Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 30: What we wish you would forget about when it comes to weight loss
Transcript
- Cameron Cummings: Hello and welcome to Cameron's Conversations. And today I'm in conversation with Harry and we're gonna talk about what we wish people would bloody well forget about when it comes to weight loss. And I'm gonna open actually, because I had one that popped into my head. And I'm actually, gonna open, I'm gonna leave it to Harry to talk a little bit about it. So no pressure Harry. But on this one, and this will absolutely resonate with you is weighing days. Harry: Okay. Cameron Cummings: once a week or once a month weigh-in days, go for it. Harry: So funny because I just literally put on a piece of paper a few ideas of what I could make people forget and right at the top of list is weigh-in days. So there you go. It's almost like we work with the same kind of people. ⁓ Yeah, terrible, terrible, terrible. I cannot stand them. Again, it is one of the biggest reasons people fail and give up because they're using the scales in the wrong way. Cameron Cummings: you. Yeah. Harry: And you will only realize this once you start weighing daily and you understand and see how much the scales fluctuate and they bounce around. As Cameron said in a previous episode, it is like a bouncy ball going down the staircase. ⁓ and you can, if you're weighing in on all of your progress with that one day, you are just rolling a dice. Like it is a gamble because you could be spiked up that day. You could be on a low that day and you just cannot compare it. You can't look from one day comparing a spiked up weight to the next week where you're in, you randomly hit a low. ⁓ the other thing that just doesn't make sense with them, because quite often it's the slimming clubs that will kind of get people weighing, doing these weigh in days. They're halfway for a day or 5 PM on a Thursday and it It just makes no sense because they're not only weighing your body fat, they're weighing everything to do with you, which is what happens normally, but also everything you've had to drink, everything you've had to eat that day. And it just doesn't work. You're never going to get a reliable measurement. ⁓ It's just, yeah, it's one of those simple things. And, know, we get quite a lot of people that will say, right, we're weighing every day. And sometimes people give a bit of a kickback because they feel like it can get a bit obsessive. ⁓ But when you start doing it and you start doing it reliably and you start looking at the data properly looking at averages looking at lows that kind of thing ⁓ you will understand how powerful it is and Within sorting six we get people constantly one of the biggest highlights is like ⁓ my god the way I'm using the scales now I It's been life-changing and it is because you then see your progress and you see your results ⁓ So 100 % it is probably the top of my list on what I wish people would forget when it comes to losing weight is not just don't do it. Do not have a weigh in day. Don't weigh anything on that. You need to look at the data in its entirety, even looking weekly. Really you got to remember your, our bodies do not work on a calendar. we look at it weekly because it makes sense to us, but, ⁓ yeah, you have to be able to look at the data and see the trend movement rather than the individual measurement is mental. Cameron Cummings: Yeah. So. So for kind of point of clarification, when Harry's saying weekly there, what he means is he means a weekly average. So we do daily weigh-ins with our clients or at least as frequently as possible, because of course there'll be circumstances where, you know, maybe one or two days a week you can't weigh yourself, whatever. But in general, we're looking to weigh ourselves every single day and then see what that average does. So you take your week one average compared to your week two average and your week three and week four and so on and so forth, right? So you can see your progress. But the way I like to think about this is like, it's almost like you reverse engineer this, right? So you go the other way around, it's like, if I wanted to ruin someone's relationship with the scales and make sure they were as stressed out as possible about them, how would I go about doing it? Well, I'd probably put on a Thursday night. That seems like a good place to start because that way they have to starve themselves all day and drink no water. So that, because if they drink no water and they starve themselves, it'll be a bit lighter. So that puts a good amount of stress and pressure on them. And it also means by the time they step on the scales, they're super hangry, a bit pissed off, just in a bad mood in general, because I know if I didn't eat for like a whole day I'd be pretty, pretty mad. And probably the day before they felt like, ⁓ I need to restrict a bit. So we're in a really good space. We're quite restricted. We're probably feeling pretty hangry at this point. And then if you do break at any point in that person, you have a little bit of food, that's, you know that that your weight's going to go up. So you're already a bit disappointed in yourself by the time you set on them. So we're doing well already. Then what we're going to do is we're going to stand you in a circle and we're going to have people around you talk to you or sort of like clap you or kind of be like, you know, that's a sh**. You suck. Harry: Mmmmm Cameron Cummings: We're going to put like 10 people around Harry. Now, I would say, mean, Harry and I know each other fairly well, but I don't know how you would say self-conscious you are. I'm not particularly self-conscious, but I think if I was standing on a set of scales in the middle of a room with 10 people, where of course. I have loads of great stories about this, what clients have told me about things people have done to weigh less on the scales. Like as I say, they don't drink water, don't eat, they wear less clothing. One of my clients was at a Slimming World thing where someone was wearing whatever were on the scales and weren't happy with it. So they went to the bathroom and came back and they're like brown pants and then weighed themselves again and they'd lost a bit more. And they're like, ⁓ that's good. And my client was just like, this is not right. And that was it. That was their line. They hadn't been there that long. They're like, yeah, this isn't right. ⁓ all these kind of things. So you've reverse engineered this and like no wonder like if I did that I'd be stressed out about the scales. Not only that, like you've taken this one point in your week and as Harry said, like we're gonna fluctuate in terms across the week. What if I'm better hydrated or worse hydrated? What if I have been to the toilet, haven't been to the toilet, very glamorous but has quite a big influence on your weight? Like what if I had a big veggie filled lunch that had loads of food in it and weighed quite a lot? Well that would influence my weight but it definitely doesn't influence my fat loss. So you can create this like reverse engineer to almost like ruin someone's relationship with the skills pretty well and putting someone in front of a group of other people doing it just doesn't seem like a particularly good strategy and then that that really like patronizing pat on the back it's okay harry you'll lose a more next week like it just cuts through you doesn't it it's just a terrible idea Harry: you I'm saying I've heard some absolute horrors about what people have been told or advised even of, ⁓ next week try taking your jewelry off before you do away and like what? That's not... ⁓ Cameron Cummings: How big is the diamond in your ring that you can like that is going to influence the scale weight? I mean if it's that big that's a great problem to have I guess but for most people they're probably not. Harry: Yeah. I mean it just comes into position where you're just manipulating the scales at that point, it's not showing you anything, it's just not. Cameron Cummings: Yeah, 100%. You start going to the sauna beforehand, where you know, where those like sort of grey running tracksuits that people had in like the 70s or whatever. Yeah, it's just silly. that's definitely my one. So Harry, let's come up with an idea from you then. What's something you wish people would forget when it comes to weight loss? Harry: So I'm gonna kind of go along the way of ⁓ this idea around foods that you can eat when you're on a diet versus foods you can eat when you're off a diet and having this separation. Yeah. Cameron Cummings: On and off plan, yeah that's right. Cheap day foods, normal. Harry: ⁓ yeah, days could be another one. Let's incorporate all of it. ⁓ Yeah, I don't like it at all. I don't think it helps anything where if you're going, starting a weight loss phase or weight loss journey or diet, whatever you want to call it, if you're going in there and you have a line in your mind of what you cannot consume, it is not going to work. And because normally all of those foods that you cannot consume and normally your favorite things, right? They're the tasty things, the high calorie things that we enjoy. It's not gonna work. I always have it as a bit of a... thing that I explained to people and I'm like, look, the way our brains work as humans, we can't really tell ourselves to not think about something or not do something. If I told you to not, do not think about this, whatever I say, don't think about it, don't picture it. Do not think about a massive pink elephant. First thing that pops in your head is a massive pink elephant, right? And it, that's the way our brains work. So if you tell yourself, I can't eat chocolate, chocolate's really bad for me. Can't have it. It's going to make me gain loads of body fat and all that kind of thing. That's what you're going to be thinking about. Every time you're hungry, ⁓ I'd like some chocolate, I'd like some chocolate. And it's just going to build and build and build. And then your craving is going to get so much that having a little Freddo bar isn't going to scratch the surface. You need to eat a whole box of Maltesers, a family share bag of mini eggs or whatever it might be, if you can afford them, because they're bloody expensive at the moment. It just goes a bit wrong. And it's not so much about having that defined line of on a diet or off a diet. It's how, okay, how can I bridge that gap? Because yeah, there's foods that we have that are going to be high calorie. They are going to put our calories up in the air. They are going to be overindulgent and it is going to put you out of balance as to kind of what you're trying to achieve. But what's really important is trying to work out how you can incorporate them in, have the baseline of your diet coming from the things we know work, high protein, good fiber, whole foods, all of the basics. But then how can you fit that pizza in? How can you fit that chocolate bar in? And you can, and it depends how much, how often, all of these kinds of things. But if you can crack that, it really, really helps. as far as like relationship with food and stuff, it makes a massive difference if you have foods in your mind that you simply cannot have because they're bad in your mind, because it doesn't exist. Everything has to be in context. So that's definitely something that I would like people to forget a little bit. Cameron Cummings: Yeah, I'd 100 % agree with that. I think this idea of like having food, like certain foods that you just can't have, I think when you create these food rules, it can be quite unhelpful. I think it can be quite unhelpful for your long-term relationship with food as well. I think there's a difference between making a choice. and being pragmatic about it than having food rules too. Like obviously, if you like pizza, that's great. You can probably have a pizza like once a week, but you probably can't get away with a pizza every single day or multiple times a day. Like that's obvious, right? So there is gonna be this element of like, you're not gonna be able to have like everything all of the time. But at the same time, that doesn't mean you can never have a chocolate bar. It might be that you, especially if you're like a smaller female on lower calories, maybe fitting in a chocolate bar every day isn't that doable or it's not, especially the back end of your diet, or hungers up, it's maybe not worth it because actually you're quite hungry and you'd just rather have foods that fill you up and that's a choice, right? But there's a big difference between that and saying, I cannot have this or cannot have that. You are going to have times where you have a chocolate bar, let's say, a couple times a week and you're going to have maybe something like a pizza night or whatever it is, once a week. That's cool, you can have those things built in, but this idea that you should never, ever, ever have them or that they're bad foods isn't good. The thing that I think's most important about that is you have that approach, you then feel guilty every time you eat them. And if you feel guilty when you eat them, that's when it leads to you overeating or actually then the next day not getting back on top of things at all because you feel like I've had a pizza, I failed at my diet, I might as well stop now. And you feel all these emotions and guilt when it's like it's a bloody pizza, like it has a certain amount of calories in it, blah, blah. Like let's just account for that and move on. Like I think that's really, really important. So I'm a big fan of that too. I think this whole cutting things out. and seeing them as bad foods is such a bad place to be. And it does not, even if you were to go to maintenance tomorrow because you finished your weight loss, it doesn't really set you up for long term success, does it? Because you're just like, you're stressed about it. Every time you have a pizza, you feel like you failed for the rest of your life. I don't want to spend 30 years thinking, or hopefully more than 30 years I suppose, but hopefully like 45 years or whatever it is, feeling like I failed every time I have a slice of pizza. That seems like a pretty rubbish way to live, doesn't it? When you think about it that way, you're like, that would be a bit mad to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times feel like you've failed for the rest of your life because you've had a food that's off plan. That's a crazy way to live. yeah, definitely. Harry: Yeah. The other negative that comes of it as well, which is a big one is when you, when you have a group of behaviors, actions, foods, all of those kinds of things that you do when you're on a diet, when you get, if you get, which let's be honest, most people unfortunately don't, but if you do get to your kind of end goal and you're like, right, done it, there's my five kilos off or 20 kilos, whatever it is. And your brain switches back to, okay, now I get to include all of my not on a diet foods and not on a diet actions and behaviors. I don't need to go to the gym anymore. I don't need to worry about steps. What's going to happen. You're just going to make your way back to where you started. So as far as like yo-yoing back and forward, the rest of your life, that is one of the big reasons why that happens. And it's because people kind of see it as like, well if I you when I'm losing weight, can't eat any of those favourite foods. I don't want to do that for the rest of my life. That's horrible. Well, yeah, you're absolutely right. But that doesn't mean that's the way it has to be. It's about finding that balance point, bit like spending, spending money and having a budget. You can spend your money on cheap things. You can spend your money on expensive things, but having a balance of both probably, probably the best way to do it. Cameron Cummings: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. bit like, the way I kind of frame it, it's like if you go on an incredibly nice holiday, like once a year, but never do anything nice for every other week of the year, that probably wouldn't be the best approach. And you probably don't want the same with your food, right? You don't want to just like absolutely save up one amazing holiday and then you do nothing, you can't even go out the weekend because you wouldn't put all your eggs in that one basket because it wouldn't give you as much happiness across, but there is also a balance. Maybe you still be a bit more sensible. So yeah, I love that. ⁓ What other things would you wish people forget about weight loss? Harry: Let's think about, let's do a, let's do an exercise one. What could we do for that? We've done a lot on nutritional kind of behavior. Cameron Cummings: I wish, I definitely wish that people would forget about the idea that exercise is for weight loss, full stop. I think this is such a big thing that people solely exercise to lose weight. And I get that for some people that might be their starting point and it can go from something like that and become, like morph into something more positive. like actually the strength training, do you know what? I do look a bit better. I can see I have a bit more tone or a bit more definition and I feel a bit stronger and I'm moving better. Cool, that's great. But this idea of only using exercise for weight loss and that, as you said in the last bit, this idea that Harry: Yeah. Cameron Cummings: ⁓ well my weight loss phase is finished, good, I can not exercise again for the rest of my life, yeah that ain't gonna work. Like that is not gonna work. Like this idea of not exercising or just not doing strength training and stuff, like strength training is the thing that is going to have such a big impact on your quality of life as we get older. It's going to have an impact on your muscle mass and how you look as well. There's no getting around that. If you keep losing muscle mass, even if you're a a sort of healthy body weight, like that's not necessarily going to be the best thing for you anyway. Harry: you Cameron Cummings: in terms of health but also in terms of the way you look because you don't want to lose muscle mass and in general I just think it's something that's like it can become so toxic if you all you if you're like ⁓ well I'm only exercising because I need to lose weight and that's only thing that matters and I hate it but I'm doing it because I need to lose weight that is not a good mindset to be in you want to find something you enjoy get a bit of fulfillment from and actually make some progress for and yeah sure maybe a little bit of it helps nudge on weight loss but that has to be like bottom of the pie that's definitely why we say about it Harry: Yeah, 100%. It's a real big one, isn't it? Of like people measuring the quality of their session via how many calories they've burned on their Apple watch. And it is just like, just, just. Cameron Cummings: Yeah, it's cool. Harry: worse, you're just going to create the worst relationship with exercise because it then becomes, ⁓ I need to get a load of exercise in before I have that meal out Saturday night, or I need to get a load of exercise in because I had that meal out Friday night. And it just isn't a great way of doing it. You're not, you're just going to resent it because it's not fun to exercise in just to burn calories. And the worst part about all of it is the fact that you're probably not burning anywhere near as many calories as you think. And that's the sad Cameron Cummings: No. Harry: point, know, you look at your watch, I've burnt 400 calories. I can guarantee you didn't. if they're so inaccurate, it's just not even worth looking at, to be honest. so it does create a real poor relationship with exercise. it's definitely a big, big one of like, okay, what, what should I be doing? Should I be doing cardio or should I be doing strength for weight loss? And it's kind of like, well, what do you mean by that question? ⁓ which burns the most calories? Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Don't even think of it like that. Exercise. gives you so much. gives us so, so much. So many benefits. It's unbelievable. Do it for all of those. Don't do it to burn calories. Find ways that you can enjoy exercise, whether it's, and there's loads of different ways you can do it via sports. can do it through, you know, I love going to the gym. I love it. Of course I do, but like, I love it. It's like the time that I can go on my own. I can have a bit of step away from things. I can think about things freely. I can just zone out and listen to music, but to be able to challenge myself and put in that effort and get those results back and see myself progressing, feeling strong. I say to everyone all the time, feeling strong is, don't care what anyone says, it's one of the best feelings you can have, especially for women. I just think if you can go in and you feel strong, it bloody changes your life because it carries over into so many other aspects like exercise for those reasons. Like it breaks my heart when someone's exercising to burn calories because that is just so boring. Just going to a bunch of burpees for half an hour. there's, there's many things I could say that I'd rather do than that. ⁓ so yeah, real good one. Cameron Cummings: So. Yeah, I definitely think so and like the inaccuracy things a large part of it is like, you know, people put strength training onto an Apple watch. It's like not worth the paper it would be written on if it was written on paper. Like it really isn't because you're only looking at your heart rate there. It can't tell how many reps you did. It can't and even then people are like, ⁓ but what about those apps that you can enter the weight you did? And I'm like, well, the problem is that Harry and I could do the same squat and travel a different distance because of our bodies, right? So one squats farther and one squats shorter and just like walking, if you walk for or you walk a shorter distance, that has an impact on the calories expended, the weight you lift, the technique you use, like all of these things would have such a colossal impact, so you cannot accurately, even in like lab conditions, trying to calculate the amount of calories burnt in a squat's not that easy, like it's really, really complex, so when you've got a watch, like it's a bit better for things like running and cycling for sure, but it's definitely not good at all for strength training, and I think something Harry said that's spot on is like, this idea of, ⁓ being strong has such a profound impact because it doesn't just impact the way you feel day to day in the kind of sense of like, feeling like fit and strong, but it also changes the way you view your body as well, is it becomes useful to see your body as something that has purpose. And what I mean by that is like, you're like, ⁓ well, it has this like function, it's like really strong and I can pick heavy things up. And that's a really nice way of looking at your body as well, not just the way it looks constantly. And I think there's a balance, like I think losing weight and getting in better shape and looking better definitely helps, but when you also feel like, but I'm also really strong and I feel much fitter and I can lift that weight and I'm able to do all these things, I think you tend to find that people's body image goes up a lot and I think I see this with lot of clients is like, I've had a few clients in the last week who are able to do full press ups for the first time, so a few female clients that are able to do their first full press ups, and I can see it in them that they're so excited to train right now and they're feeling really good and they think it's really cool they're able to do it, and that's quite nice because it's something that's body can do that isn't anything to do with the way they look and I think in the long term that is definitely an advantage I've had. It phases where I've been in really good shape where and also the phase where I wasn't in such great shape because I still trained I Definitely felt more positive about my body image I think then a lot of people around me did even although I objectively wasn't in the best shape in life before I dropped 20 kilos I still was relatively fit now. I still needed to lose that weight I still needed to make a change sure but I had a slightly more positive view of it because I was like well I'm still able to run. I'm still able to lift weights. I'm still able to do this like so I think that's quite a cool thing as well It's like even if it's just going out walking and you're now able to walk up a much steeper hill much easier That's still bloody cool, isn't it? Harry: I think that's a bloody awesome point. it's like, is the idea of like, give your body opportunity to like, make you proud of your body because it will improve your body image. You know, let's talk, let's talk about Hills cause Cameron's here. If you go and climb a bloody big Hill and it's a big hike and it's a mountain and you climb up to the top, you are not going to get to the top and have negative body image. You're going to be like, this is bloody awesome. I've done this. This is hard work and I've done it. It's so, so valuable to give yourself the opportunity. And I just thought, Um, as Cameron was talking that I had a text from a client, um, yesterday, and this has got to be one of the most random, like non-scale wins ever. But I thought it kind of contributes to this. And she basically said her, her, she put towels in a washing machine and where a washing machine was bouncing, it moved out. So she got on the floor and pushed it back with her legs, which she's never been able to do before. And she pushed it back with her legs and said, the leg press is paying off. I was like, you win for the most random non-scale victory of the week. Cameron Cummings: Thank you. Harry: It was like Monday morning. Cameron Cummings: That is definitely niche, but there you go, but like yeah, that's that's such a good one isn't it? It's like it's just nice to feel capable and I think this is a thing and like again, there's not this there's not a gap between those two things they can both like follow suit you can lose weight and like look in better shape whilst also pursuing like fitness and feeling stronger and all these things and I think that's all of where the magic happens like There's so many reasons we get people to weight train some of them are health driven some of them are body composition driven but also some of it is just Harry: Yeah. Cameron Cummings: just like the way it makes people feel. It's a bit like steps, isn't it? It's like when you get someone to walk more, there's all these knock-on effects from steps. Like yeah, the steps expend extra calories, but also by having a step target, sometimes it just pushes people to get out when they'd otherwise just sit on the sofa, and they get out for an extra 20 minutes of fresh air and a bit of sunlight, and guess what? They're in a lot better mood, because we all work, like loads of people work from home now, or you've been in an office all day, so I love that. I think that's really, really cool. But yeah, I think we'll stop that one there, because we said we'd keep this to about 20 minutes. But yeah, hopefully some useful little bits in there and we want to hear more stories of people leg pressing their washing machine. We're not responsible for any of the consequences of your actions, however, just to get that little caveat out there. But yeah, if you do want to know a little bit more about one-to-one coaching, if you are struggling with weight loss right now and you're feeling a bit stuck, then you can jump into the show notes and there'll be a link there to book a call with us. But otherwise, I hope you're having a great day and we will speak. Harry: You Cameron Cummings: to you soon. Harry: Cheers.