Ep 264 – Diet Smarter, Not Harder

In this episode of Muscles by Brussels Radio, Ben and Dani discuss nonlinear dieting and how adjusting calorie intake throughout the week can make fat loss more sustainable. They break down strategies like high/low days, refeeds, diet breaks, and flexible calorie targets while explaining why adherence is often the biggest factor in long-term success.

They also talk about training updates, managing injuries, maintaining performance while dieting, and why slower fat loss can help preserve muscle and improve the overall dieting experience. The conversation covers how to handle vacations, social events, and real-life situations without feeling like you have to choose between your goals and enjoying life.

Finally, Ben and Dani discuss who can benefit from nonlinear dieting, the importance of developing flexibility with food, and why learning how to maintain your results is just as important as reaching your goal.

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TRANSCRIPT

Ben (00:00)
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Ben.

Dani Taylor (00:05)
And I’m Dani.

Ben (00:06)
Welcome back to the show and thank you for listening to another episode. today we’re going to be talking about nonlinear dieting. when is it an appropriate tool to use? how can you kind of set up your calorie deficit for fat loss in order to make it more sustainable or get better results? But before we get into that, we’ll do a little catch up as always. So Dani, I know you did like a little mud run over the weekend with with Daisy and Desmond, and that looked like a time and a half. So how was that? And what else is new?

Dani Taylor (00:33)
that that was really fun. I had done a mud run last year with some friends and clients that live in Colorado. And the whole time I was doing it, I was just like, Daisy would love this so much. cause it’s the mud girl run. And then I looked at the ages and I was like, they can do it. And then I was like, but Desmond.

Like, you can do this, buddy, if you want to, but you’re you might be the only boy there. I was like, but there is mud. And he was like, Yes. So he did not care at all. He wore the mud girl headbit. He did not care. He was just so happy to be in the mud. But yeah, it was not much of a race. They they ran about point one miles and then they were like, let’s walk.

Ben (01:02)
Awesome.

Dani Taylor (01:09)
I was like, okay, guys. but otherwise, yeah, things have been going pretty well. Summer feels like it’s in full swing, which I don’t think I was totally ready for. Training’s been going really well. I’m working

Very hard on trying to get my first muscle up and it’s incredibly frustrating. But I’m like, d people are like, it takes you years. I’m like, no, I’m going to get it by the end of this summer. I better get it by the end of this summer. So just gonna keep working on that. and working out in like a hundred degrees, like really hard, is very new to me. And I’m learning how much that changes the way the workout, not just the way it feels, like duh, obviously it feels hot, but like it feels so much harder and

Ben (01:29)
Ha ha ha.

Dani Taylor (01:48)
like almost dizzy and almost sick and just trying to like acclimate to that, not loving that.

Ben (01:54)
Well here’s the thing. It’s like if you’re coming from a body build building background, what we’re doing in the gym is we got the nice AC, we got our forty five second set, we’ve got three or four minutes of rest, we can hang out. It’s like you can, you know, you’ve you’ve got it pretty well made. But I’m imagining in these cross crossfit gyms, it’s like open air, there’s no AC, you know, there’s not really much rest or downtime. So it’s a whole other other beast, I could imagine.

Dani Taylor (02:19)
Yeah, it’s just it’s very i it it’s just so different. That’s all I can say. It’s just so incredibly different and it’s I’m absolutely getting fitter. There’s no question about that. Like my fitness is going up faster than it’s ever gone up before. and I think because I have a good hypertrophy base of years and years, like I’m not

unhappy with things that are happening physically, like aesthetically in my body. But that’s hard to explain to people who are like, you do CrossFit? I want to do CrossFit. Like it’s the first thing I do. And I’m like, because they think it’s gonna change their body. And I mean it probably will a little bit, but not the way they’re thinking. And that’s hard to explain then. Like, well then why are you doing it? And it’s like, ’cause I don’t really care what my body looks like anymore. So yeah, how’s training been going for you?

Ben (03:00)
training’s been going well. kind of similar to you. It’s been different adapting to the heat. But like I said, I’m training at a air conditioned gym, so it’s not too bad. Is it just me or is this like the hottest start of June that I can remember in the past couple years? Cause it’s like we had this heat wave where it was like above ninety pretty much every single day. And I feel like it usually doesn’t get that way till like July, August. you know, you get the occasional like, you know, jump temperature jumps up ten, twenty degrees, and now it’s kind of set like

I was just thinking about yesterday, it was like eighty and I’m like, eighty feels so different than ninety, like it’s not even close. Like my car AC’s been broken and I’m I’m actually taking it tomorrow to get fixed. you know, thankfully it’s it’s a little cooler now. But during that time period I’m just like, Okay, you gotta embrace the heat. You’re gonna be hot, you’re gonna be sweaty, like it’s okay, you know, ’cause usually I just rely on having AC for for comforts. but yeah, it’s just been hotter than I remember June being usually.

Dani Taylor (03:42)
Mm-hmm.

I just I think back I mean I I sound like an old lady talking about this, but I think back to when I was a kid and like spring was like decently long and fall was decently long, and now it’s like summer and winter are never ending. Spring and fall are like two weeks, and I can’t I really, really am not a fan. That’s all. But my AC is also broken in my car, so I’ve been doing the same thing. Yeah.

Ben (04:12)
Yep, yep. So, anyways,

training’s been going pretty well, no complaints there. you know, there’s always like I think I’ve come to accept at this point, there’s very few periods where it’s like my body is completely healthy and there’s no injuries or anything going on whatsoever. And I think people don’t like to hear that because there’s a lot of like fear around injury, but I also think to a certain extent, just normalizing that it’s a part of life, like your body’s gonna hurt sometimes. and like then you go through the process of

Dani Taylor (04:26)
yeah.

Ben (04:38)
It’s slowly improving. And sometimes, you know, you have these injuries that last a long time. And that can obviously be debilitating in its own way. But you kind of like see, okay, I was able to overcome this little injury. Maybe it set me back this time. It was a couple of days. Maybe another time it was weeks. Maybe another time it was months. But you kind of like overcome it. And I feel like that’s built my confidence up a lot. Like when I get injured, I don’t get as down or as discouraged. And I try not to, you know, it doesn’t affect me as much mentally, whereas before it would like really mess me up for a while and I’d just be like,

you know, either blaming myself or perseverating on it or whatever it was. but now it’s like I have a few injuries that are recurring and I kind of just like know what is going to make them better or worse. And I try to manage it the best that I can. But, you know, in in my endeavor, which is bodybuilding, you kind of just are always pushing up against that that limit constantly and you have to occasionally just pull back. So it’s like this pushing and pulling and pushing and pulling that I I feel like I talk to clients about that all the time, especially

those kinds that are the pushers, like you and Alice did that podcast talking about. Are you a pusher or a slacker? And I have a few definitely of those pushers. And it’s like, you know, and I’m one of those people too, where you, you know, you you push up a little bit too far and then you gotta, you gotta pull things back. so for me, that’s been more like my left shoulder. And again, it’s like thankfully for stuff like pressing, it doesn’t really bother me at all. A lot of isolations, it doesn’t bother me. but it’s a lot of this like

overhead kind of like shoulder elevation that gets it. So I just have to be a little bit more careful when I’m pulling, not to go into like that full kind of dead hang. cause that will irritate it. So it’s probably something going on in the rotator cuff if I had to if I had to guess. So it’s you know, and then I can kind of over weeks slowly gradually get back to those ranges of motion and then eventually I can do them kind of you know pain free pretty much. But then eventually it’ll probably flare up again and like, you know, at that point that’s you know that’s okay. same thing for like my knees.

Like I’ve kind of figured out, okay, these are the stances and these are the exercises that I need to take. and you know, I it’s funny because I used to be, you know, Sawyer used to joke around that I had like bulletproof knees and I could do whatever. And my squat I mean, my squat is still like people always swipe up on my Instagram stories and are like, You have the perfect squat form! And I’m like, Well, you know, I that can be true. And at the same time, I can still deal with things like, you know, knee pain sometimes.

Dani Taylor (06:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, it’s insane. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ben (06:46)
And I wouldn’t say it’s because of those, you know, deeper ranges of motion or anything like that. I think it’s just a combination again of like usually it’s just too much load or too much stress too quickly. and your tissue tissues haven’t adapted. So the my leg trainings looked a little bit different than it has in the past, but I’ve still been able to make good progress with it. So yeah, that’s that’s mostly been what my training has has been recently. And I’ve been doing a lot more like consistent cardio. I mean

quote unquote cardio. I just you know in the past it was like I would just do steps throughout the day. but with my time being less available now it’s like steps just take longer. So it’s like what’s the, you know, what’s the most efficient way to to get the job done? and that’s, you know, tacking on thirty, sixty minutes of cardio before after my training sessions.

Dani Taylor (07:29)
Yeah, and I mean there really is something to be said about your heart health as well. Like walking in steps are wonderful and I think it’s my absolute favorite form of exercise period on earth, but

It does not give you the same like cardio benefits that actual cardio and heart rate elevation gives you. So I know it sucks. I know no one wants to hear that, but it is important. The other thing I was thinking of while you were talking is just how often I have to have that conversation with clients too. I also have like what I call walking injuries. Like they just they I they’re constantly moving around my body. but I truly believe, 100% believe, that if I didn’t train at all, I would also have injuries that move around my body all the time. Like you can have you

Can get injured doing something that you love that makes you stronger and healthier, or you can get injured doing nothing at all and getting weaker every day. And it’s just part of the human experience, is like we’re all gonna deal with some injuries. And the nice thing about most training modalities is you can work around things. you know, there’s exceptions, but like if you’re a runner, you gotta run. If you’re a power lifter, you have to SBD, but

For bodybuilding and even for CrossFit, like there’s modifications for everything, range of motion, different stances, different grips, etc. And yeah, when it is an injury that pops up over and over again, you kind of learn what it happens. I have this thing in my low back and it happens and I don’t know why it happens. It happens randomly and it pisses me off every time, but I literally know like I can make this better in 36 hours if I just do these exercises and not do anything stupid. It’ll get better in 36 hours, but.

I don’t know. It is a really tough conversation to have with clients. Like, is am I just gonna get hurt forever? And it’s like, well, maybe. Like but you’re in good company because that’s everybody. So yeah.

Ben (09:05)
Yeah, I think there’s just I think it’s just important to try to remove the the fear around it because also, you know, fear of injury leads to you moving in ways that you wouldn’t typically move, you know, guarding things and just also that general fear, anxiety, that timidness. not only will it sometimes prevent you from pushing yourself hard in the gym, but you know, I would say that being like too timid or or anxious or you know, cautious could actually in some cases maybe

I again I don’t wanna I feel like I’m piling onto people who are anxious now they have another thing to be anxious about. But it’s like I feel like almost that can increase your risk of injury ver like being a little bit too like you know, I I don’t know, I don’t wanna push myself. Cause like you said, you might just get injured another way anyways, by not having that like not having strength and resilience in those tissues because you don’t push yourself to cause, you know, those structures to ad adapt and and then grow.

Dani Taylor (09:33)
Yeah.

Mm.

Ben (09:54)
That’s a you know, a risk of through non action too. So it’s like, you know, you kinda just pick pick your poison, so to speak.

Dani Taylor (09:59)
Yeah.

So let’s talk about some nonlinear dieting. Let’s why don’t we explain what that is? Because I don’t I don’t even think people necessarily are gonna know what that means if you want to explain it.

Ben (10:00)
So that’s pretty much it. Let’s do it. Yep.

Right. So when we think about losing body fat, I think most people are familiar with the idea that you need to be in a calorie deficit to to lose weight or to lose body fat. now just as we’ve talked about in in other episodes, just because that’s what the science behind fat loss is doesn’t make it easy. so we’re gonna talk about practical ways that you can implement a calorie deficit that make it feel not as noticeable because the problem that people have

At the end of the day is adhering to that. and that is whether we’re talking about after the diet is over and you’ve gotten to your you know, quote unquote ideal body weight, or while you’re actually going through the diet itself. And these strategies, at the end of the day, even though the calorie deficit is the same on paper, or I should maybe even say at the end of the week or the end of the month or the end of the year, and that’s kind of what we’re gonna be getting into: is like, hey, you don’t have to have we’ve all heard kind of this, or most of us have heard this rule of like, okay.

You know, 3,500 calories roughly is a pound of body fat. And so if you split that up across seven days, if you want to lose a pound of body fat a week, that’s a 500-calorie deficit. And you can do that through physical activity, you can do that through nutrition, which is probably the more reliable and accurate way to actually be doing that. but you know, theoretically, you know, you could, you know, if you created a 3,500 calorie deficit on one day, you know, through physical activity or whatever, and you didn’t eat, theoretically, you know, please don’t do that.

but you know, that could be that could be a a pound of a pound of body fat. So we’re gonna talk about some strategies that we like to use that we’ve used ourselves and with clients that can make sticking to that deficit easier. And I think probably the one that we program the most would be maybe like a a high low day setup or like a weekday weekend setup. So do you wanna talk a little bit about that, Dani?

Dani Taylor (11:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s like my go to. I mean, I literally start there for most people.

That want to be losing body fat, especially if I don’t know them super well. I will always pretty much start with you have your five deficit days Monday through Friday, and then your two weekend days are gonna be at maintenance. And that’s still, you know, depending on how you set that deficit up Monday through Friday, you could still get that pound a week of loss with the higher days on Saturday and Sunday. And there’s a few reasons that I do this out of the gate, and the number one reason and the

number

one reason for all of these for me is adherence and tolerance, I guess, to the deficit in general. I find that it is so much easier for people to kind of stick to the plan Monday through Friday when they know Saturday and Sunday is coming and they have a little bit more wiggle room. And

You know, what it’s not is Saturday and Sunday is a free-for-all, and you don’t have to track anything and you can just eat whatever you want, like I wish. Now, I think some people can do that if their goal is just maintenance, actually. I think that can work for some people. But when when fat loss is the goal, no, you still have to track, you’re not eating in a surplus necessarily. I guess you could a little bit on the weekends, but it’s just gonna level it out so that when the weekend comes, you’re able to have those social events with your family and friends and participate.

And not feel like all bummed out that you can’t be part of the festivities or whatever.

You can still enjoy things, you can still have some of the treats that you like. And then, you know, you feel kind of like not just physically satisfied, but like emotionally satisfied at the end of the weekend. So then come Monday, when it’s back to the deficit, you feel a little bit more like ready to hit it again. Whereas when you have like weeks of just low days in a row, that motivation really starts to get low. You can’t really see the light at the end of the tunnel. So it’s a lot harder to convince yourself to like stick to it really well. And at the end of the day, you’re still in a deficit. So you

You might not see the drop every Monday. And usually Monday the scale is going to be up a little bit, but by Saturday morning you should be seeing like a new low, hopefully, week after week. And I think that’s a great place to start for a lot of people.

Ben (13:50)
and that’s why it’s so important, I think, to try to get people to maybe take their body weight more than once a week, because if you happen to, you know, randomly weigh in on one of these, you know, higher days and then you’re missing kind of the the lows in between, you might think you’re not making progress at all, but you actually are. and like you said, you touched on a couple things there. One is like the psychology of I only have to diet for four more days versus I have to diet for 40 more days. Like that is such a huge mental thing for people.

like the idea of being in a calorie deficit and having to be so rigid and and structured. not to say that you aren’t, you know, structured on the weekend still. You still have to have a plan. I think probably where people might go wrong with this strategy is if it’s actually what they’re doing on paper, you know, what we’re saying, but it actually just ends up being maintenance because what they’re doing is they’re setting themselves up by having a really extreme deficit during the week more than they can handle. And then they’re either trying to stick to that on the weekend or maybe have a little bit more.

But the deficit is so extreme during the week that they’re then basically erasing the entire calorie deficit over that Saturday or Sunday, or maybe even in some cases, eating more than that deficit. And so they’re actually backsliding. That’s like the worst case scenario, in my opinion, because they feel like they’re putting in so much work and effort, you know, again Monday through Friday, but then they’re erasing their results basically completely on the weekends. but if you can, you know, if you can find a way to still have a deficit during the week that is if you know that you can stick to.

and I think that’s usually like people are pretty in their routines Monday through Friday. Like we all have our kind of set routines generally that can maybe maybe it’s a little bit different if you’re like a shift worker or something like that, or your schedule’s a little bit more variable. But you know, Monday through Friday, we’re all, you know, kind of locked in. So you can probably do s implement some like meal prep strategies. It’s probably just easier to kind of like go about your day, you know. Honestly, being busy is like one of the best like dieting hacks that you can do because you’re just not you can’t think about food because you’re just busy doing stuff.

and that can backfire the other way if you end up like not eating all day. Like you don’t you want to avoid the extremes with that. but I I always try to tell people like don’t be afraid of being busy or like you know, i if anything, it’s gonna, you know, take your mind off of things. And then come the weekends, you have that time, that social time to unwind, relax, recover. And you know, we can even talk about potential. You could people have theorized like physiological benefits from doing things this way, especially if you’re pay more attention to your food choices, like for example.

Monday through Friday, you might be kind of going to the gym, training hard, doing your cardio, eating a little bit lower. And so maybe by the end of the week you’re a little bit, we would say in bodybuilding, flatter. Your your, you know, your muscles are not as filled out. You don’t have as much glycogen. And then on the weekends, and glycogen is our our body’s stored, you know, way to store carbohydrates kind of in in our muscles. and so by the weekend, maybe you try to focus on eating more carbohydrates specifically, you know, if that’s something that’s feasible. Obviously if you’re going out to eat,

the fats are gonna be little bit higher. That’s fine. I don’t want people to like, you know, super worried about being super anal with this. But hey, you know, you eat a little bit more on the weekends. You probably feel a little bit better. You have more energy for the next week and then you can push it.

Dani Taylor (16:44)
Yeah. And I the phys believe it or not, when I started doing this, when I started like defaulting to refeed days basically on the we weekends, I was doing it because of the expected physiological benefits. You know, the well you’re gonna help boost your fat burning hormones over the weekend when you eat at a higher, this, that, there’s less adaptations and

That still might be true. I think that the research is kind of mixed on this. And I wouldn’t be surprised at all if in the coming years we find out this is actually true. Like there are a couple studies, not super well done studies, but studies on like 30 men, where they did like one group did just straight deficit across the board and the other one, I think they did two weeks deficit, two weeks maintenance. Two weeks deficit, two weeks maintenance for eight weeks. And they were like, Well, they both lost about the same amount of weight. I didn’t think so.

The straight deficit group lost 1.4 kilograms, which is what, like four pounds or so. And the non-linear group lost 1.8. I mean, I think that’s a kind of significant difference between the two of them, but they also noticed they had better body composition as well. And like, was it physiological or was it just because they adhered better? I don’t know.

Ben (17:45)
Mm.

Dani Taylor (17:52)
But then I found like, you know, when more stuff came out, like, this might not actually be true. I was like, but but it is working so well for people because they’re able to adhere to it better that I’m just going to keep doing it.

And that’s that’s kind of where I started from and and where I ended up. Like, well, even if the science that I started doing this for isn’t accurate, if it’s making people adhere better and feel better and have like less perceived stress of dieting, then it’s a huge win and I’m gonna keep doing it. But I don’t do that with everybody. I don’t do five low and two high with everybody. That’s just kind of like a a blanket starting place. Some people we might, if I know them better and I know that they can kind of handle it.

Ben (18:24)
Right, right.

Dani Taylor (18:28)
We might do, you know, the f at the beginning of a diet, we might do like three weeks of just straight no refeed dieting and then start to incorporate them or put those higher days around h high tr higher training days or days that they just literally need more energy to do stuff. So it might not be on the weekends. Like there’s just the thing about non-linear dieting that I love so much is this is there’s like so many ways to do it that there is no one size fits everybody.

And you can really tailor it to that client and their lifestyle in a way that I feel like just a straight deficit doesn’t account for.

Ben (19:02)
Yeah, it’s like, you know, Sawyer always talks about understanding the principles. And then once you understand the principles, you can apply those. So if you understand the principle of being in a calorie deficit and that it doesn’t have to be, you know, the exact same every single day, you can split it up throughout the week however you want. then it just gives you more options and more tools. And I definitely have clients who I have clients where maybe we start out as five two and then I’m thinking about contest prep specifically. They might end up at six one, then deeper in prep, and then we might I might be like, hey, we’re gonna push for like ten days.

I’ll throw you a refeed if I feel like we need one, but this is the plan and this is what we’re gonna do. and then you know, as you actually actually get closer to contests, usually I’m having more high days. So it might be like now we’re back to five two, now we’re four three, now we actually have four high days and three low days. And so yeah, they’re they’re all just tools that you can use. and something that you mentioned, you were talking about that that study. and that had kind of stood out in my mind.

Dani Taylor (19:40)
Yes.

Yeah.

Ben (19:55)
the the body composition. Like I was remembering, I thought that the group that was two on, two off, like maybe it was theorized maybe they retained, you know, more muscle mass or something like that. I think that’s the Matador study, if I’m if remembering correctly, for people or or there’s some there’s there’s I know Jackson Peos did a study. I know Bill Campbell, I think, did a study on this as well. And I know the the kind of the the one that people talk about is this study called the Matador study, where they it was what you were talking about where it’s like two on, two off where the other one was more linear.

Dani Taylor (20:08)
It was it was in twenty twenty, but I don’t remember who it was.

Ben (20:24)
but what I was gonna say is I have been, you know, I I’ve been kind of in a fat loss phase, a kind of slow, gradual fat loss phase over the past, if I’m looking at my calendar, I don’t know, nine months or something like that. really, you know, just just not nothing too intentional with like this is a rate of weight loss that I’m chasing. but I can say that I’ve had I’ve used this, maybe not as structured, but I’ve noticed that by taking a slower approach and like, okay, I’ll push for

you know, three, four, five days. And then I’ll have a day where I’m feeling really kind of tired and down. I can tell my training is a little bit worse. And then I’ll say, you what, the next two or three days, I’m gonna eat a little bit more, I’m gonna move a little bit less. And then inevitably like my training bounces back, my energy bounces back. And I’m like, I can definitely see how there would be a benefit to this. And I haven’t lost any strength. My performance is still the best that it’s been. So it’s like I think that it’s more than just the fat loss itself. It’s also, you know, if this allows you to get better output and better performance out of yourself.

that is what gonna allow you to retain muscle, which then means that you’re not, you know, decreasing your metabolism as much and when you’re dieting and you can continue to keep your food a little higher, like all these things end up mattering.

Dani Taylor (21:27)
Yeah, and you know, you said something really important, I think, at the beginning of that where you’re like, I’ve been in this really slow thing for like nine months. How much do you think you’ve lost in that time-ish?

Ben (21:36)
about fifteen pounds.

Dani Taylor (21:37)
Okay. All right. So that’s like about a pound and a half a month or so. But for like a pretty you know, you’re not a small guy. You’re a pretty decent sized guy. So if you translated that to a woman, you might say like a pound a month.

That’s a quarter pound a week, right? Most people are gonna scoff at that and be like, no, I will not be going that slow. But I think that when it comes to fat loss or any body composition changes, unless you’re like at one of the extremes, the slower you can take it, the better your results are gonna be, the less disruption you’re gonna have to your life. because let’s say a quarter pound.

a week is like a hundred calorie deficit per day, roughly. You know what I mean? like that most people are not really gonna feel that. Now you could argue that your body will just adapt to that in a certain amount of time and then that won’t be a deficit, then that’ll just be maintenance. I think that would be true no matter what if you’re actually losing weight, but

I think just just having patience going into these sort of things is so important for like long-term success. And that’s a really like it’s a hard thing to tell a client, especially a client that is paying you like for your for time, you know, to be like, no, no, go slower. Cause it just sounds like you’re trying to get somebody to stay with you longer. But it’s like, no, I just want you to be able to keep this for longer, you know? I don’t know.

Ben (22:51)
Well, and you know,

I can say like I was about this time last year, I was probably the same weight that I am right now. and I legitimately think I probably have this is for a variety of reasons, but I probably have about ten pounds more muscle than I had last year. And that’s I mean, that’s a lot for an advanced trainee. A lot of that is because during my contest prep the previous year, I had lost it, you know, l definitely lost a little bit of amount of muscle and then I had an injury that prevented me from kind of like really like training the way that I wanted to. So part of that was regaining.

lost muscle, but also, you know, my strength is the the highest it’s been. So part of that I think is just retaining that muscle really well. And that’s something that I didn’t do as well. Last time I prepped was I just took a really fast rate of loss. I would say throughout, but definitely at the beginning. And instead of my strength kind of gradually instead of my strength like I think usually when you start a prep, your probably strength will keep going up for a little, maybe the first half and then like three quarters of the way it probably starts to hold and then maybe it starts to dip a little bit at the end.

something like that. But this time it’s been like just kind of slow and steadily increasing as I’ve continued to to diet down. And of course, there’s gonna be a point where that’s no longer the case. You can’t just keep getting stronger as you get leaner, obviously not. but I think that just understanding that you don’t have to pursue this like blitzing rate of loss, and you can also then if you do find that you’re losing fat.

kind of faster than either psychologically you can handle or, you know, physiologically you’re having some pushback. you can take some time away. So maybe that would be a good time to talk about actually full on taking like a diet break or a maintenance phase after you’ve pursued, you know, let’s say you’ve lost another number that I hear people say a lot is like, okay, once you’ve lost about 10% of your body weight, that’s a good time to take like a maintenance phase or a diet break. So you know, let’s say that you weigh 150 pounds, you decide you’re gonna go on a fat loss phase, you get down to like 135. Okay, maybe that’s a

a good time to, you know, go and and increase your calories back to roughly maintenance and whether you jump straight to that estimated maintenance or kind of slowly increase back to it. I think that’s another conversation as well. that maybe we can talk about. But when do you typically like to use these sort of things? Like actually like a full on like, okay, you know, we were in a deficit. Let’s take a break. Let’s just go to maintenance. Let’s chill out. Whether that’s like for a you know a couple of days or like a week, I have some kind of applications that I’m thinking in my head, but I’d like to know kind of when to use them.

Dani Taylor (25:07)
Yeah, so it’s funny, I I

I as when you said ten percent, I was like, yeah, I guess I have heard that before, but I haven’t really thought about ten percent. But then I was thinking about my last contest prep, and that’s exact I was 150, and then when I got to 135-ish, we took a diet break. and I don’t think it was just because of the number on the scale, because for me when I’m working with a client, actually the number on the scale has very little to do with when I decide to take a diet break with somebody.

And maybe I could do them a little bit earlier with people, but usually what I’m looking for is that that

decrease in motivation, that decrease in adherence, that decrease in energy or strength or mood, or it doesn’t have to be all of them, but just some of them. I’m like, okay, we’re we’re if the refeeds aren’t cutting it and we’re still kind of seeing these things increase week over week, like it’s probably time to take a diet break. But when I do a diet break with somebody, it’s usually somewhere around like 10 days.

Unless and we can talk about that application, unless someone has a lot of weight to lose, then it’s a bit different. but it’s usually about ten days. So because it’s just ten days, we get into maintenance, we get out of maintenance. There’s no like slow climb. We just get there, stay there, get back because I know that they still are working towards these goals.

And you know, s in certain cases, if I think somebody like really needs it mentally, maybe I’ll make it a little bit longer than that, or do them more frequently than I might do them with somebody else. but the only time that I’ve used like longer diet breaks is if somebody has, I don’t know, a hundred or more pounds to lose.

then maybe like every 20 pounds or so will take a couple of months and just try to maintain that. And it’s not just for adherence at that point anymore. It’s also because mentally they’ve been in deficit mode for a while at that point. And

As somebody who has lost a hundred pounds, coming out of that mindset is so hard because you’re just like, what now? Like what do I how do I live? I don’t know how to live without actively trying to see the scale go down.

So when we go into these maintenance phases, it’s almost like okay, do you like where you’re at right now? Here’s how you would have to live to maintain this so far. Like practice just living here to see what it takes to be here. Because that’s the other thing people don’t think about with a lot of fat losses. Like they have a goal, they have a goal physique, it’s like shredded, it looks amazing, but they don’t actually know what it takes to like live there. so when you do this like step by step on the way down, some people might realize that the initial step they have.

in mind maybe a step above that is actually what they can maintain and be happy with and live a life that they’re satisfied with and when you take those breaks you get a chance to do that along the way.

Ben (27:40)
I think the time that I use them the most is probably if somebody is like going on vacation or something like that, that might be a good time to to implement one. Because I think trying to stick to a deficit on vacation, to be honest, I would probably do that one percent of the time. Like it’s gotta be somebody who they’re in prep or something like that. They’re like, you know, maybe close to stepping which I’m like at that point, I’m like, I I hope like you basically got forced into this vacation because I don’t know.

Dani Taylor (27:47)
Hm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ben (28:07)
why you would be doing that to yourself at that point. But I think it’s just it’s so hard because you’re probably going out to eat more. Like yes, you’re gonna be probably walking and doing more steps and physical activity. So you can make it work. But if especially if it’s like you don’t have access to a kitchen, you’re not cooking your food, you’re in a place that you don’t know the foods and I like you are just i introducing a ton of stress that you probably don’t need. So for those folks, what I’ll actually try to do is if we know, okay, you know

We have plenty of time to think about this vacation that’s coming up in let’s say four months from now. I would probably get them to the point where we’re finished dieting a maybe like ideally like four weeks before they leave, but you know, worst case, I would say maybe like two weeks, and then try to like increase their calories a little bit closer to maintenance. So they’re not like, hey, we’re finishing the diet the day before you go for vacation. That is really hard because then you’re eating like all these palatable foods you haven’t had in a while. Your hunger’s still probably really high.

so that would be an application where I would probably try to increase their calories a little bit as opposed to just jumping straight to straight to maintenance. although that is something that you could probably do. Like in that scenario, if I was closer, let’s let’s say they were a week out from going on vacation, I would probably just jump them straight to maintenance for that last week before before they leave.

if somebody’s coming out of a diet and transitioning into just maintenance or a build, then that would be maybe a case where I’d consider reversing them as opposed to jumping straight to maintenance. But that’s not exactly what we’re talking about because we’re still thinking, okay, like in the context of after this diet break, we’re going to it’s, you know, it’s a break from dieting and we’re going to continue dieting afterwards. And then probably like a prep scenario. if somebody’s been pushing really hard for I don’t know, anywhere between eight and to twelve weeks or something like that, probably maybe six weeks.

Dani Taylor (29:33)
Yeah.

Ben (29:45)
if they’re really pushing it. And that’s really just to give them, yeah. that’s that actually I think is a case where it’s probably more physiological. is those those athletes who are getting really lean. Because the leaner you are, the more sensitive you are to the I would say, the effects of a deficit. And also it’s like, I’m sure you felt this, but if you’re getting close to preparing for a competition, if your routine is off a little bit, it’s like I ate breakfast like one hour later, you feel that. You’re like.

cranky or irritable, you can’t go anywhere and be like, I’m not gonna have food for like five hours. Like you like you you will die. Not actually, but that that you just don’t have as much I guess metabolic flexibility might be the term for it. Like, you know, usually when we’re just walking around, hey, we’ve got some body fat, we can kind of utilize for energy a little bit more. but you don’t have that when you’re, you know, basically close to as fat free as you can be. so that would be another case that I would use that.

Dani Taylor (30:17)
Yeah.

Ben (30:37)
I’m trying to think about other scenarios in which I use them. I think most of the time it tends to be more like life events where I think it makes sense as opposed to like structuring it in.

Dani Taylor (30:43)
Yeah.

And I don’t even think I’ve ever really thought about those specifically as diet breaks. I know I have sometimes, but

You are totally right. If somebody is in a fat loss ph a lifestyle fat loss phase, let’s say, and they’re going on vacation, we talk about healthy habits and some smart choices they can make while they’re away, like walking more, like hey, you don’t always have to get the fries with the burger. You can get the broccoli with the burger and still enjoy the b burger, obviously a veggie burger, but you know, you can have some treats, but you can share them with people so you don’t have like a whole one to your like we talk about those sorts of things because I think even if

If their intention was to stay in their deficit, like it’s just not practical in most situations. You’re not gonna whip out a scale on a vacation and weigh out your food. And even if you did, you wouldn’t really know what was in it anyway. You’d be taking a guess. and I think the stress of that, the alienation of that is not worth it in most situations. So

Yeah, some people I’m usually like, have fun, but don’t go nuts. That’s usually like my instructions, like enjoy yourself, but do not eat yourself sick. because I think that’s like one of the worst things that you you could do is like stuff yourself.

Ben (31:50)
Yeah.

Yeah. Especially because your hunger hormones are at that point not going to be appropriate. Like when you’ve been maintaining the same body weight for a while, you can say, Okay, like that’s probably I can, you know, rely on those cues to kind of help me stay in a a zone that is as reasonable. But if you have been dieting or you are dieting, if you are probably if you’re f walking away from a meal full, if that meal didn’t consist of super like volumous foods like

lettuce and cabbage and berries and like these things that are filling up your stomach. If you’re walking away from a meal full, and you know it was food that was more calorie dense, like you you probably ended up, you know, in a in a surplus at the end of the day. And that’s that sucks. because you know, nobody likes being being hungry all the time. But you might just have to accept specifically if it’s in this context and we’re talking about vacation, you know, just I might just want to be mindful and understand that

Dani Taylor (32:30)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (32:42)
It might be a case of walking away from a meal satisfied. or maybe you want a little bit more, but you’re gonna leave it there. because ultimately, yes, like if you’re going somewhere where you know it’s a unique food experience, maybe you decide that trade-off is worth it for you. but if it’s just like a family vacation or whatever, it’s probably, you know, you’re gonna feel a lot better coming back and feeling like, hey, I made good choices, I made good decisions, regardless of.

You know, if the scale is up a couple of pounds, because I think it often is, even if you d you even if you make pretty good choices on vacation. And once you get back to your usual routine, I think tend that tends to kind of come out come out in the wash.

Dani Taylor (33:16)
Yeah, totally. I remember my last contest that I did was the Saturday before Thanksgiving. And I was like, yeah, I got I was like, I got this. It’s not gonna be a problem. It was a problem. I cleaned house on Thanksgiving. And I was hung like I was genuinely hungry for every bite that I took. But yeah, I don’t recommend that to anybody. definitely was too confident going into that.

Ben (33:22)
Dani.

Yeah.

No.

I

I also wanted to talk about like within a day setting up your day that might like bias calories more towards certain parts of your day depending on your schedule or personal preference. because I think that’s kind of like again, we’re we’re we’re zooming out at like the macro level, but now like even at the micro level, you can kind of manipulate things based on what’s going to allow you to adhere to your deficit. And again, it’s like if you take just to the extreme, it’s it’s not gonna set you up for success. Like

Dani Taylor (33:51)
Yeah.

Ben (34:08)
If you’re hoarding all your calories to the end of the day, that is very common, very common. I think some of that can be a useful strategy if you don’t take it too far. but you don’t want to take it so far that you are ravenous by the end of the day, and then what’s gonna happen? You know, you’re gonna probably be unable to stick to the target that you set for yourself because you’re so darn hungry and you don’t give your body a a chance to catch up and say, hey, hold on a minute, or you know, we’re actually full. like if you had taken

Dani Taylor (34:10)
Very common. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ben (34:33)
Let’s say you’re trying to, you know, your your intake is is 2,000 calories for easy math. let’s say you eat, you know, three to five hundred calories in the first three quarters of the day, and the end of the day, you’re starving. you might easily eat 2,000 calories in one sitting and then you’re over kind of your target.

so I think an easy way to think about it is, you know, however many meals you typically eat, divide your calories by that number and you don’t want to probably stray too far from that at any one time. you know, again, there’s certain exceptions, like maybe you’re just super busy in your mornings. You don’t really like care or need as much energy or food. Like maybe you’re just sitting at your desk and working and like, hey, I’m fine. Like this is the case for me. I wake up, I’m you know, I’m doing work or whatever.

I can easily just have like a coffee with some soy milk, maybe like a piece of fruit or something like that. Work, maybe have something that’s made primarily just protein. And then I’m having my first meal kind of late morning, and then I’m going, you that’s my pre-workout meal, and then I’m going to the gym. like there’s things like that. Like maybe you don’t need to have like a massive breakfast. But again, it depends. Maybe you’re doing something really energy intensive early in the day and you do need that first thing. So you know, it just kind of like looking at your schedule and your personal preferences and trying to figure out.

what is gonna, you know, help me at the end of the day to stick to this deficit that I have.

Dani Taylor (35:37)
Yeah, and I think you have to be really honest with yourself about that as well, because when I for most of my like bodybuilding era stuff, I actually ate very similarly to that, where I just was pushed my first meal off a little bit and I wasn’t hungry in the morning. And this is what a lot of people will say to me, Well, I’m just not hungry in the morning.

But they’re not hungry in the morning because they have trained themselves to not be hungry in the morning. And this can work in like the way you’re describing, the way I’ve used it in the past, it can totally work, but it can also backfire. Like you talked about before now you have eaten nothing by 3 p.m. and you have to cram all your food in at the end of the day. And they’re like, well, I’m just not hungry. And if it’s like if you just tried it, just tried breaking it up a little bit and kind of forcing yourself to eat in the morning when you’re not hungry for a week, you will be hungry.

In the mornings going forward. So if you’re somebody that’s like, I don’t know why I just keep blowing all my macros at the end of the day because I’m so on track all day, just try it. Because I think a lot of people have just convinced themselves they’re not hungry in the morning and then it shoots them in the foot later in the day.

Ben (36:43)
No,

I that’s that’s an excellent point because I think that we our bodies, I have noticed, just working with clients and myself, thrive on on routine and rhythm. like if you eat at this I’m not saying you need to do this, but if you eat at the same times pretty much every day, you will find you are getting hungry at those same times every single day. so if you yeah, if you’re kind of stuck in this pattern of especially if you need to like eat a little bit more, let’s say you’re somebody who

you’ve been trying to diet for years and you’re constantly kind of hungry. you know, maybe you struggle to eat enough food, but you don’t really have, you know, you can’t just keep driving your calories down forever and you need to find a way to to increase them. that might be a case of like Dani was saying, hey, start with having a little bit of a breakfast in the morning. Just hey, you know, just have whatever you can get a little bit of. And then you like, okay, you increase that a little bit more. You take a little bit more away.

from that evening meal. And I think you can kind of redistribute things. And then once that becomes your new routine, like you said, you will be hungry for those meals. And you can kind I just think we’re very like adjustable and adaptable. It’s like there’s research on on chronobiology. Some people are tend to be more of like the night owl archetype versus the, you know, the early bird. But you know, there’s still some flexibility within that too. So like hey, maybe you are somebody who you’re not as hungry in the mornings or you’re not as hungry in the evenings.

Dani Taylor (37:40)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (37:56)
you can probably still shift that a bit. And I think kind of shifting it based on your I think just looking at your routine from a practical perspective will kind of help you to plan for when it makes sense to have your meals, you know, what should be maybe your larger meals versus not. Another strategy that I’m thinking about is let’s say that you are somebody who you like to have dinner with a partner or your family or something like that. and that’s something you might want to leave some more calories for.

you know, maybe you meal prep slash track for those first couple of meals of the day and then you leave yourself a little bit of a buffer at the end of the day so that you can enjoy that meal. with that’s like a recommendation I often give people if they’re like, I’ve been tracking for years. I want to try to get away from it. what’s a strategy? I’m kind of like scared or worried about it. I’ll say this like, hey, leave yourself again, let’s say that you have two thousand calories to work with, leave yourself, you know, six, seven hundred calories at dinner, something like that. And then

Just kind of guesstimate and maybe err on the on the, you know, safer side, like overestimate w what you’re kind of eating, and then you’ll see over time, Hey, I did that. I was able to do that and nothing bad happened. Like, you know, I didn’t suddenly gain a bunch of body fat or something like that. and you kind of gain that gain that confidence over time. So I know that’s kind of getting a little bit away from what we’re talking about, but I think it yeah.

Dani Taylor (39:00)
Mm-hmm.

But I I do something similar and I don’t do it with

a lot of clients, but I call it a free meal. And basically what it is is it’s an untracked meal per week. So I have some clients that they do not like tracking. They want a meal plan. Like that is what they want. They want to have a meal plan. They want me to tell them exactly what to eat. And of course, we have the conversations. Hey, there’s nothing magic about this meal plan. It just works for our goals right now. But then to try to like, I can write refeed days in there.

and write meal plans for refeed days, but often like as much as they don’t want to track macros and they want the meal plan, they also want to be let off leash a little bit, from time to time. So in those cases, we practice a free meal and it’s very similar to what you’re talking about, maybe it’s once a week, where

You know, they eat their meal plan, breakfast, lunch, and snack, and then we practice at dinner kind of having I’m saying this in quotes for those just listening, having whatever they want for dinner, not tracking it, but really paying attention to their body’s cues and making sure that they are eating until they are just satisfied and not super full or stuffed. And if the rest of their stuff is set up appropriately and the deficit they’re in isn’t too crazy.

Yeah.

It’s a good practice just for people to be off a plan and like it’s there, it’s really anxiety inducing at first for a lot of people to just be like, I don’t know what’s in this, I don’t know how much of anything I just had. So we work on like exposure to that kind of anxiety. And then over time, like you said, they kind of learn to trust themselves a little bit more in those situations. And then, you know, so maybe they can maybe there’s two free meals in the week at this point. So that is nonlinear dieting in its own right.

It’s just hard to quantify because we don’t know exactly what it is they’re having in that time and that’s kind of part of the point. But it can work for some people.

Ben (40:49)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that being able to have that skill of not feeling anxious around social events every time you have to go out because you’re worried about being able to track or being able to, you know, stay on stay on point with your goals. that’s something that I think is really important long term. And maybe you don’t feel like you’re ready to do that right now and that’s okay. and you don’t need to pressure yourself into doing that. But I think it’s something that, you know.

It’s going to probably be a little uncomfy at first and you’re gonna have some anxieties or fears around it. But the only way I feel to kind of work through those is to get exposure to those experiences and see that nothing, you know, horrendous is going to to happen and have that repeated exposure over time. Again, if you’re not ready for that right now, that’s okay. but I think that would ideally be a a good point to get to. Something that just came up while you were speaking for me that I was thinking about is

Also, when I’m prescribing people calorie targets these days, something that I tend to do is give them ranges. and I think that this is another way of like, okay, it’s not linear in the sense of like this is the calorie intake I’m eating every single day. so instead of saying, hey, you know, shoot for 1500 calories, I might say 14 to 1600. And on the days where they’re feeling really hungry, they can go up to sixteen hundred. And on the days where, hey, you know what? I can I feel like I can push myself a little bit more and I can stick to this fourteen hundred today, you do that.

And some days they’re gonna be a little bit in the middle. and again, it might not even be so, you know, it might be like some days they’re a little bit under 1400, some days they’re a little over sixteen hundred. And again, we’re kind of looking at that weekly deficit, and looking at the end of the week where things kind of evening out. And I think especially I found this is really helpful for people who have kind of black and white mentalities with like I hit my macros or I didn’t. and they might get stressed about like I was a hundred over, or you know.

50 under or something like that. And I was starving today or another day, like they’re not hungry, but they’re forcing themselves to eat. I think it just gives people like a little bit more, just a touch of that flexibility where they’re not straying too far from what their goal is, but they feel like they have some autonomy in the decision making process. And I think that’s another like important skill to develop, as you know, a quote unquote dieter, if you want to even call that, you know, a thing, is the ability to

Dani Taylor (42:49)
Yeah.

Ben (42:50)
Auto-regulate a little bit. So on days where you’re feeling a little bit hungry. Sawyer has, you know, used this analogy before as like your maintenance calorie intake as kind of a safe play, like home base. And I think that’s a really good analogy because if you understand, hey, even if I ate my maintenance calories for for today and I was 500 calories over my deficit, just understanding, hey, I’m actually not setting myself back at all. I’m just kind of holding ground here. it’s okay. Like I’m not taking any steps back. It’s just like today wasn’t my day. That’s totally okay. Like yesterday.

I I went out to went out to eat with a with a friend. I just understood that hey, today’s probably not gonna be a deficit day. And that’s okay. Like in the past that would have stressed me out because it’s like, I’m not getting to this goal that I set for myself like on time when I’m thinking about in the fact that I’m like, there isn’t really like a hard deadline here that I’m need to like have this for. so just taking that stress away and understanding some days you can just kind of chalk them up and just say, you know what, today’s gonna be more of a maintenance day. this day I feel like I can push myself. This is gonna be a little bit more of a deficit day.

that can work for some

Dani Taylor (43:46)
I have a question for you, because I I wrote a list of like who is a good candidate for nonlinear dieting. And I’m looking at this and I’m like, everybody? Like, so I’m curious if there’s anybody that you think wouldn’t be a good candidate for some kind of

Ben (43:59)
I think probably the people who are very type A who like their routines, sometimes they struggle a little bit more with this. I will try to still like give them a little bit of exposure to it because I think they to a certain extent don’t always know what’s good for them. and sometimes they need a little bit of a push outside of their comfort zone in the other way. Like they’re the people who are like the self-identified robots who are like, just tell me what to do, coach, I’ll do it like every single day of the week, no problem.

And I’m like, okay, I believe you. I believe that you can, but I also don’t know that one, it’s necessary and two, it’s like beneficial long term to to be thinking like that. so I think for people who maybe they again they might struggle a little bit more with the the all or nothing mentality, which is again is why I might actually want to expose them to these things. But some people if you give them I find like low days during the week, they go and they just like tend to they just can’t rein it in on the high days.

Dani Taylor (44:26)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (44:50)
where you give them more calories. Again, that’s probably something that we should look at and address and not like just like sweep under the rug. But in in the short term, while you’re kind of working on that, hey, maybe we just stick to more of like a linear approach and we save the the opportunities to practice eating more when it makes sense. So like let’s say they you’re they’re like, you know what, I’ve got

you know somebody invited me for a meal out or I’ve got an event and like maybe normally they’d be someone who says no to a lot of these things, but it’s like something that they have to go to. I I would just say, hey, you know, this is actually a good opportunity for us to practice, having some, you know, restraint in those settings and still eating more, you know, like still without feeling like you have to. I think there’s like this often the scarcity mindset of like, I’m not eating my typical foods. I’m eating like

Off plan. So, like if there’s all these things available to me, I have to get everything because then I’m going back, you know, on my diet and I have to be, you know, good or whatever it is. so I think that for certain people, they struggle with a little bit more of that flexible approach. They’re just like, I like the consistency, the routine of every day being the same thing. but I would say, hey, can we work on can we find some opportunities to work on exposing you to variation because

There is going to be some whether you choose it or not, whether you like it or not, it’s gonna happen at some point. So we might as well be try prepare ourselves for it versus being like trying to engineer our lives around it to create it. So it’s like it’s never a problem.

Dani Taylor (46:11)
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Because there are people that have told me, like, no, I just want to do it straight. And I’m like, well, you said you’d do anything I said. I’m telling you to do this. you know, not like a drill sergeant way, but like a just like you said, like this is good for you, whether you realize it’s good for you or not. Because hypothetically you shouldn’t be in a diet forever. And what are you gonna do when you’re not? Because I will never for this was 20 years ago and I will never forget what it felt like to realize, I’m at the goal.

shit. What now? And like you should be kind of learning some of those tools of what to do when you’re not in a deficit along the way so that you don’t like get caught with your pants down basically at the end going, guess I’m just gonna be in a deficit for the rest of my life because I don’t know what to do outside of that.

But yeah, the the people that I listed that are great candidates for it are people that have a really long diet phase or a lot of weight to lose. that’s funny. they have high hunger, like they just struggle with hunger in general, or they struggle with adherence, or they have very intense training because we gotta do what we can to keep that training up. And we didn’t even touch upon this, but when you were like, well, if I, you know, when I feel down, I eat a few hundred more calories and then my training feels better the next day.

Totally separate topic, maybe worth talking about another day. But I think a lot of times people don’t even realize that their training has actually gotten worse because they weren’t like training hard enough to begin with to realize that now they’re pushing harder to train the way they were before, but maybe that wasn’t hard enough. So that one’s I feel like a lot harder for the beginner or intermediate people to pinpoint.

Ben (47:29)
Mm.

Mm.

That’s good point. I think just understanding that when you’re dieting, inevitably like there is going to be some things working against you when it comes to retaining your muscle mass. And so having a training program that’s specific to your goals and specific to retaining muscle mass. And you know, what does that mean? you know, that that means training close to, you know, within at least a couple reps of you know of muscular failure.

on the exercises where it’s safe to do so. Or, you know, if you’re new to training, you don’t necessarily need that to retain muscle mass, but you should be at least trying to focus on some form of progression. So write down your weights, write down your reps, write down what you’re doing, and try to do a little bit more. and if it’s really easy for you, like if you’re, you know, doing your three sets of 10 and it’s pretty easy, you know, you don’t you don’t need to just increase it five pounds or 10 pounds. Like you could probably jump up a little bit more. I I do have this with clients sometimes where it’s like they’ve been

Like I’ll have them send me form videos and it’s like, okay, that was pretty easy. Let’s go up in weight again. And then next week it’s like, that was also pretty easy. I’m like, you know, you can jump up more than just five or ten pounds if you’re finding it really easy. Like w and then how do we assess that? Rep speed slowdown is a is a big one. So you know, your reps should be slowing down as you’re approaching failure or fatigue, not because you’re intentionally trying to make it move slower, but because, you know, you’re just like your muscles fatiguing, so you can’t move it as quickly.

And you know, that’s just important for for retaining muscle as you are dieting down. So that’s a good point. And like you were saying, I think some people also just don’t even realize when they’re feeling super fatigued and super run down. they just like push push through it. They’re just people who are like, Hey, like, you know, I’m not gonna who cares what my body says, I’m just gonna like do it. I’m just doing it. again, I’ve definitely been that person. That was me and like my last contest prep. And I basically killed myself. So don’t

Don’t it’s not always the best way forward.

Dani Taylor (49:21)
Yeah. And I mean, there is a degree of that, like, I just gotta get this done, regardless, that is required to reach a lot of big fitness or physique goals, but only to a point. And that’s where it can be helpful to have somebody else just kinda like, Hey, can I is this normal? Can I talk to you about whether or not this is normal? Because sometimes we cannot tell ourselves. Yeah.

Ben (49:41)
Right. Well that might be

a good kind of segue into closing things out and just talking about yeah, if people are interested in getting some getting some support.

Dani Taylor (49:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, well if I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. This was a really fun topic for me. Thanks, Ben, for having me on to talk about this one. If you guys are looking for any kind of one-on-one coaching, that’s what we do here.

We have coaches that have some spots available, like Ben himself. So we will leave a link to the assessment in the show notes. So if you fill that out, you’ll hear back from probably Giacomo within a business day, and you can ask all your questions about coaching and all that stuff. If you would like to follow any of our team on social media, we have Ben A. Mitchell, I am at Vegan Proteins. Sawyer is Soy Boy Fitness Coaching. Alice is Vegan Proteins Alice, and Giacomo is Muscles by Brussels. So feel free to follow anybody, ask questions. You’ll always hear back from us.

Or you can shoot us an email, coach at veganproteins.com if you have any questions or even podcast topic ideas. We would love to talk about the stuff that you want to hear about. So I think that’s everything. If you enjoyed the podcast and you would like to leave it a review, that really helps this podcast get out in front of more eyeballs. So if you could do that, we would really appreciate it. And I think that’s all I’ve got to say. So once again, thanks so much for listening. My name’s Dani. And we will talk to you later. Bye.

Ben (50:53)
I’m Ben.

Bye everyone.