Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 93: Buying a walking pad, post holiday weight loss and when to change your targets
Transcript
- Cameron: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations Podcast. And in today's episode, I want to just talk a little bit about how things have gone on my first week back post holiday. So I guess to touch on some things around weight. So first off, weight obviously was up 2.6 kilos, and by the end of the week has been pretty much back to where it was ⁓ in terms of average weight, which I'm really, really happy with. So that was a bit of a win, obviously, to drop right back down. And really all I did was stick to the same calories. ⁓ And the same sort of steps and activity levels as normal. If anything, activity levels were probably a little bit on the higher side last week because I ended up playing quite quite a lot of basketball, had quite a few training sessions in. Now that the season is finished, it's kind of ramping up in terms of the kind of pre-season as well. It's also quick turnaround. So that's been good in a lot of ways. Feeling really, really fit in that that case. And steps have been good. I actually got a walking pad. ⁓ I ordered it for the day that I came back. So I got it on Monday. So I didn't get much of a chance to use it on Monday at all. ⁓ because by the time I'd actually had a chance to pull it out of the box, it was kind of in the into the late evening. But I found it super helpful. I wasn't sure what I would think of it because you you know what it's like when you buy ⁓ home equipment. It's always a bit of a dangerous game. I always remember going to people's ⁓ houses when I was a kid and and like ever almost everybody I knew had like a cross trainer that was like actually just made into a clothes horse. ⁓ at this point like it was just had like two t-shirts hanging off the end of it and that was all it was ever used for other than gathering dust. So I wanted to make sure that I was going to be using it ⁓ so I kind of deliberated on it while but I will say I actually rate it. I think it's been quite helpful. It for me it's definitely not something to replace getting outside and getting fresh air. So this morning I have a route to do in the morning, went out, knocked out four thousand steps in this kind of loop I've done. I've kind of figured out the the perfect kind of loop in terms of time it takes and also it kind of takes me through a bit of nature so I kind of walk round a field which is quite nice through a kind of little wooded area and then back onto the kind of top of the street I'm on and it pulls me back down and it's a good amount of steps as well. It doesn't take me too long in the morning and it also means if I want to kind of jog a brief route as well it actually works quite well for that too which is kind of handy. So that's been quite positive ⁓ as a it's sort of addition to that. I don't think as I say I would want to swap it out for a lot of the steps I do outside because Obviously you don't get the benefits of being the fresh air, the daylight, all that side of things, but it is hugely, hugely helpful in the kind of context of kind of getting some extra steps in. So like one of the other days I had 15 minutes where I needed to reply to some messages and I just went on it for that fifteen minutes at kind of a like a slow and steady pace and that just chalked up an extra thousand steps. And then I used it again later that day for the same reason. So I am actually quite rating the walking pad. Has been useful. And then one of the days I probably did about 10,000 steps on it. One of the days I did quite a lot. ⁓ I set my laptop up and did some calls whilst I was on the the walking treadmill because it doesn't really make any difference if you're walking at a slow pace ⁓ to whether you're sitting down, it's actually really nice to move, especially if I've been sat doing kind of updates all day. It's quite nice to just kind of like almost change position in the flat and move around a little bit. So I actually really rated it for that purpose. So that's been super super helpful. So that's definitely helped on the kind of step side of it, but Otherwise, things have been quite steady. And I think for me now, what I'm kind of assessing is I was toying with whether I push up my step count for this next kick kind of phase for the weight loss, ⁓ phase of weight loss. My inclination for now is to keep it quite steady because weight's dropping quite well and I'm in a good spot, but also because I was finding it quite time consuming before. A couple of days a week I was struggling a little bit more to get my steps up and I like to be quite consistent with them. Whereas now, because of the walking pad, I'm finding it's quite achievable. And I've actually found I was able to get an extra gym session in because I was saving some time for my steps. So that's something I'm gonna lean into at least for now, is to make use of the fact I'm almost gaining a little bit of time back as well. So if you are thinking about a walking pad and and you do work from home, I can see some utility in it. I do think that even if you're watching an episode of a program or something as well, it can be pretty good. I did that too. ⁓ I've been watching ⁓ Dutton Ranch 'cause I'm massive Yellowstone fan these days. ⁓ so that's a spin off of Yellowstone anyway. I ⁓ watched the whole episode on that and that was great. I got like four and a half thousand steps done, and that was like my my Saturday morning, which was actually really handy, just to have ticked off a really big chunk of steps, doing something that was kind of a bit bit more chill, because I do tend to give myself like an hour just to relax on a on a Saturday morning before getting a bit of work done. So there's definitely utility in it. Anyway, I've talked enough about my walking pad. I'm not sponsored by Amazon here, so I'm not gonna carry on. But I think in terms of kind of goals for the upcoming while the goals are pretty clear and in terms of what I'm doing, the targets I have are staying the same because weight's progressing along really, really nicely. And as I say, I'm gonna keep my steps the same for now. And my hope is I can use maybe a little bit of that extra time I have to try and get an extra gym session in here or there as well when I have have the time to do so and the kind inclination to do so. It's quite nice to just feel like I can maybe go in and do a little bit of extra polymetric work, which is quite specific to the basketball I'm doing as well. So that was just a bit of a a kind of thought process around it as well. As I definitely think there's an element, if it's not broke, don't fix it. Yes, I could do more steps, but do I need to? Like actually, if I'm finding it a bit easier now and it's a little bit less of a challenge. Not that it was a huge challenge before most days of the week, just a couple, but I think a lot of the time what's useful when it comes to weight loss is If you are progressing well, if you're losing weight steadily and it doesn't feel horrifically effortful, why change it? I think a lot of the time it's important that if you're making really good progress, you don't need to just make things harder for the sake of it. Yes, I could maybe eke out marginally more weight loss if I got an extra 10 to 15,000 steps done a week. That's true. But then the trade-off is that I'll also probably see a little bit more of an impact in terms of overall fatigue. And I'm finding this kind of weight loss process probably a solid six out of ten right now in terms of difficulty. It's really not that hard. I'm making good progress. I'm obviously pushing my calories moderately low given my activity, but it's not that hard. So why change it? And I do see that mistake where people get mis sort of they get impatient and they make the decision to bring their calories down significantly or bring their steps up massively or increase the amount of time they're in the gym massively, which honestly doesn't make that much difference. Two extra gym sessions a week's not going to suddenly cause you to lose way more weight. But what happens is they then become really non-adherent because the goals they've or the targets I should say they've set are actually really tricky to adhere to. So I think there's something in that as well where if you are making good progress, sometimes you just have to accept that it takes time. If you have 20 kilos to lose for example and you're losing at 0.7 kilos a week you might think ⁓ I want to lose much faster. But it's like look at the trade-offs that you have to make to do that. Like you might not want to make those trade-offs, even although you initially do when you have this little spurt of motivation where you think, right, I could do that, I can stick to I can double my calor my double my ⁓ steps, sorry, and do way more and cut my calories down even more. It's like, okay, but will you actually adhere to that? Or after four days are you gonna falter? Or when you get to the first social weekend and you don't have time to go for massive long walks and you have, you know, a couple of meals to go out to, how do you actually juggle that? There's definitely a case for going at things a little bit faster for weight loss. There's definitely merit in that. But there's also a balance here where if a client says to me, I'm making great progress, and you know, should I speed try and speed things up? I'll often be quite pragmatic about it and try and lean them away from that and actually say to them, Well, why don't we keep it in a spot where it feels relatively easy and you feel like you can just crack on with your life rather than feel like you're overly restricted? So something to think about there in terms of kind of changing targets when you don't need to. And that certainly applied to me because like everyone, sometimes more information is not necessarily good thing. Like I know better than to change things up. But that doesn't mean I have little moments where I think, ⁓ I could change that up or I could tweak that. Actually, right now progress is really good, so there's no need to do so. So just some thoughts on that and how the last week has been. In terms of hunger, kind of what you'd expect post holiday actually, Monday was actually really easy. Was it Tuesday I think was pretty easy and I think Wednesday I saw a bit of a spike in appetite. It's just quite normal. I did find myself getting hungry at slightly odd times. Like I found that I was quite hungry for lunch quite early in the day. ⁓ dinner wasn't quite so bad, but I definitely found I was getting a little bit hungry into the afternoon. But that stands to reason, given there's a one hour time difference to ⁓ Spain so there's probably a little bit of lag there where you know in my in my head I'm obviously an hour farther on in the day so I was getting a little bit hungry but I just kind of pushed through that initial wave of hunger and after a few days it settled and I would say now it feels pretty regular. So appetite has dropped back down to exactly kind of where it was. I feel like I've slipped right back into the routine. I'm eating similar foods as to before and just finding my feet again with a routine more than anything. And honestly it's been quite easy to do. Something that helps is I didn't give myself another day. You know, when I got back from holiday Monday, I was straight into it. And yes, I had that little wave of hunger pre ⁓ pre-lunch time on both days, and then a bit more hunger generally on Wednesday, but then that's since settled down to normal. So just something to think about as well post-holiday, that actually these things are very, very normal. You will see little spikes in hunger, but they pass. And you will see little well, you'll see significant spikes in weight as as in my case, and it passes. just staying the course is the real key thing here. So hopefully that was a little bit of helpful context of a little bit of kind of how my first week back has been. I just thought I'd do really short one on that. But otherwise I hope you're having great week. ⁓ if you are Scottish, obviously we're now on en route to winning the World Cup famous last words. ⁓ now that we've won one game by one goal. So ⁓ if you don't hear from me ⁓ at some point next week after the two games we have, ⁓ it's probably 'cause I'm out partying, but ⁓ a joke. can't stay out late enough to party. I'm too old for that now. ⁓ but yes, we are we're on our way. ⁓ but if you are watching the World Cup hopefully you're enjoying it. But yes, staying up to 2 am is is not for me. I have to admit I I had didn't watch the first game until afterwards and I watched a good chunk of it ⁓ the following day. But my goodness, what a time to be up to. I've got loads of clients who did stay up to it and credit to them, but I don't think I could stay up to half four in the morning ⁓ to finish the game. I think I'd be absolutely dead on my feet for a week. But that's what your thirties does to you, hey. Anyway, have a good one and I'll speak soon.