Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2462: How to Actually LOSE Weight This Holiday Season

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

 How to Actually LOSE Weight This Holiday Season Why the average American gains 1-8 lbs. during the holiday season. (1:33) Strategies to Lose Weight This Holiday Season: (14:40) #1 - Exercise at home to build muscle. (16:20) #2 - Walk after meals. (22:42) #3 - Eat high-protein foods first. (28:19) #4 - Undulate calories. (31:48) #5 - Utilize HIIT for short periods for calorie burn. (34:04) Listener Questions: What are the best holiday foods and what are the worst? (36:27) Which alcohol does the least damage? (38:53) I get stressed for holiday parties in fear of fat gain. Should I skip them? (40:13) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Promotion: Ultimate At-Home Workout Bundle (MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Suspension & MAPS HIIT) for ONLY 99.99!  Visit Entera Skincare for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Promo code MPM at checkout for 10% off their order or 10% off their first month of a subscribe-and-save. ** Holiday weight gain: Americans expect to add 8 pounds over the next month Tuesday Nov. 12 @ 4PM (PST) – TRAIN THE TRAINER WEBINAR SERIES : The Key for Personal Trainers to Retain Clients During the Holiday Season Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** No Code for a 5% discount that gets automatically applied at checkout!!! ** Mind Pump #2137: The Best Suspension Training Workout Plan For Beginners Mind Pump #2080: Get Jacked With Bands! The Case For Taking a Walk After You Eat How to Undulate Your Calories for Faster Weight Loss & an Improved Metabolism – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump #1307: How To Make Your HIIT Workout More Effective The health benefits of strong relationships 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, 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, how to actually lose weight,

not gain weight, but lose weight. This holiday season season we give you the tips that we found that were successful for the clients that we trained over the last two decades during the holiday season. By the way, for this episode here's what we did. We took our best at-home workout programs, okay, because that's the best ones for the holiday season. We took Maps Anywhere, we took Maps Suspension, and Maps Hit. Three individual programs, each one costing over $100. We put them together in a bundle, and the bundle, which includes all of them, is $99.99. That's it. $99.99.

You get Maps Anywhere, Maps Suspension, and Maps Hit. For this episode only, you can find all of that at mapsnovember.com. Now this episode was brought to you by a sponsor Entera Skincare. Entera makes peptide based skincare products and hair regrowth products that are incredible. You won't find this stuff anywhere at all. They are quite unique and again they use some of the best science-backed peptides. Go check them out. Go to enteraskincare.com. That's E-N-T-E-R-A, skincare.com forward slash M-P-M. Use the code MPM and get 10% off your order. All right, here comes the show. It's the holiday season.

You know what that means. Everyone gets fat. All right, we're gonna talk about today's episode. Inevitably. How you can actually lose weight this holiday season. Look, we've been training people for a long time and there is a strategy that is specific to the holiday season that is quite effective. There's things you can do that not only prevent you from getting fat like everybody else,

but you actually get leaner and enjoy the holidays. It's called shaming your family members. We do this big thing where we put a pool of money together and then we bet the over under who's going to gain the most weight over the holidays. No you know so that I look this the stats up I remember us learning this this data I've actually looked it up to confirm it. Okay so I can't wait to hear this because I've heard this reminds me of the how many calories is muscle burn. Yeah like I've heard numbers. It's repeated so many times.

Yes. He's been repeating it and I've heard numbers from I think as low as eight pounds to as high as like 20 something pounds. So the average, the average American gains between one to eight pounds over the holiday season. Now here's where they get that number. If you're a somewhat fit, then it's probably closer to one. If you're not that fit, if you're somewhat fit, then it's probably closer to one.

If you're not that fit, if you're not working out, you already have some weight to lose, it's probably closer to eight or more. So in other words, the more unfit you are, the more weight you're gonna gain, the more fit you are, the less weight you're gonna gain. I'm gonna add one more factor to that. Like regionally, where you're located in terms of like how cold it gets.

That was a real thing when I was in Chicago. It was like you put on weight just to like survive. Yeah, and now here's, this is another interesting statistic. This makes up for the weight that Americans gain during the holiday season makes up for roughly 50% of the total weight gain during the year. Now that's wild. So if a person averages, you person averages 10 pounds a year,

which is typically where you see five to 10 pounds, sometimes more, a year, 50% of that's the holiday season. Then the rest is spread out. And the holiday season is considered, I believe, Thanksgiving to New Year's. That's right. That's right, they don't even count Halloween. Yeah, so it's Thanksgiving to New Year's where people.

Which is really like, you're talking about a month and a half. Yeah. This is not a long time. No, so it's a pretty short period of time where people gain quite a bit of weight and there's a few reasons for this when you look at the data and also just again you know we trained people for a long time. By the way the holiday season is why January rush exists. This is why the fitness industry knows this very well. And it's not a secret anymore. It used to be.

It used to be kind of this like. It's a big hustle. It used to be this open secret in the gym industry that come January, this is when we're gonna make all of our sales, right? And we would talk about it. And you didn't hear it spoken about in mainstream. Well now it's, everybody knows this.

Everybody knows January, you know, New Year's resolution. This is when everybody starts a workout. It's when everybody starts a diet. But it has less to do with the fact that the year is just getting started and more to do with the fact that it follows this holiday season where people really go off. Yeah, they really go off. So they go off and New Year comes up and they're like, that's it, I'm gonna try getting back into shape. By the way, most people don't lose the weight

that they gained over the holiday season. So if it's a few pounds. This keeps compounding. Yes, and again. That's where this stat, I think is like, that's the skewed part is like, you gain it and then you never lose it and then the next year you gain it again

and so that's how it ends up being way worse after just a few years of not dieting or. And the heavier you are, the more weight you gain. So it gets worse every year, theoretically based off of that, right? Now there's a few different reasons why this happens. One reason, and you kinda talked about this, Justin, is that people do move less because of the weather.

Because the weather, even in nice places like California, like we have nice weather for the most part here, but it's still colder, it still rains a little more, and of course the context of living here is for you it's bad weather. I know people in the Midwest are like shut up. But you still see this here even in California. It's enough to people that normally go out for a walk

outside, it's raining so they don't. Well, and you know human behavior, we're always looking for an excuse or a way out. That's right. Of doing hard things. So that's just a factor. It's like if it's cold, it's darker than normal. It's like, well, that's a deterrent.

That's actually a good point too. It's also darker way earlier too. So I mean, I even noticed my own pattern yesterday, right? So yesterday we had the, we turned back the clocks and I didn't realize how late I actually barbecue during the summer. I'll barbecue all the way till like 8 p.m. at night, like prepping for the week on Sundays

and there's football going all day. So it's like a great day. I'm barbecuing, I'm watching football. It's like, and I'm outside, I'm cleaning the yard, I'm watching football. It's like I'm outside and cleaning the yard, planning and doing stuff. It was dark by five last night. I was like, oh shit. I was under the flashlight,

wrapping up my last bit of meat and I'm like, oh, I'm not gonna stay out here and keep growing. So then I'm now indoors at six o'clock where normally I'd still be outside moving around. Yeah, and there's probably an evolutionary explanation for this too. You know, we're not great in the dark. We're quite vulnerable to predators. So probably some evolutionary thing where it's dark. I

mean look, I don't know about you guys, but even I instinctually when it's dark and cold want to come inside and bundle up and want to watch a movie and want to sit around with my family. Even in the days of fireplaces, which you don't even see people using those anymore, it was still like, hey, let's start a fire and let's just sit around the fire and kind of relax. So people just generally move less, or just less active during the winter season,

except for winter sports, but even that doesn't offset what we're talking about. You also have more food-based celebrations. Celebrations in general are food-based, right? If you look at, and this is actually a good conversation, people in the fitness industry oftentimes communicate food in such ridiculous ways that the average person can't connect with.

Like they'll say things like, food is fuel, right? No, it's not. It is, but it's also a lot more than just fuel. We connect over food and we celebrate over food. And there are, if I were to tell you, yeah, and if I were to say, hey, give me top three foods that you eat at a birthday party, or foods you eat at Thanksgiving,

or foods you eat for Christmas, like there are foods that are distinctively. Foods at a baseball game. Yeah, foods when you watch a movie. There's foods, we've connected a lot with experiences. And experiences, and a lot of our celebrations revolve around food and enjoyment of food and connecting over food.

So now you have these big celebrations and you're going to eat more food or be exposed to more of these different types of foods. And for many people, a lot of people don't talk about this, the holiday season is also a little bit stressful for a couple different reasons. One is you got to buy gifts for Christmas. That stresses a lot of people out with financial issues. The other part a lot of people don't talk about is being around a lot of their family. And so what they, how people tend to eat when they're stressed is they tend to eat more

or they tend to reach out for foods that are more comforting, which is, you know, AKA more palatable, right? So if you're feeling a little stressed or anxious, you're more likely to reach out for foods that are hedonistic or flavorful. So you have that in the mix as well. And then finally alcohol. If you look at the average person who doesn't drink, they drink on the holidays.

This is another thing. Alcohol is not a calorie-free food. Alcohol has seven calories per gram, if I'm not mistaken. So it's pretty calorically dense. And alcohol also contributes to more calorie consumption because of its effects on the brain. So alcohol does affect the parts of the brain that like the executive functioning part of the brain. So you're less inhibited. This is why you tend to make stupid decisions when you drink.

This is also why, you know, when you tend to think to yourself, like, I probably shouldn't eat that, that'll hurt my stomach, or I probably shouldn't eat that because it's not healthy. Well, you get a few drinks. Yeah, a few drinks and you're like, let's go, this is why those late night drive-throughs

get so popular, it's like people coming home from the club or whatever make those bad decisions. Honest question about alcohol, Justin, this is proposed to you. Sure. And I say that just because I think that if you were looking, I mean, all of our extra calories that are wasted that we each have, Sal's potato chips, I'm ice cream,

you're probably a drink. Yep. Would you agree? Yeah, that's fair. Okay, so when it comes to the holiday season, do you personally see a tick up in the amount of alcohol you consume, or is it consistent throughout the year,

what you would say? I would say it's intermittently ramped up. So you could literally point to Christmas Eve, Christmas, and then New Year's Eve. Those are definitely ramped up. I will admit, I go a little heavy handed in those days. And it's really, it's a communal kind of like a social family event.

So instead, but what I try to do with that is like, lower the amount of treats and other things that kind of get in that way. But at the same time, there's just so many factors to alcohol too. It interrupts your sleep. There's a lot of downstream effects that are negative to it that I do experience. I was just curious because I wouldn't consider myself a really consistent drinker throughout the year. I'd say it's pretty sparse, but in the holiday season-

You have a few. Yeah, I definitely kick it up. So I was curious if someone who was more consistent throughout the year. I almost never drink. I almost never, I drink no alcohol year round. I mean, you could probably, I can count on one hand the amount of times I'll drink alcohol throughout the year and most of those are during the holiday season. That's when I'll tend to have a drink or two.

So now the average person who does drink will have more. And again, it's just extra calories. And you brought, I mean, you said it very well, the downstream effects of alcohol consumption also contribute to weight gain because you're less inhibited. So you're more likely to eat the foods that you probably wouldn't. You're more likely to overeat. You're inflamed. Inflamed.

It affects hormones negatively. It affects your sleep negatively, which by the way, one of the fastest, easiest ways to ramp up cravings for hyperpollutable food is to have a poor night of sleep. This is just what ends up happening. There's also something to be said too, because what you brought up to start this with is, eight to 12 pounds on the scale, right?

But there's also another compounding effect that happens when you drink your calories is you also under-consume your protein intake. You disrupt sleep, you consume extra calories, you don't hit protein intake many times. And so not only do you potentially put on some body fat, but many times you also lose muscle. Because that's also too, a lot of people during holiday season, you're probably less consistent with the gym than what you were in the peak of the summer. So your volume of training is reduced,

whether it's dramatically reduced or slightly reduced. It's- People oftentimes don't work out. Or not at all, right? So then you don't exercise, you drink more calories than what you would normally drink. Because you're drinking those additional calories, they end up replacing calories that would have probably been in protein.

And so you not only put on pounds on the scale, which are probably body fat, you also potentially lost a little bit of muscle. Probably lost a little bit of muscle. I was just thinking of some of the actual, because it's like cocktails, it changes the way that I drink it. And it's like, if you've ever had an eggnog cocktail. Look at the amount of calories it's insane. Oh, three of those is like 1,000 calories. Yeah.

And it's so easy to drink. And so to your point of like consuming through drinking calories. At least there's egg in there. Oh my god. No. And it gets away from you really quick. The reason why I brought that up is, again, I'm

in the stage again of tracking. And it's already really hard for me to hit protein. If I were to drink a thousand calories and I love like eggnog alcohol drinks and stuff like that especially around the holidays and that's the type of stuff and if I were to drink at all during the year it would be like a straight whiskey bourbon type of deal right? It's not I'm not making it like some you know thick eggnog or coffee or dessert drink like I would in the holidays. So I do think that there there's actually, uh,

there's even worse things going on here that even what you're highlighting is that if you reduce volume of training in conjunction with poor sleep, in conjunction with, uh, you know, higher calorie and not hitting your protein intake, that's not only a recipe for putting body fat and weight on the scale, it's also a recipe for putting body fat and weight on the scale. It's also a recipe for losing muscle Well, so again, if the average person gains, let's say six pounds, let's just go in the middle here six pounds They're not they're not counting that one or two pounds of muscle loss, right?

So it's actually more now and by the way, they do work out left I mean look we all we worked in gyms for most of our careers This is already a self-selection bias of people that work out in gyms. Let me ask you guys this. How much slower is the gym during the holiday season? You're looking at 50% of the normal traffic that comes in, not just new people wanting to sign up, but just people who have memberships.

Workouts. Yes. In fact, for trainers, for trainers and fitness professionals, just new people wanting to sign up, but just people who have memberships. Workouts. Yes. Workouts. In fact, for trainers, for trainers and fitness professionals, you had to figure out strategies to maintain your sessions because your clients would cancel. Oh, November and December is rough to keep them

coming in and keep that volume up. That's right. So the strategies that we all learned as trainers and coaches over the years around this are ones that are tried and true because as trainers we had to figure this out. We had to figure this out for our clients. So you know we train people for a long time and our passion which still is this way or our passion still is helping people through our expertise which is health and fitness, nutrition and exercise and this was a

problem to solve. This was distinctly, I remember this distinctly being a problem to solve. There were a couple problems. One was, how do I get my clients to stay consistent? And how do I prevent the inevitable drop off, weight gain, loss of fitness during the holiday season? And then help people so that when they come back in January it doesn't become this kind of rebound thing which then results in

people quitting later as well. I mean the majority of people that start back up in January quit a couple months later and so the strategies we're going to discuss today are tried and true. These are the ones that we found to work very well. So we'll start with the first one which is and this took me a long time to figure out because remember when I train clients I train clients in a gym or in my studio. It wasn't until I figured out how to get my clients to be consistent with their workouts at home that I really figured out getting them consistent overall because I was always trying to get them to come see me, see me

in my studio, see me at the gym and I realized as a trainer if I could just get them to stay consistent, period, end of story with their workouts, everybody's gonna win. And so I started to incorporate at home more convenient workouts. They were less likely to leave their home. They maybe traveled more. Maybe they had people visiting

so they don't wanna go to the gym because someone's visiting, but they had 30 minutes in the morning to work out or whatever. So I figured out workouts at home and now all these workouts, all these workouts were geared towards building muscle. Why? Because I knew the additional muscle and strength would offset the additional calories that they were going to inevitably consume in the holiday

season. So it was really effective strength training workouts that were convenient at home. That is the key here I like this one because I was late to the party It wasn't until and people that have been listening to the podcast and from the early days I was the the huge gym advocate and was like, oh, yeah, I'm not big yet working out at home It wasn't until I think our partnership with PRX did I ever invest as a first? Home gym that I ever invested in up into that point I was always somebody who was training at the gym and I'll preach the

same thing for the same reason you said I want my clients to come in and see me it was it was good for my business to have them show up and train the hours later on was when I got a gym in my own home and realized like oh you know what like the power of and not only like training to build muscle, like you said, but even giving yourself the permission to just go out in the garage and do a set of squats. Totally. Like that was a, that was a game changer for me was, you know what, maybe my workout training isn't as intense and focused and consistent as it is in the summer, uh, during this holiday

season because I'm busy with family and doing other things and it's cold. But Hey, you know what? Like because I've got this home gym, I can go in there and go do two sets of lunges. I can go do some pull-ups throughout the day. Like, boy, that made a huge difference in mitigating the damage that normally I would put on in the holidays. This is when I got really good with teaching my clients

how to utilize really convenient equipment like suspension trainers and bands. This is when I made suspension trainers and bands a part of my repertoire for my clients. Because, now you have a garage gym, Adam, so do I, right? And I love them, I think that's the best thing. If you could do anything, put a rack in your garage, barbell dumbbells, adjustable bench, you're set.

You could do everything in that. However, most people don't have that, most people don't care to do that, they don't have the space to do it, whatever. So get a suspension trainer, which you can hang it in any doorway. And you can do, one of the beauties of a suspension trainer are it's appropriate for beginners and it's

also appropriate for super advanced. Just by the angles, like I could change the angle and the tension positioning of a suspension trainer to where I could challenge the strongest person that I know, but I could also adjust the angles and have my grandmother's sister do a couple exercises and get an appropriate workout. So it's super adjustable, super convenient. And then bands. Bands are also convenient. I can utilize different angles.

I could train. And with those two things, I was able to put together frequent short workouts for my clients. And it kept them so consistent. It actually kept them consistent in seeing me too, because you guys know this, if they're consistent, they're consistent across the board. And so the at home, and it was always strength training,

it was not, now we did incorporate, we'll talk about this later, calorie burning workouts, which we'll talk about, ones where we're trying to burn more calories. But the main workouts were strength training because I knew if they had muscle, then if they had the occasional big meal, they could burn it through their faster metabolism.

Yes, it's game changer having that accessibility at your house. And really it's like relieving yourself of the idea that just doing one exercise is not as valuable as a full workout. What it does is it just keeps that stimulus alive. It keeps your momentum somewhat sparked. That spark is still there for you then to build off that. Even the next day, you'll get this energy and you're like, wow, I can do more. And it's sort of like, just knowing that I can do that one thing, my body

is a lot more likely to want to keep moving and keep lifting things going forward versus me just like, dismissing it, I'll get to it tomorrow. You know, it starts getting colder and colder in terms of the amount of spark I have left. I wanna go a little bit deeper on the point that you were making Sal, because I was just communicating this to my family and it was like this aha moment for them that I guess I was like, well, maybe I can be better

about how I communicate that, or maybe they don't say that enough because it was such a surprise to them to grasp how this works. Because their idea or their attitude was like, oh, well, we're effing it up drinking and eating all these extra calories anyways. Like why waste my time working out? And I explained to them, like, let's take two scenarios and you eat exactly and drink

exactly the same, right? So let's just say you overeat by 500 calories, okay? Whether that's through alcohol, same, right? The exact same thing. But in one scenario, the day before, you got this great workout in, and in another scenario, you didn't do any workout whatsoever, those additional 500 calories,

some of those calories are gonna get partitioned over to building muscle. That we're gonna go to a positive thing for your body, which then is only gonna build more muscle, speed up your metabolism, and then your body can have even more calories in the future versus the other version of you that didn't work out, those 500 calories all get stored as body fat.

And they're all like, boom, blown away by that understanding. And then the additional muscle speeds up your metabolism, which then makes it so that you can eat even more next time and not gain the body fat. It's just that it's a winning strategy but the key with this, the key with this, were at-home workouts because getting them to come to the gym is so much more challenging to the holiday season for a million different reasons. And doing it at home you could do it very effectively like

I said. Now next is to walk after your meals especially after big meals. Now this is not because you're burning a lot of calories. I want to be very clear. It's not because a 10-minute walk after your meals is gonna substantially burn a significant... It's gonna offset it or something. Yeah like oh I you know I just ate 1200 calories. I'm gonna walk for 10 minutes. Cool you burn 50 calories. That's not why you do the walk post post post perennial. It's called postprandial Walking after you after you eat or or flexing and relaxing your muscles after you eat to put it more more specifically Reduces the blood sugar effect. It actually makes the hormonal effect or the potential hormonal damage for meeting far less

In fact, I'll give you two scenarios. If somebody did a one-hour walk every single day versus somebody who just walked for 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In other words, they walked half as much but the difference was they did it post time breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The blood sugar effects from the second scenario, the 10-minute post-prandial walk, are significantly better. Now why is that? Well when you eat food you get the sugar in your blood and it has to go somewhere. Well when you're flexing and relaxing your muscle, think of it this way, this analogy I like to use, imagine a

sponge getting squeezed and opened. It's sucking up all that sugar as glycogen and it's literally getting shuttled into your muscle. It's making your body more insulin sensitive. In fact when you talk to longevity experts they say aside from strength training this is one of the best things you could possibly do for your insulin sensitivity. It's to simply move. In fact there was a study recently, relatively recently over the last few years, where they had people post-prandial so after they ate they didn't even get up and walk You know what they did they did heel raises while seated they didn't even they weren't even doing standing cat

They just did this where they just lift their heels And I think they did it farther remember how many reps it wasn't that much and you saw a significant difference in blood sugar now Why is that important? Well if you stay insulin sensitive? You're less likely to store body fat, you're more likely to build muscle, and you're healthier. You are generally healthier. This is what will promote metabolic health.

Or on the opposite side, if you don't do this, this is where metabolic dysfunction starts to occur. This also, by the way, blood sugar spikes and drops also affect your behaviors. So when you get these ups and downs in blood sugar, you're more likely to have cravings, you're more likely to have energy crashes, you're more likely to have anxiety,

you're more likely to have sleep disturbances that come from the food that you eat. This is especially important for big meals. You have that big Christmas dinner, go for a 10 minute walk. Now here's the additional plus side of this. I love this part right here I'm about to say I love because I'm a big family person. I have a big family. I love family. I think there's so much value to the holidays

for connecting with people. I invite people with me on a walk after meals and everybody likes to join for some reason and it's not like a let's go run it's like hey everybody want to go on a walk and I have like 40 people will join me and we go on this nice and it's a 10 minute walk after eating and everybody's getting this healthy effect but I also get the simultaneous benefit of connecting with my family. So this was actually something that I had for our notes and our our quah and I didn't bring it up but it's uh relates to this this. And I'm kind of excited to go through this holiday season while in the middle of this tracking everything I'm doing. One of the things I'm tracking now is I'm tracking my steps

and I just recently moved to giving myself some sort of goal and it's nothing crazy. I was averaging 8,000 or so steps a day, so the target is to hit 10,000 now, right? Just a slightly up ticket. And one of the things that I was just making notes as I'm going through this whole process of like, man, it's really wild.

When I have a simple goal like that, it's not crazy. I'm just being aware of it, makes me get up and do things that I probably wouldn't do had I not had that goal. And so I love to give a client who's heading into the holidays, we would figure out before they go in there about where they average in steps, right? And then I go, you know what, we're just going to try and do nothing crazy. You know, you average 6,000, we're going to go for 8,000.

We're going to increase the steps just a tiny bit. And you find throughout the day places to insert those steps, whether it be right after the meals, because that's an ideal place to get it or first thing in the morning or right before you go to bed or these little or what I found myself doing is I make excuses to go clean the house or help my wife and it's like it's stuff that's supporting us and supporting the family and also keeping our house clean and it's something like for example I did the car the other day I would normally pay someone to do the car

and said, now I wash the car because I need more steps. So why not go do something that I don't mind doing anyways? And so, you know, noting this down, I'm going like, man, it's, I'm such a better husband, I'm a better partner. I'm a lot of downstream effects. Yes, a lot of downstream effects aside from that I'm trying to be healthier and fit.

And so I love adding that to this idea of walking after meals is, hey, why not even head into the holidays, figuring out kind of what your average steps are, and then just set a goal to, hey, I'm gonna just uptick it a tiny bit, you know? Yep, but again, I'm gonna hammer this home. If you do this after meals versus at other times, even if the other times is more walking, you're going

to get more health benefits from the post meal walk. And it doesn't, again, it doesn't have to be much. It's literally like an eight to ten minute walk. This is a wonderful holiday hack, especially because you could bring along family members with you. Alright, next up, this is my favorite, what I'm about to say is my absolute favorite holiday diet hack, hands down. When you walk into the holiday celebration and you're looking at the food there are gonna be meals that are high protein and there are gonna be other meals. Here's what you do go for the high protein meals and eat those first. That's it. Eat those first eat them

until you're satisfied and you will generally eat less calories overall because you simply did that. And you'll also simultaneously hit your protein targets, which contribute to muscle and contribute to fat loss. So you hit like three birds with one stone. I know Peta doesn't like that. But you- You feed three birds with one scone.

That's right. So literally, you walk in the room, this is what I do, I look at the meals, and I go, okay, we got this dish, that, that, here's the protein meal, I'm gonna go get my plate and fill it up with that and maybe some vegetables first. I'm gonna eat all that first. Once I feel kind of like satisfied,

then if I have room, I'll enjoy some of the other stuff. And again, when they do studies on this, and you track people, and I used to have clients track this, I'd have them do this and track it, like you ate 300 less calories, you ate 400 less calories, and you had higher protein, simply because you changed the order of your meal. You didn't even say to yourself, you're gonna eat less, you just changed the order, that's all you did.

My family gets mad at me for this one because I eat all the turkey and I eat it first. But it's like, it's always been that sort of a hack for me because load up, you know, get to the point where you're satisfied and then, you know, I'll get the cruciferous vegetables next and then I'll go for, you know, the Jell-O that somebody made or the Danish or whatever the, you know, but you're just at that point you're just satisfied.

And I know that at least I have like the building blocks, the materials for me, uh, in terms of that at least I have the building blocks, the materials for me in terms of the actual nutrients. Get the nutrients first and then we can kind of play around. It actually just naturally reduces the amount of stuff you're interested in. This is the most powerful tip by far and one that if you've never done, not only do I urge you to practice this right now

or implement this into the holiday season, but try and keep this practice throughout the year. I mean, to me- This is always good. I think that if I had to put a number to how impactful this has been for myself personally, this probably keeps me a solid 4%, maybe 5% leaner year round by just practicing this rule.

I would agree. No other rules, just simply- Yeah, if you flip this and ate the protein last for sure five percent gain. It is a game changer on keeping you healthy and fit and there's something to be said too about the psychological effect that Justin was kind of alluding to is that I'm not going to tell myself I can't have the Danish, I can't have the Jell-O, I can't have the sweet potato yam, I can't I'm going to say I can have it. The apple pie I'm going to enjoy that but all I'm gonna do is say I'm gonna go eat what I need Protein wise first and then however, I feel will dictate how much that and what ends up happened is

Nine times out of ten I get so full from that I either don't even want the dessert or I can have a spikes Yeah I have a bite or a small portion of it and I feel plenty satisfied. And then this also mitigates what I said earlier about the compounding effect of drinking too much alcohol for your calories is you also are gonna at least hopefully sustain the muscle. So even if you didn't work out that day and at least you hit your protein intake and you don't completely atrophy and go backwards and so hitting your protein intake, keeping you satisfied, the psychological, this is by far the most

powerful tip of all the tips. Totally. Alright next up I'm gonna say this one cautiously because you can go too far with this but it is a viable strategy and that's to undulate your calories. Alright what do I mean by that? Well you got a holiday party coming up, you can eat lower calories for two days leading up to it to offset the higher calories you're gonna have on the holiday. Now I say it cautiously because you don't want to make this a restrict binge scenario where I'm starving myself only so I can go binge. Do this with kind of a judicious approach, a little bit of a planned approach. What I tend to do when I do this, if I do this, which I really do, but

if I do, what I tend to do is I don't eat carbohydrates leading up to a holiday party. And I do that only because carbohydrates are not essential, whereas fats and proteins are, so I'm not lacking any essential nutrients. And then I move into the holiday party, eat the protein first and eat the rest. But this is what I would tell my clients to do as well, is that say, hey, you know, leading up to your Thanksgiving, let's come up with some ideas for some lower calorie days. We'll keep them high protein. And then when you average it out, and it's funny,

I've had a couple clients, like clients who are willing to do this, I didn't push this on people, but I had clients that tracked, and we would look at their averages. And when they do this, their averages for the calories were the same. Because they came in lower, ate a high, they did have a high calorie day on the holiday,

but when we average it out, which is how the body works, it averages things out, it actually came out to the same as the week before, so it is a viable strategy for sure. I actually do what you do where I cut the carbs now before the main event, right? Because I used to fast before I would go into the main event, but then I found I was still having a hard time getting my protein intake. Because I have so many grams of protein

that I need to eat for like my daily, I'm like, okay, if I wait all the way till Thanksgiving dinner and I don't have anything, and then I try and, I mean, it's the- That's 200 grams you got there. Yeah, 200 grams of turkey even is a lot of turkey to sit down and eat that in one sitting. And so what I found is, okay, if I allow myself

to just have fats and protein leading up to that, and so maybe I go in with, say, 60 to 80 grams of protein, and then I load up on the protein, and then I can eat whatever I want after that, that's been a really good strategy for keeping the calories down, still hitting the protein intake, and then also not telling myself I can't have.

Yes, now you've probably heard us say on the podcast before that just trying to burn a lot of calories with exercise is a losing strategy, and it is in the long term. But in the short term, before your body adapts, it actually is a decent strategy. What I mean by short term is like over a few week period. So this is a good time to utilize high intensity

interval training for short periods to offset the calories. Now high intensity of training burns a lot of calories in a short period of time. Like a 20 minute hit workout will burn as many calories as an hour, hour and 20 minute other kind of or traditional workout. Now the best time to do these workouts is the morning of the holiday meal. When you look at the research or the data on continual glucose monitors, when people do a HIIT workout that morning and then later that afternoon or evening, they have their meal,

the blood sugar effects are largely blunted. So this is a great time. Plus, HIIT workouts are short. So if you're like, you got people visiting and you got limited time or whatever like a 15 to 20 minute HIIT workout a real effective calorie burning way. Now the challenge with this I got to say this is that most HIIT workouts are terribly terribly programmed. Yes. Some of the worst what I mean by

program for people don't know is the organization of the exercise and how people do them. It just because. They're so poorly programmed that you can just pick any five exercises, do them as fast as you can, and you've done an equivalent workout. Really well-programmed HIIT workouts are in a completely different universe. So if you do a HIIT workout, make sure it's well-programmed. But nonetheless, short, hard workout, burns a lot of calories, morning of the meal, makes a big difference. Now the science to support that is, is that because you expend so much and you're, you basically dump the glycogen out of your muscles and so now you have

all these stores for glycogen that are waiting to get taken. They're primed. Yeah, they're primed to take on. Yes. So then when you go, oh, you go eat 1500 calories in one sitting, a good majority that goes back to just filling your gas tanks back up before you overspill. And then you add the compounding effect to that of, you've also sent a signal to build muscle so that any additional calories that say overspill or go beyond the total you need,

hopefully get partitioned over into building muscle too. This was literally my blueprint for clients during the holiday season. They came out oftentimes better than they did going in. Got some questions here. The first one is what are the best holiday foods and what are the worst? The best holiday foods?

Protein. All the meats. All the meats. Almost every holiday, like everyone either does hams, turkey, right? Like these are all the big, you know, popular dishes around the holidays, right? I would say the meats and the vegetables are the best. The worst are gotta be the big, you know, popular dishes around the holidays, right? I would say the meats and the vegetables are the best.

The worst are gotta be the sweets, you know, all the pastries and pies and desserts. I've gotta be the worst ones that I can think of. I would say stuffing too, right? Stuffing is not great. I mean, a lot of the carb meals are bad because a lot of them are just like, even like, I mean, you guys had your family do the sweet potato yams

that are like covered in maple syrup and marshmallow and stuff like that and there's like a lot of the carb dishes are just sugar and a lot of extra we have sugar on everything like stick to the protein like literally eat eat an abundance of and the gravy's the gravy's are off although delicious often just add a bunch of not useful calories to whatever you're dumping them all over. I have an aunt that makes, she makes the best stuffing. It's so good, but it's literally just,

it's all bread and starches and just, you pour gravy all over and it's just this really crazy calorie bomb with zero protein in it. There's so many jellos. I don't know why. You guys have a big jello family? Yeah, we're just jello and marshmallow people. Yeah, absolutely.

I wish we weren't. I mean, Katrina's family does the all, like, you know, ruins all the vegetables I put in bacon grease and all of that, you know what I'm saying? They cook all of this, there's like bacon and all of them. You know what else is really damaging? I don't know if you guys, a lot of families do this,

mine does, you have your big meal, and then there's like a dessert table that stays out for the rest of the night. And it's like cookies and candies and pastries and pies and fudge. See, and here's the thing though, and this is to the point of, if you just know, and this is where there's value to kind of tracking,

get any idea of like, what do I need for optimal protein? So using me, it's 200 grams, let's say, going in and saying, hey, I'm gonna let myself go have some of those pies tonight. So long as I go get those 200 grams of protein first. If I do that, I don't even have that much of a desire to, now if I under-eat on protein, then that appetite kicks up and that's my choice out there,

I could easily crush two, 3000 calories of pie and desserts. So that's the part you gotta watch out for. My weakness, pecan pie. Oh man, if I just. Ice cream on top of it? Vanilla ice cream on top? Done deal. Next question is, which alcohol does the least damage?

Straight. Straight alcohol. Vodka's the lowest. Vodka's the lowest, right? Vodka's the lowest. Whiskey's not too far behind though. It's not bad. You know, there's two strategies with alcohol, in my opinion.

Take it rectally. What, no. That's not what you were saying. No, I'm not, I'm not that. Some people do that. Isn't it twice as strong that way? Is it twice as strong? Don't even recommend that.

People die from that. No, I, the two strategies are, I either drink to get the effects, or I drink to enjoy the drink. I think if you drink to get the effects of the alcohol, which is me, because I don't drink to the taste. Do it fasted. Then it's literally, your advice right now is

it's literally vodka and soda water or seltzer with a little lime. There's so low calorie, I drink one or two of those, I have a buzz. So that's the strategy for me. So if you want it just for the buzz, or just for social and dining. I mean periods, the best is just straight liquor.

If you're looking for the healthy-wise, right, it's what kills people, calories, is the calories in the mixed drinks. It's the eggnog that Justin brought up. Everything else is gonna be riddled with sugar. Yeah, the margaritas. Cocoa, margarita, peppermint, snob stuff. You've got all kinds of calories. Yeah, just ice, you know, to cut down a little bit of the harshness and you're good. Yeah.

I get stressed for holiday parties and fear of fat gain. Should I skip them? No. So what I don't want to communicate with this is that the value of the connecting with your family and of celebrating these holidays isn't worth the potential quote unquote damage. Look, if you are healthy for most of the year, you exercise relatively consistently, you have a decent relationship with food, you go on the holiday, you're okay. Even if you're not okay, even if you overindulge or whatever, like it's one or two days, like I don't want to, because there are fitness fanatics like this where they go into the holidays and they don't even enjoy the holiday because all they're doing is tracking their calories. When am I going to get my workout?

And that's just as unhealthy, just a different reason. Here's the thing too. If you actually follow this advice, and let's just say on top of that you really overeat, you're not going to do nearly as much damage as you think you're going to do. You're not putting five pounds of fat on from two days of eating pumpkin pie and stuff. This is two days. Especially if you got the workouts in there, especially if you hit your protein intake in there, especially if you make those walks afterwards. If you hit the tips that we're saying, I would, I would, and I hate to do this, but I would if you were my client, I'd say, don't worry, go enjoy yourself.

And be with your family. Have your pie, have yourself a diet, but go hit your protein intake, take the walks like I told you, get your little workout in with your bands like I told you to do, and then enjoy the shit out of your food. Have a good time, have a good drink. This is why we stress building the body and building the metabolism so you have flexibility. You know, if you don't have that flexibility and you're paranoid about that, that's a problem. Totally. Now here's what we did, right? We have workout programs that are perfect for what we talked about. We have a program called Maps Anywhere that is a at home or anywhere based workout. We have a suspension trainer based program

which also just uses suspension trainer. And then we have a high intensity interval training workout program. So all three of those individually over $100 each. Okay, so here's what we did for this episode only for the holiday season only, just this episode. All three of them, you get all three of them together combined for $99.99. So for $99.99, you get Maps Anywhere, Maps Suspension, and Maps Hit.

All of those for this episode only. All you got to do is go to mapsnovember.com. Also, if you like the show, you can find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind show you can find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump DeStefano and Adam is at Mind Pump. 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, 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 mind pump media Dot-com if you enjoy this show Please share the love by leaving us a 5-star rating and review on

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