Dietitian Reacts to Alivia D'Andrea's Glow Up Diaries & Problematic Weight Loss Plan (OMG, NO!!)

oh boy this is bad hey everyone i'm abby sharp welcome to abby's kitchen [Music] today's video is sponsored by buildbar and thank you all so much for your patience with this as it was definitely a beast for me to write but at your overwhelming request we'll be looking at olivia d'andrea's glow up diaries note that at the time of filming this olivia has released up until season two episode three so if i missed things at the time of this video's release please excuse me um i might need to do a another follow-up video after the fact so just let me know below if that's something that you want but first i want to chat about my sponsor build bar so you guys know i am working my way through some of the flavors here and i think so far my favorite is the cookies and cream but if you are new here and you haven't heard me wax poetic about these bars i love them because they actually taste good when let's be real most protein bars out there kind of taste like chalk but these ones are like a chocolate covered nugget meets marshmallow bar so good kind of like a milky way or mars which let's be real is pretty awesome so today's little flavor is coconut almond which we haven't done yet um it's legit like those mounds chocolate bars that i used to love as a kid so good so this is a low sugar bar um so if you're looking to have this as like a post-workout snack and you want to replenish those glycogen stores i would definitely go and pair it with like a banana or sweet potato or a bowl of oatmeal but it's been a great middle of the afternoon snack and also for breastfeeding fuel late at night and if you guys haven't tried these out already which i know so many of you have since you've been sending me tons of dms with pictures of your favorite you know bars in your hall but definitely let me know your favorite flavor below but if you haven't tried them yet and you don't want to miss out i'm leaving a link and a promo code for 20 off of your order below also you can pause the screen or look at the description to check out my disclaimer including a massive trigger warning to those with current or previous experiences with disordered eating honestly this was probably one of the most triggering channels i have ever reviewed here as there's a lot of discussion and actual footage of binge-like behaviors so if this is not supportive to you and your journey please sit this one out it is honestly pretty intense also don't forget to subscribe to this channel and ring that little bell so that you never miss out also i want to draw some attention to my description where i've got some resources and links to a few experts that i interviewed specifically for this video just to help me get some added insight into some areas that maybe i'm not so much an expert on all right a super quick overview of what's going on if you haven't seen this glow up series come up in your feed now olivia is a super talented filmmaker and youtuber who posted season one of her series the glow up diaries back in 2018 when she was just 18 years old so in it she describes a pretty tumultuous relationship with food which started with a desire to lose a little bit of weight before college and soon turn into severe restriction and over-exercising behaviors not surprisingly this led to binge eating and what she describes as an addiction to sugar now one of the most shocking sentiments from the series so far that i received multiple dms about was olivia's comment about her weak mind leading to her binge eating tendencies oh my gosh no so she since backpedaled in her apology video where she said that she wasn't calling her disordered eating week but that her soul was weak i'm not sure that really makes the sentiment okay but i do want to remind all of you who may be struggling in your own relationship with food this is not your fault overeating or not being able to lose weight is not a result of poor willpower or mental weakness it's actually your body and mind being really intelligent when its needs have not been met and fighting for survival with the best tools that it has it's actually a sign of strength and we should be grateful to our body and mind for fighting so hard for us not mad that it failed or let us down i also want to very briefly touch on olivia's assertion that she doesn't have an eating disorder but rather has disordered eating as a result of an addiction to sugar so i have a whole video about the research on sugar addiction which you can check out right here and while the jury is out on its legitimacy from a biophysiological or clinical perspective i'm not denying its possibility or at least that the experience of food and sugar addiction is very real what i can tell you however is that the media had a frenzy about mice research suggesting that sugar is as addictive as cocaine because it causes symptoms of withdrawal now this seems to also be the research that olivia quotes in her i'm sorry video right here but if you look at the research very carefully what it actually says is that the subjects aka mice only displayed addictive or withdrawal-like behaviors after they had been previously restricted of sugar in other words when you make sugar a novelty you are going to obsess we know that we can see that quite plainly and eating disorder experts agree on this so when you're yo-yo dieting or severely restricting yourself in an effort to lose weight fast it's totally normal to have these obsessive-like tendencies around food i also have to express my immense empathy for olivia i mean i cried along with her just watching her journey and blaming herself anytime she would eat something sweet because i just feel that she had been so let down by literally every potential support system around her let's just watch this clip for a second you're not eating right now it doesn't matter do not making that living stop this don't make it please go to bed because you can't eat this late at night all that freaking sugar there isn't much there's no sugar in this so i spoke with my colleague alyssa rumsey author of the new book unapologetic eating which i will link below and she suggested that when parents criticize a child's food or body even if it comes from a place of concern and love it often triggers a bit of a rebellious instinct which makes us want to do the forbidden behavior even more so by telling olivia not to eat the mug cake it may make the drive to eat it even stronger alyssa suggested that the best thing that we can do as parents is to try to stay neutral when we talk about food and body size avoiding any moral language like good or bad and instead trying to build a more open positive eating environment at home another colleague of mine alyssa pearson suggested that if you want to help without harming to ask open-ended questions that encourage your friend or your family member to open up about their experience about food on their own terms we don't want to get confrontational or accusatory which may push someone who's struggling with their relationship with food into defense mode or into hiding now what i want to actually focus on in this video however is the heavy hitter of season two where olivia and celebrity personal trainer steve zim of a tighter you fitness walk us through a 20-minute guide that she used to lose weight also side note but a tighter u has got to go down as the most cringe-worthy business name of all time but anyways let's look at this piece by piece first let's discuss steve's sentiments on guilt around overeating if you fall off track do not get upset you're not a bad person that's really important to understand a lot of people like oh i i feel bad do not have that relationship with food that's horrible every time you have a great meal you finish your meal you move on terrific you did something right you feel good about yourself let's say you didn't eat a great meal do not feel bad about yourself that's not what this is about okay next meal i'm gonna do better okay so i wanna start by saying i think steve probably means well by this remark i think what he's getting at and this is true is that when you start to moralize yourself after you eat something you shouldn't you run the risk of getting into that shame cycle that can often trigger a binge we often call it the last supper mentality oh my gosh i ate a few fries that weren't on my plan i'm a failure i'm stupid i'm lazy i might as well eat all the fries and a pint of ice cream and all the stale chocolate at the back of the pantry from last halloween this binge restrict repeat cycle is all too common however steve is still moralizing eating behaviors in this statement you know if you aren't bad for eating the cupcake you're also not good for eating a bowl of broccoli either you can't expect your mind to embrace one side of the coin without the other so next let's discuss steve's demonizing views on sugar sugar is what causes us to gain weight when we eat sugar our insulin goes through the roof we have to cut sugar out to get the body to change and it sounds like an easy thing to do but you find sugar in a lot of things that you're eating these are the kind of remarks that i take real issue with especially because he is speaking to a young girl with severe restrict and binge tendencies now while there's plenty of reasons to keep rough tabs on your added sugar intake with the american dietary guidelines recommending limiting calories from added sugars to no more than 10 percent of your daily calories each day or about 12 teaspoons for a 2000 calorie diet that does not mean completely cutting all sugar out this statement makes steve's earlier sentiment about not feeling guilty for eating certain foods feel very hollow and contradictory if i was olivia's dietitian i would be handling this issue with major kid gloves because cutting out sugar is exactly the kind of restrictive food rule that could have caused olivia's sugar binges in the first place i also want to flag that there isn't anything particularly magical about sugar that immediately causes weight gain yes sugar is less satiating than let's say protein or fat so it is more easy to over consume but weight gain ultimately comes down to chronically consuming more calories than your body needs the fact that this is one of steve's major arguments makes the reality that his education is in language not dietetics even more obvious to me next olivia discusses the role of insulin and a low glycemic index diet which is promoted in steve's book superhero nutrition so first of all let's quickly unpack the glycemic index in short the glycemic index is a value assigned to a specific food based on how slow or how fast it increases our blood sugar levels now glycemic load combines the glycemic index of that food by its quantity or portion size now the theory is that consuming more low glycemic index carbs keeps your blood sugar levels and therefore your insulin levels low and that isn't untrue a review of the literature did suggest that there were some weight loss and blood sugar management benefits for people with diabetes however whether or not stimulating insulin often throughout the day is an issue for the average person is not so clear it would obviously make sense that following a low gi diet for anyone would help prevent constant peaks and valleys in energy levels which may lead to a reduction in appetite and eating this for example may explain why drinking a lot of soda pop which is very high gi is associated with weight gain but other clinical investigations of this theory have actually produced mixed results so it's not that cut and dry the other limitation of this approach is that a lot of low glycemic index foods like almond milk for example are not necessarily really saturating and don't provide a lot of nutritional value while a lot of higher glycemic index foods like carrots or potatoes do in other words paying attention to the glycemic index of foods doesn't necessarily tell us the whole picture when it comes to nutrition it also doesn't account for how the glycemic load of a food can change often pretty dramatically when we factor in the other foods that it's consumed with my advice think more about building meals with the hunger crushing combination that i always talk about fiber fat and protein rather than obsessing over numbers from a chart as for insulin we do have a lot of research to suggest that insulin is not the magic key to weight gain or weight loss one huge meta-analysis found no difference in body fat loss rates between a low carbohydrate and therefore a low insulin diet and a high carbohydrate or high insulin diet even in a metabolic ward studies where food intake is tightly controlled and energy expenditure is measured we see no advantage with a very low insulin or ketogenic diet my colleague eric williamson from unlocked fitness and nutrition very eloquently reminded me that we shouldn't be obsessing over whether or not a single food you eat produces more insulin than another food like that is not what causes weight gain over time what we should be focusing on is maintaining a high level of insulin sensitivity and the best way to do that is to move your body regularly and consume a nutrient-dense diet most of the time sugar also doesn't tell us the whole story when it comes to insulin since protein and fat when consumed with carbs also can elicit an insulin response anyways this is all super complicated but the bottom line is is that steve's advice and ultimately his book is misinformed but let's move on to the scale and i will just say that this part was very emotional to watch do not worry about scale weight we all look at the scale we jump on and we think that that's the end-all it's not the end-all at all yes yes yes the scale is often such an unreliable way to evaluate weight change which can fluctuate easily from water and food consumption hormones bathroom habits etc so i 100 agree with steve on that we have the scale we have body fat and we have measurements and what we use a scale for is to see where our starting number is what i use the body fat for is to see what percentage of the scale is actually fat pounds how much is muscle how much is water the measurements now what we do with that is we measure the body i want to look for symmetry oh steve you could have just stopped while you were ahead as i've said before i have nothing against any of these tools as benchmarks for measuring success if they feel supportive to you but for a lot of others seeing measurements or a body fat percentage can be as triggering as the number on the scale i am honestly shocked that steve didn't flag this with olivia before taking her on as a client considering her history there are so many other important ways that a young girl like olivia should be encouraged to track progress like increased energy levels decreased stress improved digestion better sleep or improved mood i have nothing against aesthetic goals but focusing solely on weight fat and shape for anyone but especially for someone with a history like olivia runs a huge risk for disorderly tendencies you know you might look like a supermodel but if you are tormented by constant intrusive thoughts about body fat percentage and the glycemic index of a carrot you are not living a healthy life in my books okay moving on let's get to steve's three keys to get fit and i can already tell i am not gonna like what he has to say there are three parts to getting in great shape number one weight training number two nutrition number three cardio why do we lift weights the reason why we lift weights is to build muscle muscle burns more calories than fat the more lean muscle you have the more your body is burning calories every day just being yourself then we go to the nutrition we want to make sure that we are starving the fat and feeding the muscle what's real important about nutrition is there's two sides to it it's when you eat and what you eat number one is actually when you eat if you're not eating at the right time your body will not burn fat for energy and that's really important because when we do a workout we want to position our body to burn fat for energy but if we've eaten too far before or too far after there's a time zone when you're supposed to eat then we go into cardio number three the idea this is to put you in the zone to burn the most amount of fat in the least amount of time there's a lot unpack here but since i'm not a personal trainer i am going to focus on the food first i want to discuss the idea of feeding muscle and starving fat when i spoke to my colleague eric about this he did suggest that this is possible but it depends on a few things that aren't in our control including genetics and a few things that are within our control that is resistance training protein intake and the speed at which we lose weight the faster and more dramatic the loss the greater the muscle loss risk so he suggests aiming for no more than one percent loss per week i also want to comment on steve's apparent life mantra that when you eat is more important than what you eat in other words he is a die-hard intermittent fasting enthusiast now while some research supports that intermittent fasting can be effective approach for weight loss the vast majority suggests that it's no more beneficial than just consuming fewer calories throughout the day as eric told me the reason that it often works for some people is that we're just not so good at making up for meals that we missed so you often end up just consuming fewer calories when you're restricting the time period in which you can eat having said that some people actually end up gaining weight because they eat more during their allowed eating window so ultimately intermittent fasting does not work for everyone and each individual needs to choose an eating approach that really works best for them personally if snacking throughout the day keeps you saturated and satisfied then you should snack i also want to mention that intermittent fasting is never ever recommended for those with a history of disordered eating as like i said one of the major reasons why it often fails for some folks is that getting yourself so hungry by pushing off a meal can often result in an uncontrollable binge based on what i've seen from olivia thus far how could that not have been flagged now while on the topic of steve's book i also just want to mention a few pieces of advice that really don't sit well with me for example steve encourages clients to try to delay eating when they're hungry by chewing gum between meals drinking water instead of eating food and brushing your teeth i also just have to call him out on the hypocrisy of his don't feel guilty sentiments when he has a whole guiltless dessert recipe section riddled with cheat meal references now moving on to steve's celebrity secrets on the three things he believes makes celebrities look good balancing muscle groups creating defined lines and improving posture i'm not going to watch this section because it's kind of out of my area of expertise as i'm not a personal trainer but it's very clear to me now that steve's priority is aesthetics and not health which is probably not a very good fit for somebody like olivia then we get into the atu mobile clip of the video now this little chapter is literally just a sales pitch for atu mobile which apparently worked because i saw on olivia's community page that his website crashed from traffic after she posted this episode so that alone lit a little fire under my ass to post this response asap but anyways in the section steve talks about his philosophy for exercise where he focuses on isolating specific muscles rather than encouraging compound exercises that would recruit multiple muscles at once now again i am not a personal trainer so this is out of my scope but i did consult my long time trainer and friend jeff chan and he told me that isolated movements are ideal if you're already advanced in your training and fitness and you're able to commit a fair bit of time to exercise but for your average person looking to lose weight who doesn't have hours every day to work out compound moves are a much better bang for your buck because they hit multiple muscle groups and they can raise your heart rate at the same time so that they can double as some cardio now let's talk about steve's thoughts on skipping out on exercise and focusing only on dieting since muscle is so important i take bcaas to help promote the muscle growth and protect it this one in specific is made in the us and only has high quality ingredients which is why i'm okay taking it okay so let's talk about bcaas or branched chain amino acids i've seen in other videos that steve notoriously tells all of his trainees to take bcaas to enhance muscle fiber however the research here actually does not conclusively support this one extensive review of the literature concluded that bcaa supplements alone cannot support an increased rate of muscle protein synthesis since the availability of other essential amino acids will become rate limiting for any accelerated protein synthesis that was a lot but hopefully you got what i mean now because of this a few human studies have actually reported decreases rather than increases in muscle protein synthesis while taking bcaas we also know that the three branch chain amino acids leucine isoleucine and valine can be obtained pretty easily in everything from eggs chicken fish chickpeas lentils and brown rice so if you're getting enough protein in your diet in general a supplement is generally considered pretty unnecessary this is also obviously the cheaper option but also more nutritious since food sources of bcaas also contain a wide range of other nutrients all right now let's switch gears to talk about sleep something i could use a little bit more of right now sleep is so important if you don't get enough sleep your body will not allow you to burn fat sleeping is key so if you're only getting a few hours of sleep you're actually working against yourself so the deeper your sleep your body repairs it allows it to burn fat for energy okay so this isn't totally untrue we do have research linking our evening sleep habits to weight gain with one six-year prospective study finding that those who slept less than five hours or more than nine hours a night were 35 percent and 25 more likely to gain 5 kilos over 6 years respectively now findings from other cross-sectional and cohort studies also suggest that under sleeping is strongly and consistently associated with childhood obesity the reason for this is largely related to some hormonal shifts that occur when we undersleep so for example a lot of the evidence suggests that poor sleep can reduce our fullness hormone leptin and increase our hunger hormone ghrelin sleep deprivation also seems to increase our stress hormone cortisol impairs our hpa axis regulation and results in glucocorticoid overload all of which can increase fat storage in fact one study found that curtailing sleep while dieting reduced the fraction of weight loss from fat by 55 percent and increased the loss of fat free body mass by 60 and as steve repeatedly points out this is not what you want now let's see what steve has to say about set point theory which is the theory that your body has a specific weight that you want to be at and will basically fight tooth and nail to maintain it a body set point that's where our body likes to be so let's say you're 200 pounds 20 body fat that's where your body likes to be to change that need to exercise nutrition cardio we need all three the idea is to build the muscle burn the fat bring down the numbers that becomes your new set point now when you're there if you're happy with that number we stay right there we hold that so steve argues that as long as you somehow manage to hold your weight at a lower place for long enough then voila you establish a new set point but the evidence actually does not support this in fact there's a lot of professional criticism of the setpoint model all of which i outline in my blog post i'll link below i prefer to think about weight within a alternative model called the dual intervention theory so this model suggests that instead of a single set point there's actually more of a set point range and that fluctuating within that setpoint range can actually happen fairly easily however moving outside of that range and maintaining it is a lot harder this would explain why we usually can lose that first 10 pounds relatively easily and can also gain 10 pounds relatively easily but losing 100 pounds and maintaining it is a huge feat can it be done i'm sure it can but statistically it's unlikely because there's a lot of compensatory mechanisms in the body that act as barriers so things like metabolic declines muscle loss hormonal shifts to increase hunger and silence satiety hormones reductions in subtle movement and activity and of course psychological changes that often cause obsessions about food finally let's look at this last chapter on under eating so i tried reducing my calorie intake a lot today uh to make up for yesterday and well now i'm eating this when you lose weight by under eating yes you start to drop but you're not just dropping fat you're also dropping muscle so remember muscle is the engine for burning calories so we took this big engine and now we're making it a small engine so you let's say you come down a few pounds you're starting to look good you think this is my answer what happens is you under eat and you under eat it gets to a point where your body will not change anymore because your same calories you are under eating at what happens is your body starts not reacting to it the same and now since you've eaten so much muscle by under eating you've cannibalized the muscle now you have more fat percentage than you did before and you don't have enough muscle now what you're eating starts to turn to fat and you start gaining weight again i feel like steve is kind of missing the point yes steve's explanation is true as i already mentioned that our body does adapt metabolically to being underfed especially if we have lost muscle you know we've seen that very clearly in the biggest loser research where participants metabolism declined an additional 500 calories on top of what would be expected from just living in a smaller body than they used to but research suggests that for average weight losses a slowed metabolic rate likely accounts for far less of typical weight regain than overeating does and what causes the immense drive to overeat or binge under eating which was exactly what olivia just demonstrated when she ate that marshmallow bar after a day of purposeful restriction i am shocked that steve isn't picking up on this really important psychological piece of the puzzle i want to close off on some thoughts from olivia's season 2 episode 3 video which at the time of filming is the last video that she had posted now in it she shares her strategies for shifting her mindset to help her lose weight and stop binge eating describing herself as following the mindset of a navy seal first of all i do think she shares a few nuggets of advice that may be supportive to some people who are trying to find the motivation to make some kind of healthy change in their life so things that i generally agreed with were her suggestions to find confidence in yourself rather than in the approval of other people or in your body and also around confronting insecurities in your life but i see a lot of red flags in the rules that she suggests that she lived by to help her change in discomfort you know you're growing and that is the only way to be happy because progress equals growth growing is living living is happiness this is one of my happiness formulas that did indeed succeed you've got to create these rules in your head if this then that here's mine if i'm doing hard things then i'm happy progress equals happiness for me which means that i got to keep my focus focused on progress okay no you do not need to do something hard or overwhelmingly uncomfortable to gain confidence or happiness in your life speaking as a complete type a perfectionist i can attest that progress does not equal happiness at least not for me in fact an obsession with progress and productivity and perfection are probably the only things in my life that have actually stood in my way of true happiness so i can't deny that this may be a helpful mantra for olivia at this moment i think it's probably not great advice for the masses what i am more confident about for olivia specifically is that putting yourself in a constant state of discomfort creates another perfect storm to swing back to old habits like this oh i don't wanna drink this water i think i throw up i think i'm gonna throw up this should not be the goal muscling through a workout that makes you want to throw up only to say that you're going to do it again because discomfort equals growth is a great way to condition yourself to hate any kind of movement this is not how healthy long-term habits are formed this is how we form a dysfunctional relationship with an activity that will never provide us with true happiness or health and while i'm ranting here i just need to say that i was also a little bit turned off by this comment right here just remember doing hard things makes you tough that's what i'm going to teach my child in the future as a mom of two boys i really hope not i think we need more empathetic kids particularly young boys like her nephew in this clip we don't need more young men forced to live out this toxic masculinity narrative in 2018 the american psychological association put out a set of guidelines for men and boys suggesting a call to stop parenting with a focus on the toxic masculinity ideals of achievement adventure risk and the obscure of appearance of weakness key word here is olivia's apparent enemy weakness the report goes on to suggest that parenting with this ideology limits male psychological development constrains their behavior results in gender role conflict and negatively influences mental and physical health i don't know about you but i don't want that for my boys and if i had a daughter i wouldn't want that for her either it's okay and actually important to allow yourself to feel sad scared insecure and anxious and to express discomfort pain and emotion i get that this isn't the navy seal way that she's describing herself as idolizing but the research suggests that this mentality alone will not help support healthy happy adults who are capable of fostering healthy happy relationships with themselves or others this front does not help us heal and grow from within in conclusion i would say that if i can give olivia any advice it would be to find another trainer one who has a better knowledge and sensitivity to olivia's binge restrict history now steve isn't necessarily wrong in all the things that he says but his advice and approach is just grossly problematic for a client like olivia no one with a history of disordered eating should be exercising to the point of nausea and following a strict low gi intermittent fasting diet this will not improve her health it will only prolong olivia's journey and true recovery despite calling her past struggles with food disorder eating olivia does currently claim that she's extremely happy and now has a healthy relationship with food and obviously i can't deny that i'm not her and i'm not her therapist but i'm flagging this because in practice any respected dietitian even one who exclusively works in aesthetic driven weight loss would never recommend a protocol like this to a client like olivia and for that reason i strongly urge all of you watching to be critical media consumers and to be weary of the information and suggestions that you've seen here in this series i know how enticing it is to see olivia's body transformation set that strong empowering drum beat but i think that this could be really dangerous advice in the wrong hands so if you are struggling or have struggled with similar challenges as olivia please get your advice from a healthcare provider not a personal trainer and not a youtuber myself included this is not the path for you and on that note that is all that i have for you today i'm going to leave some resources below for those who've struggled with disordered eating and again thank you to all of my colleagues who i interviewed to help put this video together also a big thank you to builtbar for sponsoring if you like this video be sure to give it the thumbs up leave me a comment below with what you want to see me review next subscribe to the channel and i will see you next time on abby's kitchen bye

Channel: Abbey Sharp

Views: 911,233

Keywords: abbey sharp, abbeys kitchen, Alivia D'Andrea's, Glow Up Diaries, Weight Loss Plan, dietitian reviews, dietitian reacts, alivia d'andrea, weight loss, diets, weight loss journey

Id: pms4nDLbIy4

Length: 36min 29sec (2189 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021