YouTube video review - 7 Habits to lose 25 lbs

age_is_just_a_number

I've been scrolling through YouTube lately and have come across a number of weight loss videos. Most of them say the same things — eat more protein, eat at a deficit, eat lots of vegetables, get in some exercise.

Occasionally, I find one that is a little different. Like this one - Link to her 7 Habits video - by Chelsea Mae, a New Zealand woman who lost 40 pounds and has kept it off for more than six years and has started a business coaching other people on her method.

She starts with Tortoise versus Hare comparison and advocates for consistency over a longer period of time rather than looking for a quick fix. She aligns with the tortoise and 'winning' by not stopping.

Of course, I recommend watching her video before debating it. But, for those who cannot spend those 20 minutes, please find an overview below.

Overview of her 7 habits:

1. Eat a consistent breakfast that is easy to make.
2. Eat a potato based meal every day. She does it at lunch.
3. Eat 50% of your lunch and your dinner at non-starchy vegetables. Target 1 pound of non-starchy vegetables consumed per day.
4. Eat until comfortably 'stuffed' to feel full and satisfied.
5. Stop cooking with oil.
6. Bring food with you to make better food choices while away from home.
7. Have input goals rather than output goals.

age_is_just_a_number

Items I agree with in her video:

• consistent breakfast - I have done this for years.
• 50% of your lunch and dinner as non-starchy vegetables. This is consistent with the Canada Food Guide
• have input goals rather than output goals - is a new one for me, creates a mind shift change that is intriguing.

Items I'm a little more skeptical about:

• eating potatoes every day - I get what she's saying in terms of the satiety of potatoes, but everyday!
• eating until stuffed - I understand she's saying, if you feel full, then you are less likely to binge later on. The Blue Zones advocate for eating to 80% of fullness for healthy long life.
• always bringing food with you —> I believe you can make healthy choices while out and about and don't need to have cut up vegetables with you everywhere you go.
• don't cook with oil —> there is so little oil in most things we cook, I can't see this adding to that many calories. Also, what about the health benefits of olive oil?

What are your thoughts on this video and her approach?

paperpudding

did not watch video - but my thoughts o n the points you outlined in OP

I certainly agree with the tortoise or slow and steady or marathon not a sprint or whatever wording one likes to convey it is a ongoing process over time, not a quick fix. We are forever saying that on MFP too.

1. Eat a consistent breakfast that is easy to make. - not neccesary. Eat or don't eat breakfast as suits you. although I am a breakfast eater myself and have a small breakfast, like a bowl of cereal or 2 pieces of toast, most days.

1. Eat a potato based meal every day. She does it at lunch. not neccesary at all. Eat or dont eat potatoes as per your own preference - they have no particular bearing on weight loss
3. Eat 50% of your lunch and your dinner at non-starchy vegetables. Target 1 pound of non-starchy vegetables consumed per day. good general advice - Eating non starchy vegetables is good idea and most people benifit by eating more veggies - but have never bothered quantifying the amount or time I do so
5. Eat until comfortably 'stuffed' to feel full and satisfied. - avoiding crash diets or over low calories/amounts of foods is good - often leads to poor choices or binging or dropping off wagon. But I'm not sure about eating till stuffed as a goal.
7. Stop cooking with oil. - better advice to me would be account for any oil you use and use sparingly - no need to stop using altogether.
9. Bring food with you to make better food choices while away from home. - sometimes: eg often helpful to bring your own lunch to work. But you can also learn to make better choices when eating out so that you work that into your plan too
11. Have input goals rather than output goals. I dont know what this means.

AnnPT77

General reactions to the video, beyond the 7 habits: Good comments up front to the long-term timeline . . .but losing 2 pounds a week for 3 months can be too fast, if 25 were the only pounds one needed to lose, or near to the only pounds. Generically, I think "lose fast" isn't usually a great idea.

I do think routine daily habits are a power tool for weight management, but not as rigid rules to apply in all cases. It's that rare things - eating extra cake on my birthday or working out one day for 5 hours - are a drop in the ocean. The ocean is the things I do on repeat, day-in, day-out, for the overwhelming majority of my days. Habits are a good focus, but not necessarily as something to white-knuckled comply with, without exception.

A personal context, I lost 50ish pounds in somewhat less than a year, then have maintained a healthy weight for 9+ years. My weight loss habits and my maintenance habits are largely the same habits except for a difference in calorie goal, and more consistency in weight lifting while losing than now. (I'd be better off if I lifted consistently now: Most everyone would be. But I don't enjoy it, so I don't. My bad.)

I'm also an unapologetically hedonistic aging hippie flake, so I don't like rules, and I don't think there are universally-correct ways to lose weight. "Thou shalts" make me want to rebel, which isn't a success mindset. I can accept that that's a personal character fault in me. Meh, so what? The right approach is a personal-tailored individual approach, IMO. If it doesn't suit my personality and preferences, it's less likely to succeed.

Her habits will work well for some people, sure.

I'm just going to list her habits, and comment on which I did, plus thoughts about them as generic recommendations.

1. Eat a consistent breakfast that is easy to make.

I do have a couple of breakfasts that I usually stick close to when at home. Mostly that's because morning is seriously not my time of day, so I need to be on autopilot because I'm still in a cognitive fog.

One of them takes much longer than 2 minutes, but I'm retired and I have the time, plus I love it. It's oats, with lots of amendments, cooked because I think raw oats are repugnant. Others don't. The other breakfast is for days when I need to leave the house more quickly, and can even travel with me in a pinch: Peanut butter on a pita, plain kefir on the side, or a close variation on that.

Some people do best skipping early-AM breakfast altogether because they aren't hungry then, and that's OK.

2. Eat a potato based meal every day. She does it at lunch.

What the heck? Yeah, a lot of people find potatoes filling. I rarely eat them. I don't demonize them, either. They have some good nutrients for their calories, and aren't shockingly calorie dense. This habit seems very arbitrary.

3. Eat 50% of your lunch and your dinner at non-starchy vegetables. Target 1 pound of non-starchy vegetables consumed per day.

I eat a lot of veggies, usually more than a pound a day . . . well, more than a pound a day of veggies and fruit combined. While I pay attention to the calorie content, I don't pay attention explicitly to starchy vs. non-starchy veggies. Veggies and fruits can be filling for some - they are for me - and they tend to have lots of nice micronutrients and fiber. But some people thrive on carnivore diets, eating minimal or no veggies/fruits, or on keto diets that may have nutritionally adequate veggies - non-starchy ones - but less variety and volume than I personally prefer.

4. Eat until comfortably 'stuffed' to feel full and satisfied.

Stuffed? IMO, not evil, but the way I'd define it, not essential, either.

I think it's important to feel reasonably sated and satisfied the majority of the time, because spiking appetite is unpleasant and can cause difficulties. What's filling seems to be very individual, based on years of reading posts here. I think grown-ups who experiment and pay attention can figure out which foods at what times will help them feel satisfied.

5. Stop cooking with oil.

Eye roll here. Sure, fats are calorie dense, so reducing cooking in oil can be a good way to reduce calorie intake, but I don't think it's necessary to make an absolute rule out of it. When I fry things, I use minimal oil. Some things roast better with a little oil, but they needn't be drenched in it IMO. Every once in a while, I eat something deep fried, in a restaurant. It's not doom. Generally, I prefer to get fats from foods rather than cooking/dressing oils, but that's a personal preference. Some people report finding fats filling.

6. Bring food with you to make better food choices while away from home.

I don't do that, at least not consistently. Sometimes, sure. When losing, I kept some shelf-stable snacks - tasty but not ultra-tempting - in my car. That way, if I happened to get hungry while out longer than expected, I could have a snack and not arrive back home ravenous and inclined to over-eat. I don't do that routinely in maintenance, but I have go-tos that I know I can pick up at gas station convenience stores or elsewhere if necessary: Hard boiled egg, cheese stick, Greek yogurt, pickles, skim latte, whatever.

7. Have input goals rather than output goals.

I'm a believer in process goals vs. outcome goals, which is similar, maybe identical. As much as possible, I think it's better to have goals that are things we personally control, rather than things we influence. For example, "stay within 50 calories of my calorie goal on average this week" is a process goal. I can control that. "Lose 1 pound this week" is an outcome goal. I don't control that, I just influence it. If I'm consistent in averaging a 500 calorie deficit to my actual TDEE, I'll average about a pound a week weight loss over several weeks, but when it shows up on the scale is not in my control.

Another general comment: Just from the visuals, it looks like her meals are way, way shorter on protein than I'd prefer. She doesn't really talk about it, so I don't know. Many people find protein filling, too.

neanderthin

Yeah, another list. Any alternative list or preferences are redundant by default, they're just another list. 😊

age_is_just_a_number

@AnnPT77 Thank you for your views. Regarding her protein intake, she is vegan. So, protein would be more difficult to easily identify on her plates. I also noted that she does not have protein as one of her inputs.

@paperpudding Thank you for your views. Regarding input goals, AnnPT77 described them well in her comments. They are essentially things that you can control. I actually like the way AnnPT77 described them better than the way the YouTuber described them.

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48562986#Comment_48562986

Not to be disputacious, but I'm 50+ years vegetarian. Plant-based protein - types, portion sizes, combinations to ensure reasonably bioavailable and essential amino acid complete protein intake - that's familiar territory for me. I don't know what her protein goals are; maybe it's just that she didn't emphasize them so didn't show her protein choices in the video. But if those plates were complete examples of how she eats, and included the protein she's typically eating, it wasn't very much protein. Protein is very, very important. It's even more important when losing weight.

age_is_just_a_number

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48563014#Comment_48563014

I didn’t know you were vegan. Well, I defer to your keen observation then. Looks like I incorrectly assumed ! Zoicks, we know what happens when we assume.

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48563312#Comment_48563312

To be clear: I'm not vegan, but rather vegetarian. Vegans eat only plants, and truly strict vegans don't eat honey, wear leather, or make other life choices that exploit or injure other living creatures, to the extent feasible. There are also people usually called "fully plant based" or "strict vegetarian" who eat only plants, but don't do the full range of other animal-sparing life choices.

I'm vegetarian, and not the strictest sub-type. I eat dairy and eggs (not many eggs, usually), which is the ovo-lacto sub-type of vegetarian. But I get a lot of my daily protein from plants, so I understand the plant-based nutrition fairly well. I have nothing against veganism - or omnivory, for that matter: My late husband was an omnivore and even a hunter.

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48563312#Comment_48563312

To be clear: I'm not vegan, but rather vegetarian. Vegans eat only plants, and truly strict vegans don't eat honey, wear leather, or make other life choices that exploit or injure other living creatures, to the extent feasible. There are also people usually called "fully plant based" or "strict vegetarian" who eat only plants, but don't do the full range of other animal-sparing life choices.

I'm vegetarian, and not the strictest sub-type. I eat dairy and eggs (not many eggs, usually), which is the ovo-lacto sub-type of vegetarian. But I get a lot of my daily protein from plants, so I understand the plant-based nutrition fairly well. I have nothing against veganism - or omnivory, for that matter: My late husband was an omnivore and even a hunter.