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Summary
On episode 565 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan lays out a concept he calls your “inner being,” the part of you that is always working to keep you alive and reacts to every signal you send it through food, movement, and self-care.
He walks through three levels of math behind weight loss: the simple calories in, calories out model, the more detailed macro and metabolism level, and the most complex level, hormones, which drive nearly everything the body does. When the simple math stops working, Allan argues the missing piece is usually information, the signals your choices send to your body about whether it is safe to let go of stored fat.
He breaks that information down into three inputs, nutrition, movement, and self-care, and explains how getting any of them wrong, eating poor quality food, being sedentary or overtraining, staying stressed, sleeping poorly, or talking to yourself negatively, tells your body it is not safe, so it holds onto weight as protection.
Links
- https://40plusfitness.com
Key Takeaways
- Weight loss runs on three levels of math, and simple math alone will fail you. Calories in versus calories out is true but built on estimates. Macro level tracking adds precision but still misses the biggest driver: hormones, which control nearly everything the body does with food and movement.
- Your “inner being” only knows what you tell it. It cannot see or hear what is happening in your life, it can only react to the information carried by your food choices, your activity, your sleep, your stress, and your self-talk.
- Poor or repetitive nutrition signals scarcity. If you are not getting a good mix of real food, your body reads that as a warning that food is limited and adapts by holding onto fat rather than releasing it.
- Being sedentary tells your body to conserve energy. Little to no movement signals that there is no need to be ready for anything, which pushes the body toward storing fat rather than burning it.
- Overtraining sends the opposite bad signal. Constant, excessive stress from too much exercise on top of everyday life stress reads as danger, not fitness, and can push the body into a protective, fat-holding state instead of a fat-burning one.
- Chronic stress keeps the body in fight, flight, or freeze. Short bursts of stress, like a hard workout, are fine because the body knows what to do with them. Ongoing stress from work, relationships, poor sleep, or a toxic environment keeps the body locked in preservation mode.
- Self-talk is a direct input, not just a mindset issue. Beating yourself up over a small slip, like guilt over eating a brownie, tells your inner being that something is wrong, while calm, encouraging self-talk tells it that you are safe.
- Chase health and fitness first, and weight loss follows as the side effect. Once your nutrition, movement, and self-care consistently tell your body it is safe, it stops holding onto fat as protection and weight loss becomes a natural result rather than the direct target.
“We’ve got to tell our inner being, you’re safe. It’s okay. Everything’s great.”
Coach Allan
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