This Life Gets Good is the podcast for women over 40 who want to feel good in their bodies. In this community, we don’t just settle for “healthy”, we allow ourselves to feel good everywhere we go, work, home, and even while chauffeuring our kids around after school.
I'm your host, Lauren Melton, founder of This Life Uncluttered, and a single mom who realized life can get SO good over 40. Now I help other women lose weight, feel hot & healthy, and build confidence in all parts of their lives.
From perimenopause to parenting, from dating to deadlines, we'll chat about all the things life throws at us with a little humor, honesty, and hard-earned lessons to help you build a body and a life that feel as good as they look. Because feeling good in your body makes everything else better.
The Basics vs Optimization — What Weight Loss Actually Requires
•Lauren Melton•Season 1•Episode 37
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If you have ever seen a reel from a PhD telling you to never put a banana in a smoothie with berries and found yourself questioning everything… this episode is for you.
This week I am making the full argument for being a boring basic b*tch when it comes to your health. Not because the nuanced advice is always wrong and some of it genuinely matters and we get into all of it with my 1:1 clients. But because the nuanced stuff cannot help you if the foundation is not in place first. And right now a lot of women are chasing optimization while the basics are completely missing from their routine and wondering why nothing is moving.
As mentioned in this episode… Here are some accounts I follow and recommend for evidence based information:
Welcome to This Life Gets Good, the podcast where we talk about what it actually means to feel good in your body. Because around here, we don't just settle for healthy. We believe you're allowed to feel good everywhere you go, at work, at home, and yes, even whilst you're burning your kids to practice. I'm Lauren Melton, founder of This Life Uncluttered, mom of two, and living proof that life can get really good after 40. I help high-achieving women to lose weight, feel hot and healthy, and bring that confidence into every part of their life without doing more or burning out. Today I'm gonna help you reframe your thinking on what is really required for weight loss. Like when do you need to be focused on the boring basics? And what to do when you already have those basics in place and still aren't getting results. This is when we need a more nuanced approach with strategies so that we can optimize things and get you the results. But one of the most frustrating things to see as a coach is all the garbage information that goes viral about wellness-related topics, especially when it comes to fitness and nutrition. And I get how this happens, since most coaches on social media aren't exactly excited to make a reel about the boring basics, like and the results that they'll get you, because that's not exactly what gets many clicks. But the truth is that the boring basics, when done consistently, are usually what drives the results you want. And often I see women stuck, not able to lose weight, trying to chase every new piece of nuanced advice from every PhD with a trending reel when they don't have the basics in place. And it's keeping a lot of women stuck. When it comes to weight loss, nutrition, and fitness, people can get really dogmatic, like believing there's one right way to do things. And when it comes to social media, that can be so overwhelming with all the like 60 seconds or less reels, often from doctors or PhDs telling you some pretty crazy stuff. Like just a few weeks ago, I saw a woman on one of Mel Robin's reels saying, Don't ever put a banana in a smoothie with berries if you want to get any benefit out of it, which is completely ridiculous. And to make matters even worse, this woman has a PhD in biomechanical science too. Previously, Mel had a guest on who's seen as an expert for perimenopause and menopausal women when it comes to fitness, who shared how harmful it is for women to work out fasted. And then there's all of us, 40 plus women, trying to eat healthy, trying to get our steps in workouts, reduce our stress, yada yada. And we hear advice like this and we question everything. And I'm over here wondering why are we demonizing bananas when most Americans don't even eat enough fruit or vegetables? And why the heck are we scaring women off from getting in a morning workout when most women aren't even working out? If you're on thyroid medication, which plenty of my clients are, and you have to take it first thing in the morning, you can't eat for 30 minutes. And let's say mornings are the only time that you can get your workout in. Should you not work out then? Absolutely not. And sometimes there is some truth to some of these things we hear. Like in general, most of this type of advice can be more harmful than good. But there are times when more nuanced advice out there on social media is actually accurate and could be helpful. But if you don't have the basics in place, it's often not going to do anything for you. So, yes, women do benefit from more nuanced advice. So there is a time and a place for it, which is a huge part of what I dive into with my one-on-one clients. And I am one of those women who have benefited from more nuanced advice. Like I definitely need to eat before my workouts, or I feel like absolute garbage if I don't have something in my stomach. And I have clients too, where I help them figure out exactly what nuanced strategies will work best for them with meal timing, specific foods, specific meal plans, their workout programming, recovery. But I also have plenty of clients who rinse and repeat the basics and are also seeing great results. So, what do you do when you hear all this conflicting information out there? Who do you trust? And how do you figure out what works best for you? And why is being a little bit of a boring basic bitch so necessary in the first place? Okay, here are my top recommendations and how to navigate all of this so that you know what to focus on to feel good in your body, to be able to lose weight, see those results without getting stressed out over all the noise that you might be hearing online. The first thing I want you to do is know who you can use as a trusted source of information. And this is a tough one since even doctors and PhDs and people with millions of followers are out there spewing total garbage information often. But in general, look to those who use evidence-based approaches, the ones who reference studies and not just one study with eight males in it. Recognize when things feel more clickbaity versus educational. And this is a tough one because even I have used hooks on podcast episodes and emails and reels to grab people's attention. Like I get it, it's hard to get people's attention. So we kind of have to do some of this. But be curious about what feels a little bit off there. And if you want to know who are some accounts that I trust and follow for this type of evidence-based information, check out the show notes. The next thing that's really helpful is making sure that you have someone who can ask these more nuanced questions. And this is when working with a coach is so helpful. So you have someone who you can ask what they think about these topics when you do hear them. I can't tell you how often clients come to me with something they heard on so-and-so's podcast or some viral reel going around. And now they're worried that they aren't going to get the quote unquote right things done to get results. Meanwhile, they're already getting incredible results because I've helped them build out a plan where they're consistently nailing the basics. Then we get more nuanced into ways that really optimize things so they feel incredible. And funny enough, they often start feeling incredible when they get the system in place to make these boring basics doable and can do them consistently. Sometimes we don't even have to get nuanced, but sometimes we do. This is why focusing on nailing the basics first is so key. Before you worry about whether fasted workouts are more optimal or not, first you need to be working out consistently for like a year. Yeah, like a year. Build the actual habits first before you try to like protein max anything or fiber max or max anything for that matter. If you're not sure what those basics are, here is where I'd start. Number one, steps. Minimum of 7k per day, but eight to 10K is more ideal. If you're not nailing that, that is the first thing I would focus on when it comes to weight loss. Hydration. A minimum of about half your body weight in ounces, typically around 84 ounces, is pretty ideal. Some people do better with more, some very petite women can do better with less, but somewhere around that. Sleep. I know you don't want to hear it, but if you're not sleeping for seven hours or more per night, you're not helping your body lose weight. So sleep, you can lose weight with lack of sleep, but it makes it a lot harder because it's harder to stay consistent doing the things you need to do when you have less energy all day. So get your sleep in. And workouts, a combination of strength training and cardio, you know, following something maybe two, three days a week would be a basic place I would highly recommend to start. With nutrition, focus on eating primarily whole foods over processed foods, around 30 grams of protein per meal as a minimum. And for fiber, you're gonna want at least 25 to 30 grams per day. This can vary obviously based on your size, but those are kind of good basics to try to hit. Alcohol, ideally, you're not drinking any. If you are, one to two drinks or less per week. And finally, stress management. If you do not have a toolbox of ways to support yourself, your stress bucket, when it overflows, it's gonna be really hard to lose weight. So if the only ways that you know how to reduce that stress and to relax and unwind involve food and alcohol, you're gonna need to build out that toolbox. And that's another basic that really needs to be in place. So if you haven't done the above, trust me, you do not need to worry about the banana disrupting the benefit of your smoothie or the timing of your meals and workouts. One thing I do with a lot of my clients is we don't talk about optimization until we feel really good about rinse and repeating the basics for a few months. And not because the nuanced stuff doesn't matter, because it generally does, but because the nuanced stuff can't help if the basics are not in place. You can't optimize a foundation that does not exist yet, right? Like you're not putting on this gorgeous master suite on the top level of your house without a foundation on the house. At the same time, that doesn't mean I'm not going to offer custom support ideas that might feel a little bit more nuanced. Like if a client is struggling with constipation, we are for sure going to get nuanced into helping her figure out how to go to the bathroom every single day without a struggle. And some of that advice might feel more nuanced, but you won't see me telling a client to prioritize meal timing to build more muscle in their workouts when she's still drinking alcohol every night. Like the alcohol is going to be offsetting the benefit of that. Or like I had a client come to me pretty stressed about whether she should be using a weighted best and doing inclined treadmill walks because she read about it somewhere where they said, like, literally, like all women over 40 have to be doing this. It's the missing piece. But when we looked at her actual routine, she was getting around 5,000 steps a day. Her sleep was somewhere around like five or six hours a night. And she wasn't close to hitting her protein target. Now, did I think that a weighted vest inclined walking was the missing piece? Absolutely not. The weighted vest incline walking wasn't gonna do anything here. The basics were the missing piece. And once we got those in place, her weight started moving without any fancy optimization at all. No weighted vest needed. And I want to be clear that I'm not saying the nuanced stuff is always wrong and never matters. It often truly does. And that's what I love digging into, particularly with my one-on-one clients. Like I have one client who meal timing truly matters or who fasted versus fed training really makes a difference, right? Like that stuff is really fun to get into. But the difference is we got to that nuance after the basics were locked in and producing results, not instead of them. And I know that sounds boring, but honestly, the boring basics, they're what really work. Look at most women who maintain a level of leanness year-round. They are rinse and repeating the boring basic shit day after day. They aren't doing anything fancy. They're typically eating the same breakfast, the same lunch, the same type of dinner. They're working out on the same days each week, they're doing the same workouts for a heck of a lot longer than you probably are now. They're not worried about needing variety. They're pretty boring. Like for me, for example, I've been doing the same lower and upper body workouts since January. Yes, that's right. For over seven months now, I've been doing the same movement patterns every freaking week. And listen, I know most women might find that a bit extreme. So I tend to keep workouts in the collective around eight weeks. And with one-on-one clients, I push them to get a little bit closer to 12 weeks or more so that we can really master the moves and get the most out of them. But they're not worried about novelty here when it comes to their food and workouts. They rinse and repeat, they know what makes them feel their best in their bodies. Boring. I know, but it works. Doing the boring basics over and over, it's typically pretty hard to do for most moms over 40 because of all your navigating. And that's where I come in. That's where I help you build the systems that make it possible. And dare I say, even fun. I promise you it can be a little bit fun because feeling good in your body, feeling hot, that is fun. Truly, it is. Less to think about when it comes to these habits so that you can put your energy and time into things in the rest of your life, like relationships, maybe even a hobby. Imagine that. The most successful women I know when it comes to their health are not doing the most interesting things. They aren't. They're the ones doing the most boring things the most consistently. Sleep, steps, protein, strength training, water, day after day after day. That's the quote unquote secret. And I know it's not going to go viral, but it works. And nuance does matter. This is one of where we hold space for both. So if you're ready to get the support to make the boring basics happen on autopilot and have me at your side for that nuanced support, then we should chat about one-on-one coaching because this is where we not only lock in the basics, but we go deep into whatever you need to feel your best. And then I custom tailor the support based on that, your specific life and your needs. Like I just onboarded a new one-on-one client who upgraded from the collective and we built her custom workouts based on her access to her home equipment, a meal strategy to help her reduce her sugar cravings and yeast symptoms that she's been experiencing for years. And we have her now in this body reconp phase where we're focused on really pushing in her workouts with a slight calorie deficit so she can both add muscle and reduce body fat at the same time. Yeah, that is possible. It's a very specific approach with nutrition, workout, and recovery, and with one-on-one support, of course. So head to the show notes if this sounds like something that you're ready for. Fill out the application for us to see if we'd be a good fit to work together. I'd love to see if I can help you out. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of This Life Gets Good. I am truly grateful you chose to invest your time to listen. Your feedback matters here. And if you found this podcast to make a difference for you, please take a minute to share a review. Once a month, I'll select one lucky listener who shares a review to win a live 101 strategy call with me, where I'll personally coach you on your exact next steps to see weight loss results and finally feel hot again. And if this episode made you feel seen, share it with a friend who deserves to feel that way too.
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