Non-Scale Victories: Progress Beyond Weight Loss

Transcript:

Melanie: Hello. Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. I am Melanie Beasley, and I'm a Registered and Licensed Dietitian. And with me today is Britni Vincent, who's also a Registered and Licensed Dietitian. Britni and I have both been dietitians for many years. Me, I think more than you.

Britni: Yes, that is true.

Melanie: We've done one-on-one consultations. We've taught in classrooms, but our goal is to help each and every client achieve the success with their health through eating a real food diet and we get to see the positive change.

Britni: It's amazing.

Melanie: Which is amazing. And although usually our clients come in with multiple goals to work on or maybe just one, one of the most common goals we see is weight loss. And even if it's not someone's number one goal of why they come to see us, it's often a goal. Would you agree?

Britni: I would agree. Yeah.

Melanie: So I think today's discussion is really going to be important because how do we define success in meeting your health goals? Because it can be hard to take the focus off the number on the scale.

Britni: Yeah. I mean, for so many individuals, especially women, their success, which I don't even necessarily like that word, but their success is tied to the scale.

Melanie: Yes.

Britni: And not necessarily about how they feel historically, but when they come to us, I think they're ready to take a different approach.

Melanie: Yeah, I agree with that. And they, I love to revisit why they came in after two or three times. And the number of symptoms that they came in with and how they've gone away.

Britni: And I think that, you know, it can be extremely discouraging to continue making these lifestyle changes if you are not seeing movement on the scale. But you know, oftentimes you're not thinking about the other improvements that might be happening. And sometimes these improvements are so slow that they're not even realizing how much better they're necessarily feeling.

And I've had lots of clients who are eating real foods, sleeping better, having more energy, digestion is finally working, and yet they feel like they're failing because the scale hasn't budged because in our society, unfortunately, the diet culture, that's what they've taught people.

Melanie: Yes. And that's always been the measuring stick of health, unfortunately is the number on the scale.

Britni: And I, a lot of clients tell me that their doctors told them that the best way to improve their cholesterol and lower their blood pressure is to lose a few pounds by eating less and exercising more. And we know that that little formula doesn't work. There is, it's much more complicated than that, and they haven't found that success long term when they've tried to lose weight.

Health is much more than weight loss

But the truth is, health is so much more than weight loss and the scale is really just one tool and honestly, not necessarily even the best measurement.

Melanie: Not necessarily because really when a doctor tells you, lose weight, and everything will improve, it's really not because of the number on the scale. It's really because what are you doing to lose the weight? If you increase exercise and you decrease processed foods and you're losing weight, you're going to improve your cholesterol.

Britni: Yes.

Melanie: But it's really not because you've just dropped weight.

Britni: Exactly. So when someone comes in to meet with me or one of the other dietitians at Nutritional Weight & Wellness, we ask them to fill out a health questionnaire and it asks a long list of different health questions and also about their goals. And during that initial 90-minute consultation, we're going over that very thoroughly.

So we can get an idea of what they want to achieve by working with us, what their goals are, but also, you know, what's actually going on internally in their body; so we know how to best recommend things just based on their individual needs.

Melanie: We are more than the guardian of the scale. We are the guardian of your entire health.

Britni: Yes. Yeah. We're thinking about your body holistically. And not just the scale or not just kind of siloing out different areas of the body.

Melanie: Right. Being thin does not mean you're healthy.

Britni: No, absolutely not.

Melanie: Well, and it's the same thing when someone starts our Nutrition for Weight Loss 12-week program, the first week they'll fill out a symptoms checklist, and sometimes people will look at this long list of symptoms and say, what do these symptoms have to do with nutrition, and my main goal is to lose weight?

Well, all of these symptoms are connected to diet and your gut health. And then at the end of the 12 weeks, the class participants, they get to fill out the same survey. And I've been teaching Nutrition for Weight Loss for years, and I have yet to see anyone who hasn't seen improvements in multiple areas by the end of those 12 weeks. It's gratifying.

Britni: I agree with that.

Melanie: And in fact, they are usually surprised to look at their sheet from week one because they forgot that they scored some of their symptoms so high. It's just what you said, where they've kind of forget because it's a slow, it can be a slow change and that's exactly why we have them fill out those sheets on week one.

The thing I love is standing in front of a class is you literally see their pallor change, their hair get glossier, their eyes are brighter, they're sitting up straighter, they have more energy. They're not falling asleep in class, you know, and all of that is chemistry because you forget how bad you felt on week one. But we get to see the transformation standing there looking at the, at the class. It's, it's really fun.

Real food in balance helps to heal metabolism

Britni: And you know, the truth is, a slow metabolism can take a long time to heal. You've probably heard us say, we're really focusing on healing your body from the inside out, and that's a process. I mean, it didn't take a day or weeks or even months for you to get to where you are.

So putting it into perspective, it's going to take time to reverse some of that damage. And this is especially true if you've yo-yo dieted during your lifetime or you've been significantly reducing calories, then it's going to take even longer for your metabolism to improve.

Overviewing common improvements people might see before the scale budges

But when you start eating real food in balance, you will likely start to notice other symptoms improve before the scale budges. So let's kind of dive into that a little bit more. When I meet with a new client during the first visit, I'll big picture, kind of go over the basics of eating real food.

And yes, this definitely helps with weight loss, but I think one of the first things people will notice is their energy's better, and they have fewer cravings. When you swap those processed carbs with more protein, healthy fats, increasing veggies, your energy doesn't crash. So you start to feel more balanced and steady throughout the day.

Melanie: You know, and just to clarify, when we, just in case we have listeners that are new, when we say real food, we're really talking about foods you find in nature, meat you find in nature, fats, oils that come from nature. So it's going to be something that you can find in the farmer's field or in the farmer's barn or in streams or oceans.

It's not going to be something that's comes from a factory. That's what we mean by real foods. So I just had a client and he was a little resistant, I think, to some of the changes because he loved food. He had quite the history in his childhood of being without and being very hungry. So he was, you know, part of the, don't let anything waste. I've got to finish what's on the table. And so we've worked together and he said to me today, it is almost alarming for me to feel like I'm okay. I don't need to eat excessive amounts of food. I feel satisfied. And so it's that piece of when you nourish the body, the cravings go away. And he found he could walk by dessert, which was not something he's accustomed to being able to do. So it really is getting that chemistry right and that balance so that the cravings and the habits are actually easier for you to avoid when you get that chemistry right.

Another client recently said to me, I, that she didn't even realize that I could feel this good all day. I've always struggled with low energy and sugar cravings. Well, that's a really powerful sign that the body is healing because when you start to eat real food and balance, you won't feel that mid-afternoon energy slump where you can't stay awake or that's the worst when you're at work.

Britni: Yeah it is.

Melanie: And you'll sleep better. So you'll wake up feeling rested instead of exhausted. And all of a sudden you'll have energy to take that afternoon walk. You can skip the sugary coffee, midday pick me up. You don't need that bump, the caffeine bump to get you through. It's it's magic and it's nice to feel like you have control.

Britni: Yes. People I think are amazed at how much their bodies can change. And like you said, they're actually feeling in control because a lot of people just feel so out of control with their food and their food choices and their cravings.

Melanie: And it doesn't matter your age.

Britni: No, not at all. Nope. And that, that's such a big one when people don't need that sugar pick me up during that afternoon slump.

Melanie: Yes.

Britni: You can drive by fast food without stopping. You can walk by the office candy bowl without it calling you, and it's really amazing when people tell me, I thought cravings were just part of who I am. I've always had sugar cravings since I was a child.

Then when I started eating the Weight and Wellness way with real food in balance, my cravings were gone. I'm not thinking about sugar all the time. It's truly life changing and I can think of one client off the top of my head, who recently, she's always really struggled to get out of bed. And had that afternoon slump. All of a sudden she's popping out of bed.

Melanie: Ha ha.

Britni: She has enough energy to take her dog for a walk in the morning before starting work. She's not having those cravings or that mid-afternoon slump. And that really happened, I would say, within the first month of us working together.

Melanie: That’s wonderful.

Britni: Yeah. I can think of another client that I saw recently and she has a history of binging. And so this relationship with sugar has been there since a child. And so for her, she just decided it was best to cut out sugar, kind of cold turkey. I saw her two weeks later. The cravings were gone. She had more energy and her chronic pain was better. Her pain was better, which she was not expecting to happen.

Melanie: So great just to feel, to feel like yourself again. But the bonus is your body's more comfortable. That's a win. So let's move on to our next sign of success. One of my favorite things to help clients find relief from is pain, which you touched on.

And myself, I've dealt with chronic pain. I've seen how the power of real food works for me. And when you help someone overcome chronic pain, it really is watching them get to their life back.

Britni: Yes.

Melanie: Dealing with, maybe you're somebody who deals with chronic fibromyalgia or arthritis or migraines. This can make a big deal. I’ve worked with a couple people, but one beautiful young soul comes to mind and she's a yoga teacher and she has arthritis and she has dramatically improved in her pain to where we're able to cut one of her medications completely out. And her other medication is half the dose and as long as she stays on point eating, she doesn't have pain.

Britni: Wow. That's amazing.

Melanie: Which she's dealt with for years. Pain is really your body's flare gun that says it can't handle the inflammation anymore. So when you start lowering that inflammation by feeding real food so the cells can heal, removing the food that is like a machine gun fire to the body, the body can calm down and it doesn't shoot those warning signs out in the form of pain signals. So that's very satisfying. We just really want to live long, strong, and pain-free. I mean, that's our goal in life, right?

Britni: Yeah. I think similar to pain, strength, and mobility is a very common goal that I hear.

Melanie: Yeah mobility.

Britni: Yeah. And you know, being able to walk up the stairs without getting winded, completing a yoga or group fitness class, even carrying your groceries more easily. Those are huge victories, and we have clients who celebrate things like gardening without pain or getting on the floor with their grandkids.

Those functional wins matter so much because it's impacting your daily life significantly. I can think of a client that, again, within a month they were feeling like they had better mobility. They weren't waking up with that stiffness, which of course helps with mobility and just feeling like they're moving around much more easily. And I've heard the term from clients, I just feel lighter and it's not necessarily related to weight, but they're just feeling lighter in their movements.

Melanie: Yes. I had a client and she was at the family cabin over the 4th of July, and she said they have these long stairs that go down from the cabin to where they dock their pontoon. And she said, I try to make sure we get everything down there. So there's not multiple trips. And so she had everything down there and her husband had forgotten, I can't remember what it was, but she said, oh, I'll go get it. And she said, I ran up the stairs.

Britni: Oh, wow.

Melanie: And she said, I stopped in the middle of this stair climb, turned around to my husband and said, look at me. I'm running. She just couldn't believe that she was able to just run up the stairs and go get something she'd forgotten. Just the small things we take for granted in our youth.

Britni: Yep.

Melanie: …is something we ought to be able to take for granted when we're a senior or a grandparent. It doesn't have to be this steady decline of mobility.

Britni: Yeah.

Melanie: And beyond how you feel, there are data points to measure improvements internally. I like to encourage my clients to get blood work done before meeting with me or soon after our first visit, and then compare after a few months. And with each annual doctor's visit, it's really fun to compare.

Britni: Yeah, it is.

Melanie: So when blood sugar, cholesterol, or inflammation markers improve, that shows your body is responding positively to food changes. And I love when clients come back from their doctor saying, my cholesterol improved. My A1C is down. And those numbers often change before the scale does. I'm thinking of a client where she did not feel good on statin cholesterol lowering medication. She felt horrible. We hear that a lot.

So she just stopped. She said, I can't do it. My quality of life is poor. And so she had her physical, all of her numbers improved and her doctor said, yep, that statin's doing its job. And she hadn't been taking it. It was all through real food: thrilling.

Improvements you can see on the outside

Britni: Well, we've talked a bit about how you feel and how your blood work improves when you improve your diet. Now let's discuss improvements that you can see on the outside. These, I think, are often added bonuses that people will notice even if it wasn't one of their goals.

Melanie: Yeah.

Britni: Skin will improve. You mentioned this when you're seeing our class participants over the 12 week period, their skin changes. You might look less puffy or bloated all around.

Melanie: They look more “glowy”.

Britni: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe your wedding ring is looser, your eyes might be clearer, whiter. Your nails and hair grow longer and stronger and the reduction in that kind of puffy feeling. I hear that a lot; within like the first two to four weeks. It happens pretty darn quickly.

Melanie: When you are inflamed, your body's response is to hold fluid.

Britni: Mm-hmm.

Melanie: And you can see it.

Britni: Yeah. A lot of clients will say, I'm noticing my face is looking thinner, and maybe they've lost weight, maybe they haven't. So that means that they're less puffy and inflamed overall. And over time we get to see our clients looking more confident in their own skin, feeling like their old selves. Which is really great. Well, let's, let's take a break here and we will be right back.

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Britni: Well, welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition.

More on the food & gut health connection to skin

Melanie: So when we left, we were talking about what we see with our clients when they start improving, and these are wins beyond the scale. But I want to talk more about the food connection to skin, because you mentioned skin, and it may not be an obvious connection.

If you have a skin issue, you may think to go to the dermatologist. Great. Which would make sense because that's, that's their lane. But knowing that skin is the largest organ in the body, it also makes sense that that's what's going on on the inside is going to be reflected on the outside.

Your, your skin is a tell. We talked about people start looking more “glowy”, but there's more. Conditions like eczema, rashes, acne, rosacea, bumps on the back of their arms or the back of their thighs. These are all related to gut health and diet. Believe it or not, they are all signs of internal inflammation.

And maybe some nutrient deficiencies. So when I'm working with a client with a skin concern, I will have them take pictures so they can monitor changes over time. And once we work on improving their gut health and switch to a real food diet and add in some key supplements, they notice the rosacea or their psoriasis dramatically improves and their acne clears up and their red patches clear up, and their itchy little areas go away.

And the bumps on their arms clear up and there is a clear connection. So you can save yourself a lot from purchasing expensive creams and lotions to try to clear up the inflammation that is reflected in your skin. You can try this because a real food diet is going to benefit your internal health, which is then reflected in your skin health.

So love that. I love to see, I had a young client, this was a couple years ago, and she had such bad back acne, chest acne, acne on her face. We did some tweaking and a few things and a few key supplements and within six weeks when she came back to see me dramatically improved.

Britni: Wow.

Melanie: She was thrilled and she had tried some pretty heavy duty medications, a couple courses of them that kind of destroyed her digestion.

Britni: That is so cool.

Melanie: So much better. I mean, when you're young, you just want to be clear skinned. I mean, that should be a small thing that you want to work on.

Britni: Yeah, that is, it's hard to have acne or visible psoriasis, eczema. It makes you more self-conscious.

Melanie: And we live in this selfie world, right; this selfie Instagram, Facebook world.

Britni: Yeah. Yeah. I had a client, she had both eczema on her face and psoriasis on her scalp; went to the dermatologist, did all the things, and she eliminated gluten and dairy and then also changed her shampoo. That was a trigger.

Melanie: Interesting.

Britni: And it all cleared up and I just saw her a couple weeks ago to check in.

Melanie: She has to be thrilled.

Britni: And it's still gone. Yeah. Amazing.

Melanie: Wow Britni. I bet she loves you.

Britni: Yeah. I mean, people are just so excited with all of these changes and you know, like we said earlier, feeling more confident about themselves. And again, this doesn't necessarily mean that they're always losing weight, but it's really great. People are so excited.

The positive impact of behavior & relationship with food 

But let's talk about another category of non-scale victories. Your behavior around food or your relationship with food. And I think this is maybe something that people don't necessarily think about, wanting to see changes or recognizing that that could benefit them, but a big part of eating real food in balance is to feel satisfied with your eating so you're not white knuckling it all the time.

Melanie: Yeah.

Britni: You're not in that diet mentality all the time. So many people can relate to a pattern of restricting your, your eating. Then you're binging and you're overeating and it's like back and forth this cycle that can continue for years, and it brings up, unfortunately, a lot of shame for people because you're, you, they feel like they're not able to control what they're putting in their mouth.

Melanie: Mm-hmm.

Britni: But when you eat real food in balance, like we teach, you're not going to feel overly hungry or restricted. And those cravings, like we've said, they'll go away or significantly reduce. And that makes it so much easier.

Melanie: So much better. A lot of times when I start someone, particularly men, when I start them on a real food diet, they said, so I can't eat anything fun. You know, this is what you hear. I can't eat anything fun. I can't enjoy anything delicious. But, if they give it a good effort, they find they don't even care about the food they thought was so fabulous.

Britni: Yeah.

Melanie: The processed foods.

Britni: Yep.

Melanie: Or the sugar. They're like, I'm enjoying eating this way. They're surprised.

Britni: It's so true.

Melanie: Because when you feed the body what it wants to nourish itself, it stops craving all the food that was poisoning it.

Britni: Yeah, it’s true. It's really true. You know, I can think of a…

Melanie: That was dramatic: poisoning it, but you get my point.

Britni: Well, yeah, I can think of one client and I've been seeing her for like a year. And she has dieted on and off since she was a young teenager and never found anything successful. And it was really getting to her mentally as well. And so she decided to kind of take a different approach.

She found Nutritional Weight & Wellness, and we talked a lot about mindset; shifting her mindset with her. So she's not expecting to be perfect. She's not thinking that she's a failure if she ends up eating something more processed. She's really approaching it as a lifestyle and she's been incredibly successful and it's become just what she does. Like she's created these new habits. One thing that made it more successful for her is not changing everything all at once.

Melanie: Yeah.

Britni: Because you do that, you can do it, but for a short time. I don't generally see that successful long term because it's overwhelming. So she just focused it on small changes, which allowed her to create those habits and then she could just kind of build on it. Weight loss was one of her goals. But like we're talking about today, she started to notice some of these other non-scale victories before the scale did start to move that.

Melanie: Don't you feel like the body, body has to heal, the body has to heal before it really starts releasing weight? Did you find that to be true with her?

Britni: I think so. And she decided in this journey to have less of a focus on the weight, even though that was a secondary goal for her. It was more about, I want to feel better on a daily basis.

Melanie: Mm-hmm.

Britni: And she's achieved that.

Melanie: And she's satisfied?

Britni: Yes.

Melanie: And has she dropped weight?

Britni: Mm-hmm. She has. Yeah.

Melanie: So I would love when you focus, not so much on the scale, but on about feeling good, the rest, it follows in alignment.

Britni: It does.

Melanie: It really does. And you know, if you can go throughout the day without being in that monkey brain of always thinking about what am I going to eat? And what can I eat? And she's eating that and I better not have that, or I did eat that, now I feel bad about that. And focus on what you're putting in, that you've got to get a minimum of this much protein, meat, vegetables when you're focused on what you're getting in, I think that's an easier approach.

Britni: Absolutely.

Digestive issues: some of the most common conditions we work with

Melanie: And I think something that ties into that food restriction behavior is uncomfortable gastrointestinal symptoms. Besides weight loss, digestion issues are probably the other most common reason people see us.

Britni: I would agree with that.

Melanie: Yeah. So gas and bloating, reflux, heartburn, diarrhea, cramping, and if you're experiencing these every time you eat, it would make sense that you avoid eating or maybe you rely on things like antacids or a proton pump inhibitor like omeprazole. I like to empower my clients to know that they do not have to suffer with those uncomfortable symptoms for the rest of their life.

I can see them breathe a sigh of relief once they get that glimmer of hope and that assurance that I can help them, and I think a lot of people are happier about their symptom relief than they are about their weight loss because living in pain, having to constantly pop a pill, what if I forgot my pill when we went to the cabin or on vacation?

It really improves their day-to-day quality of life to not have gas or reflux or diarrhea every time they eat. And really, Britni, a bonus side effect is that they can wean off their antiacid medications over time. We help them do that when they, we get everything straightened out in their gut, but I think it's a win-win because a lot of those medications have terrible long-term side effects.

Britni: You know, one of my favorite things about being a dietitian is seeing all the ways my client's health improves beyond just what they came in to see me for, especially when they come in so focused on the number of the scale. And I think also people don't necessarily realize what can improve from eating real food. So they don't think to even have it as a goal.

Melanie: Yes.

Britni: Because what does that have to do with food? But we know basically everything has to do with food and what you're putting in your body and you know, if this show’s topic was an interest to you, this is really great timing because we have a new round of our Nutrition for Weight Loss 12-week course starting this month.

If you haven't been as consistent this past summer with your eating habits, this is a perfect opportunity to get back into a routine of eating real food, feeling good again, and we're offering a fresh start of classes starting the week of September 22nd, both in person and our Twin Cities locations, or virtually via Zoom.

Sign Up For Nutrition for Weight Loss-Foundations!

And if you are not necessarily a class person or those days and times don't work for you, check out to see if your health insurance will cover one-on-one appointments with us.

Schedule Nutrition Counseling!

Melanie: Yeah.

Britni: And of course you could do both too.

Melanie: You could do both.

Britni: And there's private pay options for one-on-one appointments as well.

Melanie: It’s great to have that community. It's great to have all of the benefits of the class. I mean, the cookbook and the community that you have and the live Q and A’s and the, it's just great to have that weekly support.

Britni: It really is.

Melanie: I love that.

Britni: And I think the comradery with going through it with individuals that understand what you're going through, it, it really does, having that support makes a huge difference.

Melanie: It's a very friendly, non-shaming, encouraging way to start the journey with a lot of support, a lot of resources, lot of information. So we thank you for listening today and if you enjoy our Dishing Up Nutrition podcast, please leave us a rating and a review and share it with a friend and learn more about our classes and counseling. You can visit us at weightandwellness.com or give us a call at (651) 699-3438. It'd be our joy to work with you, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Britni: Have a great day.