In the Grand Scheme Of Fitness With Justin and Ethan

Building Back After Fat Loss: How to Maintain Leanness While Increasing Calories

• Justin Schollard • Season 2 • Episode 63

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Once you've achieved your fat loss goals, what comes next? The real challenge isn't losing weight—it's successfully transitioning out of your diet without regaining everything you worked so hard to lose. This episode completes our programming series by tackling the critical question: how do we build ourselves out of a diet?

Most people make the devastating mistake of celebrating their weight loss by returning to "normal" eating—exactly the patterns that created their original problem. It's no surprise that 90% of dieters regain every pound within five years, regardless of how they lost the weight.

We explore the science and strategy of reverse dieting—systematically rebuilding your metabolism through small, incremental calorie increases that allow your body to adapt while maintaining your leanness. This patient approach creates something remarkable: a higher "metabolic ceiling" that lets you eat substantially more food without gaining fat.

Through real-world examples, we demonstrate how gradual increases of just 50-100 calories weekly can transform your relationship with food. One coach shared his journey of increasing from 2,300 to 3,200 daily calories over six months while gaining only four pounds of primarily muscle. The result? Greater food freedom without sacrificing the lean physique he worked for.

We also address the training considerations during this rebuilding phase, the anabolic-catabolic balance, and most importantly, the mindset shift required for long-term success. As we explain, "any animal without structure reverts to instinct"—and for humans, that means defaulting to overconsumption without ongoing awareness.

Ready to escape diet purgatory and build a sustainable approach to nutrition that keeps you lean while enjoying more food? This episode provides the blueprint.

Speaker 1:

So how do we build out, how do we successfully build ourselves out of a diet? We've pulled off 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds of fat. Now what, what do we do? We can't stay in fat loss purgatory forever, right, never. Welcome to episode 63 of Coach's Corner with your host, justin Scallard, and Ethan Wolfe. And today, folks, we're going to finish up our series on programming. Part one was two episodes ago on just general overview on what programming is and how one can benefit from it. We followed it up with part two of specific fat loss programming what mistakes to avoid. So if you haven't seen that, you might want to go back and give those a listen. And then today we're going to wrap it all up with part three, which is going to be focused on okay, so we've accomplished our fat loss goal. We've pulled off 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds of fat. Now what, what do we do? We can't stay in fat loss purgatory forever, right.

Speaker 2:

Never.

Speaker 1:

So how do we build out, how do we successfully build ourselves out of a diet? A so we can start eating a decent amount of food again and not just be in diet world forever. And b do it in a way that doesn't just put all the fat we've spent so many months losing right back on. And personally I can relate to that like how many times have we like gone through a fat lot or gone through like a bulk phase? I'm gonna get bulky bros and then four or five months later you're like I'm just fat now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm gonna lean out and then you just cut your calories and lean out and then, once the dust settles, you literally weigh the exact same as what you did when you started your bulk. You're just like that was 10 months of my life yep what happened?

Speaker 2:

what was it for?

Speaker 1:

yeah, so hopefully you can avoid those mistakes and, uh, you know, met women. I'm sure probably don't experience it as much as guys do, but I'm sure there's some women out there who can relate as well yeah, I think you never.

Speaker 2:

You never want to find yourself back restarted after a large amount of effort.

Speaker 1:

No, I think more often the case is people. They lose a bunch of weight and then, like they're like, all right, mission accomplished and they start, like quote unquote, eating normal again and then within six months they've gained all the weight They've just spent the last six months losing 100%.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, the answer is you just go right back to the patterns and habits that you had before you started dieting. Yeah, all better. Yeah, job's done, job's done.

Speaker 1:

Go back to normal again. Static situation, again static situation. Goal accomplished yeah, walk away. Job well done. Well, one thing you guys got to understand is that there's no going back. You're never going to go back. That's it. We know what that looks like, right, it looks like the situation that got you into a place where you needed to make a change. So if we don't, if we just you know whatever reverting back to like going normal again, well, guess where that's gonna land? Yeah, guys like, come on back to like going normal again.

Speaker 1:

Well, guess where that's going to land? Guys Like come on Back to it. Yeah, so okay. So let's dig in here. So let's talk about how one would successfully build themselves back out of fat loss, aka calorie deficit, to more of like a maintenance and maybe even beyond. Maybe we want to continue this journey of building phase fat loss phase, building phase, so that's you know, maybe over the course of a year or two.

Speaker 1:

We're talking like a real composition, which was the thesis in our two episodes ago. We were just talking about programming in general. Absolutely, let's start with just I'll just give you guys like how I did it, and this is all under the context of we are assuming that being lean is the objective, because if you just want to put on a bunch of size and muscle, just go right up to maintenance for maybe a week and then just jump straight to like a 500 calorie surplus and then just go. That might appeal to some people. I've gone through phases where that was appealing, but I think for the most part, people want to keep their body fat levels low while they build up out of….

Speaker 2:

Well, especially if that's what you've done, the time to do is get lean.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, most people. Their objective is to lean out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's almost always what the case is.

Speaker 1:

We all want more lean mass, but the the benefits of getting rid of the body fat is there and it comes to a certain point where, like, by being in a calorie deficit, you actually create, you actually like, resensitize your body to be more receptive to training and calories. When you do start to build out of a calorie deficit, your body's way more efficient at utilizing calories and you know, putting in the good work to build muscle and everything. If we're always in a surplus and we kind of like, we just get inefficient, you know, you're just not, you're not assimilating the calories the same rate that you would have stuff to throw away.

Speaker 2:

Your body's like ah, we're getting plenty yeah exactly right.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's just say we are at the depth of our fat loss and we've accomplished the goal. Okay, so now what? So what do we do now? I know how bad we all just want to like build up and get out of there and normal amounts of food, the right amount of food for your body. The mistake is just want to jump right back up and you're going to see a lot of big influencers say, like I think Jeff Nippert is a big fan of just going right up to maintenance. He's probably one of the biggest influencers that exist currently and you know he's a smart guy and I don't think what he's saying is wrong. I just know that, like this is all I do all day, every day, and I've just seen it and myself and with the thousands of clients we've worked with over the years like if you do that, it's not going to be as effective and you're going to smooth out.

Speaker 1:

And when I say smooth out, that means you're going to get a little soft putting out some body fluffy yeah, a little fluffy. A lot faster than if you reverse diet. And now reverse dieting people. It's controversial, it's a hot topic, I guess it is. Yeah, people go they. It is like they.

Speaker 2:

I mean, it makes sense to me. I don't think it's that, it's.

Speaker 1:

It's pretty straightforward, I just think I mean people just think it's a waste of time, right. They just don't think that it matters if you systematically build your calories back up. They just think why not just go right up to maintenance? Because anything from a deficit to maintenance is still a deficit anyway. So why not just go straight to maintenance? What's the difference and I get the logic Right, just telling you from my experience that you just stay leaner if you reverse diet. And so reverse dieting is essentially just building yourself systematically by increasing calories every week or two in relatively small amounts, while monitoring your scale, weight and progress photos along the way until you get up to a maintenance and then beyond.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was going to say that's a big thing, and so idea would be the more slower the incremental addition of calories back from your deficit, the more your body can adjust to the increase in calories adjust its metabolism and kind of create a homeostasis around that new calorie amount so that there's not just like a sudden influx of calories compared to what it's used to, and therefore you kind of put on a little body fat along with, you know, maybe some muscle or just in your existence, and so it might be 50 calories a week. That's pretty standard or typical, I think you know. Obviously, the lower you go, but this obviously implies you're going to have to be measuring super detailed.

Speaker 1:

I don't want to measure, I just want to like.

Speaker 2:

We've already done it. I just want to like you know, eat healthy, bro.

Speaker 1:

I think it's even up to depends on the person how much deficit you're in how big of a person like if you're adding calories, you're not seeing any weight, subsequent weight gain, then you could probably make bigger jumps.

Speaker 1:

But it is so interesting to me, just in my just like, looking at people's like and we're under the assumption that people are accurate and they're consistent. If you're not accurate or consistent, then that's for step one or else nothing matters. Yeah, but it's just so interesting to me when I work with people and they're a good client and I'm seeing them every day measure their food out to the gram hop on the scale every morning for their dry weight after they pee, before food and water. They're really concise and consistent and how even just a 50 calorie increase in that sort of fertile ground can generate a result. It's really interesting. You wouldn't think that it would, but it does.

Speaker 1:

And I think it's universally agreed that the slower we lose weight, the less likely we are to lose muscle as we lose fat, right. So like we talked about last week, like if you lose, if you put yourself in a thousand calorie a day deficit, like you'll lose weight but you're going to lose a lot of muscle along with the fat. And I think the opposite side is true as well, where that's the argument that I make around reverse dieting. If the objective is to stay lean, is that the slower we draw out your rebuild up to maintenance and beyond, the less likely you are to lose or to put on body fat.

Speaker 2:

So it's the same.

Speaker 1:

It's equal opposite in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's in a certain sense. You're just not introducing larger currents to kind of move, move the system as a whole so much you know, and I think what's interesting also about reverse dieting is I think that while it's, you know, creates a nuance and you got to be nitpicky about it and be patient that over time I think it has the ability to really raise your ceiling metabolically. It does and allow you to consume way more calories in the long term without putting on substantial amounts of body fat 100% agree with you.

Speaker 2:

And so in a certain sense, it's kind of like the hack that would eventually give you way more food freedom, turning you into just let you have more lean mass even though you're not putting on extra body fat, and therefore just let you eat more.

Speaker 1:

Things eventually might come to a place where you're like oh, I kind of have the ability to generally eat what I want without like putting down a pint of ice cream which is going to be like 1200 calories in a sitting, without you know exceptions of crazy food dumps yeah that you know you could fundamentally have your cake and eat it too, because you have some room for a dessert it really is delayed gratification and like you just hold it back, hold it back and then you get to this place where I joke with my clients and say this is, it's a promised land, you've arrived.

Speaker 1:

But the journey, you know, it's a rite of passage where for me, for example, when I did it, I the depth of my fat loss phase, I think I was eating like 2200 calories, 2300 calories, which for me is a very low I mean not like dangerously low, but low. You know, I was like very hungry and then we built up. I think at the end of it I was at 32 or 3,300, but that was over the course of like literally six months. It was like I was working with my own nutritionist at the time and it was like every caloric increase was only based off of whether my scale weight had dropped or not. So we would introduce a caloric increase, so let's just say, 50 or 60 calories, which is oftentimes what it would be like 15 more grams of carbohydrates yeah, it's just so ridiculous 60 calories, I mean that's like you got to be within like a three gram or less margin yeah, and listen, he made it clear to me.

Speaker 1:

He's like we only get to have this kind of fun because of how consistent and accurate you are. He's like most people were just trying to get them to just like make their own food. He's, you know, and that's the spectrum that every nutritionist has to deal with their clients yes but anyway, so like.

Speaker 1:

But whatever, it was a lot. It was an amazing experience for me. So we would go like, let's introduce 60, 60 more calories and then the next morning I'd hop on the scale. Maybe there would be like a minor fluctuation in weight, like a quarter pound up. So we would just hold and the idea is he would see my weigh-ins each morning and then maybe, on like day nine, we would see a quarter pound drop.

Speaker 2:

So not even like staying level. It would have to go back down.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it would be, and then we'd go another 60. And then to your point what it's doing is it's just raising my metabolic ceiling, yep, right, or floor, yeah, because now it's like allowing for that adaptation as small as that, okay, created more sort of like a thermogenic effect from digestion, I guess or whatever, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then we would raise it again. And I'm not kidding you, dude. Like after six months I'm at 3,200 calories, which is a lot of food. It's a fair amount of food. Yeah, I'm like, but I'm four pounds heavier than what I was when I my lowest. I was like 180. Then I got up to like 1844. It's only four pounds, but I was just as lean as I was at 180, and so over the course of like literally a half a year, it was like three or four pounds of aggregate weight, but it was muscle yeah, it was just muscle yeah, and I'm eating 3200 calories a day with just as lean as I was eating 2300 calories a day.

Speaker 1:

So it takes discipline. It's not for everybody, but that is one way to successfully build. That's like like the most, I think, detailed approach for most folks. I think, like you said, just introducing if you just want 50 calories a day or a week, or a hundred calories a week and you know, over the course of like four to six weeks until you just got up to maintenance, that's not a bad idea either.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's just more realistic in a sense. I mean, that's a very detailed approach, that's working with the coach, totally. That's you being yeah, dictatorship, regimentedly strict covid single what else? Yeah, what else are you gonna have?

Speaker 1:

this chicken and broccoli for every meal.

Speaker 2:

It was awesome yeah, but I think exactly that right, because I think the reason that it allows for the caloric ceiling to rise is that as you approach maintenance and you're still training really hard, like like you said now, there's this ability for your body to kind of prioritize muscle gain and lean mass, and so our lean mass produces the most caloric requirements out of our whole system.

Speaker 2:

I mean, our brain does a lot, there's things, but fundamentally, the more lean mass you have, the more your metabolic rate goes up. Yep, it's the main source of heat, it's just doing all the things have, the more your metabolic rate goes up.

Speaker 2:

Yep, it's the main source of heat. Just doing all the things, it's like little engines. And so you know, you hit maintenance and you're training really hard and you put on a little muscle. Now your metabolic rate goes up and you kind of match that incrementally and you're basically your body's allowed to smoke, like you said earlier, like at a slower pace.

Speaker 2:

But put on lean mass, which then raises your metabolic demand, which then allows you to match that yep, and you kind of just do these very small incremental stepping stones yeah, yeah and I would assume you probably had some type of fat gain on there, but probably I don't think you can like, unless you're, unless you're, on steroids.

Speaker 1:

You really you're not gonna that.

Speaker 2:

To clarify that right, you have catabolic and anabolic states. Catabolic is when you're generally in a deficit related to cortisol. It's when your body you can think about it as like building and breaking down. So when you're catabolic, you're breaking down, whether through stress or lack of sleep or lack of calories. And then, when you're anabolic, you're building. You're building, putting on fat, you're gaining lean muscle and obviously you know the ecosystem of our physiology and biology is constant ebbs and flows you know, constantly adapting to our environment yeah, it's.

Speaker 2:

Everything is is kind of, uh, always an in and out and in and out, and so you know to say that you're constantly anabolic or constantly catabolic I think there's always a degree of both, otherwise we'd wither away to nothing.

Speaker 1:

You're never anabolic, even and there's benefits to cycling between the two you know, it's like you're always catabolic it's. There's benefits to that, but then.

Speaker 2:

But then you also start to lose lean mass and you know all that stuff, but the general idea is that you can't bulk or put on lean mass without gaining some type of fat.

Speaker 1:

Totally yeah, Because you're just in a state of being anabolic which is just building and putting things on and generally, it's associated with a caloric surplus, which is, like you know, what most people do Like.

Speaker 2:

People that want to get super giant will often go crazy anabolic, eat a lot of food and then cut the fat off afterwards, and that's kind of the bodybuilder way right. It's like pre-competition get as big as you can and then slice off, expecting to lose some muscle but hoping that where you end up, you'll have more muscle than when you started.

Speaker 1:

And you just kind of different ways of playing the game, and so I I think you know the idea is to just make that state of being anabolic as efficient as possible and kind of like there's always going to be a ratio. It's going to be a ratio. We can manipulate the ratio 100 via training and and and nutrition yes, exactly, and so just like losing fat. You know like if we have high protein resistance training, we can manipulate the ratio of fat loss or so.

Speaker 2:

You have muscle loss, lean mass in Lean mass in the catabolic state, in the catabolic state, and then the other side of that is like we incrementally reverse diet.

Speaker 1:

I believe that we just improve the ratio of lean, of body fat accumulation during an anabolic phase. Exactly, and that's basically.

Speaker 2:

I think that the overview of it, the bird's eye view, and just the more detailed and the more attention you pay, the more you can affect that ratio, which will eventually lead to you by putting on so much more lean mass and not acquiring as much body fat, like justin was saying, you get to maintain your leanness and then that metabolic ceiling goes up the more lean mass you have, and then you kind of are one of those people that like looks jacked, looks crispy, and then gets to eat a lot of food and kind of like all of the things are happening.

Speaker 2:

How much muscle and how are you so? How are you so?

Speaker 1:

lean. Yeah, how are? You just like eating all the time so that just a slight little hitching over the course of time.

Speaker 2:

I mean, it takes a long time, you know but once you're there, I feel like you can then kind of enter into like a maintenance mode in, yeah, some type of a moderate surplus, because obviously the more of a surplus in calories you go, the more fat you're going to gain. Again, that ratio starts to change when you enter that anabolic state. But it's almost like really razor thin, slicing your margins to let your body adapt. Put on as much lean mass as you can and then enter into a state of maintenance that allows for the most surplus with the minimal amount of fat gain which will lead to the most muscle gain which will help keep your metabolic demand high totally, and your body's efficiency, yeah efficiency and your performance and so now you can work out harder in the gym.

Speaker 2:

You can do more volume, do more workouts eating a shit ton of food eating a shit ton of food and staying in a state of leanness that is satisfactory.

Speaker 1:

And then what's crazy is like eventually you hit like an inflection point, like a critical mass.

Speaker 2:

We're like like we said there's always a ratio.

Speaker 1:

We just manipulate the ratio depending on our nutrition and our training quality, but eventually we get to the point where, even following that system, it's not going to just go forever until you're 400 pounds and lean. Eventually, you're going to hit this diminishing return where you're going to go, okay.

Speaker 2:

I can't really eat too much more.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and you've delayed that probably two or three times longer than the average person could if they just kept flip-flopping with these like 500 or 600 calorie deficits or surpluses. But if you, because you just stretch that process out, you got yourself up to that point where you're really eating a lot of food, but you know, eventually there is a ratio and you're gonna see some body fat accumulation. The beauty of that cycle, though, of that system, is that, let's say, you get up. Let's say, in my case, you know, I all right, so I was at 32, 3300 calories. Put on five, six, seven pounds of just like a lot of muscle, a little bit of fat. Eventually we get to that tipping point where it's like, okay, fat's kind there too. You just like drop the floor out and drop back down to like 24, 2500 calories, and your metabolism is just firing on all cylinders that your fat loss phases are like three weeks, four weeks, right right.

Speaker 1:

Because you could just go boom, just drop down like 2500 calories, burn up a ton of body fat in a very short period of time, and then start that process all over again, and then you just kind of just keep repeating that cycle. The thing is actually, you never have to go as low as you the first time, so maybe the first time it took you down to 2300 in order to get the leanness you needed but, as you kind of build up that cycle again, maybe the second time around.

Speaker 1:

It's just like 2700 26 which is not bad for a fat loss phase, and then you just kind of just keep shortening this little window that you need to operate in the window rises.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, the bookends kind of start to adjust.

Speaker 1:

So yeah. So that's like, if you're fucking serious and you're disciplined, do that. Yeah, that is the way For most people, though, and I would fall into that bucket at this point in my life. I'm just not. I just can't. My life just doesn't allow for that sort of level of self-discipline like it used to. But now listen, just hop on the scale every morning, increase your calories every week. If you notice that the scale is kind of going up quickly, just chill for a week or two and just hold there and recommit to accuracy, because usually it's usually it's like unintentional underreporting. So we're all right, we're doing their diet. Now we're rebuilding out of it. Yeah, no, I'm cool, I can have an extra beer or I can put a little splash of oil in this like right or like, yeah, I can, I can use a little more mail in my sandwich.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're not measuring like you used to in the fat loss phase, and so that unintentional underreporting can creep in an extra 100 or two calories a day that are not accounted for. And you're like, oh, I'm trying to stay lean, but I've noticed I'm kind of like gaining weight quickly, even though I'm only eating 10% more than I was. Well, really probably eating more, like 15 or 20, because you're not as accurate as you were in your fat loss phase, and so that's gonna be most people and that's totally fine. So in that case it's just a matter of being accurate, weighing yourself every morning your dry weight, like we said earlier, and then, if you do see the scale kind of climbing quickly, just chill on the calorie build up for a week or two and then just kind of go back and reinvestigate your days. Am I? Am I getting a little sloppy on my tracking here? And that's going to be much more of a realistic path for most folks.

Speaker 2:

So there's yeah I think what you know to what just was saying earlier, it's like you can never go back. You know, like our bodies are constantly adapting organism. We are constantly going to be a reflection of our patterns, including our composition and our health. And even if you are an athlete doesn't mean you couldn't be completely immobile and weak when you're 45 right, like just because you've attained a certain state at one point in your career of health, fitness and body fat, and all that doesn't mean that it can't change. And so we constantly have to dance and participate with it, no matter what, or at least just get a handle on it in some capacity where we know what we're doing enough to to dance and participate with it. We cannot pay attention, and so, even if you were to, to what like nippard was saying, like just jump to your maintenance.

Speaker 1:

And his audience is like young male bodybuilders, yeah.

Speaker 2:

But even if that's like just the simplest route, where you're not going to sit there and incrementally change and you know, do the math to add in 10 grams of carbs here and this and you just kind of do a lump sum, even that still implies that you're going to be measuring your food in some capacity. Yeah, hitting your numbers, understanding what those numbers are and still participating in the same way you did Just with a higher food allotment.

Speaker 2:

But I think the big takeaway is that just because the diet phase is over, you know, obviously the more detailed, the more you can maintain all the hard work you've just done. But I think it is true that you just see people get off of some type of a weight loss situation. And they just go nuts, just, they just don't, they, don't they, they completely stop right, it's, it's, it truly is a diet, versus like maybe a diet phase or a weight loss phase or a calorie restriction phase it's like this, this isolated thing that creates results, hopefully, and then they're like oh, I have succeeded and so now I can return to my previous behavior of not paying attention at all.

Speaker 2:

and, as we said, if that's what got you to the place that you didn't want to be in the first place, you know where it's going to end up you know it's going to end up and it's this mentality of like the light switch is on, the light switch is off.

Speaker 1:

Yes, it's that kind of like all or nothing thinking and statistically, that's why, statistically, 9 out of 10 people regain every single pound that they've lost within five years of of their diet or their weight loss procedure of some kind, like most people, including people who have had been on an ozempic, including people who have had gastric bypass or even just died of the old-fashioned way. The reality is, is that the mindset that it takes to maintain it is the most important thing, because it's like this okay, job is done, time to go back to normal. Now it's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. This there's no normal. There is no, there isn't. This is your normal.

Speaker 2:

Now, there's no going back yeah, I mean, it's crazy, even for a surgery like gastric bypass. You know where they're turning their stomach into the size of an egg and people figure it out you can't eat more than three bites you might. You might be lean or you might be less weight than when you started, like you might have lost 100 pounds through the gastric bypass, but then you'll gain 30 of it back.

Speaker 2:

And then you're stuck and you know, like, yeah, like those 70, if you're morbidly obese and you have 350 pounds to lose and you lose 100 through gastric bypass and you gain 30 back. Like, yeah, those 70. Net loss is still good, better, but you just did like a majorly invasive surgery which you can't return from, where your stomach is literally the size of like two inches, and even that couldn't get you to a place all the way Right. Like, even with something as drastic as that, you still have to participate and pay attention.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I'm telling you, I've, I've seen it. Like I've had people come on board that were like they've had the surgery, they've lost a hundred pounds and gained a hundred pounds twice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's crazy, it's intense, just goes to show you yeah, and then what would you say about training like what you know? Would you change your training?

Speaker 1:

I mean, we've been resistance training this whole time yeah, I think training is much more of a constant. I think of training as like protein. It's like you kind of just that's the anchor. Yeah, so, whether you're in a fat loss phase, like you don't need to just like all of a sudden start going to like cardio boot camps just because you're in a fat loss phase, like no, do your training, like what do you like to do?

Speaker 1:

And if you're listening to this show, you're probably like us and you like to lift weights and maybe you know like you don't have to like ramp it up just because you're in a fat loss phase. And when you're building out of a fat loss phase, you just keep the training the same. The progressive overload is relative to your strength levels. And when you're in, when you're cutting calories in a fat loss phase, you know you might only be putting on, maybe doing like maybe at the end of a six-week cycle you only added five or ten pounds with a whole six weeks and you might have only added a couple of reps to your lifts, because you're just in a fat lot, you're in a calorie deficit, you're just your body's just not as strong can't perform.

Speaker 1:

but then you hit you. Then you circle back to another six-week progressive overload. This time it's over the course of a rebuild phase, and from the beginning to the end of it you've increased your calories by four or 500 and you've added 20 pounds to your lifts and you've added two or three reps to every set, and so I think that that's always the anchor, and then you manipulate your carbs and fats depending on the goal, the objective. But one thing that I wanna leave everybody with is that when I got my dog eight years ago, I put him in training because he was getting aggressive.

Speaker 2:

I got my dog eight years ago.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, old red, old red, and I brought him to a trainer, and anybody who has dogs, who's had a dog trainer, knows that the first thing the trainer says to you is that I'm not here to train the dog, I'm here to train you. That's right, because it's the owners that fuck it all up. But this is the owners that fuck it all up. But you know, one thing he said to me is like kind of getting back to like there's no going back is that the job is never done. Like just because we've got him to behave himself right now doesn't mean that like, okay, wipe your hands, clean the job's done.

Speaker 1:

He's fixed it's like no that those aggression tendencies are still there. They're not ever going to not be there. We just got to manage them indefinitely. And we manage them by seeing around corners, giving other dogs a wide berth, kind of like being more aware and observant, and we can extrapolate that right down to our lives too. The job is never done just because you've managed to control your aggressive behavior towards food for a couple of months.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't mean that if you stop paying attention that you're fixed forever still a little nippy, that little gremlin still in there, and, uh, he said to me you know, one thing that I'll never forget is any animal dogs, humans, whatever any animal without structure reverts their instincts. Right, and what are? What are our instincts telling us? Eat, eat, sleep, sleep someplace warm so if we don't have an alarm, we don't pay attention to our food. Guess what we're? Just we're. We're sinking down to the lowest common denominator of humankind and so reptilian brainstem yeah so yeah, exactly all the way down that reptilian brainstem of ours.

Speaker 1:

So just keep that in mind. Like the job is never done, it's always effort. You have to pay attention. I'm years and years into this and I will still overestimate or underestimate how many calories I've eaten. Still, if I don't track my food, I'll be like, oh shit, I'm 400 over. Well, there is my deficit for the day. So now I'm going to surplus shit and I'm a coach and I still do that shit. So if I'm doing it, I know you are, he knows.