Ep 170: How Fast Should You Lose Weight for Fat Loss?
What is the sweet spot between shedding fat and preserving muscle? How can diet breaks and refeeds help you achieve your fat loss goal? Is rapid fat loss the secret sauce to fine-tuning your physique?
In this episode, Philip (@witsandweights) uncovers the truth about the ideal rate of fat loss, exploring the full spectrum of approaches from slow and steady to rapid and aggressive and everything in between. He explains the pros and cons of each strategy, highlighting the benefits you gain from each approach. He discusses how to incorporate diet breaks and refeeds for optimal results, providing you with practical strategies for long-term, sustainable diet management that will leave you feeling motivated.
Whether you’re a beginner looking to lose your first 20 pounds or an experienced dieter aiming to get shredded, this episode serves as a valuable guide. Philip aims to give you a clearer understanding of how to navigate your weight loss journey, emphasizing the importance of making informed, strategic choices for your individual goals and lifestyle.
Today, you’ll learn all about:
2:25 Five-star reviews on Apple podcast
5:50 How fast CAN you lose weight without losing muscle mass
12:37 The benefits of the slow and steady approach
16:39 The conservative fat loss approach
22:17 Incorporating diet breaks for mental and metabolic benefits
24:32 The standard fat loss approach
34:47 Incorporating refeeds, not cheat days, for the mental break
37:39 The mini cut or aggressive approach
45:41 The micro cut or rapid fat loss approach
54:23 How to choose the fat loss approach that is right for you
1:00:00 Outro
Episode resources:
Episode summary:
When it comes to body transformation, finding the sweet spot between losing fat and preserving muscle is often akin to walking a tightrope. In this episode, Philip discusses this balancing act, offering insights and strategies that can help listeners navigate the complex path to achieving optimal body composition.
The conversation begins with the importance of understanding the ideal pace of weight loss for one's unique goals. Philip emphasizes that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution; rather, individual circumstances dictate whether a slow and steady or a more aggressive approach is suitable. The key is to find a method that not only yields results but also meshes with one's lifestyle and can be sustained over time.
Listeners are then guided through the potential perils of rapid weight loss. While shedding pounds quickly can be tempting, it often comes at the expense of muscle mass and can lead to metabolic slowdown, making it harder to maintain weight loss in the long run. Philip underscores the necessity for a well-calibrated plan that prioritizes patience and adherence to a structured diet.
For individuals with a history of disordered eating, the hosts advocate a conservative approach to weight loss. They highlight the importance of establishing a healthy relationship with food before embarking on a calorie deficit. A slower pace is recommended, as it allows for a less restrictive caloric intake and a lower likelihood of triggering unhealthy eating patterns.
Moving on to strategies for managing long-term dieting, the hosts discuss the role of diet breaks and refeeds. These planned intermissions in a calorie deficit can provide psychological relief and help offset metabolic adaptation. By temporarily increasing calorie intake, one can maintain momentum in their weight loss journey without succumbing to burnout or excessive cravings.
The conversation shifts to the transformative power of physique development, particularly for individuals in their 30s and beyond. Philip shares his experience with Wits and Weights Physique University, a program designed to support listeners in achieving their best physique through personalized nutrition plans and workout programs. The discussion touches on the significance of setting realistic goals and being disciplined in meeting calorie and macro targets for successful fat loss.
Finally, the concept of the mini cut is examined—a short-term, intense weight loss strategy often utilized after a muscle-building phase. The hosts clarify that a mini cut is best suited for those who are already fairly lean and are looking to fine-tune their physique. They recommend a specific rate of weight loss and a time frame for undertaking this focused effort.
Listeners are left with a clear understanding of the various approaches to achieving optimal body composition. From the slow and steady to the rapid and aggressive, the episode provides a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to sculpt their physique intelligently, with sustainability and muscle preservation at the forefront of the strategy.
In summary, the episode serves as a testament to the notion that successful body transformation is not merely about losing weight—it's about making informed, strategic choices that lead to a healthier, stronger, and more confident self. It's about the journey as much as the destination, and with the right guidance, listeners are empowered to embark on this journey with confidence and clarity.
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Transcript
Philip Pape 00:00
How fast should you lose weight for the best results when it comes to body composition? Is there a sweet spot rate of loss that's optimal for losing fat while maintaining muscle? You'll find the answers in today's episode as we lay out the entire spectrum of safe and effective rates of weight loss for every physique goal with some surprises along the way, including times when you might actually be dieting for much longer than you think and times when an extremely rapid approach can be right for you all that and more in today's episode of Whitson wits.
Philip Pape 00:33
Welcome to the wit's end weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Whitson weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the weights and weights podcast. In our last episode 169 q&a with Jeff Hoehn menopause weight loss bulking without getting fat and cutting on low sleep. I was joined by Jeff Hoehn of the mind muscle connection podcast very special co hosted q&a where we answered questions on rest periods for muscle growth, managing your diet unlimited sleep, what to do if you're gaining too much weight in a bulk, how to transition your training from a bulk to a cut, menopause and weight loss resistance for women over 50. And how to prep ahead of time for inevitable holiday feasting. Today for episode 170. How fast should you lose weight for fat loss, we are uncovering the truth about the optimal rate of weight loss for sustainable fat loss will explore the full spectrum of approaches from slow and steady to rapid and aggressive and everything in between, you'll learn the pros and cons of each strategy, how to incorporate diet breaks and refeeds for optimal results, and the principles that apply to every successful fat loss plan because those never change whatever speed you go after it. Whether you're a beginner looking to lose your first 20 pounds of fat or you're an experienced diet or trying to get shredded. My goal is to give you a clearer understanding of how to choose the right rate of loss for your individual goals, and lifestyles. Now, before we dive in, I did want us to check out some of the recent five star reviews on Apple, where we've now got over 125 reviews and counting. So thank you to everyone who's taken the time to submit a review. That is honestly one of the best ways you can support the show because it lets others see what the experience is what you've been learning how people react to the show. And it creates what they call social proof. So if you're watching this rate, or listening to this right now, and you've never ever submitted a rating or review, please just take a moment, I'm okay if you just want to pause right now, since you're in the your podcast, app, Apple, Spotify, especially Apple, go to the five star rating and review, tap the button that says write a review, type in some nice loving words and submit it. Now if you don't intend to give me a five star review, that's cool. But I'd rather you reach out to me directly with your feedback, because I listened to what you guys tell me about the show, whether it's the guests that you might not like or the content, or maybe I have gone too far in one direction or another if things aren't quite supported by the evidence. And I heard it. And I'm listening to that feedback and continuing to adjust the show to improve quality over time. So what might be in your mind one star right now because you just found the show and for whatever reason didn't like an episode or two. And I've seen that happen with reviews, where you know, I wish they would just give it a chance and listen to a few more episodes. Or maybe it's just not for them. But you know, when you do a one star review, it really punches me in the gut, but it does give me feedback. So if you're planning to do that, I would just just DM me on Instagram, send me an email and say, hey, you know, I don't like the show. And here's why. And I'm going to talk to you about it and get your feedback. And guess what, I'm probably going to make a change if it makes sense for the audience. Now not every show is great for everyone. And that's the way the cookie crumbles as they say. So here are three quick reviews from our audience. First one is from LCD D 12. so useful. I stumbled across this podcast and I'm so happy with what I found. I've been looking for actually useful and concrete tips on my health journey and discovered that and so much more. I can't wait to keep listening as I continue my journey. The next review is from at Kim's do inspired tips for us over 40 Women are priceless. What a great discovery for my health. Thanks Philip for helping us weed through all the advice, especially as we age to find the best tips for losing weight and gaining muscle without sacrificing our health along the way. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to find a approach that works for the remaining years and decades of our wonderful vibrant lives. Right is Stay Healthy, Be Fit have that muscle but not sacrifice our health or our lives.
Philip Pape 05:00
Along the way, all right. And the last one is from for fam, I have a couple dogs, we also have some hamsters and chickens as well, chickens don't effort, but still they're part of our family. And this review says strategy, I really appreciate the strategic approach to health and nutrition with focusing on muscle mass. So incredibly helpful. I couldn't have summed it up better a strategic approach. That's what it is. We're about efficiency about doing it smart. You know, smart, Li, intelligently, time efficiently, all of those things and just cutting through the noise, right? Kind of like a recent episode when I talked about reverse dieting being a waste of time. I've gotten some great comments on that saying, You know what, I tried what you said, and you're right, it actually worked. Like I didn't have to prolong this with a reverse diet, I was able to recover right away. I didn't gain any fat, I might have gained a few pounds of water weight when I came back. But it worked. So that's what we're looking for. Alright, let's get into today's topic. I know you guys want to learn all about the various rates of weight loss, why the pros, the cons, the whole thing? How fast should you lose weight for fat loss? So we're going to start with that question. Right? How fast but another angle on that is? How fast can you lose weight and not lose muscle mass? Because that is what we're really talking about? Because of the answer is how fast should you lose weight? All right, there are a lot of factors that go into that, including Why the heck we want to lose weight in the first place. I was asked recently on a podcast. In fact, it was the physique development podcast with Sue Bush, which is I think the next episode is her on this show. But anyway, she asked me, Why do you think people struggle with dieting with weight loss? And I think my answer was, because a lot of people shouldn't even be dieting in the first place. Right? It shouldn't be, or they're doing it for the wrong reasons. And so, before we get into, like, how fast you lose weight, if you found this podcast, if you haven't followed our stuff for very long, and you're like, Yeah, I just want to lose weight, I want to lose weight on the scale. That is not what we're talking about. Yes, we are talking about measuring fat loss via a loss and body mass, right, via a form of quote unquote dieting, or a calorie deficit, not dieting, like the Keto or carnivore diet yet, but just the idea of being in a calorie deficit to release some of that energy. But we're doing it in a way that's both sustainable, right? Not necessarily sustainable for the period of fat loss, but in a sustainable way for life. So anytime you do it, it's sustainable, but also in a way that preserves muscle mass, okay, not just losing weight on the scale, but actually maintaining that muscle. And for some of you newer lifters, you might even build a little bit of muscle as you do this. And the wonderful thing here is there's a whole spectrum of approaches, and today we're talking about rates of loss. So I'm gonna go very logically, from slow and steady all the way to rapid and aggressive. And the best one for you today, in this phase of your lifestyle of your training of your year, is going to depend right on a variety of factors. So I'm gonna go over each of these and tell you what those are. All right. Before we get into the rates, though, and I know you're like, oh, what does he do and get into it? I do want to talk about why this whole idea is even important. Like, why do we care about rates of loss and all of that, it does come back to sustainability, the S word, it's the boring S word, that's, nonetheless, the key to everything here. The key to getting to your goals successfully, is doing it in a way that builds routines and habits and some inherent self discipline, you know, occasionally doing hard things a push your comfort zone, but not going all out with the all or nothing approach, and not doing things just to get it quickly done at all costs, right? That's what we mean by sustainability. So while I'm going to eventually get to a very rapid approach to fat loss, but at the very end, even with that approach, there's a context of sustainability around it, okay, of how we approach it. So that's what we want to do it put on those thinking hats and critical thinking hats, and do this the right way. Because if you lose weight too quickly, which is very tempting for a lot of you I know, I know it is, I've been there many times. All right, I've done the low carb diets to do it. I've done crazy diets like to get ready for my wedding, I lost a ton of weight. And I just looked scrawny and skinny fat. So it can be tempting, you know, especially if you have a lot of weight to lose. I mean, if you're, you know, 50 100 200 pounds overweight, and you want to lose that you might be desperate to do it, right. But rapid weight loss will come at a cost if not done the right way. Right? Because when you drastically start cutting calories, or you start doing all this extra training or cardio, your body starts to look for resources elsewhere, where does it find those resources, it finds it in your muscle tissue, you're not eating enough food, you're moving too much your body's trying to conserve and find energy wherever it can. And it's like, well, you're not giving me the foods, I'm gonna use some of that muscle tissue, and then your metabolism slows down further. And then it's harder to lose even more weight and then even once you do, it's hard to keep the weight off in the long run. And I use the word weight a lot today and weight loss. At the end of the day. I really care about fat loss but
Philip Pape 10:00
When you have anything more than a decent percentage of body fat, there's going to be an element of weight loss to lose the fat as well. They go hand in hand they correlate, right. But we want that weight to be fat, not muscle. The other thing is when you go too fast into a diet, you're going to experience a ramp up in, of course, metabolic adaptation, where your metabolism declines, and the symptoms and biofeedback that comes with that hunger cravings, even mood swings, right hang being angry. And if done too quickly, those things ramp up too quickly. That's what leads to binge eating, and weight regain. We've talked about it a lot. We've talked about body fat overshooting, check out the history of our podcasts, you'll see episodes on body fat overshooting on fat loss versus weight loss. I think I've talked about rates of weight loss a long time ago as well. Regardless, we don't want to do it too quickly. On the other hand, if you lose weight too slowly, that can be a problem too, because it can be frustrating that you don't see the change, right? It might happen over time over like months. But that's, you know, we as humans, we want these quick wins. I don't want a quick fix. But I do want quick wins. And that can be frustrating and demotivating, because you're seeing these very small changes on the scale. And in fact, because they're so small, from a fat loss perspective, they tend to be outweighed by the daily fluctuations from water weight. And that can be even more discouraging, because you're trying to go in a slightly downward direction. And you get these big jumps all the time. And you look from, say, Sunday to Sunday, and the weights the same, even though it kind of went generally down, but then it may be popped up on Sunday. Again, that can be very discouraging. And that's one of the things I actually deal with my clients, especially when they're newer in the process, where they're like, I see the trend going down. I've seen lower numbers on the scale. But then today, I was right back where it was a week ago. And my response is, let's be patient, you're doing all the right things. You're in the deficit, we know your expenditure, we've adjusted the calories and macros just keep going for now, right? If there's a true plateau, I'll let you know. And the way we didn't generally do it, you know, with my coaching and Whitson weights physique University, the approach we take is designed to avoid plateaus altogether, because we're being proactive, we're getting ahead of it. But anyway, weight loss of to slow can be frustrating. And so we want to find that balance in between for you, that allows you to lose fat at a steady pace, while preserving your muscle mass, while maintaining your energy as best as possible. And even Yes, while enjoying your food, that is a variable here. Because if your dieting plan takes you 12 months, and you feel like to do that, you're cutting out all the foods you enjoy, that's not sustainable, right, that's not sustainable. So here we go, we're gonna start with a very conservative approach the slow and steady, okay, slow and steady. And this involves losing weight at a rate of around a quarter to a half percent of your body weight per week. So anything less than a quarter percent of your body per week is probably too slow to really be meaningful, it's almost close to maintenance, and it's going to take way too long, and it's gonna be frustrating. So at least a quarter and then up to a half percent of your body weight per week. So if you weigh 200 pounds, that's a half to one pound per week. Now, that may not sound like much if you come from the like crash dieting world, or you've done the yo yo diet. So you like did keto and you lost 40 pounds in a month. That doesn't sound like much. But it is exactly what the evidence shows is very reasonable to avoid losing muscle. And at that slower rate, you can have more calories to work with, which then comes into the sustainability piece and the adherence piece of this, this approach is great for several types of people. If you're brand new to this whole macros and dieting thing, it might be great for you just because we don't want to have a massive change. And all of a sudden, you have to figure out all the hacks and all the techniques for how do I cut, you know, 1000 calories out of my diet overnight. And that's a struggle. And that's a big challenge for some people. So if you're new to dieting, my brand new clients, in fact, if you come through with some weights, physique University, you're like, I don't want aggressive fat loss or any other form of fat loss, you're gonna get a rate that's closer to the half percent, rather than higher than that. And it might be less, it might be like point two 5% If you're going for something like a body recomp. Okay, so by taking things slowly, there are a few benefits here. One is that you give your body time and your mind time to adapt to the changes in your diet and your training. So each day, you're just making these small changes. They're simple. You're swapping your lunch, decide on your lunch, maybe you're swapping it from rice, and now it's going and becoming brussel sprouts, right? You're adding in a little protein here, and maybe dropping a snack here, right? It's like simple changes you can make in the first few weeks. You get used to it, you see what it feels like you get through the hunger pangs of the first week because the first few weeks of a diet at any rate. It messes with your mind a little bit from a hunger perspective. It's more psychological than physiological like it's a lot having to do with the habituation of. Okay, I've been eating at 3pm snack every day. Now I'm cutting that out because I'm reducing my calories. And all of this stuff is great for setting you up for sticking with it for a while, obviously prevents muscle loss and metabolic adaptation. Here's the thing. muscle loss will occur in a diet if you go too fast, or you're not training hard enough. So we're not really addressing the training piece here. But the assumption is your training with the proper intensity and execution, very similar to you were when you were at maintenance or in a building face, it doesn't really change much. And in fact, the cohosted episode with Jeff Hoehn, we talked about that, like how do you transition from a bulk to a cut in terms of your training, right. And the key messages keep training is if you're building muscle, you may have to change some of the volume and the programming for recovery. Right recovery is like a very important variable during fat loss, but the intensity of execution doesn't change. So assuming you've got that the slower rate of loss at about a quarter to half percent, is going to be really nice for not even getting close to that point of losing muscle strength. And you might even see your lifts continue to go up for a while. And then while you're doing this, you can start to develop those new sustainable habits that you can stick to in the long run. Even when you're not in fat loss, a lot of the habits are going to be roughly the same, like having high satiety foods, having high fiber foods, having mostly Whole Foods, but yes, still fitting in indulgences that you enjoy, right? Figuring out your meal timing, figuring out your workout, and Perry workout nutrition, that is a much better position to be in. Rather than burning out after a few weeks, because you went way too hard, you got some results, but then you couldn't take it anymore. So I talked about people new to diet and why that's important. Another population where this is very helpful, is when you have a lot of weight to lose, if you have 50 100 pounds or more to lose, it might be a good idea to go conservative for a couple of reasons. One is, it's going to take you a while to get to your goal. And I know on one hand, you're thinking well, then I want to go very aggressively. So I get it over with quickly. But the problem is going aggressively, is you have to go aggressively for a lot longer than someone else would have to go aggressively. And that can quickly burn you out. Whereas if you go a little bit more conservatively, you could probably last a lot longer, like more than the math, you know, like if you could go half as long, rapid or twice as long conservative, you'll probably find that twice as long conservative is actually much more doable. Because on a daily basis, you're eating a decent amount of food, and you can kind of get used to that. Whereas mentally the rapid approach is like, Oh, wow, this is a slog, it's gonna seem like a lot longer time, just because it's so aggressive. Alright, so if you have a lot of weight to lose, going conservatively can help. The other reason that can help in that population is you have excess reserves to pull from with your excess body fat storage, where your body treats that as extra calories. And so if you go into like a point 252 point 5% your body weight per week, conservative deficit, your body may experience that as continuing to be at maintenance or even in a slight surplus. And that's going to be amazing for your training for your body composition development, it'll probably accelerate the fat loss, you know, because you're building muscle and losing fat. And so what will probably happen is even though your weight on the scale is going down, at a certain rate, your actual dropping body fat is going to outpace that you're going to drop more body fat than the weight on the scale tells you because you've gained muscle in the process. So that's a great place to be. And then the only other population I wanted to quickly mention here for the conservative approach is someone who has a history of disordered eating. All right now, disclaimer, I do not dispense medical advice. I don't deal with you know, actual medical conditions really to psychological conditions for disordered eating. If you're in the throes of that right now, if that's part of your life now, definitely go address that, you know, work with a mental professional for that, to address it before you get into using tracking and macros and all these things. But if you have a history of it, and you've moved, you've processed through that, and you have a healthy relationship with food now, which is something you want to develop before you even think of going into a diet anyway. All right, and my next solo episode next week is gonna be all about 15 times 15 situations where you do not want to be dieting, and I'm gonna address some of those things. But let's say you've move past and you no longer have an issue with disordered eating, you still may want to go at a more conservative rate just to be kind to yourself, give yourself that little bit of room to test the waters. Now the downside of a conservative approach to weight loss is it takes longer, that's it takes longer to see results. And that can be frustrating if you're eager to get more lean. If you're somebody like me who I know I can go more aggressively, I can go more aggressively on more calories than someone else. And so it would just be holding me back. Right. So depending on who you are, typically if you have a higher metabolic rate, you're more advanced training, ie, you're probably going to end up going with more and more aggressive approaches here. Either way, so whether you're excess weight to lose, you're newer at this and you're taking a conserve approach, there is an element of patience and consistency in all these approaches, but especially this one from a time perspective, and that can be tough if you've got a busy lifestyle, if you have a lot of social commitments you'd like to go out to eat. However, doing it at a conservative rate actually helps in those situations as well, because it's not, as I'll use the word restrictive, just from a pure calorie perspective, okay. And in any of these approaches, by the way, you can take breaks, you can use refeeds. And when you're going at a conservative approach, the refeed, or the break isn't that much of a jump from where you are in terms of your calories. And you can see that as a pro or con, you know, it's a pro, because you're not going to slow your progress that much by doing it, it can be a con, because it doesn't feel like you're really eating that much more food. But that's also a pro, because it implies that the amount of food you've been eating isn't that low anyway, Alright, anyway, if you're willing to play that long game, and you like the fact that it gives you more calories to work with and you have a decent amount of weight to lose this approach, this conservative approach can be a very safe and effective way to lose fat, and then keep it off. Because you don't get to that point of like ravenous hunger, you don't get to the point of feeling like you're depriving yourself and you need to binge back when the diet is done, it's done you up your calories a bit to recover, and you move on. So this can be great. Oh, one more thing comes to mind. Just keep in mind right now, one of my clients, he has a much lower metabolic rate, the typical man of his size, let's just say and so for him, any diet is going to be, by definition, moderately conservative, lest he be at a ridiculously low number of calories. So if you don't have a very high metabolic rate, and this applies to a lot of females and smaller individuals, then you may I'm not gonna be stuck, but it kind of limits your options. Calorie wise, you may have to go at a conservative rate just for that reason. Now, can you improve that over time, I believe so I believe with a few cycles over a few years of really solid building of muscle, and increasing your metabolic rate that way, as well as you know, moving a bit more like in terms of walking low grade cardio, and that can help. And then you could push it a little bit more aggressively. But just be aware that you may have constraints as an individual and just have to acknowledge those like, that's just reality. Okay, now, what are we going to do about it? Now, I mentioned briefly, diet breaks one strategy that makes this approach more bearable, because this is a long time based approach. And that's what can wear on you psychologically is not the calorie so much is the duration, we can take a diet break, you can take a one week, a two week break every, say 812 weeks, kind of like taking a D load and you're training, and then just eat it maintenance calories, all you have to do is up your carbs for that time and eat at maintenance. And here's a little trick, if you're using macro factor, right macro factor, best food logging app on the market, use my code, which N weights to get an extra free week on your trial. If you're using macro factor and you have it set to lose weight to go to maintenance for a break, what you can do is you can edit the goal to move the rate of loss down to almost zero, so you're effectively leaving the goal in place, but telling it that you want to lose at almost a zero rate of loss. And that gets the targets very close to your maintenance calories. And then you could just slightly overshoot it to slightly overshoot it to truly hit your maintenance, maintenance being your current metabolism, your current expenditure. Okay, so a diet break is usually like one to two weeks, every eight to 12 weeks eating and maintenance. And this doesn't fix anything, this doesn't reverse metabolic damage or anything like that. Okay. But it does, it does temporarily halt or reverse the metabolic adaptation that you had, it gives you more energy, right, it probably will feel great in the gym for a bit because now you have all these extra carbs coming in. And most importantly, and this is honestly the most important thing, it gives you the mental break from dieting, you're still going to keep your protein high, you're still going to train consistently, you can still do all the things. So consider a diet break if needed, especially when is a long period like this, because you may be planning for six to 12 months of dieting in this case. And this is one of the very few cases where I would say you could almost diet indefinitely, if it's conservative in the calories make sense, and just punctuate it with or interrupted with diet breaks, right. And I've had some very large clients who had a lot of weight to lose, we did it this way. But the amount of calories was, you know, it was still eating 2000 calories or more, maybe 2500 calories and it was like no big deal to do that for a while. So that's the conservative approach. I think I covered everything there that moves us next into the alcohol the standard approach. So this is the 12 to 16 week cut. This is the standard fat loss phase that I use with a lot of clients and what's awaits physique University. It's how I designed your nutrition plan. Again, for most people, depending on your specific situation because it is personalized to you. When you join I give you a plan and it tells you okay over the next six months this is what we're going to do to get to the result you're looking for. And if it's fat loss, it's usually going to have around a 12 to 16 week long cut. And so when you hear the word cut, doing a cut, this is like a standard cut. And if the conservative rate was point, two, five, I'm gonna say that the standard cut is around point five, two, all the way up to 1%. But most people have around point seven 5%. But we're gonna give it that full range, because I think there's some overlap between these phases. And again, if you burn more calories, you can go more aggressively and not feel it as much as somebody who burns less calories, or fewer calories, because you get to eat more plain and simple. And I know it's not fair, life's not fair. We're all different different rates of loss or different metabolisms. So, point five to 1% of your body weight per week, for 12 to 16 weeks. So if you weighed 200 pounds, that's about one to two pounds a week. And just to put that in perspective of the diet, I didn't do this with the last one. But I'll fix that here. One to two pounds, every one pound per week you're trying to lose is about a 500 calorie deficit a day. So in the last example, we talked about a half to one pound, so that's 250 to 500 calories a day. Now we're talking one to two pounds, again, for 200 pound person, that's 500 to 1000 calories per day deficit, right. And you might be like 1000 calorie deficit, I only burn 2500 That means I have to eat 1500 Yet, if you feel like that's sustainable. But if your metabolism is not that high, you may not be going at the full, you know, two pounds a week, even if you weigh 200, it might be a little bit less, you know, I weigh about 180. And when I go to a fat loss phase, it's usually around the full 1% One point A maybe even two pounds a week, because my metabolism is usually around 3000. So I can cut it down to 2000. And for me, that's fine, like eating 2000 calories a day, I can do that for 812 weeks, and then lose the weight I want to lose. Right now actually, I'm going to about half that rate. So I'm actually in this range, I'm going at about half a percent, because I went through some shoulder reactivation. And I was working on some bursitis and recovery. And so I decided to go back to maintenance for a while I did that for like three or four weeks, I felt great. I was able to recover mostly, let's just say I'm 95% there. And I said well, I want to go back into my fat loss phase. Because I do have a goal to get pretty lean this year, see what it's like, see how lean I can get. And for me that's getting back down to like at least 170 If not less on the scale. I don't want to drag it out forever. But I also don't want to go so aggressively, like I was doing because of my shoulder because I'm still kind of recovering. So I'm making it where it's sustainable for me from a training and recovery perspective, not just a food perspective. I mean, the food's nice, because now the amount I'm eating to be in a 500 calorie deficit a day almost doesn't feel like a diet. But I do feel it. I do feel it in my biofeedback, my training day today. In fact, I felt really fatigued in the gym, I don't usually feel that tired in the gym, and I did today. And I know it's because of my diet, it could have been a little bit of sleep as well. But I'm pretty confident based on my experience that it's the diet. So you've got to think about all these things. So going back to what this is the 12 to 16 week cut. I think this is a good middle ground for most people who have I'll say, a moderate amount of fat to lose not a lot of fat to lose a moderate amount. However, if you have a lot of weight to lose, you can go very aggressive. And I think this works well. If you have a high metabolism, I have a client whose metabolism is almost 4000 calories. And he can cut all the way down to like 2500 calories. And that results in a 1% if not slightly more than that rate of loss. And but he's built, he's got a lot of muscle. He loves heavy weights. I mean, he's got all the things working for him, he walks a lot sleeps a lot. He's on the younger side, right? All the things going for him, that may not be you. It's not even me, right. So I would say, a moderate amount of fat to lose and you're willing to be consistent with your diet and training. Again, it does require consistency, and a 12 to 16 week period. It ideally you don't even need any breaks. And by ideally, I mean you've set it up that way, not that you're gonna force yourself not to take a break. But you've set it up that way both with the right rate of loss, and also doing it at a time of year. That's kind of boring. That's not going to be interrupted with vacations and dining out and holidays. That's sustainable as well that because you're thinking ahead and you're planning if you need it, you're not just crashed it.
Philip Pape 29:31
Hey, this is Philip and I hope you're enjoying this episode of Whitson weights. I started with some weights to help ambitious individuals in their 30s 40s and beyond, who want to build muscle lose fat and finally look like they lift. I noticed that when people transform their physique, they not only look and feel better, but they also experienced incredible changes in their health, confidence and overall quality of life. If you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same thing to Build your ultimate physique and unlock your full potential. Whether you're just starting out or looking to take your progress to the next level. That's why I created wits and weights physique University, a semi private group coaching experience designed to help you achieve your best physique ever, with a personalized done for you nutrition plan, custom designed courses, new workout programs each month, live coaching calls and a supportive community, you'll have access to everything you need to succeed. If you're ready to shatter your plateaus and transform your body and life, head over to Whitson weights.com/physique, or click the link in the show notes to enroll today. Again, that's Whitson weights.com/physique, I can't wait to welcome you to the community and help you become the strongest leanest and healthiest version of yourself. Now back to the show.
Philip Pape 30:52
So I like the standard approach for most people, because it's not so slow, that you're gonna get bored or discouraged that you're not progressing. Because you will see drops in fat over time, like the trend weight is going to go down meaningfully. But it's also still not so fast that you're gonna risk losing muscle. In fact, we know that for the general population 1% of your body weight per week is the limit for losing muscle. Notice that I said general population. Again, I work with very trained people who are longtime lifters, they can go faster than that, I can go faster than that and not lose muscle, I can go about 1.2, I've tested it. And I have a couple clients can go 1.3 1.4%. Now they don't do this for a full 16 weeks, they might do that for six or eight weeks, and then they're done. And that'll be the mini cut we talked about in a bit. But they might do it for six or eight weeks and then taper down to the 1% it's going to depend on you. But just assume that it's generally a one to 1% of your body weight per week is the limit. Okay? Especially if you've never done this before. And so even if you're going at point 5.751, whatever, you're going to lose a decent amount of fat in a reasonable timeframe. Right and ballpark, it comes out to about 10 to 20 pounds for most people. So when you start, you're like I just got to lose that last 10 pounds to lose that last 20 pounds, this could be the perfect approach for you. Now, the downside of this is that it is I'll say, it requires in a sense more discipline, I hate to use that word sometimes. But it's discipline and adherence from in terms of the numbers, right. So if you're tracking your calories and macros, this is more aggressive than the first approach. So you can't be constantly going over your calories by 234 100 calories, because it'll just wipe out that difference. It'll wipe out the difference. Now, if you're tracking, if you're using macro factor, you know what the target is? And it's not going to shame you for going over, it's just on a weekly basis. Did you hit the let's say 7500 calorie deficit, if you're trying to get a full two pounds, they said right 7000 calories, you know, did you hit the deficit for the week, if you didn't, you're just gonna go more slowly, that's okay, that's fine. Just be aware of it and know that being close to those numbers that you set for yourself to go at that rate of loss is going to get you the result, as intended, right, you need to be on top of your macros your training to recovery, if you want to get those results. And if not, then one of two things, either there's some adjustments that have to be made to get back into that window, or it's not the right rate of loss for you. And it's too fast right now at this point in your life, and you can back it off of it. And I would rather you back off the rate and extend the duration. Now proactively, then constantly miss your macros and be over and feel frustrated that you can't quote unquote, hit that number. And now you feel like you're constantly failing and falling behind this, let's be honest, artificial plan we set for herself, because it's just a number. It's just a rate of loss. I really want to get this message that whatever you said at the beginning, make it reasonable. Make it doable, give yourself some fluff, some conservative padding in there, right? If you think you can get it done in eight weeks, assume 16, right? Like give yourself some pattern, and then make that work. And then if you want to go more aggressive as you go along, that might be a better approach psychologically, because then you're gonna feel like, oh, actually, I'm getting ahead of this thing. That's great, as opposed to falling behind. Right. So if, again, the downside is it does require a little more adherence, more consistency, right. And that can be challenging. If again, you're busy, you have a lot of stress, you have a very active social circle that revolves around food and drink, but you can always take breaks. And we talked about the one to two week diet break, we're going to talk about another way to take a diet break in a second. If you don't need the break, if you can just stay the course and get through it in 1216 weeks, you'll get there. It's a powerful tool for transforming your physique. That's what we're trying to do here. Alright, so the strategy that can make this more effective from a psychological perspective and a planning perspective is incorporating repeats. So in the conservative approach, we had diet breaks one to two weeks even longer. Now we're talking about refeeds. This is one to two days. And you could do that every week, you could do that every two weeks, as long as your weekly calories are where you want them. So you could say, Look, I'm gonna go pretty aggressive here, I'm gonna go toward the 1%. But I'm gonna carve out my Friday and Saturday, as refeed days where I eat at maintenance. And so in reality for the week, maybe I'm hitting point 8%, right, it's like slightly slower. But the benefit you get the trade off you get is this mental relief of getting to eat more food, these are not, I repeat, not cheat days, they're not cheat days, we don't do cheat days, cheat days implies that you're breaking some rule and you're cheating. And you're going off of some plant, no, these are planned in, these are controlled refeeds, where you're increasing your carbs, and eating a maintenance calories, you're not eating a bunch of junk food, or just whatever you want. However, you do have more room now to incorporate maybe some other foods you've been limiting, like pizza or something like that, which by the way, even in the regular day to day deficit, you should be incorporating some things that you enjoy on a regular basis and planning the min. So the refeed you know, there are some myths around refeeds. One of the myths is that it boosts your leptin levels, and which it might for a day or two might actually boosted but it's temporary. And then that reduces hunger and cravings and all of that, that piece of it, I would chalk up to just the fact you're eating more food, like you're going to eat more, so you're gonna be a little bit less hungry, right, like, let's just admit what it is. The more important thing is the mental break the mental break from the grind of dieting. Now, it may not seem like a grind to you, if you pick the rate of loss that was not too aggressive, but aggressive enough to give you progress, you can just stick with that just keep going. Right, just keep going. Or you can shift the calories around one week, and not do like a full refeed. But just kind of shift morale. So on your refeed days, just to be specific, what we mean is, if you are in a, let's say 700 calorie deficit, on your refeed day, you're in a zero calorie deficit, you're eating 700 more calories, mostly from carbs. And carbs doesn't mean pizza and doughnuts. Although you're welcome to include pizza and or donuts, to get to those carbs, it's a lot of fat to but that's fine, it is what it is. Carbs just means you know, any source of carbs, usually things like starches and grains and fruits and stuff like that, you're just scaling them up, getting that little boost of energy. Maybe if you time it right with your training session, you can get a little extra performance in your training session. And you can even time it with the social side of your calendar. And that's why I like refeeds is if you have a regular night out with the girls, right, or if you have a regular family dinner, that is a great time to have your refeed. Okay, so enough on the standard approach, I talk about it a lot. And a lot of the other episodes when we get into fat loss, it's typically that now we're getting into the mini cut. So this is the third of four rates of loss. This is the I'll call it aggressive approach. Not that not the extremely aggressive approach. But this is the I'll call it moderately to moderately aggressive to aggressive, any mini cut. Short and sweet, is I'll define it in a second. But who is it for? If you're already on the lean side, that has a wide range that could be like for a man that could be anywhere from 10 to even 20%, it's kind of lean for you or you're like, you don't need to lose a lot much weight, probably less than 20 pounds, probably quite a bit less than 20 pounds. In some cases, maybe it's 15, maybe it's 10. If it's just five, or you want to get shredded, right, or you're breaking up a long building phase with a cut in between. These are all situations where mini cut might work. Now, Jeff Hoehn, I talked about in the q&a episode coming out, or that already came out that we kind of have slightly different definitions of mini cut. And that's why it's important to define terms. His use of the term was breaking up a building phase, my use of the term is just a short cut, typically after a building phase before you start your next one. Technically, those could be the same thing though, right? If you think about it, if Jeff saying look, you build for five months, and then you break up your building phase with this, say eight week mini cut, and then you keep building for another four months, is that a nine month building phase with a two month mini cut? Or is it a five month building phase and a four month building phase with a cut in between it's semantics in my opinion. So what I don't like to do though, is have you constantly stopped building to cut that is not a good approach. We don't do that. We want to build muscle for at least five or six months. So once you've built for at least five or six months, you can call it a interruption in your building phase or you can just call it a cut after your building phase. We're going to talk about in the final phase here the Super Rapid Fat Loss about actually interrupting a building phase so hold on that but in the mini cut that we're talking about right now, this involves losing weight at a rate of I'm gonna say usually around 1% or maybe even a tiny bit more. If you're a more advanced trainee all the things I said before right you have a higher metabolism. You you train really hard, you're not going to risk losing muscle like some people fear monger about, you're just not I just seen it time and time again, I've heard, you know, experts who I really trust, whether it's like Brian Borstein or Steve Hall or somebody talk about how you know, if you're doing everything right, the 1% limit, it's a population level number, and you may actually be an outlier where you can go 1.2 1.3% of your body weight per week and do it at a decent amount of calories. For the average person, a mini cut is probably just at the 1% and done for a short period. That's really what we're talking about it because you don't have a lot of weight to lose, you don't need a long duration. And you can go out 1% for like six to 10 weeks. So if you weighed 200 pounds, that's let's say two pounds a week, 10 weeks, that's 20 pounds, right? But even six weeks, that's still 12 pounds. And again, I see this a lot with people who are already lifting who come to me for one on one coaching or even in weeks and weeks physique University, and they're like, I just want to lean out, like I've been trying carnivore, I've been trying all the diets, they don't quite work, I just want to lean out what do we do, and we work with them for, you know, maybe eight to 10 weeks, and we get exactly where they need to be. They're like, Alright, I'm done. Now, I'm lean enough, I don't want to keep losing, because I'm going to lose some of the strength on my lifts and such, because that's important to them. I'm going to turn it out now and go back to maintenance. All right. So mini cut about 1%, maybe a little more of your body weight per week, for about six to 10 weeks. It is designed to be short and sweet. That's the goal. All right, we're getting as lean as possible, in as short a time as possible, try and have our cake and eat it too. Because you don't have a lot of weight to lose, you're not new at this, you've done it before, you can jump right in, you track it with a macro factor, we have certainty and confidence of what it takes to keep you in that deficit. You know, to eat your vegetables, you know, to stay hydrated, you know, to eat a lot of fiber, right, you eat a lot of protein, a lot of lean meats, lower fat, dairy, all the things, you get your sleep, prioritize your recovery. And it's this targeted strike to just strip off that last bit of stubborn body fat. And for many of us, myself included, we like to be in the state where 10 months out of the year we're building and at most two months, we're dieting and those two months are like your mini cut, and you fit it in the best time of year when it kind of doesn't interrupt anything else in your life. Usually, that's something like the spring, you don't have any holidays going on, you're coming out of winter, maybe you're still bundled up, and you're getting ready to be lean for the summer. Very common approach. All right now, because of the rate of loss being on the upper end, again, it's suited for people who don't aren't looking for lots and lots of LDS lots of pounds on the scale to lose. So again, 10 to 15, maybe 20% body fat for men, for women 20 to 25, maybe 30% for women, I get your definition of Lean may be higher than someone else's. And that's okay. That's okay. Not all of us want to walk around being like super shredded, or have six packs. The other thing is, again, you should already have experience with dieting and training or be working with a coach or of course, I'm going to plug it all day. It's in weights physique university, because then we're gonna give you a very targeted plan and adjustments to do that. Now, the downside of this mini cut is number one, it's very intense, okay, it's intense if you've never done it before, and your calories aren't super high. You know, like I mentioned before the gentleman with the 4000 Calorie metabolism. Most people like most men are sitting around 20 803,000, most women are down around the 24 to 2600, something like that, you've got to think of the numbers, if you're gonna go at the full 1%, it could put you down around 2000 or less calories are far below 2000 calories in some cases. And that can tax you physically. And mentally. You have a little more strictness with the approach, right? Not restriction of foods per se. But just the constraints are there and you've got to make tighter trade offs. And really prioritize the high fiber and high satiety foods, right, we can't be, you know, the indulgences are going to be somewhat limited. Just the reality, it's a temporary state. That's why we want to do it aggressively. Because it's temporary, it's very short lived, you might get more hunger, more fatigue, more mood swings on this kind of cut, you're getting closer to that point where you could lose muscle mass, you've got to really watch out with your training, get enough protein, get enough stimulus protein is important here, because the calories are going to drop and the protein as a percentage of calories are going to be pretty high. And I've seen some people slack off a bit, they get to this point. And because they're just scaling down their food, the protein gets scared along with it. And now you're not in that great territory for high amount of protein. Now you have to be at the full one gram per pound, maybe not. Maybe not we the more we learn about protein research, the more we see you can get by on less and still hold on to your your gains, especially if you have proper intensity execution and progressive overload in your training. So if you can handle all that, if that's like, Yeah, that's cool, I can do it. The mini cut approach is a great way to get lean and mean in a hurry. So that's why I do recommend it for somebody who's already been through this at least once before. Now, I talked about refeeds can you incorporate mini cuts in a refeed and I'm in Ain't got Yeah, absolutely. Again, it's going to slow it down. But you can almost make the argument that if any type of phase needs refeeds, it will be a mini cut, the more aggressive you get, the farther you are from your maintenance, the more drained you're going to be to where a refeed, it seems like this beautiful gift you've been given, you know, and you almost look forward to it. Now, again, not like a cheat day, we don't want to be psychologically obsessed with it, we just want to have it planned in where it makes sense for our schedule. And for our mental state. So all of these things, doing it this way, let's is intended to prioritize your adherence to the diet so that you get through it and over with as quickly as you can. Okay, so let's see, that's it for the mini cut, I think. And now I'm going to move to the Rapid Fat Loss approach, which you might call the last resort, because I don't deliberately prescribe this to anyone, even my one on one clients, it's really up to them to tell me I want to do this, and almost sell me on it, because I know all the reasons why you could do it and might do it. And it could be helpful. But there are many, many, many reasons not to do this. And I want to be very clear on that. I have a rapid fat loss guide, you can go to Whitson weights.com/free. and download it, it's got the entire detailed protocol on how to do this. It's a very special approach. So you want to do it the right way. It is extreme. It is also in some circles controversial. But on Whitson weights, it's not controversial, because we do it the right way. And you've got to do it the right way. And this involves losing weight at a rate of around 1.2 to 1.5% of your body weight per week, for a very short period. Okay, usually two to four weeks max. So this isn't a mini cut, I sometimes call this a micro cut. Alright, so let's say you weigh 200 pounds, you're gonna go, you know, 2.53 pounds a week, for like four weeks. So if you just do the math that might be at most, at most 10 pounds. For most people, it's like, five to seven. All right, I did this myself, as part of the challenge. It was the shred Tober challenge back in 2003. I did a podcast on it. I don't remember the name off top of my head. But Dr. Bill Campbell came on. And we talked about it, it was inspired by his work Dr. Bill Campbell is is really into the Rapid Fat Loss research, he's doing a new study about it. And it's totally doable. And the whole point of a rapid fat loss phase is I want to lose that fat as fast as I can, and still not lose muscle and get it over with. So I want to be very clear, this is not for people who have a lot of weight to lose, this is not for 1520 pounds, because I've seen people reach out to me and say I followed your fat loss protocol. But I still want to lose more can I keep going. And I'm like absolutely not, don't keep going, what I recommend is either taper it down to a more conservative rate and try to keep going like hope for the best that you don't lose muscle at that point. Or go back to maintenance for a while, like for a month or six weeks or even eight weeks and then go into a normal fat loss phase like don't do another rapid fat loss phase right away, I feel like you're going to really eat into your performance and your sustainability in your muscle. If you try to do this as a default option. Alright, so it's not for everyone, I would say it's either something you want to do as an experiment, or you're pretty lean, you just want to get to the last bit of shredded really quick. Or it's a last resort. Let's say you've tried some of the other approaches. And because of, I don't know, let's say your hormones, your body's response rate, your metabolic adaptation, and maybe you don't have a lot of calories to work with. I've had some clients that are kind of like in that box, right? They feel like they're in a box because all the variables are like conspiring against them, and will do a rapid fat loss phase, almost like as a breakthrough. Okay, it's like, I don't want to use the word shock, because that sounds, that sounds silly, but it's effectively, very quickly getting ahead of that metabolic adaptation, even though it's going to catch up quickly, trust me, it's gonna catch up, you can't do anything about metabolic adaptation. But you're gonna get ahead of it quickly. And then because of the duration is short, you can meaningfully push that weight on the scale that fat loss as long as you're training hard during that process, and using the refeeds. So very important, this rapid fat loss phase incorporates refeeds by default, so unlike the other types of fat loss, where you can choose to include them if you need them. The rapid fat loss phase includes them as a matter of course. So like my two week protocol, it has four days of dieting, one day, a refeed, four days of dieting one day refeed and then four days dieting, right to recover and prevent that muscle loss. We also don't want to use this if again, you're not experienced dieting, and this is the first thing you've ever done. Don't do that. Don't do that. This is just going to feed into the whole rapid. What do you call, like quick fix, you know, Crash dieting kind of mentality. It's not the intent. Okay. And it's not meant to sustain for more than a few weeks. I just want to keep reiterating that. Okay, I did allude to where you You might use it like, what are the situations where Rapid Fat Loss is appropriate. So, one could be if you're trying to make weight, okay, if you're a competitive and I don't know bodybuilding physique athletes fighting, even powerlifting, I don't know, you're gonna have to try it out. And I had a powerlifter reach out about this, who was going to do this. So I need to see how that went. Because what you don't want to do is feel like completely drained of energy where you just can't hit your performance goals for the show. But we know people do more extreme things than that, you know, boxers with the water weight, and such, and, or for military tests, right? Sometimes people do this, we don't want to get into any sort of binge restrict cycle though here. And we don't want to rely on this and like, wait and depend on it. But potentially, that's a situation where it can be used and still come out of it the other side, not the worst for where another situation that comes up. And again, I hesitate to mention these when I'm going to because you're probably thinking about it, if you have a once in a lifetime event, maybe it's a wedding, maybe it's your wedding coming up, and the time is against you right now. And you want to try this and again, do it the right way, have the refeeds in there, keep training hard to just quickly cut off that five or six pounds, and you think that's worth it to you, that's your choice, do it right, that's up to you. That's a possibility. Again, it shouldn't be a regular thing, like every year, you have some event that requires this is a once in a lifetime event. The other place I actually like it potentially is breaking up a building face. So what you could do is you could say I'm going to build for a year, and I'm going to do a micro cut after month eight, right. So eight months in, you know, you might have gained, let's say 15 pounds, or 20 pounds. And now you're gonna do a micro cut for two weeks and cut five pounds, it's kind of like giving you a little reset right in the middle of your building phase, and you've got four more months of your building phase. And then the net gain of the phase isn't as large, even though the game is mostly muscle, right. So the rapid fat loss phase, cut some of the fat off in the middle of building phase so that you end up leaner by the end of it having built the same amount of muscle, which is great, right if you can do that. So that's a way to do it, where I think again, when Jeff Hoehn and I were talking about and he was saying a mini cut in the middle of the building phase kind of what he was thinking. But I'm talking about even more aggressive like a micro cut, which some people call mini cuts. So just semantics. Alright, so if you do decide to do the Rapid Fat Loss route, there's a few things you can do to minimize some of the risks and some of the side effects. The first and biggest one is getting enough protein I'm talking if you can around 1.2, maybe 1.5 grams per pound. So like blow past the one gram per pound, just to be 100% sure that that is not the bottleneck when it comes to your muscle. Second, all right, you've got to keep your training intensity up their intensity, I mean, your load, your volume, or your proximity to failure and of course, training for progressive overload and training for building muscle, even if you can't technically do it. Because you're deprived of all this energy, you act as if you're doing it. And this is where cardio and high rep type work. I
Philip Pape 53:03
don't like high rep work I don't I don't think necessarily need for that. And fat loss. Cardio is an interesting one, that could be a dial that you would use during this phase in either direction, either don't do too much, because it's just gonna totally burn you out. And you're gonna feel even more drained, or incorporate some of it low and medium, even a little high intensity cardio to kind of accelerate it even further, and potentially increase your expenditure where you're now burning even more calories. Or you could do it on a little bit less. However, big caveat there is as you're doing this rapid fat loss phase, it's so short, you don't really have time to see your expenditure change and respond to that. And so when I set up these protocols, I do it as a fixed protocol for the whole two or three weeks, I don't worry about what my expenditures doing. Because it's not long enough to be able to react properly to that. And then the refeeds every four days, five days, I like him four days dieting one day refeed that's what I like. So make sure the refeeds fit on the days you want where you want them. Okay, and then of course, get ready to come out of it. Like if you listen to my episode, reverse dieting is a complete waste of time, even after a big ggressive microcut where you've you know, you've lost five, seven pounds, and your expenditure might have tanked. Probably going to tank somewhat. Go right back to your expenditure right away or a little bit higher so that you recover very quickly. Okay, so I know this is a solo episode, it's actually going a little bit long, but I think it was worth it because we covered all of these fat loss approaches in much more detail than I sometimes have a chance to. And the question is, how do you choose the right one? Well, we've already talked about all the factors. So I hope that you heard your scenario in one of those, including your starting body composition, your body fat, how much weight you have to lose. What is your experience level, both with dieting, but also with building muscle and training? Right? And by dieting, I mean not that you've done diets, but proper nutrition macros, micros hydration supplements Shouldn't it's all in place. And ideally, you've gone through that standard fat loss phase before you try something more aggressive. Then of course, your lifestyle and your goals like what are your goals? What's your timeframe? What is your schedule look like? How do you feel when you eat this way, and so on. So if you're, again, new to dieting, you have a lot of weight to lose, I recommend the more conservative approach. And then gradually, as you get more experienced, you can go with more aggressive approaches. And that's kind of a cool way to mix it up. Right, it gives you time to build a sustainable habits, you don't get into the pitfalls of trying to go too quickly. And then as you get leaner and your body composition improves, you know, you get this fun chance to mix it up and try a little more aggressive. And you can always dial it back can always dial back, there's no right or wrong. Okay. And regardless of what you choose principles, remember the principles, prioritize your training to preserve muscle mass, eat enough protein to preserve muscle mass, and for your body composition and for satiety, take breaks or refeeds as needed, so that you don't get burned out. So you get psychological relief, and you continue to maintain your progress. Even though you're slowing it down a tiny bit, you get to continue and create that add that long term adherence. The last thing is, I want you to be honest with yourself about what is sustainable for you long term, right? Don't be afraid to adjust your plan if it isn't working. Okay. And there you have it, right. So the spectrum of weight loss or fat loss rates, how to choose the right approach. It's not a one size fits all what works for the person next to you that you're watching, and is telling you this is the perfect approach that worked for them, it may be the completely wrong approach for you. And so you've got to find that balance between making the progress but still enjoying your life still maintaining your health. And if you take one thing away from this episode, let it be this sustainability is king or queen when it comes to fat loss, short term and long term. So I don't want you to get caught up in the hype. I know you heard Rapid Fat Loss and you're like, Oh, I could actually do that. And I can do it the right way. When the rubber hits the road and you actually do it, it's tough, right? So start slow and build to where is the sweet spot for you. And along the way, you're building habits. These are long term habits. Okay, experiment, collect data, use macro factor, join the winter weights, Facebook community. And if you really need help to accelerate it and customize it for you, I want you to join Whitson weights physique University, we are open for enrollment link, as always in the show notes. All right, I hope you have a better understanding of your options for how fast you might lose weight. And again, if you want to apply these with a custom plan for you with a six month outlook with a proper rate of loss, and then you get weekly check ins and live coaching calls, monthly workout programs to take your physique to the next level. I definitely invite you to check out Whitson weights physique university, because here's what I did, I took the best of one on one coaching. And I rolled it into a community based semi private group coaching program that gives you expert guidance, accountability support, so that you get through any plateaus. In fact, you never hit them. That's the goal. You can build muscle, you can lose fat, like the way that we talk about here on WinSun weights, with no restricted diets with no excessive cardio without sacrificing who you are and your time and your lifestyle. And the university has been growing fast since we launched in April, and we're looking for some more brave souls to jump in accelerate their path to a dream physique. And that's why I recently updated the pricing structure to make it even more affordable. So if you want to learn more about that, and enroll, just head to Whitson weights.com/physique, or click the link in my show notes. Again, that's Whitson weights.com/physique, to learn about WWE you and join today so we can get you some clarity, and a custom nutrition plan so that you can start implementing right away what we talked about today, to build the Lean muscular physique you deserve. Again, the link is in my show notes. We're going to get some weights.com/physique. Okay, in our next episode 171, big butts, strong butts, we love them all, how to train your glutes with Sue Bush, we are talking about a fun topic, especially for the ladies out there. And that is how to build strong, functional and aesthetically pleasing glutes. Why do we love butts so much? What are the benefits of glute development beyond just looking good, and one of the most effective training strategies, exercise selection and programming considerations for optimal results with those glutes. Now, Sue and I were contributors to the March issue of body by science speaking of Dr. Bill Campbell. So she had me on her show recently, the physique development podcast, and if you missed that, go look her up and give it a follow. That's again the physique development podcast. And of course, make sure to hit follow right now in your podcast app for this podcast, which waits to get notified when Sue's episode comes out, and also support the show by increasing our number of subscribers. As always, stay strong and I'll talk to you next time here on the wits and weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of wit's end weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their weights or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.
