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Fat Loss vs Weight Loss Explained · Beyond Fat Loss

• Katie & Sean Darlow: Welcome to the Beyond Fat Loss podcast where we don't just talk about fat loss, you learn about all of 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 host, Shona and Katie, and today we'll be answering a very common question about fat loss. How much weight should I expect to lose in a week? We're going to explain how it differs from individual to individual, how different approaches work for this and where the faster rates of loss are better or not. By the end of this episode, you'll have a much better understanding about what influences your rate of weight loss and why comparing to others won't always give you the answers you're looking for. If you're looking for an exact number, this episode will reveal how unrealistic having one is. So let's start off by clearing up a very common misconception. Are fat loss and weight loss the same thing, No, they are not, John. But they can be very misleading for people. Especially if you've never been told the difference between fat loss and weight loss. And how do you tell the difference between them? We're going to be deliberately referring to these two terms separately throughout this episode. So just remind yourself that ⁓ as you listen the rest of the episode. They're not the same and we're going to explain why so that you don't get them confused because they are different. Yeah, can agree with you. Fully agree. So what is weight as opposed to fat loss and so on? Weight is essentially everything that your body is made up of. That's what you weigh. So when you stand on the scales, you're getting an accumulation ⁓ your body fat stores, your skeletal mass. your muscle mass, your water in your body, any food stored, anything, any matter that's not been passed through your body yet, because you haven't been to the toilet, all of this stuff contributes towards your body weight. It's absolutely everything that is in your body. It's probably the simplest way to think about it, isn't it? It's everything that you have, or is included, or is stored, or that makes up your body, is what... what the number on the scales represents. That's what the, when you step on the scales and you see a number pop up, that's what that number is telling you. And that number can fluctuate quite considerably, can't it? Yeah, because what's in your body changes quite a lot from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour. What people think. is when they see a change on the scales that it instantly means that they are changing their body fat levels. And body fat levels don't necessarily change that quickly. No, it's unlikely that they change that quickly. And we're talking about, you know, There are probably individuals out there that will jump on the scales, potentially go to the toilet, jump back on the scales and be like, ⁓ my gosh, I'm lighter now, I'm lighter, that number I'm seeing is smaller. But that is literally you just disposing of some waste from your body. That isn't your body fat levels changing. So getting too caught up on that number and it fluctuating, how it fluctuates throughout the day, even, know, brings springs to my mind here is... Slimming World Clubs, right? Slimming World Clubs. I don't want to name any in particular. People will have... Slimming World Clubs. Clubs. ⁓ want to name any in particular. Slimming World Clubs. didn't anything to mine. Slimming Clubs. Let's go with Slimming Clubs, right? ⁓ You all... You can let whatever. Slimming Club comes to your mind. But, you know, how many women in particular, and men too, I can imagine, because men do go to these groups as well. have starved themselves the day before to jump on the scales the next day in whatever slimming club that they want to go to. Basically what they're doing is they're manipulating the system depleting themselves as much as possible for a lower weight to get the reward value of everyone clapping and saying well done. But what they've changed ⁓ basically ⁓ eating as much food and not drinking enough water. So they're aware of that. And they know that that can't possibly be body fat because the thing which they're manipulating in such a short space of time is not their body fat levels. But I do think slimming groups have fostered a bad environment for this in the sense that weighing ⁓ a week, for example, has put a lot of pressure on that particular weighing. representing whether that person has been successful or not within their diet, within their exercise, with whatever actions they've been carrying out for the past week or so. All of their progress relies on whether that number has gone down or not. If that number's gone up, oh, it doesn't matter how absolutely spot on they've been with their, with their actions, with their calorie deficit, with how many steps they've done, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It all relies on just what that number says. one singular data point? Yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous and we know how much it can fluctuate, right? Think about this in any other walk of life. If you had one singular data point for an incident of anything happening in life, would you change laws? Would you change rules? Would you change entire systems based on one incident or one data point? It's highly unlikely that you would react that much to one data point. You might just say, this could be a random anomaly. This might be something that's off trend. We don't have enough data to draw these conclusions yet people get so hung up on one singular weigh-in every single week, which is a highly fluctuating number. And as we go through this podcast, you'll understand a little bit more about why and how you can find some better use from weight data points. Yeah, I agree. And skiers are fickle and they will do they will do. They can spike up, they can spike down. But letting your actions be dictated by whatever that says is just going to set you up for failure. So trying to not let your emotions tie up with something that's quite unreliable on its own for a measure of progress. could probably spend a whole podcast talking about relationship with the scales and mindset around scale weight. But for the purpose of this podcast, let's talk about the difference between weight loss and fat loss and how we can reasonably assess whether the weight loss is heading in the direction and at the current rate or at the appropriate rates that we're looking for. Yeah so people can feel empowered right? They feel empowered by the actions that they're doing to help them on their journey of losing body fat. lot of people misinterpret the number they see on the scales with purely just fat loss. And that's not the case. It's actually a little bit more complex for us to measure world fat loss, genuine fat loss. It's not something which the scales will tell us to do. ⁓ do have a few ways of measuring fat loss or attempting to estimate how much fat we've lost. These all vary in terms of reliability. There are a few methods that you can do at home and there are a few methods which require a little bit more travel, going to specific locations to get access to specific measuring techniques and specific devices. But let's talk through some of the actual fat loss measurements that you can take, where you can get them from and kind of how they can serve you on your fat loss journey. So these measures we're trying to just understand how much body fat, just that substance alone is in the body, right? And that's how it differs from weight loss. There are, like you said, on a number of measures that all of them have their flaws, don't they? All of them should be, I don't want to say taken with a pinch of salt, taken with a pinch of salt, understanding the flaws with them. And if these measures are used, it's understanding that, it's trying to replicate when they're used. Every time you use them, try and replicate the same situation when you're utilizing some of these measures. So let's break these down a little bit, Sean, and discuss kind of what measures people can use. And then the other measures that are a little bit more kind of out of reach, say, something that's not easy to utilize on a day-to-day basis. Visuals are the most obvious one and they're probably the most obtainable one for everyone. Just taking some progress pictures, same time frame, same lighting conditions, same clothing. Try and get consistent with how you set these up. And they provide a pretty good snapshot of what your body composition is doing. Some people will look at these progress pictures and assess themselves very negatively. And I think this is something that perhaps improves when you have worked with a coach because you'll be able to see a second opinion and a second pair of eyes and have a bit more perspective because we're often far more harsh on ourselves than we should be. And sometimes we're not able to spot the genuine change which is occurring between progress pictures. But that said, progress pictures are a pretty consistent measuring option and they are something which we all have access to so they're highly practical and fat loss is mostly a visual result so we do want to see some change in those visuals as we go. Yeah I fully agree I think they're one of the handiest ways to see the changes but also for you to reflect back on how far you've come I think when it comes to using visuals It isn't something that can be done on a, well, it can be done on a day-to-day basis, but it's not something we'd recommend on a day-to-day basis, right? Because changes aren't necessarily gonna be that quick visually. I know we've talked about this in previous podcasts. It's set a time frame maybe every four to six weeks or the end of every fat loss cycle where you tend to take the visuals so you can have a look at any changes in body fat. But I do agree, it's a very simple way to do it. And I also agree. We can be really critical of ourselves with the visuals. So it is handy to have that second pair of eyes that isn't so emotionally attached to images as such. And all of pointing out the things that we don't like ⁓ about ourselves than the things that we like about ourselves, aren't we? In terms of like body fat testing, you get various test methods which estimate your body percentage. We're not going to into too much detail with these, but essentially they all have certain degrees of measurement error or be somewhat unreliable based on how the tests are set up or who they are performed by. Body fat percentage is one of those measurements that doesn't necessarily inform us as well as we think it does because an individual look very different at the same body fat percentage to somebody else. They might have different where they store fat in different areas. They might have different levels of muscle development. They might have ⁓ different frames, they might have different bone structure, makes look different when they're carrying that much body fat. You'll see some people that have got very, very lean limbs and still carry that last bit of stubborn fat on their torso for a little bit longer. Other individuals get a really nice tapered waist, really flat stomach, and they still hold fat around their legs and their bum, for example. So there are lots of differences in having a set number for body fat percentage. doesn't always help to inform what result you want to get in the long run either. you could have a body fat percentage ⁓ ⁓ for example, 25%, but you still don't feel comfortable like how you look. Now, what's to give you the better kind of understanding of where you want to be? Is that going to be the photo or the name photo, you are every day or this said number that you were hoping to get to? It's not gonna be the body fat percentage, right? It's gonna be how you feel day to day in your body. Body fat percentages, when you break it down, they're just predictive equations. And as we know, Sean, from looking at many of the research papers, body fat equations vary vastly, don't they? For the same person with all of the different body fat equations out there, you could be 25 % on one, 30 % on the other, 35 % on the other one. They vary quite considerably. So I guess my advice here would be to not get too caught up on that number and if you were using a particular measure to tell you your body fat percentage at the moment, do take that with a pinch of salt because it can fluctuate, it can vary. Sometimes it'll go in your favour and you'll feel fantastic and sometimes the result may not go in your favour but don't necessarily allow that to fully impact how you are seeing everything as a whole. Perhaps a gold standard or what's being deemed as a gold standard is a DEXA scan. There's still a degree of variability between DEXA scans as well. So you can have two DEXA scans done at exactly the same time on exactly the same day and you might get two different results. So there's still a little bit of variance within those. DEXA scans are to most people. There's not that many of them around. You have to pay quite a lot of money to get a DEXA scan. to just find out that your body fat percentage could potentially be wrong anyway. It doesn't really make that much sense from a practical perspective. wouldn't necessarily recommend going to get that done. going back to what Katie said, what does it really make if you're not happy with the end result? If you're really lean and you get your body fat percentage back and the body fat percentage has been overestimated slightly, Dexascan is particularly one of the harshest methods. It is likely to add a few more percentage on compared to other test methods. So you've got six packs abs, you're really confident in yourself. You're really, you're really happy that you've just done such a successful fat loss phase. You really go and get your body fat test done. The DEXA scan comes back at like 11 or 12%, which most people would be like, wow, that's amazing. I'm really pleased with that. But you feel like you should be somewhere under 10 % based on what social media has taught you or what images you've seen online. And now you're like, my God, I've still got loads of body fat. Like I need to go and do something about this. That's a really harmful way of doing things. If you're really happy, if you're really pleased with your result, if you're feeling confident in your body, a number should never drive you to get better results. It should be the actual outcome, the physical and visual outcome that you have. This ties in really well to weight loss. So I don't actually like body fat percentage as a method. I think it's pretty redundant, all things considered. I don't think it's entirely necessary for most people. But if you want to track your body fat, there is something that you can do that works reasonably well ⁓ tracking tool, but doesn't necessarily give a number that's as variable and potentially as unreliable as estimating your body fat percentage. Yeah, I fully agree. And there probably was a time where I used body fat percentage more thought I was doing the right thing by using it and relying on it. And obviously, in more recent years has come to light that actually, no, ⁓ not that accurate. And it's highly variable. So I fully agree with you, Sean. And I think there's nothing more powerful than the actual physical result, physical body you're in and how you're feeling. But you mentioned that is something that we can use, right? To body that might be helpful ⁓ and little bit more reliable, should we say, from time to time. And that's skin folds. But many people probably have never even heard of skin film measurements Or using callipers. us a little bit more about that. So essentially you buy this small, very easy to use device on the internet called Body Fat Calipers. You can get some really, really, really cheap and nasty ones and you can get some very, very expensive ones. I was lucky enough to use some Harpindum ones when I was at university and they were so much better than any of the cheapy plasticky ones that you can buy on Amazon. But there are some. slightly cheaper versions, made of plastic that are still semi-decent. Ultimately what you want is a set of calipers and knowledge of the sites to take a small pinch of a skin fold. measure ⁓ ⁓ the thickness of that skin fold across various sites. You add those millimeters up together ⁓ you get a total. And that total, So total sum of skin folds is what you call it. It's a really useful measure to track when it comes to your body fat levels. So just to be clear, it's not actually putting those numbers into the body fat equation to get the body fat percentage result. It's actually just the skin for measurements themselves that you can track on a semi-regular basis to see whether body fat's been lost or gained in that particular area and overall, of course. I personally see a much stronger correlation with my body fat levels my skin folds than when I used to track body fat levels and body fat percentage. So when I started paying more attention to what my skin folds were doing, how they were increasing, how they were decreasing, I a much better... prediction how much fat my body was storing and much fat I was to need to lose ⁓ to get an image similar to what I class to be my ideal end of fat loss image. Where I've taken progress pictures and I've looked at those progress pictures against skin folds, they make more sense than when I have done progress pictures and compared to fat percentage. So I think skin folds are a better measure for most people. But in my opinion, you don't really need them either. I agree fully. I agree fully. This is kind of like a, if you want to go that next step further, then you can get some body fat calipers and track your summer skin folds. If you're working with a face-to-face personal trainer, then that's something which they can do for you. But otherwise, it's not entirely necessary. I think it's important to note too, this human error element to taking the their skin folds, right, making sure they stand in the same place every time. So it is that element to be aware of as well. So unless you really need a to really know that depth, there's not really much need to ⁓ the visuals can be the most ⁓ in sign can't they? How else we measure fat loss? Or what other ways do people try and measure their fat loss, that ⁓ could potentially be deceiving. tape measurements and potentially using as a measurement that can be pretty deceiving from to time too. What are the problems with those? Muscle loss might have happened, right? So when you're doing a pinch of a skin fold, you're not pinching the muscle. You're pinching the skin and the fat that's just under the skin. When you're doing a tape measurement and you're measuring around an entire area, like measure around your arm, measure around your thigh, measure around your waist, you're not just measuring fat, you're measuring the entire circumference of that area. So it's going to include your muscle. So this is where tape measurements can throw people off because if somebody wasn't doing resistance training, they weren't eating a high protein diet and they were losing weight at a quick rate, then chances are they're going to be losing a lot of muscle. They might see progress in a tape measurement and go, ⁓ great, I'm losing fat. But they might be losing equally as much muscle. They might be losing more muscle than they're losing body fat wise. So that's not necessarily a healthy outcome. And the same can be said for clothes. Clothes work exactly the same way. Your clothes might be getting more loose fitting, but what's the point in having jeans that are more loose fitting if you're losing your bum and you're losing your thighs and you're losing all your shape to your legs and the strength to your legs? They're just not telling the whole story is the thing, isn't it? And I think there's not really any type of measurement that tells the whole story either. I think this is what's important to remember and be aware of when you are tracking your And this isn't ⁓ to scare you and tell you not to use anything at all, but it's more about thinking about you want to zoom out, look at the bigger picture and understand the cons of the measurements and some of what you can take away from them to make sure that. ⁓ you would get the information you need to make your choices for your next move. Yeah, spot on. I it's fair to say that most, if not all, individuals looking for weight loss are actually looking for fat loss. It's just that fat loss is really hard to measure, as we've discussed. Even if you were taking progress pictures, they're not going to change that much from day to day. Whilst fat loss is a little bit quicker than muscle building as a process, and you will see changes quicker than if you're doing a muscle building phase, it still doesn't change an enormous amount day to day. So is where weight comes in. And this is why we do track weight loss as form of prediction measure for fat loss. Because ultimately, over if your weight, your overall mass is going down, then it's likely that you are losing body fat, right? And whilst we can't measure exactly how much body fat you're losing and some of that is muscle mass or how much of that is muscle mass, the number on the scales can indicate fat going down. And as long as you're putting the measures in place, like resistance training, like high protein diet, when you're trying to lose body fat, then you can presume... that the majority of that or a higher percentage of that is coming from body fat. really well explained. Think of it like this. If we remove changes in skeletal mass from the equation, because we would like to think that you're not losing your bone density every single time you do a fat loss phase, your organs shouldn't be changing in weight. And ideally, we're going to be setting up a fat loss phase to maintain as much muscle mass as possible. So we're going to see minimal changes in that. That kind of only leaves a few which changing on a day to day basis. And whilst we might not be able to see it visually, you might be reducing a small amount of body fat from day to day. Water weight is going to change considerably, which we'll get on to talking about. All the food matter and waste matter in your body. will also change from a day to day basis. But at least by setting up a fat loss phase correctly to maintain muscle mass, we're kind of removing that from the equation. So if we're seeing weight trends go down over time. then we would expect some of that to be from fat. So we've got a slightly better predictor if we're not losing muscle mass. Yeah, absolutely. And this is where tracking your weight and more regularly becomes more empowering so you can understand if things are going in the right direction. And you can get your head around that and utilize the number you're on the scales as averages and looking at the trends over time. Then you can utilize the scales to your advantage when it comes to fat loss and on the flip side muscle gain. I'm sure we'll do another podcast at some point around that. now, stick to fat loss. can really be a tool that is helpful on a, I'm not going say day to day basis, right, because we know fluctuations day to day can change quite a lot. But it's the one, ⁓ the measure you can use more frequently as to photos, for example. We're going to use it to track the trend. And with trend over time, that will help us to guide the direction of the process. and then we confirm that the process is working in the way that we want it to by doing those visuals, so there's progress pictures and potentially coupling that with some skinfold caliper measurements as well. We want to choose a muscle sparing approach whenever we do fat loss. And for some individuals, some muscle can actually be built during a fat loss phase. And this can skew the perception of weight loss because you might be gaining some muscle mass and losing some body fat at the same time. This generally only happens in individuals that are in a very small calorie deficit. process is called body recomp. It's more common in individuals that are either obese or untrained. But what we would say is you don't want to factor this in too much, if you're specifically on a body recomp style plan. Because over time, muscle will likely be outpaced by fat loss anyway, because muscle building is a longer term process than losing fat. And it's slower from week week basis. fat loss. So if you're not losing weight for a number of weeks and you think you're building muscle and that's outpacing fat loss, just realize that's highly unlikely to be the case unless you're hyper responsive to muscle building, unless you are untrained, you've gone in on a full-blown maximum volume, maximum intensity, hypertrophy program, guided with a coach, perfect form, all of that jazz, which let's be honest, most people don't have when they first start their weight loss or fat loss journeys. yeah, don't expect your weight to be staying the same or going up on the scales because you're building muscle at a quicker rate than you're losing fat. This doesn't really tend to happen in the real world. No, and it's a very, very specific scenario that that happens, right? Like you mentioned, obese individuals, untrained individuals potentially returning from injury, right? You should note that there. And that's usually in deficits. Sometimes it has been shown in larger deficits. We can't ⁓ that, but ⁓ ⁓ when you are untrained or obese. And we like to think of it as... If you build muscle mass during a fat loss journey, it's a bonus. It should never be the main focus. Most studies that look at this and the conditions for this are run for a very short space of time. So a telltale sign as well. If been training for more than six months overall, there's very little chance of being able to get both at the same time. ⁓ Try not to factor that in too much, it's just worth us noting that we are aware that you can sometimes gain some muscle while you're losing fat. As Katie said, consider this to be a bonus to the fat loss journey, We will still see weight loss. going down even whilst we're building muscle if we're doing a calorie deficit appropriately. You're right, you're right. individuals may see a slight increase or the scales just may hold for week or two perhaps when there might be that little bit of muscle being gained but then eventually it'll start trending off ⁓ and down again for ⁓ the loss side of things. So yeah, think It's quite a common phrase that I hear, I'm not losing weight. I'm trying to lose body fat, but it must be because I'm building muscle that the scales aren't going down. Please do not get trapped in that frame of mind for too long, because that's very unlikely to be the case and you could just be holding yourself back from getting results that you really want. So we're going to use weight loss as a method to track week to week changes and potentially day to day changes but the way that we tend to track weight loss is weigh as frequently as possible so daily or at least I would say four data points over the course of a week and then you take an average of those data points and that becomes your weekly average weight and you track from week to week the weekly average weight. So for us, it's Monday, we get our clients check-ins. So we look at Monday to Sunday for the previous week, get the average weight, compare that back to the week, the average from the week prior to that. And that gives us an idea of a trend. Once you collect those data points for a few months, you have a really, really good idea of what direction things are going in. So weight can give you more of a short term checkpoint to see whether You're in the state which you want to be in, which is you're burning more calories every day than what you're taking in with your nutrition. And it allows you to make some changes along the way if you want to speed things up a little bit more. got that data to work with and to go, right, OK, so what can I do this week now? I want more from it. Talking about speed then. What sort of speed are we likely to see when it comes to weight loss? This is a important topic, I think, and I'm really excited to talk about this to help align people's expectations with the actions that they're carrying out. And I think the first thing we should actually mention here, Sean, is the in water weight when you initially start a fat loss phase or a diet. And this is assuming that you are starting from a replenished state. So that might be after diet break. It might be after a longer diet break over a couple of months, whatever it may be. Perhaps you've never even really done a diet before and you're then going into a fat loss phase. You're in a fully replenished state or likely to be in a fully replenished state there. So your first drop in weight and weight will likely be larger due to losing water weight from your body source. Now it can be quite exciting to see that drop when you go first going to fat loss phase, right? It's motivating, it's exciting, it's like, this is working great. Use that to fuel you to keep going, right? Absolutely use that to fuel you to keep going. But also understand that that initial big drop will be water weight, combined with some body fat, right? And the reason why it's important to understand this is because your weeks are followed may not be quite as large as the first week or two. that, the initial drop, large drop is motivating, but then you hit that block of, okay, you're sowing down a bit. Then you think, what am I doing wrong? But actually you're not doing anything wrong. You've just, you're now in a more depleted state. You haven't got as much ⁓ weight to drop. So this is where then fat loss is starting to occur. And Yes, that might be a little bit slower than you like and particularly slower than the first initial drop. From our experience, Katie, what sort of timeframe are we looking at there where we would expect to see those weight changes look a little bit less dramatic? After the first week or two? Yeah, I would say one to three weeks. Depending on what approach you choose. Sometimes it kind of the waterway comes off really quickly with a more aggressive approach and then with slightly more moderate style deficits where they're not quite as aggressive. It might be a week to two weeks sometimes maybe a bit longer. But yeah, it's important to note that you might see bigger changes in the first couple of weeks and then your weight then starts to settle into a more regular pattern of weight loss after that, where the boundaries are a little bit less broad, let's say. And it's such a good point that Katie's made there because I don't know how many times we've had this over the years where a client has had like four pounds of weight loss their first week, two and a half pounds the next week, and then weeks three, four, five, and six, it's like a pound to one and a half pounds on average. And clients may message us and say, something's not working. I'm not losing as much as I did the first week or the second week. And it's our job then as coaches to re-educate them and get them to understand that without crushing their hopes and dreams for the way. But they're not losing as much fat as they thought in those first weeks. A lot of that is water weight. But it's a good thing because it means then that what we're seeing from week to week after that likely to be more fat loss. relative to how much weight they're seeing drop on the scales. And this is where it's really important to remember that if you were constantly chunking a pound of fat off of your body every week, that's a lot of fat that you're going to lose. Your appearance is going to change considerably. It's just we're using the scales as our method of judging the trend. And most of what wakes up makes up that weight on the scales from a day to day basis is going to be your body's water. ⁓ you're seeing ⁓ really, really large changes on the scales, understand that it's most likely going to be changes in water weight. But also, even if you're gaining half a pound to a pound of body fat, that's a lot of body fat. If you were to ⁓ at that from, I'm hold a pound of body fat in my hand, a tissue perspective, and ⁓ if taking that off your body, that's a lot of body fat you're losing. Yeah, it is a lot. And I think it's important not underestimate that. It really is. doesn't sound a lot. And I think it doesn't sound a lot because of what happens in the first. week of weight loss. sometimes when individuals are perhaps comparing themselves to other individuals in a different scenario themselves, for example, individuals who are carrying more body fat, they are going to likely see larger reductions in body fat on a week to week basis than someone with less body fat. But you've to remember you are a leaner individual or you've got less body fat, when you are changing the fat levels you've got and like Sean said, if that's just a pound a week, that's going to look considerably different on you because you haven't got much there to lose anyway. So never underestimate the power of actually losing a pound of body fat a week. Can there be more aggressive forces? Absolutely. ⁓ But, but ⁓ don't underestimate that. Our bodies are very clever and bodies will ⁓ our stored energy and drop body fat. But it's still a process that needs to be carried out to allow that to happen. Our bodies can't just do that magically overnight or in a week. you've got to put it in a certain environment for a certain amount period, a certain amount of time. will allow you to do what you need to do to actually use that stored energy that you've got. Over time, what typically happens with individuals that are losing weight? hate to break it to you, but weight loss typically slows down more over time. Yeah, this is true, but I feel like a lot of individuals will over exaggerate much their weight loss ⁓ slows. What actually causes their weight loss to slow down more often than not is that their activity levels drop when they're doing a fat loss phase, because it's harder to do the same high levels of activity when you're eating less and they don't make adjustments to their calorie intake relative to their new body weight. Because if you've lost, say, 10 kilograms, for example, in your fat loss phase, you're weighing 10 kilograms less. But if you haven't made an adjustment to your calorie target since when you first started, then you're still eating for an 80 kilogram individual, not for a 70 kilogram individual. So as time goes on, you may need to recalculate your calories. to be accurate with it. And when people say, ⁓ my weight loss has slowed down because I've lost so much weight. It's like, well, that is partially true. Yes, but you're not accounting for the fact that you are now a lighter individual and you may be doing, let's say 3000 less steps per day. you're not accounting for the fact that you're doing less unconscious activity throughout the day either. There's two elements there, isn't it, Sean? It's the first one where Yes, you are lighter mass now, you weigh less, so your body's naturally going to burn less calories to function. And then got the ⁓ effects of being in a calorie deficit for some time, where, because you mentioned that, ⁓ you might doing 3,000 less steps, ⁓ because you're fatigued, you haven't got quite as much energy because you've been in a fat loss phase for some time. Your unconscious movement may drop because your body's trying to preserve. energy because you haven't fueled it with more energy for a long time. So there are two things that are very real and that do happen. I think it's going to be helpful here to let people know that it's not that their metabolism is damaged or broken because of this, which you know is another phrase that we hear a lot of. Our bodies are just clever. They're adapting to the fact that you weigh less, so it's naturally you're going to need less food. Unfortunately, might not want to hear that. It might be You might wish you could still eat as much as you were when you were 10 kilos heavier, but ultimately you can't and the sooner you can accept that the better. And then when it comes to being in a fat loss phase for longer, it's not that you're damaging your metabolism by being in a fat loss phase for longer. Your just adapts to the fact that you haven't got as much fuel. So how your body adapts to that is by doing less, less. movement and by that I mean twitching, fidgeting. Like right now when I'm talking on this podcast my hands are flinging around left right and center. If I was in through the third week of an aggressive diet now for example I can guarantee you these hands wouldn't be flaying around as much they would just be down my my side preserving as much energy as they possibly can. These things are not a damaged metabolism these things are your body adapting to lower calories over a longer period. So your body's being clever, it's preserving as much energy as you possibly can. But your body's also clever when it goes back to higher calories then and it adapts back to you moving more, you naturally doing more steps, you naturally having more facial expressions, all of these things. So yes, weight loss does typically slow down over time, but being aware of why that happens can help you combat the slowing down of the weight loss and allow you to emerge as in place to keep your fat loss rates at a steady rate or push them a bit more if you wanted to. Individuals who keep their activity levels high and also adjust their calories to match their new body weight and to account for some of the potential lower NEET, which is what Katie described, that activity which we're not conscious of as being actual. activity like walking, like training, like running etc. All the stuff like those random hand movements and the fidgeting. Individuals who account for those things, high activity levels, adjusting their calories and slightly lower NEET can still maintain greater rates of weight loss for slightly longer than the individuals who don't account for those things. So that's definitely something to bear in mind. As a rule of thumb, generally speaking, larger calorie deficits typically result in greater weight loss than smaller calorie deficits. there is a case for whether the larger calorie deficits are healthy for an individual or not. This is a big question and a question I ⁓ to have as well and thought, hmm, ⁓ losing ⁓ too quickly, is that a red flag for being too unhealthy? It's definitely a question I used to have. So Sean, tell me, is there a healthy amount of weight to lose a week? It depends. depends, isn't it? Everything always depends. If you listened to the previous podcasts about the aggressive diets, you will know that faster rates of weight loss don't necessarily lead to negative But. There are cases to be made for some individuals having to be more mindful of how aggressive they take a calorie deficit because the symptoms of being in a calorie deficit at that stage likely to ⁓ a little bit more severe for them and they probably risk muscle loss at an accelerated rate if they choose to be more aggressive at that stage. So ⁓ is very context dependent. We do see a lot of arbitrary numbers given out online as what is healthy for weight loss. And be honest, we've given these numbers out ourselves over the years as well, because we want to try and give a more protective and sensible approach to people. But these arbitrary numbers don't ⁓ play out that well in the real world. I agree fully. I, yeah, also... given up these numbers in the past on the basis that that was my education at that point. That's what I understood. That's what I've been taught, learned from. But, you know, our understanding does change over time with the more research and knowledge that is out there. So I think it's important not to too caught up on numbers. You you commonly hear figures like it's healthy to lose up to two and a half pounds of weight loss per week. or a set percentage of body weight per week, for example. But as you mentioned, Sean, everyone's responses are different and they're highly variable. Things probably fair to say that if you've been in a fat loss phase for about three to six weeks, consistent calorie deficit, and you're still losing about two pounds of body weight per week, that'd be considered pretty fast. Pretty, pretty quick rate of loss. But again, there's lots of variables to consider because if you were an individual with a much higher BMI, and you're a very active individual, then this rate of weight loss probably wouldn't be out of the ordinary. If you were an individual that was at the lower end of body fat range, where... you're a leaner individual, you've got much more visible muscle definition, there might be some abdominal muscle on show, then you losing two pounds per week consistently every week might necessarily be healthy for you and you might risk losing a lot of muscle. So this is also slightly context dependent. Think about it like this, your body fat stores, are just stored energy. When you're in a calorie deficit, your body the body fat stores to make up for the shortfall. You're eating less, it draws from your body fat stores to make up for the fact that you're eating less. And that's what allows you to get fat off at a quicker rate. So if you've got more stored energy, if you're carrying more body fat, you've basically got more ability to provide that shortfall. So you can potentially experience greater ⁓ loss in that state. I think that's a really ⁓ way of explaining it. And when you're a leaner individual, you haven't got as much of that stored energy, right? So you'd expect into or want to lose it at a quick rate, but it's not there to be lost. And you could be risking that. And so think of it like this, your body still needs that energy to come from somewhere. So if it's not coming from your fat stores, where's it coming from? And this is where then that risk of muscle loss can occur because it will take energy from somewhere. Your body doesn't care, does it? It doesn't care how good you look. It doesn't care what you want to look like on the beach or in your gym wear. It doesn't care. It wants to survive. It wants to survive, right? So the environment that you create is really important. You also need to respect the current environment your body is actually in. And if it has more solar energy, it has more to get rid of. If it has less of it, that's where... expect a little bit slower rate of fat loss and expect not to take it quite as aggressive as someone who has got more body fat to ⁓ Our definition of healthy weight loss might be a little bit different. we would define it is by looking at the amount of muscle that's retained whilst you're doing your weight period. the well-being of the individual throughout that period. So how much are they suffering? How tolerable is that suffering? And the quality of their nutrition overall throughout that period as well. So we're not just gonna disregard things like micronutrients, fiber, certainly not protein intake. We want them to have a reasonable amount of carbohydrates and fats in their diet. Whilst we accept that some of these things might be reduced a little bit more than what we would like for certain periods, we're still aware of them and we want to make sure that there is some of them and for some individuals if they do in fat loss for longer periods, we might have to look at more sustainable levels of those nutrients throughout the diet. If it's an aggressive period because the diet isn't going to last very long, then we can probably make up for the fact that those numbers might be a little bit lower in things like fibre, in some of the vitamins and minerals in their diet. They're going to be lower for a shorter period. But because it's only a shorter period, we've then got plenty of time outside of that period to get those numbers back up to where they need to be for good health levels. But if we've got somebody that's doing a more moderate approach where they might be in a deficit for like six to 12 weeks at a time, for example, then we might need to pay more attention to some of those nutrients because otherwise you're going to up creating potentially some sort of nutrient deficiency, which is not what we want. So when we think about healthy weight loss, it's not defined by the rate of weight loss, it's defined by the conditions to which the individual is exposed to they're doing weight loss. Yeah, I could not agree more. And I think, again, just goes to show how caught up. Our society is on numbers when it comes to weight loss or fat loss or body image, right? That does not define health. It could be a part, a play, right? Because obviously body fat percentage is a healthy range to be in, but it doesn't define your health. And if you're only concerned with a number on the scales or your body fat percentage and you're not, you're not... you're not paying any attention to the quality of your nutrition, how fit you are as an individual, how much muscle mass you've got, your stress levels, how well you sleep, how well you recover, then you're literally doing yourself a massive disservice because it doesn't really matter whether that number is in the so-called healthy range that you think if everything else has just been thrown to the side. want to shout out one of our members here for a moment. So last year Tish did an aggressive diet process. did two cycles, so three weeks on. She did the refeed, so three days of high calories, high carbs, and then another three weeks on. So her calories were very low for her, somewhere close to 1,000. She went really hard at it. She got really good results. Her nutrition stats were absolutely fantastic. Her protein was extremely high. She was one of the first members I have seen to eat such low calories and consistently hit 30 grams of fiber per day and she wasn't using supplementary fiber. She was getting a lot of fiber naturally in her diet. Like her nutrition stats were genuinely amazing. And I was thinking to myself, if you were to look at her deficit and the numbers side of it alone and the rate of loss alone, you would go, ⁓ this person's unhealthy. And then you look at the nutrition stats in a diet and the quality of the food that she was eating. Her nutrition is better than some people that are in a moderate deficit or even potentially at maintenance. I put some money behind most people's a lot, not most people's, a lot of particularly the UK population's diet at maintenance. She was training four days per week. Her training, her training numbers were awesome. She was working really hard to maintain as much muscle and strength as possible. She absolutely nailed that period. Now that That aggressive diet is not a long-term strategy, right? We know that. We know that that's not a healthy state into being for a long-term. But just assuming that a large calorie deficit or fast rate of weight loss is unhealthy when you've got an individual that can manage their health as well as that outside of it, keeping a step set, managing a sleep pattern, managing a stress level. So it's like, you can get people eating much more than that, aren't losing weight at the rate of that that are far less healthy. So I feel like that's really important. note that just because numbers are saying one thing does not necessarily mean that you're more or less healthy. Look at the bigger picture. Yes, it doesn't paint the full picture does it? Health is more than one variable. It's a lot of variables rolled up in one. So help people out I think here with what kind of rates of weight loss can they expect then? right? It's not more of what is healthy, it's more of how much should they expect to lose, depending on what approach I choose to follow, whether that be moderate or whether that be an aggressive. Let's chat through that I think Sean, because that is something that will be practical to people and can help them along their journey. Before we do that, I to make a statement. This is based on our opinion. This is based on our experience as coaches. The definitions we're about to give you are not biblical definitions. no, no, no. This should not be written in scripture anyway. But chances are you're probably going to go and look into this in your own time if we don't tell you and you're going to be given God knows how many different bits of information from Google, Instagram, TikTok, chat, GPT. So we'd like to try and give you some more definitive answers to rate of weight loss. But please, dear God, do not go printing this out, writing it on your fridge or on your bedroom wall categorically ticking off every single day your calendar that you lose this weight and beating yourself up if you don't lose these exact weights prescribed in these exact categories. Look, just don't do that. Because even these numbers that we're about to give you, it may not be that you lose these every week, but on average across your fat loss phase, you may lose this amount. Give or take a couple of pounds, may I add, because it is impossible to outline the exact amount of weight. any individual is going to lose. It's absolutely impossible. All you can do is set yourself up with some guidelines can be helpful to follow. But like Sian said, do not beat yourself up if it's not exactly spot on to this. Don't throw the towel in if it's not, if you haven't hit that every week, because there's too many variables that we cannot control. All we can control ⁓ the actions that we carry out on a weekly, daily, weekly, monthly basis. to lead to the end result. And don't come at us in a mass mob with your torches and your pitchforks saying, you told me that at 10 % 20 % of a deficit, I was going to be losing X amount of weight for a week. We're not going to be here. So don't do that. But if you do take these numbers into consideration and you aren't seeing results which match up to your expectations, then you can feel free to drop us a message at any time. Our Instagram pages are on the description. go and drop us a message and we might be able to provide you with some free advice to help you along your way if you're not seeing results you would expect. Yeah, I agree. But with that all that said and with that disclaimer said, so... So we're not going to drop ourselves in it with the next topic of conversation. What would we consider to be moderate or aggressive rates of weight loss? Okay, let's break this down then to the amount of weight we think you could lose week on said approach and then kind of what percent of a deficit may ⁓ to this amount of weight loss per week. Moderate, start with that. For us, and this is from our experience, right? This is from years and years of experiences with the clients going through our own fat loss journeys where we think these sit. For the average person, though? For the average person. There's always going to be outliers, always. But moderate, we would say around half a pound to a pound a week is a moderate approach. Moderate doesn't mean that that's not good. Moderate is a good, still a very good approach to fat loss and is absolutely actually necessary for some people in some certain situations. Semi-aggressive, we're looking at one to one and a half pounds a week. And then aggressive, we're looking at anything above one and a half pounds per week. What I would like to express, I guess, from this conversation is setting your expectations accordingly to whatever approach you decide to follow that aligns with the outcome that you're getting. So this is why we wanted to chat about this element, because don't go expecting aggressive results of one and a half pounds plus. If you're not willing to follow a more aggressive protocol because your actions are not going to lead to the outcomes that you want and you're going to be left severely disappointed. Sean, will you tell us a little bit more about the calorie deficits amount from our experience that will help people achieve the semi-aggressive and regressive results? So you'll see ⁓ calorie deficit amount when you go in most calorie calculators it will ask you what percentage deficit you want to be in. We about 10 to 20 percent of a calorie deficit as a moderate approach. Now, if you're looking at leaner individuals, 20 % might be quite aggressive for them. That might be deemed semi-aggressive. So somebody is looking to get quite low in body fat levels. But for most people, 10 to 20%, I would class to be a moderate approach. When you're seeing a leaner individual, because that's quite subjective, right? How can someone tell if they're in that bracket when it comes to being a lean individual? I think abdominal and torso definition is always pretty good way to look at this. if you're starting to show visible abs, there's not a lot of body fat around the waist and the hips area. You don't see a lot of fat on the stomach. That's good way to look at this. ⁓ We're at kind of some ⁓ visible separation. So you tell the difference between ⁓ one muscle the other when you're looking at the body. know if you look at the shoulders areas you might be able to see different parts ⁓ the shoulder muscles. If you're looking at things like the triceps where you've got three heads you can clearly ⁓ more those three heads. It's not necessarily you have to be six pack lean. If you want to class yourself I guess as really really lean then you might define being really lean as having a six pack. But you know this is a ⁓ very definition but typically individuals that are If we go back to the original body fat percentage, just to confuse matters even more here, we're looking at individuals anywhere from like say 12 % down to single digit percent body fat, whether that be, know, calipatestin or dexascans. Normally if we go by dexascans, it's like, I guess anywhere from 13, 15 % down. Is that for male and female? Oh, good question. No, that's probably more for males. I think so. So for females, you're probably looking at anywhere from five to 10 % more than that. But I We don't want to get too caught up in body fat percentage, right? Cause we know the flaws with that. you're talking pretty lean here, right? Very, little body fat on your visibly. Yeah. Without, sounding like a bodybuilding junkie here, ⁓ as much I admire the bodybuilding physique, cause I know that that's not what everyone's ⁓ ideal of lean looks like. When we look at getting lean, you're at, like I said, visible, visible muscle separation. definition you can clearly pick out the different muscles and their development in the body. tissue around the stomach area, the waist area, the hips area is a good example even some individuals might hold a bit of fat there for longer than others. Typically when we start to see more ⁓ stomach more definition, we know that an individual is starting to get ⁓ pretty lean. Katie, it's interesting because like your back, for example, your back holds much less fat relative to your front of your torso, your stomach area. So like when you're leaning down, your back muscles are very clearly defined quite early on. But if you were to just go by your back shots alone, if you did progress pictures, then you would go, yeah, I'm happy with that. Probably a lot sooner than you look at your stomach and class yourself to be as lean as you'd like. So sometimes it's factoring that into consideration as well. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I agree. So we would say a moderate is around a 10 to 20 % deficit. What about the kind of semi-aggressive or more aggressive approaches then, Sian? 20 to 25 % for me would be a semi-aggressive or more aggressive approach. And then if you're looking for a more easily defined aggressive approach, 25 % deficit or more is what I would class as an aggressive approach. And that is quite conservative by some people's measures. Some coaches wouldn't class an aggressive deficit to be anything less than about a 30 or 40 % deficit. I'm taking into consideration the fact that some individuals will find that to be very, very, very hard to maintain depending on their activity levels, their energy levels, their current body fat stores, et cetera. yeah, ⁓ we're looking. We're looking for basically anywhere from 10 to 20 % for moderate, 20 to 25 % for semi-aggressive, and 25 % plus for a more aggressive approach by our definitions. And to bring this background to an example then, where earlier on I was mentioning it's matching up your expectations to the actions that you're carrying out and not to expect an aggressive deficit level results if you're only eating in a 15 % deficit for example. To put this into a real life example, you have maintenance calories of around 2000 calories and you're eating 1700 calories, then that is a more moderate approach. So don't go expecting aggressive deficit results. You're looking at half a pound, sometimes a bit less to a pound a week. And again, on average, some weeks may not even be consistently that. But also don't underestimate that there's a lot of body fat when you're in your groove and you're at your kind of normal rate of loss. That is still a decent amount of fat loss. I don't want to dishearten people here at all, right? But I think it's worth noting that most people dramatically underestimate how much weight they need to lose in order to have as little fat as they would like. I think most people have an arbitrary number in their heads. ⁓ I think I need to lose a stone. I think I need to lose two stone. I think I need to lose three stone. And I'm quite surprised by how much fat they still hold when they lose that much weight. And this isn't because you have loads and loads of, not always the case that you have loads and loads and loads of fat. It's just that to really get lean, do have to continue to chip away a lot of body fat. So It's about being realistic with your end result of what you want to achieve. if you're not sure about what it likely takes to get to that level, then ask somebody that you know is that lean, not somebody that naturally has always been that way because they probably haven't had to go through the same process to get there, but ask somebody that's done a transformation. ask somebody that's either had coaching or a coach themselves that has had that transformation, better yet ask us we will try and be as honest and transparent with you as possible because A lot of time we'll tell ourselves what we think we want to hear. And if we ask a friend or if we ask unknown coach on social media, they will probably tell us what they think they want us to hear. Or they will probably tell us what they think we want to hear because there might be a transaction involved at the end of it where they say, yeah, I can help you lose that amount of weight and sign you up. Myself and Katie promised that we're not those types of coaches because we know that if we don't give you right expectations for how much weight you think you need to lose or how much fat you need to lose to get this end result that you want, then that's going to only harm you and it's going to harm us. It's going to harm our reputation. It's going to harm the trust we have. ⁓ don't want that. So if you're unsure, To make sure you're going into that fat loss process with the right expectations to begin with, reach out to us and tell us, here's an example of how lean I'd like to get to. What do you think is realistic for this? How long do you think this is gonna take? We might be able to do a few predictive calculations. We might be able to draw upon our experience and give you some examples. But just have in the back of your mind that you have a set amount of weights to lose in your head that you think is going to lead to you looking a certain way, you might need to re-evaluate that as you go. It's probably going to be a little bit more than you think. Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with that. I think having the right expectations at the start, even if they do slap you in the face a little initially, it just can set you up for a much more successful journey. Because you're not left underwhelmed, disappointed, you're in it right, this is what I got to do. I'm willing to perhaps go a more aggressive to get here. Or do you know what? I want to take it bit slower, take it a longer. And I'm just going to factor it in around X, Y, Z over the next couple of years. I've gone from having faint, faintly defined abs to having quite prominently defined abs. And it's taken me 20 pounds of weight loss to get there. And most people around me at the time could not believe that I'd lost 20 pounds. Like my parents, my family, they were like, I didn't think you had 20 pounds to lose. I heard this from people in the gym. You've lost 20 pounds. I didn't think you had 20 pounds to lose. was like, that's sometimes how much it takes to get that lean. So don't fixate too much on the weight loss numbers. Think about the outcome that you'd like to get. and just be realistic that it might take a little bit longer than you think if you haven't had experience of this before. And just understand what you're willing to put into the process and what you want from it because what you want may not align with what you're willing to do that's okay if that's the case but going into that process with a full understanding of expected of you allows you just to make an informed decision then on the next leg of your journey. What could slow it down then, Sean? Let's chat a little bit about this. What can slow down fat loss? One of the things which throws people off massively is when they're looking at scales on a day to day basis and they see an increase in the scales and they instantly assume that they're not losing fat or they gain fat. This is highly unlikely to be fat. Most of the day to day fluctuation you see on the weighing scales are water fluctuation. Keep tracking the weight over the course of the week or so, get the average, reassess at the end of that week. But sometimes it doesn't even go down on a week to week basis. Sometimes weight will slow for two, maybe even three weeks at a time before you see that next drop. Make sure you're tracking everything accurately. Make sure your activity levels are remaining as high as they should be. Be really consistent with your actions and the weight will catch up eventually. Remember weight is just a trend. It's just a predictor tool. It doesn't mean that your body's not burning fat. that number you see on the scales can sometimes mask fat loss. Remember the number on the scales is weight loss, everything that's going on in your body and we're trying to just reduce body fat. So there are times in our lives in the phases that we're in where the number that we see on the scales can mask what's actually really happening. for example, dieting states, can be really stressful for the body and this differs from person to person, right? But that can lead to increased cortisol production, which ultimately that can lead to ⁓ increased water storage. Now, you are still in a calorie deficit, you will still be losing body fat, but... your body's in that bit of an over-stressed state and potentially has increased cortisol levels, which means your body's throwing a bit more water weight, you could be showing higher numbers on the scales or you could be holding at a higher number on the scales. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're not losing body fat in the background. It's, remember, it's the actions that you're carrying out drives the outcome, not one data point that we're measuring. Some individuals then can actually see a big drop at some point when either you've come out of a stressed state, perhaps sometimes even when you go back to higher calories, because your body isn't quite as in quite a stressed state. We see this with members that return back to maintenance sometimes on their maintenance breaks, don't we? Where they go back to maintenance, we put their calories up by sometimes 500 to... thousand calories compared to where they were in deficit when they go back to maintenance and They haven't experienced a weight drop for three or four days Whilst they were eating less and then they go back to maintenance and the first three days of maintenance They're dropping weight and it's like well that doesn't make any sense because we ⁓ talk about positive weight regaining when you go back to maintenance, right? Yeah, we're setting up the expectation that ⁓ you're gonna regain some weight and it's gonna look really and it's gonna be really great because you're replenishing your carbs stores and you're replenishing water weight and they drop water weight No two scenarios are the same are they? They're not, they're really not. And I think sometimes there are scenarios where our body will mask fat loss and for us then we perceive that it's slowing down, it's not happening, which isn't always the case. I think what you should be taking away at this stage is weight is so volatile, so variable. So we have to keep an open mind to what we're seeing on the scales pretty much at all times. and zoom out, look at it over longer term trends, look at it in to our visual results and our progress pictures because we don't always know exactly what it's going to do. You can't always predict what response it's going to get. That just made me think about one of the community learnings we've done recently actually for the guys about, What to expect from Daily Weighing? Simple. But if any of you listening to this would like a copy of that to help you with your daily weighting and to understand that a little bit more and what questions you can ask yourself to understand whether that number you're seeing is normal, is expected, or if it's something that perhaps you need to change something with your actions to get the results you want, then drop one of us a message on Instagram and we'll be more than happy to. send that over to you. I think it's a really handy framework actually to mentally go through and to understand where you're at with things. Let's talk about a very specific scenario. an individual has been losing weight consistently for a number of weeks. Their activity levels stay up. been their training regularly. They've been eating plenty of protein, so maintaining muscle mass. Their tracking accuracy is really good. So they're weighing all their food portions. They're reporting everything correctly in the tracker. But they don't see weight reduction for about three weeks back to back. are our thoughts going as coaches with that particular scenario, Katie? So plateaus can occur, right? They can happen. And this might need to be a time where you might need to recalculate your calories. Like I was chatting about earlier on in the podcast where our bodies, you've got those scenarios where you're like to know, so your body burns less calories. Then you've also got the scenario of where your body does adapt to those lower calories as well. So sometimes there may need to be a recalculation so that you can keep progressing with fat loss. But this is only if a plateau occurs. And I think people are too quick to jump on that plateau bandwagon seven times. So how do you tell Sean if a client has hit the the plateau? It's if all of those actions that you just mentioned, right, about tracking, were accurately weighing their foods, activity levels haven't dropped, still training with a high intensity, sleep hasn't really changed, hydration, nothing's really changed for about three weeks. And believe me, we know when you're telling the truth, they're not clients. Are those listening? We've looked at hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. data sets from clients. We have weekly check-ins with them every week. We get linked up to their nutrition, stats their nutrition tracking. We know the data and we can spot where things are being over reported or under reported. It reveals itself in the end. There's no hiding the truth when you get used to seeing these trends. and these patterns over time, That's not to catch anyone out, but we want you to get the outcome that you're signing up for. Therefore, we're to put a lot of care and attention into making sure that we're giving you the right advice. And we can't do that if things are being misreported. That said. If I am 100 % convinced that I've got a client that's tracking really accurately, they're doing everything they're being asked to do, they're reporting everything accurately, because I've worked with them for a period of time and I have full trust and faith in what the data is showing, then I can make a fair assumption that they are just burning less calories now at this stage than where they started. And the only way to continue with weight loss or fat loss at this point... is to reduce calories a bit further. And there's two ways that you can do that. You either decrease the amount of calories that the person is consuming you increase the amount of activity that the person is doing. What we see in the research is that when individuals lose weight ⁓ been in a fat loss state for a period of time, we commonly see a reduction ⁓ the non-exercise activity that they do. So they're burning less calories each day in ⁓ activity. So these are the things like the fidgeting, the shuffling about. all the movements that we're not necessarily as aware of, how many times we get up and down to go and get something from one room to the next. We're not consciously thinking I'm doing this a form of exercise. Those account for a huge amount of our total daily energy expenditure. And we have to account for that when it comes to prolonged periods of weight loss. So We can see the steps, we can see the calorie intake, we can see the amount of sessions completed, and we can recalculate the calorie target if the person has lost body weight, because now their body weighs less, so their body's going to be burned less anyway. Once we've done all that, if the person is still stuck and they're not losing more weight, then we can make a reasonable assumption that they're burning less calories, that they are unaware of burning. So do we reduce food or do we increase activity? That's scenario that we're then presenting with. That's down to personal preference then, isn't it? What kind of angle you take with that and whether dropping more calories is more feasible or is it increasing ⁓ Sometimes might be a combination of both, but it very much depends on, got so many things, right? How much time that person's got available. whether they actually want to drop more calories, I would prefer to do a bit more activity or vice versa. There's lots of different kinds of questions that pop to mind if that does happen. It doesn't happen too often though, I would say. I wouldn't say it's something that happens too frequently. Especially, I think maybe even more so with the way we do a multi-first journey, right? That's most likely why we don't necessarily see plateaus as much because you're taking your body out of that. prolonged fat loss phase, you're not allowing it to get to that state. Justments with calories are made as necessary more frequently. So plateaus don't tend to happen with the way we follow our multi-phase journey. So I think that is also something to bear in mind. This is actually a strategy which will see a lot of coaches apply, but they don't really understand why they're applying it. So you get a lot of coaches that throw cardio at their clients when they start seeing less weight loss. And they do this in response to the fact that the the clients are getting the rate of loss that they want There's a good chance that the client is experiencing a reduction in their calorie burn each day. And it may not necessarily be feasible to drop the calorie intake down and to take more food out. So they add more cardio in. And that actually does make sense. But I think a lot of these coaches do that without realizing that it's not because this individual is. needing to burn more calories from cardio, it's probably because they have stopped doing the non-exercise movements as much. The stuff which they're not necessarily control of and the cardio then is to compensate for the fact that they're doing less of the ⁓ the shuffling about ⁓ unconscious calorie burning. So it's kind of like a ⁓ for the calories that are reduced there each day. The advantage of the cardio in that state is that it's quite time effective. This advantage is it can be hard to do it when you're already fatigued. It may potentially lead to you moving even less throughout the day as a result of doing that cardio. And it may potentially lead you feel a bit more hungry as well. So there are trade-offs to it. But I do think that perhaps cardio can be a bit overused and thrown at people in that state without realizing why. I think a good little bit of advice, a tiny bit of nugget of wisdom for this is be aware of your laziness when you're in a fat loss phase. Be aware of the amount of times that you're choosing to get up and move about when you're not doing the normal day-to-day stuff that you do around the house or when you are going into cabbage mode in the evenings like me and Katie do sometimes a little bit earlier than you should. Try and keep active. Try and keep your normal activity routine. If you're quite a busy person about the house and you're quite a busy person in day to day life, try and keep up with that because otherwise you're going to end up having to cut down on the calories or you're going to potentially need to do some extra cardio you want to maintain a similar rate of weight loss to where you started your calorie deficit. There will always be a trade off for choosing to do a little bit less activity. So it's up to you how you choose to manage that. Yeah, I agree and I think is being aware of that what we call a cabbage mode isn't it because it's very real it does happen and if you can actively try and make yourself move more during that time then that's ⁓ to help kind of counteract that. Some individuals may choose to accept a slower rate of weight loss as part of the process. They may not necessarily want to... keep the same rate of weight loss the whole way through. And for individuals that get much leaner as well, you shouldn't necessarily expect to maintain the same rate of weight loss either, because trying to do that might lead to you losing more muscle than you'd like. And having that muscle at the end of the process when you are lean and showing that muscle might be part of the outcome that you want. So you don't really want to lose it along the way. It's up to you to decide. You get to choose whether you want to continue to push a faster rate of weight loss, which might mean that you have to either decrease calories or increase activity as you go. Or you could just say, well, look, this is my body adapting now. I'm burning less calories as I go. So I am going to get a little bit slower fat loss, but I'm happy with that. It's not worth me cutting my food down more or doing more activity. I'll just take a bit longer to get the last bit of that off. Because that's the more enjoyable process for you or the more realistic process for you, What's our general advice for beginning a fat loss phase, Katie, and approaching this? I think at the start of a fat loss phase, generally, once you've decided your direction, motivation levels are quite high. The desire to get that end result is quite high. And I think you should feed off that and go as hard as possible to start with if you have that capacity to do so. Also, this does depend on general nutrition and diet habits and you may benefit from having a prep phase before going into a hard fat loss phase. What would we mean by that Katie, a prep phase? Because it's a very different term to what we class in the bodybuilding world, isn't it? Yeah, so a prep phase for us, know, and again, this could be a week long, it could be a couple of weeks long. The benefits of doing that would be to lay some foundations with your habits, right? Lay some foundations with the type, the quality of the nutrition you're consuming, maybe the meal frequency that works for you. Getting used to whether you need to prep some food or if you find it easier to do that on a day-to-day basis is finding the groove that works for you and building the foundational habits that can help you then hit the road running with fat loss. Now you may already have a great foundation in place, so going straight into fat loss is absolutely fine. If you're an individual where you're literally like, not many habits are serving me well with my health and wellbeing right now. So actually I would benefit from getting some of those ⁓ place and ⁓ those before going into fat loss phase. Honestly, if you're that person, then a preface might be beneficial for you because you're just gonna be setting yourself up for a more successful fat loss phase than trying to ⁓ everything all at once. And believe it or not, that is you going as hard as possible straight away because that is you setting yourself up well to then go hard with your fat loss maybe a week or two or three weeks into your journey. Your body is in the best state to go hard from the beginning because when we spoke about your essentially metabolism slowing down, burning less calories for the day and whatnot, at the start of your fat loss phase, you're probably not in that space. metabolism is going to be burning more calories than as you go through this process. So when you're holding more body fat, you've got more energy stores to pull from. So I would use that to your advantage at the start of your fat loss phase. And if you've got the foundation habits in place, like Katie mentioned, you ⁓ how to put decent meals together. You've got your meal timing spread out. You know what sort of foods are going to leave you feeling as full as possible for as long as possible throughout the day. Then go hard to start off with because you can get the biggest rate of weight loss done first. That's going to be really motivating for you. It means that even if you do have to come out of this at some point, you've already got a significant chunk of fat off. And then if you want to continue with your fat loss process, it won't feel like you have as much of a mountain to climb, so to speak. Yeah, I fully agree there. I fully agree. It's going as hard as possible in terms of the capacity you have available. And again, that's very individualized, isn't it? So I think we've gone through quite a lot of helpful information there. So think it'd be great to summarize everything that we've gone through, have a little recap of weight loss versus fat loss and some of the expectations that you can set for yourself. The key thing being weight loss and fat loss are not the same thing. Weight loss just gives us a trend to follow, but you should assess fat loss alongside this. Progress pictures and potentially skin fold measurements using skin fold calipers the best two methods for ⁓ fat loss results. Larger individuals tend to lose weight faster. Larger deficits lose weight faster. And not ⁓ all weight quickly is unhealthy. Maintaining muscle mass is something you should prioritize, which means being somewhat sensible with weight loss rates ⁓ after the few weeks. If you're experiencing accelerated... rates of weight loss for your entire deficit, no matter how lean you're getting, you can risk losing muscle. Always aim to maintain regular resistance training sessions, anywhere between two to five times a week is a good amount and make sure you're eating a high amount of protein in your diet. 0.7 grams per pound of body weight, 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight up to one gram per pound of body weight. or 2.2 grams per kilogram. Good day. We want to hold on to that muscle mass as much as possible. It's important to keep activity up to maintain higher rates of loss. Your calorie expenditure will likely drop over time as will the rate of loss. It's just something to be aware of to know when you need to adapt things to make sure that you are continually losing weight. You can decide whether to stick with the new rate or increase the deficit either by eating less calories or up in the activity. And the final point of the summary, set the right expectations. The leaner you get, the less you should expect to lose per week without significant muscle loss. And don't expect to see aggressive fat loss results if you're only going moderately hard at fat loss. could not agree more. Being armed with the knowledge is one part, but acting upon that knowledge is another part. To support your knowledge, you need structure and systems which can help to limit the amount of mental energy you need to spend on decision making and thinking. That way, you can keep your energy for tasks such as preparing meals in advance, keeping your steps up to aid your calorie burn, or work in those muscles so they don't leave with your body fat. We designed a free mini series to break down what you need to focus on to make fat loss simple and easy to stick to. Head to the description below to download our Master Your Calorie Deficit series. That's for this episode, but next week we'll be back with a spicy topic. We're going to be breaking down a statement which makes us feel like bashing our against a brick wall. It's one of the most commonly misunderstood topics and it ruins people's experience with going to the gym and being more confident in their bodies. And we're not going to reveal what is until next week. we are going in on this one. So make sure you hit follow or subscribe because you won't want to miss the next episode. See you guys next time.