Ep. 014 - Answered: The Top 5 Most Googled Weight Loss Questions

SHOW NOTES

In today's episode, I'm doing something a little different.  I googled 'the most asked weight loss questions' and then answered them on this podcast.

1. I hit a plateau, what can I do to break through? 
2. What’s my ideal weight?
3. What type of exercise do I need to do to lose weight?
4. How can I lose weight fast/how much weight can I lose in a month?
5. What foods should I eat to lose belly fat?

 TRANSCRIPT

I searched the top five weight loss questions people ask on Google, and today, I'm gonna answer those in this podcast episode.

Welcome to Man in the Arena, your go-to podcast for all things related to health and weight loss for men over 40. Here we discuss strategies that will get you off the sidelines and into the game so you can achieve your optimal health. It's time to lead a legacy of longevity.

Hey, and welcome back to Man in the Arena.

I'm Craig Spear. Your health and weight loss coach. Today I'm doing something a little bit different I thought, you know, I get a lot of questions asked of me by my clients and I was curious to know what people are asking Google when it comes to weight loss. And so I found five questions, the top five questions that people ask, and I'm gonna answer those today as if I was answering them for one of my clients.

So there's not much else to say. Let's just jump into it. So the first question that came up was, I hit a plateau. What can I do to break through? So, you know, all of my clients at some point hit this plateau in their weight loss, and I want to address this. And in saying that weight loss is not a linear process.

So you don't start at 250 pounds and then lose weight, you know, at the same rate throughout the process. And I'm sure you're aware of that, but, It's important to highlight because at some point we're going to hit a plateau. Our weight is just gonna stall. We might go up a bit, we might stay the same. We might kind of bounce between these two different weights, but seemingly we're not able to continue the progress that we were seeing before.

So this is a plateau. Oftentimes what happens when a plateau occurs is your body's metabolism has slowed down to meet the sort of. Reduced amount of calories that you're consuming. So for example, let's say on a normal day you were consuming 2200 calories, and then as you start to eat less and exercise more and you lose weight, let's say you're down to about, you know, 1700 calories a day.

Well, what's gonna happen as you continue that process, you're gonna lose weight. Your body's going to sort of triage different metabolic processes. It's gonna say, Hey, we're not consuming as many calories. We're not ingesting as much fuel at energy, so we need to kind of slow things down a little bit in different areas.

So little things like your hair grows slower, your fingernails grow slower. You don't produce red blood cells at the same rate that you normally do because your body understands that there's this caloric deficit. So it slows down. To meet the number of calories you're taking in each day. And so just based on that math that we're doing there, you know, if you want to continue to see weight loss, then you should be reducing your calories even more or burning more calories.

But there's sort of a point we get to where we do, we just can't do that. We can't eat, we have to eat something and we don't wanna starve ourselves. We know what happens when we do that. So here's my advice. First and foremost, I suggest changing things up just a little bit. You don't want to completely rewrite your plan and do things differently, but you wanna start to tweak things just a little bit.

So if you're exercising, you definitely want to change up your exercise program every three weeks, adding in recovery weeks. But you know, maybe you want to start to lift a little bit heavier, build more muscle mass. Maybe you want to add more high intensity. Intervals and doing cardio. Uh, if you're already doing that, maybe you want to go to low intensity, slow state cardio.

So that's what I would recommend is changing things up. Just don't keep doing what you're doing, cuz that's why you're staying stuck in that plateau. From an eating perspective, something I have my clients do is what's called a nutrient cycle. So, They're eating a certain way. So sometimes what I'll have them do is I'll have them add more carbs, more fiber, so I have them eat more oats and whole grains and you know, a close to source rice, that sort of stuff.

Quinoa. And what that does is it sort of enhances our metabolic flexibility, our body's ability to change between different energy sources. And that can kind of stimulate the metabolism a little bit there too. And then obviously if you're hitting this plateau, then looking at all the different variables in your lifestyle, making sure you're getting enough sleep, making sure you're managing your stress.

So sometimes if you've seen an increase of stress or workload at work, then what are you doing to manage that? Are you proactively taking steps to manage your stress or are you just kind of like winging it and continuing to do the things you've always done? So you got sleep, you got stress management.

You know, has your hydration stayed the same? And the last thing I would suggest is taking some time to take a break. Sometimes we just need to reset the system, pull back a little bit, add in some more indulgences, add in some joy eats, and then come back and reintroduce the plan from a different perspective.

So that's how you break through a plateau. You gotta change things up, you gotta try different things, but maintain the foundation of what got you to where you are. The next question I found that I often hear from my client and is also asked on Google is, what's my ideal weight? So this is a bit of a tricky question because a lot of people look at what's called the B M I or Body Mass Index as a way to determine how much they should weigh.

The body mass index is a calculation that takes into account your height to weight ratio, and the problem with B M I is it doesn't consider lean mass, so it doesn't consider our muscle mass. So for example, the reason why this is inaccurate or an unhealthy way to determine your ideal weight is, let's say I'm a linebacker in football and I weigh 225 pounds and I'm six two.

I'm a big guy. But I have a really small waist. I'm athletic. I've got a lot of lean mass. I eat really healthy. I exercise regularly. My B M I is gonna be in the overweight category, bordering on the obese category. And by no means am I overweight or am I obese. So the B M I is not a great way to determine what your ideal weight is.

Now, it's one variable. Now if we look at your BMI and then we measure your waist circumference, and that's also high. Say north of 40 inches, then that's another red flag. If we look at your body composition, so you do have lower lean mass and a high body fat composition. That's another variable. So once we take into account all of those variables, we can say, okay, you, you need to lose weight for obvious health implications.

We can't just use the BMI alone. It's not an accurate representation of your ideal weight. So, What I'll also say with respect to your ideal weight is where do you feel good? Also, what do your habits look like that support your current weight? So in other words, if your weight is in the ideal category, but you are not getting great sleep, you are not eating healthy foods, you are not exercising, then I think weight is not even a really great representation of your health at that point.

So, We don't wanna look at the number on the scale and just assume that that is the best way to measure our health and where we should be. For example, I often say to clients, you know, when we look at someone's net worth, we don't look at their bank account statement and assume that that is their net worth.

We look at everything. We look at their liabilities, how much debt they're carrying. We look at their investments in different areas, whether it's a certain. Stock portfolio or in commercial real estate or whatever it is, we look at all the different variables to consider their net worth. And the same is true with your health.

You don't wanna just look at the number on the scale. Sure, it's important for measuring your weight loss, but it's not an accurate representation of how healthy you are. In my opinion. The best thing to do is to get a full blood panel done. That way you can get a baseline as to what different markers are in your blood, whether it's your cholesterol, your A1C levels, all these different things, your testosterone, and that way you can really see what the clearer picture of what your health is.

Okay. Number three, what type of exercise do I need to do to lose weight? So this is another trick question because. From my perspective, I don't see exercise as a dominant weight loss tool. I think it definitely supports weight loss, but it's not the means by which we want to go through to lose weight, cuz this is kind of old school mentality.

Eat less, move more. I'm gonna lose weight. So when I say exercise supports weight loss, how it does that, in my opinion is, When you exercise, you're gonna manage your stress better, and we know that we have lower levels of stress. We have lower levels of cortisol, and so we see lower levels of insulin production.

We consume more nutrient dense food rather than calorically dense foods. Exercise also helps us sleep better, which again contributes to this full ecosystem of managing our health and our stress and our hormones. You know, exercise is definitely important from a caloric expenditure standpoint. So we do wanna move our body.

We do wanna burn calories, but again, if not a weight loss tool, it's more of a weight loss support. With that being said, there is no particular type of exercise that you need to do to lose weight. What's most important is how consistent you are. So if you enjoy playing different sports, if you enjoy skiing or playing tennis, you going for hikes.

Then that is the best type of exercise because you enjoy doing it and you're gonna do it regularly. If you enjoy lifting weights, great. If you enjoy doing cardio at the gym, great. Doesn't really matter. It's what will you do consistently. Now, I'll say one last thing from an exercise standpoint. When we do different types of cardio, we metabolize different types of energy.

So whether it's fat, whether it's. Carbohydrates and blood glucose and muscle glycogen. So exercise will help us be more metabolically flexible and that's important for weight loss. At the same time, when we do certain strength training activities with lifting weights at a certain rep range in a certain intensity, how much weight we're lifting, we tend to build more muscle.

And when we do that, we are building a bigger engine and that bigger engine can burn more fuel. So there are added benefits to exercise for sure, but I don't want you to get caught up in this idea that I need to exercise a certain way to lose weight. Question number four, how can I lose weight fast? And I added a question onto this cuz this was also in the list, but how much weight can I lose at a month?

So both of these questions center around the timing of weight loss, and it's really important to, again, get away from this mentality of losing weight quickly. It's been my experience and based on research, the faster we try to lose weight, the less sustainable it is. So if you're trying to lose weight really quickly and that's your focus and that's your goal, chances are you're not creating sustainable lifestyle habits that are gonna last you in the long run.

You're just trying to get a quick fix, get to where you want to be, and then you're gonna lose the weight, but you're probably gonna put it back on. So you don't wanna have this mindset of losing weight quickly. Now, that being said, based on healthy weight loss numbers, we wanna look at between one to two pounds a week.

If you can lose one to two pounds a week, that equates to four to eight pounds a month, and that is healthy, sustainable weight loss. So keep those numbers in mind. Now, obviously if you're, you know, really disciplined and you're planning your meals and eating healthy and exercising and getting great sleep and staying hydrated, You might see a month where you lose 10, 12, even as high as 15 pounds, but averaged out over the course of a year, two years, how your weight should be about anywhere between four and eight pounds on average.

Okay? Any more than that. And you probably wanna look at the method at which you're using to lose weight and consider is this sustainable in the long run? And lastly, question number five. What foods should I eat to lose belly fat? Okay, so again, this is kind of a funny question because we can't spot reduce.

We can't say, I wanna lose fat in my belly, or I want to lose fat in my legs or my backside. Our body is going to metabolize the store energy that is most readily available. So if you have a lot of belly fat, it's probably gonna utilize that fat first, but it might not seem like it's. Utilizing it first, cuz there's a lot of it there.

But your body is gonna metabolize body fat based on your genetics, based on how it uses the fuel source that you have stored. Now with that being said, there are foods that we wanna focus on in order to help us lose weight overall and lose fat overall. And I always go back to the three simple nutrients.

Okay, fat, fiber, protein. So we want to eat healthy fats in the form of avocados. Olive oils, nuts, a salmon, and certain fishes. A fish have a great source of healthy fats, protein, so usually in the force of lean animal sources like a chicken, fish, some lean pork, eggs, Turkey, those sort of meats wanna stay away from the higher fat animal fats like steak and bacon and other pork products.

So, That protein. And then the last one is fiber. So we want to eat whole grain carbs, fruits and vegetables, lentils, legumes, beans. Those are all really great sources of fiber. And the reason why all of these foods are really good is they're nutrient dense and they're gonna help us feel full. They're gonna satiate us, which means we don't need as much of them to feel full and feel satiated and acquire the energy we need to go about our day.

In other words, we wanna avoid foods that are calorically dense, that are processed, that have a lot of sugar and unhealthy fats and unhealthy carbohydrates and processed carbohydrates in them. So again, you can't really spot reduce and say, I want to get rid of this fat here, but you can eat really good sources of different nutrients that are gonna make you feel full and they're gonna support your weight loss overall.

Okay. A little bit of a different episode today. I hope you got some value out of that. If you have specific questions that you want me to answer, reach out to me at any time. Shoot me an email, [email protected]. Head on over to the spear method.com, which is my website, and then schedule your free consultation.

I want to hear about where you're at, what your goals are, what your challenges are, and then we'll come up with a custom plan to help you change the trajectory of your health. Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to episode number 14 next week, and in the meantime, keep leading a legacy of good health and longevity.

If you're ready to step inside the arena and change the trajectory of your health, head on over to the spear method.com and download by free guide to learn simple and effective strategies on how to optimize your health today.