In the Grand Scheme Of Fitness With Justin and Ethan

From Fat to Fit: A Realistic Timeline for Body Transformation

• Justin Schollard • Season 2 • Episode 59

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The journey to genuine fitness requires managing expectations and embracing consistency over dramatic transformations. Real physical change demands understanding your genetic potential, following sustainable nutrition practices, and committing to progressive training for at least two years.

• Most people dramatically underestimate calorie intake until they start tracking consistently
• Fat loss realistically happens at 0.5-1 pound per week for sustainable results
• "Weekend warriors" often erase weekday calorie deficits with three days of higher eating
• Building noticeable muscle mass takes 1-2 years of consistent resistance training
• Training must continually evolve with progressive overload every 6-8 weeks
• True fitness requires embracing regular discomfort in your workouts
• Genetic factors significantly impact your ultimate physique potential
• Even fitness models and actors only maintain peak condition briefly
• The key to success is making fitness a consistent lifestyle, not a temporary program
• Process orientation beats outcome focus for long-term physical transformation


Speaker 1:

on what it takes to actually get in shape, like the brutal, honest truth on what it's gonna look like for you to not just like lose a few vanity pounds, but to like actually become like a fit person.

Speaker 1:

Be honest like nobody wants to get fit slow. Nobody wants to get rich slow and nobody wants to get fit slow. But what are the people who have accomplished both of those things have in common? Yeah, they did it slow. Welcome to episode 59 of In the Grand Scheme of Fitness, with your hosts, justin Scolard and Ethan Wolf. So today, guys, we're talking about the real. Real on what it takes to actually get in shape, like the brutal, honest truth on what it's going to look like for you to not just like lose a few vanity pounds, but to like actually become like a fit person, like a truly fit athletic person. Like what is that going to take? What's the time horizon? What's the time commitment? From like a weekly standpoint, nutrition, fitness we're going to do our best to just sort of lay out your runway to go from. You know, if we are 0% fitness right now, maybe you're at a decent level of fitness.

Speaker 2:

It's all the way to like what you would imagine yourself as like your full potential. Absolutely no-transcript know, uneducated in that capacity, or just have false expectations because they think they know, they think they know what the path is, that when they actually start to walk it, things are different and then it all just kind of gets a skew yeah, I mean managing expectations because, let's be honest, like nobody wants to get fit slow, nobody wants to get fit slow.

Speaker 1:

Nobody wants to get rich slow and nobody wants to get fit slow. But what are the people who have accomplished both of those things have in common? You know, they did it slow.

Speaker 2:

They did it with how it goes, which is yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, like it's messy and it sucks, and you go through periods where you feel like nothing's happening and you're just wasting your time, and then you know you start to see little flickers of hope and then, like over years, you know it slowly starts to reveal itself that you've actually accomplished your goal and that just takes time.

Speaker 2:

And so, especially with physiology, I think, yeah, like even with money, you might be able to make a big investment and take a risk, and that's.

Speaker 1:

That's an outlier, though. Most folks yeah, but physiology there's no way around the the truth of what you're working with you know, and to that point it's like what you're working with is your genetic disposition, like if you're tall, if you're skinny, if you're you know, built like a beam pole, if you're built like a fire hydrant.

Speaker 2:

You know, like you're efficient at using calories and therefore gain weight easy yeah. Inefficient using calories yeah exactly so.

Speaker 1:

There's all these factors, that kind of play into your particular unique genetic potential, which is all we can do, unless we want to do drugs and steroids and get surgery and stuff, which obviously happens. But for the rest of us who, you know, would rather just do it the good, old-fashioned way, then you know we have to be realistic and manage expectations of like what's possible for us. But who cares? Because it's you know, it's like we're just competing against ourselves. Basically, like you know, and as long as we can just accept that and be process oriented, you know it's amazing what can happen.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so the real, real, how, like, what does it take? Let's just take like a case, let's take like a scenario here of like someone who, let's say they're like super casual to exercise, they're probably carrying an extra 20 to 30 pounds of of extra body fat, probably not very strong. Maybe they get some walks in, maybe they do a workout, you know, very sporadically but not consistent. They're not, they're not strangers to it, they're not starting from zero, but maybe they're just like there's no traction, there's no consistency. Maybe they're in their 30s, they work their nutrition's kind of all over the place. They're trying, but they're not really trying. They want it, but they're not really showing through action how bad they want it. You know, yep, so you know that's kind of a typical person, I think.

Speaker 2:

That's a typical.

Speaker 1:

Like you know, westerner, I can relate. Yeah, so here's one right here. So what would that look like then? Okay, what's the real? Real I want to get. I'm that person and I want to go for it. I want to see what this body's capable of. Yeah, I want to go there.

Speaker 2:

What does that look like? What does my body look like? How can it perform All the things? Well, I think you know, and especially keeping it real, especially for aesthetic goals, that's most people's motivation a lot of the time when they want to get into shape, and I think that when people look good, they feel good about themselves and they kind of can check the box. Few of us are actually going for performance-based goals, although there are definitely plenty of people, I think, that want to just beast out, enjoy the training if they get into it after some time and kind of want to see what they can do with it. But I think fundamentally it's like anytime you're carrying around extra weight, that's going to be first priority.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know, you just have to kind of.

Speaker 1:

Lean out first. Lean out first, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Whether you get like shredded or you just get to like a very nice healthy composition. If you're carrying extra, it's just not going to serve you, whether you're choosing to run or do exercise or look good.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because even if you put on muscle underneath 30 pounds of extra body fat, you're just going to kind of look bigger. You're not going to.

Speaker 2:

It's not going to be what you want.

Speaker 1:

You know 100 men and women so I think rough number, like for men, get yourself in the mid teens of body fat percentage. Women, get yourself in the in the mid to low 20s body fat. So men could be like mid, so like, let's say, 13 to 16 is a good, would be pretty solid, yeah, pretty solid. To start, like you know, okay, we're gonna like performance train now, yeah, and then I think for women, maybe like somewhere between like 25 to 20, somewhere in that pocket yeah, I mean solid 20, 20, 20 is pretty lean, but like, yeah, 20, 25.

Speaker 1:

I'd say 25 is good but, 30, yeah, I mean, listen, you know it's.

Speaker 1:

It's everybody kind of looks different at different body fat percentages so you just got to decide what's right number for you. But I think that just like a general rule of thumb, if you are that person we just described you, you are kind of like half in, half out, not really taking that seriously, but you're not necessarily brand new at it, but you're not. Also, you'd be surprised even in a calorie deficit, even if the focus is fat loss, just by sheer consistency with your training, meaning that like three times a week it's. So it's such fertile grounds for someone like that, yeah, that any stimulus, even if it's just resistance bands and calisthenics, just to start to lower the barrier of entry and just to start three times a week consistently with hitting high protein targets, and even if you're in a calorie deficit, but like consistently eating meals and high protein, you'll still get a hell of a lot stronger and put on muscle.

Speaker 1:

Now you know, the more fit you get, the less muscle you're going to build in calorie deficit. So in the beginning you can take full advantage of that opportunity for your body to like the pure novelty of the stimulus will produce muscle tissue and strength even in a calorie deficit. Now, once you're more in an advanced fitness person, the amount of muscle you build in a fat loss phase is very negligible. So that's why it's like just getting protein levels up and being consistent with your training. If you're that person who's just getting the ball rolling, you'll see amazing recompositioning happen in that first few months. If you're consistent.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, I think, and I think some of the things for me like to think about expectations is like what's it actually look like to change your diet? Like what's the expectation of what that actually looks like? Because it's really easy to be like oh, like to just to lose weight. You just got to like get in a calorie deficit and increase your protein. It's like okay, like what?

Speaker 2:

is the actual and first things first is like you're probably gonna have to pay attention to your food, which is going to be something that's going to be new. I was just talking to a client today and I'm on the long path of therapy. I was just like, let's just have you start tracking as best you can. Even if it's just paying attention to the labels of your food, even if you're not willing to pull out a scale for every single thing, let's just like educate you and she was like, came back to me.

Speaker 1:

It was just like wow meal, 800 calories, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I actually I just bought this little bag of nuts for a snack and it's just. I mean, it was like a four by six inch bag and nuts and it was a thousand calories in there, and so I think it's like things like that where you actually start to have to realize like the expectations is like this is going to be a lifestyle change and you're going to have to start to participate with food day in and day out in a different capacity. One of those things is understanding what the food, calorically and the values actually are. So it's like, you know, it's just kind of, I think, understanding that in order to lose weight, you're going to probably have to participate with food in a completely different way.

Speaker 1:

Got to start checking those labels, man, like it's just like we said, this is the real real, and like we can stay in fantasy land and pretend like we're all like have this amazing intuition and can just like intuitively eat. But the fact is that if you are that type where we are like having this conversation because whatever we're trying just isn't working and not where you want to be, then you have to question, like, the quality of your intuition, because without the proper analysis meaning we go through 12 weeks of checking every you know food label and tracking our calories and seeing and getting that pattern recognition what we're doing is we're building the proper analysis and that proper analysis is the foundation for you to start trusting your intuition in the future, where maybe you can look at a plate and be like I think I'm a little over today or I think I can make that work.

Speaker 1:

That's a little too many nuts for serving.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Like, ooh, two handfuls, that's way too much. But if you don't have the right analysis because you haven't actually waited and logged it and seen that that's half of your day's worth of calories, for some women, yeah, which is exactly the situation. Then your, then your intuition's wrong because you don't have the analysis.

Speaker 2:

Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1:

And so the real real is you have to go through at least 12 weeks, I think, of track everything ruthlessly, commit to accuracy, don't bullshit yourself. Weigh your oil out, count your almonds, because it's like it matters 50 calories here, 50 calories there, 50 calories there. Next thing you know you're 300 calories over for the day that you thought you were, and guess what? That was your deficit and now you've hit your.

Speaker 2:

You're over yeah, I mean, this is a middle-aged woman who's not the. She's pretty tiny, I mean, you know, in terms of height and stature you know, and she's like oh, I'm eating like 2300 calories, 2400 calories, 2200 calories.

Speaker 2:

You know it's easy to do and like that, like 2400 calories, would be a strong deficit. For me as a 200 pound, six foot male, it'd be a lot of deficit, but it's still. It's not a deficit that wouldn't be egregious. So it's like she's eating in a range that would be appropriate for me as, yeah, twice her size, who trains. She's been training for 20 years, yeah, so it's like you could see the light bulbs starting to go off in her head from the tracking and so I think that's like.

Speaker 2:

One expectation is that your relationship to food is going to have to change. You're going to have to pay attention to it. You can't just wing it with the food. No, you can't just shoot from the hip.

Speaker 1:

We will always unintentionally underestimate food. We're going to have to be with the food day in, day out.

Speaker 2:

Now I'm not saying that every meal for every week has to be tracked and logged perfectly or that every food has to be a single ingredient food, but realistically, the consistency has to be like every day in some capacity. There has to be this long-term consistency. If it's a three or four day on to a three day off, week after week, you're just gonna. You're gonna be stagnant.

Speaker 1:

That's that, but that. But that. That's the. That's another arc. That's like.

Speaker 1:

Another case study is like I'm really good monday through thursday, yeah, but then I like to let loose. You know, friday, saturday, sunday, I like to let my hair down. It's like that's balance, man. It's like, well, you're nowhere near where you want to be, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So is that theory actually true, or is this just a belief system that you've created that that is no longer serving you, because the reality is is like we can do some real damage over the weekend. I mean, you can go from two thousand two thousand, two thousand, two thousand and like four thousand four thousand, four thousand. It's not, you're not. Your daily average is three thousand, yep way over, and that ain't a calorie deficit for most of us, you know. And so it's just.

Speaker 1:

You have to be accurate. You can have a couple of drinks, you can grab dessert. You just got to plan for it ahead of time and that might mean practicing just a little restraint earlier in the day by instead of a cup of rice, it's a half. Instead of, you know, three ounces of whatever, it's only an ounce and a half whatever, it's only an ounce and a half. And so you're just what you're doing is you're, you're, you're you're purposefully restraining calories in the first half of the day because you know you have a bigger dinner out later on, and so you're just creating a, you're creating room for it in your calorie budget, and that's how you master the game as far as, like you know, lifestyle balance that we all seek, while still keeping our body composition where we want it.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. And I was going to say, and I think just also being realistic, of like how long it will take to probably lose the amount of fat that you would want to lose to look a certain way or to be healthy. Yeah, both one and the same, two sides of the same coin. But you know they talk about one to two pounds as an aggressive to like a high end, two pounds, especially A week. Yeah, a week would be like two pounds a week is real aggressive.

Speaker 1:

We're talking actual fat loss Like that's aggressive, it's extremely aggressive.

Speaker 2:

So, being you, know, pulling that back from like the one extreme to just understanding that maybe a half a pound a week is a nice, good, steady, healthy, consistent but successful rate of fat loss for an individual. And then, depending on where you're at and how much weight you think you need to lose, start to like put that math together of understanding that you have to be that consistent you know, again, setting these expectations of you have to be that consistent with your food, after developing an understanding of food through tracking for however many weeks and months, in order to lose that weight and get to where you want to be.

Speaker 1:

To put it in perspective to lose two pounds of body fat per week means you need to be in a thousand calorie deficit per day.

Speaker 2:

Per day, which is for most people isn't going to happen. That's realistically crazy, that's only if you're like a 250 pound man. Yeah, like if you're a huge person.

Speaker 1:

We could probably make that work because you're just burning more calories. Yeah, but like a female will never happen.

Speaker 2:

That's, I think it's like some people because you get on my fitness pal, they're like how many, how many? And again, I know that two pounds a week isn't necessarily two pounds of fat, but people see these, these options yeah like, oh, like, how many pounds a week do you want to lose? Half, one, two, and people are always like of course, two, I want it off.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's like a pound a week is up is gonna net out give or take about 500 calories of a deficit per day. So we always shoot for a pound a week. We like that. That seems to work really well for our clients because for 80 of us it's doable. So if you're, you know, middle-aged woman who doesn't train very hard and maybe doesn't have a ton of muscle mass on them, then you know, their metabolism is probably still around 1700. So we could bring them into 12 or 1300 calories a day, which is very low, but it is what it is. We might bring it. We might only bring them down to like 1400, just just so they're not, you know, just so they're successful low and they can stay with it because consistency is another factor in this.

Speaker 1:

And if you cut too deep, if you want to lose that two pounds a week, and you pull a thousand calories off of your daily intake from maintenance, that's just not realistic. And even for me, my maintenance is almost exactly 3,000 calories. I was just at 3,000 calories for two months and I was 189 to 201 every single day, depending on, you know, food choice, but I was right at 200. I didn't gain or lose anything for two months. So for me that'd be a 2,000 calorie diet every day. To lose two pounds of fat a week, that would be miserable. For me. That would be very comparable to Tanya eating basically a thousand calories a day Brutal, you know. That'd be really difficult. And so sustainability is super important and that's why we like half to one pound per week, depending on the person, because it just means that you're not going to be starving to death and like, and then in your head and then just panic and sabotage and break the know, break the whole cycle, and then yeah, ruin all of your success.

Speaker 2:

So even you know, if it's a pound a week and you have 20 pounds to lose, that's you know four or five months, six months, realistically, yeah, you know that's a half a year minimum.

Speaker 2:

That's if you're on your game, yeah, week in, week out. So I think just you know, having some expectations that if you have fat loss and you like to have three beers or two beers every night, what kind of changes are really going to have to happen? And just getting the binoculars out and looking into the future of what that road's really going to look like, so that you can set yourself up for success, so that as you start to traverse it, you don't just like fumble your way through and then, when things don't happen like you expect them to, you get frustrated and, yeah, stop being consistent, which is just going to yeah, I mean and it's crazy people's perceptions too because I just had a call with a guy um, we do this group calls each week and he's on there and his name is jonah and he's I was like, hey man, so like, how's everything going?

Speaker 1:

he's like, yeah, I mean that it's all right. You know, nothing's really happening. I'm like, oh really, damn dude. I was like, do you mind? If I look at your profile, he's like, yeah, sure, so we're both profiled. The dude's lost 27 pounds in eight and a half weeks. Wow, I was like Jonah he lost 27 pounds in eight and a half weeks, which is crazy.

Speaker 1:

What more could you possibly want, man? He's like oh, that's good. I was like yeah, he's like, but I don't like. I feel like I look that different. I'm like because you have a lot of body fat and very little muscle mass. It's going to take a minute, dude.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's going to take a minute, you know, but dude, you're on your way.

Speaker 1:

And so it's just like understand what good is, because there is objectively what is good If you are losing a pound a week this dude's tripling that. But if you're losing a pound a week, that is good. Like, be okay with that. Like don't try to rush it. It's like, and the reason we said like in the beginning I was like no one wants to get rich slow or fit slow, but like the reality is is like what happens if, okay, all right, I heard like I did math on a calculator and if I save five thousand dollars a month, I'll be a millionaire in 10 years. Okay, well, how much do you make, dude?

Speaker 2:

yeah, what's it take?

Speaker 1:

I only make six thousand above, I was like, okay, so how long can you realistically put that kind of money before you have to pull your credit card out, get in debt? It blows up in your face and you quit. Yeah, same thing with calories, man. Yeah, if you ate a thousand calorie deficit, you lose two pounds a week, but you only burn 1,800.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly. So what are you?

Speaker 1:

going to do? You're going to just starve yourself 800 calories until it blows up in your face and you have to quit. It's like you've got to be smart and strategic and understand that you've got a long life ahead of you. And a news flash the six months is going to happen anyways.

Speaker 1:

So you can start out too hot quit for three months, feel sorry for yourself and then pick it back up. And then the six months goes by and you're right back to where you started because you went in too hot bit off one you could chew, quit and then you picked it back up again. Now you're right at zero in six months. Or we're the fucking tortoise and we put one foot over there. We go on a 500 calorie deficit. We rinse and repeat, we commit to the boring work. We stay process oriented. The six months goes by and you have just burned off 20 to 30 pounds of body fat. You feel and look amazing in the process. Totally which one you want to be right?

Speaker 2:

you know well, and so that's so, that's kind, so that's kind of like the food portion of thing and I think, like, moving on to the exercise, it's like especially, you know to to that person's comment of like I don't look very different and I think you know the way I would look at exercise again is it's not there to consider to assist with your body fat, but the way you look when you do lose your body fat is going to be highly determined by your training. The more you train, the more you do weight training or resistance training, and the more time you take for it, the better you're going to end up looking once you do lose the weight you're always going to look better once you've lost some body fat, but male or female of your body yeah, the you're just, you're gonna look better and you're gonna feel better and it's like what you're saying.

Speaker 1:

that's like if you are newer or you've taken some time off or you've just not really been that serious, you have a really magical window of time the first, you know, four to six months, yeah where you can be in a diet or in a deficit, but just be consistent with your training and your nutrition and actually build a little bit of muscle, because it's so, it's so, it's like such fertile grounds that there's so much adaptation potential that now, like we were saying, like once you become more advanced, like after six months of weight training, you're probably not going to build a ton of muscle and a calorie deficit. But in that first little window, like what Ethan was saying, like the way you train, the way you go about it, when you do lose that 20 to 30 pounds, you could look vastly different depending on how your training went in that process Exactly yeah.

Speaker 2:

So if you're taking the time to train or to lose the weight, you might as well start the training. And it's also one of those things that I think like cardiovascular health comes pretty quick, like in three months. If you were to just start running or doing sprints or doing some type of aerobic exercise, you could build a pretty decent base of cardiovascular fitness or health. But to actually develop some good lean mass it takes time. You'll have a little spurt. It'll definitely make you look different. If you've never trained or you've never had muscles before in your life, you might notice and be like oh shit, I got something going on. But realistically, I think when people think of a very built physique, whether it's a male or female I'm not talking about big bulky females, but just like a body where you can tell that they do something towards that goal it's going to take time. Strength training is kind of like I was talking to a client about it's like to me. I look at it as like a shellac layer.

Speaker 2:

It's like you got to ring the bell put down a layer shellac, you let it dry and you put down another one yeah put down another one, and it takes more time, I think, than people realize in order to develop their body to what I think they think they want to look like what they expect. They think they're going to look at their 12 weeks expectations of what they think they can look like and then how long it takes exactly 12 weeks, like three months. They think they're gonna fucking get in there and do some curls and then all of a sudden, they're just gonna have these guns sticking out guns veins everywhere, yeah, and it's just like no, this, this, this probably is a is a multi year.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, especially like if you're in your 30s or 40s. Listen, I got a guy, brian, who he's 53. He's in the best shape of his life. Listen, he's always going to just look kind of like I have a little bit of a dad Bob, because he doesn't take it that seriously. But he's consistent and he's not tracking macros but he's doing a protein shake every day. He's lifting weights three times a week and it's been you know a few good years of that consistency and he's finally takes his shirt off at a beach and his buddies are like hey man, yeah, you look good, you look good, exactly, you look pretty good he's like.

Speaker 1:

Well, I guess I kind of do. He's not like shredded brad pitt and fight club, but he's like you know.

Speaker 2:

But he's but that but that took years of consistency, like for, what two, three years?

Speaker 1:

exactly you know before when he finally got consistent with it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, got consistent and again it's like and even then it's not like he's cutting down doors with his triceps, but it's just like but he, but there's enough there where you look at him and you say, oh, you, might you do something? He trains you looks fit, you look fit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, and so and so you know it's like, it's like yeah, like so to you know, give it to put the proper timeline in place here. So for, depending on where you are in with your body fat percentage, plan on 12 to 26 weeks, so three to six months, of just like, dedicated fat loss phase. You're still training, you're still weight training, you're still hitting protein numbers the goal is to maintain muscle mass.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you build a pound or two, we're not. It's not about epic recompositioning right now, it's just getting that fat off of you.

Speaker 1:

Yes, you gotta get it down and then it's gonna be another you know, probably year and a half of like progressive overload and you know, for every like beasting dude, you know you got to do progressive overload every 12 weeks, maybe like a four week little mini cut every 12 to 16 weeks, like a little four week deficit where you just trim some fat off and then go right back into progressive training again.

Speaker 2:

For probably a good year and a half. Yeah, realistically, I mean to keep it real it's gonna take probably a year to two years. Yeah, you know of of consistent weight training yeah get a physique and or to get you into a level of fitness that is going to be consistent. I mean and we were just talking about a pre-show but um, crossfit, when it was super popular, had all these apps that would track people's progress. They would put in their reps and do this kind of thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, like all the major lifts, your squats, your bench press, your pull-ups and stuff.

Speaker 2:

Your quarter mile, your one mile your 5K, your three mile run.

Speaker 1:

Their foundational no. What are the workouts called the WODs, like they name?

Speaker 2:

the WODs. Yeah, there's like the female W, your friend, your nancy, so like all these like standard, objective standards.

Speaker 1:

Yep, that you do every year. You train hard, you eat blah blah blah and then every year you kind of cycle through all these benchmarks the benchmarks. Yeah, like what's your spot now you can see that a nice graph of like your progress and like how you get a number of, just like how quantifiably fit you are. You're 60. From 1 to 100, you're 60.

Speaker 2:

You're 60, yeah, and the grand's compared to everybody else. Now you're 70. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And so I think what he's going to say is we got to see, because we had hundreds and hundreds of members entering every workout.

Speaker 2:

I'm talking about the actual company. Put this information out. We're talking not just in our members.

Speaker 1:

We're talking about like the 10,000 users, they had Hundreds of thousands.

Speaker 2:

I mean globally, right right, thousands and thousands and thousands of individuals. And then basically the information showed that from a general low to no fitness individual to get to like some pretty beast mode shit it takes about two years of consistent training and crossfit's very hard at least three times a week at least three times a week.

Speaker 2:

So I think it's just like to set that again back to those expectations and so like really put it in perspective of that like training takes time to, to ask your tissues to like transform and adapt from from external stimulus. It your body doesn't want to do it. It's kind of like a lot of work and it's like I'll do it.

Speaker 1:

You're kind of going against evolution in a lot of ways you know exactly burning fat and building more resource intensive muscles like it doesn't make sense evolutionarily but like so we have to like, drill it so hard that we're basically reformatting our dna, like, no, yeah, we are. This is this is actually what's happening now.

Speaker 2:

It can't and you can't let off the gas. That's the thing it's like and it goes back to anything like consistency is the number one most important thing, like you said, at least three times a week. I mean, no doubt you could get benefit from two times a week if you do some heart resistance training. I'm not going to say there's going to be no change in your body, but realistically three times a week as as a good minimum if you really want to go there. And it takes time to ask your tissues to adapt.

Speaker 1:

Before, like your client Brian, before you got some guns and you're just like oh, you know, yeah like, if you just want to be healthy, one or two good workouts a week and that will make you twice as healthy as now. But it's an asymptote line, right? So essentially it's like going from no workouts a week to one is huge, huge improvement in your quality of life. Going from one workout to two is still pretty massive.

Speaker 1:

Going from two workouts a week to three is a really chunky improvement, but less than it was from one to two. And then going from three to four is marginally better, and that's kind of the sweet spot is four, in my opinion. And then ever since, there there's just fractional improvement five, six, seven workouts per week. It's like you're eking out, you know, just marginal improvement. Then you got to kind of weigh that with your body's ability to recover and your age and all these things and priorities.

Speaker 1:

So I think like, if you just want to be healthy, do one or two. But if you want to like change your body, yeah, recomp your body, burn 20 pounds of fat and put on 5, 10, 15 pounds of muscle and like look good. Three to four workouts a week, I think, is what the doctor ordered here for this and time.

Speaker 1:

Consistent and quality training, not just like random ass, you know, walking the treadmill for an hour, right, but like you're grinding, you're grinding. That's about to say, like you gotta work, right, but like you're grinding.

Speaker 2:

You're grinding. That's what I was about to say. Like you got to work out hard too. Like you know, I think that without a training partner or a trainer, or a coach, like most people work out at like 40% under their capacity, for sure, and so it's like that also is like being uncomfortable three days a week, like you got to get in there and you got to fucking. Yeah, you got to grit your teeth and be like oh, I did it.

Speaker 2:

Thank God, yeah, I mean, it's like you got to get in there If you've been doing three sets of 10 for two years straight the same exercise you might want to grab a little heavier weight.

Speaker 1:

Or you might want to push see if you can push a few more reps out. You know like, and that is the progression that your body needs Because it's like it's the law of accommodation, yeah, needs because it's like it's the law of accommodation, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So at at first, three sets of 10 bench press at 100 pound will destroy your chest, yeah, and then you do it every week and it starts every week is like less and less sore.

Speaker 1:

After eight weeks of it you actually start to decline again because your body is accommodated to that movement and you're no longer really getting a stimulus out of it. So every six to eight weeks you got to change all your shit up. Yeah, change everything. So six to eight weeks, three times a week, you got your weight training routine. Your, your, push, your pull, your leg exercises and you hunker down for six to eight weeks and you and you progress with those three, four or five sets of each exercise. Add a little bit of weight each week, try to squeak out an extra rep or two each week. Progress doesn't need to be ultra scientific, but just some progression every week at least. At least the set feels easier something, but then after six to eight weeks.

Speaker 1:

Don't go into complacency now. Delete that entire mesocycle and build a new one for yourself, or just or google a new one and just get a whole new batch of fresh exercises and then you start again week one and every week for six days you progress again. If you do that over and over and you just commit to that monotony and the boring work, I promise you that is how it's done well, it's just never going to be easy.

Speaker 2:

It's something I've uh you know clients, it's like you know, like you're saying, like you do the bench press, it's 100 pounds. All of sudden they'll be like, oh this, 100 pounds for 12 reps isn't so hard anymore.

Speaker 1:

And it's like, okay, great, they want to stay there because that's their comfort zone.

Speaker 2:

Now it's time to add another 10, 5, 10, however much weight in order to go back to that place. That was deep struggle and it's like that's the thing is away, that's the other thing you got to keep.

Speaker 1:

You got to keep yourself in a state of discomfort.

Speaker 2:

Yeah it's as soon as you're comfortable stop redo everything, yeah, redo everything, yeah yeah, you got to constantly be uncomfortable so I think that's like the what to think about. And then I think there's also just realistic expectations about when you actually arrive, if you've done both of these things, even being two years in understanding the truth of what your genetics are, what your age is, what your injuries of the past might be, and just, having, I think, realistic expectations. I mean, I was just having this conversation again about genetics and a linebacker is a linebacker because they were born a linebacker or a swimmer.

Speaker 2:

And we were talking about this all because, again, the individual kind of was like oh well, I thought like if a bodybuilder, somebody wanted to be a bodybuilder, they could just be a bodybuilder do?

Speaker 2:

isolation curls it just takes a lot of work, but like, that's what it is and I'm like you know the people that are at the top of the game in bodybuilding steroids or not are there because of their genetic potential. Yeah, yeah, that like and doubt. Somebody could train for 10 years doing bodybuilding and completely transform themselves, but they might not be a competitive bodybuilder.

Speaker 1:

They're not going to win a show, they're not going to look better.

Speaker 2:

You're going to look amazing. Probably you might completely be looking like a different person than you were 10 years ago, but you're not going to win a show. And that's just to kind of, I think, pose the example that, just like our social media conversation, that if you're comparing yourselves to these instagram models and these crazy fit mega jack dudes and all these people that we see on social media, which are the, the, the filtered out minute percents of individual that get through to your feed and are then presenting themselves in their most optimal states, yeah like, you're probably never gonna look like that. Most women aren't gonna look like all these crazy models.

Speaker 2:

Most of us men aren't gonna look like these super jack dudes yeah, men's fitness covers it's just not gonna be realistic, whether you do the two years, the six months of body fat loss. I mean think about like two, three years of training.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we hear genetics and like, what does that mean? Well, okay, let's just look at from a guy's perspective. It's like it means you have a frame. Let's just say that somewhere between, like you know, 5, 11 and 6, 3, which would be, like you know, athletic, good, athletic height, if you're looking just like aesthetics, purely. Now we're talking the symmetry, right. So one shoulder's not sunk in you're, you don't have like go-go gadget arms you have naturally full chest, yeah, like a big, natural broad shoulders height to weight ratios, and this is before even exercising.

Speaker 1:

This is just the way you came into this world. Yeah, just your blueprint and then if you're a man, you tend to um, you tend to produce enough testosterone and actually absorb the testosterone your body produces in a way that gets to your muscles with as least amount of sort of roadblocks as possible. So think about all those. Things have to happen, and that's before you even touch a weight or eat a diet.

Speaker 1:

So when you have that genetics where you're like the right height to weight ratio, the symmetry, and you produce the proper hormones to really just capitalize on muscular development, and then you have to actually have the wherewithal to train in a way, Because then you might have all those things but then all you do is run and you'll never realize your muscular potential because you chose the wrong modality. But on top of that you've got to choose the right modality of like strength training or resistance training and then couple that with proper diet and then, voila folks, you get a men's health.

Speaker 2:

Uh, 10, 15, 20 years of dedication, yeah, and probably trt. Let's be honest yeah, and so I think it's so. I think it's like you know most people. I think they will always look better, but I think you'd be surprised at how much like you you're going to look.

Speaker 1:

Even if you succeed and I don't mean that in any insulting way.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I think that goes for all of us, but I think like we can look our best With a filter.

Speaker 1:

Like it's almost like. It's almost like we look you. Almost like you will look just like you on your best day. On your best day, with a nice social media filter that might have gone over and smoothed out the plump Right.

Speaker 2:

But if you're a barrel-chested guy whose chest is as wide as his hips, you're not going to ever have that superhero V'd out. Lat look with skinny waist.

Speaker 2:

It's just not going to happen. And no matter how lean you get and how jacked you get, you might look amazing, you might be a force to be reckoned with, you might not be the guy you want to get into a fight with or whatever, yeah, but you're not going to necessarily have the look. And so I think it's just setting expectations that, even when we're in our most fit which most individuals aren't going to get to elite levels of fitness just because they're parents they have jobs. Life is life.

Speaker 1:

And even if you're considered as a dedication.

Speaker 2:

Even for me as an individual, it's like I'm not as fit as I could be.

Speaker 2:

I'm definitely quite fit, but even as a lifestyle it's like most people are just probably going to not be what they might expect if they were to, even if they reached it I think I say that just again to set expectations so that when you get there and also, like your age, do you have injuries, totally All of these kind of things to consider that when the end game actually arrives, that you just just I think for me it's just understanding you're going to look and feel your best, but to just understand, to stay, I think to stay away from like pipe dreams and to move almost away from like goals are good, but to start to think about it as a lifestyle and how you feel and then, when you end up there, you're going to look the best that you can look, you're going to feel the best that you can feel and then, when you end up there, you're going to look the best that you can look, you're going to feel the best that you can feel and you get all the benefits from this being a lifestyle that you interact with on a daily basis and you move away from this end game.

Speaker 2:

Look physique, you know aspiration, and you just kind of make it process oriented I think would be the ultimate and also like, yeah, like yeah, like it's not easy to maintain peak fitness.

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

You know, like even the guy on the, the person that we're talking about on women's health or men's health?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

Like that is, they've peaked and so, like even bodybuilders, they peak, which means that it's a season. They go through off season when they get heavy and eat a lot of food and put on mass, and then they, and then for like four to six months, they just trim, trim, trim, trim, trim, trim until they're single digit body fat and then step on stage for one day, one day peak actors and shirtless scenes or sex scenes and movies.

Speaker 2:

They all do the same thing.

Speaker 1:

They peak for that one day, for that one scene, to take that one shirt off, and then they go back to 15, 20 body fat yeah.

Speaker 2:

So all the scenes in the movie where they're shirtless, they all shot in like a week, two days. Yeah, exactly because they're just peak physique.

Speaker 1:

Now I haven't. I've been eating nothing for days, I'm I'm light headed, let's just get all this shit done, and then they go right back to normal. And so like it's not even realistic to maintain that like I got pretty lean a few years back and uh, it's just, it's like a real trade-off, you know, it's like the quality of life you're like where?

Speaker 2:

where do you strike that balance like?

Speaker 1:

you can't, be like for guys, you cannot be 10 body fat unless you just have, like crazy one percent genetics.

Speaker 1:

You cannot walk around at like nine or ten percent body fat and still enjoy a dinner out and have drinks with your buddy and like order takeout once you can't do that you can be 15% or 16% body fat, which is fine, yeah, you're going to look good. But like that's like the lifestyle tradeoff that you have to really be understanding of. And that's totally okay, but yeah, so you know that's it okay, but um, but yeah so. So you know that's it. That's the timeline, guys. Like if you got 15 to 30 pounds of extra body fat, lean out first, spend three to six months leaning out you know all the things we just said earlier and then you're gonna then then just commit to probably a good year and a half of just like six to eight week progressive overload cycles where every maybe three months you do like a four-week little mini cut to trim off some extra fat and you just keep think of it hitching up.

Speaker 1:

You do it, you do it exactly, you just build it build it and you know, in two years you'll take your shirt off. At a beach on a vacation, someone go hey man, yeah, you look good, what do you do? It'll all be worth it exactly. And then you're. But then you'll want more and you'll you realize like ethan said, it's just.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you look good. What do you do In a row? I'll be worth it In a row? I'll be worth it Exactly. But then you'll want more and you realize, like Ethan said, it's just the lifestyle, it's just who you are now. There's no going back. You can't. You just got to just commit to what you can commit to and just go. All right, guys, that was episode 59 of Coach Accord.