 All right, here's today's fit tip. Look, if you're trying to burn body fat, everybody knows it's a rule. You have to eat less calories than you burn, right? You have to be in a calorie deficit. But here is a tip that'll make it more effective. Rather than having a consistent deficit all week long, try to have an undulating approach. Some days larger deficit, other days smaller deficit, and other days yet still, maybe maintenance or surplus. In fact, studies actually show the undulating approach preserves more muscle tissue, results in a little bit more fat loss and maintains a higher metabolic rate. What do you guys? Was that a recent study? That was pretty new, wasn't it? Yeah, what they did was in the study is they gave, there were two groups of people, and these were people who worked out in the whole deal, and they said, okay, you guys over here, 25% calorie reduction or 25% below maintenance, I think it was. And then they said, okay, now you guys over here, it's 35% Monday through Friday, but then Saturday and Sunday, you're gonna eat more calories, but at the end of the weeks, the calorie deficits will be the same. And at the end of the study, the people, the group that had the larger deficit during the week, but then ate the more calories on the weekend, preserved more muscle and had less of a metabolic slowdown and actually burned a little bit more body fat. Doesn't it just seem like more realistic? Yes. Not everything is so perfectly controlled all the time, like we've had to kind of really, I mean, this is a new thing we've created, the ability to have access to food like that, where we can have the consistency of calories to be met on a daily basis like that. I'm so glad you said that, because, okay, so here's what's funny, bodybuilding, bro science, oftentimes the way they explain things doesn't make sense, but the reason why they do sit things is because they've seen it work. And bodybuilders for a long time have advocated for refeeds or cheat days, right? Essentially doing what we're talking about, where there's a higher calorie deficit and then they'll have a day or two with higher calories and they say it works better on that stuff. Now, I always recommended undulating not for the greater fat loss or muscle preservation because that wasn't necessarily, and there weren't really studies to support that, but the reason why I did it was for the behavioral effects like you're saying, because I know that giving people more calorie seed on weekends, for example, and maybe less during the week when they're working and they're busy anyway, people were, it was easier for them to stick to it. Now, what do you guys think the pros and cons of this strategy are? Because I think in a controlled environment, that this is what the research says, this is what I think we've been recommending for a long time. In fact, that's why I brought up was the study kind of new because I remember we did a video on YouTube, you and I did a long time ago, and I think later on the study came out to prove that that was the better approach of doing it, but I do see some pros and some cons. Do you guys agree, or do you think this is the answer and it's just the better way? Well, I see some cons in that, depending on the client, if the propensity for them to eat in higher calorie surplus, like if that kind of tips them into like a trend, if they tend to get sort of, I hate to use a date date, but like, yeah, they get in this binge phase where that's the only thing they're fixated on is that binge day. Yeah, this is why I never called it cheat day. The term cheat day alone implies that today it's free for all. And then what would happen, behaviorally speaking, is people would be in a calorie deficit and then the cheat day was a go crazy off the rails, off the wagon day, and it was so bad that it erased the deficit and it also encouraged kind of this poor relationship with food. So I never called it that. I always said undulating or I said higher calorie, lower calorie days. I always noticed a behavioral benefit because like you said, Justin, it mirrors real life. Like, if I know Friday, I'm gonna go out to dinner with my wife. Well, I'll make that a higher calorie day, right? If I know Saturday, I'm going to my kid's game or if I'm gonna enjoy dinner at my mom's house or have friends over, higher calorie days. If it's Monday, I'm at work, I'm busy. Well, it makes more sense to have a lower calorie day. Some people will adjust it according to their workouts. I think bodybuilders tend to do it this way. It just made more sense. But if it turns into a restrict binge approach, then it's not good. That's the major con that I see. And I agree, Justin, I think that, and it does, I think it promotes that a lot actually because you get this really strict six day or five day a week type of dieting and then you cut loose on Saturday and Sunday and Saturday and Sunday or one of those days is not controlled at all. It's just literally, this is my quote unquote cheat day. And what ends up happening a lot of times is all the calories they were reducing in the week, they end up consuming that over or beyond that and they're kind of really going nowhere. So I do think there is some value in some people having a very consistent calorie intake that they try and target. Now, what I like to recommend is something similar to what you were kind of saying, Sal, which is I like to give a client, this is our target, but then I teach them to have some balance in that meaning that allowing them some days to have a little bit of over-consuming and then some days to under-consume or meal skip. Like that's how I like to do it is, okay, this is kind of where our target is, we wanna be here, but then I also want you to be kind of normal about it. And what I mean by that is like, hey, if this is a day when you're not very hungry, I'm not gonna force you to hit that calorie intake, let it be a lower calorie day. You'll probably be hungrier the next day, but just be mindful of where our target is at and only allow yourself to go up and down that say, you know, 500 calories depending on the size of the person. Yeah, so what I like to do is I would tell somebody, we would figure out their target, right? So, okay, your body's burning 3000 calories a day, so the goal is, let's say we're doing an aggressive deficit, so the goal is 14,000 calories for the whole week, right? 2000 calories a day on average, so 1,000 calorie deficit per day. So, okay, 14,000 calories for the week. And then what we'll do is we'll have, rather than doing 2,000 calories every single day, some days will be 1500 calories, some days will be 2,500 calories, some days maybe even lower or even higher. And I like to give people kind of that undulating approach. And I noticed, again, when people did it that way, it felt they were able to do it longer, it wasn't so monotonous, it worked, they were able to work it within going out and enjoying certain foods. But what's also cool now is there's now a study that shows that not only does it help some people behaviorally, but physiologically, it seems to preserve muscle and prevent that metabolic adaptation that happens when you diet, which is a nightmare, like one of the most challenging, and this is why lifting weights or doing resistance training is so important. It's one of the strongest signals you can send your body that'll say, don't slow down your metabolism because we need muscle, we need strength, right? So you do that, but when you cut your calories and it's consistently cut, your body wants to adapt to that. Your body's always trying to meet whatever you're taking in calorically. That's kind of a main feature of adaptation that we got through evolution. So if you eat 1,500 calories, especially if you're not sending a muscle building signal, your body will very quickly figure out a way to only burn 1,500 calories and then you start to get stuck. But that up and down approach with the calories and adjusting macros, I think, is a great- You're just basically staying ahead of the propensity to adapt to that type of, just like somewhat like training in terms of adjusting and having your body still have to some days be low, some days be high, and then there's more of that. Also too, is it anything to do with the sensitivity in terms of being able to shuttle and utilize nutrients more effectively? So here's where we're gonna get back into the bro science. I don't know if there's a lot of studies to support this, but I will say I've experienced this, and again, bodybuilders have been doing this for years, where they'll go, they'll carb cycle, and they'll have lower carb days and higher carb days rather than having a consistent number of carbs. And what they notice is when they do the low carb and higher carb days, they get this, they will say that they feel more sensitive to the carbs and get better pumps. And then when they go low carb, they notice that it gets them leaner faster versus just being consistent. I've noticed when I go really low carb for a long time and then bump my carbs, even if the calories are the same, I get this really intense effect from it versus just staying consistent all the time. Did you carb cycle and eat it? I loved dieting this way. When I was training, I don't eat that way normally. So normally I'm more intuitive and I have a more balanced approach to how I eat with proteins, carbs, and fat. But when I was training and getting ready for shows, carb cycling was one of my favorite ways to just eat. And it was because I felt exactly what you're saying. I felt like when I was low carb, yes, it affected my workouts. I didn't feel as strong, but I did feel like I leaned out quicker when I was, and of course I'm lower calorie, right? When you're doing that, because that's really what's happening, right? You cycle the carbs, you're getting lower days, you're basically doing what we're talking about. You're just controlling it through carbohydrates. But I really loved the looking forward to the high carb day. It was part of the mental game too, of just like, I know I'm low calorie, low carb right now, and so I can power through the next two to three days, because I know on day four, I'm gonna get to load my body up and I can look forward to that workout. And so I love to do this, and I had a lot of success, both with myself training and dieting this way, and then also with clients that were doing shows this way. I love the feel of it. I love it when studies support old bro science. It's just really cool. You know what I mean? Yeah it is. That's when it comes out like, oh, this actually works. I'm like, oh, that's really cool. Well, there's something to be said about, I mean, you gotta understand that this community of people, and this isn't like, I think all groups, and you have these alchemists. Yeah, well there's wisdom. Yeah, they've been applying and talking to each other and doing things like that. And it's unfortunate that we're so quick to talk shit or label it as bro science, and like it gets this really bad connotation with it. But the reality of it is these guys, this is who's out there testing it first. If it wasn't for the bros going out there and trying all this stuff like that, nobody would be doing the studies to try and support it or disprove it. And so, I mean, there's a lot of value in these people that have been doing this for years and years and years and trying to practice. Well, what happens is they'll say something and they'll say this works, and then they'll try to explain how it works, and they'll get the explanation wrong. Even though they see the result of it. And then what happened, then this is the part that annoys me. It's like Eastern medicine stuff. And then what really annoys me is that the science people come out and then they try to disprove the explanation, not the result. So like to give you an example, pre-exhausting a muscle group or priming, now we'll even call it priming. So let's say I'm gonna do like an old school bodybuilding pre-exhaust. And let's say I have a tough time feeling my chest when I bench press. So the old school bodybuilders, what they would do is they would have you pre-exhaust it by doing an isolation movement first, cable flies or something, really squeeze the chest. And then go to the bench press and then you'll feel your chest more. And then the scientists will come out and be like, oh yeah, well with our MRI testing or we're testing muscle contraction, actually there's less activation from the chest. Therefore you're wrong. No, because the person who's doing that notices that their chest grows over time. And the reason why it's happening isn't because of some physiological more connection. Just the fact that they can feel it. Now my chest is kind of fatigued. I know how to position my elbows better and do the bench press in a way to feel it more in my chest. And so I'm just pressing more effectively for the goal that I have. So the result at the end of the day is what the people, what the bodybuilders had seen. The explanation is often wrong. And we see that with so many, we see this in wellness too with adrenal fatigue and the way they explain it. Like the adrenals don't get fatigued but there isn't imbalance of hormones and all that stuff. So I love it when it gets warmer. It's the unfortunate part about our space is that we all care so much about our own egos and being more right than the next person that we end up confusing the average person. The average person just, I just want some help. I just want some good information that I can go and apply to my life, to better my life. And all of us fitness experts are so caught up in being more right than the next one or being the authority in the space that we're always looking to disprove each other or prove that I have more knowledge and information. And it's really unfortunate because the consumer loses. I had such a great years ago back when I owned my training studio. I used to have an acupuncturist in there. So we had offices, people would rent. And there was an acupuncturist in there and she was really smart, really sharp. She could communicate really well. And I used to also train a lot of Western medicine doctors, surgeons and anesthesiologists and my studio was next to a hospital. And I remember one time we were all and it's a small studio. So oftentimes lots of people will be in there maybe working with their trainers or people in the offices would be on break so they'd be hanging out. We'd have these big conversations, right? And so the conversation came up around acupuncture and insurance companies had started to cover acupuncture. So I asked my Western medicine doctor about that and he kind of scoffed a little bit and I said, well, why is insurance covering it? They're showing that there's some applications or whatever. And he said, yeah, but you know, like where's the evidence for Qi and these energy meridians, right? So the acupuncturist in there who's an Eastern medicine practitioner is explaining the Chinese medicine, whatever the explanations and the Western medicine doctors like there's no evidence. So then the acupuncturist who's very, very smart and also had a little bit of Western medicine training said, okay, maybe the way that you guys understand the human body, we're not gonna find evidence for cheese but she said, are there cases where we see things like referred pain? For example, I feel pain in my left arm. Sometimes that means what? Heart attack. So the CNS, the central nervous system communicates through this wide web of communications through the body. What if putting the needles in the body changes the way the body communicates pain, which then affects movement and you should see the doctor go, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And then my head's exploding. I'm like, you know what? We get so caught up in the explanation that we forget that, let's just see, is it working? If it's working, then okay, that's great. And then we'll go back and see if we can figure out the ways that it's working, but don't discredit it just because the explanation doesn't fit your context of how you learn things. 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.