It’s Never too Late to Start Again with Susan Niebergall

Paul Salter:

Hey, Susan, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

Susan Niebergall:

Good. Thank you for having me, Paul. This is amazing, actually, to see you and finally connect.

Paul Salter:

Yes, it is wonderful to move our relationship beyond Instagram and to learn before we hit record. We’ve got so much in common, grew up in a similar area; really, really neat.

Susan Niebergall:

Yes, we have a lot in common.

Paul Salter:

We do, and we’re going to have a wonderful conversation today. I really want to, like I mentioned, set the tone here and build a foundation off of asking you what is typically a very rude question to ask, but I asked for your permission already. Just to really resonate with our listeners today, Susan, do you mind sharing how old you are?

Susan Niebergall:

I don’t mind at all. I’m 62. That’s it.

Paul Salter:

62. And when did you begin making some serious changes in your health and fitness journey?

Susan Niebergall:

The serious changes happened probably in my mid-fifties, I would say; 54, 55, somewhere in that neighborhood is when I got serious about it. But I’ve been in a gym and done all kinds of dabbled in this, that, and the other for decades really. But the serious stuff where all the pieces of the puzzle come together and you finally see progress, that was 54, 55.

Paul Salter:

Who was that woman 20, 30 years ago? What was her life like in relation to her diet, her exercise and her goals?

Susan Niebergall:

This is really interesting, and it’ll probably surprise a lot of people too. That girl was someone who thought, “All I have to do really is just eat healthy. I don’t need to pay attention to how much I’m eating. I’m just going to eat really healthy stuff.” I say that in quotes almost because so many things are called “healthy,” and we really don’t even know what that means. Everyone has their own opinion. Well, what is exactly healthy? I just thought it sounded good.

Then the word “clean” came into to fashion, and nowadays that word is almost like my fingernails going on a chalkboard, because I think it’s been so overused, and I was one of those people that contributed to that. I thought, “Man, if I eat only the perfect nutrient-dense foods and not eat anything else, I am this disciplined person,” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s so funny. I ate like that for a long time. I had my little food bubble. I never made progress. I was miserable. Yet, people thought I was the most disciplined person they’d ever seen.

It’s so funny. I have a short story about when I used to work in a school. I was a school counselor, and we have our little office, and we would celebrate each other’s birthdays. When a birthday came up, somebody would bring in cupcakes or cake or something. We’d all gather and sing happy birthday and blah, blah, blah. I would never partake in having the cupcake or the piece of cake; I would always turn it down. And everyone was telling me, “Oh my God, Susan, you’re so disciplined. I wish I could be like you,” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, as they’re enjoying their cake. And I’m standing there looking at them, thinking to myself, “I wish I was like you. I wish I would allow myself to have that piece of cake, because dammit, I love chocolate cake, and that looks like a really awesome chocolate cake that I’m not allowing myself to have because I’m afraid it’s going to ruin everything.”

That was my mindset, and when you say it out loud, it sounds ridiculous probably to every single person listening to this, because it is. But we all think that, or many of us. My age bracket, growing up with what we grew up with, that’s what we thought. Man, you couldn’t have certain foods and still be able to lose weight. It wasn’t until my mid-fifties when I started working with Jordan that things just started to change. I started being educated by someone who was all about sustainability and moderation and those words that we keep hearing, and how yes, you can lose weight and still have that piece of cake when you want to have a piece of cake. Maybe you don’t have a piece of cake every day, but if you’re celebrating somebody’s birthday, you can have a piece of cake, and guess what? It’s not going to ruin anything.

Paul Salter:

I love that. Just a huge change in not only the mindset, but specifically the word choice and the approaches you were using. Just the restrictive, lack, scarcity, fear mindset to this abundance, it’s always going to be there. And then taking a sense of ownership and control, I love that. Still staying with the theme of back before you really went all in on making these sustainable changes, what were some of the approaches or possibly even the mistakes you were making that kept you stuck in this poor relationship with food, not really making any progress hamster wheel?

Susan Niebergall:

Dear Lord, where do I begin? I wrote a book, and I talk about this in the book. The reason why I think a lot of people like this book is because they can relate to all of the mistakes that I made, every single one of them. They go, “Oh, I did that, I did that, I did that,” because we all did them. We all did these mistakes. I guess the biggest one is not paying attention to quantity. It was only about creating this perfection food bubble. You weren’t allowed to eat certain foods, you couldn’t have the treats or that chocolate cake, whatever, because it would ruin things.

I did stuff like the shake replacements. What was it, SlimFast?

Paul Salter:

Yeah.

Susan Niebergall:

SlimFast. I remember taking these little, they looked like little Whitman’s chocolates, but they were called something else. They were appetite suppressants. That was a big thing. That was a long time ago. And basically just thinking that food was good or bad, essentially. There were bad foods. “Oh, Susan, you can’t have those, mm-mm,” or the really good ones, which are nutrient-dense foods, but those are the only things you can eat. You can’t go out to a restaurant and order whatever you want because that’s not going to work well for your goals.

So, it was a good versus bad food mentality, and really truly believing that for so long. Going through the phase of fat: everything is low fat, no fat. You couldn’t have any fat, because that was the answer. That was finally the answer. You couldn’t have fat. Here I thought, “Cool. I won’t have fat. But I had a whole lot of other stuff.”

The other thing that I did, which is related to nutrition, but really it’s about exercise, is I thought I had to exercise six, seven days a week hard in order just to keep my head above water, because if I didn’t do that, I was going to lose my progress. I was going to get fat and all of that. There was that component as well. So, now you’re talking about, man, this cauldron of stuff that’s going on inside of you, and it’s no wonder I couldn’t maintain any kind of weight loss, you know?

Paul Salter:

Yeah.

Susan Niebergall:

It’s no wonde.r I did lose weight with Jenny Craig back in the ’90s, I think it was, at some point when they first came out; lost 50 pounds with them, which everyone’s like, “Ooh, ah.” No, no, no, no, no. Wait a minute. It was miserable. I was hungry all the time. They give you food and you eat it and you lose weight, but honestly, back then they didn’t teach you much about how to survive on your own. I didn’t know how many calories I was eating. I didn’t know how much protein I was getting. All I knew was that I ate these little trays of food and I would lose weight. That’s the only thing I learned from there.

So, when Jenny Craig was over, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to survive. Of course, a lot of the weight came back on, and then, “Okay, I know how to lose weight. I just don’t eat much.” So then I would go through that. I’d lose a little bit because I just didn’t eat much, and I would prohibit my myself from having certain foods. I was in this spin cycle of just going round and round and round and never making any progress.

Paul Salter:

I appreciate you sharing that, because first and foremost, I have a lot of relatability there. Foods were good or bad, and then when I had a lot of success similar to you, I’d skip out on social occasions with friends or I’d go to family gatherings and I wouldn’t eat a thing. And similarly, “Oh, your discipline is great.” Looking back, no, I was dying on the inside. I wanted nothing more than that cake, that cookie, whatever it was.

Susan Niebergall:

I skipped out on a lot of things because of that. Or here’s where it got really crazy here, even within my own household. My husband would always say, “Where do you want to go out to eat?” He always asked me, “Where can we go that has something you can eat?” I think of that now and think, “Oh my God.” We planned everything around what I felt comfortable with, because I didn’t feel comfortable going to most restaurants. There were a couple local places which I found the thing that I felt like I could eat, but oh my God, just saying that out loud just makes me, “Ugh.”

Paul Salter:

Let me unpack that further, because that’s such a strong relatable point. I’m curious, was there a level of comfort and control you felt at those few specific spots, and therefore maybe a lack of self-trust present going to an unknown restaurant?

Susan Niebergall:

Yeah, I think that was primarily it for sure. But here’s the irony of those couple places. One place in particular, I look back on it now, the dish, what I thought was a very healthy choice; again, not thinking quantity. I’m eating the whole thing of this “healthy” dish that probably ran me 1300, 1400 calories, knowing what I know now, that I was just so panicked about then. “Well, this has got a grilled this and a blah, blah, blah that, and it doesn’t have any cream sauce. Oh, this must be good.”

It was crazy. It was pure fear driving all of this, pure emotion, and it was fear. It was fear of, “Oh my God, I’ve struggled so long to try to keep weight off,” or whatever, And then when I became a coach, it was like, “Oh my God, I have to be perfect. I have to look the part, I have to be the part. I have to set the example for everybody.” People talk about regrets, and that part of my life I kind of regret because I wish I didn’t go through that. But then again, had I not gone through that, I probably wouldn’t be on the side of it that I am now.

I think I can only see that now. Certainly as I’m turning the corner, I couldn’t see it. I was humiliated. I still hate to even say the stuff that I did and thought and everything, but it’s super common. That’s the feedback I’m getting from women who’ve been reading my book saying, “Oh my God, I did the exact same thing. This could have been me.” And it was all of us, you know?

Paul Salter:

Yeah. I’m curious, with decades of being stuck in this, how do I build a healthier, sustainable relationship with food? The weight is coming off, it’s coming back on. How did you find the courage to yet again try? You invested in yourself yet again hoping, praying, maybe wishing that this was finally going to be the approach that worked. How did you talk yourself to that point of having just an ounce of hope left to try again?

Susan Niebergall:

Well, people ask, “What was the a-ha moment?” And I don’t know if I really had an a-ha moment other than being in my bathroom one day looking down and seeing my belly, and I’m going, “What the hell has happened to me?” It hit me a ton of bricks on a random day. I’m sure it was bubbling over. It was about ready to bubble over. That just was the day, the straw that broke the camel’s back or whatever that saying is. I just started crying. I had no idea. I felt so out of control. I didn’t know what to do, because I felt like nothing was working. I’m trying and trying and trying.

And then I thought, “Wait a minute, this is menopause. Ugh, I get it. I get it now.” So, everything in my brain started to make sense. This is why my belly’s like this. This is what happens when you get older. Your metabolism slows down, you start gaining belly fat, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t know what I was talking about then either, by the way. A.

Then I said, “I’m just going to go to the doctor. I’ll get a blood work-up, and she’s going to give me that medicine that I need to boost up my metabolism.” Didn’t know what I was talking about, just want to put that out there, and everything was going to be fine. It all made sense in my head at this point, because I felt like I had been working so hard. Spoiler alert: I hadn’t been working hard, but I thought I had. So, I go get the blood work. My blood work came back fine, and my doctor says, “Susan, your blood work is fine.” I’m like, “What?” You know?

Paul Salter:

Yeah.

Susan Niebergall:

Where that should have been the best news I could have heard, to me, it was the worst. It was a kick in the gut. She goes, “You’re just eating too much.” I was not obese, let’s make that really clear. I didn’t have a hundred pounds to lose. I probably could have lost 25, 30 and felt really good. She goes, “If you want to lose weight, you’re just eating too much.” And I was like, “Whoa.” That was hard to hear. After years and years and years of thinking you’re trying to be good, you’re eating the good foods, you’re being healthy, then to hear you’re eating too much, what the hell is that?

I had to take some time to absorb that, because I wasn’t ready to hear that at all. But when I was ready to think about that, I started just making small changes. I didn’t track anything, I didn’t go into all that yet. I really just started paying more attention. I started feeling better, a little more energy onboard, and I started seeing some results. I didn’t even own a scale at the time, so I couldn’t even put that into pounds. But you start feeling your clothes a little differently, that kind of stuff.

So I thought, “I figured this out.” And then I started getting back into the gym again, and I loved all that, and I thought I wanted to power lift. That’s when I hired Jordan, because I thought I wanted to power lift. We didn’t even talk about nutrition at the beginning, when he and I first started working together. I just thought that power lifting is what I wanted to do, and everyone says, “You need to hire him.” So I did, but I paid attention to everything he said, and everything he wrote, and everything he produced. I joined his inner circle as an early member, the whole nine yards.

And I started applying things without even him and I really talking about it. We eventually did start talking about it, but I never went to him for nutrition. But I applied everything, all the guidelines, everything else, and boy did everything change; just everything. I found that I could eat in moderation what I wanted to eat in a small deficit. I was losing weight, I was gaining strength. There was no tomorrow. Just everything changed. I was 55 at that time, and I still change to this day. As I continued on that journey, I just said, “Women need to know that this is possible.” I am not gifted in genetics, whatever. I’ve got a lot of things going on right now, and if I can do this, anybody my age can do this. We’ve just got to believe that we can do it, and show that there is a lifestyle out there that we can live with, that meets our life, and that we can lose weight, we can build muscle, we can get stronger. It’s never too late. That’s the subtitle of my book, because I truly believe that.

Paul Salter:

I love that. Now, is it safe to assume at the time where you were getting the blood work done, and you were almost hoping there was, and I say this very lightly, something wrong that was an excuse for why you were feeling the way you were feeling?

Susan Niebergall:

A hundred percent. I was praying for that. I was convinced that there was going to be something, and that’s exactly what I wanted. I needed an excuse, because the hardest thing for me was to look at myself and admit I’m not doing something right here, and I haven’t been doing something right for a really, really long time. That’s a hard pill to swallow. That is tough. It’s humiliating, it’s disappointing, it’s frustrating, it’s maddening. It’s all of that. And I’ll be honest, I feel like without that honest turn around and look at myself, I wouldn’t see any progress. It wasn’t going to happen.

I feel like that’s the biggest issue I see right now with many middle-aged women, is that they’re not there yet because it’s a hard one. It’s not easy to get there. But once you can be honest about what you’re consuming and really be open to changing a few things, everything will change. And I do get it: change at my age is hard. Everything at my age is hard now. Everything gets harder as you get older, there’s no doubt about that. Changing anything is harder for us as we get older. Waking up in the morning is harder for me now than it was 10 years ago. It’s all hard.

I hate to choose your hard, but essentially that’s what it is. You can just sit there and say, “You know what? This is hard. It sucks being this age. It’s so hard. Everything is hard.” You can sit there and complain all day and not change anything, and you’re going to sit there and complain all day and not change anything. Or you can say, “You know what? This all sucks. It sucks being this age. Everything about this age is hard.” And you can do something to make it a little bit easier. You can take action. That’s what I chose to do. It took me a little bit of time to get there, but when I got there, everything started to change, and the biggest one being I believed I could do it.

Paul Salter:

I love that. There’s just such an innate sense of ownership present in your story. Again, we were hoping and praying that there was an excuse to fall back on or to place blame on, but at the end of the day, you looked in the mirror, you recognized that you were the problem, but you were also the solution. And that’s what many people fail to realize.

Susan Niebergall:

I love that. I just got chills when you said, that because that is so true. Facing the fact that you’re the problem, but you’re also the solution, and how empowering that is. Oh my god, that’s empowering. If you really think about that, why would I want to be a victim to a disease, or a victim? I did have control over something when I control this. I control this, whether it’s menopause, perimenopause. I hear it all the time. Boy, does that make it hard; there’s no doubt about it. But I still am in control. I still can lose weight in menopause. I can still build muscle. I can do all of that. I’m postmenopausal now, but for anybody that’s in perimenopause or menopause, you can still do all this. You are still in control.

That’s the coolest part about it. Is it going to be hard? Well, yeah. That’s a different story, of course it’s going to be. But I was nicknamed the mother of tough love: roll up your sleeve and dive in. The alternative is, “Okay, don’t do anything.”

Paul Salter:

And I think too accepting and taking ownership that it will be hard makes it easier, because if you keep lying to yourself like, “Oh, that’s too hard,” or, “It doesn’t need to be that hard,” no. especially on the specific topic of sustainable weight loss. Tens of millions of people diet every year. As a country, we’re really good at dieting. It’s the weight maintenance that is hard. If you accept that it is hard, you can realign those action steps that are most effective, get your priorities and your ducks in a row to do what is necessary to make the hard even 1% easier and more doable for you.

Susan Niebergall:

I totally agree with that, and I love that. It comes back to honesty, right?

Paul Salter:

Yeah.

Susan Niebergall:

About what you’re eating, about how you’re thinking, all of that. It just comes down to having, as my mom would say, a come to Jesus meeting with yourself. I don’t feel like it’s a switch, that you walk in the room and you flip it and you go from this to this instantly. I think it’s something that happens with awareness and practice. Lord knows, I’ve had conversations with myself a lot. Here’s a great example: the scale. I was literally just communicating with a woman on Instagram about this. Everyone’s relationship with the scale is crazy, because we grew up, the scale goes up, it’s bad; the scale goes down, it’s good. That was it. There was no talk about what it weighs, fluctuations that naturally happened within a given day. I didn’t know any of that. Just, up was bad, down is good. That was it.

I think that for decades is ingrained. So, whenever I see the scale go up now, I get a punch in the gut. I don’t like it. There’s not a person on the planet that likes seeing the scale go up, not a single one. But what I used to do if I would see something like that is I would completely freak out. I would think, “I have to now completely restrict what I’m eating. I have to change everything.” I started letting emotion drive the weight loss car. That’s my analogy. We’ve got this car, got a driver and a passenger, and if it’s a weight loss car, man, nutrition is going to be your driver. But instead of letting nutrition drive it, I’m letting emotion drive it. And boy, are you screwed when you start doing that. When you start letting emotion make your decisions for you, you’re screwing yourself like you’ve never screwed yourself before.

If you can imagine being in a car, emotion is the one that’s saying, “Turn left, turn left, turn left. This is the shortcut. You’ve got to turn left, this is where you need to go,” when deep down inside you know that’s not right. You know you need to keep going straight. But you let emotion talk you into turning left, and there you are in that hamster wheel yet again.

I feel like that’s where so many people are, including myself. That was me for so many years. But now I get that kick in the gut; had that kick in the gut this morning, because the scale’s been up for three days in a row. I haven’t done anything different. It is just what it is. But I’m not thinking, “I’ve now got to do an hour and a half more cardio. I’ve now got to do da, da, da.” No, you know what? I just record my weight and I just move on. But I got the kick in the gut. I’m a human being. I still don’t like it, but I don’t let it ruin my day. I don’t let it dictate what I do. I’ve become educated as to what the scale actually measures, because it measures more than fat. News flash: it measures a lot of things, and we’ve got to remember that.

I understand fluctuations now, I understand lifting heavy. I’m probably going to have some water retention, and that will add up on the scale. Okay, cool. It’s water, who cares? I think that comes with experience. I think that comes with me having to tell myself, “Susan, calm down. You did not eat 3,500 or more calories over your maintenance yesterday for the scale to go up a pound today. You did not do that.” So, this is not fat. I used to do that all the time. It’s a skill, and I think it’s something that comes with practice, just like anything else.

Paul Salter:

And absolutely does. For someone out there listening who’s got this poor relationship with the scale, and maybe we don’t even want it to be a positive one, we want to at least migrate it from negative to neutral, what is one piece of advice you’d offer them to start with?

Susan Niebergall:

I am a real advocate, especially if you’re trying to lose weight, of weighing in every day. A lot of people are like, “I can’t weigh in every day. I only want to weigh in once a week.” Here’s my problem with that, and I know you know exactly the problem I’m going to tell you. It is, you weigh in on Friday, now it’s an event. We have created this thing on our calendar called weigh-in day. It is a huge event. It’s full of anxiety, it’s full of expectation, and we have brought it on ourselves because we’re stepping on it every Friday. Let’s say we don’t feel like we’ve had a great week. We’re going to start manipulating what we do before Friday, before weigh-in day, so that scale will read a number that we love, so we feel better about ourselves. So, the data could very well be skewed.

Let’s say you step on the scale and it says close to the same thing it said last Friday. You’re going to think, “Well, crap, I haven’t lost any weight this week. What I’m doing is not working”. But what you didn’t see are all the data points from last Friday to this Friday, because you didn’t step on a scale every day. You didn’t see that actually your trend line was going down and it has been for a while, but all you see is the two weigh-ins. And in a given month, if you only weigh in once a week, you’re only going to have four data points. That’s not a lot to make any kind of decision off of. If you weigh in once a month, you have one data point. Well, that’s dumb.

Then if you weigh in every day, you’ve got 31 potential data points, 30, 31 data points, that you can take a look, take a step back, get your head out of the weeds, out of the day-to-day, and look at your overall trend line. And if you’ve got one of those cool little apps that graph it and give you a trend line, that’s even better, because that’s really cool to see actually, how you can see you thought you weren’t doing anything but losing,-gaining the same three pounds, when actually your starting weight and where you are right now is actually three pounds less. So, overall you’ve lost three pounds, and you’re sitting there thinking you haven’t lost anything. Weighing every day is powerful.

Now, I know a lot of people get really emotional about it, and this is where it would take practice. They’re afraid of it. Honestly, you deal with fear, the way to get over something that scares you is you do it, you face it. This is one way to do that, stepping on a scale every day. The second you start feeling emotional, the second you start feeling like you need to change something because you don’t like what that number said, you need to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with yourself. You need to tell yourself you didn’t eat that much yesterday, so you know that this is not fat. Fluctuations happen all the time, and you need to repeat these things to yourself all the time. What you’re going to find is it gets easier. You don’t get so attached anymore. You do it every day, it becomes part of your routine.

I’m in maintenance, I’ve been in maintenance for years. I still weigh myself every day. And if I forget a day, I forget a day, but essentially every day, because it’s part of my routine, I’m not trying to analyze my weight and try to manipulate day to day. I don’t care anymore. I like to play with the trend line and see what happens. I’ve fascinated by it. And I’ve learned a lot about my body and how I react to things. Boy, isn’t that powerful. I know that if I have Chinese food, the scale is going to go up two pounds the next day. I know that, and it’s okay because I know it’s not fat. It’s not going to stay with me forever. It’s going to be gone in a day or two. I get that now.

So, I think weighing every day, as intimidating as it might sound to somebody whose relationship with the scale is not great, I truly believe that that is a great way to improve your relationship with the scale. I will say this: I feel like that there are some people out there with a disordered background, disordered eating background, potentially emotional issues, that it may not be a great time for you to step on the scale. So, I think it’s not, “You have to do this.” I think we need to have common sense here. But even those people who shouldn’t step on it now, I think at some point the goal is to maybe try to find a way to conquer that fear at some point down the road with the appropriate help and that kind of stuff, you know?

Paul Salter:

Yeah. You hit on, have some form of coaching community or accountability at your side. I love what you said too, because I’ve coached through both ends of the spectrum: staying away from it for certain periods of time, depending on the individual, and I lean towards more of the data collection myself. I love numbers, I love data. And I think you bring up a great point of the benefits of that is, every time you step on the scale, there’s this high or this low depending on the number you see. But over time as you accumulate exposure and repetitions, it’s not nearly as stimulating. You become more and more numb to it, till eventually you reach a point where it literally is just a number. There’s no emotion behind it. Just like you, you go about the rest of your day.

Susan Niebergall:

I think that’s the goal, and I feel like if you can think of it this way: If you have invested in stocks, and you can look up online and see how your stocks are doing every single day, if you see your stocks starting to tank, you’re not going to immediately pull them out and say, “Ah, ah, ah.” Most people are investing for the long term. So, you stay the course, because you know things are going to turn around.

It’s kind of the same thing with weight loss. You’re in this for the long haul. You’re not in this to lose 10 pounds in three days. So, if you start seeing the scale do funny things or whatever, stay the course. Just stay the course. It’s about the overall picture. I think sometimes we get so buried in the forest… What’s that saying? We’re missing the forest for the trees. We’re so focused on the individual little trees, every single day we’re in the weeds and we’re like, “Ah, I went up 0.3 pounds today. Ah, I went down 0.5. I’m not losing any weight,” or whatever. We’re so focused on that that we can’t step back anymore and see the bigger picture, which is where the truth is.

So, I think it’s really important to record your daily data, but don’t really start looking at it till at least 30 days, because it’s just data until then. And after 30 days, then you can start playing with trend lines and seeing what’s really happening.

Paul Salter:

I like that. One thing I always like to talk about is when it comes to reaching the point in our journey where we’ve lost the weight, that’s the sexy roller-coaster ride. The scale is going down, we get the big hits of dopamine each time we see a new low on the scale, the clothes fit looser and looser. But if we do things correctly and we take this diligent, patient approach, we should probably spend about 99% of our life not dieting, because we’ve lost the weight and we’ve kept it off.

However, that weight maintenance period is boring as fuck. It’s monotonous. It’s the same few things over and over again. What have you learned in both your personal journey and coaching so many others about how to actually stay the course? What mindset, tools and strategies help people focus on the basics despite the boring nature of that repetition?

Susan Niebergall:

Well, I’ll tell you this: I’ve been in maintenance for years, and I saw some pictures of a weigh-in… I’ve only owned a scale for three years, probably four, maybe. I started weighing myself every day back then. It was freaking me out at the beginning too, just like anybody else. But I found some pictures of those first weigh-ins. I weigh a pound and a half the same. I’m within that pound and a half.

Paul Salter:

Wow.

Susan Niebergall:

That’s been four years now. So, I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is they think it’s over. Everything’s over. I stop tracking, I stop paying attention. I just can go do whatever I want now. And that’s not how it works. Boy, wouldn’t that be nice? Just push the button and shut it down and say, “I’m going to do whatever I want.” I don’t think people have an exit plan, and I think that that’s super important, meaning you need to bring some calories back into play. You need to find what I like to call a maintenance bubble. For some people it can be a smaller bubble, meaning one to four or five pounds. Other people have a much larger range. But it’s a matter of adding calories back in and finding where your weight hovers.

So, you’re still actively involved in this stage. Jordan and I call this stage momentum instead of maintenance, only because we feel like maintenance implies stagnation. You’re not doing anything. It’s just a crazy mind trick, I think. But we like to call it momentum, because we feel like this stage is setting you up for life, and it’s also setting you up for should you want to go into a muscle-building phase, into a surplus, should you want to go into a deficit again. You’re learning how to live and maintain your weight within a handful of pounds, what feels best for you. So, you still need to track, you to be on top of your nutrition, so you can find your bubble, you can find where that is for you. Then you stay there as long as you want.

And you know what? If you’re in maintenance and you really hit your workouts hard, you’re going to be building some nice muscle while you’re in maintenance too. You’re going to start changing how you look, which is what a lot of people want anyway. It’s a great place to live. I think it’s where most all of us should live. But I think the biggest problem is people just stop, and I think when you add calories back in gradually… I would say I’m not a huge fan of trying to find a formula for maintenance. You were just in a deficit. Just add some calories back in from where you are, and if you’re a little freaked out about seeing the scale go up because it’s going to a little bit, then add them in slowly. You can do this as slow as you want. You can call it reverse, you can call it maintenance; whatever you want to call it, I don’t even care. Just add calories back in slowly, and you’ll see the scale go up.

Again, let’s go back to what the scale weight is and what it’s not. Because if you’re stuffing your face with 10,000 calories a day, coming from a deficit, you’re going to see a lot of body fat on you really, really quick. Nobody’s doing that, by the way. Nobody’s doing that. If you’re increasing your calories; some people will start conservatively with 300 a week. Not a day, a week. You ain’t gaining fat doing that. Is the scale going to go up? Well, yeah, because you’ve got some more food on board in your stomach and maybe you’re adding some more carbs, because that’s where I would go to get a little more energy for some workouts. So, there could be some water retention issues, all that, but you’re certainly not eating enough for that to be fat.

So, we’ve got to get our brains as to what this weight is and what it’s not, and then just trust that you’re being honest about what you’re tracking. You keep doing that, and you’re going to find your weight goes up a little bit, and then it’s going to stop going up. Then you’re going to see it hover; you’re going to see it go down a little bit, then it’s going to go up a little bit. It’s going to do the normal thing. For instance, my weight bubble has been anywhere from one to four pounds. Right now I’m smack in the middle of that. I’m smack in the middle of that. I was at the bottom part of that, and it’s gone up a little bit every day, but right now I’m in the middle of it. Sometimes I spike out of it just like normal, and then it comes right back down, and sometimes I have undershot a little bit and then it comes back in.

It’s trial and error too, and I think we lose sight of that, don’t you think? I think everyone wants the formula, the answer, and really you’ve got to put in the work and find out what it is for you. I think that’s something that we don’t talk enough about.

Paul Salter:

And the work doesn’t stop, because I love what you said about most people make the mistake of not having a plan. I jokingly say, “What are you going to do on day 91?” You’ve committed to this 90-day diet plan, for example. What comes next? There’s a quote out there that I’m probably going to butcher about what got you here won’t get you there, but at the same time, we need to unpack that further and look at what did get you to this place of feeling great, having all the energy you do and losing weight, because a lot of that is going to be absolutely instrumental in helping you continue to keep that weight off. Like you said, we can’t just hit the stop button and throw it all away. We have to keep leaning into those, I call them keystone habits, the ones that give us the biggest return on investment from our weight loss and now our weight maintenance efforts.

Susan Niebergall:

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I feel like it’s just overall the lack of an exit plan from a deficit. You hit your goal weight, and then you just stop. I think that’s the root of all the issues. You have to have some kind of plan, how are you going to get into maintenance, because you do need to bring your calories back. I think some people get very pleasantly surprised at how many calories that they can actually add back in and maintain their weight within a little bit of a bubble.

But I just think knowing what your maintenance is is probably the most empowering thing you could ever do, because if you think about it, once you know how to eat, and I haven’t tracked a calorie, by the way in, I don’t know, six years, seven years. I don’t even know; it’s been so long. I don’t need to anymore, because I know how I can eat and maintain this weight. Once you can do that, not only are you just living life, that’s number one, the best thing ever. But you can eat a little less and lose some weight if you ever want to. You could eat a little more and maybe be in a surplus and start building some serious muscle in an optimal way. So, you are in the driver’s seat here. You control everything, and how cool is that?

Paul Salter:

I love that. Wow, I could talk to you for hours. This is great conversation.

Susan Niebergall:

I know. I’ve been running my mouth nonstop, so I’m sorry.

Paul Salter:

This is outstanding, and I’m definitely going to have to have you back. But I have to ask you this question, because I know so many of our listeners fit this demographic. For the 50-year-old woman listening, or even older or coming up on that age, who has this PhD in dieting over the years; she’s hopped from one to the other, she’s seen short-term success followed by long-term weight regain. She’s frustrated, she’s overwhelmed, she’s questioning if it’s even worth it to try again. What is one piece of encouragement or advice that you would share with her?

Susan Niebergall:

First of all, hell, yes, it’s worth it. It’s worth every single second that you would ever put into it. And yes, it’s possible. I think we’re clouded a little bit by our decades of some of the weirdest times that we grew up in and got older in, and just the fads that were going around and all the information, and our heads were exploding and we got fed some really terrible information. That’s hard to get rid of. That’s part of who we are in this generation. I feel like we need to acknowledge that, first of all, and not try to make that go away completely, because I don’t think it ever will.

But what I think we can do is keep it down to a minimum, and let’s start opening our brains to some logic, which I think we’ve let go by the wayside. Emotion has been running in the show for way too long, so now the logic voices… I’d like to give everybody this. We’ve all got them. We’ve all got logic voices, and we need to think of them like this. They’re in the back of our head, feet up on a La-Z-Boy having a great time, while emotion is in the front doing all this crap to us. Logic voices are sitting back there with a beer in their hand going, “Look at this, look at this. Look what the emotion is doing? La, la, la, la, la.” We need to get their ass up off the La-Z-Boy and into the front, and kick emotion out and start looking at things logically. Part of that is being honest with yourself, with what’s going on.

I think it comes back to that, but I would tell the people that are just turning in 50, it is possible. Yes, let’s acknowledge that it is going to be tough. We have to put that out on the table, because I don’t want to take that effort away from anyone, because I feel like it is harder for us than it is for someone in their twenties or thirties. Without a doubt, it’s going to be tough. But these simple things are what’s going to bring on your change. I truly feel like it’s boring, it’s not sexy, it won’t sell a single book ever, but it’s the stuff that works, and that is a modest deficit. You don’t have to eat a thousand calories like we used to think we had to. I think I was eating a thousand calories on Jenny Craig. We don’t have to do that.

A modest deficit. You should be a little hungry, but not starving. We need to get protein in us, especially as we get older. We have to, have to, have to, just for muscle retention. My God, we’re losing muscle as it is. Let’s make sure we keep what we got, and let’s encourage ourselves to build more. We need to move every day. We need to walk. Walk is great; walking is just absolutely great. But you can move in any way you want to move. It doesn’t have to be steps. People are getting too hung up on steps. It can be whatever movement you want it to be. If it’s steps, perfect; that’s great. But don’t think that you can’t do something else. It’s still effective.

And lift. I would love to see women lift two to four times a week. It’s going to help your bone density, it’s going to help build muscle, so that when you’re 80 and 90 years old, you can get up out of chairs, you can play with your grandkids. If you fall, you’re not going to automatically break your hip. There’s just so many positives.

Then the last thing is just be consistent with it. You don’t have to be perfect. We think in our heads we have to be perfect, that we screw up once and we’ve blown it. No. One time, no. We just hop back on track. And I guess the biggest overriding message on top of those things is, if you keep going, you will succeed. When you quit is when it’s over. I think that in and of itself, you are guaranteed to succeed if you don’t quit, and that’s a cool thing if you think about it. No matter how frustrated you get, whatever, just hop back on track. Just keep going, because you’ll get there if you keep doing that.

Paul Salter:

Damn, that was a great answer. Susan, where can listeners go to learn more from you and learn to work with you, to get your book, all that wonderful stuff?

Susan Niebergall:

You’ll find me on Instagram, Susan Neibergall Fitness; Facebook, I’m there too. I have a podcast as well called The Strong and Lean at Any Age podcast, and Paul, you and I need to do one on my podcast too, because I think my people need to find out about you too, for sure.

Paul Salter:

That’d be great.

Susan Niebergall:

My book is called Fit at Any Age: It’s Never Too Late, and that is out on Amazon. That’s just a fitness memoir; all the dumb things I did and then how I basically turned it all around. So, you’re not alone. I did them too. I’m just out there. I work with Jordan in the Inner Circle. You can find us at sfinnercircle.com.

Paul Salter:

Wonderful. And if you guys are not following Susan on Instagram, Facebook, wherever you are, you are missing out on some phenomenal content, and make sure you subscribe to her podcast and you go buy her book. Susan, thank you so much for being here today.

Susan Niebergall:

Thank you so much. It was a great chat. I appreciate it.

Paul Salter:

It was. I took notes, I learned a lot, so I really appreciate it.

Susan Niebergall:

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Paul Salter:

Of course. And for all of you listening there, thank you so much for being here today. We greatly appreciate you. If you found today’s episode helpful, share it with a friend, a family member, a loved one, someone you know it would provide immense value to. And of course, if you haven’t done so already, it takes just 30 seconds to leave a genuine, honest rating and review on Apple Podcast or wherever you are listening to today’s episode.

Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and as always, screw the scale.