The most frequent conversation I have about fat loss
Good morning everybody, hope you're on a nice little walk now listening to this podcast. Now today's podcast, the content of this podcast comes courtesy of my sister annoying me in WhatsApp, unbelievable. Sophie, my sister, has been asking, this is what she asked me. Sophie, if you're listening, listen, Mark coming at you is just a good example of being able to ask questions off the cuff and then having answers. Here's what she comes at me out with first guys.
Speaker 1:First question is, can I lose a stone in a month? Can I lose a stone in a month? My reply, what do you think? And she says, if extreme yes, should I just run more? Only so much weightlifting can do.
Speaker 1:It's like 14 pounds is a stone in four weeks is three and a half pounds of fat a week. That is a 10,500 calorie deficit per week which means a 1,500 calorie deficit every single day. Now most people's maintenance 1,500 to 2,000 that means you're on about 500 calories a day you know, that's the first thing is like when we logically look at what we're saying the answers are there you know, like it's ridiculous you know, do we say stone, actually hate the stone system. It's just pounds or kilos it's easier we should all convert to it. Anyway, so no you can't lose a stone in a month.
Speaker 1:Know she can't marry in July right? So April, May, June, three months. She says she's on 1,500 or so calories, she goes up to sixteen hundred to 1,700 when she trains. My weightlifting taking longer to shift, my weight's taking longer to the shift and I don't like it. It's taken me nearly twelve weeks to lose 10 pounds.
Speaker 1:Now twelve weeks to lose 10 pounds is absolutely fine bang on like what we are trying to lose around one pound of fat a week. Why do we need to do more than this? Okay, because the problem is you know I don't like the weight is shifting to taking too long to shift. You don't like it because there's a rush to an end goal. If there was no end goal to rush to right and we accepted it and we didn't want to change the fact that the way to lose weight isn't extreme dieting, isn't your dieting and it will be a consistent you know one pound of fat a week around that.
Speaker 1:We just have to accept that and we bake that into our lifestyle because look Sophie shock to you as well. If you lose five more pounds, or you lost three pounds, or you lost one pound, which you know when you're wearing, no matter what, it's never going to be good enough on your wedding day. A lot of people got this mindset, whatever you do is never going to be good enough, whatever shape you get into is never going be good enough. However much weight you lose is never going to be good enough because the mindset hasn't changed, your self image still hasn't changed. We the human mind always wants more.
Speaker 1:This is a fact. So you think you're going to lose an excellent weight is going to make you happy and you're going to feel fine. It's not true. It's the biggest trick the mind plays. So instead of thinking how much weight do I need to lose?
Speaker 1:How much more weight can I lose quicker when you're actually losing weight at consistent rate? When you say, if I maintained this as a lifestyle, which is doable, I'm gonna tell my guests that week, will I be in a good headspace? Will I be feeling good? Will I be feeling strong? And the answer is that you know, if I can control what I can control which is the present moment and what I do today, then there is no need to worry about if it's going to be 10 pounds or seven pounds or six pounds okay.
Speaker 1:Because what you don't want to happen is, is that one day, that one big special day you think hinges on if you are three pounds heavier or three pounds lighter which it doesn't, ends up being a catalyst for extreme bingeing afterwards into an extreme rebound. And then what you've done to get to an X weight, if this is a holiday, if it's a wedding, you as soon as that event finishes chaos, you revert back to your former self or whatever you want to call it. And that's not healthy at all. So we don't want to sacrifice our mindset or mental health the way we do stuff for a singular day, even if it is a wedding, because your wedding is not going to be determined by your weight. Your wedding is going to be determined, how I see it, is if you can let go of things you can't control and enjoy the day with your family and loved ones without worrying about what you look like so much, of course, look the best you can get a makeup artist, get the best dress at the time.
Speaker 1:When the day comes, the day is there. You put that dress on, you get ready and then you stop worrying about what you look like for other people and you focus on the connections and experiences of the day. Surely, surely that's what should happen not will I look good in a photo, like think of stupid that is. Will I look good in that photo for my wedding? What about the wedding itself?
Speaker 1:If you only want a photo for a wedding then what's it about getting married? The memories you have for life would be way better than the fucking photos you got. And I don't know this is not saying to Sophie it's from everyone like why are we obsessed so much, we've gone holiday we can't have the holiday until we have that day one photo where we've worked out to look a certain way and then that goes on social media then you're happy to just go nuts afterwards and go yeah it's fine I've got my photo now I'm content. It's a very strange way to live. I mean we get caught up in this if we're not careful so I think it's important.
Speaker 1:Anyway let's carry on with this conversation. So I just explained you know, it's not really possible. Slow approaches are the way and it's stupid to go low calorie diets. And she says I've never done low calorie diets, but I'm normally in better shape and the training is the same. Couldn't live on low calorie diets.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll accept slow results then. You know, five pounds won't make a difference at the end of it. Okay, should I lose five pounds a month then? No, there is no number goal to lose whilst the mac you're on will be around one pound of fat a week. We can't control the total amount of weight we lose because weight and fat loss are different.
Speaker 1:You can lose fat but not lose weight. I will keep saying this is important. And now then she says my measurements have come down, my weight won't budge. That data isn't that that's useful data. That's important.
Speaker 1:So your measurements are coming down, but your weight isn't changing. Now there's a few things happening here. And this is guys, by the way a lot of members who lose weight and go to maintenance can't get their head around this but in the bodybuilding world and stuff like that, fitness world there's something called recompen. Recomposition it's when you lose fat and gain muscle but your weight basically stays the same. This is the holy grail of body transformation essentially that you gain fat, you gain muscle and lose fat and the end of the day your weight might remain the same.
Speaker 1:This happens a lot of time you see photos online of someone at one hundred and forty pounds two years ago and then you see him after weight training with still one hundred and forty pounds but they're completely different in terms of what they look like. And this is what's happening, there's more muscle mass, there's less fat. So the fact is you're saying the measurements have gone down but the weight doesn't budge is a great sign. It means that you've been weight training, Sophie, for ages. You're gaining muscle.
Speaker 1:Right? Because you can gain muscle in a deficit. I'm not saying it's optimal but it's possible. Muscle is a signal based thing so you need to do the training to signal, get the protein in, it's possible and your fat loss is coming down and that's great. Okay?
Speaker 1:So that's a more important metric. Why is it still the number that matters? Think about it. Why is it the number that matters in this case when actually measurements are down? Weights are same.
Speaker 1:Who cares? You're doing the training. You're doing some runs. You're you're feeling better. You're looking better.
Speaker 1:Why are we still more hard because a stupid number on the scale isn't a number you wanna see? And you said, Scott, what are daily weigh ins? Just to remind you, daily weigh ins with the weekly average is a useful metric for the AI of our app over time. That's it. I'm not saying it's going be useful for you day to day.
Speaker 1:In fact, it's not useful to you day to day at all. But it's interesting to see how much your weight does go up and down, and it's interesting to see how our average weight over the menstrual cycle I was gonna say our mental cycle. Clearly, I don't have one, but it'll be interesting over time when the app shows you in the graphs your mental cycle and your your stress levels and your average weight and stuff to see if there's any correlations. And again weight and fat isn't the same. This is great, Sophie then says, I say look, why are you thinking of terms back ten years ago about weight is all about weight and all?
Speaker 1:I said no I don't because I eat what I want within my macro count. I eat the chocolate to have the chocolate as long as it's within my range I'm doing it. But it's taking longer. Said doing more cardio won't mean you lose more fat. That's not true.
Speaker 1:Doing more cardio doesn't mean you're gonna lose more fat. Like I said last week, the more training we do, the body will compensate and actually think the net burn is higher, but it might be lower. You might weigh yourself out. You might move less throughout the day. Okay.
Speaker 1:And here's the kicker. Here's the kicker. I knew she wasn't using our app for tracking. Says, how how how can I lose more fat then when I'm being consistent? Okay.
Speaker 1:This is a this is the problem with MyFitnessPal because it doesn't make changes to your macros It gives you a set of macros to start with and lets you go off on your old devices, you lose weight, guess what happens when your weight drops, your maintenance changes. Guess what happens when you change your steps and work out slightly or mainly steps, your maintenance will change. So your macros will have to change over time to keep that fat loss coming. MyFitnessPal doesn't account for this. This is the biggest flaw it has.
Speaker 1:So I said, oh I caught you out and I saw for you baby listen, how are you tracking your macros? And she said, MyFitnessPal paid for the turtle one but couldn't find all my meals, had to add it and put everything in. I said, get off it. What do you mean add your meals? She said, what did you say?
Speaker 1:Why can't it scan half my stuff then? Another over exaggeration because our UK database scans 89% of the supermarket foods. It's not says half the scan don't work, you probably eaten very new foods or like you know the new plant based stuff. It's just not true statistically that we only scan half foods. Also it's for everyone, Sofia, but all of us, including me, why are we so entitled entitled to think that when we use something as new and revolutionary as what our app does or even food scanners that it should all work within milliseconds for us.
Speaker 1:So we have to scan after, we have to put something in manually that takes five seconds, no way am I doing it. Think about that now. So in Sophie's position, she's used MyFitnessPal and has not had her macros changed at all for the ten weeks and now she's at this now she's been at a standstill with her results, so she's feeling she's at the standstill for weeks because her macros haven't changed along with her data, which is the problem with MyFitnessPal. But if she had used our app and just had added the food she usually eats, it would have saved to the database. The barcodes would have saved, and she would have been able to use it just as quickly as MyFitnessPal in a few weeks and she would have had the weekly check ins and the automatic weekly tweaks to her macros and she wouldn't be in a position now where she feels stuck.
Speaker 1:So when we look at the both apps, MyFitnessPal has been around for ten plus years, it's gonna have a much bigger database even though a lot of the foods are wrong. Our app takes away the label errors, so labels are allowed to round up the calories for macros, so you always see labels will be higher in calories than what we'll have in the app. The reason is they round up to have nicer numbers. We actually take, so calories come from the macronutrients. So if we work out the calories from the macronutrients themselves we'll have the exact calories of that product.
Speaker 1:With the food labels they'll round up the calories and then you'll actually won't have the same number. So we remove that error because data accuracy is very important. If we can make changes systematically our end to improve accuracy we'll do it. So that's what we've done and we've the weekly check-in. So if you'd used our app and just had the inconvenience so you know we all feel entitled to have all these amazing tools working seamlessly, we can't spend fifteen seconds inputting some information, custom you know quick ads for the benefits of it actually analyzing data and change it.
Speaker 1:Think of the return on investment of that. You spend 2 to 3 extra minutes a day adding the foods you usually have, your recipes into an app. And as a result of that it will automatically make changes to your macros for you every week if needed to ensure you're staying on track with your goal versus saving those two to three minutes a day which is minuscule, but then you are getting confused and you have no idea if you're on track anymore. You don't know what you should change your macros to. You don't even know if they're right.
Speaker 1:You don't even know if why they're not changing. And you spend your time googling what your macros be you know that's what I guarantee you Sophie spent hours and hours googling and looking up online asking questions to people about what the macros are right which doesn't help a situation because we make changes of your data Who cares about other people's data? It's your data that matters. Self knowledge, your data. So she would have wasted our time anyway worrying even in exchanging me on messages worrying about why she needs to change her macros.
Speaker 1:You know? That's the reason we built the app the way it's built. Because we used to do these weekly check ins manually, and you have to wait two to three days for us to look at your spreadsheet, analyze it. But machine learning algorithm with an output of what we wanted to do can do that much faster, much more intelligent than we can and we take care of the human angle which is the comfort eating, stress eating, the conflict in the mind, all our stuff. And it's important that we look at the macro app, the app you're using not as a MyFitnessPal type of app, right, but as a personal lifestyle coach that does changes for you, saving you ungodly mother I was worrying.
Speaker 1:No need to worry about you should change your macros too. You just get on, live in, you can track, get on live in, happy days. I think it's an important lesson there. Again, conversation goes on. Should she change your macros on training days?
Speaker 1:And I said how many times you train a week? She said about three times and four. I was like Sophie, it's about 3% of your waking hours training. I mean, don't overcomplicate things and same for all of you. If you're training, you don't have to change your macros on training days to be higher unless you want to optimize your performance elite athlete levels and you want to increase your calves and training days fine but you don't have to worry so much about I'm training today so I need more of an allowance.
Speaker 1:What matters is the weekly average. Three workouts a week is nothing as a weekly average of your calories consumed calories expended, sorry. So we shouldn't be too overcomplicating it too much. If you are looking after if you want performance nutrition, the very simple basics are have some carbs two hours before you train and have some carbs with protein about an hour or two after your workout. Very simple.
Speaker 1:Very simple. There is more complicated stuff like a two to one ratio of glucose to fructose for to replenish the glycogen and stuff like this, which is, again, you can go as deep as you want on all this stuff. You can go really, really deep and Doctor. P can take you down this deep rabbit hole. And it can just confuse the hell out of you and it's actually no benefit to you or benefit to me anyone.
Speaker 1:Because none of us need to go elite athlete level deep. We're just trying to live a healthier balanced life, trying to lose a bit of weight, we're trying to look, we're going to try and get build our strength, try and do something manageable, crack on with our lives, get on with our work, look off friends, family, all our stuff, be happy, joy, all our stuff. That's what we're doing. You know, we're not here to most of us here are not here to be elite athletes. We're not here to have six pack abs on holiday.
Speaker 1:Like if you are here for that, you'd run-in the wrong place. We're here to live healthier, happier lives and that, cheesy, it's gone. Maybe it is, but that's the truth of it. It's like I'm not going to the gym to be a slave for me to be a slave to the gym. I'm not tracking my macros and doing this to be a slave to food.
Speaker 1:I'm the master of my days, and I will want to be healthier, I feel healthier, happier, stronger when of course I know what I'm putting in my body. I know I can eat whatever I want. Today I had a cinnamon swirl, unbelievable cinnamon swirl, unreal out of this world. Happy days. There we go, had a cinnamon swirl.
Speaker 1:I liked it, I enjoyed it, in it goes, you know. And that's it, they're cracking on with other parts of my and over time I've noticed changes, know, I've been tracking my macros using the app, tweak my macros over time. And yeah, I've noticed I'm looking in the mirror sometimes a week to week and going, yeah, I'm losing a bit of weight there, I'm looking a bit leaner, feeling a bit stronger. Ryan sees me goes, you're a bit leaner and all this stuff. I'm like, yeah, happy days.
Speaker 1:But I'm all like fanatically focusing on it. This is a byproduct of the lifestyle I'm leaving. So remember that guys, it's the byproduct. The byproduct is you're the leaner, healthier, happier person. And If you find yourself getting the word obsessive, if you find yourself saying I'm getting obsessed, we need to reevaluate things.
Speaker 1:If you're getting obsessed, you're looking at this entire thing in the wrong way. You know, we track the food we eat because it gives us a massive insight into where we're going wrong in sense where where we're, you know, maybe gaining too much fat or whatever. You know, if you run a business, you track the ins and out. And the more you can keep a tab on it, the better the performance of the business, basically. The more you let it go, the more things can go wrong.
Speaker 1:It's kind of simple stuff. The awareness of things helps us. So the awareness day to day. So that's all I'm asking is the awareness and understanding we're not trying to be slaves to the gym, slaves to macros, slaves to all this stuff. We're using them as minor tools in our lives to supercharge our life versus they're not using us to suck us in, you know.
Speaker 1:Can you picture that? We're saying happy days this technology we've got, I can track my macros with ease. It can make changes for me automatically. It's amazing. I'm not going to be trapped by diet culture anymore and all this nonsense Slimming World clubs and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm gonna train you three times a week, three or four times a week. I'm gonna do strength training followed by an expert that we've brought in with David Nolan and programming. And I'm gonna follow that and enjoy it. I'm not gonna question it too much going Instagram and see one new training technique works well and 1,000 reps over your head jumping off the ceiling is nonsense.
Speaker 1:You follow what the science says through what David has taught us through seminars, through the training plan and you just crack on with it, you enjoy that workout, that's it job done, move on with your day and results will come. What a way to live, what a way to live. Now just reiterate, that wasn't a go at my sister even though it was easy to do so. Most people will ask the same things. As much as I can share the information, say this and that, it takes a while to break through sometimes and I just want to make you all aware like look, it's normal to you can see yourself slipping back into old habits, it's normal to want to achieve x amount of weight loss by x date.
Speaker 1:But I'm just telling you that that's not the way it is it should be it's it's gonna lead to it's gonna lead to pain. It's gonna lead to anxiety and stuff like that. And, it's never the way to go because when that day does come that you've tried to look x weight for, you're gonna hate it because that x weight maybe hasn't been achieved in any miserable day, and that's not how we should be living. So enjoy your day guys. Get your one big thing done.
Speaker 1:Write it down. Whatever you wanna do, put it in the app. Get your one big thing done and successful day basically. And I can't wait, I'm testing out the new app design today and I should have a build for you all to test maybe by next week. So hopefully guys you're have the new supercharged version of our app soon.
Speaker 1:And if you're listening and you're not an app subscriber you've been on a free trial, the annual offer £59 for a one off payment it works out $4.90 a month if you work it out that way but it is £59 upfront just to be clear. That ends next week so if you want to jump on that happy days we'll see you for a full year. But other than that, enjoy your day, live one day at a time and I'll see you all soon.
