The Detached podcast
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Sophia
The Detached podcast
EP 64 Talking Ozempic, Online Coaching, Unlocking Health and Performance With Mark Doherty
Mark unlocks the secrets to mastering individualized coaching and performance nutrition with Mark Doherty, who brings over 31 years of experience in the fitness industry. From starting his journey as a fitness instructor at the young age of 17 to becoming a pioneer in online coaching, Mark's story is both inspiring and educational. Listen as he emphasizes the importance of merging scientific knowledge with practical experience, the necessity of continuous learning, and the psychological aspects crucial to effective coaching.
Ever wondered about the complexities of metabolic adaptation and the risks entailed in bodybuilding? Mark shares his personal experiences with competition prep, the role of genetics and anabolic steroids, and the mental hurdles involved. He delves into the significance of proper nutrition, the concept of diet breaks, and explains metabolic adaptation as a natural survival mechanism. We also discuss Relative Energy Deficiency in Sports and its relevance to athletes and everyday individuals, illuminating the need for comprehensive and individualized coaching strategies.
Discover the principles of nutrient timing, flexible dieting, and the critical relationship between nutrition and strength training. Mark explains why maintaining muscle and bone health is essential and critiques restrictive diets, advocating for a balanced approach that fosters long-term health and sustainable habits. Don't miss out on this episode packed with invaluable insights into optimizing health, ensuring sustainable fat loss, and cultivating a healthy relationship with food. Subscribe now to stay informed and inspired by expert guests and enriching conversations.
All right, welcome back to another episode of the Detached podcast. Today I have Mark Daherty on, and it's been quite some time since I've been trying to get him on the podcast because you are incredibly busy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been in Thailand, obviously from Dubai, but just things have been like with clients, obviously upscaling and building a team. There's been a lot happening. So obviously the summer quieter months, unfortunately. So we're trying to do stuff that promotes and builds the future beyond.
Speaker 2:Obviously, as you know, in the fitness industry, june, july, august are lag periods for a lot of clients, and then september, october, november, big months.
Speaker 2:January, february, march are big months, so sort of um, yeah, I'm hard to get at times, I realize that, but once a client is a client, um, the way I work with clients now and I work, I don't work with as many clients anymore because I've got a team, because I pretty much respond to my client hell on a daily basis on whatsapp. Now they check in once a week but I feel for online coaching, you gotta be available from a Monday to Friday on whatsapp for daily questions, because it's an individual process which we'll speak about throughout the podcast and why individuality is super important. So some of the stuff we speak about today may be general information, but you, you have the bell curve and you've got the average and the outside the average and certain people do not fit into the average. So it all depends on the type of client you're working with, and I feel the more communication you have with a client online, the better your online service will be.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, I'm sure everyone knows now that you're an online coach, but when I first met you, you were. You were obviously not an online coach, and I knew you were just always so hungry to learn more and do more seminars and really kind of fill your knowledge fountain up all the time. So I just want to kind of go back to the younger mark. Where did his career start?
Speaker 2:and yeah, so I actually was an online coach when we met and I was doing online, but my online work goes back about 15 16 years ago, um. So I started um training at the age of 15, got my first fitness instructor qualification at 17, started as a fitness here's that mark.
Speaker 1:Let's uh, let's give the listener a bit context here that's only a few years ago, so I'm now 48.
Speaker 2:So this is 31 years coaching um. So basically then I fancy in the personal training and obviously I competed in bodybuilding. So I became very highly passionate about nutrition and training and throughout the years I developed many nutrition qualifications and my first bigger nutritional online job was actually about 15, 16, maybe 17 years ago before online coaching was a thing, with a company called BTN Body Type Nutrition with Ben Comer, who is well-known in the UK or was well-known back then. So I actually did a lot of online coaching and PT at the same time. Then I left his company, then I moved to Dubai about 10 years ago and I actually went straight into pt, but within the year was back online coaching. So I was doing both, but more as a as like um. I was actually still doing a lot of online coaching um. And then, like a number of years ago, I did my postgraduate performance nutrition um.
Speaker 2:I wanted to go on and do my PhD, but the funny story is my PhD tutor from my postgrad spoke me out of doing the PhD. He said Mark, don't do it. I'm actually coaching him now to improve his body composition for his sport and he actually coaches, professional athletes who've actually won some medals in the recent Olympics, athletes who've actually won some medals in the recent Olympics. So basically, over the last 31 years I've dealt with every type of client you can think of, from professional athlete of all sports, amateur competitors. I work with coaches. I still mentor coaches right through the general population and there's not one situation or scenario I haven't worked with. Every man, every lady, and every time I jump on a sim call, someone says, right, I've someone to tell you that I've got that you probably haven't worked with. And I said, what is it? And then they tell me I say I've worked with about a hundred of you. So there, I've done everything people told me many years ago mark the felp and niece and I never did.
Speaker 2:I just ended up working with people because I was passionate about it and then, obviously, as the more people came in with different ailments or I started studying different subjects, especially in nutrition, and I also, like I did as much on coaching as well on like biomechanics and stuff like that, because I wanted to be, as for me, the best I can be, and I'm still doing more courses because at the age of 48, I feel like you got to work the brain just as much as you got to work the body and even like, a lot of the work I do is more psychological and physiological when it comes to clients. So you've got to keep that brain ticking and obviously, with a lot of the science, a lot of the science becomes more updated. But at the same time, what I class as an evidence-based coach is three things. Number one, having the qualifications and scientific knowledge of the current literature and the meta-analysis, because you might, someone might cherry-pick a scientific research and put it on and say, oh, blah, blah, blah, but I could take that part and tell clients, right, this was done on rats, so it has no effect and it was an observational study, so it's a waste of time. Now, also, not only do you know, need you know the science, the anecdotal means that your experience of coach so, with me doing 31 years and I've I've probably right, and I see coaches saying they've worked with thousands of clients I probably did 45 000 hours on a gym floor one-to-one coaching.
Speaker 2:I've done thousands of hours of online coaching throughout back from 15 years ago. Then I sort of stopped and back into online. Now I'm fully online. Even though I love personal training. I do love it, but obviously, being at the age of 48, I want to upscale my business and me myself. I personally can only probably help maybe 30 40 people because of the way I work and I'm constant communication on WhatsApp. I want to build a team that I can help mentor the guys become better coaches and we can help as many people as we can. So that is about as much as me, as I can think as possible. There's probably all our little bits and pieces in there that I'm forgetting about.
Speaker 1:I want to get to the real you, the real Mark, the Mark that went bodybuilding. What was the impact and the after effect of a bodybuilding competition, because I know a lot of people struggle mentally after coming off the stage. How was your experience going through the whole bodybuilding prep?
Speaker 2:um, so how was your experience going through the whole bodybuilding prep? Um, I was lucky because I always hired the best coaches now and I was always psychologically in a good manner. I never had a bad relationship with food, even when I was dieting extreme, because extreme restricted dieting, we know, versus flexible dieting, extreme restricted dieting can cause eating disorders and you see a lot of coaches on here oh, I've done a show and I have eating disorders, so it's not like that for everybody. Um, and I suppose it just depends on there's a lot of stuff genetics, environment, how you be around um, but I have dealt with a lot of coaches who and especially a lot of female coaches and I'll not mention their names or stuff who've come to me off the back end of competing or photo shoots and had terrible coaches that put them on peds, uh, put them on restricted diets, who were in a really bad way and and they were here for me to almost fix. Now, obviously, for me, my scope of practice is nutritional intervention and training. Now, nutritional intervention we'll talk about is I will look at a client's blood work and I was taught that by a doctor and if I see something off, I will send that client to an endocrinologist because if that client needs medication, nutritional intervention won't do, won't help certain hormones if they're needed.
Speaker 2:Now for me, the bodybuilding. I was a kamikaze from the age of 17, 20, 30 in 30, in my 30s I didn't care what it took, I wanted to do everything I could and I thought I could be Mr Olympia. And I didn't realize back then that genetics or everything my genetics, weren't that good, even though I created an okay physique and I did stuff that was needed to develop that physique. Now, do I regret doing it? I don't regret doing it because now I can speak to people and give responsible information, because at the end of the day I know we're going to speak about Osempic. It's the same as PEDs. I'm going to have guys come to me and go Mark, I want to develop a great physique, I want to go on anabolic steroids and I'll say, look, and I probably talked about 90 of people out of going on anabolic and I say, look, let me look at your blood work and then their testosterone levels are perfect. I say I can help you develop a fantastic physique just by nutrition and the proper training, and which I've done a lot of, so I'd say over the 30 years, probably 80 percent of my clientele have not used anything, but 20 percent.
Speaker 2:Obviously athletes, coaches, have used stuff. So for me it's it's up to me to give responsible information, because if I don't, what I realize happens, and the same with those, then pick people are going to do it anyway, and they're. Then they're going to go from someone who has built up years and years of expert knowledge and go to someone who has no knowledge and this person is going to ruin them, which is what I've had coaches come to me, especially female coaches, of the back end of terrible coaches. Um, so my bodybuilding, do I regret? No, do I regret some things I did? Yes, but now obviously.
Speaker 1:What did you learn most from prep?
Speaker 2:What did I? What's right?
Speaker 1:What did you learn from prep? What did it teach you the most?
Speaker 2:It taught me that it's an extreme sport and not a lot can take it to that level without mentally breaking. And if you have the wrong coach, then you're going to mentally break and the high potential there for binge eating and eating disorders is there with the wrong type of coaching. Now I still coach one or two because I'm passionate, I still love bodybuilding, but i'm'm super responsible when it comes to it and if I feel a client gets a certain point and they're going to mentally break, there's not a chance that I'm going to keep them going. I want to pull them off, prep or I'm going to utilize things like diet breaks. Now this isn't just about prep. This is about even fat loss for general population clients, because even general population clients, when you put them on a diet, you have to.
Speaker 2:Psychology is now more important physiological stuff. You have to watch right how this client responds to this fat loss phase and there is a thing called diet breaks. Diet breaks is where we go back to maintenance calories and if I feel a client is fatigued, it's a lady's time of month or the dieting is pushing them to a limit, I'm going to put them on a diet break. So a diet break doesn't stop hormones, which we'll talk about metabolic adaptation soon. It's more like a psychological break from dieting. So this is why individuality when you're coaching is crucial, and this is why the only way for me that online coaching works is if a client can basically message you on a daily basis, because if you wait a whole week for a check-in, then some disaster may happen in that first few days. Now this is especially true in your first initial four weeks. So my first initial four weeks is called an optimization phase. So a client will come to me and go right, mark, I want to lose fat.
Speaker 2:So I don't know what their past history is. Yes, they've told me what it is, but they may have been dieting. They may have gone through metabolic adaptation because of the yes, they've told me what it is, but they may have been dieting. They may have gone through metabolic adaptation because the way they've been eating before me. I don't know how they deal with food. And even professional athletes some professional athletes are putting their foot 100 on the gas, 100 miles an hour, and they're under fueling and and basically that is causing metabolic adaptation and it's even causing a thing called reds, which we can talk about. Relative energy deficiency in sports, which is a huge one, but it's not just in sports. It's a symptom that's happening with gym, uh, general population, people in everyday life, and it's a that might not know about metabolic adaptation.
Speaker 1:What exactly is it? When does it come around? When can someone identify that they're struggling with this?
Speaker 2:Okay. So basically, it's not that it's a struggle, it's a normal process, that's going to happen and it's not a bad thing, it's not something you worry about. So basically that's why I like trying to find out at the start what's someone's maintenance calories? What calories can I get them to to maintain before I start putting them on a deficit? Because if you put someone too low in a deficit and then you have big issues now metabolic adaptation is our, like our, our, um, our body fighting a bite back against us. Losing body fat, it's a survival mechanism kicking in to ensure we have enough energy to maintain essential functions in the body. So if people do these fad diets going really low protein, really low calories, and they think, oh great, I'm losing weight on the scales, that might be detrimental because, number one, the weight they'm losing weight on the scales. That might be detrimental because, number one, the weight they're losing isn't just fat, it's water and it's potentially muscle, which I could write a book on and I probably will. So your body is fighting back.
Speaker 2:Now what happens in the process is metabolic adaptation. So I'll tell you a couple of things. Physiologically, we've got hunger hormones, one called leptin, one called ghirlin. Leptin is our hormone that tells us we're full, ghirlin is the hormone that tells us we're hungry, and basically ghirlin goes up and leptin goes down as we go deeper into the diet. Hence why we want to watch. For is do we need the diet break for that client? Are they going to binge before they don't?
Speaker 2:Now the problem with metabolic adaptation. There's two main things that really happen. People think their metabolism slows down. Now it may slow down slightly, not by many calories, but metabolic adaptation and my people plateau. The main reasons are number one is that they start under-reporting so they start getting fatigued and tired and they start snacking and not telling you. Or they start overeating on the weekend. So they're not actually tracking fully. So you've got them increasing food, maybe not really doing it consciously or maybe subconsciously, but that is one reason. And number two is neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis. When you get deeper in the diet and you drop calories, you get more fatigued, so people tend to move less. So that's why it's a good idea to track steps.
Speaker 2:So, for example, I had a lady one time who was 53, and I had her on about 1,500 calories. She was doing three weight training sessions and I think it was like four by 30-minute cardio sessions and she just wasn't losing fat. So basically I said and this was years ago and I said let's track your steps, what steps are you doing? And she started tracking steps and she was on. Then I didn't worry too much about steps I still don't when it comes to certain type athletes, but I now do with general population.
Speaker 2:So she was doing 4 000 steps a day. Then we upped it to 10 000. The lady started losing a pound or two a week, every week, just by increasing the steps, because our increasing steps from like an extra 6 000 could equate to us burning an extra 200 to 800 calories. So people think, oh right, it's my metabolism is slowing down, or no, you have a slight slowdown in your metabolism. Obviously it's your diet, but it's not as big as everybody thinks. So they got to stop blaming, because what happens is it's just on the report thinks so they.
Speaker 1:They gotta stop blaming, because what happens is just on the report. So what? Like an? Like an average or a rough estimation? I know everyone's so individualized, but when it comes to metabolism, like what would be the decrease that you would see in as an average? Like what kind of numbers or figures are we talking?
Speaker 2:it's funny because, um, I've just listened to a podcast by, uh, dr gabrielle and dr alan bacon and alan's fantastic and like alan reminds me myself of me, but the guy's just, oh, absolute wisdom, puts it out there and like he put some figures from scientific studies out and he says the guy dropping from 180 pound to 150, it was like a 20 pound drop in body weight, your only, your only metabolism slowing down anywhere from 5 to 25 calories. Right, wow, yeah. And then there was like a study, the minnesota study, many, many, many years ago, where they starve people. I don't know if you heard.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, I know this one because this is where everybody thinks.
Speaker 2:All the starvation, the starvation diet. We get a starvation mode and we put on fat, which is absolute rubbish. There's no such thing. It's, yeah, there's no such thing. So people start eating more or your body cortisol stress hormone goes up. You start holding a lot of water and you get that hungry, you start nibbling on food so you come away from your calorie deficit. So people, oh, this, this diet ain't working for me, but it's the it's that they're not tracking. So therefore you have to be meticulous with tracking. So metabolism, calories wise, don't go down that that much. And the problem is is I have a lot of clients to 40 or 50 oh, my metabolism is slowing down. It's not your metabolism scientifically doesn't slow down into your 60s, but what potentially could happen is we could even now move into like sarcopenia, whereas we have loss of muscle tissue, skeletal muscle and strength from the age of 41, um, which again could cause a little bit of slow down metabolism. Um.
Speaker 1:So the what is the rough estimation, or have you done any research to show?
Speaker 2:so those who don't train or those so talking about said written individuals who don't train, you approximately approximately 9.5 percent of muscle in your 40s and then, when you go near 50s, one percent and then your strength decreases. Now we can greatly improve this by strength training. So there's there is four main issues that we want to prevent. Sarcopenia and people in the forest need to really cop on and get their shit together. They got to do their strength training and either add muscle or maintain muscle. You got to keep your strength up. Also, we know that cardiovascular for you to max is really important for longevity. So we we still have to do cardio people. People tell you all don't need, you don't need to do cardio. Yes, you do. It's really important part of the process. And also nutrition may become more important. As we age, especially like people in their when I deal with older clients 50s, 60s we develop an anabolic resistance to protein, meaning our body doesn't respond and create muscle protein synthesis at the same way it does in our 30s and 40s, meaning like. So muscle protein synthesis is a process that helps us build muscle. Okay, and also having protein um, for me, I like four protein servings minimum a day from a starting client prevents muscle protein breakdown. Now what happens at the age of when you're eating 20 grams of protein? We need one of the amino acids called leucine, being at least at three grams, to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Now when you are older, you develop an anabolic resistance, so that 20 grams of protein with three grams of leucine no longer stimulates that protein synthesis. So actually, as you get older, you may need a larger bolus of protein per meal. So therefore, if a lady was doing really well on 20 grams of protein per meal, or 25, when she's in her 50s, 60s, she might do better with 40 grams of protein per meal. So she needs a higher leucine threshold, a higher protein bolus, which is really important, and that's combined with the strength training um which prevents you um losing muscle and keeps your strength up, and that's why protein is super important and the right ranges of protein.
Speaker 2:Now, the thing with it doesn't matter for me who I work with. I tell any client that comes on board, if you're lifting weights three times a week and if you're doing cardio three times a week, you're still training like an athlete, while you're competing or not. So I treat all my clients like athletes and I'm going to fuel them like athletes, and I might do a thing called nutrient timing. I might distribute the protein out every four hours. I might have carbs pre and post training. And then people say, oh Mark, it's a general population client. And I say, but remember what we're doing.
Speaker 2:We're creating good habits and behaviors and we know scientifically that, say, I had someone eating at 8 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 9 o'clock. If I got them into a routine and a habit of doing that, we know scientifically that people who get into a routine of eating meal frequencies at the same time actually maintain their fat loss at a longer rate. Because we know a lot of diets fail. We know a lot of diets. People within two to five years put their weight back on. So my process with a client is helping to lose fat, maintain muscle, regain muscle and keep that off long term. And we have to do this in different phases. We can't just do. You can't be in a calorie deficit all the time. So people are chronically dieting, and especially females and especially with fat diets.
Speaker 2:Fat diets usually mean low protein, no strength training, too much cardio, um, so the thing is is they're chronically dieting and when you chronically diet and you're in a calorie deficit too long, you've got a thing called red relative energy deficiency. In sports I call relative energy deficiency syndrome causes lots of problems and especially the female body. The female endocrine system is a lot more sensitive than the male body, so it can't for me, in my opinion I'm working with females can't have as much stress as the male body, so you've got um like problems with their menstrual cycle, and then you could go deep into like fatigue, eating disorders, like there's so many of you like a list of symptoms of reds, uh, losing bone density. So I've I've dealt with like a lady in her 40s who was an endurance athlete and got a bone mineral density um test and it was so low. So the thing is, is people doing endurance based training think, oh, it's great for my health, but what you're really doing is, when you're pushing that body a lot and under fueling, you're breaking your body down.
Speaker 2:So people are not focusing on. You're building or lifting weights not to burn calories, to maintain muscle and strength and bone health, which we know um. You're doing your cardio not to burn calories to maintain muscle and strength and bone health, which we know um. You're doing your cardio not to burn calories as such, even though you still do, to improve your cardiovascular health. And then, when it comes to fat loss, being in a calorie deficit is the most important thing, but you don't want to be in a calorie deficit so long.
Speaker 2:So what I do is the optimization phase, to try and find out roughly what a client's maintenance calories are, because all these calorie calculators are rubbish, they're a waste of time, they don't take into individual variance and it's up to an experienced coach to sort of find out for themselves. And it's just an experiment. So if I give you, say I started you on 2000 calories over a space of two weeks, I'm going to watch your measurements, your weight and your pictures. I'm going to see what happens to your body with those calories and I'll know roughly right, are you maintaining or are you losing, are you gaining? And then I have got it almost like a good starting point. But because I've had your calories up higher in the initial couple weeks, I'm actually making you healthier and I'm probably going to tell you right, sophia, for your training. This is the training we're going to do, but I want you working at one out of 10, 10 being the hardest Week one. I want you working at six out of 10. I want you pulling back and deloading this week.
Speaker 2:So what I'm trying to do is create a better environment before I push someone into a fat loss phase. And then I'm also understanding the psychology of the person behind the food. And trust me, if I had a dirham or a penny for every time I message the client, trust the process, keep with it, don't worry, the weight you put on overnight was just water, keep with it. Don't worry, the weight you put on overnight was just water, keep with it I would be a millionaire, because a lot of my a lot of my work is more like keeping a client accountable and supporting them. Um, it's not really so. Fat loss is easy but it's not simple. It's hard to do because it's trying to keep a client on track and that's why, in a fat loss process, you need to be meticulous or I need to be meticulous as a coach in making sure they're tracking their food.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I write example meat plans and a lot of people prefer that. In fact, my PhD tutor, who I now coach, wants me to. I wrote him meat plans because he says Mark, look, listen. I wrote him meat plans because he says Mark, look, listen, I'd rather just see the meat plan, follow the meat plan. It's easier for me to do right now at this point in my life.
Speaker 2:Now I'm a huge fan of flexible dieting because we've got a lot of studies on restrictive eating versus flexible dieting. So flexible dieting means eating 80% whole foods and 20% of foods you enjoy and we know that keeps you very healthy. And my number one goal with any client is optimal health and that means physiological health and psychological health. Now the psychological health is having a good relationship with food, because every day I sit on talking to clients who've tried IF and no, I'm not a fan of IF. I'll warn that in a while I've tried keto, have tried every fat under the sun, and they've developed they haven't developed eating disorders yet, but they've developed a bad relationship with food. Now if someone develops an eating disorder, then that is out of my scope. Then they may need a psychologist or they may work with a psychologist and still work with me on that aspect Just depends on the whole process and depends on the individual.
Speaker 2:So, being in a calorie deficit too long, you should actually be on maintenance periods just as long as in calorie deficit periods. So basically, what you want to do with a client is. My process is optimization. See roughly what's a good starting point Put them in the fat loss phase, because most people want to lose fat. Now, when they come in fat loss phase, the main focus on fat loss is losing fat and maintaining muscle. Under no circumstances should we lose muscle and this is why, like spreading protein out every four hours to prevent muscle protein breakdown. Um, now there is research that three, you could have three meals like every six hours. It could range from four to six hours yeah, I don't think it's be, that rigid as before.
Speaker 1:I know before, um, lots of coaches used to be so regimental with this yeah, but the thing is, is, um, it is.
Speaker 2:Is it wrong to be regimental? It's not been regimental, but it's getting someone into the habits and eating behaviors. The problem with social media is, tell you I'll just hit calories and protein. For me, that's not good enough. For me, as a coach, that's not expertise enough. They could just do that on a deficit. And for me, um, I have seen anecdotally better results with clients actually hitting four protein servings a day, but the very least having three, three meals with the right amount of protein. And most people don't eat enough protein. And protein is the most important macronutrient because protein is not just for building muscle, it's for our immune function, our cells, our enzymes, everything. It's our building blocks. So it's crucial that we get protein and obviously when we train which we should train our need for protein goes up so tell me, this ozempic have you?
Speaker 1:have you taken it yourself?
Speaker 2:no. So my um, I always believe um, like I've trained for years and always get in shape. Now my philosophy is a client comes to me, they want, want to get a certain shape, and then I want to get them to this point, what they think is the optimal point. Well, I tell them that it's okay to fluctuate and hover around that optimal point. So say, I trained you and I got you to 20% and I said, right, I want you to stay between 20% to 23%. Say you went in the hall and you put on a few percent. Then my clients are going to know how to track food a bit. Come back and put down to 20%.
Speaker 2:What happens in society is people yield diet. They lose 10 pound, they put on 20 pound and every time they keep doing yield dieting, it's harder and harder each diet phase for them to lose fat because each time they're losing muscle as they go through these fad diets. Now, osempic I have not used it and I will not use it because I don't need it and a lot of people using it don't need it either. But we live in a society. People want a quick fix. Now, osempic is a diabetic drug that decreases blood sugars but at the same time causes the pancreas to increase insulin, which you've probably heard of the insulin hypopathy. The insulin stops fat loss, which is a load of rubbish. It does not. We can talk about that. Um, what basically happens with people on a semplic is the fact that it decreases their appetite. Now what we have seen in research is that people who are not training and not eating enough protein, the weight loss from a Sempic is a lot of muscle loss which is going to cause problems again with metabolism and again it's going to cause problems with sarcopenia as they're older because they've lost a ton of muscle tissue. They've lost more muscle tissue than the normal rate.
Speaker 2:So if I have a client, come to me, right, and I've had this, and they've said Mark, I'm going on a Sempic, I don't care if you like it or not and I say okay. So obviously I've done the research. I actually coach doctors. I coach currently I coach eight doctors. So obviously I've got a lot of feedback from doctors who are pretty well and they tell me right dosages, da, da, da. So a client, I tell a client right, if you're going to use it, that's fine. But what we want to do is make sure we get enough protein, make sure we strength train and we still develop habits and behaviors while we're doing it. Now, when we're, when they get the fat loss off, I have my final phase. Well, not the final phase, it's a phase called metabolic consolidation. So when you look the problem with the end of a fat loss diet, people put the weight on quickly again. Now there's different reasons for this, probably girl put the weight on quickly again now there's different reasons for this.
Speaker 2:Probably girl yeah, girling is higher. Hunger rates are higher. You've been on a diet. You just want to eat everything. So we want to take a client back to maintenance calories okay, and then we want to keep them. For me, we want to keep them on maintenance calories for long enough to consolidate that fat loss and to bring back certain hunger hormones like bring back the leptin and ghrelin back to normal levels.
Speaker 2:Now the problem is a lot of people, and especially females, because they have a fear of losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight. You can put someone right back to maintenance calories. You don't need to do a reverse diet. But what I have found psychologically reverse dieting someone for three to four weeks back to maintenance calories works better because they don't freak out as much. Now, the reason for this here's a bottle of water.
Speaker 2:When you're at the end of the diet, your glycogen levels are low. So when you start eating carbohydrates someone on keto start eating carbohydrate, your body refills glycogen. One gram of glycogen pulls in three grams of water. So body, body weight goes up. Body weight goes up and people freak out. They want to go back on a diet and that's why you've got this yo-yo dieting. This is why people on keto they start eating some carbs, the weight goes back on, they jump back on keto and then they're on a yo-yo dieting mentality. So we can slowly move up.
Speaker 2:But again, that phase is different habits and behaviors. So each phase is different habits, behavior and needs accountability and support from an expert coach and again daily contact with a coach to get through your phase so that client trusts the process. So I have a client who knows what optimization is. They know how to deal with the fat loss phase. They know how to do integrate diet breaks. They know how to do mindful eating if they're on a holiday during the fat loss phase. It's not just about tracking food, there's different things to do. Then they know how to bring their food back to maintenance and how to hold it there and then they know they can hover around that certain fat loss.
Speaker 2:So for a female for me healthy fat loss is around 20% to 23%. For a male it could be around 10% to 15%. 10% is low and is low, intense, hard to maintain. So you could even like I'd be happy with guys 12 to 15 percent. But it's not just about body fat.
Speaker 2:Also as well, we want to have a look at blood work. How is your blood work, your cholesterol levels, everything your hb, a1c, um. We want to look at everything, um. If they're training, how's their nutrition, how's their performance, how's your sleep, how's your stress? And the thing is, is when you're on a car deficit, that is a stress. So basically, if you cause stress too long, you may have other accumulations of stress. So every now and again you got to pull back the stress and either deload your training. And when you deload your training, because if you train too hard, too long, again you're going to hit a wall and you're going to overtrain, you're going to get an injury. So with your training you're going to deload it. And a good thing if you're on a fat loss phase and you do load your training, it's good to have a diet break. So you're having full central nervous system recovery and you're recovering as well from you're getting a diet break, a psychological break from your diet tell, tell me this.
Speaker 1:So do you think ozempic could be life-changing for some people and do you think it could be for some people, one million percent.
Speaker 2:Yes, it has. Because, um, obesity is huge, it's growing huge and some people it's a life-changing drug. Okay, and there's some people who may help, give them a kickstart, and everybody's go, oh, don't use it. Don't use it, but for me, right, I would. It's like someone had a debate with me um, oh, people shouldn't drink a diet coke and I said my clients drink diet coke all the day, um, all the time, because it keeps them sustaining a diet. And meaning, if that client loses 40 point of body fat, what's going to happen to their health? Their health is going to greatly improve.
Speaker 2:So if I had a client and I've had clients who just couldn't get in there and lose, but they're taking a cent pick, appetite slightly dying so they can sustain their diet longer, then there is certain clients it's definitely beneficial for. So for me, I'm very open-minded as a nutritionist because I've been through everything and I've seen everything and I've done everything myself as well in bodybuilding. So I'm very open-minded, I'm going to listen to the client. So when I, when I talk about an evidence-based coach, there's two things I mentioned was knowing the science, the anecdotal research. The anecdotal evidence is how your experience working clients. And the third, most important one is the preference of the client. And the preference of the client is the mindset of the client. So if this client's going to come to me and say, right, mark, I'm going on this, I'm going to tell this client how to responsibly use it, or how to responsibly do their nutrition and their training around it.
Speaker 2:So what happens is when a client and this is a huge mistake most people make when a client is eating less and even like bodybuilders do this, competitors do this, anybody in a fat loss process what happens? When they eat, start eating less calories, they start upping their training so much, they start training more weights, they start doing more cardio. But when you're eating less, you've less energy, so you're only trying to maintain muscle, so therefore you don't need as much volume in your weight training. Your cardio should be maybe low intensity steady state, not not higher intensity interval training. At that stage you can add the higher intensity intervals training back in maintenance phase. So therefore, you're trying to do everything you can. They allow this client to use your Sempic, but use it in a responsible manner. So the weight they lose is actual fat loss and what they're doing is maintaining as much muscle as possible, and then, when they come off it, you're helping support them as you bring them back to maintenance calories.
Speaker 1:Hi guys that you're helping support them as you bring them back to maintenance calories. Hi guys, I just want to say a huge thank you if you got this far. Listen to this episode, because I know it was a little bit difficult with the sound and also our mics and our both of our internet as well during this whole episode. We're a little bit distorted because it's quite difficult to film a podcast and maintain the same level of consistency from both sides. So I do really appreciate if you did listen to this episode.
Speaker 1:Mark has just scratched the surface of all these hot topics that we were focusing on today. In the future we are going to have a part two coming out very, very soon where Mark's going to dive in a little bit deeper around menstrual cycles, gaining your cycle back and being aware of the female hormones in the body, as well as ozempic and as well as metabolic adaptation. But he has given enough tools, I'm sure, for you to be wise enough to understand some of the repercussions of anything we do when it comes around to diet and nutrition. But the purpose to nutrition and weight lifting, as Mark has focused on the most, is that nutrition requires us to just eat well in order to fuel our bodies, to feel good and to train to build strength, because the future will be brighter, especially as we get older, if we really focus on just working out to build strength rather than just to burn calories.
Speaker 1:So, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you look forward to the next one that me and Mark host together again. But again, guys, thanks always for listening and don't forget to hit that subscribe button so I can grow this channel a little bit more and have some more exciting guests on to add some more value and some more knowledge to you guys, as I always want to explore these conversations so I can share all the information. Anyway, guys, have a good day.