 Our next caller is Rachel from Kansas. Hey, what's up, Rachel? How can we help you? Hey guys, I'm super excited to be talking to you. I'm a huge fan of the show. So my question is, is I am a huge nutrition and exercise enthusiast, but I always struggle to figure out what to do with myself. I've been lifting weights consistently over the last eight years and I built a ton of muscle and I love that. But I'm at the point where I feel like either my body fat's too high or I have too much muscle for my frame. So my question is basically, how can I speed up my metabolism without getting any bigger muscularly as well as just getting my calories into a better place? OK, good question. I also see here in your question that you wrote to us that you're in your last year of physical therapy school. I am very cool. So you know what you're doing then when it comes to movement. OK, so where are your calories right now? How tall are you? What's your body weight and do you know? So my calories are at 1500 on maintenance. I'm five, three and I'm 150 pounds. And I usually vary in like between 140 to 150 pounds. And my body fat is about 20 or 21 percent. Wow. OK, so you are one of those very rare female individuals where you just hold on to muscle. Does that is that? I do. OK. They call me a little bulldog in my class because I'm just that muscular. Yeah, very. And that's very rare. It's actually a cool thing to have because you're always going to kind of be sculpted and toned, but you want to get smaller and you don't want to have to cut your calories. And I can I can understand this in my entire career. I think I've worked with maybe a couple of women. Yeah, one or two in this situation. Here's what. And this is where I give advice that I never give it to anybody. Cardio. Yeah, I would say a cardio. Yeah, reduce your reduce your resistance training and do a little bit more endurance training and your body will pare down some of your muscle size. As far as boosting your metabolism without increasing muscle mass, it's really hard to do. Now, there is a range of calories that your current lean body mass will burn on the low end. You know, there's a number and on the high end, there's another number. What determines that is typically macronutrient profile will help. So high protein helps with that. But the other thing is, are you sending a muscle building signal, which it sounds like you are. So again, this is one of those rare instances where I would say reduce your resistance training. Maybe even reduce the intensity of it. When you're going to the gym, you're just kind of going through the motions, going through full range of motion. Do a little bit more endurance work and that may give you the look that you're looking for. But I will say this and I'll caution you, okay? You've heard the term, the grass is always greener on the other side. Right. Okay. The women that I've worked with, I can think of two specifically who are very similar to you, they did this and you know what happened? They stopped because they said, I don't like this. I like doing what I did before and it felt better. It felt better to have a little more muscle and I felt more solid and I like the way my butt looked and all that other stuff. So give it a shot, but my money is on that. You'll probably do it and be like, nah, I liked where I was before. Yeah, that's what I've always struggled with just because I love to be strong and I love having muscles, but it's just like, I just have a lot. Oh, damn you. Yeah, literally, my ex was a little bit taller than what you are at five, three, but your body fat percentage and total, she was like 158 and two inches taller than you. And she walked around like this. And I remember when we got her ready for her first show and she actually had a different, she hired a coach outside of me to help her. And I remember he had to completely, and then one of the feedbacks from the first judging she had was her quads were too developed for women's bikini. And we had to like completely eliminate leg training. She had to do tons of cardio. Her calories were so, I blew my mind. And I swear that like it was so hard for her to even lose a pound or two of muscle. It was just so crazy to see. And I've only met a handful of women that have genetics like this. And I 100% agree with Sal. Like, you know, to get down there, I remember it was great because so she could say she did it and she got on stage and she won. She did great, but I remember her not being happy. I remember her being like, I prefer the muscle. I prefer a fuller body and looking that way and being strong and not feeling all, like I have to do cardio three, four times a week. But yeah, you were an example of the advice we give to you would be the opposite of what we give to most people. Is you're somebody who I would say, you know, start. Yeah, I would encourage circuit type training, low rest periods and, you know, add cardio to it because in your case, your body probably just hangs on to that muscle mass. Okay. And just to be clear, so you guys did say like, so I do bump up my calories or try to get them higher or just 1500 is fine. Okay, so you can, okay. There's two issues here that we're looking at. One is, do you want to eat more calories? Cause 1500 feels too low to you. Does it give you less flexibility when you want to hang out with friends? Yeah, it's mostly just the flexibility. Like I can stick to it and it's fine in my day to day life but I run into issues whenever, like, you know just special events and things like that. And I mean, granted, I'm just not going to make or break anything, but yeah. So you can slowly bump your calories, but here's my guess with rare individuals like you that hang on to muscle, it'll make it even harder for you to lose muscle. I would, I bet this, let me ask you a question. When you increase your calories, you just build muscle and get stronger. Yeah, I get real strong. You know, everybody listening and watching to this right now is like, everybody's like, wow. Everybody hates Rachel. I feel so bad for you. Yeah, you know, okay. So here, this is, I know you didn't ask for this, but I'm going to go in this direction because this is so common for most people. There's a certain amount of acceptance that we have to have with how our bodies are. Some people's bone structure isn't perfect. I mean, I had narrow, I have naturally narrow shoulders. I had to accept that. Some people have- He has a weird face. Short, yeah, weird face. Justin, Adam said that with a weird face. It's kind of beak-like, yeah. So thank you, Justin, for giving the details. Some people have short muscle, other people have long muscle bellies, things that you can't really change. You know, acceptance is going to go a long way here. And you're young. I mean, you're in physical therapy schools. You're probably in your 20s. You know, I tell you what, in 10 years, 15 years, you're going to love your genetics. You're going to love the fact that you hold on to muscle. It's going to keep you lean. You're going to bounce back from having a baby if you ever decide to have a baby at one point way faster than other people. You probably pick up athletics very easily. So at one point, you're going to love this. I know right now it's challenging because it's like you want to do a particular thing and your body doesn't want to do it. But there's a certain level of acceptance here that I think would be a good idea to focus on because what you don't want to do is this. What you don't want to do is get so caught up on the fact that you want to be smaller that you damage yourself. You know, the example that Adam gave with his ex-girlfriend. I mean, had she continued doing that because she liked the look, she would have probably caused hormone issues. She lost her period. Yeah, see. That was like why we never did that again after that was because she lost her period for months after that. Yeah, so I guess, you know, I'm sorry for maybe not telling you exactly the advice you want to hear. But I mean, I'm going to tell you right now from the outside, these are great genetics to have. They're going to really serve you well. Work with your gifts. Yeah, totally. You could play with some things like this. I might give you some other things that, you know, you could try and do. Like I might drop you down to just one day of like a map's anabolic week. And then I'd get you doing things like mobility stuff. And maybe we would pick up some, you know, things where we're challenging your endurance and doing stuff. Yoga. Yeah, do some yoga, do some things, some practices like that that might be kind of away from. Now, again, to Sal's point, you may not like all that. And you may love lifting the weights because you're strong. Because I know, I mean, I tell you what, I know that that's what my ex, she'd love to lift because it feels good when you're a strong and powered woman and you're lifting as much as just about anybody else inside the gym. It's a cool ass feeling. So, you know, you could play with those things and see how you like it and see how you feel and see how your body shapes up. And if you're happy with that, but you're in it. You're in a good, you have a good problem. Let's put it that way. That's awesome. I mean, yeah, I appreciate you guys. And that's awesome advice. And I just wanted to get basically your guys' expert opinion on what's going on here. Cause, you know, run my brain on it for a while and I just couldn't figure it out. So. Yeah, you just got really good muscle building gene. You know, Rachel, I tell you what, if you like the competitive aspect of exercise, you might be able to focus on that. We have a program that we wrote for obstacle course racers. I was just thinking OCR. And, but you're gonna build a lot of stamina and endurance. It's drastically different from what you do. It's competitive. And for someone like you, it might give you a little bit more of the look you're looking for because it's not focused so much on building as it is on performing well and maybe the obstacle course race. Not that you need to do a race, but rather train that way. So why don't we send you that program? Take a look at it. If it looks like something that might be interesting, give it a shot and see if it gives you a little bit more of what you're looking for. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. I super appreciate you guys meeting with me. Like I said, I've been a huge fan of the show. So it's an honor to get to talk to you guys. Thank you, Rachel. Awesome, Rachel. All right, thank you guys. Thank you. Yeah, one big thing I took away from that was that you guys think I have a weird face. What the hell? I never knew. I was just piling on. I was just trying to make Rachel feel better. Yeah, you know what? You wanna know what's funny? So I had a client I trained. I literally remember two women that were like this because that's how rare it is of all the women that I trained in my entire career either directly or by proxy through other trainers and in the gym. And there was one woman, no joke. No joke. She stopped lifting weights and only did, you know, athletic based stuff. And she looked like, she looked more muscular than women would look if they did bodybuilding for years. That's kind of genetics that she had. This was Monique, dude. It blew my mind when I saw, I mean, I wanna say too, so this was way long time ago now. I remember the diet that her coach had her on and it was because they just, they could not get her to lose. Like she like had to, he's like, she's not allowed to do any leg exercises for the next three months. It was cardio crazy, super low calorie. And I remember coming home every day, just like so angry. She could just cut that hard and not like lose any muscle mass whatsoever. She's built just like this. I mean, she was taller than she was, but she also carried 10 more pounds on her body. And it was, that was like, and they're rare. It's like, she was the only woman that I had known that well that had this, that genetics like that. You hit it real too though. Like this is, when you turn 35, 40, 45. Oh, she's gonna be, she's gonna love it. Yeah. She's just gonna, everyone's gonna be like, what do you do? I don't really do much. I just have all this. Yeah, exactly. This current change. I love the idea too. When you said OCR, it was as literally, that's what I was meaning by like, hey, maybe this is a cool, fun time for you to explore some other modalities. And you know, OCR would be great for someone like this because she would, she would just get leaner and she would look still muscular and awesome. Yeah, but that grass is greener on the other side, man. That is a real lesson. Like, you know, there's so many people out there that hate, you know. I mean, I'll give you a simple example. Like, you know, I have family members that, women who hate the fact that they have really curly, thick Mediterranean hair. Oh, when I wake up in the morning, it's so bushy and I gotta do this and I gotta do that. And then my wife has got this ultra straight, sleek hair and everybody's like, I wish I had your hair. And my wife's like, I wish I had your hair. I hate the fact that I can't. And it's like, you know, you oftentimes want what you don't have and if you get stuck in that, you'll never be happy. Well, you'll never win, because then even when you achieve that, then you want the other side. Exactly, exactly.