Kate Mason (00:00):
Are you tired about hearing about the next Miracle Diet? And are you aware that recent research has shown that by 45 most women have tried 61 diets? That sounds incredible, doesn't it? Four to five every year and over a lifetime, women spend 31 years on a diet. Scary, isn't it? Have you ever wondered if there's a better way to approach weight loss beyond this endless cycle of dieting? Now, what if there was a method that was focused on sustainable long-term habits for weight loss? And what if the key to lasting weight loss isn't about cutting out foods or starving ourselves, but about understanding how our bodies work and adjusting our habits accordingly? In a society that's driven by instant results, as you know, we all love a quick fix. How can we shift our focus from the quick fixes to long lasting healthy habits that actually support our wellbeing? Could there be a smarter science-backed way that aligns with our body's natural processes? And what would it look like for you if you could break free of dieting and focus on simple principles that guide you towards healthier living without all that stress, or let's find out. I'm Kate Mason and welcome to Parenting and Personalities. This is a podcast that connects you to the ones you care about the most.
(01:34):
Today we're talking to Dr. Nick Fuller from the Charles Perkins Center at Sydney University. Passionate about a holistic approach to obesity treatment. Dr. Fuller aims to clear up misconceptions spread by unqualified individuals in an unregulated industry. He specializes in the causes prevention and treatment of obesity and related health issues such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. His work has led to policy changes and has been published in leading journals. He collaborates with BO government and industry to create cost-effective solutions and has successfully commercialized research to improve global health. His intermittent weight loss program has gained recognition including selection for the University of Sydney's incubate program and several prestigious awards. Now, last week, Dr. Fuller and I discussed the biological mechanisms that make weight loss a really tough battle for all of us, and we explored how dieting often works against us. Now, if you miss this episode, please go back and have a listen because it's really, really important because we're not failing our body. Our body is trying to protect us, and in doing so, it stops us from starving ourselves. So today we'll continue this conversation with a focus on what really works, real sustainable habits that lead to permanent weight loss without that stress of restrictive diets. Hi, Nick. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining us again.
Nick Fuller (03:08):
Oh, it's great to talk to you again. I'm very excited.
Kate Mason (03:11):
So last week we talked about the eight key mechanisms that prevent us from losing weight and that natural biology that just takes over and helps us out whether we want to or not. So we mentioned dieting and women and men and the amount of diets that we've gone on.
Nick Fuller (03:26):
It was a lot of doom and gloom, wasn't it?
Kate Mason (03:28):
It was a lot of doom and gloom. So don't diet, okay, just don't diet. So if you've missed that and you're listening, just go back because it's a really enlightening episode and I've been thinking about a lot and I have been telling a lot of people about it. And what I have found, like I said to you in just our chat before, is that most people really do want that fast weight loss and they really need to change their idea of thinking about it. And you have a really big battle on your hands, but I think that you can make it with your evidence-based and the studies that are coming out. So the science behind it's proof. So today we're going to talk about those six principles that you've written to help people, you and I and everyone who's out there lose weight permanently. And that's without strict diets, but it includes all the good foods that are out there too, not processed. And we're going back to nature. So you go, Nick,
Nick Fuller (04:23):
Go for gold. Sure. I guess look, yeah, you did recap. We talked about the doom and gloom and why we're failing and how the body shuts down when we start restricting food or calories and going on these diets and weight loss programs we've been doing for five decades. It hasn't worked. We've got to shake up this whole industry and rethink what we're doing. If you're serious about regaining control of your health and your weight, start listening to healthcare professionals that have studied the science of obesity. Not big name social media sensations or celebrities that don't know what they're talking about that are often giving you wrong or misleading advice. It's going to worsen your health and your waistline. So I guess pushing that aside, we are going to talk about some positive things today. And one of the biggest positives is we don't tell you to cut out anything.
(05:16):
This is all about educating you with what foods are better for your health, how you should eat throughout the day, and also how to incorporate movement because that is a key part for preventing weight regain and improving your health. But then lastly, how to get better sleep health. Now, I guess firstly with food, it ties in nicely with the intermittent fasting. Now, this is a fad that we're all following at the moment, but to highlight, I guess what's happening with the research there is look, and it's not achieving any better results than its predecessors. You will get weight loss, but your body will go into shut down mode. And when we conduct randomized controlled trials, people put the weight back on, okay, it doesn't matter if it's 5 2 16, 8 24 hour fast, there's all different derivatives of intermittent fasting. That's the current sort of hype fad. We'll, doing keto before that low carb, it seems to be sort of a slight change to its predecessor each time, but it's not achieving any better results.
(06:24):
Now with interval weight loss, remember all we're doing with this is actually getting you to lose weight in small intervals. So visually for everyone, think of it as a step down pyramid. So you've got a couple of kilos of weight loss, about 0.5 kilos at weight loss per week. Then you actually have to maintain your weight during the next month. So it's a plateau. Then you're allowed to go on and lose weight again. So you can go down for another couple of kilos, then you have to plateau again. So you continue that until you hit your goal weight. So if you're trying to lose six kilos, it's going to take you at least six months. If you're trying to lose say, 10 to 12 kilos, it's going to take you at least a year. But remember, by imposing those breaks every second month, we're actually preventing what we talked about in the last podcast in terms of your metabolism dropping, your appetite, hormones going up, et cetera, et cetera.
(07:20):
We're preventing our body's biology coming into play, which is what's preventing us succeeding. Now, that's the methodology we're losing, sorry, following to lose weight. But how do we lose it? Well, with respect to food, we're getting you to eat from big to small because we know we burn the calories two and a half times more efficiently in the morning versus the evening. So believe it or not, breakfast needs to be your biggest meal of the day. But anyone who is followed intermittent fasting or any other diet weight loss problem, often they're telling you to cut out breakfast so that you cut down on the calories consumed throughout the day. But this is the time when we need to ramp up our food intake. This is the time when our body best uses the calories. So with interval weight loss or IWL, breakfast becomes your biggest meal and you taper off the food volume throughout the day.
(08:12):
So that dinner is the most important from a social and cultural perspective, but it's the least important from a portion size perspective. And what we're doing then at that dinnertime is sitting around the dinner table if you living with others or family and winding back the clock, we're getting away from the TV and technology and we're allowing our appetite regulation system to do its job for those signals to be sent from organs like your stomach, acting on your brain, telling you that you are full. And we're also slowing down our food consumption by using utensils like oyster forks and teaspoons. So we put less food into our mouth with each mouthful. Now, the other, I guess interesting thing there with the food is that many people that have been on diets are often told what to cut out. Well, guess what? With IWL, you don't have to cut anything out.
(09:05):
What we're doing is retraining your brain to help you overcome one of the biggest battles in the mundane environment, being emotional and comfort eating. We're all struggling to say no to our favorite foods, those processed and fast foods, all the biscuits or the chocolates and the chips have become the everyday occurrence. Now, what we're doing with IWO is retraining so that they become the once a week treats and not the everyday, and we get you hooked on nature's treats. Those foods that are naturally high in sugar, naturally high in fat. So your fruits, your berries, your papaya, also your fats being your nuts and your seeds and your avocado, because those foods don't just give us the high we're looking for, but they also are loaded with nutrition. They're loaded with vitamins and minerals and fiber. They fill us up for long periods of time and we don't feel guilty after we've eaten them. So this is all about slow but steady change. It doesn't happen overnight. And it's about helping you overcome the biggest challenges, one being the body shut down with dieting or food restriction. So you work with your biology not against it, and also I guess embracing the modern day environment for what it is, but overcoming emotional and comfort eating because that's what we're really struggling with.
Kate Mason (10:24):
And the other thing that we do struggle with is we are, well not a nation, but people who go out and eat at night, like dinner out is a really huge thing. It is in our lifestyle now. And so cutting your food portions down at dinner and eating late is often a real lifestyle thing. So it really means that you have to look at your lifestyle quite seriously because it used to be when I was young, you did, what was it? You ate like a king at breakfast or queen at lunch and a ER dinner because you didn't have enough. And I would say that that was obviously what you are talking about in that sense of eating. But now I actually find rebellion from my family if I try to serve smaller serves. So I think you also have to have your family on board for something like this too. It's not just a you doing it for your family. If you've got members of your family, you need to educate them on what you are doing because I think if you have pushback from family as well that this is a really hard thing for a person to do if no one else is on board with them. So do you get people to sell it to their family? Do you include other members of family when you're doing this for a person?
Nick Fuller (11:38):
Yeah, the whole family approach is definitely important. And if you have a partner and you're eating the meals with them, this is going to apply to them as well. If you've got young children, it is different.
Kate Mason (11:50):
You've
Nick Fuller (11:50):
Got to allow them to eat according to their calorie needs. At some meals, I'll eat like a sparrow, and the next meals I'll eat huge volumes of food. They're very good at regulating their calorie intake across the course of the day, and we never get them or force them to eat. Now with adults, we've really got to start working with our biology because we've disrupted that appetite regulation system through the mundane environment. These process and fast foods trigger the hedonic or reward pathway in the brain, which means we continually go and say yes to the dessert even though we've just had the dinner or the main meal and have met our calorie quota. So we've got to I guess, embrace it for what it is, but we've got to start retrain back to nature's treats so we can get the high we're looking for, but fill up on foods and nutritious and yeah, we've got to work from big to small because that's how our body uses and burns the calories.
Kate Mason (12:47):
Totally makes sense.
Nick Fuller (12:48):
No way of doing it the opposite way around when we store those calories at the end of the day. But most of us run out the door, kid under each arm, maybe grab a coffee and we start to ramp up, as you said, Kate, our calorie intake at the end of the day, afternoon tea, maybe the cheese and the wine's starting to come out, but dinner becomes the biggest meal and it should be the smallest meal. It's definitely the most important from the cultural and social perspective. So rethink that evening time, get the dinner table out, sit around the dinner table together, but it's the smallest meal from portion size. So this is not something that's going to happen overnight. You are going to probably yell at me and say, Hey Nick, I'm not hungry in the morning, but you will become hungry over time if you start to taper off on that food intake and start to have some food at the morning time and maybe split the breakfast up. So you might have a piece of fruit or a serve of dairy, and then you might have another smaller breakfast over time that volume gradually pick up and you'll notice that you feel less hungry at the end of the
Kate Mason (13:49):
Day. And do you advocate also at the end of the night? I have quite serious heartburn and I've found interval fasting as we're saying it useful for me in the sense of I try to stop eating at seven or eight o'clock, whereas back in the day I would eat at 10 and I would have worse heartburn. So mine's more of a medical issue, but really we should all be stopping eating early in the evening as well, shouldn't we? To allow digestion overnight so that you can eat first thing in the morning. Would that make sense or not? Tell me you're the scientist.
Nick Fuller (14:19):
It doesn't matter too much about the time of the day. Remember, we're burning less calories at the end of the day. What we've got to do is cut down on the volume of food at that time of the day
(14:30):
And ramp it up in the morning. But in saying that, the reason you might be suffering from reflux is because you're eating and going to bed. We've got to allow for digestion to do its thing and for food to be processed and digested. So it is great to have at least a couple of hours after dinner before you go to bed for that process to occur. So the earlier, particularly if you've got young kids, you're going to find yourself eating earlier anyway, but if you can move your dinner time from 10 o'clock to nine or eight o'clock, you are going to notice a change in how you feel before you go to bed. And it would make you hungrier in the morning too if you did finish eating earlier. I imagine that is what we're trying to work on. We're trying to eat early. So we do ramp up that calorie intake and wake up hungry, and that does happen, remember, but just not overnight. It actually takes a couple of months for the appetite regulation system to start working differently.
Kate Mason (15:27):
Cool. That's good. So when you do your program, you don't just do a one size fits all, do it specifically personalized for people.
Nick Fuller (15:37):
Yeah, so IWL can be followed and digested in so many different ways. It was first translated in form of books, interval Weight Loss for Women is the most recent book on that science and program, but you can actually follow it now in the palm of your hand. It's an app, it's an online program, and there's two levels of product. You've got IWL Essentials, which is just the app and the technology, but you've got I WL Plus where if you have for instance, a food allergy or a medical condition or whatever it might be, it's tailored according to your specific needs. So yes, we offer healthcare professional support. We are real healthcare professionals that have studied the science of obesity that know how to treat this problem. So you will get your personalized care,
Kate Mason (16:29):
Which is a great idea because to someone like me or I've got a son that's got many allergies and stuff like that, it's really good to have someone medical be able to look at what you're doing as well in that place too. So when we were talking about physical exercise, most of us now exercise to exercise. We don't exercise as part of our everyday exercise. So what do you recommend?
Nick Fuller (16:56):
And it's the evolutionary reason why we can't stick to it. I mean, this is such a good point you make. The real reason why we can't keep exercise up is because it's not intertwined in our life. Again, if you wind back the clock tens of thousands of years, we are moving as part of that incidental exercise. We're not driving to a gym doing 30 or 60 minutes of exercise and then going home and then giving up on that program four to 12 weeks later. Typically how long we can stick to something. So you've got to rethink your approach to exercise on IWL. It's all about doing things in the comfort of your own home, but also as part of your day to day. So you've really got to work out how you can incorporate movement that I guess becomes habit. So it can be walking the kids to and from school. It can be parking further away in the car park. It can be getting the bus, it can be walking up the start of flight of stairs instead of getting the elevator. Because if you do that, often we find people start reaching a target that's actually sufficient for heart health.
(18:09):
Now, for exercise, sorry for weight loss, we do find you need to mix up what you do. So yes, you do need some high moderate or high intensity every now and then just to shake up what you're doing and introduce a good stress to the body. So we step you through that. But this is all about intertwining movement into your day-to-day life. So you can form a habit that sticks because those structured, I guess, exercise regimes don't work.
Kate Mason (18:42):
And we don't think about that for our children either, because often they're swimming after school, then they've got soccer, they've got, and often in those activities they don't do that much activity and we say, oh, they're tired. They've done a lot of sport today or whatever. They might be actually mentally tired in that sense, but often they haven't really done much. If they're in a soccer practice, they might've run out with a ball a few times. So introducing that as a family is really, really important as well, isn't it?
Nick Fuller (19:10):
Definitely doing activities as a family, it's not only going to get them outdoors and moving and away from screens, but it's going to, you'll reap benefits not just to yourself, but also for those children that you are raising because Monkey Sea Monkey do, if they see you moving and you're encouraging them to get outdoors, you're going to more likely to see them enjoying exercise into adolescence. And then throughout adulthood you can really wire that brain towards a path of exercise. And movement is not a nice to have, but a must have something that I just do every
Kate Mason (19:47):
Day. Like walking to school. Yes,
Nick Fuller (19:51):
Exactly. To school riding to school, whatever it might be. You've got to work within your, I guess, lifestyle and constraints, but there is so many ways that you can incorporate more incidental activity into your day-to-day life. You need to rethink your approach to exercise
Kate Mason (20:07):
One more thing after the exercise, you don't then go down to the coffee shop and fill them full of cakes or yourself afterwards, all the banana bread as a reward. That's something that also we almost exercise almost as a bit of a punishment. Oh, after I've done that, I'll go and have this even look, I look at my avocado and toast generation children. That is the avenue after exercise is the thought that after that we'll go and have a coffee and we'll go and do something. And as long as whatever you're eating after is natural and good for you, that's all great. But often we are placing things that could possibly be barriers to our loss after something that we've done that's really great for us.
Nick Fuller (20:50):
And look, if you're catching up with a friend again, let's replace that potentially unhealthy habit. Going to the cafe and getting the cakes and the sweets with a new healthy habit suggest going for a walk. It doesn't have to be intense, but you're moving and you're getting away from that environment where you're typically consuming those foods that have become the every day. So we've got to retrain our brain. And a big part of that is actually replacing the unhealthy habits with new healthy habits.
Kate Mason (21:20):
So when you talk about intermittent breaks, when in your book you talk about your intermittent breaks and after you've lost two kilo, you're not allowed to lose any more weight for a whole month. How do people, when you say that to someone, what's their initial reaction to something like that? Because people like, you've got to be kidding me. I have to hang onto this weight now and you're going to keep me there.
Nick Fuller (21:40):
Yeah, look, they don't like it. It's the last thing you want to get told. Look, we all get excited on the number of the scales going down, but continual lic restriction does not work.
Kate Mason (21:49):
No,
Nick Fuller (21:50):
No. The research is sound and we're going to move away from that approach. If you've had your own dieting history, you'll know from lived experience, but you're totally right. People don't want to be told that, that you've got to impose that, bro. How do you stop them, empower them with that education? So if you haven't already, you've got to go back to the podcast we did on the Physiological Protections and understand why your body's going into shutdown mood mode. The interval weight loss for women discusses it all in great detail because once you empower yourself with that education, you are more likely to get on board with the methodology and impose the breaks and understand why they're required. It also allows you a break. You can actually taper down on the exercise intensity. You can allow yourself the extra treat or takeaway or dining out meal. So you might find you can get to two a week instead of keeping it down to one. So really it's just allowing you to really relax and ensure you maintain for that following month before then going on and losing another couple of kilos. And look, it's not a picture perfect journey. We're just looking at that trend in weight over time.
Kate Mason (23:07):
So if you looked at it as more of a reward month in a sense, because do people, do some people just start losing weight and because they've changed to natural foods and they're not on highly processed foods, do they just keep losing because they have actually made that change? And so you have to stop them on that intermittent the month and say them you've got to eat a bit more.
Nick Fuller (23:30):
Yeah, we've got to get them to definitely get more, lobe them up with more healthy fats and make sure they're tapering down on that exercise intensity, particularly if they've changed that significantly since the start. But look, unfortunately, most have done a lot of damage to their metabolism through dieting. So their body's very good at now saying or holding onto their fat stores. And with interval weight loss, you might not get weight loss from the get go, but guess what, you're going to get health improvements from day one. And I've documented some real strong case studies where we talk to them week by week, and for some of them, they didn't lose weight for the first six months. But when we're following them up 12, 24 months down the track, well and truly on track, they've started, they're not just started to lose weight, but now nearly hitting their goal weight. But since the start, their health was improving, their cholesterol was going down, their blood pressure was improving, et cetera, they started to feel more energetic. So you have to make sure you're not just focusing on a number on the scales, but you're importantly focusing on health because this whole program and messaging is about health and really weight loss is just a side effect. It's about your body finding its inner silhouette, the weight it really wants to be at to function efficiently.
Kate Mason (24:49):
Yeah. And so do you obviously record the physiology part of their cholesterol going down and the diabetic if they're close to diabetes, all of that happening so that they know and they're aware of those changes even if they're not losing weight?
Nick Fuller (25:06):
Yeah, absolutely. So with IW, you're encouraged to be getting those regular checkups in the first part. You might even be going every three months, but at least every six months. So you can monitor and see that change happening over time and focusing on other things too, like we just mentioned, energy levels and your vitality because all of those health metrics are just as important too, to keep you motivated over time. We tend to just focus on weight.
Kate Mason (25:34):
We do. We don't, don't often think about the health of it at all. No, I totally understand. And look, my husband, he just has to have two kilos extra on him and he suddenly becomes pre-diabetic, and it's a lot of sugar going in that body as well. That shouldn't be. But it is really interesting how fast that can change too. It's not a huge amount of kilos to turn him from being pretty healthy into pre-diabetic. So I think it's a really great idea to keep an eye on that stuff for yourself as an adult to know where you are at with all of your cholesterol.
Nick Fuller (26:12):
Yeah, look, we know also from long-term weight management, even if you're trying to maintain your weight and prevent weight creep, remember that 0.5, incidental 0.5 to one kilo every year. You should be monitoring your weight once a week throughout the given year. So a lot of people who are following IWO when they sign up, they actually tick health for weight maintenance as their goal. So they're still continuing to track their weight and ensure it within that range. And that's by doing get jumping on the scales, same time, same day, same clothing every week, but no more than that. The day-to-day fluctuations mean nothing. We create this obsession with the number on the scales, and we think that the meal we aches cause weight loss or weight gain when it's usually just a change in body water. So you'd need to be monitoring just once per week, same time, same day.
Kate Mason (27:12):
Now that sounds fantastic. Now the thing is, where can people find you? And do you have an success stories on your website or wherever it is that people can take a look at?
Nick Fuller (27:25):
Yeah, absolutely. So it started all the way back in 2017. There's Interval weight loss books. There's a series of them now I guess for men and women. Interval Weight Loss for Life and Interval Weight Loss for Women and great starting points, online bookstores and also your local library. Now, in terms of success stories, better yet, remember we focus on science. Now, a great paper just came out from the University of Wollongong that actually compared the few programs. And I highlight few because most of the diets, 90% of the weight loss programs out there have no evidence. They just sell you big bold marketing claims. But they did compare the ones that have credible programs that have science, and I'm talking about the likes of C-S-I-R-O, weight Watchers, et cetera. And obviously in this case, interval weight loss. They put them all head to head interval weight loss, came out in front and achieved greater weight, 5% weight loss and 10% weight loss for 12 months or more.
(28:33):
So the science is clear in terms of individual success stories. Yes, I document journeys with people that are following it. You can listen to those week by week when you're signing up to the program, but there's also success stories on the website, interval weight loss. You can go to the App store, Google Play Store, download it. You can get a trial 30 day free trial so that you can see if it's something that is for you. But remember, this is a long-term plan. It works for everyone, but you have to be focused on the long-term. If you're after a quick fix, this is not for you.
Kate Mason (29:08):
Sounds amazing. And I hope that people listen and take it on board and that tell their friends about it more importantly, because I think this is a fantastic way of moving forward. Our world's changing and all the foods we are eating are changing as well, and they're not all good for us. And I think this is really, really important. And we'll have all of the details about where people can find you in the show notes and the link to. I'd love it if you could send us a link to that paper that would be fabulous to have there as well. And I would also like to show it to a whole lot of people I know, so that would be amazing. But look, I wish you all the very best with doing what you're doing because I think it's the thing that we need the most right now where we are sitting in the world with all of our food and our eating and our drinking and exercised and sleep. So thank you so much for being on today, Nick, really appreciate that.
Nick Fuller (30:05):
Thank you very much, Kate. It was lovely to talk to you.
Kate Mason (30:18):
Have you been caught up in the quick fix mentality like many of us have about weight loss now, after listening today, are you ready to embrace a more balanced long-term approach? Because remember, what we've actually learned is it's not about fast results. It's about consistent and healthy choices that will align with our body's natural rhythms. So be sure to check out the links in the show notes for more information and resources that'll help you get started on your permanent weight loss journey. And until next time, stay informed, empowered, and take control of your health start today. Thank you for listening to Parenting and Personalities. If you've enjoyed this episode, would love it if you could leave a rating and a review that would help others learn of this podcast. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might benefit from Nick's insights. If you are interested in discovering more about you and your family's personality types, you'll find my book, who Is This Monster or Treasure, my House on Booktopia or Amazon. If you have an episode idea, please send a note to the personality coach@gmail.com. Many thanks to our producers at Stories and Strategies, and we'll see you next time.