Latest / The Body Pod / What Women Need to Build Muscle & Lose Fat with Nutritionists Mikki Williden, PhD & Brandon DaCruz

Transcript

What Women Need to Build Muscle & Lose Fat with Nutritionists Mikki Williden, PhD & Brandon DaCruz · The Body Pod

0:00
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think they're doing the
0:02
Speaker 1: right thing. So they hear the problems that everyone has,
0:04
Speaker 1: that they need to eat more protein, that they need
0:06
Speaker 1: to have more fiber, they have to start exercising more.
0:08
Speaker 1: And these are all likely true, but to add nuance
0:12
Speaker 1: and context, you actually have to think about yourself and
0:14
Speaker 1: have awareness of your own habits and behavior.
0:18
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, my name is Hayley. And this is Laura.
0:20
Speaker 2: And welcome to The Body Pod. Okay, I am thrilled,
0:28
Speaker 2: Brandon and Mickey, to welcome you back to the BodyPod
0:31
Speaker 2: and have this roundtable discussion. I feel like we have,
0:36
Speaker 2: there's so many things on my list, and I'm dying
0:39
Speaker 2: to dive in with both of you that I look
0:43
Speaker 2: up to so much and really get a good grasp
0:46
Speaker 2: on some of these more nuanced topics. questions, and subjects
0:52
Speaker 2: that I think get lost in translation, sometimes with the
0:56
Speaker 2: bigger overall messaging. So welcome, both of you.
0:59
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here, and
1:01
Speaker 3: especially to be on the line with both of you.
1:04
Speaker 3: Mickey is someone that I highly respect, one of my
1:06
Speaker 3: closest friends and confidants. And Haley, we've had great interactions,
1:09
Speaker 3: so I'm very much looking forward to this, and it's
1:11
Speaker 3: an honor to be here.
1:12
Speaker 1: Similarly, this is always such a joy to jump on
1:15
Speaker 1: the call with both of you. And I love these
1:18
Speaker 1: conversations and Hayley, particularly when you said nuance, you know,
1:21
Speaker 1: because to your point, so much of what people hear
1:25
Speaker 1: out there is just lacking the context. And I think
1:29
Speaker 1: having conversations with people like you really just allow people
1:32
Speaker 1: to filter some of it as to how it might
1:35
Speaker 1: sort of apply to them, I suppose.
1:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I love that both of you are so
1:39
Speaker 2: educated and so smart, but you have this beautiful way
1:44
Speaker 2: of making the research approachable and the subjects approachable. And
1:51
Speaker 2: I think in this time, we are so lucky to
1:53
Speaker 2: be alive at this time in the world, even with
1:58
Speaker 2: all of the scary things that are coming up and
2:01
Speaker 2: AI and whatever. But we have knowledge at our fingertips
2:06
Speaker 2: all the time. Now, with that, there are definite pros
2:11
Speaker 2: and there are definite cons. So my goal of what
2:15
Speaker 2: I want to achieve here is to really get down
2:18
Speaker 2: and give midlife women some concrete answers to the... They've
2:24
Speaker 2: all heard, yes, we need protein, we need to be
2:26
Speaker 2: strength training, blah, blah, blah. No one's here that is
2:29
Speaker 2: hearing this for the first time that that is new.
2:32
Speaker 2: But I want to start with... I'm just diving right
2:36
Speaker 2: in to protein recommendations. And I'm going to say this because...
2:41
Speaker 2: been a little controversy online as of late, which I
2:47
Speaker 2: think kind of fluctuates where we hear these absolutes and
2:50
Speaker 2: then somebody else is saying this. And for women, Mickey,
2:53
Speaker 2: I think you and I have talked about this in
2:55
Speaker 2: some of my groups where it really isn't that confusing
2:59
Speaker 2: when you have more context to it. Um, you're, but,
3:05
Speaker 2: but to the average midlife women, it's super confusing because
3:10
Speaker 2: they're like, well, so-and-so said this. And then now I'm
3:13
Speaker 2: hearing this and I want to start there because there's
3:17
Speaker 2: been research that's come out and I actually dialed back
3:20
Speaker 2: the shred calories that we gave them, um, dialed back
3:24
Speaker 2: the protein a little bit because The research had come
3:27
Speaker 2: out that 1.6 grams per kilogram, which is around what?
3:30
Speaker 2: Almost 0.75 grams per pound, if we're talking about pounds.
3:35
Speaker 2: That was the ceiling. Nothing happens above the ceiling. Eat
3:39
Speaker 2: it if you want, but you're literally not getting anything more.
3:42
Speaker 2: And then there's this other camp and this other research
3:45
Speaker 2: that comes out that they're pointing to that's like, Well, yeah,
3:50
Speaker 2: it does matter if you're in a deficit or it
3:52
Speaker 2: can help with hypertrophy. I want your opinions on that
3:56
Speaker 2: because I feel like I'm pretty in the know with
4:00
Speaker 2: all of you guys and the experts that I bring
4:02
Speaker 2: onto my courses. But the friction I didn't really see coming.
4:08
Speaker 2: And it's with a lot of really big people in
4:11
Speaker 2: the space. What are your thoughts? What are your thoughts
4:14
Speaker 2: on the ceiling of 1.6? I don't think anything is
4:17
Speaker 2: right or wrong because there's clearly research to support everything
4:21
Speaker 2: that we can say. And before I let you dig
4:25
Speaker 2: in into that answer, I was talking with Celine Yeager
4:29
Speaker 2: a few weeks ago on a podcast and she's like, Haley,
4:32
Speaker 2: I've written for all of these magazines for 20 years.
4:34
Speaker 2: I've written books for Stacey, Vonda, you name it, all
4:38
Speaker 2: of these different people. You can find research to back
4:42
Speaker 2: up almost anything that you're hearing out there. Now, where
4:46
Speaker 2: that comes into the nuance. So nuance, here we go.
4:49
Speaker 2: I want both of your answers on that and how
4:52
Speaker 2: we can have a discussion there.
4:55
Speaker 3: Mickey, if you don't mind, I'll kick this off because
4:57
Speaker 3: I have a feeling that you both have discussed this.
4:59
Speaker 3: So I'll take it from an unbiased perspective. I'll give
5:01
Speaker 3: you guys the evidence and then also my practical application.
5:04
Speaker 3: And you guys can throw any caveats or whatever it
5:07
Speaker 3: may be at me. So first and look at the
5:11
Speaker 3: status of energy balance a person is in. So if
5:13
Speaker 3: we are talking about women at maintenance or in surplus conditions,
5:16
Speaker 3: meaning that they have sufficient energy availability, the literature would
5:19
Speaker 3: show that 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body
5:23
Speaker 3: weight per day would be a sufficient protein intake for
5:25
Speaker 3: maximizing muscle protein synthesis. This comes from Morton meta-analysis from 2018,
5:30
Speaker 3: which was based out of Stu Phillips lab. The caveat here,
5:33
Speaker 3: and many people don't read this research, is it's compiled
5:36
Speaker 3: of around 57 studies, if I remember correctly, and If
5:40
Speaker 3: you go into the methodology of the actual study itself
5:42
Speaker 3: or the review, you'll see that there is not exclusion criteria,
5:46
Speaker 3: but in the inclusion criteria itself, it says participants cannot be,
5:50
Speaker 3: first of all, they have to be resistance trained. Secondarily,
5:52
Speaker 3: they need to be out of an energy deficit. So
5:55
Speaker 3: we have to look at energy balance in a different context.
5:58
Speaker 3: So if you were to say someone's at maintenance, someone's
6:00
Speaker 3: in a surplus, I would say the broad body of
6:03
Speaker 3: evidence would say there's a confidence interval, meaning that 95%
6:06
Speaker 3: of the population will fall between 1.6 to 2.2 grams
6:08
Speaker 3: per kilogram per day. So 0.75 to one gram per day.
6:11
Speaker 3: Now we go into deficit conditions. Now let's think about
6:13
Speaker 3: the physiological implications of a deficit. First and foremost, if
6:17
Speaker 3: you go into an energy deficit between 20 to 33% deficit,
6:20
Speaker 3: we see a knockdown in muscle protein synthesis. So your
6:22
Speaker 3: ability to accrue muscle tissue. So Red and colleagues found
6:25
Speaker 3: that A 20% deficit causes like a 19% decrease in
6:30
Speaker 3: muscle protein synthesis. And the other literature shows 27%. So
6:33
Speaker 3: just being in an energy deficit of 20 to 33%
6:35
Speaker 3: causes a decrease in muscle protein synthetic rates of 19
6:39
Speaker 3: to 27%. How do we rescue that? That's actually, there's
6:41
Speaker 3: a linear dose response by increasing protein can offset that
6:44
Speaker 3: when it's done in conjunction with resistance training. Now let's
6:47
Speaker 3: go to the best body of evidence. We actually have
6:49
Speaker 3: a meta regression, which looks at a linear dose response
6:52
Speaker 3: of protein intake. I'm very fortunate that I've seen Eric
6:54
Speaker 3: Helms present on this in person. He's one of the
6:56
Speaker 3: researchers on this paper. I've spoken with Martin Ruffalo, who's
6:59
Speaker 3: a lead researcher, primary investigator on the study. And I
7:02
Speaker 3: also have had many interactions with Eric Trexler, both in
7:04
Speaker 3: person and then online. All three of them were the
7:07
Speaker 3: reviewers for this meta regression that came out in 2025.
7:10
Speaker 3: And what they found is in deficit conditions, there's two
7:13
Speaker 3: broad-based outcomes. First and foremost, I guess the floor for
7:17
Speaker 3: retaining lean mass in a deficit is 1.9 grams per
7:20
Speaker 3: kilogram per day. So we're going from 1.6 up to 1.9. Now,
7:23
Speaker 3: if you want to maximize muscle gain in a deficit,
7:26
Speaker 3: so for body recomposition, we actually increase that. And the
7:29
Speaker 3: area is between 2.3 to 3.2 grams per kilogram per day.
7:33
Speaker 3: So we're looking, if you mathematically deduce it, divide 3.2
7:37
Speaker 3: by 2.2, somewhere in the realm of 1.45 grams per
7:41
Speaker 3: kilogram per day. Then we look at other studies. So
7:42
Speaker 3: let's look at the broad body of literature on women.
7:44
Speaker 3: I'm going to talk right to your women. We look
7:47
Speaker 3: at Bill Campbell. He has a deficit study where they
7:49
Speaker 3: looked at two different interventional groups, and these were physico
7:52
Speaker 3: aspiring physique athletes and women. And they looked at a
7:55
Speaker 3: differentiation between protein intake. That was the only difference they made.
7:58
Speaker 3: Training program held constant, everything the same. They looked at 2.5
8:01
Speaker 3: grams per kilogram per day versus 0.9. And they found
8:04
Speaker 3: that the group that had 2.5 grams per kilogram per
8:07
Speaker 3: day ate more calories, but lost more body fat and
8:10
Speaker 3: gained more muscle. They recompt, whereas the other group lost
8:12
Speaker 3: body fat because they were in a deficit, but gained
8:14
Speaker 3: a very small portion of muscle mass itself. And so
8:17
Speaker 3: really when it comes down to it, we have to
8:19
Speaker 3: look at the differentiation between Where is that person from
8:21
Speaker 3: an energetic status? Are they looking to lose fat? And
8:24
Speaker 3: many of the women that come to me, they want
8:25
Speaker 3: to recomp. We look at any of the recomp data.
8:28
Speaker 3: It's over 2.2 grams per kilogram per day. And it's
8:30
Speaker 3: certainly over 1.6. So we have to look at A,
8:33
Speaker 3: the person's energy status, their goal. If most people come
8:36
Speaker 3: to us, that's a whole URL. They want body recomposition.
8:38
Speaker 3: They want to lose fat and gain muscle concomitantly. So
8:42
Speaker 3: if you are someone that you are, say you're a newbie,
8:44
Speaker 3: you're eating at maintenance, you're just getting into the gym, 1.6
8:46
Speaker 3: is great. It's a great starting lever. It's not the
8:49
Speaker 3: ceiling though. The data does not reinforce that. And actually
8:51
Speaker 3: the Martin Ruffalo data from 2025 finds a linear dose response.
8:55
Speaker 3: The more protein, the more favorable increases in fat-free mass.
8:59
Speaker 3: So the more muscle you gain, and that goes all
9:01
Speaker 3: the way from 1.9 to 3.2 grams per kilogram per day.
9:04
Speaker 3: And the only reason it doesn't go up even more,
9:06
Speaker 3: that's an asymptotic increase is because we don't have data
9:08
Speaker 3: beyond that. Jose Antonio has done between 3.4 to 4.4
9:12
Speaker 3: grams per kilogram per day, but we don't have enough
9:13
Speaker 3: data on those upper intakes. So I would say broadly speaking,
9:17
Speaker 3: I would recommend what I do with clients, lean women
9:19
Speaker 3: trying to get leaner, 2.5 to 2.7 grams per kilogram
9:22
Speaker 3: per day. And if they really are someone that's protein forward,
9:25
Speaker 3: someone like a Mickey, if she was trying to recomp
9:27
Speaker 3: with me, we would go 3.2. Mic drop right there. Yeah.
9:32
Speaker 2: Okay, I just learned something new about that too, and
9:36
Speaker 2: that makes so much sense. Mickey, take it away.
9:40
Speaker 1: I have nothing to add from the literature side of things,
9:43
Speaker 1: but if I can just add a couple of clinical comments,
9:48
Speaker 1: because this is how I think a lot of the
9:49
Speaker 1: time about the research and applying it. And I know, Hayley,
9:52
Speaker 1: you mentioned hypertrophy, which obviously is the goal for a
9:56
Speaker 1: lot of all of us sort of midlife women who
9:59
Speaker 1: we work with. particularly. But I often think of elements
10:03
Speaker 1: outside of muscle protein synthesis, like this is where all
10:06
Speaker 1: of the research is. And I absolutely understand that. But
10:09
Speaker 1: when I think about appetite, when I think about adherence,
10:12
Speaker 1: when I think about how the brain feels when you've
10:15
Speaker 1: got more protein on board, These are things which I
10:19
Speaker 1: think are super important are often sort of missed in
10:21
Speaker 1: the conversation because the conversation isn't around these other sort
10:24
Speaker 1: of important factors when it comes to adhering to a
10:28
Speaker 1: deficit and just like, you know, living your awesome life. Now,
10:32
Speaker 1: Don Lehman talks about this in a lot of podcasts
10:36
Speaker 1: and as you both know, he's done so much research
10:38
Speaker 1: in the space on protein. He hasn't actually published on it,
10:41
Speaker 1: and I asked him about it last time I was
10:43
Speaker 1: speaking to him, is that he thinks there's this metabolic
10:46
Speaker 1: sort of flaw to protein intake, whereby under 100 grams
10:51
Speaker 1: of protein absolute in a day, and this isn't related
10:54
Speaker 1: to body weight, but I just think it's worth mentioning,
10:57
Speaker 1: you don't get a lot of the same metabolic health
11:00
Speaker 1: benefits that you do when you eat above 100 grams
11:04
Speaker 1: of protein a day and that's actually a relatively small
11:08
Speaker 1: amount if we're thinking about the amounts that Brandon's mentioning
11:10
Speaker 1: here and Hayley that a lot of the women in
11:13
Speaker 1: Shred and Fat Loss Happens would sort of be allocated
11:17
Speaker 1: but I think that the shifts in glucose sort of
11:20
Speaker 1: management and insulin baseline insulin and the sort of the
11:25
Speaker 1: cholesterol changes to cholesterol profiles like I think all of
11:29
Speaker 1: these are really important elements too so I obviously I'm
11:34
Speaker 1: aware not to there's the same detail that Brandon you
11:37
Speaker 1: know talks about you can just like you can just
11:39
Speaker 1: like reel it all off Brandon but I know of
11:41
Speaker 1: those numbers that and the difference between the 1.6 and
11:45
Speaker 1: the 1.9 and then up higher but I also so
11:50
Speaker 1: this is why I generally keep or try to keep
11:53
Speaker 1: protein high for a lot of women like a lot
11:55
Speaker 1: higher than 1.6 if they're in a deficit having said
11:59
Speaker 1: that though and I think Hayley you and I have
12:01
Speaker 1: talked about this before that sometimes if you set the
12:04
Speaker 1: bar a little bit lower, people won't even reach that bar.
12:07
Speaker 1: So if we're setting up at sort of 2 or 2.2,
12:11
Speaker 1: we sort of know that if they hit 1.8, 1.9,
12:15
Speaker 1: that's actually going to get them closer to the goal
12:17
Speaker 1: than if the bar was 1.6 and they're only sort
12:20
Speaker 1: of up at 1.3, 1.4. So these are just some
12:24
Speaker 1: of the things that I think about with that.
12:26
Speaker 2: Okay. So if I'm wrapping this up, Are you both,
12:31
Speaker 2: I know that this can fluctuate too, but closer to
12:35
Speaker 2: one gram per pound in a lot of situations is
12:39
Speaker 2: aiming a little bit better than the 1.6 ceiling or 0.75
12:44
Speaker 2: grams per pound if we're getting nitty gritty.
12:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think from a practical heuristic point of view,
12:50
Speaker 3: like if I had to give, and I work with
12:52
Speaker 3: clients all around the world, if I had to give
12:53
Speaker 3: someone a tangible piece of advice, aim for one gram
12:57
Speaker 3: and just realize that, You need to track these things,
13:00
Speaker 3: and this is going to be an acquired skill. But
13:02
Speaker 3: I think that that would at least cover your bases.
13:04
Speaker 3: And even if you go to the Morton data, the
13:05
Speaker 3: reason that it's 1.6 to 2.2, and some researchers just
13:09
Speaker 3: hyper-focus on the 1.6, it's a confidence interval. It means
13:12
Speaker 3: it's covering 95% of the population. The reason they did
13:14
Speaker 3: that was because there is response heterogeneity, meaning individual differences
13:18
Speaker 3: between people. So we want to cover, I would always
13:21
Speaker 3: say you'd rather err on the side of overeating protein
13:24
Speaker 3: than under eating it just to the benefits on muscle metabolism,
13:27
Speaker 3: on metabolism in and of itself, energy expenditure levels, on longevity,
13:32
Speaker 3: on appetite regulation. Like we look at increasing protein from
13:34
Speaker 3: 15 to 30% caused in a 2005 study by Weigel
13:38
Speaker 3: and colleagues of 441 calorie per day deficit spontaneously. They
13:43
Speaker 3: weren't even trying to reduce their energy intake. They lost
13:45
Speaker 3: over the course of 12 weeks, they lost something like
13:48
Speaker 3: eight pounds due to the fact that that they had
13:50
Speaker 3: their appetite suppressed. So when we look at appetite regulation,
13:53
Speaker 3: we look at hunger management, we look at muscle metabolism,
13:55
Speaker 3: the body composition, the ability to accrete lean body tissue
13:58
Speaker 3: and then also recover, I think it's really more advantageous
14:01
Speaker 3: to at least hit one gram per pound.
14:04
Speaker 1: I'm in agreement.
14:04
Speaker 2: Okay. And then you're saying, Mickey, that under 100 grams,
14:09
Speaker 2: regardless of whatever, under 100 grams is not really giving
14:16
Speaker 2: you a lot of the benefits. that you could be
14:19
Speaker 2: getting from this higher protein amount per day.
14:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, correct.
14:26
Speaker 2: So that's good to know too, because you have some
14:28
Speaker 2: leaner individuals, women as they get older that just don't
14:31
Speaker 2: have the appetite and eating is kind of a chore.
14:35
Speaker 2: Same thing I would say with somebody that's on a
14:37
Speaker 2: GLP-1 where it's harder for them to eat. That's kind
14:40
Speaker 2: of like you want to get a triple digit number
14:43
Speaker 2: of protein.
14:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. And practically speaking as well, Hayley, I talked to women,
14:48
Speaker 1: and I'm sure Brandon does as well, about utilizing essential
14:51
Speaker 1: amino acid powders that allow them to sort of just
14:55
Speaker 1: back up the protein they can eat with those essential
14:58
Speaker 1: aminos that are required for that muscle protein synthetic response,
15:02
Speaker 1: particularly with people, to your point, low appetite and on
15:06
Speaker 1: a GLP-1.
15:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. Wow. Well, that was a heavy hitter right
15:12
Speaker 2: out of the gate. I wanted to make sure that
15:14
Speaker 2: I didn't get distracted and we didn't cover that one.
15:18
Speaker 2: I'm keeping on with the conversation of GLP-1. So I
15:23
Speaker 2: read something the other day about the GLP-1 kill fad diets.
15:30
Speaker 2: We have these keto, we have paleo, we have all
15:34
Speaker 2: of these ways. And essentially, they're just a different way
15:39
Speaker 2: that somebody can cut calories, essentially. and get into a
15:44
Speaker 2: deficit with maybe foods that work for them. Or in
15:47
Speaker 2: their mind, they're just already convinced that this is the
15:50
Speaker 2: magic diet. And as we all know, it comes down
15:53
Speaker 2: to energy deficit. And you can get that in every diet,
15:57
Speaker 2: provided you stick with it and you're tracking well, blah, blah.
16:02
Speaker 2: But GLP-1 takes a lot of the hunger cravings away.
16:06
Speaker 2: I mean, I have clients that aren't really interested in alcohol.
16:10
Speaker 2: I know Dr. Jocelyn Whitstein yesterday had posted about this
16:16
Speaker 2: new study of hormone therapy and rotator cuff injuries. But
16:22
Speaker 2: somebody had said, well, I started on a GLP-1 and
16:25
Speaker 2: my rotator cuff injury went away. And she's like, well, yeah,
16:29
Speaker 2: it helps with anti... It's anti-inflammatory. So what are your
16:33
Speaker 2: thoughts on that subject?
16:37
Speaker 1: Okay, great, Brandon. So I think this was such a
16:40
Speaker 1: great question, Hayley, about whether GLP-1s killed fad diets. And
16:44
Speaker 1: I would say the reason why a lot of people
16:47
Speaker 1: might think that is because they think that taking a
16:49
Speaker 1: GLP-1 is the plan. And that's not the plan. We
16:53
Speaker 1: still need the principles of sustainable fat loss in place
17:00
Speaker 1: if someone is taking a GLP-1 medication. And it's In
17:07
Speaker 1: my experience with the clients I work with, I have
17:10
Speaker 1: got clients who take the GLP-1 and they genuinely get
17:13
Speaker 1: a shift in their appetite. So they're actually eating, I'm
17:16
Speaker 1: not sure how to say this any other way, but
17:17
Speaker 1: normal amounts of food, like plates of food that we
17:22
Speaker 1: might sit down to and they're satisfied and they're putting
17:25
Speaker 1: into practice the protein recommendations that we're talking about in
17:29
Speaker 1: addition to fiber, et cetera. And they're seeing results because
17:33
Speaker 1: they're able to do that. But then I do also
17:36
Speaker 1: have other clients when it absolutely kills their appetite and
17:40
Speaker 1: they can't actually eat almost anything. And so there's someone
17:45
Speaker 1: that I really have to work on in terms of
17:48
Speaker 1: the essential amino acids that we were talking about and
17:50
Speaker 1: making sure they're hitting a baseline protein, which is lower,
17:54
Speaker 1: a little bit lower than the levels that we were discussing.
17:58
Speaker 1: But I think in both instances, where people who might
18:03
Speaker 1: not be so well-schooled in GLP-1s are talking like GLP-1
18:07
Speaker 1: is just another fad to get someone to lose weight,
18:10
Speaker 1: is that, I mean, quite clearly, as you said, Hayley,
18:14
Speaker 1: as soon as, you know, it's no different from any diet,
18:16
Speaker 1: as soon as someone comes off a medication or makes
18:19
Speaker 1: a shift like that, then if they haven't instilled those
18:22
Speaker 1: lifestyle behaviours, then they've not had the opportunity to.
18:29
Speaker 1: To actually embed the things that they need in order
18:31
Speaker 1: to sustain the fat loss. So people can't, and if
18:36
Speaker 1: anyone's out there thinking, oh, just take a GLP-1 because
18:39
Speaker 1: it'll sort of kickstart me, but not also have in
18:41
Speaker 1: their head that they need to do the things that
18:43
Speaker 1: we all talk about every day, then they're really just
18:46
Speaker 1: kicking the can down the road, essentially, because that's not
18:49
Speaker 1: a plan.
18:50
Speaker 3: Yes, so first and foremost, I think that we have
18:53
Speaker 3: to look at and really conceptualize GLP-1 therapy for what
18:58
Speaker 3: it is. It's a tool. And as with any tool,
19:00
Speaker 3: it could be used or it could be abused. And
19:02
Speaker 3: we see people in these dichotomous camps, they're on opposite
19:05
Speaker 3: sides of the equation. Some people think it's a fad
19:08
Speaker 3: that is going to be here today and gone tomorrow.
19:09
Speaker 3: And then others really look at it for its pure
19:11
Speaker 3: pharmaceutical properties that it has. So it's the most potent
19:14
Speaker 3: appetite suppressant that we ever had. If you really look
19:16
Speaker 3: at some of the stimulant-based pharmaceutical interventions, we're looking at
19:20
Speaker 3: something between five to 7% body weight loss and Some
19:23
Speaker 3: glutide in and of itself, Wilding colleagues in 2021 found
19:27
Speaker 3: 15% weight loss over 68 weeks. We look at triseptide
19:30
Speaker 3: over 20%. We look at tetratide, which is not clinically approved.
19:33
Speaker 3: Everyone's jumping on board a little bit too early. We
19:36
Speaker 3: have to realize that we cannot get that from a
19:38
Speaker 3: compounding pharmacy currently, but that's looking at 25% to 27%.
19:41
Speaker 3: So these are potent appetite suppressants, but they work in
19:44
Speaker 3: two different distinct manners. So we have GLP-1 receptors in
19:48
Speaker 3: the gastrointestinal tract, which is going to help with slowing
19:51
Speaker 3: down the transit of food. And then we also had
19:52
Speaker 3: them in the brain, in the hypothalamus. And so that's
19:55
Speaker 3: going to shut off our actual appetite signals, essentially, or
19:57
Speaker 3: it's going to signal satiety to the brain. And so
19:59
Speaker 3: what we really have to realize is that it is
20:01
Speaker 3: a tool that can be advantageously used in conjunction with
20:05
Speaker 3: lifestyle interventions, such as a nutrient-dense diet that's calorie controlled,
20:09
Speaker 3: proper resistance training that's going to help you build lean
20:12
Speaker 3: mass and maintain it, especially when you're in an energy deficit,
20:14
Speaker 3: high protein intake, because we were just talking about the
20:16
Speaker 3: concept of leveraging higher protein intakes for muscle retention. That's
20:20
Speaker 3: even more important if you are able to pharmaceutically induce
20:23
Speaker 3: a much larger calorie deficit than you could through adherence
20:26
Speaker 3: and just by nature itself. So I think that we
20:29
Speaker 3: have to look at this as a tool in and
20:30
Speaker 3: of itself. And perhaps what I'm seeing in practice, I'll
20:33
Speaker 3: just give you an example, is not that it's like
20:36
Speaker 3: we're putting it or pitting it against fad diets. But
20:38
Speaker 3: what I am finding in certain contexts with certain individuals,
20:42
Speaker 3: that they were people that suffered from food noise, which
20:44
Speaker 3: I think has really gotten the colloquial term of food noise.
20:47
Speaker 3: If you actually look at it as compared to what
20:49
Speaker 3: it is in the literature, they're completely different. Food noise
20:51
Speaker 3: is essentially an incessant hyper fixation on food, a focus
20:55
Speaker 3: that distracts you from everyday activities, from your family, from engagements,
20:58
Speaker 3: from connecting with others. It is almost all encompassing. It
21:02
Speaker 3: could be very similarly described as something we have in
21:04
Speaker 3: the weight loss literature as hyperphagia, which is an incessant
21:08
Speaker 3: hunger that comes from a precipitous loss of lean mass
21:10
Speaker 3: during dieting, where you essentially, you go through a body
21:13
Speaker 3: fat overshooting effect. You can't stop eating your ravenous. And
21:16
Speaker 3: so people with food focus or with food noise, they
21:18
Speaker 3: essentially cannot even focus on their daily tasks, whether it
21:20
Speaker 3: be work or the relationships with their children. So this
21:23
Speaker 3: powerful pharmaceutical intervention can help with that. It's being currently
21:27
Speaker 3: tested clinically to help with food noise. And then we're
21:30
Speaker 3: also seeing the downstream implications on other behaviors that are
21:33
Speaker 3: dopamine driven, such as gambling, excessive alcohol intake. So we're
21:37
Speaker 3: seeing that it's having interactions with dopamine receptors and things
21:40
Speaker 3: of that sort. So I think that if used correctly,
21:42
Speaker 3: and by correctly, I mean dose escalated correctly with a physician,
21:46
Speaker 3: meaning starting low and titrating up as need be. It's
21:48
Speaker 3: not based on your dose should not be This is
21:50
Speaker 3: very funny. If you look into the menopause literature on
21:53
Speaker 3: hormone replacement therapy or menopause hormone therapy, it's not based
21:56
Speaker 3: on the actual clinical, like your clinical levels in the blood.
21:59
Speaker 3: Like if you went to the menopause hormone therapy society
22:04
Speaker 3: or menopause society in and of itself, and you looked
22:06
Speaker 3: at the MHT guidelines from 2022, it's not based on
22:09
Speaker 3: your estradiol and progesterone concentrations. Once you're on estradiol replacement
22:13
Speaker 3: and oral micronized progesterone, it's based on symptomology. So the
22:17
Speaker 3: same thing should be applied and really visualized. with GLP-1s.
22:20
Speaker 3: It's based on how can you suppress your appetite and
22:22
Speaker 3: that food noise that you have, not how can I
22:25
Speaker 3: ramp up my dose to the point that I'm losing
22:27
Speaker 3: a precipitous amount of weight or just rapidly crashing on
22:29
Speaker 3: the scale, because that is actually leading to disadvantageous effects
22:33
Speaker 3: where we're having a lot of people that are speaking
22:34
Speaker 3: out against muscle loss or nutrient deficiencies or thyroidal issues. Yeah,
22:39
Speaker 3: you're in a massive calorie deficit. That's from a lack
22:41
Speaker 3: of energy availability and being in a state of relative
22:44
Speaker 3: energy deficiency.
22:45
Speaker 1: And can I just add, Brandon, because I really love
22:47
Speaker 1: how you made the distinction of, you know, food noise
22:50
Speaker 1: from what we see in the literature versus what we
22:52
Speaker 1: hear people say when, because everyone's talking about food noise now.
22:55
Speaker 2: Everyone has food noise, but that's... Everything.
22:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Hayley. And I think people are almost, there's
23:03
Speaker 1: no judgment, but they're like, oh, I've just got this
23:04
Speaker 1: food noise. And I'm like, But you know what, if
23:06
Speaker 1: you slept a little better and if you actually had
23:09
Speaker 1: that high protein breakfast and you included more fiber and
23:12
Speaker 1: maybe moved a little bit more during the day, then
23:14
Speaker 1: I think that food noise probably, well, that's not food noise.
23:17
Speaker 1: I think you're actually just probably a bit hungry, you know,
23:19
Speaker 1: and you've got a bit of a dysregulated appetite. And
23:22
Speaker 1: so I think that distinction is important. I think sometimes
23:26
Speaker 1: some of the pushback on GLPs is because not enough
23:30
Speaker 1: people are making the distinction as to why it could
23:33
Speaker 1: be helpful. And so... Almost everyone is seeing it as
23:38
Speaker 1: almost this all-encompassing sort of cure for anything related to
23:42
Speaker 1: weight loss and a lot of the other things that
23:44
Speaker 1: we discussed. Albeit, all that to say, I am hugely
23:48
Speaker 1: supportive of utilizing it where appropriate.
23:51
Speaker 2: Yes. Okay. So staying on this a little bit, the subject,
23:56
Speaker 2: I want to move to protein sparing modified fast and
24:02
Speaker 2: rapid fat loss. But also kind of encompassing that with
24:08
Speaker 2: what we're seeing in Hollywood that is definitely rapid fat loss.
24:13
Speaker 2: And I'm sure use of GLP-1s with a lot of
24:18
Speaker 2: these stars that are real thin. And so with anything,
24:22
Speaker 2: we have this, there is a need, as Brendan said,
24:27
Speaker 2: a tool to Everything is a tool, but that tool
24:31
Speaker 2: can be taken to extremes. So we're seeing that in
24:33
Speaker 2: the weight loss world right now with people that are
24:36
Speaker 2: really pushing this frail, very, very thin, scary frame. So
24:45
Speaker 2: I think when we talk to midlife women who have
24:48
Speaker 2: most of them, I'm sure all three of us are
24:50
Speaker 2: in the same boat. Most of them have been dieting
24:53
Speaker 2: for a good amount of their life. not dieting right
24:57
Speaker 2: because we didn't have the information and we didn't have
25:01
Speaker 2: podcasts and online social media to really get good information
25:05
Speaker 2: and decide what works. So you have women coming in
25:09
Speaker 2: here and I see it in two camps. I see
25:12
Speaker 2: women that have perpetually dieted And are thin, but not
25:17
Speaker 2: liking their body composition. And they're kind of like, well,
25:20
Speaker 2: where do I go from here? Because if you're going
25:22
Speaker 2: to tell me to sit and prime my body for
25:24
Speaker 2: a year, I'm going to say no. So there's that
25:28
Speaker 2: conversation of why we don't want to push any maybe
25:31
Speaker 2: rapid fat loss to these people that they are probably
25:34
Speaker 2: the ones that want it, even if they don't have
25:36
Speaker 2: a ton. And then we have more overweight, maybe even
25:42
Speaker 2: into obese. Women where the rapid fat loss might make
25:49
Speaker 2: more sense, it's maybe a little bit safer. Even if
25:52
Speaker 2: they have been, quote unquote, dieting or tried different things
25:57
Speaker 2: throughout their life, very different conversations happen. For the same
26:01
Speaker 2: age woman, say 55 year old, that is slightly obese
26:06
Speaker 2: versus someone that has 15 pounds and it's just a
26:09
Speaker 2: little bit as they would say fluffier, just not happy
26:14
Speaker 2: with body composition, but they're doing all of the things
26:17
Speaker 2: and they're probably the ones. How do you gauge those
26:20
Speaker 2: conversations with something that as we know in literature is
26:25
Speaker 2: we've covered in one of my groups and I had
26:27
Speaker 2: Bill Campbell come on and talk about it. And then
26:29
Speaker 2: it kind of went the wrong way because then everyone
26:31
Speaker 2: was like, well, I want the, I want the fast,
26:34
Speaker 2: rapid fat loss. Why aren't we all doing that? Why
26:37
Speaker 2: did you bring Bill Campbell on and then say, well,
26:39
Speaker 2: but the group's going this way. So I learned a
26:41
Speaker 2: lesson there, but curious your thoughts. Cause I know we
26:44
Speaker 2: had a little chat about this offline with that subject.
26:49
Speaker 1: I'll let you go first, Brendan.
26:51
Speaker 3: All right. So I'm going to be the king of
26:53
Speaker 3: caveats here because I work with lean women trying to- Good.
26:56
Speaker 2: That's what we're trying to do. Nuance.
26:58
Speaker 3: So first and foremost, let's define a protein sparing modified
27:00
Speaker 3: fast and then rapid fat loss. So a protein sparing
27:03
Speaker 3: modified fast is, as its name implies, a high protein
27:06
Speaker 3: diet that lacks carbohydrates and direct fats, essentially. So we
27:10
Speaker 3: are looking at lean protein sources plus veggies. And then
27:12
Speaker 3: if we kind of go and transition to rapid fat loss.
27:15
Speaker 3: Rapid fat loss was developed by a friend of mine
27:17
Speaker 3: named Lyle McDonald. He wrote about this in 2005 and
27:20
Speaker 3: he was kind of the one that brought this to
27:21
Speaker 3: the forefront. If you guys are interested, please go back
27:23
Speaker 3: to Chasing Clarity. I've done a three-part podcast with him
27:26
Speaker 3: in depth on this topic. Now, rapid fat loss was
27:28
Speaker 3: conceptualized as a crash diet, but doing it in the
27:30
Speaker 3: right way. That is what Lyle came to. And really
27:33
Speaker 3: what it is in the foundation of the diet is
27:35
Speaker 3: a high protein intake from whole food sources because a
27:38
Speaker 3: lot of the early PSMFs that were in the literature
27:41
Speaker 3: were liquid diets. And there was actually one that was
27:44
Speaker 3: basically collagen-based and people died from this. So it was
27:47
Speaker 3: called the last chance diet. And what they meant by
27:49
Speaker 3: that initially was it was the last chance to lose weight. Well,
27:51
Speaker 3: people actually died. So it was their last chance at
27:53
Speaker 3: life essentially. So we have to take into consideration the
27:55
Speaker 3: nutrient deficiencies that can come from this. So what rapid
27:58
Speaker 3: fat loss was conceptualized to be and how I apply
28:00
Speaker 3: it in practice is a very large and assertive deficit
28:04
Speaker 3: that is created through a high protein intake that is
28:06
Speaker 3: often to the 1.5 grams per pound per day. So
28:10
Speaker 3: we're in that 3.2, 3.3 grams per kilogram per day.
28:13
Speaker 3: And we are reinforcing that with vegetables. So we have
28:17
Speaker 3: nutrient density, vitamins and minerals, and then we're back filling
28:19
Speaker 3: that with omega-3 essential fatty acids. So you have all
28:21
Speaker 3: your nutrients covered. You have essential amino acids from whole
28:24
Speaker 3: food protein sources. You have your vitamins and minerals from,
28:27
Speaker 3: and sometimes we will include, like I'll personally include some
28:30
Speaker 3: fruit in the diet, but we're looking at no starchy
28:32
Speaker 3: carbohydrates essentially. And then we have omega-3 essential fatty acids.
28:36
Speaker 3: So you have EPA and you have DHA. Now, rapid
28:38
Speaker 3: fat loss is supposed to be over very short time periods.
28:40
Speaker 3: If you look at the initial writing of Lyle, it
28:42
Speaker 3: was seven to 14 days. Where that has been brought
28:45
Speaker 3: to an extreme are people that are doing months and
28:47
Speaker 3: months and months of rapid fat loss. So you take yourself,
28:50
Speaker 3: and if you guys are familiar with the energy availability literature,
28:53
Speaker 3: in 2023, the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, put forth
28:57
Speaker 3: a new consensus statement on REDS, which is relative energy
29:01
Speaker 3: deficiency in sport. And they delineated low energy availability. There's
29:05
Speaker 3: problematic low energy availability when it's sustained for a long
29:07
Speaker 3: period of time. And it's particularly in women, we see
29:09
Speaker 3: a knockdown of the HPL axis. You have low estradiol,
29:12
Speaker 3: low progesterone, you have low thyroid hormone, you have all
29:15
Speaker 3: these downstream implications, low bone mineral density. There are many
29:18
Speaker 3: physiological ramifications of that, but then we also have adaptable
29:21
Speaker 3: low energy availability, which would be the context of someone
29:23
Speaker 3: in a fat loss phase or a very short-term rapid
29:26
Speaker 3: fat loss study. So Bill Campbell's study is at a 37.5%
29:28
Speaker 3: deficit for two weeks. So you're getting in, you're getting out.
29:32
Speaker 3: And that can be a tool. And that is something
29:35
Speaker 3: that I utilize with clients. But in practice, we have
29:38
Speaker 3: to delineate who is that right for. And what I
29:40
Speaker 3: have found, I've done three, about six hours worth of
29:44
Speaker 3: content with Lyle on this. The people that contacted me
29:46
Speaker 3: about this were the people that this was least appropriate for.
29:49
Speaker 3: It was a lean woman trying to get leaner. The
29:51
Speaker 3: person with a chronic dieting history, if we look statistically
29:53
Speaker 3: between 42 to 60% of US adults around the world
29:56
Speaker 3: are dieting each and every year. There are many people,
29:58
Speaker 3: if we actually look into the micronutrient, the vitamin and
30:01
Speaker 3: mineral analysis literature, many people are deficient in zinc, iodine, selenium,
30:05
Speaker 3: vitamin D. These are all things that are cofactors for
30:07
Speaker 3: hormone secretion and conversion such as testosterone secretion. And then
30:11
Speaker 3: also particularly with thyroid and women are five to eight
30:14
Speaker 3: times more likely to suffer from thyroid disorder. 12% of
30:17
Speaker 3: women around the world will have some type of thyroid disorder,
30:19
Speaker 3: whether that be Hashimoto's, which they're up to 60 to
30:21
Speaker 3: 75% of cases is women. or they're going to suffer
30:25
Speaker 3: from hypothyroidism. So we have to delineate, is this appropriate
30:28
Speaker 3: for you? We have to look at lab work first
30:29
Speaker 3: and foremost. So I'm leading with that. And secondarily, we
30:31
Speaker 3: have to look at your starting body fat percentage. If
30:33
Speaker 3: you're a woman that's close to like 20% body fat,
30:35
Speaker 3: you don't need rapid fat loss. If you want to
30:36
Speaker 3: get a little bit leaner, we need to take a
30:38
Speaker 3: more sustainable, you know, conservative approach to protect not only
30:43
Speaker 3: your muscle mass, but your bone mineral density, especially as
30:45
Speaker 3: you get into your 40s and your 50s, and then
30:47
Speaker 3: also your hormones. And so where rapid fat loss is
30:50
Speaker 3: very advantageous is if someone has excess adiposity. Or they
30:55
Speaker 3: have something, and I'm going to be completely honest about this.
30:57
Speaker 3: I have a lot of people that were physique competitors
31:00
Speaker 3: or they were photo shoot preps people, or they had
31:02
Speaker 3: a wedding coming up, or I used to work with
31:03
Speaker 3: a lot of people that they were musicians and they
31:05
Speaker 3: had a, you know, a music shoot that came up
31:07
Speaker 3: last minute where they were working. I worked with a
31:09
Speaker 3: lot of people in New York that were actors. Those
31:11
Speaker 3: are things that we would use that for a very
31:13
Speaker 3: short-term basis. Seven days of rapid fat loss, get into
31:15
Speaker 3: a massive deficit, make sure that we're keeping the resistance
31:18
Speaker 3: training stimulus there. We're not doing excessive cardio too, because
31:21
Speaker 3: that would actually increase the essentially low energy availability state
31:24
Speaker 3: that they're in, but we're doing it. We're getting in,
31:26
Speaker 3: we're getting the fat off and we're getting right out
31:28
Speaker 3: and back to maintenance so that we can restore the
31:31
Speaker 3: metabolic adaptations that have been sustained through that aggressive deficit.
31:34
Speaker 3: But protein has to be kept high. Your essential vitamins
31:37
Speaker 3: and minerals, your omega-3s, your essential amino acids and your
31:39
Speaker 3: vitamin minerals have to be covered. This cannot be a
31:41
Speaker 3: shake diet where you're just going to drink protein shakes
31:44
Speaker 3: all day and try to lose weight as quickly as possible.
31:47
Speaker 3: And honestly, a lot of times what I'm seeing are
31:49
Speaker 3: people that have such massive appetite suppression from GLP-1s when
31:53
Speaker 3: they're doing rapid fat loss. It's more so not like
31:57
Speaker 3: the structured approach that I'm speaking about. They're just rapidly
32:00
Speaker 3: fat loss. They're rapidly losing weight. And it's a lot
32:03
Speaker 3: of tissue coming from lean mass and some coming from
32:05
Speaker 3: fat mass.
32:06
Speaker 2: Okay. Before you answer Mickey, Brandon, that was, that was amazing.
32:10
Speaker 2: And I love how you talked about, was it, did
32:12
Speaker 2: you say adaptable low energy availability?
32:16
Speaker 3: We have two terms. Now we have adaptable, which would be,
32:18
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you a couple of examples and
32:20
Speaker 3: they use this in the literature. This could be someone
32:21
Speaker 3: in a fat loss phase. It could be an athlete
32:23
Speaker 3: getting ready for a weight making situation or It could
32:26
Speaker 3: be someone that's getting ready for an event, a photo shoot,
32:28
Speaker 3: a wedding, a vacation. This is short-term. It can't be chronic. Now,
32:31
Speaker 3: when you go months in and months out in low
32:33
Speaker 3: energy availability and an aggressive deficit, that's where we see
32:36
Speaker 3: a knockdown effect to your HPO access, to your thyroid hormone,
32:39
Speaker 3: to your estradiol, to your progesterone. Then it goes downstream.
32:42
Speaker 3: When estradiol falls, your bone mineral density is going to
32:44
Speaker 3: lower as well. And then we also see immunological effects.
32:47
Speaker 3: So people are getting sick more often, getting upper respiratory infections.
32:50
Speaker 3: You see this a lot in the endurance athletes. You
32:52
Speaker 3: see shin splints, bone breaks, things of that sort.
32:55
Speaker 1: Yeah.
32:56
Speaker 2: Okay.
32:56
Speaker 1: Mickey.
32:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
32:57
Speaker 1: No, I love that, Brandon. I love hearing how you
33:00
Speaker 1: use it in practice. And I think, and it's quite
33:04
Speaker 1: different as to how I use protein sparing modified fast
33:06
Speaker 1: in practice, actually. So I use it from a calorie
33:10
Speaker 1: cycling perspective, actually. So in the literature, and when we
33:14
Speaker 1: think about rapid fat loss, as Brandon said, it's sort
33:17
Speaker 1: of you're in and you're out, and it may be
33:19
Speaker 1: several days sort of strung together or a couple of weeks,
33:22
Speaker 1: et cetera. Whereas I use protein-sparing modified fast as a
33:27
Speaker 1: way to drop calories and create a deficit across a
33:31
Speaker 1: week in an otherwise sort of eating at maintenance style week.
33:36
Speaker 1: The calories on the other days would probably be lower
33:39
Speaker 1: than the maintenance, but essentially it's only ever one day
33:42
Speaker 1: where you're doing protein-sparing modified fast and you're following the
33:46
Speaker 1: guidelines that Brandon suggested, or not suggested, I'm sorry, that
33:49
Speaker 1: Brandon sort of detailed as to what that actually entails.
33:52
Speaker 1: And then The other days are the type of diet
33:55
Speaker 1: that we would all be sort of recommending that people follow. So,
34:00
Speaker 1: and the reason I use it actually, and Hayley, I
34:02
Speaker 1: think both of you know this about me is that,
34:04
Speaker 1: you know, I don't, I don't utilize calories. I haven't
34:07
Speaker 1: utilized calories in terms of macros, if you like, with
34:11
Speaker 1: my clients for like, probably 25 years of my clinical practice.
34:15
Speaker 1: And I think it's just because my training in nutrition
34:18
Speaker 1: science didn't lead me down macro counting the same way
34:21
Speaker 1: that personal trainers get a macro sort of counting education
34:25
Speaker 1: when they do their courses. So that's just not the
34:27
Speaker 1: training that I had. So my sort of foray into
34:32
Speaker 1: calories and counting and utilizing with small pockets of the
34:35
Speaker 1: people I work with is relatively new. So what I
34:39
Speaker 1: found is that in order to create, this was an...
34:43
Speaker 1: a way to create that deficit without having to overly
34:47
Speaker 1: think about it and overly sort of restrict on every
34:49
Speaker 1: day of the week, actually. So it's a, it's a
34:52
Speaker 1: form of calorie cycling. And then in addition to that,
34:55
Speaker 1: the groups that I run, I also like to have
34:57
Speaker 1: like a diet break, essentially sort of every couple of
35:01
Speaker 1: weeks where we lift calories up on three days of,
35:05
Speaker 1: of the on three consecutive days and those calories come
35:09
Speaker 1: from carbohydrate. People get what I call a metabolic reset
35:13
Speaker 1: meal and what Brandon would call a free meal. And
35:16
Speaker 1: we just, you know, and we essentially practice being at
35:19
Speaker 1: what could be considered maintenance. And I know Haley, that
35:22
Speaker 1: we run these and you run these in your groups
35:24
Speaker 1: as well, because of course, a lot of the issues
35:27
Speaker 1: around fat loss isn't necessarily that they don't know how
35:30
Speaker 1: to diet is that they don't know how to keep
35:32
Speaker 1: it off because they've never practiced eating in a way
35:34
Speaker 1: that that actually allows them to maintain their weight. And
35:37
Speaker 1: so it's just trying to sort of override their fear
35:40
Speaker 1: of eating more. But obviously in the context of eating
35:44
Speaker 1: less with those protein-sparing modified fast days that are tiered
35:48
Speaker 1: sort of one, two, or three days of a week,
35:52
Speaker 1: but non-consecutive. So that's how I use protein-sparing modified fast,
35:56
Speaker 1: just as a calorie cycling tool.
35:59
Speaker 2: I love it. I love how different both of your
36:01
Speaker 2: similar but different ways that you use it. And I
36:04
Speaker 2: would say what popped out to me is a couple
36:10
Speaker 2: of things. But number one, this is from my experience
36:16
Speaker 2: from the groups that I have worked with. And I
36:19
Speaker 2: would say calorie cycling it in more like that seems
36:26
Speaker 2: more doable for the groups that I work with. I
36:29
Speaker 2: love the other version of like, get in and get
36:32
Speaker 2: the heck out. That to me says you have to
36:36
Speaker 2: work with a coach because most of these women don't
36:39
Speaker 2: know what's going on. They're not getting blood work in
36:41
Speaker 2: large group settings. I mean, I couldn't recommend that just
36:45
Speaker 2: because you need more information. But man, I mean, I
36:49
Speaker 2: would be sending people to Brandon for that.
36:52
Speaker 3: Haley, if you would let me expand because I have
36:54
Speaker 3: another take on this and another approach, to be honest
36:57
Speaker 3: with you, I run something called Rapid Fat Loss Days.
36:59
Speaker 3: And this is an integrative approach that I utilize where
37:02
Speaker 3: I stair-step someone into a larger deficit just on their
37:04
Speaker 3: off days. They're very similar to Mickey. And I think Mickey,
37:07
Speaker 3: we had talked about this when we detailed my own
37:08
Speaker 3: fat loss phase. So this is how I diet myself
37:10
Speaker 3: on training days. Really my philosophy around nutrition besides like
37:14
Speaker 3: the bioenergetics and biochemistry of nutrition is I want to
37:18
Speaker 3: match the energy demand Like from a nutritional perspective, fuel,
37:22
Speaker 3: I always say this, is it from James Morton, fuel
37:24
Speaker 3: for the work required. So I want that my energetic
37:27
Speaker 3: status of what I'm taking in from a nutrient perspective,
37:29
Speaker 3: both in a macronutrient perspective, and then also in a
37:31
Speaker 3: total energy intake perspective matches the activity I'm doing. So
37:34
Speaker 3: when I have resistant training days, which is a glycolytic
37:36
Speaker 3: activity that relies of a carbohydrate metabolism, I have higher
37:40
Speaker 3: carb days and I have a lower fat days. And
37:41
Speaker 3: then on my non-training days where I do more, I
37:44
Speaker 3: leverage more steps. I leverage more low intensity activity, especially
37:47
Speaker 3: in a facet state. So I can mobilize free fatty
37:49
Speaker 3: acids and burn them off for energy. I utilize a
37:51
Speaker 3: very low carbohydrate, higher fat, and then a very high
37:53
Speaker 3: protein diet to, to really increase that. And I will
37:56
Speaker 3: often stair step people into from a normal diet. That's
37:59
Speaker 3: just a non-training day and a training day where it's
38:01
Speaker 3: essentially a high carb day and a moderate carb day.
38:04
Speaker 3: I will essentially transition them when I need to get
38:06
Speaker 3: extra fat off them. I will transition them into one
38:09
Speaker 3: day per week. That's on a non-training day into a
38:11
Speaker 3: rapid fat loss day. And that's what I call it.
38:13
Speaker 3: And it's high protein and it's the same conceptualization. Sometimes
38:15
Speaker 3: I'll start with fruit at two or three meals per day,
38:18
Speaker 3: especially before bed, because I want to restock liver glycogen.
38:20
Speaker 3: So especially women can sleep better at night because that's
38:23
Speaker 3: something I find in women between 40 and 55, they
38:24
Speaker 3: have a lot of sleep issues. And that often comes
38:27
Speaker 3: due to the fact that liver glycogen is essentially falling
38:30
Speaker 3: and they're getting like an adrenaline dump and a cortisol
38:32
Speaker 3: release in the middle of the night. but I will
38:33
Speaker 3: start with say four meals of protein with veggies. Two
38:37
Speaker 3: of those meals will include fruit and I'll have omega-3
38:39
Speaker 3: essential fatty acids at those meals. So I'm driving a
38:41
Speaker 3: much larger deficit on those days, but they're not working out.
38:44
Speaker 3: So they're not getting taxed from an energetic perspective. And
38:46
Speaker 3: then if that person has more body composition goals or
38:50
Speaker 3: they have a closer deadline, I will walk them into that.
38:53
Speaker 3: And basically I have a lot of clients training between
38:54
Speaker 3: three to five days per week. Eventually the highest amount
38:57
Speaker 3: of rapid fat loss days they'll have is the highest
38:59
Speaker 3: amount of non-training days that they have. So say someone's
39:01
Speaker 3: training four days per week, and we really have to
39:03
Speaker 3: get fat off. And we really want, I really want
39:05
Speaker 3: to preserve that, that training day diet. I will leverage
39:09
Speaker 3: those rapid fat loss days on non-training days. So they'll
39:11
Speaker 3: go from say three non-training days that were normal, moderate carbohydrate. I'll,
39:15
Speaker 3: I'll take one of those out and I'll add in
39:17
Speaker 3: a rapid fat loss day. So high protein, low carb,
39:19
Speaker 3: low fat. And then as we go through the diet,
39:21
Speaker 3: I'll leverage two and then we'll go to three, but
39:23
Speaker 3: I'd never let them first. I don't like them sequential
39:25
Speaker 3: just personally where they're one after another, because then I
39:28
Speaker 3: start seeing people really struggle with hunger And then also
39:30
Speaker 3: from an adherence perspective, you can do one, one, you
39:33
Speaker 3: could go low calorie for one day. Anyone can do
39:34
Speaker 3: that because the next day you have a training day diet.
39:36
Speaker 3: But if I told you, Hey, Friday through Monday, you
39:39
Speaker 3: have to do this or Friday through Sunday, you have
39:40
Speaker 3: to do this low calorie diet. That's a protein sparing
39:42
Speaker 3: modified fast. Most people want to stay on board. So
39:44
Speaker 3: I actually usually dose them throughout the week and I
39:46
Speaker 3: make sure that they're not on weekends. So it usually
39:48
Speaker 3: looks like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for the maximum of three
39:51
Speaker 3: rapid fat loss days per week. And say that I
39:53
Speaker 3: was able to induce a 1500 calorie deficit on those days.
39:56
Speaker 3: So three days per week, I induced a 1500 calorie deficit.
39:59
Speaker 3: That's 4500 calories. So we're looking at one and a
40:01
Speaker 3: third pound of fat loss or even more.
40:04
Speaker 2: So much to think about. I mean, I love both approaches.
40:07
Speaker 2: And just to wrap this up, because I don't want
40:10
Speaker 2: this to get missed. I'm loving the adaptable low energy availability,
40:17
Speaker 2: mainly because The women coming in to a lot of
40:21
Speaker 2: my groups are terrified of low energy availability. Like after
40:26
Speaker 2: two days being in a diet, I'm feeling really low energy.
40:29
Speaker 2: I think I'm in LEA. And that's a hard conversation too,
40:35
Speaker 2: because we have to be in low energy to lose weight, right?
40:39
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, but I think we have to delineate between
40:42
Speaker 3: energy balance and an energy deficit and low energy availability.
40:45
Speaker 3: So if you would let me explain the two. So
40:48
Speaker 3: energy balance is calories in versus calories out. So if
40:50
Speaker 3: you're in an energy deficit, you're essentially spending more energy
40:53
Speaker 3: than you're consuming. And that's just colloquial. We know calories
40:56
Speaker 3: in versus calories out. Low energy availability is a knockdown
40:59
Speaker 3: effect where you are under an energy availability threshold. And initially,
41:02
Speaker 3: Lauchs and colleagues had termed that 30 kcal per kilogram
41:05
Speaker 3: of fat-free mass. So the calculation for low energy availability is...
41:09
Speaker 3: You take your exercise energy expenditure and you divide it
41:13
Speaker 3: over your amount of fat-free mass. How many kcals per
41:17
Speaker 3: kilogram of fat-free mass do you... So it's only muscle
41:19
Speaker 3: metabolism and it's only exercise. Most people, A, are not
41:22
Speaker 3: burning enough in exercise to really be in low energy
41:24
Speaker 3: availability unless they're an endurance athlete. They're doing copious amounts
41:27
Speaker 3: of activity Really, when we come to resistance training, if
41:29
Speaker 3: you look at the literature, there's a great study, I believe,
41:31
Speaker 3: by Little or Lytle and colleagues that looks at the
41:35
Speaker 3: energy expenditure of an exercise session. And for women, it's
41:37
Speaker 3: around 1.6 to 2 calories per minute. Because remember, resistance
41:40
Speaker 3: training is an intermittent activity. You rest more than you train.
41:43
Speaker 3: Think about it logically. You're taking two, three minutes rest
41:46
Speaker 3: or even 90 seconds. Your actual exercise durations of your
41:49
Speaker 3: contractions are much less.
41:50
Speaker 2: A lot of calories.
41:50
Speaker 3: Yeah. Not a lot, but endurance athletes can really rack
41:53
Speaker 3: it up. So Haley, someone like yourself or Mickey, both
41:54
Speaker 3: of you guys would be more susceptible to low energy availability.
41:56
Speaker 3: And we see that in the endurance literature. We don't
41:58
Speaker 3: see that as much in the resisting training, except is
42:00
Speaker 3: the caveat here. If you look at female bodybuilding contest prep,
42:04
Speaker 3: when you're the combination of very low body fat and
42:07
Speaker 3: very low energy intake for the amount of muscle that
42:09
Speaker 3: you have leads to low energy availability, but it's over
42:12
Speaker 3: a sustained period of time. First and foremost, we don't
42:14
Speaker 3: really see harmful effects. Mickey, you could speak on this
42:16
Speaker 3: better than I can, but Jose Arreta is actually doing
42:18
Speaker 3: studies looking at what are the effects on muscle metabolism,
42:21
Speaker 3: on muscle protein synthetic rates of short stints at low
42:24
Speaker 3: energy availability. And we're seeing no knockdown effect on muscle.
42:27
Speaker 3: We're seeing no knockdown effect on mitochondrial changes. So that
42:31
Speaker 3: would be what we would term adaptable LEA. To be
42:34
Speaker 3: in true low energy availability, you will feel it. You
42:37
Speaker 3: will have cognitive issues.
42:39
Speaker 2: Oh, I've felt it before.
42:41
Speaker 3: It sucks. The first leading indicator is usually menstrual cycle irregularity.
42:45
Speaker 3: So once you start seeing, you're not having between a
42:47
Speaker 3: 21 to 35 day cycle and you start extending out
42:50
Speaker 3: to oligo amenorrhea, so 45 days, where you start seeing
42:52
Speaker 3: you're missing multiple cycles and amenorrhea in and of itself
42:55
Speaker 3: would be termed or would be classified as as three
42:58
Speaker 3: months or more, three cycles or more without your menstrual cycle,
43:01
Speaker 3: you're in low energy availability. Now, the caveat here is
43:03
Speaker 3: that psychological stress can actually knock down your HBO access.
43:06
Speaker 3: It can cause amenorrhea. But in most cases, for very
43:10
Speaker 3: active women, under-consuming calories, under-fueling themselves. So when I talk
43:14
Speaker 3: about it's not being in an energy deficit, you are
43:15
Speaker 3: under-fueling yourself for the amount of activity, exercise, and body
43:18
Speaker 3: fat percentage and muscle mass that you have. That would
43:21
Speaker 3: be low energy availability. Most women, if you have excess adiposity,
43:24
Speaker 3: you're skinny fat. and you're in an energy deficit, and
43:27
Speaker 3: you're not losing, say, more than one pound per week,
43:29
Speaker 3: you're not an LEA.
43:30
Speaker 2: Okay.
43:31
Speaker 3: Yeah.
43:32
Speaker 1: And I will just say, it's that people hear a term,
43:36
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, that is me. That LEA, I
43:39
Speaker 1: want to avoid that.
43:40
Speaker 2: We love to identify with a term.
43:42
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Sorry, Hayley, you go.
43:44
Speaker 2: No, I was just going to say, and that is
43:47
Speaker 2: the difference right there, is that the majority of women,
43:52
Speaker 2: at least that I'm working with, are not... endurance athletes,
43:56
Speaker 2: some of them are, but not the majority by far,
43:59
Speaker 2: not the majority. They're work exercising for maybe 30 to
44:04
Speaker 2: 60 minutes, most days, three to six days a week. They're,
44:10
Speaker 2: if they're not in this aggressive deficit for, for weeks
44:13
Speaker 2: or there it's that, that, um, energy balance, really under
44:18
Speaker 2: eating over exercising that applies to endurance athletes, elite athletes
44:23
Speaker 2: and I felt that on a couple of these, a
44:26
Speaker 2: little bit on these rides of the last few months
44:30
Speaker 2: from what I've been doing just because I'm not used
44:34
Speaker 2: to training this much anymore. And I wasn't intaking the
44:37
Speaker 2: food because I'm sitting up in my attic doing work
44:42
Speaker 2: all the time. And so it was really hard for me.
44:45
Speaker 2: And I definitely... No, I mean, I've had times in
44:48
Speaker 2: my life where I felt that way, but on average
44:51
Speaker 2: for the average female midlife that has some, most women
44:56
Speaker 2: are coming that maybe have 10 to 30 pounds, maybe
45:00
Speaker 2: 40 pounds to lose. They're only exercising most days, but
45:04
Speaker 2: not every day. And they're exercising for about 30 to
45:08
Speaker 2: 60 minutes, probably don't have to worry about low energy availability.
45:13
Speaker 3: In complete agreement. And it's very similar to overtraining syndrome.
45:17
Speaker 3: People say that all the time. If you actually look
45:18
Speaker 3: in the clinical literature on that, you have more of
45:20
Speaker 3: a likelihood of getting struck by lightning than you do
45:22
Speaker 3: overtraining syndrome, especially from a resistance training perspective.
45:25
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the resistance training, yeah.
45:27
Speaker 2: I mean, as you said, the calories, it's not a lot.
45:30
Speaker 2: It's not a lot. But that's not why we do it.
45:34
Speaker 2: So moving on to spot reduction, and we're for sure
45:38
Speaker 2: going to need a part two.
45:41
Speaker 3: This is going to be a long one.
45:42
Speaker 2: There's a lot of nuance. This is question number three. Okay,
45:46
Speaker 2: go ahead. Spot reduction. I know, Mickey, you have recommended
45:52
Speaker 2: Brandon or you've referred to Brandon on some of our courses.
45:56
Speaker 2: And this is the question that always gets brought up.
45:58
Speaker 2: So the nuances and everything, because again, I don't want
46:01
Speaker 2: women to just hear and be like, okay, cool. I'm
46:03
Speaker 2: spot reducing. And where's your program, Haley, that spot reduces...
46:09
Speaker 2: X insert, whatever you want. So Brandon, tell us what
46:14
Speaker 2: that is. Um, with as, as far as how you
46:19
Speaker 2: see it, what you do with it, what you know
46:21
Speaker 2: about it, go ahead. You've got, we want to hear
46:25
Speaker 2: it all.
46:26
Speaker 3: All right. So, um, if you, uh, Haley, you had
46:28
Speaker 3: asked me off air, um, what was a, maybe a controversial, um,
46:32
Speaker 3: take that I had or something that I just didn't
46:33
Speaker 3: agree with the industry on. And this is one of
46:35
Speaker 3: my primary ones. It's spot reduction. And I think that
46:37
Speaker 3: there's been a mis-extrapolation of the research and a misinterpretation.
46:41
Speaker 3: And I also think that definitionally, we're looking at two
46:44
Speaker 3: different things. So if you were to ask most people
46:46
Speaker 3: in the fitness industry, what spot reduction is, they would
46:49
Speaker 3: tell you, or they would probably spout out something to
46:51
Speaker 3: the effect that you can target and lose fat from
46:53
Speaker 3: one specific area by simply exercising that area. So a
46:56
Speaker 3: great example is if you do more crunches, you'll lose
46:59
Speaker 3: belly fat. Or if you do enough tricep extensions, you'll
47:02
Speaker 3: lose fat on the back of your arms. And I
47:04
Speaker 3: will tell this straight up, that version of spot reduction
47:07
Speaker 3: is still a myth. You're not going to sit up
47:09
Speaker 3: your way to a slimmer stomach. You're not going to
47:10
Speaker 3: do a single exercise in isolation enough to produce noticeable
47:15
Speaker 3: fat loss. Now, how I actually define spot reduction based
47:18
Speaker 3: on the clinical literature is differently than most. And I
47:20
Speaker 3: define spot reduction as the potential to preferentially lose body
47:24
Speaker 3: fat from a specific area by combining localized resistance training
47:27
Speaker 3: for that region. So say for the arms or for
47:29
Speaker 3: the abdomen, and then combining that with cardio after and
47:34
Speaker 3: making sure that you have a sustained calorie deficit. And
47:36
Speaker 3: I think that's where it really gets delineated because a
47:39
Speaker 3: lot of people are looking at the old literature. So
47:41
Speaker 3: for instance, if you look at the original studies on this,
47:44
Speaker 3: it's in the 60s and 70s, and most of them
47:46
Speaker 3: were examining isolated resistance exercises that fail to demonstrate meaningful
47:51
Speaker 3: fat loss in that area. So a great example of
47:53
Speaker 3: this is there was a study on tennis players, essentially,
47:57
Speaker 3: and they were looking at the trained arm or it
47:59
Speaker 3: wasn't trained, but essentially the arm that they played on
48:01
Speaker 3: versus the other arm. And all they found was that
48:03
Speaker 3: The arm that was trained had more muscle mass, but
48:06
Speaker 3: the same amount of subcutaneous body fat. The same thing
48:08
Speaker 3: can be said. They did a massive crunch study back
48:11
Speaker 3: in the day. It was like 2010. And they found
48:13
Speaker 3: that even with like 30 minutes of crunching per day,
48:16
Speaker 3: they were not losing preferential abdominal fat. Now, if they
48:18
Speaker 3: were able to sustain a deficit, they were able to
48:20
Speaker 3: lose some type of fat. Now, when it comes to
48:23
Speaker 3: actual spot reduction, when we actually look at some of
48:27
Speaker 3: the more updated literature, we see that we actually can
48:29
Speaker 3: spot reduce, but it takes a multimodal approach to this.
48:33
Speaker 3: And so that's really where my approach or my stance
48:37
Speaker 3: on this has changed because I think that a lot of...
48:39
Speaker 3: There's a confounder here. A lot of the people that
48:42
Speaker 3: say just colloquially, spot reduction is a myth, they are
48:45
Speaker 3: referring to old literature first and foremost. And secondarily, they
48:49
Speaker 3: have not looked into the most recent literature. So I'll
48:51
Speaker 3: give you guys a couple of examples of some of
48:53
Speaker 3: the limitations of the early research and why I don't
48:56
Speaker 3: share the same perspective as many people in the space.
48:58
Speaker 3: So first and foremost, the... Most of the literature that
49:01
Speaker 3: came in the 60s, 70s, early 2000s, they only tested
49:04
Speaker 3: one type of exercise. So that was usually high repetition,
49:06
Speaker 3: localized resistance training like crunches or unilateral training. They would
49:09
Speaker 3: train one arm. They would train one leg. They didn't
49:12
Speaker 3: combine that localized resistance training with aerobic exercise. The other
49:15
Speaker 3: thing is we have to realize what is going on
49:17
Speaker 3: from a physiological perspective. Let's talk about fat loss physiology.
49:20
Speaker 3: If you are exercising a limb, you're only mobilizing fat.
49:23
Speaker 3: So you're getting fat out of fat cells. So essentially
49:25
Speaker 3: the process of lipolysis, which is breaking stored fat in
49:28
Speaker 3: the form of triglyceride down into free fatty acids and
49:32
Speaker 3: a glycerol backbone, that can happen from resistance training in
49:35
Speaker 3: and of itself. But if you have nothing to oxidize,
49:38
Speaker 3: to transport and oxidize those free fatty acids, you can't
49:41
Speaker 3: lose fat. You've just liberated fat that's going to get
49:43
Speaker 3: restored through a process called reesterification. And then the other
49:47
Speaker 3: thing is, if you look at the original research, none
49:49
Speaker 3: of it had dietary control. They let people eat their
49:51
Speaker 3: regular diet. And here's the thing. A lot of these
49:53
Speaker 3: were done on untrained people. And we know just working
49:55
Speaker 3: in practice, and we can see in the literature, for
49:57
Speaker 3: most people that have began exercising, many are going to
50:01
Speaker 3: unconsciously increase their food intake. So they're going to get
50:03
Speaker 3: into a surplus. And no matter what you're doing, whether
50:05
Speaker 3: you're doing crunches for all day, or you're doing tricep kickbacks,
50:09
Speaker 3: you know, until the cows come home, if you're in
50:10
Speaker 3: an energy surplus, you're not losing body fat. So it
50:13
Speaker 3: doesn't matter. So really when it comes down to it,
50:15
Speaker 3: I think that many people have misunderstood the spot reduction,
50:20
Speaker 3: like what it is from a myth perspective. And then
50:22
Speaker 3: also what I find with a lot of individuals is
50:24
Speaker 3: that they don't understand fat loss physiology. So they don't
50:26
Speaker 3: actually don't know the process in which the body needs
50:28
Speaker 3: to go through to burn fat. Cause they think about fat,
50:31
Speaker 3: like it just gets burnt and that's really not the
50:33
Speaker 3: process it goes through. There's this three steps, three-step process.
50:36
Speaker 3: which includes lipolysis, transport, and oxidation. And so really what
50:40
Speaker 3: we need to do, and this applies to every single context,
50:43
Speaker 3: any body fat that you want to lose, you have
50:45
Speaker 3: to go through this process. You need to go through lipolysis,
50:47
Speaker 3: which is breaking fat out of a fat cell. And
50:49
Speaker 3: that is going to be stimulated through catecholamine release, which
50:52
Speaker 3: is noradrenaline and adrenaline. And the things that do that
50:56
Speaker 3: are exercise, especially high intensity exercise. So if you do
50:58
Speaker 3: resistance training or HIIT training, a calorie deficit is going
51:00
Speaker 3: to increase catecholamine release. And then certain stimulants, you can
51:03
Speaker 3: use caffeine or There's other central nervous stimulants that you
51:05
Speaker 3: can use that are going to increase catecholamide release. All
51:09
Speaker 3: that's doing is getting fat into the bloodstream. Now, what
51:11
Speaker 3: we have to realize is that does not mean that
51:13
Speaker 3: you're losing fat in that area. You have to go
51:15
Speaker 3: through a second process, which is called transport, which is
51:17
Speaker 3: where you take those free fatty acids, you take them
51:20
Speaker 3: through the bloodstream, and then you deliver them to the
51:22
Speaker 3: oxidation process. And one way that we increase blood flow
51:25
Speaker 3: is through training, through exercise. It increases localized blood flow.
51:29
Speaker 3: So if you get a local contraction, say that you
51:30
Speaker 3: want to burn fat in your abdomen, you're going to
51:32
Speaker 3: have to work out that area to increase blood flow,
51:34
Speaker 3: especially because if you especially look at the low abdominals
51:37
Speaker 3: where a lot of men hold visceral adiposity, that is
51:39
Speaker 3: an area with really poor blood flow. It's not really hot.
51:42
Speaker 3: It's not other areas like your limbs, which are usually
51:44
Speaker 3: like veiny and they have good vasculature and good blood flow.
51:49
Speaker 3: So you need to do exercise to transport those nutrients.
51:51
Speaker 3: And then you have to go through fatty acid oxidation
51:53
Speaker 3: or beta oxidation. And that is where fatty acids are
51:56
Speaker 3: delivered into a tissue like skeletal muscle. And the way
52:00
Speaker 3: to do that The whole process is going to require
52:03
Speaker 3: exercise to liberate that or supplementation. Then you're going to
52:06
Speaker 3: have to do something like low-intensity aerobic activity to burn
52:08
Speaker 3: off those free fatty acids to be able to actually
52:10
Speaker 3: lose fat. So I think that a lot of people
52:12
Speaker 3: don't understand the actual full process and what it actually takes.
52:16
Speaker 3: And we have updated literature that actually looks at the
52:20
Speaker 3: process of spot reduction and how using a multimodal approach
52:24
Speaker 3: can actually elicit spot reduction. Now, before I go into that,
52:27
Speaker 3: I want to throw it back to you guys and
52:29
Speaker 3: see if you have any questions regarding that.
52:31
Speaker 2: I've got a whole bunch, but we don't have time
52:32
Speaker 2: for all of.
52:35
Speaker 3: Mine.
52:35
Speaker 2: Vicky, go ahead.
52:36
Speaker 1: All I will say is I've learned so much from
52:39
Speaker 1: Brandon about the whole spot reduction process. And Brandon and
52:44
Speaker 1: I have had some back and forths because I guess
52:46
Speaker 1: it's not a caveat, but it's something just to consider
52:49
Speaker 1: that if you're someone who has lipoedema, which is fat
52:53
Speaker 1: storage that is sort of inflamed fat tissue, typically in
52:57
Speaker 1: the lower limbs, um, that is fibrotic. And a lot
53:01
Speaker 1: of women, I say a lot of women, but up
53:03
Speaker 1: to 10% of women do have lipoedema and, and it's very,
53:08
Speaker 1: that is a different condition and doesn't, it may respond.
53:11
Speaker 1: It doesn't respond the same way as normal fat tissue
53:14
Speaker 1: does to sort of losing body fat. Um, and the
53:18
Speaker 1: one thing that I will add, um, I'm sure Brandon
53:21
Speaker 1: would have, um, would say it is that it's like
53:24
Speaker 1: high intensity work post X post the resistance exercise, like
53:29
Speaker 1: won't allow for that same sort of spot reduction effect
53:32
Speaker 1: because it, you know, increases, increases glucose in the, in
53:38
Speaker 1: the bloodstream and will suppress that fat oxidation. So it
53:41
Speaker 1: has to be low intensity exercise, but I of course
53:44
Speaker 1: learned that from Brandon as well.
53:46
Speaker 2: Yes. I, okay. I love that delineation so that it,
53:51
Speaker 2: cause that could get confusing too with the intensity type,
53:55
Speaker 2: but yeah, Okay, so if we're to, like I said,
54:00
Speaker 2: I would love to invite you both back on because
54:02
Speaker 2: I feel like we barely got through a great conversation
54:06
Speaker 2: and I feel like we nailed all of these big issues.
54:09
Speaker 2: But man, I'd love to have a whole other two
54:13
Speaker 2: hours with you.
54:14
Speaker 3: Consider it done.
54:16
Speaker 2: We'll make it happen. So if we were to wrap
54:19
Speaker 2: this up and we're talking about, obviously, I only care
54:22
Speaker 2: about midlife women in this phase. and they're listening to
54:27
Speaker 2: this podcast and they're like, okay, cool. Some great points.
54:32
Speaker 2: They're probably following all of us anyways, but kind of
54:36
Speaker 2: still feel like where, what, where do they start? Like what, what,
54:42
Speaker 2: where do they start and where do they go without
54:45
Speaker 2: feeling overwhelmed as a midlife female that desperately wants to results?
54:52
Speaker 2: And let's just go for body composition because I know
54:55
Speaker 2: everyone wants muscle, but most of the women that are
54:58
Speaker 2: coming to us probably want a little bit of fat
55:01
Speaker 2: loss as well.
55:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. So in the context of spot reduction, that's
55:04
Speaker 3: not going to be the first lever that I pull.
55:07
Speaker 3: That is something that is most applicable for people once
55:09
Speaker 3: they get leaner and they also have to already induced
55:11
Speaker 3: and sustain a calorie deficit. So the first thing I'm doing,
55:13
Speaker 3: I'm a nutritionist first and foremost, so I take a
55:15
Speaker 3: food first approach. So first thing we have to dial
55:17
Speaker 3: in your nutrition. We have to create an effective calorie
55:20
Speaker 3: deficit And I like really using the scientific method. I
55:23
Speaker 3: like isolating each variable by itself to engage someone's response.
55:27
Speaker 3: So before I do anything, and we're just going for
55:29
Speaker 3: the goal of fat loss, before we put the bat
55:31
Speaker 3: wings on the underarms under the scope or your belly fat,
55:37
Speaker 3: whatever it may be, we're going to focus on creating
55:39
Speaker 3: a calorie deficit before we do cardio, before we do
55:41
Speaker 3: step count or supplementation. Once that deficit is established, then
55:44
Speaker 3: I start layering in other principles. So first and foremost,
55:46
Speaker 3: I'm going to get that person to tell me what
55:48
Speaker 3: are the stubborn areas that you want to work on?
55:51
Speaker 3: And if they have a specific area that they want
55:53
Speaker 3: to improve, I have to make sure that they're training
55:55
Speaker 3: it directly. And it's going to be in a very
55:56
Speaker 3: specific way, but I'll just give you a broad-based overview.
55:59
Speaker 3: If it's their midsection, they want a tighter abdominal, they
56:01
Speaker 3: want tighter abs and leaner abs, we're going to do
56:03
Speaker 3: direct abdominal training. If it's their triceps, which a lot
56:06
Speaker 3: of women tell me, so that's why I'm giving that
56:07
Speaker 3: specific example, we're going to make sure that they're progressively
56:09
Speaker 3: training their triceps. And if it's their low back, we're
56:11
Speaker 3: going to do back extensions and things of that sort. Now,
56:13
Speaker 3: the thing is that I'm using resistance training with the
56:16
Speaker 3: goal of providing a localized stimulus that increases blood flow
56:19
Speaker 3: to that area and helps that fat mobilization process. It's
56:22
Speaker 3: going to turn on that lipolysis process. So what I'm
56:24
Speaker 3: trying to do is just get fat out of that
56:26
Speaker 3: fat area. Obviously, if you have excess fat in your
56:28
Speaker 3: low back, your low abs, on your triceps, on the
56:30
Speaker 3: back of your arms, we need to get that out.
56:33
Speaker 3: So first and foremost, we're trying to liberate that. And
56:34
Speaker 3: then right after that, we're going to go into some
56:36
Speaker 3: steady state cardio. And really what we're doing is looking,
56:39
Speaker 3: like Mickey had mentioned, the different modalities from an energetic
56:42
Speaker 3: perspective of what energy substrate is he using and also
56:46
Speaker 3: If we look like bioenergetics, like what is he doing?
56:48
Speaker 3: Resistant training, high intensity. So it's working off aerobic metabolism,
56:51
Speaker 3: but it's going to have that increase in catecholamines, which
56:53
Speaker 3: are going to bind to those receptors and liberate free
56:55
Speaker 3: fatty acids from that fat storage. Then we're going to
56:58
Speaker 3: follow that with low intensity exercise because it relies on
57:01
Speaker 3: fat metabolism in and of itself. So that's going to help.
57:03
Speaker 3: We've already mobilized fat out of the fat cell during
57:05
Speaker 3: the resistant training session. And then we're going to use
57:08
Speaker 3: that lower intensity exercise to burn off those free fatty
57:11
Speaker 3: acids while they're in circulation. Now, we're going to do
57:15
Speaker 3: that combination, but I have many, you know, we would
57:17
Speaker 3: have to really get into nuances, like all the approaches
57:19
Speaker 3: that I take, but really if I was to say, Hey,
57:21
Speaker 3: what is the basic thing? Let's get you in an
57:22
Speaker 3: energy deficit. Make sure that you're actually losing that effectively. Secondarily,
57:26
Speaker 3: I'm going to tack on some extra work at the
57:28
Speaker 3: end of your session to increase localized blood flow to
57:31
Speaker 3: that area and make sure that we're burning off. So
57:33
Speaker 3: I will do this actually with a high frequency. This
57:35
Speaker 3: is not going to be a once per week that
57:36
Speaker 3: we're hitting your say glutes for a woman. It's not
57:38
Speaker 3: gonna be once a week that we're doing this. I
57:40
Speaker 3: will do some type of isolation type exercise with a
57:42
Speaker 3: very high breath rate, very high rep ranges to increase
57:45
Speaker 3: blood flow and vasodilation to that area. So it could be,
57:48
Speaker 3: I'll give you an example, glute bridges. If a woman
57:51
Speaker 3: has extra fat off them and she wants to lose
57:54
Speaker 3: fat in the area, we're going to do high rep
57:55
Speaker 3: glute bridges. And, you know, we're talking 50 reps sometimes.
57:58
Speaker 3: And so we're going to do a few sets of that.
58:00
Speaker 3: We're going to increase localized blood flow to that area.
58:02
Speaker 3: If we're going to increase that mobilization from those fatty
58:05
Speaker 3: acids in the glute tissue, the gluteal, you know, femoral area.
58:08
Speaker 3: And then right after that, we're going to go do
58:10
Speaker 3: some cardio. And we're going to do that on a
58:11
Speaker 3: frequent basis. I also have some strategies that we have
58:14
Speaker 3: to get into because they're very nuanced and I don't
58:15
Speaker 3: want to just throw them out there, but there's specific supplementation.
58:18
Speaker 3: There's some facet training type of modalities that I utilize.
58:21
Speaker 3: These are all things that I've seen work in practice.
58:22
Speaker 3: And you can even look, I have transformations where I've
58:24
Speaker 3: literally done this, where I've done it in practice. And
58:27
Speaker 3: this all comes from in the trenches. I read the literature,
58:29
Speaker 3: but it really came from me testing these things with
58:32
Speaker 3: myself and with other clients and then going back into
58:35
Speaker 3: the literature to find the physiology to reinforce it. So
58:38
Speaker 3: this is not just like an evidence-based perspective, but it's also, hey,
58:40
Speaker 3: I have clients that come to me that are super
58:42
Speaker 3: self-conscious about the fat under their arms or their glute
58:45
Speaker 3: fat or their low back fat. I had to find
58:47
Speaker 3: a solution. And that's why I take a different stance
58:49
Speaker 3: than others in this industry. It also took me an
58:51
Speaker 3: immense amount of time to comb through the literature and
58:53
Speaker 3: actually get a great understanding of it and then break
58:56
Speaker 3: this all down in a simple fashion. Really, when someone's
58:58
Speaker 3: able to explain something simply, it's because they know it
59:00
Speaker 3: to an extent that most people can't conceptualize.
59:03
Speaker 2: Okay, Mickey, your take. And then I want to cover
59:05
Speaker 2: one question at the end of, I'm barely eating enough,
59:09
Speaker 2: but I'm not losing weight. And what your thoughts are
59:12
Speaker 2: on that question to end.
59:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. And in fact, Hayley, I think
59:16
Speaker 1: I could probably encompass that question with my answer to
59:20
Speaker 1: the previous question that you had, because I just... I
59:23
Speaker 1: stepped back and think, I just thought really big picture.
59:26
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think they're doing the
59:28
Speaker 1: right thing. So they hear the problems that everyone has,
59:31
Speaker 1: that they need to eat more protein, that they need
59:32
Speaker 1: to have more fiber. They have to start exercising more.
59:35
Speaker 1: And these are all likely true, but to add nuance
59:38
Speaker 1: and context, you actually have to think about yourself and
59:40
Speaker 1: have awareness of your own habits and behavior. So my
59:45
Speaker 1: almost very first thing that I like people to do is,
59:48
Speaker 1: it's really simple, but can you just keep a food
59:51
Speaker 1: diary for three days? Like, and actually write down everything
59:54
Speaker 1: you eat at the time that you're eating it, how
59:57
Speaker 1: you're feeling when you eat it, how full you feel,
1:00:00
Speaker 1: how hungry you are going in, how full you feel
1:00:03
Speaker 1: going out, and get them to have some awareness of
1:00:06
Speaker 1: actually what they're doing on the food front, because sometimes
1:00:10
Speaker 1: they're trying to solve a problem that isn't really there.
1:00:12
Speaker 1: but they think that what they need to do is
1:00:15
Speaker 1: have better snack options at three o'clock because they keep
1:00:18
Speaker 1: diving into the chocolate. Whereas actually what they need to
1:00:21
Speaker 1: do is probably eat more earlier in the day so
1:00:23
Speaker 1: they're not needing a snack at three o'clock. And it's
1:00:25
Speaker 1: not until we bring this awareness to their habits and
1:00:29
Speaker 1: behaviors that we actually are able to then sort of
1:00:33
Speaker 1: pinpoint how to implement all of the best practice stuff
1:00:37
Speaker 1: that we talk about all of the time with people.
1:00:39
Speaker 1: So that was sort of my take on on your question, Hayley.
1:00:43
Speaker 1: And I think that also probably answers that your last
1:00:47
Speaker 1: question as well. So, and I know that sounds like
1:00:50
Speaker 1: people get impatient with change. They just want the answer immediately,
1:00:55
Speaker 1: but you just don't know if that's correct for you
1:00:58
Speaker 1: and your situation until you're aware. And as we know
1:01:01
Speaker 1: from the literature, we might be aware of 10% of
1:01:04
Speaker 1: our food decisions because we run on autopilot all of
1:01:08
Speaker 1: the time. Like the things that you just aren't aware
1:01:11
Speaker 1: that you're doing are um, is, is way more than
1:01:14
Speaker 1: those sort of most deliberate and conscious decision decisions you
1:01:17
Speaker 1: make around food.
1:01:18
Speaker 2: Wow.
1:01:19
Speaker 1: Okay.
1:01:19
Speaker 2: Well, what a way to wrap it up. Brandon, Mickey,
1:01:21
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining us on the body
1:01:23
Speaker 2: pod for this round table discussion. I have loved it.
1:01:27
Speaker 2: And I really hope that there is another one in
1:01:30
Speaker 2: the future.
1:01:32
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
1:01:34
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, please
1:01:37
Speaker 2: consider giving us a five-star rating and sharing the BodyPod
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Speaker 2: with your friends.