How to Lose 5kg Before Party Season

(upbeat music) There is so much nutrition information out there. Welcome to Diet Notes. The podcast bought to you weekly by a dietitian designed to make your diet a whole lot easier. It just took me about 10 goes to record that. (laughs) I recorded each weekend for some reason. It took me forever to get it right. Probably because I'm recording this on a Sunday afternoon, and I am a little bit diet, but I'm running late with the podcast delivery. So if I stumble a bit more than usual, that could be the reason. So I think I'm gonna cover today, we'll be on the minds of many as the seasons change, and we move into the warmer months. And certainly I always notice that you go from wearing long sleeves and long pants, to suddenly needing shorts and short sleeves shirts, and you think, oh my God, like my legs and my arms are not looking great right now. And it's a reality check that summer and party season is just around the corner. And for many of us, the need to bear more flesh, get into swimming costumes, et cetera, fit into party dresses. And we think, oh my God, I need to shift some kilos and rather quickly. We call the January diet season, because that's of course the period immediately after Christmas, when I do release my annual diet reset book. People are like, right, I wanna start the year on the right foot. But that is closely followed by this time of year, when people are just noticing that the pants are a bit tired after far less movement and stodgy of food through winter. And then suddenly it launches into warmer temperatures and we're just not quite ready. So the first thing is, the good news is you've got plenty of time. You know, it's only mid-September. You've got a good three months until Christmas. And technically you could lose up to 10 kilos by then. Now, that is on the high side. In my experience working with women, I don't have that many clients who would lose 10 kilos in three months, unless they were significantly overweight. So say over 100 kilos and/or using a GLP1 medication, which is then when I would be expecting those kind of losses. Whereas for someone who is maybe five, eight kilos overweight or even 10 kilos overweight, you probably need closer to four months. And because once you get to those last few, the body really doesn't want to lean up that much. So, you know, if five kilos, eight kilos in 12 weeks is a very respectable outcome. And that basically means for many of you listening, if the kilo creep is bothering you, there is plenty of time to get things together before the end of the year. But like everything, the sooner you act, the better. And it is a really good time to accept and commit. Particularly, I find before Melbourne Cup because I find that once Melbourne Cup, that first week of November, it's like a snowball effect to the end of the year. So you've kind of got six weeks before then. And you could very easily take off three or five kilos, which will make you feel amazing. So here today, what we're going to talk about is the easy steps to take now to lose those five kilos before party season in the right way. So you're not compromising metabolism. So the first thing I wanted to talk about is the need to be strict initially. Because what happens is when you're trying to get into fat loss, you've got to deplete glycogen stores. And then once you've depleted that fuel, you're more likely to be burning a higher proportion of fat. And it takes a good few days to get through that stored fuel, which is why if you're following quite a strict lower carb plan for two or three days, you'll notice a two, three kilo drop on the scales. As we know, it's fluid weight, it's water weight, but it can be quite motivating. The measure I'm always looking for is waste, a reduction in waste measurement. I'm very happy with that more so than kilos on the scales. But to do it initially, you've got to have, you know, two, three, four, five, a week of fairly strict eating. And what I notice continually with my clients is that they're okay to have one or two or three days of pretty strict eating. And then it gets to a meal off and they're out and they sort of indulge. And then there might be the weekend and a few extra slip-in. And then they're back to where they started. They never get that very strict period initially, particularly when it comes to eating out. So I'm going to talk about that in a minute. So one of the most powerful things you can do and this is kind of why detox diets work initially is because they put people on quite a strict regime and hence they see results. They're not sustainable, of course, because they're often juices and things we don't have all the time. But they do get people into that mindset of being quite strict. So most diets, most regimes will work if you follow them. Some of them are, of course, better than others. But generally, if you can get a regime where you're quite strict with it for five, seven days, two weeks, only you two, three, four kilos down and you're on your way. So that means a lot of it comes down to really planning it in your diary. So you can be a little bit strict and it may be a case of not eating out. It may be a case of cutting out the alcohol. All of those things for a period have been quite strict initially and that will really make the difference. So that comes down to it. If you can really eliminate the alcohol, the eating out, the extras for a week or two, you'll hit the ground running and you'll be seeing results quite quickly. So you do need to be strict initially because you're depleting those glycogen stores, which is why initially when people ask the question is diet or exercise more important when it comes to fat loss, initially diet is exercise long term because it improves metabolism. But in the initial phases, definitely diet is the thing to be focusing on. Number two, you're going to be hungry and that's okay. We're terrified of hunger. We eat to avoid it. At the first inkling of it, we eat and keep in mind that when you're carrying extra kilos, you have been overeating even at small levels for some time which means your hunger's probably not the most accurate gauge and it's okay to not eat because you've got fuel stores there that you can access and you'll notice that if you ignore hunger for an hour, it goes away. You know, you've been at work and you're starving but you can't eat and suddenly you're not hungry anymore. So the body will readjust. So it's okay to be a little bit hungry. Now, I'm not talking about being ravenous all day and just thinking about food. That's generally hormonal issues and food noise and may require medical management. But if you're eating a meal, it should fill you for at least three hours. If not even close at a five hours, you're okay to go from seven a.m. and then eat at 12 or one. It's nothing bad's gonna happen. Yes, your body's probably gonna give you some hunger at 10 but sometimes you're okay to push on and that's the same at night time. If you've had a small dinner, a small light dinner which is what I'm gonna talk about in a minute, at six o'clock and you're used to eating at eight, you will be hungry at eight or nine. You're okay to go to bed hungry. But if you go and eat yogurt and fruit, you're probably gonna negate all the gains you've made. So just get a little bit comfortable with hunger. Now, if you're eating a reasonable number of calories, so say you're eating anything over 1200, it's okay to be a little bit hungry. So it's a fine liner understand, but maybe it's time to be a little bit more comfortable with being hungry sometimes knowing that for a long time, you've probably overeat and as such, it's okay to be reprogramming back down to be eating and surviving on a little bit less. Number three, if you struggle to get an hour of physical activity or exercise into your day, most days, so I'm talking to everyone listening who is getting to the gym once or twice a week, doing some steps and getting to Pilates, but really only exercising. So getting heart rate up to a significant increase, 120, 130, 140 beats per minute. A couple of times a week, but you're still doing weights, it's okay to ditch the weight short term to get some more cardio in, because you will not lose or increase metabolic grade or burning, you're not gonna burn a significant more number of calories from just doing a weight session a week, but you will if you add 20, 30 minutes of high intensity cardio to your day, most days. That is the number one thing I find that women are missing, because they're time poor, they don't love to exercise, they're working full time, they're juggling a lot, so they get to Pilates because that is a appointment, they've booked it, they might do weights a couple of times a week 'cause they've heard how important it is and indeed it is, but it doesn't take away from the fact that burning calories and burning energy in our muscles after many of us sit down all day, every day, is very important as well. So even in the short term, just for a few weeks, swapping even the Pilates, the weights for some extra cardio, will give you that initial few kilos drop, I said all the time. So it's not what we feel like doing, no one likes to sit on the exercise bike or the incline treadmill, we all hate it, I hate it, you hate it, we all hate it. But that ultimately is what burns calories and unless you have a very active job where you're walking around all day and you're getting at least 10, 12,000 steps incidentally, most of us who are sitting, commuting, spending eight, 10, 12, 14 hours a day sitting, I'm the same, I see clients all day, I sit a lot, this is one of the most profound reasons our metabolism struggles long-term. Now, if you've got three, five, eight, seven kilos to lose, get it off and then get back to the gym and build some muscle, no problem. And long-term weights, absolutely very, very important. But I'm talking when you're in this short term period where you're trying to actively lose fat and burn more calories, the more cardio you can get in, the better, it doesn't have to be two hours, it can be 20, 30 minutes of high intensity. But that's what will give you a significant burn, and help you with this initial fat loss that you have, these goals that you have in the short term. Number four, what is the most important dietary aspect? Yes, it's important we get enough protein through the day. Yes, we need extra salad and vegetables. But the number one thing that all of us tend to fall short with is dinner. Because life is busy, we don't eat enough in the day, we don't eat enough protein in the day, dinner ends up being seven, eight at night, very common and it's often the biggest meal of the day. Now, if you're dealing with a small female who's 165 centimetres tall, you're playing with a couple hundred calories a day. That female is only going to burn between 1200 and maybe 1600, maybe 1800 if she's doing a lot of exercise. As such, to get in a deficit, you're dealing with a couple of hundred calories. So, if you have a dinner, a big piece of chicken scents all or steak or salmon with some rice and potato, vegetables, some olive oil dressing, some avocado with a salad and a dessert, you're probably eating six, eight hundred calories for dinner and it's healthy, but it's too many. And this is one of the issues with a lot of the meal, delivery services. The dinners are six, eight hundred calories, it's too much for small women to achieve fat loss unless you're very reactive and probably younger. You know, if you've got metabolism in your 20 and 30s, we can burn a lot more. So, even for that four or five nights a week, if you go back to that very plain dinner, a grill piece of white fish chicken, two or three cups of vegetables or salad and that's it. Cut it off. Cut it off seven o'clock at night and do a 12 hour fast, avoid the snacking at night. That is the number one thing you can do. And again, you don't probably even have to do it seven nights a week. You probably get away with four or five and still lay yourself to have a meal off on the weekend and follow that with a longer fast. But some small like dinners, suddenly you wake up hungry and you reset metabolism and you're on your way, but it's always the dinners that creep up. Because we're cooking stuff, stuff for the kids, some extra chips for them or potato or rice. I just had a little bit, they say, I had a little bit of rice, but we don't have that many calories to play with. So, if you want to have that and you hot chocolate and you chocolate after dinner or you hundred calorie, it all just adds up and you end up five, six hundred when it really should be four. If you're a small female in your 40s, 50s, 60s, not burning a whole lot of calories and really not getting that much cardio in. So, even a few days of those smaller lighter dinners, if you need a reference, look at what a frozen meal is. Now, frozen meals can be nutritious, they're certainly improved over time, but one of the things that stand out as the size, they're quite small. So, good old link cuisine or McCain healthy choice, they're about 400 calories. You know how little they are, but we're bigger people we eat up, but think back to how you grandmother ate, they had a small dinner like that with two chops and a few veggies. Everything in our life has increased in size, our protein portions are two, three times the amount they once were, because we're told we need all this protein. But what the research is showing is that we need it in the day, we don't need to sit down with a massive slab of steak or fish at night, we need a small piece, we're in a small. So, transform your dinner, but the way to do that is to make sure you've had a bigger lunch and of course a decent afternoon top up, which often we skip that and think we'll wait till dinner and that's where it goes wrong. So, really committing to some light meals at night, where it is that 400 calorie dinner inclusive of any dessert will make a massive difference when it comes to achieving that daily calorie deficit. And then the fifth one I wanted to talk about is the eating out, because in our lives, whether it's cake at work, whether it's restaurant eating, whether it's takeaway food, picking up something on the run, as a reference, a restaurant meal will have basically double the calories of anything you would prepare at home. So, at a minimum, you're looking at 600 to 1000 calories, which means if you're doing it a couple of times a week, it's going to be really, really hard to lose body fat consistently. Because again, we're small females, we don't burn it, we love our milk-based coffees, we love our treats, we love our snacks, we love our bars, and then we expect we have to go for dinner to tie, which sound quite healthy, have a few bits of pizza, pick up a burger with the family, but if you're doing it more than once a week at most, pub star meals, family celebrations with cake, they will be pushing you over the edge. So, it's really, really difficult to go and eat out and stick to those really tight calorie loads without feeling completely deprived. So, a much better approach is really telemetar, and at most in the initial stages of trying to lose that last few kilos, or get into fat loss, so the scales are moving consistently each week. You probably need to limit the eating out and cut it right down, because it's not really a thing of going and making a healthy choice. It might be healthier, but it will still be super loaded with calories, so keep in mind that any fast food meal, even the healthy choices are 600, 800, a thousand calories. That's the fries, the sauces, the oils they cook in, the rice, the pasta, all the portions, it's doused in oil, it's so different to the way we cook at home. So, even being proactive for a couple of weeks and just cutting that kind of food right out will make a massive difference when it comes to achieving that calorie deficit and really making the difference. The final, I think I haven't really counted these very well, but the final little tip I'll give you two tips actually to wrap it up, because I know nothing I'm saying is overly inspiring, it's all just a bit home. If you don't want to eat stuff in the house, you've got to get rid of it. So, very few of us have a level of self-regulation that we can have a packet of Tim Tam's in the house and not eat two, three, four, five, very few. And so, whether it's that you buy it yourself for other family members, the kids, the husband buys it, the kids left overs, the kids snacks from school, you will eat it. At a moment of weakness, you will grab a musley bar, you'll grab a few of the kids snack-sized chips, you'll eat the limbo that someone gave you as a gift. And these are the little extras that really add up, and these are the things that derail us. When again, we're only dealing with a few hundred calories extra each day if you can't be managing that hour or two exercise, which very, very few of us can, because that will buffer those little extras, but not even not initially when you're trying to be strict. So, if you're really serious about getting these kilos off the good, you've got to get it out of the house, because you will eat it, and you do eat it, we all eat it as soon as it's there. We pick up a biscuit walking past eight o'clock at night, you think, oh, there's a limbo in there, I'll just have one. Snack on the kids leftovers before dinner, a bit of cheese here, a bit of dip there, all of it, the dips, the cheese, the crackers, anything you can grab and shove in, you really got to get quite strict with it and get it out of the house. If you know you don't have that level of self-regulation to cut it off and very few of us do, of all the character strengths, self-regulation is one of the lowest ranked, because human beings are programmed to seek out food when it's in front of us, and the famous M&M experiment, you eat double the M&Ms when you can see them on the desk versus in a ceramic jar, it's just the visual stimulus. So, again, if you're really serious about things, you've got to get it out of the house, pack it away, get rid of it, stop buying it for the kids, keep it out of reach, even for a short period and suddenly you're not having it and you'll notice how reliant you are on it and why it's preventing you from reaching your goals. And then to finish, see a dietitian, come and get a plan written because that act of having your own personalized plan, because these tips I'm giving you are general, these are for each individual. Whereas when you see a dietitian, you have a plan written which might allow you to buffer the dinner with dessert still and being able to know exactly what to eat when, how to manage the eating out, how to buffer it and have that person to bounce ideas off and different brands and knowing exactly what to do. And sometimes that's all you need. And if I'm honest with you, sometimes my best client results come from small weight loss because they already motivated people and they just need the tweak, they don't know why they're not getting the results, they're looking for it, it's just requiring a little tweak here and there of portions, timing, training, type, extras where they're under-eating, overeating. So at the moment, I do a three and six month program. The three months, it's five sessions and 12 sessions but I keep them going over the whole period of time so basically to try and get people to where they want to be. So that can be a really worthwhile investment. So of course the other option is I have my Perry reset book which is again a series of plans and ideas along this line of how to get into fat loss and create a sustainable eating pattern for you. But the best advice I can give you is just start now because it doesn't get easier. And clients of mine who started a couple of months ago and now they're you know five, six kilos lighter are super glad that they started when they did so it never gets easy out. The weight just keeps going out and sometimes you better to bite the bullet and just get on with it. So I hope that's helpful for everyone whose pants are filling a little bit tight. I feel you, it's not easy. Keep an eye on the waist measurement and if your heart rate's not getting to 130, 140 in a cardio session, you're probably not burning that many calories. Have a good week and I am Susie Barrel. I will see you next Monday for our regular episode drop of Diet Notes. Have a great week. (upbeat music)