 Our next caller is Matt from New York. Hey, what's up Matt? How can we help you? Hey guys, so um a little backstory. So I was around like I'm five nine. I was around like 230 pounds. I dropped about 60 pounds last year. I was doing a lot of running a lot of weightlifting as well. I but I came to realize how hard it is to keep that weight off after doing all that running. I was running about 30 miles a week and uh I was wondering now that I've gained about like nine pounds back since then. I'm about like 179 right now. Is there a way that I could build muscle and drop a little bit of body fat while maintaining the same the same weight or do I have to bulk and then cut? No, 100% could do that. You can. It's hard. Uh you know you might want your Goldilocks zone. Yeah, you might end up gaining a little bit but if you if you're if you put your calories at a small surplus a little bit above maintenance, it makes it much more likely and then just focus on strength. Am I getting stronger in the gym? Do I feel more stable? That'll make the biggest impact and then what you do is you slowly increase your calories from there so that you can get your metabolism to keep boosting so that it's more maintainable because what you experience is what we talk about all the time where people lose a lot of weight but play so much focus on this kind of manual calorie burning that they find themselves in a position where it's impossible to maintain. I actually think this is uh a little bit easier than what people think it is. It's tougher mentally right there. That's the toughest part of this is that we allow the scale of up and down a little bit or even the mere what we see in the mirror to all of a sudden uh dictate what you do inside the gym or what you do with your calories. I mean honestly if if your goal is to hey I want to build some strength build some muscle I also want to lose some body fat at the same time then the goal really is to kind of hover around the same on the scale like that so you don't want to see too much north or south on there and just get stronger in the gym. So you're basically are feeding the body what feels right and normal which sounds I know uh vague but that's the goal is to eat to where you're satisfied don't over consume don't really try and restrict have good balance make sure you hit your protein intake and then get stronger in the gym but don't eat over on the calories to where you're kind of staying the same scale if you do that you know and you focus on kind of hovering there while you're strength training and eating a balanced diet the body will kind of naturally do this you know you'll have times where you're probably a little bit of deficit so the body utilizes some fat for energy and then you'll have times where you're a little bit naturally above on calories some of that will get partitioned over to building muscle and you should have this nice little exchange it's the mental part that fucks with people because they go okay here's where I need to be calorie wise and because the scale isn't moving in a direction they all of a sudden change things up but um this this is how like when I'm whenever I'm training and dieting like if I have a goal in mind what doesn't matter like this is kind of where I want to be I don't want to see huge swings in any direction that tells me that I'm feeding the body uh adequate calories and I know if I'm training consistently and following a good program I'll build muscle and then the body will probably lose some faddle on the way okay cool thanks guys I also have one what are you are you following any of the maps programs what are you following right now yeah I'm uh I'm following anabolic right now I just started stage two today actually yeah that was my second question I had um can I swap out for the trigger sessions can I use um a suspension trainer rather than using the uh the bands yes you can any any kind of resistance training can replace the bands the only key is don't overdo the intensity which is easy to do so yeah yeah and the reason why we recommend bands is just because it's a little less damaging too so you get a nice pump uh and you don't really exceed that intensity very often yeah that's the one thing I'd caution about suspension trainer I mean like if you do a suspension trainer and you make it pretty easy to do push-ups and to do some like rows on it even some curls and uh try some extensions all great exercises for the suspension trainer and can do the triggers but uh you don't want to be struggling to get that 15th rep if you do 15 and you barely your arms are shaking to get 59 your intensity is probably too high so trying to keep driving that signal yeah so whatever you use because obviously you're not using weight you're using the leverage of your body make sure you don't leverage it so much that you're struggling to get 15 reps you should be able to do 15 to 20 reps relatively easy if that's the case then you're probably doing the right intensity for the trigger sessions does that make sense okay cool all right sounds good thanks for calling in map thank you guys I appreciate everything no problem right yeah that's that's the the eternal struggle it's like I lose all this weight but what I did to get there is unsustainable keep it up what do I do now I mean if people only it's like 80 something percent plus fail rate after people lose a lot of weight it's really not a weight loss issue it's a keep weight off well this is part of why though I mean I feel like lately I don't know why I don't know if it's because we've talked about this on the show more often than not is the whole cardio thing that we've been getting flack for like you guys are so anti-cardio it's like no or not the perfect case uh you know in point of why this is the most common thing this is this is more common than the other way around most people use it as this tool to get down to a certain weight abuse it yeah yeah I know but they don't think they're abusing it so I don't like to use it because then someone goes oh I don't abuse it I'm only doing it so many you know I'm saying so it's like you don't think the fast law fat loss button it's just like that button they have they think that they have to keep hitting that button in order to keep a shaving down yeah and insert any starting point any sex it doesn't matter but using cardio as one of the main tools to get yourself down 30 40 60 whatever pounds not a not long term yeah unless you're a love doing that like if you like if one of your favorite things is to get up now and go for a run in the morning and you want to make that a lifelong pursuit and you never stop that then by all means but that's not what happens most people that decide they're going to start doing five to six days or 30 miles of cardio are doing it because they have this massive weight loss goal and that is a that's a fast way to get there problem is as soon as you stop doing that the weight's going to pile back on so that's why that's why we don't like to recommend people in that direction because now you're in the shitty situation versus how do we build a good meal plan and built a program for fat loss around resistance training and just moving and walking more throughout the day way more sustainable for this person for the rest of their life