What if I told you the MOST important factor of your diet isn’t calories?

Really.

We’ve KNOW that fat loss comes down to Calories In - Calories Out for decades.

But people are failing diets now MORE THAN EVER.

So what gives?

From my experience as a nutrition coach helping hundreds of clients transform their bodies, I’ve found there’s one factor more important than calories...

CHOOSING A NUTRITION STRATEGY YOU CAN SUSTAIN

This means we’re prioritizing adherence over everything else when it comes to creating your ideal diet when you start online coaching. Forget “most-optimal”.

→ The best macros are worthless if you won’t consistently track macros.

→ A low-carb diet will create MORE yo-yo dieting if you can’t see yourself giving up carbs long-term.

→ A high-carb diet will probably make your fat loss more challenging if you’ve found you prefer the keto lifestyle.

You get the idea.

I’ve built my nutrition coaching practice on the belief that there is no single “best” diet for everyone.

We’re all individuals, with different goals, preferences, lifestyles, cultures… and THOUSANDS of other factors that play into what foods make us feel best, and how the impact our bodies.

Thus, to allow you to follow your diet long enough to...

1. Achieve the body composition goals you set out for

2. Sustain said goals after the diet is over

...you MUST start by choosing a diet structure that actually fits you.

What does this look like?

Of course, it depends. I’ve helped online clients create dozens of different diet structures over the last 6 years, often created ON our initial strategy call, as you tell me about your unique goals and lifestyle.

BUT, I’ve found 3 diet structures that work for the MOST clients, and really cover the needs of most any demographic you could think of.

More likely than not, one of these diet structures is a great fit for you.

Diet Structure #1: The Handful Diet

The reality is, some people just hate the thought of tracking their food.

If tracking calories & macros is the ONLY diet structure you have in your toolbelt as a coach, a good chunk of your clients WON’T get nearly the results they could.

I’m a fan of tracking for many of my online clients.

But for some, it just doesn’t align with their goals or psychology.

For online clients like this, we’ll most often implement something called The Handful Diet.

The only measuring tool you’ll need is your hand.

So, unless you had an unfortunate run-in with an alligator during your time as a golf pro…

This diet is pretty easy for most to stick to.

Here’s How It Works

All your meals are based on portion sizes, measured out with your hands. Your hand size typically scales with your body size, so this works well no matter your dimensions.

You know what they say about guys with small hands… they eat smaller servings of protein on the Handful Diet.

Everyone’s needs will be a bit different — all we’re doing right now is establishing a baseline.

We typically start here for 3-4 meals:

→ Protein: 2 palm-sized portions.

→ Carbs: 1-2 cupped hand-sized portions (more around workouts, less further away)

→  Fats: 1-2 thumb-sized portions (less around workouts, more further away)

→  Veggies: 1-2 fist-sized portions.

As time goes on, and we watch how your body measurements, biofeedback, and training performance are impacted by your intake, we’ll add or subtract a serving of carbs or fats as needed.

Pros Of The Handful Diet:

→ Works Great For Beginners To Nutrition - For many clients that are brand new to nutrition, we can make HUGE steps forward simply by getting you focused on eating lots of whole, filling foods.

This is the concept of dietary displacement - we’re not even focusing on avoiding certain foods, just making sure that you incorporate the above strategies. If you were following a typical “western diet” of highly processed foods before, you’ll find yourself much MORE full and eating LESS calories than before, thanks to all the additional protein, fiber, and food volume you’re consuming.

→ No Tracking - Again, tracking just REALLY isn’t some clients cup of tea. And that’s ok!

→ Lifelong Application - No matter the situation, this diet teaches online clients how to identify which foods are a good source of each macronutrient, and understand appropriate portion-sizes for their goals.

Cons Of The Handful Diet:

→ Requires More Prep Work - One of the big positives of this diet, is the fact that it pushes you to eat a lot of single-ingredient whole foods. One of the cons, is also the fact that it’s harder to work in mixed ingredient foods (foods that are a mix of protein/carbs/fats). Mixed ingredient foods DO take a bit more checking the labels, and figuring out how to distribute your “handfuls”.

→ Less Flexibility - A BIG part of what makes your diet sustainable in the long-term, is your ability to make it work with social events, family gatherings, work trips, parties, etc.

Ever tried to measure a “handful” of beer?

My LEAST favorite thing about the Handful Diet, is the fact that it IS harder to make events like this work while staying 100% on track with your goals.

Often for clients that don’t want to track long-term, but want a good understanding of how to make social events work with their nutrition, we’ll START with The Handful Diet, transition to tracking calories + protein to create education around social events, and then transition BACK to the Handful Diet after you as a client feel competent.

→ Harder To Measure Accurately & Make Specific Adjustments - The reality is, your calorie intake on the handful diet is really just a ballpark estimate. The fact that you are measuring with your hands, instead of a food scale of measuring cup DOES leave a lot more room for measurement error.

Plus, there’s a lot of diversity of caloric density within the macro options. Two different “palm-sized” portions of protein could be VERY different calorically, depending on the protein source.

In my experience, The Handful Diet works well for clients that want to focus more on the “lifestyle” side of things, but NOT those that want the quickest results, or want to get extremely lean.

Diet Structure #2: Tracking Calories + Protein

As a coach, I love nerding out about all things nutrition and training.

I have to eat different macros daily to achieve 3% better results?

Yep. Sign me up.

One of the most beneficial things for my career and client results was the realization that I’m a little crazy, and MOST people don't think like this.

In fact, most people want to think about their food as little as possible.

If your goal is getting lean and confident, while also learning how to create a simple and sustainable lifestyle - we can get you great results by simply focusing on your overall calories and protein.

I feel confident prescribing this to online clients, in a big part thanks to the 2018 DIETFITS Study, which showed that there is no noticeable difference when it comes to fat loss when we compare a low-carb approach to a low-fat approach.

So basically, using this approach clients are using a food tracking app like MyFitnessPal.

When you start coaching, you’ll do a 3-5 day nutrition assessment - I’ll have you simply eat as you normally would.

I’ll have the ability to hop into your food diary. From your nutrition assessment, I’ll have a great idea of where we need to start you calorically to reach your goals (this allows your nutrition to be MUCH more accurate and fit to your individual needs than plugging your weight and height into an online calculator will ever be).

This assessment ALSO gives me a good idea of what nutrients your body needs more of for better health, how we can adjust you meal-timing for better training and recovery, and what foods could be ADDING to your current struggles.

From here, I’ll assign you a calorie and protein goal. Your only task is to hit both of these daily, from mostly whole foods. You DON’T need to worry about carbs & fats - just let ‘em fall where they may.

Pros Of Tracking Calories + Protein:

→ Flexible Lifestyle - This is one of my favorite approaches for those that REALLY want a flexible lifestyle, and enjoy going out for food & drinks more often. Having the “calorie budget” really allows me to teach you how to strategize where you’ll “spend” your calories for the day to make social events work, while still hitting you “budget goals” (calorie and protein targets).

The ability to actually find a diet that works WITH your lifestyle is what you’ve been missing in the past. In my experience as a coach, it’s the biggest thing most everyone that struggled to stick to a diet has been missing. So the way this approach allows us to educate you on how to make your nutrition (and a lean body) SUSTAINABLE is crazy beneficial.

→ Simple - While this approach generally DOES require clients to learn how to work more protein in to their day, it’s also pretty damn simple for most. There isn’t much of a learning curve here (much less than tracking all the macros), so most online clients are able to master this in the first week of the Prepare Phase.

→ RESULTS - This straight up works. As long as you are SUPER consistent (which is where the Daily Accountability Tracker all of my online clients fill out comes in to play), fat loss essentially becomes a simple math problem.

I have seen AMAZING client results with this approach.

→ Education - Another thing I love about having you as a client track your food in an app, is I can always hop into your food diary and use it as an educational tool.

You were struggling with cravings around 4pm all week?

I can check your food choices, and give you my exact recommendations for what I would change to make this a non-issue in the future.

This is 100X more effective than a meal plan, because it really helps me give you the knowledge of what a normal day in your life (not just one where you’re eating “strict” on a meal plan) needs to look like in order to SUSTAIN these results without me.

Cons Of Tracking Calories + Protein:

→ You Have To Track - Again, for some clients the idea of tracking all their food in an app just isn’t appealing.

→ Getting Too Flexible - One of the most common mistakes that comes with this approach, is the getting a bit too flexible with your food choices - basically, the urge to hit your calorie goal daily with lots of restaurant food, Pop Tarts, ice cream, and a few protein shakes.

Now, NONE of these foods are “bad”.

The problem is, eating foods that you didn’t cook always brings in room for error. You just have no way of knowing exactly what ingredients were used, or the exact portion-size. Like we’ve talked about, the ability to go out to eat is a big part of WHY this approach is sustainable. But when it becomes a daily habit, fat loss often stalls.

When food intake becomes mostly processed foods (e.g. pop tarts) you CAN still lose weight as long as you control calories. The problem is, the foods are literally designed to make you crave more, and just aren’t very filling. So controlling calories becomes MUCH harder.

Diet Structure #3: Tracking Macros

Finally, we have tracking macros.

Here, you’re assigned a target intake for the three macronutrients…

→ Protein

→ Carbs

→ Fats

...with the goal of being within 10 grams of the protein and carb targets, and 5 grams of the fat target daily.

The process of tracking & assessing your intake, and establishing your targets is exactly like what I described for online clients that are tracking their calorie + protein intake.

Pros Of Tracking Macros:

→ Specificity - Macros do allow us to get VERY specific within your nutrition. This means they're a good idea for online clients that want very specific results (photoshoots, bodybuilding shows, etc.).

→ “Most Optimal”/Quickest Results - Like we’ve talked about, the “most optimal” approach really depends on what you’re able to adhere to. But, if you’re down to track all your macros, this allows us to optimize EVERYTHING - carbs, fats, specific nutrient-timing, refeeds - to achieve the best and QUICKEST results possible.

→ Education - Most of the coaches who start nutrition coaching with me to learn how to be better coaches themselves track macros. It really allows me to teach you how your body responds to each of the nutrients, how to optimally fuel your training and recovery, and how to adjust macros for satiety.

Cons Of Tracking Macros:

→ Tracking - Again you have to track. Here, you’re tracking MORE than Calories + protein. For most clients that are brand new to tracking, this ISN’T a good option.

→ Less Flexible - This is less flexible than Calories + Protein, because you now have specific carb & fat targets to hit. (Although often, I’ll give clients who want to track macros but also maintain a more flexible lifestyle one day per week with only a Calorie + Protein goal.) It DOES often take more planning. Really, this is about determining if you’re OK trading less flexibility for quicker results.

The reality is, ALL of these approaches take planning, preparation, and consistency. No one “wings it” on their way to success.

My online clients crush it, because they realize this, and put in the work REGARDLESS of which diet structure they choose.

There is now better time than RIGHT NOW to start getting your nutritional habits dialed in. Choose the method that best fits you, but you NEED structure. (And if you decide to track your food, check out THIS BLOG for a complete setup guide.)

In the discussion of things that make you fat, we often hear things like...

"Insulin!"

"Frequent insulin spikes!"

"Insulin causes fat storage! Without carbs & insulin your body WON'T store fat."

Are these claims true?

Do you really need to be scared of insulin?

You have questions. Today's blog has answers.

What Is Insulin?

Insulin is a hormone produced by your pancreas to help control your blood sugar levels.

When you consume carbs, they’re broken down into glucose.

This glucose then enters your bloodstream (it’s your "blood sugar"), which cues the release of insulin.

Insulin is basically a "shuttling agent" for your blood sugar/glucose - it's what allows the glucose to leave the blood stream, and enter different cells throughout your body for a variety of functions:

1. To be used as energy

2. Stored as liver and muscle glycogen

3. Entering long-term storage as body fat

So, the question is...

Why Are People Scared Of Insulin?

Your Body Can Store Fat Without Insulin

As mentioned above, insulin can act as the shuttling agent that allows glucose to enter fat cells, and increases body fat.

This is a common argument for the low-carb diet.

But the reality of gaining body fat is...

Consume carbs → insulin spike → fat gain

...isn't the only way your body accumulates fat.

Even when insulin levels and carbohydrate intake are low, your body can still gain fat.

When debating this same topic, an excellent article by James Krieger says: "There is an enzyme in your fat cells called hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL).  HSL helps break down fat.  Insulin suppresses the activity of HSL, and thus suppresses the breakdown of fat.  This has caused people to point fingers at carbohydrate for causing fat gain.

However, fat will also suppress HSL even when insulin levels are low.  This means you will be unable to lose fat even when carbohydrate intake is low, if you are overeating on calories."

To lose OR gain weight, we still must account for calories.

Personal experience:

My first successful fat loss diet was a low-carb diet.

I had just switched from a high-carb AND high-fat diet (yeah... I was just eating lots of everything).

At the time I thought I lost fat BECAUSE I was avoiding carbs.

(Really, it was because I was restricting my food choices to ground beef and avocados. I was really sick of these foods after a few months, and thus drastically reduced my daily calorie intake.)

That diet actually lead me from this…

…to losing 45 lbs, which culminated in my FIRST EVER shirtless Instagram post:

Lol also, that was a great season of The Bachelor. #teamchad

So after seeing fat loss results, I took my “only carbs make you fat” hypothesis and ran with it to create what I believed to be the perfect diet...

-- THE LOW-CARB/HIGH-RIBEYE DIET --

My diet stayed low-carb, but consisted of:

→ 1lb of ribeye, covered in olive oil daily (Seriously. It was great.)

→ Lots of eggs, grassfed butter, and nuts & nut butters, sausage, bacon, and fatty ground beef.

Basically, lots of very calorie-dense foods.

The results still breaks my heart, because I really love ribeye… but yeah I gained a lot of weight back (35lbs):

After a lot of diet trial & error, but I eventually got super lean for multiple photoshoots on a higher carb, lower fat approach:

So what’s the moral of this shirtless story, you ask?

CONTROLLING CALORIES.

→ I was able to gain fat on a low-carb diet.

→ I was able to lose fat on a low-carb/high-fat diet AND a high-carb/low-fat diet.

Now, I’m not saying that calories are the only thing that matter here - but people get way to caught up in debating carbs vs. fat, and forget to account for calories. Which really make much more difference.

Anyways, back to insulin.

Should We Avoid Insulin Spikes?

So remember when I said...

"Insulin prevents the breakdown of fat (lipolysis), and increases the formation of fat (lipogenesis)."

That in itself seems like a good reason to AVOID spiking your insulin, right?

But... for most of us, insulin levels are only elevated for a few hours post meal. This means your body is always in a flux of fat gain and fat loss. Post meal, you may be gaining fat. But several hours later, you'll be losing fat again as insulin levels come back down.

In a 24 hour period, regardless of carb intake and insulin spikes:

→ If you’re consuming fewer calories than you’re burning, you’ll lose weight

→ If you’re consuming the same amount of calories as you’re burning, weight will stay stable

→ If you’re eating more calories than you’re burning, you’ll gain weight

Once again, calories are the overruling principle that we need to control here.

Another shocking revelation to most people is the fact that...

Protein Also Spikes Insulin

*Gasps*

Really.

Many high-protein foods stimulate insulin to similar or greater levels than high-carb foods.

Whey protein actually causes a greater insulin response than white bread.

And check out the Insulin Index Of Foods from The American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition:

Maybe Insulin Isn't The Culprit After All?

Takeaways

From today's discussion, we can gather a few basic principles:

→ You need to control calories.

Regardless of the insulin response, carbohydrate, OR fat composition of a meal; you'll gain weight if you eat more calories than you burn in a day, and lose weight if you eat fewer calories than you burn in a day.

Of course it gets more complex than calories in - calories out, as many factors surrounding calories in impact calories out.

But, using my low-carb/high-ribeye diet as an example, we often miss the forest for the trees when it comes to fat loss.

→ It's smart to focus on foods that keep you full, and are hard to overeat.

A big part of why carbs (and insulin) often get a bad rap, is because in our modern environment they often come in the form of foods that make it extremely easy to overeat calories. (Think: hyper-palatable, highly-proccessed "refined carbs").

These food often also contain a large amount of fat, and are very calorie-dense. So while these foods themselves aren't bad, eating lots of calorie-dense foods will make it harder to control your calories as a whole.

That said, for a nutrition strategy to be sustainable long-term, I've found it crucial to teach my online clients how to work foods like this in, in moderation.

And like we know from Mark Haub's Twinkie Diet experiment, you absolutely can lose weight while eating mostly highly-processed foods, as long as calories are controlled. (Again, it'll just make most regulating appetite and getting vital nutrients harder for most of us.)

So for most of us, building our meals mostly around lean protein and fiber (fruits and veggies), and eating primarily whole foods is the surprisingly simple, but effective strategy for building a lean, strong body.

→ IT DEPENDS.

The reality is, we can't blame any one thing - carbs, insulin, fats, etc. for obesity.

A healthy body will use carbs for fuel. But for obese, sedentary individuals, large doses of carbs (or calories in general) are likely going to compound the issue and your body will have more trouble handling all of the insulin.

You are an individual. There is no one exactly like you - you have a physiology and genetics that are 100% unique to you.

This means that when determining what works best for you... it depends.

This is exactly why individualized coaching is such a powerful tool. I've seen client build their leanest, strongest and most confident selves on low-carb diets, high-carb diets, and everything in between.

If you're ready to determine the nutrition strategy that best fits you as an individual, CLICK HERE NOW to apply for Online Coaching.

If you've struggled to get your clients or yourself fat loss results in the past, I know your exact problem.

You didn’t have a method proven to get you the results you wanted.

Too many times, people try to lose fat by throwing random macros at the wall, and hoping they stick.

But achieving your leanest, strongest, and most confident self doesn't just happen by accident.

When you start online coaching with me, you're following a proven method I've used to create real world results with hundreds of clients.

Because the goal is always to give away as much free education as possible, today I'm going to walk you through EXACTLY how my P3 Fat Loss Method works.

Whether you're a coach or coaching yourself, this will be extremely valuable.

P3: Prepare → Push → Practice

P1: Prepare

One of the most common mistakes you’ve made in the past, that’s lead to fat loss failure?

Skipping the Prepare Phase, and jumping right into the Push Phase.

The Prepare Phase is NOT something that a lot of coaches of dieters incorporate... but there's a reason it's the first thing we focus on when you start online coaching - this phase is vital to your success.

The prepare phase is where we build your fat loss foundation - if you haven’t put the time in to building a solid foundation, achieving the results you want is unlikely.

In this phase, we’re doing a lot of psychological and behavioral work to prime your body and mind to create the best fat loss results possible when you enter the Push Phase.

This starts with...

→ Creating Your Individualized Diet Structure - One of the biggest keys to nutrition success is individualization. This is where we create a diet that you can actually stick to. I’ve built my coaching career around the belief that adherence is the most important part of any successful diet - and it’s worked out well so far ;).

When you hop on the initial strategy call with me and fill out your questionnaire, we go extremely in-depth determining exactly what you want to achieve. Some things we take into account here include:

• Lifestyle
• Dieting history
• Food preferences
• Personality type
• Desire rate of progress
• Stress levels
• Career
• Current biofeedback
• Time investment
• Activity levels
• Preferred style of training

→ Finding Maintenance - Before we create fat loss, we need to know what amount of food you can eat to maintain your current physique. This allows you to go into the Push Phase eating as much food as possible while losing at the desired rate (a much more ideal situation for maintaining your metabolism, hormones, and lean muscle).

When you start nutrition coaching with me, I put you through a nutrition assessment - I use your previous food logs to establish an estimated maintenance, as well as identify the nutritional habits (and specific nutrients) we need to put our focus on.

The start of the Preparation Phase allows me to fine tune this further and figure out exactly where your maintenance intake is.

→ Food Choices - Another principle I’ve built my nutrition coaching career around, is teaching you as an online client how to auto-regulate your appetite with proper food selection. Basically, we’re teaching you how to choose foods that make you full for relatively low calories.

This literally makes it HARD to overeat.

Once I see you start to do this habitually, I know you’ve won. Overeating - even AFTER you’re done with your diet and just want to maintain - will become much harder. This makes your new lean, strong body EASY to sustain forever.

This focus is a huge part of why my online clients get such quality & SUSTAINABLE results.

It really comes down to focusing on the two most satiating foods per calorie:

1. Lean protein

2. Fibrous carbs

This is another benefit of me being able to see your daily food logs. I can compare the times you noticed hunger or cravings, and educate you on how to make more filling food choices next time.

Being coached through the process of how to manage this is 100x more valuable than a meal plan, because I'm teaching you how to do this ON YOUR OWN in the future.

→ Consistency With Daily Movement - Want to know the BIGGEST difference between the metabolisms of lean and obese individuals?

It's non-exercise activity thermogenesis (N.E.A.T.). All your movement outside of the gym that burns calories - pacing, blinking, doing laundry, etc.

As you diet, you’re eating fewer calories.

Now , you may have noticed your body doesn’t seem to want to lose fat. So to counteract this decrease in calories, your body subconsciously reduces N.E.A.T. - this means now that you’re taking in fewer calories, you’re also burning fewer calories. As a result, fat loss can stall quickly despite eating less than before.

Studies have shown there is a HUGE amount of variability in calories burned through N.E.A.T from person-to-person. (Up to 2,000 calories per day!)

So before we put you into a fat loss phase, we must first ensure you’re consistently hitting a daily movement target (usually a step goal I have online clients track daily in their accountability tracker). This means that there is nothing left unaccounted for when it comes to your fat loss success.

→ Education & Mindset - The reality is, no matter how disciplined you are, at some point in your diet you'll feel like you've "failed" - be it from missing your calorie goal, or seeing progress at a slower rate than you'd like.

With the wrong mindset, this temporary "failure" usually leads to you quitting the diet altogether.

The Preparation Phase helps us avoid this, educating online clients on the idea of consistency over perfection, and teaching you to become focused on the process, knowing that this will lead them to your desired outcomes.

Another belief that I’ve built my online coaching service around - education creates sustainability. When you start online coaching with me, my goal is to literally “work my way out of a job”. I want you to have all the nutritional knowledge and tools to be successful ON YOUR OWN sooner rather than later. I DON’T want you to be codependent on me, I want to empower you.

This is why I put such a huge focus on educating you. In the Prepare Phase, this is generally a basic understanding of energy balance, the satiety index, flexible dieting, and how to make your diet work with the weekends, social events, and work trips (the biggest pieces that throw most people off and kill nutritional adherence).

→ Recovering From Your Last Diet - Depending on how long ago you dieted and how lean you got, the Prepare Phase is a must to set you up for another successful fat loss phase.

The recovery of many hormones such as testosterone, cortisol, and thyroid hormone, along with your metabolism and regaining lean mass (a big part of your metabolism) doesn’t happen overnight. The harsher and more recent your previous diet was, the longer you need to spend in the Preparation Phase.

→ Optimizing Metabolic Capacity -  To use an analogy I learned from Cliff Wilson, you can think of metabolic capacity like the gas tank of your car.

Anything you can do to create fat loss is "in the metabolic gas tank"... the amount of cardio you can add to your routine, and the amount of calories you can deduct from your intake.

When a new client starts coaching maintaining their weight on relatively high calories and low cardio, they have a very full metabolic gas tank.

However, if someone starts coaching looking for fat loss, but already eating extremely low calories and doing tons of cardio, their tank is empty. We can't create more fat loss without it being very detrimental to the client's hormones, psychology, lean muscle, and health.

If this is the case, you need to spend some time in Prepare Phase, focusing on refilling your metabolic tank by increasing calories and decreasing cardio before starting a fat loss phase. Starting a trip with an empty gas tank means you won't make it very far before things stall.

So in a nutshell, the Prepare Phase is all about building good habits around food choices, daily movement, building a diet structure specific to you, and recovering from your previous diet.

This can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months, depending on where you’re coming from (like all things within nutrition, it’s highly individual). If we build your fat loss house on a shaky foundation, you won’t see long-term success with your physique. Even if you do get lean, you won’t have the tools & knowledge to sustain that result.

This is why when you start nutrition coaching with me (unlike most coaches & dieters), we DON’T immediately start the diet.

P2: Push

Now that your body, mind & habits are in a position to be successful, the Push Phase is where we take action on the result you came here to get - fat loss, lean muscle gain, or  body recomposition.

For new online clients, the Push Phase is most often fat loss focused. This starts with...

→ Creating A Deficit - We know that to lose fat, you must be eating fewer calories than you burn in a day. So an essential piece of the Push Phase is creating a calorie deficit.

The goal here for you is losing .5-1% of body weight per week, OR losing .25”+ from 2 or more sites in your weekly body measurements.

I’ve found that for most online clients, this is a rate fast enough to keep motivation and adherence high, but not too aggressive to the point where you’re experiencing loss of lean muscle, awful energy levels, or drastically different hormones & metabolism.

→ Calorie Cycling - One inevitable part of fat loss is metabolic adaptation. Basically, the down-regulation of metabolism & hormones as you lose weight.

Hunger increases, training performance, energy, recovery, and N.E.A.T. decrease.

Now, while some of this is unavoidable, a big part of what I do within the Push Phase of online coaching is designed to prevent as much metabolic adaptation as possible in the Push Phase - primarily through calorie cycling.

Calorie cycling is periodization of your calories within the fat loss phase - it’s something we do to ensure we're getting you to your ideal body composition in the best place possible metabolically, hormonally, and with your overall health.

I wrote an entire article on how to implement these different calorie cycling options HERE.

→ Periodization - The further you push your body from it’s previous settling point in a fat loss phase, the harder it will fight back to prevent you from creating further changes.

One mistake made all too often, is people spending WAY too long in a fat loss phase. For most of us, this results in always trying to dieting, but never seeing the results.

Think about all those people you know that are ALWAYS dieting - often for years - but never actually achieve their fat loss goals.

Maybe you’re stuck in this position right now yourself.

Your body is smart, and WANTS to be comfortable. It adapts to whatever you throw at it, making linear fat loss for months on end HARD.

This adaptation to dieting is what is know as adaptive thermogenesis- as you get leaner, your metabolism decreases because:

• Your body is smaller, so basal metabolic rate decreases.
  
• You're eating less food, so the thermic effect of food decreases (given macro composition stays the same).
  
• The thermic effect of exercise decreases, because it takes fewer calories to move your smaller body.
  
• Non-exercise activity thermogenesis generally decreases, as you feel lethargic due to lack of calories.
  

Plus, levels of a hormone called Leptin also decrease. This leads to an increase in hunger, and less energy expenditure.

As you eat more and gain more fat, the opposite happens - metabolism increases, hunger decreases.

Now after endless months of dieting, the psychological and physiological consequences of adaptive thermogenesis build into a fat loss wall. Most people get stuck trying to break through this wall for months and years.

The P3 method is life-changing for online clients, because we DON’T waste months spinning your wheels in a fat loss phase once you hit the wall.

→ Biofeedback - When you’re in the Push Phase, we keep a close eye on your biofeedback. This is one of the main metrics I use to measure how close to the fat loss wall you are. Some sure signs that it’s almost time to transition your out of a Push Phase include multiple weeks of…

• High hunger levels. Some hunger is normal for dieting, and a good sign that you’re eating fewer calories than you’re burning. That said, we usually want this to be somewhere on a 2.5-3.5 (scale of 1-5). Once clients get into the 4-5 range consistently, we know it’s probably time to change phases.
  
• High cravings. Again, some cravings are normal in a Push Phase. But when these are consistently high, adherence and results starts to suffer.
  
• Low motivation. When clients start ranking their motivation level 1-3, I know that they’re starting to accumulate a lot of diet fatigue.
  
• Poor mood. Similar to motivation, when a client consistently starts to rank their mood poorly in their biofeedback tracker, we know that the diet is starting to take it’s psychological toll, and it’s near time to transition out.
  

The Push Phase typically lasts 6-12 weeks. At this point, we shift our focus to spending some time rejuvenating your body and mind in the Practice phase.

P3: Practice

The Practice Phase is the final phase of the P3 model, and is another piece that is often overlooked by coaches and dieters.

→ Recovering From The Push Phase - Some key changes happen during the Practice Phase that make your results more sustainable, and will make future progress easier IF you’re planning another Push Phase:

• Hormones like thyroid, leptin, and testosterone increase.
• Your energy levels, and the energy you burn through non-exercise activity thermogenesis increase.
• Hunger decreases.
• The chronic stress on your system dissipates.

Basically, your system normalizes, and your body gets used to this new weight. Everything starts to feel normal again over time, and your body stops fighting you so hard to regain the weight you lost.

Your body really doesn't like change. It wants to return to it's old normal as quickly as possible. The Practice Phase is a must to allow you to cement a new normal for your body.

→ Finding Your New Maintenance - The amount you can eat to maintain your current physique changes as you lose weight - so we DON’T want to just return you to your previous maintenance intake from when you started coaching. This would result in fat gain.

We know that 1 lb of fat loss requires a deficit of ~3,500 calories. So, if you've been losing an average of 1 lb per week, we know you're in a weekly deficit of ~3,500 calories, or a daily deficit of 500 calories (3,500/7=500).

To be safe, we’ll typically start at 90% of your estimated maintenance calories.

From here, as your hormones and metabolism start to normalize, you'll start burning more calories. This means we’ll need to continue to take body measurements, track biofeedback, and increase macros throughout the Practice Phase, as maintenance is really a moving target.

→ Practicing Maintenance - The Push Phase is very exciting and motivating, because you can see your body changing rapidly. Many of us are GOOD at being ok with being hungry, because we know we’re almost to the fat loss result we want.

The mindset of MAINTAINING that result is much different… which is why so many people regain weight after a diet. Once the goal is achieved, people are sick of being hungry & deprived (which is another big problem in the diet culture, and exactly why I focus on giving my online clients diet flexibility) - so they have a tendency to just go back to how they were eating before the diet… and the weight comes back.

Periods of practicing maintenance allow you to learn new habits and behaviors around your food choices, training, daily movement, dietary flexibility, and what your entire lifestyle will need to look like to maintain this new body.

→ Re-Assessing Your Goals - Here, we take some time to evaluate exactly where you’re at, and mapping out our next course of action.

For clients that want to get leaner still, this means our next step after the Practice Phase is another Push Phase.

For those that are ready to maintain, it means extended time hanging out and practicing maintenance.

For those that are ready to build lean muscle, it means preparing for a lean gains phase.

→ Time Frame - The practice phase can be anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. Again, it’s highly individual to where you are at as a client.

The shortest time frame (2 weeks) most often comes in the form of a diet break. After reassessing, we’ve determined that you as an online client want to get leaner - which requires another push phase. This is also dependent on your biofeedback and psychological state. But if all of these are in a good place after 2 weeks in a Practice Phase, we’ll transition back into a Push Phase.

More moderate time frames (2 weeks - 1 month) often come around the holidays, or during periods of travel for online clients. During times like these, it’s often unrealistic (and an unnecessary source of stress) to expect clients to also push for fat loss.

Many of my clients spend Thanksgiving - New Years “practicing maintenance”, and are thrilled when they realize (for the first time ever) they DIDN’T gain weight over the holidays, thanks to their new knowledge from coaching.

The beauty of this is, times like these are also the ones where people USED TO see their physique drastically regress, caving to stress eating & poor travel habits. So here, we double down on educating you how to maintain this new, lean body during periods of high stress, travel, or the holidays.

The goal of coaching with me is always helping you achieve results that are sustainable long-term. So learning to maintain instead of regress at times like this is ESSENTIAL.

The longer time frames are most common for clients that have achieved their goal level of leanness. Like we talked about earlier, this requires a whole new mindset, and making sure that the right habits are in place. The more you’ve struggled with yo-yo dieting in the past, the longer we’ll spend here, cementing these changes as your body’s new normal.

Basically, the Practice Phase is where we spend time “practicing maintenance”. This cements these changes as your body’s new normal as your hormones normalize, metabolism increases, and hunger decreases. This is key to SUSTAINING your results long-term.

And that is the P3 Method. This method has changed literally hundreds of lives over my last 6 years as a coach, and I’m stoked to watch it continue to evolve and impact more clients.

If you want my expert guidance through every step of this method, CLICK HERE NOW to apply for online coaching with me.

After coaching hundreds of women online & in-person, there's one "most common" mistake that stands out...

Not enough time dedicated to eating more & building lean muscle.

This is often the missing piece keeping women from building the lean, strong physiques.

When I ask new online clients to describe their goal physique on our initial strategy call, the most common answer is...

"Lean and strong."

Or...

"Lean and defined."

Getting lean requires proper nutrition. And getting strong and defined requires phases focused on eating more and building lean muscle.

Today's blog takes you through the exact "building phase" process I use with the women I coach online. You'll learn how to build the muscle needed for a lean, strong physique, WITHOUT the excess fat & bulk.

Should You Do A Building Phase?

Before we talk strategy, you're probably wondering...

"How do I know if I should do a building phase right now?"

Now of course, this is very individual to what you want to accomplish with your physique.

But there is an ideal body fat percentage to be at in a building phase. Generally:

→ 15-25% for women

→ 10-15% for women

This is where your Partitioning Ratio (P-Ratio) is the best - basically, your body shuttles a more of the nutrients you eat to lean muscle, and less to fat storage.

To far below or above this rate, and a much greater percentage of the overall weight you gain will be fat.

Anecdotally, in this "sorta lean" to "getting pretty damn lean" stage is where most online clients will say something like...

"I don't look as defined as I want to."

Enter: the building phase.

If you're above the body fat recommendations, it makes sense to run a fat loss phase first. (But you do you.)

If you're leaner than this, a building phase is still a good idea. Just realize your body might need to gain a bit of fat & get back to a healthier place before it allows you to prioritize building muscle. A great example of this would be a client who just finished a photoshoot. (Speaking of photoshoots, check out this blog to learn the exact process one of my online clients used to get photoshoot ready.)

Nutrition

Nutrition is crazy important to you building lean muscle without gaining excess fat.

This is honestly where most people mess up.

There are A LOT of myths out there, claiming that you need to eat thousands of calories in excess to build muscle.

In reality, muscle building is a very slow process, and you just don't need to eat that many calories over your maintenance intake to build muscle.

Eating MORE food doesn't linearly mean more gains.... just more fat.

On the flipside, it's also to easy to "play it too safe" and actually spend a lot of time eating in a calorie deficit. This makes is HARDER for you to build lean muscle. Too many people spin their wheels here for months.

This is why consistently hitting your macros on the head, and tracking your progress like my online clients do is of the utmost importance.

Since we're on the topic of macros, let's break down exactly how to set YOURS up to optimize your building phase.

Setting Your Macros

So, your starting point for calorie intake will be 10% over your maintenance calorie intake.

If you don't know your maintenance calorie intake, find it HERE.

Nutrient Timing

Supplements

Supplements are far from a must, and will truly make the LEAST difference of anything you've read in this blog.

But when online clients have every other level of the Nutrition Hierarchy Of Importance mastered, we'll sometimes add in supplements to optimize everything.

A few that can be helpful:

→ Highly Branched Cyclic Dextrin - This rapidly-digesting carb source will give you fuel during your workout, and aid recovery. 15-25g, sipped throughout your workout.

→  Essential Amino Acids (EAA’s) - Mixing EAA’s in with your HBCD will again put you in a better position to recover to your absolute fullest potential and get the most gains out of each training session.

→ Creatine - HIGHLY studied and proven to be effective. Creatine supplies your body with more ATP, which can allow you to crank out an extra rep on a challenging set - over time this adds up. Take 5g creatine monohydrate any time throughout your day.

→ Caffeine - Caffeine before your workout can increase your performance in the gym, translating to more lean muscle from each session.

→ Fish Oil - If you're not eating fish at least a few times per week, supplement with fish oil daily to get adequate amounts of omega-3 fatty acids.

Training

Ok, now that we've broken down the in's & out's of nutrition, let's break down how to build a lean, strong body as a female lifter.

(Generally) Decrease Moderate and High-Intensity Cardio, Increase Training Volume

Cardio is FAR from the most important piece of the puzzle when it comes to building a lean, defined physique.

Remember that hierarchy of importance from earlier? We can apply something similar here:

Most have this hierarchy flipped on it's head - which is exactly why so many people struggle with changing their bodies

My online clients get great results, because they have their priorities straight.

Here's why the hierarchy is in this order:

1. Nutrition

We've already talked A LOT about nutrition, and I know you're already a believer in it's importance. Whether we're talking fat loss OR building lean muscle, nutrition is always essential.

2. Resistance Training

A.K.A. lifting weights. When you start online coaching with me, you'll do a lot of this.

Now, lifting weights doesn’t burn many calories... fewer than a cardio session actually.

But, resistance training has many more benefits than cardio:

→ Nutrient partitioning - Lifting weights shuttles calories towards the calorically expensive process of building muscle and maintaining lean, defined muscle. This leaves fewer calories for the energy efficient process of fat storage.

→ Health - Resistance training builds functional strength, healthy tendons, and increases bone density. Resistance training properly will keep you strong, mobile, and capable your whole life.

→ Aesthetics - You’re reading this blog because you want to feel good and look good. You likely want to look some combination of lean/toned/defined/athletic.

Like we've talked about, the lean part comes from your nutrition.

But, if you lose a lot of body fat without any muscle underneath... most of us just end up looking like stick figures. Probably not the look you’re going for. A body that looks lean, strong, and defined requires building a bit of muscle.

→ Adherence and sustainability - In my experience, resistance training can be made fun for most anyone.

It’s rewarding - you can very clearly see yourself progressing as weights increase.

It’s a huge psychological boost - You were probably very intimidated when you first entered the weight room. Now, not only have you overcome that, but you’re suddenly lifting weights you never thought you would. You realize you’ve underestimated how much of a badass you can be if you really set your mind to it. It’s super empowering.

No other modalities of exercise have that effect. Lifting weights is just straight up fun for most people. You’re a lot more likely to stick to a resistance training routine for years than you are a cardio routine. Our goal here is sustainability.

3. Cardio

While cardio does have some benefits for health & fat loss, it is NOT very helpful when it comes to building lean muscle. So the majority of your time in the gym in a building phase should be devoted to lifting.

The problem is, most training programs marketed to women are usually based on a high-intensity, cardio-focused style training. (Think: bootcamp classes, at home on-demand workouts).

Sure, these programs make you sweat a lot - but the actual number of effective training sets is very low - it's mostly just your cardiovascular system that is gassed.

You build lean muscle through progressive overload - basically, finding a way to consistently do a bit more work in the gym. This came come through many methods:

• Adding weight to the bar
• Doing more reps with the same weight
• Taking a set closer to failure than last week
• Doing more sets with the same weight

→ 2/3rd's Or More Of Training Volume Comes From Compound Movements - There used to be a stupid idea that women's training should be entirely isolation exercises performed with tiny pink dumbbells.

Don't buy into this. Your training should make you feel like a strong badass.

Train lots of compound movements. Things like:

This is smart because:

• You're working a lot more muscles at once - Implementing lots of compound movements make higher frequency easier, since you're always training multiple muscles at once. Your workouts are more effective & efficient.
• You create more mechanical tension, the primary driver of lean muscle growth.
  

Simply following a 3x/week full body training program based around the compound movements, plus a nutrition strategy individualized to YOU can make a CRAZY difference.

→ Get stronger in the 5-15 rep range - Research shows us that you can achieve very similar lean muscle building results with anything from 5-30 reps, as long as the necessary effort is there.

That said, since you’ll be training mostly compound movements, it makes sense to keep MOST of your sets to 15 reps of less. Past this point, form often starts to break down simply from the cardiovascular effort. Sets that have you gasping for air also equate to longer rest periods between sets (and longer workouts as a whole).

→ Stop most sets with 1-3 reps in the tank - Remember the idea of “effective reps” we talked about earlier? We know that to challenge and fatigue your muscles enough to spark growth, most sets need to bet taken pretty close to failure.

So stopping sets with 1-3 reps in the tank is a good rule of thumb. (This is also a big part of what most bootcamp style workouts are missing.)

→ Rest 1-3 minutes between sets - You build a strong body by continuously creating overload in the gym. Problem is, if you’re doing circuit-style training with little to no rest, the weight you can lift will be reduced drastically as your workout progresses.

We need to give our body time to recover from peripheral fatigue (think: muscle fatigue) and systemic fatigue in order to produce sufficient effort on subsequent sets to create overload in a training session. This reduction in fatigue takes AT LEAST 1-3 minutes (depending on the movement).

Turning your training session into a circuit-style workout with no rest is a good way to ensure you get VERY LITTLE out of the session.

→ Increase training volume (maybe) - When you enter a building phase, you’ll have more recovery resources than normal. This sometimes means that we can push the total volume you’re doing (think: number of hard sets) to get as much as possible out of the building phase.

Now first and foremost, use these guidelines before just adding more hard sets or training days. If you’re currently making excellent progress training 3x/week, there’s likely no need to jump to a 4x/week split.

As you increase training volume, you increase the amount of growth stimulus you’re hitting your muscles with. You’re also increasing calories burned. Both of these mean your body has an increased need for recovery resources.

If we DON’T increase your food intake, but continuously increase training volume, you’ll eventually start to lose weight as a result of all the volume burning tons of calories. While great for fat loss, you’re likely NOT building muscle here.

On the flip-side, if we just keep increasing food intake and don’t increase training volume, you’ll start to gain excess fat.

The solution?

We gradually drive up both training volume and carbohydrate intake simultaneously. The extra food is helping you recover and grow from the extra volume. The extra volume is helping the extra food be shuttled to muscle, NOT fat storage.

Rate Of Gain & Making Adjustments

Unless you're new to training and eating properly, or have been off the wagon for a bit, it’s unlikely that you’re recomping (losing fat and building muscle simultaneously). This means that as you build lean muscle, the number on the scale should be going up.

Pay attention to the scale, as this is what you'll be making a lot of your nutrition adjustments from. (Take your weight AT LEAST 3x/week, use the average to determine weekly change.)

Aim to gain .25-.5% of body weight per week.

BUT, the scale isn't the only thing you should be focusing on.

You should also be tracking:

→ Body measurements - Body measurements give you an idea of what muscle groups are growing, as well as how much your waist is growing. They're also a bit more time consuming, so don't take them as often as weight. Online clients typically take these once per week.

For accuracy, measure in centimeters with a soft tape measure.

1. Chest - Take a circumference measurement, with the tape at the level of the nipples.

2. Bicep - Take a circumference measurement around the biggest part of your right bicep, both relaxed and flexed.

3. Waist - Take a circumference measurement of your torso with the tape 2 cm above the navel, directly over the navel, and 2 cm below the navel.

4. Hips - Take a circumference measurement around the broadest part of the hips.

5. Thigh - Take a circumference measurement around the broadest part of the right thigh.

→ Weight Lifted - If you're making gains, it'll translate over to you being able to do either:

a) more weight

b) more reps with the same weight.

Tracking your weight also helps you stay extremely mindful of consistently pushing yourself.

How To Adjust If You're Not Gaining

You undoubtedly know at least one person who seems to eat whatever they want without gaining weight. Maybe you are that person.

In reality, people like this either:

1. Haven’t accurately tracked their calorie intake before. They likely eat a lot - at times - and then subconsciously adapt by going long periods of time without eating. This is extremely common with new online clients that claim they can't build muscle or add weight..

2. Have an extremely adaptive metabolism. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is the daily calories you burn outside of the gym, through activities like fidgeting, pacing, doing chores, etc. NEAT is a BIG part of your metabolism.

In response to overfeeding (eating in a calorie surplus), some people will naturally (without even being conscious of it) increase NEAT. This increases your daily calories burned, and in turn prevents weight gain, despite the fact that you're eating more.

Now, how a clients metabolism reacts to a calorie surplus is highly individual (this is the beauty of having a coach - to see trends and adjust the plan specifically to YOU). But the gist of it is, some people WILL have to increase calories higher than 10% over maintenance in order to see gains.

So, if you’re NOT seeing increases in weight, body measurements (outside of the belly measurements), or strength in the gym after a week, it’s time to increase calories.

Increase your total calorie intake by 5% (via carbs). Continue this weekly until you're gaining in the recommended range.

How To Adjust If You're Gaining Too Fast

If you’re surpassing the recommend rate of gain, bad news - you’re likely adding a lot of excess fat.

Time to dial it back.

Decrease calories by 5% (pulling from carbs). Repeat this weekly until your rate of gain falls back in the recommended range.

How Long Should I Build For?

You can stay in a building phase for quite some time.

I recommend AT LEAST 4 months here, as gaining lean muscle does seem to take some “momentum”. If you’re constantly interrupting your building phases with a calorie deficit, you won’t get much lean muscle growth out of it.

If it’s your first building phase, you’ll likely feel VERY good after 6+ months of building. Fat loss will also come easier in the future, and you’ll look leaner at a higher body fat percentage (thanks to all the lean muscle you’ve built).

That said, you can really stay in a building phase as long as you want, so long as you keep your body fat within the recommended ranges to avoid excess fat gain.

And that's how to properly implement a building phase for more lean muscle,  and minimal fat gain.

Remember ladies, spending some time eating more and focusing on building muscle is KEY to a sustainably lean, strong physique.

Want expert guidance through this process with both your nutrition & training?

CLICK HERE NOW to apply for online coaching with me.