In this episode, we talk all about the challenges of weight loss and aging as well as strategies to cope. Recent research points to consistent movement, optimal protein intake and resistance training as key strategies for weight loss, especially as we age.

Cheryl shares her personal experiences and provides recommendations based on what she’s learned over the last several years. In this conversation, Cheryl shares various strategies for overcoming weight loss resistance. She emphasizes the importance of prioritizing protein intake, tracking food and exercise, getting quality sleep, managing stress, incorporating movement throughout the day, and engaging in resistance training. She also discusses the role of nutrition in weight loss and the importance of finding a sustainable eating plan that aligns with individual goals.

Additionally, Cheryl touches on the significance of body composition measurements, the potential benefits of fasting, and the importance of seeking medical advice and testing if weight loss resistance persists.

Creatine+Taurine (HNG10 at checkout to save) for Muscle and Brain Health

High Protein Diet For Fat Loss Research Paper

High Protein Diet For Appetite Regulation and Body Composition

Forever Strong, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

People I’m following for weight loss/aging/menopause information: Dr. Mary Claire, Wise and Well, Dr. Jamie Seeman and Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

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Takeaways

• 
  
• Protein intake is crucial for weight loss, with recommended amounts ranging from 0.8-1.2 grams per pound of body weight.
  
• If your current weight loss strategies aren’t working, consider making changes to your diet and exercise routine.
  
• Managing stress and improving sleep are important factors for successful weight loss.
  
• Supplements such as aminos and creatine can support muscle growth and cognition.
  
• Make small changes over time and track your progress to achieve long-term success.
  
• Prioritize protein intake to support weight loss and muscle growth.
  
• Track food and exercise to stay accountable and make informed choices.
  
• Get quality sleep and manage stress to support weight loss efforts.
  
• Incorporate movement throughout the day to increase activity levels.
  
• Engage in resistance training to build muscle and boost metabolism.
  
• Find a sustainable eating plan that aligns with individual goals.
  
• Consider body composition measurements to track progress.
  
• Explore the potential benefits of fasting, but prioritize protein and resistance training.
  
• Seek medical advice and testing if weight loss resistance persists.
  

Transcript:

Cheryl McColgan (00:01.122)
Well, hello friends. Welcome back to the Heal Nurse Show podcast. Been on a bit of a break and before we get into the topic today, I just wanted to share with you that it has been a very busy summer and I can’t believe that we are so far into it. mean, Labor Day is just about four weeks away at this point. I mean, this has just flown by. Lots of events we had to attend to, sold a house, so just a lot going on, which is why I had

little bit of an unintentional break, but it is good to be back on the mic. And what actually prompted me to take on this subject today is I had a conversation with a good friend of mine yesterday, kind of all around this topic around aging and weight gain and just not feeling good, that sort of thing. And then I had somebody else reach out to me again today.

And these two people are very different ages, but I think that the things that I’m going to talk about and share with you today, number one can be really applied to weight loss at any age, but number two are particularly even more important as you do get older. And I’ll go into some of the reasons why. So it’s interesting because the reason that people tend to reach out to me with this sort of thing is they know that I keep up on all the research and I’m constantly listening to

new interviews and podcasts. in fact, that’s really what I do every week when I’m at the gym or I’m in the car going to the gym or on a walk or all those things. I’m almost always listening to an interview with a industry expert, people that review different studies that come out and just people who really have their finger on the pulse

the latest innovations and the latest thought leadership in the health and wellness space. And of course, a lot of that is around weight loss because it is a topic that is so challenging for so many people. And it’s also become even, you know, for a while there, we weren’t even allowed to talk about weight loss, it seemed like. And now that the GLP -1 drugs have come out, Wigovie, semaglutide, all of those things.

Cheryl McColgan (02:16.352)
it has become a topic that is very popular and very controversial in a lot of ways for like who should be using it. Is it good for you? Is it going to cause long -term side effects, that sort of thing. So all of a sudden weight loss has really been thrust into the spotlight yet again and everybody’s talking about it. So now it’s not taboo as much anymore to talk about these things. But anyway.

So after talking to these two friends of mine, it became apparent to me that so many people are just really frustrated with this subject. They’re not sure what they should be doing to feel better, to lose weight, to just feel better in their bodies and feel better in their lives. And so I just wanted to share the things that I have personally been doing over the last several years and things that I have heard.

more and more about as people are interviewed and thought leaders in this space, talking about these different things that I’m about to go through here. And I’m going to have some links for you in the show notes. went through and tried to find at least some study, man, when you do, I don’t know. So I went to grad school and I remember doing a research review and it’s like when you have to actually go through all the literature and find the relevant studies, there’s

so, so much, right? But it’s, if you go to PubMed and you just search for weight loss or weight loss in women, any of those kinds of things, postmenopause, perimenopausal, I mean, you’ll find a lot of things. Unfortunately, though, there isn’t as much research done on just women. So a lot of these things, ways to lose weight and things that you do to lose weight have been studied primarily on men or studied in people that

a lot younger because they typically recruit college students to do a lot of these kind of studies. So you might find that what applies to those ages and sexes may not apply to you. I think the certainly the basic biologic processes are the same through both genders and through older and younger, but there are definitely some things that change.

Cheryl McColgan (04:31.05)
There are definitely life priorities. There are definitely environmental factors. There are hormones. There are so many things to take into account as we age that it really frustrates me that there are still people out there who really just say calories in calories out and that’s it because to me that’s very short -sighted. It’s just one part of the story. The truth is probably somewhere in between. It’s not all hormonal and insulin based and that whole theory of weight loss.

the truth is probably somewhere in between and the truth is in your lifestyle, the things that you’re dealing with, everybody’s going to be a little bit different. And so experimenting on yourself and studying things in relation to what fits you. So if you’re woman looking for different research studies on women or people’s experience that are women, or if you’re a man, you know, an older man looking for those kind of studies, not looking for things that are done on college students.

So there’s really just so many factors to take into account. it’s like weight loss is complex. It’s if it was so easy, everybody would do it, right? We wouldn’t need these weight loss drugs that are out there. But I will share with you again, sort of some things that have worked for me, things I’ve been experimenting with and doing over the last several years. And so the very first thing is something that has come up a lot in my content before. And this is something that I’ve probably been working on myself for about the last

five years, I think I’m going to say it’s been a while because people in the space that are in the know and thought leaders have been talking about this for a long time. It’s just that people, it takes people a long time to change paradigms or for people to hear something new and actually believe that it could work or that it is a thing. So I think in previous episodes, I’ve mentioned this hypothesis before.

by Robin Heimer and Simpson. Basically, these researchers did some studies that started on locusts. And the idea is that you will keep seeking protein until your body needs for protein are met. And so what happens is if you’re, say, in the United States where this diet that we have full of processed food and packaged foods and all that sort of stuff that are not very nutrient dense, all of the any nutrients that were there have been

Cheryl McColgan (06:51.09)
through our soils. mean, again, there’s so many factors. But basically that you will just keep eating until your body gets that amount of protein. So if you’re eating a lot of packaged foods or you’re primarily plant -based and you’re not very focused on making sure you get the proper amount of protein, your body is likely to make you overeat. And so again, that theory get started in Locust. They tried it on several different things. They’ve done some studies about it in humans now, and they do seem to find

you have this innate protein sensing ability in your body. So it will make you just keep eating until you get the right amount. So all that being said, just about the number one thing I can say, especially for anyone over the age of 40. And I actually have an old YouTube video that I made several years ago. Somebody asking me the same question, struggling with weight loss over 40. So you might want to go check out that video as well, just to see what I had to say then. And of course, you

If you study a lot and new research comes out, I think one of the best things that you can do is be open minded. Getting stuck on one paradigm or another or one way to do things is just not a good sign of an intelligent, reasonable person. If you’re confronted with new evidence or new research about a particular way that something works or that another idea that maybe you hadn’t thought of before or that you hadn’t.

put any credence in before, but more and more evidence keeps coming up, it would be ridiculous to be stuck on an old paradigm. And I think it’s great to be in a place where I’m not a doctor, I’m not somebody who has based my life’s work on some kind of paradigm that I have to stick to for pride, basically, I’m willing to change my opinions and my thoughts based on the latest research and new things that I learned.

And I think that that is a good thing. don’t think it’s a, you know, I’ve come to think of that a little differently over the years, even in when I, it’s not quite the same as politics, but you can think of it a little bit in that way. Cause often people will complain that a certain political candidate just like changes his view or a change his position.

Cheryl McColgan (09:07.82)
And I think a lot of that is they are pandering, right? They go back and forth and maybe that’s most of it, but like consider for a moment too, like maybe they learn more, maybe as they get more educated and they hear more people’s opinions and hear more research on a particular topic, like let’s say about climate change, for example, or economics, a different way of thinking of a particular economic paradigm or a climate paradigm.

and they get more research and they get more evidence presented to them. Well, maybe they change their view based on all that. And I don’t think that’s always a negative. anyway, that was a bit of a tangent there, but I think you get my point of that. So let’s still stay focused on protein for a moment. So again, going back to some of my previous content, if you have listened to me for a while, you’ve likely heard me say this before, but the thing that I have been working on over the last five years or so is to get an optimal protein intake.

where the experts are landing on that nowadays is somewhere between 0 .8 and 1 .2 grams of protein per pound of body weight. That’s the simplest formula. If you happen to know your lean mass, and we’ll get into that later on in this discussion, if you happen to know your lean mass number, then you can just do one pound or one gram of protein per pound of lean mass

If you are listening to this from the UK or Australia or anywhere else in the world, but it’s not on our silly number system, that’ll be in kilograms. And so you can just convert from there to get the proper number. But about one gram per pound is the simplest formula. Now, if you are not super active, then you can probably go on the much lower end of that. You want to go maybe more towards the 0 .8 number for that protein number.

And if you resistance train or you’re very, very active, you’d want to go on the top end of that number, like more towards the 1 .2 per pound. And by the way, there have been very several studies that show even higher protein intake than that. It does not have any negative effects. It doesn’t harm your kidneys. There’s a lot of myths and rumors and things about too much protein in the past that have kind of been debunked at this point.

Cheryl McColgan (11:20.806)
So it would be almost impossible for you to eat too much protein But however eating too little protein does have a number of negative effects on your body on your muscle mass on the things that you want to have not only for optimal body composition, but just for health and life the Stronger you are the less likely or to have falls or breaks or fractures those kind of things as you get older

Any kind of things like that that happen as you get older, whether it’s osteopenia, your bones get weak, osteoporosis, that can all be prevented and mitigated by optimal protein intake. if you have a fall at some point in your older age, that is a very poor indicator of your future health there going forward. So you definitely want to avoid those things as much as possible. And one of the good ways to do that is to stay strong and to eat the optimal amount of protein.

So in addition to eating the optimal amount of protein per day. And so I’ll just share with you, I’m 5 ‘7″, I have BMI and body weight that’s within the normal range and I am generally on a day -to -day basis shooting for anywhere between 120 to 160 grams of protein. And if you’re not used to eating that much protein, it can be really challenging. But each meal,

of the day is also another opportunity. So you could sit down, and this would be very difficult, but you could sit down and theoretically in one meal at the end of the day, eat 120 grams of protein. I don’t think I could personally do it, but I know a lot of people that do a one meal a day seem to somehow still be able to get in their protein by doing that, but that is not really the optimal way to do it because each and every time you eat is an opportunity to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. And so based on the work of Don Layman,

You basically need somewhere around two to three grams of leucine per meal to stimulate that process optimally. And the way to get two to three grams of leucine is just to make sure that you get somewhere between 30 and 40 grams of protein each and every meal. Whatever that protein happens to be, the chances of you getting the leucine in it if you hit that number is pretty high. So you don’t need to go to each and every meat and see.

Cheryl McColgan (13:41.038)
How much leucine is in this and figure that all out. Basically just shoot to 30 to 40 grams of protein in each and every meal and that’s an opportunity to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Excuse me. So if you’re a little bit older, so say for example over 40 or over 50 like myself, I really try to get more to that 35 to 40 grams of protein in every single time I eat just so that I…

make sure that I hit that threshold because as we age your body also becomes less sensitive to protein sensing and to using that protein. So you really want to make sure just to since you have to get to like for even for a smaller size woman getting to 120 grams of protein per day that be 40 grams at each of three meals and that’s a good way to split it up and then you’d be insured of hitting that number you’d be insured of hitting your daily

goal by doing that. And I’ve heard varying opinions on this. If you go back to my interview with Alan Aragon, which was like so many good things in that interview, I think I remember asking him that question if he thought that that your protein ability is sent your body’s ability to sense protein gets weaker as you age. He didn’t seem to think so. He does a lot of research reviews, but then I’ve heard other experts talk about it since then.

and maybe some possibly new emerging research, especially in this area of muscle growth and protein synthesis. And I’ve heard definitely more than one person say that, yes, that is a thing that as you get older, your body is just not sensing protein as well. So in any case, I think it’s just better to err on the safe side and get a little more protein with each meal to really stimulate that protein synthesis. So what that might look like on any given day, I’ve heard

told you the split. Sometimes if I’m having something for a meal and you know one of the best ways to do this is to simply track. I know people don’t like to track but until you get to know how much protein is in a specific thing what you need to have in a meal to hit those numbers it is very helpful to track. Maybe you don’t track everything in your meal but maybe you weigh your protein. So for example if you put the amount of protein you’re used to putting on a plate

Cheryl McColgan (16:00.75)
you might find, it’s only three ounces of chicken breast, maybe that’s only 25 grams of protein. And one negative thing is if you eat out a lot or if you buy things in a package, you will notice that even the amount that it’s saying, even with protein shakes, it’s generally like 20 grams per serving. It’s not getting you to that number. So you just need to be really aware of tracking and putting those numbers in for a little while until you know what it is that you’re trying to get.

So some of my tricks around that, I use egg whites quite a bit. and because if I find if I have to try to eat like five or six whole eggs, that is just too rich for me, it’s too much, I can’t do it. So what I’ll typically start my day with is two eggs, some egg whites thrown in there, quite a significant amount to get me up to that number and maybe some cottage cheese. That’ll get me to like 35, 40 grams of protein, not too many calories. If you’re, you know, looking at that and trying to lose fat or…

you know, keep yourself at a deficit. That’s a really handy meal. I also will sometimes use protein powder. And the one that I’ve been loving lately and use the most is by Equip. It is super clean. It’s made out of 100 % grass -fed beef. Their amino acid, it’s a full amino acid profile. That’s the other thing you need to be looking for. For example, if you take collagen as a supplement, which I recommend that you do, but in it’s technically protein, but it is not a complete protein amino acid.

So that really doesn’t count towards your numbers, unfortunately. So Equip protein, 100 % grass -fed beef, really super, super clean, good testing. You can get a discount with it if you like. With my code, it’s heelnourishgrow .com slash equip foods. And they have all kinds of deals going all the time. But if you use my link, you’ll always get a discount. And then also just

protein the center of whatever the meal is. So of course, steaks are great or chicken breast or something that’s a large piece of meat is easier to track and it’s easier to make sure that you know you are getting what you intended. And at the very worst case scenario, like I was about to say with the protein powder, if I feel like I didn’t get quite enough in a meal, I’ll just do a little top off with that. Maybe 10 grams to 15 grams of protein powder. My favorite way to do it is like a little dessert and some Greek yogurt.

Cheryl McColgan (18:21.878)
stirred up, which Greek yogurt also has an amazing amount of protein. And so it’s almost like a little chocolate protein pudding. So there’s just some of my tips on how to get more protein. And now that was, that was quite a long explanation into this whole protein thing. So let me go into some of the other things that you may want to try if you’re, you know, getting older, you’re frustrated. You know, the challenging part of this though, is like my, the one friend I know her a little bit better, know her habits a little bit better.

And just, you know, the amount of things she’s telling me, she eats really clean, she cooks all the time, she walks every day, she’s been strength training. It’s just that there’s so many things that she’s doing right and really well, and yet she’s unable to lose this weight that she’s put on in the last couple of years. She’s approaching 50. I think her hormones are probably out of whack. I know she doesn’t sleep well all the time. She has a very stressful life.

And so this is a very unpopular opinion folks, but if your stress and your sleep are not in order, you are going to have a very difficult time losing weight. So if this is your struggle, if you find yourself creeping up, you’re gaining or you’re really trying to lose weight and you can’t, you’ve got to look at those things. You’ve got to look at your sleep. You got to get that in order and you’ve got to look at your stress level, get that in order. So my two favorite things.

to recommend to help with that is number one, meditation and yoga. That is always amazing for stress relief and for learning to breathe properly and for giving yourself an outlet to kind of get out of your head and escape some of the stress. So that’s that part. And then for sleep, my gosh, you know, I’ve talked about sleep in the past and I have so many things that I use for that. So if you’re hormonal and you’re a hot sleeper, I highly recommend the Ullr, believe it’s heelnursery .com slash

I have to look that one up. Anyway, if you go to my shop page, you’ll always find all my codes and it’s all stuff that I have gotten discounts on because I use it and I love it. So that Oolr is actually out of stock now. I think that’s called the Chili Sleep. So it might be slash Chili Sleep. But anyway, it’s on the website and just a pad that cools down your bed so that you can actually not sweat and not be woken up every 10 minutes in a puddle so that you can get some sleep. So that’s a big one, especially if you’re in that hormonal phase.

Cheryl McColgan (20:42.822)
The second one is magnesium. People are so depleted in magnesium because it’s all out of our soil. And so if you’re eating particularly a whole foods diet, you’re not eating a lot of foods that are fortified, right? With like it’s not done have on the box that it’s got this vitamin, this vitamin, this vitamin. They’re adding because the soil is so poor and because they’ve also taken this thing that you can’t really call food and tried to make it into food. So they’re trying to add some things in there.

So just about everybody is depleted in magnesium and magnesium is really huge in sleep and it’s involved in something like, my gosh, I’ve heard people say like over 300 bodily processes. It’s like a huge substrate kind of thing. You need your body to be able to do all these other things. So supplementing with magnesium is really easy. There’s, I believe, seven or eight different kinds. The one that I use is by bioptimizers. So it’s heelnourishgrow .com slash bioptimizers.

It’s got all of the magnesiums in it. And it is, it’s a great page that they actually have too, that just tells you all about the things that magnesium is involved in and why you might want it, but it’s huge in sleep. And then there’s this other one, I believe it’s magnesium 3 and 8 that I’ve been hearing more people talk about lately. And that one is really involved in cognition and memory. So you can’t go wrong with magnesium. It’s a supplement.

as long as you get it from a clean brand. here’s my thing about supplements. So if it’s on my web page and I use it, you know that I’ve gone through this whole process. I always look to make sure that it’s made in a GMP facility, which means it’s at least somewhat. What do you want to call it? Not regulated and monitored, maybe not as much as we’d like to be, but it’s at least somewhat monitored some of the time. And it’s a clean facility that has been vetted and all that sort of thing.

And then I also look for supplement makers that do third party testing on their products. So at the very least, they want to be testing it when they’re finished with it, but it’s better if it’s a third party, obviously, because it doesn’t have that appearance of, you know, that they could fool with the numbers or anything like that. So if they have third party testing, that is really amazing. And you just want to make sure it’s clean of all these things. I’ve heard these horror stories. In fact, I knew a friend, one of my old yoga

Cheryl McColgan (23:02.912)
Students ended up having arsenic poisoning from she’s taken all these supplements and she wasn’t really checking on those things and obviously who she bought was buying them from we’re not checking those things and the supplements were contaminated with arsenic. I’ve heard heavy metal stories about the contamination stuff. So don’t just go to Amazon and pick the cheapest supplement especially not Amazon because there’s so many fakes and counterfeits on there. You want to go

to a website, if you want a couple good brands off the top of my head that have these that are really well known and that have all the things that I just talked about. Thorn is one of the very best. I tried to apply to be an affiliate with them years ago, but somehow that never went through, which is unfortunate because I do really love them and use them. Maybe I’ll just send them a little clip of this and see if they’ll reconsider that. But anyway, so that’s a great brand. Now Foods, I really like a lot.

that when you can get on Amazon and they have their own store on Amazon. So if you go to like find now foods on there and look for seller now foods, theoretically that means that it has come exactly from now foods, but still somehow in my mind, I still prefer if I can to order directly from the manufacturer just because I think that that is a little safer. The whole Amazon thing, it’s like, I know people use it for distribution in some ways and also for exposure.

But it’s nice. And then also a lot of my discount codes and things like that you get when you do the website. And I find that most of them match Amazon in speed and in giving good shipping prices and things like that. So you shouldn’t be spending more getting it from the direct and you can be ensured that it’s also very clean. So that is my thoughts on supplements. So

The other one that I have been taking recently and I have a future episode coming where I’m going to talk about, I got some DEXA scans, I’ve been tracking my body composition and I don’t want to go too much into detail on here because I’m going to do a whole episode but basically I’ve been gaining muscle which is amazing and I’m going to tell you how I’ve been doing it. One of the things though, so I had a DEXA about two months ago and then I just had one when I was in Utah just recently.

Cheryl McColgan (25:25.678)
What I found was that in the last two months that I put on two more pounds of lean mass, which is kind of crazy because now I’m a year into lifting and you know, something like a pound a month is not very typical the longer you’ve been lifting and it’s also like difficult for women and it’s also especially difficult for women over 50. So I was really shocked to see that number. But the only thing I’ve done different, I haven’t been training differently. I haven’t been training more.

really done anything different except two things. And they’re both supplements. And I will share in the show notes, but the one is aminos. And so it’s components of protein. So even though I eat a high protein diet, I’ve been using these aminos. I try to, I take them every day, but if I’m lifting that day, I try to take them right before I go lift. And that’s by a brand called Kion, K -I -O -N. So that’s heel nourish growth slash Kion. You’ll get some discounts. You can see the aminos.

I would actually love to have him on. I’ve heard him in other interviews and it’s just super interesting. He knows the research really well and just adding aminos even without exercise theoretically, it’s supposed to be able to really help you maintain the muscle you haven’t possibly gained a little bit of lean mass. In fact, he had a story of somebody in his office who had a shoulder injury.

And so he wasn’t able to work out really nearly as much, but during his recovery, he started taking a whole bunch more aminos to help with recovery, to help just repair in the body, but also in the effort to kind of maintain his muscle while he wasn’t able to work out in the same way. And this guy apparently like had just amazing results. So that’s definitely a thing. And then the creatine that I’ve been taking, which creatine is one of the most studied supplements on the planet.

you can get it in so many, so many supplement places will have it just pure creatine monohydrate. It is just a powder. It’s super cheap. It is one of the most researched supplements as long as you got it from a place that had me all met all those things that I described and you just add every day five grams, put it in your coffee. It’s tasteless. And yeah, it helps you build muscle is the main thing. Bodybuilders use a lot more of it than that. It can give

Cheryl McColgan (27:44.536)
Let me just warn you, some GI distress. So you might want to just start out with half that amount in your coffee and build up. But I’ve been doing five grams a day. And then what is even more exciting? And I haven’t gotten to that point yet, because I am one that has a little bit of GI distress with it. So I’m just going to sit with this level for a while and see how I do. maybe I’ll try to add more at some point. Because I think also if you spread it out throughout the day, that would probably be better. But I know myself, and I know just getting it in that once a day is pretty, you

That’s enough of a challenge to make sure I get all my stuff in once a day. Adding twice might be too challenging. But anyway, all that to say, the research that they have done on creatine and cognition, brain health, is also very strong and very interesting. But to get the cognitive benefits from creatine, you need to have more, I think it was like 10 to 15 grams a day. So of course you’re getting, especially when you’re eating a high protein diet, you’re getting some creatine in meat itself, probably about two grams a day.

And then, but to get to those levels where you’re building muscle and improving cognition, those are been at higher amounts. That’s going to require some supplementation.

So yeah, I think that is all I have to say about supplements for the moment. I will talk a lot more about that on the future episode when I tell you about my little journey into this whole bodybuilding thing. I’ll put my little baby bicep here, it’s not his baby anymore. But yeah, it’s just spoiler alert a little bit. It’s like what I’ve been doing is not super crazy or super hard and I’ve definitely seen benefits. Not as much as if I was super crazy or doing it super hard, I’d probably be further along, but you know.

You gotta just fit it in how you know it can work for you and doing something is better than nothing. So don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. One of my favorite thoughts lately, just like getting on here today. I couldn’t find my light because I’ve been out of town. look, you know, whatever. And I’m like, no, I need to just get on and record. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be. So here I am. And just let that be your little mantra. Don’t

Cheryl McColgan (29:51.31)
perfect be the enemy of good. We all just need to try to do a little better every day and if it’s not perfect, that is fine. So let me go, I actually made a whole little, this is very unusual for me for an episode, but I made a list here so that I could make sure that I kind of talked about all these different things I’ve been learning that I’ve been trying. So another one is to change what you’re doing. So there’s this old saying about how

the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting things to change. If whatever you’ve been doing to lose weight or to feel better or whatever has not been working for you and you’ve given it a serious good try. So I’m not saying like, I went to the gym yesterday and I’m sore and I’m not doing that again. Not like that. If you’ve done something consistently and done it well and given it a good fair shot and it’s not working for you. like really tracking calories. I will say here’s where I land.

on the part with the calories in calories out thing. Within your system, have homeostasis, right? You have a thing where you can balance where you’re, if you’re maintaining your weight, then you’re obviously eating the perfect amount to maintain your weight. And so if you want to lose fat, you’re going to have to eat less than that. So that might require some tracking, but it also requires you actually knowing what you’re eating. So if you’ve never been a person that tracks, you might not even realize the amount

intake that you’re actually having. So when I actually track everything that I’m eating a day when I’m just in maintenance days or what I’ve been doing for the last year and a half, which has basically been a bit of building and healing my body for some things, not restricting calories. mean, if I really track it, I’m eating something like 2500 to 3000 calories a day, which is a pretty significant amount of calories. And

I’ve not been maintaining my exact scale weight. I’ve actually been gaining weight, but most of that’s muscle. Again, spoiler alert, we’ll go to that when I do that full episode. But you know, knowing some of those things are important when you’re working on this, because if you’re not doing a lot of resistance training or doing any focus on really building muscle and you’re trying to lose fat, then yes, you are probably looking for that scale number to go down over time.

Cheryl McColgan (32:10.106)
But this is where the important stuff I really do believe if you can get a good gauge on your body composition that will do you so much more good than just the scale alone because just the scale alone there’s so much fluctuation as you know especially women in particular retaining water losing water you know I promise you when you went out and ate Mexican last night you did

quote unquote, gain three pounds overnight. You are retaining water, that’s it. And the way that people talk about weight and weight loss and weight gain is kind of like that sometimes. And that can be really frustrating. So what you’re looking for is trends over time. Also, you need to change things up. So what if you’re working is not working for you, you need to change things. So here’s where things come in. If you’re using a flexible diet or just kind of, you know, eating whatever you want, not caring about the quality of the food, whatever, and that’s not working for you.

You need to change. This is why some people do a trial of strict keto or of a carnivore diet or a vegetarian or whatever it is, just making sometimes this 180 degree shift from what you’re doing. That can be enough to shake things up. Or if you’re not a tracker, maybe you track for a while or change what you’re doing. If you’re not exercising, try exercising. If you are not eating enough protein, eat more protein.

I can almost guarantee you if you are listening to this right now, you’re not eating enough protein. can almost like I would say 99 .9 % of you not eating enough protein. So if you just change that, maybe that would be enough to shake things up. But if whatever you’re doing is not working, you’ve got to make some changes. And that can be very challenging and can be very frustrating in that you might not know what you need to change. But the idea is just change something, ideally not too many things at once. So you can tell us something’s working.

cause I know there’s also this temptation to just want to like, you’re like, okay, I’m finally going to do this. I’m going to change all the things I’m going to, I’m going to work out every day and I’m going to eat like this. And I’m to do that. That is just too much. Again, a theme of my content. If you go back over time and hear the thing, that is one thing I’ve always consistently said, small changes over time, make things habits. You’re not looking to just like do something for a few days and then you give it up and it doesn’t stick. You’ve, you’ve got to just,

Cheryl McColgan (34:27.658)
over time make these small changes that become a habit and that’s it. And oftentimes it’s like if you have it stack, you’ve heard me talk about that before, something like brushing your teeth every day. there was a pill, if I wanted to take more creatine, for example, what I’d probably need to do is put it by my toothbrush in my bedroom at night so that it would remind me the last thing I do of the day is okay, I brush my teeth.

And then I would take the extra creatine. So there are ways to accomplish these things if it’s something you’re serious about, you know, making that change. so, like I said, for my example with the creatine, I just haven’t made that mental shift yet that I’m going to add some. So when I do that, I will do something like that. I will figure out a way to stick it to something else that I do every single day without fail so that I know that I will actually add that in and then it’ll become part of the habit, part of the routine.

Another thing if you haven’t tried, know tracking steps has become very popular last several years and so if you don’t wear a fit, I actually have two. I have the aura ring which is more about sleep and recovery and then I have just an old Fitbit which is more about movement and activity. And a lot of these things, I do want to go to say a lot of these things I’m mentioning are talking about like tools or things that cost money. But there are so many things you can do for free.

as well. so like, for example, the tracking your food, I use a, an app called chronometer. I do get a discount on that as well, but I use the free version. I always have, you don’t really need to pay for it. But if you go to heal nurse grow .com slash chronometer, C R O N O E T E R, it’ll take you, you’ll get to sign up. I think you get a free trial of the pro, but you really don’t need the pro. You can stay with the free version and you can just track your things for there. The same thing with tracking steps. You don’t need a fancy, there are so many cheap things on Amazon you get now,

If you want truly free, all you need to do is track time. So of course you’re trying to move more throughout the day. And that’s really what these help you with is reminding you to move every hour. They’re good. It’s also tracking like incidental steps, like you just moving around the house, doing housework. But if you want to be totally free, just start tracking time. Go for a walk for 10 minutes after every meal. That all adds up. And at the end of the day, you know, eventually over time, after a month, after two months, you’re just trying to build

Cheryl McColgan (36:47.798)
each day a little more time that you’re moving. So that’s that easy. And then the tracking steps, it’s more about, it’s a lot of things. So walking after you eat, for example, you can really get a lot of blood sugar regulation by doing that. And blood sugar regulation helps you be satiated and have less hungry, like hangar mood swings up and down. The more even your blood sugar is, just the more

likely you are to be satiated and not overeat. The other thing I just heard about this study recently too that instead of walking after meals that you did 10 body weight squats after every meal and the 10 body weight squats were as effective as like walking after every meal for blood sugar regulation which I just thought was fascinating. So that’s also another easy

that can just start to incorporate more movement into your day. So after every meal, maybe you do 10 body weight squats. Try that for a while. So it doesn’t even have to be going outside and walk. You can do body weight exercises in your house, pushups, sit ups, squats, lunges, all kinds of things that you can do for a hundred percent free with body weight that don’t require any special tools, but just tracking steps. Overall, you’re just trying to get more active each and every day.

even if it’s not like a set workout thing, like going for a walk or going outside, it’s just more movement in general. The more that you move, the higher your metabolism is gonna be and the less likely you are to just kind of sit in front of the TV and mindlessly eat or snack or those kinds of things. If that’s you, just getting this extra little movement in, being more active during the day will help with your hunger levels and it will help with burns and extra calories as well. Let’s see.

So always keeping that in mind, even though we’re going for more activity, most of your weight loss is going to come from actually what you’re putting into your body. So nutrition part is very important. And you may have heard this saying before, like abs are 80 % made in the kitchen. It’s not how many sit -ups or push -ups you’re doing or how much exercise you’re doing. It’s all about what you’re actually eating and putting in your mouth. So moving

Cheryl McColgan (39:04.674)
higher quality food, moving towards less processed food, moving towards less sugar, more, you I’ve never said, you know that I do keto low carb, but I’ve never said that that’s the only way I was vegetarian for years. I, you know, back in the nineties did the zone diet. I did the super low fat. I’ve basically tried it all. And I also don’t want to say though that you should, this saying that everybody has is like the diet that works for you is the one that you can stick to.

I don’t know. I just I don’t know how to think about that because yes, I do think you need to find some way to eat that serves you and that you’re able to adhere to but by the same token, I kind of don’t buy this whole, you know, everything in moderation thing now not to say I never eat any treats because I do but you know, do you have a cookie every single day or to have a I don’t I don’t even know how to describe this but basically

I guess maybe break it down day by day is that each and every day, 90 % of the time trying to eat things that are healthy for you and good for you and serving your goals and maybe 10 % of the time eating things that are less aligned with that goal, something like that. I mean, maybe in that way, finding a way that works for you that you can sustain. But this idea of, you know, the eating cupcakes and sugar and cake and candy and all of that stuff is actually, you know, good for you or in some way.

Like, do you know what I’m trying to say? It gives me this dissonance in my head. Like, we all know that it’s not good for us. Like, if you talk to anybody, nobody’s gonna say that eating cookies and cake and candy every day is good for you. Now, because we’ve all grown up with it though, our palates crave that, love that, it. It’s associated with parties growing up. It’s associated with fun childhood things. So that again, it’s so complex, right? There’s so much.

There’s so many things that are rolled up into food and just being social and everything. So you can’t say that you’re never going to have those things again. But then you’ve got to find some way to balance that. Like you can’t move for most people, or at least I should say, I cannot, if I have treats every single day, I’m not going to be able to maintain my weight. I’m not going to feel good. I’m not going to, you know, have it be aligned with my goals. So some restriction or some

Cheryl McColgan (41:26.754)
thing that you can put on yourself that’s like, okay, I can’t have that every day or I shouldn’t have this kind of thing. I don’t know if those things are necessarily bad, even though a lot of people in the space talk about those things as being bad or you get too orthorexic, like you’re afraid to eat anything or afraid of food. I don’t think it has to be like that, but I definitely think like realize the things that are fueling your body and that are actually good for you and mostly eat that. And then those other things, they are a treat. They’re not something to have like every single day like bread.

Bread for me is a treat. When I choose to eat bread, I don’t seem to be too affected by gluten, so I can still have that on occasion. Will I get kicked out of ketosis? Yes, I will. But I also try to eat, like I’ll make my own bread, I’ll make organic sourdough, or recently I have a French heritage, so I started making croissants on occasion, because my sisters were coming to town, I thought that’d be a good treat. But that’s what it was, it’s a treat. It’s not something I’m gonna eat every day or even every single week.

just because it’s not really in line with my goals. I don’t think that, you know, when you eat bread, it’s like, it’s hard enough for me to eat the amount of protein I need to get to be healthy. I start throwing in some bread and there are other things like that. I just don’t have the room to eat the protein then. So it’s very difficult. So you’ve got to prioritize these things. And again, make it in line with your own personal goals. If it’s more your goal to just, I don’t know, say your goal is to just enjoy food and have a good time in your life

you know, not have restrictions at all, then I can’t guarantee that that is going to be in alignment with having the body composition that you want or having the other kind of goals you want. So it’s all just prioritizing these things. And I’m not saying any of them are bad or wrong. It’s just like actually putting some thought into that, I think will help you make those choices. And that’s the way to look at it. It’s a choice. It’s not something you have to do. It’s something you want to do because you know, it makes you healthier because it’s going

allow you to have more time to, you know, healthy time to spend with your grandchildren in the future or to do good work in the world because you’re healthy. You know, if you’re not healthy, it’s going to be more difficult to accomplish the things you want to accomplish. So I think that’s also putting it in this mental perspective in a way that will help you, you know, just get your goals in alignment with what you truly want out of your life and your health.

Cheryl McColgan (43:54.486)
Okay, another bit of a tangent there, but sometimes it’s hard to like get across the years and years of thoughts or of how you’ve come to think about things in this format. Like I usually, I do better when I write, obviously, if you’re reading my things, because you have time to like map it out a little bit more and make your case, make your argument and get your thoughts together. So sometimes I find when I just talk about it, it’s kind of hard for me to get out in a short amount of talking basically.

So the next point I had on here is resistance training. If you’re not resistance training, if your goal is to lose fat, then I suggest you get on it. And I say that kind of tongue in cheek, but yet I’ve known this. This is not a new thing about resistance training. It’s always been known that resistance training builds muscle, helps you lose fat. I think just maybe in more recent years, it’s become more of a thing where people are realizing that is, that cardio is not the end all be all.

like cardio is not the way to lose weight. know, resistance training is definitely much more powerful for that. And it’s also much more powerful for your long -term health. So if you haven’t read it yet, there is a book by Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. I’m trying to think anyway, she talks about muscle is that muscle is organ of longevity. And she gives all of her case for why this is she’s a big researcher, doctor, she

basically lays it all out and it’s escaping me, I’ll put it in the show notes, but like strong something, but Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. And so basically it’s like resistance training. And like I said, I’ve known this for years. And if I really look back at my history with resistance training, I first started weight training when I was on the basketball team in eighth grade. I remember being in my garage, we had one of those weight tower things and I was pretty consistent with that for a while.

And then I became a runner and I was a runner for like 17 years, which is why my body and my knees are a mess. If I had to do it all over again, I would never, never be a distance runner. would just have lifted weights my whole life. But here’s the problem. I don’t hate it. I don’t like lifting weights. And so I was always able to convince myself because I was always running. And then after that, was power yoga and walking and because I was always super active, hiking.

Cheryl McColgan (46:20.01)
So I was always active, but I never really was consistent with lifting weights. And I’d start at various points over the years. And what would usually happen is I would do it for a while and then I’d get a little injury or something. And the little injury was enough to put me off of it completely. Then I would just stop for a while until I healed and then I would never go back to it. And so just about a year and a half ago, after delving into this stuff more and more, after people like Dr. Lyon coming out with her book and

You know, also listening to Dr. Fit and Fabulous on Instagram, Jamie Seaman, and just a lot of these, particularly women in this space and talking about hormones and how much resistance training is really related to metabolic health. And that is what I’m very interested in. And so I finally somehow in my head made the mental shift to do it, even though I didn’t like it, because there’s plenty of upsides. I say that to our boys sometimes like,

I don’t like it either. But guess what? When you’re an adult, that’s what you have to do. And that shouldn’t be a good enough reason. But hey, and whatever gets you there, right? So the resistance training thing, I just decided that I was going to do it. And that was that. And am I super confident in the gym? No, I use machines a lot because they’re just kind of easy. They don’t make you feel like an idiot because there’s not a lot of am I doing it right or not, you put your hands or your feet or whatever body part on the machine and you do the thing.

and you kind of trust that that’s worth working. I do use some free weights as well. And actually, this is really funny. After being back to the gym for just over a year now consistently three days a week, I don’t know why I find it so intimidating as a woman, but I do because I always just feel like I look like an idiot and I don’t know what I’m doing. But you know, so that I get that that is a big part of that keeps people out of the gym.

So for a long time, that’s also why I did things at home like yoga and videos and weight resistance bands and all that’s amazing, body weight exercises. But it just kept me out of the gym for a long time because I just never felt confident. But anyway, just this yesterday when I worked out on Monday at the gym, it was like, somehow I got to the part in the day where it wasn’t as busy as usual.

Cheryl McColgan (48:34.87)
And there was a bunch of the Smith’s machine. if you, that’s like a squat rack. So if you know what it looks like, it’s like the bar on this big thing and it’s usually on like little platforms or something. But people usually use them, they’ll use them a lot for squats. They use them for bench press because you don’t have to have a spotter. That thing kind of spots you because you can just rack it at each little level. I hope I’m describing this well. I think most of you know what I’m talking about. But for whatever reason, like I always just look at those and I just think that’s not for me. Just like how I never go.

in the free weight section where all the men are for the most part, there’s this like giant rack of all the dumbbells they have the barbells too and tons of benches. There’s probably like 20 at my gym and there’s always like a bunch of guys. There’s women too, but not that much. And so whenever I need the free weight stuff, there’s like this little upstairs section that’s more like the TRX section and they also have a little rack of free weights up there. And so like when I do my split squats, I would go up there and do them. I mean, just this crazy stuff. So even somebody who has been

I’ve been into fitness my whole entire life, but like I said, never been into the gym or consistently weight lifting and it just, it’s that intimidating. So believe me, I understand your pain when it comes to going to the gym. So, I don’t know, it’s just finding a way around that finding a way to still go. And, so anyway, there’s so back to this and the machine I finally decided I’m like, okay, there’s plenty of them open. I don’t feel like I’m like wasting, you know, taking up the space or whatever, that somebody else could be using that actually knows what they’re doing.

So I just went over there and I did it. And I was so proud of myself. So I did squats and I did hip thrust, which if you’re an Instagram person is like, that is what all the girls that are trying to get a booty basically do all the time. And it is a super effective exercise, but it is challenging to do. You can do it on just a bench with a free weight, like put the free weight on your hips, but it is definitely so much easier to do it with that machine.

So yeah, so I finally did it and I was super proud of myself for that and I still felt like really awkward and like I didn’t belong there, but I did it anyway. So I don’t know, I share all that with you just to say that, you know, even people, and I imagine that other people in the gym probably feel the same as I do, but they’re like, I’m just trying to get healthier and I’m just here doing my thing. And honestly, it’s the same thing with yoga class. Like I never looked or when I was teaching yoga for years,

Cheryl McColgan (50:58.348)
you know, students will always be worried, well, I look so awkward. Is everybody watching you? No, everybody’s up in their own head. Like when I was just doing that thing on the rack, like I wasn’t paying attention to anybody else in the gym. And when I go, I’m never really paying attention to anybody else about what they’re doing or do I think they’re doing it right or do they look goofy or whatever it is? I’m never thinking that. So anyway, I just try to remind myself of that. That probably everybody there feels a little bit awkward and like they don’t know what they’re doing and everybody’s just trying to get healthier.

And if we all just respect that, then it’s all good. so yeah, so that’s my spiel on resistance training. If you’re not doing it, do it. as I get more resources on that, cause I’m actually thinking about what I’m actually thinking about now is, okay, I’ve done this randomly. I’ve proven myself that I’ll go and I probably wasted my first year of newbie gains or whatever, but I did get some gains. but now I want to focus more on like, what can I do to be more effective in the gym? So yes, I’m going every time now.

while I’m there, what should I be doing? What order should I be doing it to really get the maximum benefit out of what I’m doing? Because I can see, you know, what I’ve been doing. I’ve had some success. I’ve definitely had growth of lean mass. I’m definitely way stronger. But I know that I’m probably not doing

the right amount of sets or on each body. I know I’m missing body parts that I’m not hitting as much. So I’d like to get that more balanced out and maybe get a program or something. And so as I look into that more and find one online or find something to help with that, I’ll share that with you guys later too. Then if you haven’t tested for anything. So probably should have said this in beginning. If you’re truly weight loss resistant or having trouble

There are definitely a lot of online things now that are helpful that focus on weight loss, but even just going to your doctor and getting kind of the basics, getting your thyroid tested, making sure there’s no issue there. If you’re a woman of a certain age, are you perimenopausal? Are you postmenopausal? There used to be this thought that once you were over 50 or once you were already into menopause that you couldn’t consider bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, but

Cheryl McColgan (53:12.226)
they are saying now that that is not the case. And basically the idea that hormone therapy is related or increases the risk of breast cancer that’s been debunked over and over at this point. And I do wanna link some resources down in the show notes for you about people that I’ve recently been following on this topic. A lot of people who really have the latest data in mind, have the latest studies in mind.

that aren’t just repeating that old dogma that they learned in medical school 25 years ago that they thought that estrogen causes cancer, breast cancer in women, it’s just not there. And so a lot of these symptoms can be mitigated. Also, if you don’t know this, so what happens, do know how women’s chance for heart disease becomes equal to men after menopause? That’s because estrogen goes away. So once we lose our estrogen,

Our risk factors for so many other things like heart disease and everything else goes up in heart disease is still the number one killer, I believe, over breast cancer. So you kind of got to balance out those things that we’re trying to fight, right? Do you want to feel better and have a better cardiovascular health or do you want to suffer and have this old antiquated idea that you might be at high risk for breast cancer, which probably isn’t even true based on the data?

So I would just like dig into that a little bit more for yourself and like use some of these resources that I list, read about it, see what you think. So whether you’re paraminopausal, menopausal, post -menopausal, those are all still phases in a woman’s life where you could possibly use hormone therapy support and it could help you with weight loss. So that’s definitely something to check out. I’d also recommend that you test

blood sugar. Most doctors test for that routinely, but A1C is not the whole story. That’s your three month average of your blood sugar and it can be based on like it’s something like the life of your red blood cell, which is not quite the same in everybody. So it can be a little bit skewed. So it’s not a perfect measure. None of these are perfect measures, right? But fasting insulin, most doctors won’t test for this. It’s super cheap. If you pay for it out of pocket yourself,

Cheryl McColgan (55:21.39)
on like using Life Extension or one of those lab services, I literally think it’s like $20. And if that is out of the optimal range, you’ve got some work to do. And so if you know that your fasting insulin is really high, you’re gonna wanna change some things with your diet, and that might be part of the things that are making you resistant to lose weight. Also using a CGM as part of this, they finally approved them for over the counter use continuous glucose monitor.

So now you no longer need a prescription. I’m not sure exactly when that started or if it already started, or if I can just like go int