Interview with Sohee Lee on metabolic adaptation, reverse dieting, and more…

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Hey, this is Mike Matthews from most for life. com. And welcome to the podcast. Thanks for stopping by in this episode. I interview so he leave from, so he fit. com. And I originally came across Sohii’s work through the work of Dr. Elaine Norton, whose stuff I follow. [00:03:00] She actually works with him. So I came across her website, was reading her articles, liked what she had to say.

I like her overall philosophy and how she goes about training and dieting and working with her clients and such. So I reached out and got her on the show. And in the way of background, so he graduated from Stanford with a degree in human biology and she’s also a nationally qualified MPC competitor and she is a certified strength and conditioning specialist through the NSCA.

And she knows her stuff. One of the, one of the problems that you can run into in this world is sometimes people that need people, even guys that have PhDs. They’ll give some pretty wacky advice and some pretty impractical advice. So one thing I really like about Sohi is not only is she well educated she walks the walk and she knows what it takes to not only get herself in shape, but get other people in shape.

Without, following a bunch of ridiculous diet restrictions and rules and with making it work for, everyday life, people that don’t necessarily eat where [00:04:00] you’re not going to be bringing every meal with you in Tupperware everywhere you go. And you’re not, you can’t spend hours in the gym every day.

So I hope you like the interview. I think you will. And let’s get to it. All right. Hey, so he, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. 

Sohee Lee: Hi, it’s great to be here. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I’m excited to talk about what we’re going to talk about because it’s definitely like these subjects of flexible dieting and reverse dieting made a big difference for me when I came across them and started, applying them.

And I know it’s a big, I guess it’s almost like a big revelation for people when they move from the superstition style of dieting, where, It’s all about restricting certain types of foods and following a bunch of weird rules. And it just, it’s not viable as a lifestyle. You know what I mean?

Sohee Lee: Yeah. That makes sense. I totally agree. 

Mike Matthews: All right. So you wrote a fantastic couple, a couple of books actually on the subjects, right? So you have a book on the subject of counting macros and flexible dieting and then a separate book on reverse dieting. Most of the listeners are probably gonna be familiar with these things, but just in [00:05:00] case the argument people that aren’t, can you briefly explain each of these things?

Sohee Lee: Oh, you want me to explain the e books themselves? 

Mike Matthews: No, just the subjects. What is flexible diving? What is reverse diving? 

Sohee Lee: Oh my gosh. Okay there are so many different Definitions of flexible dieting out there, and I think that it is grossly misunderstood by people, from the outside looking in who are hearing about flexible dieting for the first time because a lot of people think that flexible dieting is a diet that Oh, just allows you to eat junk food all day long and can get ripped eating nothing but junk food.

And then people, of course, they’re going to say, Oh, yeah, that’s so unhealthy. And how are you going to get your fiber and all these things? But the fact of the matter is flexible dieting is very heavily focused on healthy foods still. But the main difference is that we don’t, exclude any food items.

We don’t say, okay, you can eat this food and you can’t eat any of that. It’s more, okay, as long as [00:06:00] you, as long as the majority of your food choices tend to come from whole foods, then, there’s nothing wrong with having a little bit of candy or a little bit of junk food here and there. And just because you’re a flexible dieter does not mean you’re a macro conner.

You can be a flexible dieter and not count macros. You can be a flexible dieter and count macros. It really doesn’t matter. It’s more, honestly, it’s, I feel flexible dieting is more of a mindset difference than anything else. And, No guilt involved. As far as reverse dining, that is a concept that has been popularized by Dr.

Lane Norton with whom I coauthored my second ebook, which is, on, on reverse dining. And reverse dining is just a concept that it’s like the happy version of bulking, because you are still, it’s a very controlled and calculated approach to increasing your caloric intake by manipulating macronutrients with the prime goals of increasing metabolic capacity.

And 

Mike Matthews: what does mean exactly? 

Sohee Lee: [00:07:00] Pretty much increasing your metabolism and normalizing your hormones, every reversing everything that’s happened from a fat loss phase or from a crash dieting phase, especially this is especially good for those who have been crash dieting for a number of years, which is surprisingly a lot of people.

So yeah, and you want to get your health back into working order and you don’t have to have metabolic damage, quote unquote to go through reverse dieting. I have a lot of perfectly healthy clients who choose to reverse diet because they want to build more muscle, but they don’t want to get fat.

They don’t want to pile a bunch of fat on in the process. 

Mike Matthews: And that’s probably, that’s a simple matter of you’re starting with a healthy metabolism. So you’re putting yourself in a mild surplus and just increasing that over time. 

And of course, some body fat comes along with it, but that’s, there’s, when you realize how easy it is to lose fat, then gaining fat is just, it’s part of the game because to maximize muscle growth, you’re, you need to be in a little bit of a surplus.

So what you get a little bit fatter, it’s just the way it is. 

Sohee Lee: And you know what, actually I do say that, a little bit of fat gain [00:08:00] tends to be the norm, but I will say, obviously the more adherent you are to your macros, run reverse dieting the less, the more you can control the fat gain and the less, and actually there are some people who lean out while they’re reverse dieting.

And this is not the norm, but I do have a handful of clients and I have heard of a number of different people who have been able to get leaner and drop inches. And watch the scale, but you go down while they’re increasing their caloric intake, but that is not the norm. 

Mike Matthews: No I’ve actually come across that too.

That’s normally when I’ve seen it is when people were crash dieting for, like you said, I don’t know if I’ve come across people doing it for, it’s not true. I have come across people for years, but usually. It’s, in more, more along the lines of months. So they’ve crashed their metabolism and their weight loss is stalled.

I’ve definitely seen that where then they start eating more and all of a sudden they’re losing fat again and feeling better and their workouts are better and like their life has changed basically. 

Sohee Lee: And this pretty much goes, I saw a post a few days not a few days, a few months back and it was really baffling to me.

Someone, some, someone on Facebook got up on her pedestal and she [00:09:00] was, She was talking about how fat loss is always a matter of calories in and calories out. And if you’re still gaining fat or if you’re not losing fat, then you’re eating too much. That’s it. No questions asked. And I cannot disagree more with that.

I think that’s an incredibly over oversimplified statement. I think it does not, it completely overlooks the fact that the body isn’t, is incredibly complex. And as we’ve seen with some people, they have to actually eat more in order to get their bodies to respond. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think that if you’re going to make a simple statement.

Yeah. You could say the energy, it does boil down to energy balance. I guess that’s probably a better way of looking at than just saying calories in calories out. Because while we know calories is a number or dieting is a numbers game and how much energy you’re giving your body, it is more or less the bottom line where that, where, how that energy is coming in terms of macronutrients.

And then also where’s your body at in terms of metabolism? I’d say somebody that has a healthy, normal metabolism. Yeah. It’s just calories and making sure that. Making sure that your [00:10:00] protein intake is high enough and that you’re not doing, making any major mistakes. But there definitely are the kind of outlier anomaly type cases where because usually, I see, I don’t know about you, but I see with people when they have, when their metabolisms, they’ve messed their metabolisms up and they’re just running a lot slower than they should be.

Then things can be different and then it gets interesting. 

And there’s also the water retention issues that people mistake for fat loss. You’re all puffy and you look fatter and then let’s say your cortisol levels are out the roof and you start fixing that and then you’re shedding water and you can’t really tell the difference.

All you know is that you’ve lost weight and you look leaner in the mirror. So you assume it’s fat loss, but it’s not always, 

Sohee Lee: Especially with fat loss, especially in the first one or two or three weeks, I’d say if you have a lot of fat to lose, yeah, the first two, three weeks, you’re probably going to see the more.

More of the scale weight drop than the normal. And I find that it’s difficult. It can be difficult for clients to first get it really encouraged by the quote unquote, fast fat loss rate. And then become really discouraged because obviously it’s going to necessarily slow down. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. If it didn’t, [00:11:00] that’d be a bad sign.

That means eventually it means you’re losing muscles. 

Sohee Lee: And I would say, actually, this is a good thing. Slow progress is definitely a good thing. And you want, you don’t want to lose too fast. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I I run into that more with women than men just because that’s the big push is drop 30 pounds in 30 days and crazy shit like that.

You had mentioned a little bit earlier about counting macros versus not counting macros. It’s an interesting subject. I get asked about it fairly often might make actually a good article. I should probably note that down, but what my, let me briefly share my thoughts and I’m curious what your thoughts are.

Of course. Of course. You don’t, in terms of counting, if you can eyeball things, you can know approximately what you’re eating. If you’re going out to restaurants a lot, you probably can’t, you don’t really know unless it’s a restaurant like Chipotle where you can get an idea or if you’re just ordering I want a grilled chicken breast and some sort of just a carb that is not going to be loaded with hidden calories.

But, yeah. I guess I find that if you’re going to wing it like that, it can work for [00:12:00] maintaining because you can also then adjust. You’re never going to make such a big mistake without knowing it, that you’re just going to pile on body fat by not counting things and just going okay, I’m hungry.

I’m going to eat. What am I going to eat? I know I need about this much protein, but you gotta be familiar with foods. You know what I mean? I don’t know. What are your thoughts? 

If you just go, if you’re trying, if you’re just like, Hey, I’m just going to feel, I’m going to eat whatever I feel like, chances are your intake is going to be, maybe you won’t grossly overeat because your body is hormonally, it has hormones to control feeding and it doesn’t want you to just, become obese.

But chances are your, at least your macros are probably gonna be messed up. 

Sohee Lee: I think as far as county macros, I. I did write that book, How to Count Macros, but it does not mean that I believe everyone should count macros. I think that, at the very least, it’s a very valuable skill to have and it’s worth taking the time to learn how to count macros because it’s not intuitive for everyone.

And it can seem really overwhelming, so learning the skill [00:13:00] to, to be able to calculate your food your eating for the day so that you come in, within plus or minus five grams of each micronutrient, that can take some practice. If your goal is fat loss, do I think that you can lose fat without cutting macros?

Yes, of course you can. It’s just trickier. It’s trickier, but I will say if you’re smaller, obviously if you’re more petite or if you’re leaner, then I would definitely recommend macro counting at least temporarily, because, going from over weight, at least body fat wise to lean is. Not that difficult, relatively speaking, right?

But going from lean to leaner or lean to shredded or ripped, that is really takes a lot of fine tuning, and the difference of even just a few hundred calories a day can make a huge difference in either stalling progress or, making the progress that you want to see. So for that reason, if you want to really lean out, then I would definitely recommend macro accounting.

If you like you were saying, if you just want to maintain your weight, maintain your body size, I think that you’re completely, it’s perfectly fine to not count [00:14:00] macros and just kind of eyeball things and tweak as you go. Yeah, and I you know, I’ve been through cycles of cutting macros and not cutting macros and both work for different goals 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I totally agree I mean for me, I don’t really I’m not so much into counting as I’m into planning like I like, you know Cooking so I’ll come up with recipes and go.

Okay cool. And because of the time that goes into It’s oh Alright, this is gonna be my dinner for the next, until I get sick of it, and that’s what I, and then this is gonna be my lunch, and maybe I’ll change I’ll leave maybe a snack will be instead of a set carb, it might just be, like, whatever, 50, 50 grams of carbs and it’s going to be from some fruit or from some whatever and I’ll decide what do I feel like, do I want to eat bananas today or apples or that’s how I like to do it.

Certain meals are fixed and certain meals have macro profiles and I I’m familiar with foods from just cooking a lot and stuff. So I can on the fly just decide, all right how am I going to fill these numbers, 

but that’s cause I make my own food though. For the people listening, if you’re going out to restaurants just assume that it’s going to be bad.

There’s 

Sohee Lee: a lot here. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: You make food tasting. Yeah. You make food [00:15:00] taste good by adding fat, by adding butter, cream, oil. Really? That’s the standard. 

Sohee Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: So a dish that you might make at home might have a, have 500 calories or 700 calories. You go to a restaurant and order it. And it’s double that.

Yeah. All right. So now next question here. So people often ask me how long they need to have been in a calorie deficit for to make reverse dieting necessary. What are your thoughts on this? 

Sohee Lee: Oh man, there is really no answer. You can go, you can, you don’t have to even be in a calorie deficit right now.

You don’t have to have just finished the phallus cycle in order to reverse diet. You can reverse diet right now. If you’ve been maintaining and you want to reverse diet, that’s, there’s nothing wrong with that. I think that I guess to make reverse necessary, I would say if you have been at a very low caloric intake and for that I would probably say either your color, total calories have been at 10 times body weight or less for more than a few months and you have been making no progress or your progress has stalled and you’re feeling [00:16:00] absolutely crappy, then I would say, okay, doesn’t really make sense to continue trying to keep you in a calorie deficit.

Let’s switch gears for a couple of months, at least a couple of months and reverse diet. You, that’s when I would strongly recommend it. Other times I would say, okay, if if your calories are otherwise good and you’re feeling great, then it’s really up to the individual. But it’s, as far as a health, from a health standpoint, Yeah, if you’re, if you’ve been at a very low calorie intake then, and you’re working with me, I would say I, I am not, I’m not going to drop your calories further.

Yeah. Really strongly recommend you consider reverse dieting. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: And 

Sohee Lee: that’s when I would say you have to, you don’t really have a choice. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I agree. Personally, I like to see people stop at BMR. Just if you’re at BMR just by standard, like catch McCardle type and you’re not losing then.

And also of course, there’s the move more aspect, but if you’re already maxed out on the exercise and you’re eating around BMR, then it’s 

Sohee Lee: probably 

Mike Matthews: not a good idea to go lower. Cool. And then I, what about though, if I guess if somebody has lowered their [00:17:00] calories, if they, drop their calories at all, even along the way of you have in the beginning, your initial deficit, and then depending on how lean you want to get, you’re probably going to have to reduce your calories a bit more along the way.

Would you agree that kind of generally speaking, it’s not a bad idea to reverse diet back up to at least your T E to your, But you know what, your total daily energy expenditure, what you’re burning, just so the reader knows what I’m talking about, the listeners know what I’m talking about there. You might as well just reverse back up there’s, I don’t think there’s any real benefit of let’s say in the end you’re, you end at 700 calories below TDE.

There’s no reason to just jump right back up and add 700 calories per day to your intake. 

Sohee Lee: And I don’t think from a body comp standpoint, that is the favorable approach because you there are a lot of research that shows that if you spike your calories too fast, too soon, then the fat to muscle ratio that you gain back is very heavily in favor of that.

Which obviously no, I don’t know that anybody wants that. 

Mike Matthews: That’s the whole point. That’s what we’re trying to avoid, 

Sohee Lee: right? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. When do you think along the way that like, when do, when, with the people you [00:18:00] work with, when do you see it, they actually start putting on where they start noticing that they’re gaining fat again?

Sohee Lee: That is tends to be very individual and varies widely from one person to the next. As an average, I would say for, so for me with macros and calories, I used, I like to base everything off of their total body weight. So calorie, calories relative to body weight. So I would say around 16 times body weight calories is where I start to see normally people getting a little bit of weight.

But then again, I see people who gain very slowly but consistently with every, all the macro bumps, every single bump. I see people who don’t gain at all ever. So it’s, it really, I and you know what, I can’t look at a person and say, here’s how you’re going to respond to reverse dieting.

We just don’t know. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, it’s. There are, there’s, if you, I’m sure you’ve gone over this research before in terms of just metabolic research and how it means people’s metabolisms. Also just working with people, but it can [00:19:00] vary quite a bit. It’s not necessarily as variable as some people might think, but I’ve run into guys that are 170 pounds that need to eat anywhere from four to 5, 000 calories a day.

Sohee Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Lifting heavyweight compound, doing everything right. And just to gain maybe a half a pound, max a pound a week. 

Sohee Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: That’s crazy. If I were to gain, if I were to eat 5, 000 calories a day, I’d probably gain like three pounds a week. 

Sohee Lee: Oh yeah. A lot of food. 

Mike Matthews: So I think the takeaway there is that learning your body is part of the process.

Sohee Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Sohee Lee: There’s, because, admittedly reverse dieting is a new concept and. There, there are not, there just, there aren’t any studies done on it because it’s so new. So yeah, there is a good deal of trial and error and even myself and Dr. Layton are both still learning about it over time.

But yeah, these are, this is as much as we know at this point. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. And this is like the, an anecdotal type of it’s just, it’s in that anecdotal stage, which is. There’s a lot of validity, in my [00:20:00] opinion, in the anecdotal research and the anecdotal evidence that’s out there, because there are certain things, metabolically that we can know scientifically.

Because of a century of metabolic research. And there’s, we know how energy balance works now. And we know the basic underlying laws of fat loss and fat gain. But when you start getting into physical fitness, niche type things like this, or even a lot of exercise related things. You can’t always just, you can’t just read a bunch of PubMed studies and know everything now and know exactly what to do it.

There is that element of you have to try things and see how your body responds. And do you find that people, your clients, they learn their body’s sweet spots almost in a sense of doing it, let’s say calories per body weight or calories by body weight. Where if they want to, if they’re going to be, if they’re going to start, losing fat, then they just know that their body tends to respond well to certain calorie ranges for that versus maintaining or bulking.

Sohee Lee: Yes. No, I would say yes, that they generally in the beginning, they say, Oh, I typically, here’s what my macros have been here. My fat loss macros. And then I’ll ask him, okay, [00:21:00] but it has that been working and they probably say no or yes. But also, with each reverse diet cycle that they go through, cause I have a few clients who have been through a number of reverse cycles with me.

They go fat loss, reverse fat loss, reverse back and forth. And each time the reverse diet cycle gets better and better. They get better and better results. They’re able to push their calories a little bit higher. And later on, they’re able to, when they diet down the fat loss is a little bit easier.

Mike Matthews: Why do you think that is? 

Sohee Lee: Who knows? I wish I knew. 

Mike Matthews: That’s why I’m asking, because I’ve seen the same thing, but I, I haven’t been able to find a good answer. 

Sohee Lee: All in the hormones, and I think the body just My best guess would be that the body learns to, 

Mike Matthews: It’s like it gets better at mobilizing and burning fat over time.

I don’t know. 

Sohee Lee: Yeah. And I think it, maybe the starvation response becomes a little bit mitigated over time. I want to say just from being in a caloric surplus, with reverse dieting and whatnot, but I don’t know for sure. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Have you also found that maybe even with your body or the people that you work [00:22:00] with that the longer you stay lean and by lean in terms of just to put some numbers out there.

So listen to what I’m talking about for guys, I would say under 10 percent or 10 percent or under. And for girls, probably 20 percent or under the longer you stay in those percentages and just, making sure that you’re not making sure you’re eating enough, but pushed your as much as you can eat to stay in those body fat percentages, the easier it is.

And the more you can more wiggle room you gain, I guess over time. 

Sohee Lee: Oh yeah, I completely agree. And I think that, there’s an argument out there for modifying your body fat standpoint and whatnot. And I think This is this does speak to that. And I think for most people, ultimately their goal is to be able to maintain a certain level of leanness year round.

And I think that this can definitely help, especially with reverse sighting, especially if you are meticulous with your tracking and consistent with your adherence and you take it slow enough and slow is going to be [00:23:00] relative. from one individual to the next, that you can still make strength gains, still feel great and still without, without, having to buy a whole new wardrobe.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. That’s not just a girl thing. It’s also, for me personally, although I’m at a point now with my body where I’m not really trying to build a bunch more muscle, I’m just, I’m happy to where I’m at and I just like to get stronger. But I know a lot of guys come out that also have that too, where once they have that foundation and they’re willing to go through the expansion and shrinkage in the beginning.

But there’s a point where they’re like, okay, I’m pretty happy with my body. Now I would like to continue making gains, but I don’t want to, I would prefer to not have to. Get up to 15, 16 percent and then come back to 10 and have cause you’d have, you have your Balkan clothes and then you have your I look good clothes.

Sohee Lee: I have been there. 

Mike Matthews: Have you found that going in like a, in a surplus deficit type of approach where like you’re in a slight surplus on your training days and you make up for the surplus with the deficit on your off days. Have you ever tried anything like that? 

Sohee Lee: You know what?

I don’t do that. I do isocaloric with [00:24:00] myself and my clients. And my reasoning is more of a mental standpoint. Two reasons. One I like to afford more room for fats on my days off. 

Mike Matthews: Okay. 

Sohee Lee: I lower my carbs, increase my fats and protein pretty much still 

Mike Matthews: do that though. If you’re in a deficit, you can go high, 

Sohee Lee: If you’re as small as I am, you really don’t have much wiggle room at all.

Mike Matthews: True. How much do you weigh? Like a hundred pounds or something? I’m 

Sohee Lee: 107 pounds. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Sohee Lee: Not very big. I really cannot afford to eat very much. So that, and also too, I found that. for I don’t know if it’s true for males also, but with females a lot of times if they know that they’re eating fewer calories on their days off from training, that makes them, less likely to take a day off.

Not only that, which can be a good thing, but if you’re training seven, 

Mike Matthews: It’s not, 

Sohee Lee: that can be really bad. So I try to, I try not to discourage off days. I like to keep, calories the same, and that’s the approach that I’ve been using for the past two and a half years, and I have not had problems with it.

Yeah. With getting 

Mike Matthews: fat. [00:25:00] That’s actually, I like those points. I’m in my book, bigger leaner, stronger than that. I have a book for women feeling is stronger, which is more interesting. Goes over all the basics. I recommend isocaloric and in, in a book that I wrote more for advanced weightlifters, I like, and personally for me, I like the surplus deficit approach specifically for staying lean, staying under 10 percent body fat.

And still being able to make gains in the gym and have good workouts where I have, that small surplus and to be able to eat quite a few carbs on my training days. But I do I can see where you’re coming from in the psychological aspects. 

Sohee Lee: Your side makes sense as well.

Have you found that you feel okay on your off days? You don’t have a problem with the lower calories mentally? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. My body’s strange. It, I don’t get hungry like period. I could just not eat all day and I don’t even get hungry. Okay. I can, I don’t know, it’s very, I can be very flexible with what I’m doing with my food and my body is just like, all right, whatever I can really, it’s weird.

I can fast for ridiculous periods of time if I don’t, I’m not really into it. [00:26:00] I don’t, I think I F is okay. Actually. What I do is on the weekends, I usually just take my calories and stuff them into three meals. So I eat my first meal around lunch and I, so I get to enjoy three meals.

And I’m active on the weekends. I’m into golf. So that’s like my sport. And so I’m out doing stuff and, burning a bit of calories that way. But yeah, for me personally I don’t know. Cutting is very easy for me. I’ve actually like asked various people that are smarter than me and know a lot more.

Like why is that? Why do I legitimately never get hungry? Like my version of hunger is I feel like I could eat some food. 

Sohee Lee: Oh my gosh. 

Mike Matthews: I know. It’s like unfair, but I’ve asked around that. I’ve asked the doctors with, at Stanford educated doctors and stuff. And there was, it was, I haven’t really found a great haven’t gotten much insight into it.

Other than one thing, one person did tell me was that kind of that’s a good thing. That’s, that is technically how the body that, that means that like in terms of leptin and ghrelin and in other hormones, that Things are balanced and that’s not a bad sign. Cause I was wondering, I was like, [00:27:00] is something wrong with me?

That I, other people that work for me they’ll be cutting and they’re like complaining all day and they can’t wait until they can eat. And I’m like, what? I don’t, I never get like that. I don’t care. 

Sohee Lee: So along those lines, are your fat loss macros pretty high? I don’t know.

Mike Matthews: No, I’m not, I’m like a meso ecto type. Very normal. My, I’ve found I hang out probably around 8 percent body fat, maybe seven. It’s hard to say when you start getting down there, but without getting dexed. And if I weigh 188 pounds. So if I were like bulking, I would be eating probably 3,300 a day.

And that’s it. I’d have to that, oh, 

Sohee Lee: that’s not really that super high. 

Mike Matthews: No. And so when I, yeah, when I cut, I start at about 27 and I just ride that as far as I can go. And then I drop it down about a hundred calories a week and to, until I get to where I want to be, and I don’t go below B more.

Sohee Lee: Sure. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Sohee Lee: That makes sense. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, I just want to get your opinion on that. Question about refeeding. Do you think it’s necessary when you’re reverse dieting? 

Sohee Lee: No. 

Mike Matthews: What if you, what if somebody is like has crashed dieted and now [00:28:00] they’re coming back up? Do you think it’s necessary? 

Sohee Lee: I guess it depends on where their calories are at that point.

I have never had to refeed a client while reverse dieting. Okay. I think there’s a strong argument for incorporating refeeds when you are dieting, when you’re in fat loss or calories are low and whatnot, but I think when you’re bringing them up, I don’t know. I just I Don’t see a need for it.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. No, I don’t disagree. Just a question. I’m asked I want to cover Whatever people ask me, I thought it would be a good idea. We cover 

Sohee Lee: Because if you’re, if you’re on a fat loss phase, then obviously your hormones are going to be, not working optimally. And you want obvious, the repeat is for hormonal benefit, right?

Although it’s 

Mike Matthews: psychological, 

Sohee Lee: right? It does have psychological benefit, but I think when you’re reverse dining, you’re technically bringing yourself out of a caloric deficit. So instead of going deeper into a deficit, 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, no, I agree. I don’t think there’s any reason for it other than, there’s the psychological, but I think with my experiences, people are pretty happy once they can start eating more, they don’t even feel, they’re just happy to.

Sohee Lee: And, but I will say that with [00:29:00] clients, anyone who reverse dieting, I found that the first few weeks tend to be the hardest from a mental standpoint. Because is, you’re straddling that line between, Oh, my, my macros are still low, but I’m not actively dieting anymore. And trying to wrap your mind around, the concept of reverse dieting and potentially putting on some way, and that’s, can be really scary for a lot of people.

And, but I say, if they ask what a refeed or anything, I just say, you know what in a few weeks your macros are going to just get higher and higher, and I would just say, stick it out for a few weeks and you’ll be fine. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I agree. You had mentioned earlier, or you’ve mentioned it several times that this concept of reverse dieting is not just applicable to coming out of a deficit.

How does it work for somebody, let’s say that you have a guy or girl who’s relatively lean, they’re in a good place to, to start, focusing on muscle growth. Which for me, like what I generally recommend, I don’t know if this is how you go with it, but for guys, it’s probably best to hang out somewhere between 10 16 or so if your [00:30:00] body fat gets too high, insulin sensitivity goes to shit and you tend to put on more fat and have more trouble building muscle and for girls probably like 20 to 25 or so do you find that to be generally true?

And then I’ll get to the reverse diet question. I’m just, 

Sohee Lee: yeah. Can you reword your question? I’m not sure if I’m understanding. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Sorry. I just a little bit tangential there, but in terms of first, in terms of reverse dieting, if you’re not coming out of a deficit, 

Sohee Lee: yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Being used for bulking.

Or being used for focusing on okay, you’re going to put yourself in a surplus 

Sohee Lee: to gain muscle. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. To gain muscle. How does that work? And why as opposed to, because if you go on bodybuilding. com, you search for bulking program, you’re going to get, what you’re probably going to get is a program that’s going to tell you to just eat an obscene amount of food right off the bat.

Sohee Lee: You know what I 

Mike Matthews: mean? Oh, okay. Start eating 4, 000 calories a day. Go mad, go drink a gallon of milk a day. Start there. You know what I mean? As opposed to, and. I get emailed by people that they’ll see different recommendations of mine. They’ll be like, really that for bulking, isn’t that like really low?

And cause I’m of the same [00:31:00] mind as you. So what’s the, I guess you could call it more of a clean bowl kind of reverse diet approach of going about it. 

Sohee Lee: Man, the general rules don’t differ for someone who’s crashed at it versus someone who is healthy. I would say that if the individual is pretty lean and for me, I say, if you are, if you really want to get aggressive with the macro increases and you are okay with putting on some extra fat then we can be a little more aggressive with the macro pushing.

I, what would 

Mike Matthews: be aggressive? 

Sohee Lee: Something like an 

Mike Matthews: example. Listeners know what we’re talking about. 

Sohee Lee: Maybe every week you increase their macros by. I don’t know, 25 grams carbs, five grams fat, whatever it may be. And for macros, we’ve worked him up to 200 grams of protein, 440 grams 120 grams of fat, and he’s still not gaining weight.

So for him, I would say, okay, since you’re not getting weight, in fact, you’re losing weight. I would tack on 50 grams of carbs and five grams of fat for the next [00:32:00] week. Yeah. It really depends on how the person is responding, and he obviously does not have any kind of history of crash dieting or anything, he’s just he’s just a hard gainer.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Sohee Lee: But 

Mike Matthews: How does he do that food wise? Cause I, there’s another thing where I get emails of guys like, how do I eat more food? They’re so not used to it. What kind of foods does he eat to eat 

Sohee Lee: without 

Mike Matthews: just being like, fuck it. I’m eating, candy bars, 

Sohee Lee: right? First off, I will say that I know that his, we are aware that his fat intake is relatively high compared to the typical bodybuilder or what, whatever you want to call it.

And that’s because, From a lifestyle standpoint. Me, I’m big, I’m very big into behavior change. I know that we were just, so we were trying to get his macros before we actually just like a one week food log, just to see where his macros were at before I prescribed him numbers. And we found that his fat macros were every day it was around one 50 some days, even one 70 really high. And so I said, okay I’m going to cut your fat, fat, your fat macros just a little bit. And bump up your carb macros, but I [00:33:00] still want you to be able to do this. I want you to be able to actually adhere to these numbers.

 A matter of not making too drastic of a change. And that’s why his fat macros are as hard or as high as they are. 

Mike Matthews: Just because that’s the type of food he likes fatty type food. 

Sohee Lee: And so his breakfast. Tend to be around, around almost 1500 calories. Yeah. And he’s eating things like breakfast burritos, hash browns.

He’ll have, oh, fruit juice helps a ton with meeting carb macros. Yeah. Yeah. And he goes through about a gallon a week of orange juice. 

Mike Matthews: I think it’s 25 carbs a cup or something. 

Sohee Lee: Yeah. It’s, it, and it helps so much. Drinking your calories is, yeah. It’s like the 

Mike Matthews: opposite of what you want to do in your diet when you’re cutting.

Sohee Lee: Exactly, but he obviously, he has to make a concerted effort to meet his macros every day. He has to be really intentional about making sure he packs enough snacks and everything to work. And then, so he’ll, so pretty much during the day, he’ll just make sure he eats as much as he possibly can.

And then he comes home and he finds out how much [00:34:00] of each macro nutrient he has left just because he has so much rugal room, generally I would not advise it for someone who does not have that kind of flexibility. I would say you have to plan ahead for him. He comes home and he has to 

Mike Matthews: eat so much.

Yeah. There’s no way that he’s going to come home and be like, what? I have nothing left. 

Sohee Lee: And we, we resort to a lot of a carb dense diet. Foods, things like we’re big into quesadillas lately. Cheese. He’ll probably have some kind of candy during the day where there’d be gummy bears or something like, a Reese’s something.

And then at night, we’ll definitely one of his favorites is a protein shake With Nutella, it really helps to get those calories out there. So we have our little secret weapons that we use. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And for the, for people that don’t, let’s say cause there is a point where you have to eat, so if you have to eat so much food, you just run out of ideas, but.

What do you think for a person that let’s say they’re, cause the people that I run into are more like they’ve gotten around 3000 calories a day and they’re so used to and these are usually ecto, ecto type guys that are so [00:35:00] used to eating, maybe one or two meals a day.

They haven’t had much of an appetite for their entire life. And now they’re, trying to try to get all this food in. Let’s say someone’s around 3000 calories a day. What type of foods would like, if you were going to be reverse dotting that person up, what kind of foods would you recommend?

Let’s say carb dense type things. Anyone can find fats, go drink some olive oil. That’s easy, but not that you actually probably want to do that, but it’s not hard to increase fats more cause they’re not very filling. But what about carbs? 

Sohee Lee: First off, I will say I will only recommend foods that they actually like eating.

Yeah. Because if they don’t like it, then they’re not going to keep it up for very long. 

Besides that, like what are 

Mike Matthews: the common things? 

Sohee Lee: I, my best, my, my go to recommendation tends to be fruit juice. 

I would say, drink it when you, or even milk, if you can, if you’re not an oxytocin tolerant and low fiber carb sources tend to do just because you’re able to eat more of them without feeling full or without feeling sick, without running into digestive issues.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So fiber fruits, or 

Sohee Lee: And, trying to try to meet really high macros, [00:36:00] using just whole foods is a recipe for disaster because you feel so sick and you get so, you feel like you’re stuffing yourself. Yeah. So I like smoothies, fruit juice. 

Mike Matthews: Have you ever looked at the macros of buckwheat?

Sohee Lee: I have not. It makes 

Mike Matthews: no sense. It doesn’t taste good. I wouldn’t, I, my mom cooked it one time. So I thought I was cutting, right? So I thought okay, cup, it’s brown rice, whatever. I thought same thing. It’s like a hundred plus carbs per cup. I had to check it like five different places like 

Sohee Lee: that.

Actually, you know what we, I just learned a few months ago and I don’t know why I never even paid attention to this. Even Jasmine rice or just rice in general is very carb dense. Yeah. You get very little carbs. let’s say 50 grams of carbs. It’s not very much at all. It’s really disheartening. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah.

Yeah. I know. But that’s like for an example, that’s the type of food I like to recommend. Check out whole grain pasta. Two ounces of pasta is like 40 carbs or something. Two ounces. 

Sohee Lee: We do a lot of pasta. We do lasagna and a different cut, different pasta types. And that. [00:37:00] With obviously you throw in the pasta sauce that you can easily get over a hundred grams of carbs in a meal.

Mike Matthews: Oh, easy. That’s that’s not even a filling meal. That’s just whatever. That’s just dinner. 

Sohee Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: You make a massive bowl of pasta that you can hit 200 carbs and then you’ve felt like you’ve eaten some food for sure. But. You can get there with sauce. It’s bad, 

Sohee Lee: exactly. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah.

So that’s also for the listeners, it’s good to know that there’s, just think with these kind of things, even when you’re planning for weight loss. For instance, there are certain foods, like when I’m cutting, I avoid pastas, I don’t do much rice. Like I’ve changed, I changed to Less calorie dense foods just so I can eat more and feel full and feel whatever without eating this piddly little meal where there’s my, my little two ounces, my three bites of pasta or something.

And that’s my meal with some chicken or something. 

Sohee Lee: Yeah, I agree. As far as fat loss. Yeah. I, you know what, now that I think about it, I do change my food sources too. When I, when my macros get low, let’s say I have a photo shoot coming up and I want to look good for the bikini shoot or whatever I’m doing.

I tend to resort to [00:38:00] squash varieties. Squash is 

Mike Matthews: awesome, I love squash. Yeah, 

Sohee Lee: squash varieties for my carbs because they’re 

Mike Matthews: Butternut squash, it almost feels like a cheat. It’s so good, but it’s so low in carbs. I 

Sohee Lee: love butternut squash, it’s great. Acorn squash is so good with I cheat. I eat it with butter and brown sugar, but Yeah, but you can get rid 

Mike Matthews: of a little bit of that.

You don’t have to 

Sohee Lee: Yeah, but it’s so good. And I also find ways to get in, Getting my veggies and in, in multiple different ways, not just with salads, but maybe sauteed and steamed. And lately I’ve been Making the cucumber tomato salad just because it’s just it’s I still enjoy it.

I get my Nutrients and it’s very low calorie. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I like I’m big on vegetables, too I usually I’m into one pot cooking these days because it’s fast and you can 

Sohee Lee: very easy 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, very easy and you can get you a lot of good recipes out there. That’s actually be my next cookbook. I’m putting together Yeah doing a bunch and I like For vegetables or certain vegetables, certain things like peas you look at and peas are actually pretty calorie dense [00:39:00] for so peas are not I, it depends what I’m doing with my calories of course, but then something like green beans, for instance, not so calorie dense.

It’s very filling. You listener, if you check out different veggies, remember that veggies count, a lot of people ask do I need to count because that’s one of the, one of the quote unquote clean eating things out there is like your vegetables don’t count. Eat as much as you want, 

Sohee Lee: but, oh, 

Mike Matthews: okay.

Go eat nine cups of peas a day and let’s see. 

Sohee Lee: And then wonder why you’re not losing fat. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, exactly. But if you get familiar with vegetables, you can get even when I’m cutting, my dinner is pretty, pretty massive, even though I’ll save a decent amount of calories for it, but because it’s a lot of vegetables and plus some protein, I get to eat a lot of food and really enjoy it without having to eat, 200 grams of carbs.

Sohee Lee: And you know what? The other thing I will say about fat loss is that I found that the main determinant of whether or not you’re actually going to reach your fallow school is. 100 percent of mindset issue. If you feel like you’re being forced into dieting, or if you like, if you have the [00:40:00] victim mindset and you feel like, oh, I’m not allowed to eat these things, or I just, I can’t do this, I can’t do that.

Then at some point you’re going to give up at some point. You’re going to self sabotage. You’re not going to make it, you’re going to get discouraged. But I found, especially if you’re utilizing flexible dieting, you are aware that you can, you can’t eat anything you want, but you choose to eat foods that are physique friendly and fit your macros.

And you understand fully that this is completely temporary and any hunger you may feel is one, it’s part of the process, but two, it’s not going to last forever. Then it becomes infinitely easier and you can actually enjoy the ride. As crazy as that sounds, you can enjoy dieting. 

Mike Matthews: I, this, these are the things I preach, preach, preach.

And it be, like you said, it becomes a lifestyle. It becomes where, and then you just, you get used to it. I don’t know about you, but for me, I will like you, I generally have to stay lean. I have to stay looking good because I have to do sometimes it’s photo shoots.

Sometimes it’s even just for, I don’t know, for maybe it’s me just being vain or something, but for social media, like if I’m going to do selfies, I’m not going to do selfies. If I’m [00:41:00] like not lean, what’s the point of that? I don’t even like doing selfies. I think social media is stupid, but 

Sohee Lee: yeah, no, I understand.

Mike Matthews: But yeah, so that, but then certain times of year it’s okay, holidays are coming there. You don’t have to have the anxiety about go enjoy yourself. Who cares? Like. When I, if I my wife’s from Germany, so we’ll go there, we usually go there once a year and the food in Europe is great and I just have a cutoff point.

Like I’m willing to gain five pounds of fat and then I stop. So you know, just, I’m just going to go enjoy myself and then come back and get rid of it. So you start getting to think with dieting like that as opposed to weighing yourself every day with anxiety Oh shit, another pound. You don’t even.

Yeah. 

Sohee Lee: Yeah. That’s very true. Espresso with the holidays coming up soon. I’ve had questions from clients over the past week or so asking me, I’m going this and this is coming up and I’m feeling really nervous. What do I do? And I have to remind them, you are in complete control of what you put into your body just because you’re surrounded by holiday food doesn’t mean you have to eat everything.

I also say, just because the food’s there and it’s delicious, [00:42:00] It doesn’t mean you have to eat the whole serving. You don’t have to eat the whole pie. You can have a small slice and be just as satisfied. In fact, you might enjoy yourself more because you won’t be distracted by how full you feel.

Or, and and there’s, I just remind them there’s so much more to the holidays than the food. 

Mike Matthews: Exactly. And then there’s also a point of just enjoyment. Like for me, When I, where I live, there are some decent restaurants around or whatever, but not the type of food that if I’m, if we’re in, we’ll go around and go to Paris.

I don’t care. That’s an experience. That’s food. That’s the food I don’t get. So yeah, I’m going to go, I’m not going to be like a glutton about it, but I’m not going to be looking at the menu going, Oh, I can’t order that because it’s maybe too high fat. Like I don’t care. I’m going to, do my thing.

Come back a little bit fatter. Yeah. Diet for a couple of weeks and have enjoyed the entire experience. You know what I mean? Oh, 

Sohee Lee: absolutely. If someone goes on vacation, I do not allow them to count macros. They’re not their food scale. They’re not gonna ask for all these substitute at a restaurant because that completes that completely defeats the purpose of going on [00:43:00] vacation in the first place.

Yeah. And that’s not to say that. That you can eat whatever you want. Obviously, I think the rules of mindfulness and will always apply every single day, but you can definitely have a good time and not blow up. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, like I, do you personally, like for me, I usually plan on doing my dinner is going to be where I’m going to eat probably the majority of my day’s calories and I’m going to be a little bit lighter throughout the day.

That’s how I like to do it. And I find it minimizes, you still get to enjoy yourself, but I’m also, I’m not like a food obsessed. Some people, they, a guy who works for me, he went to Spain for 10 days or maybe 11 days and he came back 13 pounds heavier. I was like, his name’s Kareem.

Like Kareem, how do you even do that? And he was like, wow, that’s actually less than I thought. I’m like, dude, you gained what? You gained like a pound of fat a day. You’re crazy. Wow. His breakfasts were a kilo of pastries. That’s how he started every 

Sohee Lee: Oh my goodness. 

Mike Matthews: So there’s that’s just outrageous over the top.

You don’t have to do that, but you can still go and enjoy yourself and come back a few pounds fat or Oh, [00:44:00] big deal. And then you diet for three weeks and it’s done. 

Sohee Lee: Wow, that’s impressive actually. 

Mike Matthews: He’s an impressive human, for sure. Yeah, 

Sohee Lee: You know what, I think when it comes to vacationing That’s dedication.

Yeah, I know it is. With vacationing I would not be averse to recommending I think for vacationing, a tool like intermittent fasting could work just from a lifestyle standpoint and from a practicality standpoint, because you’re probably going to be sleeping more. So you’ll be sleeping in and you may not be as hungry in the mornings.

You can push your meals back during the day and maybe just three meals a day, two, three meals a day, but bigger in size. So you can really enjoy yourself. I think that can be a very helpful tool for some people. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I totally agree. 

Sohee Lee: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Okay, cool. We could probably go on. I like to keep them at least, under an hour.

We’ll start complaining. So where can people find you and your books and the rest of your work? 

Sohee Lee: I have so all my brand name is so he fit. It’s just S O H E F I T. And my website is so he fit. [00:45:00] com. My Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook page are all. So he fit. And my email is up on my website.

You can find it through my contact form and my eBooks. My first one is, yeah, for my first one is how to count macros that was published in January of this year that you can find that at how to count macros. com 

Mike Matthews: also link in for the post on MFL and stuff. I’ll link everything, but just for the listeners.

So they know where it is. 

Sohee Lee: Yeah. And it pretty much is exactly what it says. It teaches you how to count macros. 

Mike Matthews: What does that mean? Exactly. Is it like how tell quickly about what does it go over? 

Sohee Lee: So if I were to say, Hey, okay, you’re my client here based on your information that you’ve given me, I’m going to prescribe you this many grams of protein, this many grams of carbs and this many grams of fats.

And the how to count macros book will teach you how to plan your days ahead of time or plan your food. Eat what the foods that you enjoy eating while meeting your [00:46:00] macros, which will then help you work toward your fitness goal, whether that be fat loss or residing or whatever it may be. 

Mike Matthews: Cool.

So it’s like all about basically how to take your numbers and turn it into workable meal plans that you can follow and how to tweak everything and 

Sohee Lee: yeah, and it also includes tips and tricks. Cool. Thanks guys. Shortcuts and whatnot. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Sohee Lee: And then my second one, which was launched just about a month ago, which with a lane Norton was is reverse dieting.

You can find it at reverse dieting book. com. And as we talked about earlier in today’s podcast it’s exactly teaches you the principles of reverse dining. And I will say that the, it’s, The e book is great for those of you who are looking to go through a reverse diet yourself. Because we also have, it teaches you how to reverse diet, but you also get access to an exclusive Facebook group.

For, reverse diet product customers where you can have access to myself and Lane 24 7 pretty much and you can [00:47:00] answer all the follow up questions you want and you also have the support of the rest of the group. Which is really great. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s awesome. And I’ve looked through, I haven’t seen the how to count macros book actually, but Elaine did send me over the verse that book and I think it’s great.

So I, I definitely endorse it. And I’m based on what’s in it. I’m sure that how to count macros book is great too, because you know what you’re talking about and you actually have real experience working with people and get results. There’s a that’s rare in this space I’ve found.

Sohee Lee: Thank you. I’m, they’re, they’ve both been doing pretty well so far, so I’m happy. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay, great. That’s everything people know how to find you. And I think this was a great interview. I know a lot of the things that I get asked about, so I think everyone’s going to like it.

Sohee Lee: Yeah. I hope it 

Mike Matthews: helps. Yeah. Cool. Thanks again. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two. Where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also, head over to my website at www.

muscleforlife. [00:48:00] com, where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written. I release a new one almost every day, actually, I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscleforlife.

com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.