In this episode, John embarks on a discussion of three key principles to easier, more successful and more sustainable weight loss.
Topics include:
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In this episode, John embarks on a discussion of three key principles to easier, more successful and more sustainable weight loss.
Topics include:
Buy my book! 75 EASY: the ultimate challenge for personal growth
Amazon US
UK
CA
AU
Weight loss coaching - Join the Weight Loss Freedom Academy today
To inquire about 1 -1 Coaching with John - email John at john@oakesweightloss.com
Check out the EASY WAY OUT Blog/Newsletter site
Join the free "Lose Weight with John" community
Watch the Easy Way Out on Youtube
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hello, Hello, in this episode, I want to go through three very practical mindset shifts, you know, they combine weight loss strategy, with the mindset shifts that I really preach about, and that I have learned over the years are incredibly powerful game changers. A lot of people when they come to me for to learn about coaching options, or you know that they've already decided I'm dead set, I want to do one on one coaching, I need to change, no matter whether people are fired up or skittish because they've been burned before. The number one question on everyone's mind is, why is this time going to be different? Because all the fears are telling them like, Oh, you're just gonna fail again, right? And people failed so many times with weight loss, that the idea of failing one more time, it's not just a normal failure, like it's an abject fear, it's awful. And it can be so painful that it really does make sense just to not even try sometimes. So today, I want to answer that question in a few ways. Why can losing weight be very different from any way you've done it before. And before I get into the nitty gritty, I want to mention that everything I'm covering today can be found in the Easy Weight Loss club, the Easy Weight Loss Club is a very practically focused community, it allows me to interact with people better than on the Facebook group, because in the Facebook group, people don't really get my notifications. And it's hard for me to see this, even as the moderator of the group, I don't see all the posts that that come in, it's very frustrating on a much, much better community platform, I've started this new group. Now my goal is for this to be a place where clients and non clients alike can come together and talk about, you know, hey, I lost two pounds this week, here's, here's what I did differently, hey, I tried this food substitute, you know, just the very practical stuff. But you know, me, I can't really talk about practicals without getting into the higher order thinking behind it all. Because to me, it's all connected. So this is not a coaching program, per se, this is a community membership that has a lot of resources that aren't available to the public, some courses that I've taught in the past, they're not part of my my main coaching program. But these are incredibly valuable. And so far, people are absolutely loving it. So today, just whether you feel like joining that club or not, I want you to have a sense of the kinds of things that you would learn there, because I think this stuff is really important. So the first topic is observation, when have you ever started a diet or weight loss or workout program by sitting down and doing nothing and just taking an inventory of your life just looking at life as the way it's been. Because usually what we do is we get so incredibly uncomfortable with where we are, we're so full of shame about whatever the number on the scale is that we our brains really just turn off and we go into kind of a fight or flight mode, fueled by shame and shame will tell us to do extreme things, because we need to fix this yesterday, and gets us to move more toward extreme, quote unquote, solutions, which really just keep us in the cycle of failure and shame. I get into this more in my weight loss freedom Academy and my main coaching program, but shame really locks us off from our inner world. It prevents us from observing what is and that's really sad, because that's where all the answers are. And shame makes our inner world just absolutely intolerable. And in so many ways, that's kind of the point. But for these reasons and more, we're just so you know, charged up thinking that that our better life lies in the future, when it really always is in the moment. But generally speaking, we're on the hunt all the time for what's the mat, what's the magic bullet? What's the thing that's going to fix me? And what's the diet that's going to work? And we know that just getting to a goal weight is not the answer, because we've seen ourselves do that, or get near that, and then bounce back up and gain even more. But we're so desperate for change, we're so desperate to be free from the shame that it keeps us on this hunt, you know, subconsciously or, or even consciously, but just fueled by this constant low level of dread and shame and anxiety. What this prevents us from doing is taking stock before we make any changes. You know, let's say you were going to walk into an organization as a management consultant. And they're like, listen, we're we're really failing at some key metrics. We don't know what to do. We've tried everything. We're hiring you to come into this business and fix it. You know, we've got 1300 employees, we've got offices in four different states. 10 years ago, we were doing $500 million in revenue. And now we're only doing $200 million in revenue. We need to figure out what's going on. And we're at a loss. So we're hiring you, and you walk in and you just slap your fist on the table and say, keto, it's it. That would be you wouldn't be doing a very good job as a consultant. What would a consultant do? You know, if they're trying to understand a pretty complex organization with a lot of different working parts? They would just start asking questions and say, Okay, tell me more about your operation. Tell me more. Hey, take me through a tour of of all four locations. Let me let me understand
Unknown Speaker 5:00
Let me see with my own eyes how this whole thing works. Because it's that outside perspective that's going to be impart what's so valuable about having a consultant come in, that consultant will take a look at everything that's going on from an impartial third party view, not invested in the stories that the business has been telling itself, not invested in where the business thinks it's going. It's only invested in what it can see, as factual on the ground. Here's how things are really working here. And based on that, using, you know, the principles that you're working with as a consultant, here's where I think you need to make changes. And here's how you can make those changes. When have you ever started a diet or workout program like that? My guess is never. And it's kind of a shame. Because Are you a complex system? Are you a multi layered and multi multifaceted system? Do you have many nodes within you that are contributing to all your emotions and desires and aversions? Yes, you're very complicated. This example may seem extreme, but actually, if you were to compare it to how how complex the human brain is, I think the human brain would actually be far more complex than what we're talking about. And yeah, hundreds of million dollars sounds like a lot of money. And it may seem more important than your paltry need to, you know, lose a few pounds. But when you ask yourself, like, Listen, if somebody were able to come and help me lose the weight, for good, and have the life that I really dream of that I know is possible for me, you know, for you, it would feel like winning the lottery, it's not something you can put a price on. So everywhere where I interact with people, whether it's on social media, or in the Facebook group, or in the Easy Weight Loss club, or even in my top tier coaching program, we start with taking a objective inventory of our lives. Practically speaking, we're looking at things like what we're eating, and how much we're moving. And also noticing how much shame is coming up. And what what emotions pop up. When we do this, what thoughts pop up when we do this, and we take notes, and we haven't even started to change a darn thing yet, right? We just stick with this mode of observation, really trying not to make any changes, because we can't change a system that we don't understand, we're not going to make deliberate, long lasting changes in a system that we that we've never really explored, we're not gonna be able to make changes in a business, you know, looking through binoculars from 500 yards away, like this is not how it works. And when you realize how nonsensical it is to do that, you look at every other time that you tried to lose weight. And instead of saying, Gee, why will this time be different? You instead ask, why would I have ever thought that those other times would have been successful. So no matter how fired up you are to make big changes in your life. In fact, if you are really fired up, that's maybe even a better reason to stop, take a pause, and really look at your life, because you're making changes to a system that exists already with many moving parts. If you try to make changes willy nilly, you know, making trends change that are arbitrary, like, oh, this sounds good. Oh, that sounds so did this. Oh, my favorite influencer is doing this, or so and so lost weight this way. Listen, those things worked for them in the inside the suite of
Unknown Speaker 8:11
complex factors making up who they are and what they do on a daily basis. In fact, you don't really know the answer to how should I make changes until you take an inventory until you really sit down and observe the system as is, once you do that, now you have an opportunity to make changes that are more effective and much easier to make. And this brings me to point number two, what I call playing Jenga, or we could call it the Jenga diet. And it's really not a diet so much as a method in which we take steps forward in our weight loss program. You know, there's so many influencers out there, God if we could just drop a bomb. I mean, there's just so much so much stuff. That's you know, a lot of us well intentioned, but it's just not helpful. It over complicates things. This, there's so much out there for so long about these are the super foods and these are the bad foods. And if you eat this food, this is why you're overweight. And it's, you know, you got people like Dr. Gundry out there constantly trying to convince people that lectins are the problem. Yeah, you ate too many chickpeas. And that's why your 600 pounds, get out of here. People telling you it's carbs, or no, you just aren't getting enough of this. And if you got more of this kind of fat, you'd magically start shedding weight. You know, one time somebody came to me and they were like, Do you have any programs for boosting metabolism? I was like, well, you can move your body more. That's about it. Every other program that I could tell you, it would be complete bullshit. boosting your metabolism is something that only really occurs over a long stretch of time after you make consistent changes, largely changes that are going to affect your lean mass, ie, you know, resistance training, getting enough protein, growing strength and muscle hypertrophy. So we come into weight loss programs thinking that there's gonna be key shifts that we're supposed to make, and that's just not true. And that's not true for so many reasons. Number one, there's no one for the you have to eat, too.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Lose weight, and there's no demon food that's going to stop you from losing weight. Now, every person is going to find their own unique blend of herbs and spices that that works best for them. But we're not talking about optimal, we're talking about getting started and trying to be optimal, before we even gotten started, is a big reason that people fail and build plans that are set up to fail. So forget optimal, we're at phase one, we're just getting the ball rolling. And if we try to be optimal, we're going to fly straight over easy and appropriate. The next step. So when we're first starting out, people will say like, well, which foods should I take out of my diet? You know, we can dial in your, your nutrients, we can dial in protein later, if there's something missing from your diet. Those are adjustments we can make right now. But like I say, in every program, I teach that weight loss is a temporary intervention intervention, it's not a lifestyle. And so yeah, if you cut out foods at the beginning, that do have nutrients, but they're huge contributors to your overall calorie intake. And you're able to reduce your calorie intake by removing those foods, you know, ask your doctor, but in my opinion, is it better to be 100 pounds overweight, or to go for a few weeks without all your vitamins and minerals? I think that, you know, for most people who are heavily overweight, they're not getting a full complement of vitamins and minerals. Anyways, so a temporary reduction in those things, in order to get the ball rolling, the easiest way possible, I think is the most graceful way into a weight loss program. So we don't pick the right foods, we don't pick the best foods, we don't pick the worst foods, we just picked the next foods. And the way you can do that is by looking at where you're getting a lot of calories and your diet. And you know this now, because you've been observing your life without judgment, just watching, okay, on an average Thursday, here's what I'm eating. Here's what I'm drinking, here's how much activity I'm getting. Okay, I know about how many calories in a day I eat on average. And if I want to start losing weight, I need to reduce that calorie intake, I don't need to slash it by 1000s of calories, I just need to drop it. You know, if you're somebody who's smaller, maybe 250 calories is a good start. For someone who's massive, like me, maybe you start out, you know, five to 700 calories, and it's fine. But either way, it's fairly moderate. We're just taking steps, you know, into the water. And you know, we're just getting up to our, our thighs, you know, nothing crazy yet. And so the reason I call it the Jenga diet is that you you look at the foods you're eating and you start poking around. And just like when you're playing Jenga, you look for that block that wants to move, you look for that block that really isn't holding up a lot of weight structurally in that little Jenga tower. And that's the block that you take out. That's the block that you shift around. So if you notice that you're getting a lot of calories from peanut butter, and pizza, and you put ranch dressing on everything. And every day you get to really sugary coffee drinks, and you have candy in your desk at work. You know, I would say if those are your five top contributors, I would say poke around, say, How much do I how much do I need peanut butter? A lot? I need peanut butter a lot. Okay, how much do I need the amount of peanut butter I'm eating right now, then you would go ahead and answer that question. And that might be a clue. If you're like, well, I need peanut butter, but maybe I don't need as much as I'm eating, maybe I would actually be pretty happy on two thirds of what I'm eating. Okay, boom, you can take out a third of the peanut butter you're eating. And that's going to be you know, dozens or possibly hundreds of calories right there. You know, if you look at your sugary coffee drinks, and you're like, honestly, I don't need two of these a day, I don't sleep the best, you know, I probably would be better off with just one of these. You know, I kind of just go for that second one. Because circumstantial reasons, and I really don't need it. So I'm just going to cut that one out entirely. And I'm going to leave the candy in the in the drawer at work, I'm going to leave the ranch dressing on everything. I'm going to leave the pizza by removing a third of the peanut butter I eat in a day and one of these sugary coffee drinks, I have not put myself into a 350 calorie a day deficit. And let's say this person, on average, eats 2000 calories a day. This would be a very small person, probably someone who's maybe like five to the another putting themselves in a 17.5% calorie deficit, which is very significant. You know, for somebody who's eating 4000 calories a day, that would be 700 calories reduced, you know, so they're going to need to poke around more, but they're eating more, so they're more likely to find more things that can be switched out of their diet or taken out completely for, like I said, replaced. So instead of getting a super sugary coffee that second time of day, maybe our 4000 calorie a day person says you know what, I love these super sugary coffee drinks, but just getting like a latte with one pump of a flavoring is like 80% As good as this, you know, 400 calorie drink that I usually get. And that's just way fewer calories. That's only like 150 calories. Okay, I'm just going to trade that out. So I just saved myself 250 calories right there. And maybe this person's like, you know what, I don't need to have the candy in my desk at work. Like I have that there.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
or other people, or I'm a teacher, and that's really there to incentivize students or get their attention. But I don't need to be given these kids candy, like they don't need that they don't even care that they're not thankful for it, forget it, I'm done. I'm done with the candy, the candies getting out of my drawers. And that's an example from a real client. So it with changes like that. You could find yourself in a significant but maintain a little calorie deficit. And then after a few weeks at that deficit, you start to see weight coming off. And then you're like, Well, I'm really comfortable with this. This is not hard. Maybe I'm losing a pound a week or half a pound a week or two pounds a week, but they are how big you are. But all things relative, it's fairly moderate, right? If somebody who's been eating, you know, 2700 calories a day, is able to lose a pound a week, then they've probably, you know, deleted somewhere between four and 700 calories out of their diet. And that's fairly significant. But they may think like, Hey, I'm doing great. If I can lose weight faster, why not? And so what do they do, they just take a look at everything they're eating, and they start poking around. It's that next round in the Jenga game, and you just keep poking and keep poking. And this is how you find where the limit is for you at your current level of fitness and your current level of stress management, where you can be in a good calorie deficit as significant as is easy to maintain for you. And then just watch the pounds come off. Now, this leads us into a third concept, which is the minimum effective dose. So if you want to lose as much weight as possible, that can sometimes get in your way. So the minimum effective dose comes into play when we are slashing calories right and left when we're getting good at playing the Jenga game. Sometimes we're able to remove foods that that put us in a deeper calorie deficit. But the additional weight loss we get from that calorie deficit isn't worth it per calorie anymore. Let me give you an example. Let's say that a doctor puts you on a new medication, right? They start you out at a low dose, and they slowly work you up in dosage to see how your symptoms are, if you're having any reactions, they're looking for side effects. They want to see how you're coping with the medication. And they want to gauge symptom reduction. Let's say you have 100 units of bad symptoms, okay. And at 25 milligrams, the doctor sees no improvement at 50 milligrams, we see no improvement at 100 milligrams, we see 20% improvement. So 20 units of the symptoms went away, at 100 milligrams, the doctor moves up to 150 milligrams, another 5% comes off. So now we're down to 75 units of symptoms, the doctor moves it up to 200. And then boom, we're down to 55% of the symptoms. Doctor says Okay, let's move it up to 250 and see what happens at 250 we move to 40% symptoms, and then actually has okay let's move it up to 300. And at 300, we moved down to 35% symptoms, reduction 35% symptoms. So when the doctor, the doctor starts to notice, okay, as I've removed 50 at a time, when we're getting up, you know, around 202 50. I'm seeing significant reductions in symptoms from these 50 milligram increments. Then when I made another 50 milligram increment, I stopped seeing 15 or 20 units of improvement, and it went down to five. So if we were to go from 300 to 350, the doctor's thinking, we're probably only going to see another three, four, or 5% improvement, even though we're adding 50 milligrams more 17% more medication. And we're only getting two to 3% improvement, meaning we're putting more stress on on the system, we're increasing the chance for side effects. And in some medications, we're increasing the rate at which the patient will become tolerant to the medication. So what the doctor is trying to find is the minimum effective dose, where's the where's the equilibrium point between how much we're stimulating improvement? Based on the effort we're putting in? How much are we stimulating weight loss based on the number of calories we're slashing? So let's say in our example, Bill is eating 3000 calories a day when he does his personal inventory. And he cuts out 600 fairly easily and he starts to lose a pound a week, right? And he's like, okay, you know, after two or three weeks is like I feel good. I'm gonna I'm gonna increase activity. Okay, so we increase his activity, and he starts to notice that his you starting to lose a pound and a quarter a week and he goes, Okay, I think now I'll go back and I'll adjust my calories. I think I can pretty easily I think I've seen that there's some foods that I don't really care for anymore. Now that I've changed my diet a little bit. My tastes are changing. I've I've been playing around with different substitutions and I think I can easily cut out another 200 calories. So he goes down to instead of 2400 calories. It goes down to 2200 calories, and now he starts to lose a pound and a half a week pretty steadily. He says Okay, after a couple of weeks of that he's like I want to see if I can get up toward two pounds a week. And so he knocks off another
Unknown Speaker 20:00
Are 200 calories fairly simply, now he's at 2000 calories a day, he's got he's getting more activity than he was. It's not a huge increase. But all told, he's he's losing about one and three quarter pounds per week. And he thinks I'd really love to lose two pounds a week when that mean ice. And by weight loss mass, some people will say, Well, you already should be losing two pounds a week. But that's not always the way it works. And if he is new to activity, if he's walking more, or jogging or starting to lift weights easily, you know, that can offset some of your fat loss and make it seem like you're not losing two pounds of fat a week, even though you are either way we don't stress out too much about that. All we're looking for is the equilibrium point. There is no one perfect rate of weight loss. It's something that you find through trial and error. And so Bill's like, I want to get to two pounds a week. And so let's say I'm his coach, and he's like, I want to I want to drop calories again. And I'm like, Okay, I don't see any signs that that would be a bad idea. Go ahead and try it out. He's been moderate so far. So he drops his calories again to 1750. Hoping that this gets him two pounds a week. And he does. He's like, I'm at 750 calories. I'm hungry sometimes. But you know, I don't mind that he's taken the hunger management masterclass. He hungry doesn't scare him the way it used to. He's not going hungry. You know, he's transitioning as as he lowers his calories, he's also changing the calories he's eating, he's switching out more processed foods for Whole Foods. A lot of times people get down into these, you know, pretty severe calorie deficits, and they're actually eating, getting more of their daily nutrient needs, which is pretty scary, considering that they were getting fewer nutrients at nearly double the calories. So he's now in a pretty, he's not a pretty significant calorie deficit. And he is losing two pounds a week steadily. And he goes, alright, John, I want to knock it down to 1500 calories, like, Okay, are you sure? He's like, Yeah, I want to like, Okay, try it out. And he knocks down to 1500 calories, and he loses 2.1 pounds per week. And he can really feel this calorie drop going from 1750 to 1500, you can really feel it, it's affecting his workouts, it's affecting his activity, you find themselves kind of sitting around more, he's not sleeping as well. And that's when we go, okay, we've we've exceeded the minimum effective dose. Now, the amount of side effects you're having from our dosage of calorie restriction, calorie deficit is exceeding the benefits, the rate at which we're seeing a detriment is far exceeding the rate at which we're at which we're seeing improvement. And so Bill would just go Yeah, you know, what 1750 is, pretty much, you know, the bottom for me, I'm gonna keep it there, I'm just gonna rock out. Now I know that that's, that's a good spot for me, I'm just gonna continue on for a few more weeks, lose rank and lose, and then you know, go find my new maintenance, take a break, and then, you know, I can do another weight loss phase again. So that's a practical example of what looking for the minimum effective dose looks like. We're trying to find that equilibrium point between the effectiveness of a calorie deficit and the stress that it's creating on our body. And if you've heard me talk about the only diet before, that's, that's, again, what I'm talking about there. So with these three principles alone, you can revolutionize the way that you've approached weight loss in the past, and come at it from a completely different angle, with a way more thought out way more practical way more effective, and sustainable and strategic approach. So how can weight loss be different? Man, it's gonna be totally different this time, especially if you utilize the resources I have for you. There's no reason this can't be the time I started the Easy Weight Loss club because I wanted a low cost kind of no brainer sandbox for people to jump in and start working with my content in some capacity, where we have a group where you can bounce ideas off people, it's way better. It's basically the same idea as lose weight with John, it's just there's a small monthly fee, you get access to way more stuff, and the platform is way better. There's a link in the show notes. If you'd like to work with me in a one on one capacity, you can just send me an email John at Oaks weight loss.com. Okay, yes, Jo HN. And just subject line coaching inquiry, and we can get a conversation started about whether that would be the right program for you. If it's not the right program for you, I'm not gonna try to shoehorn you into it. That's not how I roll. You can start in the Easy Weight Loss club and then always transition up to one on one coaching. If that's something that you obviously need coaching as a lot more one to one touch, and a much more comprehensive program. It's about getting completely free from all the things that are hanging you up in life, reshaping all the ways in which you've been living in limited, stuck mindsets held captive to compulsive behavior, complete lack of motivation, lack of self worth, lack of self love, and a complete lack of self trust. We systematically go through and rebuild the relationship and each of those areas with yourself. If you have any questions about what what I meant by some of these topics or something didn't make sense. Please reach out. I'm happy to converse with you about that. Happy to answer any questions you have. You just want to say hi or ask a question for the podcast.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
Please do. Email me my emails in the show notes, I'd really love to hear from you. So let's make 2020 for the year, it can be different, it will be different, and now have more lanes than ever for you to jump in at whatever level is appropriate for you and start somewhere. These programs are designed for people who are afraid to start again, they're designed for people who have failed a million times. They're designed for people who've tried it all. This is the whole reason I'm here. I didn't wake up one day and say, oh, I want to be a weight loss coach, like no, I got through some stuff on my own. Realize the perspectives that helped me get through it aren't readily available aren't widely public. And so that's why I'm doing this at the end of the day. And when you join any program, you're helping support the mission on many levels. So thanks for listening. Let me know if you have any questions at all. I'd love to hear from you. And we'll talk to you again soon. Bye.
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