251. How to Transition Between Calorie Deficit, Maintenance & Build Phase

Understanding calorie deficits, maintenance, and build phases is one thing.

But… knowing how to move between them? That’s what actually creates lasting results!

Too many women bounce from one extreme to the next, wondering why they're stuck in the same cycle. Every nutrition phase has a purpose, and learning how to transition intentionally can completely change your progress.

In this episode, I break down exactly how to move from a calorie deficit into maintenance, what accidental maintenance vs. intentional maintenance looks like, how to build muscle without overdoing it, and more. 

The goal isn't to jump from one extreme to another - it’s to make small, intentional adjustments that your body can actually sustain.

Remember, your fitness journey shouldn't be built around constantly starting over. It should be built around understanding what phase you're in, WHY you're there, and where you're headed next!

Episode recap:

• How to confidently move between a calorie deficit, maintenance & build phase
• How to transition from fat loss into maintenance without losing your progress
• Accidental maintenance vs. intentional maintenance
• How to enter a build phase to support muscle growth without overdoing it
• How to know when you’re truly ready for another fat-loss phase
• Making intentional decisions (not emotional ones) w/your nutrition phases
• How to avoid common mistakes like chronic dieting, fearing maintenance & changing calories too quickly
• Why consistency and patience will always beat starting over every Monday

Links/Resources:

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• Join my FREE Facebook group, Unf*ck Your Fitness
• Click HERE for my favorite fitness & life things!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Unfuck Your Fitness Podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Welcome to today's episode. I'm excited for this one. I know I say that every single time, and I have really said it the last few weeks, and it's really because I'm actually so excited about these episodes and about, yeah, I guess this little series that I've been building for you guys. I've gotten so many messages and just, I guess, so many DMs saying that you are really thankful for this, that this is really hitting. You're excited for the next episode to put all the pieces together. And that makes me so happy because I know it's resonating with you and it's I'm just so happy. But I'm excited for this one, obviously. But we're gonna put it all together, I feel like in this episode. And I really was sitting here for quite a while working on my notes, trying to figure out. Actually, I went back and listened to last week's episode on my way to record today. So I knew exactly what I talked about and exactly where I left off. And now I got here to the office, started creating my notes, and really excited because I feel like this is putting it all together. And then next week we'll have a QA and then we'll, you know, continue on whatever that looks like. So I want this to all make sense. And I really feel like in this episode, we are going to put together most of the pieces anyway. I know I'll still have questions, but I think this is going to really help you in, you know, knowing, like we talked about body recomposition, we've talked about a calorie deficit, we've talked about maintenance calories, and I got so many messages after that episode saying, you're absolutely right. I'm trying to stick with the calorie deficit, and I'm not, and the scale isn't moving. So I'm basically maintaining. So why don't I just say I'm maintaining? Like, why can't I just be okay with that? And so I've I've gotten a lot of messages and talked to a lot of you through that, talked a lot of you through that. And that made me really, really happy. I feel like that resonated a lot. We talked about building phases. We talked about how to know which phase you're in last week. I went over a couple of different scenarios of if you're feeling X, Y, and Z and you're in this phase, just accept it, right? That's where you're at. I mean, let's stop trying to think we're ready for a deficit, or stop trying to say I'm in a maintenance phase if you're eating too much, or vice versa, if you're still trying to lose weight and still trying to track your food to starve and to not eat that much, well, then you're not truly in a maintenance phase because that's very intentional. And so we're gonna get into that, but I'm super excited because yeah, I really want to pull this all together for you, and then I'm excited to hear your questions as well. So I want to talk about how to actually move from one phase to another phase. Because one of the biggest mistakes that I see women make, myself included, previously in years past, was to jump from one extreme to the other because we didn't know about maintenance, because we didn't know about the intentionality. We just thought, I'll diet, I'll start on Monday, and then we do that for a couple of days and it goes well. But then the weekend comes, so then we eat too much, and then we start over on Monday, which would be our diet phase again, and then we eat too much on the weekends, which would be, I guess, a surplus, or at least maintenance, right? If you average it out, and then you quit. So it's just like diet surplus, diet maintaining, quit, repeat, right? And instead, I want you to take control and I want you to do this very intentionally because, and we're gonna talk about this a little bit further into the episode. So many people feel like they're stuck. So many people are plateaued, or you know, I'm good Monday through Wednesday, and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I quote unquote fall off track and I, you know, can't get my shit together and the scale doesn't move. I don't lose weight, I don't gain weight, I'm fluctuating within the same five-pound range, right? I'll lose five pounds and I gain five pounds. So essentially you are maintaining your body, but you're working so hard. You're not doing the right things, but you're working hard at it. You feel like you're constantly dieting, you're constantly working on cutting carbs, you're constantly thinking about food, you're constantly thinking about workouts, a program, starving, starting over, feeling bad about yourself. Like it is constantly on your mind. So you're working pretty hard, but the scale isn't moving. Let's just call that maintenance, and we're gonna get into that in a little bit. But like, let's just be real. Like, that is what's happening. And it's because you're not doing the right things, and there is a way to get out of it, and it's by because you're not supposed to diet forever. We talked about that. You don't even have to maintain forever. You can move these in whatever way you want, but we're gonna talk about the different ways to shift out of them. So we did talk about the different phases, you know, you know, whether you are in a deficit, whether you are just maintaining, or whether you are consuming too many calories and you are gaining weight. It doesn't have you're not necessarily in a build phase, you're just gaining weight. So there's those three calorie deficit or maintaining or calorie surplus, you're eating too little, you're eating just enough to maintain your body, or you're eating too much and gaining weight. Those are the three phases essentially that you fall into and they can look differently, right? Like I talked about last week. But once you know where you are, you can move out of it in different ways. So I'm gonna talk about this in four different sections. Let's jump into part one, which we're gonna talk about going from a deficit into maintenance. So if this is you, if you are currently eating a little too little, maybe you are, you know, skinny fat in one of the examples that I gave last week, or maybe you just met your goal, right? You were in a deficit and you met your goal weight and now you don't know what to do. Let's talk about if you are in a deficit or we're in a deficit and you want to go into maintenance phase, this is what you're going to do. Okay. This is where most women panic, though. I'm done dieting, I can't stick to my diet, I can't eat this little of amount of food anymore, right? I stuck to this six-week cut. I made it, I met my goal weight. Now what do I do? Now I'm gonna gain it all back because I don't know what to do. So instead, we're gonna choose maintenance. You're gonna earn it and you did by going into a deficit and you made it. Congratulations, right? I talked about that last week as well. Congratulations. You fucking did that. But now your reward for completing that fat loss phase or that weight loss phase, whether it be intentional or not, you did. Now we're gonna move you into a maintenance phase. So to transition from deficit to maintenance, you need to be tracking before you even go into a maintenance because we don't know where to put you or how to increase your calories until we track. So we're gonna track for one week intentionally and realistically. I don't want you to just say, oh, now that I'm tracking, I'm gonna do good. I'm only gonna eat good foods and I'm gonna stick to it. Right. I want you to track whatever the hell you ate last week. I want you to eat the same way, and I want you to track it because that way you know, okay, this is what I'm actually eating. This is how I actually got here. And make sure you're in a deficit first. Because if you're already at maintenance, you're not losing weight anymore. Well, then you're not in a deficit. That's an entirely different conversation. So track for one week realistically, honestly as well. Track honestly and make sure you're in a deficit, losing body weight. Then I want you to increase your calories slowly. A simple place to start doing this is by increasing your calories by about 50 calories per week. I do this for my ladies inside fit club a lot. If we're talking about reverse dieting from deficit into maintenance, I will increase their calories by around 50 calories per week. After you do that, I want you to watch your average, your calorie average. I want you to watch your body weight. I want you to watch energy, hunger, and your gym performance before making your next adjustment. So let's say the first week you increase your calories by around 50. Look at your body weight. If it jumps up a lot, it shouldn't because it's 50 calories per day. It's not that many. If your energy goes crazy, your hunger goes crazy, watch your gym performance. So all of those things you're going to take note of. And I want you to keep an eye on those things before making your next adjustment. You don't have to increase every single week by 50 calories, okay? Don't overcomplicate it. Truly. If you don't feel if you're like, oh, I'm getting really full on these 50 calories, which would be crazy. But if you are, then don't increase. There's not a particular rule set that you absolutely have to follow. It doesn't have to be exactly 50 calories. There's no fucking way you could even do that. There's no way to know exactly how many, right? I've told you this. The trackers are not 100% correct. The nutrition labels are not 100% correct. So make your best guess and move on and don't overcomplicate it. Keep your protein high and then gradually add mostly carbs or fats. So if you are in a deficit and you've decreased everything proteins, fats, carbs, the first thing I want you to do is increase protein by 50 calories. After that, the next week or the next two weeks, whatever it is, add more carbs or add more fats. But once you get your protein to a good place where it doesn't need to increase anymore, then all you're increasing is carbs and fats. Every time you need to increase by 50-ish calories, you're going to be increasing either proteins, carbs, and fats. And it does not matter truly. Like I just said, increase your protein first. But if you're like, I'd rather rather increase carbs actually, just to make it so that you can stick with it, go ahead. Nothing's going to be wrong with that. It's totally fine. But I would essentially like you to keep your protein higher because that's going to help with your energy. It's going to help with your hunger levels. It's going to help you feel full. But protein is so important, is what I'm trying to say. But once your protein gets high, you can just add carbs and you can add fats on repeat. So the goal isn't to immediately gain weight, of course. The goal is to just find your new maintenance. So if you've been losing weight, losing weight, losing weight, you could increase by 50 calories and the scale could level off. You could increase by 50 calories and you could still continue to lose weight. You could increase by 50 calories and you could gain a pound that week. Move then, depending on how you feel about that. If the scale went up a pound and you're not ready for it to possibly go up another pound the following week, well then stay right there. If you increase by 50-ish calories and the scale went down or stayed the same and you're ready to bump up another 50-ish calories, go ahead. Okay. But maintenance isn't going off your diet. Maintenance is the plan. The next step after a deficit is maintenance. You cannot skip this. It is what it is. Don't be afraid. It's when you are dieting, when you are in a calorie deficit, your body purposely takes actions inside your body to reserve calories because you're not consuming as much. Once you start consuming more calories again, which is why we want to go gradually, your body will start to resume those activities knowing, okay, we're getting a little bit more food. So now our metabolism is going to go up, we're going to burn those calories gradually, and your body is going to respond well. Trust me, you see people out here looking fit, eating 2,000, 2,500 calories, 3,000 calories. If they can do it, you fucking can do it too. Just go gradually and you'll be fine. Worst case, even if the scale jumps up 10 pounds that week, which it never would, but if you increase 50 calories per day for the week, and let's say the scale goes up 10 pounds, it's not gonna, but if it does, you take that 50 calories back out, and essentially you should be back down that 10 pounds the next week, right? It's a very obviously vague and very dramatic example. Worst case, you put them in, you gain some weight, you take them back out, the weight comes back off. That's not gonna happen, but tell yourself, just in case, if you need to hear that, that's how it will work. Okay. Next, let's talk about accidental maintenance and intentional maintenance. This is my favorite thing. I love this concept because a lot of people, like I talked about in the beginning, a lot of people get frustrated because I'm working my ass off and I keep fluctuating between these five pounds. You are accidentally maintaining your body. Raise your hand wherever you're at. I don't care if you're driving your car. Raise your hand if you've accidentally maintained your body. Every single person needs to raise their hand because we have all dieted, fallen off track, ate too much, and then ate too little, and then starved, and then started over on Monday and literally not lost a pound. Right? We've all done that. So there's accidental maintenance into intentional maintenance. And that's what we're going to talk about in part two. So accidental maintenance is just exactly what I described. Okay. You're good Monday through Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, no structure. Your weekends are crazy, you're going off track, you're eating whatever you want, you're calling yourself a failure then because I can't do this. I can't starve myself and have a life, and all the excuses and all the things. You feel guilty, you feel shame, you feel bloated, you feel fat, you feel like you'll never do this. And you're maintaining your body all while that's happening versus intentional, purposeful maintenance where you're tracking, you're getting enough protein, you're lifting, you're enjoying your life, and you have consistency. There is a huge difference. Most people are out here accidentally maintaining their body, a body that they don't want to maintain. Meanwhile, some people are out here maintaining a body they freaking love. And they're putting in the same amount of effort, okay, because you're still planning your food, you're still feeling like shit, you're still trying to stay on track, you're still working hard, and it's constantly on your mind when you're accidentally maintaining your body. If you put in that same effort into doing what you're supposed to be doing to purposefully maintaining a different body, trust me, it'll be so much better. So you can eat the same amount of calories accidentally maintain as you can purposefully maintaining it's a completely different mindset. So don't accidentally maintain your body. Stop that right now. We're gonna purposefully choose to maintain a different body. But the calories are the same. I talked about that and I think two weeks ago. When I talk about maintenance calories, you're not necessarily maintaining literally your body. You can maintain the calories and change your body. So, that being said, what we're gonna do here is how to go from accidentally maintaining your body to purposefully maintaining your body is track your food for one to two weeks, look at your average calories and keep that calorie goal the same. So however you are living life right now, being perfect and eating clean Monday through Wednesday or Thursday, and then going off track Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whatever it is, track everything that you ate, drank, digested for that week or two, average out those calories. That is your maintenance calories because you've maintained your body. The scale hasn't moved, you're so freaking frustrated. That is accidental maintenance. But that calorie range is where you're maintaining. Inside that same calorie range, hit at least 130 to 140 grams of protein, and the rest can come from carbs and fats. It's that simple. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy that you can be eating the same amount of calories because you're maintaining? If you're like, okay, well, I'm eating clean Monday through Thursday, and then I'm drinking, eating pizza and all the things and chips and salsa and goldfish on the weekend, and my body weight's not moving, okay, then the calorie amount is not the problem because your calories average out Monday through Sunday. That same amount of calories, we just tweak the macros and eat with intentionality. You can still have some fun on the weekends. You can still eat a little bit less Monday through Wednesday, but still hit your protein. The rest can come through carbs and fats, and you can do it that way as well. I love that because it's so fucking simple. It's so simple. You think you're eating too much, but you're not. If you're maintaining your weight. Now, yes, within that though, if we start to then hit a good protein goal, at least 130 to 140, if we need to increase that, obviously we can. The rest, carbs and fats, get to where you're really consistent with that intentionality of those macros. And then from there, you can move into a deficit when you are ready, which we'll talk about later. Part number three is maintenance into a build phase. So if you've been maintaining, I love that for you. You've built consistency, you're recovering well, you're lifting, and you want more muscle. How do you do that without gaining weight and being totally uncomfortable in your body? Again, very slowly. All of this is very slow. You can do the 50 calorie increase just like before. So protein stays high. You're going to increase your carbs and fats by very, very little per week or every two weeks, whatever that looks like. You're going to fuel your training. You're going to progressively overload in the gym. That becomes more important than ever. If you're feeding your body more carbs and fats, more carb, more calories, essentially, you're going to have to lift heavier in the gym for your muscles to break down more, for them to rebuild and grow. So progressive overload is super important when you are going into a build or a surplus. The purpose is not to gain weight, it's to gain, it's to build muscle. It's to gain muscle. You probably will see some weight gain. Obviously. If you are building muscle, putting muscle on top of the body you already have, you are going to see if you put on a pound of muscle, then the your weight's gonna go up a pound, right? But the purpose isn't just to like put on weight on the scale. The purpose is to gain muscle. And then yes, the scale's gonna go up. If you're not ready for that, like I talked about in last week's episode, then do not go from a maintenance to build. Though this is what I did. I tried it. I was ready, I thought, to go from maintenance to build. I had been maintenance for years. Part of that was not intentionally, the other part was very intentional. Once I was intentionally in maintenance for a few years, I changed my body composition a little, but I was still pretty small. And you could not really see. I felt like I was putting in so much work and not seeing the muscle that I wanted to on my body. So I thought, okay, my only choice here is to go into a surplus and lift heavier. I did that. I did it a little too fast though. I started to eat, I think two, I think I increased by two, 300 calories at a time. And that's there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that we had a vacation coming up and then I felt a little fluffy in my bathing suit. And I didn't like how I felt. And so if I could go back, I would have just done that a little more gradually. I again, I didn't know that at the time. So I would urge you to, even if you're thinking, I'm not ready. I don't know if I can do that. Try it. Just try it really slowly. You can always go back. So what I ended up doing was cutting those 200 to 300 calories back out. I think what I did was add oatmeal into my diet at that point. And so I added oatmeal. It was a couple hundred calories. And I probably wasn't lifting heavy enough either. So I probably was putting on fat rather than muscle. This was a couple years ago. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. And so I just took out the oatmeal and went right back instead of just maybe going gradually down a little bit. But I I encourage you to try it. That's what I'm trying to say. We all try it. We're all maybe not ready. We all do it a little bit wrong. That's fine. Don't overthink it. Just go for it. You can always change your mind and go back. So now I want to talk about number four, part four, which is maintenance into a deficit when you are ready. Okay. We don't just go into a deficit like I did, where I thought, oh no, I'm too bulky now and I don't like how I look and I'm feeling fluffy. So I'm just gonna take all of that food right back out. I didn't have to do that. I could have just lifted heavier and built muscle instead of fat. I could have just increased 100 calories instead of two or three. There's different ways that I could have gone about it, but we're not just gonna throw ourselves into a deficit just because we can, just because we have some weight to lose. It doesn't mean that you should just because you can. So before cutting your calories, ask yourself have I been maintaining consistently and intentionally? Am I recovering well? Am I training consistently? Two consistencies there. Do you see that? We have to be consistent. Is my protein intake solid, meaning 130 to 140 minimum? Solid. Unless you only weigh 115, 120, then you can get away with 120 grams of protein. Otherwise, I want you 130, 140. Do I have the mental capacity to commit to a deficit? Right now, I talked about this last week's episode. A lot of people don't. And a lot of people change their mind when they get into it. And that's fine. You can always change your mind, like I just said. But maybe ask yourself first do I have the mental capacity for myself, even for a deficit or a cut? I should have asked myself, do I have the mental capacity to feel bigger in a bikini on vacation in Puerto Rico? The answer would have been no. And I would have just started when I got back from vacation. But having that mental capacity and the willingness and making sure that that's realistic is very, very important. And then the next question is, is fat loss my actual goal? Is that my actual goal? If the answer is yes to all those, you've been maintaining consistently, you've been recovering well, your training is very consistent, your protein is very solid, you have the mental capacity, you are fucking ready for this and you're ready to lose fat. You're ready to be a little hungry. All the things that come with cutting, you're ready to say no to going out, you're ready to prep your food and take it with you and look weird to people. Who cares? But if you are ready for that, then you are in a great position to start a fat loss phase. And how you do that is there's two different approaches for this. So option one is to reduce your calories by 200 to 300 calories per day, depending on your starting intake, your goals, and how aggressive you want the phase to be. So if you are consuming enough calories during your maintenance or surplus to be able to cut two to 300, I even 500, anywhere between that range. And you're still at a decent amount, you're not starving, it's not going to throw your body into starvation and you know, freak out and you're not gonna be able to lift and all of that isn't gonna suffer. You're not ready for that. But depending on how aggressive you want that to be, if you just want to do it for six weeks, totally fine. Go ahead between 200, 300, 500, anywhere within that, that's a more aggressive fat loss phase. So that's your first option is to just reduce your calories by more. If you prefer a more gradual approach, then you can decrease your calories by about 50 calories per week. The opposite of the increase, but it's the same amount until you are seeing steady fat loss. So keep your protein high always. Keep your strength training as your priority as you transition into a deficit. You are not going to feel as strong. So you will have to lift lighter, maybe lighter weight, more reps, whatever it is. But strength training has to be your priority. And then your daily movement needs to be consistent. You still need to be walking. If you're doing hit, you can do hit, whatever you're doing, your daily movement has to remain the same. What you're basically doing is cutting calories. And that's what we're talking about here. Obviously, there's more ways to do a deficit with adding in more steps, but I'm saying if you are in a surplus or you are at maintenance calories and they're high enough to where you are so consistent and you're so ready to just cut calories, that's how you do it. Protein high, strength training, priority, and daily movement consistent. Don't change any of that. The goal is to lose fat, not muscle. So that's why we want your protein high. That will keep your muscle on your body. Your strength training has to be your priority to keep that muscle on your body, and your daily movement has to be consistent to keep that muscle on your body. So I just want to recap these super, super quickly. Part one, we talked about deficit into maintenance. We want to track to make sure you're in a deficit. And then you want to start increasing your calories by about 50 per week or every two weeks or every three weeks. Remember, no rules, don't overcomplicate, just increase your calories a little bit, keep protein high, and the rest can be carbs and fats that you increase. Part two is accidental maintenance into intentional maintenance. You're gonna just track what you're currently consuming, take the average calories of what you're currently consuming and make the macros better within those calories. That way you are intentionally maintaining your body overall body weight and maintaining your calories, but your fat will decrease and your muscle will increase within those calories. Part three was maintenance to build. So you're going to just increase calories by 50 per week. Keep your protein high. It already should be because you've been maintaining increased carbs and fats and increase your progressive overload. And then part four was maintenance to deficit when you are ready, not just because you want to and because you're feeling fluffy. Take it from me. So don't cut calories just because you're feeling uncomfortable and don't go into a surplus just thinking, oh, I'm ready to put on muscle. It's a little more tedious than that. So make sure that you are ready. All of this, I want you to keep in mind that these are not emotional reactions. And a lot of my build, which I talked about when I wanted to just build really quickly and I'm ready to be so strong, I forgot to take into consideration all of those other factors that I mentioned. So I want all of this to be very, very intentional and not based on emotion or based on what someone else is doing and what you're comparing. So I want to talk about next what you should expect during maintenance and what you should expect during a build. And then I want to talk about the biggest mistakes that I see people make. Okay. So what you should expect during these phases, if you are going into maintenance, if you're going from a deficit into maintenance, you should see better workouts, more energy, better recovery, a stable weight and body recomp, and a lot more mental clarity and happiness to come along with that. During a build, what you're going to see is strength increases, better pump after your workout. Thank you, carbs, muscle growth, a slight scale increase, and improved performance. Normalize that the scale may go up, and that's okay. The biggest mistakes that I see is people staying in a deficit forever or far too long, or trying to stay in a deficit anyway, forever or far too long. Jumping 500 calories overnight, kind of like what I did when I went into my surplus or my build, I went up two to 300 overnight. That was still too much for me. So I really love the gradual phase. And I think we all know that by now. If you're not new here, being afraid of maintenance is a huge mistake that I see people, I guess, just being afraid of because it's it's a common thing that I hear, I guess, is what I should say. People are always not wanting to maintain your body. You're like, oh, I don't want to maintain this body. I want to lose fat. I want to gain muscle. So I need to not be in a maintenance phase. Remember, you're maintaining your calories, you're not maintaining the body. And even if you're maintaining your overall weight for a while, it's doing so many other good things within your body that we can't forget that either. So I always want you to look at the big picture. So your nutrition journey should not look like a deficit forever. It should look like this different phase is rotated through. So you're in a deficit, you go into maintenance, and then you go into a build if that fits your goals, and then you go back into maintenance or you go into a deficit from there. And you repeat every phase has a purpose. Every phase teaches you something. Every phase is good for your body. There's not one wrong way to do it. You can go from a deficit to maintenance, back to a deficit, back to maintenance. That's probably what I did unintentionally for years and years and years. And then I just realized I was very happy in maintenance. And you can stay in maintenance for four years. But eventually, you're gonna have to go into a deficit if you want to lose fat, or you're gonna go have to go into a surplus if you want to build muscle eventually. But there's no, it's not like 12 weeks here, 12 weeks here, 12 weeks here. No, that's not, we're not all built the same. We're not all gonna react the same. Life is different. And these phases help us to be able to navigate not only the changes that you want to make in your body, but life. Okay, when life happens and you are on vacation and you want to enjoy it, so you're going to be in a surplus. Just make it intentional. Don't go into a vacation or like I said last week, Christmas or any of those holidays thinking I'm gonna lose weight. I'm gonna go on vacation and go on a cruise and lose weight. No, you're not. You're gonna be in a surplus. So make sure that you're moving more. Make sure that maybe you hit the gym while you're there, make sure you're very intentional. Make sure you just know that the scale's gonna be up when you get back from that vacation. And then what are you doing after that, right? Just think ahead. And I think that's the most important part is just knowing where you're at, knowing what your goal is, and knowing which phase you are in and that you should be in. So I think that wraps up this episode in terms of the maneuvering between the different calorie ranges, the surplus, the maintenance, and the deficit. I think that you know helps you to be able to know how to navigate through if you still are confused. If you still are like, I don't, I literally don't know how to go from a deficit into maintenance or from maintenance to intentional maintenance or from maintenance to a surplus. Go back and listen again because I told I literally explained it here, first of all. But second of all, that's because you're overthinking it. And I I want to be very clear here. You cannot fail at this as long as you stick with it long enough. I was just talking to one of my 101 clients today on my way to the office as well, as brainstorming and thinking about these episodes. And we were talking about consistency. And she said, I didn't really believe you when I first started 101 coaching with you, but here I am at my lowest weight. Shout out, Leslie. And consistency is just huge. Consistency in walking, consistency in weightlifting, consistency in average macros. And I just can't stress that enough that if you have intention going into it and you are tracking well, this isn't just an if if it fits your macros and you know, you start eating whatever food you want. And well, I'm eating more calories and I'm lifting heavier. It needs to be intentional. You have to progressively overload if you want to build muscle. You have to be following a fucking plan that has you tracking your food and tracking your weights. It doesn't have to be boring, it doesn't have to be brutal. It's actually really fun. I have hundreds of women right now in my fit club on the app doing this exact thing and loving it. Because I'll tell you right now, and I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Well, for one, you can go into a maintenance, you can go into surplus with the idea of I don't have to do this perfectly. I'm just gonna add one more day of working out, or I'm gonna add another set instead of doing three sets of 10. I'm gonna do four sets of eight on every single workout. You can start that way, but I'm just telling you, you can't fail as long as you're consistent with steps and lifting and macros if they're set up for you correctly. You also can't fail if you have a plan and you have someone in your corner. That's something huge about the app. And that's why I created it the way that it is with the community and the women that are inside there with my leaders and everything, because it just really sets up people to you're gonna have questions, you're gonna be confused, you're gonna fuck up, but you have a place now to go and ask questions and wonder is this normal? You get a yes, it is. Here's how to navigate it. But what I was gonna say before I went into that was I've been thinking about this a lot lately. You're putting in effort every single day to maintain a body, possibly, possibly. Okay, you're putting in effort every single day into this journey, whether it's intentional or not. You're feeling like you don't know what to eat, it's stressful, meal prep, not meal prep, going out, life's busy. You are stressed and it takes effort to just live and eat and move, right? And not understand how to do this. You are spending a lot of effort to be possibly unhappy in your body right now. If you spent a little bit of effort and were happy in your body, wouldn't that effort make you more happy? Right. And what I mean by that is if you're not tracking and you're not, you're not tracking your food and you're not tracking your workouts, and you're just not going to the gym and you're getting on YouTube and you're finding random workouts and that's not working for you, why don't we try to get some macros from a great coach and track your food for a while, get their input on the situation and try to hit certain macros. It's everybody can do it. You can do it. It'll take a little while to, you know, get your groove, but everybody can do it. Everybody thinks I'm having such a hard time hitting protein. I can't hit my fats, I need more fats. I this isn't working. These foods aren't matching. I can't do this. Yes, you can. We tweak and we tweak and we change and we change and we pivot, and you can do it. But the effort that it takes to track your macros and to open an app and see I'm doing full body one today and I'm hitting 10,000 steps. That effort is honestly less than the effort that you spend when you get up in the morning and you think, okay, what am I gonna eat today? What are we gonna have for dinner? What do I have to lay out? What am I having for lunch? I never hit my macros. I got up late again, so now I can't work out. Even if I did, I wouldn't know what workout to do. You are spending so much mental energy and physical energy maintaining a body that you don't want rather than tracking for food freedom and finding out, okay, this is how many macros I can eat. What all can I fit into those macros? And let me tell you, it's a lot because I give my ladies a lot of food. You can fucking eat. Okay, you're gonna be so happy when you find that out. And you open the app and you do six exercises three times through, 10 reps each, and then you shut the app and you feel really good about yourself that day. What I have found is that this journey and doing the things that matter and tracking them makes you feel so proud and so happy, and you see results and you feel confident and comfortable in your body. And I've just been thinking about that lately as I've had clients come to me saying, Wow, I thought tracking was going to be really restrictive, but I actually get to eat a lot and I actually love seeing what I've eaten and I love putting the puzzle together of how can I fit this ice cream in and how can I eat this with my family. And I did this and the scale didn't move, and it's fine. It's so freeing. So having a plan and figuring out your goal and which phase of calories will get you to your goal is actually so, so freeing. So I encourage the time's gonna pass anyway. And it's so cliche. The time is gonna pass, anyways. But if you can spend two to four weeks figuring out this process, I promise you it'll be so worth it. So hopefully you have already been following along and you've been figuring out through these phases and you're feeling really good at this point. Leave me a comment in Spotify and let me know if you're feeling like, okay, I've been listening, but I haven't taken action. Go back and listen to the last few episodes and figure this out. And if you still need help in the show notes or on my website, unfuckyourfitness.com or on Instagram, Krista CasteoFit, there's a link somewhere or you can send me a message, email, I don't care, and get the link to sign up for my fit club. It's $35 a month. And inside of Fit Club, you get a community of amazing women. You get access to myself for questions, you get access to my leaders for questions. I teach my leaders, they're amazing. And if they do answer anything wrong, which I don't think they ever have, I am in there checking and I will correct it. You also get personalized macros that I personally have a conversation with you about. You get workouts at home workouts or gym workouts, you get both, but you can choose which on you you want. You get sprintervals, you have HIIT training, you have stretching. It is really comprehensive. And I am going to be adding on something soon that's going to be really helping you through body reconp to figure out where you're at and where you need to go. But if you need help, I highly encourage you to check out the app and let me help you. I would be absolutely happy to do that. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Also, please, please, please, please send me a comment on Spotify for the QA for next week and go rate me five stars, please, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and anywhere else that you listen to the podcast. I would really appreciate it. I'll talk to you guys next week.

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Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review, and of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy CastilloFit. I will see you next time.