On Again, Off Again? How to Stop the Diet Cycle & Get Consistent Results | HSM 742

Half Size Me episode 742 brought to you by the amazing Half Size Me Academy. To join, go to halfsizeme.com forward slash join. Hello, wonderful listeners. I am your host, Heather, and I am super excited that you're going to get to hear me coaching Samantha. She is in need of help because she's struggling with how to be able to eat in a way and still support herself when she wants to go out with friends or have a special dinner. And so in this episode with her, I am going to be kind of explaining to her how we want to break that down in a day to where she can go out with her friends or go to a special event and still be within her plan. So this is a really good episode. If that might be what you struggle with those occasional nights out, how do I balance all this and eat normally? This would be a really good coaching call for you to listen to. Now, just as a reminder, we are getting very close to launching our CartSmart workshop. I'm super excited. We're starting on May 21st. And my mission with this workshop is not just to teach you, because I think teaching is important, but it's literally for us to walk through this process together. How do I take my family of five and feed them for $600 every two weeks or $1,200 for the month, including detergent, shampoo, deodorant, hygiene products, aluminum foil, all that good business, right? How am I doing that? Well, I'm doing that by being really intentional, really knowing the best prices and where to find my products at the lowest price and how to do most of my shopping before I leave the house to avoid impulse buying, buying things in the moment because they sound good and really learning how to use my dollars wisely. I kind of got a little bit off kilter once I think COVID happened and I saw prices going up for me personally and I didn't want to go back to my extreme couponing days and just all the craziness that that involved so I kind of shied away from really tightening up my food budget for quite a while. But then we decided to get way more intentional with our spending and I decided to really figure a system out that I could stick with and that's what I'm teaching you in this workshop. Everyone's going to save a different amount of money depending on where you're starting from, depending on your family's needs, any specific type of food allergies or products you can and will and won't be able to use. But in this, you're still going to learn how to save money for you and your family. When I first started this, I didn't go from 2000 plan dollars down to 1200. I did it in baby steps. I moved it down to 1600, did well there, then refined more. And it just progressively got better as I kept practicing. So this three weeks is designed very specifically to teach you how to use what you already have. The food you already have living in your home, you've spent money on. It's like an investment. You've already spent money on it. So now we're going to use that to help you start to begin to save money right away. Then after that, we also start to look at your consistent staples that you buy on repeat all the time, whether it's detergent, toilet paper, whatever. And we're going to start to figure out where can you get the best price for your product consistently, not having to wait for special coupon stacking event and sale, just generally. And we were helping you create a system where you're doing almost all your shopping, your shopping blueprint at home before you're stepping in the store. So that way you're not surprised, you know exactly what you're gonna spend. You've got it all figured out. It's really easy peasy. And honestly, most people are overspending on groceries because they don't know what they already have. They're just buying stuff randomly. They buy stuff because it catches their eye and it sounds good and it looks delicious or they have good intentions to use it. And then there's always those like, hey, random, somebody takes you out for dinner one night or family comes into town and you go out to eat. Well, that meal that you, if you are super planned and you have those ingredients still in your home and you don't repurpose them, it's kind of like wasted money because you had planned to make a meal for that day, but you went out to eat. And we're going to talk about incorporating eating out into your family's budget and how you might want to do that and plan for it so you're not basically wasting money by feeding your family twice, right? Planning a meal at the grocery store and taking them out to eat. Pick one or the other, right? We're going to be working on that as well. So then at the end, we're going to talk about other continuations you can do, whether you do choose to do coupons, rebates, whether you're looking at ways to buy stuff in bulk and make it go to your advantage, or whether you want to start making more things from scratch at home. I'm going to give you lots of additional money-saving tips, some of which I do and some of which, to be honest with you, I haven't done coupons and rebating just because I did it for so long before. I really don't want to, quite honest. I know how to. I just don't want to. but some people might be at a phase of life or maybe they haven't experienced it and they want to do it so I want to teach you all of the skills I know so this is a really great workshop it's a way for you to start saving money immediately we do it together it's an action-based workshop where we're going to be sharing what we're doing as we're going through the process and our goal is to take you from where you are starting wise with your budget and reduce it over the three weeks so anyway you can sign up at halfsizeme.com forward slash cart the two payment option is no longer available but if you still want to sign up the price is really reasonable we have the one payment option we are starting on may 21st you have a great day enjoy today's coaching call and i will be back with you next week lovely listeners today we have miss sam on the line with us and is Sam. I'd love for you to come on, say hi to everybody, and then maybe jump into whatever you're currently struggling with so I can get you some help today, okay? Hi, everyone. I'm Sam. What I'm struggling mostly is my weight that, like, it drops, but then I keep going back into the original phase of it, and I have tried everything, anything possible, but it seems to be working like only for maybe good week and then I see my scale back up to normal and don't know why okay don't know what else to do sure sure sure sure how long have you been um doing this cycle has this cycle just been like within the last couple months or have you been doing this longer than that I mean longer than that um I stick to a plan and then like when I get frustrated seeing my weight back to normal and it just like frustrates me and obviously I eat more but then I like I'm on and off on and off on it gotcha okay and so um how are you evaluating your weight are you just looking at it day to day or are you looking at your weekly average weight it really varies sometimes I'll do daily sometimes um with with the swing not moving out at all then I'll just like you know do weekly or even I haven't even checked it for like the past week or so yet from this point. So based on everything you just told me, if you were hearing this call from somebody else, what would you say this person's problem is? They can't maintain their weight loss or they can't keep up with it? Right. What I hear is that your consistency depends on the weight loss, right? So basically, if you're not seeing the result that week, you said, I go and I eat stuff and I gain it back. Right. So you're kind of switching your behaviors based on the scale. Does that sound true? I mean, I don't really like sit there and eat whole entire week. Maybe like once a week, I'll have a cheat day or something. And then that cheat day brings it back to like, back to the beginning where I started. And that makes like no sense to me. Gotcha. Okay. So it does, because do you know how much the human body fluctuates in weight every day? Think about two to three pounds daily. Two to six, actually. Two to six pounds. So if you're looking at your weight, right, and you're seeing one day it goes up, that could freak you out, right? But if that something kind of normal that the body does and let say you were eating and what calories are you eating when you trying to lose weight What are the calories that you trying to eat I'm trying to stick to like 1,400. Okay. But then my problem is my like, whatever plan I am on, whether it's like intermittent fasting or whether it's like eating only three times a day. I am very good at when it comes to morning and like afternoon. I think what messes me up more or what I don't know how to control or how to manage that is probably my like dinner side of it. Like when I come back from work, I will like, I want a few minutes to sit down, have a cup of tea. And then with that cup of tea, I might like eat something or munch into something. I'd rather want crunchy than a toast. I think that will mess me up. When I like for dinner, I really don't know how to evaluate my dinner. So maybe that messes me up. But then it works when I I'm in a like a circle hoop loop. I don't know what I'm saying or what I'm gonna do. Okay. So do you when you leave your house in the morning, do you know what dinner is going to be before you get home or are you trying to decide when you get home what dinner will be? See, like I do meal prep. I cook like once a week and then it will last me for like kind of whole week. So I like I already know what it is, what the dinner will be. But the thing is, I don't work for rice eater. And then I don't know if I overtake my rice. I really don't know. Gotcha. Okay. So you know what dinner will be and then you overeat the rice. Is that correct? Maybe. Yes. Okay. All right. And you have a snack when you come home and is all that part of your 1400 calories or is that on top of it? No, it's, it's within, I'm usually under the calories. So that's another thing that I don't understand. I'm always like, you know, under calorie deficiency, but I don't know why the, things don't work out for me then. Sure. And when you put the rice on your plate, you're weighing it on a food scale, correct? No, I'm eyeballing it. Ah, okay. So that's number one. All right. So, so here's a couple of things. One, I would highly encourage you to not do plans like intermittent fasting and things like that. I would, I would have a calorie budget and then eat when you're hungry within that calorie budget, right? So some days you might not be hungry for breakfast and you might skip breakfast or you might have like eat at 11 and maybe that's breakfast and lunch combined. But if you're hungry one morning, you know, you might need to eat something. So if you have those harsh restrictions on yourself, you might see you getting overly hungry later because you skipped meals. So that's number one. Like your calorie budget is the only essential piece to you losing this weight. Okay. Everything else is kind of like ways that you can create the calorie deficit, skipping a meal, eating three meals with no snacks. All of those are strategies to create the calorie deficit. Does that make sense? Yeah. Now what happens to most people is one, they eyeball. And so what they don't realize is a hundred grams of cooked rice is very little. It's very little food, not much food. So that's 100 calories. So if you're, say, putting on your plate two or three servings of rice, not realizing it because it's fluffy and all that kind of stuff, you might be eating 200 to 300 calories when you think you're eating 100 calories. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So for one week, first thing I would have you commit to is weighing your food on a food scale. And that means that when you track it, you know, you're going to attract, and this is how I track it. I cook all my rice and then I put it on my plate in a hundred gram portions. A hundred gram cooked rice is a half a cup. 200 grams is a cup. So that way, when I go to record it, if you, are you using like a MyFitnessPal or LoseIt app? I, yeah, LoseIt app but it's one that I'm using. Okay. Most people have, or most apps have cooked and raw. They have both of those in there. So I would encourage you to look for cooked rice in grams and track it that way. That would be number one. Number two, when you start to feel frustrated with the scale and you might eat a little bit more, do you track all the stuff you eat on those days or do you not track? um I try but it varies it varies uh day to day but I try to track what I eat and if I went over or if I went if I was still under um but again it varies okay and when you go off plan like when you get frustrated with the scale and you eat what what does that look like like what do you eat on top of your lunch, breakfast, all that? Like, what would you eat on top of that? I mean, honestly, nothing, nothing to that extreme, but I might grab a, you know, a bag of chip or I might take, on top of that, I might take a little bit of a candy. Okay. Okay. So it would be kind of a normal day of eating for you. Same dinner, same lunch, same that, but you might grab a bag of candy or a bag of chips? Yes. Okay. So here's what I want you to do. When do you normally use your lose it app? Do you wait till you eat breakfast and then record your stuff? Or do you do it before you eat? I usually if I know what I'm eating for breakfast, lunch, snack, I'll log it as I know already know, like, you know what I will be eating. Sure. Okay. And so a quick change we're going to make to that if you're gonna have rice at dinner, you're going to put 100 grams cooked rice or 200 grams cooked rice, right? So that way you can weigh and measure it. But then what I want you to start to do every day, okay, I want you to put in the bag of chips and the bag of candy, I want you to pre log it. So it should be part of your day as if you're going to do it. Okay. And then at the end of the day, if you don't do it, you're going to just hit delete, delete. Okay. But that's when you're getting ready to go to bed at night. So what does that what will that make your calories look like first thing in the morning, if you, if you track lunch, breakfast, dinner, snack, and then the bag of candy, the bag of, of chips, what would that look like in your calories? No idea. Okay. Well, I would say you're probably going to add anywhere from four to 500 calories to a typical day. So would that be like 1900 or 2000 for you? Maybe. Yeah, because you're aiming for 1400, correct? Right. Okay. So if I start out, oh, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I feel like I'm always not like eating full amount of my calories either. And that's where weighing your food is going to come in handy, right? So let's say at dinner, you put rice, chicken and green beans. OK, and you're going to weigh the chicken. And let's say you're going to track four ounces of cooked chicken. Well, you're going to put it on your food scale and you're going to see, is this actually four ounces? Because to your point, a lot of people will underestimate their protein, but they overestimate their carbohydrates, meaning you might say, oh, that's four ounces of chicken. I'm eyeballing it. Right. But really, it's only two ounces of chicken. So you're going to be hungry later because you're not eating four ounces of chicken. Right. Same thing with the rice. People will say, oh, that's a cup of rice. And really, it's a cup and a half of rice. So the things they like, right, they tend to be like under. And the things that they're kind of like, I'll eat the chicken because I know it will help me, but it's not my favorite. You know, they tend to, and proteins especially, they tend to get underestimated. and that's a good way see you're you're checking on both sides you're saying am i actually eating four ounces of chicken and am i actually eating a cup of rice you're checking in to see if that's true do you see what i mean yeah okay and that way because if you're if you're not really hitting the 1400 calories because you're either over or under or whatever this will give you a chance to correct that so that way it accurate Okay Okay And then the reason we tracking the candy and the chips is because the days you get frustrated that what you eat right Pretty much yes Yeah So if we track it every day and then we end up not having it every day and we delete it, what's that going to train your mind to know about those two extra foods? That it will increase my calorie take? Yeah, by about 500, right? So that way you're aware of that when you're making that decision. Now let's talk for a second about the scale. Okay. Cause the relationship I think you have with the scale isn't helping you. Um, what I would encourage you to do is think about weighing in three times per week. Okay. And add them together, divide by three, your weight on a day to day basis fluctuates two to six pounds. That's a lot. And if it's your time of the month, it's, it can even be more than that. I've had a client where it's 10 pounds during her time of the month. So if that fluctuation occurs and it affects you, you knowing your average weight will be much more helpful because then you look at the average weight from week one, average weight from week two, average week from week three, and you should see a downward trend in those averages. Does that make sense? Yes. Now, do you have an iPhone or an Android? iPhone. Okay. You could get the Happy Scale app and it can actually help you with this. Have you heard me talk about that app before? I have on one of your podcasts. Yes. Yeah. Have you ever played with it? Tried it out? I don't think so. Okay. For you, for someone who's struggling with what you're struggling with, that would be a great tool to lean into. It'll do all the heavy lifting for you. You just have to put your weight in on the days you weigh in and it'll start to calculate it for you. Okay. Okay. So now real quick, let's go back to everything we've talked about. So we've talked about pre-planning the candy and the chips, weighing your food for two weeks, just do it for two weeks because you'll learn everything you need to know if you do it for two weeks solid. Based on what we're talking about, have you tried any of these things before or do you just kind of keep doing the same thing over and over again? It's just very frustrating. Initially I did. I got the weight scale. I started reading it. It gets annoying at one point. Yeah. I like reading everything and like, you know, I like I do pre-meal prep. So like doing all that with everything else gets annoying so I stopped doing that sure um I sometimes would like just grab like you know those breakfast bars and then because I know calorie is right there I also notice with my app when I take a picture of an image compared to versus where I log it manually the calories are less when I log it manually whereas As I take the picture, calories are like skyrocketing. Yeah. I'm not exaggerating a little, but like, you know, calories are a big difference. Yeah. Because when that picture is taken, they don't know what goes into that recipe. So if it's AI technology, it's having to guess so much oil, so much sugar, so much things that might not be visible in that photograph. So you're probably better off logging it manually and then just saving it. Like you said, you make a meal and you eat it for the whole week, right? Well, I would actually just save that as like, say that week it's, I don't know, taco bowls or something. I would just say taco bowls and I would put whatever portions you always use in there. So that way you don't have to keep redoing it. You just have to hit taco bowls and add it immediately. Now with the weighing your food, did you not set a time limit on it when you did it and I'm just doing this for two weeks to see what's going on. Or did you think you were going to do it all the time? I did not. Okay. Yeah. So Wayne, you don't have to do now. I will say this for some people, they'll find there's a food. It could be peanut butter. It could be cream cheese. It could be shredded cheese. It could be, it could be rice. For some people, they may find there's one food that they tend to have a hard time eyeballing and the food scale could be very helpful for that. But because I'm assuming you're batch cooking your rice, you know what you could do? You could get individual smaller Tupperware containers and you could put a cup of rice in each one one time. And then that way you don't have to weigh it all week long. Okay. Have you tried that method before? Um, no, because my rice is cooked fresh every day. Gotcha. Okay. So then, yeah, you may have to use the food scale. Um, unless are you, um, when you cook the rice, how many servings do you cook? Uh, well, I, I cook in a bulk, so I cook for a whole family. Okay. So, okay. So I think for you, maybe the food scale, if rice is the problem, like if that's the food that tends to get away from you, it might serve you to weigh your portion of rice out just to help you make sure you're actually getting what you're supposed to be getting. But it doesn't mean you have to do every single food item. Once you know the problem foods, you can kind of focus on those. Okay. Okay. All right. Now, this is not a linear process. And I think this might be part of the underlying issue too. If you're really quote unquote good for a week and you eat your 1400 calories, there might be lag time and seeing progress on the scale. So what do you think is a realistic timeframe for you? What are you, what are you thinking you should be doing each month? Each month as far as, uh, changing my diet or progress, um, changing it around maybe. No, what I mean is, um, what is your expectation of what your weight loss should be um i mean i would be happy to see a drop every time or see it consistent you know like i don't it just like doesn't make sense to me that it goes back up to the same point for example let's say if i'm 150 and then by doing all my diets and whatnot and i was like at maybe 145 and then three days later i'm back to like 150 i'm like wait what Like, you know. Okay. So now saying that out loud, based on what you and I have talked about in this call, what would you say now that you heard yourself say that? What would you say back to that person knowing what you now know? Eat your food and stick to your plan. Okay. That's a good one. Yeah. Eat your food and stick to your plan because not sticking to your plan leads to it going back the other way. But would you tell somebody logically your weight may go back up to 150? Like if a body weight can fluctuate two to six pounds and you jump on the scale one day and you're like, oh no, I was 145 yesterday and now I'm 150. You know, they're freaking out. You'd say, well, actually that's within the realm of normal. Like there's nothing bad that happened here. But if this person is averaging their weight and let's say week one, their average weight was 150, right? Then they take the next week and they average the weight. They may have a 150 in there, but they might have a 147 and they might have a 148 and they go, oh, look, my average weight went down to 149. Well, this person just lost a pound. But that day that they weighed in at 150, if they freaked out and they said, oh no, I'm going to have the chips and the candy because I'm upset that my weight went up to 150. They didn't get a chance to see that their weight went down a pound from week one. Do you see what I mean? Yes. So what you really have to do, and this is going to be hard, you have to give yourself four weeks of being consistent. So we're talking today, September the 12th. So I would block out September the 12th to October the 12th. And what I would do is I'd say I can change what I'm doing on October the 12th, but I can't change it before then. Because I got to give myself four full weeks of doing this to see if I can make progress, right? So here's what, here's what you should be able, let's say I talked to you on October 12th. This is what you should be able to tell me. Okay. You should be able to tell me your four weeks of weight averages, not your weight on the scale, but your weight average. That means you weighed yourself three times added it together divide by three week one same thing for week two week three and week four So you should have four weeks of weight averages You should be able to give me your average calorie intake for all four weeks So my average calories for week one were 1470. Second week, I ate 1501. You should be able to tell me that information for all four weeks. Okay, so weekly calorie intake. The thing I would ask you on the next call would be over that two weeks that you weighed your food, what was being mis, what was being misportioned? Were you underestimating your chicken or, or things like that? Were you overestimating rice? Was, was your, was your eyeballing it correct or not correct? Okay. So what happens in between this whole month, I, there's two, three events back to back or within like every week, there is something that, you know a birthday party a wedding against an engagement what do i do in that situation so what would you normally do if we hadn't had this call today what was how do you normally handle it normally like i would like eat very less throughout the day maybe like a um oatmeal or a banana and then i would like drag my day with like water or tea or something like that And then at the party, would you overeat? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So I'm glad you asked this question because you said you have two or three of these this month. Is that right? I'm just saying things like things come up. Nothing is planned right now, but things come up and then my diet goes down the drain all the time. So I'm just asking, just asking. And when we talk about that word consistency, do you see how between getting frustrated with the scale because it said 150 and having social get togethers, maybe on the weekend parties, how those things through the course of the month cause you to not have this consistent data. Do you see that? Yes. Okay. So at the parties, here's the first thing I want you to do. I want you to plan a normal day of eating. So you're not going to do actually oatmeal and banana is kind of the worst thing to do. I hate to say that because yeah, those are quick. Those are, those are a lot of carbs. It does protein is going to be your most satiating macronutrient. So like if I was going to come in and save you from yourself, I'd be like, here's a nice big egg white omelet for breakfast with some fresh veggies and maybe some fruit at lunch. Let's go ahead and have some grilled chicken, maybe a really nice big salad with some avocado on it. Like we would, we would get the protein nailed because what I know is if you go into that party hungry, you're going to overeat. It's just human, it's biology. It's not even you. I mean, this is just, humans are driven that way. Okay. So if you hold off on food during the day and you just give yourself simple carbohydrates that rush through your system, you're of course going to go crazy at the party. Of course you are. So then after that, I would tell you to plan a meal at the event that is honest. So can you think of the last party you went to? Was it recent? No, it's been a while. Okay. Well, let's just pretend. Let's say you go to a party, maybe think of one you have gone to, and what was some of the food that was offered that you saw yourself eating i mean there's usually a lot in the parties right there's like noodles rice chicken salad i mean there's everything you name it like snacks and tea um there's desserts like all right so what you what you're tending to do are you or is there anything you try to avoid when you go to these events? I do. I'll try to watch some. Sometimes I'll control. Sometimes I don't, you know, if there's like two, three desserts, I'll only try one that I really want to try. Um, and sometimes like, I'll be like, I don't want any snack with the tea because I know like, you know, I want to enjoy my dinner. So, okay. So what we're going to do is the opposite of that. We're going to plan for everything. We're going to say, okay, in your app in the morning, you're going to put that breakfast and luncheon, and then you're going to go to dinner. And let's just say, and it doesn't even matter if it's accurate food, because you're going to change it at night when you come home. Okay. But I love how you plan one dessert. I think that's great. Plan one dessert. And it could be like, if you think, okay, I'm just going to throw a piece of cheesecake in here. I have no clue what dessert they're going to offer. I'm going to throw a slice of cheesecake. Okay. Dessert's taken care of. I know there'll be some kind of rice or pasta. So maybe I put two cups of rice in my food log, right? So I'm going to, I'm going to pre-track that. I heard you mentioned some kind of a protein. So I might say, okay, let me put four ounces of chicken or let me put four ounces of steak. I'm going to put that. I'm going to put the snack that's going to go with the tea. I'm going to put it all in there. I'm not going to miss a single thing because I'd rather you get an honest view of what that looks like. And then while you're at the party, not starving, by the way, because you ate breakfast, you ate lunch, right? You could say, hey, you know what? I had planned to have two cups of rice, six ounces of steak, one piece of dessert. But you know what? I'm actually kind of content. Maybe I do half the dessert and take half of it home with me. Or maybe when I sit down to have my tea and my snacks, I might pick only two snacks out of four that I pre-logged. And I get to delete two when I go home tonight. So you get to take this big calorie number. Let's just say it's 4,000 calories. And you, by the time you get done at the end of the night, maybe you shave off a thousand calories because you didn't eat all the food. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. But right now you don't have an honest depiction of how many calories you probably spend because you probably don't track most of that. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. See, and that's step number one. You have to know that frustration you feel because you feel like you can't get traction. It's often because we don't really know what those party holiday get togethers calorie wise are actually running us. And when we see it, we're like, oh, wow, this is part of the reason I haven't been able to get traction. Not only am I not doing the behaviors when I see that 150 on the scale, like I kind of go off track a little bit. But then if I have two or three of these events in a month and it's 3000 calories, I didn't know it was 3000 calories. Right. So now I'm aware of that. So when I think about it, I can make better choices and I don't have to like pretend it's not happening. Okay. Does that sound good? Yeah. All right. Is there any questions about anything we just covered? no I think I'm good I often do feel bloated so maybe that's I don't know well that could just be something you're sensitive to too or it could be because when you go to the parties or do certain things maybe you over consume and you feel bloated or maybe it's food that you're is just a little different for you and that might be causing it too but you could keep a journal on that you know when you feel bloated and notice what you ate that day and just kind of see if there's any correlations there. Okay. Yeah. But your big thing, weigh your food for two weeks. It comes down to pre-logging the bag of chips and the candy every single day. Even if you're not thinking you're going to have it, you'll just delete it at night. Pre-planning these events, honestly, and actually eating normal breakfast and lunch before you go. Okay. Average weight, average calories, making sure that you are planning in things to your day. So that way you can delete them at night. That's the big thing. I don't want you to not get the data collected because then you're going to always feel confused. You're going to say, I don't know. But the truth is if you journal everything in the beginning of the day and you don't eat it, you just delete it. It's not a problem. Do you see what I mean? Awesome. Is this helpful for you today? Yes. Thank you so much. Yes, ma'am. You have a great day. Okay. You do. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Be sure to visit halfsizeme.com. Check back often for your daily dose of inspiration because you are worth it. The information you hear on this podcast is for informational purposes only. The host is not a medical professional. You should always consult with your doctor, nurse, or other certified health professional before beginning any diet or fitness program. .