Finally, A Realistic Plan That Fits Your Lifestyle and Gets Results

In this eye-opening episode, I break down my proven, science-backed strategy for losing those stubborn 10 pounds – and keeping them off for good. I’m sharing my personal approach that focuses on smart tracking, strategic eating, and sustainable habits that don’t require hours at the gym or restrictive dieting. From the game-changing importance of protein timing to the surprising impact of NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) on your metabolism, I’m revealing the exact methods I use with my clients to achieve lasting results. Plus, I’ll explain why your scale might be lying to you and what numbers you should really be tracking for true fat loss success.

What you’ll learn:

  • Why your “why” needs to be stronger than your obstacles and how to build a support system for tough times
  • The critical measurements beyond the scale that reveal if you’re really losing fat (not muscle)
  • How protein timing and fiber sequencing can revolutionize your body’s fat-burning potential
  • The truth about eating windows and why timing matters more than you think
  • Why NEAT movement might be more important than your workout routine for fat loss
  • The unexpected connection between sleep quality and your body’s ability to burn fat
  • Simple “exercise snacks” that can dramatically improve your health markers

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Resources Mentioned in this episode

7-Day Eat Protein First Challenge

Oxiline bioimpedance scale

Join my Exercise Snack Challenge

Vital Choice wild-caught seafood

Download my free Resistance Training Cheat Sheet

Download my FREE Best Rest Sleep Cheat Sheet

Tape Measure

Reignite Wellness protein powder shakes

Track your protein & macros with Cronometer App

 

Episode Sponsors: 

Try Timeline. Use code JJ10 for 10% off all products

Try Qualia risk free for up to 100 days and code VIRGINWELLNESS for an additional 15% off

Click Here To Read Transcript


Want to lose 10 pounds? Well, here’s exactly what I do. And it doesn’t include starving or spending a ton of time at the gym. Let’s make this simple and doable for you. So, here’s the first important thing. Probably not what you think I’d start with, but it’s your why. You got to make your why you want to lose those 10 pounds bigger than Why it’s such a pain to do this stuff, right?

Because here’s the reality. Challenges are going to come up. Things are going to get in the way. But when you have a clear vision of what losing this 10 pounds will do for you, then it’s going to make it easier for you when those things come up to get you Get them out of the way. And when they do come up, here’s the other thing you want to do.

You want to have a lifeline for when those tough times come up. A lifeline meaning a coach, a friend, a partner, someone you can say, I think I’m going off the rails and they’ll go, I gotcha. Now the next thing that you want to do is you’ve got to know your starting point, right? You can’t go driving off down to, you know, like I’m in Tampa.

I couldn’t go drive off to the store and set my GPS if I don’t know my starting point and my ending point. So you’ve got to know that starting point. And you’ve got to also set up a real monitoring system. This is a non negotiable. Super important because what you measure and monitor, you can improve. So what do we need to do?

First off, you’re going to need to step on the scale, but not just any skip. I want you to get a bio impedance scale. I will put the notes for my favorite ones and I’ll put the link in the show notes for this. But this is what I do every day. So I step on the scale every day. It goes to a Bluetooth little app on my phone and it’s going to track my fat free mass and my fat mass.

It does this by looking at something called total body water. What I want to make sure of is that if my weight’s decreasing, my total body water staying the same or increasing, which means I’m holding on to or building muscle while I’m losing fat. Remember, if you are losing weight, But it’s muscle.

You’re making yourself worse, not better. Same with this. If you’re losing weight, but not losing your waist, you’re making yourself worse, not better. So along with tracking your weight every day and taking the average over the week, do not be that person who steps on the scale. Full disclosure, my husband does this, where he steps on the scale throughout the day.

I’m like, what are you doing? Get up in the morning, go to the bathroom, walk around, and then use the scale and don’t get on the scale again, because it’s going to vary all throughout the day, right? Do it in the morning, but take the average over the week, because you know one day it might be up a little bit, one day it’s down a little bit.

It all depends on things like your hydration, constipation, all of that. So you’re going to take the average over the week, And you’re going to make decisions based on that. And you’re looking at your weight and your total body water. You want to make sure that as you’re losing weight, you’re holding on to muscle.

The other important thing here is you want to make sure that you once a week check your waist and your hip measurements. Sorry, I got a terrible nose itch.

Once a week, you want to test your waist and your hip measurements. Here’s what you want to know. You want to make sure that you, if you’re losing weight, You’re losing your waist as well. What you want to look at is your waist compared to your hips. For a woman, you want this to be 0. 8 or less. For a man, 1.

0 or less. And then you also want to look at your waist relative to your height. And your waist should be at least half, if not less, of your height in inches. Okay? So, that’s your waist. Just do that once a week. And by the way, there’s a super cool little gadget that you can get. Again, I’ll put the link to this in the notes.

It’s a Bluetooth tape measure. So, literally, you can do these measurements and it will just track it on your phone. So, you have a record of all of these things. This is important because You might be watching this happening and going, man, this is going slow. Because body comp, re comping, where you’re losing fat and holding onto or building muscles, kind of like watching grass grow.

If you’re losing weight really quickly, likely you’re losing some muscle too, and we don’t want to do that. When you think about losing 10 pounds, what you want to think about losing is one half to one percent of your total body weight a week. Okay? It’s slow. So, if you’re weighing in, At 150 pounds, that means that for you to lose 10 pounds is probably going to take you two months.

Done well, right? So that’s what we’re tracking. Next up, let’s talk about food. So what I want you to think about here is getting the enemy out of the house. What do I mean? I mean things that are trigger foods for you because too much healthy food is unhealthy. So sure, nuts are healthy. But I still remember the day that I ate a two pound bag of salted nuts.

So I don’t keep that enemy in the house because I lose my mind with it. Same with salted chunky almond butter. It’s like my kryptonite. So if there’s things that you know that you lose your mind on, that you will just overeat, don’t have them in the house. What you want to stock up on are clean protein sources, and that would be things like grass fed and finished beef, and Greek style yogurt, and eggs, and those two, of course, if you’re not intolerant.

Protein powders, like my Reignite Wellness protein powders, shameful plug. Pastured chicken and pork. Wild seafood. So stock up on that and stock up on great fiber sources, things like non starchy vegetables and berries and legumes. Cause here’s what I want you to do. I want you to eat protein first and I want you to eat fiber second.

And I want you to eat that way because it’s the powerhouse. For having great satiety, being not hungry, raising that GLP 1, and having steady sustained blood sugar. So you have great energy. And here’s why this is so important. Because if you’re hungry, all bets are off, right? So when you’re eating protein first, we know that you’re going to make better food choices overall.

We know it’s the most satiating of all the protein, carbs, and fat, and alcohol. And we also know that it’s the most thermic. Protein, fats, carbs, and alcohol. It requires 20 30 percent of those calories when you eat protein to digest and assimilate that protein. Contrast that with basically nothing for fat or alcohol and about 5 10 percent of the calories from carbs.

So just in that alone, if you took some of the calories away from carbs and fat and shifted them over to protein, you will start to lose some weight. And Then you’re going to bring in the fiber, onions, and mushrooms, and asparagus, and brussel sprouts, and lentils, and berries, and you’re going to fuel your microbiome.

Besides slowing down stomach emptying, you’re fueling your microbiome, and your microbiome can make the difference between losing weight or gaining weight because of the microbial balance in your gut. So feed the good microbes that can help you lose weight and burn fat. Now, how do you know you’re doing this?

Well, because you’re going to be tracking. Remember I talked earlier about you got to measure and monitor? Well, one of the things you got to measure and monitor is your food. And so I love the app Chronometer. I’ll put a link in the show notes on this. It’s free. And what’s great about it, is it learns you.

So you can start to do your favorite foods or favorite food combinations, so it saves a lot of time. But here’s the other part of this. It’s not just enough to track, you’ve got to measure it. Appropriately. And that means you’ve actually got to weigh your food in, not just use a cup or a tablespoon. Weigh your food.

And I want you to do this for at least ideally three weeks. And can we agree we could do anything for three weeks? You’ll be mind blown what you learn just by this. I will tell you that if all you did was start tracking your food, it’s going to make an impact on your health. This was one of the first things my husband did when he lost his 27 pounds of fat, was tracking.

He started to go, Oh, I like eating a bag of siete chips in the afternoon. Remember I talked about trigger foods? Now, along with tracking what you’re eating and how much you’re eating, and hopefully you’re eating about an hour or two after you wake up in the morning, letting your body wake up, getting your insulin going again, and you’re stopped eating three hours before bed, you also want to look at your timing.

Because we know that if you eat too late at night, you’re going to hijack your blood sugar in the morning. It’s, you’re going to be better at storing fat because you’ve got insulin low at night, right? This is when you should be digesting and healing or, or, uh, recovering and healing. It shouldn’t be like when you’re having to focus on digesting the pizza you just ate.

Um, so you really want to stop eating like ideally, minimally two hours before bed, but three to four better. And then again, let your body wake up in the morning, go out, see the sunlight, push it about an hour or two after you woke up in the morning, and kick out those snacks. Eat breakfast, eat lunch, eat dinner, um, you know, drink a lot of great fluids in between, green tea, some coffee, some sparkling water, some spring water.

And if you want to, you can even narrow that window. My window, my max window for eating is 12 hours. I try to stick with nine to 10 hours and sometimes I’ll push it down to eight. The other thing that I want you to track is your movement. Now you’d be surprised at the first thing I’m going to tell you to do.

The first thing I want you to do is just track how much you move throughout the day. And I want you to work on getting that up so that you’re moving at least 8, 000 steps as your minimum, with a goal of raising that floor until you get to about 10, with that goal. 8 is the minimum. This is part of your non exercise activity and non exercise activity thermogenesis called NEAT is actually the biggest thing that you can modify to have a really great impact on your overall metabolism.

Because our metabolism is made up of, you know, our basic resting metabolic rate, how many calories we burn if we just sat on the couch. We can impact that the most by adding more muscle onto our body. Then it’s the thermic effect of food. We impact that by having more protein. And then it’s activity, both exercise and non exercise activity thermogenesis.

But what tends to happen when we work out is we tend to Lower our NEAT. So if you just start getting really used to moving more all throughout the day, standing rather than sitting, parking farther away, taking the stairs, it will make a big difference over time. The other thing that I want you to do is prioritize your sleep.

Do you know one poor night of sleep and you’re hungrier and you’re more insulin resistant? That means not only are you hungry, you’re better at storing fat, not burning it. And plus, if you are going to work out, probably your workouts are not what they should be. So we want to prioritize sleep so that you’ve got better control of your hunger, you’re more insulin sensitive, you’ve got better energy throughout the day.

And since you’ve got better energy, then you can go boost your metabolism with some resistance training. That we know is going to impact your resting metabolic rate, more muscle on your body, better basal metabolic rate, and more muscle on your body, you’re more insulin sensitive. Which is hugely important, because you need to be insulin sensitive for your body to be able to really burn fat well for fuel.

The other thing I’d love you to do, is add in some high intensity interval training. And I especially love you to think of this in a way of exercise snacks. These are the snacks I do want you to do. So there was a recent study that came out that showed that people who did VILPA, Vigorous Intermittent Lifestyle Physical Activity, these are short bursts of exercise, one to two minutes of exercise throughout the day to get to five to ten minutes of total exercise.

They lowered their overall cardiovascular cancer and overall, um, all cause mortality risk factors by 40 to 50 percent when they were doing 10 minutes a day of this versus people who didn’t in just one to two minute increments. So I love HIIT training. And I’d love to think of getting this in just throughout the day.

So the best way for you to habit stack this is just think every time I eat, I’m going to do one to two minutes of something. It could be running up and down the stairs. It could be jumping jacks. It could be air squats, something. What’s great about that is it’s going to suck the carbohydrates that you just ate into your working muscles and really help with insulin sensitivity and making it that you don’t store them as.

Alright, so that’s the basics here. Now I know I threw a lot at you. But remember, just, just work down the process here. These are all easy things to incorporate into your life. And the other thing I want you to incorporate into your life that we do not do enough about of at all, is then to celebrate your win, celebrate your success.

Here’s the thing, we’re looking at this as losing 10 pounds. That depending on how much you have to lose with that 1 percent of weight loss up to that, A week, maybe a month, maybe two months, maybe three months, all along the way, you’re going to have little indicators of success. Your waist measurements went down.

Your total body water went up. You’re nailing it on how much protein you should be eating throughout the day. You’ve gotten your non starchy vegetables. You’re getting great sleep. Celebrate those wins. Celebrate that success. Now, if you’re serious, About losing weight. Knowing what to avoid is just as important as what you should be adding into your routine.

So watch my next video ’cause I don’t want you to get duped on the top five, worst high protein health foods for fat loss. I don’t want you to let these sneaky foods sabotage your progress.
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