(air whooshing) - So you wanna lose weight?
What really matters? Diet? Exercise?
Let's get into it.
(bright upbeat music)
Welcome to the series.
I'm Alyssia and I'm so excited you're here.
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The videos will stay up on YouTube
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at mindovermunch.com/foodfreedom.
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 wanna lose weight.
I know what it feels like to think
I shouldn't wanna 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 okay.
Why is it okay? Because you have to let
whatever is actually happening now
be okay 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 wanna 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 okay.
So you get it. Inner 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 wanna lose weight.
So what matters? When it comes to nutrition and exercise
how important are they really?
So many have heard 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 gonna be achieved
without extremes, you know, without those pendulum swings.
Without the restriction or the overexercise.
For the people that can get abs
it's most often because of genes.
I love Melissa Urban, the founder of Whole30.
In her social media she talks 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 composition will be more impacted
by diet than 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 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, okay.
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 a weight training
and you're going heavy enough,
you're gonna burn a lot of calories too.
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.
Okay. When it comes to nutrition
I am gonna link a book,
and I sent it out in the email today.
But it's by a guy named Scrinis. It's called "Nutritionism."
And he writes about how essentially we don't know
as much about nutrition as we think we do.
And he calls it nutrition reductionism, I think.
And if you remember, when I talked about health approaches,
like the Eastern 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 nutritionism
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 and 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 nascent, 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?
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 I 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 gonna 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 realized 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 and my body.
The best chance we have to feel good about ourselves
which is really what we want.
And we say we wanna lose weight
it's not really about that number which nobody sees
it's about feeling good and peace and comfort,
you know, okay 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.
Okay. 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, shutting 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.
(bright upbeat music)