Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2480: Your Blueprint for Single-Digit Body Fat

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

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You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast in the entire world. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode we're gonna give you a blueprint on how to get to single digit body fat. You might get shredded and ripped. We have the blueprint for you. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Intera Skincare. Now these are peptide based therapies that get your skin to literally become younger to look better. You won't find this stuff anywhere else This is cutting-edge stuff. Go check them out. Go to intera skincare calm. That's e and t e r a skincare calm forward slash Mpm use the code mpm get 10% off your order also

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comes the show. Shredded, ripped, defined, single digit body fat. Yes. You want to get there? Let's talk about it. Difficult and is it worth it? That's a follow-up question. First off we gotta say that okay so single digit body fat obviously body fat percentages that could be represented by one digit, like 3%, 5%, 6%, 9%. That's ripped for men. For women. Add 10%.

Yeah, exactly. You go up about 10% or so, 5% to 10%. Not something a woman should chase for sure, because then you're talking about some serious health issues. I think that's a good generic way to, since we're speaking, if we're speaking to single digits, we're speaking to men, what we're talking about, but if you just add 10% of that number,

the same thought process applies. Like when we say things like, that's really, really crazy, almost unhealthy lean, that's like 3% for men, 13% would be women, right? So that would be the way I would be women right so that would be the way I would look at that. I would say it's more like 7% but it's definitely more right because you figure 10% for a man is not equal to 20% in a woman.

I'd say 5% is like 15% on a woman. You think so? Yeah I think 10% is like 4.5%. It's within that range. You have zero opinions here. Right? I think I've been single digit once by accident. So that's my contribution to this topic. You got that flu really bad that one time? No, it's so it is important also to understand that single digit body fat is beyond what is considered healthy. Okay so there is a

range of what would be considered healthy body fat, so there is a range of what would be considered healthy body fat. It's a pretty wide range. Outside of that, you start to sacrifice health, either for aesthetics or in the other case, if it goes on the higher end, you're sacrificing it for a lifestyle that maybe isn't so healthy. So in other words, once you go past a certain point

in terms of body fat percentage, you know, let's say in the high range, you start to get negative effects associated with body fat. If you start to pass a certain point in the low range, you start to get negative effects associated with too low of body fat. So for a man to get into single digit body fat percentages, especially when you start to get to the middle range, you know, the 5 five six percent or lower You are almost always sacrificing health in pursuit of a particular look and again, you know add X amount percentage for women Between seven to ten percent. I would say

Also, you're sacrificing health women suffer more from getting too lean Typically the men women's bodies are more sensitive to too low a body fat because it's just their hormone profile and also because their bodies are always constantly measuring body fat and trying to figure out whether or not it should be fertile. So you'll typically see them lose their period first and then other things start to happen. But it's important to say that because getting single digit body fat percentage is essentially for aesthetics.

It's not for athletic performance, it's not for health, it's just, hey, I want to look a particular way. Yeah, I would add a category there that maybe I didn't see until after the fact is, what you learn on the way to that is pretty interesting. So from a trainer's perspective, I got a lot more value from it. That wasn't my goal, by the way.

I didn't go into it like, hey, I'm gonna learn a lot here and this is gonna be making me a better trainer. I was purely driving that way towards the competition thing, right? Like what I ended up getting from it, that was really fascinating. I remember this because it was pre-Mind Pump

and Justin and I were meeting a lot. I remember just, you know, I don't know, at that point I'm over 10 years in the career of being a personal trainer. And so I got really excited. And I remember meeting with him on a weekly basis and being like, man, it's crazy. I'm learning this and I'm learning that.

Like to be that far into my career and feel that I was still learning a lot about these things that I thought I kind of already knew a lot about, but then to see it kind of manifest in, in the way I looked in my training regimen and diet and all that stuff. I thought that part of it, that was really valuable. And so that, and I think it's made me a better communicator to even the average person. So I don't think that you would think that as a trainer like how does me getting three or four percent body fat?

Help me communicate to Susan who doesn't care about that and just wants to lose 40 pounds of fat It actually did it actually made me an incredibly communicator to that client even for with that that doesn't seem like that would match I remember those conversations funny because you start geeking out on like, how much like a certain amount of carbs would affect, you know, the retention, the look, you know, sodium or just like all these little movers because you're so lean that like anything you added into your diet like affected energy,

it affected you in some way or the other. And it's like like if you can Identify that and you can have like a client that's actually like well I'm pretty sure this is just water retention or you can nail it down to what it really is That was it's also important to understand that uh, it's it's rare Now social media would have you believe otherwise but single digit body fat per se except for the rare genetic anomaly, is work, it's consistency, and it's among all things rare.

Even working in gyms. I mean you're more likely to run into a millionaire. Millionaires are more, there's more millionaires than there are people with six pack abs. That's a statistic that people often will point to. And you can back it up with some data, but I'll speak from personal experience. I mean, I worked in gyms and managed gyms

my entire professional career from the age of 18. And for 20 years, I was in gyms working in them. So I worked, and there's a self-selection bias in gyms. People who go to gyms already work out and are caring about their health. So it's not even representative of the general population, it's representative of the gym population. And it was rare to see people in gyms that were single digit body fat. It's rare to see people in single digit body fat in bodybuilder

and in hardcore gyms even. You go to a hardcore bodybuilder gym and there's 50 people working out, probably three at most, usually one is walking around single digit body fat. So it is not an easy thing to achieve. And the reason why I want to communicate this and it's rare, I want to communicate this because social media, all you see on social media are single digit body fat percentages. And so it makes you believe that it's far more common

than it is, thus, what is wrong with me, I can't accomplish this, this is so hard, it's not common whatsoever. You rarely ever see this even in gyms. You know, you talk about that in that I remember being a trainer inside a gym where they got 2000 workouts a day, and if a bodybuilder or somebody who looks like what you're describing, someone shredded, walked in the gym, everybody knew about

it. You all, Oh, did you see that dude? Did you see that one guy just came in? Like who's that? You know, people you, everybody was talking about all the trainers would talk about it when you see somebody that is that crazy shredded. And're right like since social media we that's what everybody and anybody who's ever even been that lean before that's what they represent on their instagram page right that's what they're but they're promoting or pushing they're not like that all the time yeah and they're not even like that all the time it's a very small period of time where they got that shredded and they have all these photos that they recycle and use all year round so then the average person who follows these people for inspiration think that this person

is just looks like this all the time. And then you're right, they follow every person that does that. And you go, God, why can't I look like this or be like this? I also, and this brings us to the first point, which is if you want to get to single digit body fat percentage, you have to have the single digit body fat percentage mindset, the proper mindset. So I'm gonna start with this. You have to understand this, because if you don't,

this is a path to destruction. You have to understand that getting to single digit body fat is not a panacea of happiness, it's not instant popularity, it's not this like, oh my god, I did it and everything's amazing. It's actually none of those things. Most people don't care. You might get a few looks at the gym

or if you're at the beach. Otherwise, most people can't even tell the difference and it isn't this great, amazing thing. So get that, first understand that because if you get this, if you have this understanding or this belief that man, when I get shredded, I'm going to get so much attention from the opposite sex or when I get shredded, life is going to be incredible and things are going to change.

Maybe you're not consciously thinking about that, but really think about that. What do I think is going to happen when I get there? You will be sorely, sorely disappointed and it is a path to destruction because it's this constant rabbit that you're chasing that you'll never catch. So start there first. Realize that getting a single digit body fat percentage isn't going to make you any happier. It will almost always be more miserable because it's so challenging. Understand that first.

Then you can move to the rest of the mindset. I was going to say, I was going to add to that mindset another thing that you have to have a relentless amount of self-discipline and consistency to reach there. Insane. Yeah. Just insane discipline. Because you don't, you can't, you're not off a meal. Yeah. And you, and you. Gotta live it every single day. To even move the needle, right? Let's say you're somebody who's already pretty fit, 13, 12, 13% body fat for a male. That's pretty damn fit. You're good. Yeah, you're in really good shape, right? And you want to say 6%. Like,

the distance between 12% and 6% is a long way of consistency. It is not, oh, a couple hard weeks of dieting and training. It's like months and months of not missing these meals. And it gets harder as you get closer. Like most things, or like the opposite of most things where things get easier as you do more of it, the deeper you go into the single digits, meaning the leaner and leaner you get, the more difficult and the less room for error there is. And so the level and mindset of commitment and consistency and during that process you're gonna have some of the things that Justin alluded to which is these

peaks and valleys of feeling like you're doing the right thing or not and like seeing your physique go kind of backwards and like you have to be able to persevere through that and stay consistent to get there in order to reach those. I've gone I've gone to single digit body fat high single digit body fat many many times I've gotten a mid single digit body fat only twice in my life and it is a mental game It is such a mental game first off if you're walking around at a healthy body fat percentage as a man 12% which is good athletic your athletic body fat percentage and you you're holding a few pounds of extra water because Yesterday you had extra sodium or

some carbs that were whatever or maybe you didn't sleep great or maybe you're a little sick so you're holding a little water. You can't tell. You look in the mirror, you can't tell. You're at 6% body fat. You hold three pounds of water. It looks like you gained 3% body fat. And you look in the mirror and it messes with your head.

Like what happened? How did I, my definition's gone. Like what's going on? You go up a percent body fat, you can tell in a big way. It completely messes with your head. And the leaner you get, the more your body fights getting leaner. And the way it fights it.

Because it knows it's not healthy. Listen, I've never had dreams about food until I get to blow out. And I know when I'm getting down to about 8% body fat or so. It's like drop below eight. I start to dream and think about food and I'm not talking about like pizza and hamburgers I'm thinking about like an apple or a banana. It's very very strange What happens you also start to just your your hot your heat and cold tolerance?

Start to change your workouts suck. You're not gonna be strong. You're susceptible to getting sick. Very. Not insulated anymore. Yeah, you're not strong at 6% body fat. Not like you are when you're 15% body fat. You don't get pumps in the gym. When you wear, here's another one that messed with you, you wear a long sleeve shirt,

you feel like you lost your muscle, because you're smaller. It's just a total mental game. And then the cravings, I said, I talk about dreaming about food, your body in efforts of not allowing you to get leaner and trying to help you gain body fat, it will kick up your cravings to the point, like you have to be so disciplined that you have to be comfortable living in craving land. That's what it felt like all day long. You're just craving food.

Okay. Now that we've totally turned everybody off of wanting to do it, let's tell them how to do it. Yeah. tell them how to do it. You still want to do it. If you're still listening, you still want to try to do it. I do want to spend a little bit more time here. The discipline you're talking about, Adam, like if you're trying to go from, if you're a man, you're trying to go from 16% to 13% body fat. Different story. Having a weekend where you go out with your buddies or a couple days here or there, not a big deal. You start to get into the single digit, you can't have that. There is no off meal,

there is no off anything. It's every meal all the time, every day, all day, and so it's not discipline, it's obsession. It's probably a better word to describe it. I mean, those that are watching and following along the series that I'm doing on YouTube, this has been what the recent stuff that I'm communicating is I've already recently ran into this point and I'm not even in single digits yet. Once I get sub 12, start getting 11, as I get closer to single digits, this becomes necessary.

Up until this point, I've been able to guesstimate my food, I've been able to just make good choices, hit protein intake, train hard, be smart, focus on on those things. And then the body fats come down. I've been building muscle. It's been this great and relatively easy process to get there. But at this point now, like this last test I had, I didn't, the body fat percentage didn't budge and didn't move. Yet I felt like I was doing a really good job. But the truth is it just, I'm not, I wasn't tracking diligently

enough to make sure there's new, because I couldn't, I can no longer afford to be traveling and eating out and being off a few hundred calories here or there to now reach this new level that I'm trying to get to. And so it's now required that, okay, that can't miss now. That's right. Next, what you mentioned is you start with tracking everything. You have to track everything because in order to get to single digit body fat, you have to know where you're at because then you can know where you're going. I mean, if you're off by a few hundred calories, which is easy, easy, if you don't track, you will be off by a few hundred calories. Even someone like me who knows what's in food, if I try to guesstimate,

I'm going to be off a little bit with one meal, off a little bit with the next meal, off a little bit, and by the time you add up all the meals, I'm off by three, 400 calories. So you start by tracking everything, which means you weigh things. You have to start weighing your food, weigh your rice, count.

Everything is cooked at home at that point too, right? You can't really go out. That's it, your milk, your everything, your fluid, like track everything, give yourself at least a week or two of completely tracking everything because you wanna know generally what you're consuming on a day-to-day basis. Otherwise you won't know where to go.

What direction do I go? Where can I cut whatever? I think Justin just said it best for me is like this is the kind of the conversation I have with myself when I get to this point is okay Adam if you want the next level you no longer get the luxury of Making good choices out eating out you now have to make everything or buy from a food service That's weighed and measured and macroed out which is what I've done now to is like so when we we've recently traveled

And this time I left it, I had no choice. I was like, I'm at a point now where I could go try and make good choices and I won't, what will, what will happen in that time is I won't necessarily get fatter or put on body fat, but I won't make progress. And if I'm trying to make progress week over week, cause it's a long battle to get down to those single digits, right? Cause it takes a while. I've got to make progress every week the incremental progress which means that I've got to cook everything myself control all the controllables or invest in somebody who's doing that for me right and preparing those meals and have it ready for me because there's just no room for air anymore so tracking

becomes non-negotiable. Now you mentioned room. That's the next stage, which is start by, and I know it's going to sound weird, but eat more and build muscle. Now, why are we eating more and building muscle? We're talking about getting to single digit body fat. Well, here's what happens to get yourself leaner period end of story. You have to take in less calories than you burn to get to single digit body fat. You got to give yourself a long runway. We're going to use some padding.

Yeah, like if you just need to lose 10 pounds, you want to go from 16% to 13% body fat. I mean, you could cut your calories and you'll get there and you won't have to keep cutting. To get to single digit body fat, you're going to cut several times because your body's going to adapt when you hit a certain caloric intake. So you'll cut it first, you'll lose some weight. Cool, I'm at 10%. Plateau, what do I do now? Cut more, you cut again. Cool, now I'm down to 8%.

All right, how do I get down to six? I gotta cut again. But if I don't have enough runway with my metabolism, I'm screwed. To make it easier to understand, if I'm a man and I track everything, and I'm like, I wanna get to single digit, and I'm at 12% body fat, okay? and I track everything and I'm like I want to get to single digit and I'm at 12% body fat, okay,

and I track everything, I'm like oh cool, I'm averaging 2200 calories a day and I want to get from 12 to let's say 6% body fat. I'm not in a good place. What am I going to do, go down to 1500 calories? That'll get me so far but not very far at all, I'm going to eventually plateau and then I can't go down any lower because I can't even hit my protein intake I'm gonna end up losing muscle by the way this is a great way your body

adapts is it starts to make you reduce muscle so you end up losing weight and your body fat stays the same or goes up so it ends up happening. So what do you suggest like minimally if I was to raise now in reverse diet and raise my calories up to a level that I could then pursue the single digit? Minimum of, so I have numbers for all this. I just have a saying for this. Like a thousand at least or?

I wanna be able to do three cuts in a prep for if I'm getting right. So first of all. Which is about 1500 calories right? Yeah, about 1500 calorie root buffer, give or take, okay? So I just have a saying with my clients that I coach for prep so bikini and men's and bodybuilding all the all the above that I coached and it was shows are one in the offseason not in prep that's right so and and when I explain that to the

client it's that you know you're hiring me but you I wouldn't let someone hire me just for the prep because I need the most important part. I need to getting you ready for prep. And that's the building the metabolism, which I think is the most important part because if you get a comp, if you get somebody who thinks they're going to get ready and get down to this, the reason why I'm using competing because getting down a single digit is the same. So that's, that's a bodybuilding specialty. There is no other competitive goal. I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly. It's a competitive goal. It's the same.

Regardless, regardless, if you're going to get on stage or not, this formula still is going to apply. And that is we have to ramp the metabolism up enough, male or female, to where I can at least cut you 500 calories or more three times in that time. Because every couple weeks in a calorie deficit, this is what I have found, it only takes a couple weeks for that body to start to adapt to that new caloric intake and then I have to do it again and do it again to keep seeing this like progress. And so I would want a minimum of 1500 calorie plus buffer room, 1500 calorie buffer room

of what? Of putting you still in a, what I would consider healthy or okay place to be. So for my females, I didn't want to go lower than 1500 calories. my females, I didn't want to go lower than 1500 calories. My males, I didn't want to go lower than 2000 calories. And so I want to get my male who's ready for prep at 3500 or more calories minimum, he needs to be eating and comfortably keeping his weight and body fat percentage. My females, a minimum of 25 to 2800 calories they need to be at in before I was by the way This is by the way

These are not men eating four thousand calories at twenty percent body fat because you ain't getting down to eight percent body fat I'm sorry now from 20. This is somebody who's able to eat thirty five hundred to four thousand calories She's probably sitting around twelve percent. Yeah, and then you can cut down That's so that's a good point to make is that somebody listening right now is like cool I want to get to single digit. I'm at 18% body fat. I'm a guy No, no, you don't have enough unless you're you're burning 7,000 thousand calories a day. Yeah, then forget about that's why it's so hard because Your body adapts so quickly and so strongly What especially once you pass 10% or so it starts to ramp up that what ends up happens what everybody experiences is

They they get down to let's say 11 or 10% and it's a struggle They're like cool. I want to keep pushing it and they just lose muscle That's just what ends up happening from this point on is you just continue to lose muscle get weaker and they never accomplish that So that's same thing for me Adam as I would say get up to at least 3500 calories Where you're sitting at a decent body fat percentage already and then you've got room and the way to do that is to reverse diet yourself hit your protein targets eat your body weight in grams of protein and lift weights and get strong. If you're not at that place don't even try. Don't even try to get to single digit because you're just gonna do

yourself some damage and some harm. Or you're just gonna be really challenged to getting there. I'm going through this right now. So I only had this small window that we were documenting. And in the first month to month and a half was reverse dieting, get my calories up. Remember I came from the GLP-1, I was eating hardly anything. And so I ramped it up to 2,000, then 2,500,

then 3,000, then 3,500, and about 3,800 was about the peak I got up to. And then I've started to reverse back the other way. Now the problem with that was I would have liked to have had two, three more months of continuing to kind of build the metabolism to where I'm cruising at 4,000 plus calories because I know that once I start cutting 500 to 1,000 calories that I'll only lose so much percent before I plateau. I'm at that

situation right now. I'm eating in the low, I'm eating like 2,400 calories right now and I'm nowhere near 3%. Normally when I'm getting ready for a show, by the time I'm down to 2,400 calories, I'm already at like 5% body fat. I'm already like a couple weeks out from stage and my final cut's gonna be maybe 2,000 and like picking up some walking.

Like that is the last bit. So the fact that I'm maybe 2,000 and picking up some walking. That is the last bit. So the fact that I'm using 2,400 calories as a cut right now and I'm still at 11% body fat, that's not sustainable for me. I already know that what I'm gonna have to do at the end of this whole little docu-series is I'm gonna turn right back around and add calories back and have to reverse diet.

Because it's not a recipe for me getting down to single digits. Exactly, so next, after you've built your metabolism, you've built some muscle, you're maintaining at a caloric intake that allows you some runway, now you can start cutting. Now I don't like to cut people too drastically right out the gates. 500, 600 calories, 800 calories at the most is where I'd start. So 5 to 800 calories below what you've set your caloric intake at is the place to start.

And then what you do is you just sit there and allow the body fat to come off your body while you continue doing what you're doing. And typically, typically you'll see the body plateau anywhere between two to four weeks, right? So you'll see some fat loss and it starts to stagnate at about for me It was around three four weeks and I'd leave it there for a little bit before trying to cut again I think a big mistake people make is they cut cut cut way too fast or way too hard right out the gates Which really sends a strong signal the body that says let's pair this muscle down

Let's slow down the metabolism allow the body to slowly, try to maintain that muscle. It's super, super important. I had a kind of a generic formula and it would be different for each client, right? So that's why I'll give you ranges. That it ranges anywhere between 500 and 800 calories is what the cut would be and I would pair that with the first, so the first week would be purely cut in calories. The second week I would start to add 2,000 steps a day. And I would ride that cut until I started to see the progress slow down and then we go into another cut. And that's kind of what that would look like. So I like to do a little

bit of a calorie cut while also increasing activity. Not drastic, 2,000 steps a day is not crazy walking, that's nothing. And then on top of that, only 500, 800 calories, so I'm not extreme cutting. So I give a little bit of range for both to happen. That seemed to be like this perfect, nice cut. Well, next, and actually we'll get to steps because that's actually one of the, one of the important steps here, but next is to, this one's what people don't, this is where people, everybody screws up.

This is probably the opposite. What do you think? But you reduce your training volume. You've cut your calories. You're reducing your caloric intake. One of the big mistakes people make is they dramatically increase the strength, training volume. You've cut your calories, you're reducing your caloric intake. One of the big mistakes people make is they dramatically increase the strength training volume and intensity. So they're in the gym, they're lifting weights, they were doing this routine at 3,500 calories,

now they're at 2,500 calories after two cuts and they're doing the same routine. Your body can't recover like it used to because you have less energy to do so. You have less nutrients. The worst thing you could do is increase the intensity of volume. A lot of people do this. They're like, oh, I'm trying to cut now. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and to burn. Yeah. Now I'm doing super sets and I'm going crazy with the intensity and this only

results in muscle loss, overtraining, illness, injury, or all of the. Well, that's it. That's, I think that's where the misconception it's like, I need, I need to burn calories and this is going to increase my chances of burning body fat when in fact you've got to preserve muscle. So it's strange, but if you focus more on actual strength training with adequate rest periods, you're going to be so much better off. The best strength training style or routine that I would do when my calories were getting low was low rep,

three minute rest in between sets. It maintained my strength. It didn't burn me out, didn't over train me. Now I had experimented with other stuff before and I did what I thought you were supposed to do which higher reps, supersets and it would just burn me out man. I would just over train and then it dawned on me like well duh I'm eating way less calories. This is high volume, what if I drop the volume and go low reps? And it was phenomenal, did an incredible job at maintaining muscle.

So you gotta reduce the training volume if you change anything at all. Shows are one in the off season, not in the prep. That's when you build the physique. You do not build the physique when you're catabolic, right? So the body's either catabolic or anabolic. In other words, it's either cutting, getting rid of, or it's building. When we're in a calorie surplus and we're in the off season and we're building

the metabolism, we're an anabolic and we're building the muscle. That is when you pack on all the clay and you sculpt the body. When you get into the cut portion and you're trying to get down to single digits, you no longer are building muscle. You are just going to reveal the muscle that you did in the off season. The recipe for losing muscle with that body fat is to do too much. We've already talked at Nausium, the study that shares how little of volume you need to maintain what you've already built.

So if you did all the work in the off season and you built this, this, this amount of muscle, it's like one seventh is needed in order to keep that and that is more ideal when you're in this Constant calorie deficit to reduce whether you reduce that in total sets total exercises or intensity I did a lot of times intensity because at this point I'm I like the consistency of my routine and showing up every day. So I just backed way off the intensity. I would just go in and go through the movements. And it was like, get a pump.

It almost looked like these massive trigger sessions towards the last four to six weeks of my prep because I knew that I was in such a calorie deficit. I'm burning. My body's just burning body fat. I don't wanna stress it anymore. I just, and I just wanna send this signal that hey, we still need muscle

because I'm gonna do these movements every day and these exercises. So I just would back way off the intensity but stay in my rhythm of what I was doing. But boy, is that like one of the biggest advantages that I thought I had when I looked at my peers because I had the opportunity to work out in the gym that I saw a lot of my competition and they did the opposite. As it gets closer to show they're ramping up the intensity and they're getting after

it and I see them running on the treadmill and I'm just like oh my god like talk about a recipe for losing all that hard muscle that you or that you work so hard to build in the off-season. I know they're all in a hard cut, we're all eating similar type of foods, and then they're pushing their bodies like that, I'm like, they have no idea right now that they're actually hurting themselves by pushing more like that.

Next is what you mentioned, Adam, which is increase your steps. Now, I like steps over other forms of cardio for a few different reasons. One, steps, you could initially do them without having to schedule and structure actual cardio, which is great. It always makes it more convenient if I just track them. More activity based.

Just try to move throughout the day. Number two, walking is a very low stress on the body. In many cases, it's actually recuperative and facilitates recovery. Remember, we're playing this game of don't over train the body because I'm on a calorie deficit and I'm trying to get to single digit. What you don't want to do is intense cardio

or intense anything else. You want to do is intense cardio or intense anything else. You want to keep the stress for the strength training. So walking was great. I mean, when I got myself down to 4%, my form of what I would do with steps, I would try to just walk throughout the day and then I'd get on a treadmill and I'd walk

and it would be at a normal speed. It wasn't at this crazy speed. And I'd do it for 30, 45 minutes and it kept muscle on my body. When I tried doing other forms, rowing or step master or something like that, and it was higher intensity, I noticed I'd start to lose some strength.

It would tip me over into over training. When you push on a stair master or running on a treadmill, you are sending a signal to the body that you need to be good at endurance and stamina and having all this extra muscle that you just built up is not advantageous. And so it will want to pare that down. If you pare that and also being in a calorie deficit, it is a surefire way to lose muscle also.

And so, but yet there is an advantage to moving more and burning more calories, but a way more efficient way of doing it when it comes to like holding on to muscle and just losing body fat is to walk. And the best way to do that is to create it habitually through the day. And the reason why I liked, I would coach to steps

is my goal was to, if I could get a client, and some of them were, not all of them, but some of them, I would be able to do the step ladder of steps like scaling steps 2,000 every every other week of going up and activity without ever having scheduled cardio or scheduled go to a treadmill for an hour long to get that done and that would always be the goal like hey can you get up and do this and can you make sure you walk at lunchtime and could you find all these ways to add steps into your routine? And then only if you can't do anymore,

cause maybe you're stuck at a station for eight hours and you can't move for whatever job you have. Do we, would we go to the treadmill and say, okay, I need to go to the treadmill in order to get those steps that would I want to do it. And the why I found that was aside from the science that supports what you're not pushing the body intensely and forcing the body to pare down muscle. But more importantly, after the person gets done with getting down a single digit body fat,

a lot of those kind of movement activity things they built into their lifestyle was more sustainable. They now create this habit of like, you know Adam, I started doing these steps first thing in the morning before I had my breakfast and I just ended up liking that. I sort of get out in the morning, do outside, it's quiet. It's like, I'm just gonna keep that going. I love that.

I love taking a client to that level and then adding all these habitual, you know, moments of time of walking that then becomes something like, you know what, like I'm gonna continue to do that. I like what you said, Adam, because it also really lends it to the following. Like, almost always, and this sucks, but it's true, what almost always or inevitably follows

when somebody does successfully get to single digit is this crazy rebound. This crazy, because the amount of discipline and fighting the cravings and, oh, got to be so consistent every single day, day in and day out, and then boom, I hit this number, and then people tend to go off, and they go off in such a terrible direction. So what you're saying, Adam, is right,

because you maintain some of these activities, and I'll say this, once you hit single digit, you're not going to want to maintain it, only crazy people do, and it's not good for you. When you come out of it, you should structure your coming out of it like you did going into it. Don't just say, I'm off of it, now I'm going to go off. Because the cravings are so strong and so bad that when you start to feed yourself, the cravings actually kick up for a while.

And this is where I've seen people gain 15, 20 pounds in 30 days. Yeah, it's absolutely crazy. Got some questions. The first one is, is it worth it to get to single digit body fat? For most people, no. You're not going to gain much from it. I think it's worth it for everybody to get pretty lean. I'd say for men, if you're trying to get lean and you're like, I really want to get lean to look good, you'll get there about 9-10%. And that you can do without getting too crazy. I think you'll be happy, you'll have a six pack, you'll look good, you're fit.

Getting down to 5%, it's so, like a real 5%, when you see it, it's like an anatomy chart, and I don't think it's worth it for most people. I'm gonna take, I'm just gonna take an opposing argument to it just for shits and giggles. I'm gonna say yes, and the reason why I'm gonna say yes is that if you follow the steps on how we tell you, we just told you how to do it and you do it the right way, I think the value of that forever, like I have no desire to stay single digits at whatsoever, but doing so has given me the tools to really turn the dials any time that I want

and has gained me a much better understanding on how to do that, and so I find tremendous value in the educational portion of doing it. I think that once you're there, you'll find that. Well, the asterisk is if you did it right, right? If you didn't hurt yourself. That's a huge asterisk. That's why I prefaced it with that, because if you just starve yourself

and get down to fucking single digits, then it's going to do nobody any good. And it's probably the worst thing you could do. But if you actually do it methodically, like we laid out, like the blueprints to do it that way and you achieve it, I think you'll find it's incredibly rewarding and valuable. Well, one thing that it did for me is it made it easier to maintain 10% body fat. Like once you get down to five,

10% feels kind of flexible and easy in comparison. So I can see some benefit there, but yeah, I don't know. Most people, I think the pursuit of single digit is just gonna give them a lot of heartache and not great body digits. That's the caveat to it right there. Yeah, saying that, we all agree there. I mean, most people are gonna do it the wrong way, most people are, it's gonna discourage them,

it's gonna send them back spiraling out of control, binging, but if you actually did it the right way, I think there's lots of- Yeah, if you're methodical, and I would look at it a bit Just like trying to achieve some crazy PR and some extreme performance goal in that regard You just have to look at it for what it is This isn't like an end zone for you where you're gonna be able to sustain and maintain it It's just a pursuit where you learn and then you kind of walk yourself back to reality

I think that's a great analogy. Because I also don't think training for PRs in squatting and deadlifting and stuff like that is the most healthy thing ever. But the skills and the things that you have to apply in order to reach PR numbers and movements like that have tremendous value, the knowledge that you gain on the way there, and that I think is really valuable. But not actually training towards PRs all the time. I don't think that's healthy so very similar. What are the best

high protein foods for building? Well for building I mean animal sources are your best. For steak, for cutting there's some pretty good high protein sources for cutting. You typically want to look at low fat just because the calories are low. You know your classic chicken breast. Chicken thighs are actually great. They're not that much more fat in chicken thighs versus chicken breast. Flank steak, there's lean red meats. You can get really lean ground beef even. Ground beef, yeah.

Yeah, which is really, it's actually pretty palatable. Volume-wise, yeah. And easy. There's certain fish types that are pretty good. You know, tilapia is the famous bodybuilding. Believe it or not, I used tilapia a lot when I got down to 4%, but the reason why I use it so much is it was light and easy to use. If I threw salsa

on it, it was like I could just shovel it down, which I know that sounds like not great, but that's what ends up happening when you're getting that lean is you're just like, oh, here's my food, shovel it down. So those are all pretty good. Yeah, I'm gonna just keep it generic and just like, oh, here's my food, shovel it down. So those are all pretty good. Yeah, I'm going to just keep it generic and just steak, potato, and meat.

I mean, that's like, that's the recipe right there. Most all my carb sources are potatoes or rice, and then meat, you know, like it's pairing it with. And I actually think actually having a nice rotation of all meat is really good. So I do a lot of ground bison. I do veal, I do turkey, I do chicken, I do ground beef. I think, I think fish, I think rotating through all of your meats with a simple carb

like a potato or rice, I think is the best best bet. What are some tips to reduce cravings while cutting? Well, in the context of single digit body fat, like I digit body fat, I'll give you a couple things that are like a little helpful, but let's start with that and then I'll tell you why you just got to embrace it. So I used to drink a lot of, what is it called? Water with the bubbles. Sparkling water.

Sparkling water, a little bit of lime. I would add salt to it, I know that sounds silly, but just sipping on sparkling water helped somewhat. But you know, honestly, if you're getting out of single digit body fat, you have to embrace. You're gonna be hungry, all the time. Like literally embrace, don't run from the cravings, acknowledge and embrace them, and I would,

and mentally I'd say something, I think like, oh man, I'm craving food, I'm getting shredded, and I would just think of it that way. Because you're gonna be hungry all the time. I mean, I've heard some people say gum, just so they have some busy to do, right? Yeah, gum's one. Gum and water.

That was like my gum, I had packs and packs of gum, and I was always carrying a gallon of water with myself and so keeping my mouth busy. I'd like it. And it was the gum was for flavor and I actually get some of that. The water was to keep me peeing and drinking and not eating those two things. Cause you're right. Like, you know, I do, and I do like it.

You get used to the feeling of hunger. You do, you do. I, and I do think that's another thing that's valuable to this is, you know, our definition of hunger is, is really skewed. Like most of what we feel is cravings and it isn't real hunger. Like you, a lot of times you're, you're diet, you're eating way more than the average person. And yet you're, you're hungry all the time.

No, this is real hunger. But you've got to get, you've got to get, uh, comfortable with that feeling. You know, you, you have to learn to, uh, to get comfortable with that. And that was, you have to learn to get comfortable with that. And that was one of the things I just had to keep my mouth busy by chewing gum or drinking water. That helped out a ton. Totally. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump.

Justin, I'm at Mind Pump with Stefano, and Adam is at Mind Pump. Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs.

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