00:00
Hey everybody, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia and this week on the podcast, I am joined by my good friend and one of the smartest people I know, Brandon DaCruz, the host of the Chasing clarity podcast for the first episode in a new collaborative series, bringing together our perspectives on nutrition, fat loss and body composition. And this is really sort of born from the

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number of questions that we get from our audiences, from our clients and members along a lot of the same themes and topics. So we thought it would be really fun to address these together with our different perspectives because of course Brandon has so many skills and attributes that I just do not have and I am also able to bring my perspective to

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the topic at hand and together I really do think it just provides such a sound base for both the science of a particular principle but the application of it as well both at the individual and the group level. So we kick things off this week with a deep dive into rapid fat loss and protein-spearing modified fast. We start with what a protein-spearing modified fast actually is and how each of us define rapid fat loss in practice.

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So we explore the potential benefits of taking a more aggressive approach to fat loss alongside the physiological, psychological, and behavioral drawbacks that need to be considered. We also share how these strategies look with real clients in real situations. Brandon shares how he uses rapid fat loss days, deficit deloads, and high carbohydrate refeeds. Well, I explain how

01:52
PSMF days and structured diet breaks are incorporated into Monday's matter. And we also discuss who rapid fat loss strategies are not appropriate for, including circumstances where hormonal health, energy availability, training demands or physique goals mean a more conservative approach is warranted. So this is both a nuanced and a practical discussion where rapid fat loss is presented to you as a useful tool

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but also where it could be counterproductive and why context matters far more than simply labeling an approach as good or bad. I'm going to share Brandon's details. You guys will know this as well. Brandon de Cruz is an online nutrition coach and physique coach, accredited nutritionist, functional nutrition and metabolism specialist, and health and fitness educator with over 16 years coaching experience. And throughout his career, Brandon has helped more than 1200 clients

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ranging from Olympia level physique competitors and competitive athletes to business owners, executives, and lifestyle clients, helping them to improve their body composition, optimize performance, and enhance their overall health. His coaching philosophy is rooted in an evidence-based, informed approach that combines the best available research with the real-world coaching experience gained from working directly with clients for, as I said, over 15 years.

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You can find Brandon over on his website, BrandonDeCruzFit.com or straight on Instagram at BrandonDeCruz. And also the Chasing Clarity podcast, which is like this treasure trove of information. I absolutely love it. You guys have heard me talk about it before. It's on all of your favorite podcast listening platforms. And this is becoming a regular feature for my podcast and his podcast as well.

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I have links as to when Brandon has appeared on Micopedia before in the show notes, so dive into them if you have not heard any of our podcasts together. And before we crack on into this awesome conversation guys, I would like to remind you that the best way to support this podcast is to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast listening platform. That increases the visibility of Micopedia and amongst literally thousands of other podcasts out there. So more people get to hear from the guests that I have on the show.

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like Brandon D'Cruz. All right guys, enjoy this conversation. Brandon, I was super excited when you put the idea to me because I love chatting to you. And in fact, people often talk about how I've got friends who are like, Mickey, you only started a podcast so you can just hang out with your mates and have conversations. And I'm like, well, that's not wrong. But to your point, people can then hear us chat about it because I often hear other people say that too, that they would love to be a fly on the wall.

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for the conversations that I have with my super brainiac friends like yourself. And so what a perfect opportunity to sort of kill two birds with one stone. 100%. I always say that I wish that I had the foresight and also didn't have a fear of public speaking to be honest with you. I have so many conversations that I had with the likes of Dr. Scott Stevenson or Chris Beardsley or people that I mentored with many years ago. And I didn't, A, I didn't think to record the calls and B, some of them I did, but they were not in a podcast format.

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or podcast friendly format. And I wish I had been able to really see that podcasting would have been something of popularity because we're talking the mid 2000 or 2010s. So I would have really been able to show people maybe my development as my thought process, my critical thinking abilities kind of progress, but we've been able to do that over the years. it's always a blessing to sit down with a like-minded individual like yourself that really does have the same goal in mind, the same mission and the same intention. So I'm very much looking forward to the series. And if you're ready,

05:43
we can kick it off. Yeah, let's do that. All right. So let's start with what a protein-sparing modified fast actually is because the term gets thrown around loosely and most people using it aren't describing the same thing. So I'll go through some of the history of protein-sparing modified fasts and a little bit of the research behind it just so people have a foundational understanding of what this is. And then we can get more into the nitty gritty of differentiating protein-sparing modified fasts from rapid fat losses more so in how we use.

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So the protein-sparing modified fast came out of clinical medicine and was developed by Dr. George Blackburn back in 1970s. Blackburn was originally working with severely obese patients. And the problem he was finding was he was trying to solve what the very low calorie diets at that time were doing, which was stripping body protein, so essentially lean body mass, with body fat. And he was finding that many of his patients were losing an enormous amount of weight. So it was effective in that regard, but they were also losing a ton of lean mass with it.

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So he built a diet around the idea that if you keep protein high, you can run an extremely low calorie diet and still spare lean mass. And that's where the name comes in. Protein sparing is not a marketing term. It's more so like the mechanism behind it. The entire diet is constructed around protecting body protein while everything else gets stripped away. Now a true PSMF is a very low calorie diet. And if you look in the clinical literature, it's generally between like 600 to 800 calories. You'll see different estimations, but generally 650 to 800. And nearly all those calories are going to come from lean protein sources.

07:08
And then if you actually look into a lot of like the guidelines for it, they're generally going to minimize carbohydrates under 20 to 30 grams per day and dietary fat is going to be 30 grams or less per day. So essentially what that really means in practice is you're only going to be getting fat from your trace fat sources, from protein sources and pretty much nothing else. Now it's called a modified fast, not because you're actually abstaining for food. So it's not like looking at fasting as a window, but it's because you're fasting from the energy dense part of your diet.

07:35
You're fasting from starch carbohydrates, from alcohol, from grains, oils, and added fats, anything hyperpalatable essentially. So from a mechanistic standpoint, there are three things that are happening here and they're worth separating because people tend to not realize what's really being done. So we're reducing carbohydrates far enough to deplete liver and muscle glycogen because we have to go back to the fact that this was initially intended for those with excessive adiposity, obesity, metabolic syndrome, or metabolic diseases. So what they're trying to do is get

08:05
a fast scale weight drop. And you're going to see that due to multiple things. It's a very low calorie diet, but you're also going to have a massive glycogen depletion. And because glycogen carries water with it, that glycogen going down is going to cause a significant amount of body weight loss that has nothing to do with that. And that's going to happen very early on. That's called early phase weight loss. Then dietary fat is reduced to near the essential minimum. And I want to get precise about this because a lot of people explain this badly. You'll hear that a lot of people say that

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going to cut the fat and the carbs to lower insulin so it can release more fat. And I understand the mechanism there. But from my reading of the evidence, I don't think that's the mechanism that matters most. Really, when we look at dietary fat reduction, especially where this came from the 70s, it was more so a way to induce the greatest deficit possible. And by pulling out the dietary fat, we're able to reduce one of the largest contributors to someone's total energy intake, especially in people that at that time were not tracking. So a lot of times, when we look at the literature from especially the 70s to the 90s,

09:00
we were finding that people were passively over consuming dietary fat before the low fat movement came in. So they were really trying to be able to pull down energy intake quite precipitously. And then the last portion of this diet is protein and that's prioritized to protect metabolically active lean tissue because protein is gonna be the most protein sparing macronutrient we have. And actually if you look back, Lyle McDonald and I have had a conversation about this. One of the, I guess, limitations or the drawbacks of the initial low calorie diet. if we look at the...

09:29
VLCD diets was that they use very low protein intakes. And so we saw precipitous loss in knee mass. And once they rectified that through a higher protein intake, they saw that that was not as much of the case. Now, Mickey, do you think it's worth us highlighting some of the limitations of the traditional proteins-bearing modified fast? I'll give you an example. What are your thoughts on how they used to use a liquid diet and meal replacements in the research as compared to what we would find to be more beneficial or efficacious now?

09:56
Yeah, well, I mean, think I was thinking about this, Brendan, as you were chatting, because in the research particularly, these people are not institutionalized. were some outpatients, but it was this continuous protein-spearing modified fast. Anywhere, at least from my reading, up to about six months of being on just every day was this liquid diet. But as I understand it, with some of the initial, very initial studies done with collagen as opposed to... That was...

10:26
As opposed to actual protein. That was the last chance diet. Yeah. So the last chance diet, and it was very interesting about that. It was turned the last chance diet and what the marketing, you know, the marketing behind that was that it was the last diet you were going to need. ironically enough, and unfortunately enough, it became last chance diet because it had dozens of people that died from protein malnutrition because it wasn't a supply. was collagen and it was a cheap protein. So gelatin and collagen, and it wasn't providing all essential amino acids. So they were losing, they were actually losing heart tissue.

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from the degradation from being in such a large deficit and being protein, they were going through protein malnutrition. Yeah, it's crazy. And I guess if anything, if this speaks to anything, it's that you cannot rely on collagen alone for your protein. So if anyone takes anything away, please, please just remember that. But also it's just not real life, right? Like we don't live in as inpatients or outpatients in terms of, you know, our overall life and it's

11:24
It cannot just be that liquid diet approach, albeit I believe that they also supplied them with IV nutrients as well to make sure that they were getting everything they needed. It was therapeutic. They were in hospital. Some of them were. It was a pre-surgical phase, or it was. These people were what was termed morbidly obese. Their life was on the line, essentially, and it was to your point.

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I not a last chance, it was extreme. was extreme. 100%. I think I've looked at much of the research on this and what I see, and I do understand why they used liquid diets and then meal replacements because actually my favorite research comes from liable and Rosenbaum, which were out of Columbia University. did all the initial metabolic adaptation research. If you look at a lot of their stair-stepped studies where they bring them down to 10 % of body weight,

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and then they stabilize them and they bring them down to 20 % of body weight. And it shows like the greatest degrees of metabolic adaptation, but also the greatest degrees of like sustained weight loss. All of those are liquid infusion diets essentially. And the reason for that is from research standpoint, it gives you exactly precise control over that participant's intake and it eliminates a variable. But for me, just from a practical standpoint, the biggest issue that I've had with that, and I actually have had people that have come to me from...

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shake diets, liquid diets, that they've done this with weight loss clinics that are popular in the States, especially when I was located in Jersey and I was working with people in person. New York has a ton at that time, had a ton of weight loss centers. And for me, from a practical standpoint, that was insufficient, first and foremost, because no one's going to live off of liquids in and of themselves for the rest of their lives. And the other issue with that was it didn't cement or didn't build any eating behaviors that they could carry forward in the dieting phase. And what I've seen in...

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in my own experience is people would come to me three, six months after going through that weight loss phase that it was a liquid diet and they would have rebounded precipitously. And a lot of times what they reported back to me was that they didn't really know how to regulate their intake once they moved out from these pre-measured liquid meal replacements or they were using packets at that time or they were given actual drinks. And it was almost like they weren't able to regulate their hunger with whole foods, which is actually...

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interesting because generally we would see a more satiating effect from Whole Foods. But then we have to realize the practical application perspective of this, the eating behaviors, the habits, even just like the day-to-day routine, they were out of their routine when they went back. It was such a paradigm shift going from one spectrum, know, one extreme of the spectrum to the other. And so it really didn't allow them to sustain or to really build any habits that they could go past that dieting phase or past the

14:09
you know, the intervention phase where they had someone, you know, these weight loss clinics, they weigh them in weekly. It's almost like weight rockers. They weigh them in weekly. They're monitoring them. They're giving them all their food. It's almost like they locked them in captivity. They got them lean and then they just let them out into the wild. So it really, to me, has never made sense. I really want people to be utilizing whole foods first. you know, obviously we'll discuss later on how we do this, but I'm sure we'll agree on the fact that we're not using liquid meal replacements as

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the primary intervention from a rapid fat loss perspective? No, not at all. this is where I feel that the whole concept of rapid fat loss probably gets a bit of a bad rap, if you like, because that, as you just described it, is how people understand it. Oh, rapid fat loss. Okay, it's all about getting the weight off as quickly as possible, by any means as possible, without any thought as to...

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building those habits along the way, which is something that obviously you and I talk about a lot with the people we work with as being this fundamental part of the fat loss process. Regardless of the speed of weight loss, we still want to be building those habits. I'm curious, as to what you think, the way that you were describing that hunger wasn't able to be well controlled post the liquid diet.

15:21
It's a mechanism, do you think, similar to what you might see in physique athletes? You know, who have just come through a competition and their hunger, because they've been on such low, calories, they have, some people have real issues with hunger. Do you think it's sort of similar? So what I think it is, is that if we look at rapid weight loss, especially in a liquid diet perspective, if you are to lose a precipitous amount of lean mass during a weight loss trial or a weight loss period,

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you predispose yourself towards hyperphagia, which is extreme and persistent hunger that is not ceased until you regain the lean mass that you lost. So the best example of this is the Minnesota semi-sarvation study. They put these men for 24 weeks on a 50 % deficit. And essentially they went from approximately 3,200 calories to about 1560 or 1580 calories per day. And it was a, you know, a sustained period of time. Well, these guys lost somewhere in the realm of 25 % of their body weight with 40 % or so

16:19
coming from lean mass ended up itself. Well, what they found in that post-diet phase, or that post-intervention phase, was that they did not stop experiencing extreme insatiable hunger until they regained all the lean mass that they had lost. Now, here's the issue. Lean mass and fat mass are lost at different rates, first and foremost, but they're regained at different rates. So, what ends up happening is if you go from a very large deficit, and this could be the same example as a liquid meal replacement.

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You go from say a 1500 calorie deficit and you're losing a few pounds per week. And then you get out of that and the goal has been removed. have, now in these interventions, they're not having supervision anymore for the most part in the post-trial period. Now what ends up happening is when you go, it's not like they had a stair-step approach. They actually did in the Minnesota semi-sarvation study and one of the arms, they had a stair-step approach, but they could not deal with the hunger. The adherence was terrible.

17:16
But if you were to go from this place where you're experiencing ravenous hunger and you get out of diet, a lot of times what people do is they overeat in response at hyperphagia and they go through what's called body fat overshooting. And we see the mechanism there is not only the loss in fat mass, which decreases leptin, it's actually the loss in lean mass because the body has a protein stat that is sensing fat-free mass and that's a precious tissue. So if you look at the work of initially the Minnesota Seminar of Starvation Study, which is key, is when it was reannounced

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reanalyzed by DeLue and colleagues. DeLue has all these papers on what is referred to as body fat overshooting and collateral fattening, which essentially means that you go through a body fat overshoot effect where when you exit the diet, the fact that you went up in calories so much and you fed that ravenous appetite, you overate your energy expenditure because everything's downregulated at the end of diet. So you not only went back to maintenance, you overshot into a surplus. Well, now you're precipitously gaining fat mass back at a quicker rate than lean mass is regained.

18:10
and you will continue eating until you regain that lean mass. But often what happens is one of two things. You may get back to your same body weight that you were before the fat loss phase, but you've essentially went through decomposition. And what I mean by that is you regain more fat mass and you have less lean mass than you had at the start. Or you actually body fat overshoot, which means that you get back to your initial lean mass level. But in order to do so, you actually go up to a heavier body weight, meaning a heavier body fat or a higher body fat percentage.

18:36
And so that is really the mechanism of that fat-free mass loss. And we could see that in the liquid diets that they were utilizing at that time before they went into more of a constructed whole foods based proteins bearing modified fast approach. Yeah. And interesting as you described that, I mean, we're talking about the extreme rapid fat loss approach, but essentially any poor dieting approach, regardless of speed of weight loss is...

19:05
at risk of that body fat overshooting or collateral fattening. I love that, collateral fattening, which we see all the time out there in the real world when people don't diet properly. That's the thing. I can give you the Minnesota semi-sarvation study. I can give you some studies by Lue and colleagues. There's a bunch of multi-stressor environment studies in Army Rangers. Besides that, we don't need to look any further than the general population.

19:34
because the chronic yo-yo dieter is doing that same thing. They're crash-dying 20 pounds off and then they're regaining precipitously in a quick fashion 25. And often what you'll realize is that every diet gets harder for them. And that's for one of two reasons. A, they're starting at a higher body fat percentage every time they go back into the diet. And it's almost like this vicious cycle that they get on. I call it like a dieting merry-go-round. It just keeps going around and around. The reason for that is they lose 20 pounds for a vacation, a photo shoot, a wedding, a cruise, and they go on that.

20:04
that trip and they celebrate and they overeat. They indulge, they treat themselves, they celebrate essentially and they overeat and they quickly regain the weight that they had lost previously. Well, if you gain weight at a rapid rate, we see this in the overfeeding literature. We see this in the large versus moderate calorie surplus studies. The larger the surplus you do over what is needed to accrete muscle protein tissue or to gain lean mass is going to go towards fat storage. And so what ends up happening, especially for people that aren't having a strong training stimulus during that time period,

20:33
they're gaining a precarious amount of fat mass in addition to maybe some lean mass regain. And so every diet, you know, they lose 20 pounds in say 10 weeks and within five weeks they're up 20 to 25. And then, you know, it's almost, it's scary first and foremost, but then it's disappointing. So they go right back into the dieting cycle, but they didn't give their metabolism enough time to really restore itself. They didn't give themselves enough time psychologically to dissipate the diet fatigue that they were feeling. So they're constantly going.

21:01
between these paradigm shifting extremes of restriction to overeating, to restriction to overeating. And that is the chronic yo-yo diet. And we see in many of research that they're essentially, there's a study by, I believe it's by DeLue, and it's called, why dieting makes the lean fatter. And what they mean by that is people that have more dieting cycles generally end up fatter. Now, it's not because dieting makes you fat, because physiologically we know that's not the case. It's that people that

21:29
go into poor dieting practice. We have to think about it. This is how I like to get across to clients. I was on a call with a client yesterday. I was describing this. Dieting is a practice like any other. And what I mean by that is you could practice it properly and utilize an appropriate rate of loss with high protein, with resistant training that's periodized in there that's progressive. You can do a good amount of cardio to keep your cardiovascular fitness and to get your energy expenditure up. And you don't go to any extremes. You don't slash your calories in half. You don't ramp up cardio through the roof and do hours a day.

21:59
You do things that once you exit the deficit, you're able to sustain the progress that you made. However, many people don't do that. So what ends up happening is they put themselves in a situation where they continually practice the wrong dieting practices. So it's essentially like a mistake. If you were to look at it, I find sports fascinating. I used to train a bunch of college athletes earlier on in my career. And if you ever know high level strength and conditioning coaches, and I know this personally, a good friend of mine had played professional football and now he coaches guys that are going to the combine.

22:27
So he's coaching individuals or athletes in college that are going to try out for the NFL. If he sees that during their drills or during their speed play, any of those things, that their technique is off or that they're, whether it be due to distraction or fatigue, he either cuts the session, he reduces the volume or the amount that they're going to be doing the workload, or he has them go take a rest and come back later that day or do the session the next day. And the reason for that is his whole thing and it's more from a neurological perspective.

22:57
He does not want them to ingrain poor movement patterns. Well, the same thing can be said about our habits, our behaviors, our actions, or our decisions. If you continually dieting like shit, you're going to continuously going through that habit until you break the cycle. So I find that many people that are on that yo-yo dieting cycle, they're essentially engaging in these habits and behaviors that are predisposing them towards body fat overshooting, collateral fattening, losing more lean mass and gaining more fat mass over time, which is why that study, know, dieting makes the lean get fatter.

23:26
Yeah. And you know, Brandon, the sort of underpinning all of that is the psychological aspect because it's all effort. know, this effort has been put towards dieting and then when they're coming out and they may be, you know, let's say going on a cruise celebrating or whatever, you get this like slight reprieve, but actually under like, it would feel that they were always dieting and getting nowhere because of the absolute lack of progress. so

23:56
A lot of people are like, oh, I put in all this effort and for what? And I think this is really what you're talking to. Absolutely. So now before we get into any other topics, I do want to define rapid fat loss because I find that many people associate rapid fat loss with this continuous period of time. And that is what would, I guess, colloquially be rapid fat loss. How I define it personally, because I utilize it a little bit differently, and I think you're going to be in alignment with me, on this.

24:22
I define rapid fat loss as a short-term strategically planned phase of assertive fat loss or strategically placed days of an assertive deficit that are designed to accelerate physique progress while minimizing muscle loss. So I built my approach on the PSFF, but technically the way that I utilize it with clients, and I'm fairly certain you're the same, I'll let you expand on this in a minute, but it is not the traditional protein-sparing modified fasts and how it's set up because that is usually for, as you mentioned, this could be 16, 20, 24 weeks.

24:51
I just don't find that to be advantageous, especially for the population that I work with. I utilize more of an integrated approach where I would say that what I do is an intermittent approach with utilizing an assertive aggressive deficit rather than a continuous approach. Yeah. I'm the same as you, Brandon. I it I just call it when I'm talking to people in my groups, it's a form of calorie cycling, essentially. We were having days where the calorie drop is very aggressive and we're focusing on

25:21
on protein and it's not protein-spearing, modified fast, the way it's set out in the literature. We'll both chat about the parameters of those days. But it's built into a food approach that I term, it could be your forever diet, actually. You only ever do one day at a time. We do between one to three days a week. Then you're eating three full meals where we've got nutrition around your training and your

25:49
building those habits for forever fat loss. Awesome. All right. So let's get into the benefits of rapid fat loss because I think there's quite a few of them and I'm sure we may actually look at this from a different perspective. So I'll start off with some of the benefits that I see and then I'll pass it off to you. So the first benefit that I find is that you spend less total time in a deficit, which I consider an underrated benefit. think a lot of times when people are speaking about rapid fat loss or around a PSMF, they're only looking at the rate of fat loss. How much are you losing in a day?

26:18
or in a week. And a lot of people talk about that and I don't discount that because it sounds sexy. Hey, you can lose this amount of body fat in this week. Although we know that with measurement error and with the actual body composition assessment tools, are estimations. They're not exact measurements. You would need to get a cadaver analysis to really see your body fat loss. However, in reality, I think what we have to acknowledge is that being in a deficit has a cost and that a cost accumulates with time, not just the depth of the deficit itself. So for those who really struggle with longer dieting phases,

26:48
whether that be psychologically or physically, rapid fat loss may be a better option. And what most people don't realize is that when you compare two people losing the same amount of fat, and one is doing it over, six to eight weeks, whereas the other is doing it over 16 to 20 weeks, they end up in a pretty similar place metabolically. And I want to cover this because there's a lot of misconceptions. I experienced or I received lot of questions about this when I did a full RFL series with Lyle MacDonald. A lot of people said, know, Brandon, you've spoken a lot about metabolic adaptation, and wouldn't that be more severe?

27:17
It would be if the total amount of fat loss that was induced from rapid fat loss was much greater than a continuous deficit. However, when we actually look at the research on metabolic adaptation, we consistently find that the magnitude of the adaptation tracks with how much total fat you've lost, not how fast you lost it. So the person who took 20 weeks doesn't get to skip the adaptation. They might incur it slower, but the total, like the area under the curve of adaptation based on that individual, if they were to do it in 20 weeks or 10 weeks, it's going to be

27:46
basically the same for that individual. Now we obviously know that there's individual differences between two people that are metabolic phenotypes, both spendthrift and thrifty. But if I'm talking about the same person, they are essentially incurring the same amount of metabolic adaptation. Now from my perspective, and this is more of a physique focused perspective, if I'm having someone and they're not getting to photo shoot ready or to beach ready or whatever it may be, and sometimes we can utilize a rapid fat loss phase in terms of like a mini cut.

28:15
perspective and that is basically doing it to buy more runway to build muscle or for another type of fees. And what I try to get across to them when I'm using this larger deficit and I don't actually term it rapid fat loss, I might call it specifically a mini cut, but it's a more sort of larger deficit than I would use generally. I try to get it across to them that every week that you spend dieting is a week that you're not building. And especially when muscle growth is that person's main goal, I think it can be advantageous to cut the amount of time that they're dieting.

28:43
and then focus more on a phase that's going to develop the physique that they ultimately want. Now, the second benefit is momentum. And this one actually shows up in the research more clearly than any other one that we're going to see. When someone is dieting and sees very little change over several weeks, they start questioning whether the plan is working or not. And that's human. People stay invested into things that they see visible feedback from, and then they disengage from things that they don't. And so if we look in the literature, there's a secondary analysis of the TORS trial. And researchers took middle-aged women with obesity and sorted them out into FAS,

29:12
moderate and slow groups. And this is a study by Nackers and colleagues. And what they did was at the 18 month mark, the FAS group had lost more than double what the slow group had lost. So they were looking at essentially like a stair step approach. And when they looked at the FAS versus the slow group, they were five times more likely to have hit 10 % weight loss, which is what's considered clinically, know, weight loss. And they were also not more susceptible to regain because we have to realize is that even if people say

29:41
I'm going to give you a hypothetical. If people are to regain 50 % of their weight, if one loss doubled the amount of weight, that regain is larger, but they still net more weight loss in totality. Now, this finding has been consistent enough that it's made it into the New England Journal of Medicine. And there's a paper, there's a great paper that I really have liked looking at over the years, and it's essentially on obesity myths. And one of the main myths that they tackled was that rapid fat loss leads to poor long-term outcomes.

30:11
what they went through when they went through their review of the literature is that that's a myth, that's not a fact. Now I want to be careful with the NACRS paper that I just discussed, which is the three groups, because there's a confounder sitting there that I don't think a lot of people have looked into or actually discussed. These participants were not randomized into a rate of loss. They were self-sorted based on how they responded to month one. So the FAST group may have done better longer term because FAST or early loss builds momentum and or

30:37
The FAST group may have done better because it was the type of person who loses weight quickly in a month is also that same type of person who executes consistently later down the road. So sometimes we can't know, especially in a research study like this, because there's modifying factors and variables that we have to look at. Some people are going to succeed more than others and it's based on their personality and maybe based on their genetics, their motivation. perhaps that increase or uptake in motivation that came from seeing weight loss faster initially

31:07
kept them on the trajectory where it didn't let them go off the beaten path. maybe those in the slow group, there may have been people, if they had just taken a faster rate of loss and pushed themselves a little bit harder, they would have been just as successful. So I think that from a coaching perspective, I think we can look at it, would be both, but I think that the second one is more useful for anyone that's listening to coaches like myself, because what that's telling you is that the person often predicts the outcome as much as the protocol does. So that's why you have to really individualize who you're...

31:36
designating, hey, we're going to use a slow rate of loss or a fast rate of loss because people will respond differently. You need to look in their dieting history. You need to look at their motivational affect, their intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, really have conversations with them. And I'll tell you personally, that I spend far more time deciding who I'm going to run this with, then I decide like what calorie number I'm going to give them. Like this is a more intentional, especially when it goes to a rate of loss. Is this person appropriate to utilize this with? Yeah. No, I love that, Brandon.

32:05
Particularly with the women that I work with, and you must be the same, potentially, that you get people and they're like, nothing's working anymore. And I hear this a lot in my perimenopausal, postmenopausal women. Like I've tried everything, Weight Watchers, Sure Slim, know, Jenny Craig, all of them. And now nothing is working. My usual approaches aren't. And this is what I love about the protein-spearing modified fasts is because one, it works.

32:33
I mean, just across the board, it is so effective for fat loss whilst preserving muscle, but they get that quick win. And you need buy-in from people because oftentimes people are coming into a fat loss and they don't quite believe that they're going to be successful anyway. It's almost like they're doing it because they feel they should, not because they think this is going to be the thing that's really going to sort of stick for them. So they need quick wins. And I can see when I'm working with people, I can see quick wins within a week.

33:03
which is when we sort of like check in to see sort of what's going on. Because of course I'm doing it in that group format. I'm not doing it on that one-on-one basis. So my metrics will look different, I suppose, to yours. Another thing that you mentioned, which I want to highlight for the group that I often work with is athletes. Now we're going to talk about who this isn't appropriate for, you know, at the end. But what I will say is that if I have got an athlete, like an endurance athlete, and they've got a...

33:31
an event that they're training, that they're wanting to begin training for, and they've got like a 16 week block of training coming up for something, yet that's eight weeks away, and they're wanting to improve body composition. I'm like, okay, this is a time where we can use this rapid fat loss approach because, you know, we don't have to worry about the performance side of things right now. In fact, for you right now, it is about getting leaner so you can go into those sessions and from a power perspective.

34:00
from a speed perspective, you may well perform better and your training isn't going to be negatively impacted. Of course, I have to tell them though, is that they can't chase two rabbits at once. So this is a time where your training will probably take a hit because we are putting you into an aggressive deficit despite the fact that we're looking after your nutrition around training and we're really focusing on giving you what you need for that. You're still in a

34:30
in a deficit, so you will notice it. But right then, here and now, you don't need to worry about that because we don't need to be hitting those key sessions that are going to make you be able to perform at your best for your actual event. I do think it's appropriate for an athlete at certain times of the year, depending on where they're at in their cycle. And the other thing I really love about this rapid fat loss approach is it absolutely takes the thinking out of it for people.

34:59
You work with busy people, I work with busy people who have got careers, households. And whilst I do think, as do you, that food prep is a huge part of sustainable fat loss, and importantly, weight loss maintenance, you run a protein-spearing, modified fast day, and there's so much less to think about with regards to the types of foods or...

35:22
what you have to have available. I mean, as long as you've got it there. And a lot of people say it takes the thinking out of it. It's so much more simpler for me. And from that perspective, it just takes a lot less time. So I think that's another real benefit for the rapid fat loss. 100%. Actually, to expand off that, I mean, we work with busy people. in general, the majority, if we look at the majority of the research, we find that people seriously underestimate how much they actually eat.

35:51
and how much they need to eat to lose fat. And so I think about it in the context of, I work with busy people that are distracted. Even if their fat loss is their goal, a lot of times they've made mistakes in the past that have held them back from actually achieving the fat loss that they want. And so when I think about the dietary assessments that I take people through and the things that I see, the errors, a lot of times I think there's two things to be said. First, if you're working with someone with excess adiposity, I think a lot of people underestimate how much fat that they need to lose.

36:20
And so if they were to take gradual purge, would realistically take them, say, nine to 12 months to lose a significant amount of body fat. And just that notion or that thought can be very discouraging. So that's people in the real world that have, say they've sacrificed, I worked with a lot of people in this position, they have sacrificed their health and fitness right now for the pursuit of excellence in business. And so now they're looking at like this mountain that they need to climb. if I'm going tell them, hey, listen, it's going to take 12 months just to get you to a healthy weight, it may be...

36:50
it may be too much of an, it wouldn't be an impetus to actually start. So that's the first thing when we're talking about busy people. The second thing is we know that, like I was saying before, people underestimate their calorie intake by, generally, if you look at the literature, there's a great review that shows between 18 to 50 % and then in certain populations up to 70%. So what I've seen is that many dieters are in far less of a deficit than they think they are. Now with a small deficit, this degree of inaccuracy can easily erase that person's total daily deficit, leading them to losing no fat at all. However,

37:19
If you were to take an aggressive deficit approach, so you create a large deficit, say 1,000 calories, well, even if you're 20 to 50 % off and say that you're eating 300 to 400 calories more than you expected, which is actually, you look in the clinical literature, there's a great study that looks at dietitians versus non-dietitians. In the dietitian group, it's over 200 calories that they're eating more than they account for. And then in the non-dietitians, it was over 420 calories. So if you were only in a 300 to 400 calorie deficit, you've erased most of it, if not all of it.

37:48
Now, if you are in a thousand calorie deficit and most days of the week you eat three to 400 calories more than you expect, you're still in a 600 calorie deficit. So you're still getting some fat loss. And I think from a practical perspective, that's very advantageous. Now I'll tell you just what I've seen in practice running these types of strategies with individuals. I have seen enough clients to know that there are certain things that come through that may not be physiological, but psychological as you were referencing can be very beneficial. first and foremost,

38:17
When you run a rapid fat loss approach, is less, I guess, decision fatigue because you're very limited options. So it essentially creates bright line boundaries. And some people just don't do well with moderation. And we know that. And so if you were to give them a small deficit and a wide range of acceptable foods, they're going to end up negotiating with themselves every single day. Now, when I transition them into proteins, very modified fast on certain days, and there's a narrow structure, there's a food list, there's a meal plan that's built out.

38:45
they're essentially being given exactly what they need to follow and they're much better able to abstain from certain things on those particular days and get it done. The other thing was I found from a practical perspective, it really shows a lot of people how much of their hunger was both head hunger, so hedonic hunger, and was based off of palatability. Because when you strip out the hyperpalatable foods out of someone's diet, you'll actually see that their cravings for it go down very, very quickly. We actually have literature on this within four to six weeks of

39:14
essentially what researchers would term starving your cravings, you stop craving those items, chocolate and cookies and things like that. And that's because cravings are more psychological. It's a Q conditioned eating response. And so a lot of times if you're able to strip back the diet to lean protein sources, veggies, omega-3 fatty acids, and it's a very basic template essentially, it eliminates hyper palatable foods. It eliminates foods with a lot of food reward. So it essentially causes like a reset to their system.

39:43
The other thing is, I really like this for the fact, and sometimes I only use this with people as almost like a discomfort tool. Maybe that's a bad way to put it, but I really think that a lot of people have taken through this process. It teaches them that they can do hard things. And really when it comes down to it, physique transformation is just as much mental as it is physical. And so they're able to develop the mental fortitude because let's be honest, we'll discuss the drawbacks, but it is uncomfortable.

40:08
at certain times. If you go through it through an elongated process, it can be challenging. You can experience a lot of hunger, things of that sort. We'll do as much as we can to negate that. But if you've lost a large amount of fat, you're going to deal with an inherent increase in hunger. So some of these days can be quite uncomfortable. But once you get through that, you know that, especially in the way that we do it, hey, I have one protein-sparing modified fast day, and the next day I have a higher calorie training day. And so it teaches you that you could hold off on short-term temptation for the long-term goal that you're working towards.

40:38
Yeah, absolutely. I think, and to your point on the hunger piece is people are afraid to be hungry. And I feel that they're afraid to be hungry because they associate hunger with low blood sugar, actually, and those wild fluctuations that occur when their hunger is, basically their eating is, you know, a series of hyper palatable snacks across a day.

41:03
really just to rescue themselves from that low blood sugar that they're experiencing because of the food that they're eating. Whereas hunger from a genuine physiological place where your blood sugar, it isn't about blood sugar, it's actually about a calorie requirement, of which, of course, we're lowering those calories. It's just easy to deal with. You can still concentrate way more than you can if your hunger is driven through.

41:31
low blood sugar, you don't get absolutely ravenous. It's this sort of slow burn of a hunger. And you just have to tell yourself, it's fine. I've got a meal coming in two hours. You know, I'm actually going to be okay. But I don't think until someone actually experiences it that they quite believe it because their experience of hunger is actually really different. 100%. I think that that is a good practice to have. even, I myself was a bodybuilder for a long period of time. I competed 15 times over the years.

41:58
And I was a six meals a day type of person at that time. And I slowly titrated myself down, but I did an experiment for about six months during my last competition season, prior to my last competition season where I did intermittent fasting and it wasn't for the fat loss benefits. wasn't for the autophagy benefits. It was because I knew I was transitioning out of the sport and I wanted to teach myself that I could go past certain meal times without eating. remember, ghrelin is entrained based on your meal timing. And so I would automatically

42:27
30 minutes, 60 minutes before a meal, feel hunger. And it wasn't that I needed to think about it. Even if I was lean, I'm eating six times a day, I'm not starving. But it was the fact that my body was so entrained that I felt that I needed to eat and I would stop certain things. And it was a distraction at one point. And so now I eat four meals a day and I slowly titrated that down. But I did it initially through intermittent fasting. did early time. It was not intermittent fasting. It was early time restricted eating. would eat early in the day and then would cut it off around 6pm. And so I had a...

42:53
short eating window, I initially started with a 12 hour eating window, went to 14 and then eventually went to 16 for about six months period of time. And it just taught me, listen, you don't need to eat. Like I used to always be someone that ate right before bed, even though I knew that it was disadvantageous from a sleep quality perspective. But I was in the bodybuilder mentality, like I need to eat exactly before bed. I need to, you know, stoke muscle protein synthesis and make sure that I'm in an anabolic state because sleep is catabolic. I had all these, these irrational thoughts.

43:20
And it just taught me something good. So this is a good exercise to teach individuals, hey, listen, you can embrace hunger, you can do hard things, especially when it's attached to a goal. Yeah. And to your point, actually, and maybe this is a good opportunity for us to sort of talk through what our protein-spearing modified fast days look like. I do suggest that people in my groups actually run a tighter eating window on that day because it can help regulate.

43:49
I mean, the exception to that is other people who still want to be active on that day and not necessarily just go for a walk or whatever. But if they've got a training session and they're like, look, this is just how it's rolling, then I'm absolutely open to them doing their training on the protein-spearing modified fast day. Particularly if they're coming off a day of eating, then they've just woken up. It's not like they've run a whole aggressive calorie deficit across a day.

44:19
We still put additional food on that day in the morning, and I don't worry about the eating window, but for people who generally who may not be training and they're just going to be sort of moving across the day, I'm like, you your hunger may be better regulated if we just try and stick to an eight to 10 hour window with our protein-sparing day. So we'll just shift breakfast out a little bit, and then we'll just, you know, bring dinner in a little bit. And actually for a lot of people, dinner is the less.

44:48
negotiable meal in terms of the timing is set by what else is going on in the household, but breakfast is often much more flexible. So yeah, that 8 10 hour window, think, works best, but it's absolutely not compulsory. Absolutely. So let's get into the practical application side of things and really how we utilize these in practice. Because you gave essentially a outline, but we want to get into this deeper. So before I hand it off to you, I do want to make a distinction because there's a full rapid fat loss phase.

45:17
which is consecutive weeks of an aggressive dieting structure using that PSMF, which is the version that most people think of when they hear rapid fat loss. And then there's what I call rapid fat loss days, which is a small number of aggressive days placed in an otherwise moderate deficit where I interject higher calorie training days in between the RFL days. Now, both approaches use the same core strategy, which means we're leveraging high protein intake. We're using a low calorie approach to maximize fat loss while preserving muscle, but there are different interventions in practice.

45:47
So the rapid fat loss disease approach is what I've used most frequently over the past decade. And it's not the exact protein-sparing modified fast. A true protein-sparing modified fast would be where it's continuous rather than intermittent. So I'll hand it to you, Miki. First, I want you to discuss how you structure a week within Monday's matter of utilizing your protein-sparing modified fast and how you interject it essentially into that week structure. Yeah, no, I love that, Brandon. And very similar to you, I insert the protein-sparing

46:16
higher protein, lower calorie days, because to your point, they aren't strict proteins, very modified fast days. And I think I'm a little bit more flexible possibly with how I run it with people, just by virtue of the fact that it's a big group and you sort of have to be a little bit flexible. I do, depending on sort of who I'm working with within the group, I have different tiers. So we will do one, two, or three.

46:43
protein-spearing modified fast days set within a moderate calorie approach. Actually, if people joined Mondays Matter and didn't do any of the protein-spearing days, would likely still lose body fat. It would just be a slower process because the diet itself is based on fat loss principles that we always talk about, high volume of food, higher protein, but it is just a moderate deficit.

47:11
You insert those proteins, very modified fast days, and you just create more of that deficit. we run Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And the calories are around 800 to 900 as a base plan. And I do try and stick to, or do stick to actually, most of the days are 30 grams or less of fat and about 30 grams or less of carbohydrate unless someone is training. And if they're training, I put an extra serve of carbohydrate.

47:41
and an extra serve of protein. And protein is set between, there's a minimum of about 110 grams a day, which is pretty light for some people. But if you're training, that'll go up to about 140 grams of protein a day. And by virtue of the fact that it is a group program, can't, oh, I don't in Mondays Matter individualize protein intakes for the individual, albeit within the group, I am coaching people and if they have specific questions in there.

48:08
wanting to just follow guidelines as opposed to the plan, then we work out what protein intake is going to be most advantageous for them. But on that group level, we set it at a minimum of 110 to about 140 grams a day. And we eat three times a day. So I'm not a fan of sort of just twice a day eating. But of course, with exercise, then that's going to take that up to four times a day eating.

48:37
I actually used to do my protein sparing days as no vegetables at all, just to take all the thinking out of it. know. so the reason for this, Brandon, is because people's interpretations of vegetables at that group level is wildly variable and you would not believe it. Like for some people- No, I believe me. I've had someone eat a head of lettuce at every meal.

48:58
Yeah. So I do believe it. You do, yeah. so people would be like, oh, just have a salad, but their salad would have avocado and nuts and dressing. And I'm like, look, we're just taking that off the table. Like, no, there are no vegetables. I will say, though, over the last year, I've become a little bit more flexible on that. And I've just started to just be quite prescribed with the types of vegetables.

49:25
And I'm like, look, you're having a salad, is cabbage, it is lettuce. You're having a dressing. You love the dressing because it's pretty much a Brandon D'Cruz special, special of like mustard and apple cider vinegar and a bit of stevia. Yeah, let's get it. kind of thing. Sweet honey mustard. Exactly. Exactly. And so, there might be steamed broccoli, et cetera. So I am a little bit more flexible on that. And it helps sort of fit into a general sort of family dinner as well, if you're sitting around the family, with the family.

49:54
But ultimately, that is what we do on a weekly basis. I do have the intermittent, the diet break, chiropractic, but I can chat about that later if you like. But that is pretty much how I run my protein-sparing days. Perfect. I think that's a great insight because you're speaking to a large group that you work with. you're able to give a little bit more generalized advice, which you very well know me. I am terrible at doing. So you cover that. And now I'll get into some of the nuances.

50:23
some of the details because I do very similar to you, but it is individualized. Obviously, I only work with people one-on-one. I've never been the type of mentality or even the skill set to work with a large group of people. I'm just an introvert and it's this locked in one-on-one process, but I will say that I'm very similar in the regard that I don't run an aggressive deficit every day and I often don't like doing them back to back. I have personally done that. I have run aggressive fat loss phases, rapid fat loss phases, two to three weeks at a time when I've had been in a time crunch.

50:53
The last time I did this was, I believe, 2020, but I had essentially a photo shoot that came up. It was a calendar shoot. because of the pandemic, they had moved back to date like four or five weeks, and I was not ready. So I threw myself in the wringer, but I don't suggest that. And what I found when you utilize that linear or that continuous, very low calorie PSMF approach is you're going to get a massive increase in hunger, poor biofeedback, and then you get worse adherence as the days go on. I'm a robot.

51:22
Adherence wasn't for me, but I have run it with other clients and I've seen that. So it's just not something that I utilize. Now I'll give you kind of a construct of how I look at this. So I only place rapid fat loss days on non-training days. Then on resistant training days, because I work with more of physique focused population, I'm going to bring calories up to either maintenance or they're going to be in a more moderate deficit. And those training days are particularly going to carry more carbohydrate and more fat to support performance, recovery, muscle retention, and hormonal health.

51:51
And I stair-stepped this approach. So I never start a client personally with three rapid fat loss days. I'll start with one, I gauge their response, and then I'll build the frequency over time based on their biofeedback, how they're handling it, and also their target rate of loss and how close to that they're sticking to. And I find that to be a lot better than a linear approach because I do know people. Obviously, I people in my circle that run the PSMF, like just a rapid fat loss approach, straight. For me, I just found that the population that I work with, adherence improves.

52:19
because a client is usually only going on one day of a very low calorie intake and then they have something to look forward to the next higher calorie training day. It also, I love this James Morton expression, fuel for the work required. So I prioritize training performance by fueling when it actually matters. And then I also find personally, because you know I'm someone that's big into high step counts and leveraging that, I have found that not utilizing a continuous aggressive deficit helps reserve need and maintain better biofeedback across the phase.

52:48
What I do personally, because I'm actually looking at individual rates of loss, I'm not actually assigning a calorie number or using a percentage deficit. What I do is I reverse engineer everything from the target rate of loss because that gives me a much better read on how assertive we can actually be. Because remember, I'm offsetting that deficit or I'm essentially driving the deficit larger through those rapid fat loss days. But I also have to know how deep am I putting them into a deficit on those days? How frequently am I putting them into aggressive deficit? I'm...

53:16
going to rate a loss. And that informs me how high their calorie intake can be on those training days. So for a full rapid fat loss phase, like across the phase, when I'm looking at like across the entire fat loss phase where I'm integrating these rapid fat loss days, my standard range, if I was utilizing more of a rapid approach would be 1.25 to 1.5 % of total body weight loss per week. Now, in comparison, my traditional fat loss phases, I'm going to be anywhere between 0.5 to 1 % rate of loss per week.

53:43
So once I've determined the appropriate weekly rate, I'll back calculate the deficit needed to hit that on a weekly and on a daily basis. And that target is always going to be individualized. I'm going to do that primarily off of that person starting body fat percentage, their training status, how high their training volume is and how much of a priority their training is, their stress levels, their dieting history, their goals, and even more importantly, their timeline. Because a lot of times, if I'm integrating this approach, it's because we have a date. Now for protein, I do it a little bit differently. And you know that I'm into scaling things.

54:13
So I do this based off lean body mass and fat mass and I scale it to the person. So if someone's lean, a lean individual, whether that be male or female, I'm going to utilize 1.5 grams per pound of body weight per day. So that's around 3.3 to 3.4 grams per kilogram. If someone's at a moderate body fat percentage, I'm going to use 1.25 grams per pound, which is, I want to say like 2.7 grams per kilogram, somewhere in that range. And then if someone's a higher body fat percentage, and that's going to be like over 25 % for men or over 35 % for women,

54:42
to me one gram per pound. I'm not feeling body fat. We're feeling the lean mass on their frame. So essentially the leaner that someone is, the higher I'm going to push protein because they have less body fat to buffer the deficit. Whereas the more body fat that person contains and carries, the more that fat is going to protect their muscle and the less protein they need per unit of body weight. Now from there, I'll give you, I guess, an outline of what a day looks like. Because really my intention, I come with a food first approach.

55:10
And so the intention behind this is to create a large energy deficit, but not a nutrient deficiency. So while I'm minimizing calories, carbohydrate and dietary fat, I'm still making sure we cover the essential nutrients the body can't produce on its own. So there's three things that I'm making sure we're getting from the diet. First is going to be essential amino acids from whole food protein, which can preserve muscle mass and metabolic rate. The next is going to be essential fatty acids, which I generally will use through an omega-3 essential fatty acid product that comes from fish oil.

55:37
or I can use an algae oil if I'm working with someone that's vegetarian or vegan. And we're going to use that for health purposes and for the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. And then I'm going to make sure that we're getting in vitamins and minerals. And that's going to be particularly through vegetables. Now, in terms of protein sources, I always anchor the entire day around whole food protein sources. So I'm talking about lean sources, whether that be skinless chicken breasts, or lean ground turkey, or tuna, or shrimp, or scallops, egg whites, things like that.

56:05
I really do like egg whites at least for one or two meals because of the voluminous nature of egg whites that it's very filling. Now, this is something I actually changed my mind about. Based on a conversation with Lyle MacDonald, initially, it was no protein powders whatsoever. And then he had a conversation with me both personally and then we had it on the podcast. But we went back and forth and emailed about this. I think I kind of gave him some feedback on the vegetables that I was seeing in practice and he gave me feedback about the protein powder. And he made a really good point that there are some people that they're lean.

56:33
don't have a large appetite, especially because I do this in an intermittent fashion. If I'm getting someone up to 1.5 grams per pound of protein per day, it could be very difficult for them to either cook and prepare that or just to be able to get that amount of, say, meat down. And so, a suggestion he'd given to me, which I have used, is to almost divvy up the protein servings. Say, for instance, I'm utilizing, I have someone that's 200 pounds that are lean and they're eating 300 grams of protein per day.

57:02
and I'm using four meals of 75 grams of protein per meal. Well, that could easily be 50 grams of whole food protein four times a day and a 25 gram shake on top of those meals. And so it makes it a little bit easier to get that protein down. makes it a little bit more practical. But I will say that I would not leverage protein powder in and of itself, except there are certain meals that I will utilize with clients where it's a creamy. it's, you obviously it's the ninja creamy where it makes a very volume protein shake.

57:30
I'm just having them put water and ice and protein powder, but it will at least give them some type of volume. Now, in comparison to you, I use a much higher volume of non-starchy vegetables. And I do this actually even in comparison to the traditional PSMF. And I do that for two reasons. First, I'm making sure that people are covered micronutrient-wise and I'm utilizing low energy density, high volume sources. So, it's things like spinach or kale, romaine lettuce, cucumber, zucchini.

57:59
green beans. Even if someone has the digestive capacity, I'll use cauliflower rice, things like that. Another one I really like to utilize is mushrooms. There's some good literature on mushrooms being an appetite suppressant due to its natural source of monosodium glutamine, which can dock in receptors in the brain and help with satiety. Really what I'm looking for are low calorie, high water content vegetables that are rich in micronutrients. Then I want the satiety effect because

58:28
know that protein is the most satiating macronutrient per gram. But if we look at food weight and energy density, it's actually vegetables. So by combining both, it's allowing to get them the most satiety per calorie that we have within that budget. The other thing is, like I mentioned before, I always make sure that they have some type of quality essential fatty acid product. So my go-to is a high-potency fish oil. And I'm really looking to get 2 to 3 grams of combined EPA and DHA. I want to make sure that they have

58:57
all the necessary essential fatty acids and a little bit more so that they have good amounts for cell membrane integrity, hormonal health, and then also for the anti-inflammatory purposes that they play. The last thing that I utilize is I make sure that their electrolytes are dialed in. Sometimes I utilize electrolyte supplementation, but really why I do this is because when carbohydrates drop, especially if we go under that 30 grams or even under 50 grams, we have to think about the diuresis of ketosis because they're essentially in a ketogenic diet. It's just a high protein ketogenic diet.

59:27
And so we see when carbohydrates drop and insulin drop, that's going to increase sodium and water excretion. And oftentimes we're also going to see other electrolytes fall with it. Now that is why a lot of people, and you know this very well, that they suffer or they experience what people colloquially call keto flow. So it's essentially that dissipation of those electrolytes. So I like to add a sodium right onto meals. I will often use a potassium salt. So this would be new salt or no salt. And I'll utilize that.

59:53
on meals as well. And then I'll also make sure that they're getting potassium from leafy greens or mushrooms. And then also I'm utilizing supplemental magnesium. Usually I'm using a blend. I really like biscollicinate before bed. And then sometimes I'll use a complex earlier on in the day. And I'm making sure that they're getting adequate electrolyte intake so that they have good energy, they're able to reduce fatigue. They don't get cramping and they also don't get that brain fogginess that a lot of people use to report with ketogenic diets.

01:00:20
I love that Brandon, you covered a lot of the nuance of the specific foods, et cetera. And thank you for talking about sodium because that's another thing which I'm really hot on as well. One thing is I haven't shied away from protein powders in terms of, the protein is very modified fast and in part because of what you described with regards to volume. So when I'm adding ice, adding a little xanthan gum,

01:00:49
I do add cauliflower rice to some of those shakes. I build out recipes and stuff for people. I try and make it a little bit interesting. They're sitting down to a big volume of food, so they're going to feel less hunger. Also, they can make PSMF pancakes. They can have PSMF bread. Not because they need special food or anything, but just, people's brain love it.

01:01:18
You know this as well, they just love something different, a little bit of variety and something like that. They're not just sitting down to meat three times a day. The other thing is I use red meat as well, just because that's my usual diet approach anyway. We're doing lean rump steak or we're doing 95.5 mince. Sometimes the fat will be a little bit higher, but I think in part, I'm like,

01:01:47
People are still very successful on the way that we run it with Mondays Matter because it's the deficit that is created. so, and I think that ultimately is underpinning the success of the approach. And so it is still a deficit for, it's still very good deficit for a lot of people. The one other thing I will add is that people who come into the plan who are vegetarian, so I've got a vegetarian menu just by virtue of the vegetarian food choices.

01:02:15
their days will be a little bit higher calorie because of tofu tempeh. They will also, but I'll be also utilizing an essential amino acid powder for a couple of those meals. Like I have eggs in my vegetarian meal plan, so, or egg whites, I'm sorry, like an egg with egg whites, but you know, if they've got meals that are just tempeh or tofu, then we're putting an essential amino acid powder alongside that as well. So.

01:02:42
But yeah, you did a very good job of covering all of the different other protein sources that are utilized. And to your point, and as we've said, it's just one day at a time. This is the thing that I always try and instill in people. It's just one day at a time and also take your sodium because that's essential. The one last thing I will actually add, for whatever reason,

01:03:09
People struggle to take on extra nutrition for the training despite the fact that I bang on about it all of the time. It's almost like they think, well, if I just withhold having that extra carbohydrate and the extra server protein, I'm going to get a better response. I'm going to lose more fat. I'm going to be a little bit more successful. Whereas, of course, to your point, if they're doing training and they're feeling terrible in their training, then...

01:03:37
Overall, they're not going to have a very good experience with the rapid fat loss approach or that protein-sparing day. You're going notice a deficit anyway. It is going to feel a little bit flat. You want to feel as good as you can during your workout. You want to get the most from that. Put your carbohydrate in, have your excess of protein, and you're always going to feel better if you do that. I think sometimes there are some people who just like to take it to the extremes. Even the take the extreme.

01:04:06
slightly more extreme. 100%. I mean, that is a personality type that we often get attracted to us. let me ask you, when you're adding in, you're interjecting that fourth meal, is that a pre or post workout meal on those training days? Yeah, no, it is. it's either, so depending on when they train, so if they're training early morning, and I, course, get a lot of people in who almost never eat before training, I'm like saying, look,

01:04:32
I want you to have something before training. you're doing something of a higher intensity or you're doing some weight training, let's put some carbs in before training. Then I'm a little bit more flexible on when that next or that other protein serve comes in actually. Because I know that if it's early morning, then they're going straight to breakfast and they're going to be having 40 to 50 grams of protein at breakfast. They're fine there. They don't need anything in addition to that particular meal.

01:05:02
they might experience hunger later on in the day. And so I'm like, look, if you've, you let's have, you know, you'll have breakfast and then maybe that other serve of protein, you might want that mid afternoon. So let's just put it in there. So I'm quite flexible as to when people have it as long as they have it. absolutely. So maybe I'll just give you a little reinforcement so that those in your audience that are on Monday's matter will have a little bit more evidentiary support as to why that would be advantageous. So first and foremost,

01:05:29
If we look at the research on carbohydrate ingestion prior to training, it doesn't need to be a bolus, meaning it doesn't need to be a very high amount. This could be 0.2 to 0.4 grams per kilogram. So it could be, if you're 100 kilograms, 20 to 40 grams of carbohydrate pre-workout. But we do see an advantage, especially resisting training activity. I'll speak on that because that's my area of expertise, of ingesting carbohydrate pre-workout in certain circumstances. So one is during more voluminous activity.

01:05:57
meaning that you're using higher volumes or you're training multiple muscle groups. Helms has a great systematic review on meta-analysis that we spoke on this podcast a few years ago about essentially a pre-training carbohydrate ingestion, systematic review and meta-analysis, looking at the effects on hypertrophy and looking at the effects on total volume performance, meaning work capacity, your sets times reps times load. And they saw that there was more advantageous effects by having that ingestion of pre-workout carbohydrate or intra-workout carbohydrate. Just needed to be glucose in the system.

01:06:27
prior to or during the exercise in and of itself. The other thing is if you're training in the morning, it's actually more advantageous. So there were some moderating factors within that meta-analysis. And what they found was higher volume training benefited from more carbohydrate, multiple muscle groups in a session because of the extra energetic demand of that. if you're doing like a lower body session, multiple muscle groups, your hamstrings, your glutes, your quadriceps, your...

01:06:54
training multiple large muscle groups, it's more advantageous to have carbohydrates before or after an overnight fast. So especially preferential in the morning, if you want to get the most from a training performance and then also an adaptation perspective, ingesting carbohydrates, even a small amount will benefit you from a training performance, from a work capacity, from an adaptation, from a muscle growth, all these things are going to have downstream implications, especially it may not impact you to go fast in on one particular day.

01:07:23
But as you look across a phase of training and we're looking at a mesocycle and then a macro cycle, it will add up over time. it would just be to your benefit if Mickey's suggesting, hey, listen, you can run the protein-sparing-modified fast on your non-training days and you're fine with just three meals and the baseline structure, the skeleton diet. However, on those training days, I want you to have an extra carbohydrate ingestion, an extra protein ingestion. You don't want to do the protein all well and good, although I would suggest some amino acid availability in the morning.

01:07:52
But if you want to do it after, we see very similar effects. There's a great study by Alan Aragon, Bright Schoenfeld and James Crear looking at pre versus post whey protein ingestion, same adaptations from a muscle hypertrophy perspective. As long as it was within like a window, it was like two hours before, two hours after. So all well and good. But carbohydrates are going to benefit you from a training perspective. Yeah, nice one. And then in the moderate sort of deficit days, the non-PCMF days,

01:08:19
I'm also saying you need to fuel around your training as well. So that's that fourth sort of eating opportunity, again, I think I feel like, and I understand this because I've been there, people are just a little bit afraid to eat. I think that's what it is. And so if they're in a group that, and you've got someone sort of guiding them, then they have a little bit more confidence to at least try it because they trust me. They trust that they're going to feel better. They trust that the approach works and then they can't believe how good they feel.

01:08:49
And so, I I love seeing that sort of light bulb moment with people and fat loss that you can still eat and lose weight, you know? 100%. And I think that actually gives me a great avenue to discuss intermittent dieting strategies that we use during fat loss focus phases, because this is a strategy that we can integrate and implement to essentially mitigate the negative effects of a deficit and of losing body fat. So I'll go first and I'll give a description of some of the strategies I utilize and then I'll pass it over to you to describe how you utilize this.

01:09:18
And so a refeed is going to be the first tool that I'll use. So a refeed is a planned increase in calories that comes mostly from an increase in carbohydrates. For me in particular, I'm doing it all through carbohydrates. I'm using the skeleton diet of the protein and the fat content from that diet. And I'm just increasing from carbohydrates to increase carbohydrate availability. And so I like to use these high carb refeeds with clients because...

01:09:40
They help to replenish glycogen, which restores training performance. And also for me, I'm working with a lot of physique focused individuals. So I want to see the fullness of their physique, kind of bring it back to life, especially if we're peaking for a photo shoot, a competition, or even just to look at their best at a particular event. I want to see what do you look like when I replenish and restore glycogen. And then it also gives that person a psychological break from the deficit without breaking the structure of the diet or the phase. We're getting a reprieve, but we're not...

01:10:05
getting so far off track that it's like a cheat meal or something that's disadvantageous. What I'm using the refeeds for are really because of what I've seen them do for training quality, muscle fullness and adherence, and I've seen those benefits consistently. Now, the next intermittent dieting strategy I use is what I refer to as a deficit deload. So deficit deload is a controlled and strategic increase in calorie intake designed to manage and mitigate the physiological and psychological adaptations that come from dieting. And for me, I'm doing this at...

01:10:32
least maintenance or above. And oftentimes, I'll bring them back to their pre-fat loss maintenance to just make sure that they're covered. And really, what I describe this to clients is that this is a reset period. My goal is to lower their dietary fatigue, restore energy availability, and then prepare the body to push forward into that next block of active fat loss. Now, this is something that I will use for least one week of time, but I've run them for as long as four weeks. And sometimes, when I've had people that had a much greater amount of fat to lose, I've actually broken this off into blocks where

01:11:01
They're dieting for 8 to 12 weeks, we're deficit deloading for 4 weeks. And then we'll continue going on because I don't like very, very long deficits when someone has a precipitous amount of fat mass lose without some type of structured break. Now, how I structure these deficit deloads is... Or why I structure these deficit deloads, I'm really looking to drive up a client's energy output, especially from a training performance perspective. And we get that due to the increase in energy availability.

01:11:26
What I find personally as well is that when I give someone more, I feed them more, whether that be through protein, carbohydrates, a little bit of dietary fat, it not only drives up their training output, but it also makes them more spontaneously active throughout the day. So that's where I'm going to see their physical activity levels go up, their meat levels go up, their steps go up. We're also going to put in more fuel for training. So how I do this is it's not just an increase back to maintenance. Oftentimes, sometimes I'll do it a linear approach where it'll be a certain amount of calorie increase from where they were.

01:11:54
But oftentimes, if you think about that, that means the training day diet is still higher. So we're still getting more of an advantageous effect in terms of increasing energy availability on those training days to really fuel for the work required. I also find that this lowers psychological and physiological stress. we're going to see, if we look at it from a physiological perspective, we're going to see a lowering in cortisol. And that's going to support thyroid and sex hormone production. Another thing that I really like to do is sometimes how I build this out. I'll give a very much higher calorie meal before bed if someone has been suffering.

01:12:22
like a sleep quality perspective, this is how I run it myself. And then there's one more benefit that has nothing to do with the physiology, but I just find this to be advantageous in practice is that a deficit deload is a period where I can walk a client through how to practice maintenance before we ever get to that period. Because if you really think about it, we had a podcast about a year ago, Mickey, where you came on and we talked about why is fat loss more challenging or why is fat loss maintenance more challenging than fat loss in and of itself? And it's because many people are very goal-directed.

01:12:50
But they look at the fat loss phase as a goal with a deadline and an end destination and a finish line, and they don't see it as a checkpoint along their journey. And so a lot of people are much better at guiding and restriction than they are at maintaining. Because maintaining doesn't really have a clear cut goal. It's a little bit ambiguous. So every deficit deload is what I consider like a rep at eating more without losing control of the process. And then I'm there to hold them accountable. So by the time we exit the fat loss phase,

01:13:19
I'm able to remind them when they're scared. I get this with lot of women that they're finally seeing really substantial and significant fat loss for the first time in their lives and they don't want to go back. They don't want to go backwards in comparison to what they've done. So just remind them, listen, throughout the course of this phase, I actually had you go back to maintenance. I technically did exactly what we're to do in this post-diets phase and this metabolic restoration phase. However, we're going to do it for a more extended period of time, but I'm still here to walk you through the process. But I want you to have some self-efficacy based on how successful you were the last time we did this.

01:13:48
Yeah, I love that Brandon. all of the benefits that you described are exactly the reason why even within a short eight-week program, which it is, it's just eight weeks, I'm putting diet breaks is what I call them. Every fortnight, so every two weeks on the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so I like to do three days in a row of them eating more carbohydrate at each meal. One of those meals is what I term a metabolic reset meal, which is

01:14:18
Instead of using treat or cheat, I'm just like, okay, well, what are we going to call it? Well, let's call it this, which is essentially they eat whatever they like. don't prescribe or plan anything, but it's important that they practice eating to satiety. They feel satisfied and not stuffed. They really enjoy the meal. they're, you know, something that they really want to eat, but they're also eating slowly and they're not like trying to stuff themselves and trying to eat as much food within say two hour window, you know? And I'm like,

01:14:47
Look, if you're hungry for three courses, absolutely have three courses. If you just want one, just have one. It's not about what you eat or the amount. It's about how you feel. And then I also include another, I don't know, a treat, like some chocolate on one of those meals or whatever. But to your point, for the most part, I'm adding more carbohydrate in at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I sell it to them as

01:15:14
This is what eating at maintenance could look like for you. We need to practice this because it isn't just about that loss. That's one of the biggest reasons why I do it. But to your point, it's a psychological break after a two-week push. They get to put more glycogen in their muscles so they feel better when they're training. They get to look forward to some of these, to that metabolic reset meal.

01:15:44
I to counter it by saying, is just food. So if it's not the best meal you ever ate, it's okay, because your next meal you can still eat again. So I'm trying not to make them place too much importance on that. But then also, they then feel motivated coming into that next week. They start again on Monday with their protein sparing modified fast, because Mondays matter. And they get back into it.

01:16:13
But I also like to remind them that Monday isn't a punishment for what you did on the weekend. It's not like we're running this huge restriction because you overdid it. The whole point of these weekends is for you to eat what could be your forever approach. And you'll notice that the meals are the same. They're just bigger. We've just got more carbohydrates. So fat loss and maintenance actually aren't as different as what they might look like in your head.

01:16:40
And you've got to get your head around that actually, because this is one of the reasons why you have to come back to fat loss all of the time, because you haven't mastered that maintenance. So yeah, that's how we run the diet breaks in Mondays Matter. And if I was running this with an individual, I wouldn't do it every two weeks. You don't need it every two weeks, but in this group approach, it's really helpful. Yesu, maybe that actually gives me a little bit

01:17:09
of food for thought. Maybe I'll describe how I delineate and differentiate how to use these strategies just in an individualized approach. So I'll tell you personally, the refeed is going to be my first point of intervention. And I'm going to use that when the problem is training performance and then fullness related. So for instance, if I have someone that I'm starting to see performance losses and it's not due to just physical fatigue accumulation from the training cycle itself, it's actually due to a lack of carbohydrate availability, low glycogen.

01:17:38
just low energy levels. And then also if someone is running flat, and that's a visual analysis that I have to do, that their muscles look fat, there's no pops to them, or they're not getting a pump in the gym, or there's things that I'm seeing visually, and this is something I do. Like I pull it up on two computer screens and do an analysis. I often utilize a refeed. And I'll start with one refeed because I don't want this to be such a dichotomous change from what they've done. So the refeed will be structured out. I'll draw it up and it will be...

01:18:06
very similar to their baseline diet, but I will increase carbohydrates from glucose, glucose and fructose sources. So there's no digestive issues because I'm trying to utilize those multiple transportable carbs to increase carbohydrate absorption and oxidation. And so the refeed structure, I will use that on a one day period first. And then as I gauge that person's response, I may bring it up to two to three days at max. The deficit deload is when I found that diet fatigue has accumulated across the board.

01:18:33
So I'm seeing decrements in training performance. I'm seeing some diet fatigue from a mental perspective. This person is not checked out, but they're starting to really struggle. I'm seeing that they're starting to see have decrements in their biofeedback. So sleep is taking a hit. Some of their motivation or affect. And so then I will run that for an extended time course, which will be the week or four weeks. Now it is based off someone's biofeedback, but there are times that I have to make a coaching call, which what I mean by that is I've had, have a certain individual that I have,

01:19:02
gotten from, he was 210 or 11 pounds when he came to me and he's now maintaining under 150 pounds. So we're talking 61 pounds, 60 plus pounds of weight loss, but that was never in one thousandth swoop. That first year that we worked together, we did this dieting to deficit deload structure where it was fat loss focus maintenance, fat loss focus maintenance because he had lost and regained the same 40 to 50 pounds many years or many times over the years. And I was not only trying to get that off permanently,

01:19:31
But I also wanted him to get him leaner than that. And so I utilized this approach and there was times that he wanted to keep pushing. But I saw certain things within his biofeedback that led me to believe that that would be a bottleneck. Motivation wise, the kid was locked in and he was willing to push, but I just didn't think it was advantageous. And when I really looked at it from a yearly periodization perspective, I said, it's not really worth the cost of continuing to stay safe. For instance, he was doing 12 weeks of fat loss and four weeks of maintenance breaks essentially.

01:20:00
in certain instances, especially that first block, he was willing to go 16 weeks. He was willing to go 20 weeks. in my mind, and I express this to him, if going forward to eight more weeks in a continuous deficit is going to derail the rest of our year, I don't want that. So I'd rather us pull back before, pull back essentially proactively than me have to do so reactively and then have to have you in a full maintenance block. And so I do it obviously in an individualized perspective, but I start with the refeed first.

01:20:27
And then I have data on that. And what's really advantageous for that is that I often use the refeed data, their body's response, their body weight trends, their photos, to be able to build out the extended refeed. And then also, if I'm going to utilize, I use that data, especially with physique athletes or people that are doing photo shoots, to peak them in terms of carb ups. And then I also use that structure to determine, all right, let's go into a deficit D load. Was this enough to restore glycogen on a one to three day basis? Or did we overshoot? Did we undershoot? And then I'm able to take that data.

01:20:56
essentially make more precise adjustments and modifications moving forward. Nice one, Brandon. Yeah. So now to wrap this up, I want to go through the populations that rapid fat loss is not for. And I'm going to say something before we get into this list. I'll start off, Mickey. But I really can't tell you how many podcasts I've done where the information I've shared has been taken by less experienced coaches and then applied to people that it was never meant for. And then I'm the one getting a DM a few months later asking to fix it. And so I'm going be very

01:21:25
direct about this. went over the benefits, how we apply this, and we made it very clear that this is not a continuous approach that either of us use, at least in great frequency. I really want to get across that this is not an approach that's appropriate for everyone. And so I'm to go through what I find to be the people that it's least appropriate for, and then I'm going to turn it over to you, whether you agree or not, and then other populations you may see personally. So first category that I do not believe it's for is for women with menstrual cycle dysfunction.

01:21:54
And this is the number one group I will not use this approach with personally. I want to make it clear so it doesn't get misused. If a woman has hypothalamic hemorrhoea or a history of losing her cycle during previous diets, you shouldn't use this approach. And if you're approached with women on your roster in this position, do not use this approach with them because here's their harsh reality, but it's the truth. Many coaches don't understand female physiology well enough to restore a woman's outside of a fat loss phase, let alone during an aggressive one.

01:22:21
So the idea of gambling with someone's reproductive health or fertility and their long-term progression by reaching for an aggressive method is not something I'm even willing to be indirectly responsible for because losing the menstrual cycle isn't just a single time point in time. It's not a transient thing. When it's sustained long-term, meaning over the course of months and especially years, we're going to see a down regulation in estrogen production. With that, we're going to see implications on bone mineral density where we often see lowering.

01:22:49
And then, especially if you're an athlete, it's going to show up in stress factors or higher risk of injury or poor biofeedback. see GI issues. We see hypercholesterolemia, so high lipid levels, and then a greater susceptibility to immune problems if that menstrual cycle loss persists for long periods of time. The next category is for what I think personally is RFL should not be used for someone with an eating disorder history or someone with a history of a poor relationship with food. And I do want to make a nuance about this because

01:23:18
It's quite interesting if you look into the literature on rate of loss and eating disorders, because there's honestly no good evidence that the rate of loss independently causes eating disorders. We have to acknowledge the fact that eating disorders are complex biopsychological conditions, and that's going to involve genetics, your personality, your environment, past trauma. There's so many things that essentially go into the pot to create an eating disorder. And it's really a mental issue rather than just a physiological one. So dieting quickly is not...

01:23:46
sufficient enough to cause it. But the issue is that aggressive dieting can make it put people in a position where it can worsen their eating pathology, especially if they almost get addicted to it. I see that like with anorexia individuals, like they get addicted to the weight loss essentially. The third category that rapid fat loss is not for is for someone that's very lean. You have to think about it, the leaner you are, the less stored energy you have to pull fat from. And so it's going to increase your likelihood of losing lean body mass. The majority of dieters that

01:24:14
don't like the way they look at the end of the diet. I think it's in their mind, they think it's because they didn't lose enough weight, but often what I see visually from a coaching perspective and a more objective eye, it's because they lost too much muscle or they didn't have enough to begin with. if you're in this position, you're already lean, but you don't have a lot of muscle, you're lean but under-muscled, this is not the approach for you. And then the other group that this isn't applicable for is someone who's been chronically dieting or under-fueling. If someone's been in a deficit for an extended period of time, glaring

01:24:42
aggressive diet on top of that is a recipe for poor biofeedback and deeper adaptation. This includes anyone who's coming off a long fat loss phase, someone that's showing signs of low energy availability, especially like athletes, those that are under recovered or hormonally down regulated that can apply to some of the thyroid issues or low testosterone or low estradiol or progesterone. Then someone that's like a chronic yo-yo dieter. Before I'd ever consider an aggressive approach with someone that's in this position, I want to see some recent time spent at maintenance and I'm going to...

01:25:10
personally take this person through a primer phase and get them physiologically into the position, both physically and mentally, to be able to go into a deficit. And I usually won't use an aggressive approach with that. So I wanted to lead off with that because this approach sounds sexy and it's very effective. But at the same time, what I found in practice and also from doing this podcast for so many years is often the approaches that are least applicable for certain individuals are that group of individuals tend to ask me about it the most. They're most like a...

01:25:38
For some reason, psychologically, it's almost like going against what they should be doing, but it's almost tempting and enticing. Yeah, 100%, Brandon. And I would agree with all of the groups that you've described. And the only other one I would add, because it's the individuals that I work with, is in that athletic sense, if you are lean, yet you think, I need to lose two to three kilos in order to perform better, and I've got

01:26:07
That's a group where I'm like, well, I'm not a fan of using it within an already lean sort of athletic population. So I talked about how we can absolutely use it with an athlete if they legitimately have body fat to lose. And of course, middle-aged athletes, which I've just described, like 60 % of the population, a lot of them probably, they may well do.

01:26:36
and they may well feel better and perform better, but we're not doing it in the eight weeks lead up to their A event either. Of course, you can do it if your A race is 20 weeks away and you might have other races leading up and you've got body fat to lose, but I'm not a fan of the already lean, wants to get leaner athlete who is training really hard doing it. And to your point, they're the ones that are often attracted to these

01:27:05
quite extreme approaches as well. And of course, it's harder for me to govern that in a group setting. But I can generally clock it because they often have a lot of the questions or they're suffering the most. But not always, I can't clock it always. And I think this is just the nature of a group program where there are several hundred people sort of doing it at once. But I'm upfront about that.

01:27:34
the FAQs and the lead up to the registration for the program, et cetera. But then people will do what people do as well. Yes. Here's the thing. All we can do as nutrition and fitness professionals and educators is give people informed consent. Ultimately, they make the decision. What I say just practically, because I do have the control of exactly who I work with, exactly the interventions I take them through, is that I don't have to agree with what you're doing and I also don't have to take you through it.

01:28:02
And so that's kind of like, when I do, I do a very comprehensive intake process. Obviously I am very constrained on how many people I can work with where you were able to reach so many more people, which is a beauty. It's a blessing. But in my own practice, I just make sure that I am because I'm going to have to, you know, conversant these people daily or, you know, there's, have conversations and stuff. I also don't want to people suffer. And the biggest thing for me, especially like when I talk about chronic dieters or people with a long dieting history or someone that's very lean or the women with menstrual cycle dysfunction.

01:28:31
I have already seen dozens of women and dozens of people in these positions that have decided to take the aggressive approach and come to me after. And I've already seen the consequences, the ramifications, the downstream implications that they've done it on their own. Now, and we discussed this off air, if you know better, you do better. Well, I've been doing this 16 plus years, so I know what's to come. I know the studies by Merrill and colleagues looking at aggressive deficits versus moderate deficits and seeing lowered bone mineral density. I know the research from Garth and colleagues looking at athletes and looking at a slow rate of loss versus a...

01:29:00
a large rate of loss and how it has implications on performance and lean body mass. A lot of times people don't just want one goal and that's really what you're alluding to or you're referencing with the athletes. They want to chase multiple rabbits. You're going to have to make certain sacrifices when you have multiple goals and at times it's going to be shelving the one goal. So for instance, if someone comes to me and they're in a position where they're not physiologically in the position to lose that rapidly, we have one of two directions. I can get them back into a phase where we're focusing on muscle growth.

01:29:30
and getting them into a sufficient state of energy availability, or I can take them through a more conservative deficit approach that would be more applicable, and we're still able to get them to their goal. We just don't have to do it in the construct of six to eight weeks. So there has to be some give and take. Often what I'm thinking about when I'm coaching someone individually is I'm trying to meet them in the middle, but not so much that I'm compromising on my ethics and my integrity, but I'm also making sure that I'm designing a program that is a confluence.

01:29:58
of what's optimal for their goals and their preferences and what's optimal for the practical strengths of their lifestyle. So if someone has physiological bottlenecks, I can't just give into what they want because a lot of times people come to us and they essentially want us to sign like almost like consent on the poor decisions and poor approaches that they've taken in the past. And my whole thing is I want you to do better going forward. I want to be the person that rectifies and changes the trajectory that you're on.

01:30:24
So often I may meet you in the middle in certain aspects. You have a fat loss goal, cool. Well, you've been crash-diving your whole life and all you've done is lose a lean body mass and then regain body fat. Let's do this a different way. Because if what you are doing and we're doing, we're working, you wouldn't be coming to me. 100%. A lot of people just want to hear the good news about their bad habits, Brandon. And we are, unfortunately, the people that are positioned to be the person that's the power of authority and...

01:30:51
checking off on it. Is there anything else that you want to leave the audience with in terms of rapid fat loss, PSMFs or anything else? really like, I mean, I think we've really dived into the details, which is awesome. So people have a much better understanding of what it is. And I think that if this is, you I feel like this approach is getting more and more airtime, which I really like. And so you've got the opportunity to sort of

01:31:21
trial it with a bunch of different coaches and different groups, et cetera, and just make sure that you're doing it with people who really understand the approach and the nuance and what's required. So yeah, I think that would probably cover it. No, I couldn't agree with you more. think that oftentimes an approach like this can be sexy and it could be easy to sell. We could sit here and only talk about the benefits, the upsides, and the

01:31:50
how this is the solution to everyone's fat loss prayers. However, a true sign of it, both an expert and someone that actually cares about you is sharing both sides of the equation, who it's right for, who it isn't right for. The variables that need to be taken into consideration, more the nuanced details that go behind it because we are in a space that there's so much, it's rampant with misinformation, disinformation, and even more so marketing. And it could be easy to get on a podcast and only put something up on a pedestal, but it's always...

01:32:17
And this is why I love doing podcasts with individuals like yourself, in particular that you, is that you're always willing to get into the nuances, cover both the upsides and downsides. Because with all things, I always say this, and you love this expression, for every gimme there's a gotcha. And so we have to acknowledge that. so, Mickey, I want you to let the audience know where they can find you before we wrap this up. Yeah, wonderful, Brandon. Thank you. You can find me over on Instagram at Mickey Willardon.

01:32:44
at Miki Willardyn nutrition on Facebook, which is essentially just Instagram transferred over into the Facebook feed. But my website is mikiwillardyn.com and you can find details of Monday's Matter on there. would have by the time this airs, I would have just started the August edition of Monday's Matter. I'm really looking forward to that. But you'll find out information of sort of next group cohorts and of course, Micropedia.

01:33:11
Yes, you can't miss that, but this will be going out on both of them. So we'll be hearing it at one of these, one of our channels. Guys, as always, you can reach out to me on Instagram, is at BrandonDacruz. If you guys are interested in individualized coaching, feel free to either click the link in the show notes or to email me at bdacruzfitness.gmail.com and stay tuned to the Chasing Clarity podcast. I appreciate you guys tuning in and this will be the first of many between Mikki and I. So we're looking forward to it and we hope you guys have a great week. Wonderful. See you Brandon.

01:33:51
Alrighty, hopefully you enjoyed that. So fun sitting down with Brandon and I just love the way his brain works. I love what together, our sort of a general approach, how we utilize a similar approach but in different settings. I think that's so helpful. And our goal really with this is to just sort of cut through some of the misinformation that you might hear out there. hopefully you enjoyed that. Let me know. I'm over on Instagram threads or X @mikkiwilliden Facebook,

01:34:21
@mikkiwillidennutrition or head to my website @mikkiwilliden.com and sign up to my recipe portal. So many recipes in there guys, over a thousand. Amazing. They'll help you on your body composition or sports performance goals, whatever that looks like for you. Alright guys, you have the best week. See you later.