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November 22, 2022

How your inner being drives weight loss

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Each action and thought we have provides operating instructions to our body. If we want to be healthy, get fit, and lose weight, we have to send the right messages to the intelligence inside us I call the inner self.

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

[00:01:09.940] – Coach Allan

Hi, Ras.

[00:01:11.110] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you?

[00:01:12.540] – Coach Allan

I'm well.

[00:01:13.590] – Coach Rachel

Good.

[00:01:14.050] – Coach Allan

You already knew that because I just told you no more than 5-10 minutes ago, because I will be traveling back from my daughter's wedding on the day that we would need to record this conversation, the hello and then the goodbye, the recap at the end. So we're doing it all together. And so nothing's really changed since the last time I said anything. So just know we wanted to still have this segment in here. So you got a little behind the scenes of sometimes we doubled down because one or both of us won't be available for a certain week that we needed to do some recording. And so, Rachel, I guess are you ready to start talking about inner being?

[00:01:53.580] – Coach Rachel

Yes.

Episode

I'm calling this discussion How Your Inner Being Drives Weight Loss.

This is a concept that I've kind of been coming around to over about the last year, because as I sit down and have interviews with various people and I talk to a lot of experts in weight loss and nutrition and movement and stress management and sleep and all of it. Every single one of them has a benefit that they list for being better at that thing. And it's almost always weight loss. And that's one of the reasons most of my clients come to me. They're looking to lose a little bit of weight, maybe a lot of weight, but they're looking for weight loss.

And they're really frustrated because they're doing things, maybe even things that worked before, and they're just not working, and they don't understand, because all the experts say if you do this, then that it's simple math, right? And we talked a lot of times. It's never really simple math when we're talking about the human body. But I wanted to come up with a concept that really kind of explained the way I wrapped my mind around how the body functions, because, again, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a doctor.

I haven't done all these massive studies. I've read a ton of stuff, and I've seen what works for me and what doesn't, and I've seen what's worked for thousands of clients and what doesn't, and it's always a different story, and it's a different story, but it has the same theme. And so that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about this theme of weight loss, how this inner being you have is doing something inside of you, and you're telling it what to do without knowing what you're telling it. It's doing the right thing. It's keeping you alive, your intervening, that's its sole purpose is to keep you alive. And it's doing its job. It's doing its job very well.

If you're listening to this, you're alive. And so Interbeing is doing a great job. It's not doing the things you want it to do. And we can fix that. We can definitely fix that. So here's the scenario. You're doing everything right, okay? You're logging every calorie. You're doing everything. It's always worked before. When you were in your 20s, drop that 20 lbs, easy. When you're in your 30s, drop 10 lbs for a wedding, easy.

When you're in your 40s, you try this thing and it's not working quite as well, and it just stops working. And you're like, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do. This is what the experts tell me. I go to the forums, and they say, hey, you're not eating at a calorie deficit. If you were eating a calorie deficit, you'd be losing weight. Oh, you're eating too many carbs. If you were not eating those carbs, you'd lose weight. And so you do those things. You do them and you do them religiously, and it works a little, and then it stops working.

You're like, well, what's wrong? I'll eat less. I'm starving all the time. But it's not working. What's going on? So in the body, there kind of what I call three levels of math, okay? And they all are right? They just need each other to complete the formula. OK? So the simple formula, the very simplest of the formula is the calories in, calories out model. And in this model, if you eat less than you burn, you will lose the weight. True, the law of thermodynamics is Blatantly. True, it exists, okay? But that's simple math.

That's plus and minus. And the reality is, both of those are estimates. So the estimate of what you ate, the estimate of what you burned, all estimates. So when you do math with estimates, you can't necessarily count on the results to be consistent, because you could be off on either one of those estimates. And if you're off on either one of those estimates, the math doesn't work. So we need exact math, but we can't have exact math on calories in or calories out. We just can't. We don't know. So the simple math will help us, but it won't solve the whole problem if it stops working.

Once it stops working. You know, you have a block in the fact that you don't have enough information, you're not doing the right things because you're relying just on the simple math. It's a good rule, it works, but then it doesn't. So we have to come up with the next rule. The next rule is more complex. So the first one, calories in, calories out, was addition and subtraction. Now we're getting into algebra. So this is where we're talking about our macros and we're talking about energy output and then how our body uses the macros to do what it does and the, thermodynamic effect of food and all those types of things.

So this gets a little, maybe a lot more complex, but we start saying, OK, well, I'll just focus on the carbs, I'll cut some carbs back, I'll make sure I eat plenty of protein, so I'm staying satiated. And that's what I'll do. And many times for a lot of people, that will get you there, that will actually get you to your goal weight, because you've set a goal weight that's within a reasonable range of where you are. Yeah, you cut that weight, no problem, and then you go back to eating the way you were and put the weight back on.

And even if you don't, it's like most people who've tried keto, I have a lot of weight to lose, do suddenly plateau. And they plateau not at their ideal weight. They plateau at a weight higher than that. And then they live the rest of their life thinking keto failed, or they live the rest of life saying, I'm going to keep eating keto because I love how I feel, but they don't lose any more weight.

Sponsor

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So those folks have figured out some of the algebra, but they may be ignoring the simple math, the pluses and minuses. So you see how putting those two things together gives you a more comprehensive model for how your body could work. And I want to be clear on could, because then there's the next level, which is the most complex of the math models, and that's hormones. Hormones drive every single thing in your body. They are the messengers, they're this and that. They make your body do everything that your body does on the inside.

Everything, okay? Them and enzymes and things like that. But generally almost everything you care about on your health and fitness journey is driven by a hormone or several hormones, all working in a symphony to make things happen or not happen. And that's some pretty complex math, okay? This is calculus stuff. This is like, this is the tough stuff. And even calculus would be on calculus, maybe, because there's still so much we don't know about this math, okay?

We're just touch scratching the surface as far as our awareness of how these things impact our body. And then they still even throw in genetics along with all this. And you can kind of see how this gets really complex. We can't necessarily control our genetics, but we can control our epigenome and how it communicates. But it's for the most part, again, it's the hormones and everything else that's making all this stuff happen, okay? And that's something that most of us can't wrap our minds around. And we won't. We just won't, not in our lifetimes. So what does that mean? Does that mean that we're destined to be trying these models and trying this and that and tweaking it and a little bit here, a little bit there. And that's the best we can do. And the short answer is, well, yeah, from what you eat and how you manage your life thing for nutrition, absolutely. That's all we can do. We don't know what we don't know yet. But I want to take a step back and say, well, why are some people successful and other people are struggling when they're doing the same thing?

And, you know, there's bio individuality and all that. That's absolutely true. Why is that? So what's going on? What else is going on? And I think that the answer is information. So what are you telling your body? What are you telling your inner being on a day to day, minute to minute, meal by meal, sleep by sleep day? What's going on in your life? So what I want you to imagine is that you have this inner brain, this inner being, this thing that's looking out for your best interest and it's telling the rest of your body what to do. Okay, so if this, then that. Okay, you see a bear, okay, drop those hormones. We got to get away from the bear. Or you know, something happens at work and you're really frustrated, drop those hormones. And now you've got this stress response. Or you see someone that you really care about and you go over and the two of you hug and you get this hormone drop and now you're in bliss. You're feeling great. OK, you see how those were very different situations that something had to happen inside your body and it happened based on information that went in.

You were either stressed or you were elated. And so those different feelings are having different things are going, they're triggering things inside your body. The inner being is reacting to this information. So the inner being can't see you can't hear it, can't do anything other than do the things that you tell this intervening to do based on your inputs. OK, so there are three levels of input I want to talk about. There's probably a lot more I haven't gotten to yet in my thought process of building all this. But the first one is nutrition, the second one is movement. And the third one is self care. Now, a few episodes back, I talked about the MNS checkpoint. I'm going to start probably calling that the wellness temperature check because that just rolls off the tongue a little bit easier than NMS or MNS. You get my point? Wellness would probably roll off a little bit easier. So I'm probably thinking of that direction to rename that something else. But those are the three core inputs that I want to talk about today. Okay? Nutrition, movement and self care. Nutrition. I want you to think about your inner being as this important thing that wants to keep you alive.

It's thinking about what's going on around you and you're giving it information. Now, if you're eating crap food with no nutrition, something's wrong. Why are you feeding this? Is this all there is something else going on? Is there something I'm missing? Why are we not getting a good mix and balance of foods? Why are we not actually eating things that I would actually recognize as food? Sure, there's calories and yeah, maybe there's some vitamins and minerals, but I'm not getting enough of everything or I'm getting too much of some things. So the way we eat, what we eat, the choices of food that we make, we're communicating to that invoice. So if you take this back to our ancestors, if they weren't eating it's because there wasn't food, food was scarce. If they were eating the same food all the time, food must be scarce except for this food. And so the body has to adapt. What if I'm not getting enough protein? I have to adapt. What if I'm not getting the right nutrients like B twelve and other things. I have to adapt. What if I'm not getting enough carbohydrates? I have to adapt.

So you kind of see how the food choices you're making are communicating to your body about what your food opportunities are. So choosing good high quality nutrition over the standard American diet is going to help your body understand there's plenty of good quality food. I'm safe. Okay, I want you to pay attention. That word, I'm going to say it over and over. I'm safe, I'm in a good place. OK, so let's talk a little bit about movement. So let's say you're very sedentary and you don't move a lot. Well, what are you telling your body? What are you telling that inner self? You're telling inner self, I don't have to do this stuff, there's nothing for me to do, I don't have to go anywhere. I'm doing. There's no food, maybe there's no nothing. And so there's nothing for me to worry about, nothing but nothing to do. And maybe food is scarce, maybe it's not, but I don't know. I'm sitting here on my butt not doing anything. She bodies like, OK, well, let's accumulate body fat only because we don't know if food's going to get really scarce because for some reason this person does not want to go out and forage and hunt for food.

So let's preserve our energy because we might need it. Maybe they're hiding from something, maybe something else is going on. And we'll talk about that in a few minutes. But you kind of get the idea of under movement, not moving under training. That's a problem because you're communicating to your body that there's a reason you're hunkering down, there's a reason you're not doing things. Okay, that's information. Now maybe you're doing too much. So you decide, I'm going to get on the elliptical for an hour every morning, I'm going to bust my butt, I'm going to do all this classes, I'm going to do all this stuff so I can cut this weight again. What are you telling your body? Are you telling it that you have to go because that's how you get food? Are you telling it that there's something wrong? Because movement in and of itself is good as long as it's not bad. And I'll explain that here with you. OK? Movement is a stressor, OK? You're moving your muscles, you're pushing your muscles, you're doing things. And that's a stressor. Now we usually call that a hermetic thing, stressor, because it's intended to cut you back a little bit so you can rebuild stronger.

So the whole point of lifting resistance, lifting weights or doing resistance training is to stress the muscle and then it builds back better. That works out great unless there's a whole lot of other stress going on in your life. So overtraining yourself, pushing yourself to the edge all the time is actually information and it's telling your body something's wrong. Something's wrong. I'm not safe. I'm not safe here. There's a reason they're moving this much. I don't know what it is, but we're not safe. So I have to go into this preservation set to be ready for whatever, okay? And that whatever is stressed. So self care comes in. It covers a lot of the stuff. So I can't go too deep on this, or this will go for a long, long time. But the main one on stress care, that self care that I want to get into, and we'll get into a couple more, but this is a big one, is stress. Now, the stress hormones, when they hit us, they're designed to do one of three things fight, flight, or freeze. When you get hit with stress, that's what your body wants to do.

One of those three things is going to happen, okay? That's what the inner self hears in her being here's, and it says, okay, this thing's happening. What's going on? I'm stressed out. What I do and if it's just a short term stress like, you did a weightlifting training, it's like, oh, they had to lift heavy things. So the information is, I just need to help that muscle rebuild. I got all the protein I need because they're eating a good diet. Mission accomplished. Go do these things. Okay? And that's inside your information. But if that stress keeps coming, it's like, oh, my God, we're going to die. Something terrible is happening. This person is, like, in a state of shock. I mean, they're like, we're all over the place. That's not good. So I'm not safe. I need to preserve. I need to be ready. And you stay in this mode too long, that's bad. Really bad. Information. So the body is stressed out. The body isn't going to do the things. Your inner being is not going to serve you very well if you're dealing with too much stress. Now, a couple of other areas that you'll want to look into is your sleep.

If you're not sleeping well, again, information. Why are we not what's going on? Why am I not getting the rest I need? Now I'm trying to do things without the rest I needed, and I'm not going to be good at it. And so the body starts to close down. Things like, okay, we got to preserve energy. We got to do something different. Again, sleep is information. Quality of sleep information. Stress management, stress information. Your environment. So if you're in a very toxic environment physically, so all these chemicals, all this stuff going on, you're giving your body information. We're in this toxic zone. I got to do something I got to preserve. I got to put those toxins in the fat. We'll deal with those later. If I can't process or do them all right now, it's too much. So let's save us, and then we'll figure it out later. Relationships. You're in a toxic relationship. You're telling your body all the time, the stress reactions, all this. There's just so much going on in your head that the information that's there is telling your body, you're not in a good place, you're not safe. And then the final one I'll talk about.

Like I said, I think there are a whole lot of other ones that I'll probably get into and understand a little bit better later as I'm kind of thinking through this exercise. But the other self-talk, what are you telling yourself with regards to how you feel, your health, your fitness, your weight loss, all of that? What are you telling yourself? So if there's someone in there telling your inner being, you suck at this weight loss thing, you're never going to lose the weight. You become your own worst enemy. It's like, God damn it, why did I eat that brownie? Your inner self would have kind of said, wow, man, these carbohydrates. And it's like the sugar, it's like, I feel great. And then here you are telling it, no, we're in a bad place. We're not safe. That was a terrible thing to do. That was poison. We should not have eaten that.

Do you see how all of this is information that's going into your body that's being processed? And based on what you told your body and how you lived your day, your body has to do something for you. This is preservation.

This is living. This is staying alive. So if you're not putting good information in, you're not going to like the results that you get. Okay? So if we want to make sure that we're getting good results, we've got to start putting the right information in there. Now, to do this right, you have to focus on health and fitness above weight loss, okay?

Focus on health and fitness first. The weight loss will come, I promise, once you've started putting the right information in, and that's a health and fitness focus. It's not a weight loss focus, things will be different. Nutrition, movement, and self-care, that's what your inner being is looking for. And when that's working, it's going to make the right decisions about your metabolism and your energy uses and how you feel and how you live.

It's literally going to change the way your body functions because you're giving it information that says, all is good, you are safe. And guess what? At that point, it says, we don't necessarily have to preserve. We're getting a good mix of nutrition. This person is moving every day. Sometimes they're pushing a little harder. We're going to have to get a little stronger, a little faster, a little better.

And we can do that because we have what we need. There's some stress, sure, but we're managing it. We're in a good place. The stressor happens and then they work on it. They breathe and like oxygen and get that stuff out, and they're doing the right kind of mind things to release all this negative energy. They're not talking to themselves negatively. They're not surrounding themselves with toxins beyond environmental or relationship based. They're literally telling the body, you're safe.

And when the body inner being feels safe, it will feel safe about letting the body weight go because that body fat is a protection. It's a protection from starvation and you're not starving. You're actually overeating many cases. So if we want to lose weight, we've got to give the right information to our inner being. We've got to tell our inner being, you're safe, it's okay, everything is great. And when the inner being starts getting that information, magic is going to happen and you'll lose the weight. But the reality of what you should be after is not the weight loss, it's the health and fitness. And the weight loss is just a side effect.


Post Show/Recap

[00:24:56.210] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:24:57.820] – Coach Rachel

Hey Allan. This is a topic I don't know that I've heard, discussed, or even thought about before, is the concept of your inner being.

[00:25:06.110] – Coach Allan

Well, like I said, it's just kind of a concept that's come to me over the last year or so when I've said, and I know I've said it many times on this show that food is information, right, movement is information. And I've said that before, but I had never really fully fleshed out what that actually means from an internal perspective. But we know sometimes we do the exact same thing with the thing we're supposed to do. I'm doing everything right. I mean, 1200 calories, I'm starving myself, I'm getting on the elliptical and just busting my butt every day and I'm keeping up with everything I'm supposed to keep up with and trying to fit this stuff in. And so I'm super stressed, and because I'm super stressed, I'm not sleeping well, and so it's like and then you throw in a couple things, like you step on the scale every morning, and if the scale doesn't tell you something that affects your entire day, okay, this inner being that you have, you're telling them your life is crap.

[00:26:11.360] – Coach Rachel

Yeah, I can see that.

[00:26:14.510] – Coach Allan

When the inner beings like, oh man, we're in trouble, we're in trouble here. She can't get the right food. She's not moving. She's sedentary, so she knows something's wrong. She doesn't want to go out. It's just hiding in the cave and not doing anything. Something bad's going on. If you get dehydrated, intervening is like, hey, we're dehydrated here, so I need to probably shut some stuff down. We're not moving and we're not getting enough food or the right kind of food, the right nutrition, all that stuff, it's going to start functioning different. And as a result, you're not going to reach the goals that you want to reach or the objectives we said the outcomes you want to reach because you just haven't convinced your body that it's okay.

[00:27:02.440] – Coach Rachel

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Just start with the food part. Food is information. I have a tendency to be a creature of habit, and I'll eat the same things over and over and over again. Same breakfast or the same snack. You know, just go to the grocery store, buy the same thing. But, you know, if my body is getting bored with that or feels like we're missing out on something, then, yes, I can see how being a creature of habit could be a problem, especially if I'm not, you know, enjoying the seasonal fruits and vegetables or switching it up and getting a different protein source. I can see how the body may not respond as efficiently to that same input day after day. That's an interesting one.

[00:27:45.670] – Coach Allan

And that is if you want to try to get a variety of whole foods, but garbage in, garbage out, and that's all. It's with the food. It's with the movement. It's with the way you think about yourself. You're inner taught all of those things. They're all part of this matrix inside you that's intervening, that is just listening for what you're telling it. So you have the capacity to change the message, change the information, make it better information.

[00:28:13.990] – Coach Rachel

No, I've mentioned the past. I got a pretty fast biofeedback loop. If I eat something with too much sugar or too much refined flour, I'll pay for that later. But another big biofeedback loop that I have noticed in recent years is the way I can use self talk. And if I'm on a run, a tough training run or in the late stages of a long race, and I feel my legs are getting tired and I'm sweaty and my heart's racing and stuff, if I start worrying about how I'm feeling, it just feels tired and sluggish, and things start to slow down. But if I can recognize that thought and say, hey, I'm strong. I got this, the finish line is coming, I really do feel a big difference. I suddenly feel my chest go up. I feel really proud. I can slow my breathing down, which gets my heart rate down. So there's a big difference for me in how I talk to myself. That self talk is really important.

[00:29:16.210] – Coach Allan

Yeah. Because, again, inner being doesn't know. It's like, I don't know what Rachel's up to, but for some reason or another, she won't stop running. And I'm concerned that something bad is happening here. I don't know what we're running from, but she just will not stop running. And so it's just pain signals. All the other stuff is going on. And then when you turn around and tell it, no, we don't have much further to go. The end is near, so just bear with me. You may not understand this, but I find this fun.

[00:29:50.810] – Coach Rachel

Yes, I do.

[00:29:51.970] – Coach Allan

Okay. It is a stressor. I get it. It's a stressor, but it's a stressor that I enjoy. And so get me through this run, and we'll be rewarded for that. And. So it's just one of those things where, yeah, the way you think about these things, the way you put information in all of it, you should be really focused on it. So if you like, we talked about last week with goal setting, when you start thinking about your goals, okay, what are those actions that are going to result in good messaging back to your inner being? Okay, I'm going to get my 10,000 steps in a day. That's good information. The body is like, hey, we're out and about doing stuff. We need the capacity to do these things because this feels good. And then he's like, okay, I'm not going to eat as much sugar, and I'm going to cut out alcohol. Suddenly you're like, okay. Your body's like, oh, wow, we're getting better quality food. We're not getting all that sugar stuff. This is pretty good. I feel like I'm okay. I feel like we're safe. She's eating real food, and it's like, okay, I'll start letting some of this body weight go because I thought I had to hold onto it.

[00:30:54.640] – Coach Allan

So we didn't starve to death, right? Because blueberries run out. It's like I'm used to going into a field three weeks, blueberries, no blueberries. So breeding sugar, it's like, okay, great, there's all this sugar. But when there's nothing else, it's like, well, there must not be anything to hunt or anything else to find. And so we're stuck with blueberries, and blueberries go away. So I'm in trouble. I need to start storing fat because something bad is about to happen. And so it's just that making sure you're reassessing what you're doing, the actions that you're taking, when you find actions that are effective for you, those are your goals. And I'll get back into this soon is I would walk every morning for at least 30 minutes fasted.

[00:31:40.980] – Coach Rachel

Oh, nice.

[00:31:41.970] – Coach Allan

And then after each meal, go for a five to ten minute walk.

[00:31:45.840] – Coach Rachel

Nice.

[00:31:46.600] – Coach Allan

And those are messaging to your body that you're good. You're priming the body to say, okay, Insulin, instead of storing this as fat, we're using the muscles here, so let's chunk a little bit more of that into the muscles in the liver because we're going to be active now. And so that's a different thing. Rather than sitting there, sitting down on your couch, and then that sugar just gets in your blood, it's like, oh, well, let's go make some fat, right? And then the one in the morning, you're already burning fat, and your body is comfortable with it. It's like, okay, well, we're burning fat because we didn't eat overnight. We're sort of fasted. And it's like, okay, well, we're not moving. It's not moving too fast, so we can easily just keep burning fat to feel this activity. And it it does does. So it's really just about how you communicate with yourself, both mentally and with all the information you take in. All of it toxins your environment, where you hang out with what you say to yourself, your food. So I only mentioned a few of those things. But movement, nutrition and selfcare need to be top of mind.

[00:32:56.050] – Coach Allan

And when you find something that really is kind of fit in the groove for you, make a goal. And if you're consistent about it, over time, that becomes a habit. So getting up every morning and going for that walk will become a habit. And when it becomes a habit, it's good for you. It becomes a part of a healthy lifestyle.

[00:33:14.790] – Coach Rachel

Yes, that's perfect.

[00:33:16.470] – Coach Allan

All right. Anything else?

[00:33:18.180] – Coach Rachel

No, that's great, Alan. Good information.

[00:33:20.790] – Coach Allan

I'll talk to you next week.

[00:33:22.330] – Coach Rachel

Take care.

[00:33:23.160] – Coach Allan

You, too. Bye.

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