The Peter Attia Drive - #228 ‒ Improving body composition, female-specific training principles, and overcoming an eating disorder

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

00:00:15.500 my website and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity

00:00:19.840 into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and

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00:00:41.740 head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. Now, without further delay,

00:00:47.800 here's today's episode. My guest this week is Holly Baxter. Holly is an accredited practicing

00:00:54.620 dietician, a competitive bodybuilder, a physique coach, and a personal trainer. She's also a

00:00:58.460 fitness educator and competition coach. In this episode, we talk about Holly's background,

00:01:03.380 her interest in nutrition, and Holly opens up in detail about her struggle with an eating disorder

00:01:07.740 throughout a portion of her life. From there, we dive into a case study of what a typical female

00:01:12.340 patient that Holly may work with could experience and what she might be thinking about as she trains,

00:01:19.080 not necessarily for competitive bodybuilding, of course, but just to sort of improve her physique.

00:01:24.000 Holly builds out what a training and nutrition program might look like for a female who wants

00:01:27.840 to improve, say, putting on five pounds of muscle and simultaneously losing five pounds of fat.

00:01:33.020 We then talk further about female-specific principles when it comes to training. So,

00:01:37.220 even if you're not aspiring to be a bodybuilder, which I assume many of you listening to this are

00:01:41.180 not, I think everybody is somewhat interested in improving their physique. And therefore,

00:01:45.680 I think there's a lot of valuable information in this episode to learn about building muscle,

00:01:50.120 specifically for females, which is an important aspect of longevity.

00:01:53.300 So, without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Holly Baxter.

00:02:03.040 Holly, thanks so much for making time to sit down today. I look forward to talking about a lot

00:02:06.860 of things. My wife has already peppered me with a hundred questions for you today.

00:02:10.460 I'm really excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

00:02:13.520 So, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you grew up in Australia, and I know that you,

00:02:17.560 I think you ran track growing up. Yes, I did. So, grew up in Tasmania, Australia. So,

00:02:23.400 for those that may not be geographically aware that is, it's the little island that sits just south

00:02:29.180 of the mainland. So, pretty small place. And I think part of the evolution of me now being where

00:02:35.700 I am in Florida was just having such a big open mind, and I didn't want to stay there. So,

00:02:41.800 I moved away to do college. So, I moved over to Melbourne, Deakin University, where I did an

00:02:48.320 undergraduate in nutrition science, food science, nutrition, and then a master's in dietetics.

00:02:53.560 I know Tasmania by landmass looks pretty big, but is it a tiny population?

00:02:57.420 It's tiny. I think at the moment, it's probably like 500,000. Where I grew up specifically,

00:03:01.420 when I was living there, the population of Launceston was about 90,000. So, pretty small.

00:03:06.800 So, in high school, you ran track or in college?

00:03:08.980 All the way through. So, I started track at about age eight, and I went right through till

00:03:13.460 age 18. So, I finished by the time I got to like second or third year of university.

00:03:18.360 I guess at that point, that was when I could either go for a sporting career or choose academics. So,

00:03:25.120 I ended up choosing academics because, unfortunately, in Australia for females,

00:03:28.900 there just isn't a whole lot of opportunity to have a successful career in sport. For males,

00:03:34.280 it's a little bit different. We have Aussie rules football, which is incredibly popular and

00:03:38.060 absolutely can make a killing. And I think perhaps now that social media has grown to be where it is,

00:03:43.580 maybe females have an opportunity to have a good career in sport, but academics was kind of the

00:03:49.000 only option really for me at that time. What did you run in track?

00:03:53.100 So, I was a sprinter. 100 meters, long jump, triple jump. And if someone dare ask me to do a relay

00:03:58.080 or a 400, I might do that. So, lots of fast twitch, anything explosive and powerful and short.

00:04:05.220 And did you lift weights in high school with your exposure to it?

00:04:08.460 I actually only started lifting weights probably in year 11. So, we call that college at home.

00:04:15.380 So, grade 11, I started or introduced lifting weights. That was when I was part of the Tasmanian

00:04:21.100 Institute of Sports. So, my coach at the time, Peter Fortune, was also Olympic water meter runner,

00:04:27.760 Cathy Freeman. So, she won the gold medal in the 2000 Olympics and everybody loved her. So,

00:04:33.000 I worked with him. Yeah, that's where I kind of had a lot of my, I guess, experience in track sprinting.

00:04:38.180 So, why did you choose nutrition in college?

00:04:41.140 Good question. So, most people would probably say, oh, you know, I'm really passionate about sport and

00:04:46.260 da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But my reasoning was probably not a good one. I got into the sport

00:04:52.240 purely because of my desire for control of my nutrition. And it probably begs the question,

00:04:58.860 what's that all about? So, I have only very recently overcome a 15-year-long eating disorder.

00:05:04.840 I struggled with anorexia for a short period of time and that went on to become a binge eating

00:05:10.040 disorder and bulimia. So, before I even thought about going off to college, I was already

00:05:16.120 in the depths of that disorder. I was also struggling a lot with depression at age 16.

00:05:22.580 I had already attempted suicide twice. I was hospitalized for a good part of my year 11

00:05:27.640 schooling, which looking back at that now, like it's really sad actually. And I just didn't have

00:05:33.100 the supports. I didn't have the mentors or people in my life that really helped me to feel what I

00:05:40.440 needed to feel and I think experience as a child. And it kind of escalated into my adulthood. And

00:05:46.580 really, very recently, have I only started to work on my mental health. And I think that's where a lot

00:05:52.020 of my advances have come, especially as it relates to like feeling like I have a sense of purpose in

00:05:56.460 life and really ultimately finding my happiness.

00:05:59.900 You have one sibling?

00:06:01.120 Yes.

00:06:01.880 Older or younger?

00:06:02.680 Younger sibling.

00:06:03.780 A sister?

00:06:04.520 Yes.

00:06:05.280 So, when did the eating disorder start? And did that precede what you describe as depression or

00:06:10.820 do you think the two are kind of hand in hand and intertwined?

00:06:13.080 They kind of came on simultaneously, I think, for multiple reasons. So, I don't want to say

00:06:19.240 negative things about my family or my parents or how they raised me because, gosh, my mother was

00:06:23.120 just an incredible woman. She basically raised us as a single mom. I did have a father in my life,

00:06:27.380 but he was a very hard worker, very disciplined and so career focused that, you know, we were kind

00:06:34.600 of invisible to him. So, my mom, I think she had grown up in a similar situation where her mother

00:06:40.060 was completely absent. She was a single mom. So, I think her life experiences where she didn't have

00:06:46.260 somebody that even cared about her, that take her to do anything, do sports, you know, she had to do

00:06:51.000 it all herself. She'd catch the bus to after school training. She'd take herself to athletics on the

00:06:56.100 weekends. So, my mother was a wonderful woman, but she did what she did based on her own personal

00:07:02.160 experiences. So, it probably wasn't the best thing looking back at it, but, you know, we all have our

00:07:06.040 flaws. But our relationship was really strained. I think she wanted to control me, to protect me,

00:07:12.380 I think, you know, and that put a lot of friction between us. So, I felt like I had no control in my

00:07:17.340 life. I think up until like year 10, I wasn't even allowed to have like a sleepover at a friend's

00:07:21.920 without there being like serious arguments. And there was just a lot of hostility and

00:07:27.220 confrontation growing up. So, your 10 is about 15? Yes. And so, give me a little bit more of an

00:07:33.780 understanding of that. So, was the focus before that age, was it heavy emphasis on your academics

00:07:38.640 and on your sports and that was it? Absolutely. Yes. So, we were doing dancing, like tap jazz, ballet,

00:07:44.340 piano, music, guitar, like drums. Then we were in basketball and athletics. So, we did a lot of

00:07:52.480 activities. And I think the only kind of praise and recognition or like you felt like you were cared

00:07:59.080 for or loved was when you excelled at something. So, you know, if I came home and I did really well

00:08:04.660 in my grades at school, that was about the only time that I would get, oh, wow, you know, we really

00:08:08.600 love you or well done. And I know my mom loves me. Like, it's just how people communicate is so

00:08:13.660 important. So, yeah, I really kind of grew up with this idea that unless I was the best at something

00:08:20.720 or did everything and I excelled at everything, I didn't really have value as a human. That's kind

00:08:26.920 of one aspect of where all that depression and the eating disorder started. But sadly, I also

00:08:32.420 experienced some sexual trauma around that age. There were two instances and it happened with people

00:08:37.260 that I really respected, that I trusted. And that coupled with this toxic home environment

00:08:43.640 where you can't really even go to your parents because there's this fear of being judged, you

00:08:49.280 know, from the community. Everything was about keeping up with appearances. So, it wouldn't be,

00:08:54.320 you know, are you okay? Talk to me. Let's have a discussion about this. It was, well, what did you do

00:08:59.880 to deserve that? Well, what were you wearing? How were you dressed? What kind of makeup did you have

00:09:03.840 on? Like, you're asking for this, you know?

00:09:06.020 So, you didn't disclose any of this to your parents?

00:09:08.060 I spoke to my mother about it, but that was kind of the feedback that I got.

00:09:12.700 She didn't know how to support me and she did, granted, try to look for therapy at the time.

00:09:18.520 But I think at that point, I was so far down like the rabbit hole of depression

00:09:22.780 and just feeling like I was a lost cause that nothing worked. Certainly, the behavioral therapy

00:09:28.300 that I did at that time was unaffected. And the medication that I had actually made it worse,

00:09:34.240 significantly worse for a period. So, I consequently came off that.

00:09:37.060 Help me understand a little bit more about, I think that eating disorders are probably a lot

00:09:40.600 more common than we are led to believe. I don't actually, this is not something I know a lot of

00:09:44.620 the statistics about. We've actually been trying to find an expert on eating disorders for the

00:09:47.840 podcast because I think it is a very important topic. So, I don't know if you are familiar with

00:09:52.020 these statistics, but I'm not. But do you have a sense of how often they afflict young women

00:09:56.200 versus young men?

00:09:57.780 So, the prevalence is a lot greater in females than men, but it's actually increasing over the last 10 years

00:10:03.740 in young boys as well. I hope I don't butcher the statistics. I did actually, there is a couple

00:10:08.320 of studies that I'd like to reference, but I don't have them with me. But I believe 60% of high

00:10:13.160 school students in US females have reported to struggle with low confidence, negative sense of

00:10:19.460 self and body image. Prevalence of eating disorders, I guess it's a little bit lower, but I wouldn't know

00:10:24.420 the exact statistics. But it is scarily high. And we can also then look into some of the younger

00:10:29.760 studies in children. And it is higher than it should be. Absolutely.

00:10:34.580 And so, when you think back to how this started in you, I think you mentioned that it started first

00:10:38.800 with anorexia before binging and purging. Did you gain a sense of control by limiting what you

00:10:44.780 were eating? Did it in the short term satisfy something that was inside you?

00:10:49.460 You know what, it did. But I think because I was so athletic, I was so heavily involved in sport that,

00:10:55.300 you know, my energy demands, like I think back to the amount of training that I was doing,

00:10:58.540 you know, you've got your in school sports, and then after school, and it was hours of practice,

00:11:02.540 and six days a week, for the most part, maybe training on Sunday, I couldn't sustain the

00:11:08.220 restriction. I was so famished and hungry. And that frustrated me. It really did. Like I didn't

00:11:16.120 connect the dots. Like, why can't I control what I put in my body? Like little did I know anything

00:11:21.300 about, you know, your appetite regulating hormones at that point, and the requirements for energy for the

00:11:27.020 sport that I was doing. So I would act out these behaviors of binge eating, and then purging. And

00:11:32.980 it was just constant, it became a point where it was probably every day of the week for, I would say,

00:11:38.800 five years, which is terrifying to think about considering the risks.

00:11:42.840 So that means from high school all the way into university,

00:11:45.100 it definitely slowed down when I got to university. And I think it was just because of the requirements

00:11:49.440 for study. And like, I had to work three jobs and to make everything work. So there was just less

00:11:54.740 opportunity for me to do that if I wanted to excel in my studies. It was horrific. I just remember

00:12:00.540 feeling I wanted to be able to control things. But at the same token, I had no control because my body

00:12:06.740 was doing what it's meant to do, which is to protect you from starvation, essentially.

00:12:11.420 Now, some of the complications that people experience with bulimia, of course,

00:12:15.080 the constant flow of acidity up and down the esophagus. Did you have any of the issues with your

00:12:20.240 teeth, the electrolyte abnormalities? Interestingly, no. I can't speak to the

00:12:25.000 electrolyte abnormalities because I never had, you know, routine blood work back then. That was

00:12:29.120 definitely not something I was going to prioritize as a young, naive student. But I can say now,

00:12:35.160 thankfully, you know, I never had any of the esophageal erosion from that acidic acid. I think

00:12:40.200 that plays a strong risk in developing cancers of the throat and the olfactory. So I do wonder about

00:12:46.360 that because of the frequency of purging and what that says for me in the future, because now that

00:12:51.380 I have got that under control, it's a scary thought because, I mean, cancer is a scary thing.

00:12:57.460 How did this progress? So you're in university, you're doing an undergraduate degree, then you do

00:13:01.380 a master's degree right after. What's happening? Does anybody in your life kind of recognize that

00:13:05.980 this is going on, be it your sister, your mom or friends?

00:13:08.880 No. So I think one of the challenges, and it's been exacerbated by moving away, was my family

00:13:15.600 weren't in the same state. And they didn't travel to see me very often. And it's kind of

00:13:20.360 been that way since I've moved away. So I didn't have the family support. I've never had a close

00:13:26.440 relationship with my sister, though I would love to. It's just, we've just gone in different

00:13:29.940 directions, I think, with life. And didn't have any kind of relationship with my father. So

00:13:35.000 I didn't have anyone to go to for guidance. So I was kind of in and out of dating when you were

00:13:40.880 at school, college. But none of your boyfriends knew that this was happening?

00:13:46.300 No. I may have communicated it to one. And I think part of that was out of shame. Think about

00:13:51.600 the stigma that's associated with mental health issues, depression for one. Then to have an eating

00:13:56.720 disorder and me being the perfectionist, high achiever, driven woman that I was, there was no

00:14:03.500 way I wanted to share this weakness. And especially given that I was educated, I've done a bachelor's

00:14:10.160 in food science, and now I've got a master's degree in nutrition, I should be able to control this,

00:14:15.220 you know, and that's that word control. So I was terrified to tell anybody. So I was suffering in

00:14:20.820 silence. And it probably went that way for 10 years.

00:14:24.840 And during that 10 years, the pattern of behavior was still continuing. We're going to talk a lot about

00:14:30.120 training. We're going to talk a lot about bodybuilding and stuff that you've done more

00:14:33.180 recently. But kind of help me understand, like, what did you physically look like at the time?

00:14:37.580 Did you look as fit as you look today? Did you have more of a sort of slender build? Were you more

00:14:42.520 muscular? I think part of the issue, and I know this isn't true, but I think it's part of the stereotype,

00:14:47.020 is when we think of somebody with an eating disorder, we picture an individual, probably in

00:14:52.340 different extremes. When we think of someone with anorexia, we think of someone that's

00:14:55.940 incredibly thin, you know, they appear unhealthy and how thin they look. Conversely, I think when

00:15:01.760 we picture somebody with bulimia, we usually think of somebody that's a little overweight.

00:15:05.320 Were you somewhere on that spectrum? I was right in the middle. I think, again, because of the

00:15:10.380 amount of activity that I was doing, that prevented me from being in this state or a mental state of

00:15:15.800 anorexia. So I never got to the point where I was dangerously low body weight, but I was a healthy

00:15:21.980 body weight. And I was still, you know, sprinting, track training. I would say I was above average

00:15:26.780 muscularity. I was kind of when I just started getting into, do you remember the Les Mills classes

00:15:31.840 that they would have at the gyms where there's combat class or kickboxing or body pump? I was doing,

00:15:39.440 you know, some light resistance training. My actual interest in bodybuilding didn't start until

00:15:44.880 much later after college. So I was healthy body weight, but I think like if we look at, you know,

00:15:49.780 the research for people that do suffer with binge eating disorder and bulimia, they tend to be

00:15:54.680 normal weight to above normal weight. So I was right in the normal. No one would have known.

00:16:00.180 You mentioned also, I think that you had a suicide attempt when you were six, was it 16?

00:16:04.760 Yes.

00:16:05.740 I don't want to ask the obvious question. How was that not a wake up call to your parents?

00:16:10.760 It was. One of the things that was really disappointing, and I think it just enhanced the

00:16:15.840 sadness. I get a little bit upset and emotional thinking about it. But again, just to kind of

00:16:20.220 outline just how incapable like my father was of communicating. And it's not that he's a bad

00:16:25.860 person. It's just his backstory is incredible. Like lost his mom at age 13 through breast cancer,

00:16:31.000 was raised by an alcoholic father, four brothers, like beaten, you know, really, really sad.

00:16:36.700 He didn't know how to communicate. And I remember at that point, my mom was very upset when that

00:16:41.320 happened. And I think my dad came into my room and was like, you're a fucking idiot. And he walked

00:16:47.100 out. So to have that from like somebody that you're like, wow, I thought you loved and cared

00:16:53.560 about me. He was never somebody that would have had a clue where to start. My mother, on the other

00:16:58.580 hand, was overbearing. And that was the problem. I knew that she was trying to help. But part of the

00:17:04.220 reason that I'd gotten to this space anyway, in combination with the sexual assaults, and then some of

00:17:09.880 the things that my coach had said about my training, which led to the ED disorder as well, was that she

00:17:15.020 was just way too controlling, wanted to just do everything for me, whether it was live vicariously

00:17:19.440 through our sports, which I understand. And I've forgiven my mother for that. And, you know, she's

00:17:25.080 just doing what she knew. But she tried to get me in touch with the right health professionals. But I

00:17:31.100 think just lack of knowledge, resources, not having good connections herself. And she worked in medical

00:17:37.660 industry as like administration for years before she became a stay-at-home mom. Even through her

00:17:42.300 networks, she just didn't have the tools. And it was right about the time where I was ready to bounce

00:17:48.320 and go to college. I had to fly, move away, essentially. So the ability for her to kind of

00:17:53.960 control and manage what I did with my health, and now I'm becoming an adult, it was a lot harder. So I

00:17:59.840 think in some ways, I'm really grateful that I stepped away from Tasmania and took on other

00:18:06.180 opportunities that didn't require her support. Because if you get babied for your young teenage

00:18:12.520 years and enabled, I would never have had the life skills to be the person that I am today, to

00:18:19.180 know what it's like to step out and take risks. And I don't have any fear of failure. And I think

00:18:24.960 part of that was developed from me just moving away and stepping out from that control.

00:18:29.420 I want to kind of go back to still the understanding the eating disorder a little bit more.

00:18:32.460 Did your self-image of your body seem inaccurate with what you now look back at as reality? In other

00:18:39.100 words, does everyone with an eating disorder necessarily also have a skewed view of their

00:18:44.340 body image? Or can that be uncoupled and the eating disorder is simply a control tool that can be

00:18:51.460 unrelated to a misguided belief about body image? I don't know if that question makes sense.

00:18:55.700 Dysfunctional thoughts, yes. So I think it really depends on the individual.

00:18:58.800 I couldn't recall all of the exact criteria or like characteristics, behaviors that clinically

00:19:04.180 define anorexia or binge eating disorder or the like, because they are all slightly different in

00:19:09.280 their own way. But for me, at least I can say that initially it wasn't my body image that I was

00:19:17.420 concerned about. It was control. Then developed into like obsessive compulsive for some things. It was

00:19:23.100 like anytime I felt stressed, anxious, drop in whatever emotion. As I grew, the desire to control

00:19:29.580 came back. And I'd kind of crafted this little environment where when I lived on my own at school

00:19:36.120 and then post-school, post-masters when I went off and started my career, my environment was built in

00:19:43.100 such a way that I basically shielded myself from stresses, potential triggers, whether it was food,

00:19:49.820 environmental, social, so that I could live in control. And that gave me comfort. So reality

00:19:57.060 check, when you become an adult and you have to be flexible and nimble and pivot and learn to adapt

00:20:03.180 under stress, which my goodness, I feel like my life was extremely stressful for a lot of different

00:20:08.200 reasons, but I just had no coping skills. So it didn't start as a negative body image. It was

00:20:14.780 simply the desire for control. However, as I found myself more and more involved in sport and as my

00:20:23.340 physique did change, as I started to connect the dots with my athletic performance with superior

00:20:30.240 physique, low body fat, more muscle, and then the praise that I would get externally from people,

00:20:36.140 that then became the obsession. It's how I look. And that was where I found myself worth. That was where I

00:20:42.460 felt valued and appreciated and people respect me. And for a good part of my life, I think it became

00:20:48.580 my identity. It was impossible to break. And that just fueled the disorder.

00:20:53.400 I can only imagine, which then leads to the inevitable question of how do you break that cycle?

00:20:59.740 Through a lot of hard work. And this is one of the practices, I guess, that I've incorporated only

00:21:05.600 very recently into my own nutrition coaching and with our team as well. And that is really working in

00:21:11.560 collaboration with allied health, particularly mental health experts. So for me, until I actually

00:21:18.060 started having regular therapy, and I'm not talking like once every six weeks for a review,

00:21:24.120 which is kind of the expectation, I guess, in the clinical world. I know for me as a dietitian,

00:21:28.580 we would see our patients, you know, maybe you do a four-week review or a six-week review.

00:21:32.500 So it was really infrequent. But that's kind of how I had been exposed to it with my parents when

00:21:37.980 mom had gotten me into therapy. When was that? That was when I was about 16,

00:21:41.700 when I was still living in Tasmania. So after the suicide attempt?

00:21:44.140 Yes.

00:21:44.780 It puts you into kind of an infrequent therapy.

00:21:47.100 Yeah. So I would have to travel to Hobart. I saw a specialist down there who worked with

00:21:52.140 females predominantly, any women's health issues, but eating disorders and nutrition. So it was

00:21:57.760 infrequent. But I remember loving those little trips because it was like the one time that I was

00:22:01.560 like, oh, my mom cares. Wow. We get to go and stay in Hobart. And we get to go and spend time

00:22:06.520 together. She cares about me. Like it's a sick relationship to think like that was so exciting

00:22:12.980 for me. But that was what was fuel. It was almost like that attention was good attention because I

00:22:17.700 never felt like anyone cared about me outside of the credentials and that kind of thing.

00:22:23.760 As you think about sort of the post-college life, did you think that you had things under control or

00:22:28.980 did you think that this is a dirty little secret that is totally out of control?

00:22:32.700 I think it kind of came in waves, like any kind of condition, you know, works along a spectrum.

00:22:38.840 I definitely had periods where I felt like I was managing the symptoms and the feelings,

00:22:44.380 the emotions that kind of came along with that disorder. Okay. But as soon as things got a little

00:22:49.380 bit stressful or I had, you know, extra assignments due, or if I needed from a financial perspective,

00:22:55.500 do two full weekends of work back to back. And that's the only way that you're going to be able

00:22:59.620 to have groceries next week or put gas in your car. When anything extra kind of came into my life,

00:23:05.120 I just lost it. It was extreme, binging, purging, secret eating was really something that I struggled

00:23:12.180 with. I would go out for dinner with friends and I would try to enjoy myself and partake in the food.

00:23:18.300 But because I would restrict so aggressively, anytime that I did get outside my four walls of comfort foods

00:23:25.460 and things that were on my list of these are okay to eat, I was terrified. No one would know it on the

00:23:30.520 outside, but I'd go out for dinner and it was just this uncontrolled, it was like I had no control to

00:23:36.600 slow down my eating. So I ate so extremely fast. So many of my friends as adults have said to me,

00:23:43.960 yeah, you really eat fast, but I've noticed a massive change, you know, for the last few years.

00:23:48.680 This is certainly for like longer term friends. You know, that habit stuck around. So I'd eat extremely

00:23:52.960 quickly and I would almost binge eat. And then I would usually order something else and take it home

00:23:59.000 with the idea that I was going to have it tomorrow and I'll portion it out appropriately. But again,

00:24:05.640 because of that extreme restrictive behavior, it just meant I'd go home and then binge eat more.

00:24:11.960 And it was absolutely spiraled out of control. And I think again, my stress response at that time,

00:24:16.780 the only way I knew how to manage stress was to eat. And it completely countered the goals that I had

00:24:23.400 for my sport and my training. So yeah, it was hard.

00:24:26.800 What was the wake up call? What was the event or set of events that led you to think, I have to do

00:24:32.280 something different. And it sounds like I'm going to have to take therapy very seriously.

00:24:36.480 It wasn't until I got to probably about age 25. At that point, I had moved from state. So I finished

00:24:43.880 my schooling in Melbourne, moved to Gold Coast where I opened my own business. So like she already had

00:24:49.740 my business in Melbourne, but basically it was starting from scratch. So a new clinical practice

00:24:53.860 and then also working, I guess, 50% of my work week was also in-person training. Because at that

00:24:59.860 point I'd discovered like the love for resistance training and I wanted to be able to incorporate

00:25:03.600 those two things together. My business was going crazy, like busy, busy, busy, busy. I just had some

00:25:09.600 success in the bodybuilding space. And I got to the point where my anxiety was so hard. I didn't even

00:25:16.280 know what anxiety was. I wasn't able to identify or put a word with the feeling that I had. It sounds

00:25:22.920 so silly to think about it now because of course it was anxiety, but like I couldn't even open my

00:25:27.060 laptop because I was so stressed at the amount of work that I knew I had to do. So I actually got to a

00:25:31.680 point in business where I was experiencing some burnout and I took myself to a therapist at that point.

00:25:38.400 So that kind of started it. And then I ended up having to admit myself to like a rehab. So I

00:25:45.420 traveled back to Melbourne to a very well-known rehabilitation therapy location in like country

00:25:50.760 Victoria. And it was, I guess, incorporated counseling, yoga practices, different relaxation

00:25:57.600 type techniques. And then one of the owners kind of come and work through different nutrition things

00:26:03.180 with you. And it was- And this was specifically for people with eating disorders? Yes. And how long

00:26:07.960 did you commit to go to this place? I was there for seven days. It was pretty short,

00:26:12.560 but it was very intense. Like you had a schedule mapped out from the minute you woke up to the

00:26:15.880 moment you went to bed. How difficult was that for you to make the decision to shut down work for

00:26:20.320 seven days? Terrifying. I remember calling my mom actually and just bawling. We rarely spoke,

00:26:27.860 not because, you know, we didn't have a better relationship as adults, but I think we just kind of

00:26:32.340 grew apart. So calling her, I guess she knows like, if I'm going to bring my mom, there's probably

00:26:36.320 something wrong. Yeah. I was just mortified because I was so stressed about losing hours work

00:26:41.740 because I was so passionate about, you know, but my clients, but you know, I just couldn't bring

00:26:46.900 myself to do it. She said, look, financially, you're going to be okay. Just take a week. You know,

00:26:52.280 it doesn't have to be exorbitant. The therapy was quite expensive, but it was very well worth it.

00:26:56.580 I'm going through this, you know, I haven't really resolved my eating disorder. I'm at business

00:27:01.540 burnout stress. So it was just, to me, it was like overwhelming. And I think at that point, again,

00:27:06.440 was the second time in my life where I felt some of those suicidal thoughts. I'd kind of talked with

00:27:11.360 my therapist and she'd said, well, do we need to make her act too? And I was like, no, no, I think

00:27:15.460 I'll work through this, but it's the first time that I felt this hopeless.

00:27:20.300 So how much of an impact did that seven day inpatient rehab have on you?

00:27:26.580 Not as much as I would have hoped to think that anything that's that short in duration

00:27:31.020 is going to cure you. You're very foolish, but it opened my eyes to the benefits of relaxation,

00:27:38.060 meditation, and the value of communication and being transparent and open. And that was

00:27:44.620 not a behavior that I was good at. For that 10 year period prior, I was very closed off, very

00:27:50.580 reserved, didn't share very many things at all. I was very private. So I think I saw the

00:27:56.500 value in what it's like to work through issues rather than suppress them. Once I finally moved

00:28:02.800 to America, I got myself straight into weekly therapy. So I have had therapy sessions every

00:28:09.700 week since 2016. I probably missed, I don't know, maybe 20 weeks just through travel and

00:28:16.200 business. So it got me on the right path.

00:28:20.100 What were sort of the breakthroughs that occurred with that type of much more consistent therapy?

00:28:24.800 I think number one, it made me accountable and it made me speak, made me talk and helped

00:28:29.220 me kind of reflect back on my past, which I'd never done. I had never given two thoughts

00:28:36.120 about my upbringing. I feel like now it's all I talk about and all I think about, but so

00:28:40.560 much of what I experienced was bottled up in past traumas and those different styles of

00:28:47.340 communication. So I think gaining an appreciation and understanding for why I felt the way that I

00:28:54.360 did was incredibly valuable. It was like, oh, I've now got some data. At least it made sense

00:29:00.160 to me. And then we started kind of discussing where are the dysfunctions in these beliefs?

00:29:06.400 Let's start picking up these different sets of thoughts that you have and let's deconstruct

00:29:12.340 them. And how might these look different for a healthy mind? And through so much self-development,

00:29:19.740 reading, also finding myself spiritually, which is another major part of this story, it really

00:29:27.060 helped me to understand that I was enough as a human, despite my accolades and sporting

00:29:35.400 accomplishments and that I'm loved and I don't need to keep proving myself to all the people

00:29:42.520 in my life. And it was like this huge weight had lifted off my shoulders. And part of that

00:29:46.940 was one of our staff invited me to go to church one day. And I'd only been to church once when I was

00:29:52.700 young with a boyfriend. His family were a Christian. So my experience with religion was not negative.

00:29:59.700 I'd say I grew up like agnostic. So I don't think my parents were anti-religion, but they certainly

00:30:06.260 didn't hold any beliefs of their own and it was not something we discussed. So going to church,

00:30:11.320 and this was a non-denominational church, very progressive, the pastor was just incredible.

00:30:16.920 And every message, every week I kept going back and I was like, wow, this is so relatable.

00:30:22.460 There's so many things out of the Bible that it's just so good. It's like such good information. It

00:30:27.300 was like, this is what I've been missing my whole life because I felt for a long time that I didn't

00:30:31.960 have purpose. And part of my decision to keep moving and traveling was to feel like what's missing.

00:30:39.500 Maybe it'll be here. Or maybe if I go to this country, the people will be different and I'll

00:30:44.020 resonate with them better. But it was something in here that was missing. And yeah, going to church

00:30:49.540 and reading, that was probably the one thing that changed my life. And since then, I have never been

00:30:56.300 happier. I think there's two things that are interesting in the story that I think are

00:31:00.340 important and illustrative for anybody struggling with anything. And one is that the improvements

00:31:05.720 didn't happen quickly and that it's kind of nonlinear. I'm actually struck by the fact that

00:31:11.520 you said, look, I did this seven day intensive thing and it helped, but it didn't help as much

00:31:16.460 as maybe I wanted it to. But I think the encouraging point is here, you kept sort of at it. It would be

00:31:21.880 years before you would find yourself in daily or weekly therapy. I guess the other thing is when I

00:31:27.040 think of my addictions and struggles, I think like any addict, let's just pick alcohol because it's an

00:31:33.020 easy one for people to identify with externally. You know, they say that an alcoholic is always an

00:31:37.980 alcoholic. It's just a question of if you're in recovery or not. If an alcoholic commits to no

00:31:42.500 longer drinking, they still need to be mindful of their behaviors and still need to be cognizant of

00:31:47.260 the fact that they can slip back into drinking. Yes. That doesn't mean they can't be around people

00:31:51.320 who are drinking, but they have to understand themselves and understand those limits. That's

00:31:55.260 certainly going to be true for me for the rest of my life. I know what my addictions are. I know how

00:32:00.080 they need to be managed and they're always there. Do you feel that way as well?

00:32:05.900 Absolutely. So I think there is this idea that you can completely recover. I don't think that

00:32:11.980 anybody truly recovers. Like you said, once an addict, always an addict. Yeah. You're in recovery.

00:32:17.080 You're not recovered. Yes. Now I think with something like that, you know, there's the physiological

00:32:21.260 symptoms that you need to manage as you come out of that. You know, you've got a chemical dependence,

00:32:25.400 but for something that is psychological, you know, there's obviously chemical imbalances in some of

00:32:31.020 these conditions, but there's also a strong need for your desire to change and to improve.

00:32:38.440 It wasn't until like I had committed to myself and said, you are never going to purge again.

00:32:45.240 And I actually have started writing a book about this actually, which will be hopefully very helpful

00:32:49.500 for a lot of people that are going through the same kind of thing. But I remember sitting on my

00:32:53.640 bathroom floor one day, bawling, emotionally exhausted, physically exhausted. And it was

00:32:57.960 during a contest prep, the most difficult thing that one could probably ever attempt to do,

00:33:02.000 which is get extremely lean and try and control your body, which wants to control you essentially.

00:33:07.440 And I remember just saying like, you're not going to do this anymore. And I think as soon as I really

00:33:10.900 believed that I didn't want to purge anymore, I was exhausted. That's when things started to change.

00:33:17.860 And I think the more I talked about that with my therapist, where I no longer had a

00:33:21.540 compensatory mechanism. I wasn't going to let myself do that. And I also wasn't going to try

00:33:26.420 and overcompensate with activity because that was something else that I would do. If I didn't purge,

00:33:30.140 I would feel so restless and anxious and guilty if I didn't go and do a 10 kilometer run because

00:33:35.820 I'd work out, okay, well, I probably ate this many calories in that purge. And then really I've got no

00:33:40.160 idea because I threw some of it up. It was just this horrible, sickening feeling. Hard to talk about

00:33:46.000 really. It's kind of gross. But once I kind of didn't have these outlets anymore, it forced me to get

00:33:52.660 real with my intention for eating. It forced me to become mindful. It forced me to slow down and become

00:34:01.640 present with my meals and to really like listen to what my body was saying. And that was really hard

00:34:08.440 because if you've restrained from, you know, certain foods, alcohol, drugs for a long period

00:34:14.980 of time, all you do is think about that thing. So for me, like I'd restricted, like I would allow

00:34:20.120 myself a little bit of ice cream until I learned about flexible dieting, of course. And then that

00:34:24.200 changed a lot of things, but that's another story. You know, I'd restricted cookies and, you know,

00:34:28.580 just nice fun cereals, like normal foods. And I just couldn't control myself around them anymore.

00:34:34.620 So that was so difficult because I just felt like I was going crazy. What is wrong with me? I remember

00:34:41.220 saying to my therapist, like a couple of, this is years into therapy, why do I still want to eat the

00:34:46.440 entire tub of ice cream? I feel like I can't just make myself one serving. I want to eat the whole

00:34:50.340 thing. And she's like, well, Holly, like you've restricted this for 10 years. What makes you think

00:34:56.400 that you're going to cure this desire overnight when it's been something that you've built a habit

00:35:01.620 that's ingrained over your lifetime with this disorder? So I think once I started having a

00:35:07.120 little bit more compassion for myself and forgiveness and reducing the amount of judgment

00:35:14.000 that I had for myself as a human, like you're a screw up, what's wrong with you? You know, once I

00:35:18.620 started to be kinder to myself, that was when I started to make a little bit more progress.

00:35:25.060 And I hated the outcome going through that initial transformation because it meant I gained so much

00:35:30.740 weight, so much weight. And at this point I hadn't really tackled the underlying cause either.

00:35:36.300 The why, which was, I felt like my body need, that was the thing that would give me value.

00:35:40.940 So I'm trying to do this just to stop the binging and the purging. So for me to see my body weight

00:35:46.680 exceed 70 kilograms, right now I sit at about 63 kilos. So to get to like 75 kilos at the peak of

00:35:55.120 my recovery was the most uncomfortable I think I've ever been. And I think anybody that's struggled

00:36:02.140 with body weight, you know, weight gain can appreciate that feeling. And I just had to do it.

00:36:08.680 Was the therapeutic instruction, like you need to sit in the discomfort of this weight gain?

00:36:14.020 Yep. That was one of the first strategies that I had to work through for my anxiety. At this point,

00:36:19.740 I'd also developed a social anxiety. It was just like the lid had been taken off and all these things

00:36:26.320 were like immersing themselves in front of me and I had no idea how to manage them. So yeah,

00:36:31.900 learning to sit with that discomfort and be okay with that. So now part of that process was

00:36:38.320 discussing the feelings. And that was really when we started to identify, okay, what are the feelings

00:36:45.120 that you have now that you've gained weight? And it of course led to, I feel horrible. I'm

00:36:49.920 disgusting. This is so unhealthy. You know, I hate myself, like just such horrible words to describe

00:36:57.480 myself. And I think one of the things that the time the therapist had said was, what would you say to a

00:37:03.060 client? Because at this time, like I'm practicing dietitian. I've been a dietitian for 10 plus years.

00:37:07.780 So I really had to go, okay, what would I say to my clients if they said that? So I had to start

00:37:14.120 treating myself like I would my clients. And yeah, there was a big shift then, just that compassion

00:37:19.840 that I had for myself. So how did that work? I think that's a wonderful test. I call it the Rick

00:37:24.680 Elias test. He's a friend of mine who describes it even one step further, which is, what would you

00:37:30.120 say to your best friend if they were saying these things, if they were in this situation? And it's

00:37:37.080 amazing how much it totally changes and softens the tone. It really does. You know, the first thing

00:37:42.500 that springs to mind was, but what about your physical appearance? Well, what does our friendship

00:37:49.340 have to do with your physical appearance if it was a friend? And nothing. It was like, I don't have any

00:37:56.520 logical reasoning for believing this to be true. And so many people like clients would say, oh, you

00:38:02.780 know, I've got this holiday catching up with some friends that I haven't seen in a long time. We've got

00:38:06.480 this, it's always a wedding or some kind of special event where they feel the need to look a certain

00:38:12.340 way. And I said, do you think you would have been invited if you were 10 kilos heavier? People are

00:38:16.640 like, yeah, of course. Those relationships aren't built on your aesthetic. It is built on your

00:38:21.800 character. There's obviously something admirable that people like about you that has nothing to

00:38:26.980 do with your appearance. It's a common interest, you know, the ability to connect over things and

00:38:32.620 maybe your sense of humor, insert whatever characteristic it is. And I think when I started talking to myself

00:38:38.000 in that way, I was like, oh yeah, I actually still can have fun on the weekends and it has nothing to

00:38:42.200 do with the weight on the scale or my body fat percentage. Part of what is so interesting about

00:38:47.240 your story makes it so hard to reconcile, which is everything we just talked about, which then

00:38:52.640 coexists with one of your passions, which is bodybuilding, which seems to me to be this single

00:39:02.000 activity that would most raise the risk of the one thing you're trying to prevent, right? I mean,

00:39:10.060 I guess if you were a jockey or a gymnast, that might be close on the list as well. But even those

00:39:16.820 entities wear more clothing than a bikini. You've chosen to have this hobby outside of your job,

00:39:23.980 but it's really related to your job. In many ways, it's the pinnacle of exercise and nutrition as it

00:39:30.820 pertains to aesthetics. And you've also chosen to do it in the drug-free category. So you don't get

00:39:38.840 to rely on any additional biochemistry. You have to do this just through training and nutrition.

00:39:45.140 I don't know if irony is the word, but there's something in there that's worth exploring.

00:39:49.740 I imagine this has come up repeatedly with your therapist. It's been a really long journey. And there

00:39:55.040 was a point just a few years ago where I really questioned my decisions to remain a coach and

00:40:00.760 to be in the nutrition and exercise space because of the hypocrisy that I felt with what I was

00:40:07.700 coaching on. Again, I think I can say that for the first 10 years of my practice, I had no desire to

00:40:16.160 change my beliefs. I believed truly the bottom of my heart that in order for me to be successful in

00:40:25.860 business, to support others the best that I possibly could and to be taken seriously in an industry that

00:40:32.840 is largely dominated by males. I needed to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk. So I never

00:40:41.700 addressed that belief. I believe that I needed to be lean. So I never did anything about it. I felt

00:40:47.100 uncomfortable that whole time, like the psychological stress that I had. Can you, by the way, give me some

00:40:51.300 examples on this? What body fat are you at when you're on stage? It depends. So I compete in,

00:40:57.320 I have competed in FIGA for IFBB, which is a non-drug tested federation. And I have since moved away

00:41:03.560 from that. But for those girls, you're probably looking at just on 10% body fat. They're extremely

00:41:09.080 lean. And now the division that I compete in, which is the fitness category, and it's for a different

00:41:14.400 federation. It's a slightly smaller body, but still very muscular and very lean. I probably get down to

00:41:22.860 about 10 or 11% body fat. And just to make sure I understand at 10 to 11% body fat, does your menstrual

00:41:30.160 cycle still continue? For majority of my competition history and competing life, yes, it would completely

00:41:37.280 stop. In fact, for about five years, I did not have a period. That was even with the return of calories

00:41:46.460 back to a normal amount, even with the return of body fat back to normal, healthy levels. I think it

00:41:53.120 was just the years of binging and purging. I mean, think about just from an evolutionary standpoint,

00:41:57.360 what that's telling you. That is telling you that, again, evolution has one purpose for you.

00:42:03.080 And it's saying you are not even fit enough to do this.

00:42:06.920 Yeah. And I mean, a lot of people ask, like, is it a healthy sport? And is it dangerous to get

00:42:10.800 that lean? And I would say, well, it kind of depends because, you know, I know there are a lot

00:42:15.380 of females that, particularly in that line of work, if you're going to call yourself a professional in

00:42:20.580 the bodybuilding space, they don't have the desire for families. So fertility isn't even an issue.

00:42:27.260 And I'm making no judgment about that. I'm just thinking about it from an evolutionary standpoint.

00:42:30.940 Absolutely. It's basically saying the one thing you were put on this earth to do,

00:42:35.160 evolution is putting the brakes on. Because it's basically saying you don't have enough

00:42:38.940 excess energy to care for another life, to carry another life to term.

00:42:42.500 It's really scary. So there's no doubts about it. It's not a great thing for females to be that lean.

00:42:48.160 We're not meant to be that lean. And I think, unfortunately, you know, it's just something

00:42:52.320 that has grown with the changes in time, society shift. I think there's been a lot of segue

00:42:57.700 and improvements with the ideals for females. I think it used to be extremely slim. You know,

00:43:04.120 you think about the really tall models, you know, runway models that used to be the look

00:43:08.320 that everyone wanted to go for. And I'm actually really happy that I think we're seeing a shift

00:43:13.000 just with the general population to empowering females with resistance training and strength

00:43:17.940 training. Because to me, that is far more beneficial than starving and, you know, being a bean pole.

00:43:26.440 So that's promising. But for whatever reason, we seem to kind of find ourselves back at this extremism

00:43:33.460 ideal and extremely lean women are simply not healthy. Now, do all women lose their menstrual cycle

00:43:42.060 when they compete? No, I've had probably a 50-50 with the competitors that I've worked with that

00:43:47.760 still have normal menstrual cycle or it may not stop, but it becomes, you know, irregular all over

00:43:54.000 the place. In fact, my last competition, I was actually getting a cycle like every two weeks for

00:43:59.300 about 16 weeks of a contest prep, which was really bizarre. But that was after all not having had a

00:44:05.660 period. So it took me a few years to recover my period through the process of reverse dieting,

00:44:11.220 the recovery diet, and allowing myself to gain some body fat and have an off-season where I

00:44:16.500 got an adequate amount of calories and was able to fuel my body to a point where, you know, my

00:44:21.260 hormones are working and functioning as they should. But yeah, then the other 50% of people do

00:44:26.360 completely lose it. How do you now think about this? If you could go back in time and talk to yourself

00:44:32.200 when you were 18 years old, would you say to Holly then, just stay away from the fitness industry,

00:44:38.720 stay away from bodybuilding, get your degree in economics or business, something like that. Do

00:44:44.840 you think that even though where you've ended up now, seems like you're on a path to recovery,

00:44:50.220 do you feel that you were just flying too close to the sun all of this time?

00:44:55.840 Yeah. So I have asked myself this question a lot. People will say, you know, what would you do

00:45:01.760 differently? I think that if you spend an equal amount of time working on your mental health and

00:45:12.420 that is coupled with diet and exercise, I believe because I'm in this place right now where wherever

00:45:21.080 I am along the spectrum of body fat, wherever I am, you know, in my competition on season,

00:45:26.860 off season, I could truly say that I am good with myself wherever I am. The things that will limit

00:45:35.120 me from getting to the point of obesity or like an unhealthy body weight would probably be like,

00:45:40.700 again, extreme habits, like taking anything to the limits where you're just completely careless with

00:45:46.160 your food and careless with exercise and you just don't have any interest. So I don't think I would

00:45:50.500 ever allow myself to get to that place because it just wouldn't feel good anymore. I try to really

00:45:56.700 be conscious of, okay, what leads to you, number one, feeling happy. And then also what's good for

00:46:03.780 your body? How do you feel best? Where do you perform best? How do I think and function best?

00:46:09.000 I feel like you can be in this space, but I know a lot of people are not doing the work that is

00:46:15.700 required to shift their why. Because I think that's really important for people that are moving into the

00:46:21.300 bodybuilding space. So I want to just kind of walk through, let's say your most recent contest.

00:46:26.440 You just had a contest a couple of weeks ago, right? So I want to walk through the training

00:46:32.520 and the nutrition for the entire prep. So let's just say six months leading up to the contest. So

00:46:38.740 kind of a bulking building phase and then a cutting phase and then a post phase or a recovery diet phase.

00:46:45.920 And even though in your case, the stakes are really high, it's a professional bodybuilding

00:46:51.080 competition at the highest level, right? It's a world federation. But for someone listening to this,

00:46:55.880 it could be their wedding. You know, a woman who wants to look her best at her wedding and might

00:47:02.400 acknowledge that it's going to not be the most sustainable she can be, but wants to do it in a

00:47:07.900 way that's not harmful. So let's go back as far as we need to, six months, nine months, a year.

00:47:13.140 Yeah. What does that look like?

00:47:13.960 Yeah. What is the training? How do you periodize it? What are the principles of nutrition and everything?

00:47:19.660 I want to understand what the cutting phase looks like. And I want to know what this,

00:47:22.420 because my wife was telling me, cause you guys were talking about this, the recovery phase is also

00:47:26.860 very important. How you come out of the competition without doing what would be natural, given that

00:47:32.260 you're starving is just to go wild. So let's go back to the beginning. It's time to start adding muscle

00:47:39.440 and bulking.

00:47:40.380 Well, first and foremost, I'd say majority of the people that our team work with are just gen pop,

00:47:45.960 not quite as extreme or high up in like the professional athletes status that I am.

00:47:51.500 But the wonderful thing is that the processes are honestly no different. The only true difference

00:47:58.900 between somebody that is a professional athlete versus your stay at home mom who wants to look

00:48:05.600 good for, you know, they've got a girl's trip coming up or something, you know, next year or a wedding,

00:48:09.860 like you said, would be the extreme or the degree to which we take these processes. So for most people,

00:48:18.020 when we first start, I kind of want to have an idea about like, what's their goal? What do you

00:48:23.960 ideally want to look like? Or sometimes there's health goals as well, but I will say the majority

00:48:29.940 of people that come to us are also looking to, or primarily wanting to change their physique.

00:48:34.460 So we need to get a good understanding of what that looks like, because a lot of women will say,

00:48:40.440 hey, you know, I'm down for this resistance training that you're talking about, but I'm

00:48:44.320 terrified of getting too bulky. And how we approach this whole thing comes down to the individual's

00:48:51.080 definition of like, what's bulky look like to you?

00:48:53.980 Yeah. What percentage of clients that you guys have look at you and say, I don't want to look like

00:48:59.140 you. That's too much muscle. I would say that most of my clients, 90% of my clients

00:49:04.960 like this ideal. I think most people would say, yeah, I am not too bulky. Yeah, Holly, you look

00:49:10.540 great. I have had some people like, nope, your quads are way too big. Nope. I want to fit in my

00:49:15.200 jeans or, you know, something like that. But for the most part, my physique, that fitness looking

00:49:20.060 fitness model physique is something that most women, I might be generalizing, but aspire to. But again,

00:49:26.020 if I'm talking to an endurance athlete versus somebody that has come from a sporty background

00:49:31.040 and they're trying to do something that's very anaerobic, might be a different physique ideal

00:49:35.800 because that would not be beneficial for their sport. But we want to identify that first. So we

00:49:40.500 go through, it's very unlikely that women will get to the point where they look like a female

00:49:46.140 bodybuilder. Like these things don't happen naturally. Those bodybuilders, like that physique,

00:49:51.300 that look is not obtained without performance enhancing drugs. My physique.

00:49:57.240 And great genetics, extreme training.

00:49:59.880 Personality, yeah.

00:50:00.300 And perfect nutrition.

00:50:01.580 Yes, yeah.

00:50:02.340 We call it the myth of accidental muscle. It's just not going to happen.

00:50:05.660 You still have to admire those people despite them being, it's not easy. It's still not easy,

00:50:09.680 but they've got some support. So for me, if someone was looking to make change their physique to

00:50:15.360 this level of muscularity, that's still taken me like seven years of very consistent nutrition and

00:50:23.040 training where I have probably missed less than 10 weeks a year of training. And I have been like

00:50:29.260 that for 10 years. So you're not going to accidentally grow muscle like this, even without

00:50:34.480 some serious consistency.

00:50:36.300 And how do you help them identify the actual goals? I think this is an important state. So

00:50:40.820 I'm going to use a female example here and focus that. If she comes in and says, look,

00:50:45.140 I'm getting married next summer and I want to look my best. Is that not specific enough? You want to

00:50:50.640 say, well, right now you weigh this much and your body fat is this. A year from now, do you want to

00:50:57.340 weigh this much and have your body fat be this? I mean, what degree of granularity do you need to set

00:51:02.140 the goal, to set the path?

00:51:03.820 So I am pretty granular compared to some of even our other coaches. I think all of our processes are

00:51:09.000 slightly different. I guess the principles at the end of the day are the same, but I'll often say,

00:51:13.420 is there somebody that you follow on social media or that you've seen in magazines that you

00:51:17.600 really like their physique just to help me get a better understanding? Because it does really vary.

00:51:22.580 And sometimes I've been very shocked. I'm like, oh, okay. All right. I actually don't really need

00:51:26.360 to do a whole lot of building for this individual, you know, based on where they currently are.

00:51:30.600 So that building phase may not even be part of the equation. We also have a look at their scale weight

00:51:36.040 and their current body fat percentages, which will preferentially have them send us through

00:51:39.960 DEXA. We'll take a look at all their biomarkers, that type of thing. And then from there, I kind

00:51:45.420 of plot a bit of a trajectory. So if they do need to gain, you know, a significant amount of muscle

00:51:51.560 in that 12 months time, I will basically map out week for week using some equations like, okay,

00:51:57.620 this is basically how many weeks of building we would need to do as a natural drug-free person.

00:52:03.640 And tell me what you believe the limits are for women.

00:52:07.040 It's going to be a little bit lower than males. And part of that is just due to their ability to

00:52:11.360 build more muscle mass and I guess sex differences and that type of thing. But we can still do a lot

00:52:17.220 of positive work in an off season. In an eight week period, I was actually looking at a study very

00:52:22.180 recently for natural athletes. We're able to acquire somewhere just under the amount of one kilogram

00:52:27.980 of fat-free mass. Fat-free mass isn't just skeletal tissue. We've got to take into consideration,

00:52:34.020 you know, the increases in water mass, increases in all of these other things.

00:52:38.060 That's my record, by the way, in the one year I dedicated to the most improvement was 13 pounds

00:52:45.260 in 12 months of fat-free mass. So it's about a kilo per eight weeks.

00:52:50.260 Yep. That sounds dead on.

00:52:51.380 And you're saying that's true for men and women?

00:52:53.380 Well, again, it depends on the individual. How much time are they willing to invest in this goal?

00:52:58.340 Where is it on their priority list? You know, it really comes down to their training volumes. How

00:53:02.300 well are you going to adhere to your diet? How are you going to adhere to these other variables that

00:53:06.400 all impact your rates of muscle gain? So...

00:53:09.320 Do you know what the largest amount of lean mass you've put on in a year has been?

00:53:13.360 So I haven't done it over 12 months, but I do know that between two competitions,

00:53:18.380 one at the beginning of the year, one towards the end or last quarter,

00:53:21.260 I put on about six kilograms.

00:53:23.660 That's like 14 pounds of lean tissue.

00:53:26.580 So it was a lot. And that was me going into the University of South Florida. We were doing my

00:53:31.040 BMR testing. I did muscle thickness testing. So this was all fairly accurate methods of determining

00:53:36.860 hypertrophy. That blew my mind. But again, I would say I've put on muscle very easily. You know,

00:53:43.040 maybe there's a genetic component to that, but I'm also very regimented with my training. And

00:53:47.740 the period of time when that happened, I was very fluffy. I allowed myself to put on a lot of body

00:53:54.740 fat.

00:53:55.340 Oh, yeah. So I want to ask you about that. So with the six kilos of lean tissue,

00:53:59.440 how much fat tissue came with it?

00:54:01.120 For me?

00:54:01.680 Yeah. In that particular episode for you?

00:54:03.300 Oh, goodness. It was probably about 30% on top of. So yeah, if I had six pounds...

00:54:09.780 So two pounds, two kilos to fat.

00:54:11.980 Exactly. So basically, your body fat probably went up a little bit as you put on a lot more lean

00:54:19.620 mass. I'd say I probably went up by about 30%. So if I started this build at 12% after a show,

00:54:26.860 I got up to 19%. So actually, it's more than that. I remember being 19% body fat at the end of

00:54:31.500 that build. That's kind of amazing, Holly. To me, if a guy made that change, that would be considered

00:54:37.520 impressive drug-free. So that a woman could do that... And again, let's just posit that you have

00:54:42.560 great genetics, but it gives us a range that there are women with lesser genetics who might

00:54:48.120 be able to do half of that in a year. They might be able to put on three kilos in a year,

00:54:52.720 which is still seven pounds, basically.

00:54:55.240 And I think I also have to be very transparent about this. So I was in a position too, where

00:55:00.420 my ability to kind of step back from my other obligations and priorities

00:55:04.520 has been fair... I'm not going to say easily facilitated, but...

00:55:08.720 But you're doing this as your job.

00:55:10.180 Yes. So I remember and recall through that training block, I had programmed progressively

00:55:15.840 overloading. Like my first week of a MESA cycle might've been three working sets of everything

00:55:21.920 on my list. And I might've had six or seven exercises. By that sixth week of training,

00:55:26.740 I would be pushing like five working hard sets, high training intensity, you know, RPEs,

00:55:33.220 eight and nines of my first three exercises and then four of everything else. Like the

00:55:37.500 volume I was getting up to was insane.

00:55:41.200 So talk to me about hours in gym per day in the beginning of the build phase versus the

00:55:46.660 end of the build phase.

00:55:47.660 I hit it hard pretty quick, pretty early. I also had a bit more of a reactive style to

00:55:52.800 deloads. Normally I would plan intentional deloads. The whole purpose of that build was to

00:55:57.640 get as much muscle on me as I could in a very short timeframe. So the volume,

00:56:02.560 volume probably went up by about 50% within the first 12 weeks. And then it just continued

00:56:09.240 to grow. So the time that it would take me varied from maybe 90 minutes in like the earlier

00:56:16.140 part of that build phase all the way up to two, two and a half hours daily. And I was

00:56:20.860 doing five sessions a week at that point. So it was a big commitment.

00:56:23.940 And then were you doing any cardio at that time?

00:56:25.900 Minimal. I would just hit a daily step target of about 10,000 steps and cardio was not even

00:56:31.580 part of the equation.

00:56:32.720 So averaging two, up to two and a half hours a day in the gym, five days a week. So again,

00:56:38.460 we're talking about good genetics coupled with-

00:56:42.200 15 hours.

00:56:42.980 A lot of training. Some of the people listening to this podcast, I'm guessing will be more women

00:56:47.200 than men, won't be as familiar with RPE. Do you mind explaining to people what that is?

00:56:51.740 Because it's going to be an important concept as we talk about resistance training.

00:56:54.320 So RPE is or stands for a rate of perceived exertion. So it's a measure of training intensity

00:57:02.040 and training intensity is one of the principles that need to be increased over your training

00:57:08.500 lifespan in order to facilitate hypertrophy. I guess I can reflect back on my early training days

00:57:14.800 and I didn't even have a training RPE. There was no training intensity. I guess another one that we

00:57:20.200 can refer to, which we use on our workout builder programs is the RIR, which is repetitions in

00:57:25.700 reserve. An RIR of three would mean that you've got three repetitions in reserve all the way up to

00:57:32.200 an IRR of zero. You're hitting failure. So whatever weight or load you select for your lift, you are

00:57:38.400 going to your drop essentially. So my training when I first started lifting incorrectly was so low,

00:57:47.640 like I never challenged myself. And again, I know that we wanted to talk today about our bodybuilding

00:57:52.560 versus powerlifting and how they may be beneficial for females. I am so grateful for the time that I

00:57:59.260 spent powerlifting because that style of training threw me into understanding training intensity

00:58:05.300 and what my true strength was. So there was a lot of carryover to how quickly I was able to select

00:58:12.360 weights for my bodybuilding style of workouts. And that advanced me so quickly.

00:58:18.140 So just to make sure I understand, you're saying when you were younger and you were doing fitness

00:58:22.120 training and even training for track and field, you were never pushing yourself in the weight room.

00:58:27.240 Your RPE was below five. Your RIR was above five.

00:58:30.840 Yep, absolutely. And we were never even given a training intensity. It was just do three sets of 12.

00:58:35.120 So right now, when you say in this building phase, when you say RPE eight, meaning you stopped and you

00:58:42.320 had two in the tank, you could have potentially squeezed out two more. And you said, so if you're

00:58:46.760 doing RPE eight to nine, these are near failure sets all the way through. Yep, absolutely.

00:58:53.060 Focus on how would you split those five days? Was it a leg day, a push pull day? How are you splitting

00:59:00.500 those days? If we all look at how I kind of set up a training program, there are so many ways that you

00:59:06.800 can go about this and, but they all do need to follow principles of hypertrophy. And I guess number

00:59:12.700 one is exercise specificity. We need to be making sure that we're training in such a way or a modality

00:59:17.640 that is going to have the desired outcome. So obviously building muscle and then choosing muscle

00:59:22.680 groups that you want to build during that timeframe. So for me, that looks like glute hypertrophy.

00:59:28.280 That's kind of the main area that most women, or at least those that I'm experienced in working with

00:59:33.160 really want to improve because that has a lot of benefits for many things from normal day-to-day

00:59:38.620 activities, bending down, squatting through to, you know, improve strength across all sports,

00:59:43.480 jumping, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, you know, there's so many benefits. So glute hypertrophy took up a big

00:59:47.960 part of my training volume. Shoulder hypertrophy was another one that I really focused a lot of my

00:59:53.460 training volume on to kind of create the capped shoulders and the illusion of a narrower

00:59:58.200 waist. Thinking back to that build, most of the training that I was doing was lower body. So I

01:00:03.820 actually did four lower body sessions, believe it or not, per week, and then one upper body session.

01:00:09.740 So it sounds crazy.

01:00:11.080 It does sound crazy. And those four lower body sessions, were you still dividing the legs up

01:00:16.420 or were you hitting the same muscles of the legs four days?

01:00:20.060 I think my programs varied. And again, I would kind of triage to kind of give my body the recovery that

01:00:25.300 it needed. And again, it was very reactive style deload. So I would start by Monday might be spread

01:00:31.780 out by doing a quad hamstring, glute, carve, quad hamstring. And then that might be that workout.

01:00:38.500 I may have a second day, which looks like hamstring quad, or I would prioritize again,

01:00:44.380 the muscle groups that I knew I wanted to build. Then I would have a rest day because back-to-back two

01:00:49.040 days of leg days, pretty intense. And then I would probably incorporate an upper body session

01:00:54.180 to again, a second day of complete rest from my legs. And then I would finish out the week by doing

01:01:00.320 a Thursday session, lower body, two days off, come back in, train on a Sunday, another lower body

01:01:06.620 session. So there was a lot of training volume. And I just want to say that I would never do that for

01:01:14.380 somebody that was brand new to training. That volume would be radically reduced.

01:01:19.000 Okay. So what would it look like for a person who has some exercise background? They go to

01:01:25.060 Orange Theory Fitness twice a week. They're a relatively active person, but they don't have

01:01:30.500 any powerlifting experience. They don't know the difference between RPE9 and RPE5. So they're not

01:01:35.900 there, but they still have this ambition of building. They want to put on five pounds of muscle in the next

01:01:42.460 year and lose three pounds of fat. That's the physique goal.

01:01:46.900 First and foremost, I would say like, again, if this is like literal practical takeaways,

01:01:51.420 I would say, number one, find somebody that's evidence-based first and foremost. Ideally,

01:01:57.020 find somebody that can also, that's evidence-based, be with you in a gym setting. They do one-on-one

01:02:02.080 training because there is so much value and knowledge to be learned just one-on-one, spending time with

01:02:07.980 someone that's got more knowledge than you in that space, developing optimal training techniques,

01:02:12.300 developing the right movement pathways. And boy, I have seen some doozies, clients being trained in

01:02:18.200 the gym by someone that has no idea how to squat or deadlift. So another little plus, if you can find

01:02:23.720 somebody that does powerlifting or has done bodybuilding and powerlifting, I think that is

01:02:30.560 like a little golden egg. There's not a lot of these people out there, but incorporating that

01:02:34.880 evidence-based approach with experience, with women and powerlifting and bodybuilding,

01:02:40.060 that's like the perfect ideal. And experience with women because of what difference specifically?

01:02:47.380 Is it anatomic differences in movements or is it just the assumption that women are coming in with

01:02:53.580 lower training volume? Look, there's plenty of men out there that can do that as well, but I think

01:02:57.340 you've got to connect with the person that you're working with. Now, if you've got a male that's

01:03:02.900 extremely experienced in all of those things, then of course, a male can be great. But I think

01:03:08.520 having gone through different body image issues, having that understanding and appreciation for

01:03:14.980 maybe body dysmorphia, having an appreciation for menstrual cycle. I think men that are in the

01:03:22.100 fitness industry, and I don't want to generalize because I know there's a lot of really intelligent

01:03:25.980 guys out there, but there isn't a lot of work. Just the general personal trainer and the amount of

01:03:31.720 time that they spend learning about the reproductive system and how that can impact strength and

01:03:36.420 subjective performance and the implications that that can have on your mood, your psychological

01:03:42.760 state, and just the plethora of like what being a woman encompasses. I just think that women tend to

01:03:49.800 do better with female trainers, but it's harder to come by. So that's what I mean by that.

01:03:56.360 So what would you design for a client in that situation? I'm just going to make it even harder.

01:04:01.700 This is a woman who wants to gain five pounds of muscle and lose five pounds of fat in a year.

01:04:07.280 In other words, they want to weigh, they're fine weighing the same amount next year,

01:04:11.620 but the change in body composition is going to be dramatic.

01:04:14.940 First and foremost, I would be looking at, okay, what realistically can we gain

01:04:18.640 in an eight month timeframe? Because that's the period of time you want to build up.

01:04:22.420 Yes, absolutely. So first off, from a program design standpoint, we would want to start with a

01:04:28.460 fairly low training volume. If this is somebody that has not done a whole lot of resistance training.

01:04:34.240 So we would start by selecting the muscle groups and the exercises that target the areas they want

01:04:39.260 to build. And we would progressively overload that training. So it might start with one working set

01:04:45.620 for every exercise in week one. That little. Yep. That little. So typically I would start with a

01:04:51.280 program that is 40 minutes maximum, 30 or 40 minutes maximum. How many warmup sets to get to that

01:04:56.040 working set typically? Probably one or two. And part of that would also be just helping with the

01:05:00.200 demonstration of technique and kind of getting that movement pattern. And what would be the RPE of the

01:05:04.660 one working set? Starting off like an RPE six or seven in a week one. A set of 10, but weighted to an

01:05:10.920 RPE of six or seven. Yep, exactly. Which again, just for the person listening means you're going to do

01:05:16.000 10 reps of this thing, but if your life depended on it, you could get 13 or 14. Exactly. Yep. And just

01:05:21.900 one set. So you might start with three days a week. And again, we've got to incorporate the

01:05:26.880 person's ability to sacrifice time for their training. And so the other thing I'm taking

01:05:31.400 away from this, Holly, cause I wouldn't have thought of this. So I'm glad I'm asking this

01:05:34.000 question. It's better that she does one set of leg extension, one set of leg curl, one set of

01:05:40.280 single leg RDL, one set of leg press, instead of just do five sets of leg press. It's teaching her

01:05:47.480 enough. It's giving her the education on this so that you can now build on that.

01:05:51.680 Yeah, absolutely. Well, you're learning what muscle, what exercises target certain muscle groups,

01:05:55.400 and you're also minimizing the risk of them getting injured or ending up with extreme

01:06:00.640 delayed onset muscle saunas. The last thing that you want to do is put together a program that is

01:06:05.280 too difficult. And the next day they can't even walk. How well is somebody going to more likely to

01:06:11.360 comply with that program? You know, thereafter, if they've had that level of pain from a session,

01:06:15.800 it's going to be really low. So we want to have good adherence from the get go.

01:06:19.140 And it's also, I guess, more interesting, like the diversity of the program.

01:06:22.040 Exercise diversity. And I think women definitely, well, men and women as well,

01:06:25.440 but I think males are probably happy to do a lot more repetitive type training to get to the end

01:06:30.860 result. Females, we like a little bit of diversity. How many days a week are you doing this? And are you

01:06:35.360 mixing upper and lower body on the same day at the beginning? It doesn't really matter. Again,

01:06:39.200 the primary driver of what or how I would put together that workout would really be training volumes.

01:06:44.280 So whether or not you do lower body and an upper body, or whether you do full body training session,

01:06:50.200 it doesn't really matter. I would probably be deferring to what's your history like? What's

01:06:55.560 your experience? What do you like doing? Because on paper, it probably doesn't really matter that

01:07:00.600 much. What's more important is that I can get you to stick to this.

01:07:03.780 So how many weeks are you in that phase?

01:07:06.080 Typically, I will write a mesocycle for somewhere between four and six weeks. So again,

01:07:10.560 my decision for four weeks versus six weeks is the person's ability to adhere to the same program for

01:07:16.960 that amount of time. I know for me, when I first started, if I had to do the same program for more

01:07:21.640 than two or three weeks, I was like, this is so boring. Like as if it's even working, let's change

01:07:26.900 it up. So again, there's a lot of personal preference when it comes to putting those programs

01:07:31.540 together. I personally write my programs for six weeks. I can handle anything for six weeks. It's

01:07:37.680 repetitive, but you've got maybe three or four, maybe five programs again, depending on the levels

01:07:42.040 of the individual's experience levels. So you've got quite a bit of exercise diversity, you know,

01:07:46.780 within a seven day period.

01:07:47.700 So tell me some of the lower body exercises you would have a relative newbie, but not a total

01:07:53.020 novice do. You would cycle through what for lower body?

01:07:55.960 I think my favorites for compoundless are always going to be your typical powerlifting movement. So

01:08:01.200 I always try to incorporate some kind of squat or hinging variation or deadlift. So the degree

01:08:08.440 of flexibility just with those two exercises alone is enormous. Like you can do heels, elevated

01:08:13.220 squats, Smith's machine squats, box squats, pause squats, Anderson squats. Like there's so many

01:08:18.620 variations.

01:08:19.600 So if you have a woman who's never done anything, basics.

01:08:23.400 And that's what you're going to start with like a goblet squat or a back squat to a box or.

01:08:27.860 Yep. Absolutely. Body weight squat would be actually the first thing. So I'm just

01:08:31.080 looking at movement pattern to begin with. And then we start to add loads. And I typically start

01:08:36.280 with Arbel and my preference is low bar squatting. I like to teach, well, actually it depends on the

01:08:41.760 person's anatomical makeup because high bar squatting might be better suited to an individual

01:08:47.000 that's got very short femurs compared to somebody that has extremely long femurs. Like I do

01:08:51.960 low bar squatting. And I'm basically leaning over, looking at the ground when I squat just to clear my

01:08:56.960 hips. So keeping it basic.

01:08:59.340 And when you say low, high, you mean the position on the track?

01:09:02.100 Position on the back. Yeah, absolutely. So there are advantages, I guess, of having a

01:09:05.740 low bar squat in that if you think about, if you hold a weight plate right in front of you,

01:09:11.020 that's 20 pounds, you can probably do it for a long period of time. If we extend our arms out,

01:09:15.220 how long do you think you're going to hold that 20 pound weight?

01:09:16.920 Not too long.

01:09:17.480 Not very long. So similar hypotheses is that when we put the squat bar lower to our center

01:09:23.120 of gravity, we tend to have a little bit more strength and power. And that was a big difference

01:09:27.160 for me as somebody that had crazy long levers. I was a terrible high bar squatter. My strength went

01:09:32.520 up 50% by shifting to that low bar position. So again, you asked about the-

01:09:37.380 But is that only because your femurs are so long?

01:09:39.480 Correct.

01:09:39.960 Okay.

01:09:40.120 There's other reasons as well. I think spine length as well. I have a long spine, very long

01:09:44.340 torso. So again, I want to bring that barbell back into closer to my center of gravity. So I'm

01:09:48.840 very low on the back. And I realize I'm totally deviating from what you asked me, but keeping

01:09:53.520 it simple with the squats.

01:09:55.140 And are there any women that you look at and you just say, you know what, you're never going

01:09:59.380 to be a power lifter. It's not worth the risk. I don't want you squatting.

01:10:02.220 I would say anybody that's got some serious injuries, like a history of hip injury, knee injuries.

01:10:08.140 But again, my area of expertise isn't in like rehabilitation. So I'm normally working in

01:10:13.100 conjunction with a physical therapist or chiropractor or something like that.

01:10:16.860 Do you find women who have never done this kind of intimidated by the idea of that big

01:10:19.960 45 pound Olympic bar going on their back?

01:10:22.500 Heck yes. Absolutely.

01:10:24.940 It is intimidating. I think if you've not done that before, it looks really scary.

01:10:28.820 Terrifying. And I think people's like fear is that the bar is going to come down on top of

01:10:32.640 them.

01:10:32.780 It's going to turn them into a pancake.

01:10:34.020 Yeah, absolutely. So when you're first starting, you're not going to be loading the bar that heavy.

01:10:37.480 But I think I work with the catch bars on. So a technique that I would do and incorporate

01:10:42.300 into a new person's program, if I was training one-on-one would be the Anderson squat.

01:10:46.440 So you basically start with the bar on the catches. So you position them at a height.

01:10:51.100 You start in the low position.

01:10:52.440 Yeah. So you're finding the client's, I guess, horizontal position at the bottom of the squat.

01:10:57.640 And that's where you start.

01:10:59.000 The thighs are parallel to the ground.

01:11:01.460 You start in that position and the rep is up, down.

01:11:03.960 Push up. Yeah, absolutely. So that's a really empowering exercise that I think helps build

01:11:10.060 confidence. So I'll do that in conjunction with other squat variations. You know, it's such a big

01:11:16.000 movement. You're using multi-joint, big muscle groups. So it's also going to help contribute

01:11:21.080 positively to energy expenditure compared to just doing, you know, isolation exercises like

01:11:25.740 triceps and biceps. In fact, I rarely program arms for women anymore.

01:11:29.860 Really? And again, it depends on their goals. They're a kayaker or something. They need arm

01:11:34.320 strength. I'm going to probably do that. But for aesthetic reasons alone, most women,

01:11:39.500 once we get rid of the body fat, they've got great arms because just by way of the muscle

01:11:45.200 engagement during these big compound lifts, you're using those muscles anyway.

01:11:49.700 Okay. What's your preferred deadlift if you had to choose, or how do you think about navigating

01:11:54.560 trap bar versus traditional versus sumo? Anatomical structure of an individual. So

01:12:01.020 people that have exceptionally long arms are extremely good deadlifters typically because

01:12:08.100 they basically don't have to lean forwards very far to have a bar in their hands. My arms are like

01:12:14.600 T-Rex arms. Like they are disproportionately shorter than everything else, but also is great and creates

01:12:19.820 the illusion that I have massive arms when I don't really. So for me, I am not any way,

01:12:27.120 shape or form built to be a good deadlifter. So you might be more of a trap bar deadlifter.

01:12:32.220 Yes. Whereas he's more of a sumo deadlifter.

01:12:33.960 Yeah. But when I do deadlift, I, for that reason, I do sumo because by widening my stance,

01:12:39.780 I can now get lower to the bar and then I don't have to be so horizontal to get down to reach.

01:12:45.660 It would be very painful for you. Oh, it is my spine. And I've also extremely long spine. So my

01:12:52.200 deadlift is so ugly. Technically it looks disgusting, but I'm doing all the right things.

01:12:57.140 Like we know that a little bit of spinal curvature in a deadlift is okay if you are activating your

01:13:03.800 core and you're keeping tight. So yeah, I have a bunch back of Notre Dame looking conventional

01:13:08.560 deadlift, which is feet together. But sumo deadlift is my preference because it enables me to get

01:13:13.420 closer to the bar. And I just feel like I'm in a better position to execute.

01:13:17.500 Interesting, right? Out of the gate, we're going to take a woman who's never done these things before,

01:13:21.160 and we're going to program in some getting to know the squat, getting to know the deadlift.

01:13:26.120 You're going to also include isolation exercises, and I assume they follow in the workout. So you'll

01:13:31.960 start with the prime movers and the combined hip hinges, and then you'll move to leg extensions,

01:13:37.900 leg curls. Where does split squatting and lunging fit in?

01:13:40.940 Typically I will incorporate at max two large compound multi-joint exercises. Typically the

01:13:47.660 first six to eight sets are your best sets. They are like working sets. And then what we tend to

01:13:54.200 see is that any volume that's accrued after those eight first working sets, you start to have like

01:13:59.300 diminishing returns. So big movers first, isolation, accessory exercises second. So again, the way that I

01:14:06.260 would structure in something like lunges or leg extensions or hamstring curls or calf raises,

01:14:11.740 it depends on what that person is wanting to build. Truly, that's all it is. So again, if we look at the,

01:14:17.020 I guess, minimum dose for hypertrophy, when we look at like total set number, we want to be shooting for

01:14:24.220 somewhere around probably the 10 to 15 range per muscle group.

01:14:27.860 When you say per muscle group, you're counting quads distinct from hamstrings, distinct from glutes,

01:14:34.300 distinct from calves.

01:14:35.440 The trouble is, and I guess a lot of people have a difficulty trying to write their own program,

01:14:39.160 is that certain movements use both. So I will often just give us, yep, that counts as this exercise

01:14:45.700 and that muscle group, and it counts as that.

01:14:47.680 So the deadlift is going to triple everything. It's hitting everything. But when you do the leg

01:14:52.240 extension, it only counts for quads.

01:14:54.840 Leg curl only counts for hamstring.

01:14:56.880 Exactly.

01:14:57.680 You're saying we want, by the end of this workout, we want to have 10 to 15 boxes checked for each of

01:15:02.740 those muscle groups. So let's just go through some of them. So your favorites for glutes,

01:15:07.520 obviously a squat and a deadlift, a single leg RDL.

01:15:10.460 Yep. Interestingly, I actually was looking at a systematic review on glute hypertrophy recently,

01:15:15.900 and I guess they were using muscle activation as opposed to true muscle thickness testing or some

01:15:22.060 of those other more accurate methods of hypertrophy. But step-ups were actually as good as glute

01:15:30.280 activation as some of your hip thrusts and, you know, squats, particularly some of the horizontal

01:15:36.280 style step-ups or lunges where you're coming across the body. So like a cross bench step-up where

01:15:42.660 you're taking the foot down one side and then coming back up, where there's a lot of stretch

01:15:48.540 and lengthening taking place in the glute. So for glute hypertrophy, there's always a hip thrust,

01:15:55.660 a hinge of some sort, or a bridge, usually some kind of abduction. An abduction is basically taking your

01:16:02.980 knees out as opposed to adduction, which is bringing them together. So I'll find different machines that

01:16:09.200 enable that and also do those on the cables as well with an ankle attachment. So they're the

01:16:14.640 primary ones that I would use for glutes. Those are great. Okay. So deadlifts, squats,

01:16:21.500 hip thrusters, step-ups, and abduction. That's a lot. So you got a lot to choose from there to just,

01:16:27.500 you got to get 10. You don't have to be doing all of them every time. Yep. And to be honest,

01:16:32.200 as that individual progresses over, I guess, a seven day training block, we may be working up to

01:16:38.980 30 sets on each individual muscle group. If they're able to execute that over a seven day

01:16:46.780 period because of their training frequency, obviously, you know, a beginner, we're probably

01:16:50.620 going to be looking, you know, over a seven day period, they may get 10 to 15 sets with their three

01:16:55.280 or four training sessions, but someone that's more advanced really may be pushing like up to 30 sets,

01:17:00.200 maybe even more. But again, there's a point where we have like diminishing returns where

01:17:04.320 the inflammatory response to that training just makes it impossible to continue making progress,

01:17:08.980 in which case we have the deload. Okay. So then for quads, obviously a lot of what you mentioned

01:17:14.500 is going to hit quads, certainly the squat, to some extent, the deadlift, depending on how they do it,

01:17:19.660 the step up, certainly RDL won't, abduction won't. So then you add some dedicated stuff like leg

01:17:25.860 extensions. Yep. So leg extensions are a really simple one, obviously minimal setup, straight on

01:17:31.640 the machine, but I also like different leg press variations and different squat variations that get

01:17:36.680 our knee into a position where there's far more forward knee travel. There's a lot of

01:17:41.680 contradictions. I used to hear that all the time. It's like, don't put your knee over your toe.

01:17:45.100 It's dangerous for your knee. Now, if someone's had a history of knee injuries, that's something that

01:17:49.900 you would want to take very slowly and very progressively, but anything where we can get

01:17:54.280 the knee traveling past the toes. So by elevating your heels in something like a barbell squat,

01:17:59.120 my preference is honestly on a Smith machine because it really controls the movement pattern

01:18:02.860 and you only go forwards. And so people know the Smith machine is the squat bar that has the hooks

01:18:08.800 on it. That's in tracks. The path is vertical and it's controlled. Yeah, it's completely fixed.

01:18:12.780 So I love that exercise. I think targeting my quads, that's been a huge help. And then also foot

01:18:18.500 positioning on the leg press. So again, you're looking to have at the bottom of the movement

01:18:24.000 where your quads are in a lengthened position, you want to have lots of forward knee travel.

01:18:30.060 And I won't be specific in where you should put your feet because feet placement honestly depends

01:18:36.620 on the machine that you've got access to, because I've had some, I've had to put my feet up quite high

01:18:41.480 because of the movement plane. Yeah. So it's less where the feet go and it's more where the knees and

01:18:47.140 toes are in relation to each other in the bottom position. Yes, exactly.

01:18:50.940 So are you saying to the client, we want you to work to your level of comfort in getting knees

01:18:55.960 over your toes in the leg press, and that's going to maximize quad development. And obviously

01:19:00.200 you're going to work the back of the leg in the opposite position.

01:19:03.620 And then also there's a lot of benefits to doing like single leg work too. So many of us,

01:19:08.020 and I was honestly disgusted at my own imbalances when I tested it the other day,

01:19:12.420 I was doing some single leg squats, just sitting to a box, then standing on the box to going to the

01:19:17.960 floor only. And it's very easy, you know, with lots of repeat training and lots of repeating the

01:19:23.380 same movements where we have a bit of a discrepancy. So I really like to incorporate at least one single

01:19:29.400 leg exercise for every session. If we start to add too many single or leg movements, your program

01:19:35.200 ends up extremely long. So that's real consideration. You know, not everybody has three hours to train.

01:19:40.220 So we want to be concise and to the point. What are some of your favorite hamstring hits?

01:19:45.180 My favorite is a seated hamstring curl. And the reason for that is it is better able to isolate

01:19:50.720 your hamstrings than say a prone hamstring curl where you're laying on your stomach and you're

01:19:55.440 kind of curling the machine in towards your hamstrings. And part of that is just because

01:19:59.720 of the position of the movement, when you're in a seated hamstring machine, you've already got

01:20:04.620 tension on the hamstrings because we're sitting in this upright position. It's a lot more

01:20:09.700 tension on the hamstrings. And if you're in a prone position where your hips are far more open,

01:20:14.600 we don't get the same kind of shortening of the hamstrings. So my preference is to do a lot more

01:20:20.660 volume on a seated machine. I'm not saying you don't do any prone work, but I'll do less of that

01:20:27.440 exercise. The other exercise that I really love for hamstrings and glutes, particularly the hamstring

01:20:34.180 tie-in, which I think a lot of women, you know, you'll see the bikini competitors specifically

01:20:38.480 have these incredibly tight hamstring attachments to their glutes. A lot of that is conditioning,

01:20:44.860 which basically just means getting rid of all the body fat. You will see that, but RDLs and banded

01:20:51.320 RDLs. Tell folks what an RDL is. So a remedian deadlift, I guess you are, it's a hinging exercise

01:20:58.380 and you're shifting your hips back to lengthen the hamstrings. So you are loading the hamstrings

01:21:04.320 in that exercise. We'll link to videos of all these things so people can see what they look like.

01:21:08.700 Awesome. Cool. So you can do that with dumbbells. You can do it with barbell. You can do it with

01:21:13.820 kettlebells if you don't have access to those. And do you prefer to do these single leg?

01:21:18.760 So I'll do both. Again, for a compound movement, if I'm trying to hammer my hamstrings, I probably

01:21:23.280 will start with an RDL because it's a big movement. You know, we're talking multi-joint.

01:21:28.100 And when you do it two legs, you're loading on your back?

01:21:30.860 No, in front of me. So the barbell hangs in front, all the dumbbells. For me, when I first

01:21:35.540 started, it's crazy how quickly you can progress if you work at it. I remember picking up 25 pound

01:21:40.240 dumbbells to do my first set of RDLs for sets of, you know, 12. And now I'm all the way up at 90

01:21:45.020 pounds dumbbells for a set of 12 RDLs, which-

01:21:47.820 You're holding two 90-pound dumbbells?

01:21:49.280 90s in each hand. Yeah. So I would never have thought that I could do that. And again,

01:21:55.360 credit to my time in powerlifting to help me identify what I was really capable of.

01:22:02.840 Yeah. So what impresses me is not your hamstring strength to do that, but your grip strength to do

01:22:07.960 that. Most men cannot hold two 90-pound dumbbells.

01:22:13.040 Really?

01:22:13.880 Absolutely.

01:22:14.500 Look, I've got to be honest. I get a little bit of help. So again, there's benefits to-

01:22:19.200 Oh, are you using a grip? Are you using a wrap?

01:22:21.120 Grips, absolutely. So, and again, people will say, oh, that's cheating. Like I don't want to

01:22:25.000 use something that cheats. Like use your raw grip strength. If the point of the exercise-

01:22:29.900 The point of exercise is to hit your hamstring.

01:22:31.400 To hit your hamstrings, what's going to be the limiting factor? So grips are a no-brainer for me.

01:22:37.680 Now, when you do single leg, do you do contralateral weight or ipsilateral weight? In other words,

01:22:45.020 if your left leg is on the ground, are you going to hold the weight left hand or right hand?

01:22:50.240 For a beginner, I would do opposing because you're going to have greater stability. As you become

01:22:54.820 more advanced, then same leg, same arm. Absolutely. I think it just challenges you in different ways.

01:22:59.580 It calls upon different muscle groups to help with stabilizing. So for the client that we were

01:23:04.660 discussing before that has some experience, wants to gain muscle, I'd probably over the course of that

01:23:09.480 six-week mesocycle, sorry, over the course of maybe their second or third training mesocycles,

01:23:14.860 I might incorporate the more advanced variation of a single leg RDL. It might start opposing arm to leg.

01:23:21.500 And then as they advance, I would move it to a single leg over that 18-week, 24-week period.

01:23:27.840 And then calves, what are you doing for calves?

01:23:30.080 Combination of both. I originally wasn't doing any calf work because from an aesthetic perspective,

01:23:34.860 it's not something that you see a whole lot of, I guess, but probably, you know, six sets per week.

01:23:41.680 I'd probably start again for someone that's brand new, three sets, and then maybe in week two.

01:23:46.940 Of what? Standing toe presses, seated?

01:23:49.160 Seated or standing. I believe, based on the research, seated tends to be a little bit

01:23:55.480 better for hypertrophy outcomes. Don't ask me the mechanics. This is not my area of expertise,

01:24:01.080 but a study that I did a post on very recently was looking at the different feet positions.

01:24:06.340 And I used to be first to put my hand up and throw myself under the bus, do the toes in,

01:24:11.780 like pigeon toe style of calf raise. Pointless, doesn't really yield any meaningful results.

01:24:17.580 Neutral stance and toes facing out tend to be better for optimizing hypertrophy of different

01:24:23.680 aspects of your calf.

01:24:25.180 On their upper body day, how do you focus? Now, I know you, I mean, I'm still surprised to hear that

01:24:29.860 you're not doing a lot of upper body for a woman. And what you're saying is the most important thing is

01:24:34.540 taking the fat off to let the muscles show. But in that one day, what are they going to do for

01:24:40.640 chest, for back, for shoulders and arms?

01:24:43.740 One of the main things, again, that does differ between men and women's training programs is chest

01:24:48.120 volume. So men typically want to have jack biceps, jack triceps, big chest. There's less of an emphasis

01:24:53.980 on that. So the women, even in the fitness categories, seem to be judged a lot on glutes,

01:25:00.160 hips, hams, shoulders, quads.

01:25:03.680 Back is so less important. They want to see a conditioned back, but it's not really where a

01:25:09.460 lot of the judging and time is spent. Unlike traditional bodybuilders, where like you look

01:25:13.320 at your Kai greens, where it's just got lat on lat on lat. I will incorporate different back

01:25:18.660 exercises more predominantly in a program that I would for chest. I defer back to the client. Do you want

01:25:25.520 to do chest training? I love bench press. Like again, I've done powerlifting. So to me, like that's

01:25:31.080 so empowering, like trying to hit a one rep max on a bench. I love that, but I'm not everybody. So

01:25:35.880 again, I defer to the person that I'm working with.

01:25:38.900 And let's assume that she has no interest in her strength on a bench. It's really coming down to how

01:25:45.140 she's going to look in the dress.

01:25:46.320 Aesthetic. Some people really need a lot of chest training or conversely, they need a lot of back

01:25:51.600 training due to their posture. So that's a big consideration, but if a woman is sort of hunched

01:25:56.860 forward, yeah, they're really kyphotic. They've got that rounding. They probably have extremely

01:26:00.700 tight pectorals and weak back musculature. So in that case, I would do a lot more volume on back

01:26:07.940 and I probably wouldn't spend any time on any chest work. So, you know, for that final one training

01:26:13.460 session, I might be looking to hit 15 sets of back and no chest at all.

01:26:18.040 And what types of exercises would you do?

01:26:20.220 I would target the wide back, mid back. So we're looking at our lats to get the widths

01:26:25.280 of the back. And that can help, I guess, from an aesthetic perspective to create the illusion

01:26:29.800 of a really small waist. So wide grip pull downs, wide grip pull ups, assisted pull ups

01:26:35.860 for somebody that's just beginning and then progressing to body weight pull ups and then

01:26:39.920 weighted pull ups. So again, through the course of somebody training consistently over nine

01:26:46.080 months say, there's a very good chance they could go from doing no body weight pull ups

01:26:50.400 to weighted pull ups.

01:26:51.800 Now most women can't do a single pull up unassisted, correct?

01:26:55.520 I'd say that probably 90% of females would not be able to do a single body weight pull

01:27:00.040 up.

01:27:00.220 And how many can you do?

01:27:02.160 I think my last AMRAP was like 20.

01:27:05.380 20?

01:27:06.140 Yeah.

01:27:06.420 Okay. So the point where you would use...

01:27:08.140 Yeah, I add some weight, but not a whole lot.

01:27:10.040 You know, Beth Lewis, who you met briefly the other day, you know, Beth is convinced that

01:27:15.480 you can get any human being to do a body weight pull up.

01:27:19.020 Absolutely. There'd have to be something from a neurological standpoint that would inhibit

01:27:23.940 someone from being able to. It was a lot of work. I was that person. I could never do

01:27:28.600 a pull up. I remember like when I first got into lifting, I started with bands, the thickest

01:27:33.760 green band possible with my feet in to help me. And I could do about five reps with that.

01:27:38.940 But the thing that really facilitated my strength in pull ups, I programmed those every single

01:27:46.400 program for years, every program. And it was always the most intimidating exercise. I hated

01:27:52.600 it, but I'd always put it first. So I'd always been nervous going to training if I knew I had

01:27:56.620 an upper body day because I had to do like pull ups. But yeah, I went from not being able

01:28:00.440 to do any body weight to being able to do 20 body weight over the span of five years.

01:28:04.800 But I can tell you now, there was probably maybe three or four programs over that entire

01:28:10.940 timeframe that I did not program specifically put ups.

01:28:15.620 And was the progression using less and less and less resistance on the bands, but always

01:28:19.660 sort of targeting a certain rep number?

01:28:21.980 I would pick, you know, somewhere in the hypertrophy range. So that's typically anywhere from eight

01:28:26.140 to 12. And yeah, once I could do 12 reps with a certain band, I would progress to the next

01:28:32.420 lighter resistance. And I just kept going. Once I got to 12 body weight pull ups, I was like,

01:28:38.040 oh, okay, now we add the weight belt with a little two and a half pound kettlebell or something

01:28:42.460 progressed that way.

01:28:43.900 How much are you varying your hand position for both yourself and then obviously for the client

01:28:48.060 in this situation?

01:28:48.880 So for me, I, again, and this was primarily because of the aesthetic goal, which was to widen

01:28:54.380 my lats, I would do a lot more prone grip. I guess I targeted my rhomboids a little bit more,

01:29:01.240 which would be a close grip pull up. I didn't really do a whole lot of those. Sometimes I would

01:29:05.660 change up my variation. So if I had three sets programmed to failure, say my first set to failure,

01:29:11.580 I would do wide because that was the muscle group that I wanted to work the most. Then I would switch

01:29:16.120 to a neutral grip and then I might switch to an underhand grip.

01:29:19.500 And how much time do you need between sets to failure on pull ups?

01:29:23.240 A long time. You do not want to rush that. Sometimes it would take five minutes between sets.

01:29:27.700 And I think that's where a lot of people find themselves not being able to make progress and

01:29:31.900 not just with pull ups, but for training in general, they go way too fast. And then the

01:29:37.360 consequences, they're not recovered when they start the next working set. And because they're

01:29:41.340 still fatigued, they're not able to execute the next working set to the same number of reps

01:29:46.080 because they're not recovered. So they may have to drop those weights and pick up something lighter.

01:29:50.600 I used to do that. And as a trainer, I'd be on the floor, you'd have 60 minutes with a client and

01:29:55.800 you want to rush. But the reality is if you can slow down your workouts and take as much time as

01:30:02.760 you need. And my rule of thumb is when your heart rate is back below 100 beats per minute, for me,

01:30:09.000 probably is a little bit lower for men. I think males tend to have slightly lower heart rate than

01:30:12.280 females. So once my heart rate is back under a hundred, that's when I know I'm like, okay,

01:30:16.140 yeah, I can probably think about doing my next set.

01:30:17.700 Okay. Interesting. I'm glad you mentioned that. I was going to ask about your rest phase.

01:30:21.840 Anything you want to say about arms before we move on to the next metaphase?

01:30:25.780 If you like arms, do arms. If you don't like arms, don't worry about it.

01:30:29.400 Wow. This is so paradoxical. I would guess looking at you that it's like-

01:30:32.620 I haven't done a bicep curl or a tricep extension in 12 months.

01:30:36.360 So those arms that you have are simply the result of all of the stuff you carry.

01:30:42.700 Yes.

01:30:43.100 The heavy things you're lifting with your hands, like deadlifts and RDLs,

01:30:47.240 coupled with obviously getting rid of fat.

01:30:50.340 Especially for something like pull-ups, you do actually get better at pull-ups the less body

01:30:54.740 fat you have and the lighter you get. There's a point where it crosses if you lose too much muscle.

01:30:59.240 But-

01:30:59.300 Again, this is a very interesting point, which is you can joke and say, look, biceps and triceps are

01:31:03.220 not the most functional muscles in the world. But being able to do a pull-up, being able to do a

01:31:07.000 deadlift, that confers great benefit to life skills.

01:31:10.860 Yes.

01:31:11.260 So in some ways, your bodybuilding training much more mirrors functional training than what I

01:31:17.500 would have expected. Let me just play devil's advocate for a moment. How much of that is your

01:31:21.300 genetics? Do you just genetically think you have big muscles in your arms and that's why you can get

01:31:25.840 away with this?

01:31:26.380 If I was to look at my parents, like my dad is freakishly muscular for somebody that doesn't

01:31:31.800 do anything in the gym. He grew up, I guess, being in very like laborious type jobs. So he's always

01:31:39.780 been extremely lean. And I think he has short humorous like I do. So I guess it creates this

01:31:45.940 illusion of more muscle. It's easier to grow. It looks, if you think about a long muscle, it's a lot

01:31:50.580 more muscle you've got to grow to make it look big. So I think just my, the way that I'm put together

01:31:55.560 probably has assisted in some ways, but that's not to say that it's not possible for other people as

01:32:02.240 well.

01:32:02.920 Do you do some deltoid stuff?

01:32:04.620 Lots of training for shoulders.

01:32:06.140 So what are your hits on deltoid?

01:32:07.720 My favorites are probably a scrape the rack shoulder press. I don't know if you've ever done

01:32:12.720 those, but essentially you're up against a squat rack with a barbell on, you can do it kneeling

01:32:18.700 or standing. I like kneeling because it eliminates the ability to cheat. When you're standing, you can use a

01:32:24.220 bit of momentum to keep pushing. So kneeling, scrape the rack press, and you're basically driving that

01:32:29.240 barbell into the rack.

01:32:30.680 And what angle, what's the humoral angle at the top?

01:32:33.580 Well, you're pretty, basically extended pretty vertically. You have to have good range of motion

01:32:37.740 and mobility for your shoulders. One that I don't do with everybody, but I do, because I do have a

01:32:42.120 lot of mobility with my shoulders, a behind the neck shoulder pressing. On a Smith machine,

01:32:46.740 though, I only do it on the Smith machine because it keeps me in a very safe, fixed plane.

01:32:52.080 I'm not using dumbbells where I'm swerving everywhere or a free barbell. So I really

01:32:57.500 like that because I had some shoulder injuries.

01:32:59.700 What about for somebody who can't really press overhead due to shoulder injuries or impingements

01:33:04.780 and things like that?

01:33:05.860 My area of expertise isn't specifically on like rehabilitation, but I would be working with a

01:33:11.000 specialist with that. But lateral raises is probably another thing that people can do

01:33:15.320 to improve their like medial shoulder and also then rear delts. So you can do like a reverse

01:33:21.440 pec fly where you're kind of pushing away. If you've got access to cables, you can do a cable

01:33:26.360 crossover to hit your rear delts. And what else? Just face pulls, those types of exercises.

01:33:33.140 Let's say we've progressed the intensity of all of this. We've overloaded. So we've added sets,

01:33:38.780 we've added reps, we've added intensity. We're eight months in and let's assume we've hit our

01:33:44.780 hypertrophy goals. You do another DEXA. And remember the initial goal was gain five pounds of

01:33:51.260 muscle, lose five pounds of fat. If she has met her hypertrophy goal and gained five pounds of

01:33:57.300 muscle, how much fat do you think has changed at that point?

01:34:00.920 It depends on their dietary intake, to be honest. So we can go through a period of progressive

01:34:07.740 overload with an intentional building phase and do all the right things when it comes to the

01:34:12.520 resistance training. But the other key piece to the success of that build is diet. So how much was

01:34:20.800 the client able to adhere to their dietary requirements during that time? It's probably

01:34:25.000 like 50% of the outcomes. So going back to the beginning, I'm going to just create a stereotype,

01:34:30.960 which is she was sort of reasonable in total energy intake, but protein deficient relative to

01:34:37.940 your goals. So what would be your protein goals for her?

01:34:39.920 Honestly, exactly the same as it is males to females. The only difference is going to be

01:34:44.360 the absolute total target that we have for a female because our lean body mass is a little bit

01:34:48.760 lower. So the protein reference ranges to optimize hypertrophy are anywhere from say 1.8 grams of

01:34:56.600 protein per kilogram of lean body mass, all the way up to three grams of protein per kilogram of lean

01:35:02.800 body mass. So based on the individual's dietary preferences and what foods they like, some people

01:35:08.460 love protein. I've had clients that can't stand it. And it's a real struggle with them to which

01:35:13.920 blows my mind because I would probably live on meat if I had to pick one food group that I'd have to

01:35:19.760 survive on meat for the rest of time. But I would pick something that is realistic for them within

01:35:24.480 that range. So, you know, for a small...

01:35:26.900 You had a whole 16-ounce steak yesterday by yourself.

01:35:28.620 I sure did, yeah.

01:35:29.140 I was hoping you were going to... I was hoping there's going to be a little piece left over

01:35:31.640 for me.

01:35:33.320 I told you, I do enjoy proteins. But yeah, it really comes down to their preferences. And there isn't one

01:35:40.460 number that's better than another, but consistency is important. So we don't want to be chopping and

01:35:45.720 changing your protein and it bouncing all over the place for a couple of reasons. And that is that

01:35:50.400 you can potentially reduce or limit your potential, but it also impacts your energy balance because

01:35:57.800 protein has a far higher thermogenic effect of food than carbohydrate and or fat. So if that's

01:36:04.200 bouncing around, you're effectively moving and shifting your energy balance. So that would not

01:36:09.680 be favorable for somebody that is trying to gain muscle and 90% of their dietary calories are now coming

01:36:16.440 from protein might be shifting their energy balance in a negative direction.

01:36:21.240 And if she was starting out, let's just... I'm making math up, but she's 140 pounds and she's okay

01:36:27.100 being 140 pounds at the end, but that 10-pound swap in body comp is important. And let's assume

01:36:32.920 she's weight stable coming into this exercise. Do you basically keep her calorie stable and just

01:36:38.880 switch the macros around to increase protein?

01:36:41.540 Initially, absolutely. I would have a look at what her current dietary intake would be.

01:36:45.160 And if it was below the recommended reference range, I'd pick a number that aligned with her

01:36:50.360 lean body mass and her ability to nail that number consistently. Then progressively throughout

01:36:55.820 that building phase, we would want to be slowly adding in calories. If we look at the overfeeding

01:37:03.200 studies, which unfortunately there is not as much information available to us as there are like weight loss

01:37:08.380 studies, but of those that we do have, if we were to compare somebody being in a surplus of say 20%

01:37:14.160 above their maintenance calories versus 40% versus 60%, what we tend to see is that the best results,

01:37:21.680 and I should quantify what I mean by best, the most amount of muscle mass that would be gained

01:37:26.680 during a given timeframe would be optimal at about that 20% mark. If we go up to 40 or up to 60,

01:37:33.360 what we just end up seeing is excess body fat gain. It doesn't like continue to get better the more you

01:37:37.900 eat. Let's just, again, I'm making this up. She's at 2000 kcal coming in. Does that mean you're

01:37:44.040 actually going to put her at a surplus, even though you don't want her to gain weight? You just want her

01:37:49.160 to gain lean mass? To begin with, just for the initial week, if someone can tell me that they're

01:37:53.880 eating a certain number of calories, I want to see the data. Let's assume that you did that. Let's

01:37:57.560 assume you did a food log and she comes in at 2000 weight stable. So if that's her maintenance

01:38:01.460 calories, that's not optimal. We want to go to a small surplus. You'd take her to 2400.

01:38:05.320 Yeah. It might be a 10 to 20% surplus. And again, part of that decision is also based on the

01:38:10.280 individual's comfort with adding body fat. And for females, that is the hardest group of people

01:38:16.640 that I work with to encourage to gain body fat. So usually I'm working within a far more restrictive

01:38:23.040 calorie surplus than I would if I'm working with a male client. They're a lot more open to gaining

01:38:27.340 some body fat to facilitate their gains. So if I'm being real, optimal would be 20%. Most women will

01:38:34.340 not adhere to that. So I'm probably going to prescribe something that's more likely going

01:38:39.000 to reflect the reality. And that is like a 10% increase above their maintenance.

01:38:43.180 And how would this change if she said she's 140 pounds, she wants to weigh 130 next year. So she

01:38:50.720 wants to lose 10 pounds, but wants it to all be fat loss. So this will also improve body composition

01:38:57.480 because she's going to just lose 10 pounds of fat, but wants to lose no muscle, which still

01:39:01.760 functionally means putting on some muscle to offset the fat loss. Would you then not put

01:39:07.740 her in a calorie surplus during the building phase?

01:39:10.360 No, I still would because her ability to acquire that new tissue is going to be...

01:39:16.680 It's energetically demanding.

01:39:17.920 Yeah. You need surplus energy to come from somewhere. Now, if somebody is starting with a higher

01:39:22.400 body fat percentage, now we've got somebody that has, they have an energy reserve and we can

01:39:27.100 petition that stored body fat. And that's the whole concept behind, you know, body recomposition.

01:39:33.640 So for some individuals, if they do have body fat, I may not need to put them in a major surplus. So

01:39:38.660 it's so client dependent, you know, I have to look at them and the complete picture. So it might not be

01:39:44.860 a massive surplus at all. If they were, you know, 20% body fat, it might just be, let's nail these

01:39:49.980 calories for the next six months. And over time, we will see some positive changes because you've got

01:39:54.840 enough body fat available to help with the building and the foundations of that new skeletal tissue.

01:40:01.180 Okay. So now it's eight months in, we're two thirds of the way to our goal. She's on target for lean

01:40:07.540 mass. She's also, of course, added a little bit of fat mass. You now have four months to get that fat

01:40:13.560 off and keep the lean tissue on. What changes in nutrition and then what changes in the gym?

01:40:19.480 Changes in the gym initially are negligible. I think there's a misconception that suddenly

01:40:23.920 everything changes when you start dieting. The goal for dieting is truly to be able to keep you on as

01:40:31.260 higher calories as possible with as little increase in activity as possible whilst still achieving a

01:40:39.480 targeted rate of weekly weight loss. So to begin with, their training may stay exactly the same.

01:40:46.320 We might make a couple of tweaks because they're bored and they need change up, but the concept,

01:40:49.940 the principles of that training program and the structure does not change unless suddenly they

01:40:54.100 decided that they no longer want those giant glutes and we put back in chest training. But

01:40:59.360 the principles say the same. From a diet perspective, again, we kind of look at, okay,

01:41:04.500 now that we've acquired a little bit of body fat, we want to get all of that off in time through the

01:41:09.100 wedding or whatever the event is. I basically do a back calculation. I pick a targeted weekly rate of

01:41:16.080 weight loss that does not exceed more than 1.5% of their body weight.

01:41:20.920 Per what unit? Week?

01:41:22.480 Per week.

01:41:23.340 That still sounds like a lot.

01:41:24.540 It can be a lot. And some people may not have the-

01:41:26.380 That could be two pounds a week.

01:41:27.900 But it would be relative to the individual. So, you know, 200 pound male, that's a lot.

01:41:32.420 But even this 140 pound woman-

01:41:34.240 Yeah, 1.4 pounds, that's 1%. So we're looking at close to two pounds. Again, we've got to be realistic

01:41:38.920 with how much can be achieved in a seven day period for that person. Choosing that percentage rate of

01:41:44.140 loss is important. Why it's important is because when we see extreme dietary interventions carried

01:41:50.360 out, continuous diet interventions that push weight loss beyond those numbers, we are increasing the

01:41:57.820 risk of metabolic adaptation. So now we're starting to look at more, I guess, adaptive mechanisms,

01:42:03.400 a greater response to dieting or our self-defense system really ramps up. We become far more efficient.

01:42:10.400 So we want to keep the rate at that level. And that will help to keep your BMR, your basal metabolic rate

01:42:18.340 nice and high. And it's protective of your muscle mass. Beyond that one and a half percent, that's when

01:42:24.360 we really start to see people actually losing a greater percent of muscle mass and lean tissues as opposed

01:42:29.640 to fat loss. So I think a lot of people will argue with me in the first few weeks when we put together a program

01:42:35.620 for them, they're like, that just doesn't seem like enough weight loss. I'm used to seeing two kilos a

01:42:40.300 week. And I'd say to you, so if you're worried about the number on the scale, if that's all you're

01:42:45.040 worried about, what have I said to you that that two kilos, you lost not a single bit of fat. It was

01:42:49.780 mostly lean tissue. Is that still okay? And they're like, oh, okay. We've got to be realistic with what

01:42:55.180 you can do in a week and how it might impact muscle loss. And then determining what calorie deficit

01:43:01.400 that actually requires. So we have a really wonderful calculation in one of our book,

01:43:06.320 The Complete Contest Bread Guide. And I believe it's also in Fat Loss Forever. And that outlines

01:43:11.040 what amount of calories is required to lose a certain amount of body weight in grams.

01:43:19.880 So it's a really neat little equation. And we can calculate very accurately for the average person

01:43:25.700 that doesn't have crazy, you know, a really fast metabolism or really slow metabolism,

01:43:29.560 what the deficit is that they need to lose that one and a half percent or whatever number it might

01:43:34.520 be. So it's really neat. I can pretty much forecast exactly what someone could use.

01:43:39.760 How does a person do this practically? So there's, on the one hand, there's the calculation. Let's just

01:43:43.600 say it comes out and says, okay, we're going to reduce your intake from what was 2,400 now down to

01:43:48.740 1,875 calories. But then there's the application of that, which is if this person doesn't have a chef

01:43:56.020 that can prepare every meal that they're going to eat with a scale, how do they go about doing that?

01:44:01.080 I mean, this can be really difficult stuff to go weighing everything. And I don't see how you could

01:44:08.140 reach that level of precision without a scale.

01:44:10.360 It is really tough. And I think one of the things that I will say to people that I've worked with

01:44:14.860 is there is so much value in giving or dedicating a set amount of time to weigh your food, to get

01:44:24.540 familiar, to calibrate and learn what a four ounce piece of chicken looks like, what X food weighs on

01:44:31.140 the scale. I think having that knowledge and an understanding of what it represents from a caloric

01:44:35.160 perspective and from its macronutrient, the constituents of that food, knowledge is power.

01:44:41.500 I really struggle with people that don't want to invest that time because that is a lifelong skill

01:44:47.460 that once you know how to do it, and it might take you six months to get the hang of it.

01:44:51.520 But for me now, I can, and I've been doing this for over 12 years, is I can estimate anything and

01:44:57.040 eyeball it. So you get really good. So there is a lot of accountability coaching, homework tasks,

01:45:05.640 getting them practical tools and resources to learn how to do that, which is kind of what's involved

01:45:11.400 in that whole weekly check-in and that coaching process. So as she gets closer and closer to

01:45:17.440 this event, and again, let's just use it as this wedding example. So she's four weeks out.

01:45:22.240 Do you have a sense of where she would need to be a month out on those goals to hit the target?

01:45:27.280 When we get to probably within three to 5% of their goal body fat percentage, like that's when I can

01:45:35.580 start to tell. There's a lot of photo exchange. So we have so much data that we collect for a client,

01:45:41.660 and that can be super helpful to make accurate analysis. But there's so many benefits to also

01:45:47.540 having that supplemented with an actual physical picture. And if we're not always looking at

01:45:52.660 somebody's DEXA scan every six weeks as they're going, which is not always feasible for every client,

01:45:57.920 depends on the clientele that you're working with, but we don't always have that data available.

01:46:01.820 So it really does come down to looking at their, you know, macro tracking, watching their weight

01:46:06.920 trends, and then coupling that with their pictures to be able to see, you know, body fat loss is

01:46:12.960 actually happening. The situation I described, 130 or 140 pound woman who's going to be the same

01:46:19.220 weight a year later, but have a five pound switch. How visibly different is that?

01:46:23.900 Probably not as much as you would think.

01:46:25.960 Okay. So maybe that goal wasn't ambitious enough.

01:46:28.320 You have to look at what is required for somebody to develop the muscularity of an elite fitness

01:46:35.280 professional. That's like a 10 year process for some people. So I think, again, that five pounds

01:46:41.580 is realistic for somebody to add, but how notable is that going to be?

01:46:46.100 Probably depends on what they're starting with too.

01:46:47.840 It really does. And I think how lean they get at the end too. And sometimes the first attempt at fat loss,

01:46:53.280 it doesn't get you to the goal. And it takes multiple attempts of coming out of this diet

01:46:58.580 process through recovery diets, and then fat loss again, and then another recovery diet before we

01:47:04.820 really start to kind of achieve the ideal that that client is wanting.

01:47:09.340 So let's talk about that. So she hits her goal, which is five and five, and she's pleased in that

01:47:15.560 she hit her goal. She looks better in her wedding dress than she would have a year sooner.

01:47:20.180 But to your point, she's like, I have greater ambitions here. I would like to be even leaner

01:47:26.700 a year from now. And I like this process, but I don't feel like being as restrictive right now.

01:47:31.800 So I'm about to go on my honeymoon to Italy.

01:47:35.400 Sounds amazing.

01:47:36.540 How do I recover from this without undoing all the good I did in the last year?

01:47:41.980 Looking at the research that we have and some of these longitudinal studies that

01:47:46.680 show us what happens with fat loss and the success rates of fat loss, you know, over a dietary

01:47:54.020 intervention, people don't necessarily have a difficult time losing the weight. It is this

01:47:58.560 inability to keep it off. The reasons that it occurs is because typically outside good governance of a

01:48:06.680 good coach, people do things in such extremes. So they've done everything wrong during their diet

01:48:11.140 phase. And the consequences, they've lost a lot of muscle mass during that fat loss that negatively

01:48:16.680 impacts their basal metabolic rates. And now their metabolism, their body's requirements are a lot

01:48:21.900 less. They're coming up against hormonal changes that impact their appetite regulating hormones.

01:48:28.320 So most people post diet experience some form of hyperphagia, which for people that don't know what

01:48:33.860 is, it's just like that excessive, extreme desire to eat more than what is physiologically required

01:48:40.000 by their bodies. So if they aren't conscious of that happening and they're not aware that there are

01:48:46.080 these hormonal changes, the natural inclination post diet is to go back to what you were doing before,

01:48:54.380 especially if you haven't chosen a dietary approach that works for your food preferences. And this is

01:48:59.060 where we see a lot of people struggling with, oh, I've tried this diet. It didn't work.

01:49:03.020 Tried this one, it didn't work. And then they end up going back to what they like.

01:49:06.820 So if you can slowly reintroduce your calories post diet, and unfortunately that means that

01:49:15.380 that whole process still feels like the diet. And I can say like as somebody that has, you know,

01:49:21.500 just a few weeks ago finished my competition, I didn't get as lean. So the hunger response was not

01:49:27.520 as severe as it's been in the past, but it's still there. It is really hard to continue to regulate

01:49:34.100 when the goal is now out of sight, or at least the goal that you were getting close to is leaving

01:49:39.940 because doing a reverse diet, you're not getting that positive visual response. This is intrinsic and

01:49:47.360 you can't see your metabolism improving. The only data or evidence that you have when you're reversing

01:49:53.440 is seeing the small little increases in calories. Like, oh, cool. I get to eat a hundred more

01:49:57.940 calories this week. You know, so it takes a good number of weeks to be able to get your calories

01:50:03.480 back up to a point where it's made a meaningful difference to my life. You know, I can have a

01:50:09.120 couple of glasses of wine now with my friends and I've been able to incorporate my dessert again.

01:50:14.700 So it's a really difficult process. And how many weeks does that last?

01:50:20.000 For a lot of folks, you're trying to get them initially rule number one for setting a reverse

01:50:25.700 diet after you've finished being in a deficit is just finding your new maintenance calories.

01:50:30.360 And you can assess that by looking at how much weight you have lost over the final couple of

01:50:36.060 weeks in your fat loss phase. So we can go back and predict what they are for our clients.

01:50:40.720 For this woman, technically, if her maintenance was 2000 coming in, it's probably going to be a

01:50:45.440 lot lower. Oh, I was going to say a little bit higher because even though her weight is the same,

01:50:49.780 she has more muscle. She may have more muscle mass, but it depends how lean she wants to get.

01:50:54.800 You're saying if she wants to continue to get leaner. I'm saying if she's happy to stay at that 140

01:50:59.620 for another six months before she begins her next cycle, she might actually come in at 2100 or 2200

01:51:06.500 calories before you then say, okay, now the time is we're going to take off another five pounds of

01:51:11.880 fat. I completely understand what you're saying. However, the problem is even if she has added

01:51:17.080 five pounds of muscle mass, which we know in theory, muscle is very energetically demanding

01:51:22.280 tissue. It requires more calories. So you would expect there to be a positive shift in their BMR.

01:51:28.260 Yes. When she did that at the end of the build, yes. But that fat loss phase that someone did to get

01:51:34.240 the weight back down again, depending how long it took, how extreme we had to go and how equipped

01:51:40.800 they were to execute the deficit we needed. And what I mean by that is, did we need to do a whole

01:51:45.800 lot more cardio to create the deficit? What was the intensity of that cardio? Like she could have lost

01:51:51.820 some of that muscle during the fat loss phase. And evidently you will lose muscle anyway. You will

01:51:58.240 always lose muscle mass when you attempt a fat loss phase, but the leaner you get, the greater the risk

01:52:03.720 of that muscle loss is because you no longer have that caloric cushioning to support that. So her

01:52:09.680 metabolism, even when we go back to her new maintenance calories, after she's added more

01:52:13.940 muscle, so physically she's going to look better, she still may be lower at the start of that reverse

01:52:19.520 diet, which is really interesting to think. So there may be some work that's needed to be done

01:52:24.160 reversing just to get her back to maybe that 2000 calories that she was on. She may not be able to go

01:52:29.320 straight back to that. It takes weeks. So the way that you do that is slow and incremental increases

01:52:35.460 week by week and you observe the weight gain and then you adjust respond accordingly. So I guess

01:52:41.260 before we wrap, are there any other specific differences in male and female training that we

01:52:47.480 could shed light on? Outside like the specificity of like putting together an actual program and

01:52:53.200 targeting certain muscles, muscle groups rather, people may have actually heard somewhere along

01:52:58.980 their fitness journey that women tend to do better with higher rep ranges and males do better with

01:53:05.480 lower rep ranges. And traditionally, I think there's a reason why we tend to see that style of programming

01:53:12.580 more prominent, you know, in the gym scene. Part of that is due to some of the differences in sex

01:53:18.760 hormones. And that kind of has an impact on our muscle fiber type. So females actually have a greater

01:53:26.140 percentage of type one muscle fibers than do males. And the positive consequence of that difference there

01:53:34.580 for females is that it means that we're better able to transport nutrients into the tissues and also

01:53:41.600 clear different metabolites during activities. So the benefit there is that women tend

01:53:48.680 to be less fatigable when it comes to training. And another thing that kind of coincides really

01:53:54.320 nicely with that is that women in both the fed and the fasted state tend to do better at utilizing

01:54:00.500 fatty acids. So again, it means that we're less reliant upon some of those glycolytic pathways or

01:54:06.820 anaerobic processes. So we do better when it comes to recovery from different types of training. So

01:54:13.240 when it comes to building out that training program, again, I'm being pretty meticulous here,

01:54:19.040 but men, I would often opt for a little bit more strength specific training. And I guess if you look

01:54:25.920 at the definitions of strength training, it's the rep ranges between one to six, then you've got your

01:54:30.160 moderate rep ranges, or we call that the hypertrophy rep range. I'll have more of that with females.

01:54:36.380 Which is about eight to 12. Eight to 12, eight to 15. And then we've got our endurance strength

01:54:41.960 training, which is, you know, you're 15 to 20 reps. So some women will say that they enjoy that type of

01:54:49.940 training and they're able to tolerate it better, more so than some of the strength-based training.

01:54:54.220 But I would still argue that females, when you're putting the right hands with a good qualified coach,

01:54:58.900 that they could equally enjoy that style of training too. But again, that's thinking about like the

01:55:03.600 actual differences, that muscle fiber type. And part of that's due to, I believe it's estrogen,

01:55:08.260 you know, women having a higher level of estrogen. We've got more estrogen receptors,

01:55:11.580 I believe on our skeletal tissues. And that's one of the benefits for nutrient transports.

01:55:17.380 That's interesting. Wouldn't that also suggest that women would have an easier time

01:55:22.080 training without ingestion of glucose, at least in theory. And yet I feel like maybe it's just

01:55:30.120 looking at my wife. She does not like to train on an empty stomach. You know, she needs to be

01:55:34.740 drinking or eating something beforehand. But I think you mentioned you like to train on an empty

01:55:38.540 stomach. I'm the opposite. So again, I think it's really subjective. The science can always say

01:55:43.580 certain things, but we've also then got to take into account individuals' perception. And it is very

01:55:49.080 subjective. So for me, as somebody that has struggled with like irritable bowel syndrome for

01:55:54.740 the last 10 years of life, I can't think of anything worse than trying to train with anything

01:55:59.660 in my stomach. I might have a couple of coffees in the morning, but I'm keeping, you know, pretty low

01:56:03.840 gut irritant type foods because the minute I feel some kind of distention or, you know, pain in my

01:56:09.580 stomach, I cannot train. I would rather train hungry with a rumbling stomach than try to have to

01:56:16.120 execute with a full stomach. So, but again, endurance training, very different to more anaerobic

01:56:22.960 training. Like the resistance training that I do is probably more anaerobic. So it might be just due

01:56:28.400 to the differences in exercise type. Any other differences that we should be aware of as far as

01:56:33.640 female and male, either through response to nutrient or load? Speaking to sex hormones, I think the

01:56:40.200 menstrual cycle is probably the only other thing that kind of springs to mind. And there's been a lot

01:56:43.860 more information becoming available on that topic as it relates to hypertrophy outcomes and strength

01:56:49.600 training. And again, there's probably four studies that are high quality at the moment that I can

01:56:55.200 think of that again, tend to be kind of on the fence. Half of them show that during the second phase,

01:57:03.340 the luteal phase of your menstrual cycle, when progesterone is high and estrogen is low, that

01:57:09.940 subjectively strength decreases for females during training. And then during the earlier parts of

01:57:16.780 training, when progesterone is low, you know, people report to feel a lot better with their

01:57:21.880 training, the performance is better, the strength is improved. It's a 50-50 for clients. So when it

01:57:28.240 comes to female programming, I, as a default, and if it doesn't seem to impact them, that's great,

01:57:35.120 but I will default to setting deloads on or around their menstrual cycle.

01:57:39.200 So you might go two weeks on two weeks, like you could upload two weeks, download two weeks.

01:57:44.260 Yep. Yeah. It might be in the middle of a menstrual cycle, but again, it depends on how

01:57:48.540 serious they are about their progression, but... I'm guessing that's something a lot of male

01:57:51.960 trainers don't think about. No, probably not at all. Absolutely. And like just ability to be

01:57:56.840 adherent and like your energy, mood, sleep, you know, all of those things can be impacted around

01:58:02.380 your cycle. Constipation is another prevalent symptom of men's ease. So that absolutely impacts

01:58:09.640 people's energy levels and like motivation to train. How many times have you found yourself

01:58:14.700 training clients post-pregnancy and menopause? You have a high number of clients in those two

01:58:20.380 categories? More recently, my clientele has shifted more to middle age. I'd say majority of my clients

01:58:26.620 now are probably 35 to 65. Yeah. I think that transition going from high levels or higher levels

01:58:35.160 of testosterone for females to low level during menopause and the changes in estrogen. It's really

01:58:42.120 hard on females. A funny story. My mom did not even know that there was like symptoms that came

01:58:50.000 along with menopause. She was like, I knew women couldn't, you know, have children anymore, but she's

01:58:54.400 not super scientific in any way. She didn't know she was going to have hot flashes. No, she had no idea

01:58:59.560 about any of these symptoms. And for her, she was so upset and like just frustrated that she didn't

01:59:05.040 have any energy or she didn't want to go for walks anymore or go to a Pilates classes or whatever she

01:59:10.060 was doing. There's so much benefit to number one, like going and getting those levels tested. I believe

01:59:15.980 you're a big advocate of hormone replacement therapy, yes? Just putting somebody back into those

01:59:20.460 normal reference ranges in the benefit that that has, not just on seeing a number move on, you know,

01:59:26.960 their biomarkers, but what that does for their quality of life and how much more motivated people

01:59:33.000 might then be to be active, you know, as we age and stay involved in sport. It's crazy. And so do

01:59:40.520 you see this difference then in clients where you have menopausal women who are not on hormone

01:59:45.100 replacement therapy versus those who are? And do you see a fundamental difference both in body composition

01:59:50.040 and work tolerance? Absolutely. And I would say, unfortunately for the women that aren't proactive and aren't on

01:59:55.680 some kind of hormone replacement therapy, we tend to see those women coming in with extremely low

02:00:00.700 calorie intakes and extreme exercise output. So it's like they're burning the candle at both ends

02:00:07.020 and they're feeling frustrated because they're like, I already eat nothing. I'm training multiple times

02:00:11.880 a day. I'm doing all this cardio and I can't lose fat. And I've only gotten fatter during this process,

02:00:17.220 which is likely to happen because if you've been dealing with those negative symptoms for a long

02:00:21.300 period of time, naturally, if you're not motivated and you don't feel good, you're not going to train.

02:00:27.180 So, you know, people's quality of exercise goes down. Now they're losing lean body mass and they're

02:00:31.600 probably, as I've experienced, aging tends to lend more towards the finer things in life. And

02:00:37.620 you're gravitating towards, you know, more indulgent foods and a different lifestyle that keeps you less

02:00:43.640 active unless you're very proactive about it. So people gain a lot of weight during that timeframe.

02:00:47.640 So we obviously defer out to the experts for the hormonal replacement therapy and then

02:00:53.320 integrate with our interventions, the reverse diet to get their calories back up to something

02:00:59.160 that feels manageable. And now they're enjoying, you know, all their favorite foods again,

02:01:03.940 they have a social life again, and they just feel so much better with that extra energy and then

02:01:08.520 hormones returning to normal. What about women after having kids? A lot of women will say,

02:01:14.280 it's just not the same. Speaking about their body and body composition. So is there anything that

02:01:21.000 you've noticed in clients where you think we have to do something a little bit different?

02:01:26.180 There's the 40-year-old woman who's never had kids, and then there's the 40-year-old woman who's

02:01:30.340 had three kids. And both of them are still premenopausal, but do you notice anything different

02:01:35.680 between them?

02:01:36.200 I think the first one that's brisked to mind is just the available time that they have for their

02:01:40.560 goals. That is such a huge consideration for all of this. I can think very distinctly of a couple of

02:01:47.880 clients that I have that do not, or they've either had children and they've now grown up and moved out.

02:01:52.900 So they have all the time in the world to do what they want to do with their hobbies and their physique

02:01:58.340 goals or health goals. But for people that have children, it is really hard. And again,

02:02:04.240 I think it comes back to managing expectations. I am the coach that will turn people away if they,

02:02:10.160 you know, here's the goal that I want to achieve, Holly, 50 pounds, I've got to do it. But they've also

02:02:14.720 got three kids, you know, they only have a very limited amount of time that they can apply to meal

02:02:20.480 preparation. Maybe they have a limited income and they can't have a chef like we do that comes in and

02:02:25.780 helps out during, you know, those really busy times. They don't have a nanny full-time to come and

02:02:30.500 support them. So there are major differences in what can be achieved realistically. And I think

02:02:35.540 looking at someone's lifestyle, it is so important. And I think women don't give themselves enough

02:02:40.220 credit for the amount of time that they are taking in these other obligations.

02:02:45.120 But from the standpoint of that woman who's say 40, mom of three, who's got 10 pounds, she simply cannot

02:02:52.760 shed. Can you guess whether most of that is going to come from dietary restriction versus

02:02:59.840 increase activity versus what combination? Do you have a sense just hormonally, which one is

02:03:05.700 pestering her? One of the things in our practice that really we don't put emphasis on due to the

02:03:11.260 sheer ignorance around it is body composition. We'll say to that woman, look, we're interested in

02:03:15.800 making you as metabolically healthy as possible. That won't necessarily come with the improvement in

02:03:21.000 body composition you had. It won't necessarily take you to your pre-pregnancy weight. But as you

02:03:25.880 said, a lot of people are coming to you and that's their primary thing. They're, yes, I'd like to be

02:03:30.380 healthier, but quite frankly, I want to be able to fit into the clothes that I was wearing two years ago.

02:03:34.380 That's a tough one. I have said multiple times to women, you need to get a new wardrobe. As simple

02:03:39.120 as that. It's the easiest thing or easiest way to instantly feel better about yourself. Now you've got a

02:03:44.140 pair of clothes that are more flattering for your now physique. It's going to improve your mental health

02:03:48.400 first and foremost, but it's not constantly like pulling and tugging on the clothing that like it makes

02:03:53.620 you think about your body. And if you're already in an unhappy place, like that's a bad place to begin

02:03:57.600 with. But is it realistic for somebody to get back to their pre-pregnancy body weight? Maybe, but for a lot

02:04:06.400 of women, if you have partaken in some kind of exercise, whether it's running or swimming or cycling, if

02:04:12.120 there's anything that's applying some kind of load and resistance, you've probably added a lot of muscle since

02:04:17.260 you were pregnant, you know, however many years ago too. So to expect that you're going to see the

02:04:22.380 same number on the scale, often that's not realistic because they've built so much muscle

02:04:27.460 over the course of their life that they would never be that weight again. They'd have to lose all this

02:04:32.420 muscle and some to get back to that. So I really wish that I could give you a better answer here.

02:04:37.600 Do I see any differences like even from a hormonal perspective? No, not really. I think that

02:04:41.900 with proper nutrition intervention, and that is like optimizing somebody's metabolism

02:04:46.520 through the process of reverse dieting. So we want to sit right on the edge of like every week we're

02:04:52.520 trying to positively adapt and get their metabolism to move up. And that can be done without any changes

02:04:58.320 in lean body mass. Like there is a true adaptation that takes place. So yeah, we're trying to optimize

02:05:04.140 their dietary interventions and get them doing what we know to be adequate from a training standpoint.

02:05:10.080 That is what will help that person get to this end goal. And it just means it's going to take a lot

02:05:15.700 longer for a mom of three, just because they don't have the ability to do it.

02:05:19.820 Where do you think this goes from here for you? Do you plan to continue bodybuilding?

02:05:24.280 I don't know. I think that part of me feels really compelled to stay in the industry and keep showing

02:05:30.440 up maybe on a yearly basis to be an advocate for the people that are still suffering in silence.

02:05:38.180 I think that there's so many people that have difficulties sharing their struggles, reaching out for help,

02:05:44.820 getting support. And I've seen a massive shift in the type of work that I'm doing and the education

02:05:50.640 that I'm sharing now, because it's a really hard life to live and it can be very unrewarding.

02:05:57.340 It can feel like, what's the point if you can't keep making progress and, or if you never really

02:06:03.980 work on the psychological dysfunction that might be happening, like what's the why?

02:06:09.700 So I feel a little bit conflicted coming back and staying because I don't have the same feeling

02:06:16.700 towards competing anymore. I no longer desire the leanness. I really don't. I can do the process now.

02:06:24.060 And I was really worried about my last competition because I thought now that I don't have this

02:06:29.020 eating disorder, am I going to have what it takes to execute? Or was that previously just driven by

02:06:34.160 a psychological condition? It was nerve wracking, but I was able to do it, but I'm no longer attached

02:06:39.340 to the body. So I want to be somebody that can be an advocate to help people realize that

02:06:46.000 if you do the work, you can do these together. They don't exist, you know, exclusive to each other.

02:06:51.740 I think you can do a bodybuilding show and not have some kind of eating disorder,

02:06:56.540 but also recognize that it's an extreme sport and it requires a lot of sacrifice.

02:07:02.240 And personally right now, I'm so passionate about mental health and the idea of potentially

02:07:08.280 stepping back from everything that I do in the fitness industry and going back and doing a PhD in

02:07:13.200 the area of neuropsychology or mental health and eating disorders, that it may not be something that

02:07:19.320 I have in my foreseeable future. I just don't know. I want to help people. I know that there is so many

02:07:24.160 women that would benefit from learning that, hey, I struggled with all of these feelings and low

02:07:30.420 self-confidence and low self-esteem. And that there's another way aside from calorie restriction

02:07:35.480 and dietary restriction that can lead me to the same positive outcomes and value as a human.

02:07:40.400 So how do you think about aging yourself? I mean, how do you think about being 50, being 60,

02:07:49.520 not looking like you do today, given the journey you've been on and the struggle you've been through

02:07:56.040 and how closely those have been intertwined?

02:07:58.780 My approach is all about longevity. I think if you had have asked me that two years ago,

02:08:03.720 I would still be, I'm still going to look amazing. But I think my perception or my ideals about what

02:08:11.200 my life should be in order to truly be happy, it doesn't look like me slaving away in the gym

02:08:16.980 anymore. It doesn't look like me being a lifelong competitor. That doesn't mean that I want to let

02:08:21.140 myself go and not have any interest in exercise at all. But I would like to remain, and I hate using

02:08:28.020 this word, like functionally fit, but I want my body to be able to move. Like I want to be able to,

02:08:33.080 if someone says to me, Hey, let's go for a 5k run. I want to be able to do that. If I need to be fast

02:08:39.380 and agile for something. So I think my training is probably going to gravitate a little bit more

02:08:44.100 away from the gym and incorporate just some more hobbies and things that keep me active and

02:08:49.080 functioning well. But I will always lift because I know the benefits that resistance training can have

02:08:54.860 on your body. But you're okay with the changes that are going to come, which is, you know,

02:09:00.160 you're not going to be 12% body fat. Absolutely. And I think even in like six weeks, I will no longer

02:09:05.060 even look like I do now. Like I'm very content with the idea that I can still be healthy at a much higher

02:09:10.760 body fat percentage. And as long as I have the muscle mass underneath that body fat, I know that

02:09:16.880 that is protective in so many ways. Thinking about reducing my risk of like bone degenerative

02:09:21.840 conditions like osteoporosis, when I get old, like resistance training, anything that applies,

02:09:26.640 you know, tension and stress on the bone, you know, those little bone creating cells, you know,

02:09:31.720 they ramp up, but now I've got greater bone density. I think about that. My dad struggles

02:09:36.420 severely with osteoporosis and arthritis. Your dad?

02:09:40.020 Yeah, very much so. He needs a double shoulder reconstruction. He won't do it.

02:09:44.220 That's kind of the message we give to our patients, both men and women. But I think it's more

02:09:48.540 important for women to hear because I think sometimes women are a little bit more governed

02:09:52.340 by the scale than by what's underneath. And again, that's a stereotype, but I see it more.

02:09:57.180 It is, but it's real. It's real.

02:09:58.360 And what we say is, I'm much more concerned with how much muscle mass we can put on you and how much

02:10:03.720 we can increase the density of your bones as you age. And even if we never take an ounce of fat off

02:10:09.580 you, which by the way, would mean you'd potentially even gain weight a little bit as you age. But if that

02:10:14.900 weight is predominantly lean tissue and we're maintaining the integrity of your skeletal

02:10:19.960 structure, you're going to live a better life.

02:10:22.800 You are. And I think the first thing that women have to do, and again, I don't want to stereotype,

02:10:27.160 but ladies, this is just the reality of how we are wired in today's day and age, but letting go of

02:10:33.580 some of that identity and this belief that we need to look a certain way. There's one thing to being,

02:10:39.380 you know, feeling comfortable and confident, but let's focus on the important things of life.

02:10:43.760 And I think to me, after having gone through all of this and recovered or actively and always will

02:10:49.160 be a recovering person with an eating disorder, but there's so many other things now to me that are

02:10:54.760 so much more important. And my long-term health is important. I do want to make sure that I've got

02:11:00.360 good bone health. I don't want to have bone diseases. I want to be able to live my life to the best

02:11:05.460 and mentally as well. I'm probably going to stay active because of all the benefits that we know

02:11:11.300 for mental health, like anxiety, depression, depressive-like symptoms. I want to optimize

02:11:18.560 my health and staying so fixated on the scale and body fat and cellulite. It's like the least of my

02:11:27.160 concerns right now, which is a really weird thing for me to say as someone that like used to feel like

02:11:32.220 unless I was stage lean year round, I was not a worthy human. So there needs to be a big shift

02:11:39.180 in what we're delivering to our patients and to our clients. Because if we look at social media,

02:11:45.620 it's really easy to get engrossed in social media's thin ideals and filters. And the best step that I

02:11:53.300 ever took was just unfollow. Like all the accounts that are only focused on the aesthetic, I just,

02:11:59.640 nope, I don't look at them anymore. I read about the things that I want to learn more about. If I

02:12:04.560 want to feel happy, gosh, I've got like a hundred books that I've read that are all on how to change

02:12:09.660 your mind, how to be happy, what is life's purpose, how to break habits. That's where I spend my time

02:12:15.120 now. I'm looking to optimize myself as a human. And it means that there's less need for all that

02:12:21.520 aesthetic stuff. Well, Holly, thank you so much for sharing both the insights and also obviously the

02:12:26.060 really deeply personal stuff that actually I think will probably resonate with many people,

02:12:31.140 both men and women. So thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It's been awesome.

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02:15:23.000 Bye.

The Peter Attia Drive - October 24, 2022

#228 ‒ Improving body composition, female-specific training principles, and overcoming an eating disorder ｜ Holly Baxter, APD

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