Strength Beyond the Scale: Women’s Physique Coaching, Hormones, Metabolic Health & Stress with Brandon DaCruz

In this eye-opening episode, elite physique coach Brandon DaCruz shares how women can build strength and transform their bodies through evidence-based fitness and holistic coaching. Learn why stress, hormones, metabolism, and sleep matter just as much as training and nutrition. Brandon dives into women’s unique physiological needs, the risks of chronic dieting and low energy availability, and how high-flux and metabolic restoration approaches can promote sustainable fat loss and muscle growth.

Whether you're a fitness coach, athlete, or simply striving for better energy, performance, and hormonal balance, this episode delivers actionable science and real-world results. Discover how smarter training, better recovery, and personalized nutrition create strength that lasts—beyond the scale.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
My name is Haley and this is Lara and welcome
to the body Pod.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Welcome back to the body Pod everyone.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Today we have the pleasure of interviewing Brandon Dacruz, who
is an online nutrition and physique coach, a credited nutritionists,
internationally published fitness model, and national level NPC competitor. Brandon
has been featured in publications like Men's Fitness Magazine, Muscular Development,
Bodybuilding dot Com, and the Alanarragon Research Review, where he's

(00:37):
been a contributing author. Brandon has spent the past fifteen
years working in the coaching industry and believes in taking
an evidence informed approach where he blends what's been proven
in the research with his own anecdotal and first hand
in the trench's experience. Having worked with over eleven hundred
clients ranging from Lymbia level physique competitors to business owners

(01:00):
to lifestyle clients to improve their body composition, optimize performance,
and enhance help in order to help his clients achieve
their goals, whether that be losing body fat, building muscle,
increasing performance, or optimizing help in a sustainable manner. So
we thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with Brandon. So, without further ado,

(01:22):
let's jump in and learn from Brandon to grouse. Welcome
Brandon to the body Pod.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking
forward to this one.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
We are super stoked to get into your Let's see,
it looks like you've coached over eleven hundred clients in
your time since you've been an online physique coach.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
Absolutely so, I've been coaching online exclusively since twenty thirteen.
I initially started in person coaching in twenty ten, so
it's been a long career and a lot of people,
but it's been an immensely gratifying process, to say least.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
So I'm just curious that this isn't even a question
I was going to ask you about how how many
do you train more women than men or do you
feel like it's a pretty fifty to fifty split.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
So that's a very interesting question, especially ask me in
twenty twenty five, because this has been sort of an evolution.
When I first started in person coaching, it was obviously
a mix of whoever would have come in the gym,
and then in twenty thirteen, when I transitioned out, I
was personally doing a lot of fitness modeling based out
of New York City, and people were getting attracted to
me that were very similar to myself. So I worked

(02:34):
with predominantly men. So if I'm to go back to
like say twenty thirteen to twenty fifteen, I would say
seventy five percent of my clients were males and twenty
five percent were females. Now, what ended up happening was
I was in a precarious position in twenty fifteen where
I was doing contest preps and I had my partner
at the time. She decided to do a prep diet
with a contest prep coach that was someone that was
not related to me at all, but he was someone

(02:55):
that was very well known within the female physique space,
and she ended up suffering from hypothlemic a menorrhea. Now
no one was talking about that at the time. She
was in a state of low energy availability, and I
had this person in my life that had lost her cycle,
had down regulated biofeedback, and there was no answers. You know,
the coach pretty much just said he listened, this is
what happens, and this is a cost of doing business. Essentially. Now,

(03:16):
there was two issues with that. First, and foremost she
lost her cycle, not even getting into stage shape. It
was just a fad LOS phase ended up itself. We
were trying to go away for a summer vacation and
I was in stage shape. However she was just getting
lean and she had lost her cycle. And it continued
on for six months, and he had no interest in
really intervening. And so I had to dig into my
female physiology textbooks and really learn the female body inside

(03:39):
and out beyond. Just like the training and the x's
and o's and nutrition in terms of macros and calories
and sets and reps. I had to look at the
differences in female versus male physiology. I had to look
at hypothalamic signaling. I had to look at relative energy deficiency,
which had just gotten coined the year before by the IOC.
And so it kind of put me in a trajectory
where I had a lot of empathy and a lot
of compassion for women. And it's actually transition to the

(04:00):
point where about seventeen percent of my clients now are
women and thirty percent or males. Where so you know,
if I go ten years ago, it was exactly the opposite.
So I've just I've had a very good fortune of
being able to have a wide breadth of expertise and
experience working with people of all different backgrounds. I mean,
I've worked with everyone from ipe pros that have been
on the Olympia level stage to high level executives. Right now,

(04:21):
I have people that are working in Silicon Valley at
Google things of that sort, and these are high level executives,
and a lot of them are females, and they're bad
assets to say lead. So I love working with people
that are just interested in bettering themselves. You don't have
to be a high achiever high performer in physique. You
could be a high performer in terms of running a
business or in terms of you know, your family life
or whatever it may be. But I just like people

(04:41):
that want to get better and that are focused on
progression over time.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
That's great because I feel like the physique space. I mean,
that's probably that this is my own assumption, and this
might not even be true, but given your numbers and
the transition to this larger female audience, it seems to
me that with this influx of women in the weight
room and the physique world, I mean, it's not anything

(05:07):
that I followed. I was like in the Iron Man
world and so very different. But it seems like it's
getting more and more women over the last decade. And
it just might be my age and noticing that more
that are getting more into these physique online coaching and
nutrition coaches and all of that.

Speaker 4 (05:28):
Absolutely, I think there has been an uptick in terms
of the interests of women building their bodies, and I
think that's a beautiful thing. If I'm to go back
fifteen years ago, when I first started in a gym,
there was very it was very infrequently that I would
see women really training in a progressive manner, and when
they were, they were the minority, and that's a really
unfortunate thing. So I remember encouraging women that were in
my circle or that were, you know, peers of mine,

(05:50):
to get into the weight room. And now I think
that we've evolved so much in twenty twenty five, where
women want to get strong, women want to build muscle,
they want to burn that, they want to enhance their physique,
and I find that to be a beautiful process. There's
nothing I see this often is my clients, because I
work predominantly females. There's nothing more beautiful than watching a
woman's step into her strength to really realize that she
doesn't need to get smaller or skinnier, or need to

(06:13):
take a bless space. There's these preconceived notions in these
pop you know, ideals that were put out ten, fifteen,
twenty years ago that some women are still stuck in.
But now we're in a much more conducive environment where
women feel encouraged by those you know in most environments
I'm talking about in general, but they're able to explore
different physical avenues rather than just weight loss in and

(06:34):
of itself.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Okay, So if we're looking at how your evidence, so
you said you have an evidence based approach, and if
we're looking at how that has evolved over your court
coaching career, what have you seen the big shifts or
the big changes like you mentioned that you you know,
Eric Helms, Alan Aragon, some of these big giants in

(06:57):
the field. How have you seen for women's specifically the
evidence or even just real life coaching experience that you've
had with a thousand whim or a thousand people, over
a thousand people. What does that look like now from
maybe when you started in the field.

Speaker 4 (07:15):
Absolutely, So I'll take this from my perspective and like
how I've evolved, and then I'll go on to how
I feel the field has evolved, because sometimes they're not
directly correlated, but there are some overlapping avenues. So for me,
I've evolved from having a very excess and o's focused
coaching style to a more integrative approach, which I refer
personally to my coaching approach as a health center coaching model.
And early in my career I focus heavily on macros

(07:37):
and numbers, while and while that's still foundational, I lead
now with physiology and biofeedback. So over the years I've
shifted more towards a nuanced and integrative approach that includes
metabolic health, hormonal status, nutrient sufficiency, training quality, and psychological readiness.
And especially for women, say in their forties or in midlife,
I pay close attention to biofeedback signs like their performance,

(07:58):
their energy, their recovery, sleep quality, even the stress talerance.
That's a huge one, and those are going to tell
me more than any other scale could. Ever, so it's
I will value those bile feedback parameters and the trends
that I see and the triangulation of those trends more
than I ever will their scale way. Also, at this
point I lean much more into puritization than ever before,
because I'm more focused on what a client can achieve

(08:21):
over the next twelve months rather than over the next
twelve weeks. Whereas, to be honest with you, if you
were to look at the online coaching space, when I
first got into this in twenty thirteen, no one had
continuous coaching programs. These were eight to twelve week programs
and people would get on and get off and get
onto the next coach. There was no continuation and progression
from phase to phase. And I've built out a phasic
model where I take clients through multiple phases to be

(08:42):
able to each phase is going to potentiate one another,
but also to ensure that they not only make progress
within a phase, whether that be a fat loss phase
or a body recom phase or a building phase, but
that they're making progress that's sustainable over the long term.
They're learning habits and behaviors that can be implemented and
maintained over the long haul. Now, from VI and Charry perspective,
I think that we have to realize that evidence based

(09:03):
practice is a three pronged model. So that includes the
best available evidence from the scientific literature, That includes the
experiences and the expertise of the clinician or in my
case me as a coach, and then also the preferences,
the abilities, and the bottlenecks or limitations of the client
that we're working with. So I think that one thing
that has really evolved over you know, say, in the
last five to ten years, is really a focus on

(09:26):
treating women as an individual and not treating them. There's
a common colloquial saying like women are not small men,
and I agree with that one hundred percent. You know,
we can't just look at every single person as you know,
just the same as someone else. So I wouldn't train
and this goes for all clients. But I'm not going
to train, you know, a forty five year old woman
that's IMPAIRMENTO Paul is the same way that I train
a twenty five year old bodybuilder. Like that makes no

(09:47):
sense because their goals are different, their lifestyles different, and
their stress and responsibilities that they have on their plate
are completely opposing to one another. And I think that
we always should have taken in individualized and customized approach.
But I think that's becoming more and more evident as
to why it's important and that it's going to make
the difference because people, especially women, and I can say
this from experience having worked with so many, they're dealing

(10:07):
with high amounts of stress in every before And to
be completely objective with you, and when I compare, and
this isn't to speak down upon men by any means,
but I have a great sample of hundreds and hundreds
of clients that are males versus hundreds and hundreds of
clients that are females, and when I look at them
and do a comparative analysis, women are dealing with far
more stress than ever and than men are. And so
these are things that we have to take in consideration.

(10:29):
There's something called alistatic load, which is essentially your total
stress bucket, which means that we don't have these different
buckets that we allocate trust to. So say your physiological stress,
you've been dieting chronically, you've been smashing yourself in the gym,
doing way too much, hit cardio, all these different inputs
they go in see the same bucket as your emotional stress,
whether that be from financials or relationships, and then also

(10:49):
your psychological stress from maybe body image issues or not
feeling confident in yourself. These all things, there's an amalgamation
that leads this total trust bucket, this alistatic load which
often in many women that I counter. It's overflowing. So
we need to learn how to prioritize stress reduction, trust management,
and also realizing that we need to work with the
body against rather than against the body. So those are

(11:09):
some components that I've seen involved, and we're making it
so that there's a lot more information being put out
that are very directed towards women, which I think is
a great thing.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, that's that's the hardest part is is I have
a client right now that is postmenopausal and has a
baby and the baby's up, and it's like, you're.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
Just sleep deprived.

Speaker 4 (11:36):
Parameters.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, like in my twenties and like when I was
having my children, I can't even imagine that having like
the changes of you know, transitioning into menopause with the
sleep disruptions and then having to get up for a child.
And Laura has I'm in that saying, oh, so Perry,

(12:00):
you are you know, here we are in the perimentopause
sphase and then she's dealing with the baby.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
So that adds that all is.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Accumulated in this stress bucket that you were talking about.

Speaker 4 (12:10):
No, absolutely, So it's all an amalgamation of things, and
I think that we have to consider that. And really,
when we're trying to cater the information or even the
approaches that we tape with a client, we're looking at
a three hundred and sixty all encompassing view. We're not
just looking I always say coaching goes far beyond the
x's and o's of nutrition in terms of macros and
calories and training in terms of sets and reps. We
need to consider that person's lifestyle, their responsibilities, their stressors,

(12:34):
their psychological readiness in terms of are they ready to diet,
are they ready to push their body in the gym
or out of the gym, And so there's so many
components that need to be considered that that's something that
I find to be a much greater evolution. We have
a lot more female specific research that we can look
at that is catered towards women in midlife or in
perimenopause or in menopause, which you know, really, when it

(12:55):
comes down to research, it's not giving us a protocol.
It's not telling us what to do. You know, today's Thursday.
It's not going to tell you what you know how
to train or how to eat on a Friday. However,
it does point us in the right direction where someone
like myself can interpret the data and then also see
does it apply to the women that actually work with.
Are they of a you know, specific sample population that's
that's similar to what I'm working with. If not, it's

(13:16):
not applicable. So we have to take all those things
in consideration and really have an all encompassing approach that
is evidence based. But it's not just what the research says.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Okay, So I want to break down these phases because
this is and then I'll tell you tell you the
hardest one that I think.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
So we have the phases.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
You have primer deficit, deficit dloads, and metabolic restoration. So
how does that differ from a traditional fat loss approach?
So first of all, is it hard for you to
talk people into a priming phase? And let's go over
what the priming phase means? Because I get women that
are like, yeah, no thanks, I want to start my

(13:58):
fat loss journey yesterday. But walk us through those those
different models and how you came, how you chose those.

Speaker 4 (14:08):
Absolutely, So a primer phase is generally where I start
most women out at it, and and most clients in general,
because to be quite frank with you, I do a
comprehensive needs analysis when someone you know sends me an
intake for coaching or has an inquiry about coaching, And
really what that's going through is all these different parameters
are biofeedback, their dieting history, medication history, it could be
you know, medical background, all these different things. And I

(14:29):
specifically get a lot of women that are in a
high trustee they've been they have a very long history
of dieting. They have never given their bodies enough rest
or enough nutrition and fueling themselves properly, so they're dealing
with a bunch of down regulations. They're suffering from metabol adaptation,
which is often you know, misconstrued and misinterpreted as something
called metabolic damage, which I know you guys wanted to
talk about, so we can leave that for a little

(14:50):
bit later. But they are dealing with bottlenecks within their
physiology which is making it so they have to sustain
themselves on very low amounts of calories. So not only
are they not eating enough so they are getting sufficient micronutrients.
Because their calorie intake is so low, they're suffering gramifications
for that. So we're seeing it down regulation and energy
expenditure from all components of total daily energy expenditures. So
we're seeing their BMR suppress because they're under eating. We're

(15:11):
seeing meat be downregulated because they're sluggish, they don't have
a lot of energy to move around, they don't feel lively,
and they don't have great vitality. We're seeing exercise activity thermogenesis,
which the calories that you burn during exercise being decreased
because they don't have enough output. They don't even have
enough energy in the system to really power through these workouts.
And then also we're seeing the thermic effective feeding just

(15:32):
inherently going down just due to the fact that they're
not eating a sufficient amount of calories. And so a
lot of women come to me in this position where
they want to go into a fallosphase because want the
results that come with a fall loos phase, but their
body is not physiologically on the right state to do so,
so I use a primer phase as a way to
enhance their physiology and really get themselves into a better place,
both metabolically, but also from a habits and behavior's perspective,

(15:53):
we need to focus on sufficient fueling. I'm working on
different habits and behaviors with them, making sure that they're
not skipping long times without eating, or they're getting sufficient
protein spread across the day. We're really working on foundational
habits and behaviors to be able. I always say this
to clients. A healthy body is a responsive body. And
what I mean by that is when you put yourself
in a position to succeed, and when you really give

(16:14):
your body what it needs, it'll do what you want.
But it doesn't work in the reverse order. A lot
of people try to force fat loss, and I'm a
big fan of coaxing fat loss. Getting the body in
a state where you're eating sufficient calories, you're in a
place where you're moving well, you're feeling good. From a
functionality perspective, you look good, you feel good, you function well,
and you're able to have some room to cut from.
So from there, you know, once someone finishes a primer phase,

(16:36):
which can take some months, you know, if someone has
been down regulated for many years and I'm looking at
a downregulated a thyroido axis where someone has hypothyroidism or
hashimotos or something like that. We need to resolve that
first before we try to put for fat loss, because
your energy expenditure is going to be decreased as a
result of that. So I take them through a primer
phase and then I would transition most people dependent on
goal into a fat loss phase, and that's where a

(16:57):
deficit would be induced. But I like to do it
through a little bit of a different combination than everyone.
Some people go, you know, deficit just from nutrition. I
like to modify nutrition first, and then I also like
to increase activity, and that's really where I get them
into more of a high flux phase or a high
flux state where they're eating more and they're moving more.
So instead of being in a very low flux state
where they're eating very little calories like they used to

(17:18):
and being downregulated and unable to move a lot, so
their energy expenditure suppressed, I'm trying to keep their calories
higher and then also having them move more so they
have higher energy output. But with that that higher energy
intake is going to have better biofeedback, better energy levels.
They're going to have more energy for the gym, but
also outside of the gym, so we're going to be
burning calories more on a twenty four hour basis than
they would in any other state. From there, I would

(17:40):
transition out to a metabolic restoration phase. A metabolic restoration
phase is my way of refinding a client's maintenance calories.
And why that's so vital is because say that you've
lost a sufficient amount of weight, say that you've lost
ten percent of your body weight, You've went from one
hundred and fifty pounds one hundred and thirty five pounds. Well,
if we look at the research literature on this, there's
a great literature review by Liable and Rosenbomb from twenty ten.

(18:00):
It's adaptive thermogenesis in humans, and what they found was
a ten percent weight loss can lead to a twenty
five percent decrease in total daily energy expenditure, meaning you're
burning twenty five percent less calories than you were. So
say that you were someone at one hundred and fifty
pounds with a two thousand calorie total daily energy expenditure,
meaning that your maintenance calories were two thousand. By the
end of that fat loss phase, you could be down
to fifteen hundred, So we can't just bring you right

(18:21):
back to two thousand, which was your previous maintenance and
expect that you're going to be able to maintain the
fat loss that you've had and you're not going to rebound.
So we need to work your calories up over time,
and we have to replete any nutrients that have not
been sufficient during that phase. And so I'm really trying
to rEFInd someone's maintenance calories. I'm trying to re establish
and increase energy availability so there's more energy coming to
the system. And I'm trying to focus on improving bile

(18:43):
feedback to recover from the diet itself, and that's a
phase that's very vital. But these are just like the
primer phases overlook the metabolve restoration phases overlooked as well.
Most people are jumping from fat loss phase to fat
loss phase, and the only time they're not in a
fat loss phase is where they're falling off on the weekend.
So this is what I refer to as the concept
of weekday die. People slam themselves Monday through Friday. They
slash their calories, they go hard in the gym, and

(19:04):
then on Saturday and Sunday they fall off. So it's
pretty much getting the worst of both worlds. You're getting
the down regulations and the hormonal adaptations that come with
diet induced metabolic adaptation Monday through Friday. Then you're getting
the fat regame that comes with overfeeding on Saturday and Sunday,
and you're really kind of what you're in what I
would call diet purgatory.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
Okay, I have a bunch of questions.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Number one, so you talked about the primer phase, So
you how do you know when a client's ready to
come out of a primer phase? You said it could
be a couple of months, and that's where does that depend? Well,
Number one, on the biofeedback, I'm sure, But does it
also depend on how much weight a person has to lose?

Speaker 1 (19:47):
And I'll stop there.

Speaker 4 (19:49):
Yep, So the length of primer phase is going to
depend on that person's physiological and psychological readiness. So I'm
going to look at multiple parameters, but excuse me, both
objective and subject to feedback to see if they're in
a right state to move forward. Now, I really want
to make this apparent though, a primary phase is not
a lack of progress. You know, a lot of people
will analogize that with maintenance phase. I'm generally recomping women

(20:10):
during that phase because I'm increasing their energy intake, but
I'm doing so through very specific and strategic nutritional modifications.
So a lot of times women come to me and
they're under eating protein. So I'm increasing protein, which has
a high thermic effective feeding. It's going to increase and
lean to better ability to increase lean mass. I'm also
pairing their training with that nutrition. I'm utilizing strategies such

(20:31):
as nutrient timing, where I'm feeling, where I'm the workout perimeter.
I have a lot of women that comes to me
and they're training in a facet state. And now we
can debate the cortisol secretion of facet training and this,
that and the other. Like many people are going to
get into the mechanisms, but really, when it comes down
to it, if you look at outcome data on people
in resistant training studies facet versus fed training, we see
better outcomes in fed trainings for resistant trading in particular,

(20:54):
aerobic training is a completely different animal, but we're seeing
better outcomes. So when I'm able to take someone for
eight to twelve weeks and increase their train performance. Get
them progressively overloading following a progressive resistance training program where
they're actually geting sufficient mechanical tension on their bodies, they're
actually training in a manner that's conducive to maximizing mulcile growth.
Now they're increasing their lean body mass and generally staying
around the same weight, so they're recamping. But really, if

(21:16):
you think about it, when you increase lean mass and
you stay around the same weight, it means your body
fat percentage, without even going through a fat loss phase,
you've decreased your body fat percentage. So a lot of times,
if you were to look and I would refer anyone
to look at my instagram at Brandon Cruz Underscore, you
could see primer phase transformations and these people look leaner
and look more muscular, and that's because they've recomped during
that phase. So it isn't a period of stagnancy. It's

(21:37):
just we're not going to be chasing fat and weight
loss on the scale because you already have adaptations that
are not going to be conducive for you to actually
move forward and lose a substantial amount of weight. If
you come to me with a downregulated thyroid, or you
have low sex hormones, or you've lost your period. With
many of the women that come to me, they have
gone through chronic guiding cycles where they're in hypothlimgamentary. I
mean they've went three or more months without a consistent

(21:58):
mental cycle. We need to resolve that at first and
take off that battleneck from your physiology before we push
forward for any more fat loss.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
That's super important. I can't believe that your partner at
the time, what six months.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
Yeah, So I'm going to be comely frank with you.
I've had I've had women up to so. I actually
had a case study recently. I have a woman up
in Canada that I've been working with. It took her
ten years to restore a mental cycle and we worked
together for a year and a half just to get
it back online. And that was due to many things.
She had an eating disorder early in life. I have
a client that actually I just put this up on
my story today coincidentally that it was the caption of

(22:35):
the story was that if you had told me fifteen
years ago, when I'm on the gym floor training meatheads,
that the highlight of my week would be restoring someone's
mental cycle and having a client, you know, email me
that I would have never believed you, but at this
point in my life, these are some of the highlights
of my week. So I had a client recently that
had lost our period. She has a very large social
media influence and following, and she was trying to stay

(22:56):
lean for the grand that it is what it is,
and she had lost her period for three and a
half years. She just got it back yesterday, so this
is a huge accomplishment for her. And then I found
another woman, and these are just I've helped dozens of
women restore their mental cycle, but these are specific cases
that stick out of my head. I had a woman
that was actually forty when she lost her cycle. She
was a competitor and her coach had told her, hey,
this is part of the process and very similar to

(23:17):
my partner was ten years ago. However, when it didn't
come back in a year or two, she was forty
two years old, she went to her PCP and he
told her that she had went through menopause early. So
she had went through menopause at forty.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
Two, so she so mad.

Speaker 4 (23:32):
Here's this story so at forty eight, she starts working
with me, and it was the first time in her
life where she was sufficiently fueled. I ran blood work
every three to six months. I was looking at hormonal patterns, markers,
physiological you know, biofeedback, looking in a wresting heart rate.
She was in a sympathetically driven state. So when this
woman came to me, she had the resting heart rate
of like eighty one. So she was in sympathetic overdrive.
So very stressed, high quartersol secretor all these these things.

(23:55):
And she had stayed very very lean for very long,
had used androgens. There was a bunch of things in
the system that really confounding whether she had hypothletic menrhea
or she was metopausal. But she came to me and
told me, Brandon, I'm menopausal. Okay, I'm not gonna argue
with you. So six months in, I get a voice
note and she's hysterically crying. She had her first period.
She I worked with her for another two years. She
had periods into her fifties. So that was a misdiagnosis,

(24:17):
just based on the fact that her initial coach had
told her, Hey, that's normal to lose your period. He
had done nothing to restore it or to try to
get her hypotheimic signaling back online, and hadn't educated her
to the point that, hey, listen, this is something that
may come from being in low energy availability. But then
we got to get you out of this state, get
you out of a defit, get you out of a
period of active weight loss, and focus on restoring your
mental cycle. Because we even seen the literature. There's a

(24:38):
great study about holiday and it's a key studdy and
a female athlete who lost her cycle about twelve weeks
into a contest prep phase. It took her seventy two
weeks to get back and the reason for it was
she was staying way too lean during her actual post
contest phase. So we have to be very specific. So
the phases and the progression, the duration that I take
someone through is based on that individual's specific case.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Do you only work with physique competitors, Absolutely not, So
I have a wide demographic.

Speaker 4 (25:05):
So I used to work with very I would say
predominantly with the physic athletes, and in twenty nineteen I
stopped competing myself, and then since then I no longer
work with as many I used to work with a
lot of professional PHYSIQ athletes, but now it's mostly lifestyle clients.
Like I said, the best way to encompass who I
work with are high performers, and it doesn't have to
be a high performer just in the gym or in
their physique or in competition. I work actually much more

(25:27):
with lifestyle individuals that I think. What I can relate
to with a lot of clients that I work with
now is their type A individuals. They burn the candle
at both ends and we can relate very much. So
because I was the person that I was, Hayley, I
was telling you this offline. I spent ten years in
a corporate structure where I was working in Manhattan while
I was building my nutrition coaching business. So I was
a national sales director. I flew all over the country.

(25:48):
There was many years I was on the road forty
weeks a year trying to enhance my physique, and I
was competing. At that time. I was bringing the candle
on every end that you could think of. At the
same time, I was staying up every single night when
I would get home to hotels, or i'd get back
from a tree, or I would be waking up at
three am, which I still do to this day, but
that's for a different reason. I'd be waking up in
the morning to do client check ins because I was
trying to build a coaching business for ten years while

(26:09):
running a massive company, you know, as a sales director
for those ten years. So I can very much relate
to the individuals that are trying to do it all,
and they want to do it all, and I get that,
but we really have to prioritize specific goals. And that's
why I use a phasic approach, where each phase has
a specific intention and goal. We stay focused on that
and then we move on to the next and each
single phase will potentiate the results to the next one.

Speaker 5 (26:31):
Why do you wake up at three am? I just
have to know.

Speaker 4 (26:34):
So I was saying this to Haley off Air Laura,
but I have about thirty to forty percent of my
clients currently or international. So I have a lot of
clients in New Zealand and in Australia, and I want
to be able to interact with them and communicate on
a time basis where I can still get through to them. So,
for instance, a lot of my clients internationally are between
eight to fourteen hours ahead of me. So basically the

(26:54):
latest I could really wake up is three am to
be able to get in touch with them before they
go to bed, before they have family time and things.
And I'm someone that I really I really pride myself
on great communication and being really like in the trenches
with my clients. So I find that this is the
best way for me to set myself up and set
them up for s.

Speaker 5 (27:09):
So when do you go to sleep?

Speaker 4 (27:11):
I go to sleep at seven pm, so I know that's.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
That's you have to get the eight hours.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
You do.

Speaker 5 (27:18):
Not look tired or sleep deprived.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
I've been up since three am. I've been up since
three am today, and I'm good to go. No, I
have a very dialed in circadian rhythm. So I had
some sleep issues early on because I was obviously traveling
all around the country, but I've really dialed that in.
That's something I very much focus on with clients. Like
I said, it's not just about nutrition, it's not just
about training, it's about an all encompassing lifestyle design and
really trying to optimize the things. So I found that

(27:41):
you know, specific sleep hygiene routines or even supplementation, things
of that sort can really enhance someone's ability to get
quality sleep and to get the sufficient quality quantity that
they need. And that's going to have downstream ramifications and
implications on everything. That's going to help with appetite because
we know that when you have short sleep, it increases appetite.
We see in certain studies up to five hundred five
to six hundred calories increase in your ad libinum, so

(28:03):
your natural eating to society intake after a day of
short sleep. We see that it or it disrupts your
fat loss to lean mass retention during a fat loss phase.
So there's a two week study by not n Root
in Nettle Cheva. It's a weird last name, but they
looked at the outcomes of five point five hours of sleep,
so that was short sleep versus eight point five hours

(28:24):
to sleep during a deficit and what they found was
it was a flip flop in the actual amount of
lean mass and fat mass that was lost. So I
believe in the short sleep condition they lost about fifty
five percent more of their weight same amount of weight,
so it's the same defictate equated fifty five percent more
weight from lean mass than from fat mass and then
in the other equation. So really what we see is

(28:45):
that there could be drastic differences if you don't get
enough sufficient sleep quality and sleep quantity.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
All right, So what would you do with a client
that wasn't sleeping well? Like me, take them out of
a deficit? Number one, I would imagine.

Speaker 4 (28:59):
Yeah, So, or what is your case? We can go
through a case study.

Speaker 6 (29:02):
Around you're the avatar lur I know exactly well, I
have a twenty one month old and so my sleep
is getting better, but let's pretend it was back sixteen
months old.

Speaker 5 (29:15):
I mean, I'm up three times a night.

Speaker 4 (29:18):
All right, So we're going to try to optimize with
within what's in your control. So I'm a big advocate
of I like to develop plans and strategies for clients
that meet in the middle between what's optimal for that
person's goal and then what's also practical for their lifestyle.
Because if I just told you, hey, put blue boxers
on or a mask on and earplugs and just you know,
knock out and not take care of your child, that

(29:38):
would get you better sleep. But that's not going to
do anything like that's going to impair your actual real life.
So that's where we would look at a full daily design.
So we look at setting up your circadian rhythm in
a more optimized manner. So first thing we're going to
do is early in the morning, make sure you get
sufficient sunlight. Now, if you are someone that either you
wake up very early like myself and you can't get
someone because it's three am in Tennessee, or you just
can't get outside because you're taking care of your we

(30:00):
can look at a luxe light which is going to
have essentially it's a light therapy lamp. Do it for
thirty minutes and it mimics what we would get from
outdoor exposure and those photo Essentially light hitting the photons
in the back of your eyes. That's going to set
up your circating rhythm. It's also going to suppress meltone
in production and increased cortisol production in the morning. Now
we want cortisol higher in the morning. There's something called
the cortisol awakening response, which a lot of people, a

(30:21):
lot of women especially have adrenal dysregulation. Essentially, so a
lot of times i'll see, even on whether it be
a Dutch test or a twenty four hour you know
cortisol analysis where they'll have high cortisol at the in
the evening and low cortisol in the morning. So this
essentially leads to a patterning where they're tired but wired
at night, but they're groggy in the morning. They feel
like they could sleep in all morning, but they don't
have the time or the schedule to do so. So

(30:43):
we work on setting up your circading rhythm in that manner.
Two to three hours before bed, we would stop eating,
so we would make sure that you had a sufficient meal,
but that you weren't having anything high and saturated that
you were having, you know, some type of meal that
would be comprised of protein obviously to stimulate muscle protin
synthesis throughout the night. Actually, you know, high glycemic carbs
are actually linked to better sleep quality and better sleep latency,

(31:04):
which means that you would help you go to sleep quicker.
And then also we would have dietary fiber in there too, elongate.
It's gonna help with blood sugar regulation also society management.
But you'd want to have that at least two to
three hours before bed. Then we can look at some
specific supplementation, so it would matter on what you're utilizing. Currently,
for women that are perimenopausa, one of the number one
things to help with you know, sleep quality is progesterone,
So we would look at a micronized bioidentical progesterone. So

(31:27):
that could be one of modality. If you want to
go to the natural modality, we can look at just
a natural stack of whether it be minerals or even neurotransmitter.
So we can look at something like magnesium that's going
to help with a signaling gabba and calming you down.
So something like a magnesium glycinate which is binded or
bonded to glycine, which is a calming neuro transmitter. I
really like glysine, especially for women with hot flashes and

(31:48):
with night sweats, because it helps you decrease core body tempature.
We could do the same thing by having a shower
before bed actually hot temperatures. Conversely enough, if you have
a hot shower before bed, it actually cools down your
internal body tempture, so it helps with sleep. We could
also look at something like an elthenie, which helps with
decreasing you know, rumination. It's a stress reduction agent. These
aren't things that are going to put you right out,

(32:09):
but there's going to help you get into more of
a parasympathetic state at rest and digest. Then we can
look at for some people melatonin that works very well.
I find that to be very conducive or beneficial, especially
for people with high amounts of oxidat to stress. So
I see someone that has like high CRP or high
inflammatory markers. I actually use melotonin because grand per milligram
per miligram, melotonin is the highest or the best potency

(32:32):
antioxidant that we have from nature. So there's like all
these different modalities that we can utilize. But here's the
thing we're going to incorporate one by one to see
what works for you. I really like an isolated fashion.
I like utilizing the scientific method. So what wouldn't be Hey,
I'm gonna throw all these things through everything out the
wall to see what sticks. It's going to be. Hey, Laura,
this week, we're going to incorporate this before bed. I
want you to take two hundred milligrams of magnesium glycinate

(32:53):
an hour before going to bed, and I want you
to do that for the next week and report back
to me how you feel. Do you have any digestive discomfort.
Do you have any you know, are you feeling a
little bit more rested and regulated? And we will add
things to the mix, but we'll take things in an
isolated and more of a strategic fashion.

Speaker 5 (33:09):
I just took notes while you are talking. That is
really good advice.

Speaker 4 (33:14):
I references or anything else I can send it to
you after this.

Speaker 5 (33:17):
No, I look, your approach is smart.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
If we're in if we're back to the fat loss phase,
and you talked about high flux, because I think this
is super interesting, and I want to say it was
Andy Galpan maybe that was talking about it, not recently,
but maybe last six months recently. But by high flex,
you're meaning you want to start someone on higher calories

(33:40):
but it's still in a deficit, but not a moderate deficit,
and you're adding on exercise on top of that to
balance the.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Energy out.

Speaker 4 (33:54):
Yeah, let me explain the concept of energy flux for you,
because this is actually something that I kind of brought
to the fitness industry. If you look at my name
and energy luck, you're going to see dozens and dozens
of podcasts. I've done presentations all around the country. I've
written for Allan Aragon's research review on this. There's a
lot of comprehensive information I've done on this, and I've
really tried to push this forward because when I was
initially in the finness industry, especially working in competition prep
and things of that sort, I started noticing that there

(34:15):
was a lot of hormonal and metabolic down regulations where
people were having to eat very low calories and they
were just like in a state where they were in
this chronic state of restriction and subtraction. And I really
liked the idea of getting them into more of a
model of abundance and addition. And I was looking at
different pieces of literature and different trying out different methods
with my clients to try to see how I could

(34:36):
offset these down regulations. So the first thing I started
looking at was there was great research on what comprises
most of metaball adaptations. So metabal adaptation is died induce
and what it means is when you go into a deficit,
you see a down regulation in all four components of
your total daily energy expenditure. And the number one most
impactful area of metaboll adaptation is actually your neat so
your non extra activity thermogenesis. We see that neat or

(34:59):
down regulations me account for eighty five to ninety percent
of the decreases in total calories burned per day during
a deficit phase or during a flat loss phase. So
I started looking at this and I said, well, how
can I increase need? Need is usually subconscious activity, but
the one thing that's included in there is steps. So
at that point, about twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, fifth Bit
is becoming more popular. I'm having clients track their steps,
and I started noticing that there was a massive drop

(35:20):
offs from the beginning of a fat loss phase into
the middle of the fall loosphase. So I would have
people that would be doing their normal ten thousand steps
per day and without me modifying it, they would still
be doing their same cardio without me modifying it and
specifically telling them to keep their steps so up they
went from ten thousand to seven thousand. I had some
people at like three or four thousand, and it was
a drastic reduction in their neat levels essentially or their

(35:42):
step count. So I started looking into this model, and
really twenty eighteen was when the research on the concept
of energy flux really got pushed forward by Chris Melby,
who's actually a researcher out of Colorado, and so this
is really what it came together as a model. But
when I talk about energy flux, what I'm referring to
is the state of calorie turnover in the body. And
this is a relationship between how much energy you're taking

(36:04):
in through food and how much you're expending through movement, exercise,
and baseline functions like you're resting. Metabolic grade and diet
induce thermogenesis. And now how I start people off is
actually I like getting them into high flux when we're
in a primer phase because we can maintain our body
weight and body competition through either a low flux date
or a high flux approach. So a low flux approach
is where you're low you have low energy intake coupled

(36:26):
with low energy output. And this is the situation that
most of like average sedentary dieters or women that have
been down regulated and been through chronic dieting cycles are in.
They have low energy expenditure, but they also have very
low calorie intake. So most women over forty are trying
to maintain their weight on a very low calorie intake.
And if you ask them, and I have many conversations
with women in this position. They always one of the

(36:47):
things they always tell me is that you feel like
they're running on fumes. And so that's what we call
low energy flux, and this is not sustainable. It often
leads to poor recovery, increase, fatigue, hormonal disruption, and metabolism
that's down regulated. So high flux approach. How I like
to simply put this is this is where we eat
more and we move more. And what I focus on
with many of my female clients is helping them maintain
their body weight while improving their body competition on more calories,

(37:10):
not fuel. And how I do that is I increase
their energy output strategically through movement. I'll utilize certain changes
to resistant training and daily activity life steps, all while
supporting their output with proper fueling. And the reason I
do this is because it's more than just eating more
calories and moving more. A lot of people see it
as that, but if you actually look at the mechanisms
behind it, it's deeply, hugely beneficial because you're going to

(37:32):
increase your total daily energy expenditure in every capacity, so
you're gonna be burning more through increase neat and training,
You're gonna have more energy to invest into your activities
of daily living. You're instead of sitting on the couch
and slumping down, You're gonna be able to have more
energy to go out and do things with your friends
or your loved ones or your kids. You're going to
be fueling for better hormone and thyroid health. So that's
one thing I see with a lot of women that

(37:53):
have a chronic guiding cycle or on these massive deficits,
they usually have hormonal issues with thyroids. So usually it's
low T three and low T four. So especially from
a T three perspective, T three is are metabolically active
hormone for thyroid and so that's going to have an
implication on your wresting metabolo crate and also your daily
energy expenditure. It also plays roles in like polysis, which
is the breaking down of fat for energy, and so

(38:14):
when you have low T three, you're going to be
burning less calories. Your body is on conservation mode, and
so by fueling yourself better, not only do you have
more calories, but you also have more micronutrients. There's a
greater variety of micronutrients in the system, and so you're
going to have better hormonal and thyroid health. You're also
willing to be building a preserving muscle, which is going
to drive up your rusting metabolo crate. And you're also
creating more metabolic flexibility, which is that ability to switch

(38:36):
between substrates. So you're going to be able to utilize
carbohydrates during high intense activity like your resistant training, and
then down regularly and utilize you know, fats during lower
intense activities, whether that's list cardio or that's just you know,
your data day activities. And then the other massive thing
about high energy fleux, which is this is where the
research is most impactful, is it's great for appetite management
and satiety signaling. So we actually see that when people

(38:59):
have low levels of activity, whether that is purposeful or
just due to a down regulation from dieting hard, it
actually disregulate your appetite signaling, so you're actually hungrier than
you would be on that team amount of intake. Now,
when we get up to moderate to high levels of physoactivity,
we actually have better what's called energy coupling, which means
we can more appropriately match our energy intake with our
energy demands, so it's easier to stay at maintenance, which

(39:21):
is something many people struggle with, especially if they had
been in this low flux state they've been chronically dying
on very low calories. Anytime they try to get out
of it and they try to go back to maintenance,
they overshoot it and they suffer from body fat overshooting,
where they regain as much fat or more fat than
they lost in the phatlosophase itself. Well, by getting into
a high flux state, you're able to maintain your body
weight on higher amount of calories, and you're putting yourself

(39:42):
in a better position to succeed. So if I have
someone in a primer phase and I take them through
and I get them into higher energy flux, it gives
me a larger budget to play with, so I can
pull more calories, or I get to pull calories and
not bring them down as low as they've been in
the past. Because I have many women that come to
me and it's like they've been eating one thousand, eleven
hundred calories, twelve hundred calories. It's just not sustainable. Because
they're able to do that for a few days when

(40:02):
they're white knuckling it. But once you know the motivation
leaves or will power, you know, you know exits, they
just don't have it in them to continue doing that.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
In NA should do you?

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Do you have any clients on GLP ones.

Speaker 4 (40:15):
I currently do not, but I'm pretty well versed in
JLP ones and I find it to be something that
is going to be incredibly advantageous in the future. I
will say that there are a lot of people in
the finness industry, especially from a coaching perspective, that are
adamantly against GLP ones, and I think that's just being
negligent of the data. These are the biggest advancement in

(40:35):
obesity management and treatment than we've ever had, and they're
only going to get better from here. So I do
think that I think of this as a life raft
for a client. I will say that I have words
with a good amount of clients in the past that
had been on JLP ones. Now, this is not an
intervention that I've implemented. This is something that they've come
to me at, or come to me on, or come
to me needing. However, I've been able to support them
from a Resistian training perspective, A nutrient perspective, a blood

(40:58):
of work perspective, making sure that they're not suffering from
a lot of the consequences of GLP one use without guidance.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Okay, So for low energy availability, because this is I
just recently talked to Mickey about this, but we see this.
You know, you're right, a lot of women over forty
are coming in and they've been chronically dieting and they've
you know, not had regular cycles because of that, but
they didn't know it was low energy availability. Especially the

(41:30):
endurance crowd. Is there if you were to take somebody
into a deficit, like you've primed them and now they're
in a deficit and it's modest, you're paying attention to it,
where does Because I get this question a lot after
maybe even a couple of days of being in a
modest deficit, and I know what is the prescribed exercises,

(41:53):
So this isn't large amounts of exercise on that day,
on that specific day or over a let's say a
three day period. Can you And the question now comes
up because everyone knows about it.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
I think I'm in low energy availability.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
I must be in you know, I must be experiencing
red us well you know, it's only been a couple
of days.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Are you doing a lot.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Outside of this? But does that come on that fast?
I know we can have influxes throughout the day, but
what's your opinion?

Speaker 4 (42:24):
I get, oh, this is super interesting. So there is
a recent consensus statement by the IOC that it was
an update on relative energy deficiency in sport. Now, let
me be very clear about relative energy efficiency. I think
that for a lifestyle population, it's more appropriate to discuss
some metabolic adaptation, which are the diet induced down regulations
and energy expenditure that are transient, not permanent. So we

(42:46):
can discuss that a little bit later. I'll go through
relative energy efficiency. Relative energy efficiency is a mismatching of
energy in teake and energy expenditure, specifically through exercise. So
how low energy availability is calculated is you take someone's
lean body mass and you do it per kilogram of
fat free mass. Essentially, you look at the difference between
their total energy intake and their total exercise energy expenditure

(43:08):
equated over their amount of we mass. Now here's the issue.
There are calculations you can do, but they're imprecise because
most people are not going to accurately track their calories,
and even if they did, okay, we have one piece
of the parameter or one piece of the pie. Secondarily,
if we actually look at exercise energy expenditure devices, there's

(43:28):
a meta analysis I believe it's from twenty twenty which
looked at risk worn devices and technology for looking at
calories burned during exercise, and they were between twenty eight
to ninety three percent off of accuracy. So we're looking
at massive discrepancies where you really can't trust your Apple
watch or array, none of these things. You're fit that
there is a huge bummer. They're just I have a

(43:49):
full episode of breaking down the research on this. But
they're highly inaccurate, so you can use it as a
as a guide to say, all right, well today I
burned a thousand calories. Now that is not accurate. You know,
first of all, we would have to look at the
net amount of a calorie burned from exercise, which means
you have to subtract your actual resting, that of ball grade,
and what you would have burned in that one hour
period in and of itself, which most people don't do.

(44:10):
They just add it on top of the amount of
calories in and of itself. But secondarily, say that you
have a calculation generally you burn five hundred calories per day,
and then one day you have you go on a hike,
you have an extra resistant training session, whatever it may be,
and you burn a thousand that day. Just know that
you most likely burn more because you had a higher
output or you had higher activity levels. But that doesn't
mean it's accurate. So looking at low energy availability, there

(44:31):
was like I was alluding to, there was a consensus
statement on this which looked at and it differentiated low
energy availability in the model of REDS and what they
found was that there is short term or there's adaptable LA.
Adaptable LA means that this could be for and this
was specifically in the context of athletes, so they looked
at it from like a weight cut perspective or someone
that needed to meet a body weight goal to compete,

(44:53):
or it's a short term of being in an energy
deficient and also in a period or a state of
low energy availability to hit a goal. But it's not
crime and problematic. Now the opposite end of the spectrum
is the problematic low energy availability. Now, problematic low energy
availability is chronic, which means it concurs over months and months,
and that's where we see really the implications. If you
ever look at relative energy efficiency, I suggest anyone that's

(45:14):
interested in this, you look up relative energy efficiency on Google.
You'll see us spoke and it's a wheel, and you
see all these different ramifications. So we see metabol consequences,
we see cardiovascular consequences. Really within that, we see low
esher dile and low progesterone. Specifically, from low esher dile,
we see an increase in cardiovascular disease risk. And we
also see high cholesterol levels because when you have low

(45:36):
estra dile and also low thyroid, you're not clearing cholesterol
as readily, so you'll see high triglycerides, high LDL, high
cholesterol and total. From there, you'll also see bone health decrements.
So this is where we can get into osteopenae or ossioporosis.
Now that is a chronic condition that takes much time,
but oftentimes when someone has been in a state of
LA for years on end, that is where they get to.

(45:57):
So generally, if someone just dieting, they're just going into
a moderate deficit, like what I would recommend would be
a small deficit at most for women, they're not going
to get themselves in this chronic state of LA. Now,
they might bounce in between periods of LA maybe one
day per week or two days break when they have
a high amount of output, or they have additional activities,
but they're not going to be living there chronically. So
this is not something you need to worry about unless

(46:18):
you are someone that is incredibly active. You're an athlete,
you're someone that's a competitor, you're a triathlete, you're an
endurance rumner, someone that has very high levels of energy output,
and then you're always you're also under feeling yourself. You
could be in a state where it's likely that you'll
be in LA. But if we're talking about the general
population client, the lifestyle client, a woman in her forties
to or say forty to fifty five that's just looking

(46:39):
to lose fat, generally, they're not an ELIA.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
Okay, what's a deficit d load?

Speaker 4 (46:45):
Okay, so that is a approach that I use. You
must have been digging through my social media because you've
been finding all myself, all my terms. All right, so
you want to know, Yeah, my version of a diet
break or a refeed. But the reason I referred to
it as a deficit deload, and I actually had a
conversation with this years ago when Bill Campbell was first
publishing his diet break study. This is actually a study

(47:07):
that ended up being published under Metelin Seedler, but Bill
Campbell is the i think the head author on the study,
and my philosophy was I used to utilize refeeds and
diet breaks with clients, and with refeeds people always had
this connotation essentially that they need to overeat, and so
that was a negative, and then with diabreaks they kind
of just went off the rails. So with deficit deloads,

(47:27):
I started utilizing an approach with clients that I would
take four to seven days of bringing them up back
up to maintenance, generally through carbidrates to refuel muscle, glycogen,
refuel energy stores. But I would also do it in
a manner that was very strategic in controlled. So I
always send clients an outline of the deficit deload in
terms of food sources, in terms of the scheduling that
I want them to do, in terms of what happens

(47:48):
if you mess up and you overeat, how to get
back on tracks. So I really try to make it
that this is a physiological reprieve from the deficit. And
the reason I refer to it as a deficit deload
is everything I do is periodized in terms of training
and nutrition. So many of my clients are already used
to utilizing dloads as a way to decrease physiological fatigue
that is accumulated over the course of a mesocycle. So

(48:09):
when I utilize the term or the approach of a
deacity deload, my clients kind of just come to and
they're like, Okay, so this is just a break. We're
trying to dissipate diet fatigue. They don't see it as
this is like this all or nothing, black or white
mentality where we just veer off the beaten path and
we eat whatever we want, because that would be counterproductive
to the actual goals of a FABLLOS space. I want
to bring you back up to maintenance. I want to

(48:29):
reverse some of the adaptations. I want to get more
energy in the system, but I want to do so
in a manner that's conducive for your performance, for your physiology,
and then also for your psychology. I don't want you
bouncing between periods of being in a massive deficit to
overeating and binging.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Okay, So I like how you I like the terminology
that you use around that.

Speaker 4 (48:49):
I too, Yeah, I think words matter.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, okay, So it sounds like if we reverse back
a little bit when you talk about you said that,
and I agree personally. But I know there's a lot
of chatter in the fitness field right now about the
fasted versus fed training, Like if we're talking about, you know,

(49:14):
not an endurance athlete, but if we're just looking at
an hour of really hard, ideally pretty pretty taxing whatever
that looks like resistance training session, I can't imagine myself
going into and busting out a you know, two hundred
and seventy five pound deadlift for X amount of reps

(49:37):
with zero food, especially because I wait, you know I
don't eat two to three hours before bed.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
So what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 (49:46):
And I know we kind of talked about it, but
anything else to add in this conversation of the fasted
versus fed?

Speaker 1 (49:55):
Is it a deal breaker either way?

Speaker 4 (49:56):
Absolutely? And so I will say from a coaching perspective,
in a proce actable perspective, I don't think anything is
ever a deal breaker because that would mean that I
wouldn't be able to meet my clients where they're at.
And that's the number one component of coaching. First, it's
doue no harm, and second is meet your client where
they're at and an inch your way to getting into
a happy compromise between the two. But I will say,
especially with women, I have many women that come to
me where they've been resistant training in a facet state

(50:19):
and they haven't realized maybe some of the consequences of
the drawbacks of that until I start having them integrate
slowly but surely integrate more nutrient timing philosophy, where where
I'm really surrounding the Perry workout window, which means the
window both pre during and post with some nutrients. So
the first thing I'll generally include is something just like
a way protein shake, so they're not going to need
to get hydrated. So I'll put weight protein and I'll

(50:40):
put a serving of salt just so they have some
type of hydration. We'll start with that that is going
to give them sufficient amino acid availability which will break
the fast and get them from that catabolic state of
being in the morning and faceted into more of an
anabox state, because you're signaling muscle protein synthesis. So that's
the first step. Secondarily, then I'll start adding small amounts.
Maybe it's some fruit, or it's some rice cake, something

(51:01):
that's easily digestive, because a lot of women say, hey,
I don't want to eat a lot. I don't want
to feel heavy in the gym, no worries. We can
do a liquid meal. We can do something very small,
like an apple and a protein shake, whatever it may be.
We can do a Greek yogurt and a piece of fruit.
It doesn't have to be like these large, gluttonous meals
where you feel like bogged down. But I want some
fuel in the system. And I can't tell you how
many times, dozens and dozens of times that women have

(51:22):
come back to me weeks since the process. Now, mind you,
someone s they fight it in the beginning, but you know,
we get a couple of weeks into it and they say,
my performance is going up. I feel better energy wise,
I have better mental clarity. You know, I feel more recovered,
especially because I'm not only doing it pre workout, but
I'm also having them sufficiently fueled post workout with you know,
a quality protein source, high glycemic carbs to be able
to restore and restock musclelecagen. Now the other thing is

(51:44):
that if we actually look on the research, and this
is why I specifically start with protein, but then I
go to carbohydrates. Second is that if we look at
a meta analysis by Cane colleagues. Actually Eric Helms, who
we were discussing a fair or Hilly, is an author
on this paper. He looked at the influence of carbohydrates
on resisting training outcomes in terms of muscle gain and
also performance. Now, if you actually look into the entire metalysis,

(52:06):
this isn't just looking at the abstract. If you go
through the entire med analysis, we look at confounding factors
or contributing factors, modifying factors where it made pre workout nutrition,
specifically pre workout carbohydrates more beneficial to resistant training outcomes.
The number one was after an overnight fast, So if
you had when eight or more hours without food, you
had a bigger benefit to your performance and your muscle

(52:28):
gain outcome from including carbohydrates into your pre workout meal. Now,
the thing here was the carbohydrates. It didn't have to
be a bolus dose. So I believe that their recommendations
were at least fifteen to twenty grams, So we're not
talking this huge carbloid before your workout. It's enough just
to get your blood glucose stabilized. It's enough to get
some glucose into the system. And actually one of the

(52:48):
other theories behind this, and we actually have studies that
look at breakfast skipping versus pre workout on resision training outcomes.
It's just the fact of having something that's somewhat satiating,
because hunger is a mechanism that actually decreases your performance outcomes.
There's like a central governor theory which if you don't
have nutrients in your system, you may not be able
to push as hard. There's many different competing theories. There's

(53:09):
also like mouth rinsing studies which show that just they
active months streamenting carbohydrates increased performance. So if we look
at the actual literature of a few things that came
out in that meta analysis, a after an eight hour
overnight fast, it was more beneficial to have carbohydrates. And
also if you were doing one of the two following things,
multiple muscle groups in a session. So a lot of
times I have women doing upper and lower splits, so

(53:29):
they'll be utilizing multiple muscle groups, higher volumes. The other
component of that met analysis was if a workout was
forty five minutes or over, and most people I have
or training an hour in the gym. And then the
other thing was if you were using larger musculature, so
if you were training legs, you're just doing lugs. That
was another modifying factor that led to pre workout carbohydrates
be more beneficial on training performance. So when I look

(53:50):
at what I have the women that I work with doing,
they're training for say forty five to sixty minutes, they
are after an eight hour overnight fast, and they're also
in a position where are going to be pushing themselves
very hard in a resistant training context. These are all,
you know, specific context where it would be beneficial for
them to have some type of nutrients pre workout. So
that's where I'll combine you know, some protein easily digestible

(54:12):
protein and carbo hydrates to pre workout and that will
lead to better outcomes over time. Now, am I saying
on an acute basis when we look at just one
study in isolation, that is only one day looking at
fed versus fascity training that there's going to be massive decorents. No,
but I really have to think about the time course
over a fees and over multiple feeses that I'm taking
a client through. The average client that I work with
stays with me for over a year. So I'm trying

(54:33):
to stack up every single one percent or every penny
that I can because that is going to be a
deposit into their progress bank that you know, compounds and
adds up over time.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
Okay, we're almost out of time, and I'm super bummed.
But if you if we were to talk about a
coming out of bringing someone out a reverse diet, how
do you stepload that?

Speaker 3 (54:55):
What would that look like?

Speaker 2 (54:57):
And for a middle aged female any different, or just
for a female in general, how do you reverse diet out?

Speaker 4 (55:06):
So I don't really use the terminology reverse siding, just
because there's been a lot of contention as to whether
that is the best approach, to be honest with you,
and really what that comes down to is a lot
of times with reverse dining, people are pretty much taking
and like what we call in like coaching, like ten
carbing or five grand fatting people meaning that they're increasing
so little that the person is actively staying in deficit,
and they have they're still in a metabolically adapted state.

(55:29):
So what I do is I take coaching data that
I've collected over the course of a phase, specifically the
last four weeks that I work with someone, and I'm
looking at, based on their rate of loss as well
as their biofeedback, what is their calculated energy deficit in
their active weight loss phase of those last four weeks
that I'm reverse engineering that and calculating that that should
be If I was to back calculate that and say,

(55:50):
for instance, I'm going to give a really easy example,
if they were losing a pound per week at the
end of those last four weeks, we know that they're
approximately in a thirty five hundred calorie deficit. That means
a five hundred calorie deficit per day. Most people will
go up just five hundred calories, you know, Or I
could take that philosophy. Generally, I'll increase by eighty five
to ninety percent. And the reason for that is we
generally see that adaptive decrease like I was referring to,

(56:11):
when someone loses ten percent of body weight, it's generally
between fifteen to twenty five percent that they're decreasing their
totally daily energy expenditure. So I want to make sure
I don't overshoot right off the bat, and then from
there it is a process of looking at biofeedback, looking
at weight trends, looking at their performance indices, also looking
at what they're clothes like, how they're close fit, what
their visual photos look like that we're able to be

(56:32):
able to really customize it towards the individual. There's also
the consideration that we have to realize that there are
two different approaches to the post died phase. If I
have a general lifestyle client that's loss is a decent
amount of weight, but she's lifestyle weaning, she isn't shredded,
that's going to be a different approach where I'm going
to really just try to rEFInd her new maintenance. Like
I'd referred to previously, the maintenance after your fatilosophies is

(56:53):
not the same as it was previously, especially say that
you've lost fifteen to twenty pounds. A lighter body burns
less calories both at rest and through activities, So we
can't go back right to where your work maintenance wise,
we will work that up over time. However, if you're
someone that you have gotten you're an athlete, or your
a competitor, or you're just someone that has gotten into
photo shoet shape and you've gotten to unsustainable levels of weakness,
we need to actually increase your calories even more right

(57:14):
off the bat, because we have to get some fat
back on your system to regulate your hormones, your appetite signaling,
and just your physiological status. And that is something that's
very hard for people to understand. But if you are
at a state where you're at very low levels of
body fat, I've had women at fourteen fifteen percent body fat,
which is way under you know where most people are
going to be, and we're talking fifteen on adexas, so
that would be what people colloquially would say, well, be

(57:37):
like ten percent body fat. We're talking to credit with it.
You cannot expect to see there because you're not going
to be able to. First of all, you're in a
state where you're metabolically downregulated. You're going to have issues
from a hormonal especially if you're natural from a hormonal perspective,
you don't want to stay in that low extra dile
low producterone state, not as only as that rough to
your bio feedback, but also to your bone health, to
your cognition, to your cardativascular health, all these different things.

(57:58):
They have downstream ramification, and a lot of times people
are only thinking about the here and now, like hey,
I look great, but we really have to think about
the long term. And that's something that I really tried
to empower my clients through education and let them know, hey,
these are the upsides but also the downsides of doing this.
You want to get in the shape of your life.
You want me to get you into photoshe shape by
all means, but this is the non negotiable. After we
have to do what's called a recovery diet, which means
that your rate of gain post it it is going

(58:20):
to be quicker than it would be in a metal
bolkle restoration phase or a normal post ied phase where
you had just gotten lifestyle lean.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
Brandon, I'm going to go listen to every podcast episode
that you did and catch up on all of this
and whoever you've been a guest on, because I love
your approach. Number one, I knew I was going to
like you because Mickey's like Haley. He's so smart and
he has no ego, and I'm like.

Speaker 3 (58:45):
The egos in the field.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
So thank you for being super kind. You explained everything
so well and you just have a nice approach and
a nice take on it.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
So where can well?

Speaker 2 (58:58):
First of all, let's find out where what your podcast
is and where women can find you.

Speaker 4 (59:04):
Absolutely so if you guys would like an evidence base podcast,
this is just like a soul podcast. Generally, I'm just
doing it by myself, but I've covered every single question
that you've asked, which coincidentally, many of these things we
hadn't discussed earlier that we were going to discuss, but
I have an episode on everything we just discussed, so
primer phases. I just put one out health center coaching,
all these different things. If you're interested, you could look
up the Cheasing Clarity, health and fitness podcasts on Spotify

(59:25):
or iTunes. Other best place to find me would be
on Instagram. I put out daily content which is at
Brand de Cruz Underscore, and then for my email, I'm
always open to answer questions or help with people. If
you need individualized coaching, that is, be to Cruise Fitness
at gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
I love it well, thank you so much for taking
your time and sharing with us today. I am very
enlightened and thoroughly enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker 4 (59:47):
It was an absolute honor, and I truly appreciate you
guys having me and I know we only got through
probably like three or four of the questions on the list.
If you guys ever want to go through the rest,
by all means, I'm always open to share my information
and really connect with like minded individuals these always.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Thanks for listening everyone.

Speaker 6 (01:00:02):
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a
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