Speaker A [00:00:00]:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Paralysis Nutrition Podcast. I’m Fatima Fakouri, registered dietitian, and I want to talk today about cardio and weight loss. So many people that I work with tell me that they don’t believe they can lose weight because they can’t do cardio. And I get it because exercise is important, Burning calories is important, but. But you can never out exercise a poor diet. Welcome to the Paralysis Nutrition Podcast, where changing your eating habits is the key to losing weight, improving bowel health, and feeling your best. I’m your host, Fatima Fakouri.
Speaker A [00:00:43]:
I’m a registered dietitian who’s married to a quadriplegic and specializes in nutrition for paralysis. Get ready to be inspired, educated, and motivated so you can take control of your health using the power of food. Let’s get started. This is the Paralysis Nutrition Podcast. Hi, everyone. Welcome to today’s episode. I want to talk today about weight loss and some of the things that people tell me when it comes to wanting to lose weight and why they haven’t been successful. So there’s lots of reasons why people tell themselves that they can’t lose weight.
Speaker A [00:01:21]:
These are some of the kind of the lies, right, that we tell ourselves that psych us out and pretty much sabotage us before we’ve even really tried to do something. So when it comes to people with paralysis and weight loss, there is this common thought that because you can’t do cardio, that you’re never going to be able to lose weight. And as a dietitian, I immediately, when I hear that, I’m like, what? We know that nutrition is going to be the basis of weight loss or weight gain, but people don’t know that. You know, people with paralysis who have probably grown up their whole lives, right, Just like everybody else in this world, watching TV and things on social media and whatever about health and weight loss, it’s like exercise. Exercise is how you lose weight. You know, that’s how you burn more calories. And yes, doing cardio, like running and jumping rope and all these types of things that people do, like in the gym or at home. Yes, these things will raise your heart rate and they will potentially help you lose weight.
Speaker A [00:02:50]:
They’re not going to help you lose weight. Cardio is not going to help you lose weight if you’re eating too many calories. So for people who can’t really do cardio, or at least not like intensive cardio, lots of my clients do adaptive cardio and they get a good workout in. But we’re not relying on that to help them lose weight. We’re going to rely on tracking your meals, eating healthy, making sure that you’re eating in a moderate calorie deficit so you’re eating less calories than your body burns every day. We’re going to get to weight loss by eating enough protein and eating enough dietary fiber so that you can feel full even when you are in a moderate calorie deficit. We can’t change the fact in my coaching program, we can’t change the fact that my clients can’t do hardcore cardio. That’s going to burn hundreds and hundreds of calories.
Speaker A [00:03:55]:
Right? We can’t control that. We can control diet. And I just wanted to kind of highlight that whether you’re a wheelchair user or not, nutrition, what you eat is going to determine whether you lose or gain weight. Nobody in this world can eat whatever they want for their whole lives and never, you know, gain weight. It’s not going to happen. Maybe there will be phases of your life. I know when I was a teenager, I could eat so much and not gain weight. I was in a growth stage, right? I was still a kid.
Speaker A [00:04:33]:
But when you’re an adult, you’re not in a growth stage, at least we don’t want you to be in a growth stage. We want you to either maintain or we want you to slowly and sustainably lose weight till you’re at a healthy weight. So this idea that you cannot lose weight without exercising, this is a really big deal because it keeps so many people in this community, in this paralysis community from even trying to lose weight. I have heard so much negativity, especially like in the Facebook support groups and things like that, about weight loss, especially when it pertains to exercise. It’s always connected. It’s always like, I can’t lose weight because I’m in this chair and I, you know, can’t do cardio. I. I feel like that is just such a negative way of looking at it.
Speaker A [00:05:32]:
But no one’s trying to be negative. That’s truly what they feel. Because that’s what the world tells us. The world, like especially the wellness and fitness and health world tells you exercise, exercise, exercise. So for people who are wheelchair users, that’s really. Probably makes you feel really left out or it makes you feel like you don’t have the tools necessary to lose weight. Because even if you do stuff, like if you have a rowing machine or if you do pushes like around your neighborhood, or if you do, I don’t care, whatever it is, if you do any Sort of adaptive cardio. The reason that you’re doing it should be for cardiac health, right? Like it’s good for your heart, it’s good for your muscles, it’s good for your bones, it’s good for your mental health, right, to move in any capacity that you can.
Speaker A [00:06:31]:
But let’s not get wrapped up in this idea that weight loss requires exercise. It doesn’t. Weight loss requires a moderate calorie deficit. And you need to keep up that calorie deficit for several weeks and months, right? Because if you have, for example, 50 pounds to lose, you didn’t gain those 50 pounds in three months. You probably gained them over a few years. So we don’t know how long it’s going to take you to lose weight, but we know it’s not going to be right away. So you need a plan that’s going to be sustainable, that works for you long time, long term. So how in the world are you going to lose weight if in your mind you can’t because you don’t do high intensity cardio? So for a mindset reset, I want to really educate this community about how human beings actually lose weight.
Speaker A [00:07:33]:
Human beings don’t lose weight because they run five miles. Human beings don’t lose weight because they do an hour of swimming. That’s not how humans lose weight. We lose weight when our bodies, over the course of a few days and weeks and months, our body takes in slightly less calories than it burns. So if your resting metabolic rate, the number of calories that your body burns at rest, I’m just making up a number. Say that number is 1500 calories, okay? So your body needs 1500 calories to maintain and stay exactly the way it is. But say you want to lose 30 pounds, well, then you don’t want to maintain. You don’t want to eat 1500.
Speaker A [00:08:25]:
You want to eat slightly less than that. So say, you say you want to go for 12 to 1300. I like to give ranges because every day is different. So we need to have a little wiggle room, right? So if you want to feel full on 12 to 1300 calories, you need to know how much protein, how much fat, how much carbs, how much fiber. The breakdown of macros pretty much is what you need to know when it comes to these calories so that you can feel full and satisfied, not miserable and restricted while you’re in a moderate calorie deficit. And when you can do this for several days and then weeks and then months, and of course you’re not going to be perfect every day. Some days you’ll be a little over, some days you’ll be a little under. But at the end of the week, at the end of the month, if you maintained a calorie deficit, a moderate calorie deficit, that is how human beings lose weight.
Speaker A [00:09:27]:
When our body needs 1500 to maintain what it is right now, and we eat 2 to 500 calories less than that consistently over time, that is how our body burns fat and that’s how we lose weight. So I want to just get it out there in this community that looking at weight loss from this very able bodied, ableist way of cardio first is not helpful. It’s going to make you feel like, why even bother? And it’s surprising to me, right, Because I’m a dietitian and I know about nutrition. It’s surprising to me how prevalent this belief is that, well, now that I’m a wheelchair user, I can’t do what I used to do. And I understand that, like my husband is a quadriplegic. This fall will be 20 years. A few weeks before his injury, he completed a triathlon. Okay.
Speaker A [00:10:30]:
So once he became a wheelchair user, I can imagine that not being able to do the physical activity, the types of things that he used to do prior to injury was a big loss. Right? And if in his mind, you know, being a healthy faith, bit handsome 20 something year old at the time, it probably did feel like, oh, I can’t work out, right? Like I can’t burn calories in that way. And for whatever, you know, physical activity that perhaps people used to do and then they became a wheelchair user. I understand that you probably, especially if you were an athlete or at least a person who works out a lot, you probably thought prior to injury that your exercise is a huge part of your weight and perhaps you weren’t wrong. But now that you’re a wheelchair user, what you eat, which is something that you can control, okay, you may not be able to control the fact that you can’t do the high intensity cardio anymore, but you can control your meals, your diet. So I want to kind of flip the narrative from it’s hard for me to lose weight because I can’t do cardio, which is what I hear all the time. I want to flip that, flip the script, as they say, and give you a more affirming way of looking at weight loss. I want you to think more along the lines of, I can lose weight when I eat in a moderate calorie deficit.
Speaker A [00:12:07]:
It will be possible for, for Me to maintain my muscle mass and burn fat when I eat the right balance of calories and macros. Doesn’t that sound so much better? Doesn’t that motivate you more and make you feel like, hey, I could actually do this? Because that’s what I want. That’s what I want people to feel. I want you to feel empowered. And I’m not just like, you know, blowing smoke up your bum. This is true. This is science. This is how humans work.
Speaker A [00:12:44]:
We don’t maintain a healthy weight simply by exercising. So many people are stuck in this mentality of like, I gotta work out, I gotta work out, I gotta work out. And other dietitians out there are also talking about this. Not to the paralysis community, but to, you know, other groups, whoever they serve, you know, and it’s getting more popular to say, exercise is great, but it’s not the way that we lose weight and keep it off. The way that you lose weight and keep it off is by educating yourself about calories and macros. Educating yourself about what is in your food. Reading the nutrition fact labels when you’re grocery shopping so that you can make good choices. Eating more meals at home so that you can ensure that your meals are wholesome and healthy and balanced.
Speaker A [00:13:41]:
It’s harder to do that when you’re out to eat. So rather than get stuck in this very ableist mentality of you have to do cardio to lose weight, you can’t lose weight without exercising. I want to challenge that narrative and say it is more than doable for you to lose weight if you find a plan that works for you. And a plan that works for you is going to honor your food preferences, right? If you hate a certain food, you shouldn’t have to eat it. Right? Honors your cultural traditions, right? Works for your schedule. So if you work from home, it might be easier to make meals. If you don’t work from home, it might be important for you to meal prep. Your plan has to suit your lifestyle.
Speaker A [00:14:37]:
You need to reset your weight loss mindset and focus on the nutrition and less on the obsession with burning extra calories. Because here’s the thing too. When you have paralysis, your body burns less calories at rest than it used to prior to paralysis because you have lower muscle mass. Muscle burns more calories than fat tissue does. Okay? So when you’re exercising, you are burning less calories during exercise than you probably think because your resting metabolic rate, the, you know, based on how much muscle mass you have, is lower. So if you’re. If your apple watch or whatever fitness tracker you have says that you burned 300 calories doing whatever exercise. It’s not true, because that app doesn’t know that you have paralysis.
Speaker A [00:15:35]:
It might know that you’re a wheelchair user, but that wheelchair user, you know, that they’re talking about doesn’t have a spinal cord injury that just has a low. That just is someone who has. Who burns less calories because they’re using a wheelchair. Not. Not specifically because they have lower muscle mass and changes in metabolism. The watches, the trackers don’t know all of that information, so they’re overestimating how much you’re burning. It’s sort of a losing battle, you know, to think that cardio and exercise is going to be the key to weight loss. It’s really not.
Speaker A [00:16:13]:
And before I wrap, I want to share this story. Success story from a past client of mine. Her name is Nikki. She recorded a episode with me last year. And she’s a certified personal trainer. She’s paraplegic. And when she joined my coaching program, she was gaining weight, but she was exercising six days a week. When I say exercising, I mean she was really doing the work.
Speaker A [00:16:45]:
She’s a personal trainer. She knows what to do. She was doing workouts six days a week, and she was taking nutrition advice from her personal trainer who was, you know, not knowledgeable about paralysis. This trainer gave her incorrect calorie and macro goals, told her to eat. I think it was 1800 calories and like 100 something grams of protein. And she said, you know, it’s hard for me to eat that much. Like, I don’t. I don’t want to eat that much.
Speaker A [00:17:14]:
I’m, like, forcing myself to eat. And so how frustrating that she was exercising hardcore every day and gaining weight. And when she started working with me, we redid her calories and macros. I think we went down to like 1600 for her. And we went down to maybe 80 or 70 grams of protein. I don’t remember exactly, but we adjusted her numbers based on the fact that she’s a paraplegic. And since then, over the past about a year and a half, she’s lost about 60 pounds and about 16 inches from her waist. Now, what changed? She always worked out.
Speaker A [00:17:59]:
Always. As soon as she could, she started to work out after injury, but she was gaining weight. So this is a perfect example of how exercise is not it for weight loss. Do I think that it helped her get to her goal? Yes, because she works out a lot. But before we adjusted her numbers, her calories, her macros, she was steadily gaining weight and I will say getting very frustrated and bloated and constipated because that was just too much food for her. So be careful where you’re getting your nutrition advice. Most people don’t know about spinal cord injury and paralysis, and it can be harmful. In her case, it was just causing weight gain, which is pretty harmful, but not as harmful as things like kidney disease, you know, with excess protein, which you know is very scary because it’s not reversible.
Speaker A [00:18:55]:
When you damage your kidneys, you can’t really fix it. You can just slow down the progression. So Nikki’s a perfect example of someone who thought that they were doing everything right, was working out so much adaptive cardio and weights and standing frame and all kinds of stuff, hardcore workouts and gaining weight because the calories and macros weren’t right. And when we adjusted all of that, everything got better and she started losing weight. And I’m so happy now because Nikki has joined the paralysis nutrition program as a coach. She’s an accountability coach now for my weight loss clients in the longevity program. So happy to have her. She’s a peer support.
Speaker A [00:19:42]:
She’s been there, she’s done that, and she brings such an awesome energy to the group. And so I wanted to share that story because it really illustrates the importance of having the right nutrition so that you can actually lose weight. So that’s today’s episode. I hope that if you had that mindset of I can’t lose weight because I can’t do cardio, that you’re really going to rethink that position and you’re going to focus on what you can control, which is your diet. Thanks, guys. Until next time, that’s our episode for today. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
Speaker A [00:20:21]:
Remember, if you want to lose weight with paralysis, improve your bowel health and feel your best you can. It’s possible. You just have to change your eating habits. If you need inspiration on how to get started, check out The Paralysis Nutrition Cookbook 101 Recipes to Help you lose weight and improve bowel health. The cookbook comes with a bonus 30 day meal plan and is the perfect way to start eating healthier. You can find it online@paralysisnutrition.com cookbook. I’ll talk to you again soon.
