 Our next caller is Jacqueline from Ohio. Hey Jacqueline how can we help you? Hi I just wanted to start by saying thank you just like everybody else does. I've really enjoyed your content and have definitely been utilizing your expertise that you guys put out there. Thank you. So yeah thank you it's commendable what you guys are doing for the fitness industry. Awesome. So essentially my question is while I'm cutting should I be focusing on the absolute muscle number versus the muscle percentage because although I have a science background so I understand the differences but I was just curious which one I should prioritize while I'm cutting and if it's a bad thing that one's going down and one's going up or vice versa. Yeah no this is a great question okay so for somebody listening right now that's like what is she talking about okay so absolute number would be total pounds of lean body mass right percentage would be a percentage of your overall body weight so let's say somebody loses 10 pounds on the scale but loses two pounds of muscle so that means eight pounds of body fat they lost two pounds of muscle but as a percentage of their overall body weight their muscle mass percentage may go up because it's a percentage of your overall body weight okay so this can be confusing because with body fat it's very clear what you want to look at with body fat is percentage total number is not that big of a deal it's percentage that matters because you know body fat on a 200 pound man if you slap that on a 100 pound man all of a sudden same body fat now makes that person much fatter because they have so much less lean body mass but when it comes to muscle it's a little different total makes a big difference if you lose two pounds of muscle you lose two pounds of muscle you've lost two pounds of metabolically active insulin sensitive glycogen storing strength producing tissue right so even though the percentage of your overall lean body mass goes up you still lost some muscle so when it comes to muscle percentage don't worry about that look at percentage of body fat but what you want is you want lean body mass total number to go up now there's one thing to be careful for which is when you're looking at lean body mass that's all non-fat mass so that means if your water weight goes down lean body mass obviously uh measures as going down as well and this will sometimes happen with body fat tests where you'll get tested and if it if it doesn't test water in your body and then it may look like you lost lean body mass but really you're just not holding as much water especially if you go from a higher carb to a lower carb diet so this is us talking about a cut right because that makes a difference if you're on the bulk I'd also be careful just chasing the total the total number then because that's as long as it's lean right but that but if you're chasing the total number on a bulk you got to because then you turn into like the body builders what happens all the time right where they just they bulk and oh man I've added three pounds of muscle four pounds of muscle ten pounds of muscle then you got to look at body fat percentage right right right so which depending on the direction you're going depends on how I'm looking at this right I'm looking at this like if I'm on a bulk I'm I'm careful not to be putting on too much body fat percentage as my total numbers going up because you could add five pounds of muscle but if you had to put on 15 pounds of fat to get those five pounds of muscle I'm kind of over yeah you have to consider body fat percentage with either one body fat percentage is always percentage that's always going to be what you look at whether you're gaining or you're losing but when it comes to muscle forget percentage of lean body mass look at total muscle or total I should say because it doesn't measure muscle right it's lean body mass look at total body mass so percentage for fat for lean body mass total number is what's important so as you get leaner or lighter on the scale but you notice you're losing three or four pounds of lean body mass so long as it's not water and you know it's probably muscle you're going to notice some negative effects from that you're going to notice maybe less strength slower metabolism you know possibly for example so always main look at that number look at that total number for lean body mass it's always very important okay yeah no that's that's useful I just to answer the like cut or bulking question I'm not really doing either I was definitely bulking for a while just because I switched to lifting more often instead of cardio and just like everybody says you're getting hungry and hungrier and you're still losing weight and it's kind of mind boggling but I eventually got to the point where the calories I was eating was super daunting for me so I just went to listen to my body and kind of caught back and just only eat when I was hungry and oh that's that's a good that's a good choice Jacqueline you know I'm glad you said that because we talked so much about the importance of having lean body mass but if it's at the expense of you feeling like you're force-feeding yourself right or the quality of life has decreased then who cares which is actually a good place though because this is that this is what I'm always on your boundary that's right I'm always seeking this place for my client right when I get a client doesn't matter weight or fat loss muscle I want to get to a place where I've ramped that metabolism up so much that you look back at me as a client you're like Adam I just use a chore I'm too chore to eat this much and I'm like awesome now let's just listen to your body eat when you're hungry let's not worry about getting to a certain amount of calories you know but stay fed when you're hungry eat do make good choices and then we get into that nice little intuitive place where I'm trying to get with all my clients where you're you're very satisfied where you're at you're able to keep a lean a lean physique at the same time and then you don't feel like you're also stuffing yourself all the time right yeah because I was starting to go down the path of like eating snacks or sugar in order to get to that calorie place and I just that's not the path I wanted to start down so in order to just real quick in order to minimize the muscle loss do you recommend changing like a program to like a prime or more mobilization instead of lifting in order to minimize that muscle loss I mean actually the opposite yeah the anabolic would be like an anabolic strength-based type of program yeah and obviously keeping your protein intake high studies are pretty good on this like your as your calories drop your protein intake to minimize muscle loss typically needs to go up so if you're around 0.7 grams per pound of body weight you can move up to one gram per pound of body weight while cutting you know maybe fat and carbs to bring your calories down just keep this in mind if you if we if we reduce calories and we also change the signal of trying to get your body to build muscle to doing things more like mobility it'll adapt in that direction which it'll pair down muscle so if we want to hang on to as much muscle as we want you want to still send the signal that we were trying to build even though you may not be feeding yourself that way and that should help actually preserve more muscle while also obviously keeping the protein and take up interesting okay that's kind of kind of an intuitive to why I thought so I appreciate you correcting that no problem thanks for calling Jacqueline yeah thank you you know that's I'm so glad very technical question you need to break all this down I feel like so so again she's talking about percentage versus total with lean body mass she wasn't even bringing up I know but let's let's simplify basically what she's asking because even listening okay and I know exactly what she's talking about that there's a lot flying over a lot of people's head right now we're like oh what did we just hear you can so percentage is just a percentage of your overall body weight so that means if you are you know if you have 90 pounds of lean body mass and you weigh 100 pounds it's really easy right 10% body fat 90% lean body mass if you lost 10 pounds on the scale nine of it was body fat one was muscle your percentage of muscle lean body mass goes up a little bit even though you lost a pound of muscle but that's not that important what you want with lean body mass is the total number now the point that was important that was important to pay attention to what she said to maintain this lean body mass I didn't I felt daunting to eat this much food and yeah man listen building muscle is great but not at all costs obviously you could go on a bunch of anabolic steroids and you can live in a way that's a super unhealthy maximizer muscle but you're not as healthy you don't feel as good and as expensive as shit one of the most one of the biggest pains in the ass of competing was a man when I had got up to that place where I was 230 and my metabolism was roaring I mean hundreds of dollars a week 5000 calories dude and like and if you want good choices like you're not just piloting garbage in there like that is well that's the real part of the question I think she was trying to get to was the fact that she was starting to include like simple sugars and things into her diet that you know normally she wouldn't even have been trying to seek out but you know the calorie amount was just too much