Episode 19 Why It’s Important To Prioritize Health Promoting Behaviours Over Weight Loss
Welcome to episode 19 of Wellness Wednesday’s Audio Series.
I’m Nissrine, registered holistic nutritionist, mindful nutrition & wellness coach for female entrepreneurs who are looking to prioritize their health and wellbeing without fad diets and wellness trends.
I created this series to bring a fresh perspective to nutrition and wellness, one that is centered on and lead by you.
There’s a plethora of information out there and it can be really hard to know what to do and eat to feel good in your body.
It’s easy to get caught up in fad diets and wellness trends, often questioning, doubting and second guessing your decisions when it comes to the way you nourish and care for yourself.
I wholeheartedly believe that; reconnecting with your own innate wisdom to know what your body needs to thrive is the first step to a life-changing transformation and true lasting wellness; and that progress is made by taking small steps, mindfully, intentionally and consistently.
In today’s episode, I’m talking thing that most motivates you to change your eating and lifestyle habits based on my experience as a wellness coach.
And that’s the desire to lose weight.
While weight loss and body composition goals can be valid reasons to change your eating and lifestyle habits, and considering societal norms, it’s understandable why achieving an ideal body weight or composition is important to so many people, it’s important to recognize that health is more than just your body size, it’s more than a number on the scale or dress size.
Many women come to me with the goal of losing weight and I always ask “what if you set aside the need to lose weight, for the time being, and focused on cultivating health promoting habits instead?”
It’s always met with a half hearted “ok, but I don’t know, can’t I do both….?”
And I get it.
I’m not saying that you can’t cultivate health promoting habits and weight loss at the same time, but I am saying that more often than not, you’ll benefit far more from focusing on health promoting behaviours:
1 - Focusing on health promoting behaviours, that you have full control of, can decrease mortality risk, independent of weight loss. Meaning, you can decrease your mortality risk even if you don’t lose weight.
2 - Focusing solely on a target number on the scale, or body measurements, does very little to change your habits and behaviours long term. Because The truth is that quick weight loss methods rarely, if ever stick long term. It may help you lose weight in the short term, but if it’s not sustainable, what’s the point really? Research has shown that 95% of those who lose weight from a being on a diet, go on to gain it back and then some, within 5 years.
3 - By prioritizing health promoting habits and behaviours that actually work for your lifestyle, you’re actively improving your health and wellbeing rather than chasing a smaller body size, often at the expense of health like in the case of fad diets, for example.
Once you shift your attention away from weight loss, a number on a scale, a dress size and body composition towards sustainable long term health promoting habits your mindset shifts to one of abundance and possibility rather than sacrifice and restriction.
You begin to focus on, prioritize and experience what it means to feel good in your body and about yourself rather than achieving a target number on the scale or a dress size.
So, all of that said, what are some health promoting behaviours that you could be focusing on and prioritizing, instead of weight loss and why are they important?
Today I’m sharing four habits and behaviours that will add to your health and wellbeing and help you feel healthier and happier in your body regardless of your body size and the amount of weight you lose or don’t lose and then I’m going to share one 1 bonus habit or behaviour that you should do to take it up a notch.
Habit #1 Managing Stress
One of the things I here often from women with weight loss goals - goes something like this…”Oh, I’ve put on weight Nissrine and I really want to lose it, nothing is working and I don’t know what to do.”
As I dig deeper, I realize that this woman leads a really high stress lifestyle.
Over the past couple of years, the pandemic has contributed to this even further, obviously, but even without the pandemic, our modern hectic lifestyles and this hustle culture that we’ve normalized, are damaging enough on their own.
For one, all the busy ness makes it really challenging for you to prioritize your health and wellbeing and when you put a lot of pressure on yourself to do it perfect all the time, it creates more added stress to your already stressful life.
More stress equals more cortisol and more cortisol equals more muscle breakdown, more fat gain, and a mess of other hormone imbalances.
While it is known as the stress hormone, Cortisol is not a bad hormone per se and it serves a purpose in the body.
It’s actually your body’s built-in alarm system. It controls your sleep/wake cycle and gets you going in the morning.
It works with your brain to regulate your mood, motivation and fear.
Manages how your body uses carbohydrates, fats, and proteins
Keeps inflammation down
Regulates your blood pressure
Increases your blood sugar (glucose)
Boosts energy so you can handle stress and restores balance afterward
However, because it’s the main stress hormone, or fight or flight hormone, it gets produced in large amounts when your body is on high alert, which then causes your body to shut down your digestive, reproductive and immune system in favour of preserving energy for survival.
After the pressure or danger has passed, cortisol should go down on it’s own.
However, in our modern hectic lifestyles, we’ve become accustomed to living on high alert all the time causing our cortisol levels to be too high or out of whack.
This leads to a host of problems including anxiety, depression, headaches, digestive issues, and even weight gain.
Now, you also don’t want to produce too little cortisol, because as I said before, it does serve a purpose. You just want to keep it in check.
So this is why managing and coping with stress and calming your nervous system is more important than prioritizing weight loss.
I’m not going to tell you to eliminate or avoid stress, because it’s unrealistic, stress will always be present in your life, and in many cases it’s out of your control, but what is within your control is how you deal and cope with it.
1 - set yourself up to cope with stress by prioritizing self-care and setting boundaries
2 - change your mindset to a glass is half full rather than the glass is half empty. Instead of woe is me, oh no why is this happening to me, shift your thinking to what can I control in this situation, what can i do make it better.
Habit #2 Getting Better Quality Sleep
We know that sleep is extremely important and yet it’s one of the first things we sacrifice when we’re not prioritizing our health and wellbeing.
So, when we work too much, or we dedicate too much of our time to other people and things in our lives and we don’t make a conscious effort to protect our own energy and make self-care a priority, we tend to develop poor sleep hygiene.
Meaning, we don’t get to bed early enough, we stay up too late, we up on our phones or binge watching netflix and we get poor quality sleep and it has a trickle down on the rest of our life and our health and wellbeing.
Poor quality sleep quality has many negative effects, including:
Loss of focus and energy
Low Mood
Poor Memory
Lower quality of life
And on a more serious note
high blood pressure
Diabetes
Cardiovascular diseases
Depression
Reduced immune system function
And lower libido
Over time, it can also lead to premature aging.
When instead we prioritize quality sleep and develop healthy sleep hygiene habits, we tend to feel much better from doing that one thing, without making any other significant changes in our lives.
What I mean by sleep hygiene is, basically making sleep a priority but more specifically it involves;
Making a habit to disconnect from electronics at least an hour before bed
developing a calming nurturing bed time routine
Creating a sleep sanctuary for ourselves (making sure our room is a calming relaxing environment, our bed, pillow and room temperature is comfortable) and all of the conditions to allow us to fall asleep quickly and get a full night of quality sleep.
Regulating our circadian rhythm, which is our body’s natural sleep awake clock, by ensuring that we have natural light exposure first thing in the morning, within 15 minutes of waking up. So opening up the curtains and blinds, getting outside and getting some sun or natural light exposure as this will regulate your circadian rhythm and will actually help your body produce just the right amount of melatonin to get you to fall asleep more easily in the evening.
So all of that said, when you focus on getting better quality sleep, you’re actively improving your quality of life, your health and your wellbeing, even if it doesn’t result in immediate, quick or short term weight loss.
Habit #3 Eating Macronutrient Balanced Meals
Specifically we’re talking about getting adequate protein, adding fibrous vegetables and getting a moderate amount of healthy fats to most meals.
So if you’re coming in strong with wanting to lose weight, and doing it quickly, but you’re not currently eating nutrient dense macronutrient balanced meals and you’re mostly either dieting (so relying on resets and fads and plans that restrict whole food groups) or your just neglecting your nutrient needs all together and not paying much attention to what you’re eating, or you’re eating mostly ultra-processed and highly refined foods, you’ll want to first focus on correcting your dietary patterns to make sure you’re eating in a balanced way.
This doesn’t have to be complicated and you don’t have to go on a fad diet or follow a restrictive meal plan to accomplish this. You don’t even have to give up your favourite foods.
What you do need here is a pragmatic approach that teaches out how food affects your body and how to use nutrition guidelines to support you, and not as a tool to punish or manipulate your body.
If you need support with this, you can grab my free guide, a Simple 5 Step Framework To Nourishing Meals in Minutes, at the link below.
Habit #4 Moving Your Body Intentionally
We all know how harmful a sedentary lifestyle can be, but if you’re only ever moving your body for the sake of weight loss, you’ll never truly develop a healthy, sustainable approach to exercise and movement.
Back in episode 13, I did a whole episode on non exercise intentional movement and how important it is to your health and wellbeing. Of course, structured exercise intentional movement is also important.
The bottom line, intentional movement, both structured exercise and non-exercise activity are both really important.
So, if you’re not currently moving your body at all, you’ll want to start doing that, in a realistic and sustainable way.
Meaning, if you haven’t been moving at all, it’s unrealistic to expect yourself to go from 0 to 7 days a week at full sleep. In fact, it can actually be harmful, as you can end up injuring yourself.
The ideal way to do this is to meet yourself where you are today by challenging yourself to make movement a part of your life again.
In episode 13, I share a ton of tips on how to incorporate more intentional non-exercise movement into your day to day.
You can also seek a fitness coach or personal trainer who will meet you where you are and give you a realistic plan to achieve your fitness and movement goals with a gentle approach and that meets you where you are.
You’ll most likely find that if you’re doing these four things, consistently, over a long period of time, weight loss will be a natural consequence. But even if you don’t actually see a decrease on the scale, you’ll most likely notice a change in your body composition but more importantly, I guarantee that you’ll feel better about and in your body.
Bonus Habit #5 Quitting Toxic Habits, Behaviours & Relationships
While I normally like to focus on the things you could be doing and adding rather than what you should be taking away, this is one thing I feel pretty strongly about.
Quitting toxicity, including alcohol consumption, smoking, excessively and obsessively restricting food groups, being on a reset, a detox, or trying this fad or that fad or that trend, and even engaging in relationships that drain you rather than fill you up.
All of these things are toxic and detract from your physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing.
And to feel healthy and happy, you need to have a sound mind, body and soul.
Once you have all of these elements in place, you’ll probably achieve a healthier, happier you and a body weight and size that you feel good in.
The important thing to remember here is that the thinnest, smallest you may not be the healthiest, happiest you.
Keep that in mind, and focus on the way you want to feel in your body. I promise you, it’s possible to feel amazing, even if you don’t live up to society’s “Ideal and often unrealistic and unattainable body standards”.
On that note, I'd like to thank you for tuning in and remind you that if you’re looking for support with your nutrition and self-care and making it a priority, you can book a complimentary wellness consultation with me, to chat about your goals and how to get you there. At the very least, we’ll have a nice chat and you’ll get some clarity about the wellness journey ahead of you.
Book a Complimentary no Obligation Wellness Consultation
To chat about your goals and learn more about my coaching programs and packages and how I can support you in reaching your wellness goals with ease and simplicity as you build the business and life of your dreams.
Last but not least, if you’d like to be a part of my pilot program, entitled (re) Awaken Your Innate Food Wisdom, a self-paced mindful nutrition program with 4 weeks of group support to help you prioritize your nutrition & wellness without fad diets and trends, get on my mailing list to get an exclusive invitation once I’m ready to launch it.
It will be a journey to learning more about your body and what it needs to thrive; A mindful approach to nutrition that will improve your relationship with food; and a wellness education program that will guide you for life so your nutrition and self-care will always be a priority.
To get on my mailing list, subscribe to this audio series or download my simple 5 step framework to nourishing meals in minutes and you’ll be the first to know when the pilot program is ready for testing.
A Simple 5 Step Framework To Nourishing Meals in Minutes
You’ve got your hands full and more than enough on your plate. Take the guess work out of what and how to eat and make meal preparation a breeze, even when you’re short on time.
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe and share with a friend and be sure to tune in next week for another episode of Wellness Wednesday Audio Series, where I a share a short audio clip each week to inspire you to reconnect with yourself on a deeper level so you can start nourishing and caring for yourself, more mindfully and intentionally.
Until next week,
Stay healthy, happy and safe,