By: Michael Beiter

A month ago, a client posted pictures of his progress since working with me. Within a day of that post, I had multiple new inquiries for business from his circle of friends. One of them hired me right away and just finished his first month. We went over these questions today.

Q: Is it a big deal if I have more fat than carbs? 

A: No! As long as you stay within your calorie range, you can trade carbs and fat back and forth. Most people will discover they prefer carbs or fat rather than a balance, and to them, we say trade away! Keep your protein and calories the same, and you will not notice much of a difference between high carbs and low fat and vice versa. 

Q: Is switching from deficit to maintenance necessary, or can I stay in deficit? 

A: Switching is necessary to promote metabolic health, reduce the risk of rebound, and increase the likelihood of sustainability. It's the same idea as a cheat meal/day giving your body and mind a break from rigorous dieting, but research published in 2017 found that a singular bout of increased calories was not enough to offset multiple weeks in a deficit. Researcherss found, unsurprisingly, that we need a balance of deficit to maintenance time when losing fat to make the losses stick. 

Yes, increasing calories leads to ambivalence for many people, but once you experience what it's like and its effects, it will be hard to return to constant deprivation. Two strategies help make the transition from deficit to maintenance easier: 1.) using ranges versus static numbers and 2.) stair-stepping your way up to higher intakes. 

If your deficit is 1700 calories and your maintenance is 2500, it's better to think you need to eat between 1700 and 2500 each day of maintenance than to only count 2500 calories as successful. By using ranges, you create more opportunities for success. At 2500, you either hit it or you don't - an unfair dichotomy that promotes all-or-nothing thinking. With a range of 1700-1500 calories, you have 800 calorie levels that constitute success. 

Stair-stepping your way up to your desired maintenance intake is another surefire way to make the process easier. You could add one hundred calories per week over a couple of months to increase eight hundred calories. Or any other method that divides and spreads the difference over time. 

Q: How do I stay accurate when eating out?

A: You don't. Accept that you will not be spot on when you are not the one controlling your food preparation (eating out). Do your best by creating a food entry as close as possible to what you're eating, and move on. The point of food logging isn't accuracy; it's information. Every time you enter what you ate and get macros and calories back from the log, you now have infinitely more information to make your next eating decision based on what you've already done. In science, this is called evidence-based decision-making, and when you use your evidence of what you ate to help you determine what to eat next, you become superpowered. Any food log is better than no food log, especially when you realize accuracy is not the primary reason we use it. 

Q: I need to eat more veggies; any tips? 

A: Yes! Two tips come to mind that make getting your daily five servings of veggies easier. The first tip is to have a super shake! Blending veggies, fruit, protein, fat, and some nuts or seeds in a shake creates a real meal to go. Unlike the poor quality ready-to-drink options you find in convenience stores, these shakes have real food that you add yourself. I have had a super shake daily for breakfast for years. If I get to the end of the day and I'm short on protein or veggies, I blend one up before bed to make up for what I missed during the day. 

The second tip is to have a big ass salad. The client, asking these questions, regularly meets clients for lunch and drinks. 

There are only a few restaurants you go to that don't offer a salad with a meat topper as an option. Add whatever else you want to it and an excellent dressing for some fats, and you have a solid go-to option that won't break you. Some of the ones I get at Palmer's, Urban Grill, and Jason's Deli are the size of popcorn bowls and contain an entire day's worth of veggies. 

When veggies get tough, try concentrating them. Not in the form of green powders or pills you urinate out right away but in the form of fewer frequencies throughout the day and greater volume when you eat. 

Q: Lastly, I need to drink less...

A: I agree. There is no other form of empty calories we consume, like alcohol. Your metabolism is so unique that it can even make do with Snickers and Western fast food without shuttering. But once you introduce alcohol? Your body senses the ultimate threat and concentrates much of its resources on removing the toxins you're consuming at the cost of muscle building, fat loss, recovery, and damn near every other neat thing your body does to heal. Once it removes the ethanol, your regular systems resume their function. 

The CDC uses two classifications that help drinkers either enjoy alcohol within limits or stop consumption. The first is the classification of a heavy drinker - which happens when males consume more than 15 drinks per week and females have more than 8. The second classification is binge drinking - 5 or more drinks in a single sitting for males and 4 for females. 

In over a decade, I've never seen someone have a healthy, good-feeling month that included fitness progress when they had more than two binge drinking sessions or more than one week of heavy drinking.