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From Dieting to Building: The Multi-Phase Strategy · 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 host, Sean and Katie, and today we will be teaching you how to build a repeatable structure to completely transform your body composition. We're going to assume that if you listen to this podcast, you want to have less body fat and more muscle. At the end of this podcast, you will have a step by step process to follow, which you can set up for months of progress in getting leaner, stronger and building muscle. You'll also know which habits cross over between fat loss phases and muscle building phases and which ones are only used for a specific section of the journey. We've got a lot to discuss today. So let's make a start. To begin with, let's talk about the concept of evergreen habits. Don't think we've used this term so far in this podcast. We've discussed some of these habits, but we haven't used this term. So what are evergreen habits? I don't think we grouped them together, have we? We've just dropped the habits in here and there because the habits that we believe should be part of lifestyle as a whole, So... Evergreen habits then, these are habits that are non-phase specific. These are going to be present all year round, no matter whether you are focusing on muscle building or fat loss. Yeah, and they're habits that can be tuned up a little bit or toned down a little bit, but we'll aim to keep them present in some capacity the whole way through your year and hopefully for multiple years of your life. And the majority of them that we're going to run through now, it's quite nice to think of the rule of if you can do these 80 % of the time, then you're going to put yourself in a pretty good position for your health, right? Yeah, they're really good habits for your lifestyle in general, not just for a specific training focus. So let's talk through some of them starting off, eating more whole foods in your diet and eating less processed and particularly less ultra processed foods. I'm going to focus on protein and fibre intake. Trying to pack your meals and your snacks thinking about, have I got protein in this meal or snack? in this snack? And again, that's not every single meal or snack that you but the majority of them. It's front of mind when you're putting meals together, right? We're thinking eating multiple sources of fruit and vegetables throughout the week, but also in each day as well. Variety is the spice of life. father always used to tell me this, right? That variety is the spice of life. And whenever I think of fruit and veggie intake, ⁓ foods in general, to be honest, I try and live by this. I think if you can get a lot of variety in throughout your week. of the year, then you're going to give ⁓ body a wide variety of nutrients and vitamins, right? Yeah, absolutely. But within reason, because I have a counter statement to this, I get to laugh. We say is a spice of life, but then I say, too much spice make you shit yourself. And what I'm trying to say by this is if you have way too much variety, then you're probably going to end up feeling like there's some sort of negative reaction to having too much variety. So there has to be some consistency with at least some things. We can have a certain amount of variety, but we don't want too much because that's probably going to lead to us getting slow or very blunted results. And it might make us feel quite stressed. It might make us feel quite frustrated. It might make us feel like we're going around in circles and questioning everything we do. quite literally, it can make you shit yourself, but mentally it can make you shit yourself too. I think when you've got a foundation in place with your nutrition and your meal choices, your snacks have a base foundation, right? For example, porridge might be a staple of breakfast of yours. But the variety then comes into what you add in top of the porridge, what you add into the porridge, right? So I think, yes, there's got to be some consistency because that helps us build a routine, that helps us be autonomous with things. But then what we add in addition to what we've got as our foundation blocks, that's where the variety can be added in. Yeah, I think you're almost revealing one of our top fat loss tips in that one statement alone, Katie. How many different toppings? do we have in the cupboard at the moment for porridge, for example? If you were to add the molep, we're talking like in the 20s or 30s of different types of topping you can put on one porridge bowl. So the staple meal might be porridge, but the variety comes from what you do with that porridge. I think that cupboard is my favorite cupboard in the kitchen. It really is. It's like my adult pick-a-mix. as I'll pick up it. It's just a load of seeds and nuts and various random porridge toppings. Yeah. Or yogurt toppings. Yeah. It's quite sad that that's what you now get excited about in life. love going to Aldi and picking up all of the different varieties because it's, it's, they've got some pretty tasty options and you can make some lovely flavor combos. But anyway, we could talk about this all day long. Let's move on to another evergreen habits. Lifting weights a few times per week. And I say that carefully because an evergreen habit is something that should be present at all times. If you are in the stage of your life where building as much muscle as possible or getting as strong as possible is a key focus, then you're probably going to aim for just a few more than a few times per week, right? You're probably going to end up doing more sessions than the average person, but Being realistic, we should just all aim for a few sessions per week and by a few, more than one, than five probably. And just making that consistent. That doesn't mean if you a week or you have to miss a week for some life event that is outside of your control that you're afraid you're not at all, but it's just making resistance training a consistent pillar in your life from now and into your future. What about activity then, Sean? Participating in some form of daily activity, we'd like to think that we're all capable of getting one walk in a day, designated walking period. Maybe doing some form of lower intensity activity like it could be swimming for some individuals. For me, that's one of the highest intensity activities you can do because I hate water. So regardless of the fact that I'm non-boyant. Yeah, he claims he just thinks, guys. I'm just not... I'm just don't know. I just don't know if I can agree with that. I am adamant I'm not a boy. I remember when we used to do lifeguarding training when I was working the Village with Hell and it was part of our role to do an hour or so on a pool or shift and we used have lifeguarding training on a monthly basis and ⁓ would explain to staff members, like you could stand up in this pool but you had to pretend that you were drowning ⁓ I'd explain to staff members, look I am non-boying so just be careful. Like will drag you under, they were like no no no, you're not non-boying. I was like I am. And then I remember this one time, one of the girls there, bless her, she was probably only about 55 kilos and I had to play dead and be the body. And after a load of faff and commotion, she was the designated person to save me and I was pretending to be dead for a very long period of time in this water. And she swam over and tried to drag me off to the side. But as she's dragging me off to the side now, I am actually dragging her under with me. And she was like, you really are non-boyant. I was like, I know, I know. So yeah, I'm pretty adamant I'm not boyant. I'm not going to throw myself into deep water anytime soon, Katie, and prove this concept you. ⁓ Point swimming is not a ⁓ low activity for me, but for many of you slightly fitter and more buoyant individuals, ⁓ you find it's little bit lower intensity than I do. These can be also things like it could be yoga, could be Pilates. There's not a huge amount of stimulation or mechanical tension. They're excessively strenuous. There's not a really, really, really high sort of calorie expenditure ⁓ or ⁓ exertion for ⁓ These are that you can slot in daily in between your regular training bounce. And they may not even be... lots that you have to go out for a 30 minute walk for example. This activity can also be incorporated into your day whether that could be if you can walk your if you have children and you can walk them to school it could be a walk over to the gym it could be walk to the shops. Some people may need to incorporate that into their day if your routines are very busy, jam-packed right? It may not be that you can have a designated hour or half hour every day to yourself to go for a walk or to... do yoga or go for a swim, whatever it may be. So don't think that activity has to be a set designated slot. It can be incorporated into your everyday life as well. My mom started doing dance classes. She's put up a YouTube video of somebody doing a dance routine. yeah, she loves dancing. She doesn't particularly love walking in the rain and the freezing cold. She does a gym sessions each week. But in between that, yeah, she's been starting to do these dance. YouTube videos and it's just getting her moving. It's getting her body moving. It's providing some sort of dopamine release from the exercise and the activity. So yeah, it doesn't have to be a designated training session. It's just getting your body moving on a daily basis and depending on how fit you are, you might be able to a little bit more intense activity with that. But just start with something and build up. if you aren't doing this regularly already. which is one more evergreen habit that we have shown. I think it's important to discuss. That would be management of body fat levels. think about this as being within certain margins. So if you have very high body fat levels, there are obviously health risks associated with this. If you have very low body fat levels for long durations, there may be health risks associated with this. And some individuals will tolerate lower levels of body fat. than others without health risks occurring. So it's probably worth mentioning that some people can naturally hold lower levels of body fat without ⁓ symptoms of health. But we do want to try and stay within certain margins ⁓ make sure ⁓ bodies are functioning as close to optimally as they can be in those conditions. So management body fat levels ⁓ is an important consideration for phases that you're in. It's just that some phases like for example, a fat loss phase, you might push a little bit more towards the lower body fat end of the scale for that temporary period. It's understanding that you can't stay there forever without encountering some potential negative health consequences. And you're talking the low, low end of the scale there with the lower body fat levels, right? We're talking like single digits of body fat potential ⁓ somebody that's really, really lean, like possessing very low levels of body fat. is unnatural to normally hold most people. So there is healthy range isn't there for most people when it comes to body fat levels and it's just keeping that in the forefront of your mind. So you again don't go to one extreme or ⁓ the other. Again avoiding extremes right. And these habits, these habits could be something that you focus on first before even going into a specific phase. essentially, particularly a fat loss phase, right? you can even adapt these habits as you go. I'll be honest, this is probably easier to do with a coach on hand to support the introduction and implementation of these habits. But having these in place will lay a foundation from which you can change your body composition in a more timely manner. A lot of these evergreen habits can kind of be snucking to your journey and embedded into your journey when you have a coach. It's a little bit easier for ⁓ coaches to kind of build these habits through step-by-step action and still achieve the result which we want to with clients. And sometimes when you're trying to do this on your own, it can feel like there's an awful lot to tick off and it's quite difficult to put them together in a step-by-step fashion. But that said, for anybody that doesn't have a coach, just focus on one thing at time. building these into your life and you will be able to have a really good foundation from those. We have discussed these habits in previous podcasts. It's the first time that we've grouped them together as evergreen habits and given them a title. But you'll know by now that these are all really supportive of good health and longevity. They're not necessarily results based and focused, not that you can't receive results from these things because you absolutely can. But the priority with these is good health, good longevity and having a consistent foundation that is aligned with good health and body composition, I guess. The Evergreen Habits are the foundation. They are the stones that you want to build in place to allow you to ⁓ off into other goals. They're gonna make other goals easier once you've got these foundations in place. And scope to these habits little bit more tentatively or drop off them slightly in different parts of your journey, your phases. But maintaining them as kind of solid pillars is a great way to think about how you run your life on a daily, weekly basis. If you can put these as your forefront of your mind, you're going to be putting yourself in very, very good position for your health. Yeah. Whether your next focus is going to be losing fat or building muscle, these habits should remain consistent throughout. Yeah, I fully agree. And they serve me pretty well at the moment. Gotta be honest, been probably the last 10 years, which what makes it much easier to be able to switch between fat loss and muscle building phases, right? So let's take things one step further then, Sean. Shall we now talk about what needs to be done for specific results, like changing body composition? So the first thing that you need to do when it comes to body composition change is to determine whether you want to focus on fat loss or muscle building first. We won't go into detail talking about where you can achieve both at the same time. I personally still feel like it's worth having one main priority in mind. So for example, I'm looking to lose fat for the time being if you happen to be fortunate enough to experience some body recomposition at the same time. So if you're able to experience losing fat and building muscle together, class the muscle building part as a bonus. The key priority is fat loss. And I think it's worth determining that from the outset, whether it should be fat loss or muscle building as your main priority. If you have some questions around body recomp, we're not going to chat about it here. There will be a future episode where we talked about it in a lot more depth. But I think we cover the basics and who is for and who is not for in episode four, which I believe is fitness buzzwords. Can't remember quite the full title, but search for that and you'll be able to find it and learn a little bit more about body recomp. But I do agree with you, Sean. I think it's important to find what focus you should put your attention on first, whether that's fat loss or muscle building. then got one clear target to work from and you know what structures to start. building into your daily routine and what methods to follow to drive that one outcome. We have a quiz which can help you to work out which focus you should have to begin with. So whether that's fat loss or building muscle, you can find that quiz in the description. So feel free to check it out if you're not sure about which direction to take your goals in. But for now, let's just consider some of the underlying variables which will determine whether you should lose fat or build muscle first. The one that comes to mind for me is what would make you feel more comfortable in the next six to twelve weeks. So we're looking at a reasonably short time frame from where you are right now. If you imagine what you would like your body to look like in the next six to twelve weeks, what would be the most obvious change? Would you feel more comfortable if you down to dress size, would you feel more comfortable if you felt a little bit trim around your waist for example? Or do you feel like actually I want to fill out my clothes a little bit more, I want a bit more muscle mass, I want a little bit more shape. Only you can answer this right? Because ultimately it's your body, it's your goals, it's up to you to decide what's going to make you feel more comfortable. But understanding where you'd like to be in the next six to 12 weeks. And this is by no means saying you're going to get to your end result in six to 12 weeks, right? I think that's an important point to raise here. But you can achieve some great results in that timeframe to allow you to feel more confident in your body shape. But it's deciding what side of the coin are you on? I think there's two angles of that as well. I think that firstly, you feel more confident when you're doing a process and moving your body in a certain direction, regardless of the actual outcome you receive. So we know that muscle building takes time. It's not going to be an overnight change. But just by going to the gym consistently for six to 12 weeks and by lifting weights progressively and by eating more, you already feel like you're making progress. You might not see much of that progress in that time. You'll see some, but you're not going to see huge changes, but just by knowing that you've been doing the thing. you get more confident in yourself. So I think that's one part of play. Fat loss might be a bit faster in terms of seeing that visual change in six to 12 weeks. might visit. Well, probably will visibly see that quicker than you'd see muscle building. But the second element is also often ⁓ event based or kind of timing specific. So if you've got an event that you want to feel particularly confident. going to in the next six to twelve weeks then your best bang for your buck may be to lose fat for that specific event. Common thing like before summer it could be you've got a wedding that you're going to a particular dress or particular outfit that you want to wear. I love how my reference is to talk about dresses. going to go pink or you're going to go blue this time? Yeah, so when I'm thinking about dropping a dress size for the wedding I'm going to and I'm thinking about the hen party that's coming the week before, no, but it's about trying to feel confident in for the most important events that you're attending as well because realistically that's what we often plan our goals towards. Yeah, I have to agree. You'll know yourself what you want to and what you need to do start your best self again. And. Ultimately, you may or may not know right now that you need a multi-phase journey, right? That you may need fat loss and then muscle building. You may not really know what order that should come in and you may not even know how long you should spend in each of those phases right now. Stay tuned to the end of episode and you will, but you may not know that right now. So I think to start off, understanding what you want in the short term is a really good place to start because you can get some immediate results in the next, you know, six to 12 weeks. once you've got results, you'll have a better indication of where you want to take things next. But that immediate kind of, I guess, I don't want to call it pain point because it might not be a pain point, but that immediate thought that you have, that's right, I want to make a change over X, that's not going to go away. So addressing that point and following a plan of action to achieve that is just going to give you immense satisfaction in the process. It's going to build your confidence. And you're just going to feel much more unstoppable with the rest of the journey down. What is the primary motivator for you right now? It could be that you're feeling really uncomfortable about yourself and you want to change it, but it could also be, I'd really like to show this version of myself. It could be something that's not framed negatively and it's framed positively. I want to present the best version of myself for this event. And how I'm going to do that is by doing this. So. It's about working out, like Katie said, what's right for you and what the most immediate goal needs to be. We're not saying that there's not going to be any more goals or there's not going to be a continuation of this long-term, multi-phase process, but we're saying for this time being, what is going to be my primary target? Because if you don't set sail without a destination, you're just going to end up bobbing around somewhere in the ocean. not get results you want. Confidence would probably be... the floor not actually building it up. So I think it's really important to just be decisive in what you want right now and then put that as your main focus. If you are struggling to figure that out because sometimes you may not really know, I highly recommend you checking out the quiz in the description. It's really short. I think most people have taken maximum 60 seconds to complete it and have been really happy with the results. It's really straightforward, it's very simple. So that would be my first point of call if you're not really sure where you want to take things over the next six to 12 weeks. But let's chat about a fat loss goal first, right Sean? think majority of people, not everyone, but majority of people tend to start with fat loss, even if it's a short time frame. So let's kick things off with the fat loss. The first thing I would do is I would find a calorie calculator and I would work out what my maintenance calories are from that then I could work out what my deficit calories would need to be. I think having that initial calculation is just the best thing you can do for accuracy and awareness. In terms of where to get one, you could just Google it. There's millions of calorie calculators that will pop up. There will be some variability between ⁓ calorie calculation that you use, but your results ⁓ your progress will determine whether you need to adjust your calories or not anyway. So don't get hung up on the fact that they might produce slightly different numbers if you choose different calorie calculators. The end result will always be the thing that determines whether or not those calories are right for you. And the calorie calculators you use, whatever one you decide to find online, you use chat, GBT for it, whatever ⁓ you use. even if they do show slightly different results activity level you choose, ⁓ not going to be vastly different, right? You're talking maybe 50 to 100 calories. Now that's not really going to impact things massively. Keeping an eye on how your progress is going is what's going to be the most important thing. Where you could trip up here is if you think you're more active than you actually are. So that is something that I would like to bring to the table when you are doing a calorie calculation. Not that I want you to under report and you're more ⁓ active than you actually are, but it's very, very common for us as humans to think we're doing ⁓ than we actually are ⁓ think that we're burning more calories than we actually are. So that is something just to be aware of when you are choosing your options within the calorie calculator that you choose. Yeah, I think we all naturally want to see ourselves as being really active people because it's positive influence on our lives. But this is about being honest with yourself and being realistic. If ⁓ activity levels are where they are currently, it doesn't make you a bad person. It means that it's something that you could potentially improve on over time. But don't overestimate your current activity levels to give yourself more calories because you're going to get stuck in the end. you're not going to be losing the weight that you expect. actual fact, you could end up gaining weight when you're intending on losing weight, ⁓ that's going to put you in an even deeper hole than where you started. So be honest with yourself and do this correctly, and you won't feel like you're battling against own body when it comes to fat loss. ⁓ Even if your calories tend to be more on lower end of the scale, right, you're still going to ensure that you get in fact lost results. So in this case, it's probably better to be on the scale where actually your calories are a bit lower than your calories being too high. You can always increase them if they're too low and you can't stick to them. But if you go too high and you don't get the results that you want, then getting the results you want is what can really make you feel a bit frustrated with the process. What's better in your mind, Katie? is it starting with slightly lower calories than expected and then having to up them in a few weeks and ⁓ being able to eat a little bit more in a few weeks Or starting with higher calories, ⁓ not seeing any results and then mentally knowing you have to reduce to get any further? my gosh, first option every day, right? First option because Not only do you get a little bit more food with that first option, you also are getting results because you know eating less calories than your body requires, you're going to lose body fat. But if you're eating too much, you're not going to lose body fat and you could have wasted a couple of weeks not getting any results. Fat loss is harder the more you do it for, the more weight you lose, the harder it gets. So starting at the blocks a little bit faster isn't actually a bad strategy. So yeah. If anything, underestimate rather than overestimate when it comes to your calorie calculations. And we're going to teach you how to monitor progress as we go as well to make sure that your calorie calculation is roughly in the right ballpark. Because at the end of the day, your calorie calculations are just guidelines. They're not a perfect measure. And they're never going to be 100 % accurate. This is one of the most common debates that goes around online. You can't get this 100 % accurate. doesn't mean the calorie tracking doesn't work. It's still far more accurate than just looking at your food on a plate and saying, yeah, I think that's about a thousand calories or so. Having something measurable and trackable that you can manage is going to produce far better results than just eyeballing everything and hoping that you're eating the appropriate amounts of the foods. Yeah, absolutely. Of course it's not 100 % accurate. impossible for it be 100 ⁓ accurate, right? But it can do a... pretty good damn job of giving you a decent ball pack figure to start the process with. Yep. What do we do once we've got our maintenance calories from a calorie calculator Katie? This is where you can decide your deficit now. You'll know that favor a faster when it comes to loss, with breaks in between. Around 15 to 25 % deficit is most common. So when we say deficit, we mean your maintenance calories minus 15 to 25%. For example, could you give an example there Sean? So if your maintenance calories are 2000 calories and we were going to do a 20 % deficit, then 20 % would be 400 calories off. So your calories when you're looking for a 20 % deficit would be 1600 calories. You would have noticed guys how I spun that question to Sean because my mental math is absolutely shocking and I wouldn't get a calculator up for that. If like me, get your calculator out, we'll get out. But no, around 15 to 25 percent is most common. Can you go into larger deficit than that? Yes, you absolutely can. We often use a larger calorie deficit than that with clients and for ourselves. So don't be afraid to push that a little bit more. that would be a good starting point if you've not done it before and you want to give it a go. Then that's what we would recommend in terms of ⁓ out what deficit to. To implement. So you got your calories calculated, you now know what your calories are for a calorie deficit. We're going to set our protein intake. So protein, we're going to set somewhere between 0.8 to one gram per pound of body weight, or we're looking for around 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram per day. We're looking at trying to maximize our muscle retention here because we're going to be training and we want to try and make sure that we're supporting that process and the muscle in that process as much as possible. Does it matter if you're slightly under this protein intake? Probably not a lot. It probably wouldn't matter a lot, but we're giving you figures based on what we believe to be the most effective for most people to be able to retain as much muscle as possible in a fat loss phase. You don't need to freak out if you've got a day or two where it's been under. they're little bit higher some days or two, that's absolutely fine. But you want to try and stick around that region or that range on a daily basis, not only just you know, to help and support with muscle retention, but also for your satiety levels. protein is going to help you feel little bit fuller when you're in your calorie deficit. So it's good, good idea to aim for that amount when you're in a fat loss phase. Carbs and fats, Katie, what would we do with those then once we've got our protein intake sorted and we know what our deficit calories are? Honestly, you don't need to worry too much about your carbs and fats ratios. I wouldn't necessarily put too much emphasis on it. You'll naturally find that your carbs will likely be a lot lower in deficit, if you are prioritizing your protein intake, right, because you're not gonna have a huge amount of calories left to play with. But terms of whether one or the other impacts fat loss more than the other. ⁓ it's not the case, it's overall calorie intake that's the most important. So down to personal preference, I would say Sean, what you want to have with your fats and carbs, but you do want to make sure your fats aren't too low for too long. But you are breaking up your diet periods ⁓ well effectively, then that shouldn't be too much of an issue anyway. Yeah, makes complete sense. When it comes to tracking and weighing foods, this is a habit which is very easily formed because you eat multiple meals per day. And if you start tracking those multiple and you start weighing those foods multiple times per day, you quickly find yourself getting a lot of reps in of doing this stuff. So it becomes a very speedy habit. It's actually a faster habit to pick up than going to the gym. I think it's worth noting that because you may only go to the gym two or three days a week. So it might take you a fair few weeks to build that habit, but you're going to be eating food multiple times per day. If it's anywhere like, you if you're anyone like me, then you're eating 12 times a day. you're going to get lots, maybe half that, but you're going to get a lot of food instances every day. So you're going to build this habit quite quickly. one I want to say about this habit and because tracking and weighing your foods, a lot of people are against doing this before they've even given it a good crack. And what I want to say is this can be one of the most insightful, helpful tools to your journey, regardless of whether you want to lose fat or not, because you will quickly start learning, my gosh, I can eat a lot more than that than I thought. And I need a lot more than that than I thought to actually get the protein content I want to hit, for example, ⁓ my gosh, I need to rein that back in because that's like a thousand calories. And I thought I was only having about two, three hundred. So it works both ways, right? When it comes to calorie tracking away in foods, you can either be really shocked by the amount you're eating because actually you're not eating enough of it. And vice versa, you could be eating too much of it because it's really calorie dense and you didn't even know. Once you've done that ⁓ and had that awareness, you bank that knowledge, you have then given yourself the power to make an informed decision next time. Whereas if you didn't do that initial check with weighing and tracking your foods, you will never, ever, ever know. I could tell you until the cows come home that you need to be eating 150 grams of Greek yogurt, for example, to hit 20, 21 grams of protein. I wouldn't have been able to tell you that at the start of my journey, because I wouldn't have had a Scooby Doo how much protein is in. 150 grams of Greek yogurt, for example. I don't even know if I got that spot on, it might be 200. But the reality is, I know I've got to have an X amount of that particular thing. The more you start doing that, the more you start learning what's actually in food, not just the calorie content, because it's not just about calories, it's about what's in the food as well. So when you are using your calorie tracker in the future, don't just see it as a calorie tracker, see it as a vehicle to allow you to gain knowledge in the foods that you're eating so that you can actually feel empowered in the decision that you're going to make next time. But without actually doing that, you're never ever going to create that bank of knowledge. You're basically going into this process blindfolded if you haven't had experience with calorie track. It's like, you know how some racing drivers drive around the track so many times in their career, they could practically do it blindfolded. Do think they would drive around the track and not crash the first time round if you just blindfolded them from day one? Here's a Monaco Grand Prix. Good luck. no, they would crash away, right? They might get a little bit further than some, but they're probably still going to crash eventually. once they've done that once and they can start visualizing it over and over over over over again, like these racing drivers do. They might get further along if they blindfold themselves. They might get further along if they can't see what they're doing. And this is how calorie tracking works. The more you've had exposure to doing it properly, the more chance you've got for forever eyeballing it correctly and not doing it without your weighing skills in front of you. Absolutely. I think just open your mind to the benefits of doing calorie tracking, whether you do that short term. Long-term, whatever it is, because again, it's your choice. When you use this tool, it is just a tool, remember that, but it can be really, really powerful if you allow it to be, if you open your mind to it. I think another benefit we spoke about on a previous podcast, but I'll bring it back up again, is also the portion control capabilities this allows you to have. Like you can make your food go much further because you actually weigh stuff out when you're tracking it and you can portion control it much better. If you've got a tendency to overeat and get a little bit greedy and go back for seconds or thirds with certain foods, not that I know anything about that, but if you do happen to go back and help yourself, put those eyebrows down, Katie. Never have any leftovers for seconds the next day in this house. But no, it allows you to pour sugar draw if you actually weigh stuff out. And that can be more time. Think about the time it saves you having to keep running back and forth to the supermarket because you've eaten all your lean beef in one night and you haven't got it saved for the next day and now you've got no bolognese left. Talking from experience are you babe? I wonder what you're talking about now. Got a tiny little appetite meat. Oh yeah, like a little bird of course. There is a little bit of a technical skill to weigh in foods and then tracking it when you're in a fat loss phase. This is a mistake that a lot of people make when they first start. When you put foods into your tracker, Check how they're being recorded in tracker. So, for example, if you cook a chicken breast, the amount of calories in that chicken breast will be different to when the chicken breast was raw. If you weigh it when it's raw, then you need to track it as raw. Don't weigh it raw and then track it as a cooked chicken breast. So just make sure that you're tracking it in the state that your way in it. Track is how you weigh it. It's the simplest way to look at that, I think. Yeah and it's one that catches a lot of people out. certainly caught me out when I first started so yeah that's another another important tip actually Sian. Good shout, good shout. Did you know there's less calories in a cooked baked potato than ⁓ raw baked potato? I did know this but isn't it cooked and cooled potato has less calories? No you're right. Yeah. ⁓ right. It's not just a cooked potato, when it's cooled. Yeah. It's to do with the starch content. Something to do with, is it resistant starch? Yes. Where, yeah, when it cools down, there's less calories in the potato than when it's hot. I don't think this is an absolute fat loss hack where you can just cook loads of potatoes, let them cool and eat them, there's less calories. Because it's not a lot of calories, but there is less calories in a cooled, cooked potato than a... So if you switch all of your carb sources to nothing but potatoes, batch cook them all then cool them all down. Yeah, you could eat endless potatoes. Calories don't count man. You might be saving yourself 60 calories per day on nothing but potato, potato heat wastage. Oh dear. Okay, let's move on. Don't let that be your only takeaway from the podcast. please, please don't. how we can attract fat loss progress. There's a number of ways to track fat loss progress actually. I would recommend using multiple tools to your progress actually. I think the first, I think the most obvious one to start is the visual result, right? So some progress pictures at the start. That might freak you out at the start. A lot of people don't like taking them at the start and understandably so. But whatever you do, please just do it because one day when you want to look back at them to see how far you've come, it's ⁓ a good feeling when you can look back at your before photos, your now photos and see how far you've come and really be proud of the journey that been on. So many of our members super apprehensive about having their initial progress pictures taken. And I can't remember a single one of them that looks back and goes, I'm really, really disappointed that I took those initial progress pictures now that I can look back at them. Like every single one of them feels really glad they did that because we don't always see ourselves as we want to see ourselves. We don't always look in the mirror and see the progress that we've made. We still pick ourselves apart. Having that side by side objective visual is very, very empowering. So definitely take the progress pictures. You'll be really glad of it in the long run. You live in your body every day, right? So you're not going to see those small changes every day. There will be something that goes, wow, I really feel like I've lost body fat now, whether that's putting on clothes, whatever it may be. Someone compliments you, for example. But that initial image, that really quickly goes out of your mind. often forget. what you actually look like at start of the journey and what's uncommon. How often would we take these progress pictures? This depends on, I would say, of aggressive you're going with your fat loss and how long your fat loss phases are. So ⁓ I would say that start and the end of your fat loss phases, however long they last. So that could be in three week cycles. If you go more aggressive, that could be six week cycles if you're doing a little bit more moderate approach. But I would say start and end your fat loss phases. Yeah, great recommendation. I think whatever interval you pick, just stick to it. So if it's a start at the end of your fat loss phase, you pick that. If it's like in certain weight loss increments, so it could be like every time you've lost five pounds, you take another progress picture, whatever it is, choose a set interval and stick that as you go through your training journey. And there's no right or wrong with it, is there? There's no right or wrong with it, but ⁓ they don't need to be done every day. It's more a time frame and rolling with it. ⁓ And make you're in the same outfit. same outfit because it's hard to tell sometimes the differences and outfits fit differently. it's one of the mistakes we see quite a lot of our members making in their first few sets of progress pictures. They've got different outfits on, they have like different, why am I thinking of female clothing? Different sports bra, different pairs of boxers with males, it can show different things. So look, try and take it in minimal clothing, same lighting conditions, same poses if possible, if you're doing posed progress pictures and keep the same outfits for the clothing that you're wearing. What other measures will we track when it comes to progress? Measurements can be helpful as well. Body measurements. Like tape measurements? Yes, yeah, yeah, tape measurements. They can be helpful. specific ones that stand out, Katie, that you think are useful? Particularly ones that are useful for me anyway, I would say waist, I also do a stomach area, like a line with a belly button. not really a standardized measure as such, but I think it's a really helpful one. A lot of us tend to carry body fat when we do gain it ⁓ our belly area. And sometimes we lose more in our belly area than we will around our waist, for example. And it's nice to see that change. So those are main torso ones I would recommend using as your first point of call. other ones would you be inclined to do? I know we do the full hog with members, right? for tape measurements? Yes. I think if there's certain body parts, like certain limbs that you would like to see some fat reduction in, then have intake measurements of those. if your upper arms are carrying more fat than you'd like and you'd like to see some reduction in those, have intake measurements, those areas can be useful. with the So I ⁓ you can limb measurements as well. I think the ones are the torso measurements, Katie, because I think sometimes visual fat loss can be easier to identify on limbs compared to torso sometimes. certain stages of the journey. So the tape measurements kind of just help to support what we see in the progress pictures. ⁓ I think it's probably worth touching upon the point that the visual result is still the gold standard for how your fat loss phase is going. visual representation of seeing fat reduced should always be your first point of call. And then you use the tape measurements to help to support that. Are you seeing what you're seeing in the images ⁓ it comes to tape measurements? That's ⁓ perspective on that. All of these different kind of tools that we're mentioning will paint an overall picture. Think about the visual results, the progress that has been in the middle of that and everything else around it supporting it. Yeah, absolutely. Now you're probably all sat there wondering, well, what about weight then? Because weight is what most people associate with fat loss. So we will track weight and weight tracking weight is really important. We've got these longer term measures like progress pictures and tape measurements, which we do. at certain intervals. is something that we do more frequently, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, weight. again, this is open up your mind ⁓ I say this right now, because there many people who will have apprehensions about weighing as regularly as I'm about to say. But weighing daily can actually be a really, powerful tool. And ⁓ that to weigh more frequently are more likely to get better. weight loss outcomes. So, step-down skills every day may figure out right now. but could actually help you detach from that number and the skills in the long run. Because your weight is going to fluctuate every day. It's like repeated exposure therapy, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, for sure. The more experience you have stepping on the scales, but understanding you're actually not balling up your fat loss fields, for example, that it's just a normal fluctuation because of, I might have eaten later last night. For women, I'm doing my period. I'm around ovulation. It might have been that you've had a couple of days of training, so your body's in a recovery state, you're holding onto more water weight. There's many, many different reasons why your weight may fluctuate, and that could probably be a whole podcast on itself. The reality is stepping on the scales isn't going to determine whether your fat loss phase is a success or not. The scales, the number on the scales is simply there just to see if things are going in the right direction overall. the trend of that number is more important than any individual daily weigh-in. But the daily weigh-in allows you to get a trend, see averages, to see what direction your fat loss is going in. Because if that number is not going down over time, then I hate to break it to you, you're unlikely to be losing body fat. Yeah, I want to add two things to that statement that Katie said, because it's really important. When we're talking about trends, There's not a lot that we can do when we need to assess a longer term trend to confirm that we're heading in the right direction on a day to day or on a week to week basis. So this is why we use weight. It's kind of like our proxy measure. It's in place those progress pictures and the tape measurements, which sometimes take a little bit longer to see change with. So we're going to use this as our way to kind of have an idea. of what our body is doing on a week to week basis. But here's the thing, if we've got a measure that's daily that can fluctuate, then you can also use a quick visual check on a daily basis to combine with your weigh-ins to see if things are changing considerably. example, if I have a really late meal that's got a lot of salt in it and it's got quite high carb content, and then I wake up the next day and my body weight has jumped up by two or three pounds, then I can just do a quick check in the mirror and say, well, do I look different to what I did yesterday? You might be holding a bit more water weight. You might be a bit more bloated. What happens over the next two to three days? weigh, ⁓ body weight might come down and might stay elevated. Check in the mirror, has there been much change? Normally by about two or three days after ⁓ ⁓ of more water retention, the period of elevated weight, you're going to see some sort of shift down in weight again. And that will probably correlate with a slightly different visual in the mirror as well after that time period. So we're not saying to get obsessive over numbers and get obsessive over checking yourself out in the mirror every single day. But just ask yourself, has much changed with this individual weighing that's higher? Because chances are it probably hasn't. The visual probably hasn't changed much. Your body probably hasn't changed much. And that's your quick check to yourself to go. Okay, so my weight's higher, but I'm not seeing the fat gain. There isn't fat gain there. It's just not visible. And you can keep going then with your calorie deficit after that. Because the number that you see in the scales can throw you off sometimes and make you think that you failed, you've put on four pounds overnight, which is so highly unlikely, especially when you focus on fat loss. just honestly ask yourself, have ⁓ been honest my nutrition? Have I tracked everything accurately? Have I been doing the activity levels that I set out to do? If you can answer honestly to those, then those are the actions that are required for you to lose body fat. Whatever that number of skills telling you on a day-to-day basis doesn't determine whether you're being successful with fat loss or not. No, it's just giving you a general idea. do we do with those individual weigh-ins? If you've got, you're taking weigh-ins every single day, are we going to go buy those individual weigh-ins? we adjust day to day? What do we do with all those data points? We want to look at the average for the week, right? number is not the be all end all either, but the number to focus on more so rather than the individual weigh-ins. And you'll soon start to realise when you look at that average you're in a fat loss, and if fat loss is going the right way, that average then will start going down and down and down and down. You don't to work this out manually. Obviously, Our clients is all built into the app for them, for them to see visually. There are apps out there that you can use now. Happy Scale is one I used to use many, many moons ago. Still use that one actually. Not sure if, I know that's iPhone based. Not sure if that's on Android at the moment, but there's lots of apps that can help you with that to navigate it now. I can imagine those Akali trackers are going on built in and stuff now. But you know, it's... The point is not to focus on the daily weightings, take those with a pinch of salt and see where you end up with an average at the end of the week. People that set a weight loss target generally have better weight loss outcomes as well. So it's worth setting a target, but just don't get too hung up on that number specifically. You get better at doing that over time, but it's just worth having that in mind. So set yourself a target. It might be a target for this particular phase. It might be the point in which you want to return back to muscle building. remember that the visual is what we're really doing this for. ⁓ it might be the case you get to your weight loss target and you feel like you need to then lose a little bit more. It might be a case that you're on your way to your weight loss target and you get really happy with how you're looking and you decide, OK, well, I don't really care about getting that extra five or six pounds off now. I actually really like the way that I look and I don't want to go. that little bit leaner, I don't want to look skinny, I'm quite happy with the way I am. So yeah, don't get too caught up on the exact number. may determine that you can't finish your fat loss phase, ⁓ you can't push quite as far as you'd like, and you might have to stop a couple of pounds short. ⁓ doesn't mean that you failed. We're just trying to set a destination and set a guideline so that we have something to work towards and anchor ourselves to. Because that can be motivating. It's ⁓ It's a way to have direction and when we got direction it can be easier to feel excited about that process. But I agree, Sian, it shouldn't get caught up on a specific number dictating whether you are successful or not or whether you are happy in your body or not. Absolutely not. It would just be so easy for us to sit here as coaches and adopt the hard stance and just go, right, you keep going, you push through it, like you've got to have your... goals tattooed to the back of your eyelids kind of thing. you've got to push for this no matter what. It'd be so easy for us to do that. But most people are not capable of applying that level of discipline, tenacity, commitment with everything else going on in their lives. Like this is not the be all and end all of they've got going on. It's highly unrealistic to have that approach. What might be more effective as a coach is to say, right, we've gone as far as we can go for this right now. If there's that many barriers in place that are stopping you from proceeding with this goal, we need to take you out of a fat loss process. We need to get you into something that's more sustainable for the time being, that's more realistic, which chances are is going to be maintenance calories or maintenance break, which we'll go on to in a moment. And then we can revisit this next phase of the fat loss goal a little bit further down the line. It does not mean that you failed. in your attempt to get to that fat loss goal, it means that you're being smart and you're choosing a more appropriate moment for you to give this your best attention. Because when you're half in and half out, it's a bloody nightmare. And for me personally, I think you're actually failing yourself if you keep pushing and striving for a goal that is just totally unrealistic at that time. I think you're doing yourself more of a disservice by doing that than actually going... Hang on a minute, this just isn't right for me right now. So what's the best course of action instead? setting yourself up for failure and you're setting yourself up for feeling like ⁓ can't achieve what you set out to achieve. That's not because you're not capable. It's because you're picking a really bad moment to do that in. You actually be more self aware by looking at the overall bigger picture and going, what is right for me right now? Understanding the tools and methods that you can use is great, but you also need to know how to apply them and have confidence in applying those at particular times of your life. So we've got so far at the moment now, Sean, with the fat loss phase, right? We've discussed using a calorie calculator, find your maintenance calories, decide your deficit. can break up that deficit with some which we'll go on to in a moment. When you're in this fat loss phase, you want to make sure you're tracking away in your foods. It's really insightful. We talked about how you can track your progress in multiple ways to make sure the fat loss is going in the right direction for you. What happens if that plateaus? do you go down with your fat loss fears? I think the first thing we need to talk about here is what is actually a plateau because we're not just talking like a couple of days back to back where your weight doesn't drop. That constitute as a weight loss plateau for me. That just means that you're just having a delay in your next weight drop. A plateau for me normally observed where you're not losing weight for at least two, ⁓ would say more likely three weeks back to back. we talk about those weight averages, those weekly averages for weights. If they've not dropped by the third week, then I will most likely be making some sort of adjustment. But with the caveat that I have to be 100 % confident that Everything that needs to be done correctly is being done correctly before I drop calories further. So for example, is the tracking on point? Are all the foods being consumed being put in the tracker? So are you reporting what you're eating correctly? Are you weighing those serving sizes correctly or are you just guesstimating something and putting them in the tracker? There's no point dropping your calories by 200 calories if you're eating an extra calories that you unaware of. Because you're not really solving the problem then, you're just covering up for it. So you're better off getting your tracking and your weighing of your foods really accurate before you drop your calories. So that's the first point of call. But if you are weighing everything and you are tracking everything super accurately and you are moving on a daily basis and you are keeping up with your gym sessions and then you've hit a weight pattern for two to three weeks, then there's a good chance that your body is now adapted to the current amount of calories that you've been eating. Your body's now burning a few less calories per day than where you started and you just need a small adjustment. So you would look to reduce the calories slightly from that point. I'm going to ask you question here now from your coaching experience. How often do you actually have to do that for a client? So rarely. It's not very often is it? So rarely. Wouldn't be my first point of call, especially if you're managing this yourself, I rarely had to do it myself on my own fat loss phases. Same, same actually. And you know, this isn't me picking myself up at all. But I've got six baccalena number of times, I've got down to, you know, arguably single digit body fat percentages. And there have been very few occasions where I've had to consistently or I've had to drop my calories down even further to continually see fat loss. In most cases, when I stall with fat loss, it's just a case of being patient for a week or so and then I'll see another drop. let's be real, and I could hold my hands up to this. am I actually actually tracking away in my foods? Because honestly, we're only human. It's gonna slip sometimes. We get complacent. be honest with yourself and just sort that out because as soon as you do that, your results will start coming again. But if you do hit the it can happen, it does happen. Sometimes your fat loss is masked as well, which is another avenue to explore, maybe not on this podcast, ⁓ but. Plateaus are few and far between really. They can happen, they do exist, but that first point of course would always be the actions that you're doing and how you're doing those correctly to begin. I would say throughout the course of my many years of coaching, nine times out of 10, when a client thinks they've achieved a weight loss plateau, and I asked them about tracking and weighing their foods, they then go, Yeah, you're right. I probably have got a little bit lax with the tracking because you're tired. Your mental focus drops off when you're in a fat loss phase and you've done it for a little while. You get complacent. You get overconfident in your ability, especially when you're eating the same foods day in, day out. You get overconfident in your ability to weigh out the same portion each time. To eyeball it. You might say eyeballing. A couple of things here and there because you've had good results so far so it'll be alright. It'll be alright. Yeah, I think I know what I'm doing with this now. Yeah. But it's so easy to misjudge things and if you haven't got a lot of calories because you're in a calorie deficit and you're trying to get fat loss off faster, small mistakes of 100 to 200 calories a day might be enough to add up over the course of a week and slow down your fat loss to the point where you think you plateaued. you've not actually plateaued. No. If you were a little bit more accurate, you'd just see a rate of results that are a little bit more consistent with what you would expect. I fully agree. I fully agree. So we've outlined the whole fat loss phase here. Now what we're going to do is give you a little bit of an example of what to expect after the fat loss phase and a bit of a step by step for how to transition a maintenance break. ⁓ This would suit you if you've got an extended period of fat loss. and it's impossible or unrealistic for you to get all the fat loss done in one go. I'd probably highly recommend a game to start, to be honest. Taking a maintenance break may do you the world of good and improve your chances of reaching your eventual end goal with fat loss. So we're looking to use this as a period of maintenance calories. which is where you've got the same amount of calories going in as what you're burning every day. So you're consuming the same amount of calories as you're burning. It gives you a break from the fat loss phase. It gives you a mental refresh after an extended period of moderate deficit or after an aggressive diet phase. You can also use this for a week of unplanned change in your life. So it could be that you've got one of the kids off school because they're ill. It could be that you've got to travel for work or you can just do it because you're feeling a bit burned out. But you can use these maintenance breaks to your advantage. They can either be pre-planned or they can be reactive to what's going on in your life. And they can really help you out of a tough spot when you need them. It's important to note this is another tool for you in your toolbox because fat loss can be hard. It's not always appropriate in life to push on. So what are your options? You keep pushing on, feel like a failure and then just resent the process and then just go backwards. you go, right, I've got this tool, got ⁓ maintenance breaks. You can even use maintenance days or weekends if you wanted to in between this as well, ⁓ allow you to have a little bit more flexibility throughout the journey, but also to give you a of a break from fat loss. So it can be utilized for a number of things. This is another tool that you have the power of choosing so that you... feeling control of your next move. So how do we set up for one of these maintenance breaks? So you touched upon the other start of this section, It's your maintenance calories. Maintenance calories are you want to be consuming around about the amount of calories that you're burning. Again, we're never going to get this spot on, So we calculated our maintenance calories when we first started before our fat loss phase. But should we go by that amount or should we go back and recalculate now? Recalculate. always recalculate because you now hopefully weigh less right you don't have as much fat mass you are ⁓ individual so you're likely going to be burning less calories of maintenance because you are not carrying around as much mass so I'd always recommend recalculating you sometimes you might not see much of a difference sometimes it might be exactly the same weight as calories sometimes they might have dropped a little, but by recalculating you know roughly where you're going to be. Again, this is just an estimation, it's the ballpark figure, but something for you to go by to see if that's your actual maintenance calories. When it comes to your maintenance, this isn't you maintaining your weight exactly where it is, and it's not maintaining your body fat levels exactly where they are. I think that's really important because I think maintenance... phases, breaks, whatever someone wants to call them, can be misunderstood quite easily by thinking you've got to maintain your weight exactly where it is, you've got to maintain your body fat exactly where they are or where you ended the fat loss phase. But that's not accurate, is it, Sean? No, and I've just thought of this weird analogy, so I'm going to say it. It come up really badly. But Katie, what is the biggest... contributor towards weight change and weight fluctuations when you go from not eating much to eating much more again. Waterweight. Waterweight, right? Waterweight. And if you look at a body of water, like if you look across and see calm water, if you look across and see a river, if you look at a lake, is the water ever entirely still? Very, very rare. No. Never. So even though we're seeing the same amount of water visually, it's always just slightly titering and slightly fluctuating. And the biggest thing that fluctuates with our bodies is our water weight. That's what fluctuates day to day. So when we're thinking about maintenance, still expect there to be some fluctuation. We still expect there to be some change because like water, our bodies will always be in a constant state of change and flux. just they're less volatile. We're not seeing big huge waves crashing into the shore. We're not seeing huge amounts of shift. We're just seeing small. minor fluctuations. And I'm sure there's a more scientific way to describe that, but it is what it is. So maintenance is describing our state of energy balance. It doesn't really ever describe what our bodies are doing in response to that energy balance. we're not going to remain perfectly flat lined and perfectly still. Even if our energy balance is that. Our weight will still change and the composition of what makes up that weight, water weight, fat mass, muscle mass, that will change. So that's going to change on a daily basis in phase that you're doing, right? This isn't just a maintenance break. This is in a miscellaneous phase and in a fat loss phase. Every day of your life, your weight is going to fluctuate. The sooner you can accept that, the freer you're gonna be. However, Sean, I think it's important here to arm people what to expect. When you leave a fat loss phase and go into a maintenance break, when you go from your deficit calories of, for example, if yours are 1500, and then you go back up to 2200 calories, what can you expect to see in the scales then? What actually happens? If you go back to true maintenance calories, you should see weight gain. Weight gain after a fat loss phase? You should see weight gain. because when you're in a calorie deficit, your body is never able to be fully replenished. Water weight and particularly glycogen stores will never be at a fully replenished amount. The larger the individual is, the more storage room they have for things like muscle glycogen. So a very well-muscled individual has more storage space for glycogen, is the stored form of carbohydrates. Glycogen gets stored three parts to one with water. grams of water gets stored with every one gram of glycogen. And some individuals can store believe it's up to 900 grams I think is in the research. Yes around that I think from 400 up to 900 or it's around that region. That's an extreme case but we have glycogen storage available in the liver which I believe is around hundreds or so grams. We do have in the liver, but it's a small amount. It's one we don't really need to pay too much attention to. Most of our glycogen is stored in our muscles. Those muscle glycogen stores, if you just think about those on their own, let's say for example you have 700 grams of glycogen storage available. So you regain whatever was lost from that. So that's a couple of hundred grams there probably. That then gets stored with three parts of water. So 700 grams of total storage capacity plus three grams of water which go with that. that's 2.1 kilograms of water. So you're talking 2.8 kilograms there of just storage of what's in your muscles. 2.8 kilograms, that's... oh here my mass now, that's got to be close to around six pounds, Yeah. again, every individual is going to be different with the positive weight regain they see, right? And how depleted they were going into that maintenance period too. So how long have they been dieting for? How lean have they got to? those are all going to contribute towards that. And they'd be doing an aggressive or a more moderate approach. because of the level of depletion that they've achieved in that short timeframe. But ultimately, doesn't matter if you've done fast approach or slow approach, you are going to regain weight when you go back to maintenance. And you should, because your body is depleted of water and glycogen, both of which are positive, getting your cells and your body hydrated again is valuable. Getting your energy stores in your muscles back up to normal capacity is very helpful to your activity, your energy levels, all of this is, and your hormones. All of this is advantageous to you recovering from that diet state. So it should, your weight should go back up. you don't want to be running on 50 % capacity outside of your dieting phase. And to get yourself back up to near 100 % capacity most of the time, you're going to want to refill those glycogen stores. To refill those glycogen stores, you need to be taking carbohydrates. When you store then those carbohydrates as glycogen, you're going to draw water into the muscles when doing so. That's got to weigh something. So let's stick with the 700 of glycogen storage that Sean was on about earlier on. That's going to show as 2.8 kilograms on the scales, for example. Even if you're a little bit less than that, you still could be showing a one kilogram increase on the scales. Does that mean that you're gaining fat? Absolutely not. It doesn't. It means that you are ⁓ your body. Going back to what I mentioned previously about the weight fluctuations in the fat loss section, this is the same scenario here. Look at your body and say, have I changed visibly with my fat stores? Can I see more fat storage when my body weight has made this increase? And if you haven't had as much food in your system or you haven't had as much water weight in the system, then there may be some temporary water retention, there may be little bit of bloating, but by the end of your maintenance break, you'll start to see your body return back to normal. So a few days into your maintenance break, you'll start to notice your body is looking a bit more normal again. You'll start to see your weight gain potentially look a little bit less erratic. Then by the end of your maintenance week, you're ready to start approaching your next fat loss. block and you'll probably start to see things change again a little bit further. And you might look at yourself then and go, well, actually I haven't gained any fat at all, even though my weight's gone up by maybe as much as four or five pounds. So it's important to have that visual check too, not to create the obsession with what your body looks like and to pick yourself apart, but because your brain is already going to that place mentally anyway, where you're thinking the numbers gone up on the scales, therefore I've got fatter, well prove that to yourself. Have a look, because I promise you that's highly unlikely to be the case. And allow a few days to settle as well, because you may be bloated and that can kind of skew your judgment on that as well. think the important thing is to recognise that an initial increase when you go from fat loss to... A maintenance break doesn't mean you've failed or you've gained loads of fat. You should ride that week out. It's way to see when things settle a little and then make your judgments from there. Are there any other considerations for a maintenance break? So we've got the step-by-step approach. You put your calories back up. You expect there to be some weight regain, which we've spoken about. Are there any other steps that we should consider? For example, do I change anything in regards to my food choices when I go into this maintenance break? Your diet structure from fat loss to maintenance shouldn't drastically change. Whatever routine has worked well for you in fat loss, unless it's more of an aggressive approach, right, there might be some differences. But even so, the meal composition shouldn't change drastically because in fat loss, right, you would have been focusing on high protein, high fiber to support you during those phases, during that phase, sorry. So then when you go to a maintenance break, you just take that structure with you and you bulk out the meals, you bulk out your snacks, you add some more carbohydrates in. You don't necessarily need more protein at this stage because you're already hitting a decent amount. So when you say bulk out, is there a particular nutrient we're looking for that we're going to try and increase? Carbohydrates. You don't necessarily need to ⁓ bulk out in protein or fats. They may naturally increase a little with portion size you're having. You don't want to put your focus on having necessarily more protein. You want to try and replenish yourself as quickly as possible and increase the amount of carbohydrates that you're having. And a rough figure, Shaun, that people could use here, ⁓ that's three to four grams per kilogram, right? That's something that people could strive for when they get back to make dinners for carbohydrates to make sure they're eating enough of them. And that's probably a lot compared to what you may eat in your fat loss phase as well. So don't be alarmed if you feel like you're eating a lot more food. That's perfectly normal for this phase. I think that's what a lot of people can misinterpret carbohydrates leading to fat gain, right? Because you come out of a fat loss phase, you increase your carbohydrates whether you purposefully do that or not, generally most people will, but then also when you're increasing your carbohydrates your diet, the of skills tends to increase. And that's not because you're seeing fat gain happening, that's because actually you're eating carbohydrates, you're replenishing your glycogen stores, which means you've got more water weight, which means your weight goes up. That's not gain, right? I'm not sure how much we've discussed this and ⁓ I certainly think we should spend too much time breaking this down right now, but When you are eating the same amount of calories as you're burning every day and you're eating more carbohydrates, your body is either using or burning those carbohydrates you're storing those carbohydrates as glycogen. In the real world, we not see excess carbohydrates stored ⁓ as fat. in calorie-equated individuals and even in individuals that are consuming calories in excess of maintenance and they're in surplus calories, it's not the carbs that tend to get stored as fat. It's the additional calories that come from fat. Now, does this mean you need to change the compositions of the carbs and the fats in your diet? No, it doesn't. We don't want you to take that away from that conversation. What we want you to realise is that people think that they're gaining more fat because they're eating more carbs when they go back to maintenance, but they're not gaining more fat. They're gaining more weight. And these are different substances. And the weight they are gaining is because they are gaining water weight and they are increasing their carbohydrate storage. Which is a good thing. Which is a good thing. And you want to promote when you come out with fat loss fits, sure. A framework which has really helped some individuals and one that I quite like is that when you go back to a maintenance phase to stop you from going too far with flexibility is to keep two meals a day the same as your fat loss phase meals. So this could be your lunch and your breakfast, for example. You have the same meals as what you did for fat loss. You might add a little bit more to them as you mentioned earlier, Katie, you might add a little bit extra, but you don't change the meal itself that much. And then you have more meal a day, like your dinner, for example, might be a completely different meal to what you experienced in fat loss. That's where some of the flexibility comes in. That's where some of the extra calories comes in. But you still have some base structure and some controlled that worked really well for you in your fat loss phase. to stop you from drifting too much from a routine that you know you're going to be going back to in the future. And if that routine works for you in fat loss, it's probably going to work for you outside of fat loss too. You just need some more fluid flow and flexibility to... Not physical restricted, right? But yeah, I agree. I think keeping some consistency between phases is helpful. Less decisions to make, easy to slot in, more autonomy. It's a good place to be. So there's one final stage of the multi-phase journey that we've been describing here. Being through a fat loss phase, we've had the step-by-step of how to set that up and how to track your progress and what to do if you end up getting stuck. Then we've gone through the maintenance break and we've described how to get yourself back to maintenance, what types of foods you increase, what to expect from your weight and what to do with maintaining some sort of control throughout that maintenance week. The last thing we're going to discuss is how to set up a muscle building phase from a nutritional perspective. We're not going to go into huge amounts of depth and detail with this one because we could do an entire podcast series on this, but let's just go through the main things that you need to consider when it comes to structuring a muscle building phase nutritionally. and talk about how we're going to slot this in now after we've finished our fat loss phase. Sounds good. I think it's important to emphasize the point that you've just said there, Shaun, that we're going to talk about a muscle building phase from a nutrition perspective because... We'll be here for six hours otherwise. We will be here for six hours, yes, but also don't want to... mislead anyone to think that they can build muscle without resistance training, without going to the gym and doing progressive training, right? So that is an important, very, very important part of every phase. Of course it is, but in particular, muscle building, you're not going to get the stimulus you need to build muscle without it. But for the purpose of today, let's chat about what we need for muscle building phase nutritionally. what you eat and how much you eat in a muscle building phase. will provide the environment that supports your muscle growth. It will not make it happen on its own. need to have that stimulus from the training and then the stimulus ⁓ supported and built upon by providing the right environment nutritionally. key to understand. Yeah, it really, really is. It can be confusing to understand this, right? So part of this ⁓ is finish a fat loss phase. So we've done fat loss, we've done maintenance, we may have done another block of fat loss. Now we to go to a muscle building phase. What do do with our calories? We need to get the calories out of deficit now because a deficit for the vast majority of people is not going to achieve them muscle growth. So we need more calories. do we do with those calories, Katie? So very similar to going into a diet brick, you recalculate your maintenance calories. You don't fap about with reverse dieting. Again, another podcast that we could go into whole depth over, but ultimately, diet in, you're just prolonging your calorie deficit. So you're going to do what you do in a diet break, which you've had experience of now, recalculating your maintenance calories. And you're going to take yourself straight back to maintenance calories. You've done a maintenance break by this point. You will absolutely know what to expect when it comes to positive weight regain. You also will have experience in transitioning out of fat loss into a diet, into maintenance calories nutritionally. So you'll have an idea of what you need to do with your food as well. At the moment, the research we have suggests that you can muscle nearly as effectively when you're at maintenance calories compared to being in surplus calories. surplus calories means that you're eating more calories than you're burning every day. So this is ⁓ commonly been seen as the optimal way. build muscle and this is where the bulking terminology terminology comes from. Bulking is essentially a period of anywhere from a small to a large surplus of calories. Traditionally it's a lot more calories than maintenance level but newer research we have suggests that you don't necessarily need very large calorie surpluses and some individuals can do just fine with gaining a lot of muscle without going above maintenance calories, without eating any more than the same amount of calories as they burn every day. It's not possible for everyone. particularly individuals that are very lean individuals. may be some of you listening to this podcast, but if you typically have a really hard time building muscle and you find that you're eating loads of food and you're still not seeing much change and you don't gain a lot of fat when you're eating loads of food either, ⁓ you may need to aim for a very small surplus. Or similarly, if you're an individual that's doing loads of training and loads of high intensity training and you're more experienced and you also don't mind gaining a tiny bit of body fat over time, then you may want to go into a small surplus as well. What are your experiences, Sean? Because not to over too much of this podcast, but you have experience in both the traditional bulking side of things where you're eating in the calorie surplus. And you've also now had some more experience at building in maintenance of energy balance. And what's your take on both of those approaches? you personally, how have you found them? So over the last two and a bit years, nearly three years now, I have done both approaches. Year one and year two, I did more of a traditional bulking approach. The first year I was in a slightly greater surplus. I clearly built muscle, but I added more fat than what I gained in a long period of time. And I would say that if you think about it as a ratio to the ratio being to fat gain ratio, I would say that I gained significantly more fat relative to how much muscle I gained in that first year. In the second year, I didn't go into quite as large of a surplus, but I still allowed myself to gain quite a lot of fat. And then in my most recent building phase, spanning over about the last six months, I have stayed much closer to maintenance calories I've gained significantly less fat this time around while still gaining decent amount of muscle. So to put into context numerically or take a little bit of measurement error ⁓ gained ⁓ between about three and a half to four kilograms of muscle. So during the maintenance phase, it's hard to make direct comparisons and at numbers, ⁓ hard to work out exactly what difference is in terms of rate of gain. I have found that my muscle gains have not been... dissimilar from doing a more aggressive building approach compared to a more conservative, slow and steady building approach. I have the most muscular physique I have had so far at this stage of my journey now. And I'm also far leaner than I was when I was doing my previous bulks at this stage of the bulk. So six months into this lean building phase, let's call it, I have gained significantly less fat, but I have still gained a decent amount of muscle. And it's visible on me because I stayed leaner this time around. Now my concern was because I'm traditionally the type of person where I probably don't gain muscle quite as quickly. I'm not hyper responsive to muscle growth, not in all areas anyway. I was thinking I'm probably not going to see as much muscle growth if I eat closer to maintenance. But this has probably changed my perception to that and even somebody that's been training for as many years as I have. particularly over the last few years, it's been really, really hyper-focused on building muscle and training with a lot of intensity. I was expecting to see a little bit less progress than what I've made. So that's slightly rewarding. advice is just to make sure that if you're going to try and do a slower, steadier approach. and be closer to maintenance and to try to limit the amount of body fat you have gained. you want to make sure that you're not dipping into calorie deficits and you want to make sure that you're staying at maintenance and not slightly below it. And secondly, you also want to make sure that you're not starting super, super, super lean because it might be difficult for you to build muscle just because of the hormonal state your body is in when you're carrying very low levels of body fat. Your body might not be responsive to building muscle when you're carrying such low levels of body fat. this is seen in some of the research. ⁓ people actually respond better to building muscle when they have got a little bit more body fat. I'm not talking like, you know, carrying loads of body fat, but extreme examples, we're talking individuals that are super lean, like a bodybuilder that may have just come off prep for a show, for example, might not be very responsive to building muscle until they've regained some weight and regained some body fat. It's interesting. I think I have experienced your apprehensions of doing a longer term building phase of maintenance calories. And it's been great to experience the benefits that you've had from it actually. only building muscle at a decent rate over these last number of months, but also now able to start your next fat loss phase or your next cut at a place than... you've ever been with this much muscle mass, right? So you can now take yourself into new territory with your next fat loss phase, which is quite exciting, rather than having to lose maybe an unnecessary amount of body fat first, like what you gained in maybe your first one or two bucks. If we talk about the rate of muscle gained, don't really feel like there's been a significant difference in how quickly I've gained muscle doing a more conservative building phase compared to where I've done more kind of aggressive bulking style building phases in the past. I don't see a huge amount of difference in the muscle gain, but I see a massive difference in the amount of fat that I gained. I've gained far less fat this time around. And if there's not a significant difference in the muscle gain, there's not been a significant difference in the strength gain. I am the strongest now that I've been probably my whole entire life. So my strength gains have still gone up in this phase. That implies that I've probably built some muscle. If I don't see a big difference, then what really is stopping me from doing a more conservative gaining phase? Even if there was a very slight advantage to building muscle if I was in surplus calories or in a slightly larger surplus, even if there was a very slight advantage, it doesn't seem to be enough to make up for the fact that I'd be gaining much more fat, which then in turn means that I've had to do a longer fat loss phase to get the fat off again so I can get back to the level of body composition I am now, for example, to get leaner again. So I'd be... I'd be losing time by having to do a longer fat loss phase to get leaner again after that more aggressive muscle building phase. And I think I would probably say that based on my experience that I would lose out on more muscle gains by having to spend longer in a fat loss phase than I would lose if I did a more conservative bulk compared to a more aggressive bulk. Because overall, with the option of doing it a more conservatively, you are likely to be spending more of your time building than cutting. And if you could spend more of your time, your years, future in a building state, ultimately your net gain is probably going to be greater in terms of muscle gain if you do it a bit more conservatively. makes complete sense. Cool, so I know that was a slight side tangent right to where we're at with muscle building phase but I think it's important for people ⁓ hear the other side of the coin when it comes to muscle building too. Is there anything you wanted to add before we carry on with this section? If you're a little bit nervous about trying to build muscle at maintenance and you want to give yourself some insurance that you're not going to dive into deficit by accident, then you might want to just go into a really small surplus to make sure you're maximizing your chance of building muscle. What do you mean by a small surplus? So we're talking 5 to 10 % of your maintenance calories added on top. we're looking at, it's probably going to be about 200 to 300 calories at most for most people. And that gives you what what I class as insurance to make sure there's a little bit of room there so you're just creeping just slightly above maintenance calories. And do know what? I might have been doing this naturally over the last six months anyway, but my rate of gain, what I've monitored in terms of my weight gain, has been really, really small and tightly controlled so that I know that I'm not in a massive surplus and I know that my fat gains have been minimal. but you can give yourself just a little bit of insurance, a little bit of room to know that if your calorie tracking isn't 100 % on point and 100 % accurate, you're not going into deficit and you're not blunting some of the potential gains you would have, or you're not slowing down some of the gains that you would have. I think it's worth noting that I've calorie tracked for like 15 years. I... I am pretty meticulous with my calorie tracking. I really have not missed a beat this last six months far as ⁓ concerned. And I vouch for that because you've probably probably you've definitely been more meticulous than me. Probably for every meal for last six to seven months of life along we've been in a building phase now because our timelines have actually matched up this year. just for the listeners, that does not mean that if you had me as a coach that I would make you do exactly the same as that. No, because you coach me and you coach many other people. That's not not. Do you need to be that pedantic with everything? No, absolutely not. I have wanted to test this approach and give it a really, really thorough test period, because it's the first time that I have actually done a building phase. with very close to maintenance calories or at maintenance calories. I haven't done one of those before. And it was only going to be a really good case study and a really good example for me if I controlled it as tightly as that. Otherwise, data have been unreliable. I know data is reliable. So I know that I can reflect upon this. in future years if I want to do this approach again and know what response I'm going to get. But if I wasn't super tight with my calorie tracking and my weight and my foods and such, then I couldn't reliably say that I can predict the future result I'm going to get, if that makes sense. So... absolutely does. And you're banking experienced, right? You're putting yourself in a scenario that allows you to get the data you need to... be able to make future decisions for your own journey, but also allows you to bank this experience to work with clients too. But because you do stuff in certain way, doesn't mean that you would coach your clients to do something in exactly the same way because everyone's situations are completely different. So back to the muscle phase and setting that up then. You want to make sure you're at maintenance. You may want to be in a very slight surplus, depending on your circumstances. should we expect when ⁓ return back to a maintenance phase? In addition to the stuff that we spoke about for when you do a diet break. So you're probably going to get some scale weight increase when you first go back to your muscle building phase. That's to be expected. You might get a bit more bloating. That should be expected. But what else should we expect? this point that I'm going to raise is a bit similar when you go into a diet break too. You may experience some increased hunger signalling. You would think you get more calories, you're not going to be hungry, that you'll be sorted, you're not going to feel hungry, you're not going to feel like you've got increased cravings. But actually when you go back to higher calories initially, you may feel hungry. And that's quite normal. You may experience increased cravings. That's quite normal. you give some ideas the listeners why that would be the case, Katie? Because it seems really counterintuitive, doesn't it? It does. does. When you go back to maintenance calories, it takes a while for your hunger signaling to level off. It takes a little while for your hormones to catch up to what you're actually consuming. That just doesn't happen overnight or in a couple of days because you're eating some more calories. You need to give your body a to go from a, I'm depleted, I'm starving to, ⁓ my God, you're actually giving me more food now. I'm now replenished. ⁓ therefore I am now full. That doesn't happen overnight and that could take a couple of days, sometimes a couple of weeks. Everyone's different. It's a bit of a lag effect, isn't it? explain that so well, Katie. I really like ⁓ description there. I think this catches some people by surprise and it's what leads them overeating. mentioned about, you mentioned about cravings as well. That's another component, but there's a physiological component here, which is like Katie described, your hunger hormones ⁓ been suppressed and now they're coming back into play a little bit more and they've not quite caught up to the amount of food that your body's consuming again. So there's a little bit of dysregulation there with that. But then there's also a psychological factor to eating more foods again, especially where you've come out of a restrictive state. Freedom! It springs mind. And this is one of the most natural phenomenons that you will experience. I don't think avoids this period of coming out of fat loss, going back to normal and feeling like they want some more food or they're struggling to moderate portion sizes or they're struggling not to go reaching for snacks and treats and experiencing more pleasure from food. It's pretty much unavoidable no matter what fat loss approach you do, slow and steady, fast and aggressive, it doesn't matter. you've been in fat loss for long enough and if you've lost weight ⁓ always going to get some sort of bounce back effect. And I mean bounce back effect as in not literally regain loads of weight. mean like your body is going to start sending you more signals to continue to eat more food and to continue to crave stuff when you come out of fat loss. I think it's easy to overlook the psychological component of it sometimes also think that you are a broken individual because you want to have more something. Like you're not, you're absolutely not. But being aware of that can help you manage that a little bit better. But certainly won't be the first person and you won't be the last person to come out of a diet phase and have those worries and concerns. Absolutely not. It gets better with practice. The more you've experienced this, you'll find your own coping strategies and your own coping mechanisms for this. And it does help to have support with this as well, especially the first time around. If you've not done a building phase after a fat loss phase before, which a lot of people haven't done, a lot of people haven't had that focus and support after their fat loss phase. It does make a big difference to have somebody guiding this that understands what it is to go through, what it's like to go through this process also to know what your... best approaches for your unique circumstances are in terms of how to balance these emotions and these ⁓ you're getting from food noise. How would you transition Sean from fat loss into muscle building in terms of your structure and what you would do? I would apply the same rules as maintenance breaks. I would just go straight back to maintenance calories and I would try and keep my meals consistent for the first few days or so. I wouldn't be introducing all different meals straight away from day one, week one, week two, week three. I would try and keep a lot of the base foundations of what I was doing to fat loss, in fat loss the same. I would add more to those meals. I might add a couple of extra meals a day, but I wouldn't go ripping the whole thing up because is more likely to leave me in a place where I'm unfamiliar with how my body is going to respond to the food I'm eating. I to get more familiar with my hunger signaling and my satiety ⁓ when I out of fat loss phase and go back to the building phase. Like you mentioned, there's going to be that lag effect of hunger signaling. going to feel ⁓ some more pronounced hunger ⁓ the first week or so, maybe two weeks. I want to make sure that I am keeping meals as consistent as possible so I'm not screwing that up even more. Once I got that foundation in place and I've got my calories back up and I feel like my hunger and my cravings aren't as problematic or not on my mind, then I would look to build more flexibility in overtime. I have to agree. I have to agree. I think too much flexibility too quickly can lead to chaos and be hard to manage. We also get signaling from ⁓ tastes, new foods, which can lead us to easily over consume if we're not ⁓ careful with it. ⁓ not to say to have these in your diet again or never again. It's to be aware that ⁓ probably in a state of I could easily over consume this now after coming out of a fat loss phase. So give yourself time to sell. this mean that you can't have a particular meal that you've been really looking forward to when you've just come out of a fat loss phase and you're going to a muscle building phase? No. Like if you want to celebrate the end of your fat loss phase and go back to a muscle building phase with having a pizza, for example, then nothing to stop you. What we're saying is you don't want to go, right. loss is over. I'm going back to muscle building. My calories are going up by a thousand Now I'm gonna have ⁓ night one burger night two. I'm going out for a three course meal night three I'm having a Chinese takeaway night for I'm having chocolate cake. I'm having chocolate biscuits ⁓ is everything got to be covered in chocolate? I'm ice cream like wait ⁓ You have it all but you can't have it all at once and if you try and fit it all into the first couple of days or the first week then your probably going to run into some sort of roadblocks with that. So we're saying, if you want to have a special meal and really enjoy something different that you haven't been able to have in months when you come out of fat loss, by all means go and have that. ⁓ keep the rest of your meal structure the same. Track contain it, know that your calories are going to accommodate for that meal choice, and then all your other normal meals around it. Because guys, you can be in a muscle building phase for three to six months, sometimes a bit longer. You've got all the time in the world to add in the foods that you love and for it to be part of your regular routine. You don't need to do it all in the first couple of days. Just a note here, came up with something really interesting the day when we were on a walk. She spoke about holidays and what typically happens when people go on holidays, they do a fat loss phase before holiday and they go on holiday and then it's like the floodgates opening, just eat and drink everything in sight. And then that ends up leading to a setback. And in future, we will do a podcast about transitioning from fat loss phase to holiday. And we'll talk about some of the methods and the strategies which we put in place in order to have a really nice balance between enjoying yourself on holiday and having more freedom, but without feeling like you've just ruined all the results you worked so hard to get prior to going. But the one thing that Katie said, which really stood out to me was about how her first few days into holiday, you are more aware of the extra flexibility you have. and you contain that a little bit more than what you used to. Yes, I think what I said was it can be really easy to, again, either go on holiday or go back to more food, which is like a intermessage, a little phase or a diet break. You've got much more flexibility. You let your guard down a little. It'll be really easy to be like a kid in a sweet shop and have it all in one go. Whereas actually just hold your horses. Take a couple of days to settle. Be aware of your environment if you're on holiday. Clock the things that you really want to have on that holiday. I want to eat in that restaurant. I want that dessert. I want that crepe. I want that ice cream. You can have it all, but just don't have it all on the first couple of days. Spread it out. But if you don't give yourself some time to settle into a new environment, that new environment can really, really throw you off. Very well put. So let's wrap up a muscle building phase then. So we touched upon how long you could spend in the muscle building phase. I mentioned that, you know, you've got three to six months to enjoy all of these different foods because that's how long you could potentially spend in a muscle building phase. There isn't really a time limit on it with the muscle building phase. You could stay in it for as long as you really want, but generally you want to at least be in the muscle building phase for around three to six months to get the benefit from it, to see some visible changes in your muscle mass. If you're new to it and not done it before, perhaps you want to do a shorter timeframe to settle into it, give it a go, and then back into your next fat loss phase, right? To see what progress you have made, to see if you need to make any for the next muscle building phase. So that's the amount of time that you want to spend in it. Again, can vary for individual. You can even, if you wanted to. ⁓ align this with your holidays or whatever it may be. For me particularly, mine is the whole netball season, I'm in a building phase. before I go into a cut, but it's different for everyone. Could you, before we summarize the whole, I guess, journey that could follow Sean, how can you monitor your progress in the muscle building phase? What would you suggest there? I still suggest doing the progress pictures. They can pretty much be an evergreen habit, actually, taking regular progress pictures throughout your journey. But if you want to see visible muscle change, it makes sense to have progress pictures done. You might want to do these at slightly longer than in a fat loss phase. So you might do them every at the end of every maybe training phase. So it could be every. eight weeks, could be every 12 weeks. It all depends, but you would still do your progress pictures. terms of like ⁓ to week monitoring, ⁓ think it's important to have a rough guideline for what you want to see your weight do. In a muscle building phase, whether you're at maintenance calories or not, we want to be seeing the scale weight go up because that indicates that we're probably building some muscle. Now some of that weight gain initially is going to be water weight in the first week, two weeks of going back to maintenance calories or above. We expect to see some of that. So you might see larger fluctuations in that first week or two. You might see some fat gain or you might experience some fat gain in the time that you're doing a building phase. So just take that for what it is. There's going to be a very small amount of fat gained over time. We can assume that if we're being smart with our calories, not going into large surpluses and we are seeing weight gain on the scales, a lot of that weight gain will be attributed towards muscle gain. If we're seeing it over an extended period of time, we want to see small marginal weight increases each week, especially if we're looking to keep body fat to a minimum as we're gaining. So we're looking at around about 0.1 0.2 % of your body weight gained per week. So that's a really small amount. To put into context, we're looking at about 0.2 to ⁓ 0.4 per week, maybe less ⁓ than for some people. In kilograms, looking at like ⁓ 0.... 0.5 kg to 0.1 kg per week gains. It's a very, very small amount that you're gaining. When you track your averages week to week, have a little look, have a rough idea. Don't worry if it's a little bit of bevel below that. Think about what is my average increase over the course of like a 10 week period or 12 week period. So when you've got 10 weeks, What was your weight at the start of that 10 weeks? What was the weight at the end of the 10 weeks? Divide your weight difference by the number of weeks you've been in the phase four and you have your average rate of gain per week. It might not go up consistently every week. It probably won't do right. It's reality. And I think that's important to note. You're not going to see that perfect gain every week, in females. I speak for myself. Mine sometimes will go up a pound or two one week. hold it there for another week and then it might drop back down. So it's not always linear. It's very unlikely to be linear. So I think taking a block and then dividing it is key here. But what you want to avoid, I think the key thing is here is that it's not, you're not seeing pound, two pounds, three pounds, consistent gain on a regular basis. If that's happening, you're unlikely to be gaining that in muscle mass. it's likely then that you're going to start gaining fat mass at quite an accelerated rate. Yep, 100%. If you're gaining weight at a much greater rate than you think, there is a chance that you're overshooting a little bit too high in calories. Confirm this with visuals. That's where I would take what I'd call emergency progress pictures. So if your body weight has gone up by like nine pounds in four weeks, it's like, you've gained a lot of weight there in a very short space of time. Let's do some... progress pictures and let's see if anything has changed for you visibly. Sometimes it might not have, right? This is why you cannot just rely on the skills because we've had scenarios with clients in the past where they have crept up probably a little bit more than we thought. We haven't instantly gone up, you've gained loads of fat, they've scared you back with deficit, cut it out, not at all. I had a client recently where, start of February, knew she was on a building phase, we... had an idea of what she was expecting to gain by the end of the month. As we're going through the month, the weight is going up much quicker than expected. Didn't really panic about it for a week or two. By the end of the third week, we were kind of thinking, okay, the scale weight is still going up. Bearing in mind, she is smashing PBs in the gym. She's training more frequently with more of an emphasis on muscle burning than she's ever done before. But still, it's kind of like, okay, we're still seeing slightly large weight increases. We need to just check this. got her progress pictures ⁓ she was leaner in the second set of progress pictures than the ones at the start of the month. So even though her weight has been going up, she's leaner. second time point than at the first time point. We know that the weight that she's gained is through increased muscle mass. There may even be some body fat reduction or it might just be that the body fat that she has has been spread out across a little bit more mass, a little bit more surface area, who knows. confirm with the visuals... To decide your next move. Yeah, to know what the scales are showing. Don't just go by scale weight alone, because it can be deceiving at times. It can be, especially if it's a process you're new to and you don't actually know how your body responds. Like for me, if I seen that nine pound increase from week one to week four, know how my body responds now when I go back to higher calories and I'm training with intensity. That would be fat gain for me, because ⁓ don't see that rate anymore. But for an individual who is perhaps new to training with intensity, perhaps new to training more frequently throughout the week, and then also consistently create an environment in their body where they can build effectively, it's not abnormal to see that increase. And it can be really good sign. It can be a great sign that things are going in the right direction. So again, I know we bang on all the time that it's individualized, but it ⁓ really is. And I can't emphasize that enough. Excellent point. Thank you, sir. to summarize this ⁓ long podcast today, let's summarize the whole journey step by step. What do need to do if you want to change your body composition? The multi-phasic journey can live forever. It literally can. And when you realize that, can be really freeing because you adapt that to your circumstances, your lifestyle, what you've got going on, both in what you want for your body composition goals, but also with the stuff you want to enjoy in your life as well. So what's the point of feeling absolutely fantastic in your body if you cannot expose yourself to the things you also want to enjoy in life? And the best part of a multi-phase journey is You never really feel like you're a failure because you just shift focus. You adapt to what is going on in your circumstances there and then. Continual state of progression all the time. Fat loss is results focused and it should be done for minimal time. Get in, get out. I mean, fat loss it is. That was very blunt, very direct, but just get them done. Don't fathom how they're like, no one wants to be living in that fat loss. era stage for, for more than needed. So yeah, get in, get out, get the job done. Take it from Katie. me. Probably the most anti-fat loss fat loss coach. too true. Too true. And I, it is true because do you know what? Too many people spend most of their life dieting ⁓ trying to lose fat. And I don't blame them because it used to be me at one point, but it's so freeing to spend more of your life eating more food, building more muscle and having that flexibility with your food. We're frustrated for you if you get stuck in that fat loss loop forever and ever and ever. But we'd also love to give you a hand to get you out of it. Yeah, come away guys, come away. I couldn't keep it together. Right. Come on. to seven. don't even know. should edit that out because it's funny. Right back to us. my God. Your muscle building phase is also results forecast. Don't think that just because you are out of a fat loss phase and you've got nothing to work towards. My God. Building muscle is result it's something to work towards it's a direction but it is still a time to experience sensible flexibility you don't just want to go back to doing everything you're doing before throw all of your hands out the window because the focus will shift quickly back to fat loss before you can even enjoy muscle building In terms of learning how to be flexible and with more freedom but moderation at the same time. your muscle building phase is the time to do this. Trying to make it fit in a fat loss phase, it's just not the right environment for you to be able to get the most out of that process. So whilst muscle building is also dedicated and it is focused ⁓ based phase, there's also a lot to be gained from lifestyle habits ⁓ just general relationship with food in that phase as well. This is an absolutely key point. The better you manage your muscle building phase, i.e. not gaining too much fat in the muscle building phase, the less time you have to spend in fat loss to get back to where you are comfortable again. And if that's not a good enough reason to manage your muscle building phases, I don't know whatever will be. It is of a detriment for me anyway, for sure. The time I could be in fat loss, ⁓ the for me, the better. And knowing your calories and direction of weight travel are crucial to understanding what your metabolism is doing. So pay attention to these. Take the tracking seriously and you'll always be in control and know what your next move needs to be. Well said. think so too. Some of you will be wondering whether to start with fat loss or muscle building at this stage now. Perhaps you need both. We designed a short quiz specifically to help you decide. Check out the description below for the link. Next we're going to be back with a different spin on things and I'm really excited about doing this following podcast. We're still going to be helping you to get fat loss over and done with as quickly as possible. In previous episodes, we've discussed a lot of the science around losing fat as quickly as possible. But next time, we're going to be sharing some of our personal tricks and meal swaps to be able to make our lower calorie deficits easier to manage. is going to be the behind the scenes stuff that you probably don't see a lot of. The day to day decisions, the little tweaks, the fat loss hacks. Katie's way of trying to get chocolate involved in some way, shape or form, despite the fact she really doesn't have enough calories for chocolate. going to be diving into all that stuff. There'll never ⁓ be not enough calories for chocolate. I'm your coach now, remember? I'm sacked. We'll also a few of our client strategies in too, if any of them are relevant to the conversation. But this is a great opportunity for you to learn from our experience as coaches and what we'll be doing to set ourselves up for success in our upcoming aggressive diet phases. We'll see you next week guys.