Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 33 - The Real Reason You Can't Lose Fat (8 Things To Do)

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

In this episode, Danny sits down and examines the BEHAVIORS required to effectively shed body fat.A variety of topics are discussed, including:Goal settingBeing honestRewarding yourself/cheat mealsSleepHydrationThanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. Today, we're talking all things fat loss. Now, before we get into it, let's do a brief little rundown of kind of current events, where things are at in the world and just how things are going. So related to COVID-19, it appears as though many states have begun to open up partially or even fully. Many states have not. The division is relatively partisan, right? Meaning you've got your Democratic states staying closed, your Republican states or

your red states trying to open up, and that's about as cut and dry as you need to make it. So many of us will be going back to the gym. Many of us won't. Regardless of the state that you're in, you may choose not to go back, that's completely fine. All of us, however, when we do go back, if we do go back, we'll be seeing a different gym space altogether. The fitness space is definitely never going to be the same in the short term. We're seeing a lot of tremendous changes already. And I think if you want to learn more, you've probably already listened to the podcast on

it, but you can go to the website and check out the blog I wrote. But realistically, fitness is changing, particularly in the short term, in the big box space. And it's going to be quite, quite interesting. At the time of recording this, I've just finished the Last Dance documentary about Michael Jordan that pretty much everybody who's missing sports right now is watching. And it's quite impressive. And we're actually going to borrow from it today for our little discussion here about fat loss. So without further ado, I think we can kind of lean into this discussion. And what I want to talk about are the five biggest reasons people do not

lose weight. Now, this isn't five scientific reasons for fat loss not occurring at the physiological level. We've covered that, right? We know that it comes down to maintaining a calorie deficit. You need to do some type of exercise, particularly a balance of aerobic exercise and weightlifting with that balance tipped in favor of more weightlifting. We know you need to get more sleep than most people do between seven to nine hours of uninterrupted high quality sleep. We know that protein is of particular importance, not just for its ability to keep us full and satiated, but its ability to help us maintain valuable muscle tissue. but its ability to help us maintain valuable muscle tissue.

We also know that stress is not ideal in the long term for fat loss, but if we get all of those factors and more aligned, we can make this happen at the physiological level. However, even when people know all of these things, whether it's myself as somebody wanting to lean out for a vacation, my clients who I've explained these things to time and time again, that doesn't make fat loss any easier. While having a degree of education and a base level of understanding is certainly important, it doesn't make the journey any less arduous or any less difficult for certain people. And so what I wanted to bring up are the five biggest

personality, psychological, behavioral reasons why people cannot lose body fat. Things I've seen with thousands of clients that are probably going to resonate with you as a coach, you as a lifter, you as an enthusiast on some level that goes deeper than fat loss. A lot of what I'm going to say is actually going to have a ton of wraparound. It's going to have a ton of reach into other areas. It's not just about fat loss. These principles, these behaviors are going to help you reach any goal you have in the fitness space. And if you are open-minded enough, I'd argue it'll help you reach any goal you have in life. So let's start with number one. The number one reason people

have a hard time losing body fat is that they're kidding themselves. Yeah, that's right. Number one is you're kidding yourself. You're kidding yourself that it's going to be easy. You're kidding yourself that it's going to be short. You're kidding yourself that it's not going to have ups and downs, that this is the time, that this is the round that it's going to work, that your mistakes in the past were related to somebody else's stuff, wasn't your fault, work wasn't right, lifestyle wasn't right. The number one thing people do is they lie to themselves right from the jump. And again, this applies to attacking any goal you have in the fitness space or in the life space.

If you can't get honest with yourself from the jump, right out of the gate, you're not going to have a very solid foundation to build upon. And so when I say people kid themselves about it being easy, I really mean that. Losing a significant amount of weight is difficult. The reason it's particularly difficult is because it actually starts off quite easy. A lot of people will lose a lot of weight initially as there's fluid balance, glycogen storage, a repletion, water weight loss, muscle mass gain. A lot of things happen out of the jump. We lose a lot of weight really quick.

Then, like I said, some of those physiological things occur, kind of balances that out. It gets a little frustrating. Then you see another usually secondary dip right after that. And then things get a little tricky and you might have to reduce calories. You might have to get a little bit tighter with how you're tracking calories. But right out of the jump, you get this really easy couple of weeks where weight kind of just drops off and people lie to themselves that that's how it's going to be the entire time. I actually equated a lot to getting a PhD. Not that I would know because I don't have one, but I've had plenty of guests on the podcast, many of whom I've recommended that I do.

But what happens when you get your PhD is you start with your bachelor's, and your bachelor's is kind of easy. It's easy coursework, but a lot of it you don't love doing. That's a lot like the first part of losing body fat. You know, it's pretty easy right out of the jump, but you don't really love it. Then you go on to your master's, right? The coursework gets a little harder, but it gets a little bit more focused. Same thing happens with fat loss. Weight gets a little bit harder to lose, but you start to really learn things.

And then when you go on to that PhD, you've got to handle on what it is you need to do to lose fat. You've got to handle on how it works you need to do to lose fat. You got to handle on how it works, but it's really, really tough. And that's why people quit even when they know what to do. Because as we go through, things get harder. They require more complexity. They require more focus and more patience. And human beings are not built for those things. We live in a society that is essentially contingent on supplying us with more and more stuff instantly and instantly and instantly. Computer algorithms have been built to recommend to us which products to buy from the comfort of our home to deliver to us in two days that we may like with the plethora of other shit we've

bought off Amazon in the last 48 hours too. It's a convenience-driven society. Hey, you don't even have to move. I'm going to tell you what you should buy next, and then I'll deliver it to your door in an incredibly reasonable amount of time, making everything so, so easy. Download times are next to nothing. Everything's instantaneous. And that is not to say that we've forgotten and we no longer have the ability to achieve long-term goals. But what it has done is it shifted the majority of the interactions we've had with input to reward time. Meaning the majority of the things we get, we have a very quick input and a very fast reward time. And fat loss just doesn't work like that. So again, to summarize number one, don't kid yourself. Don't play yourself about this being easy. It's not. Okay. If it were

easy, 50% or so of Americans wouldn't be overweight. Okay. We have almost 60% of the country's overweight and like 40% is obese. That's pretty, pretty high when you think about it, considering that's not the default state for humans. But again, here we are in this world where food is instantaneous. It's high calorie. It's everywhere. You're going to be battling it all the time, the high calorie, hyperpalatable foods that are more likely to contribute to a caloric intake that's a little bit too high. So get real. Go through a checklist. This is going to be hard. I'm on board. This is

going to have ups and downs. I will weather those storms. Maybe I should get a coach. Maybe I should get help. Maybe I need to be a little bit more honest about where I failed with this in the past. Do those things on the front end. Don't kid yourself that this time is any different. It is not any different unless you make changes based on what you've learned from the mistakes you've made trying to lose weight in the past and the successes you've made. If you're not learning from where you've fallen short or where you've seen success in anything, you're missing a lot. And again, that goes for muscle gain.

It goes for things in your personal life. But again, number one, from a behavioral standpoint, get real. Write how long that shit's going to take from a scientific standpoint. Add a pound to a pound and a half a week. Add an extra 50% to that time because it's going to take a long ass time because there's going to be mistakes and just wear it. Just wear it. Own that. Own that it took years to get to where you are and own that it's going to take a long

time to get to where you want to be, but that is okay. It's all part of a process. And trainers, you need to communicate these things to your clients in a respectful, easy to understand way. Fat loss is not easy. It's not easy because it requires behavioral change, lifestyle change, all in an environment that is built to, again, like I said, kind of instill this normalcy of obesity. Everything is instantaneous. Everything is available at all times. We spent 200,000 years on a species hunting and gathering, foraging and

farming, and now all of a sudden it's all right in front of us whenever we want it as much as we want it. That doesn't work with the brain. Doesn't work with the physiology. Doesn't work with the chemistry. Doesn't work with the psychology. It makes it hard. So be real. That's number one.

Moving on. Number two, you must create the right habits and the right reinforcements. must create the right habits and the right reinforcements. One of my favorite authors of this century, of all time, James Clear. He wrote the book Atomic Habits. I'm sure you've heard of it if you've been following me for any amount of time. You know I love the book Atomic Habits. And one of the things that James really gets across in the book is our systems and our habits are what get us to our goals, not our desires, our systems and our habits. We all want to be a little bit leaner, look a little bit better, no matter where you're at. Even Mr. Olympia wants to look a little bit better. But wanting and admitting what you want and even being real about what you want,

like I said in step one, all of those things will only get you so far, okay? What really carries you over the hump and gets the ball rolling and gets you across the finish line is instilling the habits and behaviors required to actually see change. And for a lot of people, it's easy to implement habits, behaviors, and reinforcements early, but they don't create sustainable habits, reinforcements, that will last the duration required to achieve the goal. So what I mean by this is, people out of the the gate right from the jump, they'll go crazy. They'll cut out all carbs, all red meat, all sugar, go on three mile walks a day, go to the gym seven

days a week. Habits aligned with fat loss? Absolutely. 100%. If everybody could do that, we'd all be screaming lean. However, those habits are unsustainable. We know that time and time again that people who come towards a weight loss goal kind of shot out of a cannon tend to hit the ground pretty fast and pretty hard. I think you're better off taking a more tempered approach and going a little bit more slowly and finding things that fit within your schedule and that will work and help you not burn out. Okay, so remember, those habits need to be aligned with the goal, but they also need to be aligned with the timetable. And what I mean by that is,

let's talk about investing. For example, let's say your goal is to invest for your retirement. But instead of investing in the long term, like many people would recommend and things like Roth IRAs, 401ks, index funds, things that tend to play the long game, you invest in quick flip day trade penny stocks in an effort to get rich really fast. And maybe from the jump that might work great, but it's not aligned with the long-term goal. So your strategies and your habits must be aligned with the long-term goal and not trying to get it all done really fast. It just doesn't work and a lot of times it leads to defeat and burnout. Now let's talk about

the back end of point number two, which is reinforcement. You must create rewards and reinforcements built into this behavioral system that will encourage you to keep going. you to keep going. And I'll say this, food, cheap meals, don't make for a great reinforcement. Dieting your whole day, Monday through Friday, and saying, on the weekends, I eat whatever I want, or I deserve this, I worked so hard. That's not going to cut it. You know, I'm going to be honest, in life, you don't deserve a whole lot. And some people say you don't deserve shit. Nobody owes you nothing. And if your goals are fat loss, I would make the argument that, you know, dieting for a whole week and then rewarding yourself with food and binging on the weekends, you can't find behaviors any further apart than that. That behavior is not aligned with your long-term goals. So with regards to setting up

strategic reinforcement, if you are implementing the behaviors and getting where you want to go, you should reinforce them by building in rewards. And what those rewards look like could be tied to other things you enjoy, but I would not tie them to food. Perhaps you go on a hike with somebody who you enjoy going on a hike with and you say, man, if I can lose two, three pounds this week, I'm going to schedule a hike this weekend with somebody that I spent a lot of time with and that I would love to do that with. Or if I do really, really well this week, I'm going to go to lunch at a very healthful restaurant that contains lower calorie options and I'm less likely to binge, right? You're not going to say, oh, I'm going to go to that one restaurant that I always eat 3,000 calories at. You align these reinforcements with the long-term goal.

And again, that's going to lead to long-term behavioral change. It's going to set you up for success, and it's going to encourage you to stick with those day-to-day habits. So just again, point number two, and a quick summary. Ensure that there is alignment between your daily behaviors and your daily, weekly, monthly reinforcement behaviors. Because a lot of us use reinforcement and reward in an effort to stay on track. And I think that there is something to be said for doing that. But if the reinforcement and reward are not aligned with the behaviors required to lose the weight you want to lose, you're kind of fucked. And that's just the cut and dry. That's just the way it is. All right, number three is comparison. You are comparing the outcome you expect to the outcome that you've seen somebody else to have,

that you want to have, that you think is fair. And unfortunately, fat loss is not a linear process. And while we might be very similar physiologically, and the laws that govern body fat loss are universal across all people, the outcomes are different for everyone. The timetable is different for everyone. All of this stuff is very much individualized. So if you go into it expecting to see the same results as somebody else, you're going to get defeated really quick. I'll give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

Adele, the fantastic Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter, Adele, incredibly talented. She lost a lot of weight. She lost like 100 fucking pounds. Amazing. Amazing. Now, somebody out there is going to say, oh, Adele could only lose 100 pounds because she's so rich. She probably had personal trainers and personal chefs that helped her lose all that weight. It's really easy when you're a celebrity. That's a negative comparison that's probably not going to help you lose anyway.

And then there's probably also somebody who on the flip side is like, oh my gosh, Adele lost 100 pounds. I could do anything. I could lose 100 pounds. She's my hero. Also probably not realistic. The answer is probably in the middle, which is that yes, Adele did lose a tremendous amount of weight. She is likely incredibly wealthy from her success as a musician. And she probably was able to pull out all the stops financially to get all the support she needed. And she was probably able to align her lifestyle perfectly and even pay people to support her in the terms of, like I said, probably cooking her meals and training her. There's no doubt that she had a lot of help. So why compare to Adele? You shouldn't. It's fucking absolutely ridiculous. To compare your approach to losing fat to literally anybody else in the world is kind of insane. What you need to do is remember the reason you are overweight is because of the decisions you've made across your life, all of which are reflective of a unique experience on this planet. 8 billion people, 8 billion experiences. Stop trying to create a diet, a structure, a routine, a behavior that looks identical to another person. Stop using excuses why other people can or cannot do it.

Stop comparing. You can learn from the successes that other people have had, can learn from the successes that other people have had, but comparing results, comparing expectations, never a good idea. Instead, like I said, learn from behaviors from other people. Ask your coach, if you have a coach, ask your friend who lost weights, what are some behaviors that helped you? And then think to yourself, okay, what does that look like for me? Not, I'm going to do the same workout. I'm going to do the same diet. If you don't like that shit, you're fucked right out of the gate. So dig a little deeper. If Sally says, oh, I lost weight because I went to Orange Theory four times a week and ate keto. And you go, okay, well, I hate keto and I hate Orange Theory, but she did exercise four times a week and follow a diet. What can I do that's aligned

with similar behaviors, but maybe perhaps better aligned with who I am as a person? Maybe that looks like going to F45 four times a week and doing veganism. I don't know. Okay. But what it needs to be is an honest dialogue with yourself about, I need to learn from people. I need to learn from successes that people have had, but I cannot compare myself. That's ridiculous. And like I said in point two, perhaps the best person to compare yourself to is yourself, the successes and the failures you've had. So quit comparing yourselves to other people, other situations. It's genuinely wasted energy. Instead, borrow from people who you might be similar to who have had success. Look at it through the lens of how can I implement this in a sustainable way. Remember, it's kind of, this is kind of like a ladder. Every point I make is going to go back to the

bottom of the ladder, which is the behaviors you exhibit in the long term, okay? Or again, like point one, like I said, you got to be real. You got to be, you got to be 100% honest with yourself. And point two, the habits and behaviors. got to be real. You got to be, you got to be a hundred percent honest with yourself. And point two, the habits and behaviors. Here we are again, talking about point three with again, comparison and either comparing behaviors and habits that have worked for you, right? One and two, it's all tied together. It's all on this sliding scale or this ladder.

So don't waste energy comparing yourself to others. That's time you could spend implementing the right tools. shot, whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. Number four, you are rewarding yourself too much. This is short and sweet. Talked a little bit about the importance of reinforcement already. This idea that I deserve a daily, a weekly, a monthly reward because I'm doing so well on my diet. And I earned this. I earned this.

I've been working so hard. I earned this cupcake. That shit doesn't fly. The reason most people are overweight is because they've been rewarding themselves with food and laziness for a long time. Yes, some people live in situations where there's socioeconomic disparity and they don't have a lot of access to foods that are healthful, nutritious, relatively low calorie, not everybody's playing on the same playing field. I get that. Perhaps that's an insensitive way to broach the issue. But let's be real. The likelihood of somebody getting to a state where they're overweight, unhappy, and wanting to lose weight required a significant amount of conscious choice to use food as a reward

and to use overeating as a behavior in the long term that led to a significant amount of weight gain. I tell people this all the time. You can't expect to lose weight in three months that you put on in three years. You can spread that out. You can't expect to lose 10 weeks weight you put on over 10 years. And so this idea that I need to frequently reward my valiant efforts to lose weight with extravagant spending or cheat meals is ridiculous. The reward is the product of the grind. You don't need external rewards all the time. Like I said in point two, making sure your reinforcements are aligned with your goals is important. However, you cannot abuse these things or you end up where you're at. I'll put this in context because I see this a lot. Clients, Monday through Friday, I'll see them a couple of times. I'm doing so good. The scale's

going down. I'm feeling awesome. I'm doing what we talked about. I'm doing what we talked about. And I go, see, that's all you had to do. You're doing such a good job. I'm so proud of you. Keep it up. Keep it up. Keep it up.

Boom. They come in next Monday. How you doing? Oh, still rough weekend. What do you mean rough weekend? You were doing so well. Yeah, I know. I went out with the girls and had a few too many drinks, had this and that.

Then the whole weekend just kind of got away from me. And so that turns into a discussion of, so you were on point for five days. You were behaving at a really high level. You were doing all the things habitually that you need to do to lose weight. But then you had one instance where you rewarded yourself and that reward wasn't aligned with your goals. You went out drinking with your friends, which again, you can do. But if you don't have the ability to do it in moderation, it's a bad reinforcement tool. And that slipped into a whole weekend of just saying, fuck it. And so that could be every single weekend. I know people where that's every single weekend. And you might have to say, am I giving myself too many rewards?

Am I letting myself off the leash a little bit too much here? And I would say you probably are. If your rewards are sabotaging your goals, you're rewarding yourself too much. And you don't deserve all the rewards. I know this sounds really insensitive. But if you've had 30 years of rewarding yourself with food all the time, that's probably not going to be the reinforcing behaviors you need to lose weight. Instead, you need to look at food as how do I work this in in moderation? How do I include the foods I enjoy in moderation?

Okay, if I don't have a track record of doing that, I probably shouldn't do it every single week. Maybe I'll do it once a month. doing that, I probably shouldn't do it every single week. Maybe I'll do it once a month. Maybe I'll stick to my nutrition and my behavior and I'll use a movement-based reinforcement. Or I go on a walk with somebody. Or like I said earlier, I'll use food as a reinforcement, but I'll make better decisions. I'm not going to bootleg it into an entire weekend of drinking. That becomes a problem. Okay guys, so that's number four, over-utilization of reward and reinforcement when it's the wrong type of reward and reinforcement. Here's another one, hydration. Hydration is really, really big when it comes to fat loss. We'll talk physiologically for a quick

second. There are two essentially types of metabolic processes in the body that we use all the time to build or to break down. Anabolism, A-N-A, anabolism, like the term anabolic, is to build. We build using something called dehydration synthesis. That is the removal of water and the connecting of small molecules to build larger ones. That's anabolism. Think about muscle growth. The other one is catabolism. Catabolism is the breaking down of things.

When we break things down, we use a process in the body called hydrolysis. Hydro means water. Lysis means to split. Hydrolysis means splitting using water. We need water to break down and metabolize body fat effectively. So being in a calorie deficit, having your behaviors aligned, but being dehydrated physiologically is going to impair optimal fat loss. Additionally, being dehydrated is not ideal for performance, longevity, or overall well-being. We need to be hydrated to feel good, to move good, to perform well.

Number three, hydration is a massive regulator of hunger and satiety. Our stomach is lined with a ton of small cells that detect changes in mechanical tension and pressure. A lot of times these are referred to as mechanoreceptors, and they express up to the brain that the stomach is expanding and filling or shrinking and emptying. And when the mechanoreceptors trigger that the stomach is shrinking and emptying, we see a release in hunger hormones and things behaviorally aligned with filling the stomach back up. However, when the stomach is expanded and external pressure is being forced on the stomach lining from it being full, those mechanoreceptors tell the brain, hey, we're full. And one of the tools we have to help fill our

stomach is water. We can actually include water with our meals. And this is where we go from a little bit of me talking about behavior to me actually giving you some nuanced tips. One of the best tips I ever heard for fat loss, and again, this is all going to connect, was from Alan Aragon. And we have to, before I give you the tip, we have to break it down. All the behaviors are aligned, right? And we have to understand that admittedly, this is going to be a hard process and we need to give ourselves as much of an advantage as possible. And so some of the tips that Alan gave at a presentation I heard, one of them had to do with water. I'll give you some other ones too,

because I think these are too good not to share. And maybe we'll actually have Alan on the podcast to talk about these. But the first one is drink eight ounces of water before your meal and drink eight ounces of water with your meal. The reason you want to drink that eight ounces about 15 minutes before your meal is to give your stomach a little bit of expansion prior to sitting down. The reason we want to drink water with the meal is to help with digestion, assimilation, absorption, but also with that mechanoreceptor pathway. We want to fill that stomach up a little bit with things other than calorie-dense food, and water is a fantastic option to do that. It's a kind of frontline defense against overeating or face-stuffing, if you will, which isn't to say it's bad to eat. It's just to say if you can make the

caloric reduction easier by feeling fuller, you probably ought to do so. Another thing that Alan said in this presentation that I loved is to put your fork down between every bite. Putting your fork down between every bite makes you forcefully kind of chew your food and finish each bite and swallow it before you start the next one. A lot of us kind of eat like a shovel. You just kind of shovel it in there. And so I found this to be just an incredible tool. Another tool is to buy small plates. And so, you know, smaller plates are going to limit the portion sizes. And I think that all of these are fantastic tools. And let me ask you this. When you think about these tools, all of them are aligned with

reinforcing the right behavior. So for example, selecting water as opposed to a calorie-dense beverage and drinking it before the meal and during the meal with the goal of feeling more full, that's aligned with the long-term goal of needing to restrict calories to lose body fat. Setting your fork down between each bite is a fantastic way to make sure that you're chewing your food, swallowing your food, optimizing digestion, not overeating for the sake of overeating and being able to stop eating when you're actually getting full. That's a fantastic tool. It's a fantastic behavior. Buying smaller plates is aligned with perhaps choosing portion sizes,

more aligned with weight reduction rather than portion sizes consistent with the behaviors that had you gain the weight in the first place. Fantastic tool, fantastic reinforcer. All of these things are behaviors. They're not hacks, they're behaviors. You might call them hacks because that's a very sexy term to throw around. But I don't like that term. These are fantastic behavioral adjustments you can make that might even be worth doing after you've lost the weight. And so just understand again that hydration is important. It's a vital piece of this.

And there are some behaviors we can learn from, like I said, drinking a little bit of water with or before meals. And then I gave you a few more tips, but those are really, really big. So don't neglect that stuff. So let's review. We've covered kind of the five main points. Number one, you are kidding yourself. You're not being realistic about what to expect from this process. You think it's going to be easy. You want it to be easy. It's not. The greatest freedom you can give yourself in this journey is to just be honest. Be honest with where you think you'll slip up. Be honest with where you've made mistakes in the past. Be honest with where you've been successful.

Apply those things. Number two, okay, your habits and your reinforcements are not aligned with your goals. They're aligned with the things that got you to where you are right now. Number three, okay, too much rewarding. That's a big problem. I'm sorry. Too much rewarding was number four. I got ahead of myself. Off the cuff here, so I don't even remember what number three was. But hey, number five, hydration and behaviors around your meals. Having those in place are really, really valuable tools. But let's talk about some other behaviors and habits that you can implement outside of these big ones. I'm going to just start rattling off some tips that I've implemented with clients that work really, really well. And some of these might not work for you. But again, I've been coaching a really long time. I've worked with a lot of different personalities,

and I know that not everything works for everybody. So let's just chat a little bit about some of these things. And if you can gather some information here, if you can get some ideas, we'll talk about it. So number one, something that works really well with a lot of my clients, ideas, we'll talk about it. So number one, something that works really well with a lot of my clients, restricting the feeding window. So this is kind of like an intermittent fast, but what we do is we restrict that eating window so that that first meal doesn't come until they're actually hungry. A lot of people eat breakfast because it's been socially kind of ingrained in our head that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and we have to eat it. But a lot of my clients aren't hungry, but they still eat a monster breakfast and then they just tack on the calories throughout the day. So a lot of people do well

with the implementing of a behavior of shortening the eating window. And perhaps that just looks like, hey, I don't eat my first meal until around 11 and I eat my last meal at seven. And now again, that doesn't make it an intermittent fast. It's not to say that you can't have a coffee or a tea or something in the morning, even something light, but you save the bulk of your eating for a shortened eating window. That really works well for a lot of people. Another behavior that a lot of my clients have implemented with great success is replacing a meal with a meal replacement shake, such as protein shake and an apple, the Found My Fitness shake, which is from Rhonda Patrick, who was on Joe Rogan many times.

And she does a shake where she has like spinach, tomato, kiwi, apple, blueberry, avocado, all this stuff. You know, you mix that up. You can make it like three times, but that replaces a meal. It's nutrient dense and it replaces a meal. And so again, it's aligned with, hey, I understand that I'm going to eat. I'm not going to be unrealistic, but I know that I have a really high calorie lunch. And this week I'm going to replace that with a low calorie meal replacement shake. So those are two things that I've implemented with a lot of success with clients. Another implementation that I've always had good luck with is the order in which you eat your foods. This has nothing to do with any crazy physiological food combining bullshit. It just has to do with satiety. Again,

that mechanoreception at the stomach, some of the stuff we've talked about. So, say you make a plate and that plate is protein, starches, and vegetables. Let's say it's macaroni and cheese. That's your starch. Tri-tip, that's your protein. And asparagus off the grill, that's your vegetable. And if you go in the order of starch to meat to vegetables, what's probably going to happen is you're going to eat all the macaroni and cheese, which is probably the highest calorie, lowest satiety on a gram per gram basis. Then you're going to eat all the meat and you might eat some of the vegetables. Now, if you flip that on its head and you modify the behavior and you say, I'm going to eat all of my cruciferous vegetables first because they're high in fiber and they're

high in nutrients. Then I'm going to eat my protein. I'm going to eat my tri-tip second because that's another important thing for me. And then what I have left, I'll use whatever appetite I have left, I'll use to eat my macaroni and cheese. Now, flipping that, what that's going to do is it's going to introduce the higher fiber, higher satiety foods first. And what you'll find is most often you probably won't eat the entire plate eating in this manner. It's a quote-unquote hack, but it's a behavior aligned with long-term fat loss goals and sustainability. Ensuring that you're eating those nutrient-dense, high-fiber, satiating foods first is a really, really good tool towards helping with appetite regulation, kind of reintroducing a normal

appetite to the way we eat. If we start with the hyperpalatable starchy foods, again, it has nothing to do with those foods being fattening. That's purely caloric. But those are the foods we're more likely to overeat. If you eat the asparagus and the protein first, one, you're front-loading and ensuring you're getting enough of those nutrient-dense foods, but you're also kind of building a trench, if you will, against overeating the other stuff. If you just slam down the quick stuff,

that's where things can get a little bit problematic. So, that's a tip I've really, really had a lot of luck with, with a few different clients. And I encourage you to try that as well. And so guys, that's kind of it. Those are some real realistic approaches and tactics that you can implement, but they'll only work if you do the things I told you before, which are related to your behavior. One of the biggest issues I have with the fitness space right now is every Joe Schmo is just regurgitating caloric deficit, caloric deficit, caloric deficit. It's like some type of atonement for years of the industry lying to people about what it takes to lose fat. Oh, you got to eat for your body time. Oh, you got to normalize insulin. Like, yeah, I get it. Okay. Everybody wants to be in the fucking evidence-based crowd. Everybody wants to be on the right side of history. But just yelling at people calorie deficit doesn't do

shit. And this is the problem in a space that's dominated by personalities on the internet, but not dominated by real coaches. None of these people have actually worked with real clients, or a lot of them haven't. And just telling people calorie deficit, calorie deficit, calorie deficit, they know like, okay, I fucking know I need to stick to a calorie deficit. But what does that shit actually look like? Sticking to a calorie deficit is hard. Duh. If it wasn't so hard, everybody would be fucking ripped, but everybody's fat as hell because it's way easier to eat whatever you want in this environment and just give in than it is to stick to something. But if you don't give people actionable steps, tell them the pitfalls they're going to run into, tell them the troubles they're going to have,

where are we going to go with this? All we're doing is reinforcing this idea that, yeah, you need to stick to a calorie deficit. Oh yeah. And it's hard as fuck. And I'm not going to give you any tips to actually do it. We're finally starting to see people get there. But like, what are the behaviors aligned with being in a long-term calorie deficit? Just saying it isn't enough. Just putting it in a sexy little tweet and cropping out the rest isn't enough. Just getting in arguments with people on the internet isn't enough. We need to give people actionable steps. And hopefully this podcast did that. So guys, to wrap things up, share this with somebody if it made a big difference. Again, these are behaviors. These are the things that exist inside of the framework of, yeah, you need to be in a calorie deficit. You need to exercise. You need

to lift. You need to get enough sleep. You need to get enough protein. You got to manage your stress. Duh. But what does that actually look like at the behavior level, at the fundamental level, the level that's holding most people back. Because I would actually argue that people know how to lose weight. They know what they need to do, but they can't follow through. And so that's where stuff like this becomes really, really important. That's why conversations like this, I think are worth it. So guys, if you found value in this, please, please, please do me a huge favor. Leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes. That means a five-star review paired with a written review. It makes a huge difference and it helps other people find the podcast.

I only ask because I'm really, really am passionate about reaching more people on this platform. It's been tremendously effective so far. And the bigger the reach, the more people we can help. So I would so appreciate that. If you liked this episode, share it to your Instagram story and tag me so we can chat about it. I'll get a little notification that you shared it. I'll know you liked it. I'd love to ask you some questions about it. All good. I appreciate you guys sticking through to the end. I hope you have a good week wherever you're at listening to this, a good day. And again, this is a tough thing. If

you're trying to lose fat, it's not going to be easy. But if you're honest with yourself about what it's going to take, it can be done. So hopefully you enjoy this. Hopefully you're feeling like you can do this with some of these tools. And again, let's share this so that we can help create a healthier space for other people. Have a good one.