When to Add Cardio vs Drop Calories for Fat Loss

Jeremiah and Natalie discuss effective strategies for fat loss, particularly focusing on when to add cardio versus reducing caloric intake.

00:00 Introduction to Fat Loss Strategies

12:54 Understanding Cardio vs. Caloric Reduction

17:22 Balancing Stress and Nutrition for Optimal Results

18:24 Managing Fat Loss: Strategies and Considerations

24:13 Client Case Studies: Real-World Applications

30:42 Combining Cardio and Caloric Deficit: A Dual Approach

36:11 Recap and Key Takeaways: Leveraging Strategies for Success

Keywords

fat loss, cardio, caloric reduction, nutrition, body composition, women fitness, advanced training, health coaching, weight loss strategies, exercise

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hey team, welcome back to the show. Today is coach Natalie and I, and we are going to be digging into when to add cardio versus drop calories for fat loss. So really this is going to be very specific to women who are already quite lean, trying to get leaner, or I would say relatively lean, trying to get leaner. This is really by far our most common clientele. Hey, we're already in a pretty good place. Are you having above average physique? but taking it, I want to take it to the next level. So that's, again, kind of our target audience with this episode. We'll touch on considerations for others as well, especially if you're a coach, this will really help with your decision-making process. But this is or can be such an important lever for us to pull in fat loss phases, especially as we get more advanced. Just most people don't understand when and how we should be pulling this lever. So Really from this episode, you should take away a simple framework for decision-making when it comes to deciding, should I do more cardio? Should I reduce my food? Some client examples and common mistakes to avoid. But Natalie, before we get into it, any personal updates from you this week? Anything new going on?

SPEAKER_00: 1:10

Last week when we spoke, I was kind of like teasing deload. I was like, I think I need one. I don't know. And Turns out I didn't or not yet. Um, so I have not deloaded. Um, my, I think I also mentioned that my sleep was a little weird last week and like, I don't know why, like it just kind of was, but that feels very much back on track this week. Like some really satisfying sleeps, um, thankfully. And so surprise, surprise as a result, I feel a lot better. It's funny how that works. Wow. Sleep is important. Um, so I feel a lot better this week. Um, I know like Again, training performance was still like really high last week. And I was just like, man, I'm just like feeling a little bit like moody, like motivation is not where it usually is, which is usually a big red flag for me. But again, that also goes to show you how things like lack of sleep can affect things like motivation, right? Because it's like now very satisfied with my sleep and, you know, life is great again. So... Yeah. It's crazy

SPEAKER_01: 2:15

what a difference that makes though.

SPEAKER_00: 2:17

It is. And I feel like I haven't experienced that in a while, you know, like such a, like a kind of stark contrast from like one week to the next. Um, so it was kind of like just really reaffirming for like, ah, yeah. Okay, cool. Um, so still pushing really hard and like training has felt. like really good. Um, getting my weekend naps in, which has been really helpful. Yeah. Okay. Like now it's like become a weekend non-negotiable. Um, and I just tell myself, I'm like, it's extra recovery. So

SPEAKER_01: 2:48

how long are we talking here?

SPEAKER_00: 2:50

Oh, no, I just did like one Saturday, one Sunday. But it's like Sunday was really interesting. I went to the gym a lot later than usual. And it's like my biggest session, like posterior, it takes me takes me forever. It like is so soul sucking. But like, I had a really slow morning and like got in extra meals because I don't normally train that late. Right. So like, by the time I trained, I had more food in me. And I had a nap beforehand. It was such a great session. So I think like, and then of course, the gym was empty, because like, only the the losers are there at like three o'clock on a Sunday. It's like me. Um, so yeah, that might be my new Sunday jam. And I like, that's kind of what I'm currently into.

SPEAKER_01: 3:31

Just like a three hour nap or like a 20 minute nap.

SPEAKER_00: 3:35

Um, I feel like I probably got a good, like 30 to 45 minutes of sleep and then just kind of like laid there. Yeah, it was wonderful. And like, yeah, it was great. So I'm hoping to maybe repeat that this Sunday. Um,

SPEAKER_01: 3:50

Oh, okay. I like it. Well, I'm glad to hear. Feeling better. Life isn't spiraling anymore. And we didn't need to deload. That's good news.

SPEAKER_00: 3:58

Yes, because, you know, we just got to keep pushing. I feel like I'm on borrowed time here. Like, how much muscle can I get before we have to diet? Because those lines are fading. I will tell you that. But I was asking you when we signed on about your updates because I feel like I haven't talked to you and I don't really know what you're doing over there.

SPEAKER_01: 4:21

Yeah. So I'm still in fat loss. Basically came back from Portugal, a good bit lower. And since then, we did the– continued to drop like the week after. Then we did like the more aggressive refeed. Which went super well. And since then, things haven't moved quite as much. So we just made another adjustment. Basically, the plan was as of, what, Tuesday to basically push hard. And then Monday, the plan was two to maybe three more weeks at most, push hard and get a little bit more aggressive, wrap up that loss from there. So basically, we bumped to seven days a week cardio, 40 minutes, which is been fine I kind of like it

SPEAKER_00: 5:12

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 5:14

I was five days at 40 minutes so it was just lower body days and now I'm just doing lower body days as well so I just do that first thing in the morning always train I train around noon these days so no I like that I really like I like how it like forces me to get out of bed and like right away kind of get moving rather than just jack around so I And it's a very easy way to get ahead on your steps for the day if you count it towards your steps, which we do. And then we shifted food around a little bit. It's interesting because I feel like I have more food actually because I have a lot more carbs. He pulled my fat totals down quite a bit. So I'm at like, I think I'm at like 30 grams on both days. And it's like just my first two meals are fat, have fat, and then the rest, it's just carbs and protein, of course. But my carbs went up a good bit due to that. And calorie totals are basically the same as they were before, but it's like a lower fat, higher carb approach. And there were some interesting things he did there. I'm waiting on him to clarify, and then I can speak to a little bit more, which I'll chat with you about after this. But yeah, so I mean, definitely have felt better. I can definitely tell I'm in a larger deficit. Definitely been a lot hungrier the last couple of days already. Still haven't seen it show up a whole lot on the scale. I had one of the nights, Katie's birthday was Wednesday, Tuesday night. I worked a margarita into my macros. I don't know if that was like the room was hella salty. And then after that, I drank a ton of water and electrolytes because I don't want to feel... hungover or anything of the sort because I don't hardly drink in fat loss. So thus my tolerance is very low. So after that, like the scale, I mean, that was just like the scale was like 217 the next day, which I expected it to be up a bit. Then it was like back down to like mid 214, 214 this morning. Lowest I've seen is like 212.9, I think. So honestly, I'm betting like with the next day or two, I'm definitely leaner and I've still looked leaner visually like since the refeed. Just haven't seen the scale move a whole lot. But I'm betting in the next day or two, that changes quite a lot just based on how I feel. But that's where we're at currently.

SPEAKER_00: 7:18

Training still feels good?

SPEAKER_01: 7:20

Yeah, training still feels pretty good. Have

SPEAKER_00: 7:22

there been any adjustments to your training? We

SPEAKER_01: 7:27

shifted things a little bit. I started training back in the home gym with one of my sessions. I basically had everything I trained with there. Uh, yeah, we actually didn't have the change. We, well, we changed like the prime, we changed like one of the other prime machines for the prime machine that I have. So for the, like the prime chest support row, which I like better than what I was using before. So past that though, like that hasn't, so that was really a big change. And then, uh, from some of my, one of my lower body days, um, he added a little bit more volume via leg extensions and he moved a couple of things around where it's basically like, Red ranges are quite a bit lower for my compounds, like five to eight. Even like a lot of my isolation movements, we might be like five to 10. And then it seems like we're doing a little bit more almost like a free exhaust type work. So like I have a chest fly before my press, for example. I have leg extensions before my pendulum squat. And then he added a little bit of volume via leg extensions to my last lower body day, pulled a little bit of volume from both pendulum squat and dumbbell split squats, which I am not mad about. So I'm just, I mean, currently I'm just doing one hard set of those. And then I have like, I didn't have any late extensions on the day and now I'm doing two sets there, but it's a pretty easy trade off. So they were really just like kind of fatigue management. Um, and yeah, that's kind of what we've done so far. I really, again, I would say it probably like week and a half, two and a half weeks at most, and then we'll probably be wrapped up with it.

SPEAKER_00: 9:02

Are you like ready to kind of wrap up? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:07

I haven't really thought about it. Honestly. I don't feel like it's been like a, hasn't really been a fat loss phase that has really hurt. You know what I mean? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:16

I just did Instagram live with Andrea, like literally like right before this. And we were, um, we were talking about her client, Rachel's mini cut, um,

SPEAKER_01: 9:28

And

SPEAKER_00: 9:28

the question was like, why did you opt to do like a nine week mini cut versus like a slower fat loss? And so we like kind of got into that and we started getting into like the mini cut, like mentality and mindset side of things. I know you're not in a mini cut, but we started talking like some mindset and we were both just like, you know, sometimes you just like, you kind of cultivate that mindset of like, I just like want this to hurt. Like I want it to be hard. Like I'm ready, you know? And that makes such a difference.

UNKNOWN: 9:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:56

Um, I think in like how you show up and, and, um, and I know you, you like were geared up for this when you all started. So I

SPEAKER_01: 10:06

don't even know if I personally would say I want it to hurt. Like,

SPEAKER_00: 10:09

but it just, I don't

SPEAKER_01: 10:10

know if I want that. Like if it's easy, I'm, I'm for sure good with that. It's just, you know, it's just like, this is just fun and it's fun to see like my physique change, but it hasn't really gotten to the point yet where, um, Truly, again, I think the cardio thing, people can think, it's easy to think, oh, that would suck. But honestly, I feel like it's so much easier than when I was eating 2,100, 2,200 calories at the start of this deficit. I for sure would want to be done if I was still doing that. So I feel like that's a big part of it as well. I mean, I'm for sure, I'm excited to have more food. I know training will feel better and more productive, but it's just been cool. I mean, as long as I feel like I'm learning something new, being challenged and I'm happy. So it's been fun.

SPEAKER_00: 10:58

Excited to see where you guys end up a couple of weeks from now. Likewise. And then what the plan is for after that.

SPEAKER_01: 11:05

Yeah. The plan after that is just to get jacked. It sounds like he thinks my quads suck. So those need to come up and which I've been saying for a long time too. And, um, I feel like everyone else said that too. My other coaches are like, no, good quads is normally biceps and chest, which I always feel like are a strength. Um, but then what

SPEAKER_00: 11:28

about a calf specialization phase?

SPEAKER_01: 11:31

Yeah. Calves. Everyone says my calves suck. Uh, I, I know that, but I don't care to do a calf specialization phase, but basically his initial feedback was front delts arms need to come up as we got in leaner quads. So I'm imagining those will be priorities. I'm, Up for whatever. I honestly would love to have just a huge butt. I would honestly really like more glutes than I have. Not that we're leaner, but...

SPEAKER_00: 11:56

I think it is really cool to... And productive, both from a fat loss perspective. You're always going to push yourself to new levels and see what you can achieve. But to really get a good sense of where your physique is. Yeah. Like... an objective opinion like your coach you know like get a real good sense of like a good lay of the land there um which can just be so helpful for like charting the the path forward

SPEAKER_01: 12:23

oh yeah

SPEAKER_00: 12:24

so yeah if

SPEAKER_01: 12:25

you can start from like the leaner you can get prior better idea you have of that and it's also a really i mean it that you can build for a very long time i'm excited for this next phase too because i know i can manage building phases very well and i can like be lean and still feel very good so it'll be fun

SPEAKER_00: 12:42

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 12:42

cool Ready

SPEAKER_00: 12:43

to get into the episode. And having a building buddy for a few weeks. For a

SPEAKER_01: 12:47

few weeks at least. And then the roles will, the turns will table.

SPEAKER_00: 12:50

Yeah. Ready to get into it.

SPEAKER_01: 12:55

All right. So again, talking through when to add cardio versus drop calories for fat loss. So first we need to understand the tools that we're using here. So of course, when it comes to fat loss, it's pretty simple equation, right? We need to burn more calories. than we consume in a day calories out need to be greater than calories in so of course when the goal is to get leaner that is the key now thing to understand there is there are two different levers we can pull to create more fat loss we have calories in aka our nutrition so hey we can decrease calories or we can increase calories out via movement that could be more steps that could be more cardio here we're going to be talking specifically about cardio I feel like we've talked about this a ton lately too, probably because we're all doing so much of it. But typically again, talking about zone two cardio in this instance. So like 70% of your max heart rate or like 220 minus your age times 0.7, pretty easy formula to figure out kind of close to where we should be. So for most people that ends up being like somewhere between 125 and 135 ish beats per minute is a pretty safe place for us to be in zone two. And yeah, When we're like incline walking, we're on the bike, we're stair mill, whatever it is, just watching our heart rate and making sure that we are staying in that range. But so again, we can pull the increased calories out lever or the decreased calories in lever. But it is important to remember here, we're not just focusing on fat loss or weight loss. We're also focusing on creating the best body composition. So we need to look deeper here when we're going about this. especially again for like this type of client we work with where you're not just brand new to this it's not like we we have less margin for error we can get away with less and we need to be more tactical with the way we approach things so we do need to look deeper than just we need to create a calorie deficit and consider things like okay are we hitting our micronutrient availability needs for example this is one like when we're just focusing on manipulating the calorie side of things we're just dropping calories lower and lower Especially again, for like this type of client, typically this is someone who is relative, has a relatively, I mean, just looking at like men versus women, typically like a female will have to eat fewer calories in order to lose because you'll typically have a smaller frame and smaller total body weight, right? You're going to have to eat quite a bit less typically to lose body fat than someone who's 6'2 and 210 pounds, right? That person might be able to eat 2,200 calories and lose it a good clip. Whereas you might have to eat 1,200 calories to lose it a good clip. So the problem we run into there is you can have a much harder time getting, just because we have less overall calories to work with, can be a lot harder to get all of the micronutrients in we need. Just we have less food. For things like our berries and eggs and all this stuff that it gives us again, like our selenium, our B vitamins, we need to support our thyroid, our sex hormones in turn, really allowing us to have the healthiest, most responsive body. So if those things are missing, much harder for us to get the result we want in the phase, because again, our body will literally just be less responsive to both fat loss, muscle growth, recovery will be harder. Also like us, again, just focusing on slashing calories lower and lower with this type of person specifically, It drives down our energy availability. Basically think of this as a ratio of the total calories we're consuming relative to our body weight. And when this starts to get low, we again further see like, hey, this is when it's very common for like a woman to lose her menstrual cycle. And that's like a sign, hey, sex hormones aren't in a great place. Also really tying a thing like our thyroid health. So thus, again, this can really just hurt our ability to have the most healthy, responsive body. And if we're driving calories lower, our carbon intake will typically be much lower as well, which will lead to our training performance suffering and our ability to build or at very least maintain muscle and recover well is going to really suffer. So, I mean, when we're looking at calories versus cardio, there are some cons to cardio as well, right? I kind of just laid out a lot of cons to just dropping calories. Neither is inherently better, but it's again about knowing like the right time to use each tool. Anything you would add to that before we dig into when we might pull the calorie lever? No,

SPEAKER_00: 17:22

I think that was very thorough. Yeah. But basically, when dieting, we want you to be eating as much as possible for as long as possible. That's the... broad goal, right? Like, as for as long as we can keep food relatively high, like that's what we want, because everything's going to be better. But then once like, again, this like lean person trying to get leaner, this is when it becomes like really an art of balancing these factors, because what we're really having to manipulate is according to your stress levels. So we're basically trying to manage stress across physical, mental, all of these things. And that's where all of these levers come into play. It's like, how much of this dial are we turning to kind of keep you at your At best, I guess. Fat loss probably isn't going to be the best that you feel. But relatively speaking, how can we best manage all of these things with the levers that we have but keep moving productively toward fat loss?

SPEAKER_01: 18:43

That's a really good way to put it. And I think that ties very well into when it might make sense to pull the calorie lever. So... I would say a few signs you should potentially, or instances where we might just look to just reduce calories with a client, would be first, if you're doing a high amount of cardio already and you're maxed out on what your client can or is willing to do. This depends a lot on the person. I think that normally people are pretty up to do a good amount of cardio. Especially

SPEAKER_00: 19:21

this type of avatar. Yeah. Like this is the person again, like you're all about it. Right. So it's like, if it's a conversation of like, yo, how do you feel about adding another day of cardio? They're like, they're here for it. Like,

SPEAKER_01: 19:33

yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. With this, with this demographic where, and I'll speak to this more, but again, like a typically like the more gym pop we are, the less this is like, I love the development and more it gets to be like, I just have to lose this for my health or whatever it may be. Yeah. That is where a lot of times it might just be, hey, the person just isn't up for it. Or maybe there are truly lifestyle factors where like, hey, this just doesn't make as much sense. Like right now we're sleeping five hours a night with like our ability to manage our schedule or your schedule is truly just so chaotic. And like, I would rather us not shift that to like four hours a night so we can do more cardio. So there are a lot of sometimes lifestyle constraints like that. Or if we get to the point where like in my instance, okay, I'm doing cardio seven days a week, 40 minute sessions, right? above 40 minute sessions, we may start to get an increased hunger response due to that. So like, if I wanted to go further, it would be like, then I do cardio sessions in the evening as well. I mean, if I, I would be up for it, like if I was told to, but I

SPEAKER_00: 20:35

passed that point,

SPEAKER_01: 20:37

passed that point, passed that point. I don't, I mean, I don't, There haven't been very many instances where I've taken someone to like seven days a week of cardio. I think for most people, we typically ride around four or five days a week is typically plenty. But it could make sense as well to drop calories a bit more if appetite and hunger are still pretty manageable and we have plenty of wiggle room in the calories and pulling food feels quite easy. And I mean, this is part of why typically like the first adjustment we make when we're hopping into fat loss is We have a place where, hey, there is a lot of food for us to pull. So maybe we are doing like we're pulling some food, we're adding some cardio. Maybe it is mostly just food. Like a lot of times I'll make just this very small, like if we're not doing cardio, it might just be, hey, I just want to get this person in the habit of it. I'm just going to pull some food initially and maybe just like three or four, 10, 15 minute sessions. And then from there, we'll ramp that up and we might not mess with food as much after. If the person's steps are quite low, like if it's someone only doing like two to 3,000 steps a day, Unless I can see them just very consistently, which again, this speaks to that like very beginner client, unless I can see them like long-term doing cardio, we know that your daily NEAT is basically think steps, right? Pacing, fidgeting, and blanking, but within what we can measure steps. That is going to be a huge, like that being higher is going to be a huge dictator of whether they actually maintain fat loss or not, right? So I want to focus on that first and just bringing that up. Hey, can we like park further away? Can we get more walking more? One of my clients, she's a teacher. She messaged me yesterday. Who I'm going to use as a case study here. She messaged me yesterday and was like, she teaches first grade and her kids were like, I've noticed we're taking so many more exercise breaks lately. And she was like, yeah, my coach told me I had to get more stuff sent, but she's been doing great. It just cracked me up. They were, she was like, they're so excited about it. So thank you. I got you.

SPEAKER_00: 22:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 22:36

Very, very, very soon. They're all going to go to the gym together as well. Be the most jacked class of first graders. Someone who has less muscle and or a higher body fat is where we could. It doesn't mean that like adding cardio is the wrong move here, but we probably have room to pull calories a little bit lower because the fuel demand for hard training and recovery will be less than And, or we can use more of those endogenous calories, basically fat, think of it as just stored calories, to fuel our training. Similarly, if you're just not training a lot much, we need less fuel for our ability to push hard, less to recover. So probably are going to have to, and it might make sense to diet a little bit more aggressively. Anything else you would add on that front? So, I mean, when we're talking about considerations, Again, it is important to consider here if we're pushing calories too low, the way this can negatively impact our ability to train hard, our ability to recover. Even if it gets to the point where we would never do this as coaches, but if we're pushing protein too low to where we don't have enough to recover on that front, we talked about already how detrimental pushing carbs too low can be. for our muscle glycogen stores, impact that can have on things like menstrual cycle, our ability to hit our nutrient density needs, our micronutrient needs can take a big hit here as well if we're pushing calories too low. So a few things to consider, but I already kind of touched on those earlier. Now, an example of someone where I have just pulled calories so far is that exact client I was referencing earlier, my girl Sue. When we started with me like four weeks ago, I'm really stoked for her though. Like she's in a place where it's like, I want to lose 40, 50 pounds to get to just back to healthy. Um, I've always struggled with like any diet. I've really struggled to see progress on a lot of medications, how to basically just had a lot going on. Um, so like looking at her, it was very much just, Hey, there's a lot with food selection. We need to improve. There is like a lot of lifestyle factors, like, Hey, we're not sleeping. Um, our steps are very low, et cetera. So we really just started with a very simple, easy to execute plan. And she's crushed it, right? It's just basically a meal plan, repeats every day. So basically took what she was already doing, tweaked it a little bit to make sure we could hit our micronutrient needs, support a few things with like your gut health better. And hey, let's slowly ramp your steps up. So we started like 2000, we're now at like 5,500. And I want to continue to probably ramp those up to like 8K. Now she's doing great. She's, I think in our first four weeks, she's lost like seven and a half pounds. She's stoked about it. I'm stoked about it. Now, in the future, could it make sense for us to add in a cardio? For sure. It's just initially, I wanted to make sure this felt easy for her to implement. And we, again, prioritized the biggest rocks first. Anything else you would add there?

SPEAKER_00: 25:35

No, I'm stoked to see what you've been doing with Sue, though. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 25:39

that's my girl. I'm stoked for

SPEAKER_00: 25:42

her, too. Just to speak to that, I guess... I don't know. Nothing that you haven't already said, but you're right. It's like, what's, what's the biggest rock and the lowest hanging fruit for this person? I mean, honestly, sometimes the calorie pull is like, you know, from a time perspective.

SPEAKER_01: 26:06

Yeah. And I find again, like a lot or like in her instance, it's just an easier thing to manipulate. She's not hungry at all. We've actually been able to consistently increase food. So it's a lot of times in that instance, it might just make the most sense originally or initially. Yep. Cool. All right. So when it comes to when it might make sense to pull the cardio lever, we already kind of talked through what this looks like. But first we want to make sure, again, typically zone two. But first we want to make sure that you actually have the time to make it work, which again, most people in this demographic do. And as I kind of alluded to earlier, I think especially for women who are already lean, trying to get leaner, pulling the cardio lever a lot more, a lot more than most people do. I think people think of like the bodybuilding space or maybe like you've done, like, I don't feel like people as much anymore, like do a bodybuilding prep just to get in shape. I feel like back in the day, it was a lot more common thing. And there'd be like, I feel like it used to be a lot more common that I have clients who were like, I did a prep, like, 10 years ago just to get in shape for summer or something like that. And like they had me doing like two hours of cardio a day and it was just basically shitty, I think. But I don't find that to be all that common anymore. And again, in this instance, I think it makes sense for us to pull that cardio lever a lot more. As I mentioned, if you're more petite, you will have to diet on quite a lot lower calories. So it probably makes sense for us to use a good amount of cardio to drive the deficit once we're already fairly lean. especially if you have a good amount of muscle and you're training relatively often and hard, like four to five days per week. Again, we need more external fuel at this point. Like when we're not as lean, we can get away with dieting on lower calories. Our body will use like our body fat stores for more energy to fuel our day-to-day or training, et cetera. Here, we are going to need more external food coming in to support our ability to train hard, cover well. And thus it makes sense for us to keep food higher and use more cardio to drive a larger deficit. Again, especially as you get to be someone who has to diet on relatively low calories in order to keep losing. I would also say if hunger is quite high or if you're someone who struggles with hunger more when dieting, a lot of times using cardio a bit more can make sense. I find generally like us doing a little bit more cardio, eating more food has a much smaller impact on hunger than dropping calories. Again, I think my own mini cut's a great example. Well, not a mini cut anymore, but it started off as a mini cut. By the end of the first four weeks, like 2,100 to 2,200 calories that I was on daily, I was pretty hungry. Didn't feel like a whole lot of food at all, but I was only doing two 20-minute cardio sessions. I'm way leaner now than I was then, way further in the diet, but I feel like I'm eating so much more food now, but I'm also doing a lot more cardio. I'm doing, what is it, 280 minutes of cardio a week rather than 40 minutes a week. Um, but I find typically as a little bit, hunger has a, or cardio has a little bit smaller impact on our hunger going up versus us dropping calories. Anything else you would add?

SPEAKER_00: 29:19

Yeah. I think also, uh, mentally, like I know you're, you're doing fasted cardio, right? First thing.

SPEAKER_01: 29:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 29:25

Like a lot of times when you're dieting and you're like waking up and your stomach's growling, maybe you're like a little bit hungry. Um, cardio actually helps, right? You know, like when you just like get up and get moving and it's like, I'm gonna like some water, coffee, that, that hunger is fleeting. You know, obviously like you're hungry enough that you could eat at any time, but like it, it really just like, it's, it kind of helps distract you a little bit. I think, um, I noticed like when I'm dieting, if I'm like training, same kind of principle, right? Like once I, you know, it might be like kind of hungry at like the start of my training session, but then once I get going, um, I kind of get distracted because hunger wasn't so severe. It's not so bad, but it's kind of enough to be noticeable. And then once you get going with cardio, you're fine. So I feel like in practice, that's how it helps too. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 30:19

no, I fully agree. It does definitely. I will wake up and get decently hungry a lot of mornings lately. But then as soon as I get on, I just forget about it as soon as I kind of start working. start my incline walking, so not a huge deal at all. I mean, I honestly think like the example I use there is a pretty good case study with myself where we have used a lot more of that. Then when might it make sense to use both? So kind of a combo strategy, we're pulling both the cardio and dropping calories lever at the same time. I don't think this, again, like low calories, high cardio, basically, unless we're really pushing hard for like a specific event. If we're a lean person with a lot of muscle, a lot of times isn't gonna make the most sense. Again, we will typically start someone in a deficit with a bit of cardio and a calorie adjustment. And then from there, like for this demographic, cool, I'm gonna probably like maybe first adjustment after that. It's still very dependent, but maybe we'll like pull both the levers a bit or like lean more towards more cardio if we can until we max it out and then like pull food if needed. But when we're looking at doing both, and again, like a good amount of cardio, going through down a decent bit, one really interesting approach I've used a lot more lately, my client Matt is a really good example of this. So it's with clients who have higher body fat levels. So basically, like we said before, there's more endogenous food, there's more food already stored in your body to use for fuel, right? Also, this is very important. It's for clients where, hey, I know our health is in a good place. I don't have any concerns that we need a health phase in order to respond to this. And we're in a good position to pull both these levers. But the thing here is people with a higher body fat, really for them, we don't necessarily have a problem. We're looking at how do we lose fat? Okay, we need to, catecholamines act on the cell. We need to get the fat out of the cell, into the bloodstream. We need to use it for fuel. The people typically will have a good amount of fat actually like floating around in the bloodstream already, just trouble burning it for fuel basically. Normally their insulin sensitivity, metabolic flexibility, so basically ability to use carbs and fat for fuel are poor. Here again, like a lot of times we're talking about fat. As I mentioned before, like a lot of fat like floating around the bloodstream, we're just not using it for fuel well. So we need to basically get your body better at that as well. Okay. So here, looking at this and like, how can we improve that? I thought about this on a podcast. I shared it, I guess, on our channel here as well. I talked about this on a podcast with Jeff Hain recently also. But when we're looking at how could we potentially improve this, basically our body's ability to use more fat as fuel. Okay, we can kind of like force it to use more fat as fuel and we can improve our mitochondrial health and density, basically, which will really help with that fat oxidation further. So When we're looking at, how do we do that? Basically like us doing a lot of zone two cardio will really first, like when we're doing zone two cardio in that, like again, like one 30 ish beats per minute range that we will typically be using fat as a preferred fuel source. So already we're kind of in that lane of, Hey, we're using more fat for fuel. I'm alongside that. Zone 2 cardio really helps improve our mitochondria, which in turn will help with our ability to use the fat for fuel. And in concert with this, if we pull food down, again, like in this instance, so like in Matt's example here, what we did was we started him off with a foundation phase where we were just basic hypertrophy, making sure he moved really well, trained hard, just got him dialed in on his food and saw how he responded with a more balanced intake. And then for eight weeks, we went into a phase where I was pushing him quite hard. I dropped his carbs way down. His carbs were quite low, actually. And I ramped his cardio up pretty considerably. I think he was doing six days a week cardio, like 30 to 40 minutes per session. And for eight weeks, we hung out there. As far as like his training went, he was still doing like enough hypertrophy training to hold on to tissue. And he still continued to progress, but it wasn't nearly as specific to hypertrophy as before. And I was having him like in each session. Go ahead. Was

SPEAKER_00: 34:38

that like two days a week training?

SPEAKER_01: 34:40

He was doing three days a week. So he was doing four days a week prior. I pulled him back to three days a week, actually. And like, hey, each training session ended with 30 minutes. And it was basically just like four or five compound movements. I think it was basically four compound movements in each training session. Again, hey, we'll touch on everything enough to maintain the tissue that we built. But again, like fat loss, improving metabolic flexibility, nutrient partitioning, all these things is our number one priority currently. So we hung out there for eight weeks. Dude made a ton of progress. I mean, we're down like his physique, from how his physique looks, it looks like we're down like 26, 27 pounds. He's built a ton of muscle in the process. The scale is showing up as like right around 20 pounds that we've lost, but we made a crazy amount of progress. And then once we started at the point where, okay, I'm really starting to feel pretty garbage in my training. Visually, we're starting to get leaner. We're starting to get close to 20-ish percent body fat, where I feel good about us being able to feed you more food, feed us more carbs. And we've improved a lot of these adaptations that we want, or we've gotten a lot of these adaptations that we wanted. Now we're back to a more moderate approach, focusing on more recomp, more carbs, more hypertrophy training. So it's been really, really interesting to go through. Are you- So we pulled him back. He's still at three days a week for 40 minutes. Okay. So basically training days, he trains rest days, he does cardio, but they have like a garage gym set up. They have a treadmill in their garage. So that makes it pretty easy as well.

SPEAKER_00: 36:07

That helps a ton with everything that we're talking about today.

SPEAKER_01: 36:11

That does help. And that's like, you can find super easy on the Facebook marketplace. It's really easy to snag like a treadmill and a little lip goal or something of the sort. And it does just help so much. I have one in my garage and That makes a big difference.

SPEAKER_00: 36:23

I saw your client, Lexi, just got like a Stairmaster for her home gym. I'm like, dang.

SPEAKER_01: 36:29

Yeah. Now her home gym is going to be legit.

SPEAKER_00: 36:32

Like the extra mile there.

SPEAKER_01: 36:34

Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. Shout out to Lexi. She is very good at going the extra mile. Anything else that you want to add here before we wrap it up?

SPEAKER_00: 36:43

Not off the top of my head. You did a really good job covering that.

SPEAKER_01: 36:48

Thank you. I

SPEAKER_00: 36:50

feel like I haven't done it.

SPEAKER_01: 36:52

To recap, really, it is biggest thing here to understand is we need to use the lever that gives you the most return for the least downside for your current context. Again, we use three different case studies of three people, all in much different situations, but we kind of need to zoom out and look at to create the best body composition here. Which of these levers is going to be best for us at this time? And again, the more advanced you get, the more important it is for us to really look in depth at what that might be. So if you enjoy the show, do us a huge favor, leave us a five-star rating or interview. If you want to apply for coaching, hit the link in the show notes and we will catch you guys next time.