The Real Reasons Clean Eating Isn’t Cutting It

We break down why fat loss stalls even when we eat clean, train hard, and swear we’re consistent, and we explain the simplest reasons the scale stays stuck. Then we zoom out to the deeper stuff like cortisol, gut health, and thyroid labs so you can stop guessing and start troubleshooting with a clear plan. 

ANTI INFLAMMATORY FOOD GUIDE: https://stan.store/hadleashaw/p/anti--inflammatory-diet-guide

OPTIMAL LAB VALUES: https://canva.link/iw4j6r2ewfecjav

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Transcript

Why Doing It Right Fails

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi guys, welcome back to the podcast. Hope you're having a fantastic day. Today we're gonna be chatting about drum roll, please. Why are you doing everything right? Quote unquote right. And still not losing fat. Okay. I hear so many women they're like, I'm eating clean, I'm getting my steps in, I'm working out, I'm drinking my water, I'm doing all these things, and the scale just isn't moving. Or it does move, and then you gain back, and then you're starting to wonder, okay, is something wrong with me? Is it my hormones? Is it my cortisol? Is it what is it? So my goal today is to be able to cover all of these things for you so that you can be informed on what's actually going on. Obviously, what does doing everything right actually look like? What does that actually mean to you? I'm gonna start with the most practical thing before we go down like the hormone, rabbit hole, cortisol, gut, all of that.

Tracking Mistakes That Add Up

SPEAKER_00 1:03

First thing, if you're not tracking your calories or your macros, yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's that's the problem. That's why you're not losing fat because we have no clue how much you're actually eating. You can be eating clean, but eating clean and having the data to actually back up the eating clean are not the same thing. Or you're probably not tracking as accurately as you think you are. Eyeballing your portions, not wing food, not logging the coffee creamer or the handful of almonds or the extra lick of peanut butter, all of these things add up, even though you think they're not. There's no such thing as empty calories. So just because you didn't track it doesn't mean the calories don't necessarily count. Not only that, eating out more than you realize, eating out two, three, four times a week and just guessing, estimating on your calories. Quite frankly, a lot of the foods that you eat out at restaurants are way higher in calories from experience than what it says specifically on the My FitnessPal app, or your portions are way different. There's a lot of nuance that goes into eating out. And so I'm always telling my clients make sure that you overestimate how much you're actually eating when you eat out because it's probably more than what the calorie tracking app says it is. Another point to make is healthy foods still have calories: olive oil, peanut butter, avocado, all the healthy fats, these things have quote unquote more calories because they are fats, and fats have nine calories per gram. And so if you're thinking like other healthy, it's not much, it's gonna be more calories, which these are not bad foods. This is not what I'm saying. They're actually very healthy foods. We need all of them, they're all very great sources of fat, and they all have a lot of great benefits on us, specifically olive oil and avocado. Fantastic foods. But if you're not tracking them, if you have no understanding, no knowledge of the foods that you're eating and the quantity and the amounts, healthy eating, clean eating does not matter. Don't care. Most women, as well, are underestimating their intake by three to 500 calories without even knowing it. The little snacks here and there, the drink maybe that you get from I don't know where you get drinks, coffee drinks, Starbucks, wherever you go to get a little quick little something, all of these things add up

Weekends That Erase Progress

SPEAKER_00 3:56

so much. And so not only are you probably not tracking accurate as you think, you're probably not as consistent as you think. So eating well Monday through Thursday and then derailing Friday night through Sunday. You can be eating in a calorie deficit Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday, way overindulged, and now your weekly average calorie intake is way higher. And then you are frustrated wondering why you're doing so well on the weekdays, and then the weekend comes and you've lost all of your progress that come that next Monday because Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you went off the rails. You treated those days as cheat days, free-for-alls, whatever you want to call it. And personally, I don't love the idea of a cheat day, a cheat meal. I just say it's an untracked meal, it's a meal I have to eat. You having this negative connotation around, oh, that was a cheat meal, is making it more desirable for you because you feel like you have to cheat on your diet. When it's not cheating, it's literally just not eating what's in your quote unquote macros or meal plan. Like I said, one bad, quote unquote, bad weekend can erase an entire week's deficit. This doesn't mean that you're not allowed to go out out, go out out, go out to eat, have a meal, have a morgue, whatever you want to have, an ice cream. Doesn't mean you can't have those things. But it does mean that you cannot be eating thousands, thousands of calories in excess if you want to be able to lose fat. If you want to be able to stay in your deficit. This is what a week could look like. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I hit my macros. Saturday comes. Okay, maybe I eat a lighter breakfast, a lighter lunch, because I know I'm gonna be going out to eat dinner. I know I'm gonna be going to be out to eat ice cream. Cool, I have that ice cream Sunday. I'm back on with my macros. That's how simple it can be. So many people are like trying to make food this big celebrational, emotional food thing, and it simply does not need to be that. What matters more is like consistency every single week over the course of a week rather than you being perfect Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then Saturday. You just have like a complete blow-up day.

Deficit Changes And Diet Fatigue

SPEAKER_00 6:22

The second or the third thing that could be wrong is your calories are not low enough to actually be in a deficit. Maintenance calories change as your body changes. As you lose weight, your body will need less to maintain that weight. What worked 20 pounds ago is not the same deficit as now. Now, all that being said, let me just tell you, when I started my I was at 149, now I kind of teeter between like 135, 136, and my calories at 149 were 2400. Calories now are about 1600, 1650. Obviously, they're gonna be different. My body weight is different, so I'm not going to be needing as much. Now, I did have to die down a little bit more, like 1300 calories for a couple weeks to be able to get to this point. But now, now that I'm here, I was able to increase my calories and I've been able to maintain this weight. And so some of you may be thinking you're in a calorie deficit, but you're no longer in a deficit anymore. Therefore, you need to increase, either increase your activity or decrease your calorie or both. Next thing you may need to recalculate. Sorry, wrong thing. You may, you may have, you may, can I talk? You may be dieting for too long and your body has adapted. Kind of going back to calories aren't low enough. But metabolic adaptation is a real thing, and your body is very smart and will down regulate to match your current intake. So, like I just mentioned, when I was at the 1300 calories doing a bunch of cardio, my metabolism had slowed down. So, what did I do? I immediately bumped my calories up to 1600, and my body has maintained this. Now, why you must say this? Because my body was no longer responding there, and it was either okay, you cut calories more, which I was not gonna decrease another 1300 calories be eating a thousand calories, or increase food, pull back on stressors, see how your body responds. Most women's bodies are going to respond favorably whenever you pull them out of the cardio, the dieting, which those things work. Those things work in short term, they should be used short term. I'm saying, listen to what I'm saying, they should be used short term, and then you should be able to go into an increased food, and your body should stay the same. This should happen. If you are accurate, I'm an accurate tracker, I probably have one meal out to eat a week, and I still make sure that it falls pretty close within my macros, and that's how I'm able to maintain. But if I were to just go balls to the walls, eat a thousand to two thousand extra calories on the weekend, my body would not be able to maintain this. Signs that your meta your metabolism has slowed down, your progress has completely stalled after months of dieting. You're exhausted, fatigued, your workouts feel way harder, you're cold all the time. This is a sign you need to increase your calorie intake. Like I said, when I was eating the 1300 calories, the goal was not for me to eat less, it was to reverse diet. So, like I did, brought my calories up, or take a diet break to bring metabolism back up before dieting back down. If I wanted to lose even more weight, I could even go up to like 17, 1800 calories for a little bit and then diet back down if I wanted to lose more weight. But this one right here, the dieting too long is like one of the main reasons that women stay stuck is because they've tried to cut calories, it didn't work, because maybe they were inconsistent, whatever it is, they try to keep cutting and cutting and cutting, they cut them, their body stops responding. The second they increase their food, reverse diet, things start to change. And that is why most women stay stuck, is because they stay in a deficit for too long. If you've ruled out all these other things that I mentioned, not tracking accurately, or not as consistent as you think, or your calories aren't low enough, or you've been dieting for too long, then we can dive deeper into what could be going on.

Cortisol Stress And Fat Storage

SPEAKER_00 10:25

If you've genuinely ruled all of that out, not everybody needs to come to this point, but some will hear section one and like that's not it, that's not me. I've actually been doing all of that. And be genuinely honest with yourself. You've done everything, but something just still feels off in your body. The first thing that I wanted to mention is cortisol. Okay, when cortisol is chronically elevated, and I just want to preface that cortisol is not bad, but when cortisol is chronically elevated, your body is in constant fight or fight, fight or flight state. In that state specifically, fat oxidation is suppressed, meaning fat loss is harder because your bread, your body is prioritizing quick glucose for survival for you to store onto this, store this fat. It also increases your insulin resistance, cortisol does. So your cells become less responsive to insulin. So more glucose gets stored as fat rather than being used for energy. And not only that, it specifically drives your fissur fissceral, visceral fat storage, which is can be considered belly fat or just like the stored fat around your organs because it has more cortisol receptors than subcutaneous fat. So not only that, high cortisol also breaks down muscle, muscle tissue, muscle tissue for glucose through a process called gluconogenesis. So you're losing muscle while holding fat. And then when you have less muscle, your metabolism slows down. So all of these things are compounding. And one way you can tell and see what your cortisol levels are like is doing a four-point um cortisol test, salivary test, instead of just getting the blood labs done of seeing what your cortisol looks like in the morning. We want to be able to see it throughout four different points throughout the day. You can get this for like 90 bucks, very cheap. Highly recommend that if you suspect. Now, things that could make you suspect cortisol is high is like I said, if all those other things aren't working, you're not sleeping very well, you don't respond well to stress, it's hard for you to recover, hard for you to wind down, maybe you're super exhausted all the time, no matter how much sleep you get. There is a thing as low cortisol as well, because cortisol has been too high for so long and then it bottoms out, and then cortisol can actually go low, making it hard for you to actually actually what's what we're looking for, actually not build, actually be able to make that's what we're looking for, make cortisol. Because like I said, cortisol is good, but if it's too high for too long, that's not a great thing. It's too high for too long and it goes low, also not

Gut Issues That Block Fat Loss

SPEAKER_00 13:21

good. So getting into more of like the gut health specifics and how if your gut is off, that can really, really play an impact on your fat loss. Few specific things here. Gut permeability. So, aka, you've probably heard of leaky gut, but when the gut lining itself is compromised from chronic stress, so chronic stress can cause these gut issues when it's compromised. The particles that shouldn't enter the bloodstream do because gut lining is permeable. So these things specifically trigger systemic inflammation and that elevates cortisol back to the above. So they're like a cause and effect of each other. And this is what disrupts your leptin signaling, which is your hormone that signals to you that we're full, we're satiated. So when that is off, you can feel hungry even when you've eaten enough. Not only that, microbiome imbalance. So certain bacteria strands are more efficient at extracting calories from foods than others. So women with lower microbiome diversity tend to extract more energy from the same amount of food than someone with healthier microbiome. So this is why it's important to have different types of foods that you're eating. And I will say I'm not good at this. And this is something I'm working on, but I'm not good at like having diversity in my diet because I like to stick to the same things. It is important to have different plant foods specifically, different carb sources, different protein sources. So just changing these things up every now and then. I know if you're like myself, you're a structured girl, you want every day to be eating the same things, it's so much easier for you. That's great. And also have to make sure that you're having a variety of foods to support your gut microbiome diversity. So, next thing, according, according, can I? My talking is like a little bit silly. Next thing on our gut health aspect is estrogen metabolism. So your gut is responsible for clearing used estrogen from the body. An enzyme produced by this gut bacteria called beta-glucaronidase can reactivate, recirculate estrogen that was supposed to be excreted through your poop. This leads to estrogen dominance, which can cause your body to hold on to fat. It can also worse your PMS, have heavy periods, cycle irregularities. So there's a lot of different things that can happen because or as an effect of estrogen metabolism not being correct. Now, you can see your beta-glucuronidase levels through a GI map. All of these things that we're kind of talking about, you can see through a GI map to see if that's what's going on is affecting your phallus, which nine out of ten times it is. If you have underlying gut issues going on, like loose stools all the time, constipating, con contemplating. My brain, I have like brain fog right now. Actually, what is going on? Switching back and forth between diarrhea constipation, brain fog, even, constant bloating, belching, reflux, all these things despite eating healthy. That's what I'd recommend. A GI map. Last thing on the gut health affecting fat loss, serotonin production. About 90% of serotonin is made in your gut. So if you have low serotonin, it's going to affect your mood, your sleep quality, craving, especially for carbs and sugars. So poor gut health can be driving more of the behavior patterns that make fat loss harder. Another thing, the last thing I want to mention on gut health too is if you do have something underlying going on, if you've been chronically stressed, this can bring down your um HCl levels. So stomach acid levels. We need sufficient stomach acid. When stomach acid's low, our metabolism's lower. So if we can have stomach acid that's a little bit higher, have enough stomach acid to actually break down the foods, our metabolism is a lot better. So something you can do to supplement with stomach acid protection production is like betaine HCL, digestive bitters. Um, what else am I thinking of? Apple cider vinegar. I'm so sorry, my brain fog is like crazy right now. All right, so that's it on the gut health side of things. Now, when

Thyroid Labs Most People Miss

SPEAKER_00 17:46

we get into thyroid health, this is really important. The thyroid is important because it produces your inactive hormone T4, which has to be converted to T3, which is your active hormone. And so your T3 is simply what regulates your metabolism, your body temperature, your heart rate, digestion speed, all these things. And how efficiently your mitochondria, which we know mitochondria, powerhouse of the cell, produces energy. If you remember anything from seventh grade science, it better be mitochondria. Like that is the one thing I remember from seventh grade science is my mitochondria, powerhouse of the cells. Anyways, just needed to say that. But what happens specifically with thyroid? So most labs are only testing TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. So this is the signal from the brain telling the thyroid to produce more hormone. It does not tell you how much T3 is actually readily available on the cellular level in your body. So you can have a normal TSH and still have low free T3 or high reverse T3 or thyroid antibodies that could indicate autoimmune autoimmune disease like Hashimoto's. So reverse T3 is essentially like a parking break and it blocks the T3 receptor. So even if you have T3 available, it can't get in. So chronic dieting, chronic stress both drive up reverse T3. We don't want reverse T3 to be high. We want it to be in a neutral spot. If you want to know like optimal lab ranges, you can always DM me on Instagram, reach out to me. I can send you my little guide on what the optimal ranges actually should look like because conventional lab ranges from at the doctor's office versus functional lab ranges are completely different because they're going off the standard population, and we know that the population is incredibly unhealthy. So we're going off these averages, and we're not going off, okay, what is actually best for me to feel my best, be the most healthiest that I can be. One thing that I just quickly want to mention is Hashimoto's is the most common thyroid condition that I see in women, and it's always missed unless you get the antibody cited. So TPO, TPO, TPOAB, I'm pretty sure. Um what happens is it's more of an immune system issue. So the immune system attacks the thyroid, which slowly degrades the function over time. So calming down the immune response, which you can follow like the autoimmune um diet. Let me see what that's called. I think it's called AIP. Yeah, autoimmune protocol. Um it's used to help a lot with your gut healing, specifically for for those who do have autoimmune conditions. And so you basically the the first like four to twelve weeks, you do like a strictly whole food phase. So I would say Mediterranean style. You cut out anything that can trigger, trigger a response. So like egg, egg whites, milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, wheat, literally everything. It's a lot of a lot of wild caught fish, beef, pasteurase, salmon, all vegetables, fresh fruit, olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, fresh herbs and spices, and then you kind of go into like a phase two where you reintroduce things. So you test one food at a time in small different portions, and then you wait every like three to five days to monitor. So I personally would avoid foods that cause symptoms that make you feel kind of blah, and then keep the ones that don't. So it really just depends on what autoimmune you're you really have. But in this case, we're talking about Hashimoto's. It could be any autoimmune, like Crohn's, lupus, anything. So well, my biggest thing is for most is following like an anti inflammatory whole food diet. And this is just for anybody that wants to feel better. And this just I have a Undocument on this as well that I can put in the notes. So I'll put in the labs. I need to make sure I write this down. Labs, lab references, and then anti-inflammatory food guide. Both of these will put these in there for you.

Build A Plan That Fits You

SPEAKER_00 22:19

But these things are really helpful while you're trying to lose fat alongside. But these things could be affecting your ability to lose fat. So getting labs done is really, really important. Um symptoms that could make you that you may suspect if there's some thyroid issues going on, fatigue, hair thinning or loss, feeling cold, constipation, brain fog, puffy face, depression, and weight. That just feels like it's so incredibly hard to move, no matter if you're in a calorie deficit or not. So I recommend getting T3, T4, reverse T3, these labs done. If you suspect maybe autoimmune, you can do TPOAB. You can see is my is that high. Gut testing, GI map, cortisol testing, doing a salivary cortisol test, four-point. So there's lots of different options you can start with. If you're struggling on okay, where what should I pinpoint for me specifically as far as where I should start? I would start with an audit, or if you just want help and you feel like I need that, whatever she's doing, I need, you're more than welcome to DM me. We can do a call, we can set up whatever we need to to go through some of these symptoms that you're dealing with and see kind of what the culprit is of is it is it the basics, or is it one of these other things like cortisol, thyroid, gut, that can be impacting that. So obviously I just want to like connect back that I have bodybuilt, I've done all the right things. Like when you're bodybuilding, you eat so clean, you eat so good, and you can still have issues post-bodybuilding. I had so many issues with my gut, my cortisol because I put my body in such a stressful state of dieting, training, all these things that it was really my body really struggled once I got out of that. And so I understand what it's like. And I've had to do a lot of testing, do a lot of things, not be dieting for a while. And if you're somebody that's like, I can't lose fat, and you've been dieting for a while, my biggest piece of advice is like you're gonna have to stop dieting for a while. And I do want you to know too that like dieting should be done in phases, like it is you should not be dieting all the time. The goal is to not be in a calorie deficit. I know everybody wants to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat, but it's not to stay here forever, it's to be able to get in, get out, and and maintain a physique that's achievable through not being in a very, very deep deficit. So the goal is always maintenance. But if you have a lot of weight to lose, then you are gonna have to go through a phase of dieting, okay, diet break, dieting, okay, diet break because you don't want your metabolism, your thyroid levels to slow down, all these things. And I've dealt with all these things. I know I've been through it, I've had a missing period, I've had all these things. It's been hard. It was really hard for me actually to lose the weight that I did from February to now, just because I do think that my gut played a role in that because I've had H. pylori, just some gut imbalances going on. So it made me have to diet even harder to do even more cardio to be able to see the fat loss happen. And I knew, I just knew, like, okay, my gut's definitely playing a role in this because I train hard, I do all these things, and sometimes it does come down to what's going on underneath the hood, aside from the calorie deficit, aside from the training. So I had to address, had to address the gut before like something clicked in me that okay, gut and cortisol play such a big role in my body's ability to lose fat. And I think the biggest thing to take away from all of this is like we want to be working with our body and not against it. That's like my big motto is like work with your body, not against it, because we're constantly working against our body. Our body's gonna come back and like attack us in ways of like gut issues, cortisol through the roof, missing period, infertility, whatever it may be. And so that's why I'm such a big advocate on these functional health sides of things because they are so important if you want to do this healthily and sustainably. So going back to the beginning, most people need like the section one where I talked about actually eating in a calorie deficit, actually doing all of the things that you need to be doing from that standpoint. But also, women need section two, both are very, very bad valid and both have solutions. But I think the big problem is that most women skip to like something is wrong with my hormones before actually doing the basics. And equally when there are people, practitioners, coaches that dismiss the basics and never look deeper. So this is why it's actually important to have a one-on-one coach like myself, have somebody that can be there to advocate for you to see what's going on under the hood and not just be like, oh, you need to be in a calorie deficit. Oh, like you just need to be looking at all of these things, and both can be true at the same time. So if you're not sure which category you're in, DM me, reach out to me. I don't buy it. Like, I'm you can DM me and reach out to me for help. And I'm not gonna be like, hey, here's my coaching, you want to sign up. No, I'm genuinely there to help you uncover whatever's going on. I want to give you the resources. I have so many free resources to guide you in the in the direction that you need to go. So just know that phallus is possible for you. It may just look like a different approach from whatever your coworker is doing. They're fasting, you're like, I can't fast. My blood sugar is like crash. I feel terrible every time I fast, but they're doing, they do it, and they're able to lose 15 pounds. So why can't I? You're at two totally, completely different places in your life. Their stress is not your stress, your stress is not theirs. You have so many differences in your genes and every single little thing. Do not copy what somebody else is doing, but you need to find somebody that can help you work through what you're going through on a one on one standpoint if you feel like that's what you need. So hopefully this was helpful and informative to kind of give you an idea of where you are, what you're lacking in, what you need to be doing. So hope you guys enjoyed, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.