Ultra Low Calories Diets Come At A Big Cost

Hey, Athletes! Ultra Low Calories Diets Come At A Big Cost - Episode of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!

Ultra Low Calories Diets Come At A Big Cost

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IN THIS 29-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Today, Jerred and Joe talk about low-calorie diets
• The study compares two groups of females
• One one a very low cal diet, and the other at optimal maintenance
• The guys also give their general recommendations for calories
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper…

If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here are some links for you: 

Reference this study for this week!

• Low energy availability reduces myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic muscle protein synthesis in trained females

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

Don't forget to watch today's podcast!

• Ultra Low Calories Diets Come At A Big Cost

Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!

To becoming better!

- Jerred

Podcast Transcript

Joe: [00:00:00] Welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast, where we talk about fitness, health and anything to help you become the most optimal human beings. Let's dive into it.

Jerred: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared Moon here with Joe Courtney. What's up, Joe? How are you doing,

Joe: man? I'm doing great.

How's

Jerred: things? How's life? Life is good. Yeah, busy, out of town, quite a bit right now, makes training a little bit harder, as you know, uh,

Joe: but still... You have to forecast some days out or certain things that you can't do on the road. Yeah,

Jerred: I mean, you can always run, right, but then I'm, I'm always looking ahead of, I kind of have like this batch of like travel workouts, because most of the time I don't even try to stick to any kind of programming.

And when you're doing, me, when I'm doing a lot more calisthenics, it's easier, but still, it can be hard, it can be a challenge to find a pull up bar. You know, depending on where you're at. So I was

Joe: going to say today, I actually, cause we're traveling this week today. I just did [00:01:00] deadlifts pull ups, a lot of pulling, because I feel like when traveling, it's a lot easier to do pushing motions, but less on pulling motion.

So I did a lot of pulling today.

Jerred: Yeah, because you pull up bars, heavy loads for like deadlift stuff. That stuff becomes way more challenging when you're traveling. I'm going to do the same thing actually shortly after this podcast, probably to be a lower focused day for me. Try and get some weight, weight on the bar.

Cause I won't for the next couple of days. Um, but I went for a run. I've been doing consistent, I'd say five to eight mile runs. You know, a couple of times a week, somewhere in that range up to eight. Um, eight's been my longest one. Um, I'm hitting it seven a little bit more. I'm trying to keep, I talked about this in my podcast a little bit, like whatever takes me about an hour.

Right. And when I first started, it was like five miles took me almost an hour. Then I got that down way below, bumped it up to six. Uh, that was taking me. My first six mile run took me an hour and 20 minutes. [00:02:00] Just crazy. Yeah, zone two, zone two. Yeah. Let me clarify that zone two. Um, but that had a lot to do with me running not in the morning and it being 110 degrees outside or something like that.

But anyway, now that I got six, uh, more consistently getting below an hour, I'm trying to bump it up to seven, but that does add. You know, more time. But anyway, I did a six mile run yesterday. And it's so funny because I'm trying to get in this mindset of, I want to run a longer race. I don't know what it's going to be.

Like, I don't want to say I'm going to go run a hundred mile race or 50 mile race, but I've done a marathon. I think I want to run something more than a marathon. I don't know if it's gonna be a trail race or whatever. And I don't know when that's going to be because I'm not, I'm not doing something that I'm untrained for.

And I want to go into it so well trained that it's not that hard. I mean, it's hard, but it's like doable, right? Like I don't want to break.

Joe: It's not survival. It's, you know, trying to push yourself and actually excel. Yeah.

Jerred: So, I mean, if I have to train for two years, like I'm going to do that, that's why I'm not like throwing [00:03:00] out any, like, here's what I'm doing and when I'm doing it, it's just like, I'm going to, I'm going to do something longer at some point, but I'm going to keep that kind of to myself for now until I'm ready to announce it.

And then I'll let people know what I'm doing, where it's going to be, all that kind of stuff. I really like these, uh, last man, ultra formats I'm seeing pop up. Um, yeah, I've seen, there's one, there was a documentary I saw on Amazon, uh, called just one mile. And that one is literally, you just run one mile every 20 minutes.

And so it was every 20 minutes on the, on the minute you run one mile, but like there's elevation involved. So it's actually a pretty crappy one, but I like the ideas of those because it just has to do with how much you want to push yourself. Right? Like, so if I'm like, you know what, I've never ran 40 miles.

40 miles is good. Or if I feel like going to 50, like you can kind of stop wherever you want. I don't have to commit to going to full 50 or full 100 or something like that. So I I'm, I'm liking that format, but on the other side of that, if your [00:04:00] performance is in there, you get eliminated, right? If you can't, if you can't run the distance in the, in the amount of time, but anyway, I was running, I'm kind of getting in that mindset of like, you're, you have to learn to run with pain.

You know, that's just a, it doesn't really matter if you're not well trained enough, or if you're just doing something really long, you will be in pain at some point during that race. And I kind of just had that in the back of my head. Cause I've been thinking about this a lot lately. So I did a six mile run yesterday and it was like two miles into it.

No, maybe one mile into it. My shin just like lit up like, like a shin splint, right. It was just hurting so bad. And I, my mindset was, you know what, just, just deal with it. Because if you want to do one of these longer races, you're going to have to learn to run through stuff like this. And so I'm running and it gets way worse that over the next mile, it was like, just way fricking worse.

And I was like, this is bad. Like this is. This isn't, this is like unusual. [00:05:00] I was like, you're an out and back runner, right? Yeah. I'm an out and back runner. And, and I'm like, this is not good. Like something was off. I mean, I've run this route a hundred times over the last couple of months. Right. So there's something's off.

And so I, I completely stopped my run. I kind of pull off to the side of the road. And, uh, I sit down, I take off my shoe, kind of stretch out my shin a little bit. Then I put the shoe back on and lace it up, not as tight, right? I think I had it done too tight. And after that, over the next half mile, the problem completely resolved.

It just like fixed itself. So all I had done was like, I laced too tight. I mean, I could have done something else as well, like in training over the past week or over the weekend. But then I, I laced too tight and it was like screwing it up. And then my shin. That whole issue resolved reason I'm telling the story is because that was a killing comfort mindset at the wrong time period, right?

Like killing comfort is great [00:06:00] when you're, when you're trying to kill comfort over like consistency over long periods of time, that's a great place to kill comfort, but we give the rock in the shoe analogy to where it's just stupid. Right. And what I was doing was just stupidity. I could have stopped at the mile mark, then like something's off, readjusted my shoe and had a great run.

But instead I was like, no, you got to push through. Like you got to get used to this stuff when I didn't need to get used to it. I just needed to adjust the shoe and keep moving forward. So the reason I tell that story is for anyone out there, you don't always have to push through the pain. Sometimes it's better to not push through the pain and fix the issue if it's fixable issue.

And then move on and be pain free as opposed to thinking that you're, you're tough or you're building some sort of mental resilience through this pain, because had I continued, who knows, maybe the only thing I actually got out of that was, because when you start, when you start running in pain, your gait changes.

And when you, when that changes, you start striking differently and you start maybe trying to put a little less [00:07:00] weight on one side over the other. And with running, it compounds really fast. So if I had continued down that path, maybe I would just have a lower back problem or a glute problem, or something else would be hurt all because I thought I was killing comfort when in reality.

I just need to loosen my shoe and so take that, take that for what you will. Anyone out there listening, killing comfort is something that has to be done. You definitely want to get uncomfortable, but don't do it at the expense of just being stupid. Like, don't be stupid.

Joe: Every time I run now, I feel like I'm very conscious to any sort of pain or things that I'm feeling because I know, I know what running good, what running fine should feel like, but Lately, I've just have been the lower body issues that I've had.

I know that one thing could just escalate to something else and it could trickle to another issue. And you know how, you know, my, my heel issue right now, it's, it's definitely, um, it's not fun and I'm, I'm working through it, doing, doing my PT stuff, but I think it's, it's may cause my same hamstring to have an issue.

Cause because just cause of how my [00:08:00] leg and ankle ankle rotate out. So, um, running wise, I can't really push myself now until I'm, I'm healed up. But, uh, yeah, just being conscious of that stuff. And, uh, if, if it is something that you're, you're having a lot of, then definitely getting help knowing when to do,

Jerred: have you tried loosening your shoe?

Cause it worked for me.

Joe: Damn it.

Jerred: That's what I got to do. Yeah. Simple fix, man. That's all you got to do. There's no, there's no real injuries involved. It's just. Just shoe tightening and loosening. Actually,

Joe: I don't even know if I've, we've recorded since I've seen my, my, my, my PT. I actually, apparently part of my issue was I was wearing the wrong insoles.

My insoles were wrong. And this was like, I went to a running shoe store, I got fitted for the running shoes that I need. And then they were like, Hey, these insoles will help because of the striking or how you're striking and everything. And then I went to my PT and she's like, let me list your insoles.

She pulled them out and she was like, Nope, get rid of these. It's like, well, shit, who the, like, you don't even know who to believe.

Jerred: Sometimes I have a similar story. I feel like anytime I've added insoles that didn't come [00:09:00] from like with the shoe, it's just jacked me up. I've done the exact same thing that you're talking about, where I'm like, I go to a run store and they, they sell me on something.

Right. I buy it. And then my arches just are in pain for like three weeks because they're like, they said I needed more arch support, but like this arch supports like killing me. And I don't know if it's like braces when you get braces on your teeth and it's like, you're sore because good things are happening.

Like there's movement or if it's like, it's just like, nah, maybe we just shouldn't be doing this at all. So yeah, that's happened to me before. Yeah. It sucks. All right. Let's get into the study. So this one is done in 2023. Um, and really I'm going to preface before we get into this, uh, this, this study is predominantly for female listeners, but also if you know, a female, okay.

So if you are a dude listening to this, which I know is a, a large part of our audience. Don't tune out because we're going to be talking about a female study because if If you have a [00:10:00] girlfriend or a wife or or anything else like daughter Like you just might want to consider these things and if you are female listening definitely take notes because this is something as a coach i've always been really interested in like we i've worked with a lot of females on like macronutrient plans, the diet plans, things like that.

And, uh, you know, I always see, uh, females coming in with a tendency to under eat. I've normally adjusted them to eat more, uh, and things normally turn around. Uh, but sometimes a lot of damage has been done and I want to talk about that. That's a big reason I want to do this study today. So again. This was published in 2023 in June, not that long ago, so relatively new study.

The title is Low Energy Availability Reduces Myofibrillar and Sarcoplasmic Muscle Protein Synthesis in Trained Females. So it doesn't sound super exciting, but it is more exciting as you, uh, as you get into it, uh, so what they did, um, it was 30 females [00:11:00] over the course of 10 days, uh, they had a 10 day training intervention and I don't know if you took notes on the training intervention, but they,

Joe: I liked it.

I think it was pretty interesting and it was, it was good that what they did. Yeah,

Jerred: and so if you want to dive into that i'm not i'm not going to dive into what they did as much so i'll let You you tackle that but there was a five day wash in period which I thought was cool Where they had every person who's going to be part of the study basically do What they call it optimal Energy availability.

So oea optimal energy availability So making sure that people were the people in the study were eating enough calories And enough protein five days leading into it. So there's nothing that could, you know, affect the outcome of the study. And then after that, they split the study into, um, low energy availability for those, for that 10 day period.

So I want to talk about the amounts here. So what are we talking about? What is optimal? energy availability and what's, um, [00:12:00] this, what are they calling it? Low energy availability. And so what overall, what we're looking at in this study is just what happens. They're specifically looking at like muscle protein synthesis.

And so that's, that's what helps muscles grow. That's what helps you see results from your training, but also they, they get into other implications of being too low calorie too. Uh, and all this stuff. But sometimes people think that if I just control my protein, it doesn't matter how many calories I eat.

And that's kind of what this study was talking about. They're like, Hey, if we control the amount of protein, we give a female, but they still don't eat a lot. Um, they are lower energy. Will they be okay? The answer is no, I'm going to just jump straight to the, uh, the takeaway here, but let's talk about actual amounts.

Cause I think that's important. So I did some math. They were doing 25 calories. per kilogram of fat free mass. This is the low energy availability state. So let me give you an example kind of laid out. So [00:13:00] if we had a 140 pound female, uh, and this 140 pound female was 25 percent body fat. So that would be 105 pounds of fat free mass.

So what you're doing there, if you want to calculate this on your own, if I'm a, if you have 145 pound female, you would multiply that by 25. 25 cause that's going to give you the body fat, right? And so you remove the body fat from the fat free mass. And now we just have fat free mass. And so they're taking that, so this would be 105 lb of fat free mass in this 140 lb female.

Now if you just quickly, uh, put that into kilograms, because that's how the study did it, that'd be roughly right at 48 kg, right below, technically, 48 kg. And then you just multiply that by 25. So the low energy availability state for females, uh, at this, this female would be 1, 200 calories. So that's...

That's low, right? I mean, that's low, but that's not crazy [00:14:00] from what I've seen working with females on macro plants. Like, a lot of females come in, independent of their size, weight, or anything, thinking that they should be on 1, 200, calorie programs.

Joe: There's a lot of these new, like, I see commercials for them, and like, ads, and like, it's like, go low, and whatever.

A lot of these diet protocols, and I've heard from... Probably half a dozen different people from different companies, like whether it's family or friends, just other people. And it's like, I tried this one and they started me off at 1200 calories. And like completely different person, completely different, uh, exercise, whatever.

It was just, I tried this one as well. And it also started me at 1200 calories. I'm like, how are they even, why is everybody just getting this arbitrary 1200 calories to start off with on these plants?

Jerred: Yeah. And I'm sure it comes from somewhere, right? That I'm sure there's some reason why that, cause I've seen that number too, like 1200 seems to be the magic number.

Just for a female, right? They're like, yeah, you do 1200 and dudes can do 1800 or something like that, just kind of arbitrary. [00:15:00] And I don't, I don't really work with anybody nor have I ever worked with anybody who wasn't also training. Obviously I probably wouldn't, right? Like I'm not a nutrition coach. It's typically for me, if I'm working with somebody, it's like training focused and then I'm helping a little bit on the nutrition side, not the other way around.

Um, so if you were only to be dieting, maybe your calories could be slightly lower than this, maybe. But if you're training. You're actually lifting weights, doing a conditioning. There's no way like you want to be at 1200 calories. And so you can do the math that I just did. But like I said, the 145 pound female with 25 percent body fat comes out to 1200 calories.

So you can go ahead and adjust based off of your weight and what you think your body fat is and calculate your own. But let's jump up to what the. Uh, optimal energy, uh, availability is, and that it's double. So it's 50 calories per kilogram. So the exact same example, all I have to do is double [00:16:00] the 1200.

So we're up to 2400 calories for optimal. There might be some dudes listening to this right now. Who aren't consuming 2400 calories a day because they they don't think that they should and What happens when you don't eat enough calories even when you're controlled for protein? That's why I love this study so much because a lot of people think hey if I just have enough protein Everything's gonna be fine.

But what they specifically looked at was uh, they had um had the females eat 2. 2 grams per kilogram of fat free mass of of protein so that comes out to to be about 1 pound or 1 gram per pound of fat free mass. So again, going back to my 140 pound female example, that this 140 pound female was 105 pounds of fat free mass.

That 2. 2 equation comes out to her consuming about 105 grams. of protein per day, 140 pound female. [00:17:00] And I think that that would be fine. Like that's typically, I know sometimes people go up to that one gram per pound of body weight, but I typically like to do one gram per pound of fat free mass. I just think that's a little bit better because I think how much protein you should have really is different depending on how trained are you?

How much muscle mass do you have? Like, what does your training look like? What is your current, um, nutrition look like? So anyway. I think that that's plenty of protein for a female in this situation. So anyway, that's controlled for, and what they said was, Hey, we controlled for protein and then we had them go through this training protocol, which I'll let you go through in a second, but we still had all the negative effects of low energy availability and all the things that it can do, if we just go over all of it, it can impair physiological function of the endocrine, metabolic, skeletal, cardiovascular, immune, gastrointestinal, and reproductive systems.

So maybe I should just hit on those systems one more time, just in case somebody missed one. Endocrine, [00:18:00] metabolic, skeletal, cardiovascular, immune, gastrointestinal, and reproductive systems. Okay. So they're basically saying every single thing in your body is suffered, suffers and is impaired. At this lower energy availability state where most females who are training and into health and fitness and wellness are probably doing this to themselves.

At least in my experience, I do think that some, there's been some education in the industry. Like if you are, I'd say if you're a female, like really into it, like into coaching, you've been coached and stuff. You've probably had, you've been down the right path, but I think if you're not that into it, it's not like your thing.

But you still like to work out and train and stuff. You maybe have never heard of some of the ideas we're talking about right now. And the fact that not eating enough calories, even though you have enough protein can have a significant effect on basically your entire life and every system in your [00:19:00] body.

Uh, can even lead to depression, you know? So, uh, anyway, well, we can talk about this a little bit more, but what did you think of the, the training protocol that they had over this 10 day time course?

Joe: Yeah, I like, so go back, going back to the run in, um, how it started the five day run in period, they, they didn't just have all 30 people show up at the same day and say, okay, go, it was.

Coincided with their period. So it's 5 day running running. That's coincided with their period and then 10 day intervention. Um, that's when they split them up. So people were doing this at staggering at at different times because it coincided with their own cycle. And then the. It was actually, I just looked at a little bit more, it's actually really good.

It's kind of bodybuilder mixed with sort of your classic bodybuilding, you know, dumbbell upper body exercises. You have machine lower body exercises. They did, uh, four resistance training days per week and then two cycling days per week. So they're doing a lot of resistance training [00:20:00] and cycling, which I thought was really good that they combined those together and.

Um, also good going back to, uh, the protein that they kept protein the same for both groups. They basically just cut all the other, um, carbs and fats in half or even less than half, which is, um, it was just kind of crazy. So I think that was, I think the structure of the study is really good. And, uh, yeah, this, this definitely hits on a lot of common um,

You know, females especially run into when, when getting either advice when getting, when just like, I guess the perception first for, for so many is like, Oh, well, I need to lose weight. So I'm going to keep working out, but I'm just going to eat a whole lot less and then I'll be fine, but it's not. And I like one of the biggest repercussions I think from this is yes, the body mass, uh, went down for both lean lean mass went down, which is bad, but the metabolic rate to me was like the biggest.

[00:21:00] Uh, one of the biggest factors and drawbacks from from all this, from that low calorie point.

Jerred: Yeah. Your body's just not functioning how it should. And then you're, you're not burning what you should anymore. You, and, and we went over this in like the, was it the biggest loser study? They were talking about like irreversible damage that it can do to your metabolic system, depending on how hard you push it, how long you do this.

So it's, it's pretty dangerous stuff. And we've looked at things even with males. Um, I can't remember the episode or the study, but we talked about how low body fat starts to impair. Immune system. Immune function. Yeah. And so, what's funny about that is I, I had two buddies, um, they both train, I mean, very seriously train, uh, more bodybuilding style though, and they both went to a DEXA scan recently.

And the DEXA scan gives you, uh, basically a letter grade of your body, like from, uh, You know, a to F, you know, like, like a typical [00:22:00] letter grade that you'd get in school and my one buddy, um, he, I think he was around 12 percent body fat, fairly muscular. Um, and I think he got like an, an a. He, he got an A, my other friend is just jacked.

I'm talking like super big. Um, and he, his body fat was, I think right below 4%. He was at like three something and I think they gave him like a D or an F in the DEXA scan. And he was like, what the hell? I look amazing. Like, what are you talking about? And I was, I was like, dude, like the, the science doesn't back it up.

Like I, I mean, you do look great and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sit here and crap on your. All the hard work you've done, like, that's great stuff, but, like, you can't stay here. You can't stay here forever. Like, the reason they're giving you bad scores is probably because they know what I know. They've looked at enough science to know that when your body fat's this low and when you push your body this [00:23:00] hard, you're starting to impair your immune function amongst other systems in the body.

Right. And so because you can't be that level, you can't be three or 4 percent body fat and not be stressful on the system or also not being a clerk deficit. That's the one thing is like, I know a lot of people want to walk around. I mean, that's why I feel like Instagram influencers are like are silly, right?

Because they're probably all going to end up dying early deaths anyway. And I don't wish that upon anybody, but I'm just saying, if you're actually going to, you know, probably take performance enhancing drug and drugs and be at a clerk deficit and maintain 3 percent body fat for 10 years. I'm glad you got all those followers, but damn, was it worth what's going to happen next in your life?

You know, when these 10 years are up, when you can no longer maintain this, when you're finally out of your thirties, right. You know, and, um, so bad things are, are, are happening. So anyway, the, the industry knows it, that you can't do these things, but we, we don't want to accept it. Right. And I, and I think that there's a huge disservice [00:24:00] to the entire female population, like they have the worst, in my opinion, right, with how.

They maybe they feel they should look, you know, and are just with like, you know, magazines and like how, um, movie stars look and all that crap. Like, it's just all these unrealistic, realistic expectations. I'm sure it happens to guys too, but I feel like, uh, females are harder on themselves, at least in my experience, uh, nothing I can speak for.

In totality, just in my own experience, they're a little bit harder on themselves about how they look and how they, um, how they should perform and all these other things. But damn, 1200 calories a day is like, I bet there are plenty of people listening to this right now thinking that that's, that was their goal.

That should be their, their intake for, for what they're trying to achieve.

Joe: That was too bad to ask. We couldn't join because I'm sure she's, she's run into that. Um, as well. I know just speaking for, for Liz, my wife, she's been, she's been on, she's actually a bit like if, if the, the, the product, the optimal, [00:25:00] um, she's been on that for about a year and she's actually been doing like.

More toward bodybuilding resistance training and only a little bit of conditioning, basically exactly like this, um, probably at 2, 100 calories or so good protein, even starting to creatine. And she hasn't like gained weight. And that's like, I think the fear always of females of like eating enough or like optimal amount and then lifting weights.

And they all think they're going to get big and it just doesn't really work like that. It doesn't work that fast. You have to like really put in dedication and hard work. And even like being optimal is, is going to be better for you. You know? Health physique all, all, everything wise anyway. And it's, it is fine to do these, uh, calorie deficits.

I probably do at least one cycle a year while I, while I'll go into a deficit because I kind of wanna, it's, it's a little bit easier for me to gain a little bit. So I'll go into a deficit at least once per year, um, just to kind of, um, back off body composition wise. But

Jerred: yeah, dude, I think that's a, an amazing point that we should definitely discuss.[00:26:00]

There's only one real way to know how many calories that you should be consuming. Okay, and I don't think that people are aware of how unscientific this actually is because everyone's so different. So you can do the calculations that we just talked about. So low energy availability and then double it if you want to go to optimal energy availability.

But if you really want to know, like, what about if, where, how much should I actually be consuming? The only real way to do it is do something like what we just calculated. Get your best possible guess. Right, the best possible guess and then do it for two weeks and then measure where was your weight before?

Where's it at now? And then if it stays the same and that's what you're trying to do good, right? like like in Liz's case Like if she say she was at like 1, 200 calories and then we bump it up all the way to 2, 200 calories And her weight just stays the same great Now you're you're like feeding all the systems That weren't being fed and your body's able to operate at a at a better level.

You're [00:27:00] healthier. You're more Vibrant, like everything will be better. Your energy levels will be better. You won't suffer from autoimmune diseases and thyroid issues and all this other stuff. But you won't know until you start to bump up those calories because you will gain weight if you're consuming too many calories.

So say Liz was like, well, I'm feeling good here. Like maybe I should go up to 2, 700 and let's just say she tries 2, 700 over the course of two weeks and say she gains two pounds and she's like, Oh, okay. So 27 actually is too much. We're like, we know 22 is not too much and 27 is. So it's like. Maybe it's somewhere in between, but that's how you actually find out as a person, how many calories you can consume, because these trackers that we wear, the calculators you fall, you find online, they're, they're, they're off of, they're based off of some great formulas and they work okay, but they only get you probably 80 percent of the way there.

The only way to get a hundred percent is through actual experimentation and knowing, okay, I'm bumping my calories up. I'm bumping my calories up. And if you're still not gaining weight, you're just [00:28:00] still throwing yourself into that optimal zone. And you won't, you probably won't gain weight when you're trying to operate in this operate, uh, this optimal energy availability.

Um, and that's one thing. So if Ashley was here. Before Ashley joined the team, she was a client of mine specifically, and I worked with her on nutrition, and that was the first thing we did, like, years and years and years ago, she was like, came in, I don't remember how many calories she was eating, and we could probably have her come on and tell the story, but she came in with something like that, like, I'm eating 12, 1400 calories a day, and I was like, not with me, you're not, not anymore, like, not if we're gonna be training and doing all this other stuff, and so we bumped up her calories, definitely was a concern of hers, is with every female I've ever, Um, worked with and done any nutrition stuff with and then magically she's just performing better.

She didn't gain any weight. She's starting to see results building some muscle mass again, not, not increasing, um, uh, weight to any degree, unless like you maybe you want to, like you obviously could gain some muscle mass or whatever, but. [00:29:00] Uh, you know, she, she went down that path. And so she definitely came in to the EO3 community with, um, consuming way too few calories.

And I see it over and over and over again. And even with my wife, Emily, like she, she has a tendency to just like me, like same, same as me. If I, if I don't pay attention to it, I will under eat. Um, and she will do the same thing. I always have to like be on her to like, Eat more, like eat as much as you should.

Right. And she typically, she's good about that stuff now, but your body would just operate better when you're giving it, giving it enough, uh, enough calories and protein to function.

Joe: Yeah. And circling back to the study, I think the only thing that it was kind of lacking was hormones, like hormone testing breakdown.

Um, I didn't see much of anything. They did muscle proteins, this stuff, which I didn't fully comprehend that that one. I know that there was some drastic changes between, um, optimal and low energy. Uh, but yeah, Hormones are the only thing that [00:30:00] I wish to kind of went more into, uh, but other than that, because I, I'd imagine something like, um, um, Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, would, would have gone up.

The stress cortisol. Yeah,

Jerred: I'm sure that would have gone up. Yeah, probably increased level of cortisol. Um, yeah, and I can hit on that for a minute. The reason I kind of glossed over it because it is kind of technical, like how they sarcoplasmic protein synthesis decreased significantly in the LEA group by 0.

2 percent a day. Um, So anyway, and it was unchanged in the optimal energy availability group, uh, and then same with myofibrillar protein synthesis of, it was a decrease of 08 per day, or in day one. Um, so anyway, what's happening is muscle protein synthesis is going down, uh, and muscle protein synthesis. I mean, it's just this cycle.

I did a YouTube video on this a couple of years ago, just like muscle protein [00:31:00] breakdown, muscle protein synthesis, right? So like you, you break things down when you're training and then you have muscle protein synthesis, that's going to help you, um, synthesize new, new muscle, like it's going to help you, um, Break down the protein, utilize the protein.

And we've talked about why muscle protein synthesis is important. And then also like how to stimulate that. Typically you have to be paying attention to the leucine amount. Um, like that's the biggest thing that will stimulate more muscle protein synthesis. So you're typically looking at two grams, um, of leucine per serving or per sitting, I say per meal, that's going to stimulate enough.

But I'm also seeing some research coming out that's saying as long as you have Total calories and total protein enough. Leucine might not even be as important. Um, so we'll see. I'm not gonna like hang my hat on that yet because that's relatively new information for me. But like I see that why that could be true.

So all this is saying is it's [00:32:00] like it's one of those trend because it's only 10 days study, right? So it's like one of those trend studies. It's like we're seeing this go down every single day. You're not, you're not, you're not, your muscle protein synthesis going down every single day and it's not happening in the optimal energy availability group.

So that's just a negative thing overall. And when you don't have enough muscle protein synthesis, um, your body's not recovering. It's not building a new. New muscle. It's not doing all the things that it should be doing. It's really entering into a, you know, uh, entropy. It's like, it's, it's fading away. It's, it's eating away.

And so you definitely have to be consuming enough. So that, that was the main point of this study too, was just to look at like, Hey, if we control for protein and we give them enough calories and not enough calories, what happens, uh, to these specific things that have to do with muscle protein synthesis, which I don't think most people care that much about.

All we really know is that. It's bad, right? It's not going in the right [00:33:00] direction. And then with this energy deficit, you're going to impair so many other functions in your body. Because I think if they did this study for more than 10 days, I don't know what the, it'd be one of those studies. I bet that they'd have to stop because it'd be considered unethical.

Right? Like I, I've read of several studies, uh, like that, where they're like, say that they say they wanted this to be a six month study. It's really like, really what happens? Like how many people end up with depression? How many people end up with hormonal problems? Like, would you just think about if it was all of them?

You know what I mean? And we're six months in and you have to try and reverse all these things. So I think that this study would actually end up being turned off if they tried to long run it longer than 10 days, because the good news is if you do it for short periods of time, you can normally just eat enough and bounce right back.

Uh, it's more challenging if you've been doing this for years on end, which I'm sure there's people listening to that. under eaten for years on end. Well, if you find yourself with any of the problems in any of the systems that we, I mentioned at the beginning, which was every system in your body, try eating some [00:34:00] more calories and see if those things reverse themselves.

And I bet you don't gain weight in the process. So, uh, yeah, I mean, do you have anything else on this one?

Joe: No, no, I just think it's definitely a drum that needs to be beaten a lot because it's, it's still missed by so many.

Jerred: Yeah. And that's why I said, if you. If you're a dude listening to this, you have a daughter, girlfriend, you know, spouse, like, you know, wife, whatever, like anybody in your life, um, share this episode with them, or at least let them know about it because.

It's a massive problem. I really do. I mean, I think it's a massive problem within a group, a subset of healthy people, right? Because for the most part in the world and America, people are just overeating, females included, right? Like, what I'm talking about, the subset of healthy people who think that they're doing all the right things are not actually doing the right thing.

And so I think that that's really important and something I want to make sure that everyone in our community knows. And then if you can share this out. Uh, with other people that you know and care about, I [00:35:00] think that'd be great. So definitely, like you said, a drum that needs to be beaten and, um, you know, share this around than any females out there who are, you know, in this, do the math.

I gave you the math right at the beginning, how you could calculate this out for yourself. Uh, so go find out where you're at. Uh, you probably want to be closer to the OEA optimal energy availability, um, over the, uh, you know, The reduced one, the low energy availability. So just do the math and find out where you're at.

And then you can start working backwards from there. You can even control the protein. I really don't have any problems with anything that they calculated, to be honest with, I thought the protein recommendations are fine. The training was fine. And, uh, the calorie recommendations were fine for the optimal state.

So I think that's a good starting point. If you're listening to this and you want to go calculate it all by, by yourself, it's not that challenging to do. If you just listen through this episode, take some notes and calculate it out yourself. Uh, but that's it. That's all I have for this one. Uh, for everyone in the Garage Gym Athlete community.

We have a new cycle coming up, right, Joe? [00:36:00]

Joe: As of publishing this, we'll be in fit week. So it'll be the week after this is published. We will be

Jerred: starting a new cycle. Yeah, the week after this, um. We are starting a new cycle. So if you are looking to get started, want to try a new program, you know, any of those kinds of things and you, or maybe you've been off and on, like, come on for the last cycle, we have the last quarter here to finish out 2023.

We'd love to have you in the new cycle. Uh, you know, we have a bunch of different training tracks and that'd be awesome to have, uh, you know, have you get involved if you want to do it, um, and then for all of our garage gym athletes sticking around doing the training, we really do appreciate you. Uh, you know, sticking around and being consistent, a lot of cool things coming your way.

You know, we're doing a live stream. Yeah, is that this

Joe: week? The day after this published. Yeah. Tomorrow, if you listen to this on Monday, it's tomorrow, Tuesday in Circle. Yeah. But it should, it should be recorded in there. It'll be our first live stream inside the new community space, but it should be recorded for playback inside there.

So as long as you're in the Circle community.

Jerred: Yeah. So, so yeah, we, [00:37:00] it will be recorded. So if you want to know more about the cycles, uh, I'm sure we'll bring something to the podcast. Um, To, you know, push out more information, but the best place to like, ask your questions and learn in detail about this is going to be that Q and a, so head over in circle, uh, you can RSVP for the event in circle, which is, uh, you know, where our community's at, you can sign up and be a part of that.

Uh, but that's it. That's all I have for this one. I remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.