32: The Secret to NOT Counting Calories
Happy Sunday! On this week’s episode I am sharing my top four secrets on how to NOT count calories and remain on track for reaching your health goals. Join me to learn how calorie variation is normal, why we need to commit to eating real food the way God made it, and how appreciating what calories provide in the form of energy can positively change your relationship to food.
EPISODE 32: The Secret to NOT Counting Calories
SHOW NOTES
(0:00) Intro
(1:00) Introducing today’s topic: Calories and how NOT to count them (if you don’t want to!)
Maintaining weight without counting calories and logging macros.
Teaching clients and Feast 2 Fasters to not let food take up too much brain space.
For some people, counting and logging works well for people as an accountability tool.
There is a way to not have to count if you don’t want to.
Biblical and historical perspective
A calorie is just a measure of energy.
Bible women could appreciate what food did for them.
(4:31) The first secret to not counting calories:
Seeing calories (energy) as something that you need vs. something that you don’t need.
Perception and mindset revolved around calories.
Your body is a miracle, and it uses food energy for so many things that have NOTHING to do with your weight.
Your body needs sufficient calories to:
Produce heat
Produce new protein, bone, and muscle
Power your brain
Maintain heart rate
Detoxify your liver and kidney
Digest
Breath
Move things through your intestines
Fuel movement
And yes, to produce fat
How not getting enough calories can be a problem:
Your metabolism can slow down in order to conserve energy.
Low calorie diets do not work well in the long run.
It takes a lot of fuel to make all the body magic happen.
BMR: Basal Metabolic Rate
The automatic control of the body is done by design.
Hormones are in charge of directing the distribution of our calories.
(10:33) The second secret to not counting calories:
Eat real food the way God made it.
Why all calories are not created equally.
Hitting a calorie goal vs. triggering hormones.
Processed foods are signaling the body to store fat.
Biblical women would have only been exposed to real food growing in nature.
(13:36) The third secret to not counting calories:
Stop when you’re full.
Getting our Ruth on.
She ate all she wanted and had some left over. Ruth 2:14
Stop when you’re comfortable full, not busting at the seams full.
Hunger hormones:
Grehlin is the hormone that tells us we’re hungry.
Leptin is the hormone that tells us we’re full.
In order for these hormones to be signaling properly, we need to be eating real food.
Storage mode vs. burning mode
Intuitive eating:
Listening to your body.
Honoring the signals that the body is giving you.
When hormonal signaling is working properly we can tune into exactly what we need without relying on numbers.
(17:58) The fourth secret to not counting calories:
It’s not really natural to hit the exact same number of calories every day.
Sometimes we eat more, sometimes we eat less.
Bible women: food availability, religious customs, hunger cues.
Metabolic flexibility:
The #1 metabolic goal in Feast 2 Feast®.
Training the body to efficiently burn both glucose and fat efficiently.
Internal liposuction or, “Dining in” 😂
If you’re not hungry, don’t force food in your body to meet a number.
Committing to real food is necessary to ensure that everything is working properly.
(24:58) Recap of the important takeaways:
#1. appreciate food and calories for what it can do for you.
#2. Eat real food the way God made it.
#3. Stop when you’re full. Getting your Ruth on!
#4. Calorie variation is normal. Sometimes we feast, sometimes we fast.
(27:47) Feast 2 Fast® and final thoughts:
Cultivating a sense of food peace.
The next round of Feast 2 Fast® starts November 4th, join us!
Thank you for your comments and feedback!
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(34:37) Outro & Disclaimer
Thanks for listening! Have a healthy and blessed week!