Why the Last 3–5kg Is the Hardest to Lose

[Music] There is so much nutrition information out there. Welcome to Diet Notes, the weekly podcast hosted by a dietitian designed to make your diet a whole lot easier. Well hello hello, it's Lucy Barrow here with our third episode of Diet Notes. We've been getting some good feedback so we will press on and I quite enjoy having a little chat into the microphone. Two years ago my husband said to me that I should write a book on diet experiences with my clients. So profiling case studies of a client that I saw. And of course I promptly told him, I just thought that was a ridiculous idea and that he should stay in his lane and stop telling me what to do and I had no interest in doing that. It potentially breached client confidentiality. But now I'm thinking maybe, maybe there's something in it but of course I would never tell him that. So how I'm structuring this podcast is when a pertinent kind of issue crosses my path. I'll sort of make a note of it and think that is worth a little chat. I can certainly expand on that. And of course this chat is very different to the nutrition couch which airs on a Wednesday, with Leanne Ward, my colleague, good friend, business partner, where we sort of chat nutrition issues at the time and you get a couple of different clinical perspectives there. Whereas this is more my specific interest in an expertise which is more in behavioral change, psychology, women, health in their 40s and beyond and sort of those common behavioral aspects of health and weight control and longevity. So there's a real differentiation then. And so what I wanted to chat about today, we've sort of covered reset first and then we talked about Perry and I sort of thought it was time to talk a little bit about what I'm titling, the weight loss conundrum. And I call it that for a few different reasons. I think there is a commonly held belief that people like me, dietitians or even me specifically are obsessed with weight loss and fat loss. And that is not the case. You know, I am not an obsessive diet fan. I'm not an obsessive diet of myself. I do not, I'm not obsessed with dinners or being skinny if anything I prefer people with a bit of meat on them, but my industry is certainly interested in this. And for better or for worse, what I do in my clinic, which is specialised in women's health and weight, I do have a huge demand and interest in weight loss. And in some cases that may be a good idea in the set time, I have clients who are carrying 20, 30 kilos and for their health, their wellbeing, their physical comforts, they want to lose weight and need support with weight loss medication or behavioral change over a longer period, which is deeply fulfilling work. Can I say, you know, I think of the clients I've helped in the last 25 years and many cases I've developed friendships with them. I feel very close to them, they've changed their life and I've been able to be a part of that and that's really fulfilling work. But there is all sturtionally great interest in people who want to constantly be losing that, you know, three, five, seven, maybe 10 kilos that's bugged them, you know, they might sit at 70 kilos and they want to constantly be 60, maybe they're 80, they want to be, you know, they want to return back to their perception of what was their best. Now, my job is not to tell or judge people based on that. My job is to facilitate their goals in that space and do it in an evidence based way. So just because you may not think they need to lose weight, I'm certainly not pushing that agenda. This is people who come and say, I want to lean up three, five kilos, I want to be 60, I want to be. And then I will often say, look, I think there's two or three there, I think there's five, I think you're going to be hard pushed to get back to 60 just because, you know, as we get older, we also get bigger frame one. But I call it the weight loss conundrum because this is a very tricky grip of clients. It's actually much easier for me to get a client who's 80, 90, 100 kilos and get their weight down by 20 than it is to have someone who's 70 kilos and get their weight back down to 60 or even 65. And the reason for that is that the body, the human body, which is smarter than we'll ever be and ever know to be, doesn't like to be true security in general. It likes to store general women's bodies like to store, losing weight, muscle mass, that mass is a negative energy state for the body. That's why if you lose weight, sometimes you get sick, you know, our system doesn't like it. So in many cases, we're fighting biology and on top of that, we're fighting it in a world in which it is so easy to overeat and very, very hard to under because every cell in our body will drive us to seek out calories when we are restricted, both physiologically and also psychologically, as soon as we even cognitively feel restricted, often our innate programming is to seek out and become more obsessed with food. And this is where the complexities of diets and the diet cycle and dietitians roll weight loss and fat loss and not dieting regimes all sort of come to a head because complicated and like many areas of life it is complicated. But I've addressing this podcast to that group of people, the people who constantly will say they want to lose weight. And in my experience, if it's easy, they'll do it, but it's not easy and it's not easy for several different reasons and that's what I wanted to go into great detail today about because if you're listening and you're constantly fighting that battling your hair and you start each Monday, each month, each year with that desire, I want to lose weight this year and you never do. Let's have a look and see why. If you really, really want to, what do you have to do? And what are the pros and cons in do you need to and what are some better outcome variables? And hence it's the conundrum, it's the conundrum for you guys, it's the conundrum for me, it's why we never get there when it seems to be fairly back and white calories in calories out that it's not as up. It's a lot more complicated. All right, so the first point I'd like to make is that we don't do it or don't achieve those goals because in theory, we would do want to lose weight. We want to be leaner back to our best, we want to look like we do when we were 20. But this is the big butt and this is for humans, we don't want to change much, do it because human beings, we like to look hot, lean, fit, sexy, age well, but we don't like to change. Very few people like to change. Human beings do what's familiar, they do what they've always done, the biggest predictor of future behaviour across the board is past behaviour. So if you've spent 10 years saying you want to lose weight, never have chantazaar unless you make some pretty big changes, you won't change and that's not your fault, it's just human beings, you're a human being and it's really hard to do. Because ultimately when we're dealing with that handful of kilos, that two, three, five, seven kilos, you have to make significant changes because the body is really used to what you're doing. And so it's not a matter of just adding an extra exercise session, it's often completely changing your exercise regime. Everything you're comfortable doing, changing it, the same with your food, it's not going to cut it to the same way and just a little bit less, unfortunately, for a range of reasons. Homeones, habits, all those things. So that's the very, very first thing. If you really, really, really want to be three, five, seven kilos lighter in three months time and that's how much time you've got to give it. You can't give it, you know, two kilos a month maybe, but if you want to lose more than five, you've got to give it three months, that's how it all will take generally. If you're lucky, maybe six, eight weeks, but give in life the demands, you try to shift weight that doesn't want to go. You've got to give it the time and you're going to have to be prepared to make some big changes. And this is when I see my clients who I all adore, hello to all my clients this thing and people I've seen in the past, I've found memories of all of you. But if you do your version of my diet and I'm laughing because I love about that statement, it doesn't work, but we naturally return to what we've always done. So I'll sit in the clip with a client, write the repersonalised plan, say, look, I need you to change, I need you to eat less here, more here, and guess what? They divert back to what they've always done because it's so familiar. So that's my very first point. If you are really serious about getting that weight off and getting it off for good, what you've been doing is not going to cut it. You've got to change it and you've got to change it significantly for a period to adjust metabolism to sterm homeostasis and get into balos, which you probably haven't been for quite some time. So you've got to be open and prepared to change and that can be a big shift for many of us in general. Then number two, ultimately, and this is sad, I'm upset as well, we all love to eat. But if you want to be 10 kilos lighter or five kilos lighter, you're probably going to have to eat less and that's not easy. Because if you are 70 kilos, 80 kilos, 90 kilos, ultimately, your eating behaviour and exercise is keeping you at that weight. You are eating in a way that fuels a 70 kilo person. If you want to be 60 kilos, that's going to be different and you probably notice that people who are very small and light often don't eat much. Now I'm not talking about lean bodybuilders and fitness freaks who have got muscle mass per days and their body composition are different and they are able to eat a lot of low weights. That's not the norm though. So most people, they're eating up to 70 kilos, they're eating up to 80 kilos. We have to unravel it and be programmed to exist in a 60 kilo body, which means as part of this year probably are going to be hungry sometimes. Now we try and mold diets, develop diets, so clients are not hungry because we know that hunger can be very disconcerting, it can drive feeling the deprivation. But if you're used to eating, for example, an 800 calorie dinner, you know, like the meal replacement kits like hollow fresh malle spray and the dinner to often 800 calories. Probably double whereas more female needs. And you're used to eating that and you're used to having dessert and I cut you back to 400 calories for fat loss at night. You're probably going to be a little bit hungry. Not forever because your body's going to adjust, your hormones are going to adjust, just so it's going to get used to being smaller, which is how the new GLP medications work. They get rid of that so people can eat less without noticing. But that's a topic for next week. We're going to talk about GLPs then. But over time you've got to give yourself some space to feel a little bit hungry. Sometimes you've got to have to go to bed a little bit hungry. It's a bit bit uncomfortable, but you're not going to die. It's okay to feel hungry. But you need some time to read program to eat less. And we can buffer it with extra veggies and free foods and soups and all the tricks of the trade. But it's going to become becoming a little bit comfortable with feeling uncomfortable and a little bit hungry when you're eating a little bit less for a period. And I'll promise you just a week or two. If you can give it a week, two weeks, you won't notice anymore because your body is down regulating to that new lower nor, but it will take some time. If you revert back after a day or two, you will never ever get to where you want to go. Number three, we need some light days. Now I go into great detail in this in my latest ebook reset, which you can find on my website, a four week summer reset plan to get a run back and touch with their hunger and natural eating. But the biggest thing we don't do in modern life is that we are so ready to eat extras. So an extra treat here because it's been a bad day or a glass of wine here or a severed pasta at night because that's what you're feeding the family. And then you start, you know, drinks on a Friday and then take away on a Saturday and brunch out and then brunch out Sunday. And we have all these heavier days with higher calorie food. But we're not prepared to have any light days. Is it any wonder that so many of us are in a positive calorie state and can you wait? Of course we are. Because we're never hungry. We never eat lightly, but we overeat all the time, even by a couple of hundred calories. This is this insidious weight creep that affects so many of us in modern life. So getting used to having days that are more indulgent where you accept that you will have birth, okay? Or a meal out and eat, you know, a lot more calories than you need. It's okay then to have a couple of days that are much, much lighter. And that's the issue with calorie counting because we're eating up to calories we're allowed to have versus accepting some days will be lighter than others. Calorie intake will change. Some days you're going to burn more than others. Some days you're going to be hungry and then others. There's a natural with them to it. But one of the issues with following calorie control plans is that you never have that lightness, but we always have the extra. So as soon as we get into that model of it's okay to have some lighter days of eating, you're not going to damage metabolism. Nothing bad's going to happen. But it just buffers the natural cycle of eating. That's going to help your quest to lower that baseline calorie load and get your body to a lower weight over time. Which lends very nicely to the basic physiology and circadian rhythm which states. We burn more calories in the first half of the day than we do in the second. Now going back 20, 30, 40 years when I first studied and became interested in diets and health, we were told it didn't matter when you consume the calories as long as you were in a deficit. Physiologically the human body is programmed according to circadian rhythm, which means we are more likely to store fat at night. This is proven in research studies when you can consume more calories after 3pm and through that evening period which often happens because we have a late start to the day or we have coffee and then we might have a light breakfast or skip breakfast because we've been told fasting is good and then we have a late lunch because life's busy one or two later and then what happens? You get starving at four or five o'clock, binge eat the pantry, then have a heavier dinner at night because you're still hungry and then reward yourself at night. That model of eating will never work for fallos because there's a higher proportion of calories being consumed in the second half of the day. So if your goal is to change, it is to reprogram it is to get that extra weight off a good, you're going to have to just program at times to have some nights that are lighter calories in the second half of the day. And that may mean that you have your afternoon tea and a bowl of soup or you have a salad for dinner or sometimes you might have a big lunch afternoon tea and you may not need much dinner. And again it's okay because there'll be days where you have two dinners worth of calories on the weekend or when you're celebrating. So I'm not promoting bad dieting. I'm promoting getting in touch with your natural hunger and full-ness cycle and sometimes you need to eat lighter at night so you wake up hungry the next morning and reprogram metabolism to burn in the first half of the day. And this is why shift workers struggle so much with weight control because they're eating at the wrong time when their body is programmed to sleep. And no matter how smart we are, how good AI is, we cannot change basic physiology which is circadian rhythm in our brain which tells us we need fuel in the day when we're moving and we store at nighttime. But what we like to do is eat at nighttime and that's when we're storing and that's the biggest another big hurdle to break if your goal is to really change that basic calorie intake level and reduce it down to the weight that you want to be. Number four, I hope this can be not too negative about this a little bit of harsh truth but may resonate. We need to then regain control over the weekend and this links very powerfully to what I've already said. The weekends are a shamozl and they're often a shamozl for busy women and that's no judgment because I understand that a significant proportion of women listening are either in the throws of young children which it's chaos and you've got the kids non-stop on the weekends and they're up at 5 a.m. the days are long, you're tired, you're trying to socialize, you know all of those things, the kids are snacking all the time or in the case of older children it may be that you're at sport for long periods of time so you're up at the crack of dawn again you're tired then they're socializing eating out kids parties all of that and you just want to break from food, routine and meal prep or if you're then in a different category and you might not be looking after children or have a lot of time to yourself there could be a lot of socializing you might be going to gorgeous restaurants you know I had a client last year and she was retired and her time is her own and she would literally eat out like most nights of the week that required a real art to get her to lose fat while still being able to go out and enjoy nice food so it's about raining in and creating some light and shade on those weekends and the most powerful thing that you can do is to plan ahead and allow for heavier meals and lighter meals and that pre-planter you don't get constantly an over-consumption of calories and there's lots of tricks to it as I said if I can get 20 30 kilos of someone who eats out more meals than not you can do it with anyone but it does require first of all that awareness that it's also not great to be eating the bunnings sausage sizzle or picking up food at the fruit court if your goal is truly to change and lose those pillows because the calories and the quality of food is so much poorer and before you know that you've negated your fat loss for the last three days but as you've eaten 2,000 calories on a Saturday without even noticing another point that I want to make is you probably need a whole exercise revamp because yes the foods relevant and these are themes that come up time and time again with clients you know in terms of reverting back to old habits and you know overdoing it at night and having certain beliefs around when you should eat and when you shouldn't but probably the thing that needs the greatest overhaul once you fix the food is your exercise because we just always revert back to the same same same same because exercise when it's true training hurts I'm like you I'm like going for a running it or it's much easier for me to go for a walk with the dog but if I'm focused I know I need to get my heart rate up and work on the treadmill will go for a run when I don't feel like it and that becomes trickier as we get older and might have injuries or pain or fitness and we're really trying to weigh up but if you're deeply deeply committed to changing metabolic rate becoming better at burning calories and really dropping body fat that has been there a long time you're going to have to really change up the training and that is why shows going back to the old days of biggest loser or body transformations at Jim's work it's not the food it's the fact that people train intensely in a different way for three months at a time that kicks metabolism also suddenly they can lose weight they haven't before because they're training the body in a completely new way consistently now of course intense programs like that are very expensive it's not something we can always afford to go and see a personal trainer on more days than not or commit to an intense studio start training regime but you certainly can do plenty of options yourself whether it is doing a set routine and a gym that's programmed for you investing in equipment at home then guided by a personal trainer with a regime you might add sort of an extra run or extra high intensity walk with friends regularly but ultimately it will need changing if nothing changes nothing changes and if you're doing the same training at the same intensity at the same time they get that will be the biggest overhaul and even if you commit to a month where you really invest in activity and change it up alongside the diet that's when you like it and notice that two three kilojacks dropping body fat and then you're on your way, you're in the zone. Whereas what I see is people are in the zone for two or three days and then they're out and they never actually make the change because the other thing keeping your mind coming into a new school year is that the life tends to roll in cycles. So we've had the holiday period now, everyone's back after the Australia long weekend and then we've got that two or three month block in the Easter and then Easter is almost like a month off by the time people factory and say, "Then we have another block of time until the mid-year break when people might travel, go overseas." You know, if you think of it in blocks, we tend to only have two or three months of time to block things out before you're back into holidays or travel again and that it all unravels. So if you wanted to lose, say, 10 kilos, I would encourage you to enjoy it in a block. Say, "Right, I'm going to get three to five off by Easter, hold it there," and then do the next block rather than just roll it over where you're on, on, and then off again while you're holidaying and that cycle of life wishes to flow particularly for people who got kids in a school term heavily affects us. But what I wanted to end on is maybe not what we all want to hear, but maybe it's a little bit of reality. The question I would have for you is, if you don't want to do those things, if it's feeling gross to think, "Oh God, I could think of nothing worse and have to pay attention to what I'm eating on the weekend," or, "I don't want to change my training, I just can't do both of them, too old, I'm too tired of that care that much." That's fine. Remember no one's saying that you have to make these changes, no one's judging you. What I would say from a health perspective, though. If you can at least stop your weight creeping up, particularly once you're over the age of 40 and hold it stable, what we don't want to see is people who are just gradually gaining two, three, five kilos a year. You don't want to be 70 kilos than 75 then 80 because by the time you realize it's a problem, it's significant and that requires a lot more work and time. If you can at least halt gain, or more importantly than that, halt your waist or lose body fat around your waist measurement. Lean up. That is actually much more important than the weight on the scales and a weight you may possibly never get to again. Just because of life and the level of starvation intensity, you would have to focus on to get the weight down that much. But it may be a much more realistic goal to say, "I want to get my waist below 80. I want my waist to be decreasing over time with my training," or just being more mindful at night time, without having to embark on this strict restriction model of change. All means, some people can change body composition and get that kind of transformation happening. You can absolutely do it, but these are the variables that you really need to target. You have to be prepared to change. You have to get strict with your food. Some of the time, you have to consider what you're eating on the weekends. You have to really start to train. But you can get pretty good results from some subtle shifts less by going light at night, some other time, doing a bit more activity and changing your training so you're getting more of a training effect. And you may find that whilst you don't get down five, seven kilos, you might get two or three, but over time your waist measurement is significantly reducing. And that is a very, very positive health outcome, but we men in general. All right, I hope that's helpful. A few little ideas and things to think about when it comes to body composition. And next week, we are going to deep dive. The growing range and interest in GLP1 medications, our friends, Ozanpeak, Manjaro, Wagovie, Run Talk About Who Are They For, Why They Work, Why They Stop Working, and Why Most People Will Order Use Them in the Short Term Before Coming Back to the very basic need of needing to get their diet and exercise in line. Have a great week. Visit me on my Facebook page, my Instagram. Let me know what you think of the podcast and through any ideas for topics you'd like me to cover. I hope it's helpful. Have a healthy week and I will see you sometime next Monday. Thanks for listening.