Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 71: What habits do WE use to make weight loss easier?
Transcript
- Cameron: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. And today's episode is actually a conversation. It's not just me speaking to a screen. So I've got Harry here with me. So he has taken a break from using his fire hose on Passing Stranger. I mean, sorry, I'm putting fires out. it's all about playing with big holes, really, isn't it? Isn't it? That's what it's about. That's the best part, But we want to talk a little bit about habits that help us. Harry: That's great. Cameron: when we're trying to maintain weight or trying to lose weight. And like a couple of the habits from each of us that basically have solidified and we've stuck with over time and that we found really helpful because I know for me, there's two particular habits that I found super, super, super helpful for helping me maintain weight easier, managing weight loss phases much easier as well. So we'll start off with you, Harry. What's kind of like one of the habits that, cause there'll be lots of little things that you've tried. Some of them have stuck, like the complex morning routine probably won't have. Harry: Hmm. Cameron: But some will have stuck, right? So what habits have kind of stuck for you that made all the difference to your kind of like weight loss and the weight maintenance phases? Harry: You Yeah, yeah, it's such a good question. for me, probably one of the biggest ones is similar meals. ⁓ And it's been something that I've been posting on Instagram a lot recently where I just post a picture of my lunch because it's the bloody same thing almost every day. ⁓ I go through cycles of having similar, similar meals. ⁓ And I'll do that for. two to three weeks sometimes and then I change it and I'll stick to that for two to three weeks. The reason why it works so well for me is because one, we're busy, right? We're all busy and I do not want to be opening the fridge or opening cupboards, wondering what I'm going to eat. It just removes all decision-making by knowing I have this meal that ticks the boxes for what I want to achieve nutritionally, whether that's protein, fiber, calories, whatever it takes the boxes for those. I also really enjoy it and look forward to it. So it's really easy for me just to make and have. It takes no time at all. It takes no thought process or that feeling of like, ⁓ what am going to have? ⁓ I need to make sure the calories are okay. Has it got enough protein in? I don't need to worry about any of that. I just have that meal and it works brilliantly. I typically do this for breakfast and lunch every single day. They're the same thing. My evening meal is where I will add in more flexibility because I typically have a little bit more time there or my girlfriend Lucy might prepare something so I want there to be flexibility so I can actually enjoy my life but I keep the definitely the first two meals of the day in a very very structured place and it just makes everything so much easier and that whether you're trying to lose weight it works really well again find meals that work for you and then when you move into maintenance it's the same thing you can just find meals that work and tick the boxes and It just makes life so much easier when I look through clients kind of food diaries And I just see a different breakfast a different lunch every single day I just think god you are making this so much more difficult for yourself You know, you don't want to the only the kind of caveat to that is you want there to be variety on that plate So don't think ⁓ if you just have I don't know chicken rice and broccoli for example the classic Every single day then you know, you're you're missing out on potential nutrition but if you've variety of different elements on your plate which is what I do, ⁓ you're ticking so many boxes it's just a winner in my opinion. Cameron: And I think the thing is like for context around this, like when we're talking about variety, variety can also be across the day as well. So like as an example, my breakfast is very deliberate, like everyone will see my bloody smoothies, you'll be sick of them by now on Instagram, right? But that, like again, the reason I actually can put that out there is like, one, I like poking fun at the fact that it's my entire personality. The second part is as well, is that like it's also to show that I do that for a reason. I know I get 200 grams of fruit in there, I get 200 grams of frozen berries. usually half a banana, which is about 250 grams of fruit, which is a nice tick box of me being like, right, I've got a good amount of fruit to start the day. I also know I've got a good amount of protein to start the day as well. So I know that from a micronutrient point of view, like it's good that I'm eating some fruit. And even if that was all I had for fruit for the day, still having half a banana and a good chunk of fruit, like that's probably, I don't know what that actually works out as, but probably two to three servings of actual fruit. It's quite a good amount. But the point is, that And you put touch on this and I think this is something that's really important that I often stress to clients is like the advantages, you know how much proteins in it, you know how many calories are in it. So it often actually I find gives me more flexibility for variety at dinner because it's so predictable because there's nothing worse like you'll probably be experiencing this too, Harry, at points where like You try different breakfasts, so like kind of what you're saying where often it's not someone will come in and they've got loads and loads of variety. And we're not by any means saying you to the same breakfast like I do every day, like five days a week. That works for me. You might rotate between two or three and just go on a rotation of ABC, ABC or whatever it is, right? Or have the same breakfast two days in a row and then change it. But the bit that's important is that I'm never going to come to dinner and be like, great, I have 300 calories left because... I decided to have toast and slathered lard pack on it or Dan pack if I've gone to the Lidl shop that always cracks me up. Nothing better than a bit of Dan pack. But anyway the point is that you get to your dinner and you're like smashing I've now got 250 calories to eat and you're like well that's great. Like my partner's made a meal and now I'm over my calories or potentially you go to have something and you want a decent dinner because well you're a normal human and you've got no calories left and it's just a bit shit to be honest isn't it? It's just a bit rubbish. So I think the other thing for me as well is like that repetitiveness is also useful because it's predictable, isn't it? It really gives you a nice, better predictability where if you come home and loses me dinner, you're probably like, cool, I'm going to either be bang on my calories or if she's made something slightly higher in calories, you're not going to be over by a big margin because your calories during the day have been managed well. And I think that helps because I think a lot of people do get caught out by that. It's like if you are someone who lives with a partner or you live with your family, and you are not necessarily in control of dinner seven nights a week, that means that sometimes people overspill their calories quite a lot and they kind of be like, but so-and-so made a bigger meal. It's like, yeah, but maybe we could navigate that earlier in the day and just almost make that predictable, right? Like, I think that's a nice way of seeing it. But I do think that's something that I don't know you get this, Harry, sometimes someone will come to me and they'll be like, oh, but I really like variety. It's like, do remember that if Harry has three different breakfasts and he has three or four different lunches and his dinner varies a bit. That's actually quite a different, each day looks quite different to the next. He might have, you know, whatever he has for breakfast one day, option A, he has lunch option A and then he has dinner option A and the next day it's all completely different, right? But actually across a month, there's not too much variation and that's a kind of key thing as well. But the question everyone wants to know, Harry, because I don't know if you've seen Harry's lunch plate, but it's typically, is it a sandwich or a toasty? Are you a sandwich toasty man? Harry: I normally have a sandwich but I do toast the bread. So I like the bread toast. Cameron: That's sophistication where you toast your bread but it's not quite a toastie. That's interesting. Harry: Toasty have to have cheese in it. Cameron: No, no, no, I don't think you can beat fine by tea. I mean, have like a you could have a hummus or pesto base. You don't need to have cheese. Harry: What's the fine define a toasty? Cameron: I feel like a toasty to me is where you like just have a sandwich that you have toasted. Like, you've got a weird mix there. You've got a toasted sandwich, haven't you? That's what you've got there. Harry: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I bet. Because I would imagine a toastie is you put the bread, you put the ingredients in the inside and toast it. I don't do that. I toast the bread. I toast the bread as I'm getting all my elements out. And then I construct it on the bread, basically. It just sounds a bit hard. Cameron: what they do. I've done that before, it's interesting but the real question is because this is where Harry really gets his varieties your plate is typically if I'm right toasted sandwich to call it the correct term a little bit of salad and it's got some crisps on the side that's where Harry's variety comes in do you rotate crisps or do you just always go for the same flavor? Harry: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I have been rotating recently because it has been kicking off a storm. People are very passionate about the flavors of crisps. But yeah, I basically have a sandwich. have fruit. have basically little elements that I might have in the fridge. So I'll have olives and things like that. I'll put on the side. Sometimes have a little light baby bell on the side for an extra five grams of protein or winner. but I've been rotating the flavours of crisps because I love crisps and I put them with lunch and that actually brings me very closely to my second habit but we'll come to that in a minute and I have been alternating the flavours to see what people think and I tell you what people are passionate about the flavours of Walker's crisps but yeah normally I have similar ones I normally go for pop chips actually just because calories are a little bit less Cameron: Pop chips are a great shout. Funnily enough, I was in the shop yesterday and I actually got some like the small bags of pop chips as well. Because I also like, think they're such a great like lower calorie snack as well. So I can get behind that as well. My girlfriend's obsessed with lentil curls or whatever they're called. I'm not so convinced. I'm a pop chip man. I'm a pop chip man. Maybe it's just the flavor though, of course. That might be the problem. Because I think she got like the plain ones or something. And I was like, ugh. Harry: Yeah. in. What flavour of pop chips do you get? Cameron: My swing between sour cream is probably my favorite, but then I quite like the barbecue too, so I'll alternate. Harry: Yeah, fair. The lentil sour cream and chive ones are normally pretty good. I don't mind those either. But yeah, I normally go for something like that. But we just happen to have these walkers and I haven't had them in so long. And I've just been like throwing the different flavors up and seeing what people prefer. Cameron: That's what we're suggesting. If you struggle with variety, just have different flavored crisps. That wasn't quite the direction we were going in with that, but hopefully that made some sense. Because I do think when we talk about repetition, people think, ⁓ I must have the same breakfast five days a week. And it's like, you don't have to. But you could probably have three breakfasts, like a smoothie, maybe a protein yogurt, and some berries, and some overnight oats. There's three options. And you just rotate through those. And something that's a bit of a hack, and I don't know you agree with this, but this is the way I like to do it, is I like to the calories similar. Harry: Yeah. Cameron: So like, like to know that like, there's gonna be some variants, but probably between like 400 to 450 calories for my breakfast is probably about right. So I'll have like all three of my options set within that sort of like parameter if that makes sense. Cause what I don't want is I don't want like my smoothie to be like 350, which it usually is about that 360, 370, then have overnight oats and then have another option that's like 700 calories. And then every time I do that, I get to dinner and I'm like, ah, I can have a broccoli and that's it. Harry: Okay. Cameron: like one Florida broccoli for dinner, like fantastic. I might even salt it to treat myself. Like it's probably not, you know. So yeah, so that's always a good one. So yeah, that was actually my first one as well was a lot about repetitive meals as well as like, I was making this example to a client, like I've got a really busy week this week as well. I had a funeral to attend to earlier this week and like I knew that I'd just be a little bit behind on work, like nothing drastic, but it was gonna take four or five hours out of my day, like minimum and took a bit longer than that. Harry: Yeah. Yeah. Cameron: So I've been working around that. So like on Sunday, I just made like chicken pesto pasta, which is literally just like some chicken breast, some penny pasta, and then some reduced pesto, and then just like some broccoli and peppers and mushrooms as well. And it does the job brilliantly and it's three days worth of lunches. And it probably took me 15 minutes to cook. And that's just made my life so much easier. Like today, woke up. had a smoothie, like second meal of the day, it's already there in the fridge, I put it in the microwave for 60 seconds and I'm off to the races. Like it just makes my life so efficient. And it means that by the time I get to Thursday, like my nutrition's taking no effort whatsoever. And I think that's a nice way of seeing it, is it like actually takes away effort. Anyway, that's enough on repetitive eating. So let's talk about what's your next habit. We'll go for your second one next up, Harry. Harry: Yeah, I think my next one kind of in a similar similar kind of area and that's food pairing Of of always having an idea of pairing foods together. I think works really well specifically for me and kind of managing my meals So it kind of looks in two ways that I think is really really important ⁓ one side of it is pairing foods like Let's go back to the kind of crisps idea. know, if a packet of crisps. pretty terrible food for when you're hungry, right? If I was really hungry, eating a packet of walkers or a packet of pop chips, it's not going to do a damn thing, right? But it's an enjoyable food to have. I'm all about, you know, I want my food to be enjoyable and I like having a packet of crisps. So what I do is I pair it with a meal. I will incorporate it in. like having people that normally have kind of snacky foods, just bring that into a meal. If you normally snack on fruit, you can bring that into a meal if you want to, right? But there's foods that I genuinely think are really important to kind of categorize as foods to eat when you're hungry and they're typically kind of your meals and things like that. And then foods to maybe not eat when you're hungry. And that might be these really high palatable foods, crisps, chocolate, that kind of thing. It doesn't mean don't have them. It just means be sensible around having them. And if you are hungry, you need to tackle that. So for me, it's like incorporating into a meal or you can look at kind of on an evening, for example, say you just really fancy some chocolate, you're not maybe not, or maybe you are really hungry, but you kind of want chocolate. Okay. Well, if you go and have chocolate, it's not going to probably end too well. You're going to kind of over-consume it quite easily. So why don't you partner it up with something that's going to fill you up? A classic one is having fruit. You know, you could have a bowl of strawberries, which are surprisingly quite low in calories. you can have a bunch of strawberries with some chocolate and those two foods go together really well, but also it helps keep calories down. and allows you to have a sensible portion of chocolate, whatever that might look like for you. ⁓ That is something that I really try to reinforce and something that I got into a real big habit. ⁓ A few months ago was making these yogurt bowls where I'd have like a bowl of yogurt I would have different kind of fruits on there and things like that and I was actually grating chocolate over the top and I was doing this because I fancied some chocolate right I was like I just want to have some chocolate and I'd make this bowl and I would grate a bit of chocolate over the top and you'll be amazed if you use one of those microplane Graters that just like turn it into a dust One square or two squares of chocolate will go really far and it will cover the whole top of the bowl and you'll get Cameron: difference. Harry: of it with each spoon you have and it just allowed me to tackle my hunger but also incorporate a food that I was kind of craving and wanting that's maybe not the best to have when I'm hungry so that's definitely another really positive habit that I kind of have carried forwards Cameron: Yeah, I think as well, like a good way of thinking about that is you're using the food in the right way. because one of the things that people do, and we see this a lot, right, especially when people first come in, is they're like, oh, I'm really hungry. So I just find myself having lots of picky bits from the cupboards. And it's like, I don't know about you, but if I was like, let's say you hadn't eaten anything today, how many picky bits out of the cupboard would you need to eat before you feel full? Flipping loads, like it doesn't work. If I've got like two biscuits left, a packet of crisps, I don't know, whatever else, right, a handful, like maybe half a handful of nuts, like I could inhale through all of that. mass you're like okay well 200 calories for the nuts maybe a couple of biscuits 200 calories packet crisps 160 you're like well there's a meal right there's a whole meal's worth of snacks that you've just had now does that meal where you maybe have like a yogurt bowl like Harry said with some chocolate grated over the top of it um there's even a couple of squares in it or does the kind of like picky bits what's going to fill you up more well Lancer is obvious to that, right? We know that it's going to be the meal. But the point kind of around this is really simple. It's more that you can use foods in the wrong way. And this is where we talk about this, like there are no good and bad foods, right? I mean, yeah, sure, you probably shouldn't be having a deep fried Mars bar every day. That might be a limit. I don't know if that's a thing down south, but I think it's a culture thing. I've never tried one, to be fair, but apparently they're very good, I've been told. Harry: It doesn't doesn't appeal it must have Cameron: not my bag, not my bag. But the point is, like broadly, there's not necessarily good or bad foods, but there are good or bad foods in terms of the choices and what you're trying to use it for. If you fancy a couple of little bits of chocolate, that's absolutely valid. And you might want to put that in if you've got some calorie spare and that might make sense. But what you don't want to use it for is I'm absolutely ravenous. I'll just have some chocolate to tide me over because like I'll be, I'm very much one of these people. Like I have a real sweet tooth. I could eat like a whole bar of chocolate and some like a family stuff. Harry: Easy. Cameron: bar and it just doesn't like I would probably say that a family-sized bar it would slightly help my hunger, but I would still be hungry after. That's the level of impact a whole, like, 600 calories worth of chocolate makes. So it's much better that I'm kind of like, okay, well, I'm going to do what Harry said. I love the strawberries thing as well. I always like say this is really good examples, like strawberries are super low in calories. Strawberries and chocolate works a charm. Like try that the next time you have 70 calories worth of strawberries, which is half a punnet, like half a kind of 400 gram punnet. And then you end up with that and then some chocolate on the side. That's a really nice kind of dessert, but you get a bit of food volume there. and that really really helps whereas if you just have the chocolate on its own if you're dieting it's like throwing it like into a black hole sometimes like it really is and and i've seen that so many times where people do just try and nibble the way through and i always stress that that that's like one of the worst ways to deal with your hunger like it's almost like when you think about something like pop chips as an example we talked about those earlier like at least with those they've got a little bit of food volume to them and if you ate a whole bag of those okay you probably would feel pretty full right but with chocolate and things like that you probably wouldn't even get that effect because it's so so small so i think that food pairing strategy is a really really nice way of doing it i really really like that and i use that a lot myself so yeah hopefully some helpful bits in there for you guys as well around some habits that are helpful and some kind of thoughts around the way that we structure and as well, which is hopefully helpful. But yeah, we now know that Harry likes lots of different flavours of crisps. And we also have acknowledged that the best flavour of Pop Chips is sour cream. So we're going to run with that as well. So all the useful advice for you today. But if that was helpful and you are struggling with your own weight loss journey at the moment. Harry: Yeah. you . Cameron: In the show notes there is a link to my WhatsApp so you can ping me a little message and enquire about coaching or just ask any questions around it that you want to get some answers to and I can give you a bit of context. But otherwise have a great week and I'll speak to you soon. Harry: Cheers guys.