What Women Need to Build Muscle & Lose Fat with Nutritionists Mikki Williden, PhD & Brandon DaCruz

29:19I've done a three-part podcast with him in depth on this topic. Now, rapid fat loss was conceptualized as a crash diet, but doing it in the right way. That is what Lyle came to. And really what it is in the foundation of the diet is a high protein intake from whole food sources because a lot of the early PSMFs that were in the literature were liquid diets. And there was actually one that was basically collagen based and people died from this. So it was called the last chance diet. And what they meant by that initially was it was the last chance to lose weight. Well, people actually died. So it was their last chance at life, essentially.

29:48So we have to take into consideration the nutrient deficiencies that can come from this. So what rapid fat loss was conceptualized to be and how I apply it in practice is a very large and assertive deficit that is created through a high protein intake that is often to the 1.5 grams per pound per day. So we're in that 3.2, 3.3 grams per kilogram per day. And we are reinforcing that with vegetables. So we have nutrient density, vitamins and minerals, and then we're back filling that with omega-3 essential fatty acids. So you have all your nutrients covered. You have essential amino acids from whole food protein sources.

30:19You have your vitamins and minerals from, and sometimes we will include like, I'll personally include some fruit in the diet, but we're looking at no starchy carbohydrates essentially. And then we have omega-3 essential fatty acids. So you have EPA and you have DHA. Now, rapid fat loss is supposed to be over very short time periods. If you look at the initial writing of Lyle, it was seven to 14 days. Where that has been brought to an extreme are people that are doing months and months and months of rapid fat loss. So you take yourself, and if you guys are familiar with the energy availability literature, In 2023, the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, put forth a new consensus statement on REDS, which is relative energy deficiency in sport, and they delineated low energy availability.

30:59There's problematic low energy availability when it's sustained for a long period of time. And particularly in women, we see a knockdown of the HPO axis. You have low estradiol, low progesterone, you have low thyroid hormone. You have all these downstream implications, low bone mineral density. There are many physiological ramifications of that, but then we also have adaptable low energy availability, which would be the context of someone in a fat loss phase or a very short-term rapid fat loss study. So Bill Campbell's study is at a 37.5 % deficit for two weeks. So you're getting in, you're getting out.

31:27And that can be a tool. And that is something that I utilize with clients. But in practice, we have to delineate who is that right for. And what I have found, I've done about six hours worth of content with Lyle on this. The people that contacted me about this were the people that this was least appropriate for. It was a lean woman trying to get leaner, the person with a chronic dieting history, if we look statistically between 42 to 60 percent of US adults around the world are dieting each and every year. There are many people, if we actually look into the micronutrient, the vitamin and mineral analysis literature, many people are deficient in zinc, iodine, selenium, vitamin D.

32:00These are all things that are cofactors for hormone secretion and conversion, such as testosterone secretion. And then also particularly with thyroid and women are five to eight times more likely to suffer from thyroid disorder. 12 % of women around the world will have some type of thyroid disorder, whether that be Hashimoto's, which they're up to 60 to 75 % of cases is women, or they're going to suffer from hypothyroidism. So we have to delineate, is this appropriate for you? We have to look at lab work first and foremost. So I'm leading with that. And secondarily, we have to look at your starting body fat percentage.

32:27If you're a woman that's close to like 20 % body fat, you don't need rapid fat loss. If you want to get a little bit leaner, we need to take a more sustainable, conservative approach to protect not only your muscle mass, but your bone mineral density, especially as you get into your 40s and your 50s, and then also your hormones. And so where rapid fat loss is very advantageous is if someone has excess adiposity or they have something, and I'm going to be completely honest about this. I have a lot of people that were physique competitors or they were photo shoot preps people, or they had a wedding coming up, or I used to work with a lot of people that they were musicians and they had a music shoot that came up last minute where they were working.

33:03I worked with a lot of people in New York that were actors. Those are things that we would use that for a very short-term basis. Seven days of rapid fat loss, get into a massive deficit, make sure that we're keeping the resistant training stimulus there. We're not doing excessive cardio because that would actually increase the essentially low energy availability state that they're in. But we're doing it. We're getting in, we're getting the fat off, and we're getting right out and back to maintenance so that we can restore the metabolic adaptations that have been sustained through that aggressive deficit.

33:29But protein has to be kept high. Your essential vitamins and minerals, your omega-3s, your essential amino acids, and your vitamin and minerals have to be covered. This cannot be a shake diet where you're just going to drink protein shakes all day and try to lose weight as quickly as possible. And honestly, a lot of times what I'm seeing are people that have such massive appetite suppression from GLP-1s when they're doing rapid fat loss. It's more so not like the structured approach that I'm speaking about. They're just rapidly losing weight. And it's a lot of tissue coming from lean mass and some coming from fat mass.

34:00Okay. Before you answer, Mickey, Brandon, that was amazing. And I love how you talked about, was it, did you say adaptable, low energy availability? We have two terms now. We have adaptable, which would be, I'm going to give you a couple of examples. And they use this in the literature. This could be someone in a fat loss phase. It could be an athlete getting ready for a weight making situation, or it could be someone that's getting ready for an event, a photo shoot, a wedding, a vacation. This is short term. It can be chronic. Now, when you go months in and months out in low energy availability and an aggressive deficit, that's where we see a knockdown effect to your HPO access, to your thyroid hormone to your estradiol, to your progesterone, then it goes downstream.

34:36When estradiol falls, your bone mineral density is going to lower as well. And then we also see immunological effects. So people are getting sick more often, getting upper respiratory infections. You see this a lot in the endurance athletes. You see shin splints, bone breaks, things of that sort. Yeah. Okay. Mickey. Yeah. No, I love that, Brandon. I love hearing how you use it in practice. And I think, and it's quite different as to how I use protein sparing modified fast in practice, actually. So So I use it from a calorie cycling perspective, actually. So in the literature and when we think about rapid fat loss, as Brandon said, it's sort of you're in and you're out and it may be several days sort of strung together or a couple of weeks, et cetera.

35:17Whereas I use protein sparing modified fast as a way to drop calories and create a deficit across a week in an otherwise sort of eating it maintenance style week. um is the calories on the other days would probably be lower than the maintenance but essentially it's only ever one day where you're doing protein sparing modified fast and you're following the guidelines that brandon suggested um or not suggested i'm sorry that brandon sort of detailed as to what that actually entails and then the other days are the type of diet that we would all be sort of recommending that people follow so and the reason i use it actually and Hayley I think both of you know this about me is that you know I don't I don't utilize calories um I haven't utilized um calories in terms of macros if you like um with my clients for like probably 25 years of my clinical practice and I think it's just because my training in nutrition science didn't lead me down macro counting the same way that personal trainers get a macro sort of counting education when they do their courses so that's just not the the training that that I had uh so so my sort of foray into calories and counting and utilizing with small pockets of the people I work with is relatively new so what I found is that in order to this was an a a way to create that deficit without having to overly think about it and overly sort of restrict on every day of the week actually so it's a it's a form of calorie cycling And then in addition to that, the groups that I run, I also like to have like a diet break, essentially, sort of every couple of weeks where we lift calories up on three consecutive days.

37:02Those calories come from carbohydrate. People get what I call a metabolic reset meal and what Brandon would call a free meal. And we essentially practice being at what could be considered maintenance. And I know, Hayley, that we run these and you run these in your groups as well, because, of course, a lot of the issues around fat loss isn't necessarily that they don't know how to diet, it's that they don't know how to keep it off because they've never practiced eating in a way that actually allows them to maintain their weight. and so it's just trying to sort of override their fear of eating more um but obviously in the context of eating less with those protein sparing modified fast days that are sort of that are tiered sort of one two or three days of a week but non-consecutive so so that's how i use protein sparing modified fast just as a as a calorie cycling tool i love it i love how different both of your like similar, but different ways that you use it.

37:58And I would say what, what popped out to me is, um, a couple of things, but number one, that just from, this is from my experience from the groups that I have worked with. And I would say calorie cycling it in more like that seems, more doable for the groups that I work with. I love the other version of like, get in and get the heck out. That to me says you have to work with a coach because most of these women don't know what's going on. They're not getting blood work in large group settings. I mean, I couldn't recommend that just because you need more information. But man, I mean, I would be sending people to Brandon for that.

38:46Haley, if you, if you would let me expand, because I have another take on this and another approach, to be honest with you, I run something called rapid fat loss days. And this is an integrative approach that I utilize where I stair-step someone into a larger deficit just on their off days, but very similar to Mickey. And I think Mickey, we had talked about this when we detailed my own fat loss phase. So this is how I diet myself on training days. I really, my philosophy around nutrition besides like the bioenergetics and biochemistry of nutrition is I want to match the energy demand, like from a nutritional perspective, fuel.

39:17I always say this from James Morton, fuel for the work required. So I want that my energetic status of what I'm taking in from a nutrient perspective, both in a macronutrient perspective, and then also in a total energy intake perspective matches the activity I'm doing. So when I have resistant training days, which is a glycolytic activity that relies of a carbohydrate metabolism, I have higher carb days and I have lower fat days. And then But on my non-training days where I leverage more steps, I leverage more low-intensity activity, especially in a fat-set state so I can mobilize free fatty acids and burn them off for energy, I utilize a very low carbohydrate, higher fat, and then a very high protein diet to really increase that.

39:50And I will often stair-step people from a normal diet that's just a non-training day and a training day where it's essentially a high-carb day and a moderate-carb day. I will essentially transition them when I need to get extra fat off them. I will transition them into one day per week that's on a non-training day into a rapid fat loss day. And that's what I call it. And it's high protein and it's the same conceptualization. Sometimes I'll start with fruit at two or three meals per day, especially before bed, because I want to restock liver glycogen. So especially women can sleep better at night because that's something I find in women between 40 and 55, they have a lot of sleep issues.

40:20And that often comes due to the fact that liver glycogen is essentially falling and they're getting like an adrenaline dump and a cortisol release in the middle of the night. But I will start with say four meals of protein with veggies. Two of those meals will include fruit and I'll have omega-3 essential fatty acids at those meals. So I'm driving a much larger deficit on those days, but they're not, they're not working out. So they're not getting taxed from an energetic perspective. And then if that person has Tyler Reddick here from 2311 racing victory lane. Yeah. It's even better with Chumba by my side.

40:50Race to chumbacasino.com. Let's Chumba. No purchase necessary. VTW group void where prohibited by law. CTNCs 21 plus sponsored by Chumba casino. More body composition goals, or they have a closer deadline, I will walk them into that. And basically I have a lot of clients training between three to five days per week. Eventually the highest amount of rapid fat loss days they'll have is the highest amount of non-training days that they have. So say someone's training four days per week and we really have to get fat off. And we really want, I really want to preserve that, that training day diet. I will leverage those rapid fat loss days on non-training days.

41:20So they'll go from say three non-training days that were normal, moderate carbohydrate. I'll, I'll take one of those out and I'll add in a rapid fat loss day. So high protein, low carb, low fat. And then as we go through the diet, I'll leverage two and then we'll go to three, but I'd never let them first. I don't like them sequential just personally, where they're one after another, because then I start seeing people really struggle with hunger. And then also from an adherence perspective, you can do one, one, you could go low calorie for one day. Anyone can do that because the next day you have a training day diet.

41:46But if I told you, Hey, Friday through Monday, you have to do this or Friday through Sunday, you have to do this low calorie diet. That's a protein sparing modified fast. Most people want to stay on board. So I actually usually dose them throughout the week and I make sure that they're not on weekends. So it usually looks like Monday, Wednesday, Friday for the maximum of three rapid fat loss days per week. And say that I was able to induce a 1500 calorie deficit on those days. So three days per week, I induced a 1500 calorie deficit. That's 4 ,500 calories. So we're looking at one in a third pound of fat loss or even more.

42:13So much to think about. I mean, I love both approaches and just to wrap this up, because I don't want this to get missed. I'm loving the adaptable low energy availability. mainly because the women coming in to a lot of my groups are terrified of low energy availability. Like after two days being in a diet, I'm feeling really low energy. I think I'm in LLEA. And that's a hard conversation too, because we have to be in low energy to lose weight, right? Yeah. But I think we have to delineate between energy balance and an energy deficit and low energy availability. So if you would let me explain the two.

42:57So energy balances is calories in versus calories out. So if you're in an energy deficit, you're essentially expending more energy than you're consuming. And that's just colloquial. We know calories in versus calories out. Low energy availability is a knockdown effect where you are under an energy availability threshold. And initially, Lauchs and colleagues had termed that 30 kcals per kilogram of fat-free mass. So the calculation for low energy availability is you take your exercise energy expenditure and you divide it over your amount of fat-free mass, how many kcals per kilogram of fat-free mass do you?

43:27So it's only muscle metabolism and it's only exercise. Most people, A, are not burning enough in exercise to really be in low energy availability unless they're an endurance athlete. They're doing copious amounts of activity. Really, when it comes to resistance training, if you look at the literature, there's a great study, I believe, by Lidl or Lidl and colleagues that looks at the energy expenditure of an exercise session. And for women, it's around 1.6 to two calories per minute. Because remember, resistance training is an intermittent activity. You rest more than you train. Think about it logically.

43:54You're taking two, three minutes rest or even 90 seconds. Your actual exercise durations of your contractions are much less. Not a lot of calories. Not a lot, but endurance athletes can really rack it up. So Haley, someone like yourself or Mickey, both of you guys would be more susceptible to low energy availability. And we see that in the endurance literature. We don't see that as much in the resistance training, except this is the caveat here. If you look at female bodybuilding contest prep, when you're the combination of very low body fat and very low energy intake for the amount of muscle that you have leads to low energy availability, but it's over a sustained period of time.

44:22First and foremost, we don't really see harmful effects. Mickey, you could speak on this better than I can, but Jose Aretta is actually doing studies looking at what are the effects on muscle metabolism, on muscle protein synthetic rates of short stints at low energy availability. And we're seeing no knockdown effect on muscle. We're seeing no knockdown effect on mitochondrial changes. So that would be what we would term adaptable LEA. To be in true low energy availability, you will feel it. You will have cognitive issues. You have - Oh, I've felt it before. It sucks. You have - Yeah. The first leading indicator is usually menstrual cycle irregularity.

44:55So once you start seeing you're not having between a 21 to 35 day cycle and you start extending out to oligo amenorrhea, so 45 days, where you start seeing you're missing multiple cycles and amenorrhea in and of itself would be termed or would be classified as three months or more, three cycles or more without your menstrual cycle, you're in low energy availability. Now, the caveat here is that psychological stress can actually knock down your HBO access and can cause amenorrhea. But in most cases, for very active women, under-consuming calories, under-fueling themselves. So when I talk about it's not being in an energy deficit, you are under-fueling yourself for the amount of activity, exercise, and body fat percentage and muscle mass that you have, that would be low energy availability.

45:32Most women, if you have excess adiposity, you're skinny fat and you're in an energy deficit and you're not losing, say, more than one pound per week, you're not an LEA. Okay. Yeah. And I just will just say, it's that people hear a term and they're like, oh, that is me. That LEA, I want to avoid that. We love to identify with a term. Absolutely. Sorry, Hayley, you go. No, I was just going to say, and that is the difference right there, is that the majority of women, at least that I'm working with, are not endurance athletes. Some of them are, but not the majority, by far, not the majority. They're exercising for maybe 30 to 60 minutes most days, three to six days a week.

46:19If they're not in this aggressive deficit for weeks or it's that energy balance, really under eating, over exercising, that applies to endurance athletes, elite athletes. I felt that on a couple of these, a little bit on these rides of the last few months from what I've been doing just because I'm not used to training this much anymore. And I wasn't intaking the food because I'm sitting up in my attic doing work all the time. And so it was really hard for me. And I definitely know, I mean, I've had times in my life where I felt that way, but on average for the average female midlife that has some, most women are coming that maybe have 10 to 30 pounds, maybe 40 pounds to lose.

47:11They're only exercising most days, but not every day. And they're exercising for about 30 to 60 minutes. Probably don't have to worry about low energy availability. I'm in complete agreement. And it's, it's very similar to overtraining syndrome. People say that all the time. If you actually look in the clinical literature on that, you have more of a likelihood of getting struck by lightning than you do over training syndrome, especially from a resistance training perspective. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the resistance training. Yeah. I mean, as you said, the calories, it's not a lot. It's not a lot.

47:42But that's not why we do it. So moving on to spot reduction, and we're for sure going to need a part two. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. The rush of racing? Nothing beats it. But Chumba Casino comes close. Chumba's got fast spins, fun games, daily bonuses, and all the action you can handle. Now that's a ride. Ready to hit the throttle? Get in the driver's seat and head to ChumbaCasino.com. Let's Chumba. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. 21 plus. Terms and conditions apply. This is going to be a long one. There's a lot of nuances. I've got, this is all the question number three.

48:26Okay. Go ahead. Spot reduction. I know Mickey, you have recommended Brandon or you've referred to Brandon on some of our courses. And this is the question that always gets brought up. So the nuances and everything, because again, I don't want women to just hear and be like, okay, cool. I'm spot reducing. And where's your program, Haley, that spot reduces X. Insert whatever you want. So Brandon, tell us what that is as far as how you see it, what you do with it, what you know about it. Go ahead. We want to hear it all. All right. Haley, you had asked me off here, what was maybe a controversial take that I had or something that I just didn't agree with the industry on.

49:15And this is one of my primary ones. It's spot reduction. And I think that there's been a mis-extrapolation of the research and a misinterpretation. And I also think that definitionally, we're looking at two different things. So if you were to ask most people in the fitness industry, what spot reduction is, they would tell you, or they would probably spout out something to the effect that you can target and lose fat from one specific area by simply exercising that area. So a great example is if you do more crunches, you'll lose L.A. fat. Or if you do enough tricep extensions, you'll lose fat on the back of your arms.

49:44And I will tell this straight up, that version of spot reduction is still a myth. You're not going to sit up your way to a slimmer stomach. You're not going to do a single exercise in isolation enough to produce noticeable fat loss. Now, how I actually define spot reduction based on the clinical literature is differently than most. And I define spot reduction as the potential to preferentially lose body fat from a specific area by combining localized resistance training for that region. So let's say for the arms or for the abdomen, and then combining that with cardio after and making sure that you have a sustained calorie deficit.

50:16And I think that's where it really gets delineated because a lot of people are looking at the old literature. So for instance, if you look at the original studies on this, it's in the 60s and 70s. And most of them were examining isolated resistant exercises that fail to demonstrate meaningful fat loss in that area. So a great example of this is there was a study on tennis players essentially, and they were looking at the trained arm or it wasn't trained, but essentially the arm that they played on versus the other arm. And all they found was that the arm that was trained had more muscle mass, but the same amount of subcontinuous body fat.

50:48The same team can be said they did a massive crunch study back in the day. It was like 2010. And they found that even with like 30 minutes of crunching per day, they were not losing preferential abdominal fat. Now, if they were able to sustain a deficit, they were able to lose some type of fat. Now, when it comes to actual spa reduction, when we actually look at some of the more updated literature, we see that we actually can spot reduce, but it takes a multimodal approach to this. And so that's really where my approach or my stance on this has changed because I think that a lot of, there's a confounder here.

51:20A lot of the people that say just colloquially spot reduction is myth. They are referring to old literature first and foremost. And secondarily, they have not looked into the most recent literature. So I'll give you guys a couple of examples of some of the limitations of the early research and why I don't share the same perspective as many people in the space. So first and foremost, the most of the literature that came in the 60s, 70s, early 2000s, they only tested one type of exercise. So that was usually high repetition, localized, resistant training, like crunches or unilateral training. They would train one arm, they would train one leg.

51:51They didn't combine that localized resistant training with aerobic exercise. The other thing is we have to realize what is going on from a physiological perspective. Let's talk about fat loss physiology. If you are exercising a limb, you're only mobilizing fat. So you're getting fat out of fat cells. So essentially, the process of lipolysis, which is breaking stored fat in the form of triglyceride down into free fatty acids and a glycerol backbone that can happen from resistant training in and of itself. But if you have nothing to oxidize, to transport and oxidize those free fatty acids, you can't lose fat.

52:22You've just liberated fat. That's going to get restored through a process called re-esterification. And then the other thing is, if you look at the original research, none of it had dietary control. They let people eat their regular diet. And here's the thing, A lot of these were done on untrained people. And we know just working in practice and we can see in the literature for most people that have began exercising, many are going to unconsciously increase their food intake. So they're going to get into a surplus and no matter what you're doing, whether you're doing crunches for all day, where you're doing tricep kickbacks, you know, until the cows come home, if you're in an energy surplus, you're not losing body fat.

52:52So it doesn't matter. So really when it comes down to it, I think that many people have misunderstood the spa reduction, like what it is from a myth perspective. And then also what I find with a lot of individuals is that they don't understand fat loss physiology. So they don't actually don't know the process in which the body needs to go through to burn fat because they think about fat, like it just gets burnt. And that's really not the process it goes through. There is a three steps, three step process, which includes lipolysis, transport and oxidation. And so really what we need to do, and this, this applies to every single context, any body fat that you want to lose, you have to go through this process.

53:26You need to go through lipolysis, which is breaking fat out of a fat cell. and that is going to be stimulated through catecholamine release, which is noradrenaline and adrenaline. And the things that do that are exercise, especially high intensity exercise. So if you do resistant training or HIIT training, a calorie deficit is going to increase catecholamine release. And then certain stimulants, you can use caffeine. There's other central nervous stimulants that you can use that are going to increase catecholamine release. But all that's doing is getting fat into the bloodstream. Now, what we have to realize is that does not mean that you're losing fat in that area.

53:54You have to go through a second process, which is called transport, which is where you take those free fatty acids, you take them through the bloodstream and then you deliver them to the oxidation process. And one way that we increase blood flow is through training, through exercise. It increases localized blood flow. So if you get a local contraction, say that you want to burn fat in your abdomen, you're going to have to work out that area to increase blood flow, especially because if you especially look at the low abdominals where a lot of men hold visceral adiposity, that is an area with really poor blood flow.

54:21It's not really hot. It's not other areas like your limbs, which are usually vast, veiny and they have good vasculature and good blood flow. So you need to do exercise to transport those nutrients. And then you have to go through fatty acid oxidation or beta oxidation. And that is where fatty acids are delivered into tissue like skeletal muscle. And the way to do that, the whole process is going to require exercise to liberate that or supplementation. Then you're going to have to do something like low intensity aerobic activity to burn off those fatty acids to be able to actually lose fat. So I think that a lot of people don't understand the actual full process and what it actually takes.

54:56And we have updated literature that actually looks at. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing, another checkered flag for the books. Time to celebrate with Chumba. Jump in at chumbacasino.com. Let's Chumba. No purchase necessary. BTW Group. Void where prohibited by law. CTNC 21 Plus. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. You know, the process of spot reduction and how using a multimodal approach can actually elicit spot reduction. Now, before I go into that, I want to throw it back to you guys and see if you have any questions regarding that. I've got a whole bunch, but we don't have time for all of mine. Vicki, go ahead.

55:31All I will say is just that I've learned so much from Brandon about the whole spot reduction process. And Brandon and I have had some back and forths because I guess it's not a caveat, but it's something just to consider that if you're someone who has lipoedema which is um fat storage sort of uh that is sort of inflamed fat tissue typically in the lower limbs um that is fibrotic and a lot of women i say a lot of women but up to 10 percent of women do have lipoedema and and it's very that is a different condition and doesn't it may respond it doesn't respond the same way as normal fat tissue does to sort of losing body fat And the one thing that I will add, I'm sure Brandon would say it, is that high-intensity work post the resistance exercise won't allow for that same spot reduction effect because it increases glucose in the bloodstream and will suppress that fat oxidation.

56:36So it has to be low-intensity exercise. But I, of course, learned that from Brandon as well. yes i okay i love that uh delineation so that it because that could get confusing too with the intensity type but okay so if we're to like i said i i would love to invite you both back on because i feel like we barely got through a great conversation and i feel like we nailed all of these big issues but man i'd love to have a whole other two hours with you well consider it done. We'll make it happen. So if we were to wrap this up and we're talking about, obviously, I only care about midlife women in this phase and they're listening to this podcast and they're like, okay, cool.

57:25Some great points. They're probably following all of us anyways, but kind of still feel like where, what, where do they start? Like what, what, where do they start and where do they go without feeling overwhelmed as a midlife female that desperately wants result? And, and, and we'll, let's just go for body composition. Cause I know everyone wants muscle, but most of the women that are coming to us probably want a little bit of fat loss as well. Yeah, absolutely. So in the context of spa reduction, that's not going to be the first lever that I pull. That is something that is most applicable for people once they get leaner and they also have to already induce and sustain a calorie deficit.

58:08So the first thing I'm doing, I'm a nutritionist first and foremost. So I take a food first approach. So first thing we have to dial in your nutrition, we have to create an effective calorie deficit before anything. And I like really using the scientific method. I like isolating each variable by itself to see engage someone's response. So before I do anything, and we're just going for the goal of fat loss, before we put the bat wings on, you know, you know, the underarms under the scope or your belly fat, whatever it may be, we're going to focus on creating a calorie deficit before we do cardio, before we do step count or supplementation.

58:37Once that deficit is established, then I start layering in other principles. So first and foremost, I'm going to get that person to tell me what are the stubborn areas that you want to work on? And if they have a specific area that they want to improve, I have to make sure that they're training it directly. And it's going to be in a very specific way, but I'll just give you a broad base overview. If it's their midsection, they want a tighter abdominal, they want tighter abs and leaner abs. We're going to do direct abdominal training. If there are triceps, which a lot of women tell me, so that's why I'm giving that specific example, we're going to make sure that they're progressively training their triceps.

59:06And if it's their low back, we're going to do back extensions and things of that sort. Now, the thing is that I'm using resistance training with the goal of providing a localized stimulus that increases blood flow to that area and helps that fat mobilization process. It's going to turn on that lipolysis process. So what I'm trying to do is just get fat out of that fat area. Obviously, if you have excess fat in your low back, your low abs on your triceps, on the back of your arms, we need to get that out. So first and foremost, we're trying to liberate that. And then right after that, we're going to go into some steady state cardio.

59:32And really what we're doing is looking, like Mickey had mentioned, the different modalities from an energetic perspective of what energy substrate is he using. And also if we look like bioenergetics, like what is he doing? Resistant training, high intensity. So it's working off aerobic metabolism, but it's going to have that increase in catecholamines, which are going to bind to those receptors and liberate free fatty acids from that fat storage. Then we're going to follow that with low intensity exercise because it relies on that metabolism in and of itself. So that's going to help. We've already mobilized fat out of the fat cell during the resistance training session.

1:00:02And then we're going to use that lower intensity exercise to burn off those free fatty acids while they're in circulation. Now we're going to do that combination, but I have many, you know, we would have to really get into nuances, like all the approaches that I take, but really if I was to say, Hey, what is the basic thing? Let's get you an energy deficit. Make sure that you're actually losing fat effectively. Secondarily, I'm going to tack on some extra work at the end of your session to increase localized blood flow to that area and make sure that we're burning off. So I will do this actually with a high frequency.

1:00:30This is not going to be a once per week that we're hitting your say glutes for a woman. It's not gonna be once a week that we're doing this. I will do some type of isolation type exercise with a very high rep ranges to increase blood flow and vasodilation to that area. So it could be, I'll give you an example, glute bridges. If a woman has extra fat off them and she wants to lose fat in the area, we're going to do high rep glute bridges. And to, you know, we're talking 50 reps sometimes. And so we're going to do a few sets of that. We're going to increase localized blood flow to that area. We're going to increase that mobilization from those fatty acids in the glute tissue, the gluteal femoral area.

1:01:04And then right after that, we're going to go do some cardio and we're going to do that on a frequent basis. I also have some strategies that we have to get into because they're very nuanced and I don't want to just throw them out there, but there's specific supplementation. There's some facet training type of modalities that I utilize. These are all things that I've seen work in practice. And you can even look, I have transformations where I've literally done this, where I've done it in practice. And this all comes from in the trenches. I read the literature, but it really came from me testing these things with myself and with other clients and then going back into the literature to find the physiology to reinforce it.

1:01:33So this is not just like an evidence-based perspective, but it's also, hey, I have clients that come to me that are super self-conscious about the fat under their arms or their glute fat or their low back fat. I had to find a solution. And that's why I take a different stance than others in this industry. It also took me an immense amount of time to comb through the literature and actually get a great understanding of it and then break this all down in a simple fashion. Really, when someone's able to explain something simply, it's because they know it to an extent that most people can't conceptualize.

1:01:58Okay, Mickey, your take. And then I want to cover one question at the end of I'm barely eating enough, but I'm not losing weight. And what your thoughts are on that question to end. Yeah, I love it. And in fact, Hayley, I think I could probably encompass that question with my answer to the previous question that you had because I just, I stepped back and think, I just thought really big picture. I think a lot of people think they're doing the right thing. So they hear the problems that everyone has, that they need to eat more protein, that they need to have more fiber. They have to start exercising more.

1:02:30And these are all likely true, but to add nuance and context, you actually have to think about yourself and have awareness of your own habits and behavior. So my almost very first thing that I like people to do is, it's really simple, but can you just keep a food diary for three days. And actually write down everything you eat at the time that you're eating it, how you're feeling when you eat it, how full you feel, how hungry you are going in, how full you feel going out, and get them to have some awareness of actually what they're doing on the food front. Because sometimes they're trying to solve a problem that isn't really there.

1:03:08But they think that what they need to do is have better snack options at three o 'clock because they keep diving into the chocolate, whereas actually what they need to do is probably eat more earlier in the day so they're not needing a snack at three o 'clock. And it's not until we bring this awareness to their habits and behaviors that we actually are able to then sort of pinpoint how to implement all of the best practice stuff that we talk about all of the time with people. So that was sort of my take on your question, Hayley. And I think that also probably answers that your last question as well so and I know that sounds like people get impatient with change they just want the answer immediately but you just don't know if that's correct for you in your situation until you're aware and as we know from the literature we might be aware of 10 % of our food decisions because we run on autopilot all of the time like the things that you just aren't aware that you're doing is way more than those sort of most deliberate and conscious decisions you make around food.

1:04:13Wow. Okay. Well, what a way to wrap it up. Brandon, Mickey, thank you so much for joining us on the BodyPod for this roundtable discussion. I have loved it. And I really hope that there is another one in the future. Thank you so much, Hayley. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and sharing the BodyPod with your friends.

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