 Our next caller is Nicole from California, Nicole. Welcome back. How's it been? What's going on? Glad to be back. Yeah, so what's what's happening? How can we help you much? I was just coming on to give you guys a follow-up So it's probably been Close to 10 weeks since I was on last In regards to my whole story with the spinal meningitis and having the one leg shorter than the other and everything So I followed your guys's advice on doing a lot of just you know unilateral stuff You know a lot of single leg work. You had mentioned doing like 15 minutes a day every day. I Increased creatine. I was sure taking like the half scoops daily And I can't believe how what a difference it just it's awesome I mean my legs have grown so much I can do things like with my leg that I couldn't do yoga poses. I can do now I kick myself in the ass for not doing single leg work 10 15 years ago So it's been great Amazing. I mean, I can't even thank you guys enough on how awesome it's been Nicole I'm getting the chills right now So I remember you told us, you know your story about you know, what happened as a kid and you always had this kind of deficiency on one side and you know our advice was Unilateral work and we talked a little bit about you know, how to kind of change the mentality around those things I'm so glad you called us to give an update. In fact, I thought about you a few times afterwards I remember the story you told us I was like man, that's really challenging So you're noticing a big improvement. You feel like it's big. It's made a good difference then Yeah, you know, I have a couple of questions to just to kind of follow up But in regards to that. Yeah, I mean, I can't believe how much my actual my right leg my good leg grew In in like I was like, oh, okay, great. I had to suck it up. I won't lie I didn't take your advice for a little bit. I was doing You know, I had to like get out of my own way. Um, and I just seen a drastic improvement even on my good leg Which was crazy to see So it's overall been great. Um So I'm like looking at my notes. So I just have a couple follow up questions that I'd like to ask So in regards to just watching my legs build, um, I kind of remove myself from the scale, but I haven't noticed an overall And I know you guys talked about this before an overall like thickness like everywhere in my body that I didn't really notice before So I'm just kind of wondering if that is kind of normal. It's nothing that I'm ashamed of but I'm you know, it's like I just kind of want to know if that's normal. Yeah, so okay. Do you feel stronger? Oh, yeah, 100% yeah, and you're noticing more muscle in those target areas the the legs both the the Target one and then the one that was okay Yeah, yeah, yeah You're gaining muscle and you feel good because you're gaining some muscle now. Did you gain body fat? I don't know Um, you know, maybe probably not. I think what you did Is you started to send the right signal to your body you upped your creatine creatine is a very effective natural Supplement for building muscle and helping with recovery. It's also got some health some good health properties You probably built a lot of muscle one of the ways you can tell by the way If it's mostly muscle versus body fat is performance in the gym strength increase strength Yeah strength Where do you notice the the tighter feelings? Is it in the parts where there's muscle? Or do you feel it around your waist where we tend to store body fat, right? It's your waist and you know, I understand I'm a female and You know, I had brought it up previously that I cut my creatine big time just because I did feel bloated but I have over, you know, the weeks like Been very consistent with the creatine and I've noticed a big change and I think that's a big helper So I don't know if that's it. But yeah, it's around my waist and I think to that point I started to notice within like three weeks in that I was like Starting like literally started. This is all good. These are good signs. This is all very good signs And so I've been trying to get up to like 100 to 120 grams of protein a day So I've really been packing my mornings with protein because I just felt like in the afternoon I was like just eating I I work from home and my pantry is right behind me at my desk and it's a nightmare So here's so so welcome to the other mind game now. Okay, so there was some mind game There was some mind game challenges we had going into this And now we're encountering some other ones and this is a common one for especially for women Is the building muscle aspect and stronger aspect? It can start to mess with you a little bit. But if we took that out, let's just just take that part out for a second Let's just pretend that you didn't even notice any of that everything else Feels great, right? Even the increase in appetite probably feels good. You're stronger Energy might be better. Is your libido feeling better? How's your sleep? Like look at all those signs And if those things are better Then I wouldn't worry about the feeling bigger part and that again that can really mess with people's heads Now if if your diet is comprised of a lot of heavily processed foods You may in fact be eating way too much But if you know you're eating whole natural foods, you're focusing on your protein You're noticing performance, you know gains in the gym or with your workouts and your legs feel better I wouldn't worry about that right now at all. I think you're going in the right direction. Well, I yeah I think you're you're killing it. We still we do have the option though. You could run a mini cut I mean if you if you felt the metabolism kick back up, you've been hitting your protein targets We've built some good muscle. You've you've kicked ass for what a couple months now Um, and you if you wanted to lean out a little bit I don't think there's anything wrong either with running a little bit lower calorie for a couple weeks and then coming back Uh to your maintenance or surplus too. So you know our focus was a little bit different last time, right? We were the the biggest focus was the imbalance and really helping you there I think that was the main conversation that we talked about but it looks like you've had a tremendous success with that And now you're noticing some things like that around your waist and there's nothing wrong with us saying Hey, let's let's run two weeks of a lower calorie diet for a while and see if that leans you out a little bit and see how you feel Uh, and then go back to your maintenance or surplus. Uh, so long as you're in a a healthy place calorie wise right now Do you have any idea approximately how many calories you're eating a day right now? So I um, I'll go between like 1800 to 2200 a day. I try to stay within that within that range. Um So, you know, sometimes it's on the higher end. Sometimes it's on the lower end. Um, I feel good about about that. Um Mainly I eat a lot of it in the morning. Um, just because that's what I'm most hungry and then I'll kind of Eat later in the day for dinner. Um, but yeah right around in there. Yeah, that's that's not a bad That's not a bad calorie. Uh, you know place to be in I do you have our intuitive nutrition guide, Nicole? Um, I don't have that you guys sent me the maps prime pro last time and so I started to use that Um, which I really love my husband Okay, so perfect Well, I'm gonna send you the intuitive nutrition guide because I think it's gonna help you with the Oh, no of them. Am I getting bigger as a body fat? Is it muscle it's gonna help you with that internal dialogue quite a bit because it the intuitive nutrition guide Really does help you focus on The the signs that you want to focus on and take your your your I guess your focus off the things that can often Mess with our heads a little bit. It's so we'll send that over to you go through it. I think it'll help you out Okay, um, and then just one last thing before that you guys go can I Kick back into doing to like some deadlifts or like I mean I did I've kind of thrown them in there now and then But I was because I started to get bored. So it's like I'm gonna do like You know some double leg exercises. So, um Do you guys have any good like can I start like I want to kind of start doing some more? Um, I'm just not sure which ones would be the best in this situation Well, look if if you were my client, okay, because we're dealing with not just an imbalance But an actual short a leg that is shorter than the other Right, I would almost always train you unilaterally. That's just a hundred percent. I I don't think I would ever have you focus On bilateral exercise now, it's okay to throw them in every once in a while real life involves bilateral movements So you still want to do them here and there because obviously in real life You know doesn't care if one leg is short in the other so you're still gonna practice those But I would almost entirely Always do unilateral work because that's what's going to benefit you the most Maybe it may be an exercise or two a week tops that you throw in, you know a couple sets here or there But the program what we talked about last time staying focused on unilateral I mean you can develop and strengthen and oh you get a great physique Yeah, you can you can pretty much do everything you need to do by training that way And in your case it is it is what is best for your body It doesn't mean that you can't play with it here and there and you know, let's just see I've been doing single leg for a while. I wonder how strong my regular bilateral deadlift would be Today, I'm going to do three sets of it at the end of my workout or sometime in my routine Just to kind of check up on yourself. That's fine But honestly with that that imbalance like that. It's just not ideal for you. You you're only risking that's novelty for you In this instance. So yeah, I agree. It's just going to benefit you more to kind of stay as much as you can in unilateral All right, well not the answer I wanted to hear but that's okay Hey Hold on Nicole. You did what we said last time and what happened. Yeah, I know. I mean as long as I'm seeing the strength I'm seeing, you know, my legs getting bigger and like, you know better So obviously I know it works, but you know, you get kind of in your head and of course Well, you can you can also I mean, uh, you don't have to stick to the same You know lateral exercises though. I mean you can start to get creative and and try new things and challenge your body in different ways too though Yeah, like are you like are you are you playing with the Turkish get up at all? Um, no, I I have before in the past when I used to do like boot camp, um classes And it's just it was it's really difficult for me to get up on with one one leg from the ground like that On one side of the other side I could do fine But I just found it really challenging and so I'm kind of one of those like People where I found it challenging so I was like screw this exercise and throw it out where I got some more advice for you. You don't want to listen to or you don't want to hear I think you should practice speaking. I think you should practice turkish get ups on the side that you that you struggle with That's right I think you should practice them every day just five to ten minutes because I tell you I swear to god, nicole If you practice the movements that you feel like you can't do with that one side and you get good at them The what you're gonna get back from it I can't even explain how much of a benefit you're gonna get from that. It's going to change everything. Everything gets stronger. Yes Yeah No, I know I've seen it happen over the last couple months. So I I trust you guys just getting in and getting excited to practice it every day, but Excellent. Well, thanks for calling in. This is the tip of the iceberg. This is two months in you haven't seen anything yet So stay stay on the course. Thanks for the update. That's great, nicole Guys appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you Yeah, you know, I uh, I've trained have you guys ever trained anybody where they had an actual anatomical Yeah, yeah, and I had I've had a couple I had one client who couldn't fully extend one arm And then I had somebody with a shorter shoulder and yeah, and it's just you know When you're talking about an an anatomical thing that you can't like you can't make her leg longer, right? Unilateral all the time there's there's always always always unilateral and you get exceptional results Because you have to understand that anytime she does a deadlift, you know, everything else is compensated Yeah, she's got a she's got a one inch raise on one side, which is going to run all the way up the connect chain That's gonna asymmetrical shifts. Yeah, so every day and like you said, it doesn't hurt to test it every once in a while Just because real life she was on both feet. She'll have to pick a couch up or a kid or do something with So it's not a bad idea to make sure you still have the capability of doing so with that But unilateral training all the way for and then that's why I brought up the Turkish get up too Because such a great movement that's going to highlight the highlight any left to right and left to right discrepancy And just a challenge very challenging exercise for someone to do and that's a great way to keep her Interested in trying to get better and improve because I do understand that, you know, you Train a certain way only for a while. Even if it is what's best for you You get bored and feel like you need something new or different. Well, you know add a movement like that I'm not a great skill for hell. Yeah, but it was funny as soon as she's like Yeah, but I couldn't really get up on one side and right away. I went, oh, well, that's what you got to do That's what you got to find those moments Hey, if you enjoyed that clip you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here and be sure to subscribe