What's up yo? Today is Cut Day, man. This all the matter is the shreds day. Today we're going to talk about what a calorie deficit actually is, how to get into one, how to calculate one, and then how to maintain one, which is actually what freaking matters. And there's going to be some hard truths in here, some things, you know, the snowflakes might not want to hear. I'm going to give you the truth on how you can create a calorie deficit, what it is, and how to get Jax to stay tuned for the video. Regular day, like always, and then I'm feeling a little off, not really sure why. Training's been pretty hard, so my body's pretty beat up, let me get it after it. Plus, you know, the slight calorie deficit that we're in never makes that feel better, and it only makes that feel worse. My mama tastes all the way up professionally, so she's sometimes has to do it on like day trips or weekend trips, so she'll head out of town for a little bit. Today I think it's just a day trip, but I got to go take care of the puppy. I'm going to go let him out, I'm going to grab a black coffee, and then probably on the drive back to the gym, we'll dig into the calorie deficits. So, catch you, boys. Although this channel has had some blogs with Traveling and share my life, opening up to you guys to be in as honest as I can, I haven't always been like daily vlogs or talked about me a ton, just because it started so fitness-based and coaching based. I never knew what to show or what not to show, and then as soon as I got like my life settled in my own house, we started doing it, then I opened the gym, and then like that process just took so long that I couldn't focus on vlogging, and I had to focus on running a business, and then the apparel, and then scaling that, and I'm still stuck in that, but now, you know, like this, I get an hour that I can go help my mom where before I didn't show you all kind of what I'm into and what I'm really into, dogs, music, clothes. You look at my, like for your page on anything, TikTok, YouTube, mostly Instagram, this dogs, this music, this clothing, sneakers, basketball, art, and I love caches, so I'm gonna go kick it with caches and then we'll get in the car. Alright, you're no bullshit. Nutrition 101, we got a couple things we gotta look at, say like three or four categories, one, hydration, water, how much water we're taking in today, just keep it simple, half your body weight announces, bang that out every day, you'll probably be hydrated enough. Next, we got food, nutrition, right? Food, it's kind of made up of three things that we need to dig into. Food provides calorie, just energy, calories are simply a measurement of energy, right? Protein carbs and fat that all interact with our bodies and do different things for us, provide different things, protein, kind of the building blocks, right? We're building muscle, we're building hair nails, etc. Carbohydrates probably the easiest and most used source of energy within our system, breaks down into glycogen and our muscles, when we're lifting weights, we're using carbs. And then fat, which also has more calories, doesn't mean it's bad, but it does have more calories per gram, nine calories. Something like fat provides hormones, mood recates our muscles and provides other functions within the body. We need fat to live for one, two, you need it to absorb certain micro nutrients, which brings us to the next one. Micro nutrients are also provided by food, it's kind of vitamins and minerals, right? Things we need to live that also help within processes within our body, hormones, etc. Calories being the number one key to losing weight, they are all that freaking matter. Obviously to live and to feel good and be healthy, losing or gaining weight is not all that matters, right? So that's where vegetables, fruits, etc. come into play. So how do we find a calorie deficit? Now there's some basic stuff we've been taught for years and it does work and it is true, but you can just probably Google calorie calculator. How many calories do I need macro calculator on Google? There's a million sources and you put in your height, weight, age, it might ask if you want to lose weight, maintain weight or gain weight and it'll probably dump out a number. That number is probably at least in the ballpark, right? Because all we can do with all this is being the ballpark. It'll be a source and it can be a tool, but it's not going to be perfectly accurate down how many calories you need to lose weight. So every day is going to be slightly different. All we can do is tighten the bumpers and the borders as tight as we can and then stay within those. Some people are talking like, Mike, your calories are so low, they're not. Everyone that's on Instagram lying to you, they're either on PEDs or they're literally just straight up lying. Like, man, I got shredded on 4,000 calories a day. Those probably walked 50,000 steps a day or they're straight up lying. I give my one good lifting session, one good cardio session in a day, takes about two hours. The rest of the time I'm working, man. But the truth is if you actually want to make a difference and lose weight, you're going to have to be in a pretty significant calorie deficit. And rather than being in a baby 200 calorie deficit a day, I'd rather just cut and get it over with. And I suggest that for many people, actually. As long as you're keeping your macronutrients or micronutrients in, you have no health problems to begin with. It's not a bad route to go. So what I suggest is anywhere from 500 to maybe 800 calorie deficit. Again, a bunch of people talking crazy that I'm 1700 calories a day that I'm going to die. Trust me, I'm fine. I always tell people to track in way every single thing, put it in their tracker whether you want to hand-write it or you want to use an app before you put it in your mouth, before you put it in your mouth. Then track way it needed. Every handful of chips you grab, every cookie you grab, every extra squirt of mayonnaise you put on your nasty ass sandwich, all of that adds up. I'm almost at the gym. I'm going to warm up, get some legs in and we'll explain a couple more things about calories as we're training. We went over what calories are and what a diet is. The biggest issue with the industry is that everyone's trying to make money and trust me, I love making money and I also want to make money, but I'm just going to allow my morals to be above my money and not lie to you. So anything that has like a name to it, you can scratch out that someone's making money. No diet has a name to it. So I'll just explain how we lose weight. The bigger thing now is how we feel that into your life and what I call those are more like nutritional strategies. Right, you've heard them all. Keto, intermittent fasting, fasting, vegan, Mediterranean, all these I get flexible dieting. The list goes on forever. What I consider those are nutritional strategies. So what we can do is take from those, learn from those and implement them in our lives that may allow us to stick to our calorie deficit more accurately to allow us to have progress and then maintain the body weight of the lifestyle we want. Right, so for example, for me like flexible dieting simply means that you basically track your macronutrients in your calories, right, from that calculator we talked about earlier and then all you can do is have things like ketchup or potatoes over rice or beef over chicken as long as it fits in those macronutrients and maybe here and there sneaking a pop tart or rice crispy around your workout to again be more balanced and flexible long term. Rather than just eating tilapia and broccoli for seven days then freaking out and eating eight large pizzas and three milkshakes and two babies, right? That's gonna shit up. So these strategies that I implement are like a flexible dieting, a way in track everything. I also do like a form of intermittent fasting where I just don't really eat in the morning and that's for my lifestyle. That has no secret sauce and burning fat, no secret sauce and performance. The secret sauce for me is that I function better on a cup of coffee in the morning and I get all my admin or like BS work out of the way. That's what I feel best. If I woke up and had a huge bowl of oatmeal, one I get hungry or personally and then two I just feel slower. What are those strategies that may or may not work for you? Maybe it's meal prepping seven days in a row. Maybe it's not meal prepping and cooking a hot meal every meal. Like whatever that is fits your lifestyle and allows you to stick to those macros, that's what we got to worry about. It literally just comes down to you locking in. It's gonna suck but you're only lying to yourself. Every little hand of cereal, brownie, bite of a donut, extra slice of chicken, all that does matter when we lay up into it and the calories may be lower than you expect but the truth is to lose weight we got to change up the system that we've been doing. You keep having the same habits, you keep doing the same things, you can get the same results, you can stay the same way to gain more. So Locking in episode three I guess. I'm gonna finish this up. I got some Bulgarians, maybe some RDLs and then cardio time. So appreciate you all man. We over me be part of something big in yourself. Threesby.co, some of my grad here.