Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 74: The sticky middle bit
Transcript
- Cameron: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. And in today's episode, I wanted to talk all about the sticky middle bit. So take your mind out of the gutter. I don't know where your mind's gone there, but let's pull that back. And let's talk a little bit about weight loss and this sticky middle bit. And this is where a lot of people who've seen some success with weight loss get to. So I sort of frame this as you've. lost that initial bit of weight. So let's say, just as an example, your journey starts, someone takes a photo of you, you're not happy at all, maybe that's the kind of trigger, ⁓ or you've just not been feeling comfortable in your clothes, you put on a t-shirt and it's tight, but in all the wrong places, not the right ones, and you're kind of feeling pretty crappy basically, just about the weight you are, the kind of position you're in at that point in time, you've not really been looking after yourself as much as you'd like, or... you've maybe been quite active, but nutrition's just been a bit rogue, you know, the weekends, that kind of stuff. And it's just crept up, and this is the thing, right, a lot of the time, and I speak to clients about this all the time, is most people that I actually work with, it's not that the nutrition's been crazy, crazy, crazy for months, it's simply that they have just gone overboard a bit at the weekends, maybe gone over with a snacking a bit during the week for a better part of like six months a year, and it's just crept up generally. Like sometimes we do have... things come up in life where really, life even, really, really stressed and then that kind of like piles on a bit quicker. But by and large, a lot of the time that's not it. For most people it is just more gradual. It's kind of innocuous. It's like the three extra biscuits you have a day that's just an extra 200, 300 calories and it just piles on over the course of a year. You do the maths, like, you know, 300 days even, you've done it every day, over 300 calories. It turns out to be a lot of extra weight gain. So. Often it's not, that's where people start, right? And then they crack on and they drop a good bit of a bit of weight and they go from this position of being uncomfortable to comfortable. So if we want to kind of frame what that feels and looks like, it probably looks like you're putting on clothes and feeling like, oh, that's pretty comfortable now. You probably don't absolutely love the way that every item of clothing looks, but a lot of the clothing that was uncomfortable for feels much better. Some things you feel really, really good in. So you're generally feeling a lot more positive. And it can be really, really motivating. And then there's a sort of sticky middle bit that tends to come to place. And everyone has a different experience. Some people will really experience this, some people won't. I certainly had a little bit of with this and I'm gonna talk about it in a second, just in the last couple of weeks. And in essence, it's where you've gone from being uncomfortable to comfortable. You have made some big changes, but now you've also been dieting for a while now. And it's not necessarily hard. hard or harder because your hunger's not through the roof, not that much has changed, you're still chipping away, your weight loss is slower than at the start as it would be because you've now got less to lose, that's just completely normal of course, but you're chipping away steadily and all the rest of it and you feel like you're doing pretty well, but it's just, it's starting to feel a little bit long and you can start to get a little bit. tempted by what I call like shiny object syndrome where you start to think oh should have changed this or should have changed that even though when you actually look at things you're still trending down pretty steadily right so there's no real need for that that like temptation comes in a little bit there's also that temptation to just be like oh could just have a bit of a break or I could just could just sack it off for you for a little bit or I could just do with a wee bit of a breather from it and this is quite important because a lot of the time this is an interesting point because you do feel so much more comfortable but you don't yet have the compelling motivation of being really quite lean. So one of the nice things about the back end of a diet, the last four to six weeks of a diet for most people is they're already so lean that they see visual differences much quicker. So it might be every seven to 10 days and someone says, ⁓ I notice quite a difference in my physique. ⁓ I notice another difference in my physique. Like, ⁓ I notice like changing my body shape. Like, my arms are much more toned. It really is often that quick. I know. as I came to the back end of my photo shoot, it really interesting, even though my weight was not flying down, I was only pulling off about .4 kilos a week. In reality, I looked really different week on week on week, like every week for four weeks at the back end of that photo shoot, I looked significantly better, which is quite a cool experience, whereas at the start, you could die for three weeks and see differences, for sure, maybe your clothes fit better, but it's not that obvious, right? So this is what I call that sticky middle bit, because you've not yet got that excitement of, actually, I'm not just comfortable, I feel really bloody good, right? Maybe for everyone it's a bit different. For me, it's often kind of noticing, it's not just like my arms are getting a bit lean because that tends to happen relatively early, or my legs, like for example, I'm kind of at that point now where my legs look pretty lean. I was filming a set of Bulgarian split squats, which were an absolute pleasure today, and I really noticed it, like my legs are already looking really lean, my arms are definitely looking leaner, like in a top I was wearing, a, not super baggy top, but like a slightly bigger, kind of, what do call it? Overlay, I don't know what the term is, but anyway, just like a long sleeve top and I definitely noticed like I'm looking much leaner in that but my midsection still got a ways to go before it tightens up, right? I'm not seeing abs yet or anything like that. I'm definitely not quite there yet That's not miles away from me now and I'm probably get pushing to up on what we'll start to see that soon But that's kind of where a lot of people feel that they're in the sticky middle, but they're just like they're noticing some nice changes But they're not quite there. They've not got that drive of you when you start this weight loss process, you wanna get comfortable. So a lot of the time it's not in your head to be like, oh I wanna get in absolutely great shape, because you don't know what that feels like, because you've not been there before. You've always stopped at comfortable and then regained weight gradually and repeated the cycle. So this is often that bit, and actually if you push through that, then you'll find that the motivation tends to pick back up quite significantly. Sometimes at the back end of a diet, it's this interesting mix, and this is just like very realistic of what to expect. is in like the last four to six weeks, often it feels harder because you are a little bit more depleted, you've been dieting for a bit longer, you are a little bit more fatigued from it. That's all really normal. But then the upside is, is because you're in so much better shape and you feel so good in your clothes day to day, that it's this weird counterbalance of like, yes, it is actually getting harder at that point in the process. In a way, it might not be in the sticky middle bit, it just feels like a little bit more sloggy. It's not necessarily harder. whereas at the back end it is actually harder, you are a little hungrier, you are a little bit more tired, but because you wake up and you're like, no, I feel bloody brilliant and I can see such a change in the mirror and all the rest of it, you end up being really, really motivated. So it's quite an interesting thing to experience, but I just wanted to touch on this because I was thinking about this a little bit. mean, part of the two factors to this, I felt like I was kind of there over the last couple of weeks because when I was looking at photos from the stag do, which is always a dangerous thing to do. think there's not too many photos, probably a good thing. But it wasn't that well to be fair. the point is is that when I was looking, I'm very much like, in this day to day photos, which was, don't know, however many weeks ago now, three weeks ago, something like that, four weeks ago, I'm not quite sure. I'm definitely comfortable, right? If you see a photo of myself, I'm happy. Like, I don't, there's nothing in the photos for me to really pick up on and think like, ⁓ I look like I need to lose weight or anything. I'm not there. That, you know, I was at the top end of my muscle gain phase, definitely felt a little bit softer in the edges. I've kind of come away from that. in a photo now look absolutely fine, like absolutely fine, but I'm not quite at that stage where in Scottish ⁓ sort of slang, it's quite tap-saf, it's definitely not tap-saf weather, but it's also not quite like at that stage where like I feel absolutely brilliant with my top off. I feel fine and comfortable for sure, but it's not like that kind of stage. And I think that's quite an interesting point because... When I was on the stag do, I had these five days where I actually ate quite sensibly. Obviously I drank more alcohol than normal, it was a stag do, right? And even then I was somewhat moderate with it to be fair. But obviously coming back from that, I felt like I looked a little bit softer, my weight was up a wee bit, but nothing massive to be fair. And I definitely felt like that week following that, potentially because I had a little bit to drop off post stag, there was a little bit of that sticky middle bit feeling creeping in for me where I was like. I definitely feel better, but the motivation wasn't quite as high. Could also be recovering from the tequila, that might be a factor. But even the following week as well, which would have been, I think last week, the following week, I still felt like I was getting leaner and I could see that on the scales. My weight dropped. It wasn't a huge weight loss week, but it was definitely, you know, I still dropped like 0.4 kilos, which is fine. Like I trended down and I kind of felt like I in the middle ground. Where it's been really interesting coming into this week, I've A, had a very good training week. So that's maybe biased me a little bit. But B, I definitely noticed when I was in the gym training today, again, even wearing a top that I was wearing two weeks ago, there's quite a big difference. I really notice it. There's more more visual changes. So the kind of bit that I wanted to talk a little bit about was this idea that that's really normal. And I think that people expect it to always feel the same. You're gonna come into your weight loss phase with a lot to learn if you're brand new to taking a properly structured weight. weight loss approach, right, where you're tracking your calories, you're weighing yourself daily, you're doing all the things that we talk about in the podcast. But there's also a lot of excitement at the start. There's a novelty to it, which people don't always talk about. That novelty is going to wear off. I often say this to my one-to-one clients, like, they're often very excited about the progress they're making, but the actual day-to-day of doing of it, if that makes sense, is pretty routine to them. And someone said that before, I was like, ⁓ yeah, I just feel like I'm just cracking on with it. and I often say to them, good, you should not feel like A, your life is on hold while you diet, that shouldn't be the case. Yes, you're going to have to make trade-offs in certain positions in your social life. You can't go and smash loads of beers on the weekend, sure, but what you can do is you can still enjoy yourself, can still socialise, it might just look slightly different, as in you have some non-alcoholic beers and some non-alcoholic, whatever it is for you, right. The point is is your life shouldn't be on hold and B, it shouldn't be consuming all your thoughts. I often say this to clients as like, as a goal for me, For a lot of clients, I want them to be in the position that they think less about their nutrition, not more. I want them to wake up and they have a routine with breakfast, they have a routine with lunch, and then they maybe think, right, I'm gonna plan ahead for my dinners for the week, so I know what I have for at least a good few of the nights. But they might be a little bit more creative with their dinners, and that's cool, or bit more variable. But I want them to feel like a lot of things are very routine, like they wake up, they go to the gym, like at the same time most of the time, if that's applicable. Some clients obviously do shift patterns. but you want a lot of this to feel routine because in essence you need to do it for a fairly long period of time. I think that's the thing that people miss with this is that in a way excitement's great, especially at the start because it's what gets people motivated and as a coach you're definitely encouraging that and you want people to ride that wave, but at certain point if someone turned around to me and be like, yeah I just feel like I'm really cracking on, I'm progressing with my training every week, you're nudging me forward, I'm feeling good about that, I'm quite happy with the progress there, I'm seeing changes every week but. yeah, it doesn't feel like all consuming. I'm not spending all my time thinking about it anymore. That's exactly where we want to be because intensity in dieting is slightly overrated and because people often feel like it should feel all consuming because that's what previous diets where they're hyper restrictive or they are really struggling to balance it with their lifestyle because like, I don't know, they've done keto, right? So they can't eat carbs. So they go around to the family and they're like, what am gonna eat? All these kinds of things. So we actually want it to become routine and that's one of the best ways to get through the sticky middle bit is like what I did last week and the week before when I kind of felt like I was kind of probably like if I was to rate my excitement for the diet or the weight loss phase up to then, pre-use tag, it was feeling really, good. It was probably like an eight out of 10, like not a 10 out 10 because this is kind of like a little old hat to me. Like I've done it before, it's normal. Like I'm quite comfortable, but I'm feeling really good, really positive about changes. I would probably say it was like a five out 10 for those two weeks, but I just kept chipping away, focused on other stuff, was really busy with work. And now into this week, I would probably say, especially now, it's feeling probably like more like a seven, like out of 10, and I feel like into next week it'll probably drift up to an eight, because I would be, when I do my kind of like full check-in of progress photos tomorrow and all the rest of it, I suspect I'll see a quite a good little visual difference. I definitely feel a difference in my clothes. and B, my weight's down a good bit farther when I look at my averages, because I very much, don't really worry too much about my day-to-day weigh-ins, I really am focused on my weekly averages. So I think this is just a nice point, like, hopefully that one normalises the experience of the sticky middle bit, and that it's normal to feel like that, and that weight loss feels different in different stages, and that's not a reflection of you doing well or not doing well with it. Like I've been doing really steady, like when you look at my progress since the start of the year, I mean I've done like brilliantly, like I'm nearly 10 kilos down from start of the year, which is great. But that doesn't mean every moment of it I'm hyped up and excited. I'm not always. Sometimes you're just ticking the box. Sometimes it's almost a bit bland and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that as well. Sounds like an odd way to describe it but that's kind of what we want. We want this to be routine because that's what makes us sustainable as well. So hopefully that was helpful about the sticky middle bit. I promise I'll stop saying sticky now for a minute. But if you are in the sticky middle bit or you can't even get to the sticky middle bit because you're struggling to get going with your weight loss journey. then you might want to check out the show notes. There's a little link in there to my WhatsApp, so you can just ping me a message there. If you're interested in coaching, or you've got any questions or any suggestions for topics or things you'd like me to cover in the podcast, I'm very open to it. I do five of these mini episodes a week, so if there's anything you want me to cover off, just give me a heads up. But again, if you are interested in one-to-one coaching, you do feel like you need a bit of support, just jump in there and we'll have a little bit of dialogue over WhatsApp as well. And if you want to book a call, then we can do that and have a bit of a chat through how all it as well. But otherwise, I hope you're enjoying the sunshine, if it is sunny where you are. It's starting to get a bit sunny here which is great although all my clients down south are talking about heat waves so I'm very jealous and sad about that. But otherwise have a great day and I'll speak to you soon.