I'm hitting targets and gaining weight! What do I do?
Hello everyone, welcome back to the one day at a time podcast. So great post yesterday by Anne, she mentioned she's lost over four stone, gone into a healthy routine, exercise amazing, plateaued a bit, PT suggested hey Anne how's it about you eat more protein and she found PowerPal, thinks it's great, thinks it's easier MyFitnessPal, loves the podcast, thanks Anne and now is in a position where she's been on it for eight weeks and her weight hasn't gone down, it's actually gone up a bit and she's hitting her calorie target in the last weekly check-in and her targets haven't changed and she's saying, what is going on? Why isn't my app changing my targets? Here's why. First and foremost, the weekly check-in, you know, the goal isn't to reduce your targets as fast as possible or even to make you feel better about stuff and nudging it down.
Speaker 1:The goal is to make sure that you're losing fat, you're maintaining muscle because metabolic health relies on making sure you maintain your muscle whilst you lose fat, okay? So we don't want you to just be thinking of total weight loss down down down. So when the app is looking at your data, it's not always saying all the weight hasn't come down therefore it's a failed week. It's looking at stuff like your calorie, your actual calorie intake, your protein intake, your steps. It's going to judge whether fat loss could have happened and if fat loss has happened but total weight hasn't come down, it's fine.
Speaker 1:No problem. We need patience. So the app really forces you into a into a world of patience and it's uncomfortable sometimes because you want something to change. But actually it's not the target that needs to change, sometimes you need to hit closer to the targets already given. So for example, Anna said the calorie target, but she didn't hit the step target or a protein target.
Speaker 1:Now the app will say, hey, how about you hit your protein target next week and your steps? And things didn't change enough to the week or two there, then maybe we do need to adjust your calories and steps. But let's not do that prematurely because if you get into a deficit that's too big and your protein is too low, you risk losing muscle mass. We do not want to lose muscle mass. We lose a lot of people because of this in the app.
Speaker 1:People come and they say, hey, my target is too high. I want it to be lower. Say, look, it's not in your best interest to do this. And the research is clear on this as well. And when we were invited to speak up in Cambridge University and speaking to the top experts in obesity and energy expenditure in the world, and they loved our system, loved our programme, they agreed with what we were doing.
Speaker 1:They were very, very, very concerned with population, the wider population losing muscle on weight loss programs. And they're now even more concerned because GLP-1s, because they make appetite super low, it's even worse in terms of the calorie deficit, it's even bigger now and the protein intake is probably going to be way lower. So muscle loss is at a high risk. When you lose muscle, the body basically says holy hell, get that muscle back, fire the hunger hormones right now and the hunger hormones are going crazy going and you're thinking my hunger is crazy. Obviously the GLP-1s can reduce this and but interestingly as time goes on after your week forty eight way into the second year, they start to work less effectively even at the high dosages.
Speaker 1:Your body's like, hey, let's get our muscle back sooner. That's number one. And then the body goes, yeah, but if we gain the muscle back, we're gonna gain loads of fat back. And then the body's going, I don't care. That muscle is gold, That fat is secondary.
Speaker 1:So you hunger level that goes through the roof and you rebound. You lose 30 pounds, you regain 40 pounds. The reason why you've regained 40 pounds is because it took you 40 pounds to regain that muscle back. Does that make sense? Because if you regain 30 and you regain the muscle, your hunger levels would probably normalize again or they would reduce at least.
Speaker 1:So weirdly and unfortunate for us, baldies hunger will be really, really high until muscle is restored and muscle doesn't restore faster than the fat so you always regain more fat than you initially had before that diet and you end up keeping on going until the muscle is restored. That's one of the reasons why we have this sophisticated weekly check-in. There's a lot of thought gone behind us to our long term plan with everyone and how we can help you maintain muscle and lose fat and it's sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes it's annoying, sometimes it's like I want to go faster and we lose people because of this, I know we do. But I'm not gonna fall down the path of falling into the same pressure all of the companies bend to, which is I want lower calorie intake. I want my faster results.
Speaker 1:No. If you wanna do that, go elsewhere. It's not on my watch. I'm sorry. I can't be that person that sits back and you say to me, Oh my god Scott, thanks so much for parapal.
Speaker 1:I'm on a thousand calories a day. I've lost 40 pounds in six weeks. Oh my god, it's amazing. I know the storm coming. I know the hell you're gonna get that you're gonna go through not long after that.
Speaker 1:That's no success for me. That's no success for you. It's a fake. It's illusion. You're live in an illusion because you're gonna go down and you've lost muscle and you're gonna regain that fat back and you're not gonna, you're not and you're gonna regain more back and you're gonna be at a worse place muscle wise.
Speaker 1:And as your age increases, your muscle mass goes down, your total health, your quality of life will go down. How can you say how can you do that? How can I sit back and allow this? The researchers shouting in our faces about this. The GLP one research is shouting in our faces about this.
Speaker 1:The top experts in the world in Cambridge are shouting about this. Okay. What do we do? Ignore it because people wanna have quicker results. Guys, grow up.
Speaker 1:Please. It's not what we wanna be doing. We can't be living like this. I want quick results fast fast fast. Oh, it's not happening exactly how I want.
Speaker 1:Well, let's let's bend nature to my will. It's a patient game. If you're not losing weight over time, okay, and things aren't moving as fast as you want, at least you're in a position where you haven't been in a catabolic state of losing a lot of muscle mass. The good news is it's fine, okay, I haven't lost all the weight I want to do, maybe I'm at maintenance but at least I haven't been the other side where I've been in a severe deficit and I've lost weight but I've lost loads of muscle. At least you can be sure my body's not been in that severe of a state that I've lost muscle mass.
Speaker 1:There's no problem I'd rather be from there. I'd rather start from here and then chip away at the fat loss and make tweaks over time. I'm happier to go from here, a position of resources because you've got resources which is your muscle than a position of no resources. You've lost your gold and you need to get it back. Okay, so that's one of the reasons sometimes the check-in is not always making changes because we need to be sure.
Speaker 1:But Anne, stick with it honestly. I've asked you to email me so I can double check your data, all this type of stuff and obviously you haven't weighed yourself in the last three weeks, so we need to have like a few weeks of weekly weigh ins, daily weigh ins for a weekly average and then we make decisions based on that. Now there's been a few comments underneath I want to cover. I have replied to them so you can see the replies as well. Obviously everyone's meaning well and I'm not having to go anyone here but I just want to clarify a few things.
Speaker 1:Linda has commented about eating the right foods and making sure you're eating foods high in fats and not good carbs and maybe the problem if you're eating foods high in fats and not good carbs, that's a problem. Not necessarily a problem, you can eat high fats, high carbs, low fats, low carb. As long as you hit your protein and calorie targets, fat loss results would be the same over time. She's true to say that, you know, working out consistently means you might be maintaining or gaining muscle mass, so total weight might not come down as fast as if you didn't. She's mentioning eating whole foods in a natural state.
Speaker 1:Again, bit of like big words, know, whole foods natural state as in like, if it's not that bad, it's not bad and no sugar and no sugar you should lose fat. That's not true either. Of course, know what Linda's meaning. Linda's saying, hey, if you eat in whole foods, limit your added sugar. That's fair to say, added sugar such in pops and all that.
Speaker 1:You're getting steps in and you're working out, things will likely be easier for you and you'll be able to lose weight easier. It's true in a sense because whole foods are higher in volume, lower in calories, so you tend to eat a bit more volume and you can have the foods. But it's not true to morally judge foods. It's not how it works. You know, she mentioned you may be eating the wrong foods.
Speaker 1:There's no such thing as wrong foods. There's foods high in calories, low in calories, medium in calories, high in protein, low in protein, high in carbs, low in carbs, high in fiber, low in fiber. All sorts of foods are mixed. That doesn't mean one is wrong and one is good and la la la la la. Some are more nutrient dense, some are less nutrient dense depending on when you need to use them.
Speaker 1:In some cases, you know, people will say tinned food is bad or you shouldn't have tinned food. Well, during World War two we needed tinned food because it was preserved and you could eat then. If we didn't have tinned food, people would have been starved far more and you think well is this bad they are tin food. Well it's better tin food than no food at all and you're dying of starvation. Know there's an extreme example but like just because something is like more convenient, there's, you know, maybe it's preserved more and people say that's not natural or whatever, but it's something that's affordable, it's something you can get protein in, it's something you can keep in your fridge and you're more likely to eat.
Speaker 1:There's many reasons why people depend on certain different foods. So please let's move away from wrong and right foods because there's no such thing. Morally judging foods makes things worse in your mind. You become rigid, you become judgmental about yourself and others, you think foods are right and wrong, they're not doing anything to you. My body like, okay, I eat a marzaba.
Speaker 1:Do think my body's going, oh my god, Scott, you idiot, you've eaten a wrong food, you've eaten a marzaba. The Mars, the word, the brand is made up. It doesn't exist in the sense of fact. The fact is it's a chunk of material with carbs, fat, protein, sugar, whatever. That's all it is.
Speaker 1:And it's going in my it's going in my belly. My body's breaking down the nutrients blah blah blah. That's it. And it's something small and it's dense in calories and stuff. That's really it.
Speaker 1:Is it gonna make me as full as a massive watermelon for the same calories? Absolutely not. Doesn't mean it's bad, just means hey, it's a bit more packed with calories than the other options. So yeah, there's research on flexible approaches to eating and rigid approaches to eating. If you've got a rigid approach to eating, it's linked with higher body weight, worse weight management, higher risk of anxiety and depression as well and it's obvious why.
Speaker 1:When you start boxing yourself into a corner, morally, I cannot eat 95% of foods, they're bad, I shouldn't do it. Then you do it. You feel bad about yourself. Then you see other people do it. You judge them.
Speaker 1:You trap yourself. You can't let yourself go and be flexible. You're rigid. You're stuck. You're stuck.
Speaker 1:The way to live is to be flexible. Today, I eat loads of carbs. Tomorrow, I might eat less carbs. Why? Maybe this the environment changed.
Speaker 1:Maybe I was in office or I wasn't in office. Maybe I did a lot of working out and I didn't do work out the day before. Be flexible, but try and on average hit your calorie target and your protein target and your step target and the days can be mixed and matched. That's the truth of it. This is the science man.
Speaker 1:It's not making her up. Yeah, what's the other one here? Just adjust your calories take 500 off. I said do not do that because there's already a 500 calorie deficit removing 500 more means you'll be in a severe deficit, higher risk of muscle loss And there is a member, our previous member in the group Debbie McGill. So she deleted the app.
Speaker 1:She's paid for it for the year but she's not really using it. The app gave her a target of 2,300 and she's going to eat 1,002 and she says it's working for her, I've lost 30 pounds, it's all I need. I'm eating healthy and what I'm gonna do I'm not gonna change for anyone, okay. If I start eating what the app says, I'll gain all the way back, no you won't. I feel like doing the right thing for me.
Speaker 1:You can feel like you're doing the right thing all you want, but what you're doing, Debbie, is you're putting yourself into a probably, if you are hitting 1,200 calories and the app has told you to be 2,004, you're probably putting yourself into a 1,000 to 1,500 calorie deficit a day. Okay. This means you are in a severe calorie deficit. That's a fact. Severe calorie deficits, what happens?
Speaker 1:High risk of muscle loss. You've got muscle protein synthesis which is the building part of muscle and you've got muscle protein breakdown which is the breakdown of muscle. The breakdown of muscle is fast and it's aggressive in high deficits because the body doesn't have the energy, you're probably not hitting your protein target, so not only is the body not got the energy to do what it needs to do, doesn't it have the protein coming in to protect the protein that is gonna eat the way out for energy. You're gonna lose a lot of you've lost 30 pounds. Cool.
Speaker 1:How much how many pounds of muscle have you lost? You don't know. Likelihood is, and we're going to bring this into that muscle health, our muscle health score, who cares if you lost 30 pounds? How much fat have you lost? They've made this point in Cambridge uni time and time and time again.
Speaker 1:The main guy in energy expenditure, one of the leading experts in the world said, I don't care how much weight is lost. How much muscle and fat is lost? And then you look at the research, oh, they lost 10 pounds. No, sorry. They lost 10 kilos.
Speaker 1:They lost six kilos of fat, four kilos of muscle. Do you think that's a success? That is not a success. You have traded 10 gold coins for 6 gold and 4 silvers. You have done a bad deal.
Speaker 1:That's a bad trade. You've lost out in that trade. It's a terrible terrible negotiation you've done and it's a bad turnout. So it doesn't matter if you've lost 30 pounds, 50 pounds, 60 pounds, it's how it's done. That's what matters.
Speaker 1:If you've done that in three months, there's no virtue in it. There's no celebration in it. If you've done 30 pounds in six months and you've hit your protein target, you've got your steps and you've started doing some weight lifting, brilliant, amazing, you've probably lost mostly fat, well done you. So yeah, there is I'm not here to my job isn't to just make you feel better really. Have say the fact sometimes and it's coming from a place because I care.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't be doing this for half my life if I didn't care for you guys because who would do this day in day out you know. It's a lot but it comes from an understanding that like most people have been fed bad information and then the information they're getting from other people whilst it comes from a good place is sometimes over complex and stuff and it's time for the simple effective approach to be the main one, at least if all of us did there, we'd be in a far better place. So just a reminder guys, the check-in will adjust you down when needed, muscle mass preservation is one of the key factors, please remember that hit your calories, your protein, hit your steps, be happy with slower progress because it means you're actually making the good type of progress which is the fat loss not just total weight coming down and if you're on a GLP-1s, you need to make sure you need to come close to your targets as well because it's gonna be tough for you to get your protein in and super low calories is gonna be again high risk of losing muscle.
Speaker 1:So that's it for today, thanks for the comments in the post, thanks Anne for posting it so everyone can see and learn and if anyone has any questions you can obviously email me or speak to my AI clone who will give you some answers. So hopefully this was interesting for you guys or at least some kind of explanation on things and just stop panicking. Stop panicking, chill out, go slower, slowly, fat loss, enjoy your life, be flexible like bamboo, don't be rigid like the oak tree and you're going to have less issues overall and you do not want to be the person that boxes themselves into a food prison and always stressing out about stuff because that's no way to live and we've got enough data for the last thirty years of people living that way and they're still trying to sort their health out today after trying for thirty, forty years so clearly something's not going right. But have a good day, go and track your food and I'll speak to you all again tomorrow.
