Why can’t I lose weight with diet and exercise (Day 19)

So you wanna lose weight ?

What really matters , diet exercise .

Let's get into it .

Welcome to the series .

I'm Alyssa and I'm so excited you're here before we get started .

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All right .

Today I am addressing a topic that I often avoid .

I've avoided it for years on this channel , but it's time to talk about it and that is weight loss because I know it matters .

So I don't like to focus on it .

I don't want to play into diet culture or make it seem like we should all be focusing on weight loss .

That said , I know what it feels like to want to lose weight .

I know what it feels like to think I shouldn't want to lose weight or to wish I didn't care about losing weight and then still care .

I said this earlier in the series .

If right now , when you're sitting here watching this video , if you want to lose weight , that is , oh , why is it ok ?

Because you have to let whatever is actually happening now be ok before we can go anywhere else that is meeting ourselves where we're at .

I don't encourage people to forget about wanting to lose weight or to reject diets .

These are extremes on the pendulum .

I want to find that middle ground in that piece .

So instead of ignoring this desire that you have to lose weight , I ask , can you focus on developing the inner wisdom ?

Can you , you know , trust that this is a foundation to make use of outer wisdom tools like dieting , you know , trust that the pieces will fall into place , the weight will be lost when it's supposed to and those pieces will come together probably when that happens .

You won't care as much as you do now about the weight .

But right now you do and that's ok .

So you get it in our wisdom is number one , that's what we want most of all until we have that .

I don't believe the outer wisdom helps .

And in fact , we've talked about how some studies suggest it may actually hurt .

But right now this is where you are , you want to lose weight .

So what matters when it comes to nutrition and exercise ?

How important are they really ?

So many have heard uh the saying abs are made in the kitchen .

This is false really because abs are made in the genes .

Some people will just never have abs if they're approaching health in a truly mentally , physically healthy way .

I mean , for women , you have to get to such a low body fat percentage for abs to show up that for most people , it's not going to be achieved without extremes , you know , without those pendulum swings , without the restriction or the over exercise for the people that can get abs .

It's most often because of jeans .

I love Melissa Urban .

Uh the founder of whole 30 in her social media .

She talks about this a lot because she has abs and she says , yeah , you know , I work out but it's not because of that .

It's because of my genes but abs are made in the kitchen .

That's not true .

But what it's nodding to the idea that your body compass will be more impacted by diet and exercise .

That is true .

Exercise can impact body composition for sure .

But it's a detail that comes after the diet .

The diet matters , more exercise is needed for a healthy lifestyle though .

So we shouldn't , you know , just neglect it and forget about it because it might not impact our weight loss as much .

And in fact , it will in some ways , like I really believe stress is the biggest inhibitor to weight loss and exercise is great at helping to relieve stress .

So it's all you know , interconnected and still the exercise will impact .

It just , it depends , you know , how much exercise you're doing , what kind and what the rest of your lifestyle looks like .

So when it comes to exercise , what matters really , all that matters is that you move , ok , movement matters more than the details .

And I think so much of our stress around health and food is getting caught up in those details .

You know , what kinds of food to not eat or eat .

How many reps of this , which kind of exercise is best ?

The truth is what's best is what's sustainable .

You know , some cardio , some resistance is there a middle way in between whatever resonates with your body ?

That's what you should do .

Now , cardio could burn more calories but not necessarily because if you're weight training and you're going heavy enough , you're gonna burn a lot of calories too .

Um , weight training may also build muscle , but it's so dependent on diet and body composition .

So shift the intention here , you know , exercise for health and how we feel .

I encourage you to try if you do this to disconnect food and exercise , you know , or rather be curious about how you connect the two .

Just notice , you know , do you make up for food , you've eaten with exercise or do you reward yourself for exercising with food ?

I did this for years , but it really contributes to disordered thinking around food .

It contributes to emotional eating and it causes more stress rather than less .

Ok .

When it comes to nutrition , I am gonna link a book .

Um , and I sent it out in the email today , but it's by a guy named , it's called Nutrition .

And he writes about how essentially we don't know as much about nutrition as we think we do .

And he calls it nutrition , um , reductionism , I think .

And if you remember when I talked about health approaches like the East and Western models , the western health approach tends to boil humans down to machines treating symptoms rather than root causes .

And this is often referred to as reductionism , essentially reducing , right ?

Taking something complex , making it simpler , although not always accurate or sufficient .

Now , he comments on the fact that we have a very distorted view of food quality and nutrition .

He points to actual published science showing that we can't make all the assumptions we do .

Essentially , he shows how nutrition is , has tried to meet the demands of the consumers rather than give the full picture of the science .

If there's anything I've learned in grad school and looking at all of this research , it's that our approach to science is far from perfect .

The scientific method is not the end , all be all and it has problems and loopholes .

So we have to really be discerning all that being said from that book .

And from my own journey in research , I found there's no one right way to eat studies have shown , you know , people can eat low carb or high carb and still experience the same weight loss .

You know , we really don't understand all of the mechanisms behind this .

Yet , ultimately , we know less than we think .

And if we cling to anything , it's for our own comfort , it's not for the truth , it's not seeing clearly , which is the whole point of this series .

So right now , nutrition science is so nice and it's so new .

We can't say this works and that doesn't work and how it will affect us long term , right ?

If most studies , most of these studies haven't even been around for a lifetime , can we really know what happens if we eat keto for 50 years ?

No .

What about , you know , sweeteners , these new sweeteners for 50 years ?

When will we have that information ?

Are the tests being done maybe ?

But what are the sample sizes ?

How , what are the experimental designs ?

We probably won't know it .

We won't have any useful information before I'm dead .

So what I've decided rather than getting hung up and trying to read everything when it's constantly changing and getting so stressed out is that the stress experience matters more than the nutrition information that we don't really know that much about .

It's that the emotional and mental health affect my physical health .

And if those aren't accounted for , then my physical health is going to struggle no matter how much information I have it's that triangle , that triangle of the body , the mind and the emotions .

So instead , rather than trying to figure out what nutrition is , right ?

When I realize we don't know , the scientists don't really know .

I decided let it go find my inner wisdom and just take the outer wisdom where I can .

What happened when I did that less stress , less fear , less anxiety and eventually the weight loss .

But it didn't really matter .

Because more importantly , I felt peace , peace with food and health in my body .

The best chance we have to feel good about ourselves , which is really what we want .

And when we say we want to lose weight , it's not really about that number which nobody sees , it's about feeling good and peace and comfort .

You know , OK , as we are the best chance we have is getting to know ourselves and seeing clearly , getting to know how to listen to our bodies , how to respond to our bodies in the present moment , how to be in the present moment , how to take in information and process and decide what serves us and then continue adapting .

The fastest way out to the other side is just straight through .

But one day at a time , it feels slower and it's harder , but it's actually faster .

OK .

So mindfulness is a framework , a system to help me keep seeing clearly .

And meditation is a tool to keep me practicing and keep me , you know , shedding the conditioning and rewriting the neural pathways .

But also with that process , I gain confidence and I start to trust my brain and my mind , you know , it's mind over munch .

The mind is most of it , almost all of it .

I've been so focused on the munch all these years , but it's the mind , the food , the exercise , the habits will follow the mind .

If you found this video , helpful , please share it with someone or on your social media .

So share in the comments , you know , what has been the hardest thing for you on your journey to whether it's healing relationship with food or health or losing weight .

What's the hardest thing ?

And what do you suspect would help you find some peace and feel free to kindly reply to people in the community as well at the end of the day .

Remember it's all a matter really .

It is a matter of mind over munch .