Habits and Hustle - Episode 492: Sal Di Stefano: The Morning Meal That Reduces Anxiety & Why Fasting Backfires

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Listen to the full episode: https://youtu.be/6jLhl8Zaznw?si=jaBuMbIWQApYpeEv  Why does starting your day with protein reduce anxiety for the rest of the day? In this Fitness Friday episode on the Habits and Hustle podcast, Sal Di Stefano joins me to break down the science of blood sugar control, why intermittent fasting is "a terrible way to lose weight," and the shocking truth about cardio versus strength training for fat loss. We also unpack the biggest mistake women make when tracking progress: obsessing over the scale instead of body composition. Sal explains why 40% of weight lost through cardio comes from muscle, shares a study where strength training alone beat cardio AND strength training combined for fat loss, and reveals why psychologists now prescribe high-protein breakfasts to anxious patients. Sal Di Stefano is a fitness expert with over 20 years of personal training experience and co-host of the Mind Pump podcast, one of the top-rated fitness shows in the world. What we discuss: How protein at breakfast controls blood sugar and reduces anxiety throughout the day The two-question filter for any fitness advice: "Will I do it?" and "Is it realistic?" Intermittent fasting's original purpose and why it fails for weight loss Cortisol addiction and the binge-restrict cycle fasting creates When cold plunges hurt more than help for overstressed people Cardio vs strength training: why 40% of cardio weight loss comes from muscle The study where strength training alone beat cardio for fat loss Ditching the scale: better metrics for tracking body transformation Thank you to our sponsor: Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off  Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers. Magic Mind: Head over to www.magicmind.com/jen and use code Jen at checkout. Momentous: Shop this link and use code Jen for 20% off  Manna Vitality: Visit mannavitality.com and use code JENNIFER20 for 20% off your order  Prolon: Get 30% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit https://prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Find more from Sal:  Instagram: @mindpumpdistefano   Podcast: https://mindpumppodcast.com/ X: https://x.com/mindpumpsal  Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen   Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements

Hi, guys. It's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. Hey, friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up. You know I'm all about finding an edge, the small daily habits that give you more energy, focus, and resilience. But that's why I am hooked on mana vitality. Most people are mineral deficient, and that means low energy, brain fog, slow recovery, and dull skin. But mana flips the switch by giving your body a complete spectrum of minerals it actually knows how to use. We're talking Shilajit from the Himalayas, Ormos from the Dead Sea, and marine plasma from the ocean, plus amino acids and 88 other trace minerals. The benefits are real. We're talking steady all-day

energy, sharper focus, faster recovery, a stronger immunity plus glowing skin. But the biggest win, it fuels your cells for real longevity. Think of it as like a cellular switch-on formula, not as a stimulant, but the raw power your body needs to create energy and repair itself. Try it now, and I bet you'll be hooked to. Go to manavitality.com and use code Jennifer 20 for a discount. That's manavitality.com. M-A-N-N-A-vitality.com and use code Jennifer 20. This is actually a piece of information that I bide by, but I want to know if I'm off base here. Is it better to have a protein and a fat in the morning versus a carb and a protein? Yeah, there's not even a debate on that.

If you eat protein in the morning, your blood sugar levels, your insulin sensitivity, your blood glucose, for the rest of the day is better if you start off with protein. So let's say same calories, same macros, identical diet, except a carb meal is in the morning on one day, and then the other one is a protein meal. So you just switch out the meals. Otherwise, everything else is identical. Blood sugar is going to be better controlled by starting off the day with protein. Now, someone might be like, well, why is that important? You know, who cares, right?

Same calories. You'll gain the same fat or not. Here's why blood sugar is important. And I know there's a lot of debates, like insulin sensitivity, mitochondrial health. I don't need to go down and break down. This is where the science nerds in the health and fitness space. lose people because they start to argue the minutiaiae and the mitochondrial health and what are the average person's like whatever like they don't they don't understand it they also who cares

I like that stuff I think is cool but here's the important thing the reason why you don't want high spikes and blood sugar and drops and blood sugar because that affects your behaviors it affects how you feel highs and lows mean you're going to feel anxious and fatigue irritable and hungry cravings and not hungry so why do you want to control your blood sugar besides all the other stuff that they like to talk about. The main thing is it affects how you feel. Do you want to feel good or do you want to feel crazy cravings all the way all day long or do you want to feel like you're kind of in control? So start your day off with a protein. In fact, you're starting to see psychologists now start to recommend that their anxious patients start their day off with

a high protein meal. That's now starting to become a prescription when they say, oh, oh, you have lots of anxiety, whatever. And there's other stuff they look at, of course, but they'll say start your day off with, you know, 30 grams of protein. And then you'll see people report back and like, well, my anxiety's so much better. Right. Yeah, they were feeling anxiety from the blood sugar spikes. Well, what about the fat? Do you believe in the idea that you should be eating your protein in fat or your breakfast 30 minutes upon waking?

Or what do you believe in that? Splitting hairs. It doesn't matter. Yeah, I think you're splitting hairs with something like that because I know what most people's mornings look like. So, you know what I would, okay, let's say somebody makes the argument that you should wake up and not eat for an hour. So they're like, okay, here's the science. The data shows that you wake up. and don't eat anything for an entire hour.

But let's say you're the average person. So like 90-something percent of the people watching this, they're going to be like, uh, God, I wake up and then I got to get the kids ready and I got to get ready for work and this is going on. And then maybe let's say they got sold by the person I'm talking to podcast.

They're like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get my alarm and I'm going to wake up an hour early. Well, now what you've done is you've just taken away an hour of sleep, which is far more important for their health than waiting an hour to eat their meal. So it's like one of the problems that people face with their health. and fitness isn't that they're necessarily doing the wrong things. It's that they put things in

the wrong priority. So it's like, wake up an hour early so I don't eat for an hour is lower and the priority list than getting that extra hour of sleep. So don't trade dimes, you know, don't trade quarters for dimes. In advertising, they say trade dimes for quarters, right? Spend 10 cents, get 25 cents back. People are doing this with their health and fitness. They're giving 25 cents getting 10 cents back. Yeah, yeah, I woke up an hour early so I don't have to eat for an hour. But yeah, now you got six hours of sleep, which is far worse for you. It's totally true, but there's so, like, that's the problem what's happening, though. People are very confused and they hear different people saying different things.

And then they're not sticking to one thing. They're trying everything and, like, they're getting no results, right? Yes, this is how you should, you should whittle it down. Will I do it? That's number one, because if you won't do it, I don't care how effective it is. It's nothing. There's no effectiveness if you don't do it. So will I do it?

And you have to ask yourself honestly, like, will I always do it or only when I'm motivated or whatever? So will I always do it? Number one. Number two, what's the commitment of this? And is the commitment realistic for me? And then that's it. Those are the two big things. And then three is like, okay, effectiveness. Like what within that context? What can I do that's most effective within that context? So, you know, if somebody says to me, what's the most effective form of exercise? I'll typically say, well, what forms of exercise do you enjoy doing the most? Let's start there. And if they say, well, I don't care, then okay, I can give you a different answer. But if they say, oh, man, I love, I love riding my bike. It's my favorite thing to do. Like, I get so much. destroy from it. Okay, well, let's talk about how to make that as effective as possible for you, because that's what you're going to do. Yeah, that's what you're going to do. Exactly. But I believe that, like, everything always shifts, like, the pendulum always goes the other way. Even with, like, fasting, intermittent fasting, right? Like, everyone was like, that's the best thing to do. It's the best thing in the world. I was never a person that liked it. And so I knew it wasn't

going to be for me. And then people would make, like, would basically shame me into the idea that I was, I was eating breakfast and I was eating dinner. Yeah. Right. And so can you tell us, what is your thought on intermittent fasting and who is good for it and who is not good for? Fasting, fasting is the oldest, it's the oldest diet known to man. Okay. It was never intended. And the reason why, okay, so things that have lasted a long time have passed the test of evolution in the sense of ideas, right? So ideas that humans have had that have stuck around for thousands of years typically means there's some value there. So like, why have cultures done this thing for thousands of years. Why is it common among multiple cultures? There's got to be value there.

Fasting is present in every major world religion, both eastern and western, okay? It was never to lose weight. It was detachment. It was always a way to detach from worldly things. Most world religions will tell you that worshiping worldly things is a path to hell, right? It's like in the Christian Bible, it's, you know, idolatry, right? Or, you know, or the Judeo-Christian religions don't have any other God before me. It's literally, do not worship worldly things because they will lead you down a dark path. Typically, it's money, power, pleasure, or fame, what they used to call honor. But detachment is very powerful, right? Do you get value from spiritual value, from not eating for three days? Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you grow up like we live now where food is everywhere.

You've never felt hungry before. You think you feel hunger, but no, that's cravings. You've never been without. You've never, like, there's spiritual value in that, okay? The problem is people take that and they say, oh, wow, I lost weight because I didn't eat for three days. Here's how I'm going to market it. And so then it became a diet. By the way, we used to call that starving yourself when I was a trainer in the 90s. I still call it that, by the way. So, okay, so why do people lose weight on it and find a lot of value? Because they're eating less. Bottom line. That's it. Because they're eating less. I mean, if you look at all the autophagy benefits and all the whatever benefits that they'll highlight, we have studies now comparing a calorie restricted diet to fasting and we

find that the results are identical. There aren't cases where fasting may be beneficial for people with really severe gut issues where they need to reduce inflammation, give their gut a break. These people work with a functional medicine practitioner. It's very specific. But otherwise, if you're fasting for weight loss, that is a terrible way to lose weight because here's what you're encouraging with fasting. If you're doing it for weight loss, if you're doing it for spiritual purposes, it's great. It's good to test the time. If you're doing it for fat loss, it's terrible because what you're encouraging is a binge-restrict behavior with yourself. What you're encouraging is a restrict, restrict, restrict, eating window, binge.

Anybody who's fastened for long enough will tell you that this starts to happen. This is not a healthy behavior. You don't want to eat in this way where you have to fit all your calories in this window and then I'm so hungry, but oh, I got to wait until five o'clock type of deal. Not good. Also, there's also the stress that it can place on the body. Women seem to be more sensitive to this than men. Men seem to be more resistant to the stress of fasting than women, probably due to evolutionary reasons, maybe because women bear children.

But what you'll find with people who chronically fast is cortisol levels that don't look very good. Estrogen progesterone levels start to go a little out of whack. And they'll start to display signs of, even with their calories are adequate, they'll start to display signs of too much stress, hair loss, you know, hot, cold intolerance, you know, that kind of stuff. Fasting does, if you go for X amount, I don't remember what the hours are, eight hours or so, you start to see increased production of catacolamines, epinephrine, noropenephrine. This is why people initially get addicted and they feel good. They're like, oh, my God, have all this energy. What's happening is your body's spiking up these catacolamines to get you more motivated to find food.

So like, if you're in nature and you go without food, your body spikes up like, all right, give this person some energy. We've got to find some food, but people get addicted to this high. But too many catacolamines, norophenephrine, epinephrine, you know, cortisol. cortisol even feels good. High cortisol feels good. Cortisol is an energy-producing hormone. That's why it's high in the morning

and it starts to taper off at night. In fact, there's an argument to be said that there are people who are, you could refer to as cortisol junkies. Yeah. Where their stress levels have made their cortisol so high that they become resistant that they actually seek out stressful situations

to produce that feeling. So these people are like, they're typically a type A, but they'll get addicted to like high-intensity exercise. They tend to be late all the time. They tend to be in stressful conversations. all the time because without realizing it, they're causing spikes in cortisol that start to make them feel better. Over time, though, this causes you to crash. It's like being a drug addict.

Oh, yeah. It's not good. Not good at all. But I can pick out cortisol addicts now pretty easily when I meet people. But also, it's not for why also cold plunges, right? Because all the same things happen when you do a cold plunge. Also, if you're on the level of too much stress, a lot of things go into the stress bucket. Exercise is one of them. You know, if you're in a calorie deficit, that'll go into one of them. Of course, conversations with people, lifestyle, lack of sleep, all goes into this stress bucket. And if you have too much stress, adding more stress is just terrible. It doesn't matter if you think it's a good stress like workout or cold plunge or fasting. So then you'll get these people who, you know, are overstressed already and they're working out and then they try

fasting and at first they feel good, but then they start to overstress their bodies and then they start to get hormone imbalances, don't know what the hell's going on. They go to a functional medicine practitioner and they're like, you are in, you know, stage four adrenal fatigue, what they used to call it, or HPA access dysfunction. And the first thing they'll do is they'll tell them, eat breakfast, like stop fasting. Not good for you. So we've done several episodes on why you should not fast for weight loss. It's a, it's an absolute terrible approach. And we always get some pushback less now than we used to because I think a lot of people have done it long enough to be like, oh yeah, this isn't great. So yeah. And I think that like everything always has

like a bat, like it always, that always swings the other way. So do you think that the ice, like the cold plunge is more hype than real, even though, like I said, it does have some benefits? Yeah. If we took sleep, diet, activity, and lifestyle, which would include like interpersonal relationships and stuff like that. So if we take those things, those four things, those make up, I don't know, 98% of what is going to contribute to health, longevity, energy, all that stuff. The 2% you can put other stuff in the category like cold plunge, red light therapy, sauna, supplements, and stuff like that. That's how little of an impact it makes in comparison to those other things. Now, why am I saying that?

Because you're getting a lot of people who have crappy sleep, aren't eating well, whatever, and they're like, I'm going to go get a cold plunge. that's going to solve a lot of my issues. Now, if it leads to better behaviors, so sometimes there's this effect. So this is the other thing, too. Sometimes people make that step, and then that step leads to better other behaviors. So someone will be like, oh, you know, they have a bad diet, they don't actually, but they get a cold plunge. But because they took that first step of cold plunging, now they start to work out.

And they start, in that case, it's totally fine. Right. It basically could be like an impetus or a catalyst to be doing all the other things right. Correct. But it can be, a cold plunge can be the wrong application. If you're borderline on the edge of too much stress, I do not think a cold plunge is a good idea. You're just going to cortisol yourself to death by doing it. You should do things that are relaxing, not shocking to the body.

Like sauna. Even a sauna can be too much stress. Because that can be too much stress. Even a sauna can be, you should do things like meditate, mindfulness, prayer, you know, maybe get better sleep, you know, place more focus on the quality of your sleep. Cold plunge is very valuable for people who have things kind of already in balance and they can handle a little bit more stress, then there's some really good immune system boosting effects. It's very valuable for athletes who are constantly teetering on the edge of overtraining and they

want to practice more, but they just can't recover enough. A cold plunge can kind of help give them another three, four percent so they can go and do more training. But yeah, it's definitely been over-hyped in that sense. Isn't it crazy how popular it's become this whole hot, cold therapy where like there's now like tons of uh studios popping up with cold plunges like like Starbucks most people would benefit from simply exposing themselves to the elements a little bit more so you know I want to I do also want to say this and you know I want to give credit to this right our body's ability to acclimate to temperature changes is a muscle that is atrophied in us okay because we're constantly in temperature controlled environments so there's definitely value and

allowing that muscle to be exercised. So if you've ever lived in a very hot environment or a very cold environment, you know how you can kind of get used to it. Like if you've ever, I used to, years ago, I had a stake of an ownership in a gym in Palm Springs, right? In the summer, it gets hot as hell then. 120 degrees, okay? Yeah. I lived there for long enough to where when I came back up here to San Jose, it'd be like 90 degrees and I wouldn't feel that hot because I got used to the 120. Right, they're acclimated. Yeah. It is, right. Then I, you know, I'd have friends of mine that came from like Minnesota or Chicago, they'd come over here. It'd be 50 degrees outside and they'd be in shorts and T-shirts.

And I'd be like, what are you doing? It's freezing. Like, this is beautiful. The sun's out or whatever. So your body learns how to acclimate. That's a muscle that I think is important to strengthen. But it's under, let's get some activity. Let's eat right.

Let's get good sleep. Let's have good relationships with people. You know, that's the order of priority with those kinds of things. Now, that being said, if you're doing everything right and you add cold plunge in sauna, there's definite health benefits and there's data. especially heat. There's vasodilating effects and cardiovascular benefits from, you know, from using things like a sauna that are pretty, pretty awesome. There's also a detoxify. I hate to use the word detox. But if, let's say you have heavy metal or mold toxicity, you know, sweating is one way

to get it out. So it just kind of helps accelerate the process. Is sweating a myth in the sense that like I think psychologically, that's why I do cardio. I like to, I like cardio because I feel like it makes me sweat, so therefore I'm burning calories, I'm exercising. And I mean, even though I know, you know, theoretically and just my knowledge base is that you don't have to be sweating. That's what I think. Why is it so connected? Is there any truth to the idea that sweating more burns more calories, helps you lose weight? No. Not that, but are there benefits to sweating? Yeah, your body's getting, one way your body detoxify, can detoxify, is through the sweating process. But weight loss.

Not, I know there's a ton of benefits to sweating, but is there a correlation between sweating? It's hard to separate. And cow. And here's why it's hard to separate. Fat loss. Weight loss. Can improving your health help you with fat loss? Yes.

So if sweating more through activity or heat is improving your health, then it probably will help. I don't think it's going to be like this huge dramatic effect, though, where you're like, oh my God, because I sweat more. now I'm burning, you know, I've lost three more pounds of body fat. The weight loss, typically on scale, is water. It's water. But I do think, I don't think, I know there's, there's plenty of data to show that sweating is, there's some benefit. And functional medicine practitioners will often advise people to do things that induce sweating when they need to get rid of things like mold or heavy metals. Yeah. And that's, by the way, it's in combination with other things. They don't just do that. They'll do things like they'll have

meat, things that chelate or, you know, things like spirulina and chlorala to help bind. Yeah, and pull it out. Yes. Okay, this is what I wanted to. This is something that I think I want to ask you about. Like, I'm asking for a friend. Yes. Yeah.

Okay. So, let's talk about this whole cardio weights conundrum here, right? So cardio, right? The interesting thing is, like, the harder you push on cardio, the hungrier you get, and therefore you eat more, therefore not able to get that calorie deficit plus breaking down your muscle, okay? Versus the strength. Like, how do you delicately balance doing cardio and not getting famished and starving to the point where

you're eating 10 times the amount of calories? So here's what's interesting. Again, I'm going to, you know, a little caveat here, right? If you love cardio and that's the way you work out and you get lots of value from it, it's healthy. And you do it right, right? You don't overdo it or whatever. It's good for you. There's nothing wrong with it.

Same thing with strength, but let's just say the person's like they don't care. Okay. So what's the difference? No, what if they do care? It's more for the person who's like trying to get a way. away from cardio, move more into strength. So here's why cardio does that. When you're burning calories manually, your body aggressively tries to figure out how to balance

out your caloric output with your caloric intake or your caloric intake with your output aggressively. So if you burn X amount of calories doing cardio, it will bump your appetite up to try to drive you to eat more. It'll reduce activity outside of the cardio. So they've actually done studies while they put trackers on people. They work out hard in the morning. They move less during the day, like without even realizing it.

It'll try to balance it out that way. It'll also pair muscle down to reduce your calorie outputs to try and make you more efficient. So this is why weight loss in studies with cardio and calorie restriction results in about 40% of the weight being from muscle. So you lose 10 pounds, like four pounds come from muscle. And it's not burning muscle down. You said breakdown. That's not necessarily what's happening. It's more of an adaptation process.

Your body's just trying to become more efficient with calories. So that's what cardio does. Now why cardio, you need endurance and stamina. and while you do it, you do burn a lot of calories. You burn more calories in an hour of cardio than any other form of exercise. So you need lots of endurance and stamina. You don't need a lot of strength.

You're burning a lot of calories where you do it. Oh, let's get rid of muscle. We don't need a lot of strength. We just need stamina. And since we're burning so many calories, it's reduce the amount of calories you burn while we do it so that we can become more efficient cardio machines. So that's what ends up happening.

Now, strength training is different. Strength training doesn't burn a ton of calories while you do it. It's actually one of the lowest calorie burning forms of exercise and a per hour. I'm talking about traditional strength training, not the bologna strength training, quote unquote, where you're just cardio with weights, but like real strength training. You do a set of eight reps, your rest for two or three minutes, then you do another one.

You don't burn a lot of calories. But what you are doing is you're sending a very strong signal to the body, especially if you pair it with proper nutrition, that says we need strength. The primary adaptation that we want right now, because the danger being posed upon us is requiring strength. And we're not burning a lot of calories. So let's add muscle. It's okay if we add some muscle.

We can bump our metabolism, because then you're also feeding yourself. So it's like, look, we got plenty of food, we need strength, add muscle. So your body will build more muscle. And so those are the two signals that are happening. Both of them can increase your appetite. I find, in my opinion, this is my anecdote, cardio creates more of the strong acute cravings, where strength training can generally cause an increase in appetite from a boost of metabolism.

So what you'll find with cardio is, I did a really intense cardio session this morning. Oh, my God. By lunchtime or dinner, I'm like, crazy. leaving like I am starving. Strength training doesn't seem to cause that acute rise in appetite, but more of a slow rise in appetite that's coming from fueling this new added tissue. By the way, there was a study that was done, Jen, that I don't know if you saw this, but they compared strength training to cardio to strength training plus cardio to look at fat loss. These were diabetic individuals, but they were looking at fat loss. Strength training outperformed the other

ones. They even outperformed a little bit slightly, even outperforms strength training plus cardio, but it definitely outperformed cardio for fat loss, for pure fat loss. Oh, I believe it. It's just hard to get your brain to that place. I know.