Evidence-based body recomposition strategies for beginner, intermediate, and advanced lifters - Pt. 1 - With Dr. Eric Helms - Ep. 214

Yeah, I conceptualize these aspects as more of a spectrum as opposed to an on and off switch.

Yeah, I think for the surplus deficit especially, it's really important to think about it in a very granular way.

And like we're essentially in a fed or unfed state, you know, prandial, postprandial, if we want to use kind of more scientific terms.

And let's say you're in a 300 calorie deficit.

As far as your body is concerned, at some point, 20 minutes into eating and for the next couple hours, you're in a surplus.

Let's say your TDE is 2,600 calories, you're eating 2,400 calories, three 800-calorie meals.

You're absolutely going to be storing liver glycogen, storing muscle glycogen, and storing some amount of body fat when you're eating an 800-calorie meal if your total daily energy expenditure is 2,600. right now by the end of the day and after you slept for eight hours the total output is a 200 calorie deficit um and there's some time point a few hours after you ate where your body's going oh well i need to maintain blood glucose levels so we're going to tap into some of that glycogen um oh you're still moving and doing that i need not only that glycogen to to get tapped into and maintain these blood glucose levels we also got to liberate some fat tissue fat stores so it's this If you were to zoom all the way in and imagine like these cells as factories, you wouldn't know whether someone is in a modest deficit or surplus because you're just basically seeing forklifts coming in and out all the time.

Right.

And it's only until you back up and you see whether that cell is shrinking.

Do you know that if that factory is actually in a net, you know, gaining of boxes of whatever's in there or loss of boxes, if we want to stay with that analogy.

And, you know, if you're really close to the cell and someone is in total a state of total starvation.

Now, okay, sure.

Now you're just seeing stuff going out, cells shrinking.

Or if someone is on a very, very high-calorie, high-density diet and they're sedentary, there's very few boxes going out and they're dodging all the boxes coming in.

It's very obvious when someone is in those extreme states.

When someone is at maintenance-esque or small surplus or small deficit-esque, you're actually coming in and out of those states every time you eat and every time enough time has passed when you don't eat.

So you can imagine then, okay, well, what does that mean? Well, there's other events that are localized and happening.

Let's say you train three times a week.

Now you provide a resistance training stimulus.

And now for up to maybe as long as 48 hours or longer, depending upon how well trained you are.

Now there's this order that says, hey, we're going to give a priority lane.

You can cut the line for protein coming into these cells, muscle cells.

Right.

And if that happens to offset that, The amount of boxes going out and now they go, okay, well, let's take the box out of these other cells, fat cells.

Now you can actually see because of the protein and energy availability.