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#149 - Fat Loss Without Starving Yourself, How Many Sets You Need To Build Muscle & More
25 Plays8 days ago
In this Q and A episode, I answer common questions about fat loss, muscle building, and cardio and give you practical strategies you can use right away.
- How to eat in a calorie deficit without feeling like you are starving by looking at things like fiber, volume eating, pre-planning, and your food environment.
- Whether meal timing matters for fat loss, and how to choose between a few bigger meals vs more frequent smaller meals based on what actually helps your hunger and consistency.
- How many sets per muscle per week you really need to build or maintain muscle, including the minimum effective dose, the realistic sweet spot for most people, and when higher volume makes sense.
- How much extra cardio actually helps with fat loss and whether or not it's worth it
- How sleep affects how much fat you lose and how much muscle you build
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Transcript
Welcome and Podcast Purpose
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back the Fit-ish Project with your host, Lathan Bass, where we make fitness and health simple for regular people like you and I. We have another weekly
Audience Engagement and Reviews
00:00:12
Speaker
episode. Before I get into that, just a couple quick announcements. Leave a review if you can, as always. Been seeing a couple more reviews come in, so I appreciate the people who are taking a few moments to do that. That's the way this show gets
Washed Up Athlete Challenge
00:00:24
Speaker
put out to more people by reviews and sharing and just getting this message and this information out to people who can actually use it the most and help change their lives for the better so i really do appreciate those of you who have done that if you can take a moment to do that if you have not done that i greatly appreciate that as well the other thing i wanted to touch on really quickly if you are listening to this in early february i have a washed up athlete challenge running for it the third time
00:00:50
Speaker
It's a challenge for former male athletes who used to play sports. Maybe you fell off a little bit, maybe gained a few pounds. Maybe you're just not super motivated in the gym right now. You need something to just get excited about and just something to get you going again.
00:01:05
Speaker
That is exactly what this challenge is for. So a bunch of guys get together. We do some weekly challenges that are fun, kind of trash talk a little bit, hold each other accountable. a lot of guys lost 10, 15, 20 pounds doing this, build some muscle, hit some PR. So It's a really fun challenge, just a way for a lot of guys who are in similar spots to get together and have a little fun and make some games while doing it. So I'll leave the link in the show notes for that as well. But
Monthly Q&A Introduction
00:01:29
Speaker
the topic for this week, we are at that point of the month where it's time to hit another Q&A. I like to do these about once a month or so, just questions that I get from you guys, questions that I get from clients, and now questions that I'm getting from just conversations that I'm having with people in person since I'm now working at out a gym again part time. just get to have a lot of conversations about fitness and see where people are struggling and see where people are having questions and hope to answer some of these questions and just dive a little bit deeper to give you some more insight. And as always, just give you a bunch of practical things that you can actually start doing today. So some
Managing Hunger When Losing Weight
00:02:04
Speaker
of the questions that I'm going to get into how to lose fat without starving yourself. That's a good question. does It doesn't matter whether you eat
00:02:12
Speaker
Big meals or small meals for weight loss and which is better? How many sets you need to be doing per week in order to build the maximum amount of muscle? How much does extra cardio actually help with fat loss? And a couple other questions as well. And so let's dive right into this.
00:02:27
Speaker
I'm trying to lose weight, so I'm eating in a calorie deficit, but I feel hungry all the time. I'm wondering if it's even possible to lose weight without feeling like you're starving yourself. Great question.
00:02:38
Speaker
This is a common thing for a lot of people, especially when they first try to lose weight, because a lot of people approach it in the wrong way. The first thing that I would say about this is you really need to distinguish the difference between feeling hungry and just actually having physical hunger. So when you're physically hungry, you have those physical sensations, like you have that rumbling in your stomach. You feel like you're actually hungry and you need some fuel, you need some food. Like we all know what that feels like. If you haven't eaten for a long time and you start to feel those hunger, maybe you get a little bit lightheaded. low energy, that sort of thing. That is different than just like thinking or wanting some food because a lot of times we eat out of habit versus actually being physically hungry and we get in these certain habits of like I need to eat this many times per day or i eat when I'm bored or I eat when I'm stressed or I'm just used to eating this much food and so we're not even paying attention to our hunger signals or our hunger cues because we are just so far removed from those things.
00:03:35
Speaker
When it comes to losing weight, you actually have to really start paying attention to your body a little bit more and start figuring out, am I actually hungry right now or do I just want food? Because there's a big difference between that. And when I was going through this whole process of trying to just create a better relationship with food and start to understand these sorts of things, this took me a long time to realize because I love to eat. I can eat a ton of food.
00:03:57
Speaker
But there were so many times where I just found myself eating out of habit or eating out of boredom or just eating things because I thought that I should be eating or i just something smelled good or something looked good. And I wasn't actually hungry. And so you need to start to have ways to figure this out. And one simple thing that I like to do is just called the apple test.
00:04:15
Speaker
So if you are sitting there and maybe you're like, I think I'm kind of hungry, or you walk in the kitchen and you open the refrigerator like we all do not really thinking about it, and you're going to grab some food like before you have that food, ask yourself, am I hungry enough to eat an apple right now If the answer is yes, like if you're hungry enough to grab an apple and eat it and that sounds good, then you are probably hungry.
00:04:35
Speaker
If you're not, then you're probably not hungry. Like if you're actually physically hungry, like an apple sounds good. If you're not, then you're like, no, i screw that. Like, I don't want that. Give me something like sweet or sugary or whatever the case may be. And that's just a simple way to just pause a little bit, create a little bit of space and actually ask yourself, is this something that I need right now? Like, am
Low-Calorie Foods and Weight Loss
00:04:53
Speaker
I actually physically hungry or do I just want to eat? because of whatever reason, I'm bored, I'm stressed, I don't have anything else to do, I'm eating out of habit, that sort of thing. So starting to do that a little bit more will help.
00:05:04
Speaker
Another thing that I wanted to touch on is there is differences in people when it comes to losing weight and how hard and how difficult weight loss feels because of their genetics. So what I mean by this is like, different people have different drives when it comes to hunger and how full and satiated they are and things like that. And that doesn't mean that weight loss is impossible for these people who have higher drives to eat because there's just individual differences. Like we all know that person who just doesn't eat a whole lot. Like they never finished their plate. Sometimes they skip meals or you'll have that person who like, Oh, I forgot to eat today. And like they're unfazed by it. And me, I'm like, how do you forget to eat? Like i eat every meal. I eat every snack. I don't miss meals. Like I need food. I like food. I want to be eating food, but certain people, they just don't have
00:05:48
Speaker
that similar same drive when it comes to eating food or like they just don't necessarily love eating and so for like those people losing weight would be pretty easy because they're not thinking about food like they don't have those same signals that somebody who really does like food and who does enjoy eating and who looks forward to food and who gets hungry more often like it's going to be a little bit more difficult for those people to lose weight and I think I also want to point out here because some people will hear those things and they'll be like, oh well, I'm screwed. Like I'm that person who think about food all the time. I'm always hungry. I never feel full or satisfied. And again, I would go back to think about your eating habits because a lot of the things that we do, we are doing unconsciously and we haven't ever spent any time helping ourselves out and actually gaining the skills to help us out to not feel so hungry and like be needing to just eat all the time, which is exactly what I'm going to get at next. These are tips to help you out to help to change that and just help you feel more full, feel more satiated, control hunger, because there's absolutely things that you can do to help you with that. And so you don't feel this need to be constantly eating. And so getting into some of these tips,
00:06:54
Speaker
volume eating is going to be the first thing that I would tell you and this just means eating big quantities of food that have less calories and so when we think about certain foods certain foods you can eat very large amounts and they don't have very many calories and one of the examples that I always give is a pound of strawberries is about 150 You look at an entire pound of strawberries like
Protein, Fiber, and Fullness
00:07:14
Speaker
that's a lot of food. But if you think about something, let's say like full fat strawberry ice cream, a pint of that could be 750 calories, a thousand calories, depending on how much sugar and fat and different things are in there.
00:07:25
Speaker
that could be three to five times more than that pound of strawberries. And one is going to leave you feeling a lot more full and satiated than the other. And so when you think about your food choices, you want to start to pick things that are higher volume that have less calories. Another example that I always give is like you think about like potatoes versus eating potato chips.
00:07:44
Speaker
If you're like me, you can crush a family sized bag of potato chips like a half a bag, no problem, no problem at all. But if you tried to eat, let's say, two or three baked potatoes, or just sliced up, cut up potatoes, that is much harder to do than eat a half a bag of Doritos or Lay's or whatever kind of potato chip that you like. But the calorie difference in those things is like three or four times more in a bag of chips. Like if you look at two potatoes, let's say that's probably about 300 calories. If you eat a half a bag of Doritos, like a family size, that's going to be well over 1000 calories. So
00:08:20
Speaker
Finding foods that are higher volume, and these are going to be things like your fruits, your vegetables, potatoes, soup, salads, popcorn, lean proteins, oats, like there's tons of different higher volume foods and just eating more of these things is going to help you out.
00:08:33
Speaker
Second tip right along with that is going to be high protein things. So getting a high protein diet is going to help with just feeling more full and satiated. So Trying to get protein at each meal. We've probably all been in that situation where for breakfast you've had maybe like some donuts and some juice, a lot of carbs and very little protein, very little fat.
00:08:51
Speaker
And you feel hungry like an hour later. It doesn't do a whole lot for you feeling full and feeling satiated and having a bunch of energy. versus getting a breakfast that has high protein, maybe has a little bit of fat in there, has some whole grains and fibers and things like that. You feel a lot more full and satiated and like more energy and you stay full for longer. And so trying to just set yourself up to have more high protein things can help and there's this idea called the protein leverage hypothesis which is this idea that your body will continue to make you eat food or send you those signals of just wanting to eat and satisfy that hunger until you get enough protein and so trying to get more protein your diet is going to help you out with this and
00:09:36
Speaker
If you've ever spent any time at all eating a high protein diet, you probably know what I mean with this. Like you've had that feeling of just trying to eat a lot of protein and you just feel more full. Like you don't always have that constant hunger because trying to eat 150 grams, 175 grams, 200 grams of protein a day, it's a lot of food. Like 200 grams of protein is a lot of food and you're not just going to be overeating steaks and beef and chicken and things like that. So when you're getting these
Meal Planning for Weight Loss
00:10:02
Speaker
things, it's going to help you out and naturally help you to feel more full or satiate have less hunger over time.
00:10:08
Speaker
The third thing that I would tell you, and this is one that a lot of people miss out on is high fiber. High fiber helps with just staying full for longer. Again, eating things like fruits, vegetables, whole grains is going to help to get you more fiber in your diet. And most people are severely under eating fiber.
00:10:24
Speaker
Not only is it helpful for weight loss and staying full and satiated, it's also just helpful with health in general. Like there's a lot of good health benefits associated with eating good amounts of fiber. And so you wanna be trying to get at a bare minimum 25 grams of fiber per day. For a lot of people, it's going to be close to that 30 or 40 grams of fiber per day.
00:10:43
Speaker
And so just trying to pair your meals with fruits, vegetables, some whole grains, different things like that. And all that to say, like, when in doubt, just higher protein meals, higher fiber meals. If you do those two things, you are going to have a lot less hunger and just feel better when you're trying to lose weight. And it's going to feel so difficult. The other two things that I would tell you that don't have to necessarily do with food is just to plan better. Have a plan with fat loss meals that work well for you because there's going to be certain foods or certain meals that you come across that you notice they just keep you feeling good. Like they make you feel full and satisfied and other foods that you try where you're like, I'm hungry 30 minutes later. Those are probably not good meals to have when your goal is to lose fat.
00:11:27
Speaker
So we'll pay attention to those things, have a plan going in the day before or the week before or even the morning of of like what you're going to be eating throughout the day, because when you try to just wing it when you're trying to lose fat, it's very difficult to make those choices in the moment. And a lot of times we don't make the best choice when we're hungry or when we're tired or when we're stressed or when we don't know what to eat, we reach for the thing that's convenient.
00:11:47
Speaker
And those are typically the things that are going to be higher calorie, easier to overeat, those sorts of things. The last thing that I would tell you is just to try to audit your environment as much as possible. And what I mean by that is just keeping more of the good stuff around and good stuff. I just mean things that make fat loss easier. So when you keep a lot of easy to overeat things, a lot of high calorie things, a lot of hyper palatable foods, those sorts of things around,
Meal Frequency and Calorie Consistency
00:12:11
Speaker
you're just going to be more tempted to eat those things. And those things can also affect your hunger a little bit too. Like we've all been in that situation where like,
00:12:18
Speaker
You're not even hungry, but you walk past somebody who has something that looks really good or smells really good, or you walk in your break room and like there's some really good looking like desserts or cookies or something in there. You're not hungry at all, but instantly your mouth starts watering and you want to eat that thing. And then you have to use willpower. to not have that thing because you don't need it. You don't even really want it.
00:12:38
Speaker
You're not hungry, but just seeing those things, smelling those things makes you want to have it more. I had this happen to me just recently. I was headed over to hang out with one of my buddies and he had ordered a pizza and he wanted me to pick it up for him. I had ate before I left my house, but it was on the way there. So I was like, yeah, I'll pick that up for you. I grabbed these pizzas and mind you, I just ate right before I left my house and I'm not hungry at all. But as soon as I smelled that pizza and the dessert that he had, it smelled so good. Instantly, my mouth was watering and I was like, I could crush this entire pizza and I'm not hungry at all. So all that to say is just like try to set it up, like set your environment up. So you're making that healthy decision, the easy decision.
00:13:17
Speaker
You can't always do this, you know, like You're in public places, you're at other people's houses, you're at work, like you can't control what other people have and what's going to be around. But like, especially in your house, like when you're spending time in your own home, like try to set yourself up to make those better decisions. Super simple.
00:13:33
Speaker
Question number two, does it matter whether I eat few big meals or multiple smaller meals when it comes
Maximizing Muscle Growth
00:13:39
Speaker
to fat loss? The quick answer is no, it does not matter. If your calories are equated, like if they are equal, if you eat 2000 calories with six meals or you eat 2000 calories with two meals from a fat loss perspective, if your calories and protein are the same in both those situations, it does not matter. You will lose the same amount of weight. From a practicality standpoint, it does matter a little bit because there are individual differences with people. Some people like to eat more often, some people like to eat less often. And so you have to really figure out what works best for you. So just asking yourself, are you the person who likes to eat more frequently? You like smaller meals, like you feel better that way, you feel more satiated that way, you feel more full that way, or are you a person who would rather eat a large quantity at each meal and just have fewer of those throughout the day? Like maybe you only want to eat two or three big meals per day, but feel like you're actually eating a lot of food.
00:14:29
Speaker
it depends on the person like i'm the person i would rather have bigger meals and feel like i'm more satiated and i'm eating a good amount of food at each meal but some people are the exact opposite so finding what works for you and there's like some studies out there talking about different things and there's some that have said like using bigger fewer bigger meals actually leads to less hunger but again you have to try things out and see what works best for you what i found that works really well for me since i like eating bigger meals is i will eat three pretty larger bigger meals when i'm in a fat loss phase and then i'll have two really small snacks in between so like i'll have my normal breakfast lunch dinner
00:15:06
Speaker
big quantities of food, like big volume type of meals that I was just talking about. So lean proteins, fruits, vegetables, potatoes, oats, those sorts of things mixed in with my meals. And then in between breakfast and lunch, and then in between lunch and dinner, I'll have some sort of snack. And typically that's fruit or cottage cheese or Greek yogurt or something like that. It's just something that just holds me over in between those meals. And I never really feel too hungry. Like I'll have a little bit of hunger here and there, but it never feels like anything too drastic. And so figuring out what works for you and then using those little tips to just help you out can go a long ways.
00:15:41
Speaker
Question number three, how many sets per muscle per week do I need to build the most muscle? You'll hear a lot of different numbers thrown around for this. The common one that you hear a lot is 10 to 20 sets per muscle group.
00:15:56
Speaker
You'll also hear some people who will use a little bit less. So they'll say about five to 10 sets per muscle group. And you'll even hear people say you can make progress on as little as one to two sets per week per muscle group. And so what's actually going on here? What should you actually stick to?
00:16:15
Speaker
The thing that you need to understand is that more volume, meaning you doing more sets on a muscle typically does lead to more growth, but the gains are marginal after a certain point. And so what I mean by that is you could make gains on as little as a couple sets per week. If you're taking those really close to failure and really pushing those with high intensity and high effort, you could make some gains over time doing as little as a couple sets per week per muscle group.
00:16:41
Speaker
What most people are going to find beneficial is getting at least five to 10 sets per muscle group because you're gonna get a little bit more gains from that. And then if you wanted to push it a little bit higher, you could go for that 10 to 20. But some of the things you have to actually consider when thinking about this is how much time do you actually have to train how advanced you are in your training and what you actually like to do, because all those things are going to play a factor in how many sets you should be doing and the results that you're going to get. And what
Cardio vs. Diet for Fat Loss
00:17:07
Speaker
I mean by this is like, if you think about how much time do you have to train? Well, if you only have 45 minutes to train, there's no way you're going to be doing 20 sets for each muscle group. Like there's no way you're going to do 20 sets of quads, 20 sets of shoulder exercises, 20 sets of chest exercises, 20 sets of back exercises.
00:17:25
Speaker
20 sets of glutes exercises, hamstrings, calves, all these different things. Like you just don't have enough time. So time is a huge thing. Like if you don't have tons of time, then you maybe want to focus on a little bit less sets, like five to 10 sets. And again, you can make really good gains on five to 10 sets if you're pushing the intensity.
00:17:41
Speaker
How advanced you are is also going to play a role. So you might get to a point where you've been training pretty consistently and you're no longer really seeing progress and progress will slow down as you get more advanced in your training. And so you might have to implement some ways to add some volume in. So maybe you used to do five to 10 sets, but that's not really working on building that muscle or you're not really gaining a ton of strength. So you may need to add a couple of sets. on your workouts now to actually see more gains. So that might be something to take into account. And then the third thing is like, what do you actually like to do? Some people like to spend two hours in the gym and do tons of volume and tons of reps and be there all day.
00:18:16
Speaker
i would much rather spend 45 minutes to an hour in the gym and do less sets and work really hard at those sets. And then get out of the gym. Like, I don't want to be spending tons and tons of time in there. I'd rather do other things. I'd rather get outside or rather run. I'd rather do other activities and mix those things in there than to just strictly be lifting weights for two hours every single day. And so that's also really important to remember. And so the takeaway here is like for most people getting at least five to 10 sets, like hard, good sets on each muscle is going to be a really, really good place to be. You can make really good gains on that.
00:18:46
Speaker
If you have like a stubborn muscle group or you just want to squeak out some extra gains, then maybe getting more than that, getting in that 10 to 20 range per muscle group is going to be good. And then if you have just very limited time, like maybe you're super busy, you're in one of those seasons of life where you can barely get in the gym, even if you're getting in and you're only getting a couple sets per week, you could still make some solid gains there. so Hopefully that answers that question and you can make some gains and just figure out what is going to work best for you based on those different things.
00:19:15
Speaker
Question number, I think this is four. I'm considering adding in more regular cardio, but I'm wondering how much does doing extra cardio actually help with fat loss? This is a really good question.
00:19:26
Speaker
The very honest answer is not nearly as much as people think. Don't get me wrong. All exercise, all movement is good exercise in my opinion. But when it comes to just like strictly calorie burning from exercise, it's not super effective as a fat loss strategy by itself. And the reason being is because we don't burn as many calories as as we think from exercise alone. When you look at how many calories we burn from exercise, it's typically somewhere between like five to 10, sometimes 15% of the calories that we'll burn in a day will come from actual structured exercise, which is not that much.
00:20:02
Speaker
when you're looking at like your watches or your fitness trackers or like those sorts of things those typically overestimate how many calories we we're burning by a lot sometimes as much as 50 to 70 percent so like you could be looking at your watch and it could tell you you're burning 600 calories when in reality you could be burning closer to 300 calories so when we look at like some common exercises like things that people do pretty often something like lifting weights for an hour you may burn anywhere between 200 to 300 maybe 400 calories depending on how intense you are going about that exercise think about something like running for like 30 minutes somewhere between like 250 to 300 calories and this is going to vary obviously based on how intensely you're going like the effort you're putting into it your body size all those different things.
00:20:47
Speaker
But in general, like these are pretty good ranges, like walking for 20 minutes or walking for a mile somewhere around 50 to 100 calories. So you're not burning crazy amounts of calories. When you think about these numbers across the week, let's say you're a person who lifts weights three times per week, and you're burning about 300 calories per workout, 300 times three days per week, that's right around 900 calories. Let's just round it to 1000 to make it easy math, you're burning 1000 calories from lifting weights three times per week. So from a calorie burn standpoint, and like a weight loss standpoint, 1000 calories is not that much, it takes 3500 calories to lose a pound of fat. So if the only thing that you're doing is relying on exercise to lose weight, that's less than a third of a pound of fat loss per week. Or let's take another example, you think of something like jogging, because you do burn
00:21:34
Speaker
more calories, typically jogging or doing like more like moderate to intense cardio than you would just like strictly burning weights. But let's look at jogging. Let's say you're jogging at a moderate pace for, let's say 30 minutes and you're doing that Monday through Friday. So five times a week.
00:21:48
Speaker
300 calories in 30 minutes. Let's take that times five days per week. That's 1500 calories. That's still less than a half a pound of fat loss per week, which by itself, like that's not nothing, but it's also not going to give you crazy progress. And you also have to remember this is with your diet being dialed in. So you'd have to be eating really well. You can't be overdoing it on calories, overeating, because then it's super easy to just have a wash in those extra calories that you're burning from exercise. are now gone because you're eating more food. And so again, thinking about just exercise alone as a way to lose fat and to burn calories, it's just not a very time efficient way to go about
Exercise in Weight Maintenance
00:22:27
Speaker
it. Obviously, the best thing to do is to pair this up with diet because now if you're exercising and you're also eating in a calorie deficit, so you're eating 500 calories less per day, that's 500 calories less per day. Now that's 3,500 calories that's gone. So that's a pound of fat loss. Now you add on lifting weights or some cardio, that's an extra 1,000, 1,500 calories. So now you're in a deficit of anywhere between 4,500, 5,000 calories. So you're losing over a pound of fat loss per week, which is great. That's awesome progress. So obviously the the goal here is to do both of these things but if you're strictly just adding cardio by itself it's not going to burn as many calories as most people think if you have everything dialed in diets good like you're getting your steps in and you have the extra time to do some cardio then by all means go ahead and do that you're going burn a few extra calories speed up that fat loss just a little bit but alone by itself cardio or just activity in general is not going to move the needle that much unless that diet is really dialed in. When you pair those things together, like you could lose 30, 40, 50 plus pounds in a year. I mean, I lost 60 pounds in my first year when I was dieting and exercising. But if you just tried to lose weight alone, just from exercise, which is honestly what a lot of people do, they don't really focus on their diet as much. They'll just get in the gym and they'll just think, I'm going go to the gym six, seven days a week. And I'm just going to really hit it hard. And like, you may see some that scale move a little bit initially, which a lot of that anyway, is just going to be water weight. But throughout the year, they say that if you're just only using exercise as your way to lose weight, you could expect to lose about five pounds, which five pounds versus losing 50 pounds in a year because you're dialing in your diet and your training versus just focusing on training. Obviously, that's a massive difference. And so the takeaway here is just to make sure that you are using exercise because there's going to be tons of benefits with exercise. Like want exercise for all the things outside of weight loss.
00:24:24
Speaker
And then if you have everything dialed in and you want to add in some cardio, then that's an option that you can throw in there too. But just understand what you're actually getting out of these things. When it comes to like cardio and just exercise in general, I think that exercise is way more beneficial for actually maintaining your weight once you have lost a bunch of fat. Obviously, you want to exercise throughout your process of losing weight, it's going to help with that. But when you look at people who are able to lose weight and then actually keep it off, those people exercise regularly, like they're active, they live active lifestyles, they train regularly, they exercise regularly. lift weights, run, do cardio, all those sorts of things. And that really helps to keep that weight off. And I think it does this for a couple reasons. Obviously, you have the extra calorie burn that you're getting that does help a little bit. But more than that, a lot of people, when they're on point with their exercise habits, they tend to be a little bit more in tune with their eating habits as well. So you'll hear people who are like, well, I'm going to the gym pretty regularly, so I want to make better food choices versus like when they get out of that routine of going to the gym, just all bets are off. Like they're eating everything in sight. They're not dialed in. They're just like, whatever, you know, i'm not going to the gym, so i might as well not focus on my eating habits.
00:25:32
Speaker
I'm not a big fan of looking at it that way, you know, this all or nothing approach, like you can always be focusing on one area more than others and still be getting benefits. But the fact of the matter is, that's how a lot of people approach just fitness in general. And so if you can help yourself to just be more dialed in with exercise, it's also going to help you with just being more dialed in. with your diet as well. There's also some research too, to say that people who exercise regularly, they have a little bit better like appetite regulation and things like that. And so there's a lot of really good things that exercise does. And I think every little bit of movement does help, you know, that 1% better that I talk about, but just thinking about exercise alone as the only reason to exercise being like to lose weight or to burn calories, it's just not a very smart way to think about it.
00:26:17
Speaker
Question number or five.
Fitness for Busy Individuals
00:26:19
Speaker
think we got two more questions here. Between work, having young kids, and trying to balance everything, my schedule seems like it's always changing and I really struggle to be consistent with my workouts and eating healthy.
00:26:31
Speaker
Any tips for busy people in this situation? Absolutely. This is a lot of what I just deal with and help people with is just people who live busy lives. They have a lot going on and they just want to figure out a routine that actually works for them. The first thing that I would tell you is figure out what's the minimum amount that you can commit to.
00:26:49
Speaker
A lot of people overschedule themselves or they just take on too much too soon and they can't really commit to it. And so when things start to get a little bit flaky or they can't be consistent, they just say, screw it altogether. I think the much better route to go is to figure out what's the minimum amount that you can actually commit to. So when we think about the gym, maybe you can't commit to four times per week and that's all right. Like stick to two times per week. Like, you know, for certain I can get in the gym two times per week for 60 minutes and I can get really good workouts in those two days per week.
00:27:18
Speaker
Make that your priority and be super consistent with that. Like look at your week and plan it when you are going to do that. And you may have to find times that are not your favorite times to do these things. like Maybe you have to wake up super early to get your workout in. Maybe you have to use the weekend to get your workouts in. Maybe you need to use your lunch break. Sometimes you're just going have to make sacrifices for these things. Like you have to make them a priority somewhere. And then the big thing that I see people missing with this is like you have to schedule it and you have to really just protect these workout times and make it a priority. When you think about exercise and just all the things that it does for you and your health and your physical health and your mental health, reduces your cancer chances. It reduces your chances at big diseases like Alzheimer's and heart disease. It makes your mental health better. It makes your physical health better. You build muscle. Like there's so many different things that I could list right now that exercise provides for you. And when you think about something as simple as getting two workouts in and how much that can help you just to live longer and feel better and enjoy life more, it's like
00:28:20
Speaker
That's something that you should be protecting and really making a priority. And think of it just as important as the other things that you do in your week, like brushing your teeth or taking a shower or going to work. Like it should just be this thing that like you have to do. It's not really an option. It's something that you really want to prioritize because you know how much it helps you.
00:28:39
Speaker
So finding some time in your schedule and then scheduling those in your calendar and like physically put it in there, like put it in there as an appointment because there's a lot of research on this as well. I read a lot of books about habits and things like that. And people are much more likely to stick to and follow through with things when they put it in a schedule and when they name the time and the place and that they're going to be doing this certain activity.
00:29:02
Speaker
So do that. It's super simple, but it does help. The second thing I would say is just to have some sort of backup plan. So maybe for whatever reason, something goes crazy and you're not able to get one of your workouts in, have some sort of backup plan throughout the week. So maybe that's an extra day that you plan in that you know, okay I'm going to have an hour on Saturday. this time to this time where I can get my workout in, or I'm going to have little bit of time on my lunch break on this day, like I can get my workout in that day. So have some sort of black backup plan for when things don't go as well as you would want them to, you know, life just happens sometimes. And the second thing I would say is something is always better than nothing. So even if you can't get the full workout in, maybe you can't get your 60 minutes in, but you still have 30 minutes, like get that 30 minutes in. Maybe you can't get to the gym, but there's an at-home workout that you can do. Do that at-home workout. Maybe you can't even get your regular strength workout in at all. Go for a 30-minute walk. like There's so many things that you can always be doing to just make sure that you keep that momentum rolling and making sure that you're getting some of these benefits and continuing to prioritize your own health. and Just having these things in place can help quite a bit to just keep that ball rolling so you never feel like you're falling off. like You always feel like you're in control and you're continuing to make progress.
00:30:11
Speaker
when it comes to the food side of things like just with healthy meals i think having a plan is extremely important one of my clients him and his wife what they would do on sundays is they would sit down and they would just plan out their meals And they would talk about like, okay, we're going to have this. We have this thing coming up. Like this night, we might need to get takeout. What do we actually want to get?
00:30:29
Speaker
We're going prep for these lunches. We're going have this for breakfast. Like spend some time, like five, 10 minutes on a Sunday planning out what you're gonna have throughout the week. And even better, if you can actually prep some of those meals so you don't have to do that throughout the week. You're going to just be more likely to stick with those things.
00:30:44
Speaker
And then also just having like some quick meals when you are in a pinch, like maybe you do have some meals that you can make in under five or 10 minutes, like those things help a lot or just having quick meals or snacks that you can take on the go, you know, protein bars, protein shakes, different things like that, where you can just make it quick and convenient. So it all just comes down to having some sort of plan and then just figuring out some easy strategies that you can use when life does get busy, because we all know it's going to get busy. So just have
Sleep's Role in Fat Loss and Muscle Building
00:31:10
Speaker
to practice these things. And the more you practice these things, the better that you get at them.
00:31:15
Speaker
Last question of the day. I've heard people talk about the importance of sleep with building muscle and losing fat, but I'm wondering how much of an impact sleep really has and how much do I need to make sure I'm not hurting my progress? This is a great question.
00:31:28
Speaker
So sleep absolutely does matter. And it's one of those foundational things that when you get it right, it helps pretty much every area of your life. And especially with like just health and feeling better, losing fat, having more energy, building muscle, like all those things, sleep does help with that. And so there was a study and I've referenced this study before.
00:31:46
Speaker
It was showing people who slept 5.5 hours versus eight hours and they were both in a calorie deficit. The people who slept five and a half hours, they lost more muscle than the people who slept eight hours. So both groups, they lost the same amount of weight, but the people who were sleeping less were losing more that weight from muscle than they were from fat.
00:32:06
Speaker
The thing about this study is they didn't have these people doing any sort of strength training, which is going to be my next point. Strength training is the biggest signal that you can send to your body to build muscle or even retain muscle, whether your goal is to build muscle or whether it's to lose fat. Like you want to be lifting weights because it's sending that signal to your body to hang on to that muscle or to build muscle. And that is by far the biggest, most important, highest leverage thing that you can do.
00:32:31
Speaker
the second thing is to just make sure that you're focusing on a high protein diet that is also a really strong signal for your body to hold on to that precious muscle mass as you're losing fat or just send your body that signal and give it the building blocks to build muscle if that's your goal as well so when it comes to sleep like where does this fall sleep is still important but again Hit the weights, high protein diet, and then you obviously want to try to get good sleep. But even if you are not getting great sleep, you can still help yourself out a ton by doing those things. When it comes to sleep, it does play a role because if you are having poor sleep, you're going to have less energy. You may start to affect your testosterone levels over time, which can affect your workouts and how you feel and building muscle and different things like that. Having poor sleep can also affect your leptin and ghrelin levels, which control how hungry you feel, how satiated you feel after meals, which if you're always feeling hungry and you don't feel satisfied after your meals, that is not a good combination for losing weight because you're going to tend to eat more.
00:33:28
Speaker
You also probably notice like if you've had really crappy nights of sleep, your cravings the next day, sometimes they're just crazy insane and just off the charts. Like you're just wanting all those sugary things, those salty things, those savory things. Like you're not craving super healthy, high quality foods. You're craving things that are super easy to overeat.
00:33:47
Speaker
All that to say sleep is important, and so the practical takeaway is you can lose fat and build muscle, even when sleep is an ideal if you are lifting weights and having a high protein diet, but it is going to make the process harder so. The overall goal lift weights high protein diet, but also aim for that seven to eight hours of sleep to make the best progress because losing fat.
00:34:06
Speaker
Or building muscle, both those things are already sort of difficult, like they're challenging, they take a lot of work, and they take a lot of consistency, and they take energy and things like that. Like, you don't want to make it harder on yourself by neglecting sleep.
00:34:19
Speaker
And with
Listener Interaction and Athlete Challenge Reminder
00:34:20
Speaker
that being said, those are the six questions for this pod. If you have questions in the future, you can always shoot those to me on Instagram or any of my socials. I really enjoy doing these episodes and just diving a little deeper and providing some more insight to more these contextual or situational type of questions that people have. So if you have those in the future, send those over. Again, mention the challenge, but if you're interested in that, you can find the link in the show notes. And I appreciate you listening and we will see you next week.