11 - Q&A: What works for YOU, Hormone panels, Stress vs eating enough, Lean bulking..

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what's up and welcome back to a new episode of talking nutrition episode 11 today where we're going to get into

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another q a probably our favorite format so far which is why we're going to do a lot more of this

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so once again if you want to submit any questions or topics hit us up right we

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want to talk about the things that you want to learn about so hit me up on Instagram hit Christine up

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on Instagram DM is at talking nutrition podcasts and I'll make sure to uh yeah to include your questions and topics so

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what we're going to talk about today is with so much nutrition information out there how can we figure out what's going

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to work for you and we're going to talk about working with doctors who aren't necessarily taking their clients hormones panel too serious they will

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talk about calculating calorie needs uh whether you're going to be using your current weight or goal weight in

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different scenarios Christine's going to touch on um how to get enough calories when

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you're stressed and when you're dealing with anxiety for example when it's more difficult to actually you know get

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enough in and then lastly we're going to talk about increasing muscle without gaining too much body fat and if it's

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even possible to gain muscle without any additional body fat so first of all

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with so much information out there how can we figure out what's going to be working for you I love this question

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because it is very confusing and this is exactly why I think I feel like I got into this because this is what I was

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struggling with right 10 years ago and our clients do now first of all we know what's true

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within research or you know we know what's at least closest to the truth based on most of research

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a lot of different diet camps you know keto carnivore vegan whatever will kind

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of like take one study and run with it right and then like that's proof that something is true

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however with that approach you could almost prove you know any claim you know not every but just about every

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so instead of looking at single studies even though we might still be pulling up single studies on this podcast as well

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we need to consider what's probably going to be true based on most of the research right because we can't ignore

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how things work at least we have a very good idea right we know that weight loss you know is achieved through accounting

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deficit if you want to gain weight you know we need to be a category Surplus we need to be

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managing our energy balance based on our goals right we know the fruits and veggies are healthy for you we talked

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about steps and stress recently things like high protein diets how they can be beneficial for muscle gain fat loss

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colds Etc all these principles of nutrition

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are basically what we know is probably true so figure out what works for you basically comes down to getting you to

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adhere to those principles right how can we get you to adhere to calorie deficit how can we get you in the gym lifting

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close to close enough to failure how can we get you to get your steps in Etc

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and that takes a little bit of time right it's a matter of trying or at least getting started and figuring

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out what works for you might take one shot maybe two maybe even way more because with so many approaches and

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programs and coaches Etc out there especially with social media being so confusing

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sometimes you know it might take months or even a year or longer to actually find okay now I finally got something

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that I know I can stick to in the long run right anything you would like to add there Christine yeah

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um we kind of talked on this last episode for example you know people

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often go for keto but they love carbohydrates so you really have to ask

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yourself is that gonna work for you right when you don't actually need to be removing

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carbohydrates to lose fat um so it's really looking at like Johann

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said we know the basics work and are good for us getting in our fruit and

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veggies eating you know protein at every meal managing stress and steps

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um but trying to look long term like think long term am I going to be able to

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sustain what I'm doing right now a year from now right that's a good question to ask

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yourself and people often are just impatient

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right so TR you know decide okay is this something I think I can do long term and

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then actually commit to doing it for like six months not you know one month

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to do to two months and you say you think oh nothing's happening nothing's changing oh it's not working for me

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it takes time to see change and uh the more sustainable

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your approach the more success you will have long term you'll you'll have

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long-term change um so yeah that's that's my thoughts on that

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I totally agree I want to add one thing though things like calorie deficits you know

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are technically not sustainable in the long run right if we stay in the deficit and so sometimes we do need to make you

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know uh short-term to kind of like trade-offs to eventually get to a sustainable place

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right so when it comes to dining for example it's totally true like you're totally right

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and we need to figure out a way where we teach you hey how can we get you to diet for example so that in the

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future you also know how to do it right and how can we also take you back and you know bring you back from that

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so I wanted to point that out because sometimes people use it almost as an argument like

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against dieting right against academic deficit and being like Oh diets don't work like

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well they do in a way but getting you to keep the weight off for example like that's the hard part so guys work but

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that second bit which we talked about I believe in episode three like that's the hard part yeah and something to think

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about like if you're really confused and you seem to just not be able to figure

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it out on your own hire a coach that you follow that you trust

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um that can be super helpful even if you're just with them for like three six months

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they're they're gonna help put you on the right track well a good coach will that is what you need as an individual

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right and they're going to teach you these different things that you could now take with you

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um down the road when you're not working with each other it's it's so beneficial it's it's such a beneficial investment

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and I'm not saying this because we're coaches like I'm not even taking clients on right now but Johannes

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um um but it's but it's seriously it helps you kind of cut through the BS but you

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have to find a coach that is open-minded too right because again there is oh man there are coaches that are biased

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um and you know in their in their ways but finding one that has an open mind and

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you know could help you through what is right for you I mean even that takes a limit of figuring out

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and um because there's a lot of like coaches you know for the people who are not

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watching like I'm doing air quotes my coaches out there uh on social media

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who basically just train and they're good at trading and they look like they train and then they're like hey you know

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what we just sell my program yeah but like

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you don't know if these people did do a course or maybe not at all

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whether they have done 10 courses 20 courses because there's people who have done a whole lot you know

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whether they have experience whether they have results which makes it difficult actually to

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find a good coach something too to think about so these people there's so much

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information and I there's people you know driving keto and carnivore and like

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veggies are bad and all of this type of stuff uh

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what like take a real hard look at these people like are is are they trying to

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sell something right because typically they are

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and that's something to really just keep an eye on and be aware of that there's

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something driving them to push one thing

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and it's typically because they're trying to sell something right they're making money from that so

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always just keep that in the back of your head someone who is pushing that veggies and

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fruits are bad that does not make sense it just does not make sense it's almost

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like oh you know like we've talked about on about everything we've we've covered you know stats in the 80s and

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then it was carves and then you know like it's like okay one by one let's attack everything you know because it's

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like something new out there you know like something that we haven't heard or at least for a while and you're so right you know liver King

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is a great example he's like promoting you know eat liver and all this and you know we live like our ancestors

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and like click on the link and it's right there you know selling supplements you know right of like you know beef

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liver or supplements and all that which hey I'm not even against because some people would like to get those nutrients

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but don't necessarily want to eat no beef liver however like

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our you know ancestors weren't taking supplements right um

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carnivore MD too like he's like talking of fruits and vegetables or I

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believe I actually saw a video recently where it was actually including a little bit of fruit now so you see that even

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those dudes aren't slowly like changing sometimes you know like sneaky like making a little bit of a transition sometimes but like same thing you go

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there and it's like supplements right in the last episode so I talked about a

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Doctor Who's like a fertility doctor which is great by the way you know and he has his doctor title but those people

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don't get any training and nutrition you know and here they are you know selling supplements programs and yeah

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be careful like literally like if you're like I wonder if this is true just go to their link and you'll see right away you

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know right usually right yeah anyway all right so next question is how

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do you work around a dock that isn't taking a client's need for a hormone panel seriously

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um so this has happened

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many many times uh throughout my career of helping

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both women and men with hormonal issues um

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I will typically give them a panel so like a full panel and they'll you know

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bring it to their doctor and we we can see resistance there why uh

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you know it could sometimes the the doctors like burnt out he doesn't want to do extra

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work um I I truly don't really know why there's

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so much resistance with this but how I work about it

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with my clients is like I will I'm basically their advocate so I

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will if the if the doctor isn't you know say we want thyroid pulled

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right but they're only pulling TSH or they're only pulling TSH and T4

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you know ask them why you know why why won't you pull they'll give you an answer then the then the client will

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typically come back to me and then we kind of go back and forth like that but

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if the if the doctor continues to just Decline and not pull the labs I move on

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you know we look for another doctor who will I've had this

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like with my my mom recently um it was like pulling teeth trying to

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get her doctor to pull Downstream thyroid hormones

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um so typically where I send my clients is on

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the functional Med like homeopathic endocrinologist type

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doctor because typically they are going to pull a full panel

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so at this point like you can you can kind of go back and forth you

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can ask them okay if you're declining uh pulling these Labs can you please

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write that in the in the records and typically they're not going to want to

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do that so sometimes they'll pull it if they don't we move on

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um the functional Med slash alternative uh

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type of doctors they're they're gonna pull it's

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something you have to be like really like you have to do your homework on and

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be careful with because like there's the Western medicine that they'll push uh

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you know meds things like that right and then there's also like the the

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alternative medicine or Eastern side of things that will like really push

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supplements right so we you really want to try and find someone who is kind of

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in the middle and isn't super biased to either side um and that's what I typically do you

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know with my clients is trying to find a doctor who's who's in the middle there that will pull all the labs and look at

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everything and then from there say okay do you potentially need medication some

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people do right some people do need to go on thyroid meds um or can we supplement with something

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look at lifestyle etc for a time being and see if we can fix the issue that way

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um I had a client where she was having a lot of issues uh

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symptoms arising of like thyroid issues and it was years of this and she would

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go to doctors her TSH uh this is an example so her TSH was normal so the

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doctors would not pull more Labs but there's a problem there okay so we can

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have a normal TSH but our T4 is not converting to T3 well

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and that can lead to that can show as hypothyroid but we can still have a

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normal TSH so now it's being missed right so someone has a thyroid issue but

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it's for all of these years is being missed because we can't get the doctor to pull further laps

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so that again now we can go even further with like thyroid where they're testing

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antibodies um and this is what happened with this client so I sent her the the whole

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uh the the breakdown of what I wanted her to get tested they tested everything including

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the antibodies and she actually had Hashimoto's so she was dealing with this for years

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and the doctors were just telling her it was nothing was wrong until I sent her

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to more of a functional Med doc who would actually pull these right away and

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we found that right away and we started to you know get after it and

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you know try and fix some of her issues um but there's there's not a whole lot

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you can do other than like asking why they're not pulling it if they don't pull it ask them to log that in the

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records typically they don't want to do that so they will end up pulling it and then if it just if there's just

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resistance the resistance continues move on to another doctor and like I said there's definitely good Western medicine

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doctors that will pull it I've seen it I've had it with clients I'm like and I honestly it shocks me because there's

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not a whole lot if I'm being honest but there is some and and so I'm not

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you know just attacking all these Western medicine doctors because I'm not they have their

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place and some will absolutely do that but if they're not I would just go over to like more of the

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functional Med alternative side and get it done that way

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that was really long-winded but I did want to give an example of how this can

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happen right it's it's just it happens often

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yeah no I think it's good to break that one down in more detail because honestly like this is one that we I mean we've

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had we have had a list of like things we want to talk about this one's been on there for a while like

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it's also not that you know we're against doctors like you said they're great and there's a place for them and we need them right and honestly like for

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the the local clients I have or you know I'd love to have like a local person I could actually be in touch with you know

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because this is where that could be a great

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collaboration like having your doctor and possibly having a coach like look we're we're not doctors you know like we

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can't like treat you know conditions and stuff however we can help you on the nutrition and lifestyle side of things

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which really is in many cases often you know the root cause of a lot of

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conditions now we're also there to be on your team to kind of push you to kind of like

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figure things out because I've had the same exact thing you know try to mind at the moment

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just had her blood work done and she's had her blood work done like every couple months for a while because she

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had one of her thyroid glands removed and um

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also same thing I think it was only T4 and TSH it's like okay cool well we actually

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don't really know what's going on now so now she's kind of like asking more and asking more but they're the answer she

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got was yeah well we're just test testing what's important right now that was it

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and yeah I really don't understand it no like

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I really wonder why that's the case because I know I mean I do understand because I have some friends who are

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doctors too but like I understand from a Time perspective like we have more or we invest more time

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in our clients than a doctor has with a patient because they only have their 15 minutes you could come in and I 100

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percent respect that and understand because they're often overworked you know Etc

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however there needs to be like a solution you know what I mean and I really like that you actually you know figured it out with that client and you

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actually found someone who could help Etc and that's really what you want to do and that really comes down back to that

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trying you know you're going to keep trying because sometimes it takes a little while to figure it out yeah it does

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actually had an application from someone who just finished a med school who's going to become a doctor

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who asked me hey like the main reason I would like to do this or is really two reasons is first of all I would like to

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lose some weight but then second I'd like to learn more about nutrition because we didn't get that much in school and I'd like to see how I could

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maybe apply some of that to my clients or my patients in the future so you see like

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that's that's what I mean like they often don't really know and that's okay you know I can't be a specialist in

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everything right yeah MDS are not specialized in hormones no

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or nutrition if I'm correct and what I've heard from doctors is that they get

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about like an hour course on nutrition yeah which

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I mean you know and and you know when I'm when I'm working with clients like

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this hormonal issues all that being said yeah I can definitely help people with

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that but most of the time it's me the client and their doctor and we're all

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working together but usually those doctors are on the

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functional Med side of things because they're willing like they look

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at the whole body as a whole right they they're they typically are

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trying to get to the root cause of the issue versus you know putting a Band-Aid

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over something right and that's why I go there but again like I said the best kind of

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doctors in my opinion are the ones that are in the middle they are not biased to the Western they

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are not biased to Eastern they will use supplements and lifestyle when they can

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but they if you absolutely need a medication they will put you on a medication like that's where I believe

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that magic is for sure I love that

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all right next one when calculating calorie needs do I use my current weight or my goal weight

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it depends as always this is a shorter question it's pretty pretty simple when we are looking at maintenance right

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you're maintaining your weight your result this is where we use current weight so you just use your total body weight Etc when it comes to muscle gain

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I would also do the same thing so we calculate your Macros based on your current weight right your starting point

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we look at protein carbs fats Etc and then from there we're going to start increasing right

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and the increase is going to not be based on your current weight Etc it's going to be

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based on how well you're progressing right if we're getting way too fast for example okay we want to darn it back a

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little if we're not gaining at all or maybe very slowly we can maybe add some so the very starting point will be based

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off your current weights but afterwards is going to be made on your progress and adherence and Etc

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so fat loss if that's a goal we'd like to go of lean body mass now

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here's the thing we talked about this like it's difficult to figure out you know we don't really have very great

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methods to figure out that percentage or at least that are available to most people so in that case we say just to

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make things easier we'll take your goal weight and we'll start to go off that right so protein needs Etc I think too

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if you have a lot of body fat to lose like you go off of

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Target body weight yeah yeah yeah and just in general like also here we only

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calculate that as your first step and then afterwards it's going to be based off your weigh-ins of your you know your

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adherence like how fast you're losing weight cool next one next one suggestions for how to get enough

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calories when stress slash anxiety make eating difficult sorry there's like a

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fruit fly in here um um yeah so this is not uncommon

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typically I mean it can kind of go either way right so someone under a lot of stress anxiety some people

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can overeat but then there's also people that you know they completely lose their appetite or their appetite decreases

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this pops up in coaching often you know with people who are just like

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really stressed or something traumatic happens um we can see that appetite decreasing

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we still want to try our best to get in

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food and nourish our body because if we're under a lot of stress or

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anxiety is high and now we're like really under eating that's just compiling more stress right so

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we've talked about food volume and volume when it comes to

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keeping us full right so we've talked about like a protein bar is low volume

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low volume high calorie and then like a plate of food would be high volume with

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like the same amount of calories right so which one is going to keep you um

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full longer it's going to be the plate of food so when we're in a situation

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where uh appetite has decreased and we just

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don't feel the desire to eat we don't want to feel like we're Force feeding so

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in those situations we will opt for more high calorie low volume Foods so I have

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a I actually made a post on this which we will link below but I'll give you some

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examples so like a high high calorie low volume meal we'll say I have a bunch

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here so Greek yogurt with granola and berries right fairly low low volume but

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we can shoot those calories up um oatmeal with protein powder granola and berries

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smoothies and you can really make smoothies calorie dense so you're adding

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in protein powder berries Nut Butter you know chia seeds honey maple syrup you

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can add granola on there and soon enough that can end up being like a 500 600

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calorie smoothie right but you're you're also still getting in micronutrients there

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um other examples we could do like avocado toast with hemp seeds or a bagel and

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cream cheese with a protein shake so you gotta get the point right these are high

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calorie low volume foods that don't

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that aren't going to make you feel like you're force-feeding right versus like a

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big plate of food with like rice and chicken and veggies that's going to be tough obviously when you don't have a an

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appetite um other ones you can other ones are things like jerky cereal applesauce

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dark chocolate olive oil so like sometimes with clients in this situation

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I will increase their fat intake um because it's a lot easier to increase

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calories that way so like if you think about a tablespoon of olive oil is like

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you know 13 grams of fat so that's a couple hundred calories or 107

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calories I'm forgetting exactly um Nut Butter same thing so like two

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tablespoons of nut butter is like 200 calories so really easy to get the

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calories in without the volume Jam honey maple syrup you know salad dressings

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trail mix granola and on the opposite end like a high volume

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lower calorie foods would be like leafy greens vegetables you know lean protein

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sources sweet potatoes those have more volume with less calories essentially

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so it's it's it's just about um altering the volume of your meal it

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doesn't necessarily mean you know eat a bunch of like junk food like lower

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Quality Foods yeah you can definitely incorporate those just to help a little bit

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um but you can still get some nutrient dense foods in there while lowering the

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volume of your food as really using different foods for different scenarios because I think a

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lot of people run into this when they're trying to bulk like I'm gonna try to do it too clean almost you know where it's

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like all right chicken and broccoli I actually just talked to someone a couple weeks ago in town I ran into them and

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they told me I'd love to build some muscle and get into training but um but I don't really want to do

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like the chicken broccoli thing I was like okay that's interesting because that's like a very common thing you know where people think like it has to be

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like a broad meal kind of thing right yeah like the other night

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like I my appetite wasn't super high because appetite ebb and flow right or your hunger is going to ebb and flow

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it's normal um I wasn't like super hungry so I had a a dense sandwich so I had like my bread I

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had some cheese on there I had some turkey breast I had some a little bit of avocado Mayo some ghee butter so it's a

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very calorie dense meal that doesn't have a lot of volume but it's still I'm still having you know some nutrients in

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there it's not like just complete crap essentially yeah yeah

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nice one last question for today how can I increase muscle without gaining fat

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is it possible when we're talking muscle gain we typically want to be in a category Surplus we want to slowly gain

30:28

weight how slow between 0.25 and 0.5 per

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week that's very slow you're going to have to do a lot of work for a long time and it's going to take a while that's

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like half as fast as you can go with fat loss you know which is why muscle scale and phases should also be generally

30:46

longer now this is also going to depend on your experience level experience lifters

30:52

actually want to keep going very slow to kind of keep it as lean as possible whereas when you're new you can actually

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go a little bit quicker now there are scenarios where you can actually lose fat and build muscle at

31:05

the exact same time it's not going to always be the same rate usually it's not but it is possible

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to have that you know Best of Both Worlds you know muscle gain and fat loss

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however it's just not to be expected right typically for most people we want to be in a deficit for weight loss or

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fat loss I want to be in a surplus for muscle gain no exceptions where you could gain

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muscle and lose body fat at the same time first of all being newbie gains especially combined with a higher

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protein intake so let's say you haven't been eating a lot of protein well what happens when

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you raise that protein intake combined with going from not working out

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to lifting weights a couple times a week you might actually see quite a bit of

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body recomposition where that happens right once again I fellows at the same time

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it's very common from new uh new lifters basically and I would say anyone who goes through this like benefits from

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that right like be happy that this is happening right now because it's going to get more and more difficult over time

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so let's see the first exception the second would be steroids very common a lot of models are using steroids on you

32:16

know Instagram like Fitness influencers actors anytime you see like a crazy like actor

32:23

you know transformation where they have to get ready for a role it's usually steroids it's very common and uh

32:29

I think it's uh I mean we did talk about this already so I don't want to dive into this too much but it is something

32:35

to keep in mind right especially if you look at bodybuilders

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you know reality is most of them are not natural and that's okay that's a choice but I'm just saying hey we can't really

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compare ourselves to those people right so in most cases you want to go slow however you will gain some body fat and

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that sucks but that's that's how it is you can mitigate how much it is we want

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to go slow you know we don't want to push it too long because if we got to a point where we do lose some definition

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and a little too much hey maybe let's dial it back or let's maybe consider a mini cuts

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but that's also why you will often see people doing a bulk you know muscle gaining phase followed by a cut because

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first we're trying to build as much muscle as possible with as little fat gain as possible

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and then afterwards we're trying to lose as much body fat as possible while maintaining as much muscle as possible

33:30

when you're when you're when you're looking at how big of a surplus to go into like

33:35

we're talking small like it could it could be like a 100 to 200 calorie increase right it doesn't have to be

33:42

anything huge yeah yeah for sure

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because we often want to get excited and rush it a little bit right and that's where people do dirty

33:55

bulks and stuff and just get a whole bunch of body fat like just be patient nope right one step at a

34:01

time obviously resistance training weight training is is very important in a ball huge yeah you can you can do like

34:10

a little bit of cardio um but

34:17

typically people tend to like overdo it but you could you could incorporate a

34:23

little bit um more for like health reasons um but most of it should be weight

34:29

training yeah it's the thing you know like combine combine what you're doing with your goal

34:35

right if you're trying to build muscle and maybe you want to lift weights right you want to improve your cardio

34:42

go running go cycling you know if you want to approach your health maybe do a combination

34:48

but this is where what we do needs to make sense right if we really want to have

34:54

solid like physique results or physical results we've got to put the right work in we

35:01

can get some results with like you know body weight workouts Etc is going to be optimal for most people

35:09

probably not it's still going to be okay like we can make results there but you know the stimulus needs to be there we

35:16

want to lift weights if you want to build muscle cool awesome saw the episode I really

35:23

like this one once again guys if you have any questions feel free to submit them and then we'll probably be back

35:29

with another q a pretty soon within the next week or two three maybe we'll see

35:36

sounds good thanks for listening