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welcome to the Smoke show all right

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I love that name though like all right welcome to the Smoke show

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what's up guys welcome back to another episode episode three today where we're going to talk about fat loss maintenance

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last episode we touched on Fat Loss versus weight loss kind of like the differences and also the importance of

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muscle building Etc now we didn't really get into fat loss maintenance which in my opinion is

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probably even more difficult and more important than actually losing the body fat

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so we wanted to dedicate a specific episode to just that

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so a common mistake that I see a lot of people including my clients make from time to time is thinking that once

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they're done with a diet then that's it I'm good right um I'm sure that you see there's a lot

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too Christine but like this really must come from you know the the fat loss

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challenges the six pack in six weeks you know the very restrictive like X week

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diets whatever where it's kind of like this mindset of I'm just making these changes just for now I'm losing a whole

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bunch of Weights I'm gonna cut out all my favorite foods I'm gonna hate life for a couple weeks but at least I'll lose weight you know

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and then that's it and that's really a big mistake and like I said in my opinion like what you

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do after the diet no to keep the weight off is crucial it's something you can't

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neglect and that's really why we're dedicating full episode to it because once you're done with the actual

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fat loss phase you're not actually done yet right the real work has just begun so what many people don't know and it's

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just for most it's a lack of knowledge as to what happens to the body when we

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are in a fat loss phase or or doing a diet or a challenge or something like that

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um we touched on it before I mean we'll probably touch it on a million more times but it it's the metabolism

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um down regulating right and so many people will think of that as a plateau

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but it's just your body adapting to that lower amount of calories it's a normal

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process often people look at it as a negative thing but it's it's part of it it's our

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body again it's that survival mechanism kind of thing happening

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so what happens is you're done this diet and say you're at a very low caloric

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intake and you've been there for a period extended period of time the body is going to adapt to that

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amount of calories so a lot of the time why we see the weight

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rebound is because people are well the diet's potentially

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too restrictive so they end up binging and eating everything back but it's it

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just happens too quickly and we don't give the body enough time to essentially up regulate so just as it

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down regulates the body upregulates and when we don't give it enough time to do

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that we don't increase calories in a controlled manner this is where we end

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up gaining the fat back sometimes worse right

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um so that's just something that many people don't understand they think when

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the diet's done it's it's done but that's where a coach actually can help

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immensely um is that reverse diet back up

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into a more sustainable Place increasing metabolism metabolism as we increase

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calories that way you can essentially maintain

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well we'll talk about how to maintain but you can maintain most of those body

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composition improvements at a higher caloric intake but again it just takes

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time A little bit of time to get there some stuff that a lot of people don't know is first of all as you mentioned

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the metabolism has slowed down right so that's one now second

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hunger is through the roof usually but it's time you know so we're very likely

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to overeat to overshoot calories now on top of that we might even be

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better at storing body fat in those situations where the body can actually add you know

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new fat cells so we might even Just Bounce right back actually gain more body fat again

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so a lot of good reasons to not rush it right and not thinking hey I'm done

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already but instead hey let me just stay on point still just for now I'm almost

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there but you know we still got to do that transition and then maybe you know taking the food

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off the gas and just kind of slowing down and enjoying more flexibility right yeah so the the first point was talking

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about being done yet essentially after the fat loss phase second point is like not

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increasing food too quickly because again that's when the fat loss or the

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the fat gain can happen it's essentially called a reverse diet that's what we

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call it in the in the nutrition industry Fitness industry um it's going to look different for

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different people depending on the situation again this is why it's so important or helpful to have someone

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help you along the way um but that's a really important

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factor to to focus on is not increasing those calories too quickly

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yeah because it's very exciting right you're like oh you know what I planned my cuts

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all the way down till the week before I'm going on my summer vacation you know right or whatever it may be your wedding

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Etc like that's cool like don't get me wrong it's fine but we we don't want to go from

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being deep down in the deficit you know low calories to all of a sudden just going all out right that's where it goes

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wrong yeah so when you mention not increasing food too quickly where would you start people

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off I know we do this the same but for the listeners yeah so typically at the

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end of a fat loss phase I will bump them from where they are where they're ending

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I will bump them up you know 15 20 to just get them out of that lower range

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and then from there based on like well biofeedback you know how they're feeling

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in general what weight is doing I would say a general recommendation is

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about a hundred calories bi-weekly

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um I think that's a safe place I have myself when I have a first diet like I

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can reverse diet pretty quickly like I can do it every week that's not the case for some people right so again it

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depends but I think that's a safe area to be in

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I think it's hard too um especially figuring this out without a coach right because

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I mean honestly there's three scenarios you'll gain weight which can happen right away it's maybe

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not gonna be body fat but you'll probably gain weight from food water Etc which might you know make you free cars

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a little little then you might lose weight simply because your body might respond by

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burning more calories or you maintain that's kind of like what we expect right where you increase food

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but your weight loss stops you know that would kind of be what we're aiming for right the reality is you don't know how

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it's going to go you don't know if you're going to gain maintain or lose

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and how you're going to respond to 50 calories or 30 or 100 or 200 whatever

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right with that first step right which is why I think trying to not rush

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it is at least a little bit safer than adding too quick but now that we're talking about like increase in calories

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this is something I literally talked to someone about um last week where they got quite a few

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extra calories but I went to the fun stuff right

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which is cool I'm all for flexibility we always talk about flexible dieting 80 20 Etc however

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the fact that we're gonna eat more doesn't mean that that's just gonna come from the fun stuff food quality still

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matters you still want to focus on the good stuff yes sir

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so common tool um that I use with clients is the 80 20

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tool right so I'm thinking eighty percent of time we're eating whole sources of food real food uh 20 of time

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we have those fun Foods um and this can help keep those calories

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in control so what does that look like you know it can look different so we

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could have you know all horse whole sources of food one day Monday Tuesday whole all whole

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sources of food have some cookies at lunch or at dinner

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um you know something like that but again like 80 percent of the time you want to be eating those whole sources of

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food um me I what that looks like for me is like my breakfast my lunch my dinner my

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snacks pre-well a whole sources of food that's a mouthful

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um and then I'll add like some sort of processed food in there like after

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dinner everyone knows I love desserts I'm always posting it on my my Instagram like I'll do

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something after dinner um and then the next day I'll have a little bit of that in my lunch but the

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majority of the time is real foods that are basically one ingredient right so if

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we have that mindset that can really help to keep things in control

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um following a diet face and guys so we're not going to like

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calculate your 80 that you're 20 right yeah I know or at least I don't do that

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at least yeah but it's it's more of a mindset like it's making those choices most of the time right and I think

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that's really something you can apply to anything you know training uh sleep you know if you sleep like [ __ ] every now and then okay cool I'm not the end of

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the world but back to food we want to mostly make those whole food choices you know the stuff that we kind of know of

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that is healthy food right yeah and I think along the lines of that I'll touch on

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um like balancing meals right because when you're going out for dinner whether

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you're at home you can implement this anytime so when I'm focusing on my plate

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I am thinking of a balanced meal and what I mean by a balanced meal is getting a protein a carb fat fiber

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source so I want you know chicken uh vegetables like like protein and

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vegetables are going to be the main portion of my plate and then I'll have like potatoes or rice

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or something like that and I'm usually cooking with oils and or like the the fats from the animal base protein and I

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take that same mindset when I'm out for dinner so I'm looking at on the menu

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what meals here are protein based that have vegetables some sort of

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carbohydrate I keep it fairly simple if there isn't you know a veggie Source in

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there I'll I'll ask for a side of it right and just to make sure that I'm

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getting a balanced meal because that is going to help with overall hunger

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throughout the day it's going to keep you more full and again that in return that is going to help to keep calories

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more in control totally I think it's just something to keep in

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mind right like we're always in charge of the food choices that we make I think when we go

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out for food you know restaurants they tend to use a little bit more fat you know oils Etc so maybe you don't

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necessarily have to look for okay am I getting my fat Source you probably are getting your fats you are yeah little

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side tip but making those food choices um that's really going to set you up for

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success I think it's also gonna even like keep you from maybe overshooting calories while you're going out for food

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because those Foods aren't necessarily super dense in calories right

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and if you don't want to combine that with a drink okay cool at least your meal is not going to be like this huge

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calorie bomb right you can make modifications like

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really with anything right so if I if I'm looking at like a salad and there's

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a bunch of fat sources in there I will remove the cheese right and it's not because cheese is bad is because I'm

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just focusing on trying to keep calories in control right and there's other times

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I won't do that but most of the time I am um or like if there's cheese and then

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there's the salad dressing and then there's what candied walnuts you know

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again all of these are very calorically dense so I'll swap something out you

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know modify it or like have the dressings on the side things like that so I can modify how much is going on on

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the meal so these little things again can help keep the calories in control

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and that's what we need if we want we want to keep those calories in control especially at this moment right right

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after a fat loss phase right we really want to just jump back to maintenance and honestly

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reality is not everyone needs a reverse diet man but it's going to be very difficult

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to know your maintenance carriers at that point right so it's probably a good idea to

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transition to slowly bring yourself up in terms of calories preferably with a

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coach hey I'm a little biased here we're both coaches you know yeah but but I do

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really believe that that's the case personally I've had coaches and you have you know also in terms of mentoring it's

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that accountability right yes and I know for myself personally in those

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situations I'll probably let myself get away with too much you know we're human we really sometimes we make

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those decisions based on emotions and that could be a whole another episode but like yeah what I'm trying to

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say is it's easier said than done right oh we're just going to increase with 50

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calories or 100 and then a little more applying it to someone's life like

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that's where it gets tricky once again with accountability hey at least there's someone checking up on you at least

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you're having someone on your team who can say hey you know what okay maybe this time we learned that maybe this is not the

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right way to do it right and then next time you go out for food you can then make better choices and really find that

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balance between you know keeping weight off while also making you know the better food choices

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as well as enjoying because that's super important too right totally that being said I think

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at that moment you know after a weight loss made it's probably a good idea to keep tracking

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very common mistake once again which really comes from this mindset I

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think of okay I've lost weight I'm good now it's probably still a good idea to keep

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tracking and I bring this up with my clients a lot too and I will already tell them beforehand Hey listen like

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we're almost there but it does mean that we're going to stop tracking I know you're gonna really want to it's probably gonna be for the

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best if you keep doing that for at least a little while yeah so

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what I do um with my clients is we end the fat loss phase we start reversing calories

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back up and we're tracking that whole time but once we get to maintenance

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that's when we start to step away from tracking or I like to call it loosening

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the grip a little bit um it depends on the client to be honest

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with you what we do here because some clients love tracking their food like I'm one of those people I love seeing

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the data right it creates more flexibility more freedom for me

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um that being said I do believe we all do need a break um so in some capacity so I'll have

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clients we get to maintenance and we track three to four days a week

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instead of seven right and then you know maybe we knock it down to two to three

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right and we give them that break you know they don't need to be tracking every single day

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another situation that happens within my my nutrition coaching is

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when a client finishes a reverse diet or at maintenance okay they step away from

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coaching and I give them like the kind of exit strategy um and if they're not going to track

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macros in that time I tell them to check in on themselves like once every couple

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weeks and track a day or two and just see where they're at and see okay do I

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need to adjust my eating you know how much I'm eating whether it's up or down

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just just to kind of have something to see um and that works as well and then you

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know once they're done their maintenance phase they come back or if they're still with me we will ramp the tracking back up in

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the maintenance phase and then we will drop back down into the fat loss phase where we're tracking now seven days a

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week because we have a lot less leniency in the deficit let's be honest foreign

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I was laughing because as you explain that transition right from seven days a week to like three to four

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I was like that's exactly what I do too yeah yeah like we like I know that tracking is always like

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this thing where you know how I mean how often have you heard like I tried tracking calories but

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it didn't work for me you know many times a lot of people including myself

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um have had shitty experiences with tracking because typically

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we don't know how to kind of properly do it going into it like I told you

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in the first episode I I thought quote maximum weight loss you know maximum

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rate of weight loss 1200 calories I guess that's what I got to do yeah I

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didn't know you know right so that's that's the thing I think uh tracking can be a great tool when it's

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applied correctly it can really benefit you a whole lot you'll learn about food portions right what's in certain foods

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and you can also really control your weight loss or weight gain Journey or even maintenance

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but it's equally important to be able to do without tracking yep but when the

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time is right and that's not while you're still in the deficit no

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so if you're at the end of a fat loss phase are you listening to this you are not done yet make sure to

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transition first and then maybe step away from tracking and

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that maintaining also goes for most of the things that you've been working on

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you want to keep most of your habits that's why I brought that up you know with the challenges and stuff and hey I've done challenges too I think they

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can be great when they're set up the right way but the changes that we're making you

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know to get healthier to achieve your goals are not temporary

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we want to maintain most of those habits right that's why when a client comes to me I

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will not put them into a deficit right away we work on building those basic

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habits because those are what help to keep the fat loss or even just

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not everyone's coming for fat loss but like even just to maintain their body

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weight you know stay healthy down the road if we don't have those we don't have those fundamentals we don't have

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that solid foundation it's more likely we are not going to succeed at that

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so moving on neat I love talking about neat

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um so when we're looking at our energy burn throughout the day calories burned throughout today

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neat so non-exercise activity is the second largest aspect of that okay so

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I'm always on top of my clients about keeping this High I don't care what phase they're in

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um I guess in a reversed eye if someone's doing like 20K steps I'm going to tell them just to lower those lower

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those steps but this is really helpful in keeping energy expenditure up

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um when you're in a maintenance phase or your your revert you're coming out of

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that phase or you just want to maintain your fat loss um this is going to help you burn more

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calories throughout the day without like the added stress of more exercise so getting in your steps walking very

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impactful on body composition I mean body composition but Health in

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general yeah I mean so right so yeah probably one of the easiest things you

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can do for your health and just any of your goals in general is bring your steps up I think getting to that range

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of maybe around 10K or at least closer to that range it's probably something that a lot of

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people could benefit from just making that little change right I was just talking to someone and they were trying to figure out their

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nutrition so I asked them about their step count which is not related to the food side but they said hey you know it's about 3

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000 right now I'm like okay cool you know what like for the next couple weeks let's actually bring that up first

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instead and then we'll talk about nutrition and stuff but let's get into that healthy mindset let's get you moving a little bit more because

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throughout your whole journey whether it's for fat loss or muscle gain or even just health or whatever steps are going

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to be huge and it also plays into yeah keeping the weight off yeah for sure

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um and then the last couple points here that I have are to

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not skip meals um because this can backfire

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and you can end up over consuming at the end of the day I think a lot of people they try to

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they think that they're saving calories by not having a meal or skipping a meal

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and then at the end of the day they're so hungry they end up binging and now they're eating twice as many calories as

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they would have if they just would have had that meal right so not skipping

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meals is very helpful and keeping calories in control keeping fullness and hunger

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regulated throughout the day balancing blood sugar all of those types of things

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um and then I say to keep snacking to a minimum

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um because calories add up very quickly when we are snacking right especially

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we're not typically not snacking on protein okay like we're not stocking on chicken breasts we're snacking on trail

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mix different things like that that are really calorically dense so having you know bigger meals across

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the day can actually help again keep those calories in control help with

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fullness um so for me what that looks like is I have breakfast

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around like 8 30 that I have my lunch and they're big right they're like 500

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600 calories like just depends right I'm that being said I'm eating a lot right

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now but that the caloric intake will change based on where you are but

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um I'll have my breakfast at like 8 30 and then I'll have my lunch around 11 30

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12 and then I'll have my snack around three and then I'll have my dinner on

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like 6 37 and it's it's pretty structured like I'm not eating exactly at that time those times it kind of

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depends on my day but I'm trying to have about you know three to four hours in

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between when I'm eating and I'm making those meals nice and voluminous and

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balanced that way I'm staying full and now I'm way more in control of my

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calories over the day versus like having a small breakfast and then a snack and

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then I'm hungry right after and I'm having a small lunch and then I'm hungry right after I like picking at this and I'm picking at that right and that those

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calories will add up really quickly versus if you just make a nice balanced voluminous meal

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so keeping the snacking to a minimum um and trying to have a little bit more

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structure with meals can help most people again everyone's going to be

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different um but I find that helps my myself and

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my clients totally I think this is even something

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that's helping me right now like in the middle of a cut is actually having that framework right

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that structure yeah these are my meals um I like pre-logging everything already

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which I did yesterday for the whole week I'll change it up from time to time but in general I'm repeating a lot of stuff

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but I'm focusing on exactly that right yeah filling foods but not just like

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snacking all the time because I guess a lot of people would have this idea of hey that's going to keep me

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satiated yeah maybe in the short term right but what

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happens is from all that snacking you're already like you're already spending some calories here and there you know

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what happens then is your meals are going to have to be smaller if you want to stick within your calories right

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now if we have smaller meals we might not feel very satisfied after that if you really want to support keeping full

27:44

I'd say you know same thing like you said stick to your meals your meal frequency

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pick like I'm gonna have four meals a day or five whatever I just stick to that make sure that those foods are

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built from a protein a carb fat the fiber source you mentioned and you're

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gonna support your goals you're gonna get a lot of micronutrients you can stay full

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and just in general if most of your meals like even the whole tracking thing aside like if most of your meals look

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like that you're literally doing most of the work already right you know yeah you don't even need to be tracking and that's

28:20

actually something that I often start people off with you know if tracking is kind of like a thing where hey we still

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have to kind of learn and figure that out okay cool let's at least decide on our frequency and food choices because

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that's something that we can always do right if you're snacking a lot

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like you're on uh blood sugar roller coaster and that will create more hunger

28:52

it will create more Cravings you can end up feeling lethargic it can mess with

28:58

your sleep we want to regulate blood sugar and that's going to happen by you know

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spaced oatmeals balanced meals with protein fiber fat

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um and so in return again that's going to help keep calories in control

29:16

yeah great awesome so I hope that was useful guys I think

29:21

we've covered mostly most important factors right I think I can't really think of anything

29:26

well exercise yeah exactly so don't

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exercise just to lose weight right like um we'll talk about this I'm sure but

29:36

like that's maybe actually let me let me talk about that for a sec because

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a lot of people would few exercise as in that's one of your main you know ways of losing weight sure

29:49

it helps we might have to crank up the cardio from time to time but it's not going to be the number one

29:55

factor leading to weight loss that's going to come from your nutrition

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that being said training is just something that we should be doing anyway yeah right a

30:07

couple times a week hey not every day but you do want to keep doing that because Health

30:12

it goes hashtag health