Physiqonomics Subscriber Q&Aa Pt. 1
Last month I sent out an email asking you guys to send me your questions on all things training and nutrition. Over the next few emails I’ll be answering them.
As the title of this email suggests, this is part one. So, without further ado, let’s get into the Physiqonomics Q&Aa. (See what I did there?)
Table of Contents
For easier navigating, here’s a list of the questions in this issue:
- What do you think about carb cycling and what sort of training would it suit best?
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2. I’ve read that people who stay slim eat pretty much the same thing everyday. In your experience with clients and others, is this true? It doesn’t have to be the same kinds of foods for every person across the board. But for the individual — do they generally eat a relatively small variety of foods?
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3. I still haven’t understood when to “cut” and when to “bulk”. I’ve started dieting and I’ve been steadily losing weight, without exercise, by calculating my TDEE. Now I’m starting CrossFit and I’m liking it, but my weight is now at a normal BMI (for reference, now I weigh 80kg, four months ago it was something like 90kg — didn’t weight myself regularly). However, I still have body fat — especially around my belly and chest — that I want to get rid of. Should I continue losing weight while exercising (and go to my ideal body weight, which is between 72kg and 78kg) or should I start eating more and gaining muscle? When do you know to change between one and the other? (For reference, I think I’m still at 25% body fat, which I need to get properly measured)
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4. You mention the body fights you as you get to lower body fat percentages. Are you talking about getting super ripped or even to just have your abs become visible? Is the solution to just stay strict with your meal plan and calorie deficit?
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5. For someone who is 6"2 and has been doing proper weightlifting for a year what would be a rough weight range to see my abs. I am currently at 182 lbs and look lean in clothes but do not see any definition around the abs.
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6. How do I keep my smoking hot body as I age. I’m 51 and still lifting weights, boxing , hiking, etc. My diet is mostly clean. Is muscle loss and fat accumulation inevitable? Do I need to continue to adjust my calories?
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7. Do you think I can eat intuitively and lose weight?
1. What do you think about carb cycling and what sort of training would it suit best?
For those of you who don’t know what carb cycling is, it’s simply cycling between high(er) carb days and low(er) carb days throughout the week. Like so:
In the illustration above, the blue bars denote high-carb days and the green bars denote low-carb days.
Why do it?
Well, you don’t have to do it. There’s nothing magical about cycling your carb intake nor will it increase fat loss–well, not directly anyway. The benefits to cycling carbs are more psychological than physiological*:
• Some people prefer to consume more carbs (and calories) on training days where the extra food can help fuel training performance. This can have some positive effects during a diet when calories are low.
• Having 1–2 days of the week where you can consume more carbs (and calories) can help people adhere to a diet better.
• But also: it doesn’t suit some people, mentally, and for these people a simple linear approach to carbs (and calories) works better for adherence.
As long as your weekly calorie intake is consistent with your current goals, you’ll continue to make progress. So make that your focus first.
*Some may argue that increasing your carbs (and calories) for a period of 1–4 weeks could have physiological effects, and I agree. But that would be considered a ‘diet break’ and not carb cycling. When I refer to carb cycling in the context of this question, I’m referring to cycling your carb intake on a weekly basis.
As far as training goes–no training is best suited for carb cycling. If you are planning on trying a carb cycling approach, the only recommendation would be to consume more carbs on training days and fewer carbs on rest days.
2. I’ve read that people who stay slim eat pretty much the same thing every day. In your experience with clients and others, is this true? It doesn’t have to be the same kinds of foods for every person across the board. But for the individual — do they generally eat a relatively small variety of foods?
Yup.
And the research is pretty clear on the topic, too. In this study [1] researchers noted:
“More structure regarding meals is associated with greater weight loss, as compared with seemingly holistic programs that are based on concepts of balance, variety, and moderation”
In another study [2]:
“Research in the area of dietary variety shows that consuming greater variety increases consumption in the overall diet, within food groups, and within eating bouts. Thus, in those circumstances in which negative energy balance or maintenance of energy balance is desired (i.e., during weight loss and weight loss maintenance), consuming a diet with greater variety, particularly from food groups higher in energy-density due to their fat content, may make achieving weight loss and successful weight loss maintenance more challenging.”
And in this study [3]:
“These results suggest that a reduction in dietary variety of highly palatable, energy-dense foods may be useful in the treatment and prevention of obesity. Limiting the number of different highly palatable, energy-dense foods in a meal may help reduce energy intake within a meal, thereby reducing overall intake.”
Even the American Heart Association recently released a report stating: [4]
“Opposing the long-standing belief that a diverse diet is necessary for proper nutrition, the AHA highlighted observational research that instead suggests that a diverse diet may lead to a greater intake of highly processed foods, refined grains, and sugar-sweetened beverages, leading to weight gain and obesity.
And, finally, people who have lost weight and maintained that loss in the long-term exhibit a few key traits, among these: “maintaining a consistent eating pattern across weekdays and weekends.” [5]
Setting aside studies, let’s look at a hypothetical example. If you were at a buffet where you had access to hundreds of different food items, the chances of you consuming more calories increases versus a buffet where you have access to, say, only five food items.
The buffet is the metaphorical equivalent of the world today. You have easy access to a multitude of highly tasty, highly calorific, food items on a daily basis and resultantly your chances of consuming more calories is increased.
If you want to be successful with your fat loss, reducing food variety is key.
Now, to be clear, this doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a variety of foods, you can, but these should be factored into your eating ahead of time.
3. I still haven’t understood when to “cut” and when to “bulk”. I still have body fat — especially around my belly and chest — that I want to get rid of. Should I continue losing weight while exercising (and go to my ideal body weight, which is between 72kg and 78kg) or should I start eating more and gaining muscle? When do you know to change between one and the other?
I’ve written about this topic here.
4. You mention the body fights you as you get to lower body fat percentages. Are you talking about getting super ripped or even to just have your abs become visible? Is the solution to just stay strict with your meal plan and calorie deficit?
Dieting is basically controlled starvation–and our bodies are designed to prevent us from starving. So the leaner you become, the more your body will fight you. The solution is to either, a) not get that lean in the first place, or b) if you do want to get that lean, suck it up. But also understand that being able to maintain ~7–8% bf (males)/14–18% (females) is not realistic for the majority of people. And I know you’re thinking, “but *insert Instagram fitness person here* maintains that level of leanness.” Yeah? Guess what–they have better genetics than you or they’re on drugs or a combination of both. And now you’re thinking, “but they told me they’re natty.” People lie, I know 🤯surprise.
5. For someone who is 6'2 and has been doing proper weightlifting for a year what would be a rough weight range to see my abs. I am currently at 182 lbs and look lean in clothes but do not see any definition around the abs.
These types of questions are impossible to answer because there are so many factors at play.
• Are you actually as lean as you think? 95% of the time a man tells me he’s ‘lean’, he’s not. And it’s simply a case of him needing to drop more body fat.
• Do you have poor ab genetics? Some poor souls, no matter how lean they get, will never have abs because their ab genetics suck. HOWEVER, this is a rarity and I doubt this is your issue. Only mentioning this for completeness.
• Have you been directly training abs? If you’re as lean as you say are and your abs aren’t showing, then you probably need to train them directly to grow them.
Here’s an example from one of my clients.
If you look at the picture titled ‘End of First Cut’–you’ll see that while he got lean, his abs were poor. But then if you look at the picture directly underneath titled ‘End of Bulk’, you’ll note that his abs are now prominent.
No magic or one weird trick: I simply had him gain muscle for over a year. His abs were a by-product of him gaining size all over.
And based on your question, the solution is simple: focus on building more muscle and train your abs directly.
6. How do I keep my smoking hot body as I age. I’m 51 and still lifting weights, boxing , hiking, etc. My diet is mostly clean. Is muscle loss and fat accumulation inevitable? Do I need to continue to adjust my calories?
You keep your smoking hot body the same way you built your smoking hot body–continue lifting weights and exercising. There will be some muscle loss, inevitably, as you age but you can counteract a lot of this by staying active.
A quick note: a lot of the fat accumulation that occurs with ageing is because people tend to become more sedentary as they age, this results in muscle loss which tends to ‘slow’ their metabolism. You can counteract a lot of this simply by staying active, continuing to lift weights to preserve muscle mass which preserves your metabolic rate, and paying attention to protein and food intake. If there truly is a Fountain of Youth, it’s strength training.
7. Do you think I can eat intuitively and lose weight?
Can you, personally? I don’t know because I don’t know your context as an individual. However, for the vast majority of people–intuitive eating doesn’t work.
Here’s the thing: Intuition comes from EXPERIENCE.
This is why I take issue with the idea of intuitive eating. Can you eat intuitively? Possibly, sure. But, ONLY after you’ve spent some time tracking your calorie intake. Calorie tracking leads to a better understanding of food; it gives you EXPERIENCE so you can eventually stop tracking (if you wish) and ‘eat intuitively’.
But telling people that they shouldn’t track food because “Diets don’t work”, and you should, “Listen to your body”, is, well, utterly moronic. Because, HEY, in case these people hadn’t realised, we’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic EXACTLY because people have been *listening* to their bodies.
It’s called an Obesogenic Environment for a reason–foods are engineered to bypass your satiety signals and encourage you to continue eating.
Some more points:
1. People are terrible at estimating the calorie content of foods. Tracking their intake for a while helps open their eyes to what actual servings of different foods look like.
2. The Health Halo of food effect is pervasive in the diet world. People assume that because a food is marked “healthy/organic/low fat”, etc. it’s lower in calories even when it isn’t and in turn, they consume more of these foods, which equals more calories consumed. (Read more about that here.)
3. You CAN track your calories and be mindful of hunger and satiety cues. Actually, I would say mindful eating and calorie tracking go hand in hand.
4. Some people are more attuned to their *natural* hunger and satiety signals. These are also the same people who find it easy to stay lean. Just because it works for you, doesn’t mean it’s going to work for everyone.
5. “Calorie counting isn’t ‘natural.’” People ‘sell’ intuitive eating as a ‘natural way’ to eat. But, the thing is–it’s anything BUT natural. Our bodies, if left to their own devices, want you to eat as much as possible and get as fat as possible (it’s the mechanism that’s allowed our species to survive until now).
This is exacerbated by our food environment that doesn’t want you to be lean and healthy, and the best way to combat that is to pay as much attention to food via tracking.
So, the idea that tracking isn’t ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ is false and misguided.
Maybe intuitive eating was ‘natural’ 100–200 years ago where high-calorie, hyper-palatable foods weren’t as readily available. But today? Probably not.
6. “Tracking calories gives people *eating disorders*” Oh, really? Please tell me more about how an extremely complex psychological issue is caused by the tracking of what someone eats? And if it does — it’s because the person had a predisposition to it. Can tracking food intake exacerbate the issue, sure, but it’s not the *cause*.
Think of calorie tracking like training wheels. Eventually, you can ‘take them off’, but when you’re starting out you’ll be best served by tracking your intake for a period of time.
