Welcome to the Unfuck Your Fitness podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go.
SPEAKER_01I'm really excited to record this episode for you guys because we are gradually talking through in the past few episodes. We talked about body recomposition, and then we had a little break there to talk about pregnancy and fitness. And then we started back up on the topic of nutrition, talking about calorie deficits. And then we went into last week's conversation about why a calorie deficit isn't the finish line and you can't live in a calorie deficit forever. That's not how it's supposed to be. That's why a lot of us, more a lot of you, because I don't do that anymore, feel like you are failing and you're stuck and you can't stick to the diet because you're not supposed to stick to it forever and ever. So it's just, it's not you. It's the diet. You're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to be in maintenance, you're supposed to be in a build phase. And we talked about that last week and kind of the difference between, I guess, those calories and what that means for your body and what that's going to look like. So, in this conversation, I think the next kind of gradual way to approach this is talking about how do you know which one of these you are in? How do you know if you're in a calorie deficit? How do you know if you are in maintenance? How do you know if you are in a build phase? This seems to be, like I said, like the natural progression of what we're talking about. I can talk about body recomposition. I can talk about calorie deficit maintenance, a building phase. And then the next question that I get, and I know this because I asked yesterday on my Instagram stories, I asked, what questions do you have about calorie deficits, maintenance, and build phase and/or calorie surplus? And a lot of it was, I think I'm in a calorie deficit. How long am I in a calorie deficit? What do I do after that? Can I live in maintenance? There were a lot of questions surrounding this. That being said, let me jump off course for a second here. I'm going to be talking about how do you know where you're at right now? How do you know which phase you're in in this episode? And then after that, let me make sure here. I'm going to be talking about putting it all together. I had to look at my notes. So in this episode, I'm going to be talking about how to know which phase you are in. After this episode, I'm going to be talking about how to actually do that. So again, I feel like this is a natural progression where we're talking about what these phases are. And then you need to know which one you are in. Or I mean, yeah, you need to know about a calorie deficit, maintenance phase, and a surplus, but how that applies to you obviously is the only thing that matters after that. So we're going to talk in this episode about that. And then in next week's episode, I'm going to be talking about how you actually get yourself from a calorie deficit into maintenance or maintenance into a surplus and vice versa. So what that looks like. What does that nutrition look like? Maybe some exact examples. I'm not really sure how I'm going to phase that out, but I'm going to build that plan for you because I want this to be so gradual. Then after that, I'm going to do a QA. So come to my stories, ask me things in the DMs. I'm going to save all of them. I got a lot of questions yesterday that were really, really good. Some of those questions will be answered in this episode. Some will be answered in next episode as I dive, you know, way into how does that actually look? What does that nutrition actually look like for you? What calories, what should be protein, what should be fats, what should be carbs. And then the week after that, I will do, like I said, a QA to kind of wrap it up. And we can keep going depending on where you guys are at. I'm just building this little, I'm not even, as I say, I'm not even labeling it a series, but it kind of is. It's kind of building itself. And I'm really realizing that you guys are loving this. Like this is really the information that is needed. I feel like this isn't what's out there. And I don't know if I knew that or not, or if I'm just kind of figuring out by creating these episodes, these past few and the ones that are coming up, as well as the questions that I'm getting. Like this is what you guys really need to know. This is the shit that we really need to unfuck here for you guys to understand nutrition. And it's coming at such a good time. I actually posted yesterday that the following after the QA episode, I'm going to talk about food noise in an episode because food noise, that term means different things to different people. I'm also going to ask on my stories for you guys to tell me what food noise means to you. I have been hearing the term food noise. I was going to say all over social media, but I'm really only on Instagram. So I've been hearing it all over Instagram from coaches trying to help with food noise, from personal trainers trying to help with food noise, influencers, and then just normal people, right? Saying they're struggling with food noise. I want to really break that down and talk about it. I think the GLP one situation right now, with people trying to quiet their food noise with the GLP ones, and that's a whole nother, that's a whole different conversation. But I think this series that I'm kind of talking you guys through, it's really helping you to understand nutrition because without understanding nutrition and food and what that matters for your body and what phase you're in and why, you will always feel like you don't have any idea what the fuck you're doing. You'll always be dieting or you'll always be eating too much. You'll always be dieting and not being able to stick to it and starting over. Like it will constantly be the cycle that you're trying to get out of until you understand what I'm talking about in these episodes. So I really just want to keep talking about this as long as it takes and as long as I'm getting questions because I think it's really, really good. And then I'm going to be building something inside of Fit Club to go with this as well. And I'm super excited for that. More details to come later because I haven't even really started it yet. It's living in my brain, but I'm really excited for the way that that's going to help you. So let's dive into this episode. How do I know which phase I'm in? How do I know if I'm in a calorie deficit? How do I know if I'm in maintenance? And how do I know if I'm in a calorie surplus? Also, I guess in addition to what phase I'm in, how do I know which phase I should be in? So, how do you know if you're in one of those? And how do you know which one you should be in? If you are in a deficit right now, you're not seeing progress, you should be in a maintenance phase and then probably go into a bit of a surplus so that you can get back into a deficit later. But how do you know that, right? So we're gonna walk through that. So there are five questions that I ask every one-on-one client. And I don't just like give you calories based on your goal, your age, height, weight. Yes, those are things that I need to know. And I can give you a pretty good guesstimate, like I've told you on this podcast before. But for a one-on-one client, I can really dive into these questions and find out exactly where they need to be because they can come to me and say, my goal is to lose 10 pounds. I'm following these macros right now and this calorie goal, period. Okay, but I need to know how long you've been in that phase. I need to know what you've done, right? So it's there's a lot that goes into it. And so I'm going to walk you through the five questions that I ask every client to determine where they are and where they should be. And I want you to know these for yourself as well. Number one, what is your goal? Is your goal to lose fat, build muscle, maintain, feel better, get stronger? Do you have a wedding coming up? Do you want to run a marathon? The goal matters. I'm not going to put someone who's wanting to lose fat in the same calorie range as someone who wants to get stronger. So the goal matters 100%. That's the first thing. The second thing is, what have you been doing? Have you been dieting for years? Have you been eating 1200 calories? Have you been not tracking at all? So you have no clue how many calories you've been eating. Are you already maintaining? Do you already have some idea of what you've been doing and you can talk to me about that? I can't prescribe the next phase for you without knowing the previous phase that you've been in. Does that make sense? I can't say you need to be in a maintenance phase if you were already in a surplus and you want to gain muscle. I can't put you in a maintenance phase and have you gain muscle. So you have to know which phase that you've been in. So that's number two. Number three, I ask, what is your body telling you? Everybody skips this. It's really, really important. Are you hungry all day? Are you exhausted? Are you recovering well from your workouts? Are you getting stronger? Are you sleeping well? Your body gives you clues and we can't ignore those clues. That's a very, very important question as well. I was just kind of stopped myself because I've said that every single one of these. Duh, they're all important. The fourth thing that I ask is can you realistically commit to this phase that we want to put you in? Actually, I had someone message me today. There, um, she joined Fit Club and she said these are the calories that I'm trying to stick to, but I've not been sticking to them at all. I'm emotionally eating, I'm eating too much at night, I'm snacking. So these are the goals I'm trying to stick to calorie-wise, but I'm not doing it. So, can this person commit to a cut? No, she just told me she can't. So there, this is where I need to know if you can realistically commit to the phase we're going to put you in. Maybe technically you should be in a deficit, like I just said, but maybe you're leaving for vacation. And so that's not going to happen. Maybe it's Christmas time. Maybe you're moving, maybe you're just super, super stressed out. Maybe it's baseball season, like it is for me. Probably not going to be in a deficit during baseball season. Sometimes maintenance is the better decision for me to say you really would be happier in maintenance right now. And then I explain maintenance so they know they can still make a lot of physical progress and the scale can absolutely change in maintenance. You don't have to be in a deficit to see change and to see wins. So that is a really big question, too, because a lot of people just want fat loss. I joined Fit Club because I want fat loss. I'm working with you because I want to get stronger. But if you're not mentally ready to eat more and see the scale go up a little bit, I'm not going to put you in a surplus. If you've been starving yourself for eight weeks, I'm not going to keep you in a deficit. If you're not recovering well, you're not feeling well. If you have a vacation coming up, I'm not going to put you in a deficit. So all of that matters. And then the fifth thing we talk about is the expectation realistic? So many times you're going to have an idea or an expectation of what you want, what phase you want to be in. You want fat loss, you want body recomp, you want muscle gain. And maybe that expectation just isn't aligning with what is realistic for you. And that is another very, very important thing that we need to know going forward. So is your expectation realistic? Some examples that I have here is someone wants glutes, but they don't want to gain a pound. Like I said, if you're not ready to see the scale go up a little bit, but you want to get stronger, that expectation is not realistic for you. Someone wants abs, but doesn't want to lose body fat, also not going to happen. Because if you want abs, you're going to have to lose body fat, you're going to have to be in a calorie deficit, you're going to be hungry and it's going to suck. And if you're not ready for that, you can't have the abs without the hunger, depending on where you're at in your deficits. And then sometimes the phase isn't wrong, just the expectation is. But that absolutely matters because if you have to walk through those five things in that order to be able to say, okay, maybe I came into this expecting something or having a want that isn't realistic and I'm not ready for. So that's really, really important. So I want to go into some scenarios of finding out which phase you're in and which phase you need to be in. And these are going to be kind of specific, but I think they'll be very relatable. This is the best way for me to walk through, I think, the different calorie, you know, the calorie deficit, the maintenance calories, and the surplus, and to figure out where you're at is to kind of put it into real life scenarios. And then, of course, we'll get into this more next week. And then the QA will help as well. But different goals require different phases. That's why when you are hanging out with your friend Becky and she's telling you she's doing X, Y, and Z for her diet or her program or with her coach or whatever, and it's really working for her. That's why sometimes it's not going to work for you because her goals may be different. Maybe Becky just wants to lose weight and see the scale go down. And she's like, Yes, I'm ready to starve and have no energy to be able to do that. Maybe your goal is to tone up and look stronger and lift heavier in the gym. Well, then you and Becky don't need to be doing the same thing. You don't need to be in the same phase. You don't need to be executing the same program. That's not going to work. So we need to stop comparing and we need to start doing what's best for us. You need to start doing what's best for you and not paying attention to anyone else around you. That's why I want to dig into these phases because I want you to know what's right for your body. I want you to ask yourself, what does my body need right now? Not what is everybody else doing? What do I need to do? The sooner you ask yourself those five questions and you figure out where you need to be and what you actually want and what you actually can stick to, the closer you're going to get and the sooner you're going to get to that goal. Because if you keep dicking around doing a program that's not going to get you the results that you want, you are wasting your time and energy. So the sooner you stop doing that and you get very, very clear on what you want and what you're willing to do and what you need to do, it's better to take six months working in a maintenance phase or a surplus. If you know that after that six months, you can go into a pretty good cut and lose some fat. The time's gonna pass anyway. And if you are doing something that's actually working toward your goals, you're gonna get there faster than just starving yourself for six months and starting over Monday and doing all or nothing and being half-assed, you know, half in, half out. In six months, you're gonna be no closer than you are today. So let's talk about this. The number one scenario that I have is I have a lot of body fat to lose. Now, if these sound like you, hopefully they do, and you can figure out which phase you're in and you should be in. If you are someone who says, I have a lot of body fat to lose, you may benefit from a calorie deficit. The only way you can lose body fat, as we talked about in previous episodes, is a calorie deficit. You have to be consuming less calories than you are burning. Signs that you want to be in a calorie deficit and that you have a lot of body fat to lose is fat loss is your priority. You have plenty of energy, you're eating consistently, your strength training and your protein is adequate. Okay. You want a moderate deficit, not starvation. So if you have a lot of body fat to lose, you are ready for a calorie deficit if those things apply to you. If fat loss is your number one priority, not building muscle, not you know, maintaining fat loss is your priority. That's it. If you have plenty of energy, if you're already tired, starving, cheating on your meal plan, this is not gonna work for you. If you're eating consistently, if you are strength training and if your protein is already adequate, you're good. You can go into a calorie deficit, and that's where you should be. Scenario number two, I've been dieting forever. That's a lot of the women that I talk to. You need maintenance. You do not want to be in a calorie deficit if you've already been dieting forever. If you are eating 1200 to 1,400 calories and you know that because you're tracking, don't just guess. Don't just say I'm eating healthy, I'm eating 1200 calories, but every weekend you're going out and you're eating pizza and you're not tracking and you're drinking wine and alcohol, then you're not consuming 1200 to 1400 calories. But if you actually are consuming 12 to 1400 calories, if you're constantly restarting diets, if you're low energy, if your workouts suck, you're exhausted during them, if you're always hungry and you're burned out, your body needs a break. Maintenance is productive because it gets your body back to a really good baseline. It will trust you, you'll have energy, you can eat more, your workouts are gonna be great and productive, your body will be so happy. And then after you've been in maintenance, for depending on how long you need to be in maintenance for, I would say, because I know this is gonna be a question, if you've been dieting forever, you probably need six months in maintenance, if not more. A lot of clients that come to me with these things that I mentioned, they're eating very, very little. They're constantly restarting. Like I just said, the one said I'm trying to stick to these calories, but I'm emotionally eating and I'm snacking every single night before bed. She probably also has low energy. She's definitely burned out if she's coming to me saying that. She's always hungry. Her workouts are probably not great because how can they be great if you're hungry all the time? A lot of ladies come to me in this particular scenario. And when I put them into maintenance, I say 12 weeks. We're gonna put you in 12 weeks and see where you're at. We're gonna reassess after three months. Usually, like 99% of the time, they will either say, I'm good, I'm good here, I'm not going into a deficit, I'm good here and I want to actually eat more. Or they'll say, I'm, yep, time's up, 12 weeks. I want to go back into fat loss phase, a deficit. A week later, they're like, I'm so freaking hungry because they put my calories back up. And all of you ladies in Fit Club that have said that to me, please, please go in the comments and tell me because that shit is true. They will almost always say, I don't want to go back to a calorie deficit, keep my calories where they are, or they'll try to eat less and be like, no, I'm hungry and I don't like that feeling anymore. I want to stay here for a long time. Number three, it's a scenario number three, I'm skinny fat. This is a perfect opportunity to talk about body recomp, maintenance phase, lifting heavy, eating protein, and being patient. Okay, if you are skinny fat, and this is why a lot of women come to me saying, I just want to lose weight, I want to lose weight, I want to lose fat, I want the number on the scale, the overall number on the scale to drop. I want to be smaller, I want to be skinny. I often talk to them about this and say, okay, if you were to get down to that goal weight of yours and you lose fat and now you're skinny, if you don't like the way that you look when you get to that number, chances are you won't like the way that you look because you're not gonna look strong, you're gonna look skinny fat. Are you gonna be okay with the scale going back up to put on some muscle, get healthy, learn how to eat, learn how to be around food? Are you okay with the scale going back up? Most of the time they'll say, No, probably not. Once I get the scale down, I don't like it when it goes back up. So then we go back into this is what we would do anyway, is keep them into maintenance calories and just work on body recomposition within maintenance calories. But if someone's coming to me saying, I already did this, the weight isn't high, I have very little muscle, I want to look toned. The scale doesn't need to change too much. Then we could talk about body recomposition. But if you are skinny fat, you're gonna need to go into maintenance, you're gonna start lifting weights, you're gonna increase your protein, and you're gonna have to be really, really patient. And that's fine. It is what it is. Some people have already gone here. I have a lot of clients like this in Fit Club right now that are just like, I'm too small, I'm under muscled, I'm underfueled, I don't understand food. I did Weight Watchers or I did whatever diet out there. That's all I know, but I don't like the way that I look and I don't like the way that I feel and I'm hungry. And so if you are skinny fat, I would put you into maintenance and we would work on body recon from there. Scenario number four, I want to grow my glutes. Building phase. If you want to grow, you can need to eat more food than you are burning so that that food can go towards your muscle gain. The signs that you are good for this phase, if you have strength goals, if you have muscle goals, and if you're comfortable with a slight scale increase, muscle does require fuel. And so you're gonna need to go into a calorie surplus. Very mild. It doesn't need to be a 500 calorie surplus. You can just go 50 calories at a time, increasing, and you can stop whenever you feel like you've tapped out. I don't want the scale to go any higher or it's moving too fast. You can just stop. And that way you're gonna increase your strength, you're gonna increase your muscle mass. And yes, the scale is gonna go up a little bit, but knowing you're eating too much, like you're eating more than you need right now because you're growing muscle, when you don't want to grow any more muscle, you take those calories away, you're back at maintenance or even a fat loss phase, and that those extra pounds are gonna go away. Scenario number five, I just hit my goal weight. If you have just hit your goal weight, don't keep dieting. Okay. Instead, you need to go into maintenance. You need to learn to maintain, you need to practice living there. This is where the confidence is built. I freaking love maintenance phase so much. And I've talked about this in previous episodes as well. This is where people get tripped up because they diet and they're in a calorie deficit. If you're dieting, quote unquote dieting and you're losing weight, that means you were in a calorie deficit. We just call it a diet for whatever reason. I wish I grew up in a world where we just called it what it is. I'm in a calorie deficit and I'm losing weight. But no, I'm on a diet and I'm losing weight. It's just so vague. And anyway, I digress. But if you've been dieting and you hit your goal weight, you hit it, right? You're excited and you show your friends, you take a picture, you show your coach, and then you're like, shit, now what? Literally, now what? Now do I keep now I keep dieting, right? Now I just have to keep going harder. I have to keep this up, I have to keep doing what I've been doing. No, you don't. You already hit your goal weight. Now you have to maintain that weight. If that's your goal weight, your job now is to maintain it. Probably gotten to a program where you didn't think about. What happened when you hit your goal weight, but here we are. So if you've just hit your goal weight and you're eating, let's say 1500 calories, you now need to start increasing calories a little bit so your body can adjust to that calorie range. And we'll get into that in another episode. But if you've just hit your goal weight, you do have to go into maintenance and you do have to learn to maintain. And maintenance is a thing. It's just as much work, different tasks, but it's just as much work. And it's tedious. And you have to do the things confidently and you have to do them consistently, just like a calorie deficit maintenance, it's a face and it does take work. It takes work to maintain your body. It has taken so much work for me to maintain my body for 17 years that I've been doing this. I've worked every second of it. It's easy now. It's my normal now, but it's work. Scenario number six, I've been maintaining for months. Okay, so if you've been maintaining for months, good job. First of all, that's perfect. I freaking love that for you. You can actually stay there. You don't have to do anything. What's your goal? Is your goal more fat loss? Then you'd go into a deficit. Is your goal more muscle? You'd go into a calorie surplus. You want to stay where you are? Are you happy where you are? You can stay in maintenance. You get to intentionally choose now that you've been in maintenance for months. You get to choose your next phase based on fat loss, based on muscle, based on the happiness of where you are. And that's the benefit of, you know, if you're skinny fat and you want to go into maintenance, this is what to expect. How long should you be in maintenance? As long as you freaking want to. I say six months, sometimes as a minimum, and then you're you'll be really happy there. The seventh scenario is I'm brand new. I don't know what I am doing. This is quite a few of you, and I want to talk about protein and strength training and consistency in this phase. So if you are brand new, you don't know, you don't know where to start. So let me tell you, if you're brand new, we don't know if you're skinny fat, we don't know if you want to build muscle, we don't know if you want to maintain because you don't know what you're doing. You have, you don't really know what your goal is. You're like, I want to change my body. I'm not really happy with this. Maybe you want food freedom. You know, the sky's the limit when you're brand new. What I want you to start doing is tracking your food so you know what you're eating. I want you to start with hitting 100 grams of protein or more. I want you to start strength training with the intention of lifting heavier every couple of weeks, increasing your weights that you're lifting so that you can start getting stronger and feeling good about your body. And I want you to most importantly work on consistency. Drink water, get your steps up, increase your protein and start strength training. You'll likely start body recomp. You'll likely start seeing body changes right away if you're brand new. Because once you start tracking and hitting protein, you're gonna lose weight and you're gonna put on muscle and everything's gonna be beautiful. So if you are brand new to this, that's totally fine. Be there. Okay. So these are some different scenarios that I thought of. Number one was I have a lot of body fat to lose. Number two, I've been dieting forever. Number three, I'm skinny fat. Number four, I want to grow my glutes. Number five, I just hit my weight goal. Number six, you've been maintaining for months. And number seven, you're brand new. This covers probably all of you. Hopefully, you've fallen to some sort of category there. And now you can figure out where you're at. So I want you this week to pick one of those scenarios and say, yes, I fall into this category. Christy, I'm scenario number one, I have a lot of body fat to lose. Or I'm number three, I'm skinny fat, and I need to know what to do about it. Or number five, I just hit my goal weight. Now what the fuck am I supposed to do? And we talked about within there, I talked about where you're at then, right? If you just hit your goal weight, you've been in a calorie deficit, and now we want to get you to maintenance. If you want to grow your glutes, well, I guess you've either been in the calorie deficit or you've been in maintenance. You can be in either one and want to grow your glutes. What you then have to do is start to eat more. So we talked about the different phases, we talked about different scenarios of where you could be in your body and what you could be wanting. And now I want to give you some questions to ask yourself in addition to this, to figure out where you are, because in the next episode, we're going to be talking about what to do, what does this mean? What does my nutrition look like for where I'm at and or where I want to be going? So ask yourself, what is my goal? Am I recovering well currently from my workouts? How are my energy levels? Am I getting stronger? Am I constantly hungry? Do I enjoy my training? Very important. Am I chasing a number or am I trying to change my body? These things will help you avoid some mistakes and it will help you to know where you're going. The mistakes that I want you to avoid are dieting year-round, never going into a maintenance phase. So underrated. The maintenance phase is so underrated. It's my favorite phase to be in. I don't want you to be afraid to eat more. I don't want you to never build muscle. My beach body years and my years before that, I was never trying to build muscle. I was always trying to be stronger. I was always trying to just sweat and burn calories. I didn't really know what my goal was, which is why I'm asking you these questions. If I would have been able to ask myself, what is my goal to look like this? Picture that I have had of Jamie Eason at the time, I would have then been able to see, oh, she has more muscle than me. She's lifting more weights than me. I need muscle, but I didn't know that. I was never building muscle, and that was a problem. And then I never want you comparing your phase to someone else's phase. If you need to go to maintenance, don't look at that as, oh, I can't even diet right. I need to go into a maintenance phase, Christy said. That's actually a good thing. Congratulations, you're going into maintenance phase. And a lot of your friends that are dieting probably wish they could be in a maintenance phase. It's one of the phases that I saw people doing that I thought, how are they eating so much? How are they tracking so seamlessly? How does this look so easy for them while I am struggling to just eat as little as I can and constantly thinking about when to work out and what workout I was doing? And it was just constantly on my mind. So knowing that it can be easy. So whatever phase you want to go into, it's a fucking win. Okay. If you're ready to go into a deficit, fucking win. If you want to go into maintenance and you need to go to maintenance to get your body to trust you and be healthy, that's a fucking win. If you want to grow glutes and have amazing shoulders and biceps, fucking win. Okay. They're all great. You need all of them actually. So take away from this episode, take all of this information and figure out where you're at. Do some thinking in this next week about where you're at, kind of how you got here. Ask yourself these questions, figure out where you want to go next. And we'll talk about that in the next episode. But we're going to be really dialing in on obviously, this is all about calories, the calorie deficit, maintenance, calories, surplus. What does that look like? Constant dieting out the window. We're done with that, right? We want to understand food. We want to understand calories so that you know for yourself what this looks like. And the only way you can have less food noise or no food noise is by understanding this is what phase I'm in and why. And this is what phase I'm going to be in next. And this is why. And I trust this process and I want to change my body and be really strong and healthy. And I hope that's the goal. I'm so sick of seeing things on the internet about being skinny. Do whatever it takes to be skinny. You know, you'll never see true happiness unless you find skinny. It's just like the most disgusting things that I'm seeing on the internet now, which is sad that skinny culture is back. Having a thigh gap and I don't know, just eating less and figuring out ways to like stop your hunger. Like chewing gum is back. If you're hungry, just chew gum. If you're hungry, just drink a cup of water. If you're hungry, just go for a walk. If you're actually hungry, you need some fucking food. Like, what are we talking about? Your body needs food. So I'm just really sick of that phase. I'm sick of people using just quick fixes and point systems for their food and just all that kind of stuff. It's all in my mind, it's all a way to not do this work. And I truly believe that. Whether you are tracking points, whether you are doing low carb, no carb, staying away from foods, whatever it is, right? A shot, and not everybody that's doing the shot, but for a lot of reasons, those food noise, it comes back because if you're just counting points and then you don't want to count points anymore, or like it's almost like it still has the good and bad concept there because chocolate cake probably has way more points than an apple or a salad, right? So you think chocolate cake is bad, it has six points, and a salad is good, it has one point. So you're still associating it with good and bad. You're not learning what is chocolate cake made out of? What does it do inside my body? What is going on? Can I have it? Can I not? Should I have it? Should I not? Does it digest the same as an apple because it's carbs? Like you're just learning points, or you're just taking a pill or something to quiet the food noise so you're not hungry. I hear that all the time. I'm taking a fat burner or a fat blocker or even a GLP one. And people that are saying, I just need to not be hungry. I just need to not want food all day. Fair. I need to not want food all day either. But the way you do that is by eating full balanced meals so that your body gets to be full and experience that, like being satiated, then the hunger goes away. If you're still thinking about food when you're full, if you eat a balanced meal and you're really, really full after dinner and you're like, oh, I still want dessert. That's not food noise. That's you wanting some chocolate to wash down your dinner with. I do that. That's not food noise. Not to me. That's you thinking, uh, still want some chocolate cake after dinner. I still want dessert. I deserve dessert. Like that's just my hunger cue. Like I have steak, I have potatoes, I have bread, I have whatever. And then my my brain is like, next cake, next dessert, ice cream. That's not food noise. That's me saying, I want some fucking chocolate, dude. I love sweets. That's different than I'm still hungry. I'm still hungry. I'm constantly hungry. My stomach's growling. I'm thinking about food. I'm obsessed with food. Food is good. Food is bad. This food's good. This food's bad. That is food noise. So there's a big difference there. And when you're understanding how to build a plate, how to count your macros, how to save some food for later, how to make food last longer, right? If you only get a certain amount of carbs during the day, we'll have a couple things that are lower in carbs so you can have more carbs later in the day. That's how I used to fit Oreos in all the time. I'm having low fat, low carb, lower carb meals during the day, like earlier in the day, which was backwards because everybody's like, don't have carbs at night. Have carbs earlier in the day to so you have more energy. And I'm like, I want Oreos at night. That's when I'm hungry for Oreos. I don't want them for breakfast, and I'm gonna have them either way. But that's how you do it is you figure out, okay, this is what my body needs, calorie-wise, macro-wise, and this is what I get. So do I want to spend all my carbs over here on a hamburger with the bun, with the cheese and with all the things? Or do I want to maybe have a hamburger with just the bottom bun, maybe use my fork to eat it, save the carbs from the top bun, and have some Oreos later. Have a little piece of cake later, right? You get to decide what to do with those calories. It gives you food freedom. It cuts out the food noise because you have options. Tracking macros is not meant to be something that keeps you from eating. It's meant to be something that shows you how much food you need and you get to pick what you fill it with. So that was a little side rant, sorry. But that's why I'm building these episodes for you is to teach you about food. So you understand it. So you don't need another diet, another shot, another pill, another blocker, another energy burner, fat burner. Like you don't need that shit. You'll look at it and say, I'm good. Like I'm in a surplus. I actually want to grow glutes. I want to eat. So my goal here is for you to understand that. And I will talk in these episodes, as many of them as I need to in the upcoming weeks, for you to really understand this. And then I'm gonna build that amazing thing in Fit Club that I'm really excited about because this is what I truly want for you. This is what I truly want for women and men to experience food and being able to eat it and being able to understand it that way. You don't think about it all the time. Your body is strong, you have energy, you're recovering well, and you feel like a well-fueled badass. That's my goal. All right, I'm gonna wrap this up. So next week we are gonna be talking about what does it look like calorie-wise, what does it look like nutrition-wise, for you to build yourself into a deficit or maintenance or a surplus, what that actually looks like. And then I will be asking for questions. So as you have questions throughout these episodes, please leave them in Spotify. Send me a DM, or if you happen to see my stories where I ask for questions, please ask. If I need to do two of them, two episodes back to back, I will because I'm here to help. Okay, guys, I will talk to you next week.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review, and of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy CastilloFit. I will see you next time.