Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2472: Four Fat Loss Supplements That ACTUALLY Work

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Four Fat Loss Supplements That ACTUALLY Work The top-selling category of supplements is fat-burning supplements. (1:10) Explaining the fat loss process. (3:30) Supplements for fat burning are broken down into three categories. (7:44) The two most effective ways fat burners work. (12:21) Four Fat Loss Supplements That ACTUALLY Work: #1 - Protein powder (build more muscle to speed up metabolism). (15:09) #2 - Caffeine (to help with increased movement). (17:52) #3 - Ashwagandha (to help the adaptation process). (20:12) #4 - Creatine (muscle building to speed up metabolism). (22:33) Questions: Can supplements really make a big difference in fat loss? (25:01) Can a multivitamin help with fat loss? (26:57) How low should I bring my calories for fat loss? (28:54) Is it true that my sleep plays a role in fat loss? (31:58) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Seed for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code 25MINDPUMP at checkout for 25% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic** 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 #2457: Four Mistakes That Destroy Your Metabolism Mind Pump #1387: Turning Your Body Into a Fat-Burning Machine Mind Pump #1830: Five Steps to Determine Your ideal Caloric Intake Building Muscle with Adam Schafer – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump #1345: 6 Ways to Optimize Sleep for Faster Muscle Gain and Fat Loss Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is mind pump, right? In today's episode, we talk about four supplements that actually work for fat loss. Okay. Most of them don't work at all, but we picked four that might actually help. Now this episode is brought to you

by Seed. This is the world's best probiotic, hands down. If you want to get the benefits of a probiotic, reduced inflammation, better gut health, better digestion, go with Seed. Don't go with the other people. Go to seed.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code 25MINDPUMP, get 25% off. Also, it's early access for Black Friday here at Mind Pump. All maps, programs, all maps, bundles, everything, everything, everything. 60% off, this only happens once a year.

If you wanna get a program or a bundle, you wanna get ready for the new year, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com, use the code Black Friday, get 60% off. Alright, here comes the show. The top selling category of supplements by far are fat burning supplements. These are supplements that promise to help you get leaner. Here's the problem, most of them do nothing.

Now there are some that actually help a little bit. That's what we're gonna talk about today in today's episode, the top four fat burning supplements you can take. Is that true? Is the fat burning supplements the highest? It's the most, it's definitely one of the highest margins. Do you include pre-workout into that?

Because pre-workout is the highest. For margins? Oh, I think margins and- No, I think fat burning is the most- And soul. That's a good question. What's the most popular, hydroxy cut back in the day was a big name for that category.

I haven't heard of any body fat burners out there. It's still a huge category. It is a big category. It's a huge category. So what I don't know is if you include pre-workout in that category. It's gotta be, it beats pre-workout. I'm almost 100% positive.

Oh, you think it beats pre-workout? I don't think it does. Yeah, almost 100%. I think pre, the last time I saw an article, I thought I saw that pre-workout was far away. I know pre-workout was one of the fastest growing, it didn't exist, you know, 20 years ago. That's why I think that's interesting,

is because that was like, when we were trainers early in our career, pre-workout wasn't just barely becoming a thing, where it's now like, it's... Doug, maybe you could look up a fat burning supplement, look at the market share, just to see. Nonetheless, regardless of what Doug gets, it is one of the most marketable supplements, fat loss, because, I mean, shoot, we...

It provides the promise. When we do these episodes, right, when loss, I mean shoot, we uh. It provides the promise. When we do these episodes, right, when we do single topic episodes, we hired a guy, Jeremy, who helps with titling and topics and stuff like that, and never fails, always, the number one thing everybody wants to hear is fat loss. Fat loss, anything around losing fat.

Losing fat. It's the number one goal, it's the biggest challenge also look as trainers when you train people if you had if it if it If the average person or typical client came up to you and asked you a question about a supplement Nine out of ten times it was if it was a supplement that promised to lose body fat almost always right? It was always like yeah. Hey, I heard about this supplement helps lose fat this supplement So it's definitely a big category, and it's one that we get questions from all the time. And so I wanted to break down ones that actually help.

But before we do, we gotta explain the fat loss process because otherwise this won't make sense. So first off, fat loss can only occur. It can only occur if there's an energy imbalance. Okay, so you have to, your body has to burn more calories than you take in or you have to expend more energy than you consume. When this happens you have what's called an energy imbalance. So if I'm burning 2,000 calories worth of energy but I'm taking in 1,000 calories worth of energy, but I'm taking in 1,000 calories worth of energy to make up the difference my body will have to tap into stored energy, which is hopefully body fat, right? Hopefully that's what I'm burning.

I'm not burning other things. And that's the only way it can happen. If you are not, if you don't have this energy imbalance, fat loss will not occur. If I am eating more calories or consuming more energy than I'm burning, My body has, there is, it's against the law of physics. It cannot burn my stored energy because now I have excess energy that I consume which is only gonna get stored back on my body. So that's in a nutshell how it works.

Now this is an oversimplification because it's obviously more complex than just doing that, right? If it was as easy as eat less and move more, then we wouldn't be in an obesity epidemic. The metabolism is very adaptable. It doesn't stay in one place. This is what causes problems for people.

Also, the kinds of foods you eat can influence the amount of calories that you burn. The type of activity you do can influence your metabolism as well and then of course activity itself burns calories and then what you eat determines how you feel and etc etc so it's far more complex than what I just said but what I just said is also true without that energy imbalance fat loss won't happen. Well the reason why that's so important to make that clear is because all of these fat loss won't happen. Well, the reason why that's so important to make that clear is because all of these fat loss supplements always have this interesting way of marketing themselves,

where they never bring that part up. It's always, this is insulin blocking, and this does, this converts carbohydrates into, they always have some spin. Awesome animations to kind of show you how the particles all of a sudden come out of the capsule and then they evaporate the fat. Yeah, this targets specifically the fat around the liver, then transports it in the bloodstream

so you can use it off as energy and so they have all these like cool things to tell you that this supplement aids and does when none of it matters if you're eating in a calorie surplus. If you're in a calorie surplus, I don't care all the fancy stuff that they claim a supplement or a pill can do in your body, you will gain, you will gain weight, you will not lose weight, you will not be, if you're in a surplus.

So that's where it doesn't even matter. And so then if you're in a surplus. So that's where it doesn't even matter. And so then if you understand that, then there are other approaches that make more sense when it comes to investing in some sort of supplements if my pursuit is fat loss, which I think is the point of this conversation. Yeah, so then you wanna look at supplements from that standpoint.

Okay, what part of the formula will this supplement help? The burning part or the consumption part? By the way, I like that you said weight, Adam, because if you eat more calories and you burn, that you will gain weight, you could gain muscle, right? You could also gain body fat. The whole point is that excess energy doesn't just evaporate out of existence. It needs to be converted to something else. This is a law of physics where energy cannot be created nor destroyed. You don't get

energy out of nothing and energy doesn't just turn into nothing. It gets converted. Sometimes it gets converted to heat or it gets converted to fuel or it gets converted to body fat or muscle or something like that but nonetheless if there's a calorie surplus or excess energy it has to go somewhere on your body and if there's a calorie deficit then your body will tap into its own stored energy and that's where you get the weight loss and of course what we're looking for is fat loss not just weight loss and if we're looking at weight gain it's muscle gain right not fat gain. So supplements for fat burning are typically broken down into three

categories. There are the ones that are called fat burners that promise to burn more calories. Typically these are marketed as supplements that somehow trigger an effect in the body to getting your metabolism to just on its own burn more calories. Okay, so thermogenic effect, right? Yes, they'll often refer to it as a thermogenic effect, right? So if I take this pill, then, and here's what thermogenic means. If I take this pill, more of the energy I'm consuming will get converted into heat. So I'm going to actually burn more calories because I've somehow told my body,

you need to produce more heat. So thermo going to actually burn more calories because I've somehow told my body you need to produce more heat. So thermo, meaning heat, thermogenic, this is a heat producing compound that's going to get me to burn more calories. Sometimes you'll hear of a supplement, I remember back in the day, pyruvate was one, that it caused the energy metabolic system or the energy system to create energy waste, which also would come out in terms of heat, and they said, okay, this gets you to burn more calories. But nonetheless, these are supplements that promise

to somehow speed up the metabolism. Then you have the fat loss supplements that are more of your appetite suppressants. These are supplements or compounds that make you eat less. And that's a very straightforward way of getting you to lose weight. I would say in the short term, this category of fat loss supplements

have been the most successful. These are the ones that people have taken and have seen weight loss, and then they get really popular. You mentioned one of them, Hydroxycut. Back in the day, and you can't really buy this supplement stack anymore, at least not in this way. You could piece it together yourself if you go to a

pharmacy, but back in the day a really popular supplement combination was known as the ECA stack, right? Ephedra, caffeine, aspirin. Ephedra and caffeine being very strong central nervous system stimulants, Ephedra, caffeine being very strong, central nervous system stimulants, ephedrine, caffeine working synergistically. Aspirin helped elongate or prolong the half-life, so made it look work longer. And you would take those together, you get the stimulative effect, the side effect being

I don't want to eat as much food. When that supplement came out or those types of supplements came out, there was a xenadrine, there was hydroxycut, there was RIP fuel. In a short term period, typically 30 days, 60 days, people would take them three times a day. That's what you used to have to do. There was a lot of ephedra, I remember, it was like 25 milligrams each dose. And people lost weight, but the reason why they lost weight

is they just ate less food. Those are appetite suppressant supplements. Do you, you just said, I'm over here smiling because you just triggered something that I haven't thought about in such a long time. Do you remember the sales pitch for pyruvate? I do. Is it the Krebs cycle?

Yes, yes, I can give it to you. I still remember. Let's hear it. So what pyruvate is, it's part of the Krebs cycle. What is the Krebs cycle? The Krebs cycle is your body starting to burn and metabolize fat. And it takes the average person six to 16 minutes

to get into this cycle. And what tells the body that it's in this cycle to start burning fat is pyruvate. Pyruvate's released from the brain, tells the body then to switch over and start to metabolize fat as its primary source of fuel. So when you take the supplement pyruvate, and let's say on average, it takes you 10 minutes

to get into this Krebs cycle and pyruvate to get released, it gets released faster. So now you get an additional five to 10 minutes of burning fat every time you're doing cardio exercise. Oh, yeah Yeah, I remember two bottles It's been so long since I even thought about that, but I remember then you have Categories of supplements that aid the fat Metabolizing process you probably pyruvate actually might actually fit better in that category There's other ones like L-carnitine, right?

Amino acid that is important for fat metabolism. Choline, sometimes a cell was sold as this, right? These are supplements that, you know, you look at how your body breaks down fat and turns it into energy, there are certain compounds that are used and nutrients that are used for that process. So the theory was, well, if I take those, I'm going to encourage or enhance the fat,

you know, metabolizing effect of the body. So those are the three main categories of supplements, and I'm gonna tell you right now that most supplements in those categories are not gonna work very well at all. Fat loss supplements are, maybe they might be one of the most popular, but they're also one of the worst in terms of actually producing,

like when you look at the data, when you look at studies, actually producing effective and sustainable results. They just fail almost across the board. I wanna address the probably the percentage of people that are screaming at their radio right now going, oh no, I saw all kinds of great results when I did this thing. Because there's two main reasons why any fat burning

supplements worked for somebody. And there's two main ones. There's a lot of the fancy sales pitches that they tell you it's doing and what's so magical about it. But they either one, suppress the appetite, so it helps people control their cravings and binge eating. That's right. Or they affect the central nervous system

and they make you all jittery and wanna move like crazy. And so all day it's like you're on cocaine and so you burn a bunch of extra calories because you're moving your fingers and tapping your feet and you're doing a bunch of stuff that you wouldn't have been done. Those are the two most effective ways that all these products,

and that's why most all of them have something in it that suppresses the appetite or has some sort of stimulant in it to keep you to move all day long. Or you naturally just adjust your eating behaviors as a result of like being disciplined and taking a pill. Sure. Also, it has a downstream effect. Yeah. I mean that's a that's across the board on all supplements they say is that the placebo effect, right? Just the fact that you're taking a supplement, you tend to make other choices

or better choices and stuff like that. But the number one and number two is that is appetite suppressant and then making you move more. Now I move more? Now let's look at that, right? So moving more does help, it's healthier for you to move more, it does help with calorie burning, but the body does adapt quickly to that. Like if I just do a lot of movement, my body starts to learn how to burn less calories doing so and if I keep doing that, I can actually pair muscle down

through that process. We know this, we've seen studies on this. It's not really, moving more is not really an effective way of trying to burn or lose body fat. It's not bad, it's good for your health when it comes to weight loss or fat loss, it's not really a sustainable approach. And then as far as appetite suppression is concerned, at least when it comes to these CNS stimulant based supplements, the body also adapts very quickly. You get this down regulation of

receptors where it did suppress your appetite at first, but then after 30 days or 45 days or so, it's not doing it anymore. And then when you go off, you get a rebound effect. And this is why people who lost weight on ephedra back in the day gained it back. They might've lost it, but then they all gained it back. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about supplements that will

actually help and will actually help in the long term. So we're going to start with a supplement that is not normally traditionally, in fact, there's a few supplements on this list that are not traditionally classified as fat loss supplements, but we're going to make the case as to why these are, in fact, some of the most effective fat loss supplements. I like this. So the first one I'm going to start with is protein powder. So you might be thinking, how is protein powder going to help me lose weight? It's adding calories and eating protein. Well here's

why. Two big ways. Yeah, here's why. Two reasons. One, a high protein diet, even in a calorie controlled environment. So if I have two groups of people eating the same calories but one group is eating high protein, the other group is eating your typical low protein diet, the high protein diet tends to cause more fat loss and here's the important part, more muscle gain. High protein diets contribute to muscle gain especially when combined with strength training and muscle speeds up the metabolism. So if I can speed up the metabolism

through building muscle, which protein definitely helps with, we are now setting ourselves up for sustainable fat loss. It's also a great alternative when people are in a jam or a pickle of I didn't make a meal, I don't have a great choice in front of me, so having a shake in replace of some processed, well it's processed food, but a fast food, in a wrapper, you know, macro, not macro-friendly type of meal,

you've got this meal that is high in protein, which most people under-consume in that, so the benefit of you getting something, something satiety producing in addition to that, you're contributing to building muscle, which in turn speeds the metabolism up. This was like a, almost every client I ever had, because we struggle with hitting protein,

this supplement became a staple that everybody had for that exact reason. Or even this, yeah, the muscle sparing effect when you're in a deficit, you know, making sure your protein levels are, you know, adequate enough so that way reason. Or even this, yeah, the muscle sparing effect when you're in a deficit, you know, making sure your protein levels are, you know, adequate enough so that way you're, you know, you don't lose muscle. Most effective thing you could do for fat loss for yourself is speed up your metabolism.

Makes it a lot easier. And so your strength training, which does that, you, to make it as effective as possible, you want to eat high protein. High protein in this context is about a gram of protein per pound of target body weight. So if your target body weight is 140 pounds, well you need to eat 140 grams of protein every single day and that's hard for a lot of people. Sometimes it's more right if you're a man 180 grams or 200 grams that's hard to do on a day in and day out basis and protein powders could help.

So if you're a man trying to hit 200 grams and you're hitting around 130, 150 every day from Whole Foods, well you throw in a 50 gram shake, now you've hit that protein target, you're going to build a lot more muscle, thus improving or increasing your metabolic rate, now fat loss becomes much more sustainable and achievable. So this is why protein powder, in my opinion, is a good, you know, quote-unquote fat loss supplement. Next is caffeine. Now caffeine is the one of the most classic stimulants. Caffeine, now I'm not putting it in there because it speeds up the metabolism or all that stuff, you know, that's not why I'm

putting in there. I'm putting in there primarily because caffeine, especially if you don't use it all the time, when you do use it, it does boost motivation. That helps make you want to move or work out. Just naturally move a bit more. That's right. So caffeine, this is, I mean, you talked about pre-workouts at the beginning of the podcast. That's the main reason why pre-workouts are popular. It's the only reason.

It's the thing, it's of all the stuff they sell you on that's in it to do whatever they say, the most effective thing and the reason why they all have caffeine and the ones you probably like the most have the highest amount of caffeine is because it's the caffeine that you feel. It's the thing that gets you stimulated. It gets you going in your workout. It gets you sweating within five minutes instead of waiting 30 minutes

to get to break that first sweat. It's the thing that motivates you to move around throughout the day. It's the thing that wakes you up first thing in the morning and makes you do more productive things before. That's why that's so effective. And all the studies that are on caffeine as far as the benefits outweighing

any sort of the detriments, this is why this becomes a go-to supplement. But the thing that I, the caveat to that is that I would be, your body will adapt to that and so you can get into this rat race of this increasing it. Yes, and here's the way to use caffeine for fat loss. Save it for before your workouts. If you're listening to this right now and you struggle with weight loss and you're not a regular caffeine drinker, if you are, start to taper yourself off first and then save the caffeine for workouts. It's

a treat and it'll motivate you. It helps get you to the gym. It helps get you through your workout. It'll help you be more consistent. It's something to look forward to. This is how I would use it with my clients is for the ones who didn't drink regular caffeine and who struggle, I'd say, okay, let's have, if they never had caffeine, it would be 50 milligrams or a hundred milligrams at the most. And I'd say, here, have a little caffeine 30 minutes before you're supposed to go do your walk or supposed to go do your workout. And it helped, it helped them with consistency.

So really the caffeine is there to help with motivation to keep you consistent. That's why I think it's a, and it's also by the way, in almost every fat loss supplement, precisely because it does make you feel good. Yeah, you do feel it. Next is an adaptogen known as ashwagandha. Now ashwagandha, it doesn't have this direct fat loss effect, although some studies show

that it might help a little bit. It doesn't have this direct muscle building effect, although there are some studies that show that it helps somewhat with it. More so Ashwagandha helps the body deal with stress or it helps you to not be overcome or your body become overcome with stress. Now, why is this important for this category? Well, if you're trying to lose body fat, you're putting yourself on a calorie deficit, you're working out, those are both stresses. They're both stresses

on the body. And if your body's ability to adapt to that stress is enhanced a little bit, it's going to make the process a little bit more effective. And among all of the adaptogenic herbs that are out there, there's a lot of them, right? There's rhodiola, there's ginseng, cordyceps might even be in there. But ashwagandha has the most studies supporting it and is probably the best tolerated for people. Some adaptogenics can cause like stimulant effects, some people don't like certain ones,

but it's pretty rare a person take ashwagandha and not necessarily, not really like how it feels. Most people like that it's kind of relaxing, it feels good, and it does. It helps the body adapt to stress. Because again, you're going to be adding stress to your body through a calorie deficit if you're trying to lose weight and extra exercise, ashwagandha, ashwagandha will help. What does a research say as far as does it support you switching over to parasympathetic? Does it help switch over at a faster rate?

Yes. Which I think that's important to note. That's one of the things, I mean, your ability to be able to- It's known as an enzyolytic. Right, your ability to switch over to rest and recovery is as important to you being able to get up and work out and do your things because you get up, you go work out, and you move and you stimulate muscle. Well, that's important.

That's part of the process. The other part of the process is being able to relax, calm down, rest, recover, repair. And that supplement helps you, helps you, helps you do that. So yeah, that's an adaptation skill. You train, like the best athletes in the world or their ability to, uh, recover and to be able to adapt to that stress and then come back and then perform again You know, that's what sets them apart from other athletes. Yeah now last is Definitely a supplement that people don't talk about for fat loss, but in my opinion is one of the best and that's creatine

Creightin if you're eating a high protein diet, right you got that staple down And that's creatine. Creatine, if you're eating a high protein diet, right, you got that staple down, creatine is a phenomenal strength and muscle building supplement and will directly lead to a faster metabolism as a result of that. So if you want to get your body

to burn more calories on its own, you wanna build more muscle, creatine is the king of all supplements in this category. It will help you build muscle. It does also hyper hydrate your muscles. It also hyper hydrates your skin. It produces this nice fullness to your muscles, tightness feels more sculpted, more toned because of the increased fluid, but it helps the muscle building process.

And when you build muscle, you become a better fat burning machine, period. End of story. We've said this many times in the podcast. If you want to burn body fat, this is why strength training is the best form of exercise for fat loss. It's through the metabolism boosting effects. It's not because you're burning tons of calories, just through the activity. Creatine helps with muscle building.

So that supplement for fat loss is one of the best. Yeah. And improving your performance as you're doing your workout, you're going to squeeze that last bit of potential out of that signal to really kind of place you in that anabolic high signal state where you're gonna build muscle. I was gonna make that point that I think that

that's the other part of this is that when you talk all the time about the importance of when we're helping someone build their metabolism to chase strength and get strength stronger. We've also talked about when you take creatine, it's normally a pretty clear five to 10 more pounds on most of your lifts. So within two weeks. Yeah.

So when you are trying to chase strength to chase building muscle, um, and especially when you're doing that in the context of I'm trying to speed my metabolism up, that's the main purpose of me building this muscle. Even if your overall goal is I want to lose 50 pounds, Adam, that's the main purpose of me building this muscle. Even if your overall goal is I want to lose 50 pounds, Adam, that's what I'm trying to do. Us trying to build muscle and build your metabolism is going to aid in that. And so this is why this is such a great strategy, why that's such a great supplement is your ability to be able to add five or ten more pounds to the bar is only going to naturally progressively overload you in your workouts, which then

stimulates more muscle growth. And then if you feed it properly with all the other things, then you speed your metabolism up. 100%, it's also a longevity supplement. It's good for your brain, it's good for your body, it's good for your organs. It's a great all around supplement, but definitely make no mistake, it is a fat burning supplement

because of its ability to help you build muscle. We've got some questions here. The first one is, can supplements really make a difference for fat loss? Not a big difference. You know, and that's just being 100%. Like 100%, like we're listing the best supplements

we think for fat loss because that's the category. But it's still a small sliver. It's complimenting all the big rocks. Yeah, like if I put diet, training, sleep, and lifestyle in a pie chart with supplements, supplements would be like 1%. I mean, unless you're making up a nutrient deficiency, they really don't make a huge difference.

Even the crazy black market illegal stuff that's out there that bodybuilders will take doesn't make that huge of a difference. It's the diet, it's the training, it's the getting good sleep, it's those things. I've always approached it with clients in regards to how I recommend supplements based off their disposable income.

And that is, if I have a client who has lots of disposable income and they're like, yeah, why not take these extra things and give us an extra three to 5% on all the things we're trying to do. But if I have somebody who's just like, financially they're tight or they don't have that kind of disposable income and I haven't checked all the boxes with them like we're not dialed on their sleep, we're not dialed on their nutrition, we're not

dialed on their consistency around their programming, I'm not even putting that much energy in this direction. It really has to do with where they're where they're at financially and like how much of that effort is being put towards the things that don't cost them any more money that they can improve on. And if they really want to move the needle, selling them a $50 bottle of X thing is not going to move the needle. What's going to move the needle are the big rocks. Now, say you've checked all those boxes, then yeah, this is going to add some- That's the next thing.

Yes, this is the next thing to do that. But there normally is plenty of room for me to help people first in the big rocks before defaulting over to supplements as a main source for results. Can a multivitamin help with fat loss? It can if you have a nutrient deficiency. Yeah, deficiency.

Yeah, if you're deficient in deficient in an essential vitamin or mineral, your body's- Vitamin D, magnesium. Yeah. Your body's functions are not, it can't function properly. So you can cause lots of problems. Like a vitamin D deficiency can cause depression, pain, hormone imbalances, magnesium deficiency, anxiety,

bone loss, muscle contraction issues. So if you're lacking in a nutrient, and then you take a vitamin and get that nutrient filled, huge difference, huge difference. Like going from nutrient deficiency to nutrients filled, you'll feel like a completely different person. Nutrient deficiencies can feel like illness. So it definitely can help. Now if you don't have a deficiency, it won't make a difference. So I'm glad we got this question

because that's where this list changes, right? Obviously we made it easier for you to get the nutrients that you need. So I'm glad we got this if you don't have a deficiency, it won't make a difference. So I'm glad we got this question because that's where this list changes, right? Obviously we made a generic list for the general population on what we think are the four best fat loss supplements outside of your traditional fat loss supplements, right?

But what trumps all supplements are, when you have a client that, and this is why I suggest, especially if trainers are listening, that your clients go and get blood panels, especially as they age. So I can get a good look and see like, if they are deficient in anything, because somebody deficient in iron, in magnesium,

in vitamin D, which are all very common to have deficiency, and you're talking about like 50% plus of the population are deficient in some of those things, them supplementing for that now becomes a great fat loss supplement. Not because it has anything to do with metabolizing fat or a thermogenic effect, is that your body's systems are running more efficiently when your body is getting what it's supposed to get.

They were broken systems before. That's right. And so you fixing that first, it now becomes the best fat loss supplement that you could possibly take because you're making your machinery run smoother and better by giving it what it needs. So that's the the difference in this list is it changes per the individual if that individual knows where they lack in certain supplements. Next question, how low should I bring my calories for fat loss? So for fat loss you want to bring your calories below what you're burning and usually it's anywhere between five to seven hundred calories below what's known as maintenance. Now it could be more or less depending on the person so I'm giving a

kind of a general answer but let's say you've realized or figured out you've tracked your food for a couple weeks and you realize okay I'm averaging about twenty five hundred calories a day and I want to lose weight. Well, if you go down to 2,000 or 1,800, now you're in a deficit, you'll see some fat loss. I don't like bringing people's calories below 1,500, period, end of story. Definitely not below 1,200. Then things get kind of iffy, plateau real hard, and people don't feel very good. I agree. I would add this also because this is a challenge that I'm

going through personally right now with my diet, is I'm heading into a cut right now. And I'm not up to where I would like to be metabolically before I do a cut. So in the past, I would get up to 4,000 plus calories to maintain my body. And then I would go to a cut. And then I could comfortably to 4,000 plus calories to maintain my body and then I would go to a cut and then I could I could comfortably cut a thousand calories and eat three thousand calories and lean out. I'm not there right now I'm at a place right now where my maintenance is probably somewhere around

3,200 calories or so and so in order for me to cut right now, I think all the way down to 2,500 Well, here's the challenge with that is when I start getting around 2,500 or less calories, it becomes really difficult for me to consistently hit my protein intake. So that becomes really important. Like, so if you, let's say you wanna cut 500 or 1,000 calories, well, if you can do that,

if you can cut 1,000 calories from your diet and still fit in enough protein that your body needs to sustain the muscle mass that you want on your body, then I would say it's probably not a bad, the reason why cutting below 1500 is that's what happens. You cut somebody below 1500 calories, it's hard for them to get what their body needs nutritionally, especially something as important as protein. So that becomes the most important factor on how many calories I cut is can I get a client's metabolism up fast enough that when I reduce by 500, 700 or 1000 calories, that place that I reduce to, can they still hit the important macronutrients that I want

them to hit like their daily protein intake? And if that puts them in a place where all they could have is tilapia and spinach all day long in order to do that, that's way too low for me. I want them to be able to have good, healthy, balanced meals that aren't starving like them with like tilapia boiled that they can sustain because that's not sustainable. So I want to make sure that the cut is somewhere. You also need essential nutrients in there too, like fats and vitamins and minerals. That's right. So I want to be able to build the metabolism up to a place. And I think when you're in a very healthy place

metabolically, you can get away with larger deficits in calories. It's where it gets dangerous is when you cut a large deficit and that deficit takes you in a place that's so low, your body's lacking in all these macro and micronutrients. Is it true that my sleep plays a role in fat loss? Huge, huge role.

Huge role. There's really interesting studies on this where they'll control people's calories and they'll have a group essentially have bad sleep and another group have good sleep and they'll put them both in a deficit and the bad sleep group will lose twice as much muscle and half as much body fat.

So the body is really learning to slow down its metabolism. Sleep also affects your cravings, your behavior, your mood has a very powerful effect on cravings. Very, very powerful effect on, on how you eat. And then of course, it's just your health gets affected negatively. Like your hormones are all out of whack. It's just, it's so much of the building process of even building muscle or like retaining muscle, like all of that is dependent on how much rest recovery you get.

Well, yeah, obviously if you listen to the podcast, you hear us at Nausium talk about the importance of strength training and building muscle and building your metabolism. None of that works without rest and recovery. The magic in all of that, we can have the best programming in the world. You can be following a maps and dieting perfect and you get shit sleep and all that goes out the window. Because the real work or the real magic that happens from all the working out happens when you rest, recover and adapt from that. If that part is disrupted and consistently disrupted, you could have great workouts, great diet and you're going to have shitty results. That's

how powerful the sleeper is Sal you said you share a story all the time with the client that you had where all you did was Yeah, get better sleep and also you reduced I believe I think the story goes you reduced her training how much she was training and focused on getting sleep and also in the Weight sort of come and change nothing else Her body's their body just because she started to build more muscle, metabolism got affected positively, hormones balanced out and she got leaner. I mean you're trying to get leaner with crappy sleep is a recipe for muscle loss. It's a recipe for flabbiness. It's a recipe for terrible hormone profile. No,

no, no, you have, this is true for any adaptation you're looking for to any kind of stress. Building muscle, improving endurance, getting stronger, or burning body fat, you've got to prioritize sleep, otherwise you're going to make this almost impossible. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump to Stefano 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 your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a

full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a 5-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump!