2720: Metabolic Healing vs Fat Loss: Which Comes First?

Summary

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth

Episode 2720: Metabolic Healing vs Fat Loss – Which Comes First?

Date: November 3, 2025
Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, Doug Egge

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the Mind Pump crew takes a science-backed, myth-busting deep dive into the critical topic of metabolism and fat loss. They challenge the conventional “eat less, move more” approach, revealing why repairing, or more accurately “optimizing,” your metabolism is key to sustainable fat loss. The hosts share real-world client experiences, practical advice, and psychological strategies for coaching through metabolic healing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Flawed “Broken Metabolism” Narrative

• [03:28] Sal: Stresses that most people begin their fitness journey by slashing calories and increasing cardio, but if the metabolism isn’t functioning optimally, “fat loss ain’t gonna happen.”
• They clarify that your metabolism isn’t truly “broken”—it’s highly adaptive and responds to your lifestyle choices.
  • [03:56] Adam: "There's typically a knee-jerk reaction from the science community if you use a term like broken metabolism… It's doing exactly what it's supposed to."

2. How Most Diets Actually Make Things Worse

• The “eat less, move more” formula works briefly but quickly leads to powerful metabolic adaptation, making further fat loss nearly impossible.
  • [06:05] Sal: “Typical approach—work out more, eat less. Initially, it works...but your body adapts so it's burning fewer calories, and you end up teaching your metabolism to store energy.”
  • Loss of muscle is a key factor in why this backfires long-term—muscle is "metabolic gold."

3. What Adaptation “Feels Like”

• Most chronic dieters end up feeling awful, with low energy, poor sleep, hair and nail issues, and a mental fog.
• [10:00] Adam: Reflects on the client anecdotes—people who say they dramatically cut calories and work out yet still gain. “I 100% thought they were lying...It wasn’t that—they had taught their body to hang onto every calorie.”

4. The Vicious Cycle and Psychological Toll

• Chronic calorie restriction parks the metabolism at survival levels (~1,200–1,300 kcal daily), often after years of yo-yo dieting and exercise.
  • [13:18] Sal: “When you look at the data, about 40% of weight lost on a typical diet comes from muscle, not just fat.”

5. Cardio vs. Strength Training—The Adaptive Signals

• Excessive cardio (chosen for highest calorie burn) plus low-calorie diets accelerate muscle loss and slow the metabolism even further.
  • [16:59] Sal: “You send a signal for endurance, not muscle retention, so the body pares down muscle. Sometimes you lose even more muscle with cardio plus diet than diet alone.”

6. Hormonal Fallout

• Constant restriction and over-exercising disrupt stress, sex, and metabolic hormones:
  • Testosterone drops (in both sexes), cortisol rhythm flips, libido tanks, stress escalates.

7. The Fix: Build, Don’t Burn

• [20:13] Sal: “What adaptation are we looking for? The most beneficial for sustainable fat loss: a faster metabolism. The most effective signal is to build muscle, not burn the most calories.”
• Strength training (done to actually gain strength, not exhaustively “burn calories”) paired with high-protein, gradually increased caloric intake sparks positive adaptation—a “reverse diet.”

The Reverse Diet Process

• For some: improvements in 2 months; others need 6+ months.
• [22:00] Sal: “On average, around three months to see real, positive effects in metabolism.”

8. Muscle’s True Metabolic Impact

• The lab data claim that muscle burns “just 10-15 calories more per pound” at rest is misleading in real life.
  • [23:53] Adam: “It’s not what we see in real life…Adding five pounds of muscle isn’t just the resting burn. You become more active, lift heavier, feel better…It's life-changing.”
• Clients often go from surviving on 1,300 kcal to thriving on 2,500–3,000 kcal a day.

9. Client Case Study: The Power of Metabolic Rebuild

• [26:21] Sal: Shares a client who was doing 25 miles/wk running, circuit weights, 1,500 kcal/day. Cut running, switched to real strength training, increased calories over a year:
  • Calorie intake went from 1,500→2,800;
  • Body fat dropped from 24%→17%;
  • All with LESS total exercise.

Coaching the Process

• Improvement isn’t quick—scale won’t move for weeks/months, but strength gains and how clients “feel” are key markers.
  • [28:29] Sal: “I got them to fall in love with getting stronger. That was the metric. Once you see body composition change, it feels like cheating—it’s so easy.”

10. Creating the Sustainable Path

• “If every 3 months, you can add 300 calories and get stronger…in 9 months, you’ll eat 1,000+ calories more than before, feel great, and when we cut, you’ll lose fat easily while still eating more than ever.”—[30:09] Adam

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Your metabolism is not broken—it’s doing exactly what you asked it to do.” —Adam Schafer [04:15]
• “Muscle is metabolic gold. You lose muscle, you set yourself up for the ‘broken metabolism.’” —Sal Di Stefano [07:54]
• “I 100% thought they were lying. And I feel awful because later on, I realized how many people this had happened to.” —Adam Schafer [11:01]
• “About 40% of the weight lost on typical diets comes from muscle.” —Sal Di Stefano [14:21]
• “If you just ate really healthy calories…1,300 calories…it’s actually impossible to get the micronutrients you need from that little food.” —Sal Di Stefano [15:06]
• “You send another adaptation signal: I need endurance. So the body pairs muscle down even more. You’re sending the wrong signal.” —Sal Di Stefano [17:02]
• “When I have a client come in and say, ‘I don’t understand, I’m leaner, I’m eating more and doing less,’ that’s working with your body.” —Sal Di Stefano [29:32]
• “The success is in the setup—train your metabolism to adapt in the right direction…So many people feel like they’re spinning their tires. But if you do it right, it feels like your body is working for you.” —Sal Di Stefano [31:18]

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• [03:28] — Setting up the “broken” metabolism myth
• [05:11] — How metabolic adaptation works (calorie restriction, activity, muscle loss)
• [10:00] — Psychological toll of chronic dieting & plateauing
• [13:18] — Why so much lost weight is really lost muscle
• [16:57] — Why cardio-dominant approaches fail and worsen adaptation
• [20:13] — Hormonal disruptions
• [21:45] — The fix: Building muscle via proper strength training/feeding
• [23:53] — Why building muscle is underestimated in the calorie equation
• [26:21] — Client case study—reverse dieting and huge transformation
• [28:29] — Coaching for non-scale victories (strength, energy, well-being)
• [30:09] — The long game: adding calories, getting stronger, easy fat loss later

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Tone & Takeaways

The hosts blend tough-love reality checks with optimism and compassion. They debunk fads and empower listeners: successful, sustainable fat loss starts with healing/building the metabolism, not “attacking” fat with deprivation and overtraining. Their message is honest, science-driven, and celebratory of the body's adaptability when properly supported.

Core Takeaway:
Stop chasing fat loss as Step 1. Prioritize metabolic “healing” through strength training, gradual calorie increases, and patience. Only then will fat loss come easily—and be sustainable for life.

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Connect & Next Steps

• Interested in personalized coaching through metabolic repair? Visit mindpumppersonaltraining.com/help
• For more tips, stories, and updates: @mindpumpmedia (Instagram)
• [Maps Fitness Programs & Mind Pump gear available online]

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Summary prepared for listeners wanting actionable, science-based insight into lasting fat loss and metabolic health—delivered with Mind Pump’s signature humor and real-talk.

Transcript

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[D]

You just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, we're talking about metabolic healing versus fat loss. Which one do you do first? Hint. Fix your metabolism. Make it work so that fat loss becomes easy and we break it down for you. By the way, if you'd like coaching on this. If you'd like someone to help you do things like a reverse diet, follow good exercise programming so your metabolism gets faster. For more effective, easier fat loss that's sustainable. And you want to work with a coach again, go to mindpumppersonaltraining.com help and we'll have one of our coaches reach out to you. This episode is brought to you by from our place. This is cookware that is forever chemical free. And right now, if you go on their site, everything's on sale up to 35% off site wide now through January. The best cookware, it's safe, it's clean, it's awesome. Go to fromourplace.com Also, the Black Friday sale starts right now. 60% off. Everything. Everything. Maps, programs, bundles, guides, mods, everything. 60% off. And if you get one of those things, it enters you to win a vacation at the mind pump Park City House. Two people win that plus $1,000 for their travel. Five people get free coaching one on one for three months. Ten people get coaching in our concierge program for three months. So not only do you get a massive discount, but you also get entered a win. Some pretty cool stuff. Go check it out. Go to maps fitnessproducts.com get all the stuff you want, but use the code black Friday for the discount. All right, real quick.

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[D]

Most people, when they start working out, they start watching the diet. They want to lose fat. A lot of people want to lose weight. But here's a problem. It ain't going to happen if your metabolism is broken. Now, I'm being a little dramatic here. It's not actually broken, but you do need to, quote, unquote, fix it before you get the fat loss. Otherwise this is impossible. So we're going to talk about metabolic healing versus fat loss. Which one comes first and what you should do so that the fat loss is easy and it sticks around.

[C]

I'm glad you preface it with that because there's typically a knee jerk reaction from, you know, the science community if you use a term like broken metabolism or you need to heal your metabolism. There's this. That's not how it works. You don't have a broken metabolism.

[D]

It's not broken.

[C]

Yeah. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to. And so which then leads people to think that, like, oh, okay, so there's nothing wrong with my metabolism or there's not. There's nothing I can do or nothing.

[D]

Wrong with my methods. Yes. Or my approach.

[C]

Right. When there's a lot of things that we can do to Improve your metabolic rate. In fact, it's kind of like this. You know, it's not this perfect line all the time. It's up and down and sleep and food and hormones. And so many different things impact it and affect it on a daily basis. And there's a lot of things that you can do to negatively impact it. And a lot of people, when they first get into training for fat loss, which is probably the most popular reason why people start working out, actually do a lot of things that end up making it more difficult for themselves metabolically. And so understanding the importance of that is huge to the success.

[D]

The metabolism is extremely complex. It's essentially in a nutshell, Just to oversimplify, it's your body's ability to take food and turn it into energy. Okay? So it's your body's ability to produce energy, to fuel itself, to keep you alive. And that's the meta, that's the metabolism. Again, it's extremely complex. In fact, I remember seeing a chart of all the things that we currently understand about metabolism and how they interact with each other. And it's insanely complex. But the key here to understand here is that your metabolism adapts. It adapts quite well. In fact, when people feel like they have a quote, unquote, broken metabolism, which is like, it's not burn, I can't lose weight. I'm eating very little. I don't know why this isn't working. How do I fix, quote, unquote, my metabolism? What's actually happened is your metabolism is done like those people would say, Adam, exactly what you asked it to do.

[C]

It's adapted.

[D]

It adapted in a way that has made fat loss very difficult for. For you. And a lot of people don't realize that what they're doing is teaching or training or stimulating or signaling their metabolism to move in this direction. That makes it very, very difficult. In fact, the typical approach to fitness does exactly this. So I'll paint the picture for what the typical approach looks like when it comes to fat loss. What it looks like typically is a person will start from the beginning, decides, I want to lose some weight. So, like, okay, what do I do? I need to work out a lot. I need to reduce my calories. I got to eat less, and I got to move more. And initially, this does work. You create what's called an energy imbalance. So you eat less, you move more. Now your body is utilizing more energy than you're taking in. And in order to make up the difference, it pulls from stored energy reserves, notably body fat. So initially you see some weight loss and this is the beginning of, of this process or this road towards a quote, unquote. Again, this is inaccurate, but we use the term broken metabolism. Initially I lose the weight, but my body will never allow me to have this imbalance for too long. It figure out, figures out a way to adapt so that my energy output matches my energy intake. And if the signals that I'm sending my body continue to encourage that to happen, it'll happen actually quite quickly. How much can this happen? You would be blown away and surprised. There are studies on people who were prisoners of war who lived on hundreds, a few hundred calories a day. Now, yes, they looked emaciated, but it shocks scientists to see if these people survived on years, they should have been dead. The ability to survive on that low calories, it's absolutely insane. The body learns how to burn very few calories. When all you do is try to burn a lot of calories through movement and reduce your food intake, it will slow its metabolism down. So what this feels like, by the way, and it does this through a lot of different ways. One of the ways it does is it shifts your hormones in a way to promote energy storage and to discourage energy burning. Okay, so what we see in behavior studies is your body will actually will send signals to make you move less. So even though you're working out throughout the day, without realizing, you start to move less. That's a real kind of basic one. But then your hormones will also shift into a profile that looks like, let's get rid of energy burning tissue and let's try to hold on to as many reserves as possible. So you actually teach your body to burn less calories and you encourage your body to find ways of storing what little calories it can't. So it's really. I love this example. Again, this is oversimplification, but Lane Norton likes to use this example. It's like you have a savings account and that's your fat storage. And if your earnings are not coming in enough to support your spending, well, then you'll start using the savings account. But typically what people do is they spend less as they learn how to spend less and less and less, and they'll change their spending habits so that they don't keep tapping into those to their savings account. And so what your body does in this situation very predictably is it gets rid of muscle. And muscle is metabolic gold. And if you lose muscle, you are setting yourself up. This is the broken metabolism that happens is you start to lose muscle and then your body becomes so resistant that what it feels like is, I'm working out so much, I'm eating so little. This sucks. It doesn't feel good. I initially lost 15 pounds. I got 20 more pounds to go. What's going on? This isn't working.

[C]

I also want to address how common this was. Now I know and understand that we have a bit of a bias because the people that are coming to me for help have probably gone through a lot of this previously. So it's not like if you just took the average of everybody, you'd have all these people with, quote, unquote, broken metabolisms. But a lot of people that are trying to exercise, trying to eat better and have tried to do it for probably years on end have got themselves in this situation. And many times they've gotten so frustrated, they realize, okay, I can't do this on my own anymore. I'm going to go hire a professional. And so I saw a ton of this. And I remember in my early years not understanding this, because at that point we were taught, like, thermodynamics was king of everything. Calories in versus calories out. Get them moving more, get them burning more, get them eating less. And I remember sitting with these clients that were some of them over 100 pounds overweight, and them listing off the food they were eating, and it just didn't make sense.

[D]

I bet you thought they were lying.

[C]

I 100% thought they were lying. And I feel awful because later on I realized how many people that this had happened to. And it wasn't that they were lying and it wasn't that they had a broken metabolism. What it was is that they had tried weight loss so many times with this method, and their only answer was more activity and less calories. More activity and less calories. And it always worked a little bit. A little bit. A little bit. And it just. And over time, it got them in this predicament where they didn't have to eat very many calories for them to start to put body fat back on because they had continually pared down muscle. And they told their body that we're only going to eat this many calories and you're going to be running and moving and doing all this activity to a point where it's like it hangs on to any extra calorie it can get because it's like, I don't know when I'm going to get more, and I don't know how much more he or she's going to push me. And so, so Many clients were this predicament. And then when you figure out what you're supposed to do, the next challenge is the rebuilding of that and that process. It's not a short process. And I think this is where clients, I mean, we have a lot of clients underneath Mind Pump now that are training with our trainers that can get discouraged because they've all been taught by us, they know how to, which is great. Right. So if we have clients that are, that are training with our trainers, they've been taught by us how to, how to work with people like this and they come to us with the, the next step, which is like, okay, great, I understand what I need to do with these people. But then they're, they, they're, they're struggling because they're not seeing movement on the scale right away. And that can be discouraging for somebody who knows they want to lose 30, 40, 50 plus pounds off the scale. But the trainer knows they're doing the right things. Like, we've got to build muscle, we've got to build this metabolism back up. But then the client is like, come on, we've been working for like two months and we've only seen the scale move one or two pounds or maybe not at all. You know, it's insane. The same, I mean, this isn't working, it's failing, isn't it? And it's like getting them to understand that when we've put ourselves in this predicament, it's not like a, you all of a sudden switch the other way and all of a sudden, oh, fat loss comes off and it's that easy. If it was, they would have figured it out a long time ago. It's quite the process. Not just the, the time that it takes, but also the psychological discipline that it takes to stay the course when.

[D]

You'Re probably doing the right thing 100%. So here's what the data shows on weight loss with just diet. Let's just stick with diet for now. When you take people and you have them lose, let's say 25 pounds on the scale or 30 pounds on the scale. And the way that you would do this with diet is you would take their average caloric intake and you would just reduce it. So I would take these group of people and let's say this person's averaging, you know, 2200 calories a day or 2300 calories a day, I'm gonna put them on a 1300 calorie diet. Okay. Which by the way, if you look at the studies on. On diet, the typical caloric intake they'll put people on for weight loss is usually around 12 to 1300 calories. It's typically where they put people, which is very low, by the way. So they put people on this diet and they'll get them to lose again. In a study so controlled, they'll get them to lose 20 or 30 pounds. But then when they go and look at body composition, where did this weight come from? Like, what did they actually lose? What we see in the data is on average 40% of that weight came from muscle.

[C]

Almost half.

[D]

40%, almost half. Now, there's a myth out there that you're burning the muscle. That's not what's happening. Your body's not burning the muscle. It's just adapting to meet this new caloric intake. And if you look at the human body and you look at all the parts of the body, and you had to reduce the parts of the body that were burning the most calories in.

[C]

Order to just keep surviving.

[D]

Muscle's there. It's reprioritizing. Muscle is a wonderful place to pare things down because it burns so many calories. It's this very metabolically active tissue. And so you see this 40% of their weight comes off as muscle. So what ends up happening is they lose 30 pounds and now they end up with a metabolic rate that's much slower than when they first started. What does this look like long term? Well, I was eating 1300 calories, I lost 25 pounds. Now I have to eat 1300 calories forever in order to keep this, you know, amount of weight off. And 1300 calories a day for the rest of your life is very difficult to maintain. It's a miserable place. It's not a great place to be. By the way, here's the other side of it, because I've heard people argue this before and it's so silly to me. If you just look at, and I'm talking healthy food, if you just ate really healthy calories, 1300 calories of really healthy food, it's actually quite difficult, if not impossible, to get the micronutrients that you need from that few of calories. So you actually start to see our nutrient deficiencies. Actually, the risk goes up from that low. A calorie. It's not a sustainable approach whatsoever. Now, here's where it gets worse. This is. I'm going to add an element to this. I'm going to throw a little wrench into this and make this a little worse. Let's say that person or that group, we put them on a low calorie diet and then we're like, no, no, no, we're going to also have them exercise. Let's do that. The form of exercise that tends to be picked for weight loss tends to be the forms of exercise that burns the most calories. That sounds logical, right? I'm trying to get the calories out. I'm trying to eat less calories. What kind of exercise should I do? Let me pick the one that burns the most calories. That sounds logical. The problem with that is that the forms of exercise that burn the most amount of calories while you're doing it typically are cardiovascular type exercise. Running. Running. Running burns a tremendous amount of calories. If you were to run for an hour, there's pretty much no other form of exercise that would come close to the amount of calories that you burn while running. I mean, you could choose other things, but it would look like running in terms of the expenditure, it would be the same thing.

[C]

Rowing, Stairmaster, all those things, or just.

[D]

Doing crazy circuits or whatever. Right? You're burning lots of calories and it makes a lot of sense. But the problem is not understanding another adaptation signal that you're sending to your body, which is, I need endurance. I need endurance because I'm running, I'm taking in low calories, and I also simultaneously need endurance. Well, here's what your body does, and this is crazy. You're sending another signal to your body that says, become even more thrifty with energy because you need to be able to continue doing this activity. Your body doesn't know you're working out. It thinks you're trying to survive. And so it learns how to slow down its metabolism even more. And because endurance training requires very little strength, your body pairs more muscle down. In fact, more mass is less efficient. If you did running plus a low calorie diet, you'll probably see more muscle loss than if you just did diet alone, or at least the same amount, which is pretty remarkable. And so then there can be an argument can be made that you'll get an even worse metabolic adaptation in the context of, you know, slowing it down by doing that. And this is exactly what people do. And like you, Adam, when I was an early trainer, I thought this was the formula for fat loss. And it wasn't until I ran gyms for long enough and I would see members coming in who every day they'd be on the treadmill, every day they were coming in, and every day, their body weight, their body fat didn't change. And I thought, man, they must be eating tons and tons of calories. Their diet must be absolutely terrible. And then I got to know these people and they would tell me, like, their diet, and I'd be like, yeah, but you're probably lying, I'm sure. On the weekends. Are you really crazy? And then some of these people I got to really respect and I saw, like, oh, my gosh, like, they're. This is really difficult for a lot of people because they don't. Something else is happening. Something else is happening. That's when I started to understand metabolic adaptation.

[C]

You know what also becomes really challenging for the client that's going through this is that when they've done this for a long enough time and they've got their metabolic rate to come down to some really low number, say like 1300 to your point, because that's kind of the average with where these diets tend up being and all this expenditure. And then they kind of like, even if they don't fully throw their hands up, they're just like, oh, just, I need a break. I need to have a night.

[D]

Feels terrible.

[C]

Yeah. I need to have one night of wine or a pizza or just one thing. Yeah, like just. They just. They just need a small break. Or that one that. Just that one piece of pie that I hadn't had in forever. They've been restricting for so long. What it feels like to them is that one thing sticks to them right away. And part of why that feels that way is one 700 calorie or 1000 calorie slice of pie is literally 80% of their daily intake. Whereas if they had a metabolic rate, say, that was up towards 26, 2800 calories, that same person could afford to have a little bit of flexibility in the diet and not feel like it gets stuck right to them. But almost every client that I've ever had that's been through this would express that. They'd be like, oh, my God, that's what exactly I feel. I feel like I have a little bit of cheese on something or I indulge a tiny bit, and then the next day I feel like I put on a pound or 2 body fat. They didn't put on a pound or 2 body fat, but they feel that way because of where their metabolic rate is and how much their body is wanting to store calories.

[D]

That's right. And what it feels like for this person is it starts to throw your hormones off because they're adapting again towards this direction that we're Talking about. So typically, what you see in men, this is pretty well documented now, is your testosterone goes down. By the way, women's testosterone goes down as well. And women need testosterone just as much as men do. It's just a different ratio in women. You'll see estrogen and progesterone get thrown off. Cortisol, which is a stress hormone, starts to become out of whack. So we'll say elevated, but really what it starts to look like is an inverted cortisol release where it's a little low in the morning, high at night. Why? Because cortisol is this kind of energy producing stress hormone. That's what it does. Right. If I were to give you a shot of cortisol right now, you'd feel this kind of wired type of energy. And cortisol also promotes muscle loss and fat storage. It's correlated or connected to visceral fat. So your hormones are off. My libido's down. I'm not getting enough nutrients because my calories are so low. Plus, I'm throwing all the stress on my body with all this exercise. I'm getting not great sleep. I've got low energy. I got signs of too much stress. My hair doesn't look good. My nails don't look good. I just feel worn down. And at this point, the person says, why am I doing this? I give up. I don't want to do this anymore. This doesn't make any sense. This sucks. Of course it sucks. It's because you're doing this in such a challenging way and it makes it impossible to maintain. It makes it impossible to maintain. So what's the fix? All right, what, how do we fix this? Well, first let's look at exercise. And rather than judge it by its calorie burn, so let's look at it as a way to signal the body to adapt. What adaptation are we looking for? What would be the most beneficial adaptation for somebody who wants to be able to lose body fat and keep it off? Well, something that's going to make my metabolism faster, to put it plainly. Again, I'm oversimplifying, but what signal could I send to my body that would speed up my metabolism? Well, the most effective signal is the one that tells you to build muscle, not the one that burns the most calories. Why build more muscle? What's that gonna do? Muscle is very metabolically active. It burns more calories at rest, it burns more calories at activity. It's insulin sensitive. It's got androgen receptors in there, so makes your Testosterone more effective. In fact, if you build muscle, we start to build muscle, we tend to see a balancing of hormones, and so you start to move your metabolism in a more favorable direction because you're strength training, you're lifting weights. By the way, you have to lift weights like somebody who's trying to build muscle, not like somebody who's just trying to burn a lot of calories. Because you could use weights in a way that make it like running. Okay, make it like cardiovascular training. So now you got to lift weights. But there's another side to this equation, which is, okay, I'm lifting weights to get stronger. So I'm doing straight sets, you know, 10 reps. I'm resting for two minutes, doing those 10. I'm trying to get stronger. But now I have to feed and fuel that adaptation. I have to do something with my food intake that actually allows me to add that metabolic tissue, which looks like I'm eating a little more, and I'm eating high protein, and I'm fueling and supporting this adaptation. Now, that's moving in a positive direction. And you're right, Adam. This takes some time, especially when you're coming from the other direction. Where I've been over training and under eating. Now we do what's called a slow reverse diet with strength training. And this can take for some people. Some people react really quickly. So you're looking at 60 days. Other people could take six months, some people a year. On average, I'll say between around three months is when we start to see really positive effects. And then we're in a position where, well, now if we cut calories, I can bring it down to 2000 calories instead of 1300 calories.

[C]

We also have to address the. And I hate the trainers that tout the study that compares the calorie burn at rest of muscle versus fat. Because in a lab comparing muscle tissue versus fat tissue, the difference of calorie expenditure in the day is negligible. It's not what we see in real life. And it doesn't tell the full story. And I can't stand when I see trainers that tout that study, because then the message that you're sending right now about how incredibly beneficial it is to go build muscle to speed the metabolism up all of a sudden goes, wait a second.

[D]

It's only 10, 15 more calories.

[C]

Yeah, 10, 15 more calories. I'd have to build copious amounts of muscle.

[D]

40 pounds of muscle.

[C]

That's what it looks like under a microscope in a lab, in a. In its Resting position. You have to understand that there's more that meets the eye. There's. When you add five pounds of muscle to a person's body, first of all, that person organically becomes more active. That person organically becomes stronger. Volume increases again, you talked about this the other day of like how in these studies where they control volume. Well, you don't control volume. You're not. No one's in a lab controlling their exact staying. Exactly. When they get stronger, you. You lift more weights. When you lift more weights, you're now increasing your volume, which sends that loud signal. Plus, how much more training does it take just to sustain that extra muscle on you? There's extra calories expenditure there. So I cannot stand when we use that as a way to tell people it's not that big of a difference when it is life changing. I've seen countless clients firsthand that I've taken from eating 1300 calories, we've added say 10 pounds of muscle and that person is eating near 3000 calories. That doesn't math based off of what the research says, comparing muscle tissue to fat. Because there's more going on.

[D]

We do it all the time. It's predictable. We have callers all the time that call in, that take our advice. They come back on, oh my God. I went and I've added a thousand calories to my diet and the scale hasn't moved. I haven't gained any weight. It's like your metabolism went up. By the way, the studies will also show that you could have the same lean body mass and dramatically slow down or speed up your metabolism because there's a lot more that's going on that we don't understand. Things like mitochondrial uncoupling, things like, you know, how your body's utilizing hormones. And again, it's so complex. But routinely, routinely, and I can say this with all confidence, I could get a person's metabolism to go up by five to 800. That's like a routine average.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Oftentimes I'd see much higher, depending on the person I'm working with.

[C]

Crazy numbers.

[D]

I'll tell, I'll tell a personal story. The first time that I really got this and applied it, I had a young lady that hired me who was running 25 miles a week. So she liked to run. Plus she was lifting weights, but it looked more like circuits. And she's doing that three days a week and she was eating about 1500 calories a day. So consider 1500 plus. She took a lot of steps every single day. She had a pedometer. So think about this. 1500 calories while running 25 miles a week, while doing circuit training a few days a week, while taking something like 12 or 15,000 steps a day. And she just couldn't figure out why she couldn't get her body fat percent. She wasn't not fit, so she wasn't like super overweight, but she couldn't get her body fat below. It was like 24, 25%. So I took this individual and I immediately said, we're going to take you running from 25 miles a week to 5 miles a week. So I took 20 miles way off. And I said, you're going to strength train with me two days a week. And it's not going to be circuits. We're going to lift weights to get stronger. And then I want your calories up to 1800 because we got to do kind of the slow process. I don't want to freak her out. I'm going to bring you up to 1800 calories. I'm going to have you hit 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, and we're going to start there. Now, over the course of a year, the strength training went from two days a week to three days a week. The running went down to zero. All she did was walk. And her calories went from. Went all the way up to 2,800 calories a day, and her body fat percentage was 17%. She looked remarkably different.

[C]

Now, when you think back to that, that exact client and many other clients, just like that story that we've all trained, what do the conversations kind of look like? Because you know what happens? Like, you know, I'm almost always. You get, you. You've increased their calories by 300 calories already in the first month, and there's not a lot of movement. Yeah, she doesn't, she didn't go up. She can go down on the scale, but she's eating 300 more calories. And a lot of times clients don't realize what a win. That's a huge win. And so you talk about that a little bit about, like, what are like some of those conversations for that client along that process? Because, I mean, we can map it out, like this is what it looks like. But when you're in it, you, the clients a lot of times get really, really frustrated because they expect they should see more or should move along even faster.

[D]

The best strategy that I ever use with these kinds of clients, and I did it with her. And then ever, ever since this is What I would do with these clients is I got them to understand how if you're getting stronger, I would connect strength with your metabolism getting faster. Now, that's not always the case, but it can often be the case that if you're getting stronger, you're probably building muscle, and if you're building muscle, we're probably moving in the right direction. So I got them to fall in love with getting stronger, and this was the metric that we measured. So when she would come to the gym, and I'm slowly increasing her calories, reducing her activity, having her do more strength training, traditional strength training, I got her so excited about just getting stronger. And though the weight didn't really change much for the first few months on the scale, the fact that she was lifting 50 more pounds in her squat and 70 more pounds in her deadlift and her bench press went up 15 pounds, that got her really excited. So she got really excited just about getting stronger. Now, once we started to really move things in that direction after a few months, then we started to see body composition changes, and it got to the point. And here's what it looks like, by the way, at the end of this, at the end of this, what it looks like is, and I've said this many times to our coaches, you know, you're doing a good job. When your client comes to you and says, I don't understand how this is working, I'm getting leaner, I'm looking better, and I feel like I'm not doing a lot and I'm eating a ton of food. Like, what is going on? That's what it feels like when you're working with your body and not against it. And also your hormones start to feel a lot better, too. I can't stress this enough. Like, building muscle is wonderful for your hormones. What you'll typically see as you get stronger and stronger and stronger and bump your calories is your libido goes up.

[C]

Yeah, you feel better.

[D]

Your energy goes.

[C]

I feel like that's the. The thing that I'm leaning on that client is I'm always lean. I love. I love leaning on strength. I love asking them, how do you feel, though?

[D]

Yes.

[C]

You know, do you feel better? I understand that it's been three months, we've only added 300 calories, and you've seen no weight loss yet. But listen, if every three months, I can increase you by 300 calories and you continue to feel better, you continue to get stronger, that means in nine months from now, you'll be eating a thousand more calories than you're used to, feeling great and stronger than you've ever been. And then I can take you from that thousand, cut those calories in half down to 500, you'll still be eating more than you've ever ate, and you'll watch that body fat just come off.

[D]

That's right.

[C]

And so that's what that conversation looked like for me. It was just like, listen, I know you don't think it's a big win, but the fact that we're up 300 calories, you're on month three right now. We haven't gained any weight. We haven't lost any weight.

[D]

We're.

[C]

You feel good, you're getting stronger. Fast forward that three months again and then another three months. And I know that might sound like a long time right now, and that's like a lot for you, but nine months from now to say that your cal. Your metabolism is thousand calories more a day and you're strong, feeling good, and we have put any weight on, you know what's going to happen when we start to cut those calories? You are just going to plummet, and you're going to plummet eating more than you've ever ate, and you'll feel amazing.

[D]

That's. Right now you have something sustainable. So the success in this process is the setup. The success is in training your metabolism to adapt in a direction that's going to make this sustainable. Because you don't want to be stuck where so many people are stuck, where it feels like they're just spinning their tires in the dirt. They're doing so much work, they're so restricted with their food, and it's like, what is going on? This just isn't working. And I totally understand why people give up, but if you do it the right way, everybody, the right way reduces stress, doesn't add stress, and it feels like your body's working for you. And so that's why when it comes to fat loss, instead of thinking fat loss, think metabolism. Start there. Then the fat loss gets totally easy. If this is something that you want somebody to coach you through, we have specialists that are experts at exactly this, at getting people's metabolism to work better. So if you're interested, you want to work with a Coach, go to mindpump personaltraining.com help and one of our coaches will call you and we could talk about how they can get you back on track and get that metabolism humming again, or maybe for the first time ever. And also, look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. We'll see you at Mind Pump Media.

[E]

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 exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos. The RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at Mind Pump Media media.

[C]

Com.

[E]

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