Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2604: The 5 Most Effective Ways to Achieve a Calorie Deficit & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Episode Date: May 24, 2025

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin coach four Pump Heads via Zoom. Mind Pump Fit Tip: The 5 MOST effective ways to achieve a calorie deficit. (2:11) The Mind Pump Butcher Box is here! (25:43) The power of the placebo effect. (28:26) I want to believe. (34:37) The most motivating thing you can see in the gym. (37:24) Are you retired? (39:38) Baby AI. (45:54) Social contagion is a REAL thing. (47:31) The positive feedback loop of Brain.fm. (49:59) #ListenerLive question #1 – Why would I need to change up my workout? (54:26) #ListenerLive question #2 – When do you know if your cut is not working? (1:01:08) #ListenerLive question #3 – Why would more movement and lower calorie intake cause a stall and an increase? (1:12:30) #ListenerLive question #4 – How can I get calories in when I don’t have the appetite? (1:25:19) Related Links/Products Mentioned Ask a question to Mind Pump, live! Email: [e-mail] Visit Butcher Box for this month’s exclusive Mind Pump offer!  ** For a limited time, new Butcher Box members who sign up through Mind Pump will receive: $20 OFF their first box, free chicken breast, ground beef, OR salmon in every box for a whole year! A curated box pre-filled with Mind Pump’s favorite cuts — no guesswork, just great meat. ** Visit Brain.fm for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners. ** Get 30 days of free access to science-backed music. ** Train the Trainer Webinar Series May Special: MAPS 15 Performance or RGB Bundle 50% off! ** Code MAY50 at checkout ** Mind Pump # 2437: What Happens to Your Body When You Quit Ultra-Processed Foods for 30 Days Mind Pump Group Coaching The Problem of Placebo Responses in Clinical Trials Mind Movies - Positive Daily Affirmations & Digital Vision Boards 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** Mind Pump #2312: Five Steps to Bounce Back From Overtraining Mind Pump #2210: Best Workouts for Bulking & Cutting Mind Pump #2287: Bodybuilding 101- How to Bulk and Cut Mind Pump #2597: Before You Take Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro Listen to This! Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Josh Nickerson (@mindpumpjosh) Instagram Tom Bilyeu (@tombilyeu)  Instagram Bret Contreras PhD (@bretcontreras1) Instagram  

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 answered live callers'

questions, people called in, we got to coach them on air, but this was after the intro. Today's intro was 52 minutes long. In the intro we talk about science in regards to fat loss, muscle gain, talk about training techniques, current events, family life. It's a good time. Again, after that we got to the live callers. By the way, if you want to be on an episode like this one where we can coach you on air, email us your question at live at mindpumpmedia.com. Now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors.

The first one is ButcherBox. They deliver grass-fed meat, healthy chicken, pork, wild caught fish to your door. And they actually have a Mindpump box now, which is pretty awesome. It's got all the meats that we enjoy eating the most. Anyway, go to butcherbox.com forward slash mind pump, get $20 off, plus you get free chicken breast,

ground beef, or salmon in your box, included for an entire year for free. This episode's also brought to you by Brain.fm. Listen to their music and induce different states of mind as proven by study. So if you wanna focus, listen to the focus music. If you want to listen if you want to meditate or sleep listen to their meditate or sleep music. This is engineered sounds to induce states of mind and you can try them out for 30 days for free. See for yourself. You won't

go back. Go to brain.fm forward slash mind pump. By the way we have a webinar coming up for trainers and coaches where I teach trainers and coaches how to sell training effectively and with integrity. It's free. Go to trainerwebinar.com. We are going to air it or it's going to be live, I should say June 3rd. Also we have a sale this month on some workout programs. MAPS 15 performance and the RGB bundle are both 50% off. If you're

interested go to MAPSFitnessProducts.com and then use the code May 50 for the discount. Here comes the show. It's a fact that if you want to lose weight, if you want to lose body fat, you have to be in a calorie deficit. In other words, you have to eat less calories you burn or burn more calories than you take in. But did you know there are effective ways to do this, and not so effective ways? We're gonna list the top five ways in order of how you can accomplish a calorie deficit. Let's do this.

This is cool, I know that I had messaged you over the weekend, I had done my questions right on Instagram, and somebody asked this question and I thought, you know what, this is a really, basically the question was, I know I need to lose weight and create a calorie deficit, is it better to do it through food or more activity? Yes.

And I stopped, I'm like, can I answer that in one minute? I don't think so. And so I promised the person that I said, hey, I tell you what, that's such a good question that I'll send it over to Sal and hopefully he'll do it as a fitness tip because I do think it is a really good discussion and it depends, several different, which I'm sure we're going to get into right now and I think this is an important conversation and people can learn a lot.

Yeah, let me paint the context first of how we rank these in order from best to worst. Number one, it has to accomplish the goal of a substantial calorie deficit and actually make a difference, that's number one. And number two, in our experience as trainers, which we trained for two decades, clients and trainers who train clients, it's gotta be something that people will actually do,

that will actually do and it'll actually stick longer. Because yes, you could definitely just eat less, but that's not as effective as what we're gonna talk about. So the first way, the most effective way that we have found to accomplish a calorie deficit for the average person is to simply avoid heavily processed foods. Just doing that alone tends to result

in a five to six hundred calorie reduction in calories which is typically what's recommended when you first start on a diet to begin with. So typically when you go on a diet the recommendation is about five to six hundred calories below what would be considered maintenance. Avoiding heavily processed foods tends to do this naturally and the reason why this is so effective is, number one, it accomplishes the goal, but number two, what follows this is the advice

to eat as much as you want. So when I would train clients and I would say, don't eat heavily processed foods, but go ahead and eat as much as you want, it was super powerful because they didn't feel like they were restricting themselves. They felt satiated, they didn't feel like they were dieting, and yet they would have this nice, sustainable,

slow weight loss that would happen, and they would often comment that it felt almost like magic, like what's going on? It's like you're eating less, you just don't realize it. You know, we get this advice a lot, and I was thinking about the other day, of like examples of where maybe I don't give it, or it looks a little bit different,

and there is an example of this piece of advice molded or shaped to the person or the individual. And for example, sometimes I don't even need to go this far. If I have a client or a family member who is eating so much processed food, sometimes what this looks like is choosing one or two things that we just get rid of. Like soda. Yeah exactly like just soda or that you know that 900 calorie Frappuccino you have every single morning.

It's like they eat so much processed foods that even that sometimes could be such a shift like what do you mean get rid of all that? You mean that like a make whole? What a good point Adam I've actually had that before where the client then goes well what do I eat? Because they literally don't even know what to eat that's not processed. And there's so many, so many offenders in their current diet that it's like, wow,

I could easily cut six to 800 calories by just getting rid of that frappuccino or getting, just giving them one rule of, hey, no more sodas. You know, let's change that with water. And so sometimes even this piece of advice is kind of a stair step for people depending on what their current diet looks like.

This is also the benefits of having a trainer or somebody to kind of assess that for you and look at it and go like, because if I did see somebody who was just like, you know, grossly overeating and it's all processed foods, telling that person to go on a whole food diet. Too radical to change from after radical. It's almost too. Yeah. Almost too.

And they don't need to. And, and I also think that even what made me think about this was even myself, like when I get back in the swing of things, the, the, the process, I'm, I, I know myself so well that, you know, I have repeat offenders when I'm not, not on the diet. And it's like, you know, I don't even have to get crazy yet where I'm weighing and measuring and even hitting crazy numbers on my protein intake Yeah, it's just like yeah, I could probably cut out that ice cream at night or all I could stop with the soda Yeah, that one thing that I know is already

Excess calorie and I know that when I do that, I still have somewhat of an appetite So if I just choose to replace it with a whole food or another choice, that already starts to make that calorie. That calorie shift. I really do think the liquid calories are the most unaccounted for. Of course. Yeah, for anybody. So if you do have that, where you drink anything

other than water, that should really be something of focus. It's the least satiety producing of all foods, or liquid, especially sugars, like soda. You know, you're talking right now, liquid, especially sugars, like soda. You're talking right now, Adam, about this, and I distinctly remember a gentleman that I trained who lost 18 pounds from not having soda. That's all we did.

That's all we did. I've had clients say that too. It's crazy effective. We did the math, and he was consuming between 800 to 1,000 calories of soda because he worked blue collar, so he'd go get one of those big gulps, and then later he'd have more sodas,

and as I talked to him about his diet, I remember being like, hey, just drink water. He's like, really, that'll make a big difference? I said, yeah, let's see what happens. 18 pounds he lost. Just forget that. I mean, that one or alcohol, like, you know, if I had clients that are guilty

of the, you know, a couple glasses of wine every night. Isn't it interesting with alcohol that if you buy a bottle of alcohol, even if it's a premixed margarita mix or something like that, there is no label on the back that tells you any of the calories. You just, you don't see it. So you'll buy a bottle of wine.

Is that true? No. I know wine is that way, but is it all alcohol like that? It will not show. Most of it, yeah. I don't even know why that never dodged on me. They're not required to. So I know this because. Why is that? Why are they not?

They're not required to. It's listed as alcohol. And so they're not required to list. They need to show their proof. So whether it's like 8% or 10% or whatever. Why did that never cross my mind? Yeah. That's interesting.

Yeah, so I've thought about this before. But their size glasses vary substantially for people. It occurred to me this weekend, because my wife and I, my wife, we just got this nice outdoor furniture set. And yesterday, was it yesterday? Yeah, yesterday we wanna have some nice family time together. And I went and got the, like a bottle of,

like pre-mixed margarita mix. So it was like the Jose Cuervo, whatever. And I flip it around, because that's what I do, and I'm like, oh yeah, this doesn't tell me anything. For sure there's sugar in here. And alcohol is, what is it, seven calories per? Nothing, it just says the proof. So in order for you to figure out

how many calories you're consuming, it's almost impossible. That's crazy, I didn't realize that either. I know, isn't that crazy? Yeah, I don't know, it's like I guess I should know that because when I think back to trying to figure that stuff out, I always had to go to like Calorie King or go to like one of our apps to figure it out.

And it just, but I never. So you don't know how much your beer has or your glass of wine has. In fact, so it says right there that it's regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. Not by the FDA. No, I feel like beer does, Sal, but not. No.

Unless it's advertised, because then there's some. Well, if it's like a low calorie beer. If they're trying to show you that it's low calorie. Oh, okay, because yeah, because I know that there's like the Michelob Light or whatever that's like 60 calorie. Yeah, there's some ones that they do tell you. But you have those like Guinness, you know, those like dark beers.

Yeah, they don't even say it. They call it what they call like bread. Oh yeah, liquid bread, yeah. So many carbs and stuff like that. They like iron it so it's good tell you. But you have those Guinness, you know, those dark beers. Yeah, they don't even say it. They call it what they call it, like bread. Oh yeah, bread, yeah. So many carbs and stuff like that. They like iron it so it's good for you. Yeah, I mean, for most people, you avoid processed foods, you don't have to do anything else for a while. This puts you in a natural calorie deficit.

Or even do like a St. Stair step. It's like, okay, let's just do the alcohol now, then I'll do the chips, then I'll do the nuts, and then it's like, bam, before you know it, they've already cut out thousands of calories. That's right, that's right. Next up is, oh wow, pint of Guinness, thanks Doug, 210 calories.

Wow, that's not bad. Oh, it's a lager, look up a lager. That's the one that I was thinking of. All right, so eating a high protein diet also tends to produce a calorie deficit. Now, this is very effective for two different reasons. Number one, we're taught to understand calories as being equal,

and for the most part this is correct. However, when you look at studies on diets that are calorie controlled, one diet or one group eating a high protein diet, up, you know, they're eating like one gram of protein per pound of body weight, so really high protein, versus like maybe more of your standard protein diet the high protein diet produces more fat loss and more muscle

gain and there's a lot of reasons for this one is protein has a kind of this thermogenic effect meaning the amount of energy required to process a gram of protein is higher than it is to process a gram of carbohydrates or gram of fat so 100 calories of protein actually results in a larger calorie burn than 100 grams of let's say carbs or fats The other reason is protein is very beneficial for muscle gain and that has that has a lot of benefit as well But that's not all it also At least in the first six months, this is what the studies show, six months or so,

eating a high protein diet where you're chasing your target body weight in grams of protein and you're eating it from whole natural foods, it crushes your appetite. So you'll do this and you'll actually find yourself feeling satisfied earlier and not realizing you're in a calorie deficit. In fact, in my experience, and you guys have spoke of this as well, when I've had clients do this, here's the expected report I get from my clients.

It's like clockwork. I have a hard time eating. I can't eat this much. I'm trying to lose weight, Sal, and you're trying to make me eat this much food, I can't eat this much. It's not easy. It's not easy to do, and it does result, for many people, in a calorie deficit,

and it's effective, again, because you don't feel like you're restricting yourself. You feel like you're trying to eat more and you can't. This is why the advice that we've given before too, we're just tell people eat the protein first. Even just giving them the permission to have other calories from carbohydrates and other foods or even arguably the process thing. It's like listen just get the protein first then if you're still hungry you do that. And I don't know how many times that I've made that rule

for myself that, oh man, I really want those French fries, or I really want that thing, okay, I can have, just make sure I eat the eight ounces of chicken first, and then you eat it, and you're like, I don't even really want the fries that much, and if you do, you have a couple of them, and then you're fine. So it's such an effective way to create that calorie deficit.

It's awesome. Next up would be to avoid carbohydrates. So there is a satiety effect in the short term. So we're talking about probably in a probably three to six month period, because this starts to even out a little later, when people just don't eat carbohydrates. One of the reasons why the ketogenic diet

became so popular, there's many reasons, and I'm not saying this is the best diet for fat loss, okay, but what I am saying is that what people experience avoiding carbs, especially initially, is that it blunts their appetite. It's harder to overeat when your diet is mostly fat and mostly protein. And this is one of the reasons why it's so, now it's not as effective as the first two that we said,

but it is effective and now the other reason why it's, I think, it's not essential either. Yes, you can also cut carbs out and you're not gonna suffer from any nutrient deficiencies, they're not essential. The other reason why this was popular, especially in the late 90s, early 2000s, is because it was hammered into our brains

that fat was bad for us. So I think it was very freeing for people to suddenly eat as much fat as they want and lose weight. But yeah, this is an easy one. You cut out carbs, especially for like three months or so, and it'll crush your appetite. For sure. I notice this a lot when I eat an ketogenic diet.

I'm just not as hungry. Yeah, I find that this also kinda naturally happens when you do the last tip. When you tell somebody to go after protein, you end up, if you don't cut out, you dramatically reduce the carbohydrate intake, bare minimum. Next up, eat in a quote unquote window,

this is like intermittent fasting. This is why this got so popular. Yeah, it got popular precisely because people lost weight when they only gave themselves four hours to eat in a day. Now what's happening? Well, you're gonna eat less than you normally do because you're only eating in a four hour window. Now this is one of my least favorite ways to accomplish

a calorie deficit. It's hard to eat your protein targets. It can also promote unhealthy eating behaviors, especially for people who have struggled with restricting and bingeing. This actually encourages that. Nonetheless, when people eat in the window, they tend to eat less calories. So it's one way to get that calorie deficit.

And then lastly, build some muscle. So the metabolism boosting effect of building muscle, I love talking about because it gets so controversial and people like to debate it so much because they'll show a study that shows one pound of protein only burns this, excuse me, of muscle only burns this much, you know, extra calories, blah, blah, blah. Look, in practice, it actually makes a pretty decent difference.

Huge difference. And there's a few reasons that I will try to explain as to why, but to be quite honest, the human metabolism is so complex, there's probably something else that's going on. But one of them is that there's this nutrient repartitioning effect that happens when you're trying to build muscle. So more calories go to building muscle than they would to storage. And so on the scale, you'll see with people when they try to build muscle and they're trying to lose weight,

especially if they're feeding themselves to build muscle, is the weight on the scale won't be as largely affected but their body composition is really affected. And so I would see this with clients all the time where the first 45 days or 60 days, the scale went down one pound but we gained five pounds of muscle, lost six pounds of body fat. first 45 days or 60 days, the scale went down one pound, but we gained five pounds of muscle,

lost six pounds of body fat. That's a big change in how you look and feel. There's a bit of a delayed gratification to this. I think that's probably why it's not as marketed. And people are usually in this crazy urgency and hustle to lose body fat and find whatever pull from anything they can. And so I noticed that we haven't mentioned

barely any in terms of like exercise methods. Yeah. We'll get there. That's in the worst way. Yeah. Well this is, when you think of typically, I mean there's a very small percentage that we would not go this route first.

Of all the things we've listed so far, almost always, I think we could agree that when getting a client, regardless of the amount of weight they need to lose, going to building the metabolism is almost, building muscle seems to be the best strategy for people. Great point, because now people are wondering, well if this is number five on your list of one to five most effective ways, why do you focus on building muscle first with your client? Here's why. It's the one that we have the most influence over

when we have a client, because you see me twice a week, we're gonna work out and we're gonna build muscle. The other ones, a lot of, it's largely on you. I am not with you every day all day long. So in fact, when I train clients, I didn't even give them dietary advice until later. It was typically like, just come in and we're gonna get you stronger.

It was part of the conversation as you're just training. Not only that, but to your point of that, it's the one controllable you have is, let's say they don't do the best job on all the other four, but you get them lifting weights. They'll build muscle. They'll build some muscle. And so at least some of those calories

are gonna get partitioned over to speeding their metabolism up, which is in our best interest for this client that wants to lose weight. So yeah, always this is the number one go-to strategy. It always makes me laugh though when you hear people debate this, like how much of an effect it has on metabolism. Like if you gave, first off, it leverages hormones.

Hormones have a very pronounced effect on body composition. You could take a man and you could put him, you could optimize his testosterone, his growth hormone, and you could help with insulin sensitivity or with thyroid hormone. You know what's gonna happen? Without changing anything else, he'll build some muscle and get leaner.

What's going on here? Well, the hormones signal the body. What does strength training do? As you build muscle, you increase androgen receptor density, so your current testosterone now is stronger. You improve insulin sensitivity. There's evidence that it also makes your thyroid more effective,

and you see growth hormone levels tend to rise. So what you're essentially doing is naturally leveraging hormones for better body composition. You also have your muscles burn more calories just because you have them, they're more expensive. But not just at rest, and this is where those stupid, those studies get promoted.

It's not just at rest. Yes, you burn a little bit more calories of muscle at rest. But you burn a lot more calories when you're not at rest. So when you go for a walk, if you have five more pounds of muscle on your body, your calorie burn goes up significantly. And then there's other complicated, interesting ways like mitochondrial uncoupling, where the body just decides to become less efficient with calorie burn, which when you feed your body to build muscle and you build muscle, seems to happen. At least that's what we witness with all the clients that we train.

All right, let's get to the worst ways to cause or create a calorie deficit. One of them is just eat less but eat the same food. Like, good luck. This is hard. I see this, I actually see this happening. I have family, friends, and stuff that are taking GLP-1s

and still struggling with the whole process. And the common thread between the ones that are struggling are they don't change any of the behaviors. They just eat less of it. They just rely on the GLP-1. Yeah, it's like, and initially they sometimes see a little bit of weight loss, so they think it's a decent strategy.

It's like it's such a terrible strategy. Meanwhile, watching them go through digestive issues and diarrhea and stuff like that, what are you, you're not feeling, you're not connecting the dots that you're- You're supposed to get healthier. Yeah, but a lot of people are using it just to help the calorie restriction.

And it's like, man, if you don't also start to change your eating habits and the food choices that you make while also being in a calorie deficit, then even if you see some results, it's temporary. Those habits and behaviors will end up just coming all right back. Yeah, there's two main reasons, there's a lot of reasons why this isn't effective,

but two main reasons are, one, this is a white knuckling approach. I'm just gonna eat less of what I currently eat, so you're still eating foods that stimulate that. Now you really feel restricting, like you're restricting yourself when you do this. So much more of a struggle. It's a struggle, that's why people can't stick to it. And then the second reason is if you just eat less calories without bumping protein, without strength training, you can expect, okay, like clockwork, this is consistent in the data, that a decent chunk,

almost half, like 40% of the weight you're gonna lose is muscle or lean body mass. Now that's not good because, you know how earlier I said, building muscle leverages your hormones to give you better body composition? You're reversing that by losing muscle. You're actually leveraging your hormones to make you a more effective fat storing

and not building muscle machine. So it's not an endoplatos so hard. And we saw this, we had a group that we worked with on GLP-1s and there were people on there who had been on a GLP-1 for a long time who had a lot of weight to lose. There was one woman who had, I think it was like 80 pounds to lose, lost 60,

was eating 1,000 calories a day, and had more weight to lose and didn't know what to do. Where do I go from here? It's like, well, you can't eat less than 1,000, and she wasn't feeling good either, and we had to figure out how to reverse diet her and build some muscle to make that plateau break. Lastly, terrible approach is just to try

to burn more calories through exercise. The data on this is hilarious. It is a fail, fail, fail. Such a losing strategy. Losing strategy. Now, exercising more and moving more will improve your health, okay? So it is good for you, but if this is how you expect

to lose a lot of body fat, you're gonna hit a crazy plateau as your body becomes more efficient with calories and becomes a better calorie sparing machine. You see this in the gym. I venture to say a lot of like ex-athletes have this type of mentality because of the association involved when you look at your body and you're very very active and you're doing all the things and you know when you when you've got a youthful profile and your hormones are a bit better back then, you could kind of get away with things and that just, it just doesn't work, man. Yeah, and also when you're a college athlete,

the amount of exercise that is required to make this actually work is so much, it's unsustainable, unrealistic. When you look at a college athlete, like I had a water polo, ex water polo player, woman, who was like, I used to eat whatever I wanted and my body's so different now. Have you ever seen Michael Phelps calorie mouth? Yeah, yeah, over 10,000 calories.

But he's literally training his ass off in the pool six hours every day, every single day. Yeah, but keep in mind, okay, what a great example to bring up, part of why he can eat that much and burn that much is also because he's worked his way up there. If, this is how crazy the body is, if he didn't care about being gold medals

and he was just a swimmer who was active like that and kept his diet the same, his body would have adapted to that. Which this was the conversation I really wanted to have, and you kind of set it up a little bit different to get here, But why this is such a bad strategy is most people have yo-yo dieted and they've got to a place where their metabolism is so slow that they're like, okay, Adam, they come, they hire me and it's like, okay, they have

say 30, 40 pounds to lose. And we start to track where they need to be calorie wise. And they're already eating like only 1300, 1500 calories. And it's like- You see this with women a lot. So it's the only other method is to exercise. Yeah. And so they go, okay, you got to take that person who's only eating 1300 calories. That's what they have to be at just to be in a little bit of a deficit because their body has already done this up and down, yo-yo dining so many times that just trying to create a bunch of activity to create that deficit to lose weight is such a terrible strategy.

We'd be far better off building muscle, right? Focusing on actually going after muscle, going after building to speed that metabolism up so that then we could create an activity gap or create a real calorie deficit to lose because that's where most people are when they come in. Most people that would hire us have already kind of tried this on their own so many times through the lots of activity and cutting calories and they've reached a place where they have

a very slow metabolic rate. And if you already have a very slow metabolic rate, then creating all kinds of activity just to create a little bit of a calorie deficit is a really terrible strategy for long-term weight loss. It's inevitable. That person's not gonna probably be able to keep that activity up, so you're far better off instead of worrying about the calorie deficit per se right now and actually going, let's build this metabolism.

Let's build some muscle. Far more advantageous for long-term success. By the way, we talked about eating more protein earlier. Our partners, ButcherBox, have finally put together the Mind Pump box. Oh, they did it. Yeah. Doug, pull up what is exactly in there,

because we talked about it earlier. Do they do individual ones, or they do like a Mind Pump one? Okay, so here's what's in, so if you become a member of ButcherBox, so ButcherBox is a company that sends you a monthly box of- That's what's in, this is, so if you become a member of ButcherBox, so what ButcherBox is a company that sends you a monthly box of- That's what's in it right there?

Yeah, yeah, so it's a monthly box of meat, and it's high quality meat. It's like grass-fed meat, it's high quality, it's healthy, it's very good prices because of the way they source it and send it out. That's the box right there. So, and then what they did is they went through and they took our favorite cuts and have made a box.

And so here's what you get in the Mind Pump box. You get rib eyes, chicken thighs, steak tips, ribs, chicken nuggets, and the flat iron steak. And I love that they put the nuggets in there. Of course. That is my guilty pleasure. I mean these are the go-to right here. The girls and kids, yeah.

I mean I've tried, I think I've tried most of everything at ButcherBox and I've got nothing bad to say about any. But these are the best. But this is like the go-to stuff right here. The repeaters. So this is awesome. Yeah dude. So now it's, on the website is it say Mind Pump Box?

Is that what it's called? Yes. Oh very cool. Isn't that cool? Yeah, yeah. You can also modify it so you're not stuck. Yeah, yeah. But I mean that's a good, I don't't know if you're a listener and you've been curious about

starting and trying like what a way to start is on the stuff that we've been touting as our favorites as like a good box to start with. Oh and they're still giving them the free, they're also going to add free stuff to it. So it's free chicken breast, ground beef or salmon added to every box for a whole year. So if I was doing that, I would add the ground beef. Of course, yes, yes, yes. Because the argument of the chicken thighs, I don't need the breast. Salmon, the ground beef with that stack is like perfect.

I tell you what, it's 75%, my kids, my two little ones, 75% of their meat is the ground beef, the grass-fed ground beef, because we mix it with rice, and it's so easy, and it's the... That's what Max does. Throw that taco. If he's not doing the chicken nuggets, it's the ground beef, the grass-fed ground beef, because we mix it with rice, and it's so easy, and it's the... That's what Max does. Throw that taco. If he's not doing the chicken nuggets, it's the ground beef.

We do a lot of bison at our house, too. Oh yeah. I don't know if you guys do a lot of bison or not, but we do a lot of bison. What did the buffalo say to his son when he went off to college? Bison, bison, thanks. Thanks, Justin.

That's a good one. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Doug loves dad jokes so much. Hijacked. Yeah, I love it. I just, yeah. It's the punchline. I was cooking up a bunch of boxes. Yeah, I was on the grill. I did the chicken thighs, chicken thighs. And I saw you had corn on the cob this morning. I'm like, oh, we've been craving that. I don't know if it's the weather right now.

And it's like, yeah. So it's like a barbecue chicken thighs and corn on the cob. It's like, it's a great combination. It is such a good combination. Hey, so I was reading up on the power of the placebo. I was like, oh, I'm going to get a lot of these. I'm going to get a lot of these. I'm going to get a lot of these. like barbecued chicken thighs and corn on the cob. It's a great combination. It is such a good combination. Hey, so I was reading up on the power of the placebo effect.

I'll tell you guys why in a second. But I got some stats on the placebo effect. I trip out on that all the time. Bro. Yeah. It's remarkable. I probably read a lot of these same studies. Oh, dude, it's remarkable.

I got to read to you guys, so. Okay, so the placebo effect, I wrote a bunch of notes here. I mean, the reason why you have to count for the placebo effect in studies is because it's so profound. It's legit. In particular, it's for the kind of subjective types of effects, like mood, pain, et cetera. In studies, you guys wanna know how much the placebo effect affects people?

20 to 30%. 20 to 30%. 20 to 30%. 20 to 30%. You know what I find even more interesting about that? Is that, so I mean, what does that highlight to you? Just the power of the mind, right? Yeah.

Okay, so how many people do you personally know that actually go into things with kind of a negative? So it's like so you get 20 to 30 percent have positive results just from the so that's also Accounting for the people that also are like this isn't gonna work. Yeah, and then it doesn't work for them, right? It's like imagine if maybe they shift their mind with the placebo effect be even greater So the nocebo effect has the exact negative action. So like, oh, this painkiller's not gonna do anything. 20, 30% people or less will notice any symptom really.

I see, that's wild to me. So trip off this, right? Went deep into this, right? 20, 30% of trial patients will say, oh, I have less pain. Did you guys know that there's active drugs that have that same effect? The same size of an effect on that.

Now, I looked up, like, what have we discovered that really influences this? It's the context. A doctor that's convincing, a professional setting. A cult leader. And a brand name pill will do this as well. So if you see it and it says some kind of a brand name, it makes an effect as well.

So by the way, this reminds me of, remember that study I talked about where they. This is all perception. Okay, one of the most powerful crazy placebo effects I ever read about was that knee pain study, do you guys remember that one? Where they took two groups of people who actually had knee issues,

like they could image it and see arthritis. One group, they just cut the knee open and sewed it back up. The other group, they did the surgery, same effect. Everybody had the same pain relief. And it was such a powerful placebo effect. They just cut it and then just re-sewed it. They didn't do anything. Nothing.

And it was a powerful effect because you looked like you had surgery. So the context really amplifies it. It's so interesting that you went this route. I had something in my notes that I was like, I don't even know where the hell I'm going to bring this up, but it fits so perfectly for what you're talking about now because have you guys ever heard of Mind Movies?

Mind Movies. Yeah, go to mindmovies.com. So I just recently heard about this and I just, I briefly went down the rabbit hole. I didn't go super deep yet, but I wanted to ask you guys about it. And the fact that you're bringing up this whole placebo thing makes me go,

oh my God, this is like a perfect time to bring this whole thing up. So it's this company and I think they help create these movies for you, but basically you're supposed to like write down like all the things that you want to manage. Yeah, you wanna dream, like I wanna have a 50 foot yacht and a house, all the things you dream about. I wanna drive these three cars, I wanna have four kids, I want to have a you know 50 foot yacht in a house is yes all the things you dream about

I want to drive these three cars. I want to have four kids. I want all these things So manifest yeah, and then they help you create this movie And you're supposed to watch it two to three minutes every day And they're supposedly the outcome and the power of it is like super well. It's total why of attraction types stuff So not normally my jam or anything. I don't know if I'd wanna put. Yeah, not my jam. I wonder what kind of weird shit they're getting in there.

I don't know, but I mean. I wanna dream about. To your point of the power of the mind and the thought of you, and then that, people have been doing this forever, right? The, were they vision boards? Vision boards have been around forever. I mean, that's a very popular thing.

A lot of people who use them totally attest to like, man, that made a big difference for me, was putting it up there like a visually see it every day. I think this is like the next level to that, right? Like actually going, I'm going to watch it. I mean, there's something to it. It's really interesting when you have mindset where you're really focused on something and it's just the collection of how you behave after that going into your day is what matters. This is so true, people don't even realize. You think you see and perceive everything

that your eyes look at, you don't. You only perceive what you focus on. What you want to. There's that famous study. The red car thing. Or they're passing the basketball back and forth. You just have to count how many times and a guy with a gorilla suit walks through

and you don't even see him. Even though he walks right in front of your field of vision. That's how magicians are able to trick everybody. That's right, and so if you, for example, this is why gratitude is a practice, because our brains are not wired to make us happy. They're wired to keep us alive. So what you tend to focus on is the stuff

that makes you survive, like, oh, that's scary. That's causing anxiety. Don't do that. Rather than the things that, the daily things that can bring you joy. So that's why you have to practice it because you actually start to train your perception to notice the daily blessings. Have they ever done like a real clinical study on hypnotism? Yes. Because I would love to see that. Mainly because of like, if you can tap into like your subconscious of like how your, the underlying perception is working. Yeah. They found in studies that there are some people

that it really works on. And some people that it doesn't. Yeah, isn't that, so I thought there was like a strategy for the hypnotist to look for- They sift out. Right, there's supposed to be certain people that are more susceptible to it, and they have kind of a trained eye to know it.

I don't remember what it was. I remember reading about it before. Something to do with the way they're paying attention or distracted or something like that. More influential versus somebody else. Yeah, yeah. There's been a lot of- Do you remember what it was?

All this stuff is just totally converges with my passions of like- For cult. For cult leaders. Oh, totally. That's exactly it. They know how to pick those people out and then they get them all in one group. But then imagine the power of that too when you get... They pray off people off of the placebo effect all the time.

That's so funny. So what's funny about this is I was having a conversation... The reason why I looked up the placebo effect is I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is, he's agnostic and he wants to come to the faith. I was talking to him back and forth. Science guy, super smart dude. He's an MIT student, very intelligent. And so, you know, I was, we were talking data and I said, have you seen the data on the effect that regular church going and reading the Bible does on people's lives? And he goes, no. So we started talking about this. And the effects are incredible, like a reduction, 84% reduction in depression, dramatic improvement in feeling happy, purpose, dramatic reduction in all-cause mortality, which is huge.

And we were talking about this, I said, do you think it's just the placebo effect? So we looked it up, and actually, the placebo effect would not account for all of it. And so we talked, and it's me, okay, is it placebo effect plus community, plus practice? Maybe you can add all of that up to explain it. And I said, you know what the trick is, though?

I said, first off, there isn't anything I've found to have as pronounced of a powerful positive effect on your entire life as the data shows, go into church and read the Bible regularly. Nothing comes close to it. I said, if it is a placebo effect, you know what the trick is? You have to believe it. So, it was this great conversation that we had around it and he's like, man, I want to believe. You believe it's the underlying thread. Yes, yes. I mean, those of us in the faith believe it's the supernatural effects.

Nonetheless, I think it's a great way to communicate to an intellectual, like, well, I mean, if you think it's not real, you gotta believe it for it to work. Now you're working with no C-Bone. Yeah, so go in that direction. That's how I, I mean, I remember, that's how I was explaining it to people back in the day.

I was just like, would you, I mean, I'd rather go my whole life having faith in believing it and then dying and being wrong than the opposite. Not believe in being wrong? Yeah, the opposite. That's not good. I mean. That's a good hedge.

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I think that's just a better hedge. You know what I'm saying? And the byproduct of that is you probably are a better person, you live a better life, all the stats that show all the healthy stuff that comes with it. Your emotional balance. It's like, yeah, I don't know, I just think

I'd rather be better on that side than having the cynical attitude of like, no, I don't believe, and it's like, okay. Yeah, you should see the data on charity with it. It's remarkable. What do you mean? The amount of people that give to charity? Where they come?

Give and donate money and especially time to helping others. It really does make people what we would consider better in the secular world just for like, oh you should help people, you should think about it, you should care for people. If you look at the data, it shows it very clearly. Which is pretty cool stuff. Anyway, I gotta tell you guys about something

super motivating for me in the gym today. Let me ask you guys this, when you guys go to a gym, what's the most, because we've been doing this forever, so we're just, it's like walking into your bedroom, right? You see it all the time. What's the most motivating thing that you could see in the gym? The old jack dude.

Yeah, always. The old jack dude. And it's not to say that. I also get inspired when I see the person who's really overweight, who's working in there. That's inspiring to see someone doing that. Because I know the- That gets me more emotional than I think motivated,

personally, when I see that person. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I guess that's what it is. I think both create an emotional response, you know, for me that I feel those two type of people. But the old guy is like more like, ah man, that's gonna be me. That's why I think that's more like,

I wanna be that guy. When I see the person who's like in there working out, you could tell they're new, maybe overweight, whatever, I actually fight the urge to like high five them because I don't want them to feel like I'm condescending but I always wanna go over them and like high five them, whatever. I actually fight the urge to like high five him because I don't want them to feel like I'm condescending, but I always want to go over to them and like high five him or whatever. But when I see, so today I was in the sauna,

dude walks in and he's older, and he was just, he was jacked, dude. Not like crazy jack, but like really fit, lean, abs, the whole deal, and he sits down, and I'm like, I gotta ask him, I'm like, sir, do you mind if I ask you how old you are? 67. I'm like, dude, you look incredible. How long you been working out? He's like, oh, I gotta ask him, I'm like, sir, do you mind if I ask you how old you are? 67. I'm like, dude, you look incredible.

How long you been working out? He's like, oh, I've been doing this forever. We were talking a little bit, and I was like, I love seeing that, dude. 67 year old man who looks like that, I've seen him work out, he's strong and mobile and fit. And then I thought about the people I know in my life who are in their late 60s.

Yeah, so different. Medications, hospital visits, they're in pain. Surgeries and yeah, do that. What a difference. It's our generation that that really started to shift, right? Where people started. Because when you see an old guy, that's really rare. Because that generation, they didn't work out.

No, so it's super, super rare. But I think maybe the next 20 years from now. We'll see more of that. Yeah, won't that become That's a good point Shouldn't it become more of the norm when you think about the the rise in fitness and lifting weights? Yeah for our generation. I do feel like it's way more awareness has gone way up Oh, yeah, the benefits of training dude. I did you just reminded me something though that I said no

I was gonna bring this up either but it's now you got on my mind Somebody asked me if I was retired. Asking if you're retired? I've never been at, yeah. Like in person? A neighbor, yeah. A new neighbor came over and introduced himself yesterday. Older guy, you know what I'm saying? Come over and was talking to me for a little bit and you know we've been talking already for like 10 minutes about neighborhood where we come from. Why didn't you at work?

Well it wasn't even, no. See if it was 10 o'clock on a Thursday or something this was Saturday so it was like I was supposed to be home you know what I'm saying? That would be good but I've never been asked that before and I thought am I should I be offended by that? That like I wasn't you know I'm saying it was I guess it was like we're just talking about stuff stuff that he just asked. Most people, what do you do? I've always been asked, what do you do for a living? Or what like that. That was the first time that someone led with.

Are you- Is that like a Silicon Valley thing? I don't fucking know, but I feel like it's more of a gray hair balding thing is what I feel like. That's what I was like. I'm like, do I just look like that age? It's like, that's a possible- No, you do not, Adam.

That's never been a possibility that someone would even ask that to me. I know why. He saw you with your cars Like startup payout or yeah, so okay, even if that's the case that's what I told myself It's you know, it must be the color. You don't look like you don't look like a tech guy, bro Yeah, if you keep that just planted a bomb I just it's never never in my life has that ever been Ever been asked because Adam's not working out anymore And he must be in tech

Spun me out is for me out all day. I'm like that that would even be a question It's always been and even if you what you would still would think that it would be what did you do or what kind of work? Did you come in like to go like oh, are you retired? Fuck would I be retired for? That's a compliment. I think it's a compliment. Yeah I don't know. Yeah I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. You're like oh god I'm trying to reference that one. Like two wheel like what's that? Segway? Segway. Do you own a Segway?

Yeah. I mean have you guys ever been asked that? I've never been asked that. Have you ever been hired? Not as a leading question. No. I've never been asked that. And've never been asked that. I've not as a leading question. I've never been asked that. And it wasn't like we were talking about business before and I even had the opportunity to talk about mind pump and success, none of that stuff. It was just, we had been talking about actually where we lived and family and everything like that.

And it was on a Saturday or a Sunday, I don't remember what day it was, it was a weekend. I mean, I've met like one younger person that was like retired and I was always like, that's so strange. Yeah, to me, I took it as like, I could actually be that age now where someone could ask like, that's a possibility.

Like I'm obviously not old, but I'm obviously not young enough that like, if I was looked like I was 20 or in my teens, you don't even, what do you do for work? Yeah, but you're old enough to potentially have retired. Yeah, that's why I had a tight company. In this area. Okay, so that's what was so interesting to me

is like that was a first for me. I have never even possibly looked the part that somebody would even ask that. Did you ask him, why'd you say that? No, I didn't play like I was offended or like that. And I said, oh no. No, the oldest I ever felt was when I went to that party with my wife and this dude comes up to me

and complimented, oh, your daughter's attractive. I'm like, this is my wife, bro. I was like, oh, you're attractive. Oh, I was like, part of me was like. Wow, that is awkward. Oh, like my ego both grew and shrank at the same time. Like, oh, she's hot. Oh crap, I look old.

I guess that's a similar type of, you know, what we were just talking about was the neighborhood, and I do have an older neighborhood, and I said that I was attracted to that. He's like, oh yeah, it's real quiet over here, and I'm like, yeah, no, I love that. I don't like them damn kids. They're the flies. Yeah, yeah.

Those noisy kids. Yeah, so he was, I mean. Were you wearing New Balance? Like, what was going on? No, dude, I thought I looked hip, you know what I'm saying? I thought I did? I thought I looked hip you know say I thought I did wear your barbecue I was barbecue in that day, but I didn't have my barbecue gear on I think I had just Shorts a t-shirt and my Jordans on so I didn't think I looked I didn't think I looked old

That was a first for me. It caught me off guard. I didn't I didn't know how to receive it. You know first for me it caught me off guard I didn't I didn't know how to receive it you know and I thought it was interesting because that's like it never once in my life have I looked like that could be a possibility so is that the weirdest question you ever been asked you it's up there up there yeah yeah I just I mean I don't know if I've got a weird question yeah I don't know if it's weird it's just interesting I'm sure guys that are retired get it all the time I'm sure the older guys get you know and on a weekday would make sense. So if it was like a You know, he's probably been watching you you're watching me. Yeah, I saw you on like a Thursday and you're at home

I mean you might be right. So that's a possibility. He's my neighbor I drive by him all the time and so maybe he has seen me home a lot, you know And coming and going at different times like that. So that that's a possibility, right? you know, and coming and going at different times like that. So that's a possibility, right? Nonetheless, it was the first time in my life that somebody had led with that as a possibility and it just had me thinking. I thought.

We're just questioning, anyone ever asked me was if I had a nose job. I had that asked twice. Two separate plastic surgeons. Two separate plastic surgeons. It is very straight. Asked me if I had a nose job. It's very straight.

And I'm like, is that, yeah. Is that it? Is that it? Is that it? It is, it is really straight. It is really straight. It's, although even though it's beaky, it's symmetrical. You know what I'm saying?

Oh, it's it. He said Dr. Beekman. Dr. Beekman. Dr. Beekman. What is it? Thanks. Thanks. It's a beautiful beak. That is a dress. What is it? Thanks. Thanks. Beautiful beak. That is obviously-

What's a weird, you ever have a weird question asked of your dressing? I'm trying to think. I don't know. Butt implants? Yeah, it was probably- Are those real? I thought you said about swinging, you know? What?

You've got that before. No, stop. I know you've got that. I said you said you had that real quick. She's like, come on guys, you know you got that. Is that where you're at? You're at Cabo? Yeah, Cabo I thought you got that. I said, you said you were into that real quick. She's like, come on, guys. You know you got that. Is that where you're at?

You're at Cabo? Yeah, Cabo. In that older couple. That's a weird place. Oh, they bought the street food? Well, I told you the weird... Remember, probably the weirdest was when I got the invitation to go do the cocktail service with no shirt on, and then it was leading to what? You almost did it.

Yeah, well, it was 10 grand. 10 grand for... Back then, that was a lot of money to me. It was like, 10 grand for a weekend like a water On my shirt. I could do that. Tell me more Hey shout out to Josh on our editing team who did the baby at Oh, bro My family members kept watching it Oh, see look I was I told flew, man. My family members kept watching it. Oh, see?

I told Adam, because my parents loosely kind of pay attention to what I do, but they've never shared anything. My dad shared that on Facebook, and I was like, oh my god. Obviously, that did something to my dad's shirt. That's how good that was. It was so good. I don't know if it's the cut the dog that has me the hardest I don't know if it was the cut or Justin goes

Peanut butter if that cut did it or the one do you there's whatever you you do it cuts to you or you say you'd Make it sound like a girl or something. No, but after there's another one that you do that. They did an expression I don't know was it it was such a great edit to choose because of the banter that went back and forth. AI is getting wild with that, man. Isn't it cool? I know. It is. It's your little baby beard. That's what it was.

I wonder, oh yeah, the watch and the shoes had me going too, the fact that Josh, I mean Josh had to put some of that together. You know, you notice the little subtleties of AI though, right? You know, the member of the AI would always do the six fingers or that. And you notice my thing behind me, the jersey. So the AI picked up on it that it was a jersey and it was a football player. So just so, such a random, subtle, like, when you think about how accurate and how amazing it is,

but then it has weird quirks like that. Like, you know, it's so good that it can make us look like babies in all this great detail, but then like a subtle thing that's a basketball jersey behind us is whatever, the algorithm didn't pick it up or whatever and then it makes it into a football player. I thought that was really- Was it the dead internet theory is really like grabbing me.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Let that like- Remind me what that is again. So that AI actually has become what sentient or where it basically thinks for itself and has been copying and replicating. So most of what we see on the internet is just what the AI now is making. Wants us to see.

Yeah. We wouldn't know. We wouldn't know. Well, it's weird just because of all these, they've actually cracked down and found even more companies that just deliberately put AI bots in to create discourse and you know in conversation and people are arguing just with like robots. Have you guys even real? Did you guys hear about the study that Facebook did in 2012 that they talked about that they

they did a study? Is that the one where they were talking to shut it down and that one? No, no, they did. It's not AI. But just to show you the power of social media They took a bunch of people and took out the positive comments underneath Posts and stuff and then with other people that took out the negative comments and it affected the people Oh, of course for months

Oh, of course after they changed it back because it changed how what people were looking at their perception of things their mood it back because it changed how what people were looking at their perception of things their mood for months so now okay back to you know when you started being like wow this is moving so fast like like the shift from the pendulum of this to now all of a sudden it's all conservative like I think those shifts are so quick now yeah because of that yeah like because they can really just add in their influence like oh I got agree. Like at a degree that you've never seen. Social contagion's a real thing. Do you know what is widely perceived

to be a social contagion? Anorexia. Yeah, in fact, Google that, Doug. Anorexia, social contagion. It was not, it wasn't on the radar until not that long ago. I forgot what decade it was, and then suddenly it spread like wildfire. This restricting yourself to that point.

Was it never even really a thing? Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. I wonder, to your point, Justin, if we're gonna see crazy political leaning shifts like that happen more rapid than we've ever seen. I guarantee you.

We have this, I feel like there's this super conservative movement right now. But like watch it only last like a year. And then we go the other way again and then that only lasts a year or less and then it goes back and then we just get, we're getting pinged by now. That's the next one coming.

Yeah. That's not cool. Like let us enjoy this for a little bit. I don't like that. Well anyway, speaking of cool tech and stuff, I was really diving into BrainFM. And really, you know, Brain, okay was really diving into Brain FM. So people aren't familiar, so Brain FM, there is nobody else that does this.

This is their own unique way of inducing states of mind or brain wave states. In other words, we know what brain wave states look like when you're focused on something or when you're meditating or when you're sleeping and what brain.fm has done is they've used, they know how to use sounds to induce those brainwave states. But there's this positive feedback loop that happens with brain.fm, meaning when I listen to focus, 10 minutes into listening to it, I am more focused, but then because I'm focusing

on something, it's giving more feedback to my brain being in that state. So I achieve, and I know Justin, you've talked about this, a hyper focused state with it. It takes about 10 minutes and I get this really hyper focused. I don't want to say tunneling effect, but it definitely like shuts off like just my surroundings and it just really helps me lock in. Do you guys think that's the same science to support what I talked about a long time ago?

I remember the first time Tom Bilyeu, the very first time he was on our show a long time ago, he talked about listening to audiobooks on like three speed. Oh yeah. And I thought that was, and for someone like me who's always struggled the attention part, I thought, well that's a stupid idea. That'll make it even more difficult to pay attention to. And he's like, no, no, no, part, I thought, well, that's a stupid idea. That'll make it even more difficult to pay attention to.

And he's like, no, no, no, no, you have to work your way up to that, but it'll have the opposite effect. And I thought, that's weird. And sure as shit, it blew my mind when I started listening to books at two and a half, three speed. And I was written.

I was retaining more. And what I attribute to, what I feel like is happening, is it's moving so fast that my brain has to really focus in on it. And it doesn't allow me to kind of get distracted. And then now, if I listen to something on normal speed, I can easily trail. My thoughts will trail off. And it's like, oh, shit, I got to rewind that.

I didn't hear what it said. And then I go in. But when it's really fast like that, my brain to your tunnel gets kind of tunnel vision on the thing. And I get more out of it. I think it's really fast like that my brain to your tunnel gets kind of tunnel vision on the thing And I get more out of it I think that's really I don't think that's talked about enough as a strategy if you're listening right now and ever try to try that Oh my god, a lot of people's aid our conversations. Yes. A lot of people listen to our stuff faster Well this like but this because we probably look at it more in but there's a lot of people that are consuming our content for education

Yeah, so it makes sense from an educational point that you're like, I wanna get through a lot of the fluff and I wanna get just the good meat out of there. And they're long enough where they're trying to get through. If you've never done that, Sal, it- I haven't done it. It is, and maybe too, I don't know if there is a genetic thing for me, it's such a big deal,

because maybe you don't have as much of a problem with trailing off when you're reading. I do, that has always been a struggle for me reading in school. That was the hardest part was that I just trail off a trail. If I had to read the same page over so many times, I'm so frustrating, but that has been the biggest hack for me with all these books that I've consumed. 90% of them are through audible. I just have to, the only time now I'll ever pick up a book and read is if I'm on vacation and

I'm doing it more, more for leisure than I am to like learn. But if I, if I'm going into something I want to learn, I'm going to, the only time now I'll ever pick up a book and read is if I'm on vacation and I'm doing it more for leisure than I am to like learn. But if I'm going into something I wanna learn, I'm gonna start, and it's like a muscle. It's been a while since I, well I just listened to one with Katrina that long ago, and I think we were listening at one and a half speed. But I can't go right to three, I have to work up to it. I gotta go one and a half.

You did say that before. Yeah, I gotta go one and a half for probably a little while, I don't know, maybe a half a book or what have you, and then I can go up a half, I can go one and a half. You did say that before. Yeah, I gotta go one and a half for probably a little while. I don't know, maybe a half a book or what have you. And then I can go up a half. I can go about half speed every half a book. And then by the time I'm on book three or so, I'm burning at like three. And then when you're doing it at like three speed,

you're consuming that book in a third of the time it would take you. So you can knock books out fast. I'll try that. Well, with Brain FM, when I use it is when I'm writing or trying to focus on a subject that I want to bring up on the show or something like that. That's the best for writing.

And it's about 10 minutes. It's really weird. I feel the switch at about 10 minutes in where I start, at first I'm like, okay, it's just nothing. And then 10 minutes in it's locked in. Well and you enjoy listening to it because there's other options like the classical options. Yeah, music.

The classical piano is my favorite. It's not just random sounds. Yeah. Yeah. Probiotics improve your gut health, skin health, mental health, and studies now show they help you build muscle and improve your strength and performance. Which one do you go with? Go with the best.

The world's best probiotic is Seed. Go check them out. Go to seed.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code 25 mind pump, get 25% off. off back to the show our first caller is Ben from Scotland what's up Ben you don't Ben it's going on dude hey guys how you doing thank you so much for having me on means a lot you got it man how can we help you so I'm feeling you into kind of lifting weights I have some experience competing mixed martial arts but lifting weights was always something

I kind of stayed away from. I don't know why, it was just not something I took interest in. But recently I gained a lot of weight, so I decided, you know what, let's just really knuckle down and see what this weightlifting business is about. Joined a program online where I'm doing a three-day full body workout, which I'm loving. I'm seeing great progress in terms of strength, even some slight visible changes in my body re-comp, which is what I'm going for.

But the one thing I'm kind of struggling with is I see so many things online where they say you kind of need to change a program every sort of six to 12 weeks and I really don't understand why that would be the case. And I'm really just kind of struggling to get my head around it. Yeah, no, it's so okay.

So it is a good question. When you don't need to change your program every, every six weeks or 12 weeks, but you can change certain variables like changing the rep ranges or the tempo, but the exercises, you don't necessarily need to change that off, especially if you're doing, like you're doing the big compound lifts and you're new to it.

I mean, yeah. I was gonna say, especially when you're new to it too. Yeah, because if you're new to this, are you doing barbell squats and bench press and rows and dead lifts and that kind of stuff? Yeah, so it's mostly the compound movements, so six big compound movements and a few sort of ab workouts and isolation movements just to kind of touch on the things

I'm maybe struggling with a little bit. You're fine for a long time You're totally fine for a long and if you're getting stronger, you're doing great I would say probably nine months a year into it Then you would probably want to go into a program that would you know focus on maybe? Unilateral work or lateral exercises. Otherwise, you could develop certain imbalances, but you're fine You're fine for what I'd love to Ben, is I'll have Doug send you our Maps Antibolic Program, which is also a three day a week

full body routine, follow something like that, and then at some point, I'll also send him, have him send you a link to the Maps Performance, which if you, you could toggle between those two programs, indefinitely. But what that does is it just, it adds some unilateral work, some rotational work, changes up a few exercises.

You know, this is actually a good question, Ben, because you did MMA for a while. Yeah. So, okay, so I'm gonna assume, of course you like the composition changes, you like building muscle, but you probably don't wanna sacrifice athleticism, right? Is that something still valued to you?

A little bit, but I mean, that was sort of five years ago, and it was mainly just the fact I put on sort of 40-odd pounds over the five years just by not exercising and having a really bad diet. So I kind of cleaned everything up, sorted my diet out, and went into the main compound movements because I knew they were the best value for money in terms of my time and only being able to do three days a week.

But you know, I don't know whether then should I advance to four days a week? I'm just loving what I'm doing. And I really don't want to change too much. You're doing perfect. You're in the sweet spot. Yeah. And how's your diet? It's great.

It's great. I'm doing a body re-com. So I'm eating maybe just a little bit less than maintenance, but really clean, eating high protein. And yeah, just, I just, I want to stay on the path that I'm on. But the more I kind of research, the more I look into things like start questioning myself. And that's what led me off the track before is questioning what I'm doing, you know, you're doing the right thing, bro. You're doing. If you're progressing you're doing great and you could like Sal said you could technically follow that all year long

No problem. But what I'd like to do is have have Doug one Cindy maps anabolic So you got that you can follow that and that way it's programming is laid out for you And the way it's designed is it's almost like what most people call one program We have like or what would call one program, we have like, or what we'd call three programs, we have one. So in other words, there's three phases within this one program. So if you follow Maps Anabolic, it changes everything.

So yeah, so how Sal talked about changing the rep ranges and things like that, we do that for you. So it's built into the program so that you don't have to go follow another program. And that, what you're reading online, just to clarify it, to get some confusion out, there is some truth to it. Like if you did the same exercises, the same rep range, the same rest periods, indefinitely, oh, they're over within a decent amount of time,

your body would adapt to it and you would, your progress would plateau and you would stop seeing results. And so then it would be important to change your program. Now there's a little caveat to that is that when you're a newbie, a beginner, that's a lot longer because the exercises are new as you're probably feeling and learning. You've got a full year of pretty good progress. You've got a year of really getting good at squatting and overhead pressing, all this movement.

So it doesn't apply as much to you, but it will apply to you in the near future that you will want to change it up. Now what's great, the way we write all of our programs is we build that into the program. So that you could just follow a program and you're fine. And so I'm going to have Doug send Maps and a blog to you. And then if you were to do any other program, I would tell you to move over to Maps Performance at some point. And maybe what you do is you move to that program when you start to see your progress slow down. But so long as your progress, you're getting stronger, you're noticing visible change.

No aches and pains. Yeah, no aches, no pain. I mean, you just keep going what you're doing. You're doing good. Perfect. Cool. Thank you so much. All right, man.

Thanks for calling in. Thank you. Take it easy. All right, dude. I think he was on the wrong side of the car. Did you see that? Steering wheel. Yeah. When you first get started, you've got a full year

of getting good at the basics. You don't need to do a bunch, not only do you not need to do them, if you switch up too often, especially in the beginning, you're actually progressing slower. You confuse your body, yeah. I mean, I like this conversation because it's a bit nuanced because yes,

but then it could also be no. When would it be no? Well, if you decide to do leg press, leg extensions, machine chest press, you do that for a whole year and I guarantee you're gonna, I don't care how new you are, you're gonna see, you're gonna plateau pretty hard and fast. But the complexity of getting good at a barbell squat,

getting good at a barbell overhead press, it extends that. This is another reason why those movements are so valuable is because of the difficulty, the challenge, the technique of it, and so you can reap the benefits for a long time. And then if you're a newbie, that is even longer amount of time. He's doing the most valuable exercises,

so that's why this is, yeah, he could extend that quite some time. Our next caller is Margie from Pennsylvania. Margie, what's happening? How you doing, Margie? Hello. Hi, guys, how are you? Good. We're great. How are you?

Good, thanks. Okay, I will jump right into my question. So I did a bulk this winter for four months. Prior to the bulk, I was maintaining about 128 pounds at 2,000 calories. For my bulk, I ate 2,400 calories. And then when I have – let me just jump back real quick. I had a coach through this whole process. When I started my cut, which was the beginning of March, my coach

had me drop back to 2,000, but I kind of ate more like 1,900, 1,950. After two weeks of not seeing any progress at all, he dropped me down to just below 1,500. And then I still wasn't making any progress at all. So at that, when I submitted my question, I was four weeks into the cut. Now I'm 10 weeks into the cut. So I was at 1900 and then I was at about 1450. Absolutely in nine weeks, I feel like I've made no progress at all in my cut. And I feel like whenever I've been listening to you and you guys say that if you increase your calories, you go through a bulk, that you don't have to cut that drastically for your cut if you've gained some muscle. But I feel like I shouldn't be eating at 1400 calories and not making progress.

I'm wondering if I'm not eating enough. As far as my movement, I've been getting between 14 and 18,000 steps a day. I've been doing HIIT three days a week plus three days of full body. I also, when I submitted my question, did not have plantar fasciitis, which I got just the last couple of weeks. So that has obviously slowed me down quite a bit. Margie, you're over trained. Yeah, you're over doing it. Before you even finished it, my first thought was was I wonder if she's just doing too much and you are and your body's telling you it is multiple ways

First it's telling you by stalling out its progress that didn't you didn't listen enough from that So then it gave you that plantar fasciitis. So that's you just way too much way way way too much Let's back up when you went from two that you were at 2,000 calories, 128 pounds, what did 2,400 calories do for you? I put on 10 pounds over that four months. Okay, were you doing the HIIT with the strength training at the same time? No, my coach didn't have me start that

until I started the cut. So here's what happens when you drop your calories. Let me ask you this. Do you think you have a better or worse time recovering? Can the body recover better or not as great with less calories? Oh, not as great at all. So adding more volume in a cut is a massive mistake.

Yeah, it's so weird. This is the part, okay, let me tell you something about coaches that were, that coach competitors. This was like the thing that I always used to tell the guys that cracked me up When I'd see these coaches with these competitors my peers I would see them go into this hardcore cut and then all sudden they increase everything the rep range They shorten the rest periods they add the stair master to be like, what are they doing? Like you were you were you were doing less and building muscle you reduce

your calories let your metabolism do the rest. Let the cutting the calories lean you out. You don't need to do a bunch of extra activity. Or keep your calories high and do the extra activity. Doing the combination of the two is the worst idea. You would have done better your HIIT would have done better with the high calories than it does in the low calories that's for sure. Yeah. Although I don't want to do, I wouldn't want you to do HIIT. Six days a week, so three days HIIT, three days strength training is too much. So what I would do is I'd take off the HIIT,

stick to strength training, bring your calories back up to 2,000, stay there for a while, slowly build up, and then when you wanna do the cut, do the cut. Don't throw a bunch of extra activity at it. And you could walk. So the way I would always do with the competitors, do the cut. Don't throw a bunch of extra activity at it. Yeah, and you could walk. So the way I would always do with the competitors and we're getting ready for show

and we're trying to create a larger calorie deficit, we do it through walking, not through high intensity or more volume in the weight lifting because you're in a calorie reduction. So the walk will be okay. It'll create more movement, it'll create a larger calorie deficit, it's recuperative so it allows the body to recover and heal but doing something that's high intensity or adding more volume to our already current training program is just not a great move.

So has this coach somebody who trains competitors? Is that what kind of coach is this? I don't know. I don't think he does. I found him on mind pump, actually through mind pump, I should say. Through us? And well, I mean, through like the private forum. Oh, through the community. No, I was saying not one of our trainers, one of our trainers. No, no, no, no. Get their ass room for this. Yeah, no, and he's been great and super supportive because I have been mentally super struggling with the cut and feeling like I've been making no progress. So I've been like, I'm doing, and when I tell you like,

when he's like, are you measuring your food? Like I am, like if I eat a grape, I'm recording it. Like I don't, like I measure and weigh everything. I'm very strict. I never like, I'm like on it. So I'm like, I'm doing everything perfect and that he's telling me to do and nothing, getting nowhere. So.

To go down a thousand calories and then add three additional days of exercise is like a recipe for disaster. And high intensity, not just exercise. I mean, it's. Your steps are great, strength training's great, three days a week. I would get you back up to 2000, let's get you strong.

Get some strength first. The other part too, the other thing you can do too Margie is that, cause you could do the bulk and then cut. You can also just slowly increase calories and get strong and go back. So go back to the training with the three days a week, focus on getting strong and just keep slowly adding calories and just watch what happens.

I bet you'll build muscle and lean out if you do it slow. So you do. Well, and that's the thing is that obviously we're coming into summer. Yeah. And like I live on the water. Like I'm on the water all the time. And like the thought of putting on a bathing suit

this summer is horrifying to me. So like I want to be leaner because I've been lean for the last like 15 years and now I just feel disgusting. So I definitely want to lose this fat right now. Yeah. Well there's two ways to do it. One way is you can go down to a thousand calories to see what happens.

Well I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that. Option two is what we're saying. I would cut out the hit cardio, I would slowly increase calories and try to get stronger. Be patient though, okay? If you try and rush it, you'll end up overdoing something and you'll end up going slower.

What was the workout like from 2,000 to 2,400 calories? Pretty much the same, I guess three day a week, full body. Were you getting stronger during that period of time? Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, my workouts when I was eating much more, I was definitely feeling stronger. I bet you feel a lot weaker right now. Oh my gosh, yeah.

Yeah, especially when I went down to 1400. I was just like, I'd do some kind of lift and just wanna lay on the ground in between. Are you guys actually doing your own three day a week or are you following MAPS Anabolic? No, I've been following MAPS programs for the past two years. I actually just finished up today a 12 week Brett Koutaris program. That's right. Do you have a suggestion on what I should do next? I mean Brett's solid solid. Muscle mommy, maps, anabolic, either one would be great.

Do you have muscle mommy? Okay. Yeah, I do. I did that before I did the brett-contreras. Yeah, that's good. Anabolic would be good too. And then slowly increase your calories and get rid of the hit cardio. Keep your steps up.

Your steps are great. Yeah, yeah. Okay, keep my steps up. Just slowly increase. Because right now I'm at about 1600. And by the way, what you can do, so this isn't like a dramatic shift when we're there, is where you were doing HIIT cardio, just go for a walk.

So where you're doing your HIIT training, just walk during that time. So I'm not gonna tell you like go home and just sit on the couch, some of that. Like if you were already going to the gym and doing something or going, doing it at home, wherever you're doing it, keep moving, that's fine. But low intensity, just walk, just get a nice walk in.

And then tell this coach that's in our forum to stop coaching people in our forum. Otherwise I'm gonna kick them out. Yeah, just so you, yeah. Bad advice. Yeah, yeah, or I mean as long as it's good advice then I don't really care. Yeah, but this is already bad advice,

so now you're not allowed to coach anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have trainers that work for us, that actually work for us. So they have to go through an intensive screening before they get a job. So if you ever need that in the future, just reach out and then we'll actually recommend

the trainer for you. We'll hand pluck them for you. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. And I think that was one of the hardest parts for me is because I felt like I hired a coach, I paid the coach, I should do what they tell me, but I was feeling like this isn't right.

So that was part of the mental struggle because I'm not a professional, but I also listen to you guys all the time. And I was talking to a friend of mine and she's like, what would the guys say? What would the guy, meaning you. And I'm like, I think they'd say back off a little bit on all that you know the hit and everything and your instincts were right and you're

right that you hire somebody and that's what you're supposed to outsource all that thinking. By the way there would have been two approaches that could have happened at 2,400 calories. You could have stayed the same with your routine and cut it or you you could have kept it at 2400 calories and then added the hit, but you couldn't do both. Both is like, it's like, yeah, it's way too much. So what's happened right now is your strength went way down, your body just became very efficient with its calories,

and your body's like, yeah, and I mean, if you keep going down this path, you'll probably lose weight, but it's gonna be muscle. You're not gonna feel very good. Which would negate the whole bulk that I did. Of course, totally, exactly. Okay, well I will do what you say, and we'll see what happens.

All right, all right Margie. Thank you Margie. Thank you so much. I almost wanna kick them out of the floor. What are you doing, bro? I hope you're watching. Well, hopefully the audience hears that and knows. Because here's the one thing that we don't know

about our private forum. Private forum is very big. There's tens of thousands of people in there. It's not made for training, it's just for people. Yeah, and what we don't know is if there's people trying to slide in DMs and put, we don't monitor that and tell people that we don't. Ideally, we did not want to police the community.

It was designed to all help each other and we're not want to police the community, it was designed to all help each other and we're not trying to stop anybody from building their business and whatever, but buyer beware, just because they're in our private form does not mean that they are. Yeah, it does not mean we vouch for that trainer or know anything about the trainer. But going on a cut and dramatically increasing activity

at the same time, terrible strategy. Yeah, yeah, terrible strategy. It's, you know, I used to see it in the same time? Terrible strategy. Yeah, terrible strategy. You know, I used to see it in the computer. It's a common one. Yeah. Yeah. Our next caller is Heather from Wisconsin. Oh, Heather, I know you. Hey, Heather. Hello. Hey, how are you? Good. How are you doing? Good. Thanks for taking my call. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. How can we help you? I've had some incredible progress. Yeah, I've been, I've been working hard. Doing great. Um, yeah. Last time I talked to you, it was about April of last year and, uh, I forgot to thank you guys for all the content that you give us. I really appreciate it. I'm so glad I found you. And it was so funny

cause I was looking through some of my screenshots the other day. And I noticed that I had screenshotted a video, an old video of where you guys are doing the white chalkboard pointing in. I think Sal had a pointer that he was using. That was an old one. Well, how can we help you? That was an old one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, how can we help you? So my question is, I started my journey in 2023 when I lost about 30 pounds during a challenge. And that was the before picture that I sent you guys. So I lost 30 pounds. It was great. I did a good job. I actually came in top 10 of the challenge

between 2000 people. So I went through a bulk during September to January of last year and I felt like I did a really good job. I got my calories up to 2400. My protein always stayed the same. When I did this next challenge, I worked with a coach and I did this next challenge, I work with a coach, and I did the next challenge and even I'm almost

done with it. Actually, I only lost about 10 pounds and I know the scale doesn't really matter. My problem was, and I hope you guys can shed some light on it. I went from 2400 calories, she took me down, you know, not super hard right away, but it was that like two week increments She took me down on calories and bumped me up on cardio now I know you guys always say you know if you have a Trainer that puts you on a lot of cardio right away fire them well You know I'm not in the position to fire her. It was just for a challenge.

So I don't know how I can go from 2,400 calories setting up in a bulk. And I did good, I felt strong and then go down so drastically in the calories. And then so much up on the cardio, it was just walking. How is it possible that a stall I mean, the scale step of moving which I know that the cell does. I mean, I let it get my little bit. I

know that's not the end all be all information. But I was actually gaining weight on the scale. And so I just was curious as to why that happens. Yes. Hello. So you were cut out for a second. How low did your calories get? My dad got to about 1500. She did give me this. And that really helped spark my hunger. which is really weird because as I'm dropping in calories, my hunger cues aren't really there. So I, you know, I even posted a question

in the forum, the private forum asking about that because I don't I'm not hungry, even though my calories are dropping and I feel like I did put on some muscle during that bulk. Yeah, so here's the thing. Now we're gonna try and explain something very complex, which is the human metabolism. And when you cut your calories, anytime you cut your calories, but I think this effect happens even more so

when they start to get kinda low, which 1,500 calories is low for someone like you. You've got a good amount of muscle on your body. You've been working out for a while You're active, you know when you when you start cutting calories that metabolism starts to adapt and what happens is starts to become more efficient It learns how to capture and use calories for fat storage and say or what it does is it tries to hold on to body fat more as it becomes more efficient. And as it starts to slow down, one of the risks of that is it starts to cut away or pare down muscle

to accomplish this. What you did is you cut your calories and dramatically increased your activity. So what you did is you sent two signals that do the same thing. Cutting calories and dramatically increasing movement, both kind of tell the body, let's become more efficient with calories.

Now 2400 calories for someone like you with your strength and muscle is not a bad place to just be. It's just not a bad place to be all the time. So what I would have liked to see with someone like you is a slower cut and I would have not brought you down to 1500, I would have brought you down to like 1800, and walking's okay, but not dramatically increase it at the same time, and then let's do this slowly.

Heather, where were you, okay, I've seen the pictures of you in the Stripe bikini, and then you're in like a blue and black, I think like polka dot one, with the before and afters that you have next to each other. Where were your, what were you doing in like a blue and black, I think like polka dot one with the before and after that you have next to each other. Where were your, what were you doing in the after? Like what, like literally when that picture was taken, what were you eating that week? What did your food look like? Okay.

So that was, I think I sent this in April, like beginning of April, which is when I was kind of stalled. So I think I was at about 150 protein, 140 carbs and 45 fat. What is it? And then she had me walking 60 minutes five times a week. Well, what was that calorie wise? I don't know the math on top of my head. What is it? You were your calories. I think that one kind of came around to about 15 to 1600. Now she didn't drop me to that amount right away.

I went from 2400 down to about 2100, and then we went down to about 1800, 1900, and then I went down to this 15. So she's dropping me in kind of two week increments, but it just, I mean, cause I'm in a challenge and obviously we wanna try to do it quickly. I know that. And I would, I think the slower I'm in a challenge and obviously we want to try to do it quickly. I know that. And I would, I think the slower process is definitely better for me, especially with my age and perimenopause.

And I think that's a better, a better route. I mean, we were just trying to get as much off in the, in the 90 days, which is, I mean, I'm not trying to win anything. I'm just, I just like to challenge myself. Yeah. You, you look so good in that picture that if I was coaching you at that point, one, I would not want, I definitely wouldn't let you run back to a challenge. And I'd say, this is awesome.

We have built such an incredible physique. Now, let's just slowly increase your calories. And really the reason why I'd want to increase calories is I just want to get you to a place where you're like, Adam, this is the perfect amount of calories for me to live on. And that might be at 1800, it might be at 2200, but what you did physique wise, your before and afters is so incredible. And you look so good that I would not want you to try and cut hard or do anything

aggressive after achieving what you did. It really would want to be just getting you up to a metabolic rate that you feel that you can sustain that and be happy. And then just cruising there because over time of consistently lifting weights and Staying in that happy zone and eating good you would just slowly lose body fat and build muscle and just be in a very good place Long-term because you did so good like this is an example of like what happens sometimes where We get we get kind of what we want then we just we just move the goalposts and we want more and we want more and We want more and then we end up doing the just move the goalposts and we want more and we want more and we want more

and then we end up doing the things that we probably shouldn't do to our body because you did so good and you look so good to try and do anything crazy from that point is just not a good idea. Like you did, I'd be like, if we're gonna move the needle anywhere, we're just gonna move it tiny bit

because you're in such a good place right now and I think that's what happened. You guys just got too aggressive, too fast. Yeah, I mean, especially when you add activity, the times you add activity is when you're keeping your calories the same or increasing them. So the times that I actually, I'll increase activity with people when they reverse diet.

Not when they go in a dramatic cut. Yeah, because it requires more energy, more recovery. You know, I wouldn't add that until, if I cut your calories and then you're doing great and you feel good, then I might later add more activity, but not do them at the same time. Sure. Well, I really appreciate the compliments.

I do wanna get a little bit lower and leaner. I mean, I'm fine with where I'm at. This is kind of where I'm comfortable with where I'm at. I was hoping to try to get slightly leaner so that when I go back to reversing and get back to maintenance, I can bump up a little bit and be comfortable. Heather, you will. You will. You will. You're in a good place though. Like you don't need to do it. Like doing anything too aggressive is only going to stall your progress. Like you don't need to do it. Like doing anything too aggressive is only gonna stall your progress. Like you were in such a good place and you look so good and I get wanting a little bit more.

That's totally okay. But the answer to that is to just do it gradually and work with your body. Like it's very obvious that it responded well to lifting weights and building muscle and building your metabolism up and you completely, I mean your waist came in, your shoulders, your pot, I mean, everything about what,

the difference of your before and after is incredible. I'm surprised you didn't win the challenge from that because of that transformation. So to try- Well, it's not over yet. It's almost over. I got one more week. Okay, so I would not wanna,

I wouldn't wanna do anything drastic. If you're my client and we're together sitting down at the desk, assessing what we've been doing and looking at where you're at right now, I'd be like, man, we're in a good place. We look good. We feel good. Let's keep it. And I might make little tweaks, like let's jump the calories a little bit this week and see how you feel and then get feedback. But I am not ramping up cardio, cutting calories aggressively, not when you're there. You're in such a good place. The other thing too Heather is it's not too often that I have a female client that does well on less than 50 grams of fat. You said you're eating 45 grams of fat? Yeah, I'm down to between 40 and

45 depending on the receipt days right now. I don't like it. I don't think it's good for me. I never had my female clients go below 50. Almost every time they would do that, we would notice hormonal effects. It just didn't feel so good. Yeah, and actually I kind of cut my cardio head way, way down. She's got me at 75 minutes right now. And I did it for one week. I did what she told me to do.

I did it for one week. And I said, told me to do. I did it for one week. And I said, no, because I stalled on the scale again. And as soon as I dropped that cardio, my scale started moving. See? So. Yep. I know, I'm testing the waters.

And I wrote this in when I was frustrated about a month ago. So I'm learning more about my body. And obviously the older that I get, the harder. I mean, got to really pay attention to that kind of stuff. You're more sensitive to it. That's all it is. Like when you were 20 years old, you can get away with dumb shit and still rebound pretty quick. But as we get older, yeah, your

body lets you know pretty quickly, nope, I'm not happy there. And so you did so good that I wouldn't want to. This is, I get the challenge thing because I know it motivates people and stuff like that, but this is where it could like bite you in the ass is like you did so good from the first one, running back another challenge is like the last thing that we should have done. We should have just kind of made subtle tweaks

and stuff like that because you did so good. Yeah, and to be fair, I mean, the first, the picture on the left, that's the beginning in 2023 and the picture on the right was just a month ago. So I didn't drop them and that was that was not the drastic that's over a two-year period. Yeah. Well, that's for two years. That's incredible. It's a huge body shift completely. Yeah, you you look way way different. That's what I mean. Like I wouldn't you don't need any hard swings right now. You're in a good place. Okay. Okay, cool. Yep. Awesome. All right, Heather. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You got it. I mean, I've done this to myself. Did she give us her height and weight?

I was trying to see if I could find it. I mean, she's got those other pictures in the forum. Because the other thing I didn't want to, you know, you don't want to say this to a woman, but she's she doesn't look like she's this tiny little short petite thing. She looks like she's got good bone structure and she could put muscle on. I don't think she's very tall, but she definitely builds muscle. There's some good bone structure and she could put muscle on. I don't think she's very tall, but she definitely builds muscle. There's some pictures that she posted in the forum where she's flexing and she's got great muscle. And let me tell you, somebody who is more solid,

thicker bone that puts on muscle, they do even worse on low, low calorie like that. Their body does better, higher calorie, building muscle. You lean into that. There's body types and I tell you, there's certain people that do better with, that you don't do good with someone like this trying to just cut calories and.

But I've done that to myself where I'm doing really well on a cut and I'm like, cool, let's add more stuff and then stall, okay? You know? Our next caller is David from New York. What's up David? How you doing man, what's happening? What's going on guys? Excuse me first I just want to say thank you for all that you guys do. You guys are definitely role models for me so just thank you for all that you guys put out. Thank you

David. Yeah so basically I'll start my I was an athlete my whole life, worked manual labor and construction. About seven years ago, I started dating my wife and we had this trifecta of where we were going out every night going and eating at bars, restaurants. Gym became less a priority for me. And fast forward a little bit, I started a new job, I started a new job. It was a desk job, became sedentary,

and then my wife got pregnant. So I had all these things going on and I just started ballooning up. It went from like 180 up to 250. So I had a little stint where I started on a Wegovi, dropped some weight, got back down to like 197. And then, you know, I'm one of those guys that reads the headline. So I saw this headline that, you know, is, is Ozempic destroying your muscle fibers or

something. And I just, so I stopped using it and I put back on the weight and not all of it. I'm sitting at around like two 15. My, my real question is I don't have the appetite. So breakfast when I wake up in the morning, I'm not hungry at all. Don't eat anything. I eat my lunch. Um, I eat my dinner, which I'm using like a meal prep service, roughly about 1400

calories from food a day, drinking coffee with milk, four or five cups of coffee and tea. So I'm looking to get rid of this fat, the extra fat, get back down to a lower body fat percentage, but just can't can't get past this for the last year or so this plateau of just staying in this 215 unable to drop anything else. You following a maps program? I actually yesterday I bought a maps aesthetic. You just oh okay I'm not gonna start you there so I'm gonna give you a different one you can keep that one for later but not right now you need maps anabolic to start off with maps MAPS aesthetic is too much, especially for somebody who's having a hard time eating enough calories.

But hopefully what happens, OK, this is totally normal, especially coming off of a Vagovia or Zempik, any of those. Appetite's just crushed and you just don't have any desire to eat enough of the protein and things that you need. Once you start doing a good lifting program, like a MAPS anabolic, that should stimulate it. You should feel the appetite start to increase from lifting squats, deadlifts, the big movements

that are going to be in that programming. And then the next main goal or focus for you is hitting that protein intake. It sounds like that'll probably be one of the harder things combined with the MAPS Anabolic program. And I think you're going to start to see some really nice change right away, right from that. Yeah, I think too, if you can really target breakfast, and I know it's like, I went through this period

because I did a lot of fasting before and would skip a lot of breakfast, but to get protein in and make that a priority, first thing, it took a few weeks and it really started to stimulate that appetite again on top of the heavy weight training. David, you gotta just start slow. So what I would do if you were my client

is I'd have you follow MAPS Antibolic, it's two days a week. I'd have you walk after breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five to 10 minutes, that's the walking. And then start your day with a protein shake. 40 to 50 grams since you have no appetite. For lunch, make sure you get 40 to 50 grams of protein. And for dinner, do the same thing.

Eat the protein first. Just start there. That'll take you far by the way. If you just did that, you're gonna get pretty far. For about six months or so, you'll see progress. Just do that. And don't add to that. Because you're gonna be tempted to want to about six months or so, you'll see progress. Just do that. And don't add to that, because you're gonna be tempted

to want to add a bunch of stuff to it. But what it sounds like is you feel like you're stuck, like you're stuck in the mud, you gotta get out of it. So start slow, just do that. Just do that, and you'll progress for six months at least. Another nice hack for stimulating your appetite, or for somebody who doesn't have an appetite in the morning, is I love those new Greek yogurts. Sounds like you can handle dairy, so you're fine. Those Oikos or whatever brand, they have

20 grams of protein in that little cup. That's real easy to shuttle that down. And that right there, that's kind of what I do. I have the same thing. When I'm not training consistently, I fall off of breakfast. I'll eat my first meal at noon or one and then I don't have an appetite in that My body adapts to that so when I got to kick it back up and I know it's time to build muscle again I got to build this metabolism. I've got to get that breakfast in and I know I don't have an appetite so I start with that a week or two of lifting heavy and doing that and My my appetite starts to come back and then I can start to eat it like a real breakfast with a lot of calories So but what Sal said is perfect, man? That uh, that's it. You stay on that course

Literally ten minutes after breakfast of a walk ten minutes after lunch ten minutes after dinner every day. That's it Two days a week of strength training with MAPS anabolic eat You know 40 50 grams of protein for breakfast lunch and dinner eat it first for breakfast You could do a shake or the yogurt. That's it do that You'll you'll progress for at least six months, if not for a year, just doing that. You don't have to add anything to that. Okay, and so from anabolic,

would I switch to aesthetic at any point or just stick with that for six months? That's down the road, man. Way down the road. Yeah, there's no. You'll progress for literally for six months to a year just doing that. I tell you what, I definitely wouldn't even want you

touching aesthetic until you, if you were my client, we're training, and I know I had that in my back pocket to train you, it would be when your appetite has been cranking. You're eating 35, 4,000 calories, you're feeling like a beast in the gym, and you're like, Adam, what else can we do? And I'm like, all right, let's see if you can handle aesthetic, until you feel like that, we don't even need to fuck with that. In fact see if you can handle aesthetic. Until you feel like

that, we don't even need to fuck with that. In fact, if you add that now, you're probably going to plateau. Yeah, you'll see it. You might see a little bit for a couple weeks and then you'll hit a hard plateau. That's just because you're doing something, right? But not a good idea to follow that. Anna Ballock, we're going to send it over to you. The prescription that Sal gave you is perfect. Follow that. And then just, are you in our private forum? I'm not. Okay, I'm gonna have Doug put you in the private forum too.

So as you're going through this, if you have the urge to do anything stupid, just DM us or message us and then we'll keep your head straight and focused. How old is your baby, by the way? I have a three-year-old and a two-year-old. Ah, cool. Oh, good for you.

All right, good, so you got a little bit, your sleep is kind of normal. It's not too terrible Yeah, somewhat. All right. All right. Good for you. Yeah, that's it dude. Just do that and trust us Don't add anything to it. Yes, the one way you'll mess this up is if you don't do it or if you add to it Yeah, don't add if you get an itch to do that go for a walk. That's sure That's what you can do So if you're feeling anxious and you want to do more go for a nice walk and you can walk for as long as you want. Just go for a walk.

Okay, cool. Awesome, thank you guys, appreciate it. All right, David. All right, man. Take care. Yeah, good, so good advice, because you know what happens when you're in that position, you feel stuck, is you either go all or nothing.

And by the way, going all in results in you stopping at some point. I'm so glad we caught him too, because an under eater, going to Maps Aesthetic is like the recipe for, and then you think it's us. These guys don't know how to program. It's one of our highest volume programs. Yeah, yeah.

And again, my advice is you can do Aesthetic when I get that feedback from you. When you're just a beast. You're already- You're living in the gym already. Yeah, you're killing it in the gym. That's it. Squats already up 100 pounds. Your appetite's through the roof. It's like, OK, let's see what we got.

Let's see. Then we can throw that away. Totally. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump. DeStefano Adams at Mind Pump Battle. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming

designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a 5-star rating and review on

iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump!