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And we're back. What's up and welcome back to Talk to Nutrition. As always, I'm your host at Young Investors, and today we are going to expand on the mini-series we recently kicked off based on the in-person event I did with my good friend Pierre Saberg. Back in February in also, we talked all things nutrition, fat loss, what to eat, how much to eat, how to fuel your training, building muscle and everything in between. And of course, ultimately creating that lifestyle that we want to live without the food noise, without overthinking everything that has to do with food and just living a good life. You know what I mean? Being strong, being healthy, having a lot of energy, having a consistent menstrual cycle for females out there, having your digestion being in a good spot. That's what we're working towards. Now, obviously, I need you to understand that it's going to take some time to achieve that lifestyle, but that's what we're here for. That's why we show up every single week here on the podcast. But also my clients, like every single week, we check in, right? We see what can we do better, how can we learn and grow and learn from our mistakes and obstacles and challenges that life will throw at you, which is why we're called the Odyssey, right? Now, last time, so two episodes ago, we talked about the biggest mistake or mistakes really I see people make when it comes to their fat loss goals, nutrition really in general. I said, Hey, people are dying too much too often, and we think that eating healthy is this on or off planting. Okay. Now the next question, especially as I was talking about, hey, I see more people undereat rather than overeat, even if their goal is fat loss, right? The next question then was okay, so well, let's say if we want to lose the body fat, why is that under eating such a problem then? Okay, and that is today's theme, that is today's topic. We're gonna dive right in in a sec. But as always, if you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a returning listener, welcome back. If you want to help me reach more people, drop me a quick rating andor review on Spotify, Apple, wherever you're listening. Subscribe on YouTube if you don't know yet. We do have the video podcast up on YouTube as well. And um, make sure to drop a comment or something, like ask me questions, you know what I mean? Like you can do that on Spotify, you can do it on uh on YouTube as well. The best thing for you me to keep growing here for me to also understand what kind of things you struggle with, or if you're like listening and you're like, hey, this sounds good, but how do I apply this? Or what about this? Shoot me a message, whether that's a comment or DM on Instagram, hit me up because I'm always here to help. I'm not here to pitch you anything. If you have a question, I have the answers for you. And that's probably the biggest thing I want you to think of is that this this whole learning process, the more you proactively show up, I tell my clients this too, the more you ask, the more attention to detail you have, the more curious you become in figuring this out, the quicker you're gonna grow, right? So keep that learning learner's mindset. Now, as for our question, why is it such a problem when when people do want to lose fat to underat so much? Now, there's a few things, and I once again gave a a two-sided answer here. I said there's two scenarios, okay? And the second one is going to be the most common, but we could truly live on low calories. I'm saying truly, right? We are actually on low calories for a long period of time. Why is this a bad thing? Well, there's something that's called metabolic adaptation, your metabolism slowing down. I think you've might have heard already about the metabolism being fast and slow, but in all reality, it's not just fast or slow, it is adaptive. It will adapt to the environment, the stressors we deal with, the caloric intake or the calorie availability, I should say, really, the energy that's available around us through food, of course. Um, it will adjust accordingly, okay? Because your body doesn't really want to lose body fat, it just wants to stay the same. And your body also doesn't really want to gain if you think about it, okay. And generally speaking, if we're healthy, metabolically healthy, we have a good just about that maintenance calorie range uh intake of our calories, your body body does a really good job at adjusting your energy output, okay. Meaning you, and this goes for maintenance, right? Or just in general, but you eat a bit more, you burn more calories. You eat a little bit less, you burn fewer calories, okay. Now to a certain extent, the body's not always going to be able to kind of compensate for your overeating or under-eating, right? And if you think about fat lots, it's it's controlled under eating so that there's too few calories coming in. That's why it's a calorie deficit, that's what that means, so that your body starts to burn the body fat, your stored energy. But there's going to be a point where if we stay on that low calorie for such a long time, the body will adapt, the metabolism will slow down over time. Because once again, it doesn't want to lose weight, it wants to keep you alive. The body really cares about two things it's it's procreation, keeping our species going, and survival. Okay. So if you think about it, we are wired to survive, right? In you know, thousands of years ago, if you think of how people were eating and right, sometimes through like a winter, for example, yeah, there would be a period where there's maybe less food available. People didn't just die all of a sudden out of nowhere. Now, of course, right? Probably a higher rate back then, but all joking aside, um, through periods of famine, that's what it's called, right? Periods of famine, less food availability, fewer calories available, the metabolism would slow down. And then in in times of feast, right, a lot of food available, we would potentially store some body fat, but also right, that metabolism will pick up again, okay? So that we don't keep gaining either. Now, if you truly live on low calories, the body can adapt, your metabolism can slow down, and it will. It's just a matter of time. It's a normal thing, it's it should happen. I'll put it that way. It's not a bad thing, right? Because people talk about metabolic adaptation as like this terrible thing. No, it's it's a normal physiological process that is supposed to happen according to your food intake, okay, to keep things in check. Makes sense, but metabolism slows down, so thyroid production can go down. Your thyroid hormone is really that or your thyroid gland, right? The command center of your metabolism. Now, if we're talking metabolism, it's not just burning calories, okay? You gotta understand this. It is every process in your body. Thyroid hormone acts on every process. So if we're looking at sex hormones and digestion, really everything, liver detox. If we live on low calories, all those processes eventually, over time, will slow down. Okay. We also, and this is a big component too, because what I just talked about is mostly like your organs and stuff, right? That's more like your resting metabolic rates. The biggest form of metabolic adaptation, I would say, in terms of burning calories is going to be your need, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. That is walking, talking, blinking, you know, um, talking with my hands right now, even twitching. That happens less. Okay, and that is one of the biggest ways, which is why it's probably smart to track your steps in the fat loss phase because you will move less, but that way we can at least keep those steps in a good spot, making sure we keep moving. It's not just gonna show up as steps, but still, okay, it's just a good little tool to use in the fat loss phase for multiple reasons, but we'll expand on that. Need goes down, so your daily movement, your exercise activity, because I just said movement, right? Daily movement, not including exercise, exercise activity, which is only 5% of the amount of calories you burn per day. Well, we have fewer calories coming in, you have less fuel, we're able to push a little bit less, we're likely burning some fewer calories during exercise, too. And I'm just gonna cover every aspect of your metabolism or your calories burned, your total daily energy expenditure. Thermic effect. Okay, so the thermic effect of food is the calories burned through digestion. Less food coming in, less to digest, fewer calories burned. Digestion is actually kind of funny. Digestion is only uh, sorry, not even only, it's actually 10% of your daily calorie burn, which is more than exercise, if you think about it on average. So all these things will will downregulate over time. We move less, we burn fewer calories through digestion, through exercise. Um maybe if you're on really low calories, this is another weak point. If you're on really low calories, we risk losing muscle. Muscle is metabolically active more than fat. Less muscle means also a lower resting metabolic rate, okay? Or basal metabolic rate, so your BMR, okay. But this can even show in hormones, sex hormones, for example. If we look at bodybuilders or any like high-level athlete risks losing their menstrual cycle if they truly stay on those low calories and their energy requirements are very high. In athletes, this is called reds, okay? So relative energy deficit syndrome in bodybuilding. Once again, also very common to lose a menstrual cycle. Now, this is not exclusive to bodybuilders. I'm just saying those people are they cut pretty hard to unhealthy low body fat percentages. So you see that quite often. But now we're seeing it in in just you know non-bodybuilding women, right? Just your your everyday person like you and me. Menstrual cycle is gone. Okay, so what is that from? Well, it's it's a form of it's a symptom. If you think about it, okay, there's no menstrual cycle. Okay, so sex hormones are gonna go down, you're not gonna have that natural progesterone production. Why would this happen? Well, the body's trying to preserve energy, right? Things are slowing down, fewer hormones, right? If you think about again survival, how would it make sense for the body to spend energy on creating these sex hormones if there's not even enough energy for you to truly survive optimally? How would it make sense then to try to put a baby on this earth if there's too little food, you know? So this these processes all require energy. So all of that may go down. Now, that all sounds pretty scary. How do you reverse this? You eat enough. You eat enough, that's it. And obviously, eating more and eating enough is scary sometimes if you come from like a chronically low calorie intake. But look, it's it's necessary. You have to get those calories up. I have a client currently, she just lost 10 kilos, which is massive. That was her first fat loss phase. Now she has more weight to lose. Maybe another 10, then another 10. Look, we're gonna do maintenance now for three months, and that's a scary process for her, okay? And she's a little worried about eating more. She's worried that the scale is gonna go up and it feels uncomfortable. And told her, look, and I educated her on everything, metabolism, and I said, Hey, look, we're gonna take a step-by-step, first of all, which I do recommend to use. Well, if you are coming from low calories and you're trying to go to maintenance to fuel your trading, building muscle, those kind of goals, performance, even if your goal's not fat loss. Like I said last time, I see a lot of people under-eat, even if the goal is not fat loss. That process of getting categories back up probably should be a step-by-step process for you to kind of get used to it as well. Okay. And then things will will pick up. And I told my client, look, it's it's a bit of an uncomfortable season. I get it. I see women struggle with this every single week. I I literally have this talk weekly with multiple people every single week. I said, Hey, look, I just explained everything to you, but I gotta be honest. The only way for you to truly see it and understand and believe me saying that you can eat more without gaining a bunch of weight is you actually doing it, going through the reverse diet, which is our method of bringing calories up step by step. You go to maintenance, you stay at maintenance, we strategically bring food up from the right foods in the right amounts and right ratios. We pair that with good workouts. The only way for you to actually see it click in your own head is going through that phase and I told her this is one of those times where I need you to trust the process and I will keep things in check for you. And I'll promise you this we're gonna keep the 10 kilos off. We're gonna get that metabolism back up so that we maintain because that's one of the reasons we do this. Fat loss round one for her with three months. We're not gonna keep going. It's April now. We got to take a break. We take a break now, we take a break May into June, and then we will do our second round. We're gonna do a little bit of fat loss after summer, okay? Reverse diet back up from Christmas. She's gonna be in maintenance again, three months. March, we can start another fat loss phase. Now, I'm I'm mapping this out long term for you to also see. Hey, if we do have a goal that's 20, 30 plus kilos, it's gonna take some time, and that is okay. But we gotta have these breaks. Whether you are looking to lose fat or not, that needs to happen. We need dedicated periods of plenty of calories, of nutrients, and giving what the body needs. Now, like I said, the metabolic adaptation part, it's something I wanted to expound on, but it's not that common. Look, I've been doing this for years now with hundreds of people. The truly metabolically active clients I've had were very few. Very few. Okay. The second scenario, which was my my second half of the answer that I gave it also, was we think we are in low calories. We try to be in low calories, but we're eating so little that it's impossible to stick with your diet. That is where people have those cravings in the evening and they binge on chocolate, whatever, a whole bag. That is where people will, in quotes, do good during the week and then completely go overboard on Friday. They say, Well, I messed up already, so on Saturday I might as well just keep going. On Sunday, we feel like crap, but you know what? Because we feel like crap, we keep eating whatever, we dive into the chocolates and the candies, and then it's Monday we're gonna try again. We've got to start over. That is a lot more common. It's thinking that we're on low calories, but truly just being on a diet that is so strict and low calorie that we cannot stick with it. I get it, the intentions are there, but that is also why now. I mean, we just passed the first quarter of the year, almost every New Year's resolution, it's it's already done. People give up. And if this is you listening, look, I'm also not judging. Look, I I get it. I made those mistakes myself. I I followed the diets I was unable to stick with. I watched a documentary, which is and look, I didn't know better. Okay, this is what is this 14 years ago or so. I was overweight, I had 30 kilos to lose, just about what is that, 60 pounds or so, 65. And I was also trying random shit. I've I've done I've gone through this this journey, okay. I I watched a documentary and I I I forgot what it's called, I can't remember. But it was this documentary on people doing like this this juice fasting thing. So I was like, okay, great, let's do that's gotta be the way, okay. And I got this this nutri bullet and I started living on fucking green green juices. It it was a matter of days, okay. I was so hungry, I was so drained, I was unable to stick with it. I mean, yeah, obviously, right? And then I lose some weight in the beginning, yeah, but I couldn't stick with that. So guess what? It was the weekend, and you know, me and my band went out to play a show, and you know, I just went overboard. And I've tried multiple things. You know why I hate my fitness spell? It's because back in 2012, I didn't know better. I was just about 30 kilos overweight. I got my app because a friend of mine recommended this to me, which is great. I mean, also obviously he means well. I opened the app, I set my goal, and um, my fitness pal told me or asked me, how much weight do you want to lose per week? And you had a little slider, okay? And that slider allowed me to choose, I think it was more than one kilo per week, one or two kilos or something, it was. So obviously, me thinking, hey, I'm excited, I'm gonna go for it. Maximum weight loss per week. It gave me 1200 calories for a 115 kilo dude. That's way too little. That's way too little. So obviously, did I lose weight in the beginning? Yeah, was I able to stick with it? Hell no. In no time, I fell off back to square one. And that's that spiral so many people are stuck in. It's a New Year's resolution, and we think we're gonna do everything at once. We slash calories, 1200 calories, a thousand calories. We go ultra clean, no candies, no whatever. I'm gonna quit alcohol, I'm gonna do 10,000 steps, and I'm gonna do cardio every day. I'm gonna lift weights and all these things. I mean, it's pretty fucking obvious why people fall off, right? No one can live like that. Now, as you know, as I always teach you, fat loss phases are short-lived, relatively speaking, due to lifestyle. We do need to make some trade-offs. We have to go low calories for a period of time, but not that low. I was specifically thinking of a client of mine who came in and I want to think maybe it was just about 17 or 1600 calories. All I did in the beginning, as I was like, hey, look, I'm looking at your activity, you're doing a lot. Your steps, your workouts. You're eating very little right now. Let's bring it up. 16, 17, 1800 calories, 1900 calories, 2000 calories. And she was losing actually too fast. That's why I told her, hey, look, we're losing weight, yeah. And I know this is exciting, but we're also not trying to lose muscle. So I want to slow it down. Now, mind you, we're still gonna aim for just about a 0.5 up to 1% of weight loss per week. And we suck around that 1% for her. Faster, I don't love though. 1.5 every now and then, it's not a big deal. If we stay, you know, way too low and we see that weight go down really fast, other than maybe the first couple of weeks, because a lot is maybe glycogen and water. If that keeps going, like we're we're looking at some muscle loss. So I want to slow it down for you. Literally, all we did increase in cataries, and she kept losing weight, kept losing weight, kept losing weight. And then we stayed at 2000, and we stayed there for the rest of her fat loss phase. And she lost a ton of weight, it was like 15% in her in total weight, which is crazy, just from eating more. You gotta understand, and when people say, hey, lose fat by eating more, it's the goal. We're not saying we eat more to lose fat. Okay, we're saying, hey, I want you to lose body fat at as many calories as possible. And typically, what I see when you start around that 20% deficit, instead of slashing things right back down to like 1200, you're gonna be able to stick with the better, you have a lot more room for filling foods, you're not gonna be as drained, the hunger's not gonna be that bad. We have plenty of food coming in, we focus on the volume. Now it becomes easier to stick with. Now you don't have those evening cravings, the weekend benches. Now we are truly able to stick with the deficit. And what was trying to be in a deficit and overeating during the weekend, which just kind of put you back in maintenance, now becomes yes, you have more food during the week more consistently, but because you're now able to stick with your deficit, you actually see that weight move. And that is one of the biggest points here. That is truly like when I talk about eating more and losing weight. We're not we're not trying to eat more to lose weight. It's just, hey, we're just being smart with that deficit. You don't need to go that low. Now, what we do need, of course, is knowing that we are in a place where we will respond. Your habits are in a good place. We are eating proteins, fruits, and veggies, we manage our stress, we sleep well, we don't slash calories to 1200 calories right away. We focus on weights, morning cardio. If you do that without going way too low on calories, you're gonna see better results. And you're gonna be able to stick with the better, you're gonna see better results quicker, longer, you're gonna be able to stop dieting faster, which is my point to wrap it up with today. And in the expansion last time, if you have that big weight loss goal, I know you want to keep going, I know you want to go hard, I know you want to see that weight move as quick. Look, like I said, me too. I wanted to see that maximum weight loss. Guess what? That 1200 calories my fitness spell gave me, wrong move, wrong move. So that's why I'm against my fitness spell for that specific reason and others, like their database being a full mess. I never use it uh with my clients. Uh we never will. Chronomere is the best in the game. No other tracking apps out there that really like get to that level of what you can do with the app. I teach my clients how to track within five minutes per day, and we all have five minutes, maybe ten, right? Kind of depending on variety. But the long story short, once again, don't stay in low calories. You gotta have those breaks. And now I want you to start thinking if your goal is fat loss, have you been living on low calories truly? Or have we tried to lose fat by following a straight diet and then we've fallen off plenty of times and we had overeating moments? If that is the case, you know what? In both cases, let's do a period of maintenance first, build the habits, work through everything, then go into fat loss, maybe three months or so, reverse diet in a couple steps, do maintenance again. This needs to be two-thirds up to one times the length of your time spent in a deficit, which the reverse diet, just so you know, that's also still a deficit, just a prolonged, less of a deficit if you think about it, right? And then step by step calories go up. Two-thirds up to one times that length needs to be maintenance. I like a muscle gain goal. If let's say we have more than 10 kilos to lose, I'm gonna say, you know what, let's wait with muscle gain, let's just maintain it for now. Okay. And that about wraps up today's episode. So, once again, thank you so much for listening. If you could do me a massive favor, drop me a quick rating on Spotify or Apple, and then we will be back with another gut health episode next week. I'll talk to you soon.