[00:00:11] Speaker A: What's worthwhile? It's a question we all need to answer for ourselves. I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. As for me, it's building mind, body and spirit wellness. Let's ponder the big questions together as we seek peace of mind, vitality of body and joy of spirit.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: What I'm trying to educate people on with my team is that we really want to look for sustainable habits for sustainable way and a more moderate approach to weight loss where we fit nutrition around your lifestyle. My motto is really moderation and that all year round. I want to be able to allow myself on date night to have a brownie if I wanted to or to eat my, my grandma's pancakes if I wanted to. And, and without guilt by knowing how to incorporate that in, in a healthy nutrition in general.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Hey there, it's Ramsay here. That was Lisa Franz. Lisa is the founder and head coach of Nutrition Nutrition Coaching in Life and she helps clients with weight loss and strength building. I'm feeling pretty good about myself because I just got back from the gym with my daughter. She goes all the time me. Well, I like to think of myself as working out consistently, but if I'm honest, I can really benefit from learning more from Lisa about consistency and moderation and using the cycle of the year to my health and strength benefit. Instead of trying to just get back the bits of shape I lost over the holidays. How about you check out Lisa's approach? I think you'll find it valuable. Let's get to it. Hey Lisa, how are you doing today?
[00:01:59] Speaker B: I'm great, Ramsey. Thank you so much for having me on.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Happy to have you on, especially now because I think this is going to be a really timely episode for listeners. I'm going to post this podcast episode first thing in January. So people will be coming off of the holidays. And of course it is a time honored tradition for exercise programs to be started and then quickly abandoned this time of year. Right. But that is, that is not what we want, is it?
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Absolutely not. No. And I think you're alluding to the fact that I'm a nutrition coach and a fitness coach and. Yeah, absolutely. Like January is certainly some of my quote unquote, busier times. Although I would actually love for people to finally find a way to keep weight off and not yo, yo back and forth all the time with holidays, with travel and whatever. So that's sort of my mission, actually.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. And that is kind of the, the way that we would hope for, for it to happen. So I'm looking forward to talking to you all about that today, but why don't we first start. Start with a little bit more about you and your background.
You are the owner and head coach at Nutrition Coaching and Life. You also host a really great podcast and you have a master's degree in exercise science, health promotion and nutrition. But you started out in, in law enforcement, right? How is that?
[00:03:35] Speaker B: So I actually acquired my bachelor's degree in exercise science and then I changed paths a little bit and just thought I'd try something different. So I guess to give people some more context. I'm German. I moved to New Zealand in 2009 though that's where I met my now ex husband, but he's, he was from New Zealand and I finished my college degree over there, so in exercise science. And then after I finished that degree I was like, I don't really know what to do with that. I don't really want to be a personal trainer. And I actually, I don't feel like I have any life experience yet. Why don't I become a police officer? So that's precisely what I did for several years working there. Frontline. In New Zealand, you don't have to have citizenship in order to join the police, you just have to have residency. And it was a very, very interesting time. I learned certainly a lot about humanity in general and also just about myself.
Humanity in the sense that I, I'm generally probably a little bit too naive or maybe I believe in the good of the people most of the time.
So having my eyes opened that people do lie and people do do evil things from time to time was quite necessary actually in this case. But yeah, over the course of the years I realized that it A, was never my passion. It's not like from childhood onwards I was always saying, oh, I want to be in law enforcement one day and B, it was simply very, very hard on my body because we were doing some horrible shift work. And I mean, anybody who has done shift work in the past will know how tough that is on your body. So I decided for myself that I no longer wanted to do that. And over my last year within the police, I already started building up a clientele as a nutrition coach again because I also realized, yes, exercise is fun and I do love fitness training, but think people make any progress unless they address nutrition and training as well? So that's kind of how I got started with that. And by the time I finished with the police in 2019, I was already part time working for a different nutrition coaching company because again, I felt like I wanted some Guidance. I didn't want to have to focus on marketing, on acquiring my clients. I literally just wanted to become a very good coach. And within a few months after finishing with the police, I had built up to being a full time nutrition and nutrition coach. And yeah, then two and a half years into working for that company, I decided that I was ready now to go out on my own and started Nutrition Coaching in Life, which is my company that I've been running for the last three and a half years now. So, yeah, that's kind of the whole journey.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. So combination of nutrition and exercise and sleep, you know, those are all the things that we need. Right.
And you know, I think people have, and it's important to realize that people have different goals when it comes to, to fitness. You know, some people want to lose weight, some people more specifically want to, you know, burn fat. Um, I think some people are more focused on being strong and lean and fit. And some people want to, you know, build muscle mass to get, to get big.
So I'd love to talk about sort of the differences between each of those, but first, why don't we start out with what they have in common? You know, what are some basic lifestyle habits and requirements do that you need to have to really meet any of those goals?
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a really great entry point. And as you said, I actually love the individuality in general when it comes to food preferences, when it comes to, you know, it's, it's so amazing to see our differences. That someone loves cycling and the next person loves throwing around some heavy weights and all of that is wonderful. I do think everybody should aim for having a certain baseline in, in, in basically all areas, even just for longevity purposes in the sense of you probably want to be able to pick up your groceries by yourself when you're 70, 80, you know, however many years old, as opposed to being dependent on someone, you probably want to be able to tie your own shoes, you probably want to be able to maybe play with your kids or grandkids for as long as possible. And so this, in my opinion is like the pinnacle and should probably be the fundamental base goal for everybody. And then going from there into various different avenues. And I think that can definitely be very individual. If someone says, hey, I want to do a triathlon or I want to step on a bodybuilding stage or I literally don't care about exercise, I just want to be healthy. And that's the only reason I'm doing this. That's, that's A super valid reason as well.
So, yeah, let's look at all the various aspects of fitness and that we can address. So number one, should be having some sort of baseline cardiovascular fitness. Cardiovascular meaning your heart can pump sufficient oxygen or can pump the blood through your system in a good amount of time and with efficiency as well. And for most people, they automatically associate cardio with like, oh, I need to go on the treadmill, I need to go run, need to jump on a bike. And that's not even what I'm talking about. I think where I really would love for people to start that off with is simply walking. It's shocking to see on average how little we walk these days. It's just life is so convenient no matter where you are.
One aspect of my story that we didn't even or haven't gotten into yet is for the last six years, so since 2019, since I quit the police, I have been a digital nomad traveling around the world and I'm currently in Bolivia. Before we start started recording, I was telling you that before this I was in Colombia. And so yeah, I've been to 53 countries all over the world and I see the various lifestyles and what they do almost all have in common though is that unfortunately over the years we are becoming less active. Mind you, here in Bolivia and many other countries like this, it still means that they, that people are reasonably or a lot more active in their day to day life than they might be in the US or perhaps in England or something like that. Just out of necessity really. But yeah, so I think if we start thinking about, okay, how can I get a baseline amount of steps in and every single day, I think that that would be a really good starting point. And I, I don't want to even say Everybody should get 10000 steps because the person that currently only gets 2000 might be like, whoa, this is so far out of reach. I can never ever get that.
But if you say, okay, I'm gonna build on that, maybe I can add a thousand, two thousand every month, you're gonna do yourself a lot of good in the long run. So that would be really part number one. Of course, if you can want to build any kind of other cardio on top of that, and you're like, yeah, I've got my steps nailed. So once a week I'm gonna do a 30 minute jog where I'm gonna build up to a 30 minute steady kind of jog. That is awesome. That's a great way to incorporate some other cardiovascular Fitness or another type of cardiovascular fitness could be more like interval training, like on a bike doing some sprints and then resting a little bit and going again. So, I mean, there are. I don't even want to get into like the minutia of what different types of training we could look at when it comes to cardio. But yes, I would say if everyone just thinks of steps as like a baseline fitness, fitness that they should incorporate ideally daily or even just standing, as a matter of fact, that's a really good place to start off with. So that would be point number one. And from that, the second part, second very important part is strength. So as I already said, I think strength, not even from an aesthetic point of view. Most people think of, oh, I just want to, you know, either, either. Either they think strength training is for just the bodybuilders that want to look particularly muscular, or it's only for men, or whatever stigma we might have around it nowadays. I hope that many people realize that from a certain point onwards, the age of about 40, our body naturally wants to get rid of the muscle mass that we have that we don't use. It's like, okay, you're not actually utilizing this. It's expensive tissue. I'm going to get rid of it, because why have something that that's expensive and I'm not using? So if we don't work against this, we're going to lose muscle progressively as we age. Which is one thing that explains why many people fall as they get older and then that causes them to break, something that causes them to be immobile for a long time, and in many, many cases are actually the reason for someone's death in the long run and not so much any particular accident or illness that they might have. So we want to prevent that. We want to keep people as mobile and as functional as long as possible. And that is actually, in my opinion, the main reason to be doing strength training, aside from the fact that muscle tissue has so many great benefits when it comes to blood sugar regulation, when it comes to hormone regulation, like literally, literally so many things.
And of course, apart from that, it's also, as I mentioned, more metabolically active, which means it needs more energy than fat mass. So if you have two people, they're the same weight and one person has 30% body fat and the other person has 15% body fat, the person with 15 body fat is going to be burning more calories doing absolutely nothing than the other person doing absolutely nothing. So in my opinion, those are the three biggest reasons to be Doing physical activity to be doing cardio and strength training.
And apart from that, of course there are some other, let's say smaller aspects or aspects that go off of that, as for example, range of motion. So kind of like mobility, which also is, is being trained when you're doing strength training or when you're doing endurance training. Another aspect would be coordination. Of course, if we're working on our cycling skills or if we are lifting, doing a squat or so that is kind of a coordination which also keeps your cognitive function higher. So yes, many, many reasons for people to be active.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: You know, you said something really interesting to me that I hadn't ever really thought about in that frame. Exactly.
Which was that muscle was very expensive, expensive to have and to keep. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about, you know, in the context of weight loss.
I think ideally when people think about having weight loss, they think about losing fat and keeping muscle. But that isn't always really the case. Right. And I wonder if that has something to do with that notion that, like, what do you mean by muscle mass is expensive?
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah, love it. Love that we dig more into this and you're so right. Well, most people say weight loss, they mean fat loss. But unfortunately in many cases we either lose like equal parts fats and muscle and then just end up kind of skinny fat, which is what nobody really wants. And so several ways to counter that. Or the two main ways to counter that are specifically strength training. So giving the body a stimulus, a reason to keep the muscles. So basically saying, no, no, no, don't get rid of this tissue. I'm, I'm actually being used. But you can get rid of the fat. Nobody's using that. Go ahead, burn that.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Burn it.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. And the other really undervalued or often not talked about thing that we can do in order to send the body the stimulus to keep muscle mass even without training, without strength training, is to eat a diet high in protein. That in and of itself will send the body the signal to keep more muscle anyway. Maybe not the same amount as if you also pair that with resistance training, but more muscle. So you might not lose 50, 50 fat and muscle. You might lose 2/3 fat and only a third muscle or so along the way. And the reason for that is proteins are literally the building blocks of our body. So literally our entire body, not just the muscles themselves, but also connective tissue, skin and so on, is all made of various proteins. And so if we feed our body more of that, it's going to keep more of that. Of course, the fat tissue is not made out of protein building blocks. It's made out of fat as, as we can expect. But yeah. So why is muscle mass more expensive, so to speak? It's just more, quote unquote, expensive to maintain. So it has higher energy requirement to be maintained than fat mass does. So if you put one next to the other one is going to be requiring more calories from your body to be maintained than the other one. And of course, your body is so smart. It's only your main objective really is to keep you alive. And so it wants to be. It's not, it doesn't run like a Ferrari where it's like, yeah, I'm going to waste all the energy that I have. Unfortunately not. Most of the time it's more like a super efficient hybrid car where it's like, how can I spend as little energy as possible? Which is, you know, one of the reasons why sometimes our metabolism adapts. And that's a whole other avenue we could, we could do another entire podcast on. But yeah, that's basically the main reason that's really interesting.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: And you know, when we talk about weight loss too, the other big issue is that people mostly or often experience cycles of losing weight and then gaining it back and then having to, you know, start at square one and lose it again. But, you know, and sometimes you find that, you know, your, your BMI or your, your ratio of fat to muscle might not even be as good or it might be worse the after you gain it back than, you know, you were the first time that you went and lost weight. So how do you help people to sort of break that cycle and lose the weight and not gain it back?
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Yeah, great question. So, I mean, the reason why that even happens, why we often gain more weight back than before, is exactly connected to what I was just saying. Your body is so smart, it doesn't actually want you to lose fat because it's thinking, this is security tissue. This is going to keep me alive in case of a hunger period. And we've just gone through a hunger period. So your dieting phase, so it's going to send you, number one, all the hunger signals to actually eat more. So if someone after diet says, I'm just going to eat intuitively, I always caution them because if you intuitively just listen to your body after a diet, it will tell you to eat more than before. Number two, physiologically speaking, also, our body is actually creating new fat cells post diet, where it's more inclined to store more of the food that we eat as body fat immediately afterwards. Because again, it's like, oh, what if we go through another hunger period? We should probably have some extra cushion here. So those are really the main reasons why that even happens and how do we prevent that? So it starts on a more psychological level. And I do hope people listen to this before they have started a, an extreme diet. And if they've just gone through an extreme diet or they are in the middle of it, don't worry, you can, you know, moderate transition over into something more moderate. But unfortunately we do have more of like a short term vision most of the time and we're like, I want to get to my goal as quickly as possible. It's post the holidays, I put on too much weight, I feel uncomfortable. So we go from overindulging over the month of November, December, whatever it might be to, to basically eating half of what we did or maybe saying, I'm not going to have any sugar, I'm not going to have any alcohol and just doing something completely unsustainable long term for most people. And by that, by doing that we're setting ourselves up for failure. Because a, when we go about something in an aggressive way, yes, we do see more weight loss. But as we just discussed, most of that is more likely to come from muscle and fat than just fat if we go about it in a more aggressive manner. And number two, we don't practice healthy habits along the way. So what most people do, they then might, you know, cut their calories down to like 1200 during the week and then binge on the weekends. Or they might be able to stick to those 1200 for like four to six or maybe even eight weeks. But then they stop and they're like, oh, I feel so deprived and suddenly overeat on other things. So, so that's, that's kind of a big reason too extreme at first or for the duration of the calorie restriction and without practicing things like how do I incorporate a meal out into this healthy way, how do I go on vacation and practice moderation there? It's always these extremes of like really over restricting and then overdoing it that we really need to get out of. And the second problem, and that's actually more. More common or not more common, definitely not more common. But I, I also work with a lot of women that after a diet they might get to their goal and then they're so afraid to eat a little bit more again because logically speaking, we need to bring your Calories back up from a calorie deficit. So by definition, a calorie deficit is where we eat less than what the body needs. And so we need to bring it back up to a maintenance level. But not, as I was saying in a, oh, I'm going to go about it in an intuitive way and more in the sense of slowly gradually lifting up the calories again, so maybe increasing 100, 200 calories per week, waiting, giving the body a chance to adapt, then again increasing, making sure your weight sort of stays stable until you get to your maintenance. So in nutrition coaching we speak about or this is called nutritional periodization where we actually don't just have a plan for the weight loss. And again, that, that's even something that most people get wrong. They might just say I want to get to X amount of weight. They don't think about how, how much is realistic to lose each weight week, how long is it going to take me to get there, how do I incorporate a week of vacation in there and all this, this, this would be the first step, but the second part would be doing that reverse diet that I was just alluding to into a maintenance phase. That would be the next. So that's called nutritional periodization. And yeah, I see many women stuck in that, oh, I'm too afraid of eating more again. And so that turns into them under eating for many years, sometimes over exercising. And that also brings the body in a very unhealthy state when it comes to metabolism, when it comes to hormonal issues. So we've got several things going on here that we really want to look out for. And what I'm trying to educate people on with my team is that we really want to look for sustainable habits, for sustainable way and a more moderate approach to weight loss where we fit nutrition around your lifestyle. Again, I was saying I travel quite a lot, so I, I also work with clients that work, travel a lot for their work or even just for pleasure. And so when someone travels, I don't want them to every single time come back with five pounds heavier or to feel like that's a time that doesn't count. Like when in Vegas, no one, no one cares. So kind of like with this motto, I, my motto is really moderation and that all year round I want to be able to allow myself on date night to have a brownie if I wanted to or to eat my, my grandma's pancakes if I wanted to. And, and without guilt by knowing how to incorporate that in, in a healthy nutrition in general.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: Well, what I'm. What I'm hearing from you is that we should have reasonable kind of moderate and gradual kinds of changes and consistency.
And that gets back to something else. I think, you know, if we have in our mind, if we decide in our mind, you know what, I'm just going to lose ten pounds in ten days, and then everything's going to be fine after that. I'm going to stay at that weight. You know, you can sort of imagine that in your mind, but it's not something that your body is going to be necessarily on board with, and you're not really signaling to your body that that's what's happening. If you have suddenly restricted your calories so severely that anything like that is even possible, you know, you're going to have to have a real serious conversation with your body about what. What's going on and what their priorities are, because your body's priorities are, like you said, to keep us alive and keep us through difficult times.
Whereas if you are, you know, taking a much more reasonable, measured approach, you know, you can signal your body through your consistent exercise and your consistent activities and your consistent habits that, you know, this is how it is now. Like, I know, you know, you've told me that muscle is expensive. Okay, I get that. But we're using it. It's a good investment. We're gonna. We're gonna stick with that. So I think that really resonates that that's really good.
But I gotta ask, what about that last, you know, £5 or so? Like this belly fat that I've got going on here, like, it. It doesn't want to go away. It's gonna stay.
So talk to me about, you know, I think I'm not the only one, right?
How do we. How do we get past that. That last barrier of that spare tire that just is going to be hanging around for life otherwise.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Yeah, Ramsey, I think that's definitely a question that many people ask themselves. I do want to just touch on what you said before, because consistency, in addition to moderation, those two words are my absolute favorite words when it comes to nutrition coaching, because nothing beats consistency. And any kind of intense, aggressive approach for a short amount of time is always going to be trumped by doing something moderate consistently. And it's going to be healthier for your body. I will guarantee that to people. But, yeah, to address your question, when it comes to those last pesky five pounds or so that we might have. So there can be several reasons for. For that. First of all, we should understand that usually as you said, it's normally around the lower belly and that is where most of our organs are. And our body wants to specifically protect the organs, the reproductive, reproductive organs specifically. So that's often why that's like the last thing to go again for security reasons. Your body's like, hey, you can have everything else, but that part we're going to keep safe. No, no matter what, until of course you get to a certain point. But so, so that can be one reason and what we can do to counter that is really to send our body more safety signals in other ways. So yeah, okay, you are restricting the food, but how can we make the body feel safe in other ways? Number one would be sleep. There many people are sleep deprived, don't see sleep and weight loss or training necessarily connected. But the studies are very, very clear that if we sleep even just like seven hours on a regular basis, as opposed to five or six, weight loss is a lot easier, quicker. And weight loss also comes more from fat than fat and muscle. So that's a really good way and reasonably easy way I guess, to tell the body, hey, you're safe, otherwise you can get let go of that last little bit of fat and other ways to manage or get, I guess tell our body that it's safe is essentially just managing cortisol better. And while cortisol is a great hormone, we do need cortisol in order to get things done, to adapt to various stressors in our life, which again, stress can be a good thing and is a good thing, but we want to make sure that it's not a chronically high state of cortisol. So anything else that is a perceived stress, but also a stress that we might not even perceive as stress. So for example, work stress or emotional stress with your partner sitting in annoying traffic, all these things are stressors and the better we can manage them, environmental toxins, like literally, you know, you name it, the more your body is going to respond to that calorie deficit or to the training that you're doing and letting go of those last £5. So it could even be as simple as incorporating a little bit of breathing work into your day. And by that I don't necessarily mean a 20 minute deep breath wim hof session. It can even just be three to five deep breaths before you eat and making sure you're not eating at the desk, maybe actually going outside or if the weather permits or going into like a bit of a calmer state. It could be eating undistracted or it can be oh Something pissed you off in traffic and instead of reacting negatively, you're actually just going to take three to five, five deep breaths thinking of like, how's that going to matter in 5 days time? It's really not. So. So managing your day to day stress is a really good other point. And then the third one does pertain to training and nutrition. So one part I already spoke about and that's not dieting too aggressively because if it's super, super aggressive and then you're swinging back to your party weekends or party vacation time or so that doesn't send the body a safety signal. It sends the body the signal of I don't know what's coming up. It could be that next week we're in a deficit again. It could be that next week we've got way too much, too much food coming in and I don't really know what to do with it, so I'm just going to store it. So that's not ideal either. We really want more moderate, more strategic, more planned out regular meal times, whatever that means to that person. It doesn't have to be a specific number but regular mealtime so that the body knows what to anticipate. And the training aspect is a big one as we get to these last five pounds or so because sometimes we're actually overdoing it. Specifically again, that person that I was speaking about earlier, that might be restricting calories a little bit too much, that might almost be doing too many training sessions per week. They often also tend to gravitate towards like hiit training and very intensive unless I'm super sweaty at the end of my workout. It wasn't a great workout type people. And with that again, that's just another. Even though you, you are, you know, or might be quote unquote burning more calories, we don't really want to focus on that in, in that way anyway and we want to see, okay, how can I get my body to adapt to what I wanted to do. So whether that is your, you've got your endurance goal or you've got your muscle growth goal or so, but how can I make that in a way that it's not so intense that it's not so strenuous for the body and there a great training program or a training program that's not so stressful for the central nervous system is really kind of where it's at. So maybe less compound lifts and more isolation work or maybe less hit training and a little bit more steady state cardio. And yeah, that's, that's kind of getting quite nuanced, but in it comes down to managing your stress better, sending your body a safety signal so that even though you are in a calorie deficit, it's going to allow you to let go of those last few pounds.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: Well, that's great. I love all of those holistic things, tying all of that stuff together in a very reasonable way. All right, so how about with people who do want to step it up and take it to the next level and you know, bulk up, build beyond kind of the, the state that they had been previously? Like, what's that like? And, and is it different for men versus women? Is it different at different ages? Like, I kind of assume that it is, but why don't you talk to me about that?
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. And the entry point is actually the same that, as I would advise, advise for someone who wants to lose weight in a moderate way this time around, and that is simply by starting to record your current food in a food tracking app. And by recording that, I mean literally, like weighing your food out and entering that into the food tracking app. And while that always sounds super tedious, super meticulous and annoying to people, honestly, if you commit to that for even just two to four weeks, it will be eye opening and very educational and you don't even need to take it further from there. But I would almost say that by the end of the four weeks, you're like, whoa, this was so interesting. And I actually saw some results from that. I'm going to keep going with it because it gets easier. Like with anything, it becomes kind of a habit and it gets easier over time. But the reason I'm saying this is that we don't actually know, like, okay, how much of a calorie deficit am I in or how much more than I should be eating am I eating if you're currently gaining weight. And number two, am I actually getting enough protein? And I already noted that that is actually one really, really important aspect of us retaining or building muscle mass. And if we don't know, like, okay, I have some protein in every meal. Well, great, some protein. What does that mean? Does that, is that relevant to your body weight? So we really want to get more data. And I mean, just like when you have a savings goal or you want to purchase a house or so you wouldn't just say like, you know, whatever, I don't actually know how much I'm spending or how much I'm earning. I don't care, but I want that.
That would be like, everybody would agree that that's really unreasonable. You kind of need to have a bit of a spreadsheet of what's actually coming in and out. And so that's the same that our body functions, right? So we, we just want to start off recording what you're currently eating so that we could get a good picture of how is your body responding to that amount of calories right now. And that will give you an idea of where your maintenance is at. And then from there, if you want to gain weight or lose weight, you just subtract or add a certain percentage. And usually that should come from carbs and fats, because in any case, whether you want to lose, maintain, or gain weight, your protein should be set at about the same. So ideally at about 0.8 to 1.2 grams per pound of body weight. And for those of you calculating in kilos, that would be about 1.6 to 2.2 or 2.4 grams per kilo. And so, so, so in any case, just to simplify it, I always like to just say, like, one gram per pound of gold body weight. So if you're currently, I don't know, 150 pounds and you want to be 130, I would just set it at 130. If you're currently 170 and you want to be 190, just set it at 190. So that's kind of how I would go about it. And then the second point, of course, determining the calories. So let's just say you have figured out that in order to maintain your weight, you are currently consuming 2,000 calories. Now, if you want to lose weight, I would just start off with a moderate deficit of about 10 to 15%. So, you know, somewhere around about 1700 calories, perhaps. And likewise in the other direction, if you want to gain some muscle, I would just add about 10% to that. Just to start off with going about it in a moderate way so that you don't gain a lot of fat along with that muscle as well. So that would simply be 2,200. And then being consistent with that, again, going back to our two favorite words and seeing what happens, monitoring your weight over the course of the next few weeks to see, okay, is it actually changing? Maybe it might not be changing. It might not actually be that much of a. Or enough of a surplus. So you might just add another 5% through carbs or fats to that. Again, protein staying stable. And yeah, that is essentially how I would start off, whether weight loss or muscle gain and just really being Mindful of how long, what is my actual goal? Like where do I want to get to? Because just saying, I just want to gain muscle. Okay, cool. Like, do you have any specific areas that you want to built? Are you specifically focusing on your arms, your glutes? Is it. Can we be a little bit more detailed? But then also making sure you're giving yourself enough time. I would say when it comes to muscle growth, that's probably alongside of being inconsistent. The, the main fault that I see people make is just saying I'm going to go into this muscle growth phase for two months or three months. Well, unfortunately, muscle grows very slowly as a tissue and especially if we have been at this for some time, if you're not necessarily 18, 19 years old, okay, that's kind of a different story. Perhaps your testosterone is high and you're completely new to strength training and eating a higher protein diet. But if you are, let's say in your 40s and above, it's going to take some time. So I would just say give yourself at least six months, maybe nine months, maybe even longer, and to really devote to that muscle growth. Even if on a day you feel a little bit fluffier and you feel like, oh, I actually just want to reduce my calories today because I don't feel good. Stick with it and make sure you don't just yo, yo, in and out of things and thereby shutting your cutting your results short because you're not actually being consistent with your goal or even clear on your goal.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: And maybe it takes all year. You know, this is the, the good news is that we're at the beginning of a new year and if we take the attitude that it's going to be all year and it's going to take all year, and this is just how it's going to be going forward, as opposed to, I'm going to knock this off in the first quarter. You know, that's probably an unrealistic expectation.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Well, absolutely. But yeah. Ramzi, I'll share a sample sort of outline of the year with you that I have seen work really, really well for men and for women overall. So most people want to start the year off wanting to lose a little bit of weight. That is absolutely understandable. They feel uncomfortable coming off of eating a bit too much and so on. So starting the year off with a deficit, with a, with a weight loss phase for, let's say 12 to 16 weeks is a really great frame because by that time we're still keeping your metabolism healthy, especially if you are going about it in a moderate way. And then you get to spring and you actually feel great. You know, it's April, you're like, okay, cool, let's reverse. We're going into this reverse diet that I was talking about where we slowly gradually increase the calories again, reversing about it out of it in a strategic manner that might take you six weeks or so. So perhaps we are now at the beginning of June. Awesome. You're looking shredded. You're feeling good for summer. Your body is feeling healthy because you're actually at maintenance calories, your hormones are good, you're just, you know, living life over the course of the summer for maybe the next three months. We're just practicing maintenance and that is such an undervalued thing. Again, the main goal of this phase should just be to maintain your weight, to not yo, yo back and forth, to not do anything over restrictive and to not add on tons of body fat. So by now, okay, we're maintaining until let's say about September or October time. And this is a great time, sweater weather, right? This is a great time school starting back up where you don't really need to be looking that, that great anymore in a T shirt or perhaps even without a shirt. So it's okay to increase the calories a little bit and transition over into a muscle gaining phase. So we're in September now and that also coincides with the following holidays in October, November, December for many people. And so it might be nicer to have a little bit more wiggle room to play when it comes to your calories and really pushing it in the gym there as well. And so you can then transition or keep going with that muscle growth phase. Ideally it would not just last for those three months until January, ideally a little bit longer. And maybe in that next following year you could keep the weight loss phase a bit shorter, maybe just eight weeks or so. But you could repeat that cycle over and over and over again and it would be so healthy for your body. And of course that's only going to work if along with the muscle growth phase, you don't gain a ton of body fat. So keeping that moderate, keeping still a good eye on your calories and your protein. And it also only works if you're not over restrictive throughout that calorie deficit. So that can be a really, really good outline where we're saying we have a bit of a weight loss phase at the beginning of the year or beginning of spring perhaps, then we're reverse dieting. We're maintaining over the summer we're going into a nice muscle growth phase over fall and some of winter. And over the course of the years, you just build and sculpt your body or work on whatever goals you have. When it comes to endurance training as.
[00:43:30] Speaker A: Well, that sounds absolutely fantastic. How can you help us do that? Where can people go to to get that plan and to get your advice? How do people get a hold of you?
[00:43:44] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, so I am most active on Instagram. My handle there is Nutrition Coaching and Life. That's name of my company, same website name, Nutrition Coaching and Life. I'm also under that name on LinkedIn. The name of my podcast is the Nutrition and Life Podcast. But yeah, I love working with people one on one. We don't do any group coaching specifically because everything that we create is like 100% personalized to that person. And yeah, I of course hope that people will look me up and if they do, even just send me a message saying, hey, I heard you on Ramsey's podcast. That would be lovely.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: That's great. You know, Lisa, thank you so much. This has been really great and educational for me.
It's really encouraging to hear that we can look at things, you know, from a big picture and all together in terms of what we're eating and how we sleep and the activities that we take and, and how really the solution doesn't have to be so difficult. It can instead be reasonable and consistent and rational and spread out. And I just love that, that picture of the year that you painted for us. So thank you so much. I appreciate it.
[00:45:05] Speaker B: My true pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you for asking what's worthwhile? Visit whatsworthwhile.net to learn more about me, Ramsey Zimmerman, and please provide your name and email. To become a supporter, I'm asking for prayer advice, feedback and connections. The what's Worthwhile podcast is on Spotify, Apple, Iheart and Amazon. You can also
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