Podcast Transcription: Why You Keep Gaining Back The Weight You Lost (And How To Stop) with Ted Ryce 

Ted Ryce: Have you ever been in a place where you got into great shape, and you felt like you were in the zone with your health; you lost weight, you’re hitting the gym frequently, everything was going well for you in that area of your life.

But now, you’ve put the weight back on, and you’re thinking to yourself, “What was it that I did that helped me get down to that weight, that helped me get into that type of shape?”

Because you’re thinking about it, and you just can’t remember, and you’re thinking, what were those strategies that I used? What was the magic?

Well, today I have the answer to that question. What’s up, my friend? And welcome back to the Legendary Life podcast. I’m your host, Ted Ryce, executive coach to entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other high performers.

And I was having a conversation with a client recently. And this client, he’s…Well, let’s put it like this, he actually worked with a coach previously, and he got down to a weight he was very happy with. He was very happy to be at that new weight. And then he gained the weight back. Such a common story, right?

And instead of joining with that other person, and going back to them, he ended up working with me. And we’re having this conversation the other day. And my client, let’s call him Paul, Paul told me, “Ted, I don’t know what it was, I was working with that other coach, I got down to 189, which is a huge milestone for me weight wise. And I don’t know what it was, I can’t remember the strategies that I used.”

He also told me, “I remember how I put it back on. I remember the steps that happened, the events that happened that led to me putting the weight back on, but I just can’t remember what I did to get down to that 189 weight.”

Now, I’ve been working with Paul for a couple months. And he’s done well, he’s lost about, I think around 10 pounds, I can’t even remember. But the past few weeks, he’s been stuck. He’s only lost about one pound in two weeks. Not great progress. Not terrible, either, though. And what I told Paul is this.

I said, “Paul, you’re asking a good question, but it’s the wrong question. You’re asking yourself, what were the foods? What was the workout? What was the magic? What were the magic foods I was eating? What were the magic workouts.

And the question you should be asking yourself is how did I get to that good emotional state, that place of motivation that allowed me to follow through on those strategies, that got me down to that 189 weight?

Because the reality is this, there is no magic. Now there’s better strategies and worse strategies when it comes to fat loss, but there’s no magic here. You have to cut your calories in some way.

And my strategies are better than the other coaches. And that’s not just me talking, by the way, in fact, my client—small tangent here, but I have to put this in because it’s important—he said of the previous coach, that he had a lot of trouble with their coaching program. In fact, he said that it’s a textbook example of how not to create a coaching program that serves your clients. It is a textbook example of what not to do.

And my client, Paul, is a very successful entrepreneur. He’s just sold his business, as a matter of fact, and he’s built several businesses.

And why am I bringing that up? Other than just to point out that I’m better than 99% of the other coaches out there, I’m bringing it up because he’s struggling in my program, which he’s super happy about. In fact, he committed for an entire year and paid in full. He said, “I didn’t even think about it.”

So, I want you to think about this: He’s having a much better emotional experience in my coaching group. And he was having a worse experience in the other coaching group, yet, he got better results. And my strategies are better, easier.

Why do you think that’s happening? Well, it comes back to the question that I told Paul, I said, “You should be asking yourself, what was the emotional state that you were in?” Because there’s something I didn’t tell you about Paul’s story. Paul just wrote a book. And he wrote a book, and he has a whole—what do you call it? Promotion strategy.

And when he was in the coaching program, the other coaching program, even though he had a bad experience with the coach in that program, he was going to take some pictures for the book promotion.

And you better believe, a guy like Paul, who is a successful serial entrepreneur, he did what he needed to do and got in shape for those photos. He wasn’t going to look bad in those photos. So, he got to, I don’t I don’t know, I don’t remember if it was his best weight ever, but certainly, his best weight in a few decades.

And when I told him that, I said, “Paul, let me know if you think that’s wrong. But from what you’ve told me and my experience with you over the past couple months, you’re doing well, but you’re not doing great. And this is mostly emotional. This is mostly stress-driven. Tell me if I’m wrong.” He said, “You know what? I’ve never thought about it that way, but you’re absolutely right.”

Because what happened afterward is he had some trouble in his relationship, and then he started stress eating. And then he just sold his business, but there’s some complications and – or not complications. Well, yeah, there are some complications, but there’s some other things, some other details of the sale of the business that requires him to be still working in the business for the next three years. And there’s been some issues that have come up from that.

So, he’s got stress from this relationship, stress from his business that he didn’t have before. And he’s already taken the photos for his book. So that motivation that he had, isn’t quite there.

And I want to ask you right now, do you keep asking yourself the wrong question, do you ask yourself, “Oh, I got to get back to that paleo diet, or that keto, or that Whole30, or that High Intensity Interval Training, or that trainer I was working with.”

I’m not saying not to do any of those things. But I’ll tell you in 23 years, and this is a secret, so I want you to pay attention here.

The secret is getting to a place where we have more motivation, where we have an empty enough cup—or I should say, a full enough cup, that we can dedicate our energy towards a goal like fat loss.

Because if you think about that point where you were in your best shape ever, what was your life like, compared to now where you may be 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 70, 100 pounds overweight? What are the differences? And if we summed it up in one word, it usually comes down to stress.

I want to share another story with you, how did I get ripped in 2019 when I was in Bangkok? Well, I worked with a coach—excuse me, sipping on some miso soup here, one of my personal fat loss hacks, soup, and in particular, miso soup, 37 calories per serving. And if I think about the emotional state I was in, I was there. I’ll tell you what I was doing. I was tracking my nutrition. I was weighing my food when I could, although I was eating on the street.

There is a place right on the corner when I was in Bangkok, Thailand, where I get a Thai wonton soup with noodles—totally not low carb, by the way, if that wasn’t obvious enough for you. I was eating some sweets from—they had this Japanese cheese tart place, it’s so delicious. And I was in a good place. My business was just starting to take off. I had gotten out of my marriage, which was for all the benefits, for all the good things in my marriage, it was ultimately toxic for both of us. It was so stressful for both of us.

And for the first time, I just felt like I didn’t need to stress eat. I could actually buy the cheese tarts, the Hokkaido cheese tarts, have them in my refrigerator and just eat one or two instead of shoving the whole box in my face.

So, it was easy to get lean. But if I would look at the strategies, it would be like, well, I’m doing way Thai two times a week in really hard sessions two times a week. Yeah, it wasn’t that. It was lifting afterward. It’s like, yeah, but I’m lifting and doing a lot of exercise now. I even think I’m doing more exercise now – or more recently.

And then when I think about what happened, how did I lose that level of fitness? Well, certainly my exercise routine changed. But why? Well, I went back to the United States in May of 2020, because my dad got sick, and he ended up dying in October. So, my emotional state was a wreck. And many of you listened to this during that time.

And if you didn’t, go back to some of the RTFs in the 2020 range from May to the end of the year, and you’ll hear a lot of stories about me struggling with my dad. And you don’t need to listen to all of them or even the whole thing, but just to get an idea. I was in a very different emotional state and I was struggling a lot.

In fact, I struggled so much that I didn’t advertise my coaching business for all of 2021, almost all the 2021. It was only until the end of the year where we started promoting the coaching. I took months off. Now, I still worked with clients during that time.

And I was still working on refining what I was doing, because I was actually learning a lot. I started to realize the reality, through my own experience, it’s like, this is what people are struggling with. It’s really simple.

We overeat. The majority of people that I know, we overeat because we’re stress and we’re managing our emotions. We’re finding pleasure, or we’re finding escape in food. And for many of us, it’s solely food or alcohol, or food and alcohol. And the problem is, you can feel bad, and then you eat a little something delicious and it makes you feel better. It always makes you feel better. It doesn’t solve your problems, though.

So, the next day or maybe in two day’s time, you’re back at the same behavior, eating again to calm down your emotions. Combine that with the stress of the pandemic, it’s no wonder that so many people put on weight, especially if you have kids. I can only imagine what that was like, homeschooling and all the craziness.

I mean, I had clients who worked with me during that time, who had four kids, and they were all in different grades and homeschooling, and still got in shape. But they invested in coaching during that time.

So not only did they have the finances to do it, because I ain’t cheap, they also had the mindset to invest in coaching, which is something a lot of people don’t have. And three, they did the work, which is something that people even in the coaching program struggle to do sometimes. We’ll sip a miso soup—got a little piece of seaweed there.

So, the emotional state that we’re in, this is important. Why? What’s the physiology behind this? Well, that’s what I started asking myself: well, what happens? Why is it that stress knocks us on our ass? Because I’ll tell you something else: through that time where I was struggling with my dad and I was putting on some weight, I was tracking my calories. I tracked everything. I was tracking the key lime pie that I didn’t even want to track.

There were times where I’m like, “Oh, man, I know this is super high in calories, and I don’t want to track it.” I tracked it anyway. And I saw how many calories I was eating. And I just couldn’t control myself. My hunger levels were through the roof.

There’s only one cause of being overweight, or obese or being normal weight, but having more body fat than you want. It’s overeating. That’s it. None of that hormone bullshit. It’s not your age, it’s not your hormones. It’s not the pre-menopause, the post menopause, the low T, all of that’s bullshit. It’s not even low thyroid, even though low thyroid slows down your metabolism. Quite simply, you over eat, therefore, you have more fat on your body. It is literally that simple. What makes it complex is when we have stress-driven hunger.

There are three big things that influence your hunger, is what I’ve learned. Number one, your food choices. I don’t care, you can be in the happiest place in your life, there are certain foods that are going to trigger you because they overstimulate—let’s say over stimulate. This my words, not necessarily the words of science, but how I think about it, they stimulate your pleasure centers, your reward center of your brain.

It’s like doing a drug, you get a little taste and you want to get high again. For me, ice cream? I don’t care how much you give me, it’s going to disappear. So, food choices, even if I’m in a good place, by the way, even if I’m in a great emotional place, I’m going to overeat some ice cream. It just has that effect on me.

The second thing is our stress levels, stress driven hunger. Have you ever been full, but somehow you need some room for dessert, even though your full? Well, why does that happen? Or maybe you’re full and you keep going back for more food? Well, why does that happen? Stress, folks, really simple. I know it isn’t simple, because people don’t make the connection between stress and health at all. It’s not talked about enough. But I’m telling you –at least you’re starting to hear that message.

And then the third thing I would say is sleep. So, you can’t disrupt your sleep and expect to stay on track the next day, or have very disrupted sleep because you’re working a lot or because you drink alcohol every night and don’t think is a big deal. But it ends up messing up your sleep. And then for some reason, you got a case of the fuck-its when it’s lunchtime and you want some food pleasure for lunch instead of staying lean.

So, stress is that one that—definitely, food choices matter a lot, but stress is that thing that I find, I have to work with, I have to bring that up with all my clients. And it’s a factor with everyone. And if you’re not willing to do something about your stress, then you’re not going to get the results you want.

And that’s what I tell my clients. If you’re having stress-driven hunger issues, you will not get the result, you won’t be able to go on a diet, because dieting is stressful, even if it’s the strategies that I use, which everyone says, you’ve heard my clients come on here and share their experiences. It’s easier than anything they’ve ever done. But it’s still ain’t easy.

One of the things I ask people, when they hop on a call with me as I try to gauge their stress levels: do they have a full enough cup that they can dedicate some of their energy to achieving a result in the program?

Or are they just hoping that if they throw money at me— or throw money at their problem, is what they’re really doing—that something magically is going to happen. It can work, but it depends on the motivation level, how motivated someone gets once they paid. And sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

So, what are you taking away from this conversation right now? Are you starting to think about what drives you to make the food decisions or alcohol decisions that you’re making? Are you starting to think about what is the underlying problem? Because if you never deal with the underlying problem, then you’ll never be able to maintain the health that you want the weight that you want, the body that you want.

You will fall back into old patterns, put back on the weight, because you went on a diet, but you never dealt with the underlying issues. And that’s what I work with my clients on, the underlying issues. Because that’s the key. You fix that, it’s easy to get in shape.

And I want to tell you— come back to my personal story. I had an interesting 2021. I really wanted to get back in shape. I took a hard hit during dealing with my dad’s decline in health, his downward spiral and ultimate death. I had a hard time. And then my business partner told me to take months off and I did.

And I worked out quite a bit in 2021 but I was never able to get back down to that level of leanness that I was at the end of 2019, that I worked so hard for and then that I maintained in 2020, up until my dad’s death.

Even through the quarantine, the Coronavirus craziness, where everybody’s worrying about what’s going to happen to the world. Is this going to be the end? Is this just going to create like I don’t know, pneumonia Coronavirus zombies, what’s going to happen? Nobody knows. Even then, I got into even better shape. That was where I channelled my energy. But after my dad got sick, it was all downhill. And I’m finally getting back to that, but it’s taken me a year.

Now I want to put this into context. I never got a belly, I just had a four pack, so I still was able to see my abs the entire time. I never lost the ability to see my abs. So, I didn’t put on that much weight.

And I credit that to my approach, but my standard is very different. Kind of like if you’re a successful business owner, successful entrepreneur, you might lose a little bit of money during a downtime, but you won’t lose your business. Because you take action, you know what to do. You have the skills, you have the knowledge, you become creative, but you still lose, right?

And so that’s what kind of happened to me. I was still able to keep myself but I wasn’t able to stay in the type of shape that I wanted to, that around 10-ish percent body fat, bumped up to maybe 15, or maybe even 17 at some point—never went beyond 20. But it shifted around a little bit. And I got back down pretty quick, got back in shape. But I wasn’t able to get to the same level of shape. Now. I’m there, right? I’m close, but it’s March 25, 2022.

So, what are you taking away from this that’s relevant to you? What needs to change in your life? What is it that you need to do that you’re currently not doing to get yourself in a better emotional state so that you even have the energy to focus on getting lean again?

Because I want to argue that the reason that you feel so bad when you look in the mirror and see what you see and you’re not happy with it is because the excess body fat, you know what it really represents.

You may be crushing it in your business, your relationships may even be pretty good. But you see yourself in the mirror and it represents your failure to conquer this area of your health—this area of your life, sorry, which is your health.

So, what needs to change? That’s the question I want to leave you with. And I hope you enjoyed this and took a lot away from it.