Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2305: 90 Days to Get Ready for Summer Plan

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Long-lasting changes take TIME. (1:08) Laying out the blueprint on how to do this right and get in shape for summer over the next 90 days! Month one: Fix your why. (7:45) Start lifting. (12:11) Prioritize sleep. (15:27) Eat without distractions. (17:23) Avoid processed foods. (17:55) Hit water targets. (19:40) Don’t weigh yourself. (21:18) Month two: Aim for protein targets. (22:40) Track all your food. (24:45) Track your steps. (25:19) Track weight and body fat. (27:11) Month three: Cut or bulk depending on goals. (28:54) Add steps. (29:24) Increase training volume. (32:04) Ways to know you’re doing things right. (33:13) Related Links/Products Mentioned TRANSCEND your goals! Telehealth Provider • Physician Directed GET YOUR PERSONALIZED TREATMENT PLAN! Hormone Replacement Therapy, Cognitive Function, Sleep & Fatigue, Athletic Performance and MORE. Their online process and medical experts make it simple to find out what’s right for you. March Promotion: MAPS Anabolic | MAPS Anabolic Advanced 50% off! ** Code MARCH50 at checkout ** Mind Pump #2257: Why Hitting Fitness Goals Is A Bad Idea Mind Pump #2102: Maximizing Athletic & Cognitive Performance With Dr. Stephen Cabral The Myth of Optimal Protein Intake – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #2160: Macro Counting Master Class Mind Pump #2287: Bodybuilding 101- How To Bulk And Cut Mind Pump #1897: Why Phasing Your Workouts Is So Important & How To Properly Switch It Up Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Dr. Stephen Cabral (@stephencabral) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in history. This is mind pump. All right, today's episode, 90 days to get you ready

for summer. Now this episode was brought to you by our partners at mphormones.com. They provide testosterone replacement therapy, hormone replacement therapy. They also work with every peptide you've ever heard of including the GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide, terzepotide, or brand names Ozempic. They have the peptides but this is with doctors and real regulated pharmacies. So go to mphormones.com, fill out one of their forms, talk to a doctor, talk to one of the people there and see if it's all right for you. Also these are the final

hours for our March program sale. Okay, MAPS Antibolic is half off and MAPS Antibolic Advanced also half off. If you're interested go to MAPS fitnessproducts.com and then use the code MARCH50 for that discount. All right, here comes the show. You have about 90 days until summertime. In today's episode, we're gonna lay out the blueprint, how to do this right, how to get in shape, how to get ready for summer over the next 90 days.

I actually really, where did this episode die, do you come from? I was talking to our, um, our team that answers questions on our website that does live chats. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, they were suggesting.

Was it Margaret or Rob? I believe Margaret was the one that suggested this. Okay. Yeah. She said, Hey, this will be kind of a good episode. We've done episodes like this before. You know, I don't like the short, like 30 day ones or whatever.

90 days is still kind of short, but yeah, but there's more reasonable and I think you could do it right. You can make significant change in 90 days. Now granted, if you, uh, yeah, I mean, it all, it depends, it depends on where we're coming from, right? Like if you're coming from a hundred pounds overweight, uh, misleading someone to believe that they can get ripped, but you can, you can make significant change in 90 days, still even that person. Um, but I never, uh, I never even took 90 days to get ready for a show. So if you maintain yourself in, in relatively

good shape, right, you can get in really good shape in a 90 day period of time. Yeah. I think the caveat is like starting this, you should, you should not have poor health. Uh, so, you know, you're cleared by your doctor, you've got decent mobility, no major medical issues. Then I think we can do this.

But what I, what I like most about the way you structured this is, you know, and I've explained this to my family and friends, like when they get started on their, their journey and, you know, and I always see them like, okay, they went from, you know, last week, you know, eating all over the place, not working out, not doing anything. And then they like, something happened, right? Or they got a goal or something happened where

there's a challenge. So in my family right now, this is really funny right now. So for Christmas, my sister-in-law got a family photo for everyone. So the whole family has, they haven't done, they're like everybody together to do like a professional photo forever. So the whole family has, they haven't done, they're like everybody together to do like a professional photo shoot.

And so the family knows that in, this is actually like in about 60 days, cause we've known about it for a while, right? 60 days is the photo shoot. And so the whole family is like, nobody's drinking, everyone's doing like, but it's so funny because we go, and this is, I think people make this mistake a lot where they go, you you know they're on

one side they're not tracking they don't care anything and then also that's like ah like full on it's like you know it's really crazy because I've I never did it that way it was always like okay my goals get shredded but I'm like I make incremental changes like weeks over week or month over month of things because just by like the first you know the first month that you have set up here I was looking at the notes and I'm like, yeah, you just do these things and you're already going to see traction over the week, over week. Well, there's two things, two points to make with this. One is in terms of sustainability, behavior change is less likely to stick

when it's, you know, massive change all at once and rarely ever works. And I think people understand it. I don't think I need to make the case. If I tell people you're gonna make huge changes in a very short period of time, what are the odds that you're gonna maintain those changes? People, I think the average person would say that. Or low.

There's also this, like us building muscle, us burning body fat, us school, this is all a part of the adaptation process from the scene we're seeing. And your body will only allow you to adapt so fast. That's the other part is it's not just the psychological aspect of sustainability. It's also physiologically, your body

will respond faster and better if you take this approach as well. So it's not like you're trading slower results for the sustainable approach. You're more fishing because you have to allocate all those resources in that direction as opposed to a bunch of directions. Well, here's what happens. If you shock your body with too much all at once, first off, it's a

stress on the body, exercise alone. Let's just stick with that, right? When you work out, the reason why your body gets stronger and more fit is because it, it detects this new stress. And then it aims to adapt to the stress so that it no longer is a stress, right? So if you did five pushups today, that was real hard for your body. Get stronger.

Five pushups is no longer hard for you. Well, that's why then you go and try to do six or seven to continue that progress. So it's the stress on the body. If you throw too much stress at the body at once, the body goes into, for lack of a better term, a kind of a survival mode where it's like, well, we're going to store body fat. We want to kind of prime ourselves to store body fat.

We're going to ramp up your appetite. We're going to decrease muscle mass because muscle mass costs a lot of nutrients in relation to other parts of the body or other organs of the body. So you'll actually make your body more resistant to change if you go all, everything all at once. So this approach isn't just the psychologically sustainable approach. This is also the best way to get results period. Physiologically too. Yes.

This is, so the birth of me saying, you know, my goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change didn't come till later in my career, till this came full circle misunderstanding. to elicit the most amount of change, didn't come till later in my career until this came full circle, this understanding. Because like many clients of ours and myself, I made that mistake early on too, thinking like, oh, just throw everything at it right now because I want to get there as soon as I possibly can. And it's, you know, after years and years of experience, realized, and then also really understanding the adaptation process, the physiology that's going on here, also the behavioral side and everything. Once that all kind of came full circle then it was like, oh like this is this is kind of silly to do all this at once. I'm

gonna get the same amount of results or more potentially doing less. So why would I throw all that out? By balancing this delicate balance of you know calorie restriction with the new stimulus. It's like, man, I only gotta do a little bit of this stuff and slowly alter things over the course and I will see the most amount of results versus starting with the stuff that I'm gonna be at in three months right now, right at the gates

and working extra hard when it's even more difficult to do it because you haven't been doing anything and seeing less results. Yeah, and remember, like I said earlier, one of your body's safeguards against excess stress is to reduce your caloric requirements and nutrient requirements, and that's paring muscle down

is one of the best ways it does that. Save energy. So you actually, you know, some people are like, well, I lose more weight when I do everything all at once. Well, yeah, you lose more muscle is what ends up happening, and you really set yourself for failure by slowing your metabolism down.

And if you want to be a smaller, you know, same flabbiness version of yourself with a slower metabolism, then do that. But if you're looking to do this in a way to where you sculpted, you're firm, it's body fat that you lose, you get a faster metabolism at the end of this so it's more sustainable. You can actually eat more while maintaining a leaner, lighter body weight. Well, then this is the approach. Now the first part, and I'm going to make the argument that this first part I'm going to say right here, of all the stuff that we're going to talk about is the most important because this first part is what's going to drive everything else and this first part, this first piece, is the most important aspect of sustainability.

This is the biggest factor that determines whether or not what you're doing is sustainable or not. And that is to fix your why, right? So we're gonna talk about the how here in a second, all the steps you could take. But first we need to talk about the why. Now if the why you're trying to make these changes is because you don't like the way you look,

you think you're fat, you're not good, inadequate, whatever, then this is going to be very difficult to sustain because you can motivate yourself to make big changes through shame and self-hate, but you really rob yourself of the joy that could be there from feeling like this is a voluntary growth pursuit. It's very different when you do this because you're like, well, I'm overweight, but I want to take care of myself. I think I deserve to be fit and healthy, or I want to eat in a way that nourishes

myself, when now it feels very different. The other way at some point starts to feel overbearing and tyrannical and almost always leads into rebellion. This is where you go off your diet in such a big way, or you just stop working out because you want to quote unquote, enjoy your life. So you have to start with the why, and this is a conscious decision because it happens unconsciously. And what I mean by that is you have to constantly remind yourself, I'm going to the gym because

I want to take care of myself. I am going to eat this way, not because I hate myself, not because I'm gross or fat or whatever. I'm going to eat this way because I deserve to be healthy. I deserve to be cared for like somebody I care for. If you do it in this fashion, then it feels good. Exercise is self care. It's not punishment and diet is nourishment.

It is not restrictive. The other reason why this part is so important, the most important piece of all this is this is like your home base and the inevitable is going to happen during this process of you drifting away from that. Of course. And always, I mean, this is also like very similar why understanding your why in business is so important. Like as the business grows and scales, it gets more complex and you get distracted and all these other things. And before you know it, you've completely taken a left from what originally made you start this thing. And that's always the demise of businesses. The same thing goes for your journey with this is like you start off with the right intentions and then you get hooked on the scale

or you get hooked on like a look and then you're taking these things you shouldn't be taking and then you're getting up in your training when you didn't get good rep and all of a sudden you're starting to do these behaviors that don't align with your why and so this is so important. One of my favorite things to do with clients when they would tell me like a superficial goal of I want to look a certain way, I'd always nod, oh yeah, yeah, definitely, we'll get there and stuff like that. And then I'd circle back through like questioning is I really try to peer into like the things that they really, really truly cared about. Like is it being a good mother or father? Is it being great as an employee or an employer,

like a great leader in your family? What is it, is it being a great spouse? What drives that person and the things that really matter to them in life outside of what they look like? And then- Or what do they think that looking difference gonna bring them? Right, right.

Let's talk about that. So really trying to attach to that. That way, as I set these goals or lead them through this process, I'm always reminding them that the better version of them leads to the better dad or wife. And inevitably you're going to hit challenges. And when you hit roadblocks, if the reason why you're doing this is to take care of yourself, then those roadblocks are not really roadblocks. Yeah, reason why you're doing this is to take care of yourself, then those roadblocks are not really roadblocks.

Yeah, you get through them a lot. Yeah. Oh, I didn't lose weight this week. You know what? I'm taking care of myself. I still feel good. You know, this is good. I still, I still want to take care of myself.

Not that big of a deal. If it's like I'm fat and gross and ugly and I haven't lost weight in two weeks, well screw it. I'm not doing this anymore. Like I don't want to do that. I hate, I hate myself. This isn't working. Forget it.

I'm done. screw it, I'm not doing this anymore. Like I don't want to do that. I hate, I hate myself. This isn't working. Forget it. I'm done. Or what typically happens is the process becomes so painful and so crappy because

every workout's a punishment. And every time you eat, it's just restrictive. It's not what you, what you want to eat. You know, imagine this, imagine if you want to eat healthy, that's what fixing your why does is it makes you want to eat in a way that's healthy versus I have to eat this way. Um, but I actually want to eat in a way that's healthy versus I have to eat this way But I actually want to eat this this other way, but I have to do it this way

That's not gonna last now the second part to this first month So this is month one that we're talking about right fix your why The second thing you want to do in that first month is start lifting and they're gonna be lifting the entire time But if you're not lifting weights strength training needs to be the foundation of your workouts. Now it's really important. You don't view your strength training as a calorie burning workout. Okay. Here's why that's important. If you look at your strength training workout as a calorie burning workout,

inevitably you'll turn it into circuit training or something else that does not give you great results. Strength training is the stimulus that gets your body to build muscle through that process, hormones balance out, speed up the metabolism, far more effective. If you just think of calorie burn, your body adapts very quickly to that and the results plateau, stop. And sometimes you end up losing muscle. So start lifting. But the intention with that is not to burn a ton of calories.

The intentions get stronger. I would also add to this point in this first month, commit to what's realistic to you at lifting. So don't all of a sudden start lifting five days or seven days a week when you came from doing no lifting whatsoever. Be reasonable with yourself. If you can see yourself going to the gym two to three times a week for the rest of your life, well, then maybe you can commit to something like that.

If you're really uncertain about this and this is really new territory for you and you're, you already have kind of a negative, maybe only start with one time a week. And then this first month, we're trying to figure all that out and then allow yourself to naturally become addicted to the feelings that you get from working out that makes you want to come a second day or a third day of the week. But keep that in mind when you first start off with this, that more does not mean more results necessarily at this point. Pay attention to what is a realistic

schedule or realistic amount of days you can train that you could do forever. And we want to focus on building our body up so that way too. If you're thinking about, I know 90 days is like kind of a set goal, but building something that's sustainable, this is the approach that we have to take. We have to take it from the start of like building our body up to make sure that, you know, we have the strength and we have, um, everything accounted for. So when we add more stress and we add these situations where we're not, we're in a deficit and you know, our body's reacting to that.

We don't have an adverse reaction. Yeah. And in strength training, and the data shows us very clearly, as far as methods of exercise at burning just pure body fat, nothing comes close to strength training. And of course, I don't need to make the argument when it comes to building muscle, someone may be listening and say, I just want to build muscle. Obviously strength training. So it's the most effective form of exercise

for both of those goals. So regardless of whatever goal you have, start lifting. And if you're already lifting, you're good. But if you're not, I mean, I'll tell you what, my beginner clients, I would start one or two days a week with strength training. My advanced clients, I train three days a week. I didn't train advanced clients more than three days a week.

There's a lot you could do within one or two days a week before you have to add an extra day. Especially in the a week. There's a lot you could do within one or two days a week before you have to add really an extra day. Especially in the first month. That's right. In the first month, it's so unnecessary to add any more volume. It won't get you more results. Yeah. You're especially what you have to understand what happens. Where do you go from there?

Yeah. You don't have a lot to go from. You all typically what people do when they start this too, they start to change some of their eating habits. So their calories end up naturally getting reduced. And then you're also doing all this volume of training. There's no reason to be doing beyond three when we're starting this off. All right. Next thing to do in that first month is to prioritize sleep. So what does that look like?

Well, about an hour before you go to bed, prepare your body for sleep, turn the lights off or down, be more relaxed. Don't have any food a couple hours before you go to bed, go to bed at the same time every night, wake up at the same time every day. That includes weekends. A lot of people on Friday nights and Saturday night go to bed, go to bed at the same time every night, wake up at the same time every day, that includes weekends. A lot of people on Friday nights and Saturday night go to bed late, try to sleep in, come Monday morning, their jet lag. Now the data on sleep, because you might be thinking, well, what does

sleep have to do with all this? The data on this is remarkable to the point where there's some studies actually show that when people lose weight with poor sleep, 50% more of the weight comes from muscle than from people that get good sleep. Poor sleep also radically changes your cravings and your appetite, your energy, your mood. Hormones. This is a big one. In fact, people typically get leaner if they go from poor sleep to good sleep, just simply by fixing sleep alone. So prioritize this in month one and then maintain this throughout the whole process I love simple things that you can remember

I know we had cabral on here and he talked about the three two one man is the one So that's kind of typically what I would recommend is somebody because there there's a lot of facets that go into Improving your sleep. It could be this it could be that could something hormonal. There could be a lot of things going. But generally speaking, if you really attack that three, two, one rule, most all people, even if they have some other underlining issue, will see improvement in their sleep simply by doing that. Now, what is this? Three hours before bed? Three hours before, no food. That's right.

So your last meal should be three hours before you go to bed, your last drink of any fluid or water two hours before, the last bit of any sort of electronics, television, anything like that one hour before. Awesome. So just sticking to that or making that a good goal tends to send most people, regardless of what's disrupting their sleep, at least improving a good percentage from that. This next one, again, in studies across the board, has been shown to reduce someone's caloric intake pretty consistently by about 10 to 15%. And that is to simply eat without distractions.

So you don't have to change what you eat. Just don't eat with your phone next to you or while you're watching TV or on your computer. Eat the same food, just don't eat with any distractions, and your caloric intake will start to regulate itself much more naturally to your caloric demands. Very simple, but consistently effective thing that you could do. And then next up with that is to avoid processed foods. This is a bigger impact, right? Heavily processed foods, foods that come in wrappers and boxes, studies will show will result in five to 600 more calories a day in consumption,

even when macronutrients, proteins, fats, and carbs are controlled for. Just those two things right there tend to result in some nice fat loss without even tracking a single calorie. I want to add something to this part that seems a bit counterintuitive, especially when somebody is on like a major weight loss goal. I actually am telling myself, I'm telling my clients this, at this stage of our journey, I want you to eat every time you're hungry.

Do not not eat. If you just ate and then half hour late. Don't try to restrict. Yeah, don't try and restrict right now. If you are avoiding eating in front of your computer, your phone or TV, and you're not eating processed foods, eat. If you're hungry, eat. I want my client at this stage to always feed themselves because you'll see it and we get to the later stages we will start to get into tracking and paying more attention but

what always happens naturally when you take somebody who was eating processed foods, eating distracted and you just get that out of the way, they're gonna eat less food. And at this point, I'm concerned with making sure that we have this new stimulus to build muscle, to speed their metabolism, or strengthening. I want them fed. I wanna make sure they're getting enough nutrients. So I'm encouraging them to eat, just choose whole foods.

Yeah, all of this is just pointing back to awareness, and it's like bringing all those data points in. So you see, you have to acknowledge, you know, putting food in your mouth, what kind of food it is, like, and all of that just, we're just so distracted. Either the phones or we're driving or whatever it is, you know, justification, but just to focus on that part makes a huge difference.

Right, all right, next up is to hit water targets. So a lot of people don't track their water whatsoever, but typically I'll have somebody aim for around a gallon of water or maybe a bit less a day. And this almost always results in some favorable results in terms of appetite, energy, and even caloric intake. It sounds silly, but try it yourself. Track it throughout the day. Typically aiming for around a gallon a day for most people. In my experience,

so consistently, people would get some fat loss and would feel a lot better just from doing that. Yeah, I know this is especially true with somebody who drinks a lot of like canned stuff, you know, sodas and definitely any sort of calorie drinks that they're having and they're just not getting enough water. And I don't, you know. This has been interesting in my own personal journey. I've noticed before too, how much hydration plays a role in just my energy levels. So sometimes I catch myself being guilty of this, I'm going like, oh wow, I started the morning and my water I had was coffee with caffeine in it, and then I had another energy drink and then here it is. And then I had like a Sevilla or something like that. Boy, I haven't even had just a glass, you know,

or two of just straight water. And I wonder why I feel like that. And getting water just in me and getting hydrated, I make a huge difference just in my energy level. So aside from it also keeping them from probably drinking things they shouldn't drink. Is that like headaches or even kind of like joint pain, things like that?

Yeah. I noticed like, it's just, it's so funny when you are just paying attention to making sure and being intentional about drinking water, a lot of these like things and lulls in the middle of the day, energy wise, like you said, like there's just, if you're hydrated, you avoid a lot of those things. Yeah. Now lastly, in for month one, don't weigh yourself. Do not weigh yourself. You're going to be tempted to,

but don't cause that will 100% get in your head. And almost everybody who weighs themselves starts to try to over-correct or change things in that first 30 days. And we will weigh you, just don't want you to get on the scale at all for that first 30 day period. I like to get people, you know, kind of give them a nice surprise by month two,

because by the time they get to month two, they weigh themselves, they see, oh, because what's gonna happen in that first month is you're gonna get leaner in fact you might not even lose a single pound although a lot of you will a lot of you just gonna have a nice little transfer of fat loss with muscle gain but I don't like people weighing themselves in that first 30-day period at all yeah I mean I if we weigh at all during this process it's normally for me as the coach and trainer just to get some feedback I

really I try and avoid that as much as possible because it tends to only get people discouraged or in their head about what they think should be happening on the scale, which many times does not align with what is ideal with what you want as a coach. And so try to avoid this and notice too, this is the first month, right? Like there's not any of these massive shifts or changes

or things where you're saying, you can't have this, you can't have that, you can't do that. It's like, these are just some real foundational things that if they start to pay attention to this, they start focusing on these things, you're gonna start to see your body changing and moving in the right direction before we even get to month two.

Month two is now where we're gonna start to track a little bit, and now we're gonna start to kind of pay attention a Little closer. So now you're 30 days in. All right, we're on month number two now I want you to aim for your protein targets I want you to hit your goal body weight in grams of protein and I want it from whole natural foods So if you want to weigh 130 pounds if you want to weigh 180 pounds you want to weigh whatever Hit that in grams of protein.

Now the data on this, again very clear, it is an incredible appetite suppressant. It actually maintains appetite very, very well. So people tend to almost always reduce their calories just by hitting protein. It also results in more fat loss and definitely more muscle gain by simply doing this. By the way, this is a bit harder than it sounds. The reason why I didn't put it in month one is because you got to start with those other steps before you try to hit protein targets consistently. The average person hearing this might be like, oh yeah, I could do that. No problem. No, no, once you start to track, I mean, the average woman even trying to hit 120 grams of

protein a day, that's a decent amount of protein to hit You know over three meals or whatever. I mean, I'm I'm gonna sum this month to up completely with this I know we have a couple other points that you have but and this month like that is the goal because Almost everybody at this point. We haven't tracked. We haven't paid attention We start paying attention almost everybody is is under consuming protein at this. There's a very, very small percentage of people that I ever coach. That are hitting this on athletes. Yeah.

That are just like naturally hitting their protein and take every single day. Almost, and I don't care male, female, what size you were, it doesn't matter. Almost everybody is under consuming that. And it's there. Most of their diet was loaded up full of processed foods and carbohydrates and saturated fat. And when the first month, when I moved them away from that, it dramatically drops everything.

And I now have to reintroduce making sure we go after protein. And so that becomes the major focus in month two is continue doing everything we've been doing the prior month. And we are now just tracking and most importantly tracking protein all month long. Yes, now next step would be to track all your food. So get yourself an app like Fat Secret.

And now what you're going to do, you're trying to hit your protein targets. Don't worry about hitting carb and fat targets, but do track your food. This is going to come in handy because you're going to get a nice general idea of what you're consuming on a regular basis. And this is what's gonna be very important for the third month when we really start to pull on some levers. So all you're gonna do basically is enter

in the food that you eat, be accurate about it, and eventually we're gonna use those numbers to decide what direction we're gonna go in month three. The next step is to also track your steps. This is a kind of a proxy for movement. How many steps are taking today? Am I taking a thousand, 3000, 10,000, whatever. Don't change anything, but track your steps so that we can have an average.

Cause again, this is going to give us another lever that we can pull, uh, later on in month three, when we start to make it a little bit more specific. This is important to me because how I would train, and by the way too, it took a while to get here as a coach. This became the way that I recommended, any, even cardio, right? So I did it through steps. And the only reason why clients would eventually

maybe get on a piece of a cardio equipment is because over time, I had slowly moved their steps up and moved them up, and then until they finally get to a point where like Adam, you know, we're up to like 17,000 steps a day now, like it would really help if I could get on the treadmill for an hour and actually just knock those out because finding these 10 minute, 20 minute walks

or where to accumulate that many steps was difficult and then we would move in that direction. But up into that point, this is the tool, the metric I wanna use to encourage more calorie burn. I don't want to do it through my strength training. Strength training is for building muscle, building metabolism. Steps in moving, that's when we get into the trying to increase calorie burn a little bit through moving more. And right now, this phase of the journey, it's literally, let's just become aware of how much you normally move in a week so that

I know in the coming months how to manipulate that. Well, it's so much more effective because you're accounting for their overall activity throughout the day, which then they can see, even with the tracking the steps, sometimes they can see hours that they actually burn more calories. It's very enlightening to know that you could be doing something you enjoy

and you're gonna be burning more calories and be more effective with that. And it's going to stick more long-term than you are to just be stuck on a hamster wheel. Totally. And then next up would be now you can start to track things like body fat percentage and body weight. And I like to do this towards the end of the, or middle of this second month. And now we're just going to track it because what we're gonna be looking at is, am I losing through this process?

Trends. Pure body fat. And yes, and Adam, you make this point and I think you make it really well. Don't allow too, give yourself at least two measurements before you start to adjust things. In other words, if you test your body fat and your body weight and you do it again

and it doesn't move, don't change anything. Wait for another test to see if there's anything that you need to change. Right, right, and then again, and even when you do see it, let's say you have two tests in a row, body fat wise, and you saw you went up a point something percent body fat, then you went up point something percent body fat again. Incremental change.

The trend is really slow in that direction. This is not a dramatic trend to see your point something percent going in the direction you don't like. That doesn't mean you need a massive shift. And that's what happens is a lot of people, that's why I don't even like the body fat percentage and the weight that much from people

because they tend to over-correct. Although this is important for a coach to know this, and I want these numbers. For the client, I caution you if you're doing this by yourself to not over-correct when you see your first test comes back and it's not as positive as you thought it would be. Because the worst thing you could do is to over-correct and you see your first test comes back and it's not as positive as you thought it would be because the worst thing you could do is to over-correct and then really send yourself the opposite direction.

All right, so now month three, this is where we start to really start pulling some levers. By the way, if you're doing this right and you're following the steps, you're getting results this entire time. So when I say pull levers, I don't mean you've got no results up until now, now we can really start to get results.

Your body's been progressing this entire time. It's just now that we're in the third month, now we're going to pull levels a little harder because your body's starting to adapt to those smaller changes that you've already made. So now what you do, now that you've tracked, you know where your calories are at, you know where your steps are at, you know all those things, now we can start to change things a little bit. So now you decide whether or not you want to cut calories or you want to cut calories or you want to add calories depending on your goal. If you're trying to lose weight, well then you cut calories

and typically you want to go around 500 calories below what you've been consuming. And if you want to gain, then you typically go 500 calories above what you've been consuming. It's really that simple, right? It's really, that's it. One of the things too that's in this category is where we've now tracked steps for a week,

we're gonna add steps. And depending on where I'm at calorie-wise with a client, I might choose to do a little bit of both, right? So if I know, let's say I have a client who consistently takes 5,000 steps a day and they only eat, say, 2,200 calories, I might shave 2,200 calories and increase steps by 2,000. So I get kind of about a 500 calorie deficit, right?

So it doesn't always have to come from just food. If you like, if you feel like you're very satisfied with food, you don't have like bloat, you feel like you're eating just the right amount of calories, this is where we can use steps movement to create that deficit for you without getting on a piece of cardio equipment and busting tail and sweating like crazy just by moving more frequently today and keeping that and you have we have this option and some clients we go all steps and we keep our calories the same or some clients we go half bumping our steps half reducing calories or some go all reducing calories

if I have a client who did a really good job of building their metabolism and they're coming from a place of 3,500, 4,000 calories, well, the calories are easy. They have a lot of room to play with reducing calories. So we just cut that 500 calories and they're still eating a good amount of food, depending on how low your calories. And this is where it takes the individuals here being able to customize this a little bit, knowing that, oh, I'm already down to 2,000 calories. If I take 500 off of that, I'm down to my 1,500. I never wanna get lower than that. So I might choose to go more steps there.

Or if you're just taking almost no steps. If you're tracking your steps, you're like, oh my God, I'm only taking 3,000 steps a day. Well, yeah, bump your steps up because you need to move more anyway just for your health. Exactly. By the way, when you're adding steps, I don't typically think people need to double their steps. Unless your steps are super low, you're going to go up good 10, 15%, maybe 20%.

I typically use about two increments of 2,000, 2,000 steps in a day. First of all, if you're doing less than 2,000 steps a day, you need to be moving. That means you are very, very sedentary if you're under 2000. So 2000 a day in addition, whenever I'm manipulating. When you go up. Yeah, tends to,

tends to, like at the end of the, and this is like, it depends on the person. And obviously there's a massive variance here, but when I'm cutting people, like that's kind of works. So around 2000 steps, it's always worked for me. It doesn't matter how big or small they are. That extra 2000 a week is enough to create a caloric deficit that will, will, will keep going.

I was going to say it's not like every day you're increasing to that. No, no, no. You're right. It's for the month. Yeah. So it's, so you're, you're doing that. So if you were at, if you were at 5,000 steps on average a day, then you went up to 7,000. That's right. On average. And you're going to maintain that. That's right. And then next is to increase your training volume with your strength training. So what does that mean?

You add a couple more sets, uh, to your strength training, or you make the workout a little bit longer. And now, now the notice I said a little bit, don't double your training. Here's where people screw up. They get into month three, they're seeing great results and they're like, you know what, this is when I get to pull the levers. I'm going to double my efforts in the gym. You will quickly get your body to stop progressing. If you do that, you have to give your body what it can handle appropriately to

adapt, not what it can tolerate and definitely not recover from too. That's right. So the easiest hack for this one is to follow a maps program. Since we build that, we figured it out. Since we, we build that into the programs to where you naturally increase volume over the course of the phases. And so otherwise you're sitting down, trying to do the math and figure out is this appropriate or not yourself.

But that's what part of the reason why we've broken up all of our programs in phases and most all of them are three phases. There's a few that we have that are four phases long, but most are three phases. And so about 90 days. Yeah. So following a maps program while doing this will take care of the, the nice natural progression over the course of three months. Totally.

Now there's, here's some ways that, you know, you're doing everything right. You're getting stronger in the gym. I can lift more weight or I could do more reps. I have great energy throughout the day. I don't have energy crashes. I don't feel down. I don't feel down. I don't feel tired. Um, body fat percentage going down.

That's a great one, right? Not weight. Notice I didn't just say weight on the scale going down, but rather body fat percentage going down, there's different, there's different ways you could test your body fat, a DEXA scan or a good old fashioned body fat caliber test will do this. Um, you're gaining muscle. You can get that by taking a body fat test and weighing

yourself and then doing a little math. And then lastly, do you feel better at the end of your workouts versus how you felt before your workout? Here's a telltale sign that your workout's inappropriate. You go into your workout, you finish your workout and you feel like dog shit at the end. You feel like you died. You need to have more energy at the end than you did going into it.

That typically means you train with the appropriate volume and the end. You feel like you died. You need to have more energy at the end than you did going into it. That typically means you trained with the appropriate volume and the appropriate. You've got to set yourself up for the next workout. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I think it's important at this phase too, is that you're now in a month three, you've been doing this, you've been following steps two. You're also learning to connect to all the stuff you're mentioning. It's like, yes, I know the goal might've been to lose 30 pounds or to get shredded for summer.

Like, that's all important. That's great. But if you want to maintain this for the rest of your life, part of that process too is learning how to connect to like, who cares? Maybe the scale kind of stayed the same in this month or maybe the body fat percent didn't move that much. But man, like I'm so much more productive at work. Oh man, I'm eating more whole foods than I've ever ate in my life. Like my attitude's better. I'm more like my strength is up, like really learn to attach those. And it's, it's funny, like you can't just be aware of it.

It's almost like you have to say that to yourself and you're, and you're learning to reattach it because we're all guilty of this of being attached to these superficial goals of. Yeah. And ignoring that. And you know, a lot of people will hear this and go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I get it, I get it. But then you got to learn to say it to yourself to where you start to reprogram the way you

approach fitness because we've been marketed to for so long that it's a look. You know what I'm saying? It's a look in the gym or it's a look that we're trying to obtain. And so it's really tough to think that you're just gonna hear us on a podcast or us tell you oh just try and attach these things and you go Oh, yeah, I get it and the okay. Well, do you really though because subconsciously you still are driven by I mean look how many times I had a client's like man, I didn't really lose that much weight, you know over the last few weeks I'm like, well, yeah, but how's your energy like, you know now that you say that I feel really good You know strong how's your sleep like yeah, you know you went up 25 pounds on this lift. Yeah, you're right.

You know what? We're doing great. But had I not pointed it out, they would have been so focused on the fact that scale didn't move in the direction that they want it. Look, we also have a free fat loss guide that you can get. It's totally free. That can help you out. You can find it at mindpumpfree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Bundle includes maps anabolic, 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 and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having

Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle 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. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump.