Low-Hanging Fruit: The Key to Breaking Fat Loss Plateaus

Have you ever felt stuck in your weight loss journey, convinced that one particular issue is holding you back? Whether it's the late-night chocolate cravings or skipping workouts, many of us tend to fixate on the one issue we believe is the barrier to our progress. After coaching many people with this mindset, I've learned how crucial it is to take the blinkers off and identify all the other areas where you can make small improvements that will help you break through plateaus.

Think of it like picking apples in an orchard—you start with the ones within easy reach. Instead of aiming for the top of the tree, focus on the low-hanging fruit first. Simple changes such as increasing water intake, choosing better-quality foods, or enhancing your sleep routine can make a huge difference. If you're feeling stuck in your fat loss journey, stay tuned to learn how to make these manageable adjustments that will pave the way to achieving your goals.


References

Podcast Playlist: My Doctor Started Me On a GLP 1 and Now What?


Audio Stamps

01:22 - Instead of fixating on one problem, Dr. Rentea suggests exploring multiple areas for potential improvement when facing a fat loss plateau.

04:20 - Dr. Rentea challenges listeners to confirm if they are truly experiencing a plateau and, if so, to evaluate their readiness for further changes.

06:17 - Listeners find out about a practical task to help them rethink health challenges and identify new ways to make improvements.

11:05 - Dr. Rentea reminds us that implementation of new strategies isn't always easy, comparing it to a recent experience in her business. Persistence and adaptation is key.

12:35 - Dr. Rentea discusses key areas to focus on for optimizing health including hydration, nutrition, movement, sleep quality, and stress management.


Quotes

“Do you actually have the mental capacity to do more right now? Because we're going to have to change something.” - Dr. Rentea

“Anytime you want to break a habit, you want to do something different, you want to switch up your routine in some way, it's going to be an energy expenditure.” - Dr. Rentea

“There is always more that you can do.” - Dr. Rentea

"These things start to add up and they matter with time. If you make the bar low enough, the lowest hanging fruit, you will actually take action on it." - Dr. Rentea

“I'm going to have a brainstorming session and write down all the things I can do. Then I'm going to figure out what's actually easy on that list and I'm going to take action on that.” - Dr. Rentea

“It's so painful when you do something new. It doesn't mean that you're not going to be able to achieve these results or that your body's not capable of it.” - Dr. Rentea

“Remember, we're going to keep it easy. We're going to keep it simple. You're going to pick one thing. You're going to do the 1 percent upgrade.” - Dr. Rentea

“Once you start to look for small little improvements and thin

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

Transcript

Speaker: 0:28

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you all doing today? It hopefully is another great week for you. I just have to tell you, I am loving this summer weather. I'm loving getting out and doing walks in the morning where it's still hot, but it's not too humid. You know, all the things finally feel back in the groove after weeks and weeks ago of having moved just Getting settled. I can't even tell you. I feel like moving is, it's one of the worst things we'll go through in our lifetime. That's like that, death, and a few other things. I mean, I'm joking now, but it, I could not believe how thrown off my routine got. And it's, it's, it's just incredible how much. Being in a routine really helps me day to day. So today I want to talk about something that this has actually come up a lot within my different groups and calls that I do. And whenever I see that, I'm like time for us to bring it to the podcast. So a lot of the time I want to talk about a very specific scenario today, which is, let's say that you've already had a lot of progress. I'm going to today focus on fat loss. Again, that's usually a lot of the reasons why people are listening to me and you've had big results. But you get to this place where you are going to use the word like stall, plateau, things like that. And what ends up happening is people get really tunnel vision with this. And they say, This is my problem. And they, they're very married to a certain aspect being the reason that they can't keep going. So I'll give you an example. You might be under eating. You might think that you're overeating. You might think, well, I always have chocolate at night. And so you, you get really zoned in on. I'm stalled and plateaued, and this is the one reason why, and that's the thing that you just keep repeating like a dog with a bone. And the thing I want to just present today to you that really occurred to me as I've just been coaching more and more people on this and really exploring it from a metabolic health standpoint as well, is that if we really sat there and we for an hour or two really dug into what's going on for you, you know, I can guarantee we would find 10 to 20 areas that you could work on. Some of you might not even think that this is possible, but let me tell you, if we really looked at everything, maybe that one thing that you think needs to change, maybe that's not actually the problem. And so I want to bring this up today because oftentimes The things that you're telling me that is the problem and what you think you need to fix and correct, it is huge. Like, you're asking something to massively change where maybe it's a, a super ingrained habit, like, you've just done it a really long time. Maybe you actually really like that thing, like, you like having a piece of chocolate at the end of the day, and you keep making, That mean that you're never going to reach your goals or have success if you have this one thing. And so you're making, you're making just really big asks of yourself of what you need to do. And I sit there and I, when I talk to you, I can think of all these other areas that can be cleaned up first. Other things that are just lower, you know, you hear me talk about this, like the lower hanging fruit. It's like the easy thing. Let's just, can we just take a moment here down memory lane? Everyone's usually been to an apple orchard at some point in their life. And if you've not put this on your bucket list, but when you go pick apples, those trees are actually pretty darn high. Like you walk down all these different lanes, right? There's just like, usually like, like all these different things you can be walking. Right. You're picking fruit that you can reach. You're picking at the bottom, you're picking stuff that's hanging down, what you can reach. The little kids get more stuff at the bottom, you're able to get a little higher, but unless you have a ladder, you're not going to the top of that tree. Stop reaching for things that are at the top of that tree. Stop requiring a ladder to be provided in the middle of a big field with a bunch of trees, like stop making it hard on yourself. So here's the thing I want you to think about. If you're at a stall or a plateau, there are always a million things that we can work on. And so my first challenge to you, okay, are you all ready to accept a challenge? Let's pause for a second. If you are in the middle of a stall or a plateau, first of all, I need you to confirm, is that even reality? So has it been weeks and weeks of you doing all the things that That you know support you, you're drinking your water, you're getting your protein, you're getting your fiber, you're doing your movement, you're getting your sleep, your stress is managed. Have you been doing all of those things consistently for, let's say, a two month period? I used to say, you know, four to six weeks, but I've had to increase it to two months because I feel like people are lying to me when they're like, yeah, I've done everything. And it's like, Has it really been two, three weeks? And so now I've just expanded the timeline for you. So have you really been doing all of that at least a month or two? If you can truly answer yes to that, all right, we are in a period where your body's in maintenance. I don't really like to use the term stall and plateau. I think that it gives this false sense of like, it really discounts everything you've achieved and really maintenance is what I'm. What I'm taking in and the energy expenditure of my body, it's very happy to maintain where I'm at. Okay, so once you're at that maintenance place, but you realize, I really want to continue to move forward. And I have the capacity to do that, right? This is always my main question to people. Do you actually have the mental capacity to do more right now? Because we're going to have to change something. We're going to have to either change exercise regimen, we're going to have to change either food choices, calorie intake, the, the variety of foods you're eating. The type of sleep you're getting, the, you know, all these different things. We're gonna have to change something that's going to take energy. Anytime you want to break a habit, you want to do something different. You want to switch up your routine in some way. It's going to be an energy expenditure. So have we been doing whatever the baseline minimum was up to this point? Are we actually at a maintenance, what you're going to call a stall, a plateau, and do we have the energy to do more right now? Okay, this is the thing where I need you to take action. If you're answering yes up to this point, now you need to do this mental exercise on a sheet of paper, really. Take out a sheet of paper. And I need you to write down, write down at the top what you think your main, again, it's the thing you're really married to. It's like your thing, this is the problem. Okay, write that down. Alright, now, I need you to cover that up with another sheet of paper. You're not able to look at that anymore. I need you to list 20 other things that you could work on and improve. 20 other things. And the reason I make this list so extensive, it's because I need your brain to see that option A is not the only thing. There's B, C, D, E. It keeps going to infinity. There is always more that you can do. And then I need you to do something else, not only that 20. So hopefully literally if you're listening and you're in a position where you can do it, pause this and literally write that out. And then I need you to kind of order that list after you've done it. And I need you to order it from easiest to hardest and let's get rid of all the hard things cause you're not going to do it. So let's start with the easy things. And again, what's the low hanging fruit? Like, is there one where today, right now, even if it's 7 PM at night, when you're listening to this, where you could go implement it, maybe you're like, yeah, I could walk five more minutes. I'm going to go do it right now. I can't, I can't tell you, everyone listening, how often. In fact, I want to do this right now. I'm such in a habit of it where if I'm just talking on Marco Polo to my friends or whatever the case might be, I'm walking, right? I'm getting some extra steps in. So could you maybe, the TV's going and you just kind of shuffle back and forth a few steps in either direction and you get a few more steps in. These things start to add up and they matter with time. And if you make the bar low enough, the lowest hanging fruit here, not to say, I wonder how many times I can say that this episode. If you can make it achievable, you will actually take action on it. Okay, the other thing that you could do if you're having a tough time, you're like, I can't think of 20 things I could change. Then I want you to think about that one thing where you keep thinking like, that's the main thing that's the problem for me, but it doesn't ever seem to change. I want you to break that down into like 20 different steps. Let me give you an example. Okay. Let's say that you are not exercising and you know that that would really help me as far as feeling better, holding on to muscle. Maybe it helps me as far as calorie burn, whatever the thought processes that are going into that, but you just find like, I'm just not doing it. And so you start to think about what is actually required. Like, do I have gym shoes, socks, the outfit, is it very easily accessible? Okay. Do I have barriers to that? Like I keep trying to ask myself to do it after work when I'm exhausted. Or conversely, I'm, I'm not a morning lark and I'm asking myself to get up at five in the morning to get this in. Am I asking myself to do too long a length? You just start to think through every single aspect of it. Did I ever like doing something in the past? What's available to me in my community? Maybe I join a walking group. Maybe I don't do a walking group. Like, I've realized I just like having my headphones in and walking and either talking to friends or I listen to a ton of audiobooks and podcasts. It is my jam that walk. I can't even tell you how much fun I have on these walks. And the ideas that I get and the nature that I see and just all of it. It's like I was even On a trip here a few weeks ago when I was at a conference for six days, I think I might've talked about on the podcast and every morning I actually got up and took these amazing walks. I was in Nashville and in Nashville, they, where we were staying of probably like a half a mile over, there were some really nice subdivisions and I love seeing the houses. When I was walking through these neighborhoods, some of them just had really nice. fountains, and sort of just nice, creative, what's it called, landscaping, right? And I just sort of enjoyed, like, I'm in a different environment, I'm seeing different things. Notice I wasn't like, well, I'm at a conference, so now I don't move. It's like, I've just come to love that. But that took years, right? And so I want you to think about whatever this thing is, can you break it down into many different steps, and can we start with those? Remember, every habit has an anatomy. Habits are things that happen on autopilot. They're happening all the time. We usually don't even think about it anymore, but if we really start to break it down, there's a cue, a trigger, like something makes you think you actually want to do that thing. And so you can start out even with that. I know we've talked a lot about that. This is the way in which my brain thinks, but yours might think differently. So I really want you to think with, you know, you're calling it a stall, a plateau, your maintenance, whatever's going on. If I have the energy and bandwidth. I'm going to have a brainstorming session and write down all the things I can do. Then I'm going to figure out what's actually easy on that list and I'm going to take action on that. And then it might fail horribly. Like I want to tell you here recently within my business, I wanted to implement a different way of planning and doing things. And I came up with a really great plan with my coach. That was on Friday, we had our session. I figured out how I was going to implement this thing. I'm not going to get into all of it, but it seemed simple. It seemed simple, I want to repeat. Guys, Monday morning happened. It was such an epic fail, I can't even tell you. It just didn't work. It wasn't enough time. I was disorganized. I realized this would have actually had to happen on a Sunday night. Like, it just, it just didn't work. But you know what? I tried it. I'm gonna refine it next week. And I'm gonna tell you by a year from now, I will have this amazing new way of doing things. But it was, it's so painful. It's so painful when you do something new. That same level can happen When we're taking care of our health and it doesn't mean anything moral about you. It doesn't mean that you're not going to be able to achieve these results or that your body's not capable of it or this or that. No, it's simple in the same way in business you're going to strategize things. You're going to do the same thing with your health. You need to put effort into it. You need to put energy into it. You need to put a little bit of planning. Okay, it needs to be easy enough. We need to actually be able to do it. The first time you do it, it might be an epic fail. Okay, great. We pivot. That is it. It's a big concept that's, that's been coming up as well, which is we plan and then we pivot and then we plan and then we pivot. There's nothing wrong with pivoting. That's your whole life. It's just might not happen as intuitively when you're asking your body to do something really hard, like releasing fat. Okay. So going through here, the biggest areas that I would typically focus on, and there's no one in this room that doesn't have area to improve on any of this. Like, no one's like, you know what? It's all perfectly optimized. Like just, no, that's, you're not living a human existence then. So the biggest areas that I look at, number one, fluid intake. So am I getting enough, enough water or just liquids in general? When I say water, I don't care if it's flavored, all liquids count, even if it has caffeine. I used to be someone that was like, that doesn't count. And we need, you know, twice as much water to equal it out. My biggest challenge with these caffeinated products or these, like the diet drinks is that oftentimes then you don't want to get as much other fluid in, but if you're getting other fluid, great. It all counts. So number one, I would look at, you know, are you getting enough fluid? I typically say, as long as you don't have, again, you talk to your physician about this, but as long as you don't have a fluid restriction from something like. Renal, meaning kidney failure where you're on the advanced chronic kidney disease, some type of liver disease or, or heart failure. If there's not a fluid restriction for those reasons, then I say usually the average person about at least 64 ounces, if not more of water per day, that's definitely, you know, kind of getting to the eight cup land. And again, it all counts. Let's say if you're having a bunch of soups and stuff, that's going to matter. So really looking at, am I getting my hydration? Okay, thing number two that I really look at is, is my food majority of the time unprocessed? Am I getting, you know, whole based foods that are providing me protein and fiber? I'm not villainizing processed food. The only thing with processed is that it typically tends to raise our insulin levels more. We have more of a blood sugar response. And so when we do all of that, typically our hunger hormones aren't really fully online. Meaning. We get more hungry. We're not satiated as soon. And so typically if we have access to having food that is in more whole based forms, there is going to be more nutrition in there. Typically there's more hydration with these products. So let's just take, for example, if you have like a bag of dried fruit, That's very different on your body compared to eating an apple, right? You eating a dried apple slice versus a whole apple, very different as far as how you're going to feel your satiety signaling, things like that. So that's always one of the things I look at. It's like, Hey, has, has a lot of process stuff creeped its way in and you're struggling, like you're not able to get down that next level with your, with your, with losing fat. Then we look at, is that something that we want to adjust? So we look at, The food quality, am I getting enough protein and fiber? Again, I've done whole episodes on all of that. If you look back here in the recent past, this does bring up a good point though. If you are newly on a GLP 1 medication, we now have a new roadmap for you. And the name of this, it's, My doctor started me on a GLP 1 and now what? And we will put the link in the show notes to that. This is a list where we have brought together the top episodes. If you are newly starting on a GLP 1, kind of what I think is really critical as far as not losing your muscle, not getting constipated, kind of all these things to look out for, right? So we've made a nice little playlist because we have at this point almost a year and a half to two years worth of podcast episodes. It's not realistic to listen to all of them, right? And things change over time. So. If you want to get that that custom playlist where we've kind of put together a road map of your doctor started you on this and now what do you do sort of all that additional support below we will have the link where you can where you can get access to that so make sure that if you are interested in that this is also a good refresher even if you're on it and you're like I just Totally forgot what's important, like I'm struggling and I think in the future we'll make other playlists like for maintenance or for busting through a plateau, you know, things like that. But right now that's the one that we have available. So anyway, back to the plot. So we are going to make sure that your liquids are okay. We're going to really look at the quality of your food and we're also going to look at the protein and fiber, things like that. You can also look at added sugar. That's something that, there are certain topics I just don't delve too deep on the podcast. It gets too detailed. And so this is something with my patients where, When someone's struggling, there's like different levels to what we can do, right? So I actually typically don't start with calorie counting cause I see no one be able to maintain it longterm, but there's like different levels to unlock. And there is a point at which we might use calorie counting if you're really struggling. But first I would look at it. Are things processed? Am I getting my protein? Am I getting my fiber? And, and, and checking with the nutrition audit to really look, is this actually true? Cause I can be thinking it in my mind, but I'm going to trust but verify it, right? Okay. After that, I really look into movement and movement's a tricky thing because we've talked about this before too, that some people actually, Need just in general need a lot more movement. Other people are stressing themselves completely out and not eating enough. So again, this is where we have to be in that detective mode of like, what's actually the problem. And so this is why people will join different groups because sometimes you just don't know, like, I don't even know what's up and down anymore. When people come to work with me, they're just so confused because it, because it is confusing because everyone's different. And so you need to kind of look for yourself to see, do I want to maybe get some more steps or more swimming, whatever activity is actually working for you? Or is it that I'm actually, you know, doing an hour and a half per day super max intensity and my body just can't recover ever. So these are all questions to look into. There's also, we've talked about that. There's this link with some people having a higher stress response compared to others. And so, This is really, I tell you this all the time, do not compare to your friends. Because you might actually get better results with less exercise and they need to do a ton. You just can't compare, but that's the third area that I would look at. The next area that's just the, the last two areas, I would look at your sleep quality. And this includes, are you getting the sleep? When I say on time, it's with however many hours makes you feel good. Are there any limitations to your sleep? Sleep, like maybe you have an untreated sleep apnea. So we wanna look into that. Do we maybe have anxiety is totally out of control so you're not able to get to sleep? Hormonally if you're going through perimenopause or postmenopause, are these things that we need to address so that sleep quality can improve? Cause that's actually one of the things that can suffer as part of when you're going through all of that. So sleep quality, are you actually staying asleep? Do you feel rested in the morning? Is there any sleep hygiene involved? There's a lot that you can do asleep. Remember with sleep that Any of these heavier sleep aids are going to affect the, just to keep it simply, they're going to affect the brain in such a way that then your, your appetite has changed during the day. So as much as possible, we want to be avoiding majority of the sleep aids. And so that's something that your obesity medicine physician can really help you work through. And then the last area that's just always the monster in the room that needs addressed. It's your stress level. I want to tell you a little story here. We had moved and then the Monday, Tuesday, after we moved, when I was, you know, back to doing my normal work, I had a really busy Monday and Tuesday, like to the point where it hasn't been this way in a long time where I'm laughing because it was horrendous, but I literally worked all day. I worked through seven. I worked through seven o'clock, had dinner. Did a coaching call at night and it was until 11 o'clock at night that I was working. And then the next day, again, I started in the morning and I have to tell you, I don't even perceive myself having overeaten, but my weight was up within a few days. And the thing is this, it's not how I work optimally. It doesn't even matter if you're calorie counting, you just are not able to achieve results when you're stressed out all day long and you're overworking all the time. Those are actually usually periods when you put a pause on Asking for intentional fat loss because it's just unrealistic if if all sort of everything's boiling over. It's just it's not going to work. So those are the areas, right? We're going to look at liquid. We're going to look at food. We're going to look at, we're going to look at your sleep. We're going to look at your stress level, and then again with the food we had several things that we were looking at in there. Typically, if you are looking at all of those different things, because stress, remember, includes not only like home dynamics, but work dynamics, even just how you're thinking about your life, because we can all have different levels of things going on and feel differently. Typically, when you're looking through there, if you're not able to find 20 things to work on, There's a problem. There's no one that's not going to be able to find that period. And I guess it's maybe I've looked hard enough in all the areas, but remember, we're going to keep it easy. We're going to keep it simple. You're going to pick one thing. You're gonna do the 1 percent upgrade, that one thing, and then you go implement that. Typically, once you start to look for small little improvements and things you can do, then your brain starts to harvest all the other little areas that it can improve. So for example, I was talking to a patient today and they kind of felt like they needed a reset. I hate that word by the way. But what we landed on was, hey, can we really focus on the water intake? Because what I told this person is, I'm convinced when you have increased awareness. with doing the water that then you're going to look at, Oh, and let me just make sure that lunch has some protein. And, and you know what, let's see if I can get out and take a little walk. It's a cascade. It's that domino effect that's going to happen from that. All right. I hope that this helped this episode was helpful today. If you have not left a review, I want to ask you a big favor that right now you take a second, you pause and you leave us a review. It is the best way for people to find out about us and share this podcast. I can't tell you how helpful and I'm going to talk a little bit about how amazing it is to hear from you different things that resonated and, what you're really wanting to hear about this episode today actually came out of not only what I saw with patients and coaching clients, but then also, when I asked recently here on Instagram, I said, Hey, what do you guys want to hear about? And someone said, Hey, they, they wanted to hear more about this type of area, kind of how to break through things. The next thing I'm going to talk about more is kind of maintenance and the mindset and also just the, the logistics of that. Cause we haven't talked through, and by the way, this is always the million dollar question with my patients. What happens at maintenance? Does the, do the meds stay the same? Do they go down? So we're definitely going to talk about that from just a logistical standpoint and then also just a practical standpoint that will be coming up as well. All right. I hope you have a great rest of the week and we'll talk soon.