Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1575: Exercise Vs. Diet

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin compare exercise and diet and score which is the most important. Exercise is king. Nutrition is queen. Put them together and you've got a kingdom. (1:45) Exercise vs. Diet #1 – Aesthetics. (4:09) #2 – Mobility. (9:12) #3 – Performance. (12:28) #4 – Longevity. (16:45) #5 – Brain health. (21:18) #6 – Hormones. (30:12) #7 – Sleep. (40:21) #8 – Quality of life. (44:26) Related Links/Products Mentioned June Promotion: MAPS Prime, Prime Pro, and the Prime Bundle 50% off!  **Promo code “JUNEPRIME” at checkout** Visit Four Sigmatic for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout Jack Lalane pulls 70 boats on 70th birthday - YouTube How To Boost Your Metabolism The Right Way! (FAT LOSS!)| Mind Pump TV What is the First Step to Better Mobility? - Mind Pump Blog What’s making athletes faster, better, stronger: David Epstein at TED2014 The effect of resistance training on cognitive function in the older adults: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials 3 Turkish Get-Up Variations - Tutorial with Kettlebell Master of Sport – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump #1345: 6 Ways To Optimize Sleep For Faster Muscle Gain And Fat Loss Mind Pump TV - YouTube Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Serene Wilken (@mindful_axis)  Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pup, right in today's episode. We did a debate exercise versus diet. Which one is more important. And we go down a list of different goals and metrics

and weigh them out. We actually give a score to exercise and diet and at the end you'll kind of figure out which one wins. So we know you're gonna enjoy this episode. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, for Sigmatic. Now for Sigmatic makes high quality supplements, mushroom-based supplements.

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Also, all month long, we're running a sale on Maps Prime, Maps Prime Pro, and are already discounted Prime Bundle. All of them are an additional 50% off. Go check them out, head over to mapsfitinusproducts.com, just use the code June Prime with no space for the discount. You guys know Jacqueline, right?

Of course, he's like the... Not personally, but he's the Godfather of health and fitness. Yeah, that guy's amazing. He was definitely a pioneer in our space. Wait, wait ahead of his time. Wait ahead, remarkable man. By the way, little factoid with that guy. You guys know he set the world record

and push up some pull ups in his 50s. Doesn't he have several? That's a 50s. Doesn't he have several? That's a bad idea. Doesn't he have several world records? Yeah, where he pulled a boat with his mouth across the English channel or something like that. He was 70, to celebrate his 70th birthday. He had, it was either 10 boats or seven boats

with 70 total people in them. And he pulled it with his teeth in his hands and feet shackled like a dolphin. And I think he went to Alcatraz. I think that's what it was. But you can find the video on YouTube. So it's one of those so much more manly than I even described. Anyway, he's really, really, anyway, one thing he used to say, it was a quote that he used to say, is he said that nutrition is king and exercise is queen or one of the other. And together, you have a kingdom. So it was one of his king, one was queen. Together, you have a kingdom So it was one it was king one was queen Together you have a kingdom. I've never heard that before. Yeah, so maybe Doug you can probably show you

He might have just made that up the actual quote of oh look at that He did he towed a flotilla of 70 robots during a mile long swim from Long Beach harbor to Queens With that Queensway bridge wow on a 70th birthday. Oh, that's in Long Beach That's it's that's in Long Beach. That's the thing, I'm gonna... How old was he when he passed? 90s something. 90s something.

Yeah, but yeah, his quote is in regards to exercise and nutrition and how they're both very, very, very important, right? One of them is important. The other one's important, together you have, you know, what he would say is he said, exercise is king. Exercise is king, nutrition is queen, together you have a kingdom. Okay. So I want to talk about

which by the way, that statement's a little interesting in itself because, you know, we've been taught in the space that, you know, diet is 70% of your results, right? I mean, abs are made in the kitchen. You've been told so much that, you know, diet is everything. And so I do like this idea of, you know, drawing up an episode that we, you know, compare the two of them with all, you know, let's pit them against each other. Yeah. And let's talk about, let's talk about all the different things that people are looking for whenever they're embarking on a fitness and health journey. And the importance of nutrition and exercise in each of them, which one is more important, I guess,

for each one of them, and kind of what they mean. The first thing, obviously, the number one reason why anybody ever starts a fitness journey is because they want to look better, whether it's fat loss or changing the shape of their body, aesthetics are the number one goal. I mean, as trainers, when you would ask your potential client, almost always.

Yeah, it was always that, almost always, always right even clients that had that key performance goal They would even they'd always say and I and I wouldn't mind Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah I was doing that. Yeah, all right. I got you exactly So now you you made you said something you said that that quote abs are made in the kitchen. Yeah now the truth It there and there's some truth to that and this is I think where it comes from If you want to get leaner you have to create a Chaloric imbalance, right? You have to be burning more calories than you take in or put it differently taking less calories

Then you burn It's really hard to manually burn calories. It's it takes a lot of work to burn four or five hundred calories By the way your cardio machines are lying to you. When they say that you burn 800 calories during an hour of cardio, baloney, that's the reason. Yeah, it's much easier to resist the extra large milkshake after your meal than it is to go burn off that milkshake.

Or to put it down to the plate, you could eat, I could eat 500 calories super easy, super fast, right? Burning it, it's like all kinds of work. So people who try to burn calories manually through exercise and try to achieve weight loss with that study show, with fat loss, it's a terrible approach.

If you don't also address nutrition, it's almost always a failing approach. Now there is another side to that, which is exercise, although doesn't burn many calories, at least not in comparison to how many calories you can eat, it can speed up your metabolism. We talk about this all the time on the podcast. In this case, when it comes to fat loss, resistance training or strength training

can make a pretty significant impact. Well, and this is where I can get behind what Jack Lillain say, which is exercise is king. This is where it can be behind what Jekyll Lane say, which is exercises king. This is where it can be king, right? Because in the context of trying to lose body fat lean out, which is the number one goal that most people sign up for, building some muscle on your body is in result going to speed your metabolism up, which in result will make the caloric deficit you're talking about much easier to accomplish.

It's a longer term strategy, but it's something that, too, will last longer that way as well. So, you know, in terms of like what you're going to see as a result, it may be a little further down the road, but it's something that will be way more sustainable. Yeah, now realistically, I would say people would boost their metabolism over a regular consistent workout over the course of maybe six months to a year. I would see clients have their metabolism boost by about 500 calories a day, which I think is relatively realistic.

Of course, this is general, so it's different from person to person. In some cases, you'd see much more, and other cases would be more challenging. But 500 calories of extra calorie burn all the time, that's pretty significant. You know, it's 3,500 calories a week, just supporting your extra lean body mass and the muscle that you've built. So that's pretty good.

However, again, I want to go back. 500 calories are really easy to eat. So for fat loss, the importance of exercise is to maintain muscle, maintain a fast metabolism, so you don't just lose weight, right? Losing weight can mean you also lost muscle, but for the fat, so it helps you with the fat loss, but then of course the diet has to be a part of this. Well, not just for fat loss, also for muscle building, right? You can also exercise and train all day, but if you don't give your

body the nutrients that it needs to build muscle, that whole idea of us speeding the metabolism up doesn't end up working out for you. Right. You got to keep that in mind also. Right. Now, we will say this when it comes to building muscle, exercise is more important. I mean, you could have the best diet in the world. If you're not sending a signal to build muscle, you're not going gonna build any muscle at all. So when it comes to shaping and sculpting your body by building muscle, exercise definitely is very, very important. And I look, I could build muscle on people

with eating excess calories all day long. I mean, somebody who wants to lose, it's just eating too much, just having to lift some weights and you watch them build some muscles. So when it comes to building muscle, I would say the exercise portion of that formula. You'd weigh that a little bit more. Yeah, it's definitely more important.

But overall for aesthetics, I would have to say, it's a 50-50, I would have to say, right? Pretty much 50-50. A lot of it is the reveal, right? Is nutrition based, and I think that's what people like to highlight the most, to be able to kind of present yourself, but the work itself is really reliant on the exercise. Well, and most people are searching for whatever results they're chasing as fast as they can get there.

And if you are neglecting one side of this, regardless if you could do it without it, it's going to take a lot longer, and you're just extending your results as far as when you would get that if you neglect Nutrition in this case or you neglect strength training. Totally now the next one Mobility right mobility is your ability to move through Full range of emotion without pain. You've got good control and stability. So it's not just Range of motion. It's not just flexibility, but rather, you own that range of motion, that flexibility, you have strength within it, so. Fluid movement.

Yeah, so it's like you can get, it's the difference between sitting in the splits, or sitting in the splits, be able to stand up out of the splits, or not hurting yourself if someone jumps on you when you're in the splits, right? Mobility is strength, stability, within a range of motion.

Now I'll start with nutrition with that. Can nutrition improve or decrease your mobility? Well, I guess it can by contributing to inflammation, right? I've had clients change their diets and notice less pain because of less inflammation. That's really the only angle I can see is I have had situations like that where there was a lot of inflammatory type foods that were causing this type of stiffness or pain and restriction within the movements itself.

But in terms of actually going through mobility and gaining more strength in range of motion, I would have to wait. Absolutely. What about the role that it plays with body fat, though? Somebody with higher body fat percentage, I would imagine is gonna be limited with their mobility compared to somebody who is leaner. So, you know, it does play a little bit of a role also there. So obviously, immediately, it plays a role with inflammation, but long-term, it plays a role with the reduction

of body fat. If somebody, if somebody, let's say all of us in this room, if all of us, we're all carrying a little bit of body fat on us right now, so a little bit less than most of us right now. If you were to drop 10 pounds of fat off your body right now, do you think you would be more or less... Sure, because your body fat is this weight that just kind of sits on you.

It doesn't, it's not really functional. I mean, it's got some function, but not much. So if you gained 30 pounds of body fat, it would be like wearing a 30 pound weight vest. So now, however stable you were in particular positions, you're less stable now, just because you're heavier. This is why when people lose weight, they notice dramatic improvements in their mobility.

So that's a great point. So through weight loss or fat loss, through the reduction of inflammation, diet plays a role in mobility. I had a client once, in fact, we were trying to address some chronic back issues, back pain issues, and the diet made a significant in improving their fluid intake, drinking more water.

Actually made a pretty decent difference in their back pain. Well, if that counts, right? Drinking in more water, that would a pretty decent difference in their backpacks. Well, that counts, right? Drinking more water, that would definitely be a contributing factor. Yeah, but when it comes to just impacting your mobility overall, exercise here weighs much heavier. Are we going to play the same game that we do with the first one, which is a thing? This has to be like 80-20, I would say.

That's not 90-10. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I think it might be a bit... Yeah, the first one's 50-50, this one I say like 80, 20, I would say. That's not 80, 10. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I think, I mean, the first one 50, 50, this one I say like 80, 20. I would say 80, 20 or at the most, 70, 30. You know, exercise, 70 or 80. To the diet being, you know, 20 or 30 at the most.

I like that, I can get out of that. And it's cool because as we go down, if you find one you're listening or watching the podcast and there's one that you really want to work on, it'll help you put more focus on the world. Prioritize it a little more effectively. Exactly. The next one is performance.

So performance, we're talking about strength, speed, endurance, like your agility, your body's ability to move and perform. Let's start with the diet side of it. Can diet affect your performance, both negatively and positively. Let's start with the diet side of it. Can diet affect your performance, both negatively and positively? Absolutely. It's for sure. Yeah, for sure. I've noticed differences in my performance if my carbohydrates are too low or if my digestion is off because I'm eating foods that are not affecting my digestion well. I can see that I'm more bogged down or light-headed or not as focused. So there's definitely, definitely an impact with diet.

Well, too, I noticed like some of the best performing athletes have figured this out that it's a vital component. There's a lot of athletes out there that can get away with eating a little bit more excessively and not probably the highest quality that they could be, just because their priority is so focused on exercise and movement and

performance, that it's sort of, you know, they're working in spite of all that. But this is definitely, if they were to look further into their nutrition, they'll find that they could, you know, sometimes it even leads more towards injury, you know, where the inflammation itself is a contributing factor, which then leaves them susceptible with some other underlying issue that may aggravate it a bit more in that direction. Well speaking of athletes, I really think that in the last two decades, the progression that we've seen

in almost all sports, I think is nutritional science. Yeah, I think that where we've come from. That's where you see the biggest difference. Yeah, and I know they did a really cool TED talk that we've all watched before that talks about, like, you know, the number one thing actually is related to like the gear that they wear and that type of... The democratization of sports.

Yeah, and that made a big difference, right? You should say. I was trying to put it out there, but... But when I look at the last, you know, 20 to 30 years of, you know, high level sports when I look at the last 20 to 30 years of high level sports, you look at the amount of attention that these professional athletes now are putting towards nutrition. It's so different than what it used to be.

And now you're starting to see that bleed into even younger kids. Younger kids are now starting to pay attention to that. Where when I was growing up, that was an afterthought. Like you didn't even think about nutrition. You just, you did your sport as much as you could. Totally. Now that being said, whereas most of the money, energy,

structure, programming, being spent, diet, or exercise, workouts, training, skills, acquisition. For sure though. It's the workout portion, right? And it's funny, we talked about aesthetics earlier. You look at bodybuilders, when they're getting on stage to get lean, most of their attention's placed on their diet, right? And it's funny, we talked about aesthetics earlier, you look at bodybuilders, when they're getting on stage to get lean, most of their attention is placed on their diet, right? When you're looking at athletes, football players, baseball players, any other type of athlete, yes, at the high levels nutrition is definitely a focus because it plays a role, but most

of the focus is an afterthought, which is kind of what I experienced going through that. But there are specific sports too that require different type of nutrition strategies and two ones that require cutting and require you weighing in. And so I would, if we were to kind of be nuanced about this and like go through each specific sport,

you might have a little bit different ratio like for wrestling, for instance, or something in terms of like MMA. I would probably have to weigh nutrition a bit more. So I feel like that's not a fair comparison because even long before it became popular in all sports, it was always like every wrestler is, if you had to cut what you cut calories,

that's been around since the beginning of time. That's not like the evolution of nutritional science. So I feel like that's not fair to add, or like bodybuilding could be considered a sport and we know them for dieting for a show is like one of the most important. So I think other than those very specific situations, let's put those over here. Right. I think this is an even lower percentage than the mobility argument that we made.

Totally. I would say 90, 10. Yeah. I would say 10%, you know, nutrition, 90%,, 90%, skill acquisition, training, strength training, exercise programming. So if you're an athlete and you want to improve your performance, unless you're at the high, high level where your training programming is dialed, in which case that say maybe look at nutrition, you probably want to focus most of your energy on your workouts on the exercise

portion. All right, the next one, longevity. So longevity is not just how long you live, it's also how long you live and you're healthy, however long you live, because Western medicine is in a good job of stretching out our lifespan, but we find the last five to 10 years still to be pretty terrible, you know, just because a machine or some drugs can keep you alive, is it necessarily, you know, just because a machine or some drugs and keep you alive isn't necessarily, you know, what I would consider longevity. Now, when we look at the studies on longevity, what we find is very unspecifics when it comes to exercise.

It's like, you so long as you're active, that's okay, but the diet, boy, does that play a huge role in longevity? I was curious of what direction you were gonna go here, because I thought maybe we might have a little bit of debate here, because I think this is going to be the first one that it's footflopped. Yes. Right. So for the first, because when you talk about all the blue zone stuff like that,

there's people that don't even traditionally wait train or exercise. Most of them don't. Right. It's just the biggest commonality is a little bit of a reduction in calories. That's right. And whole natural foods. Right. And just being active and outside.

So I feel like this will be the first one where most everything is centered around how you eat. Yes. Now there is a caveat here, right? The caveat is if you're super sedentary, exercise makes a huge impact. So what I mean when I say, what we mean when we say that diet is heavier on this than exercise, that just means that the exercises that need to be super specific or programmed or you don't need to put a lot of planning into it. However, if you don't do any exercise at all, if you're the average American in your 70s, you can have the perfect diet, but if you're the average American sitting on your couch all

day long and you start to literally with or away, lose muscle, boy, one day a week of resistance training can make a dramatic improvement in your laundry. Oh, yeah. Every one of these categories, there's going to be this massive individual variance. And there's always going to be outliers at someone's like, oh, that's not true for me. It's this, right? So, okay, of course, but generally speaking, if you are just looking for longevity, right? The person who eats really, really well, their whole life could never do any sort of

structured training. And they're- So long as they're active and they're moving. Right, right. They're gonna be pretty damn well in comparison to somebody who trains like crazy but then it collects a good diet. Yeah, because we could get into quality,

but that's a different subject, but yeah, I would, that's one of those things like community And then just really being mindful of what you put in your body is gonna have like a massive impact on on how long You're gonna you're gonna do it. It does and what you'll find is the heavier ways on diet or the heavier ways on Exercise the more important the details are does that make sense? Yeah. So like, for example, with performance, because it doesn't weigh very heavily on diet, that means, yeah, so long as you fuel your body and you have great, very structured workout programs, you're going to do really well. On the reverse with longevity, it's like the diet needs to be very, very good.

There's important fatty acid profile and the types of carbohydrates you intake in your protein. That's very important. It's my pro-micronutrients, all those things. Yeah. Exactly. And then as far as exercise. So long as you're active.

Exactly. So I would go as extreme as the other end of 90-10 this way. Yeah, it could be 90-10 or 80-20, something like that. I would argue, even, it's just nutrition with longevity. So, so important. And so long as you're active, you're probably going to be, okay, all right, I would argue, even, it's just nutrition with longevity, so, so important. And so long as you're active, you're probably gonna be, okay. All right, the next one, brain health.

This is a big one. No, Doug, I ain't giving them 80, 20, 90, 10. You wanna do 90, 10? I would say 90, I would say 90, 10, almost 95, 5, 5, because you literally could be someone who never exercises, so long as you walk every day. Oh, okay, just the active part. That's right, if you walked every day

and ate perfect your whole life, you're signing up for probably a long healthy life. I could, you know, I could get down with that because I could definitely get down with that. That's what the research is showing, right? When you look at, again, some of these are blue zones. Yeah, these blue zones, they're basically just moving.

You know, there's other factors, by the way, they have close friends and they have a good spiritual practice and all that, but you're right, they are doing things like going fishing, you know, when they're 80 or I hike up the hill every day to grab water. And I think you nailed it perfectly. I mean, just the smaller that number is the less detail

to that. So I look at it, if I say five or 10%, that means that so long as you do something, right? So long as you fish, you walk, you do something, you're addressing that five or 10%, mostly energy and focus on the 90% of what will really make the impact. Brain health, okay.

This one, my opinion has changed considerably. If you asked me five years ago, it would be different than what it is now. In the past, I would have said it was very similar to longevity where it was mostly diet. But now the current research is showing that, what's very important for this is to maintain insulin sensitivity.

You know, the most common brain degenerative issue would be like Alzheimer's, dementia, and researchers call those type three diabetes. Your ability to maintain good insulin sensitivity is very important. Now of course, diet plays a role in that, but having muscle plays also a very, very large role. In fact, just building muscle, regardless of your weight, will improve your body's ability to react to insulin. In essence, improve your body's ability to utilize carbohydrates, sugars, glucose for energy, which again, this is why if you put someone who has Alzheimer's on a ketogenic

diet, they see improvements in cognition. It's not because the ketogenic diet's magic, but rather because at some point their brain stopped working really well on carbohydrates. So they put them on ketones and they seem to operate better. I thought you shared a study not that long ago too about like the benefits of a two in regards to like stability training and challenging that way too. Then you talked about it. Yes. Oh yeah. So here's a thing. Oftentimes we think of the brain and we separate the body from the brain. So we think so long as you're thinking a lot, like in the past they would say,

here's a great way to exercise your brain, and they'd say like do word puzzle, learn a new language. So like develop a new hobby. Like this is the only information we should get about like brain health, and now we're learning that training your body in different ways and provides all this new stimulus.

You think about all the neural pathways and all the different types of stimulus, your nervous system is providing you. That's all through your body. To be able to express all that through exercise and movement really has a massive and very great. This is where I think like the control lateral training, stability training. If it's ever done, even something as simple as a bird dog. I remember getting my clients that were in advanced age. And it actually sometimes you could see the delay. Totally. It takes them to do opposite arm, opposite leg. They get down on all fours. And then I'd say, bring your right leg left leg out. And they naturally want to do the same side. You can see them taking a moment there to like,

oh, I have to fire this side and fire that side. And so for the ever I've known that's challenging. And then it's later on, I've seen the research that's come out to support the benefits of that. Oh yeah, if you were to compare two groups of people and looking at their brain health and one group did, and everything else was controlled, but one group did lots of brain challenging exercises.

And the other group just did balance and stability exercises, challenged their brain that way. You would actually see better brain health with the people who are moving. The brain is intricately connected and tied to the body. It's part of the body. So moving the body, challenging, doing certain things. This is by the way why you lose skills. You lose skills not because you lose muscle and strength but rather because your brain loses the ability to do those skills. So it's like, you know, people say, I used to be able to squat and now I'm unstable. Whatever. Yeah, your muscles might be weaker, but really your brain just kind of forgot almost the ability to do that kind of stuff.

So it's very important movement and exercise are very important for brain health, just like they are for muscle health. Do you guys have exercises that you have told your clients, like, hey, when you get way older and you don't care about so much how you look this day, when you just wanna feel good, look good, and like overall health, like longevity, what that you stick with you should do forever, like you have like specific ones or like ones

that you like to, I have something, that's why I have one in mind. I've said this to clients before, I've taught the exercise and they listen, long after I'm gone, we don't have a relationship together, you're 30 years older and stuff like that. If you continue to keep this skill right here, the benefits that you will get for so many reasons, and that would be like a step up to a balance, to a toe tag.

Oh, sure. It seems like it's gonna say, Turkish get up. Oh, yeah, that's a good idea to a balance to a toe. Oh, sure. It seems like a Turkish get up. Oh, yeah. Another great one. Another great one. That's why I met. It's a great example of an exercise that is so good for this right here. When you talk about brain health, longevity, people can, the strength community and the

muscle building people will shit on someone. Oh, they will. They'll make fun of movements like this, but here's an example where, and this is why I always tell trainers, be careful when you critique another coach or trainer that's teaching a movement like this that you may think is ridiculous or silly, because you don't know the goals of that client, you don't know where they're currently at,

or you don't know where they want to be in 20 or 30 years, and a movement like a step up to a balance, to a hinge over and touch your toe, to be able to do that. Would it how it challenges the brain, the stability, the strength, just the overall health that you get from a movement like that, or like a Turkish get up,

I just think it's important. Well, you look at people who've had brain injuries when they go get physical therapy, how do they rehab the brain? By doing exercises, my grandmother went through this, where they would have her try and hit a balloon that they would hit to her, and it was training and strengthening the brain.

Now, in the past, I would have swore to God, I would have said, oh, it's 80% diet, 20% exercise, because I was into the mentality that the brain was like this separate thing. Now, it's a 50-50. They're both equally important for brain health, because I understand how that the brain was like this separate thing. Now it's a 50-50. They're both equally important for brain health because I understand now that the brain is part of the body. It's no different than if you asked me the health of your bones

or the health of your body. You're just thought it was cognition only. Yes. We just thought it was the education that you were building that brain muscle with when in fact, it's so interconnected with the body. It's crazy. Totally.

You know, another one I really like to do, I'm just starting to think of all these exercises that I remember teaching like advanced age clients that they don't come to you and someone who hires you. So this is where all the coaches that are listening that's 70 or 80 years old, rarely ever, they say, hey, I want to get in that bikini body. Right?

Or I want to build 15 pounds of muscle, right? They just want to live as long and as healthy as they can. And so movements and exercises like the Turkish get up, like to step up to a balance toe touch. So these are so, so great from, yes, there's exercise that build more muscle, burn more calories. But there's another side to this that we're training. Another thing, you guys ever seen those balls

that are like shaped different. So when you bounce, they always go different directions. And you got to react to it. That's right. So I'd have a client where that was part of our training. For like 10 minutes, I would just bounce the ball back and forth with him and he'd have to grab it because every time it reacts differently.

I'm telling you, okay, I trained people in advanced age, quite a bit towards the end of my career, it became one of my specialties. A lot of the doctors I trained with send me to their patients. And all the doctors would remark after six months or so, like, so and so, so much sharper. Their moods are totally different. They're telling these jokes, their memory seems to be better.

I would see this all the time in the people that I trained. Not just the physical changes, where they were stronger, they could stand up. You know better, they could sit down and squat, they could reach their arm above, above, up above their head. But I'd also noticed changes in positive changes and their personalities and how fast they were to think. And then I remember once I had a client, I've told the story before, it was a very terrifying

thing for me to witness. I had a lady that was already in early stages of dementia and her daughter brought her to me. And I trained this woman for years. And I noticed ever so slight declines in her mental capacity, or maybe they kind of stayed the same. I would say maybe what I noticed is she would kind of tell the same story over and over again.

But remember, this woman was at this point, she was in her late 70s getting into her 80s and she already was in early stages of dementia. Then she fell at home, broke a bone, her daughter no longer could afford to hire me. I ran into this woman, it was like no joke, it was months later, it wasn't years later, it was months later, at the grocery store,

she didn't even recognize me. That's how, and this is a woman I trained for years, that's how fast that cognitive decline went down because she could no longer move an exercise. So exercise extremely important for brain health and of course diet very important. Okay. So what's our score for this? I would say 50 50. I could even be convinced to say 60% exercise. Yeah, that's obviously. Oh, that's interesting because I feel like in the pat just 10 years ago You would make the case the other way for sure. Absolutely. I would even I you could easily push me to say 60 50 in fact, let's do 60 50 60 40. Yeah, or excuse me 60 40 math

Hey, man, I do everything 110 percent That's right, he goes beyond. That always annoys me when people say that. How's that possible? There's only one hundred. All right, 60, 40. Let's talk about hormone health, all right? So when we're talking about hormone health, I think we're talking about, typically it's, are your hormones balanced?

Are they making you feel good? Is your energy levels good? Your lib feel good? Is your energy levels good? Your libido good? Usually I would say people refer to more youthful levels of hormones as being healthy, right? So as you get older as a man, testosterone levels maintaining kind of where they were when you were in your 20s or 30s.

With women, we get this nice balance of estrogen and progesterone, good growth hormone, sensitivity to insulin, a nice, healthy, appropriate cortisol response, all those things, right? So let's talk about diet first. Can diet positively or negatively affect your hormones? Oh, 100%.

100% in fact, this was... It's a big one. Almost, we talked about this in the show that when I get a client, almost every female client that I had that was having hormonal issues, almost always one of the things that we just simply bumping their healthy fats or increasing proteins, solve the problem.

Especially because they're typically chronic dieters. Yes, and that wasn't everybody, but a large portion of female clients that I got that would complain of hormone imbalances one, it was as simple as a fact of feeding them some more calories and primarily coming from healthy fats. Just being well fed. Yeah. It was a massive contributor. Yes. And we just came out of that, the era of demonizing fat and fat plays such a role in hormonal health. And so they would be so, I'd look at their diet and they're eating like 10 grams of fat.

Dude, same thing here. I would get clients, same exact thing, 10, 20 grams of fat. And I remember when I would see something like this, part of me would get excited. One of the things that gets me excited as a trainer is knowing that there's a single thing that I can do that will make a huge impact because I wanna show this person the value in what we can do and something

that they can control quite easily. So I would literally tell them, I want you to add an avocado and a fatty piece of meat or something like that every single day, right? Or something like that, I don't know those lines. And they'd be like, are you sure they guess? Trust me. And sure enough, within a month or two,

they were like, whoa, I feel so different. Well, because, too, you could see the opposite when the calories have been super low for a really long period of time. What happens inevitably, you start to see they'll lose their period, they'll lose hair, their skins affected. You see the ramifications of a poor nutrition strategy

like very visibly. Right, right. And then with men, I mean nutrient deficiencies, boy, do those cause problems with testosterone. Zinc and vitamin D are actually quite common to be issues with men with low testosterone. In fact, if a guy, especially if he's young, shows up and gets tested for low testosterone,

the doctor's gonna look at a few things, sleep, one of them, and then the other one is, let's test your nutrient levels, your zinc and your vitamin D may be low, and that may be causing issues with your testosterone. And then of course, are they eating way too many calories for too long or too low of calories for too long? And then especially, by the way, this is something we haven't touched upon, when your calories are really high, it matters more where those calories come from than when they tend to be low. When they tend to be low, you get away with a little bit more.

Now, I have a question for you, so if you know, curious if you know the answer to this, is it directly connected also to the libido? Because I remember even when I was taking, you know, synthetic testosterone, so if you were to measure my blood, you would see high levels of testosterone. Yet when I get to the last two weeks, like before, show, because I had been dieting so hard for so many weeks, I would completely lose my sex drive. But yet if you were to measure my testosterone levels,

my testosterone levels would be really high. So, I mean, does that also affect just a male who's decreasing as even if he has high testosterone levels can also lose his libido because he's not getting enough calories? You know, we often talk about testosterone because it's like the main driver of that, but so many things play a role in libido,

I mean, psychologically, there's roles that play, you know, play a role in libido. Like, you can be stressed out and that would make you not feel like you're very much in the mood. But there's so many different things. Liberto is actually quite complex. If you are not healthy, you typically will have a low libido. And let's be honest, I used to love that you used to do this at him.

This was really cool. You're the only person I know that would do this is you would go so far before a show and then you would tell your audience, this is the part where it's unhealthy. Yeah, it's okay. I'm up until now, and I don't know how many weeks out that would typically be. Yeah, I wouldn't normally be up until the last, like I would stay really,

I would consider eating healthy, training healthy, until about two, three weeks out. And then at that point, I know that I was crossing the line. I knew that I was about to go to extremely low body fats. I know that's not a healthy place to be. I know I'd be depriving myself of nutrients like my body's been, I'd be pushing my body past. And so I made, I would make that switch and I would, I would always, you know, talk to my Instagram when I was talking to people on, on there and say, okay, like, you know, up into this point,

everything I've been showing you, the average person could follow me, right? So even if you weren't trying to compete, you could follow the tips that I'm giving as far as nutrition and exercise and I think it's a really good advice for everybody. Now I'm crossing that line. Now I'm going beyond that. I know that I'm chasing an aesthetic look for stage for sport and therefore this is not healthy. Right. Now let's talk about exercise. Okay. For hormones, one form of exercise actually has pretty profound, we've talked about this so many times, profound effects on hormones,

and that's strength training or resistance training. And this is because that form of exercise is pro tissue, meaning the main signal that it sends is to add active tissue, which is muscle. Now, what the body needs to build muscle are these hormones, right? So if a what the body needs to build muscle are these hormones, right? So if a man's body wants to build muscle, it's fed properly. You're sending a signal to build muscle with good strength training or resistance training. It's going to need more

testosterone. It's going to need more Androgen receptors. These are the receptors that testosterone attaches to. You're going to need to have more insulin sensitivity. Remember, insulin is also, in fact, insulin's the most anabolic hormone, a lot of people don't know this. You're gonna need to have better growth hormone responses. Your cortisol can't be high all the time because that eats away at muscle. And for women, progesterone and estrogen

need to be more balanced out. Inbalances there will prevent muscle gain actually cause. Fat gain. So when you're doing a pro tissue form of exercise like strength training or resistance training, it has a pretty profound effect on hormone levels. In fact, it's profound enough to where you could take any man and simply having him do an appropriate amount

of resistance training, you will notice an increase in testosterone and an increase in endrogens. So it's important to bring that up as a differentiating point This is training, you will notice an increase in testosterone and an increase in androgen. Well, it's important to bring that up as a differentiating point in terms of how you're training because if you were just depending on high cardiovascular output and you're putting all your eggs in that basket, it could be a detrimental towards your home imbalance. Yes, right.

I was really curious where you guys were going to put the percentage here because again, this is talking about my own experience, but I was fascinated by this When I came off of taking synthetic testosterone I had went through one of the hardest times in my life I mean I battled with depression because my testosterone levels were so low and the goal was can I bring it up naturally? And I was doing all the things you could think of infrared and focus on sleep and doing diets diet related stuff. I was taking supplements that Sal was telling me to do. But one of the things that I personally felt more than anything else was coming in and strength training heavy lifting and not

and I gotta be clear. I remember you saying you would notice the day of or the day after. Yes, and it wasn't intensely training. It wasn't like when I say heavy lifting, I don't mean like killing it in the gym. I mean, just some good, a heavy five-by, and that's all I would do. I'd come in and just squat five sets and do five-by-five type of lifting. And I would feel this little spike,

the next 24 to 48 hours afterwards, more than I felt from any of the supplements or sleep or the diet being all diet or the infrared, all those other things that I was doing in conjunction with that, I felt the strength training, I personally felt that effect my hormone levels more than anything else. Yes, and you know, it's very interesting when you would do that, you would come in, you would comment on it, just how

much of an effect it had on your body. I would see this with clients all the time, all the time. I would at one point, I had a lot of guys that would come to me with testosterone issues, again, sent to me by doctors, and it was the strength training, resistance training, and these guys were trying, they were doing everything, and it made that big of an impact. Now, I'm going to give two different scores on this one because it's different for men than it is for women. By the way, when I talked about Androgen receptor density, they're now finding in studies that that's the most important factor, more important even

than testosterone levels. They actually did a study where they compared men and their testosterone levels to see who built more muscle. And what they found was that so long as they were within a reasonable range, it wasn't a big difference. The difference came from how many receptors they had for that testosterone. Resistance training always up regulates androgen receptors. It always makes that big of a difference. Now, when it comes to hormone health for men, I'm going to say that this is more 70, 30, 70 exercise, 30 nutrition. I can almost, I mean, you will pretty much reliably

benefit a man's hormones with exercise regardless of their diet. Now with women, their exercise is still very important, but they tend to be more sensitive in my opinion. To nutrition. To nutrition. I would say 50, 50 with some. I would say, or 60, 40, I would say.

I would say 70, 30 for men, 60, 40 for women. How do you guys feel about that? 60 on nutrition or 60 on exercise? 60, 60, 40 for women. How do you guys feel about that? 60 on nutrition or 60 on exercise? 60 on exercise, 40 on nutrition. Well, I would push it even higher on nutrition for women. I would go 50, 50. So you think 50, 50? Yeah, I would say 50, 50 with women on nutrition

and strength training right down the middle. I'll get behind that. In 70, 30 for men? No, I liked that. Okay, I'll get behind that. All right, let's talk about sleep. How each of them affect your sleep quality. So when we look at the studies,

we can clearly see that diet plays a definite role in your quality of sleep. Definitely if you eat foods that make you obese, that can affect your sleep. If you eat foods that- Stimulants. That, yeah, that's gotta count. God, if we include stimulants for sure, right?

You're eating it, right? No, that's a good point. That's a very, very good point. Yeah. If it affects that digestion, that alone raises it, you know, I had that alone skews it way to that side right away, right? It does.

It makes a big difference with the stimulants. Now that you said that, I think I want to change my score. Digestion, if you're eating foods that you're intolerant to, that are causing inflammation, heart burn, that kind of stuff. Boy, does that have a big impact on your sleep? But exercise, let's talk about exercise now.

Exercise almost reliably improves sleep. In fact, in studies, pretty much anytime they just add some exercise so long as it's appropriate to sleep better. I know I'm sharing personal experience stuff and I know that doesn't count, right? But I tell you, one of the things that I always notice, as soon as I start my routine back up, I always sleep better at nighttime. And if I ever find that I'm restless,

it's almost always, because I didn't get my lift in that day. There's something to that restlessness of wasted energy or unused energy. Because I feel like my mind will just keep trying to use it somehow and that's what's keeping me up sometimes. If I'm exhausted, my sleep is just immediately better.

And my theory on this is that this is getting progressively worse as we evolve. Totally. Because tech and we're becoming so sedentary as humans in general, this probably wasn't as big of a deal 50 years ago We're almost every job everything was exhausted. Yeah, everything was exhausting You guys I never had a problem sleeping when I went to work with my dad all day long construction like you come home I didn't need a lift. I need to exercise that day to like I'm out Yeah to pass out, but we just we don't tend to expend the same kind of energy that were I think we we evolved to be able to do

And we sit down we stare at screens spend the same kind of energy that we're, I think we evolved to be able to do. And we sit down, we stare at screens, we stimulate the brain all day long, and then you think you just go lay down in bed and your body's just like, no, I got so much more I could do. Now, sleep issues are an epidemic these days. And I think it's more related to the fact that we just don't move than it is to our poor diet. Our diets have been shitty for longer than the fact that we have been as a sedative as we are. The lack of activity has dropped very, very,

or has increased, I should say, sharply over the last couple of decades. I saw also my kid, by the way, the other day, my son, if it wasn't for structured workouts, I swear to God, the kid would, he would literally morph into the couch or into his bed, right? His, he does all the school work, he studies a lot, everything he enjoys involves this computer, that's how you meet up with his friends or whatever.

And yesterday he had a scheduled workout with Serene, I've had him train with our personal trainer who's on our YouTube channel, Serene, she's amazing, right? And it was so funny last night. And my kid has sleep issues, he'll stay up all night. Last night he comes downstairs and he goes, oh, I'm gonna be going to bed now. It was like 9.45. I'm like, what? Who are you?

Why? Because he worked out. Yeah, totally. So when it comes to sleep, I think I would go 70 exercise, 30 nutrition. And again, this is based off of what I've seen with the studies. I could be pushed 60, 40 because you threw in

stimulus there just now. Yeah, that's where I was leaning, but again, I just think that that's a massive. I know, I'm gonna give it 60-40 further because who the hell do you guys know that don't drink coffee? That's the thing. So popular. Yeah, who the hell do you know

that does not drink coffee and work out at this point? And when I look back at all my clients and that was someone that was struggling with sleep, I would say more often than not, fixing either the time or the amount of caffeine that they are intaking was one of the first offenders that we would fix. That's a good point. Because of that, because it is one of the number one things that I would adjust as a trainer,

I got a little bit more of that direction. I would go 60-40. You could even push me 50-50 on this one. That's good. I'll go 60-40. All right push me 50 50 on this one. So, 60 40. Okay, let's go go 60 40. All right, life quality, quality of life. This encompasses pretty much everything that we talked about, like how much do you enjoy your life?

How challenging is your life in negative ways? That, you know, are you getting meaning out of it? Are you able to do the things that you wanna do? You know, oftentimes we talk about life quality. It really contributes to negative life quality is you want to do something but you can't, right? Like I want to walk to my friend's house, but I can't. Or I want to do things for my,

this is a big one people don't think about. As people age, one of the main reasons why their quality of life declines is because they're not independent anymore. I can't drive, I can't go up the stairs, I have to rely on someone to help me out all the time. So when it comes to life, quality and all of those things, this for me is very easy.

It's 50-50. This is very even. Your diet includes is a longevity. We talked about 90% being with longevity, but your exercise keeps you moving, keeps you strong, keeps you mobile, allows you to do all those things. I can't see how either one... Well, especially the second component of their mood.

Like, you just know right away when you're eating the right types of foods that are benefiting you, and it's not just about flavor, and just about calories, it's about what quality of food you're putting into your body, but then also, what kind of movements are you doing,

and if you feel strong and able-bodied, like, what kind of mood that puts you in, it's huge. I think there's something you need to add to talking about diet when it's related to mood and like, quality of life, though, is it doesn't mean being on a diet or restricting forever is what's most beneficial, either. It's the ability to have that balance where you can enjoy.

That's a big part, right? Yes, so that's important, right? You don't want to be caught in the other direction where it's like, oh, the guys say that it's 50, 50 diet for quality of life, so I'm going to stay on a diet. No. My whole life, like that's not, I think you have to explain. That is a very, very good point.

Look, I come from, my parents have come from a culture that celebrates food. It's such a big part of, a big part of where my parents came from and Sicily or in Italy. You need to be able to enjoy food also for its palatable abilities for enjoying the way it tastes. The way it's celebration. The way it brings people together.

So no, your balance is very important with this, right? Balance, same thing with exercise. Like we say, all exercise is real important. That doesn't mean like you're so rigid with your workouts that you miss your kids, you know, game or you end up not having any friends because you're always working out. Balance is very important, but I think Jack Elaine's comment about exercise and diet, both needing them both to create a kingdom, I think that really encompasses life quality. You need to have them both. You can't just have one. And I think that really encompasses life quality. You need to have them both,

you can't just have one. And I think that was at the ending music there. Yeah, I was gonna wrap it up here, so. Very good. So look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com. We got so much great free stuff you can download. You can also find all of us on Instagram, so you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. Me and Mind Pump Salon, Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. 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 Superbundle at Mind Pump Media dot com.

The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, 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, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag 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

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