Why You Should And Shouldnt Quantify - weight loss and muscle gain lessons

# Why You Should And Shouldnt Quantify - weight loss and muscle gain lessons

**Channel:** VIP Nutrition Coach Podcast
**Published:** unknown
**Source:** podcast

Welcome back to the Beyond Macros podcast. We are the Sustainable Transformation Nutrition Coaches, and our show will help you get leaner, stronger, and perform better in a way that lasts, with episodes about nutrition, recovery, and the all-important art of inner work. Today's episode is the final episode of 2018 and the final episode in our 2018 year-end review series. This episode will be a little different. While I was poring over the interviews from last year, I discovered some real gold that didn't fit the narrative of the episodes, but does deserve to be heard. So today we will revisit wisdom from guests like Ben House, Rob Wolf, and Luke Lehman. Before we dive in, I just want to ask, do you want to get leaner, stronger, and perform better in 2019 and do it in a way that will last well beyond 2029? Do you want to develop consistency and stop second-guessing yourself, which creates this cycle of falling back into old habits and then looking for the next plan which keeps you perpetually in a land of poor results and plateaus? Would you like the accountability and expertise of a coach before fully committing to our one-on-one program? If your answers were a clear yes, I highly recommend joining the Beyond Macros Premium Online Coaching Program. Right out of the gate in the program, your coach will help you develop consistency with a plan you can trust to get you leaner, stronger, and recovering and performing better. your coach will not only set you up with macros that it will take to hit your goal you will get a one-on-one call with them to determine what the most impactful first steps you can take are to consistently hit your macros by just tweaking a few of your current habits your coach will also send you what an ideal day of eating looks like with different options to add variety so that you don't get stuck in an eat the same thing every day rut. Plus, we post weekly meal prep recipes to help you stay on track and get some variety. You'll also get access to tons of exclusive resources to help you with everything from meal planning to understanding how to stay on track when you eat meals at restaurants or when you're traveling for work. and if you feel like the sweets and binge meals are holding you back from your goals we've got support for that too if you'd like to learn even more about what is included in the program head on over to beyondmacros.com coaching to learn about what is included and how to register all right are you ready for the b-side gold rush first things first let's throw it way back to February of this year, I chatted with a paleo legend himself, Rob Wolf. In episode 27, Rob and I talked about the 7-day carb test from his book, Wired to Eat. If you're interested in playing around with some self-quantification, I highly recommend checking out that show. But today, I want to show a different side of that interview. First off, Rob talks about why you might consider doing a test like the seven-day carb test and it comes down to buy-in. I see a lot of people, you know, if you tell them, hey, I don't think you should eat bread, rice, pasta, et cetera, et cetera, because you appear to be insulin resistant based off this blood work and off these, you know, kind of subjective elements. They get really cranky when you are an outside entity telling them, you know, don't do this. But if they discover this stuff on their own, it's kind of like, hey, man, you ran rice. How did it look? And they're like, terrible. I'm like, huh, what are you going to do about that? You know, and then it's on the individual as to whether or not they comply with what their body is telling them. And so if I tell them not to do something, I'm an asshole. But if they discover this process, then, you know, it's this whole discovery experience. And so the buy-in has actually been really, really good. And people have been pretty fired up about doing it. Even though Rob obviously advocates for this test, it's in his best-selling book, after all. He does warn about relying upon self-testing. I wish I put this next passage in the original episode so here it is today Ideally in my estimation of this stuff people actually get as far away from testing as they can the bulk of the time What I do recommend in the book is maybe quarterly you do a little bit of a systems check And that systems check starts subjectively first. Like, how do you look? How do you feel? How do you perform? You know, are you looking good naked or in photos and stuff like that? And if things are kind of going sideways, then we maybe get back in and reassess. But in general, I actually try to eschew people from relying too much on that testing piece. I'd really like them to just be in their body, feeling what's going on and being able to, you know, respond to their hunger. Eat when hungry, stop when satisfied. Be aware that maybe some foods, you know, immunogenically aren't working with you. You know, like dairy for some people causes joint inflammation and stuff like that. And maybe cow dairy is a problem, but goat and sheep dairy is not. And so I actually try to encourage people to get as far away from that consistent testing as they can and rely more on that kind of in their skin, in their body experience. But we can always default back to that more quantified process if things aren't going the direction that we want. I love this advice. and there is one way I have found that is a great entry-level step to get tuned in to the signals your body is sending. No joke, it's observing what leaves your body. Sweat, urine, and feces. If your sweat smells like ammonia, that's not good. You're probably stressed and or losing muscle. You can check your hydration, signs of gut health, fiber intake, and more with bathroom activities. No expensive tests needed. One more unrelated tidbit from Rob's interview that didn't make it into episode 27, yet I found fascinating, had to do with resistant starch. Resistant starch became quite popular on the interwebs because of its potential prebiotic benefit. But some people were spreading the misguided idea that cold rice would not act like a starch and raise blood sugar. You know, it's interesting because there's a lot of chatter about that in the interwebs. And there seems to be some research that suggests that, say, like, you know, the ones that I've seen most specifically are the high resistant starch foods like rice and white potatoes. And the idea is that once you cool those starches, then you allow some crystallization to occur and it kind of slows the ability for amylase to work on those specific starch granules and it may make its way into the gut. And then that resistant starch then can be a source of butyrate when it's digested by the gut bacteria. But for myself and for quite a number of people doing the carb test, I didn't see much of a difference in that regard. Like if you had a problem with warm white rice, then you had a problem with cold white rice. I love a good interweb myth bust. And that's what my next guest, Luke Lehman, does best. Well, that and pissing off fitness industry gurus on the Internet for sport. Part of my conversation with Luke that didn't fit into the overall narrative of episode 32 on nutrition myth busting had to do with his own weight loss self-experiment and a method he learned in the process that he now uses to help clients get consistent. Part of it, too, is I'm trying to get down into the low 90s. And if I start taking creatine, that's going to bump me up. And even though I know that that's just from the creatine and water retention, to me, it's I'm looking at a motivation factor, like a headspace, the psychology of me losing body fat. And I need to be able to see, you know, a couple of like four or five hundred grams of weight loss per week. And if I start taking creatine, that's going to bump me up a little bit. And, you know, that's it to me. It'll be a mental screw with my head. And I know that sounds silly, but to me, it's important. And I need to be able to see that to stay motivated. This is actually quite interesting because in our last episode, we just talked about all the amazing benefits of creatine, especially for vegetarians. When Luke and I recorded this interview, he was actually experimenting with keto vegan because those two diets were and still are so polarized. And as we learned in episodes 30 and 60 that talked about creatine, it's a great supplement if you aren't eating meat. But the one downside of creatine is that you will gain weight. I am reloading my creatine at the moment and added three pounds in under a week with no other changes to my diet or training. And no, I didn't go crazy at Christmas dinner. And just thinking about what Luke was talking about if I were in a weight loss phase and saw my weight go up or even plateau it would mess with my mind Yeah 100 And it's one of those things where weight loss is never linear, but we want to try to make it as linear as possible. Even if you see a 50-gram drop in a week, but everything else is kind of staying stable. And then you see a 600-gram drop the next week, and it's that, what's the average over time? but it's demotivating when you don't see that stuff drop. And just working with clients over the last 20 years, you got to figure out ways for them to actually see that drop because for a lot of people, it can be disheartening to be training so hard and doing the dieting and taking the supplements and doing their least mode and all that stuff. And then nothing happens. That's why Luke will sometimes have clients manipulate their water weight a little bit. So the, it's just the water mantra moves from being just words to something tangible that they've experienced. You know what I use often with people is I'll use a water bath at night. So I'll have them kind of, you know, get a book or, you know, watch Netflix and chill in the bathtub and sweat out some of the water. And it's just water, but they get on the scale and they see the drop and it makes them feel better. Especially when, you know, I might kick someone's carbs up 50 grams a day and kicking that carbs, the carbs at 50 grams a day, they're obviously going to be holding more glycogen and water in their muscles. So they'll see their weight start to climb a little bit and they'll freak out. Well, if I can put them in a sauna, like a wet sauna or dry sauna, if I could put them in their bathtub, um, they can sweat some of that out and then it kind of negates and they can start saying, Oh, it's just water. It's not actually fat. And I mean, you work with a ton of clients, you know what, you know what it's like when you're trying to explain to them that, that They gained a kilo overnight. It's not fat. It's just water. But if I can get them to lose that rapidly, then they start associating that with, oh, it's just water. It's not a big deal. Last but not least, one of my favorite writers and teachers, Dr. Ben House. His episode was number 49. And we talked about all of the things that affect the calories in, calories out equation and the tools at your disposal to manipulate it to change your body composition. But Ben House is a man who loves helping turn men into gorillas. A lot of episode 49 focused on fat loss, but Ben and I also chatted about what it takes to gain muscle. And realistically, lifting something other than your body is what you need after you experience your initial newbie gains. If you want to build muscle, you need at least 30 to 40 percent of your rep max. But you need to take 30 to 40 percent of that to failure. Uh, so that's going to be puke city. And that's where I think, well, that's where we just, we generally just get put in the 60 to 80% of one RM realm because that's, what's effective and time efficient. Um, and cause like 30% of my bench press, like, what is that? That's like 95 pounds. Like I would have to, I would have to do that until I couldn't do it anymore. Like I have no idea how many reps, no idea how many, like that's you probably deadlifting like 135 until you couldn't do it anymore. Like that would be death. Um, and so like, that's not, that's just probably not maintainable. I thought that was pretty wild. Most people think 20 plus reps puts you in the endurance range, not hypertrophy range, but that is an oversimplification. As Ben pointed out, most programs prescribe doing sets and reps in the 60-80% of your 1 rep max range, because you're more likely to follow that than a plan that asks you to go to true failure with lightweight. I mean, jeez, I can't imagine how crappy doing 135 pound deadlifts to failure would be. Oh, God, that just sounds awful. And I just want to take a second to thank the strength gods for bestowing heavy weights and lower rep ranges upon us meaty mortals. Speaking of meat, do you know what Outback Steakhouse has to do with reasonable rep range programming? We talk about that a lot, like the Outback Steakhouse analogy. Um, so if you go to, if you've never, like, if you go to Outback Steakhouse and you're super stoked to get a steak and baked potato and you know, the order, you order it. And then the waitress comes back with a tofu salad because she's like, you need this. Uh, you're going to be pretty pissed. And so a lot of people have preconceived ideas of what they need to feel in the weight room. And I think you need to give them that they need, they want to feel acid. They want to be out of breath. but probably not. You have to be very careful with that because too much threat and you might scare them away. So it's just got to be just enough threat where they feel something. And then, because your ultimate goal with exercise is adherence Like we have to respect that So let talk about mass gain and hard gainers A weight gain client has the same problems right So their subconscious is going to regulate it. Now we're essentially saying, we're going to drive this energy inside up. Well, the body's going to do the same thing. It's going to drive meat up. It's going to subconsciously downregulate appetite. Like it doesn't have as strong of a homeostatic control on this as, as it does on the weight loss, but it is homeostatically controlled. Um, and so if you're a hard gainer, which I think, so say we have the most, who is the most likely client is someone who's like maybe five, 10, one 75, and they want to get to one 90. Well, homie, you're going to have to train like a lot and you're going to as much as you need to grow. You're going to have to you know, you're going to have to chronically increase your training volume over time and you're going to have to eat. And I'm not saying you need to get fat like that's a real bad idea. But you need to live in like this 250 calorie to 500 calorie surplus chronically. and that, believe it or not, as much as it pisses off the kind of the weight loss crowd, that is equally as hard. Here are the boxes you need to check for muscle gain. The body does not want to change. And so what we're as practitioners or as people who want to make changes, you're going to have to have a pretty powerful driver. And if you're a weight gain client, that means you need, there's boxes you got to check. You got to check the increased training volume box. Like you got to be training. Like there's got to be a lot of effort there. And then the next box you got to check is enough protein. And that's probably less than we really think. It's probably like 1.6 grams per kilo and maybe three to four portions per day. And then we have this calorie box, which as you get more advanced becomes insanely important. Now, if you're a guy who's 155 pounds and I have nothing against 155 pound guys but you can gain way more you can gain way more muscle like I can put you at a thousand calorie excess and you can probably put on more muscle but someone who's advanced like you're gonna the research is pretty clear that you're likely going to just put on puff you're gonna put on pudge um and so you don't you want to find kind of this, it's hard. You want to, I think driving more muscle is way harder than cutting like way, way harder. Um, gaining muscle without gaining a ton of fat is, is, is difficult and it takes a lot of cognitive oversight and it just takes a shit ton of work. Um, like you think about like you and I, like I'm literally going to lift millions of pounds this year, I'm going to eat, I eat like five pounds a day. So that's like, I'm going to eat like 2000 pounds of food easily in the year. And then I'm maybe going to put on one pound of muscle. Like this, like, this is terrible. Like this is terrible. Like I wish that upon no one. Yes. 2000 pounds of food in to get one pound of hard to maintain muscle out. That does sound awful. I'm not here to tell you what your goals are, but that's why for most people, it's about getting the fundamentals right. And once you hit that point of diminishing returns, take some time to reflect and see if going down that road is worth it to you. Like once you get to this land of depreciating returns, maybe you'll gain a pound in a year. And that to me is a beautiful place. I love that. I love that world because now we get to talk about all the nuances that maybe matter um but for the majority of the population there's no reason to be talking about these nuances uh we just need to just bang the shit out of the big rocks um which is you know food quality resistance training having some level of cognitive oversight that people can adhere to um and and let's stop arguing about all the tools that we have and start thinking about the best tool for the person and then once you get to this maybe exercise becomes your anchoring habit and all of a sudden you get to be a guy and you're 185, 10% body fat and you want to get bigger. And then all of a sudden, all these little things start to matter. And to finish off with Dr. House, here is a perspective he shared that makes me see the beauty in weight loss plateaus. The primary thing that seems to happen is we seem to down-regulate meat. And that means like, that's really, really hard. So people just move less, their muscles become more efficient, which is crazy and super cool to me. I understand that's probably not super cool to you if you're a weight loss client, but

The ability of this system is why we exist, guys. Like evolutionarily, like you are here for a reason. You survived. And so this system is meant to keep you alive. And I think we've lost sight of this. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I linked up all of the episodes referenced in this show, as well as where you can find each of my guests in the show notes at beyondmacros.com slash 61. And wow, I still can't believe this is the last episode of 2018, our first full calendar year as a show. I've got heaps more coming at you in 2019, including the upcoming series on incredible streaks, ranging from 30 marathons in 30 days to a 41 running streak every day at least a mile make sure you subscribed to the show so that you don miss these amazing stories that are about to come out And you be giving me the greatest New Year gift by sharing your favorite shows from 2018 with people who you think will benefit from them. Can you think of just one person who would like this show and isn't already subscribed? I'd be so very grateful if you'd send them an episode you know they'll love. And if you can't think of anyone offhand, post your favorite episode in your gym's Facebook group or screenshot and share an episode on Instagram and tag us so we can shout you out. Plus, people always love getting good podcast recommendations. I know I do. And hey, one last thing. Safety third, macros last, and fun and enjoyment first and second this New Year's Eve. I look forward to seeing you again in 2019, so stay safe and much love, Beyond Macronians.