Q&A - Post-Bulk Fat Loss, Walking Too Much, and Diet Fatigue (Brandon DaCruz) | Ep 354 - Wits & Weights | Fat Loss, Nutrition, & Strength Training for Lifters

Episode Transcript
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Philip Pape (00:01):
Maybe your body isn't transforming the way you
expect it.
Maybe you just finished a bulkand you're terrified of losing
all that hard-earned muscle.
Maybe you're over 40 andwondering if building muscle is
even possible anymore.
Or maybe you're so burned outfrom dieting that the thought of
another cut makes you want togive up.
Today, I'm teaming up withBrandon DeCruz to answer five

(00:24):
body composition questions thatkeep you up at night, the ones
that determine whether you'llactually achieve the physique
you want or stay stuck for years.
Welcome to Wits and Weights, theshow that helps you build a
strong, healthy physique usingevidence, engineering and

(00:45):
efficiency.
I'm your host, philip Pape, andtoday I'm very excited, guys.
I'm bringing you something funhere a collaboration with none
other than Brandon DeCruz,accredited nutritionist,
world-class online physiquecoach and co-host of the Chasing
Clarity podcast.
Now Brandon is joining me forthe third time here on Wits and
Weights to help me answer yourmost pressing questions about

(01:07):
body composition, buildingmuscle training and more, based,
as always, on the evidence andour firsthand in-the-trenches
experience coaching many, manyclients where I joined Brandon
to tackle even more questionsrelated to managing hunger
during fat loss, beatingcravings and other topics

(01:29):
related to that.
Head over to the Chasing Claritypodcast.
Find it in your podcast app orclick the link in the show notes
.
Give it a follow.
You're gonna find that episodein your feed right now.
We dropped them on the same day.
Again, the link is in the shownotes.
Go look for Chasing Claritypodcast.
And Brandon my man, thank youagain for reaching out to make
this happen and for coming onthe show again.

Brandon DaCruz (01:48):
Absolutely, my friend.
It's a pleasure and I'm reallyhappy with how our last episode
just went, since we're recordingback to back, and I'm really
looking forward to digging intothis and really giving a lot of
evidence base and alsopractically applicable
information for your audience.

As you always do, and the two episodes have quite
different topics.
So, guys, definitely, whenyou're done with this, next in
your feed, go right over toChasing Clarity and we're going
to get right into it with ourfirst question today.
This is a good one.
What is the best post-bulkstrategy to preserve muscle and
lose fat for women over 40,especially during perimenopause?

All right.
So this is a situation I dealwith quite often because I work
with a lot of women over 40 thatare going through hormonal
transitions like perimenopause.
Now there are a few keystrategies I use when
transitioning a client from abuilding phase into a fat loss
phase, especially if the goal isto preserve muscle, drop body
fat and do it in a way thatsupports their long-term health
and sustainability.
So the first thing I want tolook at is the rate of loss,

(02:41):
because that is something thatwe're going to have to determine
right off the bat, and thefirst.
How I really approach this is Iuse what I call a descending
and dynamic rate of loss.
So when I kick off a fat lossphase, I actually start with a
slightly quicker rate of loss upfront and then gradually I slow
it down as we move throughoutthe phase.
So instead of tiptoeing into adeficit which is something that
some people make the mistake ofdoing and they're not really

(03:01):
getting progress off of thatwhat I'll do is I'll create a
more assertive calorie deficitat the start, which allows us to
leverage the motivation theyhave, the fact that they have
very little, if any, dietfatigue and they've been in a
surplus for an extended periodof time, so there's more
calories to pull from.
And then also, I want toutilize the fact that body fat
is at its highest, meaning thatthere's more stored energy that

(03:22):
we can pull from and there'sless risk of muscle loss.
And within that, what I foundis, when I take a, you know, a
quicker rate of loss in thebeginning, let's us get some
wins, and it's a psychologicalwin for that person because
those early body compositionchanges create momentum and that
momentum facilitates betteradherence, so we're getting
better outcomes in the long term.
Then, as we diet and fatigueyou know, diet fatigue

(03:43):
especially accumulates, I'lltaper the deficit down to a more
moderate approach.
So usually what I'm doing andthis is I'm going to give you a
broad-based perspective, butoftentimes it'll look like
something like I might start at1% body weight loss per week and
then I'm going to taper to 0.5.
And then when I get especiallywomen very lean, it's going to
be like 0.25 per week towardsthe end of the phase.
Now the second key component isgoing to be resistance training.
We cannot, you know, overlookthat.

(04:05):
You know, it's so importantthat if your goal is to preserve
muscle, that you train in a waythat sends a signal to maintain
it.
So I always tell clients thatthe training that built the
muscle is a training that willmaintain it.
And this becomes even morecritical for women over 40, who
may be dealing with hormonalchanges that make muscle
retention more challenging.
So we want to make sure we'resending the right signal to your
body that that muscle is needed.

(04:25):
The next thing I'm going to dois I want someone to follow a
high protein diet and this isreally going to help with
enhancing your ability tomaintain muscle.
It's going to help withappetite regulation and it
improves insulin sensitivity,which is really important.
If we're looking specificallyat women over 40 in that
perimenopause transition whetherthat be peri or even into the
menopause transition a lot oftimes the downregulation of

(04:45):
hormones, especially the declinein estradiol, is going to
contribute to impacting theirbody composition, their appetite
regulation and their metabolichealth, especially from an
insulin sensitivity perspective.
This is a little bit differentthan most people would recommend
, but one thing I found inpractice to be very advantageous
is I always suggest having yourlabs done prior to jumping into
a deficit, because we want tolook at how things are looking

(05:06):
internally, and personally Iwork with a lot of women from
the ages of, say, 35 to 55, andmany of them are high achievers,
and that's great.
I love that mentality, I lovethat type A personality.
But what does that come with?
For every gimme, there's agotcha.
So many of these women areburning the candle at both ends
between their professional andthen their personal lives, and
they're often putting theirhealth last.
So what I like to do is haveclients run blood work to assess

(05:27):
sex hormones, thyroid functionand stress markers to make sure
that things are in the rightplace.
And I really want to make surethat estrogen and progesterone
aren't bottomed out yet at thisphase in life, that their
thyroid function is sufficientto support fat loss.
And I also want to make surethat cortisol isn't chronically
elevated from, whether that bestress under recovery or
lifestyle factors, Because ifyou start a fat loss phase with
dysregulated hormones andmetabolic dysfunction, it's

(05:49):
going to make the process harderand a lot of women in this age
group are already having troublewith that.
So if you have put in the time,effort and energy to do a
muscle gain phase which Icommend you for because I love
seeing women become thestrongest version of themselves
you really want to put yourselfin the position to succeed,
making sure that everything isin check before you go into a
fat loss phase and then takeapproach that's going to be fit

(06:09):
to your physiology and also toyour psychology.

Yeah, I love everything you said, especially
how we're coming from a strategyhere, from someone who should
be congratulated for doingsomething that very few people,
let alone women, but men andwomen will, I'll say, have the
courage to even attempt and togo after really building, going
into an improvement phase,adding weight, knowing that some
fat might come along for theride to optimize their ability
to build muscle, which is one ofthe most critical things at

(06:33):
this time of life, because ofwhat you talked about, the
hormones.
I also like the phrases youhave for everything descending
and dynamic.
I'm going to steal some of thisbecause I do love the idea of
going all out, pretty aggressiveat first.
We also have to understand, aspart of that I wanted to
piggyback off of that the ideaof lean mass versus muscle,
versus body fat, because there'sfears that go both directions.
The fear going up, of course,is I'm going to get too fat, I'm

(06:55):
going to gain too much fat.
The fear going down is I'mgoing to lose all my muscle, I'm
going to get deflated, and it'shelpful if you're tracking and
measuring circumference I don'twant to say body fat directly,
but you can infer body fat fromtrends reasonably accurately so
that you understand.
Okay, there's sometimes thatwhoosh effect early on in a fat
loss phase, which doesn't meanyou've lost all your muscle

(07:17):
within two weeks.
I think that helps from thefear in this question, which is
how do I preserve muscle?
Obviously, you hit on trainingbeing the biggest signal,
protein being extremelyimportant.
But even understanding that youare not losing muscle, even if
the data shows a big drop inweight or quote unquote lean
mass, because a lot of that'sgoing to be fluid, so that you
don't react, you don't overreactand say, okay, I need to get

(07:38):
back out of this, you know, andstop trying this.
The diet itself, too I alwayslike to think of how are you
eating during your bulk?
Were you maintaining thefoundation of whole foods or are
you adding a lot of processedfoods?
Again, no judgment.
Some people do that if theyneed to get the calories, but it
can be more difficult when yourdiet has biased or skewed away
from that when you go back intofat loss phase, and it takes a

(08:00):
different mentality to reset tothat point versus somebody just
maybe starting fat loss for thefirst time not having gone
through the muscle buildingphase.
So I think we hit on the bigthings with again training,
protein, the rate of loss, thelean mass and then the diet
itself.
Anything else you want to add?

No, I think we really recapped that.
Well, my friend.

Cool.
All right, let's go to the nextone.
Good luck on that fat lossphase.
We're here for you.
So the next one is about oh,this is a good one.
This is good for Brandon,because Brandon is the energy
flux guy.
All right, and I guess I'manswering it first, but you're
going to have a lot to add tothis.
The question is is there a pointwhere increasing daily steps no
longer boost energy expendituremeaningfully?

(08:41):
I get this a lot.
You probably do as well.
You probably get it a lotBecause it's interesting.
You'll have somebody say look,I get 20,000 steps a day, should
I go to 30?
I'll get interesting questionslike that and I was wondering
where I should attack this.
One prong is talking about theconstrained energy model,
because I love the subtletiesbehind that.

(09:01):
I know you've talked about onyour show a lot and it's highly
misunderstood.
So we'll see if I don'tmisrepresent it.
But for most people, you know,an increase in movement is going
to be somewhat correlated withan increase in expenditure up to
a point, and then there's somesort of diminishing returns and
it's all tied into how the bodycompensates.
But it's also very individual,right?
It depends on what kind ofresponder you are to NEAT,

(09:24):
whether, when you increase yourstep count, you are compensating
elsewhere, and so on.
So I think, number one I alwaysthink of, are you measuring and
tracking the result of thesechanges pretty precisely?
For me, for my clients, that is, we're tracking food, we're
tracking weight, so we have agood estimation of your
expenditure.
Let's change one variable.
You talked about this earlier,I think it was on your show, or

(09:46):
this one, I don't know.
Yes, sir, changing one variableat a time.
Right, like an engineer, like ascientist, go ahead and add
that 5,000 steps a day and seewhat it does to your biofeedback
, to your expenditure, toeverything else.
There is a sweet spot, though.
Is also part of my answerhearing that most people are
going to benefit somewhere inthat eight to 12,000 range, and
maybe a little more.
But once you get into thetwenties, I suspect that now

(10:07):
you're getting into a slightlymore excessive, extreme regimes
of walking for a lot of people,but not necessarily everybody.
And is it stressing you out?
Is it affecting you know, yourcortisol, your feeling of
burnout?
Are you forcing yourself to doit because you feel like you
have to burn more calories?
And there's other levers youcould take advantage of.
So I'm going to start there,brandon, because energy flux is

(10:28):
part of this and I want to hearyour take on it.

All right.
So I'm going to disentanglethis from energy flux, because
the high energy flux approachthat I've taken is mostly done
through dialing in andincreasing energy expenditure
through steps, but I'm alsodoing it with a concomitant
increase in food.
So if you ever hear me speakabout this concept, it's always
eat more, move more.
It's never the reverse, nor isit are we chasing movement to
get down calories.

(10:50):
It's more so that I'm trying toget this intrinsic link between
energy expenditure and energyintake and getting this coupling
effect where I can get someoneinto a higher maintenance
calorie intake.
And there's many things morenuanced approaches that I
utilize and very contextspecific that often I don't get
to get into with podcasts, justbecause you know I'm not able to
do a lot of like case studyreviews, but when it comes down

(11:11):
to it, when I saw this questioncome through, I said this is
definitely targeted towards mebecause, especially of a podcast
, I've gotten a lot of questionsabout that.
I did with Lyle McDonald and afew months back we really broke
down some of themisinterpretations of the
constrained energy expendituremodel and that was a three-hour
podcast, so I won't be able tore-encompass it here, but I will
give you my thoughts, bothbased on the literature because

(11:31):
I read 22 papers for thatpodcast and then, in conjunction
with having worked with 1,100plus people over the years,
utilize step count as a way toincrease energy expenditure,
increase maintenance, calories,be able to get people on who
what I consider and what I referto as a state of abundance in
addition.
So, first off, that I do wantto make it clear because
sometimes people get thismisconstrued I do believe that

(11:52):
energy, energy compensation,exists.
I do believe in the constrainedenergy expenditure model, but I
think that the point whereadditional activity stops
contributing to meaningfulenergy expenditure increases is
actually a lot higher than mostpeople think.
And I think that a lot ofpeople have taken that model
where you do a comparativeanalysis and you look at the
constraint model where it's a,you know, sloping off and it's
also like an asymptote, and thenyou look at the additive model

(12:14):
where it just literally goes upand many people say, oh well,
the constraint model means thatyou know if I do extra cardio,
I'm never going to burn, youknow, the calories that I
thought I could.
Well, there's many inaccuracieswithin that because of the fact
that a lot of these activitytrackers are very off in terms
of their accuracy in estimatingenergy expenditure.
So there was a meta-analysis onthis that found that risk-worn

(12:35):
and commercially availableactivity trackers are between 28
to 93% off, I believe.
Now, when it comes to stepcounts, now this is very
interesting because we havelimited data from people that
have consistently hit high stepcounts.
So the one study that I canthink of that actually looked at
this was a study I often speakabout, which is the Amish study,
and this is essentially whereresearchers tracked physical

(12:55):
activity in traditional Amishcommunity, and so what they
found was that the Amish men inthis culture consistently
averaged 18.4 steps per day, andthen the women averaged over
14,000 steps per day.
But then, when we look at theirbody composition, the men were
walking around with 9.4% bodyfat, with no dietary
intervention.
They ate plenty of food, Ithink their calories were around

(13:18):
3,600 calories and the womenhad 25% body fat.
However, the average woman inthat culture, specifically in
that Amish community that theylooked at, had six to seven
children.
So the data is confounded bythe fact that a lot of times
when they're doing thesemeasurements, some of these
women are pregnant, so obviouslythey have higher adiposity
levels, which is essential forcarrying a baby to term.

(13:39):
Now, even with very high stepcounts between 14,000 and 18,000
, we still see clear metabolicand body composition benefits,
so it is safe to say that theyare burning more calories.
But to really answer thisquestion, I think we need to
discuss a concept that's oftenoverlooked, which is referred to
as maximum metabolic scope ormaximum sustainable metabolic
scope, and what that tells us ishow, far above your resting

(14:02):
energy needs, your restingmetabolic rate, can your body
maintain energy output on aconsistent basis?
And the best data we have fromthat is actually an endurance
training study.
It's an overview like anumbrella review by I believe
it's by Thurber and colleagues,and they looked at athletes
ranging from extreme enduranceathletes like triathlons to
ultra marathons, to even likethe race across the USA, which
is, I believe, a 20-weekessentially contest or

(14:25):
competition, where you run amarathon a day, six days a week
for 20 weeks.
So we're talking about veryextreme expenditure levels.
Now, when we actually look inshort bursts, elite athletes,
especially endurance athletes,can burn between nine to 10
times their BMR in events likeIron Man's or even ultra
marathons.
But when it comes to your actualsustained energy expenditure
like Ironmans or even ultramarathons.

(14:47):
But when it comes to youractual sustained energy
expenditure, the maximumsustainable metabolic scope is
found to be 2.5 to three timesbasal metabolic rate.
So I'll give you guys anexample to really break that
down practically.
I have a BMR that's around 2000calories.
So that means my maximumsustainable energy expenditure
would be 5000 calories per day.
Now if you're someone out therethat you're lighter than I am,
I'm over 200 pound male.
I'm over six foot tall, so I'ma little bit bigger than the

(15:08):
average individual.
But say that you're the averagewoman walking around, your BMR
is usually going to be closer,say, the 1600 calories.
So that means your maximumdaily output is still 4,000
calories per day.
But to actually reach thatamount of energy expenditure you
need to be moving essentiallyall day.
You need to train, walk and bephysically active, probably four
to six hours a day.
I actually did somecalculations for my podcast with
Lyle and it was really likehigher level output in addition

(15:31):
to training for five to sixhours a day to get to these
maximum sustainable outputs.
Now here's the thing, that's,if you did it in a single day,
you would have to do thisconsistently to actually see a
constraint.
And just realistically.
I always think about this in apractical perspective.
I work with people in the realworld.
They're busy.
A lot of people are actuallyunderactive, more than they're
overactive, and so the averageperson, the general population

(15:51):
and most of our clients.
They aren't anywhere near theceiling.
So, yes, I do believe thatthere is a point of diminishing
returns, but no, the vastmajority of people won't hit it
and I don't believe that theyhave to worry about it.

Yeah, have to worry about it.
Yeah, you hit it on the headright there.
I was just thinking like let'sstop overthinking it.
You know, I'm sure you have theclient that loves to send you
multiple questions a day andoverthink all this stuff, which
is great.
I love curiosity.
But the question was, you know,implying, should I keep going
up because it's going to help myenergy expenditure?
And I like how you answeredthat.
Um, what's interesting is we canthink more creatively when it

(16:21):
comes to our movement and ourtime efficiency.
My clients are all super busy,I'm busy, you're busy, and I
always think, okay, what are youtrying to do when you ask this
question?
If you're trying to boost yourenergy expenditure, can we just
make your walking a little bitharder, right?
Can we use inclines and ruckingLittle things like that is the
way I like to go to it, brandon,right?
That way we're not just adding,adding, adding, because, as you
know, once you've used up thetime in the day, then you start

(16:43):
hitting your stress, then youstart affecting your sleep, then
you start making eating harderand all of that.
So, again, practical, realworld.
I think we covered it.

Absolutely no.
I will admit that I am a datanerd myself.
I'm just saying, practicallyI'm the person that probably
spoken about step counts andenergy flux the most and I have
very infrequently seen someonethat I truly believe has hit a
cap and when it has, it's beenconfounded.
So I'll give you an example.
We actually there's research,by Willis, I believe, that looks
at the influence of energybalance status on energy

(17:12):
expenditure from activity andit's within this constrained
energy expenditure model andthey find it was a best fit
model essentially.
So this is statistical modeling, but what they did was they
looked at interventions wherepeople are in a large deficit
versus maintenance, versus asurplus, and wanted to see what
the best fit, what they mean bythat.
What model best fits this?
Is it the constraint model orthe additive model?
Well, in my model for energyflux, I'm keeping people at

(17:35):
maintenance or in a slightsurplus, but I'm allowing
activity to increase thatmaintenance, calorie intake and
also help with nutrientpartitioning and insulin
sensitivity and nutrientdelivery.
Now what's interesting aboutthat?
And now I was utilizing energyflux.
I think I had spoken on yourpodcast about it even before
this Willis paper came out,because it's fairly new.
Now the interesting thing aboutthat is that when they did a
best fit model analysis theyfound that the constraint model

(17:57):
only was the best fit, meaningit was most applicable when
someone was in a deficit in anactive period of weight loss.
Now that could be for multiplecomponents, but we also know
that metabolic adaptationdown-regulates a lot of the same
components.
That would also decrease energyexpenditure and could be
confounded or conflated for theconstrained energy expenditure
model.
It's very hard to disentanglemetabolic adaptation, low energy

(18:18):
availability and theconstrained energy expenditure
model Because if we think aboutit a lot of times, neat
down-regulations can be in therealm between 400 to 500 plus
calories per day.
But then if someone's doing alot of activity but then they're
sitting a lot, that could be adownregulation in NEAT.
But then it's almost conflatedbecause they're doing 24-hour
measurements of energyexpenditure through doubly

(18:39):
labeled water.
They can't really disentangle.
Was that from NEAT or were theynot burning as many calories as
we assume they would, based offthe cardio or the step count
that they were doing?
So there's many things that wecan disentangle there, but when
you look at maintenance or in asurplus, the additive model
meaning the more steps you do orthe more activity was
specifically activity.
So I don't want tomischaracterize the research.
It wasn't looking at stepcounts, but the more activity

(18:59):
you did, the more calories youburn, and so we have to.
There's many influences withinthat.
There's many differentvariables where for most people,
I don't think they have toworry about it.
There have been some veryspecific cases and I can be a
case study or an example.
I have had many women that wereconscious prep athletes.
They were competitors that havecome to me on enormously high
step counts 25 to 30,000 stepsper day.
They're on very low energyintake and it's almost like it's

(19:22):
something that people withinthe functional realm refer to as
weight loss resistance, which Ihave a little bit of an issue
with, just because the fragilitynarrative that comes with that
and it's a misunderstanding ofphysiology.
It's not that they don'trespond to a deficit, it's that
their energy expenditure is solow in so many other components
that they're not eliciting arate of loss that would be in
alignment with what most peoplewould expect.

(19:43):
Now I have a specific case thatit was an IFBB figure pro which
was on under 1200 calories perday doing two plus hours of
cardio per day.
Her step count wasapproximately like 20,000 steps
per day.
Most of that was actually beingdone through cardio, though,
because she was doing higherintensity cardio for 120 minutes
a day, so it wasn't picking up.
It wasn't like she was doing alot of daily activity, it was

(20:04):
more so.
She was getting like 14,000steps per day just through
cardio, like intentional cardio,and then about 6,000 throughout
the course of the day.
She was very sedentary inbetween these bouts early in the
morning, fasted cardio an hour,before bed an hour, and then
throughout the course of the dayshe was very she.
She wasn't too active.
However, when I looked through,I mean I put a comprehensive lab
analysis every I mean herthyroid, her sex hormones,

(20:25):
everything was downregulated.
She had hypothalamic amenorrhea, which is essentially the
cessation of menstrual cycle forthree or more months due to low
energy availability.
So all these differentphysiological components were
downregulated to the point thather body wasn't burning a lot of
energy.
So it was just what she hadfrom resting metabolic rate and
she was a very small female whatshe had from energy expenditure
.
But all these differentcomponents, including her need,
her non-exercise activity,thermogenesis, were

(20:46):
downregulated.
So a lot of times that may bemisconstrued for the energy
constraint model, and it couldbe.
It could definitely be aconstraint, but I think that
there are many other inputs fora metabolic adaptation
perspective, specifically froman adaptive thermogenesis
perspective, which is where wesee a decrease in metabolic rate
specifically, or energyexpenditure specifically, that
exceeds what we would expectfrom weight loss alone, and then

(21:07):
we also have to tie in lowenergy availability and relative
energy deficiency.
So, just for anyone out there,I don't think most people have
to worry about this, and if youare someone that you're just
trying to become a healthierversion of yourself and improve
your body composition, you're at10,000 steps per day.
Don't worry about going to12,000 and that you're not going
to get a benefit from it.

Exactly, and how many of those people in these
studies are lifting weights too?
I always, I always, think thatright.
The last thing I want to add tothis we'll go to the next
question is I just recently didan episode about the walking
snacks research from like 2022that compared squatting.

You're talking about exercise snacks.

Yeah, but specifically they looked at
squatting versus walking, versussitting for seven and a half
hours, and the vast differencein muscle protein synthesis and
vascular blood flow and insulinsensitivity between those groups
, walking being the superiorgroup of them all.
So even when you talk aboutconfounding variables and what
happens during fat loss, how youstart to compensate across the

(21:58):
board, it's important to tiethose together and not overthink
it.
That's the goal, not overthinkit.
So, all right, let's go toquestion three, which you're
going to answer first here, andthat is what is a realistic rate
of muscle gain for someone over50 who's lost significant
weight and is now training hard?

All right.
So I think the first thing thatwe need to consider and
understand is that the rate ofmuscle gain isn't linear and it
depends heavily on your trainingage.
So, both based on like theresearch and then also my
experience coaching clients ofall different ages and training
levels, I found that the bestway to go about this in terms of
how to conceptualize this, isto scale your rate of gain based
on your level of advancement.

(22:35):
So if you are now, thisquestion didn't really
disentangle, you know it couldbe assumed that they were
training previously or they juststarted training.
So if you are a novice, I wouldaim for a monthly rate of gain
of around 2% of your body weightper week.
The less trained you are, themore essentially, the larger of
a ceiling you have and thequicker you could push for gains
.
If you're an intermediate, Iwould aim for a rate of gain of

(22:56):
1% to 1.5% per month, and then,if you're advanced, it can be as
low as 0.5% to 1% per month.
So for someone who's over 50,who's lost a lot of weight and
is now training hard, the rateof gain that they will have will
depend on whether they're moreof a novice or they've trained
consistently for years.
And then I get a lot of clientsthat I want to cover this
because of the context that thislistener sent to us about the

(23:17):
fact that they just lost weight.
And I get a lot of clients whoare very fatless, focused
initially, and now they want tofocus on building muscle.
And if this is where you are now, I think it's important to
realize that fat loss and musclegain do not operate on the same
time course.
So the rate of fat loss farexceeds the rate of muscle gain.
So in a deficit, most peoplecan lose and safely lose, say,

(23:41):
0.5 to 1% of body weight perweek, especially early on.
But in a surplus, I would onlyreally recommend most people if
they're really trying tomaximize we're talking about
maximizing muscle gain in termsof lean muscle, cruel and fat
and making sure that there's notexcess of that mass
accumulation I would recommendmost people to target 0.25% per
week, and so that's going toeven taper down as someone
becomes more experienced.
So I think one of the biggestmistakes people get when they've

(24:01):
been in this cutting mindset isthey're used to seeing quick
progress, especially thingsthey're seeing like almost daily
improvements, and they want tospend equal amount of time
cutting and building, and thatjust cannot be the case.
The reality is that muscletakes much longer to build than
that takes to lose, and thatmeans that your yearly strategy
needs to reflect that.
So with clients myself, I liketo do a four to one ratio in

(24:24):
terms of building time in timespent in a surplus or even at
maintenance, as compared to timespent in a fat loss phase.
So you know, if you're 50, oryou know 50 or not, realize that
muscle gain is going to be slow.
But with the right strategyit's possible, especially if
you're doing the things thatsupport hypertrophy the most.
So you want to make sure thatyou're eating in a modest
surplus, you're prioritizingprotein intake, you're

(24:45):
progressively overloading inyour training and that you're
not overlooking the lifestylevariables, especially in your
50s.
You want to make sure thatyou're managing recovery, you're
getting an adequate sleep,especially in your fifties.
You want to make sure thatyou're managing recovery, you're
getting inadequate sleep andyou're managing your stress,
because these are all thingsthat could have downstream
effects on not only hormones,your biofeedback, your recovery,
but also your ability toaccrete or to gain muscle mass
and another.

(25:06):
Just food for thought, or justlike a little suggestion out
there is be patient.
You know, a lot of times I'vehad a lot of clients that come
to me.
I have a lot of clients that arebetween you know, I generally
work with people between 35 and55, but right now I have, you
know, at least a handful ofindividuals that are between 60
and 70.
And I find this to be veryinteresting.
But they're very impatient andsometimes it's I'm not saying

(25:26):
that they're that they're intheir life, but they have waited
so long to make these changesthat they're so excited to do so
.
But they want to see fastprogress.
They want to see it right outthe gate.
And what you have to realize isyou have to be patient.
You can't mini bulk your way tomeaningful gains and you have
to realize that this is aprocess just like anything else,
and give yourself grace andknow that this is going to be a
process, that it's an investment.

(25:47):
I look at it almost like Iwould an investment fund.
Every day that I train or Ihave a client train, it's a
penny into the progress bank andover time you realize, hey, I
have a lump sum of money or I'vebeen able to save something
that's really going to be ableto set me up from a foundation
perspective later on in life.
But it doesn't happen overnight, so don't rush the process.

Yeah, patience seems to be underlying
everything, everything we talkabout, including fat loss, and
I'm going to cross that off mylist because you mentioned it.
But what I like that you did inaddition to talking to the rate
, because people do get kind ofhung up on how fast should I be
able to gain muscle, andtherefore it implies maybe
there's a lack of patience forthat.
You talked about the time scalein two respects one being the

(26:27):
ratio, which is a nice way toput it, because then you put in
perspective well, how muchshould I be cutting on a regular
basis it's not what most peoplethink where it's a switch that
you're always going into dietingmode, and then also the
implying how long it should takethen to gain the muscle, which
is a lot longer than peoplethink.
Right, it's at least in myexperience working with clients
like a good six or nine monthsor more sometimes for a thing,

(26:49):
and people are like, well, can Ijust do it for two months and
then go back?
And I think there'sdisadvantages to that because
you're not going to see theresult.
You're also going to not giveyourself that anabolic advantage
let's call it of sustainingthat surplus for a while and you
see some magic happen when youhit months, three, four, five,
with everything, including yourmetabolism, cranking up.
For a lot of people which isanother point I wanted to
mention in that, if you're nottracking this somewhat precisely

(27:12):
per the numbers that Brandon'smentioned which are not that big
, they're like kind of almost inthe noise if you don't have a
good way to track it or a goodcoach to work with, you might
fall behind on the intake needs.
It happens all the time.
Right when you plateau going upbecause you're not sort of
staying ahead of that with yourintake, I'll get clients who say
why am I feeling hungry?
I'm like that's probably yourbody telling you you are

(27:33):
under-resourced right now andthat metabolism is cranking up.
Maybe, maybe not right, couldbe cravings, could be other
things, and so that comes tomind.
And then hitting on the actualnumbers, how do you even measure
all this?
This goes back to something wetalked about on your podcast
with body fat and lean mass.
I think it could be veryhelpful to have your
measurements, have your strengthnumbers.
Understand there's also adifference between strength and

(27:55):
hypertrophy, depending on howexperienced you are.
If you're a novice, you're goingto get a lot of that
neuromuscular adaptation.
Your numbers are going to goshooting up, but you're not
going to see anything visiblefor a while.
You're just not, and that'sokay.
So you're going to have to bepatient with it.
If you're more advanced, youkind of know what to look for.
So I think that kind of puts itall together and then be
patient but also be ready to saywhen you've hit the goal you

(28:16):
want to hit, because it's kindof an art, not all, not just the
science.
Right, you might say it's sixmonths, and then you know you
get to six months andeverything's feeling great and
the numbers are moving and youreally don't notice too much
extra body fat.
There's nothing preventing youfrom continuing.
You know you could, you could,you could train and gain for a
long time if it's right for you.
So, all right, I guess we beatthat one to death.
Right, that's a good one.

Hell yeah.

All right.
So question number four isabout home gym equipment.
I love this one.
What's the best use of spacefor a small home gym, free
weights or machine like thetotal gym?
Am I taking this one first?

Yes, you are.
You're going to be definitelygoing to be the expert, because
I have only trained in a homegym during one period of my life
.

You know what A home gym is.
What got me where I am rightnow?
Because back during thepandemic, everything shut down.
I didn't have anything and Ihad to hustle on Craigslist and
Facebook to get a rack and a barand around that time I was
reading the muscle and strengthpyramids and starting strength
and all of that.
So, look, it's all going todepend on what your goal is, how

(29:15):
you want to train, how muchyou're willing to invest in the
space and all that.
However, I think people makeexcuses on this a little bit, in
that if you give me yourfootprint, if you send me your
blueprint of your room, I couldprobably fit a power rack in
there.
Almost always, even a tiny room, I mean there's exceptions.
You also have to consider theceiling clearance right.
If you're in a basement, you'renot going to be able to

(29:37):
necessarily do overhead presseswith a seven foot high basement.
So I think the best use ofspace to me is the one that's
going to be give yousustainability for growth.
We talk about progressiveoverload.
If you invest a ton inequipment that is going to seal,
you know, hit a ceiling, withinsix months or a year you're
going.
You might regret that decision.
So I would think carefullyabout what's going to allow you
to have longevity.
For me, a home gym is one of thebiggest hacks for people who

(29:58):
are busy.
It's not for everybody.
Not everybody can afford it orhave the space.
Some people like to go tocommercial gyms for a lot of
reasons the plethora of crazyequipment.
They have right, lots and lotsof equipment, the camaraderie,
the community, the music,whatever.
But think of the pros and conshere, of you save on your
commute, you have a lot ofconvenience.
You can do some clever thingslike two days, you know, very

(30:21):
tiny sessions, exercise, snacks,all that fun stuff that I'm
doing, and you could do rehab,you could do therapy.
It gives you a lot more optionswhen you're at home.
So, long story short, what'sthe best use of small space?
I would see if you could fit arack or free weights as the
foundation.
That is my opinion.
But I have clients who have atonal.
I have clients who have Bowflexand it can work, but it tends

(30:44):
to you know, it tends to liketop out at some point and it's
kind of weird to be able to doall the potential training you
want to do.
So I'm going to start there,brandon, and curious on your
thoughts.

Perfect.
Yeah, I definitely agree withthe power rack and then some
additional equipment pieces, butI think that it's very
important to really get down tothe brass tacks and really
realize that this is going todepend on your goals, your
experience level, your budgetand then how much you prioritize
space efficiency versusexercise variety and I say the
latter because I work with a lotof intermediate to advanced

(31:15):
trainees that are trying to getto that next level, and so a lot
of times we are trying to biascertain regions of a muscle
group and I'm not saying they'rebeyond compound basic lifts but
we need a little bit morevariety, we need a little bit
more equipment accessibility.
So you hit on things that Iwould say for the general person
a hundred percent and I'll takethis more maybe from the
clientele that I work with andmaybe some of the home gyms that

(31:35):
I've built out.
What I found to work best forclients that train at home,
especially when I'm walking themthrough the process of, hey,
we're going to build out a gym.
This is a lot of people thatcome to work with me.
They are very they're highachievers or high performers and
whether they're a high and, youknow, bought into the process

(31:56):
than your average gym goer.
To be honest with you, and sooften what I do is I recommend a
hybrid approach, and what Imean by that is I want to
combine free weights and then amulti hybrid rack or like cable
season.
And the one I like most and Irecommend clients to get a lot
is one of the prime prodigyracks.
They have a full series of themand so, like one of the
constructions that actuallylooked into some of my client

(32:18):
programs to see, like some ofthe setups that I've given them,
one of the ones that has workedreally well that is really good
for a small space Like I have.
Some people with a one cargarage or one room of their
basement is to combineadjustable dumbbells, which you
can fit into tight spaces, whichis also going to replace
multiple pairs, and then a primeprodigy rack which, if you guys
aren't familiar with that, ithas a squat rack in it.

(32:42):
It has a dual high and lowcable pulley system in a single
unit and also has a pull-up bar,and so if you get a barbell and
then you get an adjustablebench, you literally have
everything that you need and youcan do almost every both free
weight and cable-based exerciseyou could think of.
You could do flies, you could do, you know, lengthen partially
all these different things cablepull-downs, all these different

(33:03):
exercises, both for the upperand lower body, and it's not
small by any means, but it has agood footprint for as much of
its delivering.
So you can have a squat rack,you can do your compound basic,
you know multi-joint movementsbut then you can also do other
movements that you wouldn't beable to do if you only had free
weights and you also wouldn'thave the same resistance profile
.
So one thing that I really liketo do this for is a lot of like

(33:24):
cable lateral work and I'll doit in, you know, really be able
to get into a lengthenedposition, because if you are
only using something like adumbbell, you're only going to
have short overload at the topof the movement.
So these are just a little moreadvanced and maybe a little bit
more intricate strategies, butI think either way that you
would go.
If you are someone that'swilling to invest into your
health, your fitness, your bodycomposition and build a gym in
your home, I commend you.

(33:45):
So any way that you could startoff work.
But if you're trying to getinto a little bit more of the
nuances of things.
I think that would be thedirection that I would suggest
or, you know, head you in.

This is why I think you're such a great
communicator, right, because youlaid out the actual product,
the products and the specificthings.
It's funny you mentioned thePrime Prodigy because there's a
really cheap rack on Amazon byFitness Reality.
It's been around for maybeeight years.
I've told tons of people aboutit just because it's so
inexpensive for the budget.
It's like $400 and it has a anoptional lat pull down, full up
and down cable attachment andthe bar built in.

(34:19):
But there was a funny Amazon ora funny YouTube video about it,
cause it was my first rack thatI ever had and it said watch
how this cheap rack handles 700pounds.
And I thought it was going toimplode.
They basically loaded a racksup high with a bar weighted with
700 pounds and the guy justdumped it onto the spotter arms
and in slow motion.
You're like, oh no, thisthing's going to collapse.

(34:40):
And it just bounced gently upand they're like this is a good
rack.
You know what I'm like.
Okay, I feel I feel goodrecommending that to people.

Yeah.

It's steel, right, it's.
It's two by two, it's not threeby three, but it's steel.
So I love that idea.
And the adjustable bentdumbbells too.
You know, I know there's thepower, the power blocks and
Bowflex might still make theirs.
Occasionally, walmart mighteven have something that comes
through.
It doesn't matter, I mean.
So what I wanted to add to thatwas microplates.
Right, having microplates forboth the barbell and the
dumbbells is helpful, becausepeople say how do I, how do I go

(35:11):
up by five pounds on mydumbbell from 15 to 20?
I can't do it.
Microplates are really helpful.
And then, when you are trying tobe efficient with space, you
alluded to multi-use A legdeveloper at the end of an
adjustable bench.
You can find that is reallyhelpful for leg curls and
extensions.
It's all plate loaded.
All my stuff is plate loaded,just because that is how they

(35:31):
sell it.
And then a pec deck, reversefly.
So anything that could do threeor two or three things is a
great idea.
So awesome, I love it.
Good stuff, man, perfect.
Want to go to the next one,absolutely Okay.

Jerry (35:42):
Hey, just wanted to give a shout out to Phillip.
I personally worked withPhillip for about eight months
and I lost a total of 33 poundsof scale weight and about five
inches off my waist.
Two things I really enjoy aboutworking with Philip is number
one.
He's really taken the time todevelop a deep expertise in
nutrition and also resistancetraining, so he has that depth.

(36:05):
If you want to go deep on thelies with Philip, but also if
you want to just kind of getsome instruction and more
practical advice and a plan onwhat you need to do, you can
pull back and communicate atthat level.
Also, he is a lifter himself,so he's very familiar with the
performance and body compositiongoals that most lifters have.

(36:25):
And also Philip is trained inengineering, so he has some very
efficient systems set up tomake the coaching experience
very easy and very efficient andyou can really track your
results and you will have realdata when you're done working
with Philip and also have accessto some tools likely that you
can continue to use.
If all that sounds interestingto you, philip, like all good

(36:47):
coaches, has a ton of freeinformation out there and really
encourage you to see if he maybe able to help you out.
So thanks again, philip.
Really encourage you to see, ifhe may be able to help you out.

So thanks again, philip.
Actually this is the lastquestion.
So diet fatigue you get toanswer this one first.
What nutritional training orlifestyle changes do you make
when someone's dealing with dietfatigue?

All right.
So I have taken a lot ofclients through fat loss phases.
So I've experienced andencountered a lot of diet
fatigue and really, if you aresomeone that is unfamiliar with
the concept, it's just thefatigue, both mental and
physical, that can accumulateacross the course of a fat loss
phase.
And really, when I encounterthis or I see a client that is
dealing with this and it'sstarting to come across in their
check-ins and their biofeedback, even in their photos,
sometimes I'm a big fan ofpulling back to be able to push

(37:33):
forward, and that's actually anexpression that I use with my
clients.
I have a push and pull method.
So there are times that I'mpushing them towards fat loss,
where we're driving greater bodycomposition change, and then
there's times that I'm pullingback and dissipating fatigue.
And I see this veryspecifically because the clients
that I work with are highperformers and they're also
those types of individuals thatthey were buried themselves if I

(37:53):
wasn't there, and so it's notalways about pushing harder.
You know, I like to take what Icall a systems-based approach
that supports both someone'sphysiology and their psychology
and that's going to utilize allthree of these interventions.
So this was a great questionthat they're looking at
nutrition.
You know training and lifestyle.
So on the nutrition side, Iwill usually start with refeeds
and high days.

(38:13):
But if a client is deep into adieting phase and their
biofeedback is showing signssuch as heightened hunger, low
mood, elevated stress, even somewater retention like you're
getting some edema from justvery high stress levels and
potentially from cortisol I'lloften implement what I refer to
as a deficit deload and that'sessentially a four to seven day
diet break where I raisecalories back to maintenance or

(38:35):
even slightly above, and I wouldrather overshoot it than
undershoot it.
I'm really trying to use thisas a restorative break to lower
their perceived exertion, bothphysically and mentally, their
perception of restriction.
So I'm trying to get them moreinto a mindset of flexible
eating, flexible eating controlor flexible eating attitudes,
rather than rigid restriction.
I'm trying to reduce stress andI want to reset them before the

(38:57):
next fat loss phase block andso during a dusty deload, like I
said, I'm going to bringcalories back to maintenance or
above and we're really focusingon high satiety whole food meals
to support appetite andmicronutrient needs.
Because if your biggest pieceof feedback that is indicating
diet fatigue, besides the mentalstress of it all is that you
have very heightened hunger.
A lot of times people kind of Idon't want to say blow it, but

(39:18):
they almost don't take advantageof the deficit deload or some
people would term that a dietbreak.
They start eatinghyper-platable foods, they start
having fun foods and thingsthat are going to drive
generally passiveoverconsumption.
So sometimes they'll overshoottheir calories but they actually
didn't get a satiety benefit.
And one of the biggest mistakesI see with clientele, or that
I've seen just in otherapplications, is where someone

(39:38):
takes the same amount ofcalories that they have and they
increase them.
So say they were dieting on2000 calories and they were in a
500 calorie deficit, so webrought them to 2,500 calories.
But they brought that 2000calorie diet that was mostly
made of whole, satiating,micronutrient dense foods.
They bring 20, bring it up to2,500 calories but they
eliminate a lot of the satiatingfood sources that they had that
were helping with satietyappetite regulation.

(39:59):
They they, you know swap itwith with fun food, which is
great from a pleasureperspective, but now you're not
actually getting the appetiteregulating.
You know effects.
You're not getting themicronutrients that are going to
help with you know hormonalstatus and mood and
neurotransmitter secretion, andso that is something that I
really try to be very consistentand very deliberate with the
food sources I use.

(40:19):
And I found that by inserting adeficit deload before clients
hit a wall, they're able to comeback refresh, refocus and ready
to make better body compositionprogress, going forward without
burning out.
Then, from a trainingperspective, I'll usually pull,
you know, auto-regulationstrategies, because a lot of
times people who love liftingthey forget that in a deficit.
You know, lifting and trainingis another stress, it's another

(40:41):
stimulus, but it's not anotherstress.
So if I see biofeedback isstarting to suffer, this could
be things like poor sleep,nagging, soreness, or like joint
aches and pains, what I wouldrefer to as the niggles.
I'll auto-regulate intensity byraising RRR.
So I'm going to take them, say,if they're training zero reps
in reserve, we might go betweentwo and four.
I'm going to reduce their totaltraining volume and then I
program a deload week.
Now the goal of the deload isnot to push performance, it's

(41:06):
dissipate the accumulatedfatigue, both physically and
mentally.
Another component of deloadingthat I really like to do is to
make their sessions more timeefficient, because I want to
give that client more time backin their day and then I
specifically direct them.
It's going to depend on theclient and how well I know them
or what things work best forthem, but I encourage them to
use recovery promotingstrategies so that can be extra
sleep, that could be a nap.
For some that's yoga, A lot oftimes it's meditation, or with a

(41:29):
lot of people it's just liketake time off your feet, watch a
movie, just relax.
You don't always have to feellike you have to be
hyperproductive and really whatI'm trying to do is shift them
from that sympathetic state intoa parasympathetic state.
Then, from a lifestyleperspective, I like to realize
that this is a totalaccumulation.
We have to look at stress.
It's your total allostatic load, which means your stress
accumulates into one stressbucket.

(41:50):
We cannot separate these.
You don't have training stressin one bucket, lifestyle stress
in another and nutrition stressin the other.
It is all going into one bucketthat oftentimes is overflowing.
So oftentimes I'm going to leaninto recovery-based strategies.
So one of the ones that I usemost frequently is meditation.
So I had mentioned previouslythat I recommend an app called
the Insight Timer and I like tohelp clients utilize that,

(42:12):
especially at night, but alsomidday, if they find a stressful
part of their day.
We kind of schedule this basedoff like what is this highest
stress portions of your day?
When are you feeling anxiety,stress rumination, things like
that.
But meditation has so manybenefits from a mindfulness
perspective, from apsychological perspective just
stress reduction, anxietyreduction, and so that's
something that I personally havebeen practicing meditation for
15 years and I got away from it,and this past year I've

(42:35):
dedicated at least 30 minutes aday towards meditation and it's
just had such a profound impacton my life and quality of life
specifically that I find thatintegrating with clients I could
speak from experience and thenalso it's been very helpful.
Other things I really like todo is having them go for walks
in nature, and the reason forthat I like to combine two
things.
Walking is just a greatactivity in general, especially

(42:56):
for your health, butspecifically when you do it
around greenery, it helps tolower cortisol and improve mood,
and there's a lot of researchthat backs that.
Another thing I really do with alot of women that I work with
specifically is self-care days.
I find that I work with a lotof like busy mothers that
they're always doing for others,so all day they're working like
a high level corporate job andthey're attending to their
boss's needs or their client'sneeds or whatever it may be.

(43:16):
Then they go home, they'reattending to the kids, and then
the big kid which is theirhusband, and so all day
everything is about other peopleand they really take on that
maternal role, which I love, butat the same time there isn't
enough time where they're justintrospectively, you know, kind
of looking into themselves andsaying what do I need?
So a lot of times what I'llassign is like a spa day or a
day to get their nails done or amassage, or even just a weekly

(43:37):
you know, weekend family outing,and I do it specifically as
part of their programming.
So I actually build this intotheir program.
And I do that because whenclients feel permission to
recover and to pull back, theysee recovery as part of their
plan and it shifts their mindsetfrom I'm failing or I shouldn't
be doing this or I need to bemore productive, to I'm
succeeding and going to dobetter by taking care of myself,

(43:58):
and Brandon told me to do so.
So it's almost like I don'twant to say I'm giving them
permission, because that's notwhat it is, but I'm kind of just
encouraging them and I'mspecifically putting in the plan
.
The plan and a lot of thepeople I work with are just
executors and so by meincorporating this into actually
something that's scheduled, Ibuild out different programs for
individuals, but when theyreceive their nutrition program,
it's not just a nutrition plan,it's not just a meal plan.
It is a nutrition and lifestyleplan.

(44:19):
So there are modifications on aweekly basis going to any
categories that fall within that, and that's been very helpful
for the clients that I work with.
So that's what I would suggest.

It's a lot, man.
I mean that in a good way.
There's a lot of hacks in thereand a lot of principles.
I'm not going to repeateverything you had.
I want to touch on a couple ofthem and then add things you
didn't already recover, which isa challenge, brandon, because
you covered so many good things.
The deficit deload you mentionedovershooting.
My listeners need to hear thisbecause you guys you hear me
talk all the time about, like,when I go to maintenance, when I
want you to go to maintenanceto kind of really push it and

(44:49):
make sure you're truly atmaintenance, otherwise you don't
get that full benefit and Ithink that's really fun.
And then you tied to what wetalked about in the bulking
question about not biasing yourfood toward the fun food,
because then it kind of throwsthe other phases off.
I think that's just a.
If you think of your wholeperiodization strategy gaining,
losing, sustaining as havingthese principles, you're going
to be good right, because that'sthinking over the long game.

(45:11):
The macro rather than just this, is an extreme thing I'm doing
right now.
The satiety by the way, guys,check out the other podcast,
chasing Clarity, because wetalked a lot about that if you
want details on that.
And then you said allostaticload.
Sometimes I call that themetabolic stack.
It's like here are the 20things that are adding up in
your life that could affect yourstress and your metabolism and

(45:31):
everything else.
Where's the low hanging fruit?
So you mentioned relaxationdays as well as building them in
.
I'm going to add to that andsay, yes, you have permission to
do whatever the heck you makesyou relax.
If I want to play video gamesand shoot people in my video
games and that relaxes me, I'mgoing to do that and you're not
going to judge me and then alsotake like a four day vacation.

(45:55):
I mean, this is the thing I'vebeen recommending more to people
is we get in a mindset of youknow we're disciplined, we've
got our routine, we've got ourtraining program.
Yes, we might have D loads.
Is it okay to maybe take almosta week off?
Maybe?
I mean some people might needthat, right, brandon?
I mean some people need that,need that, right, brandon?
I mean some people need that.
I know somebody, one of myclients.
She works in the news industryman Talk about stress these days
with everything happening inthe news, you know so she just

(46:15):
she just needs to take some timeoff and just literally do
nothing for a few days.
So I'm going to add to some ofwhat you said.
First, you mentioned a few ofthe signs of diet fatigue.
I think it's important that weare tracking what's important to
us so that we can recognizethose signs not just
subjectively but somewhatobjectively, like on a rating
scale or something like that.
What you mentioned the hunger,the irritability, even the

(46:37):
decline or plateauing in yourstrength, right, because
strength and muscle, kind of,are at different timelines.
If you will we talked aboutthat earlier If you're food
obsessed, if you are havingtrouble sleeping, a lot of those
things are good signs.
And then you mentionednonlinear dieting quite a bit.
I'll say one of my favoritestrategies is just the weekend
refeed, right, because almosteverybody has the weekend is

(46:59):
special versus the weekgenerally.
But if your week looksdifferent because you have shift
work or your weekend is Tuesdayand Wednesday, think about a
weekly lifestyle that you haveand align your food with that.
It would be a lot easier.
As well as the macro timelineof travel, right?
Don't maybe you shouldn't bedieting when you travel.
That's a great time to takeyour break and a great time to
take your deload or break fromtraining.

(47:21):
As far as training goes, somethings I've found work really
well when you go to a fat lossphase, prepare for that phase
with how you're going to train.
Are you going to continue howyou're training now?
Does it make sense, or are wegoing to go to a new program?
And this is a great time toevaluate the days per week.
You know if you were doing fouror five, maybe you're better
off with three because you getmore sleep days.
Maybe, as it happened to me atone time during fat loss, I was

(47:44):
better off with six very shortsessions because it was
recoverable.
So think about recovery versusstress.
The second thing about trainingI like is auto-regulated
programs as opposed to pushingyour numbers programs.
Right, I got a lot of guys inour community who love to push
their lifts.
They like PRs.
You're not going to be chasingthose during fat loss, most
likely.
And so what's an alternative?

(48:06):
Well, rep range style programs,hypertrophy and bodybuilding
style conjugate, like there's alot of options that allow you to
, on the given day, train, youknow, out or near failure,
whatever makes sense, withoutnecessarily pushing your numbers
, and then fatigue can reallybuild up during fat loss if
you're not careful.
So tracking those sore spots,those hotspots, maybe joint

(48:27):
connected tissue, low backfatigue, those kinds of things,
measuring your soreness andenergy as you go along and kind
of seeing like, is that tied toyour overall allostatic load and
your recovery stack, can bevery helpful.
So I think that's all I wantedto say.

Awesome.
I do want to hit on something.
You did mention the potentialperformance decrements that
could be experienced in aphallus phase.
I do think that it's importantthat you go in with a mindset of
progression.
What I mean by that is youshould be going to try to lift
more, whether that be from a repor load perspective, especially
in that initial phase, or thatinitial, you know, say first few
weeks of a thalos phase.

(49:00):
A lot of people they go in oneof two directions.
The one direction is it'salmost a scarcity and fragility
type of perspective where all ofa sudden I've been into deficit
.
I've had clients that haveemailed me two days into a 300
calorie deficit, which is a verymodest deficit, and they
might've been in a 10% caloriedeficit and they've already told
me.
I think you know performancehas dropped and it's just been a
psychological thing.

(49:20):
Our psychology has a massiveimpact on our physiology and
it's very important to realizethat.
But at the same time I have theopposite end of the spectrum
very advanced trainees that theywant to continue making gains
as they had been in a buildingphase and I've pushed their
calories up quite high.
Their training volume is in agood place in terms of their
recovery ability, their volumecapacity, their work capacity.

(49:41):
And then all of a sudden theystart seeing some loss of a rep
here or there or they can't liftthe same loads, and it's very
important to realize that thatis a natural and normal part of
fat loss.
We have to think about it fromeven just some biomechanics or a
leveraging perspective.
So say, for instance, thebiggest example that I see and I
just had this conversation witha client named Mark just a few

(50:01):
days ago.
He is a very advanced trainee.
He's been a natural probodybuilder and he no longer
competes, but he's still I mean,his physique is at such a
greater level now that it waseven when he competed.
So he is an outlier, to say theleast.
But this past off season we didan eight month building phase
leading into the current fatloss phase we're in.
He hit his all time greateststrength, greatest strength
numbers, greatest performance, Imean from a load and a rep

(50:24):
volume perspective.
He was off the charts and I'vebeen training him for two and a
half years so I'm able tocompare really things over time
and we were able to get to bodyweight high.
That was the same as we did thelast building phase, which was
over a year ago, but hisperformance blew it out of the
water.
So it was just very goodnutritional periodization plus
training programming, matchingeverything together but this
just recently reached out to methat his performance is dropping

(50:44):
.
Now we're 10 weeks until fatloss phase.
This dude is around 7% body fatand so he's very, very lean.
And what I had to explain tohim is Mark, you're not only
down 16 pounds as compared towhere you were in the building
phase, but you have lost some ofyour leverage.
So, specifically, what he wasnoticing is, on his barbell
incline press, he was unable tolift the same loads or he was

(51:04):
missing like a rep or two, whichstill, when I broke it down
from a body weight perspective,in terms of body weight towards
body, you know the actuallifting, you know the actual way
he was lifting.
He was stronger, pound forpound.
However, I've explained to himthe fact that when you lose fat,
you don't indiscriminately losefat.
You lose fat from your entirebody.
So, in terms of a pressingmovement especially, you have to

(51:25):
realize you've lost fat offyour back and then also off your
chest.
So, technically, if you weredoing the same amount of weight,
you would actually be liftingmore because of the fact that
now it's a longer range ofmotion that you have to go
through to get the same If youwere going quote unquote full
range of motion.
In terms of your technique andexecution, your range of motion
has now been extended.
So say you lost an inch offyour back, an inch off your

(51:46):
chest, just from a body fatperspective.
You now have two more inches tocover with that same load.
So it's not reasonable to thinkthat you won't be able to
maintain that.
So you have to realize thatthere's many inputs that are
causing potential decrements inyour actual training performance
.
The one is that you're losingbody fat, so you're a smaller
individual.
Your mechanics might change.
It might be harder to bracecertain lifts.

(52:08):
Most times people will noticethat things like their presses,
some of their pulls they'll bemost impacted.
Then, secondarily, you have torealize that the acute energy
deficit that you're in isimpacting the substrates that
you have available to fuelactual training performance.
Now that could inhibit somemotor unit recruitment or even
just a recovery capacity.
So now you have depletedglycogen stores, you have less

(52:29):
actual fullness in your muscles,so that's also going to
interrupt your ability tocontract muscle or even go
through the range of motion inthe same capacity, have the same
force or muscle output that youwould have if you were in a
full-on surplus or buildingphase.
So there's many things.
I think that we have to be alittle bit more aware of these
things and realize all right, Iwant to go in with the mindset
I'm going to keep progressing,especially in that beginning.

(52:49):
But if I start seeing thingsfalling by the wayside I'm not
saying falling in terms of likea rep or two here or there and
you're deep into a fallacyrealize that's par for the
course.
We can make adjustments to tryto alleviate that, whether it be
a volume reduction or intensityreduction.
We're really focusing on adifferent rep range.
I often find that it'sadvantageous to shift rep ranges
during a fat loss phase.
With some of my clientele Iactually will shift them down in

(53:10):
rep ranges rather than mostpeople will shift things up.
I actually want them tomaintain that top end strength
as much as possible.
So I'm trying to have them feelthose same loads from a
neuromuscular perspective.
So say, for instance, they werelifting a specific weight for
six to eight reps.
I might downshift that to fiveto seven reps during a fat loss
phase, or four to six reps.
I'm still going to stay withinthat hypertrophy zone, but I
want them to feel those lifts.

(53:31):
So it's still familiar, theystill have confidence.
They just may be doing, youknow, say it was 300 pounds on
bench.
They may be doing that forthree sets of four to five
rather than three sets of six toseven, and so these are just
different adjustments we canmake.
But there's also a mindset anda mental perspective you need to
bring to your fat loss phasesfrom a training perspective.
That's very important.

I agree.
Act as if you're buildingstrength and muscle.
Don't let it hold you back.
Don't assume failure.
The relative strength alsooften increases, and so that's
kind of a fun metric.

I think it's like a Wilkes score they call it
.

The Wilkes score.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Right.
And you mentioned lower reprange.
I really do love that, becausethat's another misconception.
Right Is is that you need morevolume or more reps, or you're
trying to burn fat.
I do love top set back offsetfor people in fat loss and and
only doing two sets for somepeople, cause it's a good way to
save time sometimes and keepthat top end intensity on that
first step, then get the volumein on the second.
That's just a little aside ofsomething I'm in love with these

(54:23):
days.
I think we covered it at all,didn't we?
I think so, my friend.
Yeah, All right.
So some of the you know thesewere some fantastic questions
and they're only some of theones we're answering for you
guys, so I want you to go catchthe rest of them that we covered
Appetite hunger, a whole bunchof topics on chasing clarity and
, yeah, we covered fourquestions on there.
So go follow chasing clarity,your podcast app.

(54:44):
Check out Brandon and I overthere.
It's in your feed right now.
Use it's in your feed right now.
Use the link in the show notes.
We're going to see you overthere, Brandon.
Thanks, brother, for doing this, for setting it up.
I really, really appreciate it.

Absolutely, philip, I want to say thank you
not only for joining me but alsofor having me on, and I really
hope that everyone out in bothour audiences really values the
evidence-based information thatwe brought, and I was really

(55:14):
glad that we were unite andreally benefit both our
audiences in the process.

Yeah, and I always benefit personally too, man,
from talking to you too andlearning and growing along with
the audience.
So again, thanks again.

Absolutely Bye.

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Q&A - Post-Bulk Fat Loss, Walking Too Much, and Diet Fatigue (Brandon DaCruz) | Ep 354

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Q&A - Post-Bulk Fat Loss, Walking Too Much, and Diet Fatigue (Brandon DaCruz) | Ep 354