How we use a 3 phase approach for successful weight/fat loss.

The true transformation in a weight loss journey is the mindset shift rather than just physical changes.

Katalyst Fitness uses three phases in a transformation process: the primer phase,  accelerated fat loss phase, and maintenance phase.

Spending time in maintenance is crucial for successful weight loss as it revives the metabolism and teaches proper habits for lasting change.

In a deficit there may be setbacks such as hitting a plateau or going on vacation. This is where adherence to protocols like protein intake, hydration, and sleep become important instead of just dropping calories further.

Taking planned breaks is also beneficial for avoiding diet fatigue.

Finding true maintenance calories can take 2-4 weeks but once established, it becomes the new normal for daily meals without strict tracking necessary.

A realistic expectation for weight loss is 0.5-1 pound per week on average with consistency being key for continued results.

To start off 2024 on a healthy note, reserve a spot now for one-on-one coaching  by booking a call with us (link below) or filling out the application https://go.katalystfitness.net/mmmapplication to see if we'd be a good fit to work together with Katalyst Fitness starting January 1st or whenever you're ready.

Now accepting clients, use the link to apply for 1:1 coaching:
https://www.menopotmeltdown.com/mmmcoachingapp

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For all my social links: https://bit.ly/kathykatalyst

Do you have a question that you would like answered on the show? Please ask your question here:
https://go.katalystfitness.net/podcast-question-entry

Have a personal question? Email me at kathycote9142@comcast.net

Curious about my back story and why I created the Mastering Menopause Method? Check out this short video: https://www.menopotmeltdown.com/masteringmenopausevideo

Transcript

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This is Mastering Menopause. By using fitness, nutrition, lifestyle, and mindset, you can master your hormones and get your body back. I'm Cathy Coté with Catalyst Fitness and Nutrition. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Mastering Menopause. Today, we are going to be talking about what does a transformation journey actually look like. And so usually, it's what you can't see that is the true transformation. It's the mindset, not just the physical transformation. Anyone can lose 10, 20, 30 pounds. However, the way that you lose 10, 20, 30 pounds. 10, 20, 30 pounds. And anyone can lose 10, 20, 30 pounds. And anyone can lose weight is going to be different from how you maintain it. And so with Catalyst Fitness, there are three phases that we use in a transformation, and we're going to go through that today. And I can almost guarantee that you are not doing the most important two, that you're only focused on one of them, which is the losing weight part and ignoring the most important two, which are a like primer phase and then the maintenance phase after. And so there's also going to be points in a deficit where things get sticky, right? You may hit a plateau or maybe you go on vacation. So how do you navigate that? And so most often when someone hits a plateau, they think they have to drop calories even more, right? That's the number one thing that they think and they revert to the only thing that they know, right? Dropping those calories. And so often I hear clients at three months saying, Hey, this was great. Thanks for the tools. Thanks coach. I got this. But they haven't learned the ins and outs of a deficit because they've only known the successful part working with us, I'm going to talk about what that looks like, there's also different facets in an actual deficit. It's not just deficit. It really is a process and honestly, this can be, six months to a year. Most of our clients are with us for nine months to 12 months, really depending on goals. What we want to focus on is mindset as well, and to show the importance of not just focusing on weight loss, but focusing on health instead. We're going to talk about the three phases that we use at Catalyst Fitness. And this is to create a lasting change so that you're going to be able to sustain your results and not gain the weight back right after. We're going to start off with a primer phase. This is the diet before the diet. Imagine weight loss as a marathon. You're going to have to do some training before you actually run that marathon. What we do is we use a primer phase. This is our revive and thrive phase. And this is where we have clients, increasing calories, most likely to maintenance. In this phase, we're still going to be losing fat in this phase. And I know people think, Oh my God we're gain, we're increasing calories and I'm going to lose weight. So you're not necessarily going to lose weight. However, and that's not the goal with maintenance. Maintenance is you're not losing or gaining. But you can absolutely lose fat in a maintenance phase if you adhere to the protocols that we give you, right? Which is increasing your protein, drinking water, making sure you're getting sleep. So there's a lot that goes into this primer phase, this maintenance phase. And it is super, super necessary for you to have an effective fat loss phase where we're actively going after weight loss and even more fat loss. And so that would be in a deficit, but it is so important to spend some time in maintenance and making sure your body is getting, we're reviving your metabolism so that you can thrive. This is a period where you are going to be actively building muscle. As we are taking down fat. So we see huge body composition changes in the first two months of working with clients. So a maintenance phase is eight to 10 weeks. I shared Angie's transformation a couple of weeks ago, and I included the graph that showed what happened with Angie's body. Now she didn't, she, her weight was up and down one to three pounds in that first two months, but her inches dropped dramatically. And then by the. third month, she was down 14 pounds and 14 and a half inches. So you will shrink as you are in that maintenance primer phase. And then we can go into the next phase, right? Where we're going to go into more of an accelerated fat loss phase. This is a deficit, this is what it takes to lose weight. And I think the mistake that women make is they are not spending any time in maintenance and they're always in a deficit. And so what happens with you always being in a deficit, your body is just used to those lower calories. You've downregulated your metabolism. And so with that primer phase, we're reviving your metabolism. We're having you thrive on those higher calories. You're not gaining weight, right? And you're. eating more calories. So it is a it's a win. And then we go into a deficit, and then we're going to be way more effective with that deficit. And so even in a deficit, it's not just a strict hey, we're going to drop 500 calories, and we're just going to stay here until you lose weight. And I think that's where women go wrong as well. Just thinking, okay, I got this coach. Thanks. I can do it from here on out. Okay, cool. Yeah. You do have some of the tools to lose weight. Obviously you've been successful, and we have this, where clients are just like, okay, I got it. We're good. They're crushing it, doing really well. And then the thing that. It hasn't happened when they were working with us in that first three months is they didn't hit a plateau. They didn't go on a vacation. They didn't go on a cruise. What happens when you do go into a stall or a plateau, because that will happen. And I think the inclination is just to dump calories at that point. And that's not, maybe we need to drop calories, but when I look at a stall, I'm going to have questions, right? Have we been. keeping up with protein. Are we logging accurately? Have we decreased steps, for one reason or another? Very possible, right? When we come into the colder months and getting in less activities. It's not always about dumping calories. Really, we're looking at a lot of different factors when we're going into a deficit. I also think that Taking a break, a little diet break in between. Usually we're going to see some kind of diet fatigue. People are just like, you know what? I'm tired of this shit. That's a really good indicator that it is time for a diet break. Let me tell you is when you just, you don't have any. energy. You don't have any motivation. You don't want to go to the gym You're just tired of your meals. You're just tired of all of it. And that is a perfect time to take a diet break. And so we do these planned planned breaks when the client needs it, let's take a. either a quick, like a three day refeed, which we can do on a three day weekend or something like that, or maybe there's a vacation coming up. And so we would go back into maintenance for that vacation, it doesn't make sense to be on a diet when you're on a five day cruise, it's just not going to happen. This definitely phases as you are going through that deficit phase as well. And then to get you down to your goal, right? Boom, you hit your goal. Awesome. Now what, party party, right? But not so fast, we want to make sure that now we bring your calories back up to maintenance. But guess what? Unfortunately, you're not going to have the same maintenance calories that you did at the beginning because now you are a smaller person. So I just want you to know that, when you lose weight, your caloric needs are going to go down because you are a smaller person. So the art of, going into maintenance, so you've hit your goal. We don't want to have that Oprah effect, right? That rebound where you just gain that weight right back. Our approach to a deficit is not a white knuckle diet by any means. When we go back to maintenance, we're just, we're bringing up calories. There's. Several different ways that you can do it. I'm more like rip the bandaid approach off. Let's get you out of the diet. We are done. And let's find out what your new maintenance is. And then just giving it a couple of weeks to see are these your true maintenance calories and what happens a lot of times as we bring clients back up to maintenance they still are losing weight, so we haven't truly found their maintenance calories yet. It's a little bit of a tricky dance there to find. what true maintenance is. That's usually about it could be anywhere from a four to six week process to actually finding true maintenance. A true maintenance would be where you're maintaining your weight for 10 to 14 days, that's what we're looking at. And weight's always going to go up and down, it's always going to fluctuate, but having a steady, say you drop down to 128 pounds and then we get you into maintenance and you drop down to 127, 126 and then we find your maintenance and maybe we get back to 127 or 128 and just balancing out there. And so that's where we know boom. Okay. We are good. And just figuring out what those maintenance calories are. And now that's where you are. That's where you live. And maintenance is very forgiving. It's not like a deficit where you want to make sure that you're within your caloric range by at least a hundred calories. We don't want to go over, but in maintenance, you couldn't have days where you're like, okay, Hey, guess what? It's taco Tuesday. You might overshoot your maintenance calories. Bye. A few hundred calories you're not going to gain weight from having an event like that. Now, if every day is to taco Tuesday then it would be, you've overshot your maintenance, but this is also a period where we show women how. to stop the tracking by then we've already established your go to meals. You already know it. You got this, right? This is your new normal. This is just what I do. Your maintenance phase shouldn't look any different from your deficit phase except for the fact that you're getting more calories, we're bringing some more foods back in. The whole process is really adjusting your lifestyle, adjusting your mindset bringing in, some stability in some, go to meals as well. So that when we're done working together, it's not Oh, that's over, right? You've shifted your lifestyle. How to handle this on your own. And that's why our clients are so successful. Why they don't gain weight after they're done working. with us. I hope that was helpful to you, setting up what a client transformation journey looks like. It, trust me, it is going to probably be longer than you think it is. And just being realistic with the expectations. We're going to talk about that next week, actually, like what can we expect, but, in a deficit phase. I think I skipped over this part. You can expect to lose anywhere from a half a pound to one pound a week, but you're not going to lose that every single week, so that's just on an average. And I know when you had ladies put in I'm going to lose two pounds a week and my fitness pal, not realizing that's a thousand calorie deficit. That's not maintainable, it's not sustainable. And so when we go with a slower approach, yeah, it's going to be slow and steady, but it's going to be, as long as you're consistent, we're going to have those results month after month. And so that is definitely the way to approach weight loss, to have it be more sustainable and have it not be as big suck fest of being a diet. And I know you've probably done an extreme diet where like, all right, I can white knuckle this for six weeks. I need to drop 10 pounds for this cruise. And what happens? You gain that back, if not more, just because you've restricted for so much that now you go the opposite way, right? Over correct. Just be realistic about your expectations, and we'll talk about that in the next episode. But, hopefully you found this helpful, and if you're ready for your own transformation, I definitely have a plan for you. Let's kickstart 2024 on a high note and transform your health. Imagine feeling fantastic by the time those spring vacations roll around. Rocking your shorts and a bathing suit this summer. And right now, we're going to be reserving spots for our one on one coaching starting January 1st or whenever you're ready in January. And they're filling up quickly. So make sure that you book a call with us so that we can go over your goals and lay out your plan and get your spot reserved step into the new year with confidence and vitality. And if you're ready to take 2024 by storm, then just send me a message or book your call using the booking link that I'm gonna put in the show notes, I cannot wait to show you how to transform your mind and your body and your health in 2024. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that you have a awesome Christmas and I will talk to you next week.