 Our next caller is Ruth from Washington. Hey, what's up Ruth? How can we help you? Hi there guys, really happy to be here. Thanks so much for taking my email. So I originally wrote my email because I have about 20 pounds left to lose and I really want to do it through weightlifting alone, but I just can't seem to find the right mix. So a little bit of background about me and I feel like my story can be extrapolated to many people, particularly women, but men probably too. So I'm 39, 59, originally gone to fitness through cardio. Surprise, surprised at a very uncomfortable marathon at one point. Eventually found a really high cardio dance fitness class and ended up instructing that for a number of years. And then at the end of that, I kind of got through that time, I lost a lot of weight after my last baby, who is now eight. And at the end, I kind of started dabbling into weightlifting. Felt like I loved it. Just felt really good in my body. Started with some five by five, and I really wasn't able to sustain all of that with my teaching and I was in grad school at the time. So had to kind of focus on the cardio with my classes that I was teaching at that time, long story short. I graduated from school, started a full time job as a nurse practitioner. And ever since that time, I kind of gradually increased my weight a little bit, but I started strength training regularly about three years ago. So I'm kind of in this place where I'm wanting to lose these last 15, 20 pounds, having a difficult time and time is very precious. I have three school age kids plus a full time job, which is one reason why I love weightlifting because it is so efficient and I know my body is made to do it. My problem is when I reduce cardio, I think there's a harder time losing weight consistently. Like I really want to just do the weightlifting because it feels the best in my body. I've tried various calorie macro setups. I've tried various kind of programming. I'm currently in phase three of MAPS anabolic right now and really liking it kind of staying around the same weight and tracking. We can get in the details of that if you're really interested. I listened to your podcast about why women should bulb and I was like, yes, I am on board. So after a spot check and realizing I wasn't eating very much, I did increase my calories and did that for about three months. I got up to 1800 or so and felt actually my workouts were feeling fantastic as you'd expect by increasing calories and was doing pretty well with that. But realized after three months, I had gained some fat along with that, which I wasn't really a fan of. So I'm kind of in this place where I really want to bulk and increase my calories. But I can seem to do it without cardio at the same time. So I'm really curious, trying to figure out that optimal dose for me. I think a lot of other people probably are in the same situation. So I'm really curious to hear what you guys have to say. Yeah, this is really common. This was Katrina when Katrina and I met. This was she was strength training like three times a week, running three to four times a week. Her way of kind of maintaining her weight or getting in shape would be to ramp up her runs and just run more. And she was probably eating about 1800 calories or so. And by the way, so she maintains better shape today at 40 years old than she did in her 20s, only strength training and not running and consuming over 2600 calories. So it's very much so doable. And I think you were heading on the right track or at least in the right direction. And maybe what happened when you put on maybe you put on a little extra body fat that you didn't like, or maybe it wasn't that bad at all. And you were more in your head and then you decided to reverse back down because if you are only eating 1800 calories and you're exercising this much, we need to what we need to do is speed your metabolism up before you get to a place where you can completely cut out cardio and stay at a place that's sustainable with just weight training. It's just your your calories are too low for all the activity that you're currently doing. And that's why you're feeling that any time you cut out cardio, which is probably burning, you know, a few hundred extra calories every day that you're doing it is making a difference. That's a big difference when you're only eating 1800 calories. It says it says in your question you're running or doing spin for your cardio. Yeah, I have been I just started spinning again a little bit. I haven't been running recently. I'm dealing with some kind of SI joint stuff. So running is no bueno for me. I've been doing mostly walking right now, actually, and just kind of started to add and spin back in about 30 minutes, maybe one or twice. Yeah, there's there's nothing necessarily wrong with cardio. But for what you're saying, you know, you don't want to do it. You'd rather weight train plus you're trying to speed up the metabolism. I would stay away from the spin. Walking's fine. It's it's healthy for you. But here's something else you can do. OK, because I've done this with clients. All right, we're going to cut the cardio to get the metabolism speed up. But we want to kind of burn more calories in our workouts to need to kind of help a little bit with what might happen initially. You can add volume to your resistance training. You've been following maps and a ball. I would go maps aesthetic. It's a very similar program with more volume. You're going to burn more calories in the workout. It's still a muscle building program. And then I would cut the cardio out. I mean, you do the you do maps aesthetic three foundational workouts a week with two focus sessions. That's a decent workload. You don't need to throw any cardio in and then slowly reverse diet. Get your get your calories up. Eighteen hundred is not really a good place to start from. If you want to try and burn, you know, lose weight. I'd like to see you get up to, you know, twenty five hundred calories at least. And so I do that. I mean, focus on the muscle building, right? Maps aesthetic. You can cut the cardio if you want to keep walking because you enjoy it and it's good for your health. That's totally fine. Don't do the spin classes. That's probably the worst for what you're trying to accomplish. And now you're doing more volume in your workouts, right? So now you're lifting more weights, which does burn more calories as well, but it's still geared towards building muscle. And how long, honestly, were you able to keep in the bulk in terms of like being able to, you know, stay there for a few months? You know, like, how long was it? So I was doing another program, a hypertrophy both hypertrophy based program through girls girls gone strong. They have some pretty good programs, too. I love your guys is trying different things. It was about three months that I that I tried that. I wasn't tracking my food the whole time. So 1800 is probably about where I was at, which to me felt like a lot of food coming from where I was at previously. Here's a strategy. If you're not one to one account and track everything, just track your protein. So try and hit your protein targets and then avoid heavily processed foods and just eat until you're satisfied. This does not mean until you're stuffed or really full, but rather until you're satisfied. So focus on protein, whole natural foods, and then train to build strength and then kind of allow your body to do what it's going to do. That usually moves people in the right direction. Now, if you want to get more specific, I would definitely track. For some people, though, tracking is it makes it worse or it makes it a stress or they feel like I don't want to, you know, have to count everything. I would also be interested, too. So the the program that you were running, the one that you said was hypertrophy focused, I'd be curious to actually see the programming, if that means it's more 10 to 15 rep ranges, super sets and kind of focused in that direction, where you're probably chasing the pump more versus like a five by five type of protocol. It was actually a mix of it was similar to your guys as there was four weeks of a kind of strength focus. And then and then there was kind of a higher rep focus at the end. So because I because you're going to you're going to benefit the most from a strength focus, five by five type of a routine for for bulking, right? When you're trying to bulk, that's when I would I would love to see you. And then we would we just thought we just talked to another person had a similar question. I would just interrupt the bulk every third week or so, third or fourth week with a one week calorie deficit. So run the bulk for three weeks straight after the three weeks, then then drop your calories, two or 300 calories lower than what you would consider maintenance. So maintenance is 1800 for you one week out of the month, run a 1600 calorie week. And then the other three weeks stay in more of a bulk. And that will probably help keep you from putting on much body fat at all on the way up. And then the goal is every time you go back to the bulk is trying to increase the calories a little bit higher and higher until we can get you a place where you're more like 25, 2600 calories. That that is a more sustainable place to be calorie wise, to be able to never do cardio and get yourself lean. Because then you can get we can get your maintenance at 2600. And you say to me, hey, Adam, I want to lean out a little bit. It's coming up on summertime or whatever. I like to drop a few pounds of body fat. We can easily without doing any cardio, go from 2600 down to 2000. And your body is going to lean out real nice and you're still eating a sustainable amount of calories. Versus if you're at 1800 as a maintenance with doing cardio. If all of a sudden you want to lean out, you got to drop. Yeah, you got to drop to a place that's just not down to 1200 calories. Yeah, you'll eat more than you are now. If you do this right and get lean, it is possible. I mean, it seems like very daunting, but like to kind of stretch it out, you know, even further and do it very gradually is is my best advice. Yeah, maps, aesthetic, follow maps, aesthetic, cut out the cardio. You've got plenty of volume and maps, aesthetic. You're working out five days a week and, you know, follow what we're saying with the nutrition and watch it creep back, watch it slowly creep up and be patient. Allow that to happen when you get to a good place. You do the cut. It'll feel you'll feel better than you do now, Ruth. Are you in our forum yet? I am not. OK. So I'll have Doug give you access to our forum, too. So you can kind of check in with us. I love when we give people kind of prescripted stuff to do as far as diet goes to kind of just check back with us in a month and just let us know kind of your progress when we're going, we can help guide you better that way. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Cool. Yeah. Thanks for calling in. OK, thank you very much, guys. No problem. Yeah, the taking someone who's done a lot of cardio and then telling them reverse, cut the cardio out. It's like they'll do it for a little while and then I got to go back to what I know. Yeah, especially when your background is in like spin and running and, you know, and you love that kind of stuff. It's really hard to go against the grain. Well, it's a it's a mind fuck. And she's in a very similar situation. Katrina was I actually wouldn't let Katrina weigh herself during this time. So it'll mess with her head. Yes. So I knew the inevitable is going to happen. I cut your cardio. I tell her stop running, you know, 10, 15 miles a week. I completely cut that out. All focus on strength training and increase your calories. I know I'm going to put some weight on her a little bit and weight that she may not like. So the last thing I need is her looking at the scale and seeing three pounds. It's not working. Yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. So I was like, OK, part of the rules are don't look at the scale. Just trust the process. Let me do this with you. And then it, you know, it took a while to get her there. But we got her to a place where she can eat 2600 plus calories. Otherwise, you're just in this sort of manual place where you have to always kind of shave that down by adding this little bit of like excess movement and cardio. And so you're going to be in this trap of always trying to like, you know, shave off the fat, build, try and build muscle. Not quite effective yet, but then shave the fat. And it's just like you're spinning your tires. Well, dude, 1800 calories. She's working out five days a week, including spin, including working out like not sustainable. You're just not going to be able to maintain that. Yeah, because when you think about that, her resting metabolic rate is much lower, much lower. So if you're doing active, yeah, if you're doing all that work to maintain at 18, that means if she wasn't doing it, that she couldn't eat much more than 12 or 1300 calories without putting body fat, which is not a good place. You want to be able to be at a place. There's no flexibility there. Right. Where if she ate 1800 with no activity, her body would actually lose. If that's the case, we need to be somewhere up in the 2500 plus type of range metabolism wise in order for that to happen. Totally.