Six Simple Rules For Eating To Lose Weight

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Welcome to There Is a Method to the Madnets. My name is Rob Maxwell, and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's fitness programs, and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and most importantly why things work. Hence the name, There is a Method to the Madness. Before I get to today's show, I want to thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. For those that want to know how to eat right to lose weight, this is the podcast for you. Now, you're gonna have to pay attention because I'm going to repeat some rules that I have repeated in the past on this podcast and for the last 31 years. You probably could guess, it's changed a little bit over the last decade, but you probably could guess what is the most common question a personal trainer such as myself has gotten through the years. That is right. The question is, how do I lose weight? And what's so funny and sort of ironic is that's not what a lot of us personal trainers really focus on. The reason is because almost all of weight loss is about how you eat. And the time spent in the personal training sessions is spent on most of the time strength training, and almost all of the time on exercise administration, which is the way it should be. If you're working with somebody, say anywhere from, say, I don't know, an hour to three hours per week, how is that enough time to handle all of the diet stuff? I used to tell people all the time, it's all the hours in the week outside of our training that's really going to count regarding your weight loss. It's not like I can't give tips and do give tips and all that, but the bottom line is to lose weight is almost exclusively diet. And I'm gonna move into that here real quick. I'm just really trying to make a point. How it's the number one question asked, but the reality is the answers, advice, and training are never, hardly ever, structured around losing weight because it can't be. It's a dietary change that you have to make. Now, when I say almost exclusively, there's a caveat to that. So energy in must be less than energy out. So part of that equation is burning more calories. So any form of exercise or activity will help you do that. The second caveat is that the best way to increase your metabolism is to add muscle mass, which happens through strength training and other forms of anaerobic exercise. But outside of that, the results have to come from how you eat regarding fat loss. You can still get in really good shape and not lose weight. You probably won't be in the best shape you can be in, but you can get in good shape. Meaning you can get stronger, you can improve your endurance, you can improve your cardiorespiratory efficiency, you can improve your balance and your mobility, you can improve your flexibility. All of that can happen and never lose a pound. So it's not like all of the training goes for naught. Of course it doesn't. I mean, I have said before that my least favorite type of client, I don't take them on anymore, is the one who only wants to lose weight because that is going to be a pure diet thing. And most people don't have the wherewithal to see that through. Hate to be cynical, but it's true. I have not seen that through the years. We see a lot of up and down, it's very frustrating as a trainer. So I am going to give you my rules again. The book I wrote, my second book, is called You Can't Outrun a Poor Diet. This is how I handle the majority of my weight loss clients now. When I say weight loss clients now, again, I'm not exaggerating. I don't take somebody on if they call me up and say, hey, my main goal is to lose weight. That's what I'm looking to do. I say, you know, I'm not really gonna be able to help you with that because again, it's a very frustrating proposition for me, the trainer, through the years. So I wrote a book about what, three years ago on this one now? And that's how I handle it. I hand them the book because I can't do that work for somebody. And look, I'm not discounting this. I mean, I'm not discounting weight loss. I'm not, I'm not doing that. Like, I think it is incredibly important when somebody needs to lose weight. You know, not everybody does, not everybody does that thinks they do. A lot of people do. I mean, 70% of the United States is overweight or obese. I get it, that's a national epidemic. It's a worldwide epidemic. I am not saying it's not important, it is very, very important. What I'm saying is, as a personal trainer, it is very difficult and time draining for the trainer and for the client sessions to focus on that, which is why I wrote the book. Look, I got into this because I was an overweight teenager. And that's how I came up with these rules because they worked for me. God inspired, whatever you want to call it. I know that when I was 17 years old, I'd gotten tired of being chubby. I was never morbidly obese or anything like that, but I definitely was carrying a little more body fat than I wanted to. Talk about why in the book maybe came from uh, you know, some painful experiences of losing my dad at a young age. I don't know. Maybe I binge ate. I don't know. I know I was active, I know I played tennis, I know I rode my bikes everywhere, my bike everywhere. I know I was a competitive tennis player when I said I played tennis, playing on the junior high and high school team. I was athletic, I was all those things, and I was also carrying more body fat than I wanted to carry as a 17-year-old. And somehow or another, I decided I was going to wake up and I came up with some rules that I was going to try, and they flat out worked. So over the summer of my 17th year, I don't even know how much I weighed. Like I really don't. Like I said, it couldn't have been that much because I think a 20 or 30 pound difference was absolutely huge for me. It was probably something like that that I lost. But I know I went from whatever I was to pretty darn skinny, almost too skinny, according to my friends. So I don't know exactly what it was. I just remember following my rules and every day or whenever I weighed myself being a little bit down, and then absolutely falling in love with being thinner. And I do think it sort of set the tone for why I wanted to get into this line of work to begin with, because I realized how doing that improved my confidence in every area of life. And somewhere around that time, I started working out at the little gym in New Smyrna and I fell in love with working out. Then I fell in love with the sports medicine side of things and really wanted to get into that side of things, and that's how it all began. And so now, with this all together, again, I still believe that weight loss and health is very, very important. I just believe that most of that has to occur in your own home, making right choices. So I still think I'm passionate about that. But this segue into the sports medicine thing, I've always stayed passionate in, and I love those type of clients. Okay, so that was my little introduction into all of this and why I wrote the book that you can't outrun a poor diet, because you can't. All right. And so obviously, the premise of the book, it was funny. The other day, a client of mine who I've had for many years now, he I don't think he needs to lose a lot of weight. You know, it's something that doesn't come up with he and I very much, but he was curious how to maybe show some more definition where his abdominals showed. And he was starting to, you know, ask me some nutrition questions, and I did what I typically do, which was I then segued it into the book. And it's funny, he looked at the cover and he goes, Well, I don't think I really need to read that. I kind of get the idea based on the title, and I laughed and I said, That's true, but you know, here, read it anyway because there might be some tips in there. But that is the main thing I've tried to tell people for so long. And it's now become an even bigger battle on social media because you're gonna have all these guys out there, all these influencers, male or female, you know, telling people that they need to do this or do that to flatten their stomach. And it usually is centered around a supplement or an exercise. And the other day, one of them asked this question, you know, what is the best way to? This is like this guy, he's I don't know, he thinks he's a kind of famous fitness influencer. And he he asked this poll on uh one of the social media sites, he says, You what do you all think is the best way to get your stomachs to your abdominal muscles to show better? Is it going to be strength training in the gym or cardio? And I usually don't take part in these things, but I put other the answer is diet, because that is the truth. But you know, that's harder to sell unless you're selling a diet. All right. So these rules I'm gonna go over with you are mostly psychological. They're decisions that you need to make and follow. And I will state them and then explain a little bit about what that means. Okay, rule number one: try to eat three square meals a day. Now, that might surprise you. We're coming back around to this, but for a while there, all the influencers were telling influencers were telling you to eat small, frequent meals throughout the day and get away from that three meal a day methodology. Now, they base that on some studies that were done on what is called the thermic effect of feeding, which means every time we eat, we get a very small metabolic boost to our metabolism. We're talking like less than 5%. So their thinking was if that's the case, then the more frequently we eat, the more we're boosting the metabolism. Here's what the real research states people that eat more often eat more food. I mean, it kind of makes sense. Now, when the influencers were telling you eat maybe six small meals per day, what you heard was eat six meals per day. You didn't hear the small part. They didn't mean like, you know, have a small lunch and then a second small lunch. They literally meant like maybe 150 to 200 calorie meals throughout the day. They didn't mean five to six hundred calorie meals, which are more like real meals, six times per day. All right, that would be like 3,000 calories, which is fine for baseline, probably not going to work if you're trying to lose weight. A lot of that depends on your current size. So the problem is when we're eating more frequently, we eat more food. And the recent studies, well, not that recent, I mean, I've known this for a very long time, have bared that out. You eat more frequently, you eat more food. Now, not eating a meal, I mean, look, you could make that work. It is going to come down to calories in, calories out. And now people are into this intermittent fasting thing and they think it works. The only reason why it might work for some people is because they're limiting how often they eat, therefore limiting how much they eat. But if you have blood sugar issues, I don't suggest that you go very long like that. There are some people that skip breakfast, eat lunch and dinner, whatever. I mean, if it's working for you, it's working for you. All right. But I suggest, and I put it in my book, three meals per day. Get back to the old roots, the way your grandmother taught you to eat, depending on when you were born, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So that's rule number one. Don't eat between meals. Does that mean never snack or whatever? No, this is when you're trying to establish patterns, you're trying to establish habits, you're trying to lose weight. If you're trying to gain weight or maintain your weight and you're on a very active schedule and you might exercise more than once per day, you can snack. None of these things are like hard and fast. It's like learning why and then learning what to do. But if you're trying to lose, the most effective method I have seen for myself when I was a teenager and for people I work with is to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner and say no to the tempting snacks and foods in between. Rule number two: don't eat junk food. Don't eat crap. There's a lot of truth to the saying that if you eat crap, you feel like crap. I mean, it's just true. Try not to eat it. Good healthy foods like fiber, a lot of lean proteins, complex carbohydrates, vegetables, those types of foods, they're gonna leave you more satiated, meaning they're gonna make you feel like you have enough. You're gonna feel more full. You're not gonna be craving different things because you've eaten healthy foods with all the nutrients you need. So cut the crap out. If you don't know what that means, that means cut out all of the soda. You don't need those sugar sodas. And now people are eating like what they're calling what or drinking the healthier sports drinks or whatever, the Celsius and all that. Look, it's still sugar and soda when you get down to it. Cut them out. I guarantee you you won't miss them. Cut out the extra candy until you start losing the weight. Cut out the chips, cut out the crackers, cut out the garbage foods like that, cut out the fried foods, cut out the saturated fatty foods like hamburgers, and just get rid of the crap. Start thinking about the good old health foods. This is where people on the internet try to confuse you because they try to tell you different kinds of diets that work for them. You know, the paleo folks that tell you eat from the ground, eat nothing but animal products, and you know, everything else is junk. They even think like healthy potatoes are junk. Well, look, that flat out isn't true. There's no basis to that. If you eat a lot of fat, that's junk. If you eat a lot of sugar, meaning added sugar, that is also junk. If you're eating a lot of salty foods, fatty foods, sugary foods, it is junk. Fried foods, it's junk. I guarantee you, you know what are healthy foods and what are not healthy foods. I guarantee you that. So cut out the unhealthy junk food. Just cut it out for a while until you lose the weight. That is rule number two. Rule number three: don't eat seconds. Just don't binge. Fill up your plate, eat the amount of food that you need to eat, whatever that is, a bowl of oatmeal with a few egg whites in the morning, Greek yogurt and cereal in the morning, whatever. Lunch might be a sandwich and some um carrots, maybe a small salad. Dinner might be some grouper, a baked potato, whatever it is. Don't eat seconds. So, my whole rule for that is don't binge. All right. Just don't eat seconds. Don't feel like you got a pig out every time you eat. You are not going to miss it. You have to understand that those cravings last about 20 minutes. I get them. Like I'll have a nice dinner, I'll have whatever for dinner, and like three-quarters of the way through, I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, oh man, there's hardly any left, and this is so good, I'm gonna want more. We all feel that way. I think everybody needs to understand that human beings, we feel the same way. Like we crave the foods. We all crave the foods. Like biologically, we are biologically geared to crave sugar and fats because they basically help us store calories, which helped us evolve. So it's a normal craving to have. It's a normal feeling to want to eat, eat, and eat. Think about your dog. I think about Hazel, my dog. I put the food on the ground, it's gone. If I put another bowl down, it would be gone, right? I think we would do that if we didn't feel guilty. It's kind of normal. Now, the reason why dogs don't get overly fat, most of them, is because we don't let them do it a second time, right? We give them the bowl and then that's it. And when we start not doing that and let them have as much as they want, the vet starts getting on us a little bit. All right. So that's the rule behind that. We all want to do it. We all want to overeat. I shouldn't say, I mean, maybe there's some people that don't. I do know some people that don't, and they probably don't eat enough. But most people want to overeat. But the ones who have had success realize I'm going to feel worse if I do that later, not better. All right. Rule number four don't eat dessert. Just for now, don't tell yourself you always need that second reward after eating a good meal. Isn't it kind of funny that we become so conditioned to do that? Like if you lived in another country, the the we would give them our main course or our, you know, our our off-day main course, meaning a food that's not even very good, and they would think they hit the lottery with the food, right? I mean, it is so like subjective to what people think is good food and not good food. It really depends on what you're used to, where you live. But anyway, the point is that we eat something so tasty, and then we think we need something tasty. It's like it's totally a habit. It totally is fine if you don't have a problem, but if you're trying to lose weight, one of the rules of the six is simply don't eat dessert. Delay the gratification. Tell yourself you will have that ice cream cone in a month or so, once everything becomes stabilized and you can control it. For now, you're just gonna say no. All right. Number five, I kind of already covered, but it's a biggie. Don't drink your calories. I mean, when people are trying to gain weight, when people are have a medical condition and they lose weight, what's the first thing they do? They drink the calories because it's the easiest way to get in a lot of calories, right? It's the easiest way to get it down. So if you got to gain weight, if that's your gig, by all means. But when you're trying to lose weight, don't drink the calories. Don't put the added creamers in your coffee. For God's sakes, don't drink the frappuccinos and those things. They're loaded with calories, loaded, loaded, loaded. Like a frappuccino has five to six hundred calories. Don't drink the calories, don't drink the soda, don't drink all those sweet coffees. Like for now, tell yourself, I'm not gonna drink my calories. What do you drink? Drink water. I mean, that's the best thing you can be doing. Drink water, delay the gratification. If you need some electrolyte because you exercise a lot outdoors, okay. But you don't need the sodas, you don't need all the creamers and the coffee, you don't need the sweet coffee drinks, don't drink the calories, all right? Finally, rule number six: eat a balanced diet. I can promise you, as an exercise physiologist with a master's degree, as a licensed sport nutritionist, as a strength and conditioning coach, I've seen all of the nutritional research. The stuff people out there try to sell you is total BS. All right. The different diet systems, whether you go paleo, you know, eat meat only, eat from the ground, or go the total opposite direction. None of it is true. Okay. We human beings are omnivores, meaning that we can consume both animal and plant product. We can digest and thrive on both. You can choose whether or not you want to eat more animal products or not. That's fine. That's totally a different story. But the point is, is there's not a best way for a human to eat other than eating balanced, getting all the nutrients needed, and getting everything that's required as far as the macronutrients go as well. So we need to eat a balanced diet. And a balanced diet means that you're getting all of the macronutrients in the right order. We should be consuming between 40 and 60% of our diet from complex carbohydrates. We should be consuming anywhere from 10 to 20% of our diet in protein, and we should be consuming anywhere from 20 to 35% of our diet in fat. We need to eat a balanced diet. The majority of our diet needs to be complex carbohydrates. That's the primary energy source. And as I already stated, with not eating junk, it should be high fiber carbohydrates, foods like rices and potatoes and legumes and whole grains and vegetables and fruits. And for the protein sources, it should be very lean protein sources. It could be plant-based, like soy products or pea products. It could be skim milk products like Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. It could be lean chicken and lean fish. That's all fine. The fat should be predominantly coming from mono or polyunsaturated fats, such as fats from nuts and vegetable oils. We need to eat a balanced diet. We need carbohydrates, we need lean proteins, and we need fat. So, in other words, when you sit down and have your breakfast or you have your lunch or you have your dinner, you make sure that you have a little bit of protein, a little bit of carbohydrates, and some fat. Typically, we don't have to go out of our way to get the fat. We add the fat in quite naturally. All right. So these are the big rules that we must follow if we want to be successful. As you notice, it's all about making the right choices. And the biggest piece of advice I can give you is to delay the gratification. Whenever you want to eat something, either too much or a food that you think is going to kind of calorically make you spin out of control, delay the gratification. Simply tell yourself, not right now. You don't have to say I'm never going to eat that again. Just say, I'm going to wait on this one. It will work great. All right. So this is how we eat to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight. And I really hope that this helps you. All right. Thank you everybody for listening to today's show. I really appreciate it. I want to remind you to please hit automatic download. It really helps me and it helps the show. And now I'd like to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product and the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great. They're going to get you exactly what you need. So if you have any garage door needs, give them a shout at 386-222-3165. 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