Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2395: Why Mind Pump Doesn’t Give Meal Plans

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Why Mind Pump Doesn’t Give Meal Plans Why Mind Pump does NOT give diet plans. (1:19) Reasons why they work (temporarily). (7:15) Reasons why they suck. (10:43) What to do instead. (19:55) Related Links/Products Mentioned Get your free Sample Pack with any “drink mix” purchase! Also try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water: Visit DrinkLMNT.com/MindPump August Promotion: MAPS Bands | MAPS 40+ 50% off! ** Code AUGUST50 at checkout ** Mind Pump #1522: How to Stay Consistent With Your Diet & Workout Mind Pump #1830: Five Steps to Determine Your Ideal Caloric Intake Mind Pump #2160: Macro Counting Master Class Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Tony Robbins (@tonyrobbins) Instagram

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Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Right in today today's episode we talk about meal plans, why they're terrible, why they don't work, and why Mind Pump has never created a meal plan in our nine years ever. So you're gonna enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor LMNT, otherwise known as Element. This is an electrolyte drink, electrolyte powder that you add to your water and it has the right amount of sodium. All other

electrolyte powders don't have enough sodium to really make a difference. This one has the right amount of sodium. There's no sugar, no artificial sweeteners. They are the leaders in the industry, the only electrolyte powder company we work with. Go check them out. Get a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase. Go to drinklmnt.com forward slash mind pump. Also, the August special this month, MAPS Bands is 50% off and MAPS 40 plus is also 50% off. Both workout programs half off.

If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com, click on one of those programs, and then use the code August 50 for the discount. All right, here comes the show. 50 for the discount. All right. Here comes the show. One of the most common strategies with diet, at least with coaches and trainers is give your clients a meal plan. In today's episode, we're going to talk about why meal plans suck.

This is a terrible diet strategy and the fail rate with meal plans is as high as it is with any other diet out there. 85% of you, probably more, are gonna gain the weight back. So let's talk about meal plans, why they suck, and what else you could do about it. This is a good one, because we haven't talked about this actually in a really long time. Not in a while, huh?

Did you, okay, did somebody mention this, or did, I know sometimes you get these topics from when you meet with the team, with the customer service team, like how did this, is that how this came up? Yeah, I was talking with our customer service team, and they'll get questions about why we don't. Why doesn't Mindpump give a diet?

Right. Why don't you guys provide- That's like an expectation people would have when buying a program a lot of times, they get that with it. Well, I mean, one, it was what we were taught. It still is part of the formula when you market and sell a program today that you get this diet.

People want, this also was one of the biggest challenges when I figured this piece out and realized I wasn't helping my clients by writing these diets and I moved away from that. Like it took me a while, I kind of overcome that with someone who'd be like, well, I just want you to tell me what to eat. Exactly. Just write me a meal plan. You know, just write me a meal plan and learning to communicate to them that you don't want me, you actually don't want me to write you a meal plan.

So that's why I think it's a good conversation because I think there's a lot of coaches and trainers that are still falling for this method for getting people in shape. And it's even if you think you've had some success with it, you'll have way more success when you find the better way to do this. Totally, look, we've left a lot of money on the table in the nine to 10 years we've been on the air. People want diets.

In fact, if we put out a diet with meal plans on it, we would sell probably more than we do in programs because people want it so bad. But we don't do it because people want it so bad. But we don't do it because it doesn't really work. I mean, it may work in the short term like any other diet, but it's a terrible long-term strategy. Now, it sounds like a good idea, right?

If you're a consumer or you're somebody who wants to lose weight or whatever, you just want somebody to give you the answers because you think you're just going to follow the directions. It's a simple, yeah, they want it to be simplified. They want the whole process to be simplified. Unfortunately, like we just know how this plays out. And so that's why we've ended up steering away from this method. A hundred percent.

Um, you know, a workout plan is different because you go to the gym and you follow a plan. A diet is far more than just the calories you put in your mouth. It is a part of culture is connected to emotion and celebration. It's connected to times of the day and meetings. Very few of the meals that we eat are meals that we eat because it's fuel and proteins, fats and carbs. Most of the meals we eat are because we had feelings or cravings or something where we're

meeting with people or doing something else. I mean, there's entire food categories associated with sitting in front of the TV or watching a movie or breakfast, lunch, dinner, or driving in a car. It's so complex that to think that we could just follow a pre-written do this, do that, and then you're good, it's extremely naive, and in our experience, we all started giving meal plans. That's how I started as a trainer. I'd give people meal plans, and over and over and over again,

I saw them fail, and it took me probably at least a few years before I said, yeah, I need a different strategy. It's also like, and one of the analogies I used to give some of my clients, it's like, especially the ones that were parents, it's like you taking the tests for your kids. Like you would never do that, right? Like you ask a parent, like, well, why don't you just take all your kids tests and pass it for them? Well, that's ridiculous. I would never do that. That's the

reason why they go to school so they can learn all this stuff. That's the same thing that goes for you with learning, learning what your body needs for you to be healthy for the rest of your life. Even if I had that answer, right, which I don't, even if I did have the perfect answer for you. I'm glad you said you don't. I don't. That's part of my job is to figure that out with you, but let's pretend for a second that I'm clairvoyant and I know the answer for you and I just write it down and give it to you. Did you learn anything? You didn't. You just have the answers to the test, which by the way, I don't have.

I don't have it. As good as I am, everybody is so unique that I have to figure that out with you and then together we're going to build something that not only is gonna get you to your goal, but that you're going to be able to sustain for the rest of your life. That's what you want.

Yeah, I really like that example of parents because everybody involved in this process wants to make it work, right? We want it like somebody coming in wants the expectation that's going to be simple. Just tell me what I need to do to do this and I'm going to get there. Great. Now the trainer too, they have this guilt that they want to give and provide them what they want, and they also want to have success. But once that whole process starts to happen, it's one of those things, they don't learn anything. It's like I'm teaching my kid how to tie a shoe.

If he never learns how to just physically do it himself and fumble through it and provide me feedback, they're going to end up, I'm always going to be tying their shoes until they're 30 years old. By the way, there's no set answer on this either, even when you figure it out for yourself because your life changes. It's a moving target. Your body changes, you get older or you have kids or schedule changes, your cravings change. Your goals may change.

One minute you may wanna just build as much muscle as possible, another minute you may be like, I need to eat in a way that helps me get better sleep or I'm experiencing anxiety. So learning the process is getting the correct answer. That's right. That's the only way to do it, and that's the only long term solution.

You know, meal plans do give people quote unquote results in the short term. They do work temporarily, but they don't work long term. Now the reason why they work temporarily is because well your macros and your calories are perfect. I know what numbers I need to hit. I know that I eat a half a cup of oats and you know, a cup of berries and five eggs for breakfast or whatever.

And I mean the same thing and And there's no guesswork. I just do this and then this is the result I get. And if you just do that, yes, you will see changes in your body, but it doesn't, it doesn't work longterm. And the thing we need to ask ourselves, if you're a trainer or a coach is, you know, what's your ultimate goal? Is your ultimate goal to get your clients to get short-term results? If the answer is yes, then quit right now because you're not going to do a good job. If your ultimate goal is to get people healthy and fit and teach them and get

them to the point where they want to do this and they maintain this for the rest of their life, then you're in the right job. Then consumers or clients, do you want to lose 30 pounds and gain it right back? Do you really want to do that? Or option B, lose 30 pounds and it stays off for the rest of your life. And you do so in a way to where it feels natural. This is just the way you live. Which one would you rather choose? Right?

Meal plans are A and everything else that we're going to talk about today is B. So the short-term results you might've got, because I've heard, I've had people say this to me, well, no, no, meal plans work. I did it before and I lost a lot of weight, but you're back here again. We have to figure out a different way to do this, because otherwise you're gonna do this up and down yo-yo all the time.

And we know this statistically, you repeat that on off, you know, gain weight, lose weight, cycle, something like three or four times, by the third or fourth time, most people give up forever and they're done, and they never attempt to do it. Well again, sticking to the analogy with the teaching, right, if I'm a math teacher and I just give you

the answers to tests, you pass that test right there. But then what happens when the equations change? And that's why it's so important, we're not teaching the answers, we're teaching the formula to figure out the answers. That's right. Because the problems are always gonna change. As life goes on, as you get older,

as you get a family, as you change your job, as you have health issues that happen, as all these different things come about your life, then the problems change. But the formula on figuring out what you need to do remains the same. And so part of our job is to help teach you the formula for your body. And then once I've taught you that, you can then take that and apply

it to whatever scenario is going on in your life. Whereas if I just write you a meal plan, again, even if I was clairvoyant and knew exactly the perfect meal plan for you to get you to the set goal, sure, that might work temporarily for this moment in time of your life, but the minute something changes or you go away from that or you get older or something else happens, or you change your goal. Now all of a sudden the answer to that equation is different and you don't have the formula. The irony is the one,

there is one category of people that have the most success with meal plans, and those are competitors, like bodybuilders, physique competitors, bikini competitors, and almost all of them, the vast majority of them experience a terrible weight gain, regression, bounce back, whatever you want to call it, post-show. So even with those extremely disciplined, obsessed individuals, after the show, most of them throw, 90% of them throw the meal plan out the window because it's not sustainable. So here's the first reason why meal plans don't work.

If your goal is to live the rest of your life in a healthy and fit way and figure out how to do that, a meal plan does not mimic real life in the slightest. In no way, never in real life in the slightest. Never in real life do you eat the same things day in and day out, week in and week out, regardless if you want vacation, regardless if you wake up late, regardless if you do this or that. Real life doesn't work that way. Real life requires some form of flexibility. The truth is we live in a very, very

plentiful time. You have access to so much food and travel and experiences that you're probably never going to have this like every day this is what I eat five times a day and I never veer off of that. So a meal plan is so far away from real real life that when you go off the meal plan you're screwed because now you're back in you never learned how to swim so you throw me back in the ocean you know I had a life vest on before but now I'm in the ocean and I'm gonna drown so you need to move your your way through this process getting yourself to the point to be able

to navigate real life and a meal plan doesn't do that at all because a meal plan is very specific and tells you exactly what to eat and how much to measure Etc etc. So it teaches you very very little the next point is it's extremely monotonous And this is what people I think underestimate I know when you first get motivated and you want to get fit and healthy and lose weight all stuff You just want people to tell you what to do and you're very motivated at that moment and very sincere I'll do whatever you tell me. I just want to lose a 50- to do. And you're very motivated at that moment and very sincere. I'll do whatever you tell me. I just want to lose a 50 pound.

I don't care what you tell me. I'm going to do it. And they mean it. They really do mean it. But if you stay on a meal plan for months, you know, years, which I don't think I've ever met anybody to be able to stick to one for years, but typically months, after a certain while, it's painful. It's painful eating the same thing day in, day out, and not veering too far off of it, and then trying to figure out how to do that can cause a

lot of stress. And that monotony around eating is not real life either. Yeah, and it's not fun to be around either, like for your friends or family, I mean, just to consider, it's great to have discipline. It's great to, you know, have people encouraging you on your health journey. But two, like, you got to be flexible. You got to be reasonable. Like how, especially if this rigidness that you're introducing everywhere you go really impedes upon celebrations. It impedes upon like just being able to, uh, you know, have these times shared with family and friends that you're, you're kind of removing yourself from that, uh, as well. So that's just, that's another part of life to consider. Like we,

there's a way to do this where you don't have to be so rigid and, and tight, uh, with what you're introducing in your diet. And I think that it's just a misconception a lot of people have is like, I have to like be so die-old for this period of time for me to ever get anywhere. It doesn't foster a healthy relationship with food, even if it does work temporarily. I mean, even if you have this, you know,

competitor type of discipline, and you're an example of the competitors, most of them have terrible relationships with food. Yeah. It's not a good healthy balance long-term. So this is the part I think that's interesting is that we have a lot of people in the social media space that have incredible physiques that have learned to follow a meal plan every single day, day

in and day out, and they present themselves as these, you know, perfect physiques that we have all these people oohing and awing over and aspiring to be like. But what a lot of people and consumers don't understand is that they don't have a healthy relationship with food. They have a very dysfunctional relationship majority of food. What they have figured out is how to eat the same shit over and over every single day and sacrifice that part of their life for this superficial look that they're getting consistent, positive feedback of, Oh my God,

you look so amazing. You're so great. Which many times is feeding probably some sort of insecurity that you've had since you were a kid that you haven't grown or moved past. And yet we're leading all these other people down the same path instead of teaching them how to have that balance. Like the point you made with family, like you should be able to have a birthday cake when a birthday comes around. You should be able to have a glass of wine with your wife on date night. You should be able to do these things and enjoy some of the finer things. And then also be a very healthy person. It's not an either or. It's not a, you got to choose. You got to choose to look like me or you're going to be like

that guy and then be able to do all those things. It's like, no, there's a very nice balance of learning how to work with your metabolism, the amount of activity and exercise that you do, the amount of muscle you have on your body with healthy, good food choices, and enjoying some of the hedonistic things about food when it serves you and it's right. And so to me that, and this took me a good 10 years as a personal trainer before I realized this is what I was supposed to do. Like I, I fell for the same thing for most, like

most trainers of my goal is to get you to your goal as fast as I can. And doing that, I could write the plan to do that and we'll do that and then we'll figure out later or it didn't matter because this is what you paid me for. And really I was, even the people that I got the results, I was really doing them a disservice.

It wasn't really changing their life or setting them up for a good relationship with food. That instead is about teaching them the formula and what does that look like for them. Yeah, and I don't wanna understate again, the removal of joy and experience from food that meal plans contribute to. You can't understate that right? There's a reason why there's an experience around food and why

food brings people together and why we can sometimes reach for food when we're anxious, depressed or stressed or trying to numb ourselves, right? There's this interesting relationship. That's why we use the word relationship. There's this relationship we have with food and the monotony of a meal plan over time. Basically it's essential to saying this, Hey, I'm going to never feel pleasure from sex again. So I'm just going to leave it to pure procreation. Like that's a big part of, of, of bonding and, you know, in the sexual process, just

like the experience that we get from food. If you eliminate, this is why we have the technology, technically, we have the technology to where people today wouldn't need to eat food. We could just give you a packet of breakfast, a packet of lunch, a packet of dinner. In fact, I remember old sci-fi movies would show the future this way, where people would just take a pill for their food, and oh, we've eliminated food completely. What a great future.

That would never work because it cuts out the experience, the potential joy and the potential connection and experience of eating. And meal plans, that's gone. That experience is completely gone. And you're right, 100% Adam, it leads to, it actually leads to a poor relationship to food. In fact, meal plans in some cases are a path towards eating disorder. A lot of people in the fitness space won't talk about this.

100%. But often times people with eating disorders in the fitness space, people who suffered from things like bulimia and anorexia, it started with a very strict meal plan. And even the meal plan itself too strict is known as an eating disorder known as orthorexia. So it is not a, so in other words, people who can do it long-term is because it turned into a dysfunctional relationship and eating disorder.

It's no different than how you hear us communicate exercise and the way that people use it to punish themselves or because they hate themselves. And then we're teaching people, we're trying to teach people to exercise because you love yourself and you want to take care of yourself. The way you approach the workout is very different. The same thing goes for diet. So think of the people that have this discipline to follow these meal plans are a lot like the people that have the discipline to go in and punish their bodies in the gym. It's about control too. And yes, that may result temporarily in this fat loss or this physique that they think

they want, but it's not going to last long term. Eventually it's going to break down. It's the exact same thing. You're not eating to love yourself. You're not eating to take care of yourself and nourish yourself. You're eating because I can discipline myself. I can prove, which is what I found happen when I got in the competitive space. And it's where, like when I would talk about all the different competitors, I said, well, this is what I found out about them,

is they have this unbelievable discipline to put their head down and sacrifice their lives to just do this. And it's like, they're not really enjoying themselves. They just have this ability to go through misery and sacrifice for this reward at the end, this plastic trophy or these hands that are clapping or the praise that they get from their peers. When in reality, this is not an example of loving yourself and taking care of your body. And you gave, you know, you said something earlier where it's not either or.

Um, there is a right way to do it and you are not sacrificing your results. Okay. There's a way to do it to where you still get results, but the odds of long-term success skyrocket in comparison to a meal plan or a quote unquote diet. In other words, the right way's the right way across the board, and I think we should talk a little bit about what that looks like instead. Now I think the first step with something like this,

for most, not all, because for some people this can be a bit triggering, but for most people, one of the things you wanna do is just bring awareness to what you're actually consuming generally on a daily basis, and the way you do this is you just track your food for two weeks. That's it. Just start there. That'll tell you a lot.

That gives us an idea of what the map is going to look like and what direction we need to go. So in other words, and you know, it's so easy nowadays to do this as well. You know, when I was a trainer, we used to have to, we had a book. I can't remember the name of the book, a big book with a- Calorie King. Calorie King. Thank you. When I was a trainer, we had a book, I can't remember the name of the book, a big book with the- Calorie King. Calorie King, thank you. You'd have to look up the food and weigh it, especially if you ate out, forget about it.

Now you have to do a bunch of math to try and figure that out. But now you can literally input your food into an app and then it'll calculate everything out for you. Then what you do is at the end of that two weeks, you have a general idea of how many calories I eat, how many grams of protein I eat, how many grams of carbohydrates I eat, how many grams of fat, how much fiber, how much sugar. And it's enlightening every single time. Totally.

I honestly think that we all are guilty of assumptions about our eating habits. And we think that we're consuming something on a regular basis But the regular basis might just be one or two times a week Which you know starts to really show itself when you start writing it down or you're paying attention at least for that week or two weeks Of really just kind of dialing that in like what are my tendencies? What do I do, you know at 9 a.m. and this is my first meal? What does that look like completely? And it's just good data for you to then make little tiny adjustments to

and we can really optimize what you're already doing. You guys ever hear Tony Robbins talk about everything is about figuring out patterns? Yeah. That's like his big thing, right? Yeah. I know Doug, you followed him around for like patterns. He talks about. I always subscribe to that. Right. So I always love when these things in my life revealed himself of like, oh, I've seen this pattern before.

And this one reminds me like when I was learning in leadership, like when I would get a new staff, and I can't remember what book I read this in first, but I remembered like, instead of coming in and I have like this plan of how I'm gonna fix everything or what I'm gonna do to make this club successful, what I did for the first 30 days, eventually, right? Not early on, but eventually after I knew that this was the way to do it, is I would just observe for 30 days, save very little.

I wouldn't go in, tell everybody I'm the new boss, you're gonna do this, fire, was like literally just sit back, show up to as many meetings I can, sit down and talk to as many trainers I can, and just observe. Watch all the interactions, watch how they manage themselves without me saying or doing anything. And then when I would be taking notes and I'm like, I could see all these little micro adjustments that I can make that would potentially make this huge impact on this team.

Now the inevitable happens, of course, you have to sometimes like go with people and stuff like that, but the initial me moving in to take over a new team, it's like, okay, first, let's not just come in here, assume they're not doing these things or they have to do it my way. Let me see how they do things and then pay attention to their behaviors, their patterns, and then I can go, oh, okay, I see. This person does this and this. If I just get him to do that, that'll really help that. Oh, this person does it, and they make these little micro-justums. I remember at the same time I had pieced that together, not long afterwards, I started to

figure that out with the clients with the diet. Was like, oh, instead of me coming in and telling them to eat this way, how about I sit back and just observe, what do they do? How do they eat? What are their patterns and behaviors look like? And then instead of me coming in and radically changing that, because anyone knows when you ever have to go through that, that like freaks everybody out, right? To go radically, like when a new boss comes in. Right, never sticks. The new boss that comes in and goes like, we're doing things totally different

now. I know you got this job. Yeah, it's too drastic, right? Versus coming in and just like, oh, we're going to start doing this little thing and then this little thing. And it's like over time, I build on it. It was the same thing. It was like was like the diet I come in I look at them. I let them eat whatever one I even say this you eat Snickers bars every Wednesday. Keep being Snickers bar every Wednesday I want you to eat how you would eat not the way you're trying to impress me as the coach I want you to eat the way you always do because what I want to see is I want to see what sort of Patterns and behaviors you have going on and then I'm going to make adjustments around you and your lifestyle. The clients used to love to hear that.

They're like, okay, this is interesting. He's not going to tell me what I need to eat. I'm going to just get to do it. It's also real life. Yes. So when you're tracking and you look at this, you can see how many calories you eat on an average basis, which by the way, will give a good idea of what your metabolism looks like.

You can try figuring out your metabolic rate online, but it's a, it's a terrible estimate. This way is actually quite accurate. In fact, there is almost no more accurate way to do it than the way we're saying it here. And then next, and this was, you know, it's, it's funny that you used to teach the same thing or that both you guys did, because I feel like if you've trained and coached enough people over time, you end up here, which is I'm not going to take anything away from your diet. I'm just going to add things.

So when I look, what I'm looking for is, is the protein too low? Is the fat too low? And is the fiber too low? Those are typically the three places that I look and then I add rather than take away. Now you might think, why would you add to a diet, especially if the person is trying to lose weight? Well, because human psychology shows us that adding is something that people have no problem

doing in comparison to taking things away. Typically, when you add something, especially something like protein or fiber- It replaces something else. It tends to bump something out. Naturally. Absolutely. I tell them to prioritize it. When I look at someone's diet, almost always their protein intake averages out to be

less than what would be considered ideal for muscle building and fat burning. So then what I'll say, here's what I want you to do. You're only averaging 70 grams of protein a day. I want you to average a hundred grams of protein a day and the way we're gonna make this happen is I want you to eat the protein first. First thing. With every meal. And then what about, do I need to take this out? No, no, don't take anything out. Keep eating, keep eating until you're satisfied or whatever. Just hit the protein first. And then they would do that and inevitably they'd end up

cutting out something else or whatever because protein's more satiating. Then they would build muscle and the tabasum speed up, et cetera, et cetera. Same thing with fiber. Same thing with essential fat. You're also giving them, you're stacking wins. You're giving them very easy,

obtainable goals that they can achieve and see some sort of ROI on it. And so, and this is just, again, back to human psychology, that this is like teaching a golf swing or teaching somebody a new skill. You see, if you throw or teaching them a piano, you throw somebody every bit of it all at once and they get overwhelmed. And unless you're of some savant, you're going to probably fall apart, get frustrated and quit doing it. Versus I go, I just want you to hold the club like this.

Or I just want you to learn this one key. You know what I'm saying? And I just want you to do it. And then you're like, okay, I got this. This is easy. This is no problem. Okay, great, now we're gonna do this. And now we're gonna do that.

And you start stacking these wins and you start to build momentum for that person. And before you know it, you've added four or five, six different things to the diet and now they're seeing the weight loss come down, they feel the strength and energy going up, they don't feel like they're playing this the sacrifice game of I can't have or I'm punishing myself so this or I'm missing out on these things. It's like man my trainer never said I couldn't do anything, he just told me to go get these things and it works the same way. back to the analogy with leading a team.

It's like, instead of me coming over, radically changing everybody, I just keep adding these little things to what they're already doing. Hey, I'm not trying to come in here and tell you how to do your job. I'm not trying to tell you how to be a trainer or tell you don't do it this way. But Hey, you know what you can do? Like you could help me out by doing this one thing. And then they'd start doing that one thing. And then you had to do another thing.

And then before you know it, you've got all these people rowing in the same direction. And now you're really moving the needle with that. I think it's, yeah, really a mouse. Like you're not causing any friction, you know? You're allowing them to be empowered to go seek this out, you know, for themselves. And it's just a different, totally different way of looking at that

as opposed to, no, we have to restrict, we got to not add this and we got to stop drinking this and we got to stop doing this. And that's just a lot of just friction right out of the gates. Whereas it's just so much more effective to really give them something, empower them with that to go seek it. It also hearkens back to the advice you always hear me say about exercise. The goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. The same thing goes for the diet. My goal is to do the least bit of change to the diet to elicit the most amount of change.

And if I can make these subtle things where also I take a person who's only averaging 30 grams of protein a day to now hitting 150, their goal every single day, I'm going to see change. Oh yeah. 100%. They're at the bare minimum, even if they're still snacking on 10 Snickers bars a day, they're at least going to start to build some muscle. At least the positive number of protein intake and calories

is at least going to add to building muscle, which in turn, is going to help speed their metabolism up. So I just love this. I'm going to do these little tiny micro adjustments. It's going to elicit change in their overall physique or strength or performance in the gym. And then I'm going to make another micro adjustment and then that's going to elicit change.

That's the key right there, what you just said. So once you're adding to your diet and you've kind of been adding and you can start taking things out, but they're, they're small adjustments. And what you do is you take one thing out at a time and you wait until it sticks. What does that mean? That means it feels like it's a part of your behavior. You don't want to make too many changes at once because you'll lose and you don't want to do a change

that really has no challenge because it doesn't really mean anything. So you just make one little change. Like, okay, now that I've added protein, now that I'm hitting my fiber and that looks good, all right, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna cut my sugar down and I think I'll cut it down in half and then you kind of think about that. Well that's kind of

hard but I think I can do that. That's it. Stick with that. Do that for a while and then when you feel like this is good, I feel good, this is easy, I don't really need to think about it anymore, then you go for another microadjustment. I think I'm going to add this thing or take this thing away and you make these micro adjustments over time until you get this wonderful formula. By the way, as you are progressing through this process, some of the micro adjustments may include changes to your diet because your lifestyle has changed. This is now when we get into how we can figure this out. You gave a great analogy earlier, Adam, about having the formula.

I can make micro adjustments in my diet to positively affect my digestion when needed or my cognitive performance when needed or my athletic performance when needed or if I need to sleep better because I'm starting to figure these things out about myself. Then you have these formulas that you can work with or understandings and now the way you eat is moldable and flexible through this year life and that's how the transition to real life ends up looking is that you end up knowing how you feel and here's where at this level so I like to tell clients okay here's what we're gonna do now that we've added these things to the

diet and it feels and now it's stuck and it feels good now that we've made some of these small adjustments over time and it feels good and we're doing great and you're pretty much at your goal. Here's what we're going to screw mess around with now. I would like to see how you feel on a low carb diet. I would like to see how you feel on a diet that has higher fish intake. Let's see what fasting feels like for you intermittently and let's really become aware of all the pluses and minuses of all these things. Now, why would we want to do that?

Well, because if I notice, for example, I use myself as an an example, this isn't true for everybody but this is for me, I notice my cognitive abilities sharpen on a low carbohydrate diet. I also notice that my athletic performance drops on a low carbohydrate diet and then vice versa. I notice that when I eat more carbohydrates I have better athletic performance but I'm not quite as sharp cognitively. Well this is great information. If I'm going to go do a circuit of podcasts then I'm going to switch my diet to low carbohydrates. If I'm going to go and have a really hard workout where I want to try and hit some new PRs or perform at my highest level physically well now I'm going to increase my carbohydrates but I wouldn't have known that about myself had I not taken myself through these different processes.

And this is where you can really start to figure things out for yourself to where the diet can change for the rest of your life. I also wanna make a point that I have to communicate or I've had to communicate many times to Katrina. So I know there's lots of people that are thinking this right now. Which is, you're hearing me say or us say that, oh, you just make these

micro adjustments. You just add one thing to their diet, then you stack, then you do that. And you have people that are like, well, why? I want to do it all right now so I get there faster. Your body, just like the exercise advice that we give all the time, your body will only allow you to build so much muscle and lose so much fat so fast. And you changing everything at once, thinking that you're going to add that much more muscle or burn that much more body fat faster is not true. And so instead of, and this is what she would always ask,

but I just tell her, hey, all I want you to do, hun, because we've been out the loop, we haven't been training consistently, right? It's been a while. Okay, we're getting back onto our, what we call our way of life, right? And eating better and exercising consistently. And she's like, okay, give me the things. What do I do? Do way of life, right and eating better and exercising consistently and she's like Okay, give me the things. What do I do? Do I do this this this and this and I'm like, no, no, no

Just hit the protein. Oh, yeah, but what else can I do? Yeah, but why you haven't done that? You haven't done that consistently and if you do that, we're gonna see shift and change you're gonna build some muscle You're probably gonna lose some body fat. You're gonna get a little bit stronger next week me also Reducing your sugar cutting your calorie, adding an extra 10,000 steps or something like that, it's not going to get you there that much faster at all or at all. So why would we do that? Let's just keep making this.

So there is this mistake that people make thinking that the more they decide to change at the beginning, the faster they're going to get to their results. And it's just like the exercise advice we give all the time, the same thing applies to the diet. Your body is only going to allow you. It can only build so much muscle so fast. It can only lose so much body fat so fast. You radically changing everything doesn't get you there faster than making these incremental changes. In other words, this is the best of all worlds. It's the right way and it's the right way and it's the right way. That's right. Look, if you love our show

and you want to follow some steps for fat loss, we have a free guide at mindpumpfree.com. You can also find us all on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump Justin, I'm at Mind Pump DeStefano and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body,

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