Dhru Purohit Show - The Top Dos and Don’t When it Comes to Dropping Fat and Building Muscle at the Same Time with Adam Schafer

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Momentous, Blueland, and Maui Nui.  Starting a weight-loss journey and striving for your fittest year yet isn’t always easy. It’s natural to feel like you’re the only one struggling to stay on track, but it can be reassuring to know that even fitness experts face similar challenges. Today’s guest is a fitness expert who’s here to share his relatable journey of losing weight, building muscle, and getting back on track—proving that progress is achievable for all of us. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Adam Schafer, Co-founder of Mind Pump. Adam shares the top dos and don’ts he’s learned from his journey to lose weight and build muscle. He highlights the basics everyone should know, how they shaped his own weight-loss journey, and how to harness metabolic flexibility. Adam also emphasizes that it’s never too late to get fitter and healthier, reminding us that small, consistent steps can lead to incredible transformations in every aspect of life. Adam Schafer, an IFBB pro bodybuilder and founding member of Mind Pump Media, joins us today as a co-host of the popular Mind Pump podcast. He managed some of the largest fitness clubs in the Bay Area and, along the way, collected eight national certifications, and a pro card in bodybuilding.  In this episode, Dhru and Adam dive into: Top dos and don’ts when you are trying to lose weight (00:36) The most crucial basics for the average person (15:41) How to appropriately track protein (22:02) Dhru's health journey (28:45) Why it's never too late (35:08) Behaviors that allow metabolic flexibility (41:01) Mindfulness and mindset shifts that improve how you feel (48:30) Overcoming discouragement from unrealistic goals (51:48) Ginny MacColl, the Oldest American Ninja Warrior (01:00:30) How Adam trained his wife and what she discovered (01:03:48) Resources and recommendations (01:07:57) Also mentioned in this episode: The Step By Step Longevity Protocol this 72 Year Old Followed to Reverse Her Osteopenia, Build Muscle, and Become the Oldest American Ninja Warrior For more on Adam and Mind Pump, follow them on Instagram, X/Twitter, Apple Podcast, TikTok, YouTube, and their Website. This episode is brought to you by Momentous, Blueland, and Maui Nui.  Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the purest form of creatine made by and used by the best. Go to livemomentous.com and enter promo code DHRU to get 20% off any order. 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.  Right now, Maui Nui Venison is offering my community 15% off your first purchase. Just go to mauinuivenison.com/DHRU or enter the code DHRU at check out to get 20% off and up your high-quality protein today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam, welcome to the podcast. You know, you've been on this intense journey for anybody following your story of building muscle and losing fat, both at the same time. Yeah. And for my audience who is interested in the same thing and many of them want to live their fittest year ever. Yeah. Let's talk about some of those top do's and don'ts that you've learned in your own journey that can inspire their own 30-day programmer protocol. Okay. I want to start off with the first one.

Maybe give us a don't that you experience yourself on your own journey. Well, I think if anybody that's watched the last three months I've been doing this, I made a lot of mistakes, I think. I think maybe that's probably what people enjoyed was it was relatable. I was honest and authentic. And I just kind of, you know, I didn't have a major plan. I had a goal in mind of losing as much body fat as I could, building as much muscle.

But I kind of went as I felt and just communicated what was going on. probably one of the first mistakes or pitfalls I had on the second month, I really didn't move body fat percentage. I was really frustrated with that. The goal was to lean out more. I added a little bit of muscle, so it wasn't completely at loss or terrible, but I didn't lose any more body fat. And what I communicated to the audience was I had three weeks in a row where I had like,

I had a vacation. I had a birthday. And then we had this like race car thing that I did with my wife. So basically three weeks out of the. four weeks I was traveling, you know. So virtually, you know, a third or more of the days were in hotels, flying in airplanes, airports. But I still was eating good. Yeah, I didn't eat off the plan per se, like I was still going through Chipotle and getting chicken rice bowls and, you know, staying away from the desserts and alcohol. So I was still, I would consider myself eating really

good and I was tracking. Tracking when you're traveling and in the airport is a guesstimation, right? Like, it's not, I didn't carry my scale with me and I wasn't, you know, and I wasn't getting back to the cook and say, did you use any butter or oil in this stuff? You know, so I was looking at it going, okay, that's probably six ounces of that. That's four. And I like to think that I'm, I'm pretty good at that since I did that competitively. But when the results came in and I didn't lean out, what that told me was my estimations were off and not just a little, off, they were off enough for me actually to build muscle and not, which means I had to been in a calorie surplus more often than I was in a deficit.

And based off of my tracking, I thought I was at a consistent 500 to 1,000 calorie deficit. So I wasn't just a little off. I was off by hundreds, maybe 1,000 calories on some days, which was what was mind blowing a bit. But when I really think about it, it wasn't because in the past, when I am competitively tracking and trying to lean out like that aggressively, I just don't eat out like that. Like in my competitive days, I carried Tupper wherever I went just so there wasn't room for error. And so what I think the biggest takeaway for the average person who maybe isn't trying to

get competitive or stage, but why this is so important, first of all, labels can be off by about 25%. FDA allows that. So 25% room that they can go. And of course, if they label it as a healthy food, it's in their best interest to low ball a number, right? If you are going to a healthy restaurant or ordering from the healthy menu, when it says 300 calories, you're picking it because it's low calorie. But the truth is they could be 25% off there. And that's what the recipe calls for. That doesn't also account for the room for human air.

Anybody who's ever been in a Chipotle line has had this happen, right? When Steve scoops your double meat, it ends up being like 12 ounces. But when Barbara does it, it's like six, you know what I'm saying? But they both are double scooping for you, but one's heavy handed. The other one's not. So who's accounting for all those extra calories? And we check it off as, oh, it was a healthy choice. And it's not a bad choice, but really quickly, you know, 200 calories there, 300 calories there can, you can be off on your estimation.

And psychologically, you're telling yourself, I'm eating healthy, I'm doing good, but you're either at a maintenance or a caloric surplus. And then you work out consistently like I was and you go and do your body fat measurement or your trainer measures you. and you get your results back and it's like, oh, crap, I didn't get better. I didn't lose any body fat, but yet I felt like I was making all these good choices and I didn't miss my workouts with my trainer, but the results didn't turn out. And so for clients, when I'm trying to help them, especially early on in the early stages of their journey, the consistency of making your own meals, especially at the beginning, I think is so important.

And maybe if you have a night every once in a while where you're, you're going to be a lot, you eat out and you chalk that up as not a good choice because you ate out, even if you made healthy choices, not so bad. But when you start stringing in the amount of days that I was traveling in that short period of time, it's a quick recipe for overconsuming, even if it's healthy food and can easily sell your progress. Now, that's also okay if that happens, but what happens to people that are trying to do this on their own journey is they get discouraged by that. And that really tends to spiral something. That was, this is what I communicated on that YouTube. was, I was frustrated, bummed, but aware of what happened. So I explained to the audience that

how easily this could happen to even somebody with my experience. And so the attitude you need to have is, one, don't be discouraged, don't beat yourself up. That's just, I mean, you traveled a lot. I was in airports. I was taking vacation. I wasn't making my meals. And so that's a good chance that could happen. And then if I don't want those results, then I need to make a better effort at making more of my meals. I think that's important for people to understand that, not necessarily because you can never eat out at an airport, you can never eat out at a restaurant and make good choices,

but more so when you feel like you're putting that much effort into not eating the dessert and not over-consuming and hitting your workouts, and then you get those type of results back. It could be really discouraging, and that tends to send the average person spiraling out of control because then they have the attitude of, well, F it. I made all this sacrifice, I never missed the gym,

and then that's all I got for my result. I mean, it's like showing up to a job for a month and then your paycheck is nothing what you expected it or you didn't get paid at all, right? Or you owed money. How often do you keep doing that job? You know, you say, forget. I don't want to do this anymore. So the average person, I think that is working towards their goals and that happens to them. Many times that those type of results will happen and then they get discouraged and then they quit and give up or they swing the other direction and just say, oh, forget it.

Like, why make all these sacrifices? I could have just ate whatever I wanted and got dark. are near the same results. You know, I shared with you before we started recording that you had this fantastic quote from one of your videos on Mind Pump TV. And you said, you know, the fitness industry is often giving advice for the 5%. And we forget the 95% of the people that are out there that just want to be a little bit better or have a goal that's not like something crazy, precise, which is nothing wrong with that, right? You actually are very fit, just looking at you here, but also you showing us on your YouTube channel, you're really fit. And you went on an intense journey. But the

takeaway from what I'm getting from watching that, hearing you talk about it, and even hearing what you're saying here, is that if anybody's listening here and they do want to lose some fat and they want to build muscle, one surefire way to derail your goals is that if all of your meals are being eaten out of the home, that's going to be really hard. Very hard. If maybe 75% of your meals are being eaten out of the home, that's a little less hard. If 50% that's better, 25%, you get lower and lower to the degree that the more meals, that you can make and control. Yeah.

And you got to use some tools like maybe meal planning to be able to do that. The more likely it is that you're going to be able to hit your goal. And just for everybody who's listening, yes, you can overeat on even healthy food and end up gaining weight. Yes. And really, it's also having realistic expectations from what you put in. If it was a client, like, let's say I was training me and me was a client, not myself. The conversation I would have with that client is like, hey, great job.

We still built a few pounds of muscle. We didn't lose any body fat like we wanted to. But hey, you ate out, you know, three of the four weeks you were traveling and eating out. And we didn't put on any fat. So that's a really good sign. And we at least built a little bit of muscles. That's good because that means you lifted weights and you made good choices. We just overconsumed.

Having just realistic expectations to the results. Where people are really get spiral out of control is when they have this expectation that they're going to see this huge swing or change. And they feel like they put all this effort in because they're, running around the airport looking for the only healthy place to eat or they're getting up extra early to make it to the gym because they don't want to miss that workout, but they're still doing a lot of the eating out and traveling. And so then they expect they're going to see a greater return and then they don't. And so the conversation really is like it's not bad or you didn't do something per se wrong. We definitely made it difficult to see great change in a single month. So that's okay.

Next month will be more consistent with that. And to address the 5% thing, because that's a major pet pee of mine. A lot of the success that Mind Pump has had has been. on not getting caught up in the noise of our peers. It's easy to. It's easy to allow the YouTube kid who likes to do the voiceover video and tear apart something we say and try and use studies to argue a point that we're making and, you know, get into this pissing contest between other professionals on who's smarter, who knows more, who can tell out more studies than the other person.

Meanwhile, we're losing the majority and all we're doing is appealing to this small percentage of radical fitness people that do read all the studies, that want to know all the nuances and to get that extra 1%. But the reality is that's not most people. And that's not really what most of us got in this business to help. Like, I mean, I enjoyed training some competitors and the elite people that want to get to the next crazy level.

But that's not what filled my bucket. Like, filled my bucket and what I did more than anything else was trained normal people. People that said things like, Adam, I don't like to work out. My doctor told me I had to be here. or I know that I want to be able to play with my kids and my grandkids and so I'm here, but I don't like this. I don't know what I'm doing and I'm here.

That's what I like the train. Those are the people I want to help. And for those people, a lot of the stuff that you hear online and a lot of the things that a lot of our peers are arguing over, all it does is end up confusing them or making it more difficult when there's, there's bigger rocks for those people to focus on. And it's unfortunate that we do allow some of us to get into these pissing contests of who's smarter in the space versus really trying to bring everybody up and help the majority. So I think we do a pretty good job of communicating that.

But I know sometimes we can get dragged into those battles with other peers on who's smarter, who knows more in the fitness space. Well, let's talk about doubling down on some of those rocks, the ones that significantly moved the needle forward. You were talking about the average person. When I talk to my podcast audience, which is a lot of individuals right around my age, you know, maybe somewhere between 35 and 55 as the biggest concentration. but we have a lot of people, especially women in the 60 to 70 age group as well, too, 50 to 60.

And when I hear their goals and what their version of their fittest year yet looks like, especially when they're thinking about 2025, it's, hey, I want to lose 5 to 10 pounds. And I'd love, you know, especially for a lot of my audience that's not former in competing. Maybe he doesn't even have a history of resistance training. They're like, I would love, now that I know the importance of muscle, I would love to at least build five pounds of muscle. Yeah. Right.

Add that. So when you're thinking about your own journey and some of the things that have worked for you, obviously you know some of the basics, so many of the basics, what would be those same, what would be the top things

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this. By now, if I'm not to the thousands, I'm definitely in the of hundreds of clients that I've trained and I've helped. 99% of them, when they first get started, one of the first things that I would do, before I tell them how to eat or tell them what to do, I actually always ask people to just track and pay attention to what you're doing. So if you eat a Snickers bar every single day, I want you to do that. If you have a glass of wine at dinner, every night, I want you to do that.

All I want to do is I just want to see what a normal week or two of eating looks like for you. and then we're going to make these subtle tweaks along the way. Now, from all the years or decades of doing that and the hundreds of people, almost all of them were under-eating protein grossly, like way under-eating protein, especially my female clients. Men too, but especially my female clients. I mean, we're talking 30 to 60 grams of protein on the high end for most clients. And when you asked most of them, do you eat a lot of protein?

they say yes because what happens they go well i have eggs for breakfast i have a turkey sandwich for lunch and then we normally have a chicken stir fry or something for dinner so i eat a lot of protein and in their head that's how they attribute a high protein diet well the two eggs was 14 grams at most maybe 12 12 to 14 grams the turkey sandwich only has a large subway sandwich or large togos is four ounces of meat but there's 20 grams of protein right there and then let's just say they eat a piece of chicken, eight ounces, which is a lot for a female. Now she's got 35 grams. So 35, 12, what are we at? 50, 60 grams of protein. And that's saying they, every meal, they had a, what they think is like a protein. So that is the first thing. And why that is so important is if we,

if I'm going to get this person a strength train, that's the first good step of like building a metabolism, building strength. And most people are probably listening to your positive. Know that. That's a good idea to lift weights, to get strong, to build muscle. but if you don't give it the building blocks, then what that weight training starts to look like, it starts to look like just movement and activity, which in it by itself is not a bad thing. That's good.

I mean, that's a good thing. It's movement. You're going to burn calories. You're going to stretch the muscles out, work on range of motion. Nothing wrong with that. But the most beneficial thing from that is the muscle that we want to build from that. And you lifting weights sends the signal,

but the protein and the calories that you consume, that's what goes, repairs and builds that muscle. So we want to first send the signal, but we got to make sure we're getting adequate protein. And what a lot of people don't understand about protein, what makes it unique out of the macronutrients, is it's not like carbs and fat and calories where you look at your week and then you take an average and go, oh, I average as many calories or I average many grams of fat. Like protein, if you miss a protein day, you miss that protein day. So if you had a really low day of 30 and then the next day you have 200, it's not the average of the two.

Once, if your body didn't get it that day, it didn't get it that day. And if you send a signal to build muscle and it didn't have the adequate nutrition to build that muscle, they didn't get to go build that muscle. So that's the number one. So number one, when I get a client, I look at their diet. And so the common things, grossly under eating protein, many times we're not getting enough fiber. Most times we're eating too much carbohydrates or sugar. And a lot of times with my women, we would be under on healthy fats.

Now, what I don't want to do is throw the whole kitchen sink at them. That's why it's like protein first. Because I know if I go after protein, I get them to do that, we'll take care of a lot of other things. Proteins, the most satiating macronutrient. And so a lot of times my clients that overconsume on the sugar, the carbs, all the extra calories, just by shifting them of focusing on protein,

automatically starts to carve some of that without me telling it. And there's a part of that that's so important. We as humans have this rebellious nature. So if you tell a client, you can't do this, you can't have that. Even if they have the discipline to resist the cookie or resist the thing, inside, there's a part of them that's having this internal conversation of, I can't, I can't, I can't, and they want to rebel against that versus me not ever saying you can't have that cookie. Instead, saying, Susan, what I need you to do is you need to hit 130 grams of protein every day.

Just go get that. Well, what about my wine? Don't worry about that right now. All I care about, go get that protein. Don't miss. Let's just focus on that. And then we'll talk about the other stuff later. And a lot of times I look at you all kind of sideways.

Like, he didn't tell me I can't have my wine. He didn't say anything about that cookie or this and that. But I know. I know what happens when she focuses on hitting that 130 grams of protein every day. I know those things just start to fall off to the side. And even more importantly, I'm playing the reverse psychology with her.

I'm not telling her she can't have those things. So she doesn't feel like she's like restricting from anything. All I'm telling her do is go after something. but I know what ends up happening from that. So that's step one. It's just go hit that protein intake. Go hit that consistently. And then if I can get them based off of their schedule,

I'd love to get them lifting weights two to three times a week. Before you go on the lifting weights part, can I ask a question? Can I interrupt? Yeah. So, you know, so much of our audience has heard from having, like, you know, we've had Sal on our podcast before. Obviously, this is our first time having you on the podcast.

So thank you for agreeing to do this. Thanks for hosting us in your studio. We've had Dr. Gabrielle Lyon on the podcast, a couple years ago when she was talking about muscle-centric medicine. And now really, so many people have gotten the memo on protein, right? They're hearing it. And yet, when I sit down or somebody e-mails me, and I ask them a simple question, when was the last time you've tracked consistently your protein for a week?

I hear the same thing again and again. Maybe never. Maybe a day or two at most. And then on top of that, you ask them how they're doing it. and it's not really the correct way from what I understand to be able to do it. So let's talk about that for literally the person who's heard this is like, I got it. I got the memo on protein,

but maybe hasn't actually sat down and said, nobody's ever really told me the basics of how do I actually track and what do I need if I'm really going to look at auditing my calories and in particular my protein. Can you walk us through that? Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, you had Lane on your show and Lane did a really good job, I think. And I'm in alignment with what Lane said, which is that it's like your finances. And like Lane said, I agree that not everybody, if I'm coaching you, necessarily do I have track.

Right. If I have a client that has an eating disorder and has a really messed up relationship with food, I'm going to tiptoe around that, right? I'm going to teach them other behavioral ways to get them healthy because I recognize they have a dysfunctional relationship with food and getting them hyper-focused on measuring and weighing could only tip them over. So let's just, let's carve that group of people out because I don't believe everybody should track because I wouldn't do with that client. But that represents less than 5% of the population.

The other 95%, I do believe that you should at least at the beginning track for the same reason. It's like just to get an idea of like where you're expending and what does that look like? Well, invest in a scale, right? A food scale. A food scale. And cook your meals for a week. For a week.

That's normally all I need for a client. Give me a week of tracking your own food that you cook at home. And you can do it in one, like I recommend a lot of times people like make Saturday or Sunday a meal prep day. And you sit down and you prep out good 60, 70 percent of what the foods you plan to eat for the week and use a scale doing that. I like sticking to things for this period of time. Real basic stuff like rice, sweet potato, yam. keanua as far as my carbohydrates. Meat, I'm really flexible.

What meats you like? If you like fish, you like chicken, you like steak, whatever they are. And then a scale so we can weigh six, eight, 10 ounces, whatever portions. And then an easy number, okay, whatever your goal weight is, male, female, doesn't matter. Whatever your goal weight is. So if you're trying to lose weight, what weight do you want to weigh on the scale? If you're trying to gain weight, what weight do you want to weigh in scale, that many grams of protein. So if you're a woman and you want to weigh 120 pounds, even if you're 16, 180, right?

So 120 grams of protein is your goal. If you're some guy, some skinny guy who's trying to build muscle and you weigh 150 pounds and you want to weigh 190, well, then 190 grams is your goal. So whatever your goal weight is, go one to one of it. And here's a great example, too, of the fitness space that I can't stand, right? There's a lot, like, if you get into the science, you know, it's 0.6 to 0.8 grams of 2.2.2. lean body mass. It's like who in the is going to figure that?

It's like that is what's optimal. So there's this argument online of like who's giving the best recommendation for protein. Most all the studies will show most all the best benefits you'll get is a good ratio. It is 0.8. But one is just easy to track. Just one gram to the pound of body weight to you, which one way will cover most all

your bases. Yes, if you're in a caloric deficit, there's some, there's some studies. that will point to, they show some benefits to going up to like one, one and a half even, but you're going to get most all the benefits if you just hit that one gram. And even if you fall a little short, you're still getting enough, you're going to be okay. And most importantly, the 95% of the population people, it's easy. You tell them how much do you want away? Most people have an idea of what they want away. You say, that's how many grams of protein you hit every day? Simple. And it's like it covers it. That's why we like, and that's why we give that advice.

Yeah. And so you're weighing your food. You're ideally maybe using some sort of app. You know, there's a bunch that are out there. My Fitness pal, fat secret. There's a bunch of them. Those are two of my favorite. And don't get hung up on the details of all the different apps and what might be more accurate.

It has more tools. It's like all we're really using it for is to track and get an idea of when, and like kind of what Lanes says is like, get an idea of what does six ounces look like. You know how many times I've had somebody who thinks something. I mean, I know me. I'll never forget when I, the first time I tracked. I'd already been a trainer for like good. six or seven years and I still hadn't like weighed measuring track food.

And up into that point, I'd still been guesstimating. And I would sweet potato. And again, it was a healthy food. And, you know, in the, in my back then, this was before, you know, internet dating myself a bit, right? We had these books, you know, it was like a small sweet potato, medium sweet potato, large sweet potato. And then it would have the calorie breakdown.

I'm like, oh, that's probably a large one. But it didn't go by weight. It went just by small, medium, large. That was like a large sweet potato. So I put that. Well, then when I actually started weighing and realized that was three times what that, what the large sweet potato was in my book was in ounces of a sweet.

And those things could vary. And you've everyone's seen the sweet, as you've seen sweet potatoes oddly shaped like this to this small to whatever. So it's like there's this massive range. And that's a difference of like two, two, three hundred calories by being that far off on. So just highlights that even though it's a healthy food and even though I was

even using a book to kind of guess, me back then that the weighing and tracking is so important just to get an idea of kind of what what does six ounces of meat look like what does eight ounces of sweet potato look like how many calories is that and tracking that for at least a week so we get a baseline this will also highlight going back to like lane's analogy with finances like where where's your grace offenders like i mean i know like i love that analogy because i just recently did that with my wife with our finances and you know i remember telling her like you know just feels like stuff's leaking out. Where are we spending all this money? It doesn't make sense.

We should have more than this. Oh, wow. We're spending that much on DoorDash every single month. Oh, wow. That many Instacarts are coming to our house. Like, I had no idea. We're spending thousands of dollars on something like that because you don't think about it. You're like, oh, $7 here, $12 there. It's not that much. But then you become aware of it and you're like, I was using way more than that. The same thing goes with nutrition. People think they know. And then they track and they go, oh wow, I'm actually really under-eating protein. I'm not getting nearly enough fiber than I'm supposed to. Oh, wow, I eat a lot more sugar than I thought I would.

And so it just really opens your eyes on that. And then if you, after you have that and you know where your grams of protein are, even more simple advice, and I don't mean to get ahead of your questions here. But then it's like if you just avoid heavily processed foods, eat whole foods and go after your protein target, I'll even make the rest of it really simple. Like that advice alone, like we don't even got to get into the nuances of, well, Adam, how many calories should this person eat? And how many, like that right there a lot of times will take care of 80% of most people's goals. Just avoiding processed foods and hitting protein intake and strength training. Like the combination of that, I'll get 90% of people listening really fit, really.

fit. You know, I went through that journey myself about two and a half, almost three years ago. Right before I turned 40, I had, you know, a friend of your show and friend of my show on the podcast, Dr. Gabriel Lyon, she came on and really helped me understand that like, you know, my issue as growing up, Indian vegetarian kid, under eating chronically on protein for years, is that I fell perfectly into that skinny fat category. Yep. And I never really had motivation for the gym because there'd be bouts when I played soccer, tennis, other sports, where I'd get really pumped up and I'd go to the gym and I'd bust

my ass for like five, six weeks. And all my other friends who are not skinny and vegetarian kids, they're like bulking up like crazy, you know, you're 14, 15, 16, 8, you know, 18 years old. They're putting on muscles so quick. And as you should be at that age, it's for men in particular, if you're doing the right thing. And I'm like, okay, I guess it's just a genetic thing. You know, like my body's not responding. And then finally for the first time doing a body composition through caliber testing,

working with my trainer, yes, this was after I came back from like a 40th birthday to like Italy. I came back a little bit in flame, but I came in at 26% body fat. And I was like, how is somebody like me who has? as these skinny arms and skinny legs, how am I 26% body fat? And I realized with the podcast with her, I wasn't fat. I was under muscle. It's something that I just never had paid attention to. And I think like a lot of people in my community, I was eating really healthy. I was largely gluten-free and not that that means somebody's healthy. I was eating a lot of organic and other things, but I was overeating consistently on healthy sources of fats in my diet. All healthy things.

but you can overeat on anything. And I was under-eating on the protein. When I did this challenge that you're mentioning right now, which I highly recommend for everybody, I saw that the first week I was actually auditing my protein, I was consistently getting somewhere between only 80 and 100 grams of protein a day as a guy who's 5 foot 10, right, and not wanting to be skinny fat.

And in a short period of time of just consistently doing what you said, resistance training, getting my protein up to the number that I actually needed to be, which was around like 165, 175 grams of protein a day, and not overeating on the calories more than what was my energy expenditure. I was able to do a micro, micro, microversion of what journey you've just been on for the last 30 plus days, which was I actually was able to lose fat and build some muscle. It took me a year. It took me about almost 10, months. It was nine and a half months, but I added almost about a pound of lean muscle mass a month in that period. Solid. And I brought myself back into, I got as low as 12.5%. Huge. It felt a little bit

too thin for where I wanted to be. I felt like I needed kind of like a little bit of a clean bulk. Yep. And I stabilized right around about 15% body fat. Solid. And more importantly than those numbers or anything, which is what you guys teach on your channel, I just felt good and I felt strong. Yeah. And I finally felt like I got the bug. I went from feeling like, oh, I'm a genetic situation where I can't really gain muscle and other things like that. And it's not for me to, wow, I actually look forward to the gym. I actually enjoy auditing and tracking my calories to the extent to make sure that I'm not

overeating on certain things and I'm not under eating on protein. And I got that bug of feeling like, okay, cool. Am I looking like Ryan Gosling in some movie that he's in? No, but I'm making progress. I don't even care about looking like that anymore. And if I keep this up, it may be a couple of years, but I'm going to be fitter than I ever imagined. And I'm already fitter than I ever imagined.

So it was slow and then all at once of just doubling down on some of the basics that you just talked about. If you know me and you know my content, you heard the experts on this podcast, you know that we're on a mission to meet our protein goals. Because not only is protein needed for muscle gain, but it's also critical for immunity, brain health, balanced blood sugar and so many more things.

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Or use the code D-H-R-U at checkout to get 15% off. It's time to upgrade your protein snack. today to the highest quality protein on the market. My most recent message that I'm like saying a lot on the podcast right now that I want to share everywhere I go is that it actually gets easier as we get older. And what I mean by that, because I think that's the opposite of what we hear. We hear this like, oh, it just gets so much harder. Your testosterone goes down and you lose muscle.

There's all these studies to show how many pounds of muscle you lose every year. That's because we take this crazy study. of all these average people that don't do anything. And then, of course, yes, as you get older, the average American, testosterone, bone density, metabolism, yeah, it all goes down. But the average person is not who we're trying to help and talk to right now. I'm trying to talk to people that are interested in building muscle, building your metabolism, getting stronger, getting fitter.

And if you do that, and you do that consistently, and you do just what you're doing right now, five years from now, you'll look back and go like, oh, my God, it's easier than it's ever been for me and I look better than I've ever looked. It gets better. It gets easier. What's the, what you got to see that, you know, three months is a, you know, a bit of a microcosm of what I'm talking about. It's really a testament of is prior two decades of training consistently and taking my physique to this 240 pound jack bodybuilder guy. Now, I, since then, which was when we first started this podcast, so it's been eight, nine years that I competed. I have totally fallen off the volume of training.

I mean, when I was training at the highest level, it was training seven days a week. And I mean, my life revolved around competing, just like any other sport. And then when we got the podcast was really cranking, this became my priority. I didn't care anymore about the competitive level. So my training volume looks more like two or three times a week.

And many times stretches of weeks where I haven't worked out in a week right now, many of these times where I've got off weeks that are sporadically. And so over the course of eight years, I've lost, I lost almost, well, I lost first about 25 pounds over the first like six, seven years. Then I took a GLP one as a test for my audience. That's a whole other conversation. But I did that to share with our audience what it's like to take a GLP1 without my trainer brain. In other words, I wasn't like, I wasn't like counting protein and going like, oh, I got to make sure I eat my protein. So I don't, I said, I want to take a GLP1 and I'm going to, I'm going to eat when I'm hungry and I'm going to

respond like the average client is and let's see where it takes my body, knowing that I knew I could get it back. And I lost another 25 pounds. And a half of that was muscle. So I lost a lot of muscle doing that. So now I'm down, what, 40, almost 50 pounds of muscle if you compare all the way back to my bodybuilding days. So part of why you saw such radical change on that transformation journey for me is because that's how beautiful muscle memory is. Is that because I had already invested in training consistently for so long, And my body has seen 40 plus pounds more muscle on my frame before. All I had to do was turn those dials. Get back to hitting my protein intake consistently and get back to training consistently.

And my body remembered it. And the muscle just started to pack on with if you watch the videos, mild intensity, two exercises a day, five days a week, not hard at all. And it's so and it's awesome because when I look at like, let's say where my physique is at right now, I'm in better shape at 43 years old, training two exercises a day, hitting my protein than I was when I was 24, training double days and playing basketball

and doing everything I thought. I'd taking all the shapes, all the protein powders, all the supplements to try and look as amazing as I could, busting my ass. Well, that's because what's cool about lifting weights and building muscle.

It's a lot like investing and the compound interest that comes from that. And it's like, when you look back five years from now, you stay on the path you're on right now, you will say to yourself, it is easier to be in the shape that you're in, and you'll be in better shape. So it actually gets easier for those of us that make lifting weights and eating healthy a part of our lifestyle, even if you have periods of time where you fall off for a little bit and then you come back on, which is normal. It's like,

over time, all that investing will really pay you back. It's what's difficult is when we take the average American who doesn't do any of that stuff. And yes, at 60, 70 years old, when we measure those people, yes, testosterone goes down. Yes, bone dinsic goes, yes, all this. But you take somebody who has been working out and working towards getting better at diet and working on better at hitting what they need to hit, like those people, it gets easier as you get older because it's like compounding interest. Yeah, I love that reframe, that it can actually be easier as you get older, where I think a lot of our audience actually finds himself in that place and that way of looking at things is actually hopeful. Yes. And it's true.

So that's first and foremost, but it's hopeful in the sense that it's never too late and we're not on this decline that we're trying to recover from. You know, I think the other thing about this age range of anybody in that 40 plus category, which we're both in and a lot of our audiences in, they're also in a stage of their life where they're not 18 or 20 or 25 years old where their entire life is dedicated just to fitness. They have a family life and a family life that often they love kids. They have maybe a business that they want to put attention to or one that's growing and they want to keep on make sure that it's heading in the right direction. And I think that your advice is really what can you keep up on the fitness level and on the dietary side that fits into your lifestyle so that you love it forever? Yes. How do you see that in the stage of life that you're in right now? So I'm very much so in this like kind of maintenance for my physique, right?

I want to be healthy, strong, mobile to keep up with my five-year-old son. Like that's my number one priority. I'm long past the aesthetics and caring what I look. What I just went through on that little journey was more so to show the audience what you can do in a short period of time with the right focus and attention. But personally, where I'm at, like I care more that I can stay mobile. I can stay strong and that I can stay active with him and keep. love with him. And what it takes to do that is not nearly as much as what people think, especially

when it's paired with whole foods and making good food choices and hitting your protein intake. So for me, I'm a lot like you. Only I wasn't vegetarian. I had a sugar addiction. And so if I'm not paying attention to my food, what it looks like for me, a lot of carbs, a lot of sugar, very low protein, but I get the same result, skinny fat. So I become skinny fat. I lose. So my arms get small. So the average person looks at me and they wouldn't think I look fat, but I've got this little pooch-pelly and my body fat percentages up. And that is a testament of overeating calories that are sugar, carbohydrates or saturated fats and not getting enough protein. So what ends up happening is the body stores body fat and loses muscle. It loses muscle because you're not giving it enough protein or sending a signal to keep the muscle and it adds body fat because you're over-consuming calories.

Simply me just hitting my protein intake, even if I old. overindulge and still overeat, or even if I still fall off a little bit on my training, the consistently hitting the protein hangs on to my muscle. So I'll actually still keep a decently fit physique. So for me, like that's a huge priority. It's like just stay consistent with that. I'm like I have to, I'm always reminding myself little behaviors of going after that.

For me, I'm a big guy. So 200 grams is mine. That's a lot of protein that I got to hit consistently. And I know that I have to kind of get after that early if I'm going to hit those numbers. So it's like the first two or three meals is really, really important how I do it. I'm also notorious for if I'm not paying attention, I'll skip and go all the way till noon before I have my first meal. And now I'm playing ketchup all day. So for me, it's like, that's important.

Hit that protein intake because I know I want to keep the muscle that I've worked so hard to build. And that's so that's important. So it's hitting that. And as long as I come in the gym and either do two full body type workouts or five days of just two exercises, which are 15, 20 minute workouts, that is enough to keep the physique that you see on the YouTube channel right now, which is 10% body fat, pretty muscular.

I'm not winning any shows, but for a 43-year-old guy, I feel good about taking my shirt off, feel confident, my wife thinks I look good, which really matters. I can lift pretty heavy things. There's nothing that's around my house that's not going to,

I can't lift up on my own. I'm mobile enough that I can sit in a squatted position and play with my son for an hour comfortably. Like, that's kind of how I look. at like the way I approach my training now. And again, I'm blessed because of all the years of training that it just takes a little bit of stimulus. I'm sure Sal has gotten into it with you because he's the study guy. But the studies they have around how little you have to train in order to keep. There's different studies that report anywhere between one fifth and one eighth

the amount of money. And to put that in perspective, what does that mean to the average listener? Okay, if you built this crazy impressive physique training seven days a week, one hour a day, that means it only takes one day a week for an hour to maintain that physique. That's crazy. That's not very much at all. So if you worked to build and have been consistently lifting weights and then as long as you're doing one seventh volume, you should be able to maintain that. Obviously paired with hitting your protein intake and making the good food choices.

If you fall off on the protein, you start overeating consume and you reduce volume, well, then you'll get what you and I are notorious for the skinny fat. That's a recipe for that. But as long as I get in there and touch weights a little bit, either, like I said, once or twice a week full body or just 15, 20 minute workouts, five days a week, I can maintain a very, very, at least a physique that I'm more than happy with. And I like around 10% body fat, which I like there because it gives me a lot of metabolic flexibility, meaning. Meaning when I hover around 10 to 12% body fat and I'm lifting the way I'm lifting, I'm hitting my protein take. It really allows me when my wife and I have dinner on Friday night, I can have a glass of wine or two. When I want a dessert once or twice a week after my dinner that I ate, I can enjoy that and be fine. And it might, you know, one week of doing that a lot might tip me up a percent or so.

And then all I have to do is kind of rain it back in next week and it goes right back. And so it gives me a lot of flexibility. maintaining a 6% like some of the, you know, Instagram famous kids that are out there that that's how they use their body to sell fitness. Like, yeah, like that's not, I've lived that life before and that's selfish and not fun and there's not a lot of flexibility. But hanging around 10 to 12% training about that many times a week, hitting my protein intake.

Oh, it's a really healthy good. And even more importantly, I'm a better husband. I'm a better father. I'm a better business partner. I get more done. Like this is a, and here's another like important conversation that even I have to remind myself.

I said this on the YouTube channel. It's I, even I do this to myself. I get real busy with the fatherhood thing, with the business thing. You know, we started up two new, two more businesses this year.

And so real easy I can start to justify it. Man, I'm so busy. I ain't got time to lift. Just, my days are slammed. I'm tired. I'm all stuff with that.

But every time that I get back. to my consistency of training, I always have this reminder of, it's like I get an extra two hours in the day. And what that is, and anybody who's listening that has felt that knows what I'm talking about. And what that is, is that when you lift like that, your energy goes up, you get better sleep, your libido goes up, your testosterone goes, all these hormones that help you be a better version of yourself, all are positively influenced, which just makes you a more productive, better human all day long. So then I'm getting more done work in a shorter period of time. I'm more likely to come home and help my wife around the house. I'm more excited to play with my son

when I get. And so those are the things that keep me focused on being more consistent more so than what I'm trying to do with my physique or where exactly my body fat is is that I'm doing these things every day so that I'm better at all those other things that are more important to me, which probably resonates more with your audience. And I think our audience, too, is like, that's what I'm trying to do. Yeah, that's great. As you're talking, I realize, like, you know what? I don't feel amazing today how I normally do. What's actually going on? And as you were sharing, I was like, oh, wow, I know why. I haven't had a good training session for about a week. My trainer, he's in Thailand right now, which is awesome. The trainer that I was going to use is the backup trainer. He also

was on vacation as well too. And I booked a, I booked a workout for Friday. You know, we're recording this on a Wednesday, but it's been a week. And I don't feel good. And I actually, actually should turn that into, oh, man, I'm, you know, I didn't plug in the gaps. I normally feel really good. To, whoa, I'm glad I gotten so used to training and the fact that it makes me feel good that now I can notice the difference. And I'm excited to get back in. You know, so much of this is a mindset piece, as I'm sure you know. And I, so. sounds like you have some thoughts you want to yeah no I mean what you're saying right now is so important so when we then this took me years probably at least the decade as a trainer to really come full

circle become a good I'd say my first 10 years I was okay at best trainer I wasn't a really good trainer till after a decade of this and it's this type of stuff so everybody comes in with or not most everybody comes in with aestheticals they're unhappy with the way they look or their doctor told them they're unhealthy or they're carrying all this extra body fat and so most people in. They're like, they want you to change the physical part of them. But the part that will keep them going for the rest of their life is teaching them how to attach it to all the other things that you're alluding to right now. So as my client, as I'm giving them the nutrition, and I'm motivating to show up to the gym and stuff like that, what I don't want them to do

is to be focused on the scale and the body fat percentage and the mirror. Those are things we use to measure if we're doing some of the right things. And I know you came to me for your goals. But what I really want to do with you, Drew, is I want to remind you of, like, how you felt after that workout. And how did you sleep last night? And how is your sex life going? And how is your skin feel? And how's your productivity at work?

And how's your energy with your kids? If I'm a really good trainer, I'm helping you connect those dots. And I'm speaking to that more than I'm speaking to your body fat percentage, your reflection in the mirror and your scale. Yes, those are tools for me as a trainer to make sure I know I'm calibrating things and we're heading the right way or I need to make adjustments. so I'm using those things. But what I'm talking to you about on a daily basis is all those other things.

Because that is what's going to keep you going forever. Because even if on the best train in the world, I get you to all the craziest goals you've ever seen. And once you achieve it, then what? Really hard to keep you going if, because then you just go like, okay, I've done it. I've already been the rip this guy in the room. Cool. I've already been the strongest guy in the room.

Cool. What now? But if I've done a really good job of along that journey, making sure, sure that you really make those connections where you go, oh, yeah, you're right. I'm like, I did have the best sleep ever I've ever had last night. You know what? I have been kicking at work lately. Like, oh my God, you know what? The amount of frequency of my wife and I have been sex is crazy right now. Yeah, you think it's because of all these things. It's because of this training. It's because of the food choices you're making. Oh, man, my digestion is has been so good.

My stools have been great. Yeah, that's because of the food choices and the things that we're doing. Our job or what I try and do is, is I want to attach as many of those things. to the choices that you're making because that is what will make you do until you're 90 years old. Not the abs, the reflection, the PR and the gym. Cool metrics to know

and to use to calibrate what we're doing, but what we really all should be doing, whether you have a trainer or not, is really paying attention to all those things, is checking all those other boxes on how much it makes a better version of you in every other aspect of your life. You do that, you do a really good job doing that,

you'll do fitness forever. What are some other things? that are mindset-related pieces that you see that consistently get in the way of people adopting that mentality. One mindset, I think, is expecting things to the scale, the strength measures, the look in the mirror, expecting that stuff to happen so fast. And then when it doesn't, getting really discouraged. Yeah. Which is why it's like, I want to, I want them to focus on the other things, like, let them know that that stuff is going to come. Don't worry. Let's really like, because right away, you start making good food.

choices, and you should see positive impact on your digestion. You should see positive impact on your sleep right away. Sometimes the scale, the body fat percentage, that stuff takes a while. For example, like every client that I get that wants to lose fat, the first thing we do is not really lose fat, or at least that's not the focus at first. I want to build their metabolism before I start to lean them out. And what I mean by that is if I take somebody on and they need to lose, let's just say an average person probably needs to lose 30, 40 pounds. And they need to lose 30 or 40 pounds. I assess their diet and I look at it.

I've told you already that most everybody's under consuming protein. And so what I want to do with them is I actually don't want to just start seeing the scale go down right away. What I want to do is hit their protein intake and I actually want to build muscle, which might result in the scale either seeing the same or actually positively going up. So that might will mind somebody. Somebody who is paying you to get them to lose 30 or 40 or 4. 40 pounds and you're going to tell them we might not lose any weight on the scale. In fact, we might go up a tiny bit.

But trust me, this is what's best for you. Oh, my God. I mean, talk about a roadblock for most people. And that's you paying me as a professional who knows what he's doing trying to convince you. Hopefully, I've got enough credibility that you just trust me. If you're trying to do this on your own, that's a real hard thing to wrap your brain around. What do you mean, Adam? I'm like, I want to lose 40 pounds.

I don't want to work out for the next month and see the scale, say the same or go up one pound. Oh, yes, you do. you do if I've increased your your calorie intake and you're hitting your protein intake and you're getting stronger in the gym because what that tells me is that we're building your metabolism. So a better goal for me, so let's just use some real rough numbers

so the person can grasp what I'm talking about. Yeah, please. Okay. Here's average female coming. We'll talk about the, since the average client is a middle-aged woman trying to lose weight, underconsumes on protein

and eats normally pretty low calories, believe it or not. I don't know. I can't tell you how much. times I've talked to someone sitting across from me who wants to lose 30 or 40 pounds when we look at their food and they're eating and they're only eating like 1,800 calories maybe. But what they're eating is like 1,800 calories and where they got it is a glass of wine and some carbohydrates. They're really low on protein. Like it's all over the place, right? But yet she's got to lose 30 to 40 pounds. So where do I go from there? Well, everybody wants to tout the law of thermodynamics.

Oh, calories in versus calories out. Okay, well, based off, of that law, you're telling her that she should just go move a bunch more, which is why they gravitate to the classes and the running and all the group X stuff. And so they go there and they go, okay, I got to cut my calories. Well, I'm already eating pretty low. I guess I got to stop the wine and start eating salads. So that takes them down to 1,200 calories. And they see this initial weight loss. Man, they might even drop in the first month, even 10 pounds. And they're celebrating like they did good, but that's not good. She's got 30 pounds to go. And she lost 10, eating 1,200 calories and doing her circuit training class,

like that ain't going to sustain very long at all. It's only a matter of time before she plateaus hard and she can't go anywhere. So what I want to do with that client, since she represents an example of almost everybody that wants to lose weight, is I want to get her hitting her protein. I don't want any sort of group X cardio classes.

I want to focus on building muscle and strength. Now, if I do a good job of barely creeping her calories, up. So let's say they're at 1,800 calories and I don't really go much higher calories. I stay around 1,800 to 2,000. So that's a small bump. But let's say 800 or 2,000. If I do a good job of doing that and hitting her protein and strength training, what she will most likely see is for that entire month, we don't really move on the scale. But what happened was she lost four pounds of fat and she built four pounds of muscle, which equates to zero pounds moving on the scale, but a difference in her body composition and a difference in her metabolism. Now she's got four more pounds of muscle

on her body and she's got four less pounds of fat. Scales the same, but metabolically we're heading in the right direction. Now she's eating 2,000 calories. She's stronger than what she was before. And what? Now Adam, do we still don't cut. We're going to keep going that way. What? Yeah, I like to get you up to like 25, 2,600 calories first. What? What? I haven't ate that and forever. That's, oh, I'm going to get, no, just trust me. So we start creeping that way again. Again, another month goes by. And we don't see my. much weight on the scale go down again. But this time she built five pounds of muscle and lost five pounds of fat.

Now we're down a total of nine total pounds of fat, which is a lot of fat off her body. And we've also put nine pounds of muscle. That's an 18 pound swing on the person who wanted to lose 30 pounds. But on the scale, it shows nothing has changed. That gets in everybody's way. And that is really hard for the average person to wrap their brain around. But that person is kicking a bit compared to the lady who cut down to 1,200 calories. and lost 10 pounds the first month.

They're kicking f***. And they also actually look great. Exactly. And then if you have them stand on a scale, you'd be shocked. A lot of women would be shocked to see how much they weigh. And you're like, wow,

I would like to look like that, like another woman. A lot of times, this is such a, this is such a, you know, a mind deaf that I don't want my client to weigh herself because a lot of times she'll get her own way.

She'll see the scale and that will mess with her head too much. So a lot of times with my client, and this is a lot of this is based off the first assessment when I'm getting to know them. I can feel it out. I'll know if somebody's like, oh, I've got to keep the scale away from her. She keeps referring to it, how important it is to her. That tells me right away. She's going to freak out if it goes up two pounds.

And I don't even care if it goes up two pounds. Like if I increase her calories, there's a chance. And she's lifting weights. It's a good chance that not only she's going to go up a little bit in carbohydrates, which pairs with water holds water. She's probably going to be drinking more water because she's probably going to be drinking more water, which means she could easily be holding a pound or two of water. that I don't even care about, but she will freak out if she hired me to lose 30 pounds and her scale goes up two pounds in the first week and or she's going to lie to me and she's not going to do what I tell her to do. So a lot of times a client like that, I'll be like,

here's a deal. I don't want, you're not allowed to weigh yourself for 30 days. Or I had some clients where I would weigh them, but I'd make them turn around on the scale so I can see the weight just so I'm keeping track of things, but I don't want them to see it. And then I'd let them know later on. Don't worry. I'll let you know where you're going, but I don't want you paying attention to that because I've already told you when we first met, scale's not I don't care about that. We're changing body composition. I can keep your weight exactly where it's at and radically change the way your body looks.

Trust me. And so that gets in most people's way when they first start is not understanding what they want to do. And the why that is so important to get her up to say 26, 200 calories. Imagine that same client. Three months go down the road. Okay. We have the two scenarios. We have the lady that started at 1800.

She cut to 12. and she lost 10 pounds. And then she cut again, let's say, down to 900 calories and she lost another 5 pounds. So that lady is down 15 pounds in two months. And she thinks she's doing good. But boy, she's struggling because she's only eating 900 calories, doing her cardio classes like crazy.

And she's hanging on by a thread. But the only thing hanging on to her is that she's lost 50. She's halfway to her goal of 30 pounds. The other lady who's doing it with me and doing it right, she's the same two months down the road also. And her scale hasn't moved. But she's added nine pounds of muscle. she's lost nine pounds of fat she's eating now 2,200 calories totally different situation

and then I'm going to take that lady again up one more one more month we're going to go up to 2,600 calories and the other lady's like I can't cut anymore I'm more to eat 900 calories that's basically two two salads and a chicken breast a day is all I'm eating so she's like I just maybe I'll do more cardio more classes to get a little bit more weight down and then at the end of the end of that third month where that lady's eating 2,600 now maybe I go okay let's drop you down to 2,000 calories from your 2,600, and she just does this. Oh, and body fat just starts coming off like crazy. And then she's eating more than what she ate when she met me, and she's leaning out.

So she's more, she's comfortable with the calories she's eating because that's what she was eating anyways. She's eating more, and she's losing weight. That is a difference of getting yourself in a metabolic advantageous place versus working against your body and trying to muscle your way to fat loss. that gets in everybody's in the way of everybody. You know, what you're sharing here reminds me of one of my favorite interviews from this year,

2024, as we're recording here at the end of the year, there's a woman named Ginny McGonical. Don't know if you've heard about her before, but she's the oldest American ninja warrior. Oh, really? Right? She became an American ninja warrior, for those that don't know that.

You can Google it, but it's like the competitions, we have to, like, swing from different things, and it's an obstacle course. and she was at the age of 67, I believe. We'll fact check this afterwards and link to the episode. At the age of 67, she went in for a routine doctor's appointment. And they basically told her, hey, listen, you don't have osteoporosis yet, but you have osteopenia. Your bones are actually like not strong.

They're getting brittle. And you're on the road to getting one day osteoporosis. And she freaked out and she thought, how is this possible? I've been lean my entire life. I eat very little. I've been a ballet dancer, you know, an actress, other stuff, model. How is it possible that I'm in this situation? So she asked a doctor, what can I do to like deal with this?

And he said, well, there's not much that you can do. And then her daughter was at the time just starting to really get into this sort of way of living, exactly what you described here. And she said, mom, I think there's actually a lot. Her daughter was into CrossFit, was competing at some of the games and things like that and said, mom, there's actually a lot that you could do. Let's start off with the basics, though. Let's start having you eat more. Let's get you having some more protein in the diet, not eating just these super skinny salads that you're so used to, which you feel that helped you keep this thin physique as a dancer.

Let's get you eating more, eating more protein, and then let's get you working out a little bit, right? Just slowly. We're going to sort off once a week having you do some resistance training. I think even her daughter said, try a pull up. She couldn't even do one pull-up at the time when she first got started. And then she stayed consistent with it, little by little, being consistent on that program, making it a lifestyle. And I think it was like six months into it she could finally do like two pull-ups that were

there. And she felt really confident. Anyways, long story short, fast forward, she kept this up and she now made this a lifestyle, was eating more than she ever was eating before, having more protein consistently, and actually looking forward to her training regimen, and not worried about it. bulking up something that she was afraid of previously but actually being proud of the fact that she was developing strong muscles and regularly doing like five 10 pull-ups and then so she got excited at the age of I think it was right before her 70th birthday she said I'm going to enter into

this thing I'm going to set as a goal to enter into this American ninja warrior competition and she went and she competed I think she didn't do that great on her first one but she became the first, but she became the first and oldest person at that age to actually compete. And then she started crushing, you know, the competitions and everything that were there. But it's just the reminder. Oh, and the best part is she went back to her doctor a year and a half later on to get tested. And he said, not only do you not have osteopino, you've completely reversed this whole situation. So everything you're talking about here has real world implications, even for somebody who's thinking like, oh, am I too old at the age of 65, 70, 75?

You can make a massive difference today just by focusing on the basics. It's, you know, it was, my wife has got a pretty cool story with her journey with me. So we've been together for 14 years. And, you know, we met when we were older, right? So we met when I was 30. And by that time, I was wise enough to not tell my partner what to do, right? So I knew to just allow her to come to me when she was ready. because she's she's a collegiate level athlete.

So she was always fit, played basketball, ran a lot, and had trainers, even trainer before. And so I would watch the way she kind of ate and trained and always knew that like I had something to say to her, but I'm like, I'm not going to tell her until she comes to me. When she watched one of these transformation journeys that I did, she finally had, and this was after like four years we'd been together, she came to me and she goes, okay, like,

if you were to write my diet and my training, What would you do? I said, well, first of all, no more running. You're going to lift like this three days a week. I want you to focus on increasing your protein intake. And that's all we're going to focus on right now. And she's like, oh, grumbling, right? Begrudgingly followed this and did it.

You know, fast forward a year of her like following that. She just was blown away. She's 34, 35 at this time in the best shape of her life, better than she was at collegiate level. She'd been able to sculpt her physique too, which she's never been able to do, right? she always got in shape by running and playing sports and cutting calories, or she put on weight by overeating and not doing those things.

And that was kind of her way. And even when she weight trained, her form of weight training was always circuit-based. It was always high intensity because that's what all the athletes were doing. So it was jump boxes and plyometric stuff. And like, so in her head, I strength train. I lift weights. And I'd tell her like, no, that's not strength training.

Like you're basically doing cardio with weights. And so there's a way to do that also. And I think that's the other mistake. steak that people make is they, because they take an orange theory class or an F-45, which promotes this kind of circuit training, that's more like cardio than it's like traditional strength training. What you need to do as a woman, and this is men too, is you need to lift weights to build muscle, which means you have rest periods and you put on more weight and you get stronger, and you rest again, and then you put on more weight, and you hit that protein intake, and you

will start to build and school. And now she looks back and she's like, I'm, she's eating like a thousand more calories than she's ever been able to eat. She has all this metabolic flexibility. She's shaped and sculpted a better person. She's now in her 40s. And she looks better at her 40s after having a kid than she looked at 30 years old when I first met her as a ex-collegiate athlete. Wow. And that's just from adopting like that philosophy of training coming from someone who was an athlete and exercised, but did it in the form of how I feel like so many people do. They think just burn a lot of calories manually and do high intensity stuff and cut calories. And that's the mode of getting in shape when it's like, no, the beauty of lifting weights is you can sculpt

your physique. And when you sculpt your physique and you build muscle, you also build your metabolism, which gives you all this room and flexibility with the calories. You can eat way more with that extra 10 pounds of muscle on you than if all you try and do is burn calories all the time. And so it's so cool to look at her at 40-something years old after a kid and the frequency of her training and the intensity of her training. She doesn't have to do with that. She's got to go in and kind of touch the weights every once in and while and she maintains a better body and a better physique and a better metabolism in her mid-40s than she did it 30 years old coming out of college.

It's something that we would all want. Right. Something that we would all want. And that is possible if we can focus on just the basics and take out a little bit of the noise, which is what I really appreciate about your guys' channel and the business that you've built. You know, you're really here to help provide signal in this world of noise that just a few things done right is all we need to do to have.

our fittest year ever. 100%. You know, this is the first time you've been on this podcast. So again, thank you for coming on. For anybody here that's actually looking for some practical resources, you guys have a bunch. You have different programs you've put together. Yeah. What would you recommend to them after listening to this conversation?

If they're looking for a little bit more guidance, what's available for them? So I always drive people to mindpumpfrey.com. We have built a plethora of free guidance. guides and resources. It's absolutely free. And there's there's guides for every goal or thinking what there's even a 30 days of free coaching, which is like an email drip of tips, a lot of the tips that we give on the show that you can sign up for and you can get all that. That's all free stuff. I would send you that way first. You, you know, you talked about my journey. I think there's a lot of really good practical, basic advice. And that even though it's a

road of me getting like really shredded, the advice that I'm giving nutritionally and how I approach the lifting weights, everything from how I'm training to what exercises I choose, to me talking about the nutrition, probably really valuable for someone that's willing to watch that. That's on the YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. You can watch the whole journey. Direct people that way. I mean, I think take advantage of all our free content that we've put out there. And then hopefully we get you listening to the show after that.

Yeah. And for those that want more of a program or protocol? I mean, we have programs. We have lots. Yeah, we have, geez, we have 23, 24 different programs at Maps Fitness. products.com. But again, I always tell people to go take advantage of all of our free content first, and then the programs will find you. Amazing. Well, we'll link to all those in the show notes below. Adam, this has been great. Thanks for hosting me in your studio. It's been a pleasure to meet you in

person after watching your journey on YouTube for a little while now. Thank you so much for the practical advice that really is helping that 95% of the community that's out there. I put myself in that audience, people who want to live a big and healthy life, that fitness is a key goal of theirs. It's not the only goal of theirs, but it is a goal, fitness and health that when done right, gives them the energy, the focus, the longevity for everything else they care about. So super appreciate your brother and all the content you put out there. Thank you, Drew.