Trying To Live a 2400 Calorie Lifestyle on 1700 Calories

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0:01:30.5 Kim Schlag: Jordan Lips, welcome to the program.

0:01:33.2 Jordan Lips: How’s it going? Great to be here, thanks for having me on.

0:01:35.4 Kim Schlag: Absolutely. So, Jordan, tell us a little bit about yourself, give us like five bullet points about you so people know who on Earth I am talking to today.

0:01:43.4 Jordan Lips: Oh man, okay. I am, my name’s Jordan Lips, I am an MNU certified nutritionist and certified personal trainer, and had been doing that for about a decade before going fully online, which I absolutely love. Things obviously have been very good to online coaches during the pandemic, but it’s just been a great thing overall quality of life, it’s been nice to help more people and help them in a way that I’m feeling a little bit more fulfilled. And so, yeah, I started as a personal trainer, I did that for about a decade, then I owned my own gym over the last two years of that decade, and…

0:02:16.3 Kim Schlag: You owned your own gym?

0:02:17.8 Jordan Lips: Yeah, a friend of mine…

0:02:18.5 Kim Schlag: I didn’t know that.

0:02:19.3 Jordan Lips: Yeah, we worked under somebody for a long time and we tried to become partners of our original gym, and he wasn’t having any of that, and so we decided, “Okay, screw it, we’ll do our own thing,” and we did, and it turns out… I feel like a lot of personal trainers think that owning a gym is the next step in their… It’s like, “Get really busy,” I was very busy, I had subcontractors, I was giving business away and things were really good, it’s like, “Alright, You should… Next thing is own a gym.” It turns out that’s not a forward step, it’s a lateral step, it’s a different job. It wasn’t really like I stopped coaching as much, I wasn’t doing a lot of nutrition coaching at all, I was doing a lot of payroll, a lot of more clerical work and hiring and interviewing, and it just… It didn’t feel like I was moving forward, it felt like I had changed careers, and so I quickly learned that that was not for me, and I was like, “What I really want to do is coach people,” and so that was important for me ’cause I had to take that step, which turned out to not be a good step, but I had to take that to really realize, “Okay, this is what I… My purpose and my passion is like I wanna actually be working directly with people.”

0:03:19.0 Kim Schlag: I find that happens a lot in life, we think what we want is one thing and we end up going somewhere else, but we needed that step to help us realize what it actually is that we should be doing that’s best for us, that kind of stuff, so not wasting time, it’s still a really important lesson for you there.

0:03:34.3 Jordan Lips: Totally, it was clarity, I wouldn’t feel like… It was closure, it was like, “I know this now, I have no… ” Like thinking about that, that was something I thought about for a long time, and I’m trustful like, thankfully not looking at it anymore.

0:03:45.3 Kim Schlag: Yeah, yeah. And when you’re not talking nutrition and fitness, what are you most likely talking about?

0:03:51.6 Jordan Lips: Oh my god.

0:03:52.0 Kim Schlag: What’s your passion outside of it?

[laughter]

0:03:56.8 Jordan Lips: That’s funny. I like dogs and I…

0:03:58.8 Kim Schlag: Are you gonna tell me nothing?

0:04:00.5 Jordan Lips: I like dogs and I like soccer. And those are two things that I’m passionate about, my family come from the Netherlands, and so we’re big soccer fans, and it’s definitely something I enjoy with my family, and Jenna and I both played in college, so she’s much better than I was.

0:04:12.2 Kim Schlag: Okay.

0:04:12.7 Jordan Lips: And so, yeah, we have a lot of fun with that, but outside of nutrition and fitness, soccer, dogs, we’re pretty low-key.

0:04:18.4 Kim Schlag: And do you have a dog?

0:04:19.6 Jordan Lips: We do, her name is Carly, she’s a sweetheart, I’d never had pets growing up, and so we got her about a year ago, and I don’t know, it’s super cliche, but entirely life-changing, just an amazing experience, so we have a blast.

0:04:31.9 Kim Schlag: So what kind of dog is she?

0:04:33.4 Jordan Lips: She’s a Havanese and the Shih Tzu mix.

0:04:35.5 Kim Schlag: Okay, I have to tell you, Jordan, I’m getting my first dog, we’re picking…

0:04:38.7 Jordan Lips: Oh my god, yeah?

0:04:39.3 Kim Schlag: We’re picking our puppy next week, so we’ve been on this list to get a puppy, our puppy, we’ve been watching the puppies now, our breeder luckily posts on Instagram every day, so we get to watch all the dogs and next week is puppy pick week…

0:04:50.5 Jordan Lips: Wow.

0:04:52.3 Kim Schlag: And then April 5th, my dog comes home, this is gonna be our first puppy.

0:04:55.2 Jordan Lips: What kind?

0:04:56.9 Kim Schlag: It’s a mini goldendoodle.

0:04:57.3 Jordan Lips: That was… That one… Jenna’s gonna be pissed when she hears this, that was our number one.

0:05:00.7 Kim Schlag: Oh, was it?

0:05:01.8 Jordan Lips: We still have… I’m sure we still have deposits down on mini goldendoodles.

0:05:04.6 Kim Schlag: They are hard to get.

0:05:05.7 Jordan Lips: They’re tough to get, they’re a high commodity, they’re like… And they’re beautiful, and they’re… People… Some people say hypoallergenic is not a thing, but they’re less allergenic, and so I’m hypo so… I mean I’m allergic, and so that would have been a great choice as well, so that’s super exciting, oh my God.

0:05:21.4 Kim Schlag: Yeah, I had no idea, so see we’re so naive about dogs, we’re just like, “We decided to get a dog, we’re getting a dog.” That’s what I thought like I’ll pick one and then I get it, when people were like, “There’s a two-year waiting list,” I’m like, “What do you mean?” [chuckle]

0:05:33.1 Jordan Lips: Oh my God.

0:05:33.6 Kim Schlag: “How is that a thing?”

0:05:35.9 Jordan Lips: Totally.

0:05:35.9 Kim Schlag: We luckily found somebody who was sooner than that, but, wow, I’m super excited, so. Well, that’s…

0:05:41.1 Jordan Lips: Yeah, one of my best friends… One of my really good friends is an amazing dog trainer and so the day we brought, her name is Carly, brought her home, he was over and he was like, “This is what you’re doing, this is what you’re not doing, this is how like… ” And so she’s been… She very well-trained and well-behaved, and she has been on like… She’s a tiny dog, and so she’s like 17 pounds, but she’s been on five, six, seven mile hikes with us in Sedona, and she’s like… She’s a complete adventure dog, and so it’s been super fun, yeah.

0:06:07.4 Kim Schlag: Oh, I love that, that’s fantastic. Alright, so I invited Jordan to come on specific… I’ve been meaning to have you on anyway, but I reached out specifically after I read a post of yours, ’cause I was just like, “That was good.” It was so well put. So I wanna read the first, I think it was the first line of the post that you had done, this is what Jordan said, “If you’re trying to eat 1700 calories while clinging to your 2400-calorie lifestyle, it’s gonna be tough.” That’s a good… That’s a really solid message, so Jordan talk to us a little bit more about that.

0:06:36.8 Jordan Lips: Yeah, and it goes kind of well with another post, and I wrote… I didn’t even write that one down, I wrote a different one down about not everything about your fat loss regimen needs to be sustainable forever, and so it’s interesting because the things that you do optimally to adhere to your deficit don’t need to exactly mirror what your life is at maintenance, and…

0:06:56.7 Jordan Lips: We can boil down to the two things that we just said to, you’re allowed to change some stuff even if it’s not forever, and that goes against a message that permeates through social media of, “If you’re gonna change something, if you can’t see yourself doing it forever, don’t do it.” And when you had said that we were gonna maybe talk about this, I thought very in-depth about it, and I think that there are some issues with it, but I still wholeheartedly agree that your… Fat loss is not a lifestyle, and so… Your fat loss calories are not a lifestyle. Somebody who is living a fat loss lifestyle is dead. Just [chuckle] calorie deficit is not forever, and so the things that you do to adhere to your lower calories, it makes sense that if you’re eating, let’s say you have a 2400-calorie maintenance, we’re gonna use some, just throw around numbers, and you’re using 1700 as your deficit, like, man, things are gonna have to change, if you cut your pay, if your company cuts your pay by 20%, you’re gonna change your spending habits, and that seems totally reasonable to me.

0:07:54.2 Jordan Lips: And it just goes against this idea of if you change something, it has to be forever and I think that that can be… Every time, there are a couple of things like that that are in the industry that kind of, not rub me the wrong way, but they’re… That’s not a comprehensive statement, it’s kind of a lazy opinion because I know where people are coming from, and it comes from a good sentiment of, “Well, Jordan won’t transition to maintenance be harder if I change a whole bunch of things?” Yes, that is true, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change anything and it… I think that there are a lot of good coaches out there who are saying, “Hey, let’s look at really foundational habits that you can sustain over the long-term, and let’s build those.” And I totally agree with that. But I also feel like it builds up this resentment towards changing anything at all, and I think that there’s… Listen, calorie deficit, you could… The home of the conversation of should people be losing weight, whatever, but if you’re trying to lose weight and you wanna be in a calorie deficit, it’s inherently, there’s gonna be some form of restraint, some form of a restriction.

0:08:48.0 Jordan Lips: It is literally, by definition, giving your body less food than it needs. Something’s gotta give. And I do believe in discussing non-negotiables with clients, if there are things like, “Hey, that you really need, that you really want, that you wanna keep, that you’re not willing to give up, let’s have a talk about it.” But everything can’t be non-negotiable, something has to give. You’re gonna have to change something to better adhere, and so I just… The message, I hope, that gets across today is like, “It’s okay to change some things to adhere better, even if you know in your gut that it’s not something you would be doing at maintenance.”

0:09:20.6 Kim Schlag: Yeah. So, I think, as usual, everything exists on a spectrum and people kinda tend towards one end of the spectrum or the other, so either everything has to change and you should be eating boxed meals that you’ve not given any thought to, and it’s super low-calorie and it’s like biggest loser lifestyle, or the reverse of that, which is you shouldn’t have to change anything and all of your habits should be exactly the same. And those are kind of the two ends, and really, what’s gonna work for most people, what makes the most sense is gonna be somewhere in between. I will tell you, I certainly say things more along the lines of, “Guys, your habits now should be your habits after.” But when I saw this, I’m like, “It’s totally right. Some things have to change.” And where I’m coming from with this as a person who, I have lost a lot of weight in my life and regained it, and the times when I regained it, I’ll give you one example, because it’s the biggest one in my mind, is when I did Nutrisystem.

0:10:17.0 Kim Schlag: I don’t know if you’re familiar with what exactly what…

0:10:18.8 Jordan Lips: Sure.

0:10:18.9 Kim Schlag: Nutrisystem is, the little red boxes, at least they used to be red. And so what I… And I lost 40 pounds, a little over 40 pounds. All I had to do was every day I’d wake up and I’d pick for each meal which red box. I changed, nothing, that’s a big change, then I’m like, “If I go out to dinner, I’m bringing my own red box.” But those weren’t in any way teaching me how to live next. So when I woke up one day and I was like, “I cannot eat another one of these boxes.” Like I was… The food was tasty, but it got to a point it was like, “I cannot do it another minute.” And in my mind, I was like, “I’ll just keep losing weight on my own.” I’ll just like… I don’t think I thought like I’ll take what I’ve learned, but I was just like, “I’ll just keep doing this without this.” And what I quickly realized is I had not learned a darn thing. I had no habits in place, no systems, no structure, no knowledge, and I regained over half of that weight in just a matter of months because I hadn’t learned anything. And so that’s, I think, where I’d come from, where I’m like, “You know you guys, you gotta get your habits in line, but they’re not going to be exactly the same.” So, let’s talk more specifically, what do you think are some specific examples of, “We’re not gonna try and live our 2400-calorie lifestyle on a 1700-calorie diet.” What are some examples of things that might need to change?

0:11:27.1 Jordan Lips: Yeah, and I think you make a good point, and I think that it’s conflating two ideas that I think you would agree with 100%. I think you need a good base foundation of habits that will be sustainable long-term, and maybe a basic understanding of basic nutrition. But some things are going to change, and so I think that it’s… Again, it gets lost in the fact that what we are talking about here has a bit of nuance and that’s difficult to communicate sometimes in social media and maybe offline, you’re having these talks with clients and coaches are that, are a bit more nuanced, but it doesn’t really get across in social media where it’s like, “Yes, you can change some things, but if you change everything and you don’t have a foundational habit, then you are, unfortunately, most or many people who are like, “Oh, I just go keto and then I don’t know what to do afterwards.” And it’s like keto’s issue is not to do with keto, it’s that it usually creates such a drastic change that is done by people who don’t have a good foundation beforehand and an exit plan for after.

0:12:24.8 Kim Schlag: Yes.

0:12:26.3 Jordan Lips: And that combination of things where, “I don’t have a foundation, then I change a lot, and I don’t know how to change back to because I don’t have anything, a foundation to begin with,” that’s a recipe for disaster, I totally agree with that.

0:12:36.1 Kim Schlag: That is a recipe for I just need to keep doing this over and over, right? [chuckle]

0:12:39.6 Jordan Lips: Yeah, totally. And you asked some specific examples of sometimes things can change, and I hate using myself as an example, but it was helpful ’cause I have… This is the first deficit I’ve done in quite some time, I was doing a gain for a very long time, and I was trying to expose myself to intentional weight gain and a bit of discomfort and work through some of my own shit on that, because I think that that’s something that’s not always easy to do, even for fitness professionals or whatever. So now, I’m in a place where I’d like to do a deficit, ’cause I also do wanna expose myself to that side of things, but I caught myself, I dropped a 1000 calories from my surplus calories to my deficit calories. And I was like, “There are just things that are going to have to change about the way I eat.” And so for me, and I suppose clients as well, this isn’t necessarily just a me thing, but adjusting my feeding window has been helpful. I used to… When I was trying to eat at maintenance or at surplus, I would eat first thing in the morning and it would be fine, that worked really well for me, it’s something I do like doing.

0:13:34.5 Jordan Lips: And when I dropped my calories and I started to continue doing that, I just kept… I did that, I dropped my calories, I was like, “Okay, I’m just gonna keep everything the same, change a little bit about my meal structure to adhere a little bit better. No big deal.” I found myself very hungry later and I found myself more adherent and more enjoyable when I very gently pushed my first meal back, not super rigid, Kenny to one, but didn’t try to eat first thing in the morning. And I think that that is something I know in my gut I’m not going to do if I have 500 or more calories. I’m just not gonna do that. I’m gonna eat first in the morning, it’s something I like to do. But right now, it’s super helpful. And so intermittent fasting, we can call it that or we can just call it moving your first meal back a little bit. [chuckle] That has been helpful. I know I’m not gonna do it long-term, it’s not something I love doing. But it’s helpful for me right now. I can have a cup of coffee, I can push my first meal back. I have not eaten yet today, it’s 9:43. I’m not overly stressed about the time, but yeah, I know that that for me will be a helpful strategy even though I’m not gonna do it long-term.

0:14:27.0 Kim Schlag: So, adjusting people’s meal times, so people like looking at… Your meal timing and your meal frequency might be something that needs to change to support you living in a deficit.

0:14:36.4 Jordan Lips: Yeah.

0:14:36.6 Kim Schlag: That’s a good one, that’s a really good one.

0:14:38.6 Jordan Lips: I have a bunch of ones here, but I think one that I just… I’m excited to talk about is like counting calories. Counting calories might be… I get goosebumps. Counting calories might be something that you do during a deficit because it is something that allows you to be more accurate, more directly get yourself into a calorie deficit, but it might be something you know in your gut you don’t wanna do long-term. Like that…

0:15:03.2 Kim Schlag: Absolutely.

0:15:04.6 Jordan Lips: Is the quintessential example, people are like, “Should I track my calories at maintenance?” It’s like, “Maybe, maybe not.” But should you track them in deficit? I think you can lean that maybe, maybe not a little bit towards maybe, yes, because a deficit is a little bit less intuitive and likely helpful if you’re a bit more intentional with it. And so, tracking calories is not something I’m going to do forever. I know in the deficit that that habit for me is helpful, and so I think that that’s a huge one.

0:15:30.7 Kim Schlag: Yeah, and going along with that one, weighing your food more than just eye-balling it, that is not something I wish for any of my clients who permanently do. But while they’re in a deficit, and especially when they’re just beginning, or if they’re pretty lean, trying to get leaner, that weighing is gonna be so key till you have weighed enough that you’re really good at eye-balling. And even then, look, I feel like I’m pretty experienced at this and I’m in a deficit now, I’m weighing every bit of my food because I wanna get into this deficit and I wanna get back out, and I realized that the fastest way to do that is gonna be to be adherent. And so the easiest way to do that is to weigh in grams literally everything I eat. Do I want to do that like two years from now? I don’t even wanna be doing that six months from now. [chuckle]

0:16:15.1 Jordan Lips: Well, you said something, and I think that this is an underlying… When people talk about your experience dieting or how skilled you are at dieting, I think one of those skills or that inherent understanding for people who have maybe done this a couple of times, it’s like this is not… This is voluntary and this is not forever. And when you understand those two things, you’re better able to compartmentalize these changes where you’re like, “I’m gonna weigh everything.” And it might not give you the kind of anxiety it might give somebody else ’cause you know that you’re doing this for a goal in the short-term, short-ish term in relative sense to your life, and you know that you’re feeling confident about undoing that habit and moving back to your higher calories where it might not require that level of meticulous tracking. And so for a lot of people doing that habit can feel daunting. Weighing… Somebody’s out there weighing your spinach leaves, it can feel like, [chuckle] “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m gonna have to do this forever.”

0:17:05.6 Jordan Lips: But if you are somebody who’s maybe a little bit more experienced or you’re working with a coach who can communicate this, like, “This is not forever. It serves a purpose. Here’s our exit plan. Here are your base foundational habits. Here’s what your life’s gonna look like at maintenance. Here’s how we’re gonna practice it throughout our deficits so that you know your reverse diet back to maintenance isn’t the first time you’ve ever done that. We should practice it in small chunks before we get there.” And so you can do those things ’cause you know in your gut, “Hey, this isn’t forever, I’m gonna transition back to my normal life at some point. And so no worries, I can do this for the short period of time.”

0:17:36.3 Kim Schlag: Yeah, that’s a really key point. Alright, hit us with some more, more specific examples of things that might need to change.

0:17:42.7 Jordan Lips: Yeah, and this something you and I talked about on my podcast, is the idea of how to handle temptation in the house. Now, I know my food shop looked very… I cracked up. So, Jenna, my girlfriend and I, are both in a deficit together, that’s one of the reasons I was doing it. It’s ’cause it would be pretty miserable, me in a surplus, her in a deficit, not fine. [chuckle] And so we did our food shop together, and when we were in a surplus, the food shop looked very different. And when we were in deficit, it looked very different. And you had said something that stuck with me, it’s like you’re not morally a better person by being able to have those certain temptation foods in your house and not eat them. And again, I think it isn’t personal context, individuality exists, but I know that I’m just not going to buy certain foods I know aren’t helpful.

0:18:27.1 Jordan Lips: Now, that doesn’t mean I’m gonna only be eating chicken, and broccoli, and brown rice, and berries. Of course, I have some foods that are more snack foods, more hedonic enjoyable foods, or whatever, but I also know that the way I’m gonna set up my environment is a little bit more around abstinence, a little bit more about not having that stuff around. Again, because I know it’s short-term and because I have an exit strategy. And so I think those are… I have a foundational basic good habits, I know it’s not forever, and I have an exit strategy. So, I think those three things are important if you’re gonna change stuff, if you’re gonna… The more you change, the more you’re gonna have to change back, and the more you change, the more it’s important to have that foundation and practice it and have an exit strategy. But for me, I know that for the next eight to 12 weeks, it’s just probably a good idea for me to not buy Cape Cod chips and Ben & Jerry’s. This is probably not a good idea, not helpful, and I can do that without feeling overly restrictive to a point where it maybe has some counter negative effects, because I know it’s not forever and I know that my life…

0:19:30.0 Jordan Lips: Your deficit calories aren’t forever, and so if you’re eating 1700, but you know when it’s all over, maybe your maintenance comes down a little bit, you’re like, “Okay, I eat 22, 23.” When this is all over, you can have those things. And so if you’re compartmentalizing, if you’re recognizing that this isn’t forever, you can probably rationalize better making some of those changes.

0:19:46.2 Kim Schlag: Absolutely, and I think so many, particularly women, maybe men too, but particularly women, I think they live with a dieting mentality like semi-permanently. And so hearing this skills really hard, ’cause they see no end to the diet. They just don’t see it has an end, and that’s a real problem. So you should have an end date, not an end date by like, “I will stop this when I’ve lost X number of pounds.” But an end date as in, “I’m doing this for 12 weeks. I’m doing this for four months, however long it’s gonna be, at which point I’m going to take a nice maintenance break.” That is a very different feeling, than, to be like not bringing the Ben & Jerry’s home versus whenever I lose 50 pounds, I get to bring Ben & Jerry’s home.

0:20:27.3 Jordan Lips: Yeah, for sure. I think that…

0:20:28.0 Kim Schlag: That’s a significant difference.

0:20:29.6 Jordan Lips: Yeah, absolutely. And again, it’s how you’re framing what you’re doing. If you think every change that you’re making is gonna be forever, well then you’re gonna view not buying Ben & Jerry’s in a very different light and you’re gonna say, “I’m never gonna have this again?” And that whole “I’m never gonna have this again” usually leads to this is some last supper mentality where any time you do get your hands on it, you’re gonna have it like crazy because you’re like, “Oh, I’m never gonna have this again.” But you know you will. It’s tricky, though, because there are gonna be other people who having a little bit of Ben & Jerry’s creates the optimal deficit environment for them because they can have that sort of indulgence. I just don’t think you have to be that way. And I think it’s okay if you can compartmentalize the deficit into like, “Hey, this is a short-term thing I’m doing to lose fat, and when I have more calories afterwards, I’ll be able to do X, Y and Z. I’ll be able to undo X, Y and Z habit. I’ll be able to start having breakfast and getting the chips and… ” You can do all of that all the time. It’s not a can or can’t, it’s a decision that you’re making that you know is gonna help you be most successful at the task currently at hand, which you’re recognizing isn’t forever.

0:21:32.0 Kim Schlag: Yeah, absolutely. I think another good example of things that might need to change, another good one is less eating out.

0:21:38.3 Jordan Lips: Oh, for sure.

0:21:39.4 Kim Schlag: For me, that has been… Not to say you can’t lose weight eating out. You have to probably change how you’re eating out, where you’re eating out, what you’re getting when you’re eating out, but for many people, the easiest thing to do is just less eating out.

0:21:51.3 Jordan Lips: Yeah, I totally agree. I think that’s a huge one. I think it’s not something that people wanna hear because people want to go out and they wanna have their cake and eat it too. I was trying to do my best to play devil’s advocate going into this conversation, ’cause I figured we’d have lot that we would agree on, but the question that people are asking while they listen to us is, “Well, won’t I just gain it all back when I do transition out of this?” And it’s the question on everyone’s minds, a question that I have every time a client has a little bit of success in fat loss because of making some of these changes, they start to associate success and feeling good with this change they’ve made. And they start to counter-associate, “Well, what if I don’t have that, then I’ll probably have this counter-feeling of gaining weight.” And I understand that fear. Frankly, I totally get that. It’s solely natural.

0:22:35.5 Jordan Lips: It’s like, “Okay, I’m intermittent fasting and I started losing weight. So when I stopped intermittent fasting, will I just gain the weight?” It’s a legitimate fear, I get that. But you do need to understand… And that’s why having a foundation, practicing it during your deficit and talking with your coach about an exit strategy are imperative to making any changes. If you don’t do those three things, first of all I don’t think you’re ready to be in deficit anyway, but that’s something we could talk about another time, but I get it. If you’re making changes and those changes lead to success and you’re worried that undoing those changes will make you gain all of the weight back, I think it’s all the more important to be practicing maintenance during your deficit, having diet breaks, having longer maintenance phases where you do undo those habits and you practice not gaining all the weight back.

0:23:18.6 Kim Schlag: I think the other reason people have that fear is because they’ve had so little experience with intentional maintenance. They really have bounced from I’m losing weight to I’m gaining weight, I’m losing weight to I’m gaining weight. So if I’m not actively losing weight, what’s the other option? The only other thing is I’m gaining my weight back. And they don’t understand that there is this entire space between those two, which is weight maintenance, which does not require the level of strictness with calories as a deficit does. And so really working with people to help them, women specifically that I work with, to understand you’re not just gonna gain all this weight back, what we’re gonna do is put you at maintenance, which is not the lifestyle you were previously leading. What you were living before was a surplus, an unintentional one, but it was a surplus.

0:24:00.7 Jordan Lips: Yeah, intentional maintenance freaks people out. It feels like intentionally standing still, but it is actually the thing that… I think something I believe wholeheartedly, if I looked across my clients, one of the more indirect proxies of success or traits of successful clients or whatever, is your ability to be at maintenance without viewing it, without doing it reluctantly. By doing it and enjoying it and knowing that it is crucial. It’s not a break, it is an intentional… Something that you’re doing intentionally to set yourself up for later success. And I think that there’s… And I posted this yesterday, and I’m believing it more and more, like wanting to lose fat and being ready to lose fat are just totally different things. And I think being ready to lose fat, there has to be some basis of intentional maintenance before that. I don’t know if I can stomach taking on clients who have never, ever, ever done intentional maintenance, just putting them directly into a deficit, because while practicing maintenance during your deficit is super helpful. Just that whole process of going from your deficit calories back to maintenance and seeing that the scale maybe goes up a tiny bit, and going through that and having that expectation built where you’re not assuming you’re gonna just maintain your lowest weight and never gain anything back in that transition to maintenance. That’s super important. But it’s also tough to do if you’ve never done it.

0:25:19.5 Jordan Lips: It’s tough to go transition to maintenance if you… I just don’t know if I want to be creating those foundational habits on the fly, and even if it’s two weeks at intentional maintenance or a month or something, there has to be some form of buy-in to… I think that it’s less about getting more people to do deficits, it’s more about the percent success rate. And I think that that percent success rate will go up if people practice intentional maintenance first. I’m not saying forever. You don’t have to put your fat loss on hold. But you do need to recognize that there’s some sort of buy-in. This is not something your body wants to do, and part of that buy-in is proving to yourself that you can be in intentional maintenance without doing it reluctantly and feeling guilty about it and feeling like you’re supposed to be doing something else, even if you’re not at your goal weight. Especially if you’re not at your quote “goal weight” yet.

0:26:05.5 Jordan Lips: Being able to maintain there, out feeling guilty, not doing it reluctantly, really like… I do believe that taking a break, whether it’s a deload, or a diet break, or a rest day, if you’re not doing it permissively, if you’re not giving yourself permission to take the rest, if you’re doing it reluctantly and you’re doing it the whole time feeling guilty like, “I should be training. What is this deload? I should be… I should be in a deficit. What is this diet break?” You don’t actually get the benefit of taking that break. It’s psychologically, it’s not relaxing for you. It’s supposed to be a break. And so I think that there’s a lot of the things there that are very intertwined.

0:26:38.8 Kim Schlag: So to your point of someone wanting to lose weight, but not necessarily being ready to lose weight, somebody listening to this right now who wants to lose weight, what are some things that would be… That you would say would be signs that they’re not ready? So I want to, but I’m not… But am I ready?

0:26:55.2 Jordan Lips: Yeah, I think at face value, taking a look at… Having ever done some period of intentional maintenance, having… If you… If… When is the last time you did months, not weeks, of not trying to lose weight? And if the answer is, “I’ve been trying to lose weight for the last of decade, more or less,” with the switch flipped on cruise control, well, then I do think that that’s something where it’s like, “Yes, wanting is necessary, but it’s not sufficient.” And so, you want to lose weight, but it’s not enough. I think spending some time intentionally on maintenance is psychologically important, because it gets you into a place where you’re okay eating without seeing the scale go down. And then, it’s practically important because it’s practicing the thing you’re gonna have to do afterwards and during.

0:27:38.8 Jordan Lips: It’s also physiologically important getting your hunger hormones, your satiety hormones… It’s like all of those things that are going on in your endocrine system to a place where you’d actually be able to withstand multiple consecutive weeks in a deficit. And so, it’s important for a lot of reasons. I also think, the all important assessing your relationship with food, I think if you’re having inch restrict episodes, or you’re still feeling like you’re fighting this good-bad food dichotomy, if you’re still looking at foods as, “I can and can’t have.” And so I think that… I think a lot of those things actually… Ironically are fixed by doing or improved by doing some intentional maintenance. I think that that’s… The constant pursuit of lower calories inevitably leads to periods of higher calories, you can’t always be trying to eat less, and so, if you’ve never tried to eat at maintenance, a lot of good things happen there, for sure.

0:28:31.1 Kim Schlag: I think another one is, look at what’s going on with the rest of your life. If you’re in a period of intense stress, you’re not sleeping, for whatever reason things are crazy at work and with the kids. If there’s multiple layers of big life changes happening, this might not be the time, and I think some people jump in ’cause they feel like, “I need to look better right now for X, Y, and Z reason of these big changes that are happening,” it might not be the best time to add the additional stress of, “Now I’m eating at a deficit.” That is stressful for your body, and if you’ve already got all these other things going on, it might just be a better time for you to be in maintenance, you might be more successful than trying to add the stress of a deficit on.

0:29:11.4 Jordan Lips: Yeah, and I… I think that somebody’s counterpoint might be, “Well, it’s never gonna be the perfect time,” and that’s also another sentiment.

0:29:17.4 Kim Schlag: That is absolutely true.

0:29:18.5 Jordan Lips: Totally. It’s never going to be the perfect time. But I’ll tell you what, there are better times than others… [chuckle] and…

0:29:24.3 Kim Schlag: That is so true.

0:29:25.5 Jordan Lips: It is. I have some clients… I have a client who specifically comes to mind who was studying for the LSAT and really wanted to do a ‘deficit phase’, and, we just had a conversation about like, “Hey, right now? That’s gonna affect your cognition to some degree, it’s gonna affect your food focus, it’s gonna affect your fatigue, it’ gonna affect your training for however those things kind of interact.” And, it just… Isn’t… Okay, it’s not the best time. It’s not gonna be the perfect time, but this is a worst time than afterwards. And so, like you said, just being honest about the other stuff that’s going on in your life. No, you don’t need eight weeks of being on an island with nothing happening in your life for you to go into a deficit but, there are going to be better times than others, and pairing maintenance with better times in your life. I know that… I’m sure you do this where if you have a client who’s in a deficit and they have a period, three activities, let’s say, or they’re going away for a super long weekend, or they’re going on a vacation, like pairing maintenance with that time, well, guess what? That’s because that’s a good time to do maintenance, it’s a better time to give this person more calories, just like there’s probably a better time for you to be able to withstand giving yourself less calories. Totally.

0:30:30.9 Kim Schlag: It’s a really good point that there will never be a perfect time to lose weight, and so many people think there is, they’re all waiting for this perfect time. My very first online client, I was still a really pretty inexperienced coach, but she stayed with me for an entire year. In the entire year we were working together, she just was never quite getting it on the ball, we just couldn’t quite get all the things happening at once, and she kept saying things like, “Well, it’s the spring, things are really busy with all the school activities,” which they are. “It’ll be better when summer comes and I don’t have so many responsibilities.” Well, then summer came, and it was like, “Well, now we’re traveling a lot, and things will be better when the fall comes and the kids are back in school and I have a routine.” Well, then the fall routine was, “Oh, now my kids are in competitive band stuff, so I’m chaperoning.

0:31:11.4 Kim Schlag: It’ll be better when band season’s over.” Guess what hit next? Then it was the holiday season, “Oh, it’s gonna be better when the holiday season’s over,” [chuckle] and then, it was January, and I’m like, “What’s she gonna say now?” And she’s like, “You know what? I have seasonal affective disorder, so it’s gonna be better in the spring.” I’m like, “That’s when we started.” [laughter] And then… And I didn’t say that, but I was thinking, and when we got there, she’s like, “Oh my gosh, I just realized, there is never gonna be the best time. It’s literally not coming, is it?” And I was like, “It’s not.” But your point is totally valid, just ’cause there’s not gonna be a perfect time, does not mean that some times are not the best time, right? Like… If your parent has passed away, let’s not go on a deficit that week, like, let’s wait… Let’s wait a bit. A really really good point there Jordan. Alright, give us a couple more examples of things that might need to change in a deficit.

0:31:57.4 Jordan Lips: I’m gonna… I’m gonna come… I wanna get to that in one sec but something that came to mind about your client there is like, “It’s better to be at maintenance on purpose than at maintenance by accident.”

0:32:06.3 Kim Schlag: Absolutely.

0:32:06.3 Jordan Lips: And so, if you have a client who’s like, “We’re… Right, we’re gung-ho, we’re ready… ” Maybe you even assess them before hand mentally, and they feel like they’re ready to be in a deficit, they have their relationship with food in check, and you start the deficit, and we’re like four, five, six weeks in, they haven’t lost any weight, having trouble adhering. It’s like this whole time, six, seven, eight weeks, whatever it was, the whole time you were trying to lose weight, and that’s fatiguing, it’s probably a little bit stressful on the body. We could have intentionally been at maintenance and been getting physiologically and psychologically taking steps forward, practically taking steps forward. And so, to your point, it’s like, at some point, let’s just stop trying to lose fat for a while, and let’s do it on purpose, it feels a whole lot better when you do something on purpose than when you’re doing it… When you’re failing at something and you’re ending up at a certain place. If you’re… If you’re trying to do something and it’s not working, then it’s probably better to just intentionally do the thing that you’re ending up doing anyway. It’ll feel a whole lot better.

0:32:57.7 Kim Schlag: Absolutely. ‘Cause maintenance can feel like a real victory if that’s what you’re trying to do. If your successfully maintaining your weight, and this is a great period, or it can feel like a real big fat failure, if what you’re supposed to be doing in your mind, is trying to lose weight and you end up at maintenance. So, same exact results with very different feelings and attached to them.

0:33:15.3 Jordan Lips: And if you’re lifting weights, and I don’t mean to make this about aesthetics. It’s not. But if you just… If people are out there so worried about aesthetics. Oh my God, if I’m at maintenance, I’m not moving towards the body I want. If you’re lifting weights, there is no such thing as non-productive time. There’s no amount of calories that will make this not productive. Even if you slipped into a surplus. Well, guess what? That’s the most productive eight weeks of training you’ve ever had in your entire life. So I just tell people, if you’re lifting weights, a lot of this stuff is you’re always moving aesthetically forward, health wise forward as well.

0:33:48.4 Kim Schlag: Absolutely.

0:33:48.9 Jordan Lips: That’s why lifting weights is so unique because it provides a long-term benefit outside of the calories you’re burning in that moment. And so if you have a client who’s like, wants to be toned, and part of that is losing the fat, and part of that is building the muscle and you’re hammering away at the fat loss side of things, it’s just not panning out, like, “Hey, let’s go to maintenance.” Most of the people you and I work with can still benefit from appreciable amounts of recomposition at maintenance.

0:34:13.1 Kim Schlag: Oh, for sure.

0:34:13.4 Jordan Lips: And build muscle and lose fat at maintenance, eating high protein, putting together… You know, whether you’ve… People always ask me about that. It’s a Q&A I get every single time, and even if you’ve been lifting for a while or dieting for a while, people are like, “I got over my new big gains. I can’t really recomp anymore.” It’s like, “Man, if you’ve never put together high protein and an intelligently designed training program with enough effort, and you’ve never done that for multiple years consecutively, you still have a ton of opportunity to recomp.” If you’re listening to this, you’re struggling with deficit, you’re in and out, you’re fighting it, and you want to be toned, and you know that part of that equation is the muscle building side, just take some time. That side of the equation takes way longer anyway, and so you’re gonna have to spend more time on that equation, side of the equation anyway. So don’t think that the fat loss side of things needs to happen first. They both need to happen, or if…

0:35:05.1 Kim Schlag: That effort piece is a really important part of the equation, ’cause so many people even if they have been strength training, they have not been strength training for years at an appropriate intensity.

0:35:14.0 Jordan Lips: Yeah, tracking their work outs. My god. Totally.

0:35:17.0 Kim Schlag: So I’d say most people listening could benefit from more intensity in their work outs.

0:35:22.1 Jordan Lips: Yeah, and we can circle back to original question of things that need to change. I think amount of cardio is something that is tricky, amount of steps, step count. Some of those things that feel… And Martin McDonald talks a lot about this as sustainable during fat loss. Fat loss doesn’t need to be sustainable. You need habits, you need foundations, totally. You need to practice maintenance, absolutely. But if you’re getting 12000 steps during your fat loss phase, ’cause you know that’s gonna be super helpful, but you’re like, man, long term or when it gets to the winter time and it’s really cold, I’m gonna be stuck in the 6 to 8000 range, and that’s the realistic nature of your life. It’s okay for you to temporarily…

0:35:56.9 Jordan Lips: And that’s where a lot of people are afraid, they’re like, “Well, I’m gonna go to 12000, I’m gonna lose the weight. I’m gonna go back to 8000, I’m gonna gain the weight.” It should not be how it goes, it should not be… It does come down on some level to some math. And if you go to 12000 steps per day and you lose weight and then you drop back down to six and you increase your calories too much, sure, you might create an environment where you gain some of the weight back, but that is not the fault of you going up to 12000. That is the fault of this lack of the balance of when you’ve transitioned out of your deficit, understanding that maybe you don’t change all the variables at once. So that’s part of the nuance of the exit strategy, but I think number of… Even just counting your steps in the same way counting your calories, you might not want to count your steps or even have a goal at all. But yeah, and that’s me, by the way. This is my first time counting my steps in about two years.

0:36:44.7 Kim Schlag: Okay.

0:36:45.7 Jordan Lips: I thought for sure I’d be like 7, 8. I was like, here, get at least 7000 a day. It’s a little cold, but you walk the dog a ton, you’ll probably get there. I was at 3800 the first day, I was like, “Oh crap, I’m done.”

[laughter]

0:36:55.5 Kim Schlag: Well, it’s because of what you do for work. That was stunning for me when I transitioned from being a person who trained people in person to doing online training, I was stunned when I put a step tracker on and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I am a sedentary person.” It takes a concerted effort. And now it’s like second, it’s easy for me, but that took time. I had to really… I had to work at that for like six months after I made that transition to make it feel seamless in my life to just get 7500 steps coming from sitting at my computer all day.

0:37:29.1 Jordan Lips: Yeah, and so I think that that just the active counting your steps might not be something you wanna do long-term, but you might recognize it as a habit that in your deficit helps you achieve a deficit and achieve that goal, and you long-term, I’d rather just focus on getting to walk today, and I don’t need to wear the Fitbit and that’s fine. That might be what maintenance looks like for you. Totally reasonable. But it might mean, at the end of the day, deficit is more intentional than maintenance. Maintenance, I’m not saying maintenance should be easy. Maintenance should also be intentional, and it should be intentional for a long time before it becomes second nature. But it’s probably more intentional to have to be in a deficit. It’s less intuitive to give yourself less calories and move more and create a calorie deficit. So counting steps, and then also the number of steps you’re doing is certainly something that I think is allowed to change.

0:38:10.0 Kim Schlag: Yeah, for sure. Another one that I would add to the list is the amount of alcohol will likely lead to change.

0:38:17.0 Jordan Lips: I have that one too, yeah.

0:38:17.8 Kim Schlag: Yeah, talk to us about that one.

0:38:19.8 Jordan Lips: Yeah, I think just in general, something that needs to change or something that should probably changed is how you’re ranking the qualities of food, and I think that there are so many qualities of food from how satiating it is, to the macro nutrient profile, to how delicious it is to all of these things. And I think if you go into a deficit, not to speak on that whole hierarchy, but you probably bump up satiety to higher up the list. Does it need to be you only eat high satiety foods all the time? No, okay, you don’t. But you should certainly bring satiety as a value higher when you’re looking at food. Does it need to be the number one thing? Who knows? But you should start to go to the supermarket and just be thinking, “Okay, less food. Hunger’s probably my number one enemy. Satiety per calorie needs to be something I’m at least thinking about a little bit more.

0:39:07.8 Jordan Lips: So alcohol is just not satiating per calorie. It’s just not helpful for muscle gain. It’s… I’m not… Listen, alcohol is fine. You could drink, you could lose fat. Totally fine. It’s enjoyable here and there, it’s… And I’m not, again, not overly negative about alcohol, but it is empty calories, doesn’t fill you up and probably leads to an environment with lower inhibition and potentially more drunk eating, and it’s just not helpful in any way. And so you need to be honest. I have a client. I don’t know if she’ll listen to this. I love her to death. Melissa, I love you. She has… When we first started, she had a non-negotiable of bourbon at night…

0:39:45.8 Jordan Lips: And in the beginning, she was writing her in her tracker when we’re looking at the calories, and I was baffled that she wasn’t losing weight. And I was looking at her in my fitness file diaries and we were just trying to talking through why it wasn’t working, she wasn’t even tracking it, she hadn’t even thought to herself that this is something, and so that’s another non-issue, but that is something that we have had to talk about, it’s like as calories get lower, as you’re getting further into fat loss, it’s like, “Is this a good use of my calories? Am I getting any satiety, any protein, any nutrients, and am I maybe creating an environment where I’m a little tipsy and I just don’t care as much?”

0:40:17.4 Kim Schlag: It’s a big one. That’s a big one. So what it comes down to it, this whole discussion, if you compare the calories to budget, guys you just can’t try and live a Gucci lifestyle on a gym teacher salary.

0:40:30.6 Jordan Lips: I love it, that’s awesome, so true, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:40:32.4 Kim Schlag: And that’s where we’re going with this, so let’s take it from the other direction then, what habits and systems do you think are most important for people to be practicing in a deficit to successfully maintain their lifestyle? Even though we should… We just talked… We hit a whole bunch of things that are going to change, what are some things people should be practicing while they’re in a deficit to be successful at maintenance?

0:40:51.5 Jordan Lips: That is a good question, I think on the spot, one that immediately came to mind and maybe more will come as we talk about this more, is I think the most important thing that I wish I could convey to maybe everybody on planet Earth in terms of meal composition is starting each meal around a protein and a plant, and if you just do that, I think so many… You’ll have so many knock-on benefits, it’s like what protein… And when you’re thinking about what you’re gonna eat for X meal, you’re like, “What protein am I having, and what plant?” A plant being a fruit, or a vegetable, and if you just keep that as a staple, and I… And first of all, nutritionally, it’s a good idea, high protein, good for muscle gain, good for a lot of other things, and the plants, high in nutrients, high in fiber, good things, physiologically, really good. But also, really, really, you’re building a satiating meal right off the bat. And that’s not something that comes intuitively to a lot of people and I think it also has to do with how you were brought up, and were you a family that had a protein-centric lifestyle at dinner, like did you eat family dinners together, with this every meat… Every plate had a protein? I feel like that’s sometimes, if that’s not the case, then sometimes you struggle to not realize that a bowl of pasta is not a meal. And so I think that would…

0:42:00.7 Kim Schlag: That was such a hard one for me to realize.

0:42:01.7 Jordan Lips: Is mac and cheese not a meal.

0:42:01.9 Kim Schlag: As an Italian girl you grew up like eating pasta and I’m like, “Wait, what the heck? This should not be the meal.” Like that should be like a small side dish, what?

0:42:10.6 Jordan Lips: Yeah, yeah. So I think basic meal composition habits, and in that vein, starting each meal with a protein and a plant, you just are… That’s going to indirectly reduce the amount of calories you’re eating just right off the bat. It’s also, I found, actually a good way to… I would say to a client, “You could start each meal with a protein and a plant, and I just don’t care what else you do with the rest of the plate, totally fine.” It just usually will lend people to a more overall nutritious choice for whatever else goes on that plate, it’s very unlikely that someone’s like, “Okay, protein, plant, bucket of ice cream on the plate.” And I’m not trying to push people away from high calorie, high palatable foods, there’s a place for all of that stuff but you had said like, “What’s a foundational habit?” I’m walking somebody through a maintenance block for four to eight weeks before we start a deficit, we’re getting a protein and a plant on every meal.

0:42:57.2 Kim Schlag: Yeah.

0:42:57.4 Jordan Lips: That is for sure something we’re doing.

0:43:00.3 Kim Schlag: And I love it, because that really should be permanent in people’s lifestyles. Whatever, wherever you are on trying to lose weight, gain weight, maintain weight, protein and a plant at, I would say all, if not most meals like…

0:43:11.3 Jordan Lips: Yeah. Don’t… Yeah, you miss one it’s not the end of the world, or something.

0:43:13.5 Kim Schlag: Yeah, like, “Let’s do it.” I think that’s a huge one, all right, I’ll name one and then we’ll have you name one.

0:43:17.3 Jordan Lips: Yeah.

0:43:18.3 Kim Schlag: The huge one for me is not eating when you’re not hungry, most of the time. So if you’re in Paris and you’re not that hungry, but you get to finally have the best crepe in the world, fine, go ahead and eat it, but not eating when you’re not hungry most of the time and stopping when you’re satisfied, most of the time. I think if you can really nail that, you’re gonna be so good at maintaining your weight.

0:43:40.2 Jordan Lips: Yeah. You and I would both agree that that’s something that takes time to recognize, it takes time to recognize your satiety signals, and I think also in that same note is starting to pay attention to which foods do make you feel that way and which foods don’t, and it’s easy for us to say, “Okay, the chips don’t make me feel… The chips are low satiety, high calorie foods.” But until you really pay attention and you experience that, I’m in a deficit right now, and I know that for me that there are… My protein shake meal with 200 grams of frozen berries and 50 grams of frozen avocado, is a low calorie meal but I am full for hours and starting to recognize which of those foods… It’s nice to talk about but most people don’t really understand until you are doing it and if you’re like, “Well, I just had this burrito at lunch, and I’m starving afterwards, I’m starting to kind of just piece together which foods do make me feel a little bit fuller and which foods don’t.”

0:44:27.2 Kim Schlag: Yeah, that’s a good one. All right, give us another one.

0:44:30.8 Jordan Lips: I’m biased here, but I would say some form of strength training. And it isn’t even in a fat loss… This has nothing to do necessarily with fat loss, you’re not strength training to burn calories, you’re not strength training to lose extra fat, I just think that it is a habit that is… It’s a style of training that I believe is just unique and yes, movement is super important, I think that another one would be some form of a movement habit, but I do think that strength training is unique and it’s something that I would push on anybody, or at least try and convince everybody to do. Not even from a fat loss perspective, but just from a… It gives you something else to worry about other than your weight, and the fat loss, and calories burned, and it gives you a part of an equation that actually can kind of throw people for a loop sometimes, ’cause they’re like, “I’m not losing weight. But I’m looking better, and feeling better.” And all of a sudden it can kind of devalue or bring down the importance of, or take off the pedestal, the scale, and your exact number that you weigh and so I think strength training adds a component that is different from calories in, calories out.

0:45:27.1 Jordan Lips: Most people, what you want is not just to be a smaller version of yourself, you… Most, I’m not… Not everybody’s after aesthetics, but for those of you that are, the word aesthetic means some component of lifting weights at some point, most of the time. And so I think that that would be a habit that I would love for people to do even if it’s outside of fat loss, I think it’s helpful to give you something else to worry about other than calories burned, like, “How much are you lifting? How strong do you feel? What’s your… ” Whatever, aesthetically, it’s certainly a big part of the equation, so I think that that would definitely be one.

0:45:56.7 Kim Schlag: For sure. And look, even if we’re talking non-aesthetics, if we’re just talking about being healthy, this is something I talk about with my people all the time because, look, I’m a 50-year-old woman, this is really weighing on my mind, I don’t wanna be 75 and somebody has to come help me get up off the toilet, like I wouldn’t be able to do that on my own power, I don’t want to break bones, I did not know until not that long ago, that one out of two women over the age of 50 break a bone due to osteoporosis. That’s crazy. And that it’s somewhat in our control to prevent that by strengthening our bones, and strength training is a massive part of that, that weighs heavy on my mind. So even if aesthetics aren’t your thing, if you wanna be a healthy functioning senior, let’s go, strength train.

0:46:40.0 Jordan Lips: Yeah, that’s something that unfortunately doesn’t become real until you see somebody in your life, it happens to them. And I’m not saying it’s too late by that point, but I do wish that that was something that people resonate more and I have had some… I love to hike, and so one of the things that my friends and I do quite often is to go on a big hiking trip and the last hiking trip my knee was really bothering me, and it just hit me, I was like, “You aren’t in the gym to… ” For me, personally, I was like, I need to really internalize that feeling of like, “I wanna be doing this when I’m 80, or 70, or whatever, or as long as I possibly can.” And I’m in there when I’m squatting, yeah, I care around about how much I’m lifting, I guess, a little, and I care about, okay, aesthetically, I’m growing my legs, whatever, but I want my technique to be good, I wanna be focused on just general health benefits of this, physical autonomy is something that, like you said, “I want to be living my physical life on my own terms.” And I think that those are unfortunately things that don’t get internalized until, not that it’s too late, but until you see it happening, people are, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And then your parent falls and breaks their hip and you’re like, “Oh yeah, I don’t want to do that again.”

0:47:39.2 Kim Schlag: I don’t want to be that person, yeah.

0:47:40.7 Jordan Lips: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:47:41.3 Kim Schlag: Jordan, this has been a fantastic conversation, thank you so much for coming on, where can people find you, if they are looking for you?

0:47:47.4 Jordan Lips: Absolutely. First of all, thanks for having me on, it’s been a blast, I really, really appreciate it. And you guys can find me on Instagram at jordanlipsfitness, and I have my own podcast that Kim was on, we had a wonderful episode, I still get people raving about it, and the podcast is called Where Optimal Meets Practical, and yeah, you guys can search for that and look for them at other places.

0:48:03.9 Kim Schlag: I get tagged for being in that podcast episode more than any other episode, I’ve been on quite a a few podcasts. I feel like if that was six month ago, and I still like, I don’t know, maybe once a week or so, I get tagged about that episode. [chuckle]

0:48:14.9 Jordan Lips: Yeah.

0:48:15.0 Kim Schlag: That was a good episode. I was so stinking sick when we talked, Jordan.

0:48:16.9 Jordan Lips: Totally. Amazed.

0:48:17.9 Kim Schlag: I was so sick.

0:48:18.3 Jordan Lips: You were in the Covid.

0:48:21.2 Kim Schlag: I didn’t realize how sick I was. At the time, I was just like, “Oh, I’m gonna get better. I’m better in a few days.” And I’m like… [chuckle] I had no idea what I was facing then.

0:48:29.1 Jordan Lips: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

0:48:30.8 Kim Schlag: Well, thanks so much for being here, this was fantastic.

0:48:33.4 Jordan Lips: I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

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0:48:40.1 Kim Schlag: Thanks so much for being here and listening in to the Fitness Simplified Podcast today. I hope you found it educational, motivational, inspirational, all the kinds of -ational.

If you enjoyed it, if you found value in it, it would mean so much to me if you would go ahead and leave a rating and review on whatever platform you are listening to this on, it really does help to get this podcast to other people. Thanks so much.

[music]

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