Episode #315: What You Need to Focus on for Fat Loss (and What to STOP Worrying About)

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good in your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals and how to get them on the table make food that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies well in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main Episode:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to today’s podcast episode. Thank you so much for being here for joining me. I’m so happy you’re here. And I’m excited to dive in. I hope your day your week. Your minute here your hour is going well whatever you’re doing, and today we are going to talk about focusing on the right things now what are the right things, health and fitness should not be so confusing. And that is part of why I even have this podcast part of why I try to spread a simple message you know for those of us who just want like down and dirty nitty gritty like tell me what is actually okay what is not because there’s so much confusion. I’ve done a couple podcast episodes, you can go back and listen to them if you haven’t yet about food marketing and how it is confusing. Like there’s keto slapped on cookies and we’re thinking okay, is keto, good for me, then are these cookies good for me because they’re keto or non GMO is that something I should care about? Oh, eggs are bad for you. Eggs are good for you don’t do dairy, definitely do dairy, but do full fat, like there are so many confusing things. And in some of those that specifically I mentioned, like say the full fed dairy versus no dairy, there are just personal preferences. And there’s total bio individuality where somebody’s body is going to handle something better than somebody else’s. And sometimes it’s really inexplicable. I’ve listened to, there was a PhD nutritionist out there, Dr. Elaine Norton, some of you might be familiar with, and I forget whose podcast I was listening to him on. But he was talking about how you can have all the studies and allergy testing in the world. But you also know what your body handles best. If you just feel bloated after white carbs good, then, you know, don’t eat white carbs, you know, you don’t always need these hard and fast, like scientific backed research studies to, you know, tell you that you feel best when you eat something or when you don’t eat something I think similar with, you know, as intermittent fasting good for me is not good for me. Okay, studies have shown it does not actually burn more fat to do it this way. However, maybe you personality wise, temperament wise, just you better having a window so that it helps you from overeating. Or maybe you just feel a lot better when you wake up in the morning if you’ve had time to let your body digest. So all of these things, you know, could be individualized, and they’re kind of nuanced and a little bit deeper in the conversation. What I think and what I know, from working with women for over 10 years is a lot of times we like to focus on the nuanced things and not the basics. And this is what is getting in the way of us gaining any kind of traction, gaining some momentum keeping momentum making progress. And I’m totally like this. So as with most things when I talk about something, it’s because I’ve struggled with it or currently struggle with it. A lot of these topics that we talked about on the podcast are not a one and done we’d love them to be I would love them to be. We talked about emotional eating once. It all makes sense and like how what Bernie talked about makes sense. And then we just solved it right? Like, no, absolutely not, these things keep popping back up. And you know, we need reminders, all that. So, I am like this in the way of, you know, maybe organization or something like that where I will think, okay, I always get disorganized. In my room, I have this one little table that I keep, sometimes work stuff on sometimes like nice notes or something on it’s kind of my catch all spot for stuff that’s mine that I don’t know what to do with to be honest. So I’ll have sometimes like, just random notes for a workout that I want to put in next month’s program or something, or then I have a thank you note from a friend, then I have a like Happy Mother’s Day card that I didn’t, you know, put anywhere yet from my own child, whatever. It’s like the catch all spot. So instead of thinking, Okay, what’s the real problem here? Why is this become the catch all, I think you know what I need to do, I need to go to the store and need to go to TJ Maxx and get some like gold pretty dividers, and oh, maybe even like a label maker, because maybe the problem is I’m just going to make labels for stuff. And then I’ll get some, like, cute rose gold pens, and like, I’ll just jazz up this area, and it becomes this out, you know, $150 Later, in the month later, it’s still looking like a mess, because I didn’t really take care of the actual problem, I didn’t just get rid of some clutter, I don’t need all of this extra stuff, I just need to put things where they need to go instead of making that my catch all spot, you know, it’s a very generic and the big kind of example. But it sounds funny. I’ve had clients do this all the time. And I do this too with my own health, you know, where we’ll have a coaching call, or we’ll be emailing or something, somebody in a program and saying, like, I just you know, my joints just don’t feel great. Like, what do you think maybe I should take tumeric? Or maybe I should start taking tart cherry juice? Like, I feel like most of us, our natural instinct is to add something even like you could take that a step further, without going on a huge tangent like lent admin, instead of getting our lives in order in ways that we already could we we look to add things often I think I think it’s like a human inclination here. So I will This is true conversations I’ve actually had with many clients is exactly about this joint health. And they’ll say, Do you think I should add, like, take Tumeric pills, or drink tart cherry juice? or this or that or what’s your experience with it? And then I’ll ask some leading questions like, well, what’s your sugar intake? Like? Oh, well, I’ve been pretty good. But I mean, yeah, I guess like we ate out this weekend, and we had some cheesecake. And then, like, I’ve been having some more stuff at summer barbecues. So you know, I guess I probably had a lot more white sugar in my diet than I normally do. And yeah, I have been drinking a little bit like more than normal, because we’ve had social events, and we kind of gotta get, peel back the layers and get more to the root of it. And I’ll say, you know, before we need to worry about adding in supplements and spending money on other things that we might not need. We just need to get back to basics. I think the reason we have this human inclination is because often the getting back to basics part is what’s harder, it’s more of a band aid to go out, spend money and we feel like we get that false sense that we are taking a step in a positive direction. And that we’re solving the problem when really, we haven’t solved the problem, we’re kind of masking it throwing a quick fix solution at it, which might work for a day if you go back to my desk. If I’m excited to have it looking all nice, then maybe I’ll be inspired to keep it nice but if I don’t learn how to just put things where they need to go right away or have a day of the week I do that or something like that. That problem just gonna keep coming back. So similar here at the Tumeric thing or the tart cherry juice is one I hear a lot and it’s a big example and we’ll go through then what those basics what uncluttering looks like, but other ones I’ve heard Oh, I flipped my outline here. Way waist trainers worrying about taking CLA or different like fat loss supplements. Okay, this is another big one. I will hear you know, you What do you think about CLA which some of you may or may not know it’s supposed to accelerate its its claims to accelerate fat loss. Okay, maybe I should start taking CLI or do you think I should wear waist trainer when I’m on doing my cardio or what do you think about it’s always it’s usually some new flashy thing that we’ve heard or seen on a commercial or a friend is using or whatever. Now?
Same thing here. Okay. You’re gonna ask me about CLA to accelerate fat loss. What are we currently doing for fat loss?

I would go through a little checklist with you like are we eating in a calorie deficit so burning more calories than you’re taking in? Are we doing strength training workouts and increasing our NEET your overall movement, your non exercise Activity Thermogenesis Are you just moving more? You know these aren’t drinking enough water. What do your macros look like? Are you over eating If you’re overeating, taking CLA is it’s literally like putting lipstick on a pig to be very blunt, as I typically am, which is why some of you keep coming back to this podcast and others of you might say, this is not podcast for me. Another quick aside one day, this was not nice, I’m not I need to work on compassion always and softening my blindness. And my husband was like, our, our deck is in need of help. We need to kind of re build it, resupport it, but it’s kind of it’s still doable, still hanging in there. But there’s a lot of things that you know, are holding us back from doing that, because we’re like, Well, what if, you know, we decided to do an addition. So we would do that before the deck, yada, yada. So lots of thought and discussion going into that. But my husband was adamant that he wanted to stain it. Now he stains the deck, like every summer, this is the thing. He just likes a fresh stain deck. So that’s great. However, we’re, you know, basically, exactly that putting lipstick on a pig. And the one day though, my brother was out there. And he was started at during naptime and the kids were up and running out with the family. It was the weekend. So he’s out there doing it till like 10 o’clock at night. He’s got lights on, there’s mosquitoes out, he finished up. He’s like, What do you think I’m like, Well, you know, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig, but looks pretty good. He’s like, honestly, that’s what I got for all this. And I obviously realized how cruel and harsh that sounded, and then later thanked him for doing it and all that.

But it’s true. I think a lot of us do that with our fitness nutrition, because we don’t want to change the things when we know we need to change because it’s harder, it is harder to go back and lay some foundation get the fundamental needs in place. It’s easier to think about that, again, the examples I showed you to buy something to buy a CLA supplement, to buy a, you know, even my desk example to go buy some organizers a lot of times, that’s what we think will solve it. That’s actually something I liked and took away from Marie Kondo, his way of organizing where when I first read her book years and years ago, before the show and everything, she talked about how you’re gonna get the urge, when you want to clutter to go out and buy a bunch of bins and stuff and how you don’t need to do that. She encouraged just using like, straight parts of cardboard boxes, like the top flaps of cardboard boxes just to use as separators in your drawers. And to do that, because yes, there’s I love like, that is my love language to just take long walks down organizing aisles, seriously, but we don’t need it. So what does this extra click? What can I leave you with? To be think about this? Okay, Brittany, I get it. You don’t want me to think about fat loss supplements or really any supplements in general until we’re covering the basics. What are those basics look like?

Number one, drinking 80 to 100 ounces of water? Yes, it can vary by body weight, but it keeps it pretty basic pretty covers the bases for most people, if you are exercising, and you are moving around at all, you know, not totally sedentary, 80 to 100 ounces is better you can you shouldn’t be drinking probably more if you’re breastfeeding. If you’re really active if you’re working out in the sun, those kinds of things, but 80 to 100 covers it for most people. Okay, what else should you be doing?

Number two, getting this is such a hard one, I know, sleeping seven to nine hours a night. Now I know some of you are hearing that who are pregnant and have insomnia or have a newborn or just have kids that get up all the time. And you’re not a newborn, but everybody else is waking up having nightmares, wetting the bed, all that stuff. And that interferes with it. So I get that. I know this is such a hard one for many of our seasons of life. But we’ve talked about this a little bit recently, I have an episode about how to get more sleep as a mom and things like that. We need to control what we can control. So we need to get in bed for that seven to nine hours as much as we can. And then if it’s interrupted, it is what it is. But a lot of times we’re not getting that seven to nine hours. Because we’re staying up to watch a show and having a glass of wine, like all these things that are going to affect our sleep negatively. And this really cannot be minimized. This is something I used to hear in my 20s I’m like, Oh yeah, sleep, okay. And then I’d stay out till one and be drinking and then not to access just drinking, dancing, having fun. And then I would be teaching a 5am spin class or 8am on the weekend was my latest one. And I did not care about sleep and thought oh no, I still feel fine. Whatever. There is so much that is affected by our sleep. And by being in a sleep deprived state. And hormones are the biggest thing I can say about that. I’ve talked about that a little bit in the past. I can do another episode on it too. But we are literally just trying to run against the tide here swim against the tide. If we are not getting enough sleep and then we’re trying to work out we’re trying to eat healthy because our hormones are working against us. Our cortisol is high our body’s gonna cling to fat So sleep is super important. If you’re thinking about taking CLA to get fat loss go and just go to bed an hour earlier. Okay, start with what you can, like I said, control what you can control that might mean saying no to some things that might even mean sleeping in longer and missing a workout because you need that sleep. Okay, sleep is a very important pillar of health.

All right, next up, so one was water to asleep three, getting around 10,000 steps a day, this is pretty across the board recommended for overall health. So we want to get moving, I know our lives are set up to be so sedentary. And a lot of young moms tell me all the time like Oh, I’m so active, I’m so active. When really if they were wearing a watch, or are wearing a Fitbit, or any of those things, they will see that typically, I will speak more with the winter months now fall and winter. First Steps are usually not there. And this is me speaking from experience because I felt active, I was really active when I had one. And I was still doing a lot of my normal life stuff. He was coming with me to the gym. So I was running a bunch of errands with him all the time. Once it got to two and then three, those winter months. I was like, I put my phone on me one day, because I don’t have any kind of trackers, I just put my phone in my pocket and looked at it. And I was like 600 steps at noon or something like that, because, and I felt tired. You know, like it’s tiring, taking care of little people and answering all the questions. But it’s a different kind of fatigue. It’s not necessarily physical activity. So we need to get our steps in it’s a great season to do it. Find ways if you work full time you’re at a desk, maybe you can get a walking path or a treadmill, desk thing, little standing desk, maybe you get a treadmill off Facebook marketplace. That’s what we did years ago. It’s in our basement. And like the other morning, I knew I had to answer emails, I actually had to submit my homeschool letter of intent for the next year, I wanted to start ordering curriculum. So I had all this stuff to do. And I really wanted to go for a walk outside because my husband was home in the morning. Like, you know what, I can’t sacrifice the time I have too much to do this week. So I’m taking it to the treadmill and I propped my laptop up. And I walked for 30 minutes. And then at the end of my 30 minutes, my letter was submitted, my curriculum was almost totally ordered, except I’d like to bookstore to when I got off. And there we go. So try to find ways to up that maybe it’s a fit, because I know you’d want to sacrifice family time either. Maybe it’s a family walk a couple times a week. If you can’t, you know swing that everyday, we definitely can swing that every day. We could do that a couple times a week here. All right, next up strength training at least three times a week, if you’re going to tell me Brittany, I am not losing fat. My joints feel like crap, I’m so tired. And then you tell me you’re not strength training three times a week, I’m just gonna walk away, you know, but seriously, if you’ve been here any length of time, strength training is the way to go. Some of you still don’t believe me, and I will get emails from you. And he will say I get what you’re saying. But I’m like more of a runner. Or I just really like cardio that’s great. Like your cardio to your peloton after your lift or three days a week you’re lifting and the other two or three days, you’re getting your spin on, you’re getting your walk on, you’re getting your run on, you need to be strength training, hormone wise, metabolism wise, you do not realize how much strength training impacts your metabolism in a positive way. And seriously, what I’ve cared more about recently, is age proofing. You really I mean, we’re all going to age, we’re all we’ve talked about recently being okay with the changes of our bodies as we age, yes. But there’s also a lot that we can do to keep ourselves in the best quality of life as we can. As we age. Hmm. Okay, passionate about that. I’m fired up over here. Two more for you. You need to be doing these pillars not worrying about supplements and whatnot. If you are not eating mostly whole clean foods. This one is huge. They’re all huge, and I can’t like underline and highlight them enough. processed food makes us feel like crap, I should say highly processed food makes us feel like crap. So if you are not seeing progress, if you’re feeling like you can’t stop eating, if you’re feeling like you have crazy cravings, think about the foods you turn to if it’s Doritos, I’m even saying trying to do them in moderation. But if your your fun foods, your 20% say I talked about all the time on here if you’re eating 80% whole clean foods 20% treats that’s what I promote and preach. But that 20% Looks like really sugary, highly processed foods. Or, like I just mentioned Doritos, Oreos, those kinds of things, you are, again, kind of setting yourself up to be swimming against the tide. Because those kinds of foods make you crave more of them. It’s very, very hard to just eat one serving of something that’s highly processed. Whereas if you make a cake yourself with the ingredients and you have some nice, whole clean food ingredients, right better quality, maybe you’re making some like dark chocolate peanut butter cups or something. You can typically only eat one or two because it’s so rich, it’s so indulgent. It’s different than when you’re just sitting there popping Reese’s Pieces. They’re manufactured to make you want more so Do you need to eat whole clean foods 80% of the time 80% of your plate should look like now this could have variants in it, like I talked about at the beginning of the podcast where you might lean a little more one way or the other, you might choose to eat grain free, you might incorporate grains, that’s all great. Whatever those whole clean foods looked like to should be 80%. And for most of us, that should look like a ton of vegetables, it’s also a great season to do that load of that plate. I’ve been roasting vegetables almost every day. The other day, we just had a whole sheet pan of asparagus and broccoli, and then I still served a side salad with it. And then we had some kind of chicken or I don’t remember what else I served with, if there was obviously a protein and some kind of carbon there, but you know, lean into those veggies. Okay?

Lastly, what you should be worrying about, instead of worrying about all these other nonsensical things that people are trying to sell you is to get outside and get sunshine. Okay? This is so important for your overall health, for your mood, and for your mental health, to get outside, get some vitamin D, get some fresh air, and it also helps you 99% of your problems. I will also add to this list, here’s my little addendum since I said Lastly, daily prayer is also going to help like I know I’m talking about fat loss or just overall fitness and nutrition. But, you know, obviously we’re not in charge of our lives, we there’s so many things we can take ownership over. But there’s a lot we can control. And that we need to give to God and we need to you know, bring our praise to Him first, our concerns to him first, all of that. And I am not going to preach on this all day because so many of you listening to this have such wonderful strong prayer lives that are truly an example to me and strong fates. So I’m sure so many of you are already set here and don’t need this reminder. But I assure you that some days I’m worrying about all these other things. Say we’re talking about a different arena right now say we’re talking about parenting, and I’m worrying about these kinds of lipstick on a pig things like to I do read alouds enough, do I make, you know off, I never make homemade fruit snacks, like all these things that my parents, my kids are not going to care about when they’re 30. And okay, they might care about me reading aloud, but you know what I mean? Like the things that we can hyper focus on, when I need to be thinking like, Okay, do I pray with them? Like, do we go to Mass? Do we cover those bases, like, the rest is gonna fall into place, and God will shower, his grace is down on us and our family, because we’re giving all that to him first, right? And we’re putting in his hands, we’re asking for his guidance. And truly, my days just go so much better when I am giving it to him first. Rather than trying to do this all myself and worry about everything we could most of us could get our VHD and worrying right and that does nothing help us what we need to do is a lot of times strip away, not add more, get back to the basics. Make sure that little checklist I just ran through. That is what you’re doing. Daily, most of those things are for daily right? Then think, okay, if you’re really doing all those things for months at a time, say two months, eight weeks, you’re very consistent. You don’t see any change any improvement in your overall health, then maybe it is time to consult somebody to get your blood tested. There could be thyroid issues, there could be different, like iron deficiencies that are keeping you so tired. That absolutely happens. And that you know, could be something you’re facing. But here’s the biggest trick. What I’m more often than not here is people are doing the yo yo thing, it’s they eat kind Clean Monday through like Thursday, then not on the weekend. Then the next week a kid was sick, they didn’t get their workouts in. But then the third week, they got their workouts in, but they were back to spotty eating, then it’s about that week four that they’ll tell me they haven’t seen progress. And maybe they need a fat burner, or maybe they need to joint supplement. No, you need to do all of these things. Right? One by one. Like we talked about adding a habit a day for June like or habit a weak focus on one at a time. Okay. But once all these key factors are in play consistently for several weeks for several good weeks and bank up on each other. That’s when we’re gonna see momentum, just like a budget. I’m making so many random analogies today. I hope you’ll follow the bouncing ball here with me. But it’s just like a budget where if you set a budget, but then some days you’re way over some days you spend the right amount, the next time you’re way over and then you get to the end of the month and you’re like well that did not work out. No, because some days you followed it some days you didn’t. So we need just be consistent, which is hard. Again, these things are hard. It’s hard to get back to basics and not throw money at something not throw a pill at something and just stay consistent over time. All right, I’m here to help you. I’m here to encourage Do you and I hope this motivates you. As always, if you want to join us in any of our healthy Catholic moms programs, we have the eight week challenge going on right now. So the next one for beginners is not until September, you can always hop on the waitlist for that just by emailing me Brittany at healthy Catholic moms.com. But that chasing greatness group is our monthly group which is always open for enrollment. You can try a two week free trial you can hop in with us if you already know it’s gonna be a good fit. It’s only 1499 a month you get new workouts every single month the videos are with me to great community of women. We do live workouts together once a month at least this month we actually have to and it you know helps stay the course and stay motivated to Alright ladies, I hope you have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you next time.

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