314 – SYNCPodcast_Mistakes

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[00:00:58] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of The Sink Your Life Podcast. Today I’m sharing with you the most common mistakes that I see women making in their attempts to lose excess weight. Now, I’ve been a health and fitness coach for 15 years. I’ve been a personal trainer since 2012 and an integrative health practitioner since 2022.

[00:01:15] Jenny Swisher: And I can tell you that I’ve consulted with or trained literally hundreds of women over the years, and I’ve witnessed some patterns. That’s exactly what I want to share with you today. What I see women doing kind of backwards, what’s causing them to start diets again and again to hold onto the weight and to find themselves frustrated and thinking that it must just be them.

[00:01:33] Jenny Swisher: You know that here on this podcast and in all of my programs and courses, I measure everything in energy. I’m not a huge fan of the scale, and I’ve certainly learned over the years that diet culture is trying its hardest to get each and every one of us there. What is diet culture? Well, here’s my take on it.

[00:01:50] Jenny Swisher: Diet culture is before and after photos that you see when you’re scrolling social media. It’s detoxes and 21 day programs, marketing toward weight loss. It’s fad diets, like keto, intermittent fasting, low carb, low fat. It’s the mentality that you should work out harder and eat less. It’s the calories in, calories out philosophy, which leads to women then working out harder and eating less.

[00:02:14] Jenny Swisher: It’s the never enough mentality that women live with. It’s the protein shakes, bars, and weight loss supplements. It’s the idea that there’s only one way to do it right, and you’re doing it the wrong way. It’s the portrayal of women in the media and on social media, the highlight reels that we find ourselves constantly comparing to.

[00:02:31] Jenny Swisher: It’s overwhelming. Because of diet culture, women have a false sense of what they need to do to lose the weight, reach the energy level that they desire, and ultimately feel good about themselves again. So they try one way, maybe the way that their friend is trying, and they fail, and they start over, and the cycle repeats.

[00:02:49] Jenny Swisher: Throw in the fact that many of them tell their doctors about their efforts, and they’re met with, well, your labs are normal, or, yeah, maybe you should just cut back on your carbs. And the cycle repeats itself yet again, because we trust our doctors more than anyone else when it comes to our health. When in reality, only 3 percent of practitioners are hormone health informed.

[00:03:08] Jenny Swisher: Meaning that the advice they’re giving you is completely invalid. So what then should women be doing when it comes to weight loss, and how can we go about this in a not so overwhelming way? Well, I like to keep it simple, so I’m gonna keep this one very simple for you. I’m even going to go in order of priorities, so that if you can only tackle one thing at a time, you know where to start.

[00:03:28] Jenny Swisher: So let’s dive in. Number one, take a bioindividual approach to your health. Prior to now, you’ve most likely done what other women are doing. You’ve joined the gyms, taken the fitness classes, tried fasting with your sister, or low carb with your neighbor, and where has it gotten you? The ultimate question is this.

[00:03:47] Jenny Swisher: Have you taken the initiative to dive deeper on your unique physiology through requesting proper testing and working with a practitioner who spends more than 20 minutes with you in an appointment? Seeking a functional approach to your health, one that focuses on you and your body, is superior to anything else that I share with you today.

[00:04:04] Jenny Swisher: I know that I could give you the ideal way to train, and even eat, and yet if you’re in perimenopause, or you’re dealing with a hormone imbalance, it makes absolutely no difference, because you will likely remain stuck. And I get it. It’s not always insurance covered to see the right type of hormone health informed doctor.

[00:04:20] Jenny Swisher: I wish it were different. But look, you’re listening to this episode because you want me to give it to you straight, so I will. You have to invest in yourself. Knowing what I know about women’s health and the fact that we spend at least 25 percent of our lives in poor health, I’m telling you, do the testing, find the right doctor, spend the money.

[00:04:39] Jenny Swisher: Number two. Work with that practitioner to determine your bio individual supplementation needs, which may or may not involve bio HRT. Get informed about the facts. I call this hormone literacy. We can’t put everything on our doctor to know about us. We are our own best doctors.

[00:04:56] Jenny Swisher: So we must step into self advocacy and hormone literacy because it’s this marriage of the right doctor and the right knowledge that will get you to the next level. Number three. Once you understand your unique body, decide that you’re no longer going to fall victim to diet culture and instead you’re going to fuel your body just as you would want your child to fuel theirs.

[00:05:16] Jenny Swisher: Configure your proper protein intake and make sure that you’re eating enough. The number one mistake that I see women making in their weight loss journey is actually under eating. Reverse this mentality and fuel for your activity level and your life. If you want energy, energy requires fuel. Number four, make sleep your newest obsession.

[00:05:37] Jenny Swisher: If we know women need at least seven quality hours of sleep each night, with upward of eight to nine hours on their periods, that means you better be in bed well before midnight, and give yourself extra time. My Oura Ring just last night said that I slept seven hours and fifteen minutes, but I was in the bed for eight and a half hours.

[00:05:55] Jenny Swisher: You need more than you think, so allocate accordingly. Number five. Once you’ve invested in yourself through the right practitioner, proper testing, and supplementation, and once you’ve prioritized your sleep and proper fueling, then we can start to incorporate a progressive overload style of training.

[00:06:11] Jenny Swisher: Most people think, well, I need to lose weight, so I need to work out. When in reality, if they’re dealing with hormone imbalance, under eating, and not sleeping well, fitness matters very little in the overall equation. When you train, focus on strength and muscle over cardio. According to the NIH, women lose 3 8 percent of their muscle mass every year after the age of 40.

[00:06:32] Jenny Swisher: As Dr. Gabrielle Lyon says, muscle is the key to longevity. If we want to maintain our muscle, we have to ditch the calorie burn mentality, or the sweat session dorphins that cardio delivers, and instead embrace strength training. Dr. Stacey Sims recommends polarized training, so that we aren’t burning the candle at both ends with zone 3 cardio daily.

[00:06:51] Jenny Swisher: As I see so many women doing through things like Orangetheory classes and home fitness programs, or even their Peloton. Number six, figure out your life stressors and find a better way. If work has you overwhelmed. Find a way to delegate or get a different job kids have you stressed?

[00:07:08] Jenny Swisher: Find help at home with a babysitter or ask for more help from your spouse. I’ve met plenty of women who have it all dialed in. They train smart, they fuel enough. They’ve done the work on their physical bodies to know what they uniquely need. They prioritize sleep. But yet, they remain stuck, and it’s 100 percent related to the stress that they carry.

[00:07:26] Jenny Swisher: And a body in stress mode needs a calm nervous system. Now, why did I put this last when it most likely should be closer to first? Well, number one, because I know you won’t make it the first priority. And number two, because often, better sleep, exercise, and fueling enough, especially with enough protein, all help when it comes to nervous system regulation.

[00:07:46] Jenny Swisher: But when you’ve done those things and are still struggling, we must go deeper into what’s stressing you out. My friends, this is the simple way that we need one step at a time with no need to incorporate all of these at once. Most women are under fueling when they need more fuel.

[00:08:02] Jenny Swisher: Most women are either not exercising or they’re overtraining the cardio when they really need progressive overload strength training. Most women are doing what their friends or coworkers are doing instead of doing the work on themselves to understand their unique physiology. Most women are looking for a supplement or a shake or a detox to get them weight loss results, thanks to diet culture.

[00:08:23] Jenny Swisher: When we know better, we can do better, period. And if you’ve listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that I’m a big fan of equipping women with the why. When we know the why, we will apply. I talk a lot about women based research here on this podcast. There is more where this came from, so you can most definitely go deeper by diving into more episodes.

[00:08:42] Jenny Swisher: I hope you do. We can’t leave our metabolic health up to fad diet trans or doctors who truly don’t know how to help, and we have to step into our power. I created the Sync Digital course and the fitness nutrition program associated with it because I wanted to take the guesswork out of the equation for women.

[00:08:56] Jenny Swisher: I wanted to be able to give you the hormone literacy that you need to be able to self advocate and ask the right questions with the right doctor. Oh! And I also bring you the right doctor in our amazing partnership through our resident hormone health doctor available through telehealth. I want this for you.

[00:09:11] Jenny Swisher: I want you to be able to lose the weight and reach maximum energy. But every day, I witness women wasting money, repeating old patterns, and starting diet culture cycles again and again. No better, no worse. Do better. Step into your power. Thank you so much, my friends, for listening as always. I’ll have everything linked up for you in the show notes, the course, the telehealth, and even our new protein calculator so that you can take the first step to feeling good again.

[00:09:35] Jenny Swisher: Until next time, my friends, we’ll talk soon. I hope this is helpful.