Thank you for checking out The Community Conversation, brought to you by Prototype Training Systems, home of CrossFit Prototype!  This episode of The Community Conversation is a NUTRITION EDITION! Typically, The Community Conversation highlights a different member of the Prototype Community each week and allows them to tell their story, share their life experience, and communicate their perspective on all things fitness. For this episode, we have two of our Prototype Nutrition Coaches dropping some Nutrition knowledge bombs!

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For this nutrition edition of the Community Conversation, Prototype Nutrition Coach Jon Collette and Prototype Nutrition’s Registered Dietitian, Sam Hally will be discussing Safe and Efficient Weight Loss. If you’re looking to learn more about nutrition for yourself or pick up some good eating habit tips, you will want to check this out!

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Jon 0:03
All right, thank you for tuning in to the community conversation brought to you by a prototype Training Systems home across your prototype seminar back with another nutrition episode to help provide you with some education and strategies to better your nutrition while still enjoying your social life. There’s a lot of misinformation on nutrition, one aim to provide you with some clarity. Today, we wanted to talk about how to lose weight in the most effective, sustainable way. So I’m going to start off with Sam, what are some of the most common misconceptions when it comes to how a diet should be approached?

Sam 0:47
Um, well, I feel like a lot of times what happens is people are like, Oh, I have a vacation in two weeks, I need to lose weight fast. And then you like walk into the grocery store. And then like right at the cash register, there’s a magazine that says Like how to lose 10 pounds in two weeks. And so people go into weight loss as in, it’s like a quick fix. And it’s like an easy solution to this problem that they’re having, like, they want to lose weight, they want to make it happen fast. And they can just do that if they follow what they see in the magazines. But then when you look at weight loss as a whole, like it really just boils down to simple like calories in versus calories out. But the thing is, if you don’t have an appropriate balance, and you try to do too much too fast, then a lot of things tend to go wrong. And it’s not sustainable, which is like the big, big key point, I think that we like to touch on is like, if you want to lose weight, you have to make changes that are sustainable. So like you’re approaching a diet, and you’re trying to decide what to do to lose weight, the first thing that you should do is figure out what can be sustainable, and how you can maintain that for a long period of time, like potentially the rest of your life.

Jon 1:59
So, okay, so you’re saying the big, big thing is a typically when someone goes into a diet, they feel like the results should be happening quickly. And, um, would you say that most people probably they just, they just want it like now. So if you ever give someone advice that wanted to lose 12 pounds, which is the random number out there, how long should that take? If I don’t know, let’s say they’re not like really obese or they have, I don’t know, maybe 100 plus pounds, is how long would 12 pounds take for someone that just wants to lose a little bit of weight.

Sam 2:44
So typically, like sustainable and safe weight loss that I recommend is anywhere between half a pound to a pound a week, anything more really does push it and doesn’t really give flexibility to like live life that still includes like socializing and like celebrating birthdays, or like being more flexible with the with a diet. Anything more than a pound a week is potentially doable, it’s just really aggressive. And you have to be very very strict on your diet to make that happen. So like 12 pound weight loss is going to happen across like three to six months. Now that’s like typically what I recommend john, are you similar in that or do you recommend something more aggressive?

Jon 3:28
Um, no, I’m right with you. I think like anywhere from half a pound to a pound of weight loss just depends on the individual to some people might lose weight a little bit quicker but it kind of depends on their genetics as well as their dieting history with you know, what they’ve done in the past but also like how much weight they have to lose I guess if you’re looking at someone that was just looking to lose a little bit of weight then that’s kind of yeah you’re spot on that’s kind of the timeline I would give people as well as like three to six months. They a lot of times like I don’t know about you Sam but when I have clients to check in with me they almost they almost feel like they like they failed when they only lost a pound that week. When they do like their weekly check in or their bi weekly check in they’re like I lost two pounds. I know I probably should have done better yada yada. When really like that’s like that’s like huge success if you can enjoy your life and it’s like still make gradual progress and like what’s the like what’s the Russian like getting to the goal if it feels like it’s a we feel like it wasn’t super difficult for you to be able to make gradual progress and is not like a you know, kind of a good thing.

Sam 4:48
You don’t want to suffer through the three months me like this is terrible. I hate my life. Like you want to enjoy the process.

Jon 4:55
And there’s so many different ways to like structure diet, right. Oh, you can structure Diet where you, you know, track your food and you exactly like how many calories you’re having. And some people might go ahead and have like, I don’t know, they might have some foods that they incorporate more like in flexibility at times, like maybe it’s going out to dinner once a week, like maybe they have a system like that. Like, there’s a lot of different ways you can structure your nutrition. But we’re to go into what’s the most effective ways, Tim, what is when it comes to nutrients and things like that? What would you say like is probably the most important thing if your goal is that you want to lose weight? When we say weight, I guess you mean like body fat, not losing a ton of muscle? What would you say is like one of the most important nutrients you can put in your body?

Sam 5:45
It’s protein. I’m hopeful that you agree. If nothing else, and you’re trying to lose weight, realistically, what you’re probably trying to lose fat. That’s what we get more often than not, I don’t know, if anybody’s ever walked in, at least to my office and been like, Yes, I want to lose muscle. I’m probably not, I’m probably not for you either, john, when people talk about weight, they really mean body fat, they want to change their body composition. Because sometimes what happens is like weight loss doesn’t actually happen, the scale doesn’t go down, the body composition change. So fat loss happens, even if muscle mass is increasing, and scale doesn’t change. So when we’re talking weight loss, today, we’re really talking about fat loss. And the biggest thing to think about is protein is like getting enough protein in your diet, that there’s not any muscle wasting. Also for satiety of like having a meal with protein is going to keep you fuller for longer. So if you’re eating something that’s just like a plate of pasta, maybe cutting down on the volume of pasta, and replacing that with protein is going to keep you fuller for more than like the two hours that the plate of pasta would keep people for. So it helps in a calorie like put you in a calorie deficit because of like keeping you fuller for longer. Johnny have like a specific number, like if someone comes into you and is like I want to lose weight, you have a number that you say, you should be getting at least this much protein a day. 1000 1000 1000 is not the number, definitely no, but you just need 1000

Jon 7:21
I usually recommend the bare minimum amount of protein he should have should be lean body mass, the amount of pounds of lean body mass that you have on your current body. So let’s say that you weigh 200 pounds, your lean body mass is 150, then you should be having at least 150 grams of protein. But usually, I might even recommend anywhere from one gram per pound of lean body mass to one gram per pound of actual body weight. The reason why I’ll go in like that, that range is that if you’re having one gram per pound of lean body mass, then you’re supporting, you know lean tissue and not losing it. But if we go a little bit higher than that, then it’s also, like Sam mentioned, it’s a little bit more satiating. But we also forget that your body burns energy, when you consume food and protein, you burn more calories and doing that. So if you were to have 2000 calories, and you would have 100 grams of protein, or you’d have 2000 calories, you’d have 140 grams of protein, you’re gonna expend more energy having 140 grams of protein because your body burns about 30% of the calories that come from protein and just the metabolizing process just like imagine like little workers in your body like having to work a little bit harder because you’re giving them a little bit more of a workload than what they are used to having. So you expend more energy from from having that. So if we can support lean body mass, but also like having enough protein that we don’t feel hungry all the time, it’s a lot easier to you know, not have like increased cravings and things like that when it comes to getting that nutrient. So that’s why I like that is so important. And

Sam 9:16
how would someone know what their lean body masses?

Jon 9:20
Well, you could do like a, you could do like a like an in body scan at the gym, like our facility you can go to in get you go and get that checked from them to have like dexa scans and things like that. So there’s different methods to be able to do it. You could do like a calculation but that might not be the most accurate way to figure it out. Um, but there’s, there’s a few different ways to approximate what your lean body mass is. But, Sam, we buy more muscle you have in your body also results in faster metabolism, correct?

Sam 10:03
Yeah, higher muscle mass equals higher BMR. BMR stands for basal metabolic rate. But yeah, you burn more calories at rest, you have more muscle, that’s a good thing.

Jon 10:14
Right. So if you put on muscle, you can eat more, eat more food with you because you’re expending more energy. Um, so sometimes we think that cardio is going to be the best way in order for us to go ahead and expend energy. But sometimes you got to look at things as they’re both important cardio is great for your heart health, it is a great tool for expending energy. But we also want to lift some weights, because if we’re not lifting weights, and we’re not growing building muscles supporting that muscle, then probably going to find that over time, we’re going to decrease the amount of muscle that we have in our body, which just makes future the you know, the amount of food that you’re eating now would potentially have to decrease if your goal is to save the same frame while not, you know, adding in more like, you know, stuff to be able to build and support your muscles. So, um, so protein is the main nutrient to be able to, you know, to be able to support your lean body mass, Sam, what would you say is next, the most important thing?

Sam 11:23
Well, now, I would recommend finding a balance of fats and carbs, protein and carbs both have four calories per gram, and that has nine calories per gram. So by volume, you’re getting like kind of the most bang for your buck with proteins and carbs, like you can eat more volume of that versus a fat. However, you can’t go without that. So it’s figuring out then what the macro breakdown should be. Based on those two. Ideally, we’re getting lots of carbs in the form of like, fruits and vegetables. Additionally, like some whole grains, like starchy vegetables, which I consider cards, or like, I consider them starches, as opposed to vegetables, but like your potatoes, or corn, or peas, things like that. And then making sure that the fats that you choose are they call them healthy fats. So like avocado, olive oil, things that are basically liquid at room temperature is the best way to describe them up. Like if you’re cooking with oils, room temperature, liquids are the best way to go. I don’t know if that makes sense. But maybe you can kind of clarify what I’m trying to explain there.

Jon 12:44
You’re saying that some fats are going to probably have some omega threes, and things like that, that are good for anti inflammatory responses in the body. So if you’re getting the majority of your fats coming from red meat and things like that, it’s not that they’re necessarily bad for you. But if your whole diet as a whole is just high in like saturated fat, then we probably want to try to find a little bit of a balance of having some of those more plant based options. So not everything is coming in the form of you know. Yeah, exactly like sausage or anything like that. So just having just just a balance between all of them but uh, and the form of weight loss doesn’t matter if our if we’re in a if we’re having more carbs and less fat are for having more fat and less carbs as to make a difference because there’s so much controversy with you know, high fats good because, you know, in low carb is better because it doesn’t, you know, Spike insulin and it’s more of a keto is a big phase now, where having more fat means you burn more fat, does it matter? where you get your calories from the sense of carbs and fat or? Yeah, does that matter at all?

Sam 14:02
My answer is always it depends. Um, some people will do better, higher carbohydrates. And typically, those people are athletes, where if you are working out like an hour or more a day thing, you’re better off getting more carbohydrates than more fats. Now, for someone who maybe isn’t working out as frequently, but still is trying to lose weight getting like a more equal split, as like a more of a balance between the two, like so if you’re working out more regularly, then you’re probably going to get more a higher percentage of your calories from carbs and fats. But if someone’s working out less frequently, or they just know for a fact that their body does better on like a more balanced fat to carb breakdown, then like it doesn’t necessarily mean having more fat in the diet is bad because I know there was like a whole phase. In the 90s, like low fat diets are the way to go. And now it seems like it’s swung the other way, and keto is the way to go. Realistically, we want a balance of all three macronutrients. But you can play with the macros. I’m trying to like not overcomplicate this, but it is kind of complicated. Like you can play with the macros to figure out what best suits your body and promotes muscle gain while also promoting fat loss.

Jon 15:25
Right. So as long as you’re getting enough protein, it’s more preference.

Sam 15:33
Yeah, absolutely. We don’t want to be too low in protein.

Jon 15:36
It sounds like you’re recommending that if the more that you exercise, or the harder your workouts are that you probably feel better and carbs. Yeah, but one of the weight loss, it sounds like it doesn’t. It just depends on what’s easiest for you to stick with.

Sam 15:51
Exactly. And like the more you exercise, realistically, it just says the body craves carbs as source of fuel. So if you’re exercising and you’re not giving your body carbs, there’s a higher likelihood of having cravings and then higher likelihood of either binging on food or having a quote unquote cheat day that’s like not conducive to that fat loss goal that you

Jon 16:11
have. Right? So when it comes to timing of when we have certain things, does that matter at all? Because I mean, I think we can just look at like the timeline of things that have been presented in, you know, the, the dieting world of, you know, you need to keep your metabolism firing by eating every two hours, like, does that matter? Like, do we need to eat five small meals? Does it matter if we have one or two larger meals and just in the pure form of weight loss?

Sam 16:47
So again, the answer is, it depends. However, for the purpose of this podcast, my answer is, is no. Um, because you have to first be in a calorie deficit. And no matter how you get into that calorie deficit, as long as you are in that devastate, you will lose weight, right, the body burns X amount of calories. If you eat X amount of calories, you’re at weight maintenance. But if you eat a lower amount of calories, right weight loss, now you can get those calories all at 8am. Like you can eat your entire day’s worth of calories at 8am. And you’ll still be in a calorie deficit and you can lose weight. You can eat those spread out every two hours throughout the day. And you can be in a calorie deficit and you can lose weight. Sure, it’s probably not practical to eat one meal a day, if you’re trying to lose weight, because you don’t want to have hunger cravings throughout the rest of the day. However, at the end of the day, like timing is not as important as calorie intake and macronutrient breakdown. So it’s like, you have to think about the major things first, before you get into things like nutrient timing, or supplements or anything else that kind of comes after, like, how much should you be eating? What types of macronutrient? Shouldn’t you be eating? And then you can get into when should you be eating it?

Jon 18:06
Right.

Sam 18:06
Yeah, the same thing, john?

Jon 18:08
No, yeah, I mean, we’re definitely going to probably talk about intermittent fasting in the future. But um, intermittent fasting, if you are not familiar with it, it’s when you restrict the time, the day that you’re eating, usually, intermittent fasting protocol would be like, you won’t eat for 16 hours for eight hours. And, you know, just goes to show that like, timing doesn’t matter. It’s just more about calorie balance. For some people like that can be a way that they can feel most satisfied because they can eat like one or two, like large meals and eight hours without feeling hungry. And the other timeframe of the day is just like a it’s just, it’s just easier decision for them to eat or not. We’ll dive deeper into intermittent fasting but small meals a day, you can eat three solid meals, you can eat two large meals, you can eat once a day, you just want to be able to maintain a slight calorie deficit. And if your calorie deficit is too severe, then you’re probably going to end up compromising muscle loss. Because you’re when calories are too low, by finds calories from somewhere takes it from muscle tissue as well as body fat. So if we’re smart about our calorie deficit, we are in a small calorie deficit of anywhere from like 250 to 500 calories deficit on average per day, and that’s for seven days, and that would result in that half a pound to a pound. body fat loss. But if we are in let’s say, 1000 calorie deficit, you know, you’re probably your body will most likely take glucose from your muscles so it’ll break down Some muscle tissue for energy. And that’s why we lose muscle mass. So slight calorie deficit, protein needs, make it sustainable. It doesn’t matter when you eat as long as you’re getting enough calories, and also is something that kind of works for you. Um,

Sam 20:18
be clear, we should not be eating in 1000 calorie deficit per day.

Jon 20:23
Yeah, so I mean, that would be what, that’d be two pounds a week average. And for most of us, we don’t need to lose two pounds a day. So I always like,

Sam 20:36
small series of circumstances that that would be appropriate.

Jon 20:40
Yeah, it’s always it depends. Like, if you’re 400 pounds, like, Sure you can, you’d be fine and having, you know, 1000 less calories and the what you’ve been having, but some of those 400 pounds is still going to be eating a lot more food than someone that is 150 pounds, and they and they want to lose weight. Right? So the answer is always it depends. Um,

Sam 21:03
we maybe jump into like an explanation of how you would calculate out calorie deficit.

Jon 21:10
Yeah, I mean, you could go like, as you go into, like, if you know your body fat percentage, you can like, there’s equations that you take into your, your height, your weight, your activity, and your body fat percentage, and you put it into a formula to be able to figure it out. There’s, there’s some online calculators, some of them are, you know, science based, based off of, you know, things that have been studied, and the most accurate way to figure out what your calorie maintenance is. Or you can go had and, you know, there’s some simple ways, like, What’s your goal bodyweight, if you’re, you know, gold, by the way, multiply that by 12. You know, that’s like a very simple way to, you know, have an idea, that’s probably not the most accurate way to figure figure things out, because there’s so many different variables when it comes to well, how much you working out and things like that. But, um, when I figured out someone’s calories I use I use a formula. And I base it off of also what that person is doing. So if you’re, if you know, if that individual is, you know, working out once a day, and they sit at a desk all day, you know, whether maintenance calories are and how much they’re, you know, how much they’re moving their body, you know, kind of take into account all those different variables in their in their life versus someone that’s a construction worker, you know, their calorie deficit is going to be different. But you need to know what were your calorie maintenance says before you determine Anything else? And then you got to figure out all the other stuff.

Sam 22:51
Yeah, honestly, a good starting point to weight loss is figuring out what that maintenance summary is. Like, I feel like a lot of people come in either having dieted their whole life or always been in this like swing of like weight loss, weight gain, weight loss, weight gain, and never knowing what maintenance calories are. Like, if you’re someone who’s doing that, and you’re trying to lose weight, try getting weight maintenance first, you know, the good place to start?

Jon 23:18
Yeah, it’s always tough to when, like, when you think that you’re eating a certain amount of calories, you think what, you know, this is my maintenance, and you think you’re eating this much? Well, we don’t really, you know, know exactly what we’re having, because we don’t count alcohol or the weekends or,

Sam 23:40
you know, um, you like a peanut butter spoon, or take a bite of your kids snack?

Jon 23:46
Yeah, like, all those little things that, you know, can add up to a few 100 calories throughout your day and throughout your week. You know, those all matter not saying that, you know, you should be hyper focused on food. But if you really think that reading 1500 calories and you’re not losing weight, you know, I don’t know if your calorie deficit is either set correctly, or if you actually know how much you’re eating, and those are usually the two things, most metabolisms and our thyroids and things like that aren’t really the issue they can be, but most of the time, it’s just like just pure, being purely being unaware of calories in general that, you know, and how quickly they can add up when you put dressing on your salad that can that can accumulate based off of the type of dressing that you’re putting on your salad chain like a you know, a fat free low fat and then they have dressings that are like 18 grams of fat per tablespoon. Sometimes you put like three on there and that might as well just get the fish tacos that fried is

Sam 24:57
like yeah Exactly. And the thing too is like you could be logging everything. And if you base your deficit off of what My Fitness Pal or like, whatever your Fitbit is telling you, like those apps typically grossly overestimate the amount of calories you’re burning in a workout. And like that could be another reason that like, even if you are super diligent, do super diligent about tracking everything like you’re weighing you’re measuring. Tracking is 100% spot on every single day of the week, and no weight loss is happening. Probably the exercise has been overestimated. Because I see that happening a lot too.

Jon 25:38
know Yeah, totally. And then like, what happens when like, some stress is introduced into our, into our day and into our life? Like, I don’t know how many people track their habits or track their tendencies when something comes up. Maybe that might be something to look at, too. If you’re like, oh, why can’t you know? Why do I struggle so much with weight loss, meaning some of the things that we’ve already talked about, maybe think about, okay, something stressful comes up in your day or your life? Or you get off the phone, you get out of a meeting? Do you walk over the cabinet? Open it up skin? Like do you have some of those tendencies to go ahead and not really being aware that if you’re actually hungry, or anything like that, like I guess I would just be mindlessly going about your nutrition, like how, like how, how much you actually paying attention to some of those other habits, and some of those other things that are going on with your day. Those usually are, Oh, I forgot about that. You know, I didn’t realize that I, you know, finish my kids juicebox. Like, all those little things. If you are someone that feels like, you know, there’s something wrong with you, you can’t go ahead and you know, dial in your nutrition. So you just give up, you know, maybe we want to start with just looking at some of the very basic things like like that, you know, some people don’t necessarily need to track their food, they need to be more aware of what their day looks like what they’re doing in their day regularly, as well as, what are you doing in the weekends with your friends? You know, are you having like multiple alcoholic beverages? And are you saving all your calories at the end of the day, and then you end up binge eating, and now you’re having a lot more than you realized. And then you start on Monday? Like, we want to look at the habit loop? Like what are some of the things that keep reoccurring? Um,

Sam 27:38
that’s a good point, john, because I think a lot of times, it’s like we are doing other things like it’s not like eating is an intentional part of anyone’s day. So it’s like you’re running from here to there. So you just grab a quick handful of pretzels on the way out the door, or like, oh, like I don’t want to throw out my kids like the leftover crust from their pb&j. So I’m gonna have that and like, that’ll be my snack. But it’s like, those things do add up until like, figuring out like, what is the cause of all of those things happening? Right? Like, it’s not like you’re doing something wrong. If you’re eating pretzels on the way out the door. It’s like, why is that happening? And it’s probably because you’re not making time to sit down and have a lunch, or like you’re not making time to plan a snack. And if you start making the time to make those things happen, then you don’t do those habits that potentially are causing you to overeat.

Jon 28:28
Right? Yeah, even just like maybe like, even just having somewhat of a plan for the day. It takes practice to like we’re not make it sound like it’s like it’s easy, or something that is a quick fix. But it takes practice and best thing you can do is no reflect on what your nutrition looked like each day, if you do have goals. If you look at Okay, this scenario came up in my day today. And I approached it this way. And that resulted in this. What can I do different next time to better myself so maybe it’s okay, maybe instead of having no just grabbing like a mandarin and thinking that that’s going to tide me over for four hours, maybe it’s you know, bringing something of a little bit more substance with you. So then when you do get home and dinners not ready for an hour that you’re not having basically a meal before you actually eat your dinner because you’re that hungry. So some of those common situations come up all the time is just like, it’s not intentional. It’s not that you’re trying to skip lunch or anything like that. It’s like, like Sam mentioned, like, you gotta, you gotta make the time and you also if time is really something that’s hard for you to go ahead and like sit down and have a meal. And we got to come up with a solution. Whether that’s going to be making your lunch in advance or having something that’s more portable that you can bring with you in the car, there’s so many different scenarios that can be resulting in why you might be inconsistent with your nutrition. I mean, it’s also a Wi Fi, if you are struggling with some of those things, so if you guys like Nilo gonna help with some of those, you know, some of those strategies how to approach nutrition for your lifestyle, like, reach out to us. But, um, Sam, is there anything else you want to add? When it comes to? I guess, like, what’s the most effective way, I guess, if we were to summarize this, you got to know how many calories you need to maintain your weight, your goal is to lose weight, then we need to know that we’re eating slightly less than that.

Sam 30:45
Slightly more the operative word there.

Jon 30:47
Yeah, whether that’s tracking or it’s not tracking, you have to have some form of system that works for us. That doesn’t result in us. You know, having to take either, you know, having a day devoted to we’ve talked about if you didn’t, if you didn’t listen to it, go back to our episode on cheat days, we talked about cheat days, you have to have a day of the week that’s devoted to, you know, eating the foods that you don’t allow yourself to eat, how to do that incorporate some of the things in moderation and to Fat Loss Diet. So it doesn’t feel overly difficult. And I think that what we pointed out in the beginning is no rush to doing this. You lost 20 pounds, and it took you five years and you have the habits developed in order to keep it off, then why does it matter? If it took you five years, you know, versus 30 days, in 30 days, you probably didn’t learn how to be able to do that sustainably, it probably felt very difficult to do that. And yeah, Sam, anything you want to add?

Sam 31:54
Yeah, no, I think that’s all like a nice little recap, I think another thing that I’d like to add before we close out is like weight, not intentional weight loss is not going to be linear all the time. And so it’s okay, if the scale goes down a pound, and then up a half a pound, and then down half a pound. And you know what I mean? It’s not gonna always be like, every single week, even if you’re eating in that perfect calorie deficit based off of your body in your calculations, like, weight loss still might not be going down exactly a pound every single week. It’s changing habits, and then seeing that over all trend line that you should be looking for. It’s like the scale scale does not necessarily need to go down every single day for it to be like, actual fat loss goes up, sometimes it goes down. It’s just making sure that like you don’t have six weeks in a row where you’re intentionally trying to lose weight and the weight isn’t changing at all.

Jon 32:50
Yeah, and probably shouldn’t respond super drastically to the scale. If you lift weights, and you do something that’s really stressful, your muscles can get swollen, let’s say do five sets of five back squat. And then you weigh yourself the next day and you gained a pound and a half doesn’t mean that you gained a pound and a half means you have probably a little bit of inflammation. And inflammation isn’t always a bad thing. That means that that’s the response your body got from you lifting weights, and that’s how your muscles are going to build you need an inflammatory response in order to grow muscle, but that is going to result in the scale going up a little bit. So if every time we see any form of you know, that fluctuation like Sam mentioned on the scale going up every respond by doing something that is unsustainable or super severe, then you’re probably going to run into the same thing again, where Okay, you dropped two pounds, but then you’re, you know, you’re starving you Benji, and then, you know, it’s kind of a back and forth type of thing. So that’s a really good point, Sam, yeah, the scale is not always going to go down. So might

Sam 33:56
not even change at all, like if that loss is happening, but you’re also building muscle at the same time, like you might say, the exact same way. But just see changes in body composition, like clothes will fit differently, you’ll be stronger, you can lift heavier weights, you can like run up the stairs a little bit fast, or you can like run around with the kids and grandkids without getting tired. There’s like a lot of non scale changes that can happen. Like, if weight loss is the goal. It’s probably fat loss. That’s the goal. And so even if this feels like not cooperating the way you want it to we got to figure out like, Are there other markers that are showing that that mass is going down? And if the answer to that is yes, I consider that a success. And you don’t need to live and die by the scale.

Jon 34:37
No, I agree. 100%

Sam 34:40
not anything else, john.

Jon 34:42
Yeah, I mean, a lot of times people have a goal of they want to lose X amount of pounds and then they realize that they either are happy where they are now because they you know didn’t realize that they didn’t need to lose 10 pounds. They just wanted to maybe lose a couple pounds and They wanted to focus on feeling themselves better for their workouts, and they noticed this body composition changes, sometimes that’ll happen and sometimes also have these goals of I want to lose 20 pounds, and then realize that, you know, that may not be what’s best for you, you know, that may not match your lifestyle, you know. So we have to, like, take some of those things in consideration to that, you know, you want to, you know, have, you know, a certain lifestyle two times a week, like, maybe your expectations of you know, having a six pack abs may not be realistic, but we can still be happy and we can still go ahead and, you know, be healthy and find that common ground of what’s going to meet our, you know, our lifestyle as well as like, you know, making sure that we’re being healthy in general.

Sam 35:50
Yeah, great points. So with that said, if you are someone who wants to lose weight, or someone who thinks you want to lose weight, and we actually need to talk about why it is that you want to lose weight, you should come talk to us. This is this is what we’re here for. We love talking nutrition. This is like the stuff that we research 24 seven, I would say that we are experts in nutrition. So we’re here to help. So definitely reach out if you have any questions or concerns. If anything from this podcast today, hit home and you think that we might be talking to you, please reach out. If you have suggestions for future podcasts, please let us know. And in the meantime, we hope you all have a wonderful day.