Latest / Fit for Hiking / Ep. 123 Beyond the Before & After: From Transformation to Maintenance for Lasting Results
Transcript
- Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a long time fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. In combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential and become inspired to live your most vibrant life. You're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for hiking podcast. Hello everyone! Welcome back to the fit for Hiking podcast. So glad to have you here. My name is Brady. Um, I have a fun topic for us to dive into today, and this is something that is a really big difference maker between getting fitness results and actually keeping them right, and who doesn't want to actually maintain the results that they achieve, right. So this is a big deal. We need to understand this and kind of wrap our minds around this before we even head into a phase of transforming or cutting or getting to a place where you're super, super happy with your physique. You need to understand the difference between the transformation and the maintenance. Okay, because we have to think long term here. We got to look at the long game beyond the before and after, right? Because really, it doesn't matter that much if we can get an epic result if we can't keep it. Okay. So let's talk about this because we can't be in transformation forever. We have to be able to move from this place of like working our asses off to get to the place where we want to be physique wise, and then actually keeping it without losing that progress. So if you've ever kind of crushed a transformation or you've seen awesome results, maybe lost 10 to £20, but then you backslid afterward, this one is for you. This is to help you not backslide. Okay. Um, so let's talk about it. There's a big issue with some of these kind of all out diets and, um, fitness programs similar to things like 75 hard or these extreme diets because they don't have any sort of exit strategy. They're just intense and short lived and honestly not sustainable long term. So we need to look at how can we actually find something that is doable long term and then maintain it? Because honestly, a bigger mark of success is not someone who loses £20 in a month or two. Like that doesn't tell me a whole lot. What tells me a whole lot is if you've kept it off five years later, that is an amazing success metric. Okay. And that is a huge part of what we focus on in Mountain Metabolic coaching is how do we move to maintenance. How do we do this long term? Do we have the habits in place? Have we supported the metabolism properly throughout the transformation phase, and can we move to maintenance in a seamless way so that you can actually maintain the results? So let's get into this so you can understand the purpose of both the transformation phase and the maintenance phase, and how to move between them without undoing your progress. Okay. So let's talk about what is a transformation or a cut phase. If you're hearing me say those words and you're kind of like, what exactly is that? It's basically a period of intentional body composition change. So you're either trying to be in a calorie deficit to lose body fat and get toned, get leaner, or you're trying to eat in a calorie surplus and lift in a way that allows you to maybe add weight, add muscle mass, depending on what your goals are. So that's why I say a transformation instead of just a cut, because some people are trying to gain muscle. That's what I'm trying to do right now. I'm actually trying to add muscle to my body instead of trying to lose weight. So you might have different goals than somebody else listening to this very same episode. So let's just call it a transformation phase versus a cut. But it can go either way. Either you're focusing on fat loss, toning up, or you're focusing on muscle gain. So either way, you're trying to reach a visual or physical goal that you've had for a while, and you're intentionally in a phase of focusing on this. And this is going to be kind of like a high focus. You can have more structure, a little bit less flexibility, and you're in this like grind mode where you're really pushing yourself. You're keeping track of things and you're chasing progress in an intentional way. So when do you want to do this? You need to make sure that you have the capacity to dial in and really focus. Because I've seen this happen way too many times, where people like say that they want the result, but they don't have the capacity, or they're not making the capacity to do it right, because we're always going to be busy. But if you don't have like the mental capacity, and I would definitely go back and listen to one of our previous episodes about how to know if you're ready to lock in. Okay. I think it was literally our last episode, so go back and listen to that one. Um, it's so helpful about just how to lock in, how to know if you're ready to lock in and actually begin a transformation phase, because just saying that you want to do it is not enough. You need to be mentally and physically ready and create an environment where you can be successful. Um, it's going to require a higher level of precision with tracking Wayne Foods. Eating outlets. Less treats. More planning, more trips to the gym or workouts at home, whatever that looks like. So you need to be prepared for that. Because if you want the result, you have to be willing to do what's going to reach that result, right? So that's how you know, when you're ready to do it is when you're ready to sacrifice and and do all of those things. So here's what you need to know about going into a transformation or a cut phase. Your fitness is not necessarily going to have to change that much from when you're at maintenance, but you will need to be extremely meticulous with your nutrition. Okay, so I'm not saying this to someone who's like, I'm just a beginner. I don't work out at all. Yes, if you are coming into this and you're not doing anything or you're working out like once or twice a week, your fitness will need to change. I'm talking about the person who's like, maintaining right now and you're working out maybe 3 to 5 times a week already. Okay, so with that, your your fitness isn't really going to need to change that much. Meaning you're not going to have to ramp up and do all this cardio. That's a really big misconception with cutting or trying to lose weight or get leaner is that you're going to have to be doing all this cardio. When my clients are in cut phases, we actually don't typically add any cardio because cardio is just going to make you hungrier. It's going to give you this mindset of like, well, I work so hard, I burn all those calories, so it's fine if I just like, add some extra treats here and there. And that's going to make it really, really hard to adhere to your calorie targets, which are going to be the biggest difference maker between maintaining and actually seeing progress when it comes to weight loss or fat loss. Okay, so your nutrition is going to be the biggest thing that's going to make or break your success with a cut or a bulk, like depending on whether you're trying to lose weight or gain weight in a transformation, your nutrition has to be pretty on point. Otherwise, you're not going to really see much in the way of different results from what you've been doing. Yes, you need to have those basics of like, you're you're working out 3 to 5 times a week. You have proper strength programming that should already be in place, and then you're kind of just adding in the layer of really dialing in your nutrition as far as a protein goal and a calorie goal. So some of the risks is when you're in a transformation phase, especially weight loss related, you will feel more tired. You're not taking in as much energy, right? You're an energy deficit by definition. So you're you're going to feel more tired. You're going to feel more hungry. I think it's kind of a myth that, like, you should never have to be hungry to lose weight if you're eating properly. As far as like eating for satiety, you're eating high volume foods, lots of micronutrients, lots of fiber, lots of protein. Yes, you can mitigate a lot of the hunger symptoms by eating properly. However, the longer you're in a deficit and the more intense you go in that deficit, yes, you are going to be hungry. Sometimes you'll have to go to bed hungry. That's just kind of how it is. So just know that that is kind of a normal side effect. You can definitely minimize some of that with how you're eating. But in general there will be times where you are a bit hungry. Um, you're also going to potentially see a bit of metabolic adaptation. This is normal. When you lose weight, your metabolism will drop down slightly because as you are a smaller person, you just will need less calories in general. But what we want to minimize here is a massive shift. We don't want to see big hormone shifts by doing things drastically or taking extremes. That's why doing a proper transformation or cut phase is so, so important in how you structure it with your workouts and your nutrition, because you want to minimize the amount of metabolic adaptation. And we don't want to see a ton of changes to the hormones. You can also reach a place of mental burnout if this is prolonged. So I'm a big fan of kind of the get and get out approach versus like dragging this thing out and kind of sort of being in a cut for like years. And I see this a lot with women. They're like, yeah, I've been trying to lose weight. I've been dieting for like ten years, but they haven't actually been successful because they've never really done it properly and locked in for a short amount of time. If you do this the right way, you shouldn't have to do it forever. And it's going to avoid help. You avoid that mental fatigue in that burnout where you kind of feel like you're always dieting, but you're not really doing it properly. So then you're just spinning your wheels. And I know how sucky that is, because I did it in my 20s for years, and it is not a fun place to be. Let's just say that, okay, so do it properly instead for a short amount of time and just really lock in with it. And then you can avoid doing this thing where you're spinning your wheels for years and years, but you have that mental fatigue of always feeling like you're in a diet. So important thing to note here is that we don't want to live in a fat loss phase forever. Like I was just mentioning, due to the burn out, the metabolic adaptation, diminishing returns, and lack of flexibility to live life. Our goal should not be that we're always dieting, always living in deficit, always living in a fat loss phase. We want to do it properly and then move on to maintenance, which is what we're about to talk about next. So what is a maintenance phase? By definition, this is eating at or around your maintenance calories to sustain result and restore your energy to get to a place where this is just where you hang out all the time and you're not having to strive for any new results. Let me just tell you right now, it is so much easier and more fun to be at maintenance than it is to be in a transformation phase. Yes, transformation is awesome because you're seeing these results, but it's hard, right? You have to make sacrifices and you're having to be more meticulous. You're having to plan more. You're having to track everything really precisely. That's just the reality. And when you move to maintenance, you'll find a lot more flexibility, which is great. And you don't have to work so hard all of the time to maintain. It's a lot easier to just maintain a current body weight than it is to change your body weight. Okay, so the purpose is to kind of. Allow your body to stabilize to find a new set point, to get your metabolism to a good place to maintain, and also get your mindset into a good spot after being in that data set. So what this feels like, it's going to feel like more freedom, more energy. You're going to probably see some improvements in your performance, because it's really hard to hit peers and performance metrics when you are in a deficit because your energy deficient, right? So you're not going to be having your best workouts of your life when you're in a deficit. That's not the goal at that time. The goal is fat loss when you're in that deficit. Um, so it's going to feel a little bit less exciting, but you're also going to be able to see progress in other areas like your performance. Right? So main habit differences is that you're probably going to have to track a little bit less, more freedom to kind of move towards um. Like this intuitive eating style and I definitely recommend this. Some people like tracking for life. They just like having that structure around it. It provides freedom for them mentally. However, I personally like to be able to eat intuitively, but that comes from a place of having tracked for a really long time. So I understand generally what my baselines are, how many calories are in the meals that I'm eating on a general basis, how much protein I'm getting. If I'm having these certain things, I can eyeball it because I tracked right. A lot of people can't intuitively eat successfully for their goals because they've never tracked before, and they have no clue. So I definitely recommend tracking, at least for a little while. Um, probably probably in your transformation phase, you're going to have to if you're going to want to reach a certain level. And then once you are in maintenance and kind of figure out what your maintenance calories look like, what generally makes up your meal proportions to hit those numbers, then you can start to move towards eating more intuitively. You're going to be able to say yes to extra things like the extra dessert or another drink. Maybe you're getting a little bit less steps. Um, you're able to kind of maintain though your protein goal, your workouts, micronutrients, all of those things should really stay steady. Those aren't going to change. You're not going to just going to stop working out now. You're not going to stop prioritizing protein. You're not going to stop trying to eat healthfully and get a good amount of fruits and veggies. Right? All of those things are the same. Really the main difference is going to be your calorie range, and it's not going to be that drastic. Okay. So really you're only going to be shifting your calorie range up about 250 to 500 calories on a daily basis. That's not that much. Okay. So it's not going to be drastic, but you will feel that difference in energy and satiety. Most likely if you've been in a bulk phase, then you're bringing your calories down to maintenance about 250 to 500. And this is where understanding what your baseline calories are to start. Before you even move into a transformation phase, you need to know what your maintenance calories are. Because if you're just eyeballing it or guessing or putting numbers into a tracker, those aren't always going to be super accurate as to what your metabolism has adapted to. I've had people come into mountain metabolic coaching who by trackers, they should be having like 2200 calories on a daily basis to maintain, based on their activity levels, based on their height and weight and things like that. However, they're coming into the program severely under eating, maybe only eating like 1500 calories a day at maintenance. So that changes things because our metabolism metabolisms are so adaptive. So that's where having a coach kind of guide you through this. Like what we do with Mountain Metabolic coaching is so, so helpful at the beginning before you go into a transformation phase. So you're not guessing. So you actually know what you're doing here. And then you can move back to maintenance seamlessly at the end of your transformation. So biggest mindset shifts here is that. Maintenance is still progress. Like maintaining your weight is such a win and I don't feel like enough people talk about that because the average American is gaining so much weight every single year. The average American is gaining a good like 5 to £10 in an average year. That's a lot. So imagine just not doing that. Imagine maintaining your weight. And then ten years from now, how much weight you will have not gained by just simply maintaining. Okay. So maintaining is still a huge win, especially during seasons of like holidays, major stress, big life changes. Having vacations, having things that are crazy in your schedule, having a baby, whatever that looks like. Being able to maintain is very, very valuable. And also, another mindset shift here is moving to intuitive eating. That is a extremely valuable tool to be able to eat intuitively and maintain your weight. So once you get there and have a healthy relationship with food where you're not having to obsess, that is huge. Where you're not having these like I'm on or off my diet. I'm, you know, having to keep certain foods out of the house because I just binge them if they're there. Like, look for those types of metrics of progress. Um, benefits are going to be better workouts. You're going to have more energy. Your metabolism is going to be in a better spot than if you're constantly in a deficit, better sleep, and it's just more sustainable long term to be in maintenance more so than you are in a cut. Okay. So let's talk about how to transition smoothly from cut to maintenance. So if you are in a fat loss phase you're going to want to gradually increase your calories. This is called reverse dieting. And this can be done as slowly as you would like. If you want to really minimize, um, you know, seeing the scale jump up, even if it is mainly from water, it still can be kind of mentally jarring. So I would recommend just going up slowly, maybe 50 calories per week, until you get to that point of being, um, to your maintenance calories. And that kind of depends on what your cut calories look like. So, for instance, if you're trying to lose roughly a half a pound a week, then you're going to have cut down 250 calories from your maintenance. If you're trying to lose a pound a week, then you're going to be looking at 500 calories per per day that you were in the deficit. Okay, so it depends on where you're trying to get back up to, but you want to kind of stair step it so you can go 50 to 100 calories a week, that you're raising that up till you get to your maintenance and where you want to be. Um, so by doing that slowly, you're just going to minimize big spikes in the weight, and it gives your metabolism a chance to adjust to your new set point. Um, you want to focus on maintaining your protein, do not change that. Keep it where it is and maintain your resistance training to keep your lean mass. This is equally important in your cut phase and to maintenance, so you really want to maintain as much muscle as humanly possible while cutting and getting leaner. To keep your basal metabolic rate high and to keep your muscle tone so you actually look toned, right? If you want to look toned, you have to keep the muscle while you're losing the fat. And then as you move to maintenance, that's going to be just as much of a priority. So keep doing those things. Don't change it. Um, you're going to want to really reframe that you're not done. You're just shifting your goals when people are just like, cool, I'm done. I did it all done. That's when they backslide big time. And just like, lose complete progress, you just go right back to where you were. If you don't maintain some of the same habits and keep that mindfulness, um, you're also going to want to track metrics beyond the scale, such as your energy, your mood, strength, confidence, how your clothes are fitting. I also love measurements, body measurements versus just looking at the scale. Okay, so it's not all about the scale. And you might even want to not look at the scale too much during this time because it might go up a little bit. Okay. You're going to want to allow some wiggle room with your weight for it to slightly rise, because you're going to be eating a bit more. So you might have a bit more water retention, and you are increasing calories slightly, so it's normal for it to maybe go up a little bit and then it will just kind of normalize. So as glycogen and hydration normalizes, it's going to go up a bit and then stabilize. This is normal and healthy. And then keep your daily movement like hiking and walks, consistent. You don't want to drastically drop off with anything like that, okay? So again, we're not doing much with the movement side of things, the lifestyle side. Really we're mainly shifting calorie intake, and that's where a lot of people get the whole cut to maintenance thing wrong as they're trying to change all these components. They're doing way too much for the cardio. And then once they're done with the cut, they just stop all the cardio. Well guess what? Your body's adapted to that. So now your body is really used to you burning all of these calories manually through cardio. Don't mess with that. Just focus on the nutrition and nailing that and then celebrate the win. So like you're going to have better recovery, more food flexibility, improved performance, and then have some tools in your back pocket for if you ever feel like you need to tighten things up, there's going to be times where you maybe have over eaten for a period or life has been crazy and you're like, okay, I feel like just a little fluffier than I want to. Then that's where you can, um, try out some of these things, like doing a mini cut or tracking your food again for a week to see what your current maintenance is, right? If you're gaining a little bit of weight, then you know, okay, I'm probably not really eating at maintenance. Where am I right now? What's my baseline currently? And now I know. Okay, I just need to cut down a little bit from there. Just a couple hundred calories. Just having that tracking in your back pocket is such a helpful tool. Not that you need to be a slave to it, but it actually just helps you see the facts, see the data of like, where am I at and where do I need to adjust? That is such a powerful mindset to have. And then just doing habit audits of like, okay, if I'm feeling fluffier, what have I been doing different? Oh, I've been having copious amounts of alcohol on the weekends when I'm socializing or I've been snacking in excess every single evening. Look at some of those habits and see the correlation to how you're feeling in your body. And then make some changes, right? It's all within your power. So avoiding the yo yo cycle. Let's talk about that. Why yo yoing happens and yo yoing meaning like you lose the weight and then you gain it back and you're in this cycle. This is typically due to an all or nothing mindset or having that like post cut reward eating of like, I've been so good and now I'm going to have just like a free for all with cheating on my diet. Um, if you're not having the structure around how to move from cut to maintenance, this is most likely going to happen because you were too restrictive. So one is avoiding being too restrictive and actually establishing habits that you can keep up long term. Just doing the slight changes with the nutrition. Okay, that is not going to feel that extreme. It's one small tweak, right? Everything else maintains. So that's not going to feel drastic. You're just making shifts with your nutrition. Slightly 250 to 500 calories. That's not that drastic. That's something that you can maintain. So not going too restrictive or too crazy in your cut will help you have more success with your maintenance and really having lifelong habits that stay the exact same. Like always hitting your protein, always getting good micronutrients for a healthy gut and healthy hormone levels. Always getting walks in. Always strength training, you know, at least three times a week. Some of those things should just remain constant. Um, the solution to this treat maintenance as a new phase of training, not as a free for all having those non-negotiables. Be realistic about what habits you can keep up forever. Also using mini goals during maintenance. So things like focusing on performance pairs, trying to do a new hard hike that maybe you have on your radar, having, um, consistent strength training progress of like, okay, every week I'm doing for workouts and that's my goal like that. Those types of little mini performance goals can go a really long way when you're in maintenance for long periods, and having those anchor habits that got you the results, do not ditch them. Keep those going okay. All right. So finally just kind of talking through the mindset pieces here. Transformation is exciting. But maintenance is where you prove that you've truly changed. Again that is the metric of success. At the end of the year, you're not going to care if you had a really awesome cut where you lost £20 back in January. If you lost all of that progress and gained the weight right back in March. Right? So look at where do I want to be next year, in five years? In ten years and focus on that? Okay. How do you get from transformation to maintaining those results? Um, you're also going to need to be patient and think long term. You can't have the like all or nothing fast, quick fix mentality with this. Um, and I know how this goes because I definitely have been on both sides of the track. Like on one side, I did the whole, like, super all or nothing diets, yo yoing, um, sort of been in a diet phase for years and years in my 20s without seeing the results, because I wasn't doing things the right way and my mindset sucked. And now I've gotten to the other side of things where I have successfully lost £25. I've maintained it even through two pregnancies. Okay, so this can be done. And this is everything that I've talked about today is exactly how you do it. Um, so I really invite you to kind of audit your current phase. What are your goals right now and what have you been doing? Right. Are your actions aligning with the goals and the phase that you need to be in to get there? If you're like, um, yeah, I'm kind of doing the thing where I'm like sort of kind of in a transform phase, but not really committing to it, therefore not really getting the results. But I still feel mentally burnt out. Then I definitely recommend, um, applying for our Black Friday deal within Mountain Metabolic Coaching. This is the last week to apply. Um, and you got to book those calls quick because spots are running out. As of now, we are down to three spots left, and you're eligible to get 1 to 2 free months depending on what you sign up for. So definitely check that out. This is what we're going to help you with. To not only get you through the transformation phase successfully, but then getting you to a successful maintenance period so that appeals to you if you want to do things the right way. Heading into the new year and actually get results that you can maintain for life, then let's do this. You can check the application link in the show notes to start off there, and we'll let you know how to access the Black Friday deal. All right you guys, I hope that this has been informative, helpful, inspiring all the things we'd love to connect with you. You can chat with us at the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page. We'd love to connect with you there and hear how the show is helping you. You can also chat with us about coaching there if you'd like to go back before applying. So hit us up on Instagram. Thank you so much for tuning in and I will chat with you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this. Be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at ponytail on Etrailer.com. Happy and healthy trails.