#228 ‒ Improving body composition, female-specific training principles, and overcoming an eating disorder | Holly Baxter, APD

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Drive Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level, at the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are. Or if you want to learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com subscribe Now without further delay, here's today's episode. My guest this week is Holly Baxter. Holly is an accredited practicing dietitian, a competitive bodybuilder, a physique coach, and a personal trainer. She's also a fitness educator and competition coach coach. In this episode we talk about Holly's background, her interest in nutrition, and Holly opens up in detail about her struggle with an eating disorder throughout a portion of her life. From there, we dive into a case study of what a typical female patient that Holly may work with could experience and what she might be thinking about as she trains. Not necessarily for competitive bodybuilding, of course, but just to sort of improve her physique. Holly builds out what a training and nutrition program might look like for a female who wants to improve, say, putting on five pounds of muscle and simultaneously losing five pounds of fat. We then talk further about female specific principles when it comes to training. So even if you're not aspiring to be a bodybuilder, which I assume many of you listening to this are not, I think everybody is somewhat interested in improving their physique and therefore I think there's a lot of valuable information in this episode to learn about building muscle specifically for females, which is an important aspect of longevity. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Holly Baxter. Holly, thanks so much for making time to sit down today. Look forward to talking about a lot of things. My wife has already peppered me with a hundred questions for you today.

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

So tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you grew up in Australia and I know that you, I think you ran track growing up.

Yes, I did. So, grew up in Tasmania, Australia. So for those that may not be geographically aware where that is, it's the little island that sits just south of the mainland. So pretty small place And I think part of the evolution of me now being where I am in Florida was just having such a big open mind and I didn't want to stay there, so I moved away to do college. So I moved over to Melbourne Deakin University, where I did an undergraduate in nutrition science, food science, nutrition, and then a master's in dietetics.

I know Tasmania by land mass looks pretty big, but is it a tiny population?

It's tiny. I think at the moment it's probably like 500,000. Where I grew up, specifically when I was living there, the population of launceston was about 90,000. So pretty small.

So in high school you ran track.

Or in college all the way through. So I started track at about age 8 and I went right through till age 18. So I finished by the time I got to like second or third year of university. I guess at that point that was when I could either go for a sporting career or, or choose academics. So I ended up choosing academics because unfortunately in Australia for females there just isn't a whole lot of opportunity to, you know, have a successful career in sport. For males, it's a little bit different. We have Aussie Rules football, which is incredibly popular and absolutely can make a killing. And I think perhaps now that social media has grown to be where it is, maybe females have an opportunity to have a good career in sport. But academics was kind of the only option really for me at that time.

What did you run? And track.

So I was a sprinter, 100 meters, long jump, triple jump, and if someone dare ask me to do a relay or 400, I might do that. So lots of fast twitch, anything explosive and powerful and short.

And did you lift weights in high school with your exposure to it?

I actually only started lifting weights probably in year 11, so we call that college at home. So grade 11, I started or introduced lifting weights. That was when I was part of the Tasmanian Institute of Sports. So my coach at the time, Peter Fortune, was also Olympic water meter runner Cathy Freeman. So she won the gold medal in the 2000 Olympics and everybody loved her. So I worked with him. Yeah, that's where I kind of had a lot of my, I guess, experience in track sprinting.

So why did you choose nutrition in college?

Good question. So most people would probably say, oh, you know, I'm really passionate about sport and da da, da, da, da. But my reasoning was probably not a good one. I got into the sport purely because of my desire for control of my nutrition. Probably begs the question, what's that all about? So I have Only very recently overcome a 15 year long eating disorder. I struggled with anorexia for a short period of time and that went on to become binge eating disorder and bulimia. So before I even thought about going off to college, I was already in the depths of that disorder. I was also struggling a lot with depression. At age 16, I had already attempted suicide twice and I was hospitalized for a good part of my year 11 schooling, which looking back at that now, like, it's really sad actually. And I just didn't have the supports, I didn't have the mentors or people in my life that really helped me to feel what I needed to feel and I think experience as a child and it kind of escalated into my adulthood and really very recently have I only started to work on my mental health. And I think that's where a lot of my advances have come, especially as it relates to like feeling like I have a sense of purpose in life and really ultimately finding my happiness.

You have one sibling?

Yes.

Older or younger?

Younger sibling.

A sister?

Yes.

So when did the eating disorder start and did that precede what you describe as depression? Or do you think the two are kind of hand in hand and intertwined?

They kind of came on simultaneously, I think for multiple reasons. So I don't want to say negative things about my family or my parents or how they raised me because, gosh, my mother was just an incredible woman. She basically raised us as a single mom. I did have a father in my life, but he was very hard worker, very disciplined and so career focused that, you know, we were kind of invisible to him. So my mom, I think she had grown up in a similar situation where her mother was completely absent. She was a single mom, so I think her life experiences where she didn't have somebody that even cared about her, that take her to do anything, do sports, you know, she had to do it all herself. She'd catch the bus to after school training, she'd take herself to athletics on the weekends. So my mother was a wonderful woman, but she did what she did based on her own personal experiences. So it probably wasn't the best thing looking back at it. But you know, we all have our flaws, but our relationship was really straightened. I think she wanted to control me, to protect me, I think, you know, and that put a lot of friction between us. So I felt like I had no control in my life. I think up until like year 10, I wasn't even allowed to have like a sleepover at a friend's without there being like serious arguments. And there was just a lot of hostility and confrontation growing up. So.

So year 10 is about 15.

Yes.

And so give me a little bit more of an understanding of that. So was the focus before that age, was it heavy emphasis on your academics and on your sports and that was it?

Absolutely, yes. So we were doing dancing, like tap, jazz, ballet, piano music, guitar, like drums. Then we were in basketball and athletics. So we did a lot of activities. And I think the only kind of praise and recognition or like you felt like you were cared for or loved was when you excelled at something. So, you know, if I came home and I did really well in my grades at school, that was about the only time that I would get, oh, wow, you know, we really love you, or well done, and I know my mum loves me. Like, it's just how people communicate is so important. So, yeah, I really kind of grew up with this idea that unless I was the best at something or did everything and I excelled at everything, I didn't really have value as a human. That's kind of one aspect of where all that depression and the eating disorder started. But sadly, I also experienced some sexual trauma around that age. There were two instances, and it happened with people that I really respected, that I trusted. And that coupled with this toxic home environment where you can't really even go to your parents because there's this fear of being judged, you know, from the community. Everything was about keeping up with appearances, so it wouldn't be, you know, are you okay? Talk to me. Let's. Let's have a discussion about this. It was, well, what did you do to deserve that? Well, what were you wearing? How are you dressed? What kind of makeup did you have on? Like you're asking for this. You, you know.

So you didn't disclose any of this to your parents?

I spoke to my mother about it, but that was kind of the feedback that I got. She didn't know how to. To support me. And she did, granted, try to look for therapy at the time, but I think at that point I was so far down, like the rabbit hole of depression and just feeling like I was a lost cause that nothing worked. Certainly the behavioral therapy that I did at that time was unaffective, and the medication that I had actually made it worse, significantly worse for a period. So I consequently came off that.

Help me understand a little bit more about. I think that eating disorders are probably a lot more common than we are led to believe. I don't actually. This is not something I know a lot of the statistics about. We've actually been trying to find an expert on eating disorders for the podcast because I think it is a very important topic. So I don't know if you are familiar with these statistics, but I'm not. But do you have a sense of how often they afflict young women versus young men?

So the prevalence is a lot greater in females than men, but it's actually increasing over the last 10 years in young boys as well. I hope I don't butcher the statistics. I did. Actually, there is a couple of studies that I'd like to reference, but I don't have them with me. But I believe 60% of high school students in US females have reported to struggle with low confidence, negative sense of self and body image. Prevalence of eating disorders, I guess it's a little bit lower, but I wouldn't know the exact statistics, but it is scarily high. And we can also then look into some of the younger studies in children and it is higher than it should be. Absolutely.

And so when you think back to how this started in you, I think you mentioned that it started first with anorexia before binging and purging. Did you gain a sense of control by limiting what you were eating? Did it in the short term satisfy something that was inside you?

You know what it did. But I think because I was so athletic, I was so heavily involved in sport that, you know, my energy demands, like, I think back to the amount of training that I was doing. You know, you've got your in school sports and then after school and it was hours of practice and six days a week for the part, maybe training on Sunday. I couldn't sustain the restriction. I was so famished and hungry. And that frustrated me. It really did. Like, I didn't connect the dots, like, why can't I control what I put in my body? Like, little did I know anything about, you know, your appetite regulating hormones at that point and the requirements for energy for the sport that I was doing. So I would act out these behaviors of binge eating and then purging, and it was just constant. It became a point where it was probably every day of the week for, I would say, five years, which is terrifying to think about considering the risks.

So that means from high school all the way into university.

It definitely slowed down when I got to university, and I think it was just because of the requirements for study. And, like, I had to work three jobs and to make everything work. So there was just less opportunity for me to do that if I wanted to excel in my studies. It was horrific I just remember feeling I wanted to be able to control things, but at the same token, I had no control because my body was doing what it's meant to do, which is to protect you from starvation, essentially.

Now, some of the complications that people experience with bulimia, of course, the constant flow of acidity up and down the esophagus. Did you have any of the issues with your teeth, the electrolyte abnormalities?

Interestingly, no. I can't speak to the electrolyte abnormalities because I never had, you know, routine blood work back then. That was definitely not something I was going to prioritize as a young, naive student. But I can say now, thankfully, you know, I never had any of the esophageal erosion from that acidic acid. I think that plays a strong risk in developing cancers of the throat and the olfactory. So I do wonder about that because of the frequency of purging and what that says for me in the future, because now that I have got that under control, it's a scary thought because, I mean, cancers are, as a scary thing.

How did this progress? So you're in university, you're doing an undergraduate degree, then you do a master's degree right after what's happening, does anybody in your life kind of recognize that this is going on, be it your sister, your mom, or friends?

No. So I think one of the challenges, and it's been exacerbated by moving away, was my family weren't in the same state, and they didn't travel to see me very often. And it's kind of been that way since I've moved away. So I didn't have the family support. I've never had a close relationship with my sister, though I would love to. It's just. We've just gone in different directions, I think, with life and didn't have any kind of relationship with my father, so I didn't have anyone to go to for guidance. So I was kind of in and out of dating. When you were at school, college, and, you know.

But none of your boyfriends knew that this was happening?

No, I may have communicated it to one, and I think part of that was out of shame. Think about the stigma that's associated with mental health issues. Depression, for one. Then to have an eating disorder and me being the perfectionist, high achiever, driven woman that I was, There was no way I wanted to share this weakness. And especially given that I was educated. I've done a bachelor's in food science, and now I've got a master's degree in Nutrition, I should be able to control this. You know, again, there's that word control. So I was terrified to tell anybody. So I was suffering in silence. And it probably went that way for 10 years.

And during that 10 years, the pattern of behavior was still continuing. We're going to talk a lot about training, we're going to talk a lot about bodybuilding and stuff that you've done more recently. But kind of help me understand, like what did you physically look like at the time? Did you look as fit as you look today? Did you have more of a sort of slender build? Were you more muscular? I think part of the issue, and I know this isn't true, but I think it's part of the stereotype is when we think of somebody with an eating disorder, we picture an individual probably in different extremes. When we think of someone with anorexia, we think of someone that's incredibly thin. You know, they appear unhealthy and how thin they look. Conversely, I think when we picture somebody with bulimia, we usually think of somebody that's a little overweight. Were you somewhere on that spectrum?

I was right in the middle. I think, again, because of the amount of activity that I was doing that prevented me from being in this state or a mental state of anorexia. So I never got to the point where I was dangerously low body weight, but I was a healthy body weight and I was still, you know, sprinting track training, I would say I was above average muscularity. I was kind of. When I just started getting into. Do you remember the Les Mills classes they would have at the gyms where there's combat class or kickboxing or body pump. I was doing, you know, some light resistance training. My actual interest in bodybuilding didn't start until much later after college. So I was healthy body weight. But I think, like, if we look at, you know, the research for people that do suffer with binge eating disorders, disorder and bulimia, they tend to be normal weight to above normal weight. So I was right in the normal. No one would have known.

You mentioned also I think that you had a suicide attempt when you were 6. Was it 16?

Yes.

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

It was one of the things that was really disappointing and I think it just enhanced the sadness. I get a little bit upset and emotional thinking about it. But again, just to kind of outline just how incapable like my father was of communicating. And it's not that he's a bad person, it's just his backstory is incredible. Like, lost his mom at age 13 through breast cancer, was raised by an alcoholic father, four brothers, like beaten, you know, really, really sad. He didn't know how to communicate. And I remember at that point my mom was very upset when that happened. And I think my dad came into my room and was like, you're a fucking idiot. And he walked out. So to have that from like somebody that you're like, wow, I thought you loved and cared about me. He was never somebody that would have had a clue where to start. My mother, on the other hand, was overbearing and that was the problem. I knew that she was trying to help, but part of the reason that I'd gotten to this space anyway, in combination with the sexual assaults and then some of the things that my coach had said about my training, which led to the eating disorder as well, was that she was just way too controlling, wanted to just do everything for me, whether it was live vicariously through our sports, which I understand and I've forgiven my mother for that. And you know, she's just doing what she knew. But she tried to get me in touch with the right health professionals, but I think just lack of knowledge, resources, not having good connections herself. And she worked in medical industry as like administration for years before she became a stay at home mom. Even through her networks, she just didn't have the tools. And it was right about the time where I was ready to bounce and go to college and I had to fly, move away essentially. So the ability for Herc to kind of control and manage what I did with my health and now I'm becoming an adult, it was a lot harder. So I think in some ways I'm really grateful that I stepped away from Tasmania and took on other opportunities that didn't require her support. Because if you get babied for your young teenage years and enabled, I would never have had the life skills to be the person that I am today, to know what it's like to step out and take risks. And I don't have any fear of failure. And I think part of that was developed from me just moving away and stepping out from that control.

I want to kind of go back to still the understanding the eating disorder a little bit more. Did your self image of your body seem inaccurate with what you now look back at as reality? In other words, does everyone with an eating disorder necessarily also have a skewed view of their body image or can that be uncoupled and the eating disorder is simply A control tool that can be unrelated to a misguided belief about body image. I don't think that should make sense.

Dysfunctional thoughts? Yes. So I think it really depends on the individual. I couldn't recall all of the exact criteria or like characteristics, behaviors that clinically define anorexia or binge eating disorder or the like, because they are all slightly different in their own way. But for me, at least I can say that initially it wasn't my body image that I was concerned about, it was control. Then developed into like obsessive compulsive for some things. It was like anytime I felt stressed, anxious, drop in, whatever emotion, as I grew, the desire to control came back and I'd kind of crafted this little environment where when I lived on my own at school and then post school postmasters, when I went off and started my career, my environment was built in such a way that I basically shielded myself from stresses, potential triggers, whether it was food, environmental, social, so that I could live and control and that gave me comfort. So reality check. When you become an adult and you have to be flexible and nimble and pivot and learn to adapt under stress, which, my goodness, I feel like my life was extremely stressful for a lot of different reasons, but I just had no coping skills. So it didn't start as a negative body image, it was simply the desire for control. However, as I found myself more and more involved in sport and as my physique did change, as I started to connect the dots with my athletic performance, with superior physique, low body fat, more muscle, and then the praise that I would get externally from people, that then became the obsession. It's how I look. And that was where I found my self worth. That was where I felt valued and appreciated and people respect me. And for a good part of my life, I think it became my identity. It was impossible to break and that.

Just fueled the disorder, I can only imagine. Which then leads to the inevitable question of how do you break that cycle.

Through a lot of hard work. And this is one of the practices, I guess, that I've incorporated only very recently into my own nutrition coaching and with our team as well. And that is really working in collaboration with allied health, particularly mental health experts. So for me, until I actually started having regular therapy, and I'm not talking like once every six weeks for a review, which is kind of the expectation, I guess, in the clinical world. I know for me as a dietitian, we would see our patients, you know, maybe you do a four week review or a six Week review. So it was really infrequent, but that's kind of how I had been exposed to it with my parents when Mum had gotten me into therapy.

When was that?

That was when I was about 16, when I was still living in Tasmania.

After the suicide attempt.

Yes. Yeah.

It puts you into kind of an infrequent therapy.

Yeah. So I would have to travel to Hobart. I saw a specialist down there who worked with females, predominantly any women's health issues, but eating disorders and nutrition. So it was infrequent. But I remember loving those little trips because it was like the one time that I was like, oh, my mom cares. Wow. We get to go and stay in Hobart and we get to go and spend time together. She cares about me. Like, it's a sick relationship to think, like, that was so exciting for me. But that was what was fuel. It was almost like that attention was good attention because I never felt like anyone cared about me outside of credentials and that kind of thing.

As you think about sort of the post college life, did you think that you had things under control or did you think that this is a dirty little secret that is totally out of control?

I think it kind of came in waves. Like any kind of condition, you know, works along a spectrum. I definitely had periods where I felt like I was managing the symptoms and the feelings, the emotions that kind of came along with that disorder. Okay. But as soon as things got a little bit stressful or I had, you know, extra assignments due, or if I needed, from a financial perspective, do two full weekends of work back to back. And that's the only way that you're going to be able to have groceries next week or put gas in your car. When anything extra kind of came into my life, I just lost it. It was extreme. Binging, purging, secret eating was really something that I struggled with. I would go out for dinner with friends and I would try to enjoy myself and partake in. But because I would restrict so aggressively anytime that I did get outside my four walls of comfort foods and things that were on my list of these are okay to eat, I was terrified. No one would know it on the outside, but I'd go out for dinner and it was just this uncontrolled. It was like I had no control to slow down my eating. So I ate so extremely fast. So many of my friends, as adults have said to me, yeah, you really eat fast. But I've noticed a massive change, you know, over the last few years. This is certainly for, like, longer friends, you know, that Habit stuck around. So I'd eat extremely quickly and I would almost binge eat and then I would usually order something else and take it home with the idea that I was going to have it tomorrow and I'll portion it out appropriately. But again, because of that extreme restrictive behavior, it just meant I'd go home and then binge eat more. And it was absolutely spiraled out of control. And I think again my stress response at that time, the only way I knew how to manage stress was to eat. And it completely countered the goals that I had for my sport and my training. So it was hard.

What was the wake up call? What was the event or set of events that led you to think I have to do something different? And it sounds like I'm going to have to take therapy very seriously.

It wasn't until I got to probably about age 25 at that point I had moved from States, I finished my schooling in Melbourne, moved to Gold coast where I opened my own business. So well, actually I already had my business in Melbourne, but basically was starting from scratch. So a new clinical practice and then also working, I guess 50% of my workweek was also in person training because at that point I discovered like the love for resistance training and I wanted to be able to incorporate those two things together. My business was going crazy, like busy, busy, busy, busy. I just had some success in the bodybuilding space and I got to the point where my anxiety was so high I didn't even know what anxiety was. I didn't, wasn't able to identify or put a word with the feeling that I had. It sounds so silly to think about it now because of course it was anxiety but like I couldn't even open my laptop because I was so stressed at the amount of work that I knew I had to do. So I actually got to a point in business where I was experiencing some burnout and I took myself to a therapist at that point. So that kind of started it. And then I ended up having to admit myself to like a rehab. So I traveled back to Melbourne to very well known rehabilitation therapy location in like country Victoria. And it was I guess incorporated counseling, yoga practices, different relaxation type techniques, and then one of the owners kind of come and work through different nutrition things with you and it was.

And this was specifically for people with eating disorders?

Yes.

And how long did you commit to go to this place?

I was there for seven days. It was pretty short, but it was very intense. Like you had a schedule mapped out from the minute you woke up to the moment you Went to bed.

How difficult was that for you to make the decision to shut down work for seven days?

Terrifying. I remember calling my mom actually and just bawling. We rarely spoke. Not because, you know, we didn't have a better relationship as adults, but I think we just kind of grew apart. So calling her, I guess she knows, like if I'm going to ring my mom, there's probably something wrong. Yeah, I was just mortified because I was so stressed about losing hours work because I was so passionate about, you know, but my clients, but, you know, da da, da, da. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. She said, look, financially you're going to be okay. Just take a week. You know, it doesn't have to be exorbitant. The therapy was quite expensive, but it was very well worth it. I'm going through this, you know, I haven't really resolved my eating disorder. I'm at business burnout, stress. So it was just, to me, it was like overwhelming. And I think at that point again was the second time in my life where I felt some of those suicidal thoughts. I kind of talked with my therapist and she'd said, well, do we need to Baker act you? And I was like, no, no, I think I'll work through this. But it's the first time that I felt this hopeless.

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

Not as much as I would have hoped. To think that anything that's that short in duration is going to cure you, you're very foolish. But it opened my eyes to the benefits of relaxation, meditation and the value of communication and being transparent and open. And that was not a behavior that I was good at for that 10 year period prior. I was very closed off, very reserved, didn't share very many things at all. I was very private. So I think I saw the value in what it's like to work through issues rather than suppress them. Once I finally moved to America, I got myself straight into weekly therapy. So I have had therapy sessions every week since 2016. I've probably missed, I don't know, maybe 20 weeks just through travel and business. So it got me on the right path.

What were sort of the breakthroughs that occurred with that type of much more consistent therapy?

I think number one, it made me accountable and it made me speak, made me talk, and helped me kind of reflect back on, you know, my past, which I'd never done. I had never given two thoughts about my upbringing. I feel like now it's all I Talk about it all I think about, but so much of what I experienced was bottled up in past traumas and those different styles of communication. So I think gaining an appreciation and understanding for why I felt the way that I did was incredibly valuable. It was like, oh, I've now got some data, at least it made sense to me. And then we started kind of discussing where are the dysfunctions in these beliefs. Let's start picking up these different sets of thoughts that you have and let's deconstruct them and how might these look different for a healthy mind. And through so much self development, reading also finding myself spiritually, which is another major part of this story, it really helped me to understand that I was enough as a human despite my accolades and sporting accomplishments, and that I'm loved and I don't need to keep proving myself to, you know, all the people in my life. And it was like this huge weight had lifted off my shoulders. And part of that was one of our staff invited me to go to church one day and I'd only been to church once when I was young with a boyfriend. His family were Christian, so my experience with religion was not negative. I'd say I grew up like agnostic. So I don't think my parents were anti religion, but they certainly didn't hold any beliefs of their own. And it was not something we discussed. So going to church and this was a non denominational church, very progressive, the pastor was just incredible. And every message every week I kept going back and I was like, wow, this is so relatable. There's so many things out of the Bible that it's just so good. It's like such good information. It was like, this is what I've been missing my whole life because I felt for a long time that I didn't have purpose. And part of my decision to keep moving and traveling was to feel like what's missing, maybe it'll be here or maybe if I go to this country, you know, people will be different and I'll resonate with them better. That it was something in here that was missing. And yeah, going to church and reading that was probably the one thing that changed my life. And since then I have never been happier.

I think there's two things that are interesting in this story that I think are important and illustrative for anybody struggling with anything. And one is that the improvements didn't happen quickly and that it's kind of non linear. I'm actually struck by the fact that you said, look, I did this seven day Intensive thing. And it helped, but it didn't help as much as maybe I wanted it to. But I think the encouraging point is here you kept sort of at it. It would be years before you would find yourself in daily or weekly therapy. I guess the other thing is, when I think of my addictions and struggles, I think, like any addict, let's just pick alcohol because it's an easy one for people to identify with externally. They say that an alcoholic is always an alcoholic. It's just a question of if you're in recovery or not. If an alcoholic commits to no longer drinking, they still need to be mindful of their behaviors and still need to be cognizant of the fact that they can slip back into drinking.

Yes.

That doesn't mean they can't be around people who are drinking, but they have to understand themselves and understand those limits. That's certainly going to be true for me for the rest of my life. I know what my addictions are. I know how they need to be managed, and they're always there. Do you feel that way as well?

Absolutely. So I think there is this idea that you can completely recover. I don't think that anybody truly recovers. Like you said, once an addict, always an addict.

Yeah. You're in recovery, you're not recovered.

Yes. Now, I think with something like that, you know, there's the physiological symptoms that you need to manage as you come out of that. You know, you've got a chemical dependence, but for something that is psychological, you know, there's obviously chemical imbalances in some of these conditions. But there's also a strong need for your desire to change and to improve. Wasn't until, like, I had committed to myself and said, you are never going to purge again. And I actually have started writing a book about this, actually, which will be hopefully very helpful for a lot of people that are going through the same kind of thing. But I remember sitting on my bathroom floor one day, bawling, emotionally exhausted, physically exhausted. And it was during a contest prep, the most difficult thing that one could probably ever attempt to do, which is get extremely lean and try and control your body, which wants to control you, essentially. And I remember just saying, like, you're not going to do this anymore. And I think as soon as I really believed that I didn't want to purge anymore, I was exhausted. That's when things started to change. And I think the more I talked about that with my therapist, where I no longer had a compensatory mechanism, I wasn't going to let Myself do that. And I also wasn't going to try and overcompensate with activity because that was something else that I would do. I didn't purge. I would feel so restless and anxious and guilty if I didn't go and do a 10 kilometer run because I would work out. Okay, well, I probably ate this many calories in that purge. And then really, I've got no idea because I threw some of it up. It was just this horrible, sickening feeling. Hard to talk about really. It's kind of gross. But once I kind of didn't have these outlets anymore, it forced me to get real with my intention for eating. It forced me to become mindful. It forced me to slow down and become present with my meals and to really, like listen to what my body was saying. And that was really hard because if you've restrained from, you know, certain foods, alcohol, drugs for a long period of time, all you do is think about that thing. So for me, like I'd restricted, like I would allow myself a little bit of ice cream until I learned about flexible dieting, of course. And then that changed a lot of things. But that's another story. You know, I'd restricted cookies and you know, just night nice fun cereals, like normal foods. And I just couldn't control myself around them anymore. So that was so difficult because I just felt like I was going crazy. What is wrong with me? I remember saying to my therapist, like a couple. This is years into therapy. Why do I still want to eat the entire tub of ice cream? I feel like I can't just make myself one serving. I want to eat the whole thing. And she's like, well, Holly, like, you've restricted this for 10 years. What makes you think that you're going to cure this, this desire overnight when it's been something that you've built a habit that's ingrained over your lifetime with this disorder. So I think once I started having a little bit more compassion for myself and forgiveness and reducing the amount of judgment that I had for myself as a human, like, you're a screw up. What's wrong with you? You know, once I started to be kinder, to mess myself, that was when I started to make a little bit more progress. And I hated the outcome going through that initial transformation because it meant I gained so much weight. So much weight. And at this point I hadn't really tackled the underlying cause either. The why, which was I felt like my body need, that was the thing that would give me value. So I'm trying To do this, just to stop the binging and the purging. So for me to see my body weight exceed 70 kg, right now I sit at about 60, 43 kilos. So to get to like 75 kilos at the peak of my recovery was the most uncomfortable I think I've ever been. And I think anybody that's struggled with body weight, you know, weight gain, can appreciate that feeling. And I just had to do it.

Was the therapeutic instruction, like, you need to sit in the discomfort of this weight gain.

Yep. That was one of the first strategies that I had to work through for my anxiety. At this point, I'd also developed a social anx. It was just like the lid had been taken off and all these things were like immersing themselves in front of me and I had no idea how to manage them. So, yeah, learning to sit with that discomfort and be okay with that. So now part of that process was discussing the feelings. And that was really when we started to identify, okay, what are the feelings that you have now that you've gained weight? And it of course led to, I feel horrible. I'm disgusting. This is so unhealthy. You know, I hate myself. Like, just such horrible words to describe myself. And I think one of the things that the time the therapist had said was, what would you say to a client? Because at this time, like, I'm practicing dietitian. I've been a dietitian for 10 plus years. So I really had to go, okay, what would I say to my clients if they said that? So I had to start treating myself like I would my clients. And yeah, there was a big shift then, just that compassion that I had for myself.

So how did that work? I think that's a wonderful test. I call it the Rick Elias test. He's a friend of mine who describes it even one step further, which is, what would you say to your best friend if they were saying these things, if they were in this situation? And it's amazing how much it totally changes and softens the tone.

It really does. You know, the first thing that springs to mind was, but what about your physical appearance? Or what does our friendship have to do with your physical appearance? If it was a friend and nothing. It was like, I don't have any logical reasoning for believing this to be true. And so many people, like clients would say, oh, you know, I've got this holiday catching up with some friends that I haven't seen in a long time. We've got this. It's always a wedding or some kind of special event where they feel the need to look a certain way. And I said, do you think you would have been invited if you were 10 kilos heavier? People are like, okay, of course those relationships aren't built on your aesthetic. It is built on your character. There's obviously something admirable that people like about you that has nothing to do with your appearance. It's a common interest, you know, the ability to connect over things and maybe your sense of humor insert whatever characteristic it is. And I think when I started talking to myself in that way, I was like, oh, yeah, I actually still can have fun on the weekends. And it has nothing to do with the weight on the scale or my body fat percentage.

Part of what is so interesting about your story makes it so hard to reconcile, which is everything we just talked about, which then coexists with one of your passions, which is bodybuilding, which seems to me to be this single activity that would most raise the risk of the one thing you're trying to prevent. Right. I mean, I guess if you were a jockey or a gymnast, that might be close on the list as well. But even those entities wear more clothing than a bikini. You've chosen to have this hobby outside of your job, but it's really related to your job in many ways. It's the pinnacle of exercise and nutrition as it pertains to aesthetics. And you've also chosen to do it in the drug free category so you don't get to rely on any additional biochemistry. You have to do this just through training and nutrition. I don't know if irony is the word, but there's something in there that's worth exploring. I imagine this has come up repeatedly with your therapist.

It's been a really long journey and there was a point just a few years ago where I really questioned my decisions to remain a coach and to be in the nutrition and exercise space because of the hypocrisy that I felt with what I was coaching on. Again, I think I can say that for the first 10 years of my practice, I had no desire to change my beliefs. I believed truly the bottom of my heart that in order for me to be successful in business, to support others the best that I possibly could, and to be taken seriously in an industry that is largely dominated by males, I needed to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk. So I never addressed that belief. I believed that I needed to be lean, so I never did anything about it. I felt uncomfortable that whole time, like the psychological stress that I had.

Can you by the Way, give me some examples on this. What body fat are you at when you're on stage?

It depends. So I compete in or have competed in figure for ifbb, which is a non drug tested federation and I have since moved away from that. But for those girls, you're probably looking at just on 10% body fat, they're extremely lean. And now the division that I compete in, which is the fitness category and it's for a different federation, it's a slightly smaller body, but still very muscular and very lean, I probably get down to about 10 or 11% body fat.

And just to make sure I understand, at 10 to 11% body fat, does your menstrual cycle still continue?

For majority of my competition history and competing life, yes, it would completely stop. In fact, for about five years I did not have a period that was, even with the return of calories back to a normal amount, even with the return of body fat back to normal, healthy levels. I think it was just the years of binging and purging.

I mean, think about just from an evolutionary standpoint, what that's telling you. That is telling you that again, evolution has one purpose for you and it's saying you are not even fit enough to do this.

Yeah. And I mean a lot of people ask like, is it a healthy sport and is it dangerous to get that lean? And I would say, well, it kind of depends because you know, I know a lot of females that, particularly in that line of work, if you're going to call yourself a professional in the bodybuilding space, they don't have the desire for families. So fertility isn't even an issue.

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

Absolutely.

It's basically saying the one thing you were put on this earth to do, evolution is putting the brakes on because it's basically saying you don't have enough excess energy to care for another life, to carry another life to term.

It's really scary. So there's no, no doubts about it. It's not a great thing for females to be that lean. We're not meant to be that lean. And I think unfortunately, you know, it's just something that has grown with the changes in times, society shift. I think there's been a lot of segue and improvements with the ideals for females. I think it used to be extremely slim. You know, you think about the really tall models, you know, Runway models, that used to be the, the look that everyone wanted to go for. And I'm actually Really happy that I think we're seeing a shift just with the general population to empowering females with resistance training and strength training, because to me, that is far more beneficial than starving and, you know, being a bean. Bean pole. So that's promising. But for whatever reason, we seem to kind of find ourselves back at this extremism ideal and extremely lean women are simply not healthy. Now, do all women lose their menstrual cycle when they compete? No. I've had probably a 50, 50 with the competitors that I've worked with that still have normal menstrual cycle, or it may not stop, but it becomes, you know, irregular all over the place. In fact, my last competition, I was actually getting a cycle like every two weeks for about 16 weeks of a contest prep, which was really bizarre. But that was, after all, not having had a period. So it took me a few years to recover my period through the process of reverse dieting, the recovery diet, and allowing myself to gain some body fat and have an off season where I got an adequate amount of calories and was able to fuel my body to a point where, you know, my hormones are working and functioning as they should. But, yeah, then the other 50% of people do completely lose it.

How do you now think about this? If you could go back in time and talk to yourself when you were 18 years old, would you say to Holly, then just stay away from the fitness industry, stay away from bodybuilding, get your degree in economics or business, something like that. Do you think that even though where you've ended up now seems like you're on a path to recovery, do you feel that you were just flying too close to the sun all of this time?

Yeah. So I have asked myself this question a lot. People will say, you know, what would you do differently? I think that if you spend an equal amount of time working on your mental health, and that is coupled with diet and exercise. I believe, because I'm in this place right now where wherever I am along the spectrum of body fat, wherever I am, you know, in my competition, on season, off season, I can truly say that I am good with myself wherever I am. The things that will limit me from getting to the point of obesity or like an unhealthy body weight would probably be like, again, extreme habits, like taking anything to the, to the limits, where you're just completely careless with your food and careless with exercise and you take. Just don't have any interest. So I don't think I would ever allow myself to get to that place because it just wouldn't feel good anymore. I try to really be conscious of, okay, what leads to you, number one, feeling happy and then also what's good for your body, how do you feel best, where do you perform best, how do I think and function best? I feel like you can be in this space, but I know a lot of people are not doing the work that is required to shift their. Why? Because I think that's really important for people that are moving into the bodybuilding space.

So I want to just kind of walk through, let's say, your most recent contest. You just had a contest a couple of weeks ago, right?

Yep.

So I want to walk through the training and the nutrition for the entire prep. So let's just say six months leading up to the contest. So kind of a bulking building phase and then a cutting phase and then a post phase or a recovery diet phase. And even though in your case the stakes are really high, it's a professional bodybuilding competition at the highest level. Right. It's a world federation. But for someone listening to this, it could be their wedding. You know, a woman who wants to look her best at her wedding and might acknowledge that it's going to not be the most sustainable she can be, but wants to do it in a way that's not harmful. So let's go back as far as we need to six months, nine months, a year.

Yeah. What does that look like?

What is the training? How do you periodize it? What are the principles of nutrition and everything? I want to understand what the cutting phase looks like and I want to know what this. Because my wife was telling me, because you guys were talking about this. The recovery phase is also very important. How you come out of the competition without doing what would be natural, given that you're starving, is just to go wild. So let's go back to the beginning. It's time to start adding muscle and bulking up.

Well, first and foremost, I'd say majority of the people that our team work with are just gen pop, not quite as extreme or high up in like the professional athlete status that I am. But the wonderful thing is that the processes are honestly no different. The only true difference between somebody that is a professional athlete versus your stay at home mom who wants to look good for, you know, they've got a girls trip coming up or something, you know, next year or a wedding, like you said, would be the extreme or the degree to which we take these processes. So for most people, when we first start, I kind of want to have an idea about like what's Their goal. What do you ideally want to look like? Or sometimes there's health goals as well. But I will say the majority of people that come to us are also looking to or primarily wanting to change their physique. So we need to get a good understanding of what that looks like. Because a lot of women will say, hey, you know, I'm down for this resistance training that you're talking about, but I'm terrified of getting too bulky. And how we approach this whole thing comes down to the individual's definition of like, what's bulky look like to you?

Yeah. What, what percentage of clients that you guys have look at you and say, I don't want to look like you, that's too much muscle.

I would say that most of my clients, 90% of my clients like this ideal. I think most people would say, yeah, I am not too bulky. Holly, you look great. I have had some people like, no, your quads are way too big. No, I want to fit in my jeans or, you know, something like that. But for the most part, my physique, that fitness looking, fitness model physique, is something that most women, I might be generalizing but aspire to. But again, if I'm talking to an endurance athlete versus somebody that has come from a sporty background and they're trying to do something that's very anaerobic, might be a different physique ideal because that would not be beneficial for their sport. But we want to identify that first so we go through. It's very unlikely that women will get to the point where they look like a female bodybuilder. Like, these things don't happen naturally. Those bodybuilders like that physique. That look is not obtained without performance enhancing drugs.

My physique and great genetics, extreme training, personality, perfect nutrition.

Yes. Yeah.

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

You still have to admire those people despite them being on. It's not easy. It's still not easy, but they've got some support. So for me, if someone was looking to make change their physique to this level of muscularity, that's still taken me like seven years of very consistent nutrition and training where I have probably missed less than 10 weeks, a year of training. And I have been like that for 10 years. So you're not going to accidentally grow muscle like this, even without some serious consistency.

And how do you help them identify the actual goals? I think this is an important stage. So I'm going to use a female example here. And focus that. So if she comes in and says, look, I'm getting married next summer and I want to look my best, is that not specific enough? You want to say, well, right now you weigh this much and your body fat is this. A year from now, do you want to weigh this much and have your body fat be this? I mean, what degree of granularity do you need to set the goal to set the path?

So I am pretty granular compared to some of even our other coaches. I think all of our processes are slightly different. I guess the principles at the end of the day are the same. But I'll often say, is there somebody that you follow on social media or that you've seen in magazines that you really like their physique? Just to help me get a better understanding? Because it does really vary and sometimes I've been very shocked. I'm like, oh, okay, all right. I actually don't really need to do a whole lot of building for this individual, you know, based on where they currently are. So that building phase may not even be part of the equation. We also have a look at their scale weight and their current body fat percentages which will preferentially have them send us through dexa. We take a look at all their biomarkers, that type of thing. And then from there I kind of plot a bit of a trajectory. So if they do need to gain, you know, a significant amount of muscle in that 12 months time, I will basically map out week for week using some equations like, okay, this is basically how many weeks of building we would need to do as a natural drug free person and tell me what you.

Believe the limits are for women.

It's going to be a little bit lower than males and part of that is just due to their ability to build more muscle mass and I guess sex differences and that type of thing. But we can still do a lot of positive work in an off season in an eight week period. I was actually looking at a study very recently for natural athletes. We are able to acquire somewhere just under the amount of 1 kg of fat free mass. Fat free mass isn't just skeletal tissue. We've got to take into consideration, you know, the increases in water mass, increases in all of these other things.

That's my record, by the way. In the one year I dedicated to, the most improvement was 13 pounds in 12 months of fat free mass. So it's about a kilo per eight weeks.

Yep, that sounds dead on.

And you're saying that's true for men and women?

Again, it Depends on the individual. How much time are they willing to invest in this goal? Where is it on their priority list? You know, it really comes down to their training volumes. How well are you going to adhere to your diet? How are you going to adhere to these other variables that all impact your rates of muscle gain?

So do you know what the largest amount of lean mass you've put on in a year has been?

So I haven't done it over 12 months, but I do know that between two competitions, one at the beginning of the year, one towards the end or last quarter, I put on about six kilograms.

That's like 14 pounds of lean tissue.

So it was a lot. And that was me going into the University of South Florida. We were doing my BMR testing, I did my school thickness testing. So this was all fairly accurate methods of determining hypertrophy. That blew my mind. But again, I would say I've put on muscle very easily. You know, maybe there's a genetic component to that, but I'm also very regimented with my training and the period of time when that happened. I was very fluffy. I allowed myself to put on a lot of body fat.

Oh, yes, I want to ask you about that. So with the six kilos of lean tissue, how much fat tissue came with it?

It for me.

Yeah. In that particular episode for you.

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

So two pounds, two kilos of fat.

Exactly.

So basically your body fat probably went up a little bit as you put on a lot more lean mass.

I'd say I probably went up by about 30%. So if I started this build at 12% after a show, I got up to 19%. So actually it's more than that. I remember being 19% body fat at the end of that build.

That's kind of amazing, Holly, that to me, if a guy made that change, that would be considered impressive drug free so that a woman could do that. And again, let's just posit that you have great genetics.

Yeah.

But it gives us a range that there are women with lesser genetics who might be able to do half of that in a year. They might be able to put on three kilos in a year, which is still seven pounds, basically.

And I think I also have to be very transparent about this. So I was in a position too where my ability to kind of step back from my other obligations and priorities has been fair. I'm not going to say easily facilitated, but.

But you're doing this as your job.

Yes. So I remember and recall through that training block, I had programmed progressively overloading. Like my first week of a. As a cycle might have been three working sets of everything on my list, and I might have had six or seven exercises by that sixth week of training. I would be pushing like five working hard sets, high training intensity, you know, RPEs, eight nines of my first three exercises and then four of everything else. Like, the volume I was getting up to was insane.

So talk to me about hours in gym per day in the beginning of the build phase versus the end of the build phase.

I hit it hard pretty quick, pretty early. I also had a bit more of a reactive style to deloads. Normally I would plan intentional deloads. The whole purpose of that build was to get as much muscle on me as I could in a very short time frame. So the volume probably went up by about 50% within the first 12 weeks and then it just continued to grow. So the time that it would take me varied from maybe 90 minutes in like the earlier part of that build phase all the way up to two, two and a half hours daily. And I was doing five sessions a week at that point. So it was a big commitment.

And then were you doing any cardio at that time?

Minimal. I would just hit a daily step target of about 10,000 steps. And cardio was not even part of the equation.

So averaging two up to two and a half hours a day in the gym, five days a week. So again, we're talking about good genetics coupled with 15 hours, a lot of training. Some of the people listening to this podcast, I'm guessing, will be more women than men won't be as familiar with rpe. Do you mind explaining to people what that is? Because it's going to be an important concept as we talk about resistance training.

So RPE is or stands for our rate of perceived exertion. So it's a measure of training intensity. And training intensity is one of the principles that need to be increased over your training lifespan in order to facilitate hypertrophy. I guess I can reflect back on my early training days, and I didn't even have a training rpe. There was no training intensity. I guess another one that we can refer to, which we use on our workout builder programs is the R I R, which is repetitions in reserve. And RIR of three would mean that you've got three repetitions in reserve all the way up to an IRR of zero. You're hitting failure. So whatever weight or load you select for your lift lift, you are going to your drop, essentially. So my training when I first started lifting incorrectly was so low, like I never challenged myself. And again, I know that we wanted to talk today about our bodybuilding versus powerlifting and how they may be beneficial for females. I am so grateful for the time that I spent powerlifting because that style of training threw me into understanding training intensity and what my true strength was. So there was a lot of carryover to how quickly I was able to select weights for my bodybuilding style of workouts, and that advanced me so quickly.

So just to make sure I understand, you're saying when you were younger and you were doing fitness training and even training for track and field, you were never pushing yourself in the weight room, your RPE was below 5, your RIR was above 5?

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

So right now, when you say in this building phase, when you say RPE8, meaning you stopped and you had two in the tank, you could have potentially squeezed out two more and you said, so if you're doing RPE8 to 9, these are near failure sets all the way through.

Yep, absolutely.

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

If we look at how I kind of set up a training program, there are so many ways that you can go about this and. But they all do need to follow principles of hypertrophy. And I guess number one is exercise specificity. We need to be making sure that we're training in such a way or a modality that is going to have the desired outcome. So obviously building muscle and then choosing muscle groups that you want to build during that timeframe. So for me, that looks like, like glute hypertrophy, that's kind of the main area that most women, or at least those that I'm experienced in working with, really want to improve, because that has a lot of benefits for many things. From normal day to day activities, bending down, squatting through to, you know, improve strength across all sports, jumping. Da, da, da, da, da. You know, there's so many benefits. So glute hypertrophy took up a big part of my training volume. Shoulder hypertrophy was another one that I really focused a lot of my training volume on to kind of create the capped shoulders and the illusion of a narrow waist. Thinking back to that build, most of the training that I was doing was lower body. So I actually did four lower body sessions, believe it or not, per week, and then One upper body session. So it sounds crazy.

It does sound crazy. And those four lower body sessions, were you still dividing the legs up or were you hitting the same muscles of the legs? Four days.

I think my programs varied and again I would kind of triage to kind of give my body the recovery that it needed. And again it was very reactive style deload. So I would start by Monday, might be spread out by doing a quad hamstring, glute calf, quad hamstring, and then that might be that workout. I may have a second day which looks like glute hamstring, quad. Or I would prioritize again the muscle groups that I knew I wanted to build. Then I would have a rest day because back to back two days of leg day is pretty intense. And then I would probably incorporate an upper body session to again a second day of complete rest from my legs. And then I would finish out the week by doing a Thursday session, lower body, two days off, come back in train on a Sunday, another lower body session. So there was a lot of training volume. And I just want to say that I would never do that for somebody that was brand new to training. That volume would be radically reduced.

Okay, so what would it look like for a person who has some exercise background? They go to Orange Theory Fitness twice a week. They're a relatively active person, but they don't have any powerlifting experience. They don't know the difference between RPE9 and RPE5. So they're not there. But they still have this ambition of building. They want to put on five pounds of muscle in the next year and lose three pounds of fat. That's the physique goal first and foremost.

I would say like again, if this is like literal practical takeaways, I would say number one, find somebody that's evidence based first and foremost. Ideally, find somebody that can also that's evidence based be with you in a gym setting. They do one on one training because there is so much value and knowledge to be learned. Just one on one spending time with someone that's got more knowledge than you in that space, developing optimal training techniques, developing the right movement pathways. And boy, I have seen some doozies. Clients being trained in the gym by someone that has no idea how to squat or deadlift. So another little plus, if you can find somebody that does powerlifting or has done bodybuilding and powerlifting, I think that is like a little golden egg. There's not a lot of these people out there. But incorporating that evidence based approach, with experience with women and Powerlifting and bodybuilding, that's like the perfect ideal and experience with women.

Because of what difference specifically? Is it anatomic differences in movements or is it just the assumption that women are coming in with lower training volume?

Look, there's plenty of men out there that can do that as well. But I think you've got to connect with the person that you're working with. Now if you've got a male that's extremely experienced in all of those things, then of course a male can be great. But I think having gone through different body image issues, having that understanding and appreciation for maybe body dysmorphia, having an appreciation for menstrual cycle, I think men that are in the fitness industry, and I don't want to generalize because I know there's a lot of really intelligent guys out there, but there isn't a lot of work, just the general personal trainer and the amount of time that they spend, you know, learning about the reproductive system and how that can impact strength and subjective performance and the implications that that can have on your mood, your psychological state and just the plethora of like what being a woman encompasses. I just think that women tend to do better with female trainers, but it's harder to come by. So that's what I mean by that.

So what would you design for a client in that situation? I'm just going to make that even harder. This is a woman who wants to gain 5 pounds of muscle and lose 5 pounds of fat in a year. In other words, they want to weigh, they're fine weighing the same amount next year. But the change in body composition is going to be dramatic.

First and foremost, I would be looking at, okay, what realistically can we gain in an eight month time frame?

So because that's the period of time you want to build up.

Yes, absolutely. So first off, from a program design standpoint, we would want to start with a fairly low training volume if this is somebody that has not done a whole lot of resistance training. So we would start by selecting the muscle groups and the exercises that target the areas they want to build. And we would progressively overload that training. So it might start with one working set for every exercise in week one.

That little?

Yep, that little. So typically I would start with a program that is 40 minutes maximum, 30 or 40 minutes maximum.

How many warm up sets to get to that working set?

Typically probably one or two. And part of that would also be just helping with the demonstration of technique and kind of getting that movement pattern.

And what would be the rpe of the one working set starting off like.

An rpe, six or seven in a.

Week, one a set of ten, but weighted to an RPE of six or seven.

Yep, exactly.

Which again, just for the person listening, means you're going to do 10 reps of this thing. But if your life depended on it, you could get 13 or 14.

Exactly, yep. And just one set. So you might start with three days a week. And again, we've got to incorporate the person's ability to sacrifice time for their training.

And so the other thing I'm taking away from this, Holly, because I wouldn't have thought of this, so I'm glad I'm asking this question. It's better that she does one set of leg extension, one set of leg curl, one set of single leg rdl, one set of leg press instead of just do five sets of leg press. It's teaching her enough. It's giving her the education on this so that you can now build on that.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you're learning what muscle, what exercises target certain muscle groups and you're also minimizing the risk of them getting injured or ending up with extreme delayed onset muscle soreness. The last thing that you want to do is put together a program that is too difficult and the next day they can't even walk. How well is somebody going to more likely to comply with that program? You know, thereafter, if they've had that level of pain from a session, it's going to be really low. So we want to have good adherence from the get go.

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

Exercise diversity. And I think women definitely. Well, men and women as well. But I think males are probably happy to do a lot more repetitive type training to get to the end result. Females, we like a little bit of diversity.

How many days a week are you doing this? And are you mixing upper and lower body on the same day?

At the beginning, it doesn't really matter. Again, the primary driver of what or how I would put together that workout would really be training volume. So whether or not you do lower body and an upper body, or whether you do full body training session, it doesn't really matter. I would probably be deferring to what's your history, like what's your experience, what do you like doing? Because on paper, it probably doesn't really matter that much. What's more important is that I can get you to stick to this.

So how many weeks are you in that phase?

Typically, I will write a mesocycle for somewhere between four and six weeks. So again, my decision for four weeks versus six weeks is the person's ability to adhere to the same program for that amount of time. I know for me when I first started, if I had to do the same program for more than two or three weeks, I was like, this is so boring. Like as if it's even working. Let's change it up. So again, there's a lot of personal preference when it comes to putting those programs together. I personally write my programs for six weeks. I can handle anything for six weeks. It's repetitive, but you've got got maybe three or four, maybe five programs again depending on the levels, the individual's experience levels. So you've got quite a bit of exercise diversity, you know, within a seven day period.

So tell me some of the lower body exercises. You would have a relative newbie, but not a total novice do you would cycle through what for lower body?

I think my favorites for compound lists are always going to be your typical powerlifting movement. So I always try to incorporate some kind of squat or hinging variation or deadlift. So the degree of flexibility just with those two exercises alone is enormous. Like you can do heels, elevated squats, Smith machine squats, box squats, paw squats, Anderson squats. Like there's so many variations.

So if you have a woman who's never, never done anything basics and that's what you're going to start with like a goblet squat or a back squat to a box or.

Yep, absolutely. Body weight squat would be actually the first thing. So I'm just looking at movement pattern to begin with and then we start to add loads and I typically start with barbell and my preference is low bar squatting. I like to teach. Well actually it depends on the person's anatomical makeup because high bar squatting might be better suited to an individual that's got very short femurs compared to somebody that has extremely long femurs. Like I do low bar squatting and I'm basically leaning over looking at the ground when I squat just to clear my hips. So keeping it basic.

And when you say low high, you mean the position on the track, position on the back?

Yeah, absolutely. So there are advantages, I guess of having a low bar squat in that. If you think about if you hold a weight plate right in front of you, that's £20, you can probably do it for a long period of time. If we extend our arms out, how long do you think you're going to hold that 20 pound weight too long? Not very Long. So similar hypothesis is that when we put the squat bar lower to our center of gravity, we tend to have a little bit more strength and power. And that was a big difference for me. As somebody that had crazy long levers, I was a terrible high bar squatter. My strength went up 50% by shifting to that low bar position. So again, you asked about this, but.

Is that only because your femurs are so long?

Correct. There's other reasons as well. I think spine length as well. I have a long spine, very long torso. So again, I want to bring that barbell back into closer to my center of gravity. So I'm very low on the back. And I realize I'm totally deviating from what you asked me. But keeping it simple with the squats.

And are there any women that you look at and you just say, you know what, you're never going to be a powerlifter. It's not worth the risk. I don't want you squatting.

I would say anybody that's got some serious injuries, like a history of hip injury, knee injuries. But again, my area of expertise isn't in like rehabilitation, so I'm normally working in conjunction with a physical therapist or chiropractor or something like that.

Do you find women who have never done this kind of intimidated by the idea of that big 45 pound Olympic bar going on their back?

Heck yes. Absolutely.

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

Terrifying. And I think people's fear is that the bar is going to come down on top of them.

It's going to turn them into a pancake.

Yeah, absolutely. So when you're first starting, you're not going to be loading the bar that heavy. But I think I work with the catch bars on. So a technique that I would do and incorporate into a new person's program if I was training one on one, would be the Anderson squat. So you basically start with the bar on the catches. So you position them.

You start in the low position.

Yeah. So you're finding the client's, I guess, horizontal position at the bottom of the squat and that's where you start.

The thighs are parallel to the ground, you start in that position and the rep is up, down, up.

Yeah, absolutely. So that's a really empowering exercise that I think helps build confidence. So I'll do that in conjunction with other squat variations. You know, it's such a big movement. You're using multi joint big muscle groups. So it's also going to help contribute positively to Energy expenditure compared to just doing, you know, isolation exercises like triceps and biceps. In fact, I rarely program arms for women anymore.

Really?

And again, it depends on their goals. They're a kayaker or something. They need arm strength. I'm going to probably do that. But for aesthetic reasons alone, most women, once we get rid of the body fat, they've got great arms because just by way of the muscle engagement during these big compound lifts, you're using those muscles anyway.

Okay, what's your preferred deadlift, if you had to choose, or how do you think about navigating trap Bar vs.

Traditional vs. Sumo Anatomical structure of an individual? So people that have exceptionally long arms are extremely good deadlifters, typically because they basically don't have to lean forwards very far to have the bar in their hand. My arms are like T Rex arms. Like they are disproportionately shorter than everything else, but also is great. Creates the illusion that I have massive arms when I don't really. So for me, I am not any way, shape or form built to be a good deadlifter.

So you might be more of a trap bar deadlifter.

Yes.

Whereas he's more of a sumo deadlifter. Yeah.

But when I do deadlift, I. For that reason, I do sumo because by widening my stance, I can now get lower to the bar and then I don't have to be so horizontal to get down.

Traditional would be very painful for you.

Oh, it is my spine and I've also extremely long spine. So my deadlift is so ugly. Technically it looks disgusting, but I'm doing all the right things. Like, we know that a little bit of spinal curvature in a deadlift is okay if you are activating your core and you're keeping tight. So, yeah, I have a hunchback of noctridar. I'm looking conventional deadlift, which is feet together. But sumo deadlift is my preference because it enables me to get closer to the bar and I just feel like I'm in a better position to execute.

Interesting. Right out of the gate, we're going to take a woman who's never done these things before and we're going to program in some getting to know the squat, getting to know the deadlift. You're going to also include isolation exercises and I assume they follow in the workout. So you'll start with the prime movers and the combined hip hinges and then you'll move to leg extensions, leg curls. Where does split squatting and lunging fit in?

Typically, I will incorporate at max, two large compound Multi joint exercises. Typically the first six to eight sets are your best sets. They are like working sets. And then what we tend to see is that any volume that's accrued after those eight first working sets, you start to have like diminishing returns. So, so big movers first, isolation accessory exercises second. So again, the way that I would structure in something like lunges or leg extensions or hamstring curls or calf raises, it depends on what that person is wanting to build. Truly, that's all it is. So again, if we look at the, I guess, minimum dose for hypertrophy, when we look at like total set number, we want to be shooting for somewhere around probably the 10 to 15 range per muscle group.

When you say per muscle group, you're counting quads distinct from hamstrings, distinct from glutes, distinct from calves.

The trouble is, and I guess a lot of people have a difficulty trying to write their own program is that certain movements use both. So I will often just give us, yep, that counts as this exercise and that muscle group, and it counts as that.

A deadlift is going to triple everything. It's hitting everything. But when you do the leg extension, it only counts quads. Leg curl only counts for hamstring.

Exactly.

You're saying we want, by the end of this workout, we want to have 10 to 15 boxes checked for each of those muscle groups. So let's just go through some of them. So your favorites for glutes, obviously a squat and a deadlift. Single leg rdl.

Yep. Interestingly, I actually was looking at a systematic review on glute hypertrophy recently, and I guess they were using muscle activation as opposed to true muscle thickness testing or some of those other more accurate methods of hypertrophy. But step ups were actually as good as glute activation as some of your, I believe it, hip thrusts and, you know, squats, particularly some of the horizontal style step ups or lunges, where you're coming across the body. So like a cross bench step up, where you're taking the foot down one side and then coming back up up, where there's a lot of stretch and lengthening taking place in the glute. So for glute hypertrophy, there's always a hip thrust, a hinge of some sort or a bridge, usually some kind of abduction. An abduction is basically taking your knees out as opposed to adduction, which is bringing them together. So I'll find different machines that enable that and also do those on the cables as well with an ankle attachment. So they're the primary ones that I would use for glutes, those are great.

Okay, so deadlifts, squats, hip thrusters, step ups and abduction, that's a lot. So you got a lot to choose from there to just, you got to get 10, you don't have to be doing all of them every time.

Yep. And to be honest, like as that individual progresses over, I guess a seven day training block, we may be working up to 30 sets on each individual muscle group. If they're able to execute that over a seven day period because of their training frequency, obviously, you know, a beginner, we're probably going to be looking, you know, over a seven day period, they may get 10 to 15 sets with their three or four training sessions. But someone that's more advanced really may be pushing like up to 30 sets, maybe even more. But again, there's a point where we have like diminishing returns where the inflammatory response to that training just makes it impossible to continue making progress, in which case we have the deload.

Okay, so then for quads, obviously a lot of what you mentioned is going to hit quads. Certainly the squat to some extent, the deadlift, depending on how they do it, the step up, certainly RDL won't, abduction won't. So then you add some dedicated stuff like leg extensions.

Yep. So leg extensions are a really simple one. Obviously minimal setup, straight on the machine. But I also like different leg press variations and different squat variations that get our knee into a position where there's a far more forward knee travel. There's a lot of contradictions. I used to hear that all the time, like, don't put your knee over your toe. It's dangerous for your knee. Now if someone's had a history of knee injuries, that's something that you would want to take very slowly and very progressively. But anything where we can get the knee traveling past the toes. So by elevating your heels in something like a barbell squat, my preference is honestly on a Smith machine because it really controls the movement pattern and you only go forward.

And so people know the Smith machine is the squat bar that has the hooks on it, that's in tracks, the path is vertical and it's controlled.

Yeah, it's completely fixed. So I love that exercise. I think targeting my quads, that's been a huge help. And then also foot positioning on the leg press. So again you're looking to have at the bottom of the movement where your quads are in a lengthened position, you want to have lots of forward knee travel. And I Won't be specific in where you should put your feet, because feet placement honestly depends on the machine that you've got access to. Because I've had some. I've had to put my feet up quite high because of the movement plane.

Yeah. So it's less where the feet go and it's more where the knees and toes are in relation to each other in the bottom position.

Yes, exactly.

So are you saying to the client, we want you to work to your level of comfort in getting knees over your toes in the leg press, and that's going to maximize quad development. And obviously, you're going to work the back of the leg in the opposite position.

And then also, there's a lot of benefits to doing, like, single leg work, too. So many of us. And I was honestly disgusted at my own imbalances when I tested it the other day. I was doing some single leg squats, just sitting to a box, then standing on the box to going to the floor only. And it's very easy, you know, with lots of repeat training and lots of repeating the same movements where we have a bit of a discrepancy. So I really like to incorporate at least one single leg exercise for every session. If we start to add too many single or leg movements, your program ends up extremely long. So that's real consideration. You know, not everybody has three hours to train, so we want to be concise to the point.

What are some of your favorite hamstring hits?

My favorite is a seated hamstring curl. And the reason for that is it is better able to isolate your hamstrings than, say, a prone hamstring curl where you're in the. You're laying on your stomach and you're kind of curling the machine in towards your hamstrings. And part of that is just because of the position of the movement. When you're in a seated hamstring machine, you've already got tension on the hamstrings. Because we're sitting in this upright position, it's a lot more tension on the hamstrings. And if you're in a prone position where your hips are far more open, we don't get the same kind of shortening of the hamstrings. So my preference is to do a lot more volume on a seated machine. I'm not saying you don't do any prone work, but I'll do less of that exercise. The other exercise that I really love for hamstrings and glutes, particularly the hamstring tine, which I Think a lot of women, you know, you'll see the bikini competitors specifically have these incredibly tight hamstring attachments to their glutes. A lot of that is conditioning, which basically just means getting rid of all the body fat. You will see that. But RDLs and banded RDL, tell folks.

What an RDL is.

So Romanian deadlift, I guess you are. It's a hinging exercise and you're shifting your hips back to lengthen the hamstrings. So you are loading the hamstrings in that exercise.

We'll link to videos of all these things so people can see.

Awesome. Cool. So you can do that with dumbbells, you can do it with barbell, you can do it with kettlebells if you don't have access to those.

And do you prefer to do these single legs?

So I'll do both again for a compound movement. If I'm trying to hammer my hamstrings, I probably will start with an RDL because it's a big movement. You know, we're talking multi joint.

And when you do it two legs, you're loading on your back.

No, in front of me. So the barbell hangs in front all the dumbbells. For me, when I first started, it's crazy how quickly you can progressive. You work at it. I remember picking up 25 pound dumbbells to do my first set of RDls for sets of, you know, 12, and now I'm all the way up at £90 dumbbells for a set of 12.

RDls, which you're holding two 90s, 90s in each hand.

Yeah. So I would never have thought that I could do that. And again, credit to my time in powerlifting to help me identify what I was really capable of.

Yeah. So what impresses me is not your hamstring strength to do that, but your grip strength to do that. Most men cannot hold two 90 pound dumbbells.

Really?

Absolutely.

Look, I gotta be honest, I get a little bit of help. So again, there's benefits to, oh, are.

You using a grip? Are you using a wrap grips?

Absolutely. So. And again, people will say, oh, that's cheating. Like I don't want to use something that cheats. Like use your raw grip strength. If the point of the exercise exercises to hit your hamstring, to hit your hamstrings, what's going to be the limiting factor? So grips are a no brainer for me.

Now, when you do single leg, do you do contralateral weight or ipsilateral weight? In other words, if your left leg is on the ground, are you going to hold the weight left hand or right hand?

For a beginner, I would do opposing because you're going to have greater stability as you become more advanced. Then same leg, same arm? Absolutely. I think it just challenges you in different ways. It calls upon different muscle groups to help with stabilizing. So for the client that we were discussing before that has some experience, wants to gain muscle, I'd probably over the course of that six week mesocycle. Sorry, over the course of maybe their second or third training mesocycles, I might incorporate the more advanced variation of a single leg rdl. It might start opposing arm to leg and then as they advance, I would move it to a single leg over that 18 week, 24 week period.

And then calves. What are you doing for calves?

Combination of both. I originally wasn't doing any calf work because from an aesthetic perspective, it's not. Not something that you see a whole lot of, I guess, but probably, you know, six sets per week, I'd probably start again for someone that's brand new. Three sets and then maybe in week two of what?

Standing toe presses. Seated.

Seated or standing? I believe based on the research, seated tends to be a little bit better for hypertrophy outcomes. Don't ask me the mechanics. This is not my area of expertise. But a study that I did a post on very recently was looking at the different feet positions and I used to be the first to put my hand up and throw myself under the bus. Do the toes in like pigeon toe style, calf raise. Pointless. Doesn't really yield any meaningful results. Neutral stance and toes facing out tend to be better for optimizing hypertrophy of.

Different aspects of your calf on their upper body day. How do you focus now? I know you, I mean, I'm still surprised to hear that you're not doing a lot of upper body for a woman. And what you're saying is the most important thing is taking the fat off to let the muscles show. But in that one day, what are they going to do for chest, for back, for shoulders and arms?

One of the main things, again that does differ between men and women's training programs is chest volume. So men typically want to have jack biceps, jack triceps, big chest. There's less of an emphasis on that.

So the women, even in the fitness categories seem to be judged a lot on gluten. Glutes, hams, shoulders, quads.

Back is so less important. They want to see a conditioned back, but it's not really where a lot of the Judging and time is spent. Unlike traditional bodybuilders where like you look at your kai greens, where it's just got lat on lat on lat. I will incorporate different back exercises more predominantly in a program than I would for chest. I defer back to the client. Do you want to do chest training? I love bench press. Like, again, I've done powerlifting, so to me, like, that's so empowering, like trying to hit a one rep max on a bench. I love that. But I'm not everybody. So again, I defer to person, the person that I'm working with.

And let's assume that she has no interest in her strength on a bench. It's really coming down to how she's going to look in the dress aesthetic.

Some people really need a lot of chest training or conversely, they need a lot of back training due to their posture. So that's a big consideration.

But if a woman is sort of.

Hunched forward, yeah, they're really kyphotic. They've got that rounding. They probably have extremely tight pectoral muscles and weak back musculature. So in that case, I would do a lot more volume on back and I probably wouldn't spend any time on any chest work. So, you know, for that final one training session, I might be looking to hit 15 sets of back and no chest at all.

And what types of exercises would you do?

I would target the wide back, mid back. So we're looking at our lats to get the width of the back and that can help, I guess, from an aesthetic perspective to create the illusion of a really small waist. So wide grip pull downs, wide grip pull ups, assisted pull ups for somebody that's just beginning and then progressing to body weight pull ups and then weighted pull ups. So again, through the course of somebody training consistently over nine months, say, there's a very good chance they could go from doing no body weight pull ups to weighted pull ups.

Now, most women can't do a single pull up unassisted. Correct?

I'd say that probably 90 of females would not be able to do a single body weight pull up.

And how many can you do?

I think my last Amrap was like 20.

20.

Yeah.

Okay, so you. The point where you would use, yeah.

I had some weight, but not a whole lot.

You know, Beth Lewis, who you met briefly the other day, you know, Beth is convinced that you can get any human being to do a body weight pull up.

Absolutely. There'd have to be something from a neurological standpoint that would inhibit someone from Being able to. It was a lot of work. I was that person. I could never do a pull up. I remember, like when I first got into lifting, I started with bands, the thickest green band possible, with my feet in to help me. And I could do about five reps with that. The thing that really facilitated my strength in pull ups, I programmed those every single program for years. Every program. And it was always the most intimidating exercise. I hated it, but I'd always put it first. So I'd always been nervous going to training if I knew I had an upper body day because I had to do like pull ups. But yeah, I went from not being able to do any body weight to being able to do 20 body weight over the span of five years. But I can tell you now, there was probably maybe three or four programs over that entire timeframe that I did not program specifically put ups.

And was the progression using less and less and less resistance on the bands, but always sort of targeting a certain rep number.

I would pick, you know, somewhere in the hypertrophy range. So that's typically anywhere from 8 to 12. And yeah, once I could do 12 reps with a certain band, I would progress to the next, next lighter resistance. And I just kept going. Once I got to 12 body weight pull ups, I was like, oh, okay, now we add the weight belt with a little two and a half pound kettlebell or something. Progressed that way.

How much are you varying your hand position for both yourself and then obviously for the client in this situation.

So for me, I again, and this was primarily because of the aesthetic goal, which was to widen my lats, I would do a lot more prone grip. I guess I targeted my rhomboids a little bit more, which would be a close grip pull up. I didn't really do a whole lot of those. Sometimes I would change up my variation. So if I had three sets programmed to failure, say my first set to failure, I would do wide because that was the muscle group that I wanted to work the most. Then I would switch to a neutral grip, and then I might switch to an underhand grip.

And how much time do you need between sets to failure on pull ups?

A long time. You do not want to rush that. Sometimes it would take five minutes between sets. And I think that's where a lot of people find themselves not being able to make progress. And not just with pull ups, but for training in general, they go way too fast. And then the consequences, they're not recovered when they start their next working set. And because they're still Fatigued, they're not able to execute the next working set to the same number of reps because they're not recovered. So they may have to drop those weights and pick up something lighter. I used to do that, and as a trainer, I'd be on the floor. You know, you'd have 60 minutes with a client and you want to rush. But the reality is, if you can slow down your workouts and take as much time as you need, and my rule of thumb is when your heart rate is back below 100 beats per minute for me, probably is a little bit lower for men. I think males tend to have slightly lower heart rate than females. So once my heart rate is back under 100, that's when I know I'm like, okay, yeah, I can probably think about doing my next set.

It okay. Interesting. I'm glad you mentioned that. I was going to ask about your rest phase. Anything you want to say about arms before we move on to the next metaphase?

If you like arms, do arms. If you don't like arms, don't worry about it.

Wow, this is so paradoxical. I would guess, looking at you, that.

It'S like, I haven't done a bicep curl or a Tricep extension in 12 months.

So those arms that you have are simply the result of all of the stuff you carry.

Yes.

The heavy things you're lifting with your hands, like deadlifts and RDLs, coupled with obviously getting rid of fat, especially for.

Something like pull ups. You do actually get better at pull ups. The less body fat you have and the lighter you get. There's a point where it crosses if you lose too much muscle.

But again, this is a very interesting point, which is you can joke and say, look, biceps and triceps are not the most functional muscles in the world, but being able to do a pull up, being able to do a deadlift, that confers great benefit to life skills.

Yes.

So in some ways, your bodybuilding training much more mirrors functional training than what I would have expected. Let me just play devil's advocate for a moment. How much of that is your genetics? Do you just genetically think you have big muscles in your arms and that's why you can get away with this?

If I was to look at my parents, like, my dad is freakishly muscular for somebody that doesn't do anything in the gym. He grew up, I guess, being in very like laborious type jobs. So he's always been extremely lean and I think he has short humerus like I do. So I guess it Creates this illusion of more muscle. It's easier to grow. It looks. If you think about a long muscle, it's a lot more muscle. You've got to grow to make it look big. So I think just my. The way that I'm put together probably has assisted in some ways, but that's not to say that it's not possible for other people as well.

Do you do some deltoid stuff?

Lots of training for shoulders, yeah.

So what are your hits on deltoids?

My favorites are probably a scrape the rack, shoulder press. I don't know if you've ever done those, but essentially you're up against a squat rack with a barbell on. You can do it kneeling or standing. I like kneeling because it eliminates the ability to cheat. When you're standing, you can use a bit of momentum to keep pushing. So kneeling, scrape the rack, press, and you're basically driving that barbell into the rack.

And what angle. What's the humeral angle at the top?

Well, you're pretty. Basically extended pretty vertically. You have to have good range of motion and mobility for your shoulders. One that I don't do with everybody, but I do because I do have a lot of mobility with my shoulders behind the neck, shoulder pressing on a Smith machine, though I only do it on the Smith machine because it keeps me in a very safe fixed plane. Like, I'm not using dumbbells where I'm swerving everywhere or a free barbell. So I really like that because I had some shoulder injuries.

What about for somebody who can't really press overhead due to shoulder injuries or impingements and things like that?

My area of expertise isn't specifically on, like, rehabilitation, but I would be working with a specialist with that. But lateral raises is probably another thing that people can do to improve their, like, medial shoulder and also then rear delts. So you can do like a reverse pec fly or you're kind of pushing away. If you've got access to cables, you can do a cable crossover to hit your rear delts. And what else? Just face pulls. Those types of exercises.

Let's say we've progressed the intensity of all of this. We've overloaded. So we've added sets, we've added reps, we've added intensity. We're eight months in, and let's assume we've hit our hypertrophy goals. You do another Dexa. And remember, the initial goal was gain 5 pounds of muscle, lose 5 pounds of fat. If she has met her hypertrophy goal and gained five pounds of muscle. How much fat do you think has changed at that point?

It depends on their dietary intake, to be honest. So we can go through a period of progressive overload with an intentional building phase and do all the right things when it comes to the resistance training. But the other key piece to the success of that build is diet. So how much was the client able to adhere to their dietary requirements during that time is probably like 50% of the outcome. So.

So going back to the beginning, I'm going to just create a stereotype which is she was sort of reasonable in total energy intake, but protein deficient relative to your goals. So what would be your protein goals for her?

Honestly, exactly the same as it is males to females. The only difference is going to be the absolute total target that we have for female because our lean body mass is a little bit lower. So the protein reference ranges to optimize hypertrophy are anywhere from say 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of lean body mass all the way up to 3 grams of protein per kilogram of Lean body mass. So based on the individual's dietary preferences and what foods they like, some people love protein. I've had clients that can't stand it and it's a real struggle with them too, which blows my mind because I would probably live on meat if I had to pick one food group that I'd have to survive on for the rest of time. But I would pick something that is realistic for them within that range. So, you know, for a small.

You ate that whole 16 ounce steak yesterday by yourself.

I sure did.

I was hoping you were gonna. I was hoping there's gonna be a little piece left over for me.

I told you, I do enjoy proteins. But yeah, it really comes down to their preferences and there isn't one number that's better than another. But consistency is important. So we don't want to be chopping and changing your protein and bouncing all over the place for a couple of reasons. And that is that you can potentially reduce or limit your potential, but it also impacts your energy balance because protein has a far higher thermogenic effect of food than carbohydrate and or fat. So if that's bouncing around, you're effectively moving and shifting your energy balance. So that would not be favorable for somebody that is trying to gain muscle. And 90% of their dietary calories are now coming from protein might be shifting their energy balance in a negative direction.

And if she was starting out, let's just. I'm making math up, but she's 140 pounds and she's okay being 140 pounds at the end. But that 10 pound swap in body comp is important. And let's assume she's weight stable coming into this exercise. Do you basically keep her calorie stable and just switch the macros around to increase protein initially?

Absolutely. I would have a look at what her current dietary intake would be and it was below the recommended reference range. I'd pick a number that aligned with her lean body mass and her ability to nail that number consistently. Then progressively throughout that building phase, we would want to be slowly adding in calories. If we look at the overfeeding studies, which unfortunately there is not as much information available to us as there are like weight loss studies. But of those that we do have, if we were to compare somebody being in a surplus of say 20% above their maintenance calories versus 40% versus 60%, what we tend to see is that the best results, and I should quantify what I mean by best, the most amount of muscle mass that would be gained during a given timeframe would be optimal at about that 20% mark. If we go up to 40 or up to 60, what we just end up seeing is excess body fat gain. It doesn't like continue to get better the more you eat.

Let's just. Again, I'm making this up. She's at 2000kcal coming in. Does that mean you're actually going to put her at a surplus even though you don't want her to gain weight, you just want her to gain lean.

Mass to begin with just for that initial week? If someone can tell me that they're eating a certain number of calories, I want to see the data.

Let's assume that you did that. Let's assume you did a food log and she comes in at 2000 weight stable.

So if that's her maintenance calories, that's not optimal. We want to go to a small 400. Yeah, it might be a 10 to 20% surplus. And again, part of that decision is also based on the individual's comfort with adding body fat. And for females, that is the hardest group of people that I work with to encourage to gain body fat. So usually I'm working within a far more restrictive calorie surplus than I would if I'm working with a male client. They're a lot more open to gaining some body fat to facilitate their gains. So if I'm being real, optimal would be 20%. Most women will not adhere to that. So I'm probably gonna Prescribe something that's more likely going to reflect the reality and that is like a 10 increase above their main.

How would this change if she said she's 140 pounds, she wants to weigh 130 next year. So she actually wants to lose 10 pounds but wants it to all be fat loss. So this will also improve body composition because she's going to just lose 10 pounds of fat but wants to lose no muscle, which still functionally means putting on some muscle to offset the fat loss. Would you then not put her in a calorie surplus during the building phase?

No, I still would because her ability to acquire that new tissue is going to be.

It's energetic, critically demanding.

Yeah, you need it surplus energy to come from somewhere. Now if somebody is starting with a higher body fat percentage, now we've got somebody that has, they have an energy reserve and we can petition that stored body fat. And that's the whole concept behind, you know, body recomposition. So for some individuals, if they do have body fat, I may not need to put them in a major surplus. So it's so client dependent, you know, I have to look at them and the complete pictures. So it might not be a massive surplus at all if they were, you know, 20% body fat. It might just be let's nail these calories for the next six months and over time we will see some positive changes because you've got enough body fat available to help with the building and the foundations of that new skeletal tissue.

Okay, so now it's eight months in, we're 2/3 of the way to our goal. She's on target for lean mass. She's also of course added a little bit of fat mass. You now have four months to get that fat off and keep the lean tissue on. What changes in nutrition and then what changes in the gym?

Changes in the gym initially are negligible. I think there's a misconception that suddenly everything changes when you start dieting. The goal for dieting is truly to be able to keep you on as higher calories as possible with as little increase in activity as possible whilst still achieving a targeted rate of weekly weight loss. So to begin with, their training may say exactly the same. We might make a couple of tweaks because they're bored and they need change up. But the concept, the principles of that training program and the structure does not change unless suddenly they decided that they no longer want those giant glutes and we put back in, you know, chest training. But the principles stay the same From a diet perspective, again, we kind of look at, okay, now that we've acquired a little bit of body fat, we want to get all of that off in time for the wedding or whatever the event is. I basically do a back calculation. I pick a targeted weekly rate of weight loss that does not exceed more than 1.5% of their body weight.

Per what unit week?

Per week.

That still sounds like a lot.

It can be a lot. And some people may not have the.

That could be £2 a week, but.

It would be relative to the individual. So you know, 200 pound male, that's a lot.

But even this 140 pound woman, yeah, 1.4 pounds.

That's 1%. So we're looking at close to 2 pounds. Again, we've got to be realistic with how much can be achieved in a seven day period for that person. Choosing that percentage rate of loss is important. Why it's important is because when we see extreme dietary interventions carried out, continuous diet interventions that push weight loss beyond those numbers, we are increasing the risk of metabolic adaptation. So now we're starting to look at more, I guess, adaptive mechanisms, a greater response to dieting or our self defense system really ramps up. We become far more efficient. So we want to keep the rate at that level and that will help to keep your bmr, your basal metabolic rate nice and high and it's protective of your muscle mass, mass beyond that one and a half percent. That's when we really start to see people actually losing a greater percent of muscle mass and lean tissues as opposed 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 for them. They're like, that just doesn't seem like enough weight loss. I'm used to seeing two kilos a week. And I'd say to you, so if you're worried about the number on the scale, if that's all you're worried about, what if I said to you that that two kilos you lost not a single bit of fat, it was mostly lean tissue. Is that still okay? And they're like, oh, okay. We've got to be realistic with what you can do in a week and how it might impact muscle loss and then determining what calorie deficit that actually requires. So we have a really wonderful calculation in one of our book, the Complete Contest Prep Guide. And I believe it's also in Fat Loss Forever and that outlines what amount of calories is required to lose a certain amount of body weight in grams so it's a really neat little equation and we can calculate very accurately for the average person that doesn't have crazy, you know, a really fast metabolism or really slow metabolism, what the deficit is that they need to lose that one and a half percent or whatever number it might be. So it's really neat. I can pretty much forecast exactly what someone could use.

How does a person do this practically? So there's on the one hand, there's the calculation, let's just say it comes out and says, okay, we're going to reduce your intake from what was 2400 now down to 1875 calories. But then there's the application of that, which is if this person doesn't have a chef that can prepare every meal that they're going to eat with a scale, how do they go about doing that? I mean, this can be really difficult stuff to go weighing everything and I don't see how you could reach that level of precision without a scale.

It is really tough. And I think one of the things that I will say to people that I've worked with is there is so much value in giving or dedicating a set amount of time to weigh your food, to get familiar, to calibrate and learn what a four ounce piece of chicken looks like, what x food weighs on the scale. I think having that knowledge and an understanding of what it represents from a caloric perspective and from its macronutrient, the constituents of that food, knowledge is power. I really struggle with people that don't want to invest that time because that is a lifelong skill that once you know how to do it, and it might take you six months to get the hang of it, but for me now I can, and I've been doing this for over 12 years, is I can estimate anything and eyeball it. So you get really good. So there's a lot of accountability, coaching, homework tasks, getting them practical tools and resources to learn how to do that, which is kind of what's involved in that whole weekly check in and that coaching process.

So as she gets closer and closer to this event, and again, let's just use it as this wedding example. So she's four weeks out. Do you have a sense of where she would need to be a month out on those goals to hit the target?

When we get to probably within 3 to 5% of their goal body fat percentage, like that's when I can start to tell there's a lot of photo exchange. So we have so much data that we collect for a client and that can Be super helpful to make accurate analysis. But there's so many benefits to also having that supplemented with, you know, an actual physical picture. And if we're not always looking at somebody's DEXA scan every six weeks as they're going, which is not always feasible for every client. Obviously depends on the clientele that you're working with, but we don't always have that data available. So it really does come down to looking at their, you know, macro tracking, watching their weight trends, and then coupling that with their pictures to be able to see, you know, body fat loss is actually happening.

The situation I described, 130 or 140 pound woman who's going to be the same weight a year later but have a five pound switch. How visibly different is that?

Probably not as much as you would think.

Okay, so maybe that goal wasn't ambitious enough.

You have to look at what is required for somebody to develop the muscularity of an elite fitness professional. That's like a 10 year process for some people. So I think again, that five pounds is realistic for somebody to add. But how notable is that going to be?

Probably depends on what they're starting with too.

It really does. And I think how lean they get at the end too. And sometimes the first attempt at fat loss, it doesn't get you to the goal. And it takes multiple attempts of coming out of this diet process, through recovery diets and then fat loss again and then another recovery diet before we really start to kind of achieve the ideal that that client is wanting.

So let's talk about that. So she hits her goal, which is five and five, and she's pleased in that she hit her goal. She looks better in her wedding dress than she would have a year sooner. But to your point, she's like, I have greater ambitions here. I would like to be even leaner a year from now. And I like this process, but I don't feel like being as restrictive right now. So I'm about to go on my honeymoon to Italy.

Sounds amazing.

How do I recover from this without undoing all the good I did in the last year?

Looking at the research that we have and some of these longitudinal studies that show us what happens with fat loss and the success rates of fat loss, you know, over a dietary intervention, people don't necessarily have a difficult time losing the weight. It is this inability to keep it off. The reasons that it occurs is because typically, outside good governance of a good coach, people do things in such extremes. So they've done everything wrong during their diet phase. And the consequences They've lost a lot of muscle mass during that fat loss. That negatively impacts their basal metabolic rates and now their metabolism. Their body's requirements are a lot less. They're coming up against hormonal changes that impact their appetite, regulating hormones. So most people post diet experience some form of hyperphagia, which for people that don't know what that is, it's just like that excessive extreme desire to eat more than what is physiologically required by their bodies. So if they aren't conscious of that happening and they're not aware that there are these hormonal changes, the natural inclination post diet is to go back to what you were doing before, especially if you haven't chosen a dietary approach that works for your food preferences. And this is where we see a lot of people struggling with, I've tried this diet, it didn't work. Tried this one, it didn't work. And then they end up going back to what they like. So if you can slowly reintroduce your calories post diet, and unfortunately, that means that that whole process still feels like the diet. And I can say, like, as somebody that has, you know, just a few weeks ago, finished my competition, I didn't get as lean. So the hunger response was not as severe as it's been in the past, but it's still there. It is really hard to continue to regulate when the goal is now out of sight, or at least the goal that you were getting close to is leaving. Because doing a reverse diet, you're not getting that positive visual response. This is intrinsic. And you can't see your metabolism improving. The only data or evidence that you have when you're reversing is seeing the small little increases in calories. Like, oh, cool, I get to eat 100 more calories this week. You know, so it takes a good number of weeks to be able to get your calories back up to a point where it's made a meaningful difference to my life. You know, I can have a couple of glasses of wine now with my friends, and I've been able to incorporate my dessert again. So it's a really difficult process. And a lot of.

How many weeks does that last?

For a lot of folks, you're trying to get them initially. Rule number one for setting a reverse diet after you've finished being in a deficit is just finding your new maintenance calories. And you can assess that by looking at how much weight you have lost over the final couple of weeks in your fat loss phase. So we can go back and predict what they are for so for this.

Woman, technically, if her maintenance was 2000.

Coming in, it's probably going to be a lot.

Probably going to be. Oh, I was going to say a little bit higher. Because even though her weight is the same, she has more muscle.

She may have more muscle mass, but it depends how lean she wants to get.

You're saying if she wants to continue to get leaner. I'm saying if she's happy to stay at that 140 for another six months before she begins her next cycle, she might actually come in at 2100-OR-2200 calories. Before you then say, okay, now the time is we're going to take off another five pounds of fat.

I completely understand what you're saying. However, the problem is, even if she has added 5 pounds of muscle mass, which we know in theory, muscle is very energetically demanding tissue. It requires more calories. So you would expect there to be a positive shift in their bmr. Yes. When she did that at the end of the build. Yes. But that fat loss phase that someone did to get the weight back down again, depending how long it took, how extreme we had to go, and how equipped they were to execute the deficit we needed, and what I mean by that is, did we need to do a whole lot more cardio to create the deficit? What was the intensity of that cardio like? Like she could have lost some of that muscle during the fat loss phase. And evidently you will lose muscle anyway. You will always lose muscle mass when you attempt a fat loss phase. But the leaner you get, the greater the risk of that muscle loss is because you no longer have that caloric cushioning to support that. So her metabolism, even when we go back to her new maintenance calories after she's added more muscle, so physically she's going to look better. She still may be lower at the start of that reverse diet, which is really interesting to think. So there may be some work that's needed to be done reversing just to get her back to maybe that 2,000 calories that she was on, she may not be able to go straight back to that. That takes weeks. So the way that you do that is slow and incremental increases week by week, and you observe the weight gain and then you adjust response accordingly.

So I guess before we wrap, are there any other specific differences in male and female training that we could shed light on outside?

Like the specificity of, like, putting together an actual program and targeting certain muscles, muscle groups, rather, people may have actually heard somewhere along their fitness journey that women tend to do better with higher rep ranges and males do better with lower rep ranges. And traditionally, I think there's a reason why we tend to see that style of programming more prominent, you know, in the gym scene. Part of that is due to some of the differences in sex hormones. And that kind of has an impact on our muscle fiber type. So females actually have a greater percentage of type 1 muscle fibers than do males. And the positive consequence of that difference there for females is that it means that we're better able to transfer, transport nutrients into the tissues and also clear different metabolites during activities. So the benefit there is that women tend to be less fatiguable when it comes to training. And another thing that kind of coincides really nicely with that is that women in both the fed and the fasted state tend to do better at utilizing fatty acids. So again, it means that we're less reliant upon some of those glycolytics pathways or anaerobic processes. So we do better when it comes to recovery from different types of training. So when it comes to building out that training program, again, I'm being pretty meticulous here. But men, I would often opt for a little bit more strength specific training. And I guess if you look at the definitions of strength training, it's the rep ranges between one to six, then you've got your moderate rep ranges, or we call that the hypertrophy rep range. I'll have more of that with females and then which is about 8 to 12, 8 to 12, 8 to 15. And then we've got our endurance strength training, which is, you know, you're 15 to 20 reps. So some women will say that they enjoy that type of training and they're able to tolerate it better, more so than some of the strength based training. But I would still argue that females, when you're put in the right hands with a good qualified coach, that they could equally enjoy that style of training too. But again, that's thinking about like the actual differences that muscle fiber type and part of that's due to, I believe it's estrogen. You know, women having a higher level of estrogen, we've got more estrogen receptors, I believe, on our skeletal tissues. And that's one of the benefits for nutrient transports.

That's interesting. Wouldn't that also suggest that women would have an easier time training without ingestion of glucose? At least in theory. And yet I feel like maybe it's just looking at my wife, she does not like to train on an Empty stomach, you know, she needs to be drinking or eating something beforehand. But I think you mentioned you like to train on an empty stomach.

I'm the opposite. So again I think it's really subjective. The science can always say certain things, but we've also then got to take into account individuals perception and it is very subjective. So for me, as somebody that has struggled with like irritable bowel syndrome for, for the last 10 years of life, I can't think of anything worse than trying to train with anything in my stomach. I might have a couple of coffees in the morning, but I'm keeping, you know, pretty low gut irritant type foods because the minute I feel some kind of distension or you know, pain in my stomach, I cannot train. I would rather train hungry with a rumbling stomach than try to have to execute with a full stomach. So. But again, endurance training very different to more anaerobic training. Like the resistance training that I do is probably more anaerobic. So it might be just due to the differences in exercise type.

Any other differences that we should be aware of as far as female and male, either through response to nutrient or load.

Speaking to sex hormones, I think the menstrual cycle is probably the only other thing that kind of springs to mind. And there's been a lot more information becoming available on that topic as it relates to, to hypertrophy outcomes and strength training. And again, there's probably four studies that are high quality at the moment that I can think of that again tend to be kind of on the fence. Half of them show that during the second phase, the luteal phase of your menstrual cycle, when progesterone is high and estrogen is low, that subjectively strength decreases for females during training and then during the earlier parts of training when progesterone's low, you know, people report to feel a lot better with their training. Their performance is better, the strength is improved. It's a 5050 for clients. So when it comes to female programming, I as a default and if it doesn't seem to impact them, that's great, but I will default to setting deloads on or around their menstrual cycle.

You might go two weeks on. Two weeks. Like you could upload two weeks download two weeks.

Yep.

Wow.

Yeah, it might be in the middle of a metacycle, but again it depends on how serious they are about their progression.

But I'm guessing that's something a lot of male trainers don't think about.

No, probably not at all. Absolutely. And like, just ability to be adherent and like your energy, mood, sleep, you know, all of those things can be impacted around your cycle. Constipation, like, is another prevalent symptom of menses. So that absolutely impacts people's energy levels and like, motivation to train.

How many times have you found yourself training clients post pregnancy and menopause? You have a high number of clients in those two categories.

More recently, my clientele has shifted more to middle age. I'd say majority of my clients now are probably 35 to 65. Yeah, I think that transition going from high levels or higher levels at normal levels of testosterone for females to low level during menopause and the changes in estrogen, it's really hard on females. A funny story. My mom did not even know that there was, like, symptoms that came along with menopause. She was like, I knew women couldn't, you know, have children anymore, but she's not super scientific in any way.

She didn't know she was going to have hot flashes.

No. She had no idea about any of these symptoms. And for her, she was so upset and, like, just frustrated that she didn't have any energy or she didn't want to go for walks anymore or go to her Pilates classes or whatever she was doing. There's so much benefit to number one, like going and getting those levels tested. I believe you're a big advocate of hormone replacement therapy. Yes. Just putting somebody back into those normal reference ranges in the benefit that that has, not just on seeing a number move on, you know, their biomarkers, but what that does for their quality of life, life and how much more motivated people might then be to be active, you know, as we age and stay involved in sport, it's crazy.

And so do you see this difference then in clients where you have menopausal women who are not on hormone replacement therapy versus those who are. And do you see a fundamental difference both in body composition and work tolerance?

Absolutely. And I would say, unfortunately for the women that aren't proactive and aren't on some kind of of hormone replacement therapy, we tend to see those women coming in with extremely low calorie intakes and extreme exercise output. So it's like they're burning the candle at both ends and they're feeling frustrated because they're like, I already eat nothing. I'm training multiple times a day. I'm doing all this cardio and I can't lose fat. And I've only gotten fatter during this process, which is likely to happen because if you've been dealing with those negative symptoms for a long period of time. Naturally, if you're not motivated and you don't feel good, you're not going to train. So, you know, people's quality of exercise goes down now they're losing lean body mass and they're probably, as I've experienced, aging tends to lend more towards the finer things in life and you're gravitating towards, you know, more indulgent foods and a different lifestyle that keeps you less active unless you're very proactive about it. So people gain a lot of weight during that time frame. So we obviously defer out to the experts for the hormonal replacement therapy and then integrate with our interventions, the reverse diet to get their calories back up to something that feels manageable. Now they're enjoying, you know, all their favorite foods again. They have a social life again. And they just feel so much better with that extra energy and then hormones returning to normal.

What about women? After having kids, a lot of women will say it's just not the same. Speaking about their body and body composition. So is there anything that you've noticed in clients where you think we have to do something a little bit different? There's the 40 year old woman who's never had kids and then there's the 40 year old woman who's had three kids and both of them are still premenopausal. But do you notice anything different between them?

I think the first one that springs to mind is just the available time that they have for their goals. Obviously that is such a huge like consideration for all of this. I can think very distinctly of a couple of clients that I have that do not. Or they've either had children and they've now grown up and moved out. So they have all the time in the world to do what they want to do with their hobbies and their physique goals or health goals. But for people that have children, it is really hard. And again, I think it comes back to managing expectations. I am the coach that will turn people away if they, you know, here's the goal that I want to achieve. Holly. £50. I've got to do it. But they've also got three kids. You know, they only have a very limited amount of time that they can apply to meal preparation. Maybe they have a limited income and they can't have a chef like we do that comes in and helps out during, you know, those really busy times. They don't have a nanny full time to come and support them. So there are Major differences in what can be achieved realistically. And I think looking at someone's lifestyle, it is so important. And I think women don't give themselves enough credit for the amount of time that they are taking in these other obligations.

But from the standpoint of that woman who's say 40, mom of three, who's got 10 pounds, she simply cannot shed, can you guess whether most of that is going to come from dietary restriction vs increased activity vs what combination do you have a sense just hormonally which one is pestering her? One of the things in our practice that really we don't put emphasis on due to the sheer ignorance around it, is body composition. We'll say to that woman, look, we're interested in making you as metabolically healthy as possible. That won't necessarily come with the improvement in body composition you had. It won't necessarily take you to your pre pregnancy weight. But as you said, a lot of people are coming to you and that's their primary thing. Yes, I'd like to be healthier, but quite frankly I want to be able to fit into the clothes that I was wearing two years ago.

That's a tough one. I have said multiple times to women, you need to get a new wardrobe. As simple as that. It's the easiest thing or easiest way to instantly feel better about yourself. Now you've got a pair of clothes that are more flattering for your now physique, it's going to improve your mental health first and foremost. But it's not constantly like pulling and tugging on clothing that like it makes you think about your body. And if you're already in an unhappy place, like that's a bad place to begin with. But is it realistic for somebody to get back to, to their pre pregnancy body weight? Maybe. But for a lot of women, if you have partaken in some kind of exercise, whether it's running or swimming or cycling, if there's anything that's applying some kind of load and resistance, you've probably added a lot of muscle since you were pregnant, you know, however many years ago too. So to expect that you're going to see the same number on the scale, often that's not realistic because they've built so much muscle over the course of their life that they would never be that weight again. They'd have to lose all this muscle and some to get back to that. So I really wish that I could give you a better answer here. Do I see any differences like even from a hormonal perspective? No, not really. I think that with proper nutrition intervention. And that is like optimizing somebody's metabolism through the process of reverse dieting. So we want to sit right on the edge of like every week. We're trying to positively adapt and get their metabolism to move up and that can be done without any changes in lean body mass. Like there is a true adaptation that takes place. So, yeah, we're trying to optimize their dietary interventions and get them doing what we know to be adequate from a training standpoint. That is what will help that person get to this end goal. And it just means it's going to take a lot longer for a mom of three just because they don't have the ability to do it.

Where do you think this goes from here for you? Do you plan to continue bodybuilding?

I don't know. I think that part of me feels really compelled to stay in the industry and keep showing up maybe on a yearly basis to be an advocate for the people that are still suffering in silence. I think that there's so many people that have difficulties sharing their struggles, reaching out for help, getting support. And I've seen a massive shift in the type of work that I'm doing and the education that I'm sharing now because it's a really hard life to live and it can be very unrewarding. It can feel like, what's the point if you can't keep, you know, making progress and. Or if you never really work on the psychological dysfunction that might be happening? Like, what's the why? So I feel a little bit conflicted coming back and staying because I don't have the same feeling towards competing anymore. I no longer desire the leanness. I really don't. I can do the process now. And I was really worried about my last competition because I thought now that I don't have this eating disorder, am I going to have what it takes to execute? Or was that previously just driven by a psychological condition? It was nerve wracking, but I was able to do it. But I'm no longer attached to the body. So I want to be somebody that can be an advocate to help people realize that if you do the work, you can do these together. They don't exist, you know, exclusive to each other. I think you can do a bodybuilding show and not have some kind of eating disorder, but also recognize that it's an extreme sport and it requires a lot of sacrifice. And personally, right now I'm so passionate about mental health and the idea of potentially stepping back from everything that I do in the fitness industry and going back and doing a PhD in the area of neuropsychology or mental health and eating disorders, that it may not be something that I have in my foreseeable future. I just don't know. I want to help people. I know that there is so many women that would benefit from learning that, hey, I struggled with all of these feelings and low self confidence and low self esteem and that there's another way aside from calorie restriction and dietary restriction that can lead me to the same positive outcomes and value as a human.

So how do you think about aging yourself? I mean, how do you think about being 50, being 60, not looking like you do today, given the journey you've been on and the struggle you've been through and how closely those have been intertwined.

My approach is all about longevity. I think if you had have asked me that two years ago, I would still be. I'm still going to look amazing, but I think my perception or my ideals about what my life should be in order to truly be happy. It doesn't look like me slaving away in the gym anymore. It doesn't look like me being a lifelong competitor. That doesn't mean that I want to let myself go and, you know, not have any interest in exercise at all. But I would like to remain. And I hate using this word like functionally fit, but I want my body be able to move like I want to be able to. 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 and agile for something. So I think my training is probably going to gravitate a little bit more away from the gym and incorporate just some more hobbies and things that keep me active and functioning well. But I will always lift because I know the benefits that resistance training can have on your body.

But you're okay with the changes that are going to come, which is, you know, you're not going to be 12% body fat.

Absolutely. And I think even in like six weeks, I will no longer even look like I do now. Like, I'm very content with the idea that I can still be healthy at a much higher body fat percentage. And as long as I have the muscle mass underneath that body fat, I know that that is protective in so many ways. Thinking about reducing my risk of like bone degenerative conditions like osteoporosis when I get old, like resistance training, anything that applies, you know, tension and stress on the bone, you know, those little bone creating Cells, you know, they ramp up. And now I've got greater bone density. I think about that. My dad struggles severely with osteoporosis and arthritis.

Your dad?

Yeah, very much so. He needs a double shoulder reconstruction. He won't do it.

That's kind of the message we give to our patients, both men and women. But I think it's more important for women to hear because I think sometimes women are a little bit more governed by the scale than by what's underneath. And again, that's a stereotype, but I see it.

But it's real. It's real.

And what we say is I'm much more concerned with how much muscle mass we can put on you and how much we can increase the density of your bones as you age. And even if we never take an ounce of fat off you, which by the way would mean you'd potentially even gain weight a little bit as you age. But if that weight is predominantly lean tissue and we're maintaining the integrity of your skeletal structure, you're going to live a better life.

You are. And I think the first thing that women have to do, and again, I don't want to stereotype, but ladies, this is just the reality of how we are wired in today's day and age. But letting go of some of that identity and this belief that we need to look a certain way, there's one thing to being, you know, feeling comfortable and confident, but let's focus on the important things of life. And I think to me, after having gone through all of this and recovered or actively and always will be a recovering person with an eating disorder, but there's so many other things now to me that are so much more important and my long term health is important. I do want to make sure that I've got good bone health. I don't want to have bone diseases. I want to be able to live, live my life to the best and mentally as well. I'm probably going to stay active because of all the benefits that we know for mental health like anxiety, depression, depressive like symptoms. I want to optimize my health and staying so fixated on the scale and body fat and cellulite, ah, it's like the least of my concerns right now, which is a really weird thing for me to say as someone that likes, like used to feel like unless I was stage lean year round, I was not a worthy human. So there needs to be a big shift in what we are delivering to our patients and to our clients because if we look at social media, it's really easy to get engrossed in social media's thin ideals and filters. And the best step that I ever took was just unfollow like all the accounts that are only focused on the aesthetic. I just, nope, I don't look at them anymore. I read about the things that I want to learn more about if I want to feel happy. Gosh, I've got like a hundred books that I've read that are all on how to change your mind, how to be happy, what is life's purpose, how to break habits. That's where I spend my time. Now. I'm looking to optimize myself as a human and it means that there's less need for all that aesthetic stuff.

Well, Holly, thank you so much for sharing both the insights and also obviously the really deeply personal stuff that actually I think will probably resonate with many people, both men and women. So thank you very much.

Thank you for having me. It's been awesome.

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