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How to Stay Lean After Losing Fat · Beyond Fat Loss

• Katie & Sean Darlow: Welcome to the Beyond Fat Loss podcast where we don't just stop at fat loss, you'll 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're going to reveal how to move on. And today we're going to reveal how to move on from fat loss back to higher calories without rebounding or losing control. In this episode, you'll learn how to overcome the mental barriers that prevent you from increasing your calories after a period of fat loss. You'll also leave with frameworks in mind to avoid fat gain and stay in a well-fuelled muscle building state for longer periods. This is something we both struggled with early on in our training journeys. If we listened to this podcast back then, maybe it would have been a different story. If you enjoy this episode, give it a like and be sure to follow or subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. If you'd like to hear us chat about a particular topic, then leave us a comment below. And if you'd like to connect with us on social media to see what we both do with our diets or in our training day to day, check out the links to our Instagram profiles in the description. So Katie, before we get started... We're actually going have to start thinking about how we transition out of fat loss back to a building phase in a few weeks time ourselves, because we're both doing our aggressive diets at the moment, which we've spoken about on previous podcasts. And this is something that's going to be quite relevant for us to crack on with. So it might be quite helpful to talk about this today to refresh ourselves. Yeah, it's quite relevant that we're actually talking about this now. And obviously many of our members at the moment are doing their fat loss phases, which hopefully will be ended before the summer months. They're going to be transitioning back into the longer term muscle building states, which they've been in previously. So it's quite a big topic. It is a big topic. And I think I think it's one that's not given enough attention and respect. I think A lot of individuals put a lot of emphasis on the fat loss phase and losing body fat and rightly so, right? It's a very specific goal. But I think that transition back then, it's not given the same respect or attention to detail as a fat loss phase. Panic bitten can get hit quite quickly, thinking necessarily that the thought processes they're having are wrong and not... You said panic bitten. They have no idea what my flow was now. said the panic button can get hit quite quickly. Yeah, my whole flow is gone, Sean. OK, but I couldn't leave that in there because it was... You just muddled all the words. didn't sound like what you were trying to say. Is going to be like this all the way this recording today? Sean, no, I think you didn't really need to pick me up on one word people would understand. Panic button. Button. I've totally lost my flow. I had a really important point to make. Really sorry that you lost your flow, Beb. I didn't want to let you go on and end up losing too much of the flow and then realise that that just sounds silly. You can't edit that bit because you didn't correct it. just... Anyway, it's fine. You're being really over dramatic, Katie. And perhaps the panic button is just hit too soon without realizing that a lot of the thoughts that they may be having are quite normal and it's actually part of the process, but have never really given the time and attention to work through that part of the journey. A lot of these thoughts are quite uncomfortable, aren't they? And I think naturally as humans, we try and avoid discomforts. It takes a lot of effort mentally and emotionally to apply yourself to a situation which you know is going to make you feel uncomfortable. A lot of the time, the good stuff that we really want to get to, the results that we really want to experience, lie on the other side of discomfort, but... fat loss phases themselves can be quite uncomfortable. So to then exit a fat loss phase and approach a new period that is quite unnerving, can be quite scary, and then to also have to deal with that discomfort with some new structures, some new routines, some new frameworks. That sometimes feels like it can be a little bit overwhelming, a little bit too much. So yeah, it makes sense why people avoid wanting to get the right structures and the right practices in place to exit fat loss correctly. But you're kind of doomed if you do and doomed if you don't to some extent, aren't you? You're better off getting through the uncomfortable phase of transition and doing it well, because then at least you have a model to follow for future. Because otherwise you're always going to be left in this no man's land where fat loss ends. You're pretty goalless. You're at a very high risk of regaining stuff because your world opens up again to so many different foods and flexibility and less routine and less structure. And we know from the data that even people that have diet plans typically regain a lot of weight if they don't have something to back it up afterwards and some sort of structure to follow afterwards. yeah, it's a tricky one, but it's certainly one that I agree you need to put more time and attention into if you don't want to keep ending up in this constant cycle of on fat loss, off fat loss, on dieting, off dieting. Yeah, 100%. I think it's either you go through those challenges, those discomforts, learn new skillsets, develop new routines, develop new behaviors that serve you in the long term, or you just sit in the discomfort of never being able to solve that problem. You choose which one you follow right and choose which one you... choose which outcome you want from the end of it. Both options are harder in their own way. think this gets criticised all the time, right, you hear people criticise that term, you choose your hard in life, you choose your hard in life and like... people poke fun at it, but there's a lot of truth in that. There is a lot of truth in that, in my opinion. Trying to maintain a positive outlook and to be optimistic about the challenges you're going to face and about how life is going to turn out. Yeah, that's great, but at the end of the day, there will be times where you're stuck between a rock and a hard place and you just have to make a choice. And the sooner you start to make a choice and... make your decision about how you would like to progress forwards, the easier the mental burden feels. Because at least then you have a direction, at least then you have a reason or purpose for pushing yourself through that discomfort. I think being stuck in the kind of the no man's land and not having a direction and not having a focus is probably one of the worst places you can be. Yes, it does feel uncomfortable sometimes to... challenge the preconceptions that you have or... take on a little bit more pressure, let's say, in a time where you may not necessarily feel like you can handle it, but the other alternative is often much worse. The other alternative will potentially lead you down a path that has more negative outcomes on the other side of it. So, yeah, sometimes it is a case of just choosing your heart, and one of them is probably going to lead to a better outcome than what you would associate with the other option? I don't think there's a problem about it. If you keep doing the same things you've always done, you're going to end up with the same outcome that you've always had. Or you can opt to choose a different path. Yeah, it might be a bit discomfort throughout the journey. But when isn't there discomfort in life? But if you can choose a route that is going to give you a different outcome, then... The next barrier challenge you have is going to open another new door for you, rather than just going through the same door for the same outcome all of the time. I it's almost become accepted for too long that people will finish diets and then end up goalless. I think it's almost become accepted that... yo-yo diets happen that people get stuck in these endless cycles of fat loss and there's nothing really to follow. It's spoken about so often that it's almost completely desensitized how damaging that can be. And I get it because this stuff should be spoken about. Fitness, online communities, fitness coaches, online communities, coaches. Yes, we should be empowering people to know that you don't need to get stuck in these cycles forever. And there is a life outside of fat loss. There is a life after fat loss. And you should be looking to experience that and gain the... the practical skills and the knowledge in order to be able to do that. But at the same time, it's become so familiar for people and it's become so normal for people to... get stuck in these fat loss loops over and over and over again, that it's almost like people just come to accept that they're going to be doing that for the rest of their lives. They just come to accept that, this is the normal struggle. This is a natural struggle, just like paying my taxes or paying my bills at the end of the month is going to happen anyway. So I just accept it and it is what it is. I can't change it. That can just lead to, you know... only focusing on your health and fitness, that's exercise exercise, whether that's your nutritional intake when you're trying to lose body fat. And that alone can just create a negative association in your mind with health and fitness. You're not giving yourself any chance to be exposed to the other side of the coin where you do have a bit more flexibility, you do have more food, you do have more energy, you do have a better relationship with... Health and fitness for example. If you're only doing it when it's an area of restriction, you're not exposing yourself to the flip side of the coin where life can feel really bloody good. You're doing yourself a disservice really by not pushing through those discomforts when it comes to being able to make the informed decisions for yourself in that moment when it comes to your health and fitness. Yeah, and specifically getting through that challenging, difficult period after a fat loss phase where... you've just got to the end of it or you've got the result you want. And the first thing you want to do is relax and go back to normal. But it's really important that you don't take that too far. And that will feel uncomfortable for a lot of people. That will be potentially frustrating for a lot of people to hear because the first thing they're looking forward to doing is having freedom with their food again, having freedom with their social life again. But It's really important that you manage that sensibly because otherwise you're going to up right back to square one again. I couldn't agree more with that. it's not, you know, we're not here to say you can't have X, Z and you can't have food flexibility and you can't enjoy certain things in your diet. That's not it at all. But your idea and mindset around flexibility and freedom is likely going to have to look very different to what it did before you started this journey. I think the sooner you can accept that and truly understand what you need to do. the freer you actually are mentally, because you can then make the informed choices that are actually gonna drive the outcomes that you want, not just work against them. I fully agree and it's pro-choice then. It's not something which feels like it's constantly out of your control, something which is within your control. Let's talk through a particular scenario. So the listeners can imagine what we're talking through here. Many people listening may actually be experiencing this right now, or they might have experienced it at some point in past. So let's talk through this exact scenario then. Let's imagine you've just gone through a successful fat loss phase. You've leaned down, you feel more comfortable in your clothes, you're visibly showing more muscle definition. You feel like you've done a really good job and you're really proud of yourself. You put in the hard work, weeks, potentially even months on end. There have been times where you wanted to quit. There's been times where you wanted to walk away, but you kept going, you kept pushing yourself. It's probably the most disciplined and most consistent you've ever been with something. and you feel fantastic for doing that. But, you can't diet forever. You know that this can't last forever. You can't restrict yourself forever. You want to start eating more again because you've made sacrifices in order to achieve this very particular result. You want to start having more access to some of your favourite food and you want that to happen without guilt. When you're on the diet, if you eat these foods, you feel like it's taking you away from the result and there's an element of guilt that comes with that. Now that the result has been achieved, you want to start introducing some of these foods again. You should be really excited by the results that you've accomplished and by the future that lies in front of you. but you're not that excited because something's niggling away at you. This doubt creeps in. I can associate with that. I know you could probably associate with that, Katie. I know many of our members listening to this, if not all of them, will be able to associate with this. Can you explain what's going on here with this fear and this doubt? think there are a lot of angles we can take with this. I think the overarching kind of umbrella is if you regain the body fat, you're going to feel like a failure. You've worked so bloody hard to lose body fat. It's been a challenge. You've restricted yourself. You've shown yourself that you're capable of doing things that you didn't think you were capable of doing. But then it's the, what now? What's next? ⁓ my gosh, am I going to actually be able to not turn into a kid in a candy shop right now? And you start to doubt yourself. You start to think. Am I gonna be able to do this? How am I gonna be able to do it? Is the fat just gonna creep, not even creep back on, is it just gonna pile back on, pile back on once I start eating more food again? There's an element of trust isn't there, where... think a lot of individuals don't know whether they can really trust themselves to hold back, to not give in to temptation. It's almost like there's this underlying belief that, let's say you've taken out chocolate from your diet. If I start eating chocolate again, I just won't be able to stop. There's that pre-anticipation that you're not gonna be able to hold yourself back with that particular food. And that almost forms like a confirmation bias that when you start eating that food and it tastes really good and you haven't had exposure to it for quite a while and your brain instantly starts sending you signals to keep eating it because it's like, my God, that tastes so nice. Then you keep eating it and you almost justify that with your preconceived ideas because you've told yourself that that's what's going to happen. That's where that lack of trust comes from. It's almost like you... You don't really believe that you're going to be able to hold yourself back. And for a lot of people, they haven't had that experience of moderation with particular foods over time. So it makes sense not to trust yourself because you haven't had any evidence to prove that you're capable of holding back and haven't evidence of been able to trust yourself to not go too far with this. couldn't agree more. And if you look back to before you started the fat loss phase, you probably had similar beliefs that you weren't capable of losing the body fat, right? That you're not capable of restricting certain calories because you haven't been able to do it before. But you've already proven to yourself that you are capable of doing that now. So think you've got to give yourself the same kind of trust and leeway to Flip that mindset of, I can't do that because I don't think I'm going to be able to stop eating. It's actually, no, hang on a moment. You are capable of doing this. Don't tell yourself you're not capable of doing it. But you do need to reframe these things in your mind. You need to reframe it to a place where I've got this opportunity to change my behaviors and my habits. I want to have, let's stick with the chocolate theme for now. I want to have chocolate as part of my life. But I also understand that when I do start eating this again, I am going to get a big dopamine hit. My brain is going to go, woohoo, this is bloody good. You're not wrong for having that response. You're not wrong for feeling that way. It's natural to have that response when you have something that tastes really good to you. You're not broken. You're not failing. You just need to understand that, okay, that is a normal response. And I am capable of having a bit of this and then stepping away from it. Don't tell yourself before you go into that scenario that you're not capable of that, that you are going to just turn into like a kid in a candy shop and eat everything in sight because you're already setting yourself up for failure there by giving yourself a preconceived bias idea that you're not capable of doing it. You need to rewrite that script. Because without going through it, without rewriting that script, without having the confidence that you can do that, you'll never change that story in your head or you'll never change that bias you have over yourself. You've got to go there, prove it to yourself that you are capable of doing it and the next time it'll be easier, the next time it'll be easier. And as the months and years go on, you'll get to a point where it's not even a thought that goes through your mind because that is just you, it's who you are now. But you can't do that without going through the process, without going through the hard, without actually reframing things in your mind and telling yourself that you need to respond differently to this. I think every single one of us will have experience of stepping away from something which threatens to... almost show itself as addictive like behavior, I think we all have this on a day to day basis. And a lot of the time, the pleasure response and the pleasure signaling that we get from food is similar to this. So we get a dopamine hit. We get that immediate sense of pleasure. It potentially is strong enough to override some of the other emotions we got going on in that moment or in that day. And our brains tell us we want more of this, we want more of this, we want more of this. And what happens then is our brains get used to experience that pleasure and that dopamine. And it's almost like the bar is getting raised higher every single time. It's like... It's almost like when you hit a PB in the gym and it's like, okay, so I want to get to the next goal. I want to get to the next goal. I want to get to the next goal. Next goal. Psychologically, your brain is doing something similar with your dopamine response in the sense that you just need that little bit more, a little bit more chocolate the next time, a little bit more chocolate the next time, a little bit more chocolate the next time until your brain is satisfied that it's had the response that it's looking for and happy with the amount of food that you've had. And sometimes a lot of people, they've got a very, very, very high bar for that. So by that stage, thousands of calories of chocolate can be consumed before your brain, your stomach, or another part of you goes, right, that's enough. Like no more, that's enough. Sometimes it's a little bit too late, it's gone too far. But that similar scenario can happen to us on so many different occasions throughout the day. So, starting off in the morning, right? When you wake up first thing in the morning and your alarm clock goes, I'm another five minutes in bed, little bit more comfort, little bit more dopamine. Let's just stay for another five minutes, stay a bit more relaxed, bit serotonin, whatever. Five minutes and then hit the snooze button again, another 10 minutes, hit the snooze button again, another 10 minutes, hit the snooze button again. You can't hit the snooze button all day. You're gonna be late for work, there's gonna be consequences. You're going to be late for work, you could lose your job. You might have appointments booked in that you're going to miss. You might miss opportunities to make, if you work in like a sales industry or something where you've got certain appointments booked in and you're meeting with prospective clients, you can miss those appointments. So you miss revenue. There's all these different things that could lead off the back of that consequence. You can't just sit on your lunch break scrolling on your phone for two or three hours. The dopamine hit of being on your phone, goes right. Let's send you another reel that you want to watch. Let's send you another cat video. Let's send you another video of some sort of dog doing something stupid that he shouldn't be doing. And it's funny, you can sit there all day feeding that dopamine response, but then you know that it's going to stop you from getting other stuff done. So eventually you've just got to put your phone down or you've got to put it in another room or put it in a locker or whatever. It's similar with food. At some point you just have to break that cycle and have to break that routine. Learn when enough is enough. Because there's nothing wrong with having a bit of pleasure, there's nothing wrong with having a bit of dopamine. You what I'm saying? Having a bit. It's when it overrides everything else and it becomes almost like an addictive behaviour or almost like an identity or personality trait. That's where it can quite damaging for people. Yeah, I agree. think you get kind of addicted to that good feeling, that good feeling. Because we all want to feel good, right? That's just not the reality of life. can't feel good every moment of every day. It just doesn't happen. It isn't going to happen. You can't have the good without the bad and so on. There's a part, there's a point I'd like to chat about here, Sean, is that you're absolutely spot on chatting about kind of the dopamine release we get when we have something that's tasty and pleasurable and that should be part of our diet, part of our week, of our life, right? But it just can't be our everything. It just reminds me of... Try not to turn to food as an emotional comfort blanket. And that can happen quite easily when you come out of a fat loss phase, because there's a hard no when you're in a fat loss phase, right? And sometimes that can make it easier not to turn to food when perhaps you have a stressful day or there is an emotional incident in your life. It's like, no, I've got a fat loss goal. I'm just not gonna do that right now. I'll grin and bear and get through it. But when you're outside of a fat loss phase, that hard and fast rule of achieving fat loss, especially if you have never done a maintenance period or a building period before, you haven't got that tight, that particular goal that's perhaps not strong enough in that moment, but you haven't necessarily even found ways to handle a stressful period or emotional response with something different. You just go back to what you were doing previously, which is potentially turning into food to relieve that. Short-term maybe pain, short-term discomfort from whatever happened in your life in that day. But you don't actually need to do that to get past that discomfort or that emotion because you didn't do that when you were in a fat loss phase because you had a fat snore. Potentially, Katie, but what if, right? What if there were times in a fat loss phase where somebody was emotional? It was a non-negotiable for them that they weren't going to turn to food to make themselves feel better, to self-medicate. Food was not going to be used as that picked me up. There are likely to be some experiences which an individual can draw upon from when they're in a fat loss phase to say, right, I handled this differently because I didn't have access to food as my medication. So what did you do? Like pay attention to that. Did you put your headphones on and go for a walk and listen to the SKAD podcast, listen to the Beyond Fat Loss podcast on your walk? Did you go to the gym? Did you phone a friend? Did you go out for a coffee and just sit in a coffee shop? and just watch the world go by. Did you journal? What did you do to deal with those emotions and that stress response? Those are the habits which are going to be useful for you long term because they're not causing you to become reliant on food. And I think this is one of the potentially... This is potentially one of the trip hazards, which. I think changes with individuals that finish a fat loss phase to go back to maintenance. They've developed different coping strategies for stresses and pressures when they've been in a fat loss phase sometimes. But then they go back to maintenance and because they've got access and flexibility to food, they choose food because it's the easiest option to deal with that problem. I agree. But you almost need to adopt the mindset that you had in your fat loss phase where the food is not what's going to solve this problem for you. Like do not use food to self-medicate and to... Be a crutch for your emotional state. That's not to say that food can't provide some sort of a pick-me-up. It can do, but it needs to be more intentional than that, not the thing that you always rely on to boost you up, because we go through a lot of emotions every day. And sometimes those emotions last for long periods as well. I agree fully, and I think... When we see successful clients that we work with, a lot of the clients that find different avenues do bring their fat loss fears to help support stressful times, emotional times, techniques that don't rely on solely just food as that. as that support tend to have more successful maintenance periods, diet breaks and building phases. That doesn't mean it's going to be perfect every time. They may still go back to using food, perhaps on certain occasions, then go, maybe I shouldn't have done that. But that reflection piece happens a lot sooner, lot quicker than perhaps it would have in the past. And I think that's what's important. And I'd like to highlight here is that you may fail at this a few times and that's okay. But every time that kind of, I don't want to call it damage, but the damage of that incident gets less and less. And it mentally doesn't kind of drag you down as far as it would have in the past. So I think. It's a, what you do in a fat loss phase in terms of habits and behaviors, that's a big part of a fat loss phase and should be part of a fat loss phase. If that's not part of your fat loss phase, one, you're setting yourself up for a hard bloody time coming out of fat loss. You're also making the loss journey a lot harder for yourself, But if you can then not totally turn off to all of those behaviors and habits that you've built in fat loss and learn how to apply them to your life after fat loss, you're going to make that journey so much easier for yourself because it's not an on and off switch. I've used these skill sets here in a fat loss phase. How can I use them now when I'm outside of fat loss? Yeah, absolutely. I think it all comes down to your self-awareness of when this habit is creeping up, when this behavior is causing a problem. Recognizing it early on and then correcting it as soon as you can and when you're talking to that Katie I was sat here smiling to myself. I was thinking This for me, know, like I don't know if anyone's ever seen an idiot abroad with Carl Pilkington, but when he's like bullshit That's bullshit And he called it out. It's like you always need to do that to yourself and you need to have your bullshit behavior alarm And what happens is is the more consistent you get with recognizing the spot in this bullshit behavior. The alarm goes off faster So you stop and you pull yourself away from it and you need something then to redirect your thoughts, your attention, your emotions into that's not going to be negative. like sat here scrolling on your phone, how many minutes go by before you realize I've been sat here scrolling now? So initially you might not realize for like 37 minutes, but then that first time that you recognize it, you go, oh my God, shit, I've been doing this for ages. Oh my God, I've forgotten to do this, I've forgotten to do that. You get back to your other jobs. The next time, because you've recognised that first time, this is a pattern that needs to be interrupted, you might sit and scroll on your next session. You might not do it for another week, but your next session, you then get caught doom scrolling again. But this time you only doom scroll for 23 minutes. And then the alarm goes off. And the more often you can pay attention to that pattern and behaviour, the more you have chance of cutting that time down. And it can be exactly the same with nutrition. The less weekends you go off the rails and screw up, the less time somebody opens a bag of crisps and your hand's in and out the bag 500 times. One does not become 24 when you get offered a chocolate. It just ends up being one or two. The more often you get exposure to those things, the more comfortable you get dealing with them. But I think the problem is that people just finish their fat loss phase and they just want to switch off to all of that. They just want to say, right, I'm just going to be completely free. And unfortunately, none of us are completely free to our own brains. We're not. We've got to, sorry, we've got to stay connected with. our behaviours and recognising when they're causing us problems. Because our brains, our life, it doesn't ever switch off. And if we decide to totally switch off from our actions, we're more likely just going to do ourselves more harm than good. It's finding the balance with that and what's right for you. And this will be slightly different for every individual. And you are going to balls it up. You are going to go back and do that action again. You can't correct things overnight and don't even put that expectation on yourself. Because that's where the kind of feelings of failure on the defensive behaviors come into play. Rather than just taking it a bit more lighthearted and go like... I'm being a dickhead now. Let me just rein that back in. Let's just stop. Let's move on. I wouldn't say have a bit of fun with yourself with over it, right? But I still do it now to an extent. Sometimes if there's chocolate, for example, and a bit emotional, whatever it is, right, or it's really stressful and I'm like, I could eat a little bit more of this. And it doesn't happen anymore because I just don't get benefit from it. But it is that instant where I go, I could, and I just go, stop being a dickhead. It's not gonna help you out right now, is it? Just put it back in the cupboard, move on, come back to it another time. You are going to have to call yourself out. You are and don't think that you're not going to have to call yourself out on these things sometimes because you're a human being. You're a human being that will naturally want to take the easy option or not so much the easy option. It might not always be the easy option. It might just be the most pleasurable option in that moment. But that most pleasurable option in that moment may not be the best option for you all the time. So you, yeah, you do need to call yourself out on your own bullshit sometimes. It's not always easy to do that. The way I look at it is... We're not looking for perfection, we're looking for improvement, we're looking for progression. If your natural response to having a long hard day of work is to come home and pour yourself a glass of wine every single time you have a long hard day, well, you could have 20 long hard days in a month. So 20 times out of 20 times, your response is to go and have a glass of wine and consume liquid calories on top of whatever you're already eating, right? If the next month you can cut that down to I've only had a glass of wine seven times out of 20. And then the month after that is down to three. You've made a significant improvement there. You've made a really big change. We're all obsessed on getting all the minutiae right of, know, calories got to be right, proteins got to be right, this, that and the other. And yeah, that stuff matters. It does matter a lot. But at the same time, behavior change is not just numerical. You've got to sometimes think about, I'm still much better than what I was doing before. Now, caveat to that is you can't keep using the same excuse of, I'm just better than I was before, if the behaviour is still present and it's not being improved. Again, we're focusing on improvement and progression. So if you've improved the behavior, but you're still slipping back into that old habit, then you can't keep using the crutch of, oh, I'm still doing better than I used to do. Yeah, but you're still drinking the wine 10 out of 20 times you've had a bad day at work. So yes, you are better. And it's important to have that reflection. It's important to give yourself that booster. But you should also be looking forwards and saying, but it would be even better if I could get this down to three to five times. and that might actually help me to achieve my fat loss goal a little bit better. It might help me with my long-term relationship with alcohol. It might help me with my long-term body composition where I'm not consuming excess calories that my body doesn't necessarily need. So it's looking forwards as well as looking back. Yes, recognizing how far you've come, but also still not swimming in the new bullshit, right? Because your kind of barriers will go into change and you need to recognize when you need to pull yourself up over a new challenge, a new barrier, a new bullshit alarm should go off, right? And grow with that, evolve with that, but try not to be perfect. and try not to set too unrealistic expectations for yourself because that is likely to make you just feel like you're failure when you're not. You're a human being that just needs to keep. tackling the hurdles as they can, because they will keep coming. That is life. That is going to happen. Let's revisit our scenario of the individual that's just finished a fat loss phase. They're really worried about regaining fat. They're not sure if they can trust themselves. We've spoken a lot about all the psychology that comes with being in that position and being in that state. But we have helped many members through this transition, Katie, over a number of years. What are some of the frameworks and the solutions that we put in place for them? to enable them to safely navigate this quite tricky period. think one of the biggest things for me is that... feedback that I have received is that most people benefit greatly from having the structure and the clear guidelines from fat loss. Once fat loss comes to an end, it doesn't feel like the targets are as clear. Even if you give them the calories, the exact macros, you know, I want you to hit this many, roughly this many grams of carbs, this many grams of fat, this many grams of fiber, this many grams of protein. Even those targets still don't give them enough clarity over what should I eat, how should I manage my social events, how should I deal with more food flexibility and more freedom. A lot of people struggle more with that than they do in the fat loss phase itself. Oh God, how many times have we heard? It's funny actually, because you start a fat loss journey, individuals are like, I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to do this. It's going to be a challenge, but okay, I'll do it. So they get to the end of their fat loss phase and they transition to a diet break. It's, oh my God, I can't wait to go back to the fat loss phase because that was easier to manage mentally. It's the amount of... times I've heard that and I get it, I can relate to it because that was me many years ago as well. Because you get comfortable knowing what you should and shouldn't do. People like to have, we like to have rules. We like to know what we should do, what we shouldn't do. And when you go back to higher calories, there is more scope for a bit of a gray area, there's more scope for I could have this or I could have that. And those decisions are like, I don't know how handle all this. So what's the solution? For me, I think it's really important to have kind of a bridge between fat loss and going to a diet break, right? You don't all make those calories, all building phase, whatever part of the journey you're on, you can't expect to go from having that structure, that clear guidelines to going back to nothing because there's too many question marks that you're just not gonna be able to manage amongst all of other life's responsibilities and decisions you've got to make on a daily basis. So don't switch off from all of that. Transition some of those structures and routines that are working for you in fat loss into your diet break. Don't reinvent the wheel. Do not reinvent the wheel. Keep that structure that you've got. Keep that routine that you've got. That planning that works for you in a fat loss phase, whether that be tracking ahead, planning your meals for the week, ⁓ meal prepping, whatever kind of method until you choose to use in fat loss. Don't just stop doing that as soon as you're out of fat loss. Take that over to your first, at least your first couple of weeks, going to higher calories, because that's gonna allow you to still manage your hunger levels really well, because I'm gonna guarantee that you should, if you're doing a fat loss as well, you should be eating enough protein. That doesn't need to change. So yes, the tidy levels are gonna be a little bit, managed a little bit better. You're not gonna have to think too much about the meal structure you have. You can just add a little bit more food to it. So already, there's this, clear guidelines and structure to work with, which should make up a lot of your nutrition. And then you've got a little bit of leeway then for a treat, something else you want to have. But it's just not totally trying to reinvent the wheel and go in with no structure or plan in mind. If that structure and routine has worked so well for you to lose fat, then it makes absolutely zero sense to lose all of it when you go back to maintenance calories or higher. You know that's worked. You know that's that's been successful for you. You know it's something that is repeatable because you've done it for a number of weeks. You might not be able to do it forever. But specifically what we're talking about here is adding more food. It's giving you more calories. It's giving you more fuel. And with that, some flexibility and moderation which we'll get onto a bit more in a bit. All of that stuff that you're adding is going to be far more sustainable. The most unsustainable part of dieting other than restriction is how you feel when you're in a calorie deficit. Your energy level's being really low, recovery being poor, sleep potentially being affected, hormones being a little bit wacky. the hunger, the brain fog, all of that stuff. It's the symptoms of being in a calorie deficit that make it so hard to sustain. You remove all of that and you remove some of the restriction with going back to maintenance. But if you lose all structure altogether, then you're opening yourself up to the possibility of gaining a lot of fat, feeling a bit lost, feeling a bit confused, feeling a bit overwhelmed, feeling like a bit of a failure, spiraling your emotions out of control, and then as a result gaining more fat, then punishing yourself with another fat loss phase, which is what you're trying to get away from the whole time. I It's so important to just accept that you may be done with the calorie deficit and all the symptoms which come with that, but you can't be done with focusing on your nutrition if you want to successfully keep fat off and be able to get onto other stuff like building muscle and having much more flexibility with food in the long run. And having autonomy over it in the long run, right? You've got to kind of earn that, right? That comes through experience, it comes through exposing yourself to nutrition outside of fat loss. But you've got to... respect that that's not going to happen overnight. Habits don't change overnight, behaviors don't change overnight and that is the crux of it. It's not your calories are they a spot on, it's not are you eating enough protein you know to the gram, it's not are you got enough fiber. Yeah they're all important for your nutrition to achieve particular goals but Those alone are not enough for you to have autonomy over nutrition, feel confident in your decisions, be able to make informed decisions in that moment without turning to temptation. All of these come from your behaviors, your habits that... you've got to give time and attention to give the right focus to those for long enough and all of that thing, all of those will start becoming natural to you, more autonomous. But you've got to earn that. You have got to earn that. That doesn't, we can't just give you that by telling you that. We can guide you to it. And of course we can probably guide you there a lot quicker than you're doing it alone. But you've still got to put that work in and you've still got to put that graft in to get there. You can't just buy that. No, it has to be earned. We mentioned about the first few weeks, and I wanna go back to that, Katie, because in my opinion, the first few weeks after your diet require as much care and attention as the diet itself. In fact, in some cases, I would say they're even more important than the fat loss phase itself. I think these need to be considered to be a transition period. Like you said, it's that bridge, it's that gap. From a coaching perspective, you mentioned about like the stats there and how the behaviors and habits are almost more important, they're equally as important, if not more important than the stats. From a coaching perspective, what would you prefer from a client? Would you prefer that in their first two weeks of going back to maintenance calories or above, they keep all their meal structure Similar, they've got a source of protein with most meals, they've got a source of fiber with most meals, they are allocating a small amount of calories every day to something which they enjoy and they want to be flexible with. They're prepping their meals, they go out on the weekend but they don't go off the rails with three course meal desserts and drinks. They keep a lot more structure, but they end up 300 calories over their maintenance target because perhaps their meals are a little bit too large. Perhaps the odd few treats have taken them over. Would you prefer that or would you prefer somebody that hits their maintenance calories spot on, but their protein's low, their fiber's low, because all they've done all week is eat flexible, hyper-palatable food. They're having pastries for breakfast every day. They're... Lunch is. a bit of chicken and some salad and then 400 calories worth of chocolates or sweets. They have a really calorie dense coffee in the afternoon and that means that they have a small evening meal. So, stats wise, they hit their calories, so they're on maintenance. They're like, well, I did it. But the whole nutrition structure around it, eating at different times every day, they might skip the odd few meals. That goes to shit. Which one would you prefer as a coach? The one who overshoots slightly but keeps structure or somebody that loses all structure altogether but manages to get their... calories right? Oh the first option hands down I think you're gonna get so much more return from embedding those structures and sticking with those even if you do overshoot a little because in the gram scheme things you overshoot a little a couple hundred calories a day what's gonna be the outcome of that it's not gonna you're not gonna do a lot of damage or you're not gonna I don't even want to use the word damage You're not going to gain a lot of body fat doing that, right? You're absolutely not. But what you're going to get back from actually embedding those habits that work well for you, feeling bloody good because your nutrition is actually serving you, compared to feeling like crap because you've got no structure, your hunger levels are all over the place, you aren't even giving your hunger levels a chance to settle, you no longer prioritize your proteins, you're not recovering from the gyms, you feel like absolute shit, you're not sleeping well because you... you might be hungry going to bed because you've had a really low evening meal because you've had an absolute car crash of a day with your nutrition. You're just that second option is telling you that, my God, I'm failing you. I can't do this. Yeah, I've okay, my maintenance calories, but this isn't sustainable. I can't do this. Well, it's easier to correct. Like it's easier to correct a couple hundred calories that went over when you've already got a solid meal structure in place because it's just a case of, okay, maybe this meal had a little bit too many calories in it. Maybe I just need to pull back a little bit on this particular day. Maybe I just need to pull back with my portion sizes a little bit. It's a lot easier to correct that than go, Jesus Christ, where do I start with this? Yeah, you're giving yourself a bit of a habit of battle really. When it goes back and just not totally switching off after fat loss, isn't it? It's keeping those structures. And that person who has kept, and again, they're not, every day hasn't been perfect. May I add, know, yeah, they've hit closer at everything. That's all you really know. That's you were aiming to do when you transition out of fat loss is to get close to it as you can because that's where you're going to learn what works for you. The reality is that person who's done that, they're likely going to feel a lot more energized, right? So they may even end up... burning more calories throughout the day naturally because they're feeling fantastic. So they might want to go do some extra steps, go out for an extra walk. They might work harder in the gym. They might just naturally be moving around more throughout the day. They sleep better. All of these things that actually is adding to their health, how they're feeling, they may even find that they don't even end up putting on body fat because actually their body's like, oh, I want to do more now. I actually can expend more calories. I'm feeling bloody fantastic. Whereas person two is like, I feel like shit. Yeah, so they do less steps. They don't train as frequently. They don't train as hard when they are training. So if their goal is to build muscle, they're probably not going to get much out of that. The nutrition isn't as permissive of muscle growth. They probably are going to feel more stressed. They're probably going to feel like their sleep suffers. So all of that has a negative consequence on them. They're probably not fitting themselves very well. So do you think it's easier for person A or person B to end up eventually overeating and which person is more likely to shift further away from structure and overeating and overshooting over time? Is it person A or person B? In my opinion, it's always going to be person B. The person without structure, the person without routine, the person that has completely changed everything or the person that has got way too many different things to change, they're more likely to be the ones, in my opinion, that end up overshooting. and gaining loads of fat in the period where they want to keep fat off compared to the person that starts off just slightly overshooting but keeps a really solid structure. Because those solid structures that you built in fat loss, they're there, you know, if you have prioritized the things you should be prioritizing in fat loss, they're there to maximize your satiety, they're there to get the most out of your nutrition when you're in a calorie deficit. If you carry that on outside of fat loss, then you're not prioritizing the tidy levels. You're not getting the most out of your nutrition and you're probably going to up over consuming because you're still bloody starving because you've not eaten enough protein, you've not had enough fiber in your diet. So you're just setting yourself up for more excess calories because you are actually still bloody hungry because you've not used your calories up wisely. So this isn't to say not to have flexibility, but too much flexibility. It doesn't work for anyone. It doesn't, right? It doesn't. The people who can find habits that work for them, your habits will be different to the person next to you. So your behaviors will be different to the person next to you that works for you. But it's really important that you find what works for you and stick with that the majority of the time. Not all the time, because life should be spontaneous from time to time. You should have some flexibility. You should have some pleasure. But if that's your everyday... you're not going to get pleasure back from that all of the time. That's going to turn into a negative vicious cycle rather than you gaining momentum. I've said it before. I think too much of one thing or too much of a good thing can eventually turn into a bad thing. We're all governed by calories in, calories out. It's just how our bodies work. If we eat more calories and we burn every day, eventually we end up gaining fat. some of we've all got to manage. Some people will argue that they're in a very unfortunate position. And I can agree with that where no matter how hard they try to be active, they're not going to burn that many calories every day. And it sucks. Like that is unfortunate. But it's something that you can't change. You can't change how your body operates. If your body is only burning 1500 calories every day, then you eat more than 1500 calories, you're potentially going to gain fat. So it might be times where you want to eat something that's far more calorie dense than what you're technically able to eat without gaining fat. But the consequence of that is accepting, okay, well, on this occasion, I am putting my body in a fat storing state. do that more often, you do that more frequently, eventually you end up gaining a lot of fat over time. This is by no means a kind of My son and Katie are understanding, we're compassionate, but we're also going to be honest with you. We're also... We're not going to lie to you because that doesn't help you. And sometimes it's worth just... Sometimes you're better off knowing what you're dealing with and accepting how these things work because it's easier then to rationalize with them and deal with them than it is to try and find ways to justify why you're not getting the response you want and why your body is responding differently to everyone else's. that can lead you down a rabbit hole of further confusion, a feeling like you're the one that's broken, a feeling like you've got something wrong with you, when the reality is it's just we've all got different calorie expenditures every single day and we all need to be mindful of eating in accordance with what we are burning if we want to avoid gaining lots of fat. Absolutely, I agree. And you know, this isn't to say you have to hit a certain amount of calories every day and be spot on with it, because it's not absolutely the case. And there are, you know, tools and methods that can allow you to have flexibility, but you still got to utilize those tools effectively to allow you to stay in a weight maintenance place. Otherwise you can quickly go the other way, which will... Most people I can argue doesn't want, right? Most people don't. But yeah, I think understanding your situation, knowing what you're working with, whether you like the answer or not, is the only way to empower yourself to make informed decisions that are going to... allow you to be true to yourself and live the life that you want to live. Well said. At this point, I think it's probably important for us to mention that if you've been listening so far and thinking this sounds really challenging, but it's something that I'd like to overcome. then know that our support is available for you if you want it. We have helped members who have dieted for 10, 20 or 30 years on and off to finally break the cycle of dieting and transition to long-term muscle building phases, eating at either maintenance calories or above for anywhere up to about nine to 12 months. We have helped them to gain minimal amounts of body fat throughout that time. have more access to food than they've ever had before, had more permission to eat freely than they've ever had before, to lead their nutrition to... to view all of their nutrition as a choice, not as a right or wrong, or I should eat this or I shouldn't eat this. And we have done that without the use of reverse diets, which a lot of coaches will promote to individuals and falsely claim that they are going to solve all their problems despite the fact that they prolong a under recovered state for anywhere between about eight to potentially 16 weeks. We have track record of doing this. And I can honestly say that. A lot of coaches pretend that their services are life-changing, but genuinely, if you have been stuck in cycle after cycle of dieting, or you've been stuck in a place where you're constantly afraid to eat more calories through fear of gaining fat, and then you find a solution for that, that is truly life-changing. Hands down, hands down life-changing. been life changing for me. It's been life changing for many clients we've worked with and the podcast we've done a couple of weeks back about Charlotte and Tish, if you haven't listened to that yet and wondering how on earth does this work for people, go back and listen to that one. It'd be very clear which podcast it is. It's about two clients' journeys and you will hear the feedback directly from them. about how life changing this journey has been for them. And they're still with us guys, they're still with us, they're still working with us because they get so much back from their health and fitness now. They're just like, well, what's next for me? What's next for me? And that is a real exciting place to be. Podcast number 11 for those interested. I just went back and checked. Yeah, podcast number 11 if you want to listen to their journey. But if you'd like to see what support we can offer. to help you get out of the constant state of dieting, to move on to eating more calories, having more food freedom, not freaking out about fat gain, and actually enjoying more of your life and what fitness has to offer. Head to the bio. Head to the description. There's a link for an inquiry form. Fill that out. We'll get in contact with you. We'll have a chat about your goals. Zero pressure whatsoever. And we can work out if there's... and can design a plan together that suits you. your head down there, fill it in and have a chat to one of us. That's all it is. To open the door to see what's possible for you and your future. I want talk about something that I think is really really important and a lot of people just don't realize this at all. You don't feel immediately recovered straight away after your diet. I think most people expect to finish their diet on Sunday, wake up on Monday, start eating, and by the end of Monday, they'll feel right as rain and normal again. It's just simply not true, is it? Duh. Duh. It's not. Actually, you might feel hungrier in the first week, maybe even two weeks, than you would expect to. And that is a shock for some people because not only are they dealing with having more calories, and I am eating more calories, but they're still feeling hungry. And it can make you feel a bit broken, right? I don't know how many times I used to say this to Katie before I really understood this science, right? I'd finish my fat loss phase, I'd start eating more again. And I'd be saying to Katie, Katie, I'm hungrier than I was when I was doing fat loss. How is that possible? I don't understand. How am I more hungry? And when we understood a little bit of the science about why that happened, completely makes sense. Without going into too much detail, your hunger hormones are suppressed when you're in a calorie deficit. Your... your stomach empties a bit slower. You have slower gastric emptying, it's one of the adaptations which happens, and you typically burn a few less calories per day. So combination of those things combined typically means that hunger hormone suppression, slower gastric emptying and... less subconscious movement. all lead to you sometimes feeling like you're not quite as hungry in a fat loss phase. You will be hungry at times, but there'll be times where you adapt to it. And if you follow an aggressive diet approach, the research is very strongly indicative of you experiencing more hunger suppression than potentially looking at a moderate deficit approach. Listen to any of our previous podcasts about aggressive diets to learn a little bit more about that. When you go back to maintenance, Those kind of things reverse. So, hunger hormone production increases as your body starts to regain weight, positive weight regain, your hunger hormone production will increase. So, you'll be quite sensitive to that increase in hunger hormone production. Your stomach may not empty as slowly because those processes are more energized. And all that activity which you're not technically classing as exercise, all that fidgeting about and moving about that you don't pay much attention to, that ramps up and that increases. So your calorie expenditure increases as well. So those things flip. In those first few weeks after a diet, it's very, very common to hear people reporting higher hunger than what they were experiencing in their calorie deficit. And not that it's particularly relevant to anybody listening to this podcast, it may be, but if you speak to any bodybuilders that go through prep, the leaner that you get, the more you experience that pushback when you go back as well to higher calories again. And any bodybuilders will tell you that those first few weeks after their bodybuilding show are some of the hardest weeks of their entire training calendar because All those signals their body is giving them to eat more, eat more, eat more, eat more are so strong. it's so... noise is so high, it? Yeah, food noise and the lack of society. They can just keep eating and eating and eating and eating. So those first few weeks after coming out with fat loss fit is, you do need that bridging period. You do need to... Don't summarize just yet. Speak a little bit about the energy level, speak about the cravings. You mentioned about food noise. Segue into food noise. You do it. I can't, sorry, carry on. It's okay. That's just the hunger component. There are other things which are present in those first few weeks. Because mentally you're out of the diet, but physically you're not there yet. Your body needs to catch up a little, right? You to give it time to catch up. You need to give it time to stabilize to a new ⁓ period or new phase of your life. It's just adapted to you having really low calories for a little while. You're now giving it more. and it needs time to settle. So you may experience higher cravings than perhaps you even had a fat loss during your fat loss phase, And that's normal, that can happen. You're not broken for wanting to, not broken for having an increase in cravings. You're not broken for having an increase in your appetite. Our bodies are clever, they do adapt, but they need time to adapt. And you need to, again, go back to respecting that and giving time and attention to that part of the process too. I like to think of this as in, have you seen your phone where you got low battery modes or low power modes? When your phone is running low on battery you put it on low power mode. If you try and open up certain apps and things you'll notice you open them and they're really slow. Or like you start watching a video and you're on low power mode and the quality looks really off on the video. Like it's a little bit more pixelated, it's not quite as sharp, the images blur a little bit. That's you in your deficit mode. When you go up to a higher battery power again you turn the low power mode off and everything's running optimally efficiently really really quickly. There's a reason why it's called low battery mode because you burn less energy in that low battery mode. The energy doesn't deplete quite as quickly. When you're on the full power mode and everything's running in 4k HD and everything's really sharp and really, really fast and responsive, the energy is going to deplete itself relatively quicker, right? So it's kind of similar to how our bodies work. When we're in fatless mode, we're kind of running in low power mode. When you go back to fueling properly, you feel more energized, but you're also burning more energy. And in those first couple of weeks, it's that transition that your body needs a chance to catch up with. takes as if that charge is in for a couple weeks or two before you can take the charger out and actually run on full power mode without having. without having your hangar levels too high or cravings coming from your left right center. It just doesn't happen overnight to say it's not a flick of a switch. No. So you spoke about the non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, that's neat. That's all that stuff that you're not aware of, that you're burning calories with every day. That accounts for a hell of a lot of your calorie expenditure every day. It's more than your exercise. Yeah, for sure. It's one of the biggest blocks of your energy expenditure every day. All that stuff increases quite considerably when you go back to maintenance calories. And it takes time for your body to get fully replenished again. You don't just instantly start eating more calories, for example, and have all your carbohydrate stores, your energy stores, your glycogen stores replenished. It takes time to replenish those energy stores. They don't just all get replenished in one day because guess what? While you're replenishing some of them, you're also burning some of them. And your body's got quite a lot of storage capacity for those carbohydrates. So it just takes time. You've just got to be patient. Those first couple of weeks outside of your diet are almost like an extension to your diet to some extent, just with much higher calories. You're getting yourself recovered from the diet. So call it your diet recovery phase, call it a transition phase, whatever it is. But don't think of that as in, I'm out of the diet, yippee, let's go eat whatever I want. Because you can run yourself into quite a lot of problems if you think like... Hands down, would say most people, 99.9 % of people will do that if you just see it as a free for all or totally switch off to everything that you have tried to build without doing your fat loss phase. Just a slight note here, Sean, with particular clients, even though it is a diet break, when we split up some fat loss phases with a diet break, and even going back to a longer term, and the building phase for those who are done with their fat loss for now, there is oftentimes a client, I will actually get them to rename that phase to something that is more appropriate to them. So diet break works well for some people and that's okay. They don't see that as a free for all. Some people, that is just as if a switch has gone off in their mind and diet break means... They literally mean a ⁓ break from all of their diet. Yeah, everything that they worked hard to build is like, ⁓ I just took back now. And it can be really destructive. So there's actually some clients that I've encouraged to rename these phases to something that aligns with them and something that excites them, right? Some examples. some individuals have chosen to opt for that being a sustainability phase. Some clients have chosen to refer to that as, build clean so I can stay lean, right? Everyone's is slightly different because some things refer to, some things will resonate with you more than just a diet break or a building phase, for example. They're quite logistical, they're quite practical. We know what we mean by those because that allows us to, you know, give people the best plan of action to get them to their goals. But that might not hit home with you deep down there, what you're trying to achieve. So if you need to rename that and call that whatever you want for you to tell yourself on daily basis, this isn't aligned into my sustainability phase. For example, if I choose to have, I don't know, ice cream and dessert today. Is that aligned into my sustainability phase? Is that, those habits working? Are they, what I need to do? That's easy for you if you've chosen to name it that thing to go, hmm, probably not, rather than it being a free for all. Because having a dessert and an ice cream one day, it does align with being free for all, right? It's really important how you name it and how you connect the dots in your brain. Yeah, the language says a lot, doesn't it? And the language will. often differentiate how you approach that phase and your intentions going into that phase. Just because we mentioned certain foods there which people typically don't have lot of exposure to in their fat loss phase, on their diet phase. Talking a bit more about cravings, Katie, a lot of these foods that are going to be reintroduced are going to be hyper palatable. They're going to create that dopamine response that we discussed. It's really important to be patient with the quite intense pleasure responses you're going to get from those foods. When you go back to eating high calories again in those first few weeks, it's normal to experience those... strong responses and for some people they get stronger responses than others from these foods as well. I just want to state that whilst it's okay to have some of this stuff, you have to be really mindful that you're naturally going to want to overeat it. aim to keep standards as best as you can, aim to stick within the guidelines. In let's talk about some of those guidelines. We actually use some guidelines with members to help them start reintroducing those foods in. What sort of things do you use with your clients in terms of guidelines with those, Katie? If someone's got a sweet tooth, I like to say I have one intentional sweet treat today, if you need it. You might not want it every day, but if you are a person that does have a sweet tooth... you're likely going to want to involve that back into your diet after you've restricted that out for the purpose of fat loss. You're putting a limit on it. You're forcing it to be a selective choice. In a positive way, isn't it? It's an intentional, mindful treat that you're having that you're going to enjoy that day. You're going to look forward to it. It's a positive exposure to it. You should be able to enjoy it rather than it being, oh, I'm just going to pick up a chocolate bar of yu and pick up a big of yu. And then another one for you know where you've used 800 calories of your day on on foods that just haven't filled you up. And you also probably haven't really enjoyed them in the moment because you shovel them down in between a busy day. Right. Yeah. So I like that one for and that resonates with me, of course, because I also have quite a lot to do. I've used sometimes I've used like calorie prescriptions. So I've said like you have a calorie allocation for stuff that you want to eat as pleasure food each day. So. Sometimes that's a percentage of their total calorie intake. So I might say like 10 or 20 % dependent on the individual. Because again, this is individually dependent. It is. Some individuals will. will require a slightly tighter budget because they're more liable to go crazy. So if you set a slightly tighter target, like a smaller allocation, and they overshoot slightly, then it's not bad. But if you set a larger allocation and they overshoot, then 500 out of their 15 to 1800 calories a day might go to not so healthy food. So sometimes it's about knowing the individual as well. Absolutely is knowing the individual, Sian. And even with that... point alone, right? You've got that from a perspective of helping an individual stay within a certain limit. But you've also got individuals who like working with numbers and a 10 or 20 % allowance would work really well for them because in their brain analytically that is, I can make that work. So it is very much individual dependent. I have a few members on very high maintenance calories. They're very active individuals. They might be larger individuals. The Mates calories. There might be more muscular individuals that have been training a long time. We're not talking high body fat percentage. We're talking pretty low body fat percentage, but they're very active with muscle. Their weight is higher as a result of that. And therefore they're probably going to more calories. They can probably hit all of their protein targets, fiber targets, get loads of fruit and veg, loads of their nutrients into their diet and still have like 500 to 600 calories spare at the end of the day because The rest of their food is so healthy, they've got a amount of calories that they can potentially eat for pleasure foods. Now, for some of them that might be a good thing because they might end up feeling like they're eating too much of that pleasure food, they don't particularly enjoy eating that much, it might affect their energy levels. There's other things to consider, right, but... I guess the point I'm stating is that for some individuals having a larger allocation of so-called pleasure foods allows them to hit the calories that they need to hit in order to sustain their body weight or increase their body weight as they look into a building phase. an individual that has much lower maintenance calories, that's potentially half of those individuals, you're probably not going to be able to allocate so much to pleasure food without experiencing negative consequences or without missing out on good quality nutrition elsewhere. Absolutely. It always comes back to it depends, it's individualized, and it's not one size fits all. And even through your own journey, the... approaches that you use are likely to change. Another approach that I've used with a few members that I found to be quite effective... particularly for evening snackers, is you put a stop on the evening snacking altogether. So one of the intentional decisions going into the maintenance phase or the building phase is that you might allow a certain amount of calories or you might allow one kind of, call it pleasure food or treat a day, but you say to them, you can't have this in the evenings. So you have it after your lunch or you have it in the afternoon or in the morning snack if you really want it. You don't have your chocolate on top of your yogurt or whatever, on top of your yogurt bowl. And the reason for why I suggest that is because a lot of the time when evening snacking occurs, it's occurring sat in the living room in a comfortable environment in front of the television and it ends up being unintentional. The individuals don't intend on overeating and consuming 1,000 calories of chocolate or 1,000 calories of M &Ms. but it just happens because it's there and they're picking. That's not intentional. And sometimes by changing the timing of the day, but that food is introduced gives it a slightly different response. having your chocolate bar after your lunch instead of in the evenings means that you go back to work. Any cravings to eat more chocolate are reduced because you're distracted and you're doing other things. And then by that stage, those cravings drop off and you've still had the benefits and the enjoyment of eating it, but without... like you want to keep going back to it and you just get on with the rest of your day? I think it's a really important point because we get so comfortable with our habits whether they're serving us or not and sometimes you just need to move away from a particular habit of behavior to fully understand whether it's serving you or not. You might be an individual who tries that and go do you know what actually I really enjoy just having that midday rather than late at night but you might be an individual who tries that and goes actually do you know what I've got the capabilities and I'm not over consuming that. I actually do quite enjoy having that in evening. But don't be afraid to come away from the behaviors and habits that you think are serving you because they might not be serving you in the way that you are believing them to serve you right now. Yeah, I've had clients that have said... I stopped snacking in the evenings altogether because I realized I was just doing it out of a routine. When I had access and choice to the food, choice to have the food elsewhere, I chose not to have it because I didn't really want it then. And then I started to question why I wanted it in the evenings anyway. So you just do things sometimes out of habit because you don't realize it. And just me saying, okay, so don't have it in the evening, have it somewhere else if you want it and stop you from overeating it. They eat it somewhere else and then they're like, ⁓ I don't really want this now. The amount of times that has happened is crazy, right? think it's when you give yourself the choice over it rather than it just being something habitual that you've just got used to doing, you then understand really whether you want something or not. I know it probably sounds bizarre when you're an individual that's ingrained to go, no, I like to have... my chocolate bar in evening, I like to have ice cream in the evening, I like to have a glass of wine in evening. Yeah, you like it. You like it because you're used to it. It's that habit that you've just got used to. We like the team. We like what we know. We like we like and we get really comfortable with the known and any changes to that threatens us. But I encourage you to try something different because What is the worst that can happen? You just go back to what you like and you actually realize it is what you like rather than just being chained to a habit that just doesn't serve you anymore. Like that, that mentally alone is something I always challenge clients with too. I'm like, just try it. What is the worst that can happen next week you can go back to what you think is working for you right now. Most often than not. they just have a light bulb moment either way. So, ⁓ there is a different way. I actually prefer that way. Yeah, you're learning more about yourself, aren't you? You are, and that's what's so empowering about doing this health and fitness journey is you do, if you allow it, you learn so much about yourself, which allows you to actually live life in a much freer way because you are doing what's right for you. not what your brain is telling you you think is right for you. You get so caught up in feeling embarrassed about making mistakes, but the reality is all the mistakes that you make could technically be turned into a positive. Hands down. Because you either get better at handling mistakes emotionally, you learn what doesn't work for you and that narrows down the options so you have to do less overthinking, or you confirm to yourself that you were doing it right all along and you didn't need to change it. So gives you confidence in the approach you used to follow. So actually you probably learn more from mistakes and benefit more from mistakes than just keep doing the same thing over and over over over over again with far too many different options on the table, never really sure if you're doing it right or wrong and never really know what's right for you. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're not going to die if you try something different. No. Just give it a go. Give it a go. Give it a go. Think to round off that segment in the first two weeks after your fat loss phase of going back to higher calories. You need to be patient and give your body a chance to adapt. It's too much to expect for your body to be able to go from this depleted, de-energized, restricted state to being able to eat completely freely without consequence. So give yourself a chance to transition out of that phase. There is something that gets in the way, unfortunately, of being able to do this. And it's quite common around this time of year actually, because people typically will finish their diets right before they go on holiday, right before a big event, or before they're going away or something. and that holiday or event then forms their recovery period that we just discussed about having a two week recovery period from a diet, from a fat loss phase. What happens if you go straight into a holiday? Are you joking? Please do not panic. Please do not panic. Because there's still a lot of these habits and behaviors that you can take forward with you to maintain that bit of structure. still have a bit of leeway with what you eat and what you enjoy. It's just not allowing your mind to mentally flip from... ⁓ I'm changing my behaviors and habits to drive fatless outcome to, ⁓ let's just have whatever I want at any given moment of the day. I don't think this... just... I don't think this is specific to just coming out of a fat loss phase, but I think it's specific to all times of year. We're not here to tell you what to do, but if you go on any holiday, go away to any event, go on any breakaway and view it as a complete free-for-all, then there's a good chance you're going to experience some negative body composition change. There's a good chance that you're going to gain some fat through excessive over consumption in that time. I think we all know this. We're all adults. like to think that we're all adults listening to this. We all know this. We're not blind to the fact that you can't eat and drink completely liberally and not gain some fat. It happens. But I think it's really important if you've just finished a fat loss phase to have it at the front of your mind. Not to scare yourself, not to stop you from having a good time, but to have it in the front of your mind that you are at risk of undoing some of the hard work that you've just spent weeks, if not months putting in for the sake of just not holding back that little bit. You've to ask yourself honestly, right? Because there's no right or wrong to this. You are your own person. You want what you want. But you've just got to hold your hand up to be honest with yourself and say, what do I actually want? And how do I want to end, come out of this holiday period? Like Sean said, it's not to say not to enjoy it. It's not to say to have, make memories and totally, you know, be absolute. And it's not just to focus only on healthy habits and not enjoy the moment. It's not that at all. But if you decide to just go for free for all, then you are likely putting yourself in a position where negative body composition change is going to happen. But not just negative body composition change is going to happen. How are you going to handle that mentally? That is the key question. If you can go and be free for all, come back of holiday and just accept it for what it is without beating yourself up. and then you can get back to your routine and deal with whatever happens after, then who is anyone to judge you for doing that? I've never met anyone who can do that. I haven't either, But... I think people say that they can do that, people pretend that they can do that, but then a couple of weeks down the line, if they've not lost their holiday weight a few weeks after, they get into a chi. I agree, I agree. And this is where you've got to be really honest with yourself, because in that moment there and there, you might think going... fuck it, is the answer for you. But look back at your past experiences. Did that really sit well with you mentally? Were you really in a position where you were enjoying that holiday for what it was? Or were you already thinking about what's happening after? And only you can answer that question. But it doesn't have to be an all or nothing mindset around this. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing mentality. You can have best of both worlds. Most of our clients don't track when they're on holidays. they go from a period of most likely tracking quite intensively throughout their fat loss phase to then not tracking much at all, if at all, when they're on holiday. So this is about trying to keep some structure and routine. The environment is going to be far more challenging. Doing a two week kind of post-diet recovery phase at home compared to doing it on holiday is far more challenging. Like doing it home is far easier. But there are still some structures that you can keep in place. know, thinking about having a protein source with every meal or most meals. Thinking about getting some good quality nutrients in, fruit, vegetables, whole food sources. You could refrain from having... a pastry in the morning and a dessert in the evening, you choose one or the other. You could refrain from having an ice cream or a beer in the afternoon. You could choose one or the other. There's options that you can choose which would still be better than just going off the rails and having whatever you want. And again, like Katie has said, I cannot reiterate it enough, if you want to go away and have whatever you want, that is entirely up to you. We're not here to tell you what to do. But we have coached many clients around their holidays and through their holidays. And we've got vast experience of handling the emotional fallout from the individuals that go and do whatever they want. And I would say that the overwhelming majority of the time, the people that go away and just do whatever they want, have a much harder time coming out of the holiday and looking forward to future holidays than those that just reserve themselves just a little bit, just hold back a little bit, just have a little bit more moderation in mind and keep a little bit of base routine and structure. because then they don't come home with all the guilt, all the disappointment, all the frustration and feel like they have an absolute mountain to climb when they get... I couldn't, I agree fully with you. I agree fully with you. It's still having those frameworks in your mind that allow you to do that while you're away. Like you said, Sean, isn't it? If I have X now, then I'm not going to have X later. You know, if I know I'm going to have a three course meal tonight, then I'm going to have a much lower calorie breakfast and lunch. You don't need to track calories to make those decisions. And if you're using the excuse that you're not being as accurate with your nutrition to just go the complete opposite way, that's where you're to set yourself up for disaster, really. and then put yourself in a position where you're not going to feel very comfortable. you can still understand energy balance and make informed decisions for yourself in that moment. You may find it, as you mentioned, Sean, the environment more challenging, depending on who you go away with as well. And that's probably going to test you in ways that is a lot harder than it would be you doing at home. To see that as a challenge, stand up to it. go, do you know what, actually I'm going to make what's right, what's right for me right now. I know what's right for my body. I know what's right for me. So I'm going to not have this ice cream with everyone right now because I want to have a three close to me later. Go on. I'm not going to have alcohol with my lunch on holiday because I want to have wine with my meal later on. You can make these choices. You don't need a tracker to do that. It doesn't sound that bad, does it? Like, it really doesn't sound that bad. We're not encouraging you to take a set of food scales around with you everywhere you go on holiday. Carry meals around in Tupperware doing your meal prep in your hotel room kitchen in the morning like if you were doing that I would be working hard with you to flip that mindset around unless you had you know a specific goal for specific thing and you had loads of holidays, but Being able to make these decisions in the moment for yourself, it might seem challenging right now, but in the long run, it's so empowering. 100%. And just the final thing that I think is important to have in your mind mentally when you go on holiday, especially if you go straight away after a fat loss phase, you need to think about, okay, so first of all, I got the holiday. That's just one chunk. Like everything we just discussed there in that segment, that's how I would approach a holiday. When you come back, I would still be thinking those first two weeks. Don't think of it as the post-holiday. recovery phase, think of it as I'm still in my post-diet recovery phase. You should treat that whether the holiday is there or not. In my opinion, it should be dealt with in exactly the same way. You're going to need some more structure. You're going to need to pay attention to the fact that your body's not fully recovered. Don't think just because you've been away on holiday for a week and you've had a bit more freedom eating and you've been eating more foods and having more exposure to things that you'll be fully recovered in terms of your post-diet state, either. because you probably won't be, because it's a completely different environment. If anything, it could make you feel like you've moved even further away from structure if you've had more freedom on holiday, especially if you've been doing things like tracking at home and having meals at a very set amount of time. You might be eating your evening meal at a completely different time every single night when you're on holiday. You might be going to bed every single time. might be falling asleep halfway through the day while reading a book on the beach like Katie does. Or reading a book anywhere, she falls asleep. But the point is... You want to try and return back to some sort of structure and routine. It's not like, ⁓ God, I've gained all this weight on holiday. No, forget about all that. Get rid of that. Because if you do the processes right and you manage a healthy lifestyle, then that will happen naturally anyway. But the point is to think about how you're going to get yourself back into a state that's sustainable for your diet, your nutrition, your body composition after that holiday. Not specifically because of the holiday, but because the holiday's ended up on the back of your fat loss phase and you haven't had time to do that yet because you've just been away on holiday. So kind of block that in. You've got your holiday week or holiday two weeks and then you've got your two weeks of diet recovery to follow. I think it's a good mentality to have and a good approach to have. Katie, you frame this a lot when we speak about... long-term sustainability and long-term habits. You talk about upholding standards for the rest of your life. and how. Your habits lead to maintaining and upkeeping standards. this is a really benefit... For me, this is a really beneficial way of looking at it, to think about what standards you would like to keep for the, I guess, the outcomes, but the identity you'd like to have as well. It's helped me actually, thinking of it like this has really helped me. just show up for myself every day rather than it feeling like something I have to do rather than feeling like it's a chore. It's flipped that on his head to actually something I get to practice every day that is going to allow me to live the life that I really want to live. And again, these will look slightly different for every everyone, right? But if you want to be a healthy person, if you want to maintain your body fat levels or improve your body composition. If you want to have a diet that is nutritious, if you want to live an active lifestyle, all of those things require you to actually do the habits that allow those outcomes to happen. So rather than I have to do all of these, it's what habits Am I going to practice on a daily basis? What standards do I want for myself that I'm going to practice on a daily basis that allow me to achieve that? They may not be perfect every day. I may not get everything right every day, but every new day is a new opportunity to practice those standards. So for example, one day I might be get really, really good day of nutrition, got loads of great nutrition quality in. Perhaps I didn't get to the gym that day. Okay, whatever. But still there's some habits that day that I've practiced in line with the person that I want to be, the identity that I want for myself. Rather than then beating myself up by the end of that day going, I haven't done, I haven't got to the gym, for example. It's going, okay, I have practiced a lot of the habits that align with where I want to be. I've had great nutrition quality. I've still been active today. whatever your standards and habits are for yourself. But I didn't get to the gym today when it's supposed to be a training day. It's okay, I'm gonna get up tomorrow, I'm gonna practice those habits and standards again. If you can thank yourself on a regular basis for the habits and standards that you are holding yourself accountable to, that's a much more positive mindset to be in than thinking, ⁓ I failed at this today, I didn't get this done today. Then that spiraling into the next day, the next day, the next month, before you know it, you have gone back a thousand million steps. and you're feeling really, really shitty about yourself, it's like a new slate every day. It's like, okay, I'm gonna keep practicing that today, but I would like to improve on this. So how you see that and how you choose to embed that every day, I think is really important. Yeah, it's a simple thing, but you wake up tomorrow, you get a chance to start again. and you can do one thing better than you did today or not. It's a choice. And if you could just do one thing better and then maintain that standard and maintain that habit. But first it's not a habit, it's a choice. And you make that choice enough times it becomes a habit. So if you can maintain that, then eventually you end up with a new set of habits that pretty much run themselves on repeat that you don't really need to think about too much. But this transition phase from fat loss back to... back to higher calories and maintenance is a particularly difficult one because you'll have a lot of habits which you don't realize you should keep in your fat loss phase. You should keep a lot of those habits and you should try and maintain those habits and the focus should be on maintaining those habits and then you're to have to form some slightly different or slightly new habits as time goes on through making more choices. Like when you're exposed to more freedom with food, it's about making the right choices and being able to know how to... balance things out and manage things and you'll form a habit of being able to do those. But it is a tricky period. So less like making, sorry, should have made it really more appropriate and applicable to transitioning out of fat loss to higher calories. So for example, those practices. Sorry, can you start again? For example, I hit my mic, sorry. For example. some of the harvester standards that you choose to practice that first week out is I am going to choose to have three meals a day and I'm going to choose to make sure I still have protein and fiber in every meal that day. That could be the standard that you have for your nutrition and it could be that I'm still going to make sure that I go out for two walks a day, one walk a day, whatever it may be to get your step count in. It's not, ⁓ I'm not going do any of that. Those could be the practices that you have for yourself. And if you do that for long enough, that becomes your behavior, that becomes your new identity. You then are that person that does that rather than it having to be a conscious choice every day. And then that's where you can start stacking your practices, your habits and build from there. if that makes sense. I think if your lifestyle diet or your building diet or even just your lifestyle habits or your building habits look drastically different from what you do in fat loss, I think there's a very strong chance that... this result that you're trying to achieve in fat loss will be unsustainable. There's a very good chance that you're gonna lead to yo-yo in. So much of what you do in a fat loss phase should form part of your day-to-day life and that is the part of fat loss that should be sustainable. It's a lot of the behaviors, it's a lot of the habits. The restriction shouldn't be sustainable. The low calorie shouldn't be sustainable. The feeling like crap isn't sustainable. But the rest of it... the decisions to go for those steps and do those steps. The decisions to go for those walks and do those steps. The decisions to fill most of your diet with really nourishing, filling foods. The decision to go to the gym and train regularly and lift weights with intensity to look after your muscle mass. All of those things should become day-to-day habits. If they're not, then you can't expect the things that you do to get the fat loss result to... maintain your fat loss results afterwards. Sorry. If they're not, then you can't expect to maintain the results of fat loss afterwards when you're not doing the same things that got you the result to begin with. That makes zero sense to me to some extent. I can't make that categorical statement. I'm just going to move on from that. Okay. if you have ambitions to move on to muscle building. after your diet phase, which I'm hoping most people will because it's vitally important to build muscle. whether you're doing it for health, you're doing it for aesthetic purposes, whether you've got physique goals, you need to dedicate as much time as possible to your building phases. This will never be a quick process for anyone really. Even the individuals that are most sensitive to muscle growth in their early years of training will probably all still argue they wish it was faster. It's not a quick process, so you need to be able to dedicate as much time as possible to it. And that is specifically time where you're eating more calories to provide the building blocks, to provide the nutrients required for muscle to be built effectively. That's supporting your training and that's fueling you effectively for those intensive training sessions. That's for literally building the new muscle tissue and recovering you as well as possible to get back in the gym for the next day. You're going to want to avoid fat gain for that process because fat gain means that you have to put your muscle building phases on pause. because you gain too much body fat and the only way to get rid of body fat is to go back into a calorie deficit. So now you have to lower your calories down and you're removing all that fuel, all those resources to build muscle and delaying that process even more, which is already a slow process. So if your ambition is to build muscle, in my opinion, it makes absolute sense to treat the transition back to higher calories. handle the transition back to higher calories with a lot more care especially if you haven't done this successfully before especially if you feel like you've regained fat before when you start to eat more again and then over time you can start to know what works for you and you might not necessarily need to be quite as strict, quite as routine, quite as regimented, but certainly at least for those first two weeks. You should take those probably as seriously as your fat loss phase, in my opinion. I agree, because that's the time where you are at most risk, I would say, of old habits creeping back in, being too liberal with your calories, not really understanding what works well for you in a maintenance phase, diet break, building phase, because you haven't had time and exposure at that. You've had time in fat loss. You've had time to get that right. You've had time to make tweaks. So you know what works bloody well for you. you need to give yourself the same time and exposure to higher calories with the attention and focus on changing your behaviors and habits and align with it so that it can become more of an autonomous process for you. In terms of activity, it's really important that you maintain consistency with your activity levels. We've spoken a lot about the nutrition side of things, but the activity also plays a part. Because if you up your food and you end up eating more, but you're burning less calories every day, then you run a risk of putting yourself into what we call a surplus state where calories that you're eating are much higher than the calories you've got going out or not necessarily much higher. The calories you eat are higher than the calories you've got going out and the bigger the surplus the more chance you're going to gain fat quickly. So you want to at least maintain those habits for energy expenditure. They might not necessarily be if you're doing lots of cardio say for example to get as lean as possible in a short time frame in your fat loss phase you might not need to keep doing as much cardio if you've increase your step count to, you know, extra sets like 15,000 plus a day. ⁓ when your average is normally 10 to 12, because you're pushing for that fat loss result, you might not need to keep doing 15,000, but you still need to account for the fact that you need to go back to 10 to 12,000. Cause I have seen this with members sometimes where they start adding more food, but because they're not in a fat loss phase as much, they might, they might skip a few extra gym sessions now because the fat loss phase is over or they stop doing those cardio sessions altogether, or they don't do as many steps because fat loss phase is over. you're giving them more food, but then they're burning less calories per day. And then a couple of weeks down the line, it's like, well, I'm, I feel like I'm gaining fat a little bit too quickly. And it's like, well, yeah, because. You're eating more food, but you're not burning as many calories now. So you're in a surplus. I set you on maintenance calories, but you're not in maintenance calories because you started moving less. So now you're in a surplus. So you need to keep those activity levels up. And that should be a constant. There might be timeframes where you don't push growth as much in the gym. You don't push the intensity of your training sessions quite so much. You don't have as high steps, but then you need to accordingly change your calories to suit that as well, which can be tricky. It's much easier if you have a coach to do this for you, but that is something to be aware of. Which actually brings me back to a vitally important point, which we've left pretty much to the end of the entire podcast, weight gain. It is an important point. I don't think it needs to take up too much space, but I think it's something in this podcast here right now, but I think it's something that's really important to be aware of because this is a stumbling block that really trips over a lot of people and that is positive weight regain. And it's definitely not talked enough about, definitely not talked about enough in the health and fitness space. I certainly don't see enough people talking about it. But that is positive weight regain post-diet. You've just been in a really depleted state, a very depleted state. You've deprived your body of calories, and then you go back to eating more calories when you come out of your fallows phase, go into your diet recovery phase, building phase, wherever it may be. You're replenishing your body. You're refilling up all of your glycogen stores, which is carbohydrates. And that's got to weigh something. That, alongside the more food you're eating, all of that's got to weigh something. But that doesn't necessarily mean you have gained body fat because you see the number of scales increase. But this is what trips up a lot of people. They think because they see a couple of pounds, sometimes a little bit more on the scales after fat loss phase, that they've instantly gained body fat and they failed and they can't keep eating these calories, they need to go back to restriction mode. And I just can't hammer this point home enough that it is normal, it is natural, and you should expect to see the scales go up after you leave a fat loss phase. There are caveats that, you know, in certain individuals, they may see them drop, but... the majority of the time, majority of the time, you're going to see the number of the skills increase. And that's a good thing, a very good thing. We mentioned about this two week recovery period from your diet. Specifically, over those two weeks, your weight should go up on average. You might see a weird random drop when you first start your maintenance week or you first start your diet break or whatever. Typically, you would see that with some individuals that have got a lot of stress and then that causes a lot of water retention. You go back to maintenance, the body feels less stressed. It loses a lot of its water weight which drops. But then later on throughout that week, it regains water weight anyway because you're filling up your body with carbohydrates which gets stored in three parts to one part water. So for every time you store carbohydrates, your body stores water as well. In your fat loss phase, as Katie mentioned, Your water weight is very depleted. Your muscles aren't very well hydrated. Your carb stores, your glycogen stores are very depleted. They're not very full. And they will refill when you start eating at meters calories or above for a sustained period. It's a really good sign. Your energy levels go back to normal. Your hunger hormones eventually balance out. Training performance improves dramatically. Strength improves dramatically from being in that diet state. Your muscles feel fuller. Yeah, you look better. You actually look better. There's a reason why bodybuilders carb up before they go on stage. It's a method to make their muscles look fuller before they go on stage. There's a reason why marathon runners overload with carbohydrates before they do a marathon. Because it helps their performance. Now we're not saying you need to jump on stage to do a marathon, but what we are saying is that more carbs are good. And getting the weight regain is good. Yeah, it's not even just good, right? It's vitally important. If you do not experience this, you are probably not recovered from your diet. You should expect to see some weight regain coming out of a diet. And it's a clear sign of recovery. And some individuals actually are worse off if they don't experience positive weight regain. They try and keep it off forever. Some individuals will get themselves quite lean and try and hold their body weight at that really low body weight like where they finish their cut like they're just aiming for a numerical target your body is not going to change in terms of appearance you're not going to gain body fat by going back to maintenance just because your weight goes up by a few pounds because you've fully replenished you can do a quick check of this take a progress picture do two weeks at maintenance your body weight will go up by a few pounds and i promise you you won't see a change in your body fat levels if you've done maintenance correctly at the end those two weeks. We see it time and time and time again with clients, time and time again. You might not want to take those progress pictures because you might think mentally that you've gained body fat, but it's really important that you do that checkpoint because that visual will confirm to you that that positive weight regain is a good thing and is vital and hasn't led to body fat regain. There will be quite large increases for some individuals in those first two weeks. After that, if you're building muscle and if you're eating more calories, then your body weight will gradually increase over time as well. Slowly but surely, it will start to trend up. If you're seeing small weight increases to your weekly average weight, then you're very unlikely to be gaining fat if you're training to build muscle, of course. If you're not doing any training to build muscle and your weight's going up, then you're probably gaining fat. Just saying it as it is. But if you are training to build muscle and your weight's going up in a very small amount, round about maintenance calories or just slightly above, then most of that weight increase will likely be muscle if you're training properly. If you've seen large increases in your week to week weight, like I'm not saying like, if you've seen large increases in your weekly average weight. So you tally up all your weigh-ins for the week, you take an average, you compare that to the next week's average, that's how to do weekly average. If you see large increases, then you are probably gaining a bit of fat alongside that. So you might wanna be a little bit more targeted with that. But weight increase is part of the process, it does not mean you're gaining body fat, and it's something that you should accept as part of the diet recovery stage and as part of the muscle building stage as well. For sure, hands down. And can be a hard thing to accept if you're an individual that has tried to diet a lot or, you know, ⁓ focused on losing weight for a long time. It's not easy to always flip that switch in your mind mentally, but it's definitely an important one to expose yourself to. So, to summarise this entire podcast in one sentence, in our experience, the period shortly after the diet is actually more important than the diet itself. Hands down. Absolutely hands down. Most people do a great job at losing weight. ⁓ Most people do a great job at losing fat. But even more people struggle with keeping fat off afterwards. and it's not the diet's fault. No, it's not. It's really not. When you've nailed the transition from fat loss to maintenance calories or surplus calories once, it's much easier to repeat it. But unfortunately, a lot of people find this to be very difficult. not the people that hire a coach. Because if there is ever a period to have a coach, it is during the post-diet period. It's become one of the most socially acceptable things to do for fat loss is to hire a coach. But most people leave the coaching service when they need the coach the most, which is that period after they've just finished their diet. It's physically, mentally and emotionally tricky. Having guidelines and frameworks in place like we have outlined in this podcast massively improves your chance of success at transitioning out of fat loss. But more importantly, it's not just having the guidelines and the frameworks. It's having them rem... It's being reminded of them and finding ways to actually implement these things. even if you know what to expect, actually experiencing it and managing it are different things entirely. We've had the wide variety of clients that spend anywhere from four to nine months in higher calorie states after fat loss without gaining large amounts of fat. It's no coincidence that these members that stay in shape for the longest. Sorry. It's no coincidence that these are the members that stay in shape for the longest timeframes and have the best long-term transformations we see. If you would like to hire our. If you would like our help for fat loss, then we will welcome you. We would highly recommend that you stay to transition out of fat loss because the last thing you want is to feel like all of your hard work is undone or like you're trapped in a state of constant yoyoing to keep the fat off. To find out how we can help you get lean and stay that way whilst you build muscle, hit the link to enquire in the description. Next week we'll be back with an episode that will completely revolutionise the way you train. We're going to be talking about training to failure or training close to failure. We're going to be talking about training to failure or close to failure. We'll be breaking down why this is important, where most people make mistakes with it, and how to implement it safely for the best muscle gains you can get. See you all next time.