Turo Virta: 1:07

Welcome back to the Fit Me Turo Fitness podcast. A lot of people start a weight loss journey because they don't like what they see in the mirror, and sometimes that dissatisfaction becomes the fuel. Stricter diets, more exercise, guilt after eating, punishment after a bad weekend, and then and then the belief that once weight is gone. Confidence and happiness will finally arrive. But what happens if you lose the weight and never change the way you speak to yourself? My guest today is a Meccan girl who lost around 100 pounds and has maintained that that transformation for years. But what I found most interesting about Meghan's story isn't just the weight she lost; it's what she learned about emotional eating, anxiety, guilt, self-worth, and creating change without relying on extremes. Today we are going to talk about how to lose weight without hating yourself along the way. Why shame rarely creates sustainable change. How to recover from setbacks and what long-term weight maintenance really requires. Megan, welcome to the podcast.

Unknown: 2:17

Turo, thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Turo Virta: 2:21

Awesome. So, Megan, for someone hearing your story for the first time, can you take us back where you were before losing the weight?

Unknown: 2:31

Yes, I was in my mid 20s. I think that's the time where a lot of people start to realize there's things that they're doing and ways they're handling problems that other people around them aren't doing, and that's kind of what happened to me. I I realized I was, I was having this habit with food that I didn't see other people dealing with. I was eating a huge amount of fast food in the middle of the day all by myself. I felt kind of driven to do it. I felt like in the middle of my workday, I had a break between my two shifts, and I felt like I was. I guess the words would be so stressed about going back to work that I wanted to calm myself down any way that I could. So, what what built over time was this cycle of going to food to calm me down, going to that fast food to calm me down, and then feeling like I had this break in my day, and then actually feeling calmer and going back to work for the rest of the day, and you can imagine that got me quite heavy in a few years. That got me to about 235 pounds in the U.S. And it wasn't really the weight that caught my attention first. It was that food habit.

Turo Virta: 3:50

So, what was your relationship with food like at that point? It it

Unknown: 3:57

was kind of a ping pong between loving food, loving the taste, loving the hedonic aspect of tasting something amazing and letting it light up my brain, and then what happened right afterwards, which was guilty. I felt ashamed. I felt confused about how I didn't feel like I could stop at a reasonable portion, which I'm sure I know a lot of my clients have felt that in the past. I'm sure a lot of people can relate, and so it felt like this tug of war between I love food; it's something that calms me and brings me fun. But on the other end of it, it's a source of shame. It's a source of I can't control myself around this, and I at that point I didn't know what to do about it. I didn't I didn't know where to go.

Turo Virta: 4:47

But did you know what you kind of should be doing, but struggle to actually do it in do it consistently?

Unknown: 4:57

I was looking around me, which most of us do, looking around me to what what other people were doing to see what the approved way of handling food was. What I saw for especially women around me was eat eat a few regular meals a day, eat vegetables, want to eat salad, and that felt very odd to me. I never craved salad ever, so wanting to get green juices in the morning and keep my portions small and dainty, and then you know if there was a sweet treat, be able to stop at half the serving, or be able to to have a few bites, and then say, oh, that was great, no more for me. That was what I what was kind of told to me through you know movies, through TV, and through the ways people interacted with me, like you know, through through going to restaurants with people, you kind of see a kind of very I don't know what the word is, but treating food more neutrally, let's say. So, I felt that that was so foreign to me because I always felt a draw to food, even in the middle of the day. You can kind of tell this if this is you. Maybe two two hours after one meal, you're already thinking about the next meal, or you're already thinking about the the treat that you're going to have at home once you get done with the workday, so that's kind of a way you can tell if food is maybe taking up more of your brain than you really want

Turo Virta: 6:35

it to. So, what about like I I'm I assumed you had several diet or weight loss attempts. What did your first attempts at weight loss look like?

Unknown: 6:51

My first attempt at weight loss was in college. So here in the U.S. you have the freshman 15, which is the 15 pounds you put on when you're now out of your parents' you know, watchful eyes, and you have unlimited access to buffet food for some people who go to college. So I saw myself, you know, overweight for my height, overweight compared to other people, and I decided to lose weight in what I thought was a very reasonable method. I I I bought a book called The Dorm Room Diet, and I followed it step by step. I wrote out what my biggest motivation was, what I wanted to have for myself at the end of this weight loss journey. I started making all my meals full of vegetables. I I started tracking my calories. I and I did it quite quickly. So I lost 40 pounds probably over a few months. You know, so maybe three or four months, which is quite fast. Yeah. And that weight came back on over a few few years. I basically put on 90 pounds after that. Yeah. So and that's kind of what what a lot of us experience when you lose weight quickly and in these ways that you never think about keeping up these actions for the years to follow your diet. You just think about the month ahead of you, don't you? And it makes you do things that you don't really plan to do for years to come.

Turo Virta: 8:29

Yeah, were you at the moment, if you remember, do you you were were you thinking that this was actually successful, that it was working? Because obviously you lost so much weight that I should just go back into that, or or were you wondering why you are why you were not able to do it in the years? I felt,

Unknown: 8:53

yeah. Well, I felt I was successful, especially in that honeymoon period right after you lose the weight. You're looking the best you ever did. Your clothes-you can go find more clothes. You you feel like you can go out and enjoy yourself because you're not thinking about being self-conscious, so I was-I thought I was successful, but what I wasn't really observing is that over months and years, each of the habits that I had taken on to lose the weight fell away without me noticing. So first, it was the the tracking-you know, tracking my calories. I figured I was done with weight loss, so that didn't need to keep happening. Second was putting all those vegetables into my meals. It's much harder to do that when you're living alone, and you know you have to you have to buy fresh vegetables every day, or else you're not going to keep up with that. Moving, going to the gym, that fell away very quickly, and also kind of that daily check-in with yourself. Maybe that's journaling your food, or maybe that's weighing yourself. Kind of a daily reminder that I was paying attention to my health. That fell away too. So with all of that, and with my old habits of treating food like this hedonistic pleasure, all of that kind of equal to me returning to my weight and then adding many more pounds. And I think stress eating was a big part of that too.

Turo Virta: 10:23

Yeah, no, that is just it's a pattern what you what so often happens, and thank you for being honest and telling how it was, because it's it's most people, you know, if you don't have a plan, how you gonna maintain it, how you gonna do do it after weight loss, or or you know, you just think you see you are happy about yourself. You obviously you made a huge effort, got some results, but then you know if you are not doing those things, what you what actually help you to reach those results or even to maintain it? Because I think that's maintaining the weight. It's it's probably harder, or you gotta practice it, and it it's not it's not. Easy, because we tend to go back to all to those all those habits. Yeah,

Unknown: 11:11

to con to keep a weight loss, you must continue the actions that brought you there.

Turo Virta: 11:17

Yeah, yeah. No, probably not as extreme. I would say, like obviously, if you reach your cold weight or you are you know you are happy with yourself, of course, it gives you probably a little bit more flexibility and freedom, but it doesn't mean that you know now it's like like what I see many people treat the diets or something. You know now I do this diet for whatever two three months you lose huge amount of weight and then you know you are happy you can go back to it and then you know year is going, and it's then next year at the same time. You know, you are at the same point, or usually even in the worst point than earlier. And this goes by years; it goes on and on. So, what was for you what finally made this last attempt different from all the previous ones,

Unknown: 12:09

I think the biggest thing is I I became honest with myself. So, in the previous attempt that we just talked about, I wasn't really investigating it and asking myself, "Are you willing to do this for five years, for 10 years? You know, if not necessarily at the same level, but are you willing to keep movement in your life for, you know, for 10 years from now? I didn't ask myself that at the time, and I took on a habit of a gym membership and going three, five days a week. And if I had really sat down and answered that question. It would have been no. I'm not willing to do that in you know in 10 years. I'm not willing to go to the gym every day. But what I did this time, before I took on any habit, I asked myself, can I see myself doing this when I'm 50, when I'm 70? If not this exact habit, then something similar to honor the purpose of this habit. So, the first habit that I really took on was food journaling. In my case, I learned about my calories. I started tracking calories again, but I had a different concept of what that habit was that I was adopting. And I said, "I'm not, I'm not trying to stick to the same calories every single day until I until I die. But what I am doing is keeping the habit of being mindful of what I eat every day, and that therefore I am willing to journal my food every day and roughly plan my meals. It doesn't mean I'm gonna be, you know, hitting that 1500 calories every day. But it does mean, even on a rough day, 10 years from now, I'm still gonna be roughly jotting out. All right, breakfast is gonna be this. I'm gonna feed myself. You know, at 3o'clock, make sure I have, you know, something. That spirit of the habit is still gonna stay. So when I adopted food journaling, I did so with the full knowledge of I'm gonna keep doing this because it's worth it. And I right now it's eight years since then, and I've never I've never stopped. Wow, wow.

Turo Virta: 14:26

So like about losing that 100 pounds, because when people hear you know stories like yours that I lost 100 pounds, they often imagine one dramatic transformation. What did the reality actually look like?

Unknown: 14:44

Well, the Transformation had many parts. There was a physical transformation, and there was a mental and emotional transformation. The physical transformation, you know, took 1112, months. Then in maintenance, I started working on movement and strength training. So there was, you know, growth of muscle. So that physical transformation, if you compared 2018 to now, it's very different. But the mental and emotional piece was necessary in order to create that, and that's kind of what I keep keep discovering every time, you know, I I reassess my habits. I'm just like, you know, it's really the mental game here. It's it's understanding that this is the long haul.

Turo Virta: 15:35

Yeah, what was the was it the mental game or what was the hardest part of losing debate?

Unknown: 15:42

It's definitely coming to terms with how you don't control what the scale says, and you are in charge of how fast you go. That was a hard thing for me to to come to terms with because at the beginning in the honeymoon phase, you want to go real fast, so you're always struggling with. Do I want to take on something really difficult? Do I want to go down to 1200 calories to, you know, fulfill this idea in my head that I'm supposed to be seeing two pounds going down every single week on the scale? It's a it's a big challenge to tell that part of your brain we don't need to go that fast. In fact, if we go slower, there's going to be a more pleasant. You're going to have a more pleasant time. It's going to take longer, but you're going to learn more about how this actually works. So, for example, I really loved learning how I could fit fun foods into weight loss, even while losing a pound a week, a half a pound a week, I could have beautiful restaurant meals. I could have dessert every day, something sweet every day. That knowledge has helped me tremendously. Now, eight years out, I know very strong. I don't cut things out of my diet. I know very strongly how many times I can go out to a restaurant in a week if I would like to maintain my weight. That knowledge is invaluable.

Turo Virta: 17:17

Yeah. What about did that process took longer than you originally expected?

Unknown: 17:25

The stress eating doesn't go away at like you think it will. I'll explain, and I see this with clients too. You're going to have that initial phase where you learn a new protocol. For example, for me, it was you know I plan my fun food so I don't feel restricted around them. I have filling meals, and I keep my environment at home very, you know, helpful. I don't keep big bags of chips or big slices of cake in my house. That was helpful for a year or so, maybe two years. But what you discover is that old emotional habit of going to food to cope with stress is going to come back. It might come back less strong. It might come back in a different form, but it will come back. And what you have to learn then is how to recover quicker and how to forgive yourself faster. So I saw myself having stress eating probably three years into maintenance that I hadn't experienced in so long, and it was a whole new process of giving myself more tools and learning more more grace for myself, more forgiveness for whenever that happened, and so that's a whole, that's that's probably the most difficult part because that's heavily involved in keeping the weight off, keeping the stress eating to a minimum.

Turo Virta: 18:56

Yeah, that makes sense. Did you initially believe you needed to dislike your body enough to change

Unknown: 19:06

it? It's funny because many of the clients that I have come with some kind of negative view of their body. There's there's something they want to change, and that's very normal. For me, myself, I actually didn't start with the goal of changing my body at all. I wasn't even thinking about it. I was thinking I would like my food, my relationship with food, to feel calm. I don't want to feel guilty anymore, and so I came to this weight loss journey almost accidentally because I learned after learning how to journal my food and understand what I was having. I kind of learn that I do have the capability of coping with with something other than food, with helping my stress without food, and therefore I can actually envision myself and all those good things that come along with a big weight loss like that. So some examples that I experienced way better sleep and less snoring. I don't snore anymore. That's a big one. I my hips and knees and feet don't hurt. My I I can I have bigger choice in the clothing that I buy, so I can express myself more through the way I look. Whereas before, I was just ignoring every part of fashion, keeping out of that world. So, and I, I feel I say yes to a lot more things in life because I'm not worried about whether I'll fit, whether I'll have the energy to get through it. So, those things were the most meaningful parts of the transformation. But I and I think they have nothing to do with your body and how it looks. They have to do with kind of the physical changes that affect your quality of life, but they don't really have to do with esthetics. So that's something that a lot of people who are stuck in this very urgent place. To lose weight at the beginning, they forget about all that, and they're focused very much on the esthetics. But that's not as lasting of a motivator as some of the bigger changes that you get when you do reach a healthy weight and stay there.

Turo Virta: 21:21

Yeah, yeah. What about then your self esteem? Did your self esteem automatically improve as the weight came off.

Unknown: 21:32

It was the self-esteem improved from two sources. One was I felt, you know, and this is kind of the shallow one, but I felt like I fit society's definition of what a woman should look like much closer. So there was a short term self esteem boost from that. The lasting ones, the lasting self esteem boost, has been from the reality or realizing that I could decide to make a change and stick to that change, many of my clients who first start with me, they they are either in the place or just coming out of the place where they feel they have no control over their lives. They feel that their work is the source of stress rather than their perception of their place is the source of stress, so they feel they have no control over their stress levels, and therefore, I felt like this too. Feel like they have no control over how they handle that stress. So that was the biggest change for me. Is I now felt like I now feel like I can do small things to help my situation, no matter the situation. I have agency over how my life turns out and how I see my life and what I do about it. Whereas in that place where I was coping with food, I felt like everything was done to me. I couldn't, without a little help, I couldn't really get outside of that view and start seeing my life as under my control, and so that's been the most lasting change of of this whole journey.

Turo Virta: 23:20

How much of your eating was emotional, like you mentioned, stress eating rather than physical hunger,

Unknown: 23:31

I think 90% of my eating was was emotional. I because everything felt like it was happening to me. I was very reactive, so I wouldn't plan ahead for a good meal to satisfy my hunger. I would just wait until there was a break or there was a space where I had the opportunity to get some really good food, and then it was my desire for rest and calming down and numbing out, and my desire for something really tasty and joyful that drove me to eat. So all of my meals were like that. It was in New York. We have bodegas where you know you just you get all the deli kind of foods, and you have the bagels and the breakfast sandwiches. So those were the bagels and the donuts were my breakfast. The drive-throughs, McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts were my lunches, and takeout, Chinese food, pizza-all that was my dinners, and those were all driven by a desire to have something fun in my life.

Turo Virta: 24:36

So, how did like many people believe that you know that I deal later or when that weight is going off? It means also that my emotional eating disappears. Did your emotional eating disappear once you lost weight?

Unknown: 24:54

No, it it it was quieted while I had the structure of losing weight. So I felt very clear about well, I wanna you know I wanna hit this calorie number and journal my food and and get a good amount of protein and vegetables. So all of my decisions now were in line with that instead of the emotion. But afterwards, when I started maintaining, you then start to let other decision makers creep in because you don't quite have the same structure of I expect the scale to go down every week, so that's why I'm eating this way. You have to find new reasons to to keep those habits, and you have to find ways to solve your stress that have nothing to do with food, and not even solve stress, but soothe yourself through inevitable stresses of life.

Turo Virta: 25:51

Is that what you then do now when you get the urge to eat, and it has nothing to do with the hunger?

Unknown: 25:59

Yeah. So this is how you can tell, right? You've you know you know. Your meals for the day, but there's a time in between meals where you're you're having an intense craving for something. So that's one way you can tell. Another way you can tell is your body probably has some kind of urgency sense to it. So you might feel the need to do something, or the need to solve a problem or overthink something, or go clean the counters. Like your body has some urgency to it because usually that's a sign that you're in your nervous system, your heightened nervous system state. And so when I experience that now, I number one, I have a structure for the day where I can tell it's happening because often you can't tell. Sometimes you're already in the pantry eating the chips before you realize that this is a stress eating moment. So the first thing is to have a structure for your day where you're well fed, your hunger needs are taken care of, and you can tell that this is outside of that. Then what I like to do is have a almost a menu of things that will help me actions that will help soothe me through that feeling, even if I don't know what it's from, even if that feeling can't be solved, like if there's a work problem that I can't get through right now. If there's you know financial stress, whatever the stressor is, usually you'll be able to solve it once you're calm. So you just need to soothe yourself through that. And instead of stopping the feeling with food, you can do like for what I like to do right now. It changes, but I'm a big knitter. I love to knit. I like to go outside and get some fresh air on my face. I like to go for a walk. I like to put down my work for the day. I love doing that. I love to give my brain permission to stop solving a problem. That feels very soothing to me now, and I also love to have quiet time because often there's other things that are, and everyone's different. You kind of have to get to know your own patterns, but for me, lots of noise would would always drive up my stressors and make the likelihood of going to that food worse, higher, a higher likelihood. So, getting in a quiet place, putting on soothing music or putting on headphones has really helped me. I've had clients who like to do puzzles. I've had clients who like to do a kind of a self massage, or go to in the bathtub. There's a lot of things you can do, and I actually have a list of non food actions: two minutes, five minutes, or two hours. Oh wow! Yeah.

Turo Virta: 29:03

Would you mind sharing some of what you have in your action list?

Unknown: 29:08

Yeah. Oh, I have a lot. So I like the two-hour ones because that's when you really get to like trying to address the long-term need. So sometimes the long-term need is like I'm feeling this level of stress because I don't have enough planned fun in my week, I think a lot of us are overworkers, high achievers, reactive. So some of the two-hour ones are like go to the zoo, schedule a massage, that kind of thing. And the other ones that are really important that I haven't talked about yet is the connection-based ones. So some of the needs in those moments are often for personal connection. You feel alone in your problems, or you feel like you haven't connected with your loved ones in a while. So you can reach out by phone or by text to someone, and it doesn't even have to be about your hard moment with food or the problem you're trying to solve. You just want to feel less alone. So those-that's a whole section on that list too of ways to connect with people.

Turo Virta: 30:15

Ah, thank you. I-I hope they are those are helping. Like those are amazing ways to get that noise a little bit down and help you to win a time between making the final decision, either to eat or not, yeah. You you have spoken about anxiety a lot, and how did anxiety affect your eating behaviors?

Unknown: 30:42

So, anxiety for me was I was kind of in an over anxious state. I think I had a lot of discomfort with uncertainty. So if if I didn't know how what feedback I was going to get from a boss, and I wouldn't find out for two days, that not knowing felt like. Torture to me, you know, and you can tell if this is you if you're if you kind of feel that dread in the pit of your stomach or in your in your throat. You feel that tightness, but what I learned about anxiety over the past seven eight years and in this journey was it's not physically harmful to you, especially those first feelings of of stress. You're not harming yourself by just having a few moments of stress. A lot of us prolong the stress by adding worries on top of it, which I've got to get the stress down because it's ruining my blood pressure, and I shouldn't get this stress. We add layers on top of the anxiety, which prolongs everything. So, a lot of my journey has been learning how to accept the moments of anxiety and let them move through without stirring them up, kind of like a snow globe, trying to set the snow globe down and let everything settle.

Turo Virta: 32:13

Yeah, why you think that that guilt after eating often make things even worse?

Unknown: 32:21

Because the, and I think this had to do with gender socialization, and I know men experience this too, but I think it's it's a heightened level for women. There's a there's a perception that to be a woman is to be dainty. I don't know if that's the word I want to go for, but demure, Dainty, quiet, you know, never angry, easygoing, and doing things for everyone. So, when and that all of that perception also ties into how we treat food. So you think of like in the 1950s in the U.S. they would have these housekeepers guides, or you know, magazines and articles about the right way that a woman should be and the right way to serve food to women. You know, just tiny little cucumber sandwiches and tiny salads that wouldn't fill up, you know, a fly, and so that perception is, you know, it's changed over time. But that the base of that is still here. Like women should treat food. You know, you you should be eating small portions. You should always be looking, watching your figure. That's kind of the overall stew that we're mired in, like stew that we kind of grew up in, and when you view yourself almost from outside being completely different to that, eating huge portions, eating foods that aren't at all dainty, that that kind of preys on you. It gives you a sense that I'm not, I'm not a real adult. I'm not a real woman. I'm not fulfilling what I'm supposed to fulfill, and that gap between what you should be and what you are feels so so uncomfortable. And I think that's where a lot of the guilt came from. And if you're already a person who tends to shame yourself for many things, and as a real high achiever, you're probably noticing that that comes up in food too. Like, why can't I handle this like a a normal person, a normal woman, a normal adult?

Turo Virta: 34:38

Yeah. What I'm curious to know what worked for you like that when you had a pet meal. How did you stop it becoming a bad weekend, for example? This is

Unknown: 34:52

what is really important. I want to challenge the the phrase "bad meal" because it was that very perception. It's that very perception that causes a lot of my clients at the beginning to to be very nervous to try something new, and that is to try to have a meal full of foods that aren't healthy, and learn how to make that work for your particular goal. Even if you're not being healthy at, you know, 90 to 100% of your meals, you actually still can overall improve your health, so it's it's kind of learning how to make the foods that we see as bad, bringing them into the overall, especially if you enjoy them, bringing them into your way of eating in a way that you're happier with. So, for example, for me, I used to love McDonald's as I've mentioned, and the way that I kept those foods in my journey while still losing 100 pounds and keeping it off was I said I'm still going to have McDonald's, but I'm going to plan for it ahead of time. I'm going to look at the calories and and agree with what. I'm doing, or I remember for sausage McGriddles specifically, I was like, "Those are my road trip foods. So every few months, I'll go on a little trip, and if if we go past a McDonald's, it's okay to have it on my road trip. So I reduced the frequency that I had it, but yeah. But I really told myself there there are no foods that aren't allowed, and that really helps the stress eater who has restrictive ideas around food, because a lot of that stress eating is driven by the idea that certain foods should you shouldn't eat them at all. That just makes your feelings around that food so much more Restrictive. It makes you feel stressed around those foods, and when you're stressed, you you can't really access the part of your brain that says that was a nice portion. I'll stop here.

Turo Virta: 37:00

What about then consistency? Because you hear it all the time, like people are talking. You should stay consistent, what does consistency mean to you now?

Unknown: 37:14

Consistency is the opposite. No, I don't want to say that. I think I had a false equivalence of being consistent is equal to being perfect, and I think I never wanted to make a mistake. I see this about a lot of my clients too. They they want every meal to look just right. They want every decision to be perfect. And if one, you know, if they end up having three cookies at the office when they didn't plan to, then the tendency is, or the desire is, to throw in the towel and say,"I'm, you know, I'll start again tomorrow, or I'll start again Monday, and I'll just kind of eat off the rails for the next few days. But what consistency is is accepting those moments, and they don't have to mean anything about the next food decision you make. If you made a decision that you feel is against your goal, you have seven more decisions that day to reaffirm where you want to go with your goal. And so consistency is overall. If you zoom out, if you're doing 80 to 90% of your decisions towards your goal, and you used to be doing 30, you're you're golden. Like you're doing the right thing. Oh,

Turo Virta: 38:34

and even even if you used to do 30, and you are able to do 50 or 60, that's amazing progress.

Unknown: 38:42

Absolutely, yeah. I had one client who her she felt that she was an inconsistent food tracker, and she really wanted to lose weight. But the tracking was an important part of her having a calorie deficit day. So she started at 40% Like I remember, we we tracked it. We observed her habit of tracking. We tracked the tracking, and she was at 30 or 40% And our first goal was to get to 60% So it really doesn't have to be zero to 100. It really doesn't have to be. You can make small improvements, and that can absolutely compound over time, and you can have your health transformation.

Turo Virta: 39:23

Yeah. What about then? I wanted to ask you because I think what is undertalked area is maintaining lost weight. Like you hear, what gets attention is that losing weight. That is like what everybody highlights: how much weight, how fast. Losing weight that gets so much attention. But what is different about maintaining lost weight? The

Unknown: 39:52

biggest difference is that you you cannot be motivated by the scale. Many people, and I would argue, you shouldn't be motivated by the scale during weight loss either. But sometimes it's unavoidable, but during maintenance, your goal is to keep that scale within a range of five to 10 pounds. So you're going to have moments where you get on the scale in the morning and it's three pounds higher than you thought it would be, and it probably has nothing to do with you making a poor decision or being a week off track, it's just normal maintenance. You're gonna go back and forth in this in this range, so it's a brand new skill of learning how to take in that data and reaffirm to yourself, I'm still doing exactly what I said I was gonna do, and instead of using the scale to say, all right, I, I'm really low today. I'm I'm only 122 today, so I'm gonna really keep this up and try really hard and and keep eating healthy today. That won't work in maintenance. That really doesn't cut it. The thought process. Has to be totally different. You you kind of have to decide on what habits are going to be your success. You know your your habits of success, and that the focus has to be on those actions. And I like to do kind of a habit check in every few months. I look in with a bird's eye view of am I meal planning? Am I prepping something on Sunday? Am I moving every day? And if something's not happening, then that's the first place I look, rather than looking at the scale to judge my success.

Turo Virta: 41:41

Yeah, that's so good. That's so good. Is there anything like was that was actually great example how to do it. But is there anything else? How do you know this? If, like you talked earlier, if those old habits are beginning to return.

Unknown: 41:59

Yes. Okay. So you can use a general habit check-in, like I did, like kind of every. You could do it every quarter. You can align it with your work schedule and put a little item in your calendar to to do a habit check-in. But the other thing you can do is anytime there's a stressful season. So anytime, sometimes you know it's coming and sometimes you don't. But often we know it's coming. Maybe there's a move, like you're moving house. Maybe you have to start taking care of an elderly relative, or you're having a new baby on the way, or there's some kind of big life change. Those are the times where your habits are most likely to get disrupted. So, and those things you know in advance often, so when that when you see that on the horizon, you can take 30 minutes and you can sketch out. Okay, here's what likely will have to change a little bit. We're gonna have a new schedule, so my instead of going to the gym, I'm gonna have to work out at home. Instead of meal prepping every Sunday, I can't do that anymore. So I'll have to get this food service or switch to these easy meals. You can do that in advance, and you're still going to have some rough, you know, first one or two weeks as you adjust to the new normal for you. But you've done the work ahead of time, of saying here's kind of your roadmap to making sure you still have your healthy habits on lock, and and that is a brand new skill for a lot of people, but it's one of the biggest reasons that people yo-yo their weight back up because they hit a very stressful season of their life, and their old habits don't fit in the new normal. So over eight years, I've had to do that multiple times. Yeah,

Turo Virta: 43:53

no, I I think that this is this is the key difference between successful maintain maintainers that versus those people who are consistently Dieting often. Is there anything else? What you would say that is the biggest difference between those successful people who are able to maintain and the people that consistently diet often? I,

Unknown: 44:21

yeah, I think there's a level of acceptance of when you're maintaining your weight, it's different than diet and gain, right? When when when you're stuck in the yo-yo, it's either diet or gain. There's no middle ground. So the difference between someone who does that and someone who does maintaining well is that that person has a a clear Dieting habits are very similar to the maintenance habits, just with slightly lower calories maintenance habit. But they have an acceptance of I don't go back to the gain. I I don't revert to my old default habits previously for me it was never planning ahead with my food. It was being okay with solving my stress with food, and it was eating out as my main source of meals. So that was where I was gaining weight, and I've kind of cut ties and burned the boats with that way of living, and that's not where I ever want to be again. So I very purposefully have created a maintenance that doesn't include any of that, and I think a lot of us have at the beginning have this kind of fantasy that when you lose weight, you then get to go back to normal, so to speak. But but you don't. You have to create a new normal.

Turo Virta: 45:59

Yeah, exactly. It's and it's the probably the hardest thing to understand that there is no going back. It's just it's different. You might have bit more flexibility, little bit more freedom, but it's not that you are never going to get back what it used to be, and that is that is the hardest part to understand. What about what is your opinion? Because I'm big believer. Like, because many people when they tell that you know, but I still need. I have still whatever 10 pounds, 20 pounds to lose. I'm not in my call weight yet. Should you practice maintaining your weight before you hit your weight goal?

Unknown: 46:43

I wish I had, but I didn't. Okay. I have my clients practice maintenance sometimes, especially if if there's it's a stressful season. But I didn't. I did the 100 pounds straight through 11 to 12 months. Wow. Yeah. I so it it became it became, and I think what I did was I kind of turned the last few months of my weight loss into maintenance prep in a way because I reduced my speed of weight loss. I was trying to lose two pounds a week at first, then one pound a week, then by the last few months, I purposefully said I'm going to only try to lose half pound a week, which is two pounds a month at most, or two and a half pounds, and that is very similar to maintenance. There's almost no difference. So I use that time period to practice seeing the scale go really slow using the scale to to motivate me at all, I was like, here's where I practice doing the habits without the scale really moving very much at all, and not being able to see a big change. So I find that really helpful. And the other advantage of practicing it is that you can you can almost focus more and be more successful in the deficit weeks, in the weeks where you're dieting and losing weight, when you have a an end a next end goal and milestone in sight where you can get a bit of a rest and reprieve. So if you do six month a six weeks at a deficit, and you know after that six weeks you've got two weeks where you're aiming for maintenance, and you can plan. You're like maybe I'll have you know a really special dinner that week, or maybe I'll make my breakfast nice and big and filling. And you can plan to have a more relaxing week or two during that maintenance time, you're still doing every action. You're still planning your meals. You're still tracking, but you can use it as a rest period because there is a stress to losing weight. Your body is under stress when you're doing a calorie deficit.

Turo Virta: 49:01

Yeah, absolutely. And that that is like what most people don't understand. That it's if you you know that you should you should reduce your stress, but actually like it's not even it's not the stress as we talk about it. It's stress for your body, calorie deficit. It's a huge stress for your body, and it's it's it works the same way than than reducing. Like you know, if you if work causes stress for you, you probably know that you should maybe work a little bit less or or do something to reduce that stress, and it's the same thing with the calorie deficit. That is a huge stress for your body.

Unknown: 49:42

Yeah, it's a it's a physiological stress, and a lot of lifelong dieters and my clients, many of them have been lifelong dieters. They have never experienced eating enough for your for your body at a healthy level to maintain your weight. It's either diet, diet, diet, which is the stress, or not paying attention at all and not really getting to appreciate that that feeling of being healthily at maintenance and having enough food and nutrients for your body to run great-it's and it really makes you appreciate it when you do the calorie deficit and then you purposefully do maintenance. You're like, this is lovely. This is self care right here. Yeah.

Turo Virta: 50:25

Is there anything else for of course many of my listeners, they are in their 40s and 50s, and women obviously, who have been dieting for decades, as you mentioned. What would be something you want them to understand?

Unknown: 50:46

I would love to tell them that it is it is not too late. There are scores of women who have lost weight and maintained it in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. You can still reach your healthy weight and maintain it and learn how to maintain it. And I would. Love to say that get you can get in touch with those very real quality of life changes that happen when you reach your healthy weight to help motivate you, and it can also kind of be on the other side. You can get a little fired up and a little angry, and it might even help you, you know, start your journey. But ask yourself, how long do I want to, you know, put off life, put off the trips that I've been meaning to do, because I'm not, you know, you know, I have to get a seatbelt extender on on the airplane. I can't do all that walking in that beautiful city I want to visit. I don't take pictures, you know, with my family because I don't like how I look right now. How long do you want to let that still happen and keep putting off the really lovely life that you want to have? I think that that's something that helped me immensely on my journey, and it helps my clients too.

Turo Virta: 52:07

What parts of your transformation would never be visible in those pictures?

Unknown: 52:18

The feeling that I can do what I say I'm going to do is the the greatest feeling. That it is something that was completely foreign to me at age 28. I felt totally out of control with my life, and learning that I could make a small change and it could have a huge snowball of an impact on my life has changed how I look at everything. It's changed how I look at work, at my relationships and at my community, so that's something that you can't see in a picture at

Turo Virta: 52:52

all. What would you tell the version of yourself who was just starting this journey?

Unknown: 53:02

I would say you are absolutely capable, and you can have fun while doing it, so don't dread it because not only is it going to get you to a place where you feel so much better about life and you could do more, but you're also going to enjoy a lot of parts of it. So get started.

Turo Virta: 53:21

Awesome. Last question: What is one habit that has helped you to maintain your results more than anything else.

Unknown: 53:31

It's got to be food journaling. There's a close second. Food journaling is number one because I I never I always keep my toe dipped in the river of my health by journaling my food in the morning and revising it in the evening. The second one is a food scale. It's just such a not non. You don't have to think about it at all, and it helps you so much. So those are the top two for me.

Turo Virta: 53:57

Yeah, awesome work. See it, and it makes sense. It's it's some way of bringing awareness what you are doing. It's about your total calories, your portion sizes, and that, and I believe that now once you have done it certain period of life, you can tell already. Even if, if for for sure it happens at some point, you don't have your full scale with you. You know, you you can eyeball it out, pretty.

Unknown: 54:27

Oh yeah,

Turo Virta: 54:28

pretty close. I can eyeball. Yeah, 100

Unknown: 54:30

grams of rice.

Turo Virta: 54:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, I, I'm, I'm sure. Like I know, I have never, I have never done it like years. I never felt myself. Of course, I did it for shorter period of time, but that with people who are tracking their calories all the time, you know they can hit by the within five grams, 100 grams of rice or or some rude other food what they eat on regular basis. So that is amazing, and it's it's just that at some some like for me how I bring awareness. I'm at the moment. What is enough for me? I I don't have weight loss goals for myself. What? How I keep it aware? I have built my habits that I get enough protein throughout the day, and I plan out my days every single day. I have my habits that I get. I have a bare minimum. I get my 120 grams of protein every single day, and that is even in my worst days. So, and this is something because if, of course, it's not every. If if I'm happening to be traveling or whatever, and I can't follow my habits, I feel it right away. It's when once you don't have enough protein, you start to crave something. You are eating more some other stuff, and this is it's it's just it makes such a big difference. And it's just it's all about awareness. It can be, from my opinion, you know, you don't need to track your calories. You can do it several different ways, but some way or another. You've got a way to be aware more. Yeah,

Unknown: 56:11

100%

Turo Virta: 56:12

Awesome! Thank you so much. Time is flying. Where can listeners learn more about you and your work?

Unknown: 56:21

Sure, you can. You can come find me on Instagram because I'm there every day answering DMs. So you can message me there, and it's Megan underscore Gall M E G A N underscore G A U L, and you'll find some you know some good tips and tricks there as well.

Turo Virta: 56:39

Awesome! I will I will add Megan's handle in the show notes, so please check it out. Ask questions from Mekon or from myself, as we are here both to help help you guys. We don't have any expectations, or at least I don't have. I I love to chatting with people, as I'm sure you do too. So thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a five star rating, as do Apple or Spotify, those are helping so much to more people to find the show. And thank you so much for listening. Talk to you in the next episode.