Episode 94: The 3 Stages of Fat Loss Part II: How to Lose Fat

(If you skipped Part I of this 3 part series because what you're here for is fat loss, buckle in: this part doesn't work without the healing stage.) 

Here's Part II in The 3 Stages of Fat Loss

To book in for a (free) 1-1 Strategy Session, visit:
www.MindStrongFitness.com 

Transcript

The Becoming MindStrong Podcast 3 Stages of Fat Loss Part II: How to Lose Fat

00:00
Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast, and we are diving deep into the three
stages of fat loss. Now, before I dive into this podcast episode, if you did not, and I'm gonna be,
I'm gonna be very adamant about this, obviously, you do what works best for you, but I feel
strongly about this. If you did not listen to the podcast episode before, about step one, the
healing stage. 1 billion out of 10 recommend listening to that first. Okay, if you're someone
who's like, but I'm just here for the fat loss stage. This stage cannot happen. Physically cannot
happen. Biology, 101, without the healing stage. So again, strongly, strongly, strongly,
recommend listening to that episode first before coming on to this fat loss stage. So in this
episode, we are talking about step two of three, if we want to lose fat. And I'm specifically
saying fat, because there's a lot of ways to lose weight, right? There's bloat, there's
inflammation, there's water weight, losing weight, the number on a scale, the force of gravity,
pushing down against that scale is very different than losing fat. And if we want to lose fat,
especially if we are in Peri or post menopause, I like to teach it as a three step process. Process
number one is we have to heal your metabolism. By definition, your metabolism is how good
your body is at burning calories. So as you heard me talk about in that last podcast episode, I'm
not going to go too deep into it here. If you're already eating 1100 1200 13, even 1400 calories,
and you are not losing weight right now, your metabolism is not very good at burning calories,
we have to do that step first. There's no work around for that, unless you want to go on a drug
ozempic, and you'll still wind up back here. But as I said in that last episode, that six inch hole
is now six miles deep once your metabolism is healed, meaning your metabolism is now good
at burning calories again. We are now ready for the part we actually want to do. We're now
ready for the fat loss stage, and that's what we're going to dive into in this episode. Check it
out when we talk about the fat loss stage, one of the reasons I'm harping so much on making
sure you've listened to the healing stage first is this what I'm about to say can sound incredibly
counterintuitive, right? Because if you listen to that last episode, and I just talked a lot about
slowly, slowly, slowly raising your calories for the purpose of retraining your metabolism to
being good at burning calories, what we're about to talk about in the fat loss stage is now
slowly, slowly, slowly lowering your calories. And if you haven't listened to that first episode,
you're just like, What in the like, Rachel, you're just sitting here spinning my wheels, right? Why
would I spend all that annoying, frustrating, slow time raising my calories if we're just going to
turn around and lower your calories again? And the answer is, because your metabolism wasn't
good at burning calories, if your metab, if your body was not releasing the weight at 1200
calories, why do we think it's going to release the weight at 1100 calories, at 1000 calories?
The answer is, it is not your body has decided that your homeostasis, that your natural rest and
comfort zone is a very restrictive, low calorie diet, your metabolism, said, with love, is not
working right now, and continuing to cut calories is not the answer. It is absolutely not going to
work. Believe me, I've worked with 2500 women, the vast majority of them came to me eating
somewhere between 914 100 calories and the weights not budging. And that's not Rachel's loss
of health and fitness. This is the human body, especially in Perian post menopause. So as we
talked about in that last episode, there's a very specific, slow, personalized, I will say this is the
challenge with the other term you may have heard used around this, by the way, is reverse
diet. I hate that term because I hate the word dieting, healing your metabolism is very difficult
to do on your own, and I'm kind of going off on a side rant here, but I think it's important.
Number one, from a mindset perspective, it is petrifying to raise your calories. Number two, if
you do it too aggressively, if it's this free for all of well, I'll just start eating more. You're going
to gain weight, right? You heard me talk about that in the episode. There are some coaches
who will do this very aggressively, and it comes with weight gain, and in a bigger picture, yeah,
that that's okay, because we're going to get into the fat loss stage. We're going to lose the
weight, but most of us want to avoid that if we can. So I'm just putting that out there up front.
Of course, I'm teaching you everything you need to know. So if you want to give it a go in your
own, you can. But I say that because I'm all about expectation management, that if your
metabolism is not working right now, if you are in a healing phase, I strongly suggest you get
help with that, because it is a difficult thing to do on your own. Anyway, that's my little caveat.
Now let's.
05:00
That we have gone through the healing stage. Okay? We have slowly, we've listened to your
body, we've listened we've looked for those clues. And we have slowly, baby, stepped your
calories up to a place where we can say, you know, I think of the gospel, church, hands in the
air, stand up and be healed. Your metabolism is good to go when I say that, obviously the
question is, well, Rachel, what? How many calories is that? It's going to be different to each
person the textbook label. And I hate textbook labels, but the textbook label is anything under
1600 calories is considered low calorie. Now I shy away from giving that number, even though I
just said it out loud, because right now, if you're eating 1100 calories, and you hear me say
that, that sounds absolutely petrifying, right? If you're like, I'm not even hungry. Hungry at
1100 calories, you want to get me to 1600 The answer is, I don't know. We may never get all
the way up there. This is personalized. We're going to be listening to and responding to your
body to see how high we take you. The fun thing with this part, by the way, and I'm kind of
going off on a side, going off on a side rant, is, if you wanted to train your body, your body is
incapable, is capable of crazy things. I know people that only work out two, three days a week,
and they have done this healing stage, like they healed their metabolism. Their metabolism is
great, but they wanted to take it to the next level. You could train your body to eat 2000
calories a day and have that be maintenance. That's kind of a, don't freak out about that.
That's a That's a fun little side note. I don't know that I've ever had a woman that I've
personally worked with as of the time this recording who wanted to play long ball to that level.
But I'm sharing that to say your body responds to how you train it. Right? We talked about this
a lot in the last episode. The reason it's not losing weight at 1200 calories, this is not your fault.
Nobody taught you better, is you trained it to do that by cutting calories over the years. So
when we go through that healing stage and we slowly, slowly, slowly, baby, step your way up.
Now you are in the driver's seat. You are training your body to be better at burning calories,
and we are going to take that it's not an indefinite thing. We're going to take it to a place where
now we can say with confidence, no wishing, hoping, praying, Okay, stand up and be healed. My metabolism is now good at burning calories again. Now we are ready for the fat loss stage.
So I'm going to use, I'm gonna use 1700 calories for the purposes of this conversation again.
I'm gonna probably say this a bunch of times. If that number scares you, pretend it's a different
number. I'm literally just throwing a number out there. This is so personalized. If you're coming
to me at 900 calories, we might not get you up to 1700 and that's okay. I'm using that number
for ease of conversation. If it scares you, change the number in your brain. Okay, so let's say
you came to me at 1200 calories. We went through a healing stage. It was slow, it was tedious,
it was frustrating. At times, we had a million conversations that this is a one time thing. The
healing part, stand up and be healed. Hands in the air. Hallelujah. We get you up to 1700
calories. You have not gained weight. Your energy is through the roof. Your clothes are starting
to feel differently. If you're someone who works out your workouts are next level. You feel
incredible. We are going to focus on the fact that you went from 1200 to 1700 calories without
gaining weight. Holy crap. Neon sign. Your metabolism is now healed. At this point, we have a
choice. I'm going to ask you, okay, knowing that the healing stage is slow and tedious and a lot
of mental work, do you want to immediately go into a fat loss stage? Do you want to do a little
more work? Are we going to roll up our sleeves and get to it? Or do you want to take a little
break? Do you want to just hang at 1700 calories for a bit? We're going to call this
maintenance, meaning you don't have to be as meticulous with tracking. You can eat a little
more food. Like, let's give ourselves a little mental break, because we just did a bunch of work.
I'll tell you honestly, most people don't choose to take a break. They're like, I came here to lose
weight. Get this weight off me. Let's get straight into the fat loss stage. That's personal choice.
I personally like a little mental break. But I've also been doing this a long time so I can play long
ball a little better. Most people hit that point and they're like, no, let's go. Let's get this weight
off me. At this point, we're going to reverse the process, meaning we are not going to jump you
from 1700 calories to 1500 calories again. There are a lot of coaches out there that will do that
to me, there's two problems. Number one, somewhere between 17 115 100, you started losing
weight, and we don't know where, because we took a massive leap. I want us to learn your
body like the back of our hand, where we can have conversations like at 1700 I'm at
maintenance, but at 1650 I start to notice the weight come off when you learn your body to
that level. The sky is the limit. I think of it as little control knobs. You are in control of those
little knobs. Where do you want to go next? And that's the third stage that we'll talk about next. When we go slowly, we learn your body to that level number two, if you jump from 1700s
10:00
To 1500 calories, Lord Almighty, you are going to be hangry, and it is not going to last. When
we try to be too aggressive, it leads to caving. It leads to binging. It leads to going down the
rabbit hole. One of my favorite expressions with weight loss is slow and steady is infinitely
better than overly aggressive and caving and binging. It's a long winded statement, but I say it
all the time. So you're at 1700 we're going to drop you to like 1650 okay, we're going to hang
there for a couple weeks. We're going to see how your body's responding, if we're feeling good,
if we're noticing shifts, if the weight starting to come off, if energy still feeling good, if hunger is
a huge one, we're looking for is feeling good, maybe we drop you to 1600 there's some people
I'll go to 1625 yet we'll take the babies to baby steps. What we are never going to do is get you
back into a 1200 calorie diet, because now I hate the word diet, get you into a 1200 calorie
caloric state, because now we have shot ourselves in the foot, and now we're ruining our
metabolism all over again. When we do the fat loss stage, we are lowering by baby steps, and
we are never going below a certain point, because everything we're doing is in the name of of
your metabolism. We're never going to do something for a fix that's going to hurt your
metabolism long term, because you're just going to be right back here with me six months from
now. It's like going on ozempic saying, crap. Well, now I've shot myself in the foot, because I'm
back to eating 1200 calories a day, and I'm not losing the weight when we do it in baby steps,
and when we do it only in a targeted amount, which is different for every person, which is why
I'm not talking about a bottom number your body is going to lose the weight. It is biology. 101,
there is no world. There is no wishing, hoping, praying. There is no world in which your
metabolism is healed and you get into a caloric deficit and you don't lose the weight, right? This
is why, and I'm going to go off on a side ramp, but it's not really a side ramp when our
Instagram feeds are filled with things saying, eat less, move more, when our doctors are telling
us, eat less, move more, and we're saying, as Perry post menopausal women, I freaking AM,
and it's not working. The part that's missing from that statement, because most coaches don't
know this, unless they specifically work with Perry post menopause most doctors don't know
this is that eat less, move more, does not work with a broken metabolism, or a metabolism
that's not running great. I shouldn't call it broken. And in peripos menopause, this is where we
see this most, which is why stage one has to be healing first, and then in stage two, the fat loss
stage the rules do apply, eat less, move more. Caveat, without ever going too low, which is
going to mess with our metabolism again. Okay, the fat loss stage is the one that we're most
familiar with. It's what our Instagram feeds were filled with. It's what worked for us in our 20s
and 30s. The reason it wasn't working before is because we had to go through the healing
stage first. Now last thing I'll say about the fat loss stage, you do not want to stay here forever.
This is where a lot of people start driving their they drive their metabolism into the ground for
two reasons. Number one, you could say it with me by now, if you've been paying attention,
they try to go too low in calories. Number two, they try to stay here forever. If you come to me
and you're like, I've been in a caloric deficit for six months, like, Oh, your metabolism hates you
right now, because even though macro tracking, the skill that we teach, is not restrictive,
you're still putting stress on your body because you're in a caloric deficit. Weight loss is
intended to be a quick in and out. Let's lose a few pounds. Let's go back to maintenance for a
little bit. Give our body a rest. Let's lose a few pounds. Let's go back to it. It really is playing
long ball in the in the name of training our metabolism to be as on fire as possible. I'm going to
talk about this more in the last part of the series, but for the purpose of right now, what I want
to say, what I want to end this with is that when you have healed your metabolism, when you
have now with a healed metabolism, put yourself into baby step, to yourself into a caloric
deficit. Number one, not going too quickly. And number two, never going that low again. Your
body has to release the weight again. It is biology. 101, there's no wishing, hoping, praying
involved here. And with that, the last thought I'll leave you with is, we don't want to stay there
forever. This is intended be, you know, fat loss stage. Lose lose some of the pounds. If you only
have a few to lose, you'll probably lose them here. If you have a lot to lose, we're going to do
this in stages. At some point your body's going to be clear to us like, oh, I don't love this
anymore. Take a little break. We go right back to it. But the beauty of the fat loss stage, doing
this with the healed metabolism, is it works. When people say to me, how do you know this
works? I'm like, well, because you are a wonderfully beautiful, sparkly snowflake of a human,
but you don't defy the laws of math and science. The reason it hasn't been working.
15:00
Is because your metabolism wasn't working very well. Now that we've got that fixed fat loss is a
given. You follow your plan. You do it correctly. It's going to work. What we're going to talk
about in the third stage. So we've got the healing stage, we've got the fat loss stage, then
we've got the stage that one day I'll create a better name for it's the whatever the heck you
want to do next stage is, you're now in the driver's seat. We have a healed metabolism. We
know our body like the back of our hand. We can say things like, at x amount of calories, I'm in
maintenance, meaning I'm not losing I'm not gating. I'm just kind of floating and feeling good
and eating food in at X number of calories, I lose weight at X number of calories, I aggressively
lose weight. So I can do it for a period of time. I don't want to stay there too long. In the last
part, what we're going to talk about is, what the heck do you want to do next? You want to
keep losing weight. You want to go to maintenance and hover for a little bit. You want to go
into a bulk. You want to put some muscle on your body, because you are in the driver's seat
again. I think of it as these little fine tuning knobs. You are in control, and you have the skills.
There's no wishing, hoping, praying, it's cool for the next, you know, six months, what do I want
to do? It's holiday time. I probably don't want to track macros that that aggressively, that
meticulously. What do I want to do? And we're going to talk about that last part in the last part
of this series.