Why Fat Loss is so Confusing Part 1 How to Become A Nutrition Coach

Become a nutrition coach w/ SUF-NC to work alongside of RD's and drive in streams of revenue. SUF-NC on average make an additional 30k per month

Why is fat loss so confusing? Because trainers are taught shortcuts instead of systems.

In episode 1 of the How to Become a Nutrition Coach series, we break down the 1st law of thermodynamics, calories in vs calories out, and why energy balance still matters 100% of the time. We also discuss why humans aren’t robots and how sleep, stress, hunger, environment, hydration, hormones, and habits all influence fat loss adherence.

Better understand the law of thermodynamics and what a calorie is. Why does calories in vs calories out always work, but there are other factors that influence this such as hunger, hormones, sleep, stress, genetics, metabolic disease, environmental factors, and habits. 

If you want to become a successful personal trainer and better nutrition coach, you need to understand behavior modification, not just meal plans.

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Want to ask us a question?  Email info@showupfitness.com with the subject line PODCAST QUESTION to get your question answered live on the show!

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Transcript

Why Energy Balance Always Wins

SPEAKER_01 0:00

In today's class, we're going to be talking about a 10-part series of why we're fat. So, why you're fat, the first law that nobody escapes. You cannot outhormone the first law. And what is the first law of thermodynamics?

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, any transformed or transformed.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Created nor destroyed. So what that means is if my metabolism, me as an organism, I need 1200 calories to maintain this organism. If I eat 1200 calories, I maintain homeostasis. Those calories are provided for the metabolism being my brain, my heart, my lungs, my liver. Those are the higher organs that require more fuel, muscles, and everything else that the body requires. If you eat less and you create a deficit, 100 calories over the course of a month, that would be one pound of fat. One pound of fat, this is five of them. Your body will find this. Where will it find it? Ladies, typically it's going to be more your thighs and your glutes. Dudes, it's usually more around the android area. It's based off your genetics. The body will take that. If you eat in a surplus, say you get 1300, so plus one. Over the course of a month, you will gain one pound of fat. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. People will say things like the body's not a calculator. Put people into a metabolic ward, and you will see that the body is very closely related to a calculator. It's not to say we're simple because we are very complex. Hormones play a role. Stress plays a role. Sleep and hydration and metabolic disease and environmental factors of what we call the body mass equation within nutrition certification that we offer. But what people don't understand is the basics.

What A Calorie Actually Means

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Who could tell me what a calorie is? Beautiful! From Canada. He's giving us the definition a unit of measurement. Whereas if you were to ask the average person, they're gonna say it's bad. Or there's good calories and bad calories. They don't know what the actual definition is. So I try to relate it to them like money. If I give you a dollar, how much is that? That's a stupid question, Chris. It's a dollar. Great. If I give you a hundred pennies, how much do you have? Come on, dude, that's stupid. It's a dollar. It's the same thing. There's no such thing as good calories and bad calories. There's calories that are more dense, that have more nutrients. 100 calories of an apple versus 100 calories of God's greatest gift, which is gushers, way different. The gushers taste better. No one can argue that. And if you do, you're a psychopath. But there's there's nutrient value behind the apple. You're gonna get micronutrients, you're gonna get fiber, a lot of health benefits. So then again, people will say, well, that's okay, I get it. That's good, that's bad. No. Because if there was a such thing as good and bad, if you get into a well, let's pretend like if you know to age myself, the movie Silence of the Lambs, and you're at the bottom of a well and there's a little hose that's just dropping out water, so you will survive with hydration. If you're in there for 15 days, you're gonna lose a lot of weight. And if you're getting close to that, they say about 21 or so days when you're probably gonna die if you don't have food. If I throw you 10 king-size Snickers, your body isn't gonna go, oh, these are bad calories, we're gonna die. You're gonna live longer because it's a unit of measurement. The technical definition is increasing the degree of water one degree Celsius. And so where we get in trouble is we don't understand what calories are.

The Chicken Parm Calorie Trap

SPEAKER_01 4:14

So I did a post on this the other day. How many calories are in this chicken parm? And if you know the answer, don't say it. Let other people engage. But these are great experiments with the survey of your clientele to help them understand what calories are. Chicken parm, not bad, not good. But if you were to guess, this is from a restaurant. I already had a couple bites of the carrots, green beans, we got some cool little oil over here, cheese. Do you think this is low-calorie chicken? Do you think it's cottage cheese? No, it's the it's the fattiest stuff because it tastes amazing. Anyone want to take a guess on how many calories this would be, on how I would calculate this? 1550. 1550. Now, if you look at the best in the industry, trainers, still 20% were going between 350 to 650, 750 to 850, 45. This group right here, I didn't have the other answers. So I didn't have 12 or 14. It only gives me four slots. 1550. Now, what we know based off of the first law of thermodynamics and what a calorie is, when it comes to the population as a whole, we underestimate how much we're consuming, we overestimate how hard we exercise.

Why We Overrate Our Activity

SPEAKER_01 5:58

That's why I don't like calculators because people look at it and go, do I work out not that much? I work out a little bit. Oh, I work out a lot. Oh, I'm I'm freaking David Goggins. Oh, I'm David Goggins. Yep, that's me. And they give themselves a higher multiplier. So then they get that calorie. Oh, I get to have 4,700 calories because I garden once a week, but I garden hard. I go ham. No, you don't. And so this helps people understand what a calorie is. I'm not saying that chicken parm was bad, but if you made it at home, you can choose less calorically dense options.

When A Client “Eats 1,450”

SPEAKER_01 6:34

I had a student reach out and say, hey, Chris, how are you? How much does it cost for a one-on-one consult for you or one of your instructors? If you want one-on-one time, it costs a lot of money, you can get it, but that's why we have these calls. You get these mentorships to ask these types of questions. Because as we were saying earlier, time is money. And if I do a one-hour consult with you, I'm gonna charge you my hourly rate. These calls are for you to ask these questions. I'm working with an obese client and I need some help with nutritional counseling. I calculated all the macros based on her food log and not sure how to change things because she seems to be eating within a good calorie range, but it doesn't make sense with her weight. Just thought I would review with someone to make sure I'm calculating everything correctly. I love that she is charging for nutrition, but I asked her, do you have photos of all the food for a week? And she said, Well, I had her do a food lock. I've done that as well. And when you have a client that do a food lock, 165-pound individual. The average woman in the United States weighs 169 pounds. So this is an average person. The average person put on 30 pounds during COVID, 1.5 to 2 pounds per month. Dudes, 190. So if you just do a simple guesstimation times that by 10, that's your homeostasis. If you want to lose, you got to be under. You want to gain, you got to go up. Yeah, there's other more complex equations, 1.2 multipliers, yeah, but just simplicity for today's class. She said that she's eating 1,450 calories. Here's her food log. For breakfast, I have a white egg and coffee. Oh, it's so beautiful. Lunch, wings and fries, dinner, vanilla, almond, cereal, 2% milk. Snack, pineapple. This is why your clients are struggling and why you pay us a lot of money as a coach. Because what the fuck does that mean? Did you eat the whole pineapple? Did you have a slice of pineapple? White egg. One? 30? What does it look like? Because your clients are going to say, I had a small chicken parm at the restaurant. It was like their little sampler size. It was super healthy. It was 400 calories. Your clients are the ones who were choosing this. So it's not to defame or make your clients feel bad. It's to educate them that this is 1,500 calories. You thought it was 500. So you are in fact not eating 1,450 calories. Why? Because the scale isn't moving. I told you from the beginning we will weigh ourselves once a week, but I'm going to put a little bit of emphasis in it. It's not the end-all be-all. I'm more concerned about your pull-ups, your push-ups, how much you're back squatting, how much you're hip thrusting, what's your mile time, what's your grip strength, what's your blood pressure. I put the priorities there, but you being the psychopath that you are, and I'll always make my clients laugh, you put everything on this coin flip, which is the scale. So if the scale is going up and you're putting these on, it is because you're consuming too much. If you were truly eating that, the first law states energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So if you should be getting, say, 2,000 calories and you're eating 1500, that is a deficit of 500. So in a week you would lose weight. So that's why when you have a breakfast burrito, what in the fuck is a breakfast burrito? Because 140 calorie tortilla is not a lot. And when you go to a really, really good Mexican cafe, they give you these ones, which are 600 calories. And the beans, where if you cook them at home or if you get them out of the can like I did last night, a fourth of a cup, 65 calories. They're getting their beans, they're refried, and they're cooked in lard and they're putting amazing taste and stuff in there, butter and all that stuff. It tastes amazing. I measure out a fourth of cheese, which is 110 calories. They do not. They're just throwing it on there, they're just sprinkle it on there as that guy does with the salt. They put a ton on there. And you're gonna have sour cream, you're gonna have guacamole. That breakfast burrito was 1200 calories. Right here on this day, you said you got 1500. The fuck you did, that breakfast burrito was 1500 calories. And then you have your spicy chicken sandwich with small fries. Guess what? That's another 1500 calories. Then you had fish fillets. Did you make those fillets at home or did you get them out of the box? And I actually prefer if you got them out of the box because it's gonna tell you how many calories are on there. Or did you go to a restaurant? That's another 500 calories. Good for you. You didn't have any snacks that day, but that's 3,500 calories. What does the average American consume per day? 3,500 calories. She thought she was getting 1450. So you see how frustrating that is. I spent all this time doing this food log and I'm gaining weight. You must be the worst nutrition coach in the world. No, it's because you didn't take photos as I told you to.

Mindset Stress Sleep And Habits

SPEAKER_01 12:26

And if you say that today, you're gonna get a lot of backlash. But your genes do play a role as well. Metabolic disease, hunger, hydration, sleep, stress. But the foundation is calories in, calories out. But we really need to focus on this bottom one, which is overlooked from society standpoint. Your behavior, your environmental factors, your mindset, and your habits. How do you handle stress? How do you handle sleeping three hours a night? Oh, it's because my cortisol, as I was talking about earlier, that's just an easy, easy bully to pick on. You've got to have a cortisol cocktail and you're gonna be cured. Remember, every time you take a sip of that cortisol cocktail, ah, I'm magical now. I'm a unicorn. You are changing your mindset and your habits because you're telling yourself you're doing something that's good. So later on for lunch, when I normally have my spicy chicken sandwich, oh, I remember Chris said, don't have the small fry. So your mindset, because of that cortisol, it's called a cortisol fucktail, you don't have the calories, 500 calories, sorry, the fries, you don't have them. Now you're in a deficit. So you're getting closer to what your organism really needs. And then you start losing weight. What happens to your stress? It goes down. Now you're freaked out because the scale's higher in the past, but now the scale is lower. So how do you sleep? Better. Your blood pressure calms down. You're getting into actual deep sleep. So you're resetting all of your hormones. You wake up. If you're a dude, you wake up and you're nice and happy. If you're a lady, you wake up, your testosterone's higher than normal, your cortisol is going to be higher as normal as well. That's good. You want your cortisol high in the morning because then you can go out there and fuck shit up. It's a that's that environment with high testosterone, high cortisol. You go out there and you do shit. You have a winner's mentality. But prior to your cortisol cocktail, you didn't have that. You had a scarcity mindset. You weigh yourself, the scale's up. So then you're more likely to snack on tamales and fried teriyaki chicken bowls. And I'm not teaching you or showing you this stuff is bad. No, not at all. I'm educating you on your choices. So you have to take photos of your food for one whole week. You got to get half your body weight in ounces. How many steps did you get last month? 6,000? I'm gonna challenge you to get 8,000. Do you think you can do more? I let my clients make that decision. Oh, I thought you were supposed to get 10,000. That's just an ambiguous number. If you think you can get there, you gotta post into your story every single day. And if you don't get there, you gotta bring me a bottle of wine next Monday. Have fun with it. Now it's a competition, like, oh shit, I gotta go get my steps today. So as a whole, you are teaching them about what they're putting into their system, and you're getting them to move a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

And that makes people like meticulously tracking every single calorie, not just doing the food log where it's like, oh, I just ate egg or per burrito. They're like legit tracking everything or weighing their food. And let's say they're not losing weight.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

There's there's a hole in their story somewhere, and that's what photos provide. Because you could look at this and you could be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What's up there? Oh, well, it was a stressful day and I had a beer. Okay, what type of beer? Oh, I love IPAs. Why didn't you put your IPA on the food log? Well, I thought I was gonna get in trouble. Who are you gonna get in trouble from? That's why I'm having you do this, is for accountability. Okay, well, to be 100% honest, I did have a beer and then the Knicks played, so I had another beer, and then I had French fries and nachos and also three lines of coke and ecstasy. And you're like, oh, there we go. Now we're having fun because now I know exactly what's happening. You were afraid to tell me that stuff because tracking is awesome, but you got to educate your clients. This isn't for the rest of your life. It's to help you understand what a calorie is. If you do measure it out, Cody's awesome at it. He posts in this story. He measures that stuff out. I guarantee you he's very accurate on his calories. And Cody, when you want to lose weight, what happens?

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Simple subtraction. And you lose weight, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah, and if you want to gain weight, what happens? Yeah. So he's meticulously tracking, he's measuring out everything with his scale. So that's why when you buy this coaching program, I give you a scale. I'm gonna challenge you for one week, don't eat out. Oh my god, it's gonna be so hard. I'm not saying never eat out again. I'm saying I want you to understand what goes into a burrito when you make it at home. Take a photo of the package for the tortillas. Oh, these are healthy tortillas because they're carb balance and there's 29 grams of fiber. Now you're gonna be shit in your pants while you're after you're eating that. But there's there's 250 calories in it. Well, it takes away because then that carb, calories in, calories out. Yeah, that does play a role within reason. But if you have seven of those burritos, how do you know what you're getting when you go out? And again, it's it's all in the conversations you have with your clients. I don't say, oh, you're doing you're doing it wrong. You don't know what calories are. I'm like a superior, a superior person and I'm I'm talking down to you. I tell people my flaws all the time. Last night I had probably four glasses of whiskey, maybe even more. Why? Because a student gave it to me because he got hired at Equinox here in Santa Monica. Nice red breast, it was like 150 bucks. Tastes great. I knew I was gonna be consuming more whiskey yesterday. So guess what I had for breakfast? Nothing. Guess what I have for lunch? Nothing. I'm able to control my hunger by getting enough water. And I use that as okay, today I'm gonna have a little bit more calories, so I need to modify what that looks

Weekly Math And Weekend Blowups

SPEAKER_01 18:38

like. It doesn't need to be just for a day, though, it can be for the whole week. And that's where a lot of people get in trouble, is because when they do their tracking, you could have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday all at a deficit of 200. So that's minus a thousand for the week. But then you have two cheat days, and you're like, yeah, cheat, I have whatever I want. Go back to her food log. Chick-fil-A with I was at in and out the other day with my father-in-law, and the guy is your typical big belly android obese. It's just amazes me on the consumption of humans because it's not like I'm judging, but it's just it's observation. Double double with a coke, shake, and fry. That right there is close to 2,000 calories. When I was there, what I got was a double double. That was it. I knew it was about 800 calories. That's fine. It fit into my week. So if you had a day of plus a thousand plus a thousand, which is super easy to do, as we just saw. 2,000 plus, minus 1,000. Tori, you're a rock star with math. Minus 1,000, plus 2,000. What do we got?

SPEAKER_00 19:58

What was the starting number?

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Damn it, Tori. Plus minus a thousand. Plus a thousand for the week. You do that for a month, you got one pound of this. You do that for a year, you got two and a half of these. But I tracked my food. I did so well. I two days you didn't. You cheated, you did whatever you wanted to. Cheating's a stupid word. We need to hone in on these days. Did you work out on Saturday and Sunday? No, those are my days off. Work out on Saturday and Sunday. On this day, don't get too hungered. Go extreme. Fuck, don't eat. Challenge

Fasting As A Hunger Lesson

SPEAKER_01 20:37

your clients. I love to challenge my clients to fast. Fasting isn't magical, but what it teaches people the difference between physiological hunger and psychological hunger. It's almost like educating people on what true cold is. So if you live in Southern California, you're like, it's freaking freezing today. It's 68. People are like, what did you just say? Like, dude, I got my sweater and everything. My mind, compare that to hunger. I'm a little uncomfortable. This isn't cold. Go to Canada, where Greg's at. You're gonna find out what cold is when it's negative 10. Or when we were in New York and New Jersey for the seminar. Negative 12. If you have a week off, go five days without eating. On that fifth day, you'll have a really good understanding of what true hunger is. You won't die. I'm not saying you have to do this for the rest of your life, but you're now gonna have a date with true hunger. Because the first couple days, you're just gonna be uncomfortable. And then you're gonna get like a couple days you're like, actually, it's not that bad. I because I love the mindset people out there, like Jocko. Every month he'll do one day he doesn't eat, every quarter he'll do like five days he doesn't eat. He's a SEAL. He has that military background. I can appreciate that because you truly understand. And then where we go wrong as a society or just a social media world, is people will say it's like you have to fast. No, I didn't say that. What type of person are you? Oh, you're an executive? Yeah, probably not the best idea to fast when you need to present to your private equity firm on why you need $100 million. Let's not do it that day. Maybe on this weekend you're gonna be out of town because you have a holiday weekend. Friday, try to fast. Let's see if we can go 24 hours. Saturday, try to fast, go 48 hours. Sunday, you're gonna have your party, that's when you can indulge. So then we're manipulating the weak calories. That's what we really need to look at. And so if you have five days where you're great, but two, you're terrible, that's the recipe. And again, when you do the tracking of the food log, I like to do just to get you in the habits. But taking the photos and sending them to me, I can give you a better guesstimation of what you're consuming. And that the telltale sign is when you have three days in a row where they send you everything and one day they forgot. Well, that day you forgot, I'm gonna say that's 3,500 calories. That's why we restart. And once you go a whole week of recognizing what you put into your pie hole, then you have the cheat code. Then you're gonna look at this as more of a strategy. You're a detective versus good and bad. And that's healthier for your mindset. I'm never gonna say you can't have your fries, you can't have Chick-fil-A. No, that stuff's fine within moderation. But if you look at trainers and fitness professionals and dietitians, they will consume that stuff weekly. But it's more of like an 80, 90% home cooked, a lot of fruits and vegetables, a lot of fiber, a lot of protein. The 10% is the stuff they enjoy. But for our clients, it's 60% of the stuff they enjoy, 40% of the stuff they don't like. So I just tell them learn to not be obsessed with the taste of food. And it's challenging because if you're eating fucking Chick-fil-A seven days in a row, and then you go home and you have chicken breasts with broccoli and carrots and you cooked it, that shit sucks. It's bland. Maybe the food engineering that people are creating and the addictive stuff that they put into it, it's done on purpose. So we have to re-engineer your habits and your behavior.

Building Sustainable Nutrition Phases

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Once you do that regularly over the course of time, then we get into behavioral augmentation, longevity integration. Those are the three phases as a nutrition coach that I help my clients with. Phase one can take a long time, but at least they understand the stepping stones. Because what happens is when they truly optimize the metabolic awareness of what they're putting in, the scale starts dropping. Stress goes down, sleep improves, hydration improves. They actually start getting close to 1.6 gram per kilogram in protein per day for their body weight in kilograms. That's empowering. Their workouts are improving. The best feeling in the world is when you get a text from a client on a Sunday and say, hey, guess what? I didn't go to brunch and get blacked out drunk. I just did a four-hour hike. That's them winning. That's that matrix effects with Keanu Reeves when he pauses the bullets. He knows what he's capable of doing. Your clients now understand, oh, you know what? That bottle of wine that I was drinking every single night for three years, I was ashamed to tell people. And I just kind of hit it. That's why I wasn't sleeping. Well, it all factors in. And so when you explain it like this to your clients, it's helpful because you're not saying it's just calories in, calories out. And that's what some people will do. And we get in these fights. No, it isn't about calories. Well, yeah, it is. You just are not aware. You don't know what it's like to run a mile without a vest on. You're running a mile with a 40-pound backpack on and a freaking parachute behind you, and it's taking you 15 minutes, and you think that's normal. I'm helping you understand what the distance is. And I'm comparing calories to distance because that's what it is. A mile in the rain is still a mile in the snow, still a mile if you're driving, if you're walking, it's the intensity and intent behind it. Same with calories. 100 calories in broccoli is not 100% equal to 100 calories in protein because of the thermal effect of food. Diet induced thermogenesis, these all play into it, but it's 100 calories. Yeah, you're gonna burn more from the protein, but if you had 100 calories in gushers versus 100 calories in something else, still 100 calories. I'm educating you on all

Wrap Up And Questions

SPEAKER_01 26:24

this stuff. What are some questions that we have?