Speaker 1: 0:00

Today I'm experimenting with a new format no intro music, no outro music. This is a bonus episode. I'm just giving you the Q&A straight up from our Wits and Weights Facebook group where we do a live Q&A. If you want to join, link is in the show notes. Other than that, enjoy the episode.

Speaker 1: 0:16

Today we tackle the truth behind low-calorie diets, how to use training and nutrition to prevent chronic disease, when to choose a mini cut versus a traditional cut and whether you can actually ruin your metabolism. Jacinta says the question is I'm new to the group but a regular podcast listener. I'm small. All the TDEE calculators put me at 1,200 calories to lose weight. I cannot eat that low and honestly haven't tried. I'm 54, postmenopausal. Weigh, 62 kilograms. I do 1.62 grams per kilo of protein, 20-ish grams of fiber Started lifting heavy last August. Love carbs don't really track them or fats. Currently do three to four days in the gym, two days of cardio. So I think I'm doing some of the right things, but I'd love to crack what calories I should be on, as I'm guessing, I'm undoing all my good work at the weekend and I love some of your podcast ideas about nonlinear dieting and would like to start doing that.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Okay, before we even talk about advanced strategies or nonlinear dieting, it sounds like you don't quite really even know what your TDE is, because you talked about using a calculator and unfortunately calculators are just averages. Even though, yeah, you put in your height, weight, gender, all that activity level, it's just a guess within a wide possible range like 400 plus or minus calories either direction. So they're effectively useless other than as a starting point and so you can start there and you can say okay, it puts you at 1200 to lose weight. So I'm assuming it puts you at, say, 1700 TDE and you think you need to eat 1200 a day to lose weight. And then you said you cannot eat that low and honestly haven't tried. So first, does it actually require you to eat that little to lose the amount you want to lose? We don't know because an estimate isn't going to give you that, so hold that thought. Number two is, if that was what was required to lose a certain amount of weight and you said you cannot eat that low, and that's a true statement, then that's not a sustainable level of calories and you can't lose weight at that rate sustainably. Which is probably why you asked about the nonlinear approach, which means like, for example, you might be able to go moderately aggressively for six weeks but then go back to maintenance for six weeks.

Speaker 1: 2:36

Different strategies, right, go really aggressively and then go less aggressively. A lot of different strategies that I've talked about on the show. But I replied here and I said the best way to figure out your dynamic metabolism, your T E E, the calories you burn every day, is to use macro factor and start tracking your food and weight every day. That is, I'll say, the easiest. Yeah, it costs a little money, it's well worth it, um, but it's the it's easiest because it does it for you. It has an algorithm built in that does that. The manual way to do that which almost nobody does these days because it's too much spreadsheet work and fancy math and time and everything. It's just not convenient is to do it in a spreadsheet to track how your weight is trending over time, with a moving average compared to how much you're eating over time, with a moving average compared to how much you're eating. Try to eat the same amount for like two or three weeks and see what happens to your weight If it goes. You know if it stays the same, that's roughly how many calories you're burning.

Speaker 1: 3:31

So an app like macro factor might start at the estimate, but then it's going to either converge up or converge down after you start giving it real data about you and your body. Once you have that, then you'll know okay, I actually burn, say, 1,500 calories, or 2,000 calories, and so to lose X pounds per week, I need to, or X kilograms per week, I need to eat this many calories. And, of course, if you don't want to, or like to, or cannot adhere to eating a certain amount of calories, then that's not right for you. Then you need to go less aggressively or you need to split it up into phases and all of that. So I think your your overall question, um, was related to kind of how much, how many calories you burn and what you need to eat, and so I would start with tracking using macro factor so you can figure that out.

Speaker 1: 4:20

No other food logging app is going to do that Right. I mean, I just today had a call with someone who was using another app for macros and I'm looking at it and all it does is let you track food and then it gives you an estimate, just like the calculators do for the targets, which is useless. I had another potential client. I call everybody. I talk to potential clients just in my head but another person on one of my free calls who was using Macrofactor but she wasn't logging her weight. Same thing If you don't give it the data about your weight, it doesn't know how your weights to get the two weeks free, you know, and it will give you the data you need over time and then you can check back in with us here and say, okay, now I understand my true metabolism, my metabolic rate. Now this is the next place I'm stuck. Or now what is the next step? Okay, All right. The next question from Jesse. I love this. We have a lot of questions. We have questions from a bunch of new members, so you are absolutely taking advantage of this group.

Speaker 1: 5:29

I know eliminating fat and building muscle and cardiovascular improvement is everyone's goal. I've never heard the question regarding this type of health Is there a way to work out to be a way to work out to be the most healthy by health risks like cancer, heart attacks, strokes and maybe even lowering the risk of dementia? The simple answer is lose fat. But I'd like to hear the question answered by someone in the training industry and not just a doctor who's overweight, lol, and I kind of laughed at that because I can empathize with the sentiment that there are a lot of just GPs, you know, general practitioners, you know, who may not be very healthy themselves, and I've experienced that and you just take with a grain of salt what they say in the realm of nutrition and training, because they don't have a clue, let's just be honest, and a few of them do, but most of them don't, and so you're kind of seeking out people who actually live this stuff and walk the walk, and I think that's smart.

Speaker 1: 6:23

I think doctors have a lot to offer in when it comes to medicine, when it comes to diagnosing some things and maybe even, yes, prescribing medication, obviously where necessary, um, but they know a lot less about nutrition than you think, and a lot of the things I'm going to tell you right now are related to the lifestyle changes that I would recommend for anybody and a lot of my clients, for whatever reason. Especially lately, I've been attracting a lot of clients who are in a poor metabolic health place and they don't just want to lose fat. They know that's important. They also want to improve their resting heart rate, their blood lipids, their cholesterol or that's the same thing, their cholesterol or that's the same thing, um, and you know, maybe they're A1C, maybe they're insulin sensitivity, um, what else? So so, uh, maybe there are hormones like testosterone or female reproductive hormones, and so we know that maintaining a healthy weight, maintaining a healthy body composition and having muscle plus being active is are huge, and I mean huge, I mean probably the majority of the pie factors that affect all of these health outcomes, which is actually a very empowering thing, because it means if you just do the things that we all want to do to be fit and functional and live a long life, you're also generally going to have healthier outcomes with those markers.

Speaker 1: 7:49

So, for example, strength training is massive. Building muscle is massive. Muscle is a sink for glucose. Insulin sensitivity increases when you have more muscle. But even in the process of training to build more muscle, Walking is great for blood sugar control. It's great for your resting heart rate. A little bit of cardio as well, of course, helps with your VO2 max and your resting heart rate.

Speaker 1: 8:13

When we think about cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, a lot of these are correlated with poor, low quality diets, higher body mass and a lack of muscle, lack of strength training. So I would have, you know, strength training, using your nutrition with a focus on 80% whole foods to maintain a healthy weight. And a healthy weight is very subjective, but for a female I would say, body fat percentages in the 20s are good. Once you get up in the mid 30s and up, then you're talking about getting into the overweight, obese range, where it starts to become much more of an issue. So all of that is super important for health markers. It's not just how you work out, but strength training. If you're going to ask the question, how do I work out, I would say you know, lifting heavy, building muscle, building strength are all going to be super helpful. I mean, there's other aspects of health too, like function. So this is why I like a little bit heavier lifting incorporated in your overall regimen, even if it's not everything. Especially for women, especially because of risk of osteoporosis and the lack of bone density as we age, especially for men too, wanting to be functional into their 50s, 60s, 70s. Lifting heavy weights, doing spinal loaded exercises like squats, doing compound lifts, are going to be really valuable and really important. And then all the other stuff also helps with building muscle, staying athletic, staying fit From the nutrition side, when we think of blood pressure, lipids, inflammation, there's a few things that come to mind.

Speaker 1: 9:45

One is just having a good balance of your macros in your meals as well as in general for the day. So not cutting anything out too low Even if you are following macros, not trying to go too low on the fats or carbs, for example, having enough protein, all of that. Also keeping saturated fat at a reasonable level. So the typical threshold is below 10% of your calories or below a third of your fat. And then fiber. I'm just more and more on the fiber bandwagon because I think it's a legitimate thing to care about how much fiber we have in our diet from a health perspective, from fat loss, for gut health, for digestion and then a bunch of other things that I talked about in the Wednesday episode. So go check that out. You know fruits and vegetables that contain fiber have so many nutrients and compounds that are what I'll call anti-inflammatory or you know they're antioxidant rich. They have lots of compounds that kind of fill your nutrient gaps Omega-3, fatty acids, all that stuff. So generally a balanced diet with mostly whole foods, strength training and being active and not sitting on your butt all day like, even if you go to the gym and even if you do a few walks here and there, don't just sit on your butt all day, is a powerful defense against most health risks.

Speaker 1: 11:02

So that's probably the longest answer I'm going to give today. All right, wyatt. Wyatt always has a great answer or a great question and it's super, super detailed and so, in the interest of everyone watching, you can go check out the full question. Sorry, wyatt. So I came up with a concise version of your question, which is when do you recommend mini cuts versus traditional cuts? All right, I think that's generally what you're saying with this. Okay, and if, if I missed some nuance, that's important, let me know. But there's a lot of why. It's like me, we, we tend to overthink things a bit and we really want to plan everything out and like we second guess ourselves and then you know we make some progress and we're like, oh, but what if I did this other thing? Am I missing out? And so on and so forth. And he's got a lot of detail in there and I really love that. Right, he's thinking about it.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Here's what I'm going to say. I'm just going to focus on mini cuts versus full length cuts. You know mini cuts. I think what you want to do is look at your life, look at the seasons okay and obviously look at your goals, like and pick one thing. And by one thing I don't necessarily mean fat loss or muscle gain, I mean a very specific thing. Like you know, I want to get lean for this specific reason around this timeframe, or I want to get to a PR on this, or I want to work out this way, or I have this event or something like that. Why? Because I think I don't want you to be kind of floating around in this like body composition thinking, where the be all, end all is losing fat, gaining muscle, because that can become purposeless at some point where it's not very fulfilling compared to going after something very specific that drives you there. That makes sense, and maybe you have to find what that is. I don't know. Maybe you have to find what that is Now. Sometimes you've got lots of stuff going on in your life and focusing on just the process itself could be fulfilling. So it depends on where you are.

Speaker 1: 12:56

But I'm going to say this a mini cut is great if you're thinking six, eight weeks. Right, you want to shed a small amount of fat. You just want to lop it off. You're not going to worry about muscle mass or strength, because you're probably not going to lose any. You're not going to get too much metabolic adaptation. You want, like, a quick reset. You want to fine-tune your physique before you go into another 6, 9, 12-month muscle building phase. This is great if you're already in a good kind of mental and physical state and you're already in that vacillating in that range of I'll call it leanness, whatever leanness is for you.

Speaker 1: 13:31

And usually it's a little bit aggressive, right. It's a little more aggressive, short-term kind of calorie deficit, all the way down to as short as four or even two weeks if you want to go super aggressive. And then the traditional cuts are more for the sustained fat loss 12 to 16 weeks, right. And guys like us who lift and you know we're at the point where we can manipulate this stuff pretty well can do both. You can do both. I mean, you can get in phases where you really train hard for a long time and you build a lot of muscle, but you end up gaining more fat than you'd like. Or maybe it's on purpose. Hopefully it's just more on purpose, and now you need a little bit longer time to cut. Or maybe you want a longer time to cut because you want to get more shredded than last time, right? So either way, when it's going to be longer, we want it to be more controlled, more moderate. We can use some of the non-linear approaches because, again, we're trying to maintain our muscle and strength, maintain metabolic function, kind of enjoy our life without feeling like we're just always dieting and, you know, manage all the stress.

Speaker 1: 14:26

So it's a periodization question of al. So when I go back and look at your question, you had a bunch of scenarios and each one had pros and cons that you gave. I guess what I would say is take all that, put it on a single piece of paper, give yourself the one plan and the other plan Okay and stack up all the pros for each plan and then just circle the ones that are most important and the one that has the most circles go with that. Does that work? That literally is, I think, good enough for you, and I joked that like if you want to hire me as a coach, we'll dig in and we'll do exactly what you need exactly at the right time. That's how we do it. I can't solve that through these lives, but hopefully it's a good starting point, man.

Speaker 1: 15:16

Okay, and then Janetta said is it a myth that you can ruin your metabolism? I had done intermittent fasting for four years and people kept telling me that I was ruining my metabolism. I'm no longer fasting and using macro factor with success and I responded yes, it's a myth. Addressed briefly on the live, it is a myth that you can ruin or break your metabolism. Your metabolism is extremely complex, dynamic and flexible. Okay, it's very flexible and what you're experiencing anytime you go into fat loss or when you're fasting. No, you said you did intermittent fasting for years.

Speaker 1: 15:52

Intermittent fasting in and of itself really has no negative effects on anything that not fasting would have. They're the same, other than your ability to adhere to your diet and whether it works for your schedule. Some people use intermittent fasting because it allows them to restrict the feeding window. Therefore, they have bigger meals on fewer calories. Their body adapts to the fasting window and now they can kind of stick to a diet more sustainably. Cool, go for it if that works for you. For others, you know, they can't stand going that long without eating or they may feel less recovered because they're not eating frequently enough for their training, or they have to eat a certain amount of calories, and so it's hard to like stuff yourself with just like one or two meals in the IF window, in the fat, in the feeding window, well, even three meals, but if it's too tight, and so those are practical reasons not to fast. There's no reason to fast other than those practical reasons that have nothing to do with your metabolism or with health, or with hormones, or with autophagy or with longevity. None of that. Okay, so that's out of the way.

Speaker 1: 17:05

Now we talk about ruining your metabolism. What people experience if you were losing weight, if you were in a deficit? It's called metabolic adaptation. Okay, it's well-documented. It's a normal physiological response to calorie restriction and or weight loss. Calorie restriction and or weight loss why do I say to those two things Calorie restriction?

Speaker 1: 17:28

When you are in a deficit, you are depriving your body of resources. Your body then responds by becoming more conservative, more efficient in many ways, and it happens through hormones, through hormone signaling, through your brain, through many ways, and it happens through hormones, through hormone signaling, through your brain, through your gut, and it just tells everything in your body to just like shut down a little bit. We need to save. We need to save because food's not coming in. Okay, that means your metabolism declines. Thyroid, insulin, cortisol, leptin, ghrelin all these hormones are doing this. Reproductive hormones and so on. They all kind of like try to save energy. And the more aggressively you go and the longer you go, the more they save, the more your metabolism drops. That's one reason.

Speaker 1: 18:05

The other reason for metabolic adaptation is the weight loss itself. You are a lighter person. You're simply going to burn fewer calories, that's it. So some people go through this situation where they've been carrying around a certain weight for years and years and years. We work together. They lose 30 pounds of fat and they come out of the fat loss phase and they go into maintenance with their new, leaner weight, but they're not burning as many calories as before. But that's because they're lighter. I mean, they're not carrying 30 pounds around.

Speaker 1: 18:32

And when that happens I know I'm going off on a tangent here, but we talk about okay, do we add more volume into our diet so that it doesn't feel like we're eating too little? Do we now go into a slight surplus so that you could eat more while you're building more muscle, or do we accept that this is the new reality Now when I say that you shouldn't be hungry, you shouldn't be hungry. So when you're at maintenance you shouldn't be hungry. Even if you're at a lighter weight, it just might be psychologically. Now you're eating fewer calories, okay, anyway, metabolic adaptation caused by calorie restriction and or weight loss is totally reversible. Your metabolism is not ruined, it is not broken. It's simply adapted.

Speaker 1: 19:10

And now, depending on what you do with your strength training, your calorie intake, it's going to recover when you get back to maintenance to its current set point. That may be different than what it was before, but it's going to unadapt. It's going to adapt back to homeostasis when you give it more energy. So all you can do is focus on yourself and what you can do. Stay active and train right, move, prioritize protein, manage your stress, get enough sleep, like the big things, and you're good. If you want to fast, go for it, but you don't have to. So again, that was just a taste of what you can experience in our Wits and Weights Facebook group, totally free. The link is in the show notes. We do a live Q&A where I answer your specific questions. It's kind of like getting free coaching for your nutrition training, all of that. Again, use the link in our show notes to go to Wits and Weights Facebook group or look it up online, and I'll see you next time.