Let's Be Healthy Latinas!

103. The "last" 5 pounds

• Naihomy Jerez • Episode 103

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We push back on the five-pound fixation and lay out a saner path to fat loss that protects muscle, bones, hormones and joy. A dinner-table moment sparks a reset: confidence first, data-informed choices, and habits that last.

• why “just five pounds” becomes a moving target
• intermittent fasting concerns for perimenopause
• normal weight fluctuations and what they mean
• difference between fat loss and muscle loss
• long-term risks of chronic undereating
• training that preserves muscle and bone
• protein-forward meals and glucose steadiness
• labs to personalize your plan and pace
• building confidence without waiting for the scale
• breaking intergenerational diet talk at the table

Please DM me. Send me a text, an email (hola@naihomyjerez.com). I am so excited to talk to you about this.
If you're looking for health coaching, food, hormone, health coaching support, go ahead and DM me on Instagram or send me an email as well

Thank you so much for listening!


SPEAKER_00:

Hey friends, welcome back to the podcast. As always, I am so grateful that you're here listening, supporting, sharing, reviewing, rating, and doing all the things that helps the word get out there to reach our community, to really inspire people to think a little bit differently about wellness. And I appreciate you. Today I want to share about a conversation that I was part of and that I heard, and it is all too common in our community. And I just, as always, would like to share my thoughts and maybe inspire a different way of thinking, a different perspective if it's the right fit for you. So I recently was in conversation with a woman of color who was in her or who is in her late 40s. And we were sharing a meal, and she would consistently stop herself, or like I could tell she was a little anxious about what she was putting on her plate. It was more or less a traditional Dominican food. And she would consistently talk about how she didn't want to overeat. She was trying to lose weight. And it was based on anxiety, right? Like that's the energy and the vibe that I got. And I don't know this person. This is the first time I was interacting with them. So I also wanted to say that and just like the vibes that I got. Although I am really, really good at reading energy. So one thing that she was talking about is how she's always trying to lose five pounds. She goes, I'm always trying to lose five pounds. I'm always trying to lose five pounds. And from my perspective, this person was already very thin. Okay. And she's like, I'm always trying to lose five pounds. Um, she goes, I've lost two pounds this week, and I'm doing intermittent fasting. And you know, I try not to butt into people's business, but but sometimes I can't help myself. And she goes, and I told her, I said, you know, that's that's really not that great. Um, you know, you we should we should understand how to use, I didn't tell her this, but I'm telling you this. We should understand how to use these different tools and modalities of dieting or eating or something like that. Her clear reason was she was doing it to lose five pounds. Now, intermittent fasting is based on the science, is not that great for women, especially women who are in perimenopause. And I don't need labs or anything, just her being in her late 40s is information enough to know that she's in perimenopause and the transitions that her body is going through in a general sense. So, you know, when it comes to intermittent fasting, there's just so many things where your body is not getting sufficient nutrients a lot of times, you're overeating at certain times, it causes sugar spikes and crashes for a lot of people. Um, you are not regulating your stress it early in the morning, you know, there's just certain things, and obviously, this is super general, everybody's different, but based on science, intermittent fasting, and of course, I didn't know the details of how long she's going without eating or something like that. I think she said she started to eat at noon or something, and she's also going to the gym and all these things, it's just not the most effective. Okay, so another thing is what kind of weight do you want to lose, right? Are you wanting to lose just any weight, or are you wanting to lose body fat, or are you okay losing your muscles? And something I I did not tell her all of this. The only thing I said was, oh, that's usually not, you know, that great, you know, for for women. And she was like, I know, I know, but I don't care. She was like, I don't care. All I care about is losing these five pounds. Now I don't know. To me, I'm gonna talk, listen, I'm gonna talk from my perspective. That is so pro problematic for me because it is clear that this person to me, right? To me, I just want to keep saying that, that she has you know body confidence issues, like she's she doesn't she has confidence issues as to how she looks. People have probably told her something about herself. She doesn't have a really well-rounded reason as to why she wants to lose five pounds. It seems like this is has been always part of her identity, and it's really hard to separate yourself from that. It always gives you something to strive for, but it's also something that is so stressful to me and doesn't allow you to live your best life because every single morsel of food that you want to eat has this daunting kind of veil over it of is this going to impact my weight loss or not? Five pounds is usually within the margin of weight shifts that happens because you're freaking human. You probably haven't used the bathroom and you have a bunch of backed up shit. You probably um are bloated because you're around your menstrual cycle, you're probably retaining water because you're dehydrated. Like there's so many things that can shift your weight five pounds. You maybe you're sore from the gym, right? So this five-pound shifts within a range is pretty normal just by being human. We are not like a stone, like everything shifts, and we need to understand what's a reasonable shift that's going on so that when you step on the scale and you see two pounds up or two pounds down, you're not blaming it on the extra spoonful of rice you ate. You're not blaming it on the extra bite of cookie that you had. It's really important to understand how food works, how food works in your body, and what causes weight to shift, and what are natural shifts that happen, especially for females. So this is what I want to get at, right? Like there, and I have worked with some clients where their identity is just losing weight, and they don't know who they are without that goal in mind. And another thing that a lot of people don't think about is the long-term effects of these things. How undereating leads to brittle brittle bones down the line, how reducing your caloric intake and not being mindful of the food you're eating can waste away your muscles, which also impacts your bones, which impacts your strength and your mobility, and just your ability to be independent and to avoid fractures as we get older, right? We become so fragile, and it really makes me sad and worried about our generations as we get older, because we continue with this mindset of I need to lose weight at any cost, and there is no grounded explanation or reason aside from I'm obsessed with changing this number on the scale. I'm obsessed with manipulating my body, whether for good or for bad, to make sure this number on the scale changes. You see how kind of masoch is that sounds. And if it was somebody else, and under a different circumstance, you would be like, what is happening? It is okay to want to change your weight, that is not the issue here. However, I think that having a grounded perspective as to how you want to do that while protecting your health first can be of much more greater benefit. So, with a lot of my clients who have come in with this mindset of I want to lose weight no matter the cost, because they think that that is what's going to increase their confidence, allow them to look better in their clothes, have a hot girl summer, whatever their goal is. We have really worked on shifting the perspective. It has never been uh the conversation has never been you should not want to lose weight. It's like, okay, if you want to lose weight, that's amazing and that's great. Let's make a plan so that we are optimizing your health along the way. And you are nourishing yourself well, you are protecting your muscles, you are protecting your bone health, you're protecting your energy, you are protecting your mental health and your cognition and your gut health and your hormone health and all of that. And guess what? We also work on, just real quick, what's the goal? Like, what's the reason why? And it's not a just because, and we work on increasing confidence then and there. What is it that they do love about themselves? What is it that other people have told them and defined them? And what is it that they really think about themselves? Why are they carrying, or not why, but what opinions of others are they carrying along with them? What societal pressures is coming along for the ride with them? And how can we work on letting those beliefs go and just really creating their own thoughts about themselves and what they want for themselves, regardless of what has been passed down in your female family lineage or in society, in magazines and TVs and all this, right? So we start to increase the confidence of how can you feel good in your clothes right now? Because I'll tell you what, when you have that, I want to lose weight at any cost mentality, and it's consistently your goal of I'm gonna lose the next, excuse me, the next five pounds, the next five pounds, the next five pounds, it is never enough. Ever. It is never enough, and you will grind yourself to the bone, literally, and then you might fall and break your hip and lose your independence, and cannot get up from the toilet and cannot reach the top shelf to get your plate or your cup, you cannot spend time with your family or go on vacation because you're so weak and fragile, and you have to be put up in a nursing home. Okay, and this is what we want to avoid, this is what we're not thinking about. This is what I start to talk about with my clients and really understand that it is important to think that far. And when you start making adjustments to your weight with these short-term and long-term goals in mind, you get what you want, you get weight loss, or you get body recomposition, where you're actually losing fat, losing those inches. The scale might not move as much, but with this new understanding of what's happening to your body and the acceptance of how fast or how slow this scale moves, depending on how much body fat you have to lose, and how changes are still happening where you are feeling confident, you are losing those inches, you are fitting into different sized clothing, you are feeling that energy and that strength, and you're protecting yourself in the long run. That is different, that is a different mentality than I'm just losing these five pounds at no cost. And girl, look, I just circled back and be like, girl, you were talking about moving the goalposts and it was never enough. But it's true, right? I always have you know health goals, and my health goals is always to it, actually, they don't change that much. It is to it is to remain strong, to remain strong, to prevent my muscle mass from deteriorating at a fast rate, to retain my muscle and build some at almost 40 years old, and to stay independent and fast with balance mobile, and leading that lifestyle allows me to also be in a body size that feels really good to me because I pay attention to my exercise, it's intentional, it's not just doing random movement, which a lot of people think too, like I'm just gonna do cardio all day, or I'm just gonna do strength training all day. No, there is a science behind how we move as well, it's not just one thing. I'm also very conscious and mindful about what I eat, when I eat, how I eat, to make sure my body's getting the nutrients it needs to repair, to lessen muscle soreness, to build my muscle mass, to make sure my bones are strong. And that all trickles down, and with that comes sleep and comes stress management. But we're not talking about those things today, right? And the progress and the process is so much more slower and grounded because it's just something I'm continuously working towards. And at some point, I'm like, oh, I feel really good. This is just maintenance, like I just need to continue doing what I'm doing. But again, when the goal is losing five pounds at any cost, we're always changing up what we're doing. I'm gonna do keto, I'm gonna do vegan, I'm gonna do intermittent fasting, I'm gonna do a three-day juice detox, I'm gonna do all these wild things that are stressful, that are expensive, that you don't know what worked or what didn't, that have you feeling like absolute crap with low energy that have you anxious all the time because you can't figure out what's not gonna have you gain weight or lose weight. It is so stressful. And we're passing along that mentality down to future generations, and it's not like it's a secret, these are things that are spoken like this was happening at the dinner table in front of a multi-generational room. Now, imagine if there was luckily, I think I was the youngest person there, but imagine that there were other young females, children there, no matter if it's men or women, right? Like boys or girls or whoever. Imagine if there were other humans there listening to this, and it's like, oh my god, losing these five pounds, or I need to watch what I'm eating, especially when the person saying this is so freaking thin already. It's like, what are we doing? What are we saying? Why can we not expand our thinking? Why is it so difficult to really just see a different perspective? Love ourselves deeply inwardly instead of just the outside shell that will continue to age, that will continue to shift. We do not appreciate our humanness so much, and we are so our very own bully, so mean to ourselves, so restrictive. We don't let ourselves enjoy life, and then we're in our 60s, in our 70s, lamenting, most likely, lamenting how weak we are and how it's too late. And I shoulda, coulda, woulda when I was younger. Do that shit right now. Start changing the conversation, start shifting your perspective. Yes, it might feel like a tall mountain to climb, but I can reassure you, it's possible. You will get the hang of it, you will understand it, you will be so much happier, you will enjoy life so much better, you will feel so much better in your freaking body. I know that that is exactly what you're looking for, and you are just looking in every which way, trendy, gimmicky direction, trying to find it, thinking that it has a deadline, thinking that it has a timeline when it doesn't. So I wanted to scrap everything and start from the beginning, from how are you feeling? From how are you thinking? What have people told you before? What is your actual goal? Not just for now, but for later. If it's weight loss, great. How are you gonna accomplish that while putting your health at the forefront? Why don't you go get your lab work and seeing how you can start optimizing starting there? Are you, do you need to work on your cholesterol? Do you need to work on your blood sugar? How's your stress levels? How are your hormones? Go along with some sort of facts and evidence about yourself instead of oh, this new trend, this new pill that's happening, because you are just going to waste your money and cause yourself unnecessary anxiety. All right. I hope that was helpful. As always, I hope that we start a conversation from here. Please DM me. Send me a text, uh, send me an email, and I am so excited to talk to you about this. If you're looking for health coaching, food, hormone, health coaching support, go ahead and DM me on Instagram or send me an email as well. This is exactly the type of work I do with my clients and the conversations I have in our one on one coaching sessions. So I hope you guys have a great rest of your day. Bye.