SS 194 – Listener Coaching Session: Maggie Loses a Ton of Fat

Episode 194 Show Notes

Grant and Heavey are joined by Strength and Scotch podcast listener, Maggie Sizemore, from Montana, as they tackle Maggie’s questions about navigating the right path towards fat loss. Listen in to this fun discussion about counting your macros, overcoming plateaus, caloric deficit, and cutting alcohol.

 

[01:13] Miss America: No Longer a Pageant, But a Competition

 

Grant saw TMZ news on Miss America Axes Swimsuit Competition and No Longer Judging by Physical Appearance. Shouldn’t it be a part of the process though? Well, they just made a statement that they’re no longer a pageant, but a competition. This underlines the essence of the competition where contestants take part in a live, interactive session with judges and have to demonstrate passion, intelligence, and understanding.

 

The reason for this? Well, there has been some controversy surrounding how candidates are answering questions.

 

For instance, Ms. South Carolina was asked why she thinks that a fifth of Americans aren’t able to locate the U.S. on a world map. She said that Americans are unable to do so since some people in the country don’t have maps. She went on to say that the U.S. should help South Africa with their education and help Iraq and Asian countries in order to build up our American future. (This doesn’t make sense!)

 

Ms. Idaho 2011 was asked whether evolution should be taught in school. Her response was that it shouldn’t be pushed on you but you should be “knowledged” about it.

 

The organizers also stated they’re getting rid of the evening gown portion of the competition. So they’re really completely getting away from looks. Grant thinks this is great – more about what’s on the inside than the outside. But if you’re going to completely remove any appearance at all, what is Miss America supposed to represent?

 

Heavey adds he doesn’t really have an issue with having a competition based on looks. They do that to guys as well such as in bodybuilding competition and it’s not really a big deal. But if that’s what they want to do with Miss America, that’s fine. If they want to turn that into a competition, it’s just as fine. It’s just a matter of knowing what the intention is behind it.

 

[09:00] Maggie’s Question

 

“I’m a 26-year-old gal looking to loosen fat. It’s been a challenge to weed out the bullshit booze and brunch. Ultimately, I’ve got the goals but I need some help navigating the right path to them. I really buckled down in the last couple of months by not boozing, 38 days strong. Not easy for my age or friend group. I passed on many brunches and other yummies and up my training. But there’s still so much bullshit out there. Help! I could go down a million rabbit holes and then give up and eat a cookie… What’s the most effective for me personally?”

 

[10:00] A Brief Background About Maggie

 

Maggie actually lost 30 pounds on her own over the last five years. She had been heavy in high school, but then when she turned 21, she started going out and having fun. She then went to Alaska to work for a summer. Booze was expensive at her really remote lodge so she decided not to drink. Plus the fact that she was moving around a lot, cleaning cabins and serving customers. Next, she started listening to Paleo Podcast. Without a solid understanding of nutrition, she cut out sugar and did some mental health counseling. That’s when the weight started falling off.

 

Maggie didn’t realize she was cheating – or seeking food as comfort so to speak – until she went through counseling. At that time, she was in a relationship and instead of talking about issues, she would seek comfort in food. This led to her weight gain and drinking. Once she realized she can talk to someone about this, it helped.

 

Grant adds that you can’t get your body right if your mind isn’t right. Once your mind is right, you still have work to do in terms of your body. Maggie describes this as an ever-flowing relationship. With that said, checking in with yourself helps a lot.

 

[15:30] Joining a Bootcamp, Finding Your Niche

 

Since January 2018, Maggie lost nine more pounds. And over the last couple of months, half of that weight came off. She actually did bootcamp twice a week that involved high-intensity circuit training. It wasn’t until January that she discovered her niche in bootcamp style training.

 

Then, she went on to do strength training 2-3 times a week on top of her bootcamp twice a week. Additionally, she would hit at least 10,000-12,000 steps a day. She also didn’t drink for eight weeks. She initially set a goal not to drink for four weeks and was able to extend it.

 

It can become annoying for people asking why you’re no longer drinking. By the second half of her eight weeks of not drinking, she’d just tell people she’s pregnant. What she ended up saying was that she’s spending a lot of money going to bootcamp and training so she didn’t really want to ruin it.

 

[21:11] To Count Macros or Not

 

Despite her massive progress in terms of weight loss, Maggie was still curious about whether she should count macros and calories. Are you supposed to be really eat two handfuls of spinach in every meal, every two hours? What’s the threshold for an individual to continue losing fat even if it’s at a slower pace?

 

Heavey points out that you don’t really need to count macros. But Maggie did this for a couple of months and got great result. This could be because it matches her personality of being an all in or all out kind of person.

 

For Heavey’s personality type, however, it makes sense to do that if you’re pursuing a fat loss goal. But at some point in time, Heavey found that he didn’t want to continue to track his macros. Instead, he would prep his meals and did the tracking on them. Then he eats those on a daily basis. So although he’s no longer tracking, he already knows what those things are and there’s that robotic, “forced” consumption. Apparently, this doesn’t work for everybody.

 

[24:55] Go for Something You Can Stick To

 

Grant adds that if counting your macros connects with you and makes you happy or makes it easy to monitor what you’re doing, then that’s the right thing for that individual. So find something you can stick to and follow, whether it’s exercise or nutrition.

 

Heavey adds that you need to find something you can do on a regular basis and that you’re not going to hate.

 

When you find an approach that works for you because it’s consistent with your lifestyle and personality, it has to be one that puts you in a caloric deficit if your goal is fat loss. Hence, counting macros can be a powerful tool for that. Why everybody pushes it is because it has the precision and the accuracy required. But it doesn’t mean that it’s a good fit for everybody.

 

Other people can apply principles like Paleo or clean eating that will put them in that deficit which fits their lifestyle. At the end of the day, they’re doing the same thing. They’re putting themselves in a caloric deficit.

 

[27:20] How Do You Figure Out Your Caloric Deficit?

 

Fitness trackers are terrible at estimating their daily caloric burn. Heavey recommends not to use anything that the tracker tells you you’re burning in a day because it’s almost certainly very wrong.

 

There are other tools you can use to do this. For one, determine your basal metabolic rate. Then factor in your activity level. This is the traditional path to determining your maintenance calories – the number of calories consumed to maintain your weight. Then, you can see what type of caloric deficit is needed to lose fat.

 

But they’re all just estimates. That being said, Heavey believes that the best approach is to do a food log over a period of seven days. Then measure your body weight while you’re doing it.

 

And at the end of a couple of weeks, you have data on the number of calories you’re consuming on a daily basis as well as what your body weight was over that period. Then you can experiment on this. If you don’t want to count calories, then you have to find another way to do it.

 

[31:05] What If You’re Not the Detail-Oriented Type

 

Grant says that for most people, there might be a happy medium where you can start by going online and putting in your age, height, weight, and gender. Then you get your BMI and have that idea of what you’re trying to target. After doing it a couple of weeks, you can look at your scale. If you’re someone who’s less detail-oriented, you can still get a target and work towards it over time.

 

The same goes for nutrition. For instance, if you’re having consistently having similar foods for lunch and at dinner. For example, a particular vegetable and protein. You do that for a week. Check your weight and if it’s not working, you have to make some adjustment to that. That’s the least scientific you can get for some information that will lead to progress.

 

[32:33] Balancing Your Macros When You Hate the Carbs

 

Heavey says many people struggle with this all the time. If you want to lose fat and everything else is fixed. Take two diets: one is high in fat, low in carb, and the other one is high in carb, low in fat. And protein is fixed in both of them. They’ve done studies where they’ve put people in caloric deficits on those two diets and everybody loses the same amount of fat.

 

You can use of any of those macro percentages to lose weight. Ideally, you have a high protein diet but that factors in satiety. One of the things that “un-does” a lot of people in their diet is that they’re hungry all the time when they’re cutting calories. That’s not sustainable. Your body is fighting you and if it’s constantly fighting you, it’s going to be difficult to sustain it.

 

Instead, focus on eating more satiating foods that fill you up. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient. In terms of carbs and fat, they’re similar in terms of satiety on a caloric basis. There are more calories in fat than there is in carbs. But the higher carb foods, like the sweets and treats, don’t have filling sensation. You could eat 2-3 donuts and still not feel full. This is where the carb argument becomes more important. So it’s really about focusing on higher protein and higher fiber foods and this will take you along the way towards filling yourself up at mealtime. Then add some treats on top of that occasionally and it won’t be an issue.

 

Just make sure that if you’re counting calories, make it all fit within those calorie limits that you’re losing weight on. You can put whatever calories in there that you want but if they’re more filling, then you’re going to be able to stick to the diet for a longer time and lose weight.

 

[36:15] Cutting Alcohol, Are You Happy?

 

Grant underlines the value of moderation as drinking can be a social thing as well. But when it comes to meeting fitness and body composition goals, there has to be alcohol moderation.

 

Our social lives can sometimes take over our nutrition plans and we sometimes feel like if we don’t make it to everything, we don’t experience each social event, that we’re cutting ourselves short. This is the pitfall that a lot of us fall into. The real challenge is to limit those nights. What Grant has found helpful though is putting something else in your hand. That will replace that element of social drinking.

 

Heavey adds that the issue with alcohol is that they’re packed with calories that don’t do anything for you in terms of satiety. In fact, it works against you since you tend to stay up later, meaning eating more food, sleeping less, and eating crappy foods. Then you throw your goals and motivation out the window.

 

Again, you can definitely drink and lose weight, but you can’t drink a lot all the time and lose weight.

 

[41:50] Change It Up!

 

If you’ve been losing weight with of your current routine or plan, you’ve got to eventually change what you’re doing. You can’t do the same thing forever and expect results. Your metabolism is going to adapt, which is this idea of adaptive thermogenesis. Plus, you’re going to lose weight to the point where your original caloric goal becomes your maintenance level. So there has to be some adaptation in the plan.

 

Heavey recommends planning for three months increments as the most effective. For instance, plan for a 0.50-1 pound per week and chart that out for three months. Then reassess after a couple of months. See if you’re continuing to progress at that rate. If yes, then go on. Otherwise, you would have to make some changes.

 

Also note that as you start to get leaner, your body fat percentage drops more and more. It then becomes more difficult to lose fat.

 

[44:55] Overcoming Workout Plateau

 

If you feel your body is already adapting to your training, it’s no longer going to tax your body enough to adapt which defeats the whole point of exercising. This is when making adjustments in training become a factor. When you’re weight training, you can add more weight, increase or decrease sets or reps.. When you’re in bootcamp, you could manipulate the workout to increase the intensity.

 

[47:30] Caloric Deficit vs. Goals

 

It comes down to your goals. If your goal is to be a super strong lifter, you don’t want to be in a heavy caloric deficit. You have to find that balance where the amount of food you’re eating is not making you sleep shitty at night. You have to have that amount where it still enables you to be active.

 

Most importantly, pay attention to the way your body feels. If you feel like you’re not having motivation to exercise, then you’re probably cutting too hard.

 

Grant adds that lifting doesn’t make you big. You have to eat so much more and you’ve got to lift heavy all the time to make you big.

Links:

Miss America Axes Swimsuit Competition and No Longer Judging by Physical Appearance