Modern Wisdom - #015 - How To Get Lean For Your Summer Holiday

Episode Date: June 4, 2018

Yusef from PropaneFitness.com joins me as we navigate the perilous waters of cutting for a holiday. We've all been there. Drilling our diet into the ground on 800kcals a day only to see our condition evaporate in the sunshine as soon as we look at a Corona or take a mouthful of that first hungover Burger King. Expect to find out our hard-learned solutions after years of making errors during a summer cut, get a grip on a training protocol and calorie deficit which allows you to still function pre-holiday, and learn the optimal weekly weight loss target you should be aiming for to safely lose fat. Further Reading: https://propanefitness.com/propane-protocol-infographic/ Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi there. This week I'm sitting down with Yusuf to talk about how to get lean for your summer holiday. So as almost everybody will do, you've left it too late until you're going to go away on holiday to some hot summer destination. You've realised you're going to be in swimmer around a pool or on a beach and you're not quite as lean as you want it to be. Now all of us who've been training for a little while have made the same mistakes over and over and over again. You look okay for one day when you're out there and then you turn into Mr. Blubby as soon as you touch a cab. What we want it's trying to do today is give you a protocol that you can follow over a short

ish period of time to get you in good condition so that you look good in your swimwear around the pool and try and mitigate the effects of a corona on all of your hard won gains. So here we go, me and you, on then I was like, oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. So, hi. Hi, everyone. Hello. You may notice that there is about 105 kilos of missing Aryan perfection of the far side just there.

And if you're just listening, you will notice that there is not the sound of a massive arse. Just squeaking all over the lander so that is because Johnny is away in holiday so it's just me and you see today and we are going to be talking about how to get lean for your summer holidays. This is actually take two. This is technically take two we had a technical problem but this is in pure gold. pure, how to get shredded for some of the gold. So if this is not as good, then it's not our fault. We already gave up our best.

So how do you get lean for some holidays? I did a little Instagram post about this yesterday and had an awful lot of messages coming back, not least of all because it's due and a lot of people will have realized, shit, I'm going away on holiday within the next eight weeks and maybe not as lean or as muscular as I want to be. And I mean, I have to turn my top off on the beach or I'm going to wear a bikini or whatever it might be. The point that I think struck a chord with a lot of people was what I said about the typical approach for getting the lean for holidays. And if you have a look online, a lot of the resources that you will find about how to get lean will focus on

potentially fitness competitions or long-term, slow deficit, fat loss approaches. The crucial difference between stepping on stage and going on holiday to a B-throw my bear is that when you step on stage all that you're going to do is flex and tense. When you go out to my bear or a B-throw you're gonna be drinking corona and having bigot all day, every day. Bigot. Bigot. As in one bigot, one huge fuck off bigot. Yeah, you take a bigot out, you know, taking a bigot with your whole day. Just in the long bigot. I think this is where the alcohol reference goes, is there's some kind of drink called bigot? No. No, you do mean baguette.

Bigot. Yeah, just that. Not baguette. La baguette. Yeah. So is it la baguette? I'm not sure. It's, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess.

Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, it's a little bit of a mess. Yeah, so morning. And then fish and a rice kick midday and it's just like all that you're doing is creating an environment in which your body will absorb corona like a fucking sponge. And so many times I went away on a holiday, I drilled myself into the ground on like a 1500 calorie per day allowance, got out on a holiday, looked peeled to bits for one day.

The next morning looked even better because I was dehydrated to hell, and then as soon as I had that first breakfast in the hotel, I just ballooned out. There's no shape left, and any size that I did have eight weeks ago has been lost due to this catastrophic deficit that I'm in. So what I wanted to do was try and put together a little bit of a structure and some principles that you can take away if you've got between four and ten weeks, something like that until your holiday. So are we writing saying that if you've got less than four weeks until you go on holiday, it's going to be very difficult to make a profound change. Honestly, if you've got less than four weeks,

don't bother, just carry on as normal. So don't try any more. So don't try any making yourself suffer needlessly. Like you're not going to elicit any change in your body visibly in four weeks time. And I think what you said is interesting because it right now, it's the second of June, it's a common question that we get in terms of inquiries. I'm sure you've got some messages about this stuff as well. And it's endemic of the mindset

that we have towards fitness, which is, shit, I've got 28 days, I've got to drastically undo the last 35 years of my bad 7-entry habits and make a change in my body from now. And it's like, what's the rush? Like, people often, there's no thought given to it until suddenly I've put my flight shit, I need to make a change. And second of June, it's cutting it fine, to be honest, I'm not going to,

I'm not going to sugarcoat that. As you said, four to ten weeks, so if you have say eight weeks. So if you're going to end a holiday after sort of the start of July, start to mid-July, up until the end of the summer, you're sweet. Well, yeah, you're not sweet, but you're all you're salvageable. You're definitely salvageable by that point. And I think there's a lot of key principles here, but the first thing is that muscle gain is a very slow process. And so all we can expect at this point is to lose fat. Okay. And we would say this on the first take, my my favorite thing when you're looking at a Facebook photo of someone's like summer holiday

And it's like six lads all 18 but five of them 18% body fat one of them's like six percent body fat and huge and just Treaded this like odd one out there. Yeah, that's the guy who has a part of his lifestyle as opposed to a Crash diet exactly like that is a of the 10 years of the previous training. So there's no point that if you're worried about how you're going to look relative to your swollen mate, that you're going to be comparable. So don't set that as your reference point. Like realize that if you are, and so the numbers wise,

eight weeks away, eight a kilo man, 18% body fat, you die. Just to interject there. I'm writing saying that the principles are the same for men and women. Yeah, for this time period it's the same for sure. Okay, so both genders can broadly take the same approach that we apply here. Yeah, exactly. So for women, 18% body fat will actually look quite lean. 18% body fat will actually look quite lean. 18% body fat. I mean, yeah, you've, as a woman, you pretty much start to get abs at 15% body fat.

So if you're not sure about these ranges, don't get hung up on the percentage. I use this as kind of an anchor point, but don't try and get caliper or anything. Basically, if you're carrying a bit of extra fat and you're absolute not visible, you've got no deltoid tricep separation. You're probably around 18% body fat and then, you know, linearly fat as that goes up. So, if you're around that, let's say 80 kiloman, eight weeks time, aggressive diet would mean 1% of your body weight lost per week assuming you hit your average calories without fail for that time and we have to hit the ground running. There's no time for fucking around when you've got eight weeks to go.

You can't ease yourself into this program. This is like the times already. Well that's for the train. That's definitely one of the things that I think people need to realize that if you have left it as late as you've only got eight weeks and to the one of the things that we need to state from the beginning is eight weeks sounds like ages but physiologically in terms of fat loss eight weeks is a couple of seconds like it's not a tremendously long amount of time you have you have less time than you think you can't take liberties. So if you've got, if you're planning to go away this winter, beginning your cut now, six months in advance. It's, it's too long, even six months.

And that depends on how fat you are, I suppose. Yeah. Okay. So beginning, beginning of fitness regime that works towards that, if you've got six months, you've got time to even gain a bit of muscle and then, and then, and then we're even reverse back up. But eight weeks, yeah, not long enough. And so 1% of your body weight per week, for eight weeks, 80 kilos body weight is 800 grams of weight loss per week, 6.4 kilos of weight loss over eight weeks. So that is gonna make a visible difference

in how you look as you move. It will, yeah. It will, but that, I mean, that 1% of body weight loss per week is the top end of how much weight you should be losing each week. It's gonna impact on, as you said, how you feel, how the potential rebound at the end.

Obviously, the faster you lose fat, the higher the cost at the end. So this is something we have to bear in mind. Anyway, the principles are the same. We want to be lifting weights to retain as much muscle as possible, even if you're a woman, something that the most common and the most heartbreaking fitness mistake I see with women, and I'm glad you said other principles are the same for men and women, is that the woman who's like, oh, I want to drop a couple of dress sizes, I'm going to pound the cardio and eat just a bit of cabbage every day, some celery. And it's like, you are only going to look like a smaller version of yourself,

but just as shapeless. And yeah, your dress might be a smaller size, but not actually going to have any shape. You're not going to look any better than... 100%. And the other thing as well is that now, especially since Instagram fitness chicks and stuff are a lot more prevalent, having a good set of legs

as a woman, like a sort of a, you know, a shapely set of legs is kind of cool, right? Like it's not, it's not obscene for cross-fit girls to go out wearing dresses and stuff like that. Like it's actually almost desirable. Definitely. I think probably if you asked girls what look more muscular on Instagram because you can't tell scale. When you see some of these cross-fit girls in real life, they're absolute babes. And you see the one that photo you think, oh, she's a bit big, but actually,

they've got small frames and they're just- Still very, very womanly. If you put them in a dress, then... So, yeah, what you're saying is that we need to hit the ground running. We don't have any time to lose that lifting weights rather than pounding cardio is a good start. So, for me, I'll put forward what my proposal would be for a pre-holiday routine and why, and then I'll let you critique it and I'll let you go at yours forward. So I am the sort of person who is inherently very lazy and I need to stack the deck in my favour. You may have noticed due to the fact that we do endless episodes of life hacks that

shortcuts to an effective outcome as something that I value quite highly. For me, I need to try and make all of the right decisions as easy as possible. What that means is, I would get up on a morning, I would have a black coffee, I would go for a walk on a morning. Reason for that is, firstly it allows me to clear my head. Secondly, it allows me to get a little bit of low intensity steady state cardio in. Now the list versus high intensity debate, I'm not really that bothered about. For me personally, I do crossfit a lot.

So my high end power endurance output gets looked after by my training methodology. Should probably clarify that you do crossfit, not to burn calories, you do crossfit because you enjoy crossfit. Yes. Yeah. It's not a goal not a God's strategy. Yeah, it's it's just happens to be the methodology that I'm following but on a morning if you get up and you go through walk you've got some fresh air in you you've had your coffee you're set for the day so that's a few a few different big wins just yeah exactly that you've put in the bag

and the little intensity steady today stuff's nice. Get back, prep your food for the day. Either pay someone to meal prepping company, there's loads, especially in Newcastle, Aurora Kitchen, Spoonhead Nutrition, there's a load of different guys that do awesome food prepping in Newcastle, so check them out or look in your local area if not, prep your food yourself on a morning. Get yourself out for the day. For me personally, I would train around about midday or a little bit earlier. It means that my training is done for the day and I don't have to worry about it. Going on to diet and going on to my calories, I would tend to have between 200 and 300 grams on a training day, around about 200 grams on a recovery

day and about 100 grams on a rest day. Of what? Cops. Okay. Sorry. And let's say carbs. I just say grams. Do I just assume that everyone knew what I was talking about?

You might have said carbs. I might have. Straight over. Yeah. Of carbs. Protein and fat widths generally stay the same. A little bit more fat on my rest days. Some of the strategy that I use for curbing hunger would be natural set yogurt on a night time which is without a doubt the single best approach for stopping yourself from trying to

cheat on your diet. Firstly, if you don't want to cheat on your diet, do not have junk in the house. If you, like me, have got sweet tooth and you do not have chocolate bars in the house, you will not eat them. You can't eat what isn't in your cupboard. And going to the shop, getting yourself up at 10 o'clock at night because you've got craving for a chocolate

and walking all the way to the shop. At least you've built up some steps that way. Yeah, you've got some other intensity cardio in. but it's just, it's probably not going to, like it's not going to happen, you're going to protect yourself. So yeah, for me, I would natural set yoghurt, scoop of protein powder, some mixed blueberries, and unless you're an absolute animal, that will say she ate pretty much anyone's craving for something sweet. The macros on it are unbelievable, like it'll fit. You can probably add it on top of any diet, I think, and it'll in total, it'll be like 120 calories, something like that, for a big tub bowl of protein E through E niceness and then you sweep from there.

So berries are like wizardry as well, like considering how low calorie density they are for what you get. Yeah, there's a lot of volume and they taste pretty good. So yes, my few little tips would be get up on the morning. If you want to do the high intensity stuff then go and do some hill sprints, something like between 10 to 20 rounds with 30 second rest, run up a hill, then walk back down, wait for 30 seconds at the bottom and then go again. If you can do that 10 times, upper moderately steep hill that it has output

for about 30 seconds, something like that. So you're getting like two to one work to rest, something like that. So two to one rest to work. That's a good way to get some cardio in on a morning. Then if you can train later on in the evening or the afternoon, make sure that you're lifting weights. Don't get stuck or hung up on the toning from going to super high rack ranges, still focus on the moneymaker sets, which are between sort of six to 14 reps at a weight, which is moderately heavy and still testing. It would likely that you're going, unless you're new to training that you're going to PR during this particular period. But yeah, that would be broadly my approach. So I like that you split it out into a day, a day

daily schedule, and also the principle of make the good decisions as easy as possible and make the bad decisions as hard as possible is definitely the way to set up your environment for success. Because if you have to consciously make the good decision and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops each time, then by 5pm, you have the decision for teak sets in, which is a real thing, like you tired, you think, I'm just going to... Yeah, mistraining the chocolate bars and the cupboard, any of that, definitely. The yoghurt thing, there's some evidence behind this as well, which is interesting people have done studies looking at if you feed someone yoghurt, the little

spoon, and then see how many canneries they eat subsequently in the rest of the day. It's lower than if they were to eat other types of food and they- That was an equivalent amount. Yeah, so they compare calorie-matched amounts of tuna, carbs, crackers, milk, way, all those kind of things, and the way in yoga with the higher. So in terms of satiety, you're going to feel better from that. On a side point on the making sure that it's easy for you to stack the deck in your favor. That includes prepping your food. So roll back the clock from

the morning that you need to prep your food. If you've got chicken in the freezer and you haven't defrosted it, when you wake up the next morning, you can't cook the chicken that's still frozen. So you default to Cocoa Pops, exactly. So you think, oh, well, fuck it, the diet's gone for today. So I'll just order in some takeaway or I'll do whatever I go to Greg's, I get a pastry like, you know, it is all about making the good decisions as easy as possible and the bad decisions as hard as possible. Remembering that you are going to have a lower, you're already using up an awful lot of willpower here. Dr. Roy Bauer-Misturys, studied that he did with turnips, where he had two groups of people in a room, one group had cookies and turnips and another group just had cookies.

The group that just had cookies were allowed to eat them or not. If they wanted the group that had cookies and turnips were told they couldn't eat the cookies and could only eat the turnips. So they were then given a cognitively demanding task to do afterwards and the group that wasn't allowed to eat the cookies gave a 50% faster than you have. So it's a finite resource, willpower. And yeah, so that's such an interesting study. Like do not trust the future version of yourself to make the right decision. Treat yourself like a little child because that's it. Like the, you know, another thing on decision fatigue, we know that juries and even judges, like fucking professionally trained senior people in the legal sector, industry sector, will judge people as guilty more often in the afternoons than in the mornings, just because, ah,

screwing skills, you know, can't be asked to. Is that statistically significant figure? Yeah, and it's also related to blood sugar levels as well. Was it not something to do with biscuits? Did you not tell me? Was it whether they'd been giving biscuits or being given food or something like that? I've not seen that one. Maybe I've run it along from the blood sugar thing.

Okay, and there's also a correlation with blood sugar. So yeah, so basically, so if you're in court, bribe the jury with biscuits and make sure that you get them on the air. Morning session biscuits, you're sweet. Laughing. Yeah, to be honest, to stack you, yeah, stack it in your favor. So yeah, the other thing you said about cardio, I love a good morning walk as well. I agree it's not done to try and burn calories. And I, they're getting into this chasing your tail of trying to do cardio so that you can

earn the right to eat more calories and eat them back and all this don't get into that cycle at all. Remember that the reason you are losing fat is 100% from your calorie intake and just leave it there. So let the fat last be driven by your diet. So the muscle retention be driven by your training. Okay, so you wouldn't say G-Flux theory, which... So, to answer that, yeah, sorry. Can you briefly explain what you've got? So G-Flux theory is that the effect on your body in terms of cellular turnover and body composition

of eating a calorie deficit of a thousand calories is different if that deficit is created from eating 2000 and burning 3000 compared to eating 4000 and burning 5000. So there's still the net deficit is the same at the end but actually the bodies have to go through a lot more processing to achieve the same deficit and that it will have a more favorable effect on your body composition to do the latter rather than the format. That is true, but again, telling someone to do that when they want the minimum effective dose, the risk is that they end up chasing their tail, and people always underestimate the number of calories, sorry, they underestimate the number of calories that they eat back from cardio, and they overestimate the number of calories that they think that from Cali from cardio and they overestimate the number of calories that they've been burned from cardio. I knew a guy who gained 20 kilos in two months,

I think, and he just got really fat. And it was because on my fitness pile, he played basketball and he was like, oh, well, I ended 90 minutes of basketball on here and it says that it burns 5,000 calories. So I've been eating 6,600. Like look at the scales, look in the mirror. Yeah, exactly. Obviously not burning calories. And I don't know whoever entered that bit into the because my fitness part is just user-generated. It's a Wikipedia for. Oh, yeah. So anyone's size isn't it? So maybe some like Michael Jordan came along and was like, oh well, you know. 5,000 calories. Yeah. Okay. NBA level of basketball. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So yeah, basically don't get into that game. As Chris said, walking, increasing your general neat, so your non-exercise activity like,

you know, taking the stairs, getting off the bus at an extra stop earlier, just general moving around, not sitting like a fat turnip during the day, fine. But don't try and count the calories that you're burning when you're hoovering the house and you know, just see that, and the other reason why we say lift weights, even if you're not trying to gain muscle, is that lifting weights and the effect that it has on your body is so much more biologically expensive than going for a walk or a run. Because when you lift weights, you're tearing muscle, you're breaking down the tissue, your body then has to marshal a lot of resources to build that back up again, which is very expensive

in terms of calories, which is what you want. You also said don't fall into the trap of toning and doing high reps, 15 plus or whatever. Remember when you're in a calorie deficit, you're never going to be gaining muscle anyway. So if you're a woman and you're afraid of gaining too much muscle, common fear, just like I go to the library and I'm sometimes scared that I might get too clever, so I have to leave early. I went for a jog once and I was like, no, no, it's not. I might win the 100 meter gold medal. So I better start. I think that's such a good point. Like I leave work early as well,

because I want to make too much money. Yeah. Like girls, girls do have this fear of, oh, well, I'm not going to live too heavy because what if I start to get arms that I don't want? I should capture all this that I don't want? Like there are professional bodybuilders, female bodybuilders who spend hours

and hours and hours every single week in the gym desperately trying to gain the drugs as well. And they look like they're left and your fear is that by moving from the eight kilo to the ten kilo dumbbells, it's insulting to them actually, yeah. Yeah, it's not that easy to gain muscle. Trust me, I've been trying to do it for 10 years. Like, it's really quite hard. So, okay, so we're talking about when we get to training,

someone's gonna go in, they're gonna be training how many days a week. So, in a deficit, three times a week is all you need. Because all you're trying to do is hold onto the muscle that you need, because all you're trying to do is hold onto the muscle that you already have. When you're trying a gain muscle, yeah, you want to be training for five days a week if you can't, Shendhi will permitting. Is there a potential here?

So your criticism about G-Fook's theory aside, is there a potential here that if someone was to train, if they enjoy their training schedule and they're able to train between sort of three to six times a week if they're able to up that frequency that that may afford them a little bit more on the calorie side. Sure, if they have the time and the freedom to do that then why not? Okay, as long as you, again, if we're saying, I think personally, a lot of the people that will be listening that I have got the holiday that's coming up I think especially for eight weeks you can probably being yourself but you can put you can go balls to the wall and go right

okay I can train for five five days a week and for this time period it would be helpful because yeah as you said you you haven't got much time so you may as well just do as much as you can. So okay so what's the split? The approach that just meta speaking here like big picture, the approach that I would prefer is to start six months earlier, having a much easier time and also bear in mind that the difference you're going to make in the next eight weeks compared to if you like yeah you might look a bit better for this summer holiday but next year's summer holiday, if you carry on the momentum, you're gonna look world better. So for sure.

But again, we are creatures that like to leave things until the last minute. So let's take into account the fact that as soon as people go away on holiday, they're going to be eating and drinking disproportionately higher than they were. Yep. While they were doing this diet to get themselves to look good. And you said yourself that you went on a 1500 calorie diet and then you rebounded and looked watery for the rest of the...

Oh yeah, you have one day where you look awesome, you have a second day where you look even better and then as soon as you have the hunger of the food you just fill out. And anyone who's listening who's done a crash diet for a holiday knows that this is the case. And you get there and holiday and you're like, I don't understand. Like I was so lean all the way up until this point. And I've got out here. And no, I'm not lean anymore.

No, well, you're no longer training. You're eating 80% of your diet is coming from alcohol, 80% of your calories coming from alcohol and carbohydrates and you haven't had either of those for eight weeks. So again, for me, like expenditure suddenly dropped, it takes suddenly gone up. Yeah, and you're wondering why you don't look as good as you did in the mirror two days ago. So for me, I think that trying to increase output and not drill calories super, super low, if you can get your calories closer during the prep phase to whether going to be when you're away, you're going to be less sensitive. Can you explain about why having low calories in the buildup will make you more sensitive to than once

you get out there. So, I mean, I made this mistake myself on the meditation retreat, for example, as well, where I've lost loads of weight from being in hospital, actually, I wasn't dieting, I was saying, but, and then suddenly went for it. And obviously, when you're in hospital and you're ill, your expenditure is quite high because there's so much... Immunity. It's taking a lot of energy, right? And so then I went from that to having recovered and sit for to work for 10 days in silence with unlimited vegetarian food, so low protein food, no activity, no training, and I did regain a lot of fat.

But yeah, it's simply that there is an abundance of food and alcohol, as you said, alcohol will stimulate your appetite further. You can create a reactive hypoglycemia, which will make you hungry and get the munchies afterwards. Plus, the general lack of restraint that you, or the inhibition, the disinhibition that you get from drinking. So all of that will contribute just to overeating. plus, as you said, it's hard whether you're in the sun.

Physiologically, as well, I'm going to guess that your metabolism will have dropped during the prep phase because intake of food is going down. Intakes gone down, and you've lost weight. So you're actually, your maintenance calories have dropped, even if there was no metabolic damage per se, you've still You and then that means that when you get out there that the the danger is Overshooting. Yeah, definitely and it's very difficult. I think another thing as well to consider is

One of the most fun things about going on holiday Is the planning and the anticipation for it as you build up to it. Now that anticipation you can use the anticipatory energy to motivate you to go and train and that's good, that's a good use of that energy. But one thing that you don't want to do is absolutely hate your life for eight to ten weeks. In the build up to this holiday, I think people need to appreciate that if you are below 13% body fat, 13 to 12% body fat, you're approaching. Outline of your abs. Yeah, outline of your abs with some visible vascularity, maybe in bicep and forearm, like to 90% of the people on the beach, you're going to look awesome.

Like, you look like you left, and you're probably shredded to, like, a slightly lower proportion of those people. So, yeah, Johnny mentioned this, and I've definitely experienced, I'm sure you have as well, where, like, we, if you've been training for some time, and you're, you're like, trying to diet from to diet from 13 to 11 or from 9% to 7%. I've got to make these fine tunes. Oh, actually, I've lost a bit of size on my delton. Actually, these differences matter only to you.

No one else. As far as anyone else concerns on the beach, you're either a Bobby Builder or you're not a deadly dog. And so, like, yeah, like, and people at easily, someone who doesn't train, like the untrained guy will look at a guy who's 65 kilos and has abs. And he's huge. Yeah. Because the illusion is there.

That's it. So getting on up on the small details, compared to if you're just generally in shape, even if it's a few percentage points out of your own reference point, it's such a big source of insecurity. Yeah, and I think as well, especially if you've been lifting for a little while, I've got a lot of friends who I know that you know they train consistently but maybe they're not super strict with their diet. Oh, no, we can shoot at them in a minute. Don't we?

Like, well, mate, it really, really, you shouldn't be obsessing over it. If you're walking around at 10% allow yourself Do you know what it is? Here's something to think about we're talking about this rebound effect Just ginger out there and you start having beer and all the rest of it. I bet That a significant proportion of people who are sat at about 10% body fat Let's say which is probably fairly maintainable for people who train consistently. If they went into a holiday on maintenance calories or just a little bit above with a slightly increased training output that

after day three or four, they would look better than the same person that they were, had they drilled themselves into the ground of the deficit and then got this rebound effect. So when you said that day two and three of the holiday, you looked your best and then got worse. As simply that, you've carved up almost. And then you keep carving up more until it just, and you've only just wholly unprepared to deal with it. So the solution that I would propose to, to this is the simplest way as well, meaning that

you finished your diet, you aggressive approach that you've had to take because you're an idiot and you've left it until the last minute. Rather than trying to track your calories while you're away and stressing out over it, pick the shitest most pointless meal of the day. Usually breakfast, especially if you're in a beef there and you're in a hotel and you're getting boiled eggs and like, what, cross-art or something. You've never been in a beef there. It's not, it's not boiled eggs and class on Okay, so what would it be for breakfast?

Pillars probably. Okay I mean that's excellent. Well, the thermogenic, isn't it? Yeah, so fine talking about caffeine. So stay on the I'm not gonna endorse having pills for breakfast, but yeah, like Pick the meal, which is the most pointless doesn't't provide a social purpose, doesn't really help with your hunger. Most people find that they just eat breakfast because they feel like they have to. Or they're told what about that? Okay, if breakfast serves you hand over great, but what I'm saying is, yeah, pick the meal that doesn't doesn't really contribute to your day in that sense. I know a lot of people that are like,

oh, the people always tell me breakfast is most important all of the day. So I don't eat it anywhere, even though I'm never hungry in the mornings. Well, don't eat it. Like, save it for me. Yeah. So do that. And then instantly you freed up an extra four or five hundred calories or more that you can dedicate to drinking to an evening meal, whatever you want, or restrict your eating window. That's another way of doing it. So start picking out in the day. Being frank, I think some of this is going to be difficult to do when you're when you're away. If you've got a five day hollering. Is it going to be easier than tracking your calories and trying to do? Oh yeah. I think I just think that when you're hungry, although like, things go well, your willpower is that the air is so low. So in that case, if it's not an option to change how you're

eating while you're on holiday, then you need to prep over a longer period. It's one or the other really, and I think the weight reband is related to slightly to the speed of weight loss, but more so to the amount of weight loss. And the way that you can counteract that is every time you've lost a bit of weight, hold out there for a while, establish a new set point, and then do a stepwise diet. And people that do that hold on to their weight loss more than people who just drop and then die at over, and that's just rebound. So we're talking about not trying to go super, super low on the calories before we go away on holiday because what that's going to end up doing is creating this environment for rebound effect,

which ruins the hard one, lean-ness, the just sacrifice date weeks or 10 weeks for or whatever it might be. You're saying focus on muscular movements, focus on resistance training rather than relying on cardio. If someone does want to add cardio in, how do they do it? So, but as long as we make those three days that you're lifting weights sacred, so, and then up it to four if you want to, this is assuming that you've got more space in your schedule to do five or six training sessions a week,, then fine. You've got the resistance training covered Once you're training three or four times a week there's very limited benefit Especially in a deficit to adding in an extra few days of lifting weights because you haven't got the fuel available to

Build the muscle and so you may as well use your Fifth in your sixth training day in a week to do some cardio. Okay which case, I would suggest do the cardio that you enjoy the most. So, because then you're more likely to stick to it. So, if you hate rowing, but you're told that rowing is the best way to spend calories, then you're going to stick to it for a couple of weeks and fall off the wagon. If you like hillsprints, I mean, if you're nutter and you like hillsprints, then find do them. If you know, CrossFit is, and I've come full circle, oh, not full circle, I've come 180 on this.

Because I really like having seen the results it's had on you. So CrossFit really, in a lot of ways, it's given you the community environment, the motivation to push yourself more than you would, there's a lot of volume that you're accumulating just from the amount of lifting in there. And it's very high cardio demand as well. So it ticks all of those boxes. So really as far as that goes.

Just do cross it for a week. Well, you could do. Yeah, I mean, if you're not used to training, bad idea. Going balls, I mean, well,'re not used to training, bad idea. Going balls, I mean, well, I think one of the problems that you'd have with going and doing CrossFit for something like this is that technically it's very demanding. Their barriers to entry for a lot of the movements are actually quite high. So this is it, you're not going to be able to hit the ground running in terms of intensity

because you're not even going to have learned all of the movements. Yeah. I think maybe something like a bootcamp might give you a little bit of external accountability. Yeah, if you've got a trainer there that's able to adjust your technique and so on. What's for me doing cardio on your own is it's pretty miserable, especially if you want to push yourself quite hard. But you know, you can find almost everywhere. you can find a good bootcamp class for a tenor, a session. And if you're paying £10 once a week or twice a week, you know, for if that's what it takes to get you to get that cardio in, then cool.

Yeah, and the bootcamp runners, the bootcamp organizers want you to come back. So they're going to make it as fun as they can make it. Yeah, they'll have partner exercises and all that stuff. So, yeah, you get, you get, you get kidded into thinking that it's fun, but it's by the end of the session, you actually look at what you've done to yourself. And you think, you're fucking really hurt. And that's a big advantage. And it's the same advantage for CrossFit that there is no way that I would have

had, like when I came to CrossFit once, a couple of times, it was grim, but there's no way that I would put myself through that on my own. But it's because if you, when you're with a group, and if you just start with, I'm leaving. So, would you say that potentially during the prep to go away on holiday, getting another one of the guys who's also going away to be a training partner, would be a good idea. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Okay. As long as you don't mind that you're both look better, if you just want to look better than you make, this is the high-lender thing like that,

can only be one. Yeah, it's a zero-sum game of like you've got the group of people that you're going with, and there's only a certain amount of so sabotage them with like cake leave cake on their desk as much as possible fine so by a load of cake so basically 50 quid either spend it on boot camp for you mate or spend it on cake for you mates yeah depending on how macchi a value and you are and then relatively I haven't lost any weight but everyone else in my friend's circle has gained fucking love. It's still achieved with the same agenda, bloody hell, right, so actually, sack everything we've said so far.

Get all of your mates to gain 6.4 kilos over the eight weeks. Which is probably a lot easier. Get gain 1% of their body weight, Poe. Yeah, 500, 800. Yeah. Well, we've come to a solution there. Okay, so find yourself training partner. Probably one, preferably one who you're going

away with because it means that you're both working towards the same schedule. You're looking at resistance training three to four times a week. Yep. If you want to add some more training in, then another one to two sessions of enjoyable cardio, of cardio, whatever it is. We're talking between 30 minutes to an hour. Yeah, if you can spare it. Yeah. I think I do think that a lot of people, I think your schedule is unrepresented, it'd be busy. And reasonably tight. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons that I don't do cardio because one, I'm lazy, to my schedule

is so tight and I have to go for the highest yield that Lois is hanging through it first. But yeah, the other thing outside of cardio is the non-exercise activity that we talked about. So I'm terrible with this. Yeah, me too. If you work at a desk a lot, then try and push the daily activities, just fit it into it. It's not formal cardio. It's walking to the shop, walking to work, taking steps. Of a walking lunch, maybe something like that. Exactly. Anything that involves movement but isn't formalized, like you don't have to put on your shorts and go and do something for. All of this will help to not let your metabolism drop too far through the floor as well,

which will also mitigate this rebound effect once we get out there. So, okay, so we've got the three to four sessions in terms of muscular training. For that push pull legs, something similar? Yeah, so the simplest way, and I like this was from Spencer Nadoelski, who he's a family physician and talks to, this is the kind of standard exercise advice he gives to patients, which I think is great because he can't get it wrong. He's, go to the gym three times a week, do some kind of pushing, some kind of pulling, and some kind of legs in each session for? Okay, so do that in every session. Well, that I mean that yeah, or as you said you can do a push session

push session and leg session. Yeah, that's a push push push push push Yeah, push pull legs on each of the days. Okay. I think for some people that may be a more easy to to work out split so I think for some people that may be a more easy to work out split. So have the listeners, have you got any resources on propinfitinst.com that the guys can have a little bit of a look at? Yeah, we have. So if you go to propinfitinst.com and search for the propin protocol infographic, there is a full training program laid out for you. It's four days a week, it covers all of the bases, it's structured in a way that you will avoid injury and maintain structural balance,

and it's all laid out in there, and there's a diet framework in there as well. So it's just a big, it's a big long image, right? It's a big, not animated, it's like a big illustration. Full infographic style. You scroll for a little while, but everything's in there. Exactly. Everything that, the only thing I would change about that is because we're talking about a short time frame, you're going to need to be more aggressive with the calories. And if you want to really take things up a notch and guarantee that you will lose, so we have a program called the 28-day shred, which typically people lose 5% of their body weight within 28 days.

So that is done as relatively easy, as far as losing 5%. It's the easiest way that we know of to lose that much of body weight. So yeah, you get that. So this is push the red panic button stations, right? This is four weeks till I go away. I need to do it.

And how much is that? That's 67 pounds. Okay. And you'll get lifetime access to that, you get support weekly calls to one on one calls with your coach and it's basically everything that you need. That's cool. You know, done for you. So basically.

If people want the step up a notch then they've got that as a resource. If they want the free resource then they've got propane fitness.com and search for the propane fitness.com and search for the propane protocol. And if they are to head strong or lazy or anything else to not want to do either of those things then we've got it laid out for them here. Train resistance training three or four times a week, couple of sessions of cardio, make sure that you get someone who you can train with, get some external accountability in terms of diet, typically for the typical sized man, so 5, 11, 80 kilos, you need to be looking at what about 2000 to sort of 1800 calories, something like that.

Yeah, I mean, start at 2000, take your daily body weight every morning, post-poo pre-breakfast naked at the same time. Yeah, I'll put a link to the set of Sandler scales that I've got which were 6 pounds. Great. And they're perfectly accurate. And use my fitness pads to track your weight. So my fitness pads also for a create and account, download the app on your phone, put your weight in every single day and it'll free creating account. Download the app on your phone, put your weight in every single day and it'll track it over time. It'll make sure that you know. It's quite important to get it every day.

And yeah, if using the sound of the digital scales, then that's gonna give you a more accurate reading. Yeah. Take that daily body weight every morning over the week, calculate the average. So if my fitness pal might do this, it does it, does a week on week. Fine, our propane spreadsheets will do this as well.

Or if you use a Y things or withings, Y-Fi scale, that will, that's super. That was like, it's Link with Johnny. Johnny with Johnny. It's choosing in his pants if he was here. Oh, it goes to the grid and then like some guy comes out with an envelope and they cut you watermelon for you and it's amazing. But no, I think, once you've got that,

then you can start to see whether the 2000 calories is producing the expected. If someone doesn't know, if someone doesn't know what 2000 calories is, how can they roughly eat 2000 calories a day? So we're talking man 80 kilos, 2000 calories, female, maybe 1600, typically between 50 and 60 kilos, something like that. Yeah, maybe go slightly lower if you've got a short time for a maybe 15, 14, 100. Okay. But the thing is, the starting point is just a starting point to see how your weight's responding and you need to.

Because you might drop two kilos. You might drop two kilos. Oh, yeah, in which case your calories are too low. Yeah, or if your weight doesn't change, and the calories are too high. So the adjustments have to be made week on week and that's where the magic happens really. So and again, try and keep your average weight change between 0.5 and 1% of your body weight. If it goes too far above that, you start to step into cutting into your recovery too much

and drop in testosterone, increase in cortisol, depression symptoms, all of that. I think another one of the things that we need to mention, we haven't mentioned so far is that there are other costs, there are other things going on in your life outside of how good you're going to look for your holiday. And I alluded to this earlier on, you don't want to absolutely bend your life just to look a little bit leaner while you go away, especially seen as presumably the summer holiday something that you're supposed to be looking forward to. Yeah, you don't want you don't want to go out there. The whole period miserable. Yeah, you've got you you know, which is why I'm saying start as early as possible. Yeah, or like at least

yeah, fine, follow the advice in this podcast, get shredded for the next eight weeks or as much as you can, but keep up the momentum and focus on next week's content. Definitely, definitely as well. A lot of people will lean out for eight weeks, go away, maybe have a little bit of this rebound that we've discussed here. But within seven days of coming back, you could get back to the set point that you were at beforehand quite easily. Oh, exactly. Don't think holidays are over back to the day. Yeah, I've ruined it easily. Oh exactly, don't think holidays over back to the... Yeah, I've ruined it, I've ruined it, I'm never going to be lean again, you're like well no, that's the exact opposite.

So a structured and consistent training program is sort of number one, that's the zenith. So what you and I have done is a proper diet, get lean once and for all. I got, last time I dieted was 2013. I spent five or six months getting bone shredded, like pancreas lean. Dig skin lean. And then gradually reversed, reversed dieted, which is systematically increasing the calories up to a point where body weight isn't influenced by it. And then if it starts to spill over, then you pull calories back, painstaking process. But what it's meant is that I've now topped out my calories. It supports your training, you're eating as much food as you want, really. You're very happy with the amount of food that you're eating, maintaining your post diet condition. And I'm still

reaping the benefits of that five years later. Yeah, you're still absolutely, you're still abs. Still abs lean thanks to that diet. So the short time. You only need to get lean ones. Exactly. Get lean ones properly. Do it gradually and then systematically reverse back.

Okay. And then you'll set yourself for five years or so. So someone's gone away. They've managed to hold on to the training protocol. They've kept controlled with their diet up until then. If you've only got eight weeks, are you allowing someone to have a refeed day or are they just on this, they're just in the deficit every day? Yeah, you can do a refeed day. Okay, so you could have one day where you would

maybe bump up your calories to two and a half thousand to three thousand cars. And I think that I'm glad you said that because refeed can mean, can be quite a flexible meaning in some way. Yeah, you can undo all of the deficit for an entire week in one day eating 10,000 calories. Oh, yeah, easily. So, and when you're dieted, eating 10,000 calories is not beyond the realm of possibility. No, not really. So, when we're talking about doing a refeed day, one day a week, or I would be more tempted to say one day every fortnight, especially given that you've got this short time frame.

What calories are just 30% higher, for example? It's not like an absolute... No, I think it's important. I know that it's important for me to work towards a day where I have a little bit more leniency. I can feel a little bit more satiated. Also choose to do your refeed day on a day where you're training a muscle

part that you really want to go for it on. If you are used to eating, training in a deficit where your training quality maybe isn't quite where you're used to it or where you'd want it to be, if you have this day where you've eaten a little bit more, your training output's going to be so much better, you're going to go in, pumps are going to be more improved, your level of strength is going to be more improved energy levels, feeling of society like. Yeah, absolutely. Everything's going to be fueled by that. Refuse that. Feeling of society, that feeling society, feeling of satiety. And so, final thing, someone's gone away on holiday and they've come back. How do they then slowly recomp themselves back up?

How do they do this rediret that you've said so that they can maximize the return on all of the sacrifices they've made in a couple of months leading up to this? So someone's come back from holiday? Yeah, they've gone away, they've maybe done the thing. Have they gained any weight? Yeah, they're away. Yeah, I think it's very, veryudent to achieve that that's going to happen.

So rather than get into the self-flaggulation, self-punishment cycle straight away, come home, restore your momentum with training. Yeah, I think that's on the training again. That's number one. Yeah, just eat normally for a while. Don't try and go into a big crazy cycle. Do that for a couple of weeks, set yourself a baseline, then decide, has the excess weight come off? It may have come off naturally, just having returned from, you know, even flying, traveling somewhere will increase your weight.

And it might be because it disrupts your blood salts and water retention and that kind of thing. Is that a significant? Yeah, at least with our clients, like, I mean, it's not a huge proportion. Well, it's also that, I mean, it'll affect your scale weight, but it doesn't mean that you've got a factor. It just, yeah, it's just that it disrupts the data

that you're seeing on the sheet. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, so, wait till you've established a new baseline, and then you can say, look, actually, I'm lean enough, I could go, I could do with gaining some muscle. So I'm going to spend the next year gaining muscle. And the other time I'll open my next holiday, I can do five or six weeks before, before the holiday. And just cut a bit of fat. I think, I think definitely for me, getting back

into training as fast as possible is a really big deal. A few things to remember is that if you've just been aware and a part a party holiday and you've filled yourself with all kinds of substances, that first training session, it's going to be pretty uncomfortable. You sweat is going to be viscous and multi-colored and you're going to be really, it's going to be an enjoyable experience. However, I heard about, I don't know whether this is true, but someone said that LSD is stored in your fat cells. And so there were all of these people who lost weight being in the part of the summer of loving the 60s

and then lost weight during a mid-life diet, sort of maybe in the 90s, and were driving along the road. And the adipot cells would have... Just released a bunch of... Don't, a lot of psychedelics back into the bloodstream and there were people tripping while they were driving. Man, I mean... I'm not sure that the same story is... released a bunch of... Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't.

Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't.

Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't.

Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. to be tremendously good, but you will feel better if you can get yourself back into that routine. So another benefit to getting a baseline, I suppose, is you had a bunch of substances, just a couple of weeks where you're just... Yeah. Don't obsess over sleeping normally. Sleeping normally and... Yeah, get yourself drunk. Get yourself back, stop taking drugs, stop drinking all the time, and get back into some

training and enjoy it, make yourself feel a little bit more healthy. Remember that, and it's trying to fall back in love with training because it The thing the thing that's so impressive to everybody about someone who is lean The understands why it takes to get lean is that they appreciate the sacrifice that person's made to get there because it is a miserable process to To not eat as much food as your body wants and to then try and get your body to exert physical exercises. On top of that, it just sucks. Allow yourself to fall back in love with your training if you've always like walking, rowing, running, hillsprings,

jogging, crossfit, martial arts, whatever it is. Do the training that is going to allow you to remain physically active as easily as possible. And then make sure you keep on top of you resistance training. Make sure you're not letting your weight drop too much. Keep tracking your weight when you get home. And then, yeah, take it from that. Yeah, we've covered it with COVID most of the bits there. Solid advice. I think that's the complete picture.

So to be honest, everything that is discussed in this podcast, if you just do this now until that you're holidaying eight weeks time, you're going to make the most progress that you can in that time. I think you'll be laughing. So let's break it down again, going from the top, find your training partner, someone who you're going away with. Yep.

Or if you can't find one accountability partner, there's an app, I think where you can put 500 pounds into or a thousand pounds or whatever into a, what was it? Like an escrow account. escrow. Yeah. And then it gets released if you don't do the thing you said you don't do. That's, yeah, that's one way to motivate you. But try and find a train. We have a client that gave a thousand pounds to his mom and was like mum, if I drink before Friday then... Oh my god. You got a thousand pounds?

Imagine if your mum just went and spent a thousand pounds. Oh yeah. Or if your mum just kept leaving shots. Or around you. Or around you really? That's really one in the year 2000 pounds. Training three or four times a week resistance, a couple of times of cardio. Maybe on a morning, trying to get a 10 to 15, 20 minute walking,

fasted, black coffee before you go. I also like what you said about just get training done in the morning and then that's the win for the day. You know that you've taken it off the list and you don't need to worry about it. You're also more likely to stick to your diet because then you've not had a stumbling shit day where like you know, I haven't been to the gym and diet's gone out the window or whatever, but whereas if you've started it, as you mean to go on.

Get some easy wins and do about it. And if the session's one of them, then, so be it. Push pull legs, we think, for a session, yep. A split, you can get a good breakdown of that propin fitness.com, have a look at the propin protocol. Diet, you're going to be looking at around about 2000 calories a day for men and about 16, 15, 1600 for women. To start with, yeah.

To begin with, that adjust based on how you wait moving. Yeah, tracking your weight on a morning. After you have been for we and who, but before you've had food, naked, set of scales will be linked in the show notes, which you can get. They're like five or six pounds, and they'll do you for the rest of time as well. My fitness power, use that to track your weight

and see how your weight's getting on throughout the day. Don't get caught up with too much meal timing BCAAs before and after training. Sack all of that stuff. Yeah, you're only goal during the next eight weeks is hit your average weekly calorie intake and your minimum training volume. Like don't get hung up on it.

Don't buy any supplements, don't, yeah. Any of that is distraction and masturbation. Mm-hmm. So grass feds, pre-digested MCT oil in your coffee before you train and throw them up here and you know all of the only if it's the one that costs $100 for the the little turban, it's grass fed then. Right okay then in that case it's going to make a big difference. And then when you get out there maybe don't go completely crazy on the baguettes. If you've got the option of having vodka diet coke on a night or if you're drinking during

the day. So that was another thing I was going to mention, actually, I forgot about this, which was when you were going out drinking, consider what is your intention. Is your intention, I really like the taste of beer, so I'm going to drink lots of beers, or is it, I want to get as drunk as I can without gaining fat? If that's the case, then tree alcohol, like any other drug, you want to have the highest concentration and to get as drunk as possible for the least amount of money

and least amount of calories. This is such a use of approach. I've heard you make this argument so 20 times. So 10 beers is going to, let's say beer is two to 300 calories, then you've instantly a day's calorie can tell you. Completely fucked it. So whereas if you say, right, I'm not going to eat three, four hours before I start drinking to sensitize myself to being drunk as much as possible. Now I'm gonna have spirits or some high-density form

of alcohol. Most Muslim approach to trying to get drunk. The front loaded. So drink as much early as possible in the night so that by the time you end up going home, it's starting to wear off, you sleep better, you haven't blown your calories too much. You've got the most of the alcohol for the least amount of effort calories and time. I think if anyone implemented this on the holiday, anyone goes, right,

lads? You know what people are doing anyway? You know that even in meal, right? Well, I'm just gonna have meat vodka. Another meat vodka over here, please, darling. And you wouldn't just have one. You'd be like, I'll have 10, just right now, immediately. And I'll just bash the water. So you know that maximum recoverable volume. Yeah.

Is this like maximum consumable alcohol? Yeah, exactly. Without throwing up. Or you're doing a throw up, because then you wasted the money. Wasted the money, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Although you may have got rid of some more calories. Thing is, I know people that naturally drink like that,

but that's more just like a, it's kind of a novelty thing, isn't it? Oh, look at the eager bombs out, and it's just like, yeah. Okay, so we've got that. When you come back, start back into training, try and find something that you like, and begin tracking your weight again, and plan for summer 2019. Now, as opposed to eight weeks, don't be naughty. Don't be naughty. Alright, bye then. of that