Ep 52: She Lost 22 Kilos: How The Biggest Change Had Nothing to do With food

Liz’s seamstress took in her wedding dress four times. Two days before she flew to Las Vegas to get married it still wasn’t sitting right, and the seamstress finally asked her to please stop losing weight.

This week I’m talking with my client Liz, who is down 22 kilos on a low carb plan. She spent twenty years as a vegetarian eating carbs on carbs on carbs, tried keto on her own, and slowly gained it all back before she found a plan she could actually stick to.

The change that made the biggest difference to her results this year had nothing to do with food. Same meals, same plan, earlier bedtime, and it was her best month of the year.

We also talk about shake up days and egg fasts for breaking a weight loss plateau, the Japanese word for eating when you’re bored rather than hungry, how Liz handles the muffins at work, and the two freezer meals she cooks once and eats all week.

If you’re a woman over 35 who is tired of starting again every Monday, this episode is for you.

What You’ll Learn

• Why twenty years of vegetarian eating left Liz short on protein, hungry, and gaining weight
• How sleep affects fat loss, and the nine o’clock bedtime experiment that changed Liz’s results without changing a single meal
• What a shake up day is, and how egg fasts and lower carb days move a stalled scale
• The mindset line Liz repeats when it gets hard: no one’s coming to save you, but no one’s coming to stop you
• Kuchisabishii, the Japanese word for a lonely mouth, and what to do when you’re bored rather than hungry
• How to stop one slip up turning into a whole week off plan
• Liz’s low carb meal prep system and her two go-to freezer meals
• How to handle other people’s comments about your weight loss, including the unhelpful ones

Key Moments

• Twenty years vegetarian, carbs on carbs on carbs, and always wondering why the weight wouldn’t shift
• The 2am fortieth birthday Facebook post about sausage rolls
• A proposal, a date set a year out, and a wedding dress that gave Liz a goal worth chasing
• The surprise that lifted her results without touching her food: an earlier bedtime
• Shake up days, egg fasts, and why being a bit hungry is not a state of emergency
• The goal photo Liz set as the screensaver on every device she owns
• Four alterations, and off the shoulder sleeves made two days before the flight to Vegas
• Nine kilos of sparkling water, and the moment Liz realised what she’d been carrying every day
• What Liz would say now to the woman who is about to start

One Action to Start Now

Put lights out one hour earlier tonight. Just tonight.

Liz didn’t change her food that month. She changed her bedtime, and her results changed with it. If a full hour feels like a stretch, start with thirty minutes and see how your hunger looks tomorrow.

Links and Resources

• Fab Freebie: my five day low carb meal plan plus five dinner recipes 
• Foundations of Fat Loss, my four week program for women over 35