Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2780: How to Start Losing Weight for Summer, Now!

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

How to Start Losing Weight for Summer, Now! The real work is in the offseason. Lay down the foundation NOW! (1:24) 5 Steps How to Start Losing Weight for Summer, Now! 1. Reverse diet and build muscle. (3:38) 2. Begin cutting calories. (9:47) 3. Adjust workouts. (11:13) 4. Add steps. (12:36) 5. Add cardio. (15:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned 3 Steps to Fat Loss Guide  Visit Vuori Clothing for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** No code to receive 20% off your first order. ** January Promotion: Code NEWYEAR50 at checkout for 50% off the following programs: MAPS Starter, Transform, Anabolic, and Performance! Mind Pump Store Mind Pump #2690: The NEW DIET Everyone Is Using For Fat Loss Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Corinne Schmiedhauser (@mindpumpcorinne) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in the world. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode is How to Start Losing Weight for the Summer now. If you start now and do it the right way, it'll happen, it'll be sustainable, it'll be effective. By the way, we have a free fat loss guide, how to lose fat in three steps.

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but summer's going to come at some point and you're going to want to get lean. Now's the time to set yourself up. I'm excited to talk to you right now about how to start losing weight for summer right now. Let's go. I actually, I'm glad we're having this conversation now because we typically do it when it's springtime

and everybody kind of... A month away. That the hype is around there. Last minute kind of efforts. And when I think about how I get myself ready for summer or how I get a client ready for summer, it starts right now. Yes.

Right now is when we build the metabolism. It's very similar to, I mean, even though we're not taking it to a stage level, but it's just like I would talk to my bikini competitors or men's physique athletes. It's like the real work is in the off season before prep. That's right. And so consider this is like if you want to have a great body

come summertime, the real work is done right now in the winter of laying the foundation. the time as we get closer into spring heading into the summer is the revealing of the hard work that you put into the cut. Yes.

So what's really cool is that we have a training staff now of coaches and trainers, both in person and virtual, and they're now contributing to these topics. And, I mean, truth be told, we typically don't think about a summer topic until we're close to summer.

We've got a lot stuff going on. We're doing lots of episodes. And the truth is, This is the best time to do this episode because there's a setup. There's a setup to the fat loss that needs to occur. If you want this to be effective fat loss and if you want it to be sustainable, fat loss. What you don't want to do is get caught like, uh-oh, it's, you know, in a month or 45 days, it's going to be summertime. Typically, it's 30 days away when people think about this.

I'm going to get lean. And then because the time is so short and they haven't set themselves up properly, their metabolism isn't isn't a good place. it ends up failing. Either A, they do lose some weight, they lose some muscle along with it, or B, they fail, or C, they get there, and then they gain it all back,

which is what happens to a lot of people. So the way you set things up is so important. So if you want to look lean for the summer, right now is when you start with the reverse diet and the building of the metabolism. This is the most important part, everybody. And here's why. If you want to lose body fat,

you have to eat in what's known as a calorie deficit. In other words, you have to take in less calories than your body is burning. And if your body is burning, by the way, the calories your body burns both comes from activity, but it also comes from your resting metabolic rate. It's how many calories your body burns on its own. If that's high, then the amount of calories they can eat to cause weight loss can be higher. If that's low, the amount of calories they need to eat to cause weight loss is much lower. So to paint this in a very stark picture, if my metabolism is burning, you know,

1,900 calories a day and I want to get lean, I got to eat like 15 or 1,400 to 1,200 calories to get there. That sucks. First off, that's not enough calories to maintain any decent amount of muscles. You're going to get some muscle loss. And you're not going to be able to sustain it. So if you're starting this process now, what it looks like right now is called a reverse diet and a focus on building that metabolic machinery to make this much more effective

when you start getting closer to summertime. It makes this so much easier. Yes. It makes it so much easier when you spend the time building that extra muscle, building the metabolism up, getting to a place where you're eating more calories than you're used to than to come back the other direction. And then you land someone. What's so great is that you can cut calories and land in a place that is comfortable.

And that doesn't mean you'll never be hungry in a cut on a diet. That's a normal feeling. But you won't feel like you're starving. And most importantly, you won't have to deprive your body of so much of the macro, micronutrients that it needs to maintain the lean body mass that you're working so hard to build. Tell the story of when you coach Melissa. I love that story because it's such a great example of if you do this right, where you can end up. Tell that story.

Yeah, well, it's exciting too because I'm about to do it again with Corinne, right? I haven't done this for, I think I looked back, I think Melissa was almost six seven years ago. So it was a long time since I took a competitor on. And a very similar situation, right? So she weighed around, I want to say around 119 weight-wise, she was eating around 1,800 to 2,000 calories in good shape. Like already in like really good shape. But she wants to get a stage presentation. Yeah, yeah.

So she was in good shape. I just want to make that clear already. She couldn't go compete and win a trophy. But this is a good example of like you have somebody who's already in pretty good shape, healthy, eating 2,100, 2,000 calories or whatever. And then comes to me and says, hey, I want to compete and go on a show. And I go, okay, well, and she's like, I want to do a show with this time. And I said, well, we won't do that until I build your metabolism first. Because I know I'm going to have to cut calories to really lean you out for stage presence.

And you're already only at 2,000 calories. And so I'm going to put you in an unhealthy place. so let's build first. And what was so awesome was that we went through probably a good three months or so of reverse dieting. And it was just a few hundred calories at a time and really focused on strength and building muscle. Got her all the way up to the high 2000. I think we even peaked at like 2,900 calories where I got her up to. And we really didn't put on that much weight.

We put a couple pounds of muscle on her body, maybe even a little bit of body fat, but not very much at all. but really ramped that metabolism up. And she actually hit stage. We won. She won her class. She took overall and she won another for a first time trophy or whatever. So she walked away with three trophies. And she was eating 2,200 calories in her final prep week.

And this is stage leanness. It's not even healthy leanness. Yeah, yeah. So she ate more on stage than she came to that. Yeah. That just shows you how radical the difference that you can make. with somebody metabolic, which is why, if you've listened to the show for very long, you may have heard us where we get really feisty about the coaches and trainers that try and

make this argument that muscle doesn't really burn that many more calories per day. And it's so misleading, because if you take muscle tissue and you take fat tissue out and you measure it just its rate of calories, it util, energy it uses in a day. It's more, but it's not so this huge number. Yeah, exactly. So in the studies, somebody might try and say, oh, it's not that big of difference, but it's like what you're not realizing is that person who built that muscle now moves more and differently throughout the day. It moves a bigger, stronger body throughout the day. There's also really, it's also really complex. It is. This is what I know. This is not even to the last part where I'd go. And that's what I don't know. There's other things I don't know.

But I know to maintain that muscle, the amount of volume and training is required, is increased. the strength of that person is increased. There's their activity level because now they're stronger and healthier is increased. And so it doesn't tell the whole story of somebody who adds five or 10 pounds of muscle what exactly does to their metabolic rate. When we just look at the studies, it's not good enough. What we have found in our personal experience, all of us in here training clients, is a radical difference. I've taken female clients like that and been able to feed them 900 more calories and them not put on body fat.

I mean, that does not align with what the studies say about muscle, because I didn't put 40 pounds of muscle on her. We put 5 to 10 pounds, maybe a muscle at most on her body. Right. So it starts with the reverse diet. This is a slow increase in calories. You're adding 100 calories every other week, 200 calories every other week. And you're also eating high protein. So you're hitting your target body weight in grams of protein.

And the focus is strength and muscle. So this period right here, I'm just trying to build muscle. I'm just trying to get stronger. Now, the next step is when you start to look at cutting your calories. And so the question's always like, wait, when do I know? When do we do that? When do I cut calories? Here's when you start when you're eating a lot of food.

When you're at the point where like, I'm eating a lot of food, I think if I start cutting some food from food from here, I'm going to feel okay because I'm eating so much. Like in the case of Melissa, small girl eating 2,800 calories, she was probably like, I can't eat any more food. Well, now we know we're at a good place So just so you guys know, that was when I said, okay, it's time to book a show. Yeah. I was trying, I kept trying, I kept pushing her the calorie-wise

until she looked back at me and she goes, Adam, it is like a full-time job. This is it. Eating this much food. I don't know if I could go any higher than this. I'm like, perfect. Yep. So now the countdown begins.

Yeah. Now I'm like, okay, book our show. Now the cut, the slow, slow cut begins. And then the steps you're about to go over is exactly what this look like. And but that was, that was what triggered, because someone might ask, well, why did you stop at 29? Why that number? It was like, I kept pushing her until she looked back to me. It was like, this is more food I've ever heard in my life. It's so much food. I'm like, okay, this is enough runway for me to work with.

Perfect. So when you get to the place where you're like eating a lot of food, you're strong, you feel good. You're like, I could cut from here and be comfortable. This is when you can start cutting your calories. And it typically looks like a three to 500 calorie drop, sometimes a little more depending on how many total calories you're eating. So I'll see on average four or five hundred calories below what you've been currently eating. So now you cut your calories and simultaneously add this third step, which is adjust your workouts. So here's what a lot of people do. They cut their calories and they dramatically ramp up the intensity of the workouts. Don't do that.

Either A, keep your workouts the same or B, which is more likely, is you actually reduce a little bit of the volume. Because you're just not eating as many calories. Your body doesn't have the same recovery ability now with the reduced calories. if you reverse dieted yourself up to 3,000 calories, and now you're at 2,500 calories, you have 500 less calories that you can use to recover from. Okay? So what you definitely don't want to do

is simultaneously bump up the volume of your training. Now I'm doing instead of three sets of this extra, I'm doing five sets. Instead of working out three days a week in the gym, I'm working out five days a week in the gym. Don't do that at the same time. That's a total recipe. I would make it even, so we didn't change that at all, right?

So in fact, I would actually tell her to be careful of intensity and volume because we're now in a deficit. We're adding a new layer of stress. That's right. So now that we're cutting and we're not feeding the body when it was just used to feeding it, we're already adding a layer of stress. The last thing we want to do is ramp intensity up.

We were doing that on the build. When we were building and we're eating a surplus of calories, that's when I was pushing intensity. That's when I was stacking on things. Now that we're getting ready to reveal this physique, we actually want to keep the workouts the same or actually even back off a tiny bit of intensity and volume. And when you say 500 calories, what I like to do is I want to create a 500 calorie

deficit and the deficit would come from half calories, half steps. So it looked like about 250 calories and I'd add about 2,000 steps. Now that's obviously body size and everything's going to change, but roughly about that. And I know that's one of your points on here is to add steps. Yes. And so that's the way to add activity. I just want to be very clear because you may want to add activity. and one of the best ways to do this is to add steps because it's throughout the day, it's your regular day. It's not intense. So it's not taken away from recovery.

In many cases, it helps facilitate recovery. It's actually recuperative. So, and this is very easy to track nowadays. Step counters are really inexpensive. Your phone probably has one. And so if you're averaging 7,000 steps a day, bump it up to 9,000 steps a day. The very easy thing you can add to increase the calorie deficit.

So I tell you the kind of the method behind my madness on that. or why that way. I just knowing that I can only play the calorie cutting game for so long. Now, we talk on the show that, like I think a 500 calorie cut is good or a deficit, however you want to say it, is a good number.

And so I always liked, you know, being able to keep my, my competitor or a person I'm trying to cut fed, giving them somewhat of a reduction, so we move in that direction, but then also just starting to edge up activity. So I'm creating that deficit you're shooting for,

but I'm doing it with a little bit of both, so I have a little bit of runway on both ends. Like I know I can continue to go more with activity. Just 2,000 steps is in a huge ask per day. It just means actively paying attention and going after it, which is a couple walks to get 2,000 more. And then that's, okay, I'm not asking you to restrict a ton. You're just, you're cutting back a little bit on portion size

or maybe one of the meals if you were doing lots of small meals. And so it's an easy adjustment and it leaves me a lot of runway. And so that was kind of the theory or idea. with the competitors, I would do that. And so I like the idea of like a $250. Now, if I had a big guy who, like I say, I was coaching you at $4,000 plus calories. Easy to cut.

Yes, I can cut 500 calories. And like I could cut at least 500. You're not even need to add steps yet. Yes, because you're at such high color. When I start, when I'm doing this with female clients who are under 3,000 calories, I do a little bit of both because I have less of a runway. a big dude who's eating five, who has a hard time eating enough to keep his mass.

I'm like, oh, chop five, seven hundred calories right away. I don't even have to add steps and they're right away sort of delete. Right. So you're adjusting your workouts. You're not training with tons of intensity because you're cutting your calories. You're monitoring your activity, increasing your activity a little bit. The best way to do this in our experience is to monitor your steps.

Obviously, you can be active different ways, but it's just something you can track and you can see on a regular basis as subjective. Steps is a great way to do this. And here's the last thing you do. The last thing you do is add cardio. This is the last thing you do in this fat loss process. So you're cutting your calories, you're adding steps.

You can cut your calories probably a couple times through this process at 1.250 with added steps. At the time, another 250 with added steps. And then at the end, probably with the few weeks left, this is when you add your 30 minutes or whatever. Everybody usually puts that first. Everybody does this all the wrong way. That's number one first.

Everybody's the wrong way, loses a bunch of muscle and finds themselves in a very difficult. So most the research that I read around this, and this is what led me to like the strategy that I used of the final weeks of only cardio, is it only takes about two to four weeks for your body to get adapted to whatever cardiovascular training that you're doing, which is I also think this is where the whole hell week came from, why it only takes like a week of like hard training for a sport.

And that doesn't mean you're at peak condition, but like, you still get a fast, but you get a lot of it. But you adapt to game speed. You adapt really fast to cardiovascular endurance. And so because you adapt so fast, so do the fat loss results from that. So my logic behind training the clients or competitors was, let's keep moving steps through activity through the day without using any bouts of cardio. Structured cardio.

Yeah, structured cardio for as long as you can. Until just like the food thing, the feedback I would look back from Melissa, well, she comes back to me, she'd go, okay, Adam, you're having me do 16,000 steps. This is hard for me to not to get on a piece of equipment. and kind of get after it a little bit to get those steps up there. Now we start doing this. Now, when we do this,

it's ending up being somewhere between two to three weeks before peak time. So if you're getting ready for summer, this is just the final couple weeks. So if you do a really good job of what I'm talking about with calories and a little bit of steps, you inch your way from the average person

who does 6 to 8,000 steps, you know, 8,000 to 10,000 to 12,000 and 14. You start getting what I have found is common. Once you start putting over 15,000 steps or so, you need to call you. Most people, need to have some time on some equipment to do that, which is perfect because we've now been doing this for a month or well over in a month and a half to heading down this pathway. And now it's time,

okay, I can start to introduce a little bit of cardiovascular endurance training. And because it's, it's so foreign to the body. It's so novel. Your body goes, oh, my God, and it's burning. And it and it leans you out really nice. And it's the perfect way to get somebody show ready. It's a perfect way to get somebody ready for summer is to use cardio as a tool. When you, when you weren't thinking about aesthetics, how you want to look. This is not the best approach if you're trying to run a marathon or you are looking for long-of-gests. No, this is fat loss. This is not athletic training. You want the best strategy to lean out the fastest possible, the healthiest, smartest way. Then you want to use cardio as your final chisel or tool. That's how you should explain to my clients.

Right now, we're going to, we're going to use your piece of clay and I'm using the chainsaw to knock the big pieces off. And then when we get to the final couple of weeks is cardio, and that's the chiseling away at the aesthetics of the body. And that's what the final two or three weeks ago. Awesome. Now, we have a fat loss guide that's free. It's how to lose fat loss in three steps.

It's totally free. You can go to MPfatloss.com to go and check it out. You can also find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

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