Lifestyle – Caroline Juster Fitness

March 23, 2021April 6, 2021

What to do if you don’t like working out right away

I’m a huge fan of craft coffee and beer.

I start every day with a few cups of hot black coffee from a local roaster. On the weekends, I sometimes I enjoy a beer or two. My favorite styles are quite heavy: IPAs, double IPAs, stouts, and Belgians.

My boyfriend loves fancy gins and bourbons, which he usually drinks straight with just a twist of citrus.

Coffee, beer, and liquor are all acquired tastes. Children don’t like these things, and most adults don’t even like them on the first try.

It takes repeated exposure and experimentation to discover what we like and develop a palate that can appreciate complex flavors.

I didn’t start drinking coffee or beer until I was in college (sorry mom.) Even then, it took some time for me to transition from sugary coffee drinks or the cheap beer of college house parties to the craft coffees and beers I like now.

My boyfriend had a similar experience with gin and bourbon. Over many years, he has experimented with different types and learned more about what he likes and doesn’t like. Now that he can identify subtle differences that would have once escaped him, his experience is a lot richer and more fulfilling.

Fitness can also be an acquired taste.

It’s true that some people have always been athletic or loved to work out. For the rest of us, however, our first experiences with exercise were not so enjoyable:

You may have always been clumsy or unathletic (this was me as a kid.)
Perhaps you never felt like you belonged on a sports team or with the fit people at the gym (also me.)
Maybe all of your past attempts to get in shape ended badly, thus reinforcing the story that working out just isn’t for you.

My message for you today is that, if you’re willing to try again and be open minded, you can almost certainly find some form of exercise that works for you.

A few examples from my own journey:

I hated playing team sports. I had a lot more fun and made faster progress when I started competing against myself in the weight room.
I hated running and therefore wrote off all cardio. Years later, I realized I really love riding my bike and that I actually enjoy doing a lot of cardio.
Recently, I’ve started rock climbing on a regular basis. I really sucked at first and could have easily given up. Instead, I kept showing up and my enjoyment has increased along with my skills.

Much like you won’t like every food or beverage item that’s an acquired taste (I’m not going to be drinking my boyfriend’s fancy gins anytime soon), you won’t necessarily love every style of exercise.

I also would not expect anything to feel like love at first sight. You need to give an activity enough tries to get out of the awkward initial stages to see if it’s truly a good fit for you.

Think back to your other acquired tastes: it’s unlikely that you were sold on the first try. Instead, you probably enjoyed yourself in an unexpected way that piqued your curiosity. You can follow those same signs when you’re trying out different styles of exercise.

Very few people like bourbon the first time they try it. Working out may be similar. You have to try it a few times to figure out what you like.

To summarize:

Even if you haven’t been successful in the past, there are absolutely styles of exercise that will be a good fit for you. There are simply too many ways to move your body for this not to be the case.
You may need to try lots of different stuff to see what sticks.
It’s likely that whatever you do decide to stick with will still be an acquired taste to some extend. Keep showing up, look for ways to get a little better all the time, and don’t forget to make it fun.

Struggling to adopt a consistent exercise routine despite repeated attempts and good intentions? This is one of the biggest struggles I hear from new clients.

That’s why I created my 4C System to help you become a more consistent exerciser. I teach this simple, practical system in a free five-day email course. You can sign up to get the course using the box below.

March 11, 2021April 6, 2021

How to know you’re making progress

Getting in shape – whether that means crushing it at the gym, losing weight, or just feeling healthier in general – is a long game.

No matter what goals you’re chasing, you can bet you will need to work at them for months and years.

It makes me sad to see how many people give up on themselves before they’ve been at it long enough to see the true results of their efforts.

Some people try to do way too much and once and end up flaming out.

Other people focus exclusively on the most obvious measures of progress and ignore all the other signs that they’re moving in the right direction.

Both of these approaches set you up to fail. We have to be patient and keep showing up for ourselves if we truly want to transform the way we look, feel, and perform. This is why it’s so important to take a sustainable approach to training and eating.

We also need to adjust some of our expectations (for example, in regards to how much weight you’ll add to the bar each week or how fast the scale will drop) and expand our definition of what it means to progress in the first place.

Here are a bunch of things you can look for to tell you that you’re moving in the right direction.

Signs of progress toward your strength training goals:

Lifting more weight
Doing more total volume (sets and reps)
More density (doing more volume in the same amount of time)
Using better form
Things just feel easier
You’re able to train without pain
Progressing to a more advanced variation of an exercise (eg. moving from kettlebell deadlifts to trap bar deadlifts)
Changing the lifting tempo (slowing down, adding pauses, speeding up)
Increasing your workout frequency (how often you train)
Increasing your workout consistency

Signs of progress toward your weight loss goals:

Scale weight goes down
Measurements (like waist, chest, hips, arms, etc.) go down
Body fat % goes down
Clothes fit better, or you go down a size
You notice changes in the mirror or in progress photos
Other people notice changes (even if you can’t see them)
You feel lighter and more energized
You can consistently stick with your diet
Reduced instances of binge eating or completely falling off the wagon
Less stress and anxiety around food

Signs of progress toward building a healthy lifestyle:

Sleeping 7-9 hours each night
Regularly including things that help you recover from training (eg. massage, low intensity movement, foam rolling and mobility work)
You can consistently stick with your diet (can be a generally healthy diet, does not need to be geared toward fat loss)
Less stress and anxiety around food
You can delay gratification in the short term so you will feel better in the long term
You feel lighter and more energized
Increasing your workout consistency
Increasing your activity outside the gym
Increasing your daily step count
Able to complete physical tasks that used to be out of reach
Reduced aches and pains
You feel less stressed out
Health metrics and/or bloodwork improves

I’m willing to bet that no matter how hard you are on yourself, you can find a few things in each category that already apply to you.

Keep going, keep an open mind, and reach out for help if you’re not sure what needs to change.

Are you feeling frustrated with your progress toward your goals? Sometimes we all need some help and guidance to make sure we’re moving in the right direction. You can apply for my 1:1 coaching program here.

February 11, 2021February 18, 2021

What Really Matters For Fat Loss?

There is a lot of confusing information out there about what it takes to get lean.

Everyone and their mom is selling some new diet, promising to reveal a secret trick you haven’t tried yet. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking there’s an answer for your struggles out there if only you keep searching and trying all these different diets.

In reality, weight loss success is a lot less sexy than what nutrition gurus want you to believe. Furthermore, most of the things they tell you to do don’t actually matter and won’t help you lose weight.

I love the concept of big rocks vs small rocks when it comes to dieting.

Big rocks are changes that have a huge impact on your results. The 80/20 principle applies here – 20% of actions are responsible for 80% (or more) of your results. Moving the big rocks helps you build the habits and skills that will help you actually lose weight.

Small rocks are a lot less impactful. Some of them can give you an edge, but only after all the big rocks have been moved. Other small rocks have virtually no impact on your results at all and are merely a shiny distraction.

Keep reading to get some clarity about what does and does not matter when you’re dieting.

1. Consistency

Even if you find the mythical “perfect diet”, it won’t do you any good if you’re constantly falling off the wagon and having to start all over again.

There are many factors that can improve consistency, including non-food considerations like managing stress and creating a more diet-friendly environment at home.

For now, just know that if you aren’t following your plan ~90% of the time, you’re probably not going to be successful. Make changes or find an approach that’s a better fit for you.

2. Energy balance

Our bodies follow the same laws of thermodynamics as the rest of our physical world. We all use a certain amount of energy (measured by calories) to power our daily activity, digest the food we eat, and maintain basic functions.

Weight loss requires you to eat fewer calories than your body uses for a prolonged period if time. If you’re not losing weight, you’re eating too many calories.

It’s important to note that eating for health and eating for weight loss are not exactly the same. You can eat a very healthy diet and still not lose a single pound if your caloric intake is too high.

3. Macros

Macronutrients are categories that sort the foods we eat based on their molecular structure and how they’re processed by our bodies. There are technically four macronutrients – protein, carbohydrates, fats, and alcohols – but most of the time we just focus on the first three.

Once you’re consistently eating in a calorie deficit, you can potentially improve your results by tweaking the amount of each macro that you consume.

I suggest focusing on protein first, because it will help you feel more full and enables faster recovery from your workouts. Aim for .7-1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight every day.

More advanced trainees can also play around with carbs and fats. Generally speaking, most people feel better eating either higher carb, lower fat or lower carb, higher fat.

One is not necessarily better than the other for fat loss – remember, calories are king. However, finding the right balance of carbs and fats can go a long way in helping you feel satisfied and energized as you diet.

Read more: Calories and macros

4. Food quality

Technically, you can eat a 100% junk food diet and lose weight so long as calories are in check. However, this would be a lot less satisfying and would most likely make you feel pretty shitty. For this reason, I do think it’s important to focus on food quality when we diet.

Try to eat more whole and minimally processed foods like lean proteins and fresh fruits and veggies. These foods will give you a more steady stream of energy throughout the day, which makes it easier to stick with your diet. As an added bonus, they tend to be higher in water and fiber, making them more filling with fewer calories.

I would focus on moving these big rocks in the order listed. Consistency is most important, closely followed by calories. You can get great results focusing only on those two things.

If you’re ready to take your dieting to the next level or you want to troubleshoot issues with energy, hunger, cravings, or performance, then you can focus more on macro ratios and food quality.

The image above gives some examples of small rocks that don’t really matter for weight loss, at least not without moving the big rocks first.

It doesn’t matter if you’re fasting or eating 6 small meals a day. You can’t trick your metabolism and you won’t lose weight if your calories are too high.
Supplements may help with some health issues and improve your workout performance, but they don’t circumvent the laws of energy balance.
Drinking enough water can help you feel energized and temporarily quell hunger, but it won’t lead to weight loss if you’re still eating too much.

You get the idea.

I hope this concept gives you some clarity about what you should focus on if you want to lose weight. It can also serve as a filter for future questions.

When you come across a new dieting trick, ask yourself if it fits into one of the four big rocks above. If it doesn’t, it’s probably only a small rock.

Are you struggling to lose weight and keep it off despite your best efforts? Join me in a free webinar to learn how to avoid the common dieting mistakes that are standing in your way.

February 4, 2021February 18, 2021

My Fat Loss Coaching Framework

There are a lot of diets and fat loss coaches out there. Nearly all of them have good intentions and really want to help you be successful (although there are a few charlatans just out to make a quick buck.)

However, good intentions don’t always lead to good results. If your diet fails to follow scientific principles or if it’s too restrictive, you’ll struggle to lose weight.

Furthermore, if the diet doesn’t help you make lasting changes to your lifestyle and environment, you’ll have a hard time keeping off any weight you do lose.

Any successful diet will focus on energy balance (establishing a caloric deficit) and work with your psychology (preferences, routines, beliefs) to help you make long-term, sustainable changes. Leaving out any of these pieces will make it nearly impossible to get and stay lean.

Keep reading to learn the exact process I use with fat loss coaching clients to help them achieve their goals without falling prey to common dieting mistakes.

(If you want to apply for my fat loss coaching program, you can do so here.)

1. Gain awareness of current eating habits.

If you don’t understand what you’re doing now, it’s impossible to make well-informed decisions about how to move forward.

Oftentimes, people are already doing many things well. Yet their first instinct is to totally overhaul their nutrition and dive into a restrictive fad diet.

Identifying your baseline habits and routines can save you a lot of unnecessary headaches down the road.

2. Fix your leaks.

Sometimes, one or two bad habits are behind the majority of extra calories in your diet. If possible, I try to help people reduce or eliminate these things first. This is a great way to get some fast wins at the start of your journey.

If you want to learn more about this concept and start identifying some of your leaks, check out this article I wrote on the subject.

3. Reduce calories in a sustainable way.

This where the bulk of the work occurs when dieting

Some of my clients track calories or macros, others monitor their portions using other methods.

During this step, I work with clients to iron out all the details of their individual diets. This usually involves some experimentation to figure out what does and doesn’t work.

Key questions we address in this stage:

How can I eat in the most satisfying way possible while still staying in a caloric deficit?
How can I manage hunger and cravings?
What foods help me feel my best?
How can I make good food choices in challenging situations?

4. Change your environment.

This is the most underrated and under appreciated step in the entire process.

Most of us gain weight because we live in an environment that makes it insanely easy to overeat and difficult to make healthy choices. Your will power can only take you so far if everything (and everyone) around you is pushing you to fall back on your old habits.

To lose weight and keep it off, you need to reengineer your environment to support your new healthy lifestyle. This might mean making changes at home, at work, and even in your relationships.

5. Build related healthy habits.

The only thing you need to do to lose weight is sustain a caloric deficit, and the best way to do that is through dieting. However, this is much easier if you stay active, get enough sleep, and manage stress.

A few ways I can help you achieve your fat loss goals:

I coach my 1:1 clients through every step in this process. If you want custom help right now, you can apply for the program here and I’ll follow up.

I also run a 6 week group course – Sane and Simple Fat Loss – to help clients lose weight without losing their minds. In the course, I teach a six pillar system to help you navigate steps 1-4 above (we don’t really cover exercise). Topics include increasing awareness, managing portions, and which foods to eat and which to avoid.

Sane and Simple Fat Loss is coming back on Monday March 8! If you think you may be interested, you can join the waitlist to receive early, discounted access on February 26.

If you’re struggling to lose weight and keep it off despite your best efforts, join me in a free webinar to learn how to avoid the common dieting mistakes that are standing in your way.

January 21, 2021April 6, 2021

Who should count calories – and who shouldn’t?

My fitness journey began ten years ago when, during a routine check up, my doctor informed me that I was prediabtic. I was scared and knew I needed to make big changes to avoid a lifetime of illness.

However, this was not the first time I tried to lose weight. I knew for years that I wanted to change, but I didn’t know how. Without a concrete plan, I struggled to find my way.

Around the same time as my fateful appointment, I happened to discover a food blogger who had successfully lost a lot of weight. She laid out the steps she took to achieve her goals and many of them involved counting calories.

Losing weight always seemed like a mystical process beyond my grasp. Now, for the first time, I saw a clear path from where I was to where I wanted to go.

All I had to do was do a few calculations, start logging my food, and patiently trust the process.

I bought a food scale, learned to cook, and dutifully logged my calories every day. Right away I saw that I was eating WAY more calories than I realized. No wonder I was having so much trouble losing weight!

I used this data to experiment with different changes to my diet. For the first time, I saw real progress toward my goals and felt like I actually had the power to make this daunting change.

Calorie counting helped me with all of this:

It helped me detach from my extreme emotions about food and get objective.

It improved my relationship with hunger and cravings.

It showed me a clear connection between the foods I ate and the way I looked and felt.

It gave me the power to make changes based on actual data, not just how I was feeling. Instead of getting frustrated when my efforts didn’t match my results, I now clearly saw where I could make changes.

It eliminated my fear of “junk” foods, because I saw that I could enjoy them in reasonable amounts and still lose weight.
Most importantly, I actually saw real weight loss success.

*On the left: just before I began my fat loss journey back in 2011. On the right: me in 2020.*

Counting calories gets a bad rap in the fitness world.

Gurus love to tell you that counting is obsessive and that it destroys your relationship with food. I disagree with this appraisal because myself and countless clients have had the opposite experience.

Too many people give up on their weight loss goals because they feel like they’re working really hard with little to show for it. This is where having actual data can be so powerful: you clearly see what’s going on which gives you the opportunity to make more impactful changes.

If you wanted to improve your financial health, you’d start to track numbers and data. You’d create a budget, monitor spending, create a debt pay-off strategy, and make smart investments.

No financial advisor would tell you to just listen to how you feel and trust that you’ll instinctively know what to do. And no one would be able to help you if you had absolutely no idea where your money was going.

Some people may take tracking a little too far and waste half their work day watching market fluctuations. Most people, however, would simply view this data as an objective measure of their success or failure.

They’d know they’re doing the right stuff when they see more and more money in the bank. If the numbers go in the wrong direction, they can look at their spending and budgeting to see what may be causing the problem.

Calorie counting works in the same way. You have a “budget” of calories that you need to stay underneath to lose weight.

Once you understand how your favorite foods fit into your daily budget, you can choose to eat the ones that are the most filling, satisfying, and energizing without going over your number.

You don’t need to count calories forever. I don’t do it all year long, and I don’t force my clients to do it if it’s not a good fit. But, if you’ve been struggling to lose weight for a long time, counting calories for a while can be a helpful and illuminating experience.

You may benefit from counting calories if:

You’ve been following popular diets (Keto, Weight Watchers, Paleo, Whole30, Atkins, etc.) but haven’t been able to lose weight.
You’re tried of feeling like you’re working really hard to lose weight but not seeing the results you expected.
You’ve never tried to lose weight before and you don’t know the calorie content of common foods.
You are a person who likes to make decisions based on numbers and data.
You want to be able to enjoy some of your favorite treat foods while you diet.
You are a pragmatic person who prefers systems and science vs relying on intuition and feelings.

If you want to learn more about setting calories for your goals, check out this blog post.

You may want to skip counting calories if:

You’re incredibly busy and the thought of adding even one more task to your day stresses you out.
You’ve tried to count calories in the past and you know for a fact that it creates unnecessary stress, anxiety, or food obsession.
You don’t care about losing weight and would rather work on eating in a mindful, moderate way.
You have a history of disordered eating and have been instructed not to count, weigh, or measure food (please note this isn’t true across the board, some people – myself included – use calorie counting or food logging to help them recover from disordered eating).

If you want to learn more about how to lose weight without counting calories, check out this blog post.

And if you want some help with your personal fat loss goals, you can apply for my 1:1 coaching program here.

August 6, 2020February 18, 2021

A New Way to Think About Trigger Foods

A lot of nutrition coaches will tell you that there are good foods and bad foods.

“Bad foods” typically include things like fast food, baked goods, fried foods, and candy. Depending on which diet camp the coach belongs to, more contentious things like grains, dairy, meat, or even fruit could all be on the do-not-eat list.

There is typically a lot of shame, guilt, morality, and fear-mongering tied up in this approach to eating.

Early in my fitness journey, I fell prey to many of these questionable nutrition dogmas. I tried numerous fad diets looking for the perfect way to eat and lose weight.

My entire experience of food was heavily influenced by this good food, bad food dilemma. I remember the anxiety I would feel at a party or at a restaurant if I couldn’t find foods that fit within my narrow menu of acceptable options.

When I inevitably did eat an off-plan food, it sent me into a spiral of overeating because “I already blew it.”

As you might imagine, this approach did very little to help me lose weight. It certainly didn’t help me live a healthier life or improve my relationship with food.

These days, I consider myself a diet agnostic. I don’t believe there is one best diet for everyone and I never instruct my clients to follow a specific diet (although I will answer questions and provide information if someone asks me my thoughts).

Part of this shift has involved removing morality from food. I no longer think of foods in black and white terms like good or bad. Food is just food, and I think there are always instances when it’s appropriate to eat foods other coaches may consider off-limits.

Despite this attitude, however, I don’t think you should just eat whatever you want, whenever you want all the time. It’s still useful to consider which foods work for you and which do not.

This is especially true if you’re trying to lose weight, or if you have a history of disordered eating like I do.

I love the concept of red, yellow, and green light foods that I learned from Precision Nutrition.

Red light foods are foods you don’t want to eat very often, or ever.

This category includes foods you’re allergic to, or those which strongly clash with your values (eg. meat for a vegetarian).

Red light foods could also include foods you have a really hard time regulating yourself around. For example, I know there are particular foods that are heavily associated with binging for me, and I choose to avoid these foods.

Note that there isn’t necessarily anything inherently wrong with these foods, they just aren’t a good fit for your body, psychology, or goals.

Yellow light foods are foods that you can enjoy in moderation but don’t want to eat all the time.

Sometimes these foods are higher in calories, so we want to be mindful of portion sizes so we don’t accidentally overeat (think nuts, nut butters, pasta, etc.).

Other times we may feel uncomfortable if we eat too many of these foods. For example, many people are mildly lactose intolerant and can only eat so much dairy before they start to experience side effects.

In other situations still, yellow light foods may be treat foods that we can enjoy in small amounts but want to be careful not to overindulge. I usually have a couple of chocolate bars in the house, but I limit myself to one or two squares at a time.

Green light foods are foods that make your body and mind feel good and support your goals.

They should make up the bulk of your eating if you want to look, feel, and perform your best. Although the specific selections will vary for each person, green light foods include things like fruits, veggies, lean meats, whole grains, beans and legumes, and eggs.

How to use this system:

Most of your meals should consist of green light foods.
Occasionally, you can enjoy yellow light foods in appropriate portions.
Skip red light foods most of the time. I would not keep these foods in your house, and if you do decide to eat them I would be very intentional about the setting.

Keep in mind that these categories are fluid and will likely change as you get older or chase different goals. And remember to remove shame from the equation. Red light foods are not inherently bad, they just don’t work for you at this time.

Are you struggling to lose weight and keep it off despite your best efforts? Join me in a free webinar to learn how to avoid the common dieting mistakes that are standing in your way.

July 23, 2020February 18, 2021

The Most Underrated Tip for Weight Loss

The first thing most people do when they decide to lose weight or build healthier habits is decide which foods to eat (or skip) and how much of them to include in their new diets.

It’s great to consider which foods work for you and which don’t. And it’s very helpful to learn about the calorie content of your favorite meals, or to focus on eating more whole, nutrient foods.

However, I think there is another factor that nearly everyone misses that may actually be more important to their long-term success.

You do not live in a vacuum; you’re highly influenced by the people and things around you at all times.

Therefore, in order to lose weight and keep it off for good, you need to change your environment to support your changing lifestyle.

There are a lot of great things about being a human in the modern world. Unfortunately, the same conveniences that help us live safer and less stressful lives also make it much, much harder to eat in a healthy, sustainable, and moderate way.

You can find cheap, delicious, and highly processed foods everywhere you look. They’re in the break room at work, in every corner store, at family get togethers, and even in our own homes.

These foods are engineered to make it difficult for us to stop eating them. They also happen to be high in calories and low in nutrition, a terrible combination for health and weight.

It takes way more effort to resist these foods than to just eat them. And it’s even harder to actively replace those foods with minimally processed whole foods, especially if you’re not used to the taste of these foods or don’t know how to cook them.

Many people fail in their weight loss efforts because everything in their world is conspiring against their attempts to make healthier choices. You only have so much willpower at your disposal before you start defaulting to easier options.

That’s why it’s so important to build a healthier environment as you’re working to build new eating habits.

Here are a few ways you can change your environment to support weight loss and improved health:

Don’t buy trigger foods.

I’m not the type of coach who says you can never enjoy your favorite treats again (in fact, I think that approach is actively counterproductive). However, you do need to get honest with yourself about your relationship with certain foods.

If you know you have a hard time eating just one serving of something, or if it tends to trigger binge eating or food guilt, you’re better off not keeping that food in the house. If you buy it, you will eventually end up eating it.

Keep snack foods out of sight.

If you do buy treat foods, try to keep them tucked away in a pantry or cabinet where you don’t have to see them every time you go in the kitchen. Out of sight, out of mind.

Make healthy foods highly visible.

This is the flip side of the point above. I keep a big bowl of fresh fruits on my counter, and as a result I tend to reach for fruit when I want a snack. Some of my clients chop fresh veggies at the start of the week and put them in the front of the fridge. Now, when they open the fridge looking for a snack, the veggies will be the first thing they see.

I strongly recommend using a list to grocery shop so you already know what you need to buy and don’t need to make decisions at the store.

Be smarter about your grocery shopping.

Try to do most of your shopping around the perimeter of the store (that’s where the produce, meat, fish, dairy, and eggs are located) and only venture into the aisles to replenish pantry staples that are on your list.

It’s also wise to have a snack before you hit the store and never grocery shop when you’re hungry.

Some of my clients have had a lot of success using grocery delivery services. They only order what they need and aren’t tempted by treats at the store. This option may be even more appealing during the age of COVID-19.

Plan for your restaurant meals.

If possible, try to be the person who decides where the group is going to eat or order take out. This allows you to pick a place that will have healthy or on-plan options for you to order.

Take a look at the menu before the meal. If you have no idea what you’re going to eat until you’re about to order, you’re more likely to make an emotional decision or say “screw it” and order more than you want.

Read More: Eating Out on a Diet

Plate your food.

Have you ever eaten an entire bag of chips while you mindlessly watched tv? I’m definitely raising my hand here. This happens because we tend to keep eating until we’ve finished the food in front of us, no matter how hungry we are.

To solve this problem, always serve yourself food on a plate or in a bowl. If you want to have some chips, put what you want in a bowl and then put the rest of the bag away.

Minimize distractions while eating.

Many Americans eat as they work, watch tv, or scroll on their phones. You’re way more likely to overeat when you do this, and you’ll get a lot less satisfaction out of your meals.

Try to eat without distractions as often as possible. Pay attention to your food, eat slowly, and savor the experience.

Get your loved ones on board.

It’s very hard to make lasting nutrition changes if everyone else in the house is eating junk food.

I know it’s not easy to do – especially with kids – but you may need to sit down and have a conversation with the people closest to you about what you’re doing and why it’s important to you. See if you can get others to be a little more supportive, even if they aren’t ready to change their own eating habits.

Changing your environment to make it easier to make healthy choices and harder to make not-so-healthy choices is one of the best things you can do to help you achieve your health and fitness goals. Remember, your life and choices are deeply connected with your environment. It’s impossible to remove yourself from this influence, but you can make changes that will make your journey a lot easier.

Are you struggling to lose weight and keep it off despite your best efforts? Join me in a free webinar to learn how to avoid the common dieting mistakes that are standing in your way.

June 18, 2020December 14, 2020

The problem with meal plans (and what to do instead.)

New fat loss or nutrition coaching clients often ask me to write them a meal plan.

I actually have a blanket policy against writing meal plans and I want to share why.

Meal plans can actually do more harm than good. Keep reading to find out why and learn what I think you should be looking for instead.

A meal plan prescribes an exact diet. They’re usually very precise – every last bite of food is to be weighed and accounted for and eaten at a specific time.

At 7am, eat 3 egg whites and 1 whole medium egg cooked in 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil with a 5oz apple.
At 12pm, eat 6oz plain grilled chicken breast with 1/2 cup steamed broccoli.
At 3pm eat a snack of 1/2 cup fat-free cottage cheese with 3oz berries.

You get the idea.

There is a time and a place for meal plans. For example, registered dietitians who are certified to provide medical nutrition therapy can use meal plans to help clients manage illness or chronic conditions.

If you fall into this group, you should absolutely seek the help of a licensed professional. Personal trainers are not qualified (or legally allowed) to write meal plans to address medical problems.

A-list actors, elite bodybuilders, and professional athletes regularly use meal plans to get in amazing shape and perform at the highest level.

Here’s the thing: you don’t live the life of a pro athlete or Hollywood star.

I work primarily with busy urban professionals. My clients work long hours, care for young kids and older parents, and enjoy active social lives and traveling (at least they did before recent events).

They don’t have private chefs and their lives and livelihoods don’t center around their bodies.

This is the first reason why I don’t write meal plans: they are completely unrealistic in real life.

If you try to follow a restrictive meal plan that doesn’t allow for the unpredictability of life, you are setting yourself up to fail.

What to do instead: Develop flexible frameworks that guide your eating in any situation.

For example, if you’re someone who eats out a lot but still wants to lose weight, you can use your hand size to eyeball portions instead of relying on a food scale.

Ask yourself: What are the most challenging nutritional situations I find myself in on a regular basis? What skills can I build to help me navigate these situations in a way that will move me toward my goals?

The second reason I don’t like meal plans is that they ignore individual differences.

Meal plans are heavily biased toward the preferences and experience of the person writing the plan. They fail to account for differences in:

Physiology. One of my biggest pet peeves in the nutrition world is that many coaches act as if there is only one way to eat for optimal health. Everyone’s body is unique and responds differently to different foods. I may be able to easily digest foods that tear you up, and vice versa.
Personal preferences. Many meal plan staples are bland, boring and tasteless. If your meal plan is full of foods you don’t really like, you’re not going to stick with it for long.
Cultural heritage. The foods I learned to eat growing up in a Jewish household are very different than those eaten by my Indian and Latinx friends. You can still lose weight or improve your health eating the foods that are meaningful to you. Just say no to whitewashed meal plans.
Food availability. What’s in season where you live? What foods can you actually buy at the grocery store where you shop? Your meal plan won’t do you any good if you can’t find the foods on it, or if they’re super expensive because they’re out of season.

What do do instead: The unsexy truth is that everyone needs to experiment to find a way of eating that works for their unique situation.

Some people can eat grains and dairy, others should avoid them. Some people prefer to eat big meals, other prefer smaller meals and snacks. Some people eat a lot of meat, others remove it from their diets entirely.

You need to make these decisions for yourself, not rely on a piece of paper to make them for you.

This brings me to the last problem with meal plans: they prevent you from building the skills you need to think and make decisions for yourself.

“If only I had someone to tell me exactly what to eat, then I’d finally achieve my goals.”

I’ve heard the above statement more times than I can count. Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking that isn’t rooted in reality.

People actually do best when they feel they have autonomy in their lives.

This means decisions you make for yourself are much more powerful and will have a much bigger impact on your actions than decisions a coach makes for you.

My clients who’ve experienced the most success over the years are the ones who took the most ownership over the process. They got curious about themselves and experimented to find their own unique path.

Failure is part of this process, because you often have to weed out the things that don’t work to find those that do.

Although I encourage you to ditch the meal plans, you don’t have to go through this process all by yourself. You can hire a coach who listens to you and helps you build habits and skills as opposed to just telling you what to do all the time.

If you’re interested in my online coaching program, you can learn more here.

May 28, 2020October 15, 2020

What’s more important, diet or exercise?

I am a true believer in the power of exercise.

No matter who you are or what goals you have, I guarantee you can benefit from moving your body on a regular basis.

One reason why exercise is so powerful is that it is a keystone habit. In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg defines a keystone habit as a super habit that causes you to adopt additional positive habits.

Think of it as the first domino in a habit chain reaction. During the process of implementing the keystone habit, many people consciously or unconsciously build other helpful habits to support their efforts.

When we start working out, we tend to adopt other healthy behaviors.

We might go to bed earlier so we can perform better in the next day’s training session.

Maybe we start eating more protein so we can see faster progress from our workouts.

Before we know it, we’re looking, feeling, and performing better as a result of all the changes we’ve made to support our new exercise habit.

Working out on a regular basis can be an incredibly powerful catalyst for change in many areas of your life. And let’s be honest – most people feel it’s easier to start exercising than to clean up their nutrition.

For these reasons, I usually encourage people to start their fitness journey with exercise. Move often in ways that feel good and occasionally challenge your body in safe, productive ways.

Exercise is amazing, but it’s not always enough.

Unfortunately, despite its propensity to be a keystone habit, exercise by itself is not enough to get most people all the way to the finish line.

This is especially true if you have a body composition goal like losing weight. If your diet isn’t in line with your body size, goals, and activity levels, you will not see the progress you’re hoping for with exercise alone.

This misalignment is the reason why some people who hit the gym religiously can’t seem to get the scale or their measurements to budge.

In these cases, diet becomes more important than exercise.

Why is this the case?

Fat loss occurs when we consume fewer calories than our bodies use over a prolonged period of time.

Although our energy balance mechanisms are actually a lot more complicated, it’s helpful to think of this in terms of exercise (calories out) and diet (calories in).

There is only so much exercise you can do before you run out of time, burn out, or hurt yourself. We also tend to burn a lot fewer calories working out than we think (the number your wearable tells you is likely inaccurate).

Eating, on the other hand, happens multiple times every day. Most of us are bad at estimating how many calories we consume, and the world around us is filled with tempting, tasting, high calorie foods.

It’s criminally easy to wipe out any calorie burn from exercise with a big meal, a few drinks, or a post-workout treat.

Even “healthy” foods can contribute to this problem. If you burn 200 calories during a hard workout and then drink a 400 calorie smoothie on the way out of the gym, you’ve wiped out all your efforts and then some.

This is why paying attention to portion sizes through calorie counting or some other method is an essential element of successful fat loss.

Read more: All about food logging

Ultimately, you have a lot more chances to control the calories going in to your body than you do over the calories coming out.

So what’s more important, diet or exercise?

Both diet and exercise are essential elements of building a fit body and living a healthy life.

However, if you’re trying to lose weight, diet is ultimately more important than exercise.

If your weight isn’t moving in the direction you’d like despite regular exercise, perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at your diet and nutrition.

Do you want to ditch the overly restrictive fad diets and lose weight in a sane and sustainable way? Join the waitlist for the next round of my Sane and Simple Fat Loss group coaching program.

In this signature six week program, I teach clients the basic principles they need to follow to lose weight without losing their minds.

May 21, 2020October 15, 2020

How to accept and deal with hunger

Let me be the first to admit I’ve always struggled with hunger.

I rarely get a growling stomach like most people. Instead, I get very edgy, irritable, and short tempered. I like to think I’m a pretty laid back person, but watch out if I’m hungry. On more than one occasion, I’ve done or said something I regretted because I wasn’t thinking straight and didn’t realize it until after I’d eaten.

Over the years, I learned to attack my hunger as soon as it appeared to avoid these undesirable side effects.

I’d snack and overeat all day long because I was more comfortable with being overfull than feeling even the slightest hint of hunger.

I also spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. Why did I always get so hungry? Why did hunger seem to affect me more than other people? If only I didn’t feel so hungry or if it wasn’t so uncomfortable, then I’d be able to finally lose weight.

I’ll never forget my first experience working with my long-time coach Bryan Krahn years ago. I complained to Bryan because I was feeling pretty hungry during the day in between meals. He was pleased and told me that feeling the hunger was a good sign!

Although hunger was still uncomfortable for me, I began to see it in a different light. I begrudgingly made friends with my hunger because I realized it was indicating that I was heading in the right direction with my fat loss goals.

Hunger is not an emergency.

Here’s the thing: some hunger is not a bad thing. If you’re trying to lose weight, it’s an inevitable and necessary part of your journey.

When I stopped my personal pity party and accepted this, I was able to focus my energy in a more productive direction, namely learning to get more comfortable with discomfort in the name of my bigger goals.

I realized that my hunger was not an emergency (even through it felt like one) and that I could survive to my next meal without snacking.

Perhaps you’ve heard that you should never feel hungry. There are a lot of misconceptions about hunger and what it means.

Like anything, hunger exists on a continuum. It’s normal to experience some hunger in between meals. In fact, if you’re not hungry at all, you probably shouldn’t eat much (even if it’s supposed to be meal time). This is true for everyone except people who are actively trying to gain weight.

Those who are trying to losing weight will likely experience higher levels of hunger. This hunger may start sooner after meals or be more intense than if you’re eating at maintenance.

However, if you take it too far and chase hunger for its own sake or try to see how little you can eat, then you’re starting to enter the realm of disordered eating.

I am in no way telling you to starve yourself or that the hungrier you feel, the better your results will be. But I do encourage you to get honest with yourself about your relationship with hunger.

These days, I still struggle with the way hunger affects my mood and energy levels. The difference is that I no longer delude myself into thinking I’ll be free of hunger if I want to get and stay lean.

Some tips for reducing and managing hunger

Routine is a very powerful tool to help you manage hunger. If you can eat your meals at the same times, your body will adapt and you may start to experience less random hunger throughout the day.

On a related note, sometimes changing your meal timing can help with hunger. For example, if you aren’t hungry when you wake up but feel extremely hungry later, try fasting in the morning and pushing your regular meals later in the day.

A diet that consists of mostly whole foods will fill you up a lot more than a diet filled with processed foods. Protein, fiber, and healthy fats can be particularly satiating. Solid foods are also more filling than liquid foods like shakes and smoothies.

Drink plenty of water throughout the day. Aim for half your bodyweight in ounces every day. In a pinch, black coffee or tea can also help dull hunger pangs.

When you do eat, practice eating slowly and mindfully. Chew your food and pay attention to the experience of eating. Don’t wolf down your meals because that often leads to feelings of dissatisfaction and false hunger after meals.

Practice sitting with hunger when it arises. Set a timer for 20 minutes and do something else before deciding if you want to eat. Hunger comes in waves, and many times you may find you can wait longer to eat.

Start asking yourself if you’re really hungry or just craving something. One mental test I use on myself is to ask if I’m hungry enough to eat a plate of plain chicken and broccoli. If I say no, then I know I’m experiencing a craving.

Have some perspective. It may seem preachy, but it’s helpful to me to remember that choosing to go without food in the name of fat loss is a luxury. Many people in the world – including in my own city and country – are regularly forced to go without food for extended periods of time. This stops me from feeling so sorry for myself.

I know talking about hunger is not very sexy, but I strongly believe getting more comfortable with hunger is one of the most powerful tools you can use in your efforts to lose weight or maintain your weight.