Different Life

Episode Summary
Many people believe the fastest way to lose weight is by doing more cardio. Running, cycling, and treadmill workouts are often the first strategies people turn to when they want to lose body fat.

But despite the effort, many people find that their weight barely changes.

In this episode, Gary and Peter break down why cardio alone is rarely an effective fat loss strategy. They explain how calorie balance ultimately drives weight loss and why people often overestimate how many calories exercise actually burns. The conversation also explores the difference between exercising for general health and exercising to change body composition.

The discussion then shifts to what actually works for sustainable weight loss. The hosts explain why strength training is essential for preserving muscle mass while losing fat, how whole foods help control hunger, and why processed foods often lead to overeating.

By the end of the episode, listeners will understand a practical framework for approaching fat loss that prioritizes nutrition, strength training, and long-term lifestyle habits.

Key Topics Discussed
• Why running alone rarely leads to meaningful weight loss
• The difference between exercising for health vs fat loss
• Why calorie balance ultimately determines weight loss
• The importance of strength training during a fat loss phase
• How losing weight without strength training can lead to muscle loss
• Why whole foods help control hunger and improve adherence
• The role of fiber and food volume in satiety
• How processed foods increase hunger and overeating
Chapters with Timestamps
00:00 – Why people start running to lose weight
03:30 – The calorie burn myth of cardio machines
07:15 – Why people eat back the calories they burn
11:40 – Cardio for health vs cardio for weight loss
16:10 – The importance of strength training during fat loss
20:45 – Muscle loss vs fat loss explained
25:30 – Why whole foods help control hunger
30:20 – How processed foods drive overeating
35:00 – The practical hierarchy for sustainable weight loss

Notable Quotes
“Cardio is great for your health, but it’s not a strategy for fat loss.”
“If you overeat calories, you gain weight. If you under eat calories, you lose weight.”
“You can lose weight eating junk food, but you won’t be able to sustain it.”
“Two people can lose the same weight on the scale and look completely different depending on whether they strength train.”

Resources Mentioned
Lose It App
 https://www.loseit.com

Connect With Us Here:

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Website: https://wholehealthsolutions.life/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wholehealthsolutions.life
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/whole-health-solutions-sports-performance


Creators and Guests

Host
Gary Donia
Gary Donia, MSPT is a physical therapist and Chief Operations Officer at Whole Health Solutions and Sports Performance. With more than 20 years of experience, he helps individuals and athletes recover from injury, build strength, and improve long-term physical capability. Gary focuses on identifying root causes, creating practical plans, and guiding people toward sustainable health and performance. In addition to his clinical work, he coaches high school and Legion baseball, applying movement principles to develop resilient, confident athletes. He lives in Townsend, Massachusetts, with his wife Jessica and their two sons, and is passionate about helping people build healthier, more capable lives both on and off the field.
Host
Peter Brouillard
Peter Brouillard, DPT is the Founder and CEO of Whole Health Solutions and Sports Performance. As a physical therapist and strength coach, he works with individuals and athletes to recover from injury, build strength, and develop long-term resilience. Peter takes a whole-body approach to health, integrating exercise, lifestyle habits, and performance principles to help people exceed their goals and unlock their potential. His focus is on practical strategies that create lasting change, not quick fixes. He is passionate about empowering people to take ownership of their health and build lives defined by capability, confidence, and meaningful progress.

What is Different Life?

Most people don’t need more motivation. They need a different approach. Hosted by Gary Donia and Peter Brouillard, Different Life draws on years of experience helping people navigate pain, movement, recovery, and performance — but the conversation goes far beyond health alone.

We talk about:
• Strength training as a life skill
• Back pain, mobility, and injury recovery
• Pelvic floor health and durability
• Sleep, stress, hormones, and energy
• Performance and longevity over 40
• Discipline, habits, and identity shifts
• Parenting and modeling health
• Relationship-based healthcare

We discuss these not as isolated topics, but as part of a bigger question: What does it look like to live differently, not just try to live better?
If you feel stuck in patterns that no longer fit who you want to become, this show is for you. Because better often keeps you in the same cycles. Different changes your trajectory.

Gary (00:00)
Peter, we're back. Yes. Here we are again. What's up buddy. All right. As goes my life, people say a lot of things to me for some reason. Apparently they think I want to hear them. I want to listen to them. I don't know. Don't you kind of? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Okay. So then why do you pretend you don't? Most of the time. I don't know. It's like unsolicited, you know, like I didn't like ask any questions. Yeah. But you like people confess. You like to be asked things that you then can give advice on. I do.

It takes up a lot of time though. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's when I'll left alone sometimes, but this is fine. So somebody came up to me recently, a friend of mine, and this is what she said to me. She said, I'm really frustrated. And I said, okay, well, why? And she goes, well, I started running and I've been running a lot and I haven't lost any weight. Classic. And I just kind of stared at her for a little while. Like just confirming like, yeah, no shit. Yeah. And I just kind of looked and I was like, OK I was like, well, can we talk about that? Because that's probably the...

maybe not the worst way to go about it, but it's not, I certainly not the most efficient way. It's a part of it. It's part of it. But it's like a fragment of it. Totally a fragment. so we spent the next 10 or 15 minutes having that conversation about what this should look like and why that wasn't working for her. ⁓ then she went on her way. But I guess the reason I bring this up today is because I think a lot of people have confusion around this topic.

But like, especially with everything that's out there now along the lines of, ⁓ you know, you have all those people that the zone two people, and then you have the GLP one people, and then you have like, you know, there's just schools of thought like everywhere. Right. And so it gets really confusing for people and they don't know what to do. And they're just looking for help. And so that's what we're here for us to try to help them. And I think in general, most people overcomplicate it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So I'd like to distill this down. Yeah. So this is like, this is your thing.

This is literally what I do. Yeah. I'm so excited. Aren't you trying to lose weight right now? Why don't we talk about that for a minute. Aren't you trying to All right. Well, are you or are you not? mean, technically, yes. No. So, so I haven't done, I haven't tried to lose weight intentionally for like 12 years. Yeah. But I, I give this advice all of the time to people. tell them how to do it.

But I was like, you I'm so far removed. I should probably know, have a more like intimate knowledge of recently of how to like do this to myself. So me and Jianna are going on a little weight loss challenge, but not really weight loss. We're just trying to lose a little bit of body fat. yeah, but it's more for the exercise of remembering how to count the calories, how to count the macros, like having it. I have to be beholden to the number and so on and so forth. I've lived my life in the past 12 years. I'm not having to do that at all. I just eat when I'm hungry.

I also tend to eat like really good healthy foods and I'm able to just intuitively maintain my weight. Yeah. I also eat when I'm hungry, which seems to be all the time. You don't intuitively maintain your weight though. No, I don't. And I think that that's most people. I do eat when I'm hungry. I think I'm probably, this is part of the conversation today. I probably am hungry more than you because I don't eat the right things all the time. Yeah. And so that makes me hungry more often because I'm not putting, anyway, so we'll, know, let's get into that, but let's start with essentially the idea around cardio.

and running. Right. So it's a super normal thing for people to start doing. Yeah. So it seems like it should make sense, right? I ran three miles and I, know, even if you, you know, I just ate well that day or whatever, like I should start to lose weight. If I do that pretty regularly, why for most people is this not the way to lose weight? Yeah. I mean, there's even science behind cardio and weight loss. Like technically speaking, you burn more fat than you burn anything else when you're doing zone two cardio. That's just some nonsense. Like that's so

It is technically true that your fat cells are more mobilized for energy during zone two, but that has nothing to do with like, you, if you eat too much, regardless of whether it's fat carbs or proteins, you're still going to gain weight and no amount of 250 calories in a 35 minute session on the treadmill is going to stop that from happening. If you choose to put an extra 250 calories in your face, right? It just negates that from, a purely fat loss perspective, right? mean, like running for health is good, but like if you're thinking,

I'm going to just run or elliptical or whatever cardio of your choice for weight loss. That is maybe 10 % of the equation overall. Right. Like, yeah, for instance, like I was on the treadmill yesterday and the treadmill told me that I likes to lie, that I burned almost 800 calories to lie. Therefore I went home and had 800 additional additional calories. not pizza night. It wasn't pizza. I can find calories anywhere, buddy. Uh, your candy drawer. So how accurate is

would you say, would you think maybe the treadmill is? how many, you know, I was on there for an hour. I was walking up a hill basically at 3.2, no, 3.5 miles an hour, 10 degree incline for 60 minutes. was something like 800 calories. Would you say that's relatively close? No, you're probably 600. So, so it's probably within- So I had one too many take fives last night. It's probably within one third margin of error. But I mean, just think about it, like really think about it. Those machines are in, like the companies are incentivized to make those like-

tuned high, obviously. It feels good. You're like, I burned 800 calories, this is something good for myself today. It's like primary, right on the main display. Yeah, so that's obviously way too high. I to put context on it, to burn 1,000 calories in an hour, that's unbelievably challenging. Not only do you have to be incredibly fit to push at that effort for that time, you also have to be fairly big. A 200-pound man burns so many more calories than, for instance, you and your wife. You're literally almost twice as big as her.

I think you are. she burns on the same cardio session about half as much as you. Yeah, she hates it. She gets so mad at me. It's so great. It's unfair, but it is what it is, right? This is why I put on weight recently, so I can more easily burn calories. Is that the wrong way to go? That's such the Gary way. Would you say that's not the best way to I how to burn more calories. I know how to burn. If I got bigger, I can burn more calories and feel better about myself. guess technically that's true.

So I'm hashtag winning. Things are going great for me. But just going back to that point, I think part of the problem is exactly what I do sometimes too is when I do that and I see that number, it's permission to eat more. Yeah, it's horrible. And I will immediately eat more than what the treadmill me. You really feel that you do that? 100%. It's a mental thing because you think you earned it.

And you'll just be so. I most people are not maybe in that's probably speaking out of turn. Maybe not most people. I think a lot of people when they work out in general, they permission it's permission to eat more. So their calories actually go higher than what you know what they probably should be at. And they're eating more than sorry. They're eating more than what they actually burned. Right. So because it doesn't take a lot. Right. Like I think I looked up the example of like what like what a Snickers bar would be. Right. So

The example was 150 to 180 pound person running for 30 minutes would burn about 250 to 300 calories, right? A Snickers bar is about that. So I'd have to run. That's a lot of effort. I'd have to run really hard for 30 minutes. To destroy it in one minute. Like how long would it take me to eat a Snickers? One and a half, two minutes. And like, let's just assume that Snickers is part of my day. Even if I ate healthy the rest of the day and came in at my calories, you know, I didn't lose anything that day. I burned off the Snickers.

right? Like in terms of like, negated the cost of this Snickers I wouldn't lose weight over time. No, not at all. But let's also be clear too, right? Like, so there are like, let's just put them into two categories. Like, let's say we're doing cardio for weight loss, and we're doing cardio for like, exercise, for health. These are two totally different things. And so if you're in a place where you're exercising to perform, then yeah, then you should be you should technically be able to eat more in a given day, because you literally need to get up to your maintenance level. But if you're like, but if in Gary's story, like if you're doing it,

to lose body fat and you're intuitively overeating because you've exercised or maybe you're just, you're doing the thing where you don't realize that you're overeating, then obviously that's like super negative. Then you're doing nothing for yourself. Right. I mean, you don't do a lot of cardio. Almost none. Yeah. Like very little. just, I just- It's a very small part of like your workout routine. it's probably like 10 % of everything You bike ride sometimes, but you're not really, I mean, you're getting cardio obviously, but that's not the point of the bike ride.

But it's not something that like this time of year, for instance, it's cold. This time of year I get the least amount of cardio in the summertime. I get, I get quite a bit because of the thing, but I don't, I don't do cardio, but you don't put on weight. No. Yeah. I understand you're saying, so I don't have to do cardio. Cardio has nothing to do with weight in my opinion, right? It's it's you, you should do it for, because it's good for your health and you should do it because it's like good exercise and it makes you feel better. But in my opinion, it's not a strategy at all for I want to lose body fat.

Yeah, I agree. mean, I always tell my clients, you know, you do cardio for fitness and for your heart and your lungs and for all the things there's benefits to cardio, certainly do it. Yeah, please. But if your goal is weight loss, it's the wrong approach. So then I guess the question is, well, what is the right approach? Right. Right. So how do we go about it? Like, is, where would you start? You know, when you do a lot of health coaching with our clients, like, where do you have people start? Like, how do you start this process of like, I want to lose weight?

Right, sure. Yeah. so let's do two thought experiments. So well, we'll start with I guess, in the end, in my experience doing this for a long time, if you overeat calories, then you will gain weight. If you under eat calories, calories, you will lose weight. And our goal, if we don't want to do neither is just to kind of like ride the midline. Okay. So so that's the way to lose weight, right? So there's many, there's many ways to do that, right? So you can you can eat less, you can exercise a little bit more and then not.

like eat the calories that you just burned, right? It's basically activity. So what you're outputting into the world versus the food that you're eating, the energy that you're intaking. So you have to have some balance there, okay? So that's the primary foundational element. And then the way to go about it from a real like health perspective, and this is part of the problem with like these GLP-1's, is that if people are just taking it and they're not exercising, they're shedding muscle mass. I mean, if they exercise, you mean strength training.

I'm speaking specifically to yeah. So because like a GLP-1 with no strength training combined with like the treadmill is like a bad recipe. Yeah. So here's why, right? So, ⁓ and this is an actual reality that, ⁓ that every client that sits in front of me will go through. ⁓ and so I, I want to share it with you guys because I think it's really important to understand the difference of how to lose weight correctly for your health. So over a year, if you wanted to lose 50 pounds and that's realistic in a year, like in a sustainable way, you could lose 50 pounds, right? If you did diet alone,

and you crushed it, right? Did a really good job, very adherence to the calories. You tick down about a pound a week, you lose about 50 pounds in the first year, but you did no exercise at all, right? Well, that person will have lost 50 pounds, but they honestly might have lost 15 pounds of muscle mass and 35 pounds of fat mass. So the scale would have changed 50 pounds, but they would feel weaker.

They would not look like they want to because they still have more body fat on them than they'd want to because they've also lost the muscle mass as a part of that weight, right? So wouldn't over time to maybe I maybe I misunderstand this because I apparently misunderstand a lot of things around this but over time wouldn't that person also then have more difficulty continuing to lose weight because they carry less muscle and muscle tends to I always describe people You don't I don't know if you know this but I often will describe you to people as a furnace

because you carry so much muscle. I was like, he has to eat, because they talk about you eat here all the time, like in our workplace, you're always eating, always eating, always eating. And people will often say, well, how come he doesn't like gain any weight? And they assume you're just doing a ton of exercise and you exercise, but you don't exercise like a whole lot more than normal people. you carry so much muscle because you've done this for so long that you're a furnace. And that's how I always describe it, because you burn more.

If I was somebody that was doing the opposite, I say I was losing weight rapidly but not strength training and so I lost my muscle mass, am I gonna have more difficulty than continuing to lose weight because I'm just carrying less muscle? Yeah, so again, remember, let's say you lost 50 pounds. Look, whether or not you lost 50 pounds through fat or muscle or both, it doesn't matter. You're still going to burn less calories at the end of that 50 pounds because you're a smaller human being. But it is also true that if you lose muscle mass, you will lose the ability to burn energy

to burn calories. that's true for sure. It's not as big as people make a big deal out of it. It is true that the more muscle mass you have, the more you burn, but it's not as big of a factor. it is important. That's good news for me. be fair. There's hope. I can do it. I can do it. So I wanted to do the counter thought experiment about somebody who were to lose 50 pounds and strength train the whole year as well. put these things on a timeframe of a year.

because to change your body realistically over the long term, you need a long time. It doesn't happen in like 10 days. It doesn't happen in a couple of months. So if you lose 50 pounds in a year, but in your diet was amazing and you did a great job with strength training, you're working with a personal trainer on your own, whatever it be, multiple days a week, not only would you lose the 50 pounds of body fat, you probably, if you weren't a regular exerciser, like strength trainer before then, you probably would have gained some muscle mass.

And let's just pretend, which is totally realistic, that you gain eight pounds of muscle mass in that first year. But the scale still showed that you lost 50 pounds. Well, why is that? I gained eight pounds of muscle. If you gain eight pounds of muscle through strength training, you got stronger, you gained more muscle, you would also would have had to have lost 58 pounds of body fat to still lose those 50 pounds. So then therefore, the end, you're going to be 66 pounds of net body composition change because you will have lost that much extra body fat.

because you gain the extra muscle mass. So if for both people, you've still landed at the scale showing the same number, but those two people look and feel vastly different because of the work that they've done on keeping their muscle mass. And so in my experience, to lose weight the correct way from a health perspective, to get the look that you want and to get the energy and the feeling, the strength that you want at the back end of it, you must strength train as a part of that strategy. Yeah, that makes sense. That's a huge difference. Massive difference.

And that person, like you said, they feel better. have more energy, more alert. Like throughout the day, they're probably sleeping better at night. And so those effects start to compound on themselves. Right. Because then, and then because you have more energy and you're more alert, you're sleeping better than you're more, you like, you're more likely to want to continue to do those things. Cause you're like, well, this is like a whole different, like I feel way better. I have better energy. I want to go to the gym. I want to use, you can, your workouts become better, like more efficient. again, the timeframe over here in the, in the very beginning, this is all horrible. Like it's horrible. Like it's like,

is there's so much intention and effort required to track your calories, to know what you're eating, to exercise regularly. Your body and your brain are constantly telling you, I don't want to do this, I'm sore, I'm hungry, so on and so forth. But that's like the first month, right? Like if you get past the first three weeks to a month in your morning routine and your body isn't sore all the time, and you understand how to eat well for like not only like your satiety, but your energy levels, by the time you get to that end of like the year,

boy, it's kind of just a part of your life. You look forward to exercise, you look forward to eating healthy food, you kind of feel like shit when you don't eat healthy food. So it requires time for the body and the mind to change. If you don't give it that time, you're not giving it a fair shot to actually get to the point where you've gotten the change that you want. All right, let's go back to the food. Okay. It's like, what should I eat? You know what I mean? Like so- weight? Yeah, because like, for instance, I'm allotted right now like-

whatever I'm allotted, 2200 calories, right? I'm currently using my Lose It app, I'm 10 days in, I'm doing good. But all 2200 calories aren't created equal. So for instance, we'll just go back to the Snickers bar. I could have nine of those or something, And math off the top. Somewhere between eight and nine of those. I would do that, and I would still be at that calorie thing. You can lose weight eating Twinkies. Right, so would I still lose weight if I just did that?

Okay, shit. Show's over. but clearly that's not the way we wanna go about this. So what do we advise? Like what do we tell people when they come through here? Like what is the best way to go about this? Because I also, just one more quick thing, because I often find that when I'm eating the wrong things, I feel hungry more of the time. So when I'm, and I define for me, the wrong things is typically carbohydrate type things, right? So I enjoy things like rice cakes, or in my mind those are healthy.

I know they're not, so don't judge. But things like that, right? That maybe aren't. Yeah, they're low calorie, but they're crunchy things like pretzels and whatever. But I find that those things actually tend to make me more hungry, like more of the time versus when I do eat. If I eat a salad, for instance, I actually feel more full after that. really like The salad with protein. Yeah, right. So what should I be eating so that I'm not feeling like I'm starving all the time? And I'm obviously trying to stay within this caloric range.

Okay, so I'm gonna answer that question. do want it to just go back quickly to you technically can eat lose weight on a Twinkie diet. In reality, I don't actually think it's possible. But like, just I'm trying to like, make people understand that it's still make Twinkies by hostess. That's still exists. How are they allowed to exist? Yeah, anyway, so all of my advice is structured towards actually like, what are the things that will

actually help people adhere to a calorie deficit. Right. Because it's not about discipline and it's not about motivation in the end. It's about finding ways that you can get the body to naturally stay hungry and to get the nutrition it needs. So you're essentially tricking the psychology to feel full all of the time.

You would be starving if you ate 2200 and Snickers or. Yeah, I feel like I would be hungry the whole day. Right, right. So there's no way I would stay at like 2200 because I'm going to eat something. So that's the point. And then and of course you would also your body would slowly deteriorate from a health perspective like that's it. That gives you nothing that your body needs. Nutritionally, it has the macros right, but it has none of the micronutrients. It's none of the fiber. Do you know I used to think that was healthy? Snickers bar why I used to convince myself because it had like how long ago like when I was asshole.

In my mind when I was like picking out my candy bar, That was the best one. I used to be like, well, this is like the healthiest cause they had like peanuts. I can't believe you had a health argument with yourself when you're picking out candy bars. Like it was like it was healthier than the Milky way. You don't even or like a Hershey's bar. No, it's actually worse. Or like, but in my mind, it wasn't because like peanuts, like, it sounds like this is why I don't do health coaching.

And I think of myself as a pretty smart person. it was is like mind games. It wasn't that I believed. I really believe it. I just told myself that so that I could justify eating the Snickers, but whatever. So I guess the point is the foundation is the calorie deficit, but how do we get in the calorie deficit long-term from a healthy way? So what we need to do, so think of it like this. The stomach has an actual physical size. Let's say the stomach is like this big on average. When you fill it,

Right. You get this hormone that tells your brain, Hey, like I'm, I'm not hungry anymore because my stomach is physically full. It's like filling like a balloon, right? Now it's tight. I don't need to eat. What's the name of that hormone? Right. So that's going to be called grelin So like growling, like my stomach is growling. So,

I'm sorry, the opposite. So leptin is the satiety hormone. Grelin is the hormone that tells you you want to eat. Oh yeah, so my stomach's growling. Yeah, that's when you had that. Perfect. So when you stretch your stomach, your brain shuts off and it says I don't need to eat anymore. Well, how should you do that best? What do you think? What is the primary way to do that best through food that we have available? Like expand my stomach? Yeah. mean, I think it's- And still staying under calories, right? Yeah, sure. Because like food- So that's gonna be-

I mean, that sounds like it would be something like a salad where I could eat a lot of it and there's not a lot of calories or something along those lines, right? Like something that would fill up a lot of volume, but with a low calories. That's essentially the strategy. Just for the record, I could do that with rice also. No, couldn't. Absolutely not. Have you ever seen me eat rice? Yes, but it's really, you're saying you could physically do it. A lot of volume. Yeah, but then you'd need like 2000 calories. But ideally like low calories. here's the strategy.

The strategy is volume thing. could eat a lot of Is your stomach's probably like this I know it's probably huge. So, okay, so here's the strategy. The strategy is adhere to a whole food diet and well, why is that? Well, when you adhere to a whole food diet, whole foods compared to their processed foods, you know, counterpart have so many less calories per volume, right? Per space. again, thought experiment, right? If you had like, if you had a really fatty cut of steak in a giant like half moon of rice on that plate,

I mean, that T-bone and rice is probably 2,500 calories, right? And it's gonna fill up the same space as a plate full of, let's say, broccoli, sweet potatoes, and chicken breast. Like, if you had the exact same size of both of those things, the chicken breast plate probably has 650 calories, whereas the other plate has 2,500.

but it fits the same size in your body. so the calories are not the thing that tells your brain, I'm not hungry. It's the stretching of the stomach. So if you can leverage foods that have very low calories that also have a highly dense and nutrients, like fruits, vegetables, lean meat, so on and so forth, you can easily overcome the feeling of hunger because you're not hungry as often. And then this other thing happens too. And this is really important. When you eat high-fibrous foods,

that are in their real form, your body has to physically digest them, which means it takes a much longer amount of time for that food to get out of the stomach and into the intestines, right?

And then what does that mean?

It takes longer to be hungry. feel hungry, Yeah, because it's just, it takes like, let's say, let's say it takes three hours to get that food out of the stomach and into the small intestine. Well, you get all of that time where your brain's not having any food noise whatsoever. Right. And let's do the opposite now. So let's say we put 650 calories into our stomach, but it was a quarter of the size. We're hungry 30 minutes later. And if it's processed, it's already mostly digested literally by the company that made the food. that shit gets out of your stomach. sounds gross. Kind of, because it's all like chopped up into nothing. Right.

So your stomach digests that so much faster. So now you have this dual purpose of your stomach didn't stretch as much and it gets out of the stomach faster. And you're gonna eat way more because you're way more hungry throughout the day. And if you're choosing processed foods, you're also most likely eating way more carbohydrates, which to then just get into the hormonal aspect of it is like, then you're spiking your insulin, you're overproducing from the pancreas, you're driving your sugar out of your blood, back into your cells.

there's an overcompensation effect, which means you have low blood sugar, which means your body then says, hey, asshole, like I need blood sugar. And so that's why like this processed food loop of like always being hungry every 30 to 50 minutes is because your body is not filling the stomach. The hormones aren't doing their job for you that they're supposed to. And then that's the loop that most Americans get trapped in is what I find. Yeah, I mean, we're kind of like, we're marketed to that way, right? Like they want us to be in that. is not really food. Plus they sell more of it.

Yeah, of course. You know what mean? If we're always hungry, we just keep buying more and more more more, you know? in the end, can lose calories are king, but in order to get to a calorie deficit, the strategy of whole foods and highly dense, nutritious foods is going to be extremely important to actually have that work in real life, in my experience. So then the ideal long-term approach here, right, is having your diet be largely whole food based.

making sure strength, and this is gonna be my summary, you're gonna tell me if I'm right. So eating a largely whole food based diet. Strength training, if I had to choose one thing. I to pick up all the exercises. Try to strength train, I'd say at least two to three times a week. You'll tell me at the end if I'm wrong. I can incorporate some type of cardio in there if I'd like just for my general health, but not specifically with the idea that I'm using it to lose weight.

⁓ Sleep well, ⁓ drink a lot of water, just water, help. Like if I drink a lot of water, does that make my stomach feel more full, if you will, like expand it? Especially when you drink it during meals, right? Because it's gonna, again, take longer to get out of your stomach. So it'll expand your stomach more and it's like non-calories, so sure. So it's helpful. right. More helpful than say like soda.

Yeah, I mean it's interesting right so yeah if it was like full full sugar so yeah, yeah, right Well like seltzers and like diet sodas and stuff like that. Yeah from a calorie perspective coffee tea like whatever Yeah, something but calorically speaking non non caloric drinks for sure if you drink your calories it's so it's it's almost impossible to lose weight, right? Okay, so then that would you say like my summary is pretty accurate like if you were advising me as like your client one caveat. Yeah

So when I get my clients onto a nutrition app and they're adherent to the calories, when you're not intuitively eating, so I agree with how we started this as we said, if you do cardio, oftentimes you eat more that day because of it. And again, if you're trying to lose weight, if you do cardio, you should eat more that day if you're not trying to lose weight. But if you are, and you're also counting calories and you're doing a good job at that, you can absolutely leverage 20, 30 minutes of cardio three times a week.

to get that extra energy expenditure to help that process. As long as you're aware, right? As long as you're beholden, you like say, well, I'm not gonna add extra calories in because I did this thing. It can't help, but I would just say like, find the cardio that you like. Cardio doesn't really matter as much like of the type it is. Just find the thing that you enjoy doing the most that you're most likely to participate in. I would say add that in three times a week, meet at the tail end of your strength training sessions if you have the time to do it.

and it could accelerate the process of weight loss if you're doing the other things first. If you're only doing cardio and that's the one thing you're doing, it's not gonna do much. Okay. So the hierarchy is nutrition is the top, strength training, cardio, and they're just being like an active human being. Yes, sitting less. Yes, 100%. So be more physically active. So for most of my clients, I'll put them on a physical activity plan as well. not exercise, like you're not on targeted exercise.

you're living a more active life and you're thinking about how to be more active throughout your days and weeks with intention of like, that's the lifestyle that you're moving towards is how to sit less and move more. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Well, I think that sums it up. Cool. I will try to do all those things. Let's go. Again. I've tried. Good luck. I'm learning a lot. I've learned a lot over the last few years from you. Yeah, that was I an idea. I mean, at one point I thought Snickers were healthy. Wait, and look how far you've And now I don't. Yeah. Congratulations. All right. With that, I think that's the end of the pod. All right, buddy. See you.