My Takes on Aggressive Dieting, Cardio for Weight Loss, & Low Volume Training

On today's episode of Transformation Talks, I share my takes on three hot topics in the fitness industry right now: aggressive dieting, cardio for weight loss, and low volume training.

Here's the free low volume training program you'll hear me mention toward the end: https://hercules-performance.kit.com/9e5865d1c3

Apply for 1:1 coaching here if you want me to personally set up your plan and help you see the fastest, best results possible—then show you how to sustain them:  https://samforget.com/coaching/

Email me any other thoughts or questions you have here: mail@samforget.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome back to another episode of Transformation Talks. I'm your host, Sam Forger, and today we'll be getting into three very hot topics in the fitness industry right now: aggressive dieting, cardio for weight loss, and low volume training. I don't know about you, but when I scroll my feed right now, which I realize is very fitness skewed, I see people talking about the three of these very, very often. So I felt like they'd be good to touch upon today. And on the off chance, you have not seen people discussing this on your feed, because perhaps your feed isn't as uh fitness-centric as mine. Let's start with a little bit of background as to, or on, I should say, the usual recommendations in these three areas. So when it comes to the dieting side of things, for a while now we've seen people recommend slow and steady, sustainable. Don't do anything now that you wouldn't do forever. With cardio, people, myself included, have generally said, hey, don't think of this as a weight loss tool. It's inefficient, it can negatively impact your relationship with exercise. It can negatively impact your relationship with nutrition, even because while you're eating, you're thinking about how much cardio you might have to do to burn off that food. And with training, we've always seen a lot of bodybuilding influence. So it would not be uncommon where, so I should say uh moderate to higher volume training for the most part. So it would not be uncommon that I work with a new client, I ask them to show me what they have been doing for workouts. And it looks straight out of an old school bodybuilding magazine where it is a body part split, maybe chest and tries, back and buys, a leg day, a shoulder day with a lot of exercises and a lot of sets. So, say on that chest and try day, maybe it is a barbell bench press, four sets of 10 to 12. Then you move on to an incline, dumbbell bench press, three sets at 12 to 15. And then you move on to a fly, maybe a push-up, a dip, some tricep pushdowns, and just bodybuilding style, moderate to high bodybuilding has also shifted in recent years, which is a separate topic. But as a whole, yes, I would say moderate to higher volume stuff. Whereas now the things I'm seeing on my feed are basically the opposite. Dieting, people are talking about, you know, be aggressive, get in and out as quickly as you can. Do not let your diet drag on, even if that means a very low calorie total, something people have advised against. Cardio, yeah, it's a valuable weight loss tool. That's the content I'm seeing now. So get your diet in check, yes, but add cardio to speed up your weight loss results. Training, this might be the biggest shift I've seen. Now everybody's talking about low volume training, minimum effective dose. You're doing maybe four to five exercises, two to three hard sets of each, and kind of a get-in and get uh get-out approach to training as well. You don't need to have these big marathon sessions in the gym. So, for today's episode, I'll tell you my take on each of these uh pendulum swings, which are pretty typical for the fitness industry. I don't doubt that what I'm talking about now will not be that relevant. In three to five to ten years, pretty much everything is in for a while, then out for a while. If you've been in the industry for a little bit, or if you've been a fitness enthusiast for a while, I'm sure you've already seen this where this year it's okay, we're gonna go high fat, we're gonna go low carb. And then a little bit of time passes. It's like, no, no, no, you want to go low fat, and then you want to go high carb. And that's a nutrition example, of course, but you name it. Anything that's in now is often quote unquote out a little while from now, and then it cycles back in. So uh those are that background, those caveats aside. Let's get into my takes on each of these. Starting with the dieting side of things. So, like I said, we have seen a shift from slow and steady, sustainable, no very low calorie targets to basically get in and get out as quickly as possible. Drop your calories lower, do not let your diet drag on. I think a good place for us to start with this specific topic is by actually defining what aggressive dieting is, because I think if you pull 100 people from the street and say, hey, what might an aggressive diet look like, the vast majority of them are going to refer to rules or strict protocol, maybe something like no carbs, no alcohol, no sugar for 30 days, something like that. Which, yeah, that's that's aggressive and kind of, I don't know if layman's terms is the right description, but I want to clarify that when I refer to an aggressive diet, when most fitness professionals refer to an aggressive diet, we are just talking about how big your calorie deficit is, basically how far under your maintenance calories are you? Now, also in typical fitness industry fashion, there's no universal rule for what like technically crosses the threshold into okay, you are now officially doing an aggressive diet. But I would say if you ask most experienced professionals what seems aggressive to you, most people are gonna say 20 to 25%, sometimes a little bit more, under your maintenance calories, which tends to be better than just using blanket things like, oh, if you're more than 500 under your maintenance calories, that's aggressive. Because for somebody like myself, and actually, let me put my calculator now. Let me give you a quick example of what I mean. If I go percentage-based and say, okay, I'm gonna drop 25% under my maintenance, which happens to be about 3,000, I would just do 3,000 times 0.75, and I'm at 2,250 calories per day. And I've dieted around there before, and I would say it is slightly aggressive, but it's manageable. It's nothing that's gonna absolutely crush me. And that's 750 calories under maintenance. If you take somebody with lower maintenance calories, like a lot of say the smaller women that I work with who might maintain on 1700, 1800 calories per day, that same 750 under maintenance is an enormous deficit. It's gonna pull them down to a thousand calories or so off the top of my head. I don't know, it's a 40% deficit. So obviously far more aggressive, which is why, you know, I can't really think of an exception where it wouldn't be better to go with something percentage-based rather, because then that's all relative. That's specific to you and your situation rather than a blanket thing, like, oh, if you're more than 500 calories under maintenance, that's aggressive. Because, for example, I work with clients who are, you know, looking to lose 50, 100 pounds. They might maintain on 3,500 calories, um, even closer to 4,000 calories at times. So they might be able to get away with a thousand calories under maintenance and still have plenty of food on their plate as long as that those calories are used well. Whereas to go back to the smaller woman example, you know, if you're maintaining on 1700, you're not going to go a thousand calories under maintenance. So percentage-based would be the way to go. Now, as for you know, my take, what I think about this more aggressive dieting, I would say that my opinion has also shifted to a degree. Like most things, I tend to be more, more moderate. I never really get too far in one direction or the other. But I would say earlier in my career, just because of the education sources that I had, the content I was consuming, I also would steer people a bit more toward slow and steady, moderate, no extremes, especially because a lot of the clients that I work with are coming off a history of very poorly structured, to no faults of their own, but very poorly structured, aggressive dieting, diets, you know, that would get you into huge deficit with not so great methods like eliminating entire foods or food groups as a result. There's been a lot of underlying uh deprivation, moderation issues. And then if I throw somebody straight back into a very aggressive deficit, it could send them back into a yo-yo cycle. So that was kind of the incentive earlier in my career. Now, I would say, yeah, somewhere, somewhere in the middle, I do prefer to get people in and out of a dieting phase as quickly as reasonably possible. Now, how aggressive we go is going to depend on a couple of factors. Starting point and eventual goals. So, you know, if somebody comes to me, I know I just use this example. So I'll be brief. If somebody comes to me, they are 300 pounds, they want to eventually get down to sub 200. So their maintenance is very high, they have loftier weight loss goals. Okay, let's go right ahead and be aggressive. I don't want this to drag on for you any more than it has to. I want you to see a bunch of progress that's going to get you bought in, that's going to keep you motivated. Whereas if I have somebody come to me, and again, I know I just use this example, who is um, I don't know, uh 130 pounds with low maintenance calories, but wants to shed a little bit of body fat, I am going to be less likely to throw them into a huge deficit percentage-wise, just because they're already not really working with a whole lot. So we're looking at somebody's starting point, their eventual goals, their dieting history and relationship with food. I work with some people who are pretty nonchalant with food, and other people who, if there is an aggressive protocol on paper, because of their history of dieting, they feel like they're hungry or they feel like their cravings are higher, they feel more restricted. And then it gets tough not to have those cycles of one to two weeks on point and then one to three days of like, fuck it, I'm just gonna eat whatever and I'll get back on track the next day. And then the net result ends up being higher calories anyway. So we have to look at your dieting history, your relationship with food, your habit foundation in order for somebody to uh not suffer more than they need to with an aggressive dieting protocol. I want to make sure your food choices are in a good place. You're getting plenty of whole food protein and fiber uh sources specifically. That way we're keeping your hunger as low as reasonably possible. It's gonna be up there if you're doing uh something aggressive, but I don't want you suffering more than you need to. Are you getting plenty of neat? So non-exercise activity, where are your steps at? Uh, are you strength training a couple of days per week to hang on to as much muscle as possible? Because we are after fat loss, not weight loss. How are your stress management skills? Uh, where's your sleep hygiene at? So we're gonna look at all that. Your current health and biofeedback. Biofeedback is just how your body's responding to the protocol that you've been doing. So, you know, where's your hunger at? How's your digestion? Energy levels, performance, recovery, things like that. I want to make sure that's on point. Lifestyle, obviously. Are you somebody who eats out a lot? Do you get a lot of pressure to splurge or drink from your partner or family? Do you travel a lot? Um, you know, basically, what are the environments that you find yourself in on a monthly and weekly basis? Um, and then what's the upcoming calendar look like? No, there is never a quote unquote good time to fully commit to a diet, something you'll hear a lot of people say, but there are undoubtedly, excuse me, undoubtedly, times where, all right, we get a little bit more of a clear runway here, we can capitalize. You know, maybe you have six weeks without a whole lot going on. So let's dip our toes into that more aggressive water. So those are all the things that I would look at when deciding on somebody's deficit size. If those are in a pretty good place, then yes, I would say I am generally a fan of let's try to get you in and out as quickly as possible. So, how low can we drop your calories that uh you can still sustain for the dieting period? This is like the big thing with sustainable dieting that I have been shouting about for a while now. Sustainable dieting is not a thing. The very nature of entering a calorie deficit, you can't do that forever. Um, physiologically, and then many of the best strategies and tools for getting in a calorie deficit, like very consistently planning your meals, tracking relatively precisely, embracing more hunger, et cetera, those aren't things you have to do long term. So I don't like the audit of, well, don't do now what you couldn't do forever. A much better version of that is do something now that at least resembles what you could do long term, but it doesn't have to look exactly the same. So when I say, okay, let's drop your calories as low as possible that you can stick to, not forever, but for a dedicated dieting period, something like six to eight to 10 weeks. Occasionally, clients will go up to 12 to 14. That tends to be the like the upper range of where it's all right, let's pump the brakes here, diet break, give you a little bit of a breather, practice maintenance, and then we go back into another um dieting phase. Uh, but yeah, basically, what is the lowest that we can go that you, based on your dieting history, based on your health, biofeedback, habits, all the other things that I mentioned, lifestyle, what can you sustain? What is as low as that we can get you? Um, and I will say it often sucks at first, like, wow, this there's no real hack here. You know, with the calories that I'm working with and this aggressive dieting protocol, I literally just don't have room for some of the things that I want. And I get that that sucks, but I'll tell you right now, the upside, and this is why a lot of people are advocating for it now, is like you you obviously see results faster. So you'll see a quick drop on the scale. You might feel your clothes fitting differently sooner. You'll see a drop in your measurements, excuse me, measurements. You might see, you know, oh, my shoulders already look a little bit more toned within a relatively short period of time. Okay, I guess that makes all the sucky stuff work it. I'm gonna keep up with it now. So so dust settled. I am, I guess this is a recurring theme, but I'm somewhere in the middle. I no longer have people just do like this crazy slow and steady thing because I don't want to be the coach who makes people aggressively diet, but I also recognize that people don't want to diet forever. So, what's that spot in the middle? How low can we go based on all those factors I mentioned that you can sustain for the dedicated dieting period? Because again, we should be using checkpoints, diet breaks, maintenance phases. We don't want to just diet with no end in sight. Next up, let's talk cardio. So I would say this is like a very related topic to the aggressive dieting thing where the conversation for a while was like, okay, let's not be crushing people with these crazy low calorie diets. Um, you know, what's crazy? I don't know, that's a topic in itself, but let's not be crushing people with these crazy low calorie diets, and we don't want people killing themselves on a treadmill every day in an effort to lose weight. It's not efficient. It can hurt your relationship with both diet and exercise. And I still agree with a lot of that. I think, um, and I think just objectively, cardio is not an efficient weight loss tool. The time that you have to spend, say, on a treadmill or in a class doing cardio to burn not nearly as many calories as you think can be very quickly erased in about three and a half minutes of eating. So I think it is very important to start with education and expectation setting that, yeah, cardio burns a couple of calories, but it is wildly inefficient. And then I will say anecdotally, excuse me, anecdotally, I don't know, I'm a little tongue-tied today. I have seen cycles where people who are very active, who do a bunch of cardio, who do a bunch of classes, almost feel like they've earned. And sometimes this is literally within the dialogue of the class, the marketing of the class, like earn your carbs or whatever it is. And you kind of get in that cycle of, like, oh, I just did a bunch of hard shit. So now I get to eat a little bit more. But you could do a really hard cardio session or class for 60 minutes. And like I said, in three and a half minutes, you've erased whatever deficit, additional deficit that you created from that class. So I do think it's important to start with education expectation setting. You do not burn nearly the calories that you think doing cardio, it's not very efficient. Getting your nutrition in check is much, much higher yields. And then to the point about relationship with diet and relationship with exercise, you know, it's still what I said, and I still am very cognizant of this. Where if we are saying, hey, let's do cardio to help you lose weight, it gets easy to get very tunnel visioned on, okay, I'm on the treadmill right now to try to weigh less, to try to be smaller and not also factor in all the other amazing things that cardio does for you, everything from improving your blood sugar regulation to reducing stress levels to helping with your sleep, to obviously improving your cardiovascular health. So I don't want people to just think of it as a weight loss tool. Uh, and it just gets really unenjoyable uh when that is the case. And then on the nutritional side of things, like I also mentioned earlier in the episode, I've seen that cycle so many times before where people are splurging and then thinking, like, I'm gonna have to hit the treadmill tomorrow to try to burn this off, which which I would say is not a healthy relationship to have with both food or exercise, and it's inefficient. So it's kind of a losing battle. All of this said, there is no denying that cardio does burn additional calories. If we look at what contributes to your TDEE, your total daily energy expenditure, biggest piece of the pie is your um basal metabolic rate. So just how much energy does your body require to just exist? Adding some muscle can help with this. That's the biggest piece of the pie. After that, in order, we are looking at number two out of four would be your neat, so your non-exercise activity. So I would love to see somebody's steps get up to seven to nine thousand as a minimum, 10,000 plus, especially if you are a smaller woman with lower maintenance calories. After that, we are looking at exercise, excuse me, uh, thermic effective food. So calories burned, digesting your food, getting more protein can help with this. It's not magical, but it doesn't hurt. And then bottom of the list is uh exercise activity and thermogenesis. So eat that is just the calories you're burning doing exercise. So, like I said, it's not a huge needle mover, but it is a contributing factor to your TDEE, your total daily energy expenditure. So, what are my recommendations now? I still factor on all those other things I just mentioned, you know, somebody's relationship with cardio, their relationship with nutrition, the fact that it's inefficient. But if you're currently doing no cardio, obviously, just start. That's kind of level one of like, let's just get you off the ground floor. If you want to do a couple of maybe two 15-minute sessions per week immediately after your lifts, great. Like I just I don't care about optimal, I care about getting you started. But from there, as kind of a level two, like a next baseline to hit, a benchmark to hit, 60 plus minutes per week, however, you want to piece that together. Say you're somebody who lifts four days per week, you could do four, 15-minute sessions immediately after your lifts. You do two separate longer 30-minute sessions, however, you want to piece it together. I like to look at it, it's not always optimal, but I care far more about realistic and sustainable. So we would look at how can you piece together and accumulate more minutes. And then I would say after that, for the most part, at least for a little while, the more minutes, the better from a health perspective. Again, blood sugar regulation, uh, stress reduction, uh, better cardiovascular fitness for your training. If you're somebody who's like, I uh I don't really like cardio, I just care about lifting and my strength training. If that's true, then you'll also prioritize your cardio because cardio gives you a better engine to be able to perform well during your strength training workouts, recover better between sets, recover better after the session, obviously improve your long-term cardiovascular health. So uh an enormous amount of benefits, and you won't reach the point of like real diminishing returns for a while. So we get you off the ground floor just by starting. That's by uh, I'd call that kind of level one. These are arbitrary levels. I'm kind of making them up on the fly. Level two, let's get you to 60 minutes per week for all of the benefits I mentioned, and then some slight extra calorie burn. And then level three is like, okay, let's get you to maybe 90 or 120 plus minutes per week. Um, and keep in mind, I'm not saying this cardio has to be like crazy intense where you're sprinting up a hill for an hour and a half. A lot of this could be spent at zone two, something else that I'm sure you've heard about a lot. It's been a hot topic in the fitness industry for uh a bit longer now. Zone two, very simply put, would be an intensity where it's like a little bit difficult to talk, but you can still talk. Yes, you could wear a heart rate monitor, do some calculations and get in the exact right zone. I wouldn't worry about that too much for most people. Just get to the part where uh the spot where it's a little bit difficult to talk, but it is still possible. Accumulate, accumulate a lot of minutes there. And yes, the additional calorie burn, even if it's a few hundred extra calories per week over a more uh over a longer time horizon can help you lose a little bit more weight. Last topic for today low volume training. And just to cut to the chase, I am a big fan of lower volume training. I've never been one to program a ton for people where they're in the gym all the time doing a ton of exercises, a ton of sets. I'm fortunate in that I was exposed to some great um training. Training mentors early on, actually, even before, I mean, I started training people at 16, 17, but even before that, when I just started exercising at 12, 13, 14 years old, um, yeah, I just I got into the good stuff right away. Very much a quality over quantity thing. So I've been a fan of this for a long time now. Um for most people, if we look at the upside of lower volume, so not doing a ton of sets in the gym, or I say gym at home, just during your workouts, calendar upside, obviously. Uh the vast majority of people that I work with are pressed for time. So not having to put these 90-minute blocks on their calendar for exercise, hugely advantageous to being able to stay consistent, which I would say is the next benefit because it's less of a time demand on your calendar. It's it's much more realistic that you're going to be able to stay consistent with that from a set quality perspective. And this is this to me is the big one, it becomes less about getting through a workout and more about let me make the most of these sets that I do have. So to go back to the beginning of the episode when I talked about the bodybuilding influence, influenced programs where you might see a leg day that is like squat, uh uh front squat, leg press, walking lunge, leg extension, that's insane. Like if you're pushing hard, that is a brutal, brutal workout to get through. Your performance is going to fall off a cliff. So you end up just kind of pacing yourself, or maybe you do push insanely hard, but then you can't walk for six days, which is dumb because then it negatively impacts subsequent subsequent workouts. Whereas if your lower body day is something like uh, let's say a barbell RDL, two to three top end sets, two to three, you know, hard sets, and then you're doing a Bulgarian split squat, and then maybe you do uh let's say a seated hamstring curl, and then finish with maybe an isolation quad exercise, adduction, abduction, something like that, then an ab exercise. And you look down at that same program and it's okay, I got a few big hard heavy sets today, some other stuff that's more reasonable. Let's really get after it. Let me push, let me let me see what I'm capable of on these rather than looking down, seeing six exercises, three to four sets of each, a lot of it's big stuff. I mean, you're just you're getting through that. So the set quality tends to fall off for most people. So that's why I do like low volume from a calendar perspective, consistency perspective, set quality perspective. Now, the case against it, and this is some of the other dialogue you'll see online, is like, okay, if you are an experienced trainee, so basically just somebody who exercises, then yes, with just two to three hard sets, you can accumulate enough what's called effective, what are called effective reps or stimulating reps for strength and muscle because you know how to push close to failure. You know how to choose the right weights, you know what failure feels like, you know how to approach that. And those reps close to failure are enormously important for developing strength and muscle specifically. So the counterargument that you'll see at times is okay, well, for newer people, three sets of 10 to 12 or four sets of 15, it kind of gives them more opportunities to be accumulate these effective reps. And I get that to a degree, but I would much rather just work with somebody on learning what approaching failure actually looks like. What does it feel like? Because most people routinely, especially during high volume workouts, most people routinely stop when they've reached an arbitrary rep number, when the set gets pretty hard, but not actually when they're approaching failure, or they're just pacing themselves to get through something crazy high volume. So I'd much rather just help somebody learn more about what approaching failure is like so they can accumulate more of these effective reps, this effective training without having to do just a ton of stuff. Um and then there is, I guess, one last thing I'll throw in here is that somebody who's more advanced, somebody who's stronger, it's going to be a bit harder to recover from their their set. So I'm not saying I'm the world's strongest man or anything like that, but when I'm doing a um a lower body workout, I am often using three to four hundred plus pounds on things. Yes, there are people dramatically stronger than me, plenty of them. But that's still enough where it's pretty demanding. It can be hard to recover from that. So the other uh consideration or thing that people will throw in is okay, well, if somebody's not that strong, they can get away with a little bit more volume. Sure, that may be true, but like I said, just if you look at how most people do not want to spend a ton of time in the gym, struggle with consistency, don't necessarily have a ton of comfort in the gym, don't have the best relationship with strength training, I'd rather look at how much can I give you that's going to give you most of what you're after. Kind of like the Pareto principle where you get 80% of the results from 20% of what you're doing. I'd rather focus on what does that 20% look like for you rather than worrying about turning every possible card to potentially get you slightly better results. And sure, if somebody wants to optimize, then maybe I end up having them do something a bit higher volume, but does settled for most people that I work with. Three days per week, you know, uh lower, upper, full. You could go um full, full, full. I really hope you can't hear this construction behind me. I'm hoping this noise canceling stuff is doing its job. Um, but yeah, full, full, full, lower, upper, full, a lot of good options. Um, two days per week if you're somebody who really struggles um with consistency, you just don't love strength training, you'd rather spend your time in other places, whatever the reason is, two days per week can also work well. But we're just looking to get that set quality really, really high to get you most of the benefits that you could potentially get with a higher volume approach. And if you want an example of what this looks like, um, if you go to the show notes of this episode, you will see a link to uh my BDB workout program, which just stands for bench and dumbbells only. It is purposefully minimalist for all the reasons that we just talked about. So if you just have a bench and dumbbells, you'll be able to do it at home, at the gym, and get great results as long as that set quality is really high, which is an important caveat. So let's wrap up today's episode with uh a very brief recap. Dieting. Recent years, slow and steady. Never do something now you couldn't do forever. Sustainable, much more recently, aggressive, get in and out, you know, low calorie, it is what it is. Sam's take. I don't know why I'm talking about myself in third person. My take, somewhere in the middle. How low can we drop your calories based on your dieting history, lifestyle, et cetera, that you can actually sustain for a predesignated period of time, something like a six to eight to ten week stint of dieting before you come back up to maintenance for breather to practice maintenance, and then you rinse and repeat till you reach your goals. That can be a really great way to move things at a fast, motivating clip without you fizzling out. Cardio. Recent years, it is not a weight loss tool. Don't think of it like that. It's inefficient, hurts your relationship with exercise, hurts your relationship with nutrition. Just dial in your nutrition and let that handle the weight loss. Uh, more recently, hey, do more cardio to help you lose more weight. My take actually still skews a bit more toward the first thing I just mentioned, which is like, hey, just keep in mind it's not very efficient. Um be mindful of only thinking of cardio as a weight loss tool, how that might affect both your relationship with exercise and your relationship with nutrition, but also there's no denying it does burn a few extra calories. So if you're currently doing no cardio, just get off the ground floor, maybe two 15 minute sessions per week. Level two, let's say 60 minutes as a weekly minimum for an enormous amount of health and performance benefits, and also a little extra calorie burn. And then I would say level three is like just accumulating minutes beyond that 90, 120 plus at zone two. I'm not saying crush yourself for two hours a week, literally just an inclined treadmill walk that gets you a bit out of breath while you stream a TV show or something. Lastly, training. So, like I said, we've often seen a big bodybuilding influence where you have body part splits, lots of exercises, lots of sets. I don't love that for most, and and now the industry trend is more low volume, which to be honest, I've always kind of skewed toward for the calendar upside, just less things for you to, or fewer things for you to schedule. Uh, it's you're more likely to be consistent. Set quality is going to be a bit higher. Yes, most people don't quite know or aren't yet comfortable with training close to failure, but rather than just giving you a bunch of junk volume in hopes that you eventually accumulate enough effective reps, I would much rather educate you on what approaching failure looks like, what it feels like. That way we can really lean into that Pareto principle where you're getting 80% of the results that you could be getting from 20% of the work that you're doing, which in this case would be a lower volume split, something like two to three days per week, lower upper, full body sessions, really well selected exercises, two to three, did I just say this? Two to three hard sets of each of those exercises. Um again, if you want an example of this, just head to the show notes. You can download totally for free the BDB workout program, which is two days full body uh bench and dumbbell only. And the very last thing I'll say today is um if you want to talk more about your specific situation, uh, you know, how I would pull each of these levers for you to help you see the fastest results possible that you can actually sustain. Do not hesitate to shoot me an email, mail at sam4j.com. I will also include the link to my coaching page in the show notes. It's just sam4j.com slash coaching. And again, we can have a very no pressure chat about where you're currently at, a lot of the dieting exercise history that I just talked about, and then how we can set up your plan to maximize everything that we just talked about in today's episode. So I will wrap up today, right here. I hope you got a lot out of this. And again, I don't doubt that another couple of years from now, I'll be talking about the trends going in the exact opposite direction. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it.