Your 2026 Transformation Roadmap (Primer → Recomp → Fat Loss → Lean Build)

Hey, theme. Welcome back to the show. Today, we are going to be talking through your 2026 physique roadmap. So last episode, Andrea, Natalie and myself talked about our own 2026 physique goals and road maps. So in today's episode, I want to kind of walk you through what this could look like for you based on a common client avatar that we work with. So basically, what each of your phases could look like in terms of trading and nutrition to get your goal physique. Now, as a warning, it probably won't be the road map here expecting, or it might be to listen to the podcast consistently. Most people probably want to start with fat loss in January, but that might actually be hurting your results. So really, our focus here is on teaching you how to apply our basic approach to physique development in your own transformation timeline. And walking you through an actual year-long plan phase by phase, again, alongside some real life client case studies based on a very common avatar that we work with. And in this case, I thought of it like when I was writing this, I've shared a lot about my client Brits' journey over the last year plus now. Very common real life client of ours where her goal, basically when she started was to look like she lifts, which for her entailed both getting near and building a good amount of muscle. She was ordered and training consistently three to four days a week, and she had built some muscle, but didn't have a ton when she started. She was mindful of her food, probably this person even tracks some macros, but not that lean. I would say in this case, typically around like 25% body fat. So again, quite similar to where my client Brits was when she started and in a similar place to where a lot of clients are sharding and kind of aligns with a very common goal set of new clients. So that's really what we'll be basing this on now. Before we get into the episode, today I am joined by Michelle, our client success manager. If you have signed up to work with our team at any point in the last like six six months or so, you've probably talked to Michelle. Michelle has been a client of mine for over a year. She has been taking most of our client intro calls for quite a while now as well. So I'm excited to have you here Michelle. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Of course. So do you want to just tell the listeners just a little bit about yourself before we get into it? Just got here. You are what you're up to. Yep. So I like Jeremiah said have been working with Jeremiah as a client since last January. Best year of your life so far. Right. Absolutely. It's really been quite a transformation from an educational standpoint. I think like you said, many people come into this. I sound very much like your client Brit in the beginning, thinking that I worked out a lot, not really looking like I looked worked out a lot, yeah, and just kind of learning what the value of strength training coupled with your nutrition coach doing both things for you, how those two things work together, and then by myself, I'm not even through all of the phases and just seeing how those kind of pile on each other and the value of sitting in each phase, the importance of that and having the patience for that. I've shared you on my page quite a bit as well. Michelle, for those who don't know, it was like the most jacked, ripped 50-year-old, you know. Do you think for you was it like the training the biggest piece? Do you think that what do you think was the biggest missing piece for you? That is something we put a big focus on with your shift for CrossFit and that's like right away I knew that was going to be a big lover for us, but what do you think? I think, especially now taking those calls for the past six months, a lot of people come in, you know, this type of population who is like probably Brit and I, we come in, thinking A, that we know how to lift, you know, from a CrossFit background, I figured I would know the movements really well and just kind of integrated. However, I was one of those clients that came to you and said, I'm just going to do nutrition only, I earning know how to train and that shifted about three weeks in. You know, I was dead set on just doing nutrition and then once we bundled the two together, basically, I was scared of the primer phase. We'll talk about that later. And wanting to hop right into fat loss and not truly understanding how to sit in that primer phase and then realizing my body and my weight and everything did change in my primer phase, it went more like what I would have interpreted as a fat loss phase. So, you know, it's kind of just sharing with people that you don't want to be scared that you're not going to see results right away because we're not putting you in that stereotypical fat loss phase that the beginning primer phase is really, you know, cleaning the body up and getting it ready and things do change during that period. And we can definitely dig into that a little bit more as we kind of talk about what that would look like for this client avatar. But let's go ahead and get into it. First, just a bit of a foundation when it comes to understanding the phasic approach for this timeline, we'll be talking through for your next year. So basically with the phasic approach, we're strategically using different nutritional and training phases that kind of build on each other. So think of it like this. We have three levers we can pull to change your body composition. We have fat loss, which is primarily going to be stimulated by what you're doing with your nutrition and your cardio and movement. Most people really only focus on this. But we also have the muscle growth lever, which like we talked about in your case, hey, that might have been just as impactful for those physique changes you've seen as a fat loss. It is going to primarily be stimulated by your training, which getting that correct is so important. Again, as we mentioned, then also even nutrition is supportive of your training and that it really fuels the quality of your training. The better our training quality is, better we can drive the muscle building stimulus to a degree. Your nutrition is going to be very important for our recovery and ability to build new tissue as well. But it's kind of like training is the signal and food is what supports that signal to a degree. And then we also have improved health, which is another variable in the primer phase that a lot of people are overlooking, which helps amplify both fat loss and muscle growth. So like in your case, we really focused on in that first phase, hey, we want to improve your digestion. There's some thyroid downer regulation. There were some other things where normally we looked at your blood work and looked to like, hey, can we improve this? Can we improve this? We have better digestion, better sleep, stress management, better movement, better hydration, better micronutrient intake, especially when we're looking at things like your micronutrient intake and your digestion, which is going to be so important for supporting our thyroid function, which is going to make your fat loss so much easier. Energy is going to be higher even like for building muscle like your T3 levels are so important for so many processes in your body, but it is quite important for building muscle not just fat loss. But that's going to increase our baseline energy expenditure. If we're sleeping better, we have better stress management. We're getting these microbes we need to especially for digging into blood work, like we did in your case, and there are things with like sex hormones that we can improve. Then we have a hormone environment that is much more conducive to you being able to build muscle. We'll also aid in the fat loss side of things as well, right? So basically, these different levers and pulling them at the right time as a key part of this concept of the phasic approach. So it's kind of the thing of it as this idea of podentiation, right? By pulling the right lever at the right time, each phase says up the next phase to be more effective. And again, most of you will only ever pull the fat loss lever, they die at the do more cardio that are harder, they do even more cardio and don't get anywhere. So again, we're trying to teach you how to use all three strategically strategically to see your best year of progress ever. So again, revisiting client avatar. Think of this as someone whose goal is really to look like they left. They probably need to get both leaner and build one muscle. Do you so? You are probably already training consistently three or four days a week. Hey, you build some muscle, but on as much as you expect for how long you've been in the gym. And you are aware of your nutrition, you eat well or even might track your macros a lot of the time, but again, we're not necessarily that way. I guess before we continue, feel free to, like she'll been with Ever whenever any questions or whatever you want to stop me. Good on that. Anything to throw in. Yeah, I think I should just pop in and say that during my primer phase was actually when I lost about 8% of my body weight. And then going into my fat loss phase, I've lost maybe just another 2%. I say I lost 10% total. So only 2% came from fat loss, but the body composition change was drastically different than. Yeah, in your case, we really were able to clean through nutrition a lot in that primer phase initially. And just again, just improving the things like digestion. We did see a lot of a nice downwork trend. And then your training was really starting to click as well in the fat loss phase, which we didn't have that far to go. It was a pretty short fat loss phase that she did. I think we spent a good amount more time in our primer phase than our fat loss phase if I recall correctly. So we didn't really have that far to go. But the actual visual changes we saw, because you've also built a good amount of muscle, did definitely outpace even the scale weight loss that we saw. Yeah, my primer phase may have been a little bit shorter, not to scare people off that you might sit here for months, you may. But I turned 50, had birthday parties, traveled to Mexico. I did a lot of things during my primer phase that needed to be worked in for sure for sure. All right, so getting into the in some key insights for this avatar we're discussing. The biggest things I see with this client are typically they usually need to build a good amount of muscle, of course, to reach their goal physique. And oftentimes needs significantly more muscle to get to that physique than they might realize. I would say typically this person over estimates how much fat they need to lose and underestimate the muscle growth needed, which is actually probably pretty similar to your case. A pretty calm outcome in this instance is going to be this client needs to lose about 10% of their body weight total to get to their goal physique. But we'll generally have health bottlenecks sabotaging progress to a degree that we need to address. Not always the case. If not, that's great, right? Look, we're not going to create, try to create problems that aren't there, but there will oftentimes be things like, hey, we have constipation or digestion, digestive issues. And if we look deeper into this, the root cause, which is often lifestyle based could be like, hey, maybe we have low stomach acid, right? And like us better supporting that within what we can actually like, and again, it's not like we're actually going to do, there are like at home tests we can do and like, hey, based on what we consistently see, we can better support this with these different things, like this is an instance where like apple cider vinegar can actually be useful, for example. And if we can get you to adjust your foods better, that will better score the ability to break down, absorb, utilize these different micronutrients that will then support things like our thyroid. And often, even just simple things like your hydration, poor micronutrient intake, again, really those, those variables of minerals we need to support these health processes, just better supporting that can get our body in a much more responsive place. But again, there's oftentimes a few bottlenecks there that we need to address. And then we just need to build as a whole a better foundation and kind of structure for them to be successful. So we're often missing things like just day-to-day, there's not a lot of structure in terms of things like meal timing, we're doing a poor job with periworkout fueling with nutrition. So we're just creating a lot more structure around that. This client is also typically under-eating carbs specifically. I like what you added about in your case, we oftentimes need to learn how to train effectively for hypertrophy. Both execution, effort, basically proximity to failure, will need to be improved quite a bit. So again, in your case, you knew how to train, but we didn't really know how to train well for hypertrophy. You came from a crossfit background, coach yourself, but the way we'd execute for a crossfit versus when the goal is to build muscle is quite different. I remember your sply-squast telling you the first couple of weeks, we still have so many more reps than tankier. And it can be kind of uncomfortable at first, but truly for almost everyone, just once we get the execute, you should now understand what training close to failure truly looks like. It's such a new thing, but it does make such a big difference. So because there's so much foundation to build, before we just hop into fat loss, it's kind of like we just like we don't know how to drive when we're just putting you on the air state right away, whereas here we want to really focus on building the foundation for success first. And then another important variable for this client that I think is often overlooked when we talk about building and the importance of building muscle a lot here, but this person is typically at a high enough body fat that they really won't see the shape they want until they get near. So for this person, I think it aligns pretty well with the natural learning curve. So basically it takes time to learn how to train well. So for this person, I typically find it makes sense to focus on after this primer phase getting near first and then go all in on building once training is really clicking. And again, this aligns well with the learning curve as throughout these first couple phases as we are improving body composition getting near, they're picking up the skills and really understanding training. And then right one little point where we're quite lean and we can actually see more of the gains that we have our building as we're leaner as easy to see all the progress we're making. We're also in like a better position held wise, like better nutrient partitioning insulin sensitivity, the build muscle, then actually building becomes a lot more productive. Again, like trainings, training is really clicking, understand how to do that. So we can do more with more fuel rather than just getting body fat. So I think I think it makes the most sense to kind of follow this progression of for this person, teach them how to train as we get leaner and then really focus on building versus the other way around. We can build as we're getting leaner, but again, most people just won't be sufficient enough at the training yet for that to really make sense on just like you do with a building phase first, unless we're quite lean already. Eight thoughts, questions there before we continue. I think just trusting, trusting the sequencing of everything. And then the huge thing is training to the correct RAR and knowing what failure is is where the turning point, you know, in building muscle happened for me. I failure is very different than most people think. This for sure levels to it too. Like with my coach now, that's a conversation we've had a lot where he's still like, yeah, he's still more in the tank. What's weird here? But it is truly like even like a task failure versus muscular failure and like, hey, you're expanding all this effort here with like you're bobbing your head so much and you're like pressing your losing your brace, right? And that's actually more that's like causing you to fail a few reps sooner than you would otherwise. There's there's a progression where there's like a constantly level we can learn, but yeah, it's a huge part of it. Okay, so let's get into phase one here, which is going to be this primer phase that we'll talk about a lot. Hypothetically, this could be four to six weeks. If we are in a good place, not much to address, it could be a little bit shorter. If there's a lot to address, it could be a lot longer. I think yours was like 12 weeks, is that correct? Okay, but there were a few more things that we need to address here. So in this phase, again, hypothetically, four to six weeks, we are going to focus on building the foundation for future phases. So we want you consistently nailing your food targets, feeling well around training, getting your body in a healthy, responsive place for fat loss. We want to optimize energy, digestion, sleep. We want your biofeedback in a good place. And again, it really teaches you how to train what hard and execute well. Now, common starting reality for this person is that typically, this individual isn't eating all that much in terms of calories. So we also, if we were to hop right into fat loss phase, we just wouldn't have the much to pull from. And this is an important obstacle, but we need to address now. Some of this comes from they might just not be tracking all that accurately, right? A lot of people, even those who are tracking their food consistently, or like, it's actually when you hop into their food logs, it's like, okay, we've tracked like three or four days per week for the last month. But this is like, that's like 50% of the time, right? And we're skipping the weekends. We're skipping the days when the calories are the highest. We're actually not accounting for a large amount of your calories. So sometimes it is just a matter of, hey, we're not tracking accurately. And we're actually more than we think other things like we can improve your food choices to increase the tidy. So you feel like you're eating more. We can also leverage up a higher step count so that we're expanding more and less can eat more without gaining. But again, typically as a result of typically this person's movement isn't all that I as a result of that. And again, us addressing them, some of the things like your micronutrient needs, better supporting internal health, it is better tracking. What we will be able to do throughout this phase in the first couple phases is actually work in their food up a considerable amount. So that when we do interval loss, we're in a place where we would pull calories more and without hurting nearly as much. The strategy in this phase is typically, uh, eat more, move more approach for me. Basically, what I want to do is I want to drive up both food and movements simultaneously. And this will probably continue in the next phase. So basically what we're doing here is we're increasing movement, which I'm typically going to start with primarily focusing on more steps. So a lot of times it's like this person is getting 4,000 to 6,000 steps per day. Hey, can we titrate that up to like 8K? And then maybe 10K. And then what's realistic for you can we potentially go up to like 12K is like 10K or ceiling, like let's find what's feasible or realistic for you. But even that, like over the course of a week a month, that's a lot more calories burned. And thus we can wrap up food alongside that. So we're improving movement, we're improving health and responsiveness. So thanks, thanks, like the food quality, digestion, et cetera. We're increasing food alongside this. And we're improving the actual trading stimulus we're getting, right? We're teaching you how to train. So we are focusing on better execution, better intention, and even just a better trading program, meaning you are going to start building muscle. So we will see some visual shifts in this phase. And then from there, like once we have those steps in a decent place, again, like I typically like to get some up to at least like 8 to 10K if it all feasible. Depending on the person I might implement like three, 10 to 15, maybe 10 to 20 minute cardio sessions per week. Hey, if there's steps, which had a long ways to go in terms of steps, I've ramped that up quite a lot already. I don't like to like push this lever too much because I like to be able to kind of conserve that for the next phase. But I also do like to start to get people in the habit of, hey, we're probably going to have cardio in the next phase. Let's kind of bake this into your routine now. So that is second nature. And we can really hit the ground running in the next phase in terms of food. I typically like to start somewhere around what I estimate to be this person's like about the midrange what I estimate to be their maintenance, typically going to be like the same intake daily for this person rather than a calorie cycling approach. Again, just wanted to be simple, easy to execute. And based on how they respond, typically what we'll see is like I will put someone out what I estimate to be the midrange of the maintenance. Food quality is improved. Track and accuracy is improved. Generally, I like this person to just follow me on plan. So there's like very little room for error or at least most of the time follow me on plan. What's always is what we'll see is in an like hey, I might ramp your steps up and actually like two paper that almost always what we'll see is, oh, hey, I'm actually getting leaner. We saw like a bit of a weight drop. We saw some nice measurement drops. And generally, the first like four to six weeks here, we'll see like every week, every other week. Wow, we're actually getting leaner, we're getting leaner. Okay, let's keep ramming up food. If we can get leaner in this phase, that's great with our goal is first and foremost to get a certain position to be successful in the next couple phases. Alongside that, health optimization, of course, is an important part of this. So as we discussed, just addressing the common bottlenecks like constipation and digestive issues, poor sleep. We already talked about that quite a lot, so I don't think we need to address that any further. In terms of training, already touched on this quite a lot as well, but again, really teaching you how to train for hypertrophy. I would probably like most people, my favorite approach here is going to be just a four day week upper lower split. We don't need to get too specialized yet. This person typically just needs to learn how to train master the basic movement patterns and just build muscle across the board. But again, in this phase, we should start to see visual shifts. You're getting leaner, your balloon muscle, you feel much better, your energy is better, all are about a few back is better. And training starts to feel very productive. Now, typically, I'm ready to transition to the next phase when this person has shown me they could be extremely consistent in their food intake targets. We have a lot of structure and daily routine in terms of meal timing, hydration, sleep, major biofeedback issues are resolved or improving rise. So I don't see anything as a major bottleneck for our ability to build muscle or lose that in the next couple phases. Any questions there before we continue? What, I think it would be nice for people to hear kind of circling back to the steps and increasing output. What do you tell your clients when they come to you and they're like, I really just want to I want to run, I want to do crossfit with this. Isn't that increasing my output as well? Yeah, so I mean, it's going to be two a degree. I'm not opposed to someone working in like running or even a crossfit, right? Like it depends on the client. It depends on what their goals are. If you were to come to us because you were inspired by a certain transformation and it was someone who had been like a lot of the transformations that bring people in or someone who's the cave that gone all in on our process, right? They've really focused on just trading four to five days a week with us to really focus on maximizing their ability to build muscle specifically. Basically, to get the results, if you want results like them, we also need to get willing to follow a process like them. We can't pick and choose. Again, there's nothing wrong with like crossfit, for example, but for trying to squeeze in like three or four crossfit sessions per week and get a quality hypertrophy stimulus across like four trading sessions, it does become just a lot for us to recover from where the actual quality of our trading sessions will deteriorate or ability to recover from them will deteriorate. But more so, let's like the quality because we're getting where just trying to cramp so much in that our actual ability to recover and push harder in those sessions, get the most out of our recovery sessions can take a hit or just like you're just feeling so beat up all the time we just don't get much out of it. So we can start to suffer there. Running again, it's going to be very like you can work in a decent, I don't really have a problem with running to a degree unless you're like training for a marathon and we want to get as high as we can at the same time and we want to get lean, it just depends on how it's very dependent on your goals and like where it falls because we kind of have give it like a triangle right on one end we have one point we have building as much muscle as possible the other point we have getting as lean as possible and then at the tip of the triangle we have like your your like you're running performance right and all of those are kind of like at different points in the spectrum or we can't optimize for all of them at once. So the further we want to go in any one direction the more we have to be willing to give in terms of the other. So it's very much going to be dependent on your goals but if it's like I want the best results possible out of this I would say like hey I mean our running is there's nothing wrong with running but unless we're like talented at it we actually like move well when we run this not something that just leaves you feeling beat up probably and it will still will be like a larger recovery that for us probably going to want to buy us like less taxing forms of cardio like more and again like we could run in stand zone two but if you finally abuse it your joints for example hey might not be the best option for us if it's got a lower body training where again if we're like running so many miles or really it's really hindering our ability to recover pushes hard in our lower body sessions then it can start encounter productive so it just largely depends on the goal there that makes sense yeah cool all right so phase two would be a body recombosition phase which I would say is probably going to last about eight to twelve weeks now body recombosition is simultaneous fat loss and muscle growth basically what everyone wants now the ideal scenario for this to happen is when body fat is moderate we're in a place where someone is new to experiencing a quality training stimulus so quite some water we talked about in terms of you like hey you've been training for a long time but you were new to hypertrophy training specifically the newer we are to that signal the more responsive to it we will be and of course we're recovering your consistent scene need to be in a good place now recombosition works very well as this next phase because by this point training is starting to click typically the person isn't quote unquote great at training yet but good enough that we're definitely starting to productively build some new tissue and it's also just a matter of time right like it takes several weeks for us to get good enough at a movement get coordinated enough at a movement to actually meaningful or to actually generate hypertrophy before that it's basically to skill adaptations rather than us building a new muscle tissue so we're basically just at the point now where we've got good enough of the thing that we're building muscle we have built a lot of structure around their day-to-day habits and they are consistent with through timing hitting macros, periwork out fueling etc and we've mostly addressed the health bottlenecks, biofeedback bottlenecks that could stop us from being responsive to fat loss or muscle growth so because of this we're in a place where we can really see some impressive body composition changes without really needing to push food too low or for them to really feel like they're dying so this is a really cool place to be this is like one of my favorite phases when someone like graduates from my first primary phase and is in a body recombosition phase so here calories aren't often super high yet so i would rather we keep food high for longer so typically what i prefer to do is drive change using more cardio and the training so basically using more cardio to increase calorie output to continue to get us a bit leaner and then using the improved training stimulus to build muscle which will change the shape of your physique improve the ratio of fat massively mass which also literally decreases our body fat and then again ideally we'll actually be able to continue to increase food throughout this phase so that when we get into a dedicated fat loss phase we have a high calorie intake pull from if needed to drive further fat loss so in terms of cardio what i'm typically going to like to do here is probably start this person at something like three thirty-ish to forty-ish minute sessions zone two cardio if needed i mean we can push this all the way up to like pin independent on the person their levels like how much they can handle we can push this all the way up to like four or five thirty to forty minute zone two cardio sessions if possible which this isn't really for everyone but if possible i would also love for this to be something that's fasted cardio paired with yohim being so we talked about yohim being quite a lot on the show basically yohim being a self woman that helps us if we use it in a fasted state what it does is basically helps us get fatty acids out of otherwise stubborn body fat cells women specifically tend to have like a higher density of stubborn body fat cells in areas like hips thigh it would be really cool because it helps us get liberate fatty acids from the cell and then basically so when we look at fat loss and like what we need to create fat loss basically we need catacole means to act on the cell to get fatty acid out of the cell and then that that fatty acid is in the bloodstream and then we need reason to actually burn it for fuel otherwise it will just go back into the fat cell so when we pair again like stimulants help increase catacole means which will help bring fatty acids out of the cell again yohim being is a stimulant but also kind of unlocks these cells to get the fatty acid out of cells and then when we pair it with facet cardio that is our reason to burn this as fuel so basically it gonna help us burn more body fat specifically from stubborn areas if we do like this fasted cardio in being combo but it's not make her break if we can't do it fasted and alongside this I do really like a high high day low day calorie cycling tool so this is one I would often have to transition someone from just eating the same intake daily to do in like a high day low day I find this really effective in body recombosition phases so basically we're using the higher day is to eat plenty of carbs keep the client well fueled keep out feedback in a good place keep training performance great etc and then we'll have two to three lower calorie days per week where we're probably in a deficit and we're driving fat loss right whereas those higher days are probably the main ends upper end of maintenance these two to three days a week we're actually in a decent sized deficit and starting to push fat loss along here now we can kind of make all this work very synergistically to also improve the person's metabolic flexibility so the zone to cardio and these high low days so basically your metabolic flexibility is your body's ability to use both carbs and fat for fuel the better our metabolic flexibility is the better our health will be would also like typically the easier I find the easier it is for people to be a leaner now most people are not all that good at using unless they're quite lean aren't all that good at using fat for fuel at that oxidation so what I like to do a lot of times on these lower days is actually bias a much lower carb slightly higher fat but as a whole I mean your calories are going to be lower a lower carb higher fat intake now from a satiety perspective like let's say Michelle I was going to push you at like let's say you're at like 140 protein 120th carb and like I don't know 45 fat what I find is or like let's say like 125 carb 45 fat what I find is from satiety perspective you would actually probably be a lot more full throughout the day you find out more manageable if we biased let's say like 60 fat and 100 carb 90 carb sometimes you can push it a little bit lower than that pushing the fat higher like 65 70 fat and like 80 70 80 carb which can sound quite low now this isn't forever but in this phase again you will like that will be a little bit more satiating I typically also like do in that case what I find is if we like try to spread it out like we have 415 gram molasses of carbs just like stimulates a little bit of hunger whereas if we keep the first couple meals like mostly fat and protein then add in carbs later in the day that typically is going to work the best but that's going to be more satiating but also those lower carb higher fat days are going to force our body to use more fat for fuel so with that in itself again we're getting our body better at the skill of using fat for fuel zone two cardio also improves mitochondrial density and increases in the amount of money conduit we have that is a very important part mitochondrial health and density is a very important part of our ability to actually oxidize fat use fat as fuel so this also really like the zone two cardio that helps improve metabolic flexibility alongside that then specifically again for doing fastly cardio specifically we are going to be using more fat as fuel whereas if we're doing our cardio to bed state we're going to have more carbs on our bloodstream or more likely to do that it is really like in the last year this is something I've put a lot more focus on and used a lot more and it is pretty cool to see how much of a positive impact someone it's like focusing on improving someone's metabolic flexibility has on their ability to lose fat other than the most drastic examples of this I've seen actually are at like um we've had a decent amount of men at a much higher body fat this year like quite high body fat like I think my client Greg where I think you where do you we're now from like 290 to 240 so far uh dieted or like matte matte more or someone who I've talked about a lot with this approach as well like my guy will where we uh dieted on quite low carbs for a period of at least like 6 to 8 weeks quite low carbs prior has a lot of zone two cardio before that it was like man we're at like quite a low calorie intake and you just but a balanced diet in this person just does not lose very well at all right and then from there like once we go through this phase where we're focusing on improving metabolic flexibility loss of zone two specifically is quite important here then once we get down with it what it's what we'll find is it's pretty cool how much more food that person can lose on it and like our did you so much better with more carbohydrates in the diet as well I'm kind of just rambling so again feel free to jump in whenever in terms of nutrition go ahead the metabolic flexibility just being so underrated and then kind of watching it unfold as an individual is remarkable yeah it's it's cool to see and again it'll vary from person to person like if you're already quite lean it's not a huge it's probably not a huge issue for you but again like the higher someone's body fat is especially just the more effective I've found it to be if you're someone who has like a large health bottleneck like you have like thyroid thyroid issues thyroid dysfunction hormone is function probably don't lose room in the low carbs so we again it's case by case but if someone is like otherwise in a healthy place it does like that approach does work quite well now in terms of of running nutrition progression here which again we wouldn't be using like that extreme from the approach here but again in your case I might be like those low days we might be pulling you down like again like hypothetical like 60 70 fat somewhere 70 to 90 carb like let's say like one about body weight plus 10 to 20 grams of protein wouldn't be a like a bad starting point in terms of nutrition progression generally going to what we're going to be doing again like the goal here is ideally adding food throughout this phase so typically what I'm going to do is keep those low days relatively stable and not really touch them those continue to dry fat loss but what I'm going to be able to do is similar way in the last phase typically add carbs to those high days throughout this space especially when we're increasing cardio a lot of times what we'll see is hey this person is maintaining extremely well on this intake I'm going to add if we're seeing someone losing on this intake a lot of times I won't even need to add cardio hey I might just add like somewhere between 10 and 25 grams of carbs to their high days more fuel around the time when you do the most insulin sensitivity will be the best we're more likely to show those carbs towards muscles cells versus past cells but then alongside that even if it's just like hey I just want continue to drive their intake up without me seeing them losing then a lot of time what we'll do is like hey maybe we're going to add 10 minutes to each of these cardio sessions and then we're going to add 25 grams of carbs to each of your high days for example training really doesn't need to change a liar focus is still on just learning the skill progressive over a little bit time now typically what we'll see in this phase is quicker visual changes embody a composition this is where the thing is really start to pick up there but you shouldn't really feel like you're dieting yet the skill probably won't move dramatically because we're again really started to build more muscle but measurements and visuals will definitely rapidly outpace the change that we're seeing on the scale and then by the end of the phase we will be noticeably leaner and a bit more muscular now typically we're ready to move on to the next phase when the rate of body recomposition starts to slow which is going to be normal here around 12 to 18 weeks into doing all this quite well I mean we could see recombin definitely but we'll kind of start to hit a point where it's like okay we're pretty lean now we're also getting quite good at training we have like three days a week where food is fairly low and might make more sense for us to ultimately get to the workplace we want to be quicker for us to now kind of go all in on fat loss just get the fat loss phase done with so we can keep eating more food seven days a week really push you eating even better place to build muscle rather than kind of like trying to have our cake you needed to but we want to make sure food is at a good level to pull from and this person will typically by this point have still about five to seven percent of their total body weight to lose to hit their goal which brings us into phase three the fat loss phase which here again is typically only going to be about eight to 12 weeks so we'll have seen a lot of decent visual changes by this point but again we'll have typically started to see the rate of body recomposition slow now as I mentioned this client typically needs to lose about 10% of their initial body weight to get close to the goal physique again we typically have realistically like five I think that five to seven percent of body weight total to go here it's pretty feasible now if we're in a healthy response of place like that doing that in eight to 12 weeks for most people just isn't a huge deal thanks the way we approached things before where again we're in a healthy response of place but also the cool part about this is we have your calories in a much higher place thanks to the mood more anymore approach we've been taking over the last few phases so in this phase we can just keep movement where it is and just like man by this point like we might have feet very easily like five hundred calories to pull back pull from to get you back to wish you thought was your previous maintenance intake and then that can drive fat loss very very quickly while feeling like food is extremely low so the approach I like here is typically to start more aggressively I in general prefer to start diets more aggressively if I have a good feeling about or good gauge on how someone will respond so when biofeedback is good and body fat is higher we can push harder without as many detriment so the first few weeks of this phase I'm okay with let's say like the first two to four weeks I'm okay with this person losing like one to one point of five percent of their body weight per week again we just want to make your body will typically fall also be easy to start it'll have the least negative impact on our training performance at the start for us to push harder so when I get as much done as we can't early on now in this case we talked previously about this high low diet structure I might start like the first week or two I might just go hey we're gonna keep that same structure but we're gonna have all low days this week or maybe we're gonna hit three low days one high day in the repeat again it's we're gonna push hard while the sledding is relatively easy and then over the next few weeks as hunger increases biofeedback starts to suffer what we do is add in more and more of those high days by the latter part of this phase I typically I'm only gonna want to see this person losing like point five to one percent of their body weight a week and here again like it's not just weight that we're focusing on it is also how our measure much changing how is progress picture changing etc but again once we get quite deep into this like starting off with hey maybe it's all low days or it's three low one high and realistically through this phase we could probably keep like a three low one high or maybe like two low to high repeat basically like three to five low days four to five low days a week two to three high days a week realistically we're not lean enough we're training hard enough yet that we necessarily need more than that some like in if this was you going through this Michelle you have more muscle than most you are quite lean already so you are someone who actually we might realistically start and you know how to train really well now right because you again like you already knew what effort both bike was basically us just teaching you a different way of moving you were someone who might actually need more of like a training day rest day approach towards the latter half of the space we actually have higher food on a train days lower food on a rest days um to better support your ability to train hard and recover still because we don't want that suffering as we get deeper into this phase now to make that work like your cargo would not be able to stay as high as the previous phase right we might have to bring down like we still need you to be in in that deficit right so your cars might still be lower than they were in the previous phase we have a higher intake a lower intake those low days we're still putting fat loss more of the training days we are keeping food higher to better support training now in this phase this is where we see the query the quickest visual changes because fat loss happens very quickly fat loss happens much quicker than muscle grow grow this is quite rewarding because again you see the changes like week to week it's why fat loss is always like typically the mostly I don't know if I would say the most fun but the most exciting most instantly gratifying for most people you will look noticeably there consistently and more shape with the muscle we've been building will come through as the body fat comes off I also find though for a lot of people a lot of people aren't that good at the skill of dieting yet sometimes it's just a mental mental component but by the around the eight to twelve week more of this phase oftentimes I'll find people head a bit of a wall they will look a lot leaner and have a lot more shape but we'll hit a point where either biofeedback is really starting to suffer they're just like I'm just like sick of dieting struggling with adherence more or my gauge is hey us getting you a whole lot leaner from here just really won't do a whole lot more to actually change the shape of your physique which I would say is pretty similar to like where you were but we've gotten you like more shredded but your physique wouldn't actually like have them take on a much different shape by us getting there so by this point when we were like transition out of fat loss so at this point makes sense for us to now focus on actually building that shape you want transitioning to the building face which brings us to our lean building phase which is going to be at least 25 to 30 weeks realistically this timeline is always longer than people want to hear and I mean really do build a lot of muscle if your goal physique is a lot more mostly of currently to be realistic for a lot of people who are looking out like hey we a year two years of you really really trained well that might be moving through multiple phases but well over a year focused on just building fueling yourself well that's again like people don't I think like coaches don't like to talk about those timelines and how long we take because it seems like by marketing but I think it's worth marketing you just not be realistic with it so again the client needs more muscle to have the shape they want more term and the prior phases have really perfectly set us up for this they're much leaner now so we have great insulin sensitivity and nutrient partitioning a lot of the food that we're taking in more of the food that we're taking in will be shuttle to muscle versus fat they actually know how to train effectively so we can do more with more food and their body needs more fuel now to build so what aligns very well with this phase so transitioning into it typically we're going to pull cardio down significantly now we're a few weeks bringing food back up to maintenance we've talked about like what the reverse diet process looks like a lot in previous podcasts I won't cover that too much here and also I'm going to conduct and knees analysis with the client what most of groups need the most work right so like for you you're like I really want jacked arms and I hate lower body training we can probably still do some lower body fit that that was when you're exact words arms arms delts were a big priority for us initially now like arms and upper back correct but we're going to do a knees analysis both like what do I think we should closer to the goal if they should give me and then from your perspective as well what do we want to prioritize then map out okay based on this hey what do I think the next six eight months will look like or another example like in Britz example for her it was hey I really want to bring up my lower body and in her case what we did is she was someone like by this point she trained really well she built a lot of muscle okay we're going to go all that on lower body specialization actually we shifted to a similar to you know how you have you have micro cycles rather than weeks so you have four trained days but it might take you eight to nine days to actually can put a micro cycle rather than like heavy training four days every seven week or four we do four training days every seven days for example so similar to her we did four training days over a nine day micro cycle again rather than a traditional week and basically split it up to be a posterior so glute hamstring priority quad priority we still of course train her upper body but big big actually I think it was glutes quads one day and then hamstrings and upper body the other buddy even like on our on her hamstring days like we might be doing an RDL as well right so we're lower body does take a lot to recover from and our training quality is very important for training like lower body four days a week for doing a well I don't think most bush should be able to do some so pull that actually back to training three days a week and just went all in on lower body which really worked out very well for us now was it will be that be the approach we take with most people not necessarily but that's an example like how we might shift things here in this phase training is so key training is the stimulus that creates muscle growth so everything else really is for training and training quality so what does training quality mean one execution we are grinding the stimulus where we want to with the movement we're doing right so if you're doing an RDL like Michelle we worked a ton of your RDLs right we're still improving but if it's hey this just hurts my lower back rather than I'm getting a lot of glutes out of it or like my goal for this split squad is to build through glutes but just like your quads are the limit factor okay we need to adjust our execution actually drive the stimulus where we want it to and this is something that both I'm looking at like of course our training video feedback is a huge part of with clients but also often asking questions and getting feedback from you in your weekly check in form around your perceived stimulus right are we actually feeling like we're getting a stimulus here and then how we're things progressing your law books the very important part of it intensity are we actually training close enough to failure to stimulate grow which again we're going to assess both via training videos and looking over your law book sometimes and again this doesn't really come up for you you would really get a training hard a lot of times I'll see as like hey dude we've done the first set here of your split squad we did 50 pounds for eight second set we had 50 for 10 these were supposed to both be at 1 hour or right if anything like which to be a little bit more for you in the second set by the you two more reps the second set versus the first tells me the first set was probably like three to four reps in the tank rather than one and most important thing they understand is to actually stimulate growth we need to basically multiple fibers will try to grow enough to signal to the body that hey this is a very stressful situation we need to grow adapt get stronger and bigger so we can better handle this next time but if we're not training within a couple reps shy of fail we're not going to create a stressful enough environment for that to happen typically the intensity is huge and then again your progression in your law book specifically like key lifts and that's like in your case we have a couple key lifts that we're looking at for like a for for example would be okay your already else your reflect all it is split squats your leg press those are key lifts we know we goals to build your lower body glute specifically then those are key lifts we want to progressing more really the honing in on those we might not progress your chest press a whole lot and not that's focused on that but here those key lifts are a main proxy for muscle growth terms of how they're getting stronger because we're just not going to be able to see the thing here is unlike fall off when I will see huge visual changes with now when we're talking progression I think this is also important because people can get too fixated on the law book in this phase progression isn't always just here doing more weight or more reps now it can be more weight for the same reps same weight for more reps those are performance or progression but oftentimes is also hey maybe we have better execution at the same weight right like last week we were a little bit sloppy we were we weren't hitting our full range of motion on our leg press or we're bouncing out of the hole whereas now we have better control of removing that same weight or maybe we even had to reduce weight but we have better execution and better age and motion we're doing a better job driving tension to the muscle it's progressive stimulus that's what we're chasing which sometimes means again maybe we actually need to reduce look better exoteless and drive the stimulus we want versus just always focusing on more numbers than the law book but over time the law will be turning up in terms of nutrition we need to act with fuel but not excess so a lot of times when we talk about a building phase people are scared of like ha but I don't want to do a bulk and have to gain like 10 15 pounds of body fat there's not a need to especially at this point and less and less like I've talked about the phase that I'm in quite a lot lately right where I mean I'm in a building phase currently I'm very hungry my food isn't all that high at all but I'm growing extremely well my nutrient of partitioning is great and like I find this less applicable to like this female clientele I'm talking about here more so to men but a lot of times there's this idea of hey we kind of have to eat to our knees not our appetite where you could probably for most guys I find it's like hey we could actually eat more for sure there's some hunger that might not be a bad thing right where again that's a good sign that like our insulin sensitivity is in a good place but similarly here like I typically find greater the best outcomes just maybe we're at the upper end of maintenance so we have adequate fuel we're not necessarily going to get more growth out of more past that point so the goal here is basically to add a similar body fat as we build tissue so again calories will typically be at the upper end of maintenance probably four to five meals per day I would say like at least four for most people gonna be ideal if we have trouble digestion or hunger five minute more since really like a training day rest day approach here as well now in this instance rest days wouldn't be nearly as low as the last couple phases we talked about like that low carb carb approach on your in like the recalm phase in the fat loss phase here I would actually want to much higher carb intake I wouldn't want to like a huge drop off because what I find is if food is super low that previous day carb is super low that previous day that will hurt our performance the next training day period workout fueling so we're feeling right or training is very important so adequate hydration a good amount of your carbs typically between like a pretty intro post workout at least like 50% of a daily carbs we talked a lot about like what period workout nutrition would look like in previous episodes as well so I won't dig too deep into that here but also this is the case where I'll probably introduce like an intro workout drink to make sure hydration but also even throughout the training session like we have some carbs we have some creatine we have some amino acids potentially really put us in an anabolic environment to recover and then also the carbs will help and creating will help training performance now again we can't see muscle growth week to weeks when we're looking at our measures of success we're typically looking at how is the law book progressing on our key lifts that's important the execution quality or training through our video reviews and the intensity in your training those are going to be our biggest training metrics visually and here we're looking at over a month not weeks we're not going to see huge changes week to week body composition in this phase but over months we should be seeing over time if we're staying lean in we're building muscle more definition in the areas that you're leaner so if you have like typical female body fat storage patterns you might have a little bit more body fat in your glutes lower body so we might not see like huge we might not see like more definition more striations there we might see overall yes we're building shape here but you're not lean enough for us to see things again like new striations whereas we might see hey you're quite leaner upper back your delts okay we can actually see like these new striations even like it's the like upper chest area your arms you see more vascularity all good signs we are staying lean build the muscle oftentimes what I find is this shows up a lot more and I have almost everyone seeming to like those flex pictures alongside the relaxed now which helps but I find that this actually I can see a lot more like oh wow she's looking a lot more jacked in someone's training videos even more so than in their progress pictures we're also looking at with the measurements things like improve glute to waste and visuals seems like it can improve glute to waste ratio or shoulder to waste ratio but again basically we want body fat level staying similar so not a lot of blurring or loss of definition and any key areas is gonna be ideal with measurements body measurements waste staying the same what other measurements turned up can be a good sign but we do need to be cautious interpreting measurements here again like a lot of women will sort fat preferentially out of more bodies what we might see is oh my glutes went up but my way stayed the same so I build in glutes right I really could just be so on my body fat there as well so again this is kind of combined what we're seeing visually and in the wall book now I'm not too concerned with seeing a certain number on the scale but remember that the goal here is not to get leaner the goal is to build muscle so we don't want you losing weight via body fat for gaining muscle which should be over time gaining weight out of frame via muscle mass so the scale should be slowly training up over time it's very hard to put a number on that's because it varies so much I've seen some instances that don't make sense to me where it's like I don't know how we only gain two pounds here but it looks like you have like 15 pounds more muscle I can think of a couple I think but client came from Australia somebody really comes to mind here where it's like our weight isn't are they changing but your body composition looks so much different in this building phase it's and it's cool to see again I've talked with the several mentors about there's like for some reason women seem to do so much more hip-hopal body recomposition but basically I'm not too concerned with the number on the scale but expect it to probably slowly trend up now from there then we are getting into our final fat loss phase right so we've gone through a long productive building phase this final fat loss push should only take about eight to twelve weeks and if we do this correctly for many clients this is when they kind of reach their initial goal physique now of course this depends on how advanced your goal physique was let me back this up they'll kind of talk through the basics of it first so again probably going to be about eight to twelve weeks by this point we should have built a solid amount of muscle over the last six months you maintained your body fat quite well well building so we don't have a whole lot more body fat maybe there are a few weeks we've got a little bit lose over things we have slightly more but not a whole lot we've been eating higher calories for a long time so again this sets us up very well for a very productive fat loss phase should be relatively easy because we've spent so long at higher calories we have plenty to pull from probably also not doing a lot of cardio so we leverage both more cardio and lower calories your body should be in a very healthy response of place by this point so here we can typically see quick fat loss in the first few weeks and it's this is probably the coolest phase yet because we're uncovering the shape that we've been building over the last few phases over the last like year now I and I said this is a year of transformation but if you like put your other timelapse that put together it's more than year but I'm sorry I want to be realistic again on timelapse but really for most people I would say like a lot of times people underestimate whether I should keep up with here unless your initial goal physique is one where it's like damn this is a lot more muscle typically this is when most people reach the goal physiques at the end of this fat loss phase where okay we got leaner we set up the foundation we built the muscle we needed now we had to lose a bit more body fat to get to the goal physique which is such a cool place to be and now okay let's reassess what we will accomplish next and lay out like what is our next year's timeline look like now again understand that the more muscle the goal physiques requires especially the longer this will take for some people this is working through multiple cycles um but for you and like someone like uh the most common client avatar we've discussed here I think this is a pretty feasible timeline so to kind of recap what this looked like one more time weeks one through six we had that primer phase we're really building the foundation week seven through eighteen we had the body recall position phase we're focusing on that move more eat more approach losing fat building muscle at the same time least nineteen through thirty roughly where that fat loss phase where we're getting a lot leaner quickly thirty one through fifty six roughly where the lean building phase the leaner shape and then the last fifty seven to sixty eightish week fifty seven to week sixty nine were revealing all the shape we built so far and probably getting to the initial goal physique biggest takeaways here phases potentially each other right if we would skip the primer phase realistically this person would probably just be spaying their wills here from now wouldn't have been able to do like the next couple phase well or would have been responsibly wanted so that is important I find that for this individual move more eat more work so much better than that like just try to eat less and it'll cost just constantly less move more you have to build muscle to have the shape you want you can't just die your way there praying quality is such an important part of this training as a whole is such an important part of this and for most people this will be longer than your project and we do embrace that any questions final thoughts for me Michelle before we wrap it up I think we covered everything really well private alright y'all well hopefully this was helpful hopefully this helps you set sure you're up for success if you have any questions feel free to shoot me a dm on instagram if you would like to apply to work with our team you can hit the link in the show to apply for coaching Hey, we'll catch you guys next time.