Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 38 - Sohee Lee: Energy Balance, Body Composition, and What it Means To "Thrive"

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

In today's episode, we sit down with Sohee Lee. Sohee Lee is the founder and head coach at SoheeFit Systems, LLC. Sohee has been coaching in the virtual realm since 2012 and currently coaches out of her in-person training at her San Diego studio. In addition, she offers multiple online fitness services and is the author of 2017's Eat.Lift.Thrive along with her multiple e-books. She has a B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University and an M.S. in Psychology from Arizona State University. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D under the guidance of another podcast guest, Eric Helms Ph.D.We chat about many valuable things, including:Energy balance and its role on body composition.Her story overcoming an eating disorder.Diet cultureActivity trackersAnd MUCH more!Enjoy!RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS:Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Welcome back guys to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. Today's guest is Sohee Lee, one of my absolute favorite educators in the health and fitness space. So he does a tremendous job of weaving practical evidence-based nutrition practice with psychology, behavior, and application. Things that I think are all too often forgotten when we discuss things as nuanced and individualized as nutrition. Today, we're going to talk about everything from diet culture to Fitbits. It's a very, very interesting conversation, and Sohi shares her expertise, and I promise you will enjoy it. Now, before we get started, all that I ask is please share this episode so that more people can hear it, have more ammunition, more things in their arsenal to help positively

impact their health and make a serious difference in their quality of life. Please enjoy today's episode with Sohee Lee. So Sohee, how are you doing? I'm doing really well, all things considering. Thanks. How are you? I am well. So for those of you guys who aren't familiar with Sohee and her work, I'll let her talk about it a little bit, but I have been quite familiar with you in the space for quite some time. You've been producing really high quality evidence-based content for quite some time, primarily related to physique change, body composition, nutrition, and even behavior. And I think these are things that a lot of people tend to neglect. And you've kind of come to this

place now that really nobody else in the space has. And I think it's kind of indicative of the journey that you went through to get here. So for anybody who's not aware, how did Sohi get into the space to now being kind of the force that you are? Well, I do. It's funny because I think I fell into this career path entirely by accident. It was never in my plan to do anything in the fitness industry. And when I was younger in my early teens, I knew nothing about nutrition. I did not understand what a calorie was. I didn't understand macronutrients. I didn't understand that women can resistance train and so on and all these things, all the myths I fell for. understand that women can resistance train and so on and all these things, all the myths I fell for. Um, and I, at the time was living in a very, very heavy diet culture, um, where I grew up at the time. And so it kind of became normal for me to think just like all my peers were that, especially as a female, it was considered desirable to be really, really skinny and really slim. And so even amongst my friends, when we were 13, 14 years old, many of us were skipping meals and

so on, and it was just considered normal. And that is kind of what I accepted as, well, this is just how things are. And as you can expect, that can lead you down a very slippery slope. And I did become anorexic and bulimic for a while and continue to struggle where I was not going for days, not eating at all. And then every two or three days I would binge. At the same time, I went from doing cross country and swimming as an athlete to all of a sudden running for three hours a day, because I thought it was the best way to burn as many calories as possible. And during in this process, I lost my social life, I lost my personality, I became miserable.

And after a few months of just being like living that life, I woke up one day and I think I was still 14 at the time, but it had been a little bit. This was after the worst parts of my anorexia. I woke up one day and I thought to myself, is this the life that I want to be living for the rest of my adult life? because I knew something didn't feel right where I'd wake up and I would spend the whole day either dreading the workout that I had planned ahead or thinking about all the food that I wasn't allowing myself to eat. And it just didn't seem like an existence that I wanted for myself. So over the course of the next several years, obviously it wasn't just an overnight fix or anything like that. I continued to struggle for a while. And it wasn't until I was 18 as a senior in high school that I came across an oxygen magazine, which for any of the listeners who don't are not familiar with, it's a very popular women's fitness magazine. And on the

cover, they had a fitness model who looked muscular and lean and fit. And I immediately fell in love with the look. And I, it was the first time I realized that women could look athletic and, you know, support the lean muscular physique without having to be professional athletes. So at the time I was hooked on the look, I was obsessed with looking that way. Um, Jamie Eason in particular was one of my idols because I was like, well, she's small like me. She's five, two, and I want to look like her. And that's, that's what was in my head at the time. So I started learning about clean eating. I started learning about calories and macronutrients and how women can resistance train.

I started lurking all the different fitness forums. Um, I was stalking everyone's fitness blogs at the time, and this continued through most of college and i had um i had been hiring different online fitness coaches at the time so i was i was the client right um and so every time they sent me a new program i would study everything like the the logistics of the training workouts they wrote for me trying to understand the movement patterns any themes and what i was seeing anytime i got a meal plan which is what they were giving me at the time I would calculate the macros and the calories to be like okay here's here are the changes that they made and here's why I think they did it and meantime I was you know I was I was pre-med for a while so I kind of was

doing this on the side as a hobby for fun but towards the end of my college career I realized this is what I genuinely loved and even though this is back in 2011, I don't feel like the online fitness world was that big at the time. And being an online fitness entrepreneur was not a widely known career path. So I did face a lot of resistance at the time, but I knew that one, um, I wasn't really seeing very many prominent women in the industry, uh, at the time doing fitness blogging. And two, I had become interested in the psychology of behavior change through a lot of my own personal experience and my own personal struggles with not understanding why I knew what I was supposed to do, but I couldn't, I couldn't do it consistently. And I started to realize that maybe there's something with habits and behavior change

that I was missing. And so I wanted to talk more about those things. And I decided, well, I don't see other people doing it very much, so I might as well try it myself. So initially, I started out doing it for fun. I started my blog, soheathlyfitness.com is what it was back at the time. And I started taking on some online clients here and there, really just as a way to pay for groceries and stuff because I was still in college. And then I didn't know what I wanted to do after graduation. So I applied for an internship

at a strength and conditioning facility. And then really one thing led to the next. And I realized that one, I liked being my own boss. I liked working from home and I was really good at structuring my day. So I knew I could get done when I need to get done as long as it was on my own time and so I've been basically doing this stuff for almost eight and a half years now which is pretty incredible and now I have a team of six people I have I now have my bachelor's degree in human biology my master master's degree in psychology, and I'm currently pursuing my PhD in sports science. So it's pretty cool that I've been able to host different seminars, speak at different national conferences, release a few different products, and just be active on social media, creating content and educating the public for as many years as I have.

And it really feels like a dream come true because I feel like I get to do exactly what I love doing and make money while doing it. No, I think it is a really amazing story, particularly that, you know, there's, this is a space that's dominated by men. It's been dominated by men and to, you know, be blunt, women have kind of gotten the short end of the stick of the fitness industry. They tend to be the most victimized by things like diet culture. They suffer. They really seem to struggle more with these body image related issues because they're just pounded at the sociological level.

They think they need to look, feel, act a certain way. To see somebody get through all of that, use that as fuel to kind of have built the foundation that you've built to help other people to look at it in a unique way from a behavior standpoint to integrate science. I think it's very, very impressive. I've always been a fan of your work. And I think that hearing the story, it makes a lot of sense why your work is the way it is. And it's really quite cool. your work is the way it is. And it's, it's really quite cool. So I think that we have to talk a little bit about physique change. I just saw the webinar you did with Ben last week. It was excellent. And it was all about kind of physique change, behavior change, how all of these things are integrated. And for a lot of people, they've kind of just only been exposed to diet culture.

The only way to lose weight is to be on a diet, is to skip meals, is to do tons of exercise. And that's not entirely true. There are more healthful ways to do it. And so for those who are listening, what are kind of the foundational principles that are at the base of physique change? What do we need to have in place? What are the big rocks? Yes. Okay. So for anyone who was not aware, the webinar was called the science and application of energy balance principles webinar. And we really want to cover the main elements of energy balance that maybe are overlooked or commonly misunderstood. So we covered topics, including why energy expenditure is a little bit more complex than people make it out to be. What are some common reasons that people might

not be losing weight, even though they think they're doing everything right. And I specifically went over calorie cycling strategies for weight loss. So I actually just made a video on this topic about why eat less, move more as an example is advice that maybe is well-intentioned, but it's so often misinterpreted because it is so vague and unclear. And so we talk about, yes, you do need a calorie deficit to shed body fat. But then when you say that, you get a lot of people saying, okay, so how do I figure that out? Or you might have people saying, oh, okay, so just eat as little as possible because that obviously must mean that more of a deficit is necessarily better, which obviously is not the case at all. But we have a lot of people thinking that. And that's one of many reasons why people can get themselves into trouble when they over-restrict or needlessly over-restrict either

their total calories and or their food choice. So I usually see a combination of the two happening. But the reality is that the vast majority of people, maybe rather than focusing on just what calorie intake you're going to focus on and just how much protein you're going to eat, which are the two most important nutrition elements when it comes to food change, especially in the realm of fat loss. Also focusing on other things that help accomplish those goals specifically with what are your daily behaviors that are going to make sure that those two things happen consistently. So this is an example of where instead of focusing on just the outcome goal, in this case, like for example, eat 1600 calories a

day. Why don't, why don't we figure out specific steps in your day, like behavior wise, so we can make sure that actually happens. Otherwise, usually the people don't have a specific plan for how to achieve that. And they can get very, very overwhelming. Absolutely. And I think you hit on something that's really, really important, which is that as an industry and even as a culture, we use phrases like eat less, move more, calorie deficit. We say these things all the time. And in some respects, it's quite positive because people are starting to understand, okay, I don't need a diet. It's not my insulin. It's not this and that. I need to focus on these things. But in practice, in application, sometimes we miss out on, hey, what does that look like behaviorally? What does

that look like nutritionally? So where have you seen as somebody who's an educator, but also a coach, the most common issues when implementing a calorie deficit or when somebody is trying to move more and eat less, what are the behavioral gaps, I guess? Well, I think the default is for people to think move more equals doing, always doing more cardio in the form of running in particular, but then you also see, you know, biking and other things like that, which as we know, cardio is not inherently a bad thing, but when it comes to physique change, I am of the opinion that it's not going to move the dial quite as much as actually focusing on resistance training. And then we also run into the issue of, well, what about magnitude? How much, right? You move more about

how much more. And on the one hand, you have people who start exercising seven days a week because they think more is better. And then they become afraid to take a day off. I did this for a long time where I would never take a rest day because I thought one day was enough for me to lose all my gains. When in actuality, I was running myself into the ground, I was not recovering enough. So I really wasn't seeing much strength gains in the gym. Um, I was feeling super fatigued all the time. Cause I was doing maybe an hour of lifting and two hours of cardio a day. Um, and I thought that was just what you were supposed to do because I want to be super hardcore. Right. But so then we have doing too much cardio, not enough emphasis on

resistance training, not understanding the importance of progressive overload. And then on the diet side, again, just over restricting too much. And then not realizing that just because you over restrict from Monday to Friday doesn't mean you're off the hook from Saturday to Sunday as an example. And so they actually they they focus more on what their plan looks on paper more than what is your adherence actually look like? Because if you're only sticking to your plan 40% of the time, that's not a good plan for you or something has to change. Um, and, and then you don't realize that in many cases, sometimes actually increasing someone's target calories can help them see better results because their adherence improves. And even when you implement things like diet breaks and refeeds, where you're actually

increasing your intake on purpose, going by the eat less, move more mantra, you would think that's not what you were supposed to do for fat loss. So there's so many intricacies that you just don't get. I like it because it touches on energy balance. It does, but also overlook so many other things. Yeah. Of course. I mean, it's easy to miss the forest for the trees and a lot of this and it's nobody's fault, but perhaps socially and societally, we haven't done a good enough job of teaching people how nutrition works until they're in their teens and twenties when they start looking at this. They've got no foundational education, but you hit on something

that I think is huge. And that is, it's not so much the diet. It's not so much the macros. It's how can you adhere to them? Is this something that's sustainable? And what are some of the biggest issues and kind of things you have to troubleshoot with dietary adherence, maybe in regards to tracking calories? Like what are some common pitfalls? Because I think people know, they know calorie deficit. I got to do that. And they maybe even know move less, eat more or move more, eat less, I should say. But they don't always nail it in practice. What are some of the fallibilities and the issues that people run into with this? Because I know

that you speak so well to this. I love to hear it. I think one of the biggest misconceptions with this is this idea that it's supposed to feel hard or that you have to rely on high levels of self-control or willpower. And if you fall off the wagon, quote unquote, it's because you didn't have enough willpower. And that's what I thought for a long time. I always thought, well, I am a full-time college student living on campus, eating out of a dining hall. And my coach has given me this meal plan to follow where if you think about it, that's not practical at all. No, but I would obviously have a hard time sticking to it for more than a few days. But every time I would eat something different or binge, I would think, well, it's my fault.

I just need more self-control. And that's why you'll see me talking a lot about how it's actually a lot of times not even though self-control has its purpose i think we misunderstand its utility and so if we can learn to remove as many obstacles as possible in your fat loss journey so yes you do need a calorie deficit but there are easier and harder ways to accomplish that. And my thing is trying to maximize your enjoyment of the way that you eat, which is going to look different for everyone. And maybe we can find ways to cut away calories where you're not even really going to notice them being gone. So if you can swap out your soda for a Diet Coke, two cans a day, that will cut out a few hundred calories in and of itself.

And if you're someone who doesn't notice the discrepancy in taste very much like myself, you just did yourself an easy favor in terms of counting calories. And yeah, and also you'll have people who, maybe they feel more resistance towards tracking their intake which happens right and to be honest like weighing your food using a digital food

scale logging everything in an app can be kind of a pain and not everyone wants to be that many meticulous and yes there's going to be a point where you have to make some degree of sacrifice obviously to change your eating behavior but at the same time there are also lots of ways to eat less food without having to use a food scale, without having to be so obsessive about things. And depending on the individual, depending on their starting point with their nutrition behaviors, depending how much, how much wiggle room they have to improve their eating behaviors and so on, you can do a lot in terms of, well, let's just swap out your complex carbs for some fibrous veggies or, you know, drink a few glasses of water before your,

before every meal, things like that, where you can kind of, um, in a way effortlessly reduce food consumption without making it feel so difficult. So those are things that you can definitely do with clients. And the other thing too, is I'd like to be as flexible as I can with each person so that they can feel like the nutrition is not too much of a sacrifice where they don't enjoy it, or they are dreading it and two to where they can still live their life. And sometimes this means allotting higher calorie days when you know they want to be more social or when you know they want to relax and indulge a bit more, which tends to

be weekends for most people. So if you can engineer their nutrition programs that they have, they're slightly stricter during the week and they get to relax a bit more during the weekend. That can overall help them see better progress in the long run. So stuff like that. help them see better progress in the episode. Yeah, I like that. And I think it, at least here in America, yesterday was Memorial Day, which is a Monday holiday that kind of creates a three-day weekend and it's built around barbecue and there's quite a bit of overconsumption. And just to kind of give everybody at home a little bit of what that looks like in application, I skipped breakfast. I had a very heavy lunch and dinner,

but I tried to manage my calories a little bit knowing in advance, hey, this is going to be a day where I want to enjoy the people around me, the food that's associated with the holidays. where I want to enjoy the people around me, the food that's associated with the holidays. And thinking ahead of time in how you prepare your diet for the week, you can have your cake, quote unquote, and eat it too in some respects. So one of the things I think that's really common in the industry, and you've really hit on this a lot with some of the infographics that you posted over the years, is under-re is under reporting or misreporting of calorie intake. And again, this doesn't make you a bad person because we've all done this and it, there's, there's always connotation with verbiage. So I don't even like misreporting, but sometimes

we just simply make errors. Where do we see these errors pop up? This is a lot of the reason why people will swear up and down like, coach, I promise I'm eating in a deficit. This happens all the time. And I think if people understood where these errors pop up, it would actually be empowering for them. So where do we see this in research? Where do we see this in application? Oh gosh, yes. So this was a whole lecture section from my webinar because it's something that I feel very, very strongly about. What's tricky about underreporting and discussing it with your clients is that sometimes you know for a fact your client is underreporting and eating way more than they claim to be. And yet it can be really tricky

navigating a conversation where you confront them, but not too aggressively to the point where they get upset or they feel attacked and then don't want to open up to you, but still coming at it from a compassionate angle where they know that ultimately you're just trying to help them. And I think that admitting, especially if you're someone who is intentionally underreporting, admitting to doing it can be really difficult, especially in this kind of society where for some individuals, it might be harder to admit that you are an overeater. And so that's when we have things like, you know, closet eating or nighttime eating or secret binge eating, things like that. And yeah, it's definitely tricky, but the people who are most prone to under-reporting their intake tend to be women with a higher BMI. This is not to say

that other people don't do it because almost every single person does, but it happens to a higher degree. Yeah. It happens to a higher degree in women with a higher BMI, um, with a lower degree of education, um, those with a longer dieting history and higher levels of body dissatisfaction. So those are the people who tend to be most prone. However, even professionals who do this stuff for a living, like nutrition coaches and dietitians still under report, it's very, very common. So the, the most, the the most the the ways in which i see this happening the most would probably be one um when you are just eyeballing your portion sizes so if you take one of the most common examples of this is taking half a cup of oats where you measure it out with a cup measuring cup and i usually do this as well,

where I would, you do like a heaping half cup, right? So there's like a mound over it versus when you actually weigh out half a cup, which according to quicker oats anyway, is 40 grams. So if you actually measure out 40 grams on a digital food scale, you'll see that it's actually less than the half cup mark. And when you do the calorie calculations, you could be off by no over 100 calories, then you have to like peanut butter, another common one, where it's the big one. Yeah, one tablespoon is far, far less than people realize. And it's actually not uncommon for people to consume three to four times the serving size. And for peanut butter, which is one of the

more calorie dense foods that can be very disheartening so one is using volume measurements instead of instead of going by weight the second one would be not accounting for like oils cooking with butter creamer in your coffee the sugar that goes in your coffee, all that stuff where in your mind, they're kind of compartmentalized as extras. Yes. But they still have calories and they still like the dressing in your salad. For example, you're like, well, I just had a salad and we're sitting there like, yeah, that salad had 1400 calories in it though, because look at everything else that you added onto it besides the chicken and the lettuce. So things like that can happen. And then of course, snacking, taking bites here, licks there, which again, snacking is not

inherently a bad thing, but when you are trying to moderate your calorie consumption, it can be harder to keep your intake and check because it is so easy for those calories to add up without the snacking actually helping you feel more satiated. So I think when it only comes to only when it comes to monitoring your calories, that can be tricky. I try to be really careful with my wording, especially now because I don't want I think there's a line you have to toe between providing this kind of education, increasing awareness and so on, but also not feeling like you're pushing people in a certain direction because my angle is always to inform the public and you guys can make your own decisions as to what you want to do. So when I talk about how snacking can increase your calorie consumption,

we're not saying snacking is bad. We're just saying if you're struggling to reduce your intake, maybe this is one reason why. That's it. Yeah. No, I think those are all really valuable tools and you hit on it with foods that we add or things that we add to foods we already consume. Many of those tack on additional calories that we don't even track. And snacking is not an inherently bad behavior. It can be part of a healthful diet and can be part of a fat loss diet. But for most people, many of those snack options are hyperpalatable, easy to overconsume, and oftentimes we don't track them. Another metric-based tool that I've seen people using a lot lately, and it's really exploded probably in the last five years, are fitness trackers like Fitbits, Apple Watches. I'd love to hear what are your thoughts on these tools as metrics

for caloric expenditure? Are they accurate? Is there utility for them? I've noticed that they muddy the waters a little bit because people tend to think, okay, my Fitbit says I burned X, so now I'm going to consume that back. Where do you fall with these? Because they're very prevalent. And I think that there's a lot of education that we could bake into today's talk to help people manage these tools better. Yes. I do think that those kinds of apps can be useful for some individuals. I had the body bug 12 years ago when I was a freshman in college and I was like, oh, what? It tracks your calorie manager. I lasted a few weeks before I stopped because I noticed that I was becoming very obsessive with it, where in my head, I was always thinking that I had to burn a certain number of calories

per day. And if I didn't hit that number, I'd go off, go outside and like do a lap around the building or something like that. And obviously that's not normal, healthy behavior. So I know for myself, I noticed those obsessive patterns creeping up. So I had to stop. And obviously that's not normal, healthy behavior. So I know for myself, I noticed those obsessive patterns creeping up. So I had to stop. Um, I know a lot of people like you using like Fitbits and Apple watches and so on. There is research research showing that there is a high degree of variability in terms of accuracy. So even though it may be more accurate tracking your calorie expenditure for one certain activity, that doesn't mean that it's going to be accurate when you're doing something else.

Also going from one person to the next, it can vary pretty widely. I think in general, it can be useful if you're looking to overall just try to make sure you're generally staying pretty active. staying pretty active, but I would caution people from sticking too hard to what the numbers spit out as far as here's how many calories you burned in your hour of lifting weights. Cause I've seen numbers like 800, 900 calories burned in an hour with a moderate effort lifting session. And like, that's, there's no way that's true. Yeah. So I do think can be helpful, but I don't require any of my clients to use them at all. Um, because I think in some ways it can do more harm than good. And I don't think that it's considered a, uh, like a big rock behavior. That's really going to do that much to move the dial for most people.

So what then would those big rock behaviors be? I care more about how is your sleep quantity and quality? How are your overall stress levels? Because there's, these are two things that can positively or negatively impact your health, you know, your eating and exercise behaviors. So even if you're trying really hard to adhere to your diet, if something's off with your sleep, it'll make everything that much harder. And this is the example of what some people might call a keystone habit, where if those are in place, everything else becomes much, much, much easier. So are you doing there? How's your overall quality of life? Are you enjoying the way that you eat?

Are you enjoying your exercise? And it sounds a little bit floofy, but I do think that making sure your client is enthusiastic about the program that they're on, at least for the most part, is a huge component of their seeing long-term success. Because if they're not liking what they're doing, as you can imagine, they're not going to stick to it for long. So even if whatever program that they're on, maybe exercise-wise, is not considered ideal by what the research says,

I don't care because at least they're being active and at least they're having fun. And again, that's going to get them better results than forcing them to stick to a program that the research says is optimal, but they hate. So that's the stuff I'm looking for. I totally agree. We're shilling for big Zumba right now. I'm kidding. But it comes down to the fact that if people aren't enjoying the activity they're doing, they don't have lifestyle habits in place, they're probably not going to be successful. And as coaches, we have an idea of what we think that perfect formula might be, but it's almost never something that you can just give to somebody and then implement perfectly.

You have to make adjustments that kind of suit their personality and you have to meet them where they're at. One of the things you've always said, and I actually have a sweatshirt that I bought for my girlfriend of yours several years ago that says, eat, lift, thrive. Wait, was this was this like in san diego when yes this i remember this that is so funny that was me yes so very serendipitous i i saw the hoodie i wanted the hoodie for her because i've as a as a man in the industry i understand that that message eat, Lift, Thrive was something that I felt was particular. I felt that it was a particular importance for my girlfriend who at the time was

very new to lifting. I was like, cool hoodie, like the vibe, really liked the message. And I wanted to kind of impart that onto her. So I bought her the hoodie and it's, it's been a long story short. I think Eat, Lift, Thrive is a really positive message overall, but I think it's been a long story short. I think eat, lift, thrive is a really positive message overall, but I think it's particularly positive for young women or people who are becoming a little bit more woke, if you will, as to, hey, I don't have to crash diet. I don't have to do massive amounts of cardio. I can eat nutrient-dense foods, fuel my body for performance

and strength-based activity like lifting, and that will set me up to thrive and be healthy. And I always say a healthy body is probably one that you're happy in. And I think that that is resonating a lot with people. And I'd love to ask as somebody who really understands the behavioral side of things, why is that message one that you want to put out? And why is it something that so many people are embracing right now? I think the thrive component refers to numerous different things, but mostly quality of life and mental health, which are two variables that I, in the beginning of my own personal journey. And as you've alluded to before, many of much of what I do now is because of what I experienced myself at the beginning of my fitness journey. When I was in the throes of my eating disorders,

I did not think about either of those things. And I thought that being fit or the pursuit of fitness was all about looking a certain way. And as most people can agree, if that's all you care about, you're kind of missing the point. And if your life goes to crap because you're obsessed with building a little bit more muscle or losing a little bit more body fat, have you really succeeded? Yeah. And I think for me, people can disagree, but I think that when a lot of people say that they want to pursue some fat loss goal, whether they want to look a certain way or fit into a certain size jeans or whatever it is,

a lot of times, I think maybe the underlying reason for that is this idea in their heads that once I look a certain way, then my life will be better or like, then I'll be happier. Then my quality of life will improve. And as many people can attest to, that isn't always the case. Sometimes it's actually the opposite. It might backfire in some ways, especially if you went about your fat loss journey in a way that sacrifices way more than you need to. Right. And so I like eat, live, thrive, because it really places emphasis on the importance of keeping your quality of life high and being mindful of how anything you're doing with your fitness is impacting your mental health. Because if you're miserable, if you're hating your life, it's whatever you're doing, at least in my book, is not worth it. And so sometimes a fitness win might be taking an extra rest day or two on a given week.

And by most standard fitness standards, you would think, oh, well, you've regressed. You're being lazy or whatever it is. But depending on the individual, that might be a huge win if there's someone who comes from a very obsessive background like I was. Absolutely. Where like forcing themselves to take the rest day and instead spend that extra time with their family, that's a huge quality of life win.

Or choosing to deviate from your nutrition program to go to your best friend's birthday party and have a slice of birthday cake. Like that is considered a win. And this is something that I will always applaud my clients for doing. So it's not always about maintaining the highest adherence, even though we do talk about how it is important. It's also about striking that balance between adhering enough so you can get results, but not trying to be too much

of a perfectionist that everything else in your life falls by the wayside. Yeah, no, I think that's super valuable. So much of our time in the industry is spent talking to people who don't have exercise habits in place or don't have nutritional habits in place, but there's a lot of people who have them in place, but they might actually be somewhat destructive, somewhat obsessive. And so hearing that it is in fact, okay to let off the gas can actually be a really big relief for somebody and help them redeem or help them kind of regain a lot of that life quality. Because if you're trading off all of your time, all of your energy, all of your relationships to be

two to 3% leaner, you might look great, but you know, what really is, where's the quality of life there? And I think that that's something that's, there's a lot of value in that. And I think that that's a really good place to kind of wrap things up and circle the wagons. And so, Sohi, I'm sure everybody follows you already. But for those who do not or who listened to today's conversation and really liked what you had to say, where can they find more of your work? For sure. Very easy. All of my platforms on social media are Sohi Fit.

I'm on Instagram is my most active platform. I've got a Facebook page, Twitter, a new TikTok page, which I'm like still trying to find my groove on. I've got a YouTube page, a website, SoHeFit.com. So just search for me in any of those platforms and you can find me there. Yeah. And again, SoHe, thank you so much for coming on again. I've been following you for quite some time in this space. I've always enjoyed the content that you've created. And I'm very proud of you for pursuing this and taking it now to the PhD level. I think you're inspiring a lot of people. And I think that you're making the industry a much better place. So thank

you so much for coming on. And hopefully we can talk again soon. For sure. So guys, there you have it. That was me and Sohee Lee. Thank you again so much to Sohee for coming on again. Do check out her content on various platforms. It is fantastic whether you are a coach, fitness enthusiast, or just a hobbyist. Tons to learn. And if you are a coach, I'm not sure if this is still on the table, but the webinar we spoke about as of today's recording is available for purchase after the fact. It was an excellent webinar. It's a valuable way to earn CEUs, and I quite enjoy it. So I would recommend doing that as well. Thanks again to Sohi for coming on. Thanks again to all of you guys for listening. Please like, share, subscribe, leave a five-star review, have an amazing day and help other people make a difference.