Sustainable Nutrition Strategies for Fat Loss

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, Mind pump with your hosts. Sal D Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the top downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast in the world This is Myine Pump Tod's episode, we talk about the best workout for people who want to lose weight We break it down, very simple, a few steps, follow what we say, it will Now this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Element This is an electrolyte powder that you add to your water. There's no artificial sweeteners, there's no sugar, and it's got the right amount of sodium. Most electrolyte powders are too low in sodium to really make a difference This is a thousand milligrams per serving So if you need electrolytes Go with element It can help eliminate things like headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue Sleeplessness Other symptoms of not having enough electrolytes, if you're on a low carb diet, if you work out a lot, if you work in hot environments, it makes a big difference, everybody, and it tastes really good. This actually encourages my clients to drink more water because it tastes so good. But remember, no calories, no sugar No wor official sweeteners Go check them out. G to drinklMT. com forward slash Mindpump. That link will get you your free sample pack of the most popular drink mixed flavors with any ur We also have a sale going on this month on our workout programs. All maps programs, all programs, bundles, everything, every fitness program, forty percent off for the summer starting right now to maps Fitness productroducts d. com pick your favorite maps, workout program. usese the code summer forty for the discount. All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs or training gear over at mypumppsstore d. comot I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mypumpstore. comot That's it. enjoy the rest of the show. All right, we're going to talk about the best workout strategies for those of you that want to lose body fat. If you're overweight and you need some help, Listen up, we're gonna to fix it for you. Let's go. You shared a study earlier. I did. New. Was that new? It was done in twenty twenty six. I can pull it out. Okay, so so it is a new study. It was published, I should say in twenty twenty. Okay And what they did in the study and this just backs up what we've seen in other studies preparing fitness strategies for Fitness strategies for weight loss, for fat loss And here's what they found in this stud. I'm to pull it up here and you can get this on PubMed. so you can actually find this So what they did is they took three hundred and four adults. Okay And there were three categories All of them followed a low calorie diet. So they were all eating in a way that would induce weight loss, right? They're all eating in what's called a calorie deficit Some of them did strength training Some of them did just cardiovascular exercise And then some of them did no exercise Okay, so you had strength training group Cardio group. U no exercise group yet The weight loss, now obviously, we would expect the exercise group to do the best or the two exercise groups to do better then the group that did no exercise. I don't think that's a shock or a surprise anybody. So the real interesting part here is to look at Well, which form of exercise was more effective The strength training group and the cardio group both lost roughly the same amount of weight. Okay. So weight on the scale went down roughly the same But that's not where it gets interesting. When they looked at the kind of weight that they lost The strength training group lost the most body fat. And They gained a little bit of muscle The group that did the cardio lost the same amount of weight, but they lost some muscle along with it. So they didn't build muscle. they lost some muscle. So when it comes to pure Body fat loss, strength training is the best form of exercise. which we have been tal've saying for a long time. That's. It's always great for when these studies come out just to back up what we've been saying for a long time Did the study break down the exact protocol of each? Noope. It didn't. just said these people did cardo Yeah too. I mean sometimes when they putit those together, you see how cardo like burns more calories versus like, you know dr training and then yeah, they try to like use that angle. It does. so if you're not familiar with this You know, this is kind of widely known that cardio burns a lot of calories. It really does.s like running for an hour on a treadmill Al burn more calories than a traditional strength training workout. It just burns more calories. You know what it does, Oceell? becausecause I like to talk about this also But it doesn't burn that much more Burns more And it's one of the highest ways you can burn calories in an hour would be to go for a run. Running running in a recession. But it's not like you don't burn anything lifting weights. No. So a good example is you're probably on a normal run, we'reving crazy intensity. five, maybe six hundred calories in that hour running Uh strength training three hundred. Yeah. So it sounds like a lot when you say double, right Yeah. But it's like three hundred calories is not a huge number. No, it's not. I mean, you could you could drink a soda or two and cover that. Yeah.'s there's that point. Here's the other point. The other point is It's not the calorie burn that we want to look at when we're looking exercise We want to look at what adaptations it induces. Now, the adaptations from cardio are to improve your stamina and your endurance. The adaptations for strength training are to make you stronger Okay, everybody knows that way. If you lift weights And you do it in a traditional way, right? You do a set, you rest, you do a set, you rest You get stronger If you get an elliptle or a treadmill or a rower and you do your workout over time, you build more stamina and endurance And you do burn a little bit more calories. Well, why is it then that the strength training causes more fat loss. Well here's why Anytime you cut your calories below what you're burning This is what a calorie deficit is Your body will always try to learn to burn the amount of cowers you're takaking in. It's called metabolic adaptation. In other words, your metabolic rate for lack of a better term more complex than this slows down So if you're burning three thousand courers a day and you're eating two thousand cowers a day, your body is really trying to figure out how to burn only two thousand cowers a day because if you're in a perpetual calorie deficit, you'll die So your body's always trying to adapt One of the ways that it can do this is by pairing muscle down. H muscle burns just more calories through movement, at rest It's much more calgorically expensive Strength training sends a signal that says keepeep the muscle. We need the muscle, we need the strength Cardivascular exercise, although it uses your muscles. You don't need lots of muscle. You don't need lots of muscle to have lots of endurance. You just need good energy systems. You just need stamina. Strength requires larger, thicker muscle fibers. And so what you see with strength training when this is the focus Fat loss When the focus of your workout is cardio, you see fat and muscle loss as a result So for pure vath, That's right. Now If someone may be listening, say, I don't really care If I lose muscle I just need to lose a bunch of weight There's some negative effects that come from losing muscle. Well, yes, slowing the metabolism. That's right. So now further weight loss Aside from getting weaker Yes. besides difficult. Besides the fact that you may get weaker or more fragile, that kind of stuff Even if that's not necessarily a concern for you it makes future weight loss more difficult because you have a metabolic rate now that is slower. And to maintain your new weight loss will be more difficult. So more body fat is lost with strength training. You might even build a little bit of muscle like in this group. It was a tiny bit, but in comparison to the group that did cardia, it was significant because they lost muscle. But you've also maintained them atabolic rate That's a bit higher. because of the muscle. So it just sets you up for something that's far more sustainable What's your guess on the protocol? Like you think they did three hours a week of cardio, three hours of strength training or something like that and then compared it after six to twelve weeks or I don't know, but that's a good question, but I will say this. when you're doing cardiovascular training versus strength training, if you're looking at the adaptation One build endurance, one build strength The time required to gain a great adaptation from strength training is less than the time that is required to gain Great adaptation from Cardio. That's why I think they did the same amount of time though. Yeah. because they got because the Straight train still lost weight also. Yeah Right Well, they're all in the calie deficits. That's the thing. They diet. So that was controlled. Yeah Diet was controlled. Everybody was in a calorie deficit. It wasn't like they were just working out. Everybody was the study says hypoal caloric intake. So everybody was in a deficit It was just which form of exercise is going to produce a better result. And it was strength training hands down. And we know this. We know this as coaches and trainers. We've been communicating this forever that if your goal is to lose body fat And your goal is to not get your metabolism to slow down as much And your goal is to sustain that weight loss, then your focus should be strength training Now, what I would like to see, what I would have loved to seen in a study like this, but you've seen other studies is the weight loss lookooks different in terms of how quickly you experience weight loss or fat loss in strength training versus cardio It's more of a snowball effect with strength training, whereereas with cardio, it happens a little faster than plateau. Almost immediate. A little bit fas because of the metabolic adaptation. It's opposite of each other That's what like which is why I think so many people get stuck in the trap of doing cardio because cardio seems to send the quicker message on the scale. That's right. So if I'm obsessed with just getting my scale weight down, puttingself in a calorie deficit and burning as much as I can every day We'll send we'll send that scale down faster than strength training will three days a week. In other words this is just an example. So this is not like, you know this is not what would happen, but I'm just to illustrate a point. If you had two groups of people both trying to lose twenty pounds, the cardio group and both of them being a calorie deficit The cardio group would lose ten pounds on the scale faster the strength training group. But that's because they would lose muscle. But the group to lose the twenty pounds from body fat only strength training So the form of exercise that you should focus on is strength training if your goal is to lose weight or lose body fat. Yeah. That's the one I. I mean, the point that I made too about the calories, I think we just We overestimate how valuable a couple extra hundred calories of burning is just weight loss pl too It's just not that huge of a difference because we act as if cardio is the one that's burning and when youif weights, you're not burning. And say, Oh, you're still burning calories too. In fact, you Burning quite a bit of calories. I mean, I'd argue that the weightlifting is probably three, four hundred and the cardio is five, six hundred That's nominal. evenven if it was dble even if it was double or triple. Exactly, even it wasouble which was the original number I said, which I think is was totally conservative for strangin training being only three hundred. and on the high end, six hundred calories burn on a tri. An additional two or three hundred calories burned a day is great when it's your metabolism that's doing the work. Yeah. When it's you doing the work to burn the calories, it's a lot of work, you guys. It takes a lot of movement a lot effort. That's right. And your body learns how to burn less calories with movement, whichich means you got to continually ramp that up or continually cut. That's right. And then you end up in this place where Let's say you disciplined yourself to drop that thirty pounds on the scale what it ends up looking like is more activity, less food, more activity, less food all the way to that thirty pounds. And then you're like, well, I'll just figure out what to do afterwards. But then you're in a place where you're only eating fif thousand hundred calories and you're running every single day for an hour And it's like how sustainable is that? That's right? It's not sustainable. And then what inevitably happens to so many people is this massive rebound. It's the throwing up the hands of F this because what happens is We need to lose, say, fifty or sixty We drop the thirty, let's say. And then the hard plateau comes and then the you feel like what a waste of time. Yeah then you go what eff it. I am miserable. I am sweating my balls off every single day. I'm starving myself All did not reach my goal. I was happier, heavier. That's right. And I think that's where what happens to a lot of clients is They get to a place they're like, you know what? I just I'll just I'll be overweight. I to be overweight and eating whatever I want than struggling to get to half myight. Right. And here's what that study didn't show because they were hypo caloric the whole time is through strength training, you can positively induce metabolic adaptation, meaning you can cause your metabolism to burn more calories. through the addition of strength training, which induces muscle gain.. So it actually sets you up a little bit. And we see this all time with the clients that we have here That mind pump. Sokay, the so let's get a little deeper Strength trains the focus. Well what does that workout look like then? Do I just go in the gym and just do a bunch of exercises? Do I follow a bodybuilding routine that I find online No, here's what what gets people the best results typically, especially people in this category. So when we say people who want to lose weight It's like thirty pounds or more. This is your goal U there's two really effective ways to approach strength training. One is to do what's called a full body split. What that means is T days a week, maybe three, but not necessary, two is plenty. You're in the gym and you're training your whole body. Ming you're doing an exercise per major muscle group So I have a leg exercise, a chest, the back of shoulders arms and some core and then I'm done This is more effective on a long term basis than what are called body part split. type routines where today I'm going in chest, tomorrow I'm doing back. next day I'm doing shoulders, that type of deal. So that's option one. Option one, two days a week, full body Here's option two And I love option two. I love this one the most You do one or two exercises a day So instead of going to the gym or working out two days a week for forty five minutes each time, You're doing one or two exercises every single day and you're doing it for maybe three sets and then you're done Both of them are similar in terms of total volume you know the same exercises, same reps, all that stuff. It's just in my experience that a little bit every day, seems to result in better results for people because if you miss a workout, you only miss one or two extraces. There less barriers in the way of that. And I think That's right. A lot of the times, you know, the pushback is really like it's the timing of it or I can't fit that in the schedule for today and to just account for that two exercise workout routine is pretty consistently an easy thing to handle for people. Now the key to the one to two lifts per day is that these are big gross motor movements. So it's important to note that because if you did Two lifts a day every day and the lifts were lateral raises and biceip curls Tice Ticeip push downs and rear delt fly and like, you know, calf raises, like you those are your choices We're not going to move the needle very much. Yes you're doing these big you know, squat, deadlift, overhead press, you know, hinge press Rch press Rows, like pull up, like these movements Big bang for your buck movements and you will really move and you know, you know, having this conversation today, I just just came across my feed I to bring it up in our qua. As you guys if you guys have seen. You guys I think we all follow him young man Weigh we he used to weigh almost five hundred pounds. you' talking about. And he's been on a weight loss journey. Y. Red hair Y. whyy can't I think his name? people reached out to help Dyl? Yes. D Dylan you know his name. Don't you know red hair Rd hair guy conf find him. Yeah. Good kid and I've kind of followed his journey along the way and he's recently hired an online or somebody who's famous online. I didn't know who they were. They have a pretty big following. and so I just kind of was curious to the strategy and suuper disappointed in the way they're going about helping this guy out, dude, because they are still playing like the biggest loser game of just hard workouts, lots of burn and hard calorie deficits. And u His body's just not responding. ye Yes, thank you. Shout out to Ethan Bernard. Great kid, suuper great attitude, positive. Got to commend him too for putting himself out there online. I know how difficult that is to do that. So a lot of vulnerability And and I think what he's doing is awesome was sharing the journey with so many people But I've watched him go about it and it's it's the wrong way. It's not how we would coach somebody. No. Well, I think yeah. the natural tendencies because the urgency of losing weight, you know, when you're bigger and it's like, you know it looks like it's such a dramatic amount of weight you have to lose like instead of focusing on building your body up and really being able to get in a good metabolic place as opposed to just, you know, the urgency of to just burn calories and really like shave down to that point where you're going to run into this wall, youre run into these plateaus. they think that once they get there, then it's like we're going to build ourselves back out of that hole, but it's like if you just build first like we know. it's just such a better strategy. Yeah. Well what it looks like on on an even like Some of the stuff that Sal's talking about, right is, you know, anybody who's thirty pounds overweight, as that number increases, the, you know, Sal gave the analogy of kind of a snowball effect The snowball effect is even slower when it's a big number. So someone like that who has over a hundred pounds that they need to lose What's difficult is when you first start coaching, they may see very little weight loss on the scale at all for the first few months, maybe even six months because they're having this nice even exchange because we're focused on building muscle. becausecause we're focused on building muscle so much, what we might see is You know, Gains a pound of muscle. lost a pound of fat, gained a pound. And so yeah, incredible change is happening, but you don't see it very much because we've got a layer fat over the top of it. We have a lot of weight d still to go. You don't see the scale move very much because you're having this kind of even exchange of you're building a pound of muscle, you're losing a pound of fat, give or take. And so it can be really deceiving, but it's that snowball. Now the positive side is you take someone like that who's got good size to them and you build That guy has potentially to put twenty thirty pounds of muscle on. Yeah. You put twenty thirty pounds of muscle on that guy, his metabolism is going to be roaring and then he's going to be eating more than he's ever ate and he's going to be able to come the other way. And then it really sps. Well what this points to is the real challenge. The challenge and this is hard to understand when you're like, I want to lose weight. the weight loss is not the big challenge. That is a challenge. It's difficult, but the big challenge is going to be keeping it off. And the data supports this So many people try to lose weight, a percentage of them succeed at losing a significant amount of weight or getting closer to the goal weight Very few of them are able to keep it off. That's the part that we need to focus on. And setting yourself up metabolically is far more important than seeing the scale move very quickly. Because if I move the scale quickly, but you gain it back, who cares? You failed What we want is long term, like let's get it off. Let keep it off really the yoyo approach. That's right. And let's make this as successful as possible long term Now back to the compound lifts. Here's why the compound lifts are so valuable. If I do Bench press I'm working my chest. shoulders and my triceps one exercise. If I did a bunch of isolation exercises, I'd have to do three exercises. I'd have to do one for my chest, one for my shoulders, one for my triceps. Whereas I could have just done one lift for three sets and hit all those body. Awesome systemic effect. That's right. It also has more carryover into the real world. The kind of strength you get from compound lifts carries over into the real world because the real world requires compound lifting It's easier, it's faster, it's more effective. So when you're doing the full body split or the one to two lifts a day Pretty much your entire routine should be compound lift focused. You're doing lifts that require more than one joint Presses, rows, squats, deadlifts Those are the kinds of exercises you should focus on, and those are the ones are going give you the best Well end result to the point that I'm bring up with talking about bringing up this young man story is And they should be focused on just pure strength, long rest periods which it seems counterintuitive traditional strength for somebody who wants to lose a bunch of weight, there's this idea of keeping them moving Burn. We got to burn all these calories and it's like, That person would do so much better resesults wise, if they took three to five minute long rest periods between these compound lifts and every time they went back to that lift, they gave everything they got to push more weight. That and get strong in those lifts. because that person, although they if they Didn't see any movement on the scale down in thirty to sixty days But I've got them eating, say two, three, five hundred more calories than what they were when we started And their big lifts are up ten, fifteen, twenty pounds ope We are winning. That's right. And y the scale hasn't moved. That's so hard for somebody who's coming from this position where they have a lot of weight to lose to accept that They are right on track or what we call in the Goldilocks zone And yet the scale' not moving when they they paid me to lose a hundred pound.. You know, it's like, man, I want to lose one hundred pound. Yeahah, but this is the pathway. We got to lay that foundation first And this is what it looks like. And so Forecasting for a client like this is so You know, this is for all your other coaches that listen to the show is so paramount to your success and your client success letting them know that this is a long road and it's not a long road because you have a lot of weights lose. It's a long road because we're not going to see a lot of movement on the scale like what you're originally paying me to do. But what we're doing is going to set you up for success long term and will make the process easier. But at first, the psychological piece will be the biggest hurt hundred percent Now let's talk about activity, just general activity. Now you can do some cardio on the side if you want, if you want to move more But in our experience as coaches with over twenty years of experience, the best possible thing you could do is track your steps and try to hit a certain step count every single day. A good number is about eight thousand. eight thousands is a lot of steps, by the way, for a lot of people. A lot of people listening right now You're probably averaging close to four thousand steps, maybe So hit eight thousand steps a day and you don't need to do any additional activity. You do your strength training You're eight thousand steps day and you're on a good nutrition plan, which we'll get to You're gonna get great results. I actually don't want this client doing any sort of cardio or scheduled you know, treadmill work or unless They have to because let's say they have a job where they're sedentary all day long And they can't get eight thousand steps through twenty minute walks, half hour walk here and they can't build it into their lifestyle. Then it's totally understandable. It's like, hey, our goalals eight thousand steps. I know we can't get there unless you spend about an hour walking on the treadmill. Totally feasible. we can do that. That's fine But the goal always that I set for someone at this stage is Let's try and get that eight thousand through lifestyle Can you start to make it a part of your routine that instead of getting up at eight in the morning, you get up at seven thirty and you take a nice walk in the morning for thirty minutes to start further from your job. Yeah, Park further in your job take the stairs, little things like Yeah. At lunch break, can you take a nice fifteen minute walk to on your lunch break. Also, when you get off of work and you come home, canan you take a nice stroll forty five minutes. And and because that becomest sit down intentionally for a while. Right. This becomes sustainable because once you start to help someone build this becomes a lifestyle. versus I got to go to the gym to do the extra movement. Right.. And that becomes that's more difficult for someone to sustain long term versus becoming that person who I just get up and And by the way, the health benefits, if you were to take steps throughout your day The health benefits are actually better than if they were concentrated all at once. The data supports this. It's better for insulin sensitivity, it's better for mobility And in our experience It's much more sustainable because it is part of your lifestyle All right, let's get to diet So here's where everyone's going to kind of trip out. We're not going to give you calorie goals. I'm not going to tell you to cut your calories, but I am going to give you a few steps that will pretty much guarantee that you're going to be eating the right amount of food. to lose body fat. Here they are Number one On eat whole foods. No processed foods, notothing out of a box or wrapper, donon't eat fast food, don't order food, makeake your own food, prep it. Whole foods. These are foods with one ingredient, meat, rice, potato, vegetables, fruits. That's it. That's it. That's what you're going to eat and eat until you're full Okay until you're satisfied You're going to place a special focus on protein. And what you're going to do with that is you're going to try to hit whatever your goal body weight is in grams of protein. So if you want to weigh one hundred and fifty pounds one hundred and fifty grams approaching a day And again, eat when you're hungry. Now here's the kicker. What I just said, Whole food only, hitting your target body weight and grams of protein, you're going to feel both satisfied and you're going to eat in a natural calorie deficit. Without you feeling like you're trying to cut your calories, it's going to naturally happen because wholeole Foods That are high protein produce incredible satiety when you compare them to processed foods or foods that you eat when you get, know door dash or whatever. Even then you're just having the better materials for build muscles. It's like you're now sending a signal because you're training, which is already gonna change body' chemistry for that. So yeah, you're in a good place We're so worried that like the amount of calories right now is too crazy, but you know you've been living off that, you've been building fat, why not now build the muscle instead? I haven't had a client Yet that I gave these rules to that had an easy time hitting protein. In fact, most of them would come back to me. I can't eat that much. I can't eat that much It's really hard. And so the one thing I would add to that advice that you gave that we give all the time on the show, which is eat the protein first. Yes. because you will find it challenging. That's right to hit your one hundred fifty, one hundred seventy five, two hundred grams of protein consistently day in and day out. and then ye you have to add to that because unlike carbohydrates Your body doesn't store this up and then tap into it and use it like a, you know, a day or two later. Like you miss protein intake, you miss protein intake Yeah. You're back to system. You're back to schoolore because what ends up happening is people go like, Oh I'm pretty good my protein. That's ' they had a high day. They had three hundred grams one day and then they run it back with a eighty gram day. And it's like, oh well I'm still averaging two hundred something It doesn't work that way. If you have these days where you're really inconsistent with protein, you are missing out on reaping the max benefits from the strength training piece that Justin was alluding to. And so hitting your protein intake consistently through Whole Foods, eating it first M. And then it naturally controls the outide. I don't have to tell a client, Oh, only eat this much or stop. It's like, no, eat when if you're end what's great is You will naturally have higher calorie days and what typically happens is they come when they're supposed to Because you've streng trained you send sleill muscle, Yre h. The body goes. Yeah. hey We need to build some muscle so you get a little bit hungrier and you're like man, out of, I think I ate a little extra today. Good. That's probably because we trained we hit some squats yesterday, you hit a PR. body's like we need more muscle. it's like and I want you to feed it. and then it ends up balancing itself out. It's a beautiful thing when done pro In our experience, training clients, when people are able to do this consistently, eat whole foods, eat protein first, hit their target body weight and grams of protein. peopleeople average fifteen to thirty pounds of weight loss with that. Yeah. withithout doing anything else. to justly crazy just that approach. It's they don't have to count calories. They feel satisfied. Many people come back say, I can't eat that much And it really does work like magic. I know that sounds crazy But it does if you do those things. and you eat when you're hungry. And then lastly, this is another one. This makes somewhat of a difference Try to aim for about a half a gallon to a gallon of water a day. This makes a difference, everybody. Now, it's not because everybody's dehydrated. and some people like, Ohh we don't drink enough water, we dehydrate. That's something's happening. But there is what is considered good and then there's considered optimal And half a gallon to a gallon of water a day does help contribute to weight loss through getting people to drink less other fluids.. It helps with joint stiffness. It helps with energy and digestion. And that's it. Those are your steps for the diet. You do those with the eight thousand steps a day You do your strength training, either two full body workouts a week or one or two lifts a day. Some good sleep. And you stay consistent with that, everybody listening to this right now You will see nice consistent fat loss that does not result in some crazy plateau where you're all of a suddenly gonna to rebound. makes a big difference. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. It's Mindpump Media. We'll see you. Thank you for listening to Mindpomper. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB superbundle at mindpumpmedia dot com d The RGB suuperbundle includes maths anabolic, maths performance, and maths aesthetic, nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over two hundred videos, the RGB superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers At a fraction of the price. The RGB suuperbundle has a full thirty day money back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia d. comot If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mindpump to your friends and family We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump