Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Summary
On episode 638 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Daniella Forrest, a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner and NASM certified personal trainer who has coached clients in Silicon Valley for over 20 years and draws on her own struggles with disordered eating, osteoporosis, and autoimmune disease.
Her book, Own Your Wellness, pushes back on the idea that health is about hitting a number on the scale. Instead she argues that weight loss is a side effect of doing everything else right, and that people need an emotionally meaningful reason tied to their goals to stick with the work.
The conversation covers why obesity is often a disease of undernourishment, how to get comfortable with hunger, the key elements of a real movement practice, and why chronic pain is not just an inevitable part of aging.
Links
- https://dfitlife.com
Key Takeaways
- Weight loss goals need an emotional reason behind them. Setting a goal like losing five pounds rarely works on its own. Tying that goal to something meaningful, like getting off blood pressure medication or playing on the floor with a grandchild, makes it far more likely to stick.
- Negative self-talk affects whether your body lets go of weight. Daniella points out that people extend more compassion to a friend who eats a donut than to themselves. How you talk to yourself is an input your body reads as a signal of safety or danger.
- Constant change should be embraced, not fought. Daniella has a tattoo that stands for constant change because strategies that worked in your 20s or 30s often stop working later. The goal is to keep adjusting rather than clinging to what used to work.
- Obesity is often a disease of undernourishment. The modern food supply is calorie-dense but nutrient-poor, so the body keeps signaling hunger because it never actually got the vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids it was expecting, even after a large meal.
- Learning to sit with hunger, with a plan, changes eating patterns. Rather than eating on a fixed schedule to avoid ever feeling hungry, Daniella has clients practice noticing hunger cues and having a specific plan for how they will break a fast so they do not default to grabbing whatever is nearby.
- A real movement practice has several distinct elements. Get your heart rate up, get and stay strong, keep your balance, avoid getting too tight or losing suppleness, and rest and recover. Balance in particular is a use-it-or-lose-it skill that most adults neglect.
- Doing the same routine forever stops producing results. Daniella describes clients doing hundreds of crunches a day with no change in their abs. Real progress requires pushing past your current comfort zone and then actually resting so the body can adapt.
- Chronic pain is usually a signal, not an inevitability of aging. Most nagging aches come from disuse, muscle imbalance, or doing the same workout the same way for years without recovery, not from age itself. Ignoring it with painkillers or creams misses what the body is trying to say.
- Daniella's three strategies to get and stay well: cut out any food that is not adding to your health if you cannot explain why it helps you beyond just liking it, move your whole body for at least 10 minutes every day (ideally outside), and test yourself, starting with basic blood work, to find what is really driving any nagging issues.
“If you're not addressing how you actually feel about yourself, and if you're telling yourself that life is good, and I'm okay, those pounds are going to stay with you.”
Daniella Forrest
Another Episode You May Enjoy
Episode 652 – How to design your perfect mobility workout over 40
Episode Notes
Podcast: 40+ Fitness
Episode: 638
Published: 2024-04-16
Host: Allan Misner (aka Coach Allan), author of The Wellness Roadmap
Guest(s): Daniella Forrest, our co-host, Coach Rachel, Own Your Wellness
Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube (audio only)