Your Sustainable Weight Loss Journey - Part 3

This is the third post in my Sensible Weight Loss Series.  I’m doing this series to help you lose weight in a healthy way, build a lifestyle that keeps weight off, and enjoy your life throughout the whole process and beyond.

Watch Me Discuss It

https://youtu.be/1oh8FlkoSU0

If you missed the first two blog posts, I recommend you go back and read them before you move forward with this one. Please don't jump into the process here, because in the end, that will be a disservice to you. Start at the beginning.

Disclaimer

• If you have a history of disordered eating, tread carefully. Work with a therapist trained in disordered eating before even considering a weight-loss journey.

• Discuss potential lifestyle changes with your doctor. Changes to eating patterns and exercise routines are healthy for most people, but you must keep in mind any risk factors or underlying health issues when making lifestyle changes, even healthy ones.

• The changes I suggest are considered healthy and beneficial by most standards. Suggestions I make have worked well for me and people I know, and are common concepts used among successful nutrition and wellness coaches. But you know you best. Don't do anything that doesn't feel right to you.

Previous Homework

Let's do a quick review.

Homework #1: In the first installment, I asked you to begin tracking your food without changing your habits or eating routines. We did this to get an honest assessment of your current lifestyle. How many calories are you really eating, not how many do you think you are eating? I expect this to be a big reality check for many people. We can easily find ourselves consuming much more each day than we think.

I also asked you to begin tracking your daily steps and purposeful exercise, so we have an accurate assessment of your average daily activity. If your daily steps are well below 5000, I asked you to find ways to walk a little more.

And lastly, I asked you to weigh yourself every day and log it in your tracking app.

Homework #2: We started by assessing how the previous homework went. It is important that you learn to track food, exercise, and weight accurately, as we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Next, we discussed how to calculate your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), the number of calories you need to consume to maintain your current body weight. I refer to this as your maintenance calories.

Once you know your TDEE, I ask that you eat at this calorie level for several weeks. This gives you the opportunity to clean up your diet, learn how to prepare high-protein, high-fiber foods so you can feel full while eating fewer calories, and to figure out how to incorporate some of your favorite foods into your meal plans. We are setting ourselves up for long-term habits.

You Are Here

Your previous assignment was to spend a few weeks eating at your maintenance calorie budget. How are you feeling?  Hopefully, you are feeling good!  I’m hoping you made a few small tweaks to your diet to move away from your weight-gain calorie level toward your maintenance calorie level. At this point, eating at a maintenance level should feel pretty comfortable. If not, I ask that you stay here longer while you work out how to feed yourself at this level. Because if you can't make this calorie budget work, you will definitely fail trying to trim out even more calories.

How are you doing in other areas?  Are you staying hydrated?  Are you keeping up with some exercise, maybe increasing your movement a little? Are you getting plenty of sleep? Are you logging all your calories, all your exercise, and your daily weight? You better be!

If you are feeling confident in your ability to stay at maintenance calories, it’s finally time to consider going into a calorie deficit.  But if you are still struggling to figure out how to plan meals and navigate life on maintenance calories, stay in this phase longer. Experiment and do some research to learn foods and meal prep skills that work for you. If you want long-lasting weight loss, don't rush the process. Remember, you gained the weight over time; there is no need to rush the process of losing it! Slow and steady wins the race.

Evaluate Your TDEE

Before we can figure out your new calorie budget, we need to review the data from your maintenance level weeks. Remember, we calculated our maintenance calories (our total daily energy expenditure), but the estimate may have been a little off. Let's discuss how good the estimate may have been.

First, either graph your weight to see if the data is trending up or down, OR average your weights for each week to compare them.

You ate at a maintenance level for several weeks. What happened on the scale?

• If you were logging calories honestly at TDEE level AND your weight stayed pretty steady, your TDEE estimate was spot on.

• If you were logging honestly, and you gained a little over the last few weeks, you calculated your TDEE a little too high.

• If you were logging honestly, and you lost a little weight, your TDEE was a little too restrictive.

Note - If you gained more than 1/2 pound a week, that means your TDEE calculation was off by more than 250 calories a day. I would recommend you adjust your TDEE and repeat a few more weeks at your appropriate maintenance calories before moving on.

Let's Talk Calories

We want to lose this weight slowly, so it is easy and sustainable. That means we want to shave only the number of calories it takes to lose between 1/2 and 1 pound per week. That's it. Faster is not better. Attempting a large calorie deficit will not be sustainable. We will get fed up, we will fail, we will rebound, and we will gain back anything we manage to lose. Remember, we are not doing that this time!!!! We are creating eating and exercise habits that we can maintain long-term.

I know you want the results that the fad diets promise. But I promise you, you will have much better results in the long run if you go slow!

Let's talk calories and pounds for a moment.  3500 calories = 1 pound.  That means if you overeat by 500 calories a day, you gain about a pound a week.  That is pretty easy to do. Even when trying to eat well, you can easily consume 500 extra calories (ex. apple with 1/4 cup of peanut butter, a yogurt parfait, a smoothie, 2-3 oz of cheese with crackers), not to mention unhealthy snacks (ex. chips and dip or a candy bar).

However, the same is true in reverse.  If you eat 500 too few calories a day, you will lose about a pound a week.  250 too few calories each day will allow you to lose about ½ pound a week. 

How To Calculate Your Calorie Deficit

As I said, the goal of a healthy weight-loss journey is to lose between 1/2 and 1 pound per week. For that to occur, our calorie deficit should be between 250 and 500 calories less than our true TDEE, on average. I know your first thought was "okay, 500 it is", but I would recommend starting at -300 calories to begin with.

However, if the scale trended up or down while eating at your calculated maintenance level, we need to consider this. Did it trend and by how much? Remember, 250 calories a day equates to about 1/2 pound a week. Considering that, adjust your TDEE to what you think it truly is. Then, subtract 300 calories from that value. This will be your new daily calorie budget.

Once you figure out what your new calorie budget is (with a reasonable deficit), update your tracker app. For example, if your TDEE was 1950 calories and that seemed pretty spot-on for you, reduce it by 300. Your new goal would be 1650. If that seems too low, round up to 1700. Your weight loss might be a little slower than you would like, but slow weight loss is better than setting an unrealistic goal, never meeting it, and giving up in frustration.

Repeating Myself

I don't really mean to sound like a broken record, but I know I do. It's because this is SO important to understand. We aren't just dieting hard for a month and then reverting back to our old crappy habits. We are moving through weight loss slowly, so we can learn how to properly feed ourselves from this day forward to lose the weight and then effortlessly keep it off. We are building new habits around food and exercise. Habits that feel good and work well for us.

We want to build these habits around our real lives. We are figuring out how to create fast, healthy meals for busy weeknights or choosing to do more meal prep on the weekend. We are teaching ourselves how to incorporate our favorite foods into our calorie deficit while still feeling satisfied and happy. Yes, the weight will come off more slowly than we really want, but it will also stay off, and we get to feel good and happy through it all. You can poke around my blog for some recipe inspiration, but I also encourage you to search online for high-protein, high-fiber meal plans. Maybe even give ChatGPT a try!

Food Noise & Emotional Eating

Food noise is the constant chatter in our heads about food. A certain amount of food noise is normal, especially if you are the one who has to plan and prepare meals for you and your family.

Emotional Eating is just as it sounds, it's using food for comfort during moments of stress, sadness, and sometimes joy. We use food to celebrate, to dry our tears, or sometimes to relax after a horrible day. Just like food noise, a certain amount of this is normal.

However, when we become aware of our eating patterns, we often realize we have more food noise or more emotional eating than we thought. This may have become noticeable to you when you started to track your food. Maybe you didn't notice until you reduced down to maintenance calories, or maybe you'll become aware of it when you drop into a deficit. Any sort of calorie restriction can make these worse.

When normal levels of food noise and emotional eating are present, you are able to work through them once you identify how they show up for you. While you do have to plan your meals to ensure you have healthy options, if you find you are spending too much time daydreaming about desserts or looking at restaurant menus, start by distracting yourself with other activities. If you notice that when your day gets hectic, you reach for a candy bar, stock your desk with healthier options. A big part of learning to eat and exercise for your life is learning to navigate the sticky times when life is busy and stressful.

I heard another coach recently say that if and when you break your eating plan (eating more than intended), pay attention to the words you use in your head to justify it. How did you give yourself permission? Pay attention, there are lessons there. For example, if you had a stressful week and you decide to have a big glass of wine on Friday night that you didn't budget for in your eating plan, how did you give yourself permission? Did you say to yourself, " It's been a horrible week, you deserve this"? Then maybe, in the future, you can budget a certain number of calories for an end-of-week treat.

But, if and when you do go above your calorie budget, don't freak out. Log the food into the tracker. Own it and move on. Don't let it derail you into throwing in the towel and just eating whatever you want for the rest of the day. It was one little blip. Don't make it worse by giving up on yourself.

If you feel like you are having obsessive thoughts about food or consistently fail to meet your calorie goal due to turning to food for emotional support, I highly recommend finding a professional to talk to about this. Food noise and emotional eating can be among the biggest obstacles to overcome when trying to eat for weight loss.

Remember, this is meant to be easy to do. We are keeping the calorie deficit limited to ensure success. But if food noise or emotional eating keeps sabotaging you, either ease up on the deficit a little or go back to maintenance for a while longer while you work through some of this. But don't give up and go back to unhealthy habits.

More Tips For Eating Less but Feeling Full

In my previous post, I listed several tips to help reduce calorie intake. Let me expand on a couple and add a few more.

You don’t have to do all of these.  They are just some ideas to help you along.  Experiment! 

·         Stay hydrated with water.  Avoid drinking your calories. Enjoy flavored seltzer waters and herbal teas.

·         Limit eating out.  Whether it’s fast food or a nice restaurant, food at home is almost always lower in calories. If you need to eat out occasionally, find restaurants that offer healthier options and plan what you will order before you go.

·         Focus your meals and snacks around protein and fiber. We want to hit our fiber and protein goals with food, not supplements.

· Choose high-volume, low-calorie foods such as vegetables, popcorn, egg whites, and shrimp.  Adding more vegetables to your meals is always a good idea.

·         Use your tracker app to plan meals, not just log results. Know how many calories are in the meal BEFORE you eat it so you can make adjustments if needed.

·         Ensure your meal/snack plans still include some of your favorite foods. This is not an exercise in deprivation.

·         Don't eat anything directly out of the packaging. Put your serving on a plate or in a bowl so you know how much you are eating.

· Come up with a simple rotation of high-protein, high-fiber breakfasts and lunches.

·         Be sure you are tracking as accurately as possible. Your body knows how many calories you ate, no matter what you entered in the tracker.

What About Exercise?

When you evaluated your activity level to calculate your TDEE, if you came out as either sedentary or lightly active, I want you to make an effort to add more movement into your day, and this is the order of importance:

1. Get your steps up to 5000+ per day. Higher is great, but if you are at least here, I want you to move to priority #2.

2. Resistance/Strength Training. We need to build muscle. More muscle means we burn more calories just moving throughout the day. Muscle also makes you feel strong and look toned. And since we lose muscle as we age, it is never too late to work on building and keeping more muscle mass.

3. Stretching. You know I'm a yoga girl. When our muscles are tight and we have no flexibility, not only do we look and feel older, but we also become more susceptible to injury. Spend a little bit of time every day doing some basic stretches.

4. Get your step count higher by walking more every day and adding another form of cardio to your week. Purposeful cardio is great, but if you are sitting at a desk the rest of the day, you still have a problem. Be sure to take a few short walking breaks throughout the day.

If you are currently moderately active, keep it up; your activity level is great! However, as I said above, strength training is super important, so be sure to incorporate it into your week, along with some stretching!!

That's It For Now

Take care of yourself, eat mindfully, and keep at it until I see you again in the next blog post