If you're a member of the Inner Circle you can reach me directly through the platform's direct messaging services.

If you are on the Essential plan you can either post a comment in the community beginning with #ask or fill out the questions form here.

I pick up the questions and address them during the weekly live coaching or one of the community members may weigh in with some supportive ideas.

In Module 4, we are going to be focusing on some eating habits that will help you differentiate between genuine hunger and eating out of habit or boredom.

If however, you feel genuinely hungry after implementing all the habits we have learn't there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating a little more.

As a rule of thumb, I always tell people to fill out with vegetables first, then protein. Those two should be enough to keep you full.

Here are a few food items that can help you feel satiated with little to no calories:

• Mushrooms
• Watermelon
• Egg white
• Konjac noodles
• Cauliflower rice
• Zero calorie drinks. Please do not be afraid to drink these. There is currently not enough evidence to suggest that drinking a moderate amount of zero calorie drinks leads to health concerns. For more information surrounding this topic read this blog I wrote. 

We cover this in more detail in Module 1, but here are some of the liquid carbs you can have during your training sessions:

• Any fruit juice
• Electrolytes
• Dextrose mixed in water 
• Drinks with any of the following: Maltodextrin, Trehalose, Isomaltulose, Hydrothermally modified starch

   

While this programme is designed to help you learn how to notice your own hunger and fullness signals, it is also really important that we understand meal timings for better recovery.

I would recommend that you do eat according to your training volume where appropriate but use less volumous foods that still give you the right amount of energy.

For example, a handful or dates or raisins won't make your feel stuffed but a bowl of bloated oatmeal might.

Ultimately, if performance is your priority, eating according to your plan is highly recommended.

The science of weight loss and weight gain is much simpler than most people realise. If you take in more energy than you expend, it will result in weight gain and in contrast, if you intake less energy than you expend, you lose weight.

This means that you can eat your meals at any time of the day and it wouldn't make you gain weight if you stayed within your calorie allowance.

So what is the point of nutrient timing if it doesn't matter?

Because although it doesn't matter what time you eat your food for weight loss, eating certain macros at specific times can help you body absorb some of the nutrients better.

For example, after a training session, our bodies are insulin sensitive, meaning that if we ate fast releasing carbs, it will be likely be used up by the body and not hang around and thus turn into fats.

There are a couple reasons why I design the meals so that you eat late at night:

1. This is so that you fuel yourself up until a couple hours before bed so that you don't experience as much hunger the following morning
2. In my experience as a nutrition coach and a erm.... as a human, I find that most of us tend to chill by the TV and snack. By having a clearly defined 'snack' so that you know what you can eat for muscle growth, recovery and/or performance, it makes the process of following a nutrition plan a little easier and less restrictive.

For ideas of what to snack on at night, visit the next FAQ

Your final meal is meant to be a snack, so unless your excited about eating chicken and vegetables at night, I'm really not expecting anyone to do that.

Aim to hit your protein in a lighter snack like Greek yoghurt or a casein mugcake or something similar so you aren't have to stomach a large meal.

Visit the Resource Page for a simple Casein Mugcake recipe.

Although I don't recommend training two hard sessions per day, I know that I can't convince some athletes to scale back on training so I'll list a few guidelines below.

Keep in simple, if you train twice a day, cluster your carbs according to the heaviest type of training and hop on to the next carb column.

So for example, if I wake up and go for a short 5k run and then in the evening I do 2 hours of heavy lifting, I would follow a "Demanding training day" if I felt I needed it, and carb cycle around the evening session as that is the heaviest of the two.

Guidelines:

• 2 'Standard' training sessions in a day = Most likely still 'Standard' column
• 1 'Standard' + 1 'Demanding' training sessions in the same day = 'Demanding' column
• 2 Demanding sessions in the same day = Somewhere between 'Demanding' and 'Endurance'. Gauge by how you feel.

This is a question I get asked a lot and it's not one I can answer with complete clarity since it depends on so many factors like your genetics, your current body composition, how consistent you are and the foods that you choose to eat when you aren't tracking.

I encourage you to take an 80/20 approach. Eat well, enjoy your favourite treats within reason and don't stress about hitting the numbers exactly and with that consistency, you will see results.

Same as above, this programme is not about strict rules, its about learning to implement better habits so that you don't feel like you have to restrict only to binge later.

The ultimate goal of this programme is to help you create better food habits and if that means still eating pizzas every week then I'm all for it.

You can eat what you like, as long as you are making the right choices for you that align with your values. For example, "I choose to eat pizza because it will make me happy" is better than "I won't eat pizza even though I love it because it will make me gain weight".

I encourage you to take the approach goal, rather than the avoid goal.

Instead of "I'm giving up pizza", aim for "I'm going to eat lots of vegetables with my pizza".

This is outlined extensively in Module 3, but as a rule, regardless of whether you have reached your weight goal or not, you have to reverse by week 12.

If you still haven't reached your weight goal by week 10 but you still feel good (remember to check with your sleep, mood and energy), you can remain on the 'cut' until week 12.

By week 12 you should reverse unless you never left Phase 1.

Again all of this is explain in detail in Module 3.

You can take any form of protein you like, although the yellow section of your macro plan, which highlights your liquid carbs, you'll want to aim for those in liquid form.

Casein and whey isn't for everyone so if you struggle it's absolutely fine to find any substitute that you are happy with.

Although there are no hard and fast rules on this program, I would recommend that the workout shake be as prioritised as possible. This will help you maintain strength, energy and decrease your chances of experiencing muscle loss during a cut.

Next, no you absolutely do not have to eat 5 whole meals a day, you can eat as many (or as few) meals as you like as long as you are hitting the overall macros. Although I would highly recommend that you do not eat less than 2-3 meals a day as that would be approaching intermittent fasting schedules.

If you miss a meal due to a busy work schedule you can combine the macros of two meals together.

This is covered extensively in Module 3 so please do not move beyond Phase 1 until you have watched all the lessons in Module 3.

This is covered extensively in Module 3 so please do not move beyond Phase 1 until you have watched all the lessons in Module 3.