Do we chose to gain weight?
Hello everyone, good morning to you. So I'm back in full swing now and we'll having daily podcasts anew every single day, so happy days. There's a lot to cover, I've been reading a lot of research. We as a team at Turtle, put a lot of effort down into bringing research through these voicemails but also through Reels and Instagram, TikTok and things like that to make it more digestible, so we're looking into at the moment all the literature on obesity and if it's a choice or not and the reason I started looking into this because I saw it on TikTok many weeks ago, this young guy saying to this girl on a split screen live that he shut her down when she said you don't know my story as to why am where I am today and overweight and he shut her off and was like you're just fat because you eat too much and you need to move more, that's it, basics, know, buy my plan in my bio, right? And that girl went on to cry on live and all his idiot comments, it was horrible to see.
Speaker 1:And that's the type of stuff the fitness industry I thought we were over with, I thought I was done with, the bro science and stuff, but it seems that people still think that it's as simple as telling people that they need to eat less and move more and that information, whilst the principle is true with calorie deficit, I've always said this is not enough and if these people were serious about helping others they would put the time into what actually matters and are supporting you guys, people with their journey, actually the strategy of obtaining the deficit over time without it causing havoc in the mental health, without the relation with food worsening, without them judging themselves every single day, that's where the hard work is and if these people genuinely cared but wanting to help people, they would put their time in fire and not into this nonsense, you know, eat less, move more and putting all the balls in your court and essentially we have to be accountable for our own lives but these problems are very multifaceted, they're very tough to overcome, some people find it easier to lose weight than others, that's fine, that's the truth, some people are more naturally gifted to play rugby and football and others basketball, some people are more, you know, when I was younger, when I was going through school I was really really good at maths and I was quick and I was fast and, you know, my sister was the opposite, she really struggled with maths and you know I didn't work for that really, it just came unnatural to me right and there's a lot of these things that come unnatural to all of us, we have to be kind to the people that it doesn't come natural to, it doesn't come easy to, You have to look at these and go, you know what, even though I find it easier to do it, it doesn't mean everyone does.
Speaker 1:And it's the same narrative that people who have made a lot of money say they go, well, I become rich, you can too. And whilst I understand they're trying to say, look, anyone can make it, it still doesn't mean that it's that easy to do. It's not easy. There's a lot of things that go into it. Right?
Speaker 1:And an analogy maybe that makes it come to life, maybe it's a bit more to of a military one, but it's like saying to, like, you're in a battle and you gotta take, you know, the fort on the mountain, like, gotta go and take that fort up there, and this is the battleground and I'm on I'm on this side, the enemy's on that side. And it's telling all the soldiers, that's the fort. All I want you what you need to do is you need to kill more of them than they kill us, and we need to take our fault. And then that's it. And then soldiers go, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We get that, but, you know, what what's the strategy? Know, we're gonna run-in head on? Are we gonna we got artillery? Like, are we gonna we got snipers?
Speaker 1:Like, what what are gonna do? It's like, oh, You know? No. No. No.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you all that stuff. I'm not gonna actually help you. I'm just gonna tell you that you actually have to just get that fort, and you have to kill more of them than us. That's that's all I'm saying to you, and that's all you need to know because that's the game. That's that's all there is to it.
Speaker 1:And this whole is would be perplexed by this type of scenario, you're telling us the obvious mate, but we need strategy and that's what delivers the results, it's an executed strategy, right? And a strategy can be applied through experience from people like us at Turtle helping you apply strategies and they're learning more from you and then you can, you know, it's like a circular learning loop if you would. And I think that's the thing about all this stuff about obesity and losing weight and stuff like that, and all the complications and all the stuff that goes into it, is that nothing overrides a calorie deficit, like if you're in the calorie deficit you're gonna lose fat, So whilst hormones and balances of hormones, lifestyles can make it harder to obtain deficit. It's still the deficit is the law to lose weight and if you're not losing weight you're on a deficit, right? So we must try and get into a deficit over a prolonged period of time, that's the strategy, that's the battleground.
Speaker 1:Now there's a few tips on this, of course, and that's what we're trying to build with turtles. One of the main things we've seen and research backs up is that actually tracking your intake of food, the awareness of what you're eating will make a huge difference, will make a huge impact on your actual eating habits. So being just aware of the calories in the food you used to eat and actually looking at your food choices makes you do better choices, which will help you get on a deficit. If you're not aware of what you're eating calorie wise, you're in a bit of a troublesome spot, right? And this is where people turn to diets like keto, intermittent fasting, what else will they do?
Speaker 1:They'll do like carnivol, all these stuff, they'll do extreme forms of trying to lose weight without knowing what's in the calories in food, they'll just cut an entire food group out. And that will work short term but it doesn't work long term because you're not actually learning what's actually happening there, you just think that I'll cut carbs and I'll only lost weight, every time I need to lose weight now I need to drop carbs and it's not true right? So the awareness that comes from tracking is one of the biggest things you can do that will change your life when it comes to eating. We've got no calories on menus in The UK, and that makes a huge difference. Like, as I'm foody, Saturday, my friend, and looking at the menu, you know, I didn't get anxiety looking at these numbers.
Speaker 1:They they were just numbers to me, but there was many choices I would have had that night. Know, lot of people like, oh yeah, eat what you want. Yeah, I want to eat a lot of stuff on the menu. I'm not like stuck to one thing, but I made a better choice because I looked at the menu and he was like, well, that's not worth it for me. I'd rather have that and a starter which is equal to one main.
Speaker 1:I was like, no. Have a starter on the main, which would have been equal to the previous main only, and maybe we'd have a dessert after that, know, and you actually end up making bad decisions, you're happy about a job done, and there's no more problem to it. So the awareness of tracking, honest tracking is the biggest thing you can do. I think a lot of you who aren't doing that yet or who are struggling to get back on track need to really look at your tracking and being honest with it, even if you do say to yourself I'm going to do it for three to four weeks, that's it, I'll do it for three to four weeks, that's it, and I'm going see what's it all about. You will learn more doing that than all the articles you read online, all the books you read in nutrition, all the influences you follow telling you this and that, all the calculations you think you need to do, all that is secondary to you tracking your own eating, right, by far.
Speaker 1:So that's the first thing. When it comes to the second part of the equation which is movement, right, we need to move more, part of the equation people say you need to just move more. Well, what's the strategy for moving more? Well, walking, getting your steps, it has to be part of your lifestyle, it can't just be ad hoc. So you need to start thinking of, will I wake up and go for the fifteen-twenty minute walk as part of my morning routine?
Speaker 1:Will I do half my lunch break walking, half having food? Will I go for a walk as soon as I get home from work for fifteen to twenty minutes just to declutter the mind? These need to be built in as a habit of a lifestyle not ad hoc and you need to look at your carb intake because if your carb intake is very low which means you got low energy because carbs are the primary source of energy for the body, you might subconsciously move less. You will fidget less, you will walk less, you want to do less movement and that will have an impact on your calories burned. So look at your total step count, at your carb intake, can it be increased, is it in the one hundred-two 100 gram range, that's ideally where we want to be at to see and some of you might be like, I prefer fifty-eighty grams of carbs a day, feel better for it.
Speaker 1:If you've genuinely done that experiment and feel better for it, fine, but if you haven't and you're scared of carbs, try and increase them. You can do this yourself in our macros app, you can just slide it up, it'll automatically reduce fats, but you don't want reduce your fats too much, and see if this increase in carb intake does genuinely improve your day to day mood and energy because it could, right? So give that a go. And then when it comes to other factors like there is a very delicate topic in regards to excuses and reality of fat loss. So a lot of people will read the content of the studies and go okay, so obesity isn't a choice because no one goes I want to be obese, no one does that, right?
Speaker 1:But they'll go well it's not a choice, it's just me, it's just my genetics, I was born, this is how I was meant to live, this is how was meant to be, right? And that's not the path to go down either. And this is where like moderation as just a life way of life is just massively important. So whilst you can look at the research and it says obesity isn't a choice, there's a lot of factors that go into it, makes obesity a thing that is, you know, maybe you've had an upbringing where even prenatal, you're in the womb, where you're getting kind of conditioned into being someone who's going to store fat easier and stuff like that, then you're born and then you're just eating junk food and you've had like a you're from a low socio economic area and the food is low in nutrients and then it comes to your teenagers, you've just been eating crap and you've you know, a lot of teens who are obese end up being obese and adult, a lot of it does go back to teen years. And then you can come as an adult and you've kind of not even been conscious of any of these decisions, you just ended up as an adult and gone, how am I here?
Speaker 1:How have I become obese? I don't understand, like I've just been trying to live my life and that's kind of what does happen to a lot of people but at the same time, right, it's our responsibility now to take control and look at what in our mind is an excuse and what's reality. Like, are we saying I can't track my food because it triggers me and that's just how it is, hate food, I can't look at food or whatever. A lot of people will get anxiety of tracking, right? And the running away from the the tracking, running away from the stuff because of the anxiety it brings you, just makes the anxiety bigger.
Speaker 1:That's just the fact about this anxiety stuff about tracking and weighing yourself. You have to start from somewhere. You have to face the facts. You have to look at yourself and go, this is where I am. This is where I am and actually I don't want to be here anymore.
Speaker 1:And I have to be honest with myself. I have to look at myself completely judgment free, full of awareness, my weight, my eating habits, my stress levels, am I comfort eating, why am I comfort eating, what are my triggers for that, what's my nighttime routine, like am I going to sleep, we need to be completely honest and open and look at all this stuff, excuses cannot come in at this point. We're happy, we all make excuses sometimes, but when it looks like that we can't make an excuse for taking our starter measurements or starting base, we have to be willing to open our eyes. Right? It's the same in business, it's the same where you have to be able to look at the business, look at the numbers, not run away from them, right?
Speaker 1:And you have to look at them face first and go, this is where we're at. Once you know the fact of where you're at, you can work from the fact. You can't work from an illusion. A lot of businesses fail, I saw an article the other day about a tech business saying that they were raising another round because there's a crash in the economy now, the investors are pulling money out, they were raising another round and they sent an email out to say that they're not willing to reduce headcount and because they've said online before that they're growing so fast and their employee benefits and all that, and actually someone inside the company said they've literally got like a month of runway left cash wise, they're literally not doing the exact action they need to save the company, they're willing to take everyone down with them just to not lose face about sacking people. So that leadership isn't looking at the facts and going we need to reduce head count because we've got a month or two left, we need to reduce head count, we've over employed and we need another six months runway.
Speaker 1:They're not willing to look at the facts and do that decision because they can't face the truth. They know what the truth is. In the back of their heads, they know the truth is. They have to reduce costs, but they cannot do it because they want to save face. They want to look stupid, want to look foolish, they want to be embarrassed by themselves.
Speaker 1:That's kind of the mentality they have. Maybe it's similar when it comes to a body and stuff like that or general fitness before we do a run. We haven't done a run-in ages and you can barely learn 200 meters. We're not willing to face the facts because it's uncomfortable. But that's the starting point for change.
Speaker 1:That has to be the starting point because if you're not starting from there, you're starting from an illusion and you're never going to go in the right direction. That's why data and accuracy and tracking accuracy is so important in this journey, especially at the start and that's why everyone goes wrong. They don't weigh their foods properly, they think the nibbles and bites don't count, they don't increase their steps because they don't think they're so important, they don't track the alcohol on the weekend or they say they only had a few drinks when they know they had 10, and they're not looking at the facts. Then when it comes to a check-in or a review or they speak to us in nutrition email or on a call, and they say, look, I'm trying my best, I'm not, you know, I don't know why I'm not losing weight, I'm doing everything, I'm hitting my targets. But behind that is that's the illusion they've created, it's false.
Speaker 1:It's not the truth. And you can only make results from the truth, guys. We push this hard because it's a hard hitting fact. So whatever you've done this weekend, if you've tracked it or not, ideally try and put it in. If not, today's a new day and today's the start of being honest.
Speaker 1:Every single thing you eat and drink goes in the app. It'll take you five, ten minutes a day. That's it. I'm not saying you have to do this for life, but if you aren't, where you want to be with your weight or how you look, you need to look at the facts, so you need to start tracking and being honest about it and the results will come if you're honest. I've had so many messages from people who've said, Scott I went away and I tracked everything, I've been honest for two to three weeks and I'm down five-six pounds, I'm down, I feel amazing, I'm down, I can't believe this wasn't happening before, I know that I wasn't tracking properly, that's why.
Speaker 1:And they then come clean and say they didn't track and that's why the results didn't come before, but they wouldn't admit that. So maybe that's you. Maybe it's not. So today's task, your one big thing is really just to track everything honestly and go from there. And I think if you can do that, that's all.
Speaker 1:That is the base of change. So good luck, get your one big thing done and I'll see you all on the radio.
