Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2345: The Muscle Mommy Revolution

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

The glowing reception of the new program. (1:44) Reflecting on the change in attitude towards fitness for women. (2:52) How CrossFit opened the door for strength training for women. (6:22) The Muscle Mommy Revolution is here! (8:29) Understanding health as more than just your looks. (11:57) Working with your metabolism and not against it. (13:54) The MASSIVE misconception around how irrelevant scale weight is. (19:34) Doing what’s right is ALWAYS easier. (25:45) How the hormone balancing effects of strength training also influence how you store body fat. (29:18) Let’s keep this revolution going! Post on all social media #MAPSMuscleMommy (32:04) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Launch Promotion: MAPS Muscle Mommy ** Code MM80 at checkout for $80 off. Includes: Bonus #1- Mike Matthew’s THINNER LEANER STRONGER. BONUS #2-Mike Matthew’s THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF WORKOUT MOTIVATION. Ends Sunday, May 26th. ** Exclusively for Mind Pump Listeners, if you get a CPT certification through NASM, you can add on additional education courses for FREE! Mind Pump # 1647: Ten Female Fitness Lies Mind Pump # 1547: The Hidden Benefits Of Lifting Weights Mind Pump # 1915: How To Re-Ignite Your Metabolism Mind Pump #1835: Why Resistance Training Is The Best Form Of Exercise For Fat Loss And Overall Health Mind Pump #2187: Why Building Muscle Is More Important Than Losing Fat With Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Metabolic Consequences of Weight Reduction Mind Pump # 1565: Why Women Should Bulk Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

Are you a business owner or marketer looking to reach highly engaged podcast listeners just like you? AdvertiseCast can help. Whether you are looking to promote a national brand across Canada or a regional event or service, we've got you covered. Reach out today to Bob at AdvertiseCast.com. That's E-O-B at AdvertiseCast, as in podcast.com. 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. This is Mind Pump, right? Today's episode, we talk about the Muscle Mommy Revolution. This episode is awesome. By the way, our new program, Maps Muscle Mommy, these are the final hours for the launch,

meaning you get it for $80 off, plus you get two free e-books, okay? So if you're interested, here's what you gotta do, go to mapsmusclemommy.com, use the code MM80, you'll get $80 off. Plus you'll get leaner stronger and the little black book of workout motivation. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor NASM. They're the world's premiere certification for personal trainers and coaches and if you go through our link, nasmt.com, you'll get some giveaways, some discounts. They've really

hooked it up for our listeners. In fact, some of the discounts are where you buy one, get one free. They have a physique and bodybuilding course that you can get with your CPT certification and other stuff as well. Go to that link, NASMPT.com, check out what they've hooked up for Mind Pump listeners. Alright, here comes the show Ladies you've been lied to long enough by the fitness industry, but that's okay. Things are changing Revolution is here. It's happening strength training is growing in popularity Women are waking up to the lies in today's episode We're gonna talk about this revolution and why it's such a good thing. Today's episode is the Muscle Mommy Revolution.

Ah man, I can't hear for it. The uh the program is absolutely crushing flying right now and I wasn't sure how it was going to be received. I know we had that that stretch where the first time we heard the term and then all of a sudden it felt like we were hearing it every week and it's like wow they're actually this has become a thing where women are actually asking for that, right? Which is so different because for all of my training career, that was something that you wouldn't say. In fact, we made up words like tone to describe what a muscle mommy is.

Really that hasn't changed. How I train a female client that says I want to be sculpted, fit, toned, is the exact same way that I trained someone to be a muscle mommy. But back then you couldn't say that because people... We had to be very careful how you communicated it. You had to encourage people in a very thoughtful way because women were afraid of getting bulky or big or masculine. They were told that strength had to encourage people in a very thoughtful way because women were afraid of getting bulky or big or masculine. They were told that strength training and eating more and fueling their

body was wrong, that that was wrong. I mean, let's talk about this for a second. I mean, I started in the late nineties and for a long time, first off, the weight room was dominated by men. You didn't see women in the free weight area. You saw some women in the machine area, but they were typically relegated to the adductor or abductor machine, maybe the, you

know, the donkey kickback machine, you know, some of the exercises with the pink upholstery. And I'm not making this up. Literally the gyms I worked in, they would, they would put, make the upholstery a different color to attract women. And they weren't even doing strength training. They were encouraged to do lots and lots of reps, no rest periods.

It was all about burn, burn, burn. And then you started to see kind of this slow drip in change. I remember when it really started to first happen because for a long time, one of the biggest struggles I had as a trainer, because this is by the way true industry wide, personal trainers if you're working with the general population majority of clients are going to be women. So at least 65 to 70 percent of your clients will be women and it's still that's still true today. So you work with women all the time and I remember when I had to go from really convincing women like deadlifting, squatting, pressing, rowing,

like this is, I know you said you wanna get skinny, I know you said you wanna lose weight, this is the best way to do it, and I'd have to educate and really encourage and teach my clients through a long process. And then you started to see women start to see representatives that they identified with. CrossFit kind of did this a little bit in the fitness space where all of a sudden

one were like, you know what, I think, I think I do want to live voice. I think it does make me look the way I want to look or the way I think I'm going to look by getting on the treadmill and running for two hours and eating a salad. Um, all day long. And that slowly started to change. We started the podcast almost 10 years ago. And when we would communicate this message, it was like, light bulbs are going off. We still got pushback, but we had a lot of women that would write in and say,

Oh my gosh, like this is no wonder it wasn't working. No, I I've done exactly what you said would happen, which is I would lose some weight, end up losing muscle because I felt weaker and I, I was smaller, but I didn't look better. And then my, my weight loss would plateau. I'd be doing hella cardio. I'm eating almost nothing. And eventually I'd gain the weight back and then some, and I'd repeat that cycle. And what you're explaining is exactly what happened to me.

Like what you're saying now makes a lot of sense. I'm a little afraid though. I'm still afraid to really try to build my body. Am I going to get big? Am I going to get bulky? And we would have these conversations. We did episode after episode after episode on this and slowly but surely the industry is starting to shift. And that's why I think this program, that's why Mass Muscle Mommy is crushing because I think

women are finally like, you know what? I'm ready to take a leap. It's a pain point. This is something that's just been blasted their way forever. And it's just like, it's not working because once you get to that point where it's like a plateau, like the only answer that was provided was just eat less and then move more. Eat less, move more, burn more calories. Like literally women would be just like eating barely anything, you know, for years and just trying to survive on that just to fit a certain size. So too, I think a lot of fashion like really leaned into that. Whereas like the size of clothes like and everything was like very much framed to this,

this skinny portrayal. And so, yeah, it's so great to see this, this shift in this movement more towards being healthy, being strong and, and, you know, still looking great and having that, the curves and the natural look that they're going forward to begin with. And feeling strong. Do you guys think that, do you think a lot of this comes from CrossFit? To give credit where credit's due, I feel like. I think the beginning of it. I definitely think that CrossFit did more for strength training for women than the fitness

industry did ever leading up to that point. Women weren't lifting weights, unless they wanted to be bodybuilders, which nobody did, they weren't really lifting weights. And then what CrossFit did is it had, through social media, right, you would see these CrossFit women who presented these sculpted, lean physiques,

and a lot of women were like, wow, that looks cool, and look what she's doing, she's doing pull-ups, and she's squatting like, and look, she's got a round butt and I want to look like that. And so I think it opened the door for the conversation, even though especially early days crossfit programming wasn't great, we've done episodes on this, but it did open the door.

It definitely did open the door to strength training being not just a great form of exercise, but one of the best forms of exercise, especially for women who want to be lean, fit, mobile, healthy, who don't want to work out every single day, who aren't just trying to starve themselves. It did open the door.

It opened the door for that conversation. Yeah, it really feels like the timing was perfect in the space because I felt like the 80s and 90s model was just starting to fade out in the early 2000s. And then early to mid 2000s is when CrossFit really started to take off. And so I think it was this perfect timing of the skinny Coke model was no longer the look anymore. Or we started to realize like, oh, how unhealthy that was and how, Oh,

that didn't look really that good either. And I think that was already starting to become the conversation. And then here comes this sport where you have, like you said, these bodies and women that are extremely capable, you know, that are doing things, doing these crazy feats that are stronger than a lot of other dudes that are like trying to lift this. So it was like, I think it was a really important time in our culture that, and it just was perfect. And I think CrossFit had a lot to do with that.

It did. And I'd like to say that we played a bit of a role. I mean, we do, we do lead the, we lead the podcasting space and we had for a long time in the fitness space. And look, Adam, you're, you're Adam, you're definitely the business genius of the group. Look at the shows that have done the best. The episodes that we've done that have gotten the most reach, what were they? It was the early episode. Well, the very first, well, the first viral one ever was Women's Fitness Myths.

Yeah, top Women's Fitness Myths. Which we addressed all this. Why women should bulk. Yeah. Our episodes around women and metabolism, needing more protein and why they need to strength train, why they need to get stronger, those episodes took off. Now, luckily we have a platform where we have long form communication, so I can break down and explain why, right?

Because the average person might not understand, but here on a podcast, I can break it down and say, look, if you gain 10 pounds of muscle and you lose 10 pounds of fat You're smaller because muscle takes up less space. It also Shapes and sculpt your body, but that's not the best part Now you have a faster metabolism meaning you burn more calories all the time In fact a fast metabolism will burn more calories every single day than you getting on a treadmill for an hour every single day So it's even more effective than that. So then when I can really explain that and break it down and why that happens, people are like, oh, I'm not afraid of lifting weights. Oh, this makes perfect sense. And then when they try it,

here's the deal. When you do it right, when you fuel your body the right way, meaning you don't starve yourself, but you feed the adaptations you're looking for. And what are the adaptations we're looking for? Strength, muscle, we want the hormone profile that tends to lead to that. So nice balance of estrogen and progesterone, growth hormone, we want cortisol to be appropriate, not always high or not crashed into the floor. We want insulin sensitivity, we want good testosterone levels, which is also very important for women. And when they try it and they feel it,

here's what ends up happening. People come back to us and go, you know what's weird? I've been doing what you're saying. I feel like I'm doing less work than I've ever done before. I'm not beating myself up. I have all this energy, my libido's through the roof. The scale says I lost eight pounds, but everybody around me says I look like I lost 15 pounds.

My clothes are looser, I feel empowered, and then what's crazy is I'm eating more than I did in the beginning. You were right, and I don't ever want to go back to the old way again. Well, I think initially we were talking about why this is a revolution. I think in the beginning, the Coke model era then it kind of shifted over and CrossFit sort of opened the doors towards more women like lifting weights, but it was definitely a pendulum swing to the extreme. And we saw that because I mean, nutrition was a bit of a highlight, but it was like still really low calorie and everybody was overtraining. And so this is where we're kind of coming back.

And two, even in culturally speaking, there was this big movement to push health at any size. And disregard the fact that you have a lot of excess amount of pounds that need to be lose. So I feel like now, after all of the dust is settled with a lot of the realization that, so, you know, I feel like now after all of the dust is settled with a lot of the realization that like, wow, like our culture and everybody's really unhealthy. I think like health is finally like equal to, to fitness and strength. And this is something that's like finally kind of

merging together. And I think the muscle mommy really represents that well. When people understand that, you know, cause what drives us often, me included, when I, especially when I first started working out, what drives us to exercise or change our diets initially, and sometimes it's like this for a long time, is that we want to look better. I mean, let's just be very honest, right? People say they want to be healthy.

They say they want to improve all these different things, but really what drives them is like, I want to look better. I just want to look better. I want to be more attractive. I want to look a lot better in my clothes, out of my clothes, the whole deal. But when you understand that health equals the look that you really want, then it's really about just getting healthy, getting healthy in the right way. When you're healthy in the true sense, you'll have a good lean body fat

percentage, not ripped to where your hormones crash to the floor and you're not feeling good, but a nice, lean, healthy body fat percentage. You have adequate muscle that moves your body, produces strength, and you can see it from the outside. You have shape. It looks like you can move yourself. It looks like you're mobile. You've got glutes and hamstrings.

You've got good posture. You know, your arms look sculpted. Like everything looks like you're mobile. You've got glutes and hamstrings. You've got good posture You know your arms look sculpted like everything looks Really really good. You've got good energy your hair and your nails and your skin reflect this by the way studies show this Strength training makes your skin look better other forms of exercise not necessarily now Why is that when you strength train especially when you feed yourself appropriately, it boosts collagen production. Collagen is protein. Okay, collagen is a protein that your body builds just like your muscles. So when you strength train, you send that signal to build and you feed it appropriately. You don't just build your muscles, you build your skin. Same thing with your hair and your nails. So a healthy look is the look that people want. The problem is when people just go for the look,

they end up compromising their health and they get neither. They get none of either one. So as people are starting to understand this, it's like, oh my God, this makes perfect sense. Plus, I mean, isn't that the way you wanna go? Isn't that where you wanna go with this? Yeah, so this is interesting that we're here, right?

So this weekend, I just got back from my Seattle trip and I was with all my family and my cousins and you know they're my cousins I don't get a chance to see very often and yet a lot of them actually do pay attention to what we're doing in the space and fitness and a couple of them really want to lose weight and they want to lose more than 30 40 pounds worth of weight and I'm sitting there kind of explaining to them how they have done it in the past. And I was thinking to myself, like, what do you think is the most difficult part to communicate this to? For me, as I was explaining to her, I'm like, you know, what part of this is so hard for them to understand?

And I think the part that I came to was it's one way is working with your metabolism and then the other way is working against it and so that you and understanding that there's a way that you can do this to where you're actually working with your body to try and obtain these results and then there's another way you can try this and you're literally working against your body and then the ability to be able to communicate that in its simplest form so they can grasp that understanding. I think that's one of the most difficult things to do. It is, cause people equate calorie burn to movement. So the more I move, the more calories that I burn.

But your body burns a lot of calories maintaining itself as well. And the way you move makes a difference in terms of how you burn those calories. So all activity burns calories, but only some forms of activity teach your body to burn more calories on its own. That's what strength training does.

Strength training as a side effect, because the main effect of strength training is to build strength, okay? To be very clear, that's the main adaptation. If I strength train, I'm gonna get stronger if I do it right, that's what I'm aiming for. The side effect of strength training is to build strength. To be very clear, that's the main adaptation. If I strength train, I'm going to get stronger if I do it right. That's what I'm aiming for. The side effect of that though is your body requires more energy to maintain itself. If you've built a little bit of muscle and you feed your body appropriately to do so,

in other words, your body doesn't feel like calories are scarce and it's in the process of building muscle, and you're not trying to be so active all the time to burn those calories all the time, which I'll get to in just a second as to why that's not necessarily a good thing from a getting leaner perspective. Then one of the adaptations is you get a metabolism that burns more calories. This is why if you do this the right way, you use the weight loss doesn't start quickly and then plateau super hard. It's more of a snowball effect as the metabolism kicks in. To give an example, I'll use a typical client. Typical client example, I would have a client who would train with me and they would switch

from their traditional workout, which was a lot of back in the day step classes, aerobics classes, spin classes, cardio, to traditional strength training, maybe a couple days a week, two or three days a week with me, and I would slowly fuel their body for that extra muscle, their caloric intake would go up. It would go up at the end. At the end, when most people expect their caloric intake to be at this low point that they have to maintain. In other words, somebody would come to me and be like, and they're maintaining their

weight at 1800 calories and they're doing all this cardio like crazy. then over the course of the next few months through strength training reducing the activity they were doing because it wasn't Serving us they would be eating 2300 calories. So you're burning 500 more calories and you're you're doing way less Cardio and all those crazy activities and you're leaner I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to understand which one's more sustainable because the other thing you have to consider is this, you have to live in the real world. If you're watching or listening to this, the odds are you live in a modern society where food is plentiful, it's tasty, we do a lot of things with it, it's with food to celebrate

and enjoy people and whatever, it's convenient. A fast metabolism 10,000 years ago, wasn't a great idea. Like if your body burned 3000 calories a day and you're a hunter gatherer, like you're in trouble. Like you got to find 3000 calories a day, but a metabolism that burns 3000 calories a day, you know, in a modern society is an asset because you can burn those calories off. All of the negative effects from food that can happen, even bad foods, even quote-unquote

bad foods, a lot of it goes away if your body's able to burn it off. So a fast metabolism is what you're looking for if you want to get lean, not a slow metabolism. Now let's go back to slow metabolism. What am I talking about? Well if you're training and exercising in a way that tells your body, hey, in order to get better at this activity, I need to become more efficient of a machine, more efficient with my calories, your body will slow its metabolism down. What form of exercise encourages your body

to become more efficient with calories? Cardio, lots of cardio, lots of cardio, because in order to get better at cardio, you don't need a lot of strength, you need very little strength, So your muscle, your body actually says we don't need much strength and we're burning all these calories. What we need to do is pair this muscle down so that this person can do this much better and you'll build more stamina and endurance. So cardio does build lots of endurance and stamina. But when you do that, especially when you combine it with calorie restriction, you slowly metabolism down. This is why you go on a diet. You add three days of cardio, you lose 10 pounds,

then you plateau. What's going on? Oh, I know what I need to do. I got to cut my calories more. I got to do more activity. You lose a little bit more weight and you plateau again. Uh-oh, I think I need to do more. I need to eat less.

And then you're in this place where like, I can't do more, doesn't fit my lifestyle, or I just, I don't want to do that. I'm eating so little that when I go on a week vacation with my husband, or I step out of my diet for a couple of days, I gain all this weight. Like this sucks. This, this doesn't work. And so that's what women were encouraged to do for a long time. And by the way, this isn't just what we experienced.

So we saw this as trainers and gym owners and managers in the fitness industry for two decades. We know this by the way, trainers and coaches watching this, what I'm saying, there's none of this is new. They're all nodding their head like, yes, I know this, but you know, what's funny is now we have the data to support it. Look at the studies on strength training versus other forms of exercise for pure fat loss.

Strength training beats the crap out of other forms of exercise. Look at strength training versus other forms of exercise. Look at strength training versus other forms of exercise for longevity, for hormones, for movement, for all that stuff. It beats the snot out of all those other forms of exercise because it is the superior form of exercise for fat loss. But it also, also, the only form of exercise where you can look at yourself

and you can spot sculpt your body. I can literally develop more of this, develop more of that, develop more of this because that's what strength training does. I work different muscle groups and parts of my body. And yes, you're definitely limited to a large extent by your genetics, but that small, there's a small margin where you can manipulate how your body looks through strength training. So bodybuilders do of course, as they manipulate how their body looks.

I think there's this massive misconception around how irrelevant scale weight is too. You know, we were talking, uh, Katrina and I just last week about like this journey. Part of why we were talking about this is because she been teasing me with the trisepatide weight loss and the back and forth. And right. So it's been like this home joke, right. About, Oh my gosh, you're going to get so skinny. You're going to be so small.

Right. So she's poking at that insecurity. Right. And, uh, she's like, no, you know, and she's like, you know, I'm just playing with this. And of course I know that. And she goes, you know, it is really wild. We've been together for almost 14 years. And she goes, I've seen you at one 97 and all the way up to 245 pounds.

you at 197 and all the way up to 245 pounds. And I've seen an incredibly ripped version and unhealthy fat version in every weight class. That's right. And so the, and the reason why I bring that up is because many times I'll get people that just want to like my, my cousins who just want to lose about 30 pounds or so. And it's like 30 pounds means nothing. The scale weight means nothing.

Like I could literally keep your weight Exactly the way it is and and build you the most bangin body you've ever seen in your life with your exact weight and I think there's a misunderstanding around that that you You need to see the scale go down and I was trying to communicate that to my cousin that Actually when we first start this process and I want you lifting and I want to feed your body more I actually don't want to see the scale move much at all because that's not the problem here The problem is not that you're 40 pounds overweight on the scale It's that we have a lot of extra body fat and you you're under muscle And if I do a really good job of building muscle

We'll simultaneously start to shed some of the body fat and you might not see the scale move very much at all but fast forward three months of trusting this process with me and I'll show you a radically different body but no movement on the scale that's really hard for people to wrap their brain around especially if you have got a number in your head that you think this is where you look good or you can at. You can look it up online. You could go up online and look up a 140 pound woman at 20% body fat versus a 140 pound woman at 30% body fat, same height. Radically different, they look very different.

Do the same thing for a man. Look at a man that's 10% body fat at 190 pounds versus a man that's at 20% body fat at 190 pounds, same height. They will look very different. Muscle looks and feels and is very different than body fat. Body fat, if we were just to take a bunch of body fat and put it on the table and put 20 pounds of it right here

and I put 20 pounds of muscle next to it, the 20 pound of muscle pile would be smaller. It takes up like maybe a quarter less space roughly but then again and shape different. It's very different. Look, if you gain 10 pounds of body fat most people know where it's gonna go. It ain't going to the great places on your body where you want it. Gain 10 pounds of muscle, you know where it goes? Wherever you told it to go. That 10 pounds of muscle is gonna go to the areas that you built.

So what did you work on in the gym? Well, I wanna build more glutes or more quads, or I wanna have a nicer looking upper back, or more sculpted or shaped arms, or whatever. That's where that 10 pounds go. So it's not just that muscle takes up less space, it's also that muscle shapes and sculpts your body. And unless you're one of those genetic anomalies where you gain body fat and it all goes to your

boobs or wherever right that's just not how body fat works. So muscle does that from a look perspective but then when you look at them from a metabolic standpoint which one now you need to have a certain amount of body fat to in order to survive right you don't want to go too low I think I don't need to have a certain amount of body fat in order to survive. You don't want to go too low. I think I don't need to say this. There's an essential amount of body fat. But besides that, metabolically speaking, muscle is metabolically active. Fat in comparison is incredibly inactive. Muscle insulin sensitive. Fat, not so much. Muscle receptors for hormones like testosterone or growth hormone. Body fat, not so much. muscle receptors for hormones like testosterone or growth hormone, body fat not so much. Muscle moves your body. Fat just sits on your body. One of them makes

you mobile, one of them makes you strong, one of them makes you capable, the other one weighs you down. It makes it harder for you to do things. So if your weight stayed the same but you got lean, you're gonna look and feel incredible and the scale lies. Now if you're gonna use a scale, we've talked about this before, combine it at least with a body fat test so if you do lose some weight or gain some weight you can see muscle, fat, hey here here's what's going on, here's not what's going on because there's on the other side of it you could also lose weight and lose muscle and you won't be happy with the results even though the scale says it went down.

Well, and the truth is, this is what normally happens. When you run what a traditional workout was, especially for your average female person that was exercising 20 years ago, it would be eat less and run. And that recipe is the recipe for losing- For muscle. Yeah, for losing muscle as fast as you are fat.

So the scale goes down by 10 pounds, but you lose five pounds of as fast as you are fat. So the scale goes down by 10 pounds, but you lose five pounds of muscle and five pounds of fat. Yeah, you know, I want to say, Adam, for someone listening, what are you talking about? This is now well studied, and I'm so glad we are now where we're at in the space and why this is a revolution. Because now we finally have studies and data

to support what we've observed for over two decades, which we've seen, we saw this, we saw this. When we ran gyms, we had the cardio section, right? The weight, the free weight area, the machine area, the group X classes. And then maybe if you're in a big box, you have a pool and that kind of stuff. But we would see this, right? We'd see the members that would come in and would live on cardio and we would see them slowly become flabbier. You know, the people that just come in all the time

and there's like, and we saw this, but now the data supports us. Look at studies of weight loss through running and calorie restriction and here's what you find. On average, 40% of the weight that is lost comes from muscle. Some studies show more. So if you lost 10 pounds on the scale, four came from muscle,

which also means now you have a slower muscle, which also means now you have a slower metabolism, which also means now that you're smaller but you don't necessarily look that much better. Now look at the studies on strength training and feeding your body. Fat, pure fat loss and oftentimes you gain some muscle along with it. Well look at the oxidative stress too. A lot of times you'll see that, I mean you look tired, you look at the bags under the eyes. A lot of the features like skin wise, a lot of times you'll see that, I mean, you look tired, you look at the bags under the eyes. A lot of the features like skin wise, a lot of people don't like per se, you know, if they're just completely trying to solve this weight problem with cardiovascular training,

not to mention, you know, if you're going down that road and you're under eating and then, and you're also just doing this repetitive movement and stress, you know, that's got a shelf, there's a shelf to that. You can't keep going in that direction without injuring yourself and having incredible joint pain. So, you know, you have to vary your training and strength training allows that it's built in. It's already baked in there.

Whereas cardiovascular, you have to get really creative and outside the box, which it's, people don't even realize that, you know, you have to move differently. You can't just move the same way and just, this is going to be the answer to every, every time I feel like I'm a little bit overweight. The best part about this is it's actually easier. It's it, and it takes less. Doing things right is always easier. That's the crazy part about it.

You have to commit to it. It was, it was one of the coolest parts, like with Katrina and I, you know, for as long as we dated to watch that transformation that she went through because, you know, we dated for years without me ever telling her how to lift weights or train or anything. Like I didn't bother until she asked me. And then when she asked me, I completely flipped it on its head and was like, eliminated all the running, had her increase her calories, hit her protein intake and strength train, lift heavy ass weight three times a week. That was it.

And I remember her just being like, this can't possibly be enough. And then watching what happened six months later, her going, holy shit, I'm eating more food than I've ever ate in my life. My body looks different than it's ever looked. It's easier for me to, I've seen abs for the first time in my life, my body looks different than it's ever looked. It's easier for me to, I've seen abs for the first time in my life, like it blew her mind how much easier it was.

And then since then, so much easier to maintain because now she actually has a metal, which gives her more flexibility around her diet. It used to be she'd be on a strict diet and running like crazy to be in what she would consider back then good shape. And then she'd fall off and it would be like, oh, she'd introduce some drinking or pizza or something in the diet and running like crazy to be in what she would consider back then good shape. And then she'd fall off and it would be like, oh, she'd introduce some drinking or pizza or something in the diet and inconsistent with her running.

And she put on this body fat and then she'd go back to this vicious cycle. It's like where now she has this ability. When you've built a lot of muscle, you get more metabolic flexibility. You could actually have some of these things in the diet and it not feel like it sticks to you right away. You know, it's interesting too about this, uh, not to go too veer or too far off, the hormone balancing effects of strength training also influence how you store body fat.

A lot of people don't realize this, but if you strength train properly and fuel your body appropriately, what your body does through the muscle building process or the strength building process is it organizes its hormones, because your hormones are the signalers, right? So it takes your hormones, it says,

okay, we're getting the signal to get stronger. We're getting adequate nutrients and protein and rest. Let's get stronger. But first, we need to organize our hormones to do so. So it upregulates what are called androgen receptors. Androgen receptors are what testosterone attached to. Very important for women as well. It boosts growth hormone, improves insulin sensitivity. Cortisol becomes appropriate where it's high in the morning and starts to come down at night so you could sleep. Estrogen progesterone start to balance out and that hormone profile is what builds strength, builds muscle and leads to those results. But that hormone profile also leads to healthy fat storage. What do I mean by that? Well you'll notice and maybe people are aware of this but high cortisol throughout the day, imbalances

in estrogen and progesterone, low testosterone, growth hormone that's out of whack, insulin insensitivity, it promotes fat storage around the mid section in women and it takes away fat storage around the glutes and the hips. You actually get more of an unhealthy type of body fat storage and men by the, increases visceral body fat, that hard body fat that's around the organs. So even the kind of fat that you have on your body is healthier when you organize your hormones in a healthy way, which strength training is the best way to do it. Now I'm going to be honest, getting healthier will always typically make your hormone profile look better, but strength training really directly sends that signal that says we need a hormone profile that builds muscle, which also mirrors the

hormone profile you probably had in your late teens, early twenties, that hormone profile that people, when you're growing and building, yet that people tend to search for. So, you know, it's the difference between skinny and thin or strong and sculpted, right? It's the difference between I'm restricting myself to I'm fueling myself. It's a very different approach. And that's also why it takes so much less work

because the value of the workout is not how many calories I'm burning in this workout. The value of the workout is not how many calories I'm burning in this workout. The value of the workout is, am I sending the signal to my body in the right way, appropriately for my body, so that it can start to do the work during the recovery and rest process? This is why less exercise than appropriately is more effective than more exercise than inappropriately.

And in this case, that's exactly what you're doing when you strength train properly and feed yourself properly. So I didn't tell or announce this to the guys, so Andrew, hopefully you're paying attention, that I want to keep this thing going. So as you hear this and if you're following along, I want people to tag, hashtag muscle mommy. Like I want people to tag hashtag muscle mommy so maps muscle mommy and I want to make like a hype reel of you Lifting weights flexing like I want to promote this message and keep it going while we're like we have everybody going through this program

Right now So if you're on Instagram you're on social media and you're taking videos of you deadlifting and squatting and benching and flexing and going through this process. I wanna highlight all the women that are doing this and keep this revolution going. Let's do it, let's keep going. We're moving in the right direction and I think people are finally waking up to it. So it's pretty awesome to be a part of it.

Look, if you like the show, if you love what we have to offer, head over to mindpumpfree.com, check out some of our free fitness guides. Also, MAPS Muscle Mommy is our new program. It's got everything in there. Workout, diet recommendations, supplement recommendations, lifestyle recommendations to build the kind of physique, the healthy physique that we're talking about.

If you're watching this episode on the day it launches, these are the final hours for the launch special, meaning you can get it at a discounted price, plus you get two free e-books. So you go to mapsmusclemommy.com, use the code MM80, you get it for $80 off, so you get $80 off the price, plus you get the e-books, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, and the Little Black Book of Workout Motivation, both from Mike Matthews, an incredible author

in the fitness space. Again, mapsmuscle.com. The code is M M 80. 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 super bundle at mind pump media.com. The RGB super 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 5-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. Whether you're looking to build a website for your business, your hobby, your podcast or just for fun, Pear Networks is your go-to web hosting partner.

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