Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 46: What to do when you've tried everything
Transcript
- Cameron Cummings: Welcome to Cameron's Conversations podcast. And in today's episode, I thought we'd lean into some weight loss, tough love on a subject I really like to talk about, and it's this thing of trying everything. Now, what I kind of want to talk a little bit about, and if you listen to the episode where I had Lainey on and she absolutely cracked me up because I think she was talking about the champagne and grapes diet, which sadly I'm not gonna push on you because if I did, I'd be so busy. I'd be so busy, just wouldn't be able to move for the amount of clients I'd have, right? But the point is this, is that a lot of people feel like they have tried absolutely everything, but they haven't. And this is a little bit of a harsh truth, but also a bit of a nice one in a way as well. You probably haven't tried everything, you probably have tried a lot of fairly shitty approaches. Some slightly better than others, some with a little bit more structure. And actually, Most approaches have some value in there somewhere, but there's just, you know, it's too extreme. So an example of that is where people would have low-fat diets, super, super low-fat diets. Now, for a long-term health perspective, having super, super low fat intakes isn't great for hormonal health and a bunch of other stuff as well. Not very good for your libido and all these kind of things as well. If you go super, super low-fat. fat you often as not do see things like hormonal dysregulation, amenorrhea, loss of periods, et cetera, et cetera. All these kind of things can come with it, which is not bueno, it's not what we're looking for at all. But there is a little element of, for some people, having some less high fat foods on their diet makes sense, right? It's good to have some healthy fats in there, but we wouldn't want to be consuming tons and tons of... high fat products sometimes because they've got a lot of calories in them. As simple as that, it's not because they're bad, not because they're good, nothing in between. It is simply that they are quite high in calories. And if you are in a weight loss phase, having more fruits and veggies, which are more carbohydrates and obviously very fibrous, et cetera, and give you more food volume, helps. Whereas a lot of things that have fat in it, like cheese, for example, are delicious and tasty, but unfortunately not particularly filling, which is a damn shame because I bloody love cheese. If only it had... triple the amount of protein it does. When it always makes me smile when someone's like, ⁓ it's a really good source of protein, I'm like, not for the calories it has in it. Not for the calories it has in it. Otherwise I would probably be eating cheese all day long, quite happily, and smashing my protein up. But sadly, that is not the case. So, there's often a little nugget of truth or value in most kind of mess, or most, if you like, approaches to dieting. Not on the cabbage diet. That is just misery bottled up, right? And misery for everyone. Misery for the people around you in the office. Misery for the people in the bus with you. misery for your family at home. So if you are thinking about the cabbage diet, think of the children. Just think of the people around you before you make such a rash decision. It makes me sad that people actually do the cabbage diet. And I have clients currently that work with that. One or two of them told me they've been in that kind of place where they're so frustrated they were kind of trying these kind of extreme approaches. Honestly, I genuinely, as much as I joke about it, my God, that must have been awful for them. Absolutely awful. So. Obviously, certain things don't have a lot of value, but things like, even if we look at Slimming World, dare I say it, you can look at that and say, well, you know what? Having some accountability can be useful. It's not a very good form of accountability. That's the unfortunate thing, and it often leads to people having a terrible relationship with food. And also, and this sounds a bit harsh, but I'm just gonna go for it, shots fired, the caffeine must be kicking in, is that most Slimming World leaders don't have a clue about nutrition, bluntly. A lot of them have been through a bit of a weight loss journey themselves, regained 89%, that's not an accurate statistic, but 89 % of the weight themselves and are really, really struggling with their own nutrition. And I have actually worked with lots of people that have been kind of weight loss group leaders and stuff like that and it's been really, really interesting. And obviously sometimes like anything people can get into it and they mean really, really well, but that lack of understanding and then they can't come away from it and think, actually, yeah, do you know what? it's not something that I was ready for, should have been involved in, et cetera. It's really, really interesting as well. And it's not in any way a criticism in the sense that it sounds like it's just the reality, right? In the same way that bluntly a lot of new PTs, because there's not a lot of nutrition qualification in the actual PT course, don't know very much about nutrition. And a lot of my friends, like have a lot of friends who are PTs would say the same, is they learn a lot more five, six, seven years on about nutrition than they did in the first instance because they didn't have the tools. that eat well plates and being told that calories are important isn't quite sufficient to actually coach the damn thing. So the point is this, is that all these diets have a little bit of value, but the problem is they all tend to have the same problems, or they have similar groups of problems, Whether it's keto or low fat, it's very extreme, and a lot of the time what happens is it's not very sustainable, right? I have absolutely worked with clients who've said to me, and this is multiple, multiple times, they did a ketogenic diet, they lost loads and loads and loads of weight, but they regained it so quickly. And some of them are talking about that regain in the short term, so they maybe did it for two weeks and they lost a stone, and I'm gonna talk about that in a second, and then they regained it all, or half a stone or whatever it was, or the people that kinda did it bit longer term really stuck it out, like really stuck it out for a month, two months, and lost weight, but then regained it. And it's like, in the latter category, if you cut out biscuits, crisps, chocolate, sweets, you know. Bread, like pasta, pizza, all these things. Like chances are on average you probably will lose weight. That's why ketogenic diet works in part. The other part is to do with the first example where people lose weight really quickly with it, which you do, is that if you go very, very low carbohydrate, you empty out your glycogen stores and for every one glycogen you store, you also store about three grams of water. The problem with that is it makes a bugger all difference to the way you look and it just tends to make your energy levels worse. but it is a good way of manipulating weight and it is sometimes that like a low-fiber, really low-carbohydrate diet is often what like boxers would do, you know, if they're cutting weight for a competition, you know, they'll like sweat it out in a sauna and all these things as well. That's one part of it, but there are other parts with the nutrition that they'll manipulate too. So the point is this is that it tends to show you that, right? So you see this kind of initial drop. The problem is, much like the super, super low-fat approach, well, what do you do a month on from that? What do you do six weeks on? You go to someone's for dinner and you're like, right, well, I can't have any of the carbohydrates here. I can never have an ice cream. I can never have a bar of chocolate. I can never have a pizza, never have pasta. That's just awful. And it's not sustainable. And it also demonises the food group. You think carbs are bad. And the problem is, is it's doubly compounded because the second you go and have a glass of water and half a slice of pizza, you see a bit of a spike in weight because your glycogen stores refill. The problem is, is that has nothing to do with how you look. It's just water weight and glycogen stores that have been depleted. But the point is, is that you obviously have that association there and then you're kind of stuck with it. So it can end you in a bad spot. And this is, quote, difficult, as people can feel like they've tried everything and sometimes they'll have some success, which is actually worse, because if you have success with a ketogenic diet, then you get bought into the idea that your carbs are bad and then you really are stuck in a loop because you think to yourself, well, shit, this works for me. I know if I do it, I'll lose weight. How the hell do I make that sustainable? How can I have dinner with my family? How can I make sure the people around me have a good relationship with food and see me to have a good relationship with food if I cannot eat those kind of foods ever? Like it doesn't work and there's this real friction that occurs because there's a sense of this is what I need to do, but then it's really hard to do, really, really hard to do. So it doesn't work well at all. So this is where people can really feel frustrated. And then they flip from that diet to another. try God knows what else diets. You've tried Slimming World, you've tried the ketogenic diet, you've tried low fat and all the rest of it. But the bit I always come into is that most people have never had proper structured accountability or professional guidance, if we want to put it that way. They want to make it slightly more corporaty. They just haven't. They have never had professional guidance. And this sounds slightly controversial and I want to contextualise this, but your GP often doesn't count. What I mean by that is they are absolutely a professional, but the amount of hours your average GP studies nutrition, it's like a handful, right? It's an absolute handful. Now, by no means am I suggesting you ignore medical advice. That's not what I mean. But what I mean is I have absolutely multiple times had clients who said to me, ⁓ yeah, my GP, before I came to you, my GP recommended Slimming World or Weight Watchers, not Weight Loss, Weight Watchers, or these kind of things. And the reason for that is, is the NHS services around weight loss themselves are generally reserved for people at very high risk because they're obviously under-resourced. So you can maybe get professional guidance from dieticians, but the problem is is actually getting there, you usually have to be in a pretty bad spot, realistically. So that's not very helpful. The GP's also got eight minutes and you're trying to get them to give you advice around nutrition that actually sticks in eight minutes. And I hold my hands up and say this, I couldn't do it. Like I know that when I work with clients week in, week out, we do detailed video check-ins that on average maybe somewhere from eight to 14 minutes long, right? So I'm giving them feedback eight to 14 minutes long every week. I read through or watch through the feedback they give me, whether they're doing a check-in form or a video. I'm going in depth on that. I voice note them or message them depending on preference throughout the week. We have constant dialogue, not when I say constant, I don't mean like I'm pestering them five times a day, but you know. a of times a week they'll check in if they're struggling with anything. That's how we make the changes. It's so in depth because it bloody well needs to be. It is not a surface level, ⁓ here you go, here's your calories, off you go. It doesn't work with nutrition because most of nutrition isn't a target, it's not numbers. Like if someone asked me for a calorie target, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend as I'm doing something magical with it. I am not. I probably have a better than average way of calculating it to give someone a sensible approach. based on their goal. Should we go kind of fast and hard at it first? Should we go a little bit easier? Should we be bit more gentle? Do we need the right habits? You know, I might look at these things, right, but the actual calorie number, it's just a flipping number. And even then, I often say to clients, when I calculate it for a client initially, I'm looking at the data. What's the data doing with week one, week two, week three? And I'll change that target often. It's not a little, maybe not a lot, but a little. So the point is, is that GP only has a tiny, tiny touch point. They don't even spend, you know, when I speak to a client on a consultation call initially, right? They don't even get that much time with them to do that, to ascertain what the challenges are. So when you are going into those scenarios and they're giving you, they're just giving you the best you can. So when I'm talking about professional guidance, that's why I don't really include that. I'm not saying that it's not professional guidance because they obviously are qualified medical professionals, but that doesn't make them qualified nutrition professionals. It means they can actually comment on things and when it's medically related, absolutely. But I train quite a lot of GPs. have a good handful that I coach, right? And a lot of them will say the same and say, my nutrition knowledge isn't that brilliant, like because it's just not, right? They have an understanding, there's more of a baseline than average, sure, but the confidence to coach other people on it in eight minutes when you see them once and then don't see them for six months, it doesn't work, it's not enough. They're never going to be able to give you enough, you're never gonna be able to get questions answered in the way that you need. When I was doing one of the nutrition courses I've done, and sort of some CPD, Continual Professional Development, I've been in courses with doctors and GPs there, which is really, really cool because they've identified within themselves, like, this is a common issue, people struggle with their nutrition, yet I don't have the tools to help them. Like, that's the reality. So one of the things I often say is when we've tried everything and everything, you probably haven't had accountability and structure. You probably haven't had someone in your corner taking you through it. Now, whether you're talking about something like Sorted in Six, which is a group program and is... like a relatively inexpensive programme, It's not expensive at all for six weeks of coaching and accountability, then that's accountability, right? More than people have had, we have a group for everyone to be in. We have feedback for you weekly. It's written feedback, so it's detailed enough, way more detailed than you've ever received before to kick you on. Then we have one-to-one where it's a lot more analytical, into your food diaries, into your training, into all the lifestyles, the emotional eating, all these things, right? Either way, the reason that we see so many people that are super successful in those programs is because they've actually got accountability, they've actually got support. It's not this surface level, brushed off type kind of thing, and you need more than that. And being told you just need to cut out carbs, well, where do you go with that in the long term? So you've tried the low carb thing, you've tried the low fat thing, you've tried Slimming World, you've tried this, you've tried that, you've tried a shake diet, you've tried a detox thing, there's so many of these things. So you feel like you've tried everything, but the reality is is you've not had proper structured coaching. And the reason I think this is important, because you might think, oh, this is a bit of a sales pitch there, isn't it, for like coaching? In a way, sure, it probably sounds like it, but it's actually more about, I don't want someone to feel like the reason that they failed is because they just haven't tried hard enough. Now, let's be blunt. I'm sure, and hands up here, that I could absolutely say there are times that I've gone to diet and half-arsed it, right? I've not really given it a good go. I kinda tried, didn't stick it out after a few days and just fallen back into old habits. That's where was before I got into much better place than that many, many years ago now. But, you know, that's where I've been. I've been in a position where I stress it and gained weight. Like, I've been there. And I attempted a handful of times to get going and move something and it didn't. And then it did. And funnily enough, it's also when I got coaching for accountability. The point is this, is that it's understanding that it's more common than not to fail and it's not because you've tried absolutely everything, it's because you've tried all the things that don't actually help you, or you've got this very surface level advice, because a lot of the time, if you actually look at the things that you've changed, if I said to you, right, what did you change with your nutrition? People say, ⁓ well, I cut out carbs and I had more of this food and more of that food, because I didn't really know what else to eat, and I just did that for a few weeks, and then eventually I just couldn't stick it out, I went out for my birthday and then I just fell off the wagon with it. So they've tried all these things, but there's very little structure to it. No one's ever sat and told you, well, actually, you know what? I've looked at your food diary, Sandra, and I can see that you struggle with evening snacking, but no wonder your dinners aren't filling enough. You could put a bit more of this in or a bit more of that in, or actually, your meal times are all over the shop. eat at completely different times every day, or you're snacking loads and loads and loads, and you're doing that classic thing of... You're trying to stick to calorie target because you've realized that tracking calories is probably good idea. You've seen a few videos on Instagram and YouTube about it. But what you've suddenly realized is that actually, you're eating your calories, sure, but you're eating them all in snacks. So then you end up wobbling over your calories because you're really hungry all the time and you think it's impossible to stick to 1600 calories. But actually, it's because you've got so many snacks and your snacks don't fill you up like your meals do. So there's all these things that come into it. A lot of the time, the reason you've actually been failing at dieting, isn't because you have tried everything and nothing works for you. It's just that the things that you've tried have never given you that much. It's all very surface level, It's a bit like being asked to fix a car engine after being told how to do your tire pressure, right? It's pretty handy to be able to do your tire pressure and it's useful to know little bits of that. Maybe you take that from the low fat approach. Like, ⁓ sometimes I have more higher protein and higher carb sources. Like, actually, that's a bit more filling. Cool. But everything else you don't know how to do, you don't know how to handle. And then someone said, right, I need you to fix this carburetor. And you think to yourself, what the hell is a carburetor? And I barely know myself, so there we go. That's a nice insight to my lack of knowledge around cars. But the point is this, is that a lot of the time you're failing, it's a lack of knowledge, but also lack of accountability thing. And you've always been given these surface level changes. You're given a... a detox kit where you have smoothies. Great, like smoothies are not a bad thing to have. I have a smoothie for breakfast every bloody day as everyone knows probably by now. Like I have that all the time. That doesn't solve all my problems. That's me fixing the tire pressure, well, you know, blowing up my tires and knowing how to assess my tire pressure. That's it. Like I don't know how to do anything else that doesn't help me that much. So that's one of the things that I think is really important when it comes to nutrition is actually you might not have tried everything. You actually. probably just tried a lot of things at surface level and never got any further help. So your understanding is no better. You're 10, 12, 15, 20 years on and someone, a coach, I was really, really a great educator early in my career. That was really fond of in terms of the education that they did. It was so impactful to me. I remember something you said always stuck with me, which was this idea that repeating the same... year 10 times is not 10 years experience. And he was talking about as a coach developing in a different context, but it applies with this is like, how much have you actually learned about nutrition in the last year? How much have you learned about your own nutrition and your own lifestyle that you can say that you've adapted and changed that's made it easier for you? Often the answer is people can say is nothing. They've tried a different diet on repeat year after year, but it never gets any farther than that. So a bit of tough love in the start where you probably haven't tried everything, even though you're telling yourself you have. but also something to maybe make you feel a bit more positive about actually maybe you've been trying the wrong damn things. Hopefully that was helpful for you. And if you are interested in one-to-one coaching, feel like this episode's been a little bit heavier on coaching is bloody great, but it is bloody great to be fair. And the one-to-one coaching we do is phenomenal. The success we get with clients is unreal. I had so many, clients in the last week. We move over to maintenance for the first time ever and feel like we're finally out of a dieting phase after so many years of being stuck in this loop of on-off dieting. It's just bloody brilliant to see. So if you are interested in one-to-one coaching, the link to one-to-one coaching will be in the show notes and you can book a little call with me and we can talk a little bit through it. There is of course no pressure and if it's not the right fit for you, I will say as much and I will nudge you in the right direction. But if I think we can get you in the shape of your life and in a much better place with your nutrition overall and lot less stressed about it. then can move into coaching. Anyway, have a great day and speak soon.