 Okay. So we are live. I have Brandy on with me today and we're going to cover something pretty awesome. She's already lost 75 pounds. She's plateaued and she wants to put on some muscle and she wants to of course burn a few of what 20 more pounds Brandy is that you're looking for? Yeah. And I'm going to coach her and how to make that transition like where's the why the plateau, what to do, how to start building the muscle. Is that the right plan? And we're going to go through this whole thing Brandy and she was nice enough to say I can do this live in front of all of you. So hope you all get value. So as you come on, give Brandy some love for doing this for not just for me, but for her and for everybody else that wants to watch. So Brandy, do me a favor. Tell everybody where you're from. I am from a small town in northern Michigan called Mayo. Mayo. Are you considered a Uper? No. We're a troll. We're under the bridge. Oh, you're a troll. So if you know anything about Michigan, they have that Uper's are the ones way up by. So the trolls are right below the water line there. Yeah, we're only about a couple hours away from the bridge. So, okay, awesome. Awesome. Is there a bridge that actually goes up over? That goes over to the UP, Mackinac Bridge. I didn't know that. That's really cool. And so how long did it take you to lose 70 pounds and 75 pounds? And how did you do that? Well, I basically two years in April, I started ketones and been using them faithfully ever since. Did a low carb, low fat diet with it and just started basically doing more exercise and more workout. Okay, very cool. Very cool. So you combine ketones with a lower carb diet, a relatively, was it really low fat or moderate low fat diet? Moderate. I mean, give or take some fat here or there. I basically consider my good fats and my bad fats type of thing. I try to stay away from as much carbs and fat as possible. And then I was fasting and rebooting once a month until this new intermittent fasting, and I've been trying that and it's somewhat working. So, perfect. Now, let me ask you this question. What was your goal when you started for 75 pounds? What was your initial goal? To get down below what I gained after having my son. About 200 pounds is what I was looking for. And now, did you make it yet? Not yet. I'm right there. You're right there, right on the cusp. Okay. Now, once you get below that, are you satisfied or are you looking for more? Maybe a little more, but not much. I mean, I I've always been, you know, a bigger sized girl and we're farm girls here. Strong farm girls. So we do a lot of outdoor stuff and, you know, just building and toning muscle would be a really good. And even if I lose weight at doing that, that's great because I know that muscle weighs more than fat. So. Wow. Now that she's lost 138 in nine months, that's huge. Wow. That's amazing. Now, can you mind telling everybody how old you are and your mom? Do you have one child, two child, 10 child children? I have one kid. I am going to be 42 in April. Perfect. Okay. Awesome. And I like to put that perspective because, you know, sometimes people are like, it's easier for men. It's easier for, you know, different people in different phases of their life. And the reality is we're all individuals and we all have to find the path that works for us. So my goal is I'm going to try to help you break your plateau, which you've already started doing. I know you've taken some of our advice. I'm going to ask you what you've been doing because it's already starting to shift, but I just want to make sure we fine-tune it for you so you get the best experience. So what have you done more recently? And you said you have lost a few pounds over the last, you know, over the last, what, couple weeks maybe? Couple weeks, yeah. I've done more of the intermittent fasting. I was doing to, I think almost, I was doing too much of an advanced intermittent fasting just because of the way my lifestyle is. It was easier for me basically to fast from 8.39 o'clock at night all the way until the next day when I got home from work at 4.43. And I think that was just too much for me. And then I was grabbing a lot of the, like, manufactured foods like string cheeses or nuts or, you know, this already pre-made meal instead of making good wholesome meals with, you know, chicken breast and broccoli and, you know, that kind of stuff fresh pretty much. And I want to talk about that for a second because one of the things that, I know you've probably seen a few of my videos where I talk about these things is one of the things that I'm always concerned with for people, especially the OMAD. OMAD is one meal a day. And because basically you have to get all your nutrients in that one meal. And if you miss it, you create deficiencies. And that makes it a little bit more complicated. Also, you have to make sure you're maintaining a certain level of calorie intake, because otherwise you'll slow your metabolism down. So I'm always cautious with that. So I like to cycle intermittent fasting and fasting strategies. And I call them refeed. We used to call people used to call them cheat days. I like to call them refeed days. You want to fuel your body with more. And you think about this way is like, when your ancestors, in the wintertime, they may gain some body fat, right? Or in the fall time. And then they're going to use that extra body fat through the year. And they're going to be leaning through the summer. They're going to get reeling out through Christmas. And then they're going to start putting back on. That's a cycle. But when they found food, they wouldn't overindulge. And that would keep the metabolism up from destroying itself, right? Also, ketones help that process too. But we can overdo that by overfasting. And I'm always concerned with overfasting. And I have a few different ways that you can evaluate if you're overfasting. Usually I use performance evaluations to do that. Because your performance, if you're overfasting or not giving up food or calories in, your performance will start to drip down. And when that happens, that's a red flag for me to say, okay, we got to refeed the warrior, right? What happens is people go do more extreme things instead of the other way around, right? So I just wanted to bring that up to light here. Now let me ask you this question. When you think about your ideal body or your ideal results, can you explain to me what that looks like? This is going to be really important for me to take the next step to give you some really good guidance. So meaning, what's more important to you? You said a farm girl, right? Yeah. You have a physical thing that's more important to you or fit into a pair of jeans. And I want you to be honest with that. Well, I would love to lose some belly fat, because I still have lots of belly fat from when I was pregnant. Forming more, which I have seen that over the last year with the way I'm exercising, forming more upper body muscle and leg tone muscle. But I have went down two jeans sizes since I started, which is awesome. Right. Been able to fit into clothes a lot better than I used to. But if I could get down another size and close, that would be awesome. But I've always always been, I mean, we carry around five gallon buckets in both hands, and it's nothing for us. So the reason why I ask this question is that I have a lot of conversations with like fitness people, a lot of prostitutes. And after two or three hours of talking to them, I realized that what's more important to them is getting their butt in a pair of jeans ultimately than it is about the extra strength they would have gained. Right. And why that matters is because the form of exercise that you're looking at doing is slightly different for building muscle and strength than it is for leaning out. There's a lot of similarities, but there are some differences. And what happens is that if we do the wrong program, like hence a lot of my CrossFit girls, they don't actually like the way their legs don't fit in their butt doesn't fit in jeans, but they don't realize the way they're doing their squats, which are great exercises. And I love them. It's just that they're doing them designed to make their legs get bigger, not smaller. And so it's like, what's more important? Because I have an Olympic athlete I work with where, you know, her goal is she wants big, strong legs. Like she has no, the whole pant thing doesn't matter to her. She wants to win a gold medal. Now, that might change someday in her career. So that's something we have to look at from a psychological thing, because I, why do you need to be stronger? Do you? I mean, here's the deal is most people I've talked to, I want them stronger. I want them to have more muscle mass, but what if you have the right amount now and you just want to see it different? Right? Because once again, the program is going to matter a little bit by what I suggest based off of really what do you want? Because I don't want you to go on the wrong way and then go, let's not working for me because what you want was more this than this. Yeah. Well, I was told before I even had my son that I needed a full knee replacement. And my son will be nine this year. So 10 years ago, they told me a full knee replacement and they won't do it till I'm 65. So what they told me I need to do was lose weight. So that's what I've been working on is losing weight and trying to strengthen my knee up. You know, fit into my jeans a little tighter that I mean, that's not a big thing for me. Because I know, I mean, big legs already, I was a volleyball player and, you know, I already have that strength and muscle there. But just the, I guess the sculpting and not seeing my chicken wing would be amazing. And that's kind of, I guess, where I'm at for like, So I would suggest for you, based off of what I'm hearing is this is more about a fat loss transformation than it is a build muscle transformation. Now we may think about this too as you might build one or two pounds of muscle. But if we drive it towards a, because like some people I literally build programs just for muscle development, muscle growth, right? It's, that is our 100% focus. And so the amount of food you eat matters more, right? Because you're trying to grow a muscle versus trying to lose body fat. And so it's hard to be in caloric deficit and grow muscles. It's just harder. You can do it just very hard. You have to be very perfect about everything you do. Do you know by chance how many calories you actually consume per day? Yeah, actually, I'm pretty organized about things and I put my food in my intake. Just so you know, although disclaimer, I'm not a huge fan of that psychologically, if you're the right personality that doesn't overthink things, then it's okay. But I don't like that long term, but I do like people to check in from time to time. So what would you say your calorie intake? My calorie intake today was just over 18. Okay. All right. And then what is the average usually? Anywhere from 16 to 18 normally. Okay. And how much do you weigh? I weigh 222. 222. All right. So 222. Listen, the gloves are off. We're just, we're putting everything out there. How old are you? 42 or 44? I'm sorry. 40. How old are you again? I'm 41, but in a couple of months I'll be 42. Okay. And then how tall are you? I am a 5'7". So I don't have my little fancy calculator in there, but you can actually go and look up how many calories per day you should burn. Now, how active are you during the average day? Well, I am a receptionist, but I have got a stand-up desk now. I do go up and downstairs. I do help out back when we're like packing five gallon buckets and stuff like that. During the winter, I'm not as active as I am in summer at work, but I do try to get into the gym at least four to five times a week. Anywhere from at least 30 minutes to an hour, most of the time about an hour. And then what do you do when you're in the gym? I do some type of cardio anywhere from running elliptical for anywhere from five to 10 minutes. Then we do some strength training depending on, we follow an app that we have. And then, like this month, I was in a stair step challenge. So for 10 minutes every day I got on the stair step machine and did about 27 to 30 flights of stairs. And then you stay at that calorie amount most days or is that every day pretty consistent? So what we want to do, so this is what I'm hearing. What I would do for you, when you come to weight training, do you have a lot of limitations on your knee? Can you do lunges or do you? I do lunges. I just have to watch. Sometimes I have to take it slower, a little more cautious, so I'm not like overdoing it. I did have an injury in November. I played in during Thanksgiving, played an alumni basketball game and found out I have, I'll never say it right, planners 50 items in my foot and I couldn't walk for months. So I hadn't been in the gym since the end of November to the beginning of January. So I'm basically getting back onto my training again. But we do anything from we have a bench day, we have leg day, we do hip workouts, we do E-moms. You're not afraid of working out which I like. So what I'm going to suggest based on your goals, I'm going to suggest a few things. Sleeping okay? Yes. I'm going to suggest a few things. We want to do is we want to change some things up. But also with your workouts, one of the things about workouts, I like changing. I just don't like changing too much too fast. So when it's just like a coin flip of what you do, your body kind of has a memory and the more fit you are, the more you can change more often, the more unfit you are, the more you kind of have to build the rhythm and routine with it. So if you look at most people that go to the gym that are really in shape, it's kind of a notness and boring. You'll look at their diet, it's kind of a notness and boring. It's not a lot of difference, not a lot of change. It doesn't mean that we can't stay like that forever, but we want to kind of do things in cycles. So I would say anywhere from four to eight week cycles, we want to change it up. I'm going to suggest a six week cycle for you. What I mean by that is I'm going to send you over a workout and it's going to be designed for body composition. So you're going to feel, you probably put on a pound or two muscle in the six weeks. So you might feel that little bit of that more solidness, but it's also designed to lean you down and give you more of a muscle tone, but the workouts are very, they're challenging in a different way than you're probably used to, and it's going to allow you to feel weight below. Now after that six weeks, well, I don't do a follow-up, so you have to do this because we're going to change the style. Because I don't think right now focusing on building a lot of mass is really what you really need, but I'd like to give you a little bit of sense of what that feels like and really see how your body responds to it. And if you are needing some muscle mass to help burn more calories, then we're going to get it. So that's going to be good for you. The other thing nutritionally I want you to focus on, you're already drinking your ketones, and that's the most important thing because that's going to keep your health and vitality up, but I want to cycle calories. This is where you're too consistent. Now I'm not a big fan of one meal a day and eating all your food at one shot because I find that most people that doesn't suit very well long-term, and it actually hinders their performance. And you'll see that when you're watching yourself at the gym, when you have days that you're off, ask yourself what you did the day before, the day before that. And see if you see a trend because sometimes if you don't feed the warrior, you'll feel weak because some of these don't feel strong, right? Because you're putting all this demand on your body without fuel, enough fuel coming in. And if you're not eating enough and you're not tapping into your fast stores efficiently, the fuel has to come from somewhere and you're creating a higher amount of cortisol stress on your body that is probably not suitable for you, for your ultimate goals, right? It's what they did to us in the military world, right? So you get into a survival technique. You don't want to be in a survival technique at 41 years old, right? The world will do that for us. You don't need to add your own damage to yourself. So what we want to do is we want to cycle foods. Now I'm going to ask you to do the iFAST five-day iFAST challenge. I want you to do that at least once a month through this challenge, okay? You can do it twice a month, but I think what I'd like to see you, you've already did the iFAST, just did it, right? Yeah. I actually kind of, just the way my life is, it's kind of fit in nice because I could kind of do it almost like non-stop. Right. And I don't want you to do it non-stop. Okay. So there's a reason we want to cycle our calories in. So I want some days where you're low calorie, some days where you're maybe right at the right amount of calories. I'll look at, I'm assuming somewhere between 1,700 and 2,000 will kind of be your optimal range, but we don't want to go too far below that, but we have to go down some days to burn more body fat. Gotcha. And it sounds like you've really found a really good maintenance plan, but you haven't found the next plan that you need. And I always remind people is like who you were when you're 75 pounds heavier is not the who you are today. Yeah. The plan that took you to get 75 pounds down, it's not the same plan that's going to take you forward. But what happens is people, we see success, we go back to what worked, but you're a different person now. So we have to create a new plan and almost like start over, but you, you have to also remember all the things you did led up to this. There's a lot of success and lessons you've learned in that journey. And so changing the workout up will do that. And then so I'm going to recommend on the, on the, so when you do your iFast, I want you to do two days a week of refeeds. So if you do your five day iFast, you might go one meal a day, you might go two meal a day. I don't care about, if you might only eat and I want you to listen to your body a little bit, but you might only eat 800 calories one day and 1800 the next. I want the fluctuation on those five day iFast. On the two days after that, I want you to refill your body and I want you to stay relatively low carb like you've been doing. But I wouldn't say that you have to be 100% keto necessarily. You're working out and training your body enough. If you want a little bit of fruit in here, you maybe want to start your week or two. I wouldn't hide from that. I just wouldn't bend you on it. Some sweet potato, some rice or things like that. I wouldn't, you've earned by the activity you're doing, you've earned it. Now, if you feel like, Hey, for my health and my longevity, I don't do a lot of that because of my health challenges. So if you're like, I still want to avoid that, absolutely you can do it too. But I don't want you to feel like you're, you're, that is bad. That makes sense. I don't want you to think that is bad because I think I want to give you some flexibility and windows in there. I just want you to do those on the refeed days. Now I'm going to send you over another plan. And this was written by Dr. Jacob Wilson, where you're going to do, on the other, when you're not doing the iFAST, you're going to do one day a week. You might want to buy an iFAST kit because you can have it in this, but an extra, some extra ones. So on Sunday to Monday night, so you eat dinner on Sunday night, up to Monday night, you're going to do a 24 hour fast. You're going to have one meal on Monday. Okay. And you're going to do that each Monday. You can switch the days around. That's fine. So, and on that day, you're not eating the amount, you're going to eat less calories on that day. I don't want you to eat 18 hundred calories for dinner. Okay. I want you to use the products and then you're for dinner, you want to have a high quality meal and stop when you're full. On Tuesday, you're going to then go and have a low carb or an intermittent fast. And you're going to eat, you get, I want you to eat the lunch. Okay. Okay. You have to, you have to pack it and bring it, pack it and bring it. I want you, I want you to eat the lunch and I want you to have the dinner. Okay. Try not to eat too close to bedtime. It's always better to have at least three hours before bed to stop eating. I try to stop around eight, eight, 30, any snacks, anything like that. So the earlier you can make that the better. That typically for fat burning. Okay. So then on Wednesday, you're going to have a refeed day. So you can eat. So most likely on Monday and Tuesday, you're lower calorie because you're intermittent fasting. You're going to be deeper in ketosis. On Wednesday, you're going to do a refeed day where you're going to eat. You can eat, you can have three meals that day, but at least have two larger meals. You can still intermittent fast if you feel like that's more comfortable for your lifestyle or you can have breakfast that day. Maybe you have a late breakfast, like at nine AM. The reason why I do this is that I want to see how your performance goes because you might find on Thursday, you feel stronger and that tells you that you're feeding the warrior, you're feeding your metabolism and that's a good thing, not a bad thing. Okay. Thursday, Friday, you go back to intermittent fasting. Saturday, it's a refeed day. It's also a day that you can go up, maybe be a little bit loose, have some wine and go out with a date with your husband. You know what I mean? Like allow yourself to have a life with this journey and not feeling like you're restricted and behind a prison wall that you can never have this or never have this. I want to give you some of that freedom. Sunday's an intermittent fast day, go right back into 24 hours fast on Monday. You can use the IFAST kit for all the Mondays or you can even split it up and use it for some of the intermittent fasting days too. I just want to make sure that you're going calorie. Basically, you have low calorie on Monday, moderate to low calorie on Tuesday, refeed day. The refeed day, you want to hit your base of metabolic rate. You want to hit the amount of calories that you need to maintain your muscle, fats, and health. You're reminding your body that this is your standard and you don't want your standards to come down. People that go low calorie long-term, they slow down their metabolism or they can if they don't do it properly. What happens is then they go back to have a good day. They go back to eating normal and they gain all the way back in themselves. We don't want that to ever happen. That's why cycling your calories a little bit is going to be very useful for you. People tend to do it five days a week really good. Two days a week, you can do whatever on the weekend. That's another way of doing it. I find that you're less likely to sabotage yourself and go off the reservation if you do the little cycle like I showed. I have this all written out for you and I can send it over to you. I'll send you over the workout and I'll send you over the fasting protocol. You can do it twice a month, but at least once a month do the five-day intermittent fasting. You have to take the other two days to refeed. You might go low calorie on that day. I don't want you to be so structured in your calories that you're almost forcing yourself to eat when it wants to tap into your fat stores even more. I want you to give yourself that flexibility. Sounds good. Any questions for me? This is amazing and I appreciate this. Thank you so much. You're welcome. The last thing I'm going to say is on the workout, the most important thing when I give you the workout, I don't want you to hurt yourself. It's a pretty intense workout and I think you're going to like it to your personality. I think you're going to enjoy it. I don't want you to hurt yourself. If there's anything that feels uncomfortable, just hit me back and we'll substitute the exercise for something that seems more suitable for your joints. I'm very aware of joint discomfort. I need my knee replaced to my 20s also. I know what it's like. Unfortunately, my knee's gotten really good. My hips had to be pretty good relatively. I hope that helps and don't hesitate to reach out and ask. We just got to trick your body and change it up a little bit and then six weeks from now, we'll put a new workout program together for you. And it's okay in your non-workout days that you can go out and do walks and do light cardio and stuff like that. Be active. I want you to because you have a sitting job, so be as active as you can on the other times. I would tell you to try to hit 10,000 steps every day too. I cry very hard. My Fitbit tells me when I need to walk or my watch, I should say. It tells me when I need to walk and all that and get moving and keep that up. I have a 5K with my son coming up in a couple weeks for running. Perfect. You're doing a lot of things right, so let's just make some adjustments. Shock your system a little bit. I have a feeling you're going to have some things come back together. Awesome. I can't wait. You're welcome. All right, cheers. Thank you. Hey, everyone, give, I almost called you Denise. Give Brandy, I don't know why, give Brandy some love for willing to be out here, be vulnerable, tell her story. I truly appreciate Brandy. I do because there's people out there that watch these and they get so much more from sitting here and it from a real person and me just jabbing my jaws all the time about everything. So thank you all for being on. Brandy, thank you so much and stay warm up there in northern Michigan. We have a couple warm days coming. Yeah. Was it three degrees? Right now it is 31 degrees out and this weekend it's supposed to be in the 40s. That's like summer. Yeah, for sure. We'll be out in t-shirts and flip-flops. Awesome. Thanks, Brandy. Bye. Bye-bye.