0:00 this is Susan Wilbanks with Blended insight.com I am a holistic and integrative Healing Arts practitioner an intuitive and an energy healer in this podcast I share tips tools and suggestions that have helped me along my path in hopes of inspiring and helping you along yours let's get started with today's podcast topic hello bright Soul thank you so much for joining me on another podcast I just ate a ninja creamy ice cream and my mouth is partially frozen so forgive me maybe I should pause and wait a few minutes for my mouth to dethaw and by the way I haven't told you all about the orange kitten his name is Milo but we call him Miley I don't know why we call him that but it's pretty funny he has a thing now where he comes
0:47 around between 1 and 3:00 a.m. and knocks things off my nightstand Now isn't he just a treasure so he did it last night it's a thing I don't know I don't know why he does it but it's pretty annoying it's funny but he's one of those things he's one of the kittens that just likes to mess with things he likes to knock things over get into things and he's still in full kitten mode he will be a year old in February so I'm hoping this kitten nonsense dies down eventually but so far he's still a rambunctious kitten and the winter I almost thought he had some seasonal depression because he he goes outside a little bit but there's nothing for him to do out there so he comes back inside
1:34 and sleeps a lot and so I was concerned for a little bit but then he gets these surges these annoying surges where he just wants to tear everyone up he slashed my arm and my sleep my forearm so I had this big slash and it's pretty funny my ssan was like oh my gosh what happened well the kitten that's what happened anywh who so that's the entertainment about the orange kitten in the orange kitten Chronicles as my mouth Dews and we go into the topic for today and this is something that I have lived do you hear me I have lived it I went on my first diet in the fifth grade did I need to go on a diet no was I overweight no was I part of the toxic diet culture
2:24 yes I was surrounded by it and so I have absolutely lived this in fact I started drinking Tab soda do you you remember that tab t a it was a diet soda my my neighbor always had she was always on a diet she was overweight and she always had tab soda because you know that's the healthy soda to drink and I grew up drinking soda I didn't even drink water it was Dr Pepper all the way my mother would feed me a candy bar and a coke for breakfast that's how I grew up so I have had to shift my relationship and my mindset regarding healthy eating and Fitness and Nutrition I played basketball in in all in elementary school going up so I had a little bit of
3:09 a sports mindset but I was very unhealthy in my eating and I had no idea what I was doing so over the years you know starting early in my teens it's whatever the fat diet is I did the military diet do you all remember that where it was like 3 days of just absolute cutting your calories I mean I don't even like cottage cheese by the way I'm not even going to get on a tangent but I have become such a master at high protein recipes and high high protein meals over this entire Journey that are delicious and fit in with your everyday life so I've got this down at this point okay so I've done all the cabbage soup diet the you know ridiculous neutri system you know Weight
3:57 Watchers carnivore keto you know oh let's do cleanses oh my gosh I've done so many cleanses herbal cleanses where you're basically juice fasting um I've even done the master cleanse where you basically just have the liquid the strange liquid for seven days I was a vegan I was a vegetarian I mean I'm telling you I I really believe that I've tried it all and this is why I can speak to you plus I went through a holistic nutrition program learning all about raw food about the absolute just sham of an organic industry and how they still put all that stuff in your food and so it and you can go down these rabbit holes of trying to eat clean and it's you know whatever
4:43 it's too much at some point it becomes too much and really what it is is it's calories I know but nobody wants to hear this and listen if you have a different experience please go create your own podcast go on your channel create your own podcast if you don't agree with what I'm saying I'm sharing my experiences you can share your experiences on your podcast but I'm sharing mine on my podcast so I think this is important because this is a triggering subject for people people love to argue for their limitations or what works for them so at the end of the day it is calories in versus calories out and I know people don't like to track their food but what gets measured gets done how do you know where you're at unless you track it so
5:28 the easiest way to start losing fat and keeping it off because if you go on if you go to a weight loss clinic they're probably going to slash your calories down to 1,200 calories you're going to damage your metabolism you're going to be starving it won't be sustainable long term and then when you're done losing the air quote weight which you actually lost a lot of muscle because you didn't do it appropriately um you're going to gain it back and probably you're going to gain some back why because you damage your metabolism so this is the way and I I've gained muscle I've completely recmed my body in my 40s I look better now in my 40s then I looked in my 20s how did I do it well first I stopped
6:13 with all of the crazy cardio that stresses out your adrenal system it raises your cortisol and it doesn't do anything for your bone density and your long-term Health Muscle is the organ of longevity so I changed the way I was working out number one number two I started to track my macros now it's not just about the calories because if you want to build muscle which is the key and it's not just about appearance it is about your bone density it's about um your body being healthier and stronger and you look better and you feel better so your body has to have adequate protein to build muscle and to maintain
6:59 muscle and especially after the age of 40 cuz we start to lose muscle if you're not actively doing something to build the muscle and so the way that you get your nutrition in check and again resistance training is the key building muscle so I started weight training and everyone has a different level that they come in at I was already when I started working with my coach and I know I'm kind of all over the place but I was already doing the nutrition piece before I started working with my my coach and it is the same across the board through all my experience through doing I'm immersed in this work I'm constantly listening to the latest research um around people that are doing it it's it's all of this stuff so use a simple tracking app like
7:46 my fitness palette I personally use chronometer I think that's how you say it chronometer I like chronometer because it also tracks nutritional information so how many vitamins and minerals and all those things I'm getting plus it tracks everything else so the so I track my calories and I'm going to help you figure out how to do this that you can start simply right now and the main macro that I pay attention to is protein I need to make sure I get enough protein and I need I personally eat my body weight and protein because I am actively building muscle and I'm an advanced lifter at this point so I'm lifting a lot of weight and I want to make sure that I'm feeding those muscles so that I can continue to build and maintain muscle all the other macros are not important so I don't care about carbs I don't care about fat fiber is important
8:32 I do track my fiber I want to make sure I get enough fiber and so it helps me to keep eyes on what I'm doing and I know that if I'm doing these things the results will follow so here is how you do it just get a simple tracking app like my fitness pal that's free it's easy I think chronometer also has a free version I personally do the paid because I want the other features but you don't have to do that and just simply start tracking everything you eat and do it for one week at the the end of that week take the calories your total amount of calories that you ate for that whole week divide it by seven so that you get a daily calorie intake of what you are averaging every single day take about 50 to 100 calories off of that day so you
9:18 know and and if you want to start Simple Start simple do 100 100 calories a day or 50 calories a day that's it so if you were your daily average was 2,000 calories a day now you're going to cut it by 50 you'll eat 19950 calories a day now I do ranges so my range would be I'm just using this as an example because you know sometimes we eat high low so and basically it's the weekly calories that matter so let's just say my range then would be I want to eat between 1,800 and 1950 calories a day that puts me in a deficit that puts me in a slight deficit so that my metabolism isn't going to freak out and my my body's not going to think I'm starving it's very mild do that and you should start seeing
10:05 the weight move so after a few weeks if the weight is stabilizing or when it starts to stabilize and it's not moving anymore you take it down by another 50 50 calories a day very simple very gradual now another way that you can get yourself into a deficit is by getting more movement but as we get older the like like orange theory for example example I was noticing I was exhausted after Orange Theory why because I already live a very high stress life and I was lifting weights 5 days a week heavy weights not in there bsing I'm in there for an hour and a half to two hours and I'm lifting heavy weights my routines are hard I'm getting my heart rate up during my routines and so the orange theory on top of that was just stressing my body out so it's really
10:52 easy all you have to do is walk and if you're only getting 5,000 steps a day push it to 6,000 steps a day increase your movement gradually you can get a simple step counter I have an Apple Watch I like Apple watches but you can get a pedometer I know that Apple phones check but I don't always have my phone on me so that's not particularly accurate for me but again when you're measuring it it one holds you accountable two it shows you what you're doing so you can actually analyze it and figure out what's going to work for you so protein is important you've got to get your protein in so that you maintain your MUSC muscle and if you're wanting to build muscle maybe a little bit more and then your movement and your resistance training that is really it and a lot of times when I share this I
11:38 still have friends that are like oh I'm going to do keto for a week and of course they don't stick to it because it's not sustainable you want to pick an eating approach that you can do longterm this is about the journey it's not about a quick fix when you do the quick fix you burn out and your body is trying to adjust to these extremes these extreme highs he extreme lows so you want to do a steady approach you want to have a fat loss goal that aligns with your long-term health and your energy and your balance now again the reason why I say fat loss is because you can lose weight but when you're losing the weight you're also losing the muscle and then what happens is and this has happened to me you end up looking skinny fat you look like this flabby terrible version that's just
12:25 smaller than what you were before and it's like ew I've done that to myself before and it's because you lose the weight so quickly that you also lose muscle and we don't want to do that and the way that you do that is by actively stimulating the muscle through resistance training and so before I hired my coach okay I had worked with another coach before a nutrition coach and mind you I've been through nutrition training and for me I always believe in supporting the very thing that you also support people with so I believe in investing in my field so I had when I was doing Orange Theory only before I was going and lifting weights and things like that first I was just doing Orange Theory this was after my divorce um I was really inflamed coming out of that
13:10 situation cuz my cortisol was so high because it was just such an awful toxic um relationship for me it just wasn't in alignment with me and I stayed way past what I was supposed to have stayed so my body was very inflamed and so I was doing Orange Theory because I was coming out and figuring out and getting my cortisol down and you know balancing my hormones and doing all the things just to regroup after all of that and so I hired this nutrition coach because he was working with people who were just doing Orange Theory and what he was trying to explain is like most women tend to undereat and they're undereating because that's the toxic diet culture that we've been sold and your body actually needs much more to function so when you're undereating you're tired you know I would get laded
13:57 when I'm standing up I was getting lightheaded in the workouts cuz I wasn't properly fueling and it was this big shift to understand that I actually need to eat more because I'm actually Haring my body is like starving and my body is exhausted so when I was working with him it was he did the same same thing tracking your Macros every week like he had a spreadsheet you know I was using my fitness pal i' would have to go into my fitness pal and transfer it to the spreadsheet so we could track the calories that I was eating and because I wasn't like strongly lifting weights at that time is we were just looking at like the calorie range and fiber and protein and so then I was like you know this is I don't really need this anymore I've got this down and I was like you
14:43 know I really want to Recon my body so I started doing all this research about that and so I'm like I need to start lifting weights and I don't want to do just cuz I have um things like in a home gym at home but like no I want to go like do cables and I want to join a gym and so then I started using this app called shred s h r e d and I can't remember I think muscle and fitness I don't even know if it's still I I think you can still use it I started using that app because it would create workouts for me like weightlifting workouts or whatever workouts you wanted to do so I started going to the gym and so I personally like to go to the gym 5 days a week I like going during the work work week um I like to get up in the morning I like to get my blood moving I like to go before work and I've been
15:29 doing this for you know I don't know since I was in my 20s so I've been doing it a long long time so it's just part of my fabric at this time so I already had a really good base of muscle before I decided to invest in a coach and the reason I like I wanted to invest in the coach is one for accountability because it's one thing when and I notice this with people where it's no one else is holding you accountable nobody knows your goals so it's really easy to just not complete it because it doesn't mean anything to anybody else and nobody knows your goals and so I I was like you know I really would like somebody to hold me accountable and also help me to craft
16:14 this and work things out I want someone to bounce it off of because there is no one in my inner circle that is serious about their health the way I am most of them are still crash dieting overweight don't work out and it's kind of always been like that with me so I'm like God I need to get around fitm minded people so when I hired my coach I was already going to the amount that I'm going so you got to find what works for you because I know some people that just they go lift two to three days a week and then they walk and they do resistance training that that's their resistant training days other than that they just walk so for me um I also got a walking pad so that I could walk at work cuz I was tired of sitting in meetings and so I did that last year that's been really helpful before that I would just dedicate time I would go on my breaks I
17:01 would walk I would you know go for an hourlong walk after work just fitting it in where I can I get on the treadmill after my lift so nowadays I lift heavy weights 5 days a week and when I'm not lifting the weights I walk so I average between 15 and 20,000 steps a day but I didn't start like that I started at 10,000 and my point is it's the nutrition and people don't want to believe that it's the nutrition they want to say well I did keto and I lost you know 5 lbs in a week no you lost water weight and that's why as soon as you eat carbs you gain that weight back and you didn't lose muscle I mean you didn't lose a fat you lost muscle and water weight because your muscles are a big portion of what takes up your body
17:46 mass if you're actively building muscle so it's really simple once again all you have to do and I've done this I've been doing it I've Reco my body I'm in the best shape of my life and the scale weight doesn't matter so much when you're putting on muscle because my muscle is denser it's bigger it's Fuller so it's really interesting because when I was first doing it my metabolism just went berserk and I started losing a lot but I was still building muscle at the same time um I got really really thin and I was about about a dress size smaller than I am now but I looked skinny fat even though I was building mus it just it was I was too thin so then we started really going
18:32 into a surplus where I'm I'm not in a deficit anymore I'm in maintenance plus so I'm I'm putting on muscle cuz my muscle needs that fuel I need the food to gain that muscle then I started really packing on muscle and then my dress size maybe went up like one dress size and I look so much better and so much stronger and still in a smaller dress size than I ever was like even in my 20s so I look so much better now with the muscle and I feel so much better and I'm so much stronger and so really we've got to no matter what what age we're at we got to do resistance training that is really the key we were just sold a big phony mess with the cardio being a
19:18 cardio Bunny and starving oursel it doesn't work so what you could do now just start tracking get one of the apps track what you're eating average up your calories figure out what your daily intake is reduce that by 50 calories or 100 calories a day very slow and gradual and just monitor it it's really easy to do when you plateau take off a little bit more and then and you don't want to stay in a deficit forever either because your body gets your body adjusts our bodies are meant to adjust and so after you get to your well that's is this is this can get really complex and I don't want to go into that I'm just trying to give you a starting point anywh who diet breaks are a real thing where you kind of bring yourself up to maintenance
20:03 maybe for a week or two and then go back down so that your body knows it's not starving it's a whole science behind it and I know there's a lot of information out there but I will tell you this is what has worked this is what works it's calories in calories out this is an easy way to determine it lift weights and you can do it and it doesn't matter where you're at you can start and that is all I have to offer let's go into a healing and in this healing particularly because I can feel some people's heads are just spinning let's cleanse you and clear you and help you to know very clearly the path away ahead for you and you can make this change you can totally do it let's go into the healing you can uncross your arms and legs I will turn the healing on
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21:40 [Laughter] [Music] okay and so it is and Friends listen fat loss is a marathon not a Sprint it's important to celebrate your progress and stay connected to your purpose and what is our purpose to be healthy I know for me I want to be so healthy and so strong I want to be the best version of myself so I wanted to also leave you with an affirmation because affirmations can help to concrete the intention so the
22:25 affirmation that I wanted to leave you with is I am creating a healthy balanced lifestyle that honors my body and my goals and my intentions so that is all I wanted to share and you can do it and I appreciate you so much for being here and I want to wish you a beautiful week take care bye-bye n
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