Nutrition Strategies and Caloric Deficits

what is the nutrition going to look like from that standpoint The first thing we have to do is let create a theoretical base So I like using catch McCardle So what I do is I try to make an assumption If I can measure their body fat we say somebody is really heavy Like they really overweight. They got a lot of stored energy on their body, right? That's like the politically correct way of saying they're fat, right? It's going to be hard, but you can take a heightened weight. So like I'm right at six foot tall, I'm sitting at 92 kilos. I know I've got about maybe 83, 84 kilos of lean mass, maybe somewhere between 80 and 84. So I can get a pretty good measurement of my BMR, at least theoretically, just by taking 21.6 times my fat-free mass plus 370. That should give me a rough estimate of BMR. Now, if you don't know, if you can't make an assumption on fat-free mass, you can always use Mifflin St. Jor. If you're really lean, I don't like using that because it'll underfeed you. Mifflin St. Jor will underfeed me by about 350 calories. And I don't want to underfeed myself. I like to eat. So what we'll do is if they're at an average body fat percentage, I'll try to make an assumption based on how well trained they are and their height and weight and how they look, because it doesn't matter if you're 100% on because none of this stuff is 100% anyways, right? So we'll do that. I'll add in about 10% for neat, 10% for thermic effect. And then what I'll do, I set things, I use a lot of technology stuff. So if you have a Garmin, if you have an Oura Ring, if you have an Apple Watch, I'll set that up in the system we use, which is chronometer. And I'll put on there to have like variable calories. And I'll have I'll set a deficit, let's say we set it at 500 500 calorie deficit at first, and then I'll set protein and fat because those don't need to change. Those can be constants, the carbs are usually what's going to be variable. So the more you train, the more carbs you get, the less you train, the less carbs you get, right. So that makes it you want more carbs, cool, train more easy. But what it'll do is it gamifies it. And if somebody is more active, their calories go up, which means carbs go up, but we still maintain that 500 calorie deficit, right? So we'll look at that and see what happens over a couple of weeks. And then if they're not progressing the way we want to, then we might cut 125 calories off, see what it does over a week or two, cut another 125 off. And we'll keep doing that until we see the rate of fat loss or the rate of body mass drop in the way we want to, right? And the same thing with the surplus. But what I'll do is I'll do that. All of that's the same, but I'll put 125 calories surplus and see how they go. If they're not gaining fast enough, I'll do another 125. And we'll keep doing that until it looks like they're gaining too much fat. And then we'll start backing it back off. And over time you, it takes a while, but you find a really good sweet spot for people. But your constant, your number one cost is going to be protein. Because the thing is, if you're looking at even calculating that against fat-free mass, your fat-free mass isn't going to change drastically enough to need to change protein enough. And I like to overfeed protein a little bit. So I might set somebody like 2.5 to 2.8 grams per kilo of protein. So that doesn't actually need to change. So even if they lose weight, it doesn't matter. They're just overfeeding protein. And then the fat too, I'll say, do you like a lot of fatty foods or do you want to keep it fairly lean? So then I'll set the fat based on what they like to eat. And then I'll also run averages. If they're overdoing it. Let's say I set your fat at 65 and you're consistently hitting 80. I'll just adjust it up to 80 and then it'll work itself out with the carbs and the calories at that point. Yeah. So you're going to get their estimate and then you're going to change it based on what their goal is and whatnot. And it is awesome. I use cryometer for my clients and I love all the features it has on there. I think that's a great place to track your nutrition. So let's say, so with that, if you do have somebody who, again, maybe they're like HR resting heart rates a little high blood pressure is a little high are you now i know that obviously dropping weight can definitely help with that so are you still in that specific situation those numbers are off are you still going to put them straight into a deficit at that point are you going to feel it out a little bit to see um where they're at yeah most of the time i'm going to go ahead and put them in a deficit now it may not be a huge deficit but it just depends on what we're doing now if the goal isn't let's say they're already fairly lean and they like the way they look and they just want to get their blood pressure down, we might not set any deficit at all. We just might add in some conditioning work to try to get that down. And then we're going to look at other things too, because you got to look at things like sodium potassium balance as well. So people tend to way over consume sodium and under consumed potassium. So at that point, it's, we don't necessarily need to reduce sodium. We just need to pump potassium up. So it's okay. Let's look at your food choices with, with lots of potassium. So let's look at a lot more plant matter. So Let's a lot more veggies, a lot more fruit. And let's see if that helps. In a lot of cases, that's the one thing that'll drop it down. But if they're eating a lot of prepackaged foods, a lot of precooked foods, it's not uncommon. I've seen people eating 15 to 20 grams of sodium a day. It's like, all right, that definitely needs to come down because nobody needs that much sodium. And you're not going to eat enough potassium to offset that. So let's try to get that down to something reasonable and also pump the potassium up. And then you almost always see their blood pressure drop immediately Yeah So diving a little bit deeper and looking maybe the food choice specifically in terms of how you can that that can help obviously to drop their sodium or drop their blood pressure decrease sodium increase potassium there on that And then I assuming to somebody that wants to gain muscle and they come in high resting heart rate, high blood pressure, you're not going to put them, that person into a surplus. Like with them, you would probably work on all those. And the thing is you don't, this is a hard thing for people to wrap their heads around. When I try to explain to some, you don't actually need a surplus to gain muscle, right? That's one of the biggest myths in our industry. What you need is you need to have your protein set and you can be in a deficit and gain muscle because you're going to make those calories up, body fat. So if you have body fat to spare, you're never really, we can look at this as being, you can be in a deficit on paper. You can be in, let's say you might be in a 500 calorie deficit on paper, but your body's going to make that gap up biologically by utilizing fat and also using stored glycogen. So you're not really, to me, technically, and this is a matter of semantics, right? It's just a thought exercise. But to me, you're not actually in a deficit biologically unless you're starving to death. So if you look at the guys that came out of Minnesota starvation study, you go look at World War II pictures, people coming out of Auschwitz, those are people in an actual deficit, right? But they're starving the death. But if you're in a 500 calorie deficit and you're easily making that back up with your fat stores, you can still put on muscle. I have people put on muscle easily just by keeping their protein high and not training too much, like training just enough with enough tension and get in the, probably the one thing that is the hardest to get people to do is a sleep more. Like that's the key to everything is getting your sleep. Yeah, no, I agree with you a hundred percent. I've talked a lot about like body recomp and like how I feel like a lot of people have more wiggle room for that than they think they do coming into it just because you've been training for five years doesn't mean you can't recomp right like you said sleep like if that's been garbage it's okay you have a lot like you have some low-hanging fruit there to work on and i'm assuming too this probably goes all into it but stress management i'm sure that plays a big role in all this as well too but that that that goes back to what we just said sleep thing the number one getting more sleep understanding if you're beasting things outside of the gym it doesn't make any sense to go to the gym and beast things out but you hear people go oh the gym is my therapy no that could be part of your therapy protocol but if you need therapy you need to go to a fucking therapist right and get that shit sorted out you could have early childhood traumas adult traumas everybody's got shit they're dealing with stuff that's going on in the world with wars and recessions and inflation and uncertainty it's like you have to you have to look at this from a perspective of guarding your thoughts and reorganizing how reactive you are to things because that's what, when I talk to people about this, I try not to get stressed. I understand there's gonna be things out of my control, so I just don't stress out about it. I always know that things will eventually get better and getting stressed out and crying about it or getting mad about it doesn't solve the problem. So you have to, and I know this, some people will say, oh, that's easier said than done. It's just something you gotta practice. Stop being reactive to things and that's part of stress management. If things are, the sky is falling, cool, get an umbrella, get under a tree, but you have to learn being hyperreactive doesn't fix things, right? So if the shit's hitting the fan, if you're a hyperreactive person, I don't want you in the foxhole with me, right? Because you're going to make bad fucking decisions or you're going to get paralyzed. So I think people need to understand how to stay calm under pressure and keep their thoughts under control. And that's probably the biggest advice I can give anybody for managing stress. Yeah. Cause I think a lot of people hear stress management and they think, Oh, okay. Like you said, things are going to happen to you. You can't control that, but it's how you manage, how you react to those and how you manage those. It's going to be key there on that. But yeah, with the training, I see that all the time, oh, training is my therapy or somebody's training three, two times a day, every day. It's good. But I feel like at that point, it's like, it's probably just adding to your stress load versus actually decreasing it at that point, which might not be great. that point, if you're training twice a day as part of your therapy, and it's not part of your program, because it's necessary for some type of adaptation. It's not a therapy thing. It's an addiction at that point. So you're basically self medicating with your workouts. So you don't have to face what's going on in your life. It's the same thing with people who do cocaine, people who like hookers, people who overeat food because they're feeling sad. That has that's a mental issue. That's an emotional issue, a psychological issue. The weight training, it's like retail therapy. You feel down, you go out and you buy yourself a couple of things, you feel really good. And then you're like, oh God, I just spent $2,000 on shit I don't need. Now you feel even worse. So you're never going to overcome that because you're using things to basically as shields. So you don't actually have to have it coming to Jesus talk with yourself and work within. People try to use working out instead of working in. Right. Absolutely. No, I love that working in versus working out. I know we've been on training throughout,