Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2457: Four Mistakes That Destroy Your Metabolism

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

4 Mistakes That Destroy Your Metabolism Previewing what you will learn in this episode. (1:07) What is your metabolism? (3:14) Fat loss vs. body composition. (4:04) 4 Mistakes That Destroy Your Metabolism #1 - Eat less and do lots of cardio. (7:01) #2 - Endurance training. (18:03) #3 - Take fat burners. (19:09) #4 - Skip meals. (22:29) Do this instead: (25:06) #1 - Eat more (protein) #2 - Lift weights (build muscle) #3 - Avoid too many stimulants #4 - Eat throughout the day Listener Questions: How many calories does a lb. of muscle burn? (34:30) What is the best type of strength training for fat loss? (38:23) Is creatine good for fat loss? (40:11) What are the best strength training exercises? (41:58) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Our Place for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout to receive 10% off sitewide. Our Place offers a 100-day trial with free shipping and returns. ** October Promotion: MAPS Muscle Mommy 50% off! ** Code OCTOBER50 at checkout ** Mind Pump #2372: Five Steps to a Faster Metabolism Why CARDIO SUCKS for FAT LOSS?? (QUAH #14) | MIND PUMP Fat Burners are a Waste of Money - Mind Pump Media Is Fasting a Good Tool For Weight Loss? - Mind Pump Media Mind Pump #009: Is Eating Small Meals A Myth? Mind Pump #1547: The Hidden Benefits of Lifting Weights Energy expenditure and activity among Hadza hunter-gatherers Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

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. Today's episode, we're going to talk about the four massive mistakes people make that slows down their metabolism, destroys their metabolism, makes fat loss almost Impossible this episode is brought to you by a sponsor from our place This is cookware heavy-duty cookware that has no zero zero forever chemicals

You want safe stuff for your families? You don't want weird xenoestrogens in your food Go to from our place.com use the codePUMP at checkout, you'll get 10% off. We also have one day left for our October special, MAPS Muscle Mommy, 50% off. You have 24 hours left to take advantage of this. If you want the 50% off, go to MAPSFitnessProducts.com, click on MAPS Muscle Mommy, and then use the code October 50 for the discount.

All right, here comes the show. You're trying to lose fat on hard mode. Here's why you're failing. You've killed your metabolism. In fact, often people make four mistakes that destroy their metabolism. We've got a slow metabolism. Good luck trying to burn body fat.

Let's talk about this. Hard mode, video game reference. Yeah, I know. Very good there. I like it. So we'll quickly talk about or list what these four things are. Yeah, I know. Very good there. I like it. So we'll quickly talk about or list what these four things are.

Yeah, list them and then we'll go into it. And then we gotta break it down, because once I say these, everyone's gonna be like, huh, that makes no sense. So here are the four big mistakes that people make that destroy their metabolism, make fat loss impossible. Eat less, they do a lot of cardio, they take fat burners, fat burning supplements,

and they skip meals. Those are the four metabolism killers. Yeah, I think that it's important because you're gonna get, for sure, especially since most people only listen to the first 30 seconds and then they make a judgment on what you're gonna say, that you're not destroying your metabolism. The metabolism is doing what you tell it to do. It's adapting. Yeah, it's adapting and it's recoverable. It's just not ideal and unfortunately, most of all those things that you just listed

is what most people think they should do when they are going to embark on a fat loss journey. I have put on this weight, I've fallen off the wagon, I haven't been going to the gym, I haven't been doing these things, I know I don't eat good, I know I drink, I know I do all these things are bad for me. Okay. It's time to change my life. Here's the steps.

I'm going to start doing cardio. I'm going to eat less food. I'm going to skip some meals if I need to. I'm going to take the latest greatest fat burners that are on the market and, uh, and hop on the treadmill. This is literally your go to plan. Yeah. And what it looks like, and I'll paint the picture, right? If you do those four things, here's what it looks like.

You'll lose some weight initially, then you'll plateau real hard and you'll find yourself in this really difficult place where you're already doing a lot of cardio. You're already eating very little and you still have 15 pounds of lose or whatever, and you're stuck and you're like, okay, what do I got to do? Eat even less, do even more cardio, skip meals even more, and you're just stuck in this, in this crazy plateau. And then worse, you go have a weekend out with your friends, you come back and you gain weight all of a sudden. And your body is ready to gain body fat. So let's talk about the metabolism

first before we talk about kind of what's going on. So metabolism really is just your body's ability to convert food into energy. It's the very, very complex process of taking what you eat and turning it into things that your body needs and uses to repair tissue, to build muscle, to fuel your brain, your movement. It's the conversion of food and energy and it is a very complex process. Now when it comes to weight loss, first off, what we're going to start to say here is fat loss because weight loss isn't necessarily fat loss. People don't want to lose muscle or you shouldn't want to lose muscle. Muscle is something you should want to keep. It looks good. It's sculpted. It is healthy. It's body

fat people want to get rid of. So let's talk primarily about fat loss and body composition change. Meaning you know more muscle less body fat. So in order to lose body fat or just weight you do need to take in less calories than you burn. But I can also flip that and say you need to burn more calories than you take in. It's the same thing. It's the same formula. And there's two ways you can approach this. I can either A try to burn more calories than you take in. It's the same thing. It's the same formula. And there's two ways you can approach this. I can either A, try to burn more calories on this end, or B, try to take in less calories. But the burn more calories part, this is where things get a little bit interesting.

You can try moving more to burn more calories, or I could teach my body to burn more calories on its own. That's the sustainable approach. That's the faster metabolism that you want because then that requires less work from you. It means you don't have to move as much to try to burn more calories. It means your body's burning the calories on its own. It requires quite a bit more clarification unfortunately because that's a whole education of the why. Like why should I build muscle as opposed to just

go this route where I know that I can actually just at least lose the weight and I'll see that substantially out of the gates. Right, right. I've always thought too that approaching this, like it's a marathon and in the things like eating less, doing cardio, doing all these things that we're talking about, they all can be like potential strategies and winning the overall race.

But a terrible idea is to come out the gates in this long race that we have ahead of ourselves and do all these things. You're most likely going to burn your body out, or in this case, your metabolism out. And then what's going to end up happening halfway through this race, you're going to give up. We're going to get crushed because it's just like, you can't sustain, uh, that

way of training for very long. And even if you could potentially get to your goal, you're not going to keep it there because it's not, very complex, very complex process, it can slow down and it can speed up. In other words, it can run off of more or less calories. Now what determines whether or not it runs off of more or less calories are the signals and the inputs that it gets. This is what tells your body which direction to go. Now one signal that will almost inevitably cause metabolic adaptation downward is

simply reducing your calories. When you cut your calories, initially you'll see weight loss because now you're eating less than you're burning. Remember if you're burning let's say 2,000 calories a day and you're taking in a thousand, your body will burn body fat and weight in order to make up the difference. That's where it has that stored energy. But then what happens is your body starts to learn how to operate now on a thousand calories. This is why you plateau. This is why initial cutting calories results in some weight loss, but then you plateau very hard. And eating, just eating less is a very strong signal that tells your body slow down. Now this is an evolutionary thing that we have. This is

it's a good thing. We want an adaptive metabolism in the sense if we didn't do this, if our bodies didn't learn how to become more efficient with calories when we have less food, we wouldn't be here right? We wouldn't be here. We wouldn't have survived famines or difficult situations. If your body just burned tons of calories even though you're eating very little calories, we wouldn't have survived for as long as humans have. So this right by itself is a signal that says slow down. If your calories are well below what you're burning that is going to tell your body to adapt downward now cardio activity

Although it's great for building endurance and stamina Does the same thing and the reason why it does this is it burns a lot of calories while you do it But it doesn't require much muscle to complete. It doesn't require strength So you're taking in less calories, low calories. You're doing lots of cardio, which doesn't require much muscle. And your body's going to say, we need to slow down our metabolism. We need to be able to perform this task more efficiently, AKA with less calories. And we're taking in less calories anyway.

How do we slow down our metabolism? You lose muscle. This is why the data on lots of cardio plus low calories results in sometimes 50% or more of the work that you're muscle. This is why the data on lots of cardio plus low calories results in sometimes 50% or more of the weight coming from muscle. Muscle is expensive tissue. It costs a lot of calories to maintain or to move or to be active. And so your body, one of the primary ways that it reduces its metabolic rate is by pairing muscle down. So eating less and then doing lots of cardio, which requires very little strength and also

burns a lot of calories while you do it, two very powerful signals that say, hey, slow down, become more efficient. I mean, I think there's something else that exacerbates that too. And when I think back to the clients that this was their strategy to lose weight, what often happens is they were eating say 2000 something calories a day, not the best choices. They know that and they say, okay, I'm gonna cut these few things, I'm gonna cut out the alcohol,

the fast food and I'm gonna replace that with better choices or just completely skip it out entirely because they're gonna try and reduce calories. With no emphasis on the importance of hitting their protein intake every single day. And then they add in cardio on there. So not only is muscle an expensive tissue, not only does cardio send this signal that says, hey, we don't need a lot of muscle to run on this treadmill, but then you also pair that with most people that go in a calorie-restricted diet from their starting point also don't prioritize protein. And so it just accelerates that muscle loss.

Your body needs a certain amount just to tell it wants to keep the muscle. You put it in a deficit, you eat even less protein than what you were before, you increase the cardio training, and it is a complete recipe for losing as much muscle, if not more than what you lose body fat. And this happens all the time. This is why, you know, I mean, I managed gyms for years and anybody who's worked in gyms or worked in fitness for a long time knows this. You see these members, they come in like clockwork religiously, four days a week,

five days a week, they're on cardio and they do it every single day, oftentimes in the morning, and they look the same. They're the same, you know, they still have the same 25 pounds to lose and they continue doing this. And then as a gym manager, I thought, man, they must be just eating a lot of food. This is when I was an early trainer,

I didn't really understand what was going on. I thought, they must be eating a ton. Then I would meet and talk with these people. Some of them kept food logs and they would show me, and I had women who were doing this, who were 20 pounds overweight, they would show me their food logs. They were eating 1200 calories a day. That was such a mystery to me as a trainer. We thought they were lying.

Yeah, I thought they were lying. I just couldn't fathom it. And then it's really frustrating for them because they're like, we're putting all this work in and I think I'm doing all the right things. But literally if I wasn't doing this, I would put weight on. And I'm like, oh wow, that's the state where they were in the plateau where it's like, you know, their body had adapted so well to the routine that any increase, it was like they felt that.

You know, this reminds Sal recently, as talked about how somebody mentioned to him that we do what's called grace based coaching or training. Grace based fitness. Yeah. Grace based fitness. Where I do like that. And it does remind me of this conversation because I do remember this part of my journey as a, as a coach of learning like, Oh wow, these people aren't lying to me. These people have been trying really hard and oh my God, imagine being in his or

her spot where they're a hundred pounds overweight and they're eating two salads a day and a chicken breast and maybe a bagel or something is like their tire meal and they're that overweight. Like imagine how difficult that must feel to be like, where do I go from here? And you know, once I understood what was going on, what were the point we're making and talking about right now, it gave me a whole different approach.

And I think that's where the beginning of this kind of like grace-based type of training began, where I had so much more empathy for these clients that have struggled their way through this and it then began, okay, how do I help them? And then also, how do I communicate this to them so that they don't get discouraged and then convince them that we're going to do a lot of things probably the opposite of what they think? Completely opposite. Yeah, a big problem, you know, we go back and we can kind of

break down why this became the message. Focus on cardio for a second. Why is cardio, why has that been for so long considered to be the best form of exercise for fat loss or weight loss? Well, when you look at the formula for weight loss or weight gain, it's a calorie imbalance or an energy imbalance is what they'll say. Calories in versus calories out, which is true.

I want to be very clear. This is a real thing. This is not false. And there's some wellness people out there that say calories in versus calories out doesn't matter. No, it does. This is the law. I'd say law of physics.

It's a real thing. Now it oversimplifies to be quite honest, everything. It's far more complex than just that, but it itself is a real thing. So when you look at it that way and you go, okay, I need to burn more calories than I take in. Okay, so let's look at the burn calories side of the formula. Let's look at all the forms of exercise

and let's rank them in order of calorie burn. Well then cardio becomes king because 45 minutes of running is going to burn more calories than 45 minutes of almost any other form of exercise. Definitely more than 45 minutes of strength training, which burns very little calories. Especially traditional strength training. Yeah, traditionally in comparison. So that's what they did.

They ranked them in order of calorie burn, but the problem with that is it completely ignores the adaptations that that form of exercise induces. The adaptations that are the most important thing that we need to look at because the adaptations are what stick around. Now, what are the adaptations that cardio causes on the body? Well, it does improve endurance and stamina. Look, if you want a lot of endurance and stamina, cardio is going to be one of your best ways to exercise. You want endurance, you got to

train for endurance. It's a great way to build that. But if you're looking for weight loss, well we got to look at this and say, okay what are the adaptations? I'm getting more endurance, that's cool. It's actually teaching my body to become more efficient with calories. In other words, because it's a high calorie demanding form of activity and my body wants to get better at it, it actually learns how to burn less calories while doing it and it requires very little strength. Cardio, traditional cardio, requires very little strength. So there's a very easy answer here for your body to become better at cardio. More stamina,

burn less calories, reduce muscle. And the evidence of this is if you look at the, like the, the top distance runners in the world, they're very skinny. They have very little muscle in the body. It's in comparison to, let's say a sprinter who does more like a strength training version of running who's very muscular. So the body pairs muscle down to become better at this activity. So you actually teach your body, or at least you send the signal to your body that says, all this muscle is an advantage.

In fact, muscle is a disadvantage when you're doing lots of endurance-based training. This is why you don't see big heavy muscular. It's going to weigh you down. You're going to lose stamina. So it sends that signal. And then if you combine that with low calories, well, now you got the double whammy and the body says, okay, we need endurance. We need stamina and we have to learn how to operate on low calories. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to really pair muscle down through other processes that are not fully understood.

We're also going to become more efficient in other ways. We're going to slow this metabolism down. So to give an analogy, it would be like if I had a super advanced car, that was AI. And the car adapted to my driving habits. And let's say what I did every single day was I drove for six hours a day, going 20 miles an hour every day. Well, what would my car turn into? Well, it wouldn't have a V10 engine. It would become the most fuel efficient car that it could become in order to get

me to do this six hour commute for, you know, at 20 miles an hour. It would become a very small engine. It would be a banger. It would, it would burn very little energy. This is what happens to your body when you beat it up with tons of cardio and you just cut your calories. Initially you see weight loss because it takes some time for the metabolism to adapt but once it adapts you are in a very hard plateau and this is a terrible place to be because I can't tell you how many times I've seen this and maybe this is you watching this right now. You're

looking, you're tracking your calories and you're like I'm eating 1,300 calories a day and I'm doing all this cardio. I'm on the treadmill almost every single day. Where do I go from here? Do I cut my calories more? You don't want to do that. You don't want to keep going down. At some point you need those essential nutrients and we're gonna double the amount of cardio that you do unless you're a fitness maniac. Nobody wants to do that so it puts you in this really terrible position which tends to result in a rebound. This is when people say, screw it, I'm done, and they gain tons of weight back. Well, and you just described what you called the double whammy.

The triple whammy to that is the not eating enough protein. And we know what the research says that when you're in a cut like this, this is a time when you should probably increase protein even more for the likelihood of potentially paring down and losing muscle. And that's just not what happens when somebody goes in a cut. They go in a cut, they cut calories, and they just cut it from wherever,

not realizing before they even went in the cut they were probably under eating protein as it is, and now they're eating even less, and then they're doing the double whammy. You're saying it's now the triple whammy of losing muscle super, super fast. You know, you didn't put it on this list, but I would add it in this category,

this portion of the conversation, which is also the overuse and abuse of circuit training and lifting weights in a cardio-like fashion. Well, that is cardio. It's just you holding dumbbells. But people don't know that. People think when they take these classes like Orange Theory and F45 that they're like,

oh, that's not me, I'm not doing just cardio. I do a little bit of cardio, but I'm mostly doing weight training. I'm using weights as well. Yeah, I'm using weights. Therefore, I'm not seeing the same, I'm not getting the same negative effect. And that's not true. Like if you are using weights in a fashion where you have low rest periods. Or no rest periods. Or no rest periods, and you're doing it in this circuit based fashion it's way more closer to you running on a treadmill than it is

like you doing traditional barbell squatting very very different adaptations that we're seeking when we're doing that circuit based training and I would put that in this category of quick ways to slow down that metal endurance based training it's endurance based training, not strength based training. You're still focused on burning calories. That's right. That's right. Now let's talk about fat burners here for a second. Fat burner supplements. Those can be loosely categorized into two categories. One are the stimulant based fat burners. These are the ones that quote unquote work. And then ones that burn body fat in other ways that really don't do anything. Now the

stimulant based ones can cause some initial weight loss, but it's not because they're burning more body fat, but rather stimulants tend to have an appetite suppressing effect. So when you go on, I remember back in the day, you can't do this anymore because they don't sell this particular supplement anymore. I don't think it's even legal to do so, but back in the day, the most popular fat burner supplement, stimulant-based fat burner supplement was what they called the ECA stack, the ephedra, caffeine, aspirin stack.

The heart attack stack. Yeah, caffeine is a stimulant. Ephedra, another strong stimulant. And people would lose weight on them, but that's because those stimulant, ephedra, another strong stimulant and people would lose weight on them but that's because those stimulants and stimulants in general tend to suppress your appetite and you eat less. Now the problem with that is just like with caffeine. Let's stick with caffeine for a second because everybody has coffee. You know how great it feels to have coffee when you haven't had it in a while but then when you have it every single day it kind of loses its

effect. That's because your body adapts to the stimulants. So if your appetite is a spread suppressed initially from these fat burners, it won't be for long. And then you take them to remain the same. What do you think is going to happen when you come off? The rebound gets really nasty. And this is what you saw with those very powerful fat burning supplements in the nineties with the ECA stacks.

As you would see this weight loss from the appetite suppression, then they would adapt, not really notice anything. Then they'd go off of them and they'd gain the weight back and then some. Not to mention, when you're doing tons of cardio, eating very little, those are both stresses on the body. Stimulants are a stress on the central nervous system.

That's why they're called stimulants. They stimulate the central nervous system. What you why they're called stimulates. They stimulate the central nervous system. What you tend to see with these, especially overuse, is you tend to see this kind of stress response, high cortisol, hormone imbalances, which is not favorable for fat loss, but rather it's favorable for muscle loss and for storing visceral body fat.

This is why fat burners have never solved anything in the supplement world. They just don't work. They'll give you maybe a good feeling of energy for the first couple of weeks, but they don't work. Is it even legal to still call them fat burners? There's a whole category. Is it still an actual true category? If you were to Google or Amazon search that, is that true?

Yeah, put fat burning supplements. Because it's completely false advertisement. You're not taking a pill that is actually burning body fat so it's not not that at all so it's interesting that the I know it's not FDA rate I know supplements aren't FDA regulated but I would think that they can't even get it they wouldn't be able to get away with that still they're still calling them that yeah really yeah that's interesting to me because it's not I mean there's and I think that's why they still sell as well because you think you assume,

why wouldn't you assume that? You're buying fat burners, why would you not assume that they help you burn body fat? Like it just seems logical if that's the name of them, but the fact that they can, I mean, can we create a category that's called just like something around muscle building or something just like false advertisement and sell it to people?

Yeah, well that also exists. I think you can look it up. Yeah, but there's some truth to that. Like protein actually helps stimulate muscle growth. It's like in a roundabout way, yeah. Achieves what they're trying to talk about. Now, one of the last mistakes that people make is they skip meals.

Now, this wasn't a thing until, I'd say, maybe 10 or 15 years ago. Before that. Intermittent fasting became popular. Yeah, because we've been in the space for a long time, and I remember what we used to call skipping meals was starving yourself. So we used to say back in the fitness industry, then it became very, fasting by the way, just to be very clear, fasting has existed for thousands of years.

It's the first diet that was ever talked about was fasting, but it was never to lose weight. It was always as a spiritual process. It was always a practice of detachment from worldly things. It's present in every major world religion. One of the side effects of not eating those, weight loss. So of course, with diet culture, they said, oh fasting, let's rebrand this as a way to lose weight,

and if people don't eat, then they're gonna lose weight, and it's gonna be wonderful. And then they started attaching all these false promises to lose weight. And if people don't eat, then they're gonna lose weight and it's gonna be wonderful. And then they started attaching all these false promises to it. Like, oh, if you cut your calories, you get some benefit. But if you fast, you get more benefits. And there's seletophagy. And there's all this other stuff that happens,

which all happens with the calorie deficit. Doesn't matter if you fast or not. It's a terrible approach to fat loss. First off, it encourages this relationship with food that looks a lot like restrict and binge. Number two, if you ate the same amount of calories as another person, but that person ate all their calories in two meals, you ate all yours in let's say four meals spread throughout the day, the two meal person or the one meal person tends to have more stress markers. And we're starting to see this now. You're starting to see this more common in women.

Oftentimes, some of my female clients who would fast, we would send them to a functional medicine practitioner. It's affecting their hormones. Yeah. One of the first things they said was, don't skip meals anymore because it's causing stress on the body. It does elevate things like cortisol and stress hormones, which can feel good at first, is one of the reasons why people feel more energy. But mainly, the main reason why I don't like skipping meals, it makes it hard to hit your protein targets, and it also encourages this like restrict binge,

restrict binge, like I don't eat till three o'clock, I can't wait, can't wait, then it comes around. It encourages a bad relationship going forward with food, and that's, you know, not preferable. I mean, as much as it's great to kind of, uh, step back and reduce calories, you know, to skip a meal, this is just one of those things that just creates that sort of, uh, well, I can't have it like, and it's almost like that punishing effect.

And now I can't have it. So it's, it's just this urgency towards all of a sudden now I need to consume it all because I can. I'm just gonna keep beating the protein drone because when you, when we're, the whole point of this conversation is about the metabolism and the you know for sure fireways to slow your metabolism down and what do you want to do in order to build your metabolism and one of the fastest ways to slow the metabolism down is to lose muscle off your body. It is definitely going to slow that down and slow it down.

I mean, eating less, you've already pointed that out, doing cardio, all those things, and then you continue to lose muscle. Every client that I've ever trained that doesn't matter if they were trying to lose weight, build muscle, doesn't matter what their journey was, when I assess their diet, the number one thing I have always had to communicate is we need

to get more protein. And so if you take this person who is trying to get a faster metabolism or definitely doesn't want a slower one than they already have, this is a recipe for disaster. This is why I was actually even, I know that early on when we first started the show, we talked a lot about the myth behind lots of small meals. And those that have been listening for a long time probably remember that I kind of took an opposing position on that. And my, it wasn't that I didn't believe the science, right?

We were very, the science is very clear. If you do one giant meal, it's the thermogenic effect that happens from that one giant meal is equal to four small meals. So there's no real difference. If the calories are the same, the thermogenic effect is the same. And so we've debunked the whole science around, you want to have these small meals for a thermogenic effect. So that's been debunked. But I didn't like that messaging because what I did is sort of making people go like, oh, I don't need to eat a bunch of small meals. I'll just eat twice a day like I always do,

or three times a day. Which results in low protein. Which results in a really hard, most people don't eat eight to 10 ounces of meat or more in a sitting. And if the average person eats two or three meals a day, this now becomes difficult for anybody over 130 pounds to hit their protein intake. It just is a fact. And so this is the thing that I cannot stress to the listener enough is when I have somebody who wants to go on a fat loss journey, lose weight,

the first thing I actually start doing is adding to the diet. And the first thing that we add to the diet is protein. I tell them, okay, here's what I want you to do. I'm not gonna tell you take away or do cardio, do this or that. I want you to make sure you hit your protein take. Go after that.

And what ends up happening when they go after that protein intake is naturally the other stuff falls off the back end and they make better food choices, not to mention they are now feeding their body what it needs in order to hold on to that protein and it inevitably will help them build their metabolism. By the way, high protein in the context of what we're talking about is about a gram of protein

per pound of target body weight. So that's why Adam said, you know, if you're over 130 pounds, I mean you're eating 140 grams of protein and what are you gonna do? You're gonna have two meals, 70 grams of protein in two meals. Difficult to get through. Or 140 grams of protein in one meal. I can't do that myself. Right. Let alone 140 pounds.

As a little 140 pound girl or guy, like that's small. It's just not going to happen. By the way, with muscle loss, you know, we're talking about slowing your metabolism down with losing muscle. Losing muscle also makes it harder for your hormones to do what they do effectively. So like a couple, there's a few hormones involved. All the hormones are involved to some extent with muscle building and fat loss, but like a testosterone, very important, this is both for men and women, and then how sensitive your body is to insulin can also impact your body's fat gain or fat loss, right? We know this. We know when you start to lose insulin sensitivity,

when you start to become insensitive to insulin or you can become pre-diabetic, like you just tend to store more body fat. We also know that testosterone is a body composition changing hormone. If you take a man who's low testosterone and you have him raise his testosterone or a woman with low testosterone have her raise her testosterone, they tend to have more muscle less body fat regardless of the calories and that stuff. So those are very important things for body composition. Well here's why muscle is so important. First of all building muscle you increase the amount of androgen receptors that you have in your body. In fact, the androgen receptors you have in your body, they're all over, but a lot of them are in muscle. So when you lose muscle, you lose androgen receptors.

All right, what are those things? Those are the receptors that testosterone attaches to so that testosterone can do what it does. Okay. So if you have good testosterone as a man or woman and your androgen receptors are cut in half because you lost half your muscle, that testosterone is now doing way less of its job even though it stayed the same. Or to put it differently, if I doubled your androgen receptor density it's like having twice as much testosterone. By the way, just to be clear, testosterone is just as important for women as it is for men. The levels are different But the same things that testosterone does for men builds muscle burns body fat gives you energy

Confidence all that stuff. It's the same things that it does for women insulin sensitivity Let's talk about that for a second one of the easiest fastest ways to improve your sensitivity to insulin or how Little insulin you need in order for your body to take carbohydrates or sugars and shuttle them into the body to be utilized is to have muscle. Muscle is a storage vessel for those things. Losing muscle is a fantastic way

to becoming less sensitive to insulin. So it's not just that you get a faster metabolism or a slower metabolism, it's also my hormones are more or less effective. You are essentially by losing muscle, turning yourself into a better fat storage machine. With more muscle, you are turning yourself into a better fat burning machine. Now back to protein, when you look at the studies on protein, on high protein, like we're talking about, one gram of protein per pound of target body weight, if you compare groups of people eating the same calories, they're consuming the same amount of energy,

except one group is high protein and the other group is eating the FDA recommended protein, which is low, the group that eats more protein has more muscle and less body fat. More muscle, less body fat, same calories. So you're gonna want to eat more protein. So instead of eating less, fat. More muscle, less body fat, same calories. So you're gonna wanna eat more protein. So instead of eating less, don't do that, increase your protein intake, lift weights, strength train, avoid the fat burners, and don't skip meals,

because that'll make it impossible for you to hit your protein targets. Doing those things slowly speeds up the metabolism. I say slowly because I want people to be to be patient here. You're not going to get that initial quick 10 pounds of weight loss that you may get which again half of it coming from muscle that you may get from just cutting calories and doing tons of cardio. It'll be a little slower however I will say this part of the reason for that is you're losing fat and building muscle so the scale might not

move but you'll look smaller I can't tell you how many times I would have a client the first 60 days of training when we come to me and say Co-workers are telling me I'm losing weight even though I know I haven't say well you lost fat and you gain muscle You're smaller because muscles dance. You'll look better, but your metabolism is faster So as the metabolism speeds up the fat loss looks different instead of that initial fat loss and plateau or weight loss and plateau you see a snowball effect of fat loss where it accelerates as you continue on this progress not hitting plateaus and setting yourself up for long-term

success because now a fast metabolism allows you flexibility to eat more food and to live your life. By the way, one last like wonderful point here, strength training requires less in order to exert its adaptation benefits. In other words, one or two days a week of strength training will build muscle, will make you stronger, will boost your metabolism. Cardio, you want to burn a lot of calories, cardio, you got to do it every single day. Yeah. So it's another reason why you know strength training is just the the best form of strength. And the beautiful, you talk do it every single day. So it's another reason why strength training is just the best form of exercise. And the beautiful, you talk about that snowball effect. What's really cool about that slow

process of building your muscle, increasing calories, reverse dieting, and it slowly, and then all of a sudden it starts to accelerate, is not only does the fat loss accelerate, but it does it while you're simultaneously eating more than what you were before. That's right. Which is like mind blowing. That's right. Which is like mind blowing. Mind blowing. You want to radically change a client's life is you take that client that we started off

talking about, which has only been eating, they're only eating 1,300 calories a day, they're 100 pounds overweight. Get a gram of protein per pound of target body weight, lift weights once or twice a week and don't skip meals and then watch what happens. It blows them away. Yeah. That same client, you have them down six months down the road and now all of a sudden they're losing more weight than they ever had.

They're eating twice as they've ever ate before. They look way better. They're stronger. Their energy's up. Their hormones are, but like, it's just, it's so life changing to it. It's just hard. It's hard to get somebody stuck here to get out of that trap because it is a vicious trap and cycle that you can get into, but it most certainly is the right path. It's the fastest path, it's the most effective path, it's the one that's going to keep- It's the right path.

Yes, it's the one that you're going to be able to sustain for the rest of your life, and if you could just trust the process and stay focused and do that. You know, one thing here, I do want to say this. For someone wondering how much faster they can make their metabolism, routinely, routinely, I would get somebody's metabolic rate to go up by 500, 800, 1,000 calories. It wasn't unheard of for me to get someone's metabolism even faster than 1,000 calories. And I'm talking about everyday average people who are middle-aged. I'm not even talking about younger people who are already healthy and all that stuff. So it will happen and it will happen reliably

so long as you're consistent and patient. You got questions? All right, we've got some questions here. The first one is, how many calories does a pound of muscle burn? Oh boy, controversial question. Yeah, so this one's controversial because if you look this up,

what you'll see is a pound of muscle at rest burns six calories, whereas a pound of body fat at rest burns like a calorie or something like that. So it's like, oh, it's not that much more. First of all, it is a lot more if that were simply true by itself, but number two, the metabolism is way more complex than that. Way more complex than that. In fact, simply sending the signal to build muscle and starting to feed yourself more before you build muscle already gets your metabolism to burn more

calories. In other words, same lean body mass, but you're burning more calories. The metabolism is quite complex. There's many mysteries to it, but the process of speeding up the metabolism is a lot more than just this many pounds of muscle burns. Because I would get, you know, when I say I would routinely get people's metabolisms up by 800, it's not like these people that we're training will gain 20 pounds of muscle. Eight pounds of muscle. Five pounds of muscle.

Yeah, like if I got a woman, a female client, to gain eight pounds of muscle, and we did this right, typically they're burning 800 more calories a day. What does that translate to? 100 calories per pound of muscle? There's a lot more going on than just the- There's way more. I'm glad they asked this question,

but I also really get fired up when I see people- Wrong question. Yeah, when I see people in the space having this debate of they try and come out and they debunk, oh, someone like Sal is saying, oh, I got a girl to add 10 pounds of muscle and she's now eating 800 more calories. They try and come out and they debunk Oh someone like Sal saying oh I got a girl to add 10 pounds of muscle and she's now eating 800 more calories They try and come around and be like, oh, that's bullshit This is what the science says eight pounds of muscle only equates to an extra of 50 calories a day

there's no way that he increased her metabolism the fat and that is such a terrible message and it's so stupid because you're You're like they're literally taking out like comparing the muscle versus the fat in idle in a lab in a situation like that when you're not accounting for that person who you got to build eight pounds of muscle. What you know they had to do, they had to have good programming, they had to recover properly which means they're probably sleeping better. Their hormone profile is probably improving. If not significantly, all these things are going to impact their total calorie burn and their metabolism. And that's what we know.

Back to your point about how complex the metabolism, we don't even fully grasp it. But what we can tell you from people that have been doing this for well over two decades, it definitely makes a massive difference. Look, when we look at the By2 as a machine and we have all the building components and the way that we're setting it up, this machine just works at a higher level, at a more optimal level, if this is the direction that we go with it. So. Yeah.

You know, and this reminds me of that study that I bring up all the time. And there's other studies that have been done on this where the study that I typically quote was the one done on modern hunter gatherers where the scientists went to Northern Tanzania and studied the Hadza tribe and through sophisticated testing, were able to test their metabolic rates.

Now these are hunter gatherers, okay? They don't have electronics. They don't sit down and watch TV. They don't have social media. They hunt and they gather, meaning they're gathering and when they hunt they'll throw a spear at something Wounded and chase it for miles until it gets exhausted It should be burning ton of calories and and you know what they found they burned right around the same calories as the average couch potato What's going on here? How's that possible? They're moving so much

Well, our bodies adapted to be able to become efficient because if we were hunter gatherers with super fast metabolism, we'd be dead. So, and now what kind of activity they engage in? Lots of cardio with low calories. Their metabolism slowed down. So, that's just the point I want to make. So it's not as easy as one pound of muscle. It's the process that we're talking about that leads to the faster metabolism. Yeah, it's all the habits.

What is the best type of strength training for fat loss? I love this question. There is no different type of strength training for fat loss and muscle building and whatever. The best type of strength training program is the one that builds the most strength period in the story. Slash muscle. That's it.

So if you want to get the best strength training program for fat loss, follow the one that is producing the best strength gains for you and the best muscle gain for you. That's going to be the best one for fat loss, follow the one that is producing the best strength gains for you and the best muscle gain for you. That's going to be the best one for fat loss. Of all of our programs, for most people, because we have a lot of programs, of all of our programs, MAPS Anabolic is probably the one that I say generally is probably the best for most people in this category.

And if you're the type person that does a lot of reps typically, and this is just something that you've done continuously over the years, and if you change it to low reps and you know switch it out in terms of the strength, heavy strength focus on that you're going to see a new stimulus which also helps aid in new muscle gain. Well this is why mass anabolic is the way to go. This is also what highlights the brilliance of when Sal originally created that road that I remember where I was at in my journey of coaching and helping people. At that point, realizing that most people that want to weight train for fat loss typically

do the circuit training or the high rep, low rest period type of training. I always knew that if I took that client and I put them on a five by five long rest period, got them to get really strong, they would see more fat loss than they'd ever seen from strength training. Totally new stimulus. And so that's the reason why MAPS anabolic phase one becomes this like magical thing for so many people and they see such great results from it. It has a lot to do with understanding the type of client that wants to speed their metabolism up, that wants to lose body fat, that tends to be for 80% of the population or clients that we've trained, that tends to be the best

place to start. Is creatine good for fat loss? Oh, I love this. Creatine, typically known as a muscle building supplement, actually is probably one of the best quote unquote fat loss supplements. Now I'm not saying that creatine is going to make you lose all this body fat, but indirectly through its muscle building process is the best supplement to use for this metabolism boosting effect. Aside from anything you may be missing, like if you're missing your protein, protein powder

can help. If you're missing a nutrient, you don't want to have a nutrient deficiency, but if everything's good, creatine, it fuels the cells, it's a longevity supplement, it's healthy for you across the board. It also helps the muscle building process. It's gonna help this metabolism boosting process. It's funny because creatine has never been marketed as a fat loss supplement, but if you were to break it all down,

it's actually the best one. There's a caveat to this, because if you are somebody who's trying to lose weight, many times you are married to the scale and you have a very hard time not looking at that and judging your results based off what happens to scale. And what creatine will do is it will hold more water in the muscles, which ultimately will make you look better

and make your body look better. Your muscles are hydrated and full. Yes, you'll perform better, you'll look better, so 100% it is. You went up a couple pounds on the scale. But you might see two or three pounds go up on the scale because you started taking creatine and that freaks people out and makes them think that it's a bad idea. But it couldn't be further from the truth.

There is a difference between your body being puffy and retaining water from inflammation and there's a difference between your body holding water in the muscle bellies because of the cellular water that it's holding from like something like creatine. That will actually make the muscles make the shape of the body look better and is an excellent supplement for fat loss but be prepared for the psychological game that will play on you when the scale goes up. What are the best strength training exercises? Oh the the best ones are what are known as is these gross motor movement or compound

lifts, the reason why they're the best and I'll list some of them, but the reason why they're the best is they do the work of the five next exercises on the list. So they just, a lot of bang for their buck. They produce a lot of results, great strength, great muscle, great metabolism boost for just doing one exercise. So barbell squats, a barbell deadlift, overhead presses, great muscle, great metabolism boost for just doing one exercise. So, you know, barbell squats, a barbell deadlift, you know, overhead presses, bench presses, rows, like those are just great exercises

for what they can produce for the time spent doing them. They're just great bang for your buck exercises. Look, if you like our show, come find us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump. Justin, you can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.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