Why You’re Primed for Weight Regain After A Diet

Hey, 5% community. Welcome back to another episode of The 5% Way Podcast. I am your host and registered dietician, Paul Salter, and joined today by my wonderful co-host, Micheala Barsotti.

Micheala Barsotti:

What’s going on, guys?

Paul Salter:

Micheala, incredibly excited to talk about today’s topic because it could not be more timely. I know you and I just had a couple hours of calls where we talked about our themes and our focuses and our mantras for the new year. Obviously, there is intention in why we chose this topic right now, but the real point I hope every single one of you listening walks away with after this episode is simply that the harder you diet, the longer you diet, or, dare I say, the wronger you diet, the harder the consequences you will experience are after you finished dieting. That’s if you ever even follow through on this commitment you have to yourself when it comes to diet duration today.

That is what this episode is going to be about, is really giving you the science, the research, the ins and outs of the physiological and the psychological changes that take place during your diet. Those of you on the new year, new you diet bandwagon, January through February, you’re going to be experiencing all these changes, some to a lesser degree, some to a much more extensive degree, and all of them are collectively working to accomplish one goal, you regaining all of the weight you just worked so hard to lose.

However, by understanding these changes, you can better understand how to augment the approach you take to dieting to set yourself up for not only significant results, but sustainable results as well. I am excited to talk about all things that.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yes, I’m excited too. I think this is something that is just going to blow their mind when they really hear the science behind it, because so many people think that dieting is just, “I’m going to start tomorrow and I’m just going to start again on Monday and again,” but when you realize what that’s actually doing to you on a deeper level then it’s like, “Oh, man.”

Paul Salter:

Yeah. I’m actually so happy you shared that point, because you’re right, for those who do struggle with consistency, the more you’re start, stop, start, stop, the more pronounced and prolonged all these diet-induced adaptations actually become and you’re just slowly digging yourself a deeper and deeper grave that becomes more and more challenging to get back out of. Excellent point there.

I guess the way I would love to begin this episode, because we are going to just dive right in today, is giving a simple yet relatable analogy that helps set the stage for what we are going to discuss. The way I want to do that, and I’m sure many people are familiar with this example, is introducing what is called the body fat set point theory of weight regain.

The analogy that this concept utilizes to describe why we are so prone to weight regain after a diet is comparing our bodies to that of a thermostat. If you think about it, if you have your thermostat set for, let’s say, 72 degrees, your thermostat is going to begin working really hard when it notices a change in the environment that pushes that desired comfortable temperature range outside of the range you have set. For example, if the heat starts to rise and all of a sudden it’s 73, 74, 75, well, boom, the AC kicks in to bring the temperature back down to a normal, or in this case, preset level. Similarly, if it starts to cool way too quickly in that environment and you’re down at 70, 69, 68, 67 degrees, the heat then on to quickly warm the environment back up again, achieving the level you have determined and set to be normal, or in physiological speak, homeostasis.

I don’t know about you Micheala, but I know I have felt the repercussions of that when I have begun dieting in the past, where as soon as I start getting lower and lower with either my food or my weight something kicks in that makes it a hell of a lot harder to keep going in the direction I am trying to go.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah, our bodies don’t like to be uncomfortable and they’re smart, so when we diet, they fight back.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, they really do. I think one of the biggest overarching themes that gets lost in dieting, as exciting as it is, it’s really this dopamine-fueled roller coaster of a ride for, six, eight, 10, maybe even 12 weeks, is dieting is actually a significant stressor, physiologically speaking, psychologically speaking, emotionally speaking. As you just said, your body is going to fight that stress incredibly hard, making the calorie deficit deficit you do create really like public enemy number one.

As I’ve thought about this analogy over the years, I really like to compare our body to a mixed martial artist or an MMA or UFC fighter, because your body is going to kick, punch, pinch, throw, slam, wrestle with you to do everything in its power to get you out of a calorie deficit, out of that stressful environment so it can return to normal, or in this case, its homeostasis, its comfort zone.

As we continue with this episode, we’re going to really peel back the layers as to what going on under the hood, psychologically, physiologically, so you understand, because ultimately we want to empower you with this knowledge because it really should go a long way in shaping how you approach your diet. Because as I was just joking with Micheala before we hit the record button, if you only take one thing away from this episode, I really want you to know that the harder, the longer, or the wronger, I know that’s not a word, that you diet, the more pronounced all of these psychological and physiological adaptations become, which makes it much more likely you will not only regain the weight you lost, but a lot more in addition to that.

Yeah, so here’s how I think is best to really work with you to paint or illustrate an example here to set the stage for this conversation. Many of you can relate to preparing to diet or you’re thinking about starting a diet. Let’s say for simplicity purposes, when you’re not yet dieting and you’re fairly consistent with your nutrition, fairly consistent with your workouts and your weight is staying within the same three to six pound weight range. Let’s say you’re eating an arbitrary number of 2,000 calories per day. You know that in order to begin a diet, you need to create a calorie deficit. You need to begin eating fewer calories than you’re burning and you can do so by simply reducing the amount you’re eating, increasing exercise or a combination of the two. But let’s keep things simple, you’re just going to make a reduction to your calories.

Let’s say you go from 2,000 to 1,600 calories. The first couple of weeks, the weight begins to melt off. It’s smooth sailing his first couple of weeks during a diet because you’ve created a calorie deficit. Your body is still kind of adjusting, like, “”Holy shit, you’ve just thrown this handful of stress at me. Let me just do some recalibration, assessing the situation before I begin to fight back.”

Although the first couple of weeks of a diet may seem relatively easy, inevitably, you’re going to reach a point where the scale slows, hunger increases, cravings increase, the way you think about, plan about, and decide about food all are augmented and ultimately influenced by the fact you are dieting. Your cravings are high, like I mentioned, your energy may or may not remain consistent depending on how you approach that diet so that by maybe the end of your diet, maybe you’re eating 1,200 calories and you’re in a far worse position. The scale is still stagnant, you’re hungrier than before, your cravings are through the roof, you have no energy, your workouts aren’t the same they used to be four, eight, 12 weeks ago, and you find yourself in a position where the only thing you want to do is eat and the only thing your body wants to do is store body fat as quickly as possible.

Let’s go ahead then, with that set staged for us, dive into some of the actual changes taking place. Micheala, I’m going to have you walk us through what’s really going on, on an appetite related level, when we do find ourselves in a calorie deficit.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah. Obviously, in a calorie deficit, you are restricting calories, which means you’re going to be hungrier. Do you want me to get into the hormones?

Paul Salter:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Micheala Barsotti:

Cool. Okay, so we have two hunger hormones. If you haven’t heard of them before they’re ghrelin and lectin. What happens when we diet is we have an increase in our ghrelin levels. This is our appetite hormone, our appetite stimulating hormone, I should say. Ghrelin is produced in the stomach. As a result of minimal food being present, it spikes and we become hungrier and hungrier. On the flip side, lectin’s stored in our fat tissue. Again, as we’re in a calorie deficit, our lectin levels decrease. What happens here is, again, as a result of that, your ghrelin levels spike, your lectin levels decrease, and you become a heck of a lot hungrier. It is much harder to manage your hunger levels, I guess.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, absolutely. Going back to the analogy I shared in the beginning about your body being this mixed martial artist, this is the jab, high round kick, one-two combination here. First, you’ve got this huge surge in appetite-stimulating ghrelin. The way I like to differentiate the two, or remember to do so, is ghrelin, to me, you know, ghrelin starts with a G, gain starts with a G, gaining weight, eating more calories. That’s how I remember ghrelin. Then simultaneously, you’ve got lectin who is here to help you feel full, feel satiated, you’ve got production of lectin going way, way down. Now, between the elevated ghrelin and the reduction in leptin, we’re just fostering an environment where hunger slowly but surely becomes the norm. We’ve got this one-two punch, or I like to say the jab and the high head round kick right off the bat.

Unfortunately, that’s really just the beginning of some of the physiological changes that take place. Again, all of the changes we’re describing, you might hear me say this, and I might have already said it, are just under the umbrella of diet-induced adaptations. They’re adaptations that occur as a result of beginning a diet or being in a calorie deficit.

Unfortunately, I wish Micheala and I could come in here and say, “But wait, there’s good news, X, Y, and Z happens,”, but sadly, it only gets worse because as you are experiencing a change in all of these appetite hormones, unfortunately, what’s also occurring in the background is your body is working overtime to conserve energy. The way that this manifests, that you experience first and foremost, is on the scale in the form of a plateau or scale stagnation.

If we go back to the example I kicked off this episode with, you’re eating 2,000 calories per day to maintain your weight, you make that initial reduction to 1,600 calories per day, you begin losing weight, but inevitably you’re going to reach that plateau. What happens is 1,600 calories initially was a calorie deficit, but your body’s smart, it’s dynamic, it adapts quickly. Soon, within a couple of weeks, that 1,600 calories per day level is now your new maintenance intake.

In order to drive weight loss further, get the scale moving in the direction you desire, you need to recreate a calorie deficit by either reducing your portions, increasing your exercise, or a combination of both. It’s just a situation that unfolds on repeat. You have to keep eating less, moving more, and your body works harder and harder and harder to conserve energy.

One of the most eyeopening things I learned as I was going through my schooling education is let’s say you have a standard workout. For all of you who are engaged in the CrossFit, or you’re at least familiar with the Murph workout. Let’s say for what ever reason, you’re crazy, you’re just a high-achieving badass, kudos do you, you’re doing Murph once a week. When you start your diet, you’ve got the most accurate wearable fitness technology in the world, which we know doesn’t exist, but we like to hope, and it says you burn, let’s just say, a thousand calories per workout. You could do that workout every week during the duration of your diet, and four, six, eight, 12 weeks in, despite doing the same amount of reps, the same exact time, your body will expend fewer calories. That number might slowly be reduced from 1,000 per workout to 980, to 940, to 910, to 880.

These are arbitrary examples, but basically the point is this, you expend fewer calories not only during your workouts, even if they are the same exact workout, but you expend fewer calories during all activities of daily living. You have less energy to go do more activities to go burn more calories, and as a result, you’re just expending fewer and fewer calories, which makes it harder and harder to sustain the necessary calorie deficit for weight loss. Again, you find yourself in a position where the scale is plateauing, you’re hungrier than ever before, yet you have low energy. The only solution is to eat less, move more, or a combination of the two. It’s not a really fun position to find yourself in.

Micheala, anything I missed there from a physiological standpoint?

Micheala Barsotti:

No, I would just say that, I mean, for a short period of time this is doable and expected when dieting. What we’re saying here, even though it all sounds like it’s negative, I mean, dieting is a tool. As long as we use it appropriately and for short bouts, it’s okay, it’s doable, our body can handle it, it’s harmless. What happens is, is when we take advantage of this tool and we start doing it too frequently and we take really aggressive approaches, then these symptoms are going to come on faster and stronger.

I guess what I’m trying to say there is less aggressive approaches to dieting is better as far as maintaining, I shouldn’t say maintaining, but to not experience these physiological changes so frequently or so soon.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, absolutely. I recognize, I’m glad you said that, I was coming across kind of as the Grim Reaper of dieting there for a couple of minutes.

Micheala Barsotti:

No, I think it’s important to understand, because before I really understood this myself, I was caught in the yo-yo dieting cycle, where I was like, “Oh, I’m not happy with the way I look, I’ll start a diet on Monday,” but when you start to understand the science behind it, then you can realize that you can’t really just jump into it like that, or if you do, there are going to be repercussions.

Paul Salter:

Yeah. The weird thing too, and this is where everything starts to be a little counterproductive, is after a diet, or counterintuitive, excuse me, after a diet, just like you spent time gradually reducing your portions to lose weight and you ultimately put yourself in a position to experience the handful of diet-induced adaptations we just described, in order to bring yourself out of that, you’ve to do the exact opposite in a way, meaning you have to diligently, patiently begin increasing your food.

But here’s the thing, I mean, in a perfect world this wouldn’t be the case, but it takes a couple of weeks for your body to adapt to the calorie deficit, for your metabolism to slow, your appetite hormones to shift in a way that promotes a hungry environment. But after a diet, I have found in my own experience, as well as working with so many people over the years, it takes even a little bit longer. Meaning, you can’t just make these rapid increases in your portions or your calories or your carbs right after a diet and expect your metabolism to catch up just like that, your weight to stay the same and you to feel better overnight.

Unfortunately, it takes just as long, and like I said, I have a hunch it takes even longer as you begin adding more food, which means you have to remain patient, steadfast in your commitment, really strong with the advanced hunger fighting strategies you may have had to utilize during a diet to actually win the first four weeks or so after a diet, as your body does finally adapt and experience the fact that, hey, it’s no longer under stress or attack, it can chill out for a bit.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah, I think those first four weeks after the diet are by far, they’re harder than the diet.

Paul Salter:

100%.

Micheala Barsotti:

They’re harder than [inaudible 00:18:07] the diet. Yeah.

Paul Salter:

Yeah. We should do a whole episode on that. I’m going to make a mental note of that.

Micheala Barsotti:

[inaudible 00:18:14].

Paul Salter:

Why the first four to six weeks after a diet suck, but what you can do to make it suck less. Boom, you heard it here, there’s the title. I’ve got to listen to this episode later because I’m going to forget that.

Anyhoo, the one point too I want to add before we shift our focus to psychological adaptations taking place is to speak to those of you who have yourself struggling with diet consistency, or whether we want to call it nutritional compliance or adherence, where every few weeks you’re starting a new diet. There’s two really big mistakes in this. The first one is related to that, where let’s say the first Monday of every month you’re starting a new diet. What ultimately happens is for maybe two to three weeks you’re eating a really low number of calories followed by seven to 10 days of just completely abysmal consistency where your calories skyrocket.

Well, like I just shared, your metabolism doesn’t adjust as quickly as we want. If you’re spending this, let’s just call it a 3:1 ratio of three weeks in a really harsh deficit, one week binging or cheating your face off, and onward the cycle goes, what happens is your maintenance or baseline calorie intake is never really given much time to increase.

What that means is if you got into a harsh calorie restriction and you’re eating let’s say 1,500 calories per day and you’re losing weight really quick, and then you do that for three weeks, your body starts to adjust, it becomes your normal, and then all of a sudden you go on a bender for a week and then try to come back to that 1,500 calorie per day diet, it’s not the same deficit. It’s not going to have the same effect. What that’s going to breed is frustration. You’re going to be more likely and prone to throwing in the towel, calling it quits early, entering that binge or cheat cycle, yet feeling frustrated there because the weight’s coming back really quickly so now you want to diet again. It’s just this self-fulfilling perpetual cycle, AKA yo-yo dieting, that puts you in a terrible place.

The only true way out, to let these diet-induced adaptations truly normalize or restore themselves to near pre-diet levels, is to not only spend time away from dieting, but to make sure you include the diligent increases in your food throughout the time after you finish a diet, because the second biggest mistake I see people make, and we see in the community all the time with new members, is that they make an initial increase after a diet and they never touch their food again. Their baseline intake remains low, hunger remains prominent, fatigue, prominent, cravings, out of control, and they wonder why they’re stuck in this chaotic environment, both internally in the body and also internally in the mind.

On that note, with the mind, Micheala, I will let you take over in sharing with our listeners some of the psychological changes that take place during a diet and some things they really need to be aware of and consider.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah. Well, the biggest thing it comes down to, when you’re dieting you, again, are restricting your food, so you become super food focused, or as we like to call, you end up with diet brain. This whole idea behind diet brain is that you’re always thinking about food. You might start to notice that you’re feeling guilty when you’re eating off plan or you’re missing out on special occasions because you can’t navigate your nutrition or follow your plan on that. It starts to get really challenging to adhere to the plan because you are mentally becoming really fatigued. Again, for a short while we can manage this diet brain, but it’s only a matter of time before we start to cave.

Paul Salter:

Yeah. I you know you’re just listening to us, but it’s kind like a question or a situation you can relate to, put your hands up or smile to yourself if you have ever found yourself in a position in which you are eating a meal, yet thinking about a future meal. I’ve caught myself so many times where I’m eating, I’m like, “Oh, I know I’m going out to dinner tomorrow. What am I going to eat there?” I’m like, holy shit, I don’t want to be thinking about a meal 24 hours away when I’m currently eating. That’s not a really fun place to be and it’s not the best use of our mental or even emotional or physical energy.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah, or you just finished a meal and then you’re already thinking about that next one. I know I’ve been there.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, whether it’s that or you’re waking up and the first thing you’re thinking about is when I’m eating today. I found myself, for the longest time, my entire day and social life always revolved around when I was eating, what I was eating, could I eat, whether it’s at a social occasion, a restaurant, dining out, dining in, et cetera. It’s incredibly draining, just incredibly draining.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yep.

Paul Salter:

I think too, the byproduct of that is adherence ultimately becomes harder because you’re expending so much energy. You have less to allocate to willpower, if you will. You have less at the end of a stressful day in your arsenal to soothe yourself in a non-food format, which ultimately means you’re more prone to poor compliance, eating off plan, binging, et cetera, which is obviously not in line with the diet or weight loss goals you originally set to begin with.

It’s not a fun place to be, but as you did such a great job intervening earlier, again, this is not forever. You’re not dieting 365 days per year, you’re not always thinking about food. It’s an interesting conversation that maybe that the larger, deeper scale is worth an entire episode on its own, but dieting can breed some obsessive, anxious, guilty, or even restrictive based thoughts, because the way we diet, the way we approach dieting, our relationship with food, our relationship with dieting, are going to have an impact on how we think, how we act, how we make decisions.

But again, the reason we’re sharing the physiological adaptations, the psychological adaptations, is to give you this knowledge. Now, we want to talk you through how to utilize this knowledge, because a well thought out and planned diet can really help alleviate the strongest of sensations felt in any of the adaptations we just described. A really well grounded and foundational eating habits … Or let me say that again in English and not broken English, a strong foundation of healthy eating habits that is grounded in individualization, simplicity and sustainability before you start dieting makes dieting a hell of a lot easier, to the point where, yes, these changes are still going to take place, but not nearly to the extent that they would if you just go into a diet blind and start slashing calories, carbs, restricting X, Y, and Z, and find yourself in a very tough position very early on in your diet.

Micheala, I’ll let you speak to it more. Taking a slow and steady approach, it’s not sexy, but it truly helps yield the biggest bang for your buck in the long term.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah. I mean, I think this is the perfect opportunity for a little shameless plug to our Fundamentals program, because in our Fundamentals program, we literally teach you that there are phases to dieting. I think so often, you have a weight loss goal, maybe you want to lose a good chunk of weight, whatever it is, but you might not be able to do all of that in one dieting phase. It’s so important that you have the knowledge and education to pull yourself out of that, spend a little bit of time in maintenance to bring back up.

We just talked about all the psychological and physiological changes on a negative level that are happening, so we get those to a healthier level before we enter into that diet again. You do it more of a cycle so that you are going to be a lot more successful. But if you keep that short term goal in mind, of you just want to lose the weight now, you’re not going to do it correctly and you’re going to go more of that at fast pace, aggressive, keep attempting, even though you fall off every couple of weeks because physiologically and psychologically there are a lot of things that are up against you here. There’s a reason why you’re not able to stay consistent. Oftentimes, when people are dieting and they can’t find themselves to be consistent, it’s because they need a break from dieting.

Paul Salter:

That’s exactly the case. Yeah, it doesn’t ever seem like the answer that makes sense, but it couldn’t be more true, because yeah, otherwise you find yourself in this self-perpetuating cycle that just makes it harder and harder to climb out of unless you really get that wake-up call or that education and surrounded by a community of coaches, experts and like-minded individuals. Yeah, could not agree more.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah, really setting yourself up. We talk a lot about the pre-diet maintenance phase, but it’s because it’s so important to make sure that you are at a healthy place, mentally for one, that you haven’t been dieting, so that when you enter into that diet it is fun and exciting and short and you have the motivation and willpower, but it’s just for a short while.

If you’re constantly attempting diet after diet, it gets old. The approach, it loses it’s … I don’t know, I don’t want to say dieting has a spark, but it loses all the weight that dieting carries of it can be a good tool to use, but not if you’re doing it all the time, then you keep breaking those promises with yourself and then you in the dieting phase, but you’re not really acting like it. Understanding the phases of dieting is truly so important, and what you should be doing and how you should be acting in each phase, so, so important.

Paul Salter:

Yeah. Think about it like this, everyone sets an intention to diet to lose a significant chunk of weight, the law of diminishing returns comes into play here. If you’re dieting left and right, every other week, every month, it’s not going to have the same effect. When you diet, I’m pretty sure you probably want it to work, so doing so in a way that yields significant and sustainable results so that if you need to or so choose to diet in the future you get almost that same magical level of an impact is really the way to go.

Micheala Barsotti:

Yeah.

Paul Salter:

With that said, just to recap from your perspective, Micheala, or to give you an opportunity in case there’s anything else you want to say, is there anything you really want to make sure the listeners walk away with and truly know when it comes to understanding the physiological and psychological adaptations that take place while dieting?

Micheala Barsotti:

I guess it all goes back to just having a plan, the importance of having a plan to execute your diet, but not only that, but then to come out of it. You need to have that action plan. So many people, they’re missing that. You have to remember that your body’s been under a great deal of stress, so regardless of how that diet phase turned out for you, maybe you didn’t accomplish all that you wanted to within those eight, 12 weeks or so, you can attempt it again, but you have to give yourself time away from dieting.

Paul Salter:

Absolutely. Just to add another or note on the whole pre-diet maintenance phase and building a foundation of healthy eating habits in the absence of a calorie deficit, we just talked about how stressful dieting is and all the adaptations that ensue, if you don’t have a stable foundation to build upon or to enter a diet upon, that only further increases the stress, because now you’re entering with a level of uncertainty, unpredictability, on top of the physiological and psychological adaptations that we just shared with you. All of that stress is not a recipe for success. It’s a surefire recipe for short-term success in full emotional, physiological, psychological implosion after the fact, which is a position in which you find yourself weighing more than you did before you started your diet and thinking about food way too much. That’s not a position that either myself or Micheala wishes you find yourself in.

Please, recognize that spending time away from dieting to really reign in those habits, build a unique, simple foundation of healthy eating habits first will absolutely serve you well. Then when it comes to making adjustments to your portions to lose weight, slow and steady. The example I always like to give is if you can lose weight eating 1,800 calories per day, why would you eat 1,200 calories per day? You want to be eating as much food as possible, as many carbohydrates as possible while dieting and losing weight so that adherence, compliance remains strong, the ability to enjoy foods you like and to feel satisfied both mentally and physically remains high. All of that is going to work in concert to produce significant results, but most importantly, to produce sustainable results.

Micheala Barsotti:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Paul Salter:

Awesome.

Micheala Barsotti:

I just want to say one more thing too. I think that the last thing is just the power of accountability in this phase. If you’re somebody who’s tried to attempt diet, or you have attempted diet after diet, and you haven’t been successful or you’ve regained the weight, there’s a lot of power and accountability, because navigating these next four, six weeks are very hard, as we just mentioned. Look at all the things that are up against you. Having somebody in your corner and to really keep you on track when we all know what we want to do, we get scared and we want to bump up our food, or we just make decisions that we shouldn’t necessarily be making. Having a coach and somebody who really knows what they’re doing to guide you, it’s really powerful.

Paul Salter:

Yeah, absolutely. The way that I plan to wrap up this episode is to paint one last picture for everybody listening. Before you start a diet, you’ve got all these grand aspirations to lose weight, feel better, improve your confidence, control, certainty. Hunger is relatively normalized or absent. Your energy is stable, cravings are very rare. Wellbeing, exercise performance and recovery are all really, really good. Fast forward to the end of a diet. Hunger is through the roof, fatigue is incredibly high, cravings are erratic and strong as can be. Your body is adjusted to eating significantly fewer calories than usual, which promotes round-the-clock hunger and fatigue. You have not the same drive, whether it’s sex drive, workout drive, et cetera, to perform, whether in the gym, the bedroom, wherever it may be, and your body wants nothing more than to just prioritize every additional calorie you eat over its baseline as fat, as body fat.

That means if you do not take a patient, well thought out approach after a dieting phase to slowly build your calorie base back up, all those extra calories are more likely to be stored as body fat, which is basically undoing your hard work. Yes, I’m saying this in a dark, grim, this is going to happen approach, and it’s not meant to scare you, it’s just meant to share the facts and what actually is happening with you so that you can take this knowledge and use it as a motivational kick in the ass to make sure you do take a sustainable approach rooted in a foundation of healthy eating habits that really is in alignment with you, in alignment with simplicity and in alignment with sustainability.

Of course, that is everything Micheala and I do in both The 5% community and The 5% Fundamentals program. We would love to be able to connect with you, whether it’s on Instagram, through a DM, an email, or jump on a quick call to learn how we may be able to support and serve you through one of those avenues.

Well, thank you so much for listening everybody. We really hope you found this episode valuable. We hope it made you stop and think. If it did either of those two things, we would greatly appreciate it if you shared it with a loved one, a friend or somebody who you feel would also find it valuable. Of course, we would greatly appreciate too, if this podcast is providing you with new knowledge, value, inspiration, one or all of the above, leaving a genuine, honest review on Apple Podcasts or whatever you listen to your podcasts. But until next time, have a wonderful rest of the day and we will catch you on the next episode.

Micheala Barsotti:

Bye, guys.