the weight loss, the fat loss that you are after, that you actually find somebody that can help you and then help you maintain it and then send you off so that you can spread your wings and fly away. But I do think some of the other misconceptions about fat loss is that for one, like I said, if you are in a calorie deficit that you're gonna just mess up all your hormones, that is completely not true. I've been in a calorie deficit for three and a half months now, getting going on to four months. I can't believe it's been February, March, April, and then now we're in May. So three and a half months of me being in a structured deficit, I've still had my period, I've still had libido, like my sleep has been okay. Like just because you are in a calorie deficit doesn't mean that this is going to mess up with you, mess your hormones up, mess your digestion up. Now, if I were to be eating like a thousand calories a day, probably, but I have yet to go under 1,500 calories. My carbs have stayed at 150 grams, my protein at 120, and my fats right now are at 60. So I do not like to go under 50 grams of fat, especially for women, because we do need that for our hormone health. And really, recently I've liked to keep carbs a little bit higher and protein a little bit lower. I just find that works best with me for my digestion, and I also seem to recover well from it. But keeping carbs in a moderate spot is going to help keep your thyroid healthy. I cannot explain how many the importance of eating carbs for your thyroid health. Way too many women are under-eating carbohydrates, therefore slowing their thyroid down, therefore making them go into hypothyroid and then making it harder for them to actually lose weight. I love carbs, carbs are great, but also remembering that the source, the type of the carbs are equally as important. This is why Obfer potatoes and rice and fruit and vegetables and what are some other carb sources that I can think of. Those are like my main ones that I utilize because they make me feel the best. I try to stay away most of the time from bagels, breads, things like that, just because they don't leave me feeling my best. Maybe they you feel fine with him, that's okay. But for me personally, they kind of give me low energy, and I do know that gluten can cause some GI issues, and so I do try to avoid that most of the time. Am I like, oh, straight abstinence from gluten? No, I will enjoy it occasionally and be fine and live and move on, and I'm still able to achieve my fat loss goals because of it. Same thing goes for dairy, right? Some people have intolerance to that. This is a whole nother topic, but I know I'm just getting off topic, so just bring it back into the fat loss and what we're talking about here. But going back to just making sure that you have a set time where you are in maintenance. So, for example, like I have been dieting, quote unquote, for three and a half, almost four months now. I think I did take a bit of a diet break where I brought my calories back up to about 1800 for two weeks because I did hit a plateau. So since I'll have been dieting for about 16 weeks, the end of May or the beginning of June, probably about a month from now will be about four months total. Then I will kind of reassess, okay, how much did I lose, how much more am I wanting to lose? And then from there I can either do a little bit more, go back up, do a diet break, bring my calories back up to maintenance for a bit, and then go back into a deficit. But staying in a deficit is not the goal, and that's why it's really important to have a coach to be able to guide you through coming out of a deficit, going into maintenance, and all of these things. I really think you should get in a calorie deficit and get out, and you're like, okay, but what happens whenever I do, you know, increase my calories, go back up to maintenance. What happens is typically your body responds really well, and your body will maintain its current weight as you bring your calories back up to a good maintenance spot. And I think a lot of people don't fully quite know where their maintenance is, and I think this just takes some trial and error of playing with okay, I bumped my calories up to 1800, my weight stayed the same for a week. Okay, just keep it here just to see, like another week, give it another week to see if my weight did go up again. If not, okay, cool, then maybe I can increase it up again, go up to 1900, weight stayed the same, cool, great. Go up 2000. Oh, my weight kind of went up a little bit, and you can bring it back down to that 1900 range, and that can be your maintenance for maintaining the weight that you're at that you're wanting to stay at. And you're like, Kathy, but I don't attract calories forever. I think that this is very person-dependent. Whoops. I do think that obviously for the most accuracy, tracking is a great tool. I think to wean yourself off of tracking is to be really conscious when you are tracking, when you are weighing your food of like, okay, two big heaping scoops or spatulaful. I was doing this today, two big spatulafuls of beef was like 100 grams, around 100 grams, and then like four spoonfuls, I think not four, maybe like eight spoonfuls tablespoon, big heaping tablespoonfuls, like a hundred grams of rice. So just like really starting to be conscious of these things so that you can know when you do transition out of tracking, like how much you actually need to build a meal for it to be not too much, but not enough. And then also just understanding your hunger cues as well. I think this is a really big thing for transitioning out of a where you're tracking your calories all the time. I will say that tracking your calories and tracking your macros is going to be the most efficient, most effective, quickest way for you to lose weight. And I know a lot of people are like very anti, I don't want to weigh my food, I don't want to track it, which is fine. You can still see results from that. However, you are going to see much more consistent results because you're going to be consistently eating the same amount each day. Whereas if you're just eyeballing, you're not really tracking, you don't know what, the inconsistencies of your days can be off. Therefore, your weight can be fluctuating and you don't really have a clear picture of the data. And I think data is so important when it does come to fat loss. Some other things that I did want to mention as well when it does come to losing fat, is there are so many factors inside of it. And a lot of people are like, My hormones, my age, my PCOS, my menopause, all of these things can influence and impact your ability to lose weight, but they or you're like, I have hypothyroid, whatever it is, it does not prevent you from losing weight, guaranteed. There should be no reason with those things why you can't lose weight and why you can't lose weight without incorporating a fat loss drug, which I'm not against, I'm not anti. I have clients who have used it. I'm just saying you need to nail in the basics first. First one being sleep, sleeping eight hours through the night, not waking up, and then also waking up feeling rested and rejuvenated is huge. Having consistent sleep and wake times is also a really big one. Like you go to bed at nine, you wake up at five every day. Whatever it is, stick to it majority of the time. I notice personally, specifically on the weekends, if I go to an outing, if I do something, that really messes with me. And I just feel more tired come Monday morning. Obviously, I'm gonna have fun, I'm gonna enjoy my life, but just know that these things do affect fat loss and lack of sleep definitely affects not only fat loss, but also muscle loss. And muscle loss is something that we do not want. So if you're not consistently getting in the eight hours, say you got five and a half hours, you're not only losing muscle, but you're not able to actually lose fat. So fat gain increases, but also your risk of muscle loss because you are not recovering. Your body needs to go through different types, I think it's three to five maybe REM cycles. Um, maybe that's not the right thing. I'll have to look that up, but at least a couple different of like full deep sleep cycles in order, I think it's three minimum, in order for you to actually feel recovered. And this is why I don't have my aura ring on. Oh, yeah, I do. This is why wearing an oar ring, I was charging it. That's why I said that. This is why an aura ring is super beneficial and helpful for actually tracking your sleep and like your feelings or your readiness score, but also remember that it is super important to go off your feelings too. Of okay, do I feel rested? Because sometimes my ring will be like, oh, you're ready to go. And I'm like, I feel like I slept awful. And so being in tune with your body, but also having this to see, like, okay, what would what kind of did my sleep pattern look like? What did my resting heart rate look like? My HRV, all of these things. The next thing is stress. Stress is huge. If you're constantly in a state of go, go, go, fight or flight, you never fully get into rest and digest, which if you don't, I highly recommend 10 to 30 minutes every day of doing absolutely nothing. And you're like, Hadley, I don't even have that time. If you have time to scroll on your phone for five minutes, that is five minutes where you could be focusing on yourself. And I know it sounds crazy and I know it sounds woo-woo, and you're like, Hadley, that doesn't work. It works from a girl who is very high strong, go, go, go, on my phone, texting clients, marketing, all of these things. I personally feel worlds better whenever I am take time at least, at least 10 minutes, 20 minutes to 30 minutes is on a good day for myself. And I do like a morning meditation of just laying in stillness in silence. I think this is a big mover for a lot of people because we are so constantly overstimulated on our phone, never truly just being. And I think this is something that a lot of us actually need, and you don't realize how much that this can actually impact your fat loss more than you think. If you're stressed on the go, plus eating in a deficit, plus lack of sleep, plus da da da da. It's like it's just a recipe for disaster. And I'm not saying the conditions need to be perfect, but I am saying that you don't need to be working 80 hours a week. You don't need to be saying yes to every single little thing on the weekend and filling your calendar with things, whenever really, you just need to like take a nap on the couch. And I highly recommend taking a nap on the couch because I love a good nap. Whereas before, I spike, oh, napping, like that's that's such a waste of time. Like I could be doing other things. And it's like if your body allows you to fall asleep on the couch, that's a good thing. Whereas before I was not able to do that, and so just some of the little things that you can do to like really make sure that you're pouring into your cup so that fat loss can actually happen for you. Some people have stressful jobs and they're like, this is really weighing me down. Really think about, okay, maybe not feasible for everyone to change jobs, but for myself specifically, I was like, I my job caused me so much like stress and turmoil. I was just like, yeah, this is definitely a no-me, and I realized it and my body felt better when I stopped that job. It was actually insane because now I get sunshine and now I have time off, and now I just have a little bit more flexibility. Don't get me wrong, I am a hustler and I will work 12-hour days, okay? But at the same time, I know when my body needs rest and I'm able to give that to her. So I think also learning to listen to your body and its cues is huge. Of like, okay, I am super exhausted. I don't really have time to go to the gym today. Like, I just feel mentally worn out from school, from kids, from whatever. It's gonna be okay if I don't go today, but I know I'll adjust and go a different day. And just thinking of it from that lens of working with your body and not against it. So we've covered sleep, cover a little bit of stress. I don't know what I'm missing. Obviously, the calorie deficit, like we talked about, but obviously training too. I think training is a big one, and just bringing enough intensity into your training. I see women overtrained sometimes, I see women that don't know how to train. I have had both of them. Most of the time, women are under training in the sense of not bringing solid enough intensity to their training and really getting the muscle to tear and therefore be able to grow. And so I think it's super important that you're pushing your strength training to a point of near failure. And not a lot of people know what near near fair near failure, excuse me, looks like. So 10 out of 10 recommend doing that, and your body's going to look better. When you have more muscle, your metabolism is firing more because it takes more energy to keep muscle going. I actually was reading, I'm writing Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins, and he mentioned that I think one of the something he was doing for his training is like they were not able to like, they had like maybe three MRE bars. That's like I don't know how much the MRE bar calories are. Maybe like 300, 400, if not even that. Only three of those a day. And now this is a grown man who is like training to be a Navy SEAL. That's like maximum 1400 calories a day. And he lost so much muscle just because he was not eating enough. So this goes back to the importance of like, yes, we're gonna be in a calorie deficit, but yes, fueling your body enough. Also, while you're spending time in maintenance, it is important that you are building muscle. You're not gonna get the toned, the toned lean look that you're wanting from doing Pilates and doing your group workout classes. And I guarantee you you're gonna see far more fat loss results if you are training intentionally, resistance training, sprinkling in some cardio in there. Personally, I like zone two cardio, especially for fat loss. This is like the optimal. I don't want to say optimal, but this is like the optimal spot for fat loss to happen, is in zone two. So this is typically between 120 and 140 beats per minute. It goes based off of your age, and then you basically take a percentage, your age and your weight. I'm pretty sure I'm not quite sure what that is, but I just like to say aim for 120 and 140 is a pretty good spot. So just let's just say 130 beats per minute, steady state. This is considered low intensity steady state or zone two cardio, sprinkling that in a couple days a week. If you have your four strength training days, four to five strength training days, two to three cardio days, there should be no reason why you are not reaching your fat loss goals alongside the calorie deficit, sleeping, the other things that I mentioned. The last one I want to touch on is the type of foods that you are intaking because anybody can say, I track my macros, I hit my macros, but not everybody can say that the food that's filling their macros is whole nutrient-dense. And I really do believe that when you are fueling your body with these types of foods, your digestion's good, you recover better, you sleep better, you just feel better mentally, which makes the process so much easier. And you actually see results faster and you see better results because you're not inflamed from the excess consumption of ultra-processed foods. So that's my last little tidbit. And I think that pretty much covers everything that I want to talk about on fat loss. And like there is no secret if you look up how do I lose fat, this is it. I think it's just the matter of actually applying it because so many people want something magic to happen, something magical and quick when you're naughty. It's like, nope, you're gonna have to track your calories and weigh your food and go to the gym and actually prioritize your sleep instead of scrolling on TikTok all night. There's things that you're gonna have to do, and you're just gonna have to get over it and build the mental discipline to just get the shits done. I I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it's not pretty, it's not sexy. The repeated meals, the getting up and going to the gym, the cardio, the walking and getting your steps like it's not sexy. It's not like, ooh, cute gym outfit, which is a cute gym outfit is great, it can get you for it, but it's not like a cute gym outfit and your little bundle of supplements and your little bowl, your bowl that looks so pretty and beautiful. Shout out to you if your if your plates of food that you're eating look beautiful. But mine is just throw everything together and this is call it good. And that's how I've Gotten my results. It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be this long drawn-out recipe that you're trying to fit in My FitnessPal and you're trying to do macro friendly this and macro friendly that. If you have the time and the energy to do that, kudos to you. For me, I'm about efficiency. This may sound bad, but if I didn't have to eat to keep myself fueled, I probably wouldn't just because it is time consuming. And I do like to just be quick and easy. And I'd throw things together when everyone's like, ooh, I want the thing that's gonna taste the best and look the best. And it's like you're wasting more energy trying to find the most perfect thing when it's just like just throw shiz together, really. Your beef, your potatoes, your vegetable, whatever it is. There's your meal right there. That's it. Yes, I'm all for having fun meals, great. But on a day-to-day basis, I think it the more simpler that you can keep it, the more easier you're going to be able to stick to it. Because I used to be the person that was like, ooh, let me do macro-friendly this and that. And just keeping things simple takes the mental effort out of it. I probably eat the same things of a different variation each and every week. And that's how I'm able to get results quickly. I can think of many people who have been trying to lose weight for a long time and they just try to overcomplicate everything. When in reality, if they would just repeat the same thing every day, every week, they would have the results. It's the boring, the mundane that people don't like, but it's what's actually going to get you the exact thing that you want. So that's where I'm gonna sign off on today's little episode. But I hope you guys enjoyed this, and I will see you in the next one. Love you, bye.