2604: The 5 Most Effective Ways to Achieve a Calorie Deficit & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth Episode 2604: The 5 Most Effective Ways to Achieve a Calorie Deficit & More (Listener Live Coaching) Release Date: May 24, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth, hosts Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, and Doug Egge delve into the most effective strategies for creating a calorie deficit—a fundamental component for fat loss. The episode combines insightful discussions on nutrition and training with real-time coaching for live callers, offering practical advice grounded in over 40 years of combined fitness industry experience.

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Top Five Strategies to Achieve a Calorie Deficit

1. Avoid Heavily Processed Foods (00:00–04:54)

Sal and Adam emphasize that eliminating heavily processed foods is the most effective way to naturally reduce calorie intake by approximately 500-600 calories daily. This approach allows individuals to eat until satiated without feeling restricted, promoting sustainable and gradual weight loss.

• Notable Quote:
  • Adam Schafer (04:54): "Avoiding heavily processed foods tends to do this naturally. When I would train clients and I would say, don't eat heavily processed foods, but go and eat as much as you want, it was super powerful because they didn't feel like they were restricting themselves."

2. Adopt a High-Protein Diet (04:54–13:04)

A high-protein diet not only aids in fat loss but also supports muscle retention and growth. Protein has a higher thermogenic effect compared to carbohydrates and fats, meaning it burns more calories during digestion. Additionally, a high-protein intake enhances satiety, helping individuals feel fuller longer without consciously restricting calories.

• Notable Quote:
  • Adam Schafer (07:09): "Protein is very beneficial for muscle gain. And there's a lot of reasons for this. One is protein has this thermogenic effect, meaning the amount of energy required to process a gram of protein is higher."

3. Reduce Carbohydrate Intake (13:04–14:38)

While not the top strategy, reducing carbohydrate intake can effectively decrease appetite and calorie consumption in the short term (3-6 months). This method aligns with principles of the ketogenic diet, which suppresses hunger by emphasizing fats and proteins over carbs.

• Notable Quote:
  • Adam Schafer (13:04): "Avoiding carbs, especially initially, is harder to overeat when your diet is mostly fat and mostly protein."

4. Implement Time-Restricted Eating (Intermittent Fasting) (14:38–16:55)

Intermittent fasting involves limiting eating to specific time windows, typically resulting in reduced calorie intake. Although effective, this method is ranked fourth due to its potential to encourage unhealthy eating behaviors and hinder sustainable progress.

• Notable Quote:
  • Adam Schafer (14:38): "You're gonna eat less than you normally do because you're only eating in a four-hour window."

5. Build Muscle to Boost Metabolism (16:55–23:09)

Strength training and muscle building play a crucial role in increasing metabolic rate. Muscle tissue burns more calories at rest and during activity, enhancing overall calorie expenditure. Additionally, building muscle leverages hormonal benefits, such as improved testosterone and growth hormone levels, which further support fat loss and muscle retention.

• Notable Quote:
  • Adam Schafer (17:21): "Building muscle leverages hormones to give you better body composition. Your metabolism goes up."

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Live Coaching Segment

Caller 1: Ben from Scotland (53:35–60:00)

Question: Ben, a former MMA competitor now delving into weightlifting, inquires about the necessity of changing workout programs every six to twelve weeks to avoid plateaus.

Advice: Adam and Justin reassure Ben that as a beginner focused on compound movements, he does not need to switch programs frequently. They recommend sticking with his current regimen for at least nine months to a year to build strength and muscle effectively before considering program variations.

• Notable Quote:
  • Adam Schafer (55:25): "When you first get started, you've got a full year of getting good at the basics. You don't need to do a bunch."

Caller 2: Margie from Pennsylvania (75:24–84:25)

Question: Margie shares her experience of a bulk followed by an aggressive cut under a coach's guidance, resulting in stalled weight loss despite strict calorie tracking and increased cardio.

Advice: The hosts identify that Margie's approach—drastically reducing calories while significantly increasing high-intensity interval training (HIIT)—was counterproductive, leading to muscle loss and metabolic slowdown. They advise returning to a moderate calorie intake, emphasizing strength training over excessive cardio, and gradually increasing calories to revitalize metabolism.

• Notable Quote:
  • Justin Andrews (77:54): "You did so good from the first one, running back another challenge is like the last thing we should have done."

Caller 3: David from New York (85:22–93:27)

Question: David, who experienced significant weight gain followed by a reduction using Wegovy (GLP-1), reports a plateau after cutting calories and increasing cardio, leading to feelings of stagnation despite meticulous tracking.

Advice: Adam and Justin highlight that David's simultaneous calorie reduction and increased cardio are unsustainable and likely causing muscle loss. They recommend reducing cardio intensity, maintaining strength training, and slowly increasing calorie intake to support metabolic health and muscle retention.

• Notable Quote:
  • Adam Schafer (91:00): "Your strength went way down. Your body just became very efficient with its calories and your body’s like serving you."

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Additional Discussions

Placebo Effect and Mindset (28:25–37:40)

The hosts explore the significant impact of the placebo effect on subjective experiences such as mood and pain, citing studies that show a 20-30% effect. They discuss how belief and mindset can influence outcomes, drawing parallels with practices like mindfulness and gratitude.

• Notable Quote:
  • Adam Schafer (28:35): "There are some people that it really works on and some people that it doesn't."

Technology and AI in Fitness (37:40–48:57)

A brief conversation touches on the influence of AI and social media on perceptions and behaviors, including the manipulation of online discourse and its effects on society’s mental health and social dynamics.

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Conclusion

Episode 2604 of Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth provides listeners with actionable strategies to achieve a calorie deficit while emphasizing sustainable and health-focused approaches. Through live coaching segments, the hosts offer personalized advice that underscores the importance of balanced nutrition, consistent strength training, and mindful adjustments to fitness programs. The episode reinforces the show's commitment to debunking fitness myths and presenting evidence-based solutions for long-term health and muscular development.

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Find Mind Pump on Instagram:
@mindpumpmedia
@mindpumpsal
@mindpumpadam
@mindpumpjustin
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Visit: mindpumppodcast.com
Training Programs: mapsfitnessproducts.com

Transcript

[Sal DiStefano]

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.

[Adam Schaefer]

Mind Pump. Mind Pump.

[Sal DiStefano]

With your hosts Sal Destefano, Adam Schaefer.

[Adam Schaefer]

And Justin Andrews, you just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode we answered live callers questions, people called in, we got to coach them on air. But this was after the intro. Today's intro was 52 minutes long. In the intro we talk about science in regards to fat loss and muscle gain, talk about training techniques, current events, family life. It's a good time again. After that we got to the live callers. By the way, if you want to be on an episode like this one where we can coach you on air, email us your [e-mail] now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Butcherbox. They deliver grass fed meat, healthy chicken, pork, wild caught fish to your door and they actually have a mind pump box now which is pretty awesome. It's got all the meats that we enjoy eating the most. Anyway, go to butcherbox.com mindpump get $20 off plus you get free chicken breast, ground beef or salmon in your box included for an entire year for free. This episode is also brought to you by Brain fm. Listen to their music and induce different states of mind as proven by studies. So if you want to focus, listen to the focus music. If you want to meditate or sleep, listen to their meditate or sleep music. This is engineered sounds to induce states of mind and you can try them out for 30 days for free. See for yourself. You won't go back. Go to Brain FM mindpump. By the way, we have a webinar coming up for trainers and coaches where I teach trainers and coaches how to sell training effectively and with integrity. It's free. Go to trainerwebinar.com we are going to air it or it's going to be live. I should say June 3. Also, we have a sale this month on some workout programs. Maps 15 Performance and the RGB bundle are both 50% off. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code MAY50 for the discount. Here comes the show. It's a fact that if you want to lose weight, if you want to lose body fat, you have to be in a calorie deficit. In other words, you have to eat less calories than you burn or burn more calories than you take in. But did you know there are Effective ways to do this and not so effective ways. We're going to list the top five ways in order of how you can accomplish a calorie deficit. Let's do this.

[Justin Andrews]

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

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

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

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Let me paint the context first of how we rank these in order from best to worst. Number one has to accomplish the goal of a sustained, substantial calorie deficit and actually make a difference. That's number one. And number two, in our experience as trainers, which we trained for two decades, clients and trainers who tried trained clients, it's got to be something that people will actually do, that will actually do, and it'll actually stick longer. Okay. Because yes, you could definitely just eat less, but that's not as effective as what we're going to talk about. So the first way, the most effective way that we have found to accomplish a calorie deficit for the average person is to simply avoid heavily processed foods. Like, just doing that alone tends to result in and a 5 to 600 calorie reduction in calories, which is typically what's recommended when you first start on a diet to begin with. So typically, when you go on a diet, the Recommendation is about 5 to 600 calories below what would be considered maintenance. Avoiding heavily processed foods tends to do this naturally. And the reason why this is so effective is, number one, it accomplishes a goal. But number two, this what follows. This is the advice to eat as much as you want. So when I would train clients and I would say, don't eat heavily processed foods, but go and eat as much as you want, it was super powerful because they didn't feel like they were restricting themselves. They felt satiated, they didn't feel like they were Dieting, and yet they would have this nice, sustainable, slow weight loss that would happen. And they would often comment that it felt almost like magic. Like, what's going on? It's like you're eating less, you just don't realize it.

[Justin Andrews]

You know, we give this advice a lot, and I was thinking about the other day of, like, examples of where maybe I don't give it or it looks a little bit different. And there is an example of this piece of advice molded or shaped to the person or the individual. And for example, sometimes I don't even need to go this far. If I have a client or a family member who is eating so much processed food, sometimes what this looks like is choosing one or two things that we just get rid of. Right?

[Adam Schaefer]

Soda.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, exactly. Like just soda. Or that, you know, that 900 calorie Frappuccino you have every single morning.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right.

[Justin Andrews]

It's like they are. They eat so much processed foods that even that sometimes could be such a shift. Like, what do you mean, get rid of all that? You mean, like, make what a good point, Adam?

[Adam Schaefer]

I've actually had that before, where the client then goes, well, what do I eat? Because they literally don't even know what to eat that's not processed.

[Justin Andrews]

And there's so many, so many offenders in their current diet that it's like, wow, I could easily cut 6 to 800 calories by just getting rid of that frappuccino or getting. Just giving them one rule of, hey, no more sodas. You know, let's. Let's change that with water. And so sometimes even this piece of advice is kind of a stair step for people, depending on what their current diet looks like. This is also the benefits of having a trainer or somebody to kind of assess that for you and look at and go, like. Because if I did see somebody who's just like, you know, grossly overeating and it's all processed foods, telling that person to go on a whole food diet. Too radical is almost too. Yeah, almost too. And they don't need to. And. And I also think even. What made me think about this was even myself, like, when I get back in the swing of things, the, The. The process, I'm. I. I know myself so well that, you know, I, I have repeat offenders when I'm not. Not on the diet. And it's like, you know, I don't even have to get crazy yet where I'm weighing and measuring and. And even hitting crazy numbers on my protein intake yet. It's just like, Yeah, I could probably cut out that ice cream at night or. Oh, I could stop with the soda. Yeah. That one thing that I know is already excess calories. And I know that when I do that I still have somewhat of an appetite. So if I just choose to replace it with a whole food or another choice that already starts to make that.

[Doug]

Calorie, I really do think the liquid calories are the most unaccounted for.

[Adam Schaefer]

Of course.

[Doug]

Yeah. For anybody. So if you do have that where you eat, you drink anything other than water like that should really be something of focus.

[Adam Schaefer]

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

[Justin Andrews]

That's all we do. I've had clients crazy, effectively and I.

[Adam Schaefer]

Mean we did the math and he was consuming, you know, between eight to 100 to a thousand calories of soda because he worked blue collar. So he'd go get one of those big gulps and then later he'd have more sodas. And as I talked to him about his diet, I remember being like, hey, just drink water. He's like, really? That'll make a big difference. Yeah, let's see what happens. 18 pounds he lost.

[Justin Andrews]

I mean, that one or alcohol. Like, you know, I've had clients that are guilty of the, you know, couple glasses of wine every night.

[Adam Schaefer]

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

[Justin Andrews]

Is that true?

[Adam Schaefer]

No.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, I know wine is that way, but is that all, is it all alcohol?

[Adam Schaefer]

It will not show most of it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I don't even know why that never dawned on.

[Adam Schaefer]

They're not, they don't. Not required to. So I know this because.

[Justin Andrews]

Why, why is that? Why are they not.

[Adam Schaefer]

They're not required to. It's listed as alcohol. And so they're not required to list. They need to show their proof. So whether it's like 8% or 10%.

[Justin Andrews]

Or whatever, why does that never cross my mind?

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, it's interesting. Yeah. So I, I, I thought about this before.

[Doug]

Butter size glasses varies substantially for people.

[Adam Schaefer]

It occurred to me this weekend because my wife and I, my wife just, we just got this Nice, like, outdoor furniture set. And yesterday. Was it yesterday? Yeah, yesterday. We want to have some nice family time together. And I went and got the, like, a bottle of, like, pre mixed margarita mix. So it was like the Jose Joseph Cuervo whatever.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And I flip it around because that's what I do, and I'm like, oh, yeah, this doesn't tell me anything for sure. There's sugar in here.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And alcohol is. What is it, 7 calories? Nothing. It just says the proof. So in order for you to figure out how many calories you're consuming is almost impossible. Yeah.

[Doug]

That's crazy. I didn't realize that either.

[Adam Schaefer]

I know. Isn't that crazy?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I don't know. You know, it's like, I guess I should know that because when I think back to trying to figure that stuff out, I always had to go to, like, Calorie King or go to like a. Like one of our apps to figure it out. And it just. But I never.

[Adam Schaefer]

So you know how much your beer has or your glass of wine has, in fact. So it says right there that it's regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

[Justin Andrews]

Now, I feel like beer does sal, but no, no, no. Unless it's advertised because, well, if it's.

[Sal DiStefano]

Like a low calorie beer, they're trying.

[Adam Schaefer]

To show you that it's low calorie.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. Yeah. Because I know that there's like the Michelob Light or whatever. Calorie. Yeah, there's some ones that they.

[Adam Schaefer]

Do you have those, like Guinness, you know, those, like, dark.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. They don't even say.

[Adam Schaefer]

They call what they call, like, bread.

[Doug]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like iron in it.

[Doug]

So it's good for you.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, for most people, you avoid processed foods. You don't have to do anything else for a while. It's put you in a natural calorie.

[Justin Andrews]

Deficit or even do like a saying, stair step. It's okay. Let's just do the alcohol now.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right.

[Justin Andrews]

Then I'll do the chips, then I'll do the nuts then. And it's like, bam. Before you know it, they've already cut out thousands of calories.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right. That's right. Next up is. Oh, wow. Pint of Guinness. Thanks, Doug. 210 calories. Wow. That's not bad. When it's a lager, look up a lager. That's the one that I was thinking of. All right, so eating a high protein diet, it's a meal, also tends to produce a calorie deficit. And now, this is very effective for two different reasons. Number one, we're taught to understand calories as being equal. And for the most part, this is correct. However, when you look at studies on diets that are calorie controlled, one diet or one group eating a high protein diet up, you know, where they're eating like one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So really high protein versus like maybe more of your standard protein diet. The high protein diet produces more fat loss and more muscle gain. And there's a lot of reasons for this. One is protein has a kind of this thermogenic effect, meaning the amount of energy required to process a gram of protein is higher than it is to process a gram of carbohydrates or a gram of fat. So 100 calories of protein actually results in a larger calorie burn than 100 grams of, let's say, carbs or fats. The other reason is protein is very beneficial for muscle gain. And that has, that has a lot of benefit as well. But that's not all. It also, at least in the first six months, this is what the studies show, six months or so, eating a high protein diet, where you're chasing your target body weight in grams of protein and you're eating it from whole natural foods, it crushes your appetite. So you'll do this and you'll actually find yourself feeling satisfied earlier and not realizing you're in a calorie deficit. In fact, in my experience, and you guys have spoke this as well, when I've had clients do this, here's the expected report I get from my clients.

[Justin Andrews]

It's like a hard time eating.

[Adam Schaefer]

I can't eat this much. I'm trying to lose weight, Sal, and you're trying to make me eat this much food. I can't eat this much. It's not easy. It's not easy to do. And it does result for many people in a calorie deficit. And it's effective again because you don't feel like you're restricting yourself. You feel like you're trying to eat more and you can't.

[Justin Andrews]

This is why that advice that we've given before too, where we just tell people, eat the protein first, even just giving them the permission to have other calories from carbohydrates and other foods, or even arguably the processed thing is like, listen, just get the protein first. Then if you're still hungry, you do that. And I don't know how many times that I've made that rule for myself that, oh, man, I really Want that, those french fries or I really want that thing. Okay. I can have. Just make sure I eat the 8 ounces of chicken first. And then you eat it and you're like, ah, I don't even really want the fries that much. And if you do, you have a couple of them and then you're fine. So it's such an effective way to create that calorie deficit.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's awesome. Next up would be to avoid carbohydrates. So there is a satiety effect in the short term. So we're talking about probably in a, probably three to six month period because this starts to even out a little later when people just don't eat carbohydrates. One of the reasons why the ketogenic diet became so popular, there's many reasons, and I'm not saying this is the best diet for fat loss. Okay. But what I am saying is that what people experience avoiding carbs, especially initially, is that it blunts their appetite. It's harder to overeat when your diet is mostly fat and mostly protein. And this is one of the reasons why it's. So now it's not as effective as the first two that we said, but it is effective. And you. And now the other reason why it's.

[Doug]

I think it's not essential either.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes. You can also cut carbs out and you're not going to suffer from any nutrient deficiencies. They're not essential. The other reason why this is, this was popular, especially in the late 90s, early 2000s, is because it was hammered into our brains that fat was bad for us. So I think it was very freeing for people to suddenly eat as much fat as they want and lose weight. But yeah, this is an easy one. You cut out carbs, especially for like three months or so, and it'll, it'll, it'll crush your appetite for sure. Yeah, I noticed this a lot when I eat in a ketogenic diet. I'm just not as hungry.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I find that this, this also kind of naturally happens when you do the last tip. When you tell somebody to go after protein, you end up. If you don't cut out much room. Yeah. You, you dramatically reduce the carbohydrate intake, bare minimum.

[Adam Schaefer]

Next up, eat in a quote unquote window. This is like intermittent fasting.

[Justin Andrews]

This is why this got so popular.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, it got popular precisely because people lost weight when they only gave themselves four hours to eat in a day. Now what's happening? Well, you're gonna, you're gonna eat less than you normally do because you're only eating in, in a four hour window. Now this is one of my least favorite ways to accomplish a calorie deficit. It's hard to eat. Your protein targets can also promote unhealthy eating behaviors, especially for people who have struggled with restricting and bending binging. Excuse me, this actually encourages that. Nonetheless, when people eat in a window, they tend to eat less calories. So it's one way to get that calorie deficit.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

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

[Justin Andrews]

Huge difference.

[Adam Schaefer]

And, and there's, there's a few reasons I could, I could, that I will try to explain as to why. But to be quite honest, the human metabolism is so complex, there's probably something else that's going on. But one of them is that there's this nutrient repartitioning effect that happens when you're trying to build muscle. So more calories go to building muscle than they would to storage. And so on the scale you'll see with people when they try to build muscle and they're trying to lose weight, especially if they're feeding themselves to build muscle, is the weight on the scale won't be so large as largely affected, but their body composition is really affected. And so I would see this with clients all the time where the first, you know, 45 days or 60 days, the scale went down one pound, but we gained, you know, five pounds of muscle, lost six pounds of body fat. Like that's a big change in how you look and feel.

[Doug]

There's a bit of a delayed gratification to this. I think that's probably why it's not as marketed. And, and people are usually in this like crazy urgency and hustle to lose body fat and find whatever, pull from anything they can. And so I noticed that we haven't mentioned barely any in terms of like exercise.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh yeah, Methods.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, that's in the worst ways.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, this is when you think typically, I mean, there's a very small percentage that we would not go this route. First of all the things we've listed so far, almost always, I think we could agree that when getting a client, regardless of the amount of weight they need to lose, going to building the Metabolism is almost, you know, building muscle seems to be the best strategy for people.

[Adam Schaefer]

Great point. Because now people are wondering, well, if this is number five on your list of one to five most effective ways, why do you focus on building muscle first with your client? Here's why. It's the one that we have the most influence over when we have a client. Because you see me twice a week, we're going to work out and we're going to build muscle. The other ones, a lot of is largely on you. I am not with you every day, all day long. So, in fact, when I trained clients, I didn't even give them dietary advice until later. It was typically like, just come in, we're going to get you stronger.

[Doug]

For you, it's part of the conversation as you're just training.

[Justin Andrews]

Not, not only that, but to your point of that, it's the, it's the one controllable you have is. Let's say they don't do the best job on all the other four. Yeah, but you get them lifting weights, they'll build muscles, they'll build some muscle. And so at least some of those calories are going to get partitioned over to speeding their metabolism up, which is in our best interest for this client that wants to lose weight. So, yeah, always. This is the, the number one. Go to strategy.

[Adam Schaefer]

It always makes me laugh, though, when you hear people debate this, like, how much of an effect it has on metabolism. Like, like if you gave. First off, it leverages hormones. Okay. Hormones have a very pronounced effect on body composition. Okay. You could take a man and you could put him. You could optimize his testosterone, his growth hormone, and you could help with insulin sensitivity or with thyroid hormone. You know what's going to happen without changing anything else. He'll build some muscle and get leaner. What's going on here? Well, the hormones signal the body. What does strength training do? As you build muscle, you increase androgen receptor density. So your current testosterone now is stronger. You improve insulin sensitivity. There's evidence that it also makes your thyroid more effective. And you see growth hormone levels tend to rise. So what you're essentially doing is naturally leveraging hormones for better body composition. You also have your muscles burn more calories just because you have them. They're more expensive, but not just at rest. And this is where those studies get, you know, promoted. It's not just as rest. Yes, you burn a little bit more calories muscle at rest, but you burn a lot more calories when you're not at rest. So when you Go for a walk. If you have five more pounds of muscle on your body, your calorie burn goes up significantly. And then there's other complicated, interesting ways like mitochondrial uncoupling. Right. Where the body just decides to become less efficient with calorie burn, which, when you feed your body to build muscle and you build muscle, seems to happen at least that. That seems. That's what we witnessed with all the clients that we trained. All right, let's get to the worst ways to cause or create a calorie deficit. One of them is just eat less, but eat the same food. Like, good luck. This is hard.

[Justin Andrews]

I, I see this, I actually see this happening of family, friends and stuff that are, that are taking GLP1s and, you know, still struggling with the whole process. And the common thread between the ones that are struggling are they. They don't change any of the behaviors. They just eat less of it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Rely on the GLP1.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, it just, it's like, and, and, you know, you know, initially they sometimes see a little bit of weight loss, so they think it's a decent strategy. It's like, it's such a terrible. Meanwhile, watching them go through digestive issues and diarrhea and stuff like that. What are you, are you not feeling, you're not connecting the dots.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're supposed to get healthier.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. But, you know, a lot of people are using it just to help the calorie restriction. And it's like, man, if you don't also start to change your eating habits and the food choices that you make while also being in a calorie deficit, then even if you see some results, it's temporary. Those habits and behaviors will end up just coming all right back.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. There's two main reasons. There's a lot of reasons why this isn't effective, but two main reasons are. One, this is a white knuckling approach. I'm just gonna eat less than what I currently eat. So you're still eating foods that stimulate. Now you really feel restricting. Like you're restricting yourself when you do this.

[Doug]

It's so much more of a struggle.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's a struggle. That's why people can't stick to it. And the second reason is if you just eat less calories without bumping protein, without strength training, you can expect, okay, like clockwork. This is consistent in the data that a decent chunk, almost half, like 40% of the weight you're going to lose is muscle or lean body mass. Now, that's not good because, you know, earlier I said building muscle Leverages your hormones to give you better body composition. You're reversing that by losing muscle. You're actually leveraging your hormones to make you a more effective fat storing and not building muscle machine. So it's not. And then you'll plateau so hard. And we saw this, we had a group that we worked with on GLP1s and there were people on there who had been on a GLP1 for a long time who had a lot of weight to lose. There was one woman who had, I think it was like 80 pounds to lose, lost 60, was eating a thousand calories a day and had more weight to lose and didn't know what to do. Like, where do I go from here? It's like, well, you can't eat less than a thousand. And she wasn't feeling good either. And we had to figure out how to reverse diet her and build some muscle to make that, that plateau break. Lastly, terrible approach is just to try to burn more calories through exercise. The data on this is, is hilarious. It is a fail, fail, fail.

[Doug]

Such a losing strategy, losing strategy.

[Adam Schaefer]

Just now. Exercising more and moving more will improve your health. Okay, so it is good for you. But if this is how you expect to lose a lot of body fat, you're going to hit a crazy plateau as your body becomes more efficient with calories and becomes a better calorie sparing machine. And we see this in the gym.

[Doug]

I venture to say a lot of like ex athletes have this type of mentality because of the association involved. When you look at your body and you're very, very active and you're doing all the things and you know, when you, when you got a youthful profile and your hormones are a bit better back then you know, you could kind of get away with things and that just, it just doesn't work, man.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. And also when you're, when you're a college athlete, the amount of exercise that is required to make this actually work is so much, it's unsustainable, unrealistic. When you look at a college athlete, like, I had a water polo ex water polo player, a woman who was like, I used to eat whatever I wanted and my body's so different now.

[Doug]

Have you ever seen Michael Phelps? Calorie amount?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

But he's literally training his ass off in the pool six hours every day. Yeah, every single day.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. But keep in mind, okay, what a great example to bring up. Part of why he can eat that much and burn that much is also because he's worked his way up there. If this is how crazy the body is, if he didn't care about being gold medals and he was just a swimmer who was active like that and kept his diet the same, his body would have adapted to that which this is what this was. The conversation I really wanted to have was, and you kind of set it up a little bit different to get here. But why this is such a bad strategy is most people have yo yo dieted and they've gotten to a place where their metabolism is so slow that they, and they're like, okay, Adam, they come, they, they hire me and it's like, okay, they have say 30, 40 pounds to lose and we start to track what they, where they need to be calorie wise. And they're already eating like only 1300, 1500 calories.

[Adam Schaefer]

And it's just with women, so it's.

[Doug]

The only other method is to exercise.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And so they go, okay, you got take that person who's only eating 1300 calories. That's what they have to be at just to be in a little bit of a deficit. Because their, their body has already done this up and down yo yo dieting so many times that just trying to create a bunch of activity to create that deficit to lose weight is such a terrible strategy. We'd be far better off building muscle. Right. Focusing on actually going after muscle, going after, building to speed that metabolism up so that then we could create a activity gap or create a calorie, a real calorie deficit to lose. Because that's where most people are when they come to you. Like most people that, that would hire us have already kind of tried this on their own so many times through the lots of activity and cutting calories and they've reached a place where they have a very slow metabolic rate. And if you're miserable. Yeah. And if you already have a very slow metabolic rate, then creating all kinds of activity just to create a little bit of a calorie deficit is a really terrible strategy for long term weight loss. It's, it's inevitable that person's not going to probably be able to keep that activity up. So you're far better off. Instead of worrying about the calorie deficit, deficit per se right now and actually going, let's build this metabolism, let's build some muscle that far more advantageous for long term success.

[Adam Schaefer]

By the way, we talked about eating more protein earlier. Our partners, Butcherbox, have finally put together the mind pump box.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, they did it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Doug, pull up what is exactly in there because we Talked about it earlier.

[Justin Andrews]

Do they do individual ones or they do like a buying pump one?

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay, so here's what's in this is. So if you become a member of Butcherbox. So what? Butcherbox is a company that sends you a monthly box of.

[Justin Andrews]

That's what's in it right there.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah. So it's a monthly box of meat and it's high quality meat. It's like grass fed meat. It's high quality chips, healthy. It's very good prices because of the way they source it.

[Justin Andrews]

That's the box right there.

[Adam Schaefer]

So. And then what they did is they went through and they took our favorite cuts and have made a box. And so here's what you get in the mind pump box. You get rib eyes, chicken thighs, steak tips, ribs, chicken nuggets and the flat iron steak. I love that they put the nuggets in there. That's like my, that is my, my, like my guilty pleasure is their.

[Justin Andrews]

I mean these, these are the go to right here.

[Doug]

Kids and kids.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, well, I mean we. I've tried, I'd like, I think I've tried most of everything at Butcherbox and I've nothing bad to say about any.

[Adam Schaefer]

But these are the best.

[Justin Andrews]

But this is like the go to computers. So this is awesome. Yeah. So now it's a. On the website, does it say mind pump box? Is that what it sells?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, very cool.

[Adam Schaefer]

Isn't that cool? Yeah, you can, you can also modify it so you're not stuck.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean that's a good, like, I don't know if you're, if you're a listener and you've been curious about starting and trying like what a way to start is on the stuff that we've been touting as our favorites as like a good box to start with.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, and they're still giving them the free. They're also going to add free stuff to it. So it's free chicken breast, ground beef or salmon added to every box for a whole year.

[Justin Andrews]

So if I was doing that, I would add the ground beef.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Justin Andrews]

Because y' all got the chicken thighs. I'm salmon, I'm not big. The ground beef with that stack is like perfect.

[Adam Schaefer]

I tell you what, it's 75%. My kids, my two little ones, 75% of their, their meat is the ground beef, the grass fed ground beef. Because we mix it with rice and it's so easy.

[Justin Andrews]

And it's the, that's what Max does ground tacos. If he's not doing the chicken nuggets, it's salad ground. The ground beef. We do a lot of bison at our house, too.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

I don't know if you guys do a lot of bison or not. We do. We do a lot of bison, I think.

[Adam Schaefer]

What did the buffalo say to his son when he went off to college? Bison. Thanks. Thanks. Just Doug loves dad jokes, so.

[Justin Andrews]

Hi.

[Sal DiStefano]

Hijacked.

[Doug]

Punchline.

[Justin Andrews]

I was cooking up butcher box this weekend. That's what. Yeah, I was on the grill. I did do the chicken thighs. Chicken thighs. And I saw you had corn on the cob this morning. I'm like, we've been craving that. I don't know if it's the weather right now. And it's like.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's getting nice.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Yeah. So it's like barbecue chicken thighs and. And corn on the cob is like.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's a great combination.

[Justin Andrews]

It is such a good combination.

[Adam Schaefer]

Hey, so I was reading up on the power of the placebo effect. I'll tell you guys why in a second, but I got some stats on the placebo effect.

[Doug]

I trip out on that all the time, bro. Yeah, it's remarkable. I probably read a lot of these. These same studies.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, dude. It's remarkable. I got to read to you guys. So, okay, so the placebo effect. I wrote a bunch of notes here. The reason why you have to count for the placebo effect in studies is because it's so profound.

[Doug]

It's legit.

[Adam Schaefer]

In particular, it's for the kind of subjective types of effects like mood, pain, et cetera, in studies. You guys want to know how much the placebo effect affects people? 20 to 30%. Yeah, 20. 30.

[Justin Andrews]

Personally, you know what I find even more interesting about that is that. So, I mean, what does that highlight to you? This. The power of the mind, right?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay, so how many people do you personally know that actually go into things with kind of a negative mind? So it's like. So you get 20 to 30% have positive results just from the. So that's also accounting for the people that also are like, this isn't going to work. And then it doesn't work for them. Right. So it's like, imagine if maybe they shift their mind with the placebo effect be even greater.

[Adam Schaefer]

So the nocebo effect has the. The negative. Exact negative action. So, like, oh, this painkiller is not going to do anything. 20, 30% people or less will notice any symptoms.

[Justin Andrews]

It's wild.

[Adam Schaefer]

But. But study. So trip off this. So I went deep into this, right? 20 to 30% of trial patients will say, oh, I have less pain. Did you guys know that there's active drugs that have the same effect?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

The same size of an effect.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

On that.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Now I looked up, like, what, like, what have they, what have we discovered that really influences this? It's the context. A doctor that's convincing.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

A professional setting, a cult leader, and a brand name pill will do this as well. So if they see it and it says like some kind of a brand name.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

It makes an effect as well. So. By the way, this reminds me of. Remember that study I talked about where. Where they all.

[Doug]

Perception.

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay. One of the most powerful placebo, crazy placebo effects I ever read about was that, that knee pain study. Do you guys remember that one where they took two groups of people who actually had, like, knee issues? Like, they could, they could image it and see arthritis. One group, they just cut the knee open, sewed it back up. The other group, they did the surgery. Same effects.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Everybody had the same pain relief. And it was such a powerful place.

[Doug]

Cut it and then just resold it. They didn't do anything.

[Adam Schaefer]

Nothing. And it was a powerful effect because you look like you had surgery. Yeah. So the context really amplified.

[Justin Andrews]

So interesting that you went this route. I had something in my notes that I was like, I don't even know where the hell I'm gonna bring this up. But it fits so perfectly for what you're talking about right now because. Have you guys ever heard of mind movies?

[Adam Schaefer]

Mind movies?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Go to mindmovies.com. so I just recently heard about this, and I just, I. I briefly went down the rabbit hole. I didn't go super deep yet, but I wanted to ask you guys about it. And the fact that you're bringing up this whole placebo thing makes me go, oh, my God. This is like a perfect time to bring this whole thing up. So it's this company and, and I think they help create these movies for you. But basically you're supposed to, like, write down, like, all the things that you, you want to manage that you want to dream. Like, I want to have a, you know, 50 foot yacht and houses. Yes. All the things you dream about. I want to drive these three cars. I want to have four kids. I want to.

[Doug]

I want all these things manifest.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And then they help you create this movie and you're supposed to watch it two to three minutes every day. And there's supposedly the outcome and the power of it is like super wild. It's total law of attraction types stuff. Yeah. So not normally my jam or anything.

[Adam Schaefer]

I don't know if I'd want to put. I wonder what kind of weird shit they're getting in there.

[Justin Andrews]

I don't know. But I mean, I want to dream about to your point of the power of the mind and the thought of you and then that people have been doing this forever. Right. The. The vision boards. Vision boards have been around forever. I mean that's a very popular thing. A lot of people who, who use totally attest to like, man, I. That made a big difference for me was putting it up there. I can visually see it every day. I think this is like the next level to that. Right. Like actually going. I'm going to watch.

[Doug]

I mean there's something to it. It's. It's really interesting when you have mindset where you're really focused on something and it's just the collection of like how you behave like after that going into your day is what matters.

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay. This is so true. People don't even realize like you. You think you see and perceive everything that your eyes look at you don't. You only perceive what you focus on.

[Justin Andrews]

There's that famous thing, the red car thing that they.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Or they're passing the basketball back and forth just to count how many times. And a guy with a gorilla suit walks through. You don't even see him. Even though rocks. He walks right in front of.

[Doug]

Your magicians are able to trick.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's right. And so if you. For example, this is why gratitude is a practice. Because our brains are not wired to make us happy. They're wired to keep us alive. So what they. What you tend to focus on is the stuff that makes you survive. Like, oh, that's scary. That's a. That's causing anxiety. Don't do that. Rather than the things like the daily things that can bring you joy. So that's why you have to practice it because you actually start to train your perception to notice the daily blessings.

[Doug]

Have they ever done like a real clinical study on hypnotism? Yes, because I would love to see that mainly because of like, if you can tap into like your subconscious of like how you're. The underlying perception is working.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. They found in studies that there are some people that it really works on and some people that it doesn't.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Isn't that. So I thought there's like a strategy for the hypnotist to look for sift out. Right. There's supposed to be certain people that are more susceptible to it and you're. They have kind of a trained eye to know it. I don't remember what it was. I remember reading about it before. Something to be with, like the way they're paying attention or distracted or something like that.

[Doug]

Influential versus somebody else.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

A lot of.

[Justin Andrews]

Do you remember what it was?

[Doug]

Stuff just this totally like converges with my passions of.

[Justin Andrews]

For cult.

[Doug]

Yeah, for cult leaders.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, totally. That's exactly. I mean, they know how to pick those people out and they. And then they get them all in one group. But then the power. Then imagine the power of that too when you get.

[Doug]

They pray off people. The placebo effect all the time.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's so. That's. Yeah, that's so funny. So, so what's funny about this is I was having a conversation. The reason why I looked up the placebo effect is I was. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is. He's agnostic and he's. He wants to come to the faith. He's. I was talking to him back and forth. Science guy, super smart dude. He's a mit, you know, MIT student, very intelligent. And so, you know, I was, we were talking data and I said, have you seen the data on the effect that regular church going and reading the Bible does on people's lives? And he goes, no. So we started talking about this and the effects are incredible. Like reduction. 84% reduction in. In depression, dramatic improvement in feeling happy purpose, dramatic reduction in all cause mortality, which is huge. And we were talking about this. I said, do you think it's just a placebo effect? So we looked it up and actually placebo effect would not account for all of it. And so we talked and it's made. Okay, is it placebo effect plus community plus practice discipline, Maybe you can add all of that up to explain it. And I said, you know what the trick is though? I said, first off, there isn't anything I found to have as pronounced of a powerful positive effect on your entire life as the data shows. Going to church and reading the Bible regularly. Nothing comes close to it. I said, if it is a placebo effect, you know what the trick is? You have to believe it. So it was this great conversation that we had around it and he's like, man, I want to believe though, is the underlying thread. Yes, yes. And I mean those of us in the faith believe it's the supernatural effects. Nonetheless, I think it's a great way to communicate to an intellectual, like, well, I mean, if you think it's not real, you got to believe it for it to Work.

[Doug]

Now you're working with Nocebo.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So go in that. Yeah, go in that direction.

[Justin Andrews]

That's how I. I mean, I remember that's how I always explain it to people. Back in the day, I was just like, would you. I mean, I'd rather go my whole life having faith in believing it and then dying, being wrong than be wrong.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, that's a good hedge.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I think that's just a better hedge. You know, saying. And the byproduct of that is you probably are a better person. You live a better life. All the stats that show, all the healthy stuff that comes, like. Yeah, I don't know. I just think I'd rather. I'd rather be bet on that side than having the cynical attitude of, like, no, I don't believe. And it's like, okay, yeah, you should see the.

[Adam Schaefer]

The data on charity with it. It's remarkable. Like, the.

[Justin Andrews]

What do you mean? The amount of people that give to charity, where they give and they donate.

[Adam Schaefer]

Money and especially time to helping others. It really does make people in what we would consider better in the secular world just for, like, oh, you should help people. You should think about others. You care for people. If you look at the data, it shows it very clearly, which is, you know, pretty cool stuff. Anyway, I gotta tell you about something super motivating for me in the gym today. Let me ask you guys this. When you guys go to a gym, what's the most. Because we've been doing this forever, so it's. So we're just, you know, it's like. It's like walking into your. Your bedroom, right? You see it all the time. What's the most motivating thing that you could see in the gym?

[Justin Andrews]

The old Jack dude. Yeah, yeah, always all the old Jack dude. And it's not to say that I. I also. I also get inspired when I see the person who's, like, really overweight, who's, like, working in there. That. That's. That's inspiring to. To see someone doing that, because I know the.

[Adam Schaefer]

That gets me more emotional than. Than I think. Motivated personally.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

When I see that.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I guess that's what it is. I think both. Both create an emotional response, you know, for me, that I feel those two type of people. But the old guy is like, more like, man, that's gonna be me. That's why. That's what I think. That's more like. I'm like, I want to be that guy.

[Adam Schaefer]

When I see the person who's like, like in there working out. You could tell they're new, maybe overweight, whatever. I actually, I fight the urge to like high five them because I don't want them to feel like I'm condescending. But I always want to go over them and like high five them or whatever. But when I see. So today I was in the sauna, dude walks in and he's older and he was just Jack dude. Not like crazy Jack, but like really fit, lean abs, the whole deal. And he sits down and I'm like, I gotta ask him like, sir, do you mind if I ask you how old you are? 67.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

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

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So different medications, hospital visits, their pain surgeries and yeah. What a difference.

[Justin Andrews]

It's our generation that, that really started to shift. Right. Because when you see an old guy, that's really rare because that generation, they didn't work out. No. So it's super, super rare. But I think maybe in the next 20 years I see more of that. Yeah. Won't that become, that's a good point. Shouldn't it become more of the norm when you think about the, the, the rise in, in fitness and lifting weights.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

For our generation. I do feel like it's way more.

[Doug]

The awareness has gone way up.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh yeah.

[Doug]

To the benefits of training.

[Justin Andrews]

Dude. I did. You just reminded me something though that I didn't know I was going to bring this up either, but it's now. You got on my mind. Somebody asked me if I was retired and I've never been at. Yeah, like a neighbor. Yeah, a new neighbor came over and introduced himself yesterday. Older guy, you know what, I' come over and was talking to me for a little bit and you know, we've been talking already for like 10 minutes about neighborhood, where we come from, work. Well, it wasn't even though, See I, if it was, if it was 10 o' clock on a Thursday or something, this was Saturday, so it was like I was supposed to be home, that would be good. But I've never been asked that before and I thought, am I, should I be offended by that? That like I wasn't you know, I'm saying it was. I guess it was like we were just talking about stuff and that he just asked, you know, that instead, like most people, what do you do? I've always been asked, what do you do for a living? Or what? Die? That was the first time that someone.

[Doug]

Led with, like, a Silicon Valley thing.

[Justin Andrews]

I don't fudge know, but I feel like it's more of a gray hair, balding thing is what I felt like. That's like. I'm like, do I just look like that? It's like, that's a.

[Sal DiStefano]

No, you do not.

[Justin Andrews]

Like, that's never been a possibility that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Someone would even ask why he saw you with your cars, bro.

[Doug]

Like, startup payout or.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So. Okay. Even if that's the case, that's because that's what I told myself is like, oh, it must be the.

[Adam Schaefer]

Although you don't look like. Although you don't look like a tech guy, bro.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

If you. If you keep.

[Doug]

That's a bomb in your head.

[Justin Andrews]

I just. It's never. Never in my life has that ever been. Has that ever been asked.

[Adam Schaefer]

Maybe because Adam's not working out anymore and he must be in tech.

[Justin Andrews]

Spun me out. It spun me out all day. I'm like, that. That would even be a question. It's always been. And even if you. What you would still would think that it would be, what did you do? Or what kind of work did you come, like, to go like, oh, are you retired? The fuck would I be retired for?

[Adam Schaefer]

You'll say, like, that's a compliment. I think it's a compliment.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

[Doug]

Like, oh, God. I'm trying to reference that one. Like, I mean, two wheel, like, what's that Segway Segue. Do you own a segue?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I mean, have you guys ever been asked that? I've never been asked that. Not as a leading question. No, I've never been asked that. And it wasn't like we were talking about business before. And I even had the opportunity to talk about mind pump and success. None of that stuff.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

It was just we had been talking about actually where we lived and family and everything like that. And it was on a Saturday or a Sunday. I don't know what day it was. It was a weekend.

[Doug]

I mean, I've met, like, one younger person that was like, retired, and I was always like, that's so strange.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. To me, I took it as like, I could actually Be that age now where someone could ask, like, that's. That's a possibility. Like, I'm. I'm obviously. I'm obviously not old, but I'm obviously not young enough that, like, if you. If I was. Looked like I was 20 or in my teens, you don't even.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

What do you do for work?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. But you're old enough to potentially have retired.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. That's why this area.

[Sal DiStefano]

So that's in this area.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. So that's what was so interesting to me is, like, that is. That was a first for me. I have never even possibly looked the part that somebody would even ask, did you ask him?

[Adam Schaefer]

Why did you say that?

[Justin Andrews]

No, I wasn't. I didn't play like I was offended or like that. And I said, oh, no, no.

[Adam Schaefer]

The oldest I ever felt was when I went to. That I went to that party with my wife, and this dude comes up to me and complimented. It's, oh, your daughter's attractive. I'm like, that's my wife, bro. I was like. Part of me was like, that is.

[Justin Andrews]

That is awkward.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, like, my ego both grew and shrink at the.

[Justin Andrews]

Like, that's like. I guess that's a similar. Type of similar. You know, we. What we were just talking about was that the neighborhood and I do have an older neighborhood. And I said that I was attracted to that. He's like, oh, yeah, it's real quiet over here. And not. And I'm like, yeah, no, I love that.

[Adam Schaefer]

I don't like them damn kids. Those noisy kids.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So he was.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, were you wearing New Balance? Like, what was going on, dude?

[Justin Andrews]

I thought I looked hip. You know what I'm saying? I thought I did. I thought. I thought we're in your barbecue apron. I was barbecuing that day, but I didn't have my barbecue. You're on. I think I had just shorts, a T shirt, and my Jordans on. So I didn't think I looked. I didn't think I looked old. But that was a first for me. It caught me off guard. I didn't. I didn't know how to receive it, you know? And I thought it was interesting because that's like, never once in my life have I looked like that could be a possibility.

[Adam Schaefer]

So is that the weirdest question you ever had asked you?

[Justin Andrews]

It's up there.

[Adam Schaefer]

Up there? Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Yeah. I just. I mean, I don't know if I.

[Adam Schaefer]

That is a weird question.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. I don't. I don't know if it's weird. It's Just interesting. I'm sure guys that are retired get it all the time. I'm sure older guys get, you know, and on a weekday would make sense. So if it was like, you know.

[Sal DiStefano]

Probably been watching you.

[Justin Andrews]

You're watching me?

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

I saw you on, like, a Thursday, and you're at home.

[Justin Andrews]

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

[Adam Schaefer]

Weirdest question ever anyone ever asked me was if I had a nose job. I had that ass twice. By two separate plastic surgeons. Two separate plastic surgeons.

[Justin Andrews]

It is very straight.

[Adam Schaefer]

Asked me if I had a nose job.

[Justin Andrews]

It's very straight.

[Adam Schaefer]

And I'm like, is that. Yeah. Is that doctor.

[Justin Andrews]

It is. It is. It is really straight. It is. It is really straight. Although, even though it's beaky, it's symmetrical. You know what I'm saying?

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, it's that Dr. Beekman.

[Justin Andrews]

It's a beautiful beak. That is so.

[Adam Schaefer]

What's a weird. You ever have a weird question asking you, Justin?

[Doug]

Oh, I'm. I'm trying to think. I don't know.

[Justin Andrews]

Butt implants.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, it was probably.

[Justin Andrews]

Are those real swinging?

[Doug]

You know you've got that before.

[Justin Andrews]

I know you got that real quick. He's like, come on, guys.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, Is that where you're at? You're at Cabo.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

In that older couple, weird place. Oh, they bought the street.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, I told you the weird. Remember that? Probably the weirdest was when I got the invitation to go do the. Do the cocktail service. Yeah. With no shirt on. And then it was, like, leading to what?

[Adam Schaefer]

You almost did it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, well, because.

[Adam Schaefer]

10 grand.

[Justin Andrews]

10 grand back then, that was a lot of money to me. It was like, 10 grand for a weekend. Like, I walk around my shirt up. I could do that. Tell me more.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. I'm not gay, but 10 grand. Oh, God. For sure.

[Justin Andrews]

Hey, hey. Shout out to Josh on our editing team, who did the baby?

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, brother.

[Justin Andrews]

So good.

[Adam Schaefer]

My family members kept watching it.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, see, look, I was.

[Doug]

I told Adam because, like, I mean, my parents that loosely kind of pay attention to what I do, but they've never shared anything. Like, my dad shared that on Facebook. And I was like, oh, my God. Obviously, that did something.

[Justin Andrews]

That's how good that was. Yeah, it was so. It was so good. I. I don't know what. I don't know if it's the cut to Doug that has me the hardest. I don't know if it was the cut or Justin goes like, you see the peanut butter, if that cut did it or the one to you. There's one where you. You do it cuts to you, or you say you make a sound like.

[Adam Schaefer]

A girl or something like that.

[Justin Andrews]

No, but after there's another one that you do that they did an expression. I don't know. It was a. It was such a great edit to choose because of the banter that went.

[Adam Schaefer]

Back wild with that man.

[Justin Andrews]

Isn't it cool? It is.

[Doug]

Your little baby beard. That's what it was.

[Justin Andrews]

I wanted. I wonder. Yeah, the watch and the shoes had me going too. The fact that Josh. I mean, Josh had to put some of that together. You know, you notice the little subtleties of AI though, right? That, you know, the. Remember, the AI would always do the five or six fingers. And you notice my. My thing behind me, the. The jersey. So the AI picked up on it that it was a jersey and it was a split. It was a football player. So just so such a random, subtle. Like when you think about how accurate, how amazing it is. But then it has weird quirks like that. Like, you know, it's so good that it can make us look like babies and all this great detail. But then like a subtle thing that's a basketball jersey behind us is just whatever. The algorithm didn't pick it up or the whatever, and then it makes it into a football player. I thought that was.

[Doug]

Dude, was it the. The. The dead Internet theory is really, like, grabbing me.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, yeah, yeah, that.

[Justin Andrews]

Like, remind me what that. That is again.

[Doug]

That AI actually has become what sentient or where it basically thinks for itself and has been copying and replicating. So most of what we see on the Internet is just what, like, the.

[Adam Schaefer]

AI now wants us to see. Yeah, yeah, we wouldn't know. Well, we wouldn't know.

[Doug]

It's weird. Just because of all these, like, they've actually, like, cracked down and found even more companies that just deliberately put AI bots in. To create discourse, you know, in conversation, and people are arguing just with like, robots.

[Adam Schaefer]

Have you guys.

[Doug]

Not even real.

[Adam Schaefer]

Did you guys hear about the study that Facebook did in 2012 that they talked about that they. They did a study?

[Justin Andrews]

Is that the one where they were talking? They had to shut it down, that one?

[Adam Schaefer]

No, no, they did. It's not AI, but just to show you the power of social media, they took a bunch of people and took out the positive comments underneath posts and stuff. And then with other people that took out the negative comments. And it affected the people.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, of course.

[Adam Schaefer]

For months.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, of course.

[Adam Schaefer]

After they changed it back. Because it changed how, what people were looking at their perception of things, their mood for months.

[Doug]

So now, okay, back to, you know, when you started being like, wow, this is moving so fast. Like, like the shift from the pendulum of this to now, all of a sudden it's all conservative.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Like, I think those shifts are so quick now.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Because of that. Like, because they can really just add in their influence, like.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, I agree at a degree.

[Adam Schaefer]

Social contagion is a real thing, you know. Do you know what was widely perceived to be a social contagion? Anorexia. Yeah. In fact, Google that, Doug. Anorexia, social contagion. It was not. It was nothing. It wasn't on the radar until not that long ago. I forgot what decade it was. And then suddenly it became. It spread like wildfire. This, this, this, this restricting yourself to that point. Was it never even really a thing?

[Justin Andrews]

Interesting.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. And there's, there's. Yeah, there's.

[Justin Andrews]

I wonder, to your point, Justin, if we're going to see crazy like, like political leaning shifts like that happen more rapid than we've ever seen. Like, we have this, like, I feel like there's this super conservative movement right now, but, like, watch it only last like a year.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Then we go the other way again and then that only lasts a year or less and then it goes back and we just get. We're getting pink. But I know.

[Adam Schaefer]

That'S not cool.

[Justin Andrews]

Like, let us enjoy this for a little.

[Adam Schaefer]

I don't like that. Well, anyway, speaking of cool tech and stuff, I was really diving into Brain FM and really, you know, Brain. Okay, so if people aren't familiar, so Brain fm, there is nobody else that does this. This is their own unique way of inducing states of mind or brain wave states. In other words, we know what brainwave states look like when you're focused on something or when you're meditating or when you're sleeping. And what Brain FM has done is they've used. They know how to use sounds to induce those brainwave states. Okay, but there's this, this positive feedback loop that happens with Brain FM, meaning you. When I listen to Focus, 10 minutes into listening to it, I am more focused. But then because I'm focusing on something, it's giving more, more feedback to my brain. Being in that state. So I achieve. And I know Justin, you've talked about this a hyper focused state.

[Doug]

Oh yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

With it hyper. It takes about 10 minutes and I get this really hyper focused.

[Doug]

I don't want to say tunneling effect, but it definitely like shuts off like just my surroundings and it just really helps me lock it.

[Justin Andrews]

Do you guys think that's the same science? To support what I talked about a long time ago. I remember the first time Tom Bilyeu, the very first time he was on our show a long time ago, he talked about listening to audiobooks on like three speed.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And I thought that was. And for someone like me who's always struggled the attention part, I thought well that's a stupid idea. That'll make it even more difficult to pay attention to. And he's like no, no, no, no. You have to work your way up to that. But it'll have the opposite effect. And I thought that's weird. And sure as shit, it blew my mind when I started listening to books at two and a half, three speed. And I was, I was retaining more. And what I, what I attribute to what I feel like is happening is it's moving so fast that I have. My brain has to really focus in on it and it doesn't allow me to kind of get distracted. And then now if I listen to something on normal speed, I can easily trail. My thoughts will trail off and it's like, oh, I gotta rewind that. I didn't hear what it said and then I gotta go. And so but when it's really fast like that, my brain to your tunnel gets kind of tunnel vision on the thing and I get more out of it. I think that's really. I don't think that's talked about enough as a strategy. If you're listening right now and ever try.

[Adam Schaefer]

I haven't tried that.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh my God.

[Doug]

A lot of people speed our conversations.

[Justin Andrews]

Yes. A lot of people listen to our stuff faster. Well this, I bet this because we probably look at it more. But there's a lot of people that are consuming our content for education.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So it makes sense from educational point that you're like, I want to get through a lot of the fluff and I want to get just a good meat out of it.

[Doug]

They're long enough where you know they're trying to get.

[Justin Andrews]

If you've never done that Sal it.

[Adam Schaefer]

I haven't done it.

[Justin Andrews]

It is. And, and maybe. Maybe too. I don't know if there is a genetic thing for like, for Me, it's such a big deal because maybe you don't have as much of a. A problem with trailing off when you're reading. I do. That has always been a struggle for me. Reading in school, that was the hardest part, was that I just trail off a trail. I've had to read the same page over so many times. It was so frustrating. But that has been the biggest hack for me with. With all these books that I've consumed. 90% of them are through audible. I just have to. The only time now I'll ever pick up a book and read is if I'm on vacation and I'm doing it more. More for leisure than I am to, like, learn. But if I. If I'm going into something I want to learn, I'm gonna. I'm gonna start. And I. And it's like a muscle. I. It's been a while since I, like. Well, I just listened to one with Katrina that long ago, and we're. I think we're listening at one and a half speed, but I can't go right to three. I have to work up to it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, okay.

[Justin Andrews]

I gotta go one and a half.

[Adam Schaefer]

Say that before.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, I gotta go one and a half for probably a little while. I don't know, maybe. Maybe a half a book or what that. And then I can go up a half. I go about up half, half speed every half a book. And then by the time I'm on book three or so, I'm. I'm burning at like three. And then when you're doing it like three speed, you're consuming that book in a third of the time it would take you. So you can knock books out fast.

[Adam Schaefer]

I'll try that. Well, with. With Brain fm, when I use it is when I'm writing or trying to focus on a subject that I want to bring up on the show or something like that. And it's about 10 minutes. It's really weird. I feel a switch at about 10 minutes in where I start. At first I'm like, okay, it's just nothing. And then 10 minutes in is.

[Doug]

Well, and you enjoy listening to. Because there's other options, like the classical.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, it's music.

[Doug]

Classical piano.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's not just random sounds. Yeah, yeah. Probiotics improve your gut health, skin health, mental health, and studies now show they help you build muscle and improve your strength and performance. Which one do you go with? Go with the best. The world's best probiotic is Seed. Go check them out. Go to seed.com forward slash, mindpump. Use the code 25. Mindpump. Get 25% off. Back to the show.

[Sal DiStefano]

Our first caller is Ben from Scotland.

[Adam Schaefer]

What's up, Ben?

[Justin Andrews]

How you doing, Ben?

[Doug]

What's going on, dude?

[E]

Hey, guys, how you doing? Thank you so much for having me on. Means a lot.

[Adam Schaefer]

You got it, man. How can we help you?

[E]

So I'm fairly new into kind of lifting weights. I have some experience competing in mixed martial arts, but lifting weights was always something I kind of stayed away from. I don't know why, it was just not something I took interest in. But recently I gained a lot of weight. So I decided, you know what, let's just really knuckle down and see what this weightlifting business is about. Joined a program online where I'm doing a three day full body workout, which I'm loving. I'm seeing great progress in terms of strength, even some slight visible changes in my body recomp, which is what I'm going for. But the one thing I'm kind of struggling with is I see so many things online where they say you kind of need to change a program every sort of six to 12 weeks. And I really don't understand why that would be the case. And I'm really just kind of struggling to get my head around it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, no, it's okay. So question, it is a good question when you don't need to change your program every. Every six weeks or 12 weeks. But you can change certain variables like changing the rep ranges or the tempo. But the exercises, you don't necessarily need to change that off. Especially if you're doing like, you're doing the big, big compound lifts and you're.

[Justin Andrews]

New to it, as you say. Especially when you're new to it too.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Because if you're new to this, are you doing barbell squats and bench press and rows and deadlifts and that kind of stuff?

[E]

Yeah, so it's, it's mostly the compound movements. So it's six big compound movements and a few sort of ab workouts and isolation movements just to kind of touch on the things I'm maybe struggling with a little bit.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're fine for a long time. You're totally fine for a solid. And if you're getting stronger, you're doing great. I would say probably nine months, a year into it, then you would probably want to go into a program that would, you know, focus on maybe unilateral work or lateral exercises. Otherwise you could develop certain imbalances. But you're fine. You're fine.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, what, what I'd love to do Ben is I'll have Doug send you our Maps anabolic program, which is also a three day a week full body routine. Follow something like that. And then at some point I'll also send him to said, have him send you a link to the Maps performance which if you, you could toggle between those two programs indefinitely. But what, what that does is it just, it adds some unilateral work, some rotational work, changes up a few exercises.

[Adam Schaefer]

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

[E]

A little bit. But I mean that was sort of five years ago and it was mainly just the fact I put on sort of 40 odd pounds over the five years just by not exercising and having a really bad diet. So I kind of cleaned everything up, sorted my diet out and went into the main compound movements because I knew they were the best value for money in terms of my time and only being able to do three days a week. But you know, I don't know whether then should I advance to four days a week. But I'm just loving what I'm doing and I really don't want to change too much.

[Justin Andrews]

You're doing perfect.

[Doug]

You're in the sweet spot.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And, and how's your diet?

[E]

It's great. It's great. I'm doing a body recom, so I'm eating maybe just a little bit less than maintenance, but really clean eating, high protein and yeah, just I, I just, I want to stay on the path that I'm on. But the more I kind of research, the more I look into things, I start questioning myself. And, and that's what's led me off the track before is questioning what I'm doing, you know.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, you're doing, you're doing the right thing, bro.

[Adam Schaefer]

You're doing, yeah, you're doing good. And if you're progressing, you're doing great.

[Justin Andrews]

And you could like Sal said, you could technically follow that all year long, no problem. But what I'd like to do is have, have Doug1 send you maps Anabolic. So you got that, you could follow that. And that way it's programming is laid out for you and it, the way it's designed is it's almost like what, what most people call one program. We have like, or what would call three programs. We have one so, in other words, there's three phases within this one program.

[Adam Schaefer]

So if you follow Maps Anabolic, it changes everything.

[Justin Andrews]

So, yeah, so it. So how Sal talked about changing the rep ranges and things like that, we do that for you. So it's built into the program so that you don't have to go follow another program. And that what you're reading online, just to clarify it, to get some confusion out, there is some truth to it. Like if you did the same exercises, the same rep range, the same rest periods, indefinitely. Oh, they're over within a decent amount of time, your body would adapt to it, and you would. Your progress would plateau, and you would stop seeing results. And so then it would be important to change your program. Now, there's, you know, a little caveat to that, is that when you're a newbie, a beginner, that's a lot longer because every. Because the exercises are new. And as. As you're probably feeling and learning like.

[Adam Schaefer]

You'Ve got a full year.

[Justin Andrews]

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

[Adam Schaefer]

No aches and pains.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, no aches, no pain. I mean, you just keep. Keep going. What you're doing. You're doing good.

[E]

Perfect.

[Justin Andrews]

Cool.

[E]

Thank you so much.

[Adam Schaefer]

All right, man. Thanks for calling in. Thank you. Take it easy. All right, dude, I think he was on the wrong side of the car. Did you see that steering wheel?

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

When you first get started, you've got a full year of getting good at the basics. You don't need to do a bunch. Not only do you not need to do them, if you switch up too often, especially in the beginning, you're actually progressing.

[Doug]

Confuse your body.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, well, there. I mean, it's. I like this conversation because it's a bit nuanced, because. Yes. But then it, it, it could also be no. When would it be no? Well, if you decide to do leg press, leg extensions machine, chest press, you do that for a whole year. And I guarantee you're gonna. I don't care how new you are, you're gonna see you're gonna plateau pretty hard and fast. But the complexity of getting good at a barbell squat, getting good at a barbell overhead press, it extends that. This is another reason why those movements are so valuable is because of the difficulty, the challenge, the technique of it, and so you can reap the benefits for a long time. And then if you're a newbie, that is even. It's even longer amount of time.

[Doug]

He's doing the most valuable exercises. That's why this is. Yeah, he could extend that quite, quite some time.

[Sal DiStefano]

Our next caller is Margie from Pennsylvania.

[Adam Schaefer]

Margie, what's happening?

[Justin Andrews]

How you doing, Margie?

[Adam Schaefer]

Hello.

[F]

Hi, guys.

[G]

How are you?

[Justin Andrews]

Good, we're great.

[Adam Schaefer]

How are you?

[G]

Good, thanks. Okay, I will jump right into my question. So I did a bulk this winter. For four months prior to the bulk, I was maintaining about 128 pounds at 2,000 calories. For my bulk, I ate 2,400 calories. And let me just jump back real quick. I had a coach through this whole process. When I started my cut, which was the beginning of March, my coach had me drop back to 2000, but I kind of ate more like 1900, 1950. After two weeks of not seeing any progress at all, he dropped me down to just below 1500, and then I still wasn't making any progress at all. So at that when I submitted my question, I was four weeks into the cut. Now I'm ten weeks into the cut. So I was at 1900 and then I was at about 1450. Absolutely. In nine weeks, feel like I've made no progress at all in my cut. And I feel like whenever I've been listening to you and you guys say that, you know, if you increase your calories, you go through a bulk, that you don't have to cut that drastically for your cut if you've gained some muscle. But, like, I feel like I shouldn't be eating at 1400 calories and not making progress. I'm wondering if I'm not eating enough as far as my movement. I've been getting between 14 and 18,000 steps a day. I've been doing HIIT three days a week plus three days of full body. I also, when I submitted my question, did not have plantar fasciitis, which I got Just the last couple of weeks. So that has obviously slowed me down quite a bit.

[Justin Andrews]

Margie, you're over trained.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

You're over trained before you even finished it. My first thought was, I wonder if she's just doing too much. And you are. And your body's telling you it is multiple ways. First it's telling you by stalling out its progress. That didn't. You didn't listen enough from that. So then it gave you that plantar fasciitis. So that's. You're just way too much. Way, way, way too much.

[Adam Schaefer]

Let's back up. When you went from two, you were at 2, 000 calories, 128 pounds. What did 2400 calories do for you?

[G]

I put on 10 pounds over that four months.

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay. Were you doing the hit with the strength training at the same time?

[G]

No, my coach didn't have me start that until I started the cut.

[Adam Schaefer]

So. So here's what happens when you cr. When you drop your calories. Let me ask you this. Do you think you have a better or worse time recovering? Can the body recover better or not as great with less calories?

[G]

Oh, not as great at all.

[Adam Schaefer]

So adding more volume in a cut is a massive mistake.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. It's so weird. This is the part. Okay, let me tell you something about coaches that were, that coach competitors. This was like the, the thing that I always used to tell the guys that crack. I'd see these coaches with these competitors, my peers, I would see them go into this hardcore cut and then all of a sudden they increase everything. The rep range, they shorten the rest periods, they add the StairMaster to be like, what are they doing? Like, you were, you were, you were doing less and building muscle. You reduce your calories, let your metabolism do the rest. Let, let, let the cutting the calories lean you out. You need to do a bunch of extra, extra activity or keep the calories high and do the extra activity. Doing the combination of the two is the worst idea.

[Adam Schaefer]

You would have done better. Your hiit would have done better with the high calories than it does in the low calories. That's for sure. Although I don't want you to do, I wouldn't want you to do hiit six days a week. So three days hiit, three days. Strength train is too much.

[G]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So what I would do is take off the hit, stick to strength training, bring your calories back up to 2000, stay there for a while, slowly build up, and then when you want to do the cut, do the Cut. Don't, don't throw a bunch of extra activity at it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And you could walk so the way I would always with the competitors. And we're getting ready for show and we're, we're trying to create a larger calorie deficit. We do it through walking, not through high intensity or more volume in, in the weightlifting because you're in a calorie reduction. So the, the walk will be okay. It'll create more movement. It'll create a larger calorie deficit. It's recuperative, so it allows the body to recover and heal. But doing something that's high intensity or adding more volume to our already current training program is just, isn't just not a great, a great move. So is this coach somebody who trains competitors? Is that, is that what kind of coaches?

[G]

I don't, I don't know. I don't think he does okay. I found him on Mind Pump, actually through Mind Club, I should say through us and. Well, I mean through like the private forum.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, through the community. No, as I say, not one of our trainers. One of our trainers get their ass room for this.

[G]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

No.

[G]

And he's, he's been great and super supportive because I have been mentally super struggling with the cut and feeling like I've been making new progress. So I've been like every. I'm doing. And when I tell you, like, when he's like, are you measuring your food? Like I am, like, if I eat a grape, I'm recording it. Like, I don't. Like I measure and weigh everything. I'm very strict. I never, like, I'm like on it. So I'm like, I'm doing everything perfect and that he's telling me to do and nothing. Getting nowhere.

[Adam Schaefer]

No. To go down 1,000 calories and then add three additional days of exercise.

[Justin Andrews]

It's like a recipe and high intensity. Not just exercise.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, your steps are great. Strength training is great. Three days a week, I would get you back up, get you back up to 2000. Let's get you strong, get some strength first.

[Justin Andrews]

The other part, too. The other thing you can do too, Margie, is because you could do the bulk and then cut. You can also just, just slowly increase calories and get strong and go back. So go back to the training with the three days a week, focus on getting strong and just keep slowly adding calories and just watch what happens. I bet you'll build muscle and lean out if you do it slow.

[G]

And that's the thing, is that obviously we're coming into summer.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[G]

And, like, I live on the water. Like, I'm on the water all the time. And, like, the thought of putting on a bathing suit this summer is horrifying to me. So, like, I want to be leaner because I've been lean for the last, like, 15 years, and now I just feel disgusting. So I definitely want to lose this fat right now.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, there's two. There's. There's two ways to do it. One way is you can go down to a thousand calories to see what happens.

[G]

Well, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Option two is what we're saying. I would cut out the hiit cardio. I would slowly, slowly increase calories and try to get stronger.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Be patient, though. Okay. Don't if you try and rush it, be thinking you'll end up overdoing something and you'll end up going slower.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So what was the workout like from 2000 to 24 to 2400 calories?

[G]

Pretty much the same, I guess. Three day a week, full body.

[Adam Schaefer]

Were you getting stronger during that period of time?

[G]

Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, my, my workouts, when I was eating much more, I was definitely feeling stronger.

[Adam Schaefer]

I bet you feel a lot weaker right now.

[G]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when I went down to 1400. I was just like, I do some kind of lift and just want to lay on the ground in between.

[Justin Andrews]

Are you. Were you guys. Are you guys actually doing a. Your own three day a week or are you following maps Anabolic?

[G]

No, I've been following maps programs for the past two years. I actually, this Pat, I'm just finishing up today. A 12 week Brett Contreras program.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's fine.

[G]

So do you have a suggestion on what I should do next?

[Justin Andrews]

I mean, Brett's solid soul, Mommy.

[Adam Schaefer]

Maps, Anabolic. Either one would great. Do you have muscle mommy?

[G]

Okay, yeah, I do. I did that before I did the Brett Contreras.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, that's good. Anabolic would be good too. And then slowly, slowly increase your calories and get rid of the hit cardio. Keep your steps up. Your steps are great.

[G]

Yeah, yeah, keep my steps up. Just slowly increase. Because I'm right. Right now I'm at about 1600.

[Justin Andrews]

And by the way, what you can do. So this isn't like a dramatic shift when we're there is where you were doing hit cardio. Just go for a walk.

[Doug]

Walk.

[Justin Andrews]

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

[Adam Schaefer]

And then tell this coach that's in our forum to stop coaching people in our forum. Otherwise I'm gonna kick them out.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Just so you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or I mean, as long as it's good advice and I don't really care.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. But this is already bad advice. So now you're not allowed to coach anybody.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we have trainers that work for us, that actually work for us. So they, and they have to go through an intensive screening before they get a job. So if you ever need that in the future, just reach out and then we'll. We'll actually recommend the trainer.

[Doug]

We'll hand. Hand pluck them for you.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah.

[G]

I appreciate that. And that, I think that was one of the hardest parts for me is because I felt like I hired a coach, I paid the coach, I should do what they tell me.

[Justin Andrews]

Right.

[G]

But I was feeling like this isn't right.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah.

[G]

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

[Justin Andrews]

And your instincts, your instincts were right. And you're. And you're right that you hire somebody. And that's what you're. You're supposed to outsource all that thinking.

[Adam Schaefer]

By the way, there's. There would have been two approaches that could have happened at 2400 calories. You could have stayed the same with your routine and cut it, or you could have kept it at 2400 calories and then added the hit. But you couldn't do both. Yeah, both is like, it's like. Yeah, it's way too much.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So what's happened right now is your strength went way down. Your body just became very efficient with its calories and your body's like serving you.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And I mean, if you keep going down this path, you'll probably lose weight, but it's going to be muscle. You're not going to feel very good.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[G]

Which would negate the Whole bulk.

[Adam Schaefer]

That I did, of course.

[Justin Andrews]

Totally. Exactly.

[G]

Okay, well, I will do what you say, and we'll see what happens.

[Justin Andrews]

All right, thank you, Margie.

[G]

Thank you so much.

[Adam Schaefer]

I almost want to kick them out doing BRO.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, hopefully the audience, you know, hears that and knows, like. Because here's the one thing that we don't know about our private form. The private form is very big. There's, you know, tens of thousands of people.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's not made for trainer. It's just for people.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And what we don't know is if there's people trying to slide in DMS and put. We don't. We don't monitor that and tell people. We don't. We've. Ideally, we did not want to police the community. It was designed to all help each other, and we're not trying to stop anybody from building their business and whatever. But, you know, buyer beware. You know, just because they're in our private form does not mean that they are.

[Doug]

You mean we vouch for.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, it does not mean we vouch for that. Trainer or know anything, but going on.

[Adam Schaefer]

A cut and dramatically increasing activity at the same time. Terrible stress strategy.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah, terrible strategy. You know what? I used to see it in the computer.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's a common one.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sal DiStefano]

Our next caller is Heather from Wisconsin.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, Heather, I know you.

[Justin Andrews]

Hey, Heather. Hey, how are you?

[Adam Schaefer]

Good. How are you doing? Good.

[F]

Thanks for taking my call. I really appreciate it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

How can we help you?

[Justin Andrews]

We've had some incredible progress.

[F]

Yeah, I've been.

[Justin Andrews]

I've been working hard, doing great.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[F]

Last time I talked to you, it was about April of last year, and I forgot to thank you guys for all the content that you give us. I really appreciate it. I'm so glad I found you. And it was so funny because I was looking through some of my screenshots the other day, and I noticed that I had screenshotted a video, an old video of where you guys are doing the white chalkboard pointy. And I think Sal had a pointer that he was using.

[Justin Andrews]

Those are old videos.

[F]

That was an old one.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, how can we help you?

[F]

So my question is I'm. I started my. My journey in 2023 when I lost about £30 during a challenge. And that was the before picture that I sent you guys. So I lost 30 pounds.

[G]

It was great.

[F]

I did a. I did a good job. I actually came in top 10 of the. Of the challenge between 2,000 people. So I went through a bulk during September to January of Last year, and I felt like I did a really good job. I got my calories up to 2,400. My protein always stayed the same. When I did this next challenge, I worked with a coach and I did the next challenge and I am almost done with it. Actually, I only lost about £10 and I know the scale doesn't really matter. My problem was, and I hope you guys can shed some light on it, I went from 2,400 calories. She took me down, you know, not super hard right away, but it was the like two week increments. She took me down on calories and bumped me up on cardio. Now, I know you guys always say, you know, if you have a trainer that puts you on a lot of cardio, right away, fire them well, so I'm not in the position to fire her. It was just for a challenge. So I don't know how I can go from 2,400 calories setting up in a bulk. And I did good. I felt strong and then go down so drastically in the calories and then so much up on the cardio. It was just walking. How is it possible that I stall? I mean, the scale stopped moving, which I know that the scale, I mean, I let it get in my a little bit. I know that's not the end all, be all information, but I was actually gaining weight on the scale and so I just was curious as to why that happens.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So how low? So you were cut out for a second. How low did your calories get?

[F]

My calories got to about 1500 she did give me. And that really helped spark my hunger, which is really weird because as I'm dropping in calories, my hunger cues aren't really there. So I, you know, I, I even posted a question in the forum, the private forum, asking about that, because I don't, I'm not hungry, even though my calories are dropping. And I feel like I did put on some muscle during that bulk.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So here's the thing. And now we're going to try and explain something very complex, which is the human metabolism. And when you cut your calories, anytime you cut your calories. But I think this effect happens even more so when they start to get kind of low, which 1500 calories is low for someone like you. You've got a good amount of muscle on your body. You've been working out for a while, you're active. You know, when you start cutting calories, the metabolism starts to adapt and what happens is it starts to become more efficient. It Learns how to capture and use calories for fat storage, let's say. Or what it does is it tries toto hold onto body fat more. As it becomes more efficient and as it starts to slow down, one of the risks of that is it starts to cut away or pare down muscle. To accomplish this, what you did is you cut your calories and dramatically increased your activity. So you did is you sent two signals that do the same thing. Cutting calories and dramatically increasing movement both kind of tell the body, let's become more efficient with calories now. 2,400 calories for someone like you, with your strength and muscle is not a bad place to just be. Yeah, it's just not a bad place to be all the time. So what I would have liked to see with someone like you is a slower cut. And I would have not brought you down to 1500. I would have brought you down to like 1800. And, you know, walking's okay, but not dramatically increase it at the same time. And then let's do this slowly.

[Justin Andrews]

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

[F]

Okay, so that was. I think I sent this in April, like beginning of April, which is when I was kind of stalled. So I think I was at about 150 protein, 140 carbs, and 45 fat.

[Justin Andrews]

What is it?

[F]

And then she had me walking 60 minutes five times a week.

[Justin Andrews]

What was that calorie wise? I don't have the math on top of my head. What is you. What were your calories?

[F]

I think that one kind of came around to about 15 to 1600. Now, she didn't drop me to that amount right away. I went from 2,400 down to about 2100, and then we went down to about 18, 1900, and then I went down to this 15. So she's dropping me in kind of two week increments. Yeah, but it just, I mean, because I'm in a challenge and obviously we want to try to do it quickly. I know that, and I would. I think the slower process is definitely better for me, especially with my age and perimenopause and. Yeah, I think that's a better. A better route. I mean, we were just trying to get as much off in the. In the 90 days, which is. I mean, I'm not trying to win anything. I'm just. I just like to challenge myself.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, you. You look so good in that picture that if I was coaching you at that point, one, I would not want. I definitely wouldn't let you run back to a challenge. And I'd say, this is awesome. We have built such an incredible physique now. Now let's just slowly increase your calories. And really the reason why I want to increase calories is I just want to get you to a place where you're like, Adam, this is the perfect amount of calories for me to live on. And that might be at 1800, it might be at 2200. But what you did, physique wise, your before and afters is so incredible, and you look so good that I would not want you to try and cut hard or do anything aggressive after achieving what you did. Said it really would want to be just getting you up to a metabolic rate that you feel that you could sustain at and be happy and then just cruising there. Because over time of consistently lifting weights and staying in that happy zone and eating good, you would just slowly lose body fat and build muscle and just be in a very good place long term because you did so good. Like, this is an example of, like, what happens sometimes where we get. We get kind of what we want. Then we just. We just move the goalposts and we want more, and we want more, and we want more, and then we end up doing the things that. That we probably shouldn't do to our body. Because you. That is, you did so good and you look so good. To, to try and do anything crazy from that point is just not a good idea. Like, you. You did. I'd be like, let's. If we're going to move the needle anywhere, we're just going to move it tiny bit. Because you're in such a good place right now. And I think that's what happened. You guys just got too aggressive too fast.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. I mean, when you. Especially when you add activity, the. The times you add activity is when you're keeping your calories the same or increasing them. So the times that I actually, I'll increase activity with people when they reverse diet, not when they go in a dramatic cut. Yeah. Because it requires more energy, more recovery. You know, I don't. I wouldn't add that until. If I cut your calories and then you're doing great and you feel good, then I might later add more activity. But not do them at the same time.

[F]

Sure. Well, I really appreciate the compliments. I. I do want to get a little bit lower and leaner. I mean, I'm fine with where I'm at. This is kind of where I'm comfortable with where I'm at. I was hoping to try to get slightly leaner so that when I go back to reversing and get back to maintenance, I can bump up a little bit and be comfortable.

[Justin Andrews]

Heather, you will. Heather, you will. You will, you will. You're in a good place, though. Like, you don't need to do it. Like, doing anything too aggressive is only going to stall your progress. Like, you were in such a good place, and you look so good, and I get wanting a little bit more. That's totally okay. But the answer. Answer to that is to just do it gradually and work with your body like it. It was. It's very obvious that it responded well to lifting weights and building muscle and building your metabolism up. And you completely. I mean, your waist came in, your shoulders, your pot. I mean, everything about what the difference of your before and after is incredible. I'm surprised you didn't win the. The challenge from that because of that transformation. So to talk.

[F]

Well, it's not over yet.

[G]

It's.

[F]

It's almost over. I got one more week.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. So I would not want to. I. I wouldn't want to do anything drastic. If you're my client and we're look. We're together at the desk assessing what we've been doing and looking at where you're at right now, I'd be like, man, we. We're in a good place. We look good. We feel good. Let's keep it. And let's just kind of. And I might make little tweaks, like, let's jump the calories a little bit this week and see how you feel and then get feedback. But I am not, you know, ramping up cardio, cutting calories aggressively. Not when you're there. You're in such a good place.

[Adam Schaefer]

The other thing, too, Heather, is I. It's. It's not too often that I have a female client that does well on less than 50 grams of fat. You said you're eating 45 grams of fat.

[F]

Yeah, I'm down to between 40 and 45, depending on the re feed days.

[Justin Andrews]

Right now, and I don't like it.

[F]

I don't think it's good for me.

[Adam Schaefer]

I never. I never. Yeah, I never had my female clients go below 50. Almost every time. They would do that. We would notice, like, hormonal effects or just. It didn't feel so good. Yeah.

[F]

And actually I, I kind of cut my cardio head in half. I mean, way, way down. She's got me at 75 minutes right now. And I, I, I did it for one week. I, I did what she told me to do. I did it for one week. And I said no because I, my, I stalled on the scale again. And as soon as I dropped that cardio, my scale started moving.

[Adam Schaefer]

See, so.

[Justin Andrews]

Yep, yep, yep.

[F]

I know, I know. I'm testing the waters. And I, you know, I wrote this in when I was frustrated about a month ago. So I'm, I'm learning more about my body. And obviously the older that I get, the harder, I mean, you got to really pay attention to that kind of stuff.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, you're more, you're more sensitive to it. That's all it is. Like when you were 20, get away with dumb shit. 20 years old. Yeah, you can get away with dumb shit. Rebound pretty quick, but as we get older. Yeah, your body lets, you know pretty quickly. Nope, I'm not happy there. And so you did, you did so good that I wouldn't want to. This is, this is, I get the challenge thing because I know it motivates people and stuff like that, but this is where it could, like, bite you in the ass. It's like, you did so good from the first one running back. Another challenge is like the last thing that we should have done. We should have just kind of made subtle tweaks and stuff like that. Because you did so good.

[G]

Yeah.

[F]

And to be fair, I mean, the first, the picture on the left, that's the beginning in 2023. And the picture on the right was just a month ago, so I didn't drop. I mean, that was, that was not the drastic. That's over a two year period.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, that's incredible. For two years. That's incredible. It's a huge body shift. Completely. Yeah. You look way, way different. That's what I mean. Like, I wouldn't, you don't need any hard swings right now. You're in a good place.

[F]

Okay, cool.

[Justin Andrews]

Yep.

[F]

Awesome.

[Justin Andrews]

All right, Heather, thank you so much.

[F]

I appreciate it.

[Adam Schaefer]

You got it. I mean, I've done this to myself.

[Justin Andrews]

Did she give us her height and weight? I was trying to see if I could find.

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, she's got those other pictures.

[Justin Andrews]

In the forum because the other thing I didn't want to, you know, you don't want to say this to a woman, but she's she doesn't look like she's this tiny little short petite thing. She looks like she's got good bone structure and she could put muscle on.

[Adam Schaefer]

I don't think she's very tall, but she definitely builds muscle. There's some pictures that she posted in the forum.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And so flexing and she's, she's got great muscle.

[Justin Andrews]

And let me tell you somebody who, who is like, like more solid, thicker bone that puts on muscle that they don't. They do even worse on low, low that their body does better. Higher calorie, building muscle. That's you. You lean into that like you, there's body types and I tell you there's certain people that do better with that. You don't do good with someone like this trying to just cut calories and.

[Adam Schaefer]

But I know I've done that to myself where I'm doing really well on a cut and then I'm like cool, let's add more stuff and then stall. Okay, you know.

[Sal DiStefano]

Our next caller is David from New York.

[Adam Schaefer]

What's up David?

[Justin Andrews]

How you doing man?

[Doug]

What's happening?

[H]

What's going on guys? Excuse me. First I just want to say thank you for all that you guys do. You guys are definitely role models for me. So just thank you for all that you guys put out.

[Justin Andrews]

Thank you, David.

[H]

Yeah, so basically I'll start my. I was an athlete my whole life, worked manual labor and construction. About seven years ago I started dating my wife and we had a, this trifecta of where we were going out every night, going eating at bars, restaurants. Gym became less a priority for me. And fast forward a little bit. I started a new job. It was a desk job, became sedentary and then my wife got pregnant. So I had all these things going on and I just started ballooning up and went from like 180 up to 250. So I had a little, little stint where I started on we go V. I dropped some weight, got back down to like 197 and then you know, I'm one of those guys that reads a headline. So I saw this headline that you know is, is Ozempic destroying your muscle fibers or something? And I just, so I stopped using it it and I put back on the weight and not all of it. I'm sitting at around like 2:15. My, my real question is I don't have the appetite. So breakfast when I wake up in the morning, I'm not hungry at all. Don't eat anything. I eat my lunch, I eat my dinner, which I'm using like a meal prep service. Roughly about 1400 calories from food a day, drinking coffee with milk, four or five cups of coffee and tea. So I'm looking to get rid of this fat, the extra fat, get back down to a lower body fat percentage, but just can't, can't get past this. For the last year or so, this plateau of just staying in this 215, unable to drop anything else.

[Justin Andrews]

You fall in a MAPS program.

[H]

I actually yesterday I bought Maps Aesthetic.

[Justin Andrews]

You just. Okay, I'm not gonna start you there, so I'm gonna give you a different one. You can keep that one for later, but not right now. You need Maps Anabolic to start off with Maps Aesthetic is too much, especially for somebody who's having a hard time eating enough calories. But hopefully what happens, okay, this is totally normal, especially coming off of wegovia or Ozempic. Any of those is. Appetite's just crushed and you just don't have any desire to eat enough of the protein and things that you need, need. Once you start doing the, a good lifting program like a MAP Santa Bolic, that should stimulate it. You, you should feel the appetite start to increase from lifting, you know, squats, deadlifts, the big movements that are going to be in that, in that programming. And then the next main goal or focus for you is, is hitting that protein intake. It sounds like that'll probably be one of the harder things combined with the MAPS Anabolic program. And I think you're going to start to see some, some really nice change right away right from that.

[Doug]

Yeah, I think too, if you can really target breakfast and, and I know it's like I, I went through this period because I did a lot of fasting before and would skip a lot of breakfast, but to, to get protein in and, and make that a priority, you know, first thing took a few weeks and it really started to stimulate that appetite again. On top of the, the heavyweight trap.

[Adam Schaefer]

David, you got just, you got to just start slow. So what I would do if you were my client is I'd have you follow Maps Anabolic. It's two days a week. I'd have you walk after breakfast, lunch and dinner for five to 10 minutes. That's the walking. And then start your day with a protein shake, 40 to 50 grams. Since you have no appetite for lunch, make sure you get 40 to 50 grams of protein. And for dinner, do the same thing. Eat the protein first. Just start there. That'll take you far, by the way. If you just did that, keep it Simple. You're gonna get pretty far for about six months or so. You'll see progress. Just do that. Don't, don't, and don't add to that because you'll be tempted to want to add a bunch of stuff to it. But what it sounds like is you feel like you're stuck. Like you're stuck in the mud. You got to get out of it. So start slow. Just do that. Just do that, and you'll progress for six months at least.

[Justin Andrews]

Another nice hack for stimulating the appetite or for somebody who doesn't have an appetite in the morning, is I'm. I love those new Greek yogurts. If you. Sounds like you can handle dairy, so you're fine. Those Oikos or whatever brand, they have 20 grams of protein in that little cup up. That's real easy to shuttle that down and that right there, if you like. That's kind of what I do. I have the same thing. If I. When I'm not training consistently, I fall off of breakfast. I'll eat my first meal at noon or 1, and then I don't have an appetite, and that. My body adapts to that. So when I got to kick it back up and I know it's time to build muscle again, I got to build this metabolism. I've got to get that breakfast in, and I know I don't have an appetite, so I start with that. A week or two of lifting heavy and doing that, and my. My appetite starts to come back, and then I can start to eat, like, a real breakfast with a lot of calories. So. But what Sal said is perfect, man. That's.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's it.

[Justin Andrews]

You stay on that course literally 10.

[Adam Schaefer]

Minutes after breakfast of a walk, 10 minutes after lunch, 10 minutes after dinner every day. That's it. Two days a week of strength training. What's MAP synabolic. Eat, you know, 40, 50 grams of protein for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Eat it first for breakfast. You could do a shake or the. Or the yogurt. That's it. Do that. You'll. You'll progress for at least six months, if not for a year, just doing that. You don't have to add anything to the. That. Okay.

[H]

And so. So from. From Anabolic. Would I switch to aesthetic at any point or just stick with that?

[Justin Andrews]

That's down the road.

[Adam Schaefer]

Way down the road.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. There's no.

[Adam Schaefer]

You'll progress for it literally for six months to a year just doing that.

[Justin Andrews]

I tell you what, I definitely wouldn't even want you touching aesthetic until you. If you Were my client, we're training, and I knew I had that in my back pocket to train you, it would be when your appetite has been cranking and you're eating 35,4000 calories, you're feeling like a beast in the gym, and you're like, Adam, what else can we do? And I'm like, all right, let's. Let's see if you can handle aesthetic. Until that you. Till you feel like that. We don't even need to.

[Adam Schaefer]

In fact, if you add that now, you're gonna. You're probably gonna play. You'll plateaus.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah. You'll see. You'll see.

[Adam Schaefer]

You'll see no results.

[Justin Andrews]

You might see a little bit for a couple weeks, and then you'll hit a hard plateau. That's just because you're doing something right. But you. Not a good idea to follow that anabolic. We're going to send it over to you. The prescription that Doug or the. The Sal gave you is perfect. Follow that. And then. And then just. Are you in our private form?

[Adam Schaefer]

Form.

[H]

I'm not.

[Justin Andrews]

Okay. I'm gonna have Doug put you in the private forum too. So as you're going through this, if you have the urge to do anything stupid, just DM us or message us and then we'll keep your head. Head straight and focused.

[Adam Schaefer]

How old is your baby, by the way?

[H]

I have a three year old and a two year old.

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay. Oh, good for you. All right, good. So you got a little bit. Your sleep is kind of normal. So it's not too terrible.

[H]

Yeah, somewhat.

[Adam Schaefer]

All right. All right, Good for you. Yeah, yeah, that's it, dude. Just do that and trust us. Don't add anything to it. That's the one way you'll mess this up up is if you don't do it or if you add to it.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, don't add it. If you get an itch to do that, go for a walk. That's true. That's what you can do. So if you're feeling anxious and you want to do more, go for a nice walk. And you can walk for as long as you want. Just go for a walk.

[Adam Schaefer]

Okay, cool. Awesome.

[H]

Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

[Justin Andrews]

All right, take care.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, good. So good advice. Because you know what happens when you're in that position? You feel stuck is you either go all or nothing. And by the way, going all in results in you stopping at some point.

[Justin Andrews]

I'm so glad we caught him too, because now an undereater.

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, my God.

[Justin Andrews]

Going to maps aesthetic is like the recipe for and then you think it's us. These guys don't know how to program.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's one of our highest volume programs.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, yeah, no, that's the. And, and again, I like. My advice is you can do aesthetic when I get that feedback from you. When you're just a beast. You're already living in the gym. Yeah, you're killing it in the gym. Your squats already up £100. Your appetite's through the roof. It's like, okay, let's see what we got. Let's see then we can throw that way.

[Adam Schaefer]

Totally. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mindpump. Justin, I'm at Mindpump DiStefano. Adam's at Mindpubble.

[Sal DiStefano]

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super [e-mail] the RGB Super Bundle includes maps, anabolic maps, performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert extract 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 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.