How Much To Adjust By | Lecture

[00:00:00]Hey folks, Dr. Mike here for Renaissance periodization calorie balance video number three. How much to adjust by?

[00:00:06]Time for some mathematics. Fun. So the client's average weight is at least half a pound lower higher than it should be.

[00:00:19]And this on a muscle gain plan or fat loss plan is very easy to say to see because you have a distinct trend line of this week we need to be here on average. This week we need to be here. this week here either above it or below it by a certain amount.

[00:00:35]And it's a little bit trickier on maintenance because on maintenance you have a straight line. It actually almost never can be exactly on that line. So if your maintenance is at 150 lbs and you're like, "Oh, I weighed 151." Like, "Coach, what should I do?" Really, on maintenance, we advocate for roughly a 2% buffer up and down. So that means that you know 3 lb plus or minus at 150 lb nobody lost nobody found. So if you weigh up to 158 still maintain like but I weigh 158 like yes but it's 155 is where you started 158 is totally cool and so is 152. Now if they weigh 159 or if they were 151 then yes it's significantly different enough from 155 that we may make a change.

[00:01:27]So either way, once we decide to make a change, the math is same for maintenance as it is for anything else. Maintenance just has uh roughly 2% buffer zone. And again guys, I want to make something very very very clear. It's not something I mention enough and I want to mention it for you. Especially in this case, we just do not do dogma at RP. We don't do any pretend. 2% is a rough estimate that we think works well. If you ask the question of, well, isn't there a compelling case for a percent and a half? Isn't there a compelling case for 2 and a half%. Yes.

[00:02:01]If on the other hand, you go way out and say, "Okay, I don't change anything unless it's 5% plus or minus." Like, bro, 5% body weight gain at 200 lb is like 10 lbs. You gain 10 pounds of fat.

[00:02:11]And your coach is like, "Ah, you're good. That's not maintenance anymore."

[00:02:15]And if you take the margins down to 1% or less, every body water fluctuation will trigger response. Oh, nope. We're off off balance. We have to adjust the calories. So, I can't go out to have Chinese food with my friends and be totally on track tissue- wise. My body weight jumps up by 2 lbs and all of a sudden I have to change the diet. That's insane. So, we're not saying it's it's got to be 2%. We're saying 2%'s a really good rough place to start. That's just how science works. As we collect more data, etc., etc., maybe we'll have research that shows actually about 1.7% in most people is where the cutoff is made. But we don't have that. So, we just use the rough number. So don't get too crazy obsessed with this is the exact number of but our people this video said 2 and a half. This video said 2%. What's the contradiction? There's no contradiction. It's just all in in the trend of roughly similar. That's it.

[00:03:06]That's as close as we have unfortunately or unfortunately today.

[00:03:10]Now there the client's average weight is is a half a pound lower or higher above the the trend lines and the 2% plus or minus buffer if it's maintenance. And this has been the case for at least half a week. Okay, so we've checked our boxes and then you make the decision to adjust calories. But the next question is by how much. And this is where it gets a little bit mathematical.

[00:03:31]But before it gets mathematical, we have to realize that we're dealing with an equation has two parts to it, not just one. It's not just food, it's physical activity as well, aka cardio, which usually we just measure with steps nowadays.

[00:03:46]You have to ask the client, especially in this example is a fat loss plan.

[00:03:53]This is especially pertinent to fat loss, which will be 90% of your client cases.

[00:03:59]Are you hungrier than you are tired or more tired than you are hungrier? For example, someone's eating 3,000 calories and you run the numbers and you're like, "We got to cut 500 calories out of this cuz it's you're actually gaining a little bit and you're supposed to be losing."

[00:04:16]You interact with them and try to figure out how hungry are you versus tired.

[00:04:23]Let's say they tell you, "I'm really hungry." And then you're like, "Do you feel like you're moving around a lot? Is like do your feet hurt? Your knees are aching? The physical activity is too much?" They're like, "I basically just don't move at all and I'm going to start walking to work and back cuz I live pretty close to work. I don't even know why I take my car. I'm just being lazy and uh so actually I can do a lot more activity." Do not cut their calories or by much. Just increase their physical activity because they're already hungry.

[00:04:51]If you cut their calories even more, they're going to lose it. They're going to fall off the wagon. So, in that case, physical activity is the thing that boosts up. That generates the deficit and the client's super on track. On the other hand, you could have the different scenario where like, hey, like uh time to make another fat loss uh time to make another deficit crunch, how hungry are you versus tired? And they basically say after you explain to them what you're asking, they go, I'm actually eating quite a lot. I I can't believe I'm eating this much on this diet. I'm kind of full all the time and it's a bit of a chore to even finish my meals in the evenings. But I gotta tell you, I'm doing 14,000 daily steps and like if if I do like I did 16,000 over the weekend because my parents were in town. I'm showing museums like the soles of my feet hurt and my knees feel all wobbly and my legs kind of feel deflated and weak. You're like, "Okay, we're not going to add 16,000 steps is unsustainable for you clearly, at least in the short term, but you're full and you're not super hungry." Then it's easy to take a chunk out for calories. So you always have to consider that balance of am I going to increase activity, decrease activity, increase or decrease calories. And the best way to find out is talk to your client and see hunger fullness versus uh fatigue of doing too much physical activity slash, oh man, I really don't move around at all and I could do a lot more.

[00:06:06]Calories come from a combination of food and cardio. So or food and activity. So zooming back into the calories, how do we adjust those calories? How much to adjust by?

[00:06:15]And this is the question of how far off of the trend line are your clients in that situation is your client in that singular situation and what the slope is of the previous ways. What is the directionality?

[00:06:39]the distance from where they're supposed to be and which way they're tracking to be later on. So, for example, client was supposed to weigh 152 lbs on average this week, but weighed 151.4 and the trend line is actually catching up. So, let's say they're losing 152.

[00:06:59]They weighed 151.4.

[00:07:02]Sorry. Oh, good god. Uh, this uh this is better for muscle gain. Sorry, my bad.

[00:07:07]So 152, they're supposed to be here.

[00:07:10]They're at 151.4. So they're below. So you think, okay, they're not as heavy as they should be. They should be heavier.

[00:07:15]They're trying to gain. Should I increase their food? Well, hold on.

[00:07:19]Their trend line over the past little while is like this. So it's going to intersect anyway looking like probably uh maybe that's not a big deal. Maybe you making no changes at all or at least very small changes. On the other hand, you're gaining, the client is gaining, and they were supposed to weigh 152 this week, but they weighed 149.2.

[00:07:38]She whiz, that's more than half a pound.

[00:07:41]And they actually weighed 150.3 a week ago. So, they're supposed to be doing this and they're doing this. That is going to take one hell of a calorie increase to close those gaps. And that's exactly what you want to do is close the curve gaps. get your client's curve as close to the uh goal line as possible.

[00:08:02]So, just generally thinking uh of it mathematically and conceptually, you have some options of how far the departure is from the goal. They weigh maybe a quarter of a percent more or less than they're supposed to, a quarter to half a percent, half a percent to 1%, or 1% more or less than they're supposed to, plus two, three, four, five.

[00:08:24]Hopefully, it doesn't get that crazy.

[00:08:26]And then you have slope options. There is converging slope, same slope, and diverging slope. Converging slope means that if everything keeps going the same, they're going to hit their weight prediction in a week or two or three anyway, cuz they're supposed to be gaining like this, they're behind track, but they're gaining fast or faster than their their goal line. So, they're they're they're slated to make an interception.

[00:08:51]Same slope means they're supposed to be gaining or losing or whatever. let's say a losing example and they are too heavy so they need an adjustment but but they've been on track it's just that if you if you continue the curves out you said to them like I think you can weigh 145 lbs at the end of this diet but if you change nothing cuz they're 2 lbs heavier now than they're supposed to be then even if you change nothing at all they're going to end the diet at not 145 but 147 and they're going to be like a man and you're going to look back and be like ah I could have easily made an adjustment four weeks in row and it didn't but you should have because the slopes were not predicted to intersect.

[00:09:30]Then you have the situation which is much more extreme and happens sometimes of diverging slopes where you're supposed they're supposed to be losing at this rate and they're actually losing at a much slower rate. And so they're supposed to get to 145 at the end of the diet in 5 weeks but at this rate they're going to get to like 151. Like that is very very different. That is 6 lbs off.

[00:09:52]And mind you, that's not like, oh, they're trying their best. Like, well, you just, they're like, hey, I'm ready to do whatever. I'm not so hungry or tired. And you're like, nah, no, we're not going to change things. So, here the impetus for change is pretty intense.

[00:10:02]And if we say, okay, why am I giving this talk at all in detail? I could have just said, look, if the client's behind track, you add 250 calories. If they're ahead of SCA schedule, you you subtract 250 calories or whatever, just one number. But I don't want to give you that one number because where the uh curves are going, this is more advanced, right? It's a university course. Where the curves are pointed and how big the difference is matters for how many calories you're going to add or subtract. Because if you say, let's say we have a situation where their trend the the goal line is this slope and their trend line of what they're actually doing is like this basically maintenance may be a little bit hypoc caloric. If we just every week we subtract 250 calories from their [ __ ] they might end up doing this and then you've end the diet way behind. What you would have wanted is for them to do this and actually get there before the diet ended and get to their goal. It's uh very very similar to the idea of like you know how much do you pull up on the on the control uh uh sticks of an airplane? uh you know if if it's just below the horizon just a little bit if the airplane is pointed into the [ __ ] ground maximum e effort as much as possible. It's not always the algorithm to say, "Okay, if we dip below the horizon, pull up maximum." Or if we're pointed straight down, just pull up a little bit. You you don't want to break the plane like we're going to die. Pull as hard as you can. Right? Same idea here in this situation.

[00:11:37]So there are many combinations obviously of how far off the client is from the trend line. You know, 0.25% 51 1 plus. And then there is another you have to combine them with other combinations of converging slopes, same slopes or diverging slopes.

[00:12:00]I've given you I'm giving you three of the most extreme examples or most extreme, most average and least extreme or most extreme on the other end. And I'm going to give you some calorie percentages to work off of. And then in the next slide, we'll talk about how to apply them a little bit more for best practices.

[00:12:19]These are general theoretical numbers, but they're real good places to start to get pretty pretty accurate uh changes to get your client your best guess into the right direction. This is basically how hard do you pull on on the uh on the control stick. First, the largest departures and diverging slopes. That means the client's supposed to be here doing this and they're here doing that. Something like that.

[00:12:51]At that point, something like a 30% calorie change is actually a smart idea. And you think to yourself like what 30% is enormous? But hold on, the situation is enormous. The situation's extreme. So, for example, I'm eating 3,000 calories as the client to try to gain weight. 3,000 calories a day. And in reality, I'm 1.5% less than the weight I'm supposed to be this week.

[00:13:28]Uh-oh. And I'm losing weight. Last week, I was heavier. Would you really tell me like, "Oh, yeah. Add 5% calories and we'll go from there." That will just make me still lose weight. Lose weight, guys, on a muscle gain plan, just a little bit less quickly than before. Oh my god. It's like you're in the car with someone and they're like literally headed into opposing traffic and you're like, "Hey, we're going to die. Turn the wheel." And they're like, "Oh, okay.

[00:14:00]A little one of these. Great. We're not going to die hitting lane one of opposing traffic. We're going to die hitting lane two now." Slow clap. or we'll just get right between the lanes and we'll both die because we'll get ripped out from cars. But if if someone was sitting in the very middle of our car, they would like miraculously survive. Nah, you're heading on to opposing traffic. You got to turn that ish hard.

[00:14:22]In this example, just to make sure you guys are understanding sort of not gravity situation, but how big these numbers can be so you can see them here in the educational course. And when you have to do this with clients, you can rest assured that you're not making some kind of crazy mistake. Cuz I'm tell you these numbers, and you can probably read them already. It looks like a mistake.

[00:14:39]And your clients will be like, "Wait, I'm sorry. What? You want me to eat how many calories?" 30% of 3,000 calories is 900. So if someone is eating 3,000 calories a day and they're supposed to be gaining weight, but they're underweight and losing weight, it is not unreasonable to give them something like a 900 calorie addition. That means tomorrow they eat 3,900 calories, basically 4,000 calories. And your client will be like, "Hey, yeah, you sent me the diet update. Was this a typo?" And you're like, "Nope." And then they're going to be like, "This is insane." And you're going to say, "Hey, listen. It's not insane at all. I'm going to show you why. You're supposed to be 180 and gaining. You're 175 and losing.

[00:15:20]How many calories do you think you need to add?" And they're like, "Yeah, okay.

[00:15:22]Yeah, fine. That makes sense." Because if you think if we add like 500 calories, then I'll just take them to maintenance. Okay. But but we're again wrong is it's supposed to be a surplus.

[00:15:33]That's like if you if you save the plane from a crash and now the plane is at just 500 ft altitude and you you managed to dip it out and you're just flying 500 ft above the ground. Buildings going by, lakes and rivers and streams and a little mountain here and there, but you just haven't hit one. You're not like, "Oh, thank God. We saved we saved the plane." [ __ ] are you crazy?

[00:15:55]Pull up at 500 ft. So, it's not good enough to just get to maintenance. We got to go up or in the contrary situation down. See, you give someone 3,000 calories and they're supposed to be losing.

[00:16:07]And not only much heavier than they're supposed to be, but they're gaining.

[00:16:11]Yes, you would cut 900 calories out of their diet. Oh my god. A 900 calorie cut like you see that you see client, the curve is supposed to be this. You're doing this. Big differences, big divergences call for big changes. So our rule here at RP very very general is yes is something like 30% calories if you have big departures and diverging slopes. 30% could be a fine guess. Could it be 25? Totally. Could it be 35? Yeah, something like 30 just to to get your intuition built around what those numbers could look like.

[00:16:47]Then we have sort of the middle tier of moderate departures in similar slopes.

[00:16:52]Like yeah, you know, they're off by like half a percent. And but it looks like they're just going to be going at the same slope. Uh which is another way of saying they're not going to get to the goal that you guys agreed upon as the target because they're just going to arrive like 3 lbs heavier or something like that at the end of the thing. If that's the case, maybe you want something like a 20% calorie change. For example, the client is eating 3,000 calories to try to gain weight, but they're half a percent under what they're supposed to be and gaining slowly at at the same at the same pace as the the gain prediction. So, they'll actually never accomplish their goal.

[00:17:28]And you're like, "Okay, well, yeah, I'm going to add 600 calories to fix this."

[00:17:33]Can it be 400? Totally. Can it be 800 in some situations? Yes, absolutely. But we're not talking about 900 anymore.

[00:17:40]We're talking about less, 20%.

[00:17:43]Lastly, so we have one super extreme tier, moderate tier. The other extreme, the other extreme is small departures and converging slopes. That means very close trend lines and the trend line is predicted to intersect soon anyway. Now, here's a big thing. Predicted to intersect does not mean that the intersection is going to occur. You could be predicted to intersect and then it's like hoop it just doesn't work. that can totally happen where it looks like it's going to converge and then it just stays flat where it looks like it's going to converge that it diverges a little bit and then it just starts to open up slowly. So a prediction of convergence is not the same thing as convergence but it's uh better guesses convergence than not convergence.

[00:18:24]In that case, you do a 0 to 10% calorie change because convergence could get you there anyway. And if they're on their way anyway, and they could do a week of the same diet as last week and get exactly to where they were supposed to without a change, will take no change. Absolutely.

[00:18:42]Right. If you What's a good analogy for this for for driving? Let's say that you kind of uh you're driving a little late at night and you went a little too close to the lane divider. No, there's just you're in the middle lane of a freeway.

[00:18:57]It's totally empty. You're not going to crash anywhere. And you when when you notice that you were a little too close to the lane, your steering wheel is already pointed. It getting you away from being too close. Should you be like, "Oh [ __ ] I'm really close." Jerk the wheel and die. No. Could you get the wheel moving a little bit more to get out of that close to the lane border a little faster? You can. But if you notice that your car is already leaving that borderline, a good idea is just to do nothing at all. You can always wait and see if convergence is what you observe. Because if it ever becomes just a parallel line or if it becomes a divergent line, then you can make a change no problem later. 0 to 10%. So, the example here is you got your client, same same example, 3,000 calories, trying to gain weight, and they're a quarter of a percent underweight, which is very, very close, like half a pound or 3/4 of a pound, depending on their body weight, and they're looking like they'll probably catch up to the trend line in 2 weeks if the trend continues.

[00:19:57]You can add anywhere between zero or 300 calories to their plan. And there's just kind of no wrong answers there. So, as you guys can see, the specific numbers here, I do not want you to get caught up in too much.

[00:20:12]We'll do some more specific numbers and reinterpretation of these on the next slide. What I want you guys most to understand is that if you're off by a lot and you're headed in the wrong direction, you need to make a big change. If you are off by just a little bit and or the trend line is going to be closing anyway, a little change or no change at all is probably your best approach here.

[00:20:34]So best practices kind of summing all this up. When you decide you need to alter calories for the client, consider adding and reducing physical activity in addition to or completely in replacement of any uh alteration in food intake. So remember that that's two sides of a coin here.

[00:20:55]If the client is out of bounds, way far away from their the goal line and diversion, getting further away, consider adding or subtracting a serious amount, something like 20 to 40% of their daily calories.

[00:21:11]That's the best way to assure that they're going to meet their target. I you guys do not punt on this kind of stuff. If they're supposed to be doing this, but they're doing this, don't be like, "Well, let's wait and see."

[00:21:24]You're you're going to wait and see for two weeks, and then you're going to have to cut so many calories for them to even get on track. It'll be an impossible diet. They say, "Well, you got to eat 1,000 calories every day now for 18 days, that's the only way you'll meet your goal." They're like, "What the [ __ ] So, you put me on a gain diet and now you're putting me on a mini cut psychotic diet to nowhere cuz you just couldn't make the adjustment fast enough to make it nice and smooth to begin with. Don't do that." So sometimes it looks crazy, but you pull the trigger.

[00:21:49]If your maintenance values are off, if your guest was off, if the client is off, yeah, 20 to 40% calories in those situations, it could be a matter of waiting to see if the trends continue. Um, and then you can wait. But again, if it's divergent and really far off, don't wait longer than like a week to to really pull the trigger on something. Another thing you could conclude something else entirely from here. This is a very important point.

[00:22:18]The goal is something you set with the client and it could be like, "Okay, you're eating 2,000 calories right now.

[00:22:25]You're kind of hungry and you're gaining weight a little bit.

[00:22:30]In order for us to get you to meet that trend line that you want, which is diverging and 5 pounds below what what you are right now, we theoretically, you know, we'd have to slash 30% off of that 2,000 calories. That will bring you to a calorie level at which you will be basically experiencing like psychologically acute starvation, total food obsession, total lack of energy, no sleep.

[00:22:55]Maybe the goal is too extreme. And that is absolutely totally possible.

[00:23:00]Sometimes you make a goal with your client that seems reasonable and you discover later that it was totally unreasonable. And maybe not because mathematically it was unreasonable, but the client's metabolic and psychological state was not really what you had understood.

[00:23:14]Maybe a client comes to you and says, "I'm ready to diet." And you start dieting and everything, fat loss. And then like at whatever 2,000 calories, they're kind of hungry and they're not losing weight. And then after you realize like I'm gonna have to cut this client down to 1400 calories tomorrow, you talk to them and you're like, "What, you know, we talked about dieting history a little bit. What have you been doing in the last couple months? You said you were maintaining and then they hit you with the bomb." By the way, this happens all the time. Like, well, I was maintaining some of that, but to be honest, I was I was actually just trying to lose the whole time, but I would have like my weekends would go crazy. I'd eat a bunch of Doritos and I would try to cut again. Like, oh, I see you're in a chronic dieting cycle. and they're like, "Yeah, what they need now is a properly executed slow muscle gain phase or maintenance phase from earlier lectures, if you remember that, to massively reduce the insane diet fatigue they already have." And so sometimes these big changes, if you pull the trigger, they work. But if pulling the trigger means it's just not going to happen, then you need to alter the goal and maybe even alter the diet phase altogether. So if they look at you and say, "Cut 700 calories. Are you [ __ ] crazy?" You go, "Well, if I'm crazy, then the goal is crazy because cutting 700 calories is the only way to meet the goal." It's like someone's like, "Yeah, I'll go to the concert with you." And you're like, "Great. It's 80 miles away." And they're like, "What?

[00:24:32]I'm not going." And they're like, "Okay, actually not going is a good idea cuz the concert starts in 10 minutes and we don't have a rocket to ride to the concert." So, same kind of idea there.

[00:24:39]Uh, it looks like a real serious amount and it's an amount that works when it works. And if it doesn't work, if it's too much for the client to handle, the the goal is the problem in that situation. But it could be a thing where they're like eating 2,000 calories and trying to lose weight and they're stuffed to the brim and they're like, "I feel like I'm on a gain diet." And they're actually gaining like, "Okay, you're going to cut 700 calories from that." They're going to be like, "Oh my god, thank God. Thank God." And then you cut the calories, they're eating 2,300 instead of 3,000. They feel great. They feel a bit like, "Okay, I'm now dieting finally." and their weight starts to drop like crazy and everything works out.

[00:25:14]If the client is out of bounds, like they're not uh at where they're supposed to be uh in that line, they're not above or below the line where they're supposed to be uh or they're out of bounds plus minus on the maintenance and they have a similar slope to the line, then, you know, there's a conversation of, you know, adding or subtracting um 10 to 30% of calories. And remember, if they're eating 2,000 calories, 10% is 200 calories. 200 calories is at the very close to the minimum amount you can actually reliably count with the way food measurements and and estimates are off. Like so if you if you ever look up a calorie uh table or macros table for peaches for example and and you okay this gram weight of peaches has this many carbohydrates and calories. It actually depends uh quite extensively on how ripe that peach is, what you actually get out of it. And so if it's super ripe peach, there's all the calories. if it's not nearly as ripe or if it's really hard or whatever, it actually has fewer of them. This applies to almost all vegetables. It applies to a ton of different kinds of foods, you know, uh all how many almonds gives you XYZ calories. Depends on the exact weight of the almond and the exact weights can be off and all this other crazy stuff. So, if people say like, "Okay, I want you to cut your diet by 100 calories." That's actually not a tenable amount to cut by. We can't reliably say a 100 calorie addition plus or minus is actually a different amount of food. It's within measurement error.

[00:26:32]So 200 is close to that margin. And so 10% looks like a lot, but it really isn't a lot in the grand scheme. Up to 30% is definitely a lot, but sometimes that's what's needed.

[00:26:43]Uh again, people often muddle around with tiny calorie differences and just waste a ton of time. They'll say, "Okay, you're you're pretty close, so I'm going to cut I'm going to cut your calories by 50 or by 100. Don't if it's less than 200 calories, it's just don't get out of bed for it." Is kind of the rule here.

[00:26:59]If the client is out of bounds but converging looking to meet, you add or subtract 0 to 20% of their calories, why would you do 20%. Here you think like what 20%? That's [ __ ] crazy.

[00:27:11]Here's an example. You targeted 150 pounds for them to end their fat loss phase at.

[00:27:18]That's a 10-week diet. You're just getting to the weekly review where you alter their plan or keep it the same. And that's weekly review of the beginning of week nine. You have a one more week of dieting left. You promised them 150.

[00:27:38]Shook hands. This is our goal. You promise them that they're going to get there, but you do your best. And they're currently at like 150.5.6.7.4 something like that. You want that number under 150. And if you you you know it's converging but you don't know if it'll quite get there, then you can say, "Listen, 20% calorie cut for the rest of this week." First of all, it's one week. How much diet fatigue can you accumulate? Some, but then the diet's over. No big deal.

[00:28:09]You cut them by 20%. They weigh in at 148 success. That's an example of where you could potentially implement that. or they are 3 weeks out from where they need to stop their diet and 5 weeks total out from an important competition where they have to weigh under that number. You can say, well, like if the slopes look like they're converging, not good enough. I want to be below the line and I want to I want to chill below that line and I want to get there now versus I don't want to rush at the end. In that case, yeah, 20%. But in a case of like it's week two of a 12week diet and the slopes look like they're really mega converging, just don't touch anything at all. It's totally cool. So, that's where that nuance comes in.

[00:28:53]Awesome. We know how many calories to change things by now. We have formulas.

[00:28:58]We have percentages. We have an understanding of the logic behind it so we can choose our best values.

[00:29:03]Here's the quintessential transition to the next lecture. How the [ __ ] do you cut calories? So, what's a calorie again? It's like a unit of heat. Do you eat units of heat? Is that like what the M&M's are made of? No. No. The M&M's are actually made of macronutrients, proteins, carbs, and fats. So, where do the macros come from? Do you just cut your proteins? Hey, I cut my calories. I took 50 grams away from protein. There's 200 calories. Like, wait, wait, wait.

[00:29:27]That's probably bad. But then, where do you get your calories from? That is exactly what we'll talk about next time.

[00:29:32]See you then.