Train. Eat. Think. Episode 15 - Is Lifting Fasted Good or Bad?

Ever wondered if training fasted is actually holding you back? 🤔  
Many think it’s a shortcut to fat loss but training on empty can actually hinder your performance. 

Episode 15 of Train. Eat. Think. sees Francis and Benjamin delve into the nuances of fasted training, we also cover nutrition strategies for reversing diet phases a question put to us from one of our clients. Finally we debunk common myths about metabolism. 

Join us as we share practical tips to optimize performance and long term progress in your fitness journey.

For online 121 coaching enquiries/information

Please contact Francis on X/Instagram @coachfhm or email fmeliacoaching@gmail.com 

Contact Ben on X/Instagram @benjaminyeezus or email ben@yeezuscrew.com  

Thanks for listening. See you next week :D 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Train Eating, Episode 15. We're talking today about some of uh nutritional questions that we've had. Uh last week we were obviously talking a lot more about the thinking side of things, the psychological stuff, and now we're really gonna delve into some of the nutritional topics, especially about faster lifting. Should we train faster? Should you not? Um, we're gonna talk about how we reverse out of a diet phase and potentially talk about broken metabolisms. Is your metabolism broke? Uh, does anything change with your metabolism as you get older? Uh we're looking forward to getting into this one, mate. There's a a lot of good nuance that we that we can delve into.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Episode 15 already. It's um the weeks are flying by. And um, thanks to everyone that sent us you know some suggestions and and we really do welcome them and really excited as always to dig in, mate, and and have a good chat as we we started offline, we'll we'll bring it online.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

I think what's what's what's good about being on Twitter as well, on the timer, mate, is that we see a lot of the see a lot of the arguments and you know the the shite that pops up and there's always there's always something new every week that someone's got a cob on about. So um we've we've had training fasted, we've had that on the pipeline for a couple of weeks because uh this one always always causes up a bit of a stir, doesn't it? Should you train fasted, you know, uh is uh is it the best thing since sliced bread, or you know, are you actually uh limiting your performance by by by training faster? There's there's a lot of nuance to it, and I I want to try and cover all the bases with it because I think there's a lot to talk about with it. So uh I think we definitely start off with training fasted. You know, what's what's your what's your take on uh fasted lifting? Let's just dive into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

For me, uh I mean I think it's a a very difficult one. It it's hard to be black and white about anything, you know. There are people out there that maybe wake up at three in the morning or four in the morning just to get their training in. And I think as you'll agree, Francis, I think we're very aligned here. You're better in getting your training done and doing what you can. Training fasty, I would say, is probably not the most optimal. You know, you want to be trying to get something, and I've had conversations very recently with with one of my clients where it's like, can you get something in? You know, a rice cake, half a protein shake, a banana, some honey, something. It's very hard to suggest to someone who's getting up at five in the morning to get up another half an hour early to get not a full meal, but some semblance of something into your stomach, which to be honest, most people will, whether that's a coffee or something like that. For me, you probably want to have some food in the system, whether that's starting off something really small, a bite out of a banana, and building it up from there. I think you would really see, and and from what I've read, understood, and some people I've worked with as well, who've maybe trained fasted, and you suggested to them, let's have a try at what can be done here. They do certainly notice the performance increase from that almost immediately.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

And you're right in the fact, like it's it's meeting again the client where they're at. Like, we're not gonna tell someone to you know you need to jump up at four in the morning, you need to slug down a big underground bowl of oatmeal, you know what I mean, if you if you don't have the time to do it. So it this training fasted approach, it it always does come from people who um they wake up early and they don't have a lot of time to get a meal, and this this is where the training fasted really comes from. And I always draw it back to what is the purpose of a pre-workout meal? What is the main purpose behind it? I think there's two big purposes. Number one would be to fuel the session, number two, to maybe spike a little bit of uh anabolism or protein synthesis from getting that sort of 20-25 gram spike of protein if possible. So they're the they're the two things that you're after from a pre-workout feed. Now, that doesn't need to be a big bowl of oatmeal and six eggs. It could be something very, very simple, as you just mentioned earlier a protein shake and a banana. A protein shake, 20 grams, 25 grams of whey, a banana and some honey. We want the carbohydrate to be easily digestible, something that's going to get into the system quite quick without causing any sort of bloating, nausea. You know, you don't you don't want something with a lot of fibre. So we we spoke off earlier about the uh the high carb refeed days that I'm going through now. And you know, easily digestible carb sources, bananas, dates, honey, rice cakes and jam, even a little bowl of cereal with some whey, things like that, you know, they they don't break the bank in terms of this big, dense calorie meal. You can wake up and have a small little bite or a small little bowl of something for two, three hundred calories, which is gonna maybe give you 30-40 grams of carbs, 25-ish grams of protein. That's gonna be a lot better than going in the gym on zero fuel. If you can definitely work around it and get something like that in, I would always recommend trying to get something in versus just trading on it on an empty stomach.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Orange juice can be another good one, it is a little bit acidic. So, again, there's not gonna be one thing that that lets everybody meet everything. Some people will be okay with that, some people might be a little bit acidic first thing in the morning, but it's certainly something again that breaks the seal, you don't need to be completely fastied. And I'm gonna say something really controversial now, so I'm gonna build up the moment. Um, but training fasted is one of the candidates for for BCEAs. 99.9% of the time I don't recommend them to anyone, especially if you're getting enough protein across the rest of the day. EAs may be a slightly different um you know argument to have, but certainly for anyone that wants to train fasted, um, they could get some BCAs, and that's just to protect any um muscle loss that might happen. And again, it's not going to be huge. Let's be honest, we're we're not training you know as much as we want to, like an IFBB pro. So we're talking about you know a really minimal bit um part of an attenuation here in terms of muscle loss. But you're absolutely right in what you've said, Francis. We're looking to fuel performance. There is a little bit of stimulus, obviously, we we would ideally want to have uh if you if you're not in cat um an anabolism, you're potentially in catabolism. We want to do you know, stave off that threat as much as we can, and that's where the BCAs and and that do come into it. Um, and again, it's just something you can look to even potentially build up because we're not going to say someday, oh you don't want it, you don't want it bad enough, mate. Wake up and make your steak and eggs. You know, do do what you can and and build on that and see, and you might get to a point where you know, even if it's a couple of bites before the workout, and then you're sipping on potentially things like psycho-dextrins is a great thing. Um, instant energy, it doesn't need to be digested, nice small molecule. That is a bit spinny, there is a price to pay for that particular technology, but it's one thing that can really help um when when you're faced with that you know that dilemma of having to train fast it.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

I was just about to say that about the the interwarehouse carbs, like there's there's very easily available out there as well. And as I say, you know, let's let's just give an example. Let's say someone is up at 4:30 and they want to be in the gym for five, you could literally get up out of bed. One of the first things you could I would recommend to do is hydrate. You want to try and get maybe 700 millilitres to a litre of uh you know good old-fashioned water on deck, get some fluids on deck. If you're being asleep all night, you're gonna be dehydrated, you don't want to go in the gym dehydrated. So that'd be the first point of call. If you're up 4:30 in the gym for five, hydrated right away, something like a banana, maybe a little bit of protein, and sipping on some um dextrose, maltodextrin, sports drinks, any sort of carbohydrate, powder or liquid contents of carbohydrates because it's gonna digest very easily. So even on the way to the gym, you could be sipping on that. So by the time you get into the gym, you're getting some carbohydrates which are gonna be in the system. And I get it, it's not this big meal, it's not a it's not driving in the car with a big fucking bowl of oats, and you know, you're steak and eggs in when you're driving into the gym, you know, it's uh it's practical, you know, and it's practical and it's gonna it's gonna leverage better training performance because you know the the if if you're gonna spend the time to get up and get in the gym, we want to try, as we spoke about uh countless times over the last couple of weeks with the podcast episodes about driving the most out of our sessions and our sets that we do. So if having a little drink of carbs and a banana, giving you 30-40 grams of carbs is gonna make your session better. Why wouldn't we do it? It's it's so easy, it's not it's not like as I say, it's it's not hard, it's not difficult, but it it does make a big difference.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

And the other thing you can do obviously is you know that the minute you put down your your last rep, you've got the anabolic window there that's 6.7 seconds long, so you want to be getting getting them fed. Uh I'm obviously joking a little bit there, but you can get fed quite quickly after maybe you've trained then and that's your time to have your your breakfast, where you can have a slightly larger meal. So you're you're ripping off a little bit, as we've mentioned there, Francis, whatever that would be. Maybe it is a little bit of orange juice, maybe it is a banana with some honey, um, maybe having the opportunity to get the protein in, you can you can have it then as soon as you've finished training, as part of the rest of your day. You know, the the the studies show that it's it's the protein that we get in in total, as much as um, I'll be honest, I hate to admit it, but we we've got to follow what the science says, and that's it's actually about the total protein that you would get in for a day, but you probably want to break that down into something like three or four feedings. The other thing I would say is it also comes down to what um phase you're in. So if you're in a muscle building phase, improvement phase, bulk, whatever you want to call it, it's probably going to be less important, and by that I mean maybe your last meal at night is somewhere you could uh front load, so to speak, for ahead of the next day. Maybe you're having some extra carbs, be that a bagel, oats, overnight oats, but you're having them before you go to bed, for example, something like that. You're getting to basically store that'll help you, so you're not going in the next day and you're completely empty. That might be a bit more, and you'll be able to speak to this, Francis, a bit more difficult when you're you're going into um you're in an sorry, you're in a deficit and you're doing that fasted training because you don't have as much then to draw down from.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Yeah. Absolutely, mate. And this is this is the nuance of it where you see on the timeline and you see people say, I've trained faster for years, it works for me. Yeah, but I I guarantee that that that pre-bed meal is probably higher in carbohydrates because again, you then top up the glycogen. Again, especially if you're well fed, you're in a you know your minimum around that sort of maintenance calories, maybe slight surplus, if you're having a big load of carbs before bed, you're not going to burn through all of that glycogen and fuel while you're sleeping. Whereas if you're in a deficit, you know, the the likelihood again, right now, where I'm at, I still have a fair amount of carbs before bed. I wake up and I'm absolutely ravenous. All those carbs are gone. But if I was in an improvement phase or eating around maintenance calories, storing more carbs before bed, I'd be able to wake up and still go and train because I'd have enough glycogen. So it definitely does depend on the phase that you're in. But yet that is a great strategy, isn't it? It's people you can front load or backload some of the carbs before bed, and you can wake up and you're still gonna have uh a decent amount of uh glycogen ready for to smash a good training session. So that's some nuance to it as well. And again, you do see that where people say I've trained faster for years, and likely they have a big or a higher carb meal before bed, and that's why they can get up and do that.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yeah, I think that's a great point. You know, that there's nuance to everything that we see online, and that's maybe something that's being missed because let's be honest, if you're drawing down on your carbohydrates and and and you're not having them and replenishing, then at what point do you run out? Well, I know that you run out, you know that you run out, Francis, you're in that very zone at the moment. Uh I know when I'm doing um competition type diets, the the carbs are obviously you know what we start to really pull down on, and we know how that can potentially affect our performance. So, what we are trying to do is make sure that we've got enough around our training window, and obviously, we're specifically talking here about you know um fasted training um and and how that can affect the performance. So, again, it just depends really what phase you're in, but finding what works for you and in and of the moment, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

I think it's important with fasted lifting as well, me, to talk about or bust this myth that I think people with fasted lifting, what's the reason for doing it? If someone is gonna wake up and you are gonna train fasted, if you're trying to do that as a means to burn more body fat, you've got to ask backwards. That is the wrong way to think about it. Your lifting performance, the training session, the actual again, lifting weights here. This is the stimulus for muscle retention. We're not trying to burn body fat with anything to do with our lifting. We allow the deficit that we create throughout the day, or what you do with maybe cardio and steps, that is your primary source of what your the big lever that you're trying to pull for fat loss. Don't wake up and think that you're gonna have any benefits from training faster in terms of fat loss. If anything, it's gonna be detrimental, as we just spoke about, because you're gonna be on lower fuel. So that is something we should touch on because I think a lot of people do get confused with that. They think, oh, I'm trying to get leaner, so I'm gonna train faster so I can use more body fat for fuel. And again, it's it's backwards thinking because you're now going in the gym on down tools, less energy, less fuel. So your performance is gonna be down. So if anything, it's gonna hinder the fat loss process and muscle retention process. I just think it's important to touch on this.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

I think it's a fantastic point, and it's another misnomer. You know, we mentioned there about protein feedings, and as much as we hate to admit it, it's about what you do in a day. Fat loss is about what you do in a day. Fat loss is what you do in a week. You could have a day where you you don't have a deficit, and you've got another six days where you've got deficit, you've got fat loss for the week, and this is, I think, so important. It seems to have died off a little bit, but um, we've seen people buying CGM uh glucose monitors and they stick it on themselves and they eat some blueberries. Well, surprise, surprise, your blood sugar's gonna spike. That's your body doing what it's designed to do. It sees uh blood, uh sorry, it sees sugar in your blood, it releases um insulin from the pancreas to deal with that and shuttle it out. It's a it's a normal, natural hormonal response, and that's where you need to zoom out and look at the bigger picture and say things are happening in your body for a reason, and because in and of the moment that you're not in a fat-burning state, or you you are in a fat-burning state, it's what you do with your calories for the day, uh how you split them out. If you're using you know protein, we know has got a higher thermic effect of feeding, so you burn a bit more calories because you eat protein, but these are the things that you need to sort of zoom out and don't be like, yeah, we're not training for calorie burn. You're absolutely right, we're training for a stimulus. So even if we're in a spot where we we've drank the orange juice, we've had a cyclic dextrin or a multidextrin or whatever it is, we're not in a fat-burning spot of a moment. It doesn't mean that for the day we haven't uh burnt fat, and the most important thing is we're talking about we're training for muscle retention because if we don't have the muscle retention when we are dieting and and when you're when you're trying to train and training fasted, if your performance goes down and hits the floor and you're constantly missing reps, losing strength, you're in a net negative position.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

That's what it all ties into, mate, isn't it? It's that that's that's what we're trying to maintain with advising people against fasted lifting. We're trying to maintain the best performance that we possibly can. And as we know, that the body's primary preferred source of fuel is some carbohydrates. So having trying to shuttle some something around the training window, it's always going to be better than nothing. Just to uh propel performance. Why why leave it up to chance? Why avoiding against something like a 20-30 gram boost from a banana or something? Why why would you not do that? Why would you even leave that chance open uh uh and maybe go in the gym? And you know, you you as you mentioned there, we're we're missing reps, we just feel weak as piss, you know, consistently having sessions like that because we're trying to train faster. Again, it it's just uh it it is it is backwards thinking, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 17:39

It's it's so funny. I I think I I can't remember if we said it online or offline. I smile sometimes when you say things, Francis, because that they're exactly the way that I think. And in all of my lifting career so far, I've never really wanted to miss a protein feeding or an opportunity to get some food in for that very reason. Now that's not to say that oh I'm I'm I'm paranoid about oh, I missed a meal. Obviously, I've missed meals at points, but what I'm saying is I'm always thinking of the long term of well, I probably don't want to do that too often. Has it happened before? Of course it has, nobody's perfect. But what I'm saying is in my thoughts, I'm thinking I need that little bit of energy for going to the gym, or I need that protein hat because it's part of what I'm doing in a day, and these are the things that stack up over time because we don't want there's enough things out there that are going to take us away from muscle building and and trying to do what we're trying to do, and to be honest, that that's not one of them because it it can be controlled, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

And it's it's it's it's these small little percents that do they they add up to something big over time. As I say, if you if someone I guarantee if someone uh if you've done a study on this, no one's probably gonna do it, but if someone done a year of faster lifting versus a year of fed lifting, I I guarantee the person who trains fed for a year is gonna have better performance than the person who is gonna go to train faster for a year. It would just be night and day difference. So if you zoom out and you look at well, what what can I do? You know, let's let's let's take again reversing out of a diet phase and you've got a uh a building phase coming up and you've got a good 10 to 12 month runway. Why would you want to waste a session? Why would you want to waste a week of training or a month of training and training faster going in on down tools? Why, why do that? Why would you why would you not milk absolutely everything out of every session? And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to milk absolutely everything out of uh every set, every rep, because that's what stacks up.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

I think you just need to look at what can be done and and and obviously be open to it. It's okay to say I can't, but have you tried? And again, have you tried a little bit? Find something that you really enjoy at that time in the morning, even if it's a handful of Skittles. It it doesn't need to be the most nutritious thing on the planet, you know. If if anything, one of the times where you can eat the least nutritious food, we do it ourselves, Francis. Uh a bowl of cereal, you know, um think things of that kind of elk, a little bit of haribo. And it's a time in the day that for me, I know I can get away with eating that type of food. I I enjoy that type of food. I'm just gonna throw it out there. I do. I enjoy eating a little bit of haribo, I enjoy eating some cereal or rice krispy balls. There's nothing wrong with that because the rest of my my diet and nutrition is set up that all my micro, not just the macronutrients, but the micronutrients from my salad, veggies, my different um protein sources, I'm getting a good balance of micronutrients, and that's what it comes down to. What what what can you do? And start off small, literally a bite. Does does it help? A bite and and a drink? Or will I manage to get a full bar this week? Well, that's fantastic. And you know that if you ask the question, Francis, again, you've you've you've raised a fantastic point. If you've got two two people in the same level of experience, one's getting something to eat before, and one's training fasted and and even possibly in a deficit. It's an absolute no-brainer that who's who's getting the best performance.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I think if we wrap fasted lifting off, we just say, look, avoid it as much as you can unless you really have to. No, a meal the night before that's higher in carbs is gonna aid someone. Uh, if you are in a maintenance calories or a surplus, you'll get away with it. If you're in a deficit phase, that still probably likely won't cut it, just front loading a lot of carbs at night. Eat something. Doesn't have to be a big meal. It's not gonna be a big bowl of oatmeal and steak and eggs in the car on the way to the gym. Doesn't have to be that. You know, two, three hundred calories, a little bowl, a little a little bowl of cereal, rice cakes, jam, dates, banana, honey, something easily digestible, a little bit of Protein, 2 to 300 calories, maybe sip on some carbohydrate formula when you're in the gym. Job done. It doesn't have to be uh it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that mate, does it really?

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Absolutely not. It's it's so simple that it's probably frightening to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Just like everything though in the fitness industry, everyone likes to uh complicate it and uh make up bollocks for the sake of it. But yeah, we've covered that. Nice bit of nuance with that, and we'll get into the next question that we've had about reversing out from a uh a diet phase. This this is this is always a pretty common one. I think a lot of people get stuck in this phase, they get a little bit of anxiety because they've dieted for so long, they've got themselves so lean, and then they they don't want to mess it all up, reversing out, and they're not sure how many calories to add, what should they do with food, like should they you know, reverse diet, you know, where they you're you're adding 50 calories every week or whatever, all that sort of shit. So let's let's dive into this one, mate. So, you know, ends of a diet phase, let's just say someone's got themselves lean, they can see their abs, you know, whether that's 10, 11, 12% body fat, or if someone's tucked leaner, someone sees their abs, end of a diet phase. What should they do?

SPEAKER_00 23:18

So when the when the diet phase ends, it's important to then say, you know, what's next? What is the next goal? And and you've you've touched on it just a couple of sentences ago there. We have no time really to waste. Yes, we've got a fantastic runway potentially, if we're at that sort of 10% mark, we could have a 12-month runway of of getting food in and looking and heading into the improvement phase. But we don't want to waste any time here. Get out, get out of the deficit. That that's as simple as it is. Get out of the deficit and start growing. I understand the psychology, especially if someone's lost and they've come from a position where they were maybe 30 plus percent body fat and they've worked really hard to get down. They automatically think that basically they're going to go back to where they were. And one of the things I always say to anyone who's who's in that position, you won't go back to where you were because your mindset's totally different now. You're setting out your stall here at the beginning of the improvement phase, as we call it, if you want to call it a bulk, whatever you want to call it, a surplus, and you definitely need a surplus to build muscle. We're just gonna throw that out there as well. But when you're doing that, the 50 calories and see what happens is just an extension of the diet. Your diet's done, you're probably a little bit fatigued of dieting, you're probably ready and your body's ready for that food, and it's gonna utilize it in the correct way, done right, approached with the right um approach and and and having your goals marked down. You're gonna switch the lanes to be about performance, but that performance is going to need fuel, building muscle is going to need fuel, so we need to put the nail in the coffin of the diet phase, and we head with a positive mindset into improvement phase. It doesn't automatically mean that you need to add thousands upon thousands of calories, you head to the nearest whatever it is, greasy spoon, and get yourself seven breakfasts and stuff like that. There's ever never any reason to binge or eat like an asshat, as I call it, and with that, if you do it the right way, more food's going to come your way.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Yeah, I I I agree with what like once the diet's done, mate. Like we get out of it. Like, there's no point hanging around and piss balling around adding 50 calories here and there. Like, once the diet's done, get yourself back to maintenance. You know, whether that is depends on the individual, whether that's 400, 500, 600 calories, whatever it is. Again, there will be a little bit of trial and error with that. Get yourself out the deficit, get yourself a number. Let's just say it's four or five hundred calories, get yourself out, plug yourself out of that deficit. I like to see the majority of the increase in calories when I reverse somewhere out. I like to see the majority of that coming from carbs. I don't really see much point in up in protein intake too much. Maybe a little bit of fat can come up, but the majority of that increase in food that comes up, we want that to come from carbs. Again, leveraging some extra fuel, some more glycogen replenishments. I'm going to try and leverage some extra training performance. Get yourself out of deficit, four, five, six hundred calories. Let that settle for a couple of weeks. Spend time here, right? This is important. Don't come out and don't add 500 calories and think, oh, I'm I'm not gaining away fast enough. Ah, let's have another 500. No, just bring yourself to maintenance and just let it settle three, four, five weeks. Let it settle here. You're gonna see some noticeable improvements inside the gym. With it, you know, if you bring in an extra 100 to 150 grams of carbs, you're gonna notice that. So that's coming in every day over the course of a week. If you bring in an extra 150 carbs over over the week, that's an extra thousand grams of carbs that's coming in over the week. You're gonna notice that. You will notice the improvement the performance improvements from that. So get yourself the maintenance, let everything settle, take your scale of reading, see how your body weight fluctuates. Again, it will fluctuate when you bring in your extra calories like that, extra carbs, you're going to refill and replenish your glycogen stores. So don't panic if the scale jumps up, you know, the first couple of days. Again, expect this. The scale's gonna jump up a couple of pounds, two, three, four, five, six pounds, depends on the size of the individual. The analogy I always use for this, mate, and I I love it because it makes so much sense. It's like blowing air into a balloon, you go, like you're so at the end of a diet, you're depleted, you're bringing in these extra carbs, you're gonna fill out, you know, as we know, when when you when you start storing extra glycogen and pulls in water weight, that's what the scale weight is is responding in a way, it's just adding some water weight, and it's gonna be a couple of pounds first week or so. So don't think that you're getting fat because you're not, it's just it's it's glycogen and water that is gonna be coming in for those first couple of days. So I think it's important to touch on that because people get spooked out by that.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Your your best look as well is going to come. So if you can be really patient in that phase, as you've said, you know, we'll bring it up four or five hundred calories from from carbohydrates, probably, depending on the individual. The nuance there would be, you know, sometimes in the last couple of weeks you'll drop fat down even maybe to levels that you wouldn't want to. Obviously, you know, for anyone out there that that's doing it naturally, you need dietary fats to keep your hormonal processes ticking over. But there is a position where for the last few weeks you can only go so low in your carbohydrates where you're probably at a point it's like you know, struggling to function type things, and that's when you start to get into well where Francis is going at the moment and and and where I've been in the past, you know, we're going for the competition type diets, and this is why we know what happens when you go beyond the 10% realms. So when that food's coming in, your best look's gonna come, you're gonna get, and as much as as we would try, Francis, you and I, when we're when we're coaching people, to keep the fatigue off as much as we can. Let's be honest, fatigue is just gonna come, it's just a part of dieting, unfortunately. And as much as we would maybe have clients on refeeds, depending on the type of client that it is. Um, sometimes lifestyle clients, we don't give them the refeeds, but it's maybe more suited to somebody who's gone for maybe like a photo shoot or or to the stage. The the best looks going to come. So if you can slow that process, do what you're doing, keep the focus. You're gonna see in a couple of weeks the fatigue comes off your body, you'll feel alive, you'll just feel fuller in the gym, the pumps, the strength going up, uh, and all of that sort of good stuff. And the other thing is as well, you might be at a level of cardio again because you've been dieting, um, you've maybe at a level of cardio that you wouldn't be kind of year-round, so it might have gone up to let's even say 60 minutes per day. You can then start to bring that down gradually. But what you want to do is if you think about it like a like a set of scales where you know it's weighed down heavily in the deficit to the deficit, and you want to find that sort of equilibrium when you're starting to balance it out, but don't do it all at once, so don't go from 60 minutes cardio to zero minutes cardio and then bring your food up because then what you've done is you've gone from the deficit that you've created into a massive swing into a surplus the other way, and that's where you end up in a bit of danger. Because one of the things, and I think we've probably touched on this, but one of the things you need to do when you're coming out with a deficit and reversing out is be even more focused than your cut. All of these great habits that you created in the cut, and all the little hacks that you found to get all the food in and keep yourself satiated, those need to remain. I'll give you a great example. I stopped dieting at the start of May. I'm still eating rice cakes because they satiate me and it's helping me. I've obviously brought my calories up, and I'm to be honest, probably ready for another calorie bump. I'm just kind of happy with where I am at the moment, but what I haven't done is overshot. So, yes, I'm up um 11 pounds, I think it is in total, one 185 to 17 pounds. Sorry, I'm up 17 pounds and I'm still keeping very good condition, but that's been now the month of May and the month of June, and I'm just that so just to give some sort of um you know, some sort of example there.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

And you you're right, and we should it should always have that that one eye on what's to come next. It's not like okay, we get to the end of a diet phase. Um when we have this food bump, don't look at this as an opportunity just to cram in as much bullshit food as you possibly can and binge it. This is what so many people do, and they blow the runway that they've created. Like you've spent all this time dieting to get down to you know 10% body fat, whatever it is. You spent all that you've grafted your ass off to get down here. Yes, of course, we're all human, and and and I would 100% recommend like you're in the diet phase, go and enjoy a a good meal, you know, whether that's what you're your other half, the family, go and enjoy a good meal, whatever, what a meal of choice, whatever you want, like go and enjoy it, no problem. That doesn't mean okay, I'm gonna eat everything in sight, full 12 packs of donuts, packs of Oreos. I wonder who's done that. You know, just just absolutely everything. And we're not just talking one day, we're talking, you know, you finish the diet of a of a Friday or a Saturday, and you just go on an absolute A-Wall binge Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. You just can't stop eating anything that you can set your eyes on. That is the worst thing that you can do. Because again, you you're just gonna you you're gonna blow the runway. Think about when when you're at the end of a diet phase, you know, there's a lot of food noise going on. Appetite's gonna be through the roof. You know, we've all been there. You've got to be smarter because you can blow the runway that you've created. Go out, enjoy a good meal. You know, you'll you'll probably have a meal that you've been wanting to have all through your cut. You'll probably be an iron that up. Go and enjoy that, you know, and maybe enjoy a good breakfast the next day, as we've said before. But then get get your back get yourself back onto your regular foods, the things that you would eat in the deficit, just a little bit more, as we did the classic a building phase, is uh it's just more chicken and rice. Uh and that and that's what it is. It's it's just be smart about it. You spent all this time to get yourself down there, keep foods in that are gonna satiate you, uh, and and again, just don't blow the runway that you've created because you you you you'd only look back two or three, four weeks after the end of a deficit. If you've blown that runway, uh you you'll you'll regret it.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

But I think that should it's gotten light somewhere. Your improvement phase is is is just you're cutting a bit more than that. That's a classic. And and it's so true, you know, that that delayed gratification is something that really comes to the fore. You look good for a couple of days, you'll look better for a couple of days, but you'll quickly realise that you've overshot, and what you've done is you've create you've you've had a lot of hard work, you've created a great environment for your body to build and accumulate muscle tissue if you do the next phase right, and not only just for the next few weeks, which are really, really important, you know, the next six, eight, ten weeks in that phase, you're gonna get a better look, you're gonna get stronger, you're gonna get more muscle on, your hormones are gonna get um regulated again, and all of that sort of good stuff, but then there's another 40 plus weeks on the other side of that. Food will come, and that's where you need to say, Okay, Francis is absolutely right, you know, we we've done that ourselves. Go out and have a nice meal, have something that you've maybe been thinking about for a while, maybe even extend it to breakfast the next morning. And with that, there's no need to go and eat the kitchen sink. But the more that you can do that, get yourself back into your your plan, have your your game head on where you know maybe you've just finished a 20-week cut, but you've actually got a 52-week improvement season ahead of you, so it's not just something's finished and it has, but something else has started, so it's a it's a continuum, it's not a oh that ended and then there's a gap and then there's this. The work that you've done the the 20 weeks previous is what's going to set up the next 52 done right, and and I know this, I can speak to this because um my last improvement phase, I got 46 weeks from it just by doing the right things, and when it came to dying down, it was actually relatively easy. And one of the things you need to think about as well, why are you doing the improvement phase? You're doing the improvement phase to get more muscle on, to get bigger, to get stronger. Why? Because when you cut again, it'll look even better, and instead of dieting, as I did in my in my very early cuts, I was dieting on 1500 calories because I didn't have a lot of muscle. The last deficit that I have just been through, my average calories for the week was around about 3400. So the bonus of getting muscle tissue means that you more than double the calories. So you see the importance then of getting the muscle tissue on, but what you don't want to do is put on too much body fat because if you do that, then you need to brutalise yourself in the diet to get back down, and what you're doing is you're setting up a yo-yo where you never go one way or the other, you just get stuck in this kind of medium and middle of the road.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

It's becoming it's it's becoming process oriented and having that patience when you're coming out of the end of the deficit, isn't it? Because the food's gonna come, as you've mentioned, so it's holding it's holding your nerve and uh and not you know blowing your loads too fast, so to speak, where you're jumping out and you're coming in fast as the calories right out the gate. The food's gonna come. Because at the end of a deficit, you're so lean. Yeah, the the big thing, what what gives us this runway is you know yourself, mate, you you're very, very insulin sensitive at that at that point in time. Your body is an absolute calorie burning furnace. Now, if we if we play our cards right here, the food only comes up even more after you get through those couple of weeks. You know, you settle, you you you bump the food up, you still stay staying insulin uh sensitive, you're responsive to the carbohydrate intake. More carbs that we can bring into a point and digest well, more anabolic it is, more training performance we're gonna be able to fuel. So the food comes, but if you can just hold your nerve for those couple of weeks and not blow it, as you say, like you just create you have this long runway of you know 40, 50 weeks of food being high, training performance through the roof, recovery in a fantastic spot. You know, and you're gonna be able to, when your food gets that high, you're gonna be able to have, like as you mentioned before, you know, if you want your little extra bowls of cereal to a side, you know, you you can bring that in because your food's gonna be that high. So you can you can have your small little treats in there and you can bias them correctly to help fuel performance within your diet, so you can sprinkle that stuff in if you're patient and you just hold your nerve when you're coming out.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

Digestion. I mean that that that's the the the one of the best things you could have said, Francis. And with that, a little bit of hunger, even in your improvement phase, a little bit of hunger's good. Leave the edge on it because what what then is happening is your food's digesting well, you're ready for more food. And I'm gonna absolutely butcher one of the things you said, and that was eat eat for your progress, not for your hunger. Would that be right?

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Uh you gotta uh eat eat to your appetite, not you're not your uh not what you want. Well, no, well I think I don't I think I've just bolted that up yourself. Eat to your knees not your appetite, that's it. Eats your knees, not your appetite. That's the one got me.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

So even when you're coming into the improvement phase, you're still gonna have a little element of hunger, yeah. And and that's good. I I'm going through that myself at the moment. I know that I I could be due if I wanted to, I could bring my carbs up a little because my my weight just now is is just kind of holding. My my strength in the gym is getting better, I'm I'm feeling good, but my digestion is brilliant. I'm having my meal, and it's like I I I could go again, but I'm not, I'm I'm holding back on that. But and what that says is the food that I'm getting is is digesting well, it's burning, you know, as you said, you know, you're you're burning through the food, and you're ready for for the next. And and I've got a really good example of this, you know. One of my clients, Bill, that that came over from um Atlanta, and we can maybe even link him to broken metabolisms at this point. Now, Bill's 57 years of age. When we first started working together, he had self-coached and he was he was at 100 grams of carbs, which was necessary because he went through a really impressive fat loss phase and he got all the body fat off, created that runway that we spoke about. So when we started working together, um we we had that good run of his improvement phase into another cut, and we're now into the second improvement phase that we've had, and just this week he's still losing body fat on 500 grams of carbs. We've just bumped him to 550, and with that, you know, he's meticulous and he's training, he gets his cardio in, he has social events from time to time, but he's mindful. I'm going out and he's looking ahead at what's there, what's on the menu. But his metabolism has just come up that much, and and we've we've seen with the DEXA scans how much muscle tissue we've we've put on his frame over the last couple of years. But these are these are the things that were exactly driving it. The importance of muscle building phases, of having them as improvement phases, not just calling them a bulk and being like, it's alright, I'll just do everything I need to when I'm in the cut. You need to do everything that you need to do when you're in this phase. Because for me, and I've said it before, I'm sure you share it with me, Francis. This is the most important phase. The one that you grow on is more important than the cut, and and I'll probably I die on that hill.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

100%, mate. I I I think it's having a it's a it's having a phasic view and a phasic structure to the way you know people like to periodise the training and they have phasic views on the training, what they're gonna work on, and weak points through this phase and whatever. I think it's important to look at your nutrition from a holistic view like this. We're not gonna spend two years just bulking or two years dieting or whatever. Look at it as a phasic structure, each phase builds on the next one. So that three or four month cut that you do that leads you into the next improvement phase, which make that that might last 12 months. That then leads into the next diet. You get to the end of that, left with more muscle tissue, and then we're sensitive again to build back out again. So it's a phasic approach to what we're doing. We're not just coming in and oh, fucking summer's around the corner in two months. I'm gonna start dieting, and yeah, I'm gonna try and build a little bit of muscle now, the weather's a little bit colder. Well, the bollocks, you should be setting things out and having a phasic structure and a schedule. Look, this is how we're gonna go about training diets, you know, the next 12, 18, 24 months. We spoke before, mate, about you know, I started working with a coach last January. My whole timeline for what we were doing was set out two years in advance. This wasn't just done on a whim, it's all being carefully calculated, and it's all been followed to a T. That's what brings best results. You're not just doing random shit, it's all physically structured out. This is what we're gonna be doing this time, we're gonna nail it, then we move into the next phase. We nail that, that sets you up for the next phase. So it's just being organized and not just doing fucking things randomly.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

Yep, I've I've done that on my check-ins as well. I'm like, I'm 104 weeks out. Now, to some people that might sound absolutely ludicrous, but what you're doing there is you're you're building in the success from that structure because what you do, yes, be focused on what you do on a on a day to day basis. So you're having your meals, you're keeping your structure, you're getting your car doing everything for the day and the week that you need to check off, but they're part of a bigger picture. So instead of saying, in my case, 104 weeks as being two years in the future. Well, I was doing everything, even the we tiny 1% things that I could that were going to deliver me the best results. So when it came to is it time to do a little bit of a tidy up? No, let's keep going. With the improvement phase is fine, we'll just bring it all off at the end, so to speak. And and that that's where you need to, you know, be in it. It's not that's why I don't call it an off-season, it's an improvement phase, and and you need to have those barriers and guardrails around it because the good thing is your time, your effort, your money, everything that you're spending on supplements, food, you're getting the real rewards by doing that. So focused on the process, yes, and and have your your your overall goals overarching that, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 44:49

I think that's a uh again another big benefit of coaching and working with someone in your corner is that they can they can come in and I like to call it like taking it up in the helicopter, like having a 10,000 foot bird's eye view of everything. Look, let's go up in the helicopter, let's look down and go, like this, this is how we're gonna plan the next year, 18 months, and this is what we're gonna do. This is the best way to go about it. Because so many people again they're just they're lost, they're damn rabbit holes, they don't know what to do, they're just confused. So, again, that's again working with a coach or a trusted coach can help you set out a timeline and where you can go, right? This is how we're gonna go about our next 12-18 months of trading and nutrition as an example, and we just nail it, and again, it's it's uh it it's massive, mate, isn't it? The planning and then the execution piece.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

It's one of the most popular things you see, to be honest, on on timeline. I I'm cutting this week, or I'm I'm back to to balcing, or I'm I'm I'm just doing this or I'm I'm doing that, I'm just gonna be mini this or mini that. And there's never enough in it to to make any you know fruitful progress over time. The real the real progress is made when you make a goal and you stick to it. Now I'm not saying that you know we would be inflexible enough that if something came up and something changed that you you couldn't pivot, but you would pivot with some of these best interests and and at hand, and that's where obviously you know when you've got your coaching hat on, you're in an essence, you know, you're driving people towards the goal, you're keeping them accountable to what they've said at a point, this is what I want to do, and and that's what you're you're driving people towards. So it really helps having that accountability and support because it stops. I'm gonna do this amount of cardio, I'm gonna take this amount of food away, and it ends up you know, about the scales that I was talking about earlier. There's never that equilibrium, it's either you know too much one way or too much the other.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

100%, mate. And I think that's one thing that I've I've said before in previous podcasts that sometimes the job of a coach and when you're working with someone is to stop them from doing stupid shit and getting them out of their own way. You know, like someone could be, as you as you mentioned, in an improvement phase, could be three months in. Um, but someone's around the corner and they want to start mini-cutting. You know, they're seeing some of the some of the people in their circle who are they're all going on holiday and we want to be lean for the beach, but no, like you you you you finished your cut three months ago and we're going on a 10 to 12 month building phase. Now that's what you've set your stall out to do. Not to be chasing into the gratification from the beach now, which is in two weeks' time, and you're trying to mini-cut for it. That doesn't make sense. So, again, it is just it's pulling people away from making nonsense decisions which don't align with the long-term goal.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

I've I've done that myself. Um, when I had my my two-year goal, I I went on holiday and it was like I'm not shredded, I don't walk around shredded anyway. We we we've spoken about that, you know. On the on the grand scheme of things, probably spent something like 26 weeks in in total, and the rest of the time, you know, spent trying to build your physique up as we need to do as mere mortals, you know, and that includes you know some tough decisions where it's like, well, I'm going on holiday, yes, I'm going to enjoy my holiday, I'm there with my family and whatever. Um, but I've got my overall goal in mind, which is I'm looking to put size on, I'm going to delay the gratification, um, yep, for the seven days or five nights or whatever it is that I'm away, I'm going to do this and I'm going to enjoy it. But when I come back, straight back into my process, and and you know, I'm putting in the effort, the time as we've mentioned, because I wanted to get the the results from from that period of time, and that doesn't come from three months and a surplus. It isn't going to touch the side. And especially, you know, the more years that you put on, you know, the less sorry, the more that you need to do in terms of then making progress. You you maybe get away with that at the start, at the very, very beginning of your journey. But the more time you spend in, then the harder and more intermediate advanced that you'll get.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

Well, that's it, mate. I I went on holiday in September, peak building phase, like 106 kilo, 230 plus pounds, like the fattest I'll have been in a fair amount of time. You know, it is what it is. So it stuck to the timeline. I wasn't gonna die for that. Um, so you know, again, we uh practice what we preach, but I think we brought it if we want to round off about broken metabolisms, and and people like like to say it it's a it's a classic excuse, isn't it? My metabolism is broken. Uh you know, I can't drop body fat. Uh I'm getting older. And I think one of the biggest things that causes this would probably just naturally be the someone's lifestyle and how everything to do with you know, calorie burn, expenditure, lifting weights, training, everything, it just dwindles down as someone gets into the 20s, into the 30s, into the 40s, they just naturally stop moving and stop exercising, they stop training, they start eating more processed, pre-packaged shit, not tracking food. So, energy expenditure goes down and calorie intake goes up. That is going to be a recipe for disaster. That's not broken metabolism, that's just not having the right inputs. So, again, I I know you you you've got lots to say on broken metabolism, Mason. You you've probably helped many people, you know, come out of the other side of that as well.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

It's it's very funny. Even before I was a coach, I remember having a conversation with two guys in the gym, and they were like, Uh, oh, that's me now. I'm in my 40s, you know, and I can't lose weight. I've been trying to lose this weight, and I I just I did that to him, and he went, That is exactly what it is. And he knew, he knew he just drank too much, and and this is something that can happen, you know, alcohol becomes a factor. Um you you quite rightly said people stop moving, but they also deprioritise themselves. Work becomes as as people maybe move up the corporate ladder, more pressure on them, more stress. And for me, that's probably a time where you need to be looking after yourself, you need to be prioritizing yourself, you need to bring yourself up and make that time for your training, make that time for getting active and getting moving and the decisions. And I'm not saying that it's easy, but if you've ignored that, ignores maybe a strong term. Life happens again. We get that, we we work with many people. Life happens, and there's different life styles and times of people's lives that things happen. But the most important thing is just picking it up. You don't have a broken metabolism, no matter what anybody tells you. I've been coaching now since 2017, and I haven't met a single person with a broken metabolism. And I've worked with people with type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, or pre-diabetic and females with PCOS, you know, as a as a hormonal um thing to get um herschatism, things like that, but it affects you hormonally, but your metabolism isn't broken for that, and but those particular individuals they just need to eat a little bit less food than the normal person would. And as we've said, if we can get a bit more muscle tissue on just people in general, your metabolic rate is going to come up because it's active tissue, and this is where we need to place the focus. So we start to get you know good habits, sustainable habits, we cement those sustainable habits, get people moving, get people eating what they can. There is no such thing as a broken metabolism. There's maybe your metabolism's a little bit downregulated, there's maybe that you've just got quick hands to get to the beers on a Friday and a Saturday. There's so many things that it can be. It's not that your metabolism's broken and you can be saved, and it's not difficult.

SPEAKER_01 53:05

Well, I think if you were to look at the lifestyle of someone who says they've got a broken metabolism, you probably notice a lot of common similarities. You know, they probably drink too much, as you mentioned, they hardly move, you know, maybe 3,000 steps a day. The desk jockey, the classic deskbound uh office worker, probably not enough protein. They're probably not training, they're probably detrained completely. There's not enough muscle tissue on the physique. If you were to look at the habit, that's why you again you're struggling to lose body fat or build any muscle tissue or change your physique. It's not the broken metabolism, it's your lifestyle habits. So then again, what do we I know you're a big fan, mate as well. You know, we pull on the big levers. Let's get someone in the gym consistently. What can we what can we do consistently? Let's start turning you from this detrained, skinny, fat person who's got no muscle. Let's start, let's start getting you lifting, let's get the wheels turning, right? Number one, let's start getting you moving a little bit more. You know, let's get the steps up, some cardio in there. Diet, you know, let's start bringing up the protein intake, you know, let's try and get around that sort of one gram per pound of body weight. Let's start getting that up, prioritizing carbs around your training, tracking of your foods, you know, let's maybe see if we can tone down the alcohol consumption. And then again, we're starting to pull on the big levers now. And if someone starts doing this consistently, you know, we're talking three, four, five, six months of continuously pulling on these big levers and doing these uh habits consistently. You'll soon realise everything to do with your physique just it just starts to take shape, and it's a domino effect, it all starts to take care of itself, and then you you know, you won't be saying six months down the line if you start improving these habits, you won't be saying I've got a broken metabolism because you'll see with your own eyes, it was never a broken metabolism in the in the first place, it was poor lifestyle habits.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

I mean, sometimes these sort of things are kind of thrust upon as just one thing in life happens, another thing in life happens. One of the things you do need to do is you need to put your your flag in the sand, or you need to put your finger in the stop button and say, like today's the day, or that this hour is the hour, and start to be mindful about what it is that you can do. One of the good things, or one of the things I I say more accurately, you know, your job would be advertised in 48 hours if you keel over at your desk, you know, as much as work needs you and stuff, and I'm not being anti-corporate by saying that, but at some point you need to look after you, you need to be mindful about uh everything that Francis has said there, you know, those lifestyle factors are you getting enough protein and are you getting moving? Do you resistance training? And when you start to say yes to all of this, you're gonna extend your life, and there's nothing really more else or above that that we can say you're gonna be healthier for longer because what you're doing in essence is slowly killing yourself, you're not moving, you're gonna be a higher um you're gonna have higher risk of cardiovascular type diseases if you're drinking alcohol. I'm not gonna demonise it and go into all the things, everybody's talked that to death. You'll know what I'm talking about. Very different from having a beer on a Friday night or a special occasion, you have a couple of glasses of wine. We're not saying that. Um, we are saying, you know, looking at the long term, zooming out and having that 30,000 foot view about what your lifestyle habits look like. And if you can fix them, you don't need to do it all in the same week, you don't need to do it all at the same time. You can even make one change, just one change. I'm gonna go to the gym this week once, next week or next month, I'm gonna make that two days a week, things like that. I'm gonna stop ordering from just eat every day or I'm only gonna have one just eat order per week or every few days, for example. You don't need to go from living like a Tibetan monk from from where you are, you can do that in stages, and to be honest, it'll probably serve you better because then you're cementing things that you can do, you're using one habit and you're bringing in a new habit to replace a poor habit.

SPEAKER_01 57:22

I think that's where people go wrong, mate. We we touched on this over the last couple of weeks that people try and go from zero to one hundred too fast, and if it's not 100% perfect, 10 out of 10, everything they don't start, and they just paralyse themselves. And again, you're right, like it's I I understand people get on the the treadmill, so to speak, of working in the corporate world, working for firms, uh whatever it is, they're just so busy, and they forget to look after themselves. But I think that's sometimes our job as a as a coach, we come in and it's taking it off that treadmill and going, look, you've got to zoom out now and you've got to look that you as you rightfully so as you said, mate, you know, if you work for a firm or a company, if you were to keel over, they're they're gonna replace you in a couple of days' time, like that, and that's just the reality of it. You know, that that's you know, life goes on. So if you're sacrificing your own health completely just to work yourself and run yourself into the ground for a company or a firm, yes, I know you've got to you've got your job and you're earning your money, your family to look after. I we of course we understand that, but you're you're only gonna be able to again work harder, look after your family even more for longer. If you look after yourself, again, you've got to water your own flowers first if you want to look after the garden outside. You know, it's it's so so so important. And and this is a conversation that I've had with uh with many new clients when I onboard them. A lot of them come to me. It's the it's the same, a lot of the same situation. They've just they've they've they've fell on bad habits, they're in a rut, and they can't get out of it. And it's it's it's bringing in these small steps up front and pull on the big rocks, the big levers. We don't try and do everything all at once, as you mentioned. We you know, we we we get the wheels turning, we start seeing some improvements in habits, and it's a domino effect then, but again, you've got to start, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 59:16

The energy that comes from from making those changes as well. You know, we've we've heard that so many times, and I'll never get bored of it. You know, it's such a good feeling to know that you're helping people and helping them help themselves when they've realise that they're in a place they don't want to be, when the body fat starts to drop and they're they're more energized, they're living on less, you know, coffee, maybe nicotine, cigarettes, things like that. Just the whole picture of health changes, you know, how they stand changes, oh, this sort of good stuff, they're getting stronger in the gym. There's so many positives that come from it, but just knowing that you're helping people add not just years onto their life, but quality in those years because what they're doing then is is creating time that they're gonna get more time to spend with either grandchildren, just family in general, doing more things, and as well, maybe just breaking them away from that you know, that sense of feeling that they need to be at work so many times. Again, we're not saying don't work hard, yes. Work hard, everybody works hard every single day we do, but just don't get lost and don't don't forget yourself because at the end of the day you're important as well, but nobody is going to come and say to you, Oh, I don't want you to do those extra hours or whatever that you're doing. Obviously, projects will come and go, different stresses and times you'll be up sometimes and down others. But if you've got those habits in there, you've got that support and accountability coming from elsewhere, and somebody holding you to what you said nine months ago, twelve months ago, there's just a better picture all around.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:57

I I love it as well. I mean, you know, when someone does take the leap and being consistent with it, and you start getting the messages like, oh, I'm I'm I'm I'm on a holiday here, I'm on the beach for the first time in years with my shirt off around the pool, I feel confidence. Um I I I I had a message, it was about six, seven weeks ago. One of my clients who just got a lee and he said, I've just got some photos with my son, and it's the first time like I've I've actually felt jacked in a photo. I feel like it's just so confident, and you know, just just little things like this. And I I I know I know you're a big fan of that, mate. Like the when you get these sorts of messages, like the life-changing stuff, you see the confidence coming through and the checking photos, and it's just um it fills you with like gratitude that we're able to do what we do. Do you know what I mean? It's uh it's it's very fulfilling, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:47

100%, mate. You know, I always say I say it often to anybody that listened to me, you know, I feel very blessed and I feel very grateful that I'm in the position that I am to help people. And regardless of what the one is, a belt notch, I think the holiday one is absolutely fantastic. I mean, that's such a great feeling. There's a lot of people out there, you know, that are scared to take their tops off or whatever, and those individuals have worked so hard. So, you know, kudos to them, you know, and we get those messages that my belt notch has come down, I've had to go and buy a pair of 29-inch waist trousers. I haven't been this weight since high school or since I was age 16. Yeah, the difference that you're helping people to make, but also that people are helping to make to themselves, and we're helping them with the tools to get over that line and stop being in that yo-yo position. Though I'll never get bored of all wins, all wins to me are fantastic, you know. Some people, and I don't like it when they belittle their own wins, or it might not be a big deal to you. As a as a coach, it's a huge deal to me. It doesn't matter what the one is because every one is another win we can stack on another one, and basically we just keep winning.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:01

That's it, mate. We keep winning. That's that's the mantra. I've got to end the podcast on that. We keep winning. So, another good one wrapped up. And if anybody is interested in coaching and you know getting a second pair of eyes on things, you know, changing your life around, improving your training, your nutrition. Message Benjamin at Coach Benjamin Years on Twitter. I'm at Coach FHM. Give us a message and uh we'll happily sort you out. But uh, another good one, mate. And next week is gonna be a QA, isn't it? A QA session.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:31

Uh yep, another good one. Um, obviously been fantastic just going through there. We've probably go through another 45 minutes, I think, quite easily. But um, yeah, next week we're gonna get uh uh a message out across the platforms. We're gonna be looking for input. Um, some some gents are very kindly giving us some input for tonight. Um, hopefully we've answered um the questions and we can continue to do that for anyone who wants to bring any topics to the table. We'll we'll quite happily do the nuance and obviously the balanced deep dive that that Francis and I try and do um every week on on Train Eat Think.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:07

Yeah, so we're gonna get a post out on Twitter in a couple of days and we'll get a couple of questions and maybe even a couple of rapid fire ones at the end as well, and we'll try and gather as many questions as we can and we'll pick the best ones and we'll we'll get through as much as we can. So I'll be in a nice little change of pace next week.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:23

Epic. Look forward to it, mate, as always. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:27

All right, everyone. Cheers, speak to you next week.