Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 980: Five Steps to Your Best Body by Summer

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

Want to look great with your shirt off or wearing a bikini this summer? To reach this goal the time to start is NOW! In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin go over five steps you can take to achieve your best body by summer. Has Justin has gone full ‘Dr. Brown’ from Back to the Future? (2:16) Do the guys of Mind Pump have doppelgangers? (4:10) The War of Immersion: The attention economy & how focus is the new IQ. (7:15) The Five Most Important Steps to Your Best Body by Summer. (14:36) #1 – Learn to track your food. (16:40) #2 - Learn to track your movement. (28:15) #3 – You must eat LESS calories than what your body consumes. (40:00) #4 – PROPER training & lift weights. (49:21) #5 – The importance of having a sleep practice/routine. (57:34) People Mentioned: Coach Danny Matranga | CSCS (@danny.matranga)  Instagram Products Mentioned: March Promotion: MAPS Aesthetic is ½ off!! **Code “BLACK50” at checkout** Behind the Curve | Netflix FatSecret - Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker for Weight Loss Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, M fitness, you know, we have our fun conversation. We start up by talking about Justin's hair. Yeah, it looks so nice. It's gorgeous. You got a lot of it. Adam apparently found my doppeldinger, this is somebody who looks like me, but not quite as handsome. We talked about the Indiegogo Sex App campaign

and how focus is the new IQ. And then we get into the bulk of the episode. All we talk about in this episode are the five most important first steps you should take to get the best body by summer. If you're listening to this episode when it drops, you got about 12 weeks, which is a decent amount of time to get yourself in shape.

Follow the steps that we talk about in this episode and you'll get there in the most effective way possible. By effective, I mean, you'll get there quickly, but also long term. So you're not going to gain the way back and look all terrible after summer's over, like a lot of people do. Also this month, one of our most popular maps, fitness programs ever, not one of the most popular, 50% off. You guys have been waiting for it. We got it. Maps aesthetic is 50% off.

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and use the code black50black50 for the 50% off discount. Just in. Boy, you got so much, take your head off real quick. You don't need to podcast with your head off. Look at that hair. Skin, super white. It's, yeah, but it's good though. Oh my God.

I'm like dock from Fax of Future. Have you, what's your hair? Right, Scott. Besides white, what's your hair color? Is it brown or like a reddish brown? It used to be a really dark brown. Really? Yeah, like I remember people would think it was black for a while.

And then it just started black about it. Yeah, it's salty. Bro, you have really salty. You have so much hair though. Have you lost any? That's why I'm not mad. Yeah, like all my friends around me just thin. Yeah, thin.

I'm not gonna lie, I'd rather have gray hair right now. Yeah, cause I could color that shit. Yeah, but I won't, cause it's, then I'm just, I'm pretending. What do you mean? Well, I'm just, I'm pretending. What do you mean? Well, I'm just, I'm pretending. Yeah. You've already committed that you will not color it.

Well, because now I'm already this far, you know, like it's, it would be, yeah, unless, I was on some TV shows. You could, you could lighten, highlight. You don't need to like go black, jet black or like a solid color. I think you could do like a lighter look to it. Yeah, I thought about, you know, bleaching it, because I'm going to go on.

That's too far. Yeah, I want to go like full goose, you know, like Maverick and goose. You want to go on top of that. You want to make it white or will it turn blonde? Yeah, I think it would turn blonde. You know, it wasn't that long ago where, well, actually it was a long time ago, but in the, I look at things that are grand scale, well actually it was a long time ago, but I look at things in a grand scale, but you know, men used to wear wigs with white hair. That was a long time ago, isn't it? That's a fair question.

Yeah, it's just because of syphilis. I mean, we've moved forward from that. It was, wasn't it? You ruined my whole theory on that. I thought it was because people just like white hair. No, it's terrible. Yeah, they had problems back there. Yeah.

You noticed I got my beer going real short right now? I do, I like that. I might, I almost shaved it completely, dude. Yeah. I almost went slick. You guys hyped up my beard too much. Everybody's asking me for this like really big beard pick. I'm like, I never, it didn't get that crazy.

He did, he's the one that I have. You have to make it, you have to live it too. Now I'm like, I guess I it didn't get that crazy. I did, he did, he's the one to talk. You have to make it, you have to live it. No, I'm like, I guess I gotta let it. Yeah, I'm gonna have to grow it. Are you gonna tell people about your talk at CMBC? It's CMBC, the one he just did. Oh, that's hilarious. What, that guy is total doppelganger.

How did you get that? Did someone send it to you? I love our listeners, dude. Yeah, I open them, right? I get these, and somebody sent it to me So I can't take credit for finding that but when I saw it I was like oh shit. This is too close I want I want some of Adam and Doug and me like we need the listeners to find more of those I mean I get them quite a bit But that was the first one that made me laugh. Oh, okay, quick glance that you could see that you know

And he's talking with the mic on I I was like, a hundred percent sound. I mean, I had people actually DM me afterwards, like, oh, what did he talk on? And people didn't even get the joke. Remember when you were a kid, if someone said you look like someone else to be pissed, like, ah, as an adult, I'm like, cool. Yeah.

I'd like to meet that guy, that's handsome guy. You know what the article is actually about, it's about the, where we're moving, like, I know Gamefly is kinda like this already, but it's like the Netflix of gaming is and they I forgot it's all streaming Yeah, but that's a lot of juice. You got a stream though, but they're getting the point where they'll be able to do that right right then They say that's like the next big thing and all there's a ton of companies that are all trying to jump into it Well, because they have all the cloud storage now to where they can make it possible. Yeah, before it was, I remember

because PlayStation had their own sort of shopping cart where you could buy it and then you stream it from their own store. And it was like, but then you could only get so much. You don't get like three games and then that was it. Kids don't stand a chance, man. I am very strict with, even and as strict as I am My kids still play a lot of video games

Because it's just the way the way it is nowadays. It's just the way life is but they don't have a chance man like the games that I could play a lot of video games too, but we were not exposed to like the variety and amazing Types of games they have today. No, but we would have been just as addicted because I remember Mario Brothers, I would literally go to my friend's house because her older brother had Mario and I would just sit there watching play just because it was like I was so enamored by video games. It was crazy. Yeah, I loved watching even just people are good at it. Which is a good point that I know we tease the generation now about watching people play on YouTube, but that's just because we didn't have that shit back then, right? Well, that's just it. Oftentimes you'll talk shit about a generation as if you're, you know, you wouldn't be the same. Right. Like the odds are if you, you know,

lure into video games as a kid, you're 90% likely you're probably doing the same. The odds are if you, you know, you're into video games as a kid, you're 90% likely, you're probably doing the same. The odds are, if you were a kid today, you'd be doing what most kids do today. That's all it is. So it's, did you guys see that? I think it was a Kickstarter, or what's that other company that raises money?

Indiegogo. Indiegogo. Did you guys see that Indiegogo for the virtual, like sex girl on the video? Did you guys see that? I did. You showed me that yesterday.

I think. Bro, blew my mind. So what it is is you get this like, it looks almost like a shaker cup, but in reality, it's a, you have sex with it. It's like a pretend, but it's way more awesome. It looks like the flashlight thing. Yes.

And you turn it on, and then on your computer screen, is this AI girl, and of course they made her really hot, right? And what you do is you have sex with the flashlight thing, and it understands and picks up the speed, the depth, the everything you do with your movements, she'll react to. So you're literally my swirling move. Yep.

Yeah. Was that pickup? Yeah, that didn't pick up in real life. I'm mostly curious about it if I would even like it. I just don't think I would, but there's a part of me that it's just curious, maybe I would. Maybe I would be into that. I don't see myself getting into that.

I don't think it would be that great. I can't imagine it being, but if your girl is like, I'll let you do that and I'll hang out with you while you do it. That'd be kind of weird. Yeah, it would be weird. It would be weird. Although I'm sure I could convince Katrina to do something like that. She's like, whatever, you don't say it's a fucking robot. Yeah, she's supposed a threat. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But it raised a shit ton of money apparently. That's the future, dude. Wow.

That's gonna be weird, man. Few viewers. Yeah. I mean, that's so weird to think about, because I know they had that for like some of those cam girls and all that. Like you could interact with them if they had another device on their end.

Oh, really? Yeah, and it was like remote to where, if you know, she did something by inserting it, like you would feel it on the other end. Like same, same concept, but I was like, I thought that was like way far, like they're just like in prototype. I just imagine like, you know,

having internet problems and shit, like you know, you know, you're like, you're like, buffering, you know, you're like, fuck, you're gonna give him seconds. It's just about to go. Yeah, just like, just kill it, you know what I'm saying?

No! Hack your buddies computer, so it's like, right, like about five minutes in. Right, right, turn into your little sisters downloading some of your downstairs and fucking slows down the whole process. It's like, ah, ah, ah, ah, all of a sudden, oh, shit.

Hey, do your homework. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, hey, hey, do your homework. Ah! That's gross, man. That's the ultimate block right here. But I mean, it's gonna be weird, man. It's gonna be so, what are they calling it? It's like a war of attention right now, a war of immersion, immersion, all these tech companies. They're trying to just fight for your, what do they call the attention economy?

Have you guys heard this from before? So I was just commented on Danny's post of their day. He was talking about something. I can't remember what he was talking about with intelligence. And I was saying that, you know, they say, and I don't know, remember where I read this, that focus is the new IQ. And that, it's, and so it goes right to the point that we were talking about Elon Musk. And real soon here, we all are gonna have access to all the right answers super fast, right? So most people are gonna be pretty fucking smart.

Even if you're not yourself, you'll have access to it. So in turn, it'll be like you're that smart. The next thing will be how many people, the focus and the attention and the ability to get non-destracted from things is going to be the rule. It's gonna be everything. Right. Yeah, that and critical thinking. I don't see a lot of critical thinking anymore, too.

This is where you start wondering how the hell can people really subscribe to like flat earth and all these things that like people are just getting like duped into this like thought process. And it's like they've just lost the ability to critically think about these subjects. Like you just think that, oh yeah, maybe it could happen because the thing with conspiracy theories that fucks with human psychology is that when a conspiracy theory starts to grow,

the more you push back against it, the bigger it grows. Yeah. So the flat earth thing, everybody's like, you guys are idiots. The more you push out against that the more Like see everybody's in on it. It's told it's a conspiracy worldwide right and they just did you hold our information back There's a documentary on the flat earth. I watched it. Did you I did and you know what I thought they did a good job Only because like good job at proving it. No, no, no If you watch the whole thing and you have a critical mind you'll see that they're literally exposing all of the flaws of that train of thought.

And they literally, at the end, did experiments that failed, like miserably, like three times, and they still didn't want to believe the results they got. So it proved that the earth was, in fact, round, you know, a globe. And so what was good about it, I thought, was that they weren't like completely shitting on these people. Like, they weren't, they were showing, you know, their train of thought and like, how they got into it.

But also, like, they had a guy, there was a scientist and they had a convention, I think it was for NASA. And so they actually had a speaker come up and he was like, you know, like, instead of like immediately condemning these people, like, why don't we look at to these people as like potentially being interested in the subject matter of like, you know, physics and sciences and, you know, like, like, how do we steer these people into like sound practices of like empirical

data and get them more into the testing part of it. Because some of the people there, they're not all completely stupid. They got succumbed to this idea. Obviously not because they've got enough people to follow it. It's someone who ever is leading that theory and that idea. Probably has a very good compelling argument. It reminds me of trying to argue with someone. It just doesn't hold somebody who runs an MLM.

Like if you run the fucking thing, you've learned how to overcome all the objections that the other group is telling you is stupid. And so whoever's probably presenting the information, they've found holes in things that we've done before. And so I'm sure that's what makes it whole more important. Yeah. I just like that because it was like because it was more of a challenge. He was challenging true scientists to get them more involved in the process of why there's

peer-reviewed things. Why there's true science is always questioning results and it doesn't always replicate. Governments have known about this for a long time. And if you guys have heard of the propaganda technique, a big lie or the big lie, so Hitler knew about this. And he talked about how if you told a lie that was big enough, that people would believe it because they would believe that someone could not have the impudence

to distort the truth so infamously. So like the bigger the lie, the more likely people are to believe it. And what bigger lie can you think of than? We're not on a globe. We're on a flat earth. You know, something we just proved so outlandish. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Right.

You know what I mean? So if it was something like, you know, the earth is actually, you know, two kilometers smaller than they say it is. Everybody would be like, nah, that's bullshit. You know, the earth is actually, you know, two kilometers smaller than they say it is, everybody's like, nah, that's bullshit, you know. The earth is flat and the sun revolves around us, like, oh my gosh, that's true, you know. It's propaganda techniques, really crazy. Anyway, I wanna talk about,

I wanted to cover on this episode. I know this episode is gonna probably drop. When do we drop in this one, Doug? Is it sometime in March? Yeah, first part of March. So right around March, an April, people start to really think about, or, you know, kind of getting in shape for the summer, or getting lean. At least they should. I hate it when people are like, hey, it's summer today. I want to get lean by summer. I'm like, well,

this doesn't work that way. You should have thought about this back in March, back in March or April, at the latest. You had to pay how far away you are. So I wanna talk about just steps like in basic, I think sometimes we get lost in the complexities of what we talk about because we talk so often about health and fitness that we forget that a lot of listeners just need to hear tangible steps and things that they can do,

things that we might take for granted, but things that we 100% talk about when we meet a new client. As a personal trainer, when a client hires you, there's like three or five things that you always cover and talk about. No, I love this idea because I think, and I love that you're bringing this up now, because I think some of the things that get people into making bad decisions and the wrong ones

towards this goal is because they procrastinated and they waited too long. Because now it's a month out and it's like, okay, summer's 30 days away, and this is a question as a trainer, I used to get all the time, like, hey, what's the fastest way for me to get in shape from now till next? Immediately, it's a compromise. Exactly, so immediately, I already have to throw out a lot of things that I highly recommend that people do that are the right steps to set them up for long-term success,

to not only get them in the best shape they've ever been in their life, but also have created good habits for themselves, so they maintain that, because I don't care who's asked me to get in the best shape of their life. All of them want to keep that if they can, but the reality is most people don't. Most people go from one extreme to the other,

and so personally, I think that the number one thing for me, so when I think of like, you know, like the five steps for the best body by summertime, I'm thinking, okay, number one, the first thing that I'm doing with somebody is like the first thing I do with every client I take on is I want them first to track what they're currently doing.

And I don't want them to impress me with, you know, oh, I hate this, it's a salad today, Adam, and I mean, you know, don't go out of your way to eat really good, because you've started tracking. No, track what you pretty much normally do. This is huge. This is huge. This is always the first thing that you wanna talk about

because people simply do not know. Like most people right now, besides the fitness fanatics, most everyday people who are even listening to this podcast, if I could talk to you personally and ask you, how many calories are you eating a day? How many grams of protein are you eating a day? How many grams of carbohydrates and fats?

Do you know how many calories you're burning or what your movement looks like? If I ask you these questions, at best you're gonna give me estimations. You're gonna be like, well, I probably eat around 2,000 calories. I probably eat around this many grams. The funny thing is, you literally have no idea.

In fact, they've done studies on this time and time again, and I've experienced this as a trainer as well. When people are always way off, what they're actually doing. Way always. I can't believe how many times I've had clients tell me, I don't eat that many calories. We start tracking, it's like, you're eating 3,000.

Including myself, I want to put that out there. Like, I mean, and that's how I, that's, I think that's when like the light bulb went off for me, where this became like mandatory. Like before, I was like this. I was the trainer who would print a meal plan off. I would do your body weight, I would plan your goal, I would guesstimate based off of that,

about where your macro nutrients should be, put you at a 500 deficit, and then I would just, then I write this meal plan at, say follow it. But what I realized was, one, everybody's at a different starting point. It doesn't matter if you have, if you're 55 and weigh X amount of pounds

and you have a friend who's exactly the same, metabolism's completely different, so your starting points should be different. That's right. I also realized when I started to track my food, every time I go back to tracking, it's never exactly what I think. So if you guys were to ask me challenge me because I'm not tracking right now, like Adam, guesstimate where your macros are right now. And I would just kind of rattle them off and doing the best I could to do that. 100%. I'm wrong.

Yeah. It's going to be closer than the average person. Right, I would think that I should be a lot close to the average person. It's not a matter if, if I'm wrong or right. It's a matter of how wrong I am. And that is why this part I think is, it's very revealing. Very, very revealing.

Especially with the, with the new person or the new client or somebody who's never done this before because they, they don't know that they don't know. They literally have no idea. Now, when I first started personal training, this was a literally have no idea. Now, when I first started personal training, this was a lot harder to do. Like, when I first started training and I would teach people to track,

we used to have a nutrition book that they had. Calorie King. Yep, and it had common foods, Cal, you know, how many calories, how many grams of this that and the other per ounce. So three ounces of chicken breast as this and these foods have that and then they would have some popular

Food, you know restaurants and stuff that you could go to and so what people used to do is they would way things Look in the book write it down add it up themselves. It was a lot more work. Well today Way easier. Oh god. It is so easy. It's so much easier now There are so many apps you can get fat secret is a good one that you can literally Spal that's another one. You can you enter in your food Enter in what you're eating and at the end of the day you'll know what you wait and literally when we say track your food That's all you're doing right now all you're doing right now is Entering in what you're eating and now this may require that you weigh your food

And measure it at first. And this is important because most people, if you ask them to tell you what three ounces of chicken looks like, they actually have no idea. In fact, most people would, you know, are underestimating. So they say, oh, that looks like three ounces of chicken or overestimate.

And it's actually more like five or six ounces, right? So, weigh your food, start tracking, and start paying attention to, you know, what is going in your mouth, including what you drink. And this right here is going to be the information that you're going to need to work on your diet nutrition. If you don't do this, if you don't track, it's gonna be very difficult. Because what ends up happening when you don't track is the way people tend to get leaner

when they don't track is they just cut huge swaths of food out of their diet, like, okay, I'm just not eating carbs, you know, or I'm just gonna skip this meal, or I'm not gonna do this, which isn't a very good long-term strategy. You're just not giving yourself lots of information. Yeah, it's a lot bigger. Yeah, of a thing you were trying to implement

versus just finding a couple of those things. I remember going through this process with one of my clients and he had no idea that just snacking on nuts accumulated so many calories for him. And because he thought that, well, maybe some of the desserts or maybe some of the drinks were like, you know, the biggest offenders, but really, we did the math and looked and it's like, oh my God, like you're getting so many calories

just from nuts and that was just one thing you can easily fix. Well, this is why too I like to at the very beginning is, okay, so now I've got you to track. And again, I don't want you trying to impress me just eat the way you eat. You got to track what you're doing, right? Normally. And then the main things I'm having them look at, I'm having them look at protein, fats,

carbs, fiber and sugar. And those are the main things that I'm having a client look at because in my opinion, these are the areas that we have the greatest offenders. Either protein, typically I'm under-consuming. That's what I get a lot of clients that don't get enough of protein. Fat, healthy fats, a lot of people miss on that. A lot of people have a hard time getting your good fats. Carbohydrates, probably the most common one to be over-consumed, eating way more than any two, especially from where they're getting the carbohydrates. And then total fiber. Fiber is a lot of time, especially if you're not somebody who's eating a lot of processed foods that's infused. Fiber getting fiber through whole foods. Sometimes this is

challenging for people, so teaching them that and then sugar is probably the most abused one out of all of them is kind of seeing that. And so once you kind of look at it, I don't throw the whole thing at a client. I will take... Yeah, you don't say eat this much protein fat, call it a fire, eliminate this, add that. Right, and so if you're a person listening right now, you could take your weight, your sex, and put it in and say, what is the optimal amount of protein I should eat,

or what is the optimal amount of fat I should eat, and you could get that number for yourself. And then you should compare that, especially with the essential ones, proteins and fat, right? Those want those two, you want to at least know that you're... Now, why are those essential? It's important.

We communicate that. Well, essential means we would die without you. You need them, right? That's what you mean. That essential, like, you know, oh, everything else is important. Everything's important, but proteins and fats, you have to have. Right. And so that they take a priority in targeting in my opinion.

So if these are the most important of the macronutrients, let's first address those. Let's first make sure you're getting adequate protein and adequate fats. And that's all I'll have them really focus on at first. So you just pick like one or two things. Yeah, one or two things and start, and what's kind of neat is what I've found over time,

even though I wouldn't over time, even though I wouldn't over complicate this for a client, is we may I have somebody who's under consuming on the proteins and fats are not hitting their targets, they're overdoing it on the sugar and the carbs. And when I get them to just focus on getting what their body needs for protein and fats, it naturally reduces the sugar and the carbs. It's just, it's just a beautiful thing that it works and you're not having them worry about it, but you're just like, hey, we are kind of grossly under consumer, you're only getting seven.

This is common having this conversation with a female client of mine. You're only getting 60 to 70 grams of protein a day. I'd like you to be more 90 to 120-ish. So let's, you know, and get them focused on that. And all of a sudden, their sugar goes down because now they're having to go after meats and foods that have higher protein in them.

And so you kind of see this natural balance. I think it's important to talk about good sources of the of the macronutrients. Food quality. And I forget about this too. I forget about this a lot, you know, because we podcast and I don't train as many people, but I used to have to communicate this to almost every single client. Because then would ask me like, okay, we're good sources of protein. and I don't train as many people, but I used to have to communicate this to almost every single client. Then would ask me, okay, we're good sources of protein.

All right, good sources of protein are animal meats. So, you know, all your foul chicken, turkey, your beef, you have lamb meat, fish, high quality dairy is a great source of protein if you are not intolerant to dairy. So those are probably your best high sources of high protein, where you'll be able to get protein pretty easily. Fats, we can talk about fats.

Coconut oil, a great source of fat. High quality meats have good sources of fat, avocado. Very, very good vegetable source of fat. All of oil, that's a good one. For people who eat nuts, really nuts is a good one. Nuts and seeds. Nuts and seeds. Nuts and seeds are very, very good healthy source of fat.

Dairy fat can be okay if you don't have it in tolerance to them. Carbs. Carbs, I like to tell people to stay away from processed forms of carbohydrates. So in a box or a wrapper? Yeah, and the reason why I do that, it's not because they're inherently unhealthy although processed foods tend to be less healthy than whole natural foods. But the main reason why I say stay away from processed carbs,

it's just because they're so palatable that they tend to increase your desire to eat more food. So potatoes, yams, rice, I mean, these are the areas that I'm on fruit, yeah, fruit, I'm, these are the areas that I'm on fruit. Yeah, fruit. I'm pushing clients towards that direction of trying to get your carbohydrate. Instead of like bread, you know, pasta, cookies, crackers, those that. And what's great is if you've shifted their thought process into targeting the healthy

protein or the the right amount of protein they should be intaking and getting it through whole foods and then targeting the fats that their body needs and getting that through whole foods. And then I'll just saying, hey, eat, you know, rice, potatoes, yams, fruit. It's kind of, it's kind of neat how that everything kind of matched without them having to get crazy. I know. Oh, way this, you have to do this. It's just like target those things. It's amazing how that will start to balance out. And when I'm doing this with clients at the very beginning, so this is your first week or two, even, I want you eating when you definitely feel hungry.

Like I don't want to be really trying to restrict food yet. I'm wanting to kind of see what's your body's natural signs of, you know, hey, I'm hungry, I want to eat now. Go ahead and eat it. If you're eating from the, if you're hitting your protein, you're hitting your fat, you're choosing those types of carbohydrates, I'm and eat it. If you're eating from the, if you're hitting your protein, you're hitting your fat, you're choosing those types of carbohydrates, I'm happy with you consuming whenever you're pretty much hungry

and kind of tracking that and seeing where homeostasis is for your body. I think the whole key with tracking is just, at the end of, and I typically will tell a client to track four between one to three weeks. And once we have all the data in front of us, we can sit down and look at it. And usually what it tells me is how many calories you're consuming on a regular basis, which

typically they're consuming it around maintenance, unless they're gaining weight through that period. But usually they're about maintaining. So I'm like, okay, I see here that you average, 1800 calories a day. So that tells me that you're probably, that's probably your maintenance. And then we see your protein intake fats and carbs and we can sort of just do those But we need to have that data. That's why tracking is so important This is also why it's important to have people track their movement so that they can see How much I'm actually moving? You know when they first came out with really good Movement trackers like the body bug remember when the body bug first came came out? Yeah. By Apex? Game changer for me. Here's what blew me, this blew me away. I remember we first got them and you know, at

this time I wasn't with 24th fitness, but I did work with Apex and they had sent us body bugs. I remember giving one to at the time, my wife at the time and she put it on and we were tracking her movement. And so she was doing 30 minutes, 30 to 45 minutes of cardio Monday through Friday. At her work, they had a little, you know, a little gym that had cardio equipment.

So she'd go in there, at lunch and do about 30 to 45 minutes. And what blew me away was how much more calories she burnt on the weekend, or how much more movement she did on the weekend than she did during the week. And she more calories she burned on the weekend, or how much more movement she did on the weekend than she did during the week. And she didn't work out on the weekend. And so when I looked at this, because what it would do,

the body bug was kind of cool, so it would give you this general amount of calories that it would say you were burning. Well, Bumiaway was that, here she is working out Monday through Friday, but because she did, because all she did was that cardio and the rest of the day, she's sitting down at her desk Saturday and Sunday, she's not doing cardio, but she's

up cleaning the house, she's going to the mall, washing the car, whatever. She was burning more calories on those. That's a blue meatway. That's when you started to compare and contrast workouts to just everyday lifestyle functions. So, like, going out, doing doing things like chores around the house, you know, being outside, hiking, like all these such of things, it started to really add up throughout the day because, you know, this is a consistent movement that they're showing throughout the day, which would add up. I'll tell you what blew me away was the discrepancy between certain

days. Oh yeah. So, you know, and I remember seeing, so I got Sundays. When the body bug first came out, I tested on myself first. And what I found just that blue Me Away was that on Monday, when I would book 10, 12 clients all day long, and I'd be training all these clients,

whether I worked out or not, was like a 5,000 calorie burn day. And then Sunday, when I sleep in till 10, I watch a little TV or watch football during football season, I could only, I would sometimes only burn 25 to 2600. So you're talking about a 2500 calorie difference. And also what blew me away was guess when I would probably make the worst choices, lounge it around watching, fucking football, pizza,

or beer, or just cheese. Or whatever, pancakes and syrup and whatever in the morning for that Sunday. And so what I was realizing is the days that I would make the worst decisions nutritionally were on some of the worst days that I could do that when my body wasn't needing any, that was gonna utilize a bunch of that,

all that load of sugar and calories that I was getting. And so that to me, and when you talk about numbers like, you know, and I know there's a generic number, but I still like to use it to give people the visual that 3,500 calories basically equals a pound of fat. That in a single day, if I ate the same way that I was eating on Mondays to just support all the movement I was doing, if I ate that same way on Sundays, I could potentially add a whole pound of fat. He's a Monday. In one day, and that's staying consistent with my eating.

That's not saying that I overdid it, too. And that's why it's alarming. Yeah, and that's why tracking movement is so important because when you track your movement, you can see like, oh wow, you know, I went for a walk earlier today, and I thought I had all this activity, but really I wasn't doing much at all because,

and this is what ends up happening. Like if you ask people, hey, are you active? They'll be like, yeah, I work out every single day, not realizing that the rest of the day really counts a lot more. And so tracking movement is so important. Like I give, and you can, by the way, you don't need to use these complicated machines. I was just going to say, so there is just your health kit.

If you have an iPhone, that is a pedometer. Like you have ways to track your movement without having to go by a fit bit without having to go by these fancy watches, all these different things, which, I mean, for me, I like having that, if I'm really on a kick of like, I wanna learn patterns, I wanna see it, you know, visibly like where my movement is and then kind of adjust accordingly, I don't tend to stick with it for very long, but I do wanna know what that looks like.

Well, I'm glad you brought up the point of not having to spend money on the big trackers because here's the thing that ends up happening. This is one of the most annoying things that I have to answer via DM and to questions when it comes to these trackers because here's the thing that ends up happening. This is one of the most annoying things that I have to answer via DM and to questions when it comes to these trackers is which is more accurate and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the iPhone is the shittiest and the Fitbit 2000 is the fucking best. As long as it's consistent. Yeah, you're just looking for consistency. It's the same thing as like comparing different forms of body fat testing.

It doesn't matter which one you decide to use. Don't get hung up on the actual number and be like, oh, it says I only take 4,000 steps, but this thing says I take 7,000. So one of them's way off. It doesn't fucking matter. Stick with one of them and use that one all the time because all you're trying to do is create new behaviors.

So that's the first step is to track for that week, and then I tell a client, okay, whatever track you're using doesn't fucking matter. So you track for that week, and then we divide it by seven, and go, okay, you're averaging 6,800 steps a day. Okay, so we go into week two, I'm barely gonna move that needle up. So I tell that client, like, okay.

What did you do 500 or 1000? Yeah, 500 to 1000 at first. Just I just want to and I want them doing just say, hey, pay attention to your steps for the day. Make sure you don't get anything less than 7,200. Don't go out of your way to blow that way out of the water. Just keep an eye on it throughout the day and make sure that you stay on pace to always hit over 75.

I had a client who used the step tracker and we, they wanted to do 30 minutes of cardio every single day and they hadn't done any cardio at this point. They were just getting started. And so that's what I did. I had them track their steps and I said, okay, here's what I want you to do. And this, by the way, is something I learned later on in my career. And I was far more successful clients using the strategy. And so what I would say to them is I said, look, I don't want you to do 30 minutes a cardio every day. All I want you to do is park at the end of the parking lot at work and then during work when you have to go to the bathroom, go to the bathroom on the opposite side of the building.

That's it. I don't want to see anything else. And he actually just from doing that and people think that's stupid. Oh, walking further, I'm parking further, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, you know, walking a little further, you know, the bathroom, whatever. He, it all added up to more than the 30 minutes of cardio, whatever. Now, here's why it's more, that's more effective. It's not because it was more calorie burning,

although it was, it's because 30 minutes of cardio is something you're taking out of your day. You have to drive to the gym or change your clothes, get on the cardio, do your cardio, then you're done with your cardio, you're sweaty, change again, go back to work. This was just this regular life. Like all you gotta do is take your regular life

and inject a little bit more activity throughout it, and it all adds up. I mean, think about it. 30 minutes of cardio, all at once, is the equivalent of six five minute walks throughout the whole fucking day, which if you do that throughout the whole day, you don't even notice it. You don't even notice that you just did a bunch more activity. And that's the key is that we're trying to create behaviors here.

We're not in a race to what's the fastest way to get you to the burn X amount of calories. Like, no, of course, sitting, getting on a treadmill blasting yourself for 30 minutes is the fastest way to get you to burn X amount of calories? Like, no, of course, getting on a treadmill, blasting yourself for 30 minutes is the faster way. But what's sustainable for the rest of your life is just learning to incorporate habits. I mean, and I know on previous episodes, I've talked a lot about this. How, you know, Katrina and I make these habits now of on days when we know, like, especially like a Sunday,

when we do sleep in, we already know that we're losing an hour to two hours of Movement that we're used to having in a weekday and because of that We always make a conscious effort to go for a nice stroll those days Like it's like if there's a day. I'm not gonna miss Sunday's stroll Like we are gonna take it either at the end of the day and walk extra further with the boys or go by ourselves and just incorporate that and what's beautiful Is if you're if you're in a relationship or you have a partner or you want to use that as your time alone, like you can also make it into

like killing two birds with one stone. We're feeding two birds of stone. That's what I'm talking about. Sorry, it's good. All right, thanks, Peter. Right, so it's something that I'm also, wow, this is improving my relationship because I'm carving off 30 minutes of walking

with my partner where we don't have any electronics, we're just spending time with each other. It sparks good communication, it keeps us very in tune with each other, oh, and by the way, now I'm getting an additional 1000 to 2000 steps. That's my new title. That's funny, you bring that up, because I was thinking of how to interject that,

because the biggest thing that I found, like I was trying to incorporate more cardio, more steps, more movement to get in and realize, like I was getting the most amount of movement when I was cleaning, when I was contributing, when I was outside doing stuff outside my house to get things all in order. And it's like, let's take our selfishness

around going to the gym and getting in self-improvement. Let's take some of that and benefit the people around you. You know, it's like a crazy concept, but you know, this, I could literally do what I need to accomplish, but also benefit my relationship, benefit my family, and just kind of bring everybody into it.

But when you track, and this is why it's so important, again, it's taking you from the unconscious and competent stage to becoming conscious of all of these things, to becoming more aware. You know, this may change the trips that you take. You know, like, if Jessica and I are talking about something we wanna do together and enjoy, and I track my movement and I'm aware of it,

and I know I'm not moving much, that may dictate what we do, and I may say, hey, let's go to the city and walk around the city, which is a fucking great time. We have a great time doing it, but I've injected this activity into, you know, something else I did with the other thing.

I had a client who did this once. I had a client, I told her, I said, hey, there's what I want you to do. Stop using the downstairs bathroom. If you have to go to the bathroom, go upstairs. That's all. Do you know how much the increase are steps on a daily basis?

By like a few hundred. It was nothing. It was really nothing. It was literally, you're going to the bathroom anyway, rather than using the downstairs bathroom, just use the one upstairs that's furthest away from you. I got to use the one outside. Yeah, you got to use the bathroom. I've done things with that. I think I've shared this in the podcast a long time ago too,

where I used to have, I used to get a book of stickers that were just colored circles. And I did each color had a different meaning for it. So like, you know, blue is squats, you know, reds, pushups, something else is pull-ups, whatever, right? And they would, I would have them stick it at different places like the refrigerator one goes, the mirror and the bathroom and other one goes, the TV, another one goes and it's like, okay, when you see that dot, when it passes your vision and you make contact with it and you see it,

like at that moment, do five of these. Like that's it, like I'm not trying to get you to do a half hour workout plus that, it's like do five squats, do five pushups. And it's amazing. You put those dots around the house where you pass on a regular basis, you just get in the habit. It makes such a huge difference because you're talking about, you know, you're doing

three to five pushups when you pass a part of your house that ends up turning into 30 to 50 pushups throughout the day. You do them all at once. It's a crazy workout. You do them spread out throughout the day. It takes no time. And it starts to become a part of your behavior. And that's even a more extreme one.

I mean, I was just talking about just trying to move a little bit more and being aware of your movement. Now that they are tracking their food intake and they're tracking their movement, then you gotta start taking steps, right? Now we talked about increasing activity, taking those steps, but we Now we talked about increasing activity, taking those steps, but we didn't really talk too much about what steps to take with food.

And if you're trying to get in shape for summer, most people are thinking about getting leaner, right? Most people are like, okay, I want to get leaner for the summer. There's one thing that you cannot get around. I don't care what kind of diet you're on. I don't care if it's low carb or low fat or vegan or carnivore. At the end of the day, if you want to get leaner, you have to eat less calories than your body burns. That's the bottom line. It's a lot of physics. You can't get around it. But now that you're tracking your food and you know how many calories you're consuming, now you know how many calories to consume in order to lose body fat.

As far as a cut is concerned, I don't know how much you guys like to cut clients out first. Well, this depends, right? So, there's some things we have to address before I just allow someone to go into a cut, right? First of all, you have to be, your metabolism has to be prepared for that, in my opinion. So, if we're getting ready now for summertime, I have a client and that we track their food and we find out they're only eating 1100 calories, I don't want to restrict anymore calories.

They're, they, they, yeah, we're going to go right. So we are us and that is unhealthy. Right. So we're actually going, I'm still going to do all the other things we said, creating more movement, tracking your food, good habits, but now instead of us restricting calories right now, I'm going to increase a little bit of, of habits, but now instead of us restricting calories right now, I'm going to increase a little bit of healthier, better calories trying to get their calorie and take up with pairing that with strength training, because if they're strength training,

you're trying to get their body to work. Right, I need them to speed their metabolism up a little bit, and I'm hoping that because I've created a couple new habits of moving a little bit more, that the additional calories aren't gonna be stored as fat because I'm getting them to move a little bit more. So that's kind of how I negate the calorie increase if you're really, really low. Now if you're in a healthy place and you're you know you're not somebody who's eating low calories, you know you've been eating like a slob for the last three months or since Christmas. I've heard that word in a long time. You know who you are. If you're eating like that, then I actually don't really like to cut more than

about 500 calories, especially if they're doing a good job of also slowly moving up the movement. That's what I see. That's what you're already creating a nice thing. I've noticed if I go lower, or excuse me, if I do more than 500 calorie deficit, so if I take someone to a thousand, which is the most that I'll typically take anybody,

at about a thousand or right about 700, they start to feel it, they start to feel the hunger, it starts to become very, they start to be dramatic. Yeah, they feel like they're dieting, you know what I mean, really, really hard. And not to mention very few people have such a healthy metabolism that they're, they're, they're actually

above 2,000, 3,000 calories higher than a good place for them to be, so you don't have a lot of room to cut. So, if you get somebody who's only at eating 2,500 calories and you cut them 1,000 right out the gates, they're already down to 1,500. What do you go after their first plan? So it does really matter where they're eating. This is also something that you can Google. Like, what's a healthy amount of calories somebody at this size of weight should be eating?

And you can get some pretty good ideas. Where do you like to see your male and female clients at before you cut them? A generic number? Yeah, just the average person. Because, you know, I have my numbers for like, people who work out a lot and a lot of stuff. And then I have my numbers. A generic number I like, my girls to be around 2,500. And I like my guys to be around 3,500. Okay. So and a lot of stuff and then I have my numbers. A generic number I like my girls to be around 2500 and I like my guys to be around 3500. Okay.

So a minimum of those numbers. Like I've got, I've had women I've had up into 3000 before and that high and I've had guys that well above 4, 5000 before. But that's about as kind of low as I want you to be. If you're, that's a pretty good metabolism. No it is. That's a health that, so that's where I want you to be if you're... That's a pretty good metabolism. No, it is. That's a health that's where I want you to be. So if I get you as a female client at 2000

and that's where you're maintaining, I actually would prefer to build your metabolism up before I just start cutting you for the, especially right now, for planning this right now before the summer and I'm trying to do this to healthy and right way. Well, they'll have technically about 12 weeks technically, right? Yeah, it's a good amount of time.

So the first four or five weeks, I'm really trying to balance their diet out, get strength growing, build some muscle up, hopefully boost their calories up to 2,500 to then to where I can then go back the other direction. Yeah, because at the end of the day, you cut 500 underneath what you're burning. That's going to equate to maybe a pound of body fat, loss a week generally, but if your metabolism is speeding up, it could be a little faster. But I don't like to cut women. I don't like to ever get a woman's calories below 1500.

That's the lowest typically I'll let a female get to, except for maybe real short periods of time. And man, I don't like to get them below 2000. That's the old, that's like the lowest I'll ever let them get. And that's why I've made another point about 2500 for my business. Because they only gives me two cuts, right? They only gives me a 500 drop and then another 500 drop. And you know, it only takes their body about two or three weeks

before they normally start to plateau from a calorie restriction like that. Yeah, because what you don't want to do is you don't want to end up in a situation where, you know, here you are, you're following our advice, you're tracking your movement, you're tracking your nutrition, you're tracking your nutrition. And now you're like, cool, I'm gonna cut,

I have 12 weeks to get lean for summer. At the end of this cut, you're eating 1,100 calories a day. You're in a tough position now, right? You're in a tough position, what you're doing, you're setting yourself up for potential rebound. And what's interesting about rebound is typically, the type of behavior

that rebound looks like is people don't typically come out of super low calories and come out of them real slow. Usually they don't work that way. Usually they go real low calories, summer's over. I can't take this anymore. I need more food. And then they quickly ramp up their food. Yes. And what they gonna be able to get fat cells in your body. And you're gonna be able to get fat cells in your body. And you're gonna be able to get fat cells in your body. And you're gonna be able to get fat cells in your body. And you're gonna be able to get fat cells in your body.

And you're gonna be able to get fat cells in your body. And you're gonna be able to get fat cells in your body. And you're gonna be able to get fat cells in your body. And you're gonna be able to get fat cells in your body. And you're gonna be able to get fat cells in your body. And you're gonna be able to get fat cells in your body. And you're gonna be able to get fat cells on your body and we're not sure if those ever go away. So you're actually... I mean, you're telling your body you're in a state of famine and you need to pack away more stored energy

as much as possible. What's happening is, and the theory is, is that because you were sold, let's say you were 1100 calories, right? You dieted, your metabolism was slow to begin with. You cut it down to 1100. Summer's over, like, fuck this, I can't do this anymore. And you start eating 2,200 to 2,300 calories,

which is easy. So for people who are like, I wouldn't jump that much. No, no, no. It's really easy to eat an additional 1,000 calories. It's a piece of cake. Literally, a piece of cake. So if you go, if you did that, your body, because it went from solo to so much higher,

what it's doing is it's setting itself up to be able to store more energy and capture more energy in the future. And the way it does that is by adding fat cells. It is literally preparing you for the next round of low calorie and high calorie. So that next time, boom, I could store those extra calories. That's why it's so important that you do this the right way. But it is important to know that in order to lose body fat, you have to be in a deficit.

Even if you eat super healthy food, if your body's burning 2,000 calories and you're eating 2,000 calories, you're not going to really lose any body fat. Now, here's a good question I get a lot. What should people focus on cutting, what macro nutrient, proteins, fats, or carbohydrates? Where do you typically throw, or direct your clients? Well, typically carbohydrates. Because that's the most commonly abused one, right?

So it's rare that I have somebody who just overeats protein, and I need to restrict that, or overeats fat, and protein satiates for the most part, and fat as well. So it's like, for me, it's an easier transition than the opposite where, you know, like, you're just, you're eliminating the protein intake or the fat intake. So for me, it's like, it just just starting to kind of,

like, taper down a bit on the carbohydrate intake as usually the first approach. Yeah, now low carbohydrate is 50 grams, I would say, or lower, although, you know, active people can go, can be considered low carb much higher. But for the average person, I typically don't ever bring anybody's carbs lower than 50 to 75 unless we're doing some kind of a keto diet. And that's not all the time. I do cycle people's carbohydrates.

So this is another important thing. What might actually help you with your calorie deficit is to have some days that are higher calorie and some days that are lower calorie, but overall have it average out to the deficit you're lower. I like that a lot, especially when I'm actually not trying to cut very much. I just have like lower carb days and the days that they're not moving as much. So this all goes back into why it's so important to track and kind of seeing what a week looks like.

And then if I'm trying to find a way that I'm gonna restrict calories, like the day I'm gonna do, it's not gonna be the day where I asked him to do squats with me or I told him to train maps and a ball, it's gonna be, oh, a trigger day, or maybe a day of rest, that I'm gonna have them scale back on the carbohydrates and take what a good day for you to be lower calories.

Cause I think doing a lower calorie, especially if you're not already in a high calories, on a day that you are pushing the body real hard, is not ideal for you right now, especially when you're trying to also build your metabolism. There's a lot of the people that are wanting to go into a cut right now. I really think that they should be more heavily focused on how they're training. Right, right. I think that, I think that this is the area where most people make a mistake. They what they do is they decide they have an X amount of time till they wanna be in shape.

They restrict calories and they do cardio and they do high intensity training. And I think all of them are the worst decision they can make. It's so funny. So when you do diet alone, you'll burn body fat and muscle. When you do workout alone, especially if you do it the wrong way, you might not burn that much body fat and you'll affect your muscle. Sometimes you'll even lose muscle if you do it the wrong way.

When you combine proper exercise with a proper calorie deficit diet, when you combine those two, here's what ends up happening. Most if not all the way you lose is body fat. And oftentimes you maintain or sometimes even gain muscle, especially if you're a beginner. That is a beautiful scenario because if you go into deficit of calories and you're building muscles at the same time, you're actually speeding up your metabolism, which means that what is a 500 calorie deficit today naturally turns into a 700 calorie deficit tomorrow, which means you can increase your calories throughout your diet and still lose body fat.

And I've done this many, many times. Well, I have someone start off up 1500 calories and throughout the process of proper training, I move their calories up to 1700, 1800, 2000. The body fat loss is at the same rate. They're still losing body fat, but yet they're consuming more talent This is also that's such a great point. This is also why when we're the way I'm deciding where the calories are gonna be is not Dictated by our our weight loss on the scale up or down because in a perfect world I know that I got a hold of you and I'm training with you now and you weren't really training before

I know I'm sending a signal to your body to build muscle and so I actually want, I'd rather see your scale stay the same and stay there than actually see a dip to three pounds every single week even though your goal is to lose 15 pounds of fat. If I know that I'm increasing your volume of training you you weren't training before, now you're lifting weights properly, and I've got you eating whole natural foods, and you're making better food choices, I actually like to see a scale stay the same. Because then I know I'm getting a pretty close to an even

exchange here where, yeah, we're losing a pound or so of body fat, but we're also adding about a pound of muscle. And so you're kind of... I just had a client right now. I had bumped her calories, 200 calories, and she was all freaked out because the scale went about a pound of muscle. And so you kind of, I just had a client right now, I had bumped her calories, 200 calories. And she was all freaked out because the scale went up a pound and I said, now relax, it's probably water, whatever. And she goes and gets body fat tested, okay?

After three weeks of 200 more calories, her body weight actually stayed the same. She went down one and a half percent body fat and she was tripping out that that had happened. I'm like, well, you're feeding your muscle, which sped up your metabolism. That metabolism boost actually, not only offset the calories that we ate,

but actually superseded it, and you lost more body fat. The best way to work out for fat loss is no joke. Build muscle. Build muscle. You want to lift weights traditionally. Do a set rest. Do a set rest. You want to lift weights traditionally. Do a set rest. Do a set rest.

You want to, because what you're trying to do, you're trying to offset the signal that you're sending with your lower calories. You're trying to balance it out. It's funny because this high intensity, you know, do lots of cardio type workout. You know what's a good diet to eat when you're doing that workout?

A high calorie diet. Because those workouts are great for stamina. Forget about burning body fat. Now, in the short term, they're effective. And when I say short term, I mean weeks. Right, a week or two. Yeah, I'm talking weeks. I'm not talking, you know, longer than a few weeks.

So when you're doing those kind of workouts, really, the only time I prescribe, like those types of workouts, is when clients are trying to build stamina. And the way I feed them is, eat more. I'm not putting you on low calorie and having you do a shit ton of that type of activity because we're just setting the stage for a metabolic rate that I work down. So I'm going to preserve muscle as we're losing body fat. You know, going through that process because you are going to have to restrict your calories. But what can I do to preserve my muscles is to lift weights.

And that's why that's such a big thing to focus on. But everybody, not everybody, but most people get that wrong. They wanna do everything at once to burn as much calories as possible in the quickest amount of time possible. And what we're just signaling to our bodies is that, oh, we're too heavy.

We need to waste away all of this mass. Well, you just get rid of it. This is also why the way I recommend cardio is different now to than what it was when I first started as a trainer. So even though you're somebody who wants to lose body fat, I'm not actually recommending you to do any sort of traditional cardio right now. I'm referring back to our steps, right?

So if I've got 12 weeks till summertime, and I'm week over week, increasing your steps, my goal is to get you to keep increasing steps through behavior through normal behavior so that you're parking your car far away like Southside, walking the bathroom, take a walk with your wife, walk the dogs an extra time, get up a half hour earlier, go for a stroll in the morning, stay in your night with a walk for 10 minutes after you're done with your lift and your workout. I'm trying to create all these little habits to keep increasing the steps week over week

until which is inevitable. There will come a point where and all clients get to this point with me where they go, Adam, it's really tough for me to get 22,000 steps in a day without just getting on the treadmill for 30 minutes and at least knocking out two or three thousand of those steps really quick.

That is like how I have them introduce cardio. Is I sure? Most people you probably don't even need to. Right, most don't even get there. But there are some and my competitors tend to be the ones that are doing that because I'm pushing their limits a little bit further and faster, where I'm itching them up like in bigger chunks than just a thousand steps. I'm pushing them to 4,000 steps every time I tell them I want more steps. And so eventually, yes, they get to a point where they're like, man, Adam, it's really hard to get that many steps without spinning one hour on some days on the treadmill. I'm like, great, that's what I want you to do. Here's the attitude that you want to take with exercise. Don't take the calorie burning attitude with your workouts. Stop that right now because it is not benefiting you in the long term. Instead, look at your workouts

as ways to improve your performance and whatever you're training for. So, I'm either training for strength or I'm training for stamina or I'm training for endurance or I'm training for flexibility. The diet is what helps the fat loss. Now, you want to combine a type of training to offset the potential negatives of your diet. So, if what are the potential negatives of your diet. So, if what are the potential negatives of a high calorie diet? I need to be able to burn off these calories with lots of high intensity type activity, and so maybe cardio and that type of stuff

works plus it fuels my stamina. What am I trying to offset with a low calorie diet? A slower metabolism. I'm going to try and build muscle. So look at your workouts like, I am training for types of performance. That's it. Not that I'm trying to get leaner or do that kind of stuff.

I'm trying to build performance. Diet helps me get leaner. How do I offset the negatives of my diet? Strength training offsets the negatives of a calorie deficit. It is by far the best way to exercise. If you're trying to get lean, I recommend everybody resists his train.

But really when it comes to that burn tons of calories, cardio type workouts, that's for stamina, and that's what I'll recommend. And I'll typically recommend people eat more calories with that to fuel the stamina building, you know what I'm saying? I'm avoiding cardio at all costs for as long as I can with a client, just because I've never met somebody who's loves to get up and do an hour of running on the treadmill every single day of their life. And if that's you, that's you. But for the most part, it's a new thing that we're introducing in their lives.

So I want to create new habits and behaviors through walking. And then I'm going to introduce the cardio. If I introduce it, it's either going to be one, the list, which is, you know, your low intensity steady state, you're kind of cruising on there. You're just walking very slow pace for a half hour and hour to get those steps up. Or post workout, I'm letting you do like a 12 to 15 minute cardio hit session, but that's not, you're not doing that

until you've progressed the steps up, naturally just through walking throughout your day, and you've now reached a point where you're struggling to get those steps in without adding some sort of cardio in there. If you've slowly progressed that way, you're gonna be in a much better place than if you come out the gate and start prescribing yourself cardio.

Now, I do have one more thing I wanna cover and this is a factor that I almost never talked about with my clients for most of my training career and it did not become evident until later on, sleep. Yeah, I learned the importance of that later on, and boy, did that make a difference in my clients? And the science supports, like, if your sleep is bad, if it's off,

if you're not sleeping enough, you will eat more food, you'll crave the wrong kinds of food, you'll reduce your body's ability to adapt to exercise, so you end up building less muscle, burning more body fat, you end up not doing those things. So it actually makes everything so much more difficult. Yeah, you're fighting yourself. Like internally. If you're not fully recovered and you're bringing that same workout, the next day, that's

just going to accumulate. That whatever stress you're bringing in is just going to keep compiling. Yeah, it's funny. I was watching this documentary on sleep and the scientist made such a great point. He says, look, he says evolution has done a very, very good job of getting rid of things that are not beneficial to humans or things that are detrimental. And he says, if evolution could have gotten rid of sleep, it would have done so a long time ago.

Cause think about it. When you're sleeping, you're super vulnerable to attack. You're not doing any work, you're not finding food, you're not trying to get shelter. You are literally this like unconscious piece of meat laying on the floor. Super vulnerable. Not doing anything ready to be eaten.

So evolution at some point, if sleep wasn't as absolutely imperatively important as it is now, at some point, we would have just not been able to sleep. Now most animal sleep, because it's that important. And today, especially sleep is a problem because, well, we have electric lights on all the time. We have our technology in front of us all the time. And then we have this access to stimulants that we didn't have for mostly human

civilizations. So people literally drink coffee all day long, take caffeine. Some people even go the pharmaceutical route with stimulants and they go, they get by on six hours of sleep every single night, not realizing that it's making them fatter, making them have less muscle, making it very difficult for their body to adapt to exercise. You got to explain that part. So you got to explain the difference between parasympathetic and sympathetic and why it's

important that we have both and the importance of us being, and why we're not recovering the way we should be recovering. Well, was sleep is your rest and repair and recover. It sets you up. It gets rid of waste, it consolidates thoughts and ideas. It builds connections between neurons in the brain, the hormones that are released when sleep are the ones that repair and rebuild the body.

It's absolutely essential for not just good health, but again, because here's a deal. You have a bucket that you pull from when you, with stress, all stress, pulls from the same bucket, and exercise is a stress on the body. And if you're not sleeping, you're working with a smaller bucket. If your day is very stressful, you're working with a smaller bucket.

And so you're not able to work out like you normally could and you're really negating the potential of positive effects of exercise. I mean, I've had clients just work on their sleep and notice fat loss and muscle gain from that alone. That's that tripped me out. I had the same thing where that was the one component that was missing and it wasn't apparent until,

throughout the process, it was like, just spit in the wheels, you know, you're consistent, you're eating right, like all these factors are, you know, throughout the process, it was like, just spinning the wheels, you know, you're consistent, you're eating right, like all these factors, or you know, you're doing everything right, but what was lacking was the fully being recovered and rested, resting, sleeping. The irony is that the people that tend to be

the greatest offenders on the sleep point of all this are also the greatest offenders on the calorie, on the exercise they choose and the cardio. They're cortisol junkies. They get that. And this is always really hard for me to explain to somebody who loves like an orange theory or an F-45 class or loves their high intensity training because try arguing with someone like that who is a cortisol junkie, and they fucking love the feeling they get from it. They for sure feel better, they're right. They for sure, it gives them a rush, and there's nothing you can say to them

to get them to believe that they're not feeling that. Well, they feel it. You know, it's perpetuating the problem. Yeah, just like insulin resistance, like if your body's constantly exposed to high levels of insulin, your body will stop responding to the same amount of insulin and you'll need more and more insulin to produce the same response.

This is because receptors get down-regulated, your body becomes less sensitive to that particular hormone. Well, that can happen with cortisol as well. So if you're high stress all the time, the same amount of cortisol now no longer feels like it used to. You're going to feel fatigued and so you're going to seek out things that squirt more cortisol out and make you feel better. So that'll be more high intensity exercise, pushing your body harder, restricting your sleep even more, drinking more coffee, showing a blight to meetings.

Oh, it creates very interesting behaviors. It's been, you know, this is a speculation that a lot of trainers and functional medicine practitioners will say is that these cortisol junkies will, they have this chronic problem of being late places. It's like self-sabotative. Because it's almost like their body's trying to produce these situations. And it's like talking to a junkie on anything else,

like try telling them that they're addicted to it. You know, it turns into like this argument and debate, like there's nothing you can tell me that you're gonna tell me that this work, I don't let this work out great for me. I'm always in the best shape of my life during this time. I feel the best when it's like, fuck, how do I get this person to understand that? You're stressed at work all day long, you're stressed with your home life all the time, you're fucking not eating like you're supposed to, you're not wrestling,

and then on top of that, you're fucking training like this. Like, no, trust me. There's a reason why you don't have the body you've always dreamed of because you're fucking pushing it so hard. It's revolting back on you. Well, you're redlining. Yeah, you, just like modern life has created the need

for structured and planned activity. Because like modern life is very sedative, right? So I wake up and there's not much I need to do to get ready and then I get in the car and I drive somewhere and then I get out of my car and I sit down all day long and then when I'm done I get my car drive. So it's a very sedative lifestyle, very, very little activity and that's just the way modern life is. So we have to structure practices to increase our activity.

We have to track it to figure that out. Well, the same thing now is becoming true with rest and repair. Where before, there were lots of quiet times throughout the day. Like back in the day, and I say back in the day, it was like 15 years ago. If I drove somewhere, that was it. I'm not, I mean, unless I play the radio and stuff like that, there was no one with me.

I was by myself, no one could contact me if I'm somewhere else. I was quiet. If I'm sitting in line waiting for something, I don't have my phone do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it.

I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I don't have anything to do with it. I like to tell clients today now, as I say, look, two hours before bed, one to two hours before bed, I want you to do a sleep routine. And that consists of either one of two things, either A, turn all the lights down in your house

and go by candlelight if possible, turn off all your electronics if possible, for at least an hour better yet, two hours before bed, that tells the brain the sun has come down, that it's nighttime, it's studies show that you produce more melatonin when you do that, but it's also a time for you to be quiet, reflective, allow yourself to not be distracted

so you could process thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and all that stuff, and believe me, this makes a big difference, and their science that supports this. Or the second option, which is more viable for most people or pragmatic is where some blue blocker glasses at least block out that blue light and then avoid stressful situations and things so maybe don't work an hour before bed that's probably the worst time to work you know I'm gonna get on my emails and

get on this right stressful work done turn it off shut it off put on your blockers don't argue with people on social media that That's, that's, don't do that. Or your spouse. Yeah, or your girlfriend or boyfriend, right? So I like to give people kind of this night time routine and then I tell them to schedule their sleep so they have at least seven hours, ideally eight hours of sleep.

So if I know I need to be in bed by 10 pm so that I can have seven or eight hours of sleep, then by eight, 30 lights are going down. I'm off electronics. It's real quiet. You know, like I said, I put my blue blockers on and do the same thing. You know, it's funny. It makes me laugh when we talk about this because I can't help but think back to like 25 year old me. And I know what a laugh to think.

I don't think you could convince me. It's crazy. And but then I think of the 37 year old me now. And it's like so obvious to me now. Like I completely feel the difference, notice the difference. But when you're in those early 20s, and you feel like you're invincible, like these things don't, they don't really register yet for you until you start to age a little bit. And then it sounds really old and stupid.

Right. And so I always try and tell when I'm talking to my younger guys or girls that about this stuff that think it's no big deal and they fall asleep with their phone right next to their hand from texting all night long or doing whatever. I'm just like, man, if I promise, if you can learn these behaviors now, when you get my age, it won't be as difficult to do it because I actually struggle with these things. It's tough. I've watched TV.

I mean, Katrina was the first one to really break me from that. Like I've had a TV in my bedroom since I was a kid. Like that was just a habit of mine. That was one of the things that she's like, and her excuse obviously is for the intimacy proof. I mean there's studies that show that TV in the bedroom decreases intimacy by X amount.

And so she's like, I'm not letting the TV fuck my game up. Right, so that's, but I also notice it how much it's improved my sleep by not having that. Well, I mean, what I like to tell youngsters is, look, however well you're doing now, because when you're young, you get away with a lot, right? But it's, it's whatever you're doing now, you'll do that much better. It's still suboptimal. If you, if you inject some of these changes, like if you get good sleep, and if you're 20 and

you get good sleep, you're going to build more muscle, burn more body fat, be faster, be stronger, be better at school, be better at work, whatever, you're just going to do that much better. As you get older, this stuff becomes a requirement for you to just function. So, yeah. But these are all, I mean, I guess what we just covered, what do we just cover? We covered, learn to track your food, learn to track your movement. You want to be in a calorie deficit

to burn body fat, train properly, lift weights, and then focus on that repair and recovery, especially sleep. Those are the five basic things. Like if you do those five things right there, and the first two really are just setting you up for the next three three because tracking by itself is going to do anything for you, but that's going to give the information to cut your calories and watch your macros and all that stuff.

If you just do those things right there, that's like 95% of anything you need to do to get your body lean and fit or whatever in however much time you have, even if it's 12 weeks from now, summertime. It's a simple recipe. That's it. Look, go to MindPumpFree.com and check out our free guides, lots of free resources there. Check them out, they'll help you along your fitness journey. Also, if you want to find us on social media,

you can find our individual pages. So you can find us on Instagram. Justin is at MindPump, Justin. My page is MindPump, Sal, and Adam is MindPump, Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance,

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