Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2467: Get Jacked & Ripped in 5 Steps (Must do in this order!)

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

Get Jacked & Ripped in 5 Steps (Must do in this order!) Get Jacked & Ripped in 5 Steps. (1:35) #1 - Lift weights to get strong. (4:18) #2 - Reverse diet. (12:58) #3 - Walk daily after meals. (21:21) #4 - Cut calories. (25:27) #5 - Add cardio. (28:37) Questions: Does cardio hurt muscle building? (30:45) What is the best food for reverse dieting? (33:42) Will I gain body fat on a reverse diet? (35:01) Can I get leaner while building muscle? (36:18) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Eight Sleep for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump Listeners! ** Black Friday promotion. Use the code MINDPUMP which will provide up to $600 off the Pod 4 Ultra when bundled. Currently ship to United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia ** EARLY ACCESS to the Black Friday Sale is open NOW! ** ALL MAPS Fitness Products 60% OFF. Coupon code BLACKFRIDAY. The code will expire on Sunday, December 1st. Each purchase enters you to win one of two 5-day stays at the Mind Pump Park City Vacation Home. Each winner will receive $1,000 cash for travel and food. Bundle purchase - 10 entries, Program purchase - 5 entries, ALL other MAPS purchases (mods, guides, etc.) - 1 entry. Winners will be announced and contacted in December. ** Mind Pump #2462: How to Actually LOSE Weight This Holiday Season Mind Pump #2457: Four Mistakes That Destroy Your Metabolism Mind Pump #1897: Why Phasing Your Workouts Is So Important & How to Properly Switch It Up Reverse Dieting: What Is It and Should YOU Try It?? | MIND PUMP Mind Pump #2382: The 5 Biggest Challenges With Cutting & Bulking Mind Pump #1860: Fourteen of the Best Foods for an Amazing Physique Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

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Today's episode, we're going to teach you how to get jacked and ripped. Just follow the next five steps in order. You have to follow them in order for them to work. Now, this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, 8 Sleep. This is the world's most advanced sleep system. It sits on your bed, it monitors, and then changes the temperature of your bed based on your sleeping patterns to maximize the quality of your sleep. There's nothing like this on the market. The data on it shows it significantly improves people's sleep quality and how long they sleep. By the way, huge Black Friday promotion. If you go to ateSleep.com forward slash mind pump,

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and then use the code BLACKFRIDAY for the discount and the entries for the vacation. All right, here comes the show. If you want to get built, sculpted, and lean, there are five steps you need to take. By the way, they have to be done in order. If you do those five steps out of order, it's not going to work.

In fact, most of you do them wrong. Watch this. You could blow up. Oh, you put these in order this time. Well, you know why? Because the order matters. The order matters because if you do things which, as we go through these, people will hear these and go, oh, I typically start with the fifth one and I start that one first. It's funny, it gets nuanced when we start talking about how we like put programs together and people don't realize like you know based off of experience we're going to set the priorities in this section and we're going to add these exercises in front of these ones because what happens as a result of that and you're gonna be fatigued from this there's a lot of factors. So let's also define getting jacked and ripped right because when you say it or when you say

it that way it's like okay we want to build a bunch of muscle, and then we also then want to get ripped lean. Lean, lean. Right, so that's kind of like the thought process. So build muscle and get lean. Right, right. And even if you don't want to build muscle and you just want to get lean,

this is important because this process will- Still apply. Still apply, still minimizes any muscle loss, because inevitably when you try to lose body fat, the challenge isn't necessarily the fat loss, but rather how do I prevent myself from losing muscle? How do I prevent the metabolic slowdown that tends to happen? That's almost inevitable unless you follow some of these steps because if your metabolism slows down, you hit a plateau, and then this becomes almost impossible. And of course now, consider the data, right?

Consider the data on weight loss. People lose weight all the time, but almost everybody gains it back. So why do they gain it back? Is it because the process of losing the weight is so hard that it's impossible to maintain? And I would say yes, but not because that's the actual process,

but rather that's the process everybody uses. So they do things the wrong, yeah they use the wrong methods. If you do it right, it is sustainable. We proved this through the two decades we trained people. If you do things the right way, there is a sustainable approach. You don't have to become a fitness fanatic. You don't have to work out all the time. You don't have to become obsessed and maintain obsession with fitness or to maintain these things. It's just you have to do them in the right way and the right way is working with the human body. If you work with the human body then this is not really a problem. If you fight the body or you

don't understand how the body works, which is more accurate, most people have no idea how the body adapts. If you don't understand how the body adapts and you start doing the wrong things, then you'll make this almost impossible and the plateaus become inevitable, metabolism slowdown becomes inevitable and then forget about it. So number one, step one, is you want to lift weights but more specifically lift weights to get strong. You want to get strong. So think of it this way, right? Anytime I'm trying to lose weight or burn body fat, what I don't want to do is lose muscle. Muscle is very metabolically active. It's what gives

me a fast metabolism. Muscle looks good, right? It's shapely. It's also mobile. It contracts and relaxes, allows me to move. It's very functional. And if I don't send my body the appropriate signal to keep or build that muscle, then my body will get rid of that muscle anytime I try to lose weight. Because anytime you try to lose weight, that typically comes from a reduction in calories and the body tries to match the new low calories by slowing its metabolism down by losing muscle. So we want to strength train. But the reason why I say to get strong is because if you just lift weights, but you don't get stronger, you could still lose muscle. If you're getting stronger

you know you're doing the right things. If you're able to do more weight, more reps when you go to the gym versus the last time, you know you're moving in the right direction. That's a very, very good sign that you're not going to lose muscle, that you're not losing muscle, your metabolism isn't slowing down. This is so important because you're also thinking three, four steps ahead too, right? Because of how we titled this, that it's the get jacked and ripped, meaning the inevitable is coming. I'm going to cut calories. I am going to lean out and I want to put myself in the most metabolically advantageous place before I do that.

So I mean, you could technically try and skip to just getting ripped right away and cutting, but by prioritizing getting strong and building muscle, you set yourself up in the most optimal place to be able to sustain whatever desired outcome this is, which is to get jacked and get ripped. And so I think that's important to understand is like somebody else might be going, well, I already feel like I have enough muscle, so I'm cool, I just wanna get ripped.

So tell me how to just get ripped. Still applies because I want to set you up metabolically before I decide to get you shredded and ripped because wherever that place is that you land whatever shredded and ripped looks like for you, obviously you want to be able to maintain that. You don't want it to be a place that for in a moment in time you get there but then it's just unsustainable. One of the ways to make it sustainable is to first build the metabolism and build muscle. Yeah, so look at it this way, right? So losing body fat

will always come from a calorie imbalance, which we'll get to. We'll get to later in this episode, but that's always where it's going to come from. In other words, you have to burn more calories you take in or taking less calories than you burn. In your body, what it does is it makes up the difference by burning stored energy, which is body fat. Now while it's doing this, it also simultaneously tries to reduce your caloric output by slowing your metabolism down. So I'm going to use an analogy just to make this make sense for a lot of people. So imagine you have a budget. You have a budget, you know how much you earn, you know how much you spend.

And you have a savings account. Let's think of the savings account as body fat. That's the stored energy your body has, it's a savings account. All of a sudden, you're bringing in way less money than you did before. Now in order to pay your bills, you have to tap into your savings account, okay? Now what are you gonna do if this is you and this is happening in one month, two months, three months,

if you're smart with your budget, what you're gonna do is you're gonna look at your budget and you say, okay, we need to spend less money. Because eventually the savings account is gonna run out and we don't wanna tap into our savings account because that's in case you know what hits the fan. So let's reduce our spending. So then you look at your budget and you say okay,

and you sit down with your spouse or maybe by yourself and you say all right, what's essential? What's essential? Food, that's essential. So I'm not gonna cut food out, I need to eat. Rent, that's essential. I'm not gonna cut that out. Oh here's some money I spend going to the movies.

Here's some money I spend on some other things that I can cut out, let me cut those things out. So that's what your body does. If your strength training, if you're lifting weights and you're telling your body you need muscle, that becomes an essential expense. Your body won't get rid of it because it needs it. Remember, when you're lifting weights in the gym,

your body doesn't know you're in the gym, it just knows that there's a stress being placed upon it and in order to meet that stress it needs strength. So when you're taking in less calories and your body's tapping into your savings, body fat, it's looking at your expenditures and going, oh do we need this muscle? Yes, we need this muscle. Let's keep it. So it maintains your metabolism. But if you're not using that muscle in a way that promotes strength, by the way, not all forms of exercise do this. Strength training does this. Other forms of exercise, you could pair a bunch of muscle down and still be flexible for yoga. You could pair a bunch of muscle down and still be okay with your distance running or your distance cycling or swimming. But you can't pair muscle down and be strong. This doesn't work that way. So your body's looking at expenses and

going, oh no we need to keep this metabolism so let's just keep where it's at. And then your body plays this game of, all right keep tapping into these fat sources. This is why strength training leads to more fat loss, any leaner physique than not exercising and definitely better than other forms of exercise. So it's imperative that step one in this process is first before we cut anything is I need to tell my body I need this muscle and then getting stronger is your signal to tell you that you're doing it right because if you're strength training you're not getting stronger something's missing which we'll get to either you're

not eating enough you're not you're not you're training too much too little whatever but if you're strength training and getting stronger, your body's going to keep your muscle. Otherwise it all looks like expendable income. That's right. Yeah. You really do have to like prioritize that. Your body responds best to what you teach it is, as the vital movements, the environment that you establish. So to create that environment where muscle is, is the, the top of the tier and our

strength training is the focus. We got to stay strong. That's the biggest signal right away that we can then carry with us. Once we get to a point where, you know, your metabolism is a healthy place where we can, you know, start shaving the calories down a bit, but you're at such a point at that point where you're a machine, you're ready and you're primed for actually shedding body fat. Now to get a little more granular with this, like in someone's case like you Sal, you've been lifting for a really long time, you're incredibly consistent. Let's say you're getting ready to go on this kick and you're going to follow these steps because you want to get shredded and so it still applies to you even at your advanced level.

And getting stronger is difficult because you're so strong. What I do, and I'm curious if this is what your guys' strategy is, this is where I love to change a program and go after an exercise that I'm not the strongest at or I haven't done in a long time. Because you know you're gonna get stronger at it.

Right, and that's really what I'm trying to do is send a signal to the body of like, hey, this is new or we haven't done it in a long time, let's work towards it. Like for example, I haven't consistently tried to get strong at a movement like Turkish get ups in a long time or a windmill. And those are great movements, I love them,

but I also haven't done them consistently in a long time. And so let's say I'm going on this pursuit, here's a good time to maybe introduce a movement in the programming so that my body has this opportunity to get stronger at something that it's probably adapted and got weak, right? Because I've done a lot of it. Versus, let's say you consistently follow maps anabolic right now, continuing to just follow maps anabolic and add weight and try and get stronger when you're probably peak strength right now may not be the best strategy no you want to find strategies to get yourself stronger at the very least maintain your strength but some of the strategies

include look if you're not doing a lot of strength training now then start strength training then that's easy right if you've been doing this for a long time you want to try to maintain your strength but even better like Adam said yeah change the stimulus change the rep rep range, do exercises that you're not accustomed to because you'll get that adaptation that tends to promote strength. Nonetheless, strength is the signal that we're looking for. It's not just the strength training. Sometimes people say, oh, but I lifted weights, so why did I lose muscle?

Okay, something was missing there because you did use weights but you didn't get stronger. So that's the important thing to pay attention to here is can I get stronger and set my fat loss up in a way that's gonna be as effective as possible. Which take us to the next point which is you do a reverse diet. All right, what's a reverse diet? Well a diet is cutting calories. Reverse diet is adding calories. Why am I adding calories? I want to build muscle. I, my body needs in order to build muscle as I'm getting stronger, my

body needs, uh, nutrients. It can't, I can send all the plans to, to build a building, but if it doesn't have the material, the wood and the materials, it's not going to build anything. So what you do while you're lifting weights, while you're strength training, and you're trying to get stronger, is you slowly increase your calories. Now the way you start with this is you gotta find out where your calories are at to begin with.

So this typically starts out with tracking your normal calories, maybe for a week or two. You just write down, or now they make apps, they're super easy, right? You enter everything you eat every single day in an app and then you'll get your average you say okay I'm averaging 1500 calories a day or 1800 calories a day or whatever 2200 calories a day this is my average. Here's what I'm gonna do now I'm going to average 23 or 2400 calories a day right let's say your average is 22

I'm gonna bring it up a hundred to 200 calories every single day. Make sure you're hitting your target body weight and protein. So whatever body weight you want to end up at, that's the grams of protein you're eating and you increase those calories slowly and then you wait with that bump for a week or two and then you do it again. Now what should be happening through this process is you either gain no weight at all on the scale or maybe just a little bit of weight but you should see yourself getting stronger and what's probably happening during this process which is exciting is you probably are getting a little leaner even while you're doing this while you're building muscle but what we're

trying to do is we're trying to build up the metabolism for later on down the road when we do the cut and when we do the cut now we're gonna be in this incredible position because our calories are so high because we worked our metabolism up to that place. So if you're a woman right now and you're listening and you're tracking your calories, you're like, wow, I'm averaging 1,400 calories a day. Okay, why can't I just cut my calories from here?

Well, where are you gonna go? You're gonna go down 1,900? This is why people plateau so hard. Why don't we slowly reverse you, build muscle, get you up to let's say 22 or 2300 calories, which is totally totally possible. It's not only possible, it's probable. I've done it many many times with people.

Slowly work you up to a higher calorie intake or maintenance, build some muscle and some strength, and then cut your calories from there. And it's a beautiful place to be. I feel like this is one of the most counter messages that we promote all the time. And then it's, it's just like an alien concept to your average person. But it's, it's just important that we keep stressing it on this podcast all the time, because to get somebody in a healthy metabolism is, that's the goal to be strong and to really give yourself that

that sort of that that flex that that ability to to get to a point where you're eating at such a level where like wow this is a lot of food you know now is the time I can start cutting it down and then you start bringing it down to a level where it's not even it doesn't even interrupt your your day-to-day life you don't really notice like those dips in terms of, because when you're, when you're dieting, that's the biggest frustration when you're in the gym. You're just struggling. You got no energy. Appetite's crushed. Yeah. So I mean to set yourself up is, is everything in this process. I wish I would have done this more when I was a trainer

starting out. This is my favorite thing to do with a client that comes in. And even if they don't say things like, I want to get ripped and jacked, and they just want to lose 30 pounds or just get leaner in tone, and they use words like that. One of my favorite things to do is to have them track and assess where their calories are at. They come back to me and say it's 1,400, 1,800 calories,

whatever. It doesn't matter. That's what they eat. And they're unhappy where they're at. They wanna lose body fat, they wanna drop 30 pounds, and they're eating in that range. Nothing excites me more than to take them through this journey of getting stronger, reverse dieting,

and then bringing them back to this, to where what ends up happening is I slowly increase their calories, I take them to a place of 24, 26, 2800 calories and then maintaining weight. Not gaining, not losing, but now they're eating 2800. Then I bring them back down to where they started, right? Where they were staying the same and they just plummet. The weight just comes off. That is like one of the best feelings to be able to give to a client because after that point, they're 100% bought in. They're 100% bought in and they understand, oh my god, this is how, why strength training and building muscle is so important because it gives you that metabolic flexibility. It gives you that ability to kind of have

these days where you eat a little bit out of balance and you don't feel like you put all that body fat on. Yeah, and the question oftentimes with this is, well, how long do I reverse diet myself and what does this look like? Well this is this can be very individual okay. Some people respond much quicker to this than other people so when you do this you do it in a slow process, you monitor your weight, you're not trying to gain any weight. A few pounds on the scale is not a big deal, that's okay, that's expected but you want to move up slowly to where you don't see lots of weight fluctuations and you also want to move up slowly to where you don't see lots of weight fluctuations.

And you also want to see yourself getting stronger in the gym. Those two things are the good signs. My calories are going up, weight on the scale, not really changing, but I'm stronger in the gym. Very, very good signs. But what does this look like from person to person? In some cases, it can be quite dramatic. I remember I had a client once who was, she was a marathon runner.

She trained, she ran a lot. So she would run, you know, 15 to 20 miles a week. She was also lifting a lot of weight. She also had a very low calorie diet and over the course of, it was like an eight month process, we got her miles down from 15 to 20 down to three a week. So three miles. So she ran way less. She was strength training twice a week with me and I got her calories up by about 900. So 900 above what she was eating before while doing way less activity and being and she was able to maintain a leaner physique through that process. That's one example. Then I have other examples where it takes us a little longer. You know I've had examples of people where we've had to reverse diet them slowly over time and I

think the reason for that was these were people that had yo-yo dieted so strongly for so many years that their bodies were just a little bit resistant. But most people are somewhere in the middle. Most people, what we're gonna do is we're gonna slowly reverse diet them and typically what I'm waiting for is for the person to say something like, well that's a lot of food. You need a lot of food. I feel like I'm eating a lot of food. Once they feel like that, then I know we can cut calories and be uncomfortable.

That was always a personal goal for me because I'd get asked the same thing. How long we do this or what's the calorie going to be like? I say, listen, let's just keep going and keep getting stronger and keep building that metabolism until it becomes a job or a chore just for you to eat that much, which that signaled me as a coach and a trainer that Okay, my client is now eating more or feels like they're eating more than they've ever eaten their life more than they even like Now we're in a great place to come back to go back to their place because I want them to land somewhere comfortable I want them to land somewhere where it's like they're satisfied. They're eating a few times a day just like they like they they're enjoying their meals, they're not, their portions are decent, they don't feel like they're eating barely anything and so that was always the goal was can I keep pushing them to get to a place

where they finally give me the feedback of oh my god, Adam that's too much food, I can't anymore. Great, we're in a perfect place now. Now it's like and literally one of the easiest things to do is take that person who feels like they're working so hard to eat The kit the calorie goals you give them to now just okay eat when you're hungry You make good choices and watch for the calories fall and then typically it falls in this nice little deficit that takes them down Now some takeaway points with the first two, right? So we said lift weights to get strong if you if you need a workout program I would say our maps and a ball of programs probably the most appropriate for most people for this particular goal.

That's about two days a week to three days a week of strength training. Then with the reverse diet, with the reverse diet you find out your average, bump your calories by about 100 to 150 or 200 per week, do it slowly. If your body weight jumps, then you want to just stay where you're at for a week or two and then try again. Slowly move it up until you're at the point where you're feeling like you're eating a lot of food. If you're getting stronger and your weight is stabilized on the scale, you are doing the right thing. Everything's moving beautifully and we're getting set up for a nice sustainable awesome fat loss. Now step three is to walk daily

after meals. Now this is not, we're not doing this to add cardio. Okay, that's happening later. This is because walking after meals is one of the most effective, aside from strength training, it's one of the most effective ways to maintain insulin sensitivity, okay? Insulin sensitivity is something you really want because that makes sure, that maintains muscle,

it ensures fat loss, it's good for metabolic health, it helps with your blood sugars ups and downs, it's good for your behaviors. And in my experience, a 10-minute walk after breakfast, lunch and dinner is better for overall fat loss than a one-hour walk done on its own without being before breakfast or after breakfast, lunch and dinner. And a lot of our doctor friends that we've had on the show, these are experts in the field will tell us like if people just walk for like eight to 10 minutes after meals. There's so many benefits we keep learning about from just that one little thing.

It's from a hormonal benefit. That's why we're doing this is it's going to prime our hormones in particular, insulin, which is a very important hormone for fat gain and fat loss. It is priming our bodies to be sensitive to insulin. Now think of it this way, like your muscles are like sponges and when you walk you're contracting, relaxing them and what's happening after you eat is you're getting sugar in your blood, right, from the food that you ate and your muscles are sucking it up by walking. Literally it's the best analogy I can give and it does incredible things for blood sugar levels.

And it's very easy to do. It's a very easy way to add activity, but you're adding it in a very effective way. That movement creates that movement inside too. So the whole digestive tract, the whole process just functions more appropriately. And so yeah, for me, it's just been a game changer in terms of like anything interrupting sleep,

especially for dinner. If I'm like, you know, if I can get that walk in and it just helps everything to move and track and be effective with that. Who are we talking to or listening to that made the comment that if everybody just hit 10,000 steps a day, we would solve like 80% of like the chronic obesity? It was like no diabetes? Yeah, well, Dr. Seed said if everybody just hit 10,000 steps a day, we would solve like 80% of like the chronic obesity.

It would be like no diabetes. Yeah, well Dr. Seed said if everybody walked 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it would cure diabetes for most people. And then you're quoting a study that showed that 8,000 steps a day will give you about 80% of all the benefits of walking. That's what it was.

Yeah, okay, yeah, that's wild when you think about that. Most of it's in the 8,000 steps, which most people can accomplish. If most people walked 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and tried to stay relatively active during the day, like they weren't just laying down all day long, they would hit close to 8,000 steps, and they would get all of those benefits.

Wild. Yeah, so this is really easy, and what this does is it makes the, like I said, if it improves insulin sensitivity, it's priming your body to build muscle better and burn body fat better. So this is not, and again, I want to be clear, this is not about the calories burned. Don't worry about, we're going to talk about that later. This has nothing to do with the extra calories that you're burning.

It's actually optimizing your hormones and your metabolic health in a way to where your body will want to be leaner. So it's way more effective than counting the calories. In other words, again, I'll make this case again, 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch and dinner is better than an hour done separately at a different time, even though it's double the time. It's really tough to measure all the other positive things that potentially happen too. So many times if you're going for a walk, you're probably walking outside somewhere. So you're getting out in fresh air and sunlight.

I know personally myself, when I hit like 10,000 steps versus a day where we're in here sedentary for 3000 steps or less, that my sleep is different. So there's a lot of these other things that we can't just isolate and go like, and that all those have an impact on your hormones, on your metabolism and your success of this journey. And so it isn't as simple and as cut as dry as like, and that all those have an impact on your hormones, on your metabolism

and your success of this journey. And so it isn't as simple and as cut as dry as like, oh yeah, you walking 30 minutes out of the day is gonna burn all this body fat. It's just overall health, it's a good habit and behavior to help anybody out. And that's the idea is that not only do we help the people get there, get ripped and jacked,

but then that it's sustainable. This is one of the ways they're gonna be able to sustain that. Okay, next, now step number four, ways you're gonna be able to sustain that. Okay, next, now, step number four, once you've gotten your calories to a place where you're like, ooh, I'm eating a lot, I'm getting stronger, I feel good, I'm consistent with my walks, this may take two months for you, three months for you,

a month for you, maybe longer, whatever, once you're at this place, then it's time to cut calories. Now you look at your caloric intake and you go, okay, I'm eating 2,700 calories a day. Now it's time for me to go on the cut, and I'm going to go below that, because that's my maintenance now. My maintenance is 2,700. Now if I go below that, I'm going to start burning body fat.

So the question is always, how many calories should I cut? I like to tell people around 5 to seven hundred below what their new maintenance is. So if I'm twenty seven hundred calories, twenty two hundred calories or two thousand calories is a good place to start. And what you'll see there is a nice steady pure fat loss. So wherever you're at cut the calories by about five to you know seven hundred below that and then you're good and you'll see some nice fat loss. Yeah I feel like typically my women I would shoot for like five hundred my men I would shoot for like 700. So that's kind of the range that I would go,

but that's normally a good spot. And here's the thing to be careful of, right? Cause sometimes you tell someone to do that and they wanna see this initial huge swing on the scale. But a lot of times you might not see a major move in the scale. If you're doing a really good job of hitting protein, continuing to strength train through this whole process, getting most of your

activity through walking and now just cutting some calories, many times we will just lose body fat and hang on if we're lucky to muscle. You might hit that sweet spot. So don't allow the scale to dictate whether you're having success in that cut. If you're cutting 500 or 700 calories, you don't necessarily need to see scale weight go all the way down. If you were maintaining your weight and maintaining- You could very well be building muscle for the process. That's right. You could very well be doing that and sometimes that can be, people can over correct when they do that. They cut the calories and because they don't see this major

movement or shift on the scale, they all of a sudden freak out and think they need to cut even harder or they start picking up all kinds of cardio and it's like Stay the course trust the process stick in it This is where I think body fat testing becomes super valuable is so that you can just test Stay the course trust the process test again in two to four weeks And then you realize that like even if the scale hasn't moved you may have leaned out and actually maintain our hello built A little muscle. That's right And then the question is do I keep cutting my calories as I go through this process?

If you did the first steps properly, you don't have to keep cutting calories that much. Most people can lose most of the body fat they want just by maintaining that 700 calorie deficit or so, as long as they're maintaining the strength in the gym. Now, if you start to see strength drop, then that might be a problem. By the way, you could always reverse back out.

In other words, if you cut your calories, you burn some body fat and you plateau, and you're like, I don't wanna keep cutting my calories, it's getting a little low now, do another reverse diet. Like there's no rule that says you can't reverse diet a bunch of times in and out. In fact, this is how I like to get people leaner while maintaining as much muscle as possible, is I would cut them and then

reverse and then cut them in the reverse and you peel that body fat down and maintain and oftentimes build muscle. Now the last step, this is where you add the additional cardiovascular activity and this is more for health and or to get that extra 10% of body weight or body fat off the scale. This can be pretty much anything. I like to stick to forms of cardiovascular activity that don't require lots of skill. So a lot of people who don't run suddenly decide running is the best form of cardio. Running is a relatively high skill form of cardio and injuries are quite high on this.

So I used to have my clients, unless they were already runners and they already ran well, I would have them do things like stationary bike or elliptical, far less skill required but allows them to burn. Low impact versions. Yeah, allows them to burn calories. So I'm a little more specific when it comes

to addressing cardio in the pursuit of getting jacked and to me it's the final two to four weeks of whatever I like to peak. And the reason why I do that is because unless this is a client that is telling me that they want to introduce cardio and may keep it in their life forever, if I'm using cardio to get them to this peak physique or whatever that they're trying to attempt to achieve, then I only want to use it as like the nitrous for the final two to four weeks of like you said the last 10% because what I still want is that if and when they hit that point, they

go off to their trip, they have their wedding, they do whatever it was that was motivating them to get to this shredded inject that if they simply fell off the cardio, they wouldn't all of a sudden balloon up and go all the way back. It's like, okay, so if they lost, if that cardio fell off, yeah, you might put a couple, a percent or two back on, but you're still gonna be able to maintain a healthy, fit, strong physique. I wanna really use that, the cardio,

for the final last two to four weeks. And really what it looks like is 30 minutes to an hour, every other day inside the gym, is normally enough to get somebody who's followed the steps to like- Three days a week is what I would have my time. So about 30 minutes. That's it, 30 minutes to an hour tops.

And then what it might look like is for me when I'm doing four weeks is 30 minutes for like the first two weeks and then the last two weeks is maybe an hour for those three days. And that should be enough to really keep them heading down that like leaning out to get shredded. Got some questions here. The first one is does cardio hurt muscle building?

You know what's interesting about this is you know Okay, so here's the deal cardio is another stress on the body that is now requiring resources for recovery and recuperation That could be taken away from the adaptation process of strength training. Now that being said Cardio also improves your health, right? And you need a certain form of cardiovascular health or fitness to do certain strength training exercises.

In some cases, cardio can help muscle building, but in most cases it hurts. What I say in most cases is oftentimes people overdo the cardio and cardio is not sending a signal to the body that says keep muscle. In fact cardio sends a signal to the body that says get rid of muscle because what we need is stamina and we also need efficiency with calories. What you see in the studies of calorie restriction is when it's combined with cardio it results in a lot of muscle loss. Your body doesn't need a lot of muscle for endurance. It needs it for strength. So in many

cases it does. But again, if you're like you can't perform a set of barbell squats for 10 reps because you have no cardio fitness and you're just out, you're gassed out or it's hard for you to do a set of curls, like you might need to do some cardio to improve your endurance to help you strength for anymore. So it's not as cut and dry as, yes, it hurts. It's nuanced. There's points of it that obviously make strength training potentially better. But what you find is, if you're thinking about this for a second, if you're only strength training three to four hours total in the week, and you're doing three days a week or more of hour-long cardio, you're sitting a louder endurance signal than you are a strength training signal. And in that case, it is not advantageous for you to keep muscle. It's more likely your body will

pare it down. So keep in mind, and this is again why I really want to wait till like the very end of the programming to send that loud of a signal of needing that much endurance because many times it'll conflict with that. And you'll normally only get pushback from the people that have those types of genetics that can run on the treadmill forever and they don't lose any muscle. Because there's also that part, right? There's the variance that you're talking about, then there's also the genetic variance between clients. Remember I had the opposite.

I look at a treadmill, muscle falls off. I had an ex that competed and it didn't matter how much we ran. I mean, she could be running every single day for weeks, and she might only drop one pound on the scale, and it would be just a little bit of fat, and no muscle would fall off. Just has those genetics that she would hold onto it. So you gotta keep that in mind, too.

Speaking of the anomalies, and I don't really bring this up a lot, but I have had trained athletes that will just do fast twitch, kind of cardio, some HIIT sessions, and more anaerobic. So if you get the more anaerobic you get with your cardio, you know, the better the chances you are

of preserving muscle, so just keep that in mind. What is the best food for reverse dieting? You know, so high protein foods, we want to hit our protein targets, but whole foods, whole natural foods is what you want to stick to when you're reverse dieting. And I'll add one more thing, easily digestible whole natural foods. For most people, this looks like white rice, it looks like animal sources of protein, potato, like things that'll give you the calories that digest well that are not coming off as a reference.

So I was gonna say high fat meats. So I always found this really easy for me when I was reverse dieting, trying to add calories, allowing myself to have things like rib eyes and tri-tip and these fattier types of meats. And then when I went into a cut, all I had to do was make leaner cut choices. Because I'm already, and that's also, by the way, I'm still including that I have butter

and olive oil when I cook and do all that stuff. So all of that would be in there. And then when I would switch over to kind of leaning out, I would simply just make leaner cut choices, still getting fat from meats, but leaner than I would be if I was on the reverse diets an easy way to bump calories 100 to 300 calories by simply saying oh, you know what? I'll allow myself to have more red meat or higher fatty fattier cuts That's an easy way to bump your calories and also enjoy it while you're doing it

Well, I gained body fat on a reverse diet Yeah, maybe a little bit. You know, the goal is to not gain a ton of body fat on a reverse diet. Possibly. Yeah, maybe a little bit. You know, the goal is to not gain a ton of body fat, but I would expect on a reverse diet, like I'd be okay with a client gaining a little bit of body fat. I'm looking at the scale and say, okay, if it goes up three to five pounds, we're okay with that, not a big deal.

If they're starting to gain a lot of weight, well then what we do is we'll stop the reverse and keep them at wherever they're at for a little while and then attempt it again later. Yeah, as long as your strength is there and you're still applying. I mean, that's a huge component to that, whether or not you're gonna be gaining bifurcis muscle.

I mean, 20 to 30%? Because what do you, at what point, I definitely, if I'm putting on 50% fat, that's not good. So if I put 10 pounds on the scale, and five came from fat and five came from muscle, that was way too much because at that point too, when I cut, I'm potentially going to lose half the muscle I did. So I'd worked all that hard to bulk to only be able to keep a couple of pounds. So I want to see a ratio that's like a 80-20 split. So if I put 10 pounds on and eight of it came from muscle and only two of fat, That's solid, that's really solid.

I get 30%, not bad, could've been a little bit better. I start getting 40, 50%, and that means I push. But if they're getting stronger, it's gonna be like 80, 20 or better. Yeah, true. Okay, sorry. Can I get leaner while building muscle? You know what's funny?

Yes, you can, and and now it doesn't necessarily mean you lost body fat. If you just built muscle and gained no body fat in terms of pounds whatsoever, you're leaner. You're leaner because your current body fat is now, yeah it's now a smaller percentage of your overall body weight. In other words, a 100 pound man with 10 pounds of body fat, that's 10% body fat. A 200 pound man with 10 pounds of body fat that's 10% body fat. A 200 pound man with

10 pounds of body fat is 5% body fat right so building muscle without gaining any body fat also simultaneously makes you leaner as a percentage. You could also technically lose fat actual fat pounds and build muscle. Yes, much harder though. I just explained this in the series that I'm doing on YouTube, and that is like when you zoom out 30 days, so you're never building muscle and burning fat at the same exact moment. But in the context of a 30-day program, if I do a really good job of trying to hit caloric

maintenance to a slight surplus or so, which means what probably happens is there's moments in time in those 30 days when you're actually running a little bit out of a deficit, your body taps into fat to propel it through and fuel it. And then there's other times when you're in a surplus and because you're doing a good job of strength training, those additional calories go to building muscle, which this is the Goldilocks zone. This is when you're in the beautiful spot of hovering around a good calorie intake that sometimes the body isn't enough of a surplus to actually build some muscle and sometimes it's enough in a little bit of a deficit

that it actually burns body fat. You're not literally catabolic and anabolic in the same moment. You have moments in time in 30 days and to me that is always a sign of being in the most beautiful spot calorie choice wise. Right? If you're in a spot where you built muscle and lost body fat in the in 30 days, that's a really good sign of you're making good like calorie food choices because you're kind of dipping in and out of both sides. That's it right there. Look, if you like our show come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mindpump Justin. I'm at Mindp to Stefano Adam is that mind pump Adam? Thank you for listening to mind pump if your goal is to build and shape your body

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