Losing the COVID "15"

Have you found your healthy habits becoming a victim of the COVID-19 quarantine lifestyle? Jonathan. Tune in as he and TeriAnn discuss some great tips for losing that COVID-15 you may have put on! Learn the concept of a time-tested method of losing weight today!

Notes for this week's Podcast

Empowering You Organically – Season 12 – Episode 101

Title: Losing the COVID “15”

Hosts: Jonathan Hunsaker, TeriAnn Trevenen

Description: Have you found your healthy habits becoming a victim of the COVID-19 quarantine lifestyle? Jonathan. Tune in as he and TeriAnn discuss some great tips for losing that COVID-15 you may have put on! Learn the concept of a time-tested method to losing the weight today!

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What’s the ‘calories in, calories out’ model?

The “calories in versus calories out” model is based on the idea that to maintain a stable weight, the number of calories you eat needs to match the number you expend.

“Calories in” refers to the calories you get from the foods you eat, while “calories out” is the number of calories you burn.

There are three main bodily processes that burn calories:

Basic metabolism. Your body uses most of the calories you get from food to sustain basic functions, such as your heartbeat. This is commonly referred to as your basal metabolic rate (BMR) (1Trusted Source).
Around 10–15% of the calories you eat is used to power digestion. This is known as the thermic effect of food (TEF) and varies based on the foods you eat (2Trusted Source, 3Trusted Source).
Physical activity. The leftover calories you get from your diet are meant to fuel your physical activity, including workouts and everyday tasks like walking, reading, and washing dishes.
When the number of calories you take in from food matches the number of calories you burn to sustain your metabolism, digestion, and physical activity, your weight will remain stable.

Thus, the “calories in versus calories out” model is strictly true. You need a calorie deficit to lose weight.

Because 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat, it’s estimated that you need to burn about 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound. So, in general, if you cut about 500 to 1,000 calories a day from your typical diet, you’d lose about 1 to 2 pounds a week.

However, this depends on numerous factors. These include age, height, current weight, activity levels, metabolic health, and several others.

Plateauing

We have all been there. How do we avoid this?

Every 3 weeks or so increase the calories back to starting point for a week and then drop them back down.
This keeps the metabolism burning.

What the Studies Show

Some studies only report the total amount of weight lost, without mentioning whether the weight loss came from muscle, fat, or water losses.

Different diets affect muscle and water losses differently, which can make it seem as if they are more effective for fat loss when this isn’t truly the case.

Studies controlling for these factors consistently show that weight loss always results from a calorie deficit. This is true regardless of whether your calories come from carbs, fat, or protein.

The source of calories has different effects on your metabolism

Foods affect your metabolism differently. For instance, some require more work to digest, absorb, or metabolize than others. The measure used to quantify this work is called the thermic effect of food (TEF).

The higher the TEF, the more energy a food requires to be metabolized. Protein has the highest TEF, while fat has the lowest. This means that a high-protein diet requires more calories to be metabolized than a lower-protein diet does.

This is why eating protein is often said to boost your metabolism to a greater extent than eating carbs or fat. That said, when it comes to weight loss, the TEF of foods appears to have only a small effect on your calorie balance.

A Caution…Why nutrient density matters

The amount of nutrients a food contains per calorie can vary greatly.

Nutrient-dense foods provide higher amounts of vitamins, minerals, and beneficial compounds per gram compared with less nutrient-dense foods.

For instance, fruits are much more nutrient-dense than donuts. Calorie for calorie, fruit will provide a much larger dose of vitamins, minerals, and beneficial plant compounds.

Other examples of nutrient-dense foods include vegetables, whole grains, legumes, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, and unsalted nuts and seeds.

On the other hand, processed foods, including white pasta, soda, cookies, chips, ice cream, and alcohol are considered to have a low nutrient density.

Diets rich in nutrient-dense foods are consistently linked to a lower risk of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease, and may even help you live longer.

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This week's Transcript

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Episode 101 – Losing the COVID “15”

Jonathan Hunsaker: Welcome everyone to another episode of Empowering You Organically. I’m your host, Jonathan Hunsaker joined by my cohost, TeriAnn Trevenen.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Hey everyone.

Jonathan Hunsaker: So today we’re talking about … We’re going to talk about the “Quarantine 15”, how to drop those extra pounds that we’ve put on. But let’s just talk a little bit about quarantine. Let’s talk a little bit about COVID-19 and just do a check-in. We are filming this podcast, it’s August 21st today as of this filming. It’ll probably air in the next couple of weeks. But yeah, we just wanted to check in with everyone. First, let me cover just some basic things in general, and then we’ll get into some specifics for those of you that are really looking to drop the extra pounds that we put on, that we’ve all put on, including myself. Some of us like our producer, Joanie, had lost during the quarantine. And so I think we all handle stress, we all manage our stress differently.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Somebody like myself, I have that oral fixation that comes from probably smoking for 20 years and all of that, and constantly needing to do something with my mouth. And when it’s stresses, I often put in food in my mouth and different things like that. And so for me, I put on 15 pounds. But for all of us, it’s a little bit different. And I think it’s really interesting right now because we’re often being told what to do. We’re told to wear masks. We’re told to stay home. We’re told to social distance. We’re told our kids can’t go to school. We’re told all of these different things, and we’re all naturally rebels, I think. We don’t like to be told what to do. It’s one of the reasons that our ancestors had made their way here to America, is because we’re rebels.

Jonathan Hunsaker: We want to be free. We want to do our own thing. So it’s naturally in most of our bloods to be that way. And people are now telling us what to do and they’re starting to, in some cases, overstep their boundaries of what maybe we feel like they’re allowed to tell us or not allowed to tell us to do. And I’m not the-

TeriAnn Trevenen: Well, I want to jump in for a second too, because I think, without getting too political or getting into the conversation too much, I also think we’ve evolved over time in being told what to do and how to do things as well. So I think some people are grasping for what do I do because of so much conflicting information? There’s people on one side who are like, “Don’t tell me what to do, stay out of my life.” And there’s people on the other side who are like, “I’m going to do this because they said this. But now someone’s saying this and this.” There’s two sides to that story. And for some people, this has been a very stressful time and a very hard time because it’s like they’re rule followers and they listen. And it’s like, “Now this person says this and this and this and this.” And it’s like, “What am I supposed to do?”

TeriAnn Trevenen: And so that stress is, without going down the rabbit hole of saying what is right, what is wrong, any of that because I don’t think anyone can answer that question right now, I just think that there’s stress for everyone no matter your personality type, no matter what you subscribe to, no matter what. We all have one common thread in the fact that we’ve all lived through this year together with so much uncertainty, so much information coming down the pipeline, just so much fear around all these things. And I think we’ve all had to deal with that and we all have dealt with it differently.

Jonathan Hunsaker: I agree with you a hundred percent, and that’s where I think it comes back to, we’re not feeling in control, right? So either we’re not feeling in control because we feel like give are telling us what to do, we’re not feeling in control because we don’t know what to believe. There’s so many contradicting stories out there and there’s so many political agendas and all of that. So we’re not sure what to do there. And then there’s all this fear, and with fear comes, even poor ability to make good decisions. And then what do we do? Do we stress eat? Do we cry? Do we do drugs? Do we drink? There’s all kinds of things that we do with the stress.

Jonathan Hunsaker: And what I really wanted to talk about was taking back control of the areas of your life that you do have control over. And doing so will help decrease the stress, will allow you to sleep better, will naturally have you lose some of that weight again, likely, that you may have put on. May have you gain some of that weight that you may have lost because your response to stress is to not eat and to kind of close off completely.

Jonathan Hunsaker: And so during all of this uncertainty, during all of not knowing what to do, what can you do, however that affects you emotionally, consider that oftentimes it’s just a matter of control. And let’s get back control of the things that we do have control over. We may not over school, over mask wearing, over what stores we can go to, restaurants being open, all of that stuff. But what you do have a hundred percent control over is what you put in your mouth and the kind of foods that you eat. You also have a hundred percent control over moving your body.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Even if you’re stuck at home, you can move your body in ways to just walking around your kitchen island. You can just walk from your bedroom to your bathroom and back and forth. You can do some light stretching, some yoga. There’s 1,001 YouTube videos to look at to do that. But what I would consider is start taking back control of things in your life. Get yourself back on a schedule. If you’ve fallen out of control, maybe you’ve been furloughed from your job or you’ve lost your job and so now you’ve fallen into a routine of you watch TV until one o’clock in the morning, two o’clock in the morning, and you’re eating a little bit of junk food. Now you’re sleeping until 9:00 or 10:00, and just six months ago, you were up at 6:30 and ready for work and all of that. Start getting back control of your life again. Start waking up again at 6:30 and keep yourself a schedule even if you have nowhere to be.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Just get up and work out a little bit, then take a shower, put on makeup, wear something nice. Do your hair, shave. Do these little routine things that help bring you back to balance. Yes, there’s all kinds of stuff like meditation and yoga and all these things you can do that are great. But sometimes that’s even just like pie in the sky. Let me just brush my freaking teeth before 8:00 in the morning. Right? And that’ll be a win. So what I would encourage a lot of people to do right now in terms of whether that’s trying to lose some weight or trying to get back to before is take back control of the things that you’ve lost control over that you have direct say over.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Yeah. And as you’re talking, I’m thinking about how this year has progressed for everyone. In March there was a lot of uncertainty for everyone. And then that kind of all just set things in motion for almost an entire worldwide shutdown. And then people started slowly reopening different things. And everybody was on different paths in different states and different countries in different places. And so we’ve had this roller coaster. And now I feel like this is a really timely conversation because we’re getting back into school time for a lot of people around the world. Now, this is different depending on where you are and where you’re listening in from. But a lot of people are gearing up to go back to school or they’re already back at school, whether it’s college, whether it’s high school elementary, those really young years in school.

TeriAnn Trevenen: And we’re feeling this huge shift in changes again, and who’s doing what and how are they doing it? Some people are facing this issue of, “Am I going to have to quit my job and stay home with my kids? Am I going to homeschool? Am I going to do online school? Am I going to put my kids back in school? What are we going to do about our jobs? And who’s going to help here and here where things used to be set now it’s not this way?” I think we’re going through this emotional roller coaster again with more changes. They’re reporting, we’re seeing spikes in number so people are fearing again and not leaving their houses again. So whatever you believe is really not what we’re here to talk about today. But rather, we’re talking about the fact that there’s just been this up and down, up and down, up and down.

TeriAnn Trevenen: When Jonathan’s talking about do those little things, now is a really good time to get back to your habits or to not let go of your habits. Because there’s a lot, again, where it’s just up in the air, we don’t know what it’s going to look like. And really taking back that power. I almost don’t even love the word control. It’s that power we have within ourselves to keep good habits, to keep good routines, to look for the good, to be grateful, to move our bodies, to set good intentions, schedules, practices, routine in our lives. We have that power within us and I think sometimes we let that power go to stress and anxiety and fear and the unknown. But sometimes it’s walking into that with our power and saying, “All right, I’m going to face this and I’m going to move forward and I’m going to make changes and I’m going to put good things in place because I have the power to choose for me.”

TeriAnn Trevenen: I think that’s a really good mindset to be in as we face the next few months of more changes and more uncertainty. I don’t think this is going away anytime soon. So for me, personally, as we’re getting back into the school year, it’s been really good for my girls and I to get up at a certain time. We get ready. We brush our teeth. We make our beds. We make breakfast together. We sit down and start school together. I haven’t stopped my workout routines. I work out in the morning. I’ve actually added more workout routines and classes and with people where I’m getting interaction and I’m moving my body. Connecting more with people at work online than ever before, doing fun competitions, putting people in teams together to focus on their health within our organization and having that consistency and routine. It’s really giving yourself back the power to keep those good habits, to keep those good routines, to keep those good schedules that keep you on track.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Yeah, and consider that many of us have lost some of those good habits that we may have been doing. And that’s all right. I mean, shit happens. Nobody foresaw this. Most of us have not lived through anything like this before. So go easy on yourself. I know I have. I know that my workout routine actually at the beginning of all the lockdown was strong and I was … The willpower was strong. I’m going to make it through this, this is all going to be great. And then over time, yes, I was still working out, but I wasn’t working out as intense. I wasn’t going as hard as I was. My diet, I would notice, I’d go get some ice cream with my daughters. And that’s fine once a week. And then it was twice a week and three times a week, and now what’s the treat I’m eating today?

Jonathan Hunsaker: And so that’s all fine though. That’s all right. It’s no big deal. This is life. It goes up and down. Put on a few pounds here, we’ll take a few pounds off. The thing is, is recognizing when it’s time to reset, recognizing that, okay, now’s the time to say, “Okay, that was fun. That was great. That’s what my body needed to get through some of that. I’m now better prepared. I’m now more aware of my body and my routines. Let me put some things back in place that actually have me feel empowered.” So it’s interesting is the ice cream and the treats make you feel good in that moment, but ultimately, it hurts. It makes us more depressed in the long run, has us regretting making that choice later on in the day, may even have us more sad or emotional because of the sugar and the imbalances that it’s doing in our body.

Jonathan Hunsaker: And so consider that while all of it was fine and all of it was good, that taking your power back, taking that control back, whatever you want to title it, is really what’s needed right now to get you to the next level and to just … Again, it’s not changing everything all at once. It’s just, let’s get back to our schedule, going to bed at 10;00 and being up at 6:00. And that might just be what you do this week. And then the week after that, let’s go to bed at 10:00, get up at 6:00 and make sure we’re getting our 5,000 steps in a day. And then the week after that, we go to bed at 10:00, we’re up at 6:00, we get our 5,000 steps in and we’re drinking eight glasses of water. Start rebuilding those habits.

Jonathan Hunsaker: And if you didn’t have them before and they just got worse during quarantine, that’s all fine. But now’s the time to take ownership and control the things that you have control over, because ultimately there are certain things that just happen in life that we don’t have control over. We’re never going to have control over them. If we’re controlling ourselves and what we’re doing with our body and we’re feeling good there, then we’re going to treat others. We’re not going to feel like we need to control our spouses or our kids. We’re not going to be overly controlling over all of these other things because we feel like we’re so out of control, that we’re having our control, our power, over what we have control and power over, which is our routine, our diet, our exercise, things like that.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Yeah. And I think it’s already really overwhelming what we’re experiencing and living through. So I’d also caution people to be really careful. When I talk about taking power in my life and the routines I had, these are not just all the sudden I’m on a schedule and I’m getting up early. These are routines that I’ve created over many years, especially the last four or five years, with a lot of personal and self-growth where I’ve started habits of meditating when wake up, getting up early and exercise every single morning, and getting up with my kids and helping them get ready. And they do certain things every morning. And these are not habits that just all of a sudden life got stressful so we implemented all these habits to try and make our lives feel better. These are things that slowly over time I built in my life for myself and with my children.

TeriAnn Trevenen: And so I would definitely caution you not to try and do that dangerous New Year’s resolution list, if you will, where people make this list of 10 things I’m going to do this year to change my life. I learned more and more that small and simple changes make the biggest long-term impact. So for example, maybe you’re really struggling emotionally right now. So maybe your goal and your consistent habit that you’re going to put in place, something you have power over, is I’m going to connect with one friend every day and talk about things we’re grateful for, or I’m going to send kind messages to people I love every single day and tell them something I’m grateful for about them. Or I’m going to write in a gratitude journal every day, or I’m going to get out of my house and go on a walk and do breathing exercises and breathe in the good and breathe out the bad while I go on my walk.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Just know that if you try to change everything all at once and all of a sudden just do a vast 360 on your life, chances are that you’re going to fail because it’s a lot to take on. Daily, consistent habits and efforts to change your life start one thing at a time, doing one day at a time. And it’s the same thing with nutrition. Maybe your nutrition has gone out the window and you’re just eating garbage and junk food.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Okay, well maybe your goal this week is, “I’m not going to eat any treats this week.” So you make it through one week and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to make that a second week and a third week.” And then you get rid of that sugar concept in your life. Or maybe it’s like, “I have this go-to snack that I eat all the time and it’s really not good for my body, but it’s my makes me feel better treat. So this week, instead of when I’m going to go to the pantry and get that to feel better, I’m going to replace it. I’m going to throw it out and I’m going to replace it with carrots or berries or something like that.”

TeriAnn Trevenen: It sounds so simple and insignificant, but small, consistent habits and changes without a doubt are how I’ve made the biggest changes in my life, and then continuing on with those. There’s research out there. And I can’t remember off the top of my head, but you have to do something for so many days before it becomes a habit. Like brushing your-

Jonathan Hunsaker: 21 days.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Is it 21? So like brushing your teeth. So don’t go guns blazing, like, “I’ve got to do this and I’ve got to do this. And I got to do this.” Don’t do that to yourself. Pick one thing and be consistent at it. And when you do it, this is another big tip I have for you, celebrate the fact that you did it. So, okay. I was going to go to the pantry and get chips that I love, but I got carrots, and every day I’m going to replace something bad with something good. And at the end of the day, before you lay your head down on your pillow, say, “I chose me today. I did it today. I’m going to celebrate that win. I’m grateful for that today.” Small, consistent changes and celebrating those changes are what really keep them in your life and make them consistent habits

Jonathan Hunsaker: Just don’t celebrate with a piece of cake or something. Celebrate with something else. So really quickly, before I wrap this up, we talked about quarantine 15 and how do we drop it? I’m going to give you a fail-safe way, guaranteed to drop your quarantine 15 in the next two to three months. And it’s really monitoring what you put in your mouth, and it is a calories in and calories out. And I know a lot of people want to come back and say, “But ketogenic does this. But vegan does this. But vegetarian does this and Mediterranean diet does this and Hollywood Cookie Diet does that,” and whatever else is the new fad.

TeriAnn Trevenen: I want that diet, Cookie Diet.

Jonathan Hunsaker: The reality is, you just have to monitor what it is that you’re putting in your body versus what your total daily energy expenditure is. And so what’s the easiest way to do this? Download MyFitnessPal. It’s a free app. You can get it on your smartphone. And all I want you to do for the next three days is track every single thing that you put in your body. That includes the little bit of butter that goes in the pan before you make your eggs. Count the butter and the eggs. If you eat vitamins that are the gummy vitamins, those have calories. Count every single thing that you put in your mouth for the next three days. Don’t change your diet. Don’t worry about any of that, or the next five days, whatever you want to do, to get a good average.

Jonathan Hunsaker: What happens with most people is they grossly underestimate the amount of food that they eat and they grossly overestimate the amount of exercise that they get in. So what you do is you take your five days and find out what that average is. A lot of people are going to come in and say, “Well, I just don’t eat a whole lot of calories. I only eat 1,200 calories. How can I diet, so to speak. How can I get less calories in those 1,200? 98% of the time you’re really getting 1,800 calories in there. You’re just not counting everything that’s going in there. And so we’re really not starting from a 1,200 calorie basis. For some of you, if that were the case, then you’d want to go through something like a reverse diet, really building your calories up.

Jonathan Hunsaker: But again, I’m talking to the 95% of people here that this is going to apply to. Count your calories for those five days. Count everything that goes in and find out what that number is. I think for most people, it’s going to be between 1,800 and probably 2,300. Maybe the more than that, if you count all those chips. And here’s the good news, is you can scan the barcodes of foods that you’re eating if they have them. Even the organic carrots, baby carrots that come in a little bag, you can scan that barcode and estimate what you’re putting in. This is really important to know what your starting point is. Then from there, deduct 500 calories every day. And that’s what your new goal is going to be. And you can set this in MyFitnessPal and you can track it. So if you’re eating 2,000 calories, drop down by 500 calories per day and you’re going to be at 1,500 calories. That will have you lose, no doubt, a pound a week at that level.

Jonathan Hunsaker: A pound of fat is roughly 3,500 calories, 500 calories per day times seven is going to be 3,500 for the week. The other thing that you need to make sure you’re doing is getting your steps in. Get a minimum of 6,000 steps, but really shoot for 8,000 to 10,000 steps every single day. Now, a lot of people ask, “Do I count my exercise in my … Do I count that? Do I get to eat the food from the calories that I burn from my exercise?” And no, you don’t. You just need to get those steps in. It may have you lose a little bit faster than a pound a week. But really you should be looking at losing no more than 1% of your total body weight per week. So if you’re 200 pounds, you could lose two pounds a week and be fine. If you’re 130 pounds, then you shouldn’t be losing more than 1.3 pounds of your weight per week.

Jonathan Hunsaker: You can monitor that with the amount of exercise that you do and the amount of calories that you take in. You can obviously customize this more for your specific needs. But the other thing that I want you to consider is that you do need to take breaks from your diet. Quote, unquote diet. I hate that term. From your way of eating or restricting your calories. So if you eat 1,500 calories for about three weeks to a month, a lot of people’s bodies will adapt. They will have what’s considered a very efficient metabolism, which means now they’re going to start operating and only needing 1,700 to 1,800 calories per day. Well, if you’re only consuming 1,500, it’s not enough to really get that weight loss to happen, so you would have to drop down to 1,300 calories to be at that 500 calorie deficit. Now, the way to combat that is every three weeks, just take two weeks off and go back to eating at your maintenance. So if your maintenance is 2,000 calories, for three weeks you’re going to eat at 1,500 calories.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Then the next two weeks, eat at your 2,000 calories again. You’re not going to lose weight during those two weeks, but your metabolism will stay at that 2,000 calorie rate so that then the next three weeks, you do 1,500 calories again. You’re going to lose those three more pounds or whatever it ends up being. It could be a little more if you do some more exercise. But let’s say you’re going to lose those three pounds. Then you’re going to go back to doing your diet break for two weeks. You continue on that pattern and your metabolism is not going to slow down overall. Because if you continue to cut, cut, cut, your metabolism will make up for it and will burn less energy and you’re going to have to … You’re going to get down to 1,200 calories, 1,100 calories.

Jonathan Hunsaker: And yes, you can do that. If you’re going into competition and all that kind of stuff, body building competitions, maybe that’s something you want to do. But for 99% of us, there’s no need to put ourselves through that. It adds more stress to the body. You’re hangry all the time, all that. You don’t need to do that.

TeriAnn Trevenen: And I think you made a really important point that we need to point out. A lot of people when they’re trying to lose weight, they hit a plateau. A lot of people are not educated on what Jonathan’s talking about right now. So calories in calories out has heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy research behind it when it comes to our overall weight maintenance. A lot of people, as he’s talking about, cutting. You figure out your baseline of calories, which is what he was talking about. Track your calories and where you are and figure out, am I gaining at this or am I losing at this? What has your body been doing? Then you know where you need to go from there. If you realize you want to lose some weight and you’re cutting your calories, over time, people who diet or what I would call cutting calories to lose weight, they plateau. And they’re like, “Why can’t I lose any more weight?”

TeriAnn Trevenen: And what Jonathan’s talking about is going back up to what your normal maintenance calories would be just to stay at your current weight. And that will reset your system and get it back to optimally functioning so that when you go to lose more weight again, it kicks your body back coming gear. It’s like, “All right, I’m ready to do this again.” So a lot of people have that question, like, “Why can’t I lose those few extra pounds? I’m eating everything the way I’m supposed to. I’m tracking everything. I’m doing everything I can do. I’m exercising.” Sometimes your body needs a jumpstart, if you will, to get back to that place.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Absolutely. We could do an hour or two hour podcast, I think, on all of this and really going into the details. But I just want to share that it is really as simple as that, is looking at what are you taking in calorically and then what are you burning? And there’s TDEE calculators out there. So total daily energy expenditure, and you can go, I think it’s tdeecalculator.net. And you can put in all of your information. It can tell you roughly where you should be. But I want to consider that you likely are grossly overestimating the amount of exercise you’re doing and you’re underestimating the amount of food you’re doing. So what I’m giving you is just a very basic elementary level starting point. What would be interesting though, is you will lose weight, guaranteed.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Now, I know there’s a lot of people … I know keto is very popular. And trust me, I used keto during portions of my weight loss journey. Keto worked really well for me. And at the time I was uneducated enough to think that keto was working for me because now my body was burning fat for fuel and so it was partying all of my existing fat for energy and blah, blah, blah. That’s not the case. Your body, if you’re in a caloric deficit, will always burn fat for fuel. That’s what it’s going to go to first. That’s why our bodies store fat. So it has nothing to do with keto is why that’s happening or why I lost weight. The reason keto worked is because fats and proteins are more satiating than carbohydrates. And so by eating those, I felt fuller longer. And so I was just consuming less calories throughout the day.

Jonathan Hunsaker: So anyway, I don’t want to go down that tangent very far, but for those of you that are really looking at what is a sustainable way to drop those extra pounds, it’s about calories in calories out. I would highly encourage you to go on Instagram and follow Dr. Layne Norton, L-A-Y-N-E Norton. Follow Coach Mark Carroll on there. And there’s several other people, evidence-based training, things like that, where they really just talk about and they break down the science. And I know there’s guys like Dr. Fung out there with fasting, and he talks about the hormones there and all of that, and that calories aren’t treated the same. The reality is the research is overwhelming that the calories in calories out is what ultimately matters.

TeriAnn Trevenen: I want to make one other comment too. If you’re going to something like MyFitnessPal to track your food, a lot of people have this misconception about carbs, proteins and fats, like, “Oh, I can’t have any carbs to lose the pounds,” which is not accurate. In fact, carbs, proteins and fats go hand in hand together in helping you to actually maintain a healthy weight. But going back to calories in calories out, this way of thinking, this way of living, this way of eating, you can absolutely have proteins, fats and carbs. You have to figure out where you need to be and what amount you need of each of those. That’s something you can learn with Mark Carroll, Layne Norton. That’s a way that I eat, is proteins, fats, carbs and tracking calories in calories out. But I still eat things that I enjoy from time to time. I don’t punish myself.

TeriAnn Trevenen: You’ll also read a lot with those two individuals about eating a healthy, balanced nutrition plan, versus, “I’m cutting all this out and I’m never going to eat this.” They call it flexible dieting, basically, still eating foods you like while getting the results that you want. So there’s a lot of myths out there. You have to eat like this, you have to eat like this. You can’t have anything you like. And it’s so untrue. You can have a very balanced, healthy eating plan, eating some of those foods you love from time to time and not having to cut those things out where you’re going to yo-yo in your food because I haven’t eaten this for three months because I’ve been cutting it out. No, from time to time, you should eat things that you like, and that’s also going to really help you in your weight journey.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Yeah. I mean, not a lot of people would see my before and after pictures like, “You must not have eaten any carbs.” And it has nothing to do with that. The fact is, if my maintenance is 2,000 calories and I just eat 1,500 calories of Snickers bars every day, I’m going to lose weight, plain and simple. Now, will my body suffer in other ways because I’m not getting the nutrients it needs and all of that? Yes. So if we’re talking about just straight losing weight, I just got to cut the calories. And I can do it by eating 1,500 calories of ice cream or Snickers or things like that. It goes deeper than that, but consider that you can absolutely have a Snickers every day if you want to, if you account for that in terms of the calories and only hitting your point.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Now, macros matter, I’m not going to give you the macros and the proteins and fats and carbs and all of that. Proteins are very important to get. Proteins, I think, are great as a macro because your body requires 25% of the caloric intake from the protein to process the protein. So if you eat 1,000 calories of protein in a day, you’re going to burn 250 calories just processing that protein, which if weight loss is the goal, can help in that concept in that context.

Jonathan Hunsaker: I didn’t mean to go this far down the rabbit hole with this. I was just going to give some quick, simple pointers. But I highly encourage you, if you’re frustrated with where you are weight-wise, consider that calories in calories out is guaranteed to work for you if you’re honest with yourself, if you track everything. And you don’t have to track forever. I don’t track every single day or that kind of thing. If I did, I probably wouldn’t have put on my quarantine 10 or 15 that I did put on. But when I am really focused on, okay, I’ve put a few pounds on, I want to tighten up, then I track for a couple of few weeks. I also really get a good understanding of knowing how much chicken is that, how much meat is that, how much vegetables is that? How much of this can I have, that can I have? So the longer I do it, the better I get at it.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Yeah. I will say that when people ask me with my specific health journey … So I’ve gone on this journey from being in cardio and being very thin to putting on a lot of muscle and being able to lift very heavy in the gym. People will often ask me like, “What’s the one thing you would recommend when it comes to getting that kind of result?” And hands down, my answer to people is always, “Track your food by macros in something like MyFitnessPal for a month. It will change the way you see carbs, fats, proteins, how many calories you eat, how many calories you don’t eat.” That would be my number one tip to people. And it also helps give you an idea of how many foods and how much of that food you can have before you hit a certain amount of calories. And we all, like Jonathan said, grossly underestimate that and don’t realize how many calories are in certain foods we’re eating and how far over we go every single day.

Jonathan Hunsaker: It makes me think of these little ice cream cups that I get with my daughters. And they’re like this big and they’re made by Blue Bell ice cream. They’re like 160 calories. It’s like four spoonfuls. It’s just enough to get you warmed up to want three more. But it puts you in perspective to realize, “Wow, that’s 150 calories.” And it’s interesting because I know the whole calories in calories out is old news. Many of you have heard it before and you thin, “Ah, I don’t want to track everything. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do that.” MyFitnessPal makes it really easy. People have already entered all of the macros. People have already entered all that stuff in there. So it’s super easy to do. Anyway, I’ll do another couple of podcasts on it. Clearly I know how to lose weight because I’ve lost nearly a hundred pounds. I’ve lost way over a hundred pounds because there’s been fluctuation in there. But I used to be 270. Now I walk around 180.

TeriAnn Trevenen: It’s funny because he’s been on a weight loss journey and I’ve been on a gaining weight journey, which is funny. But we’ve obviously been well versed in this type of nutrition. I’ve been a woman who’s gone from 118 pounds up to 140 happier and healthier than ever. He’s lost a ton of weight by really tracking calories in calories out. And it just makes a huge difference. Just total game-changer.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Still comes down to the calories. You can really fine tune your body and understand it at a deeper level. And so we’ll do more podcasts on that in the future. But I wanted to come back to the Quarantine 15 because I’m tracking again, because I’m dropping myself down to get nice and tight like I was. And I just wanted to give you some pointers on that as well. There’s many other people out there that are way smarter than me on all of this stuff that you can find on Instagram and online. And they’ve got great books on it and things like that. But I just wanted to encourage you to look into that if this is something that has you a little bit down because the last six months have been so stressful and you put on a few extra pounds. You really can take back control of your life, take back control of what you’re eating, take back control of the amount of steps that you’re getting in every day.

Jonathan Hunsaker: And ultimately, in the next few months, you’ll just be back to where you were before and likely even better because you’ll be that much more equipped to handle whatever comes next in this crazy journey of life that we have. So thank you so much for tuning in. This was going to be a quick 10 or 15 minute podcast. I think it turned into a half hour-plus. I hope you enjoyed it. Go to empoweringyouorganically.com to listen to this again. There are no show notes because we just kind of wing this podcast. We just wanted to talk from speed of consciousness. So go there to listen to it again. Go to iTunes to subscribe. And as always, tune in to our next episode. Thanks, everyone.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Thank you.

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