Bad nutrition advice - PART 2

Today, we're diving into part 2 of some of the "less than ideal" 🫠 nutrition advice that I've heard people receive! We're taking a look at why it may be detrimental, and the things I would want my gals to know, understand and be aware of if they were given this advice!

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DISCLAIMER
The Eat Like Ruby podcast is not a substitute for professional medical or dietary advice.
The advice given in this episode is general in nature and should not be used to treat any medical conditions, health conditions, illnesses, injuries and/or any nutrition related conditions, deficiencies or similar.
This podcast is not to be used as, or in place of, medical advice or dietary advice.
Please consult your health care professional before implementing any of the advice, information or protocols discussed in this episode.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello fam, welcome back to the pod. Today I'm gonna do an episode that flows straight on from our last episode. So in the last episode, we spoke about, I think we literally called it something like effed up fitness industry advice or something like that. And really just looking at some things that I've personally seen come out of the fitness industry or the online coaching industry or similar, where I've just had clients or people say to me, like, I was told to do this, I was given this plan, I was given this advice. And just as someone who is an educated professional, my mind just going like, oh, I don't think that is the best advice. And I said in that previous episode, my intention with this episode isn't to just like bring up a bunch of horror stories for entertainment because A, I'm aware that even though they can be a little bit entertaining, there's still a big element to them where it's like, this is not good. People who are getting this advice are getting left in shitty positions. It's shit to think that people are getting this advice in the first place and paying for it. So I don't want to view this as just like a form of entertainment. And I also didn't want to just be like ragging on people with no real point or no outcome. So I guess my point or like what I want to get out of it, and I feel like we did a pretty good job of it in the last episode, is really just pointing out like if I've heard certain things or seen people being given certain advice, what I think that person needs to be aware of when they've gotten that advice, what I think coaches need to be aware of when they're giving that advice, and just like opening our minds a little bit instead of just giving people very like generic or like one-way sort of plans and protocols. I said in that last episode, it can be common to see people, and I don't want to just like assume, but it can be common when we see people who don't have the right education to be giving out that advice, to kind of just have this like one way and pretty much be saying to clients, like, do it my way or don't do it at all, kind of thing. And to me, that does suggest that you don't have much education because when we have education, we know that there's multiple ways we can do things. We know that there's a lot we want to look at before just deciding on what someone's plans and protocols should be. When we come over to a coach or someone just saying to people like, this is just the one way to do it, my mind pretty much just goes, Did you just learn that way? And now you're just passing it along. Like, I don't think you've got a lot of education and a lot of information. I think you've just got like one approach that you've seen either work for you or for someone else, and now you're just handing it along. So that might not always be the case and not even the point I wanted to get into here, but just what I wanted to touch on before we keep this combo going is like really what I want to get out of it is just bringing up a few of the main things that I've heard over the last few months and just kind of pointing out what I would want people to think about and be aware of if you've been given that advice or if you find yourself in a position where you're hearing these things. I want people to be like, ah yeah, Rubes has told me about this and now I know a little bit more about it because of that episode Rubes did. I can make a bit more of an informed decision of whether this is the right advice for me. That's really what I want people to get out of this episode. And just like always, I just want people to have that little bit more open-mindedness. I think coaches definitely need to have a bit more of an open mind that there's so many things that we can work towards with our nutrition and training, and therefore there's so many ways we can work towards things. And then I think clients need to remember that as well. And if you have been given a plan or a protocol or something that just doesn't work for you, you absolutely have the right to say to that person, like, hey, this approach isn't really working for me. And a good coach will communicate with you and go, like, hey, what's not working? What could we change? What could we do? And like I said in that previous episode, sometimes that conversation might lead to the coach and the client going, Maybe we're not the right fit. Maybe our approach or the things that we teach and the way we teach them aren't the right fit for you. Or maybe we do have a different approach we could use for you. And because you've communicated that this one isn't working, we can try a different one. So there's so many directions that can go, but that just comes back to people having an open mind and knowing that there's different ways we can do things. And it really comes down to conversing on the right way to do something for the individual. So if you find yourself in a position where you've just been given like a one-way thing and it's like this is the only way, in my opinion, it ain't the only way. Have a little look around for some other ways. And obviously, we touched on a few like specific scenarios and we really broke those down in that recent episode. I want to get into definitely one more specific scenario today, and I think it might lead to a f in a few different directions. But really, the one I want to look at today, I'll preface this one by saying somebody told me that they had done a program, like a group program, where this advice was given. And I don't know for sure whether this exact advice was given. This has just been told to me by someone who did that program. They might have interpreted it wrong or they might have missed the mark. I'm not too sure. But I definitely think advice like this is being given in different scenarios in the fitness industry. So I think it's definitely worth looking at this. I think the program that I originally like heard about this from, I think we're gonna have some crossover with our audience and this particular program. So I'm definitely not gonna name and shame it because A, I don't even know if this is definitely right in terms of their doing this. And B, the point of this is to not name and shame. I just more so want to look at any program or anyone who's giving out this particular advice. I definitely think there's other shit we want to look at with this. So, what the advice was or what I heard is that this was a fat loss or weight loss program. And like I said, it was a group program. So you're kind of given like your calories and different things like that. And it was like, okay, we're all in week one, like get started on your calories, let's go, right? Which can be awesome. Things like that can work well. But then the advice that was given, and again, I think there's going to be a lot of different programs or coaches out there giving similar advice, was any week that you don't lose 500 grams or more on the scale, you should drop your calories by 150 calories. Any week that you do not lose 500 grams or more on the scale, you should drop your calories by 150 calories. In my opinion, there are so many things wrong with this approach. I want to point out the very first most obvious problem here is that I work predominantly with females, and I know that this program works predominantly with females as well. And obviously, we know that females make up a huge client base in this nutrition and training space, and especially in the fat loss and weight loss space. So I think there'll be other programs out there giving similar advice, maybe not those exact numbers, but giving that advice of anytime we don't see XYZ weight loss, we want to reduce the calorie intake. The biggest red flag that waves straight away for me right here is that we know that the female body goes through different things at different times of the month. So we cannot decide whether this person or whether any person, any female, is in an effective deficit and therefore succeeding with their fat loss and weight loss goals based on what their body does in one week. We've spoken about this so much on the podcast before, the fact that we do go through different things at different times of the month. I've spoken about the way my body goes through that and how I just notice like there are certain times of the month where my weight just goes up, regardless of what I'm doing. There are certain times of the month where my weight just goes down. If I was to sit at maintenance, like if I was to sit perfectly at my maintenance intake for three months, I would still see at different times of my cycle, my weight just creeps up. At different times of my cycle, my weight creeps down. And if I'm sitting at maintenance overall, then that balance is out and I tend to maintain because it's going down at times, it's going up at times, and it's always coming back to that maintenance place. But if we then come across to someone who is watching that on a weekly basis and then adjusting based on that, if that was me, I would have weeks where it's like, oh, I could definitely be in an effective deficit, but there's other things happening in my body that are causing a temporary weight spike. And I'm going to talk about that in a second. But it is a temporary weight spike. If I was to then look at this advice of, okay, Rubes, well, you didn't lose 500 grams or more this week, so you need to drop your calories by 150, that starts to come over into a whole nother problem. I've got about eight problems with this, so I'm trying to rein in my thoughts and talk about them in the right order. But that next thing being drop your calories by 150. If you've got someone, like when we look at things like group programs where people are either given calories or often we use something like a calorie calculator and people do it themselves, like I said, these things can work well. But we can find people in positions like we can have tiny petite people who have maybe like a moderate to low activity level, and therefore their initial starting intake might be like 1500 calories. If they don't see a 500 gram drop within a week, do we tell this person to go to 1350? And then if they don't see another one a week or two later, are they now going to what is that, 1200? And then if they happen to have another week, you know, maybe they do have some weeks where it drops and some weeks where it doesn't. But if they have that week where it doesn't, are we now going to drop this person down to 1050 calories? That is a very one size fits all approach. And if you've got a program with people in it that have very different activity levels, very different ages, body sizes, heights, weights, etc., I don't think we could say, I don't think we should say, you should all be losing XYZ amount on the scale every week. And if you do not, you should all adjust this way. That is a real red flag in my opinion, because like I said, you got a tiny person. That's a big adjustment because let's say this person, let's say we did have a tiny, like fairly petite person who wanted to just drop a little bit of body fat and they've been put on a fairly low intake in order to make that happen. If this calorie calculator is quite decent or the person calculating calories is pretty decent, we should be quite close to this person's deficit. I've said on the podcast before, like we can't always calculate the deficit on the first go because there's different little things that'll make up every individual. We've got to actually see how the body responds to an intake for a while before we adjust that intake or before we can say whether it's working or not. So completely agree that sometimes we do need to adjust an intake. But if we look at someone that's been put on 1500 calves, you would assume this person is quite tiny already, and that's gonna be pretty close to a deficit for them. If we drop 150 calories off this person, we've dropped another 10% of their intake. If we have a person on 2200 calories and we drop 150 for them, we've dropped a lot less than 10% of their intake. So it shouldn't just be like regardless of who you are, how big you are, what size you are, what weight you are, what height you are, what intake you're on, you should all drop 150. It should come back to a bit more of a percentage thing so it's relative to you and your intake and where you're at. The second thing to look at there, I think I'm I'm going all over the place. Like I said, I got a lot of thoughts on this one. The second thing to look at there is, like I said, if you've got a tiny person who just wants to drop a little bit of body fat, I wouldn't expect this person to drop 500 grams a week. Again, that's a very like blanket one size fits all, like generic approach. If you do not drop 500 grams or more a week, there are tiny people with fat loss goals who don't need to drop 500 grams a week. And this segues into a whole nother issue of just simply looking at weight loss. If we have a tiny person, or even if I use myself, like I am in the 60 kilo range, I've got decent muscle mass on my body. If I went into a program like this, I would want to drop a bit of body fat, but I would want to hold on to as much muscle as possible. So I wouldn't want to see 500 grams a week dropping off the scale. I would want to look more so at something like pictures and measurements and see, like, hey, is my body composition progressing in the direction that I want to go? Because let's say it's like a 12-week program. I'm not sure about this particular program, but like I said, I think we see approaches like this in a lot of different programs. If it's a 12-week program, if I went in at like, let's say 65 kilos and I was like, I just want to lean up a bit and drop a bit of body fat, I'd be aiming to end this around, say, 62 kilos. Well, I don't need to drop 500 grams a week for 12 weeks. So if the rule essentially is like, well, any week that you don't, Ruby, you should decrease your intake. It's like, yeah, but I don't want that outcome. It's like you should decrease your intake to get this outcome. But if I'm over here going, um, hang on a minute, I don't want that outcome. It's like, well, what is the protocol for me then? So I think that, like I keep saying, is such a like one-way approach. Like everyone should do it this way. But then you got to go, like, well, does that suit everyone? And then we come back to my initial point of the female body doing different things at different times of the month. So let's say somebody does go into this program and they are in an effective deficit. Like the initial calculations are really good for them, things are really good, and they just happen to be coming into a time in their personal cycle when this program starts that their weight just does fluctuate up or just doesn't drop as much as it might at other times or whatever. Like their body is just doing its good, healthy female thing, but then they get to the end of week one and the rule is just like, okay, well, if you didn't drop 500 grams, drop your cows. If this person actually, like I said, is in an effective deficit, but they just have other factors playing out for their weight at this time. Because let's not forget, we've had a lot of conversations on this podcast about the fact that a lot of things can affect weight that have nothing to do with body fat and body composition change. So if we are simply just looking at weight, it's like this person's weight could be reacting to things that have nothing to do with the deficit, the nutrition intake, the fat loss, the body composition, all of that. This person's body right now is responding to this particular time in the cycle, right? And we could look at all the other things that affect weight as well, but let's just stay on this one or we'll be here all day. But if that's playing out for somebody, and then let's say they would go into the second week, if we kept them on the same protocols, but they start to come into a different time in their cycle where the weight spark and the weight fluctuation has calmed down. In the meantime, we've now started to have an effective deficit in place for two weeks for this person. So the body fat and the body composition is slowly starting to respond to that. Then this person might then see the 500 gram drop in this second week. They might not have needed to drop their calories. But if the rule is as simple as like, get to the end of week one, things haven't changed, drop the calories. On top of all this, I don't think seven days is enough time to declare something working or not working. I think we need to sit on an intake for a few weeks and let the body actually enter that deficit and start to show the response to that. Like, assuming that we should drop 500 grams in seven days, you're going to need a pretty gnarly deficit in place to do that, for some people, especially. Again, it's just going to be different from person to person, just which just backs up the whole point. But not everyone's body is going to respond to that in seven days, and so it shouldn't. And then, like I said before, you might then get into the next week and other factors like your cycle and your digestion and your fluid levels and different things are sitting in a different position. And your body has started to respond to the deficit at the same time. So you do start to see the weight loss and the fat loss occur. And then it's like, we never needed to drop the intake. We just had to sit on this intake for a little bit longer in order for it to actually be effective. And some people might hear this and go, well, why not just drop the intake though? Like, yes, the initial one might be effective after a few weeks, but why not just drop it sooner and get the ball rolling sooner? There's so many things to look at here, which just back up the point of it can't be a one-size-fits-all approach. Because, like I said before, firstly, if we have someone who starts on a low intake, how low do they go? How hard do we push them based off of this one theory? There's one theory that if you don't drop 500 grams of the week, you have to drop 150 calors off every day. And I don't even know if I worded that correctly at the start, but that's what it was. You would drop 150 calories off your daily intake if you haven't seen a 500 gram or more drop on the scale. And so if you've got this tiny person, like I said, how far do we push them? How low do we drop that intake? Or if they're just a really sedentary person, sometimes we have people that aren't super tiny, but they're quite sedentary, like their step levels low, their training volumes low. There's so many factors that are gonna make up somebody's required intake. But it's like, how hard do we push out? How low do we push that just based off of one theory? And this is why I always say to people like, we want multiple forms of assessment, like pictures, measurements, weight, different things. We also want to look at, and this is a whole nother tangent I'm about to go on, but we also want to look at things like energy, hunger, performance, etc., to then actually decide is this person in an effective deficit or not? And how much harder, if any, are we gonna push this person? And that's what I'm gonna get into in a second. But the last thing I want to say on this particular bit right here is I think it is very narrow-minded and I think it is making a huge effing problem even worse by just telling people to look at the scale weight side of this. I have dedicated my life and contemplate on a daily basis retiring from this industry because the scale weight conversation is so painful. The scale weight conversation is so painful, and I man up every day and I fight the good fight, and I slowly see people respond to it well, and that motivates me to keep fighting the good fight. But we have dedicated so much time and energy to trying to get women to move away from a scale fixation. And I think this approach of simply watch what the scale does and then adjust is just taking such a backward step on that approach. Like that's crazy to me. And again, if I think about myself or even so many of the girls that I work with, there are so many people who I wouldn't want to be dropping 500 grams a week. Because we've got to remember, like I keep saying, the scale is made up of so many things. And a 500 gram drop, like let's just go there for one second. A 500 gram drop could be someone just taking a huge dump, right?

unknown 18:44

Right?

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Like, you're all gonna be laughing right now, but it's friggin' true. It absolutely could be. We don't know because there's so many things that are gonna make up the exact number on the scale every day, which is why I will never use it as a form of assessment alone. Have to have other forms of assessment in place alongside it. But then coming back to a more serious thing to think about here, like I said, I wouldn't want to drop that much weight and I wouldn't want my a lot of my girls to drop that much weight because they have built such wicked physiques and they're holding on to such awesome muscle mass. And if somebody wants to do like a bit of body recomp and they're like, yeah, I want to get a little bit leaner, but geez, I want to hold on to as much of this muscle as possible, then we don't want to see these big drops. I personally wouldn't want to see drops that big every week because it would be very hard for me to personally drop that much body fat every week. And I work with girls, a lot of girls that are smaller than me. So it'd be even harder for them to drop that much body fat every week. So then it's like, okay, yeah, technically maybe I saw your 500 gram requirement, but it wasn't from body fat or it wasn't all from body fat. So it's just a shitty rule to have in place and therefore a shitty thing to work towards. And then, like I said, we then get women like deeming the week successful or not successful purely based on did I get that 500 gram drop or not. And then that can lead to like A, people just fixating on the scale and just wanting more drops, more drops, more drops, which then B can lead to people getting to a position where it's like, okay, yeah, technically I've had weight loss, but have I achieved the physique I wanted? Or have I just pushed and pushed and pushed for that weight loss because I was told I should be dropping 500 grams a week. And in order to do so, I've dropped my calories maybe four times throughout this process because there were weeks where I didn't see that. And now I'm in a position where I have dropped weight. I'm also on a very low calorie intake. So I'm not holding on to much muscle mass. And yes, technically I'm lighter, but I do not have the physique that I want. Because I'm dropping muscle, I'm not holding on to muscle during this time. So I'm starting to get this light body, but it's not reflective of the body that I want. And then the other big factor to this that I said I would come back to, and we touched on this in the last episode, is if somebody is working towards this expectation of should drop 500 grams a week, if this person has a week or a few weeks where this doesn't happen, I don't think it should just be, okay, well, you need to drop your calories by XYZ. There needs to be education and conversation with this person around things like adherence and consistency, first of all. I think programs like this assume adherence and consistency, which in a perfect world, we would all have it, right? But we know that people don't. So that needs to be looked at first is like there's no point assessing if an intake is working or getting a certain result if we're not actually hitting that intake. And there needs to be real education on what that looks like. There then needs to be a huge conversation, and we've had this conversation so many times on this podcast before for this reason. There needs to then be a conversation of okay, cool, let's actually look at maybe you are not in as an effective deficit as you would want to be or as you need to be to get the result that you want, right? There are times where we, like I said, calculate the deficit, we put it in place, someone hits it for a while, we assess, and we go, we need to push a more aggressive deficit to get the result that you want. We're not Currently, in an aggressive enough deficit to get the result that you want, right? But there has to be a conversation of do you understand what that is going to look like? And are you wanting and willing to endure that? And some people say yes straight away, but it is important to explain to a person and have them understand if you drop your calories, right? You are going to find it harder to plan days. You're gonna have less energy. You might start to suffer with energy dips, training performance, hunger, cravings, mood, sleep, libido, all of these things can be affected by lowering a calorie intake or increasing a calorie deficit. And sometimes we have this conversation with people and they're like, yeah, all those things feel fine for me right now. I feel like I could push a more aggressive deficit and push those things a little bit further, and it's not gonna be too bad. Other times we have these conversations with people and you can pretty quickly pick up if someone's already really struggling with like energy training, performance, recovery, you've got to ask, what is gonna happen if we take 150 calories a day off this person? And I just think it is so important to clock that right there. If you are, first of all, if you're a coach who's just giving out advice like this, really think about that. Secondly, if you're a client who's been given advice like this, really think about that. If someone is just saying to you, if you do not get XYZ result, you must drop your calories by XYZ, there has to be a conversation in the middle around, but do you understand what that is going to mean for you and your daily life? And do you want to and are you willing to go through that? And that sounds really dramatic. Like, are you willing to go through it? It sounds really intense, but it can be intense. If you have a woman who is on, let's say, like 1600 calories and she's at a point where she's like, this is pretty hard, this is pretty intense. I'll use myself as an example. If I'm sitting in a deficit on 1600 calories, I'm like, this is really starting to become quite a grind for me, right? Like I have to plan my days pretty accurately. There's a lot of things I've got to like cut out and say no to. I've got to like be pretty strict and tight on my dinners with my husband. Like if my husband says I'm getting KFC, there's no way I'm getting KFC when I'm on 1600 calves. Like, just different things like that. Even if there's certain meals he wants to have at home, you've got to look and go, like, how many calories can I really allocate towards that dinner? Then we come over and go, like, am I able to fit a good amount of pre-training calories into this day or am I finding that quite hard? And if training is important to me, do I wanna make sure I'm fueling that training? How am I actually feeling when I am training? Because again, if training is important to me, do I wanna rip myself off by more calories and therefore more energy and have my training suffer? Is my energy, my training performance, and my recovery already really feeling like a grind and feeling like a struggle for me? How are they gonna feel if I was to drop down to 1450 calories? Like that would be very hard for me personally to drop down to 1450. And really the conversation here is explaining all of this to the person and saying, like, this is what it might look like for you. So we need to look at like where are all of these things currently sitting? Like I said, sometimes you have people that are like, no, I'm sweet. I could definitely push this harder, right? But then other times you have people where you're like, you're already really struggling. It's gonna be very friggin' shit for you if we drop 150 calories off your day. And you're really then explaining to this person, like, yes, we can do that, but all of those things are gonna take a hit. The alternative is we stay where we are right now. Maybe the fat loss and the weight loss is a little bit slower, but it's a lot more doable, it's more sustainable, it's more enjoyable, etc. And then that comes back to like the adherence and the consistency thing we said before. If a person is like already struggling to stick to this intake, then you've got to look and go, well, what's gonna happen when we make it even harder for you? It's probably less likely you're gonna stick to it. I've said before the best diet in the world means nothing if we can't stick to it. So if the rule is as simple as like drop 150 calories off this person's day, if that then leaves that person in a position where they're like, I cannot stick to this, well, we should have kept them on the intake that they could stick to. But no, we can't keep them there because they didn't drop 500 grams this week, apparently. Can we see the issue here? And if we can't, don't worry, because I've still got more issues with this one. The next thing we need to look at here is having the understanding education and then having the conversation with people about diet fatigue. Because sometimes people have come into these programs off the back of weeks or months or even years or decades of dieting. So maybe this person has literally been on low calories for years. They've come into the program, they've been given calories maybe really similar to what they've already been on. And there's a huge element there of everything we just said has already been playing out for this person for months, if not years. They have had shitty energy for months, they've had cravings for months, they've been struggling with all of these things for years, and they're just at a point where it's like, yeah, technically I've been put on like 16 or 1700 calories, whatever it is, but I've been trying to hit that intake for the last six months, the last 12 months. It's become such a grind. The underlying thing there is the diet fatigue has just accumulated so much to the point where it is very hard for me to physically stick to this, mentally stick to this. Like it's just not a good time at all. And the conversation has to be like, hey, do you understand diet breaks and spending time at maintenance and spending time away from the deficit for a while and understanding that you can still work on your nutrition and training in different ways while relieving some of this pressure, relieving some of the negative things you're feeling around this diet and all of that, and then revisit it at a later date. Let's just say we have a person who has been trying to eat 1600 calories a day for 12 months, if not longer. And then they come into a program like this and they get given 1600 calories and they're like, whoa, cool, like I'm super motivated for the program. But the underlying thing is, I've been trying to do this way before this program started, right? And then they do have pretty low energy training's been quite shitty. They've been quite snacky and moody because the cravings are there, maybe sleep's been a bit shitty, training performance has been a bit shitty. Like overall, it's just like trying to grind through these locals and it's just not feeling too good for me. If this person was to be educated, and anytime we've delivered big fat loss content, like we used to do group fat loss programs, we've delivered heaps of content about this on the podcast. One of the very first conversations that we have is understanding what is required to achieve fat loss, aka calorie deficit, understanding that a calorie deficit is an energy deficit, and asking yourself, based on everything I've just spoken about, do I feel like I want to make my body deficient in energy right now? Do I think that would serve me? Do I think I'd be able to stick to it? Do I think it would work well for me? Or based on all this stuff I've just heard, am I realizing now, like, wow, I've been in this position for a long time and I need a break from it? And then if we give people that information and they realize, like, hey, maybe I do need a break from it, coming back to what I just said before, understanding that you can still work on your nutrition and your training, especially, but like you can still work on all of these things without going into that deficit, without watching the scale, without pursuing fat loss or weight loss for a while. If someone comes into a program like that and just goes, hey, I've just taken all this on board and understood all of this, and now I realize like might actually spend a little bit of time on a slightly higher intake, working on things like getting enough protein and doing really good training sessions and improving my energy and my sleep and learning about flexible dieting and things like that. I'm gonna do that for four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, 10 years, whatever you decide. And then being like, I can revisit the deficit at a later date when it actually feels good for me to do so. And I think the more people understand all of this stuff, the more they can make these informed decisions about it instead of just simply being like, go on to these calories. If you don't drop 500 grams, drop them again. And if you don't drop 500 grams, drop them again. And even if that winds you down to 900 calories a day, you better be losing 500 grams a week. Can we see how messed up that is? And then that segues me into the other big thing I wanted to talk about on this topic. Can we see why I had to split this into two episodes? As soon as I saw this note, I was like, yeah, no, that's a total episode. The other big thing to think about here is something we spoke about on the podcast heaps, but looking at the concept of energy availability and just any and everything that comes along with that. So if people don't know energy availability in really simple terms, it's pretty much like how much energy does the body have available once it's used its energy towards training for the day. And what we're sort of looking at here in this particular example is if a person is training a fair bit, or even if they're just training like a moderate amount, but their calorie intake is so low, if we're on really low cows, and then we put most of those calories towards training or a decent amount of those calories towards training, how much energy is left, how much calories are left to support the body for everything else that it needs to do. So the rest of its daily activity, but more importantly, its actual physiological functions. And when we've talked about this in the past, we look at things like hormone function, immune system function, digestion, just to name a few. If we think about people that have limited their energy intake for a really long time, this is where we can commonly see people like regularly getting sick because their immune system hasn't had much energy, hasn't had much love and support for a really long time. Hormone imbalances or disruptions to hormones is another big one. And again, it's just because the body hasn't had the energy available to support those things. So there has to be a level of education around that as well, because that ties into a person coming into a program maybe off the back of already spending a large amount of time on low calories, or coming into a program like this, and maybe you do have a really high training volume, so you need a higher intake and that hasn't been factored in, or you're then just being given this rule of dropping 150 caly that you don't drop weight, if that pretty quickly takes you down onto a low intake and leaves you in a state of low energy availability. But no one has mentioned that at any point because the rule was just as simple as drop your calories anytime the scale doesn't drop. There's this huge element here to health and especially to women's health that just isn't even mentioned or isn't even factored in. So I think the biggest takeaway from this one is like I said before, if you're a coach who's just handing out this like one rule kind of approach, or if you're a client who's getting this, just ask, like, especially if you're a client, just be like, have I actually been educated on the different ways I could navigate this and the different consequences or potential outcomes of navigating it certain ways? If I've just been told to do it one way, have I stopped and been like, is that way actually gonna work for me? Does that support me and my health and my goals? Does that support the rest of my lifestyle right now? Because that's a huge other factor here. It kind of ties into everything we've just said. But maybe you have gone into a program like this with a little bit of a moderate goal and you're like, I'm actually dealing with other things in my life. Maybe I've got study, I've got work, I've got kids, I've got owner business, I've got, you know, holidays, a moving house, whatever it is. Like people have times in their life where it's like, I can't give my all to nutrition and training, but I still want to give a bit. Have we educated people on like, hey, you might not get as good of an outcome in terms of like scale weight, fat loss, et cetera, if you're not able to give it 100%, but that's fine. But if the rule has just been like, well, no, because you just have to drop X amount of weight, it's just assumed that we can all give it 100% all the time. And I've said this so many times when we've spoken about fat loss and eat like Ruby is like, you can give it 100% if you want, you can give it 70%, you can give it 30%. And you just want to understand if this is what I'm willing to give it, this is what I'm gonna get in return. And you just want to ask yourself if you're okay with that. But I think when it's been like a one size fits all approach or it's one rule, it's like just assumed that we're all gonna give it 100% every single day. And if we don't, we all need to adjust our calories to make sure that happens. And it's like maybe I didn't need to adjust my calories, maybe I just had like a stressful week in my life, and I just need to learn how to adjust my nutrition to support that. And that kind of segues me just into another little note that I had. This is like moving or away from that um topic now. I feel like we've covered that one. It's been like half an hour. Um, but another little thing I had in my notes, I've seen this over the years, and I think there can be like a little, like a little bit of room for this at times, but it can also be a red flag at times. What I'm talking about is gyms or people or things like rewarding more visits, or like the more you come, the more rewarded you are. Like the more you come and attend the classes or the gym or the more workouts you clock for the month or whatever, the better. I can understand there is an element there where if someone is like getting started and that can provide like a little bit of accountability or something like that. Like I do get that, but I think pretty quickly there becomes a problem there where it's like training isn't about the more you can do the better. Training should be about quality training, not quantity. So if we're just rewarding quantity, I personally don't love that. I have said this on the podcast before, but when I get my girl started with training, we talk about like how many days do you actually want to do? What are your goals? And how many days do I think you need to do based on those goals? And then where is the sweet spot with that? And a really common thing we see there is people will say to me, like, I want to do five to six days. And I'll say, based on your goals, I think you should do four. Sometimes we might go up to five. For other people, we do two or three. But what I'm getting at is I'm never sitting there mapping out training for my girls, going, the more you can do the better. What we want to look at with training is like, what do you want to get out of it? And then we reverse from there and go, what do you need to do in order to achieve that and to get that out of it? And then how do we structure that across the week, then factoring in how many days you actually said you can come, what does your lifestyle look like? I work with so many mums who have like after school activities and different things like that. And then by default, they're sort of sitting there going, I can definitely get to gym like Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Perfect. That's four days. Let's map out a four-day program. It's not about rewarding how often you can go the better, how much you can go the better. And if we think about the point of training, which was spoken about so much on the podcast before, the point of training is exactly like I just said, work out the goal, like what we want to get out of it. Program the training accordingly to work towards that goal and then carry out that structured programming in a consistent manner. It's not about going as often as you can. It's about doing what's required to move you in the direction that you want to go. If your training has been structured across four days to move you in that direction, you don't need to go to the gym seven days. And you definitely don't need to be rewarded for going to the gym more. You just need to go and do that programming that's been implemented for the goal that you have. So, like I said, I think there can be a little bit of room for it to just get people up and moving and like getting started in the gym. But I think if you find yourself with a PT or a group thing or something that's just like, the more you can come, the better, the more you can come, the better, more visits, more visits, more visits. It's like, does it need to be about more and about quantity, or do we need to look more at the quality? Because what is the quality of training that's happening for a person that's just going as often as they can? Probably not as good, or most likely not as good as the quality of training for someone who has a really well-structured program for them, goes in, does it really well, and then rests. So it's like starting to get into a whole nother topic. But that was just something that I've seen over the years where it's just like this rewarded for the more visits you can have. But it's like not about how many visits we do. It's about what we do with those actual visits and what we do when we're there. And the last thing I want to talk about on this whole topic of the fitness stuff. Like I said, I got sent so many stories, I got sent so many things. I feel like we could just talk about it all day. And it might be something that comes up again. I'm sure people will probably have some comments off the back of this episode. But the last thing that I wanted to talk about, and I got sent this a lot through a lot of different young coaches, and I don't even really know where I'm going with this. I don't know exactly what my point is with this, but seeing so many, and I don't want to put people in boxes because not everyone in this position does this, but it was a common theme with seeing so many young female PTs who are in just pretty good shape and like, good on you, go off. You obviously work hard. And then having clients who are also young females who are in pretty good shape, and constantly talking about putting these people back into deficits and back into mini cuts. And literally, like, I got sent so many Instagram posts or reels or whatever of people that are like, this coach is putting this person back into a deficit, back into a mini cut. And we've seen her put this person in a deficit four times this year already. And we're talking about people that are, like I said, in great shape, like healthy body weight, healthy looking, very in shape, like don't need to be doing four deficits a year at all. And I'm very mindful of the fact that like people can be in good shape and want to get in great shape. I'm not saying at all that that can't happen. I'm not against that at all. I would say, like, when I go into a deficit, there's probably people that are like, she don't need to go into a deficit. Like, what are you doing? Right. We've all seen that for different people. But I think just clocking, like, it almost comes back to something we said in the last episode. That actually just triggered something in my mind that I want to talk about before we wrap this up. But um, coming back to something we said in the last episode, where often, especially if we have PTs that don't have a lot of nutrition education understanding, just putting people on like low macro targets, getting them like a little bit of weight loss on the scale, getting them a little bit more shredded. And then therefore the person's like, oh my God, I got this PT and like I dropped three kilos and I look more lean than I've ever looked before, and I look more shredded. And that can be great. Again, like for some people, it's like maybe you've always struggled to drop that last little bit and the PTs helped you do that. But there's a difference between that versus PTs not educating people on things like energy availability, spending too long in deficits, pushing to too low body fat levels, etc. If a client comes along to a PT or a nutritionist or someone, but I think we see this a lot with PTs, and it's just like, I'd love to drop a little bit of weight. I think coaches need to have the balls to converse with that person and go, but do you need to and would it be good for you? And this is where I think we have a big problem with people who don't have enough education because it's like, A, you don't have enough education to even know this stuff to actually realize how much of a problem it is to put this person back in a deficit. But then B, you also then haven't developed the skill set to have hard conversations like this. If you think it would be hard to say to someone like, hey, you probably actually don't need to pursue fat loss or weight loss, we don't need to put you on low cals, we actually need to put you on higher cals. This is something I have this conversation daily with people. I think you need to be on a higher intake. You've got a female there that spent their whole life pursuing a lower intake and pursuing weight loss. It is a skill for a coach to be able to have that conversation and to be able to hold that client through that process. That is a skill. And I speak to that from big experience. On a daily basis, I talk to females about getting out of deficit, staying out of deficits, and I coach them through that process and I know that there's a lot going on for that client. And as a coach, you have to be able to say, I know this stuff well enough and I back myself and I back the process well enough to know that this is the best thing for you to do. It's very easy to say to a client, yeah, you want to drop four kilos, we'll just put you on 1200 calves, let's go. Right. And side note, I'm not saying anyone who wants to drop four kilos should go into 1200 cals. That's my point. It's easy to just put a gnarly deficit in place, but if you don't understand the health consequences of that, you shouldn't be doing it. And if you don't have the skill set to have hard conversations with people about the times when it might serve them and it might not, you shouldn't be doing it either. And that comes back to a lot of these things we can see online where everything's just very aesthetic and it's light and it's fluffy, and it's like, oh my God, here's Sammy and she weighs 63 kilos and now she's gotten down to 60, summer shred. Woo-hoo, go Sammy. Like that can be great. I'm not saying that's always a bad thing. But if Sammy's then back in three months doing another mini cut and doing another one and doing another one and doing another one, we have to clock that and go, what kind of content are we looking at? And what kind of coaches and shit are we supporting either online by just by following them? Or if you are someone who is investing in these kinds of coaches and services, really just clock like, am I just paying someone to give me macro targets and put me through another mini cut, another fat loss days, et cetera? Has this person spoken to me about things like energy availability, like diet breaks, spending time at maintenance? What is actually required to build a physique? Sometimes we see these people with these, you know, super shredded physiques, but it's like, bro, you've been training for three years and you haven't built any shape. You know why? Because you've been on a quote mini cut that's not that mini. It's pretty friggin' maxi at this point because you've been in it for three years. And as a result, you haven't been able to build much shape or much muscle or anything. So that's a whole nother thing. But coming back to the actual like health side of this, the physical health side of this, of having someone on low cows for years, and also just like the mental health side of it, the education side of it, it's like, are we actually getting coached and taught things or are we just getting put on low macros and put into another mini cup? And the last thing I wanted to talk about, I said in there, like something popped into my head. This is just a little bit of a horror story. I don't have too much like wisdom on this one, but this was just crazy. I guess I'll probably find some wisdom in it. And this is pretty, like kind of sad in a way as well. But I started with a nutrition client at the start of this year, and I said to her, she was young, like she was um 20. And she was pretty into training and had been like learning a bit about nutrition and stuff over the years, been working with a PT. And I said to her, like, what does nutrition look like over the last few months and stuff? And she said to me, like, I've had a PT. I feel like he was great for training, but I don't think the nutrition stuff I was getting from him was very good. And I was like, Yep, okay, cool. And like I said in that last episode, I never want to rag on people's trainers and stuff when I'm talking to them. Like, I'm never gonna say to someone, yeah, your PT sounds friggin' shit, right? Because this person's obviously invested in that thing. I don't want them to feel like, wow, that was like Ruby's pointed out how shit that was. We can definitely point out, like, oh yeah, cool, like maybe you got some good stuff from that person, and now we can look at doing some other stuff, right? In my mind, I'm thinking, I'm gonna save your life right now. But I like to try and keep it fairly positive for people. But with this person, she said, yep, training was great. Don't think he knew what he was doing too much with nutrition. And I was like, okay, cool. Like, did you have a like calorie target or nutrition target or anything in place? She said to me, I would go in to do my PT sessions, he would measure me, like measurements like belly button, hips, etc. And if they had gone up, he would put me on 1400 calories, and if they had gone down, he would tell me to eat 2100 calories. What? Like, what is going on? First of all, such random numbers, such big difference in numbers. And I said, like, well, did you have a fat loss goal or a muscle gain goal? Or like, like, what did you tell him you wanted to get out of it? Because I was trying to work out like, why are we going from 1400 to 21 back and forth? Pretty gnarly. And she was like, Yeah, I just told him like obviously want to like tone up and just be a bit leaner. And so I think there's so much confusion happening there where we've done so many podcasts talking about like how a toned physique is actually achieved. And often people don't know this, and that's fine, because if you haven't studied this stuff, you don't know it. But often, especially when we're young, we don't fully understand that a toned physique needs to be like built, and then yes, we can do a bit of a fat loss phase and reveal it, etc. But if you're just like a young girl and you're like, I just want to tone up, and you go and you say that to a PT, again, this is where I think it's a PT's job to actually explain how do we achieve toning up? How do we achieve a toned physique? This is where we explain to someone, okay, cool. The best way to do that is to actually spend some time building some muscle. Best way to do that is to spend some time out of a deficit. We can implement some time doing that. Then we can see if we do want to pursue fat loss for a while, that's an option. Like, you need to explain all this stuff to a person. From what I could gather in this situation, we have someone going, I want to tone up. She might not fully understand that that requires like building the muscle at times. That's gonna require eating a decent amount. Maybe she does do a fat loss phase at some point. Like, she doesn't understand all that, which is fine. She had never studied this stuff in her life. But then you come over to the PT, and again, you've got to ask, like, well, does he understand all that stuff? Or does he more just understand training? Or maybe he doesn't even understand training. I don't know what's going on with this guy. But it just seems like it was quite a quick fix thing of being like, oh yep, okay, cool. You have a goal to tone up. So I would hit XYZ macros. Go off and do that for the week, come back, get measurements. I I don't know, like, I don't know. There's something in my mind that was just like, I don't love the like, I wouldn't love the idea of being like a young girl just getting measured weekly by a guy and then getting told, like, yes, things are working or no, they're not, and adjusting. I don't know, like I could be totally wrong because some people might have male PTs, they might love it. It just seemed like a bit of a weird energy because this client was quite nervous and quite lost. And I just felt like I can't imagine it's been the most pleasant experience for you to just get measured by this dude every week and then told to change everything and then notewake, change it back, change it again, change it back. And again, just want to make it really clear. I'm not saying this would be the case for all male PTs, like, can't stress enough, but there was definitely an element with this client where she just felt kind of uncomfortable and like it just hadn't been a good experience. So I was like, yeah, I can see how like A, that probably just didn't feel that good. Even if you had a female PT, like someone of the same sex measuring you, but then just going, oh yep, that's not working. Eat more, eat less. Like, there's no information as to A, like, how do we achieve the goal you initially came here and said you wanted to achieve? Like, what's the initial conversation about, okay, cool, you've just said to me this is your goal, this is how it's achieved. Like, it didn't seem to be any of that. But then B, when we're now like doing these measurements and just dropping and cranking up the cows, again, is there any actual education information as to why? Like, are we telling this person, like, hey, I'm going to adjust your nutrition this week because of XYZ? And I don't think, oh, measurements went up this week, we need to suddenly eat 1400 cows. Oh no, they went down, we need to eat 2100 cows. Like, I don't think that is a good approach that there'd be no explanation for that approach. I can't imagine what that would be. But regardless, like, are we actually educating and conversing with people? Even if we just look at, like I keep saying, you know, PTs or online coaches that just give out macros, if you are adjusting someone's macros, are you explaining to them why? And more importantly, are you talking to them about that adjustment before you do it? Like I said before, converse with this person and see how they're feeling, how are things going? Is it actually a good time to push this harder? Because we can absolutely do that at times. I've got clients that have deficits in place, things are maybe chipping away nicely. And I say to this person, I'm getting the vibe. You're feeling really good, you're very locked in, you're very motivated, you have other goals. Like often when someone has goals like muscle gain or performance or events or whatever that we know are coming, and I'm detecting like you're very focused on this fat loss goal right now, and it's feeling really good. It's not too hard for you, it's not too intense for you. I think we could give it a bit more of a nudge. That can actually be an approach we take, but there has to be a conversation about that approach. It's not just like I would never just say to someone, hey, things are going really well for you on 1800 cows. I'm gonna drop you to 1600. I think we spoke about that in the last episode where we had the client who was averaging weeked progress, and then the PT just steps in and drops the calories, and she's like, um, why? Where's all my food going? Right. And so there has to be a conversation with people around like we could potentially push this a bit harder if that feels good. Equally, we could keep it how it is if that feels better. Like, there's always so many options, and making sure clients understand the options is the biggest thing. That is the reason I have this podcast. That is literally the reason I have this pod is to give out this kind of information and let people really make informed decisions. And you can make them with your coach, you can make them by yourself. Like that process can look like a lot of different things. But we want to make sure we've got information before we go through that process or to go through that process. So I feel like this could be a good place to wrap up. But I guess really what I just said there is probably the biggest thing I would want people to take away from this is if you are a coach, are you actually coaching people? Are you giving them information education? Are you helping them learn things and make informed decisions to really suit them? And then especially if you're a client, come over and ask yourself like, am I getting that service? Am I understanding all of these things? Or am I kind of just like getting told what to do? Am I getting blamed and shamed if I don't do it? That was a really big thing we spoke about in the other episode is people just basically getting shamed by their coach for not being able to do something instead of having a conversation of like, well, why couldn't you do it? Is there things we need to look at here to make it more doable for you? I could talk about this all day, but I think I'm gonna wrap this episode up here. Like I said, there might be a few things that come off the back of it and we revisit this topic, or we might not. Who knows? I've always got plenty to say, but I think that is all for today. So thank you so much. Like always, I will be back very soon.