Nutrition & Fitness Tips with Sports Scientist: Dan from Team Ecto

Transcript:

- Hi Burners, I'm here with Dan from Team ECTO. So Dan is a PT, a nutritionist, and a sports scientist.

- [Dan] Yep.

- The reason we have Dan in is 'cause he is the go-to guy in Perth to prep for competitions and sleuth out these health issues as well.

- [Dan] That's why we've created the business, you know, to help the people who need the help. You can see it.

- Yeah, okay, and it's great that he's here. So we've got a great resource to ask some common questions that our Burners ask us to someone who is a highly qualified expert. So, you happy to help today?

- Yeah, for sure, man.

- Awesome. So, I've got the list of questions here. I'll just fire the first ones off, the first one off. The first one is, "Carbohydrates make me gain weight."

- Okay.

- What do you have to say about that?

- Well, we have to then explain, okay, what type of weight are we talking about, you know? It says in the name itself, carbohydrates, so every gram of carbohydrate you consume will carry around about three to four grams of water. So if we then go, okay, is it weight as in water weight? Is it a little bit of sodium that comes with carbohydrates as well? You know, like, you gain a bit of glycogen in the muscle, you fill a little bit of water, you get a little good pump, you feel fuller. Or are we talking fat weight?

- So, they could be talking about just overnight and in that case it would be sodium or water weight.

- It would be sodium and water, yeah, exactly. So, we find it quite funny all the time, people will associate a number increase on the scale with being just a fat weight, and they're like, "Oh my God, I've got so much fatter." It's like, well, no you haven't. It's like if I was to slam down this water very quickly and hop on the scales, I would weigh heavier but it's not fat. It's water weight which I can have by an increase in carbohydrates in my diet. So would that be a case of am I getting fatter from that? No, I think it does increase weight but we need to change the semantics of what the actual weight is.

- So then, if we understand that having carbohydrates can create a quick result in weight gain for water and sodium, what about those people that are talking about carbohydrates, over the long term, making them gain body fat, what do you have to say about that?

- No, that's an overconsumption of calories.

- Right.

- So that means they're just overconsuming their calorie intake, so their intake is higher than their output, and then that's when you'd need to assess what are they actually eating? You know, if they're overconsuming calories and they're not training as hard, which, you know, having carbs is great for performance, then we'd probably say, okay, maybe you need to reduce your food intake a little bit and create an actual calorie deficit to then drop body fat.

- Right, okay, and so what about those people that'll turn around and say, "Well, protein keeps me fuller "and so I eat less protein and I'm fuller "and carbohydrates, I can just keep eating "and eating and eating." And that goes back to the calorie consumption.

- Yeah, it comes back to that. So protein is very, very satiating. So it does make you feel full. I mean, trying to eat, like, 500 calories worth of chicken breast versus 500 calories of rice. You can do one a lot easier than the other.

- Rice is a lot easier.

- Yeah, you can just inhale that and it's down there. So, again, it comes down to what are they consuming day to day and then just manipulating that a little bit to help with the fat loss goals.

- So, really, it's calories in, calories out.

- Yeah, in a general statement, yes .

- Yeah, it can get a lot more complicated than that.

- Oh, it gets so much crazy but for most people, match your input versus your output, and then just manipulate it based on your goal.

- And don't worry about carbs or proteins.

- Carbs are magic.

- Yes, for performance.

- They make things happen, yeah exactly.

- And then, all right, so we've got a second question here. "I'm eating under 1000 calories and exercising every day "but I am not losing weight." What's going on?

- Okay, so we have to understand the human body is very, very smart, okay, and what I mean by that is our main goal in life is not so much about trying to look really good, even though that's an amazing thing to do, but it's more so your ability to survive every day. So if you are consuming less and less food, your body will adapt to that, and you'll start downregulating things such as, like, NEATs, your ability to exercise, so you become more efficient in movement patterns, you might not move as much, and you will start also shutting down certain things like your thyroid hormone and stuff like that as well. So, in that sense, what's probably happened is they've probably become now, that's their new baseline.

- Right.

- So, if that is the case, then maybe we look at slowly increasing calories up higher, either in terms of reverse dieting or a recovery diet, so going straight back to maintenance, and still keep exercising as you would, and you might notice your weight might starting coming down a little bit more or you actually start looking better for it.

- By eating more.

- Yeah.

- And when you say it creates a new baseline, are you talking about BMR or basal metabolic rate?

- Yeah, rate resting metabolic. Basal is a little bit tricky to determine unless you have a really sexy-ass lab where you can sleep in and stuff all like that. It's very hard to do so we normally say resting metabolic rate. So, at that point in time, most people would be kind of consuming into their resting metabolic rate which would start decreasing, well, they'll start increasing muscle protein breakdown, they'll start having an increase in catecholamines, and thyroid hormone starts to go down so then that starts regulating metabolism a little bit slower. So, all those things start coming into play, yeah.

- So, what you're saying is that if they eat too little calories and exercise too much, sometimes, or their metabolic rate can come down?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Right.

- So you start trying to protect yourself, you know. The goal of the body is to survive whatever situation you go into. Same, like, with training, right. So if you are training your bench pressing and notice that's really, really heavy, your body starts to break down muscle tissue and starts breaking down so then you can repair it. So the next time you start benching again, it becomes a little bit easier. It's all about trying to adapt and survive whatever the stimulus is coming at it.

- Right, okay, I think that answered a really good question. So people that do, they undereat and they overtrain, and then they can't lose weight, their body is simply adapting to this, overtraining, undereating, and it reduces metabolic rate and so you have to maintain that calorie and you won't lose weight. But you're saying that, if you can eat more, sometimes you'll lose weight. How does that work?

- So there's a few ways that this can happen. So, the first we have to, I'll break down total metabolism, if that's okay?

- Sure.

- So, we have, obviously, resting metabolic rate. We have the thermic effect of food and the thermic effect of activity, and then another thing called NEATS. So NEATs is very, very hard to actually track and manage because that's kind of like unstructured movement. So, like, me waving my hands is like Ricky Bobby right now. It's like I don't know what I'm doing. Or steps and stuff like that. So as long as you don't track it, it's still unstructured movement, right. So, if we have someone who's eating, say, 1000 calories, and then we bring them up to, I don't know, 1200, so 200 calories more a day. So, not only are they going to have an increase in thermic effect of food, which is your body's ability to break down and digest that food. So we know that protein has a 20 to 30 percent, carbs is about five to 10, and then fats is like, one to two percent. So, if I was to consume 100 calories of protein, I would actually lose about 20 to 30 percent of that just breaking down that protein source itself.

- Right, okay.

- So, you see, that's why they say protein is quite satiating because it's very expensive to do so.

- All right, so you can eat 100 grams of protein and you're only really getting the calorie effect of--

- Say, like 70 to 80, yeah.

- But you'll feel fuller 'cause you're getting it.

- Yeah, so that's a real cool trick with that.

- Right, okay.

- So, if I'm eating more food, I'm gonna have a higher thermic effect of food because I'm consuming more so therefore I'm allowing that to come into play a bit more. And then, the same thing with thermic effect of activity is, if I'm eating more food, I'm gonna have more energy to do things. So, now I can train harder, especially if I'm using carbohydrates which we know is very, very important for performance goals. So, if I consume, say, 200 calories of carbohydrates, for example, well, I'm now actually consuming whatever five to 10 percent of that is less, and now I'm gonna train harder, which actually may increase my overall calorie expenditure.

- Right, okay, so you're taking more in, but you're probably gonna burn more.

- Burn more, yeah exactly.

- Okay.

- So doing a process like that, where you slowly build it up like that, will actually allow you to eat more food whilst either getting better in performance, and obviously, that's improvement in body composition, or maintaining where you're at.

- Right, I see, okay. So, if you're eating under a 1000 calories and exercising every day, the ideal way to actually fix that is start increasing calories slowly.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Would you decrease the exercise component, if you're training too hard?

- It comes down to the psychology of a person. Some people don't like to stop training and I find, particularly with a lot of females, they will to keep training and quite high. So I would probably then just focus on increasing food at a lot faster rate. If you're okay with that, then I'd say, look, why don't you do both?

- And will that increase in food repair metabolic rate?

- Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't say repair, I would say improve.

- Improve.

- Yeah, yeah, because obviously the thing with the whole metabolic damage and stuff like that, there's two side to this coin. So some people say that it's true, some people say that it's not. We just say it improves it.

- It improves it. So the body has just adapted and then it improves by increasing that metabolic rate or resting metabolic rate. Okay, well that's a really in depth explanation to that question. Look, if you do have any questions regarding what we're talking about, just flick a message at the bottom of this video and one of our team, or even we can ask Dan, and he may be able to give you a hand later on down the track.

- Yeah, for sure. So next question we have is, "I've tried so many diets but nothing works for me?" So what would you say to someone that says that to you?

- Ah, okay, so first thing we gotta understand is, like, a diet, it's semantics again. I hate the word diet. I think it's--

- It's so overused, yeah.

- It's overused but it's also, when I say diet to you, it's a short term period, right?

- Yes, yes.

- So everyone goes, "Oh, I'm doing an eight week diet," "I'm doing a 12 week diet." It's like, okay, well, what are you going to do on week 13? Are you going to be doing the diet for that time period? Are you making it a sustainable part of your life where you can now keep it working for you? Or are you doing your eight week intermittent fasting diet, or eight week keto diet, or eight week hike? It doesn't matter. It's not sustainable, you know what I mean?

- So you'll always, you'll bounce back to where you were.

- Yeah, exactly. So we have to look at it and go, okay, well, what is, like, what's the purpose of you doing this, and what's your escape plan? What's your action plan afterwards? If I go, oh, I'm gonna diet for eight weeks. Okay, I'm reducing, say, my calorie intake, I'm gonna follow a certain plan but I know when it comes to week nine, I know what I'm gonna be doing afterwards to make sure that I can still keep the result I've got going and then continue it for a long period of time, for this thing called life .

- Well, then let's, and that makes a lot of sense, and, I think, people sort of lose that. They think it's gonna be a one-time fix and then, they can just go back to normal.

- Yep.

- You've got to improve your lifestyle and your overall dietary changes, but what if someones turns around and says, "I've tried an eight week diet "but I get no change with my diet. "So I can go for eight weeks "but nothing changes by the end." What do you have to say about that?

- Okay, so, if someone is starting to eat with diets, so, say, they go, okay, we're on a certain amount of calories and stuff like that, then we'd need to look at, okay, was the deficit sufficient enough for them to create a change? So, you know, 'cause it's all equations and theories, you might go, oh, I think I need to be on 1500 calories to create deficit. Very average training number but it might be like that and we go, okay, well no, that didn't get the results that you needed, maybe less, maybe more output if you don't feel like going lower. Whatever it may be to create that calorie deficit would have been more of a sufficient way to do it.

- So this general term of I've tried diets, nothing works for me, you go, wait a second, we need to get a lot more specific than that.

- Yeah, yeah. So it's when everyone comes to us and they go, "Okay, I wanna go on a nutrition plan with you," or "I wanna do this," we go, okay, well, what have you done in the past? What has got you to come to me right now? And then we go, okay, then from there, we'll adjust things and we'll create a plan that works with their lifestyle. It's not, okay, this is what I think works, here you take it, 'cause it might not work for you. So then we go, okay, what do you currently do? What's your current eating like? What do you do right now? And then we just manipulate it to get them to the goal they want and I find a lot of times doing that doesn't make it feel like a diet and, therefore, they can continue on with the results 'til the end of time, you know, and then it's a case of educating them and showing them, okay, this is how you get out of the calorie deficit, or the action plan afterwards, to give you that sustainable result long term.

- So that's if they go to you. What if someone says, "Look, I haven't had advice "from a PT or a nutritionist or an expert. "I've literally got this diet from a magazine," or a paper or I'm following the Atkin's diet or I'm following the diet my mate gave me or a friend gave me and nothing works, in that regard. What about that sort of person?

- Yeah, yeah, okay. So, the first thing I would say is, if they got it from the magazine and stuff like that, well, first, throw it in the bin. But, two, ask yourself, can you have that diet or will you stay on that diet for the next five years?

- Right.

- That's a very short term way of thinking is like, if you can stay on it for the next five years, great, that's the perfect plan for you.

- But, what if that didn't work for them? What if they stayed on that diet for eight weeks and nothing changed, and they've tried every diet in the book and nothing changes?

- Okay, so then, just write down what you eat in a day. Do that for a week. Go on MyFitnessPal or whatever. Enter those foods in. That's your baseline right now. Then, all you need to do is ask yourself two things. Can I train a little bit more? Or can I eat a little bit less? And then, do that. Then, measure, manage, and manipulate. So, if they can't, if they measure themselves and they're down in centimeters around the waist, the arms, legs, whatever they're using as their objective value, okay, not just the scales; scales are great but you need to have it with something else, it's gotta be complemented; and it works, then great. We'll keep on that until it doesn't work and then, when it doesn't work, manipulate it again. So, ask again, can I do a little bit more output or can I eat a little bit less? And do that until you get to a point where you're like, okay, I think I've gone a little bit too low now with calories or I'm training way too much now, and then bringing yourself back up to a good standpoint again.

- Right, and then, how about if, so that's how we would fix them. What would be the answer that you would give them if they asked the question, why isn't it working? I've tried every diet, why isn't it working?

- Why? Because they're not in a deficit.

- So that's--

- It's as simple as that.

- So they can try any diet they want, it's never working, it's because they're intaking more calories than they're expending in exercise.

- Yeah, in a very simple crux of things. The other thing I find as well is, when people say that, you go, okay, cool. Most of the time they follow the diet Monday to Friday, Saturday they give themselves the day off, Sunday, they feel bad about themselves, so then they try and reduce it and then we create this lovely binge cycle, I'd say, so to speak, off that. So that's one aspect. But then also are we having, like, subconscious eating? You know, are your ordering your coffee with, I don't know, full cream milk or whatever, stuff like that, which does have calories in it, so there's all these hidden treats and--

- But they're not following the diet like they think they are.

- Yeah, so then we gotta look at, okay, is it compliancy issues? And stuff like that, as well. But, most of the time, if they say, "That's not working," it's because it's not a deficit.

- It's not a deficit. Okay, and just, I know we were talking about it before but the easy way to explain that, what would a deficit be?

- So, a deficit is, in very, very simple terms is, is your input less than your output?

- So, input is food that you've eaten?

- Food, yep. Essentially anything that goes in your mouth because if we say food, and we have a glass of wine

- That's still calories.

- Or, you know, 10 shots of tequila, that's still calories going in. Or if you have your soy frappuccino with dusted chocolate or whatever, that's still gonna have calories in it.

- Drinks can have calories .

- Yeah, yeah, the only thing that doesn't is water, funny enough.

- That's it, yeah.

- Yeah, so what I'd say is, anything that's going in your mouth, that's your input. Output is anything that you do that's physically active or just requires you to have energy expending.

- Right, okay. So the diet is not working because you're putting too much in and you're not exercising or moving enough.

- Exactly.

- Right, okay, and that's why a diet won't work. Doesn't matter what they try. If they're in a calorie surplus, nothing happens.

- Yeah.

- Okay, excellent. We have another question here. "I can't have protein as it makes me gain too much muscle." So I think that's from a lot of our female Burners and what would your answer be, or what comment would you have to someone that would say, "I can't have protein as it makes me gain too much muscle."?

- Ah, okay.

- He's laughing

- I'm like, oh, whoa, it doesn't make you gain that much muscle, unfortunately. I wish it did. So, look, there's obviously some ranges in terms of protein that we gotta understand. So, normally, with a lot of women, I'd say is about two grams per kilo of body weight, so very, very easy start number. It's quick for them to work out. So, if we say, average girl, say 60 kilos, just for the maths, that's 120 grams of protein a day.

- It's quite a bit.

- It's quite a bit, yeah, I totally agree. So, if we were to go, okay, 100 grams of chicken breast is, say, 30 grams of protein, two whey protein isolates is 24, 48, so that's about 78 grams of protein just there. So, if we have, say, two meals which have protein in it, two shakes, and then, like, breakfast, whatever that may be, you could hit that quite easily.

- Sure.

- I don't think protein causes them to gain that much muscle unless they're training very heavy but they're also in a surplus as well. You know, you've gotta understand that to grow something, okay, because energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it's just converted from one thing to another, you've gotta have energy to do so, okay. Everyone thinks that gaining muscle is super easy and stuff. It's not, it's more exhausting than dieting itself. So, you have to understand that it does take energy to add on a lot of lean tissue. So I think that's where people kind of get that misconstruction of it and they feel, particularly women, that they feel like they're getting bulky because they're now weight training, they're eating a lot of food and stuff like that, and this is where I might get beaten up by a lot of your female Burners here. You've still got fat on your bodies though. So that's gonna be on top of, so that's probably a reason why. Maybe you have to do a little bit of a deficit now, put a little bit of that fat off, and hey ho, you know, you actually look amazing. So I don't think that's a, yeah, that's a very bad question, yeah .

- Well, we do, when I was working in a retail store, we would suggest a protein to a female, and I think, just through the last 10, 20 years, they associate protein as being the only supplement out there and they hear of the word supplement and they think, supplement means body builder, and an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger comes into their head, and for some reason, they think one scoop of protein is going to make me wake up looking like Arnold.

- I wish.

- Then we would do it.

- That would be, I would be injecting that into my eyeballs, you know what I mean. Yeah, no, I think and that's where it's a lot of misinformation is coming out now. So the most important thing that we have to understand is, obviously, protein is not just for muscle building. It's very, very important for a lot of things like, you know, your organs. So your liver actually requires a lot of amino acids to function and if you don't have a healthy liver, then you're gonna a lot of other health complications going through. Also, enzymes need it as well. Hormones require this as well. So, we've gotta look at, it's not just protein for muscle building but it's protein for health.

- So, what you're saying is females should be on more protein and they could benefit from a protein shake?

- Yeah, yeah, like, if they can't get a full meal in, which, you know, in today's lives, we're very busy, we're always on the go, and that's how we kind of are, I would definitely say have some sort of protein shake, whey protein, vegan-based protein, whatever it may be, to help supplement that and then actually help them get towards their goals better.

- Will they wake up the next day looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger?

- No. _ They won't?

- No.

- Will it, possibly, over a long period of time give them a nice looking muscle tone?

- Yes.

- Yes, okay. So, and I think that's another thing that we have to talk about too is that females don't produce as much testosterone. So whereas males might be able to convert using testosterone a bit more muscle mass, females, even if they push heavy, heavy weights and take protein, they're not gonna get massive.

- No.

- Yeah.

- No, that's the thing. I think, from researching, and I'm gonna just throw this number. I might get it wrong so don't attack me, please. I think it's like one tenth of the testosterone that a male has, a female has. So, actually, a lot of our muscle building for women actually comes from estrogen.

- Right

- So that's it, estrogen is actually good .

- Yeah, the right amounts at the right times.

- Yeah, right amounts, yeah, exactly, exactly. So, that's why I think like, it's again, that's misinformation is coming out there. So it's time to start informing some people.

- Exactly, which is what we're doing here today.

- Exactly, that's why we're here.

- So, from Dan from Team ECTO, he's a PT, he's a nutritionist, and a sports scientist, is saying that females are fine to have protein and, especially protein powder, and it's possibly recommended as well.

- Yep.

- Awesome.

- Our next part that we'd like to do is just ask you a personal question regarding to your three top tips when it comes to nutrition and weight loss. So that's putting you on the spot.

- Yeah.

- What would be your three top tips with nutrition and weight loss?

- Okay, so the first thing I would say, and I say this to a lot of clients is, to scale your expectations to your commitments. So, if you wanna get insanely lean as fast as you can and stuff, that's obviously fine to do but scale your expectations. So, if you're not going to track your food, go to sleep on time, train appropriately, and aim to progress every over of that, then maybe your expectations are not gonna be as good as your commitment. If, on the weekend, you still want to go out with your friends and have dinner and drinks and stuff like that--

- Which they're fine to do.

- I do and that's okay. My expectations is based on my commitments. I know that.

- Sure.

- So, I always say, I know what I'm going to get myself into and I'm okay to do that but I see a lot of times, with a lot of people, where they go, "Oh, I was good Monday to Friday," Saturday comes round and they go, "Well, why am I not looking like so and so?" It's like, okay, well, their commitments are different to yours and that's why they're gonna look different to you. So, I always say make sure you do that, is scale your expectations to your commitments, but also understand that every person is different. Like, if we were to talk about, in analogy, books, you might on chapter eight, I might be on chapter nine, but we also might be two different books, you know. Like, you might be, say, "Harry Potter" book number two, and I might be book number one, you know what I mean. So, never compare yourself to other people but also understand that your expectations are based on your commitments.

- Okay, I think that's probably a really good number one actually.

- Yeah.

- Always scale your expectations to your commitments. I think, it's really good.

- Yeah, number two.

- Number two.

- Probably would be, obviously, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

- Okay.

- So, and that's the thing, obviously, whatever you can manage and whatever you can measure is what's gonna help you get results, you know what I mean. Like, if you hear all these people and they go, like, certain hormone stuff and all that. It's like, okay, you're not gonna get blood work done every week.

- So don't talk about, concentrate on the ones you can measure.

- So talk about the ones you can measure but also what you can manipulate as well, and manage. So if I can measure how much food I eat a day, okay, I know I can bring that up and I can bring that down depending on what I need but I'm not gonna worry about anything else that I won't be able to manage over time and that's it. It's about consistent, daily approaches to that and that's what gets you the results.

- So, you mentioned, obviously, tracking food. What else would you suggest to measure?

- I always measure performance in the gym. So that to me is very, very important so if I look at, I'm trying to create an adaptation of my body, whether it's fat loss, muscle gain, anything like that, and I go, okay, have I done better than the previous time before? If it's yes, great, we're on the right track. If the answer is no, okay, why was that? Okay, I didn't get a good enough sleep. Okay, maybe I should start measuring my sleeping, look at how long am I sleeping for? What's the quality of my sleep for? Did I have enough water that day? Oh, no, I didn't. Okay, so I need to make sure that I drink plenty of water to keep myself hydrated to make sure that I'm getting a good session. So these are very, very simple things that I think are not sexy and that's why no one does them anymore. But that's what gets results.

- Right, and so, how would you do it? Do you have a diary? Do you just have a pen and piece of paper? Do you have a booklet? How do you write it?

- So, we have a coaching app that we use for our clients so everything is done on there so they can see what food they need to eat for the day, what's their calories, the protein, carbs, and fats, so if they do flexible dieting, and also it has training programs on there as well. So we do it our way like that but I find whatever way that worked for a person, keep at it because, again, it's gotta be consistency over time, you know what I mean so--

- Measure and track. Write it down if that's what you're doing. Just something so you can look and refer to.

- Yep, and that's it and then, if you don't know what's going on, then you can look back and then go, okay, well, this has been happening for a while now. I now know, okay, if it's poor sleep, I might need to go get a sleep supplement or I need to change my sleep routine and that's then obviously where you can then start monitoring and measuring and seeing if it's actually working.

- Right, okay, excellent. All right, so that's Dan's tip number two is measure and--

- Manage.

- And manage, perfect. Okay, and number three. What would be your third top tip for nutrition and for weight loss?

- Oh, this is--

- This is live. He's thinking of this.

- Yeah, this is pressure on right now.

- Yeah, that's right.

- I like this.

- It's real. This video is real, there's no cuts .

- Yeah, none of that stuff. Probably, you've gotta look at it in terms of sustainability. So, this is the thing that, why I got into pretty much the industry and where I am at now, is I don't like the eight, the 12 week, the four week, whatever, those sort of challenges and stuff like that, because they don't talk about sustainability. Like, in terms of, obviously, coaching, that's a lot of our bread and butter. You get your before and after and everyone looks amazing and stuff like that. I get excited when I see the after after.

- Right, so, months, years.

- Yeah, once they've done that, and then you look back at it and they go, oh, you look worse than your before one because they didn't increase sustainability and they didn't teach how to make it sustainable. So, if we're looking at it in terms of, like, a nutrition, okay, like I said, I've been saying a few times now, can you continue this for a period of time afterwards? Or is it just very, very short and aggressive and you're not gonna get the result you want afterwards, which then makes you feel bad about yourself and then, go okay, well I know that to get to the body that I was before, I did this and then, you go back to the eight week, and then you create this lovely cycle of all you do is just find different eight week challenges around the place that don't really get you that result you want but you just feel good because you're always doing something. So, it's not creating the good sustainability with a person and that's why I think people need to understand is it takes time, but sustainable progress is progress.

- Right, so you're looking for positive, permanent change.

- Yeah.

- Not just quick fixes, sustainability.

- Yeah, yeah, and that's the thing. The more times you look at it, if you diet once, you gain it back twice as easy and it's twice as hard to lose it. So if you've done yo-yo dieting for a long period of time, well, guess what? It's now, like, it's an absolute bitch to lose the body fat you've now got and it's gonna take you longer again and you're gonna have to then start doing more drastic things, whereas if you approached it from a small, you know, you measured, you managed everything, you scaled your expectations to your commitments, and you've done it in sustainable progress, you're gonna keep the results that you've got.

- So, and that's the common misconception that some people have is they've just gotta chop their diet down to no calories.

- Yeah.

- And I think that's really good advice. So, just to recap. It's manage your expectations.

- Yep.

- [Both] Measure and Manage.

- And about sustainability

- It's all about sustainability.

- To keep someone in that healthy state over the long term.

- Yep.

- There you go. Three great advice structures when it comes to nutrition and weight loss. We didn't know that was coming. I really like that. I thought that you might have--

- I didn't know that was coming either so--

- Well, there you go. It's all live. Really appreciate that. And so, that's pretty much all the questions that we had listed down. I've got a question for ya before we wrap up.

- Yep.

- And this is gonna be a tough one 'cause there's so many out there. At Fat Burners Only, we give advice and make videos, etc, but we also do supplementation. What's your favorite supplement out of any supplement on the market?

- It's gonna sound like a sex joke but I love that D, so vitamin D, for sure, yeah.

- Vitamin D. .

- Yeah, purely because a lot of people anywhere are very vitamin D deficient and it's actually shown to have a lot of good research in improving things such as depression, bone metabolism, muscle growth, even cell receptability. So, if you're having some hormone issues, you know, vitamin D can be good. Obviously, make sure that you do get checked first to see if there's no medical issues that may arise from you consuming that. But yeah, definitely vitamin D.

- And so, with vitamin D, how many people, do you think, are out there, as a percentage, that are probably vitamin D deficient? Just from the people that you deal with.

- Everyone.

- Everyone. So, you would say everyone needs a vitamin D supplement?

- Yep.

- Right, okay, and the ones on the Australian market are typically 1000 units, and how many units would you advise people to take, or does it vary?

- It varies person to person. So it's actually body weight dependent. So, what I'd normally say is, yeah, have a chat to one of you guys, and they'll be able to tell you based on that but yeah, it's very, I don't want to say a magic number 'cause for one person who might be 100 kilos, it might be X amount, but then someone who is 60 kilos, that might be too much, and if they have an issue, that may cause some problems, or they just might get too much of it 'cause it is a fat soluble vitamin so it can stay in your system for a long time.

- Close to it.

- Exactly. So I'd normally just say chat to someone who actually knows, they know what they're talking about, and then you'll be safe.

- So, if I'm a 75 kilo male, which I am, how much vitamin D would you recommend someone like myself have?

- Approximately 4,000 IUs.

- Every day?

- Yeah, every day.

- Right, okay, excellent. All right, so that's some good advice there, as well. Have you got any comments to make at all before we wrap up?

- No, no.

- No, all pretty good?

- I like that, yeah.

- Yeah, I think we've gotten into a lot of detail but all valuable information. So Dan is from Team ECTO. If you do wanna get in touch with him, you can send us a message and we can link you guys up. He is a PT, a nutritionist, and a sports scientist.

- Yep.

- Right, excellent, and, like you told me before we started chatting on camera, you deal with a lot of fitness competitors.

- Yep.

- And obviously you're really great at it 'cause people keep coming back to you time and time again. But, you also love dealing with the normal person because their problems are more interesting.

- Yeah, well, if I can help one person who is going through a real hard time in their ability to then change how they view just food, training, and lifestyle, and actually create, like, a really good life for them, that to me is so cool. Like, being able to actually help someone and go, you've changed the way I view things. It's not always about extreme diets or extreme training fads but actually going, okay, I've come to you and I see everything from a different perspective now. That's what I really love, being able to help people change their lives, for sure.

- And once they've learnt that, you can't take that away.

- No.

- But if they weren't there and they didn't learn it to begin with, they had no education to make that change.

- That's it, exactly. So, that's why I love working with people like that. It's just, that to me, really gets me going. That's like, fuck yeah, let's do it.

- And you were saying as well that a fitness competitor, although you love training them, they're easy. They're committed individuals

- Exactly.

- And it's almost a cookie, not exactly a cookie cutter approach but you know how to do it.

- So it's not cookie cutter 'cause every person is different and, obviously, they come from different positions, different divisions, federations, but if you look at a fitness competitor, they're highly motivated, you know. They wanna get up on that stage. So, if you've sat them down, you explained the process and they know it, and they already have a great kind of understanding of buying. They're gonna be, you can tell them to eat dog shit, and they'll go, "Cool, what breed, "how much, and when would you like me to have it?" So there's no real, they understand what they need to do to get the job done. So I love training them because I can throw nasty programs at them. I can change their diet if they need to and they'll just follow it perfectly, whereas, if we're working with someone who is not doing that and they just wanna look good for bikini season and stuff like that, then you have to really start working with their lifestyle and making it work for 'em and that's what I find is a very, very big difference. So, the competitor will do the job because they got a date in mind and they have to hit that date otherwise, you know, show's over.

- That's right, yeah. So they're more committed, excellent.

- Yeah.

- Cool, so Dan is also, we're proud to have him on board as an affiliate to Fat Burners Only as well. So, that wraps it up. Thanks for watching. If you have any questions, like I said, just pop a comment under this video or hit us up directly at the shop and we'll get you in touch with Dan. Right, thanks Burners, we'll catch you later.

- See ya.

- Thanks mate, appreciate it.