Do Women Need To Diet Differently Than Men? (a smarter approach to female fat loss)

Hey, team. Welcome back to the show today. It is coach Adrian. I again, um, and today we're going to be talking about a smart approach to bat loss for women. So really, as the title suggests, wanted to just kind of make this a dive into the way we approach fat loss specific to women differences between like male versus female dieting. There are a lot of them warning considerations here. Um, I think a lot of a lot of times in the coaching space or just like in the general information that's put out there, like the things that distinguish like, hey, my how I approach with female diet or versus male diet or the important considerations we need to make are just off and overlooked. So really want to do dive into as a female diet, which again, like almost all of our clients are going to be women, uh, typically somewhere between 30 and 50 really typically looking to kind of take their position to the next level. How we might approach that because again, there are a lot of nuances there we need to consider with just like the journal of, of course, like a calorie deficit is important. But I do think that as a whole, there is so much context around how to better approach fat loss for women that we need to consider. So getting into today's episode first, I'm curious your take. Do you think weight loss is harder for women? You hear a lot of like, my husband lost 20 pounds full and same diet as me and I haven't lost any, from your perspective, do you think weight loss is harder for women? I do think it is, but it's, it's not just because it's inherently harder. I think that there's a few specific reasons for that. One is because the amount of a calorie deficit that you need doesn't vary by gender, but the amount of calories that are eaten typically does. So men are just typically going to be bigger. A 250 pound guy is probably eating upwards of like 35 to 4000 calories, whereas women are going to be a lot of times much smaller and just need less calories. So percentage-wise, whenever you're pulling down, you have to create a much larger percentage of a deficit in order to get the same loss. So that's one big reason why I think that it's just, it seems like it's more difficult. And then a lot of times guys just haven't been dieting a lot, whereas women have, yeah. My husband didn't do his first intentional fat loss phase until like three or four years ago, but like for you guys being your 40s, especially. Yeah, I know, he held off for a long time. Is he 36, too? No, he's 38. So, but he did, I mean, that's like mid-30s before he ever intentionally was in a calorie deficit. Whereas for women, like, I know, I, like in high school was in a calorie deficit intentionally. So yeah, well, I started working at a Mexican restaurant, I'm eating chips and salsa all the time. And I was like, okay, I got to do something about that. That's the trouble for me. I, at Fips and salsa are the hardest, are just so easy to eat. I love chips salsa. Go on, though. But that's, that's pretty standard, right? Like, there's a lot of times where, and this isn't true across the board, of course, but a lot of times women start dieting very early on or at least paying attention to their weight, whereas men don't. So, um, that, that's, that's a big one because if you've spent most of your life trying to be in a calorie deficit, then you're just not going to be as metabolically resilient as somebody who never has paid attention to that. And then all of a sudden, like cuts out beer and fries. And that's like a thousand calorie deficit per day, you know what I mean? So I think that that's a really big reason why versus like, it's just inherently harder for women. Yeah, no, I think those are both the grip points. As you said, first, just your relative calorie intake, typically women will have a smaller body, a smaller frame, right? Like, my wife is five three and probably weighs like 120 pounds. I'm six three, I would 220 pounds where I like the relatively end day we can eat to diet. Like I can eat what I mean, I saw the diet fairly aggressively, but that's still like, I can make good progress on like 2300 calories, right? Whereas for her, that's probably well above her. And still like, there is a, there's sort of threshold where it's going to be harder to get your micronutrient intake. And even if like for her, like her eating like my like 3500 calories a day, I mean, right now in my building phase, I would feel like a ton of food for her. Yes. But still, if she has to eat like, let's say 1340, 100 calories to lose body fat, the, it's still going to be harder for her to like hit her micronutrient needs at a list of order health in that phase, versus like what I can do at 2300 calories, for example. And I do think that yeah, the like, it is really interesting, like, especially looking at like how, like frequently and how consistently have we dieted because your body is an adaptation machine, right? And I think that I don't know if there's actually any research on this, but I can say anecdotally, it seems that a lot of people who have dieted consistently, which I actually don't know if I don't know if there's actually, I don't think it's necessarily like the frequency of your diet. I do find though that a lot of times, this one's like spend a very long time trying to diet. And I don't know if this is like necessarily like a more habit thing or more like, hey, maybe your health is in the best place because of that. Because I'll say on the flip side, I think if like someone's health is in a good place, like their thyroid markers are in a good place, their sex hormones are in a good place. But it may be like, like you, for example, you'll probably be more responsive to this upcoming diet than you have been in the past. You know, so I don't want to say that it's like just a product of dieting. But I think that a lot of times again, like the end thing is like your thyroid markers or sexual hormones might deteriorate due to like continually trying to be any calorie deficit and thus that does make it harder. But again, like I don't, I don't know the dieting and the salt necessarily does that something I go back and forth on. Yeah, I don't know that either, but I think that it's probably a combination of dieting frequently and not doing the right things in between to put your body back into a good place. And then getting enough of the micronutrients that are needed. So then things like thyroid hormone and sex hormones are downregulated. But then also if you're frequently dieting and you're not doing those right things in between, you're not putting on as much muscle, which does definitely have an impact. I would fully agree with that. Okay. What would you say then are signs you look for that a client is ready to diet? It's a lot of the things are going to be opposite from the person that we are just talking about. So one thing is someone who hasn't been actively consistently attempting to diet over the last six months or so for all of those metabolic reasons, but also in big part to diet fatigue. It's just harder to adhere to a diet if you feel like you've been consistently restricting yourself for months and months on end. Another thing is good biofeedback. So that's going to be low or not low, but good hunger signals. So you shouldn't be consistently never hungry or you shouldn't be always starving. Like those should be in a pretty good place. You should have a consistent menstrual cycle, good digestion, pretty good energy through the day. All of those are just symptoms to say that you are internally pretty healthy. If those are in a good place, then you're probably in a pretty good place to diet. I think the biofeedback is a big one. A lot of times people learn a place where it's like, I feel like shit, maybe like your cycles and consistent. And hey, before we are in a place to diet, we're probably going to like these things that are like if you're already starving all the time, or are you like struggling with like extreme like lethargy and lethargy with larger, you feel the tarjic. I think you've your line is fine. I think lethargy works. I just feel like it didn't pronounce that correctly. These are just going to be elevated more in this fat loss phase. And ultimately, is that going to yield like the best health, the best body composition, probably not. And I would also say like, I'm looking for typically, is this person at or above a healthy level of body fat? If it is someone where hey, you're already extremely lean. And sometimes there can be like a body image of a needy leaner, so I'm never lean enough. A dieting probably isn't going to be the best move for your overall health and improving body composition. And I'm pretty similar to this. Like I want to make sure the person actually needs to get leaner to achieve their phys equals, not just build more muscle. For a lot of people who are already there, oh my god, and you go just smells just it's been smelly on my office so badly the last two days. Anyways, sorry about that. So bad if I die on this episode, please. You know, it was my dog's fault. Anyways, we're one that person to be at a healthy body fat. And again, not just be like, if we're already very lean, oftentimes it is, hey, you actually need to build more muscle, get the physique, get the shape you want, right? Again, we talked a lot about like many of the clients who, well, those of us who worked with who are already very lean and again, like think like I just need to lose like a couple more pounds all together, and there's a couple more pounds all get there. One's really like, hey, it's not like a body fat, you're already very lean. We need to change your shape and like create more definition by building more muscle tissue and prioritizing that over losing body fat. So if it's like someone's already like lean or very lean, a lot of times it's, hey, we actually need to focus on building, not on fat loss. And it's pretty similar to what like this kind of goes hand in hand with the biofeedback side of things. Also, I want to look for Do I have any concerns about the client not responding well with that loss? Right. So if someone's like, hop on board, encoaching and it's a case of, like, my body just hasn't responded well with that loss. I've been trying to die after the last however many months. And I just haven't seen progress. So where they report dieting on extreme little calories and not seen progress, I'm not going to want to put a push them in that loss or add it to like eight. We're probably going to go into a primer phase first. And I want to make sure I resolve that. Now, a lot of times it is just a consistency issue. And it can be relatively easy fix. But I want to make sure I've cleared on that before I push someone with a fat loss phase. Of course, like the person being consistent with things like eating their food targets, their food quality, eating their movement goals. I want to make sure they can actually be successful with that loss. And they like have the basic habits in place before we push to the end of that. And then I would also finally say, I feel like their calories in a reasonable place for us to pull from. Right. If it's like a, hey, I weigh 140 pounds and we're seeking. Now again, like a lot of times this is just a matter of consistency. Right. A lot of people were, or I have, I can't lose weight, despite eating like 1200 calories per day. And then we'll see that we'll we're actually only tracking two days a week. And yes, we already do 1200 calories the day there. But the other days we were eating like 2400 calories. Right. So that's a different situation. But when we're extremely, when we're truly being consistent and it's like, hey, you're only eating like, let's say you weigh 140 pounds and you have to eat like 141500 calories to maintain. We, I don't want to pull you to like 1100 to start this phase to lose. So we obviously need to make sure that your average calorie intake isn't a good place to pull from before we start. Anything else you would add to all that. I would also say on the movement side, we want to, we want to have somewhere to go. So if somebody's already taking 20 plus thousand steps per day or doing an unsustainable amount of cardio, that's also something that we would want to bring down first. So and that that's going to vary per person. I know that some of my clients absolutely, hey cardio and also don't have a lot of time for extra cardio and some really like to just keep a baseline of cardio in just for enjoyment and heart health. And that's perfectly fine. But if it's at like an unsustainable level where it's already pushing their time limits or something like that, then then that's not a great place to get started from because where do we go from there? Yeah. No, I would fully agree with that. And that's almost always we see. I at least personally almost always see someone maintaining or needing to lose on relatively low calories paired with someone who is constantly focused on driving their activity extremely high doing that like 20,000 steps per day, maybe doing a lot of cardio on top of that, where a lot of times we talked about like I think we talked about relative energy deficiency. Um, quite actually, no, that wasn't in the primer or in the basic dieting podcast series or I'm thinking that I think I'm thinking of the mentorship actually where we were talking about that a lot. Um, but whether in this place we're relative to the amount that we're moving, the amount of calories or burger per day are relative food intake to support like recovery from that. It's just so low that it drives a lot of other issues like hormone Lee thyroid things that nature downstream. So we oftentimes need to reverse that. Um, and again, like I used, I think that Lexi was like an example we used in like the mentorship of yeah, we started a place where as like man, we're doing like 20,000 steps per day recorded calorie intake was like 1200 per day. We're doing this just to maintain your training six days a week. We're doing cardio on top of that. We have to like hold this back and drive calories up, which has been really able to see like how much better like for her, we found like on a very low training bullying, she responds the best pulling steps back how much higher food is. Um, and actually for her now like for a very small person, she was she was like 115 pounds, is able to maintain on like, I think she's like 1900 calories on training days, like 17, 50 on rest days, which is a cool seat. But anyways, it's like such a big shift. But again, a lot of times we need to reverse that before it's like if you're already low calorie, already moving to time, it's kind of like hey, where can we go prepare? And if this is truly what we're maintaining on, body is probably telling us that that loss is definitely not the thing that we need to do right now in order to improve your health and like your overall responsiveness. Outside of what we talked about there, any other red flags you'd be looking for as far as someone shouldn't die it. I mean, largely of course, it's just going to be the opposite of like, grand looking for these things. So that we already kind of answered this, but anything else we would add there. Um, just on the the mental side, there are a lot of things that we would want to get into a better place. Before we go into a fat loss phase, like we kind of touched on on some of it, but if somebody just has like a big mental block around any part of the dieting experience or something. Yeah, I'm having a hard time putting this into words, but or like categories. Do you know when I'm when I'm saying there, can you put that into better words for me? I think that I mean, we're talking about the low teen goal. I think like someone's where someone's low-cost of control is is very important. Yes. Yeah. And the and as a whole like their perception of fat loss, like there's some people will have this perception that like nothing works for me. I try to everything and nothing works for me and like my body is broken. And we of course want to get to the bottom of that first. Like is there actually an issue here that we do need to resolve? Sometimes there is, right? Um, sometimes it is a mindset thing and it's like, Hey, actually we honestly just tried a lot of fat diets. We haven't have for actually like done this well, but there is often times like a lot of mindset work. Yeah. And yes, the element of this is going to be difficult where you will probably have to say no to certain things, certain foods, there will probably be some hunger. We may like feel lower energy and things of that nature, but you're still in control, right? And like meals out unless someone's forcing food down your throat, like we still get to choose, right? There's no right or wrong, but you have a choice in like, Hey, am I going to eat this or am I not going to eat this? And if it's like a and again, like this is an old place to be. So it's okay if you're there right now, but if it's a place where it's like, Hey, every time I go out to eat, um, people just typically order for the table. So I don't have any control over that. It's like we do actually still control. Like we make, we can speak up for ourselves. We can like worsen, we can like choose the portion we want. And it's okay if you don't want to do that, but you use all of a choice in it. And a lot of times again, just shifting that like, focus of control to something internal in that, I do control my decisions, I control my actions, I control my perception of things, even like my attitude around like, if this is like when the diet is getting difficult, I can choose whether this sucks. I hate this. I don't want to be there. Be here or hey, I'm choosing to do this. No one's forcing me to do this. And I can make this. I can approach this from a positive place if I want to. A little thing is like that. Yeah, oftentimes need a lot of work. And I would say as well, it's oftentimes more productive to try to address most of those in like a primer phase rather than trying to approach them like that wall space. Is that what you were saying? Someone? Yeah, so big, a big part of what I was trying to organize in my brain was that focus of, look, it's sub-control. There's also sort of a, sort of a desperation that comes out sometimes with like, I need to get into fat loss right now sort of thing. That's kind of what I was thinking about as well there. And a lot of times that is sort of a big mindset shift that needs to happen before we actually go into that phase as well. Because I just don't ever see that that fat loss phase going super well whenever we go into it with that sense of desperation. Like I have to change my body. I feel just, I just feel so uncomfortable in my body. There's there's a version of that that is like, I feel very uncomfortable in my body and it's helping to drive me. And that's actually sometimes someone who is maybe coming from being obese and will actually become healthier in a fat loss phase. But there's the version of that as well where it's like, I am already a very relatively lean person and I have this desperation around needing to be leaner right now because I have a self-worth thing within side me that is needing addressed. That's a really, really good point. And that's, I didn't think of it from that perspective. That is so true. And I do think that is, I think that's a big thing that holds people back ultimately from a lot of times getting the physique that they want. You're right because it is often like a desperation where like, I need to be in fat loss. I need to be in fat loss. And it's often times like a, and hey, we've been ignoring all the signals your body has been sending for the last like five years. For example, because we have this desperation for like, I need to get in fat loss because I feel it's, I feel for you. If you feel super uncomfortable in your body. And it's normal. Even in first someone who is like already relatively lean aw, shit, I mean, even for someone who's extremely lean, right? We were talking about today on like our team call about like, like, task where she is right now, like, she's shredded. A week out from her show. Right. A week out from her show when she's so lean or like, even before like my photoshoots that I've done where I was in as lean as she is, right? But it's, I remember similarly like looking in the mirror and be like, even lean yet, right? When it's funny to look back on that like, wow, I was shredded, like my perception that was way out. But yeah, that a lot of times that desperation to like I need to get leaner, I need to get leaner. It oftentimes puts people in a place where they ignore the signals their body are sending them in that, again, things like, hey, if we're like, your mental cycle's gone, your sex hormones seem to be in a terrible place. We have to diet on crazy localities. And then because we ignore those signals post diet, because then it's eventually like, wow, I feel like shit, I wish it was so hard for so long. I just get to this place, maybe we lost a big muscle situation in the process post diet because we ignore those. Again, it is typically more likely that a person is going to rebound again quite a bit of body fat. Then it just becomes this vicious cycle of body composition worsens and worsens. Every time I diet, I do this so aggressively that I like down regularly, these things even more. I lose muscles, so then I'm more likely to be like, re-aim more body fat post diet. And it's puts people in this vicious cycle where, and I understand this has to be, this is definitely a hard place to be. What is oftentimes like understanding the hate to break this cycle of always feeling like, I feel some uncomfortable on my body, it can change requires change, right? So if we continue to perpetuate the cycle of constantly dieting, oftentimes we're not actually gonna break the cycle, right? So sometimes requires the KB match, sometimes a time focusing on health, I have to spend time in a primary phase first. But I do have a primary phase a lot here, so I definitely recommend if you're not familiar with the terminology here, go check out the basic dieting series we recorded. It should be relatively within the last couple months, this like an eight part series, but especially I would check out the primary phase episode there. But I think that's a great point. Anything else you wanna talk about there before we move on? - Nope. - Okay, would you say you typically prefer more or less aggressive fat loss for females? - To me, this doesn't depend on male or female as much as it just depends on the person. So there are a lot of factors there, and I don't even think that I could put it into like a male or female thing there. More so that's gonna come from the person's skill for dieting big time. If they are newer to dieting, that's not a person who typically would wanna go very aggressive with, because that's like instead of starting to train with training wheels, we're going straight to like a motorcycle with, let's see. So okay, so having the skill for dieting and then also having their calories up fairly high already. So probably not someone who's gonna be fairly sedentary as a lifestyle, probably has a higher movement, but also higher intake, like that high energy flux. That's typically the kind of person who can get their calories up fairly high. Most of the time already has a decent amount of muscle mass as well, but also has enough body fat to pull from pretty quickly. So if somebody's very lean, this is also someone where you would wanna go less aggressive, because the leaner you are, the more risk you are for losing muscle mass when you diet aggressively. So has a little more body fat, has their calories already pretty high, usually has some more muscle mass on them and then is already very skilled at dieting. Those are the kind of the criteria where I would start off more aggressively. And usually what we would do, or what I should say, what I typically do is start out with a more aggressive diet for a short period of time, like six to eight weeks usually, get pretty aggressive to bring body fat down and then take a bit of a diet break. So maybe a couple months to go back into recomp and feed back up, really push the training a little bit more. And then have a second fat loss, like stage of the fat loss phase where it's a little bit less aggressive. Now we're already leaner. We kinda see how the body responds and we can finish out that fat loss phase. - Yeah, I fully agree with that. And that's, there are a lot of variables there. Like, I think it's really hard to assign even a specific number of like, people should never diet on like XM below X amount of calories, for example. Right, there are so many variables where the more, over and over again, we see with clients, the more muscle mass someone has, typically the higher calories they can diet on. And the actual muscle in itself is part of that. Yes, in that muscle is metabolic, the active, it will increase our metabolic rate. It's not a crazy amount that it increases it. But I think as much as anything else is oftentimes a sign of, if this person's been able to accrue a good amount of muscle mass, their sex hormones are probably in a pretty good place. Not that like, you can't build muscle without, like your sex hormones being in a good place is very, very feasible as well. But again, probably in a pretty good place there, we probably, they're probably gonna fuel themselves pretty well. - Okay, they fuel ourselves well. They've probably done a decent job with like getting their micronutrient needs. Probably do a decent job with things like their sleep and their stress management and their recovery as well. So overall, it's more so like, it's almost like I think like, if you look at it like a car, it's almost like you taking better care of it, I would say, in a way, like a sign that, like, I don't know if that necessarily makes sense. But it's again, like almost a sign like, "Hey, your car is really nice." And you spend a long time thinking, I don't know, weird analogy. You understand what I'm saying? - Yeah, I do. The couple of people that I can think of, here are Melissa and Andrea. They both are able to diet on really high calories. Like, and the reason I say that is because to me, it's not even so much like body weight times any certain number. It's relative to them. We can get pretty aggressive. But for them, their calories are still pretty high. They're dieting on, Melissa's like 1750 and Andrea was like over 2000 and still losing a considerable amount. And Melissa's was not, or sorry, Andrea's was not aggressive at loss, but I can tell just from our slower fat loss that if I wanted to get aggressive, it's still gonna be in like that 17, 1800 calorie area. And they both have a lot of muscle mass and they've both spent time building their bodies and haven't done a lot of recent dieting too. - Absolutely. Whereas on the flip side, like, I've worked with clients who are, like, let's say, as a client who's like, how I think I was like 232.40. And I've had quite a few instances like this, where it's a lot of times like almost like an avatar where it's so many similarities where, hey, like maybe they feel like they need to lose like 60, 70 pounds to get back to what would be a healthy body weight for them. But also it's like stress is so high all the time. They're sleeping like four or five hours per night. They're constantly deprioritizing themselves, like working into the late hours of the night and just like living off a stimulant and things of that nature, which I've done all these things myself. So again, it's like no shame. But like in movement is a shimmy low. They're getting like 2003 thousand subs per day. And it can be pretty crazy to see like, with where we're at currently for us actually to lose, we have to get down to like 1400 calories, right? And it's an end up, and again, like don't like take any of these numbers and apply them to yourselves. But it has been, it is such an interesting thing to see like, how much different that can be. But I agree. I think that's like one of the biggest variables. I will say though, when we're talking about female clients, I am a lot more likely to use like, redefeats more frequently with a female client than a male client. And I think this makes a lot of sense if you look at it from the perspective of like your sex hormones, right? Where you'll, the as a whole like, you know, if as you all is, you're going to be more sensitive to stress, right? When we're looking at like the amount of calories coming in, if it's like, hey, we're in a period of calorie scarcity or calorie intake is just not very high. Okay, we're probably not in a safe place to reproduce, right? So it makes sense for, and like support like the growth of a child. So it makes sense for like, your body to down really like sex hormones that we couldn't reproduce at that time. And as a whole again, typically it will be like, female physiology will be like, have a, because there's also a lot more, almost like moving parts, right? You have not just testosterone, but we also have estrogen and progesterone, which men of course like estrogen for men is important as well, progesterone really not something that we're concerned about with like a male client, but for women there's like so many more variables there as well. They can be impacted and not so, and like your menstrual cycle, right? Like it's an even like if you look at like stress and the menstrual cycle stress in itself can be the reason that like someone misses their cycle. Even if we are like in a good place with body fat, and we like already like 20 to just like psychological stress, can impact that. I think that's a great example of like a home where the stress mitigation is, whereas refeeds, diet breaks, and like using those a little bit more consistently, I would say especially refeeds can be a way to like interrupt that stress signal, right? If we have like two back to back days, where are our maintenance, I do, I do use the refeeds a lot more frequently with female clients, whereas for a male client, like something like testosterone, is a lot more resilient to us just dieting and pushing someone hard. And it's also, it's not, again, it's like a, as long as your lifestyle is in a good place, right? As long as we're like trainer, our body well, and you're getting like adequate sleep, like yes, if we're getting shredded, yes your testosterone levels will drop, right? But it's gonna be a lot more resilient. be so much more resilient in a male client where you can push them very, very hard. And we're not worried about like, you're gonna lose your testosterone. Like you would like with a female client like if we lose our cycle, which would be much more likely. Some more to like for a male client, still will use reach beads as far as like a like, hey, maybe we need a psychological break. Maybe I want to like improve training performance. Or yes, maybe it's like, we see we need a D-load and like, I'm seeing you're like, energy super low, we're feeling like shit. Over the last couple days and maybe we need to like, take like a bit of a deficit D-load along with a training D-load. But I'm a lot more, I use refeeds a lot more frequently. I would say with my female clients to kind of interrupt that stress signal. And I'll say anecdotally, I also see a lot better results. Like using refeeds more frequently with female clients and like being able to push fat loss along and like seeing a quicker rate of loss there. - Yeah, I agree. I don't really have too much to add there. I do it the same way as you do. - I don't know of diet breaks. I would necessarily say, this one's a little bit harder because. I think this is also skewed because it mostly work with lemon. But I don't know how to say it. Say I use diet breaks like more. But I would again say I find that like the. from my experience, which I mean, I've still coach several hundred men by this point. From my experience, still you can typically push that diet timeline along a little bit longer without seeing as much negative biofeedback. And a male client, before we need to take a diet break versus a female client. So what's it actually? I probably do use diet breaks more frequently with like a female client as well. Because there will typically be a point where it's just like the hunger so high or it's just a grind in this is like, my energy is so low and things that ensure to where we do need to use those a little bit more consistently with women. Anything else to add there? - No, I totally agree. I end up tending to use diet breaks a lot more for like stress on the body purposes for women. Whereas with men a lot of times it's like, we've got a vacation or something like that, which it does tend to come up quite a bit with women too that just naturally is a good time for a diet break. But when we don't have a trip or something like that come up, I will notice that with women, it'll be like, okay, training is starting to feel worse and our joints are starting to hurt or sleep is starting to be affected. So those little signs of stress on the body start to creep up and we need a diet break outside of the natural just vacation type of diet breaks that come up. - Absolutely. I would say I typically see for, and this isn't set in stone. I never want anyone to be to attach these numbers because it varies from person to person. But I would say for women I will a lot more frequently see like, and it also will depend on how lean we are. But we're like at a relatively, we're like at an average body fat push and a good leaner. I will see as a lot more common that somewhere between like us losing about five and eight percent of your total body weight, we'll start to see like biofeedback to tier rates for really struggling more and we may need to take a diet break. Whereas again, I find that a lot of times from men, we can push that along quite a bit further before we really start to see like those negative biofeedback adaptations. Anything else you can think of as far as like considerations for how the menstrual cycle might impact that loss or female physiology as a whole? - I think it does more for psychology in a fat loss phase than anything else really because psychologically we're like doing everything right in the fat loss phase and all of a sudden for a week we're not seeing any fat loss on the, or well, we're thinking we're not seeing any fat loss on the scale. And for some women that is just like so frustrating that it leads to like horror adherence or something like that and that has an impact on fat loss. There are obviously like cravings and things like that that come up which will end up having an impact on fat loss but really like when we're looking at fat loss across the month, things tend to go pretty not linearly but they will tend to continue to trend down even with the menstrual cycle at play. It's just that the scale is impacted for that week or so. - Yeah, and that's a really good point where because it is very common for someone like when their cycle is about to start and on their cycle the first couple days wait my spike up a little bit where at very least wait won't move during that time. That's very common. So if we look back at okay, where was our weight the last cycle? If we see your down like three, four pounds where were we then or even a lot of times if it's like hey we've been losing at a very consistent rate on this intake over the last two weeks and now we see you just maintaining where normally like the trend we see with your cycle is your weight actually spikes up a bit. Okay, that's prevent and self probably tells us we've actually lost here and we'll typically see like a wouch and a big drop after that. That is a really important consideration as well. The cravings is also a really interesting one. But like for here in the US I know it's like the like like chocolate is a very stereotypical like when I'm like about the MS cycle or like on my cycle like craved chocolate and things of that nature but I also know there's research showing that like in countries where like the chocolate's not like readily available or like something people consume consistently there aren't like these chocolate cravings. So it's interesting how much of that is like nature versus nurture as well. Yeah. That's like I know that my mom every time she went to not my mom but like as an example like somebody would see their mom go grab chocolate each month whenever they were dealing with cravings or like cramps or something and now that's ingrained in me. So similar to any other food habits I think that's a lot of it. Yeah, no, no, absolutely. And that's like a not like downplay any of that but it's an interesting thing where I think you can also and again this is from someone who obviously doesn't have a MS cycle so I can't speak to this extremely well but it is interesting to like talk through that with clients when it's like I just have like such bad like cravings or XYZ and like first a lot of times I find that comes with other severe PMS symptoms where hey if we address these is it like a micronutrient need that we're missing is it hey you have really low progesterone so you feel like shit when you're about a search or cycle when again that progesterone should be kind of calming for that harsh drop in estrogen that we see like right before your cycle starts. And that's missing. Then a lot of times it might be like food is something that we're using to kind of distract from that is a cold discomfort that we're feeling. So oftentimes when it's okay we would address these things which to the top to the point of those podcasts as well we wouldn't be able to address those things very well and deficit we would want to be like it maintenance focusing on like addressing these things first but oftentimes that makes it so much easier. I think that a lot of time but yes those things often come with like someone like has having really really bad PMS symptoms and just kind of normalizing it where like it's like this just is how it is for me or like maybe it's like their doctor just told them to take or control it with it. Not that that's necessarily a bad, not that's a bad thing right? I'm not like anti-bure control or anything that's or normally I like teleclinist like hey we just have to stop re-bure control right? I think that should always be decision but it is really interesting how like often as well that's just like a, I don't know. It's crazy to me to think about like if I was like 15 and it was just like yeah we're just gonna shut on your testosterone and you're in my, you know what I mean? It's just crazy concept but again, it's like not like a speaking one way or the other on that but it is really interesting how oftentimes that's just like normalized where or just like this is just the way it is for me right? I just have like really bad PMS every month in my period is like really painful where a lot of times hey we can address that as I have to be that way and then it will make all this significantly easier as well. Would you say from a cardio perspective there's any difference? Would you say that's something that you're more likely to use with like a female client? You think it makes a bigger difference there? What's your take on that? Again with this one I haven't really thought about this in terms of male or female. I obviously have mostly female clients and so I work with a lot more women who are doing cardio versus men. It really is more dependent on the individual person and where they're coming from. A lot of it honestly comes down to their enjoyment of it and then also their goal and how it like let's say in a fat low space how lean they wanna be. At some point once you've pulled food down it does make sense to have that conversation around okay at this point hunger is at a six or seven out of 10. Would you rather at this point bring food up? Sorry. - Yeah. - So good. - And to have it at least once. Bring your food up or sorry bring your food down or add in 20 or 30 minutes worth of cardio a couple of times a week. 'Cause either way is just creating a larger calorie deficit. So which of these things are least impactful to you? 'Cause usually at first pulling food down is gonna be less impactful. But at some point that starts to switch. It's like okay well I would rather spend another 30 minutes on a bike for a week and keep my extra apple that I have at lunch for example 'cause the hunger just starts to get extreme. - No, I would agree with that. And I think I'll say that I think that using cardio sooner when it comes to fat loss is a lot more common with the female client than a male client. Again, bring it back to the first point of your relative, like the amount of calories you can eat will generally just be quite a lot lower. And then when we're looking at things like, okay, if we're having a pollute below like 100 grams of carbs or like well below like your body weight in carbs, right? So let's say you read like 140 pounds of preminiple, you will below that. Or once we're getting close to that line or again, like similarly from a total calorie perspective to where like your carbohydrate intake to support again, like that is part of like a supporting like a healthy cycle. For example, part of supporting thyroid function, which again, like some adaptations are like again, like your thyroid adapting and slowing a bit is a part of that loss. Since you want your body's defense mechanism for starving, similar that'll come back up when we're eating more food. But if it's like, hey, we can still like I want to make sure we're getting enough food, you support for micronutrient needs, getting like a decent amount of carbohydrate, et cetera. I would be a little bit more likely to leverage like, hey, if it works for you, what should you get in here? It's going to be the most important thing. Or for you, I would rather leverage a little bit more movement and that's the higher intake versus like what I would be able to do with a male client. But I also think there it's like a making sure that it's not like our number one goal in all of our training is in disperning calories, right? I think that's an important part of it as well where building muscle tissue is such an important part of this. And like more jewelry or training should still be focused on that specific cardio sessions. But it's also not like a hit session where we're further applying a lot more stress on your body to recover from. But again, something this low intensity and again, the intention here is to burn calories without drastically increasing total stress load. Anything else to add on that? I don't think so. Okay. When it comes to tracking progress, do you think here like weight loss, like in general for like a female client, do you think weight loss is a less effective measure of progress? So I think it can be sometimes for example, during the menstrual cycle. So or I should say during like the mency space of a menstrual cycle. So in that case, yeah, we want to look more at measurements and pictures and see if there's any difference there where the scale might be holding and blurring that line. Aside from that, there are definitely going to be things like bloat or waterway. Or things like that that just happen for various reasons like if we had a later meal, then usual, had some food that didn't digest super well. I again don't think that that applies just to women, but I would say that there are times where bloat just seem it does seem like bloat is something that impacts women more frequently than men. And so that's going to blur what the scale is telling us, also going to blur the below the enable measurement. And so we need to know that whenever we're looking to see if there's been progress made. Do you I don't know about any other times. It would be less effective for women. I think it's just important to look at it as because I do still think it's important to metric, but it's important to look at it as a total, a percent of your total body weight loss. We'll just look at it objectively again, that like my husband lost, let's say my husband lost 10 pounds on this diet, and I've only lost five pounds on this diet. Why has he lost five pounds more than me? When it's again, it's again, like using the example of like me versus my wife where let's say she's actually have no idea what her body weight is, but I'm guessing, I'm guessing like 120 pounds. Whereas again, I'm 220 pounds for her losing 1% of her body weight is right around like a pound, 1.2 pounds, right? Whereas for me losing 1% of my body weight is like me losing like two and a quarter pounds, right? So like for her losing five pounds, like basically for her losing five pounds is the equivalent of me losing like what? 10. Actually, I think it'd be more than 10 actually. It'd be like, it'd be like 11 pounds, right? So basically her losing about five pounds is equivalent of me losing about 11 pounds, right? But I think that it's easy to look at because oftentimes that like number is smaller, there is more. And as you said, like there are everyone sees fluctuations. But again, like women will like with your cycle and just to get the way of hormone is fluctuating whereas for like a man, typically our hormones are just going to be very consistent throughout the month. Our hormonal profiles are changed much whereas for a female client, they're going to be like the fluctuations in estrogen and progesterone, you're ovulating or you're starting bleeding. There's a lot more fluctuations there as a whole, which can impact things from normally. And again, if your system's more sensitive to stress, it will again be more sensitive to you will typically see like occasional periods of more water retention and things of that nature. So thus, when we're looking at first a smaller percentage or not not smaller percentage, but like total pounds lost will typically be smaller and like one pound might be like a red round without a target we want to see for you versus two, two and a half pounds might be a target we want to see for me. When we're looking at that combined with like a intensity for more fluctuations, it can be a lot harder to interpret that day, which is why we talk so much about these other things, like progress pictures, your biofeedback, your body measurements as well. I do just think those other things become a lot more important. Whereas for a male client straight up, there will be a lot of times where I am actually just primarily focused on body weight. If this person is not already like so lean, maybe like every month or so, all like really be able to see and like went out big changes in their progress pictures. But like heck, and really trust the way it a lot more. Whereas for female clients, I will a lot more frequently want to see like progress pictures weekly body measurements weekly as well to really see the entire picture. Yeah, that's a very serious point. I will also say with like a lot of clients who work with the other aspect that is again, oftentimes like training has been very suboptimal for building muscle. And I think this has changed a lot in like the last five years. But a lot of at least in my experience, again, a lot of women have come from the background of like I'm really focusing on cardio and burning a lot of cow. And again, this is shifted quite a bit. But like I do a lot of like group classes, focus on burning calories, et cetera. If they've been in the gym consistently. Whereas most men who have been in the gym consistently, like hey, that shit. And really have just focused on I just like want to like bench press as much weight as I possibly can. So maybe have already built a bit more muscle, not like relatively women like have just just as good a potential to build like real like build muscle. But oftentimes like the clients we work with will build a lot more muscle, especially at the start. And again, that also means we're adding weight to your frame and get muscle mass. So again, like other metrics to become more important, not just looking at the scale weight. I don't have a if I have anything else to add. How's that? No, that's a great point. And that's that's why we are looking at the percentage of rate of loss per week rather than any given number. Like when I'm necessarily looking for a pound or two pounds, it's more percentage based. That way, you're not looking at the 180 pound female at the same way as you're looking at the 110 pound females completely different in terms of what that rate of loss needs to be or rather what that actual amount of loss per week needs to be. Yeah, absolutely. Kind of a rambling discussion, but I think we got on some really good points here. Anything else you want to add before we wrap this up? I don't think so. Cool. Well, hopefully this was helpful. Again, I would say the majority of the listeners are probably women and a lot of you probably one idiot leaner have gone through about less face recently or going through one of the future. So just some important things to consider with the way you're approaching it, the way you're in her opinion progress, but that's what we have for you all. As always, if you enjoy the show, there was a huge favor to leave us five, start rating or review. If there are any top please, you want us to just gust in the future. Feel free to choose. She does a DM. We're happy to break down like anything that we think would be valuable. But we'd love your input. If you want to apply a work with us, hit the link in the show notes and we will catch you guys next time. [BLANK_AUDIO]