Dhru Purohit Show - Don't Let The Scale Run Your Life: The Power of Focusing on Body Composition

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Fatty15 and Blueland. When it comes to weight loss, most people rely on the usual strategies—cutting calories and exercising more. But what happens when these methods don’t work? And how do we ensure we’re losing fat, not muscle? It’s time to rethink our approach. Instead of just focusing on the number on the scale, we should prioritize body recomposition—building a stronger, healthier body that supports longevity and resilience as we age. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, we bring you a special compilation episode featuring Dhru's conversations with leading experts on why body composition is more important than your scale weight.  Sal Di Stefano, Mind Pump co-founder and fitness expert, explains why body composition matters more than the number on the scale. He breaks down the most efficient and sustainable ways to exercise and highlights the crucial role muscle plays in overall health. Sal also reveals why lasting motivation for a healthier lifestyle must come from within. By adopting practical, sustainable strategies, we can boost energy, improve well-being, and achieve our fitness goals—all while promoting longevity. JJ Virgin shares her top strategies for weight loss, muscle building, and vibrant aging, emphasizing the power of resistance training for sustained fat loss and the importance of tracking personal goals for long-term motivation. 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. 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. JJ Virgin is a renowned health and fitness expert, bestselling author, and prominent media personality. With over three decades of experience in the field, she has become a trusted authority in nutrition, weight loss, and wellness. She is the author of four New York Times bestsellers. Virgin actively contributes to the health and wellness community through speaking engagements, online programs, and her podcast, Well Beyond 40.  In this episode, Dhru and his guests dive into: Why weight loss matters less than body composition (1:08) Reframing our approach to exercise and the body's adaptation to fitness (12:41) Hacks to help with fat loss versus weight loss (22:43) Tracking movement and progress (26:10) Testing body composition and the importance of prevention (29:27) Tracking food intake to optimize protein, fiber, and sleep quality (33:09) Aging powerfully and the new normal (44:01) The misconception about bulking up and the reality of muscle building (47:56) Also mentioned: Full episode with Sal Di Stefano Full episode with JJ Virgin Virginia MacColl Oldest Ninja Warrior episode This episode is brought to you by Fatty15 and Blueland. Fatty15 is offering an additional 15% off its 90-day subscription Starter Kit. Go to fatty15.com/dhru and use code DHRU to replenish your C15 levels for long-term health. Get a clean home while keeping a clean planet with Blueland. Right now, get 15% off your first order by going to blueland.com/dhru. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Prode here. So many of us have been conditioned into valuing the number on the scale above many other markers of health. And it's no wonder why. Social media, traditional media is flooded with weight loss advice, much of which is unhelpful or unsustainable. We're inundated with unrealistic beauty standards that especially go after and target women, if we're going to be honest, that focus on being skinny and petite instead of focusing

on being strong. And these are pervasive in our culture. And this all coexist with the population experiencing a serious obesity and metabolic crisis. Most of us have taken in a lot of unhelpful messaging around the importance of weight. And we haven't been taught that it's actually our body composition that offers a clear indication of overall health and fitness. Weight is important, but body composition is even more important. So in today's compilation episode, I talk with personal trainer and mind pump media co-founder, Sal DeStefano, a world-renowned health and fitness expert, best-selling author, and prominent media personality. I also chat with my friend JJ Virgin about why body composition is more important than body weight. Let's listen in first to my

conversation with Sal DeStefano as we discuss the benefits of strength training for looking and feeling your best. Having kind of gone deep into your content over last month, as I've been anticipating this interview is that both for men and women, but in particular, I had shared with you that my audience skews female, that if you are really serious about wanting to lose a little bit of weight, and that obviously fits into the conversation of body composition, because anybody could lose weight just by not eating for a short period of time or just way too much fasting, which is not good for you, but if you're serious about body composition, which the fat loss being a part of that and building muscle, if you're not strength training in some capacity, and we'll go through that,

I'd love to hear like if somebody's just started, okay, if they have a little bit of experience, you know, what's the best approach to that? We'll get to that in a second. You're really doing yourself a disservice because your only levers that you're pulling are, you know, the diet side of things and maybe a little bit of stress. if people are paying attention to that as well, right? You're doing yourself a disservice because you're not taking advantage of the fact that muscle does all these things that you talked about before. Yeah, so let's talk about weight for a second because people are so focused on the scale,

especially women, because we've looked at that number and that number to us means something. I used to love telling people this. It's, I want to lose weight. And I'd say, okay, what kind of weight? And they'd look at me like, what are you talking about? So, well, we cut your leg off and you'd lose weight. That's obviously not the weight that you want to lose. Now, of course, that's an extreme example, but body composition is what matters. If you took a 150-pound woman at 35% body fat, let's say 5'4-4-5-4, and you took another woman who is 5-4, 150 pounds, but her body fat percentage would say 20%, same body weight. They would look vastly different.

They wouldn't even look the same. In fact, most people would guess that the 20-something percent body fat female weighed a lot less. This is because muscle takes up less space than body fat on a pound for pound basis. Something like if you were to lose 10 pounds of body fat now and gain 10 pounds of body fat, excuse me, 10 pounds of muscle, so replace 10 pounds of body fat with 10 pounds of muscle, you would lose roughly a quarter of the size of your body. Okay? So you weigh the same, but you're a lot smaller. But there's more to it than just that. That muscle, obviously makes you more mobile.

So that's great. You're stronger, more functional. Feels different on the body. Looks very different on the body. It improves your hormone profile. So it balances out things like estrogen and progesterone, growth hormone, helps modulate cortisol. So it's more appropriate. It helps regulate testosterone, which is also important in women, not just in men.

By the way, testosterone women, same functions that you find in men. it helps with motivation. It helps with, you know, feeling drive, libido, you know, energy, those types of things. So that muscle does a lot of things. But you weigh the same, right? You weigh the same. I used to have this trainer that worked for me, this female trainer that I used to use. And it used to, we used to laugh about this.

She was like one of my favorite sales tools because I would get a potential member of the gym that I'd give a tour to. And let's say it was a woman. And we would talk about the gym. And sometimes they'd say, oh, I'm not interested in the weights at all. I just want the cardio and the aerobics classes. And we talk all about strength training. And I'd explain to them. And they'd still be like, no, no, no, I'm not interested.

And then I would do this challenge. I'd say, okay, I'm going to call in one of my trainers. And if you could guess her body weight within 10 pounds, I'll give you a free membership for the next three months. And they would say, I'll take that challenge. And I'd page this trainer. And then she would walk in. And she was like 5'2, very sculpted, very.

very fit and I'd say, guess, her body weight. And they would all guess like 100 pounds, 110 pounds. Then I'd have her stand on the scale. I forget how much you weighs, like 135 pounds. It always blow their mind. And I'd say, you know, muscle and body fat look very, very different. So the scale just tells you total body mass. It doesn't tell you, you know, what it's made up of.

So I want to paint, first I want to explain that because as we talk about muscle, I know people who are trying to lose weight when they hear, more muscle to them, they just feel like I'm going to get bigger. I'm going to be a bigger version of me just with more muscle. Yeah, yeah. No, it doesn't work that way. Now let's talk about the weight loss approach. The weight loss approach, if you look at it from its absolute most basic viewpoint,

it's a calories in versus calories out equation. Now, it's obviously far more complex than this, okay? the human metabolism or mammalian metabolism is extremely complex. And calories in versus calories out is like telling somebody who is in poverty, just make more money and save more money, right? It's like way more complex than just that. But that part's still true. So the calories in versus calories out, that is true.

What it makes up of or what contributes to it is very complex. But let's talk about calories in versus calories out. We understood that equation for a long time. And so we said, okay, we're dealing with an obesity epidemic. People want to lose weight. We need to reduce their calories. And we need to have them burn more calories. So the calorie reduction part, let's have them eat less.

Okay, that's what they said with diet. And we can get into that, but there's far more effective and less effective ways of doing that. But then they looked at the calories outside of the equation. And what they said was, okay, movement burns calories. So let's look at all the forms of exercise. And the most valuable ones would be the ones that burn the most calories. And that's what we're going to tell people to do. And it sounds like it makes sense, right?

Like, okay, if I'm trying to lose weight, trying to burn more calories, I should just pick the form of exercise that burns the most calories. The problem with that is it completely negates a very important factor with exercise, which is exercise gets your body to adapt. and those adaptations mean a lot. They mean a lot. So if I pick a form of exercise that just gets me to burn a lot of calories, let's say running, that's phenomenal.

Now I'm burning a lot of calories, except my body's adaptation process is going to say this. We need more endurance. We need more stamina. We need to conserve more calories. We've got to be able to do this activity well and more efficiently. That's what your body is trying to do with that form of exercise. So you build stamina endurance. You don't need much muscle at all for stamina endurance. In fact, you need very little muscle for that. So what your body does to become more efficient

or slow down its metabolism, lower its calorie requirements, is it actually starts to pair muscle down, especially when you combine it with low calories. And the studies are very clear on this. You diet and you run a lot or you diet and you do tons of, let's say, calorie burning activity. You see weight loss, but a significant portion of that weight loss is muscle. Now, there's a misconception that you're burning the muscle for energy. That's not what's happening. Your body doesn't like to burn muscle for energy except in extreme situations. What it's doing is it's just it's just pairing it down. It's becoming more efficient. This is why, and by the way, everybody, almost everybody who's ever tried to lose weight has probably tried that approach.

They've experienced the following, that initial 10 pound weight loss, and then hard plateau, what happened? I'm doing three days or four days a week of this activity. I'm eating this low calorie diet. Why did I plateau? What happened? Well, what happened was your body adapted and learned how to perform and operate on the lower calories and on the calories that you're burning with that activity. And it's very, very intelligent on how it adapts to that. Okay. There was this incredible study that was done. They actually went and studied a modern hunter-gatherer tribe, the hodzah tribe. I'm sure you're familiar with it because people talk about it all the time.

And scientists went down and studied them and through some sophisticated testing, we're able to figure out how many calories they burned on a regular basis. Now, remember, these are hunter-gatherers, okay? So they don't have TVs and iPhones and they got to go hunt their food. They have to gather. They have to get water. They're far more active than the average West. What they found at the end of the study was that they burned roughly the same amount of calories that the average Western couch potato burns.

And you think, well, how is that possible? Well, that's how we evolved. If humans burned six or seven thousand calories a day as hunter gathers, we wouldn't be here. It is very hard to find calories in nature until we learned agriculture and, you know, we live in modern. Now it's easy. Calories are really easy to find. But if you go out in the wilderness and you get to hunt for your food and get a hunt for your food and gather your food, you're not going to find, excuse me, 6,000 calories a day.

Their bodies adapted. So that's essentially what we're doing when we apply the wrong strategy to try to lose weight. Our bodies quickly adapt and nothing happens. And then what we do is we try to do more of the same. Well, I guess I need to do more exercise. I guess I need to cut my calories even more. Then you lose another seven pounds and you plateau again. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how unsustainable this is.

Well, what do I end up at the end of this journey? I lost 30 pounds, but I'm eating 1,100 calories a day. and five days a week, I'm on the treadmill for an hour. Most people don't want to do that forever. Or if they stop for a month, everything comes back on. That's miserable. Miserable. So what we should do with our approach with exercise is this.

What form of exercise, forget the calorie burn while I'm doing the exercise, because that's inconsequential anyway. What kind of exercise is going to do the opposite? Like, what form of exercise is going to teach my body or, encourage my body to adapt in a way where it becomes less efficient with calories, where it wants to burn more calories on its own, where I don't have to constantly move to try to make this happen. Well, that's strength training. Nothing does it like strength training. The process of building muscle and having the extra muscle itself. By the way, it's not just the muscle. It's also the

signal to build more muscle, both of which teach my body to burn more calories. And And I would see this all the time with clients. I'd have a client who would lose 30 pounds and at the end of their weight loss journey was eating more than they did when they started. And here's the other side of strength training. That's phenomenal. You don't need to do a lot of it. With strength training, the primary benefit is the adaptation, not the calorie burn.

And for most people, that looks like a couple days a week, you know. Now, if you want to move into advanced strength training and, really push yourself and compete in strength, sports and all that stuff. Well, then you're getting more than that. But for the average person, you can get really far with what I'm talking about with like two days a week of appropriate strength training. So now I lost 30 pounds. I'm in the gym two days a week, maybe three days a week, and I'm eating more than I did before.

That is a sustainable approach. That's the approach that I try to communicate on my podcast, and that's the one I learned with my clients. You know, I've heard you say that a lot of your clients would come in, initially their focus and their motivation is like, hey, I want to look better. It was focused on the sort of look thing. And then through following your methodology and having this approach of sustained strength training done in a way that doesn't make you feel burnt out, we're going to talk about that in a second, doesn't make you feel miserable, actually might give you more flexibility in terms of what you can eat. because your muscle also might be allowing you to have a little bit more flexibility in your diet. We'll get back to that in a second.

And all the other components that come in, they ended up in a place with, sure, they might have come in to look a little better and they ultimately ended up looking better because of that shift and body composition. But what had them stick to this and make it sustained is actually this approach made them feel better. Yeah. Can you talk about that? Yeah.

Yeah, you know, we, the fitness space, social media now, but when I was a kid, it was magazines that we would read, it glorifies workouts like their battles, like you're going to war and you're beating yourself up and you're crawling out of the gym. And by the way, if you don't do that, well, then your workout wasn't effective. We have to reframe what exercise really is. Now, is there value in beating the crap out of yourself in the gym? Maybe sometimes. I mean, I think mental fortitude is important.

We probably need more of that nowadays. But that's not what makes a workout effective at all. Exercise is simply a signal that tells your body to adapt in a particular way. So let's use another form of adaptation as an example. Let's think of our body, our skin's ability to tan, or to turn. darken when exposed to the sun, would it be advantageous to get a tan by going outside and sunburning yourself every day? So if I go out, I need to go out there and burn really bad. That's how I'm going to get a sun tan. No, of course not. If I did that, not only would I not get a tan, I would cause

lots of damage. It would be miserable experience and I probably wouldn't want to do it anymore. Well, for some reason, we approach exercise this way. You're going to come into the gym. You've never worked out. or maybe you have a little bit of experience, and you're going to crawl out of the gym or you're going to be so sore that she can't move for a few days. And yay, that was a great workout. No, all you've done is created a lot of damage and you've completely overcome your body's ability to adapt.

Recovery and adaptation, by the way, are not the same thing. They're somewhat related, but they're not the same thing. We talk a little bit about recovery, and that's important. but there's also our body's ability to overcompensate become better at then with withstanding the same stress next time. Okay, so let me explain what I'm talking about. Recovery is healing. Adaptation is changing. It's overcompensating. It's I scratch my skin. I cause a little bit of abrasion. My skin heals over. That's recovery. Adaptation, I develop a little bit of a callus. Okay.

You can overcome your body's ability to adapt by just getting your body to want to heal. Okay. Beat yourself up at the gym. You get sore. Soreness kind of goes away. Go back to the gym and beat myself up again. No room for adaptation. I'm literally on a hamster wheel.

Recovery damage. Recovery damage. No adaptation. Okay. Some people take it even further and go beyond recovery. What we're looking for is the perfect amount of stress on my body to allow, for the adaptation process to occur. Now the question is, what is that perfect amount of stress?

Well, boy, that's different for everybody. Okay? If you don't exercise now, it doesn't take much at all to send the signal and to get your body to adapt. Not at all. If you sit on your couch all day long, I could have you do 10 squats, which you never do. And those 10 squats will send a signal to get your body stronger and you will adapt and you'll get stronger.

And as you get stronger, the stress begins to change. The stress starts to change. This process is a slow process, but it should feel good. It should not feel like you're surviving your workouts. You know, the other part of that is we people tend to approach exercise or diet from this place of self-hate, right? Like they get motivated to start working out because they saw a picture of themselves or they felt like they weren't attractive or inadequate. I'm fat. I'm too skinny. I'm unattractive.

So the beating myself up initially is a bit cathartic as well. Like, how many times have you heard this, right? Somebody goes to the gym. We're like, oh man, last night ate too much food. I got to go sweat this out. I got to go beat myself up. And then they leave and they feel like they can barely move and like, that was a great workout. Right. It's like this cathartic self-flagellation like punishment, right? Instead, try this. Go to the gym and think to yourself, how can I take care of myself? What's going to care for me like somebody I care about?

Okay? That'll help you train yourself a little bit more appropriately. You should also feel more energy after your workout than you did before. You should leave the gym feeling better. This is when people figure this out, by the way, people like to work out in the morning. People who really figure this out like to work out before they go to work. Because when they do it, they go to work and they feel sharp and energized. I could tackle my day.

I feel great. That's how you should feel after your workouts. You should not feel like you survived. You should feel like you thrived. That will, now it's of course what makes up the workout and the exercises and all that we could talk about. But what I just said will direct more people in the right direction than almost anything else. You should leave the gym feeling good. Okay.

Here's the other side of that. here's another point. If you do that and you do it right and you're starting to see results, even if they're slow, but you feel good and you kind of enjoy going, what are we doing? We're developing a relationship with exercise that you're going to want to maintain. You're going to want to continue to go. We've got to think of this in those terms. We can't think of workouts in the terms of, I can survive this for the next few months

and then I'll figure it out afterwards. Like, if you dread going, if you hate it, if you leave and you're sore and you can't move and that self-hate eventually goes away and you just feel like crap and you're like, I don't want to do this anymore. Like, you're done. You're not going to go anymore. And then you rebel, by the way. This is what happens is that people, you'll talk to people and they'll say things like,

hey, how's your workout going? Oh, I stopped. I just want to enjoy my life. Like what? What do you mean you want to enjoy your life? the proper application of exercise and nutrition, there's almost nothing that will improve every facet of your life, literally, like simply becoming more fit and healthy in the real way and in the appropriate way.

Nothing. Think of anything, right? Your ability to parent your kids or be a partner or work or sleep, connect with others. Like, if you're more fit and healthy, everything gets better. And yet people say, I stop because I want to enjoy my life. Well, well, you were doing it wrong. You were definitely doing it wrong. Wow.

I hope that sinks in for a lot of people who maybe just had the wrong guidance on their approach and are now sort of waking up to see like, okay, there could be a different way to do things, especially if I want to make this sustainable, because it's not just about looking good, which you can do in a short period of time and through sacrifices, but there's this whole other element of all the components that come from long-term health, including improving your metabolic health and all the factors that play into strain training for longevity. Establishing a sustainable strength training routine is such an important part of taking care of ourselves today and for the long run. I got this message late in life and to be honest, I only

seriously started focusing on it at the age of right before 40 years old. But when I finally got the memo and started focusing on this area of life, strength training, improving my body composition, it was a game changer for me. Not only did I look better, but I started to started to feel incredible and all my biomarkers around health started to improve as well. So next up, on that spirit, we're going to be talking to JJ version about tracking everything from body composition to food to sleep, as well as how focusing on strength is one of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves as we age. Let's listen in.

For women that are struggling to burn fat, dial in their body composition and lose belly fat because it's a big topic. A lot of people care about that. What are a few hacks that you have that can help them get to that place of sustained fat loss, which is different than weight loss? Yes. And by the way, it's different and the most important, as we know. And that brings up the very first topic of you've got to know what you're looking at,

because how would you know if you lost fat or weight unless you were actually looking? Now, this can be as simple because most of the time when people want to lose fat, they want to lose the fat around their waist. They want to lose that visceral out ofose tissue, right? So just simply having a tape measure. So once a week, you do your waist and hips. So you have a waist to hip and I call waist to height measurement. And there is actually a Bluetooth tape measure by Renfo $30 on Amazon. Greatest thing ever.

It reads right into your phone. So you just do this every week. That way you know if things are going in the right direction. So I say that first because what we measure and monitor we can improve. We talked about this idea and you talked about this idea of being where you want to be. And before we go to the fifth hack that we have, which plays right into this, the thing that I want to chat about for a second is that a lot of people actually don't, they think they know where they want to be, but they don't have an accurate assessment of their body fat percentage.

they don't have an accurate assessment of their lean muscle mass. How do you recommend and what are your best tools that are out there for people to get a snapshot? And how important is it? When you work with your clients, how important is it at the beginning that they know exactly where they stand so they can track where they want to be? I don't know how you do this without knowing that. The single most important thing in a perfect world, we would not have scales. We would only have body composition. because the scale has done so much emotional damage to people over the years.

Now, I am 5-11, 6 feet tall, and I've been lifting weight since I was 16. And I remember going in and wanting to become a model, right? And them telling me I needed to lose, gosh, I'm trying to think of what it was. It was either, it was like 20 pounds at least. And I look about like what I look right now then, right? I was a little not as muscular, but basically I was about the same. same. I can't lose 20 pounds. It's not physically possible. I'd have to lose muscle in order to do it. And it messed me up completely. And I know I'm not like we we have to know what our weight is

made up of. And if we did that, if we used to scale like as a biometric tool rather than as a mean friend, right, and we really had all the information, it would shift so much. And then you'd also be able to see what's your best body composition for you? I've always been a super muscular person. I'm an adopted gal when I met my birth mom. She had the same body type. That is our body type. I always wanted to be the curvy one. I'm not the curvy one. I could try as hard as I wanted. If I gain weight, I just get wider. I don't get curvy. Doesn't happen. So we all have to find that best body type for us and then monitor with body composition to make sure that we are holding onto our muscle to, as we know, like bone density is a lagging indicator of poor muscle mass, that we have

quality muscle, because it's not just about having muscle. You don't want fat infiltrated muscle. You don't want to be a ribby. You want to be a fillet. And that our body fat is not dangerous. There's a huge difference between having body fat on your thighs and hips and having body fat around your viscera, right? So we want to make sure that we have body fat in the right places. So we can't tell that with the scale. And I can't tell you. I mean, people DM me on Instagram saying, well, this isn't working. I go, but you, you know, tell me what your body composition is. They go, we haven't tested. I go, then I don't, how do you know? You don't know. You have no idea by just stepping on the scale what's happening here. You can't see under the hood. So we have to know our starting points. I mean, same with, same with food.

If you're going to be making sure that you're getting the right amount of protein in, you have to weigh it. how would you know? Even dietitians tend to underestimate what they eat by 25%. If they're not doing it, how does the average person have any idea of eyeballing how much food that they're eating, right? So in every one of these things doesn't mean you have to do it forever, although I think we should be managing body composition forever. We should do that. That should be something that's just part of your routine and the research bears that out, that those people maintain their weight better. So let's talk about that. Good, better, best in terms of measuring your body composition. What's available to us in the tools that are out there for first

us to get a baseline and then track our progress along the way. So the very best is cost prohibitive would be an MRI. So the best I think for what we have is Dexa. And I mean, those are so easy to get now. And even if you just did it once a year, think about like this used to be something you only did for bone mineral density, and you didn't do it until you were in your late 50s, early 60s, to show that you had osteoporosis. So it's like, let's go see that the eggs are cracked. It's so ridiculous. You can't uncrack them.

So this is something that we should be doing in teens when we can actually start to make a demonstrable difference in bone mineral density. So if we started doing this, let's say someone did this in their teens, and it was just part of the annual physical. Like they did that, they did a VO2 max and some pushup tests. Imagine how amazing this would be. And then ideally, once you hit 40 plus maybe every six months, but then what you can do is correlate it. So at home, you could get a biopedent scale. So Dex is going to be the best thing that you could do. Typically you have to go to like a clinic or a doctor's office. There's a lot of centers. Not expensive. They're now under 100 bucks.

A lot of doctors now have something called an in-body scan, and an in-body is biopiedence, which is based on total body water, and it sends a wave up your body and tests the resistance to it, and the resistance to it is how much body fat. It predicts body fat and predicts it in specific area, so it's predictive based on total body water, which means that if your total body water is lower that day, you're dehydrated, you will look like you are fatter, right? You've got more body fat. If you're super hydrated, you'll look like you have less body fat, but your weight will go up.

So this is where this is a little bit challenging because we fluctuate, right? And this is why what I like to do is have someone have a biomepedin scale at home. They do their dexia. They come home, they check where they are at home for over a week every single day. that average and they can correlate it. I know that my DEXA reads me lower than my at-home scale by a couple percentage points, right? But I can use my at-home scale just to make sure that I'm staying where I want to be. And what I think we should do is just have a Bluetooth. You don't even have to look at it if this makes you nuts. But you just take the average over a week because you

cannot look at your weight every day and make any kind of intelligent decision because weight fluctuates a couple, you know, can go up a couple pounds, down a couple of couple of based on what you ate, right? Or if you traveled. So we don't look at the daily to make a decision or beat ourselves up. We look at the average over a week and then once a week do do measurements as well, do that waist and hip to look at it as well. But what we're looking for is am I losing body fat and specifically body fat around my waist? Am I able to hold on to or build muscle? those are the things we've got to look at and make the decisions based on. This goes into number five, your fifth hack that's there.

And it's often when people hear about it, there's a little bit of resistance. And I'm not talking about resistance training. There's a little bit of resistance because it feels like a tough or intimidating thing to do. And it's tracking. Talk to us about why tracking is so key. And then let's talk about how to do it to actually be successful. successful long term to support body composition changes and burning belly fat. Right.

And I think with this tracking, I'm really talking about food tracking, although I really think we should be tracking food, sleep, stress, movement, and body composition. That's a lot. Now, here's the thing. Don't have to track those all forever. However, as you're learning about your body, these things are fantastic. So step one, now when we talk about tracking food, this doesn't mean you have to track your food forever. But I think as you're starting, you need to track your food for at least a month.

And what I like to do is you've got to get a food scale. They're $10. So this isn't something that's hard to do. It's even more important than the measuring. You've got a way. So for one month, you start out. And the first thing I have people do is just get their protein optimized, eat protein first. and track and focus on that.

We haven't changed anything else. All we're focusing on is tracking what you're eating and making sure you're getting the right amount of protein. Then I like to upgrade the plate and start to make sure you're getting in five or more servings of non-serti vegetables, a little bit of healthy fruit, and then we'll start to look at fat. And if someone's looking, they go,

okay, I want to actually drop some body fat and either recomp, lose body fat, add muscle, or also lose some overall weight, then we'll start to look at what we need to do to shift calories. But at least at that point, we've been tracking and we know how much you're average eating a day.

Like I know what my average calories are to maintain my weight, right? Because I've been doing it for so long. I know just where I need to hit, what feels good. And some days I eat a little more, some days I eat a little less, it's fine. So that's the first place.

And honestly, I hear so often people telling me I'm stuck, nothing's happening. And then they'll do that and go, oh, oops, I thought I was eating a lot more protein than I was. I didn't realize how many carbs I was eating. I mean, I think last time I told you the story of my husband who was 25% body fat. And, you know, he was eating like half a bag of sioux chips every night and a bunch of hummus. And I was like, why are we eating before we're eating? Like, this was pre-dinner. Didn't make any sense. But that was great feedback for him. And then, of course, the next thing is to make sure you're tracking that body composition. I think it's important. And the research is pretty clear that people who track

their weight are better at maintaining their weight. I just want to make sure you're tracking your body composition because we don't want to maintain your weight. If you weigh the same at 50 that you did at 30, but you aren't actively doing resistance training, it's not the same weight. Right? You might be a size are two bigger at the same weight. That was my husband was, you know, his waist size was two inches bigger. Same weight, totally different body composition. Because if we are not actively supporting and building our muscle mass as we age, we will lose it, as we know.

And then the other part is tracking that sleep. And man, if you, I just read a study where they looked at short sleepers, four and a half hours. they took people down to four and a half hours of sleep versus eight and a half hours of sleep and, you know, basically stop their weight loss. Like couldn't lose weight, couldn't build muscle. You've got to, you basically really put blocks on muscle protein synthesis when you're not sleeping well. So sleep is critical and, of course, managing stress.

Now, I don't start with all of this at once. You can't. You wouldn't do anything. So when you really look at what you need to do, I think, you've got to do a body composition to start with so you really know your starting point. But then pick the thing. Maybe the first thing for you is you go, you're not up and sitting all the time. Your first thing's activity.

Start there. Focus on one thing, nail it. We had that discussion last time where I said it took me six months to get meditation under my belt. Six months. I didn't focus on anything else. I just worked on that. Right now, I had been working on doing steps. Now that the steps are solidly being, you know, 10, 12,000 a day, I'm working on really kicking up my hit training.

So I don't focus on improving multiple things at once because then I don't do anything. You focus. One thing. One thing at a time. You know, the beautiful thing about body composition, we had the oldest female ninja warrior on this podcast. I don't know if you've heard about her, but she would be great for your podcast. Her name is Jeannie McConicle. How old is she?

She is now 70, mid-70s, I believe. Yeah, mid to late 70s. And her story was fantastic. She went in for routine checkup with her doctors and they suspected some osteopena that was their first step before full-blown osteoporosis and getting that, I don't think it was through a dexas scan. I don't know exactly how they did it,

but they found out that yes, she did have osteopena. And again, if you do a dexia, scan, you're going to get a sense of your bone mineral density. Well, you'll get even better because they probably did a foot scan to see if she had osteoporosis or osteopenia, but like full body, Dex is going to show it. I'm just, it's just amazing to me that a ninja warrior would have. Well, this is before. So this is before she was a ninja warrior, right? So that's the story. Okay. So she's just living her life.

For her, being healthy was always about being skinny. Yeah. It was not muscle. Which is the opposite actually of being healthy when you think about it. Exactly. And we're going to get to this concept too. But she always thought of, you know, aging as let's be graceful instead of your idea of powerful. We're going to come back to that. So her daughter, her daughter, when she found out that her mom had these results, said, Mom, you got to get serious about changing your life around.

And I'm going to help you on that process. How old was she? She was in her late 60s. when she got started, like late 60s. This is so important for people to hear because what is very clear is that it is never too late. It's never too late. And then she got serious.

She started doing first, it was just, you know, walking more, then some lightweights, then some more bands. Then that leading into like full blown resistance training at the gym, getting more protein in was one of the first things that she did. She got serious about this. And then she went back not even a year later. I'll fact check this. We'll go back to the episode and see. But not even a year later or about

a year later. I know it was something like that. She had reversed her osteopenia. Which you can do. And that's a really, it's really fantastic. And that's why you've got to catch it. Yes. But I'm amazed she caught it that like she catches it in her 60s and was able to do it. It is so huge. And that's just another reminder for everybody here. Yes, you can change your life. and it's never too late, but it does get harder as you age and you suffer that whole entire time. And so trying to catch it early.

Yeah, all those years of not having the energy, of not feeling like you could do those things. And the key takeaway, what you talked about there was she just started and built. And I think that's one of the challenges I see that people do as they age as ago. Okay, I'm going to jump into this. Nope.

That's why I say, let's change your fork. then let's get you moving. Then let's add some intensity to the movement. Now let's start some body movement. Like let's just build and build and build. And you'll be blown away where you are in a year. But don't go like crazy rushing into some CrossFit class. Yeah, absolutely.

You got to sequentially build these steps up. Like you said, focus. Nail that habit. Have it be a part of your life. Sure, there's going to be ebbs and flows. You might get off for a day or two, but then you get back on track. And now this thing becomes a part of your lifestyle. It's just who you are.

I mean, you've been working out since you were 16, but fitness, these other habits that you have, it's just who you are. You can't imagine life differently. And for the person that I'm working with right now that has 200 pounds to lose, used to be an athlete, a major athlete. And so what we've done is just bring them back there. I go, we have the picture. We have them mentally there.

And that's part of it too. It's like future pacing yourself to go, what are the things that I want to be able to do? because I think for so many of us, and I did this too, Drew, I'm kind of blown away when I started to think about it. I'd had all these goals of what I wanted to be able to do at 50 and I didn't reset. I didn't think, okay, now what I want to be able to do at 60, at 70, at 80. And I just went on autopilot and I was autopileting everything. And you're like, oh, this is good for me. And, you know, if you look around at everybody else, you're like, oh, I'm doing fine.

Who wants to do fine? Like, don't you want to be the best version of yourself at every age? So you can't look around at what society is saying because then you're going to be average. And there's no reason to be average. What they're showing us about aging now, like there's, to me, two totally different schools of thought. And where I'm most concerned is that woman who's always tried to control her weight with diet. Because what the research shows is those people tend to be toffee, thin outside, fat inside, right? And that they will tend to have poor muscle mass.

they'll have sarcopenic obesity, so they don't have enough muscle. And they're so used to controlling by just doing more cardio and eating less. They're just devastating your metabolism. Devastating it. However, you can turn that all around by starting to move, add the intensity, add the body, add all the resistance training, and change it. And what's fun is rather than focusing on the scale, you're focusing on, I used to be able to do one pull-up, now I can do six.

I used to be able to do 10 air squats. Now I'm doing air squats with weights. Now I'm jumping at the end of my squat. So the feedback you're getting is really what am I able to do, which is the whole point of this anyway. It's not a number on a scale. Why I worry about focus on body composition is I know that if I'm improving muscle and losing fat, it's meaning that I can do more everywhere.

And that's the point. Powerful. Right. Right. Do you want to just chat about that for a second? The difference between power, aging powerfully, and this idea that we've had for so many years of aging gracefully, the messaging that has been given to people. I know, being a little old lady.

It's like, I'm never going to be a little old lady. Actually, I've never been little in my life. So the chance I'm going to be a little old lady is slim. But I think it is interesting because we are so, we're focused so much on muscle. and that's important, but when you really look at what happens as we age, and again, I'm really unpacking right now how much this is aging and how much of this is the habits that we get into as we age. And I'm starting to think it's a lot more of our behaviors than actual physiological aging. And so we lose muscle, but that isn't really what's scary here. And as you start to unpack it,

with muscle, we have two different types of skeletal muscle. We have. slow twitch and those are all the things like right now we're sitting up our slow twitch muscle fibers are keeping us upright if we're walking if we're standing those are all our slow twitch muscle fibers our fast twitch muscle fibers and they can they can get bigger but the ones that really tend to do more of the hypertrophy are the fast twitch muscle fibers so as i started to look at this i want it must be that we're losing more fast twitches we age which is clear as we age while we're losing muscle what we're really losing is two to three times more strength, but what the biggest thing we're losing is power. So muscle hypertrophy is your muscle size. And you want to think of that, but you also want to think

of quality. Like having a big muscle doesn't necessarily mean you're strong. A lot of those guys over there at Gold's Gym weren't that strong. They just knew how to build muscle. Strength is how much you can move something one time. And it turns out to build strength, it's a little different than how you actually build muscle. There's crossover, but they're not the same. Power is how fast you can do something. And I think when we think of power, we also have to think of agility. Because as we age, it's that ability to catch ourselves, you know, move quickly, run up the stairs, that's what we lose. But again, we don't have to. But I think we start to look at it and you look at the, you know, adult exercise classes. And they are standing there with the chair and doing chair exercises. And I think, you know,

that's not going to help us in life sitting doing our exercises in a chair because in life we have to get out of the chair and so yes your knees might hurt your back might hurt that's not the reason why you shouldn't do something that's actually the reason why you should I blew out my knee at 17

and they were like you're going to have to have a knee replacement and but you want to put it off as long as possible because these things only last like 20 years and so I just strengthened everything around it and I thought, all the things they tell you couldn't do with a blown out knee, squats and lunges, I did all of it. And I put off a knee replacement for like until I was 52.

And I remember when I walked in, they go, we don't know how you're walking in here. Wow. I go, I've just kept everything super duper strong. Again, think of your reason why not is probably your reason why that we have to train to get better at life. And in life, we're going to have to get out of the way of something fast. We're going to have to pick something up off the floor, catch something, grab something. And so train for that in a controlled environment

so that when you get out of that controlled environment, out into the wild, you don't get hurt. Such a powerful reminder and really a mindset shift. We don't want to be thinking about aging gracefully, especially for women, right? It's almost like it's a messaging of sort of like quieting, not being too loud, don't be in sort of of like, don't be a nuisance in the world.

It's kind of, it's not intended to be that, but it kind of ends up being that, this idea of like gracefully, you know, just fit into society, stepping in the background. No, you want to step into your power. Yes, both for men and women, but especially for women who've been getting the opposite advice. Right. I mean, it's time to be the matriarchs here. This came out of me starting to talk more about, okay, build muscle. I had been focused on muscle building since my early 20s as I started to work with clients and everything was focused on cardio back then.

This was in the 80s. Everything was vegetarian, vegan, and cardio. Lots and lots of cardio. And what I realized was it didn't work. My clients were 45 plus and it wasn't working. And I went, well, they're not going to pay me to get worse. I'm pretty sure. And I discovered resistance training and I was taking people to Gold's,

Jim and I saw people in their 60s and 70s that were amazing and went, this is it. This is how you change everything. If you have more muscle, you change your metabolism. If you're doing cardio, you have to keep doing it all the time. It's like you're making money and spending living on paycheck to paycheck versus having a great bank account and you're just living off the interest. Having the great bank account is having a lot of muscle. Living paycheck to paycheck is just doing cardio. So it's been really clear for a long time that this is the way to go. And I have been fighting this silliness for now 40 years. And I cannot believe it's still out there that when you talk about muscle, the biggest thing I hear is I don't want to get big. And I'll tell you,

I mean, for years, I've been saying, hey, you know, do you know what it takes for a woman put on one to two pounds of muscle a month? It is a fight. Even a man. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Unless if you're like 18 years old. old, 20 years old, you know, even at my age of 40, turning 42 this year, even for men that's very difficult. There's men who work out in the gym, four days a week, you know, eating the appropriate amount of protein. And even for them, it can be a tough thing to do. Right. So you look at it and go, you know, lose up to 1% of your body weight, body fat, body weight really a week and putting on one to two pounds of muscle month. That's like Herculian.

And people are afraid they're going to get too big. And the only time I've had a client get big is when they quit and decide to sit on the couch and eat. That's when you'll get big. Muscles, metabolic spanks. It holds everything in tighter, boost your metabolism. It's not going to make you bigger. And by the way, if you did say, oh my gosh, I'm getting bigger, you could stop. That would be it.

They'll say, I want your arms. I go, do you know what I do? Like, this is a lot of muscle. This is not toning. Like, this idea of toning. I'm just going to do 100, 100 repetitions with a pink. dumbbell, it's just silliness. But I realized hearing this over and over, I don't want to get big. I thought, you know what? Get big. What if it's time for you to get big? Show up bigger in every part of your life.

I remember early on working with a client and she was getting so strong and so powerful and her husband convinced her she had to quit because it was threatening him. Wow. Mm-hmm. So, you know how the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. I see working out, transferring to every part of your life. When you go to the gym and you work out, what you're doing is you're doing things that are hard and you're showing your body, see I can do things that are hard and I can get stronger. And then that transfers into every other part of your life. Establishing incremental habits to support your well-being no matter where you're starting from. And by the way, it's never too late to start. This is truly.

the key to a sustainable, healthy lifestyle change, a permanent change that makes you stronger from the inside out and the outside in. I hope today's compilation episode offered you a new perspective on why focusing on your body composition over just the number on the scale can be a transformative area for everybody to embrace. And if you like today's episode, do me a huge favor and do a friend in your network, a solid, share this episode with them. Who's somebody in your life that needs this reminder or needs this new perspective that more important than the weight and the scale and the number on the scale is your body composition and a big part of that is being strong and prioritizing resistance training of any sort.

And I promise you, if they've never heard this message before, this episode will be an enlightening experience for them. So if you wouldn't mind, share it with them. That would mean the world to me. Until next time, thanks for tuning in.