Weights and Plates Podcast - #81 - Strength Training for the Obese Trainee

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

We've talked about how an overweight trainee should approach strength training with an eye toward "recomping," that is, changing their body composition with more muscle and less fat. But what about very overweight or obese trainees? Dr. Santana and Coach Trent discuss their experiences training obese people wanting to lose weight and get strong in their novice phase of training.   Online Diet Coaching and Strength Training with Dr. Robert Santana https://weightsandplates.com/online-coaching/     Weights & Plates on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@weights_and_plates?si=ebAS8sRtzsPmFQf- Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream Email: [e-mail]  

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I'm Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. What's going on, brother? Brother! Not much, brother. I still think that story's funny when you said the guy's like, well, if 20 pounds of lean mass you gotta take steroids brother you better get on steroids brother man i wish i could find that guy again we could interview him on the show do you think he's still lifted i don't know i like to think he is i like to think he's one of those he's one of those lifers he probably trains at uh uh metro flex right you know because this was arlington texas he's probably he's probably one of those lifers at metro flex you know he's like 64 and he's uh just booking it so he trained with ronnie coleman trained with ronnie coleman trained with uh branch

warren you know i uh i did uh it's kind of funny i when i was 14, 15, I had a job in the summer as an assistant counselor at Camp Thurman, which was this kids day camp that's in the South, kind of South Arlington area. Right. And it's not far from Metroflex. And one of the counselors that I assisted, they all had names they would take on, like Toast, I think was his name. Toast? Toast. Yeah. They would all have like, you know, kind of names that were camp names. And anyway,

so Toast, he was like kind of jacked, you know, not, not, not super, not like a, not yoked or not a crazy physique or anything, but you know, you could tell like even at age 14, 15, when I knew nothing about this stuff, I could tell he was pretty jacked. And, uh, he trained with, uh, he trained with branch Warren. He was kind of a casual training partner there because I remember one of his buddies who was not, uh, I mean, he might, this guy might've been a pro. Uh, I don't know. He was certainly not a name that's famous, but he came by one time with toast. And I remember seeing this guy. Did he eat toast? I don't know.

That's a dumb name. But I remember seeing this guy, this friend of his that was training at Metroflex, who definitely looked like an IFBB pro type guy. I just remember he couldn't turn his neck. So somebody said his name. It was a yo. And he has't turn his neck. So, like, somebody said his name. He was like, yo. And he has to, like, turn his whole body. He's got to rotate his whole torso in order to look over. Because his traps were just, I guess, so fucking big, he couldn't turn his neck.

Well, that's a good problem to have, right? Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. So, anyway, Toast ran in some interesting circles there. He probably knew the guy at GNC too. Did he know Ronnie? I don't know. I have to imagine he would have met him because this would have been 2003, 2004.

So Ronnie was still, Ronnie was a cop for either the Arlington, like Arlington PD, or maybe it was Grand Prairie PD. I can't remember which, which police force he was working for, but he was a cop up until like year 2000 or so. And then I think he went full-time bodybuilder after that. And he competed what, until like 2005, 2008, 2010, somewhere around there. I don't know much about bodybuilding careers. But, yeah, it was certainly the same time where Ronnie was at his peak. I think Ronnie was early 2000. Yeah. So, anyway, there you go. Toast and the guy from GNC. What was the guy from GNC's name?

I don't know. Was his name Hulk Hogan? He definitely looked like, man, you know, it's kind of funny. I hadn't thought about this before, but there are a number of guys that were in my social sphere. They're not, they weren't friends. I wouldn't even call them acquaintances, but they're just people that I knew that left an impression looking back on it. I didn't think about it at the time, but there were these like really jacked guys that I knew in, in, in my sort of social circle. And it would be things like that. It'd be the guy at the GNC store. He's like, you know, you better get on storage, brother.

It's the guy at the camp who's friends with bodybuilders. It's my junior high football coach, one of them. I remember his name, Coach Mashburn. This would have been eighth grade, so I would have been, yeah, 14. He was a reservist. I think he was a Marine. Yeah, he was in the Marine Reserves. And he had served in, what would that have been? Afghanistan? Yeah. Afghanistan would have been prior to that, right? So this has been 2000, yeah, 2003, 2004. So he had, he had, he had done a tour, had come back and he was in the reserves and he took this teaching job for like two years at my junior high. And this guy was just huge. I mean, that guy was definitely on gear. Like, there's no way, there's no way, but he was just massive, like huge neck, like 20 inch neck. And, uh, yeah, that guy, I remember he would, he would, um, he would lift in the, in the gym. And like, we, this was the very first time we'd ever touched

weights. And it was certainly the first time I'd ever touched weights. We had a little gym in that junior high and the eighth graders were allowed to lift. Seventh graders didn't, eighth graders did. And so he was like the first guy to introduce us all to lifting and he would do crazy stuff like he would just yell and like he was benching like 405 for some reps and He would just scream in the gym and then rack it and he'd go right like profanities up on the up on the whiteboard there Yeah, it was it was wild That guy didn't last very long but he left an impression i remember uh well i was thinking of a couple of things i have some guys like that too but

you know i saw a while back that mr hulk hogan got fact checked and told that not everybody's his brother i don't know i'll let you do you want to tell him that I don't you want to deliver that message did you see that one yeah I think I saw that yeah fact-check that sounds like an onion article it probably is no there's a guy so he there are a couple guys so there's this guy that worked at this supplement shop that i used to go to because they had sci-fit protein powder and it tasted like a milkshake that stuff's good i don't know if they still make it anymore this was 20 22 years ago probably okay three years yeah that's

rare for something that tastes good back then yeah that exactly used to taste terrible exactly this one tasted like i felt like you were cheating, dude. It tasted like a milkshake. It was called Syfit. Okay. We'd go to this place in Joliet, Illinois. So it's like a city south of Chicago, about 45 minutes for Illinoisans or Chicagoans, you know where that is. And we would get this stuff, and they had this guy working there who at the time was probably in his 40s, early 50s. His hair was white.

I think it was salt and pepper at that point, so probably 40s, early 50s. You know, his hair was white, you know. I think it was salt and pepper at that point. So probably 40s. And he said he was just helping out there, right? And he was, I remember going in and what did he tell us? He said, there's a couple things he said. First, he's like, shit, what did he say? I think he might have told us to drink more milk because he was definitely from RIP's era, you know? Okay, yeah.

But the two big things that were happening was there was a guy who you and I would consider jacked now, but he was, like, you know, not ripped. He was, like, this big fucking dude. Yeah. You know, no gut. Swole. Yeah, just swole. He had pretty defined arms, I remember.

But he just was, like, a big dude, big traps, big shoulders. And he's like, oh, yeah, he was telling us, he's like, you guys got to eat big if you want to get big. You want to look like this guy, right? And I was like, dude, that guy's huge. And then there was this one skinny guy in our group who had abs, and that's all he had. He was like a buck 55 at six foot. He's like, yeah, when he said that, I was like, nah. And I'm like, seriously, dude, you don't want to be that i was like nah and i'm like seriously dude you

don't want to be that big what the fuck is wrong with you you know so this whole fight club thing was starting to pick up steam around this area you know but i remember that he's like yeah you want to look like this guy right and he's like this big jacked fucking dude you know yeah and then uh he told us saturated fat is or saturated fat's not that bad and then i was like whoa you know because everything i'd heard was that saturated fat is right that was the food pyramid days yeah yeah yeah and this was 2002 so he's like no it's not that bad it doesn't cause heart disease and then like what he's like you should do your research he's like look at the eskimos he's like they eat they live off whale blubber and that's nothing but saturated fat why aren't they dropping dead of heart attacks

you know and uh you know he was mostly right on that and you know later on we found out that a lot of that stuff was bullshit and oversold. But the bigger thing is just, it depends on demographics. Some guys are sensitive to certain diets more than others. I've certainly seen that in working as a nutritionist. So, yeah. So, what the fuck are we talking about? Yeah. So, we're going to talk about, so today we want to talk about losing weight for the obese person. And we realized like when we were kicking around this topic, we're like, oh, you know, we've talked about weight loss for the person with the dad bod, the skinny fat person. And a big part of that, right, was first building a large base of muscle, which, which involves for a lot of people gaining weight when they're in that position. But then at some point they may want to strip some fat off that they had gained in that process. And so they would have to go on a cut later down the road. And then we have addressed in passing on multiple episodes, what someone who was starting out from a, you know, over fat or

obese standpoint would do, but we haven't dedicated a whole episode to it. So that's what we wanted to do today is talk about what do you do if you are obese, which I want you to kind of help us understand what does that mean from a clinical standpoint? What do you do? You know, how do you approach weight loss when you're in this, in this boat? First of all, it's kind of hard to even classify obese anymore, because it just doesn't take into account enough variables. So yeah, if you go off BMI, clinical obesity is a BMI of 30 or greater, right? Okay, only accounts for height and weight. So doesn't account for structure you know frame size doesn't account for muscle mass you know so if you're a lifter getting to a BMI at 30 might happen if

you get strong enough yeah I touched 30 a couple of times yeah I'm getting close to it now you know so then you people say oh use body fat percentage well body fat percentage again it's ratio of muscle and fat the limits of the instruments used to measure uh body composition or body fat percentage uh are one problem that's a whole nother discussion but the main issue there is it um tends to focus much on the percent fat and not the total body weight for height, you know? Right, yeah. Because you could be 30% body fat because that 70% muscle mass is a very low raw number, you know? Yeah, so you could be a relatively normal body weight and be 30%.

Exactly. Normal in terms of like not extreme. Yeah, it doesn't take into account body weight, you know? You're going to look at the percentage, and the person who looks at that at face value might want to get very skinny to get the fat percentage low then there's waist circumference which i think works good most of the time but again if you got a guy who's 6 8 is a 40 inch um abdominal circumference the same as a guy who's 5 88 you know what i mean yeah obviously not yeah yeah exactly so i think the theme here that i've seen with all these various ways of classifying

whether somebody's too fat or not uh is that it works for average height you know once you start getting to the average height average frame size, whatever that means. I guess say small to medium frame if you want to just throw it there. Right. Because very small frame, that's not the majority. Very large frame is not the majority. So small to medium frame people that are of mediocre height, 5'9 for a guy, 5'4 for a woman. I think that that's probably true most of the time for an untrained person. When somebody's trained, it all goes out the window.

So how do we assess this then, right? I think waist circumference is probably decent for a dude. Hip circumference is probably decent for a woman. And the bigger that is, the more likely you probably are carrying too much fat to the point where it's impairing your ability to function, impairing how you feel, and probably causing some metabolic disturbances if you're old enough or fall into certain demographic groups that are at higher risk for some of these problems, right? Right.

So, you know, if you have a big bowling ball gut, okay, you're probably fat, you know? Yeah. Plain and simple. You know, if you're active and strong, that's better. You know, fat guy who's strong and aerobically conditioned is you know healthier or less unhealthy than a fat guy who's you know sitting on his ass eating cheetos all day you know so yeah if you have a big giant belly or uh you know a lot of body fat in your lower body you know if you you're an exaggerated pear shape you know like just kind of you know i think i like ansel keys his response

to this he was a guy who you know kind of coined or popularized bmi when asked about this is like if you want to know if you're too fat just look in the mirror and you know something to that effect you know right yeah yeah um so it's it's so subjective like the objective measurements don't always apply but you know if you've you've, you know, if you're fat, okay. And if you have body image issues and you have a normal BMI and a high fat percentage, you know, that's a different topic that we hit on a lot, but you know, if you're tend to be very round, you know, that's probably one way to look at it. You know, if you tend to be very, very round to the point where it's impairing your physical function, you could probably afford to lose some pounds.

Now, some people are just going to have that shape no matter what. A better diet will reduce the magnitude of it. So it's not so exaggerated. You know, a fat guy who eats well isn't going to be as fat as if he eats like shit. You know, there are things you can do to make the situation less shitty. You know, just like I'm never going to deadlift 700, but I've gotten myself over five. If I manage to stay healthy, might hit six. And that's, you know, because I enjoy lifting heavy weights. I've committed myself to it, right?

But take someone even less committed, less, and I'm not, I wouldn't say that I'm athletic. I have a 24-inch vertical jump. and I'm not, I wouldn't say that I'm athletic. I have a 24 inch vertical jump. My VO two max, the best was like 57 mils per kilogram per minute, or like four liters, I think. So I'm pretty mediocre in terms of athletics, but you know, I guess if you look at norms, I'm slightly above average, you know, whereas the top of the top 40 inch vertical jump and has VO two maxes in the sixties and seventies, you know, 80s. I think that, no, the 80s is more rare, but 60s and 70s, that's, you know, elite endurance athletes. So, okay, I'm maybe, you know, half a standard deviation from the mean, maybe one, you know.

Right, right. But, you know, when I look at people who struggle, you know, people who tend to just look at food and gain weight or people that spend years to, you know, deadlift 315, you know, people tend to just look at food and gain weight or people that spend years to, you know, deadlift 315, you know, uh, you know, you have to work a little bit harder, you know, to be less below average, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, yeah, so that that's really helpful. So first of all, you can't get too tied up in the official, you know, official designations of these things. Cause yeah, it does definitely does not tell the whole story, but I'll say like, I've primarily have experience with what I would classify as obese men. And I would say that like a typical

guy in this category would be, let's say five, 10, 285 pounds, let's say, you know, that's, that's kind of, you know, or, or 5'10", 2, let's say 5'10", 250 to 300 and not extremely strong, right? So we're not going to, we're going to count out the, uh, the like world-class lifters. Cause there are some, uh, who was at Serge Redding, you know, the great Serge Redding. He was, he was 5'8", 300 or something like that. But he also clean and pressed over 500 pounds. So he doesn't count. But yeah, these are guys who are either untrained or sort of, you know, novice to early intermediate sort of level of training. And they're, yeah, average height, 5'8", 5'10", somewhere between 250 and 300 pounds. That's, that's who I have seen in this category. Now, there are a couple people that I have worked with that are outside of that, on the more extreme end, 400 pounds, 420 pounds, 430 pounds.

pounds, 430 pounds. But I'd say most of the people who are in this sort of obese category this year more in the like sort of high 200s at a normal male body height. Does that sound about right to you? Yeah, yeah, that's probably right. If you're if you're a dude of normal height 250 at 300, I'd say you probably have some weight to lose. Right? Yeah. If you're squatting and deadlifting 800, maybe not. Right? Yeah. So we're squatting and deadlifting 800, maybe not. Right. Yeah. So we're, yeah, obviously we're excluding that. These are people who are squatting, you know, not even their body weight maybe, or slightly above body weight. That's right. Yeah. So, okay. So what do these people do? Like, so do you, you know, when we talk about the skinny fat person or the person that has more of the dad bod body type, we've been harping on and on and on

about how they really don't need to focus on the scale. They need to focus on the weight on the bar and getting their lifts stronger and gaining muscle mass. And that in the body fat percentage, the body composition will right size itself over time. But what about for this person, right? What about this obese person who is, you know, definitely has some weight to lose? How do you approach the person in, let's say, the novice phase of training? Are you just going to have them lift? Are you going to have them focus on trying to lose any weight at first or what? I've said it many times, a fat guy who's strong looks better than fat guy who's not strong and

he functions better too. So the skinny fat guy needs to not worry about fat at all because the fatness in terms of percent fat the higher ratio of fat is really due to a lower ratio of muscle you know it's funny how we can sit here and come up with norms for how much fat you should have but there are no norms for how much muscle you should or could have or benefit from. You know, nobody's looking at that. Like you don't really see studies with associations between, you know, percent muscle mass for a given BMI and all these health markers, but you see all these correlations between a fat percentage or high BMI and all these other things, right? Like they haven't normalized muscle for height and weight. You just made me realize,

this thought just popped in my head that we would have such different conversations if the term wasn't body fat percentage, if instead it was muscle mass percentage. Exactly. Like it would just, I think it would turn a lot of these conversations on their head.

But yeah, when you say body fat percentage, you're putting emphasis on the body fat part of the ratio, and you're de-emphasizing the muscle mass part of the ratio, just by what we call it. What I'd like to do is get one of these big population-wide data sets. I mean, I wouldn't want to do it, but I want to get a paper on it. I'd like to pay a want to get a paper on it. I'd like to pay a biostatistician to do it. And normalize

percent muscle mass or even lean body mass for a given BMI. Or fat percentage for a given BMI and start looking at correlations between that and all these health markers. When you control for muscle mass, what do we learn? They never look at it that way.

Or if they do, they write look at it that way. Yeah. Or if they do, they write it up in a way that people can understand, you know? Right. But, yeah, a guy who's 250 to 300 is probably a fat guy and heavier is probably even fatter, right? We're not talking about Eddie Hall here who was 375 with abs, you know? Right. And then females, you know, the closer they get to 200 plus, you know, for what what, average height of 5'4 to 5'7. Most women are shorter, sometimes they're shorter.

Once women start getting in the upper hundreds, untrained, and over 200, then that's usually the demographic that calls me up for diet coaching. Because women are never fat. We're not stupid here, you know? That's right. You got to be careful about how you frame this. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. God, no. I had a returning client the other day and she's very strong, very athletic and very lean. You know, she's explosive she uh cleaned 100 kilos at like a at what 115 pounds clean two to one hour you know she's five six she's one of my most athletic clients i've ever trained and uh she had a diet coaching and i'm like oh so you had a diet coaching this time you are serious

you know because the problem with these natural athletes is they have these attention spans that kind of fade you know because they're fucking awesome and there's it's hard, sometimes it's like, well, they never think they're good enough, but then there's that thing, right, where, you know, they're hitting some pretty awesome numbers, you know. Right. Yeah. Like they're going to go from really strong to, you know, a little bit less strong but still really strong, you know.

But anyways, she's like, well, yeah, unless you don't think I need it, then I'm like, well, a lady never needs never needs it I'm not gonna fail an IQ test yeah I know some people don't like don't don't even like saying using the word diet right like right they don't like saying diet coaching it's it's nutrition coaching or whatever we're just trying to have fun here but yeah no my point is really typically when I have women hiring me that are, you know, five foot to probably five, seven, five, eight, I'd probably say five foot to five, six is realistically what I see the most of,

you know, because just a lot of women aren't super tall. You know, they get them sometimes, but, you know, most women are under five, seven. So, you know, five foot to five, six, typically the weights that I tend to see are in the, seven. So, you know, five foot to five, six, typically the weights that I tend to see are in the mid to high hundreds, you know, when that baseline and they want to lose weight, you know, um, sometimes over 200. Um, but typically it's the mid to high hundreds untrained, just no lifting background. And, uh, we work from there, right? So what you do in this situation is you train these people, male or female, just like any other novice.

You know, they're going to squat press, deadlift, bench press, power clean, and chin up. And, you know, they're going to alternate the bench press and the press right away. They're going to alternate the deadlift and the power clean after a couple weeks. And they're going to do chin ups or pull downs if they're not strong enough to do chin ups. And they're going to do chin-ups or pull-downs if they're not strong enough to do chin-ups. And we're going to add a few pounds each time. And typically, if you have a lot more weight to lose and you're a novice, you've got two things going at once. This is a foreign stimulus physically, so you're going to build muscle and get stronger. But then you're pulling calories back, cleaning up your diet.

You're losing fat. You could do both at the same time. And you don't have to think about it too much, right? What I've tended to see is over time, once they get out of that novice phase, now they're no longer a novice. Now we've got an overweight, obese, whatever word you want to use, intermediate, who now has higher recovery demands. That person now behaves just like the skinny guy who got to intermediate by gaining weight you know

recovery matters and you see weight fall off the bar as they try to lose more body weight yes yeah and i think of this guy that i trained years back and he's still with me he was 320 325 i think when he started we got him all the way down to 230 and uh wow yeah obviously near progression to start but then eventually you know achy joints missed reps all the same shit you see with the skinny guy except he was like experiencing this at 275 280 right so yeah we had to put him on a intermediate program to get the rest of the weight off we were resetting some things pulling stress back just basically treating it as another stressor that he

needs more recovery from versus, well, I'm losing weight, I'm getting weaker. That's true, but let's think of the mechanism there, right? Your body demands more food, more recovery for the intensity, volume, and frequency that you're doing. So we have to adjust those variables to allow for additional recovery. Now, do we typically see PRs with weight loss? Not usually. Typically in the higher rep ranges you may, because you can recover from that a little bit better. You still have to manage that so you don't get achy joints from that as well. And I did do that with him. I tried higher rep ranges. This was years ago. But to get down from the high 200s to the low to mid 200s i had to train him just like the normal weight the lighter guy you know i had to adjust it so

that he can complete his workouts not miss reps and not have everything hurt right yeah yeah it makes sense i mean you know in some sense too we don't like to talk about ratio of you know, in some sense too, we don't like to talk about ratio of, you know, like how much, how much you're lifting relative to your body weight that much, but that's really what's happening too. You know, if you go from 300 pounds to 250, even if your lifts went down, you know, your ratio may have stayed the same or maybe even have gone up, you know, of how much you're lifting relative to body weight. And that matters, you know, that's, it, it, it changes the amount of stress that you're experiencing. So, you know, I, I think that's something that happens. And then of course, along with that is the changing in leverage, which we talked about on the show, right? You lose some

of that gut, the inches come off. It really changes the feel of the squat in particular, off. It really changes the feel of the squat in particular, but also bench press, you know, maybe even the press. Okay. So yeah, that, that makes sense. So if someone is novice or untrained so that, you know, they're, they're in the novice, you know, novice linear progression right now, or they have not started it yet, they can expect to be able to lose weight and run the program and just do it as written until it runs out. Do you have a target body weight loss per week or per month that you're looking for? You know, it depends on the person's behaviors, their history with food. But typically, the general numbers I give are about half a percent to a percent per week, you know, is what we try to do. But sometimes if these guys lose a pound a week, you know,

I know that's lower, you know, so if they're what, 250, or let's say they're 300, a percent is three pounds. Three pounds a week, right? Yeah. One and a half to three pounds. But if they lose one and they have, you know, they're feeling real hungry, all right, let's roll with that. You know, they might lose two the next week than one.

It's not really linear every time, but. Yeah, ideally, on average, you want to half a percent to a percent per week. But don't hold yourself super strict to that because life happens. Some weeks that doesn't happen because shit will happen. You'll cook you go off the diet, you're not going to have 12 perfect weeks most of the time. Right? Some people will though, but most people won't. Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense i mean and you know too there's also uh i found that bigger people have bigger swings in things like you know body weight gain body

let's just say body weight fluctuation due to like hydration you know so you could eat a lot you could eat a bunch of salt and then take in a bunch of water. And then you might have a swing that's five, 10 pounds up. Whereas I might have the same swing for me in the same situation. Like I eat a pizza and I drink a whole bunch of water might be plus three pounds, you know, they might be plus 10. That's right. So, okay. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Um, so what do you think are some of the big pitfalls that people make in this process in terms of getting stuck losing weight? Because i'll be honest here Um, I haven't trained that many people who are in this category Um, but I have done a handful and I do not I do I don't bill myself as a diet coach

I'm, not a nutritionist. I'm not an expert in that Um, I offer some advice and I know some things about it, but I'm not an expert and I don't specifically coach that. I just coach the training, but I have not had a whole lot of success with people who are very, very overweight or obese, whatever you want to call it, losing that much weight. They get stronger. Absolutely. We get them a lot stronger, but they tend to, they tend to stall out on losing weight. They get stronger. Absolutely. We get them a lot stronger, but they tend to, they tend to stall out and losing weight. And I'm not always sure how to, you know, like what the, what the behavioral breakdown is. Well, you know, the reason for

that, we don't know everything that's going on, but like anything else, there's a genetic component. Some people just get fat easier than others. Yes. That's definitely seems to be true. Some people just get fat easier than others. Yes, that definitely seems to be true. For various reasons. You know, a lot of people like to shit on that because if you just look at things at face value, like go back 50 years even, there are just fewer people that were that fat. That doesn't mean that these same types of people weren't walking around. The world was just different. You know, we didn't eat the same things.

We didn't have the advancements in mass food production that we have now. And we tended to be more active. There's so many variables there, right? Yeah, sure. But the point is there was a time in history where there just weren't a lot of fat people. But there were probably a lot of people still that could get that fat that just weren't exposed to certain stimuli to do it, right? Yeah, sure. But there's a genetic component, and there always has been. I think that we just have an environment right now that favors the expression of that genetic phenotype. We have

food everywhere, you know? You get lots and lots of calories very easily, and I think go very far for it, right? Right. And lots of stressors, you know, lots of, you know, outside of food, right? So outside of food and training, right? Lots of stressors, extra extracurricular stressors, let's put it that way. Well, I don't really know how to quantify this, but it just seems that people are responsible for more things in their job now, especially if you work a corporate or government job. more things in their job now, especially if you work a corporate or government job. I just see – I've watched this trend over the last 20 to 30 years of having to wear a lot of hats to do what used to be just one thing. You can't just do one thing. In fact, I was shunned for that in my first run of the PhD. Robert, you just want to do one thing.

That's not how it works. You have to be able to manage multiple tasks at one time, and you can never spend too much time on one thing. I'm like, how do you get good at anything? I mean, it's more of a philosophical conversation that we can have a side. If anybody in Phoenix wants to it's not just one task that you're responsible for i don't know that it was ever just one task i'm not an expert on this but i have a feeling that people tended to have a more narrow set of responsibilities in these types of jobs years back and i think that when you're constantly juggling you know my opinion on this is it reduces you to mediocrity which creates stress because you're not awesome at anything. You're just trying to fucking stay above water on all these different things. And that stress follows you outside of work. Absolutely.

And that's just one type of stress. A lot of other things have changed too. We need to get an expert in for this shit because I don't want to speak out of my little realm. I have opinions, but everybody does. It's just like we all have assholes, right? But that's something that I've observed. That's why I'm not in academia. I'm not in a big corporation.

I knew from a young age that wasn't for me. But that was probably the biggest reason. It's like I want to do my thing. I want to do this narrow set of tasks, and I want to get good at them. But you can go down the list. We should get, what's his name, to do my thing. I want to do this narrow set of tasks and I want to get good at them You know, yeah, but uh, you know, you can go down the list. We should get what's his name pewter back on here See what? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, definitely. Well, yeah I don't think we have to look very far to find a lot of other stressors there So and I think we you know, it seems like I don't want to say I think we know it seems obvious to me But I don't know what the you know, what science really has to say about this, but that higher stress levels, higher cortisol levels, whatever you want to call that, however you want to quantify that, makes it harder to lose weight.

It seems like it just makes, you know, it changes the hormonal milieu, has a lot of knock-on effects that make it more difficult to lose weight. So, yeah, that's certainly an issue. on effects that make it more difficult to lose weight so yeah that's certainly an issue so for those people who are you know weight loss resistant let's call it what do you do like what kind of what kind of strategy do you have to work with them because if they're still let's say okay so here's a scenario i've run into before where we've got someone who's, again, average height male, we'll call them 5'10", and they're 285. They have now run through a novice linear progression, and they've worked hard. They've gotten their squat up into the 300s. They've got their deadlift up into the 300s. They're benching in the 200s, pressing, et cetera, but they're still hanging around about

285, much more muscular than they started. So the body composition has changed, but they're still pretty overweight. And they may have some other issues too, like they might have elevated A1C levels. Maybe their lipids are a little messed up. Some other health markers that are concerning. Well, the big issue here is we don't supervise people eating and living their life. That's not what we do. We consult on it and we can look at pictures, we can look at logs, you know, self-reported data that we can assess, but ultimately modifying eating behaviors, a lot of it falls on the individual. You know, we're just here to reinforce and hold them accountable for the most part and obviously provide information when it's needed right um but it's

been my experience that because the internet the information most of it's been acquired a lot of the time i'm clarifying things but i'm not having to basically spell things out from the ground up like you know it's your first time ever talking about nutrition for a lot of these people they've been around the block but the issue is just behavioral. They've created these habits around food. I try to listen to what they say. I try to give advice on what some alternative strategies are that make sense for their lifestyle. And a lot of it's just reinforcing.

And it helps if they're working with a mental health professional or somebody like that that is more well-versed in the psychology of it's just reinforcing. And it helps if they're working with a mental health professional or somebody like that, that, you know, is more well-versed in the psychology of it. You know, that's not what I do. You know, what I do is I gather information from the person and try to find solutions that I think might work. And I try to use solutions that have worked for others. I try to share things. And a lot of it's just reinforcing and reminding the person that they need to stay on track you know um but typically when they are that heavy there tends to be a lot more of a psychological connection there in addition to the genetic makeup you know just because you know yeah i didn't win the genetic lottery doesn't mean you have to be completely and utterly fucked you know you can right make the situation better with an active effort but then a lot of its you know accepting that there are certain things you just can't do anymore you know and that that's where I always run

into walls with these people like the two biggest problems aren't into with diet especially in the overweight obese category is snacking and eating out especially snacking. I remember the first, one of the first guys I worked with in the context of barbell training, who was really big. When I told him to get the snacks out of the house, I got such a severe emotional reaction from him.

Like that's just never going to happen. And I told him, you're not ready. You know, you're just not ready. Right ready. You're just not ready. You're just not ready. If you're an alcoholic and you want to keep a six-pack in your house, we all know where that's going to go. If you're a severe alcoholic, maybe a mild alcoholic can get away with it, but if you're a severe alcoholic, you can't keep a six-pack or a

bottle of vodka in your house. And what's the same thing? You know, a lot of, because people say, well, it's food, food people need to survive. Well, you don't need all types of food to survive. There's usually trigger foods, right? These people aren't eating a chicken breast and eating 70 of them, you know? There's certain types of foods that are triggers, and breaking that emotional bond to those foods is tough, you know, and I can talk to them about that and discuss what I know about it. But even if they're working with a mental health professional or somebody who's an expert in psychology, it comes down to them, you know, they got to be ready to do the hard things. If you eat an entire gallon of ice cream in one sitting, guess what? If you're serious about not being as heavy as you are, you can't keep a gallon of ice cream in your

freezer anymore. Those days are over. And if it's not today and you need a year or two of eating more gallons of ice cream, then I guess you just need a year or two to figure it out. That's not great for your health, but that just might be what it takes. You know, sometimes things just take time and there are trade-offs to that. And some of that comes at the expense of your health. But, you know, if you do it in two years instead of five, you're better off. Like you just got to kind of reframe the problem, right? But if you are the type of person that can't have ice cream without eating the entire gallon, you know, this is an exaggeration, obviously. You can insert whatever food you want here.

I know some people that drink entire cases of soda, and they're like 300, 400 pounds. Sure. But part of the formula to reversing the weight gain or the high BMI, high fat percentage, high body weight, whatever you want to call it, is you have to part ways with some of those things yeah and that's it's a tall order i mean i it is and it's a process i'm not

saying when i say that i do not mean you have to do this right now right but yes it's part of the formula no matter how it makes you feel just like you have to squat when you want to vomit and when you feel like you have no control over it and yet it looks right in the video it's the same thing sometimes you have to do things that elicit emotions you don't like i'm sorry it's part of life if you want to advance grow and progress in an area right like there's an emotional reality with that that you have to confront yeah yep yeah i saw recently something it's probably an reality with that that you have to confront. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

I saw recently something. It's probably an Instagram. It's like, you're, you know, you're uncomfortable because you're growing, but Hey, you're growing. So you're going to be uncomfortable. Like that's, it's, it's okay. You know, that's actually a, that's no, it's an okay thing, but you have to learn how to be okay with being uncomfortable. Yeah.

I know, you know, talking to, uh, or listening to Dr. Pewter, I, you know, I, I produce his podcast, um, psychology and psychotherapy, I'm sorry, the psychiatry and psychotherapy podcast. And he's talked about, you know, psychotherapy on a lot of episodes. It's a huge component of his podcast. And there are patients he's worked with that he's needed to work with for years until they get a breakthrough. Now, these are generally people with some pretty severe issues, some pretty severe mental health challenges. But the point is, it can take time. And this is no different. I find this is one of the most difficult areas of coaching for me, at least, is I get people who are looking for help. And I realized that the

problem is something I can't help with. Like they need, they need help. Like I'm, I'm like, I feel like I'm a, a bucket of water in the middle of a, like a massive firestorm, you know, like I can help them get strong, but that's not the totality of what they need. It's a small piece of the overall puzzle, maybe not a small piece, but it's just one piece of the overall puzzle. And that's hard, you know, when they only have sought your help and I can just tell they need more, but yeah, for sure. I, you know, I always suspect that there's things like that going on where I don't know if it's conscious or not, but there's some sort of

self-destructive snacking behavior going on where, you know, it's pretty easy to erase all of the gains you've made, so to speak. You know, like you said in the past, if you eat great Monday through Thursday, but then Friday, Saturday, Sunday is a disaster, it's easy to completely erase whatever deficit you've created over the previous four days, right? That's right. And you find yourself, maybe you didn't lose anything, maybe you gained as a result. Yeah, and understanding that and being honest with yourself about it, even if that means you want to keep doing it for now, is the most important thing. There's no skirting around this. Some people can't drink alcohol because they drink too much no matter what.

It has addictive-like properties, certain foods can. so i'm sorry you love chocolate but if you eat an entire box of it no matter what type of chocolate touches your tongue then it's probably bad for you not chocolate's not bad for everybody but for the guy who's gonna you know eat two boxes of it just because it touched his tongue it's probably bad for him you know and right because he's gonna be able to moderate? Okay, there's outliers. Sure. Sure. There's probably outliers that can moderate that had those problems. But that is not the norm. Most of the time, if you eat something and don't stop eating it, you're always going to not stop eating it. that you will eat an entire gallon of ice cream if you've always eaten an entire gallon of ice cream is very high. So do you want to play with those odds? You can, you'll just stay heavy and that's fine.

Being heavy is not right or wrong. There's a healthy, unhealthy argument to be made, sure. But right and wrong is something you got to decide. We're not going to sit here and say you're an asshole because you eat like a sack of shit. Right, yeah, it's not moralizing. Yeah, I think that's important to say. We're not going to sit here and say you're an asshole because you eat like a sack of shit. Right. Yeah. It's not moralizing. Yeah. I think we're, yeah, we're, that's important to say, like we're, we're, we're having this discussion because people will come to us wanting to lose weight and, and, you know, have, have struggled with that and failed in the past. And so, you

know, usually that's, that's where we're starting this conversation is they've stated the goal of losing weight in the first place. And so that's their goal that they've come up with. And so we're trying to figure out a way to get there. Right. And I don't think I share any information on diet that other people don't. Some people try to use gimmicks to make money. I don't do that. But what I do tell people is that, hey, you're just going to stay fat with those habits you know yeah I try to be straightforward with people you know like there's one guy literally like I don't change my message week to week you know I give them different forms of it but it's the same message dude you're snacking too much you have

too much shit in your house and then you know you get the answer that oh well I don't live alone other Other people live here. And I'm like, well, now you've got a bigger problem, you know? Like, I am not afraid to say that, hey, if you are a big fat person and you're feeding your kids shit, maybe you should reconsider the example you're trying to set, you know? Right. Yeah. I have no problem saying that. And if you have a problem with me saying that

well you know there's other shows to listen to there's other people to hire because at the end of the day you are the leader of your home right so if you when that doesn't matter if you're male or female your mom or the dad if you're trying to put yourself on a diet but everyone else is eating like shit, reconsider that. That's a conversation that needs to be had, and it doesn't mean that everybody needs to be on a strict diet. And I know you're going to say, oh, fuck you, Santana, you live alone.

Sure, fair, fair enough, fair enough. Trent doesn't, so you can chime in. But my point is, I always hear that phrase when you're around, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I hear that one thrown around a lot. But what I get from it is, you kind of adopt the habits of the people you're around, and that can go both ways, right? So if it's important to you to eat healthy and not be super overweight and snacking is a problem everybody's got to be on board you know and if everybody's not on board then maybe being heavy is not the worst thing in the world for you because obviously there are a lot of other things in your life that you have

to balance that against right so again it's not a morality thing right wrong thing right uh my whole thing is that you're coming you're coming to me with a goal that really kind of requires everybody that you live with to be on the same page. Yeah, I agree. I agree. You know, it's interesting if you've, if you've never done this, um, you ever stayed with someone who is very fit and, you know, what we would consider to have very healthy eating habits for an extended period of time. Like if you ever spent like a weekend or a whole week with somebody like that, I'm sure you have. Are you talking to me? Um, yeah, well, I'm kind of speaking rhetorically, but yeah, I'm like, I'm sure you have. Right. Um, but you know, I, I remember some experiences of

being in my twenties and, you know, getting out in the world more, experiencing more people than just the people I grew up with, you know, people I met in college. And I've been able to spend weekends, whole weeks with people who are, you know, in the upper tiers of fitness and certainly healthy eating habits, right? You know, sort of the upper quartile or whatever. And it's interesting what kind of commonalities you see. I think one of them is these people all are very active. They all walk, you know, at least 10,000 steps a day, probably closer to 15,000. If there's, you know, if we're going somewhere, we're walking there, or we're going's, you know, if we're going somewhere, we're walking there, or we're going to ride our bikes, not a whole lot of car time, unless we're taking an extended trip. There's usually a lot of like, whatever activities we're

going to do involve some sort of walk or, you know, getting out. It's like, hey, let's go hang out. Let's go play on the slack line at the park. Cool. You know, so we're going to walk a couple miles of the park, set up the slack line, mess around, you know, it's just all physically active play. And the other thing is I find that most of these people, they cook all their own food. So if you want something to eat, if you're hungry, the only grab and go stuff available is usually like fruit. You know, there's like an apple or a banana or whatever an orange but if you want something more substantial than that you're gonna have to cook something or prepare it it's not just like there's nothing to just grab that's a more meaty snack

and i know that in our own household as we have drifted more and more in that direction where like the stuff that we have is stuff that we have to prepare or bake or cook or whatever the better our body composition has been because it does kind of naturally eliminate that snacking problem you're talking about it's kind of hard to have a trigger food when it's like oh yeah i really want that but uh i wait for you know six seven minutes for the water to boil first. And then I got to cook it. And then, yeah. Yeah, that's right. If you create barriers for yourself and don't make it easy to get that stuff. Yeah.

You're going to have better outcomes. Yeah. On accident, you know. Right. Yeah. But that's, you know, it's kind of funny. It's kind of some commonalities that I see amongst people who I've spent a lot of time with. And that's something you don't really see from the outside in, you know,

you don't really, unless you actually like spend like a whole day with a person, you don't really know what their life's like in terms of their eating habits. You know, it's funny. I think of this, you know, on this topic of, you know, your environment, cause you know, it's nature versus nurture thing. You know, obviously there's genetics, that's your foundation, but then your environment and your actions influence the outcomes of what you're doing as well. You know, you can't make somebody who's a motor moron an elite athlete, obviously, but you can make them less of a motor moron, you know, and this can apply to anything. about an interview that rip did with marty gallagher i think it was 12 years ago and he told rip he's like and i'm going to use a lifting analogy here obviously he's like if you're squatting

600 and everyone else around you is squatting 315 then that's a whole lot less incentive than you can't go on the big man platform unless you have at least a seven squat right yeah and then he goes on and on and he's like but you know what those guys on the number four platform they're watching when uh who the hell is he talking about i can't remember somebody clean and jerking 400 at 198 you know um was it bill cassidy does that sound right yeah i don't know i don't know or uh shit I have to listen to the interview again. But anyways, it's true. So, like, you know, I worked out at lifting gyms before. And obviously the guys had better genetics and were on drugs.

So they were lifting a lot more than me. But the point is they were competitive. And that competitive energy spreads. You know what I mean? Yes. So it's like it's not so much that, you know, okay, I can't go on, I can't go work out over there because I don't have a 700 squat. So I better work up to a 700 squat. It's that the guys over there that are squatting at least seven, they're trying to scrape every last pound on there and get eight, nine, a thousand, whatever, you know, depending on what gym you're talking about.

But when you're in that environment where these guys are doing whatever it takes to get stronger you start adopting that you know you feed off of that and it's the same thing applies what we're talking about here if you know you're eating well five days a week and then you're eating out or snacking on the weekends and everyone else around you is doing it then it feels more normal than you know if you're on a bunch of guys that take this stuff seriously you know what I mean and that's not neurotic eating disorder bodybuilder people you know and some of those guys are naturally lean don't have any disorders by the way not everybody not every bodybuilder has an eating

disorder some of them are very well suited for that don't have to diet that hard hard enough to get on stage, but some people really, they go crazy trying to get that lean. There's a lot of eating disorders and bodybuilding that's not really disputed even in those circles. So I'm not sitting here trying to make this about that. But what I'm saying is if you're around people that have pretty good habits, you know, they stop eating when they're full, they leave leftovers if they don't want more, you know, they take stuff home. They don't keep a lot of snacks in the house. You know, you start adopting some of that.

You feed off of that, you know, it's just like, you know, if you're lifting around a bunch of guys that are much stronger than you and are competitive and work hard, you're going to do it too. Yep. Yep. That's, it's such a powerful thing. It just sets a baseline for you. That's different. You know, uh, it's amazing what you can get, what you, it's amazing what you can get what you it's amazing what you

can normalize in terms of like how you frame things like oh that's really heavy man 315 that's really heavy well yeah i'm sure a lot of people think that but then yeah but then you see guys benching it on a regular basis for sets of 10 right and then you're like oh okay well that's not really very heavy is it? Yeah, it's amazing how that baseline that you have for, you know, everything can be shifted.

If you're around a bunch of guys that are, you know, bench pressing your deadlift, then you're not going to be that scared of it, you know? And that's what Rip

was talking about. He's like, I was scared of 600. I had this in my mind, you know? And Marty's like, well, you wouldn't be if you saw guys benching it on a regular basis. And they're like, oh, it's, you know, no big I had this in my mind, you know? And Marty's like, well, you wouldn't be if you saw guys benching it on a regular basis.

And they're like, oh, it's, you know, no big deal. It's just 600, you know? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know, that applies to anything, you know? Like, just pick your endeavor, you know? If you want to get good in a musical instrument, you got to play around people that are good at music and also competitive. Because there are naturals that just don't have work ethic, you know?

Right. What you want to be around is the guy thatals that just don't have work ethic, you know? Right. Well, you want to be around is the guy that's awesome, but also works his ass off, you know? Right. Yes. Because if you can't get the ability because you lack the genetics for it,

you can absorb the work ethic. Yes, absolutely. And it's all the more fun too. It is. Yeah. I was about to say, I mean,

that has, that's has its own rewards outside of the, rewards outside of the strength and muscle you get. I mean, to do today, I was at a dog kennel for most of the day. It was a slow day here. So I did all my online coaching in the morning. Then mid-morning, around noon, I went to the dog kennel, spent like three hours there, and just watched them train dogs. I didn't do anything. I just watched and absorbed it

and then i came back here and applied some of it in between my lifting and before i got on this show but uh i'm just applying that principle i'm like if i want to get good at this i gotta spend i gotta immerse myself in that environment as much as i can you know right now for that it's just once a week i don't want to go into someone's place of business all the time, but they're my friends. And they invite me to do that. And then the owner always explains, okay, this is why we're doing this, this, and this. And he's like, I'm glad you stayed for that one. That one's good for you because your dog does some of that stuff.

And yeah, I want to push it. I want to push it. So I try to spend time around it. I try to spend time around people. I invite them here to bring their dogs into my gym and use it for various drills. So that's really what it comes down to, you know, if you really want to get good at something, you got to do the work, but you also got to immerse yourself in the environment, you know, whatever that may be. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know, there you go. So, you know, we haven't dedicated an episode to the obese person

who's looking to lose weight, but it's not really any different in principle to anyone else who's trying to lose weight. But the challenges are certainly greater in a lot of cases. You know, there might be bigger behavioral changes you need to make. There may be more hurdles you have to overcome to make those changes. And we certainly recognize that it's not easy. None of this stuff we're saying is easy, but it's not complicated either. It's pretty simple. Sorry, people. Easy doesn't work. Yeah. Easy doesn't work. Easy doesn't work. And you know, we wouldn't want it to work either. Life would be very unreward if if all these results were easy to get look i thought i slammed dunk on the bench two weeks ago i got 310 for five off the pins after three months of troubleshooting it

312 and a half today four so i was so pissed but i was most pissed because i'm like well now i gotta keep fucking troubleshooting this till it cooperates you know right i told and then you know will's getting in my ear about what he's suggesting and i'm like well i will get rid of the pin bench when i do 315 for five yeah sure i gotta somehow eke out these last two and a half to five pounds you know man we'll figure it out but it, it's going to make it sweeter. It's going to make it all sweeter. I don't stress about deadlifting anymore, but when I was obsessed with 500, man,

whew, that frustration. Oh, yeah. But I learned, you know, and I help others do it, so it's worth it. That's right. Yep, yep. Well, there you go. There's another episode.

Why don't we sign it off? All right. You can find me at weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. Or you can find us on YouTube now, youtube.com slash at weights underscore and underscore plates. If you're in Phoenix, Metro Phoenix, and want some one-on-one coaching or a gym membership, we are just south of Sky Harbor Airport off 32nd Street and Broadway. Weights and Plates Gym, come on by or visit us on Instagram. Weights, double underscore, and double underscore.

Plates. Bam. There you go. You know where to find me. I'm on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream. And I'm also available via email if you have any coaching questions. Jonesbarbellclub atgmail.com. All right, we'll talk to you again in a couple of weeks. Bye.