 Are you eating low calories and doing a lot of exercise but your body is not moving? Watch this. Our next caller is Nicole from California. Hey Nicole, how can we help you? Hey guys, I really appreciate you guys first of all taking my call. I started listening to you guys about a year ago and I stayed for not only the fitness content but you guys are just super entertaining so I really appreciate everything you guys do. Thank you. Thank you. So I'll start with a little bit of background. About three years ago I decided that I want to lose some body fat so I started doing you know your typical like orange theory classes and then I finally got into resistance training and so that led me into a bikini competition which I did about two years ago which was literally right before COVID hit so about two weeks later COVID happened so I found myself dealing with a lot of like binge and restricting type of eating and a little bit of like body dysmorphia and so fast forward a little bit after that listening to you guys I decided to bulk to speed up my metabolism because I was still eating pretty low calories and so when I did the bulk I got up to maybe a little under 2,000 calories and I had put on a lot of unwanted body fat so I did that for a couple months and decided that I just felt really uncomfortable that I wanted to cut and so about four months ago or so I decided to cut and when I did that I was starting from about 2,000 so I didn't really have a lot of wiggle room and I went down to about 1700 at first and then slowly progressively went down and for the last six weeks or so I've been around I would say anywhere from 1200 to no more than 1400 calories and I've been doing consistent resistance training so I've been doing your guys is uh maps anabolic and so I kind of feel like I'm stuck because I'm not seeing any more progress and I don't want to add any more like cardio because I'm already doing about 15,000 steps a day and I don't want to obviously cut my calories because it's already pretty low so I'm just feel like my so my question is I'm pretty stuck at what I should do because I know I maybe should do another bulk or reverse diet but I don't want to put on more body fat because I still want to lose about 15 and so I just where do I go from here and should I stick with anabolic or try a different program yeah Nicole when you did your bikini competition you said that was I see wrote up here is about two years ago do you how long was your prep and do you know what you what your calories ended up with at the end of that prep like what were you eating you know right before the competition how long did it take you to get I don't know stage ready uh yeah so before I did uh competition I was just like a regular client with my coach I did I was on a diet um just counting my macros and so my prep so I went straight from that into a prep and in hindsight I should have reversed out of that but so I was doing the prep for maybe four months I think my calories at the end of my prep were anywhere between like maybe 800 to a thousand calories maybe even lower I was doing hours of cardio um on top of resistance training six to seven days a week and so that and then coming out of that I just my metabolism was all over the place and so yeah um yeah it was fairly low okay yeah so um I'll go we'll give you some good news and some bad news so we'll start with the bad news first okay okay you you went from counting macros to a prep period which was four months long which really was just an extension of your diet it just got more and more severe because you said you were counting calories to begin with then you added lots of cardio lots of cardio lots of exercise um and now you're dealing with kind of the the the consequences of that okay so that's the bad news the good news is you can come out of it it's going to take some time it's going to take some time there's some you know I remember talking to Jason Phillips about this he's the the founder of nci coaching he deals a lot with people in this category he says you know he feels like the body the central nervous system kind of has a memory and you have to get your body the point where it feels like it doesn't need to hold on to everything so it might take longer than you think and you're going to gain body fat unfortunately in the process otherwise you're going to be stuck here uh for a long time and it could potentially get worse now how do we minimize the fat gain we slow it down it might take a while but we go real slow so a reverse diet for someone like you would look maybe something like this right now you're eating you know 12 to 1400 calories I wouldn't increase your calories yet I would just reduce your cardio and your steps start with that slowly cut it maybe cut it down by a quarter see how everything works when you feel comfortable cut it down by another quarter to the point where you're not doing any deliberate cardiovascular activity still eating 12 to 14 calories then I would slowly raise your calories by maybe 100 a week at the most and watch what happens but you're probably still going to gain some body fat your body still needs to feel safe and comfortable it may be a long process I had a client that I did this with over a year it took us over a year to kind of get her body out of what had happened but at the end of that year uh man things were working a lot differently she she was you know eating eight to 900 calories more than she was before she stopped her twice daily cardio sessions we were only lifting weights three to four days a week which is very different than what we had started with so that's what we're kind of working with so you're gonna have to you're gonna have to kind of go through that process otherwise you're gonna be stuck where you're at and it's gonna be like this until you back out of it and and you know I I don't know which one's worse for you right sticking where you're at now or moving out of it and maybe setting yourself up a little differently in the future yeah I would want to dive in a little bit too on the the body dysmorphia and your experience when you gained weight um did you happen to test your body fat during that time when you went on your bulk um when I was doing the prep I was maybe around six percent after that I never tested it um I had a bad I didn't like the scale at all after I went on prep um when I came off so I saw I saw the scale increase and I knew it was gonna happen but in my head um I just didn't like the way that that felt so I gained obviously some weight I needed to but I didn't test my body fat after the prep or after the competition yeah uh but I I did gain weight but in my head it was too much and so I kept trying to like slow it down but I couldn't because I kept eating and then restricting uh so I dealt with that cycle for a while yeah so I this is the tough part about um you know this is like a situation where you know I wish you were a client of mine and we were talking though through this I literally was just talking to a client of mine about something she wasn't a bikini competitor but she has these extremely high standards for what her her body should look like and she puts on you know two or three pounds uh extra on her body and she all of a sudden starts telling me how out of shape she is and I said you know you're not you're not actually your incredible shape uh I said and you get to have glasses of wine here and there and you get to go out to dinner and you don't do hours of cardio and you're able and you're in your fifties and you can maintain this this body I said a lot of this is in your head and you the way you view yourself and what I would what I'm wondering is you actually might have been on the right track when you decided to bump your calories and you started to gain a little bit away and the reason why I asked about the body fat percentage because this happens with some of my clients they put let's say 10 or 15 pounds on and there's maybe their their jeans are feeling a little tighter or whatever and they start freaking out but then I body fat test them and of those 10 to 15 pounds you know 80 percent of it was muscle and yeah we put a couple pounds of body fat on there too along the way but most of it was muscle which means I'm moving you in the right direction towards speeding your metabolism off and I would tell that client like hang tight we're doing the right thing right now I know this feels a little uncomfortable for you I know you look at yourself in the mirror and go oh I don't like the way I look and I'm putting on too much weight but you gotta trust the process we're gonna lean out we're gonna come back the other direction but right now I need us to speed our metabolism up because we're not in a healthy place for long term and so you might have already kind of been on the right track I wonder how much of that weight that you put on was actually as bad as you think it is and and how much of that is just in your own head of thinking that you were just putting on too much weight yeah the other thing too Nicole sometimes I'll get a female client that's 12% body fat and she gained weight through a reverse you know diet and went up to 19% body fat and freaked out 19 is healthy 12% is not to maintain you know what I mean and we tend to have those standards let me ask you a question Nicole do you think you could focus on purely on strength and performance if you took your mind off of how you looked forgot everything else do you think you could just focus on getting stronger at the bench press the deadlift and the squat would that be a possibility uh definitely I think that well when I was doing the bulk last year um I felt myself getting stronger uh obviously but I also saw myself like my clothes weren't fitting I was gaining weight but I did get rid of the scale because I didn't want to associate that with yeah like how I felt so I did I I did like the way that I feel I was lifting now I'm obviously not lifting so much in my head I feel like I can do it but my strength is just not there uh so I would love to get back into focus on that so currently I am doing anabolic I don't know if you recommend me trying something else for that while I'm increasing my calories yeah let's put you on maps power lift I was just gonna say I'm glad you went that way because let's say anabolic is fine totally fine but I think power lift would be good for the mindset pure symmetric yeah all you're thinking about is getting a stronger bench getting a stronger deadlift yeah so I love that suggestion yeah try this try following maps power lift and if you're able to for the next three months just see how strong you could get in the major lifts and Nicole have have some or not sorry have some compassion for yourself too like know that if you are getting stronger in the gym your building muscle and initially if you put on a couple pounds of body fat along the way it may feel new it may feel uncomfortable you may be comparing yourself to when you were shredded and lean and you got to get out of that that space and kind of trust the process because it does take some time to speed this metabolism up it's not going to be overnight and we are going to put a little bit of body fat on along the way but that's okay when we get you up to eating seven eight hundred more calories and you're used to and then we cut you back down four or five hundred calories watch how fast that body fat goes thanks guy I really appreciate it it's been that's a I've been thinking about doing that maps the program so I'm glad you guys suggested that so thank you yeah we'll send that over to you follow it and just focus on getting stronger and feeding yourself for at least the next three months see if you could do that I think at the end of it you'll see some positive some positive results awesome thank you guys so much thanks Nicole it was Nicole yeah I was scrolling up and down over there and I thought he scrolled on somebody else's name when I know you got it right I tell you what I think uh I've said this before I think stage presentation competitions are the worst for most people I mean if you have any any body image issues at all you're gonna get on stage and get judged by how you look with other people and judges are very blunt that's what they're supposed to tell you all your glutes don't look good which correct me for them wrong but it seems like the majority of people that that sign up have yes underlying it attracts the very people attracts those people yes and I knew it right away when I mean she didn't track her body fat she said it already she was getting stronger she was at six percent when she was competing that's that's beyond unhealthy she was probably right on the right track she probably jumped all the way up to 12 or 14 percent which is still lean as fuck you know it got stronger and metabolism was going in the right direction but freaked out freaked out because still comparing herself to this this shredded lean body that she once had when she was on stage not realizing that she's probably healthier stronger and in a better position when she was increasing the calories yeah you know this reminds me of like when you you guys you know back in the day with Michael Jackson people would look at him and say who what doctor what plastic surgeon continues to do surgery on his face when he approaches them like what lack of integrity what who isn't telling him you're this is a problem we're doing too much that's how I feel about these idiot coaches you're training this lady this girl she's already dieting she says I want to do a show yeah no problem and you beat the crap out of her and how you have 800 calories a day that's about the money dude yeah you like it's not even that much money in it like how big you have to be yeah but I mean trainers love it because it's you're committed to me for three to six months depending on how long we do the prep for what are like that and it's you project your own shit onto other people yeah this is absolutely terrible I mean never coach someone that way it's flooded it's flooded with this I mean it was a obviously at the beginning we used to talk with us all the time right when I was in the thick of all of it it was probably a conversation in every other podcast early on when we first started the show but yeah no it's it's more common than not it's it would be rare I would run into a coach in that space that I was like oh he or she's telling given really good advice for the most part it's shit advice and it's to the wrong people it's like the worst people it's like the people that do not belong competing at all right now on many levels not just body dysmorphia and understanding nutrition not enough experience in lifting yet it's like you take somebody who's been lifting for a year or less haven't even put muscle maturity doesn't have a physique they've built yet and then throw them on extreme diet to get on stage and come and then compare themselves work their crap out of them yeah it's just like I mean this is the process you sign up for one of these events you hire a coach who doesn't understand health and really has probably their own body image issues then you have to send them pictures I don't know every week about of you in your underwear looking at the camera and then they're going to break your body down every week and then on top of it you're going to be competing amongst a bunch of people who have their own issues and then you have a bunch of judges who are just going to be very blunt and then you're going to put yourself on stage like you want to talk about the perfect storm for creating problems like I whenever I I have yet insecurities even further oh I have yet to meet someone who's told me hey do you think I should compete I have yet to meet someone and be like yeah it's a good idea it's almost always actually it's like a Hollywood of this fitness space yeah it's just for the most part it's a fucking cesspool dude there's very there's very few people that are doing it well doing it right and are thinking about and by the way it's a sport it's impossible for it to be truly healthy most sports are extreme right and it was something that I used to talk to my audience about my little audience that I had back when I was doing that and it would be okay I did this as healthy as I could here we are heading into the final two weeks I know and letting you know that this is not something anybody should go and do because it's not healthy it's not ideal but it attracts the people that struggle with this the most and I think it just perpetuates the problem totally 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