Adam Schafer

I didn't include much background in my email, but I did want to talk about my metabolism and reverse diet journey since listening to you guys, because I think it'll be helpful to a lot of listeners.

In early COVID, I lost about 80 pounds doing all the wrong things.

Fasting, cardio, no lifting, no protein.

Um, I found you guys like four years ago, having lost a ton of muscle.

Um, and my maintenance, once I started tracking, it was, uh, 1500 calories later found through blood work that I tanked my thyroid starving myself during that weight loss.

Um, I think a lot of listeners hear your callers, um, and how you can recommend people jump a couple hundred calories a week, every couple of weeks, um, and get discouraged like I did, um, because I had to take it so slow, um,

I did a complete 180.

I hit my protein goals, used only your MAPS programs, changed sleep habits.

And even still, it took me over 18 months of being absolutely dialed to get my maintenance from 1,500 up to 2,000.

Many times I had to backtrack and stay at a level for months.

Wow.

However, in 2025, everything changed.

Using the scale to maintain my weight, my reverse diet saw me go from 2,000 all the way to 3,800 calories.

I was constantly hitting PRs in literally every lift of your programs.

And I straight up traded 19 pounds of fat for lean mass with no change on the scale.

So this is what you guys call the Goldilocks zone, I think.

Yeah, dude.

Fast forward to now, and the reason why I wrote in, I'm regressing.

Wrist and forearm are the causes.

I've been doing physical therapy for significant forearm pain.