what does it mean to live life to the fullest train to your potential and perform at your best. Leave nothing on the table. That's a non negotiable is that I I strive to be better every day because if I'm not on top of my game, how is anybody else gonna follow me down the road? Keep demanding more of yourself to to live up to that potential and to stay hungry. Training is progress. You know when I look at the word training, I think of steps, baby steps to get somewhere that you want to be and that is basically your life journey. That's a mindset and itself man, it's like, it's not just about I know that for you, a lot of that's about the physical, but we're constantly in training, whether it's growing our skill sets, whether it's growing up physical bodies, whether it's growing our relationships whatever and all of that is a training ground and that kind of goes back to the mindset that we just talked about. You underestimate yourself and you don't even start, but then once you start, you often surpass what you thought you could do perform at your best mate. That's that's sort of what life is all about. I want to have the knowledge and have the fitness, the healthy ambition and drive that no matter what comes along when the next phone call comes, I can just say yes, I don't have to worry, just go and do it, yo what's up guys, welcome to this episode of the live transform podcast?

I'm your host, Sean koba joining me in today's episode is my mate Leo Tyson who has been in Thailand for a number of years. He interned for me at Tiger muay thai. Uh he's got his own business now I'm sure that something will dive into. But leo, welcome to the podcast met. Thank you very much for having me, but it's good to be here. Good man, I'm really excited for this chat. You are subject matter expert in a few fields that I'm Uh not that burst in. So every time I talk to you about these topics, I'm really interested to hear what you have to say and then how I can then apply them to my own clients, my own coaching process. So for the audience can give them a quick five minute introduction to who you are, what you're doing here, what you specialize in. Awesome. Thank you. So um today we're gonna be chatting female physiology which is cool, it's a subject that somehow as random as it seems, has become kind of interested and kind of passionate about now. So the quick intro for me is I came out here at 16 and 17, lived here for a little while to have some fights for Tiger Multi wasn't good enough to make it and eventually decided that I like the coaching side of it more than the fighting.

Anyway, so I moved back to England when I was 18, got P. T. Qualified um and kind of, here we are, just went through that conventional route off working with clients, fill in my diary, going on courses, studying rinsing and repeating for about six years. Taking the boxes, taking the boxes. Yeah exactly bro and that was where I kind of learning this stuff along the way. Um And then about three years ago I was burned out on a misspoke. It felt like business was in a good enough place online to move back out here. Um So yeah and that's when I met you came and asked fucking guest coach at Tiger. And uh Yeah three years later here we are here we are doing a podcast. Yeah. Cool man. Um So what made you get into uh going down the path of female specific physiology? Yeah. So yeah it sounds like around and one doesn't it? But the specific story that kind of happened, there was this one incident in particular that really got me like interested in it And I was training this client one morning training for quite a while. That may be nearly six or seven months at this point and she was just having a really bad workout and I obviously didn't know why her numbers are way off.

Maybe putting the blame on her putting we're putting the blame on her anything like that. Yeah man, that's sorry to cut you off man. But that was so common for me as well. Like when I first started working with people was like if my clients aren't getting results, like you're not following the plan. Like it was their problem is their fault, right? Yeah, Yeah, exactly. But you just don't know. You just kind of don't know any better. You don't understand the variables that influence progress outside of just tracking macros or following a Miliband plus plus training. But in general, she was doing great. It was just this one kind of specific session. Her numbers were off. Like she has a great low bar squad, but that was really often. I just remember thinking like, what is going on here and uh this last night? Yeah, it's like a Wednesday morning, Like, come on, I think it was Wednesday was a long time ago. And uh in between sets of leg press, she's like almost nearly kind of tearing up a bit and I think we'll just call this up, we'll just kind of call this recession and you know, it's all good. You know, wasn't angry at her anything. She was just a bit annoying herself. And I was just one of those things that happens sometimes. Um And she messages me a few hours later, go in, Hey, I just started my period.

Could I possibly come back in this evening? Do you have any slots? And I was just like, I have no clue why that's relevant, but like sure, you know, and I think kind of just my intuition was like, all right, there's may be something to this because of what she wouldn't have said that normally I'd be like, no, just rest recover. You've already trained this morning. Like it wasn't a full workout, but you know, we've already trained like no point doing a second session today. And I'm really glad that I kind of did let my intuition guide me that. All right. Maybe there's something to this since she said it. Like, sure, come back in. I had a one hour gap between two clients anyway. How old was she? She was in her early thirties. How old were you at this time? I was probably not even 19. Yeah. Right. So she was obviously had picked up on something through her own experience and then she's like, Okay, maybe this is what's going on. This is why I wasn't performing this morning, maybe I'll give it another crack this afternoon. Exactly. Okay. So yeah, and that's why it's so important to listen to clients. I think the majority of the time it's our job to be like, no, that's not a good idea or or whatever. But there's a lot of times where you don't know what you don't know.

And sometimes if the client does say something like that and there might be something to it. So I was like, yeah, sure. You know, come come back in and she crushed it. And like, not only was it a complete 1 80 from the morning's work out, it was actually a really, really, really good workout, which doesn't make sense considering we already did train at least some legs that morning, I'm like, you should be a bit tired and fatigued. Like how are you hitting PVS on your back squat and just a completely different person, you know, energy mood or you know, just confidence getting under the bar and I was like, well that makes absolutely no sense. So I should probably go away and kind of look into that and the kind of catalyst for that is, you know, I think all coaches as our job is to solve problems and get your client the best results possible um and do right by your client, which I don't always think it's the same thing is getting the best results possible because sometimes getting the best results possible is a contradiction of doing right by them at the expense of their health or sometimes it's just not related, you know, like maybe referring out for example or whatever it might be, so doing right by your client, maybe isn't always the same thing as getting the best results possible.

So both of those and of course selfishly, like I'm not doing this to not be the best that I can be like, I want to enjoy my career and enjoy mastering my craft. So I went away and I kind of started looking into, you know, why would you train better? I went through a period that started, I think that's what I literally googled, I didn't know where to start and then just kind of went through this process of being like, okay, well there is something about this late luti or phase leading up to Menzie starting, which has a series of, you know, implications for mood, strength, coordination um and sometimes it isn't as abrupt as Menzie starting call, everything's good, but that is what we do. So what you're saying, Menzies meeting your periods, okay. Yeah, it always feels a bit weird when I use the word period, like almost I'm not allowed to kind of thing. So I call it Menzies, menstruation period starting is when we start to get that increase in estrogen again. So yeah, that kind of happened and then I just kind of went down the rabbit hole from there really, and and I was pretty lucky that had a few clients that year, female clients that year in the subsequent year on contest prep.

Um and obviously now you have a situation where you can't necessarily blame these big variables and things that, you know, like why is this happening? You can't blame that on while they're a gen pop client and their lifestyle varies, which is reason for your performance and strength etcetera varying, like that isn't really happening their own contest prayer, everything's controlled and consistent and dialed in. So the only variable really left is the menstrual cycle, so that started to make, uh yeah, a lot of that stuff kind of more evident to me and just in my own pursue off, getting the best results possible um and doing right by my clients, I kind of went down, went down those rabbit holes really and yeah, the more you learn, the more you realize that females really aren't just smaller guys and it's very hard to kind of work that out because there are still a huge bias start in sports research being predominantly done on guys, you know, females weren't really used in sports science studies until the mid 19 eighties, like that isn't that long ago because there are so, so many variables to the menstrual cycle or lack of one and differences between phases, which is, you know, what we're going to get into a bit.

It makes it very, very hard for, you know, the everyday person to have a clue what's going on, let alone be able to control that in a, in a study and therefore, you know, uh equate for it, which means that it's kind of quite hard to learn this stuff. There isn't a massive amount out there, especially aimed at fitness professionals in the context of working With the clients. 100%, man, that's why I wanted to get you on. That is because I've seen you give seminars on this stuff, you've given like a development coaches, development series for me and my coaches that Tiger and I really took a lot out of it. Um a lot of the stuff was kind of like touching on things that I've already learned but it was like putting it all together um and just kind of diving a little bit deeper into these different um you know, things that we need to consider as coaches. So yeah, that's why I want to really get you onto this this podcast and dive into this and a lot more detail man. Now, a few things to unpack in the start there there was a lot of awesome information. Um The first thing I want to talk about is do you get any pushback from people because you are educating on female specific physiology as a male because obviously you said Menzies and I'm like what are you talking about?

So talk to me about that. Yeah, I'm sure I do, but no one says it to me, okay. It's one of those that that was a very large part of the reason why I didn't really talk about it and create content on social media around it for a long time was kind of just that fear of it not being received well, but then I was like that's kind of ridiculous because I have mostly female clients anyway, I'm doing it with them anyway, so I'm kind of doing them a disservice and anyone that wants to listen, it's completely up to you if you do or don't want to listen to a guy talking about it, I'd understand if not, I'm then potentially doing those people a disservice. You know, the amount of people that have come to me and on board them and it turns out they have endometriosis or pcos all of these things they don't really know anything about. It turns out that the depression was being caused by the pill because they've been on the pill since they were 15. They never remember what it's like to not be on the pill. And so it's like I'm doing these people a disservice if I don't try and do right by my clients and if you want to watch and and read it my content. So of course, I'm sure there's loads of people out there, but by default, they're kind of probably not engaging with me and therefore telling me, you know?

Yeah. So yeah, I think a lot of females, not that I can speak on their behalf, at least from what my friends that are girls tell me and my clients tell me, is that quite happy about it. If anything, you know, almost relieved. Like it's not a taboo subject dirty to have a period, like, you know, all girls on birth control, of course will have them. It just is what it is. And I think a lot of women would like the other half for their boss or their guy friends to understand that a little bit more. I mean, most girls don't understand it. So, so it's funny a couple of times people have said to me like, you know, what do you know about that? And I'm like, what do you know about it? And they're always like, Yeah, I guess nothing. So it's like, you know, girls himself don't know anything about it. Um so you know, why not try and educate 100% man. Like I think I shared, you're doing like some like a coaching kind of course the coaches um and I shared one of your posts on my stories or something, and I had a guy reach out to me and was like, what would this do you know about female specific physiology? And I was like, well just because he's male doesn't mean, doesn't know what he's fucking talking about, It's like, you know, uh an oncologist doesn't need to have cancer to know what they need to do to trick and treat cancer, you know what I mean?

So dude, I think it's a topic that definitely needs to be opened up to the wider public and You know, again, so many things to unpack in what you just said there. Um one of the things that came up which we're gonna dive into in a moment is the lack of education around birth control. You know, birth control has been around for what, like 60, 70 years or something like that and you know, there wasn't that much, there wasn't any long term studies done on it back then and it's only kind of in the last decade or so that information is coming out about how it affects your hormones long term and you know the implications that it can have on, you know, physiology. Yeah, so we'll dive into that in a moment. But the next thing I want to bring up as well is I've actually got my um my journal from my yoga course last year. So I went back to Australia and did my yoga course with a bunch of veterans as a like an alternate therapy for PTSD and anxiety, depression, things like that. So we could basically take that information, the principles back to our network and be able to help people manage their minds and all that sort of stuff.

So anyway it was a veteran heavy um yoga course with all these you know infantry soldiers that have been deployed numerous times to Afghanistan, you know warfighters etcetera etcetera. And the component on the course where we're diving into um you know female physiology, menstrual cycle and stuff, some of the boys are like what the fuck are we learning this stuff blah blah blah. And I was like listen fellas when the most guys have issues when it comes to anxiety, depression and PTSD is like normally something massive happened in their life. They've lost their job, they've moved on from the military, they've lost their identity. They have massive barney with mrs and the misses leaves with the kids etcetera, etcetera. And like, you know guys, we need to understand what our partners are doing, where they're at on their menstrual cycle. So then we can go all right, well during this phase, probably not a good idea to bring up certain topics with them. Let's not create conflict during this phase. Let's maybe wait to this phase when things balance out a little bit and their hormones are a little bit more regulated and you know, it's going to be a lot more of an open conversation, open flowing conversation.

What are your thoughts on that? Do you think there's anything to that? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think your other half is only gonna really appreciate it if you find understand them as much as possible and maybe you can help them understand what's going on as well because like you said, man, maybe they don't understand what's happening with their emotions. And you know, we'll talk about all the different physiological responses that occur through the different phases of the cycle and things like that. How to adjust that, adjust your training to suit that, How to adjust your nutrition hydration. Um you know, how to basically start putting these processes in place on a daily basis to work in line with what's happening with your biology, man, because you can't find it, right? Yeah, I apologize, you got to work with it. Yeah. And even if the effects for you aren't that profound like some people fluctuate throughout the menstrual cycle a lot other people less so. But it should still be pretty empowering to be able to proactively kind of deal with this stuff instead of reactively that are for rubbish slated to do. Like no I know a lot of girls, a lot of females that will kind of plan your life around it a little bit like if you know you're not going to be your best self for three days out of the month.

Obviously if you're employed it's a bit different. But if you're self employed maybe that isn't when you try and film content for social media for example you do that you know in advance or or you don't plan going on a podcast if you're if you know that affects you but you can't do that if you don't understand it in the first place that those small tweaks to being proactive allow you probably feel very empowered. I'm kind of taking back control of maybe matching your your life, your training, your work, your relationship, whatever it might be around that a little bit. Again that's may or may not be too relevant. Some girls have PMS so bad pre menstruation syndrome symptoms. So bad that it's actually P. M. D. D. So it's a disorder and they have to go on antidepressants or a hand for the days out of the month that affects 5 to 10% of females at reproductive age with the menstrual cycle which obviously is really really really sad. You know that that's kind of quite soul destroying to know that you're going to go through that every month. Um and other females don't know when menstruation is starting for them if they're not tracking it. Whereas some do even if they're not tracking it they can be like yeah I feel a bit anxious and you know real low energy and I've got a lot of cravings and probably do my period in the next 2-3 or four days.

You hear that quite a lot. But some females don't. They started I started it today like that they don't know because those effects are just a lot less profound for them. So there is a massive response. Range of responses to the menstrual cycle and how it affects you. So again sometimes I'll be chatting about this and a girl will go well for me like and they just presume that therefore everyone else is like them for me, I don't notice the difference. Everything is pretty consistent call that that's great for you. But that isn't the case for everyone. So for some of this information is kind of going to sit on a continuum of relevance and the potential you know impact for this that it will have depending on on the individual. What are some of the variables you think that can impact that a big one is genetics. So with people that have P. M. D. D. Versus just PMS there seems to be a different genetic response to how progesterone binds with the gaba receptor which really affects mood. Um And that can also have an effect on whether birth control improves someone's mood and anxiety or actually in some people it makes it a lot worse. Um So obviously that's something that again you need to kind of be a little bit in tune with and and speak to your doctor about and kind of figure out.

I think again the guy said this earlier because it's so true. So many girls are put on birth control at such a young age that they don't realize that there may be a little bit depressed and anxious versus how they would be and how they were and they don't know that it's birth control causing that because they've been on it for, you know, it just becomes a normal it's just there norm. Yeah. They don't they don't know. So one thing I do when I start working with a new female client because this is very much an area which like you know, as a guy I don't really want to I don't want to talk them too much about but I'm very aware of. You don't be preaching. Yeah. Exactly because obviously there's a lot of legitimate reasons for taking birth control. Obviously being contraception but also it does decrease the risk of certain cancers, increases the risk of others. And it's not you know, that isn't a decision that just affects you that will see a picture of a half etcetera etcetera. So how long has approached that is if they say they're on birth control, on my intake form or the corporate idea, whatever it is, I send them a couple of articles. I've got ones that I like by dr laura Brydon and I'm like, I will never bring this up with you again unless you ask me to and reply to. But just since you've ticked that box, please just read these.

And if you want to chat to me about it after about maybe coming off or not or have questions about it, we can do that. But if you want to read them and then go I'm still happy being on it and I don't want to chat to you about that, that's absolutely fine. Not once have any of my female clients then read those and then not going, you know, thank you for that. That was interesting. I didn't know that. And about half of them then go, do you think you can help me come off? A lot of females don't realize they're only 36 or seven days a month. I did one of my little quizzes on insta stories. Can you get pregnant any day of the month outside of your outside of your period and I don't remember the exact numbers. But the majority said yes, you're only first half of six or seven days or your first offer less than that. The sperm can survive for a few days. So you know if you have sex just before ovulation then that might still cause pregnancy. But so it's a six or seven day window. So if you're very good at tracking, you can use the fertility awareness method with a very high degree of accuracy anyway. But most females kind of don't don't know that. So yeah, that's just one specific example kind of in terms of you know birth control the effects that can have a mood and just how how I approach it.

And again, if any male coaches are listening, that's maybe what I recommend. So you are very much saying that I'm aware that you know you might not want to talk to me about this is a guy and it's out of my scope as a fitness professional. But I wouldn't be doing my job. I'd be doing you a disservice. If I didn't just bring some awareness to this from a female doctor, you can read it from a female doctor. She's a doctor and a female. I'm just the messenger. Yeah, exactly. You don't know what you don't know. It's it's my job to inform you off that. I think a lot of coaches very much stay in their comfort zone. I don't have all the answers. You know, I'm not a doctor and I'm not female, but I'm not gonna not pull on resources from females and or doctors to help with subjects that may be very, you know, that might have a very large effect on why someone's coming to me. If they're coming to me going, I'm unhappy, I've got low mood and that's part of my part of their goal is to improve that. Then three months later they might be a bit happier. They've lost some weight, they're a bit healthier. But if overall their mood is still really bad, that reflects badly on me. I've done them a disservice because they didn't achieve their goals. And if the underlying reason was birth control for them, how it affects them from a genetic standpoint is it really affects their mood and I didn't bring that up and try and inform them on that, then that's my problem.

Uh That's not their problem. Yeah. Have you had females come off birth control and then decided to go back on within 3-6 months because things have taken too long to balance out things haven't improved or they just essentially feel better taking birth control? I've had two off the top of my head that yes have done that one was for her skin, it did get bad afterwards, which is potentially a problem. You know, you're not this is the thing on birth control is quickly to kind of help with the context of that question is it doesn't balance your hormones. Just like if a guy takes testosterone, it doesn't balance your hormones. You stop your own internal production because you're taking an extraordinary source because you're taking synthetic progesterone and estrogen externally, you don't get some of the symptoms that may come with those high or low states naturally. You're not fixing the underlying problem when you come off, which you're most probably gonna do eventually if you want to get pregnant, all those problems are going to still be there.

And some because some of those problems, for example, heavy Menzies, heavy periods, those estrogen receptors get overwhelmed when you come off, just like when you go through puberty and they can be very heavy. You know, we can suppress the underlying reasons why you can have hormonal acne and that can rebound even worse. So yeah, it doesn't fix the other. You can hormonal acne if you're if you're taking it for your skin, which then the rebound effect can be worse initially. So it's one of those where it's like you're already on it, what you do with that information, you know, coming off probably isn't going to be great for a few months. There is a lot of stuff you can do for that. It's known as post birth control syndrome. The syndrome. Just meaning for anyone that doesn't know, just like I. B. S. Or P. C. O. S. It's not a specific diagnosis. People say I've got pcos off the I. B. S. What type? And I don't know that's not a diagnosis. A syndrome just means a collection of symptoms which can't be diagnosed with another definition. So there's kind of different types or different root causes or different subcategories. So two women coming off birth control wouldn't have the same post birth control syndrome.

You know, your skin might get bad periods, might get heavy, you might gain a little bit of body fat, your mood might get worse. You know, you don't know, there's a lot of variables to this. Um But what females kind of do which make all of that worse and people in general do. But in particular females is and this is some stuff I know we're going to chat about is their own very low calories. They've always got the stress of overtraining. And I think yeah they're micro nutrient deficient because and this is something I know we're going to chat about. You can't physically eat All of your micronutrient targets for the day or less than 1900 calories. The mass just doesn't add up. So you now have this huge disconnect between females dieting and this is why females have so many problems dieting that guys don't is just the number of calories they have to die on and that goes below the energy availability threshold by default. If you reverse engineer, you're not getting insufficient fats, carbs, proteins, micronutrients. So you've got these girls coming off birth control. And then there's this quite sad situation where they're they're just not healthy because they're doing all of this stuff or not doing all of this stuff. That makes it a lot worse. The last class and I had come on birth control, We we kind of, you basically want to lay like a foundational protocol.

So it's like, you know, let's come off in two or three months, let's get you as healthy as we can. First. We've got calories two off the top of my head, I think 2400 and training day 2200 on a rest day. She also had follicular and beautiful face splits, which is a bit more advanced and not relevant for most people, but different targets the different phases of her cycle. And we just ensure that she was managing stress. You know, we were just doing everything we could possible to get as healthy as possible, mostly by reversed item calories up and therefore getting in sufficient food and sufficient micro's. She came off birth control and absolutely zero problems. Her cycle is actually back on the next one, which is quite rare. Normally that takes a few cycles, just absolutely fine. And again, there's a lot of genetic stuck to that for sure. But she was just as healthy as you could possibly be in terms of taking those daily boxes, sleep, stress management, sufficient calories, etcetera, etcetera not overtraining, you know, post birth was going to say, I'll make an assumption that you probably you know because most females also addicted to like the cardio on the high intensity interval training. So whoa, hit. Yeah, I was going to say I'd imagine that you'd like kind of reduce that stuff right back or cut it all out altogether and focus more on resistance training as you go through reverse dieting, build a little bit of muscle, let's get the metabolism firing.

Let's yeah. Yeah. It's a complex subject, man, but this is why we need to discuss it right? There's so many things that go on and if you're you know adding, we've spoken about this before, like offline like adding stress on top of stress man. Like the stress is linked to so many like health implications in the Western world and we need to manage stress as much as we can in all areas of life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So a couple of things there, you spoke about the follicular little face, let's go through the menstrual cycle and then let's talk about what's happening in those phases, hormonally. Um some of the emotions that might be experienced at different times when you might be able to push training when you need to pull back when you need to maybe eat a little bit more um when you need to manage your macro nutrients and dial everything in when you can be a little bit looser etcetera etcetera because everything is connected Right? So um let's go through that process. Talk my audience and myself through the phases. Yeah, great.

So a quick thing kind of around the research on the menstrual cycle. That's okay because what a lot of the time, not so much the everyday gen pop girl probably isn't reading studies but some are and some coaches will say to me, I read this study and it said that you know the menstrual cycle didn't impact strength levels for example. And what we need to understand about research is that you need to control and you need a variable. The variable is the outcome. The menstrual cycle itself is a huge variable and again we'll get into some of those in a second but we have the length of it, you know what phase that they are in in the second half of the cycle, The looting or phase, progesterone should be the dominant hormone over estrogen but it isn't always a lot of girls experienced this umbrella time of estrogen dominance, some might have followed a menorah, so an inconsistent cycle there. For whatever reason they're just overstressed to lean pcos some are missing it altogether, some are on birth control, menopause etcetera etcetera, which means that because there are so many variables to even a healthy cycle and the individual range of what a healthy cycle means, let alone an unhealthy cycle.

It's very, very hard to take that into account with research because it's a variable and the outcome is also a variable. And then people just read the abstract. And one of the most famous studies that kind of went around for why you shouldn't just read the abstract was on birth control. And the abstract was, you know, we concluded that birth control did not impact body composition, which it kind of doesn't and it doesn't buy much. There's obviously a lot of other variables there, the impact, body composition. But one woman in the study had lost £70 No, sorry, had lost 35 lb and one woman had gained £70 over a year. So any time you look at the study, right, you know, you get that bell curve, you get the majority of people kind of sit in the middle and then it kind of tapers off and then you get those outliers. But those outliers often skew the average or can mean that the average is nothing, but actually that doesn't mean there wasn't a huge response to how that affected individuals. And again, we're in the business of working with individuals. It's called personal training. I'm not in the business of working with averages. So, you know, another great example is there's a few muscle gain studies where people have lost muscle, they want to compare high frequencies for low frequency split and some people have lost muscle, there's fat loss studies where people have gained fat.

So that really skews the averages. And often they'll then be kind of like another part which will, they'll say we'll take the outliers out or, or whatever. But the point is again, the menstrual cycle is so many variables in it, which will get to or lack of it or or health Variations of it. And then you have, you know, even within a normal healthy menstrual cycle can be between 21 and 35 days, so that how would you factor that into the outcome of a study? That's a huge range. Um and then most people just read the abstract and and and the other thing when you think about like how these studies being conducted as well for the most part, like I'd imagine something like that is done through a survey. Yeah. And you can't control like any of the other variables, you can't just look at one variable and be like, oh, when this happens, that's it's not cause and effect right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly that a lot of them are surveys. So then we need to look at what is the research, Is it, is it a meta analysis? Is a random controlled trial, is it in a lab? For sure. So, and then they're kind of basic terms that coaches should be kind of familiar with so that when they are trying to understand the topic a bit, they kind of can go, yeah, this study maybe has more validity than than another study and I'm a huge fan of examine For that for coaches.

I think I've had about $20 a month. It's nothing and it does an amazing job of examined dot com. Yeah, yeah, So we recommend um, so yeah, anyway, that's kind of the problem with the studies and the research done on this in terms of then Okay, well it doesn't seem to affect this much or that much. Then people don't do anything to don't do anything about it. So really what we need females to do is kind of be their own scientists ideally. So to just quickly talk to you through the process of how I do that before we get into the menstrual cycle is, I'll have female clients track their menstrual cycle because a lot don't. And I used to use like flow or clue one of those apps and they were good and then I was like, there's a few problems with this one that isn't a coach's dashboard section where I can view my client's data and to, its very much aimed at just getting pregnant or preventing pregnancy and some education around things like PMS, which is all great stuff, but they weren't aimed at athletes by athlete. I don't mean what most people would perceive to be an athlete. You know, if you train on purpose and you train hard four times a week you're an athlete because that is a massive amount of stress on the body, which most people just, again don't kind of understand how relevant that that is.

So, you're an athlete if you try, I don't care if you're actually a mortgage broker if you're my client and I'm training you four times a week, you're an athlete and we need to take that into account. So I actually started having the wire frames for an app made to to make an app like that and then someone's done it and it's great. So that's a bit annoying. But anyway, it's good that it's out there now and it's called Why would a I it's a great app. It links with the ordering now, which is awesome for some reasons we can get into. So I've just literally just started playing around with that app now, but before is using clue or flow and what we do is we track the cycle for typically two cycles. The reason being, is, you know, one that could just be random. That doesn't necessarily give us any consistent picture if a client does come to me and they have been tracking their cycle very consistent and I kind of know a bit about it. We might be able to go straight in pretty much from day one being proactive in, you know, some strategies taking into account the menstrual cycle whether that's training on nutrition, but for the most part with most clients is probably unnecessary extra stress. Initially, there's so many other low hanging fruit that they need to get into the habit of doing that, I kind of put the menstrual cycle down a few notches for most people and again, depending on what is we're talking about, so typically would still go through two months where we're maybe not being proactive.

I'm trying to educate them a little bit and maybe being a bit reactive, just connecting the dots with what's going on, where they are in the cycle, how they're feeling, what emotions are coming up, how they're feeling in the gym with training stress levels, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, that's cool. And then we'll jump on a call after two cycles, kind of evaluate that and then start to maybe be a bit proactive. Again, the exceptions to that our clients that are coaches which kind of have the prerequisites to be consistent. I think people don't put enough importance on setting yourself up to win from a consistency standpoint. If you're struggling to be consistent and you're not hitting your daily protein target and you're sleeping 6000 etc, etc. You do not need to change your mac pros in your training program amount of menstrual cycle, you just don't, you're setting yourself up to fail us unnecessary stress and it's unnecessarily complicated. So, but I do have about 50% of my clients are the coaches, which is great. So sometimes I will from day one, they have that data, they have the prerequisites of consistency and knowledge and we're into taking that into account. So again, it depends, you got to treat this person like an individual.

Um So yeah, but then getting into the menstrual cycle itself, that's kind of how I approach it. Um so the menstrual cycle itself, I think a lot of females freak out when it's not 28 days because they believe that's what it should be. 28 days is just an average between 21 and 35, which is the range of what's going to be a healthy menstrual cycle. I think it's only 20-30% of females that actually have a 28 day cycle. So don't freak out if yours is 32 or whatever and it's changing a little bit month to month within that range is also deemed as normal. So that's kind of the overview of the cycle. Um It doesn't have a start date and an end date because obviously it's an ongoing cycle at least from puberty to menopause, but doesn't work with the calendar. Yeah, exactly. So typically what we typically, what's called, as we say, it's 28 days for a normal average cycle. We then have the follicular phase, which is the first half the loot eel, which is the second half. So the follicular phase is from Day one of Menzies, they're one of the period until ovulation occurring. So again, it is a 28 day cycle, that's probably 14 days and then ovulation occurring to the last day before Menzies is then the little phase, which again, in theory would be about 14 days and then within that we kind of have the early follicular, late follicular, let me tell later Lucille, which are going to typically seven days each.

If it's a 28 day, 28 day cycle. Some people will and there is validity to, especially from a training standpoint, refer to the early follicular phase as however long menstruation lasts, however longer period last, which kind of makes sense because it's when that starts finishing that this estrogen starts increasing again the most. You might only have a three day period and then that early follicular phase, you know, for you, it's kind of three days from a training standpoint when you might start feeling a lot better, a lot stronger, recovering more. So that those kind of two times can be used interchangeably. Some people say the early follicular phase is against seven days based on the average normal cycle. Some people will say it's however long Menzies last, which is typically 3-5 days. Okay, so just for the audience, I'm just thinking out loud here, could we break this down um into simpler terms and say there's two phases, Phase one is going to be part a puppy pussy And then the same thing with Phase two a day early and Yeah, Okay, okay, okay, cool, So part one or Phase one A b those two.

A B. Yeah. Alright, cool, that works perfect. Let's talk about what's going on um from a physiological standpoint within each of those phases and the associated effects of that. So the easiest way of explaining this in my opinion is actually starting with population because the whole point of the menstrual cycle is for reproduction to occur and that sounds kind of a bit reductionist. So I apologize. But from a physiological sense, that's what it is, right? But even if you don't care about reproduction, you know, right now, whatever, there's a lot of other functions of progesterone and estrogen that we need to care about, which is why if you have lost your menstrual cycle from being too lean and or overtraining over dieting, that is a problem. We need to care about whether you want, you know, to reproduce or not. Yeah. So that's that's, that's typically a sign of like overstress, right? Like your body is literally going, hey, I can't support another life right now because I'm struggling to support my own life. Exactly, yeah, exactly. So whenever we refer to stress, just quickly when we're talking about stress, you know, actually, no, but for the audience, a lot of people just go stress lifestyle stressed, I'm not stressed, you know, there's four categories of stress, we have physical.

So training injuries, etcetera physiological, if you had a digestive problem like Candida or whatever it might be being on medications, places a physiological stress on the body. Psychological. So then that is, you know your lifestyle stress etcetera etcetera. Um And past trauma and depression kind of then takes its own category which I'm not an expert in but a lot of the time that isn't at the surface you don't feel like it's affecting your day today but it's obviously very much still there. So the definition of stress is just anything that throws the body out of balance. Okay we obviously have that stress response. We end up in that sympathetic state of our nervous system. That's a training session just like arguing with your boss. Just like it's having anxiety about something else. You know staying up at school, financial issues etcetera etcetera. It's all the same physiological response, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, increased blood sugar levels etcetera etcetera. Which ties into like HP. A access dysfunction right? Which is something we'll dive into later on. Yeah exactly. Um And that you can line that up next to the HBO for ovaries and actually look across going that inhibits that that stops the production of that.

And that is why we stopped producing the sex hormones. So yes starting population or so talking a little back from population when estrogen surges just before population and its role is to grow the end of mutual lining. So it starts really surging if you look at it for most people just as Menzies is about to start finishing or just as your periods finished oestrogen will start surging. It kind of makes this last ditch attempt to search and it does that by converting any extra progesterone and testosterone available back into E two, which is there's free estrogen. So but to keep it simple, there's estrogen E two is the one that it pulls testosterone and progesterone into E two. So there's as much estrogen as possible to kind of have this last minute surge grown in the mutual lining as much as possible, ready for ovulation to occur when those estrogen levels reach a certain point that sends a positive feedback loop up to the pituitary gland in your brain, which just goes, hey, we're ready to release an egg and a mutual linings. Good church gland goes sweet will send down some our hates and legitimizing hormone which triggers ovulation.

Um One follicle was chosen is known as the graphene follicle that releases its egg. And uh yeah, then pregnancy may or may not occur. So again, we have this window a couple of days before ovulation because spam can still survive and then a couple of days after until obviously that egg dies. So then that estrogen drops off the loosen. Izing hormone drops off when the body realizes that pregnancy didn't occur, it kind of gets ready to start this whole process again. So then we get start to get an increase in estrogen again in the second half of the cycle still less than the first half and still less than progesterone. But the progesterone starts to really increase. And that's because there's this little part of the egg called the Corpus Duty um which produces progesterone. And this is important to know because we do produce a little bit of progesterone in the ovaries and adrenals. So it is a little bit in the first half of the cycle. But the surge comes from releasing that egg. Now a lot of females don't know that you can have a period without ovulating just because you're having a period does not mean populations occurred.

And there's a good handful of times where I've started working with a new client, they have all the symptoms of low progesterone. The big one being PMS just and those kind of symptoms, you know, mood fatigue, etcetera, etcetera. Especially in the first, in the second half, sorry, of the cycle where you should have that surge of progesterone, we check to make sure populations occurring and there's a couple of ways of doing that. The easiest one if possible, is with bloods when ovulation in theory should be occurring. And obviously you'll see the levels of looting izing hormone, which again, is the signal to trigger population. This is also why it's important to track. So you get you've got that data, you can have you can have an understanding of like when you should be do when you're in different phases of the period. So then you can check your hormones at that time exactly depending on the goal of the blood. If the goal of the blood is to make sure population is occurring. You have a very small window to obviously get that measurement. So that's one way of bloods on an optional they're a bit too expensive. We can use population strips which urinate on that will tell you if there's lutin. Izing hormone in there.

Um And we also can take body temperature. Body temperature can be a good reading to take because not only does it tell us if ovulation has occurred because it jumps up by about 9.5°. It also tells us how long the phases are and if month to month if the length of the phases are changing which is good data because if they are changing a lot then that again is potentially a sign that the body is going okay. In theory we should populate today. Estrogen is going yes send you know we're good to populate but the pituitary glands going Actually no I'm perceiving too much stress external or internal. Yeah we need to delay that and that can happen a lot. So estrogen is going hey yeah we're ready and the pituitary glands going but we're not actually the bigger picture is gonna pause you there at the door there. Yeah I'm not gonna let you in. Yeah we're not we're not ready but stressed or whatever it might be. Um So body temperature is a cool one because then we take it every morning and it tells us the length of each phase as well as if populations occurred. Um the downside of it is you have to take it every morning and it's a bit of effort. But that again, as I mentioned earlier, is one reason why the ordering is awesome is obviously it takes that basically 24 7.

So it's one less thing to have to worry about doing sinks with that wild Ai app. Does that take your body temperature? Yes, Body temperature of spiritual rate, heart rate, heart rate variability. And of course the sleep stages because the menstrual cycle will get to does affect a lot of those numbers are just spilled off. That will explain it's great to have that consistent data and not have to worry about putting a heart rate monitor on every morning or taking your body temperature or whatever it might be. So anyway, they're the freeways that we can measure if ovulation has occurred. And as I said, it's, I wouldn't say it's that common, but I'd say a good 30 to 50% of the time when I start working with a new female client that has these symptoms of low progesterone. Again, the big one being bad PMS population isn't actually occurring and therefore they're not because they're not releasing the egg. We don't get that increasing progesterone in the second half of the cycle, like we should and that does two things. One, we don't have the progesterone and two, it means we have this estrogen dominance time, which some people have heard of estrogen dominance doesn't have to mean we're producing too much estrogen.

It can just mean that there's too much relative to progesterone. Estrogen is higher than progesterone ratios. Yes, it could be about the ratios. It could be that we're not detoxifying it properly in the liver. It could be that it's getting unpackaged in the gut before we can excrete it in our stores. If we have digestive problems, it could be that we're not going to the toilet regularly enough and it's recirculating because we we eliminate estrogen in our in our stores. So these are the kind of questions that I ask and one of my intake forms some symptoms off like a burden sluggish liver. If they have PMS and estrogen dominance because they might not be able to detoxify estrogen properly and it's recirculating or digestive symptoms and problems, which means it's recirculating and just frequency that they're going to the toilet. So there are three things that like I would definitely be looking into, you know, if I was a female and I was struggling with this estrogen dominance and or low progesterone causing my PMS. That is the cause of PMS, then it kind of like need to go through this little bit of a flow chart process going okay bad PMS in the second half of the cycle is the problem.

You know, low energy anxiety, high cravings. That's the problem. Okay. It's either estrogen dominance and or low progesterone. There's checking populations occurring to see if it's low progesterone. Okay. Do I have any issues potentially with my liver, my guard or going for a poo at least once a day and it being healthy and then you can start to support that area. So, you know, sometimes new clients didn't take form. There's a lot of signs of the liver, you know, not being particularly sluggish being sluggish. Then maybe not producing bio. They have an inability to digest fats. They eat foods of fat in it. They feel very sluggish bloated. They see, you know, fat in their stores. Maybe they have a very sensitive to alcohol or some other chemicals, blood sugar dysfunction, problems like energy crashes, etcetera. That could all be symptoms that the liver is kind of overburdened and a bit sluggish and then you can start to address the actual root cause of the PMS because all doctors typically do is go, but you've got PMS, it's because of high estrogen and or low progesterone. So let's just get rid of those and give you the pill, which again, doesn't fix the underlying problem.

Yeah. Yeah, that's that's what I meant earlier when I said, you know, taking birth control balances because that's how it's explained when doctors prescribe that balances and regulates, but just just doesn't. So yeah, sometimes in the second half of the cycle, we should have the progesterone higher than than the estrogen. And and we don't um let's talk about just tying back into the two main phase of the cycle and then the early phase, late phase in both, each individual phase. What should be occurring like if someone has a healthy menstrual cycle, what should be occurring and what should they be feeling? What are the things they're looking forward to kind of give them an indication that things are working well. Let's talk about that first. And then we'll come back to things that, you know, may uh the signs that something is not quite right what to look for and then how to address that. So, the question would actually kind of be the other way around. It would be not much and again, there is a genetic component of that.

But for the most part, the female clients, I've got that on the most calories that aren't over training that are really healthy. We may be addressed specific problems such as constipation or their gut or their liver. They don't know it as much. Um that's kind of how it how it should be. Sure there is always going to be, for example, an increase in metabolic rate in the little phase because we're not significant enough to speak about. Yeah, for sure. So this is like so when we have we've got this estrogen and progesterone as we've touched on. So we have both in both phases, but only a tiny bit progesterone in the first half. Right? So estrogen is the dominant hormone in Phase two Phase B. It should be progesterone should be dominant over estrogen and progesterone is cata bolic In nature, estrogen is anabolic. So progesterone breaks things down. Estrogen builds things up. So I think about, you know, estrogen, you go through puberty, girls start growing boobs, guys jump on a testosterone cycle. They don't manage their estrogen. Estrogen goes up in proportion to testosterone. You know, they start getting going for example.

Right? So that's how I remember that. So progesterone is now the dominant hormone in the second half of the cycle because that is cata bolic, it breaks tissue down. We do have potentially a higher risk of obviously not being able to recover from sufficient amounts of training in comparison to the first half of the cycle. So now you might do a little bit less volume and or you might do a little bit less training which is geared towards muscle damage. You might not spend as long in the centric phase or you might not use techniques which take you past failure in the central phase, for example, because progesterone is cata bolic, we do get that slight increase in metabolic rate which brings with it the increase in core body temperature, it's around 5 to 15% and how you might figure out what end of the spectrum, you sit out there if you don't have access to like a proper gaseous exchange chamber to measure your metabolic rate actually in each phase of the cycle, which obviously most people don't. You kind of asked the question, how much do you feel your hunger and appetites and and neat and energy levels change between cycles.

Obviously those other variables to that. But if we can kind of control those kind of like lifestyle and sleep and stress variables between both phases, then the big change which is left is the amount of progesterone. So if someone goes, yeah, in the second half of my cycle I do have less energy. I don't want to do as much neat. My hunger is higher. My cravings are higher. They probably sit on the higher end of that 5 to 15% range. That metabolic rate is increasing by and obviously if they're kind of like yeah, you know, it's too much of a difference. Maybe a couple of days perform a period, I'm a bit hungry or whatever. They're probably sitting on the on the lower end. So when it comes to then setting clients up with their calories, I typically do take that into account and give them slightly more calories in that in that duty or phase because you know, why not kind of probably already calculated for the most part, the maximum deficit that you want them in if they have a fat loss goal and subsequently um probably not gonna want to make that more and kind of set them up to fail by maybe making the hunger and cravings worse than they already are kind of in that new teal phase.

So sometimes for that whole story face be not to your face the second half. So yeah, I might have about 5 to 15% increase their, remember that? Obviously there were looking at at BMR. So not overall maintenance calories, just BMR which for most females is what? 11 to 1300. So take 10% for easy math because I'm not very good at mass if we just got in the middle of 10% Say a female kind of calculates based on her weight and age that her BMW is 1200 calories, you would have an extra 120 calories per day in the second half of that cycle. Um and then if the hunger and cravings and you know, fall under the symptoms of PMS are really bad, which kind of happens in that lately to your face at the end of the second half, the typically 235 days. That is when I might use a whole diet break when we come back up to maintenance calories. And there's some other benefits of that in terms of period icing nutrition which which we've touched on as well. But just to kind of offset the cravings because Say they have a 30 day cycle for easy maps.

I'd much rather than make 25 days of great progress, five days at maintenance, not getting fat, just maintenance calories. If they gain a little bit of way, it's super important for females to know that's not body fat. If you've done this right, it's just, we're now topping up glycogen stores a little bit, we're retaining a bit water, a bit more water. There's a bit more undigested waste. Um, So yeah, that's, that might have a tiny weight increase, but you're not going to gain body fat. But most importantly, what we've done is we've got through it, so to speak. And now we can damage exactly. We can rinse and repeat that monthly. There's a lot of females go into it. Their hunger cravings there on low calories already. You know, they're restricting foods using pure discipline and willpower. Yes, the training hard because they don't adjust their trainings that lately to your face, which again, some don't need to, but some should and whether it's before period starts or whether it's when the period starts, which also then has some of the same symptoms in the sense that progesterone and estrogen is still low, there hasn't started coming back up yet. But then you throw in the potential period traps or migraines or whatever that brings, then they really go, uh, fuck it, right.

And often massively binge. I'd much rather you had an extra 5, 600 calories per day for 356 days at maintenance and it was controlled versus trying to stick with your deficit and binging. Which probably results in more calories anyway. But also in arguably more importantly one forms a healthy relationship with food where you're in control and one food is controlling you and that isn't sustainable. So that yeah, I was gonna say that creates a psychological association. Yeah. And now you're starting problems. Yeah. And now you're starting to hate your menstrual cycle and present it instead of feeling empowered to work with it. So I kind of call that the again was 25 5 for example, if they had a 30 day cycle, 25 5 diet diet break strategy or whatever it whatever it might be. Um So that's kind of one example of something that you will notice, even if your cycle is healthy and happy as the progesterone does in the second half bring that increase in metabolic rate again, you probably won't recover quite as well. Um And what you'll actually find is what the progesterone does do those, it does increase vo two max a little bit so in people that are pushing the boundaries of that.

So more kind of like, you know, long distance endurance work which isn't the majority of people me and you train, but if you are doing that type of training, you might notice an improvement in the second half of the cycle for that most generally speaking, the rest of your performance from a strength coordination, intra set recovery. So recovery between sets and recovery between sessions, estrogen is going to be beneficial for that and subsequently that is going to be a bit better in the first half of the cycle. So you will still kind of notice that changed between performance a little bit and between hunger and appetite and cravings may be a little bit from the phases of the cycle. Again, how profound that's going to be is going to be slightly genetic, slightly what you you know, are you dieting versus are you at maintenance calories? Because that makes obviously a big difference to recovery. That makes a big difference to hunger and cravings. Um Again it's important to know that because a lot of kind of girls here this and they run away with it and it's like well europe maintenance calories then you know, your your performance is going to be better in your loo, teal phase.

In phase two it's probably going to be better than if you were dieting versus your performance in phase one. Even though your hormonal profile is better in Phase one versus Phase two for strength training and resistance training and muscle growth. The hormonal profile is only one snapshot of what affects strength and performance and recovery. Obviously calorie intake and that hormonal profile is not going to be optimized if you are in a calorie deficit and you are potentially nutrient deficient in some areas and you got to so many things that come into play here. So we need to take into account the that basically are you dieting or not, calorie intake as well as some other variables such as stress and sleep. You know, one girl might have a really stressful two weeks at work in the first half of the cycle and she's actually sleeping better and less stressed in the second half of the cycle, even though in theory that shouldn't be happening from a hormonal standpoint just that month. Her lifestyle happens to line up, you know, the other way around. So again, this is where girls idea, we kind of need to be their own scientists with it a little bit. Just understand that the menstrual cycle is one variable calorie intake.

Obviously, you know, quality of food, macros and micros, stress and sleep are kind of the other big ones which are going to affect mood, energy performance uh and recovery. Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome, man, that's a that's a really excellent way of wrapping that portion up. What I do want to move on to next is you just spoke about females being their own um I would say there are scientists. Yeah, let's talk about that. How what are some people are listening right now and they're like, all right, this seems really interesting. I want to dive into this and a lot more detail to figure out like what my body is doing. So then I can start planning my days, I can start planning my nutrition, I can start planning my training, I can start managing stress, optimizing hormones, working with my life physiology like what, where do we start with that? I'm sure there's a lot of things to unpack here. I'd say it's a relatively short answer for the most part, to be honest, as we kind of touched on already, it all starts with tracking it. You know, you can't manage and be reactive to and understand what you're not measuring can't change what you're not unaware of.

Yeah, exactly. So it starts with tracking, it said I would now recommend checking out the wild dot ai app. You can keep using flow or clue or anything that you're already using, but check that out as well for something which is a little bit more aimed at athletes. Again, athletes being anyone that trains on purpose. Um, and then consider if you can buy an aura ring to go with it, you know, this is about £200 which is a lot of money upfront, but you know, you get however many years and years and years of use out of it. It works out to be a very small, monthly, monthly cost and obviously the data is only as good as how consistently you do it actually. No, and the reality is a lot of quote unquote gen pop clients, they either don't want to and or forget or just make excuses for, you know, we've had about as low as before and coaches developments both of us have chatted and we've been teaching them about the importance of tracking that stuff and it is super important but we also have to then way up the cost of it, the cost being financial, of course buying it, but more what I mean by that is the cost from a stress standpoint of actually having to do it, remembering to do it and then also putting that information in for example my Excel check in sheet so if you can buy something which just takes it 24 7 and you don't need to do anything you don't need to put a bloody strange Yeah, exactly.

Or with Wild Ai as a coach, I cannot address decline and I can view that from the coaches dashboard, which again is why that's great and I'm going to get stuck into that up a bit more but before it would just be, but my client's assembly print screens off there or a ring or whatever it is that they're using the Elite HIV app. So now you can see again, a good amount of data it's tracked all of the time and especially if you think it with that app, you don't even need to put it anywhere and then what you can kind of do is all right, that's one half of it. That's that variable side of it and then the other variable is whatever it is, you want to improve right strength performance, managing your mood, whatever it might be. So then how do we do that? Obviously it's going to depend on, for example if it's training it's quite simple you look but you know you write your numbers down, You write the numbers down, you also make a bit of a note of how you feel in the session. Maybe some videos from a coordination standpoint as well. Some of the lifts are more complex and you re evaluate, you know, put time in your diary for 30 minutes, once a week, once every two weeks once a month to then just kind of re evaluate and draw these conclusions.

What we're trying to do is more mood kind of related stuff or appetite or cravings then that's just kind of journey in the morning or the end of the day or whatever. Just spend a few minutes kind of being like how do I feel? You know, and I kind of think for the most part it's as simple as that. Obviously more specific advanced cases, it sounds really simple for us and I mean like the simple way that I'd like to explain it to people is you're literally just connecting the dots, you're collecting this data and you're going all right. This is where I'm at in my cycle, this is how I slept, this is my hunger levels, this is how I feel, this is my energy levels, you know, like this is my mood, this is my attitude and you're paying attention to all of these different variables and then you're like putting it together so you've got a snapshot, so the next, the next month, If you're on whatever, let's use that 30 day cycle again, you're on day 17, alright. On day 17, last month I felt like this, these are all the variables that were going on day 17 this month, I felt like this, these are the variables okay, but a lot of those variables are a lot different, so I can't use that as an accurate comparison.

Alright. The next month, Alright, cool. Week, sorry, month one and month three, those variables are much more comparable. So now I've got some data to show what I'm typically going to be feeling like at that stage of my cycle. Exactly that. Yeah, so and that, you know, it allows you to set you up to win, you know, let's take a client, for example, that's training for personal trainer and the personal trainers going progressive overload. Did a great, that's that is correct. But for guys in theory we can probably progressively overload weekly, females might not be able to, so if they do notice a decrease in strength in that second half of the cycle and then, you know, you as the coach maybe getting a little bit annoyed, the clients getting annoyed or just, you know, your girl training yourself, you're getting a bit annoyed because you're not being your logbook is getting worse. You don't understand why that is gonna be very de motivating, Very, very de motivating. You know how I should be able to back squat there. So you know, I had an eight week goal of getting this on my dead lift and maybe that eight week mark just happens to be the last two weeks off the second half of your cycle and then you're like, oh well I took a massive step backwards here and that's really de motivating.

But if you kind of go okay, my progressive overload is going to happen two weeks of the month, the other two weeks it may, my numbers might kind of be the same. Maybe I'll, you know, upper rep or something, but it's, it may not happen and that's okay, then you're setting yourself up to win, right? You're minimizing that frustration. The other one as well as kind of the logbook and and the weight you use all the reps you get at the way the other big one, obvious one is scale weight. My female clients only weigh in once a month. Your lightest reading when water attention is at its lowest will typically be about 3-4 days after the period is finished. So that is when we weigh in and we'll keep it consistent. There is no point comparing a phase, first half of the cycle to a second half of the cycle reading. Especially your first way into your second way because how demoralizing is that you've been dieting hard for two weeks and then your scale weight has actually gone up and then obviously that doesn't reflect well on anyone and it's very demoralizing. I'm sure there's uh different times when you're going to make different suggestions, right? Like some people are weighing every day.

So in my opinion, like if they, one of those people, they weigh every day and you tell them are running away once a month, some people like that stress them, they get freaked out, right? So then maybe you go, hey, I still want you to weigh every day, but I want you to connect the dots with this other data that you're collecting. This is where you are in your cycle. This is how you feeling. These are those other variables we spoke about before. All right. I'm connect make an association with what's happening with my weight and these other variables. So then they can, it's like the same when I'm talking to people about the effect of carbohydrates and glycogen storage and water attention. You know, i if people, you know, talking about losing weight or gaining weight over the weekend, they're waiting on friday and then they weigh in on monday and like, oh man, I'm gonna kill on half heavy. It's like, well, it's not fat. Like did you eat a heap of carbohydrates or have a couple of years on the weekend? Yeah, I did. All right, well this is the case blah blah blah. And then again, you educate them on that stuff so they can connect the dots, which I mean education breeds compliance right? Like if people understand why they're doing something and they can understand what's happening with these scale weight fluctuations with all these other lifestyle factors and nutrition and all that type of stuff.

I think that's really powerful for sure. I 100% agree with that. The the specific example of the scale way is when I might kind of despite completely agreeing with that and that I would do that in other concepts. I still might not sometimes with the scale way the reason being is that if telling someone they are going to be weighing in once a month stresses them out, obviously you don't want to cause that stress, but I would argue that we need to fix why that stresses them out because that's not probably particularly healthy. So it's one of those sometimes won't even use the scale that it comes back to like where does that sit on the list of priorities of course. And then you have to, you know, that's why it's so complex. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I do have females that kind of push back against that and sometimes I have to say to them like give me your scale if there in person or give it if they're online, give it to a friend because if the temptation is there, then a you're depleting that willpower and discipline muscle every time you see the scale and you want to jump on it, be your potentially setting yourself up to fail if it doesn't kind of go in the right direction and that's demoralizing and by, by letting the client trying to say is by letting the client do it, you're potentially contradicting yourself a little bit in my opinion.

So what may be saying to them is, hey, the scale weight doesn't matter that much in general because we want body composition, not wait and because of this menstrual cycle stuff we've been chatting about. So that is what I'm telling you, but I'm not reinforcing it with my actions if I'm going. But yeah, sure you can still weigh in every day or once a week or whenever I feel like that kind of doesn't line up and then you're not as likely to get that adherence from the client because you're not being strong in that belief. If I'm not going to be in that fucking scale, they're going well, okay, he really means that there is zero importance on this and I need to then understand and change my beliefs around it if I'm telling you that, but not backing it up with not my actions, but the actions I'm asking you to do, then that's kind of maybe a little bit contradictory you're not going to change that belief that the scale really, really matters. So a lot of time I will be like, you're giving your scale to a friend because especially if we have to use a reverse diet phase to start, which is another thing that we're going to chat about a little bit what you need to focus on health first. And sometimes people are so unhealthy and their calorie intake is so low that they don't have the prerequisites to start dieting.

They're just setting them up to fail. And this is something that a lot more closures are doing now, which is amazing. And it's something that I teach in my courses, We might need to do that for four weeks or six or eight weeks first. Um but then you're kind of going, okay. The goal of this face goal of this phase story is to eat more calories, uh improve metabolism, get healthy, fix whatever specific fixed you're not broken your adapted fix whatever health issues you may have, which would vary person to person. Um But then you can't measure any of those outcomes with the scale. So then again, there's kind of a disconnect between what is the goal of the phase and the scale can actually measure your health or your metabolic rate improving by your final speeding up or whatever. So then sometimes it isn't the right tool for the phase because even though you're telling the client, okay, this isn't a weight loss phase for the first four or six or eight weeks, we need to get your healthy first, they'll be like, okay, I understand that, but they might not really understand it, you know, and then by jumping on the scale and not seeing it going down, you're just kind of reinforcing to them that they're not actually achieving the goal that they want to achieve.

So sometimes I might get a starting weight and then I'm like, okay, we're going to be reverse dieting for 4 to 8 weeks first. We need to get you healthy, You plateaus on 1400 calories. We physically can't go into a deficit. The math doesn't add up. We need to go up so we can come back down and therefore wait isn't going to go down, it's gonna stay about the same, so therefore we're just not going to use the scale, it's not the right tool. Get rid of it for a couple of months. Yeah, completely client pendant, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's, I mean, fuck man, this is something I've spoken about every time I've had other coaches on, we've had discussions around, you know, the different tools that we've used with clients like those, how we apply those tools are completely different to every single person, you know, depending on their mindset and they're already preconceived ideas and you know, we need to prioritize what we're going to go into battle about because we can't give our clients all of these tools and just expect them to follow that. We need to be able to adjust and go all right, cool.

I'm gonna let you jump on the scale every day, but I want you to track and make these connections and have these associations because it's very difficult to have that conversation with the client about, hey, like you've created like metabolic adaptation and you're operating on very low calories. Like we need to go through a reverse diet. We need to um, improve the health of the organism because the healthy organisms and adaptable organism, we need to go through that process first. And it's hard to explain to particularly female weight loss client that we need to go through that process and hey, you know, I know you want to lose weight, but for the next 345, maybe even six months depending on how you came into this process. Like we're not going to be losing weight. We need to go through this reverse diet process. We need to bump your calories up, your weight is going to stay the same. Or maybe it might even bump up a little bit Because maybe we're gonna change your training. Like yeah, exactly. We're gonna, we're gonna put a little bit of muscle on, we're gonna add some strength.

We're gonna improve health performance, functionality, etc, etc. Like it's hard to have those conversations with people. So you know, the point I was making is like I totally understand where you're coming from and like 100% agree with that man. But then for you know, this is more for the coaches listening as well is we need to find the tools that are going to work with our individual clients and we need to find, we need to find the things that were willing to sacrifice with our clients on or compromise with and find the things that our clients are willing to compromise on us with because we can't do everything at once unfortunately in a perfect world, absolute relation. Yeah. And like as you said, a reverse diet can take that many months but no one wants to do that. So the compromise for me is the duration. It's very rare. I'll start a client on a reverse diet which means when we're talking about four week timeframe is technically not even really a reversed but it was very rare. I'll do it for more than four weeks. Yeah. If you've lost your menstrual cycle, it's different. It's 56 months we're not dieting.

But if it's just optimizing the start point so that you have the runway ahead of you to actually achieve, we're gonna get you were going to get you to the start line first. Yeah, exactly. And one little tip for any coaches listening, how I kind of do this is I feel like some visuals can really help with this. So when I'm on the call with a new client or they're about to sign up and I'm explaining this, I often kind of do a screen share and I've got like a couple of things that are usually I've got, you probably see my little graphic where there's two people at the bottom of the mountain, one's got a huge backpack on one dozen. I've written goal physique at the top of the mountain and diet in journeys up it. Which one is going to have an easier time getting to the top. Which one's the person with a heavy backpack or might not even get there? And I'm like, say you spend three weeks taking that backpack off, you'll get up there faster, easier and more efficient than if you just try to climb it with the backpack on the backpack representing sluggish metabolism, digestive problems, low calorie intake, whatever it, whatever it might be. And yeah, that kind of makes sense. So I've kind of got a few visuals that I use, which help and then I bring it back to them. I'm like, okay, so how did you feel the last 17 times that you finished the diet and rebounded?

And I like sounds harsh. I really get them to like pay into that. Like you need to, if you're not in pain, you're not going to change. So I really delve into like how it's filled, how it's filled, how they felt every time they've kind of gone through the starvation diets or whatever and how that they've, you know, not enjoyed it and it's been difficult and how they've missed out social occasions and how they feel when they have rebounded. So then I really play into that that we need to do this differently. And then I'll just quickly explain the concept of light to them how metabolism slows down when you diet. You can actually grow new fat cells if rate of fat games fast enough. And they're like, I didn't know that. That's scary. And I'm like, yes, it is. Which means we need to do it right this time. And if they're still not on board, um, then they're not the client for me to be honest, because I'm not prepared to compromise your health and what I know you need to do, I will compromise on the duration or some aspects of it. But I'm not prepared to throw it out the window altogether. And the most of sometimes compromises depending on the client and depending on the phase of the cycle there in if they have one and a few other variables. Sometimes we will do a small diet first.

I'm like, okay. You know, you do understand this. You are prepared to reverse diet, but you just really don't like how you look and feel right now. Maybe depending on where they're at. They have four weeks of, I call it like runway, maybe you have four weeks of runway ahead of you. So sure, let's diet for four weeks, probably not gonna make anything worse than it already is or two weeks or three weeks. Just get you dropping the first few pounds, you're feeling better. You're looking better. Then we'll go into what we need to do. You just giving them the tools to provide buying. Yeah, exactly. This dude knows what he's talking about. Maybe I'll trust the Process, man. Yeah, exactly. And then, okay then we kind of go into the mini reverse diet to actually start the diet which again, we might compromise on duration. It might be 4-8 weeks. Now we've built The runway where they can actually get to the finish line, which is maybe 12 or 16 weeks as most people quit after free to six because they can't sustain it physiologically and psychologically. So now we've got the runway ahead of us. If the plane taking off represents achieving the goal. We've got enough runway ahead of us. They achieve the goal. Then we go into the full reverse diet to cement it.

So that's kind of how I go through that process is it's like some visuals to kind of help explain what's going on. I really home into like their pain points and get them to decide that they need to do it. It's always better if the client decides that's what they want to need versus you telling them. Then I'll explain metabolic adaptation and growing you fat cells to them quickly and simply, you know, then if really need that. I might even compromise on a mini car, mini diet first as well as compromising on the duration of the reverse diet. Because what often happens is people start reverse citing and they go, you know what they are. I feel so amazing. I've, you know, I've not got PMS anymore. I've not got this, I've not got that. Like I do still really want to lose weight, but would it be more advantageous for me to carry this phase on for a little bit? And then I might say yes or no to that depending on what is or isn't. And then actually they might go for a little bit longer anyway because they're like, wow, I really see every time I started to diet before, in the past it's been a struggle because I've been unhappy, unhealthy and low energy starting the diet. Now I feel great Using motivation using yeah.

And then after 4-6 weeks, like that's going on. It's like, boom, binge fucking you know, all or nothing wanted. So because people exactly that. Because people often don't remember how good they used to feel and therefore how bad they feel. Now. Often when we compromise on a four week reverse diet to get us started, often they go, I do want to lose weight, but can we just do this for a little bit longer. Okay. Do you know what? Actually a few more weeks would be really beneficial. Started to get calories up a bit. You know, maybe we've gone from 1500 to 1900 and I'm like that's great. But the second we go into a deficit, we're back to that number. Okay, great. At least it is now a deficit and you're losing weight versus plateau down that low number. But we're kind of back to square one. If we can get to 2300 calories, then we're starting a diet on 19 and now when we reverse engineer the calories for how many, how much food and how many of each macron, how many microbes you can get? We're now starting the diet on a number which is just sufficient and that makes a massive difference. It's still supporting health. Yes. Because this is why guys have an easier time dropping weight.

If girls are maintaining weight on 2000 calories per day, you remove that generic 500, you've got 1500 calories. Let's put that to one side for a second. Let's look at the minimum amount of protein fats and carbs we want in a day for their roles and functions and the new times that number by the 449 calories. Right? I've done a post on this. If anyone wants to kind of see like what numbers might be right for them? It does depend on your weight and your goal. Can you send us? Yeah, sure. Let's take a generic like 1 10 protein 50 fat and 1 60 card for example, You add those up. You know, that comes to roughly off the top of my head, like 1650 calories. So there's instantly this disconnect where we have to compromise on either the amount of fats or carbs which then presents problems in the long run to be on the amount of calories you want to lose weight because guys don't need to do that. Because if we're maintaining weight one again, a generic 2500 for example, Starting the diet on 2000. So not only do we have to compromise one macro, which then can present problems. Most people compromise carbs.

And what actually happens in females, which is kind of crazy. It's different too in guys and guys just calorie intake seems to regulate these things. But in females, the hypothalamus actually senses glucose availability to the brain. So in times of low glucose irrespective of calorie intake that can actually cause menstrual cycle dysfunction. There was one study where they put a bunch of girls on keto and I think basically all of them either ended up with some dysfunction like a regular periods, missing periods or they lost it all together and it wasn't they weren't even on low calories. It was I believe it was a deficit was a weight loss goal of the study. So it was a deficit but it wasn't crazy low, but there was no there was no glucose and obviously you end up eventually you end up in ketosis and that potentially then changes things because you're able to run off those ketones. But in the meantime that is very, very stressful because you're not adapted to using ketones yet or even producing them and you don't have what your organs primarily want for now, which obviously is glucose, which then, as you mentioned earlier then means that the body goes, we're not healthy ourselves, let alone reproducing and you lose that menstrual cycle.

So the macro that people typically yeah, drop is obviously cards because they think carbs are essential and it's like they're technically not, but they actually are from a menstrual cycle and health standpoint for fire oil production and of course the training and performance. So now, you know, girls training often goes like this and of course what does training do? It's the stimulus for muscle tissue and it's a calorie expenditure. So, you know, if your can't train as hard and or you're losing muscle tissue, the amount of calories you're burning per day goes down, which of course makes weight loss harder and creates metabolic adaptation. Yes. And there's a really awesome point on that metabolic adaptation females quickly with muscle tissue so it works a bit differently. And a lot of girls kind of don't know this when you finish a diet and your reverse dieting or you just finished a show and a diet and you're just eating everything and getting fat. If you're not actually strategically reverse dieting, but without meaning to your reverse dieting um they'll often be like I gained all the way back that I've lost, but I'm still, you know, I still have high hunger, I still have a lot of cravings like why is that?

And it's because and I don't think this has been 100% proven, but it's pretty certain that muscle tissue seems to send its own independent signal to the hypothalamus, irrespective of fat issue, which sends let's in. So it's not until you build back the muscle tissue that you've lost, that the things seemed to stabilize out hunger and cravings and this became really prominent to me when I was chatting to a lot of bikini girls, a lot of them that signed up for my course because they're also coaches and they're chatting to me about post show. And what I'd asked them to figure this out is I would say, did your metabolic rate kind of coming back to normal in terms of maintaining way and hunger and cravings coming down, did that line up with your logbook going back to pretty much the best it's ever been or certainly pre diet numbers like your strength um and ability to do more training volume, more sets and they go, yeah go cool, that's because that's when you build, that's when you build the muscle mass back that you've lost because obviously muscle tissue is a prerequisite for health. If you're not healthy, you're not going to build muscle tissue.

So the body is kind of going, okay, we haven't built the muscle tissue back that we've lost from this diet. So we're still in a stressed state and it's only when that muscle tissue level comes back to pre diet levels, that the body goes, okay, cool. We now know that we're good. Now we're healthy now we're responsive now because that's that's now the set point and your body goes, hey, this is this is now we're healthy. And then when health decreases it's not until you get back to those levels that your body is like, okay, cool. Now we're under stress. But once you get back to those levels, all right, cool. Now we're healthy, we can stop sending all these signals to So most people again, because most coaches are guys and most research is carried out. And guys, they think that just happens from body weight mostly vie elected right fat tissue. But actually in females, Yeah, muscle tissue seems to send its own independent kind of signal. And a lot of people were like, oh, you know, you gotta build muscle to increase metabolic rate or try and maintain it muscle tissue. Like purple needs like eight calories per day or something ridiculous. Like it's not really a meaningful amount. But where it is meaningful is if we lose it, that really tells the body were in this stress state slow down metabolism and it doesn't start coming back up until we build it back.

And the kind of the unfortunate irony there is, when are we less likely to train hard to train consistently and eat enough protein? It's after the diets finished, right, because you're bored and fed up whether that's training for a fight, whether that's training for a show, whether you are an everyday girl. You know, you've just been training hard. You've just been training when you don't want to train. You know, you've been pushing yourself hard when energy is low. You've just been eating a probably a fairly bland clean diet with lots of protein in it. So now all of a sudden the training frequency comes down, The volume comes down. The intensity potentially comes down and protein comes down. So we now have the situation where metabolism is slow. We're gaining lots of body fat because we're not creating the stimulus or the recovery to get back that muscle tissue, we just keep gaining body fat even more than what we than what we lost and people. But my weights the same. Like in theory, this should because some bikini girls know that like in theory, now, this should average out. My weight's back to where it was like, why isn't it? You haven't built that the muscle tissue that that you lost yet.

So making sure that when you finish the diet, you're still getting insufficient training, you're still trying to hit your PBS obviously, if you need to take a D load week or whatever, you know, of course do, that's not gonna be a problem. Obviously, that's often very necessary. But not throwing training out the window and protein and sleep and stress management out the window because you're fed up with doing all of that stuff once you finish the diet or training for the training for a fight, whatever it might be, it's super important because the quicker you can build that muscle tissue, the quicker metabolic rate comes up and the better for reasons we've been chatting about. Yeah, that kind of brings me to one of the things that I wrote down, which has come up a number of times throughout the conversation, it's like, you know, there's there's there's optimal ways to do things and this ideal ways to do things suitable to those individual circumstance. Like, the optimal way of doing things is like, all right, here's the study, here's the research, here's the scientific evidence like this is what we need to do, this is going to give you best results, but in reality, it doesn't work like that.

You know, we still need to have a look at what people are doing in their lives. We need to adjust these tools. So, you know, then we're looking at ideal? All right, what's going to be ideal for you right now, What are the ideal protocols that we can start adding in or, or taking out or whatever it might be? Um So my question is when we're looking at um let's say fighters, right? I work at Tiger muay thai work with professional fighters when we're looking at females that are competing and they have no input into when they fight. How can we look at giving them the we're not going to be able to optimize their hormones, right. Unless we can say, hey, they're gonna fight on this date, because this is where it falls on their cycle. How can we give them ideal protocols to be able to kind of manage that fight camp process. Let's say it's an eight week fight camp, How can we give them protocols that are going to put them in a good position to be able to perform at their best?

Yeah, So there is an answer to this, and I'm almost like, I almost don't want to give it because it's not something that I would genuinely wouldn't recommend. But the reality is a lot of girls do it and instead of acting like I don't have an answer for you, I kind of made just as well give it anyway. But yeah, you know, you manipulated with birth control. A lot of girls do it for stage athletes do it because the birth control kind of mimics that first half of the cycle in terms of obviously having um, you know, sufficient amounts of estrogen. So yeah, you know, a lot of girls, a lot of girls will manipulate that with birth control just a short period of time now, it probably isn't really going to be a problem doing that. Anything you do for such short periods of time is probably going to be fine. What would you say? A short period of time is, well, say, you know, the fight is one week into your one week into the second half of your cycle, you probably just need to take the birth control for long enough for it to kick in for you, which is going to depend on if you're having the mini pill or a blend or some stuff, which you just need to decide what was best for you.

So that's probably only gonna be a couple of weeks. You know, you could do it the whole flight camp if you wanted to never have the slight disadvantage of the second half of your cycle. But if you're like, I'm very much prepared to kind of, you know, if it's the cycle isn't, that doesn't make massive changes for you and you kind of don't want to do that doesn't line up with your values, then, you know, you just do your fire camp and you just change the training stimulus up a little bit, we can chat about how to do that in the second half of the cycle and it may be just the load. Yeah, you just, let's get that in one second and then you would just kind of like maybe use the birth control for two weeks leading up to the fight so that you're technically in the state of the first half of your cycle when actually you were technically in theory and you're in the second half of your cycle. So using it for a short period of time. I know a lot of girls that do that and the slight kind of things to take into account there is there's nothing healthy about getting on stage, just a bikini girl or getting into occasion fighting. So it's like in the ground scheme of what you're doing to your body is taking purpose, two weeks going to be a problem.

And that's what I mean, like optimal versus ideal. Like, like we want to be looking at health, but you know, health and performance don't necessarily go hand in hand. So I'm thinking like, let's look at health all year round and then all right, cool. Now we've, you know, we've signed a fight contract. We've got eight weeks for this spot. All right, now we're training for performance healthy about that Exactly, able foundation and the prerequisites of health to be able to do that. Exactly. That is something the bodybuilding world does so well in the fight world needs to learn, Yeah. Most fighters don't reverse diet. They're not tracking any health metrics. They often gain a lot of body fat and every time they do a fight camp it becomes harder for them to die it next time because of this metabolic adaptation thing. Whereas bodybuilders get better every show for the most part because they have a structured offseason or improvement season as some like to call it and that's partly due to the reverse dieting calories up, not gaining body fat, all of that stuff, which is so, so important. So I'm building that out of tiger bro. Yeah, awesome, I'm sure you are so and that's, that's really valuable. You know, every time you train for a fight it should become not easier, easier, isn't the right word, but the weight cut should not get harder, maybe even easier and you should be better, you become more refined the process.

Exactly metabolism is in a better place, not the worst place etcetera etcetera. When you look at good men's physique guys or good bikini girls, which you know, is bodybuilding. Most people when they think of bodybuilding think of bodybuilding category, but men's physique guys in mckinney gaza still bodybuilders, you know, they maybe do one or two shows a year and every year they are bigger and they're leaner, They're maybe not always healthier if they are running drugs, which is a big, if they are bigger and lena they are better for their sport every year because they have that amazing structure and consistency in the off season, which actually correctly said is where you lay the prerequisites in the foundation of health and optimizing things because when it is time to drop the hammer, eight week fight camp or 12 week contest prep, there's nothing healthy about that. So your start point dictates your endpoint. Um but yeah, bring it back to birth control, that is one thing. But obviously some, some females, you can consider if they, if they want to, if not, you just, you know, you just kinda have to roll with it, you know, and it is what it is, what it is. Yeah, let's go away everything up and then make the most educated decision that you can exactly, you know, if there's a huge variance for you between your aggression and your coordination and your skill and you really want to make it as a fighter, I think you'd be silly to take a fight in your second half of your cycle, in your in your in your face, you know?

So try it on birth control for two, I don't want to say, try consider trying, going on birth control for two weeks when, in theory, you would be in your loo to your face the second half of your cycle and see if it mimics the first half and see if you feel good and if it does, you know, don't ever do anything for the first time leading up to a fight, that's not a good idea. That was exactly what I was doing, run. Yeah, and if you're like, wow, actually, yeah, I feel much better on these two weeks on birth control than in when I'm normally in my little phase then then call, you know, that's a strategy for you. But again, some girls that really triggers anxiety and mood swings and it and it might not, so you definitely do a trial run um and know that that isn't gonna work for everyone, but it isn't is an idea. But again, you know, say you're fined 55 minute rounds, That's very good cardiovascular obviously other energy systems used within that 55 minute rounds is a long time to fight. We have slightly better aerobic capacity in that second half of the cycle. So you might be a little bit strong, a little bit less aggressive, a little bit less powerful maybe. But your cardio is probably going to actually be a little bit better in the second half of the cycle.

So maybe you're someone that is an absolute power puncture, you know? And uh your aggressive anyway and you feel great, your cardio is a bit of a problem. You might actually not actually a good thing for you to fight in that second half of the cycle. It depends on what your game plan is. Right, exactly like you want to push the pace. Yeah, take a little bit of power off and you know, push the pace and work a little bit more speed. Yeah, that could work out well for you and if it's noticeable for you, you know, some, some people might do, you know, let's equate just a 25 minute run on a treadmill 12% for example, you might do that in the first half of your cycle in the second half and not notice the difference, in which case then that point, you know, isn't relevant for, you might notice a big difference, but this is where it comes back to kind of the whole point of this, you know, podcast is, I'm sorry about that, I don't know who that is. The whole point of this podcast is it comes back to um being your own scientists, right? You've got to figure this stuff out for yourself and then having some sort of benchmark in your training, like knowing your six right max back scott, for example, knowing your 12 minute cooper time, Like knowing a few of these numbers is really, really important because then you can compare in phase one to phase two and you can kind of then start to make these obviously educated decisions based on what is what is best for you, awesome man made.

This has been an incredible conversation. Um I've learned a lot and hopefully the audience takes a lot on board as well. Um is there anything you wanna finish up with? No may, I think that's that's everything really, there's definitely a few other bits which I think would be valuable if you ever want to do another part, but I think that's great for what we wanted to get through today, so very much for having me on excellent foundational stuff. I really appreciate time. Super welcome bro. Thank you for coming over. Thank you brother. And there we have a great conversation with Leo Tyson of Tyson transformations, whose links I'll have in the show notes. This episode was brought to you by Big Yankee, which is an Australian made T. J. Listed female hormone optimization supplement. It is the sister company of be spunky, which is a male hormone optimization supplement that I'm affiliated with, that I've been taking for around about a year and a half and I absolutely love their product, you can go onto their website, Be yankee dot com dot au. That is B E G E N K I dot com dot au. This episode was also brought to you by Swiss A which is a proactive mental health program designed by veterans to schedule in eight pillars of health and wellness via an app on your phone.

Those eight pillars of health and wellness, our sleep nutrition, time management, discipline, fitness, personal growth, mindfulness and minimalism. I know a lot of people going through the lockdown process again. So a great way to give yourself some structure and some purpose in your life on a daily basis. That's it for me today guys, any five star ratings and reviews are much appreciated, much love peace.