Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 77: How to navigate the summer months
Transcript
- Cameron: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. And in today's episode, I wanted to talk a little bit about navigating the summer months. So I think people go a little bit wrong sometimes when it comes to the summer months. So usually, usually someone's weight loss journey will look like this. They've been focused on weight loss potentially from the winter months with the aim and the hope of being in better shape by the time summer swings around. And they've crapped on, lost a good chunk of weight and they're feeling pretty good. Now. Often is not what people then do. Is they get to about now, I mean, you know, the weather's nice, the sun's out, I've got loads of socials on the schedule, a couple holidays planned. This is where they can kind of just switch off completely. They're like, do you know what? I'm just gonna relax, enjoy the summer, I'll come back to it in X, Y, Z, right? Let's say you come back to it in September. If you're lucky enough for your summer to last that long, then it'll be like one week for us up north. But the point is, is that a lot of the time people switch off. and this is where they are missing a trick, a huge trick. I have a lot of clients that over the last, and what my one to one clients, over the last two months, three months even, have shifted to maintenance. And I have a lot of clients who are coming up for that. Actually, just today I was doing my, this morning I was doing a few updates and I've got a few clients, three or four clients actually, headed towards maintenance in the next week or two, which is really nice. And that means that they can be that bit more flexible for the summer socials, for the barbecues, for the things that are coming up. But here's what we'll be doing that's a little bit different, right? And what we won't be doing for those clients is we won't be switching off. We won't be just saying, pfft, well, summer now. I can't make any progress. And then just allow weight to creep up and up and up and up so that they get to end of summer and they're like, ⁓ I need to die again. and the cycle repeats. And then if you don't crack on then you get into winter months and you're even less motivated. That's not what we want. We're going to put the extra calories to good use. So we know if we push them up to maintenance that that gives them some more flexibility. But it also has a second benefit, which is that when your calories are higher than in a deficit, you tend to be able to recover from, fuel better and get more from your training, right? Now, something onto caveats. You might be listening to this and you're still dieting and you're nowhere near it. You're thinking, my goodness, I'm nowhere near going to maintenance yet. I've got months of dieting ahead. That is absolutely fine. Do not think that you can't make progress in a deficit. There are plenty of studies that show that even people in quite aggressive deficits with sufficient protein and training can still gain muscle. They can still get stronger. They can still progress. So it's utter nonsense to say that you cannot progress when you're losing weight. Now, the one bit of context that applies to that is the more advanced someone is, it's a bit different, right? If I have someone who already has a lot of muscle mass, is super strong, has been training for seven years hard, they might struggle to add more muscle in a sort of weight loss phase. Why? Because at that point, they're closer to what the genetic potential of how much muscle they can gain is. They've passed the beginner gains, they've passed the intermediate gains, they have to do a lot to get a little in return. which is something that most people don't need to worry about genuinely until they are six, seven years of hard, consistent training for like all that time. No six months off, a year off, three months off, all that. They need to be doing it a long, long time to be in that position. So it's really not a real life worry. It's not even something I would be overly concerned about, let's put it that way. So one of the things that's important here is that you absolutely can gain muscle in his F-set, but. it's undoubtedly better. When you're up to maintenance, your progress is faster. And this is what I often say to people, and I say this to lot of clients who move to maintenance, it's like, look, weight loss is the most exciting phase initially, because when you get farther into it you see such big visual changes, bigger visual changes, it's incredibly motivating, right? It's incredibly motivating to see big changes, your clothes fit better, people notice, people comment. It's huge, it's a big deal, and that's one of the reasons I love coaching weight loss. But there's this magic bit that happens afterwards, where if you move into the summer months, for example, at maintenance, and you focus on your training, you say, right, I know I'm at maintenance now, I know there's gonna be some extra calories from barbecues, there's gonna be some extra calories from socializing, I'm going on holiday, what I'm gonna do around that is I'm gonna make sure my training is absolutely bang on, I'm gonna be super consistent with it. Even when the sun's shining, like I'm gonna go out and enjoy myself for sure, but I'm gonna make sure I get my training done. And of course, when you do that, the magic happens because what tends to occur is muscle gain, right? So you end up getting an even better shape. And this is the little reframe I want you to think about. You think that weight gain is inherently bad for good reason, because if person A on a sofa gains any weight, Well, it's gonna be body fat, right? If they're inactive, if they're sedentary, almost 100 % of that's gonna be body fat of the weight they gain gradually, right? It's going to be. If you get person B who goes to the gym or exercise or just sort of does resistance training at home, it doesn't really matter which, but we'll suggest the gym for simplicity sake, three times a week, it trains hard. They have a stimulus to build muscle, right? So when your body gets an extra 100 calories, it doesn't just say, right, straight to fat gain, job done, simple. It actually says, well, we need to build some muscle. And actually, building muscle takes energy. We now have more energy available so we can build a little bit more muscle than we did beforehand. So more of those calories actually get pushed towards muscle gain. Now, what's important to remember is this, is we only need so many extra calories, right? We know that probably for most people, being in a two to three hundred calorie surplus, depending on your body weight and height, is sufficient, right? It's not a massive amount more. But let's say I'm aiming for maintenance. For simplicity's sake, I'm gonna say I'm on two and a half thousands calories. And let's say I'm aiming for that over the summer. And actually, over an eight week period of the summer, I have quite a few weeks which are quite social. And actually, three of those weeks, I end up on 2,800 calories. And then four or five of those weeks, I end up 2,500, 2,600, almost bang on target. So I'm doing pretty well. Not perfect. Maybe could be a little bit better, but not perfect. But not bad either. When I look at that, because I've actually been in quite a small surplus for that time, and because I've got this stimulus from training, the really cool bit is, is even though my weight might creep up a little, although not a lot, likely as not a good chunk of what I do gain, it's actually gonna be muscle. So let's say after eight weeks of the summer, I'm being a bit relaxed, calories have gone up, I may be pushed over a maintenance wee bit, it wasn't perfect, I then get into summer and I'm a kilo, I'm 1.2 kilos up, not much at all, nothing big to worry about. You know, nothing that couldn't be pulled off in a week or two, or sort of two or three weeks max. Feeling pretty good about that. But, what's even cooler is I know that 1.2 kilos probably added a bit of muscle. And it might be three, four, 500 grams, let's say, depending on how hard my training is, how new I am to training. That's pretty cool. Because when I then go to say, actually, I might just drop a wee bit of that summer weight off before, you know, next holiday, whenever it is October, or whatever it is, right, or you just kind of want to carry on maintaining. you don't have the same impact from gaining 1.2 kilos of fat mass, which looks like 1.2 kilos of fat mass. What you've actually got is a little bit more shape, because you've got a wee bit more muscle, and a little bit of fat on top of that that can easily be pulled off. So all of a sudden you're looking at it you're like, well, hold on a second. My weight's at 1.2 kilos over a couple months, right? So not fast, because here's the thing, right, and this is really important to just quickly touch on. If you go into a really big surplus, this still applies. Some of that will go towards muscle building. but the biggest chunk of it is just gonna go towards fat gain. If I go into 1000 calorie surplus rather than two or 300, if my body only needs 300, all the spare 700 over and above that will go. And if I go up to 1500 calories, the above 1200, know, by 1500 calories, above 1200 is going to be going to fat gain, right? That's the reality. There is a maximum amount of need. And once that threshold's satisfied, let's say 300 calories, anything above and beyond that, whether it's 10 or whether it's 1,000 calories, is gonna go to fat gain. So that's a really good bit of context. But this is such a nice way of thinking about it because this person B, who's been really diligent with the training and pretty diligent with the nutrition, not perfect, they're not sane, but they've done pretty well, it's got to the end of summer, they're 0.1, 0.2 kilos up. And then actually when we look at things, well, 500 grams of that is muscle mass, 0.7 kilos of that fat mass. Well, let's be honest, how long does it take to pull off 0.7 kilos of fat mass? after two months of not dieting, when you're now, your body's out of that kind of, little bit of metabolic adaption that happens when you're dieting where you're, see this very small, but notable, like this very small drop in kind of metabolic rate, which just happens, just part and parcel, it's not, you're not broken it, and it just adapts down a little bit, because you're on less calories. It's now come back up, because you spent two months being active, training hard, feeling good, know, calories are up a little bit, there's lots of positives, you've now only got 0.7 kilos to pull off. Easy, no problem at all. That is the difference and that's what I do with a lot of my one-to-one clients is make sure that over the summer months we do not slack off, we drive forward with training, put those extra calories to work. Like that's the way we want to think about it, not to think about, well, I'll sack off and come back to it, I don't need to train now. That is the absolute bloody worst thing you could do because that, if there's one gateway of guarantee that guaranteeing that all the weight you gain is pretty much all fat mass. is to not train, right? So that's something I want to be a bit of a shift in your summer mentality is that, and this can be really helpful in general, and I say this a lot to clients who maybe do have a week where they're in a weight loss phase, maybe they have a week where they didn't quite nail their calories, and I say to them very often, just remember that even by default of training really, hard, you mitigate the risk of fat gain a little. It's not massive, but it's something, right? It's something. likely some of what you might gain in a week might be that. Now of course in a weight loss phase often it's not we're not actually gaining anything, it's likely to be more of a loss or maintenance but nonetheless those same rules apply here. So hopefully that's helpful and I think that's a good thing to kind of think about because I think a lot of people go into these summer months with completely the wrong mentality of like I'm just gonna send it, have loads of pints, not worry about it, I'll worry about it in September. Why do that? Why not set yourself off, I can't speak, honestly. You think I've been having pints in the sun or have sunstroke? But this is a really nice way thinking about it is that you set yourself up for success, which I'm trying to say, because you've kept up with your training and you've built more muscle, which also means that by continuing to build muscle month on month on month, that as time passes, as months fall into years, you're going to be in much better shape much more easily. There's no doubt about it. I have clients now that are years into coaching with me and they find it so much easier now to stay in good shape and it's because they have more muscle mass. Maybe they needed to be. 70 kilos to be in good shape, now it's 74. Like, they can be in great shape at 74 because they have four kilos more muscle mass after a few years of training. Like, that's a big difference. They just find, and if they ever do need to go into weight loss phase, they don't need to diet as hard or on such low calories. So, you want to set yourself up for success. So, if that was helpful and you feel like you could do with a bit of a hand on your own weight loss journey or navigating the summer months without, yeah, sitting in your garden and going full send on the. drinks in the garden and just completely chilling out for four months and realising your five kilos up, then you can jump into the show notes where you will see the link to my WhatsApp so you can ping me little message, ask anything about coaching, or if there's anything you're struggling with generally, and you can also pop over if you've got any suggestions or anything you'd like me to cover in the podcast in future episodes, you're welcome to do so there. Otherwise, have a great week, speak soon.