Ep 270 – How to Track Macros Without Losing Your Mind

Flexible dieting can seem overwhelming at first, but it doesn’t have to be. In this episode of Muscles by Brussels Radio, Coach Sawyer and Giacomo break down a practical approach to getting started without obsessing over numbers or overhauling your entire diet overnight. They discuss how to build awareness of your current eating habits, establish realistic calorie and protein targets, and gradually develop a system that fits your lifestyle instead of fighting against it.

The conversation also explores common beginner mistakes, including trying to change everything at once, chasing unnecessarily high protein intakes, and letting perfectionism derail progress. Sawyer and Giacomo explain how to navigate restaurants, travel, family gatherings, and unexpected life events while staying on track, emphasizing that consistency and curiosity are far more valuable than perfection.

Whether you’re completely new to tracking or looking to make your nutrition approach more sustainable, this episode offers practical strategies for making flexible dieting work in the real world.

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TRANSCRIPT

Coach Sawyer (00:00)
Hey everybody, welcome back to Muscles by Brussels. I’m Coach Sawyer.

Giacomo (00:04)
I’m Giacomo.

Coach Sawyer (00:05)
And we’re really excited to have you here. This is episode, I don’t know, one million and seven probably. I don’t know, that’s what it feels like.

Giacomo (00:11)
At least. Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (00:13)
But today we are gonna talk about how to get started with flexible dieting. But first, Giacomo, how the hell are you, man? It’s been a minute. What have you been up to? Have you been traveling? Have you been at home? What have you been up to?

Giacomo (00:25)
my gosh, where do I even begin? I’m actually excited about Saturday because one of my clients is coming to my gym. So we’re gonna have a little training session together. And

Coach Sawyer (00:32)
Ooh, cool.

Giacomo (00:34)
usually when I have somebody and I train them and train with them in person, I I watch them and I’m prep like I’m prepared. Like I go in and I have their whole workout in my head and I run through it with them

Coach Sawyer (00:42)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (00:44)
and I watch them and I assess. Like I just wanna focus on them.

Coach Sawyer (00:47)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (00:48)
I don’t want to buddy it up with them per se and like not give them the chance to be coached in person.

Coach Sawyer (00:52)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (00:52)
But this time I think I want to do things a little differently and I wanna go through the workout with them because I feel like it’ll it’ll be a nice encouraging way to push because they just went through a competition prep. And after you

Coach Sawyer (01:00)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (01:02)
go through a competition prep, sometimes you forget like how hard you can actually push because you’re just so used to being fatigued and

Coach Sawyer (01:08)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (01:10)
that can affect your intensity. Honestly it

Giacomo (01:12)
I think about that too as a bodybuilder because what are we really responsible for for bodybuilders? Getting a pump. That’s pretty much it. And you can get so obsessed with the pump that you can become deconditioned c as far as your cardiovascular health is concerned. And you can go into the gym and I I don’t want to say a little get a little lazy ’cause I don’t want to be a little shamey here, but

Coach Sawyer (01:33)
Hmm.

Giacomo (01:34)
you sort of lose that intensity, that push. Do you know what mean? So I don’t know.

Coach Sawyer (01:37)
Lose focus. Yeah, yeah. I mean,

Coach Sawyer (01:40)
it is important that your workouts feel good. I think there should be somewhat of a dopamine hit if you can find it in a workout. Because you can look forward to that. But at the same time, it’s like, but that’s not what drives the progress forward. It’s not feeling good in the moment. It’s doing the things that are gonna increase tension in the muscle and kind of stimulate it to grow. And that might not be the most fun part of training for you. you know. Yeah.

Giacomo (02:03)
What

Giacomo (02:03)
is Mia singing in the background, right?

Coach Sawyer (02:05)
I don’t know actually, I think she’s writing something which is cool. So yeah, I definitely, I was like, oh can you hear it? Because I didn’t want to tell her to be quieter because I’m like, go do your thing, enjoy. Because I’ve been writing music too and it’s such a cool outlet and I definitely didn’t want to rain on her parade at all. But you know.

Coach Sawyer (02:28)
It’s cool to hear her singing though, because it’s been a while since she’s done it. So I’m happy right now.

Giacomo (02:33)
I got embarrassed

Giacomo (02:33)
because Danny is such a good sing she’s that’s her strongest suit when it comes to music is her voice. And so

Coach Sawyer (02:38)
I know, she is great singer and she just is great at writing music too.

Giacomo (02:42)
mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I had taken singing lessons because I wanted to impress her and I like finally had the courage to do it. And then I

Coach Sawyer (02:47)
That’s cool.

Giacomo (02:49)
just got embarrassed and sh I because I don’t know, just a part of me was like I

Coach Sawyer (02:54)
Hmm.

Giacomo (02:55)
was judging myself even though she wasn’t judging me. And then I just gave up.

Coach Sawyer (02:57)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (02:58)
After two months of singing lessons it just stopped. It was

Coach Sawyer (03:00)
Wow,

Giacomo (03:01)
Yeah, I was so frustrated with myself.

Coach Sawyer (03:01)
it’s hard,

Coach Sawyer (03:02)
it’s hard man. There’s so many different ways of expressing ourselves that are so foreign to us that it feels almost wrong or feels cringy or whatever, but those are just, I mean, I really like this one quote that was like, anything that feels cringy to you is just an unexplored area of yourself. Like you just haven’t spent enough time there to feel like it’s you yet.

Coach Sawyer (03:23)
And so it feels like you’re faking it, it feels like you’re trying to be somebody you’re not, or that you’ll never be comfortable there, but it’s just really a matter of repetition and you’ll get to the point of like, okay, this feels more normal now, and then it’ll eventually become part of you. And it’s just, it’s cool to treat life that way, like a bunch of different things instead of trying to be like, okay, I’m only gonna do the things I’m already good at. You’re trying to explore a little bit too. But you have to do it for yourself too. I think if you’re doing it for Danny,

Coach Sawyer (03:50)
you might, it might not be a strong enough motivator for you to be like, I really want to keep doing this. You know what I mean? Like you have to really want to do it because it’s, is so uncomfortable at so many points. Yeah. It can, it can stop you in your tracks sometimes when you hear your voice back and you’re like, that’s not good. I don’t like it. Yeah. It’s awkward.

Giacomo (04:07)
So

Giacomo (04:07)
What am I thinking, friend? I don’t know if you know or if you realize just how much we’re plotting here to try to find a way to lure you back into the United States selfishly, because I don’t because that obvious exactly. But

Coach Sawyer (04:17)
Haha, good luck

Giacomo (04:22)
out but also aside from how much we all miss you out here, we’re all really

Coach Sawyer (04:27)
Hmm.

Giacomo (04:27)
h I’m I speak for myself, I’m really happy for you. But I’m also I also don’t know anything about what life is like for you. And I’m super curious to just

Coach Sawyer (04:35)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (04:36)
to get a better insight on how your eating habits might have changed and since you’ve been out there and what

Coach Sawyer (04:41)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (04:42)
kind of food you have access to and like what’s that all been like?

Coach Sawyer (04:44)
Yeah, it’s

Coach Sawyer (04:46)
a great launching off point, because yeah, that’s so true. It’s like flexible dieting does allow you to be flexible, which is really nice when you need it. So yeah, so I’ve been in the last several months for people who haven’t been keeping up with my travels. We came to, we got to Spain in February, and then stayed there until our traveler visa was up in May.

Coach Sawyer (05:07)
and then we’ve been in Albania since then and we’re actually going back to Spain in about a month. So we’ve been in Europe since February and been a lot of learning involved for sure with how to be vegan in a different country, how to be a fit vegan in a different country. So there’s two kind of layers to it.

Coach Sawyer (05:27)
But really it’s just a matter of finding the staples. You know what I mean? It’s been harder here in Albania for sure than in Spain. In Spain I was right away like, there’s tofu, there’s TVP. There’s things that I could recognize. Here though I had to go check some different stores and some things off of the beaten path a little bit. You can’t go to the main grocery chains and find.

Coach Sawyer (05:49)
everything you could find like one or two things and maybe they’re more expensive and so you have to like Shop around a little bit after you find the first thing like tofu is about twice as expensive here as it is in stays So you buy it by like the half a block and it’s just as much if not a little bit more Than what it is back home. So that was something I was like, damn that sucks tofu is usually one of the cheaper things from my in my grocery budget, but now I have to like

Coach Sawyer (06:16)
maybe eat less of it or find it in different place or whatever. So yeah, it’s kind of cool because it’s almost like a little scavenger hunt, you know? You can go look around town and see where you can find things and try different restaurants and whatnot. Especially extra challenges if you don’t speak the language at all, which is definitely how Albanian is for me. But Spanish I’m pretty good at.

Coach Sawyer (06:38)
Spanish is a lot easier. There’s a lot more options in big city like Barcelona. Albania has been a challenge, but we figured it out. It’s cool. We found like this health food store that had like soy flour, TVP. What else do they have? They had like some tempeh. So it’s like, you don’t even know where you’re to find it, but you kind of just start gathering like lists. I have so many lists on my phone of like, here’s where you get this and how much it costs. like, so I’m just like, I’ve been kind of

Coach Sawyer (07:03)
gathering data like a computer nerd, because I like this stuff. yeah.

Giacomo (07:08)
See,

Giacomo (07:08)
so it is bec I feel like because of your ability to understand flexible dieting, you

Coach Sawyer (07:17)
Mm.

Giacomo (07:17)
went out there and you figured it out while you were on the go, right? Because

Coach Sawyer (07:20)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (07:21)
you’ve been doing this for how long now? and even still for me, well, yeah.

Coach Sawyer (07:22)
While tracking macros, tracking macros I’ve been doing for like

Coach Sawyer (07:26)
16 years and then vegan since a little over 10 years now. yeah.

Giacomo (07:32)
Yeah,

Giacomo (07:32)
exactly. Right? But imagine that you just were starting off and you found

Coach Sawyer (07:38)
It’s hard.

Giacomo (07:39)
this quick, simple system that worked for you. And you’re like, All right, I’m gonna wake up, I’m gonna have my protein shake and I’m maybe gonna have a bowl of cereal. I’m gonna it’s my afternoon time, I’m gonna have my vegan chicken and my sweet potato and my broccoli, and then it’s dinner time and I’m gonna have whatever, like a mackerel bowl. And maybe for snacks

Giacomo (07:57)
I’ll have either pretzels or carrots. And I know that if I follow this formula and if I stick to the script and I make these meals in advance for myself and I repeat these meals and that I then I’m gonna have the body that I want. And I’m gonna put them in Tupperware and that’s that. But then all of a sudden, I don’t know. You have a move and you are planning for

Coach Sawyer (08:18)
Yeah.

Giacomo (08:19)
it and and but now you’re in the middle of your travels and you have to travel from one country to the other. And how does how do you

Giacomo (08:24)
Without understanding the principles of flexible dieting,

Coach Sawyer (08:27)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (08:27)
what do you do? Right? So I I feel like that’s

Coach Sawyer (08:29)
Yeah, or your goals change

Coach Sawyer (08:30)
even. Like you’d realize like, you know what, the amount that I was eating before is no longer moving the needle. What do I do? How much do I add? How much do I take away? Yeah, there’s a lot of questions when you don’t rely on or have any kind of thing to do with the numbers.

Coach Sawyer (08:44)
If you’re just looking at the food itself and you try to eyeball it all the time, that can be a great skill to have, but it can also leave things a little murky, especially if Ev’s life and goals change. So I agree. I think it is good to have an understanding of numbers, and then you can always back off of them periodically if you feel like there’s a season of life where you don’t need to be as controlled. But I think it’s good to always have that foundational understanding of, hey, this is the calorie range I need to be in.

Coach Sawyer (09:09)
for this goal and this goal and this is where I need to be, where the protein is and stuff like that. So yeah, I mean, I’m excited to explain that to people a little bit today, but yeah, it’s a really good point is that like, you you could have like something figured out at one point in your life and feel like I’m good, awesome. And then something changes and you have to have like an understanding to be able to back to like, you know, have foundationally because life has just changed so much that.

Coach Sawyer (09:35)
it’s kind of throwing you off your game a little bit.

Giacomo (09:37)
For sure. For sure. So some so even

Coach Sawyer (09:39)
Yeah.

Giacomo (09:40)
with the tools and even with the experience, you can still find yourself going back to the drawing board, basically. But

Giacomo (09:46)
I think to get started, it helps even understand it helps understand what tools you need and how to access them. And so what would be the first thing you would do for someone who is brand new to understanding how much they eat and what they want to put on their plate and how to get in protein? They understand these

Coach Sawyer (10:04)
Yeah.

Giacomo (10:04)
concepts, but they have no idea how to put them into action. They have no idea what kind of tools to use. And let’s throw like

Coach Sawyer (10:10)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (10:10)
a curveball our way and let’s

Coach Sawyer (10:12)
you

Giacomo (10:13)
Let’s throw

Giacomo (10:13)
in the idea of this person being a little intimidated by the idea of using math to like count calories. They’re a little hesitant. There’s a fear around there.

Coach Sawyer (10:20)
Yeah, that’s a

Coach Sawyer (10:23)
good little layer, I like that. So, yeah, mean, it can be scary to think, okay, I’m have to do this math equation for the rest of my life. So, we can get to that later. But where I would start somebody is, what are you currently eating? And try to get an awareness of where your habits are right now.

Coach Sawyer (10:39)
because they might change a bit day to day, but for the most part, we all have some guidelines. They just might be unspoken or less defined than we realize. So for instance, if people gravitate towards a certain breakfast and a certain dinner, we all kind of just rotate meals. mean, we all have kind of fallen to patterns, right? So if you kind of get an idea of, what are the average calories I have in a day? So maybe you download an app and you say, all right, I’m gonna just track for a week and I’m gonna see, or maybe just a few days even.

Coach Sawyer (11:06)
I’m gonna see where my average daily calories end up around. And you might find yourself in between a certain range most days. That is a good starting place, I think, for most people to figure out what their maintenance calories are. A lot of times. You can use a calculator too. Those can be really helpful. We have one, vegan proteins. it’s like, sometimes the real test where the rubber really meets the road is like, what are you currently doing and what is your body composition currently doing? Are you pretty much staying the same? How many calories are you averaging?

Coach Sawyer (11:32)
That’s a pretty good starting point for like, okay, like baseline. So would you agree with that starting point or do you do something different?

Giacomo (11:38)
Where’s your body composition at and how many calories are you eating? Is that what you’re asking?

Coach Sawyer (11:43)
Yeah, well I mean, yeah, trying

Coach Sawyer (11:44)
to figure out like, okay, what calories are you consuming on average, even if you’re not tracking like regularly? And yeah, and what direction is your body weight headed? Is it generally a good thing to be mindful of?

Giacomo (11:57)
I feel like the easiest way to do it, depending on what kind of avatar we’re creating for what kind of person we’re working with, let’s just assume that they know nothing and they’re just getting started so we can give all the ideas. I think a three-day food diary without trying to calculate or t anything, without trying to pay attention to anything.

Coach Sawyer (12:13)
that’s a good, yeah.

Giacomo (12:14)
A three-day food diary, and you can even fill in the portions down the road. Like you don’t have to like try and think of the person who’s like doesn’t want to take a super detailed approach and maybe it’s little intimidating

Coach Sawyer (12:23)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (12:23)
and did

Giacomo (12:24)
Yeah, it’s

Coach Sawyer (12:25)
Yeah.

Giacomo (12:26)
right. So just super simple, just to get started. And then while you’re

Coach Sawyer (12:29)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (12:29)
doing that also maybe take take away in every day for three days to see how your weight fluctuates. So you’ve created a habit,

Coach Sawyer (12:36)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (12:36)
you’ve done something where you’re less likely to analyze what you’re doing, you

Coach Sawyer (12:41)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (12:41)
are unlikely to start to second guess yourself or become frustrated with what you’re doing. Or judge excuse, that’s the word I want say. You’re unlikely to judge yourself.

Giacomo (12:50)
You’re unlikely to judge

Coach Sawyer (12:51)
Yeah.

Giacomo (12:51)
yourself, you are more more likely unlikely to analyze what you’re doing, and you’re more likely to start to put the habits in place. Just three simple days

Coach Sawyer (12:59)
Yeah.

Giacomo (12:59)
of just starting to to write things out.

Coach Sawyer (13:02)
I like that. Yeah, you’re right. Because sometimes when people know that they’re tracking, they’ll change their habits a little bit. And so you’re like, okay, don’t eat differently, but try to write it down, try to get an idea. That can be tricky. But ultimately, the cool thing about the process is sooner or later you’ll figure it out. If you think you know your maintenance calories and you say, okay, well, let’s just go a little bit below that. You’re trying to lose some body fat. Cool. Say you subtract 300 calories from the average you got for that three days.

Coach Sawyer (13:28)
but you don’t end up losing any weight if eating under, okay, that’s probably your maintenance actually. It’s just that you were a little bit overestimating before. And so that’s why it’s kind of cool is like the more you do it, the better you learn. The more data you collect, the more information you have to make inferences and make decisions. So that’s the big rocks is like, calories matter the most when it comes to moving the body weight, moving the body composition.

Coach Sawyer (13:53)
into a catabolic or anabolic state, meaning are we gaining weight, are we losing weight, is going to be dictated by calorie intake. And getting an idea for you, not for what the calculator said or what your friend eats or whatever. You need to figure out for you, your activity level, your body mass, everything, what is the ballpark of calories you need to be in. And you can get more refined later, but just knowing general ranges like, hey, this is high for me.

Coach Sawyer (14:20)
This is maintenance for me. This is low for me. That’s a good, I think, baseline for most people to get a hold of. And maybe they don’t ever go past that. Maybe that’s enough for them to reach their goals is just knowing, having an understanding of their calorie kind of landmarks. And so I want to just put that out there. We don’t have to get more complex than that because there’s a lot of ways to get more complex than that if you want to. But depending on how

Coach Sawyer (14:45)
precise your goals are. Maybe you’re just like, I just want to lose five pounds. Cool, okay. Eat a little bit less than your average. Cool, you’re going to get there. But the more, you know, the bigger your goals are, the more like muscle versus fat you want to have, the more, you know, difficult physiologically that’s going to be, the more precise you’re going to have to be in that process, you know? Would you agree with that generally?

Giacomo (15:05)
Mm-hmm. This is I feel like this can all happen inside of three weeks. So you’re getting started, you you’re starting

Coach Sawyer (15:08)
yeah, figuring out.

Giacomo (15:10)
to get into the habit of paying attention to what you’re doing. Then you can analyze, assess, and judge what you’re doing by getting some answers by the end of the week. And then with to like you said, the next two weeks, the things that you’re talking about in terms of assessing your body composition and how it is changing and how w and where you want it to go and all that. Like that happens, I think, inside of week two and week three tops.

Giacomo (15:31)
And then I feel like by week three you can already

Coach Sawyer (15:33)
Yeah.

Giacomo (15:33)
start to make some changes. And I think this is a fast track to to doing all of this. But so like, but let’s let’s get deeper into what we’re talking about here, which is flexible dieting, right? So we’re let’s hone in on the nutrition side of things. So what we’ve done in the past is we’ve so one thing I like to do is I don’t like to change someone’s the way that they’re eating.

Giacomo (15:54)
I like to work with the foods that they’re eating, the weight they like to eat throughout the day. Gotcha. Cool.

Coach Sawyer (15:56)
Same.

Giacomo (15:59)
And then the next thing is to encourage them to eat a little more similarly than they would other like because how do I say this? When someone is ex when someone is looking forward to assessing how they’re eating, they start to like make changes all all right right away. And it to

Coach Sawyer (16:15)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (16:15)
me, it just puts extra work on your plate, right?

Coach Sawyer (16:17)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (16:18)
’cause they’re ready

Coach Sawyer (16:18)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (16:18)
to make a change and they’re more inch they’re more in ch they’re interested in taking care of themselves. So all of a sudden they start how many recipes can I make? What can I batch cook? What can I do differently? What kind of variety

Coach Sawyer (16:27)
Yeah.

Giacomo (16:28)
like all the things. Like I literally s saw

Coach Sawyer (16:29)
Yeah.

Giacomo (16:30)
someone once just try to do it all at once and then they just they just stopped. You know what I mean? As opposed to like

Coach Sawyer (16:33)
Yeah, I mean there’s so many

Coach Sawyer (16:35)
examples of that. Like where people get too excited for a change and then they go so big that it’s unsustainable. They don’t even like what they’re eating. They don’t like the lifestyle that they’re living anymore. They don’t have room for anything else. So it’s almost like, the more excited you get, the more you could set yourself up to fail by setting the bar really, really high at the outset. At the same time, you might have to make some changes, right? Like there might be some like,

Coach Sawyer (17:01)
I was eating only 60 grams of protein a day, I might need to get that up. But that doesn’t mean you have to turn your entire diet on its head, you could just add some more higher protein things and maybe they crowd out some of the junkier things and that is enough to move the needle right now instead of overhaul, change everything right away. I agree, yeah.

Giacomo (17:21)
So the first thing you you’re saying is to find foods that are find meals and foods that are more protein dense and that’ll help you make better choices right off the bat. Is that is that what you’re suggesting?

Coach Sawyer (17:29)
Yeah, I usually talk

Coach Sawyer (17:31)
about that pretty early on in the coaching process because that’s something that not a lot of people focus on, especially if they’re not familiar with flexible dieting because most of the time what I have people focus on and I myself focus on is just protein and calories. That’s the level of depth that I’ve found is sustainable for most people in a lot of different phases and is enough to move the needle in the ways that we need to. Getting more detailed than that can be helpful.

Coach Sawyer (17:56)
in certain situations, but if you find that it’s just like filling out a puzzle piece, know, puzzle every day, it can be a little bit much for like all seasons of life. You know, I can understand like prepping for a bodybuilding show or preparing for summer. You want to be maybe a little bit more precise. But for most things, I’ve found protein and calories is a pretty good, just like well-rounded approach. I don’t know. What do you think? Is that how you do it? Or you like to do macros more exact for you?

Giacomo (18:23)
protein calories for sure. But I do

Coach Sawyer (18:24)
Oh, you like to do that too? Unless you’re, what

Coach Sawyer (18:27)
about when you’re prepping for show? Do you go more towards macros? Or do you like a meal plan? Yeah, okay.

Giacomo (18:30)
of course. Well, absolutely.

Giacomo (18:32)
Because it’s cre whatever fuel you’re getting in, it’s critical that it’s gonna be optimal for what you’re doing. You need that fuel

Coach Sawyer (18:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

Giacomo (18:39)
that’s r ready for you for the day in the form of carbohydrates. If you go high fat and your workouts suffer a little bit, recarburis suffers a

Coach Sawyer (18:45)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (18:46)
little bit, energy levels suffer a little bit, and your the the

Coach Sawyer (18:49)
Yeah.

Giacomo (18:49)
nutrient density, whatever you’re getting in throughout the day that has some nutrition. I mean, granted you’re in a c severe calorie deficit, so

Giacomo (18:56)
you’re going to be nut nutritionally deficient to begin with, but you might as well get some energy from nutrients. And if you

Coach Sawyer (19:00)
Yeah.

Giacomo (19:01)
lean too heavily on fat, you can also typically have like things on your plate that are more calorie dense and rich. And that would be a little less satiating. I mean your stomach shrinks and but still when you’re s in that severe calorie deficit, your stomach is often empty and that’s an uncomfortable

Coach Sawyer (19:18)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (19:18)
feeling when and I think also just psychologically, when you see a plate and there’s not much on it.

Coach Sawyer (19:23)
Yeah.

Giacomo (19:23)
it’s kind

Giacomo (19:23)
of it’s kind of hard to to to sit with that and be

Coach Sawyer (19:26)
Yeah.

Giacomo (19:27)
okay and then you’re more likely to I mean not to go off too much on a tangent about bodybuilding, but to to walk

Coach Sawyer (19:32)
Yeah.

Giacomo (19:33)
it back to like everyone here and the average person. I think when it comes to macrowing, I like understanding carbohydrates and fats because it’s they are barometers and they will tell you what direction you’re leaning too heavily in when it comes to

Coach Sawyer (19:48)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (19:50)
Like if your carbs are low, you’re probably lacking nutritionally. If your

Coach Sawyer (19:54)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (19:55)
fat is low, well, maybe you’re gonna be a little more peckish or famished. And there are you do want to get a certain amount of fat in for hormonal health. Although I feel like most people usually we don’t have a problem with or

Coach Sawyer (20:03)
Yeah, there’s hormonal effects too. Yeah.

Giacomo (20:07)
if your fat is too low, maybe you’re trying to suppress calories a little too much. And like all of you, like your calor cal I’ve seen that

Coach Sawyer (20:12)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (20:13)
kind of behavior with fat being low. If your fat is too high,

Coach Sawyer (20:15)
Yeah.

Giacomo (20:15)
maybe you’re gonna wind up blowing

Giacomo (20:17)
blowing through your calories, blowing out your calories for the day, or

Coach Sawyer (20:19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Giacomo (20:20)
you’re just leaning into foods that that are are not gonna be satisfying for you or actually feel good

Coach Sawyer (20:24)
Yeah, yeah.

Giacomo (20:25)
in your GI.

Coach Sawyer (20:26)
No, that makes sense. I think the reason I even brought up a bodybuilding prep show is to kind of give the explanation of like, okay, if you’re just starting out with this, if your goals are not that extreme of getting to sub 10 % body fat or whatever, you probably don’t need to go much beyond protein and calories, but you’re right. Having the macros in mind or having those in the app that you’re logging in can be helpful because if you start having an issue,

Coach Sawyer (20:51)
you can look and say, okay, well how much fiber am I actually getting? Okay, many carbs am I getting compared to how many fats am I getting? That can be some source of like troubleshooting if there’s a point where you’re realizing, I don’t feel great, like what’s going on here? That could be a really helpful thing and that’s another reason why having the data is great but you don’t necessarily need to look at it all of it all the time and be like, oh, I need to get 50 plus grams of fiber and oh, I gotta make sure I’m getting my vitamin C and my magnesium and all this stuff. Little much.

Coach Sawyer (21:19)
Little much, so it stops being as flexible when you look at too many micronutrients and things. And that’s why I say for most people, protein and calories is a really good base because it takes care of the big players. We’re talking about calories because it’s gonna move your body weight up or down, it’s gonna encourage you to gain or lose weight. And when I say weight, mean fat and or muscle. It can be either or, depending on the environment you’re creating.

Coach Sawyer (21:46)
and then same with the weight loss. But that is one big lever that we pull is calories and the other one is protein amount because that’s just something you can’t really get around and to be honest, it’s something that not a lot of people get enough of without paying attention to it. So it’s just one of those things where it makes sense to pay at least some attention to protein. And so that’s where I usually take people next is okay, we figured out your calories and here’s also your recommendation for protein.

Coach Sawyer (22:12)
How do you like to introduce the topic of protein and where do you work that in?

Giacomo (22:17)
Well, I like to encourage people to break up their protein throughout the day because they tend to feel more satiated that way and it tends to encourage good behavior and good habits where you’re gonna get enough protein for the day because it’s easy because when it comes to flexible dieting and when it comes to saying, Well, as long as I’m in calories for the day, I’m okay, we can start to plug in whatever we want throughout the day and then we negotiate

Coach Sawyer (22:39)
is true.

Giacomo (22:39)
with ourselves and then all of a sudden it’s it’s a couple hours before bedtime and

Giacomo (22:43)
your protein goal is for the day, you’re like fifty percent of the way there because you wanted

Coach Sawyer (22:47)
Yes.

Giacomo (22:48)
an extra cookie and something

Coach Sawyer (22:51)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (22:51)
else that was low protein, but it was a nice filling meal. Maybe you didn’t throw tofu, temper

Coach Sawyer (22:55)
Yeah, you’re right.

Giacomo (22:56)
or setaine into your dish, but you had a full avocado

Giacomo (22:59)
with your macro bowl instead. And then

Coach Sawyer (23:01)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (23:02)
if you don’t encourage yourself to start the day off of protein, have something I think breakfast can be especially tricky and challenging too. Not to say it’s it’s

Giacomo (23:11)
harder for vegans ’cause I think where there’s a will, there’s a way. And also obviously I want to have people make choices where they’re they’re eating nutritious food that that digests well and feels good. But like in the morning, what would be your your options

Giacomo (23:26)
For a plant based diet, we’re looking at what? Like

Giacomo (23:28)
oatmeal or something like that or muesli mix or like whatever tofu scram there you go. Exactly. Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (23:28)
I mean, yeah. Protein oatmeal, tofu scramble. Yeah, yeah. You got

Coach Sawyer (23:37)
smoothies, whatever. I think you

Giacomo (23:39)
Mm.

Coach Sawyer (23:40)
don’t have to be super worried about it until you have set a goal and then maybe you’re finding it hard to reach without a bunch of protein supplementation, in which case, that probably means you need to put some more like,

Coach Sawyer (23:53)
whole foods or minimally processed protein sources throughout your day. Especially because you’re right, satiation is a big deal when it comes to having meals. If you have an entire meal, like a big old salad, super healthy, but might not just actually be that filling and have you coming up short for your protein needs for the day if you just do a big salad with no protein with it.

Coach Sawyer (24:14)
It’s kind of a good thing to keep you on track for your fitness goals, but also like just keep you more satiated in general, which is going to make you having better choices. And that’s kind of like a positive feedback loop that kind of… So I find that having a protein target that’s kind of higher, but not so aggressively high that you have to eat like protein products for every meal. don’t think like doing like, having a protein bar for every meal or a protein shake with every meal would be reasonable.

Coach Sawyer (24:41)
In fact, I don’t have protein powder at all here. And I could get it, but it’s just more expensive. So I’m just not gonna have it. So yeah, think protein is, the better you get at it, the more benefits you’ll receive from it and the less inconvenient it’ll be. But you just have to find your go-to sources and the ways that you enjoy it. Because by default, our society…

Coach Sawyer (25:04)
any society that you go to, they just don’t emphasize protein all that much, at least not vegan protein. That’s something that you don’t see in meals very often unless you put it there. And so that’s why I think it’s something that you kind of, most people would benefit from watching more closely in addition to calories, because calories are freaking everywhere and vegan protein sources are almost nowhere.

Coach Sawyer (25:27)
you have to kind of maintain a good amount of each, you know, for your goals.

Giacomo (25:32)
But let’s think

Giacomo (25:33)
about the opposite side of this equation, Sawyer. You when it

Coach Sawyer (25:36)
What’s up?

Giacomo (25:36)
comes to someone who is wanting to become leaner or they want weight loss, the first thing they focus

Coach Sawyer (25:43)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (25:43)
on is caloric restriction and protein and they start to lean in hard on the protein and it can and it can make it hard to make other choices that would otherwise

Coach Sawyer (25:52)
Yeah.

Giacomo (25:53)
be healthy and good for you. And they just lead with the protein. Like, okay, I’m gonna have

Coach Sawyer (25:56)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (25:56)
just protein in the morning, but what else can I put on my plate? And is also it’s like

Giacomo (25:59)
nervousness around what kind of decisions to make and I honestly I’ve seen

Coach Sawyer (26:02)
Yeah.

Giacomo (26:02)
people go cons consider like over calories and over on protein because of that concern of and then then they they use protein as a thing where like well protein’s good for me but they it it becomes tricky to make other choices and not center the conversation around protein when it comes to flexible dieting. Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (26:22)
That’s true. That’s true. It

Coach Sawyer (26:23)
could definitely be too much of a focus.

Giacomo (26:25)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Sawyer (26:26)
can be a little bit neurotic how much protein people eat. I mean, one thing is it’s nice that it’s harder to overeat, but if you’re neurotic enough, people can still do it and it can crowd out a lot of healthy foods. right. So I think the most I would ever really recommend somebody eats in terms of protein would be one gram per pound of body weight. In most cases, like that’s still

Coach Sawyer (26:50)
too high, but if it helps satiate them and calms their nervous system a bit, because they’re still eating a lot by most people’s then great. But for me, I’m eating about 1.6 to 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. So for me, that’s about 130 plus right now, 130 grams a day.

Coach Sawyer (27:16)
As long as I’m getting around that, I’m not worried about it. I used to be somebody who was like, no, I need like 175 minimum or else. And the ways that that makes your life more difficult, it seems worth it at the time, but like if you experiment enough with protein, and this is my experience, so I’d to hear yours, you just figure out like you don’t really feel that different. The only thing is that your life is harder eating that much protein versus, you know, a more moderate like decent amount or.

Coach Sawyer (27:43)
whatever you want to call 130 versus 175. What’s been your experience with experimenting with protein amounts?

Coach Sawyer (27:50)
Have you done like crazy stuff? Have you done like 300 grams? I bet you are. I bet you have, knowing you. You probably have.

Giacomo (27:55)
Well

Giacomo (27:56)
thirty years ago I used to get in like three grams per pound of body weight. I got it between two to three. That that was great. And then

Coach Sawyer (28:00)
my god, see, there it is. Yeah, there it is. I knew you couldn’t resist.

Giacomo (28:06)
like like you, I I did obsess over the number needing to be at the upper limit at all times and a little higher than it probably needed to be. I think I think maybe like ten, fifteen years ago I used to try to get it closer to like maybe even upwards of like two hundred forty grams.

Giacomo (28:20)
And if it was getting below 180, I would be I would think that I’m failing at building muscle.

Coach Sawyer (28:26)
you

Giacomo (28:27)
and in one sense, I could see the satiety aspect of it. Like you said, like one gram per pound of body weight. Like I I kinda want to give a little pushback on that because it depends on where someone is. You know, if someone

Coach Sawyer (28:36)
Yeah.

Giacomo (28:36)
is if you take a a person who is 225 pounds and they and their their everyday normal healthy weight is 150.

Giacomo (28:46)
I wouldn’t I would not I would not have them at two hundred and twenty-five pounds of pro grams of protein. I’d have them maybe like at a hundred and maybe like taking your whatever ideal weight that you want to be at, if your goal is weight

Coach Sawyer (28:56)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (28:56)
loss and having one gram per pound at that number. But if protein is keeping you satiated and you want to juice that number up by like say ten to thirty grams, I think you can within reason.

Coach Sawyer (29:07)
Yeah, and that’s kind of what I was getting at. This is only for the people who are real paranoid about it and okay with the trade-offs, because there’s a lot of them of going that high. I mean, it’s diminishing returns, right? You increase your protein from 60 to 80, and you’re going to feel a big difference in satiety. 80 to 100, yeah, maybe, yeah, sure. 100 to 150, still more maybe, but beyond…

Coach Sawyer (29:30)
some of these, like you get into the stratosphere of protein intakes and it’s just gonna make your life harder and not any better. You’re not gonna see any more results. In fact, it might actually give you worse results because you’re crowding out carbohydrates, you’re crowding out fats. You’re not able to socialize as much or rest as often. It’s just like people get so neurotic about this that it kind of shoots them in the foot at a certain point. And so yeah, I do think it’s, you know, we give general recommendations, but like,

Coach Sawyer (29:57)
Ultimately, it is up to you and what you find to be beneficial. The longer you do this, the more you find out about yourself and like what feels like a reasonable amount versus what do I actually feel the benefit of. That’s going to be kind of the murky answer I’m going to give, but in general, a good starting point is somewhere around, you know, 0.7, 0.8 times your ideal body weight. And you can work it up from there. And in, pounds, you can work it up from there if you feel like that would be helpful or

Coach Sawyer (30:24)
maybe even do a little bit less if it just would make it stick better because you’re like, I can’t keep getting this point eight, this is insane. You have to also consider it has to be sustainable too. you know.

Giacomo (30:34)
Hm, I

Giacomo (30:35)
think an important point to make also is pay atten my personal opinion here is it makes sense to pay attention to how you like to eat and the foods that you like to eat first before you start to think about macros. That’s second. What I find is that when I when I tell someone, hey, or suggest like hey, like just go ahead and don’t think about calories, macros, portion of them, just write down what you eat for three days. You can find out

Coach Sawyer (30:59)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (30:59)
if they prefer

Giacomo (31:00)
a day where their fat is a little higher or they prefer a day where their carbs

Coach Sawyer (31:03)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (31:03)
are a little higher. And then you can sort of adjust their macros accordingly, where you could create guardrails that are more in line with how they like to eat, as opposed to them making the macros the guardrails where now they’re trying to stick to a certain formula as opposed to making it work for their the way that they already are they already enjoy eating.

Coach Sawyer (31:21)
Yeah, that’s a great way to put it because it’s like we’re not trying to make people exactly like us. It’s more about, okay, how can you, the closer we start you off with something you’re already kind of doing, the more likely it is to stick forever. You know what I mean? And I think that once you’re a certain age, you’re not probably gonna change your preferences or your habits all that much. Not to say that people can’t change and start to enjoy different foods and stuff like that.

Coach Sawyer (31:47)
But like you’ll always have nostalgia for like, I don’t know, like for me, it’s banana bread. Like if I couldn’t ever have banana bread because my macros wouldn’t allow for it, I’d, that’d be a big part of my life that would feel like it was missing. And I would probably periodically fall off the wagon because, no, my macros don’t allow me to have banana bread. And I really wanted it one time when I was home and my mom made it or whatever. So the more inflexible you make flexible dieting, the more risk you have of it not being sustainable.

Coach Sawyer (32:15)
And I would argue that beyond being in a competition and prepping for a bodybuilding show or something, that doing much more than protein and calories in most situations is gonna push you more towards that it’s too inflexible to be doing long-term. But different people are different. For some people, tracking all the macros gives them a security blanket and they feel good with it. That’s fine.

Coach Sawyer (32:40)
I just think for most people, having some flexibility that makes sense for them needs to be a part of the equation, right? It also has to work. I always say, whatever you do has to be sustainable and effective. Like, it can’t be one or the other. It has to be both. And that’s a tricky needle in the thread sometimes. And that’s why we have to have some give. Like, when I say, you know, it might be ideal physiologically for you to have more protein, but like, psychologically,

Coach Sawyer (33:05)
you getting this much more protein is detrimental, then let’s do the kind of middle ground, let’s do the thing that feels sustainable and is doing enough to move the needle, maybe not the fastest possible, but it’s still pushing you in the right direction, your body composition in right direction, and you feel like you can actually keep up with it. So I think that’s kind of the big message I want to put out to everybody is like, hey, flexible dieting is meant to be flexible and

Coach Sawyer (33:32)
it should be tailored to you and your system should be for you. It shouldn’t be like, oh, this guy does all the macros and he looks great and he says it’s easy, so therefore I should put that pressure on myself. I don’t agree. I think you gotta trust your own experience. Once you start at a place where you start to understand, okay, this is how much protein range I should probably be in, this is how much calories I need for my goals, then you gotta start tinkering with…

Coach Sawyer (33:57)
What are the things I should hold myself accountable to and what are the things that I should maybe not and where’s the bar that I should set for the calories and the protein goals? Because if you try to do everything at max speed and overhaul your life, like you were saying with the new foods and stuff, it’s going to be hard to make it stick. You’re going to start feeling like you’re kind of adrift at sea and you don’t really know if you’re going to be able to keep going without any signs of like, this is really worth the Herculean effort that it took to get me here.

Coach Sawyer (34:24)
So yeah, any thoughts about that? Any follow ups to that?

Giacomo (34:28)
Mm, I’m wondering how what we want to do to get into the conversation that you have with yourself when you are how do I say, you don’t have all the control and

Coach Sawyer (34:40)
Hmm.

Giacomo (34:40)
you understand the concept of calories, you know you want to get in a certain amount of protein, you realize you can be flexible with yourself, but there are you wind up getting in environments that are not that don’t give you

Giacomo (34:54)
choices that you’re looking for, but they are your choices. And

Coach Sawyer (34:56)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (34:58)
you’re and you’re not necessarily equipped to understand what’s on your plate without using a food lager in your hand or

Coach Sawyer (35:07)
Yeah.

Giacomo (35:07)
or or anything like that. You know what I mean? but like in other words you’re going out to eat or your friend calls you on the fly, your family invites you over, your family comes over and like surprise we brought we brought

Coach Sawyer (35:17)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (35:17)
lunch.

Giacomo (35:18)
Or your

Coach Sawyer (35:18)
Yeah.

Giacomo (35:18)
friend is like, hey, I really need you right now. Can you come out with me and and you’re at a restaurant somewhere and you’re and you’re having whatever?

Coach Sawyer (35:24)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (35:25)
Or your day was s was planned, was mapped out, and but all of a sudden you got some sort of emergency phone call and you had to scrap your plans for the day and now you’re in a hypervigilant state taking care of of something

Coach Sawyer (35:37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (35:39)
that you that was completely unexpected for the day. Like what do you do in scenarios like that when you don’t

Coach Sawyer (35:44)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (35:44)
fully understand what’s on your plate?

Giacomo (35:46)
to the to to a point where you like you could be like, I probab I’m I’m I’m about to eat anywhere from five hundred to eight hundred calories right now. And if I’m stressed, that that lunch is probably gonna be somewhere between 700 to 1200 calories. I I can conceptually know that about myself without even thinking about it. It’s just an automatic response, but I’m articulating

Coach Sawyer (36:03)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (36:06)
to like illustrate the point. And my goal is

Coach Sawyer (36:07)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (36:08)
to have the five hundred calories, but so you I think I feel like you get there after time.

Giacomo (36:12)
you do this enough you know about you know yourself and you know what what you’re set up

Coach Sawyer (36:15)
This is…

Giacomo (36:15)
for with the choices that you don’t want. But I

Coach Sawyer (36:17)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (36:18)
I think first you need to get there, right? So there is so how do you what do you do when you’re newer in that situation? Ugh Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (36:20)
I agree. Well, I think you got to you got to not quit. I think that’s that’s the thing is like people people get

Coach Sawyer (36:27)
shameful. They get really like afraid that they’re not doing it right when they have situations like that. So I think just like any other behavior, if you start shaming yourself for the ways that you’re not doing it, quote unquote, perfectly yet, that’s a dangerous thing. Just think I’m creating my system. Like I think that’s the better way of thinking about it. Like

Coach Sawyer (36:47)
Am I going to have meals out in the future? Am I going to have emergencies? Yes. So I got to figure out a way to fit that into my system, right? That’s, that’s the overall thing that I want to say first. So I think it’s really, it’s, it’s very smart to think ahead and say, you know, these things are going to happen. So I need to remain calm and have a plan for it. My personal strategy for that is to just guesstimate. It’s just to log in my app that I’m using to log, which is right now the VP app.

Coach Sawyer (37:14)
What do I think these calories are? What do I think this about how much like I just had a falafel meal. I’m to have to estimate right after this call and I’m to have to be like, all right, how much falafel do I think that was? How, much tortilla or wrap was that? How much sauce did it have? And I’m going to estimate that and put it in the app and then maybe give it a couple of hundred more calories than I think it could be. Cause who knows with restaurant food, but ultimately at the end of the day,

Coach Sawyer (37:41)
Even if I’m off by a couple hundred calories, just know that that’s not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. As long as I’m not eating out for every meal of every day or even, you know, once a day or something like that, I could throw things off quite a bit. If I’m not eating out that that often, guesstimating is fine. And maybe you, you don’t want to do that in situations like being in a contest prep, right? That would probably make things way harder than they need to be. But.

Coach Sawyer (38:06)
For most people, eating out a few times a week, couple times a week, it’s not gonna make that big of a difference in your goals as long as you’re getting somewhat close to the ballpark of like, yeah, it’s probably about this many calories. That’s what I tell people and that’s how I do it. But do you have any different strategies? Do you go about it a different way?

Giacomo (38:23)
I feel like in a highly unpredictable scenario, like one of the three that I’m continuing to think about, at least hypotheticals, the very first thing that I would do, rather than worry and scrap the plan and tell myself it’s okay and try to breathe and process my whatever like however I’m gonna do, like whatever I’m gonna do, I think the very first thing I would do is like, okay, I give myself a a a ha a budget.

Giacomo (38:48)
And I say I I want to try to stick to this budget. I’m probably not gonna be in my phone logging. I may not even after the fact, although that’s probably a good idea. So you can, like you said, guesstimate after the fact. but I I I want to hit this number, give or take. I wanna give myself a range. We’ll we’ll go back to what I was saying.

Coach Sawyer (39:01)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Giacomo (39:03)
I w I wanna go I wanna I want I have a goal right now. I want in one of these whether I’m out with a friend, whether my family came over and brought food to the house, whether the

Giacomo (39:13)
Whether it was I forgot the third one. But my point is like I would want my range to be five hundred to seven hundred calories because I know that it’s very

Coach Sawyer (39:20)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (39:20)
without any any idea. emergency, like let’s say someone’s really hurt and we’re at the emergency hospital for like eight hours. But that was not the way

Coach Sawyer (39:27)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (39:29)
all these kinds of of environments, your emotions are gonna be heightened, your stress response will will ensue, especially because you’re you have your outcome and goal oriented.

Giacomo (39:39)
When have something you’re looking to do. That’s a I think another important thing that to mention. Like when when you have a goal, it’s very easy to lean too heavily and being outcome oriented and you get lo you get lost in the sauce and you’re unable to think about how to be pliable and plasticky with your process and how to adjust your process for the unpredictables. You could understand your patterns and how you do things, but

Coach Sawyer (39:57)
Yeah, I would argue, yeah.

Coach Sawyer (40:00)
And I would argue that’s why it’s so important to start with an understanding of what your maintenance is. Because no matter what your goal is, maintenance is homeostasis. That’s what your body likes to be. So if you know, okay, I’m purposefully targeting 500 calories under my maintenance right now. But something happens, something blows up, you could say, well, I know if I eat 500 more calories than I’m trying to today, I’m still not gonna do any damage. I’m gonna be at maintenance.

Coach Sawyer (40:23)
That’s a very reassuring thing, and it’s something that’s very personal to you. And so I like to tell my clients what their maintenance range is, what I would tell them, and that way they can say, okay, if things don’t go according to plan today, and I don’t get this low of calories, I know I can go to this higher amount, which is easier for me to hit, and that’s not gonna blow everything up, it’s just gonna be pausing for a second, and the deficit.

Coach Sawyer (40:47)
And so I think that’s something that really helps people kind of walk themselves through this little bit of trickiness that can happen in life is to say, hey, this isn’t about being perfect. This isn’t about hitting your macros exactly and hitting the calories exactly. It’s about knowing, okay, if I’m in a calorie deficit, I’m to be making progress. If I’m not, that’s just taking a break. That’s just homeostasis. That’s home base. That’s not a bad thing, you know? So you’re not bad when you can’t predict something and something kind of goes off the rails a little bit.

Coach Sawyer (41:15)
And even if you go over your maintenance a little bit, 200 calories above maintenance on a week that’s otherwise in a deficit, you’re still gonna lose weight that week. You know what I mean? So I think it’s important that people understand those numbers so that they don’t catastrophize and turn to shaming behaviors and then fall off the wagon because they just feel bad about themselves, which is way more often the reason that people actually keep going down that dark hole is that they think that they’ve already messed it up and it’s

Coach Sawyer (41:40)
it’s not salvageable anymore. But it’s like, if I just tell you where your macros are or like where your maintenance calories are, you know, how much far below that we have, so how much room you have above that to take breaks when you need to, to like say, you know what, maybe it’s not today. I think it calms people down. There’s like plan B, plan C built into that instead of thinking it’s this way or I’m off the rails. You know I mean? Like they’re walking a tightrope and if they fall, they’re just done. And I think that’s a dangerous way to do it.

Giacomo (42:07)
I love what you said specifically about not shaming yourself because after the fact, if it’s a punishing experience for you and you just need to get back on it, you’re unable to learn and grow from these are opportunities. It’s not a matter of what you

Coach Sawyer (42:22)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (42:23)
did right versus what you did wrong. It’s not about a matter of what you could have done better or what you didn’t do. It’s not a matter of getting back on it and forgetting about it and accepting it. It’s about, in my opinion, it’s about what can you take from that experience.

Giacomo (42:36)
To learn more about yourself and your behaviors when those are your choices that you’re presented. And if you don’t keep an open open, curious mind and you’re too busy wallowing being in a place of potential regret or we’re pr like forgetting about what happened altogether, then you don’t get to learn from those experiences. So literally,

Coach Sawyer (42:53)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (42:54)
in my opinion, like if you can, you look at it with an open, curious mind. And then when it’s it’s a week later, you could say to yourself,

Giacomo (43:02)
Well what did what did I do? Why did I why why were these why did I make these choices when these options were presented in front of and f to me? And some of it there is there is nothing to even think about as far as like what well I could’ve done differently. It’s more a matter of

Giacomo (43:16)
I don’t know what I don’t know about myself and about what kind of choice I would make because I’m not that familiar with how to make the choices I wanna make when I’m out to eat or when when

Coach Sawyer (43:25)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (43:25)
when things change. Do you know what mean? So it’s like you don’t know what you don’t know. Mm-hmm.

Coach Sawyer (43:27)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, being curious about yourself. Yeah,

Coach Sawyer (43:30)
yeah. Being curious about yourself instead of shaming. Like it’s a good mantra to go back to and just being like, why did I make that choice? Because I think

Giacomo (43:36)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Coach Sawyer (43:38)
a lot of times when we don’t understand things, the reflex is to shame ourselves. It’s to think, it’s because I’m bad I did that. But a lot of times it’s because we just didn’t anticipate something or something punched us right in the feels and it got, you know, we got out of our better

Coach Sawyer (43:54)
higher mind, whatever you want to call it. And we were in that moment so much that we couldn’t plan ahead. Right? Almost like you’re an animal of lower intelligence at that moment and you just were focused on survival or something like that. Right? And those are not times to shame ourselves. There are times to, yeah, remain curious and think, okay, how can I better prepare for that situation in the future? Like if somebody gets hurt and I’m at the hospital, like

Coach Sawyer (44:19)
you know, how can I calm myself down before having a meal and think ahead a little bit? Like you don’t necessarily need to have a survival pack of food with you at all times, but having like the wherewithal to say, you know what, okay, this isn’t the perfect scenario, but this is what I do in this kind of thing. And maybe it’s I eat how I want and then I just guesstimate later. Maybe it’s that you just kind of.

Coach Sawyer (44:45)
I don’t know, except that it’s gonna be more of a maintenance day. You know what I mean? There’s a lot of different strategies that, again, build into your system. Nobody gets to tell you when to feel bad and when to feel good. And as long as you create a system that has the kind of give in it, that allows you to live a real human experience and still get to the goal, then you’re winning. You know what I mean? That’s the definition of success, is you’re not trying to be somebody you’re not.

Coach Sawyer (45:11)
you’re trying to create parameters that keep you in line, like we said with the protein and the calories and trying to keep, you know, from eating junk food, all those calories and trying to like get to the goal by moving the big rocks, but not trying to get so granular with those things that the second we’re in a position of not having complete control over our food situation, that it all crumbles and we don’t have a plan B and we’re just like, I’m bad, I’m terrible.

Coach Sawyer (45:36)
Like that’s just not a good plan. That’s like having a budget, a financial budget and not planning for fun, not planning for emergencies where people get hurt and you gotta pay for co-pays and stuff like that. You have to build into the budget some protocols that when things are not perfect, like you just have to know that is gonna happen. So I think it’s just wise to like think through these things and then.

Coach Sawyer (45:57)
You can’t necessarily anticipate every single one that’s gonna come. So when they do happen and you didn’t anticipate it and maybe it didn’t go as well as you would have hoped, you think, okay, what am I gonna learn from this? What am I gonna do next time without shaming yourself? Because you couldn’t have seen it coming. We’re doing the best you could. You’re still learning as you’re living. You know what mean? So yeah, I love it, man.

Giacomo (46:17)
Is there anything else you want to talk about? Do you feel like we’ve covered most of our ground? Yeah. Ha ha ha Same.

Coach Sawyer (46:21)
my god, it’s almost been an hour. What the hell, dude? I could just talk and talk. Dude, it’s crazy.

Coach Sawyer (46:28)
Time just flies when you’re having fun, I guess.

Giacomo (46:31)
Parting thoughts.

Coach Sawyer (46:33)
No, I don’t think I have, I mean, probably a million things I should think of, but it’s hard in a podcast situation, because you don’t know who’s exactly listening. So if you

Giacomo (46:41)
Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (46:42)
guys are listening and you’re like, I don’t know what to make of this, you might need more specific advice. You might need.

Coach Sawyer (46:47)
Advice for you, if you’re getting all turned around by the things we’re saying, because this is generally applicable, but when it comes to your getting lost in your process, you’re having trouble solidifying the things that you need to do for yourself, and you keep setting things and then going back on them and rethinking, and I’ve been there, trust me, it’s not that fun. We’re here for you. Just reach out to us, and we’ll help you guys get there, because it’s not fun being there in that limbo.

Coach Sawyer (47:12)
ambivalent state where you’re not sure what to make decisions on. And that’s why our jobs exist, is because it’s a hard thing to figure out sometimes. And that’s why we love helping people with it, you know? So I’ll leave it at that.

Giacomo (47:22)
Yeah, yeah, it’s exactly what we do here. So

Giacomo (47:25)
I’m gonna wrap it up if it’s cool with you, my friend.

Coach Sawyer (47:27)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (47:28)
Well, thank you so much everyone for tuning in to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. You can stay in touch with us on all the socials at Vegan Proteins at Muscles by Brussels, at Soy Boy Fitness Coaching, at Ben Mitchell.

Coach Sawyer (47:43)
god, now I forget. I want to look it up.

Giacomo (47:43)
Is he put an A in there and at Vegan Proteins Alice?

Giacomo (47:47)
And if you are interested in more one-on-one support, we will get back to you right away. Just hit the contact button on veganproteins.com. You’ll have a conversation

Coach Sawyer (47:56)
Mm-hmm.

Giacomo (47:57)
with me first, but we will find the best fit for you over here. And we have a team of five coaches who truly care and are looking to support you and a community, wonderful community team here.

Giacomo (48:07)
They’re looking to support you in any and every way possible. It’s been a pleasure being here for you. I hope you enjoyed this episode once again. My name’s Giacomo.

Coach Sawyer (48:14)
Adam Sawyer.

Giacomo (48:16)
And we’ll talk to you soon. Late everybody.

Coach Sawyer (48:17)
Alright,

Coach Sawyer (48:18)
see ya.