Latest / The Body Recomposition Revolution | Fat Loss and Strength for Women 35+ / How Gaining 7 Pounds in 2 Weeks FINALLY Enabled my Body to Drop Fat & Build Muscle

Transcript

How Gaining 7 Pounds in 2 Weeks FINALLY Enabled my Body to Drop Fat & Build Muscle · The Body Recomposition Revolution | Fat Loss and Strength for Women 35+

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the body recomposition revolution.
• 0:03
  Today you were going to learn why I voluntarily gained 7 lbs
• 0:09
  in two weeks and how that ultimately helped me to drop fat
• 0:12
  and build muscle. Let's start with a reality
• 0:15
  check, because I definitely needed one over the last year
• 0:18
  and a half. Two years actually.
• 0:20
  So my job, my business, what I do is I help women above the age
• 0:24
  of 35 drop fat and build muscle because as you know, it's a
• 0:30
  little different. If you don't know it is because
• 0:32
  of your hormones, boom, easy peasy.
• 0:35
  Now I have a certain type of women who primarily reach out to
• 0:39
  me for help with their macros, help with their training.
• 0:41
  They want to apply for a coaching position and that type
• 0:45
  of woman is usually the type of woman who really cares about
• 0:49
  changing their body, who really wants to uncover why their body
• 0:53
  is not doing what it should, or they want to Start learning how
• 0:57
  they can make their body do what they want it to do.
• 1:00
  They are ambitious, driven, really smart.
• 1:04
  And I'm not saying that because they're reaching out to me
• 1:06
  truly. These are the commonalities I
• 1:08
  find amongst most of the women I work with.
• 1:10
  There's some common personality traits and they are as I just
• 1:13
  listed, but I help them formulate their macros and we do
• 1:17
  that through a series of quizzes.
• 1:19
  But I have found all these women are really active.
• 1:24
  Not all of them. Most of them are really, really
• 1:26
  active and they're not eating enough.
• 1:30
  I would do all their calculations.
• 1:32
  We would find how much protein they should be eating, how much
• 1:36
  carbs, how much fat, the percentages.
• 1:37
  We would figure out their TDEE and do all these things and you
• 1:43
  would not believe most of these women were consuming 1200
• 1:47
  calories, 1300 calories. Even if you're 4 foot one,
• 1:51
  that's that's not enough. OK, but not just that.
• 1:54
  These women were working out four days a week, five days a
• 1:58
  week, six days a week, seven days a week, 2 times a day.
• 2:01
  They were doing maybe 12 to 18,000 steps a day.
• 2:05
  These are high output women who are literally starving
• 2:09
  themselves and they all had the same frustration.
• 2:12
  They were like, I just, I do everything I do of Orangetheory.
• 2:15
  I'm constantly participating in boot camp classes and I run 8
• 2:20
  miles a day and I'm doing it and I just can't get rid of this
• 2:23
  body fat. I look skinny fat.
• 2:25
  And to me, from my perspective being an outside one, I thought,
• 2:29
  well, duh, you're not eating enough.
• 2:32
  OK, let's get you to start ramping up your calories, eating
• 2:35
  the right amounts of your macros.
• 2:38
  More often than that, they have to really bump up their protein.
• 2:41
  A lot of them have to bump up their carbs.
• 2:44
  And women are pretty good on the fats like they naturally, I
• 2:47
  think we just love fat. I love fat.
• 2:48
  And if you're a woman, I'm sure you do too.
• 2:50
  So these women are reaching out to me.
• 2:52
  They were primarily above the age of 35.
• 2:55
  They were stuck with a lot of them called it a menopause
• 2:58
  belly. They were experimenting with
• 3:00
  HRT. They were doing all types of
• 3:02
  treatments. They were working out more and
• 3:05
  more and more and eating out and eating less and less and less.
• 3:08
  And ultimately, as I said, to me, it seemed obvious, but but
• 3:11
  it's not when you're in the driver's seat.
• 3:13
  And I had that reality check myself.
• 3:16
  So if you haven't heard, my other two episodes on LEALEA is
• 3:21
  just low energy availability. And according to research,
• 3:25
  recent research, 50% of women who identify as active are
• 3:31
  considered low energy availability.
• 3:35
  Now, as kind of vague as women who identify as active is, if
• 3:39
  you're a woman and you identify as active, whatever that may be,
• 3:42
  according to research, according to the statistics that were
• 3:45
  gathered from this massive study, 50% of them were not
• 3:50
  eating enough food for their primary bodily functions to work
• 3:55
  proficiently. Now, what happens when you under
• 3:59
  eat, when you chronically are under fueling for the tasks that
• 4:02
  you keep asking your body to perform every day, being the
• 4:05
  Orangetheory classes, the runs, the whatevers, and you're not
• 4:08
  eating enough. Well, what happens?
• 4:10
  Your hormones get out of whack. You can't recover.
• 4:12
  You're just sore all the time. You're tired all the time.
• 4:16
  You're wired all the time because your cortisol levels are
• 4:19
  through the roof. Your metabolism downgrades.
• 4:23
  OK, Ding, Ding, Ding. Your metabolism down shifts,
• 4:28
  meaning you are now burning way less calories than you were
• 4:32
  before because it's in survival mode.
• 4:35
  Your digestion suffers, your sleep suffers, your thyroid that
• 4:40
  goes out of whack, your muscle repair that kind of coincides
• 4:42
  with recovery, but you're not recovering.
• 4:45
  You're just sore. You're not putting on any
• 4:47
  muscle. If anything, you're losing
• 4:49
  muscle and you can see it in your reflection.
• 4:51
  You're looking flabbier, You're looking weaker.
• 4:54
  Your brain function is out of whack.
• 4:56
  Things are foggy, you're emotional.
• 4:58
  All of these things are correlated with Lea, which is
• 5:02
  low energy availability, meaning your body has adapted to this
• 5:07
  high stress, high output environment.
• 5:12
  By adaptations, your body gets more efficient, you move less,
• 5:16
  your recovery drops, your training quality drops, your
• 5:19
  stress hormones rise, water retention increases.
• 5:22
  I really experienced that. Fat loss stalls.
• 5:27
  It's done. Your body is literally holding
• 5:30
  on to its body fat for dear life because it knows you're going to
• 5:35
  put it through another Orangetheory class.
• 5:37
  And why the heck would it let go of its fat stores?
• 5:39
  Because you're not even giving it enough calories to complete
• 5:42
  the class without having to down regulate all the other systems
• 5:45
  your body needs. Your body will not let go of
• 5:49
  body fat primarily in your midsection, if you are not
• 5:52
  giving it enough calories to feel safe, to fuel your
• 5:56
  workouts, to build muscle. The last thing, the absolute
• 5:59
  last thing your body is going to do is release fat.
• 6:04
  So as I said, statistically speaking, 50% of self identified
• 6:08
  active women are struggling with low energy availability.
• 6:12
  Lea and most of the women who reached out to me, I could
• 6:15
  clearly see on paper, whoa, you are under fueling.
• 6:18
  You're not ever going to drop fat and build muscle by eating
• 6:21
  that much. So when I see that on paper and
• 6:25
  in my delusional brain, I thought, well, I'm eating 1900
• 6:30
  calories, 1800 calories a day. I'm good.
• 6:34
  Let me give you some stats, my own personal stats.
• 6:36
  I don't care. I'm 5 foot seven.
• 6:39
  I just turned 38I lift five to six days a week.
• 6:44
  I do probably 440 minute sessions of zone 2 per day.
• 6:49
  I am usually around 15,000 steps per day.
• 6:53
  I am high output. I've been training a really long
• 6:57
  time. My body needs a lot of
• 6:58
  stimulation in order to see any sort of progress.
• 7:02
  But over the last couple years, even though this is what I
• 7:05
  coach, this is what I do, I wasn't, I was not seeing
• 7:09
  progress. In fact, I was struggling with
• 7:11
  so many negative side effects. My hair was falling out, my
• 7:15
  sleep has been horrendous. I could go on.
• 7:18
  Now, if you want a checklist of L EA symptoms, there's one on my
• 7:22
  Instagram. Go take a peek.
• 7:23
  Score yourself. It's a little quiz.
• 7:24
  You don't have to enter any information.
• 7:26
  Just answer those questions. And if you score in the L EA,
• 7:30
  I'm sure you know exactly what side effects coincide with that.
• 7:33
  Life is not good. At least it's not good in the
• 7:36
  workout nutrition part. And if you're a woman and who
• 7:38
  work so hard like I do, and to not see the results of that,
• 7:42
  that's really frustrating. So I had to come to terms with
• 7:45
  that. And I learned through having a
• 7:49
  nutritional coach, honestly, because I truly think a coach is
• 7:53
  very important when it comes to your nutrition, your training.
• 7:56
  You need somebody to report to and to tell you when you're
• 7:58
  being delusional like me, like I was.
• 8:00
  And I learned that I should definitely be eating at least
• 8:04
  2500 calories a day with all the activity that I am doing.
• 8:09
  And I that I don't reduce, like I'm not reducing the amount of
• 8:12
  activity because I don't want to, OK, I'll eat more.
• 8:16
  I love food. I'm OK with that.
• 8:18
  And so I started doing what's called a reverse diet.
• 8:22
  And I definitely should have been more gradual with my
• 8:25
  calorie increase. But once I, you know, came to
• 8:28
  terms with reality and committed to eating more, I ate more.
• 8:32
  Like I ate more and my body responded quickly.
• 8:37
  I gained 7 lbs in two weeks. That's insane.
• 8:43
  And most women when they do start reverse, reverse dieting
• 8:46
  and eating a little bit more and they see that scale go up a bit,
• 8:51
  they they check out, Nope, done not working.
• 8:54
  My body obviously cannot eat this much food.
• 8:56
  You have to go at it gradually. And I have a lot of information
• 9:00
  about how to gradually reverse diet on my last episode.
• 9:03
  But just in a nutshell, start adding in a hundred, 150 more
• 9:07
  calories for a week. The next week add in another 100
• 9:11
  calories and so on and so forth. For me, it went a little higher
• 9:14
  than that. And again, I gained 7 lbs.
• 9:18
  And when women see that, they stop, they turn around.
• 9:21
  But because I needed to be the example I talk about, I kept
• 9:27
  going. I kept going and I went from 135
• 9:31
  lbs to 142 lbs. I hadn't seen that number on the
• 9:37
  scale in many years. And it was, it was, I don't know
• 9:41
  how else to describe it beyond besides kind of triggering.
• 9:45
  But as much as I coach people to stop identifying themselves at
• 9:49
  the number on the scale, I just had to keep trucking.
• 9:52
  I just kept eating and being a little more mindful of the
• 9:55
  quality food I was putting into my body.
• 9:58
  Now here is where I want you to understand the science behind
• 10:01
  that 7 LB weight gain I experienced in two weeks.
• 10:05
  I did not gain 7 lbs of fat. And if you are doing reverse
• 10:09
  diet or thinking about it, you are not going to gain that much
• 10:12
  fat in two weeks. But your genes might feel
• 10:15
  different. You might feel a little puffy.
• 10:18
  Your muscles are holding on to more water.
• 10:20
  Your digestion is changing. It's kind of getting used to
• 10:23
  that, you know, the more calories that you're eating, but
• 10:26
  what's actually happening inside your body is glycogen
• 10:30
  restoration. When you start eating more
• 10:33
  carbohydrates, your body is going to shuttle a lot more
• 10:36
  water into the muscles. It will, that's just science.
• 10:39
  When you start eating more carbs, especially more carbs
• 10:41
  than your body is used to, you are going to retain some water
• 10:45
  because your body is not used to getting this many carbs.
• 10:48
  And that translates to a higher number on the scale that
• 10:51
  translates to you may be looking a little bit more puffy.
• 10:54
  But a positive, a positive of that that I experienced, and I
• 10:57
  know you would too, is I had way better workouts.
• 11:00
  I was, I was getting the pump. I was, I was lifting more than I
• 11:03
  had ever lifted before. And I felt good because I could
• 11:09
  see, I could physically see in the mirror that my body had been
• 11:12
  so depleted for so long and it was finally getting fuel again.
• 11:17
  All my muscles pumped up. I actually did not mind the way
• 11:20
  my physique looked and I didn't so much care for my face, The
• 11:24
  way my face changed. I looked very puffy, but I
• 11:27
  really liked kind of a more muscular bulbous look.
• 11:31
  I always use that word bulbous, but that's kind of how I would
• 11:34
  describe it. I finally had a butt, like a
• 11:37
  butt that I worked really hard before I could see it.
• 11:40
  So what happened after the first two weeks?
• 11:42
  I gained 7 lbs. I started at 1:35.
• 11:44
  I went to 142. And then after that first two
• 11:49
  weeks, my weight dropped down to 139 and I took a body
• 11:53
  composition scan because I really wanted to see where I was
• 11:56
  starting and I wanted to see what would happen 30 days from
• 12:00
  that point. And I love data.
• 12:02
  I love data because you data doesn't lie.
• 12:05
  And I'm also going to post, post my body composition scan on my
• 12:09
  Instagram. You can peek at it yourself.
• 12:11
  And it literally shows side by side, my weight being 139 and
• 12:15
  all the other metrics that changed over the course of my 30
• 12:18
  day reverse diet, or I should say the tail end of my reverse
• 12:21
  diet. So let's talk about this 30 day
• 12:24
  period. Now at this point I was 139 lbs.
• 12:28
  The 7 LB weight gain had kind of petered down and I was just 4
• 12:32
  lbs heavier than when I had started.
• 12:34
  I was also eating 800 more calories per day than I had
• 12:39
  eaten for years. So now I'm 4 lbs heavier.
• 12:43
  I'm eating 800 more calories per day and I'm lifting heavy the
• 12:48
  same way I always left. But here's what happened.
• 12:51
  During that 30 days, my body weight stayed 139.
• 12:56
  So at the end of the 30 days I measured again, my body weight
• 12:58
  was still 139. My muscle mass went from 66.8 to
• 13:05
  67.9. For me that's incredible.
• 13:09
  I I can barely put on muscle because I've been lifting so
• 13:12
  long. So to see that much muscle be
• 13:15
  put on my body in just 30 days, Oh I'm happy and get this.
• 13:20
  In 30 days, eating 800 more calories per day, maintaining
• 13:25
  139 lbs, my body fat went from 14.3 to 14.
• 13:32
  So I lost .3% body fat. Now I did these measurements at
• 13:37
  the exact same time, in the exact same state, fed the same
• 13:40
  breakfast post workout. My body fat went down, my
• 13:46
  skeletal muscle mass went up, and my weight stayed the same,
• 13:50
  eating 800 more calories per day for 30 days.
• 13:56
  Now remember there was that big uptick in weight for two weeks,
• 14:00
  but only two weeks and then that weight petered out.
• 14:05
  Now that was I think about a month ago.
• 14:09
  That was about a month ago. And since then I have cut my
• 14:12
  calories a tiny bit, but I have not dropped below 2400, not
• 14:17
  once. I've gone above 2400 throughout
• 14:21
  the last month but I haven't gone below which to me is kind
• 14:25
  of insane because I was eating 18119 hundred at what I thought
• 14:28
  was my maintenance and it's not and actually eating that much.
• 14:34
  My weight has gone down to 137. I think it was 137 this morning.
• 14:39
  So I don't know, it just it's really empowering to know that
• 14:44
  if you fuel your body, what it needs to complete the tasks
• 14:49
  you're asking of it, and if you train accordingly, which means
• 14:53
  you are lifting in hypertrophy, it is possible to build muscle
• 14:57
  and drop fat. But if to your knowledge you're
• 15:01
  doing all the things correctly and you're still harboring that
• 15:04
  really stubborn fat in your midsection or you resonate with
• 15:09
  a lot of the side effects of L EA that I had described, I'm
• 15:13
  going to go through this list. I call this the low energy
• 15:17
  availability risk Screener. And this is for females, OK?
• 15:21
  So are you accidentally fueling your under fueling your body?
• 15:25
  This assessment will identify if your nutrition, training and
• 15:28
  recovery habits may be putting you at risk for low energy
• 15:31
  availability, which does impact your fat loss, hormones and
• 15:34
  performance. OK, for all these questions I'm
• 15:38
  going to ask you, the scoring guide is if you say yes, it's
• 15:42
  two points, if your answer is sometimes it's one point, and if
• 15:45
  your answer is no or never, it's zero points.
• 15:48
  So yes is 2 points, sometimes one point, no is 0.
• 15:50
  So #1 Do you regularly eat less than 1800 to 2000 calories while
• 15:55
  training? Do you skip meals or go long
• 15:59
  periods like 12 to 14 hours without eating?
• 16:03
  Keep your score in your head or write it down.
• 16:05
  Do you feel anxious about increasing your calories?
• 16:09
  Do you track food obsessively or avoid tracking completely?
• 16:15
  Do you struggle to consistently hit 100 grams of protein daily?
• 16:20
  Add up your points. Section 2 is training and again,
• 16:23
  yes is worth 2 points, sometimes is one point, and no is 0.
• 16:27
  Do you train five to seven days per week without planned rest
• 16:30
  days? Do you frequently combine
• 16:33
  strength training and cardio in the same day?
• 16:36
  Gosh, I'm so delusional to even reading this back to about
• 16:38
  myself. Do you feel guilty taking rest
• 16:41
  days? Are most of your workouts high
• 16:45
  intensity, not just occasionally?
• 16:47
  That means like Orangetheory or like HIT classes, Section 3
• 16:51
  recovery and biofeedback? Really TuneIn on this one.
• 16:55
  Do you feel chronically fatigued even after rest days?
• 16:59
  If you know, you know. Do you experience poor sleep or
• 17:03
  wake up frequently during the night?
• 17:06
  Do you feel cold, especially your hands and feet?
• 17:10
  Do you experience low motivation, brain fog, or mental
• 17:13
  fatigue? Section 4 Hormonal signals Have
• 17:18
  your menstrual cycles become irregular or stopped altogether?
• 17:23
  Do you experience worsening PMS, mood swings, or irritability?
• 17:28
  Have you noticed stubborn fat retention despite dieting and
• 17:31
  exercise? Do you experience low libido,
• 17:37
  Section 5 performance, and body signals?
• 17:40
  Has your strength stalled or decreased recently?
• 17:42
  Don't worry, you're almost done. Do you experience frequent
• 17:45
  injuries or nagging aches or pains?
• 17:49
  Do you struggle to recover between workouts?
• 17:53
  Have you hit a plateau despite being consistent with nutrition
• 17:56
  and training? OK, so add up your points.
• 17:59
  Remember yes is 2 points, sometimes is one point and no is
• 18:02
  0. Total your score out of 42.
• 18:06
  Now if you scored zero to 10 low risk, you're likely fueling your
• 18:10
  body well staying consistent with your nutrition and
• 18:12
  training. If you scored 11 to 20 moderate
• 18:15
  risk, you may be under fueling in ways that are slowing fat
• 18:17
  loss, recovery and hormone balance. 21 plus points high
• 18:21
  risk for low energy availability.
• 18:23
  Your body is likely under fueled and under recovered.
• 18:27
  This is a major reason fat loss feels stuck.
• 18:31
  If you want my help, e-mail me. I do have a little bit of a
• 18:35
  waiting list right now. I can do custom programming,
• 18:38
  custom macros I can do a combination with.
• 18:40
  I can do a package with both of those.
• 18:42
  Or you can apply for a coaching spot where I do all of it and
• 18:45
  we're in contact on my app. Or just start eating more.
• 18:50
  OK, tack on 100 calories this week to your, to your, you know,
• 18:54
  nutritional regimen. Tack on another 100 next week.
• 18:58
  See what your body does. Experiment.
• 19:00
  But the best thing I can recommend for you is to hire a
• 19:03
  professional who can help you navigate this phase of life if
• 19:07
  you're feeling stuck. Because a lot of women are.
• 19:10
  And I was myself. And even though I do this for my
• 19:12
  job, I too had to hire somebody else to help me.
• 19:16
  So keep that in mind. I hope this episode was helpful
• 19:19
  because as I said, the majority of women who reach out to me or
• 19:22
  are women who have a lot of common traits, they're
• 19:26
  ambitious, they're motivated, they are hard working, they're
• 19:28
  driven, they want to do all the things and in actuality, they're
• 19:34
  doing too much and not giving their self what's needed.
• 19:37
  Also, remember to subscribe. I've gotten a couple messages
• 19:40
  over the last month and I keep forgetting to address this.
• 19:43
  Subscribe that way. New episodes will automatically
• 19:47
  pop up on your feed for Apple Podcast and Spotify.
• 19:51
  The question was, how do I get alerted when you have new
• 19:53
  episodes? And that's simply by
• 19:56
  subscribing. If you do want help with your
• 19:57
  macros, my e-mail address is racracrecomposition@gmail.com.
• 20:03
  My Instagram is rack fitness under score.
• 20:07
  I just kind of post stuff about my podcast, what I'm eating,
• 20:11
  what I'm doing. I post my grocery card a lot.
• 20:14
  I do some workout things. Just fun stuff from my real
• 20:18
  life. OK ladies, remember, give your
• 20:20
  body what it needs to do, what you want it to do.
• 20:24
  Talk to you soon.