Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1027: 3 Steps to Speed Up Your Metabolism

Episode Date: May 9, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin go into detail how to speed up your metabolism in three steps How people simply aren’t AWARE what they are doing to their own bodies. (2:45) What is metabolism in the context of fitness? (9:09) Are you taking in fewer calories than you are burning? (13:08) How to make fat loss easier and permanent! (14:50) Why you MUST give your body a REASON to have a faster metabolism. (18:35) Step 1: The best way to lift weights PROPERLY, to INCREASE your metabolism. (22:00) Step 2: Sending the RIGHT signals to FUEL your body properly. (27:47) Step 3: Getting proper sleep. (41:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned May Promotion: MAPS HIIT ½ off!! **Code “HIIT50” at checkout** Visit Felix Gray for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! How To Calculate Your Macros For Rapid Weight Loss - Mind Pump Why Fat Loss Stalls (And What To Do) - Mind Pump How To Boost Your Metabolism The Right Way! (FAT LOSS!)| Mind Pump TV Mind Pump 843: The Best Creatine, The Most Accurate Way To Measure BMR, Spartan Training & MORE When Exercising Less and Eating More Burns More Fat and Builds More Muscle MAPS Fitness Anabolic – Mind Pump Three Things You Can Add Into Your Daily Routine To Help With Weight Loss Natural Himalayan Salt Lamp. Hand Carved With Elegant Wood Base (Single Lamp) Mind Pump Free

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. So we've been doing these episodes where we just specifically talk about one topic, and one topic that continues to pop up is how do I get a faster metabolism? This is a big one. And there are strategies that you can employ to speed up your metabolism. And they really work.

We've done this with clients for decades. I've been doing this for two decades with people. And it never sees this to me age me. How much faster I can get someone's metabolism. And there's three basic things you need to focus on. And these are the things that we really get into detail and depth in this episode, really break it down. So the first thing is you want to get stronger

and you want to build muscle. So we get all into the best way to lift weights to speed up your metabolism. So a lot of different ways to lift weights. We talk about specifically the best ways to do it to speed up your metabolism. Then we talk about diet. There is a way to eat to speed up your metabolism. And in a nutshell, it comes down to slowly increasing your calories. That tells your body, hey, it's okay to burn more calories. But there is a specific way to do it. There is a strategy.

We break that down as well in this episode. And then finally, sleep plays a massive role in your body's ability to burn calories, burn body fat, and build muscle. And again, we give some of our strategies in there. And in there, in part of the strategies, we also talked about the benefits of blocking blue light if you are gonna be on electronics before bed. And studies show that that does improve sleep quality

significantly in most people. Now, we do have a company that we work with electronics before bed and studies show that that does improve sleep quality significantly in most people. Now we do have a company that we like that we work with that offers the best blue light blocking glasses that we found. The company is called Felix Gray so it's Felix GRY and the website is Felix Gray glasses.com forward slash mind pump. You'll get free shipping and free returns if you go through that particular link. Now, before I get in the episode, I do want to tell everybody that our Maps Hit program, this is our high intensity interval training program, is 50% off all months long. In order to get that discount, go to mapshit.com.

That's MAPS H-I-I-T dot com and use the code hit 50 H-I i i t 50 50 no space for the discount. And if you want to look at our other maps programs, let's say you're interested in speeding up your metabolism, like this episode talks about the best metabolism speeding program we have is probably maps and a ball. Like you can find that program and the other maps programs at maps fitnessproducts.com. So when I think of like some of the most paradigm shattering moments in my fitness career, I would say when I would get this client and it took me, I don't know, probably 30 plus maybe more that I would get that were severely overweight, like we're talking a hundred pounds or more overweight. And I'd sit down with them and they would tell me what

they would eat. And this general, I'm over generalizing this, but it would be like a bagel for breakfast, a chicken salad for lunch, you know, and then another salad for dinner, and they're like a hundred pounds overweight. And I might have a diet coke. And I remember as a trainer, I remember thinking to myself like, this bitch is lying. Oh, I know exactly. And I remember just going getting frustrated. Like I cannot believe that they think I'm going to fall for this.

And I feel really bad because there's a lot of clients, I probably blew right out the door because I was just certain that they were lying to me. There's no way this person could be this overweight in eating 800, 900 calories a day. And it wasn't until way later in my career, did I start to piece this together like, man, something's going on here

that these people really do have this slow of a metabolism. I was in the same, I had same exact experiences you had them and part of it is because a lot of people do lie or not lie, I should say, people under report, right? They're unaware, right? Yeah, they're just not aware. And so more often than not, that's what happened. Somebody, they'll just not aware and so more often than not that's what happens somebody They'll tell you I'm only eating this much

But then when they go and actually weigh and track they come back and you and it's it's you're like okay There it is there's a real numbers But like you're saying I've had that situation and for me it wasn't an obese client For me what it took for me to learn what you learned, I had to train somebody who was super active, working out all the time, somebody that ended up becoming a workout partner of mine for a little while. And she was, she was very honest. She was very, very honest with me. And so we sat down and she showed me her, her cow, and I knew she ran something like 20 miles a week. So she ran like crazy, took Pilates, did other

classes, and then she lifted weights with me twice a week. And she showed me her food stuff, her, her food logs. And I knew her. So I knew she wasn't lying. And I looked at her food logs. And I'm like, you're consuming 1500 calories a day. This doesn't, this doesn't seem right. Right. And you're running 20 miles a week. Yeah, there's no way. This doesn't seem right. How long have you been doing? So when you look at our history, and this is how I

pieced it together, she had yo-yo diated half her life was always had a problem with weight. So she'd cut calories and move like crazy to lose the weight over and over again. So this was after years and years and years of doing this. So that's number one. Number two, I believed her because I knew her personally. So I'm like, okay, she's telling me the truth,

but this is crazy. So I did some research and I would, I read this article on prisoners of war, people who are captured by You know opposing countries or whatever and these people would survive for years Unlike a few hundred calories a day now. Of course. They were malnutrition. They were malnourished But the fact is their body survived off of 300 calories in some cases a day for a long long time and I thought to myself Okay, the everything else I'd learned up into this point

was like the human body can adapt, has her metabolism and body adapted in such a way to where it's just hyper, hyper efficient. And that was when I really started taking a series because up until that point, I didn't believe people. Yeah, and I started to piece together exactly what you did, which is that it seemed more and more common in these extreme situations where you know, you had, you would fall out

of shape. And when you were out of shape, you were either sedentary or you weren't moving a lot, you weren't moving a lot, you weren't exercising, you were overconsuming on calories and then you would decide, okay, it's time to get in shape. And you would go the complete opposite. You would try and restrict as many calories as you could because everybody told you calories in versus calories out. And so you would reduce the calories as much as you can and you would try and go as much

exercises you could. And you know, they would do this on and off multiple times per year for many, many years and now I've found themself in this position where they're 30, 50, 100 pounds overweight. And they're eating a normal amount. Yeah, they just can't. And they can't lose it. And not even a normal amount.

A lot of times it's eating low, low. Like you're saying saying like 1500 calories Not I saw 900 calories. I saw Calories on bodies that just didn't make sense to me. Well, it's always been hard. Excuse me I had a client who had you know seen really good results and had you know got there by an Extreme amount of cardio and also just completely, just constantly scaling down her calorie intake. This got almost a hundred pound loss and then came to me and then was now trying to lift

weights and maintain this. It inevitably became a really delicate situation where she's not eating very many calories now. I mean, there's like, you know, a thousand in below on a daily amount to where even just like a hundred calorie would, you know, fluctuate and it would mess with her to where now like it was so delicate to where her weight would fluctuate all over the place. Well, once I figured this out, it changed how I trained people forever.

It really, really did. Regardless of who you were, if you came to me, and your goal was to lose weight, my first goal with you was to speed it up in metabolism. But I think before, because sometimes we forget that a lot of people who listen to the show need to learn like some of the basics. And so I think it's important we talk about the metabolism first a little bit.

Yeah, what is it? And what it is. Now, if you look it up online, the scientific term is it's the chemical process that occurs in an organism to maintain life. Now, metabolism, you know, animal metabolism is one of the most complex things that we know of in the universe, probably second only to the brain, right? So to say that we know exactly what it is, I don't think we know that, but in the context of fitness, from what we're talking about, the one we refer to the metabolism, what we're talking about is your calorie burn that

happens on its own. So outside of you trying to move more to burn more calories, it's like how many calories is your body burn kind of on its own just to maintain itself. Right. When you, there's, there everybody has a, you know, a calorie maintenance or your, your BMR, which is basal metabolic rate, which is you could lay in bed all day long and never move. And the body will still burn X amount of calories. And then what we do exercise wise increases that.

And now there's going to be a huge individual variance based off of a lot of different things. Right. there's going to be a huge individual variance based off of a lot of different things. And genetics play a role. Some of us have a more natural, quote unquote, slower metabolism. But I think that's where a lot of people go wrong. That's right. You know, they see maybe passed down generation,

like, oh, my mom was overweight, my dad was overweight, my sister, everyone in my family is overweight. And so they assume that they just have this bad, these bad genetics, they have a slow metabolism and then they're stuck with it for the rest of the card. They were dealt. Right. But in reality, the metabolism is this free flowing thing that is affected by many different things and that we too can manipulate this and actually increase it.

No matter how slow of a metabolism you've started with, you can ramp it up and make it into a thriving metabolism. Like most things in the human body, the metabolism adapts and it adapts to the signals that it's being sent from you and from the outside world. Now, why would the metabolism need to adapt? Well, do humans always have a consistent amount of food in front of them? Well, for most of human history, no, most of human history, it very dramatically depending on the season. And if you were a successful hunter versus if you weren't. So it adapts and it moves according to the signals that it's being sent. Now, that's important to understand, because if you weren't. So it adapts and it moves according to the signals

that it's being set. Now that's important to understand, because if you understand that the metabolism adapts and changes, then you can start to approach your metabolism or your goals with that in mind and think to yourself. Look, if you're listening to this podcast right now, and your goal is to, like most people, is to get leaner and stay leaner forever, what do you think is going to make it easier for you?

A slow metabolism, one that is thrifty and efficient that doesn't burn a lot of calories, or one that is fast, that is burning lots of calories. Well, in the context of modern life, in other words, if you live in modern Western societies and you have food all around you and you're just not that active, a faster metabolism. Obviously, it's gonna help you out. Now, if we go back a thousand, 10,000 years ago and you're living, hunt by hunt,

you don't have food, you don't have grocery stores all around you, it probably wouldn't be beneficial to have a hyperfast metabolism all the time, because you just don't have that much food. But today, a faster metabolism just makes it much easier. Now, when we talk about fat loss, it's really a boil down, it's more complex than this, but it really boils down to an energy imbalance. Are you burning more calories than you're taking in or to put it differently? Are you taking in less calories than you're burning?

If that happens, your body makes up the difference by tapping into its stored energy, which is body fat. That's what body fat is. It's like a bank. You put extra money in the bank and save it there just in case where your body does that with body fat. That's what body fat is. It's like a bank. You put extra money in the bank and save it there just in case where your body does that with body fat. So when you're taking in less calories and you're burning, your body's going to burn it from your body fat. So it only makes sense that burning more calories is going to make that much easier.

Now the problem is when people understand that whole, you know, oh, I got to burn more calories and take in less calories type of deal, they consider the manual calorie burn that happens for extra size versus the automatic. Yes. They're not looking at their own natural, but their own metabolism, what they're looking at is, okay, I only have an hour to work out three days a week, which one's going to burn the most calories? Is it going to be running on a treadmill? Is it going to be using an elliptical? Is it going to be cool? Yeah, this is the interesting part because there are formulas out there for finding your basal metabolic rate. There's ways of trying to organize your thoughts around where I'm

at currently in terms of where do I burn, How many calories like you know generally do I burn throughout the day and also what am I consuming? So those are two very important things to track and to watch however it's again like you'd mentioned how it changes and so this is something that you know don't live and die by these numbers but have it you know accessible so you can kind of learn more about your own tendencies and your own habits. Well, you know, talking about the manual and automatic, and I get beat up a lot by academia by using these numbers.

But for me, it was very game-changing when I remember reading a study on this a long time ago, and it was just referring to when we add muscle, for every pound of muscle we add in our body, our body burns ex-amount of calories. And so there's a lot of argument in debate. What that number is. What that number precisely is. And so I do know that you add muscle, you burn more calories.

Right. And so I used to use a generic number to give people that example. I mean, there's, I've seen studies to show as low as, you know, 20 calories a day for every pound of muscle to as high as 60 and give or take. So I used to tell people, okay, so figure for every pound of muscle that we can put on the body,

the body burns an additional 50 calories a day. So if I could just add five pounds of muscle to your body, that means your body is needing 250 more calories a day. That's a lot of calories right there. And that's just from five pounds. And that doesn't mean that we have to see five more pounds go up on the scale because what we can do is we can actually lose five pounds of body fat,

add five pounds of muscle to your body. Your scale stay about the same, but your metabolism completely change. Yeah, look it this way. If you own a business, what would be a better strategy that you do everything in your business, that you run the front desk, you run the back, you do all the numbers, you do all the sales,

you do all the mark, you do everything by yourself, which requires incredible amount of energy and time and dedication, or you get the business to run itself. If you want to make fat loss easier and make it more permanent, why not get your metalves into work for you? Like the example Adam gave of 250 calories. People think, oh, 250 calories, that's nothing.

No, no, no, no. That's like doing 45 minutes of cardio every day. Yeah. Imagine if you burn enough calories to equate to 45 minutes of calories, of 45 minutes, excuse me, of cardio every single day, except you're just doing your everyday normal stuff. That's the difference between approaching your fat loss and approaching your goals with the idea of, I'm gonna make my body adapt

in a way to burn more calories automatically versus I'm going to try to burn all these calories on my own. Now why is this important to understand? Because inevitably you're going to be left with, you're going to be facing this choice. Do I do the workout that burns more calories? Or do I do the workout that speeds up my metabolism? And the one that burns more calories is cardio, lots of cardio, but the one that speeds up your metabolism better than any other form of exercise is lifting weights. There's nothing that

comes close to lifting. Now why does lifting weights speed up the metabolism? This is an important thing to explain here. We're focused on building muscle. Well, we have to talk about lifting weights properly, by the way. There's just ways to do it that way. Not only that, but every time that we lift weights, we send a signal to the body that says, we need more muscle.

And what's nice about that is that you lift weights, and then now after the next 24 to 48 hours, your body is going to prioritize some of the calories that you consume towards that, where it's instead of it being stored as body fat. So right away, you're already doing something so much better for your body in terms of speeding the metabolism up because now that I'm lifting weights, not only do I get the calorie burn benefits of while I'm lifting weights, not only do I get the calorie burn benefits of while I'm lifting weights, which is similar to the calorie burn benefits you get for running on a treadmill, but then I get the added benefits of the next 24 to 48 hours, where my body

is prioritizing some of these calories to go towards building muscle. Now, think about it. This is an important, before we get into the best ways, the lift weights, to speed up your mentality, because that's going to be important, because I know sometimes people are like, oh cool, they said lift weights and then they go do the wrong type of weight training routine, which is not going to give you the benefit. But before we get into that, I think it's important to understand why you need to give your body a reason to have a faster metabolism. you need to give your body a reason to have a faster metabolism. Remember, for most of human history,

humans have been living in states of scarcity when it comes to food. For most of human history, food was not readily available at any given moment. And in order to get food, especially calorically nutrient-dense food, you had to expend a lot of energy. Hunting was not like you go to the grocery store and you pick up some meat and you pay for it and you leave. You had to chase that shit down, you had to kill it with your bare hands, then you had to carry it back.

So our bodies did not speed up their metabolism unless it absolutely thought it needed to, because doing so meant you at you increased the demand on your body in terms of how many calories you needed. And to conserve that energy. Do you think this is why this is so challenging for people, because this is relatively a new message? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, like would you think like in 100 years,

we'll look back and it'll be like absurd that we even have to have this conversation. Well, I mean, having a slow metabolism, context matters, right? Because we're gonna even talking about 100 years. Because you're talking, you're going all the way back to Hunter Gatherer, but even just, you know, before the Great Depression, and stuff like that, it wasn't like, there was food on every corner.

You're right. Fast food, there wasn't door gas. People were active. Yeah, exactly. It was, yeah, exactly. You didn't go walk at least to go get your food and you're gonna kill it and make it yourself. So we're talking about something

that hasn't been as big of a problem. Yeah, we don't have to expend a lot of energy if we don't want to anymore. Right, no, I can go, this is a relatively new message when we think about that. It is, and so you have to give your body a reason to speed up its metabolism. Otherwise, its default will be to slow down.

And one of the best reasons you can give your body is, hey, you need to get stronger. You need to build muscle and get stronger, because what happens when you lift weights, is you create, you send an adaptation signal to the body. All exercise does this, and your body tries to get better at whatever stress that you're placing upon it, and resistance training or weight training is a stress.

So your body, it does this kind of like, if you imagine like, imagine a boardroom with an a meeting, it was your body talking to the other parts of the body that are running things. And they're like, hey guys, okay, we got this muscle damage happening. It seems like yesterday we were really pushing things that were heavy and lifting things that were heavy.

We need to get stronger because if we don't get stronger, that stuff's gonna hurt us and it's gonna break us and the rest of the body's like, okay. It's a specific type of stress or insult versus like the other one where, you know, we had to really expend all this energy to get places and we had to like carry things

and move, it was all about endurance versus, you know, if you keep telling the body that, you know, you're gonna have to overcome this stress, this force that's pushing you in this load that you have to overcome, that's a different signal you're sending the body. This signal is everything. This is what we're talking about. That's it.

The best way to lift weights to speed up a metabolism, because not just lifting weights won't do it. There has to be a particular way, or there is a particular way. The best way to lift weights to speed up a metabolism is to get stronger, like literally get stronger to where you can lift more weight. Now it's not a guarantee, but in my opinion, my experience,

that's the best metric I can use when measuring, are you lifting weights in a way that's gonna speed up a metabolism? Now some people might think, well, okay, so that's great. So why don't we get the benefit of both at once? Why don't we take weights and put them in a situation where it's cardiovascular, but I'm also lifting weights. That will, now that's a great question

because a lot of people say that, right? Well, what if I burn calories too? Do you have to think of it like this way? It's a spectrum. And there's cardio all the way over here on the left. And then there's weight training all the way here on the right. And if the best way to speed up our metabolism

is to be as far right as we can, which is build muscle, lift weights, get stronger, you want to be as far right as you can. And trying to combine weights with cardio falls more towards this cardio side. Your body, which is the opposite of what we want. You're competing messages. Yeah, because your body then is thinking,

we need to get a little bit stronger, but we also need a lot of endurance. And endurance doesn't require a lot of muscle. It burns a lot of calories. And so the body's always trying to get more efficient. And so it may actually not speed up and spend talism. It may maintain, or even slow down. I've seen people slow the metabolism downels and it's down with weights as well

because they all I do wear circuits over and over again because they just want to burn lots of calories. So there's a caveat to this also though that I think is important to talk about because it is one of the hardest things for me to overcome when I'm trying to help somebody speed the metabolism up is if you've also starved the body to death where you're eating such low calories

for such a long period of time and then you go to build strength or build muscle and you don't also increase some of your calories. Of course, you also tend to be spinning your wheels. And that is a really tough thing to tell someone look them in the eyes and say, I know, Susie, that you are trying to lose 50 pounds. And I'm going to tell you that. Me more. Yeah.

I want you to eat more calories. Panic sits in, right? And that's a really hard message to get across. Yeah, because you're trying to fuel the faster metallics, I'm gonna fuel that signal. But before we get into that, because that's a very important point you just made at them, you can't die it and try to speed up your metallics.

You have to let your body know that there's food, there's ample food. You're not, you know, at a calorie deficit, you're going to fuel the extra muscle that you're building. But before we get into the food part, because that's where it gets technical, like when it comes to weights, there's the best way to do it. Get stronger. What does that look like? That means you're doing compound lifts. You're focusing on barbell and dumbbell movements. You're trying to get stronger at the big gross motor movements.

Dead lifts, squats, rows, bench presses. You're doing straight sets, meaning you do your set, you do your eight to 12 reps, you rest. You rest for a minute and a half, two minutes. Let your body fully recover. Lift weights again. The goal is to come back the next week and add two pounds or five pounds or a half, two minutes, let your body fully recover, lift weights again. The goal is to come back the next week and add two pounds or five pounds or a rep or two

to each of these exercises. If you can add weight to your big gross motor movement exercises week over week, you will almost always see a rise in metabolism. In fact, when I have one of the most common emails and messages I'll get are from women who do maps in a ball. Because maps in a ball is a very build muscle, metabolism boosting type routine, right?

They'll message me and they'll be like, I'm starving. I'm so hungry right now. I'm at week number three in my appetite. Right side. I'm like, oh, did you get, I'll always ask in this. I'm like, how much stronger are you? Oh, I added 15 pounds on my squat, I added 20 pounds on my deadlift.

That's why you're hungry, your body is burning more calories. Now it's saying do you eat more food? So I now I think we can get into the second most important thing. Well, one last thing before you move on to that, you know, because you just kind of glazed over something that I think is important. One of the reasons too, when you first sent over maps and a bulk and we first met,

that I thought it was absolutely genius. And the part that I thought was so genius was that you chose to start the first phase in a strength, a type of five by five type of blocks. And why I thought that was so smart is, and there's exceptions to all rules here, but the client that I've dealt with this the most is my female client who has done high intensity stuff,

high reps, supersets, circuit type training, low calorie, and one of the best things that person could possibly do is to go the complete opposite, into the spectrum, which is long rest periods and heavy weight and only five reps and working sets like that. So a five by five or a map Santa Bologna phase one type of phase is an incredible place for this person

who is trying to speed their metabolism up to start. Yeah, your goal is literally, you know, look at these big gross motor movements that I named earlier, bench press, squat, deadlift, overhead press, barbell rows. Look at those big gross motor movements and your goal is to be able to lift more weight each week. Am I getting stronger each week in a low rep, whether it's six reps or even higher

reps, eight to 12 reps? Am I getting stronger if you're getting stronger, you are doing better. Not am I sweating more, am I more sore? Am I getting more of a muscle burn? Forget all that. Am I getting stronger week after week? If you're getting stronger, then the high odds are

you're lifting weights in a favorable way in the context of getting your metals and faster. Now Adam, you talked about eating more food. Here's the thing. If I'm sending signals to build muscle, like we're talking about sending and then the side effect of that being a fashion metabolism, but I'm not feeding my body more food. Ain't gonna happen.

Yeah, my body's thinking to itself, sorry. You know, at the end of the day, survival is more important than being good in famine mode. Yeah, yeah, exactly so you have to also Eat a little bit more because simply eating localities sends a signal to your body to slow us metabolism down That's in fact the primary signal that'll tell your metabolism to slow down is by eating low calories So let's talk about what we do here So when I get somebody like this and this goes back and this is why it's going to be very individualized

for the person, right? So the first week or two weeks, I'm tracking and I want to see where they're at because I've seen as low as 800, 900 calories to upwards of 2700, 2800 calories, all of which I'm trying to help build the metabolism. Like your point, Sal, almost anybody that comes to me and their goal is fat loss.

The first thing that we do at the beginning of our programming is to build the metabolism. We're going to increase calories even if you want to lose weight no matter what. But I need to find a baseline first. The very first week to two weeks, it's all about tracking. This is not in pressure, trainer, or, oh, this is day one of my new diet. You're changing things up. No, this is The first week of getting started towards your program or getting started in this direction is Let's see what I've been doing. Let's see what I've been doing consistently eat normal

Track it and figure out where your kind of caloric maintenance is what is keeping am I when I tell this to a client I say okay for the next and 10 days is about what I like to do So I say the next 10 days Su about what I like to do. So I say, the next 10 days, Susie, what we're going to do is eat normal. I don't want you to try and overeat. I don't want you to try to under eat. The goal, really, is to kind of maintain your weight. We don't want to see your weight go up or down, fluctuate too much. All right, my goal is at the end of the 10 days that you weigh the same today.

And I want to see where your calorie maintenance is. And that'll give you their metabolic rate. Right. You want to see what they're comfortable. You know, like what range of calories are already like, this is a good fit for me. Right. Because what I know I'm going to do is I know that I'm going

to increase their intake slightly. And I just want to go slightly because what SAU was mentioning, we can send signals all day long to build muscle. But if we don't give it the nutrients it needs to build, it's not going to build the muscle that we want to. It's not going to speed the metabolism. So we can't be afraid of increasing the calories, even though our ultimate goal is to lose weight. Right. And in fact, before you even get into that, during that 10 week period, excuse me, 10 day period of tracking, because that's exactly what I would do. I'd go seven to 10 days.

In that period of time, you're already exactly what I would do. I'd go seven to 10 days. In that period of time, you're already starting to lift weights to build your metabolism. So the weights starts first. Start lifting, get stronger, start with the first one or two weeks and just track. Keep your calories the same. You might even notice your appetite go up.

Now, after that first 10 days, now you have your baseline, now you know, okay, I'm gonna go up from here and start real slow, and I would, this is different from person to person now, because some people, I would bump them 50 to 100 calories a day, and that would be perfect. Other people, I could get away with bumping up as much as 150 calories a day.

I like the slow approach, That's my personal thing. Right, you can always add more later on. You can always add more. And I would typically, and I'm not sure how you did this at them, but I would typically keep someone, if I bump them up 100 calories, I would keep them there for about two weeks before I would try bumping them again.

Yeah, my goal at this point is that I still want to stay on that goal of not really seeing the increase. Although, I am okay with seeing a pound or so, a pound of two pounds going up on the scale, more so than I want to see one or two pounds go down. So if I'm on my, now we're onto our second week of training somebody and we've kind of figured out their baseline. I've now told them, okay, Susie, you were eating 1300 calories. I now want you to go to 1400 calories. And by the way, I typically like to go towards protein

as the calorie increase. Just because most people that have the slower metabolism, most people that need to build muscle are also grossly under eating protein. So I normally will ask that the extra 50 calories do 100 calories comes from a good protein source. It's also more satiating. Right.

And it's got a higher thermogenic effect. Right. The sense that when they compare diet to diet in the calories are exactly the same. The higher protein diet tends to promote more fat loss, even if the calories are the same. And that's because, again, remember the metabolism is a very complex thing, but it's because protein itself causes the body to burn more calories than other macronutrients.

Right. So I want to see them, I want to see them increase by 50 to 100 calories coming from protein. And I want our scale to stay about the same or potentially go up a tiny bit. I do not want to see a decrease. If I see a drop in the first week or two, I'm training someone to build their metabolism up. I bump it up even more calories. That's my sign and that's a great sign.

I mean, that's like, oh, this is great. Your body's responding. You're lifting weights. It's wanting to build muscle. It is building muscle, metabolism speeding up. Let's feed it some more cows. And the hardest part, and this is the part that people that will be challenged with,

is the mental fuck. You've got to be okay with knowing that you're not gonna see the scale move very much in this first month, maybe even two months, maybe even longer for some people. This is also why I encourage, like for all my clients, it was a Friday photo. And this isn't for me, this is for you.

This is for you to be able to look at four weeks have gone by and Coach Adam has not allowed you to lose any weight on the scale. And you can look back four weeks earlier and see what your body looked like. Your body still changed. And I will promise you, you will see a difference in the way your body looks.

Even if the scale looks the same. Even if the scale looks the same. Even if the scale is the same. That tells me as we're in a really good place, we are reducing body fat and we're slowly building muscle at a nice exchange and that means that metabolism is slowly ramping up. I tell you what, too, this is what I notice. People sometimes, oftentimes, would have a struggle with knowing that they hired me and I told them, we're not going to try to lose weight for the first couple months. I'm going to speed up from a talisman.

At first people freak out, right? Because they're like, well, that's all I want to do is lose weight. I finally made the decision to work out. I finally made the decision to hire a trainer and you're telling me, I can't. The ones that I could get their minds wrapped around the fact that we're going to speed up them a talisman and get them focused on getting stronger, it actually made it way easier when it was time to finally cut calories because by that point, they've been consistent with their workouts, they've been consistently tracking, looking at their food intake.

By the way, bumping your calories up during this process doesn't mean you're eating crap. You're eating healthy. That's the other thing too, that I think it's important to note, is when I would look at their diet, and I would boost their calories a little bit to speed up them to have them, within their calories, within their food intake,

I would start to clean things up a little bit. I would start to take out heavily processed foods, which just make you want to eat a lot anyway, and typically aren't as healthy. And I'd start replacing with whole natural foods. So although they're still eating 2,000 calories and that's what they were eating before, whatever that was, the food breakdown is a little bit different and it's healthier. Now that sets you up really, really well later on when you have a faster metabolism, you've

already been working out for a few months lifting weights and your goal has been all about getting stronger. Now when we go to cut, it is way, way easier. You've got everything working for you and the odds that you're going to stay lean are so much higher. In fact, the only clients have ever had who've lost weight and kept it off permanently, which is a hard thing to do, are the ones who did this approach. The other ones, whoo. Yeah, and it's interesting. I mean, obviously the ones who did this approach. The other ones? Whew. Yeah, and it's interesting. I mean, obviously, the toughest cells that you're not

going to be losing, you know, what you come in there, you want to lose weight. Like that is a mind-fuck. But at the same time, if you are able to now eat calories that will help energize your workouts and make you feel great during your workouts, like that's huge. If you can get them to focus a little bit more on that

and like how they feel stronger and how they feel more energy throughout their day, you know, that's a big highlight in the very beginning of this process for them to then shift when they have to go to cut. This is what I would say. So Adam just said focus on protein as the macro nutrient you're using to boost your calories.

So here's the thing, aim for about 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. So figure out what your lean body mass is because if you're trying to lose weight, then we don't want to use your total weight. And aim for about one gram of protein, just to make it even, one gram of protein per lean per pound of lean body mass. And every time you bump your calories, keep it at protein until you hit that number. Once you hit that number, so let's say your lean body mass is a hundred. And you're bumping your calories, this is your first week of bumping your calories.

Now your protein grams are up to 70. The next time you bump your calories, add protein again. The next time add protein again, when you hit, finally hit 100, then start throwing in more fats and more carbohydrates. But prioritize the protein because that's what's going to fuel the muscle. That's what's going to fuel the strength. That has a higher thermogenic ability. It burns more calories on its own. It's more satiating meaning it's more filling. People eat more protein than 10 to eat less calories. So, so prioritize that macro nutrient as the one that you're going to use to boost your calories until you get to that number that I just gave you at which point, then you can start adding things that carbohydrates. I also think

there's some good generic strategies with things like carbohydrates. I typically, you know, I want, I like a balanced type of a meal, unless you have some sort of autoimmune issues. If all things are normal and you can eat carbohydrates and you're fine, I like to have a nice balance of carbs fat and proteins where I'm not, you know, I don't want to restrict too much from this person. I'm trying to encourage a good relationship with food.

I want good balance. I recognize that at one point in their life, they're gonna want a glass of wine. They're gonna go at the dinner. I don't wanna go ketogenic. I don't wanna do these types of things. I want a good balance. But there are some strategies towards how

and where I have them eat carbohydrates. I personally like either one, one of their meals in the morning. So their first meal in the morning time will have a little bit of carbohydrates in it. I love to lean towards things like oatmeal or fruit, stuff like that to start their day off. And then I try and time the rest of their carbs pre and post workout.

And then the rest of the rest of their meals, those are gonna be higher protein, higher fat. So like a couple hours an hour or two before the workout. Right. Right after the workout. Right. So I get the benefits of the fuel for that workout. I'm also refueling my glycogen levels right afterwards. So that's kind of where I'm going to try and gear them towards.

I think those are good habits for the average person to have. And then also to train them that on days that we are not exercising, that if we were going to reduce our carbohydrate intake, that would be the day. But all in all, I want a good balance of all the three major macronutrients because I think for most people, I think that's a more ideal long-term way of living. Unless again, like I said, you have some sort of an issue that you can't. Yeah.

And so you're looking at every maybe week or every two weeks, you're going to be slowly bumping your calories by about between 50 to 150, depending on the individual, depending on how many total calories you're eating. If you're really scared about gaining lots of body fat while you're doing this with called reverse diet with your weight training, then bump them slowly. 50 calories a day this week. And then no, I check the scale. I'm doing the workouts. I'm getting a little stronger. The scale, you know, it didn't really go up or only went up a pound or stay the same. Cool. I'll try another 50 next week.

You can do this slowly. It doesn't have to happen. In fact, it's probably better to air on the side of slow than it is to, you know, dramatically increase your calories because that could cause all kinds of other problems. So there's also a lot of benefit because we're, and I know this is as much in the eating more, probably could have fell under the exercise portion of this conversation, but we didn't really address meat

or just walking around and moving. There's something to be said about good habits like this, one of the best habits that I've created for myself and my clients is, you know, we've gotten to this place where we sit and we eat. We sit at a TV and we eat food. We sit down at a restaurant for an hour at a time and eat food and then we plop down on a couch

or get in our car and just promoting movement, not exercise, not training, not running on a treadmill, just after meals going for nice walks. Like this will promote the digestive process and help that process. And I think overall that this helps speed the metabolism up. If you're somebody who eats tons of food and then sits down and doesn't move,

that can't be ideal and beneficial for the body. So getting into good habits of going for a nice stroll after every time that you consume food, I think is a really good healthy habit for this person. They find it increases or improves insulin sensitivity and contributes to a healthier hormone profile, which we should definitely talk about one big, big rock that we're not addressing, because we're not addressing, because we're addressing about slowly increasing calories, lifting weights to get stronger,

but there's one thing that will be ultimate recovery weapon. There's one thing that'll make all of this go to crap if you don't do this very well, and that's get really good sleep. This is one that we see Achilles heel of this. Oh, totally. This is probably, again, when you talk about paradigm shattering moments or like big a haz as a trainer. You know, I may get all these other things right. And I just I was not a trainer who really addressed and looked at sleep in my first probably five, five to seven years until I realized how detrimental it can be to somebody

who neglects that. I attracted a lot of CEO type clients and high performers and struggled with getting fat loss with them and didn't realize how much sleep was really hindering that. Well, when you look at, again, if we talk about adaptation of the body and we look at evolution, it's likely that the, well, there's two types of stress

that we kind of experience in life. There's acute stress, which is typically something really scary or dangerous happening right now. It's not very cute. Like I almost got run over by a car. Oh my God, and then I'm safe, I'm okay now. Or for most of human history, it was probably a predator or an attack of some sort.

The other type of stress that we experience is that kind of low to. The other type of stress that we experience is that kind of load of moderate, you know, consistent level of stress that just kind of stays with you all day long. Now today in modern times that's, you know, traffic, it's a stressful life, it's not getting good sleep. But back for most of human history, if you had this kind of low, moderate level of stress, it meant two things. It probably meant two things. It probably meant, I don't have good shelter, so I'm not going to be sleeping well because I don't feel safe. And it meant I didn't have a reliable, steady source of food.

So it only makes sense that if your body is feeling this low to moderate level of stress, which lack of sleep does, lack of sleep promotes this in the body, your body is going to want to do two things, hang on to calories, and it's gonna make you want to eat more of the types of foods that encourage you to want to eat more. So what you'll notice is studies show this. People who lack sleep tend to crave highly palatable foods, makes them feel better, they tend to eat People who lack sleep tend to crave highly palatable foods, make some feel better, they tend to eat more sugar, they tend to eat more of the stuff that's not necessarily

good for you, and they find that people, when they lack sleep, their bodies tend to not want a burn body fat. And here's the other thing. Poor sleep is terrible for your hormones. What I mean by terrible is it creates a hormone profile that is not beneficial to building muscle and burning body fat. It creates a profile that's great for giving you energy now, which is kind of high cortisol,

and not building muscles, not getting a faster metabolism. So you want to talk about shooting yourself on the foot, don't get good sleep, boost your calories and work out to get stronger, and you're probably going to be spinning your tires in the dirt. about shooting yourself on the foot, don't get good sleep, boost your calories and work out to get stronger, and you're probably gonna be spinning your tires in the dirt. So some of the things that we should address and talk about then are,

what are some of the things that you guys have? Because this isn't a hard one, to get people to get good sleep. Like, I mean, to try and get me when I was in my early 20s, you know, I used to say things like, I'll sleep when I'm dead and sleep is overrated. I know my favorite thing. Oh, I used to say shit like that.

It's terrible when I think back. And, but I know that I'm not alone with that mentality. I know there's a lot of people that think this way when they're grind, they take a lot of pride in grinding. So what are some things that you guys have done to implement good behaviors around sleep with your clients? Oh, so the first and most important thing is to treat sleep like something you prioritize, like anything you prioritize. So let's say for example, I'm

going to go do a talk and I'm going to present to 500 people. If that was something that I took seriously, I would prepare for the talk. I would treat it very seriously. I'd make sure that morning I woke up and I looked over my notes. I would have made sure that I covered all the things I was going to talk about.

And I had a really good idea of what I was going to talk about. That way when I went there, I was prepared and I had a good speech. If I didn't prioritize the speech, I would just show up and wing it. This is how we treat our sleep. We treat our sleep like something that's just gonna happen. We completely take for granted that the state

that you go into your sleep matters a lot and it's gonna make a big difference on your sleep. So if you're go, go, go, go, electronic lights on all the way up until the second you close your eyes and you expect your body and your brain to fall right asleep. It's not going to happen unless you're completely exhausted. I know there's some people listening right now who are like, I only get five hours sleep but I go right to sleep because you're exhausted.

You're just exhausted. You're beyond the threshold of that. You are. So you want to treat it like anything else that you prioritize. So what does that mean? Two hours before you go to bed, prepare your body and your mind for sleep. Get off the electronics.

This is a huge thing for me too, because I didn't even realize how wound up I still was before I would go to sleep. And then taking the time to really prepare yourself mentally for sleep was like, it sounds crazy, but to be able to not just like eliminate a lot of the blue light and all these electronics, obviously that's gonna help,

but to kind of prepare yourself mentally to calm down, there's two different states, and I felt them specifically. I know now the difference of when, I'm in this heightened alert, like, you know, fight or flight type state, which is a very common state that people just carry throughout the entire day and then expect to just sleep.

Exactly. So, you know, it's a training process. A lot of times you hear people talk about meditation, they talk about, you know, awareness or like all these like woo-woo terms out there. But really, what they're just trying to get you to experience something that you're probably not even feeling right now.

And that's really the state that you need to be concerned with in order to fully recover and recharge your battery to then develop a better metabolism and to build muscle. Yeah, the blue light thing was a game changer for me because there was a major duh moment for me when I figured out like, oh, wow, yeah, for most of human history, we didn't have artificial light. Yeah. The sun went down and the sun is what told us it's time to rest and recover, you know,

which depending on what time of the year it is, it's going down somewhere between 6 and 8 pm at night at the latest. Here I am, and we live in this time now where we're underneath these artificial blue lights all the time. We have these laptops and computers, we have these badass big screen TVs, we got these smartphones now in social media, and then you add into like, what your your point, Justin, about the the fight or flight type of stress that just with your mindset and where you're at. And man, you watch a you watch a scary movie or you watch something that is like a action packed, you know, Netflix series that you're all into and it's nine o'clock at night. And then before you go to bed, you check your Instagram and some haters got on there and said some shit to you.

Like all those things aside from the light sending a signal to the brain saying, hey, it's still daytime, aside from that, then you add in all the things that you're actually watching and the brain is downloading. And then you go like, oh, it's 10 or 11. It's time for me to shut down and rest and recover. Get the fuck out of here.

It's not to mention, I mean waking up, like for me, I used to have anxiety about waking up. I didn't even know I had anxiety about it. It's because of the shock factor. It's the, yeah, like I would anticipate my alarm clock going off and I would wake up three hours before my alarm clock would turn off. And so it's just like just being able to address that

and find a better way to even wake up was huge. Well, and we just it's it's funny because it's like anything else. You know, if it's really important, anything in our lives, you prioritize things and you make efforts and you and you create rituals around and it's you know, sleep for so long has just been kind of an afterthought. It's like, I'll sleep when I'm tired. My body will just, I'll pass out all. And that's versus, whoa, this is something that's really, really important. I mean, look at the, especially in our industry and fitness.

Look at the rituals around getting ready to work out. I mean, you got your gym bag, you got your shaker cup, you take your pre workout, you play your Metallica music before you get ready. You're a red man, you're a band. Yeah, you're strapping, you take your pre workout, you play your metallic music before you get ready. You're a red man, you're a red man. You're strapping, you're fucking waylifting shoes, you get the wristband going, you freaking prime the body, you do a warm, I mean, Jesus, there is a whole host of things. I got my shreds taken. And that same thing carries over into a sporting event.

If you're a basketball player, football player, look at all the rituals that are before you go to game time. But if you knew that sleep was as important or arguably more important than these things, and yet you have no rituals or you have no good habits that you've put in place to optimize that. Man, what a game changer when I figured that piece out and how important that was for me to teach my clients. Oh, and sleep requires more ritual than activity. And here's why.

Sleeping is probably the most vulnerable thing that humans do ever anytime. So if you're, you think, imagine again, 5000 years ago. At what point are you, you're most vulnerable to attack? Yes. And you're unconscious. Well, duh, when you're most vulnerable to attack? Yes. By and you're unconscious. Well, duh. When you're unconscious, it's night. You can't see very well at night. So if you don't get good sleep, first off, if you're stressed by for at all, your body's not gonna let you go to sleep. It's not gonna lay because imagine if you're like running away from a from a predator or something

and it's dark and you're really, really tired, but you know he's kind of out there. Your body is going to try to keep you awake. Well, that's what happens when you're going to bed, stress out, lights on, turn them off, and you expect yourself to shut down. It ain't going to happen. Here's a couple things. First off, and here's some tangibles. First off, aim for seven to eight hours of sleep.

That is what we found to be the ideal amount of sleep for most people. So give yourself, so know what time you need to wake up. Give yourself seven to eight hours before that. That's the time that you should be in bed and go to sleep. Now, two hours before that is when you start to get ready for bed. Now, that doesn't mean that you lay there in a dark room

and you do all that stuff. You don't have to go that crazy at all, but here's a couple things you should probably do. The all light, all light, tells the brain that it probably shouldn't be asleep, but there's two different types of light that have the biggest effect on the brain. The first one is blue light. That's what blue light blocking glasses help you get rid of. So you can wear those. The second one is green light, which is also present in electronics and in sunlight. And then the type of light that affects you the least is red light.

Now why do you think humans evolve to not be negatively impact by red light? A fire. A fire. Because the only kind of light we evolved having late at night or during the evening or whatever, was fire. So here's what I like to do.

I have put in my house candles, right? Candles or Himalayan salt lamps. So candles are great, but the problem with candles, you have to replace them all the time. So I, and it's a flame, right? I put Himalayan salt lamps. Now Himalayan salt lamps, just Himalayan salt, there's a bulb inside, you turn it on, it's a red glow, it's wonderful, and so at two hours before bed, and it's enough light to where you can see what you're doing and stuff like.

So in my house, that's what we have, two hours before bed. And we continue our normal stuff, I'm hanging out with the kids and maybe I'll read a book, I like to turn off electronics, I like to try and read. If I do let watch electronics, I put on my blue light blocking glasses to get rid of that. I make sure that all the stressful stuff that I've done for the whole day has been done two hours before debt bed. It's when I shut down the stressful shit.

That's when the conversation is that, if I wanna have a tough conversation with my girlfriend, then I'll make sure I schedule it before two hours before a force shit happens. But again, you're not gonna be perfect every single time. To talk about finances right before bed. No, no, no, not a good idea. It's terrible.

So take your time and prioritize it. And watch what you will be blown away. When I started doing this with clients, I couldn't believe it. I looked at their food intake after a few weeks of doing this, they started eating healthier. They noticed less cravings. Cravings are different eating healthier. They noticed less cravings, cravings are different than hunger. They noticed less cravings.

Many times cravings are due to stress or your body is trying to get a quick jolt of feel good because your body feels like shit, so you'll reach for the hedonistic, highly palatable processed food. I noticed they were eating healthier. Of course I noticed better performance in the gym, stronger, more stamina, for the clients that I did have that would monitor things like hormones. I noticed men's testosterone levels going up. I noticed my female clients would have a better balance

of progesterone to estrogen. I just noticed all these incredible things that were happening to them. And of course, they felt better, had more energy and they were more productive throughout the whole day Here's a myth. I would love to just smash for those you thinking oh, I can't get eight hours of sleep because I'm a hustler And I got to work and so I only you know want to okay If you get good sleep, you'll be far more productive during the hours. You're awake and you actually be more productive

That's a fact that's an absolute fact You'll be more productive on with less time than you were before when you were just grinding it out. You look way less like a zombie. Absolutely. So, sleep is extremely important. Schedule it two hours before. Blue light blocking glasses are great.

Even better. Turn off everything off. Go by kind of red light or a low glow. And oh, cool room. Make sure your room is really cool. Here's another one that's interesting. I read a study that showed that people who sleep almost naked or naked have consistently better sleep. I think it has to do with the body temperature.

So this is what I do now. I go to bed and I just sleep in my underwear. You guys know that I send you guys pictures. And it works in conducting your own experiments. And that would sleep in naked forever. Have you been for a long time? Yeah, a long time. We've always been in naked.

I can't do that. Not completely. A little boxer guy. Yeah, exactly. And in prioritize that, and then combine that with a good traditional strength training program where you're trying to get stronger. For most of you, this is going to be about three days a week in the gym, full body. You're doing straight sets. And then take your calories, figure out your maintenance calories, bump them up

very, very slowly between 50 to 150 calories a week, watch the scale if it doesn't go up or it goes up just a little bit, and you're getting stronger and you're getting good sleep, you're on the right track, and stay on this path until you're at the point where you're like, wow, I'm eating a decent amount of food. My metabolism feels good. I'm really strong. I think I could start cutting down, be happy with where I end up settling with my colorekin take. And if you do that, the odds of your long-term success way, way higher, in fact, in my experience, the only clients I've ever worked with who've had real long-term success are the ones that took this approach.

And with that, if you go to MindPumpFree.com, you can download any of our guides for free. You can also check us all out on Instagram. You can find Justin at MindPump. Justin, you can find me at MindPump.sal and Adam at MindPump. Adam, thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a ballac, maps performance, and maps aesthetic.

Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family.

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