Inside Out Weight Loss 286: Losing Weight As you Age, Part II
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On today’s show, the hidden dietary shift that has been causing us to gain weight as
we get older that has nothing to do with aging.
Welcome to Inside Out Weight Loss. I’m your host, Dr. Renee Stephens, and
together, we’re accessing and adjusting the control panel of your mind, body, spirit
system. Bringing ease and joy to your weight loss journey and fullness to the rest of
your life. This journey isn’t about food plans and calorie counts. It is about learning to
love and care for you from the inside out. So that it becomes natural and easy for
you to be slim and healthy. Join me, as a former compulsive overeater myself, I have
been where you’ve been, and I am here to help you create exactly what you want.
Now take a few moments to drop down inside. Following the magic of your own
inhalation. Take a deeper inhalation than the one before. Perhaps a very very deep
and filling inhalation. Ahh, it feels so good. We have an abundance of breath
available to us at any moment, wherever we go. Just remember that. There’s an
abundance, as much as you delight in. Take it in now. Another deep breath. And as
you exhale this time allow the exhalation to release any tension or tightness within
you. Allow yourself to let go of whatever it is that you’ve been holding onto. You may
know consciously, ‘Gosh, I’ve been holding on to this or that.’ Or you may not know
consciously. Subconsciously you may have been holding on to something. Have you
ever been in a situation where you find that you’ve been tensing a muscle without
realizing it. Now is the time to allow yourself all of those muscles, all of that tension,
to relax and let go. In fact, the theme of this whole episode could be the theme of
letting go. What’s no longer needed. Letting go of what’s weighing you down.
It’s as if you’ve been carrying around these big heavy old-fashioned suitcases. The
kind that you have to carry by the handle, and they’re so darn heavy, and you’ve
been carrying them everywhere you go. You don’t even remember, it’s been so long,
what’s inside of them. But what was it that somehow you got in the habit of carrying
them wherever you went. And you hadn’t realized until perhaps this moment that you
could just put it down. Just let it go. Just release it and walk away. What if that were
possible for you? Ah the delight of it all. Imagining what is possible. Now we’ll get
deeper into that particular aspect a little later in this episode. For now, just notice that
your center of awareness can float down down down deeper and deeper within
yourself. To that place that is most relaxed right now. You can follow the rhythm of
your own breath, deepening as you go. You may find that if you take simply one
more deep slow breath.ahhh…you’re whole nervous system relaxes. Ah, feels so
good doesn’t it? Available any time, anywhere.
Now, take another moment, and begin to open your heart. Think of someone that
you care for. Someone that you like. Someone that you love unconditionally. Think of
a pet. Think of a friend. A beloved family member. Someone you just love to think of
and when you think of this person, notice the feeling in your heart. Is it an open
feeling? Or a closed feeling? Just notice. I’m guessing that your heart feels pretty
open. Maybe it’s not open or closed feeling that you have. Maybe it’s a warm feeling.
Just notice what it is for you. That good feeling of loving someone. Unconditionally.
Unreservedly. I hadn’t realized for the longest time how good it feels to love. Loving
feels good. Try it out for yourself. As you think about a person or multiple people.
Maybe some animals or children that you really love. Notice perhaps a smile comes
to your face. Notice how good that feels. Now if you were to have your heart open or
warm or whatever it is now. That feeling of love in your heart that you have when you
think about your beloved family member, friend, pet, child. And you imagine what it
would be like to feel that same love to that person caring those big old heavy
suitcases. Just lugging them around, all over the place. You are getting them all
scuffed up, and it is time to let them go. Just notice what it is like to just love her or
him. Send a little extra love to that person right now. Ah, feels so good. And heck,
while we’re at it, send that love, that support to all the other listeners of Inside Out
Weight Loss across space and time. Send them your love and your support as you
feel theirs coming back to you magnified many many times over. Think of it, there
are future people sending you their love and support right now. There are people
from the past who have already sent it to you, and it is arriving to you just as you
openly receive it. Ah. Sweet, huh? The real sweetness of life.
We have been talking about weight loss as you age, and looking a little bit more
deeply into the notion that it’s hard to lose weight as you age. I was chatting with
someone the other day, and she said, “Oh my goodness there was this LA Times
story, and it was some doctor who was interviewed, and he said, ‘Well statistically,
it’s much more difficult to lose weight when you’re older.’” And this had upset her
because as most of the people who want to talk to me about private coaching are,
she was feeling rather hopeless and desperate. ‘Will I ever be able to change. My
gosh, I’ve struggled for so long. Is it ever going to be possible for me?’ And then she
reads this article and a doctor is saying, ‘Statistically, Honey it ain’t gonna happen!
So you better get used to it.’ But she thought to herself, ‘Well I can’t get used to it! I
hate it. What am I going to do? Are you saying I’m stuck here? Is there any hope for
me?” And on and on and on.
It’s not very encouraging, is it? And we go again back to that maxim of the financial
industry. Have you ever heard from an investment person or read in an investment
book where they say past performance is not a predictor of future performance. Ha!
How about that? There may be a correlation. A correlation does not mean causation.
In other words, as we were discussing last week, it is often true that people put on
extra weight, and they do not lose it as they age. And they may even have the
experience of it being harder to lose when they are older. That doesn’t mean that
getting older itself causes it to be harder. It just means that those two things happen
at the same time. For the reason that we’ve already discussed. Metabolism slowing
because of a sedentary lifestyle. Yes! Because you spend a lot of time sitting on the
butt. Which should really make you grateful to have a butt. Because imagine how
uncomfortable it would be to sit if you didn’t have a little cushioning down there.
Remember, gratitude first people. And there is another factor that we did not discuss
last week, and that would be dietary changes. I’m going to tell you more about that in
detail when we come back from our break. This is your host Dr. Renee Stephens,
and you’re listening to Inside Out Weight Loss. We’ll be right back.
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entire archive is now available at InsideOutWeightLoss.com/podcasts, plus we have
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through the crucial first steps outlined in episodes 1 through 18, plus you'll get to
hear my story in the prologue. That's: InsideOutWeightLoss.com/podcasts.
We’re back now. Before the break we were talking about factors that can cause the
correlation between gaining weight and aging and that that does not mean
causation. The causation piece is something else entirely, and we’ll get to that too. I
promise you. But I wanted to talk to you about a dietary shift. I dug into this a little bit,
because I wanted to give you some statistics, and a couple of guys, a couple of
researchers, named Stephan Guyenet and Jeremy Landen estimate that average
US per capita consumption of added sugar in 1822, and they dug deep into the
USDA records on this. Their estimate is that in 1822, way back when, before the
Civil War, the amount of added sugar per person in the United States, in their diet, in
a year, can you guess? About six pounds. About six pounds of added sugar per
person per year. Now, we’re not talking about sugar that’s naturally occurring in
things like butternut squash, yum. Have you ever had butternut squash soup? It’s so
good! And fresh fruit. And delicious delightful things like that. We’re talking about
added sugar from things like, well, sugar. Sugar cane and other things. Now in 2005,
the last year that they were able to obtain data for, they estimate that the average
consumption per person in the United States of extra sugar, added sugar, was over,
north of 100 pounds a year. Yes. You heard that correctly. From just over six pounds
a year to over 100 pounds a year of added sugar and the illustration that they give.
They say in 1822 we ate the amount of added sugar in one 12 ounce can of soda.
The amount of sugar in one 12 ounce can of soda every five days. It would have
taken a person five days to consume that much added sugar, while today, we eat
that much every seven hours. As a per capita average.
So, that’s a lotta sweet, isn’t it? And why has that happened? Because food is now
processed. Food manufacturers discovered that the more sugar that they added to
food, the more people were inclined to buy it and to eat more of it. Giving them
greater profits. In other words, they’re doing their job that they’re paid to do, and they
were very successful at it. And it's a great thing all around for them because sugar is
cheap. And in particular if you use something called high fructose corn syrup, here
available in the United States. You’ve probably heard of this one because it’s been
villainized so much, including by me, I admit it. It’s subsidized by the United States
government so that it’s cheap to grow corn, and therefore corn syrup is cheaper than
actual sugar cane. It’s cheap.
The other thing that happened is the whole low fat craze. And I can only call it a
craze because it sent us in the absolute opposite direction of where we needed to be
going. Who knows – it was some seriously bad science there. Let’s not call it
science. It was some mistakes. By scientists who came up with this idea that fat is
bad. And fat makes you fat. And all of those things. And saturated fat is bad. Not true
at all. In fact, the things we’ve switched to are bad because, I want you to try this out
in your local grocery store the next time you're there. Anything that you see on the
shelf. Pretty much anything that you see on the shelf that is advertised as low fat is
going to have added sugar. They take out the fat, and they add back the sugar. The
most recent example of this, and I will not say in who’s pantry I found it, because this
person is a very close family member who I’m very found of. It was this powdered
peanut butter thing, called PB2 or something. It’s a powder. They say, ‘Oh well what
we’ve done here is we have extracted the oil from peanuts and made it into a
powder that you add water to so now you’ve got all the peanutty flavor without the
fat. How wonderful is that oh my gosh!’ And this particular person has a little problem
with peanut butter. A little compulsion situation. To her I said, ‘listen to ye old
compulsion blowout for peanut butter. A much healthier solution.’ So this product,
then they’ve taken out the fat, but guess what they’ve added back in, oh my God,
shocker of all shockers, they have put sugar in. So now you have non fat peanut
butter powder. Peanut butter solids with sugar and then they threw in some
chocolate to one of the varieties. You add water to this and what a delight! Instead of
getting a nice healthy natural fat that’s so satisfying in your diet, you are getting a
sugar dose. Great, sugar doses cause cravings. Increase your appetite. Decrease
satiety. What a bonanza, because now you’re going to eat more of this particular
product or whatever low fat product you have got from the supermarket on your
shelf.
It is as I said, a food manufacturers dream. Except that us consumers and this is
particularly acute in the US. We do sugar. We do sweet. I think we do it better than
most countries. Although, I hear Mexico has actually surpassed us in a certain way.
The question becomes though, yes, okay, now you get it. All of this added sugar is
not good for us. We’re talking about this. Let’s remember why we’re talking about
this. Because increased sugar consumption increases appetite. Decreased fat
consumption decreases satiety and therefore you are inclined to eat more. This is
going on as you have been aging over the years. Because the amount of sugar in
most foods has gone up. And you may have heard me say this before. I didn’t eat
any sugar for 16 years. It may seem extraordinary. It’s not when you realize that the
less you eat the less you crave. Sugar creates cravings. So if you have some today,
you will crave some tomorrow. It’s just the way it is. You may crave it even sooner
than tomorrow. And the way I was able to do that was to understand that sugar was
a weakness for me.
Now, I’m not saying you have to go cold turkey like I did. Because I had the shakes
and it was altogether miserable. You can also wean yourself off. You can also
compulsion blow out yourself. That’s a guided journey that I sell. You can also do
that. You can also use EFT tapping to reduce your cravings. It doesn’t have to be
difficult. In fact, it can be easy my friends. Easy. Don’t we love easy? One of those
things where it just kinda happens. Because remember, we’re opening up to
possibilities here. We're dreaming. And this whole two episode series on weight loss
as you age, is to invigorate your dreaming capability. Your dreaming muscle about it
being easy. About the weight falling off even as you are older. Because as I said
before, everyone who loses weight, in the world, is the oldest they’ve ever been
when they do it. Including Joe, who following the Inside Out Weight Loss program,
dropped about 25 pounds. At last check had kept it off for over three years. He was
about 45 when he started. Weight just fell off when he did the deeper work. Including
Kate, mid-fifties. Just within weeks of us working together, 10 pounds fell off her
body. And of course Leanne who lost 120 pounds, and has maintained that for, I
don’t even know how long now, six years, something like that. By the way, if you
have your own story, can you drop me a line on Facebook? I would love to hear. I’d
love to give you a shout out on the podcast. My Facebook page is Renee Stephens
PhD on Facebook. You can find me there. You can message me; you can post to my
timeline. Tell me what’s going on for you in terms of your weight loss success. I
would love to know because I know other listeners would love to know too. It’s
inspiring. It’s important to share the wealth. This is the way that you can send your
love to other people.
Now, one final reason that you could be holding on to the extra weight as you age,
because you’re always aging, as long as you’re alive, congratulations. This is a little
more unusual. Kind of unusual. Let’s say you change all of your behaviors, you stop
binge eating, you stop overeating. Eating the extra food. You stop all that and the
weight is still there. You’re thinking, ‘What the heck?’ Now, it is appropriate at that
juncture to get a good old thorough check up by your doctor. Especially the thyroid.
A good check up of the old thyroid. It’s appropriate to have all that done just to make
sure everything is working as it should be. I want you guys to be healthy.
And there are emotional reasons that sometimes, occasionally, someone will hold on
to weight. Because it can seem scary to be thinner. It can mean that we have no
more excuses. It can mean that we have to be perfect forever more. Well, not really.
But in our heads, in our crazy minds that think about these things. The fears are
typically irrational. And there could be something like that lurking underneath the
surface. So for you, a great exercise for that is to imagine that you have lost the
weight you want to lose, and step into it. Try it on for size and see what your
emotional reaction is as you try it on. You can do this all in your imagination. I walk
people through this. I think I’ve done it on this podcast at least once. Great exercise
to just filter out, to shake out any extra fears that could be slowing you down.
Because when you are aligned, mind, body soul and spirit, nothing can stop you.
Nothing can stop you when you are aligned, mind, body, soul and spirit. Your
thoughts, your beliefs, your actions all align. Your identity all of that aligned for the
outcome of being naturally slender, and it’s just like rolling down hill. It’s gonna
happen.
That brings us to the end of our show today. Thank you for being present. Inside Out
Weight Loss is produced by Andrew Frame of BAFSoundworks.com. This is your
host, Dr. Renee Stephens, and I am on a mission to eradicate the weight struggle
from the planet enabling you to develop and share your abundant soul’s gifts. Join
me as we evolve the world by evolving ourselves. Take good care.