One thing I see ruining peoples progress... with fat loss & maintenance!

Today, we're diving into some of the cool mindset stuff that has come up for me and my clients recently! This is part 1 of 2, and in this episode, we're going to look at one BIG thing that I see people getting stuck in, that can hinder their deficits, but also their time at maintenance!

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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.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

G'day gals, welcome back to the pod. Today I'm gonna do an episode about a few little mindset things that have popped up for myself over the last two months, but also things that have popped up for my clients. And the real kind of theme with all of these things is the benefits of spending time out of a calorie deficit. And if you heard that and thought, oh my god, we've heard rooms talk about this so much, I'm out of here. Like, been there, done that on this combo. Stay with me for one second. Yes, we've talked about it a lot. I'm obviously very biased because I'm very passionate about this. But the reason is I just see so many benefits when women do this. Like so many mindset benefits, physical benefits. Like the list goes on, and I shit you not, I could name multiple, like dozens of people that have literally said the sentence to me, it was life-changing for me to learn how to get out of a deficit, to understand what it means to get out of a deficit, and to spend intentional, positive time out of a deficit. Literally, countless people have said to me, this was life-changing. So that is why I'm so passionate about it. And like I said, I know we've covered this topic in so many ways before, but I've been accumulating little dot points over the last few months of just things that have popped up in my own head because obviously I'm doing my surplus right now. But then I also have so many clients that come to me for this reason because they hear me talk about it and they're like, Rubes, help me do this, help me get out of the deficit. And I will do this all day. Like, this is my favorite, probably honestly my favorite thing to do in Eat Lac Ruby is help someone navigate that process of coming out of the deficit, going to maintenance, finding their like top end of maintenance, how much can we get them eating to fuel all their training, have a good flexible diet, have balance, have all the things we talk about. That is genuinely my most favorite thing because I just believe in it so much. So when someone comes to me and they want to do that, I'm like, hell yes, let's go. And then when I watch them do that, I'm like, this is just awesome. And then, like I said, so often the comment of this is life-changing comes up, and it's just unreal because we see women who have literally spent their entire life just on a diet, eating less, quote, trying to be good, shouldn't eat that, shouldn't eat too much, all of these things. Like the list goes on, we all know it. And I've just seen so many women who have spent their whole life there, and then the more we learn about nutrition overall, and the more we understand nutrition, the more we realize, like, hey, I can take this in so many directions. Nutrition and focusing on my nutrition doesn't just have to be eating good, eating less, weighing less, losing weight. For so many people, if we were to say, like, I'm on a diet, think about like if we were to just say the sentence, I am on a diet, most of the world's default thought of that is like, oh, so that person's trying to lose weight. Clock that right there. People can quote diet for so many things and towards so many things, yet everyone's brain is just so hardwired to hear someone on a diet and instantly go, oh, so you're trying to lose weight. And like I just said, like I'm dieting right now. I would say right now, I am dieting. I am watching my food, I'm tracking my food, I'm on it. I have a plan, like I'm working hard with my nutrition to do the opposite, to gain weight. And then, like I said, I've got so many clients that are just trying to find their maintenance, trying to find the high end of their maintenance to really fuel their training and fuel all their goals. That is awesome. Like, I love that. We're probably gonna speak about that today. Got a lot of clients that are working towards events and performance goals. So they are absolutely quote, dieting, but definitely not for weight loss. So this is why I love this work so much, because like I said, we've got women that have spent decades just having that connection of like, well, if I'm on a diet, it's to lose weight. And then when we start to learn all of this stuff and we start to understand, like, hey, if I want to build my shape and my physique, probably need to spend time not losing weight. Hey, if I want to run a marathon or do high rocks or play a sport, again, probably need to spend time not losing weight. And the more we learn about this stuff and the more we learn how to actually do it for ourselves, it's so cool because it just opens up the door to be like, wow, I can take my nutrition in so many different directions. I can work towards so many different goals. I don't just have to be pigeonholed into this, I'm a woman, I should go on a diet to lose weight category. And then obviously there's a big side note here where we do genuinely have people who want to lose weight or need to lose weight or both, and it is actually a positive thing for them, and they're in the intentional deficit and they're doing really well with that. We've spoken about that enough on this podcast that I would like to think people genuinely believe that I can advocate for both, and I am an advocate for both. So I'm not against deficits, I'm not against fat loss. Like I said, there's a time and place for a lot of people to do that, but I just think it is very cool to understand that it's not always the time and place to do that, and to really reap the benefits of putting nutrition and or training protocols in place to work towards other things. I think it is insanely empowering. Like empowering doesn't even do it justice. When we think about women saying this is life-changing, that is beyond empowerment. Like, that is awesome. So I'm going off on a tangent here. Let's bring it back. The reason I wanted to do this episode, like I've been braindumping these little points throughout the month and really just thinking, like, what is the actual episode here? Like, what's the point of talking about this? I would say the point is wanting to give women exposure, I guess you would say, to the fact that we can diet towards different things, to the fact that we can have different mindsets, we can have different beliefs, we can think about nutrition in different ways. If we point out things right now that I'm experiencing and that I've seen my clients experience, someone listening might just go, oh my god, I've never even thought about that being an option with nutrition. Like if I have felt pigeonholed into this one approach my whole life, I've never even thought about the fact that I could experience that thing. And then on a similar note, I think it's even just cool for people to hear all these things. And if you're someone who has spent time out of the deficit in a positive way before and you've done some of this stuff that we're talking about, it can even be cool to just hear these things and be like, oh yeah, well, like I have experienced that benefit or that thing is in a good place for me. That's awesome. And then on the flip side, if you're someone who feels like they've been in a deficit for a long time, I think it's very common to accept some things as just normal or not even accept them as normal, but have just like subconsciously got these like thoughts, habits, routines, everything in place. Like that has just become our normal. And then when we point out the fact of like, hey, that's actually quite a restrictive thing that you're doing. It might be quite negative, it might be quite miserable for you. There is actually an alternative to this. I think for so many people, they've been, quote, on diets and in deficits, thinking about restriction, thinking about weight loss and all of those similar things for such a long time that you've set up your habits and your mindset and everything accordingly. And that is just quote, normal for you because you've been doing it for so long, and you don't realize, like, hey, this could actually be a lot better or even just a lot different. So I really just want to bring all this to the surface and people can just kind of hear these things and be like, yeah, well, that's interesting. Maybe that's for me, maybe that's not for me. Like, I'm not too sure. Everyone's gonna be different, but it's just a lot of cool shit I've been seeing lately, and I just don't think enough people talk about it. I think we have podcasts where people are constantly talking about fat loss, and it's like, yeah, we get it. Like, we get it. We've all grown up in a fat loss world. We get it. Let's talk about something else. So let's talk about something else. The first thing I want to talk about is almost something that I would describe as something that is possibly getting in the way of you experiencing the benefits of life out of the deficit. And stay with me. What I'm talking about here, and I think a lot of people are gonna be able to relate to this, is people who have done intentional deficits and then they've heard me renting and raving on the podcast about wanting to spend time out of them. So they set up their plans and they go, like, yep, I'm gonna go to maintenance, I'm gonna increase my intake, etc. But they make a very gradual increase on their intake, and then they kind of just hang in this middle ground. And what I'm talking about is I'll give some numbers to help explain it. Let's say someone has effective fat loss and weight loss on 1600 calories, so that is their deficit, that's the intake that they spend their time on when they want to be in a deficit. And obviously, you can think about what your personal deficit is and therefore what that number is for you. But let's use the example of 1600. If somebody spends time on that pursuing fat loss and then goes, I'm gonna go to maintenance, and they move themselves up to something like 1800 or 1900, and then they sit there for a while and they probably hear me and maybe other people, but definitely me, saying things like maintenance will usually be a range, it's really cool to see where the top end of that range is. We want to try and essentially eat as much as we can and still maintain, like we want to find where that edge is of maintenance versus the surplus. If somebody does not have a goal to go into an intentional calorie surplus and start intentionally gaining weight, which most women don't, obviously I'm an exception and there are exceptions out there, but most women don't, and rightly so. Like I'm all for that. If someone comes to me and goes, Robes, I've got no interest in the surplus, but I definitely want to spend time out of the deficit, this is where we have that big middle ground of maintenance, right? Which is awesome. I am the biggest advocate of this. But if you've heard me saying all of these things about like find that edge, see if we can crank it up a bit, like sit on an intake for a while, assess how the body responds, crank it up a little bit more if we're getting a good response. We've spoken about all this shit so much. I think it's very common, and I think this happens when people do it on their own, like when they're not working with a coach, so you're doing this by yourself. I think people get in this mindset of like, I definitely don't want to go too far, I don't want it to be too risky, like I definitely don't want to go into the surplus, so I'm gonna play it really safe. If we come back to those numbers, if someone pursuing fat loss on 1600, moving up to something like 1900 for their maintenance, and then just going like, yep, this is good enough. Like I'm I'm not on the 1600 anymore. I've increased my intake, so I'll just stay here. And just as a little bit of a side note for this to make a bit more sense, most people will have a very big difference between their deficit and their maintenance. And then, like I said, maintenance will be a range. So if we use this example of someone who achieves fat loss on 1600, they might go to 1900. Personally, I'd say just go to 2000. But usually, if we went to 2000 calories for a few weeks, and like I said, we had good consistency there, we watched how the body responds. If we were seeing things maintain overall, we'd want to nudge this person up to 2100 and see like, can we still maintain on this intake? And I would nearly bet my life we could. Because I've done this with hundreds of women. I do this every day, every single day. This is my job, this is what I do. So I would put that person up in the 2100s and go, let's spend a few weeks here. And again, let's just have good consistency, let's hit it, let's see how the body responds. If we're still seeing maintenance, let's nudge it to 22, let's nudge it to 23, let's find where the edge is of where we stop maintaining and we start to move into a little bit of a surplus. This information is so insanely valuable. This is the life-changing information. When a woman goes through this process, and I think I'm gonna be a little bit biased here and say, I think you do it significantly better when you have a coach working with you, because we've spoken about before, like women can have bad days, emotional days. I haven't myself. So when you have someone else there going like, nope, we've got a plan, stick to the plan, like I've got you, that can just be really reassuring, especially if you've never done this before. But if we go through this process, it's one thing to hear me talk about it and to hear other people talk about it, but I think you've all heard me talk about it a lot. It's one thing to hear me sit here and say things like, it's so empowering, it changes lives, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think it is a whole nother thing to actually gather the evidence that your body can do it. I think there's a common thing where people hear about it and go, that sounds awesome, but I don't know if that would work for me. I don't know if that's going to be true for me. Like there's just a lot of hesitation, a lot of fear, and again, rightly so, because if you've spent your whole entire life working towards fat loss, it makes so much sense that we have hesitation and uncertainty about eating more and increasing our calorie intake, right? That makes so much sense. But then when we actually do it, and like I said, when I work side by side with someone who does this and they go through that process of moving up through different intakes, usually, like it's going to be different from person to person, but usually when we're looking at females anywhere from that sort of 50s to 80 kilo range give or take, standard height, standard activity levels, like there's no major outlying factor with big training volume or like crazy tall, like whatever it is. If you fall into a sort of typical range, usually we see maintenance anywhere from 2,000 to 2,500, give or take, right? So then very common to go through that process that I just said where the deficit is down in the, you know, maybe 1500, 1700, whatever it is. We come up to 2000 for maintenance, we sit there for a while, we go to 21, we sit there for a while, we go to 22, and then we start to find for you personally, maybe it's 2200 is the sweet swap. Maybe it's 2500. Like so often women can eat more than they think, but they don't know this until they go through the process. And coming back to what I was saying, we gather the evidence that our body can do it. When you actually go through that process yourself, this is what is life-changing because you see it, and when you see it, you start to trust it. And when we trust, hey, my body can actually eat 2300 calories a day without gaining weight, that is what is life-changing because you know that you don't have to spend the rest of your life on 1600 calories. That is life-changing. If you've been a woman who's thought, anytime I'm quote, being good with my nutrition, it means low calorie, it means weight loss, it means fat loss. When you understand, hey, I can quote, be good on 2300 calories, fuel my training, fuel my health, and not gain weight. I can just hold really steady and feel really good. That is why it is life-changing. So going through that process, this is why I say this is my favorite thing to do with clients, because I just believe in this process so much. I love it so much. I love watching people gather this evidence for themselves and then gain the trust in higher calorie intakes and then know, like, you're a woman that can now go to those intakes anytime you want to for the rest of your life. You don't have to spend the rest of your life on a low calorie diet. This is why I love it and this is why it is life-changing. If we come back to my point here of the problem that I can see when some people make that decision of like, I'm gonna come out of the deficit, I'm gonna go to maintenance. If they do a small increase, like I said in that example, going from 1600 to 1900, and then thinking, I'll just stay here because it's safe, it feels good, it's not too risky, it's quote, good enough. I think there's a big negative thing that can come with this, where first of all, this person can most likely eat 2200 calories and we're never gonna know because they never take themselves there. But secondly, and this is what I'm seeing, and this is what I think so many people need to tap in and ask, shit, am I doing this? Because I think this is killing people's results. Not having much difference between what you put in place for your deficit and what you put in place for your maintenance. If we think about someone doing a deficit on 1600 and then spending the rest of their time on 1900, that's not a huge difference. And what I see happen here is we don't really reap the benefits of either. Because if you've done your deficit on 1600 and you've done that really successfully, and then you're like hitting that point towards the end of a deficit where you're like, yep, okay, hunger's there, cravings are there, like food focus is there, I definitely need to increase my intake to relieve some of those things. Yes, you might get some temporary relief when you come up to 1900, but that can still feel pretty restrictive. And if you're a person who's quite active, and like I said, you fall into this typical category where we predict your maintenance is going to be up in the 2000s. If you keep yourself down on 1900, you're not gonna experience all the benefits that can come with finding that top end of maintenance, like really reducing hunger, really reducing cravings, reducing food focus because you can have more food flexibility, fueling your training. Let's think about the fact that if a person can maintain on 1900 and they can maintain on 2200, why the F would you not go for the 2200 to have an extra 300 calories coming in every day towards your training? Especially if you've got performance goals or if you're someone who's training in the gym to like build shape, build muscle, build strength, etc. Why would we not? This is why I'm such an advocate of finding that top end of maintenance. Because if maintenance is going to be a bit of a range, why would we not want to find the top end of that range? Because then our day-to-day nutrition just gets to have more food coming in. Like I would assume anyone listening to this podcast wants to eat more food. If you're into nutrition and training, usually you want to eat more food, right? So if you can have more food coming in every day and still get the same result, but then also reap the benefits of increased energy, increased performance, increased recovery, etc. Why would you not? And I think the reason people don't, the reason people keep themselves on that low end of maintenance is because it feels safe. It feels risky to go higher, it feels risky to go through that process of increasing the intake and watching how the body responds. They don't feel confident doing that themselves. They think, yep, 1900's good enough. I'll just hang here. And then coming back to what I think the actual biggest problem we see here is, then when a person maybe wants to go back to a deficit, like it's really common to see people do a deficit maybe at the start of the year, go to maintenance through the middle, maybe you want to do another deficit coming into summer, right? Just as an example. But if you've gone from 1600 for the first three, two or three months of the year, then you go to 1900 for five or six months, whatever it is, then you go back to 1600. To me, I look at that and go, that's a pretty low calorie year overall, right? And obviously that's going to be relative to the person. Sometimes we just have tiny sedentary people that do have to work within those numbers. But for majority of people I see doing this, it's more so that factor of like you're hanging at that low end of maintenance because you're too scared to crank it up. But then what's happening is you're never really fully relieving the restrictions of the deficit because your quote, maintenance intake is still quite restrictive. You don't get a lot more flexibility, you don't get to satisfy a lot more cravings or reduce a lot of the hunger, improve a lot of the energy, because the intake is still fairly low. And then when you come around to a time where you want to go back to a deficit, usually it's not that effective because you haven't given your body that nice big break on a decent intake. If we think about for a second, side noting into metabolic adaptation, which is when we've had a deficit in place for a while, the body essentially, in really simple terms, goes, I'm getting a reduced intake coming in. I have to learn to adapt to survive on this intake. And this is where we see a down regulation of metabolism. And this is where we start to look at diet breaks and different things. But essentially, it's like if we've had a person in a deficit for so long, their body adapts to that deficit and tries to survive as best it can in that deficit. So the deficit becomes less effective. If we then come out of it and go to this like slightly higher intake, we're not gonna fully relieve that metabolic adaptation as much as we would if we increase the intake more. And then, like I said before, we're also not gonna reap the benefits of things like improved training performance and recovery, et cetera, which means we're also potentially gonna rip ourselves off from the benefits of putting on more muscle mass, which is gonna increase metabolism as well, increasing our TDEE through our daily activity levels, through our training intensity, etc. So some of that might have been confusing for people, but really what we're looking at is like when we're in the deficit, we want to be in an effective deficit that is going to work for us. The point of the deficit is achieving fat loss. So we want to get in a solid deficit and get that fat loss happening. Once we make the decision to get out of that, we want to get the hell out of it to relieve all of those shitty things that come with it. You want to go into a deficit and go, I'm gonna give this everything I got to get the best result I can. Yes, some of these shitty things are gonna accumulate over time, like hunger, reduced energy, cravings are gonna crank up, training might suffer a little bit, recovery might suffer a little bit, and along the way, that metabolic adaptation is gonna happen. Those things come with a deficit. We know this, right? And we have to just accept that. So we want to make sure that deficit is worthwhile because we're essentially saying, if I'm gonna endure those things, I want to at least make sure I've got something to show for it. AKA the fat loss. So we want to go into that deficit and get it done. We then want to go, okay, the deficit is done. I'm getting the hell out of here to bring all of those things back up to peak position. I'm gonna bring myself up to the best position to relieve hunger, to relieve cravings, to relieve food focus, to fuel training, to optimize my energy, to optimize my recovery, to optimize the way my body's functioning, to optimize my metabolism. And I'm stopping myself now from going into a whole nother tangent about energy availability. If you don't know what energy availability is, you wanna go back and binge the podcast. But if you're a regular listener, you'll know. And energy availability is a huge factor here as well. Because to me, like I look at nutrition as simple as this. Either go into a deficit if it's a good time to do so and it makes sense to do so, and we've got the goal to do so, go into that, do it very effing well, get the job done, get out, and get to the best possible place you can get to for your energy availability. If you're someone who cares about your health, your body composition, andor your performance, that is how I would look at nutrition. I'm either doing short, sharp, effective deficits, and anytime I'm not, I'm absolutely optimizing my energy availability. There's no in between to me. And like I said, I'm very biased because I'm very passionate about this stuff. But if we bring it back to someone who has the deficit in place and then just kind of like tiptoes out of it, goes to This little maintenance thing, you find yourself like quote, at maintenance, but not really reaping the benefits that you could be reaping if you were to go through that process of really finding the top end of maintenance. And then if or when you go back to a deficit, it's a not as effective as it could be because you haven't given your body a big relief from all those things. So your body's just not working as well as it could be. Because it's like, I had pretty intense restriction in place. And then, yeah, you kind of took me out of that, but you didn't optimize anything for me. You just kind of sidestepped me out of the restriction for a while and you let me hang there for a bit, and now you've sent me back into the restriction. So I'm just not functioning and thriving as optimally as I can be. But then we also want to look at the mindset side of this and the ability to really implement a good deficit. I would argue, and this is what I think a lot of women need to clock, if you can relate to this where your deficit is one number, and then you're when you go to maintenance, like you do increase your intake a bit, but not really, like you kind of play it a bit safe. I would really argue that when you go back to deficits, you don't go back there in a really refreshed, rejuvenated, energized mindset. You're going there in this mindset of like, okay, well, the deficit is restrictive, but maintenance is also pretty restrictive as well. So where's the relief? Where's the enjoyment? Where's any of those things? And that's where I think we get hit with this double whammy of like physically the body's not in the best position it can be to enter the deficit, but also mentally, you're you're kind of like pre-exhausted. Like you go into a deficit and you're like, cool, more restriction. How well do we think we're gonna do that? And if I use myself as an example here, and I am gonna talk myself up for a little bit, but also we could argue like if I couldn't do this well, I probably shouldn't be sitting here ranting about the fact that people need to do it better, right? So if I go into a deficit, it is around that 1600-ish mark, give or take, depending on my actual activity levels and stuff at the time. But usually my deficit is anywhere from 1500 to 1700. Anytime I'm not in that deficit, which if you're a regular listener, you'll know I'm in that for about four months of every 24 months. Like I pretty much do one dedicated deficit once every two years. So if I spend four months on that intake, I then counteract that with 20 months on two and a half thousand plus calories. And obviously, right now I'm in the surplus, so that's even higher, like closer to 3,000. But I've spent most of the last few years at maintenance, with the exception of those few short, sharp effective deficits, and then coming straight back to maintenance of 2,400 calves, give or take. And then to me, when I go into those deficits, anytime I do a deficit, it is significantly effective. I would do a deficit anywhere from 10 to 15 weeks, I normally do. Say like three to four months when I do a deficit, and I get significant results. If you know, you know, usually about seven to eight kilos, a very clear visual result in my body composition. And I would argue it's because physically my body thrives most of the time. And mentally, when I go into those deficits, it is tunnel vision. Everyone get the F out of my way. I am nailing this for this dedicated time because I can, because my mind is so rested, because I spend majority of my time not on a restrictive diet. And so coming back to the point I wanted to make here is literally the note I had, guys. Like, we're 30 minutes into this rant, and this is off the back of this one sentence: maintenance versus deficit gray area. Like I wrote that down in my phone, and that has prompted the last 30 minutes of me talking. So the maintenance versus deficit gray area to me is where we see people have not much difference between the deficit intake and the maintenance intake. And then therefore, like I said at the start of this rant, not really reap the benefits of either. When I'm in the deficit, I feel like it's not that effective. It's probably because your mind's already fried because you haven't given it the relief of going to a decent intake, and your body physically probably isn't thriving as well as it could be. And then when I go to maintenance, I don't feel like I reap the benefits of that either because it still feels pretty restrictive. So all of these numbers and exactly what this looks like is going to be different from person to person. But I just think it's important to have a little think about that, especially if you're an experienced person that has dabbled in and out of these things. Like if you've done a few deficits and spent a bit of time at maintenance, you should start to have an idea of what all of this has looked like for you. And I think you could pretty quickly look and go, no, I've done this well, or have I kind of hung in this gray area? And what I then see is when these people do go back to deficits, you kind of see like that initial little drop on the scale, and then things kind of hang steady, and you might might get like a little bit more of a gradual drop here or there, but it's not a clearly effective deficit. And I would argue that it's the body physically not operating as well as it could, and your mind not being in the most optimal place to do that deficit either. I think the combo of that does leave people in this little gray area where it's like, well, technically I'm in the deficit, but it's just not working that well. I would then come over and go, but did I prime myself for this deficit? Is really what I would be looking at. When you are not in a deficit, are you optimizing other things and are you priming your body or are you just hanging in that gray area? And I think I'm actually gonna wrap this episode up here because I still have so many more notes and I feel like I've just spent over half an hour on the very first one. So I am going to stop the recording now. Uh we'll upload this episode, and then I'm just gonna keep going with these notes. And in the very next episode, we're literally just gonna keep this combo going. So if you can relate to any of that, or if you're in that position, like I said at the start of this episode, where you've either spent time at maintenance, the next few things we're gonna talk about in the next episode will just be cool to kind of clock where you're at with them. Or if you're someone who hasn't spent much time at maintenance and you feel like you've been in that deficit mentality for a long time, it's gonna be really cool to hear the things we talk about in the next episode and just have a think like, wow, would it be beneficial for me to spend a bit of time out of the deficit and experience some of these things? So that is gonna be in the very next episode. Thank you so much for listening. As always, I will be back then.