Hello and welcome to the ESG Fitness Podcast. I'm doing another solo episode because, well, actually, Andy and I seem to be ridiculously busy in lockdown, which I've said every week, but also there are many questions to get through. So I think it will be a double episode. And I think hopefully tomorrow we can arrange a time that we are both free to record the second half of this.

Okay, question one, is it better to meet your protein targets even if it means going over your calories slightly?

Okay, so the answer to this would probably be dependent on your goals.

So if your goal is, if your primary goal is fat loss, then your calories come first. So it wouldn't be good to go slightly over calories.

Now, if that happens one day because you didn't plan or something similar, that's absolutely fine.

But the point is not to just be like, oh, okay, so calories more important, protein doesn't matter.

No, you're meant to hit both targets.

So you need to plan your day better so that you are getting in that protein target.

And the protein target I've set you isn't excessively high.

Like, I'm aiming for you to be anything over 100.

If you're a vegetarian or vegan, actually not so much vegetarian, but if you're vegan, I will

accept 80 grams. That is fine. But while you're in this fat loss phase, that is what I want you to be

hitting. Question two, or the second part of this question, does the natural aging process, as in the breakdown of collagen, impact how our cells, our fat cells lie beneath the dermis, so beneath our skin?

My fat bits are squishier now that I'm older, or maybe it's just I'm fat than I've been before.

It could be a combination of things and generally I mean this might not apply to you

given that you are exercising, you are eating well, you are

putting your body under resistance so that you should be at least maintaining your muscle

but generally we lose muscle, we lose a bit of tone, we lose cells. So things do

become a little bit more like saggy, I guess, not a great word to describe it. I don't think your

fat cells change. I think that a lot of things become almost looser. And that's probably what you're feeling.

And I think a lot of that is to do with loss of muscle.

The good news is we can do something about that.

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