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The Truth About Fueling Muscle Growth (It’s Not Just Protein) · Beyond Fat Loss

• Katie & Sean Darlow: Welcome to the Beyond Fat Loss podcast, where we don't just stop at fat loss, you learn about all the good stuff that follows. How to build muscle, how to enjoy more food and how to stay lean without going to extremes. We are your hosts, Sean and Katie. And today we're going to discuss the problem of endofueling for muscle growth. We'll be breaking down some of the most common reasons why people struggle to eat enough to support muscle growth. In this episode, we're going to talk about the practical problems, and the psychological barriers people have with eating more food on a consistent basis. We'll also reveal why some individuals don't even realise they're into eating when they think they're eating plenty of food every day. If you can overcome this, it's a win-win because you'll be able to eat more, feel energised more and really build the body you want. But before we go any further, we just want to stop for a moment and say thank you to all you listeners so far. We can't believe we're already recording episode 10. It's absolutely flown by and we've really enjoyed doing this, but none of it would be possible without having some listeners to record to. So thank you all for showing up and listening to the pod. I couldn't agree more, And we had a message from someone the other day asking how they can support the pod. If you want to support our podcast, you can like the episode, comment or subscribe on whatever platform you're listening on. And if you are on Instagram, sharing the podcast, your story and tagging us would be hugely appreciated. Links to both of our pages are in the description below if you can't find us. we direct you straight to the page. But yeah, any support you can give us, we'd be more than grateful to receive. But let's get back to today's episode for now. And kick things off by discussing the role that nutrition plays in building muscle. One that's often overlooked, I would say, Sean, would you agree? Yeah, I agree. Let's start by talking about where nutrition plays its role in building muscle ⁓ that interacts with lifting and going to the gym. Yeah, I think that'd be a great place to start. Because I certainly didn't fully understand it many years ago. I think having it broken down to what you need to do to build the muscle in the first place and then how you can support that with your nutritional lifestyle is going to be absolutely key for people achieving the goals they want to achieve. I think there's a misconception that the eating particularly eating protein is to be what build the muscle. But we're here to kind of debunk that myth and say that that's only part of the bigger picture. In fact, it's very unlikely you're going to build muscle just through eating, eating more calories or eating more protein alone. There are stages of our life where we may naturally build muscle. For example, when you go through puberty, you will naturally develop some small amounts of muscle mass and strength even when you're not training. But that's to do with the hormonal changes that your body is going through. And this doesn't continue throughout the rest of your life without lifting weights. not. It'd be great if it did, but unfortunately it doesn't, right? And particularly after the age of 30, it's that we don't even see muscle mass being gained. We actually see it start declining after that age, right? Yeah, which doesn't really seem that long from your teenage years, does it? Like how quickly have our ⁓ flown by, Katie? We're in our ⁓ now. You look back to those teenage years, it just feels like ⁓ were a complete blur. And now all of a sudden you're on the slippery slope to decline. And unless you're doing something about it, bye bye muscle gain. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I don't understand where the years have gone, but I'm certainly all for trying to keep hold, if not build, muscle mass now as time goes on. And I think it's a, know, everyone says and everyone knows that as you age, you decline, you know, you lose muscle mass and it's quite a common phrase that you hear around, a common phrase you hear a lot of people say. I don't know if it's actually fully listened to and understood and what you can do about it to change that. It's not just what you could do about it to prevent it either. You can definitely build muscle later on in life. mean, we have living proof of that in the members that we've worked with through all different age categories, all different age brackets from their twenties all the way through to their sixties. We have ⁓ good research showing ⁓ individuals can build muscle mass in later stages of life. So this something that we should set a low bar for. This is something that everyone can achieve and everyone can accomplish in some way. Obviously it's better to start early, but what we're going to talk about today is how you can fuel that process effectively because the fueling part of the problem is something which once you get it right, you can do that for the rest of your life. You may have to adapt your training. You may have to adapt the way which you go about trying to get the stimulus for your muscles to grow, but fueling can be pretty consistent the whole way through. Once you find a pattern and a routine that works for you, the principles will always be useful to you that we're about to discuss in this podcast. Yeah, absolutely. So you've mentioned Sean, it's not just calories and protein that we need to think about or focus on to build muscle. So how is it achieved? How do we build muscle? Think of it like this. Your body needs to receive a signal to start the muscle building process. signal of eating more food and protein alone is not enough. The signal we really can rely on is by intensive weight training. So resistance training that's really stimulative, that challenges your muscles to contract with lots of force, that is what starts that signaling process for your body to build more muscle tissue. There's a great quote from Eric Helms and really summarizes it well for me. The quote is, nutrition is permissive for muscle growth, the training is the stimulus for muscle growth. So, Nutrition is what allows that muscle growth to happen, but without the stimulus, without that signal initially from the weight straining, the nutrition isn't going to do the job it's intended to How can it do a job if it hasn't? got a job to do. probably the simplest way to put it, right? Taking a load of tradespersons, sending them to a location and saying, okay, this is where you're going to do your job for the day. And they all get there and they're like, but what job am I meant to be doing here? I'm completely pointless here unless you tell me what I need to be doing. That's basically what having more protein, more calories in your diet is doing without that training stimulus to begin with. have to be given the job and the training provides the job which... those nutrients are going to be useful. Yeah, I think that's a great way to look at it actually, Sian. You can't... How can you expect your body to do a job you haven't actually initiated it to do? So there's a two part process to fueling for muscle growth, right? We have the fueling of the sessions themselves and we have the fueling of the actual recovery process and the muscle building process that follows. Because it's not the training session itself that builds the muscle. That's important to note. The training provides the stimulus. The nutrition... and the sleep and recovery that follows is where the muscle is built. So these have to go together. But to get the most stimulus that you can in the training session, you also need to provide the fuel and the resources in order for you to be able to go and perform with intensity, provide as much muscle tension and contraction as possible, because that's what's going to really signal those processes. Yes, you don't want to just think of it as solely eating ⁓ for your training, ⁓ the reality is your training is just, well... of hours a week you want to think of it as eating for your training and for the recovery growth process or phases that follow the training sessions. Absolutely. think a lot of people overestimate how much energy is actually required for the training itself. I absolutely agree there. think it's definitely not uncommon for us to underestimate that. often, as humans, think we burn more calories than we do from exercise and particularly in the gym a couple of times a week. I think something which often gets discussed is about the importance of carbs with training as well, Katie. This is something that I think I've learned more about over the years. actually taught this on courses. We were taught this when we were doing our PT exams about how training is really carb dominant ⁓ and use loads of carbohydrates when you're doing ⁓ moderate activity. So you plenty of carbs to fuel resistance training. There's an element of truth to that, of course, but do you necessarily need loads and loads and loads of carbs? or do potentially slightly lower or slightly more moderate carbohydrate intakes work for training? What does the research tell us? I think it's been overstated how important carbohydrates are for sessions, particularly gym training, weights training. Whilst it is important to carbohydrates as part of the diet to support it, it's not the B or N dollar. It's not as big as it's made out to be. We don't necessarily use as many of our carbs stores as we're perhaps led to believe. I believe it was Hamid Vande and colleagues in 2025 looked at glycogen depletion following weights training. So how much of your stored carbohydrates get used in a single weights training session. I think it was found that it was around 25 to 30 % on average of the glycogen stores get depleted in the session, Most of your glycogen stores, so most of your carbohydrate are in your muscle. So there's still plenty of muscle glycogen left, even after an intensive weight training bout. I believe in this meta-analysis, they found that a single really high intensity weight training session may deplete glycogen by up to 40%, which is little bit more. This is still probably a lot less than what people assume. People assume that they're going to deplete far more of their carbohydrate stores. It's like, must eat loads and loads of carbs after you train. You must replenish all your glycogen stores. we're probably not depleting as much as we think we are. As long as we're eating enough carbohydrates day to day, we'll be fine to recover from those wage training sessions. Of course, there needs to be more research into this. There's probably more nuance for people that are training more frequently with high intensity every single session. It's probably different for athletes like team sports athletes and individuals that doing multiple training sessions per day. But the point is that single resistance training sessions, single weights training sessions in order to stimulate as much muscle growth as possible are unlikely to deplete us as much as what we think they are. I think it's safe to say that most individuals will eat enough carbohydrates just in their regular meals and throughout the day, there isn't this need to replenish them straight away after after a session or have loads before a session, right? It's how you have any carbohydrates as normal part of your diet. Yes, for most people, that's going to be more than enough carbohydrates to support their training sessions ⁓ I've heard that there's also a bit of a placebo effect potentially with carbohydrates before session, which is again another interesting line of research but potentially just eating carbohydrates before the session provides you with a placebo of you thinking that you've got more energy and you've got more fuel and you're going to perform better. As we will discuss later on there are some performance benefits to having diet rich in carbohydrates but the point of us bringing this up is to help you understand that whilst energy is used in training and it is energy intensive, it's not so much the energy that you use in training which requires you to eat higher calories and to eat more protein when you're trying to build muscle. It's more so that for the rest of the day you will be recovering from that training that you've done and in order for you to train repeatedly, multiple times a week with high intensity sessions, you need to provide the best possible environment for your muscles to grow for as long as possible. So it's being in a higher calorie state with higher protein available for as long as possible around all these training sessions. Not just particularly for one individual training session, but more consistently over time. It's about looking at the bigger picture, isn't it? Not overshooting how many calories do you think you're actually burning? for a particular session and not really worrying if you're going to deplete your carbohydrate stores from a particular session. It's just about creating an environment in your body that I like to call it a building state. So you're putting your body in a building state, right? to be in a building state, you need to be at maintenance calories or above, and you want to be making sure that you're eating adequate protein amounts. Because lacking these nutrients, so not eating enough calories, not eating enough protein, will either blunt your muscle growth or they will prevent muscle gains from occurring altogether. So ultimately you could be working your ass off in training. Quite literally because it's going to be disappearing if you're not feeling it properly. Quite literally then, could be working your ass off in training if you aren't dueling to match it. You want to be yourself adequately, which is a nice refreshing change, I think, focus on the fat loss and being in more of a cathabolic state. So a state where your body is breaking down, which is what is happening when we're trying to lose body fat, right? Let's go through some of the recommendations. So you touched upon one key point, Katie. We want to be at maintenance calories or slightly above. know we've covered this in lots of previous podcasts as well, but briefly summarize for this podcast, for this episode, what are we talking about when it comes to maintenance or slightly above? When we refer to maintenance calories, it's not a of state. It's not, I to maintain here. It's maintenance calories ⁓ are balance. So it's you're consuming the same amount of calories that you are burning. And that's what maintenance calories is. To be in a building state, so I'm going to refer in this podcast with being in a building state, right? This is what we're going to aim for when we want to try and build muscle. So to be in a building state, you want to make sure you're eating at least maintenance calories or potentially slightly above. And this is what you'll hear being called as a surplus or surplus state or potentially bulking, right? Depending on where you're getting your information from. Go back to the last podcast we want to hear us talking about bulking and the psychology of bulking, where we discussed that in a bit more detail. for now, let's bring it back to the maintenance calorie So it's just making sure you're eating more calories. or at least matching the calories that your body is burning on a daily basis to allow it to be in that building state. going to be slightly above maintenance calories, what sort of amounts are we looking at here? I would say you don't need to go more than five to 10 percent. above your maintenance calories. I think that's a safe, safe amount. I anything past that then you're entering in territory where you potentially just gain fat at an rate, which you don't really want to do when you're trying to build muscle, right? I would say for the most people listening to this podcast. it's you want to gain muscle but you don't be gaining fat quicker than you gain the muscle get this muscle mass. Very fair assumption. Protein intake then, want to be eating around 1.6 grams per kilogram per day as a minimum. This is 0.7 grams per pound per day. And for individuals that are training more frequently with lots of high intensity sessions, you may want to stretch this protein range up to around one gram per pound of body weight or 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. We don't necessarily have very strong data at the moment to suggest much more protein is beneficial for muscle growth. The benefits seem to be capped around these ranges for most individuals. It's not to say that if you eat more protein than this you are instantly wasting your protein, not the case, but just know that these are the recommended ranges. The vast majority of the benefits for building muscle are achieved with as little as 1.6 grams per kilogram per day. or 0.7 grams per pound per day for most individuals. So don't be worried about eating excessively high amounts of protein. The research just doesn't support that. it can actually make bulking or actually make gaining muscle and enough to gain muscle more difficult in some cases by eating excessively high amounts of protein. Protein is actually one of the most Thermic foods, so it actually costs more calories per gram of food to break down and absorb protein than it does for some of the other macronutrients that you eat. So it's not a huge amount, but if you're already struggling to eat enough food to gain muscle mass and you have a really high protein diet, like eating more protein than is necessary for building muscle, then you might find that you're actually using some of the calories you're eating just to break down this protein, which means you're ending up having to eat more as a result. And protein is also very filling and it probably takes a little bit longer to digest. So you can end up kind of working against yourself a little bit by eating a nutrient that isn't necessarily providing you with any additional muscle benefit. It's not really very energy efficient. It's not providing you with easily digestible food. So it might make you feel a little bit more bloated and feel a bit fuller for long. And it's actually quite costly when we say about inefficiencies, kind of ties into this as well. You're using some energy to break it down and get into the system to begin with. So it's like putting 100 pounds into your bank account, but only seeing 99 pounds go in. Yeah, you're spot on there, Sean. I think protein is definitely banged on a lot about in the fitness world and it definitely shouldn't be because it serves a purpose and a very important purpose. But I don't think it needs quite as much intention in terms of you must hit maximum values all of the time. got to eat XYZ of the time or a certain amount all of the time. And rightly so, it's an important part of the journey, it's an important part of our diet. So yeah, we do want to include that, right? And we'll talk a little bit more about the importance in terms of total and frequency of protein in a moment. Before we move on to that, I would just like to just make people aware that you don't need to get too caught up on the exact amount you're having between those figures of 1.6. grams per kilogram per day up to 2.2 grams per kilogram per day like Don't focus your energy on finding the perfect spot between there for you. As long as you are least at 1.6 grams per kilogram per day. And just to pull this in a bit of perspective for a 70 gram, a kilogram individual, that is around 112 grams of protein a day. Which, let's be honest, is pretty achievable, right? It's pretty achievable to hit that in your calories. May you benefit from having a little bit more? Possibly. But if it's really stressful for you to get that in or to get more in, or it doesn't work for your diet or doesn't align with your family structure, whatever it may be, then don't sweat the small stuff is what I wanna say here. Just get your minimums. And if you like a little bit more protein in your diet, cause you feel fuller from it, helps you stick to your calorie limit, great. If you're eating more than that, but you find it hard to your calorie intake, then you might wanna. just pull it back a little so you can have foods that are little bit more easily digestible. It's not an on-off switch either. Like if you don't eat enough protein, like if you don't eat the recommended guidelines of 1.6 grams per kilogram per day, for example, it's not like you automatically are disqualified from building muscle. It's not like muscle protein synthesis doesn't occur. It doesn't just cut off, does It doesn't just stop. no. It's not an on-off switch. It's more like a temperature dial. essentially, ⁓ do I say temperature? It's more like I'm thinking of a thermostat. ⁓ it's more like a thermostat, which you turn up and down, right? If you're eating more protein and you're in that range, then there's a stronger chance that you're maximizing muscle protein synthesis. There's a stronger chance you're given the maximum amount of support for your muscles to do their building and repair. If you're eating less than that, it's not like you just don't do it. Your body still does this process. It's just it's not fueled as efficient. It's not got the maximum amount of support or nutrients that it needs to be able to maximize that process. if you're looking to maximize your muscle growth, it makes sense to be near maximal values, but don't sweat it too much if you're slightly below the values on some days or certain meals which don't have really high protein. We'll talk about this in a moment. The absolute magnitude of these effects over time. are probably so unbelievably small that you probably wouldn't notice them. But if you are that kind of character, there's probably a bit more like me and Katie where, you know, we're always eating more protein than what we need every day, to be honest. We're probably always hitting those targets. we really want to try and maximise the muscle growth we have in this period in time. Then also know that you're giving yourself the best possible chance to achieve maximum muscle growth if you are eating. in the guideline ranges that we suggested. Yeah, for sure. And also don't be afraid to eat that amount. It's not unhealthy for you. It's not going to damage you in any way. It's a case of you've got to do what's right for you, but give yourself a bit of buffer room because not every day is going to be perfect. You might take a little while to figure out what works for you. like Sian said, it's not a total on or off switch. It's just what's perhaps a bit more optimal than other option. Let's discuss total protein intake per day before we make this entire podcast into a protein podcast. I agree. It's a bit like, chat about the hierarchy when it comes to ⁓ muscle, muscle hypertrophy. Because it used to be the case that the advice was that you must eat frequent meals every couple of hours to make sure that you are stimulating muscle growth. But what's changed, in the research? What's more important now? It seems like the most important stat is the total amount of protein that you eat per day. So you can have really large servings of protein or smaller, more frequent servings of protein. And providing that each one of those servings of protein are adequate enough, then... you're going to achieve close to maximum levels of what we call muscle protein synthesis every day. This is an important muscle building process. So muscle protein synthesis, just think of this as important muscle building process. But yeah, it's the total amount of grams per day that seems to have the biggest impact on your rates of muscle protein synthesis rather than what happens in individual meals. But there's probably some value to making sure you're distributing your protein throughout meals as well. Right, Katie? Absolutely. It's just all about building muscle, is it? It's what works well for me in terms of my hunger levels, what works well for me in terms of my routine. When am I going to be best farewell for work? When am going be best farewell for my training session? Whatever it may be. There's always other variables to consider when it comes to how you structure your day. what times a day you eat, how frequently you eat. So it's not just all about that, but I think it's important to give people confidence that if two meals a day works best for them, as long as they hit their protein intake over the course of the day, then ⁓ likely to do a decent job of building muscle. What's the difficulty with two meals a day? It's quite hard to get your total protein intake in two meals, right? They're going to be quite ⁓ meals and then great. I have a greedy, greedy bugger over there. I can see him now, his eyes are lighting up with the whole chicken on his plate. Yeah, but the problem is I'd still be hungry a few hours later. That's it, right? It's figuring out, know, for some two meals a day may work perfectly for their schedule, then they don't want to think about food too much and that works well. The likelihood is they probably would need to have snack in between that to be able to hit their calories and be able to hit their protein intake right because it's not just protein intake as we've established it's making sure you're eating enough overall in the day as well. So these are the factors to consider and perhaps splitting those up to three to six meals a day whatever suits you because again some individuals may prefer to have six meals a day. for other individuals, six meals a day, all that washing up, all of that cooking, all of that prepping, just sounds like an absolute nightmare. But does that mean one is better than the other for terms of muscle growth? Probably not when it comes between three to six meals a day. Would you agree? Yeah, I think this of blends into other topics that we'll get onto in a bit in terms of distributing meals and distributing your calories, et cetera. It's a more optimal approach to aim for three to six meals per day in terms of spreading your protein out, trying to make sure that you're stimulating muscle protein synthesis as many times as you can throughout the day. If you're looking to really optimize things further, that's what I would look to do is try and aim for three to six meals. This helps with getting enough of a particular. building block of protein into our bodies as well, doesn't it Katie? It does, it does because... There is a building block, a certain amino acid that we need to consume to stimulate muscle protein synthesis within the body And that is something called Lucy. And you may or may not have heard of that. it is a Lucy. All I know my Welsh accent sometimes sounds like I'm mumbling. ⁓ no, not. What's she got to do with building a maximum of Gat? someone, ⁓ someone kick out. put a dummy in him. will say it slower. Lucine. Lucine, That doesn't sound as exciting as Lucy, does it? ⁓ I know, who tell me? Moving on. Lucy, you've on your mind, Alan. Let's move on. Quickly. So, back building Not Sean's imagination driving off to Lucy. You need... leucine and don't make this over complicated but it's... you to aim for having around two to three grams in the meal or protein serving that you have because it's an essential amino acid that is required for building muscle. If you aim for high quality protein sources and aim for around 25 to 35 grams of protein per meal, per snack, however way you get your protein in, this should help you hit the leucine threshold. And that's what I mean by I don't want to overcomplicate it. You don't necessarily need to worry too much about the two to three grams. It's more about the total protein content of the meal that you're having will pretty much look after the fact that you get enough leucine, leucine into that meal. Awesome. So lots on protein there, but total protein intake for the day is the most important thing to mention. for around 25 to 30 grams of protein per meal, ideally through high quality protein sources. So meat protein sources, dairy protein sources, combination of plant proteins. We're looking to try and get calories, or slightly above and protein intake for the day that we're aiming for is around 1.6. to 2.2 grams per kilogram per day or 0.7 grams up to one gram per pound of body weight per day. It's a lot of numbers. It is a lot of numbers. There's one thing I wanted to just quickly mention on that protein element because collagen protein is around a lot at the moment. It's rubbish. It's around a lot at the moment and can be quite misleading for... For people in terms of coming, when it comes to building muscle rights, don't substitute your protein in your day when you want to, when you really care about building muscle for collagen protein, because the leucine content in collagen protein is not enough to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. I just wanted to drop that in there. I don't want to go into too much depth about collagen protein or anything on this podcast, but it's just more of a FYI. Be aware of that if you are counting that towards your total overall daily intake for protein. If we need around 3 grams of leucine per serving or per meal to reach a threshold for muscle proteosynthesis, then problem with collagen protein is that it's got such a low amount of leucine content as you suggested, Katie. It's about 0.85 grams per 25 gram serving of collagen. And we need around three grams of leucine per serving per meal to reach the threshold. That's one shake. ⁓ muscle protein synthesis to occur. So we're looking at three to four times the serving size, like 75 grams of collagen. So that's not only pretty hard to drink in one go, but it's also really expensive. Like to have to consume that many servings a supplement just to hit that threshold once per day. It's just such an inefficient way to get your protein in. So if you want to supplement with protein to help to boost your protein levels, looking at either whey protein or potentially even a plant source protein would be better. use collagen supplements for building muscle because they're quite frankly really poor at doing so. Yeah, they're not just expensive financially, they're expensive calorie wise as well, right? Yeah, exactly. just because of the sheer amount of volume you've got to have to hit the thresholds you need to adequately build muscle. Moving on to Cobb's end. So what's recommended for carbohydrates in terms of fueling a muscle building process? Do we even need really high amounts of carbohydrates like we suggested? There is a recent meta-analysis. by King and colleagues in 2022 that indicates that calves are ergogenic. So performance enhancing for lifters who complete training sessions, including plenty of maximal effort sets or sessions that last longer than 45 minutes in duration. So essentially there is a link between carbohydrates and improving performance in sessions that are very high intensity longer in duration. Now, as we discussed, the training sessions themselves are providing the stimulus in order to build muscle. The greater the stimulus, the more recovery that's required, but also the more muscle we have potential to grow. So carbohydrates help to improve the stimulus. So makes sense to eat more carbohydrates in your diet in order for you to be able to fuel the process, which gets out of muscle growth itself, which stimulates more muscle growth itself. That makes sense. You've just got a bit more oomph to give when you're trying to create that stimulus in the first place. High carbon takes aren't necessary for building muscle, but they are advisable. There might be some other reasons why we would choose to advise this. If we look at very low carb diets or zero carb diets like ketogenic diets, these tend to have similar or worse effects on hypertrophy. So on muscle building compared to balanced macronutrient distribution. So those with more moderate carbohydrate intakes. So there is a chance that we may be making muscle growth worse if we don't have sufficient carbs. So piecing all that together, too low carbs, potentially worse outcomes. We need enough carbohydrates in order to benefit the training itself. What other things do we need to consider when it comes to? where the carbohydrates are recommended or useful for building muscle. I think it's important to note that many carb sources are easier to digest, which it can help individuals who potentially struggle to consume the required amount of calories. But don't underestimate this when you are trying to build mass, it can be quite difficult at times to eat the amount of calories a person needs consistently to build muscle. carb sources, they can be quite easy to eat, they can be highly palatable, of them easy to digest. high protein, high fiber, we get quite full of those quite quickly, right? Yeah, even some sources of fats take a little bit longer to break down and digest for their energy than some of the carbohydrate sources. How much carbohydrates would you recommend then, Sean? Again, it's something that there's wide ranges recommended in the research. Agreed. I've seen anywhere from like two to six grams recommended. I think a really good ballpark and what I tend to use with most of my clients is aiming for round about three to four grams per kilogram of body weight. I agree. I think that's a good ballpark to aim for alongside the balance of protein and fats in the diet as well. And like you said, it... definitely the range I tend to use more with my clients and myself too. I just find that it's a range where we know that it's not excessively high, it doesn't take away from other nutrients in the diet by being far too high. but it also makes sure that you're eating enough. It avoids that potentially slightly too low range. So you're probably gonna capture a lot of the benefits of eating enough carbohydrates by eating within that range. I think that individual diets will play a big part in this. And I think also other activities, we're talking about building muscle as if that's the only thing that somebody's doing here. But if an individual is doing... lots of other forms of cardio, if they've got team sports involved, if they're preparing for a particular endurance event like a half marathon or a high rocks competition, then there may be some to eating more carbohydrates than full grams for a pound of body weight. I somewhere in that range is probably capturing most people is a pretty safe range to recommend. I fully and we're mainly talking here about, ⁓ guess, who ⁓ are to build muscle, gain some mass. What range would you say? think when it comes to sport performance, ⁓ events, ⁓ there be slightly different recommendations around that, right? I'm actually eating probably slightly more than this range myself at the moment because I'm around 91 to 92 kilograms. My calories every day are 3800. I quite often will need to eat close to 400 grams of carbohydrates a day. So it's over four times my body weight. And that's just simply because I have to make those calories up from somewhere. And it's probably easier for me to eat the extra carbohydrates, which are probably slightly easier to digest. They're easier to fit around other meals eating more protein, ⁓ as we discussed can be quite energy inefficient and more fats, which Fats are quite hard to eat on their own. There's only certain types of fats that you will be able to eat on their own and enjoy. carbs tend to be a bit more practical for that. So individuals that do have more calories, I guess, to eat each day may benefit from increased carbohydrate consumption. But it's in order to hit those calories. It's not because the carbs themselves are providing much additional benefit to muscle growth. Yeah, I think that's important to note is that... you want to make sure you're eating enough calories overall and that can be challenging as we mentioned to hit if A you're used to eating that many calories and B doing that consistently. We all know it's easy to over consume calories on one particular day but when you're doing that consistently for a longer period it's not always easy to do that when you're full and sometimes it's almost practical right so you just want something easy simple to add into your diet. That leads us really nicely onto the challenges with eating a NERF. You just mentioned, Katie, that it's very different doing this on a one off occasion and eating enough calories on a one off occasion to doing it every single day. What's your experience with that? got a lot of experience with this, but what's your experience with that? From me personally, from my perspective, really enjoy eating a maintenance calories. I don't personally find it a challenge to hit them on a daily basis. But I know that's not the case for everyone. And it can be difficult for some people, particularly if their maintenance calories are quite high. And I for yourself, Sean, that is something that you've got to be really aware of to hit your calorie intake. Especially when your diet consists mostly of and nutritious sauces most of the time, you sometimes can end up with, you know, a thousand calories left at end of the day that you've got to eat. And that can be challenging for myself personally. I don't find it too hard to hit my maintenance calories. I really enjoy eating the most calories. What my experience has been is it's allowed me to find a much better relationship with food because it's given me more freedom and availability with calories. while still allowing myself to eat healthily but also have a little bit of flexibility for the things I want on a daily basis alongside hitting my muscle building goals. But everyone's different experiences are very different, right? I think past experiences in terms of the problems I faced was just lack of awareness of why I actually needed to consume to build muscle. Tell me a bit more about that. When I was, let's say, stuck in the endless fat loss loop of losing body fat and then just of going back to maintenance, kind of not really doing anything, then going back to deficit to lose body fat, I didn't really understand the importance ⁓ of my body with enough calories. Protein was always consistent because that stays the same when you're in a deficit or not. When it came to building muscle, I didn't really understand the importance of being ⁓ your body in a building state for months on end to be able to get the outcome I want. But even when you did understand the importance of it, what you need to put in place? Because I think it's quite common knowledge now for most people to know you need to eat enough to build muscle. You need to eat enough to support muscle growth. But what is stopping people from doing that? What are people missing when it comes to doing that? I think a lot of people are missing, tracking the progress with it. think the lack of awareness of actual consumption made when it's combined with lack of progress data such as weight, how that should when you're trying to build muscle, weights lifted in the gym. Quite a lot of people go into this blind. Do you think, Sean? Yeah, so there's no ⁓ way of them whether what they're eating is actually aligning with the outcome that they want. You can try and eat more food and try and eat more meals and try and eat more protein, but what are you measuring that against? So if your body weight isn't going up, then there's a chance you're not building muscle because something has to be added. If you're building muscle, it's being added. Therefore, your weight has to be added. It's got to be weight. It's got to be something, right? Your lifts in the gym over time should be progressing. You can make progress when you're in a calorie deficit, but if you've been training for a little while now and you're doing the same lifts time and time and time again, you'll get used to the concept that your lifts just don't go up every single week. Sometimes they get stuck for a little while, but over time we should be seeing those increase and go up and go up. And the thing that's going to allow you to get stronger and build more muscle is going, thing that's going allow you to get stronger and progress. with your lifts is going to be the extra muscle that you build to do the lifting with. So you want to be seeing some things go up in alignment with the extra food you're eating because if you're just eating more but other things aren't increasing, you're not seeing visible change, you're not tracking data which shows your progress, then how do you know if you're making progress or not? Yeah, I agree. I agree fully. I think that is a real challenge for a lot of people. I know it was one of mine many, many moons ago. It's how do track that data? What am I looking out for? What do need to look out for to know that actually the maintenance calories I've chosen to consume, how do know if they're the right amount of calories for me to drive the outcome that I want? So I can put a stumbling block in people's way for sure. practical challenge that I have had is just trying to get enough meals in each day to fuel the amount of calories that I need to eat every day. This is a problem that a lot of people will experience if eat infrequently ⁓ they miss meals. This makes it harder to hit their calorie intake each day. It makes it harder to hit their protein intake each day. When they eat certain meals, they might be too full. after they've eaten that meal to then get other meals in. So let's say, for example, they go from breakfast all the way through to their evening meal without eating, then they eat a huge amount of food for their evening meal, but it's still not enough to hit their calories for the day because they haven't had a snack and they haven't had their lunch. They might eat that evening meal then, reasonably late, six, seven p.m. They might not digest and break down that food quick enough to allow them to eat again before they go to bed. But now they've only had two meals per day. And even though that evening meal might be a big evening meal, it still might not be enough to account for the calories that they've missed. And that is a mistake which some people make. They think that just because they've had one or two really big meals, it's going to be enough. But it quite often isn't if you're more active person, doing more training, et cetera. Well, for example, isn't it, like if calorie intake or your maintenance calories is three thousand calories a day. But you don't eat, for most of day, you will have a meal in the evening and potentially a snack. You're talking max 2000 calories. You know, you're not. It's very hard to get that in in one go. Which is where you can set yourself up for failure with it, right? There's only so much more you can add to meals. before you're eating those meals and you're getting full in those meals and then it's putting you off your food and you feel like you're force feeding yourself. Sometimes it's better to have a little bit more spread out so that you don't have to keep kind of force feeding yourself and individual meals. I that with my approach to lean building over the last six months or so, eating six meals per day is a sweet spot for me. I have to spend a bit more time eating every single day to get those meals in, I can't. eat meals that are 800 to 1000 calories each every single time I eat. It's just, they're really filling. I'm eating some of those meals and I'm not necessarily feeling like I want to finish the food or I'm not feeling really hungry and excited about eating those meals. So for me, breaking my calories up a little bit more over more meals per day means that there are still meals that I'm getting hungry for and there are still things I'm looking forward to I can have. something in the evening before I go to bed that doesn't sit heavy on my stomach because it's not a massively large meal. I feel like that's a better approach for me personally and that might differ from individual to individual this coming from a person that's got a pretty big appetite. It can be quite hard to get the amount of calories in every single day if you don't have a good of things like your calories and your protein throughout the day? fully agree that actually because even though as I said I find it quite easy to hit my calories every day I think I find them easy to hit every day because I eat three meals in a sack and that's just what works for me that works for my energy levels, works for my routine it just that's my go-to every day and once I fill those in the way that I do with the nutrition quality that I like, that's pretty much my calories gone. So that's probably why I find it easier. Whereas if I didn't have that routine in place, I would probably find it difficult to hit my calories and hit my protein and hit all of the other nutrients that I'd like to get into my diet. So there's a reason why I don't find it difficult now. It's because my structure doesn't really change day to day in terms of how many meals I eat and the size of those meals. They're roughly the same on a regular basis. There's a bit of context this as well, isn't there Katie? Because your maintenance calories have gone up over time as they naturally do as body kind of adapts to what you're eating. You tend to burn a few more calories each day. Your activity levels may increased since you started eating your maintenance calories back in September. ⁓ You've built a little bit of muscle, but Eventually what happens is we tend to burn more calories every day the longer time that we spend eating more calories, right? So your maintenance calories have gone up a little bit. How much would you say they've gone up? Maybe a couple of hundred calories? I'd say so. Around about that. Obviously ⁓ you a certain amount of body weight, you tend to go back down to more conservative calorie maintenance calories you come out of a diet. Yeah, it's gone up around 200 to 300 since the end of my last fat loss phase. Yeah, so for example, my calories have gone up by... I started on about 3,300, 3,350, something like that in September last year, I'm now up to 3,800. So I'm at about like 450 to 500 calories. That's a whole meal for a lot of people. So... Whilst your maintenance calories have gone up and you've had to work out how you're going to get those extra calories in, I've also gone up by quite a lot too. So it's... The point I'm making here is that you have to do something with those extra calories. You have to find a way to get those extra calories into your diet because your body adapts over time. Beyond like 3,500 to 3,600 calories a day, I'm not necessarily eating for hunger anymore. I'm quite full when I'm eating all those calories every day. I then need to just add a little bit more in because otherwise my muscle isn't being built, my weight's not increasing. I need to make sure I'm staying in that state like like that permissive state in order to build muscle. So yeah, it is a consideration, especially for individuals that are training very frequently, they're building more muscle, eventually your calories are gonna go up and you need to find a way to get these extra calories into your diet. feel like we might have made that sound quite challenging to do and for some it may be a challenge, but for others you might find that easy by just simply adding a little bit more to your meals. So not always a huge challenge for a lot of people, but for some it's depending on really how many calories you've got, your appetite levels and what your routine is like. It's just something to be aware of when you go to... building phase or longer term maintenance phase? And those calories that have been added over time like Katie's 200 or 300 calories more, 400 to 500 calories more than where I started my build phase, we haven't added those all in one go. That's gone up incrementally over a number of months. So when our weight is plateaued, we then added a bit more. So it's kind of just finding ways to get 50 to 100 calories into your diet more each time. So adding large amounts of food, I wouldn't be able to just add a whole meal. I couldn't eat while I'm eating now and then just add another meal on top. It's just impossible. I just wouldn't be able to get the food in. But by increasing by small amounts each time, I've then been able to eventually hit this higher calorie intake that is now required. you're just looking to add small bits here and there. So just to reassure you, if you feel like, ⁓ my God, how am going to keep adding more food? Yeah, absolutely. And you only increased your food and add more if your data points that you're collecting say that you need to, right? If like Sian mentioned that your weight plateaus, your weight plateaus for a bit too long, then okay, you're probably not building muscle and you want to build muscle. you need to add a little bit more, a little bit more food to your day. I think another thing in when people are trying to eat more food, is worrying too much about everything being really healthy. Now, this isn't me promoting a really unhealthy diet, not at all, right? Because you do want to fill the most of your diet with nutritious sources. You want to limit the amount of ultra processed foods you're consuming. That's just a standard. And you probably are aware of that if you have been listening to our podcast throughout. But sometimes there is a place for Not trying to keep everything too clean, should we say, and trying to follow clean eating to the letter. Once you've hit your, or ticked your health boxes, got what you need from your diet, then it's okay to enjoy some more palatable options. even more so when you're in a building phase, because you want to make sure that ⁓ consuming enough calories to allow your body to be in that building state. Absolutely. I think that I have made this mistake in the past where I've tried to go a little bit too clean eating style. That stupid term. I really hate that term, but clean eating where I'm trying to really minimize the amount of processed foods in my diet. And then I'm also trying to bulk at the same time. And it just gets unrealistic with what you have to consume and the types of foods that you need to eat. There is definitely time and a place for being a little bit less strict when it comes to your meal choices and having some more enjoyment in your diet but when you're trying to build muscle you will benefit from having some choices which are a bit easier to consume which you look forward to eating which you get a bit more pleasure out of help you to hit that higher calorie intake that you need to get to every single day. Like Katie said, once you've ticked your protein box, you've got plenty of fiber, you've got lots of fruits and veg, lots of micronutrients, different sources of carbohydrate, et cetera, already ticking all the health boxes for food. So then it's just a question of, okay, ⁓ need to get some extra calories in here. How can I do this comfortably without causing myself too much discomfort with bloating, ⁓ GI stress? any of that sort of stuff, what can I to help to get my calories up to the level that I want them to be at? Yeah, absolutely. And that's where you can, ⁓ know, fit in those pleasure foods, the enjoyment foods and the of the building phase. I think this is actually something that really helps people's relationship with food as well. Because a lot of people that have never done a building phase before would have spent a lot of time focusing on removing those sorts of foods from their diet, keeping out of those sorts of environments where potentially classed as naughty foods or bad foods. Learning to reintroduce these things back into your diet and consume them in moderation and enjoy the pleasure and enjoy them without overdoing it, I think is a really important skill and really beneficial one for the rest of your life. So doing this in a building phase can actually improve your relationship with food. Do not feel like these foods should be banned or should be permanently restricted. Yeah, it allows you to have that mentality, isn't it? I can have a whole, still not going to have it all at once. But I've got the calories to experiment with that as well as keeping up some great healthy habits during the process. And in the building phase, you are more satiated more often, you're fuller more often. So you're probably less likely to overeat these foods just because you're not as hungry as well. So you will eat so much of it and then you probably feel fuller more quickly. So it's actually a good time to reintroduce some of the foods that you may think, I shouldn't really be eating that. With the caveat that you are... I want to say taking those health boxes first, right? Keeping those good habits in place because if you are opting for those more pleasure foods before you've actually filled yourself up with good nutrition, then you may easily over consume those in excess. So still recognizing that having meal that is high in protein, rich in fiber, fruit and veggies is what's needed to allow you to feel full. So you're less likely to want to snack. And when you do have the pleasure foods, you're less likely to over consume them because ⁓ your brain's already telling you that you're pretty full and you don't need more than that. So it's still using your calories wisely but allowing yourself then that bit more flexibility whilst doing so. One of things I do notice as a practical challenge, Sean, in a building phase, and maybe particularly because you have six meals a day, cough cough, it's the time spent preparing, eating, and bloody washing up. See, I don't really see this to be as much of a challenge, Katie, but I'm not sure why. ⁓ no, is that because of very ⁓ up godmother? Hmm might have something to do with it. Yeah. We're in a magic one and just have more upon with the preparing and the eating side Yeah. Jokes aside, the more frequently you eat, the more you're going to be preparing, cooking, just literally the time eating. I do think I spend a lot of time every day just eating food. one my big work ons ⁓ over last couple of years actually has been just to eat slowly, eat more mindfully. So not just like ⁓ slam food down me at a hundred miles per hour, actually chew it, actually take my time. you're doing that and you're eating more meals per day you do feel like you're spending a lot of time eating. There's ways to try and make this process a little bit easier so you don't ⁓ of your time in the kitchen, be it preparing, cooking, eating or washing up. What are some of those things that you could do, Charlotte? We like to do a lot of home cooking and I'm sure lots of people listening to this podcast also like to do a lot of home cooking, but don't feel like you have to make that your entire identity where all you allow yourself to do is cook from home. There are lots of ways to get food into your diet that's really nutritious and tasty without having to cook every single time. We use a meal prep company, Clean Lean Kitchen, and they are absolutely fab. The meals are really tasty. They change on a frequent basis, so we get lots of variety with it. We know the calories and the macros of the foods. Works really well around our lifestyle. So we have a number of meals from those each week. So that helps me out with my multiple meals a day. We also eat things like bowls of yoghurt and fruit that we can put together quite quickly. Oats. We buy some ready-made chicken options. a certain number of lunches a week, we've already got ready-seasoned chicken breast that is good to go. We use things like microwave packets of grains, mixed grains, rice, vegetables, which be microwaved pretty easily. We do cut out a lot of corners with cooking at times because the amount of food that we have to eat and the time that we have available to eat it just means that something's got to give somewhere. Don't feel like you're... doing wrong for having some more readily made or readily prepared options. It cuts down on your prep and your cooking time. It cuts down on your cleaning up time. And ultimately, that suits a lot of people's very busy lifestyles better nowadays than trying to cook and prepare everything from fresh. doesn't have to be ultra processed and really low in nutrients. when it's readily prepared it can still be really good nutritional quality. Absolutely, it's about picking your battles isn't it on how you can the situation work for you with the time you have available on lifestyle that you need to live or the lifestyle you want to live. Now, there's some of the practical challenges, but there's also some psychological barriers when it comes to going into a building phase. I've had some psychological barriers in the past. We worked with many clients that have psychological barriers when it comes to building. And think the most obvious one is the fear of weight gain and the fear of fat gain, especially in individuals that have either worked so bloody damn hard to lose the body fat in the first place or individuals that generally just really enjoy being leaner and that's their comfort zone. We have discussed this quite a bit in previous podcasts as well, haven't we? So let's just summarize this shortly But weight gain must happen to build muscle. Fucking can be kept to a minimum though. If you are accurate with your nutrition, it can. But weight gain must happen to build muscle. this is a fear I'd encourage you to explore. get over, gain some positive experiences with it so that you can really achieve the goals that you want to achieve. If you're maintenance calories or a slight surplus and you're accurate, then you're not going to gain much fat at all. And you can maintain that position for a very long period of time before body fat levels creep up to a point where you think, right, I need to do a fat loss phase now and cut back down again. And even if you're not tracking calories, even if you're not weighing out portions of food, it still makes sense to try and gain weight slowly. We definitely recommend tracking something, like rather than just visual change, because it takes a bit longer to see, but looking at gaining weight slowly is also a really good sign that you're not gaining much fat. and we would highly recommend you checking out the podcast which compares weight loss and fat loss for you to have a little bit more information on that. But like Katie said, weight gain has to happen, fat gain can be kept to a minimum and experiencing the process will remove a lot of that psychological. baggage, let's say, that you worry about when it comes to doing these building phases. Absolutely. Absolutely. And don't just rely on the scale to tell you the full picture that either. But yeah, like Sean said, go back to previous podcasts of Leavis Fat Loss versus Weight Loss Explained and that will help you a lot with ⁓ ⁓ in particular. What are some of the other psychological barriers when it comes to eating to fool? at building muscle. Something that I've encountered a lot whilst I've been coaching has been issues around eating certain foods. And a lot of this comes from the fear mongering that gets spread around online. A lot of the charlatans that tell you that certain foods are toxic or they're going to make you ill or this ingredient's really unhealthy, don't eat that, but instead buy my book. All that loads of rubbish and nonsense. meaning that a lot of people are to eat foods which are perfectly fine to eat in moderation as part of a natural healthy balanced diet. ⁓ And they're eliminating so many foods in their diet, because they're so afraid of eating these ingredients, they struggle to just find enough food to eat on a consistent basis to hit their calorie intake each and every single day. So me, the way to look at this... is look at what the vast majority the population are consuming and just use a bit of common sense. The research and the data shows that our bodies do a really good job of removing any harmful and toxic substances from our body that may find their way into our bodies through our food. The amounts that we actually get into our bodies are likely so small that they're not difficult for our bodies to handle. And even with the individuals that have problems responding to these. Even when individuals consume excessively high amounts some of the reported foods that are really unhealthy for them, we don't necessarily see the rates of and the rates of disease and the rates of poor health that are suggested by people online that are fear mongering certain ingredients and certain labels packets. So it's about having some common sense and thinking what impact is this really going to have if this is the only amount of this stuff that I have in my diet. never down to just one food group that ⁓ you unhealthy or is going to be bad for your health ⁓ That fear mongering online can be really impactful, not just for building muscle, but just in general when it comes to eating a diet that you enjoy. So yeah, do agree there, Sian. The only thing that I will say is that people will consume regardless of whether they're doing. Fat loss, muscle building, maintaining, whatever, is alcohol. Alcohol unhealthy in every form. There is no amount of alcohol that's healthy for you. It's very dose dependent, but even very small amounts of alcohol do come with their risks and they do have a negative impact on your health. So... When we say there is no one type food or type beverage or drink in this example, ⁓ there ⁓ alcohol harmful to you and you should try and limit your alcohol consumption as much as you possibly can for better health. that said, outside of that, It's really, really, really hard to put your finger on one single food that is going to be really toxic, really harmful, really damaging to you if you only consume it in moderation and the rest of your diet is really healthy around it. Yeah, I fully agree. I fully agree. I think it's just about not getting too caught up in particular thing being really destructive outside of ⁓ of course. you know, I'm talking about the people ⁓ you see online. going around the supermarkets demonising certain food groups and certain foods, particular brands etc. It's not really beneficial to anyone for their life. not. Do you think there is a problem with... There being a bit too much flexibility for some people when they're encouraged to start eating more, Katie. ⁓ absolutely. Hands down. probably even struggled with that when I first had more calories available. It's like, woohoo! Yes, I can have my chocolate, can have my ice cream, I can have my crisps. And then it's like a kid in a candy shop. Every day is a weekend. Yeah. So it can lead to that. And I know many individuals from experience working with many clients that I'm not the only one that would have struggled with that going from lower calories to higher calories. I think even more so when individuals have perhaps dieted for quite some time of their life. It's an absolutely new concept and more flexibility can lead to different problems that you face when you're in something like a fat loss phase where rules are, I won't say rules, but yeah, rules are clearer. You know what you're doing. You know what's expected of you. You can switch off temptation perhaps a little bit easier because you know that there's a particular result you get from the end of it. But when you go to a building phase and you've got more calories available, you don't really know. what guidelines and measures you're going to be looking at to see if you're going the right way. And then you've also got these calories to ⁓ it's like, ooh, what I going to do with these then? And I think if you go straight into building phase without having some structure, some routine, perhaps some rules for yourself, because rules aren't always a bad thing, it can help ⁓ control the flexibility in a good way. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if you ever did if it fits your macros or if you ever... Oh, I've absolutely done that. There's not many things I haven't tried. Come on. I'm sure a lot of the audience will be familiar with if it fits your macros, but it's essentially saying you can eat whatever you want as long as it fits in your calories and your macros for the day. Now, this concept in itself was meant to be a permissive, helpful concept, but it just got abused so badly because people would be eating really poor nutritional quality foods, like absolute rubbish all day, every day and go, ⁓ my calories are up. It's like there's so much more to nutrition and health than just a number that goes in a spreadsheet. It's not just about calories. ⁓ not just about how you hit your protein every day. These foods have different impacts on your body. They've got different nutrients in them. We know from other research that it's really easy to over-consume calories when you're eating nothing but hyper-palatable foods. We don't get the same signals to switch off from eating and to tell us we're full and to tell us that we've had enough that we get when we're eating slightly more plainer foods. So, you can in theory eat a certain amount of calories every day of whatever food you want. and not gain weight or not gain fat. But that doesn't really solve the health problem. That doesn't make you function optimally as a human being and it doesn't allow you to have better health outcomes. And in the case of this podcast, we're looking to build muscle here. What's the point in trying to build muscle to look good if your health is rubbish? Yeah, you feel like absolute poo. Yeah, you're eating rubbish food every single day. Like we're talking about how to feel more energized, how to feel your best, how to perform your best. You're not going to be doing that if you're eating rubbish all the time. If you're trying to go in and do your best gym sessions, but you've been eating nothing but junk food, you're not going to be fueled very well for that gym session. That energy probably isn't going to make it to the gym. You're probably not even going to make it to the gym because you crashed on the sofa. get off the toilet because you've nothing but rubbish all weekend and now your guts are in a mess. I ⁓ think you the nail on the head with it if it's your macros and it started from a very good place of pretty much unconditional permission to eat anything, which probably helped society at a time to come out because there were ⁓ loads things. demonizing certain food groups and demonizing not even just food groups, certain foods, et cetera, types of food. Yeah, it was a breath of fresh air to know that actually you can have some of these more pleasure foods in your diet. But like with all good things, they often get taken to the extremes, right? And then this got taken to the extremes of... We are the problem. It's us. It's humans, isn't it? We are the problem. We can't take what is meant to be a good thing and just take it for what it is and accept it for what it is and enjoy it for what it is. We've got to take it to extremes. We've got to try and take it too far. ⁓ how far can I bend these rules? It's us, we're the problem. Yeah, so you take bits of what works for you from all of these different things, and then you get the diet and approach that works for you really. I like the concept of having some permissive rules. So I encourage a lot of my clients, I do this myself. These rules are there to help enable you to have a better balance and a better relationship with food. They're not there to restrict you. but they are there to restrict you, but they're there to restrict you in a positive way because we know we all have a tendency to give in too much to temptation to overdo it a little bit. And then that leaves us feeling a little bit regretful afterwards. So put some rules in place that allow you to maintain the balance you want to have with your food. It's always your choice whether you choose to make or break the rules. It's always your choice whether you choose to go along with them or not, but some sort of guidelines and some sort of boundaries can actually feel a little bit more liberated. liberating to people, it can remove all that overthinking that often comes from having more calories to play with and what decisions to make from food. And if you're not overthinking all the time, then you're in a calmer state to be able to make better decisions. So I think having some basic rules in place, as an example, just off the top of my head, if you're choosing to go out for food and you're going to have drinks, you're not having drinks and a dessert, you're having one or the other. If you're going to have a takeaway on the weekend. You're not gonna have a takeaway on the weekend and then have loads of treats after the takeaway. You're going to just have the takeaway and you're gonna eat healthy for the rest of the day. These little things can help and everyone can make their own rules that suits them and their lifestyle, but. The key point is that not every single rule is designed to make things worse for you. Some things are actually to help you stay in the lines and to feel like you're getting a better experience out of it. Yeah, couldn't agree more there. Without some kind of direction, is very easy to ⁓ things. It's very easy to get decision fatigue. and make decisions that just don't align to where you really want to be. I think the more streamlined you can make that for yourself as an individual, then the easier it is for you to stay in control, but be confident in the decisions that they're right for you. like you said, Shaun, everyone's is going to be slightly different with that, ⁓ on things they want to enjoy in life. And also their goals at that particular time too. The other thing as a, I'm not even just a female, but I'm speaking from my perspective as a female who eats around 2,700 calories a day. I've definitely had comments of... You're not going to eat all of that food are you? You're going to eat all of that? That's a massive portion now. Well they go, oh I can never eat all that. Oh yeah that's a good one. That's a golden one. That happens quite a lot. There have been times where we've been out for food and somebody has come over to the table and said that to Katie and I wanted to stand up and punch them in the face. Have you? Yeah. ⁓ bless you. Because I'm like... I just said that proudest punch going, yes I bloody am. I am proud of you as well because you've the right to eat that much food, right? You've earned the right to eat that much food through your hard work, through your dedication, through how active you are, through the relationship that you have with your food, through how sensible you eat. so often. So you've the right to eat that food and look the way that you look. But it's more so just how nosy people are and how they will try and put their insecurities and mirror their insecurities onto you. They have no idea how hard you've worked psychologically to get to a point where you're comfortable eating this stuff without gaining weight, without resenting yourself, without feeling guilty. Like, it's very true. Allow me to swear. But who the fuck are you to come over and pass comment on what somebody else has to eat? Like, it really winds me up. And sometimes I just feel like, mind your own business, go back to your table and eat what you got to eat, drink what you got to drink and keep out. I've never thought of it from your perspective or someone else's perspective here. Actually, there's probably many people that have that comment or comments thrown their way. And if they're in the early stages of repairing a relationship with food or potentially eating more food, then that can really hinder them or be destructive or make them question whether they should actually be eating that much food. Yeah, it's not, it's quite damaging actually. I see it from both sides because obviously I've worked with a lot of people that have had trouble with eating more and come from relationships with food that have been quite destructive where it's expected for them to eat small portions, it's expected for them to not fill up their plates and things and that's quite a detrimental mindset to have. I just think that you shouldn't really be commenting on what somebody else is eating unless you're in their circle of trust to be able to make those comments to begin with. Like, it's our jobs to help clients with what they're eating and to make recommendations on what they could change with their diet to get better outcomes, to get better results, to improve their health and relationship with food. It's not for anybody else to come and comment on what you're eating. And just to make this clear, we all have a joke around friends and family, about foods and stuff. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like I said, those people are in your circle of trust. It's a bit different. You can have a very different conversation, a very different bit of fun with that. ⁓ sometimes you just let it go over your head. And that's what I have to do when somebody comes over to the table and they might say something to you, I just let it go over my head. ⁓ deep down, ⁓ know that there's a deeper meaning to that. And that person is most likely just... reflecting their insecurity project was a call what's the term projecting they're just projecting their insecurities onto you they're worried about what would happen to them if they had that much food they might secretly admire or secretly want to be able to eat as much as what you're able to eat or what you're choosing to eat and look the way that you do but it's about understanding that If you're training to build muscle and you're eating more food and you're making certain choices with meals, chances are people are going to look at what you're eating and they are going to look at what you're doing and they're going to feel a bit intimidated by that. They're going to feel a bit triggered by that in certain environments. Definitely so. Just try and remember that their comments are not a reflection on you and your goals and your body and what you're doing. it's more of a reflection on them. So try and blank them out as much as you can. Yeah. And stay in your lane with it because you're in a process of perhaps preparing, perhaps repairing your relationship with food and keep doing that because it's a good place to bloody be in, right? And, or you have an important goal that you want to achieve with building muscle mass. So it's a case of, yeah, you do need to all of that food. You need to fuel that costly process. they actually want you to say back from it. ⁓ they ⁓ over and go, you're not going to eat all that are you? No, actually, I'm not. No, now that you've said it, no, I just pushed my plate across the table. So what will they expect you say? Yeah, I am actually Janice. I am going to eat all this. sit down, shut up and go and eat your pot noodle in peace. It just makes me think that it just actually emphasizes a lack of understanding with nutrition for so many people. And I actually feel for these people that have to these comments and feel this way about nutrition. Because I feel very grateful that I've got this knowledge and I've got this relationship with food now when it comes to not just building muscle in life in general, but yeah, you know, my heart's like my soft soul. I do. And I think, well, yeah, I am eating all of this. And sorry that you don't feel comfortable about that. usually a deeper meaning to it, right? I think that's the best way to look at it though, isn't it? I think it's one of the hardest things to do, but it's having empathy for that other person and realizing that this isn't a you problem, it's a them problem. Yeah. trying know, it sounds but take pity ⁓ on the that ⁓ They feel the need to comment ⁓ on what you're and try and bring you down for something that they can't experience themselves. It's a similar comment with someone who's healthy because, fortunately, eating healthy is not with the norm I go to these days. And if you're eating a healthier snack around a lot of people, particularly you see this in... Implices of work for individuals where it's like, ⁓ eating healthy today, are you? As if that's something that's abnormal and that can make people who are trying to make a better choice for themselves feel really uncomfortable. But if you are that person who's choosing to do those habits, hold your head up high and be like, yeah, I am. And this is what I wanna do. This is how I wanna live my life. ⁓ do it with a big smile on your face. A lot of these individuals that make these comments, they probably need to be led by example. They probably need somebody to be brave enough to break the norm. Because if you go into a workplace with healthy meal for the first time, for second time, for the third time, whatever it is, and they make a comment and they say, ⁓ healthy food today, is it? And then you go, well, now I'm standing out from the crowd. I'm noticeable. They've highlighted this. ⁓ feel uncomfortable, I'm not going to bring this healthy meal into my mouth, I'm just going to go along with the rest of the group, I'm going to Greg's on lunch break with the rest of the group. You're making a decision which is not necessarily what you want, doesn't really match the behaviours and the outcomes that you want, but you're also reinforcing that person's bias. What they really need, and if you really want to try and get into psychology with this, is they need to be shown that the opposite to what they think is safe for them is also safe for them. They need to be shown that the opposite is normal and a good choice. It's the same with bigger portions, isn't it? Like, actually filling your plate up to fuel well. ⁓ there's... I see so much in ⁓ younger now, but perhaps... generations older than us, where it was more encouraged for women to have smaller portions that was seen as the right thing to do because they were supposed to be a smaller individual. And smaller usually indicated more attractive, smaller usually indicated looking better, et cetera, that then having a bigger portion would be frowned upon. Which, it's nonsense really, isn't it? My God, because... I'm five foot nine, I'm really active. I need a big potion. My point is that you should lead by example and you could be the one to change somebody's mindset on that. If you're brave enough to say, I'm not going to let those comments get to me. I'm going to still go along and do what's right for me. And I'm going to show them that this can still lead to being a healthy, fit, athletic individual. So step them. And you're actually teaching them a really important lesson there. You're actually challenging their belief. You're challenging their psychology and their bias proving them that there is another way. And you're not doing that in a dogmatic, aggressive, argumentative way. Your actions are speaking louder than your words. And I think that that is a really important takeaway for a lot of people listening to this podcast. Yeah, I agree, Sean. Well said. And just on the last point of psychological barriers, I think it's important to talk about this next problem because it's one that I have had a hard time with and that's trying to be too lean all the time. This doesn't just capture people that want to build muscle, but it definitely is a problem If you're trying to stay lean all the time, you're essentially trading your health for aesthetics. You're trying to look a certain way all year round, present a certain image of yourself all year round, potentially with negative consequences, with potentially malnutrition, under-fuelling, not giving your body enough nutrients of what it needs. There are potential hormonal implications of trying to be too lean all year round. Now, we're not saying that everyone will suffer. from these consequences, because some people can naturally hold lower body fat levels all year round and be absolutely fine. There are some individuals that this is quite normal for, but there are other individuals, and you'll know if I'm talking to you or not, that have to work really, really, really hard to get as lean as they would really like to be in their heads. And it's not natural for them to hold that level of leanness all year round. It's... quite outside of what is normal for their body. And it's a real struggle to get there. It feels awful when they're there. And to try and stay there is probably just worsening their health and wellbeing by being there. In terms of the impact this has on building muscle, it's not going to pay off in the long run. We have research to suggest that some individuals that are too lean will actually struggle to build muscle whilst they're that lean until they regain body fat. There may be a slightly more optimal range for building muscle and that might be slightly higher levels of body fat than what you think your best look and your best appearance. Fairly individualized, but Just bear in mind that if you are extremely lean and you're struggling to build muscle, it might be that you're just too lean. Yeah, I think it's an important point to note because that's where a lot of people will start, right? And they will start naturally, genetically lean. And their battle is actually, I really struggle to gain mass. you may be limited in that by trying to stay at that body fat level all year round and perhaps just gain a little bit of body fat would allow your body to be in more of an optimal building state than not. It's actually one of the myths that still gets spoken about now. I saw a post about this the other day, somebody saying that you should lose fat first because when you get really lean, you're more sensitive to muscle growth. You're more sensitive to building muscle. That's an absolute lie. It's an absolute load of nonsense. That's the opposite, isn't That's not what the research suggests. I think what's being confused there is the fact that when you're really lean, if you do build muscle, you can see the muscle growth a little bit easier because you're already lean. That doesn't mean that you build more muscle. That doesn't mean that you increase your rate of muscle gains. If anything, the research is showing the opposite, that if you're too lean, it makes it really difficult to build muscle and you might be better off regaining some weight and regaining some body fat before your body is in a more anabolic state to be able to build muscle more consistently. Just be mindful of this. trying to stay too lean and ⁓ eating calories, which is mostly what people do to try and stay too lean, prevents you from being in this environment for building muscle for a long period of time. And I could go into ⁓ psychology behind body composition and trying to stay too lean for long periods of time. So not gonna do that in this particular episode, but just know that. There is a trade off for trying to look a certain way all year round you might actually feel better and grow more confident in your appearance if you allow yourself time outside of that state. I just had an idea spring to mind. It's definitely not one for this podcast, right? Because it's a whole topic itself, but I think it may be helpful to talk a little bit more about that in an episode and particularly from your experience, trying to stay lean. Oh boy. well, all the time and that actually impacting how you're feeling yourself, impacting your muscle building journey. Have the listeners got time for a four-hour episode? Guys, I'll be in a minute, don't worry. I'll be in a minute. But I think that's one for another time for sure. And I think it'll be an interesting But for now, ⁓ to ⁓ a little bit more insight around fowling correctly to build muscle, shall we just delve ⁓ the minds of coaching just a little here? listeners have some practical frameworks that they can take away with them. to help them when it comes to their building phase. So are there any particular frameworks, Sean, that you have found particularly helpful in your experience with If you're new to this, I a really good way to start is to start on maintenance calories. So don't worry about going up to a surplus, just calculate for maintenance calories and just aim for a really slow, steady building phase for a short duration. This is literally just like a trial period. So I'm talking like eight to 12 weeks, which is probably enough to see a little bit of progress. You'll see some improvements in your lifting, in the gym. You'll definitely experience higher energy levels. You may see some muscle growth. This isn't to have your best phase of building muscle you're ever gonna get in your life. This is more of a psychological phase where you're putting yourself into a state where you're able to eat more calories consistently for a long period of time. If you've got any fears about fat gain or you've got... struggles in the past from, or you've got hang ups about scale weight, then running phase for 8 to 12 weeks of eating more calories is a great way to move past that. Because the only way you're ever going to get to a point where you're able to maintain a building phase for like ⁓ 6 9 months at a time, a more optimal building phase where you can really build more muscle, by overcoming these hang ups. If you can't get past those psychological barriers, then you're never going to achieve this. And I think this is a big mistake that I see a lot of coaches make. A lot of my clients have come from coaches that have encouraged this, is they put them on really high calorie diets. They try and get them in bulking phases for longer periods of time when they're just simply not comfortable eating even at maintenance calories for six weeks. It's like they're trying to make them run before they can walk and they're constantly afraid of falling over. We just need to take this slow. So that would be my recommendation to start off with. Maintenance calories. eight to 12 weeks, short duration, take it slow, get a good experience from it, and then you'll be more excited to do it again, and you'll remove a lot of these psychological barriers that were already standing in your way. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely walk before you can run, bank some positive experiences, and then move on to your next stage. I would just like to say here that it's always helpful to just acknowledge that When you're on a journey like this, every phase is just going to be taking you a step closer to not even an end goal, but where you want to be. Because your goalpost will probably always move and every phase is just taking you closer. You're just investing in yourself for the long haul. You're never going to stop investing in your health. You're never going to stop investing in your wellbeing. I think that soon you can accept that the phases that you do, are just taking you steps closer, either psychologically, physiologically or both, then the more peace you're going to be at during this journey. That's my two pence there. other one I think ⁓ really helpful and a framework I like to use is thinking about 80 to 90 % good nutrition quality. 20 % chocolate and 20 % You know me. 20 % chocolate in your case, it might be crisps. Who knows? But yeah, no 80 to 90%. Right? If you can look at your week, let's call it a week as an overall look at your week overall. Fill that 80 % with good nutrition quality. Like we keep banging on about taking the fiber boxes, taking the protein boxes, taking the fruits, the veggies boxes, getting some grains in there. Then you are going to put your health, your energy levels, your mood, your satiety levels in a really solid place. Do that. Then the other 10 to 20%. Give yourself a bit of what you really like. You can't have all of the good, pleasurable foods without filling yourself up with some of nutrition stuff either, as well. I think that's a really helpful framework and one that's been proven to be successful time and time again, especially in our community. Katie, I want to put this one back to you again, because I think you've probably had a better experience with this than me. But using non-tracking days, I this can be really helpful for individuals that struggle to get away from obsessing over numbers, being so perfect in their calorie trackers, and feeling about over-consuming things as well. I'm happy to talk about this one. it's non-tracking days, right? They do serve a purpose. They absolutely serve a purpose. Perhaps for more experienced individuals, but then again, there are scenarios that could be appropriate for many different reasons. But when it comes to non-tracking days, your calorie tracker, It is a tool, right? It is a tool that gives you bit of accountability. It also can teach you a hell of a lot about nutrition. So you don't have to rely on a particular meal plan to serve a purpose and get your goal or achieve your goals. But it shouldn't be used as a crutch. It shouldn't be there to solely make your decisions. around or drink. And this is where doing non-tracking days can really come in handy because you can take away the accountability tool that you've been so reliant on for a long time. And it's not a bad thing being reliant on this, by the way, because when you have a particular goal in mind, it can help you be extremely accurate. So you can be confident in your decisions. So it absolutely serves a purpose. But to be able to step away from that tool and have the confidence in your decisions to still make the healthier choice for yourself is really empowering and it can really help individuals embed those healthy habits that they have built whilst using the tool of calorie tracking to use them without it. Because if you can only do your healthy habits, make the right choices for yourself, when you're calorie tracking then I'd highly encourage you question why. You don't have to or need to rely on that tracker to hold yourself accountable and to make the right choices for yourself. The habits that you do in phase that you do that are healthy for you, they still apply whether you put it down in a tracker or not. That tracker is simply just adding up some numbers for you. If you do go from, I'm not tracking today, so. fuck it let's be honest that's the mentality that happens right screw it I am going to just have whatever I want ten pieces of this get back to it tomorrow you're actually worsening your relationship with food because in your head it's not the fact that that habit is an unhelpful habit to you in your head it's because you're not calorie tracking that That's the problem. That carry tracking restricts you. That's the problem. But that's not actually the problem. That's not actually the root cause. It's the fact that you're just over consuming that particular food, over indulging in XYZ. Lost a bit of self control. You're not regulating emotions very well. So you're turning to food. These are the real problems. Absolutely. And You can those and might feel bloody uncomfortable to do so, right? Pull back the layers. And your calorie tracker isn't going to fix any of them for you? ⁓ No, calorie tracker is just actually going to heighten them even more. It can't even mask them. Yeah, it can mask them because you're not paying attention to those emotions when you're literally just robotically following what you're putting in your calorie tracker every day. It's like following a diet plan. Anybody can robotically follow a diet plan. Take the diet plan away, what happens? And if you can't make better decisions with eating food, when you take all these parameters away, then this is a really obvious sign that your relationship with food and your habits around food, and probably emotional regulation with food, needs work. And if that is okay, if that, I'm sorry, if that is the case, That's okay. It doesn't make you a bad person. It just means that you might want to address those to have long term success and have full control and confidence in the decisions that you're making around your nutrition. don't know many people that... don't have some hangups or let's call them vices or whatever they would use to describe them. I'm trying to think of the terms that people use to describe them, but you know, what are the pitfalls? What are the hazards? Like everyone has their own thing with food that they need to try and keep in check. We all got them. The better you can regulate those and the better job you do at managing those, the more successful you're likely to be with health and in this case with body composition change. Like let's not forget the podcast is about building muscle. The problem is if you can't manage these things and if you can't manage these emotions, then you're probably going to end up overshooting or you're probably going to end up gaining loads of fat and every time you try and build muscle. And then as a result of that, you're going to need to be going back into restrictive fat loss states which are stopping you from building muscle. these are problems which are problems which will exist across of your life. They're not just ⁓ building phase specific problems, but the reasons why we're mentioning them in this particular podcast is because it can actually stop you from being in the state you need to be in in order to build muscle. Absolutely. And I think these problems get masked more when you're in a fat loss journey or phase because you are so focused and tunnel vision on, I'm just sticking to the plan. I'm just sticking to the calorie limit to drive a particular outcome. So you can kind of ignore those for a little while, but you can't ignore them forever. And they can come back and bite you in the ass when it comes to having more food and more flexibility. Really well said, Katie, and the way that you've described all that and explained all that, really, really helpful. Like, I've benefited from listening to you talking through that and it from your perspective as a coach. Just so can add the flip side to this, you mentioned that calorie tracking. is the better option for some people when they're beginners. there any other scenarios where calorie tracking might still be the better option for individual? So they don't necessarily have these hangups with foods. They don't struggle with the relationship with food. They perhaps might be capable of their consumption of food. So you would remove the tracking from them and they're not gonna have those let's call it fuck it moments that other individuals may experience, why would they then benefit from having calorie tracking as a more regular tool for them? accuracy right so You're trying to achieve a particular result. How can you expect to achieve a very specific result without specific actions? Calorie tracking allows you to be more specific with what you are doing. So calorie tracking allows that accuracy, right, to achieve that particular result. Now I've talked a lot, and this seems to be a theme throughout our podcast, I've talked a lot more about the emotional side of food, trying to fuel to achieve a particular result. But sometimes it's not emotional, sometimes it's more of a logistical problem, right? And I see this more in you, Sean. So I think I'd like to hand this back over to you now to share your experience with why calorie tracking to build muscle is still beneficial for you, even though you've always had a pretty decent relationship with food and your choices with what you eat wouldn't differ whether you were calorie tracking or not really. I would find it really difficult to consistently eat the amount of calories I have to eat every single day if I was not calorie tracking. and to be accurate with these because I naturally have... A very healthy diet. enjoy. lots of whole foods, I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. decisions around food are very much ingrained and have been for a long period of time. I don't tend to regulate my emotions very much with food. I eating things that I enjoy, ⁓ but almost trust my body to not send me signals to overdo it with those and I don't feel like I have the urges and cravings to to overconsume. I'm very comfortable saying no when I don't want something If I wasn't calorie tracking on a regular basis, I think I'd probably struggle to hit my calorie intake because I think I would naturally gravitate towards eating loads of healthy foods, having a little bit of kind of enjoyable food most days, and still being slightly short of my calorie intake just because most of my diet would be healthier. I would... I would probably gravitate more towards eating less of the not so healthy stuff if I wasn't calorie tracking because I would probably assume that it's more calories than it is, if that makes sense. So calorie tracking for me is quite permissive because when I tally it all up and I put it all together, I realize, ⁓ actually, it's not quite as high as I thought. And I probably do need to eat a little bit more than this. And I don't know if anyone Listening to podcasts has tried to eat nearly 4,000 calories a day, but it's a lot of putting a lot of food in my tracker every day to try and this out. On the flip side of it, I also a massive appetite. So it's not so much I've got an inability to stop myself from over consuming sweet stuff ⁓ or over unhealthy foods. It's more a case that my portion size or my portion control without calorie tracking may lead to me overshooting intending to. I may find that typically larger volumes of things like carbohydrates. If I'm eating things like rice, potatoes, oat bowls, trying to like eyeball those ⁓ not ⁓ those calories in my tracker would be really difficult because they're quite volumizing foods anyway. It's quite easy to misjudge those portions. So. For me, just allows me to be precise and to get in the ranges that I want to be. My decisions around food and what I would choose to eat and kind of how much I would choose to balance out healthy foods in my life and my enjoyable foods wouldn't change regardless of the calorie tracker. I don't think that would be an issue for me because enjoy the way the food makes me feel in the relationship I had with it, regardless of the numerical value. I do care a lot about getting the numbers side of things right because I want to fuel myself as well as possible for muscle building. I want to try and progress with physique goals as much as I can at this stage in my life. I care a lot about not gaining more body fat because I'm really comfortable with how I look right now. And yeah, just found that point this is where I can get my best results. but without it being harmful to my relationship with food. Yeah, that makes total sense. And I think as I'm sitting here listening to you talk about that and your experiences, I think I'm very much more on similar level to where you're at now. But I've also been in the the corner of not having such a great relationship with food. Now, could say I'd be confident enough if I if you had to take my track and away from me. My composition of in terms of the amount of healthy food I eat, more nutritious food I eat, that is something I enjoy. I thrive of having that in my diet. That would be my staple. That would be my go-to. And it'd be easy for me to just slot in the pleasure foods into that. I could do that now. And I feel like I could do that for a long time without it going to piton, let's be honest. But like you said, the calorie tracking allows that accuracy, that precision. to drive a particular outcome, to know that you're in a building state consistently every day, rather than potentially dipping in and out of being in a building state. If you can be in a building state for months and months on end, you're gonna put yourself in a much better state to build muscle in the long term. So yes, it into that outcome very, very well. It gives you the confidence that you're feeding into that outcome very well, right? Absolutely. ⁓ It's not something I feel like I'm forced to It's choice that I make that benefits me a hell of a lot when it comes to getting the balance right with my goals, what I want to achieve, ⁓ and still being able to have a degree of flexibility around food with the things that I And I actually... I actually don't feel like I would do too badly without it, but I also don't feel like I need to figure out why I would need to change it. Because it just runs like clockwork for me every day and I really enjoy the process. So that's my take on that. agree. I think if ⁓ listen to this you... Always remind yourself it's your choice to these tools or not to support your goals. But don't get trapped in the mindset of blaming the tool if something isn't working or something's not going in the right direction. It's not really the tool's fault. It's usually something's not quite working with the user end of things, ⁓ And to put that politely, that's not a problem on you. It's absolutely not. It's more of a self-reflection What could I be doing differently here to get the outcome that I really want? And usually it's not blaming the tool that you're trying to use. And that's where coaching really does come. invaluable. So we've discussed a lot on this podcast about under fueling when it comes to building muscle. by this stage, you should have a really good idea of some of the practical challenges you're likely to face, some of the psychological challenges you're likely to face, and also ⁓ of the ways that you can handle and deal with these challenges moving forwards. If you've been listening to this podcast and you found yourself saying That's me. Don't worry. We've got you covered. This is such a common issue for people that we decided to make a short mini series specifically designed to help you spot your most common mistakes with under-fuelling to build muscle. Like this podcast, we also include practical tips on how to make sure you're not missing the mark with your nutrition and costing yourself some valuable muscle gains in the process. Head to the description and click the link to download your free version of the mini series. Yeah, it's a good one. Get on it guys. In the next episode, we're going to share our appreciation and celebrate two client stories that have not only inspired us and our community, but have helped us become better coaches along the way. Thanks for listening, guys. See you next time.