Components of Healthy Weight Loss
A common goal among my nutritional therapy clients, and many Americans in general, is to “lose weight.” Maybe this rings true for you, too. Many are interested in “losing weight” (or otherwise altering their physical appearance) to achieve some other personal goal — whether it be aesthetic, performance-related, or to improve some measure of health.
So why are these goals so common, and why is weight loss the first step for most people?
Well, for starters, we have rampant chronic disease epidemics in our country (diabetes, atherosclerosis, autoimmunity, and cancer — to name a few) that are now threatening to decrease our lifespan; for the first time, our children’s generation is expected to live a shorter life than ours. There are strong scientific ties to risk factors such as overweight and obesity, so it makes sense that “losing weight” will help with these conditions… but oftentimes the health media fails to mention that chronic disease risk factors also include simultaneous metabolic disruptions like insulin resistance and HPA-axis dysregulation. Either way, most doctors and health professionals encourage weight loss to help avoid these chronic maladies. They’re not wrong, there’s just more to the picture.
Secondly, our nation’s strong diet culture perpetuates the ideal body type as taking up less space, making most of us feel inadequate if we’re not always aiming to be smaller. The health and wellness industries have been cracking down on this stigma over the last few years. It’s been refreshing to see concepts like the “health at every size” movement and body neutrality take the spotlight for once.
However, while I support feeling comfortable in the skin you’re in, I am wary about all this in general, because I don’t want our efforts to swing too far in the other direction, either — in other words, I don’t think it’s fair to demonize weight loss SO intensely, to the point where folks feel shame for wanting to change their bodies or look a different way.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve, and many people truly could experience happier, healthier lives by doing so. I think these goals can be healthy when approached in the right way, and especially when the appropriate practitioner is helping. We don’t want to create complexes around body image or food, either too much or too little, and sometimes guidance in this area can be key to seeing the goal through healthfully.
Let’s dig into some key things I like to discuss with clients looking for this kind of change.
First of all, let’s be clear what you’re hoping to “lose.”
I’d imagine when you say you want to lose weight, that you’re not interested in losing muscle mass, right? (At least I hope not!)
Body fat loss is usually the intention.
It’s good to keep this terminology in mind because you want to make sure you don’t lose the wrong kind of bodily tissue; lean mass is what helps keep you strong and capable into old age.
With that being said, there are some “weight loss” strategies that can sometimes eat away at your muscle tissue — like drastically undereating, for example.
I’m all for lowering your daily caloric intake to be in a little bit of a deficit, which can be good for fat loss (which I’ll get into shortly). However if you cut calories too much, or consistently consume the wrong fuel sources for your body and your activity, your body could begin breaking down muscle to provide itself the nutrients it requires.
Eating too little might help you lose some weight in the short-term, but in the long-term, you might run into some issues.
Your body has what is called a “basal metabolic rate.” This is essentially a calorie-burning equation: it takes energy for your body to maintain its regular status and keep you alive, and the rate at which it uses this energy is dependent upon how much energy you consume. (The daily processes involved in keeping you alive include things that go unnoticed by us, like controlling body temperature and blood pH, keeping your heart pumping oxygenated blood to your body, and cellular respiration — to name a few.)
It takes energy to carry out these processes, but your body needs to make sure it doesn’t use too much energy to do so, otherwise it puts your survival at risk by leaving you with less fuel for other daily activities. Your body also doesn’t want to use too little if there is an abundance, because you won’t be operating at an optimal capacity, and the excess consumed energy floating around can disrupt your homeostasis, too.
Tangent, real quick: if you need a little refresher on the term “homeostasis,” it’s essentially the balanced state your body is always searching for, whether that be stable blood sugar, regular internal temperature, etc.
So, when you undereat, your body — like all its other balancing mechanisms — will adjust its basal metabolic rate to match your current food intake. In other words, you consume less fuel, and your body will make sure it burns less fuel to keep you alive and leave an energy reserve for you. Once this “downshifting” happens, you burn less body fat on a day-to-day basis.
I know that’s extremely frustrating, but don’t get too rattled… it’s your body swooping in to save the day, which would be especially important if a true famine came along.
This is why, strictly and chronically cutting calories alone is not enough to lose weight and keep it off — because your body will eventually slow or halt that fat-burning process to ensure your survival. It’s best to focus those good intentions more on the nutrient density of your foods rather than their total calorie counts.
Keeping your body and basal metabolic rate guessing by switching up how many total calories you consume and burn (think: fueling appropriately for exercise and movement) per day will help avoid this constant downshifting and require your body to be on its toes, always burning clean fuel and responding to your needs daily… and sufficiently fueling your body gives it the wiggle room it needs to properly burn stored body fat, knowing it’s not going to starve.
So how do we burn body fat, specifically?
There are a few different methods you can try. Not all will be appropriate for you, depending on your age, current health status, history of disordered eating tendencies or diagnosed eating disorders, body image, etc., but the list begins with the obvious and moves through some pillars that often get overlooked:
Eat nutrient-dense, minimally processed foods as the staples of your diet.
Move your body in ways that are intuitive and interesting to you.
Improve the quality and duration of your sleep.
Manage stress.
Try different eating styles or patterns.
I always encourage clients and visitors to ensure they keep their doctor well-informed and seek medical clearance before tackling big weight loss goals — you always want your entire healthcare team to be on the same page and supporting you as best as possible. This goes for seeking the appropriate nutrition or fitness professional for your goals, as well.
Start by eating the right foods… the ones nature provides for us.
As I mentioned, we’re going to start with the obvious. Nobody can lose weight eating a ton of junk.
If you haven’t heard me say it enough by now, eating the “right foods” includes removing the junk and trying to incorporate as many foods in their “whole” forms as possible. With my clients, I always start by reviewing the following four things:
What oils and fats they cook with, explaining why some are worse than others, and the best ones to use;
Showing them where sugar can sneak into many packaged and/or processed foods, and how to either make their own version of that food or find a healthier alternative;
Identifying potential food sensitivities through their Food & Mood Journal and the correlations we find there between what they ate and the end result (changes in mood, energy, digestion, etc.); and
Determining a good hydration target and schedule, because most people are under-consuming water and electrolytes.
If you’re interested in hearing more about how addressing these items can help with fat loss, feel free to contact me.
Beyond those main things, where we go next is usually bio-individual, meaning that no two clients ever receive the same protocol from me. It might include things like balancing macronutrients (which might look like increasing protein, lowering refined carbohydrates, etc.), upgrading cookware, or cycling in some targeted supplementation.
I’ve talked a lot about what “real food” means. If you have more questions, drop a comment below or message me!
It’s more than just eating healthier foods — you gotta move, too.
While you certainly can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet, movement is still absolutely critical, and it doesn’t have to be some crazy workout regimen. Start with walking every day, anywhere from 10-30+ minutes — after all, walking is the movement pattern we are inherently designed for!
Exercise helps keep your cells responsive to insulin, which in turn keeps your blood sugar levels more stable.
When you exercise, your muscles and liver release stored glycogen (essentially carbohydrates) and triglycerides (essentially fats) to use as fuel to keep you going. Later on, as you eat and go about your daily life, your cells are more apt to respond to insulin bringing in sugar from the bloodstream, because you’ve used some of your reserves of fuel during movement, and your cells now have room for healthy replenishment. The more consistently you exercise, the more quickly your body is able to mobilize and burn this stored energy.
Continuously moving on a regular basis helps this become a stable pattern for your body longer-term, and helps the phenomena of your basal metabolic rate stay high and healthy.
As if there weren’t enough benefits to movement, contracting your muscles also gets your blood and lymph flowing, helping to detoxify your body and rejuvenate your tissues by expediting the removal of cellular waste.
Essentially, exercise helps keep whole-body inflammation down, increase your metabolic rate, and tap into your body fat stores for fuel to keep you going. It won’t single-handedly be the only factor in your weight loss, but certainly will rev up the fat-burning engines.
Get your sleep in order.
There are a lot of things at play surrounding sleep, and it can be daunting, I know — but if you’re not sleeping well, everything else will get thrown off at some point, including how well you break down and absorb your food, how well your body responds to insulin to maintain blood sugar levels, how beneficial exercise will be for your body, etc.
There are a lot of ways to hack sleep, which I will address in a future post, but some things you can do to get started right away:
Eliminate all forms of light in your bedroom, especially anything LED (alarm clock, status lights on appliances, etc.).
Don’t do work from your bedroom, especially right now when a large proportion of people are working from home — keep the bedroom for sleep and sex only. Maybe reading at the end of the day, too.
Try to keep the lights low after dark — this includes light from screens.
Keep a cool temperature, anywhere from 65-75 degrees, during sleeping hours.
Try some gentle yoga or stretching before getting into bed.
Start using some essential oils (if you have questions, let me know!) like lavender, ylang ylang, or vetiver.
The elephant in every room: manage your stress.
It’s not likely we can reduce the amount of stressors in our modern lives — but we can find ways to handle them better. This also seems daunting, I’m sure, but there are easy ways to begin tackling this:
Honestly, back to my main message — eating foods that support healthy hormones is paramount to your ability to handle stress.
Incorporate a five-minute break for every hour you work. You can stretch, take a quick lap, do some deep breathing, and/or follow a short guided meditation during these breaks.
Make sure you’re moving your body on a regular basis. As I mentioned above, movement gets the blood and lymph flowing and helps your body “recycle.” This includes the recycling and clean-up of stress hormones that might be constantly circulating in your bloodstream. Putting those hormones to good use and exercising your body can aid in stress recovery. Just make sure you’re not pushing yourself too hard — that creates more stress than it solves.
Go for a walk. Seriously. I know this kind of ties into movement in general, but going for a walk has been shown to reduce anxiety.
Surround yourself with nature, whether that be a great local park, the wooded area in your backyard, or any other area you find serene.
Limit your news intake — especially right now, during the global pandemic. It’s certainly important to remain in-the-know about everything that’s happening, but maybe limit it to 10-20 minutes per day.
Ask yourself how you can turn a current stressor into an opportunity — whether it be an opportunity to learn something, to solve a problem, or to grow as a person. How is this situation working for you, instead of to you?
Get a good planner that allows for journaling, whether it’s your own version of bullet journaling, passion planning, or something from this list. Just getting your thoughts on paper can help you break free of their chains, and being able to do so within a planner can keep the organization of both your tasks and your stressors in check.
While it might be the most intimidating, starting a therapy journey with a trained professional is awesome at helping you sort and work through your stressors.
Something to consider trying: Intermittent Fasting.
If you’ve never tried it, I recommend going in slowly. (I will write another post in the future about the different ways to approach it as well as the various kinds of fasts.) I practice intermittent fasting almost daily, but I modify it according to my needs. For example, I aim for at least a solid 12 hours of no food intake every day; this time away from feast mode gives my digestive system a well-deserved break to rejuvenate, clear out old damaged cells, and keep its defenses strong against pathogens and other disruptive material that can be found in food. If I’m feeling great and want to fast longer, I do, as long as I am able to do so comfortably.
This digestive “break” from calories helps prioritize the removal of that cellular waste mentioned before to the various ways out of your body (bowel movements, urine, sweat, breath, etc.). This prioritization comes from not having to focus cellular energy on digesting and absorbing fuel from food, and while this is occurring, your body is able to break down stored body fat for fuel since no calories are coming in. Win-win.
This can be a big undertaking, but an effective one. Seek help from a nutritional professional and make sure you’re cleared to try this by your doctor, and never push your “fasting time” beyond your body’s discomfort signals — your body will let you know when it’s time. Honor that.
Something to keep in mind: your weight will fluctuate daily, so try not to weigh yourself too often if that is something that will discourage you.
Yeah, it can be frustrating for someone who wants to weigh themselves daily. But the reality is, combined with your ever-adjusting basal metabolic rate, there’s plenty of reasons for minor fluctuations on the scale:
There is an actual weight to your food and beverages after you ingest them, that can shift the poundage up.
If you haven’t yet had or need to have another bowel movement that day, your bodily waste does weigh something too.
If your hydration and electrolytes are not properly balanced, you may be dehydrated and therefore weigh less (which is why people usually step on the scale first thing in the morning), or conversely, you might be holding onto some water weight due to the shifts that come with different levels of carbohydrate consumption and electrolyte supplementation.
We’ve all heard this before, and it does matter: muscle and fat do not “weigh” the same on a scale. As you improve the quality of your foods and move your body more, you will likely begin burning body fat and increasing your lean muscle mass. The number on the scale may not move much, but you will have obvious signs that you’re getting healthier and your body composition is changing, like your once-tight clothing fitting more loosely, or how much further you’re able to run or heavier you’re able to lift after two months of commitment. Don’t believe me? Take some before-and-after photos, with progress pics in-between, and track your scale weight for each picture. You’d be amazed at some of the results you’ll see, with hardly any change on the scale!
People tend to shift a little heavier on weekends because — shocker — we live our lives and enjoy some foods or drinks we normally don’t have during the week. This is okay. As long as it doesn’t completely derail your efforts or make you feel like crap, you should be out there enjoying yourself. Food doesn’t have to be torture.
This applies mostly to females, but your hormonal status affects weight too. Some women gain a few extra pounds around ovulation and/or menstruation, and again, that’s all okay. As long as you’re not suffering from pain or other extreme discomforts, these can be normal, biological fluctuations in your body.
The same goes for other hormones besides the female cycle — cortisol and the other hormones involved in the HPA-axis can shift and alter fluid balance and other bodily inflammation that can temporarily shift the scale.
Don’t let these things set you back. My best advice is to only weigh yourself weekly. Pick one day and time (morning is best, especially to track fluctuations if you’re curious), don’t consume anything beforehand, and use the same scale each time. (Using the same measurement tool every time helps reduce potential margin of error due to calibration, design, etc.)
Something to keep in mind: break your long-term “I want to lose X amount of total pounds” goal into smaller, achievable increments.
Setting a goal of “a pound a week” can be a good place to start — and honestly, someone with less fat to lose might see less than four pounds lost per month, and someone with more to lose might see more. Just make sure, again, that you keep in touch with your primary healthcare provider or practitioner treating you for a specific health condition to ensure you’re burning body fat at a healthy rate.
These shorter-term goals, though, will help keep you on track and make the end result less intimidating. It also helps prevent people from getting desperate and trying to crash-diet (which is not good for your health!). Even-keeled is the way to go.
Something to keep in mind: taking steps to get healthier can improve multiple facets of your lived experience… including the confidence to handle anything.
Your unstable blood sugar might normalize. Your disrupted digestion might calm down. Your interrupted sleep might become more sound. Your resilience and ability to handle stressors at home or at work might increase. Your lifelong skin issues might clear up (or at least improve!). Your risk of degenerative issues like bone density loss might go down. Your vital signs (blood pressure, heart rate, etc.) might stabilize. Your endurance to play with your kids might go up. The non-scale victories can be endless, depending on what your body needs, and how honest and committed you are to your long-term health and the short-term, realistic, actionable steps you take to get there.
Weight loss requires a big-picture view of your life.
You can try short-term fad dieting, or force yourself to run ten miles every day, and you might see some decent change in the beginning — but the reality is that without commitment in all the aforementioned areas of your life, long-term, sustainable, healthy fat loss becomes more difficult. And realistically, as we’ve seen, leading a healthy life outside of general weight management requires addressing those areas, too.
Your body will cling to fat as its defense mechanism when anything in your life is disrupted or imbalanced. It may seem difficult to juggle all of the areas above, but with the right supports in place, anything is possible! Don’t hesitate to reach out if I can be of any help to you in achieving your goals healthfully.
