Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 555 - Your Metabolism Is Preventing Weight Loss...

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

We keep hearing people can't lose weight because their metabolism is messed up. Are they correct? We discuss this in today's episode. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off the Power Project Panel! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use ode "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

A lot of wrestlers, when they do wrestling promos, they yell. I can see him. I'm going to smash you on August 31st. Beat you up with a chair or whatever. But Jake the Snake Roberts, he used to whisper. That's creepy. He'd be like, when I get in that ring with you, it's going to be the biggest mistake of your life. And you'd be like, huh?

But it would draw people in. They'd be like, what is he saying? Everybody else would be super quiet you know i remembered good strategy good strategy i remember i would always be like oh my god i can't believe he put somebody in a bag with the snake like the scariest thing i've ever seen in my whole life oh yeah you take out a giant snake and put it on top of people yeah that's terrifying all of that wrestling is like before i got into wrestling when i was watching wrestling it was stone cold the rock the undertaker triple h it was that era and cane and cane don't forget about cane bro you're the scariest motherfucker dude dude no the undertaker was the scariest motherfucker he gave me nightmares because he'd be like great

yeah i would not sleep because of that motherfucker so i i started like really terrifying yes really watching the wwe when um when he was american badass when he was like coming in and harley and like yeah the kid rock song so sick dude oh my god so good that was uh like the smackdown era so the rock and sock connection um at that point stone cold was like hurt the whole damn time what year was this the rock and sock so good mankind yeah with the fucking puppet socko oh my god that was good that was like 1999 or something about yeah 2000 early 2000 late 90s what's the name of the king guy with the dreads you guys know what i'm talking about he was king something and he had dreads like long dreads he was super jacked uh long dreads oh um i'm kind of thinking of booker t but you're not talking about it's not booker t no it's not booker t uh i don't think

for root because i was who had long dreads i don't remember anybody with long dreads. Hopefully somebody in the chat room can figure it out. That wrestling was sick. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. It's this guy. What the fuck's his name? What's the name of this guy? Oh, that is Booker T. What the hell?

That is Booker T. Damn it. Okay, it was Booker T. Yeah, Booker T did have pretty long dreads after a while. I guess I didn't really recognize how long they got. So right around where I stopped watching was when they combined the WCW and the WWF. That's when I stopped watching. Not because I hate WCW, because that shit was amazing, too.

And then Rob Van Dan and all those fuckers from ECW. They all came in. Yeah, but that's just, I don't know, maybe I just got a little bit told. I got to say, the sickest move is a choke slam. Yes. So when I was in Utah, we were just filming some stuff for the Steak Shake. Hurts. There was a dude there that was 6'9", and he was like 440 pounds.

He's a strongman competitor. Jesus Christ. He just looked like a giant wall. I mean, he's just fucking huge. And the whole time I'm just thinking, this motherfucker is going to choke slam me with those giant ass hands. He's going to grab me by the throat like the undertaker would do to people. And he's just going to pick me up and just slam my fucking ass on the ground.

Oh, geez. But luckily he was nice and he didn't do that to me. That's good. Yeah. Whenever I see large, like very tall people, I just keep my distance.

Yeah. Watch them and keep my distance. They brought in all these people that were huge. I was like, I'm supposed to like interview these people on how they like the taste of the steak shake, and I'm going to have to stand on a ladder or something. This isn't very good. I can't stop thinking about wrestling now.

I remember when The Rock started doing movies, he always had some form of that choke slam in the script. He would choke slam somebody and you're like oh where's the elbow oh wait that was wrestling yeah he would give somebody like a rock bottom a lot yeah there you go yeah not just like rock bottom yeah which is kind of similar similar but yeah what's that okay so there is a scorpion king but there was this one movie where he uh he played this dude and rundown rundown that was so good i've seen that movie like four times have you guys seen be cool no holy shit so it's like kind of like the uh uh like get shorty part two so i guess you don't have to watch get shorty but watch be cool if you watch if you watch be cool it will make total

sense why the rock is so fucking successful because he is great in that movie he is so funny he's basically plays like the muscle oh god he has an afro that's so funny he like he kind of plays like the muscle for uh vince vaughn and his uh he's a rap producer but he's a i'm not gonna spoil it but he is he's like he's that's him in that oh no way it's the i never seen that john travolta uh what's her name umma thurman umma thurman killed if i have any recommendation that you ever follow through and watch it's going to be this movie be cool is so good so i didn't know you were watching that much wrestling when i was younger yeah i think we all everybody what that's called the attitude error right my wife right before i started watching yeah you need to ask april about this When I was younger, yeah. I think we all, everybody. That was called the attitude error, right? My wife.

Right before I started watching. Yeah. You need to ask April about this. Oh, God. My wife and April watched a match between, I think it was Triple H and Mankind. Maybe it was just, oh, it was just Triple H and Mankind. And Mankind gave Triple H like a backdrop, which is a move where you like, the guy goes to like do something to you and you like kind of throw him over your shoulder

and the guy like lands on his back. So he did this outside the ring and Triple H landed on a pallet. And the pallet, the wood from the pallet, spiked through his boot and through his calf. And these two guys killed each other for another like 30 or 40 minutes. I mean, this was, you know, wrestling, you know, there's a lot of stage stuff and things

like that. But this was a piece of wood that jabbed right through his calf and they finished the match. They beat the hell out of each other. But the greatest thing is that my wife and my sister-in-law, April, they watched the whole thing and they just, they had their jaw hitting the ground the whole time. I love it. They're like, this is fucking amazing. They're like, if you ever showed anybody a wrestling match, you know, don't show them

any of the boring shit. Like show them this match right here. These guys are killing each other. I haven't seen that match, but that just sounds not a damn. Like, how do you go through that? Must be painkillers. It must be something. It must be something.

Unfortunately. Just being a man. There was another match too. That was a three-way. Can I get a hey now? Yeah. There was a three-way. Can I get a, Hey, now there was a three-way match and, and Kurt angle was in it and he got a concussion and they took him,

they took him to the back and like, he literally had a concussion. It's not like part of the wrestling angle. He literally was really fucked up. And the way that the match was scheduled, you know, they got the three guys involved. And so there's like,

there's like a certain script that you're supposed to follow. Now there's not the third guy. So the other guys, they go through a lot of the stuff they're supposed to go through. And Kurt Angle comes back out and helps finish the match just because that was the— Oh, damn. They kind of needed him, you know? Yeah. And so not the smartest thing to do probably with a concussion but uh he went back out there and finished the match it was pretty wild i remember him and uh jericho had beef

that was hilarious because jericho was just like a silly shit talking guy and then at that time kurt angle was like super square you know olympic wrestler and it was just it was just such an awesome fucking little like beef that they had between each other. What year did Cena get in? Because I didn't watch any of it. Yeah, he came in a little bit later. He was still training at that time. Getting himself prepared.

Yeah, what you sipping on in SEMA? Some coffee and some raspberry alimente. Alimente! I had some chocolate element this morning with some chocolate steak shake with an ice with a cold brew coffee. And it was so good. And then I came in here and benched like a motherfucker. I'll save this for later. Yeah.

Five plates was fucking crazy. Move that in a minute. I'm bringing that strength back around. I love it. Yeah. I had I had orange salt this morning for my workout. Don't be sleeping on that orange one.

I like that one for multiple reasons. I like it for breakfast. It reminds me of having an orange juice for breakfast when I was not eating too well. Do you think they're going to make an eggplant one? Let's not even. Is eggplant a fruit? Will it taste like will it be it's salty would make sense right if it's just a little bit salty they could just maybe creamy

creamy and salty gross yeah but i think the the one thing that's cool if y'all get that one that was a kind of deep cut this drink tastes like nuts it tastes like salt oh yeah a little salty sweaty um what i was gonna say though was like electrolytes is the one supplement that you really like feel the difference you know that's why i end up like forgetting to take certain supplements like vitamin d and stuff even though it's great for you because i don't feel it right creatine i don't feel it but i drink coffee i make sure i don't forget my electrolytes because i feel different when i'm not hydrated so yeah when you don't have it you're like i fucking made a mistake or what do i need

like you're like oh i didn't take my electrolytes today like you feel that shit yeah try to substitute it with salt and it's not the same thousand milligrams of sodium uh 300 potassium 60 magnesium fucking great combo absolutely uh to pick yours, head over to drinklmnt.com slash powerproject. No code needed, but I think they're still offering a free element recharge pack at the time of this recording. But if not, check out the value bundle because you're going to get four boxes. So any four flavors you want, although I know right now the new grapefruit salt is sold out. Really? That one was really good.

We're responsible for that one. We talk about it all the time uh but anyway you can get uh four four different boxes at four different flavors for the price of three again it's at drink lmnt.com slash power project head over there right now while we chat on this podcast all right so let's get to it we're talking about the metabolism today metabolism and, tabulism. And I hear people often say that they wreck their metabolism through some sort of diet. Yeah. My issue is a lot of times these people aren't really like people that are trying to get on stage, do a show. And then also, just for this entire show, let's put aside anyone that has an eating disorder,

because some people that take it that far, obviously, you would run into a lot of health implications. So we're not talking about people that have issues with that, but we are talking about people that want to lose fat, that do want to be in better shape. And sometimes they maybe go about it the wrong way, and then just sometimes they'll say things that I think aren't really true, but maybe they're identifying with it because they got it from somebody else. They'll hear a competitor say, oh, I did this diet and it messed me up and it screwed up my metabolism. My metabolism is now broken and it's harder for me to lose body fat now. What do you think of some of that? Well, I mean, a lot of it does come from competitors,

but like the, you know what? Nah, I'm not going to go there just yet. When you go on any type of caloric deficit or any type of diet, your metabolism will slow down. And that's not a bad thing. It's part of dieting. Like there are, there are a few parts of the metabolism that we should pay attention to. There's obviously the basal metabolic rate, which is the amount of calories your body

burns at rest. There's NEAT, which we've talked about a lot, but that's non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So like you guys notice, I move around a lot. We stand. We're usually fidgeting quite a bit. That's part of NEAT. It's the calories you're burning that you're not really paying attention to because you're a mover or you're not. But when you go into a caloric deficit, typically a lot of people, their NEAT goes down,

right? So you stop fidgeting or you find that you want to sit more or you find that you want to be off your feet more. And it's just, it's a natural way for your body to be like, oh, we're not getting enough calories. Let's, let's slow things down. There's the calories you burn during exercise. So exercise activity, thermogenesis, and there's thermocollective food. But when you go into caloric deficit, your metabolism slows down. And I think one thing that a lot of people need to pay attention to, especially people that are listening, if you're just trying to drop a few pounds or drop a little bit of body fat, a lot of people try to go into too harsh of a deficit. So let's say that their metabolism is at a maintenance of 2000 calories and they go to 1,200.

You'll drop pretty quickly, but your metabolism will also slow down. You won't burn as much calories during working out because you're not taking enough food. And you might hit a plateau quick. So what happens when people usually hit a hard plateau is they're like, I'm not dropping weight at 1,200 calories. I got to decrease more. I must have metabolic damage. And that's not necessarily the case.

Most people don't have metabolic damage is a thing. And it's not something that you can't get out of. You can get out of it. But I think more people think they have that than actually have that. I agree. I think that it would take a long time to induce so much damage that it's hard to reverse your way back out of it. And I think a lot of times what I'm seeing is somebody will say, man, that didn't work for me. I really messed myself up, which is a good observation, meaning like goal when you were on the diet? Your goal was to lose some weight. Did you lose some weight? Did you achieve that? If you did lose some weight, then the diet actually did work for you. When you say it doesn't work for you, maybe it's something that you don't wish to follow any longer. And that is a concern. That is legit. You no longer want to do it. You want to switch to

something else so that makes a lot of sense to me but what doesn't make a lot of sense is when someone says that i did that diet for a while and when i came off it i gained all my weight back it's like well yeah because the diet only diet you know is kind of uh in reference to that it's something that is inclusive with your lifestyle. And so every time your lifestyle changes, if it goes back to a lifestyle that promotes some bad habits, then you're going to gain the weight back. So you have to, unfortunately, and I hate using the word have to, but you kind of have to go from one diet to another diet or some other plan that you're going to be able to integrate

into your lifestyle and so when you say a diet doesn't work for you that might be a decent observation uh but it's more like the style of diet didn't fit your lifestyle great and so now you're thinking about switching to something different yeah i sorry i just want to get this point out there like i really don't like when i hear people say like, oh, I tried keto and it didn't work for me and it doesn't work. Or, uh, you're right, Mark. Like, yeah, I did keto for a little bit, but as soon as I came off all the way, it came back. So keto doesn't work. Um, if you have a job where you work eight to five Monday through Friday, you get paid and then you stop working and you no longer have that job. Will you say working doesn't work for making money?

Because as soon as I stopped working, I was broke again. Like you kind of have to keep going. You know, we always talk about when it comes to lifting, making sure that whatever program you do is sustainable. Right. So you're not going to initially step into the gym and start working out seven days a week. Right. Doing heavy power lifts every single day because you might manage that for a week, maybe two. But at some point, you're going to get so fatigued that you might just get injured and you need to kind of you got to slow that down because you won't keep making progress.

I think we kind of need to look at diet progression in the same way that we look at some of our lifting progression. We need to look at sustainability. So is dropping your calories by 50% going to be sustainable in the long run? Unless you're obese or, or, or morbidly obese where you have a lot of weight to lose, because that can work

for obese individuals because they have so much fat on their body. Um, it's going to be rough on their, uh, on their appetite, but they can actually maintain a decent amount of muscle, still go through their day, still not still drop weight for a long period of time with a harsh deficit. But for a lot of people who are trying to do this, the intensity of your diet plays a big role in terms of if you're actually going to be able to get to the end goal. Because if you're too intense, too quick, what happens is it's like, have you heard of the Oprah effect? Go ahead and explain. I kind of got what you're saying, but yeah. Yeah. So Oprah Winfrey, I love that woman, by the way. She's an amazing interviewer.

So smart. But Oprah has always talked about diets for years and years and years on her show. And one thing you'll notice when you watch the Oprah show, if you've watched it through the years, my mom loved it. So I was able to see Oprah's progression myself. You see Oprah lose weight, but then you see Oprah come back the next season and she's heavier. And then she comes back the next season and she's dropped a little bit of weight.

She looks a little bit better. But the next season, Oprah comes back and she's heavier. And what happens is that when you go into an intense dieting phase and you do harsh caloric restriction, your metabolism slows down. But you hit a plateau. And most people, they're like, the diet didn't work. So immediately, like you mentioned, they go back to their old habits and they start eating maybe what they were eating before. And because they had such harsh caloric restriction, now their appetite's crazy. So they start binging a little bit here and there and eating excess calories on certain days.

And they gain a lot of weight back. But now they gain a lot of weight back with a slower metabolism. They gain even more weight. But then they're like, oh, let me diet again. So they diet again, they lose a little bit of weight, but then the diet doesn't work because they did a harsh caloric deficit. They gain too much weight back and it's a cycle heading upwards. It's not metabolic damage.

It's just, you don't have good dieting habits. That's all. And it can be easily fixed if you take a more moderate approach. I like what you're saying there a lot. And you mentioned, uh, your metabolism slowing down. So let's stick on that a little bit longer and let's figure out what that means. So

you mentioned the thermic effect of food. So you take in food, it takes a certain amount of energy for your body to assimilate, break down that food, and I guess turn it into energy, right? Yeah. Protein is a little bit harder for the body to utilize as a source of energy. So the thermic effect of protein is different than some of the other macronutrients. And so I think that one thing could be stagnant. So if you get in and you take like Oprah, for example, if she got in adequate amounts of protein, she, I don't know what she was doing with for example, if she got in adequate amounts of protein, she, I don't know what she was doing with her calories. If they were plummeting down really,

really low, then maybe she still would have lost muscle. And every time she gained her weight back, maybe she would still gain body fat. But if the protein was staying true and staying around one gram per pound of body weight, she probably would have been able to sustain that. Is that right? staying around one gram per pound of body weight, she probably would have been able to sustain that. Is that right? Probably. And that's the thing with a lot of people, especially with celebrities. A lot of celebrities get on fad diets. So you got to imagine the type of dieting that she was promoting at the time sometimes was like no carb dieting, very low protein type dieting. A lot of at the time, it was low fat too in that generation. And they were demonizing fats and they weren't eating a lot of protein.

So you got to imagine those were probably the types of diets that she was trying to do. Kind of a fat-free-ish diet. Yes, because fat was demonized hardcore back in the day. So you got to imagine, probably wasn't doing a crazy amount of resistance training. And again, a lot of those people, it's lose weight fast, especially within that type of culture, celebrity culture. How can we lose as most weight as possible as fast as possible? And when you try to lose as most weight as you can fast, well, you end up doing very,

very intense restrictions that you can't sustain. The rough thing about that is, is like you notice this in a lot of people who do shows. So people that do bodybuilding shows or bikini shows, they'll do some caloric restriction and maybe they'll diet for 16 weeks or whatever. And then after they get off, right, you're supposed to gain body fat back. But since they've been restricting their calories so hard for such a while, they have a problem with being controlled as they start eating more food. So they have a lot of sessions of binging.

They have a lot of sessions of just uncontrolled eating. And a lot of them gain a lot of weight back very quickly. You see this a lot within that realm. But the other problem is that these athletes, they like to do shows all the time. So they'll gain a lot of body fat back. They'll gain a lot of weight back, but then they'll try to diet again really quickly.

This is a problem because if you were in a caloric deficit and there's kind of a rule of thumb, whenever dieting, if you've put yourself in a caloric deficit for six months and you've gotten kind of lean in that period, you ideally want to give yourself about almost like, let's say almost double that time to just be at a normal place where you're not restricting calories hardcore so that when you cut again, you'll have a successful cut. Right.

But most people, they'll cut for six months. They'll come out of it. They'll binge. They'll gain a lot of weight back. And after about three months, they'll try to cut again. And anecdotally, a lot of these athletes, they're always like, why is it so much harder for me to lose fat now than it was when I did my first one? It's because first off, you didn't spend enough time out of being in a deficit and your metabolism actually is slower. It's not slower than when you're in a harsh deficit, but it hasn't come back to a place where it's you have that same maintenance where you were at the very beginning.

So it ends up turning into a yo-yo effect where you lose, you get lean, you gain a lot of body fat back. You try to lose again. It's harder. So you need to go into an even harder caloric restriction and then you yo-yo back up and potentially you're gaining more and more body fat each time. Whereas if you were moderate with your approach,

you took yourself, you gave yourself time. And then when you put yourself at maintenance, you stay there for a little bit, you would be okay. But most people don't give themselves enough time out of the diet for them to actually be able to have successful long-term weight loss. This stuff gets to be a little tricky because there's something that's referred to as the honeymoon period. When you're doing any diet, a lot of times the diet, as long as it's followed, will work pretty well in the beginning. It will work for a couple of weeks at a time. So of take your time to allow those carbohydrates to

be effective again once you start consuming them because your body's just not used to them at that point. And there's still a lot more research that needs to go on to have a better understanding of that. But basically, it's kind of a use it or lose it type of deal. And for myself personally, I've just learned that I don't need that much carbohydrates for me to operate well, for me to lift heavily and things like that. And I think one thing I hear happening often is people will use the word need.

You know, they'll say, I have to have this before I train because, you know, I need that supply of energy. need that supply of energy. And what we learned through fasting, and sometimes fasting is not always the right move, but what we learned through intermittent fasting and through people doing some extended fasting is it doesn't appear that you need to have food necessarily right before you work out. We have something called glycogen stores, and a lot of times you can have access to that energy, even if you ate it six hours before or eight hours before. And I would even argue and say that the thing that you eat 30 or 40 minutes before your exercise, I don't even know how available. I mean, I'd like to see more research on that because I just don't even understand how it could be available so quickly unless you had a really fast acting

carb, like something like some form of liquid or something like that. So, you know, I think that it's interesting because I think that people are kind of consistently thinking they need to do this. They need to do that. They'll think a cheat meal is going to rev up their metabolism. They're like, I need to do that once a week. I need to overeat. And actually, some of the research will show overeating is such a weird trick. The research will show overeating is such a weird trick. Overconsuming your calories doesn't really satiate you the way that you would think.

It actually will set you up for the next day to where you're romanticizing the next day about eating those same foods and overeating once again. And it can be helpful. I don't want to say that it's not helpful, but it can be helpful to overeat here and there. It can be helpful to eat some things that are off plan here and there. But just recognize those things are going to be kind of dancing around in your head the next day as well. And you have to fight them off for about two, three days, and then you're good again. And then you'll find yourself, as Nseema is pointing out, you'll find yourself better off than you were before. So you go on a strict plan for a while, you follow it,

follow it, follow it, get yourself super lean. And then there's going to have to be a time where you're on a different type of plan with some different goals. That's why, because the question about cheat meals always comes up there. There's okay.

So there's a few ways. I think cheap meals are useful. But you you got to be smart with it when a lot of people approach cheat meals it's usually not just a cheat meal like we've talked about before it's like a cheat day right where they end up eating an excessive amount of calories anybody ever have a cheat weekend yes i have tahoe and it usually starts friday night then it goes to sunday night slash monday morning you know the funny thing okay so peeps uh like we i went to tahoe um recently and i had all you can eat sushi two nights in a row and i came back 11 pounds heavier than i normally am 11 pounds heavier so the scale was. Damn. 11 pounds heavier.

So the scale was at like 252. All man, all muscle. Still look shredded. All carved up. Actually, no. My feet were swollen. I was trying to make it sound good. No, my feet were... I told you guys.

I couldn't put my foot in my shoe the right way the second, the first day after All You Can Eat Sushi. I was like, this is a wide shoe. Why can I not fit my foot in here? Bro, you got two feet. You got two guys right here i mean we will gladly rub your feet ah thank you i mean if that's for you yeah let's go so bendy um but anyway that's pretty fast yeah i know like be careful with your hip

no it's actually kelly stirrett thank you so much hip feels so juicy. I can't wait to roll today. I'm going to have some dance moves. I can't wait to feel it. Yeah, man. I feel so good. But. What was that, Andrew? Because he's like, it feels so juicy. I'm like, I want to feel it. Let's get back to it.

It took me like eight days. It took me eight days to get back to normal. Friday was the first day. This past Friday was the first day that I had a normal weigh-in. And you did cardio every morning to get that's normal friday was the first day this past friday was the first day that I had A normal weigh-in and you did cardio every morning to get rid of it, right? No, I didn't I did it. Um I did it now. See that's what a lot of people do though, right? Yeah, and then maybe even in that process, which is it's only a couple days. Maybe that's not a smart thing to do Yeah, no, it's not a smart thing to do. That's that's the thing like a lot of people have these

it should be just a structured cheat meal where you have a healthy amount of something that you haven't had for a while to just give you a taste, even though sometimes that can be dangerous. But most people turn it into too much. Then they're like, oh, I got to do cardio for two days to try to burn this off. And then it turns into just a nasty, vicious cycle. And you don't want to be trying to do extra cardio to burn off something you ate a few days before.

That's why you kind of want to structure it in. Like if I do something like that, I'll usually fast before I have that meal. Or it'll, it'll, it'll be, it'll just be in a way that I'm not trying to work something off. Let's just give people a little scenario. You know, you're doing jujitsu, you're lifting, you're doing these kind of like pretty intense like kettlebell workouts sometimes. Um, you're doing these kind of like pretty intense, like kettlebell workouts sometimes.

Uh, and, uh, I'm just going to guess that you consume somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 calories a day ish. It's 2,500 to 3,500. Yeah. You don't really track it, but somewhere in there all the time. Um, what would happen if you just aggressively went on, like, let's say 1500 calories a day and you started do some like morning cardio that'd be bad that'd be bad because okay so 1500 calories a day we already talked about non-exercise activity third genesis right that's the all your movements around during the day

your body's smart i'll just stop moving as much y'all see i fidget a lot like during the podcast i'm just doing shit like this my toes are over. I'm getting like my tendons and I'm doing a bunch of stuff. I wouldn't be moving nearly as much. So that's one thing that would slow down. When I actually, actually work out, my calories that I burned during my workouts would be lower because I wouldn't be able to work out as intensely. So I wouldn't be burning as many calories. Your workouts might start to really suffer, especially over a period of time, right? My strength will suffer. I'll probably lose more muscle mass because I'm not able to maintain as much muscle because I'm eating in such a harsh deficit.

I drop some fat after a while, but once my metabolism kind of catches up to that deficit, I'll be hard stalled for a minute. I won't feel good. I'll have lost some muscle. And the only things I could either do are do more cardio, try to actively be more active in terms of the day, stand more, et cetera, or take my calories even lower. And that's not something that's sustainable. That's why, again, it's much better to do a 10% to 20% deficit, work there for a minute, see how long you can work that out maybe go into a

little more of a deficit over time take a diet break here and there or come back to maintenance for a week or two and then go right back into it if you give yourself the benefits of this is that you will maintain more muscle over time your workouts won't suffer over time um and the diet won't feel like too much of a diet until you start getting really, really lean. So in general, I think a lot of times when we talk about someone having like a busted metabolism or, you know, that diet, you know, really messed up my metabolism. Now I can't lose weight anymore. We're really talking about is we're not totally saying it's it's total bullshit.

But most of the time, unless you're competing, unless you're somebody who's really, really restricting your calories and exercising a lot, we agree that those people could potentially be overdoing it. But in general, we want to try to find a better way to send more positive signals to our body. So what are the positive signals that we need in a given day? We need to show our body like, hey, we're going to expend some energy. Um, but we're not going to go crazy with expending energy. We're not going to run, uh, you know, 17 miles every day. We're going to expend energy in some reasonable ways. Um, and also another signal that we want to kind of send to our body is we want to tell the body let's promote gaining muscle mass. And the way that we do that is by hitting the gym and doing exercises that are, you know, that utilizing resistance training to our advantage, getting some resistance, getting some good muscle tension.

We don't want to necessarily overdo that. We don't want to underdo that. It's heavy, but it's heavy for you. It's not heavy in comparison to anybody else. but it's heavy for you. It's not heavy in comparison to anybody else. We want to basically kind of disrupt our muscle protein by exercising, by lifting weights. And then we also want to feed that protein through our diet,

through nutrition, through making sure we consume enough protein each and every day. Another signal that we want to send to the body is we want to make sure that we're not doing things that are going to really challenge our progression and that are going to be disruptive towards us being able to release fat and us being able to hold on to muscle mass. So therefore, we have to also make sure that we consume enough fat calories every day so that our hormones aren't all jacked up.

This will be, I think this is, I think that this is where most people are probably running into problems, male and females that are dipping down in like 30 grams of fat a day. I think that that for sure is a great way to kind of make sure that you're, you're screwing things up a little bit, maybe even fasting too often because fasting would be zero grams of fat for the day. Right. So you have to be cautious. And some of the stuff in SEMA was

saying there is like, if you're not giving yourself enough energy, then your energy output won't be nearly as good. And so we need a good energy output every day in order to be able to get the proper signals to our body. We need to show the body and tell the body, yeah, we're going to expend some calories every day doing some things that are in our best interest, walking, maybe some sprints or something like that. But we're also going to be lifting some weights here and there to help promote muscle mass. One thing, we always talk about it, but let's not forget, within all of this, if you're dieting and you're going into a hard deficit, you need to get good sleep. You absolutely need to get good sleep. to a hard deficit, you need to get good sleep.

You absolutely need to get good sleep because if you're getting minimal sleep while you're putting your body under stress and you're dieting and you're trying to work out, you won't last long. You won't last long at all. You will have more cravings. Your ghrelin will increase. Your leptin, you're going to be a human trash compactor. And you'll think the diet's not working or this diet's not good for me. But if you're not getting good sleep, you're already setting yourself up to have massive failure.

Another thing that we kind of mentioned off air is when you go into a diet, caloric restriction is a stressor in and of itself. But now you're working out while you're calorically restricted. And when you start getting really lean, if things get very intense, you might literally feel more and more stressed out. We know that you get more stressed. You have an increase in cortisol. And one thing that a lot of people that they do shows a lot, etc. Some people, when they hit a sticking point, as far as a diet, they might hit a sticking point for a minute. some people come and they do a diet break. So they bring their calories up. Maybe they stay there for a little bit. And that works sometimes where you bring your calories up by 30% or something, stay there for a week and then bring it back down. You'll start dropping again. But one thing that is actually really beneficial, and I've had somebody do this where like, just don't work out for four days. Don't work out. Don't go to the gym and bring your calories up by like 40% just for a few days because they were really freaking stressed.

Actually, I have someone I'm about to do this with because I can tell. But within those four days, they dropped like eight pounds. And you might remember when I told you that, like, I dropped hella water. Like, I ate all those. I ate all that. All you can eat sushi. I gained like 11 pounds. I didn't gain that much body fat.

A lot of what I had on my body was water. And I wasn't stressed. But when you are very stressed, you can hold on to a lot of water, so much that it can be fairly surprising. And by stopping that activity a little bit, and oddly enough, eating a little bit more food just for a little bit so you can de-stress, think about something else, you can drop extra weight. You can actually drop a little bit extra body fat. Then when you start dieting again, you'll be able to go back into it fresh and feeling good. And do not de-stress yourself with fucking bullshit food. Don't go binging.

No, that's not what I'm happy you said that. De-stress yourself by going to the beach. De-stress yourself by walking in the forest. De-stress yourself by going on a walk with your wife or your daughter or son or your dog or find something like some of these things, I mean, they can be they're so much more powerful than food.

They really are. They're way more powerful. I know that I know, like, I love food. All three of us fucking love food and we want to get down on some Chinese food. Yes, we do. Or go down. We want to go down on Chinese food. Pleasure it or pleasure ourselves but chinese food anyway we do have to still do that podcast where we eat all that junk yeah we do i'm gonna bring

in i keep forgetting to bring in some spanish, man. I'll bring them on our next podcast. I changed my mind. Eating bad food is way better than being on a mountaintop and overlooking a sick view. With the championship belt. Yeah, we don't need that. We did have... I was telling people...

We don't listen to us. But we do have questions and I wanted to save them for um the next podcast the q a the q a sunday podcast but i it goes in line with what insima was talking about and a name that i'm not going to be able to pronounce but uh they asked uh what are your thoughts on walking all day to achieve a caloric deficit uh and then another one from an awesome handle sweep the leg he has a cobra kai logo and everything nice damn bro sweep the leg i know uh what about not dropping calories and just upping more sauna one second not dropping calories and upping more sauna yeah and then the

other one's kind of similar but just walking and to get yourself in a caloric deficit person's name they deserve to be set on air sweep the leg the leg. No, not sweep the leg. The one before that you couldn't say. All right, well, you're going to have to pronounce it. I'm going to spell it for you. Oh, where'd it go? Ah, no, I lost it forever. No, there it is.

H-J-A-L-T-I-S. Jaltis. Jaltis. I don't know. Sorry. H-J-A-L-T-I space S. I'll just say Jaltis. All right.

Sounds close enough. It's probably wrong, but it's fine. Increase sonar walk all day. Walking often can really be helpful and useful. And I think just maybe rather than walking all day, just try to do things that promote movement in whatever fashion that you can. You know, trying to think that you're going to walk like literally all day is probably asking a lot of yourself. But maybe you can make time to walk when you're listening to some podcasts. Maybe you can walk almost two hours every day.

That would be tremendous help to help burn some calories. Absolutely, man. That would be tremendous help to help burn some calories. Absolutely, man. Like walking all day, because that can turn into being something excessive and non-sustainable if you don't walk often already. It could pull on you too. Like you don't want anything that pulls on you. You don't want anything that, you want nothing in your plan that's going to promote overeating and you want nothing in your plan that's going to promote you to exercise less.

So in my own experience, if I was to walk five, six, seven miles, that's a little excessive for me. And I love to walk, but that starts to be a little too high where I found that I'll walk five miles one day and none the next. And then five miles, you know, maybe three, four days later, you want sustainable and you want to be able to do it daily. Yeah, maybe have somebody that you can walk with and have some good conversation with. I always enjoy that. But one thing that, and this is going to sound so fruity and people are going to be like, I think that we should really start like maybe developing a little bit of a better relationship with our body and movement. Like a lot of people just sit like really, you know, when you work, you're forced to

sit all day. Right. But if you can stand at your desk, right. Have some things maybe in your office where like you have maybe some one of those kelly strut ball things under your foot and you're just doing some movement because like if you can get into the habit of just moving more where it doesn't become something you're thinking about but something you just do that's why like whenever i re-watch podcasts sometimes so i'm like oh where i we're like looking for shit that we've done i'm always moving and i'm just like this must be really annoying to some people but i just have a

habit of continuously moving i've been that way for a minute but it's not i haven't always been that way i just like moving and i think we've if we can build a habit of just trying to move more um and and exploring aspects of our body that that can be really beneficial for your fat loss in the long run because your NEAT might just perpetually stay higher. I have no scientific background behind that, but I do know that when I go into harsher deficits, because I have a habit already of moving, it's a habit for me, my NEAT will probably still be pretty high compared to the average individual. I think if you think about a lot of people, they sit down at the end of the day and once

their day is done, they, they, they really relax a lot and they, they, uh, kind of just succumb to the day and they just like let the day be over and they go to bed. Um, but I would still say like find ways to move. You know, a lot of times people are sitting down with their phone while they're in front of their TV. You've got your phone and the TV both going at the same time, and you're already showing that you know how to demonstrate multitasking. So instead of the phone or instead of the TV,

I would choose one or the other, and maybe you're doing some stretching, or maybe you're on the ground, and you're like, I'm going to lay on the ground while the TV is running. And I'm going to occasionally do five or ten push-ups and I'm going to be here until I accomplish 50 of them. But I think a lot of times once the end of the day is near, I think people really shut down and get very sedentary for the end of the day. and get very sedentary for the end of the day. If you can find anything that's going to promote you to be able to do something every single day,

even if you're only burning a couple of calories, that's going to be something that's going to help you long term. That's going to help you for the rest of your life if you can kind of continue to do that. And to answer the second question about the sauna, instead of lowering calories, increasing your sauna intake, increasing your sauna and intake, increasing your sauna,

just going to the sauna. It can be useful. You just got to make sure that you, you know, rehydrate, get some electrolytes. And I said, he rehydrate.

There's the baby talk. I have baby talk every now and then. I can't avoid it. There's been a lot more lately though. Yeah, man. It's just the way it be. It's just the way it we, yeah.

But yeah, make sure you get your electrolytes back in and just be careful with it because you know if you're in the sauna for too long for some people that does affect their performance a little bit um so yeah getting some extra sauna though can burn some extra calories and it is beneficial and helps you feel good i say do it a good de-stressor it is a good de-stressor but it's But it's also not in place of calories. You know, you're not going to be in there like burning so many calories. That's going to make tracking a huge significant.

Yeah, it's not going to make a huge difference. Yeah, that was my follow-up question was like, I had no, I mean, it makes sense that it would burn calories because you're burning up. But I hadn't even considered it. But I think what Mark just said to clarify, it makes a lot of sense. If you're in the sauna and you like, I think you sometimes stretch in the sauna. You take that opportunity because you're already warm. Your muscles are warm. You can do some extra stretching.

You'll burn a little bit extra calories there, but it's nothing massive. And it could, again, it could give you, could put you in a little bit more of a deficit without you attacking your calories immediately, but it's not, I don't,

it's not something substantial. Yeah. I think just to kind of reiterate, um, just really be cautious of, of what you do diet wise. You want to make sure you're promoting movement throughout the day as much as, as much as you can handle, but not so much that it also promotes you not to move the next day. Uh, we've all had workouts where I'm sure you've had some like lifting sessions and stuff, especially in the beginning when you're doing jujitsu, you're like, even though I guess maybe you probably felt like you had to go to jujitsu just to kind of get over the hump, but there was probably a lot of days where you just didn't want to go and you didn't

want to continue to, you're like, man, I'm just, I'm really sore. Or the jujitsu made you so sore because it's something new. So you want to do things that are going to promote movement, but not do so much movement that it promotes you not to move the next day. When it comes to your nutrition, it's the same thing. We want to promote, you know, the idea of consuming nutrient-dense foods and good calories. And a lot of times when we promote that, a lot of times we're going to naturally start to eat less. The more that you stick to that food list, that food plan,

I think the better off you're going to be and the easier you're going to be able to manipulate your calories. When you have an influx of cereal and some other types of foods like that, more often than not, you're going to promote overeating and it's going to be very, it's just going to be difficult to fight that off. So I think those are a bunch of things that can help you guys with your metabolism. Take us on out of here, Andrew. I will. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. And if you did appreciate it, please hit that like button on YouTube.

And if you are on a live stream, stick around. We're going to go live in a few minutes after this to answer your questions. So if you have questions, get ready to ask them and we'll get ready to answer them. Please make sure you find the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z and Seema. Where are you at? I didn't see my Indian on Instagram and YouTube and see my Indian on TikTok and Twitter. Mark. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell.

Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.