Project Bates Personal Development

One of my clients accidentally proved a huge metabolism lesson a couple weeks ago.

When he first started training, the goal wasn’t bodybuilding — it was just getting healthy and getting off some medications.

By staying consistent with training and nutrition (and keeping his doctor informed), he was able to get off all of those medications within about 6 months.

Later we decided to treat his progress like we were prepping for a bodybuilding show on his 50th birthday. No real show — just the strategy: build muscle first, then run a cut.

When the cut started, he had been doing really well on a higher-fat, lower-carb approach, so I told him to drop about 20g of fat per day (90g → 70g). (About a 180 calorie drop)

But because of an error in the food entries in his tracking app, he accidentally dropped to about 40–50g of fat per day. (About a 400 calorie drop)

And everything stalled.

Weight loss stopped.
Workouts felt terrible.
Energy dropped.

Once we found the mistake, I told him to bring fats back up to the 70g we originally planned.

And almost immediately he started losing about a quarter pound per day.

Now he’s down almost 70 pounds from where he started.

Here’s the lesson:

Fat loss isn’t just calories in vs calories out.

Drop calories too aggressively and the body often slams the brakes and goes into survival mode.

Fuel the metabolism properly and the system starts working again.

Sometimes the answer isn’t cutting more food.

Sometimes the answer is supporting your metabolism so your body can actually do the work.

If you want help getting started, message me.