Dhru Purohit Show - Biggest Weight Loss and Nutrition Myths Sabotaging Your Health and The Top Hacks That Actually Work In 2025

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Bioptimizers, and Our Place.  Did you know most people fall short on their New Year’s resolutions? Too often, these resolutions are based on unrealistic expectations and lack a clear plan for success. Today’s guest is here to help you break the cycle with a practical guide to making 2025 the year you master consistent, sustainable habits and achieve meaningful progress that transforms how you feel every day. ​​Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with personal trainer and Mind Pump Media co-founder Sal Di Stefano to explore the biggest pitfalls that sabotage fitness goals and prevent people from having their fittest year yet. Sal shares his top tips for incorporating underrated activities, implementing movement throughout the day, and staying consistent for sustainable results. He also discusses the unrealistic goals that often hold people back, such as lack of specificity and overreliance on trendy supplements. If you’re seeking inspiration to make 2025 the year of consistent, long-term progress, this episode is for you! Sal Di Stefano began his fitness journey at just 18, quickly rising to prominence as a trainer and opening some of the largest big-box gyms in the California Bay Area. By 24, he launched a wellness-focused fitness studio that combined expertise in hormones, nutrition, gut health, and fitness training. It was during this time that Sal developed his unique, behavior-focused approach to achieving lasting health and fitness success. Today, Sal is a highly sought-after expert known for his practical, easy-to-apply insights. As co-host of the Mind Pump Podcast—the world’s top fitness and health podcast—he’s appeared on hundreds of leading shows and frequently speaks at events for trainers and health practitioners. In this episode, Dhru and Sal dive into: The most underrated form of activity (00:00:42) Why movement results in better choices throughout the day (4:38) Getting results versus keeping results (9:30) Unrealistic approach to calorie cutting and how to build a proper foundation (14:32) Nutritional advice or myths we can leave behind (19:22) Insights into the fitness and wellness industry (32:12) The one supplement Sal recommends and the research behind its effectiveness (34:47)  How to use caffeine appropriately (40:22) Being specific with your goals and focusing on one at a time (45:32) Prioritizing simple whole foods and fiber (51:37) The risks of sitting too much and how to counteract it (56:47) How to get started with a sustainable routine (1:02:47) Over-exercising and finding balance (1:06:04)  Also mentioned in this episode: MAPS 15 Fitness Programs Why You Need A Coffee Break and How to Do It For more on Sal and Mind Pump, follow them on Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, Apple Podcast, TikTok, YouTube, and their Website. This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Bioptimizers, and Our Place.  Ready to enhance relaxation and muscle recovery? Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Make Magnesium Breakthrough part of your daily routine this year. Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU10 to get 10% off any order and free gifts when you subscribe.  Start your New Year off right by reducing your toxic load and upgrading your cookware! Go to fromourplace.com today and use promo code DHRU at checkout to receive 10% off any order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sal, welcome back to the podcast. Pleasure to have you here. You know, you recently made a pretty mind-blowing video, in my opinion, about the things that sabotage people the most when it comes to getting fit, losing and burning fat, and really having their fittest year ever. And one of the top things you listed on there was having unrealistic goals and expectations. You try to do too much. So I wanted to bring you back on the podcast to talk about the realistic.

things that we can do that actually significantly move the needle forward. And I want to start off with one of your number one tips, and it's on the topic of something that's so underrated, and that's walking. Yes, yes. Walking is very powerful as a tool to improve insulin sensitivity, to improve overall health, and it's a form of activity that most people can perform with good technique and form, with low risk of injury. This is a big deal because a lot of people will pick up exercise.

They'll lace up their shoes and go running. The injury risk is through the roof with it. Why? Well, it's because people stop running when they're 13 and they decide to pick it back up when they're 30-something. And it's a skill. And if you don't do it right, your biomechanics are off. And injury risk is quite high.

Walking still, luckily, we don't live in Wally World, like that animated film where everybody was on those hovering, you know, chairs. people can still walk with good technique. So walking is a great way to move. Now, I don't want to look at this, and I encourage people not to look at forms of exercises, ways to burn calories. That's oversold quite often.

The body adapts quite easily and quite quickly to calorie burn from activity. You want to look at it as a form of activity to improve your health, but more importantly, as a way to improve your insulin sensitivity. So where am I going with this? Walking post meal. So after you eat a meal, if you walk for 10 minutes, it has profound effects on insulin sensitivity.

To put it differently, if you walked for 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which would be a combined total of 30 minutes a day, you would get better insulin sensitizing effects from doing that than you would from walking an hour at any of the time during the day. Okay, so right after you eat, go for a 10-minute walk. This has huge impacts on insulin sensitivity. Now, why is that important? Well, if you remain sensitive to insulin, you have better medicine,

metabolic health and your body's more primed to do things like build muscle. A lot of people don't realize that insulin is actually one of the most anabolic or muscle building hormones. It also balances out. There's this cascading effect on other hormones. For example, in women, insulin sensitivity is very important for balancing out things like estrogen and progesterone. And again, it's easy.

Most of us don't need to put on workout clothes to go for a walk. We could just do it outside. And if you tie it to something that you do every day, which is eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, you're likely to be consistent. Now, a lot of people may wonder, why does walking after you eat have such, you know, big impacts on insulin sensitivity? Well, if you think of your muscles like sponges, this is a real terrible analogy, but imagine these are like sponges, and you eat a meal on that, those carbohydrates and those sugars or even some of these unused proteins going to the bloodstream as glucose, contracting and relaxing muscles helps suck them up. Muscles are a storage

vessel for carbohydrates in the form of glycogen. Now your liver stores glycogen, but so do your muscles. And moving them post-pranthial right after eating gets them to become sensitive to insulin so they could suck up this glucose. In fact, I had Dr. Seeds on the podcast not that long ago. He's one of the leading researchers on peptide therapies and the like. And he made a statement to me. He said, if people just walked for 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we would probably

solve most people's type 2 diabetes issues. Very simple, very easy. When I've had my clients do this, they tend to be consistent with it. It's not this big ask. And again, you have these really amazing profound impacts on your overall health. And it's a great place to start. So if someone's watching this or listening to this and they don't have a structured workout routine, they want a place to start to be able to see some good impacts on their health, just 10 minutes after you eat and watch what happens. One of the things I love about walking that I've seen my own life, and I'd love to ask you about this and maybe why is this happening, when I walk more, I make better decisions during the day. I want to be healthier, and I feel like I have more momentum for all other goals that I have in my life.

Is that something you see with the people that you work with? Yeah, totally. There's data to back that up, right? So movement changes are mood. In fact, I just brought up a study recently that showed that the positive mood changes that happen from exercise. We've known for a long time, and it's been established that they last for a few hours, right? You see this uptake in neurotransmitters like dopamine, catacolamines, noraphenephren, these energy-producing chemicals. So when you exercise or move a little bit, you just kind of, everybody knows this. You get up a move.

You feel a little bit more energized, right, so long as you don't overdo it. But now they're finding in studies, and this, I think, was out of the University of London, if I'm not mistaken, showed that activity has this positive effect on your mood that lasts for about 48 hours and you see changes with the way that the hippocampus functions and blood flow to the brain. All right. So what does that have to do with what you said? Well, when you feel a little bit better, you're more likely to make better decisions. If you look at the eating habits that people tend to have that can maybe be labeled as poor eating habits, they tend to be more closely connected to bad feelings, to feeling depressed or lower energy or high stress. Movement is a very simple fix. Exercise in

general is probably, well, definitely, again, based off the data, is the most cost effective and one of the most effective ways to do things that can prove the symptoms of the most common forms of depression and anxiety. And we also see this behaviorally, when you do something that is, that you perceive as pro-health, you tend to make more pro-health decisions later on. So in other words, studies will show that when people start an exercise program, they're more likely to pay attention to what they eat. When they stop exercising, they're less likely to pay attention to what they're doing with their food. So it does have downstream effects. And it gets a simple ask, right? Again, you just move for 10 minutes. By the way, there was a study that was done on this very topic where they had people

not even walk. They did seated calf raises. Now, this wasn't a machine. It's literally me sitting here and lifting my heels. So they activated the soleus muscle, which is one of the, it's a flat calf muscle. under the large gastroc muscle of the calf. And they saw an improvement, significant improvement in blood sugar and insulin sensitivity from that. That's very, very minor activity. So I like to communicate things

that have big bang for your buck results. Because again, you know, as I've said on your show a couple times, I trained most of my clients over the last, you know, two decades were just everyday regular people. And what I learned through that process was what works. And a big part of what works is what people will do and what they'll do consistently.

That's like the most important factor when it comes to what actually works for people. Have you seen any of the work of Francine Shapiro and EMDR? No. I'm familiar with EMDR though. Yeah. So Francine Shapiro was a researcher that found, to put it sort of in a quick story, that every time she would go on a walk, especially with some of her research students, she would notice that she had a little bit of an improvement in mood boosting.

And I think she was going through something difficult at the time, maybe like a cancer diagnosis. And they started to look into it and they found something fascinating. They found that when there's bilateral eye movement, our eyes are looking at the horizon and they're scanning it, that signals something to our nervous system that everything's okay because we're making forward movement. And that's how EMDR, which is a therapy for those that aren't familiar with it, it's this technique that's used in, it can be in conjunction with psychotherapy, where people are using bilateral eye movement. movement, in some cases, even soldiers that have been through traumatic experiences to reprocess memories and help them better understand it. And it's been validated. Initially, they said that she was a kook. And then a bunch of studies came out on it and showed that it actually worked. And so that's another thing that I noticed with walking is that you get out, you get perspective,

and all of a sudden this thing that you've been just sitting on, this problem in your life, you know, saying sorry to your wife or husband or whatever, something that's so small. that you just needed a little bit of perspective on. You get that perspective when you walk and all of a sudden you feel better for the day. Yeah, no. This is something that people who've worked in gyms and worked with people in fitness have noticed, you know,

for a long time. But now you have the data to back this up. By the way, creative types know this. Riders block. What's one of the solutions for rider block? Get up and go for a walk. Go for a run. Go move, right?

Your brain process is better. You think better. And it changes the filter through which you perceive the world in some ways, in profound ways. And this is all connected to or all contributes to, I should say, your potential success rate. Again, if you look at the data on weight loss or on people embarking on a fitness journey, getting results in the context of what I'm saying isn't the hard part of keeping them. Keeping them is where everybody really fails.

And it's their strategy. It's the approach. It's the strategy. It's how. And it's also why, why they do it. And I've talked about this on, I think, on your show, it's the self-hate versus self-care, you know, perception of why you're doing it. But this one small thing that I just told you, okay, walking after you eat has such profound

effects. I wish I knew this in the first 10 years I train people. I used to scoff at people saying walk more to improve your health. I mean, back when I was a meathead trainer, I thought, oh, that's not a form of exercise. you're just walking, you're not sweating and getting sore. 10 years into my career and realizing I wasn't doing what I thought I could, started incorporating tips like this one. And I just, the success rate went through the roof as a result of this, like I said,

just this one thing right here. And again, now we have the data to support it. Another unrealistic expectation and goal that people put on themselves when it comes to living their fittest year ever is they say, I am going to significantly cut back on my calories. I'm going to starve myself so that I can get into the best shape of my life. Why is this a completely unrealistic approach? And how will it end up sending people backwards?

And the last part of that is that let's talk about what people should be doing instead. You know, for the last few years, I've been really prioritizing my muscle strain. With that comes soreness, tension, and just general aches and pains that come as a natural part of the recovery process. Now, if you can relate to this, bond charge's PEMF infrared devices are a total gain change. It combines the soothing power of infrared heat with pulsed electromagnetic field PEMF therapy to target deep muscle areas and revive stiffness, aches, all in the comfort of your own home. Unlike traditional recovery methods, the bond charge infrared PEMF devices penetrate deeply into muscle tissues using electromagnetic pulses to boost circulation.

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How are you doing with your New Year's intentions, as I like to say? One of my big intentions every single year is to focus on my well-being. And we all know that the foundation of well-being is a good night's sleep. Personally, if I had a list of a few things that would significantly improve my sleep or my friend's sleep and overall well-being, it's taking the number one mineral for that, which also helps me personally on so many levels that I can't even fully describe. Yes, I'm talking about magnesium. Actually, I'm talking about magnesium breakthrough by biopopopause. The seven different forms of magnesium in the supplement are involved in over 800 different

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breakthrough part of your daily routine this year so you can get the vitality you need to conquer your dreams and goals in life. If you want to get on this train, I'm already on it. Come and join me. Just go to buy optimizers.com slash dh-R-U and enter the promo code Drew 10. That's D-H-R-U-10 to get 10% off any order. And if you suppose, subscribe. Not only will you get amazing discounts and free gifts for my friends at Buy Optimizers, you'll make sure your monthly supplied is guaranteed to be there. Nothing worse than running out of magnesium. Again, if you want in on this deal and to get on the train, that's buyoptimizers.com slash D-H-R-U for 10% off and free gifts. Anytime you set a goal, again, behavioral science will show

this. If you give me a goal, the further I stretch the end of that goal out, the more bloated or the more I believe I can accomplish that goal. So if you tell me 10 years from now, what do you think you can accomplish? I'm going to give you these huge, crazy things. If you say next week, then I tend to be much more realistic. When people think of a year, right, oh, it's the new year, it's 2025. I'm going to lose 40 pounds, right? Break that down into smaller goals and break that down into goals that contribute to the larger goal.

So it may be something like, I'm going to walk every single day for 20 minutes, or I'm going to do one structured, workout a week, which is one more workout a week than I'm doing currently. Start there and you can build upon that. And this is a strategy for developing discipline and developing new behaviors. Every new behavior has to develop on previous behaviors. Very rarely do you see a situation where a person goes from one set of behaviors to a radically different set of behaviors. That's called an epiphany. And most of us have experienced maybe one epiphany our lives or none. We know it because that's why it's called an epiphany. Like I had that one.

life-changing experience. In many cases, it doesn't even, it doesn't happen even with dire consequences. I've trained many people who've suffered from multiple heart attacks. And the first and second one wasn't enough to give them that epiphany that changed everything. So if you want a strategy, if you want to follow a winning strategy, one that's going to dramatically improve your odds, you've got to start slow. And I know that's echoed so many times, but it's so true. And so someone may be asking, what does that mean? What do I start? Give yourself a challenging step. And it has to be challenging. Otherwise, it has no meaning.

So that has to be a little bit of a challenge to it. But in the context of, well, I'd be able to maintain this for the rest of my life. So if somebody says, I want to lose 40 pounds, I'm going to work out five days a week. And I'd say to them, do you think you'll work out five days a week every week, weekend and week out for the rest of your life?

Because you're currently doing zero. Then you'll see them go, hmm, let's take that back a little bit. How about once a week? Do you think you can maintain that for the rest of your life realistically? They'll say, yeah, I think so. Stay with that when it becomes a consistent behavior. then you build upon that.

That's the strategy for long-term success. Now, in terms of cutting calories and doing this dramatic cut in calories, most people's goal is to lose weight. And in order to lose weight, you do have to take in less calories than you burn. That's just a fact. But the burn side of that equation

is what people misunderstand quite a bit. You can positively affect your metabolism to burn more calories for you. And a better strategy is to build that up before you try to cut down the intake. So what does that look like? Build some muscle, eat a high protein diet. Those are two things that make a huge impact on that.

So strength train and hit your target body weight and protein. When I say high protein, that's what the data shows to be the upper limit of the benefits you'll derive from a high protein diet. It's right around there. So what's my target body weight? I don't know, 150 pounds, let's say. Okay, I'm going to hit 150 grams of protein every single day. I'm going to divide that up over my three meals or whatever or three meals in a shake, let's say.

And I'm going to start strength training. Let's start there. What I'll do is I'll start to build my metabolic rate. I'll start to build my metabolism. Now, what that does is that sets me up for a much more sustainable approach when I do finally cut my calories. So did you give you a different outlook at this or a different way to say this? What sounds more sustainable? A metabolism that's running on 1,800 calories where I need to eat 1,300 calories to lose weight or a metabolism

that's running on 2,800 calories, right, 2,000 calories or 2,500 calories to accomplish that. Obviously, the one where my metabolic rate is higher. So rather than trying to cut calories right out the gates, build your metabolism first, then start the cut. And by the way, once you start cutting calories, your metabolism does try to adapt in the opposite direction, but that's why we build the muscle. That's why we strength, strength. That offsets that negative metabolic adaptation or that slowdown of metabolism.

So build muscle, build strength, eat up. high-protein diet. Once that gets up to a certain point and you feel strong, you're seeing progress in the gym. Give yourself a few months of this of doing this. Set yourself up really well. It's like building the foundation of the house before you build the house itself. That's great advice. You know, you talk about calories. What about the food side of the equation? One of the most searched things for our content, and I'm sure your guys' content even way more than us, people want to know what to eat. What is some of the most unrealistic advice that people are following some of these trends or maybe even myths that are out there. And what's the realistic

antidote when it comes to, again, living your fittest year ever? Radical changes in diet where you're eliminating entire categories of like a macronutrient. Like I'm not going to eat carbohydrates anymore. Or extreme elimination diet, carnivore diet, or I'm going to go from omnivore to vegan. These just again, the data shows have the lowest success rate because the, they, they, just change everything so radically. I believe this is a good approach. What I'm about to say is a good approach for a couple reasons. One, it has lots of downstream effects.

But two, psychologically and behaviorally speaking, it works really well with natural human behavior. Okay, so if I were to tell you, you came to me and you'll lose 40 pounds. And I told you to stop eating all this stuff over here. That's going to be harder than if I said to you, don't worry about what not to eat. Instead, I want you to eat this over here. So add this to your diet.

psychologically speaking, one of them seems more appealing and I don't feel so restricted. Now, there is a way to do that that will accomplish both. One of those is to hit your target body weight and protein. It's got a very powerful satiety producing effect. Eat that first and you will naturally reduce your caloric intake, especially if you also include fiber in that. So a high protein, high fiber diet results and lower caloric intake. Okay.

and then if you want to add a third step to that, really try to stay away from ultra-process foods, which are designed and engineered to make you overeat. If you just did those three things right there, you would naturally be on a fat loss diet without making massive big changes and everything. You're literally eating protein, trying to chase that, making sure you get a good amount of fiber in your diet as well,

and you're just staying away from foods that come in boxes and wrappers, but eat as much as you want, and you don't feel so restricted. And what that does is your systems of satiety become more accurate. Your body actually stops you from overeating, unlike it normally would when you eat a lower protein diet, lower fiber diet, one that's high in ultra-processed foods. Those extra proteins are great for building that metabolism with strength training. And they're not these crazy, like cut out entire categories of food type of steps. Like if you just know those three things right there, I've gotten clients, just those three

things right there. Don't eat, you know, stay away from ultra-processed foods, hit your protein. We'll make sure we get fiber, eat the protein and fiber first and then everything else afterwards. Don't cut your calories. People lose 20, 30 pounds just doing that without doing anything else. And they always come to me and say the, they always say the following. I feel like I'm eating so much food. How am I losing weight? This is, this is insane. Because your body's systems of satiety are working now. Yeah, and you're not getting all those concentrated calories from eating out all the time or eating ultra-processed foods. It's more than concentrated calories.

These are foods that are highly and expertly engineered to make you overeat. That's the whole point of these foods is long shelf life, high margins, and how do we make them so palatable that you want more and more and more of this? I've used this example a million and one different times. I had a functional medicine practitioner on our podcast years ago who gave me this wonderful analogy. And he said, you know, imagine sitting at a table with four or five boiled plain potatoes, no salt, no butter. And imagine if I put a stopwatch on front you for 30 minutes, would you be a lead them all? And I went, oh, I don't know. That'd be very difficult. I'd probably

gag after the third potato. And he says, now imagine if I put a family-sized bag of laced potato chips in front of you, which contains about the same amount of potatoes. How much easier would it be? It was significantly easier. One of them is hyper-palatable. One of them is engineered to make me overeat. The other one, my body's systems of satiety, palate fatigue will kick in. There's this show called Man versus Food. I don't know if you've seen this before. I haven't. There's this guy goes to these different restaurants and does these food challenges. And, you know, like, you know, if you can eat this five pound burrito, you know, those types of things, right? So he goes this restaurant. And the food challenge was to eat a kitchen sink of ice cream.

So they bring out a big kitchen sink full of ice cream and you have to eat it all in it in a particular amount of time. That's the food challenge. challenge. And so that's what he does. He travels around the country and he does these challenges. So he went, did this challenge. And he's eating the ice cream and then palate fatigue starts to kick in. And he starts to like, oh, God, I can't finish this. So understanding palate fatigue, understanding satiety, he, in order to win this challenge, he orders a separate plate of extra salty, extra crispy french fries. Eats those, goes back to the ice cream and is able to finish it. In other words, in order to eat more ice cream, he had to eat more food.

by hijacking his systems of satiety. This is why you always have room for dessert after a big, heavy meal. So the tips that I gave, protein, fiber, avoid ultra-processed foods, your body will naturally make you eat less without you even realizing. In other words, you're going to be like my clients that come to me and say, I'm eating so much food and I don't know why I'm losing weight. You know, I got to say that we all know these things. Even people who are not doing them, they instinctually know that these foods,

really cause us to overeat and encourage that. And I'm feeling really excited about the current state of sort of politics, you know, said nobody ever until maybe now, where there really feels like an approach and it's starting to become very bipartisan, which is also exciting too, where you have people speaking up and saying these foods are literally destroying our society. And if we don't do something about it, we're going to be effed forever. Yeah, the obesity, poor health, undermuscled, this one, no one talks about this, the undermuscled epidemic, this is the silent epidemic. Just to back this up before we get onto a little bit of what you're talking about, when you look at the data on type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, a majority of the people

that suffer from those things are overweight or obese, okay? But there's a sizable minority to the tune of tens of millions of people who are not overweight or obese, and yet they're getting type 2 diabetes or heart disease or cancers. What's going on here? They're under muscle. They don't have healthy, strong muscle. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue. It's an organ, if you will, of the body.

And poor muscle health, weak muscles. Weakness in general is a great predictor of all-cause mortality. There's a grip strength test that you could do, and there's lots of studies on this. By the way, your grip strength is just a proxy for overall body strength. If you have low strength, that's a better predictor of all-cause mortality than almost any other single metric you can test. So the under-muscled epidemic is this silent epidemic that's kind of running under this obesity epidemic. But to go back to what you were saying, it's a very complex problem. But if I had to pick one thing that I could put the chronic health and obesity epidemic squarely on top of,

if I had to pick one thing, it would be these engineered, ultra-processed foods. In fact, if you use the same criteria that they developed to describe the addictive properties of tobacco, back when we realized how bad tobacco was for us, if you use that same criteria, ultra-processed foods fit perfectly within that. they are addictive. They are designed and engineered in ways that make them completely irresistible. Don't believe me, look around. Or how about this? Put yourself in a room surrounded by these foods.

See how long your willpower lasts. So not avoiding those is setting yourself up for failure. It's like being an alcoholic and working in a bar and saying, I'm never going to have a drink. These foods, billions and billions of dollars and decades of research has gone into these foods to make them so, addictive, so alluring that the only way you could eat the proper amount of calories is if you track your calories. So if you want to live like that, if you want to count every calorie that goes in your mouth and go, oh, I'm done eating for the day, then go ahead and go for it. It's going to be a miserable life. But if you want to have a life where you eat and feel

satisfied and, you know, I'm doing okay and I'm, wow, I feel kind of healthy. I'm not like super trying real hard at the time. I'm a white nut. white knuckling this whole thing, then definitely avoid those foods. By the way, those, I mentioned tobacco, the people that went into these food companies that engineered these, the palatibility of these came from the tobacco industry. Some of the largest purchases in corporate history at the time were from these tobacco companies when they saw the writing on the wall went in and bought these huge food companies. and they took those same scientists that understood how to, you know, the addictive properties of tobacco,

and they applied the science to food. By the way, this same science is what they're using for your technology, your apps, your social media, and look around in a very short period of time. We went from nobody using these things to everybody using them too much. That's a whole other topic of conversation when it comes to health. But we are in a world that is completely designed and engineering. and put together in a way that is not conducive to health in any way, shape, or form. So you have to be aware and set yourself up with certain boundaries.

And my job is to find the boundaries that are the ones that are most realistic that people can stick to. And one of them is like, if you want to make this work for yourself, let's just stay away from the addictive foods. And then eat as much as you wanted these other foods. And then watch what happens. You'll feel full and you'll lose weight. You know, on the topic of, again, unrealistic expectations, sabotaging your goals and

dreams of having your fittest year ever. One thing that I see all the time, I love being on YouTube. I'm a fan of your guys' channel. Please everybody subscribe to Mind Pump. I have a link below in the show notes. One thing I see, I use YouTube premium to avoid ads, but whenever so often I want to see what kind of ads are going on on my channel, other people's channel. The top ads are for quick fixes, fat burning, supplements, gummies, things that are out there that promise to solve your problem and help you look slimmer and quicker without any effort at all. Everybody knows that doesn't make sense yet so many people are buying those things. Talk to us about how a lot of that stuff doesn't work. And in fact, one of my favorite videos you guys made recently was actually

doubling down on things that actually could be supplements that could actually support your fat loss and muscle building goals and journey. This episode is brought to you by Our Place. Did You know that one of the most toxic items in your house might be your cookware. So much cookware these days is made with highly toxic non-stick coatings that when heated can leach into our food and end up in our bodies. I've been on a mission to swap out my toxic cookware with non-toxic options, which is why I use the titanium always pan pro. It's the first ever non-stick technology that's coding free and like all of the hour place

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And all industries, all markets support themselves through sales. Okay, there's nothing wrong with that. Okay, but just understand that because understand that, then it starts to make sense that the information that's put out is going to be skewed towards the things that produce revenue. And what this is going to do to the consumer is it's going to distort what we believe to be most important. Okay.

So what makes a lot of money in the fitness, health, and wellness space? Products, supplements. They make a lot more money than me selling workouts. I mean, we sell workout programs. Workout programs. I mean, selling supplements would be far more profitable than selling a workout program or me giving advice on my podcast, right? All right.

So where am I going with this? Well, a lot of the information you're going to read from the fitness industry is going to be geared towards selling a product. and so as a consumer, you start to believe that supplements make a much bigger impact than they actually do. They make very little impact, very little impact on any kind of progress. Now, there are cases in situations where supplements can be game changers at the top of the list is if you have a nutrient deficiency. If you have a nutrient deficiency, let's just say you have a vitamin D deficiency, okay, which is relatively common. Vitamin D deficiency would be one of the more

common deficiencies in a modern society. If you have a pretty good vitamin D deficiency, you probably are suffering from anxiety, depression, low energy, maybe aches and pains in your body. And if you don't know you have a vitamin deficiency, you're going to be struggling. Like, what is wrong with my body? Then you go to the doctor. They test you. Ooh, your vitamin D is really low. Take this vitamin D supplement. And within a few days or weeks, you're just like, miracle. I feel so much better. So in those cases, supplements can make a big difference. Now, underneath that, are there supplements that really make a big impact when it comes to fat loss, muscle gain, health, longevity, wellness? Not really, with the exception of one. And the one that makes,

that does make a difference is also not this miraculous game changer. It's just the best in the context of supplements, which don't make a big difference. Okay. And that one supplement is crating. of all the supplements that exist out there, creatine has the best, most studied, most proven benefits across the board. It's a very interesting supplement in that it actually does, for lack of a better term, it almost does everything. Okay, so let me explain before somebody's like, what's this guy talking about? Sounds like snake oil.

Cratein is naturally found in animal tissues. So if you eat meat, you'll get cratine. but our bodies also synthesize creatine from amino acids. I believe it's organine glycine and methyonite, if I'm not mistaken. And creatine, your body takes creatine and turns it into ATP, adenosine triphosphate. Now, this is a primary source of energy for your cells. So when you hear of like mitochondria in your cells, mitochondria use energy and one of the primary source of energy is ATP. When you take in creatine, when you supplement with creatine, you're giving your cells.

more ATP, more energy. So what's that going to benefit? Well, it's going to benefit any cell of a body that uses ATP. Which cells of the body use ATP? All of them. Every single cell in your body uses, that has a mitochondria, which is all of them, uses ATP. By the way, it's the most studied placebo-controlled, like gold standard studied supplement that exists. There is no supplement that has more backed consistent studies than creatine. I can say that with full confidence. There's literally thousands of studies on it. Cratein will improve, can improve cognitive function. In vegans, there's a pronounced measurable IQ boost. In omnivores, you see a boost in cognitive function. It has anti-depressive effects.

It's an anzeolytic for some people. It makes you stronger measurably. So if you take creatine within a week or two, it'll make you measurably stronger to the tune of about two reps or about five to 10 pounds on most of your lifts. So if you're working out right now, your strength training, you start taking creatine. Within a week or two, you'll be able to add five to 10 pounds to pretty much every exercise or two reps to pretty much every exercise that you do. Because of the increased ATP, you also have this hyperhydrating effect.

You have this cell volumizing effect where the cells actually bring in more water. Okay. So one of the other effects of creatine is you'll gain, and this is where people freak out, you'll gain probably between one to four pounds on the scale, depending on how much muscle mass you carry on your body. Now, a lot of people are like, oh, I don't want to gain weight. No, no, no. It's lean body mass. It's intracelular fluid. It is not bloat.

Bloat is fluid under the skin. It's the puffiness that you get. The increased hydration you get from creatine is in the cells. meaning you might be a pound to four pounds heavier on the scale, but your muscles are firmer, tighter, rounder, skin, more hydrated. By the way, creatine also improves the collagen matrices in the skin, also hydrates the skin. It's good for the liver. It's good for the heart.

It's good for your bones. It helps with osteopenia. It's this incredible supplement that is the best wellness slash performance enhancing slash fat burning supplement. Now let me pause right there for a second before everybody gets excited. There is no profound crazy fat burning supplement. There's nothing you're going to take

that's going to just make fat melt off your body that doesn't exist. But through the muscle building effect of creatine, because of the cell volumizing effect, the increased ATP, you will see what's known as muscle protein synthesis spike more on creatine than you will off creatine. protein synthesis is the building of muscle, let's say.

It's other tissues that can do this, but muscle in the context of this conversation. So you'll build more muscle. You'll build it a little faster and you'll be a little stronger, which means you'll get that positive metabolic boost that we talked about earlier in this episode faster or more effectively. Does that contribute to better fat loss? You better believe it. So you will get a faster metabolism better or more effectively by supplementing

with creatine. Cratine is one of the only supplements that I tell everybody to take, especially if you're older, especially if you're older. Cognitive benefits alone. Even if you don't a strength train, you don't work out, take Cratein, it's definitely good for you. And then I remember when it first came out, by the way, in the early 90s, there was the fears of, is it going to stress?

The kidneys, because it gets filtered. No, there's done so many studies on this, causes no issues to kidneys, just like a high-protein diet, causes no issues to kidneys. there are cases where you shouldn't supplement with creatine, but you know if that's you. You have a nephrologist, you have kidney disease or something like that, and your doctor says, don't supplement with pretty much anything.

Don't supplement with creatine. But if you're otherwise healthy, you should probably, you definitely take creatine, even if your goal isn't fat loss and muscle gain, it's just good for you. But even with creatine, with all those profound effects, it is not life-changing. So it's not like you're going to take it

and it's going to be like, oh, my God, this is a panacea. it's just going to give you five more percent probably if you're lucky. Well, there was two others that you had in the honorable mention that would be a way better spend than all the fat loss supplements that are marketed out there, which you've already said don't work. And one of those was caffeine. Yeah. And how to use caffeine appropriately.

Yes. Can you chat about that? Yeah, caffeine is the most, I mean, everybody watching this has had caffeine. It has a neotropic effect, anti-fatigua. effect, antidepressant effect. There's a central nervous system stimulating effect from it, so it does increase your strength temporarily and performance. It improves motivation.

However, the tolerance build up from caffeine is quite rapid. It does have addictive properties. Anybody who drinks coffee every morning knows that. Don't give me my coffee. All of a sudden, I have withdrawal symptoms. The best way to use caffeine is to titrate it and to go off of it weekly. you probably ideally if not then at least monthly go off of it for you a few days is that what you do yeah what i do is i'll monitor the amount that i use and i have my dose and i'll scale it up

and then i'll try and scale it down um and there's always that little withdrawal that you got to deal with when you scale down uh and come off the best strategy for coming off uh caffeine in my experience with clients because you can go cold turkey which is great you'll get through the withdrawal faster it's just going to suck for a few days but the best strategy I found was to cut your usage down by a quarter and then cut it by a quarter, cut it by a quarter, then you're off, stay off for a couple days, then go back on at a lower dose. So if you're, you know, if it's 200 milligrams and it goes down to 150, 150, 0, you know, type of deal. The best way to use caffeine, don't take it later than, let's say, 1 p.m. of the day, you know, during the day.

And use it before your workout. use it before you're going to go do that thing that is to improve your health and your fitness. Other times use creatine or before creative endeavors. So I think why people like taking, excuse me, caffeine. I think this is why people like using caffeine before meetings because it gives you that kind of motivation or whatever. But before your workouts, about 30 minutes before is probably the best time to use it. I wrote a newsletter. I'll link it to in the show notes.

but I will, I don't really drink too much coffee. Everybody has a different definition of too much, but I'll have an Americano with sort of two shots inside of in the morning that I usually make at home. I have an all metal espresso machine trying to avoid the microplastics that are out there. By the way, if anybody's looking for solutions, I have no affiliation with this company, but AeroPress.

Are you familiar with AeroPress? AeroPress is basically this 80-year-old inventor came up with this idea of vacuum pressing coffee using this sort of press. And you can buy it. It's like a hundred bucks or whatever. And it consistently makes like the best coffee and all these award shows that are out there. Anyways,

the number one feedback that their audience had was because the whole thing is made out of plastic, like BPA-free plastic that's touching hot water. Sure, you may not get BPA in there, but you have all these other microplastics you're getting exposure to. So they just recently launched a metal and glass version. Oh, great.

Which I'm excited to jump into. But what I'll do is when I'm cutting it off, which I'll cycle every like three to four weeks, I will replace my coffee with a Yerba Mate for a few days. It's just a little bit more gentler, and then I'll go to, you know, a quarter from there. So everybody has different methods, but I do think it's a good thing to do every so often.

If you need caffeine for energy, there could be some underlining things that you might want to talk to your, you know, functional medicine or integrative doctor with to see if, you know, is caffeine giving you energy, which it really doesn't, or is it sort of like whipping your HPA access, you know, throughout the day and kind of getting you like hyper anxious,

and that feels like energy to you? Or is it, I need it to feel normal. And this is how most people use caffeine. They use it so regularly and so consistently that it's a fix that they need to feel normal. This is how you know your tolerance is now so high that if you don't have it, you go through withdrawal that's so bad. that you're grumpy, irritable, you have migraines, headaches, or whatever. So definitely, you know, I've used this example before on my podcast.

If caffeine were discovered today, it would be a controlled substance. It has all, it's definitely a drug, okay? Not necessarily a bad drug. If used them properly, it can definitely be a bad drug. It also has some pro-health benefits, you know, for the brain. It's, you know, pro-dopamine. It seems to be anti-alzheimer's anti-dementia. There seems to be some insulin sensitizing effects that come from caffeine.

caffeine as well. But it's addictive. The LD50 on it is pretty low. You can overdose on I think it's one of the number one reasons why people go to emergency rooms is being overcaffeinated. So it's definitely something to pay attention to. But I like going off. I used to recommend all my clients to scale down and go off relatively regularly. Another way to do that is use rodeola. Rodeola is a, it's got its own mild stimulatory effects that can offset some of the withdrawal effects that you get from going off caffeine. You know, going back to this theme again, fittest year ever, people stepping into it, thinking about it this time of year, you list out a whole framework of dues that I'd love to just kind of cycle through a few of them and tee you up

to talk a little bit about it more. And the first one that you had on your list of dues, which is the opposite of what people typically do, is you told people that it's important that whatever your goal is, it's important to get specific with it. In addition to being realistic, it's good to be specific. So somebody is listening today and they're like, hey, I want to want to be healthy. I want this to be my fittest year ever. I want to lose weight. That's the common thing that you hear from people. I want to get fit. I want to build muscle. At least now, a lot more people are talking about not just losing weight. They're talking about adding muscle, but it's very unspecific. Why is specificity so key? Well, I mean, in order to hit a target,

you need to be very clear with what that target is. It also helps paint the picture. And this is an old trainer hack, right? Somebody would come to me and inquire about, you know, fitness or personal training. I'd say, what's your goal? Oh, I want to get in better shape. All right. What does that mean to you? I want to lose weight. How much weight do you want to lose?

What parts your body want to focus on? Do you want to improve your mobility? Like, the more specific I could get as a trainer, the greater the odds that we were going to be consistent and accomplish our goal. Plus, it gave me a framework of what to work on or how to guide this person. So specifics, I want to lose 30 pounds. Let's back up from that. Okay.

I need to start with, I'm going to be consistent in the gym. gym two days a week. So let's start there. And then from there, it could be, I'm going to add five reps to my squat. I'm going to be, I'm going to hit my protein targets for four days in a row. I'm going to try and go four days in a row without missing. By the way, hitting protein targets very difficult. So I've said this already earlier about hitting your target body weight and protein. It's not easy to do for most people. It's actually quite difficult. Satiety hits quite quite easily. So that's what I mean by being specific and then changing a lot of those goals and trying move away from the cosmetic goals and move to performance goals as well. Most people don't

use performance goals. It's all cosmetic goals. Lose weight, look better. What do you think is going to happen to you if you improve your mile time or you're able to lift 20 more pounds in your deadlift or in your bench press? You're going to look better. What do you think is going to happen? if I go from I want to lose weight, you know, 30 pounds to I'm going to hit my protein targets four days in a row or every single day, right? So look at the specific type of goals that lead to the bigger goal. Don't make them all cosmetic. You know, maybe it's, I'm going to read for 15 minutes a day on health and wellness

oriented material. And I'm going to start my day that way, right? That could be a goal that you know is going to lead to better behaviors later on. These are all literal strategies I've used with. clients that have helped them find success. And it's not the whole, just the general getting better shape, you know, type of goal. Another one on your list was focus on or at least try focusing on one goal at a time. What do you typically see? I'm guessing it's probably the opposite. People have a lot of goals that they want to do. And that, what, distracts them? Distracts them. It also sets you up for failure.

It's very difficult to accomplish, you know, five different things at once. Like what you don't want to do is throw everything but the kitchen sink at yourself when you're trying to pursue fitness. The statistics on this are dismal. I mean, so many people, you know, I managed gyms for years. And come January, by the second or third week of January, by the way, it's not the first week, people recovering from New Year's Eve. But usually by the second week or so, you see about a 50% or more increase in foot traffic. That's members and potential new members.

By the time March rolls around, that's almost all gone. By the time the summer's around, they stop. Almost all those people stop. Now, the ones that tend to stick around are the ones that hire coaches and the ones that are systematic with how they approach their goals. They come in with different kinds of goals. You know, it's like you're more likely to be successful overall if your goal is, I'm going to, I don't have a weight loss goal.

I don't have a muscle building goal. My goal is to make it to the gym three days a week. You're more likely to lose weight, build muscle, get fit with that than you are by saying, my goal is lose 30 pounds and build muscle. You're more likely to be successful with the, but hitting the, I'm going to just make it to the gym a few days a week. Speaking of which, a big mistake people make, especially when they first get started, is they have this all or nothing approach when they do make it to the gym. Well, I don't have the energy to do my full workout.

so I'm just going to skip. No, go and go easy. Or go and do a little bit or half. You're far more likely to be consistent. You're far more likely to accomplish your goals by doing that than you are by skipping entire. There's definitely a place and a time for not going to the gym or not making it to your workout.

But you can modify your workout. You could drop the intensity way down. You can go just walk a little bit on the treadmill. You can go lift half as much weight as you normally do. you just go through the motions, but just that, that consistent behavior, you know, I found this a long time ago. It's funny, too, because it's our most popular selling workout program. You're more, you're more likely to be successful doing 15 minutes a day than you are working out twice a week for 45 minutes each time, which I believe adds up to the same amount of time. So if you just did like,

here, I'm going to do two exercises a day. That's it. Every day I'm doing two exercises. I'm going to do some body weight scots and I'm going to do some step-ups or I'm going to do some body weight rows or something like that right if you just you know 15 minutes every single day you're far more likely to be successful than trying to make you the gym for you know 45 minutes to an hour two days a week that's great advice one on this list and it kind of covers a topic we've already talked about a little bit but it double downs on something that's super important so it's on the topic of food and you said focus on simple foods use protein and shakes to to hit protein goals. Let's start off with that first piece. Focus on simple foods. What's the

opposite of that that you see people doing? Like if you had to paint a picture? Well, simple in the sense that there's a hierarchy of importance and priorities when it comes to nutrition. Now, there's definitely value in what a lot of wellness channels and individuals communicate when it comes to food. But if right now you're eating typical American diet, 70% ultra-process food diet, you don't have have to go all the way from that to grass-fed, grass-finished, organic, you know, I only eat meat from, you know, food that is blessed by a Tibetan monk or whatever, right? Just start very basic. I'm going to, I'm just going to go with no ultra-processed foods. Just start there. And then it may be, I'm going to get my protein targets. Then it can be food quality. Now I'm going to go with the more

grass-fed variety. Go with foods that are easily digestible. This makes a huge difference in how you feel. Easily digestible foods tend to lead to better behaviors later on. You know, poor digestion, bloat, constipation causes lots of different changes in the body, mild immune reactions that you might not necessarily notice, but changes in how you feel that later on lead to different types of cravings. You know, good examples of foods that are, that people tend to have issues digesting gluten, dairy, legumes, you know, tend to be up there. So, you know, rice, potato, well-cooked vegetables. Well-cooked vegetables, easier to digest than raw vegetables.

Meats, eggs, fish, chicken. And, you know, you can definitely make them taste good with seasoning, salsa's, prepare your foods ahead of time, you know, once a week or twice a week, make big batches, prepare your meals, and then go from there. like a really winning, it's a really good winning strategy to pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-pure foods. Yeah, the other thing that I hear when I was watching that video that you made, which we'll link to in the show notes below, again on Mind Pump TV, is focus on simple foods also means what can you kind of quickly and consistently make? Because I love meal prepping and then

everybody hits that week where they got so busy and they didn't get a chance to meal prep. what can you make that you like that you enjoy and that is good it's not maybe great you don't have to make some like i mean i love the great like to me like the simplest foods that i make are great like i genuinely love them and i crave them your palate changes but sometimes i see that people feel like they have to make something quite elaborate and it really doesn't have to be that way what can you make consistently that's simple that you can stick to over a period of time and actually genuinely they look forward to. I mean, a real basic, simple, like, if you could tolerate dairy, right, if dairy is not

an issue for you, digestive-wise, like full-fat cottage cheese with some fruit in it is a great high-protein, great macronuture breakdown meal. It requires almost zero prep, right? Some tuna fish with, you know, some fruit or some crackers or throw in some olive oil on that, like really easy, basic stuff that you can eat. And then the pre-prepped stuff, right? I made some food on Monday or Sunday, and I just have it ready to go, and I can throw some salsa on it.

You know, eggs, very easy to prepare. Like, scrambling eggs takes almost no time. Like, you know, overcomplicating things just puts barriers between you and potential success and progress. Like simple foods like that are very, very easy to follow, very easy to make. You can go to the grocery store. You can buy it off the shelf. Like I said, tuna fish and caught it. These are bodybuilding staples.

And I know, by the way, they're bodybuilding staples for. a reason. They were easy and inexpensive. And they can oftentimes, like, you can dress them up, make them taste good. You know, we've talked a lot about protein, even on the last conversations that you were here on. You gave some fantastic examples then and also in this interview. One area that I've seen people actually recently struggle with as they up their protein is making sure they get enough fiber. Yeah. Do you have any favorite high fiber foods that are simple? You know, some of the high fiber foods that are out there sometimes that are not single ingredients, sometimes, like you said, make people feel bloated, make them feel not that great. You know,

Are any couple of them that you love relying on as a staples part of your diet? Berries. Berries are phenomenal, phenomenally high sources of fiber, low glycemic index carbohydrates. You can eat a whole bunch of them. They're very low calorie required zero prep, like blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, those are some of my favorite ways to give clients extra sources of fiber. And then if, you know, if digestion's an issue, Cillium husk is a very easy pro-digestive cholesterol-lowering supplement.

You could take three capsules with the meal and find some great regularity and there's some great health benefits to taking cilium. And then well-cooked vegetables. Like cook them well, add a little olive oil. You know, it could be asparagus. It could be, you know, broccoli. The cruciferous ones, sometimes people have issues with. But well-cooked vegetables, great, you know, spinach, like a great way to get things moving.

and to add satiety to your meal. All right. Here's another bonus one that you've recently talked about on your channel. And it's the benefits of, as you're thinking about your fittest year yet, it's the benefits of not sitting too much.

Yeah. You've already talked about walking and how sprinkling a few walks, especially after meals, can be a fantastic way to improve your metabolism, but also give you perspective, boost your mood. And the reality is

a lot of us still find ourself sitting on such a frequent basis. Do you want to talk about some of the challenges and the dangers to our goals that sitting faces, oversitting? There's two categories of activity I want to look at. There's structured workouts, which, you know, strength training being the most effective, generally speaking for health, metabolism, boost, fat loss, et cetera. But that's a structured workout. There's a program. There's programming. There's exercises. And then there's just activity, walking being phenomenal, but also just not sitting. So standing or, again, avoiding sitting for too long. In fact, there was a study that was relatively, I think it was the last

five years that showed that inactivity was as bad for your health as smoking was, just sitting, right? So, and by the way, people who work out every single day oftentimes are also considered sedentary. Like, I am sedentary. I exercise almost every day, but that's about an hour a day. The rest of the day is this sitting in here in this chair and doing podcasts. So the more you can just not sit. So if you're doing something that requires you to sit, see if you can do it while standing. And then while you're standing, shift your body weight side. It sounds so simple and so silly, but it has profound effects on health. And again, there's data to that supports all of this. getting on the floor is another one, right?

There's a difference between sitting in a chair and sitting on the floor. Sitting on the floor requires more core stability, more mobility in general. It requires you get up and get back down. There's a great documentary I was watching not that long ago on villages in Okinawa where they have these kind of traditional homes. And you had these, you know, 90-year-old individuals whose houses had no chairs. The traditional way of sitting was to sit on the floor. And here they are 90 years old, able to get up.

down off the floor. Why, because they did it every single day. Like, that's a silly one. It sounds silly, but it's, it makes a big difference. Just not sitting a chair sitting on the floor. Requires more, more muscle, more stability, more activation than sitting in a chair like this one. On a practical level with you sitting so much and yet still working out in your fit and you focus on your diet and all those other aspects, do you go out of your way to try to hit a step goal in the day, whatever that goal would be? I don't track like I used to. When you look at the data on walking, about 85% of the benefits that come from walking are derived right around 8,000 steps.

So if you hit about 8,000 steps a day, which if you were to walk 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then also try to stay relatively conscious of moving throughout the day, like taking the bathroom on the second floor of your office and climbing the stairs every time, parking a little further in the parking lot, you'll probably hit 8,000 steps. You know, the other thing you could do is build muscle because it's so protective against being sedentary. It's one of the most protective things you could do. So my workouts, which are typically in our most days, revolve around building muscle, which has the protective effect that helps protect against, like I said, what I'm doing right now. But it's all, you know, one of the things that we do in here, you know, during the day, because we'll come in here and we'll podcast and

we'll record episodes. And we're in here for most of the day is we try to break up the day with a walk. We go up and we, after recording one or two episodes, we'll go on a walk for 15 or 20 minutes. It actually also helps the show. It actually helps with the, the way that we present ourselves and communicate on the podcast. So you're just breaking up the day by moving. You know, it's got to be a conscious thing. You know, back in the day, I would hear the recommendation or the advice where you would hear people say things like, park your car further in the, you know, down the parking lot or take the stairs.

I used to think how silly that was. No, no, that's great advice. It's really good advice. Like, if you work in an office and there's a bathroom that you need to use, maybe pick the one on the second floor. And that's all you do. All I do is I don't use that one. I use the one on the second floor and I walk up to it.

Like that alone will have huge impacts on your activity. You can track your steps and see for yourself. If you were going to take some of the things we talked about today and kind of put it together in a program. And what I mean by that is that a lot of times around this time of year, people think that they need to do so much. And a big part of your guys' content is that you'd be amazed at how nailing the basics and just focusing on a couple of few things,

which in, you know, when you look at it could feel like so little, actually makes a huge difference. So if you're going to put some of the resistance training, walking, dietary lifestyle, you know, you already talked about the creatine, so I'll leave out the supplement side of it. If you're going to put that together in a realistic program that somebody could use who's starting off and get a chance to run with that. Obviously, you know, you've said previously on our podcast, which a lot of people took to heart, is that if you can afford it, finding a good trainer, and not even if you can afford it, spend that money there rather than that upgraded flat screen

TV or that next iPhone. It's going to be one of the best return on investments in your life. So that person will help you personalize this to your situation, but you could use some of your advice as a base framework of a program or protocol you could do. So if you would put those things together in sort of a weekly program, how would you do that? So if this is new to you and you're just getting started, walk after breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five to ten minutes, hit your target body weight and protein from whole foods, so not from shakes and bars, but from whole foods, eat the protein first, strength train once a week, go to the gym, do four exercises, make sure that they're big gross motor movement compound type exercises, things like squatting,

deadlifting, pressing, and rowing. Like, if you just did that and you stay consistent doing that, you would get exceptional results. And then when you do the workout, don't beat yourself up in the gym, practice the exercise. Use a weight that's challenging but practice the technique and skill of the exercise and master the technique of the exercise. That right there, you'll be great. So for somebody who says at the beginning of the year, which you hear all the time, I want to lose about 10 pounds, right? You hear that all the time. People just 10 pounds is the magic number that everybody wants to do, except for me who's trying to gain 10 pounds.

And I want to build a little bit of muscle. Do you think that this type of protocol and program, if somebody was consistent, because again, this is realistic. So it's going to be much more likely they're going to be consistent. Is that a realistic goal, a way to hit that goal? But most importantly, maintain that goal. Oh, that's the protocol, 100%. I mean, 10 to 20 pounds is what most people will accomplish that they're consistent with what I said is what they'll get. By the way, it's a snowball effect of results.

That's what you should expect. Don't expect this initial boom of progress and results. The way that it's going to feel, so I'm just going to paint it. the picture so people know what to expect is you're going to start out and you're just going to start to feel a little better. And then you're going to feel stronger and you're going to notice that you could lift more or you could do more reps in the gym. And your energy is going to feel great. And the scale is not going to move that much for the first couple months. But people are going to approach you who haven't seen you in a while and they're going to start saying things to you

like, wow, how much weight did you lose? Because what's happening is you're burning body fat and you're building muscle at the same time. So all the scale isn't moving much. Your body's changing and you're looking and feeling different. And then the snowball effect starts to happen. As the metabolism kicks in, then you'll start to see weight go down on the scale. So expect that right there. You know, I want to touch on just one quick item as we're wrapping up today's interview, which, by the way, thank you so much for hosting me in your studio. It's a beautiful place. Thank you. I got to watch on YouTube all the time, but now I get to see it in person. So everybody, make sure you subscribe to Mind Pump TV. We have the link of the show notes.

They're fantastic channel on YouTube. You guys put out so much content, like five days a week. I think you're putting out content. And I heard from your team member and business partner Doug over here that you guys are approaching 2,500 episodes. Yeah. Amazing. That's a huge accomplishment. Congratulations to you and your entire team. If for some reason some of these things aren't working, and again, it's probably because somebody's not following it, there might be a couple of things that people need to be paying attention to.

Number one, and this comes from a really amazing video you guys made. Number one, you might be going too intense with your workouts. How could going too intense with your workouts be something that actually sabotages building muscle and losing fat? Yeah, the progress you get from exercise is a stress adaptation. So when you exercise, you are causing stress on the body, and the body gets stronger or improves its resilience or its stamina in response to that stress. So that next time, that same stress is no longer a stress. So it's not that different from

going out to the, and being in front of, you know, out in the sun and having your skin darken in response. What happens if you stay out in the sun for too long? You get a sunburn. So the stress that is applied on your body needs to be appropriate. Otherwise, you will overcome your body's ability to heal and adapt. And if you're just getting started, it doesn't take much at all. Now, if you've been working out for four or five years consistently, your stress tolerance when it comes to exercise is much higher. And to get your body to progress any further requires much more careful and intense type training. But especially when you first get started, it doesn't take much at all. So people often ask when I say that, well, how do I know?

You should feel more energized than better at the end of the workout than you do in the beginning. If you leave your workout feeling like you survived it, you went too hard. you should feel good, energized, healthy, and vibrant. Muscle soreness, minimal at most. Minimal at most is what you should feel. You know, that goes right into the second one, which is really doubling down on something you said earlier. Focus on the skill of the workout.

Get out of this idea that a great workout is punishment. You know, a squat isn't just because it works my legs. There's a technique to it, and the better I perform the technique, the more I'll get out of a squat. A well-performed squat will give me far better, results than a poorly performed squat. And a poorly performed squat also has a much higher risk of injury. So treat exercises like skills, like you're going to go learn how to golf. If you wanted to go learn how to golf, you wouldn't just swing the club as hard as you could. You would go

out there and you practice the technique of a golf swing so that you could hit the ball further with less effort. That's how it works with strength training as well. So practice the skill of the exercises. So rather than going to the gym and thinking, I'm going to go hammer my legs, I think I'm going to go perfect my squat. Instead of thinking, I'm going to go, you know, make my shoulders sore, think I'm going to perfect the skill of the overhead press. That will get you much further. Last one we have here on this topic is that some people actually to hit their goals

for the fittest year ever, they might actually need to tone down the amount of volume that they have. Totally. This is building again on the top two things you said. But just can you address that a little bit? Who would be that person that might need to tone down the volume? They have too much volume. Yeah. So there's a right dose, right? So you have like nothing and then you have too much or what you can tolerate.

And then you have the right dose. And the right dose, it allows your body, first of all, it sends a signal. Hey, we have some stress here that we need to heal from and then we need to adapt to. So the healing process of the recovery, the adaptation is above and beyond recovery. So it would be like if I rub my skin with a rough object and I tore off a couple layers, first my skin would have to heal. And then I would add. a layer or two of skin, which is how you develop a callus. This is the same thing that happens from exercise. So if you're a fitness fanatic, the odds are you doing more than is necessary. Now, how do you know this? You're not progressing. You go to the gym and it's the same weight on the same exercises every single time. There's no strength improvement, no stamina improvement, nothing. You're just showing up doing the same thing over and over again. All you're doing at that point is healing. You're healing, but not adapting. Progress, especially in the first couple years,

looks like getting stronger. If you're getting stronger, you're moving the right direction. If you're not getting stronger, then something's wrong. And if you're a fitness fanatic, oftentimes it means you're doing too much, although beginners often do too much as well. They go and they beat themselves up thinking it's going to get them faster results. It isn't. You're just overcoming your body's ability to adapt.

All you're doing, if you're lucky, oftentimes it's even worse than this, is breaking down and healing, breaking down and healing. It's like you're just spinning your tires in the dirt. Sal, this has been great. You know, our first episode together is like almost 900,000 views. And you brought the fire. Second episode, well on its way towards that. And I want to thank you on behalf of our entire audience who has really enjoyed your content and your realistic advice.

You've shown us time and time again, and you did that on today's episode that just by doubling down on the basics, we can make significant progress on the things that we want to do to achieve our fittest year ever. So shout out to you and the Mind Pump team. Just remind everybody, of course, we've linked to your channel. Yep. But you guys have some incredible offerings, including workout plans as well too that anybody could sign up for. Where can they go to get those?

Yeah, I think there are two programs that would probably benefit your audience the most. We have MAPS starter. This is a great beginner strength training program. And then we have something called MAPS 15, which most people would benefit from. And it's 15 minutes a day. It's two exercises a day of strength training program. strength training, and it's by far a most popular program. It's the one that people refer other people to get the most.

You can find those at Maps FitnessProduce.com. Amazing. We'll link to that below. Sal, thanks so much for hosting me and for coming back on the podcast. You got it. Thanks for coming in.