2590: How Moms Crush Fitness Goals

Summary

Podcast Summary: Mind Pump Episode 2590 – "How Moms Crush Fitness Goals"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth
• Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews
• Producer: Doug Egge
• Episode Title: 2590: How Moms Crush Fitness Goals
• Release Date: May 5, 2025

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Introduction

In this special episode dedicated to mothers, the Mind Pump hosts—Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews—delve into the unique challenges and triumphs that moms experience on their fitness journeys. The episode aims to provide science-backed strategies to help moms achieve their health and fitness goals while balancing their familial responsibilities.

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Appreciating Moms and Their Role

Adam Schafer opens the conversation by expressing deep appreciation for mothers, acknowledging their relentless efforts in taking care of everyone else. He emphasizes that this episode is solely focused on helping moms prioritize their health and fitness amidst their busy lives.

Adam Schafer [01:13]: "This episode is for moms. Today we're talking about you, how much we appreciate you, and how you can crush your fitness goals even though you take care of everybody else in the world."

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Challenges Moms Face in Fitness

The hosts discuss the primary obstacles moms encounter when striving to stay fit:

1. Time Constraints and Sacrifices: Moms often prioritize their family's needs over their own, making it difficult to allocate time for exercise and self-care.

   Adam Schafer [03:01]: "The biggest hurdle that I had to overcome was just that, like, taking time for themselves to do this."

2. Mental Energy and Health: Balancing family, work, and personal health can lead to mental fatigue, making it challenging to stay motivated and consistent with fitness routines.

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Overcoming Hurdles: Time and Sacrifice

Justin Andrews highlights the "martyrdom" mindset many moms have, where they sacrifice their priorities to ensure everyone else is taken care of. Overcoming this mindset is crucial for moms to invest in their own health without feeling guilty.

Justin Andrews [03:30]: "They sacrifice so much for their families. They sacrifice so much for their families."

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Importance of Health for the Family

Adam Schafer underscores that a mom's health directly impacts her ability to care for her family. By improving her own health and energy levels, a mom becomes more effective in her roles as a mother, partner, and professional.

Adam Schafer [05:56]: "The limiting factor to how effective you can be or how good you can be at the important things in life... is always your health and your energy."

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Exercise and Mental Health

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the profound effects of proper exercise and nutrition on mental health. The hosts cite studies showing that consistent fitness routines can be as effective as, if not more than, medications for improving anxiety, depression, and overall mood.

Adam Schafer [06:17]: "The most effective intervention, period, end of story. Whether you go with medical interventions, non-medical interventions, the most effective intervention for anxiety and depression... is becoming more fit and healthy."

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Proper Exercise and Avoiding Overdoing It

The conversation shifts to the importance of appropriate exercise. Overexertion, especially through high-intensity classes and extreme dieting, can lead to cortisol imbalances and stalled progress. Instead, the hosts advocate for efficient, strength-based workouts that provide maximal benefits with minimal time investment.

Adam Schafer [16:17]: "If you do it right, you spend 30 minutes on improving your health and you'll get something like 90 minutes worth of energy back."

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Diet and Nutrition for Moms

Adam outlines a simple yet effective dietary strategy for fat loss:

1. Avoid Heavily Processed Foods: These are engineered to make you overeat and should be minimized.
2. Increase Protein Intake: Hitting target protein levels ensures satiety and supports muscle building.

Adam Schafer [31:24]: "There's really only two steps... avoid heavily processed foods and hit your target body weight in grams of protein and eat the protein first in your meals."

Justin adds that it's essential to combine both dietary strategies for optimal results, as doing only one often leads to insufficient progress.

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Supplements

Regarding supplementation, Adam recommends minimal yet effective options:

• Multivitamins: To address potential nutrient deficiencies, particularly in women.
• Creatine: Supported by extensive research, creatine aids in muscle building, cognitive performance, and overall mental health.

Adam Schafer [33:57]: "The two that I recommend are multivitamin to fill any potential nutrient deficiencies... and creatine."

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Cardio vs. Strength Training

The hosts debate the role of cardio in a mom’s fitness regimen. While cardio benefits endurance and stamina, they caution against overdoing it, as excessive cardio can lead to muscle loss without contributing significantly to fat loss.

Adam Schafer [35:40]: "Focus on the strength training, either the 15 minutes a day or the two 45-minute workouts and then just walk, that's plenty."

Justin Andrews [36:18]: "A bold statement and say none. Although there are exceptions to the rule, but typically with this demographic, we are not doing any sort of cardio whatsoever."

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Measuring Progress and Detaching from the Scale

A critical insight shared is the importance of moving away from solely using the scale as a measurement of progress. Instead, moms are encouraged to focus on metrics like energy levels, sleep quality, strength gains, and overall well-being.

Adam Schafer [27:18]: "If you focus on your health and performance, everything else will follow."

This mindset shift helps in fostering a healthier relationship with exercise and diet, reducing the stress associated with weight tracking.

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Program Recommendations and Discounts

Throughout the episode, the hosts promote various fitness programs tailored for moms, offering a 50% discount for listeners:

• Fit Mom Bundle
• Fabulous 40s Bundle
• Bikini Bundle
• Build Your Butt Bundle
• Maps 40/Maps Starter
• Maps 15 Minutes

Discount Code: Use M Day at mapsfitnessproducts.com to avail the offer.

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Conclusion

Adam Schafer encapsulates the episode's core message by reiterating that a fit and healthy mom is better equipped to excel in all areas of life. By prioritizing health and adopting efficient fitness and nutrition strategies, moms can achieve remarkable transformations that positively impact themselves and their families.

Adam Schafer [30:50]: "A fit and healthy version of you is going to be better at everything. That's the bottom line."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Mind Pump provides invaluable insights and practical advice tailored specifically for mothers seeking to enhance their fitness and health. By addressing the unique challenges moms face and offering science-backed solutions, the hosts empower mothers to prioritize their well-being, ultimately benefiting their entire families.

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Connect with Mind Pump:

• Instagram: @mindpumpmedia, @mindpumpsal, @mindpumpadam, @mindpumpjustin, @mindpumpdoug
• Website: mindpumppodcast.com
• Training Programs: mapsfitnessproducts.com

Transcript

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[Sal DeStefano]

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 Schafer and Justin Andrews.

[Adam Schafer]

You just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. This episode is for moms. Today we're talking about you, how much we appreciate you, and how you can crush your fitness goals even though you take care of everybody else in the world. We know that moms, you do a lot for everybody. But again, this episode is for you and we're going to talk about how you can get fit and healthy with all your challenges and responsibilities. Now, because of this episode, we've put all the programs that this demographic tends to like on sale 50% off. So we have the Fit mom bundle, the fabulous 40s bundle. We have the Bikini Bundle, the Build you'd Butt Bundle. Then we also have maps 40/maps starter and maps 15 minutes. All of that is 50% off if you go to maps fitnessproducts.com and then use the code M Day. This episode is also brought to you by sponsor Element. Element is an electrolyte powder. You add your water, no artificial sweeteners, no sugar, the right amount of sodium to make a difference. This is especially valuable if you don't eat heavily processed foods or you're on a low carb diet. Makes a big difference. Go check them out. Go to drinklement.com mindpump on that link. You'll get a Free sample pack with any drink mix purchase. All right, here comes the show. This is a special episode for mothers out there. We're gonna talk about getting you fit and healthy. But before we do, let's talk about all the things we appreciate about you and why being fit and healthy is so important, not just for you, but for your family. This. We do an episode similar to this every year, but I think it's a real important one because moms, look, all of us are married. All of us have wives that are mothers. And then we, of course, have our own mothers. Moms sacrifice a lot for their families. They sacrifice so much for their families. And, you know, a lot of people don't know this, but when you're a trainer, if you train people for a long period of time, the majority of her clients falls in this category. I would say. Most of my clients throughout my whole career were women and were mothers. And so I had a lot of experience training people in this particular category. And the biggest hurdle that I had to overcome was just that, like, taking time for themselves to do this.

[Justin Andrews]

That was always a conversation, almost like the martyrdom. It's taken a lot of the time out of. Of their own priorities to. To make sure everybody's accounted for, and they're just amazing at that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You know, I know it's cliche to say behind every good man is a great woman, but as I've gotten older and been around a lot of very, very successful people, I've never met a dude that is just absolutely killing it in all levels, and him not have just an absolute badass woman by his side. Just never. I've never met that. Like, it's. It's never this dude by himself. I know that. That in movies, in television, we portray the Peter Pan guy, but in real life, it's never that way at all. When you meet somebody who is absolutely at the top of their game and you meet the spouse, it's. It. It. It's always like, oh, okay, yeah, you know, and I feel how this is working. I feel that way about mine. Like, I 100% know that as. As talented, as successful as I was before Katrina and I met, it pales in comparison to where I'm at today. And the. And the thing that's most attractive is that they don't ask for the credit. They don't need to be in the limelight. They don't need to be told that they're the best or this. Like, it's just, like, they just. They just do it. And I think a Lot of times a lot of moms take a lot of this and, and at least all the clients that I try and train. This is mostly the clients that I train. When I think back of all the clients that I have, it's the largest.

[Adam Schafer]

Demographic of people that hire trains by far.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. Is middle aged moms who normally wanted to lose a few pounds after their second or third child and have struggled to do it or struggle to find the time or tried other resources before. And then they would hire me and then I would get a hold of. So when I think it back to a clientele or avatar that I train, I feel more confident training mothers than I think I do anything else, because that's what I think I have the most experience helping same.

[Adam Schafer]

It was a majority of my clients. And again, the biggest hurdle, the biggest struggle, it wasn't how to get the diet right. It wasn't what the best workout program is. It was really getting them to take some time for this because they were always sacrificing everything.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Everybody else and their family, everybody else first.

[Adam Schafer]

It was very difficult to kind of make that case. And I got good at making the case eventually because I realized as a trainer, if I want to be effective, I have to convince this person, I have to convince this woman that this is going to benefit everybody, not just themselves, not just her.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes. Because it's one thing to say, okay, I want to get fit because I want to look good for myself. But what I found with this demographic was, yeah, that's important. Everybody wants to look good. Everybody. But it was like, yeah, but, you know, it's going to take away time for my kids, can take away time from, you know, my family. And I don't want to do that because that's the most important thing to me. And that was, again, that was the biggest hurdle. And the real thing to understand with this is that your. The limiting factor to how effective you can be or how good you can be at the important things in life, like your kids, like you are with your partner, like you are with your job or your home or the things that we consider very important. The limiting factor is always your health and your energy. It's like now, like. And the way I would put it is like this. Imagine if I doubled the amount of good energy that you had, how much more effective would you be at all those things that you sacrifice so much for? And then it makes a lot of sense. And so it's this really interesting, you know, fitness physics I would call it when it comes to exercise. And eating right, where the time you devote to exercise, the time you devote to eating healthy, so long as it's effective and appropriate. I want to say that because if you do it wrong, this doesn't make sense. If you do it wrong, this doesn't work. You'll devote more time to your fitness and get less in return. But if you do it right, which we're going to, we'll talk about, if you do it right, what you end up is you getting, you end up getting three times the return. So you spend 30 minutes on improving your health and you'll get something like 90 minutes worth of energy back. So it actually makes you far more effective and it makes you far more resilient. So it's very important, aside from just trying to look different, it's important for all those things that are important for you. And the data on this is very, very, very clear from a mental health perspective alone. We'll start there. Yeah, the most effective intervention, period, end of story. Okay. Whether you go with medical interventions, non medical interventions, the most effective intervention for anxiety and depression, or for lifting your mood is becoming more fit and healthy, nothing comes close. If you could bottle this and sell would be an absolute blockbuster. Now in the data, in the studies, when they compare proper exercise and eating right to things like Enziolytics and antidepressant medications, in the short term studies, you know, four month, five month, six month studies, they're at least as effective. But what you start to tend to see is that the fitness and eating right, the improving your health continues to trend better and better. Okay? So there's no downregulation of receptors like you get with medications. There's no side effects, negative side effects. What ends up happening, just to put it differently, is whatever benefit you get from a mental health perspective, right, from your outlook, anxiety, depression, just feeling good. Whatever benefit you get at month three is, it gets better at month six, it gets better at month 12, it gets better at year three, year four, year five, it continues to get better over time. There is no medication that shows that, that does that. And now why is this important? Well, the things that tend to get in the way of our ability to be patient with our kids, to do well at work, to do things at home, to do things with your family. It's often this, right? It's often just the mental energy to do those things. And the data, again, I go back to the data. I mean, we've obviously seen this training clients, but the data is very clear. Like it really does a phenomenal job at helping those things both in the short term but especially in the long term.

[Unnamed Speaker]

This is why I've always loved the analogy of building muscle like investing. Because it's I think a lot of times, and this is for everybody, not just moms, but I think a lot of people are hesitant because the amount of time and volume that is they think is required in order to reap these incredible benefits. But to your point, one of the things, even if starting small, investing small and a little bit of time, just consistently over time ends up compounding and then it gets easier and all those things that it impacts get exponentially better over time. And so it's the long game. And I think for me it was always getting that client and convincing that client the where, where we needed, where we just needed to start and then how that payoff would be and what it would affect to get them bought. And then what's awesome about getting my mom's bought in is a lot of times they definitely are the ones who are running the house too. And so if I impacted her, it tended to impact the entire family for their habits and the way more so than the guy. Like I could train a, a dad and get him ripped and jacked and it doesn't always bleed down into the rest of the family. But if I won mom over and showed mom the return on this and got her invested, then everybody started eating better. Everybody. She really impacts the family. I think when it comes to stuff.

[Justin Andrews]

Like that, there's a real built in reward system if you approach it the right way where your body literally will give you these types of reactions and feelings and energy spikes and elevation of mood which is, you know, know that's a huge thing when you're interacting so much and inundated with like moments where stress can affect you either super negatively or you could have some resilience towards it. And the more you build up like physically, the more you get more resilient mentally to handle these situations. And you know, it plays out all the time when you get that mood elevation, it really like carries you throughout the day.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, when you, when you. Again this has to be appropriate. What I mean by that is proper exercise and appropriate nutrition, right? If it's a stress on you, well, all of it's a stress. But what I mean by what I'm saying is if it feels really stressful, if you go beat yourself up, that's not going to do what we're talking about. Okay. So if you're listening to this or watching this right now and you're like, you know what? I tried really working out, and I did this crazy boot camp class or whatever, and it just made me exhausted. Or I did this diet, and it was just. It was a stress, and I was counting every calorie, and it just didn't feel good. That's. You're doing it wrong if you do it right, and we'll get to some of this. But if you do it right, right out the gates, what you'll notice is an improvement in your outlook right off the gates, you'll have more, more energy. In fact, you should have more energy at the end of your workout, at the end of workout one than you do in the beginning of the workout. And then to your point, Adam, moms have far more control over the nutrition. This is. The data shows this, okay? It's not my opinion. They have far more influence over the food that the family eats than anybody else in the household, for sure. So when mom is moving towards a direction to become more healthy and fit herself, what tends to happen? One of the downstream effects is that everybody starts to kind of eat healthier in the house. And so now that, of course, now the reason. Why am I saying that? Well, I think it's an important thing to say, but also knowing how much moms sacrifice for their family sometimes, this is it. This is what makes, what motivates them. In fact, I've had, I mean, countless clients hire me because they saw that the health of their kids was suffering, so they came and started working out themselves, and then it bled through to everybody. But you see this. The example of the mom tends to bleed through to the rest of the family. But again, what it does when you do it right, is it. And you mentioned this, Justin, is it makes you far more resilient. And there's a few reasons, few ways that it does this one is just becoming stronger in general means you fatigue less throughout the day, right? So, and I'll give you real. This is real, real numbers. If you're not exercising right now, okay, if you're not working out consistently right now, and let's say you start proper strength training, it is 100% reasonable, so long as you don't have, like, a major injury or terrible health condition, okay? It is 100% reasonable to double your strength within the first year, okay? That's, that's, that's conservative and reasonable. I know that sounds crazy, but it's 100% and every trainer and coach knows it. So you may be able to squat with 30 pounds on your back by the End of the year, it is completely realistic and conservative. Be able to do with £60, you'll probably be able to do more than that. Okay, so now imagine the how much less fatigued you are because you're twice as strong. So that's just one example. Your hormones also start to work better through the exercise fitness process, especially muscle building process. You become more sensitive to insulin. And insulin sensitivity is closely related to the balancing of things like estrogen and progesterone. In fact, some of the issues that women will suffer from, like PCOS is closely connected to the opposite, which is insulin resistance. Okay. Building muscle, strengthening your body improves insulin sensitivity. Your body becomes more sensitive to the testosterone it has, which means you have more drive, libido goes up, you have more energy. Your estrogen, progesterone start to balance out. Cortisol starts to look a little bit more appropriate. All these hormones are what make you feel a particular way. And so as your hormones start to organize themselves a little differently, you just start to feel better. You have to do it right for this to happen. But when you do, you know, because you feel it and it feels great, and then think about the mood that you have from feeling better and how much easier it is to handle all the challenges of being a mom. It's one of the hardest jobs in the world. But now you feel so much better because your body's working better. It's just going to make you that much more effective.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You know, speaking of hormones, there really was like for the most part, obviously I had a huge wide variance of all different types of moms, but there I could categorize them in, in two different categories. I had my moms that weren't working out mainly because the time, energy to be able to do that. Then I had the other moms that I helped out that actually were working out, but they weren't seeing results. And these are the one I bring up when you bring up hormones was they were also my cortisol junkies. They were the ones that were doing it. They were over. They were already exhausted, hammering self. They were attracted to that, that, you know, high intensity class that gave them that cortisol dump that made them feel temporarily really good afterwards. And so they were in this vicious cycle of thinking, I feel good after this class. This, I love meeting my friends here. This must be what I'm supposed to do yet, man, I've been doing this for the last year, two years consistently showing up to these classes and I haven't changed. And it doesn't, it shouldn't be that hard. So those were, I felt like I was. You could fit my mom's in one category.

[Adam Schafer]

Super good. I'm so glad you said that. So exercise is a stress on the body. It has to be appropriate in order for it to be effective. Being a mom, especially if you are a mom of younger children, it's a massive demand on the body. It's a huge demand on the body. So going out and beating yourself up is not going to be effective. It's going to overwhelm your body with stress and it's going to cause you to feel terrible. Now the weight on the scale may go down that, but you're not going to feel better. In fact, you'll probably feel worse and you'll start to exhibit symptoms of excessive fatigue. Hot, cold, intolerance, hormone imbalances, hair loss. Hair loss will start to happen, you know, type of deal. So the exercise application needs to be appropriate because you're 100. Right. I very clearly remember those ladies I would train just overdo it. They were just way overdo it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, it's hard. And let me tell you this is that when I think back of like some of the biggest challenges I had was. And this is again why I feel so confident speaking to this clientele because I spoke to so many and I had a really hard time communicating specifically to these, this group of women that were already doing classes and consistent and not seeing results and then convincing them that that workout wasn't good for them because they get this feeling afterwards that does feel good. So try telling somebody who's like certain, I know it feels good, I feel great right after I do it. So how could it be bad for me convincing that person that it's not good for them and that's the reason why. And what plateaued.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes. And what probably happened is they initially lost the £15 at first.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yes.

[Adam Schafer]

And now they're doing hours of workouts a week. Nothing.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Because at one point, at one point that mom was in the other category. She was the one that wasn't exercising yet. Then she, she found the time or made the time to get to these classes, say two, maybe three times a week, sometimes more. And she's doing this hour intense circuit type based class and then gets this sweat feels. You know, she takes like all, all the emotion that was going on from her busy week and then she's like, ah, run on the treadmill. Like crazy sweat. Oh my God, I needed that. You know, feels so good. But then doesn't understand why I'm doing All these things. I'm eating good, but yet I'm plat totally hard. And our hormones are all out where cortisol is being dumped.

[Adam Schafer]

Like, or to be clear, they're eating little.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Adam Schafer]

And getting no results.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Adam Schafer]

And they're stuck. Like, I'm eating 1200 calories a day. I'm doing those crazy classes, but my body is not responding anymore. And you're just. Your body's overcome with stress. If you do this right, here's what you should feel like. You should feel great energy. You should have very good sleep. You should wake up feeling energetic and refreshed. You should not have these crazy fluctuations in temperature, which, by the way, that's a sign of oftentimes overdoing it. Yeah. Where you're just intolerant to temperature changes. You should feel really good. In fact, what it feels like. Those clients that you just said, Adam, when what, what happened when they were training with me, I know you guys heard the same thing, is when they started doing things right with me, after about 30 days, 60 days, and everything started working right, they'd come to me and be like, I feel like I'm barely doing anything. How am I getting lean?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. Why am I leaning? You have me eating more, training, I'm training less hard, and I'm getting more results. But those are also the best because you take that client who's been doing all the things she's doing to be a kick ass mom. Then in addition to that, she was also kicking her own ass in the gym three times a week or more. And then you flip it on its head and you're like, I'm gonna feed you more and we're gonna train more efficiently and you're gonna see more results. And now you have got a lifer. That person right there. You radically changed their life. And then they see that cascade down to them being a better mom, a better wife, a better everything else that she's doing. And that was like, those were the best clients.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, let's talk about how much time you actually need to dedicate to structured workouts. So first, to be clear, it's good to be active every day. Now, active doesn't mean workouts every day. Active just means you're moving, you're not sitting down all day long, your muscles.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Show me a mom who's not active.

[Adam Schafer]

That's right. Yeah, that's right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Show me a mom who's not active running around chasing kids.

[Adam Schafer]

Especially if you're staying. My wife, you know, my wife is staying. Stay at home with the little ones. And if she's with the little ones all day long, she'll track her steps. And it's like, you know, 15,000 steps a day easily. But one of the easiest ways to track your activity level is to track steps. I love that. I think 10,000 steps a day is a good target. In fact, the data shows that you'll get about 80% of the benefits of steps at about 8,000 steps. Okay. In other words, after 8,000 steps, you start to get diminishing returns. So just track on a daily basis your steps. Make sure you're getting about 10,000. And then it's like, okay, well how much? What about workouts? What about structured workouts? 15 minutes a day, maybe two lifts or two 45 minute workouts a week. That's it. That's all you need. This is not just my opinion, although this is how. This is 100% what I experience. But the data clearly shows us that's all you need. Now, strength training, why so little? Strength training is very unique to other forms of exercise. With strength training, you just send this signal to build strength and muscle and then you leave it alone. That's it. And for the vast majority of people listening to this, unless you're a competitive bodybuilder or a competitive powerlifter, it's literally, you could do two exercises a day, six days a week, which takes about 15 minutes. You do like two, three sets each or two 45 minute workouts and you're done.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And that's pretty intentional. It just takes a deliberate focus. And then in conjunction with that, the real magic happens in the recovery.

[Adam Schafer]

That's right.

[Justin Andrews]

So this is where it's, you know, the misconception is that we just got to stay busy and do a lot of things in the workout and it's not the case. We just need to be real focused. Deliberate. And so honestly, that whole time restraint thing can be solved a lot by just being a little more appropriate and smart with your training.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, back to your point about being active in the 8 to 10,000. I love this as like this, this benchmark because all the research points to once you hit that 8,000, beyond all these, great benefits happen.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And so we don't need to over complicate and think about cardio and even movement. So long as we just hit that, then all we need to focus on are these two workouts you're talking about. It really simplifies the plan. It's like, listen, we're going to get to the food part and what that Looks like, but it's like literally the exercise portion. Stay active. You probably naturally already do it, but maybe you don't. Maybe you happen to be a mom who has a desk job and you do sit at home or sit at a job all day long. And so you might not get as many steps. So then it's that simple. Go get 8 to 10,000 steps a day, be active. We know the benefits of that. And then it's your two workouts or it's your 15 minute workouts every day.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. Now my, the clients that I had that had desk jobs, we would hit this pretty easily by getting them to get up and walk every couple hours. So they get up and walk either around the office every couple hours or they'd go outside and go for a walk, which actually improved the productivity. They told me, man, I'm so much more effective at work by doing this.

[Justin Andrews]

The last 10 minutes every hour.

[Adam Schafer]

That's it. So most, you know, phones have apps that now track steps. Their pedometer super cheap, you can get one almost anywhere and just track that and that's it. And then the two strength training workouts a week if you want like structured dedicated time or 15 minutes a day. And look, I know that sounds crazy, but we have a program that we created that was 15 minutes a day of strength training. And it's our most popular program, end of story. And I don't mean most popular in the sense that just people get it. Most popular people get it and continue to do it over and over and over again.

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's the results.

[Adam Schafer]

And they get great results because it's easy to stay consistent and it's super effective. It's minimal dose, maximal effect as long as it's programmed properly and you do everything right. Now that doesn't mean you blast yourself for 15 minutes. Some people think, oh, 50 minutes, I'm gonna go all out and kill myself. No, no, strength training doesn't work that way. Strength training is you're trying to get stronger. And there's a, there's a very specific way to train and it's not trained to failure and beating yourself up. Again, the data is very clear on this and what you should notice if you do what we're saying and you have good workout programming, meaning you're doing the right exercises, the right combo of them, good rest periods in between sets is you're going to see yourself get stronger consistently. This is what you'll notice. So if you did the two 45 minute workouts a week proper, you know, you focus on the compound lifts. We have lots of episodes where we break this down or the 15 minutes a day. What you'll notice is essentially week over week, especially in the first six months or so, but then for the first couple years, relatively consistently, you'll just get stronger. You'll get stronger. You'll do another wrap, add another couple pounds or five pounds. You know you're moving in the right direction. Every time you get stronger, you know your body is getting better with its hormones, your metabolism is inching up or getting a little faster, and you're sculpting and shaking your body. So shaping your body, that's all you need when it comes to strength training.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, you're, you're alluding to. I, I would say once, once I got my mom on the plan. Right. And we're heading that direction. The next biggest hurdle is to detach from. From the scale.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Is it detached from.

[Adam Schafer]

So glad you said that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Using that as measuring our progress. Because I'd have to, like, communicate. Listen, we've done this the wrong way in the past of being married to this, this, this number. That really doesn't mean. When you think about it, especially in the context of building muscle, burning body fat, I could keep your weight exactly the same and radically change your body composition. So this number on the scale, we need to get away from looking at that and then getting them to a place where we're probably reverse dieting, hitting our protein intake and focus on getting strong. That's the metric. That's the metric. Consistency with our protein intake and then consistently getting stronger. Not worrying about the scale because again, but that's always a challenge at first because we've been taught for so long there's these artificial BMI numbers that's made up that, oh, you should be at this weight for this size or this. No, none of that stuff matters. And I'm telling you, even, I mean, if I have a woman who's well over £100, we're going to lose some weight. But most my moms that I got 20, 30 pounds, they need to lose. And I'll tell you right now, we can never even move on the scale. 20, 30 pounds. And I will radically show you a different body.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Radically different.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes. Like let's say a woman who's, let's say 5, 3. The difference between a woman who's 5, 3, 150 pounds at 30% body fat and one that's 150 pounds at 20% body fat. Radically different. Huge. And they both weigh the same. But the way they look is very different. 20% body fat. Sculpted, shaped, firm. 30% body fat. Obviously. Much more body fat, different shape of the body. One of them has way more muscle. The other one has way less muscle. The more muscle version can eat way more food on top of it. Way more protective.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Way more. Way more.

[Adam Schafer]

Yes. So, okay, so let me reword that. Okay, if you could just pause for a second. If you're listening to this, pause for a second and imagine yourself with really good health and really good performance, meaning you're really healthy, good energy, your body just healthy, and you're strong and you're fit. Now, what does that look like? That's what you're after, right? Okay. Focus on health and performance and everything else will follow. In other words, if while you're doing this, you don't use the scale and you don't use the mirror to measure progress, but rather you measure things like energy, sleep, libido, anxiety, mood, your digestion, my hair, my skin, the health of my hair and my skin. If you use your strength, my stamina, my mobility, my pain, you use all those metrics to determine whether or not you're progressing, and you move all those forward. What will 100% follow? Is the aesthetic. What will 100% follow? Is.

[Justin Andrews]

Is the look healthy? Always looks better.

[Adam Schafer]

It does. Now, if I flip that, If I flip that and we chase the scale in the mirror, what almost always inevitably happens is we sacrifice our health, we sacrifice our performance in pursuit of a look. And when your health suffers and your performance suffers, so does the look. Okay, so that's the key here. The key here is focus on your health, focus on the performance. In the gym, don't worry about the mirror, don't worry about the scale. Especially the first 30 to 60 days when things don't shift much, you're just kind of feeling better and you're getting stronger. And then like a snowball effect, you start to see things start to look radically different. In fact, this was very common for me. I'd have a female client that I trained for four months, the scale would move like four pounds maybe, and their friends would comment and say, man, you look like you lost £15. What's going on? We had this radical shift and body fat percentage and muscle, we had a body composition change. So chase health and performance. Everything else follows after that. By the way, this is a much more relaxed feeling. Imagine breaking the chains that you have to your scale and the mirror you're breaking. That is what's happening. It's a much more relaxed, freeing Feeling. And it's a much better relationship with exercise because if you're always focused on the scale, even if you get to your goal, this relationship isn't going to feel good. It's not going to be a relaxed one, it's not going to give you nearly as many benefits.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And it's a momentum thing. It takes a little bit of time at the beginning, right, to build that momentum and to start that investing. But boy, once it gets rolling, it starts to snowball and then it really starts to move in your favor and then it does, it does get easier and it does get better. And it gets so rewarding to be able to, to eat more, to have more energy, less time towards you. I mean, it's just, it's just getting over that, that first initial. All the things that we talked about of the, that starting point, whether you're coming from doing nothing at all or you're coming from the, you know, circuit based type of classes, but figuring that piece out and then slowly building on that life changing dude, totally.

[Adam Schafer]

Now the bottom line is this. A fit and healthy version of you is going to be better at everything. Okay? And I mean in a real sense, fit and healthy, okay, where you're doing it right, it's not obsessive, you're not stressing, you're not orthorexic with your diet, but rather you're doing this the right way. That version of you is so much better at all the things that you value the most, like your family, your kids, your job, your spouse. All those things improve because you're more fit and healthy. That's the bottom line.

[Sal DeStefano]

We have some questions. The first one is how should I structure my diet for fat loss?

[Adam Schafer]

Diet. So this is the hard part, or should I say what people perceive to be the hard part?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Initially, for sure it is.

[Adam Schafer]

Okay? So look, there's really two steps you can take that will make the bulk of the changes, okay? And I'm not making this up. There's really only two steps. Now you can take more after this, but if you just did these two things, I'm about to say you will see change, radical change in your body and it'll feel easier. You won't feel like you're depriving yourself. It won't feel crazy. Okay? Step number one, processed foods. Avoid heavily processed foods. They make you overeat. They're engineered to make you overeat. Just avoid them. Eat as much as you want. Whole natural foods. Eat until you're satisfied. Cut out heavily processed foods. And then number two, Hit your target body weight in grams of protein and eat the protein first in your meals. Those two things right there will naturally, you'll be satisfied. Okay, you're not going to feel like you're dieting, but it'll naturally bring your calories and your diet in line with fat loss. In fact, in my experience, doing those two things typically would result in around 15 pound fat loss for most of my female patients.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And I want to stress that the secret sauce to what you just said is doing both, not one or the other. So the most common thing I see is somebody who will that, that isn't seeing the results they want to see is they're hitting their protein intake, but they're allowing a lot of processed foods in the diet too. So they're also probably overeating a little bit. Or somebody goes, well, I'm only sticking to whole foods. But then they consistently miss their protein target. So it's the secret sauce of what Sal is saying is the combination of both. It's not either or. And if you get one of the two, you're not doing pretty good. It's like you want to knock both of them out. You knock those two out, then you really simplify all the rest of the diet questions that come, which is, what about my macros, what about my carbs? How much protein? How much fat? How much hit your protein intake? Whatever your goal weight is. So, okay, whatever weight, you know, even though we talked about that being an arbitrary number, just think of like a weight that you will be happy at, whatever that number is, and hit that in grams of protein consistently and do it through whole foods. The combination of two of those will take care of it.

[Adam Schafer]

It does. And the average person, if you eat like the typical American diet, cutting out heavily processed foods will naturally cut your calories down about 500, just without you trying. Just eat until you're satisfied. 500 calories less. And hitting those protein targets in the studies where they have equal calories, high protein results in far more muscle gain and far more fat loss and a higher satiety effect, meaning you're probably going to be even more satisfied or satiated. Which is great, right? Because imagine if you're eating for fat loss, but you feel satisfied, you feel like you're eating plenty. That's what ends up happening.

[Sal DeStefano]

What are good supplements to take?

[Adam Schafer]

Okay, so supplements don't make that big of a difference. Let me be straight up. I know that a lot of the advertising tells you that they do that. There's always something out there that does Great things. They're not going to do much for you. But if I do recommend supplements, the two that I recommend are multivitamin to fill any potential nutrient deficiencies. Because if you have a nutrient deficiency, that's a big deal. And women can sometimes have nutrient deficiencies at a bit of a higher rate than men. So multivitamin and then creatine. Creatine is a, we did, we've done whole episodes on creatine. It's the most studied supplement. It's got incredible safety profile. It helps with building muscle, it helps with mental health, it helps with cognitive performance, it helps with fat loss. So it's a, it's a good for you supplement that also helps with all the other goals that we're.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, I mean, I'm noticed that in our steps, this wasn't in there. Right. This was for a reason. Because it's not going to move the needle unless you're deficient in something. And I agree. And which by the way, there's a 50, 50 shot, you are deficient in something. So I do, I do recommend that everybody find, take a test, find out if you are lacking in any nutrients and then go supplement for those nutrients. Normally, by the way, though, those are the cheap ones, those are the easy. Exactly. They're all the basic ones that most people. The one other thing that I'd add to that, that isn't necessarily supplements, but this, this kind of conversation evolves from this is the finding out about your hormones. Right? So if, if you are following all the steps that we're saying to a T and still not seeing results, almost certainly the next thing is, okay, then what's checking hormonally, what's going on? Because there might be an imbalance there that's causing that. Because if you follow the steps that we've talked about, even without supplements, you will see, you'll see great results.

[Sal DeStefano]

How much cardio should I do?

[Adam Schafer]

Look, if you want endurance and stamina, then you can go ahead and add cardio training. Or if you love running, you love. Ok, but if you're listening to this and you're like, I just want to get fit and healthy and I don't have a ton of time to dedicate to exercise. Focus on the strength training, either the 15 minutes a day or the two 45 minute workouts and then just walk, that's plenty. That's going to give you all the health benefits you're looking for. But again, if you want stamina, if you want to be able to run, you want to be Able to cycle, you want to be able to swim, Go ahead and add it. You know, add that a few days a week or a couple days a week, especially if you enjoy it. But I will say this. It is more common in my experience with this demographic where people overdo cards.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, that's why I was going to say none. So the answer you're getting from me is none. Unless you had a very specific goal that you play intramural sports and you also want to have good endurance. Or maybe you have a kid that's, you know, 10 to 13 years old and you're wanting to keep up with them at their physical activities, they're doing like, okay, I get that goal. And we can add some cardio into it. But most my moms were have plenty of extra stress on top of what they got going on. That pushing the body running was. So long as we are hitting our steps, not necessary.

[Adam Schafer]

No.

[Unnamed Speaker]

If you're walking eight to 10,000 steps a day, then that's fine.

[Adam Schafer]

And overdoing workouts, especially overdoing cardio, is this recipe for muscle loss.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So easy to do do and that and that and that a lot of times is enough to keep us in this, this, this plateau. So I'm going to come out with a bold statement and say none. Although there are exceptions to the rule, but typically with this demographic, we are not doing any sort of cardio whatsoever.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah. By the way, what we did for this episode is we went through our data and found the programs and the program bundles that this demographic tends to like the most. And we found quite a few of them. And we're going to put all of them 50% off. Every single one of what I'm about to say is going to be half off for this episode. So we have a bundle called the fit mom bundle, includes a few programs. We have the fabulous 40s bundle that includes a few programs. We have the bikini bundle and then we have the build you'd butt bundle. So those are bundles of programs. Those are all 50% off. And then we have individual programs that are really popular. We have maps 40 + maps starter, this is a beginner program. And then we have maps 15 minutes that's also 50% off. Maps 15 minutes is a 15 minute a day strength training program. So all of that is half off right now. If you go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code mday, that'll give you the discount. So mday 50% off. Also you can find us on Instagram. Justin is mindpumpjustin I'm mindpump distefano and Adam is mindpump.

[Sal DeStefano]

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically, improve improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super [e-mail] the RGB Super Bundle includes Maps, Anabolic Maps, Performance and Maps Aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos. The RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now. Plus other valuable free [e-mail] if you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.

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