How to make a plan to Loss Fat and Improve your Running.

 

 

Full Transcript

 

Hey, what’s up. Hello, rich here. Reinforce podcast, episode number 73. I just looked that up. This is the 73rd installment of the reinforced running podcast, which is pretty cool on the 73rd episode, Josh and I have an episode of AHMC. We talk about that loss for the endurance. Athlete. So this is kind of a big topic and one that people kind of dance around a considerable amount, just because there is a lot of nuance to it.

And there’s a lot of emotional baggage. That’s also tied to that loss and perception of bodyweight. So we talk about that and we talk about when it is appropriate to use that loss as a tool for performance and all the type of things you need to. Kind of check off your list before you go ahead and use that.

But then once you decide, this is something that you want to do in a responsible way, we give you some tools to figure out exactly how to set some fat loss targets. And then what that, what the expectations of what that is going to feel like, what that is going to look like when to use that in terms of your race season.

And some other different things in terms of how it is going to affect your, your mood or your actual performance. We touched on some anecdotal stories and in my personal history with, um, diet and food and my relationship with my body composition as well. So that’s cool. So I hope you guys do enjoy. I really love this topic.

This is something that I am very passionate about. Um, and I’m always happy to have my good friend.

Josh Reed is fresh off of 20 pushups. Pushups.

Thank you, sir. Hey, you’re watching my form. Did I get any no reps?

I didn’t, I couldn’t quite see all. It sounded, it sounded right on point though. Do you do 20 pushups before you do like everything? Is it like, alright, I’m on the phone. 20 pushups. Alright mother, go to the grocery store.

Here we go. 20 pushups. Is that how you roll? Yes.

Like again, in the back of my van, before I go in the grocery store and I just do 20 pushups. People see at rockets, they don’t ask questions.

You just see the pump

now. But I dropped, I dropped down a bust them out, you know, but it just really calls to me just when it calls.

I like it as smart grease in the grooves,

squeeze on the floor.

Um, what’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Dude, I. It’s funny when people ask that kind of question, like, what’s the, what’s the worst or like, you know, I was like that game, never have I ever can’t think of shit in my, I got bad advice.

I just totally let it fall to the wayside. And it’s not a part of my, it’s not in my brain. I don’t have room for it,

so I don’t have a good answer for it, man. But it’s, it’s good that you don’t take bad advice.

I do not take bad advice. I like internalize it, I think. Is that, does that sound right? And maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, what’s a bad piece of ice that you’ve

had.

Well, I’ve, I’ve ones that are like, related to my business. Like I had someone tell me to like, buy a bunch of tee shirts for marketing and there they were expensive. And then I had a whole bunch of different sizes and I didn’t know what to do with them. I thought that was terrible advice. That’s a really bad piece of advice for like accounting.

Like it’s hard when you get advice from people that you trust and then it turns out it’s like, Hm, that was awful. That was really something that I shouldn’t have done in any way. And I can just take it for face value and like, Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, so things like that, and I find that a lot, especially with the tell people what to do.

It’s like, Oh yeah. You know, like I have a run coaching business and I do this and that. Oh, it’s online. And people immediately wants to be like, Oh yeah, have you ever done, like group runs? It’s like, No I’ve thought about doing

it.

Like, you know, people like this is a small business that people always think like, Oh, I could do a small business or whatever, but I’m going to tell you the things that I think would work for you without even having any experience of doing anything at all.

I don’t want anything of your background. So here’s some unwarranted advice. There you go.

There you go.

Yeah. So I would, I would say don’t um, if you, if you come across someone with a small business, don’t just, just give them advice, ask them what they’re doing first.

So don’t, don’t, don’t start out with, t-shirts selling

to, let’s start out with t-shirts man.

It’s a good idea. I wish I could get that and have that be a little bit more seamless. I think I can. But I don’t want to have inventory.

Oh, I feel like the fake it till you make it thing is kind of ingrained in that somewhere. It’s like, well, if I make the tee shirts and like, I set this up, then like this will follow suit.

People will think I’m serious. People will see my

brand. It’s like

someone might think that that works

totally. And it’s like brand marketing. It’s like, Oh yeah, I’ll give you some marketing, man. I’ll wear your tee shirt around. It’d be great. It’s like maybe, but like your

quality product before your brand on a tee shirt.

Totally,

totally.

These sorts of the quality bro.

But, and I, that was the thing. I didn’t want to have a shitty cotton t-shirt so I was like, well, when it’s teacher, I want something that I’m going to like to wear. And cause I hate getting. Bad quality. T-shirts I just put them, I just donate them right away.

I’m like, I’m not going to, like, why did you give this? And then it’s like a marketing thing where it’s like, yeah, the people will see it and it’ll be marketing. But like, I don’t know what people are. People aren’t going to take action on that. Like, how am I supposed to know how this t-shirt is going to pay off longterm in terms of my marketing efforts when you’re out wearing it on a run or like wherever you are?

No, one’s like you can’t click on the tee shirt to take you to the website. You know? Yeah. Maybe that should be the advice that I would take an end would like to, to, to run with is like, Oh, okay. Like, let’s start a company where you can click on the tee shirt to take you to the website. Someone who has no, how

I was thinking like the Google glasses, you know, or like in, in the future, we’ll have the glasses and you’ll see stuff.

And you might like, look as an outfit someone’s wearing. You’ll think like, I liked that. And just like your brain tells the glasses or whatever to like go or you click a button and it takes you to the site. Like immediately you’re walking out of the sidewalk and five seconds after you see the outfit, like in your left eye, up in the upper corner, you’re like scrolling, scroll on the clothes.

And then you buy before you hit the next block.

That’s definitely going to happen. Oh my God. That’s going to happen. That is such a good idea. It’s such a good, like, I’m sure, but that’s not that far. Do you want, do you want Amazon,

dude? I we’ve talked about this. I I’m. After, after watching the heavy metal episode,

I just like we did with this, talked about

this.

Yeah. The episodes are they’re awesome. But like they hit too close to home. Cause they’re the perfect balance. It’s brilliant. Like they make it, they make it kind of out there, but it’s like something that could happen in the near future. It’s not so outlandish that you think that’s never going to happen.

You watch and you think like, Holy shit, that. Kind of right on par perhaps with the direction we’re going. And thus it’s very disconcerting. Don’t watch it right before bed.

And usually they’re, they’re kind of grim like that heavy metal one is not very uplifting. There’s a couple that are nice, but most of them

there’s one with the, uh, like the antique store out in the middle of the desert that had like a

happy ending.

Oh, I’m not even sure. Okay. There was like a little bit anyway, but, um, there’s an episode like that where like, there’s, as soon as you’re born, there’s like a chip implemented into your brain where you record everything that happens. So you can run everything back and your perfect recall for everything, but it just kind of leads people to mania and just kind of rerunning things and playing out these stories in their head and creating things that, and just buy it over and over and doing things

like that advice.

Let it all fall away.

Did, uh, there’s this article that I read on this blog is called wait, but why it’s like my favorite, like blog quote, unquote, it’s more like psychology and technology and stuff. And he, this guy’s named Tim urban. He did a ridiculously long blog post about, um, Elon Musk’s neuro link.

Have you, or are you following that at all?

Yeah, I’ve heard of the neural link

and that’s kind of along the lines of as like connecting the internet to your brain. Um, but I, I don’t remember. I read the article it’s ridic, it’s like 50,000 words. It’s took me forever and now I just kind of forget everything that I read about it, but it’s something along those lines.

So I would recommend reading that. Cause I think that’s common, man. I mean, that, that means it’s obviously coming, but. That’d be really interesting. Would you be one of like an early adopter on something like that? Or would you want to, or you think that’s a little bit invasive to have like all that information right there and having, and having potential security issues with the internet being in your brain,

dude?

Yeah, that sounds pretty pretty bonkers. I don’t, I don’t know. Um, part of me wants to jump right on it. Cause like experimentation is fun. However, if it’s something that it’s a one way road, you can’t come back from that’s that’s a little concerning there. Um, but Amanda, it sounds, yeah. From what I’ve heard so far, it sounds like he wants to start out though.

They’re focusing on like doing inter brain control. So rather than so much, like networking the internet with the brain, it’s a, it’s like this chip will recognize things happening within the brain and it’ll override certain. Undesirable, uh, actions or, or, uh, instigate certain actions. In other words, like if you have motor control issues, right?

So if you’re like, if you have like some sort of paralysis or Parkinson’s or something along those lines, uh, it can help to kind of stimulate the proper neurons to get function

proper

function in your body. So I think that’s where they’re like starting out and then they’re gonna start to, you know, Lincoln.

The internet somehow I got, well, I’ll the chips in there. As long as we’ll start out inside, make sure it doesn’t kill people. And then we’ll start to add Google so you can buy clothes walking down the street

that, yeah, I mean, it makes

commerce capitalism.

So that that’d be interesting development when that pops up. And I also heard, I mean, what, we’re just talking right off the cuff right now. This is nothing about I’ve did no research on any of this stuff, but I remember hearing about something or reading about this.

I heard a person say, yeah,

it’s something like that.

Yeah. So this is all just, we’re just, we’re just talking and, uh, there’s like a, a. Chip or some sort of monitoring system that you can put either in your, I think in your teeth or something in your mouth where it will be able to recognize what you’re eating and it can kind of give you recommendations off of everything that’s actually going in functional

grills

for real.

Yeah. Like, and, and, and I I’m guessing it has to be in your mouth. Cause it wouldn’t. In your stomach. I mean, cause it would just pass, but there was some talk of having some sort of attachment or some sort of implant that can give you an idea of what nutrients you’re taking in and where you might be short and give you recommendations based on what you are actually eating, as opposed to just kind of putting out some, like a framework as like.

Eat all the colors of the, of the plant family and have protein and carbs and stuff is it’s actually like, Nope, like this is what you’re getting. This is everything you have. Like, that’d be pretty cool

too. It’d be super interesting to see how do you get like immediate feedback? Okay. You know, what’s going in your mouth, like precisely, and then you also, if you could also figure out precisely how much of that you’re absorbing.

Which your body needs more of than what it’s rejecting. I mean, you can kind of figure that out in some way, but it’s not like immediate feedback. You have to go get blood work or get like stool samples,

stuff like that complicated stuff. Yeah. They could put a chip at the end, both ends

don’t they

have,

they have the type of chip that light goes on in, like it goes inside one of your. Veins, uh, and it can kind of pick up what’s in the bloodstream immediately. And if they don’t have that, they should, as long as, as obviously the, the vessel can accommodate that without restricting blood flow.

Of course.

Yeah, there might be some, some blood clotting, uh, hiccups in the beginning. It might be one of the thing that you can’t come back from that, right. Probably one way road as well.

It’d be like a stent. It would go in and it would, or like a dilator. Right? So it’d be like a reverse ring. Were versing falling, even when I said reverse, but yeah, it’d be like a, I think the ring, yeah, it goes inside.

Right. And it opens up the vet like the vessel, but there is like sensors on the inside kind of like your watch has, right. It picks up your blood flow through your skin to pick up your heart rate. And it can sense like your oxygenation and somehow maybe pick up, uh, you know, the blood sugar and, you know, the yeah.

Glucose, fatty acids, whatever.

So it could be a 24 hour blood work that, yeah, that can be the problem with blood work, right? Like, depending on, on when you’re getting it, what you’ve eaten and not having it be controlled enough, like seeing what’s happening through the blood and real time would be a game changer.

That’d be unbelievable.

That would be really, really cool. Yeah. I’d probably get too nerdy on it. You know, you’re just watching it like all the time. Like, what is it right now? Ooh, what is it right now? What is it right now? You would,

you wouldn’t be able to function as a human anymore, properly optimizing your human ability and you just stare at it and just never do anything

like speaking about technology and like nerding out on it.

I am almost at the two month Mark not using my whoop

strap. Nice. How’s it been as, and

it’s do it while I’m alive. Um, well I’ve, I haven’t gotten sick or, or injured other than like that hamstring thing I was telling you about, but that’s cause my bike violated me while I was doing tricks on it. The seat stabbed me in the hamstring.

It was unsolicited

related,

non whoop related. Uh, but, but yeah, it’s just been nice. Not. Waking up in the morning and looking at it continuously, I’ve been better about like, not picking up my phone for 30 minutes or an hour when I wake up in the morning and just like drinking my coffee and

stretching,

whatever.

So just kind of that disconnect from technology and also recognizing like, okay, I still have. Some intuitive abilities because cause like all these tools are super duper cool. Cause they help you make correlations. The whoop you have numbers in front of you or you have your Apple watch and they can tell you, it’s like, okay, here’s Rachel Ruby.

Alright. What’d I do yesterday. We’ll do the, before you make correlations, maybe what you ate your training. Oh, I feel like this. And then this is the correlating number. Well, when you get, if you put that technology to the side, you very well may have. Still, you can still make those connections now, you know,

that’s true.

And they just took some time to collect data and now you can just use that in its own. Right. And I think that that’s a good way to kind of go about it. Um, because yeah, I, I, like, we talked about this before. I sometimes. Over the give too much weight to what the technology is saying versus what’s actually happening because it knows it doesn’t change your sleep.

It doesn’t change how you feel or what’s happening inside. Um, much like the pace on your watch. Like if you, if your watch dies and you don’t have it and you don’t know what the pace was, like, you still get the benefits from that run. Um, are you going to bring it back?

I’m definitely gonna bring it back.

Yeah. I have a theory that I’m gonna put it back on and my numbers are gonna be better than ever. Uh, I just, cause I feel really good. So at least in my mind, uh, where my mental head space is, I feel really good. So I’ll put it back on and I’ll see how the numbers correlate to that.

Yeah. So are you going to get real sad and just never use it?

I might, man. It’s like, Oh yeah, yeah. You thought you were getting really good sleep. You’ve actually been going to bed later. Yeah. We’ll find out, man.

So it doesn’t change. The training will change performance. I mean, you’re still going to

change the training cause you know what I mean? I think you, I know I heard Mark say this on your, on your podcasts.

Like you guys have some strict schedules that you like to stick to.

Right?

It’s like a one day is going to be a 10 miler, easy run or whatever. Uh, I already, like, I’ve pretty much always gone kind of more flexible. It’s like, okay, this is gonna be a 40 mile a week, but I’m going to do that. Him all run on Monday.

Sure. But if I wake up and I feel like crap, maybe, uh, maybe I’ll do a bike ride. I’ll do the 10 mile on Tuesday. Like there’s a little bit flexibility in there. So I think, I think it’s just important to kind of listen to your body and it feels like crap, don’t do something as long and that’ll help you reduce your risks of injury and, uh, and yeah.

Falling into pooper. You know, what else is a cool thing that like a tool to use? That you don’t need to use forever cause you kind of make correlations and then you get away from it and you still have information. And that is something like my fitness pal,

like counting your calories.

Yeah, that thing has been an awesome tool, figuring out like, Oh, it turns out I was eating this much.

Now I know what it’s like to eat 3,500 calories. Now I know what that portion of meat really accounts to. And that’s actually pretty relevant because today we’re talking about fat loss,

we’re going to do some fat loss stuff. And that is a great point in talking about tracking everything and some of the tools that we have that we use and how we can use technology to help benefit that.

But, um, yeah, I think this is a valuable topic and. We were talking off air before we came on, that people don’t necessarily want to touch because there is so much, um, heaviness around it. And people have different relationships with, with food and their weight and that, and how they see themselves and what they think.

Um, they need, uh, based off of

just.

Societal norms or, uh, just however they, like whatever’s been embedded in them. So there are some straight up benefits though, of, of losing fat for, for running. Um, do you think about that at all much on your end? I mean, you you’ve come from background where you think about it more from the muscle that you have, right?

Like, cause you’re more on the bodybuilding side. Do you ever think about that loss when it comes to your rent or your running performance?

Uh, for, for me personally, uh, genes play a role in a lot of people’s body composition. I’ve been blessed to have, uh, you know, what they call skinny jeans for the most part.

I’ve been a hard gainer. It’s been hard for me to put on weight. So yeah, for me, it’s more so been muscle. And I put on muscle when I was younger and now, uh, and now here I am wanting to be an endurance athlete and I gotta carry this shit around. So, so that, that’s the way that that’s the way that goes.

But.

Like the you’re carrying weight, no matter what. Right. So having to carry that weight, like it is going to take a toll on you energy-wise but at least it’s, it’s usable weight, like with muscle, like you can actually fire that and have it propel you forward. And there’s going to be a balance between where that is and where I’m like, what’s going to be beneficial and what might be detrimental, but for fat loss, like you don’t really have that, like with fat that you’re carrying around a little bit extra.

There is not a ton of benefit. I mean, obviously you need to have a proper amount of fat on your body to have proper human function. And there’s definitely a floor where you could go and there’s an optimal place for each person. But if you’re, if you’re carrying too much, it’s it’s is going to slow you down.

Like no matter what, and like the amount like VO two max is an example of just how much oxygen you take in per, uh, per mass of your body. So like, if you’ll do max will probably go up. If you lose less weight just based off of the equation itself. And I’ve actually heard this, this one anecdote and I did look into it more.

I think it’s just kind of like a, more of like an old coaches type of deal. Like, I don’t think science has anything to say about this, but every extra pound of fat that you have on your body, it will equate to one to two seconds per mile on for the effort. So like, if. You were five pounds overweight that could be up to 10 pounds, 10 seconds per mile, which is 30 seconds for a five K you know, and even just that slight little difference will, will.

Change the performance a lot. And I mean, that’s, that is just kind of like an old coach of sale, but anecdotally I’ve found that that is pretty close to, um, where I have found it kind of, kind of lying and everywhere. Have you ever heard anything like that?

Yeah. Um, I mean, in the studies that I’m working through right now, I came across a study where it’s right around 70% of your, of your effort while you’re running is in carrying your own weight.

Roar as a smaller portion is what actually propels you forward. So the lion’s share of your energy output is just a carrying your own weight compared to propelling you forward.

Interesting that I guess that’s a strike against the muscle mass then as well. Right?

Right. So, you know, unfortunately there are some saviors such as really working on your, uh, your economy, your form, and kind of reducing vertical oscillation.

But that’s, that’s another story, but yeah, you got to carry that weight around.

And I think it’s important to note, like when you should look at fat loss to help your, your development as an athlete. And I think it should be almost one of the last things that you should do. Like if you aren’t doing all the other things that you could potentially be doing for training, then I don’t think you necessarily need to work towards something where it comes.

Like I just want to lose five pounds so that I can take off 30 seconds from my 5k, potentially say the 15. Um, but. Like you need to kind of maximize everything else that you’re doing before working systematically towards us. Because if you are doing that a lot of times it’ll just kind of take care of itself.

And I think that’s where a lot of endurance athletes end up. It’s like, okay, I’m running a hundred miles a week. So I’m skinny, you know, like, and that’s, and that’s, these are the examples of the people that we see. You know, the people who are running really fast, the ones that are, who are doing a lot of training and who are putting everything toward the effort to make them a better runner than that.

Then if the byproducts of. The training is the physique that they have. And that’s also something that I’ve heard. Um, like people talk about with CrossFit. It’s like, there is no physique training in CrossFit. These animals just look like this because of the way that they train. And it’s just kind of like the optimal body composition that, that morphs from doing all this ridiculous training.

So like before someone would move into like a fat loss phase, like, what do you think they would do first? Like if someone’s coming from. Just like, okay. I think I could lose five pounds, but they haven’t done anything differently. What would you have them look at first, any idea?

Well, first of all, I want to say that that was a great opener.

Cause that’s so that’s super duper important. Take care of all of the other things first. I think that that is a good move,

but if you have,

yeah, if you have someone that’s trying to lose some weight, like what’s one of the first things for them to look at. Stress stress first and foremost,

uh, I think more improved performance, not less about losing weight, but more about improving, improving performance, which also goes hand in hand, right?

Like if you’re even if your, your stress is high, your performance is going to be shitty.

Yeah. The performance itself is. Maybe, I didn’t hear your question properly.

Yeah. Meaning like before someone looks at fat loss as a modality for improvement, like I would always say like, okay, look at your volume.

Like how much running are you actually doing? Like, is it, do you need to put something in place to help you lose fat? If you’re, if you can handle more volume, you know what I mean? So like we’re in line. Would you put this in line anywhere? Or have you thought about that? Like where it would be in terms of like the train, like if you have like a pyramid, right?

Like where would you kind of. Put that,

but

losing weight. Yeah.

In the training at the very end. Yeah. That’s that, that is like the pay thing. Cause like you said, it kind of takes care of itself if everything’s in line. I mean, if, if the training is, if you have proper progressions, if you’re moderating the amount of stress that someone’s taking, you know, between like volume and intensity and the sleeves being taken care of and they’re taking in, uh, you know, it’s funny cause calories come into play.

And if someone doesn’t take in enough calories that can be too stressful and their body might want to hold onto the weight. And, uh, I think we’ve, we’ve both heard of this time. And again, maybe being an experience that yourself, right. With, uh, with increasing calories, your body got into a more like relieved state and it’s like, Oh, we’re finally getting enough from the outside.

We can kind of like go with what we were holding onto and that can actually help people lose weight. So go through and going through all those steps. And then finally, when, uh, when everything seems right, the person doesn’t themselves think that they’re at a good weight or a coach can visually

see that perhaps there’s some.

Some weight, that’s not benefiting them such as, you know, muscle or something. Then maybe that’s an intervention. They can start talking about losing weight there, but it’s at the end.

Yeah, totally. I agree. And I think that there’s a crucial part of what you brought up is the caloric expenditure. And a lot of times when the volume goes up, I think that people are going to be much better served to make sure that they are fueling that performance and seeing what happens to the body composition then.

So I think eating more is typically the best route to go on these, especially if you haven’t matched up your input with your output. And before you even think about losing weight, I think that you need to make sure that you know exactly how much you’re, you’re eating versus how much you’re training and how much that’s costing.

Um, and just recently, that’s funny that you brought that up. Like, um, this guy was pushing the guy. I want, I want to bring my volume up a little bit. I have some time now. Um, I wanna, I want to go after some stuff, we have supporters, no races or anything coming up. So I was like, okay, cool. We’ll just in case, like, let’s, let’s take a look at the nutrition piece.

Let’s set some targets, make sure that you are fueling this just so that you don’t kind of spiral down the hole. And, um, and, and just kind of feel like shit all the time. And so we bumped his calories up and he was having a hard time eating enough. And then over the course of like four weeks, he lost five pounds, you know, about that.

So he, it was like, it was like a struggle for him to eat more. Um, but his body composition kind of took care of itself. And his goal was that he’s like, I don’t want to lose weight. I want to make sure my weight maintains. And then after he’s done this, he’s like, I feel awesome. Like I feel great, you know, like by eating more and make in his body composition changes.

And, um, but for the better, because he’s a more efficient runner at that, at that weight and able to eat that much, so right on. Right.

But it is important to like, we are talking about athletes here when it comes to like eating more might be the, it might be the cure. We’re definitely talking about people with high caloric expenditure because they are, those are people who’ve taken on more stress than a sedentary person, a sedentary person.

Almost needs to introduce that kind of stress. They need to moderate their stress, re reduce shitty stressors, you know, work, relationship, life, a negative thought and introduce positive stressors of exercise to get the a, you have to get the risk. Bots that you’re going to want for a better body composition.

Right. And, and bring it up a sedentary person versus an athlete is also something that is worth noting because what I’ve found and just that what’s available for the general public to consume is all based around someone who is sedentary, looking to lose weight, who might already be, you know, um, prediabetic or someone who is at a health risk, or is gone to doctrine.

Doctor, can you need to lose 30 pounds or whatever they’re being told. So a lot of the information available for them is. Um, is based around the general public and not really for an endurance athlete. Um, so I feel like that is important to note and that’s where I’ve come across. A lot of things like my fitness pal are.

Just set up for them, you know? So they have weird markers on there. Like they kind of like move things with, based on your, your, have you, have you used my fitness pal in a minute,

I’ve used it quite a bit. And the one thing that I’ll note about is that it has preset macronutrient recommendations, all which I realize that you can go in and adjust.

But the thing is, if you don’t know what they should be, you don’t know what to adjust it to. So it is kind of just numbers to a degree. Unless you really know what you’re looking for.

It is. And they put weird markers on like sugar. Like they they’ll they’ll count sugar for people without you asking. And like, if you, if you, um, hook up your, like your smartwatch to it, it’ll change the caloric output.

Based on what you’re doing, but not, but it’s all just kind of very generalized. Um, so that, that confuses people a lot. Um, the sugar one in general, like, you know, like eat like three bananas that day on a long run. It’ll be like, your sugar is through the roof. And it’s like, ah, like

maybe

it’s like maybe for a regular person who needs to make sure it needs to see that when they drink soda, like.

That’s a lot of sugar in that, but for the athlete who might be using using those things, it’s, um, it’s not as, as crucial of a marker for them.

So you’ve used it. You’ve used my fitness pal.

No. Yeah.

They kind of, what, and what is your relationship then with the, have you had your watch linked up to it? Are you just using it for numbers?

Yeah, mostly just for numbers. I took the watch off of it because when calculating numbers, uh, I always will use. What cause I know what I’m going to do. So I I’m mixed in what my out, my exercise and my energy expenditure with those numbers. So the numbers I set have nothing based off of what my watch is telling me.

It’s based off of what’s. I know what activity I’m going to be doing and kind of generally where that’s going to put me as opposed to, uh, eating based off of the activity. Cause then you start chasing it and that’s, and that’s a tough relationship with food too, because like, Oh, I can have an extra cookie.

If I walk for an extra 150 steps, that’s what people will do. They, they try to outpace themselves because of what their watch is in my fitness, Palestine. Then instead of having like a straight plan, it’s like, This is what you’re gonna be doing. This is what you generally do every day. So here are your numbers stick with that.

that’s the way to go. Simple. Yeah, it’s simple. You’re getting rid of more variables, more confusion.

Yeah. And, um, so when it comes to. The actual point where it’s like time to lose fat. I think it is something that is going to have to be more internally driven as a coach. I would, I know I would have a tough time telling somebody it’s like, you know, you could lose probably five or 10 pounds, right?

Like, because there is this, um, touchy relationship that people do have with, uh, with food and with their own body composition. And I’ve been through this type of ups and downs with it. And that’s kind of, what’s led me to this point now is just based on my relationship. So with food, um, and kind of like the response I’ve got from other people and the help that I needed versus what I received, um, was very lacking.

Um,

give us a little backstory on that real quick.

Yeah. So like, as a college athlete, like I went into school and I’ve written about this before. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about it, so we’ll see how it goes. But, uh, The speak it out, but it went into school and, you know, I was a high school kid. I could eat like a maniac.

I would eat like crazy and never gained a pound. But in college, like I did, I started to gain weight in them and I was even running like 80 miles per week. I was part of a cross country team and doing all these things that, um, I had done in the past, but you know, unlimited food to me, maybe some more beers around and just like different things that I could have in with no cap.

And it just gained weight. I gained like 10 or I remember it was 13 pounds. I gained like pretty quick too. So like when people gain the freshman 15, I was like, I’m not doing that because I’m a cross country athlete. So I’m going to be good. But I gained that weight and I started to be terrible at running.

I started to really, really have a hard time and I just like, I didn’t look the part, I didn’t feel the part and everything was just really, really hard to on the competition side. And I basically went to school only to compete. Right. Like I went. I didn’t go to school for school. Like I went there to be an athlete.

And so when I started falling apart, like everything started falling apart. Like I just hated being there. And it was like all because I thought of these 13 pounds that I had on me. It’s like, if I could just get rid of this weight,

like

yeah, for sure. And like, I wouldn’t get killed and I would just like, feel better, you know? Like I went there. I didn’t, um, I wasn’t a good student, so like, I didn’t care about what I was doing in school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do after school. All I wanted to do was run and run well, and I. Couldn’t because I just didn’t know what I was doing nutritionally.

And I got like, I gained this fat. Um, so like, I didn’t know anything about your,

was that broke up a little bit? What’d you say you

broke up out of here. I was wondering what was behind all of that. What did it end up being? What did you discover was there was the reason behind all of that.

Behind that fat loss, the fat

about your, your, your fat increases and your, and your diminishing performances in school.

Yeah, it was just not having the proper knowledge or guidance. And then after that, what ended up happening happening was, you know, cause I didn’t have any of this guidance. This is division one program. May I remind you that we had no education on nutrition and no, nobody helping us or telling us how to fuel for performance.

Um, and so like, all I knew was at the time, you know, 18, 19 years old is that. That 2000 calorie recommendation that, you know, the general health guideline, you know how they say that based on a 2000 calorie diet, I just thought everybody. Burned everybody like burn 2000 calories a day. I just thought that’s what it was.

I was like, okay. So if I eat less than 2000 calories, I should lose weight. So I started eating way less, you know, like 500, 800,000 calories a day. Um, Trying to lose this weight. And, uh, it would just repeat it. Like I wouldn’t, nothing would really budge and it would repeatedly end in some sort of binge.

And then as a way to try to remedy that it was, uh, like I would resort to purging it as well. So it had like this really awful, like disordered eating relationship for like a year and a half with, with food as a way to try to like, make myself feel better so I could run faster. Um, And it just led to terrible results and just like a really awful time that was first like two years.

Um, and that’s what kind of drove me to get to this point on it. So like, I know that there is a lot that comes down to the food that you’re eating and not just based off of the performance that you hope to get is that it. For me, like boiled all the way back down to like my self worth, you know, like what I felt like who I was as a person, if I wasn’t a good runner, then, like, I didn’t value myself as a person.

So like, if I could get rid of this fat, that would make, that would make everything better.

You know, that totally makes sense. So that’s gosh. Yeah, that’s a pretty, that’s a rough educational period you went through, but so here you are now. You went through that. What did you uncover in your, in your learnings that you applied to yourself that created the turnaround?

So a lot of it was the education and the data behind things. And this is kind of where I make a hard stance on this because people don’t want to count calories or count macros because they are worried about the relationship that it’s going to create with food. And, and sometimes that is right for people that if they the.

Will not eat things because of, um, what it says on the nutrition facts or whatever, because they’re counting calories and, um, But if you approach it from a perspective of data and just, and, and making sure you’re matching with what you’re doing, and you have all these data points and these things to consider, it makes it just easier.

It makes it cut and dry. Whereas from that time I started chasing fad diets, you know, like it’s like, okay, like this diet worked for this person and they dropped. 10 pounds in two weeks, you know, like to me, that will be like the dream. I was like, okay, cool. I can run fast again in two weeks. Like, I’ll do that.

You know, like, and it was just ends up chasing those things. And that’s a lot of the ways that I feel like fat loss, like people kind of take on fat loss. Um,

so fad diets didn’t work for you.

They don’t work. Believe it or not like the word for like a minute. And like, but it’s just like people trying to get that, that magic bullet.

Right. And trying to. Um, get these results and if you never happens for, and a lot of times people writing these fad diets that are marketers, you know, right. So they can present it in a way that makes you feel like it is going to work for anybody who really dedicates themselves to it. And then when it doesn’t work, you jump to the next marketer, who’s kind of pitched something your way, um, or that whatever is in your attention.

So it went through a lot of that first and then, um, Eventually just getting to the point, like, all right, I need to make sure I need to, I’m eating enough based off what I’m doing and not worrying about it. And I remember in college when I did lose weight, it was when I really kind of let go. I, uh, I decided I was going to transfer.

I was in like, maybe not even run again, um, because about shitty things were going. So I started to eat again and I said, and like lost weight and felt better and ran out a great season. Um, so it’s just like weird how that happens. And then like, But I would still kind of try to chase these weird things without giving myself a proper education and knowing what what’s going to boil down, um, to what I need.

You know,

but so what’s like a general, uh, what are some guidelines that you adhere to yourself that you also that seem to work with the general populace or athletes that you work with?

So then that, that really does kind of come down to. Figuring out your total energy expenditure and that ends up being first, right?

Like, and how much you will burn just from being alive, without exercising, and then figuring out how much exercise is going to play into that. And again, that kind of goes back to that example of the person who the guy was coaching, who wanted to bump up the miles, like, okay, well let’s bump up the calories too and see what happens.

So figuring that out really needs to be the first, the first point of that. Um, Do you, do you have like a, a BMR calculator or anything that, uh, not, uh, not BMR. What am I saying? Um, yeah, BMR basal basal metabolic rate, or any calculator that you trust the most? Cause it’s like three or four of them out there.

Um, do you ever use them?

I don’t. Um, I don’t use that. I go, I’ve been going off of more of a intuitive approach and there’s. There’s a lot of wiggle room in that

it’s like,

what does intuition mean? You’re relying on some body’s self-awareness uh, and I mean, as a coach, I also have to ask the right questions and take notes of what’s going on with them and with how they’re feeling with their performances, uh, with their weight.

But ultimately my approach is a little more. Flexible. The sort of the, my, my education has led me to realize that it’s more of the entire tardy of a lifestyle. And if you eat in a certain manner, it can be a little bit easier to eat intuitively properly. And that’s through the that’s through the managing of, you know, your appetite hormones.

I take it in the right macronutrients at the right time. And when I say right, that’s going to be kind of individualized, but we have kind of like some guidelines that we go by, which is keeping your carbohydrates at a certain level, having your protein, that certain level and making sure that that is introduced with pretty much every meal.

And really you kind of like fill up on fat to improve satiety.

Right. And there there’s like the, the, the two camps of, uh, quality and quantity. Right. And like making sure, like, kind of what you’re saying is like the best. If you get all the quality foods and all quality macronutrients, like things will kind of take care of themselves based off of the intuitive feeling that you have and being dialed in with the, the, the response that your body is going to give you based on those, those choices, more or less, right.

Yes. Um, yeah, and like, I, I agree that that’s ultimately the best way to do it. And I think that if, if you can convince yourself that you’re capable of doing that, then, then that’s how you should do it. But I’ve found in, in my, uh, with my background in having like this fucking complex and like figuring out like what I need to do and not necessarily, um, Like just the qual quality of things and making sure I know, um, and give myself the education on what all these things are and what that all means.

Like I’ve found it easier for me to kind of go the quantity route and not really have the, um, not having like a hard lines on what to eat and when to eat them, or just like here is like the general. Um, amount that you would need, and here are the different macronutrients where it’ll line up and then get that, however you can, and you can kind of get into timing and things a little bit more, um, based on how much nuance you want to get to it.

Um, yeah, because for me, If I was to go on that route, I would still, I would probably under eat if I was, um, like just being like, okay, if, if you feel like you kind of this eat these kind of record amounts, I think I would undershoot it just because I’m like, okay, well, I don’t want to overdo it because I have a big appetite, so I don’t want to go crazy.

And that’s kind of like led me astray in the past. So like I kinda liked these numbers. And then within these numbers, you can make sure the quality of the food is appropriate as, as it. Is out

Roger that I will say. Yeah. So, uh, like I was saying, there’s certain tactics of how to eat, but yes, I also do advocate for my fitness pal

at Lee, for

any given amount of time.

If a person can’t stand having one more app on their phone, we’ll minimize that time. And I go back to it if we need to. But yeah, for sure. When starting out with somebody, I like to see what they take in naturally. Well then take it. I won’t even give them recommendations. I say, just record what you eat plain and simple.

We’ll see what those numbers look like. And if something needs to be adjusted based on their performance, body composition, then we’ll work off of their current numbers. Not off of a grid that I have preset in front of me

a hundred percent. And that’s, that’s ultimately the first step. That’s the. Most important first step, because a lot of times, if people are logging it down and it comes face to face with what is really happening, like, Oh my God, I didn’t know I was doing this.

And then they’ll all like almost self-correct, you know, based on just like them looking at it or having to log it or seeing it for themselves because people generally know what’s healthy and what’s not, you know, like, it’s not like. And that’s another thing with some advice, because people won’t be really touchy about it and they’re like, well, just don’t eat chips.

You know? Like, don’t like, make sure you listen to your body and like, uh, like, but like, Maybe you were eating chips one, you think, or maybe you’re eating other things that you don’t necessarily know are, are not as nutritious, but for most where people know is like, it’s like, Oh, I want to lose fat, but eat pizza, every meal.

It’s like, okay, we can start there. But then if they are at that point where it’s like all my, all my. The quality is online, everything is good, but I’m still kind of would like to see what it would be like if I could lose a couple pounds, um, then I think then we can kind of really get into like these markers of like what you should be expecting.

Um, and trying to, trying to calculate out like the actual. Amount of expenditure I’ve found is, is also tricky, especially for the endurance athlete. Because again, most of the information out there is based on the general public and the general public, right. Isn’t running 10 miles in the mountains, you know?

So like now

you actually had tests done and that’s ultimately the best way to get accurate. So some accurate feedback on where to go from there.

Totally, totally. I mean, and like that is certainly not going to be within the realm of possibility for most people, but even if I was not practical, it’s not practical.

And even if I was approaching this from kind of the way I do now, I would have a better idea of where I should be. Um, based off what I was doing. And a couple of the main factors is like miles, you run. The miles you run, um, how much you’re biking, how much you’re lifting and what you’re doing outside of just the exercise itself.

So like Josh, you mentioned you’ve had some, uh, laborious jobs, right? Like, sure. And so like during that day, like you’re probably burning more at work than on any run. Would you say. Yeah, right. So like that’s, that’s something you really have to take into consideration. And like, if you were sitting at a desk or if you’re doing manual labor and like the three or four different options that you could have in between, and then really trying to break down things as far as how much you’re each, each mile is going to cost you.

So I found a. Pretty good calculation on this that I found has been pretty, pretty true. I don’t, I don’t think the Garmin is accurate. And in any way, what do you, what have you found from like your watches and things like that?

Whoop is high,

but don’t consider you don’t even consider it.

Cause cause

hi.

Totally. Yeah. I’m like in, I don’t think I burned 7,000 calories today. I do mind. I don’t think so,

but no, but I would say, I would say boobs high about like a thousand calories. Probably like it’s really high sometimes,

but I wonder if that was a tactic on their part. I wonder if they truly believe that that is the case or if they are intentionally generous.

Because of the realization of what we discussed earlier, which is that for a lot of athletes, they typically under eat. So if we overshoot them, maybe they won’t hit that number, but they’ll still be like, Oh, I need more. Yeah. So like maybe they were actually, they, maybe they burned like, you know, 5,000 calories that day they typically eat 3000.

Whoops says you burned seven. Maybe you will meet

a little bit more. Yeah. Because that will definitely improve your, your recovery. Like if you eat up to that point of what you’re expending, like your sleep is going to be so much better and your recovery and your heart rate metrics are going to be better.

So like that would be a pretty. Good way, although dishonest of, of getting people to recover better

it, dude, that’s such a great point. Yeah. I mean the recovery, the recovery factor, and actually you had Linda Lima on the post or on the pod not long ago. And he said something that made a lot of sense to me, which just like he’s eating on the bike, not the fuel, the bike ride.

But just to trickle things in, because it’s a good time for the body to absorb stuff, which is going to help with the next day, it’s going to help them with the next day. I was like, that’s right on.

It is right on. And there is, there is evidence behind that, like the recovery will improve based off of like the timing of the carbohydrates you’re taking on the runs are still you don’t completely depleted.

Um, and he’s a great example too. Cause he does all the things that like a regular runner endurance athlete, that, that one necessarily consider it. Cause he’s not really from that background. So he’s like, Oh, I have to eat. Sure. We’re like, runners are kind of like. Uh, well, not gonna eat that much, but anyway, so the, the garment garments are incredibly low.

I found on how much, uh, on their calorie count. Woop is incredibly high. I’ve actually found the Apple watch is in a pretty good spot based off of the calculations. I use that I’ve used with athletes that I coach, um, and I use for myself. So there’s some anecdotal evidence on this too, but every mile, every, okay, we’re going to every kilometer you run, um, Times the amount of kilos you weigh kind of gives you a good, accurate estimate of how much that activity costs calorically.

Um, so to do that in pounds, you would take the pounds of body weight time divided by 2.2 and then take the miles and times it by 1.6 to get to be kilometers. And then that kind of equals out. So, um, say if I, I, if I always 75 kilometers kilograms, I don’t run a 10 K. That would be about 750 calories, right from that run itself.

So right there, you can add that to your, your, your base metabolic rate or based off of the exercise that you do. And then you have a number that you can kind of kind of aim for to match your calories.

That sounds really good. Cause that also scales for intensity. I mean, you can do the 10 kilometers fat fast, right.

And you’ll burn that many calories and you know, 35 minutes or you do it slow, lower intensity, but you’re out there longer. It seems, it seems pretty appropriate.

Right. And like, that’s kind of the, the, I think that is the idea behind the distance. Like, it doesn’t change that much. Because of the intensity factor, it more changes the fueling, like we’ve talked about several times before, like what fuels being used, but the chlorine, the calories being burned, ends up being about the same thing.

Right. Does that make sense? So like you end up, if you’re going slower, you’ll burn it from, from fats a little bit more as opposed to

yeah. That’s, you know, that’s a very, that’s very interesting topic. Uh, the fact that. There’s that fat burning zone quotations, you know, it’s like, yes, you are burning for a dominantly fat as a percentage of your, your feudal utilization.

But I mean a higher intensities. Yeah. You’re burning more glucose, but you are still burning more fat than you were just because of the total caloric expenditure. So you’re pulling more from glucose, but as a whole, you’re burning more calories. You’re probably burning more fat as well.

Right. And like, you’re going to be doing, it’s going to come in and out, like, right.

Like people want it to be. Like, okay. Now your Localytics now your fat burning. Like it’s both like, it’s going to use a little bit of both, um, depending on your training, depending on your diet, um, which we’ve covered in previous podcasts, we’ll cover your cover on future podcasts as well. Um, but yeah, there’s a couple of other ways.

Um, I’m actually going to drop a link in the show notes that has the actual calculator that I use. So if you want to grab that, it will help. Because there’s a, there’s a formula for biking. There’s a formula for, uh, like lifting weights and things like that as well. Um, and one thing that’s kind of hard for this is to say like, Josh, you, you, um, when you do like a 10 K and I’ll do a 10 K just for training, like, it’s gonna take me 43 minutes, but your 10 K in the mountains will take you well, like an hour 20, you know?

So, yeah, totally. So like, you kind of have to address that as well. And this kind of also is in the terms of a high intensity. Uh, interval training because I’ve considered that more cardio than shrink training. It is. Um, but then just take the converted, just take the amount of time. So like Josh, in your case, if you run like eight minute miles on flats, then just take what, however long an hour 20 would take you from eight minute miles, which would be, I don’t know, or where am I?

11 miles or something like that. So like, I would say like a 10 kid, it takes 120 would kind of be a. An hour 20 would be like running an 11 mile flat run for you. Right. Does that make sense?

It does

because you’re spending that time out there, but the distance for this formula that I’ve found works really well.

Um, it’s not apples to apples. So like if you’re doing six miles in the mountains that that’s going to be more than a six mile on flats.

That makes sense to me. I was talking sense.

Right, right. Um, and then, so from here, What you’re going to want to do. If you want to look into like the fat loss numbers of things is a really sustainable number that I’ve found helps people is a 500 calories per day.

And this is, this is widely used if you’re are using any type of, um, like I think my fitness pal will kind of put you in this, um, caloric deficit range right off the jump. And pretty much everybody’s like, if you. Eat 500 calories, less than you’re expanding per day. You’ll probably lose a pound a week.

Cause that ends up being yet 35, um, 3,500 calories, they say ends up equaling about a pound. So over the course of the week, I’ll make you lose about a pound a week, which is pretty sustainable and that’s the kind of fat loss you want to go for it. So that if there’s anything that promotes 10 pounds in two weeks, if there’s a cleanse that says you’ll lose.

Six pounds in six days. Like it’s not real weight, it’s not fat loss. It is smoke and mirrors. And like, you might see that on the scale, but it’s not, what’s actually happening. Um, so to get this 500 calorie deficit. I recommend that you take it from you, split it between carbs and fats. Um, to a certain point, like for fats, I feel like there needs to be a floor for how much you’re taking in, and that ends up being your body weight times 0.3.

And that’ll kind of put you at your absolute, uh, fats floor and anything lower than that. Like you’re just going to be doing damage to yourself. So.

Right. You need that stuff for cellular repair.

Right. And you’ll feel awful. Like it won’t go well for your channel vitamins. Yeah, absolutely. So you can’t go below this floor because that’s, that’s where people got in trouble with like low fat diets.

It’s like, okay, I’m just going to eat rice cakes because it’s the most volume is thing that I can eat or just a lot of veggies and things are just fat free.

Gotta throw a peanut butter on those rice cakes.

You do. You just kind of do it at that point. At that point, I’m just eating the peanut butter though.

Are you putting at rest cases of

vehicles, vehicle? You don’t

need that. It’s fine, but you don’t need it.

And is it fun? I’m going spoon. So you’re then taking those calories from the carbohydrates and the fats and kind of splitting them evenly. So 250 calories from either one. And it’s important to note here that nine.

Um, there’s nine calories per gram of fat and there’s four calories per gram of a carbohydrate. Um, so again, if you’re trying to like write this stuff down, like, this is just like, again, in the notes, you can kind of check that out, but that’s kind of how it’s broken down that way that you aren’t taking all from carbohydrates, because carbohydrates are going to really help for.

Your, um, your performance within the training itself and also the recovery and the fats, just cause of the bodily functions that we said before, the fat soluble, vitamins and everything that you need. So you really wanna kind of balance both of those things to create the deficit and you always want to keep protein high.

You’re not taking calories and protein.

Absolutely. Totally agree to keep that protein high also. And another thing once after that, alcohol, alcohol is seven grams or seven calories per gram. And if you want to find out how many, how many grams of alcohol, or how many calories of actual alcohol or inside your beverage, you’ve got like a 12 answer.

Multiply that by 28 grams and then multiply that by the percentage of the alcohol content. And I mean, you’re going to end up having a good amount of alcohol in your bloodstream. If you drink a few beers or, you know, a bunch of liquor or something, and your body wants to get that rid of that first, and lot of times we drink with a meal.

Right. Makes sense. And, uh, if you’re, if you have good alcohol, a good amount of alcohol in your bloodstream, your body’s gonna want to give it to that first. And it’s gonna apply like carbs, fat, all that other shit to the wayside. And oftentimes by the time it gets to it, right. Yeah, it’s going to get end up getting soared more as fat.

You have a high propensity to store that for fat. So watch out for alcohol, with meals, watch out for excess alcohol in general, if you’re going to see fat loss is your concern.

That’s the ultimate when it comes to your fat loss, like you’re right. Like, because it is also a macronutrient, like it’s the fourth macronutrient that we just don’t consider and it is a fuel source and that it burns right away.

And that’s what, when that burning is like the euphoric feeling that you feel where you would be burning. Fats when you’re just sitting around or walking around instead, you’re burning alcohol and it’s just, again, putting everything to the wayside and it’s something you don’t really consider it because people are looking at the calories or the carbohydrates on their white claw.

And they’re like, listen, this is only a hundred calories, but they’re like, and like there’s only, there’s only so many carbs, but they don’t have a, a caloric spot for the alcohol on your nutrition. Label. Right. So they’re kind of blindingly throwing this out there. So you drink 10 white claws, like, and you’re like, Oh, that’s only a thousand calories or whatever, but just like the macronutrients and the energy that, that, which shifts what’s burning is going to sabotage that.

It’s just not going to pull it. And, and that’s another thing about like knocking down those, um, those big pillars first, like kinda all the way back to the beginning before you even start to consider, like really putting yourself in a caloric deficit to improve your, your, your body composition, stop fucking drinking alcohol, you know, like that is just the way it’s going to be.

And I’d like, I mean, I’ve been, this has been a problem of mine, for sure. But like, So I know firsthand. You’re not, it’s not going to work

and there’s a good, there’s a good sign. If you would need to drink alcohol the time, you’re probably a little bit stressed out in life. That’s something to address, right?

That’s also, that’s contributing to your, uh, your poor performance and, and poor body composition,

for sure. For sure. Yeah. Stress and, or you’re just not, you’re just not that serious about, or the priorities of being an athlete is, are not all online. So you gotta kind of work those things out first.

I want to ask you a question.

When it comes to caloric deficits and navigating fat loss for the athlete, is there a better time than others to do this for the sake of optimizing performance?

That’s a great question. And, um, typically you want about four weeks to kind of get into maintenance numbers, uh, leading into competition. So if you’re looking out a building backwards, I would make sure that you have a.

And like I said, it’s a pound a week, but dieting for two weeks might not lead to two, uh, two pounds of, of tissue loss. Um, it might, but usually you’re gonna be about three or four to have any sort of sustainable like cut. Um, if you will, we’ll talk body, we’ll talk in bodybuilding terms. You went on that.

So three or four weeks, because really what you’re going to need to dedicate to see any type of fat loss from, from that range. And that doesn’t mean accelerating things. So if you want to lose eight pounds in. Four weeks to take off a thousand calories a day. It just doesn’t work like that. You’re set, you’ll set yourself up to, for a binge for poor performance leading into this big event, you recover like shit.

So no matter what, like you can’t cheat this, so you just need to plan appropriately and, and backtrack things. So if you want to lose four pounds, you’ve got to give yourself eight weeks. Right, so that you can kind of build back into maintenance numbers and, and be at about maintenance when you leave, when you are heading into the performance itself.

Um, so, and, and with that, I wouldn’t take it any longer than 12 weeks. I found for an endurance athlete. Eight weeks is kind of. It is really a sweet spot because the energy expenditure and the physical demands are so high, that to be in a deficit for that long is mentally exhausting and physically hard.

Um, so I do really, I think. Uh, seven to 10 pounds within an eight week timeframe is going to be what’s most realistic. And then taking at least that many weeks in, into maintenance before going back in. So it’s not like you can’t take eight weeks of cut one week maintenance and eight weeks of cut at the, it’s not really going to give you time to properly recover and, and kind of reestablish your baseline in terms of your metabolism.

So being able to give yourselves, like, I like a, one-on-one like an eight and eight or like a 12. 12 and eight, I think it works well. If you do 12 weeks of cut, eight weeks of maintenance, I think also works pretty well. Um, so yeah, you’re gonna have to like, look at that. Or you can just, if it’s, if it’s not a big race, um, if it’s a B race or C race and fat loss is the goal over, um, the performance of that day, then you just kind of schedule things out based off of like the big race of the year.

Right on, you know, what I really like about what you were just talking about is, and this is, this should be a huge takeaway for people. And that’s the fact that you’re not talking about a few weeks of dramatic change. You’re talking about several weeks, a little changes so that it is sustainable. It is smooth.

It is not shocking. It’s shocking to your system and it gives you time to play things out, ride things out, take notes on what’s happening and, uh, and yeah, you just ebb and flow gently and kindly to yourself. It is that’s. Yeah, that’s precisely the way they should be going about things and staying away from very quick few week, long month long extreme.

Dieting like the, like a crash diet or something like it just not going to be optimal for performance. Like you might see results on the scale, like real fast, but it’s again, it’s, it’s fake. So yeah, like it takes time, again, it takes patience and you’re going to have setbacks. You’re gonna screw it up. And there’s going to be times you’re going to gain weight or there’s times you’re going to be so hungry that it turns into just like saying screw it or a binge, or you’re going to drink, you’re going to drink some alcohol.

And then that turns into like a binge, right? Like, ah, screw it. Whatever I’ve been. Quote unquote. Good. I’m just going to go for it here. Um, So, yeah, taking, taking that all into consideration that it’s not going to be linear and it, even if you took eight weeks and you were perfect the whole time, like you probably won’t be, but, um, again, having some self compassion and just some patients through that, because things will bounce back.

And that’s why it’s important again, to collect this data, um, as scary as the scale can be it’s it’s it’s and how much it sucks to see it go up one day. So like, if you weigh. 140 pounds one day, and then you have a bad quote, unquote, bad day, or like a or whatever. And then you’re one 42 the next day. Like, Oh my God, I screwed everything up.

You’ll see. In two days, it’ll be back to where you were or even under. And it just kind of helps give, give that self compassion and that, you know, there are going to be setbacks, but your body is going to respond. Um, if you’re properly training and you’re staying the course, because this is a freaking process and it’s not going to happen, um, over the course of one to two to three weeks, Hmm.

So when it comes to, when it comes to like race weight, when it comes to race, weight, how does someone really find out what the best place is for them?

This one is like interesting. Cause there is some information available. I was actually Googling around. Have you ever seen these? It was like race week calculators.

No. I just thought it was a Raceway calculator.

I they’re like I have no idea what it’s based off of. Maybe it is that old school formula that we talked about in the past, but it like asks for your weight, ask for your body fat percentages. People definitely don’t know. Um, and then it, and then it’s like, how much time would you like to take off?

It’s like, okay, here’s your appropriate weight Raceway? Um, So like that is it that’s really subjective. I’ve found like it’s hard to have like an objective number for everything. Um, and where I raised. So here’s an example, right? Like again, just straight up anecdotal. Um, talking about me, uh, in, when I raised my best, like 10 years ago, I weighed 153 pounds and I’ve since broken several of those PRS weighing like 163.

Um, So I put, I emphasized 100, but I meant to emphasize 61, 5,300, one 60. Uh, um, so like, it just depends on like what your actual body composition looks like. My body composition is much different now. Um, in terms of muscle. So I might even, I may have been leaner now than what I was then, but like the weight itself doesn’t necessarily associate with the, um, the performance, uh, that you, that you’re going to be related to.

Um, do you, do you have anything you kind of look for in your own body composition when it comes to racing or are you always feeling pretty good going into like, okay. I’m in, I’m in, um, I don’t feel much different no matter what. So I feel like I’m, I’m good to go here.

So I, I have focused more on weight in the past.

Um, when I went a couple years ago, going into world’s toughest, Mudder, and I was increasing volume and whatnot, I went to race. I was one 72 weeks out. And then going into the race on race day, I was one 65. I had a fantastic race. I felt light as a feather. I tried to replicate this going into West Virginia.

Uh, last year I, uh, Then rather than getting down to one 65, like supernaturally, just through like an increase in volume, I was intentional and decreasing my calories. Uh, I kept my calories too low for too long. I did two weeks, like right into the race, went in with an energy deficiency and I felt it in the race.

And I actually did have, I mean, I felt like garbage. I was totally destroyed. I could hardly even do the barbed wire crawl. My body was super duper fatigue and that’s the only thing that I can point to. So same weight. Got there differently felt terribly. I don’t really look at my weight anymore. I don’t own a scale.

I go by by feel if my, if I’m getting good sleep, if my energy is high, uh, you know, if like, uh, yeah, if my mind, if I feel invigorated, that’s a good sign. Um, and to, to point to some other, some other areas, I have a client who I’ve been working with for just a few months. Now, this individual ran, uh, Well they’re there.

They ran like in the mid twenties for 5k. Okay. To start out, they put on 10 pounds. They were concerned about this 10 pounds over the course of these, these few months, uh, we had a discussion and we put them through another test. They took two and a half minutes off their 5k.

Oh shit.

And we’re talking about a 10 pound increase.

So their body composition, isn’t where they really want it to be right now. However, the performance is showing that it is at a very good spot. So we’re going to continue to build on performance while addressing the body composition things and see how we can kind of level those scales. But I wanted to say that to just kind of point that out to other people that.

Wait is not everything

a hundred percent. And like now, like there’s a couple of things that could account for that. You know, maybe his recovery is better, his power outputs, better, his running form strength, whatever it is, or just as training is at a point where it’s going to be better and body composition aside, he’s seeing performance gains.

So like, ultimately that’s. That’s the case. And if there is a point where like, okay, we’ve maximized everything, then that’s, again, that’s what we talked about at the beginning. It’s like, okay, let’s see what if we can drop two or three, um, where that leads to you then. And then, and then if the performance doesn’t shift or change because of that, like then, you know, you’ve already found your spot.

So it does come down to testing and then retesting and making sure that you’re playing around with these things and seeing how that, that performance does, uh, does matter. And also he could just been fueled like how you said. Going into a race and, and feeling like lethargic. And there, there is a certain feeling that comes along with would be like, kind of like a bunk feeling of being undernourished that is just like this overwhelming fatigue and like this slow sluggish feeling that does screw up your performance.

Um, And, you know, maybe he was under fueled before and now being fueled enough and being nourished. Everything is good and he’s, he’s cranking along. Um, but that’s the time, cause

I was gonna say, I was just gonna say, uh, I’m just gonna touch on like cortisol’s role in that. I mean, if you’re, if you’re in a caloric deficit and you’re exercising, I mean, both of those things create.

You know, you produce cortisol and combined, you have elevated cortisol for extended periods of time because cortisol is released too. It actually helps break down fuel sources in your body for energy. It can like, you know, take amino acids and boom, like that. Help give some energy to your brain, keep you functioning, keep you surviving, you know, fight or flight, keeping trying to keep you alive.

If that stays elevated for too long, then it ends up kind of crashing. And then. You’re not able to kind of cheat energy anymore. And then that is where the complete crash comes. Cause when it comes to race day and you’re all amped up, that cortisol is flowing. You get out there and you’re, you’re, you know, you run as fast as you possibly can.

You’re feeling like an animal that cortisol is flowing. It’s helping your brain function, your body function, optimally. And if it’s been elevated for so long, then now it just can’t anymore. You’re not going to get that race day. You know, extra little kick.

Yeah. And that’s a, that’s a great point with, um, being like, cause that would be considered a catabolic hormone.

Right. And like re running in general is also very catabolic breaking things down. And if it’s not met with any type of anabolic hormone that you’re just going to kind of go down this hole and just kind of spiral into. Shitty performance. Um, so that’s a good point, cause yeah, there’s like this internal, these internal things that are going to happen, um, that you might not even have any, uh, like bearing on it, you know?

And like, you might not know why it’s happening, but, um, there are internal factors to that, which is a great point to bring up. Um, yeah. And duly

looking pretty good.

Yeah. So I think we cover quite a bit on that, um, on the fat loss thing. And, you know, I think it is important to cover because like I said, I’ve been extremely disappointed with the amount of information that is available.

Yeah. Like I was looking at some stuff yesterday and like, there’s like this super famous runner elite runner who did this YouTube video and it was. So terrible and generic, and there’s always so much generic stuff that it doesn’t address the actual needs that the individual might have. And again, it’s just because people are just trying to dance around it and there are needs, and there’s ways for people to address these.

And aside from not eating pizza, you know, like, and like, we did talk about booze, but like, and not drinking booze, like those are the big ones that you can knock down first. But when they went through there, like then what, and a lot of it does come down to, um, You know, the emotional response people do have to eating and their nutrition and then being able to work through those as well.

So that’s also a big point of that and that’s where it is helpful to have a coach as well, or someone to kind of work that out with, um, because you can be blind to your own habits and, uh, the education that you’re you’ve been given and what you’ve been around growing up, um, is really what you base a lot of this information on.

And just again, societal norms that you’ve been told and what you should. Uh, like what, how you should kind of have a relationship with food or what was it? Did you have any education on food, the growing up? Like, what was it like with your parents? Did they like tell you anything about food? Did they know anything?

Not at all, dude, not at all. Everything. My first education getting into, it was like pretty much how to put on muscle. So looking at body building stuff, and it pretty much came down to like chocolate milk and shitloads, like raspberry jam with cottage, cheese,

and egg and stuff. It’s not bad.

Just get it in man scholars in the, uh,

yeah, cause I mean like our parents’ generation, they, they came up right when like, uh, Quick easy to make microwaveable food and like food and like marketing in general really started popping off from like television and radio.

And like, they, like, they just didn’t really have too much of a chance. So like the generation ahead, uh, that, that brought us up. Um, their education was very low. I feel like people’s education is extremely low now. Um, and there’s a wealth of information available. It’s everybody. And there’s still not kind of seeking that it’s never really sought out or, or, or.

Or they are never put in a position it’s never presented to them to learn about this. Um, so I feel like a lot of people are kind of coming from, from zero, even though like you eat food every day, every day. So you think you have an idea of what it is, but most people are coming from. Pretty much nothing,

dude.

It’s, you know what it’s, when you learn something there’s like a language to it. Uh, I, if you look at like a bumblebee, you can’t see it, but the way they see a flower, it kind of like speaks to them. They, they literally can see things. Differently until like, that’s the flower that they want to go to. Or, you know, if this one has nectar, there’s like this day up something with like the light waves, right?

When it comes to like a human looking at food, if you’re educated with the food, you don’t just see a burger. You like, you see the Patty, you see the bond and all the constituents of it. You can see, you see the macros, the micro nutrients it’s purpose. You just, you view it differently. So your relationship with it becomes so much more.

Involved in intimate and at CA and in that sense, it can be super duper healthy.

I love that. Right. And there’s a, there’s a purpose for almost everything. I mean, there’s obviously some foods that, um, I know that that is a big part of, for, for kind of how you approach things. Just the quality of things, like the way things were raised or what was used to grow them or the dyes associated with them.

Anything that’s packaged is probably not gonna be great, but there are, there are foods like, it’s like, okay, Like say pizza pizza is unhealthy. It’s like, unless you have a gluten intolerance or you’re intolerant to dairy, like probably not. It’s just really easy to overeat. It’s just delicious. And you eat a shitload of it, but if you know what it is, you know what you’re looking at and you know, what, what works for you?

Like pizza is not like any less healthy than, um, all those things on their own. It’s just like, You’ll just eat three slices and that’s a bit too much,

you know, it’s, you know, you get to mix pleasure with purpose and it’s like, Oh, I’m not just gonna eat pizza every night, but I’m going to go for a really big workout on Saturday.

And it’s like, well, afterwards, the pizza would be like really perfect for that time

a hundred percent. And like, I mean, it’s get to enjoy it. Yeah. And I mean, that’s where the education comes in. Again, that’s a delicate balance of what we said before, where it’s like, you shouldn’t train to eat, but like, There is a place for that.

Like, you can enjoy your pizza, you can have, um, I like cake. I like donuts, you know, like, that’s my shit, dude. But there’s these donuts here in town called federal donuts. They’re actually like, like a cake donut, which I didn’t think I liked. Uh, cause I, I grew up with like Dunkin donuts, which was like the yeast ones, but do like it.

Good cake donut chocolate. If it’s like a triple chocolate, anything chocolate,

can you overnight shift me a box right now?

I might have to. I could say how could we keep that preserved? Um, maybe some dry ice situation. I don’t know. Um, but yeah, but like, you know, like you can have these things if like, as long as, you know, what works for you again, like if you’re not gluten intolerant or something, probably not, or like, whatever.

Um, but cool man, um, Sweet

now, you know what? It’s a, this was a good discussion. There’s, there’s a lot of other things that I would love to bring to the table talking about like hormones and stuff and the role in this. But that’s getting a little nerdy. I don’t know if that’s for everybody. Maybe I’ll, uh, I’ll put up some info about that later.

But this was,

this was good, bro. I think the hormone conversation would be good. I think it is important to have the actual function of the food that you’re taking in and like how that’s going to affect your body other than just, uh, calories, you know, calories or chairs.

I’d love to discuss that. So anyone that’s like nerdy and really into that one also understand, uh, and the, the details, the nuts and bolts of the nutrition stuff.

What’s beyond the macros. Tune in later,

we can talk about it. We can talk about what the fuck we want is our podcast. You know, whatever they don’t, they don’t want us to do. They can turn on Joe Rogan later. That’s fine. What you have going on this week, year? You’re nursing your hammy. Have you busted yourself up?

Yeah. Yeah. I’ll roll this thing out. I’ll probably get some more vert. Cause the vert feels real good on that. Uh, that Nordic track. And, uh, probably gonna go for a bike ride. I’m going to go meet some homeys. We’re going to go like do a fire tower, bike things that will go from one fire tower up a mountain, then we’ll go get our bikes hot to the other one and bike to the other one.

Just for funsies.

Cool.

Yeah. Get together. How are things doing over by you brother?

Good man. Yeah, just pairing for burpee 10 K and a beer mile. I haven’t practiced anything on beer. Mind

you, when I mentioned those

were happening, you haven’t seen the running public 10 burpee, 10 gay. It’s gonna be rough. I think I was telling in that group chat, we got, I did a burpee, like three mile, um, where I ended up doing like seven rounds of the burpees and it’s like a Berbick 10 Ks 10 is, uh, every 800 do 20 burpees for 10 K.

Um, So it ends up going to be 240 burpees. So I did it. I did 107 now, 140. Yeah, I did 140 year mine and like, it, it sucked. The burpees are definitely going to be a limiting factor these for a minute.

What do you think? What are these going to be a good time? Like a solid winning time for that?

I don’t know.

Like when I was in the burpees, I was keeping them under a minute still. So I was like between, like I started at like 50, but ended up being more like 58, 59, two at the end of it. And I’m guessing that’s going to drift for me until like, you know why? And I’ll five, one 10, maybe by the last couple of rounds.

Um, But I was running like five thirties in between. Yeah. So I don’t know. So I don’t, so I didn’t do the actual math on how long it’s going to take. And I didn’t even look at how long, the three mile tape, since he got a long fucking time. Cause you can’t take a really long time, but most people are going to be with like an hour, you know?

I think, I think you’ve run an hour. That’s pretty good.

Yeah a lot. So I was listening to the running public and they think that like 49 minutes would take it.

So they laid it on 49 minutes. Like they just wanted, they like, why not? Why not? 50 50? Like why, why 49?

39, 27. Well, let’s see if you can run like a solid 10 K 6.2.

If you’re on a six minute mile, you’re running like 36 something,

right. Yeah, think great. Wait, uh, yeah, like the 37 minutes

of the dinner, drop it down for burpees. How many times? 12 times,

12 times say it takes a minute, right?

Okay. So that gets you 48,

48. So if I run five thirties, I’m going to be faster than this.

I don’t foresee myself running much slower than five thirties. Honestly, the running didn’t feel bad. The worst part was I was doing it in the grass. I would get up out of the grass in my allergies. My breathing would be all messed up.

Aw man.

But the burpees might take longer than a minute by the end. Is that 49?

That’s actually not a terrible, it’s not a, it’s not a terrible, it’s

not this at all.

I’m going to try to find a track. I don’t know. You’re going to be able do it on track. I’m going to be able to do an odd

track. Yeah.

I was going to try to get out to one, um, like the closest track is like probably eight miles from here.

So I was gonna ride my bike six miles and then run to the track for my run, warm up, and then she’d see how my legs would feel during it. Um, but I might just Uber there and they offer just deal with it and just wear a mask. And my Uber,

I was considering doing it on the treadmill, but one that’s like kind of layman just be like too monotonous, but also.

Dude. I didn’t realize like how important it is to have wind going past your body when you’re running. Like, I knew it conceptually, I knew it was important, but like really feeling it and being

entrepreneurial hot

when it’s hot as shit. And there’s no air taking the, you know, wicking, sweat off you and cooling you.

Oh my God.

It’s unbelievable. How’s it been with the incline trainer? Have you been just grinding, dude? I

love it. I absolutely love it. It makes it’s. Do being on 15% now, it feels really easy. I’m actually looking forward to doing another 15 at 15 a test and see how that works out. But yeah, like being able to hike up at 40, 40%, it’s a, it’s really good for like building muscular endurance and, uh, being able to like keep the heels elevated, uh, the mechanics of it and the strength factor feel really nice.

And it’ll be cool to see how it, how, how it ends up serving me. You know, in the future,

but it is fun, dude. I’m jealous. Yeah. I definitely don’t do that probate model on that thing though. That would suck. What does, will it stay running for a minute while you’re? Is that like a cause whenever I do something like that in the gym, if I’m off the thing for like 20 seconds, it stops.

Yeah. Those things. Yeah. The gym, they, they kept

selling stuff. No, it’s pretty sweet. Turn that off

so I can get off. I can get off and it’ll just keep, it’ll keep on going. Uh, but I can also pause it and it’ll pause for 10 minutes, which is a good amount of time.

Yeah. But then it takes a minute to get back going.

You need it. It gets up to speed

pretty quick though.

Do it on the track. Yeah. All right. Cool dude. Well, where can we find you on, on the socials you drop in. Some people saw that your, your kettlebell tutorial. That was pretty cool. People like that up. So that was good episode. Nice.

Yeah. Joshua Reed, J underscore, S H E underscore, R I E D.

Yeah.

Rich Miller. Where you at?

Reinforced underscore running underscore rich. Like I said, it’s basically just to promote the podcast anymore. I know you, man, if you could send me a message, I’ll respond to them, but usually I’m just doing podcasts.

It’s good content. And you know what, man, I am a, I’m really excited right now.

Cause we didn’t, we didn’t say anything about it, but West Virginia is on.

Yeah. Yeah. They changed it to a beach. That’s good. My brother gets married that day. So like, yeah, the only, the only opportunity to race, not going to be there

for you.

You’re going though.

Absolutely do it. I got beef with that course.

Like I was saying before, I tried to like cut weight last year and I ended up having a, an okay raise. But like personally how I felt about it. It wasn’t, it wasn’t that great. So

you’ll do well. You’ll do well this year,

this year, it’s going to be fun. And if anyone

else wants to kick some pushy,

hit rich or myself up, let’s talk

and we’ll help you.

Yeah, I did sign an off paresis.