Reddit Said What? My Take on Internet Weight Loss Advice [Ep. 147]

0:00 This is the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast. I'm Lisa Salisbury and this is episode 147. Reddit said what my take on internet weight loss advice. Welcome to eat well. Well, the podcast for busy women who want to lose weight without constantly counting, tracking, or stressing over every bite. I'm Lisa Salsbury, a certified health weight loss and life coach, and most importantly, a recovered chronic dieter here. You'll learn to listen to your body and uncover the reasons you're reaching for food. When you're not truly hungry, freeing you to focus on a healthier, more fulfilling approach to eating.

0:41 Hi everyone. I, um, am checking in here for a solo episode 1 47. I, I'm sorry, I am like really frustrated because I just recorded this whole thing, except for that I didn't. Um, my recording app has updated this week and I had to like, not just like click on the update, but actually download an entirely new program. And it looks different. It's acting different, and apparently I didn't actually hit record last time, so I got through the whole thing and I went back and I'm like, it's. It's not there. So here we go for take two. Interestingly, I usually do a lot of scripting on my podcast, but this week I didn't.

1:27 And so now I have to do this all off the cuff again, which I, I Super fun. Super fun. Oh, well, okay. Well, I do enjoy hearing from you. Um, as you know, I mentioned this last week. I've got a content request survey thing going on right now. Should take you just a few minutes to let me know what your questions are, what you're struggling with, so I can help you here on the podcast and maybe in some Instagram content as well. So that link is in the show notes. I'd be just so delighted if you could. Just take a few minutes and fill that out. So as a thank you, everyone that participates will be entered into a drawing for an Amazon gift card. Okay. So today I was thinking actually in line with that content survey, I'm always trying to think what is.

2:12 The most helpful for my listeners. You know, it's, um, I, well, I don't know if you know, let me tell you, it's one of my goals that you will lose your first five pounds. Just listening to the podcast alone. I hope that I offer you enough stuff for free, that you are able to start losing weight and that you have a little bit of trust in me first, and that's why I do this. So. I am always looking to see what are the questions, what are you struggling with? What is keeping you from losing weight? So I was checking out Reddit,'cause you know why not? And I was just in one of the weight loss forums or threads or whatever they're called.

2:55 I. I really loved this one particular thread. The original poster said that she feels like she's heard the same weight loss advice like a million times to drink the water and eat clean and move more, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, but I wanna know the real stuff, the underrated hacks, the weird habits, and like the stuff that nobody talks about. And I was like, Ooh, this is gonna be like. Totally unhinged, right? And I start reading the answers and I was floored. I was absolutely floored at how good the advice was.

3:36 Like there were, there were some outliers for sure. I. But generally speaking, people repeated or, you know, upvoted and said, yeah, me too, on so much good advice. So, I wanna go over some of the things that they said. The number one, the number one thing that was echoed again and again was tracking, tracking, forcing myself to be brutally honest with my food log. Um, tracking it in the morning so you don't have to think about it all day. That's what I call a 24 hour practical plan. Um, a lot of people that use an app to track their food intake and um, there was this comment that was, I struggled for the first two or three weeks because you simply don't realize how many calories you really take in.

4:21 And I was hungry and mad, but after a while, and then she says how she was able to get through that. What I think is really interesting about that. Is this idea of like not realizing how much you're eating. This can be true whether you are tracking in an app to keep track of the calories or not. If you start just writing down all the food that you're eating, you might be surprised. You might be surprised at how many times you go in the kitchen, graze, grab stuff on your way through. And when you are really diligent and like the one comment was being brutally honest, writing literally everything down, you, you might be a little bit surprised now a, a lot of the advice had to do with calories and.

5:08 And tracking and weighing and measuring, and you know that I don't have my clients do this. There's a couple reasons for it. Number one, first and foremost, most of my listeners and clients have been a chronic dieter in the past. You have done the diets, you have counted the points you have. Weighed and measured and managed the macros, like it is a horrible game of Tetris, right? You've, you've done all that and you're like, I just wanna not do that. I want to eat like a normal person. I don't want to have to pull up my phone, use an app every time I put a bite of food in my mouth, which I totally get, and that's what I'm here for. I, I'm totally.

5:49 You know, my clients lose weight and they never use an app to track. But I think what's interesting is this one comment about you simply don't realize how many calories or you know, how much food you're really taking in, and that is where tracking in a, in an app. Can sometimes be a useful tool for a limited amount of time for two or three weeks, like put an end date on it, especially if you're a chronic dieter, especially if you're prone to anxiety. When it comes to tracking. Put an end date. I'm going to do this for two weeks. I recently did this. I cannot remember for the life of me if I've mentioned this on the podcast, but I did recently go back to tracking.

6:31 for two weeks, because I wanted to check a few micronutrients and also my saturated fat intake, so this was on the heels of the, um, conversation I had with Dr. Sarah Valentine, the author of Vore. We did a two part series on the podcast in January about the nutrient quality of your food and how to increase. The nutrients that you're getting from your food. And ultimately we did get into some weight loss talk through that. But part of what I wanted to know is like, how am I doing from a micronutrient level and also how am I doing with my saturated fat? Because I did notice that my cholesterol is kind of creeping up into a place that I don't really care for.

7:15 So I wanted to check my saturated fat. And I just don't feel like those things, like the micronutrients and the saturated fat are things that I wanna calculate on my own with a calculator and paper and pencil. So I did use an app for that. if you are someone that wants to track, you know, some of those kinds of things, like, Hey, am I really getting enough potassium? Or whatever it is that you're kind of wondering about. Then that would be a good reason to track in an app. The other really great reason to track in an app is if you've never done it before. If like this poster, you simply do not realize what portions look like if you simply do not know what it looks like to get 30 grams of protein in.

7:57 Um, like what a chicken breast with 30 grams of protein in it looks like. Then you do need to do some tracking. You do need to do some weighing and measuring and track that because some of these next few things that people are going to recommend do depend on you knowing what it looks like to get 30 grams of protein in a meal. So that would be another reason, but again. Um, my caveat to this tracking advice is if you are going to use an app, keep it to a two to three week limit. Something that gives you a lot of information, gives you a lot of different meals, but you're, you know that there's an end date, you're not going to do this for the rest of your life.

8:41 What I do think. Doesn't ha what I think doesn't have to be given up. Sorry, that was bad grammar. Um, is food logging or food journaling? So my clients do a 24 hour food plan. We plan ahead what we're going to eat in a day, but I. Second only to that is food logging is just logging everything that you eat at the time that you eat it so that you have a really clear picture. This is, just a lovely study where you have the N of one. That means there's one person in the study. It's you, you, your food journal is the most important nutritional study you will ever read, and so that never gets old. It never gets old to look and see why am I having low energy today?

9:26 Or why was that workout amazing? What have I been eating? How have I been sleeping? What can I do to duplicate that? Or, wow, this was a great day. I really have have been feeling like my cravings have been at bay for several, several days, maybe even a week. Look back, what have you been eating? How have you been sleeping? You know, whatever it is that you're tracking in that health and food log. And so that it can be duplicated. That is the most valuable thing. It's not just to lose weight, it's to say, how can I recreate these amazing days? Right? Because you will have, like right now, if you're in the, like, the dregs of, of weight loss and you're just like, I can't figure it out, and, and you're really struggling.

10:08 You, you maybe haven't had some of those good days yet, but you will and you wanna have records of them. So yeah. Tracking. It's, it is really the first and foremost advice that everyone gave and I couldn't agree more. Um, second was quite a bit of comments on fiber. So, several that commented on fiber supplements, so people that put like a scoop of benna fiber in their water. Um, I kind of gagged when I read that because that is not something I can do. I've tried several different fiber supplements and it's just not for me, but, um, I, if I could. If I could choke it down, I probably would. But I, I have a couple of fiber supplements in my cabinet right now just expiring because I, I can't choke'em down.

10:54 I don't know. I can eat a lot of gross things, but that isn't one of'em. Um, so I like to get my fiber from, from fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and especially beans. I can't miss my fiber goal when I get a serving of beans in a day. It's, they're just a powerhouse. Last week I made a bean and, um, edamame salad with, um, cabbage and be bell peppers and several other things, and a dressing, and it's like all sturdy vegetables. So I made enough for four or five days. I kept it in the fridge and. Every day that I had that I was like, way over my fiber goal. And I'm like, whew, I gotta do that. So, um, I'm just outta cabbage right now, so I gotta go get some more. Uh, but yeah, fiber is a huge tool for weight loss.

11:35 Lots of people that said I increased my fiber and it really helped me to stay full. And, um, just keep that in mind. I'm gonna mention this again later where we, it helps you stay full. So just, that's coming. Just like fiber though, almost equally as mentioned was protein. And everyone's eating protein, like it's their job these days, but it's because it actually works. So several comments of collagen in coffee or tea. I don't love collagen. It's not a whole protein. It's um, not shown to be excellent at muscle synthesis, which is the primary reason that we want to eat. Protein is to maintain our muscle mass or increase our muscle mass if we are, um, doing proper weightlifting.

12:19 So, um. I don't love that. But also it's like it can't hurt. We can, even though it's not a complete protein, we're getting those other amino acids in other foods later in the day perhaps. So it's not worthless. I just don't want you to depend on collagen alone for muscle synthesis. Um, a lot of people commented that increased protein, but especially in the morning, was helpful. Um, having protein drinks while they are cooking dinner. Was another little hack there for increasing protein and that's a great also supplement. So similar to the Benefiber supplement of fiber, also having a protein supplement is a great way to hit your protein goals.

13:06 So it's, when I think of supplements, I always think of capsules or pills, right? But a protein supplement is just protein powder. And so as opposed to getting your protein from. You know, chicken, fish, cottage cheese, you know, the, the protein sources, uh, protein powder is considered a supplement. So we don't wanna get all of our protein from supplements, but there are lots of great studies, that whey is. Really excellent for protein synthesis, or excuse me, for, um, for muscle synthesis. So we want to be using high quality proteins that help us build and maintain our muscle mass.

13:50 Not only that, protein helps us stay fuller longer, similar to fiber, but the difference with protein is it has a high thermogenesis so it. It costs more calories to digest protein than our other macronutrients. And so we get that, little boost from protein as well. Okay. A lot of comments too on exercise. This was an interesting one because it, the, the advice varied on what worked for people, and I think Wow, that is so true because whenever I have clients. That are like, I don't, I don't know what to do. I don't know where to start with exercise. I always say to start with walking and a lot of comments about getting steps, getting a minimum step count.

14:33 And even people that were on a plateau, if they increase their step count by several thousand, even that, that really helped'em push through a plateau. So, um. We know that the calories burned during exercise are not equivalent to the calories eaten. So when you're using a calorie in calorie out model, it's a little bit difficult to include your exercise calories. Primarily when you're using that calorie in calorie out model, you're looking at your basal metabolic rate plus some of your activity level, but we don't necessarily want to. Add in than your exercise calories. My Apple Watch said I burned 300 calories doing a bike ride.

15:15 Um, it's not that we want to eat 300 more calories, however, when you are more active during the day, it does improve your overall. Burn for the day. So it's, it's tricky because it's not a, it's not a calorie for calorie situation, which is good because I don't really want you counting calories. And so I don't really want you looking at your watch and thinking like, okay, I can eat 300 more calories today. that's just a recipe for disaster because it teaches your brain that you have to earn your food. If you, um, again, are anything like me that. Really turned into for me in my dieting days, earning, sweets especially.

15:59 And so if I didn't exercise, I didn't allow myself to have dessert, or if I did, it was just a whole like mental mind game situation. So it is not true that you have to exercise in order to earn your food. That is not true. So we want to really separate exercise from eating, especially in the calorie form. What is really helpful with exercise is your mental state. So there was one particular comment in her that said, whenever I do, um, referring to her exercise routine, whenever I do that, all my decisions during the day are way. More healthy. If I don't move, I always end up snacking.

16:39 And it's such good insight that if you are someone who enjoys morning exercise, I, I cannot exercise in the evening. I love a morning exercise routine. Most of my clients are morning exercisers. Um, and if you do that, your mental space, your decision making will be upleveled. It, it's just true. You feel better. When you exercise and you make better food decisions, so this can work if you are, you know, a busy professional, you're an exerciser in the evening, that motivation does carry into the next day. Also, looking forward to that exercise routine can also be somewhat of a boost as well, so it.

17:21 The exercise matters more in how it makes you feel, especially about what your choices are and just your general overall movement. We want to increase as well. So all the silly stuff like get up and move once an hour, do a set of squats every time you go to the bathroom park farther away. All of that stuff that, like the original poster was like, I've heard the same advice a million times. That's because it works and because it actually is effective, we must be moving during the day in addition to our formal exercise routine. Okay. Uh, water was mentioned, but in the context, not, not as much in the context of just like have a certain number of ounces a day, but several mentioned how water was something that helped with their hunger levels.

18:12 So there's, I'm going to, I'm gonna tell you what they said, but bear with me here because it's a little bit tricky. She said, whenever I think I'm hungry, I have water. Then I wait 10 minutes. Am I still hungry? Usually, no. So this is tricky advice because while I agree with it that nothing sends up a false hunger signal, like being thirsty does it, it's tricky to just subdue your, your hunger signals with water. Yes, I. You definitely need to try water first. A hundred percent. If you have a hunger signal, especially at a time where you're like, why am I hungry now? Like if it's been an hour since you ate, you're like, that's not right. You, you probably are thirsty.

18:53 Go with the water. But we don't wanna get into that like old, you know, eighties diet advice, which is just like drink water to. To, you know, be able to fast, essentially water fasting for hours and hours and hours on end. We don't want to do that. So yes, we wanna drink water. Yes, we must be hydrated in order to flush out, you know, to flush the system. We wanna have a healthy, digestion all the way through our urinary tract system and. Another thing I learned recently about water when I was at my mom's doctor with her discussing her A1C is he said, be sure that you have really excellent hydration, because that is a dilution factor, and so it helps with the sugar that you do bring on board.

19:37 And so I thought that was really interesting. Um, an extra reason to drink water as well. But I, I don't wanna encourage you. To use water instead of food if you are hungry. But it is good to make sure that you are hydrated and make sure that those hunger signals are not false ones just desperate for some water, and so your body suns up a false hunger signal. an another one that I thought was really good was regarding consistency. So someone said to eat the same things consistently. and then, then the advice kind of went off the rails, which was, number one, it's less exciting so you eat less.

20:17 I'm like, oh, well I. Kind of like my food to be yummy. And I, you know, I eat almost the same thing every day for breakfast and I just eat about the same. So I'm not sure that's really true, but it's the second piece she said, you know, approximately how many calories and what the protein is so you don't have to do the math again. That is the best. So this is where you wanna have some go-to meals, have two or three breakfasts that are, go-to that, you know, have your minimum baseline. I wanna get 30 grams of protein and I wanna start my day with eight to 10 grams of fiber. So it's tricky. You have to really design a breakfast to get to those stats and so you're not just eating random stuff and you.

21:02 You know, it's something that you've worked on that, like the recipes that, and the things that I eat for breakfast, like I'm pretty, pretty good at because I've worked on them to get them to those numbers. Um, because that, that works really well for me to set myself up like that so then I don't have to recalculate and wonder if I'm getting the enough protein every morning. That's a huge benefit of eating the same things day in and day out, and the same things, meaning like the same grouping of things. So if you don't have my go-to meals guide, download that in the show notes. It really helps you to dial in some things that you can, eat every week or so, so that you can find things that really, um, work for you.

21:47 So really consistency. Someone said consistency is the ultimate hack and it's, it's true just doing these things. Okay. some that weren't repeated over and over, but I thought were really good. One was adding, not subtracting. she said, if I say I'm not going to eat something. It's all I want. And I thought, Ooh, that is so true. If I put all my goals, like no more cookies, I am like, oh, I wonder what cookies I have in the freezer. Ooh, I wonder if I could make some Like it's, you know, it's all you think about. And why is that? It's because when you tell your brain, like, I'm gonna tell you, okay, I'd like for you to not think about a yellow school bus.

22:32 And now collectively, you and everyone else that's listening to this podcast is thinking. About a yellow school bus, right? And so when you tell your brain to not eat cookies. Even though your brain hears the, the knot, the negative there, you still conjure up an image of cookies. And so then they're on the mind, right? Instead we, she said adding, not subtracting. So this is the concept of crowding out. We wanna add in food. So back to our fiber and our protein, we wanna add in more fruit. Perhaps for the fiber we wanna add in another protein, drink. Maybe if you, if you're gonna add a protein supplement, maybe you're gonna add that in mid-afternoon.

23:16 So those are things we're going to add in instead of telling ourselves, we're going to subtract something. Be mindful of stress and sleep was mentioned a few times, and then also getting blood work done and or like dialing in any medical things. So address hormonal issues. P-C-O-S-A-D-H. D-A-D-H-D came up a number of times, like once I got my A DHD medication, right? I no longer sought out food to manage my dopamine. Needs. And I thought, Ooh, fascinating. That's not an area where I work. But if it's an area that you struggle with, you might want to consider that. But generally speaking, like make sure you're good medically.

23:56 Like there, there could be something that you, um, you know, need to address now. there were a couple of random bad ones. only eat when you're at home was kind of, I was like, what? And she was like, yeah, I never bring food to work. I don't eat all day at work, and that's a long time to not eat in the, you know, middle of the day when you need to be productive and you need to be feeling your brain. So I thought that was like really random. Someone else said, getting down to Omad, OMAD, if you've ever seen that acronym, it means one meal a day. Um, again. I don't love that primarily because trying to get all of your micronutrients, your fiber goals and your protein in one meal is a struggle. Like I do not want to eat a hundred grams of protein at one time.

24:39 So it's very, very difficult to meet your nutritional needs in one meal a day. Um, another one I noticed was extended fasting. And these are like the multi-day, like one or two full, full days, um, like 36 hours kind of thing. again, this is not necessary. Studies show that when controlled for calories, meal timing does not matter, which means that one meal a day would technically work because meal timing doesn't matter except for that, it's just difficult to. Manage. And so because meal timing doesn't matter, it means that you can eat multiple times a day, which just is easier for you and more comfortable, and you're gonna be fueled and have, you know, the, the energy that you need to perform at work and what you need to do during the day.

25:28 So I just realized all of the random bad ones I listed. And yes, that's literally the. Title that I gave them, random bad ones, and then I listed some. Um, they're all to do with fasting and meal timing, so you can tell I'm just like not a fan of that. It's just not necessary. Obviously, we're gonna fast overnight, don't eat all the way up till the time that you go to sleep. You wanna give yourself some digestive rest, but that is not the same as these kind of long, fast situations. So, um, this is a lot of generic advice, right? But. That's what I wanted you to hear is that the boring stuff is what works. A lot of these women said, this is what I did and I've lost blah, blah, blah.

26:09 But the original poster knew this as well. She said, I've heard all of the advice. Why don't we do this stuff? You've heard all this advice. You may have put this on like two times speed, like waiting for me to say something new, right? Um, and it's this, why don't we do it? We know all of this. Lack of knowledge is not usually the problem for weight loss. Usually it's the mindset piece. Usually it's the, why am I eating when I'm not hungry? It's not wanting to do. All of these basics when it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year.

26:52 Right? So it's why we don't do them on the bad days. This is obviously where coaching comes in. This is where you need some of that mindset piece. Why do I not do the things that my higher brain and my future self wants me to do? some of this is getting some accountability and some of it is just getting that support from a coach. And then really quite a lot of it is just accessing my knowledge. It's. My knowledge on not only the coaching piece and how to work with your thoughts, but also the nutritional piece on how to, you know, make sure we're getting all of these pieces with the, the fiber and the protein and, and the water and, and all of that.

27:39 So I help you figure out where your blind spots are. The original poster has blind spots. She thinks that she's doing all the things and no shade to her. Like, uh, Reddit is all anonymous, so, you know, I, I doubt she will ever hear this, but the truth is we all do, we all have blind spots that we don't even know about. And so getting someone to look at your food journal, getting someone to take a look at your brain and see what's going on. Having someone look at what your, maybe you might call them, excuses are, but reasons, you know, all of those kinds of things.

28:22 Um, a classic one, one of my favorite one from a client several years ago was she did, tours in Italy and she's like, well, how do I not eat the pasta? Like that was a blind spot for her because she was like, I don't. I were like, legit, don't know how to not eat the pasta in Italy. And I'm like, you do get to eat the pasta, but we just don't overeat the pasta. And it was like, like a revelation for her that she could eat it and also not finish her plate, that she could eat it and be like, actually I'm just done. And. And those are all the bites that I want. So it's just simple things like that that my clients go away with, like with their minds, like actually blown, um, which is also just so fun.

29:03 But the accountability, I gotta say, is, huge because having someone to send your food journal too helps you to do your food journal if no one knows if you do it or not. Sometimes you don't do it because you are the first person that you're gonna cancel on. Building self-trust is a huge piece of losing weight and believing that you are going to do what you say you're going to do is something that you will develop through working with a weight loss coach. And one of those, one of the ways we practice that is you sending me your food journals so that you have someone to send them to and. And through that practice, you will end up realizing how often that you are not wanting to do your food journal, but you do it because you have someone that's going to look.

29:54 And so once you can transfer that sort of outside help, which is me internally. Then you will be able to go on and continue losing weight on your own. And that is, that is what I want for all of my clients, is to teach them the skills so that then they can move on, and continue to lose weight. Some of my clients lose all of their goal weight with me, and some have. Um, more that they want to lose, but they have the skills. And so after working with me, um, for several sessions or sometimes several cycles, then they go out on their own. So it just depends on your needs.

30:35 So if something in today's episode made you think a little differently or gave you that little nudge you needed, that's exactly why I do this. If you're ready to take it further, I'd love to support you. Start with my free, what to do when you overeat. Course this is for you if you find yourself. I. Overeating too many times in a week to see lasting weight loss. You'll get the reset and recover guide and figure out how to reduce your overeats and not beat yourself up about it. You can also schedule a free consult session to see if my full 12 week one-on-one coaching program is right for you. All the links are in the show notes. Remember, it's not just about the food. It's about empowering yourself with the choices that truly serve You. Have a great week and as always, thanks for listening and sharing the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast.