So our first mistake is what's called
skipping the prep work.
So let's jump right in, which is ironically exactly
what you should not do when it comes
to a transformation in most cases,
which is the topic that we're starting with.
So when we talk about the prep work,
not everyone is in a healthy condition
to begin a transformation.
A transformation puts stress on your body.
That's just the nature of what's occurring.
When we're trying to lose fat
or build muscle, we have to impose stresses
to get the adaptations or the changes that we are
after if we're not in a healthy place to be able
to handle process and recover from those stresses.
It can not only slow down progress,
but kind of dig us into a hole where it's harder
to make progress in the future,
and we have to spend time trying to repair things
before we can build upon them.
So the first thing we need to do
before jumping into a quote unquote transformation
or starting a diet, is assessing the things
that might inhibit the recovery from those stressors.
This could be conditioning, whether it's cardiovascular
or local conditioning.
So systemic versus local conditioning of the cells
and tissues themselves.
It could be digestive stresses or irregularities.
If you're not being able to digest
and assimilate nutrients, it's gonna make it harder
to recover, especially when we start bringing down calories.
So the amount of nutrients available is less.
Next is gonna be our sleep quality.
Not just quantity, but quality.
If we're not able to sleep consistently through the night,
you're waking up during the night,
you're having trouble falling asleep,
or you're not feeling rested, waking up in the morning.
Those are kind of the three things that we look for
to assess the quality of your sleep.
The lower quality of sleep we had isn't just about
how much energy you have the next day.
It's much more important than that.
It also affects things like our signaling hormones, our,
our sensitivity to insulin
and glucose, our ability to kind
of put those nutrients in the right places so
that we are able to recover and repair, um,
or maintain muscle tissue while burning off fat.
And then inflammation.
And inflammation is a very general term.
There's a lot of things that can be called inflammation,
whether that's, uh, cytokines within the muscle tissue
or digestive distress, bloating, water retention, all
of those things kind of fall under inflammation.
But if we have enough of that before starting,
and then we start throwing additional stress on top of it,
it can make it worse.
And inflammation, depending on what type it is,
is another thing that can inhibit our ability
to assimilate nutrients, repair muscle tissue,
recover from training,
or even make a, uh,
larger stress response than we should actually have to.
Things like training.
So when we look at our conditioning, it's going
to affect not just your ability to do more sets,
it's gonna affect your ability to recover between sets
and between workouts.
So the better your conditioning is,
the faster you can recover,
potentially the more frequently you can train.
The more frequently we can train,
that's more energy expender,
it's more nutrient partitioning opportunities,
the better your conditioning is.
You can also tolerate a greater energy deficit,
which is something we're going to need if we're trying
to lose fat quickly.
So you will feel less fatigued
or less tired with a greater energy deficit,
the better your conditioning is.
And again, there's different types of conditioning,
but that's something we would get into more in
depth on different topic.
And then your tolerance to something called a high energy
flux, which we will be covering in an upcoming video.
A high energy flux is something that can be very valuable,
again, when we're trying to lose fat, quickly
maintain muscle tissue and maintain our overall health
quality while going through the transformation.
So once we assess where those weak links might be, we have
to look at how are we gonna improve them.
And those are gonna be through specific training protocols
or programs and sometimes a pred diet diet.
So let's start with the training.
Locum conditioning work can improve mi what's called
mitochondrial efficiency.
And biogenesis, all that means is the mitochondria
that are in your cells responsible for producing energy, uh,
improving their ability to do that.
And biogenesis meaning increasing the
number of mitochondria.
Uh, so it enhances more than you know,
just your energy during the workout.
Having more or more efficient mitochondria is also going
to influence your recovery, your performance,
and even your ability
to resolve any inflammation more quickly.
Systemic conditioning is gonna bring up your cardiovascular
cardio respiratory performance, which is going
to improve your workout performance,
your tolerance distress, and even your sleep quality.
When we look at the pred diet diet, that is kind
of filling in any nutrient gaps
that might exist depending on
what you're currently taking in.
So this could be basics like magnesium, D three, uh, omegas.
Uh, if we're going super specific,
you could even take a DNA test that might tell you,
you know, if you need a specific, let's say form
of B vitamin to assimilate that properly, um,
or looking at different areas to consider based on your, uh,
potential genetic makeup.
But that's a very specific, uh, kind
of in-depth application.
And then the third thing will be figuring out your
maintenance window, which we will cover
in an upcoming video.
If you don't know anything about where your maintenance is,
it might take four to six weeks to kind of figure this out,
because it's not just a specific calorie number
and just plugging your info into a calorie calculator.
It might get you in the ballpark,
but it's not gonna tell you the whole
story for every person.
Um, that window may take longer
or this prep work period may take longer if there are
preexisting issues that we're trying to kind of sort out
before diving into the transformation.
So again, gut health, that could take a little bit of
of time depending on what it is, how severe it is,
troubleshooting sleep.
If there's existing inflammation that we want to try
and resolve beforehand, we want to address those first.
So you have the best opportunity
for success in your transformation.