Episode #: 59 The Scale is a lying liar who lies.

You’re Listening to the Keto and Low Carb Success podcast, Episode # 59, The Scale is a Lying Liar That Lies

 Did you know that you don't have to spend money on a diet program or weigh, measure and track your food? What if you could learn to have success by following an easy roadmap that takes you on adventures from learning how to change your mindset so that you can believe in yourself, to learning about what foods work best in your body and why? Join me, Miriam Hatoum, health coach, course creator and author of Conquer Cravings with Keto, as I give you actionable coaching advice that is sure to empower you so that you will finally find peace with food and learn to trust your body’s signals. You’ve got this, girl!  

Be sure to go to miriamhatoum.com/resources to get all the free guides to help you along the way. I am in your shoes, my friends, and I wrote these guides for both of us. The link is in the show notes and transcripts.

Oh, and before we start, I want to let you know that the primary purpose of this podcast and the course is to educate and does not constitute medical advice or service, and I’m keeping up with the science as fast as I can so I can share with you the latest breaking research in this area to help you achieve your dreams!

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Now on to today’s episode:

I am taking that directly from one of my favorite people, Jimmy Moore. I think it is perfect! I always say, “Keto is a shape-shifting diet.” When you get done listening to this episode go to the transcript to check out a photo I will have there. I don’t have the individual photos dated, but I do recall that this was several months into my Keto journey and my weight loss had been stalled. The pictures were taken about two months apart with very little to show for it on the scale.

(I AM SORRY - IT TURNS OUT THAT I CANNOT ADD PICTURES TO THESE SHOWNOTES. CLICK ON THIS BLOG TO SEE IT.)

But before I get into some other things, I want to talk about NSVs.

4:40 What is a NSV? It stands for Non-Scale Victories

Listen, little grasshoppers, let’s sit around the campfire and count the ways you could be experiencing these non-scale victories: 

·       You no longer obsess about food and about each meal and snack you will have. 

·       You no longer calculate points and calories in your head every time you want to figure out whether or not you have room for a food. 

·       You just aren’t hungry all day and the cravings for sweets and “carbage” are gone. 

·       You no longer have “carb face” meaning that the swollen look and the double chins are gone or have slimmed down and you don’t have that red face that no amount of makeup could conceal (that’s less inflammation, people). 

·       You recognize when you are hungry and recognize when you have had enough to eat. 

·       You don’t mind leaving food on your plate and it doesn’t traumatize you to throw out or put away the little bit left on your dish. 

·       You are actually willing to leave things on your dish and on the kids’ dishes! Your clothes fit better. 

·       Your knees, hands, elbows and hips stop aching. You don’t wake up an old tired pile of bones every morning. 

·       It is actually easy to eat out! 

·       Your grocery bills have gone down even though you are buying higher-quality food. 

·       You are using so much less food. 

·       Your feet don’t hurt. 

·       OMG and don’t forget the clothes! You will be shopping in your closet for sizes from long ago or will be treating yourself to a wardrobe bought in the regular-sizes section of the store.

·       You get the picture, grasshopper. Be patient and the scale victories will follow the NSVs — I promise!

6:11     How could I go down in size but not in weight?

There are several reasons for this. 

·       Of course, if you are exercising, muscle is denser than fat. 

·       A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat, but it takes up less space. 

·       For those of us who exercise, the difference in size vs. weight might even be more marked. 

·       However, there is more to it than that. 

·       Your weight fluctuates daily or even hourly or minute to minute, and because of this, weight can be a weak benchmark for progress. 

·       A better indication of your progress with Keto and Low Carb is how your clothes fit because of muscle gain and fat loss. 

·       Further to that is looking at a shift in fat. 

·       There are five types of fat in our bodies: 

o   brown fat, also known as the fat-burning fat, revs up metabolism, stabilizes blood sugar, lowers your risk of type 2 diabetes and improves heart health. 

o   This fat has smaller droplets and thus is denser than white fat, which is what is around the belly, hips and thighs.

o   So, as you are eating healthier and increasing brown fat while reducing white fat, the scale might remain stable as you shift from white fat composition to brown fat composition, but your size may be going down. 

o   However, of course, overall fat loss will result in weight loss. 

o   The other three types of fat are subcutaneous fat (just under the skin),

o    visceral fat (the most dangerous, around your organs) and 

o   beige fat which is a combination of white and brown and is along the spine and collarbone. 

I talked about this in Episode #51 that aired May 25th. 

·       All fats play a role in metabolism and hormone regulation. 

·       Suffice it to say that with your change in eating you are not only shifting around fats, but making changes in connective tissues, vessels and the like. 

·       There is a lot more going on in your body than what the scale can gauge. 

·       Personally, for me, my insulin levels went down and my A1c went down. There were also vast improvements in my heart health and inflammation-marker numbers.

9:00    The Whoosh Effect and Water Weight

·       According to some social media sites and blogs, the whoosh effect is a term that describes the noticeable weight loss that occurs, particularly  when following a Keto diet. 

o   The idea behind it is that when a person burns fat, the fat cells lose fat but fill up with water. 

o   People then report that after losing enough fat, the cells will gradually increase their water to fat ratio until they are all water. 

o   Then, the body will release the water from the cells through urine or diarrhea. 

o   Some people believe that when the body expels this excess fat and water, you will be noticeably slimmer. 

·       However, What the science says is that 

o   when the body burns fat, fat cells do not fill with water. 

o   Fat cells, or adipose tissue, store excess energy. 

o   When the body burns more calories than it takes in, the body expels excess fat and the fat cells shrink. 

·       Although the body does convert a small percentage into water, there is no evidence to suggest that the cells begin “filling with water” and suddenly disappear when they no longer contain any fat. 

·       The whoosh effect that people claim to experience may actually be due to losing “water weight.”

·       If the body becomes dehydrated, it begins to store water. 

·       This can make people feel more bloated or heavier than they would usually. 

·       Once a person drinks enough water, they will lose the excess water weight, which can appear as a noticeable loss of weight.

So, feeling lighter “all of a sudden” is more likely you are actually losing fat, or your fat is being shifted from white fat composition to brown fat composition, or that you are losing water weight.

11:00   Water weight is typically the first to go when you begin a calorie-restricted diet. 

·       Your body burns through the calories, then dips into your glycogen supply for energy.

·       Glycogen is bound to the body by water, and the process results in the water being released and your pants fitting a bit better. 

The links to articles that I refer to on Water Weight and the Whoosh Effect are in the show notes and transcript.

11:40   Your body’s priority is restoring itself to health

Your body’s priority is to find a return to health. 

·       That means that while it is working to bring down inflammation, to regulate blood sugar and insulin, to shift LDL particles from small and dense to light and fluffy, to repair skin cells, etc., it cannot be saying to itself, “But she wants to see results on the scale — to heck with all this other stuff!” 

·       If you are healthy, your body will then begin to release the weight. 

·       If you do not have a lot of other issues, metabolic and otherwise, then the body doesn’t have to fight so hard and it will release the weight. 

·       When you see success stories about how people have lost 10–20 pounds a month on Keto, ask yourself, 

o   “Is this person young? 

o   Does this person have a history of yo-yo dieting? 

o   Are her hormones balanced? 

o   Does she have any factors of metabolic syndrome (most notably insulin resistance)? Etc.?” 

You do you and let them do them.

·       Don’t be discouraged.

·       As in the picture above, the scale does not show many things, but most importantly, it does not show your progress toward internal healing. 

·       As you get closer to the one, you will get closer to the other. 

Be patient as you are learning new tasks, both in the learning and the outcome.

13:19    Be Patient

Being patient comes in with learning how to recognize and accept more NSV outcomes than just what the scale says. Patience also plays an important role as you are learning new things about your chosen eating style.

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, asks the question “Are you an abstainer or a moderator?” 

·       The idea behind the question is that some people find it easier to give things up altogether than to have sporadic or moderate indulgences. 

·       There is no right or wrong here; you just need to know your personal bent to have the best success. 

·       For people who are moderators, success will not be easily available — if it is available at all — if they jump headlong into a new way of eating, especially with something like Keto, where there is very exact elimination of certain foods. 

I am generally an abstainer and not a moderator, meaning that it was fairly easy for me to jump all in when I started Keto. 

But I had clients who were very much moderators, and it didn’t work for me to tell them to jump all in. 

·       This is where Granny Keto Transitions Program comes in and why I saw the need for it. 

·       When I first started Keto, I went to dozens of Keto websites and Facebook pages and watched an equal number of YouTube videos and bought dozens of cookbooks and informational books. 

·       Every single one (web page, Facebook page, YouTube video or book) speaks to the abstainer: “Go all in or go home.” 

·       I witnessed Facebook groups ban people for even asking questions about moderating some foods that may not be Keto. 

One person said, “I could stay Keto if I could just have an apple every day.” I kid you not when I say the administrator’s reply was, “Then you obviously don’t belong in this group,” and with not even a chance to reply, the person was banned from the group. 

I would have to say, this is not extreme; it is the norm. 

What if you are a 50- or 60-year-old woman and you have never in your life even cut back on sugar, let alone cut out sugar, grains, legumes or root vegetables? 

·       I am not saying that ultimately on Keto it’s okay to eat an apple every day (not just because of the carb count — an apple is your total carbs for the day — but also for the detrimental effect of all that fructose on your liver). 

·       But when you are starting out, if having an apple a day means the difference between learning to eat Keto or just going on to the next diet, I would rather have you eat the apple.

When you are a moderator – and this is where boiling a frog comes in  –  you are particularly sensitive to the boiling water and will jump high and far. Or you might just pass out, sink and be boiled to death anyway. 

Maybe I need to rename Granny Keto Transitions Program to How to Successfully Boil a Keto Frog. The point is that everyone’s journey to Keto is different. Sometimes the failure or starting-over or walking-away rates are because people don’t understand their own personalities. 

They think something is wrong with them or the diet if they can’t do it 100% like everyone else seems to be doing. 

If you are a moderator or just a person who has never done anything like Keto before, then the Granny Keto Transitions Program might be perfect for you, and it is fully available in my program, Keto and Low Carb Success. 

·       Cut back sugar and baked goods (Step 1); 

·       cut out grains and legumes either both at the same time or one at a time (Step 2); 

·       learn the carbohydrate values of the food you eat and slowly cut back the amounts (Step 3); 

·       learn what it means to moderate your protein intake and cut out fruits except for berries — again both together or one at a time (Step 4); and 

·       learn not to fear fat and eat more of it, while also cutting out root vegetables (Step 5). 

·       There — you’ve climbed the ladder to Keto without jumping all in. 

By the time you get to the top step 

·       You won’t even feel the need to eat sugar or potatoes or bread or rice or pasta anymore. 

·       You will wonder how you ever ate bagsful of baby carrots or bags of popcorn. 

·       You will have been slowly brought to a nice tender Keto lifestyle! 

·       Did you even notice? 

o   Was it hard? 

o   NO and NO. 

o   And along the way you learned what works for YOU. 

No one Keto way of eating is right. No one’s Keto has to be your way. As you climb the ladder slowly and steadily you will find a kinder, gentler Keto that will be perfect for YOU. Really this approach is all about patience and how to boil a frog!

20:13   This week’s Actionable Coaching Advice:

This week I would like you to give some thought as to how you approach things in general. 

·       Do you jump right in, learning as much as you can at the front end, but it’s okay with you if you still have a lot to learn on the back end?

·       Do you take things very slowly, not even starting until you feel you have all the information you need?

·       Are you right in the middle, taking things one step at a time, but at least starting even if you don’t have all the information yet?

·       Do you start with a portion of something? Like if you want to do Keto you start with Low Carb, or if you want to do Low Carb you take time to learn the bones of Keto?

You can see there are so many different ways to approach your new eating style. And, you might be surprised to find that you are one way with one thing and another way with another. The problem is when you don’t take the time to identify how to be most comfortable with a new way of doing things.

The second thing I would like you to do for this week is to list all the NSVs that you either currently are experiencing, would like to experience, or remember from the past. Take note which ones have nothing to do with the scale but gave you a great sense of accomplishment and made you very happy.

I also encourage you, as part of your coaching, to look at my new program, Keto and Low Carb Success at miriamhatoum.com/course. There is so much in there that will help you find your footing with all of this.

And, let me remind you. If you’ve ever got a question you’d like to ask me or share a topic idea that you would like me to cover on a future episode, don’t be a stranger! I always look forward to hearing from listeners like you. You are welcome to email me directly… miriam@miriamhatoum.com. And don’t forget to leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. I would SO appreciate it. Leaving a review makes it easier for other people who are looking to listen and learn about Keto and Low Carb.

22:37  Coming up in the next Episode

Next week I want to talk about Keto and Low Carb sweets, baked goods and other treats. Recipes for all are abundant on the web – including my own site where I give you recipes for Keto bagels and Italian cream cake. The next episode, however, will explore what’s behind having all these things, including looking at the saying “Never go back to the things that broke you.” 

Please share this show with your friends and invite them to tune in with you and learn how to become free from diet prison with my Keto and Low Carb Success podcast. Especially share this podcast with anyone you know who is struggling with their weight or eating plan. This podcast and my course can be game changers if you take the information and coaching advice that are in them, they really are. It will help so many people transform their lives – not just with food but with how they feel about themselves, how they approach the food they eat, and how they make decisions about any area of their lives.

Until the next episode, go live free from diet worry — I’ll see you back here next time.

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Water Weight
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