Ep 238 – Gain Weight to Lose Weight (Women Too!)

In this episode of Vegan Proteins: Muscles by Brussels Radio, Alice and Sawyer unpack the complex relationship between weight gain, weight loss, muscle building, and modern culture.

They explore how lifestyle structure, calorie density, and societal norms make long-term weight management difficult, and why many people are unknowingly under-muscled rather than “overweight.”

The conversation breaks down common myths around metabolism, dieting, and body trends, emphasizing that sustainable fitness often requires gaining weight to increase muscle, metabolism, and long-term health.

Alice and Sawyer also discuss realistic timelines for muscle growth, the importance of resistance training, the dangers of extreme body ideals, and why patience, balance, and self-compassion are critical for lasting results, especially for beginners navigating fitness in a culture built around convenience and excess.

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TRANSCRIPT

[Alice]

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Alice and I’m Sawyer.

And here we go today. We’re talking about gaining weight and losing weight and what that can mean for you individually, how you might’ve been impacted by this throughout your life and getting impressions about how weight loss and muscle building works and I think that Sawyer has a really good like history of this that applies to a lot of people. So you want to, you want to get started?

[Sawyer]

Yeah, I think this is a good place to start. So most people when they’re born, like you don’t really have any choice to who, what kind of family you’re born into and what habits they have around food and management of calories and blah, blah, blah. Most people are not born with a very huge awareness around like what their caloric needs are and things like that.

So we just kind of fall into the patterns that our parents have more or less, but maybe we’re more athletic, you know, growing up, which is helpful in a lot of cases and stuff like that. Also, what’s that?

[Alice]

Maybe boys are more athletic growing up.

[Sawyer]

You think so? Yeah, I think, I think it’s getting more like even, but who knows? I haven’t seen the data on that, but at any rate, maybe you’re more athletic and that helps you keep your kind of calorie equation more or less balanced.

Maybe you don’t struggle with your weight growing up or maybe you do, and that’s something that becomes obvious, apparent, like from, from the get go that that’s an issue or something you’re, you’re going to struggle with, but usually it gets worse as you get older because when you’re young, you have a lot of structure around eating. You have, you know, meal times at school and you can only eat kind of what you want at the end of the day for a few hours, you know, and you’ve got a lot of activity usually.

[Alice]

And you have structured classes, and if you are an athlete and you have dedicated time, you know, running, training or something specific.

[Sawyer]

Even if you don’t though, you got recess.

[Alice]

But yeah.

[Sawyer]

You got recess at school. Sometimes you get two recesses in school. Most kids like to run around.

So it’s like you, you kind of get into these habits that are better from the get go just by default with like school and athletics. And then as you get older, those, those structures start to fade away, right? You get into high school and they don’t have recess anymore.

You know, PE is an elective and for a lot of people and a lot of people don’t take it and they’d rather take study hall and just mess around or whatever. Then as, as you get to college, you’re not in class all the time at all. You can eat every other class if you wanted to, you know, and again, you don’t have to be active.

So that’s where the freshman 15 thing starts to come from, I think, is because now for the first time you’re, you’re living away from home. You’re probably not that good at cooking yet. You don’t have to be active.

[Alice]

There’s no one, there’s no parent being like, you gotta eat your vegetables.

[Sawyer]

Yeah. Yeah. There’s a whole lot to that.

And some people, I think this is enough that they are kind of have corrective mechanisms or they have a, you know, some, some words of some people who are very fit in their lives to resounding in their ears and they’re, they’re like, oh, wow. I gained the freshman 15. I should really do these things that are, you know, get me back on track.

But some people never had that. And some people, you know, have different coping mechanisms for different stressors. Like they’ll just work extra hard if they feel stressed about their body or whatever.

So that can start to pile up. And then when you get into full on adulthood out of, out of school and everything, and you have a job, most jobs are sedentary. You can kind of snack where and whenever you want.

Nobody’s, nobody’s stopping you in between meetings or whatever. And you’re kind of set up not for success when it comes to body weight management. Unless you go outside of those channels and like create your own systems, you’re kind of at the mercy of your lifestyle for the most part.

And I think most people can relate to that. It feels harder to keep the weight off as you get older. And I think sometimes people ascribe that to, wow, I must be getting older or my hormones are changing or whatever, not to say that those things aren’t happening.

But for the most part, metabolic rate doesn’t change from age 20 to 60. So it’s, it’s usually the habits that change. It’s usually the lifestyle that’s the biggest determinant of how many calories you’re burning and taking in on, on a daily basis.

And so you have to kind of create a system for yourself at some point, or otherwise you’re just going to keep kind of going up and up and up, you know? So is there any context you want to add to that? I feel like that’s kind of what the example I wanted to give was.

[Alice]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a couple of things that you mentioned, being at the mercy of your environment, being American, we are flooded with images of people eating pizza and drinking alcohol and burgers.

And we’re not really, you know, encouraged or taught what good nutrition looks like. We’re not taught what portions of whole foods look like, you know, we’re not going to be seeing people eating these things, media, social, whether it be social media, whether it be television, movies, whatnot. So instead, you know, we think that, oh, to have a good time, to live my life, I should be able to just eat ice cream, you know, have all this alcohol as my lifestyle.

And in reality, like it’s very backwards. It’s very upside down. And people start to wonder like, oh, there’s something wrong with me.

I’m broken because all of these foods are extremely calorie dense. Like foods in nature, you can have a decent amount of a lot of them and they are fewer calories, right? But the foods that we are just like bombarded with all the time in American culture, like it is just a little bowl of chips is just like astronomically more calories, more dietary fats.

All of the foods are very high in dietary fats and fat. One gram of fat is equal to nine grams of calories or nine calories. Compare that to carbohydrates and protein and one gram of each of those is four calories, more than double.

So it’s just very, very easy to overeat. And it looks like nothing. It feels like we’re eating nothing.

That Starbucks beverage, that bag of Doritos, one donut, right? We’re eating the equivalent of large meals and these tiny, tiny little things or worse, like drinks, right? Think that we’re broken.

We’re not broken. We just don’t understand calorie density and that we’re supposed to be eating differently than we’re constantly shown.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, well, I think I think you’re right. Like it reflects our culture around it because it’s not just like the images, the images help to normalize it. But the truth is like most like social situations revolve around eating these really highly processed, fatty, sugary foods, right?

Yeah, that light up your reward centers and make you feel like excited about it. But then, you know, afterwards you’re like, oh, man, I don’t necessarily love how I look right now or how I feel. And so we live in a culture of very like short-lived, like acute, you know, benefits and like long-term food.

Yeah. Like, like let’s just deal with the, the impacts later and, and immediate gratification, you know, it’s similar with consumerism kind of culture. So I think it takes a lot of discipline and planning and just, just frankly, energy to get around that stuff.

And you’re also seen as kind of weird if you do. So it’s like, there’s lots of incentives or disincentives to being fit and healthy in this society. Whereas in certain countries, like certain European countries and things like that, they try to make it so that it’s, it’s more like walking friendly and cities are kind of set up that way.

[Alice]

Right.

[Sawyer]

You know, make food more accessible and affordable. That’s, that’s healthier.

[Alice]

Lots of rules and regulations around food as well.

[Sawyer]

I think people worry a little bit too much about like additives. I think, you know, obviously you don’t want to eat too much processed stuff, but I think we get hyper-zoomed in on like, oh, red 40, that’s son of a bitch, made me fat.

[Alice]

For someone to be like, oh, it’s not my fault. It’s the food’s fault. But the reality is it’s not necessarily like all these additives.

Obviously they’re not great. A lot of these ingredients should not be in our foods really. But the reality is like, we’re supposed to be eating differently.

And by blaming the ingredients, it’s easy to be like, oh, it’s not my fault. It’s because of food. And it’s like, we need to work on changing behaviors and those stuff.

[Sawyer]

Yeah. And there’s also this, this narrative of like, oh, I went to Europe and I ate the bread and it was so much better for you and all this stuff. And it’s like, maybe marginally, but I think probably what happens is you’re more active when you go to Europe.

You’re walking 15, 20k steps a day.

[Alice]

No, I was actually just reading about this. A lot of the bread from Europe is actually purchased from the United States.

[Sawyer]

Really?

[Alice]

That’s the reality, guys. I hate to break it to you, but.

[Sawyer]

That makes sense. I mean, it’s just, it’s, these are, are biologically they’re, they’re similar foods and additives and things like that. It’s not like there’s going to be a massive difference on the whole.

What’s really happening is, yeah, you’re living differently when you go live in, you go to a different society. And yeah, when you live in the U.S. society, it’s really not built around healthy habits and, and encouraging those things socially even, you know? So, so when we have cities built around cars, you don’t have as much ability to go walk around town.

I mean, we walked, we went to Vegas a couple of years ago and we were like, oh, look at this, like, we’re looking on the map. We’re like, we should be able to walk this. And like 20 minutes or so, well, it was like intersected by a freeway and all this stuff.

So you plug it into Google maps and it was like, oh, you have to walk an hour and a half to go. I was like, that’s so stupid. Like I could have walked it in 25 minutes or something.

[Alice]

So it feels like it should be just there and instead you’ve got to get it.

[Sawyer]

Yeah. So it’s, it’s kind of built around industry instead of like around people. So anyway, we, we’ve gone on this tangent for a long time, but the point is that if you live in a certain society, more likely than not, your habits are going to be dictated by that society, especially if it’s the cultural norm of that society.

[Alice]

Society. I want to mention that too.

[Sawyer]

Go ahead. Yeah.

[Alice]

Like another part of it is literally, it’s like we are taught, like we get off work and the thing to do to relax in the evening, everyone is supposed to go sit in front of the TV and snack. We’re snacking again on things like chips and cookies. And before you know it, you know, you’ve, you’ve downed a whole sleeve of Oreos and calories, right?

And that’s part of it. And we think that’s normal and we need to be more mindful of these things and be like, all right, if we, it’s not that you can never have these snacks, it’s that you have to know how many Oreos you’re eating and fit that into your day. Enough Oreos, you know, if you eat too many of those, it’s going to replace a meal and you don’t want that to happen.

Right.

[Sawyer]

And it’s just not going to be the same amount of filling either. It’s just going to be like, you’re going to eat the Oreos and then the regular meal because you’re like, well, I’m still hungry.

[Alice]

Now you have the equivalent of two to three meals or more, right? The other thing that you mentioned, I think, was metabolic rate. And this kind of goes into, I think, next, next part of what you want to talk about is people’s metabolic rates start going down when we are sedentary, when we are not weightlifting, when we are not actively doing anything to keep up our muscle, so when that happens, it happens to almost everybody.

We don’t realize it, but pretty much everybody living the way that we live in the society is losing muscle by the time they reach 30 because they’re not doing anything, they’re not doing any physical training. Yeah, walking and yoga and Pilates are great, but it’s not going to do anything to maintain and or build your muscle. So as you start losing muscle, that’s going to impact our metabolic rate.

You know, to talk about the details of that.

[Sawyer]

So, yeah, we, I mean, we can get into the numbers of it in a minute, but I think, yeah, to, to kind of talk about more about the culture is like, yeah, weightlifting is getting a little bit more mainstream, but it’s also just more effort, right? It’s, it’s additional. It’s another service that you have to pay for to figure out.

You’re not really taught it very well. I mean, I remember in high school taking like a strength and conditioning class and then kind of showing us a couple exercises and then just kind of letting us do whatever we felt like in the weight room. And I was proud of myself because I actually took it seriously.

And I was like, I’m going to actually get a workout in, but I was like one of three people that actually did that. Everybody else kind of just sat around and maybe some kids were doing like a max bench competition and other people were kind of just like, I don’t know, not taking it seriously, but yeah, it’s, it’s a not very common thing to learn. It’s, it’s something you have to go out of your way to learn in this society.

Whereas I think we could do a lot better job teaching people how to exercise efficiently here. But yeah, it’s, it’s again, it’s not an immediate gratification process. It takes a long time.

It doesn’t necessarily feel all that good when you’re first starting. I think you get used to it and you start to crave the, like the soreness and the pump and all that stuff, but you really got to develop the discipline first. So there’s a whole lot of barriers to entry in this society basically is what we’re saying.

And it just makes your life harder in the long run because you’re fighting this battle against these calories that are in and out and the muscle tissue that you’re losing as you’re getting more sedentary over the course of your life. So yeah.

[Alice]

And more and more, or I should say less and less affordable. And then suddenly that membership feels like a luxury. And not only that, but time.

We’re so limited on our time. We’re expected to work so many long hours in this nation. I’m home and it’s like, you don’t have any time for yourself and you’re expected to carve out more time for the gym.

And unfortunately our bodies require maintenance, right? Like it’s really a hard thing to accept and learn to love. But that’s, that’s really the key is learning, learning to love it.

[Sawyer]

Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s like, I think what we’re saying is like, you’re still responsible for maintenance of your body, but it’s just by default in certain societies, certain countries, it’s going to be a little bit harder or a lot harder depending on where you live and how you were raised. So us coming from the U S we understand like it’s really hard and a lot of people end up being overweight or obese because it’s just a lot of work, especially if you’re very limited on resources, time, energy, it becomes exponentially harder to manage this fitness equation and to put in the extra effort to work out and all this stuff.

So we are not trying to say that it’s not your responsibility because at the end of the day, nobody else is going to watch what you eat and things like that, but you’re not necessarily set up for success in this society. And so I think giving yourself a little bit of grace is not a bad thing. And being super, super hard on yourself is not really good for behavior change anyway.

You know, if you just internalize everything and say, this is a hundred percent my fault, I’m the worst, I’m a fatty, whatever. I just don’t think that’s very productive. I think that’s you internalizing things and saying and shaming yourself instead of just being like, okay, I wasn’t set up the best for success and my life isn’t perfectly set up for fitness right now, but there’s still some things I can do to make improvements at this point in my life.

And I think that’s a measured approach because if you go all one way or the other, I think you can get caught up in some pretty extreme habits to say the least.

[Alice]

So I think that’s a good segue into talking about gaining weight, that’s the piece of the puzzle, gaining weight in order to lose weight, right? So, um, I just wanted to, you know, bring up the fact that unfortunately scrolling through social media, I’m seeing more and more things come up. That’s like thinness, like as a body trend is coming back and it’s a really scary thing for women in general, but especially for me as a fitness coach, where COVID we finally started to move more towards like encouraging women to be strong, encouraging them to gain muscle, eat more, you know, have more realistic, uh, goals and body physique, like ideals.

And now we’re taking that step back again and it’s scary. It’s a scary thing. Like we said, you know, when we are inactive, we’re going to be losing muscle.

And when we just dieting ourselves, just dieting, dieting, dieting to get ourselves to a point where just, you know, we’re trying to take up as little space as possible, this is not conducive to being able to build muscle, right?

[Sawyer]

I think it’s important to, yeah, like to recognize the trends that are going on. What’s trendy, what’s fashionable, and to realize that what you expose yourself to in terms of marketing and culture and things like that is going to have an impact on what you aspire to look like, right? How many people have said, I want to look like Brad Pitt from Fight Club or I want to look like, you know, Selma Hayek from whatever.

So it’s like, you get these ideas in your head coming up on these movies and these cultural kind of phenomenons. I remember watching Daniel Craig in the, you know, 007 movies and being like, damn, that dude’s jacked, that looks awesome, I want to go for that. And I was like, you know, 13.

You know, when you’ve got these cultural icons that get propped up as like the best we have to offer as society, it can be dangerous because either way it swings, right, whether it’s big muscles and big booties and all this stuff, or if it’s like super lean bodies, because people usually take that to an extreme. Like that, you know, big muscles and stuff like that is cool when it’s natural, but people start getting surgeries, when they start getting surgeries and hopping on all kinds of drugs and PEDs, you’re kind of like, okay, now you’re gambling with your health a little bit there. And then on the skinny side, it’s like, yeah.

And then on the skinny side, it’s people dieting themselves into oblivions. You’ve got all kinds of problems that can come from treating your body like it’s a Instead of thinking, what do I actually want to look like free of the influence of society? Granted, you’re never going to be able to get completely away from it, but trying to think what actually feels good to me, first of all, and what’s going to actually match my values in terms of like how I want to live my life and the best life I want to live.

It’s very hard for young people to see down the barrel of their entire lives and think, wow, I want to live a long time. So I better not do anything too dangerous right now. But that’s something to think about.

And even if, you know, the the constraint, like I think for me, if I had been given the access to it and the cultural seal of approval, I probably would have jumped on steroids at some point in my late teens, early 20s, because there’s just a lot of pressure to be a bigger, leaner, stronger dude in our society. And same with women having the body trends pendulum swing back and forth.

[Alice]

Trends move on, waste away and then nothing.

[Sawyer]

Right. Like the last time it was like that for women, it was, was that.

[Alice]

They’re both forms of profession for people, you know, expecting people to live up to these certain like unrealistic body expectations, just a way to like basically sell you more things. You literally feel emotionally like desperate for these things. It’s literally just a way to get your money.

And so I want to, I like to talk about the psychology of all this because the way you look has nothing to do with your value as a human being. Like we need to disconnect those two things.

[Sawyer]

Absolutely.

[Alice]

No, for women in particular, like if you’ve never weightlifted, if you’ve never lifted anything heavy again, you know, the Pilates are great things, but they don’t count this. Um, when you go and try to lose weight, I think a lot of people come to us thinking that, okay, I want to do a cut and once I lose X amount of body fat, it’s going to reveal, you know, a certain amount of muscle. And the fact of the matter is you’ve been sedentary, you’ve been sedentary your entire adult life.

You haven’t done any weight training. You might not understand what it means to lift heavy. You’ve never even gotten close to squatting your body weight.

The reality is not muscle under there. The reality is you’re under muscled. It’s a clinical term and you’re going to try and keep shrinking and shrinking and shrinking.

And instead of revealing muscle, you’re going to reveal bone. So that’s how I built.

[Sawyer]

Yeah. And I think, I think I’m not trying to discourage people from having goals and aspirations with their bodies. I think we just need to be mindful of when we’re being influenced by culture and in companies, quite literally, to, to look a certain way or to compete with other people.

I think there’s, there’s a certain level of health and maintenance we should all be doing in terms of like fitness. Like, okay, you want to have a certain amount of muscle on you so that you’re not incredibly insulin resistant and fragile and weak. Right.

But you don’t need to be bodybuilder, tear lifter. Right. Like that’s, there’s a spectrum on that.

And I think people need to understand, like, you don’t need to take things to a thousand percent and we’re not going to take you to a thousand percent if that’s not your goal. But if you do have aspirations to live a healthy, sustainable life, we’re going to get you to that point at least. Because I think everybody needs to do that.

Beyond that, it comes down to, do you want, like, why do you want more? Like, I’ve accepted at this point in my journey that that physique and aesthetics and all this stuff as a lifestyle bodybuilder kind of person is just fun for me. Like, I just, I just find it fun.

It’s a hobby. It’s like playing video games or something. Granted, there are some health and fitness benefits.

There’s also some health and fitness drawbacks. I guess not fitness drawbacks, but health drawbacks in terms of like, OK, maybe I should be eating more whole foods, but I’m opting for a little bit higher protein thing or something like that. Not huge, but still something to consider.

Like, OK, why am I doing this? And I think beyond a health and maintenance of, like, longevity and things like that, there is a hobby aspect to it for me. There’s like a dopamine chasing thing.

And I’ve recognized that in myself. But not everybody needs to be there. So I think it’s important before you set out on this journey of building muscle and habits around what you want and setting your sights on what you want, just understanding why you’re doing it and how much work that is going to require of you.

So some people, I mean, when you first start, like when you first started, how much, like, emphasis did you think you’re going to need to put on training and nutrition to get where you wanted to go? And where did you want to go when you first started, like, lifting and stuff?

[Alice]

When I first started lifting, I thought, yeah, I mean, I fell into a lot of the same traps when I was young. I fell into the same traps of chasing that smaller and smaller and smaller physique. Nothing was better than skinny.

And well, for all that cultural brainwash nonsense, you know, and I thought that in order to build the physique that I wanted, you know, I would have to be in the gym every single day. I’m a very all or nothing personality, you know, and it fascinated me so much, you know, very, very quickly turned into my career. Yeah, I think that there’s balance to this is very important, you know, if you especially, you know, or what I want to impress upon people is like, if you are already like fairly lean, I know most of us are going to look in the mirror and no matter how lean we are, we’re going to pick ourselves apart and be like, I’m not lean, I’m not lean.

If you take it, if you are realistically assessing, like, you know, how lean you are, like if you are relatively lean, like I would say, like instead of trying to turn to another diet, turn to starting a workout program. And this can be as simple as three days a week, three full body days a week. You can start out just doing a few lifts.

Now, you like your big lifts, learning how to squat, learning how to deadlift, learning how to shoulder press, learning how to row, learning how to bench press. And this can take you really, really far. And that’s not a whole lot of exercises there.

I mean, later on, I’m sure you’ll get a lot more excited with all the isolation stuff that you could do. And it’s so fun. Right.

But it doesn’t have to be every single day of the week. In fact, I would say, like, if you start out trying to go to the gym every single day of the week, you’re going to burn yourself out and then you’re going to hate the gym. You’re going to resent the gym.

You’re going to feel like it’s your whole life and you have no time for anything else. Trying to approach this with a sense of balance, you’re going to have a lot of big changes, especially in the first six months, because chances are you haven’t been lifting. You haven’t been lifting, haven’t been lifting heavy.

Right. So when you’re able to start, like, making goals like, I want to be able to squat my body weight, you know, a lot of people can get there in a relatively short amount of time with with patience, consistency. And then we’re going to start seeing major real changes coming up.

And you’re going to be in your new gains phase. You’re going to be gaining all kinds of exciting muscle. Lots of changes are going to be happening within that first six months.

Right. And I’m still saying I’m still saying three days a week. Yeah.

[Sawyer]

Well, yeah. And that’s the reason I asked you about, like, what what you started out doing, because I think when people start, they have a very I mean, necessarily they don’t have a good idea of what it’s going to take to get to their goals. So they just say, well, I’m just going to do the most.

I’m going to do the most that I possibly can do to make sure that it happens. But the truth is, yeah, you you could burn out pretty easily that way. And that’s why, yeah, I think it’s it’s smarter, especially I think some of the best clients are the people who have done that a couple of times and they’re like, OK, that’s not it.

And they’ve learned from experience and they say, OK, well, I need to be more patient with myself. I need to listen to my body more. I need to be more realistic about the calories that I’m shooting for.

And sometimes they just need the guidance, the handholding from a coach to do that. But it’s just it’s one of those things where I wish that, you know, even the fitness industry is so like just just commercialized now, like they’re selling an image of like, oh, I work hard every day and I eat super low calorie and lean all the time. And I think if we were to be influenced by more honest people and less neurotic, super pathologically lean people or people who are at least like, hey, I’m like a maniac, like I this is my job in my life.

And if you’re holding yourself to this standard, not a great idea if you’re working a full time job and you have kids and all this stuff. But maybe we could even say that and it would just fall on deaf ears because people want the flashy, shiny stuff. At any rate, we could be doing a better job educating people about like what is necessary amount of movement and nutrition and what’s like a kind of excessive amount of focus on this stuff.

Especially for most people’s goals. But I would say it starts with setting a reasonable expectation for yourself in terms of like, OK, what what amount of lifting can I actually do sustainably and do it well instead of doing like tons and tons of volume? I see that all the time with coaching programs and fitness companies is they’ll throw everything but the kitchen sink at somebody in terms of volume and they’ll be in the gym for two and a half hours or whatever every other day or whatever it is.

And then they got cardio, too. So it’s just like so much that people are being berated with and they just think, oh, that’s that’s normal. That’s what you have to do to get fit.

But they’re running like a program and not like like they have to do a lifestyle, you know.

[Alice]

They think about something they have to only do in the short term.

[Sawyer]

Right.

[Alice]

So point to these extremes and then they wonder why you can’t maintain it because they don’t want to. And if you take a more moderate approach and this is something that you’re going to be able to do. I mean, yeah.

And if you go ahead, back to drugs a little bit, like as far as like. Understanding what a realistic amount of muscle that you can build each year. You want to talk about some of that?

[Sawyer]

Yeah, sure. I was yeah, I was going to get into that actually. Good idea.

So it varies depending on person. Like women build less muscle than men typically. But and you’re going to build the most muscle earliest in your fitness career.

So if you if you really focus on those basics like Alice, you just listed off and you’re doing three days a week with very good like focus on those days, you’re going to build a lot of muscle in the first few years. In fact, probably most the majority of your muscle is going to come from those first few years. And if you’re hyper restricting calories while you’re doing that, you’re kind of shortchanging yourself.

You’re kind of limiting how much you can actually build. You don’t need to be in a mega surplus or even a surplus at all for the most part, unless you start noticing, well, now I’m not progressing at the rate that I would expect to in my first six months or whatever, because I’m not eating enough. I’m too lean, because basically this is something people need to understand.

You can’t synthesize lean muscle tissue from nothing. If you’re very you’re going to need to eat in a surplus. If you have some body fat tissue on you, you could probably use that to synthesize new muscle tissue to a point to a point.

[Alice]

There’s going to be a point. I’m not going to eat, please.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, yeah, no, I want to contextualize this. You’re right, because, yeah, it’s it’s not like you can just keep getting leaner and leaner and leaner and leaner. Your body at some point is going to push back and it’s going to affect your training quality.

It’s going to affect your sanity. So you do need to have a certain amount of body fat to keep you healthy. But if you have, say, 30 percent body fat and you’re thinking, I need to to be in a surplus to build muscle, not necessarily.

You could probably utilize a lot of that body fat to build muscle over the next couple of years or so.

[Alice]

But as you get better, you know, maintenance for a normal person, right? Like, I don’t know how tall you are as a woman, but like, you know, anywhere from like 1500 to 1750 calories like that’s like you can if you are. And I’m still talking about people, you know, around 30 percent body fat for for males.

Do you think like 17 to 23, 24?

[Sawyer]

Yeah. I mean, depending on how tall they are, it’s so variable, though. He’s trying to get a rate about, yeah, maybe, yes, yeah, maybe up to like twenty five hundred or so, depending on.

But yeah, it changes so much depending on the person. But at any rate, if you’re kind of in that ballpark with your calories and you’re not really gaining or losing too quickly, you’re going to be body recomposition, essentially using some of your body fat that’s not hard to get at for your body. Like you’re not you’re not 10 percent body fat and your body’s not like saying, no, I absolutely need this fat.

Like you’re not getting at this. You’ll be able to mobilize that and use it for synthesizing muscle tissue if your training is good and your calories are under control. Eventually, you’re probably going to need to be in a bit more of a surplus if you want to build more.

But, you know, you can cross that bridge when you get to it. But the point is, when you’re starting three days a week, focusing on compound lifts and learning, learning how to do those, even using a lot of machines, I really like, honestly, for a lot of beginners.

[Alice]

Things are great, especially if you have injuries, especially if you are new to this, especially if you have balance challenges, especially if you have any mobility challenges, just like regular flexibility stuff. Yeah. But getting into some like some just some these are very, very vague numbers.

I mean, most guys can expect to be able to gain around 10 pounds of muscle in a year. And that’s only muscle. That’s only muscle when they first start.

[Sawyer]

Yeah.

[Alice]

And women, that number is probably more around seven or eight pounds.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, it’s pretty amazing what you can do just with a few days of lifting, like really quality lifting in the first year or two of doing it. And yeah, I mean, basically when you get to where me and Alice are at, like you’re grinding for little gains, but it’s like it’s fun at this point. So we don’t freak out about it.

But for most people, it’s like they don’t understand how much is right within reach for them, just right at their fingertips. If they just started lifting a little bit and and keeping control of calories. The other thing I do want to mention is if you are relatively lean, like, you know, 20 percent ish as a woman, 15 or below as a man, you probably will need to eat more calories sooner to build muscle.

Maybe in the first few months or so, you won’t you won’t need to. But your body’s. Yeah, the new beginnings are going to come.

[Alice]

You haven’t been working out beforehand because it gets longer, the more sedentary you were before.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, but if you’re if you’re starting to lift and you’re realizing, OK, I’m getting these new begins, this is great, but it starts to slow down at a certain point just because you’re not having an easy time mobilizing that body fat because you’re already pretty lean. You’re going to need to be in a surplus at that point if you want to keep gaining. And that’s where gaining weight can be really helpful, because even though it’s scary to see the scale go up for a lot of people, you just can’t maintain your way to a higher muscle mass if you’re already pretty lean.

It’s just where is that energy going to come from? You don’t have any on your body that’s easily accessible for your body. You’re going to need to gain weight.

[Alice]

That is wrong. We are not saying you can make zero gains from this, but like, no, it’s going to get slower and slower and slower. And at that point, especially if you are like a non-fitness professional, don’t understand the science, you’re going to be like, I’m making no progress.

Forget everything. So it’s just the smart thing to do to start to try to eat in a calorie surplus. And we’re not talking about a huge calorie surplus, guys.

You can start out with 100 to 200 calorie surplus and just like sit there for a while and watching this very slowly, slowly, slowly go up, right? I’m talking.

[Sawyer]

Yeah.

[Alice]

Tell me the numbers, Torey.

[Sawyer]

I would say, I would say 1 to 2% of your body weight per month if you have a lot of potential for muscle gain. So you’re in the first few years of lifting, you’re relatively lean, you’re still learning all these things, but you’re getting better at them. I would say you have a lot more muscle building potential than somebody who’s done it for 5, 10 years.

Those people probably want to gain.

[Alice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really like slow and careful.

[Sawyer]

Right, right. And then as you get closer to your muscle gaining potential, like if you’ve taken that and you’ve gone up and up and up with that for several years, then you’d probably want to slow down at that point because your muscle gain potential isn’t quite as high. So you’d probably go to like half a percent of your body weight per month or so if you wanted to still be gaining.

You kind of want to be. Yeah. And at the end of the day, if you’re like, I gained, you know, 30 pounds of muscle over the course of five years, I’m happy.

Cool. Stay there. That’s, that’s great.

That’s awesome. Yeah. That would be amazing.

[Alice]

Yeah, I’ve successfully done that.

[Sawyer]

Yeah. And you don’t need to keep squeezing the juice out of everything and saying, I need to build more and more muscle. Like I said, at that point, it’s, it’s just like a hobby because you’re like, you’re already kind of one and you’re just having fun with it now.

Your habits are great, hopefully. And you’re, you’re able to do this naturally and sustainably. Congratulations.

You won the fitness game.

[Alice]

I want to put an emphasis on that because what happens is we look on social media and you see people making these tremendous, ridiculous body changes. Those numbers that I said, the seven, around seven pounds for women, around 10 pounds for men per year, per year. Think about that.

That’s not a lot of weight, guys. You’re going to get a lot more if you are on PEDs. If you are on performance, performance enhancing drugs, steroids, hormones, things that we don’t recommend here.

[Sawyer]

And for a lot longer, like you, you could do that in perpetuity. Basically, if you keep upping the dose, you can keep gaining 10 pounds a year for, you know, 10 years. Whereas if you’re a natural, it’s going to slow down over time.

It’s just, it’s just the reality of how it works.

[Alice]

Well, drugs are able to like max out every single muscle to like above and beyond their potential. And this puts so much stress on your body and it does horrible, horrible things to your health. That’s why these competitive bodybuilders who are not competing in natural federations are just dying.

They’re just dropping dead. I mean, I don’t know if any of you are following the news, but I mean, it’s like every couple of weeks, it’s like, oh, there goes another one. And people aren’t talking.

They’re getting messed up.

[Sawyer]

At the highest competitive level, it’s just like, it’s, it’s kind of ridiculous. It’s kind of like a, who can survive the most pharmacological intervention competition at some point and who has really good genetics and habits. But it’s, yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s just a symptom of our culture kind of being just the most, like maximize the spectacle of everything kind of culture.

But at any rate, I don’t think most people hopefully are getting sucked into that except for like young kids, maybe. So if you’re a young kid listening to this, just, just don’t do it because you have, you have so much to figure out first before you decide if that’s a path for you.

[Alice]

Yeah. And if you’re a kid, you already have so many hormones going through your body that by design, nature basically has you on steroids. So there is no need for you to do this.

I promise that is puberty. That is what puberty is.

[Sawyer]

That’s true. That’s very true. That’s a good point.

It’s like, you know, most people, if they are going to get on steroids, intelligent way to do it would be to max out your natural gains first and, and your brain development, and then consider it and then consider it. But even then it’s like you’re, the way I conceptualize it is like, you’re basically electing to have a chronic condition because now you’re saying, oh, I got to manage my hemoglobin and my insulin. And I got to make sure that my heart isn’t, you know, hypertrophying too much.

And like all these, all these health issues that can come along. Granted, if you have a great coach and doctor and you’re working really super, super closely with them, yeah, you could probably do it in a way that’s not too harmful, but at the end of the day, it’s, you’re taking on, it’s like a science project. You’re becoming a bit of a, of chemistry set and you’re not, you’re not going to be sure.

Yeah. And it, and maybe like hormone replacement is a different thing entirely as you get older, but that again is done with the supervision of a doctor and you’re not doing all kinds of different stuff. You’re just saying, well, I’m going to replace these things that have naturally declined as I got older.

So at any rate.

[Alice]

The things that a doctor is going to prescribe of hormone replacement therapy is within normal range. Like these athletes, these bodybuilders that are competitively trying to maximize, they are taking like many, many, many, many, many times what is normal and what is safe, so there’s a difference in those things, right?

[Sawyer]

Yeah, it’s true. And they do the same with leanness too. They’ll just try to get leaner and leaner and leaner too, because they know that it draws the attention of people on social media and that’s how they get more business and traffic.

And so it’s kind of a, a self-perpetuating system in which we are looking at these people the most who are, are the, look the craziest. And you know, I do it too. I’m like, holy crap, these people look insane.

But if, if you don’t know what you’re comparing yourself to, you could get really, really untethered from what’s naturally achievable and, and start to.

[Alice]

Expectations are just like, whoa.

[Sawyer]

Yeah. And you’re right. You’re going further and further away from what is healthy because there is like a, like, I imagine it like a Venn diagram.

Health and fitness are very close together in a lot of ways, right? When done properly.

[Alice]

Sliding scale, right? And there’s definitely ways you’re taking health and fitness way, way, way so far.

[Sawyer]

Exactly. Exactly. And it starts in little ways like, oh, I’m going to eat 300 grams of protein a day just to make sure I get it.

You know what I mean? Like it starts in that, that kind of way. And then people just go farther and farther down the rabbit hole of like maximizing fitness and minimizing health.

And it can really, really start to.

[Alice]

Fitness at the expense of your health is never a good thing.

[Sawyer]

Exactly. So, but to get back to the main topic, which is so easy to get away from, because there’s so many different avenues, but the main topic is gaining weight is going to help increase your metabolic rate, your, your ability to eat higher calories and not gain extra body fat and also being more active is too. So if you can, you know, ingrain in yourself some very basic, healthy fitness habits and not get sucked down the rabbit hole of culture and all these like super physiological things that, that would take you drugs and years to achieve.

You can achieve some really amazing things with your body and feel great and live a long, healthy life. And I feel like as unsexy as that sounds right now, especially for younger people, you will be glad you did it in the future.

[Alice]

It’s so worth it.

[Sawyer]

I’m already there. Yeah.

[Alice]

Realistic timeframes too, because I think a lot of people will come in and they’re like, okay, well I will gain weight for three to six months. And honestly, if you are going in there with the expectation that three to six months of gaining weight of going throughout the slow bulk journey is going to push you in a place where you’re going to cut and you’re going to be like happy with that, you’re most likely very mistaken, unless you have been very active.

[Sawyer]

It depends on their goals too.

[Alice]

And like from a lot of my clients’ perspectives, when they look back, they reflect on these things and like, I wish I had known like how long I would really need to be, because a lot of them come and are coming to me and saying, I want to look like a bikini bodybuilder. Honestly, what a lot of people are coming to me with. And really looking at more like a year to a year and a half at least is actually for someone who, like I said, has never really lifted before, has been heavy before, so give yourself the time when you’re working with a coach, they’re going to keep, they’re going to help you keep things like very clean, very efficient, very like, okay, follow this plan and we will get the maximum potential for your genetics, for your ability, right? Consistency for your lifestyle.

Like there’s a lot in the process that’s going on, right?

[Sawyer]

Totally. I think, I think the best advice I could give a total beginner to this process, especially when it comes to nutrition is learn what your maintenance range calories is like approximately, and don’t stray too far from that because chances are you’re not super, super low body fat. And so it’s probably not going to be a bad idea to be a little bit of a deficit, probably wouldn’t hurt you, you know, fine.

Just don’t go and drop, tank your calories to nothing because that’s going to really hurt your progress and your just sanity and your health. And then the same with the opposite, you know, going and having like a dreamer bulk, like insane above your maintenance calories is also going to make, leave you feeling not great. So the best thing I could tell you, the simplest thing advice I could tell you in terms of nutrition, when you first start your fitness habits is learn what your maintenance calories are and stay in a reasonable window around that, right?

A few hundred calories above or below.

[Alice]

And the more consistent you can be with getting those same calories each day, more you’re going to be blown away by what your body can do. When we’re feeling our body, like very, very close to the, like very small, like window of error, you’re going to be like blown away by how your body looks and you’re going to be gain and recomp at the correct way, like rate to be like, this is almost like social media, almost.

[Sawyer]

It’s hard. It’s hard. It’s always comparing yourself to smoke and mirrors, but at any rate, I think, yeah, being around maintenance and knowing what that is for you, especially in the first few years is going to be very rewarding because no, it’s not flashy, no, you don’t lose 60 pounds in the first six months, but, or gain it, but you are going to feel better and you’re going to notice a lot of muscle gained because you’re just starting out in your fitness journey and you’re not super depriving yourself of nutrients to the point where you can’t have good workouts and muscle building ability. And you’re also not just getting huge and bloated for no reason. As you get more advanced, yeah, you can start to delve into different calorie ranges and things like that.

But I think when you first start out in order to make sure you’re not doing anything too extreme, or that’s going to shoot you in the foot for the long term, to stay around close to maintenance, I think is probably the best advice I can give.

[Alice]

Do you want to add to that, that your maintenance is probably a lot higher than you think it is?

[Sawyer]

Well, yeah, you think so? That’s interesting. Cause sometimes I get people who come to me and they’re like, my maintenance is super low.

I have a slow metabolism, blah, blah, blah. And then come to find out it’s, it’s actually higher than they thought. They just been chronically dieting and kind of.

Oh, that’s true, huh? Yeah. They, yeah, they, that’s true, huh?

That’s true. Yeah. And then I guess I always, as a skinny growing up as a skinny kid thought it was higher than it actually was.

I was always aiming close to like 3000 calories. I was like, yeah, I’m a bigger guy now. I have all these goals to, to build a bunch of muscle.

And then over the years I’ve been like, oh, you know what? Hmm. Actually I’m gaining weight at that level.

[Alice]

Hmm.

[Sawyer]

Interesting. So it’s, it’s been a humbling thing, but I think you’re right. Most of the time, people are, are underestimating what their maintenance calories, maintenance calories are 1200.

[Alice]

No way.

[Sawyer]

Not often. Yeah, no, it’s yeah. And we’re all, we’re all different, right?

We all have different sizes and activity levels, but you know, eventually if, if you’re getting to the point where you’re doing more activity, you know, you’re regularly lifting and things like that, and you’re building more muscle, your metabolic rate will go up.

[Alice]

You will have more calories to eat more and not gain weight that way. Actually, please, this is the goal for you. I don’t want you to like starving forever because that’s what this forever lean smaller and smaller frame is going to do to you.

It’s just going to make you live in permanent starvation and it’s going to stop backfire on you once you reach a certain age, promise you that.

[Sawyer]

Yeah. Maybe that’s a good segue into talking about the last thing that I want to talk about where, um, they’ve studied in, in evolutionary biology. There’s this, this researcher, Eric Trexler, who has talked about studying the Hasda tribes and they were saying that these people get like sometimes upwards of 30, 35,000 steps a day, which is insane.

And they’re also having relatively low calories per day as well. And so they were trying to figure out, well, how are these people not like completely emaciated and just like starving to death? And they found that actually, uh, once they, once they went to experience or, or observe people with high prolonged calorie expenditure, especially in a low caloric environment, that our bodies are actually very metabolically adaptive in that environment.

And so they actually see similar, uh, calorie expenditures in those populations to other populations like ours, even doing three, four, five times less activity and eating way more calories. So they’re in a calorie neutral balance doing way more work and way less food while we’re doing way less work and way more food, which is really interesting. Of course, the body compositions, yeah.

So, so when it, the, the lesson there is in a prolonged state of calorie restriction or calorie burning, you know, in terms of exercise, your body will adapt. It will get really good at using the energy that you give it really, really well. And so it’s not a good idea to be a chronic dieter because you’re inevitably going to lose ground year after year after year of just being like, well, now my maintenance calories is 1200 because I’ve eaten that or below for so, so long and done so much cardio for so, so long that it really, really bites you in the butt, but the good news is, is if you slowly titrate up your calories, you can also reverse that because your body is metabolically adaptive again.

[Alice]

Especially if you keep up your, like a moderate amount of movement, you know, anywhere from 7,000 to 12,000 steps a day, right?

[Sawyer]

And I think it’s really important to just note here that it’s, it’s really, if we’re staying in a deficit most of the year, you’re, you’re losing ground by default because that prolonged exposure to calorie deficits is what eats away at your calorie pool that you can eat from. So most people should be hanging around maintenance most of the time, right? It’s just something that our bodies are better equipped to handle.

And if we are constantly exposing ourselves to super, super low calories, our bodies will just say, all right, well, you’re only going to give me this much food, then I’m only going to burn this much energy because I don’t want to starve to death, right?

[Alice]

And it might be scary for a lot of women hearing, like, I want you to stop being in a calorie deficit all the time, but the trick is like eating more, eating regular meals, like having regular meal times throughout the day, that number can be, it can be three, it can be five, it could be six if you want, you know, just be consistent with it, be consistent with your calories and have movement goals, have daily step goals, or if you are one of the people that actually enjoys cardio, that’s fine, you can have it. Me, I’m always going to be like, get your steps so much more better.

[Sawyer]

It’s a lot easier to burn calories that way. But I think, yeah, move more. And yes, if you have a lot of body fat to lose that you want to lose, yes, you could be in a deficit to achieve that.

Don’t do anything extreme because that’s going to, yeah, that’s going to suck. And also it’s going to probably hurt you in the long run. But also once you lose the weight or you lose a significant portion of weight and you’re starting to notice your hunger going way up and all these things starting to change, then go back to maintenance calories, which might be slightly lower because every pound of fat is about two to three calories that it burns on your body by default based on metabolic rate.

And then muscle is actually about six calories per pound. So these things aren’t huge, but they do affect your metabolic rate a little bit. So say you lost 30 pounds of fat.

Well, 30 times two, 60 calories, your maintenance is lowered by. Your hunger hormones are probably going to be, that’s true too, that’s true too. But yeah, your hunger hormones are going to be going nuts at the point of like you’ve lost 30 pounds, that’s a big deal.

So go back to maintenance, give yourself a break. And every time you do that, every time you go back to maintenance and you’ve achieved a goal and you say, okay, I did the thing, I lost the fat, I built the muscle, whatever, you’re going to have to reassess and say, okay, now if I want to gain or lose more weight, is it for a vanity reason or is it for a health reason? Based on that, how quickly or slowly should I go?

You know what I mean? Like, I think you have to be realistic with yourself. If you’ve lost 30 pounds and now you’re in the healthy weight range, if you want to continue to lose weight, just know that it’s, it’s probably just because you want to see yourself lean for the first time, not necessarily for health.

And I think that should change how you approach it. Because if you convince yourself you need to stay super, super lean, even if it’s very hormonally uncomfortable and it keeps you socially not super happy and things like that, you’ve got to be able to differentiate between what is healthy and what is just fitness hobby-ism, for lack of a better word.

[Alice]

Sort. Territory.

[Sawyer]

Yeah. Yeah. And you can get, you can get dangerously close to disordered eating too.

So anyway, I, I don’t, I’ve been a little bit, yeah, I’ve been a little too preachy, I think, but I think we have strong feelings about it because we’ve had personal experience with this stuff.

[Alice]

And so many clients coming to us in various stages of what situation have you gotten yourself into? And sometimes they take a long time to get ourselves out of that situation, especially the top of mind thing is the people that come to me who have not been eating food for years and years and years and years. So now we’ve got to work on just eating a regular amount for a time to repair things because otherwise to get you in a calorie deficit, you would have to be at 800 calories.

[Sawyer]

And right. And focus on building muscle too. I think there’s so many people that think, well, I just want to see the muscle.

I just want to be lean and toned and all that stuff. But you’re saying, yeah, like you do have to build the muscle first if you want to see it. And the bigger your muscles get.

[Alice]

I promise.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, yeah. And the bigger your muscles get, the easier they are to see. You don’t have to get quite as lean, quite as diced up just to see your abs, you know, because they’re bigger now.

[Alice]

That’s genetic, but I’m talking about the ab thing.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, that’s true. Abs are different. But I mean, where you store body fat, too, is different.

But in general, if you make your muscles bigger, they are easier to see underneath subcutaneous fat. So just keep that in mind.

[Alice]

I think a lot of people think, and Danny talks about this a lot, a lot of people think that, well, I need to lose the weight first and then build the muscle. You set yourself up for a lot more challenge.

[Sawyer]

Nutritionally.

[Alice]

And taking even longer, just try to do all the right things all together and don’t rush it. Go at a responsible rate of weight loss. Right.

And sometimes, especially if you have a lot of weight to lose, sometimes that won’t look like the scale continuously going down for a little while. It looks like inches coming off, but scale weight doing some weird things. It might be staying the same, going up and down.

But the thing is, if your body is shrinking, you’re making progress. That is actually important. And it’s really hard to step away, distance yourself from that number on that scale.

Right. It’s very scary.

[Sawyer]

That’s a really good point you make, Alice. I think, yeah, using the body weight can be a helpful metric, but I think you can even make it better by adding more context in terms of measurements, especially around the waist or places where, yeah, waist, hips, places where you hold a lot of body fat usually. And also checking your strength progressions.

You know, are you getting stronger consistently? Then you’re probably building muscle, you know. So if you can keep track of those three things, I think those are a big deal.

Progress pictures can help, too.

[Alice]

Of course. Although, without a coach, that can be really hard for someone who’s not trained to do that, because most of us look at pictures of ourselves and just immediately are like, oh, and I can’t even, you can’t see your true self. All you see is that emotion that’s tied to, you know, what they’re seeing in that photo.

And it won’t let you see the truth. It won’t let you see your progress. That’s why so many people get on diets and they start going and they’re actually having this great success and the scale’s not moving.

They’re like, I give up. I’m so over it. I haven’t made any changes.

It’s like, no, you have. You have so many positive changes.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, I do think that is that is a topic that I do want to explore at some point is the metrics you choose to dictate your decisions you make can be a huge deal because whatever you focus on is it could change how you feel throughout the process. Like you were saying, progress photos for a lot of people, very triggering. I don’t press them, push them on people who are just like, no way I can’t do it.

But at the same time, I think they can be really helpful for other people who only see themselves in pictures that other people take of them at weird, awkward angles or different lighting. And they might think, how the heck do I actually look? I don’t know how people actually see me.

And and having some objective, like in the same lighting, in the same posing can be really grounding in some ways. But you have to be able to look at yourself and not like just pick yourself apart. And that’s really hard for a lot of people, like you were saying.

[Alice]

I think we’ve been talking a lot about people with a lot of weight to lose. Yeah, someone who is lean, you know, focusing on really gaining weight, going through that. I think that people will usually say, oh, I’ve been uncomfortable with, you know, my body image for a little while.

And if you have gone through that work and then you do the cut, it’s going to be light years of a difference. You actually would be revealing that muscle shape. Mm hmm.

Muscles give us the actual curves that we want. It’s a totally different look than body fat. So I want to encourage like that’s why the name of this podcast is basically muscle first, then fat loss.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, I think it’s really important that people people do accept the fact that if they want to gain an appreciable amount of muscle, you will need to be in a surplus at some point, either by having body fat that you then use to turn into muscle and then maybe adding some more calories beyond, you know, beyond maintenance once they get lean enough that it’s hard to pull from their body fat stores and create muscle.

Or if they’re relatively lean when they start, they’re probably going to need to be above maintenance calories to continue progressing past a certain point of muscle gain.

[Alice]

So getting on the muscle brain to really be beneficial health wise, you know, at a point where, you know, you’re not going to be losing skills. We want you to be, you know, hitting your 40s and not struggling to get up off the floor. We want you to get a place where you’re not getting injured constantly.

We want you to be at a place where, you know, you’re able to continue thriving and improving, improving your strength, improving your your physical abilities.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, bone density, insulin sensitivity. These are things that that lifting improves. It’s not a more is always better situation.

Like you don’t need to become an absolute freak of nature. But if you do push into some.

[Alice]

I promise you.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, it takes a lot of effort to try.

[Alice]

You will not.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, right. Like I would venture to say, like, people would not mind. Most people would not mind looking like us unless they’re actual freaks of nature already.

And they’re like, oh, that’d be losing gains. People wouldn’t mind looking like us. I don’t think.

But they don’t realize how hard we work to build muscle. Like on a daily basis, we work to build and preserve muscle. And we still don’t look like absolute genetic monster, crazy looking people.

I don’t I don’t think personally.

[Alice]

I don’t we don’t know the people, you know, people that you think of as bodybuilders, you know, if you haven’t been looking at if you haven’t been following someone who is like very, very vocal about being a natural competitor in the physique sport, then chances are they are on drugs. And when they get that ridiculous, bubbly, disgustingly huge look like that is drugs, including what you think of when someone says woman bodybuilder, like I guarantee you you’re for that photo that you’re that you’re thinking of that you saw on the Internet one day or saw on TV one day on drugs and that it’s actually attainable naturally. I promise.

[Sawyer]

Yeah, it’s good to be to be mindful of who we compare ourselves to, because, yeah, definitely I think the most disordered and unhealthy habits come from when we are are just thinking I’m not getting those kind of results, I need to push harder and that can lead you to some dark, dark places. So, yeah, it’s hard to convey to a broad audience, like what to do exactly, because obviously everybody’s in a different body, has different habits and goals. But what we’re trying to tell you is don’t do anything extreme.

Learn what your your actual maintenance calories are. Stick pretty close to that if you’re when in doubt. Right.

And and start doing these these basic things like calorie tracking and weightlifting consistently, but not excessively, not not tracking every little, you know, spinach leaf that goes into the bowl and not training seven days a week, six days a week, but doing some reasonable amounts of these things and you’ll start to see improvements in these metrics that that really matter. And eventually, if you want to take it to a hobby slash influencer zone, you can. But but you’ll know what you’re doing at that point.

First, you won’t be jumping into something you don’t fully understand.

[Alice]

Gain the skills.

[Sawyer]

Yes.

[Alice]

It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s not.

[Sawyer]

Amen. OK, I think I talked about everything I wanted to talk about. Hopefully this is helpful to people, because I feel like I just bounce around so much in how I explain things.

But yeah, let us know what you guys thought of this episode and what you’d like to hear from us, especially me and Alice, because we have a lot of synergies. We have a lot of similar experiences, a lot of different experiences, too. But we always want to hear what you guys are interested in.

So send us your feedback. All right. Do you have anything else you want to want to chat about, Alice?

You feel like we covered everything?

[Alice]

I think we’re safe to close.

[Sawyer]

OK, well, thank you guys for listening to Muscles by Brussels Radio. We really appreciate your guys’ feedback. Like I said, please like and subscribe.

Please share this with a friend that you think this is relevant to. And yeah, we’ll see you on the next one, guys. I’m Coach Sawyer.

[Alice]

I’m Alice.

[Sawyer]

We’ll see you guys later. Bye.