Podcast Transcription: 7 Science-Backed Strategies To Lose Fat Faster with Ted Ryce  

Ted Ryce: What’s up, my friend? And welcome back to the Legendary Life podcast. Today, I have an episode, it’s just going to be you and me, we’re going to go into some science-backed tips to lose fat faster, I want to tell you just briefly why I decided to do this, I get hit up every week by totally ridiculous people who want to come on this show. Most of the time, the claims are so ridiculous, the people are so silly with what they’re promoting that I just have a laugh and delete.

But this one person reached out to me, and I’m not going to name their name, because so many people are guilty of this, and I don’t want to single out this one person, because so many people are guilty of this. But they’re coming out with a new book, and they have this thing where you’re going to take this test, and it’s supposed to figure out what macros you should eat. And it’s all bullshit, right?

And I want to share with you my own spin on what you should be doing. And my competitive nature comes out—not just competitive in like, I want to be better than other people. But like, man, you know, this person, they have a huge following on YouTube—and again, who they are isn’t important because this could be so many people—huge following on YouTube, and hundreds of thousands, way more people subscribed on YouTube than listen to my show.

And I’m like, I get competitive, because I feel like it doesn’t need to be that way. You don’t need to put out incorrect information or to make things too… I mean, I’m in the marketing too, and I want to succeed as a business too. But there’s just not a necessity to make up stuff that just isn’t true. Some of the things that I’m going to do, I’m going to put a cool name on some of the approaches I have, I’m going to name them. But I’m not going to come up with things that aren’t true.

So, let’s get into things that are true. How about that? Sound good? All right, “7 Science Backed Tips to Lose Fat Fast.” And I just had to say that, because I want you to know what I believe in and where I come from. And I want to shoot it straight to you. I want you to understand where I’m coming from on this show, and what I do. A lot of the things that I do for you, sometimes you won’t ever notice because I keep a lot of people off this podcast, right?

I really want to have high level conversations that move the needle in a meaningful way, and so on, coming on here and me arguing with them, because it’s like, what you’re saying isn’t true. I just don’t know how helpful that would be. If I’m wrong, send me an email, or hit me up on Twitter, and I’m open to it. But I just don’t find value in that.

So, without further ado, let’s get into some things that are true. So, here’s what I’ve got to tell you about how to lose fat faster.

Number one, know your numbers. What does that mean? Well, a client of mine who’s lost 20 pounds in about six weeks, told me this. And I mean, Trevor, if you’re listening, just so proud of you.

And actually Julie, his wife is the one who listens to the podcast regularly. Julie got her husband, Trevor to sign up, and Trevor is looking lean like he hasn’t in a long time. And he was already in good shape. And Trevor told me something that stood out to me. He told me, “Ted, when you said to me that the whole calorie thing and this is like a budget, I got it. That made me understand things.”

And that’s what I would tell you. People hate the idea of tracking their nutrition. And I get that. I’m not asking you to like it. I’m not telling you it’s fun, either. I’m just telling you it works. But one thing that I ask clients, or people actually, “Oh, I hate tracking.” And we can talk about if you’ve tracked before—I’ll talk a little bit about that—If you’ve tracked before, and you didn’t get good results, I’m going to talk briefly about that.

But one thing I asked people I’m like, well, listen, let’s say I’m someone you love. Let’s say I’m your brother-in-law, and I come to you and I say, “I don’t know what it is I go to work, I get paid. But for some reason, I just don’t have money at the end of the month. It’s too much month at the end of the money.

What would you tell that person if someone came to you and asked you that? Would you say well, stop buying your $5 Coffee? It’s like, “well, I’m not even drinking Starbucks,” or whatever. No, what you would tell them is, hey, let’s look at your statements. Let’s look at where you’re spending your money. Let’s look at how much money that’s coming in. And then we can come up with a plan for you.

And that’s what I do for my clients. It’s more like accounting, food accounting. And I’ll tell you this: the clients who do well with numbers like Trevor or so many of my other entrepreneur and executive clients, they’re great with numbers. They crushed this. They crush it because this is more about numbers. It’s not about carbs, it’s not about fat. All the nonsense that other influencers have you chasing, trying to worry about your hormones and complicated, you know, remove the toxins out of your bathroom and dish soap.

Look, I’m not telling you not to do that. But if we’re talking about fat loss, the number one reason why people are overweight or obese or have too much fat on them is this: there’s only one reason and one reason only and ever, you eat more calories than you burn, period. There is no argument here. If you want to argue with me, I’m not going to argue with you because I already know this is true. But you can test this.

Okay, you can test this, go do the Masters Cleanse, go do the potato hack. Do you think carbs are making you fat? Go do the potato hack. Let’s not get into an intellectual discussion. Put this to the test. I can’t stand talk. Talk is cheap. Go do it! Gosh, just Google starvation. There’s nobody who is “Oh, I eat so little that my metabolism has slowed down?”

Look, I don’t want to condescend to you because I used to believe this stuff. But what I want to tell you is this: that’s just nonsense that rich countries come up with to justify how much food they eat, how unhealthy their habits are.

I’ve been to Cambodia people died of starvation during COVID. And I’m not laughing at that. I’m laughing at how people in the West or in rich countries specifically, just have no concept of this.

They think, oh, the reason I’m obese is because I eat so little that my metabolism has slowed down. Look, there’s a little bit of truth in that; some people have an adaptive metabolism. And look, and again, I’m not coming down on you if you believe this, or you still believe this. I’m just telling you, it’s wrong. And it’s so, so wrong. If you have too much fat on you, the number one thing is you’re eating too many calories. That’s it.

“Oh, but I hardly eat at all.” We’re going to talk a little bit about why that’s not true in a second, okay, because the number of calories you eat doesn’t affect your appetite, meaning there’s no like, “Oh, eat a ton of calories so I’m satiated. I’m not hungry.” There’s no connection there.

And the reason, in fact, there’s the opposite. High calorie foods usually don’t do much for your appetite. I’ll give you an example. Ice cream. I don’t care how much ice cream you give me; it’s going to disappear within 24 hours, 48 at the max, okay, 24 to 48 hours. If it’s a half a gallon of ice cream, that is going to disappear, it’s going to disappear fast. That’s my crack . For other people, it might be other things. Maybe for you, it’s potato chips or pizza.

And a pint of ice cream, your average pint of something delicious—We’re not talking about the low-calorie ice cream or the halo top or any of that nonsense. We’re talking about Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough. We’re talking about 1000, 1100, 1200 calories per pint. I don’t know about you. But if I start eating part of a pint, if I buy a pint of ice cream, that’s gone within hours.

The way to get yourself out of the fat loss craziness is to know your numbers. I know tracking is a pain in the butt, but it’s the way to freedom. Why? Because you start to learn what you’re doing. Have you ever, for example, had a recurring charge on your credit card and you didn’t realize it until you went and looked? Then you’re like, “I’ve got to get rid of that $60 charge, that $97 charge for that thing I signed up for a long time ago and I’m still being charged?”

Well, that’s what’s happening with your nutrition. You think your appetite is the thing that should dictate how much you eat. And we’ll talk a little bit later. Again, like I said earlier on why that’s not true. But tracking is the way to understand how much— it’s like, oh, I’m spending my calories on this. I’m spending my calories on that. And again, there’s no judgement here.

By the way, I ate… I don’t know… I’m in Portugal right now, I forget the name of the pastry I ate, but I ate a pastry today. Queijada, that’s what it was, a queijada, probably 300 calories. Was I hungry afterward? You bet! I had to come home and eat like, man, I had to eat some egg whites and some other things to calm my hunger down because that queijada, it just sometimes...

That’s why intermittent fasting is so popular with some folks because sometimes it’s easier to not to eat anything at all than it is to eat something like a pastry and then control that and control your hunger afterward.

So, I want to say this to you as well, next time that you’re trying to eat healthy. Let’s say that you’re out at a restaurant and you’re like, “You know, I’m going to be super good today, I’m going to have a salad.”

Try to look at the calories in the salad. You’ll be surprised because restaurant salads, they’re like, 600 to 1000 calories. Go look up salads at… what is it called again? The Cheesecake Factory, if you’re in the US, of course. Or another popular chain, if you’re in another country. Go look at the calories in the salad, go look at a restaurant that has the calories. The salads in the restaurants, they are 400, 500, 600, 800, 1,000 calories, you’re not doing yourself any favor.

But what do we do, we don’t pay attention to what we eat at home, and then when we’re out, we try to eat the salad, we think we’re doing a great job. We have the soup and the salad, and the soup is full of cream and fat, low protein. And so, the salad, it’s just 800 calories, mostly of all the world, cheese. Start to get a hold on what’s going on here. Because if you don’t, you’re never going to get out of the trap.

And you don’t have to track forever, just until you learn what you need to, until you learn, “Oh, well that’s about that many calories.” It becomes unconscious. I don’t think about this stuff. Now I’m tracking because I want to get lean. And when I say lean, I mean veins on my abs lean, like it was in 2020. I’m committed to doing it, even though I’m having a really hard time in Portugal because this place is all about food, wine, and history. Love the history, don’t really drink wine, but the food, you know, history doesn’t have calories, food does.

Anyway, number two, lift weights. Why lifting weights? Well, lifting weights helps you build muscle. Actually, get this— and I want you to pay special attention when I’m about to. This is something that might blow your mind a little bit. Lifting weights actually helps you lose less weight? Lose less weight? Yes, lifting weights helps you lose less weight. And that’s a good thing.

Because now you might be freaking out and say, “Oh my gosh, helps you lose less weight? I don’t want any help with that. That’s not helping at all.” Ah! And that is why you fail. That was my like, want to be Yoda impression there, which wasn’t so good. But we’re going to keep moving. What I mean by this is a 200-pound body burns more calories per day than 180-pound body.

It doesn’t matter how much weight is muscle or fat or the body fat percentage, a 250-pound body burns more calories at rest, than a 225-pound body. If you weigh more, you burn more calories. This is so simple. A Mack truck is at a stoplight along with a Chevy sedan, or a BMW, it doesn’t matter, who’s burning more energy at idle? Of course, the Mack Truck. Why? It has more moving parts.

Fat is a metabolic tissue, folks, it costs energy. Nothing is for free. When they say we’re going to get rid of all the student debt, someone still needs to pay for that. There’s never nothing for something. And certainly, it takes energy to maintain fat mass. You don’t believe me? Go look up the Maduro diet in Venezuela. People are losing weight there because there’s not enough food. Maybe the same thing is going to happen in Ukraine.

So, look, you have to have food in order to maintain the body fat. So, on a slight tangent there. Lifting weights helps you lose less weight. What does that mean? Well, I’ll give you a more concrete example. I had a client who lost four pounds in two months. Now four pounds in two months? That’s not good progress, if your sole metric is the weight on the scale. However, I’m an expert. I had my client take a DEXA scan.

So, what we saw on the DEXA scan, but yes, there was a net change of four pounds lost on the scale, but he actually lost 10 pounds of fat and gained six pounds of muscle. Hence, the change was only four pounds. This is crucial, because you actually don’t want to lose as much weight as you think. You want to real eye opener, Google “Woman Same Weight,” body fat, right? And you’ll see all these women who I think the women…

I don’t know if there’s an article on men, but with women you’ll see there’s woman 150 pounds and she weighs 150 pounds in the second photo and you see the distribution of muscle and fat is way different. So, the body fat percentage is way different, but the weight is the same. Lifting weights helps you do that.

Lifting weights also helps you regulate your appetite. So, all exercise actually helps you regulate your appetite. But lifting weights in particular is the best form of exercise to do, because it helps you keep your muscle or build muscle.

And so, I just wanted to squeeze this tip in because people have this misconception that, “Oh, I get hungrier as I exercise more. “Actually, that’s not true. From the best evidence that we have, sedentary people eat just as many calories as very active people, except they’re not burning them off. So, exercise, being active is crucial to lowering your hunger levels. So, lifting weights is the best form of exercise for fat loss.

Tip number three, prioritize protein. And there’s three main reasons here. Protein decreases your hunger, hormone, ghrelin. People talk about weight loss and hormones, but what they usually talk about is estrogen or progesterone for women, and testosterone of course for men, but really, the hormones that are involved in fat loss are ghrelin and leptin.

And leptin is your satiety hormone. Ghrelin is your hunger hormone. You know when you’re hungry and your stomach crumbles and you’re like, “Ooh, what causes that?” Well, now you know, it’s ghrelin. Protein also helps you maintain or build muscle. So, the number one thing that helps you build muscle is lifting weights. That’s why it came second, as far as tips.

Protein helps with that. How do we know? Well, there’s a bunch of studies done in this. I’m not going to take the time to recite them now. I’ve done that many times in the past, I don’t know if any of you go read the article, or read up on this studies that I cite anyway, but know that this has been tested.

Protein also has a higher thermic effect of feeding than carbs or fat. What does that mean? This one can be a little bit confusing. In fact, I had a client, who was part of my coaching group asked me about this. She’s like, “I’m eating almost the same calories as I did before.” I said, “Yeah, that’s true.” She’s like, “well, how is this different than what I was doing?” And she asked it in a much nicer way than that, but…Shout out to you, Jesse! But she brought up a great question, what’s the difference here?

I said, “Well, in part, the difference is protein has a higher thermic effect of feeding. Digestion, in other words, costs energy, it costs energy to digest your food. And protein costs more energy than carbs or fat to digest. And it’s not by a small amount. We’re talking about if you’re eating a regular meal, about 10%, a regular mixed macronutrient meal, so roughly the same amount of carbs, fat and protein, about 10%.

But if we’re talking about a meal that has more protein, we’re talking about 15, 20, all the way up to 30%. That’s a big deal. So, protein doesn’t affect the calories coming in, the calories coming in are the same. If you eat, let’s say 500 grams of protein, let’s just say you eat 500 grams of protein, that’s a lot of protein. No, I’m sorry, 500 calories of protein. But the energy going out of that is less because of this high thermic effect of feeding. I hope that was clear.

Four, eat hunger-fighting foods. In my 23 years helping entrepreneurs and executives lose fat—and even more personally, on my own journey to master this and master this in hard environments. I travel the world, folks, how do I not get fat around all this delicious food? Haven’t you asked yourself that? How can I still see my abs? Even though I’ve been in like, Mexico, Colombia, Portugal, Scottsdale. San Antonio was hard too, my cousin’s house. All the bacon and brisket over there.

And I’ll tell you this: it’s not just enough to talk about carbs and fat and it’s not even enough to say just eat whole foods. You have to know that there are certain foods that fight hunger, and certain foods that facilitate hunger. There are certain foods that make you feel full and there are certain foods that trigger your appetite.

For example, I love cashews, do you? They’re delicious, and they’re healthy for you. There’s a ton of research on nuts and the health benefits of eating nuts. But guess what, if you give me a small bag, or a big bag of cashews, I’m going to eat the whole thing.

In fact, this just happened. In fact, in fact, in fact, one thing I’ve been cooking again—I haven’t had great Thai food in a while, even though I’ve eaten at a couple of Thai restaurants and I’m actually quite good cooking a few Thai dishes, one of them being cashew chicken.

If you ever come to my house and I show off my cooking skills, that’s what I’m making. And I had some cashews that I was saving for it. But I opened the bag just thinking I would have a couple and guess what, the whole bag disappeared and guess how many calories were in the bag? About 400 calories. How hungry was I after that 400 calories of nuts? I had to go and eat again. It didn’t help at all.

And so even though that’s— because that’s an unusual one. But it’s something we all know. We all if you’re like me, you’re like, “Oh, nuts are healthy, let’s go eat nuts,” except you then you eat 400 calories of nuts and you’re like, “Damn, okay, I’m still hungry.” Ice cream and donuts and cookies, that’s a bit more obvious, potato chips and pizza, that’s a bit more obvious. But even something as healthy for you as nuts, can be a challenge.

That’s why I came up with my unique method that I teach my clients to handle their tummy grumbles whenever the hunger starts acting up. If you don’t learn how to handle your hunger through food selection, and understanding how it works in general, you’re not going to win the fat loss game. This is one of the things I coach my clients on the most. Now, I go into detail with my clients in my coaching program and my one-on-one coaching.

But the easiest advice I can give you is to Google the Satiety Index and click on images, then choose the one that’s easiest to read and look it over. I’ve talked about the Satiety Index many times in the past. If this is your first time hearing about this, click pause right now on the episode and go Google search the Satiety Index and find the image, choose the one that’s easiest to read and bring it up and then come back.

Cool. Are you back now? Well, let’s talk a little bit about this. So, as you can see on the Satiety Index, and I’m not even looking at it, I’ve seen it so many times, I have a lot of it memorized. You can see that protein at the top, fats, at least the version I have, fats, then carbohydrates, then refined carbohydrates, then hyper palatable foods. What’s the first thing that stands out to you about this?

Well, I’ll tell you what stands out for me, first of all, boiled potatoes score off the charts. It’s a boiled potato, folks. Another thing that stands out is croissants are the worst—worst in terms of what scored on the study. And by the way, this something that my clients asked the other day, the bar graph, as it’s usually depicted, you know, what is it? Hunger units? I don’t know what the scale is. But just understand that the longer the graph is, the bigger the graph is, the more satiety that food gives you.

That’s all you need to understand by looking at this. So, let’s return to some of the things, right? Well, another thing is look at boiled potatoes, and then look at French fries, and then look at potato chips.

So, we took the potato we boiled it very satiating. Of course, he wants to eat a bunch of boiled potatoes super filling. But what about French fries? I don’t know about you, but I can toss back some French fries.

Actually, I don’t love them, unless they’re really well done. So, it’s lower on satiety because what are French fries? Are those carbs, by the way? No, they’re hyper palatable foods. What does hyper palatable mean? It means it’s refined. It’s a combination of carbs and fat. That, folks, is where all the low carb gurus are doing you a disservice, by calling French fries carbs. It ain’t carbs. It’s carbs cooked in fat. You’re getting as many calories from fat as you are from the carbs. If not more, especially in the case of something like ice cream.

And I said calories, not the same grams, because carbs are four calories per gram, fats are nine. Stay with me, folks. These are the details. The devils in the details. The experts, they know these details.

So, I’m going to stop now on the Satiety Index and move on but just understand, start to choose foods off the Satiety Index, or even just think about some of the foods that you choose that are on the Satiety Index and think about how you react to those foods in terms of how do you feel afterward? How is your hunger afterward?

Next tip, tip number five is stay hydrated. And with that said, I’m going to take a sip of water here. Good reminder. I even need it. Portugal’s quite cold right now and I’m not that motivated to drink water. When I’m in hot environments, I’m like I can’t get enough. But here, my pee is super yellow. And I’m like, “Oh, I haven’t drank enough water.” And I need less water, of course, because it’s quite cold, at least for me, probably not for you if you’re in Canada or New York or Chicago, but for me, it’s quite cold.

So anyway, stay hydrated. What does hydration do? Well, it decreases stress, it hydrates your body. Water is fundamental to your body; don’t need to tell you that. Learned that in grade school, I’m sure. But still, if your pee is yellow, you need to go drink some water. And a lot of people –or I’ll say it like this. One of the ways we get waters through food. So, if you’re dehydrated, there’s this idea...

And this has happened to me. And I want to ask you, does this sound familiar for you? There’s this idea that if you’re not drinking enough water, you can have these thirst signals that get interpreted as hunger signals. And if that’s the case, then you end up eating more, but what you’re really trying to satisfy is not hunger, but hydration. I’m going to take another sip of water based on that.

You need about three to four liters a day, or three to four quarts a day. Sorry, I’ve been in the metric system for a bit. So, three to four quarts a day. Yep, that’s right. It’s close to a gallon of water. But the best way to see if you’re having enough, because we get water from food, like I just said, is to look at your pee, is it yellow? Well, then you need to go drink. If it’s super yellow, then you needed a drink hours ago, right? If it’s very, very light yellow…

And by the way, when I say light yellow, I should say this, the P charts—If you’ve ever seen the hydration P charts, they’re assuming that you’re peeing in a cup. Probably not something you do throughout the day, but just know that it’s going to get diluted even more when you pee into a toilet, which has a lot more water. Yes, kind of a disgusting thing to talk about, but these are the things we need to talk about if you’re going to do the right things and have the right information. So, think about that.

So, if you’re really turning the toilet water yellow, then you need…You’re probably just drinking coffee in the morning, like three cups of coffee in the morning and drinking wine at night and having zero water during the day. This may be a Diet Coke or two. And hey, listen, like I said, I struggle with this myself. So, stay hydrated, it’s going to help you regulate your hunger—also help you perform better at the gym, also help you to avoid fatigue. Hydration is a killer of productivity.

Number six, sleep well. Well, we know that sleep has an influence on eating behaviors. If you sleep less than seven hours, in fact, your brain just doesn’t function as well. Your neurons start to slow down, which decreases reaction time, decision making skills and reasoning abilities. What happens? All of a sudden, the idea: “should I eat this pastry for dessert?” It’s like, “Hmm, no.” Well, why not though, right? You end up being making poor decisions.

And on top of just the poor decision-making ability, sleep loss changes the timing and release of appetite-controlling hormones. So, during sleep deprivation, ghrelin we’ve already talked about that when talking about protein, gets released in larger amounts. And also, we didn’t talk about leptin, I just mentioned it briefly. But leptin which is secreted by your fat cells, which is a hormone secreted by your fat cells, suppresses your appetite, but less leptin gets released when you’re sleep deprived.

So, you’re combating hormonal hunger here. That is not a winning…You could do it, but it’s not…. I mean, you’re going to lose that battle, eventually. And there’s another thing that happens when you lose sleep. Sleep affects the reward center of your brain, kind of like how marijuana does—kind of like how marijuana gives you the munchies. I don’t know what you’re talking about Ted. Mm-hmm.

Well, you might, you may not. But actually, alcohol seems to do the same thing. This is why you want to… I don’t know about you, but when I used to do the club thing in my 20s, I would go out and I’d be drinking a lot and what do you eat after going out to the bar or the club? Well, you go to the pizza joint, of course. That’s what I used to do.

So anyway, the reward center of your brain gets sensitized, right? You don’t smoke some weed or come back from the bar and say, “Hey, you know what I’m in the mood for? Ah, yeah, baby kale salad with shredded carrots and a light vinegar.” No, you want ice cream or you want pizza, or you want a hamburger. That’s not you making those decisions. That’s your reward center being compromised by the lack of sleep, and yeah, your behavior getting hijacked. And you think you just love food, right? So that’s what happens.

Number seven, manage your stress. So, one of the biggest things I talk about to clients, when I give clients the strategies that I’ve shared with you, I show them exactly what to do. I make this so easy for my clients. And guess what, I don’t want to say most of my clients, but I would say over half my clients, go and crush it. And then there’s those folks that even with the easiest best strategies, they have a hard time. And in this case, it has to do with stress.

I’ve got a client right now, shout out to you, Glenn. Glenn has just sold his business. But he is also in a situation where he’s got to go through some things that are a little bit stressful to until he fully exits the business. He sold it, but there’s… you know, I don’t know the details of the deal, but there’s some things going on, that are quite stressful. And as a result, we’ve had to find ways of managing his stress, because it’s just going to be it takes some time for him to go through this process of selling and completely exiting the business.

So, in a situation like that, you’ve got to manage your stress. And I’ve shared with you my own challenges when I was… I mean, I’ve had a lot of challenges with emotional eating my life. It took me forever to realize it, because nobody said anything to me. Even though I was pre -diabetic blood sugar levels. People like, “Oh, you look great.” It’s like, “Yeah, but I’m not healthy and I feel like crap.” “No, but you know, you’re not as fat as me.”

All right, that wasn’t helpful. All right, anyway. And some people actually did want to say some things to me, but just didn’t.

So, the point is, after, you know, when I was struggling, when my dad was sick, and he eventually died, as I’ve shared many times, I was hitting the key lime pie. And I was tracking my calories that time, by the way. It was very interesting, because I was tracking my calories. I saw my calories were a lot higher than I wanted.

And certainly, that helped me to avoid putting on a lot of weight because I saw what was going on. But what was kind of weird, it’s like I had enough control over myself to track my calories. But I didn’t have enough control over myself to lower my calories. My appetite was just out of control, due to stress. And it took me a while to get myself back in a good place where my stress was low enough so that I could start this journey again.

And even throughout 2021, I feel like I finally started back on the path. I’ve gone up and down on 2021, even though I’ve tracked throughout most of the year. And listen, I was in excellent shape in 2019. Even though I had some challenges in 2019, I was in Thailand, got Dengue fever, I was working with a coach, got Dengue fever during that experience working with him. But by the end of 2019, I was shredded. And that’s what you see, the results of that journey that working with a coach, that’s what you see on the thumbnail of this podcast.

So, managing your stress is huge. I had a very good life at the end of 2019. My business was starting to go really well, it was just getting better. I wasn’t even sleeping that much. You know, we just talked about sleep. I believe that stress and managing your stress is even more fundamental. As long as we’re not talking about—well, I’m only sleeping three hours a night. I was probably averaging five and a half hours a night in Bangkok. But I was having such a good time. I was training Muay Thai.

And the only reason I wasn’t sleeping is because day is night and night is day. All my clients are in the United States, mostly in the United States, some in Europe. And just the hours were super wacky. So, I just ended up not sleeping that well. But I felt so good about my life, I was able to get in shape. And I stopped tracking and I was in Colombia. From 2019, I ended up in Colombia at the beginning of the year.

And I was able to just track for a few days because the food environment from Thailand to Colombia, as you can imagine, changed drastically, my food choices and options changed drastically. So, I tracked just to give myself an idea of what was in the foods I was eating. And then I just stopped tracking. I was like, “Okay, I got this,”

But then when my dad got sick, boom, I was even tracking all the time and I could see how many calories I was eating, but I just couldn’t lower them, my appetite would just override it. And hey, I’m not one to fight that much, right? Because that would just cause me more stress.

So, I found my way through it, but I went backwards quite a bit. Not a lot of bit. I mean, my abs didn’t completely disappear or anything like that I didn’t become overweight, but I became more normal instead of ripped. And that was not what I was shooting for. That’s not what I wanted. I’m in this business. And honestly, it’s not even though I feel the pressure—I do feel some pressure to show up in a certain way, and to be in a certain level of physical fitness.

But if I’m really honest with you, when I’m lean, I feel amazing. I feel much more amazing than I do right now. And that’s why I’m working to get back to that. Don’t worry, I’ll bother you with photos and things when that time arrives. I’m getting there, I’m getting there.

But manage your stress. And as I share this story, I’m sharing this story not to just sort of tell you like, hey, this is me and this is only about me. I share this story with you so that you can see your life, your stress in this story.

So, what is coming up for you, when I talk about this? What’s coming up with you in general, when we talk about all of these?

And just to recap the 7 science-backed tips. Number one is: know your numbers. This is an accounting issue, folks. Once you start looking at it that way, it will give you tremendous power. Number two, lift weights. It’s okay if you want to do cardio on off days, in fact, that might help you build more muscle, but your workouts should focus around lifting weights.

Number three, prioritize protein. Again, this is for everyone, it doesn’t matter—I’m a woman, I’m a man, I’m 60 years old, I’m 32 years old, it doesn’t matter, these all work. Prioritize protein. Number four, hunger-fighting foods. Number five, stay hydrated so that thirst mechanism doesn’t get hijacked or get confused rather and you think that you need to eat more food, when in reality, you need to drink a glass of water.\

Number six, sleep well, or else you’ll get the munchies without smoking any weed or drinking any alcohol at all. And number seven is manage your stress. This is the biggest one. In fact, most sleep problems, although they could be caused by other things like a health issue. Or just trying to stay up and watch that, you know, one episode comes to an end on Netflix and it just keeps going so you keep staying up late.

But stress is usually the cause of most of the sleep issues that I see with my clients. Not saying that’s your case, just telling you about the clients that I work with. So those are the 7 science-backed tips on how to lose fat faster.

Hope you enjoyed this episode, and speak to you on Friday.