Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Interview With Sohee Lee on Metabolic Adaptation, Reverse Dieting, and More...

Episode Date: December 30, 2014

In this podcast I interview Sohee Lee and we talk about the ins and outs of protecting your metabolism while you lose fat, getting it to run as fast as possible, and more... How to Count Macros book: http://www.howtocountmacros.com/ Reverse Dieting book: http://reversedietingbook.com/ Sohee's website: http://www.soheefit.com/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: The Refeed Day: When Dieting Should Include Overeating and Why: http://www.muscleforlife.com/refeed/ How to Lose Weight Without Counting Calories: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-lose-weight-without-counting-calories/ How to Count Calories Correctly for Effortless Weight Loss: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-count-calories/ The Definitive Guide to Effective Meal Planning: http://www.muscleforlife.com/healthy-meal-planning-tips/ How to Speed Up Your Metabolism for Easier Weight Loss: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-speed-up-metabolism/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you're going to like my books. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger If You're a Guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger If You're a Girl. I mean, these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live

in the gym grinding through workouts that you hate. Now, you can find these books everywhere. You can buy them online, you know, Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audio books like me, you can actually get one of them for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audio books and you can see how to do that there. I make my living primarily as a writer, so as you can imagine, every book sold helps. So please do check out my books if you haven't already. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I think you're going to really like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion. As you may know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted who knows how much money over the

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which means you can dive in and go validate everything that we say. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. Our formulations are 100% transparent. So if that sounds interesting to you, then head over to legionathletics.com. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com. And you can learn a bit more about the supplements that I have as well as my mission for the company, because I want to accomplish more than just sell supplements. I really want to try to make a change for the better in the supplement industry because I think it's long

overdue. And ultimately, if you like what you see and you want to buy something, then you can use the coupon code podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you'll save 10% on your first order. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscleforlife.com and welcome to the podcast. Muscle for Life stuff I follow. She actually works with him. So I came across her website, was reading her articles, liked what she had to say. I like her overall philosophy and how she goes about training and dieting and working with her clients and such. So I reached out and got her on the show. And in the way of background, so he graduated from Stanford with a degree in human biology. And she's also a nationally qualified MPC competitor,

and she is a certified strength and conditioning specialist through the NSCA. And she knows her stuff. I mean, one of the problems that you can run into in this world is sometimes people that need people, even guys that have PhDs, they'll give some pretty wacky advice and some pretty impractical advice. So one thing I really like about Sohi is not only is she well-educated, she walks the walk and she knows what it takes to not only get herself in shape, but get other people in shape without following a bunch of ridiculous diet restrictions and rules and with making it work for everyday life know, everyday life,

people that don't necessarily, where you're not going to be bringing every meal with you in Tupperware everywhere you go and you're not, you can't spend hours in the gym every day. So I hope you liked the interview. I think you will. And let's get to it. All right. Hey, Sohi, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Hi, it's great to be here. Yeah, yeah. I'm excited to talk about, well, what we're going to talk about because it's definitely like these subjects of flexible dieting and reverse dieting made a big difference for me when I almost like a big revelation for, for people when they kind of move from the superstition style of dieting, where it's all about restricting certain types of foods and following a bunch of weird rules. And it just, it's not viable as a lifestyle. You know what I

mean? Yeah, that makes sense. I totally agree. All right. So, so you wrote a fantastic couple, a couple of books actually on the subjects, right? So you have like a book on the subject of counting macros and flexible dieting, and then a separate book on reverse dieting. Most of the listeners are probably going to be familiar with these things. But just in case, you know, the arguing people that aren't, can you kind of briefly explain each of these things? So, oh, you want me to explain the e-books themselves? Well, no, just the subjects. Like what is flexible dieting?

What is reverse dieting? Oh, my gosh. Okay. So, well, there are so many different definitions of flexible dieting out there, and I think that it is grossly misunderstood by people from the outside looking in who are hearing about flexible dieting for the first time. Because a lot of people think that flexible dieting is a diet that, oh, just allows you to eat junk food all day long and, oh, you can get ripped eating nothing but junk food. And then people, of course, are going to say, oh, yeah, that's so unhealthy and how are you going to get your fiber and all these things.

But the fact of the matter is flexible dieting is very heavily focused on healthy food still, focused on healthy food still but the the main difference is that we don't exclude uh any any food food items we don't say okay you can eat this food and you can't eat any of that it's more okay as long as you as long as the majority of your food choices tend to become from whole foods then you know there's nothing wrong with having a little bit of candy or a little bit of junk food here and there. Just because you're a flexible dieter does not mean you're a macro counter. You can be a flexible dieter and not count macros. You can be a flexible dieter and count macros.

It really doesn't matter. It's more, honestly, I feel like flexible dieting is more of a mindset difference than anything else. There's no guilt involved. As far as reverse dieting, that is a concept that has been popularized by Dr. Lane Norton, with whom I co-authored my second e-book, which is on reverse dieting. Right. And reverse dieting is just a concept that it's it's like the happy version of bulking i guess um because you are still it's a very controlled and calculated approach to increasing

your caloric intake by manipulating macronutrients with the prime goals of increasing metabolic capacity. What does that mean exactly? Pretty much increasing your metabolism and normalizing your hormones, reversing everything that's happened from a fat loss phase or from a crash dieting phase. This is especially good for those who have been crash dieting for a number of years, which is surprisingly a lot of people. Yeah, I've run into it all the time. Yeah, and you want to get your health back into working order.

And you don't have to have metabolic damage, quote-unquote, to go through reverse dieting. I have a lot of perfectly healthy clients who choose to reverse diet because they want to build more muscle. But they don't want to get, you know, they don't, they don't want to pile a bunch of fat on in the process. So, and that's probably, I mean, that's a simple matter of you're, you're starting with a, with a healthy metabolism. So you're putting yourself in a mild surplus and just kind of increasing that over time. Right. And of course, I mean, some body fat comes along with it, but that's, there's, when you realize how easy it is to lose fat, then gaining fat is just, it's part of the, part of the game because to maximize muscle growth, you're, you need to be in a little bit of a surplus. So, you know, so what you get a

little bit fatter, it's just the way it is. Right. And you know what, actually, um, I do say that, you know, a little, a little bit of fat gain, it tends to be the norm, but I will say, you know, obviously the more adherent you are to your macros when reverse dieting, the more you can control the fat gain. And actually, there are some people who lean out while they're reverse dieting. And this is not the norm. But I do have a handful of clients and I have heard of a number of different people who have been able to get leaner and drop inches and watch their scale weight go down

while they're increasing their caloric intake. But that is not the norm. Yeah. No, I've actually come across that too. That's normally when I've seen it is when people were crash dieting for, like you said, I mean, I don't know if I've come across people doing it for, and it's not true. I have come across people for years, but usually it's more along the lines of months. So they've crashed their metabolism and their weight loss has stalled.

I've definitely seen that, where then they start eating more, and all of a sudden, they're losing fat again and feeling better, and their workouts are better, and their life has changed, basically. Right. I saw a post a few days, not a few days, a few months back. It was really kind of baffling to me. It was really kind of baffling to me. Someone on Facebook got up on her pedestal and she was talking about how fat loss is always a matter of calories in and calories out. And if you're still gaining fat or if you're not losing fat, then you're eating too much. That's it.

No questions asked. And I cannot disagree more with that. I think that's an incredibly oversimplified statement. I think it does not – it completely overlooks the fact that the body is incredibly complex. And as we've seen with some people, they have to actually eat more in order to get their bodies to respond. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I think that if you're going to make a simple, simple statement, yeah, you could say the energy, it does boil down to energy balance. I guess that's probably a better way of looking at than just saying calories in calories out because while we know calories is a, is a number or dieting is a numbers game and how much energy you're giving your body, it is more or less the bottom line where that, where, how that energy is coming in, in terms of macronutrients. And then also where's your body at in terms of metabolism? I'd say somebody

that has a healthy, normal metabolism. Yeah. It's just calories and making sure that making sure that your protein intake is high enough and that you're not, uh, you know, doing, making any major mistakes, but, uh, there definitely are the, the kind of outlier anomaly type cases where, um, because usually, I mean, I see, I don't know about you, but I see with people when they have, when their metabolisms, they've kind of messed their metabolisms up and they're just running a lot slower than they should be. Then things can be different and then it gets kind of interesting. Right. And there's also the water retention issues that people mistake for fat loss. I mean, you know, you're all puffy and you look fatter and then, uh, you know, let's say your cortisol levels are out the roof and you

start fixing that and then you're shedding water and you can't really tell the difference. I mean, all you know is that you've lost weight and you look leaner in the mirror. So you assume it's fat loss, but it's not always, you know? Right. Well, especially with fat loss, especially in the first one or two or three weeks, I'd say, um, if you have a lot of fat to lose, yeah, the first two, three weeks, you're probably going to see the more, more of the scale weight drop than the normal. And I find that it's difficult. It can be difficult for clients to first get really encouraged by the quote unquote fast fat loss rate and then become really discouraged because obviously it's going to necessarily slow down. Yeah. If it didn't, that'd be a bad sign. That means eventually it means you're losing muscles.

What do you mean? Right, and I would say, actually, this is a good thing. Slow progress is definitely a good thing, and you don't want to lose too fast. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I run into that more with women than men. Oh, absolutely. Just because that's the big push is drop 30 pounds in 30 days and crazy shit like that. Right.

You had mentioned a little bit earlier about counting macros versus not counting like that. Right. Um, you had mentioned a little bit earlier about counting macros versus not counting macros. Um, it's an interesting subject. I get asked about it fairly often. I might make actually a good article. I should probably note that down. But, um, you know what, let me briefly share my thoughts. I'm curious what your thoughts are. Uh, of course, of course you don't, in terms of counting, if you, you, you can eyeball things, you can know approximately what you're eating. Um, if you're going out to restaurants a lot, you probably can't, you don't really know unless, unless it's a restaurant like Chipotle where you can get an idea or if you're just ordering, like I want a grilled chicken breast

and you know, some sort of just a carb that is not going to be loaded with hidden calories. But for – I guess I find that like if you're going to kind of wing it like that, it can work for maintaining because you can also then adjust. You're never going to make such a big mistake without knowing it that you're just going to pile on body fat by not counting things and just kind of going like, okay, I'm hungry. I'm going to eat. What am I going to eat? I know I need about this much protein, but you gotta, you gotta be familiar with foods. You know what I mean? I don't know. What are your thoughts? Uh, if you just, if you just go, if you're trying, if you're just like, Hey, I'm just going to feel, I'm going to eat whatever I feel like chances are your, your intake is going to be, maybe you won't grossly overeat

because your body is hormonally, you know, it has hormones to control feeding and it doesn't want you to just, you know, become obese. Right. But chances are your, at least your macros are probably gonna be messed up. You know, I think as far as counting macros, I, you know, I did write that book, how to count macros, but it does not mean that I believe everyone should count macros. I think that at the very least, it's a very valuable skill to have and it's worth taking the time to learn how to count macros because it's not intuitive for everyone. Right. You know, and it can seem really overwhelming. So learning the skill to be able to calculate your food, your eating for the day so that you come in, you come in within plus or minus five grams

of each micronutrient. That can take some practice. If your goal is fat loss, do I think that you can lose fat without counting macros? Yes, of course you can. It's just trickier. It's trickier, but I will say if you're smaller, obviously if you're more petite or if you're leaner,

then I would definitely recommend macro counting at least temporarily because, you know, going from overweight, at least body fat wise to lean is not that difficult, relatively speaking, right? But going from lean to leaner or lean to shredded or ripped, that is really takes a lot of fine tuning and the difference of even just a few hundred calories a day can make a huge difference in either stalling progress or making the progress that you want to see. So for that reason, if you want to really lean out, then I would definitely recommend macro counting. Like you were saying, if you just want to maintain your weight, maintain your body size, I think that it's perfectly fine to not count macros and just kind of eyeball things and tweak as you go. Yeah. And I've been through cycles of counting macros and not counting macros, and both work for different goals.

Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, for me, I don't really – I'm not so much into counting as I'm into planning. Like I like cooking, so I'll kind of come up with recipes and go, okay, cool. And because of the time that goes into it, it's like, all right, this is, this is going to be my dinner for the next, you know, until I get sick of it. And that's what I, you know, and then this is going to be my lunch or maybe I'll change. I'll, I'll leave, like maybe a snack will be instead of a set carb. It might just be like, you know, whatever, 50, 50 grams of carbs. And it's going to be from some fruit or from some

whatever. And I'll decide, what do I feel like? Do I want to eat bananas today or apples? Or that's how I like to do it. Certain meals are kind of fixed and certain meals have macro profiles. And I kind of, I'm familiar with foods from just cooking a lot and stuff. So I can kind of on the fly, just decide, all right, well, how am I going to fill these numbers? You know? But that's because i make my own food though for the people listening if you're going out to restaurants uh just assume that it's going to be bad like there's a lot here yeah you make food tasting yeah you make food taste good by adding fat by adding butter cream oil really i mean that's the standard yeah um so

a dish that you might make at home might have 500 calories or 700 calories. You go to a restaurant and order it, and it's like double that. Right. Yeah. All right, so now next question here. So people often ask me how long they need to have been in a calorie deficit to make reverse dieting necessary. What are your thoughts on this? Oh, man, there is really no answer.

You can go. You don't have to even be in a calorie deficit right now you don't have to have just finished a fat loss cycle in order to reverse diet you can reverse diet right now if you've been maintaining and you want to reverse diet that's there's nothing wrong with that um i i think i think that um i guess to make reverse eye necessary, I would say if you have been at a very low caloric intake, and for that I would probably say either your total calories have been at 10 times body weight or less for more than a few months, and you have been making no progress or your progress has stalled

and you're feeling absolutely crappy, then I would say, okay, it doesn't really make sense to continue trying to keep you on a caloric deficit. Let's switch gears for a couple of months, at least a couple months, and reverse diet you. That's when I would strongly recommend it. Other times, I would say, okay, if your calories are otherwise good and you're feeling great, then it's really up to the individual.

eyes good and you're feeling great, then it's really up to the individual. But as far as a health, from a health standpoint, yeah, if you've been at a very, very low calorie intake, then, and you're working with me, I would say, I am not, I'm not going to drop your calories further. I really, really strongly recommend you consider reverse dieting. And that's when I would say you kind of have to, you kind of don't really have a choice. And that's when I would say you kind of have to – you kind of don't really have a choice. Yeah, I agree. I mean personally, I like to see people stop at BMR. If you're at BMR just by standard like catch McCardle type and you're not losing, then – and also, of course, there's the move more aspect.

But if you're already maxed out on the exercise and you're eating around BMR, then it's probably not a good idea to go lower. Right. Cool. And then, you know, what about though, if, um, I mean, I guess if somebody, if somebody has lowered their calories, if they, I mean, drop their calories at all, even along the way of like, you know, you, you, you have in the beginning, your initial deficit, and then depending on how lean you want to get, you're probably going to have to reduce your calories a bit more along the way. Um, would you agree that kind of generally speaking, it's not a bad idea to reverse diet back up to at least your TDE to your, you know, what your total daily energy expenditure, what you're burning, just so the reader knows what I'm talking, the listeners know what I'm talking about. You might as well just reverse back up. There's, I mean, I don't think there's any real benefit of like, let's say in

the end you're, you end at 700 calories below TDE. There's no reason to just jump right back up and add 700 calories per day to your intake. Right. And I don't think from a body comp standpoint that is the favorable approach because, you know, there are a lot of research that shows that if you spike your calories too fast too soon, then the fat to muscle ratio that you gain back is very heavily in favor of fat. Right. Which obviously I don't know that anybody wants that. That's the whole point. fat to muscle ratio that you gain back is very heavily in favor of fat. Right. Um, which obviously no, I don't know that anybody wants that. That's the whole point. That's what we're trying to avoid.

Right. Yeah. When do you think along the way that like, when do, when with the people you work with, when do you see that they actually start putting on where they start noticing that they're gaining fat again? That is,

it tends to be very, very individual and varies widely from one person to the next as an average i would say um for so for me with macros and calories i use i like to base everything off of their total body weight so calor you know calories relative to body weight so i would say around um 16 times body weight calories is where I start to see normally people gaining a little bit of weight. But then again, I see people who gain very slowly but consistently with all the macro bumps, every single bump. I see people who don't gain at all, ever. I can't look at a person and say, here's how you're going to respond to reverse dieting. We just don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's, there are, there's, if you, I'm sure you've gone over this research before in terms of just metabolic research and how, uh, it means people's metabolisms. I mean, you know, also just working with people, but it can vary quite a bit. I mean, it's not necessarily as variable as some people might think, but, uh, I mean, you know, also just working with people, but it can vary quite a bit. I mean, it's not necessarily as variable as some people might think. But, I mean, I've run into guys that are 170 pounds that need to eat anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day. Yeah. Lifting heavy weight, compound, doing everything right. And just to gain maybe a half a pound, max a pound a week.

Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, if I were to eat 5,000 calories a day, I'd probably gain like three pounds a week. Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, I, I, if I were to gain, if I already eat 5,000 calories a day, I'd probably gain like three pounds a week. Oh yeah. A lot of food. So I think, I think the takeaway there is that, um, learning your body is part of the process. Yeah. There's, I mean, because, you know, admittedly reverse dieting is a new concept and there, there are not, there just, there aren't any studies done on it because it's so new. So, yeah, there is a good deal of trial and error, and even myself and Dr. Lainard were both still learning about it over time.

But, yeah, these are – this is as much as we know at this point. Yeah. Yeah. this point. Yeah. Yeah. And this is like the, an anecdotal type of, it's just, it's in that anecdotal stage, which is, there's a lot of validity in my opinion, in the anecdotal research and the anecdotal evidence that's out there because there are certain things, you know, metabolically that we can know scientifically because of a century of metabolic research. And there's, you know, we know how energy balance works now and we know the basic underlying, uh, laws of, of fat loss and fat gain. But when you start getting into niche type things like this, or even a lot of exercise related things, you can't always just,

you can't just read a bunch of PubMed studies and know everything now and know exactly what to do. There is that element of, you have to try things and see how your body responds. Right. And do you find that, uh and see how your body responds. Right. And do you find that people, your clients, they kind of learn their body's sweet spots, almost in a sense of like doing, let's say, let's say calories per body weight or calories by body weight, where if they want to, if they're going to be, if they're going to start, you know, losing fat, then they, they just know that their body tends to respond well to certain calorie ranges for that versus kind of maintaining or bulking? Yes, yes and no.

I would say yes in that they generally in the beginning, they say, oh, I typically – here's what my macros have been. Here are my fat loss macros. And then I'll ask them, okay, but has that been working? And they probably say no or yes. But also with each reverse diet cycle that they go through because you know i have a few clients who have been through a number of cycles with me they go fat loss reverse fat loss reverse back and forth right and each time the reverse diet cycle gets better and better you know they get better and better results they're able to push their calories

a little bit higher and later on they're able to when they diet down down, the fat loss is a little bit easier. Why do you think that is? Who knows? I wish I knew. That's all I'm asking because I've seen the same thing, but I haven't been able to find a good answer. All the hormones, and I think the body just – my best guess would be that the body learns to... It's like it gets better at mobilizing and burning fat over time. I don't know.

Yeah. And I think maybe the starvation response becomes a little bit mitigated over time. I want to say just from being in a caloric surplus, you know, with reverse dieting and whatnot, but I don't know for sure. Yeah. I mean, have you also found that maybe even with your body or with the people that you work with, that the longer you stay lean and, um, by lean in terms of just like to put some numbers out there. So, so listeners, what I'm talking about for guys, I would say

under 10% or 10% or under, and for girls probably like 20% or under the longer you stay in those percentages and, and just, you know, making sure that you're not making sure you're eating enough, but kind of pushed your, uh, as much as you can eat to stay in those body fat percentages, the easier it is. Uh, and the more you can more wiggle room, you kind of gain, I guess, over time. Oh yeah, I completely agree. And I think that, you know, there's an argument out there for modifying your body fat standpoint and whatnot. that there's an argument out there for modifying your body fat standpoint and whatnot. And I think this does speak to that.

And I think for most people, ultimately, their goal is to be able to maintain a certain level of leanness year-round. And I think that this can definitely help, especially with reverse dieting, especially if you are meticulous with your tracking and consistent with your adherence and you take it slow enough and slow is going to be relative from one individual to the next, that you can still make strength gains, still feel great and still without, without, you know, having to buy a whole new wardrobe. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's not just a girl thing. That's also, I mean, for me personally, although I'm at a point now with my body where I'm not really trying to like build a bunch more muscle, I'm just, I'm kind of happy to where I'm at and I just like to get stronger. But I know a lot of, a lot of guys coming out that also have that too, where like once they have that foundation and you know, they're willing to go through the

expansion and shrinkage in the beginning, but there's a point where they're like, okay, I'm pretty happy with my body now. I would like to continue making gains, but I would prefer to not have to get up to 15%, 16% and then come back to 10% because you have your bulking clothes and then you have your I look good clothes. I have been there. Have you found that going in a surplus-deficit type of approach where you're in a slight surplus on your training days and you make up for the surplus with the deficit on your off days? Have you ever tried anything like that? You know what?

I don't do that. I do isocaloric with myself and my clients. My reasoning is more of a mental standpoint. Well, two reasons. One, I like to afford more room for fats on my days off. Okay. I lower my carbs, increase my fats, and protein pretty much – You can still do that, though.

I mean, if you're in a deficit, you can go high fat. You can, but not as – well, if you're as small as I am, you really don't have much wiggle room at all. True, true. How much do you weigh, like 100 pounds or something? I'm 107 pounds. It's not very big. I really cannot afford to eat very much. So that, and also too, I found that for, I don't know if it's true for males also, but with females, a lot of times, if they know that they're eating fewer calories on their days off from training, that makes them less

likely to take a day off. Not only that, which can be a good thing, but if you're training seven days a day, that can be really bad. So I try not to discourage off days. So I like to keep calories the same. And that's the approach that I've been using for the past two and a half years, and I have not had problems with it with getting. Yeah, no, that's actually, I like those points. I mean, I'm, uh, in, in my book, bigger, leaner, stronger than that.

I have a book for women feeling stronger, which is more kind of goes over all the basics. I recommend isocaloric and in, in a book that I wrote more for advanced weightlifters, I like, and personally for me, I like the surplus deficit approach specifically for staying lean, staying under 10% body fat, and still being able to make gains in the gym and have good workouts where I have, you know, that small surplus and I'm able to eat quite a few carbs on my training days. But I do, you know, I can see where you're coming from in the psychological aspects. Your side makes sense as well. Have you found that you feel okay on your off days? You don't have a problem with the lower calories mentally? Yeah. My body's strange. Uh, it, I don't get hungry, like period. I could just not eat all day and I don't even get hungry. Uh, I can, I don't know. It's very, I can be very, very flexible with what I'm doing with my food and my body is just like, all right, whatever.

Really, it's weird. I can fast for ridiculous periods of time. I'm not really into it. I think IF is okay. Actually, what I do is on the weekends, I usually just take my calories and stuff them into three meals. I eat my first meal around lunch. I get to just enjoy three meals. I'm active on the weekends. I, I'm into golf, so that's like my sport. And so I'm out doing stuff and,

you know, burning a bit of calories that way. But, but yeah, for me personally, um, I don't know. Cutting is very easy for me. I, I, I've actually like asked various people that are smarter than me and know a lot more. Like why, why is that? Why do I legitimately never get hungry? Like my version of hunger is I feel like I could eat some food. Oh my gosh. I know. I mean, it's, it's like unfair, but I've asked around that I've asked doctors with, you know, at Stanford educated doctors and stuff. And there was, it was, I haven't really found a great, uh, haven't gotten much insight into it other than one thing one person did tell me was that kind of that's a good thing that that is technically how the body that that means that like in terms

of leptin and ghrelin and in other hormones that things are balanced and that's not a bad sign because i was wondering i was like is something wrong with me that i you know other people that work for me they'll be cutting and they're like complaining all day and they can't wait until they can eat. And I'm like, what? I don't, I never get like that. I don't care. So along those lines, are your, are your fat loss macros pretty high? Well, I guess, I don't know. No, no. I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm like a meso ecto type. Um, very, very normal. Like, you know, my, I've found, um, I hang out probably around like 8% body fat, maybe seven. It's hard to say when you start getting down there, but, my, I've found, um, I hang out probably around like 8% body fat, maybe seven. It's hard to say when you start getting down there, but, um, without getting Dexed and if I,

I weigh 188 pounds. So if I were like bulking, I would be eating probably 3,300 a day and that's it. Like I'd have to, that's not really that super high. No. So when I, yeah, when I cut, I started about 27 and I just ride that as far as I can go. And then I, uh, you know, drop it down about a hundred calories a week and to, until I get to where I want to be. And I, that don't go below BMR. Sure. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, I just want to get your, get your opinion on that. Um, question about refeeding. Do you think it's necessary when you're reverse dieting? No. What if you has crash dieted and now they're coming back up? Do you think it's necessary?

I guess it depends on where their calories are at that point. I have never had to refeed a client while reverse dieting. Okay. I think there's a strong argument for incorporating refeeds when you're in fat loss or calories are low and whatnot. But I think when you're bringing them up, I don't know. I just don't see a need for it. Yeah. No, I don't disagree.

It's just a question I'm asked, so I want to cover whatever people ask me. I thought it would be a good idea to cover. Because if you're on a fat loss phase, then obviously your hormones are going to be not working optimally. The purpose of a refeed is for hormonal benefit, right? And psychological. Right. It does have psychological benefit. But I think when you're reverse dieting, you're technically bringing yourself out of a caloric deficit instead of going deeper into a deficit.

Yeah. No, I agree. I don't think there's any reason for it other than, I mean, there's the psychological, but I think, I mean, with my experience, people are pretty happy once they can start eating more. They don't even feel, you know, they're just happy to. But I will say that with clients,

anyone who reverse dieting, I found that the first few weeks tend to be the hardest from a mental standpoint because, you know because you're kind of straddling that line between, oh, my macros are still kind of low, but I'm not actively dieting anymore and trying to wrap your mind around the concept of reverse dieting and potentially putting on some weight. And that can be really scary for a lot of people.

But I say if they ask about a refeed or anything, I just say, you know what? In a few weeks, your macros are going to just get higher and higher. And I would just say, stick it out, stick it out for a few weeks and you'll be fine. Yeah, I agree. Uh, you had mentioned earlier, you mentioned it several times that, um, this concept of reverse dieting is not just applicable to, uh, coming out of coming out of a deficit. How does it work for somebody? Let's say that you have a guy or girl who's relatively lean. They're in a good place to start focusing on muscle growth, which for me, like what I generally recommend, I don't know if this is how you go with it, but for guys,

it's probably best to hang out somewhere between 10 and 11 and probably 15 or 16 or so. If your body fat gets too high, insulin sensitivity goes to shit and, uh, you tend to put on more fat and have more trouble building muscle. And for girls probably like 20 to 25 or so. Um, do you find that to be generally true? And then I'll get to the reverse diet question. I'm just, yeah. Can you reword your question? I'm not sure if I'm understanding. Yeah, sorry. I just kind of a little bit tangential there, but, um, in terms of first, in terms of reverse dieting, if you're not coming out of a deficit, um, being used for bulking, so, or being used for focusing on like, okay, you're going to put yourself in a surplus.

Oh, to gain muscle. Yeah. To gain muscle. How does that work? And why, and why, as opposed to, cause like, if you go on bodybuilding.com and you search for like bulking program, you're going to get, what you're probably going to get is a program that's going to tell you to just eat an obscene amount of food right off the bat. Like, you know what I mean? Like, Oh, okay. Start eating 4,000 calories a day. Like go mad, go drink a gallon of milk a day. Start there. You know what I mean? As opposed to, and you know, I get emailed by people that they people that they'll see different recommendations of mine. They'll be like, really? For bulking, isn't that really low?

And so, because I'm of the same mind as you. So what's the, I guess you could call it more of a clean bulk kind of reverse diet approach of going about it. Man, the general rules don't differ for someone who's crashed at it versus someone who is healthy. I would say that if the individual is pretty lean, and for me, I say if you really want to get aggressive with the macro increases and you are okay with putting on some extra fat, then we can be a little more aggressive with the macro pushing. What would be aggressive? Just an example so listeners know what we're talking about. Maybe every week you increase their macros by, I don't know, 25 grams carbs, 5 grams fat, whatever it may be. For example, my fiance, his macros, we've worked him up to 200 grams of protein,

440 grams of carbs, and 120 grams of fat, and he's still not gaining weight. So for him, I would say, okay, since you're not gaining weight, in fact, you're kind of losing weight, I would tack on 50 grams of carbs and 5 grams of fat for the next week. So it really depends on how the person is responding. And he obviously does not have any kind of history of cross-dieting or anything. He's just a hard gainer. How does he do that food-wise? There's another thing where I get emails of guys like, how do I eat more food?

They're so not used to it. What kind of foods does he eat without just being like, fuck it, I'm eating candy bars? Right. like fuck it i'm eating you know candy bars right well first off i will say that um i know that his we are aware that his fat intake is relatively high compared to the typical bodybuilder or what whatever you want to call it and that's because from a lifestyle standpoint uh well me you know i'm big i'm very big into behavior change i know that we were just so we were tracking his macros before we actually just kind of like a one week food blog just to see where his macros were at before I prescribed him numbers. And we found that his fat macros were so – every day.

It was around 150, some days even 170, really, really, really high. And so I said, okay, well, I'm going to cut your fat macros just a little bit and bump up your carb macros. But I still want you to be able toros but I still want you to be able to do this. I want you to be able to actually adhere to these numbers. It's a matter of not making too drastic of a change and that's why his macros are as

high as they are. He likes fatty type foods. His breakfasts tend to be around almost 1,500 calories and he's type foods. Yeah. And so his breakfasts tend to be around, around almost 1500 calories. Yeah. And he's eating things like breakfast burritos, hash browns. Um, he'll have a fruit juice helps a ton with meeting a carb macros. Yeah. And he, he goes through about a gallon a week of orange juice. It's thing. It's like 25 carbs a cup or something. Yeah. And it helps so much. Drinking

your calories is... It's like the opposite of what you want to do in your diet when you're cutting. Exactly. But he obviously, he has to make a concerted effort to meet his macros every day. Yeah. He has to be really intentional about making sure he packs enough snacks and everything to work. And then, so pretty much during the day, he'll just make sure he eats as much as he possibly can. And then he comes home and he, he finds out how many, how much of each macro nutrient he has left just because he has so much room, you know? Yeah. Um, generally I would not advise it for someone who does not have that kind of flexibility. I would say you have to plan ahead for him him, he comes home and he's still –

He has to eat so much. Yeah, there's like no way that he's going to come home and be like, what, I have nothing left? Right, and we resort to a lot of carb-dense foods, things like we're big into quesadillas lately, cheese. He'll probably have some kind of candy during the day, whether it be gummy bears or something like Reese's something. And then at night, well, definitely one of his favorites is a protein shake with Nutella.

It really helps to get those calories up there. So we have our little secret weapons that we use. Yeah. And for people that don't, let's say like, I mean, because there is a point where you have to eat. So if you have to eat so much food, you just run out of ideas. But what do you think for a person that let's say they're because the people that I run into are more like they've gotten around 3000 calories a day. And they're so used to, you know, and these are usually ecto type guys that are so used to eating, you know, maybe one or two meals a day. They haven't had much of an appetite for their entire life. And now they're, you know, trying one or two meals a day. They haven't had much of an appetite for their, for their entire life. And now they're, you know, trying to, trying to get all this food in,

let's say someone's around 3000 calories a day. What type of foods would like, if you were going to be reverse starting that person up, what kind of foods would you recommend? Uh, like let's say carb dense type things. Anyone can find fats, go drink some olive oil. Like that's easy. But, uh, I mean, not that you actually probably want to do that, but it's not hard to increase fats more cause they're not very filling. But what about carbs? Um, so first off, I will say I will only recommend foods that they actually like eating because, you know, if they don't like it, then they're not going to keep it up for very long. Right. Besides that, uh, what are the common things? I, my best, my, my go-to recommendation tends to be fruit juice.

I would say drink it or even milk if you're not an oxytocin tolerant. Low-fiber carbs tend to do well just because you're able to eat more of them without feeling full or without feeling sick, without running into digestive issues. Yeah. Like low-fiber fruits, right? Right. And, you know, trying to meet really high macros using just whole foods is kind of a recipe for disaster because you feel so sick. And you get so, you know, you feel like you're stuffing yourself.

Yeah. So I like smoothies, fruit juice. I've never looked at the macros of buckwheat. I have not. It makes no sense. It doesn't taste good. My mom cooked it one time, so I thought I was cutting, right? So I thought, okay, cup, it's brown rice, whatever.

I thought the same thing. It's like 100 plus carbs per cup. I had to check it like five different places. Actually, you know what? I just learned a few months ago, and I don't know why. I never even paid attention to this. Even jasmine rice or just rice in general is very carb dense. You get very, very little for, let's say, 50 grams of carbs.

It's not very much at all. It's really disheartening. Yeah, yeah, I know. But that's like, for example, that's the type of food I like to recommend. Check out whole grain pasta. I mean, two ounces of pasta is like 40 carbs or something. Two ounces.

That's the other thing. We do a lot of pasta. We do lasagna and different pasta types. And that with obviously you throw in the pasta sauce, that you can easily get over 100 grams of carbs in a meal. Oh, easy. That's not even a filling meal. That's just whatever.

That's just dinner. Yeah. You make a massive bowl of pasta. You can hit 200 carbs. And then you've felt like you've eaten some food for sure. But you can get there with sauce. It's sad. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. So that's also for the listeners. I mean, it's good to know that there's – just think these kind of things, even when you're when you're planning for weight loss, for instance, there are certain foods like when I'm cutting, I avoid pastas, I don't do much rice, like I've changed, I changed to less calorie dense foods, just so I can eat more and feel full and feel whatever without like, you know, eating this piddly little meal where there's my, you know, my little two ounces, my three bites of pasta or something. And that's, that's my meal with some chicken or something. Yeah, I agree. As far as fat loss. Yeah. I, you know what, now that I think about it, I do change my food sources too. When I, when my macros get low, let's say I have a photo shoot coming up and I want to look good for the bikini shoot or whatever I'm doing. I tend to resort to squash varieties. Squash is awesome. I love squash. Squash varieties for my carbs because they're- Butternut squash, it almost feels like a cheat. It's so good, but it's so low in carb. I love butternut squash. It's great. Acorn squash is so good with... Well,

I kind of cheat. I eat it with butter and brown sugar, but- Yeah, but you can get rid of a little bit of that. Like you don't have to – Yeah, but it's so good. And I also find ways to get in my veggies in multiple different ways, not just with salads but maybe sauteed and steamed. And lately I've been making the cucumber tomato salad just because it's, it's just, it's, I still enjoy it. I get my nutrients and it's very low calorie. Yeah. I like, uh, I'm big on vegetables too. I usually, I'm kind of into one pot cooking these days cause it's fast and you can very easy. Yeah. Very easy. And you can get a lot of good recipes out there. That's actually gonna be my next cookbook I'm putting together. Yeah. Doing a bunch. And I like vegetables or certain vegetables. I mean, certain things like peas you look at and peas are actually pretty calorie dense for Oh, yeah. So so peas are not so I mean, I it depends on

doing with my my calories, of course, but then something like green beans, for instance, not so calorie dense, very filling. So you know, you listener, if you check out different veggies, remember that veggies count a lot of people ask, like, do I need to count because that's one of the one of the quote unquote, clean eating things out there is like your vegetables don't count. Eat as much as you want. Oh, right. But, oh, okay. Go eat nine cups of peas a day and let's see. And then wonder why you're not losing fat. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, um, but if, if you get familiar with, with vegetables, you can get like, you know, even when I'm cutting, my dinner is pretty, pretty massive, even though I'll save a decent amount of calories for it. But because it's a lot of vegetables and plus some protein, I get to eat a lot of food and really enjoy it.

Yeah. Without having to eat, you know, 200 grams of carbs. that the main determinant of whether or not you're actually going to reach your fallacy goal is 100% a mindset issue. If you feel like you're kind of being forced into dieting or if you like, you know, if you have the victim mindset and you feel like, oh, I'm not allowed to eat these things or I just, I can't do this. I can't do that. Then at some point you're going to give up. At some point you're going to self-sabotage you're not gonna make it you're gonna get discouraged but I found especially if you're utilizing flexible dieting you are aware that you can you can't eat anything you want but you choose to eat foods that are physique friendly and fit

your macros and you understand fully that this is completely temporary and any hunger you may feel is one it's part of the process, but two, it's not gonna last forever. Then it becomes infinitely easier and you can actually kind of enjoy the ride as crazy as that sounds by dieting. Absolutely. I mean, I, I, this, these are the things I preach, preach, preach. Um, and, and it be, like you said, it becomes a lifestyle. It becomes where, and then, and then you just, you get used to it. Like, I don't know about you, but for me, you know, I will like you. I generally have to stay lean. I have to stay looking good because I have to do, sometimes it's photo shoots. Sometimes it's even just for, for, I don't know, for maybe it's me just being vain or something, but for social media, like if

I'm going to do selfies, I'm not going to do selfies if I'm like not lean. What's the point of that? I don't even like doing selfies. I think social media is stupid. Yeah. No, I understand. But yeah. But then certain times of year, well, it's like, okay, holidays are coming. You don't have to have the anxiety about – go enjoy yourself. Who cares? Like when I – if I – my wife is from Germany.

So we'll go there. We usually go there once a year. And the food in Europe is great. And I just have a cutoff point. Like I'm willing to gain five pounds of fat and then I stop. So, you know, I'm just going to go enjoy myself and then come back and get rid of it. So you start getting to think with dieting like that as opposed to like weighing yourself every day with anxiety like, oh, shit, another pound. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, that's very true, especially with the holidays coming up soon. I've had questions from clients over the past week or so asking me, you know, this and this is coming up, and I'm feeling really nervous. What do I do? And I have to remind them, you are in complete control of what you put into your body. Just because you're surrounded by holiday food doesn't mean you have to eat everything. And I also say, you know, just because the food's there and it's delicious doesn't mean you have to eat the whole serving you don't have to eat the whole pie you can have a small slice and be just as satisfied in fact you

might enjoy yourself more because you won't be distracted by how how full you feel or and you know what i mean and there i just remind them there's so much more to the holidays than the food exactly yeah and then there's also a point of just enjoyment. Like for me, when I, you know, where I live, there are some decent restaurants around or whatever,

but not the type of food that if I'm, if we're in, you know, we'll go around, go to Paris, let me go to nice. I don't care. Like that's an experience.

That's food. That's the food I don't get. So yeah, I'm going to go. Yeah. I'm not going to be like a glutton about it, but I'm not going to be looking at the menu going, Oh, well, I can't order that because it's maybe too high fat. I don't care.

I'm going to do my thing, come back a little bit fatter, diet for a couple weeks, and have enjoyed the entire experience. You know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. If someone goes on vacation, I do not allow them to count macros. They're not going to put their food scale. They're not going to ask for all these substitutes at a restaurant because that completely defeats the purpose of going on vacation in the first place. Yeah. You know?

And that's not to say that you can eat whatever you want. Obviously, I think the rules of mindfulness and posture will always apply every single day. But you can definitely have a good time and not blow up. Yeah. Like, I mean, do you personally, like for me, I usually plan on doing like, uh, my dinner is going to be where I'm going to eat probably the majority of my day's calories. And I'm going to be a little bit lighter throughout the day. That's how I like to do it. And I find it kind of minimizes, you still get to enjoy yourself, but I'm also, I'm not like a food obsessed. Some people, they, I mean, a guy who works for me, he went to Spain for 10 days or maybe 11 days.

And he came back like 13 pounds heavier. Like, I was like, his name's Kareem, like Kareem, how do you even do that? And he was like, wow, that's actually less than I thought. I'm like, dude, you gained, you gained like a pound of fat a day. You're crazy. Well, his breakfasts were a kilo of pastries. That's how he started. So there's that. That's just outrageous over the top. You don't have to do that, but you can still go and enjoy yourself and come back a few pounds fatter. Oh, big deal. And then you, you know, you diet for three weeks and it's done. Right. Wow. That's kind of impressive. Actually, he's an impressive human for sure yeah well you know what i think when it comes to dedication well yeah i know it is with with vacationing um i would not

be averse to recommending um i think i think for vacationing a tool like intermittent fasting could work yeah just from a lifestyle standpoint and from a practicality standpoint because you're probably going to be sleeping more so you'll be sleeping in and you may not be as hungry in the mornings you can push your meals back during the day and maybe just three meals a day two three meals a day but bigger in size so you can really enjoy yourself i think that that can be a very helpful tool for some people yeah i totally totally agree agree. Yeah. Okay, cool. I mean, we could probably go on forever. I like to keep them at least, you know, under an hour. People start complaining.

So where can people find you and your books and, you know, the rest of your work? Well, I have, so all my, my brand name is SoHeFit. It's just S-O-H-E-E-F-I-T. And my website is SoHeFit.com. My Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages are all SoHeFit. It's just S-O-H-E-E-F-I-T. My website is SoHeFit.com. My Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages are all SoHeFit. My email is up on my website. You can find it through my contact form. My e-books, my first one is...

Tell us about your books. My first one is How to Count Macros. That was published in January of this year. Cool. You can find that at howtocountmacros.com. Also link for the post on MFL and stuff. I'll link everything, but just for the listeners so they know where it is. Yeah, and it pretty much is exactly what it says.

It teaches you how to count macros. What does that mean exactly? Is it like how – tell quickly about what does it go over right so if i were to say hey okay you're my client here based on your information that you've given me i'm going to prescribe you this many grams of protein this many grams of carbs and this many grams of fats and um the how to count macros book will teach you how to plan your days ahead of time or plan your food, eat the foods that you enjoy eating while meeting your macros, which will then help you work toward your fitness goal, whether that be fat loss or residing or whatever it may be. Cool. So it's like all about basically how to take your numbers and turn it into workable meal plans that you can follow and how to tweak everything.

Yeah. And it also includes tips and tricks can follow and how to tweak everything. Yeah. And it also includes tips and tricks. Cool. Shortcuts and whatnot. Yeah. And then my second one, which was launched just about a month ago, which with Lane Norton is Reverse Dieting. You can find it at reversedietingbook.com.

And as we talked about earlier in today's podcast, it's exactly teaches you the principles of reverse dieting. And I will say that the e-book is great for those of you who are looking to go through a reverse diet yourself. Because we also have, it teaches you how to reverse diet. to reverse diet, but you also get access to an exclusive Facebook group for reverse diet product customers where you can have access to myself and Lane 24-7 pretty much, and you can answer all the follow-up questions you want, and you also have the support of the rest of the group, which is really great. Yeah, that's awesome. And I've looked through.

I haven't seen the How to Count Macros book actually, but Lane did send me over the reverse diet book, and I think it's great. So I definitely endorse it. And I'm based on what's in it. I'm sure that how to count macros book is great too, because you know what you're talking about and you actually have real experience working, working with people and get results. But you know, there's a, that's, that's kind of rare in this space I've found. Thank you. Well, I'm, I'm, it's, they're they've both been uh doing pretty well so far so i'm happy yeah yeah cool okay great so um that's that's everything people know how to find you and i think i think this was uh a great interview i know a lot of a lot of the things that i get

asked about so i think everyone's gonna like it yeah i hope it helps yeah cool thanks again hey it's mike again hope you like the podcast if you did uh go ahead and subscribe i put out Yeah, actually. I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.