Landy Peek (00:36)
There's a moment in midlife when you realize the way you've been trying to lose weight isn't working anymore. More restriction doesn't help the weight come off and just makes you more anxious. More cardio doesn't seem to be helping and makes you more tired. And the advice online somehow leaves you feeling worse and more confused. Welcome back to the Landy Peak podcast. I'm Landy Peak.
And today I'm talking with Terry Tatiosian. Her turning point came after an ER visit where she was convinced she was having a heart attack, only to be told it was a panic attack. And that moment forced her to look at the full picture, anxiety, alcohol, sugar, emotional eating, and the dieting cycle that kept repeating. This conversation is a true eye-opener.
Terry breaks down a different approach, using data to make decisions, building strength and making changes gradually enough that your nervous system isn't triggered. we also talk about reverse dieting, what it is, who it's for and why some women need to increase their calorie intake before weight loss.
can even work. I absolutely love this conversation. I'm so excited for you to hear it. So let's dive in.
speaker-0 (02:06)
Welcome Terry Tatiosian to the Landy Peak podcast. Terry, welcome. I'm so excited you're here. Can you share a little bit about yourself so the listeners can get to know you?
speaker-1 (02:17)
Thank you, Lansy, for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. So for everybody listening out there, I am just like any normal, regular, average woman that was minding her own business most of her life. In my 20s, 30s, and 40s, I was working. I had two kids, had a family, doing all the things, right?
In my late thirties, actually, I ended up finding myself in a place where I did not recognize myself. I was 80 pounds overweight, which put me in the obese category. I was struggling with a lot of anxiety, probably a lot of depression as well. I was drinking more alcohol than I'd like to admit. And things were just started snowballing for me. Right. So I was very overwhelmed or stressed out, overstimulated.
overworked, I had my own business as well for since the age of 25 really, and ended up growing it with 40 employees. By the time all these things happened and one night I was opening up my freezer for my nightly pint of ice cream and vodka. And I started experiencing extreme chest pains. And because
My grandfather passed away from his third or fourth heart attack, something extreme like that. I immediately thought, my gosh, I'm having a heart attack. I need to go to ER. So run, we go to ER. ER is packed, okay? There were probably about 50 people in there. I walk in, I go, OMG, I'm going to drop dead because there's too many people ahead of me.
And as soon as the nurse heard what my symptoms were, immediately they rushed me into ICU. So now I'm even more panicked, right? So all these racing thoughts are going through my mind. They've run all these tests. I stay there overnight. And finally they go, here's the Xanax, go home. You're having a panic attack. And by the way, you need to lose some weight. And very bluntly. And so I was embarrassed, ashamed. I was mad.
because for a busy person who has time to spend the night in the hospital and another half a day on, you know, after that. And so I was like, you know, this was some kind of weird fluke. I just forget it. Like that's ridiculous. I don't even want to talk about it. Right. And so I just went on about my business until it happened again. And again, this time I was like, ⁓ man, I'm having a heart attack for real this time. They missed something. They, they didn't know what they were talking about. They didn't know what they were doing in the hospital.
Run to ER, same exact thing. Here's the Xanax, go home. Follow up with a cardiologist just to be sure, you know, just to put your mind at ease. And so that's where it all started for me.
speaker-0 (05:14)
That's big. And I think a lot of us can relate maybe not to that extreme where we're feeling like we have a heart attack, but that there comes a point in our life where we feel like we're doing okay until we're falling apart and really hitting it. And I had not heart attack symptoms, but in that same feeling the anxiety, feeling not like me, really I had lower spaces than
I'd care to admit as well. And it really is kind of this pivotal point in life where it's like, what the hell is happening to me?
speaker-1 (05:51)
Absolutely.
speaker-0 (05:53)
What was kind of the next thing that came in as you've had the second time coming in, ⁓ hitting that kind of wake up call.
speaker-1 (06:01)
Yeah, the first thing was I really had to reevaluate my attachment and my relationship to alcohol. That was the first thing because consuming too much alcohol is a precursor to her disease. And so I started doing that. And then interestingly, what ended up happening is I developed a very serious sugar addiction while I was in alcohol withdrawal.
And, ⁓ yeah. And, and I was just eating everything in sight. So I ended up gaining more weight on top of the 80 pounds I was already overweight with. And so now the next thing, so you guys know how this goes. Okay. You fix one thing, then there's another thing that comes right up behind that. And then you're like, ⁓ shoot, I got to fix that. And then you fix that thing. And then another thing comes up and you just keep going and peeling that onion.
And it was just one thing after the next. you know, it's amazing because I had no idea. I was such a mess.
speaker-0 (07:09)
I think we get the kind of the blinders on and so into life that we're not pausing to really evaluate what's going on with ourselves. It's easy to push things aside and say, ⁓ I'll come back to it. I don't have time for that. I've got this, this, and this, and this. Then we focus on everything external and we don't take that time to focus internal. And part of that's really uncomfortable to look at what's going on in our lives.
speaker-1 (07:34)
Exactly, exactly. So that was my journey. I gave up alcohol and then I had to figure out what's up with the sugar addiction. ⁓ I realized I had an emotional eating problem because once you give up alcohol, that coping mechanism is not there. So then you start doing other things to...
alleviate that discomfort, right, that internal discomfort. then sugar and ice cream and Nutella jars came into the picture and things were, I was just, you know, trying to get all the plates in the air, right? And then I realized, okay, you know, I'm going to go on every diet I find out there that seems like, you know, is working for other people. And so I went on this journey of Yo-Yo dieting to try and get the weight off.
I went through Atkins, South Beach, keto, vegan. Oh, that was an interesting period. I did vegan for six months and I have really funny stories on that. It didn't work out for me. Vegetarian, pescatarian, I did them all. I did all the things. Fruitarian, there was a celery juice diet. I mean, I could keep going, right?
They all worked for a certain amount of time. You know, my white knuckled it. I very, very dedicated to fixing all these issues. And then I would fall off the wagon. Right. So after eating celery for two months, can guess what ended up happening. I went into a binging episode, right. And then I would gain the weight back over time. And
You know, all jokes aside, I realized that dies didn't really work for me and I had to rethink my approach once again. Right. And so I, um, I decided eventually after a lot of trial and error, and this was just for everybody's reference point, this was 13 years ago. So I am going to be 50 this year. And I was 37 when all this stuff started exploding. Um,
And there were not a lot of resources out there ⁓ at that time on macronutrition, for example, or how much protein that you need to eat, or resistance training, or any of these modalities. So I was just kind of fumbling in the dark trying to figure things out. And eventually I got very lucky. I found a coach that specialized in women.
over 40, and specifically she helped women with resistance training and getting started ⁓ in that realm as well as macronutrition. And that's when all of the things fell into place for me because for the first time in my life, was forced to learn what nutrition, basically, I was forced to learn what is the nutritional content of chicken, shrimp, pork, beef.
⁓ bananas, oranges, tomatoes, Nutella, right? All these things because I had to enter that into my ⁓ macro tracking calculator. And the interesting part of what I realized back then is that I could eat a lot of food and lose a lot of weight at the same time. I didn't have to restrict myself down to ⁓ an apple a day, you know, basically.
or down to 500 calories, or just have coffee in the morning and a muffin and then not eat anything all day and then be starving at night. I didn't have to do that. So ⁓ that's when things kind of became a little bit more clear. And over the years, I fell in love with this entire process, the entire process of transformation, the mindset work, the physical work.
the spiritual work, the nutritional education, and I ended up becoming a coach myself. And now my mission is really to help other women to do the same thing, right? No matter what age, no matter what stage, no matter what their experience is, beginners are actually my specialty.
speaker-0 (12:03)
lovely because I think a lot of listeners out there may be feeling in that space where you were in like, I'm overwhelmed. I've tried the dieting. I've tried what used to work and nothing's working. So what do I do now? When you're working with somebody that's coming to you and they are at that beginner stage and they really have no clue about macros or how to move their body or the mindset that comes in, where do you start?
speaker-1 (12:31)
Well, the first place is to, you know, if I use a metaphor for business, right? So imagine that you just inherited this business and you're the CEO, what's the first thing you're going to do? You have never operated this business before. You don't really know the ins and outs. You're not sure what the cashflow is, right? You don't know what's coming in. You don't know what's going out. You don't know. So what are you going to do, right?
you're going to do an audit and you're going to figure out, okay, you know, what's the cashflow situation? How much are we taking in and how much are we spending? Right? So that's the first place immediately. What, how many calories are we taking in and how many calories are we spending? Because that will determine whether we're in a surplus or we're in a deficit or we're in maintenance.
Right. And so first thing first, we're going to track everything we eat for seven, 10 days maybe, and then add up all those calories, average it out by however many days you tracked. And that will be your average caloric intake. At the same time in this time period, we're going to take our measurements, right? So what's our scale, body weight, our hip measurement, waist measurement, right? Die bust measurement. How many inches?
circumference around each. And then we're going to track and see what happened after 10 days. Did we gain weight? Did we lose weight? Did we stay the same? And so that average caloric intake is going to determine based on what the measurements and the body scale, ⁓ body weight says, whether we're overeating, undereating, or eating just enough. And that's our starting point right there.
speaker-0 (14:21)
I love the analogy or visual of a business because it takes us a little bit removed from our body. And we're looking at, as you said, the like, how much money is coming in and how much are we spending? And when we shift that viewpoint around our calories, how much, you know, is coming in and how much are we spending? It feels a lot less restrictive because it really is kind of that flow intake outtake.
And you're the first one I've heard talk about doing it like that average caloric intake versus just like the daily micro that we're looking at and really saying, okay, what is the average? And then where do we go from there? It's that audit with a little bit of detachment so that we can have the numbers to be able to make decisions. And I love how it's just that little step back from, okay, this isn't about like,
how good I am, how bad I am, how I have lack of control. We're just looking at data.
speaker-1 (15:25)
Exactly. And when you put it that way, the question then is, well, can I lose weight by eating just Nutella? There are experiments out there that people have lost weight just eating McDonald's. the answer is yes, you can. But can you handle being hungry the majority of the day? Because if you just eat, let's say, 1,500 calories of Nutella per day,
And that's all you eat because that's your budget for the day, 1,500 calories. That's not a lot of food. That's very little food because Nutella has very high sugar content. And so can you do it? Yeah, you can. But you're going to suffer a lot. You're going to be hungry. You're going to be malnourished. ⁓ And it's not going to last long, which is what most diets. And I want you to really think about that, everybody listening. That is how most
Traditional diets work, right? They restrict many food groups and then you end up eating low volume food with whatever calories you have. And so you feel hungry, you feel restricted. If you're cutting out bread, you're cutting out all kinds of things and then your body's going to naturally want to have that. And once the diet quote unquote is over, you're going right back to...
eating the way you used to eat rather than truly changing your habits and your relationship with food where you're viewing it for its nutritional content rather than as a good or bad.
speaker-0 (16:59)
love that different perspective. just, as you said, you're white knuckling things. I think a lot of people are white knuckling those diets and we're pushing through and we're creating those restrictive environments. And you're right. As soon as we let go of that diet, then we go back to eating the way that we have it and we haven't learned to eat differently. We've just learned to override kind of what we want and what we need. So can you share a little bit more about
how do we shift into a more, well-balanced, I guess, diet, where we're supporting our own needs in a way that we're not just having to white-knuckle our way through eating.
speaker-1 (17:41)
So great question. So what we talked about earlier, right? So getting the average daily caloric intake. let's say as an easy, nice, easy number, that's 2000, right? So on average, like some days you might eat less, some days you might eat more, but on average you're consuming 2000 calories. Okay. So what do do now? Right? So now the next question is, well, what is our goal? Right? So is our goal to gain weight? Cause there's a lot of women out there that need to gain weight.
⁓ There's a lot of women that need to go into a reverse diet, meaning that they need to increase their caloric intake in order to be able to begin a weight loss journey to begin with, right? ⁓ And then there's a lot of women that just want to maintain, that don't want to lose or gain, and there are women that want to lose weight, they want to lose body fat. So, okay, so let's say that...
2000 calories on average per day is a good number where you can start a weight loss journey because if your number was 900 calories on average, you're kind of backed up into a corner, right? So if you're at 900, 800, 900, you're now looking at reverse dieting. So I can talk about that after we cover this example, what exactly that is, because I get a lot of questions on reverse dieting. But let's say you're at 2000 and you're looking to lose weight. So the first step is going to be to
bring down that 2,000 calories down to 1,500. So give yourself a 500 calorie deficit. So maybe we do a little bit of cardio mixed in, right? So we're going to offset some of that. So maybe we'll be between 600 to 800 calories per day is now going to be our new target. And that's how we begin this journey. So 1,600 to 1,800 caloric intake.
per day, every day, not when I feel like it, right? Every day, and that's the max. And we divide that up into five equal balanced meals. And this is what I do for my clients. I tell them exactly how much protein within those 1800 calories, how many carbs and how much fat, and we divide that up into the five meals. And that's how we begin, right?
So ⁓ in addition to that, we look to increase step count. So we want to 5,000 to 10,000 steps really depends on each individual and what their activity level was before. We might add 10 minutes of cardio, just things that are kind of sustainable and an easy on-ramp for ⁓ each individual. Again, it depends. It's very, very unique to each person. And if possible, we could add
three to four days of resistance training. And so when then we do this for 30 to 60 days and see how the body responds, what kind of measurements come back in during a check-in that you lose inches off your waistline, did you drop weight on the scale, all of these metrics are ⁓ supervised, right? So we're paying attention to all these metrics, we're paying attention to how many calories.
And it's all one big spreadsheet, right? So we're looking at it as a business and now we're looking to hit a particular goal in the business. So if I were to use a metaphor again for business, if I wanted, for example, to get two clients per month and I knew I had to make 2000 phone calls in order to get two clients per month, I just have to hit those numbers and I know I'm going to hit my goal, right? So the focus every day is, my gosh, know, something's wrong with me.
I don't know what's happening. Everything is different. I don't know if I can do this. This works for everybody else, but it doesn't work for me. No, we put those thoughts to the side because we know if we hit these numbers, we're going to hit our goal. So that's all we focus on.
speaker-0 (21:41)
my gosh, I love that because it's just using data it's such an incredible system where you're looking at just the input and output, what you're bringing in and what you're spending. And it's not just about cutting calories and cutting the amount of food that we're eating. And you're talking about five meals a day, which is a lot.
And so you're not just white-knuckling it and being hungry. You're looking at, so what am I spending? What do I need? And then reevaluating, which gives you more control because you have the numbers and the data that you're using. It's not, and I think a lot of us, when we're looking at how do we exercise and how do we eat, it's just random stuff that we're either finding on social media and trying for ourselves, or we don't have a consistent plan. It is that
What am I going to do today? I'm going to try to eat less. I'm going to try to exercise more, but we don't have the data to back up and make us be successful because it's random. It's guessing.
speaker-1 (22:47)
Exactly. Most of us are fumbling in the dark the way that I was. And I know this because I experienced it firsthand. I lived through that. I call it the dark ages because no matter what I did, I just couldn't get it right. And it was, I think, one of the most frustrating times of my life because I...
I could figure a lot of complicated things in the past. I went to school for computer programming, computer engineering. I started a business. understood all of these ⁓ concepts, but I couldn't figure out my own body. Right. And that was really embarrassing. There was a lot of shame associated with that. There's a lot of negative self-talk, ⁓ you know, all of that.
was just a lot of mind garbage going on. And then you're second guessing yourself every step of the way. You're unsure. So you're not really fully committed to the process. And once this became clear to me, I felt so secure in this process and confident that I could repeat it at any time. I had a full understanding of how these things worked.
And I was safe doing this because I never really felt hungry either, right? And a lot of things that... ⁓ A lot of things that people don't realize... Some of the things that people don't realize is that when you starve yourself, your nervous system goes into fight and flight, and you become anxious, and ⁓ it's very hard to stick to the plan. Now, when you're nourishing your body,
speaker-0 (24:29)
Yes.
speaker-1 (24:37)
and you're nourishing yourself with the right amount of fuel, right? To perform all of these activities and to just live, right? To breathe, have your hair grow and your nails grow, like all these things require fuel. When you're not ⁓ restricting fuel and you're looking at the whole picture, your nervous system calms down, you sleep better, you...
have less anxiety, feel less stressed. And so things start to move forward in the right direction, especially during perimenopause.
speaker-0 (25:16)
I think one of the big highlights and I'm glad you brought in nervous system, but is safe because a lot of dieting and when we're really throwing ourselves into exercise programs that we are just doing because we think we should, we're not feeling safe. We're doing it because we don't feel good about ourselves. And so we're already hard on ourselves and then we're trying to restrict what we're eating. We're setting ourselves up for failure. We try to do
hard and fast exercise, which then ends up backfiring for us. And we feel even worse about ourselves. I love the safety aspect. Can you speak more to that? And then I want to swing back to the reverse dieting.
speaker-1 (25:59)
Yes. So the safety aspect, I mean, if we really think about it, right, this lifestyle that we all live in, it's not unique to me, right? This world that we have created in 2026, I cannot name one person that I know that can honestly say they feel safe, right? Because
Okay, you get on your phone, you get bombarded by social media, you turn the TV on, you're bombarded with all kinds of attention grabbing headlines that are doomsday. ⁓ You call somebody on the phone, they're struggling. You go out, you try to get to work, there's two hours of traffic you got to get through. mean, it's just constant nervous system attacks, right? The environments that we're living in right now...
you know, even at home, right? All of the different home products that are creating havoc with our hormonal system, right? All the plastic everywhere, we're just constantly being attacked with toxins essentially, right? And so the nervous system is already taxed. You're already stressed. Even if you may not feel like you're stressed, you're stressed. know, biologically you're stressed, right? So then add on top of that,
perimenopause, your hormones fluctuating, ⁓ the fear of the unknown, what's going to happen to me when I get older, or are things going to get worse? ⁓ Nothing I do is working, you're starting to panic a little bit. And so all of these things contribute on top of the already stressed nervous system. And when the nervous system is stressed, you're constantly in fight and flight. You're not in rest and digest.
A lot of the systems like a lymphatic system, for example, does not drain or detox properly if we're in fight and flight. It needs to be in rest and digest. So now we have a symphony of things happening all at the same time and they all come to a head in perimenopause because now there's an additional fluctuation happening. There's an additional biological change and chemical change that's taking place not only ⁓ in our brains but in our body as well.
And so it's just the perfect storm, right? one ⁓ of the things that I really, the primary thing that I really like to address before even starting to work with any ⁓ new clients is nervous system regulation and sleep pattern, right? Before we even kind of, you know, circle around the food, because the food are just numbers. But if you, your body, if internally you don't feel safe,
And we ⁓ work on finding ways to get there, So breath work, meditation, yoga, Pilates, things like that, and mostly for nervous system regulation.
speaker-0 (28:54)
hundred percent right. my gosh, you're just brilliant.
speaker-1 (28:57)
you.
speaker-0 (28:57)
There's so much in that safety and a lot of us, especially in midlife, are so on the go and so bombarded that we never give ourselves the opportunity to downshift, to even realize that we are stressed because we're so good and we have learned to be so good.
at turning down our own interoception, what's going on inside of our bodies. We push past hunger, we push past tired, we forget to go to the bathroom. So we're turning off all those internal signals. And it's when we're either forced to pause or we end up on vacation or things like that, that we have that pause. And then our body really swings. I know so many people who hit vacation and then get sick.
because it's the first time that they've slowed down enough and it's like, Whoa, and here's our body. It's incredible that you're bringing in. have to have that safety and be able to have the nervous system downshift into that parasympathetic, the rest and digest. need to bring in sleep before we can focus on food. And that's a key part that so many people are missing. We're just jumping to the diet and the exercise.
speaker-1 (30:17)
Yes, and that's another stressor, right? So you're adding stress to the stress. really interesting what you mentioned. ⁓ I tell my clients this all the time. So I give out a proactive warning that once we start this work, ⁓ most women actually do get sick in month one or two, because getting sick and just getting a cold, know, runny nose, a cough, et cetera.
That is the lymph system actually detoxing itself. It needs to go through that process in order to cleanse itself out. So it means that things are working correctly, right? ⁓ Because at least once a year, I read somewhere that ⁓ you should get sick at least once a year and get just all the toxic congestion out of your body. It's like a shedding process, essentially.
of the lymphatic system. And that's a good thing. It's a great thing. And it's funny that you mentioned it because it is a pretty regular occurrence. Once we start this work, women do get that cold. They get a little bit of a stuffy nose. And once it flushes itself out, they don't really get sick, at least for another eight, nine, 12 months.
speaker-0 (31:35)
It's really interesting. And as I think many of us, we start things like we start the diet or we start the exercise program and then we get sick and it derails us. But knowing that this is part of the process and it's actually a good thing helps us maintain and keep on, okay, I'm doing this right. We're okay. We'll get through this and keep going versus I'm sick and I'm quitting exercise and never doing that again. I'm going back to how I'm eating.
but we haven't addressed kind of that basic safety and how our body's functioning.
speaker-1 (32:10)
Absolutely. that's really, that's the benefit of having a guide through this process, right? Because for me, until I had a coach that could tell me these things, like, hey, this is what's going to happen, right? Or these are the possible things that could happen. Or, ⁓ hey, we're starting a new program right now and you're going to be more sore than before. Or, you know, just whatever is coming up ahead so that you
perceive these things not as threats, but as something that you know is coming up for you. So one of the things ⁓ that was very helpful for me when, because I had a binging habit, right? I had an emotional eating habit. And when I would get triggered or I would get kind of dinged in a sense emotionally, that was more than my nervous system could handle at that particular time.
I would reach for ice cream, Nutella, potato chips, what a cake, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, crème brûlée, you name it, right? And that would help calm and soothe myself down, but it would derail my goals, right? And so instead of what I decided back then, since again, 13 years ago, what I decided back then
is that I wasn't going to avoid the binge. I wasn't going to white-knuckle myself into getting through this episode or that particular flare-up, let's say. And I wasn't going to be delusional and think it wasn't going to ever happen again. Like, okay, you know, wasn't... Because I did... I used to do that, right? Oh, I'm never doing that again. Well, guess what? You...
You do, you did, you did it again. Right. And so there's a lot of, ⁓ reprimanding thoughts that happen when you do fall on your face, cause you said you weren't going to do that and you did it. Right. And so what I decided is I'm not doing that. I'm going to expect it. I'm going to prepare in advance because I know there will be a time where I will fall on my face.
⁓ something is going to happen that's going to trigger me in some way, right? So it could be big things, it could be little things, right? But my goal really is to try and make it as less frequent as possible, but I'm not going to be delusional that it's not going to happen. So when it does happen, which most likely it will, we're human, right? We're all human. I'm going to be prepared and I'm going to have a very similar type of food.
in my fridge, in my pantry and whatever, I'm going to make something that is going to meet my goals rather than derail me. So if I'm looking for ice cream, instead of Haagen-Dazs, Ben & Jerry, nothing against them, like very high, I would eat the whole pint, maybe two. I would make a protein ninja creamy, right? With yogurt, cottage cheese, protein powder.
and freeze it overnight and then throw it in the machine and cremify it. And that hit the spot. That did the job, right? And so I could have the ice cream and not fall off the wagon.
speaker-0 (35:39)
you
That's huge. It's accepting the behavior. It's like, okay, this is part of how my nervous system is trying to self-regulate. I'm not, I love how you say I'm not being delusional because I think so many of us are setting us up ourselves up for failure because we're like, I'm never going to do this again. I'm going to totally cut this out. But when we're overtired, overstressed, we don't have the capacity to regulate. And we're searching for those external regulators and food is one of them.
then we're not in the space to have that thought process of, I'm to go find something different, but you're setting yourself up for success because you already have that something. And then it's turning to that comfort and that regulation in a way that is supportive. Instead of sending me on that shame spiral of, I fell off the wagon again and I did this. And then we completely derailed ourselves.
speaker-1 (36:38)
Right, exactly. And it works like a really nice bridge also while you're working on ⁓ reprogramming your habits and your behaviors. And, you know, over time, you don't really reach for that anymore. You don't even think about it anymore, right? You have other ways of coping. But in that in-between stage, when you first start doing this work, yeah, it saved me so many times.
speaker-0 (37:04)
love the bridge idea because yes, we do. and can we can work with our nervous systems to create more of that capacity and range. So when stress hits us, we're not going back to those old patterns, but there is that bridge space because we can't just jump to what we want to do and like totally think that we're never going to do the old behaviors. And even when we have a lot of capacity, we still might slide back into old behaviors and high levels of stress.
I'm so glad that you brought that in. I do want to swing back to that. What did you call it? Diet reversal?
speaker-1 (37:42)
reverse dieting.
speaker-0 (37:44)
I want to swing back to that reverse diet because I'm so curious about kind of what you mean and how you walk people through it.
speaker-1 (37:52)
Absolutely. there are a couple of different scenarios. So all of these things are really nuanced. just want to preface that ⁓ for everybody that's listening. There's a lot of nuance here, right? And I'm just kind of giving you the cliff notes on these things. There's a lot of different situations that would be addressed very differently. It's a very individual thing. Nutrition in general is a very bio individual type of field of science or research or
⁓ behavior really, right? So everybody requires very different types of nutrition based on their own biology. But I'm going to give an example. So let's say we're talking about someone who has dieted their entire life, right? So it's a, and I'm going to use myself as an example. I'm 50 years old.
I have dieted for 30 years. I've been done a lot of cardio. I'm underweight, right? I'm, I'm overweight, but I have low muscle mass, right? So I want to lose 20 pounds. And then we do the audit and we find out that the average caloric intake is 900 calories. Okay. Okay. You know, fine. That's okay.
But in order to cut calories, where are we going to be at? 400 a day? Right? 500 a day? Can you eat 500 calories a day? How long are you going to last on 500 calories a day? Which is what happens with most traditional diets when you're reading the diet book and it says, you got to do these things. You know, they take you down to some crazy number. And of course your body is not going to respond because you're already starving.
speaker-0 (39:21)
Hmm!
speaker-1 (39:43)
Right. So what more are you going to take from the body? Right. And so the solution to that is to reverse diet. over a, depending on how low your calories were to begin with, over weeks or months, sometimes it could take up to a year. It really depends on the individual. I cannot give a timeframe. But over an extended period of time,
we start to increase the calories very slowly while trying to maintain body weight and minimal weight or fat gain. And so every couple of weeks, you know, if you were at 900, we try to get you at a thousand. And then if you're at a thousand, we try to get you to 1100, 1200 until you get to a good number of calories for your body type,
speaker-0 (40:24)
Okay.
speaker-1 (40:42)
your your age, your level of activity, etc. So it's very unique to each person. And at that time, once your coach is satisfied that you're consuming enough food, then you start the actual diet phase. That's when you start ⁓ lowering the calories intentionally and very strategically.
And progressively, that's the other thing I see a lot. So someone who's been used to eating, let's say, 2,500 calories a day that goes on a diet and all of a sudden they're eating a thousand calories a day. What do you think is happening to your body when you make such a drastic change, right? All of a sudden your body's like, whoa, starving, right? And it goes into a panic, essentially.
⁓ which is another thing you want to avoid. You don't want the nervous system detecting what you're doing when it comes to a diet.
speaker-0 (41:45)
Yes, that's big. Because a lot of people really do kind of dive down from, know, they're start that diet and they drop calories quickly, which is increasing that stress. And I love how you're doing this kind of sneaky behind the nervous system back so that we can continue feeling safe. Because I mean, that's so huge. And we think about like this kind of roller coaster dieting that we end up on.
speaker-1 (42:05)
Yes.
speaker-0 (42:15)
And if you're doing things very gradual and very intentional, we do keep that nervous system safety. And it's not sending up these big red flags saying, my gosh, we need to hold onto this weight because we're starving. We're never going to get food again. It's a huge shift. If we're really consciously making those choices, working with that guide that knows where your body's going to go. And we can have, okay,
Cause most of us, don't think we think, okay, I'm already low calories. You're going to want me to increase before we even start to diet, but bringing that up incrementally also builds that safety in the nervous system.
speaker-1 (42:56)
Yeah. So my computer engineering background actually helped me a lot here in this field because I look at the nervous system as the firewall of your body. Right. And what's the job of the firewall in the system is to alert the system that there's a threat, right? So there's a threat, somebody's trying to break in something crazy is happening. We're getting robbed, right? Or someone's hacking in. And so our job, my job as someone's coach is to
hack in without being detected, right? So I don't want to alert the system. I don't want any alarms going off. I want the nervous system to think everything is fine. Everything is great. Nothing's changing. Everything's the same, right? Or if it was already in alarm mode, I need to stop the alarms, right? So the first thing I got to do is turn off all the alarms, calm everything down, and then I'm going to sneak in there.
speaker-0 (43:52)
Hey, so when this just curiosity, so if it doesn't align, let me know. But I'm really curious about the person who has restricted significantly. How do you get that buy in to we're going to start increasing calories? I have somebody in my life that I am thinking about and I'm like, I don't think they'd go there because it has been such a long journey with so much restriction. How do you get that shift?
speaker-1 (44:21)
Great question. So one of the first things is that here I can have you talk to a few other women that I've worked with that we have reverse-dieted and they can tell you themselves that they were in the same place that you were at and this is what we did and this is what happened and this is how things changed. All so that's one social proof, right? The other thing is you can't really convince people to change.
speaker-0 (44:48)
Great.
speaker-1 (44:49)
And so when someone is just not ⁓ interested in or being curious, you know, and they've been doing the same thing their entire life and it's now working for them and you offer a solution and they don't have the curiosity to be like, well, maybe I can try this, right? This is something I've never tried. Maybe I can try it and see what happens. Cause what's the worst thing that's going to happen. Right. Right.
Um, things can get better, right? Right. Cause I mean, that's where I was at. I was so desperate. was like, what the heck can I possibly do any worse than what I've already done to myself? Right. I can try this new thing, these macros and I eat and I had to eat astronomical amounts of food when I started and I was scared. I'll be honest. I was like, Whoa, you've okay. I hope you know what you're doing.
Now you're my coach, right? And so ⁓ what I normally tell people is, why did you hire me?
speaker-0 (45:57)
Hmm.
speaker-1 (45:58)
If things go wrong, if you gain weight, it'll be my fault. So you can outsource the blame, the shame, the embarrassment, all of it to me. It's not going to be your, if you do the plan according to how we designed it and it doesn't work, then it's my job to fix that. And so it falls on me, right? But you got to do it exactly the way that we talked about. All right. So it takes that responsibility off the person. ⁓
And if that doesn't work, then they're not ready.
speaker-0 (46:30)
And I love that. I love just in that safety of, okay, I'm not just, it's not just me. I'm not the one to blame. I'm not failing. You giving that scapegoat is really giving that nervous system safety in the stories and they, we have so many stories tied around our bodies and around food in that, okay, I'm trusting someone else if, and you're already giving them permission. If this doesn't work, it's their fault and it's not me.
And we have, think a lot of people who have been yo-yo dieting and trying to exercise like crazy have this success failure where we never fully succeed. We white knuckle it until we fail.
speaker-1 (47:15)
Exactly.
speaker-0 (47:17)
And if you're not there, you're not ready. And that's okay too.
speaker-1 (47:23)
Absolutely. Because we're not always ready, you know. Sometimes we have to, you know, put ourselves in more situations to realize that none of these things work. And asking for help is, it's very brave. It takes a lot of courage, ⁓ especially when you're like a really high functioning woman that's taken care of everybody and our whole family.
done all these things to admit like, holy moly, I don't know what I'm doing here on my own body. I don't know what I'm doing. I can do all these other things. I can do everything else, but I have no idea what to do with my own body. And that's humbling, right? And it's very difficult to do. And then you have to submit to somebody telling you what to do and you're not really used to that. you know, there's a lot going on. Yeah.
speaker-0 (48:19)
on and you've really brought a lot of that to light. And so it's not just trying to white knuckle. There's so many nuances that come into eating and, you know, working out physically moving our bodies in ways that support us that we're not always aware of or even thinking about ways that we feel like we're sabotaging ourselves, which are really just nervous system safety and patterns and stories that we have kind of ingrained.
and you're bringing that gentle awareness to it so we can shift in a safe way.
speaker-1 (48:54)
Yes, that is my absolute pleasure, purpose, and my whole point of life at this point is nervous system, regulation, safety, just being in our body, being out of our head and being in our body for the first time maybe in our life.
speaker-0 (49:14)
And you're right for a lot of women, it's the first time in their life. And it feels scary because we were very much living in our heads and our bodies have not always been a safe space, especially if we've been, you know, yo, yo dieting and crash exercising that are, we have become almost enemies with our bodies. They're a source of failure and inviting somebody to come into their body when it hasn't felt like a safe, good space is a big ask.
and you're really shifting to that breakdown. So it's a step-by-step process, not expecting, out of your head, in your body, let's do this. You're addressing the whole gamut of things that come up with someone.
speaker-1 (49:58)
Yes, exactly. And it's a process. It's a journey, right? It takes, it's not a light switch. It doesn't happen overnight. There's a lot of dedication and, you know, showing up for yourself and commitment and, you know, changing your values. You know, that takes a long time.
speaker-0 (50:16)
It does take a long time. my gosh. You're incredible. As we come to a close, is there anything else that you think our listeners should hear?
speaker-1 (50:26)
Yeah, not everything out there on Amazon and dive books and social media and all these places and advertising, TV, not all of it is for you, right? And most of the time you will not have an advertisement for something that is so basic and it works because they can't make money off of it.
So telling people to eat more vegetables, more fiber and more protein, they can't really make money off of that. It's not a pill solution. There's not a shot you can take. There's no trademark they can put on it. And so you don't hear about it because they can't make money off of it. And so instead what you hear about is all the other things, So people that can profit from ⁓ your pain, right? From your struggle.
people are profiting off of it. And so I wouldn't necessarily, how should I say, buy into all of these things that are out there, but really do your own research, look into nutrition, try to understand the contents of the foods that you're eating, try and get your own metrics down, right? Know your numbers. It's important. You know, we know...
when we need to change our car oil or when our insurances do, but we have no idea how our body works, how much food we need, how much calories we're like, we're like, we just don't know. So invest into that, invest into figuring that out. And I promise things will be phenomenally better.
speaker-0 (52:09)
my gosh, I love that. And it comes back to that business analogy. If you're trying to run a business in the dark where you don't know any of your numbers, you're not going to succeed. And I really want to highlight where you said that nutrition is individualized. And so when we're looking at all the fads and what social media is saying to do, that doesn't mean just cause it worked for somebody doesn't mean that it is ideal for your body.
And so it's really tuning in and getting to know what you need and how your body works. And that's going to create the success that you want.
speaker-1 (52:43)
Exactly.
speaker-0 (52:44)
Terry you're amazing.
speaker-1 (52:46)
Thank
you, Landi.
speaker-0 (52:48)
know that there are listeners out there who really want to continue a conversation with you. How can people connect with you?
speaker-1 (52:56)
And so you can find me on thehouseofrose.com, www.thehouseofrose.com. my information is on there. We have a new cookbook or recipe book coming out this week ⁓ that includes a ton of recipes that I personally use to lose 80 pounds. ⁓ My Instagram is howgoodcanitget. I post a lot of funny stuff on there. It's just kind of goofy stuff because you don't want to give blanket.
comments and statements about nutrition and things like that. But you know, it's a fun spot to visit. And yeah, and if you have any questions, I'm very open to any kind of conversation or anybody that has any question so you can reach out.
speaker-0 (53:39)
have all of your links down in the show notes. Thank you, Terry, so much for this conversation.
speaker-1 (53:44)
Thank you, Landy. It was a pleasure. I really enjoyed it.
Landy Peek (53:47)
This is such a powerful conversation I want you to hear this in a new way. Weight and food aren't just willpower issues. They're nervous system issues and thought pattern issues. When your system is on high alert, your body will reach for quick relief, quick control, quick comfort. And that's where the cycle tightens. The shift isn't try harder.
The shift is learning how to work with your body in a way that feels safe and sustainable.
and if you know your stress response is part of what keeps pulling you back into old patterns, I invite you to check out Stress Rewritten. It is a brand new all audio program, meaning there's no videos, no workbooks, no journaling, and it's built to help you change your automatic reaction. The one that happens at a subconscious level before you can
Think about calming down or using your mindset tools. So you're not white knuckling your way through change. You are repatterning the response that runs underneath it. You'll find the link to stress rewritten down in the show notes. If you wanna connect with Terry, her website is thehouseofrose.com and she's on Instagram at howgoodcaniget. Everything's linked down in the show notes. I wanna thank you for being here with me. I wanna thank you for showing up and doing something incredible for you.
for learning how to change your life in a whole different way. Because we don't have to white knuckle our way through life or force change. There is an easier and more sustainable way to create the changes that we want in our life. I wanna thank you for being here. I am so grateful that you're in my life and that you keep showing up because it does show how much you value yourself.
If this episode helped you, please share it with a friend who also needs to hear there's a different way to approach our weight loss. Follow the show so that you don't miss a single episode. And I wanna wish you all the happiness that today can bring and I'll talk to you on the next episode.
Speaker 2 (55:57)
Hey, before you go, just a little bit of legal. This podcast is designed for educational purposes only. It is not to replace any expert advice from your doctors, therapists, coaches, or any other professional that you would work with. It's just a chat with a friend, me, where we get curious about ideas, thoughts, and things that are going on in our lives.
As we're talking about friends, if you know someone who would benefit from a conversation today, please share because I think the more that we open up these conversations, the more benefit we all get. So until next time, give yourself a big hug from me and stay curious because that's the fun in this world.
