What is going on, guys? Welcome back to Eat Train Prosper. This is episode 223 titled Is Your Fat Loss Stalled? Question mark. Then do these. So I came up with this idea from just DMs. I get questions from people who are potentially interested in working with me, and they like to generally lay out what they're doing and what they've been And a lot of the very, very common ones continually show up. So I thought it would be really, really helpful. For us, just to put together an episode of this. So if you are coaching yourself or taking yourself through your own fat loss phase, and when these come up, you know how to navigate or identify some of our ~ classifications, which I have under here as poor metrics, being the first one, false plateaus, and then conversely, true plateaus. But before we dive into the nuts and bolts of the episode per usual, Brian. What's going on with you? Yeah, not much. real quick for me,~ updates here. I am leaving for a ten day road trip tomorrow with the family. We're gonna go to all the canyons,~ ending with the Grand Canyon and then circle. So I'll pretty much be MIA. We'll do no pod for the next week, maybe two weeks, figure it out. And I'll be on the road and hopefully posting beautiful photos into my story. So you guys can check that out. But I think more importantly, Aaron just had an awesome weekend of training with the bros and I'm excited to hear about it. So let let's let's hear it, man. Yeah, so me and four other guys went to Dallas, Texas this past weekend for what I had put together called boys training trip. And the whole premise was just that of a boys' trip, except with none of the Let's call it like hedonistic or negative connotations Mm-hmm. of when you get, you know, men together and just all the positives. So we lifted weights, we only ate quality food. We got up, went for a walk, got some gas station black coffee, because that's what was nearby. And then we worked for about 90 minutes in the morning. before getting into everything else and then just had really good meaningful conversations and maybe watch some old ~ MOC bodybuilding documentaries on YouTube Mm-hmm. as well. So we went to the Frisco location of the absolute recomp north of Dallas. And that was my First experience in one of the modern day, I don't even know what you call them, super gyms, mega gyms. it was very, very cool. I have to admit, it was very, very cool. It was very, very, very well done for for what it for what it is. They had a really cool lobby. Staffed really well. Everyone was super friendly. All the employees there were very, very helpful and friendly. Full supplement shop sort of thing. Whatever you want. RTD proteins, RTD energy drinks. There were, you know, one pounders, two pounders of of whey, whey isolates, a myriad of pre-workouts, pumps. There were carbs, Gatorades, electrolytes, you know, all that stuff in there. And then they had some pretty cool merch. They had like a merch wall too of some. Cool, well-designed ~ apparel. And then the gym was absolutely gigantic. So what I had previously been curious is how are they affording to build these locations? You know, with how how big these facilities are. And then when we get there, it's in a strip mall. And I realized, Wow.~ They're taking over leases of, for example, like a a staples that failed or or closed down or a grocery store that closed down. And then I was like, okay, that they're not building these buildings, you know, ~ in their own parking lot. It's taking over existing Mm.~ business locations. But it was absolutely gigantic. They have four hundred machines in there.~ I don't know, ~ an an on mind-bending amount of of dumbbells and stuff. It was very cool. The first day definitely had my senses. I had that over-stimulated feeling. So many people, so many noises. There was LED lights everywhere bouncing off of the mirrors. I just definitely over stimulated, but certainly cool. If if you think any gym right they had so let's let's for example use like a leg extension. They had a leg extension from New Tech, a leg extension from Atlantis, a leg extension from Prime, a leg extension from Watson, a leg extension from I don't know, other modern-day brands. So it was pretty Yeah. much like Arsenal, maybe, or something like that. So if you take any of your modern day fitness brands, they had effectively one of each piece of machinery from their lineup, more or less. So It was cool. definitely a a fun thing to to to get to train hard, really, really push people, ~ and just have some fun. Lots of coaching conversations, lots of us being in this next phase of life conversations, and I definitely enjoyed it. I think the guys got a lot out of it and were very, very sore. Yeah. What was the ~ what what did you train? How many days were there? we were there three days, so we did a push, a pull, and a legs. Nice. Three days in a row. That's legit. Very cool. All right. Well, ~ hopefully I can join on the next one. That'd be rad. Maybe do one in Denver next time. Yeah, potentially maybe at what's that? Armburst. That place is cool. Yeah, armburst is pretty legit. I mean it's not like that, but like armburst is pretty solid. I think if I'm really being honest, in the future I wanna do them at more like less of the flashy ones where it's a little bit more for the equipment, right? 'Cause I mean, like I said, it's really, really cool. I I had a good time there, but I would rather train on some Cybex seated like a Cybex VR two seated hamstring curl as opposed to, you know, the the lot the latest one from New Tech or something like that, Right, right, right, personally. right. Well Armbrust and the gym and like these kind of older, more ~ established gyms that that you and I both have been to and experienced, I feel like tend to have those kind of gems of equipment that that you're like, Of course. Wow, this thing was made in like nineteen eighty and it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, certainly. All right, well talk to us about fat loss, dude. Alright, let's get rolling. So the first section that I want to start with is poor metrics, which is it's very, very common. ~ and one of the things that I think is very helpful for the listener out there. Something like fat loss that we have an emotional tie to, it's very helpful to save you from yourself by imp by placing metrics and objectivity to help you make decisions. Right. It is the very same reason that, for example, I'm going to be ~ bringing on a coach to help me with my build. Because of that same reason. Because when we we don't, it's hard to look at yourself objectively because of that emotional attachment and things like feelings, right? Which we'll get into. So with poor metrics, is your plateau only in perception? And oftentimes that is yes. So with that. Did we ever create an actual baseline of where you're starting your deficit from, where your fat loss from? What were your maintenance calories? How consistent was your weight prior to starting? Did you come back from some trip and you were quite dehydrated and you had only taken your weight once in the last 14 days, and you just happened to catch a a ~ low off of this back end of this trip when you're dehydrated and you're starting your diet deficit or diet? from three pounds below what you were actually weighing for the prior month that. If you don't have a baseline, you don't really know. So we need an actual baseline. So put your maintenance calories and I'm not one of those people that says you need to eat maintenance calories for three months or six months. You just need some level of consistency and recording of that so you know what actual baseline is. Second part is intuitive eating is not a plan, right? This is where we bring into terms that we often hear things like I eat healthy or I eat really good. And I'm being a little bit pedantic, but it's important in delivering this. How do we objectively quantify healthy eating? Right? How do we objectively quantify good eating? These are subjective labels that we as a society or population generally has some level of idea of the direction it goes towards, but you can eat quote-unquote healthy foods in a surplus. If your diet has a lot of salmon, olive oil, nuts and seeds in it, it's very easy to eat at maintenance, even though you are eating healthy, eating good. Right? That doesn't mean that those foods are bad, quote unquote, or unhealthy or anything. They're just calorically dense. And they have a lot of nutrients, but they're still calorically dense. So Blurred lines of subjective perception, which is why we want some level of quantification, right? I'm not going to say that you need to weigh and measure everything for fat loss to happen, but you want to incorporate some level of metrics and objectivity into your approach. Using all sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no, I was just gonna say, like, I keep thinking about like examples or things that I would wanna say or like add to what you're saying, but it's so thorough that every time I'm like, I should say this, and then use you say it right afterwards. So I just wanna commend your your preparation and your delivery. Yeah, it's almost like I do this for a job or something, Right, right. right? Using only daily weigh-ins, right? So just knowing what your lowest was, and then any number above that means something went wrong or is bad. Okay. We want to use a daily weigh-in, but we use that as a single entry point for us to produce weekly averages. And then one of the best helpful ways is to compare your weekly average against the prior week's weekly averages. or a little bit more of a real-time way of doing that is a seven-day moving average, right? So each new day you will produce a seven day moving average. Is that going down or staying at par and not increasing can be helpful. And not weighing under identical scenarios. This is one that's really, really common. One day you weigh fasted first thing in the morning, like you're supposed to. The next day you weigh after you had a cup of coffee and maybe a little bit of breakfast. Or maybe you weigh yourself at the gym where you have different clothes on, different shoes on, different hydration status, different nutrition status at that time of day. Compare under equal scenarios so that you're not importing muddiness into your metrics of evaluation. Judging your progress by the mirror. Over a long enough time horizon, given that time horizon has ~ also yielded success, you will be able to. However, we see and hear things like, I don't feel like I look any leaner, right? That is a feeling. It's a subjectivity. I can't see myself leaner. This is one that some clients will give me. I don't feel any leaner. And I say, your feelings are valid because we have to say that in this day and age, but Objectively, you're 13 pounds down on average from where we started. I know you don't feel leaner, but you're leaner because we are. So ~ and oftentimes if we think about we when you lose fat, right, it's Distributed over your entire body, more or less. There are some regions that have a higher propensity to store fat, so we have a higher propensity to lose from there. But if we're looking for a three or four pound fat loss across your entire body, you're not gonna find it. Oftentimes we need to cross much larger deltas before you can visually perceive the delta in the fat loss. And finally, with poor metrics, a target rate of loss was simply never established. So this is one of the hallmarks I would say that I set off of my coaching~ and it shows then the reason we want it is it what shows up is unrealistic expectations. We and let let's talk target rate of loss and then we'll work backwards. 0.5% total body mass per week. Is a good low end target to set. At a 200-pound person, one half percent total body mass loss is one pound per week. Okay, that's the low end. The higher rate of loss is effectively double that, one percent. Using that same 200-pound person, we're looking at two pounds per week. So that is low end. And what I not high as in you can't go above this, but high as in shoot for the stars sort of thing. A 1% rate of loss per week, week over week, extrapolated over time is quite productive. Where this shows up is unrealistic expectations, especially if someone takes a diet approach that That is a a large reduction in carbohydrate. If so, if someone starts keto or a a really, really low-fat diet, they very may well see five to seven pounds reduction in that first week. That's not five to seven pounds of fat loss. That is a majority, an overwhelming majority of that is gut contents. glycogen depletion and subsequent water flushing that comes with glycogen Okay. So that is an important understanding that what you see immediately when you start, most of the time immediately, is often collateral that needs to move before the fat can really start to move.~ Yeah, I ~ I would just say two pounds a week is I think that's a pretty aggressive target unless you're quite overweight to begin with. But even with a target like that, or even without a target like that, like you could lose five pounds in the first week just simply from the glycogen and water and stuff. So you could be targeting the point five percent, which is one pound a week, and you could still lose five pounds in the first week. And so it's important not to let that change your. kind of alignment with your goal and like your caloric deficit that you're approaching it with. Yeah, that's a really good point. The the one percent, it is ambitious.~ It's 100% doable. It it is about the upper threshold. And and where that that that where these numbers come from is I I should have looked, I should have pulled it up, but maybe in 2022, 2021, there was a paper by like I know Eric Helms was on it. I believe Era Alan Aragon was on it, where they it was basically done on all the natural bodybuilders. So it was basically like a in ~ an evidence-based approach to natural contest preparation and and above that Yeah. you start. to run the risk of catabolization of of lean tissue. But it's it's a good again shoot for the stars. And the reason I say that is let's let's take a a really you know typical example. You're 200 pounds, right? And you're you know let let's call it you're you're you're you're gym pop but you maybe let a a bulk get a little bit out of hand. Maybe it's post holiday season and you're in the low 20s. you know, low twenty percent body fat, maybe a twenty-two, something like that. And you wanna get pretty lean. Let's call that one seventy-five. That's a that's a decent amount of muscle, but you're not gonna be like like Brian, when you were shredded in some of those photo shoots, you were like one eighty-four-ish, right? Yeah, I would say I load out at like one eighty, but then after refeeding up I would do the shoot like one eighty four or something, yeah. Okay, so to to help put that in context, Brian is high amount of muscle mass, natural, long training age history. I I don't I don't want to shoot anyone's dreams down, but I don't think you're gonna be Brian the first time you diet. Okay. So I I like to use that number to to help set some expectations. So let's say we have 28 pounds to lose, something like that. If we use that 1% rate of loss, or sorry, half a percent rate of loss, right? And there's a part that I'm gonna get into ~ a little bit later, which I call non-progress weeks. If we're losing 28 pounds, that's 28 weeks, right? And that is six times four, seven times. What are we how many how many months are we looking at there, Brian? At 28 weeks? Seven months? Twenty eight weeks is six six months and two weeks or so. Six months and two weeks. Yeah, something like that. Okay. So are you prepared to diet straight through, week over week, without missing, never failing a week for the next six and a half months? Most often that answer is no, I'm not. So we need to move a little bit faster. And the way that I love to explain this, you have fat loss goal, right? the amount of work that needs to be done, you can it can be modified in terms of aggressiveness, but that work needs to be complete. So we can do a little bit of work I should not say a little bit, a moderate bit of work over six months, or we can do really hard work for the first three months, get ahead, and then we have less to do, but X amount of work needs to be done. The only real di the only the only other variables are intensity of work, as in how hard the diet is, and then that changes duration of diet. But X needs to happen. And I love to explain it as such because it makes sense if you actually take the time to think about it. and you're either doing a really intense diet for a shorter period of time, or a more casual per se, diet for a longer period of time. But X amount of work must be done for goal to be accomplished. So those are our metrics evaluation and then we're getting into false plateaus right so times things muddy your evaluation and when we're not actually plateaued we just may think we are because of some obfuscation of data water retention and inflammation right muddying our observational waters i just talked about Boys training trip. Everyone came back from that trip quite fucking sore because we trained really hard for a really long time in volume and intensities exceeding those of what the majority of the attendees are used to. They're gonna be up weight when they come home, right? Because of that inflammation. So a new training phase, the novelty will induce some of that. Flights and/or travel, retaining water. Due to the pressure, the the travel-related foods, it's very, very common. Poor sleep, which also typically piggybacks onto flights or travel, sickness, right? As we have an immune response to something, what is that immune response? It's a triggering of inflammatory cascades. The scale's going to be up acutely. And then a very common one is a monthly cycle, a menstrual cycle for women. One additional little caveat that I will add there. I wish I could say that I've seen a I was gonna say rhythm. I do see a rhythm to the to the body weight changes with menstrual cycle. Where that change is does truly seem to differ woman to woman in my coaching experience. I have some clients where maybe four or five days before cycle starts. Body weights up, and then once effectively day one, we get that that body weight dumps back down. And then I have other ones where body weight will just kind of climb through the cycle. And then once ~ seven, day seven, day eight, something like that, or maybe I should really say like day five, day six, day seven, body weight tends to dump off. So you will find what's normal for you, but in my coaching experience, it does seem to vary between my my female clients.~ Personally. I also, regarding the false plateaus, I would just add, like from my experience and I've seen with other people, I'm sure you have too, that sometimes it's just like there is none of these reasons. Like it just happens to be that your body is like, you know, I lost a bunch of weight the last few weeks. I'm gonna hold on to it now. And then there's like a whoosh that occurs. And I don't know if there's always like one of these simple, easy explanations for it. Yeah, so the one that I I in my we'll we'll just jump down. I have your fat loss is not always linear. Simple as that. And Hmm. Got it. Yeah. one of the things that I commonly see is if sometimes you're gonna have a week that's you're way above your rate of loss. Right? Let's say that rate of loss is two pounds. That week you might lose like 3.7 or 3.8, like a giant week. And you're all like, you know, hooray, we just crushed it this week. I would expect the next week for you to be under your rate of loss a little bit.~ because normally again things average out over time. So if you have a very productive week, it's one might even say unreasonable to expect a subsequent week Mm-hmm. that's in excess of rate of loss, unless your efforts are also increasing, you know, a a second week in a row. So that one i it's just not linear. You know, I I would say that the w the most like structure I've actually seen or or predictability with my ~ weight loss, especially as I get like lower and lower down where these plateaus tend to happen, is I I almost feel like it would be on like a two week cycle. Like in in a two week period I would lose two pounds and then I'd go like a whole two weeks and the scale just wouldn't move and I'd be like wondering going on, and then suddenly there's like another two pounds and then another like two week hiatus. And so it just it just Everyone's individual and you never know how it's gonna play out. And so just looking at the trend over time is obviously gonna be like the most relevant thing to pay attention to. One of the things that I think is really relevant to to in inject right here, when you're having when you're you're bound to experience some level of frustration or seeming you're you're plateauing. The thing that I will use with clients are: did you have my actions changed? Would my actions be indicative that I am plateauing? Meaning, am I getting loose with things or am I Yeah. running everything by the book? If I'm truly running everything by the book. Then there's external factors at play, and we just have to practice a little bit of patience. One thing that you brought up that I think is also very relevant. As we get leaner, to let let's you let's we'll use a male here. I will call this sub-12% body fat. For women, let's call this about sub maybe 21%, something like that. You become more sensitive to the indirect impacting factors like stress, like sleep, ~ digestion, and things like that. So you're a little bit more susceptible to some of these things that that can introduce some levels of ~ being fickle with with Mm-hmm.~ things. So that that is a helpful point to bring up. Other flat false plateaus, recomping. It's a thing. The note I have here is, you know, don't hold your breath. very rarely would I say I actually experience someone's plateau is just a If you are a newbie lifter, right, you're just getting into it. Yes, the higher likelihood there. Or if you were a returning lifter, maybe you were super into it, you took a new job and you know it came on the back burner, maybe you you know, just had a child or something like that. That is those are two scenarios where I do think the the reality is higher there. But like I said, I I wouldn't necessarily hold your breath.~ Outside of those. We just talked about how fat loss is not always linear, so I don't think we need to revisit that one. This one is huge. This one I would say is the most common false plateau. Too much flexibility and macro Tetris. The flexibility in macro Tetris looks great on paper. On paper, it is 100% doable and viable. In real life, it is 100% doable and viable. However, a lot of things need to go right. And the problem with this is It's an increase in opportunity for errors to happen, right? And one thing do we know about human nature? We are very, very error prone, right? And we are also psychologically accustomed to make decisions in what we hope or want to happen, as opposed to what is actually factual or realistic. So again This one I I I mean in my in in my business I see this constantly. Right. And then over time, you play the game enough times you you can spot things pretty far away.~ for example, on average, if I have a client, let's say male, five foot seven to five foot eleven. Hundred and seventy-five-ish pounds, and we are dieting. I know approximately my deficit range of calories is gonna be, you know, about a basement and a ceiling, something like that. If I have a client and we are 20-25% below that basement, and fat loss is not happening, and the body weight is not changing, it is a user error. It is it is a a food selection and accuracy error.~ there are few times this is not true. And if you really want to know, get some laps, right? And the things you're gonna want to look at there, sex hormones, but more specifically thyroid. Right. Thyroid, ~ fasting blood glucose, fasting insulin, HBA1C. And there you have your answer. But that's an expensive way to identify that you're just not nearly as accurate as you think you are. Along the lines of that, this one also happens: overconfidence from early success. So in these first five, six, eight weeks, whatever, when we are Netting our early parts of fat loss, we can get confident because maybe we haven't been tracking everything. Maybe we've only been tracking four days per week, something like that. And it's never prevented us from achieving that rate of But as we get leaner and we achieve our easy bits of fat loss. The more fat loss we pursue requires an increase in effort. The more fat loss that we achieve, the harder the fat loss becomes of the next levels. And we're cutting corners in those first weeks, but we were getting able to get away with it. And then we stopped being able to get away with it. And that is one again to the previous one on the flexibility that I see. Again, false plateau. Yeah, you do need to get like a little bit more dialed in the closer that you get to your goal. And so it's not even like Yeah, I I mean I guess it's getting away with things, but it's like little teeny things that you don't even think about, like a condiment that might add like ten or twenty calories or something like that, or like portion sizes not being measured as accurately. And ~ it seems like things like, no, I'm doing it the exact same, but when you actually Get down to it, and ~ you realize that there are certain corners that were being cut, you just didn't realize it. Exactly. Especially because your psych psych your psychology you want more food. So if we're using something Mm-hmm. like a cup, for example, I want more food. So I want to allow that cup to have a little bit extra on top, I'll pack it down a little bit or something. right? Because exactly Yeah, yeah. because I want more. So ~ that's where I talk about like cutting corners. So those little things are are definitely real. And then the final one in my false plateaus here, inversion of control. This is this one is really the simplest one of them all. Too many meals sourced by hands that are not your own. And the it's just it's a it's a margin of error thing. That that's really what it is. Even restaurants that provide macros and calories, they are often grotesquely inaccurate. So ~ the more eating out that you do, the less. Predictable the diet and results become. It is as simple as that. So if you want things to be really, really streamlined, take control over your sourcing. Yeah. Whenever I would eat out at the ends of diets, I would literally purposefully overestimate each macronutrient by like twenty percent, which would then at the end of the day actually often lead to me being in a bigger deficit than I even planned on. So yeah, that's one way to to account for it, but there's downsides to that as well, which is you're not getting enough energy that you need to actually like make it through tough workouts and things like that too. So ~ definitely something to be cautious of. And now into our true plateaus. And the biggest one, the first one that I that I see here is a paper deficit does not match your reality. And that is simply an accuracy problem, which is a bit of an extension of the one that we just talked about, but I have a little bit of more concrete examples. So sauces and oils are not tracked, right? We we can put something on a meal plan. But then maybe we don't have in our ketchup or our barbecue sauce or the oil that we dump in the pan when we are cooking our chicken, steak, whatever, something like that. Bites and tastes are not tracked. Maybe you're a parent and you have some some children. This one is commonly called the mom tax or the dad tax. Meals eaten out are very underestimated, which opposite of what Brian said, but if I in Mm-hmm. in In most I would say in Brian's defense, mo most people are are not Brian. Like it's as simple Yeah. as it is, right? There are people who can get this done. The majority of of them, like you would overestimate your foods than knowing have a higher level of hunger and stuff in the evening. You're not the average, let's just put it that way, which we already kind of know. Mm-hmm. So ~ people really underestimate meals and it's really it's the fats most most commonly. Yeah. On that note, ~ one thing that I think is important is like you have those zero sprays and ~ you know it's because there's seven thousand sprays in a can, so it's like zero calories. But when I spray, I spray about fifteen or twenty times and it like kind of coats the bottom of the pan. And so to say that that is zero calories would be completely inaccurate statement. Yeah, technicality of ~ FDA regulation ~ of allowance. Periodic alcohol gets a pass. This one I cannot tell you how many times I've seen it. alcohol is its own macronutrient, so it's not a carb, a protein, or a fat. It's alcohol. And we can see things on a label that'll say no protein, no carbs, no fat, but it's whatever, 120 calories, and that is why. The back end of alcohol weekends are robbing your true weekday progression. This one. Second most common. I had a note here, arguably most common, but I but I would say it's second most, and it's just in a very stark increase in flexibility over the weekend. And if you have a history of your weigh-ins, you will see a very strong correlation to rises Saturday, Sunday, Monday, potentially Tuesday. Things start normalizing. We see often Wednesday or Friday yielding the lowest. weigh in of the week and then a cyclical nature there. So what I think is really helpful is to plan in something for the weekend if you are meeting your rate of loss or exceeding it, including something like a free meal, but it has to have some level of confines on it. But it's a simple gut check of just looking at the trends or throwing your CSV output of your weigh-ins into you know clawed chat, whatever, and asking it to run a correlation of the days of the week. that correspond with your highest weigh-ins and then you have a very clear Mm-hmm. Yeah, maybe there. you also on the weekends you're changing a little bit of lifestyle habits outside of nutrition. Like, you know, maybe during the week at work, you make sure that after lunch you take a 15 minute walk around the building and you don't end up doing that on weekends or, you know, anything downstream of that. So just making sure that weekends, yes, you're you're focused on your nutrition and making sure that's dialed but also that your neat and all your other movement and stuff is all kind of the same as it is during the week as well. Yep. I'll I'll move this one up since you just spoke about it. Your neat inadvertently drops the longer we're in a diet. Because what is a diet? It is a prolonged, energy constrained environment, and that leads us to have less available energy, let's say, and a innate Drive to move less to conserve energy. Now, caveat asterisk, it's really important to point out here. If we are moving from a body fat percentage that we would classify less healthy, and how would we classify that? Metabolic markers in serum lab work, elevated heart rate, you know, some of these other different things there, insulin sensitivity, and we are moving toward health. This is not going to generate a neat reduction. In many cases, as we're improving metabolic health, you all you have an increase in these sorts of things. we are talking prolonged energy constrained environment that has also yielded a tangible delta in both body fat and body weight change. Okay. So you're tired and you move less. You have less energy and you don't want to do as much. So maybe you're less social. You're not going to go do things. You might train a little bit less. You might move less outside of that. as you see here, I'm a little bit ~ animated in in my speaking, but if you go back to any of our podcast episodes, let's call it July August of 2025, I am moving pretty slow, if you compare those. Right? If you pause this one, go grab one, you will see my speech is slowed, my attentiveness is dulled because I was Dieting for quite some time and at very low levels of body fat there. Mm-hmm. Metabolic adaptation. This is the big one, right? This is the big clinical one that oftentimes gets spoken about. I think this gets overblown often in its efficacy and potency. It is real, but on the back end of what I said about meat, we need a considerably large delta of body fat. And body weight reduction for this to accumulate to a meaningful amount, right? The metabolic adaptation is your body improving its efficiency and use of energy as an energy conservation tactic because you have lost so much. If you've lost six, eight pounds and you're just cleaning up some of your you know, holiday body fat, y you don't really have to be worrying about metabolic adaptation to any meaningful degree. Can I quickly just jump in with some of the research from Poncer on the ~ energy constrained model? I I believe that, you know, obviously you're gonna see fewer calories burned you weigh less. So, like a 200-pound person compared to a hundred and seventy-five pound person, 175-pound person is gonna burn fewer calories for the same amount of of work or whatever. But I believe, from my understanding of this research, is that just simply the act of being in a deficit. changes the way that your body ~ utilizes or burns calories too. So Brian in a surplus might burn a hundred calories walking a mile.~ but Brian in a deficit, even at the same body weight, potentially will be burning fewer calories than I would in a surplus or at maintenance. So I think that that's just important to keep in mind as well. That's a really good point. One of my favorite ways I like to explain this is after meals, right? Body temperature after meals. When you're at, I like to call it like maintenance plus. You might notice it a little bit, but certainly in a caloric surplus. When I am in a surplus and I'm eating meals, I start getting sweaty. Like I can, my my body temperature rises, I can feel it. When I'm in a calorie deficit, you're not getting that same blow off top of your body trying to dump excess energy. Because not to derail the conversation,~ but it the body increasing its body fat stores, it it is a it's not something that the body wants to do. It is a storage tactic, right? So when we have consistent Levels of of Energy being intaken that are in excess, but not grotesquely in excess. The body wants to dump that off as things like external heat before the body fat accumulation process really kicks over. So, like Brian said, it was one of those things that you can notice is when you if you start getting like hot, or a really good ~ example is if you ever go to like a Brazilian steakhouse or the Korean barbecue and you get the meat sweats because your body Body's like working to digest the disproportionately higher amount of which has a higher thermic effect of feeding and energy cost to digest and assimilate those nutrients. That's a really good practical ~ way that you can experience that working in real time. And then the part that I left last for a good reason: poor sleep quality, right? One thing that I have been quoted a number

sleep is the unsung hero of fat loss. The better you sleep, the longer your duration of sleep, up to a point, right? Sleeping 14 hours per night doesn't necessarily make things better. Let's call it eight to eight to nine and a half practically, the more productive your fat loss is. The greater the percentage of body mass lost will be fat mass and not fat-free mass. The more satiety you will have, the less hunger. and therefore easier time of adherence. So if you are very serious about your fat loss, taking your sleep seriously is one of the very few cheat codes, natural cheat codes, we we truly do have. Yeah, I got woken up last night by my daughter at 1 a.m. and she didn't even have a bad dream. She just wanted to sleep with somebody. And then she proceeded to make noises every hour and waking me up. And today I woke up and already, like this is way before I would normally want food. I've been like craving just fried things and like bread products. And I haven't eaten anything, but I can just tell you that that is not normal for me. And Sleep is absolutely crucial to being able to manage your willpower. Yeah, I I one of my I don't have a very high willpower, right? I really do not. What I am very good at is putting myself in situations where I never need it. So I like change like constraining or or adapting your environment to make things more productive for the the goal at hand is immensely helpful there. So a a few take homes. For you, because I know this one, there's a lot. Define your goal objectively. What is your starting point? What is your stopping point?

you may set a very simple goal, easily exceed it, and then maybe set like five-pound chunks on the back end or something like that. But no. What that start is from your baseline you established, what your purported end is. Take that delta and reverse engineer it from that rate of loss that we talked about. Half a percent. If I do it at half a percent, it takes me, let's call let's say 20 pounds, right? If we do half a percent, and you are Let's use that same example. 200 pounds, 20 weeks, right? That's four and a half months, that's five months. Five months. If we go at the high rate of loss, right, 1%, that is 10 weeks, right? Eight and ~ two and a half months. I would strongly encourage to build in non-progress weeks proactively because life is going to happen. You are going to get sick. The entire family's going to get sick. You're gonna have some work trip that you need to go on where inversion of control is bound to happen. When I build out these plans for clients, I build in a non-progress week for every five weeks. So I am assuming 20% of every five-week period will be a non-progress. At the worst case, We're right. At the best case, you're ahead of that curve and it's all positive for you. But I think it's really important to be realistic because oftentimes people think they're gonna diet for seven weeks and be shredded. Can you do it? Yes,

X amount of work needs to be done, right? The shorter that window, the more intense each day is to yield the amount of work that needs to be done within that fixed timeline that you're setting. Except that the rigidity of your approach very likely needs to increase the more success your fat loss has created, right? Very same thing. In the beginning, the newbie gains. You just go in, you fuck around, you do some three sets of 10 curls, and you build some muscle, right? It's fun. When you're squeezing after though those final few bits of maximizing your genetic potential or something like that. Going in and fucking about and squeezing a few sets of ten is not going to do fuck all anymore, unfortunately. So as your ambition grows and how lean you want to be, accept that the intensity and dedication that that require also increases in ~ what's the word I'm looking for? In parallel. That's what I have for us this week. Yeah, dude, that was so well put together. I was hoping that I'd be able to contribute more and honestly, like I said in the beginning, as you're going through it, I was just like, Yep, nailed it. Not much to add here. ~ Ha ha ha. so I appreciate all the work that you put into this one and I think that it'll be super valuable for people. Cool. So as always guys, thank you for listening. If you have reached the end of this one and you're thinking, man, that's a lot to manage. I would love for someone to manage that for me. That's what I do. Right, I like doing it. It's really fun. I've gotten pretty decent at it over the last eight and a half years. So reach out. You can find me on Instagram. You can send me an email, Aaron at StrakerNutrition Co. dot com, or you can simply go to my website and then we can start that there. like Brian said, he has a sweet family trip. he will be out on for the next two weeks. Let's plan for two weeks if something happens. We we get an episode out earlier,~ and then maybe I'll talk to Jenny to see if we maybe fill the gap with the fertility questions that came in on the back end of last week we might be able to potentially do that. yeah, you and Jenny should do an episode together. That would be great. Yeah the only downside is she's like right above me and we'd probably just be like hearing each other speak and the lag might be kind of strange but maybe Yeah, yeah. the maybe these can can get the job done and we'll we'll figure it out. So Sweet guys, thanks. ~ as always, Brian and I will be back shortly for episode two hundred and twenty-four.