episode 219: the one weight loss method you haven’t tried yet
You’ve been conditioned to think weight loss only happens with strict rules, meal plans, and obsessing over every bite. But what if that’s not true? What if fat loss could be a side effect of learning to eat in a way that actually works for you—without dieting, restriction, or misery?
In this episode, we’re diving into:
Why traditional diets keep failing you (and it’s not your fault)
How shifting your focus from rules to skills changes everything
Why food freedom and fat loss aren’t opposites—they go hand in hand
If you’ve ever wondered, Can I actually lose weight without a diet?, this one’s for you.
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219
[00:00:00] Hi friends. Thank you for being here. Let me shut that metronome off. Not sure if you can hear that. Uh, welcome back. It's another episode of the Diet Diaries. I appreciate you being here and listening. And today I am going to talk about weight loss, fat loss. Let me move this microphone a little bit closer to me so you can actually hear me.
Um, but I'm going to talk about it in a very specific context, and that is the way that I think about and approach weight loss. fat loss and coaching, and how it works when, when we work together. Um, and I'm doing this not to try and like sell you on doing this at all. I'm doing this so that you can understand there is another approach to weight loss.
Um, because if you are listening to this podcast, then very, very likely you are someone who has been on a lot of diets over the years, who has spent a good part of their adult and maybe even [00:01:00] often adolescence or even younger life, um, trying to lose weight, feeling unhappy in your body, feeling unhappy with how your body looks, not feeling good enough, feeling ashamed, feeling unworthy, feeling like if you could be smaller, thinner, you would be a better person, a happier person, more attractive, more desirable, right?
So somewhere, something in what I just mentioned. applies to, applies to you in some form. And so, we're also in this place in the world where it's, in some ways, right, we have the GLP 1 meds, which are having, impacting culture in a very interesting and fascinating way. Um. And I'm not gonna get into those today, um, but then there's also this, right, there was kind of like this body positivity movement, but, you know, and, and with that came along this feeling around, well, I'm not allowed to want to lose weight.
[00:02:00] I can't want to lose weight because like the anti, anti diet movement became so big that if you wanted to lose weight, it meant that you were like a shallow person or you didn't accept yourself. And nothing is that simple. Right? That is very black and white thinking. It's the same type of thinking that we have around food, and it is just not that simple.
Being a human, having a human brain, living in a human body with human feelings is just not that simple. And so I am of the belief that you can both accept your body and want to change it at the same time. Acceptance does not inherently mean not wanting to change your body. It simply means that you accept it where it is at the moment, That you have clarity around what you can and cannot control and that you take action accordingly, right?
And this links very much into self compassion. And so the reason I'm bringing all this up is because It is okay to want to lose weight. What is very [00:03:00] important is to understand your whys. Why are you doing it and what do you think the outcome is going to be, right? That is a very important part of this.
But what I want to talk about today in relationship to all this, this really drives why I approach weight loss the way that I do and why this is possible for you, whether we work together or not, right? This is absolutely something that you could work on on your own. And that is. Approaching weight loss as a side effect of changing how you feel around food and changing the way that you use food.
Well, as I often say, learning the skills of what, why, and how to eat, right? When you learn and consistently practice the skills of what, why, and how to eat, weight loss can and very often will be a side effect of that. And what is so wonderful about that is you are no longer death gripping onto the scale or onto how your clothes fit as your primary [00:04:00] measure of success or progress, because you are.
Working, learning and working on these skills and as a result, the way that you feel around food, why you're eating, what you're eating, how you're eating is changing and transforming, which then changes and transforms just how you feel every day, changes your quality of life, it changes your thoughts, it changes or changes It really does.
It really does. your ability to respond to your thoughts. It changes how much time, energy, and attention you spend thinking about food. And because you are experiencing these amazing quality of life changes when, and if a scale goes down, no longer become something that you are relying on for your happiness and wellbeing, because your happiness and wellbeing is improving.
because of the changes you're making as a result of those skills. And the second, and equally important part of that, is those changes that you're making in [00:05:00] terms of the skills are things you can control. When and if the scale goes down is something you have zero control over. And so we are shifting our self worth and our happiness away from something that we can't control and to something that we can control.
And that in and of itself is a total game changer. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about, like, kind of the mechanism by how this works, right? Because people always say, well, I can't lose weight without trying. And I shared this in an email a few weeks ago, if you're on my email list, uh, my letter list.
I really like to call it because they really, I really do think of them as just, like, Letters to a friend, um, because if you're in this community, you are here because you've experienced this, you've been through this, and this is deeply personal, challenging work, and so we are in it together, and so that's why I think of them as letters to friends.
Um, and I shared how a longtime client, kind of an on and off client, over the [00:06:00] past six ish months has lost 15 pounds, and she didn't even realize it. Because she wasn't weighing herself, um, and I'm not going to kind of get into the specifics around that. But the way this works, right, is if, let's say you are someone who, Stress eats a lot, snacks constantly, doesn't eat a lot of meals, and these could be the byproduct of stress in your life, your job, lots of different things, right, could cause these situations.
And so you're snacking a lot at night, you're not eating a lot of meals, or when you do eat meals, they're not filling, they don't have a lot of nutrition, you stress eat a lot, right, and as a result, your body has gained weight over time, and it feels shitty. Right? And you want to do something about it. So typically what you would do is you would go on a diet, right?
You would restrict food. You would cut out sugar. You'd cut out carbs. You would meal prep very kind of rigid, specific meals for the week, um, and you might lose some weight, right? But because [00:07:00] it's so strict and so rigid, you won't be able to keep up with it. And then the weight will slowly start to come back on.
You'll be back at square one because you're following something that is so rigid and so strict and so not meeting you where you are at that does not take into consideration your preferences, your lifestyle, your history. It's just not sustainable. And so when we work on skills, right, Let's say we're working on, um, prioritizing protein at meals, right?
I know I always talk about that, but it is a bedrock of the work that we do. When you prioritize protein at meals, a couple things happen. One, excuse me, your meals are more filling and more satisfying, so you are less likely to be looking for snacks. It also helps reduce cravings, right? So if you were eating a more filling meal with more protein, which at that meal helps you eat less of the more calorie dense foods, which then [00:08:00] impacts the, and the protein then impacts your snacking.
So you're less likely to snack between meals. And it also impacts cravings throughout the course of the day. So again, you are less likely to snack. What happens is you start to intake less food over time. It is a much slower process than following a 1400 calorie a day diet. But what happens is increasing the protein then decreases the amount of food you're eating for other reasons and in other situations that was really excess that you didn't need to be eating or want to be eating.
And that over time will create fat loss, right? Fat loss happens through a caloric deficit. Science, science, laws of thermodynamics, that's how it works. There are many ways to get into a caloric deficit. A diet is one of them. Changing the reasons, changing what, why, and how you eat is another one. So going back to what I was saying a few minutes ago around what you can and can't control, you can [00:09:00] absolutely control and have choice and autonomy over how much protein you eat at a meal, what you choose to put on your plate.
And as such, you start to just feel better around food, right? Because you have a meal and you're full afterwards. And that in and of itself is like, holy fucking shit. I am full after a meal. I'm not immediately or an hour or two later thinking about food again. This is amazing. Joey! Sorry, Joey's up here and she's sniffing things.
That's amazing! My brain is now freed up to pay attention to work or my kids or anything else aside from thinking about food all the time. Game changer and then I'm, I'm not, I'm full. So I'm not looking for snacks two hours later. I'm not going into the pantry and grabbing a bag of chips or some candy or walking through the kitchen and picking up a cookie.
Oh my god, amazing. That feels so good. I feel so good that I'm not eating the stuff that I don't really want to be eating, that I'm not even enjoying just because it's here and mentally I feel better because I know [00:10:00] that I'm actually taking care of myself. So these skills are helping you transform and feel so much better in your body and in your mind.
And then the side effect of that is fat loss. I mean, that's a win win if I have ever heard it. And that is how this process works. And what's so cool about it, right, is because I work with women who I don't want to, and maybe in some cases need to lose fat, and I work with women who don't want to and don't need to, but we work on the same skills.
The outcomes are different based on you, your unique lifestyle, preferences, history. Metabolic makeup, genetics, there's so many factors that impact that, but the skills are the same. And what's so cool about that is there's not one path to improve your relationship with food and another path to lose weight.
Guess [00:11:00] what? They are the same path. They can be the same path because they are the same skills. And anyone who tells you that you have to choose Is selling you something, is, is, has black and white thinking, is way too binary, and is oversimplifying the way that this works and what it means to be a human being.
And I believe in the long run is doing you a disservice. You do not have to choose between those things. They are the same skill set. And again, this is so important. Now let me be, maybe get a little more nuanced in this. If you are someone who wants to lose 10 pounds. versus someone who wants or needs to lose 30, 40, 50 plus pounds.
That is different, right? Someone who wants to lose 10 pounds because you don't like how it looks or your clothes aren't fitting, your body is going to be much less likely to want to lose that weight, whereas [00:12:00] someone who is carrying additional excess body fat, their body is going to be much more likely to respond and want to lose the weight.
So the less weight that you have to lose, the harder fat loss becomes, right? That is just a scientific fact. But what happens when we get into those spaces is this is where, and not only where, it's all, this happens throughout the process, but this is where values really come into play, right? Because at that point, in order to lose fat, in order to lose 5, 10 pounds in some cases, and this is, there's so much context around this, so this is not me blanket saying that one person trying to lose 10 pounds is the same as another.
It's not the same. But I'm going to say a relatively small amount of weight for your body size and your body composition, right? So there's a lot of subjectivity here. Um, but when it gets to be smaller and smaller percentages, basically, because you're really close to where your body likes to be, your body's going to hold onto it.
It doesn't want to lose it. [00:13:00] So it comes to a point where in order to lose that weight, the way that your body functions might require you to do things that don't actually feel good, that are not in alignment with your values. Um, and this is where that work comes into play. So you can get clear and say, you know what, like losing this extra weight is not going to change my life in the way that I think that it is.
My relationship with food has improved so much because the skills that I've learned and I feel really good. And typically what happens is when you've gone through this process and you've learned these skills, Losing that last kind of quote, little bit of weight doesn't matter anymore because you finally feel so good in your body and around food that that you are deriving so much more self worth and happiness from how you feel in your own skin and the way the action that you're taking that you no longer need the number on the scale or the tag in your clothing to tell you how to feel about yourself.[00:14:00]
This is what happens. This is why I'm saying it's the same skills. It's not one or the other. You do not have to choose improving your relationship with food and breaking up and dieting and the all or nothing mindset and the good bad shit around food and all the stuff that has sucked and the binge restrict cycle and all of this.
You do not have to choose between working on that and changing your body composition. They go together. They are one and the same and the values work is an essential important piece of that so that you are really clear. As to what is important to you, how you want to be taking action, and that your choices around food and your body are in alignment with that, right?
That you're not just taking action in the way that you want to with how you raise your kids, or how you show up at your job, or how you treat your friends. That you're doing it with how you treat yourself, and how you use food and exercise, and how you talk to yourself. Because that's just as important.
If not more important than all the external stuff, the way you use it [00:15:00] externally, meaning with your family, your kids, your job, your friends, et cetera. Um, so you improve your relationship with food. You find more ease around food and in your body, no matter what. And then depending on the circumstances of your body, where you are, your history, your health, your genetics, all of these things, fat loss can, and very often, for a lot of women I work with, is a part of that.
And so I just wanted to talk about this. I think this is so important. Um, That you know that you don't have to choose between these things, because why should you? That's not fair. And anyone who tells you, again, that's a way, insanely reductionist view of health, of physical and mental health, of well being, of how we live and exist as humans, which is not in binary mode, like computer language, right?
It's not yes or no, black or white, a zero or a one, a dash or a dot. It's so much more nuanced than that. I say this all the [00:16:00] time and Dr. Becky, if you're familiar with her, is the champion of this. Two things can and always will be true at the same time. Seemingly opposing opposite things can and will be true.
And forcing yourself to ignore that or choose between those two things is in direct opposition and defiance of what it means to actually be a human. You are not a machine. And so if you're out there and you've been struggling with any of this or what you're doing hasn't worked and you're like, I still want to lose weights.
Very often, the path to weight loss continues to worsen your relationship with food, because we keep going back to these diets and we just get stuck in this loop. And I just want you to know that there's another way. And so start to notice, right? What, what skills can you start with? Can you look at the role of protein?
Can you look at eating more at meals? Can you look at increasing vegetables? Can you look at slowing down when you eat? Can you look at paying more [00:17:00] attention while you eat, right? There's so many different places to start. But you've got to start somewhere with a skill, not with a rule, not with following a meal plan that you pulled off the internet that doesn't match your life.
As, as appealing as it sounds and as easy as it feels because there's no decisions and I totally get that. I totally get that.
But you also need to be paying attention to what works for you, and that is sometimes really hard and scary. It just feels easier to follow what someone else tells you because there's less decisions, you've got enough decisions to make in your day to day life, this cannot be another thing, and it feels like there's not time, energy, and attention for it.
And I totally get that, but then it's like, where are you, where are you at? What cycle are you stuck in? How much time, energy, and attention, big picture, have you been spending on this? And how does that feel for you? So that's really it. That's what I wanted to share. Thank you for listening. Thanks for being here.
Um, reach out if you've got questions, if you've got [00:18:00] ideas. I'm always here for support and, um, more soon.