 Our first caller is Abby from Florida. Abby, how's it going? How can we help you? Hi, so just to give you some background, I'm a 5'5 female, currently around 98 pounds. And the last time I checked, I was about 8% body fat. I have a workout program from a trainer three times a week. And my split for these four weeks at the moment is one upper, one lower, and one full body day. And right now, I usually get about 20,000 to 30,000 steps each day. And on the other four days, I don't work out with my trainer. I'll run or walk, on average, anywhere from 10 to 13 miles. And sometimes throw in another full body day on my own on the weekend. Study State Cardio helps me with my anxiety, but I tend to push myself too hard. And some days end up running a half marathon just because I want to see if I can. I'm eating around 1,900 calories a day with 120 grams of protein. And the rest usually breaks down to about 50 fat and around 250 carb. And I take one or two on track meals a week. I'm a recent college graduate, and I'm applying to medical school for fall of 2022. So for the gap year, I'm starting a part-time job next week as an any-time fitness membership experience manager. And on top of that, I also volunteer at the hospital. I know all this exercise isn't sustainable, especially when I'm going to be start working over 30 hours a week starting next week, but I don't really know where to go from here. I recently just finished playing Division 2 college soccer, and I'm not sure how to train for a lifestyle instead of performance. And I'm scared of suddenly getting a lot of fat from drastically reducing my cardio all at once. I was advised by the trainers at school that my body fat's at an unhealthy level, and my cycle's often irregular. I just want to look and feel good and be strong and not ruin my metabolism, but I don't really know how to achieve that. So my question to you is, how do I transition away from so much cardio and implement a more sustainable workout plan slash how should I adjust my macros to reflect less activity? No, first off, great personality. Yeah, I also like long walks at the beach. Yeah, I just want to add that too. First off, thank you so much for calling in, asking us a question like this. Can I ask you some some personal questions if you don't mind? Yeah, sure. OK, do you have you ever dealt with any eating issues or thorexia or anything or anything else? Or would you say that you might have a tendency towards that? No, definitely. I grew up eating really healthy because my mom's a personal trainer too. So I think when I came to college, I was so scared of gaining that freshman 15 that I was like, I'm only going to eat super healthy. And I know probably the first two years of college, I was really restrictive. And I think I've gotten a little bit better about that. But yeah, definitely tendency towards thorexia. OK, yeah, so you're also a medical school student. And in my experience, people who tend to be high achievers tend to self-medicate when they're stressed out with more work and more accomplishment. So some people turn to drugs, other people turn to alcohol. Overachievers tend to turn to challenges, physical challenges, or more studying or more volunteering. Would you consider yourself somebody that would fit in the type A personality type category? Yeah, 100%. So I'm going to give you some advice, what I think you should do, and then I'll answer your question. So this is totally, you can take my advice. It's totally up to you. Again, I do want to thank you for calling in because putting yourself out there is a real tough thing to do. So your body fat is too low. It's too low for a female. If you haven't already caused yourself hormonal issues. She already is. She's already had irregular months already with her period. Yeah, so then you're causing yourself some issues now. A lot of these can be long lasting. You can also cause yourself bone mineral issues. You can cause metabolism issues, other health issues. But I don't think you should focus on those things or running away from those things because if anything, those are going to drive you in the same direction that you're currently going. So what I'm going to recommend is this. I'm going to recommend that you don't observe body fat, don't observe weight. I would definitely take away any type of intense exercise. Strength training is perfectly fine. Three days a week, perfectly fine. Getting stronger, it's actually great. Focus on getting stronger. And I would recommend that you focus on how you feel and also being with your feelings. Sometimes people have anxiety or stress. And rather than sitting with those feelings, they tend to distract themselves with lots of activity and lots of different things. You're doing a lot. You're doing more than three people should be able to do just for yourself. And you're probably going to crash and burn if you haven't already. So I would scale everything way back. Three days a week and resist the strength. Don't weigh yourself because here's what's going to happen. You're going to gain muscle. You're going to gain body fat. You should gain body fat. As a female, your body fat should at least be twice as high as it is now. So you said 8%. You should be at least, 16 is really lean. You should be at least 16%. And so your weight's going to go up and it's going to freak you out when you weigh yourself and you see that. So avoid the scale, avoid those things. And then if you really want to take it a step further, I really recommend that you work with a therapist who's worked with situations like this once a week or even twice a month and just give them feedback. Hey, here's what I'm doing. Here's my nutrition. What do you think? And dig a little deeper. And I promise you it'll get harder before it gets better. But when it gets better, you'll find this balance with exercise and nutrition and you'll develop a new relationship with it. Cause right now the relationship you have with it, although it's taking you away from certain things, it's a stressful one. And that is definitely not sustainable. I think you've identified the not sustainable part. So that's my advice. Now to answer what you said, I would slowly just scale things. If you don't want to go that far, just eliminate the running. Just start with that. Just cut the running out and keep everything else and increase your calories by at least 600 calories a day. That's where I would start if you just want to start slowly. Are you going to leave anything for Justin and I? No. I'm going crazy. I'm going to eat the whole burrito here. I hope you're one on one session with Sal went well. So if you were my client, the first thing that I would actually say to you is I'd ask you what you're running from. If I have a client that's training this much, working that much, got this much on their plate, in this crazy of lean shape already and is still pushing, I would want to dig in. I'd want to find out what it is that you're distracting yourself from that it causes you to do this much exercise. You're already in obviously beyond physical as far as eight or body fat percentage wise in incredible shape. That's also the good side of this. The good side is you're in an easier place to help somebody physically. Mentally, getting through all those hurdles and getting to the bottom of what Sal was alluding to, that's probably going to be the biggest challenge of all this. I mean, simply allowing yourself to have a few hundred more calories and cutting out all the running and extra activity should be easy. It's less work, less effort you need to put forth. But my concern as a coach or if you were my client would be mentally being able to get through that. Something has got us here, right? Yeah, I think that's really it. Most of the challenge here is the mental side to this, is to be able to shift that over into performing as well as you're performing and everything else with recovery and focusing more on what's gonna actually restore your body to keep you going. So to be able to kind of look at how you can increase that within your schedule by eliminating some of these things that you're overdoing quite a bit will actually help to improve all other avenues of what you have yourself involved in. As something more specific as far as training too is if you're not, I don't know what the split looks like that you're running, but I would definitely run a maps phase one, maps anabolic type of a program. I mean, and or something like maps power lift, something where you're focused on getting strong, you're focused on the weights that you're moving, you're not thinking about the scale, you're not getting hung up on your body image, you're not paying attention to that stuff. It's really just about getting in there, training three days a week, trying to get stronger inside the gym. That's what I would do as far as my lifting protocol. Yeah, you know what, Abby? I'll give you something else too, because one of the hardest things to do when you're using something as a distraction or you're medicating with something, in your case it may be exercise, is to just take it away because now it's gone. So now what do I do, right? Sometimes it's easier to replace it with something that is better for you, before you eliminate everything completely. May I recommend Yin yoga or meditation? So on those days that you normally take an hour to run or to do lots of activity, now you're not gonna do power yoga, you're not gonna do hot yoga. No pio. You're gonna do the slow Yin yoga. It's very slow, you're holding positions, you're focusing on your breath or meditation. Sign up for a meditation class. Don't do it on your own. It's gonna be really hard to do on your own. Meditation is not easy, but sign up and take a course or do a class. Those would be the two things I would say that can replace what you're currently doing. That might be an easier step than just cutting things out. Just out of curiosity too, how are you getting 20 to 30,000 steps on a non-running day? What's that, where's that coming from? I walk a lot because I live in Florida and it's nice out every day. Okay, yeah, okay. Okay, do you have maps on Ebola? You're super productive. Do you have maps on Ebola, by the way? No, I don't. All right, we're gonna send that to you. And then, you know what I'm also gonna do? I'm gonna send you the intuitive nutrition guide because in the intuitive nutrition guide, there's a lot of talk about developing a better relationship with food. And I think that might benefit you. Now, I want you to be, I wanna be very clear, this is not gonna be easy. It's not gonna be easy because the direction that you wanna move, although logically and cognitively, I think you know that's the direction you need to go. But making that change is gonna be very challenging. You're gonna have to take a bit of a leap of faith in order to do it. And you're gonna have to be okay with gaining weight. Although you know logically, 8% is too lean and your body weight is too low, that still doesn't mean that you're gonna be okay with gaining weight. So that's why I said, get rid of the scale and avoid even paying attention to it for a little while because- Focus on strength. Yeah, because it's gonna be really hard to see the scale go up even five pounds. You're gonna wanna reverse that. Okay, thank you all so much. No problem, Abby. Thanks for calling in. Thank you, Abby. Thank you. Ooh, that's a tough one. That is really hard, especially at that age, at a college. Her mom was a trainer. She's surrounded by it. And it's, how many times have we seen that kind of relationship? I've seen that a lot. And that's why my first thing back, if she was my client, would just be to be very direct. And what is it? What else is going on that we are trying to avoid thinking about that, that you need to do 30,000 steps on what you would consider an off day. And then on days when you're running, you're doing 10 to 13 miles. A marathon when you feel like it or half marathon. Yeah, and then on top of that, getting ready for med school and working. I mean, that's just, obviously trying to stay distracted. I have no idea what from, but that's where the real thing, it's so funny, we're talking about what she wants to know about macros and food and what my exercise program, but the truth is it has nothing to do with that. There's something else going on that that's what you have to get to the bottom of. You get to the bottom of that and those other things fall into place. If you get hung up on, and even our advice, macros, focus on strength, cut back, like still that's the wrong focus. I mean, maybe it's better direction than the current direction she's going, but the real answer lies in figuring out what is it that you're trying to avoid thinking about? She's killing it on a lot of different levels, but it's just too much, like the sustainability and longevity for all these different activities and pursuits. It's just, it's gonna hit to a heading point, which it already is. Oh yeah, it damages your organs. You start to see osteopenia in young women, especially in 98 pounds of 55, 8% body fat. You'll start to see that. Obviously hormones are gonna be thrown off, but here's the light of that, the good side of that is she obviously has the ability to focus and be ambitious. Right. And so if she can figure this out. Yeah, discipline won't be the problem. Oh yeah, if she could figure this out, she's got a lot of success ahead of her. If she doesn't, it's gonna be very, very challenging. I find it interesting, she's a trainer for a mom, her mom's a trainer. I wonder how long, we should have asked how long it was. Kind of, I wonder, and this is totally speculating, it could be totally wrong right here, right? But I could see a kid, like I could see my kid being this way if maybe my son was born when I was like in my early 20s and I was infatuated with building a body and it was all about body fat percentage. Totally. And I was constantly looking at image of myself and I always had this, imagine being a young kid who you see, you look up to mom and dad so much and this is what you see is what they focus on as like. I used to train a psychologist who said that, because we talked about this, about children developing eating issues and body image issues. And she said, now there's the obvious causes where the parent says something to the kid, don't eat that, you'll get fat. But she said, what's more common is not that. It's not that the parent says something to the kid, it's how the parent talks about themselves. Like, oh, I can't eat that honey, I'm gonna get fat or oh, I don't look good in this bikini and then the daughter or the son, here's mom or dad, yeah, say that about themselves and then they internalize it.