What's up, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj, SeanNal.com, RealScienceAthletics.com, and this is a really common message I receive
where someone has gone off track with their diet for a day, or a few days, or maybe even
for a week, and now, they're all stressed out about it because their weight on the scale
jumped up by maybe two, three, four, five pounds or more over a very short time.
Now, they feel like they've erased a big chunk of the progress they've made and that they've
ruined their diet and put on a bunch of fat overnight.
Now, before I lay out the reasons why this isn't something that you should get overly
stressed out about, if you are new to the channel here and you find this video helpful,
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Here's the thing.
If you want to improve your body composition, whether you're trying to lean down and lose
fat or bulk up and gain muscle, yes, you do need to be consistent with your diet in the
overall picture.
That means either maintaining a proper calorie deficit for fat loss or a calorie surplus
for bulking.
It means landing roughly in the proper macronutrient ranges with protein being the most important,
and it means basing the bulk of your diet around 80 to 90% on nutrient-dense, minimally-processed
whole foods.
Consistent in the overall picture is the key term there, and you have to keep in mind that
this is not going to be perfect on a day-to-day basis.
Okay?
You're going to have days or even weeks where things go a bit off track and where your calories
go higher than normal or even lower than normal, which could be due to all kinds of different
reasons.
This happens to everyone from time to time, but what's important to understand is that
there's nothing inherently special about one day or 24 hours as a unit of time.
It's just the way we tend to categorize things because of our sleeping and our waking cycles.
What matters much more than what you do during any single day is what you're doing on average
over the longer term.
Nothing really significant is going to happen over the course of one day when it comes to
your overall levels of fat mass or muscle mass.
If you do happen to gain a few pounds after going off track with your diet in the shorter
term, it's very important that you recognize that most of that extra weight on a scale
is not from actual gains and body fat, but instead, it's from increases in water weight
because of the higher amounts of sodium and carbs that you've eaten.
You could be storing a bit of extra glycogen, and it's just from having more food volume
in your in general.
I mean, if you eat a thousand grams of extra food in comparison to what you normally have,
which is not that hard to do, that's over two pounds of extra weight that you've put
into your body right there, which is, of course, going to reflect on the scale.
A small amount of your weight gain could be from fat, depending on how many calories you
ate and for how long, but keep in mind that it takes about 3,500 extra calories above
your maintenance level just to gain one single pound of fat.
In order to gain, say, three pounds of fat, which is what a lot of people think they've
gained where their weight jumps up on the scale like that, you would've had to have
eaten over 10,000 additional calories above maintenance, and not to mention that if you're
weight-training regularly, and you have that muscle building stimulus in place from your
workouts, not all of the calories that you eat above maintenance are going to be stored
purely as fat because a small portion of them, probably around a couple hundred per day,
are actually going to be used for muscle growth.
So many people, they have that temporary calorie spike in the short term, and then they step
on the scale and see that higher number and they end up really stressed out and anxious
about it.
Then this gets compounded even further because they go and they look in the mirror, and they
might even see that their physique is a bit puffier and more bloated-looking.
Again, the vast majority if not all of that is just temporary water weight that you're
holding.
That's going to naturally flush out once you get back on track with your regular eating
plan, not to mention that a portion of it is probably psychological as well.
This whole thing works and the opposite direction too, for people who are bulking.
Maybe they go lower than normal with their food intake for whatever reason, and then
they lose a couple pounds.
Now, they're freaking out because they think that their gains have wasted away overnight
and that they're rapidly losing muscle.
I understand that mindset because I've been there before, and I used to think the same
thing.
Again, most of the change in body weight if not all of it is just a result of retaining
less water, possibly less glycogen, and from having less food in your system in general.
The reality is that if you still have a weight training stimulus in place and your protein
intake is still within a decent range, if anything, going into an unplanned calorie
deficit in the short term will actually cause you to lose body fat and not muscle.
It's really not something to stress out about and the bigger picture.
Once again, if you look in the mirror and your physique doesn't seem quite as full and
muscular-looking, it's the loss in water weight and the glycogen that's causing that, not
actual lean muscle loss.
Your muscles will fill out again once you get back on track with your normal diet.
Bottom line here is that, yes, you need to be consistent overall if you want to reach
your muscle-building and fat-loss goals.
Make no mistake about that, but fluctuations in your calorie intake over the short term
are not something to stress out about as long as you get back on track as soon as you reasonably
can.
Short-term fluctuations in your body weight or your appearance in the mirror are rarely
a result of any significant change in actual fat mass or muscle mass but are instead caused
by those other factors that I mentioned, which will automatically self-correct once you do
get back on track with things.
There you have it guys.
If you want to succeed at your fitness goals over the long-term, then it's not just about
having a proper training and nutrition plan in place, but it's also about having the right
mindset towards your program in order to keep yourself on track in the bigger picture.
If you do want to learn how to tie this all together into an effective and sustainable
muscle-building and fat-loss program to fully maximize your results, then make sure to take
my physique quiz over at quiz.SeanNal.com because that'll set you up with the optimal
approach that you need based on your individual goals and body type and experience level.
You can click up here on that or use the link in the description box below.
When it comes to proper supplementation, you can also visit RealScienceAthletics.com to
check out my no BS science-based product that I personally formulated to help optimize your
results and get the very most out of your program.
The link for that is also in the description.
Of course, make sure to hit that Like button.
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Thank for watching guys, and I'll see you in the next one.