 Hey everyone. Dr. O here. So we just finished a lesson where I made the argument that calorie cycling is a very viable tool for getting into a calorie deficit and it gives you the flexibility to determine when you're going to be eating less and when you're going to be eating more. But now I'm going to make an argument that calorie cycling is actually superior to or better than quote unquote regular dieting where you're always in a calorie restriction. So the reason I love calorie cycling and I love using fasting as the main tool to use calorie cycling is that my diet and this program allows me and allows you to eat to perform over the short term, but then eat to lose weight over the long term. So I get to focus on fueling performance on the days that I'm most physically active and the days that I'm exercising, but I still get to focus on losing fat and losing weight at the end of the week. So basically eat on your training days, eat when you're exercising and training might be a two hour session for you. It might be 20 minutes. That doesn't matter. Eat on the days when you're most physically active to fuel that and then fast on your resting days or your recovery days. And you can certainly walk and do that exercise on those days, but you're basically going to save your calories for the days when you're most physically active and especially days when you're trying to build muscle and then you're going to eat less calories or no calories on the days when you are less active. That is how fasting works as a calorie cycling tool. So here's a picture of me. It's nothing special, but I'm 44 years old. I hadn't lifted a weight in 15 years, hadn't exercised in 10 years. And while losing 165 pounds of fat in one year, I was able to increase my lean mass by 15 pounds. Most people that diet and lose that much weight lose a ton of lean mass. I went the opposite direction and I do credit this. I was able to, because on the days I was lifting weights, on the days I was strength training, on the days I was resistance training, whatever terms you want to use. And I was using resistance bands, all sorts of things. But on the days when I was exercising, I was in a calorie surplus. I was telling my body to build muscle. And then on the days that I wasn't exercising, I was fasting in a severe or serious calorie deficit. So my goal was to build muscle one day and then lose fat the next. And then build muscle one day and lose fat the next and repeat it. So you may not get an accumulation of lean mass. You may not build a bunch of muscle. But at the least, it should preserve it and keep you from losing it. And we've talked about this before. If you're on a regular diet, a half or more of the weight you lose will be lean tissue. So if you don't lose any, that's a huge victory. If you don't gain any lean tissue, but you also don't lose it, be very proud of yourself, because that puts you in the top 1% of people that lose weight, basically. All right, so I want to tell you a quick story. If someone were to ask me, does this really matter? Here's how I like to frame it, especially when I'm talking to my nutrition student sitting in a classroom. So think about fuel. Think about how you fuel your body. So let's say that you have a student, they wake up in the morning and they eat breakfast. It's got 100 grams of carbs, several hundred calories. What's their body going to do with it? Well, it's going to replenish the glycogen reserves, glycogen stored glucose that your body used last night while you were fasting. It's going to replenish the energy that your body used overnight. Then you're going to come to school and you're going to sit in the classroom, or you're going to go to work at a desk job, or you're going to be very physically inactive for another reason. Then it's lunchtime. You're going to eat a lunch that's very similar, a number of calories, 100 grams of carbs, let's say. But where's your body going to put those 100 grams of carbs? Your glycogen stores are already full and you didn't do anything between breakfast and lunch to empty those glycogen reserves. So now your body has to turn it into fat. That's what your body does with any excess energy. So it's not all about carbs, but I like using that example because we can talk about muscle glycogen. And then you sit in class all afternoon or you go work at your desk job again. Then you have dinner and you do the same thing again. Now you got another 100 grams of carbs. Your body has to decide what to do with it. Well, the glycogen stores are still full. We haven't used any of this fuel. So our gas tank is overflowing. So what do we do with this extra energy? We turn it into fat. So to me, it makes way more sense to eat more on days when you're physically active. Actually empty your fuel tank and then fill it back up. And then on the days when you're less physically active, don't keep forcing fuel into a full system. I think it makes way more sense to eat more on a day that you're going to be walking and lifting weights and doing those things and then eat less or nothing on days that you're going to be sitting around all day. Right, I'm sitting here today. I'm going to make videos all day long. I'm not, I'm going to fast. Today's going to be a perfect day for it. Yesterday though, I ate quite a bit because it was a squat day. It was a big day for me from an exercise standpoint. And tomorrow I'll do the same thing. So to me, this gives you more control over what your body does with the fuel that you eat. If you're always eating the same amount of fuel, your body is forced to store it as fat if you haven't used up any fuel between meals. If you're eating a bunch when you're exercising, then your body says, hey, let's build. And then if you're eating less, when you're less physically active, your body is forced to burn fat. And I think that's the brilliance of calorie cycling and fasting as a calorie cycling tool. So if you do this right, you should be able to build some muscle or at least maintain it. And we've talked about that. Just think about it this way. I want to make sure I'm feeding my active muscles, not my inactive fat. So if I'm just sitting around and I'm not using my muscles, and there's no reason to feed your body right now. And that's how fasting works as a calorie cycling tool. So here, a picture early on in my progress, you know, I lost 101.2 pounds in six months and almost all of it was lean mass. Almost all of it was fat, that was bad. About 88% of my first 100 pounds of weight loss was fat and the rest was lean mass. And again, you can, that lean mass probably came from fat because fat has proteins in it and fat has cellular structures and all of that. So you can make an argument that by using alternate day fasting and then about four months in, I started resistance training. And so you can make an argument that my program led to 100 pounds of almost pure fat loss. But then here at the next picture, so I had a great rate of weight loss and a great percentage of it was fat mass compared to fat free mass compared to people that are losing 50% or 80% of their weight loss is lean tissue instead of fat. But then once I add a resistance training here, you see me in my gym and I was actually able to gain 15 pounds of lean mass while I lost the next 65 pounds. So I really credit calorie cycling, putting me in a surplus on the days I'm lifting to tell my body to build muscle and then putting myself in a deficit, telling my body to burn fat the next day. I credit that. So not only, but when I lost 165 pounds, not only did I lose 50 or 80 or 100 pounds of lean tissue, I actually gained it along the way. So I believe calorie cycling is the best strategy when it comes to regular dieting or compared to regular dieting, which is why I'm here, right? I wanna teach you the program that I use that allows you to use calorie cycling to end up in a better place than if you were just constantly dieting every day. And besides the fact, we'll talk about the psychological things later, but besides the fact that you get to be well fed every other day as well. So all right, I hope you see how fasting can be a very, very powerful calorie cycling tool. We'll go into more details as we move forward, but I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.