Online Fitness Coaching
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Work With Our Team 1:1 HERE
In this episode of the Eric Roberts Fitness Podcast myself and my assistant coach Linda speak with her 1:1 coaching client Faith!
Faith is only 21 years old but man, she is absolutely killing it. You will hear her talk all about how she has changed her life around thus far.
Hope you enjoyed the episode and if you did, please feel free to leave a 5 star rating and review!
If you are somebody wondering how to get lower in squats, boy oh boy, have you come to the right place.
It can be super frustrating, and uncomfortable, trying to get lower in your squats yet just feeling like you can’t!
We are going to dive into just “how low” do you really need to go, ways to improve your squat depth, and even some specific exercises you can do.
You’re going to get a lot of value from this guide, but please know it follows a typical reading fashion.
Meaning one thing is meant to come after the other so it would be most beneficial if you read this guide from start to finish in succession.
Rather than skimming, skipping ahead, or only going for ONE specific thing.
Make sense?
I figured so. I know you’re smart.
The first thing we need to discuss before talking about exact ways of how to get lower in squats is how low do you really need to go.
( Is it just me or am I envisioning someone limboing everytime I say that.. )
You’ve probably seen people go ATG ( Ass To Grass) where they go ALLLL the way down there.
You then may have seen someone go to about 90 degree parallel to the ground.
Then, you may have seen Lebron James on his instagram posting a video of him doing squats only about ½ the way down.
So, what is the “right” answer here?
It somewhat depends. For the majority of people in majority of scenarios, you are going to want to get to at least 90 degree parallel in your squat.
This is essentially when your hips are in line with your knees, as depicted by that white line here below.
A lot of people try to “get lower” because they see someone else do it on instagram, yet they don’t have the proper active range of motion to achieve that depth without compromising form.
( if you don’t know what “active range of motion means”, don’t worry we will cover it a bit later in this guide ).
A picture of what I am talking about is here below.
This is one of my 1:1 online coaching clients Ralph here. He shot me over his technique video so that we could take a peek at his form. We were able to notice the back rounding and correct it!
If this is happening, then no, you do not want to push to go lower in your squats with very heavy weight on your back.
You are actively rounding your pelvis and lower back muscles, causing them a ton of unnecessary stress.
Thus, leading to injuries over time. Yet if you can do it without sacrificing form, then sure, go for it.
Going lower than parallel in your squat typically speaking works a bit more of your quads because you are able to get more of two things called
These are just fancy terms for saying that your knees can go farther over your toes, again, without compromising your form.
This allows for your quads to get a bigger stretch on them, which is why having a squat that is ATG is generally more beneficial if your main goal is to grow some massive quads.
One of the worst myths when it comes to how to get lower in squats is that your knees can’t go over your toes.
Funny enough, this myth is actually the cause of a lot of knee and lower back pain.
Your knees can, and most likely should, go over your toes when you are hitting a full depth squat.
No, it is not “bad” for your knees. Think about when you are walking up the stairs.. Your knees go over your toes everytime right..
So, let’s just stop walking up stairs? I think not.
The reason people say your knees going over your toes is bad is because it CAN be bad if your heels lift off the ground.
If your heels lift off the ground then you are going to put an inordinate amount of pressure on your knees, and yes, this sh*t hurts.
Yet as long as you keep your feet flat your knees are not only fine going over your toes, but as mentioned earlier, most likely necessary!
A lot of people try so hard to NOT let their knees go over their toes they throw their butt back entirely way too far in a squat.
This turns the exercise into some weird combo of a deadlift, squat, and good morning that basically leads to a ton of lower back or knee pain due.
Don’t fall for this myth. Your knees are totally fine to go over your toes.
If you are someone who does have knee pain, I would finish reading this article because I think the things I will lay out can help.
As well as I wrote an entirely separate article on the best workout for bad knees, I can link that HERE.
Okay so we know it’s okay to go lower in squats as long as you don’t round your back.
The next question then in how to get lower in squats is well what if you’re not getting to that 90 degree parallel mark?
Is that bad? Is that ok?
Here is what I will say.
For the majority of people, you should be getting to 90 degree parallel. You saw a picture of Lebron James doing it because he is a professional athlete whose main goal in life is to be the best basketball player he can.
When you think about basketball players, are they squatting all the way down and jumping up to get a rebound?
No, they are half squatting down and then needing to explode up to get a rebound.
In that picture you saw, Lebron is training the squat in a “sport specific” way for this individual sport.
Now, again, he’s the top .01% of basketball players so he’s doing that to get .01% better.
We need to be training our muscles in full ranges of motion (aka hitting 90 degrees parallel in a squat ) for a few reasons.
Therefore I would say if you are NOT currently hitting 90 degree parallel in your squats, then I would recommend doing some of the things we will talk about right now below.
Now that we know we should be hitting at least 90 degrees in our squat, let’s talk about specific ways on how to get lower in squats.
Gah, I know. It’s lame.
But hear me out here. I know no one wants to lift less weight, we go into the gym to lift MORE weight and feel like a bad a**!
Taking weight off the bar doesn’t make us feel so bad a** now does it?!
No… but this is why it’s important to check your ego at the door.
You want to feel bad a** so you’re loading up the bar. You’re not chasing actual results, you’re chasing fueling your ego.
Drop the ego, back off the weight a bit, and be able to get that full range of motion.
Think about this.
You would actually see better results squatting 150lbs with full range of motion, than you would, squatting 250lbs with a half range of motion.
Why? Because of the things we mentioned earlier. You are stretching your muscles more and putting your muscles under more tension.
This will lead to greater RESULTS over time.
Not to mention eventually you WILL get stronger and you will move from doing 150lbs full range of motion to then doing that 250lbs yet with a full range of motion.
THAT is going to make you feel REALLY bad a**.
Again I know it isn’t sexy by any means, but just be sure if you feel this is you, remember why you’re working out in the first place.
You want to see results. You want to change. Don’t let your ego hold you back from seeing results.
In conjunction with backing off the weight you are lifting for right now, you can start doing something called Pause Squats.
These are the same exact thing as regular squats, except at the bottom of the squat you pause for anywhere between 2-5 seconds.
What this allows you to do is…
All of these things allow for you to work on your squat depth that’s very “simple”.
I mean if you are doing squats right now, all you gotta do is keep doing squats, back off weight, and start doing 2 second pauses at the bottom.
Do that for a solid 4-10 weeks, then start back up doing regular squats again.
Now again, you WILL need to lighten the weight here because you are pausing at the bottom.
This makes the movement exponentially harder because where is the squat the hardest to begin with?
At the bottom.. If you spend more time at the bottom, where the exercise is the hardest.. You can imagine it isn’t sunshine and rainbows down there.
Yet if you add them in, tell me you don’t see, notice, and feel a massive difference in your depth!
Now, you may need to back off the weight to get lower in your squats…
Or, you might not. You just may need to make some other adjustments that we will touch on here.
Try taking a wider stance with your feet. Move your feet slightly outside your hip width.
This can help create more of something called external rotation in your hip.
You need external rotation to get down to the bottom of a squat. If you don’t have it, it will often feel like you just kind of “hit a wall” and can’t go any lower!
This is because your femur (your leg bone) is running into your hip socket. There is nowhere else for it to move, so, you stop!
Or, you do get lower but it is from what we talked about earlier compromising from your lower back. That’s the funny thing about your body.
If you want it to do something, it will find a way to do it. If you keep trying to get lower, even if your hips won’t allow it, the next joint up will compensate & make it happen.
That next joint is your lower back. The issue here is your lower back isn’t meant to be taking the load that your hips are supposed to be taking.
Now you have created a situation where your lower back is doing the work your hips are supposed to… Thus, leading to injury.
It’s like if a CEO gave his responsibilities to a person who was on their first day on the job.
Wouldn’t go very well, right?
Same concept here.
If you take a wider stance though with your feet, you will find you may automatically feel like you “have more room” to work with, allowing you to get lower in your squats.
Really quickly, right along with taking a wider stance, a great tip on how to get lower in squats is going to be slightly point your toes out.
Again, in combination with taking a wider feet stance, slightly pointing your toes out will allow you to create more external rotation in your hip.
These two things, I have seen, tend to dramatically improve your squat depth with a lot of the clients we have coached over the years .
Another common, and painful, myth is that you should be “keeping your chest up” in your squat.
No, no, and no one more time for good measure.
Now, should you be letting your chest drop to the ground?
No.
But “keeping your chest up” is one of the worst cues told by any high school football coach or trainer out there.
Now I’m not hating or bad mouthing, because I thought this at once too.
Yet when you try to “keep your chest up” you do something that is called arching your cervical spine.
Your spine is broken up into 3 parts.
Cervical spine – this is your neck area.
Thoracic spine – this is your middle back area.
Lumbar spine – this is your lower back area.
When you “keep your chest up” you arch your cervical spine, which in turn, ends up arching your lumbar spine.
This is why most people get pain in their back while doing squats. Their cervical and lumbar spine are arched like a booty pop IG girl – thus leading to some serious low back pain.
I think you want to avoid having low back pain, correct?
Thought so.
As well as you want to actually get lower in squats, right?!
Man, it’s like I’ve known you your whole life ;).
This is going to…
You don’t want or need it to be this super aggressive throwback. You’re not in the club on a Saturday night or anything.
You want to think about just slightly karate chopping your hips back to START the movement.
Once you start with that slight hip push back, your torso slightly leans forward, THEN, you can drop straight down into your squat from there.
You will actually still keep your chest up because your chest will still be more or less facing the wall in front of you.
If you have not ever tried this before, I am telling you right now, it will be a game changer for you for how to get lower in squats.
To be very honest with you, the things I laid out above are my “top” tips on how to get lower in squats.
I have done those few things with thousands of clients over the years and it has completely changed the game for so many of them.
Now, on top of that, some people may in fact need to work on their hip and ankle mobility to allow them to get more active range of motion.
Remember I said we were gonna come back to that? Remember how I also said this guide was going to work in succession so you needed to follow it step by step all the way through?
Good, I am glad you remember 😉
A very easy way to think about active range of motion is how far can you go in your range of motion on an exercise while still actually having full control of your muscles and joints.
So in a squat, how low can you go while still being in control of your body and NOT compromising form.
Remember earlier we talked about the way people can get lower in a squat is by having more ankle dorsiflexion and knee flexion?
Well, if someone does not have the adequate ankle mobility to produce that ankle dorsiflexion, then they do not have the active range of motion to get lower in the squat.
They are going “low” in the range of motion but their joints and muscles can’t actually control that range of motion, leading to injury.
Therefore one thing you can do to get lower in squats is work on your ankle and hip mobility to improve your active range of motion.
How exactly do you do that?
Well, that could be an entirely separate article. As a matter of fact I actually made an entire mobility manual that you gain immediate access to if you join my Clubhouse as that’s how in depth mobility work is..
But for some quick, simple, and easy implementation work for mobility, I can link some here below.
Hip 90 90’s
Do about 5 reps each side
Hip Cars
Do 5 reps each side
Hip flexor lift off
Do 5 reps each side
Run through those 3 exercises back to back for 2 rounds.
Perform this routine 3-7x per week.
Ankle Mobility
Elevated ankle mobility
Do 5 reps each side
Banded Ankle Distraction
Do 5 reps each side
Squat With Ankle Dorsiflexion
Do 5 reps with 5 second holds each time
Run through those 3 exercises back to back for 2 rounds.
Perform this routine 3-7x per week.
These two routines will allow you to improve the mobility and range of motion but also strengthen the new range of motion to make it ‘active’ range of motion.
Rather than what most people do which is just stretching, which leads to a short term range of motion increase, but because they don’t spend any time strengthening the new range of motion…
They lose it and just go back to what they had before, never making any ever lasting change.
If you follow the routine laid out here, you will see everlasting change in your mobility and active range of motion!
Now, the one little bonus tip for you, which you may have seen some people do before, is elevating your heels.
When you elevate your heels during a squat, this automatically creates more of that ankle dorsiflexion that we talked about earlier.
It is a super easy way to allow you to get lower in your squats (On top of the things we already talked about)!
If you have squat wedges, like you see me using right here.
You can use those. I can put some here below!
If not, you can always just elevate your heels to 5 or 10lb plates in the gym as well.
This strategy of elevating your heels can be a long term solution, short term solution, or both.
Ideally, you WOULD like to be able to get low enough in a squat WITHOUT elevating your heels.
This is why I encourage people to in fact throw in some ankle mobility exercises like the ones we talked about above.
But I don’t want to say elevating your heels is inherently “bad” or “wrong” because it’s not!
Especially sometimes if I am really trying to bias my quad, I will elevate my heels just to get more work on my quads in a squat.
Man, even me writing this right now I’m like “damn that’s a ton of info” LOL.
Let’s quickly recap.
When it comes to how to get lower in squats, those 6 things are your bread and butter.
I hope you enjoyed this guid & got some value from it.
If you are interested in getting a bit more personalized help with your training, nutrition, weight loss, etc, you can apply for 1:1 coaching with my team right HERE.
Or, if you are interested in joining my group coaching program The Clubhouse, you can do so right HERE as well.
Look to chat soon,
-E
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
In this episode of the Eric Roberts Fitness Podcast I do a Q&A pulled from my instagram story!
We talk all things protein, cold showers, deload weeks, and more.
I hope you enjoy the episode, if you did, please feel free to leave a 5 star rating and review on itunes.
As well as if you are interested in coaching with us, I can drop our links below!
Join the Clubhouse HERE
Work With Our Team 1:1 HERE
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
In todays episode I give a little bit of a different podcast – I give my thoughts on anxiety, stress, and overwhelm.
I talk about my own personal two cents behind it, as well as the best way to “manage” it – which might be contrary to what a lot of other people say.
I hope you get some sort of value from this podcast and if you do, feel free to leave a 5 star rating and review.
If you are interested in coaching with us, I can drop the links below!
Join the Clubhouse HERE
https://erfclubhouse.com/
Work with us 1:1 HERE
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Join The Clubhouse HERE
In this episode of the Eric Roberts Fitness Podcast we speak with our May Teammate Of The Month Zack.
Let me just say this, you’re blessed to listen to this episode. Zack is one of the best guys I have ever met, he brings a crazy positive energy to the table, and he is crushing his journey.
If you enjoyed the podcast, please feel free to leave a 5 star rating and review!
If you were wondering at all about how to use a diet break to lose weight, then look no further.
You have come to the right place.
A “diet break” is something that is relatively new in recent years when it comes to dieting and losing weight.
We are going to cover exactly how you are going to use this tool to your advantage to lose more fat, be more consistent, and not hate your life so much while dieting.
Sounds pretty snazzy, huh? I know.
Let’s dive in, but forreal before we do, just make sure you don’t do one of those “skim through” jobs with this article here.
You can be easily confused and implement them wrong if you don’t understand the context around diet breaks. Just be sure to reach each and every line.
Got it?
Before we go to how to use a diet break to lose weight, let’s go ahead and define what a “diet break” really is.
Some people have different “phrases” or words to describe a diet break.
Some people call it a “refeed” day or a “cheat” day.
Really to me, it’s all the same thing. (Although, cheat days are kinda stupid IMO. I talk about why in another article on my site!).
Essentially what a “diet break” is going to be defined as for the purpose of this article is
Taking an intentional period of time eating at or around your maintenance calories to have a mental break from dieting.
This period of time could be a day, it could be 3 days, it could be up to 4 weeks.
After the 4 week mark I wouldn’t really say you’re taking a “diet break”, you are just eating at your maintenance calories at that point.
Remember, if you are “dieting” that means you are eating in a calorie deficit. The diet break is meant to serve as a mental break (which we will touch on a bit later) which then you will get back to the deficit after!
Also notice the “intentional” component of it. This is the reason why I think the term “cheat meals” is stupid.
What are you cheating on? Your girlfriend cheated on you in high school, you cheated on your drivers test (which is scary for ALL Of us).
You can’t “cheat” on your diet by eating a bit more calories if the plan is to eat more calories.
This is essentially what a diet break does, therefore, no “cheating”.
Now, let’s dive into things a little bit more in depth.
You may be sitting here thinking “Well, Eric, why would I want to take a break from dieting if I’m not at my goal weight yet?!”.
Great question, so glad you asked.
The answer is, you might not want to!
You might be crushing it, seeing great progress, and might be in a really good groove with your nutrition.
If that’s you, kudos! ( F you at the same time because dieting SUCKS but.. GOODIE for you.. ).
On the other hand, if let’s say you’re feeling a little burnt out.
You are getting pissed off at the thought of continuing to track your calories every single day, going into my fitness pal, logging your foods, etc.
Maybe you are becoming more irritable.. More moody.. More frustrated…
Or maybe, because you have been in a deficit for a little while now, you are getting as hungry as the cookie monster each and every single night.
Any or all of these reasons would be a great reason to take a “diet break” so to speak.
This is one of our Clubhouse members Zoe.
Each and every Friday inside the Clubhouse we have a live Q&A via zoom where members come, ask questions, and get help!
Zoe asked me about something that was going on with her.
It had been about 6 ish weeks and she had been SUPER consistent with her calorie deficit (minus a little vacay thrown in).
She was down about 6-8 ish lbs and was doing great from a progress perspective.
Yet, she mentioned that recently she was STARVING.
Not like the “oh my tummy is a wittle hungry” thing. No, she could eat someone’s arm off and not be sorry for it.
So what I advised her to do was take a diet break. Give herself about 3-5 days of eating at or around maintenance calories (we will talk about exactly what this should look like in a bit).
Then I had a feeling she would feel a lot better and be ready to get right back into her deficit.
I say “truly” in all caps because I’m not talking about like 3 days you’re on it.. Then 4 days you fall off… then 2 days on… 3 days off.. I’m not talking about that game.
I’m talking about if you are 90+% consistent each month with eating in a calorie deficit, what’s going to happen is your hunger hormones are going to get a little out of whack.
There are two main hormones in your body that control hunger. Leptin and Ghrelin.
Leptin is the hormone that tells your body you are full and satisfied.
Ghrelin is the hormone that tells your body you are starving and want to eat more.
As you get longer into a calorie deficit, your leptin goes down and your ghrelin goes up.
Thus, making you one starving beast. So, for Zoe, she was able to use a 3ish day diet break to get her hunger hormones a bit back to balanced.
Which led her hunger to suffice and her energy to return. She was no longer feeling so burnt out or fed up with dieting, so, she was able to head back into her deficit and finish out her diet!
That’s just one example of how to use a diet break to lose weight. Let me give you another.
Again, when talking about being in a calorie deficit, this is a stress on your body.
Therefore what will happen is again, over time if you are actually consistent with your deficit, stress adds up on your body.
When this stress piles up you feel more exhausted, more stressed (shocker, right?!), more moody, less sleep, less willpower, less drive, and on and on.
Therefore using a diet break to your advantage can help lower your stress, put you in a better headspace mentally, which will then allow you to continue on with your diet much more effectively.
Way more effectively than if you just continued to try to beat your head against a brick all by “just keep going!”.
People often struggle with taking a diet break when losing weight because they feel like “oh, well I won’t see progress”.
Incorrect, you won’t see progress if you DON’T take a diet break sometimes because you keep trying to “push through”….
Yet you can’t ever end up being consistent because you’re so burnt out, right?
Therefore.. 3 weeks goes by and you see no progress because you can’t be consistent.
If you just would have taken the 3 day or 1 week diet break, you’d be able to be much more consistent moving forward, and see way more progress.
It’s almost like a slingshot effect if you will.
Take my client Tori below for example.
During Toris weight loss journey we implemented several diet breaks along the way. Some were a few days, some were a few weeks.
Yet the point being is Tori used them whenever she was feeling super burnt out from dieting, tracking, and just dieting in general.
This brings me to my next point in how to use a diet break to lose weight..
Quick recap, thus far we know that
Perfect, so what’s the “Right” way to take one?
Well, here’s the thing, there isn’t one necessarily.
We will continue talking about my client Tori above.
Some weeks for her diet break we still tracked calories, logged everything, and just made sure we ate about 3-600 more calories than she was currently eating.
We primarily increased the calories via carbohydrates and protein.
So if she was eating say 1500 calories in her deficit, she increased her calories up to about 2000 mainly through carbs and protein.
We did this because at the time, she wasn’t really burnt out with “tracking calories”. She just wanted to eat some more damn food.
Yet, other times, we took a break from logging / tracking food in general.
She didn’t use her my fitness pal app. She wasn’t logging and weighing her food.
We came up with other guidelines instead for that week to allow her to still be mindful & Mentally have a break from dieting.
For example, her checklist during one of her diet breaks was to..
Because again, she was a bit burnt out from tracking, so we took the ‘diet break’ from THAT aspect of dieting.
Let’s face it, sometimes it can be hard to work in ALL of the foods you enjoy into your calorie deficit, even with flexible dieting .
So some weeks what we did was we intentionally worked in some different foods whether a burger, or ice cream, or whatever it was, while having a little bit higher calories as mentioned earlier eating around maintenance.
Again, this is not a “cheat meal” or “Cheat day” because she wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was intentionally eating more food and working in some different foods she may not always have on her deficit.
As you can see, there is no “right” way on how to use a diet break to lose weight.
Yet, there is a WRONG way.
It’s Not An Excuse To All Out Binge.
I think what a lot of people confuse about taking diet breaks is they hear “eat more calories” and think..
ALRIGHT, IT’S ON! Pizza, beer, wings, ice cream for days!
5000 calories later of highly processed, greasy, and fatty foods.. They feel like absolute garbage.
Not only do they feel like garbage physically, but mentally they feel like sh*t too. Their relationship with food is not the best because when they’re “dieting” they are only eating clean and on point..
Then, if they’re “not dieting”, it’s an all out free for all.
I would strongly recommend against that. It’s one thing to work in some different foods like I talked about my client Tori. She worked in some different foods that she enjoyed during her diet break..
But she also had all of her fruits, veggies, and protein for that day.
So as opposed to adding in 600 calories of ice cream during a diet break, maybe you just go from
You get the gist.
This way, as opposed to making it this all out binge, you are simply just increasing your portion sizes of what you’re already eating.
It’s also exponentially easier to then go back into your deficit AFTER the diet break is over because if you take a 3 day “diet break”, aka eat like sh*t for 3 days, is it easier or harder to get back to it after?
Much, much harder, right?
This is why I usually encourage people to try not to treat their diet breaks as this all out free for all.
Like my client Tori did above, still practice moderation.. Still get your fruits / veggies / protein..
Still do “all the things” you know you should be.. Just have a little bit more calories and or flexibility here and there.
How can you take a break from something you’ve never been consistent with in the first place?
I don’t want you to use “diet breaks” as an excuse to not stay on track and not see progress.
Remember, diet breaks are a STRATEGIC tool put into place with an intentional purpose to help get you results.
Just not wanting to put in the work to stay on track and calling it a diet break isn’t going to serve you much in your journey.
Make sense?
Okay, now that you have a good sense of what a diet break is and how it’s used, how often should you do this?
Again, there is no “right” answer and it will depend person to person.
I would say if you want some GENERAL guidelines, maybe every 2-12 weeks IF you need it.
Now, I know that’s a big range, but you have to understand everyone is truly different.
I have coached plenty of clients who never intentionally needed a diet break just because of who they were, how they thought, and the way their lifestyle was set up.
Myself as an example. Whenever I do a “cut” or a calorie deficit. I will go about 6-12 weeks of just straight dieting with no diet breaks.
Why? Because
So for me, I generally don’t take a ton of diet breaks.
Maybe we would take a diet break of 3 days every 3 weeks.
Or if I know someone likes to ‘see an end in sight’ so to speak, I will say “Okay, after every 4 weeks of dieting, you are going to have a one week break!”.
That may help them be super consistent during those 4 weeks because they see that end in sight.
Or, for example, you can use diet breaks if you know you have some sort of event coming up.
Again, you need to be mindful of just saying “oh, diet break!” if you just don’t wanna be consistent or stay on track.
Yet for example, we have a Clubhouse member Victor pictured below.
Victor likes to treat his wife to date night sometimes because that’s the kinda guy he is ( I gotchu Big Vic!!).
During some of those date nights, he would have a planned “diet break” where he would eat a little bit more at maintenance calories.
They knew it was coming up, he planned his weeks / months around it by really being on point the other times, and he still has seen great progress like you clearly see here.
So as you can see, there is no one right answer, but that can be to your advantage because you can use it how you see fit!
You may have also heard before that how to use a diet break to lose weight has to do with the metabolism.
The thought process was that because when you go into a calorie deficit your metabolism slows down, eating more food is going to then increase your metabolism back up!
Yes and no.
Yes, for one or two days your TEF would go up. Your TEF is your thermic effect of food, this basically just means how many calories your body has to burn to digest the food you eat.
Since if you ate more food one or two or seven days, your body would have a bit more calories to burn.
As well as if you eat more food (carbs especially), you typically speaking have more fuel for the workouts you do during that time.
More fuel for workouts = push harder in workouts. If you push harder in workouts you typically exert more energy and burn more calories.
Therefore, your metabolism would “increase” those days.
But, when you head back into your deficit, because you go back to having less food your metabolism goes right back to where it was.
So generally speaking you’d typically need to eat higher calories for 3-5 weeks to see a significant uptick in your metabolism.
Which is part of the reason why I say diet breaks last up to 4 weeks because after that you’re really just eating around your maintenance calories.
The main purpose of a diet break is mental and psychologically. There may be physical benefits from a hunger hormone standpoint like we talked about earlier.
Yet from a “metabolism boosting” standpoint of actually changing this drastically, that’s usually done by eating higher calories (maintenance or above) for 3-5 weeks.
Whew, that was a lot of information.
I hope it was in fact able to help you out!
I know it was a lot, so maybe go back and re read some things to be sure!
Or, if you have any questions, you can email me at Eric Roberts.
Likewise, if you want some step by step help through your weight loss journey you can check out our coaching options.
The first option is going to be joining us inside of our Clubhouse HERE.
The second option would be applying for 1:1 coaching with myself or my team of coaches HERE.
Hope it helps and look to chat soon!
-E
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
In this episode of the Eric Roberts Fitness Podcast I chat about the 4 main things I learned this past weekend from our coaches retreat.
I had all of my coaches in town and he spent 2 days learning, getting better, and pushing each other.
I hope you take the lessons I learned and can use them in your own life.
If you enjoyed the podcast, feel free to leave a 5 star rating and review.
As well as if you are interested in coaching with us, I can link those options below!
Join The Clubhouse HERE
Work With Us 1:1 HERE
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
In this episode of the Eric Roberts Fitness Podcast myself and my assistant coach Bob speak with his 1:1 online coaching client Amanda!
Amanda takes us through her previous “dieting” and fitness struggles.. Only to talk about how she has since overcome then to be CRUSHING it now!
Hope you enjoy the podcast and if you are interested in coaching with us 1:1, I will link our application form here below!