Fixing 3 Strangers Fat Loss Plans

Are you trying to lose fat and build muscle but can't get the number on the scale to go down? Recently, thousands of people applied to have their fitness plans critiqued by me on this channel, and almost everybody was making the same few mistakes. Today, I'm fixing the plan of 3 strangers to show you how to finally lose fat, build muscle, and get that number on the scale to say what you want it to say. These strategies and suggestions that I use will be the exact same things I've used coaching over 25,000 clients in the past 8 years to help them transform their bodies and break their plateaus. So without further ado, let's dive right in. Our first submission is from Janine, and this is going to be an interesting one. She is a 41-year-old female weighing about 155 pounds wanting to get to 145 pounds. She consistently tracks her calories and gets about 1,650 1,250 per day with 140 grams of protein, which is an absurd amount of protein. You can see a normal day of eating here for her. Pretty clean, pretty healthy, and for the most part, pretty dialed in. She's got some really good water intake as well. And when it comes to her workouts, she said she's doing about 2 hours with breaks and setups. And on the weekends, she's doing 2.5 hours of zone 1 to 3 activities. And this is kind of like where your heart rate isn't that high, but you're You're still moving and exerting yourself, and she's struggling with wanting to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. But she's not seeing the progress that she wants to see. The scale isn't going down, and her smart scale isn't showing she's losing fat or building any muscle. So there's a lot to unpack here, but let's go ahead and start right now. I think Janine is stuck in a dieting mindset while trying to exercise like a madwoman, and I think. She's obsessing over metrics that don't really show her progress. And let me explain what I mean. Janine's lifting 5 days per week, and she's doing cardio on those days as well. And again, on the weekends, she's doing a ton of activity. Right now, I think Janine is falling into the overtraining or underrecovering category. Even though she's eating a high amount of protein, I don't think her body is properly recovering, which is causing her to stall out. And yes, there is a thing as doing too much exercise. And on top of that, I wouldn't put too much into these smart scale numbers, and here's why. Research has shown that the body fat percentage that it gives can be anywhere from 5 to 10% inaccurate. So she might think that she's not losing body fat, but this scale is just not the most accurate method of tracking that body fat percentage. And if we go back up to her current weight and desired weight. She's trying to lose the last 10 pounds. This is also a problem for Janine and a lot of people out here because most people think they need to lose more weight on the scale to look the way they want to look, and it's just not true. Right now, Janine needs to start building more muscle and not focus as much on losing the fat or losing the number on a scale because she could lose as much more fat as she wanted to, if she doesn't have the amount of lean muscle that she needs to have, she will never look the way she wants to look. And that goes for you too. So how do we fix this problem? Number one, we stop chasing a number on the scale, and we stop looking at these BMI and body fat percentage metrics that your smart scale is showing. And what we start looking at instead is your month-to-month progress pictures, your body measurements, how your clothes fit, and your strength levels in the gym. So are your pictures looking different? Are your measurements changing? Are your clothes fitting better? And are you getting stronger in the gym? Those are the 4 things I want you to track, not this for right now. The second thing she needs to do is do less training. You don't need to be lifting weights 5 days a week. I would either cut this back to 2 lower body days and 2 upper body days. And if you want to keep doing your cardio, that's fine. But I would definitely make sure it's lower intensity, and I would make sure it's not more than 15 to 20 minutes after your workout because again, you don't want to be doing too much that you're taking away from your results. And the last thing I would probably start to do is stop trying to eat in this massive calorie deficit. You should be trying to eat more towards your maintenance calories instead because you want to be able to fuel your body enough to build the muscle you need to build to look the way you want to look. And I'm telling you, this is a trap a lot of people get into. You think you're going to look the way you want to look at 145, Janine. You're not going to look the way you want to look. The number on the scale doesn't matter. Focus less on that and focus more on building the body that you want. For example, this is one of my clients, Bremer. In between these 2 pictures, he only has a 3-pound weight difference, but you can see the incredible progress he made. Or this is one of our clients, Stephanie, where her weight only changed a couple of pounds. But look at the difference in her stomach. And the reason this is going to work so well is when you stop overtraining slash underrecovering, when you stop underfueling your body, you stop focusing on the number on the scale and you start to build more muscle. You actually improve your body composition versus just chasing a number on the scale. You have better recovery in your workouts. You can lift heavier weight, push yourself closer to failure, all those things which will build more muscle to get your physique how you want it to look. And the changes you are looking for are not in a number on the scale. So all of this right here that I'm highlighting, you can fix this right here by doing exactly what I just said. So quickly, some recaps. Cut 5 days a week to 4 days a week. Increase the calories to maintenance. By the way, if you need to know how many calories you should be eating for a deficit or maintenance, Free calorie calculator in the description of the video. Track your progress with progress pictures, measurements, how your clothes fit, and your strength in the gym—not the weight on the scale or your smart scale metrics. I hope it helped, Janine. And now let's get into our next submission, Ray. And actually, before we get into Ray's submission, if you want a free review of your plan ending up on this channel. Click the link in the description below. There will be a link to input the information just like you see here and have a chance to have me review it for free. Ray is a 39-year-old male currently weighing about 168 pounds, looking to get down to roughly 155. He's pretty dialed in, it looks like, with his steps, with his calories, with his protein. He never orders takeout. You must be better than all of us, Ray, so kudos to you. He's eating pretty healthy foods for the most part. He wants to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. He's stuck at a certain weight on the scale, stuck at a plateau for— looks like about 3 weeks now. And his routine is— it looks like a mix of cardio, strength training, and then a little bit more cardio afterwards. Looks like Ray is also working out 5 times a week, and he's following a split that is chest and triceps and abs. Back, biceps, and shoulders. Leg day. Thursday is chest routine. Friday, back to biceps and back and biceps routine. All right, so we got a couple things here I think we can help Ray with. Number one, when we are losing fat and building muscle at the same time, just like I talked about with Janine, you can't put all of your progress into a number on the scale. Let me show you something really quickly. This is 1 pound of fat. This is one pound of muscle. If I put them on the scale, they both weigh a pound. The composition is different. Muscle is more dense and hard than fat. Fat is more jiggly and squishy, and it takes up more space on your body. But they both weigh a pound. So if you're losing some fat and then building some muscle, the scale is not going to change that much. But If just look at this, if it this is here versus this is here, it just looks different. But the scale is not going to move that much. So Ray, I think you're getting into the same thing Janine was, which is stop overly focusing on the number on the scale. And plus, it doesn't sound like you have that much more weight you'd like to lose. Thirteen pounds. So I think that's one of the problems that we'll talk about. The second problem is looking at Ray's workout plan. I think he's doing what we kind of call like you could call it a bro. split, or you could call it a little bit more of like a push-pull-legs split. But I think he has some opportunity to improve his workout split to then improve the muscle building progress that he can make. And then number 3, with the cardio routine that he's doing both before and after, I think that might be holding him back as well. So how are we going to fix these things for Ray? Number 1, like we just talked about with Janine, you got to stop focusing on the number on the scale. Who cares that it's been stuck for 3 weeks? If you were one of our clients, I would ask you, what have your progress pictures looked like in those 3 weeks? What have your measurements looked like in those 3 weeks? And what have your workouts looked like in those 3 weeks? Because that will give me a better understanding of progress versus just a number on the scale. Second, I think that we could do a couple of things with this cardio routine. Number one, I would either just drop the cardio before your workout. I think that's probably taking away from some of the strength building and the muscle building and the workout performance that you could be doing. So I would personally save that for after your workout. And I don't think you need to run in place holding 10-pound dumbbells. I think you could just like walk on an incline or you could do some low-intensity elliptical Zone 2 cardio for 15 to 20 minutes and then just kind of be done with it. It looks like you're getting a good amount of steps per day. You're already hitting 8,000+ steps a day, which is great. So I think pull back on that cardio a bit. I don't think you need to do all of that because I think it's taking away from your recovery and your ability to build muscle. And then number 3, I think we can change up this workout split much like I talked about with Janine earlier. I think if it were me, I would go to a Monday lower body, Tuesday upper body, Thursday lower body, Friday upper body. That's actually the exact split that I run. So that's what I would do if I were you. It allows you to hit your muscle groups 2 times per week. It allows for better recovery and it allows you in conjunction with kind of pulling back on the cardio, you'll be able to push more, you'll be able to lift heavier, you'll be able to build more muscle, which Much like I talked about in the previous one, this is not about losing 13 more pounds for you. This is about building muscle, changing your physique, and pushing yourself. And the last thing I would say with your calories, you're eating roughly about 2,100 with a ton of protein, which is a lot. I don't really think you need to change a ton with your calories. Maybe you might go a hair lower, maybe 2,000 calories, maybe 1,900. But I would make those couple of changes first. I would look at the rest of your progress. before dropping your calories any lower. And the reason this is going to work so well for Ray, I think, is because number one, he's not going to be under-recovering and under-fueling his body a lot, which will help him change his body composition. Number 2, the workout split I think is going to lead to a bit more muscle growth. And number 3, with the cardio being backed off once again, he'll be able to recover a lot better, push harder in his workouts, and have more of what we call progressive overload. If you don't know what that is, Basically, you're just trying to do more weight or do more reps week over week, and that's what's going to drive him to get the body that he wants to get. So action plan: take your progress pictures, measurements, and track your workouts in the gym. Look at those as your forms of progress other than just the scale. Change up the workout split and drop the pre-lifting cardio and move that to after. Make it low intensity. 15 to 20 minutes. And if that doesn't work, maybe you slightly decrease your calories by 100 to 200 per day. Hope it helps, Ray. And let's go into our next submission, Christy. So Christy is a 46-year-old female currently weighing about 150 pounds, looking to get down to 135. Christy's is pretty interesting here, so I'm going to have some fun going over this before I go over anything else. Christy has lost a significant amount of weight already, about 55 pounds using Ozempic. She got off it around March, and so we are in July of this year. So she wants to lose the last 15 pounds, but she's gained 5 pounds back since she started— since she stopped the medicine. She's hungry, she's miserable. So there's a lot going on there. Christy's main form of exercise, it looks like, is doing a lot of cardio. She does work in some strength training here and there, looks like about 3 times per week, but she's doing a lot of steps and a lot of— it looks like high-intensity cardio because these step aerobics are— your heart rate is, is pretty high. You're doing a high-intensity cardio there. Now this is also interesting because she's having 4 to 6 drinks per week, which isn't a ton, but she's also saying she just in general does more dessert And wine on the weekends. And the last thing I'll point out, she's having 90 grams of protein per day, and her calories during the week are— looks like 1,400 to 1,600, and the weekends are 2,000 to 2,400. So there's a couple of things here. Number one, let me start with the exercise. So when we talk about one of the reasons your hunger is probably through the roof, you're doing a shit ton of high-intensity exercise. Like I've been saying with the previous submissions, I don't think you need to be doing all of this. If you like doing step aerobics, that is completely up to you. I would do that maybe 1 time per week. Right now it looks like you're doing it 1, 2, 3, potentially 3 times per week, maybe sometimes 4 depending on the rest days or not. I would drop that down to 1 time per week. You're already getting 10,000 steps per day plus, which is more than enough. I think what's happening here is once again you're overtraining slash under-recovering. You're just putting too too much stress on your body. And also, when we talk about the hunger levels, some of this may be due to coming off Ozempic, but I will say it's been a couple of months since you've been off Ozempic, and so your levels probably should have normalized out by now. But when you are restricting so much throughout the week and then overeating that much on the weekends, and you're doing a lot of alcohol, more desserts, and only 90 grams of protein per day, you're not giving yourself much of a fighting chance to not be hungry. You're, you're gonna be hungry doing that. And it kind of creates this vicious cycle a lot of people fall into, which is like they restrict and they overeat. They restrict, I'm good all week, I overeat on the weekends. I'm sure that sounds familiar to you listening to this. And what's happening here is just the classic, like, you're undoing all of your progress on the weekends that you think you're making during the week. And again, your exercise isn't helping. It's only making your hunger and your cravings worse. So how do we fix this? Number one, like I said, we drop the high-intensity cardio to one time per week. If you would like to still move your body on these other days, do it, but you're already hitting your 10,000 steps, so I promise you're good. Second, and I'm just gonna get real with you, you got to get your shit together on the weekends a little bit more. It sounds like you're just going too much free-for-all on the weekends, and you just simply can't do that if you want to continue lose fat and build muscle at the same time. I would bring your drinks down to maybe 2 to 4 per week. So I'm not going to tell you to completely cut it out, but you should be cutting back on it. And I wouldn't have such a big difference in your calories. You said your weekdays are 1,450 as your lowest, and then your weekends are 2,400 as your highest. Your hunger hormones are going to be all out of whack. What I would do if I were you is maybe bring the weekday totals up to, let's just say, 1,700 to 1,800 per day. And then I would make those weekend totals 1,900, 2,000, 2,100 per day. Again, if you need an exact calorie calculator, click the link in the description below. There will be a free calorie calculator. But this right here, this can't keep going on right here. We gotta fix this. We gotta fix this. And I do think changing up your exercise will help you fix this, but you can't do too much restriction because it's leading to overeating on the weekends. And the very last thing I would say is we got to bump up this protein as well. So if you're hitting 90 grams, I would love for you to start hitting probably at least 110, if not 120 grams of protein per day. And looking here at your food log, I would say you could do this in a very simple couple of ways. Number one might just be adding maybe 1 to 2 whole eggs in your breakfast. If you're doing a protein shake that is 360 calories, I don't know what protein shake has that many calories. And so I would look at that because the protein that I use, I can put a link for the description below. It's actually, I have my own flavor. So if you want to check it out, check it out. But the protein shake I use is like 110 calories. Per 24 grams of protein, 23 grams of protein. So we should probably look at that because I don't think you need to be having that many calories for, for that much protein there. And then with this right here, I would probably just increase the amount of Greek yogurt you're having because that'll increase your protein. You make those 3 changes, you're probably at 120 grams right there. And the reason all of this is going to work so well is, number one, less high-intensity cardio equals less cravings, so she'll be good with that. Number 2, the higher protein will help with hunger and cravings as well. And number 3, not going so much restrict and binge is going to help her hunger hormones be a bit more aligned. She won't fall into this, I'm doing good all week and then undoing my progress on the weekend. It needs to be a bit more leveled out. And again, I know some people like their alcohol and wine, but if you really want to do this, you're gonna have to cut back a tad bit on that to get to your goals. Sorry. I really hope you found this video helpful and took some tactical tips from it. 2 last things. Number one, if you're interested in becoming a client and getting coached by an expert one-on-one coach on my team, click the link in the description below. There will be a link that says apply for our one-on-one coaching. Number 2, if you'd like to apply for the free review on the channel, there'll be a link for that below. And number 3, if you want my best cheat codes to help you lose fat and build muscle as fast as possible? Well, lucky for you, I did a video on exactly that. Watch this video right here next.