In this episode, Dani and Sawyer break down the slow but rewarding process of body recomposition. They discuss why strength progression is a key indicator of muscle growth, the importance of pushing yourself in the gym, and how to apply progressive overload effectively. Plus, they share insights on balancing good form with training intensity.
📢 Highlights from this episode:
- Why muscle growth is a slow, long-term process
- How to track progress beyond just body weight
- The real meaning of progressive overload and how to apply it
- The importance of intensity—why most people aren’t training hard enough
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Transcript:
Ep 211 – The SkinnyFat Problem
[Dani:]
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Dani.
[Sawyer:]
And I’m Sawyer.
[Dani:]
And this is episode 211. So I don’t know, usually we like kind of shoot the shit a little bit at the beginning of the episode before we start talking about what we were talking about. But we already did that.
We literally just hung up.
[Sawyer:]
But we didn’t talk about what you’ve been up to lately. We talked about what I’ve been up to lately. What about you?
What’s been going on?
[Dani:]
Well, I am flying out in four hours to Columbus, Ohio to go to the Arnold. Yeah, with Vegan Strong. It’s, it’s the biggest.
So we’ll have a booth there, a big booth, a 20 foot booth, just huge at the Arnold. So we’ll have our team there. But we will also have, I think, five people from Plant Built competing in the Strongman event.
Oh, no way. Like, they had to qualify for it. So it’s pretty cool that we are going to have so many people there competing.
That’s never happened before.
[Sawyer:]
Wait, who are the people?
[Dani:]
Oh, I hope I don’t forget anybody here. Okay, so we have Rick, Melissa, Angeline, Veronique, who you didn’t meet. She was there the year before.
And Brady, duh, Brady, obviously. Yeah, so cool. Yeah.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah.
[Dani:]
Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. But then we were there for five days, and then we fly home and then we’re home for three days. And then we fly down for the cruise.
So oh my god. Yeah, I’m not nervous about either event individually. But it is just like it’s so much.
It’s back to back. And I know I told people are like back in December when I saw our travel schedule for 2025. I like panicked.
And Giacomo was like, Oh, Danny, you worry about everything, blah, blah, blah, blah. I like planned my ass off for this. So I woke up ready to walk out the door basically this morning, and I already have my stuff set aside to pack for the cruise as soon as we get home.
Guess who’s super stressed out today? Mr. Giacomo.
[Sawyer:]
We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it kind of guys, huh?
[Dani:]
Only if it’s something I’m worried about. It’s almost like there’s only one of us can worry about any one thing at a time.
[Sawyer:]
I think there’s something to that psychologically. If somebody’s freaking out, your natural response is usually not to freak out too. It’s usually to be like, Okay, I got to be the calm one here.
[Dani:]
It’s got to be it’s got to be a computer. I’m gonna try to fix it a little. Okay.
[Sawyer:]
I feel like that’s why in families, there’s always like one sibling who freaks out about everything. And then there’s one sibling who just like, is just go with the flow, because they know the other one’s gonna freak out.
[Dani:]
Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know, Giacomo. It’s so funny how very, very different Giacomo and I are and then how similar we are in a lot of ways, too.
And like, there’s not enough room for that both of us to have certain personalities in this relationship.
[Sawyer:]
But we could we could go down the rabbit hole with this stuff. I love relationship theorizing.
[Dani:]
But yeah, me too, actually. And I really love comedy about it as well. Some of my favorite comedy is is the relationship style comedy.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah. Good comedy, like gets to the heart of things that you didn’t even realize about yourself. And you’re like, Oh my god, I do do that.
[Dani:]
I am a firm. So I know like a lot of people think comedians are like, I don’t know, kind of the dumb, funny people or whatever. I am convinced they are some of the smartest people on earth, actually, because they like, they really see stuff for what it really is.
And they find a way to explain it in a way that people are able to hear it. 10 out of 10. Some of my favorite movies are movies with traditionally comedic actors leading, but it’s a drama.
Like, like, like when Adam Sandler did punch drunk love or Jim Carrey in eternal sunshine.
[Sawyer:]
Like, these are these are those movies, I’m ashamed to admit, but now I’m gonna put those on the list.
[Dani:]
So you would very much like eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. It’s one of the best movies ever.
[Sawyer:]
I’m gonna write that down. Right? Yeah, you should.
[Dani:]
Okay, so we left you guys off on a cliffhanger on the last one, because Sawyer started touching upon skinny fat, you mentioned at the end of the episode, oh, there are some people who like, lose a bunch of weight, and then they’re like, but I still look the same. Yeah. And I wasn’t expecting that.
So we I wanted to do a whole, whole podcast about, like, the skinny fat phenomenon, in general.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah, I love that topic. I don’t think it gets talked about that much. I mean, maybe in some spaces, but I’ve certainly never done any talks or read that much about it.
[Dani:]
I think it comes up in conversation a lot, especially with new clients that they come to us and they’re like, Oh, I’m skinny fat. And I don’t want to be so first, let’s I guess, define what skinny fat is for people that don’t know. So it’s, there’s two ways to think about this.
There’s like the colloquial way of explaining it. It’s like somebody who’s a normal healthy weight slash BMI, but they have high body fat percentage. So like, they might look all right in clothes, but if they were to take them off, they’d not have a lot of muscle tone, they’d be kind of soft.
But then there’s also the medical definition. Like, I don’t think a lot of people realize there is a medical definition of skinny fat. I was not even aware of that.
Yeah, I a couple years ago, I wasn’t aware of it either. But that definition is sarcopenic obesity, which is actually two, two diagnoses. So sarcopenia being under muscled, and obesity being high body fat.
So it’s literally two conditions at once.
[Sawyer:]
In terms of the medical community, what do they consider like under muscled? How do they measure that?
[Dani:]
You know, I didn’t actually look up what the diagnostic criteria is for it. But I do remember when I was researching that it goes like way under diagnosed way under diagnosed because like, how would a regular? Yeah.
And I mean, I know you like wear a gown when you go into like certain doctor’s appointments, but they’re not like staring at you butt naked and like pinching at your fat. You know what I mean? So I, I don’t think there’s a way most doctors would like know that.
So I think it probably goes very under diagnosed.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah, I would probably I would see that being a possibility probably.
[Dani:]
Okay, cool.
[Sawyer:]
So that’s what skinny fat is then?
[Dani:]
Yeah. So I think people think of it as just, well, I’m thin, but I still have way more body fat than I like. Like, I think that’s how most people that come to us and talk about it are thinking about it.
Is that how they talk to you about it?
[Sawyer:]
I haven’t had that many people who describe themselves that way. To be honest, I’ve only really heard it in like online spaces. So I guess that’s why I haven’t talked about it that much.
But yeah, you do see people who look normal enough, but you know, when asked to do a physically challenging thing, it becomes apparent that they’re not, they don’t have a whole lot of muscle mass or endurance. And so they just don’t work out very much, but they’re just genetically blessed in the sense that they don’t, or they lost a bunch of weight recently, like you were saying, and they just don’t have to think about their weight in terms of like a societal peer pressure type of way. They’ve just always kind of been inactive and looked pretty normal and skated by that way or whatever.
[Dani:]
I think I remember this being sort of a big deal, like in high school and coming out of high school, not for me, because I was not that, I was just fat. But, you know, I knew so many people that could just like eat a half a pizza for lunch and like, just eat all of this crap and never gain weight. And I remember just being like, you’re lucky bastard.
I can’t stand that you get to be able to do that. And but over the years, those same people, because they have been told their whole lives, like, Oh, you’re so lucky, you get to eat all of this and nothing happens. You know, their body, they never pursued fitness in any way, because they didn’t feel like they kind of had to, which leads us to what people think about fitness as like a means to an end to look a certain way versus like actually being healthy.
[Sawyer:]
But I think it always starts that way. Pretty much always.
[Dani:]
But a lot of those people, like basically became kind of skinny fat in their 20s. So they still were a healthy weight. But like, there’s some maybe their shape had changed because just because they weren’t 16 years old anymore.
Distribution patterns were different. But if they went to the doctor, a doctor would never say, you know, you’re unhealthy. You got to work out, you got to lose fat.
Yeah, as long as their blood works, fine. It’s like, you’re good, right?
[Sawyer:]
Right. And I think like, like, a lot of times, isn’t the Americans like on average will gain a certain percentage of weight every year?
[Dani:]
Like, yeah, I think I think it’s 1%. Year over year. And that’s 10 years.
That’s 10%. That’s a lot.
[Sawyer:]
Right. Because generally, we like homeostasis, we don’t necessarily have to like have this impulse to keep eating, eating. But there are times, seasons and events where we’re eating more, and we’re not necessarily losing it.
So that it just kind of becomes like a gradual body fat gain thing. So I think, yeah, the people who maybe started out life or didn’t develop these habits early on are prone to getting, having even more fat and not ever really feeling or understanding how to build muscle.
[Dani:]
And then you compare that with, you know, starting to lose muscle at around the age of 40. Yeah, I think that is also about 1% per year. So now they’re like, both of these numbers are going in a not great direction.
[Sawyer:]
And yeah, yeah, that can be the case where people find themselves like, Oh, wow, I’m now I feel like I have all this catching up to do to get healthy. Whereas I always had felt healthy enough before. Right.
But maybe it would be better if medical professionals were diagnosing people earlier.
[Dani:]
I think it would, they’d have to like, I don’t even know how they would do that without having access to DEXA scans or all the dogs. I’m just picturing like an actual doctor pinching people with calipers.
[Sawyer:]
Like, that’s kind of traumatic. But, but, um, I think it could be helpful if, if, you know, that was part of a standard medical exam to have a DEXA and just say, Hey, these are your percentages, just so you know, like how your reference ranges might want to be here. Um, and diet and exercise, you know what I mean?
I guess.
[Dani:]
Cause even when they start screening, I forget what age it is. They start screening women for osteoporosis. They do send women for DEXA scans, but it doesn’t say anything about muscle or body fat just tells them their bone density, which is really a shame because the machine can do all the things.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah.
[Dani:]
But a lot of people think of skinny fat is just like, you know, ugly. Like it’s not the way they want to look. That’s what they think is like the biggest downfall is like, this doesn’t look the way I want to look, but I’m still healthy.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah.
[Dani:]
No, actually you’re probably not.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah. You’re kind of set up for, even if you’re not, you don’t have any like red alarms going off in terms of health, you’re not really in a good position to like, for one thing, um, having more body fat, uh, significantly more body fat than muscle is going to make you more insulin resistant for one thing. Um, if you’re genetically predisposed to having diabetes or any kind of insulin resistance, that’s going to make that worse.
I mean, there’s so many different ways we could go with this, but like health wise, yeah, it’s not, it’s not a great place to be, even though you actually looked up what the statistics are.
[Dani:]
Cause I was like, I’ve never heard anybody talk about this. Like what are the health risks of sarcopenic obesity? So they have a 21% higher risk of all cause mortality compared to those with a like healthy body composition.
And then if you look at metabolic syndrome, which you just kind of mentioned with the insulin resistance. So, okay. Obese folks are seven and a half times more likely to have metabolic syndrome.
Sarcopenic people alone are twice as likely to have, uh, metabolic syndrome. But if you have both, if you have sarcopenic obesity, you are 11 and a half times more likely to have metabolic syndrome.
[Sawyer:]
And that makes sense too, because you’ve got, when you have muscle tissue, it’s very insulin sensitive. It uptakes carbs like crazy. You’re just like a fricking carb sponge.
When you have a lot of muscle, you have fat that’s gumming up those locks. So to speak, you, you have a harder time uptaking that insulin that, yeah, that insulin and those carbs.
[Dani:]
So that makes a lot of sense to me that it would be shocked me like that was way worse than I expected actually.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah. Does the same thing about what the cutoffs are? Like what the normal reference ranges are?
[Dani:]
Yeah. I have a couple of cutoffs, which actually kind of brings me to one of my points, I think in the fitness community specifically, I think a lot of people think they’re skinny fat and they’re not, they’re perfectly healthy. You know what I mean?
Like there’s so many people that do work out. They do watch what they eat. They lift, they’re doing all the things, but they’re just not as firm as they want to be.
So they think they’re skinny fat. Uh, but the actual, I guess, definition of having high body fat percentage. So they’re two separate categories, right?
What’s high body fat and what’s low muscled. So high body fat percentage for men is over 25%. And for women, it’s over 33%.
So, you know, we got women at 25% saying I’m skinny fat. And it’s like, no, you’re just normal. No, you’re, you’re fine.
[Sawyer:]
That’s interesting. And then what, how do they define under muscled?
[Dani:]
Okay. So they do it by height and sex. So for men, there’s a lot to take in this, a lot of numbers.
So for a five foot five man, it’s 120 pounds of lean body mass. Five foot seven is 130 pounds of lean body mass. Five foot nine is 140.
Five 11 is 150 and six foot one is 160. So basically between five foot five and six foot one, somewhere between 120 and 160 pounds of lean body mass. So that’s not just muscle.
That’s also your skin, your organs, um, and basically any tissue that is not fat. Um, and then for women, so I’m gonna do the same thing. So for five foot one woman, it’s 85 pounds.
Five foot three is 95 pounds. Five foot five is 105 pounds. Five foot seven is 115 pounds, five foot nine, one 25, and then five 11, one 35.
So, you know, I, I actually was surprised. I think these numbers are a little bit higher than I expected them to be.
[Sawyer:]
I was going to say that. Yeah. I feel like, yeah.
Like me being five 11 and having a 150 pound and put your mark that I was like, interesting. Cause that’s usually what I, I assume my fat free mass is around maybe a little bit higher, but not much higher than that.
[Dani:]
And mine is the same. So five foot seven, it says one 15. I’m pretty sure that’s somewhere around where my lean body mass is.
But again, how are they calculating? This is going to give you a totally different number.
[Sawyer:]
Um, yeah, I’m just thinking like, okay, I’ve spent the majority of my life trying to build as much muscle as possible. And I’m just, just over that, like under muscle things.
[Dani:]
I’m like, that might be a really high bar, but I mean, these numbers could be, these numbers could be wrong. It’s possible. If I looked at a different source, it might say something else.
I’m not sure.
[Sawyer:]
That’s interesting. Nonetheless. Um, yeah, I just, I guess.
Yeah. And it makes sense though, that, that people understand like, or at least have some kind of inkling as to what we’re talking about when we say, okay, under muscle, but also having too much body fat, um, can compound problems. And that’s why it’s more of a concern when people are both those things at the same time, instead of just one or the other.
Cause like, for instance, you know, when we, in the obesity episode that I think you did a really good job about, um, you’re talking about, okay, like all cause mortality in certain reference ranges. And some of those reference ranges went higher than, than the references you just said, like in terms of body fat. But I think the difference between those people is, is the, and this is pure speculation, but you know, one, how much muscle that person has, and then two, how active and how good their habits are.
You know, I think when you factor those things in, I think you get more health at higher body fat percentages.
[Dani:]
Right.
[Sawyer:]
And there’s obviously genetic variability in that, but I just think that’s super interesting.
[Dani:]
Yeah. I mean, I think I find the whole thing, uh, to be really interesting in this particular topic in general, cause this is like, you would say like, okay, how does, how does this happen? What do we do about it?
Right. Um, so I think those are important things to talk about is like, how does this happen? Well, the first and simplest way is just somebody doesn’t eat well and doesn’t exercise their whole life.
So that’s, that’s one camp of people. That’s pretty simple to define.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah.
[Dani:]
Um, I would say another group are, uh, the cardio bunnies, like when you don’t focus on strength training in some capacity, it doesn’t even have to just be lifting weights. But yeah, if you’re not focusing on strength training in some way, you’re gonna have a hard time building muscle.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah. Yeah. And that can really affect later on.
Um, if, if you do start to accumulate body fat is like, say you have kids and, you know, work gets harder and you don’t have as much time for working out and whatever it can, yeah, it can start to pile on the body fat as well, because, I mean, it’s not a huge amount, but muscle also does improve your metabolism or like, you know, it’s what, it’s like nine calories, nine to 10 calories on average per pound or something like that. When you factor everything in just cool.
Um, but I do think that, that just generally being more active will help you keep muscle on, especially if you built it early.
[Dani:]
Yes.
[Sawyer:]
So the sooner people can get in the gym or start doing resistance training of some kind of better.
[Dani:]
Right. As I think a lot of people, um, kind of don’t start as women, especially because that’s just how society is set up. Like women for a long time, we’re not encouraged to strength train at all.
So there’s a lot of women who are like, kind of starting to lift weights 40 and beyond. And that’s great. Do it.
Don’t not do it, please. But you’re going to have a much harder time than if you started when you were even 30, you know, or that person’s going to have a harder time than when they were 20.
[Sawyer:]
So that’s kind of, you know, I think if, if you’re ready to do that or talk about this, I think that’s kind of where we go into the, like, what do you do about it? If you, if you fit this description, um, and I, I think the biggest thing is training. I think that’s like new, even nutrition aside, like you’re not in a crazy, I mean, yeah, you probably have some more body fat than you’d like to, but, um, the more, the bigger concern in my opinion, and the thing that’s easier remedied is starting to train and really start to get familiar with these lifts and starting to push yourself hard in these lists is going to pay massive dividends at that point. Um, because it’s almost like, you know, like the newbie gains phase. Once you start training your body adapts almost no matter what fuel you’re giving it.
Um, yeah, you want to have a certain amount of protein and yeah, you want to have a certain amount of calories. You don’t want to go too extreme with any of that. But I think literally, if I, if I could only give one piece of advice to somebody in that situation would be just start training and the other stuff will probably come later, but you’re going to notice like benefits right away from just training more intensely and more frequently.
[Dani:]
Absolutely. 100%. And you, you brought up another good point there.
Um, I forget exactly what you said that made it jump into my head, but okay. So personal anecdote thinking way back to when I started to, uh, lose weight, which I went vegan when I was 17, I’m sorry, 16. And then when I was 17, that’s when I was like, Oh, maybe I can do something about this.
And then I, all the weight was gone by the time I was 19. I clearly, I remember exactly what I did. It was so stupid, but I remember it.
I ate basically as little as I could stand, you know, 1200 calories a day, just like they told you. Uh, and all I did was cardio. And even at that time, I was like reading magazines that had like kind of muscly women in them.
And I knew that’s what I wanted to do. Like, I knew that, I knew that was what I wanted to eventually, but I thought to myself, well, let me just lose the weight first. And then I’ll focus on building muscle.
And it was my biggest misstep in my whole fitness life thus far. What an epic mistake that was.
[Sawyer:]
That’s crazy.
[Dani:]
Uh, well, you know, dieting without lifting is like a fast track ticket to skinny fat land.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah. And losing a bunch of muscle probably even, I mean, even if you don’t have a bunch, you’ll probably lose some in that.
[Dani:]
Yeah. And I don’t think I had much just, yeah, I, yeah.
[Sawyer:]
I don’t think people understand you can attack the problem from both angles. When you start training, um, you will probably end up losing weight. Um, you’ll probably just become more conscious of your worst, you know, the lowest hanging fruit, like, oh, maybe I won’t have as much soda or maybe I won’t, you know what I mean?
That stuff becomes, uh, more encouraging, more encouraging and more second nature, the more that you get into the fitness lifestyle, I guess. And then, um, just the training itself is going to help you transform, not only build muscle, but also probably help you lose fat a little bit, especially if you’re staying around calorie neutral, you know, calorie maintenance, probably some of that fat is going to be used to generate new muscle tissue. I don’t know.
You have anything you want to say about that?
[Dani:]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So you said, as long as you’re staying around calorie maintenance, okay. I think that’s really important because I find a lot of people who are like trapped in skinny fat land are constantly trying to diet. They’re constant because they, they don’t like how they look.
They think it’s too soft. So in their brain, they’re like, well, I gotta, I gotta cut fat while I’m lifting. And it’s great that they’re lifting, but you know, it’s like trying to brush your teeth and eat Oreos at the same time.
You’re really, uh, you’re in your own way when you are constantly trying to be in a deficit. If you’re already in a place where you’re a healthy weight, like I know it’s hard. I know it feels counterintuitive, but let the deficit go because your weight is fine.
A deficit is only going to change the weight on the scale.
[Sawyer:]
Um, I mean, if you’re a healthy weight. Yeah. And there’ve been so many studies where they’ve done.
And one, I always highlight to clients is like, look, there’s one where they put people in about a 500 calorie deficit and one where they put them about fat or like 800 calorie deficit. And even there, they saw a difference in how much muscle they were able to build and retain. So you’re, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage in terms of building muscle, which is really a big, probably the bigger component you need to achieve, because if you’re skinny fat, meaning you don’t have enough fat to be considered obese.
So you’re not really like nobody’s freaking out about your health in terms of like, you have so much body fat that it’s like insane. You’re probably just going to notice your, your muscles getting bigger and you noticing more definition and all while being comfortable nutritionally. Yeah.
So that’s one less stressor you have to induce upon yourself. And then if at the end of that, or you feel like, okay, my strength is kind of plateauing a bit and I’m just following, like I’m eating more than I’d like to, or whatever. Um, you could potentially think about doing a diet at that point, but it’s, or even that would, that’s sometimes we’ll talk about this.
[Dani:]
That can be a good time to just tweak the macro ratio without messing with the calories also. But you reminded me while you were talking, like you said, it’s probably more important that you focus on the muscle side of things first. I agree.
But if you build muscle at all, and your weight stays, even, even if your weight didn’t stay the same, even if you just gained a pound of muscle and the scale went up a pound, by definition, you just reduced your body fat percentage.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah.
[Dani:]
You know, the percentage is going down.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah. And to explain this to people a little bit more, like it’s not just that muscle gets added to your frame calorie free. You need calories.
You need other calories to be brought in to add. It’s like, it’s like hiring workers. You have to pay those workers to put that muscle tissue on your frame and that costs calories, right?
So on average, it’s just from memory. I think it’s about 2,800 calories or something like that to add a pound of muscle to your frame. And of course that doesn’t happen all in one day, right?
But you need that, those little, you need that excess energy to add that muscle to your frame. And so, okay, where do you think if you’re calorie weight, weight neutral or maintenance calories, you’re not gaining weight. You’re not adding fat or having excess calories.
Where do you think those calories are coming from? You’re creating an environment in which you’re telling your body, I need this muscle. In fact, I need more of this muscle.
So it’s not going to use your muscle for energy, right? It’s going to use your body fat.
[Dani:]
It’s easier to use for your body as well.
[Sawyer:]
So that’s why it’s so much better to focus on training when you’re in that situation, because one, you’re under muscled anyway. So build that muscle. And then two, you have all this extra energy on your body that you can use to add that muscle to your frame.
It just makes sense. And you don’t need to limit the amount of muscle you’re able to build by going into a deficit. And then later on, if you’re like, no, I still have more than I want.
And I feel like I’m at that point of muscularity where I’m like, okay, this is going to look good when I lean out, or this is going to feel okay. Just dieting for a couple of months, instead of thinking I got to diet for a whole year or whatever.
[Dani:]
That’s the place that I, you know, that sounds so silly when I say it out loud. And I know that there are men that fall into this camp, but there are so many women that fall into this camp, just thinking they need to diet forever. Their body is never changing the way they want.
It’s just like a hamster wheel to nowhere.
[Sawyer:]
That comes from a fear of gaining muscle, like this, this like bulkiness thing that won’t go.
[Dani:]
No, I think it literally, it comes just from a fear of seeing the scale go up.
[Sawyer:]
Period.
[Dani:]
Full stop. Unfortunately, I, you know, I work with very smart people that I love my clients. They’re very smart.
Logically they know that they can gain weight and look better and look closer to the way they want to, but it is like so deeply ingrained that the scale going up equals bad. It is very hard to like reverse that. I mean, it’s almost impossible to get women to think the scale going up is good, but if I can just get them to see the scale going up as just a data point that is neither here nor there, that’s my goal.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah. I’ve literally had clients I had to like talk down, like they’re crying being like, I don’t want to gain weight. I don’t want to get it.
I’m like, look, you told me you want this, this, and this, you need to gain weight. And also your, your diet fatigue, like crazy. You know, this person, um, she’s a sweetheart.
I don’t think she, I’m not going to say her name, but she, she, she was, um, telling me that people around her at work were being like, are you dieting? You’re crabby. Like, like it was like to the point where she had like no patience for people.
She was exhausted. Like, you’ve probably heard this story a million times, but when I brought it up to her and I was like, look, your diet fatigue, you need to at least go to maintenance calories. And probably for the goals you’re telling me, you need to gain some weight.
Um, she, it would took several conversations, some of which she was crying during. Um, but I was proud of myself and how I handled that because it was like, look, I know you’re not upset with me. You’re upset because you’re, you’re feeling scared.
And she was very good about communicating that. So that’s why one of these things is like with coaches is like, you have to have that trust of like, nobody feels attacked and nobody feels like they need to go on the defensive. But anyway, that’s an aside.
She eventually came around to the idea that she needed to put on some weight. And now every few months she sends me an update of like her, like she she’ll do like a side-by-side and, um, I haven’t worked with her in over a year, but she’s constantly sending me these side-by-sides and she’s like, okay, one 55, you know, versus one 35 back when I was like leaner, I thought I was leaner because I was like weighed less, but I look leaner now because she got really focused on building muscle and she got okay with giving her body enough fuel to do that. And then periodically she’ll dial the calories back when she feels like she needs to or whatever, but she’s improved her body composition year over year since that conversation, since that time. And I’m always so proud.
I’m always so impressed by how much progress she’s made. And she just has been, has created like a, an iron will around like gaining weight is not bad. Like she had to just like double down on that and like really, really like let it sink in, have those crying conversations and let it all out.
And I’m so proud of her for that. It’s scary. It’s hard.
[Dani:]
It’s, it is so scary. And it’s so, it’s like a core value or something at a certain point for people. It’s like a part of them.
It’s not even something they’re choosing to think like they would rather not think it, but they, it’s like a belief. There we go. It’s a core belief, not a core value, a core belief that they can’t just change because they want to.
Yeah. It’s a, it’s a super, super deeply held core value. And I would say that most of the really fit people that I know, the fit looking people, the people that folks want to look like, they tend towards the higher end of that weight spectrum that is considered normal, you know, like a healthy way to healthy BMI.
If you look at like underweight, normal, overweight, like they’re usually like smack in the middle of that normal, or maybe even a little higher. I mean, Giacomo is closer to overweight. Giacomo is freaking shredded.
Like don’t, don’t do that. But, but I’m just saying like people that have the look, a lot of people are after means the scale is higher than you think.
[Sawyer:]
It’s true. It’s true. Muscle is very heavy.
And I think if it like, obviously in terms of logistics, like learn as much as you can get a coach, whatever you got to do. But in terms of emotional support, I would say the more bridges you can build with people who have done that and who understand that the better, because you’re going to be reminded by society all the time that smaller is better and that people all around you are trying to diet. And then all this stuff is still that got you to that point is still there.
So you need to create an environment or a culture around you. That’s like, she’s trying to gain weight. That’s a good thing.
And then having those reminders mirrored back to you all the time, because you are trying to create, it’s like trying to break generational curses. It’s freaking hard. And there’s lots of barriers to doing that.
People are going to try to guilt trip you out of it or whatever crabs in the bucket kind of. Yeah, absolutely. So you have to be aware of those, those influences and, and not try to just like, like we talked about in the past and white knuckle through it.
Yep. You need to try to give yourself positive feedback loops so that you have multiple people telling you, Hey, like, I know you gain weight, but you look leaner or like reminders of those kinds of things that you’re trying to achieve of like, yeah, I’m so proud of you for doing this. I know it’s hard to keep going.
You got this. I’m seeing improvements. Look how strong you’re getting all that stuff.
It’s so important that people feel supported in their escape from that trap, which is the, I need to be this weight or below trap.
[Dani:]
And a lot, a lot of the stuff we’re talking about is like, what we’re talking about is largely body recomposition, right? We’re not talking about going on a straight build or a straight cut or anything like that. But I think a lot of people think body recomp means the scale doesn’t change at all.
And I don’t, I think that’s almost never the case.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s a range, right? You could be slowly gaining weight and recomping.
You could be slowly losing weight and recomping. You could be about weight neutral and recomping. What I think is really important to focus on metrics wise is how strong are you getting?
I think that’s going to be the best kind of metric for you to, and obviously how do you look in the mirror, I think is going to change eventually, but in the short term, a shorter term, how strong are you getting week to week, month to month is going to be a good indicator of like, okay, things are trending. The more, the more that you see that trend happening, that line forming in your data points, you can be more sure like, okay, muscle has had to be built by this point because I’m getting this.
[Dani:]
Yeah. That’s, that’s what I always tell people to focus on. Cause when you’re cutting, you can see the changes almost weekly.
If things are going well, right. When you’re building, you can’t, I wish you could, but you can’t, maybe you can see the changes like two months to two months, you know, it’s, it’s so much slower. But if you’re getting stronger in the gym, intelligently, like with good form, you’re not sacrificing your form just to add a little bit more weight.
Like if your lifts are going up even a little bit, cause some people think, oh, I had one workout where I didn’t go up in anything. So I’m failing now. And it’s like, no, no, no, that’s just shit happens.
Like it happens to everybody. Uh, the longer you’re at this, the more of those workouts you’re going to have. But if those numbers are going up at all, you are getting stronger.
You are building muscle.
[Sawyer:]
And maybe I’ll put a finer point on that. We just said, because a lot of times people think, oh, progressive overload. That means I have to do one more rep or one, add more weight each time.
But they’re thinking about it backwards. In fact, I like to tell people to look, just focus on stimulus, focus on the fact that you worked out a muscle and you felt like you did something. So like the point where, you know, you walked in is different from the point where you’re walking out in terms of how your muscles are feeling, how tired they are.
If you do that, then what will happen will be that you’re able to do more over time without even necessarily exerting yourself more. You have a consistent, consistent level of effort, but your reps and your weight are going up because it’s just like things are working. You don’t have to push yourself harder each consecutive workout.
Yeah.
[Dani:]
I think that could be a good cue for the right person.
[Sawyer:]
Um, I think that could be a good cue for the right person because there are people that just need to train harder.
[Dani:]
There’s a lot of people that just need to train fricking harder. And that’s, that’s the other thing I guess I would say. And you did mention it much earlier in this is like, yeah, we got to lift weights, but like you got to lift, like you have to actually be pushing yourself.
[Sawyer:]
You’re right.
[Dani:]
You know, like I think a lot of people think, okay, well I came in and I did three sets of 10 of everything and I’m good to go. Cause now I’ve lifted and that’s much better than not doing it at all. But it’s like, man, those last couple of reps should be hard.
They should be kind of slow. You should be fighting to like, not make a face. Like it should be hard.
Um, and again, I think this is something where men just do a better job at it. Um, because there’s something very masculine about like grunting through the final reps. Women don’t want to look ugly and they don’t want to, they don’t want to even draw attention to themselves on the weight room floor.
And sometimes that both of those things do that.
[Sawyer:]
Right. And I, uh, how I bring attention to this with coaching is if I see the reps staying the same, each consecutive set, they got 15, 15, 15, 12, 12, 12. I’m like, are you pushing those as hard as you could?
Because you’re not going up and wait at each of those sets. Then what’s happening is you are holding back and then you’re able to hit the same number of the next set and you’re holding back. So, so what I tell them is like, look, it’s totally fine to get above the rep range a little bit on the first one.
You don’t necessarily need to go up and wait right away, but you should be either going up and wait. If you’re noticing that you don’t have to go down in reps or going down in reps because your muscles should be affected by this workout, they should get weaker over the course of the workout because you’re doing such a good job stimulating them.
[Dani:]
You know, I guess I have a different both. Neither one’s like right or wrong. I have a different approach where if the, if the rep ranges, let’s say age 12 or whatever, and let’s say they have three sets.
If I see 12, 12, 12, they have to go up and wait.
[Sawyer:]
Oh yeah. No, for sure.
[Dani:]
And they’ll probably get, you know, 10, eight, eight or something the following week, but then they just got to stick with it sometimes for, you know, many weeks until they’re back up to 12, 12, 12. And then we do it again. Now when people try to, when people try to not do that, I get so frustrated when they’re just like, well, I just, I’ve been doing this forever.
And I’m like, why? That’s literally exactly what we’re trying to not do.
[Sawyer:]
Right.
[Dani:]
You know?
[Sawyer:]
Yeah. Because, and we’ll explain real quick why. I mean, the, the stronger you get, the less stimulative that weight and those reps become.
So you need to, if you want to keep growing, if you want to keep progressing in your fitness journey, you have to keep bringing up the, the, the weight or the reps or both as you get stronger in order to keep challenging those muscles. So it’s like, yeah, focus on the stimulus, focus on actually feeling it and get it and noticeably getting more tired as you go throughout the workout, because that will be the stimulus for getting stronger, building more muscle. Yeah.
[Dani:]
But I think a lot of people don’t, you don’t know what it’s like to push yourself that kind of way in the gym. Sometimes until you have somebody standing there going, nah, you can do more than that. No, I think you got more than that.
Um, that can be a really profound experience.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah, it’s true. I try to bridge that gap on the online coaching space by saying, look, with isolation lifts, you should try at least going at least one set to failure, see how it feels. And then you don’t have to go to failure for every set, but your reps should be so slow at the end of the set that you’re not even sure if you’re going to be able to do another rep.
Like, I think, I think we should, we should go more towards that extreme than the opposite, which is like, Oh, I kind of felt it. I’m done.
[Dani:]
Yeah. Or sometimes I’ll tell people, just film your last set and send it to me.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah.
[Dani:]
So I can see what that final set of, you know, this or that exercise looks like.
[Sawyer:]
Yeah. It’s funny. People often overestimate, I mean, this could be a whole nother video and we have to go soon, but they overestimate how important form is and underestimate how important intensity is.
[Dani:]
That’s an episode. We’re going to do that. I’m going to write it down immediately because that’s, that’s a great topic.
And I think that’s a good place to end this one. Yeah, no, I like it. I like it.
And it’s not on our list, so we’re doing it. I’m pumped. Thank you guys so much for tuning in.
If you’re looking for any kind of one-on-one coaching, we have our coaching links in the show notes and in the description below the YouTube video. So check that out. Feel free to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, at vegan proteins at muscles by Brussels and Sawyer is at soy boy fitness coaching.
And if you have any questions, just shoot us an email coach at vegan proteins.com. Once again, my name is Danny and I’m Sawyer and we will talk to you soon.
