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Doug
If you want to p and expand
Sal Destefano
your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump Mind Pump with your hosts
Adam Schafer
Sal Destefano, Adam Schafer and Justin Andrews,
Sal Destefano
you just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode Callers called in. We got to coach them on air, but this is after our intro. Today's Intro is about 56 minutes long. In the intro we talk about fitness and current events. Fat loss, muscle gain, family life. Always a good time. If you want to submit a question and be on an episode like this one live, here's what you do. Send it to mplifecaller.com now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Element. They make electrolyte powders that you add to water. No artificial sweeteners, no sugar and the right amount of sodium. It's got enough sodium to make a difference. By the way, they have a new flavor. It's Lemonade iced tea. It also includes a little bit of caffeine and theanine in it. It's delicious and it'll wake you up. Go give it a shot. Go to drinklement.com mindpump and go again. Check out their Lemonade iced tea. By the way, if you buy if you go on that link, they'll give you a sample pack of their most popular drink. Mix flavors with any purchase. Now this episode is also brought to you by our partners@mphormones.com so if you have any questions about peptides, any peptides or hormone therapy, go to mphormones.com you can get a 10 minute free consultation with an expert. They'll answer all of your questions. By the way, just doing the consultation will also enter you to win a free membership or an essential lab to be paid for. Three people are going to win a membership and 10 people are going to win. Their labs being paid for, but nonetheless, it's a free conversation. If you have any questions at all and you want them answered and that's all you want, go to nphormones.com also cool sale this month on our workout programs. Buy any MAPS 15 style workout program. Get any other MAPS 15 style workout program for free. This is the first time we've ever done this. Go to maps15bogo.com Here comes the show.
Adam Schafer
T shirt time.
Doug
And it's T shirt time.
Adam Schafer
Aw, shit, Doug. You know it's my favorite time of the week.
Doug
Two weeks, two winners this week for Facebook. None for Apple podcasts. The Facebook winners are Jody Simpson and Hamman704. Both of you are winners. Send the name I just read to itunesindpumpmedia.com include your shirt size and your shipping address, and we'll get that shirt right out to you.
Sal Destefano
All right, real quick.
Justin Andrews
If you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over@mypumpstore.com I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to my pumpstore.com. that's it.
Adam Schafer
Enjoy the rest of the show.
Sal Destefano
If you had followed the official guidelines for health over the last, let's say 30 to 40 years, you'd probably be sick, fat, and unhealthy. It's true. It's because they were peddling lies. We're gonna talk about the five biggest lies that we believed over the last few decades and what has been a result of those stupid lies. Let's get to it.
Adam Schafer
So has anyone tried to sue the government over that stuff?
Sal Destefano
You can't.
Adam Schafer
Well, I mean, is that, is that. You can't. You can't sue the government for that. That's ironic. But you have people that would sue. MC sued McDonald's and stuff like that.
Sal Destefano
I know.
Adam Schafer
You know, which is crazy. Could you imagine, when you think about this, like, the government puts out health guidelines and tells the, you know, schools and stuff like that to teach kids this. This stuff, Right? Food pyramid, stuff like that.
Sal Destefano
Right.
Adam Schafer
McDonald's. By no means. It says, come here if you want to lose weight.
Sal Destefano
They never said that.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Are not promoting.
Sal Destefano
They just made tasty food.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
And then yet they could get. They've been sued for obesity and stuff.
Sal Destefano
I know.
Adam Schafer
And that is. That's crazy.
Sal Destefano
If you could see, this is what
Justin Andrews
we knew back then.
Sal Destefano
I mean, right?
Justin Andrews
That's the, the go to technically you
Sal Destefano
can sue the government for stuff, but, like, winning is the other. Is the other. It's, like, impossible. Plus, they have endless resources if they want to. They want to just wear you down. But, God, if you could really do that, they'd be bankrupt so quick.
Doug
They already are bankrupt.
Sal Destefano
Thanks, Doug. Yeah, thank you, Doug. Well, so I saw.
Adam Schafer
I saw somebody. A meme that said, you.
Sal Destefano
The.
Adam Schafer
The. The government. If the government. If you lie to the government, it's a felony. If the government lies to you, you can't do it. You can't do anything about it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, such that it's a felony for us, but you can't.
Justin Andrews
Yeah, I just posted that. It was like a Bill Murray quote.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, that was okay. That.
Sal Destefano
Saw that.
Adam Schafer
I was like, I saw. I know. I saw that just this morning.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. Yeah. It's just convenient.
Justin Andrews
It's really convenient.
Sal Destefano
Well, so being in the health and fitness space. So we've been doing this for a long time. I've been doing this now for almost 30 years, you guys. Do you guys realize that I've almost been doing this for 30 years. You guys are getting. You guys are so close, dude. I know. It's crazy, but being in this space for that long, you kind of get used to the fact that a lot of the. What would be accepted wisdom around health and fitness is. Is not true. Yeah. And now back in those days, a lot of the reasons why we countered some of the things that we heard wasn't because we had data to support it. Although there was some data. It just wasn't a lot. It was just based off of experience. Like, we knew people who were healthy and fit, and it was like. But they don't go by these guidelines. And the people that do go by these guidelines seem to be worse off. And so it was always kind of this. The health and fitness space tends to be counter anyways, I think, because we've been trained to be a bit counter. But I'll go with the first lie, and this one now, I think is widely accepted that it was a lie. But I'm gonna tell you guys right now, look, 25 years ago, this was the law. Yeah. Like, nobody argued doctrine. Yeah. And it was that dietary cholesterol was bad for you. Avoid dietary cholesterol like the plague, because if you eat dietary cholesterol, it's going to negatively affect your blood lipids, like your hdl, LDL and your total cholesterol, the result of which will be heart disease. And so just stay away from food
Justin Andrews
forming and all those things that are hyping up.
Sal Destefano
In fact, if you went to grocery stores 25 years ago and you looked for health food, nine out of 10 of them would say low cholesterol. This is how believed it was. That's right. Now what's the result of this? The result of it is people avoid. Yeah, dude, that's one of them. The other one is. And we'll get back to that. The other one is people avoided the most nutrient dense part of an egg, which is the yolk. Yeah. Diet. You know, egg yolks are very high in cholesterol. They're also super high in some pretty incredible nutrients. It's like nature's multivitamin. And so really it created this like generation of like egg whites. And by the way, especially for kids, the studies on children who eat egg yolks and intelligence as they get older is pretty remarkable. And so we just avoided all these nutrient dense foods because we're so afraid of cholesterol.
Adam Schafer
It still hasn't gone away.
Sal Destefano
Dietary cholesterol.
Adam Schafer
This still.
Sal Destefano
There's people you have to believe.
Justin Andrews
You go to the doctor and they're still worried about your cholesterol numbers. And so if they're not conveying that, you know. Well, obviously the, like, dietary cholesterol isn't the big factor here, but they're not going to convey that.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, I mean, you still see in, especially in the, you know, muscle building, bodybuilding world, egg whites is still a thing.
Sal Destefano
Oh, well, that's just because they're trying to. Low calories. I think that's more anything trying to do that.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, but it's still, I mean, this reminds me too, when people do that with the extra lean ground turkey versus regular, it's just like the difference in calories is, is so minimal compared to what you're losing out on the nutrient side, which has its own benefits. So it's interesting to, to make that trade off of, you know, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna trade, you know, 30 calories and not get the dietary cholesterol. Makes no sense, especially when you're trying to build muscle.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. A lot of what happened was, you know, like, like I said, we avoided foods that were really good for us out of fear of. By the way, this is one of the lies that now they've come completely back around and said, oops, we messed up. They now officially say dietary cholesterol doesn't really matter. It literally doesn't matter. Okay. Because some things matter a little bit. Dietary cholesterol is not going to affect you in any negative way, apart from what it may come with or other factors in your diet. But, yeah, we avoided nutrient dense foods, and then what we did is we tried to replace them with synthetic. Way worse for you foods. You brought up margarine, which is crazy.
Justin Andrews
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
People stopped eating butter and instead started eating, like, plastic.
Justin Andrews
I can't believe it's not butter because
Sal Destefano
it's plastic and it's tr. And it was made with trans fats, which are always bad for you.
Adam Schafer
Is this. When did Velveeta cheese get popular? Around this time. Also for that reason. Is it also like, a no cholesterol cheese?
Sal Destefano
Good question. It probably is. Like, no cholesterol.
Adam Schafer
Could you look that up, Doug? Because that. I bet it came out around the same time, like, margin. Maybe it was before.
Justin Andrews
It reminds me of, like, orange caulking or something.
Adam Schafer
Velveeta is not real cheese. You know it's not real cheese.
Sal Destefano
No.
Adam Schafer
Just like margin isn't real butter.
Sal Destefano
No.
Adam Schafer
So I. I wonder if that was why.
Sal Destefano
Let's see. Contains cholesterol and is not promoted as.
Justin Andrews
No.
Sal Destefano
CL also had a little bit of cholesterol in it. Oh, 10 milligrams, which isn't that much.
Adam Schafer
So is it considered low compared to regular cheese?
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, I imagine that's what.
Sal Destefano
And they also made Velveeta because it melted and it stayed melted. So they engineered it in a lab. So.
Justin Andrews
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
You know what the problem with cheese.
Adam Schafer
Yes. I'm so curious of what the. If it wasn't the cholesterol thing that made. That's why I'm trying to get to the bottom of right now, because Velveeta being fake cheese, like, what made them make.
Sal Destefano
Well, if you've ever melted real cheese on nacho chips, you know what happens? It gets lumpy, and if it cools, then it gets hard. You could melt Velveeta in a microwave and you've got liquid cheese for a while. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So it's really just about soup. Yeah. It's basically gelatinous.
Doug
Interesting. Velveeta filled a market need for affordable shelf stable food during the Great Depression in World War II.
Justin Andrews
Oh, wow.
Sal Destefano
So they were trying to make something
Doug
cheap, bolstered by Kraft's aggressive marketing as a healthy diet product.
Adam Schafer
So they did. They did use the low cholesterol angle a little bit. Yeah. Okay.
Sal Destefano
That makes it better for you because the fats in there are better or whatever, which is pretty wild.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
The next one is that fat. Fat. And then slash carbs. Make you fat. Now the carbs make you fat. I would. Is not a government lie. That was kind of pushed by, I'd say, the market, as a response to the fat makes you fat message that we got from the government. So we were told to go low fat for a long time. So if you grew up in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, especially 90s, low fat was the way to go. Avoid fat at all costs. And this resulted in Franken foods. Low fat, high sugar. They had to find a way to make food palatable. It also resulted in lowered satiety. So people overate even more because fats produce more satiety than, let's say, carbohydrates and sugars. And it pushed people towards processed foods because you could process something low fat and still find a way to make it palatable. But nature, yeah, low fat generally tastes gross.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
And it caused a lot of problems. And fat is essential. And so I remember there's so many times I would train a client, especially a female client, and a lot of her issues were the fact that her fat was too low. I'd bump her fat intake, and then miraculously, everything.
Justin Andrews
We get so much hair and everything
Sal Destefano
else, energy and hormones. And it was like, yeah, you're eating 30 grams of fat a day. Like, let's get you up to 70 or 80 and watch what happens. And they'd feel amazing.
Adam Schafer
Which is so ironic, too, because when you think about how we probably evolved, that was probably the. The best thing. I mean, the first thing that you. When you kill an animal is you go after the fact.
Justin Andrews
Everybody celebrated. It's like, oh, yeah, like that kill you.
Sal Destefano
The meat was valuable. Yes. Protein is essential. But the. But fatty meat was.
Justin Andrews
That kept you alive.
Sal Destefano
That's what kept you alive. It was very nutrient dense. You need it. You need protein, too. But if you just eat super lean protein all the time, you actually die. We've talked about this before, you know, trappers and hunters in the west, many of them starved because they could only catch rabbits.
Adam Schafer
It's called. Wasn't it called, like, a rabbit disease?
Sal Destefano
Rabbit starvation?
Adam Schafer
Yes, I think it was called.
Sal Destefano
Because they couldn't get enough fats. So no, fats are essential. You need them. But we went through a whole generation of people believing they needed to avoid fat. Now this led to this crazy rebound effect where it was like, no fat is good. It's carbs that are evil. So then we had this whole generation of avoid carbs at all costs. Do you guys remember when Atkins.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
Became popular? It Was like, massive, Huge.
Justin Andrews
I remember huge product machines.
Adam Schafer
We were, we were in middle school, high school time, around that time when that was really, really popular. And I remember, because I remember a lot of the kids that I went to school with, their moms were doing it, you know, that were on it. Remember coming over and seeing, like, eating bacon and stuff like that all day long. This is different.
Sal Destefano
You know, I just want butter. You're like, what a great. A great way to sell a product is to take a lie that everybody believes and then sell the opposite. Yeah. And it has some truth. Yeah. And then you're going to crush. So what Atkins did is the, the, the message that was accepted was fat was bad. He came back around and said, no, fat is essential. We need it. It's carbs that are bad now. He knew that's what you can see in the data. When you go zero carb, it really does crush your appetite many times. But more than that, it's a generation of people who are so afraid to eat fat that now they can eat the fat that they've always avoided. And now it feels like it's freeing. Now, the fat carbs, they don't make you fat. Too many calories make you fat. It's obviously more complex than that, but it created a whole generation of people that went in the opposite direction. By the way, low fat, low carb diets both have terrible adherence, so they're both just as equally ineffective. If you have to pick one, I go low carb because fats are essential and you can cause some serious health problems. But super low carb is also not.
Adam Schafer
I think any, any diet that eliminates or tries to eliminate a macro is just a bad idea.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, just.
Adam Schafer
I mean, I think that's a good general rule. It's like if. If it's telling you to completely eliminate a macronutrient, obviously, if it's one of the essential ones, it's really ridiculous. But even if it's carbohydrates to, to totally do that and then to think that you're going to go the rest of your life. That was the biggest problem I had with the, you know, carnivore ketogenic type of diet. It's just like, just so unrealistic.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
And I understand with health issues and for the.
Sal Destefano
There's some extreme cases where it seems to help.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, totally ketogenic.
Sal Destefano
By the way, the original ketogenic diet was a medical diet. There were medical applications for it.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. And so it may. But like, we always do. I feel like in the health and wellness space is we. We bastardize something like that because it's something that was used in. I mean, again, we're feel like we're. We're on the. The, you know, cusp of that right now with GLP1s.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
This is something that's been around for a really long time. We were medically prescribing it to people that really, really needed it, that were, you know, morbidly obese. And this was, like, the option to save their life. And now it's turned into everybody who wants to lose five or ten pounds, People. Yeah.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
I mean, that's where it's getting used to. I mean, are you guys. Are you guys paying attention to all the commercials and ads and the pill forms now and all the celebrities that
Sal Destefano
are, I'll tell you right now, endorsing 2/3 of every two thirds of America will be on a joke.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, you called out. I thought that was aggressive when you first said it, but I don't disagree anymore. And now I'm. I'm. I'm willing to potentially retract what I said as an argument with you early on, which was it was going to be a net positive. I'm not sure anymore.
Sal Destefano
It's.
Adam Schafer
It's become so popular. I knew it would be. I knew some people would abuse it. But we're. We're quickly getting the place where more people that shouldn't use it are using it than the ones that probably need it or should be using it. Right.
Justin Andrews
Melted bodies are a thing now.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. Gosh. Yeah. So what makes you fat is eating more than you burn. It's obviously more complex than that. We've done lots of episodes going into detail, but it's not carbs or fats that are bad. Fats are essential, and carbohydrates give you energy. And going too low carb for too long oftentimes causes hormone issues in people, especially women. And believe it or not, going no carb for too long can actually cause insulin resistance, which sounds like it shouldn't be the case, but you can see the data. In fact, people like Dr. Mercola, who was like, super pro, no carb now advises everybody, you got to have carbs at least a couple days a week to avoid that. Next up, low sodium. Avoid sodium. So bad for you. It's so funny because it's like we do this to things that are essential. Sodium is essential. You'll die without sodium. You need sodium.
Justin Andrews
Yeah, there's wars just because everybody needed it.
Sal Destefano
Ancient world fought over salt they used to actually kill each salt.
Justin Andrews
Frustrating because it's still very pervasive.
Sal Destefano
Yes.
Adam Schafer
I was going to say it's. I was going to say it's remained very popular up until. I want to credit one of our partners element with this. I mean up until that point nobody was even putting like the right amount of sodium in electrolytes. In electrolytes, which is a supplement that's supposed to help replenish that. And there wasn't an appropriate dose. That's how like overly we were. We were compensating on the other. Other direction.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Justin Andrews
Sugar instead of salt.
Adam Schafer
It really was when they hit the scene and I remember we didn't even look at the product for almost a year in our studio because up to that point every electrolyte that came out before was a bunch of bullshit. It was something that was. Didn't even have the effective dose of sodium to replenish.
Sal Destefano
Have like 100 milligrams.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
Of sodium.
Adam Schafer
So I remember you wouldn't even look at it. And then you open the box one day and you're like, oh my God, this is like the first.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Electrolyte. And so I feel like we're, we're barely going the other direction to your point. Like I don't. I think it still is.
Justin Andrews
Yeah. I, I find myself constantly having to educate and talk to my friends even too like that. You know, this is, this is healthy. This is something that like, you know, your body needs to have adequate amounts
Sal Destefano
of electrolytes and salt and, and, and just to even just to. For hydration, you need it. So there are special populations that, that need to control sodium intake, but such a small. They're pretty ill already otherwise. And here's why. The data showed that there was a correlation between a high sodium diet and worse health outcomes. What you're looking at, if you take 5,000 people and you just take their dietary information and you look at sodium. I can correlate high sodium with poor health easily. But it's not because it's the sodium, it's processed foods. That's right. When I look at high sodium for the average person, what I'm typically looking at is a diet that is very high in processed foods. And so if you don't control for that, you're throwing in a bunch of people. This is why they thought for a long time that coffee caused cancer. But this is true. Not that it was decades ago, but studies came out showing that coffee drinkers had more cancer. It's because they didn't control you Know, back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, the heaviest coffee drinkers were smokers. And so they didn't control for smoking. They just looked at coffee. They're like, oh my God, everybody who drinks the most coffee gets a bunch of cancer. Which is funny because the opposite is true. Coffee has anti cancer effects. We just had to control coffee.
Justin Andrews
Coffee was helping you.
Sal Destefano
That's right.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
So sodium, when you just look at sodium, if you want to pick out high processed food intake, one easy way to do it without going digging deeper, just look at who's consuming the most sodium. You'll almost always see whoever's consuming the most sodium is consuming a lot of heavily processed foods.
Adam Schafer
Okay. Which is, if you understand, if you look at any box food or frozen processed stuff is. It's. They load the shit out of it. It's so it preserves it. So it's a strategy.
Sal Destefano
It's also ingredient palatability.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, it makes it more palatable, but even more importantly, extends the shelf life. Which is probably one of the most important reasons why they load it with as much because you can, you can get away with just adding some of some sodium in there to make it taste a little bit better. But they put so much in there and it's to preserve how long it lasts.
Sal Destefano
It's more about the palatability because they.
Adam Schafer
Oh, you think so?
Sal Destefano
Yeah, because they could preserve salt used to preserve food back in the day before modern ways of preserving. What it is is that food companies, when they make a processed food, the goal is to make it as palatable as possible. Duh. So every ingredient in there is put in there to make it as palatable as possible. One of the ingredients in palatability is sodium. So is fat salt and fat sugar.
Adam Schafer
One of them comes with. The other two come with calories and one of them doesn't come with calories.
Sal Destefano
That's right. So salt, sugar and fat are the three main ingredients in palatability. Now, food scientists have gone way crazy with this. They've also, they've added chemicals and color. They know how to change the texture. They do all kinds of crazy stuff to make food. Like a Doritos chip is hyper, hyper palatable because of all the stuff that they've figured out with science. That's why you overeat process.
Justin Andrews
A master class in ultra processing.
Sal Destefano
Totally. But salt is an ingredient, so you want to. By the way, element is a great example. So going back to sodium, I agree with you. I think element was the first one to courageously put out a product that's A thousand milligrams. Oh my God. A thousand milligrams a serving. Like that's crazy. First off, if you need electrolytes, you need, you need a decent amount of salt. Number two, it's sugar free. There's no artificial sweeteners. Why does it taste so good? It's 1,000 milligrams of sodium.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
So element was like brilliant in a lot of the directions that they went. So sodium is an ingredient. Palatability. But here's the deal. If you eat a heavily processed food diet, you're going to be unhealthy for the most part. If you don't eat a heavily processed food diet, you eat whole natural foods. Especially if you work out, especially if you work in the sun, you need to add salt to your diet. And salting your food is often not enough.
Adam Schafer
I'm so stuck on this palatability. Reason is why you think the whole thing is because why is it then sal. If you were to measure like you cook whole foods.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
And you personally salted it. And I mean salted it up.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
You wouldn't even come close to the amount of sodium that's in this packaged food to make it taste good. In fact, if you put the amount of salt. If you saw like a salt shaker on your food to equate to the same amount of sodium that's in a processed food, it, it would taste.
Sal Destefano
It wouldn't taste good.
Adam Schafer
It wouldn't taste good. It was like you'd be over salted. You'd be like, oh, I taste this salt.
Sal Destefano
So why, I don't know, the combination of things that they put in there which allow the palatability meter to keep scaling up. So but like, like you could can foods with no sodium to last a long time. You could box them, you could freeze them. They'll last a long time. It's all about palatability. And it's. They've got, they've got so wild.
Adam Schafer
To me when you think of it like that, because that's the other thing that like I remember what I teach clients is that because they're like a
Sal Destefano
balance between salt, fat, sugar, and so they know how to like keep raising the bar. And it typically looks like a lot.
Adam Schafer
It's crazy when you think of the science that then has to go into that. Because I remember when I first started teaching clients that you. That they could go freely salt their food when they were eating whole foods and I put them on there, they'd be like, well, how much can I season it and salt. I'm like, go to town.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Like, what do you mean, go to town? Like, should I measure? I'm like, no, salt it all. I don't care, like, as much as you like for it to taste good. And I remember them having a hard time to wrap their brain around because it's around this time when sodium is so bad for you. And I'm like, listen, yeah, we're eating all these whole foods. You're not in. You're literally. Your sodium intake is cut to 1/4 just by going from processed whole foods and salting the out of it. So it's interesting that you're. You. You can't even. You. It's almost like you can't. I mean, obviously it's possible, but it'd be really difficult to salt your whole foods to come even close.
Sal Destefano
Not even close.
Adam Schafer
I remember I saw, I used to have this thing. I kept it in my, in my trainer area years ago, and it showed what one, like, fast food meal was of sodium. Like one like super sized meal at McDonald's was like somebody who ate whole foods and salted all their food for like a week.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, yeah.
Adam Schafer
Like one, one. One meal out was equivalent to a person who ate three or four square meal whole food meals a day. And salted. All of them would take the same. It was crazy.
Sal Destefano
Have you guys ever accidentally bought a processed food that was low sodium? Like peanut butter? Like, you don't even realize, oh, peanut butter's got a lot of sodium. Go eat low sodium peanut butter. It's gross.
Justin Andrews
Well, that's why I think it's, it's. It's so embedded in there that, like, you don't taste the salt necessarily, but you start looking at the packaging of all these things and you see the amount and it's. It's astonishing how much they, like, pack in. Yeah, yeah, I've had it.
Sal Destefano
So sodium from the dietary. Sodium. 70% of it comes from processed and restaurant foods. 70%. Yeah. The vast majority.
Doug
And not all the sodium in processed foods is salt. So it's not salty necessarily because they use MSG or sodium nitrate.
Justin Andrews
Msg.
Doug
And so that doesn't taste salty.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Doug
But it's used to preserve the food.
Sal Destefano
Okay.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, see, that makes, that makes a little more sense to me because it's just like, it doesn't make sense that. Because if you were to salt even anywhere remotely.
Sal Destefano
Here's what happened.
Justin Andrews
Msg, gluten and sugar making and everything.
Sal Destefano
So here's what happened too, Adam. Everybody got afraid of sodium, so companies Figured out how to use other preservatives to increase palatability and to preserve the food that weren't sodium. So you got low sodium food.
Adam Schafer
Is that. Is that where the MSG came from originally?
Sal Destefano
I think it's been used for longer than that.
Doug
Yeah, for a very long time. Because we actually.
Adam Schafer
We've also learned about the addictive properties of msg, too. Right?
Sal Destefano
Yeah, it's interesting, but. Yeah, so. And by the way, I started to piece this together as a trainer because I'd have. When I piece together, if I just tell my clients to eat as much as they want but avoid processed foods, it was such a game changer, you guys. It was like. It was the craziest dietary light bulb moment of my entire career. Suddenly I had all these clients who could eat as much as they want, just avoid processed food. Everybody's losing weight. Everybody's getting better shape. Everybody feels full. Yeah. But then I. With my most consistent clients, I started to have to recommend, like, more sodium and electrolytes because they'd get some of the symptoms of low sodium because processed foods are so high in sodium. And when you make food, even if you salt it, it's not nearly. Not nearly as much.
Adam Schafer
I think. Do you think that's the pushback? Because there's still some pushback on electrolyte products like Element in the fitness space. And I think it's related to comparing to the average American who still eats tons of processed foods. But I think that there's a. There's a bit of a bias there. It's like if you're. If you're listening to a fitness, health and fitness podcast, you're probably trying to eat better and exercise, I'll give you two options.
Sal Destefano
Here's the deal. If you have a crappy, heavily processed food diet and you're like, yeah, I'm gonna throw more sodium at myself because I need it, you're wrong. That being said, if you're eating a heavily processed food diet and you love things that taste good, you probably also love drinks that taste good. And I'm gonna make this. I'll make this case all day long. You're way better off drinking Element than soda. So go for the sodium. If you want something to taste good versus your Coke, Yeah, it's gonna be way better for you. Yeah. So that's my argument.
Adam Schafer
So even in that context.
Sal Destefano
Even in that context. Next up, avoid the sun. This one's one of my favorites. This one still pisses people off, dude. I know.
Justin Andrews
Still it pisses me off, dude.
Sal Destefano
I got, I got some new data for you guys on this one. I actually saved it because the sun
Justin Andrews
isn't always kind to me.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. So you want to not get sunburn. That's it though. Okay. But they turned it into like sunscreen yourself all the time. Stay out of the sun.
Justin Andrews
Reading all the chemicals they put in friggin sunscreen.
Sal Destefano
Four studies were put together and here's what they found. All cause mortality in people who avoid sun was 2 times higher.
Adam Schafer
2 times higher.
Sal Destefano
There was, there was people who got a lot of UV exposure. 16% drop and all cause mortality. 36 drop in cardiovascular and stroke events. So you know what's interesting about this? Avoiding the sun like it's the plague is as bad for you smoking. Yeah. In this data.
Justin Andrews
Stay inside.
Sal Destefano
Yes. It's like what have we done to people? And not only that, but the sunscreen people are using. It's these crazy chemicals that have like hormone effects where I can stay out of the sun. Bad idea. But oh, it's bad for you. They're lying and then on top of you slowly die. Then they're like slather this crazy chemical stuff all over your face and body. Yeah. And put it on your kids too, everybody. Before they go to school. Wild.
Adam Schafer
I'm so curious if I'm going to be able to see like a feel or see like a true measurable effect. Because I understand what all the studies say when you, when you talk about sun. And then also like the sauna which so like this has been like this ever since I got the sauna. I mean I'm almost daily, dude, almost daily. The routine is to do that plunge into the pool which is cold and then sit, sit laying out in my little chair. And even when it's like an overcast day, I still sit out there because you still get lots of sun. And so even this last week when we've had kind of like low 70s, it's not really like a pool day or layout.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
I'm so hot from the sauna that the it feels good to cool off in the pool then still lay out there like that. And so I've been doing that every single day. What I'm really curious what if I'm gonna notice anything like that is measurable from consistently using the sauna and being out in the sun. And like I'm doing this like daily right now. And yeah, I know what all the research says about all cause mortality on both the sauna and the sun. And this is, I've never been this consistent with Both of them. At least not since I was a kid with the sun for sure. Laying out almost daily. And then in addition to that, I've never had a sauna that I've had access daily to. And so to be doing both of those, I'm curious to see if like sleep, energy, skin.
Justin Andrews
Sure. You'll feel it.
Adam Schafer
I know, like, I definitely feel better. Like, I can already tell the difference, that it does feel good. But I'm so curious if like there's going to be like a measurable. I mean, you have any, do you have any theories if I, I'll see a measurable difference or I'll be able to like, point to.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, I think so. I think immediately probably you probably already feel better.
Justin Andrews
Better skin, I would imagine.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. And I think as you continue doing it, you're going to notice more and more health benefits. But it's one of those things that if you don't, if you do it for a while and then stop for a while, that's when you'll notice, you
Adam Schafer
know, I feel like that's with everything. I feel like a lot of stuff,
Sal Destefano
like if suddenly you stop going out in the sun for a while.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, no, I think a lot of stuff that we talk about is like that, Sal, like, the reason why I feel like we can talk so much about. We've been doing this for so long. There's been many times in probably all of our lives where there was something that we did consistently, health and fitness related and then didn't do it. And it's the didn't do it part that I actually, I think I noticed the most. It's like sometimes it's really hard. A lot of stuff that we talk about, like, oh, this has got this much percentage of benefits and it's. This will help you with that. And it's like. And a lot of people would argue, like, I didn't really notice a difference, you know, but it's like if you do it long enough consistently and then you don't do it is when you tend to really notice the difference.
Sal Destefano
Here's the thing, like if you, if you took someone, put them out in the sun and then measured the UV exposure, stress factors, you would see some bad stuff happening. By the way, you would see that with exercise too. You go do a workout, it's a stress on the body. Now, can you work out so hard that you damage yourself and cause problems? Yes. The workout needs to be appropriate. So does the sun exposure. If you never go out in the sun, you got to go out little by little and build up your tolerance. Sunburn is not good for you. That's the issue. But going out in the sun and avoiding it all the time, that'd be like saying exercise is stress. Avoid it. Avoid it like the plague. Terrible idea.
Caller Jake
Yeah.
Justin Andrews
Is there any studies, though, that have really teased that out in terms of the long term chronic exposure burning level versus just frequency and dosing of it?
Sal Destefano
There is. So you can find data on sunburns. When people get a bunch of sunburns, that's a problem. But people who go out and work out in the sun, around the sun, who've built that callus, they live longer. They generally live longer. They're also outside more, which has its
Justin Andrews
own implications because Mel know that that's the biggest scare. You know, that we're always getting, like inundated with for cream and like, whatever. Like, even makeup has, like sunblock now. It's like everywhere.
Sal Destefano
It's. It's wild. All right, next up, the last one. And this one is changing. But for a long time, like, if you wanted to get lean and you were going to exercise, like, don't lift weights. That's the worst way to get lean. This was believed for a long time. It still is believed by people. And I would say the older generations, because they grew up in our.
Adam Schafer
You know, I would say it's still
Justin Andrews
the ones that think you're going to turn a lime.
Adam Schafer
I'd say it's still really popular in general pop. Dude, we had a video not that long ago that went viral that was talking about this. In fact, we. I think it was a video where we were ranked. The staff had us rank things. Oh, and for fat loss. And I think we put cardio like the bottom Y and lifting weights at obviously the top. And that went. Because it went viral and it went beyond our.
Sal Destefano
Our little network.
Adam Schafer
Right. I feel like within our network or our bubble, I. I feel like this is kind of common. It's become common knowledge and more people are aware of, but this reached beyond that. And there's a lot of people that were like, these idiots, you know, think that, like, so I don't know. I think that when general pop still, still, this, this is the prevailing theory is that cardio is the best way to lose body fat. Weight training is not for that.
Sal Destefano
No. So cardio burns more calories than other forms of exercise. That's true. And fat loss does occur when there's a calorie deficit, when you burn more than you take in or take in less than you consume but cardio is not muscle sparing. So if that's the primary way that you exercise to lose weight, with the calorie deficit type diet, you'll see a lot of muscle loss. You'll see 40% of your weight come from muscle. Strength training is muscle preserving. It doesn't burn as many calories, but it also tends to move your resting caloric burn up through metabolism boosting. Okay. So it's just, it's a great way to get lean if you had to pick one form of exercise to get lean in combination with other lifestyle factors. Because just exercise by itself isn't a great way to get lean. It's a great way to get healthy, but not lean. But if you had to pick one, strength training is king. But a lot of people don't realize that, don't know that. They think because it doesn't burn as many calories or what they'll do is they'll hear strength training is good, could be good for fat loss. Let me just turn it into cardio. So I'm going to do a bunch of circuits and stuff like that because it burns more calories. But we now know it's the best way to burn body fat and definitely the best way to preserve and of course build. Build muscle. Yeah. So anyway, back to element. Have you guys, do you guys see their new lemonade iced tea?
Adam Schafer
Yeah. Tastes like an Arnold Palmer.
Sal Destefano
It's got, it's got a little bit of caffeine. 50mg caffeine I tried over the weekend.
Adam Schafer
Katrina was pumped about that. So Katrina doesn't take a lot of caffeine. She's really sensitive to it. And so 50 milligrams for somebody who doesn't drink, it's perfect. Caffeine actually gives you, they put theanine
Sal Destefano
in it too, so it balances it out so you have like a longer lasting. So it's, you know, electrolyte. Plus, if you don't have a lot of caffeine and you're in a hard workout drives it. This is a great way to fuel your workout.
Adam Schafer
Well, you're, you're also low caffeine too, right, Doug? Yeah, yeah. You're, you're not a big caffeine drinker either. Right Now. Would you try a 50 milligram or is that.
Doug
Oh, absolutely.
Adam Schafer
Okay. So that's not too much like you could, you don't do well with pre workout stuff. That's like 200.
Doug
Yeah, I pretty much avoid it because I don't feel great with caffeine. But Theanine does actually help a lot.
Sal Destefano
Oh, yeah. The studies on theonine, caffeine.
Adam Schafer
And I imagine, because I know what it feels with theanine. Feels like with 100 or 200 milligrams of caffeine. I'm sure with a nice mild dose of 50 milligrams, it's probably really easy for someone like you or Katrina.
Sal Destefano
Totally. All right, I got a cool study for you guys that's really. I mean, it's really. It's going viral right now. And it's. It's going viral because it compares two groups of people and it shows, well, how you can predict happiness. I'll just say that. So check this out. Poor Americans. So people who are below, like, not middle class, are considered poor, who go to church several times a week are happier than wealthy Americans who don't go to church. So you can be poor, go to church a few days a week, and they report that they're happier. So 36% of people who are poor who go to church several times a week are happy. 26% of wealthy Americans who don't go to church are happy. Isn't that wild? Now, the happiest group, of course, is wealthy Americans that go to church.
Justin Andrews
Yeah, let's shoot for that.
Sal Destefano
So not saying, obviously what this is not saying is that being poor is not a factor. Right. If you're poor, it's hard to make anything.
Justin Andrews
It's a mindset.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. That definitely can affect your quality of life, for sure. Like, it's not saying that it doesn't. But what I think is wild is that it's more. A better predictor is being in that community. Going to church.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
Pretty cool.
Justin Andrews
The purpose of it.
Sal Destefano
Pretty cool.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. I wonder, I wonder how that that compares to just any sort of person who is involved in something community driven and relationships and I'm glad you said that. Okay, cool. You have something.
Sal Destefano
Yes. Yeah, I'm glad you said that. So being in an active community is. Is really great for happiness. So having great relationships, meaningful relationships. The data is good on that. But when you compare it to church, for whatever reason, I think I know the answer. But again, I'm Christian. Church is actually better. But that doesn't mean it's not great to just be in community. It's very good to be in community.
Adam Schafer
Well, I think there's a way to even being. If you were not a Christian, you could still unpack that. I mean, you're believing in a higher power than yourself.
Justin Andrews
Offloading control.
Sal Destefano
Right?
Adam Schafer
You offload that right there. Is there's a. Everything happens for a reason. Good or good or bad or indifferent.
Sal Destefano
There's a good plane, everything. Yeah, there's. There's a. There's a good ending.
Adam Schafer
Right. You know, so there's. So, yeah, there's hope right there. So I think that it, it pairs community with that, which has got to be where that comes from. Right. Just community by itself has positive benefits, but does it. If it could, that could lack purpose. It could lack the personal responsibility stuff. Like it could lack.
Sal Destefano
There's also this. And I have limited experience because I haven't. I haven't been to like a million and one different churches, so I'm sure it's different. I know there's. There's. People have had bad experiences.
Adam Schafer
I've been to a lot.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. Yeah, you've been a tough.
Justin Andrews
Yeah, yeah.
Sal Destefano
So you actually beat me. So I know that because I've also recently looked at data on relationships, and they're not all the same. I brought this up on a previous episode, but there's like, a lot of people have what are called duty free friendships. I think I brought this up a few few episode episodes ago.
Justin Andrews
Absolutely no duties.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. So, yeah, so duty fee. Friendships are like friends, but you don't do life together. So it's like, hey, how you doing? Oh, I'm good. Yeah, we're cool.
Adam Schafer
How's your face?
Sal Destefano
Yeah, like, we don't. I don't, like, we don't, like, I don't suffer with you. Yeah, we don't, like, really let each other in on our struggles and stuff. It's like, we like to keep people at arm's distance and we're cool and that's better than nothing. But it's not the same as, like, real.
Adam Schafer
You actually didn't talk about this on the podcast. You talked about this in a question you asked. A live caller called in. Oh, a lady came in and you were giving her. It was our lady who called in a second time. And actually, because it's the first time I actually heard you use that term.
Sal Destefano
Yes, I do remember.
Adam Schafer
Probably the regular audience has not heard that unless you listen to all the live callers, because that's the first time I'd heard you refer to that as a duty.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. And I know in my experience, again, this is what I've seen. So I go to a great church, have such a great community, and I know that our faith encourages this. It encourages confessing to each other, doing life, forgiving grace. People are people. So you're always gonna get messed up people. But it kind of encourages this deeper type of relationship. And so I think that could definitely be a part of it. But again, I think when you look at the data on this duty free kind of friendship thing, that's exploded. You know, it used to be back in the day, like your family, your family, everybody live close to each other, so they know your business or your neighborhood, everybody knows your business. Sounds like a bad thing. And I can get that right. And get like, you don't want anybody to know your business, but now you don't have, like, real close friends.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. What do you think that. What do you think that is the big determining factor for that? First of all, men are bad at this stuff already.
Sal Destefano
Terrible.
Adam Schafer
Right. So men are already, you know, worse, generally speaking. But then what. What separates, let's say, even the three of. What makes that different in each one of us? Like, is it more child? Like what we grew up, our childhood? What do you think? What do you. What do you think separates even the three of us with that, like the way we are with relationships with people like that? Why one of us would have more or less of that? What do you think it's caused?
Sal Destefano
I don't know. I can't speak to everybody. I can speak to myself. I think I feel like I know how I used to feel. It's changed a lot. So it's totally different now. But you asked me five years ago, I felt good being the friend that was there for somebody. But if you were there for me now, I felt like a burden. So why would I share my challenges? Yeah.
Adam Schafer
What do you think that comes from? Because you had such a good upbringing.
Sal Destefano
I did.
Adam Schafer
Family and community.
Sal Destefano
I think I was the oldest. And so I had that kind of thing. You know how it is, you know, because you're the oldest.
Adam Schafer
I am, but we have this. We're different here. This is why I'm asking, because I find this interesting. Because you would think based off of my childhood, being the oldest, I would share that in common with you. But I would think that. I think you and I are very different than that.
Sal Destefano
Well, I've heard you say when you're with your younger, younger siblings, it's hard for you to be like peers.
Adam Schafer
That's true.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. So that's. That's part. Is that not part of it?
Adam Schafer
No. I mean, it hasn't impacted this part with. Because the relationship part. And I'm trying. I'm trying to unpack as we talk.
Sal Destefano
Do you talk to your younger siblings and call them about your issues and Problems?
Adam Schafer
Definitely not.
Sal Destefano
That's what I'm saying.
Adam Schafer
But with other people, I do.
Sal Destefano
Okay.
Adam Schafer
I have a lot. I have a lot of friend groups, and I. I would say they're. A lot of them aren't duty free. I think a lot of them, like, I do. I. Even relationships that you guys are aware of, that I've made even through this podcast, I tend to deepen those and. And do things and share. I'm open. But, like. So I'm not like that, but I should be. Based off of the things that you're saying right now. Right?
Sal Destefano
I don't know. That's interesting. You know, it's funny. I just saw a clip on social media the other day of this. This girl. She was like, in her 20s, and then she's like, her older brother comes over and he's in his 20s, and they have this great relationship, and she's like, why do you think we have such a great friendship? And then the brother's like, because we went through a lot of trauma together with our parents. And so I thought, I'm wondering if you guys went through the crap together, if you guys, like, stuck together as a result.
Adam Schafer
I mean, that's my sister and I. Yeah. So my sister and I are like that. That's for sure the truth. But I'm not just. I'm thinking about other people.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Caller Jake
I don't know.
Adam Schafer
Outside of family. Yeah.
Sal Destefano
I don't know.
Adam Schafer
You know, like in. Because, I mean, what you're sharing about yourself, I think is. Has been something that you've obviously been open about and you've been working on.
Sal Destefano
Right.
Adam Schafer
Being more of that. Even with us. Right. We have this brotherhood and this bond, but for a long time, I feel like you. You feel like that you're being a burden, if. Totally.
Sal Destefano
Right. So.
Adam Schafer
But it's something that you've been. But I'm not that way, and I should be. When you think about, like, your things, you're pointing out the. The trauma I went through as a. As a kid, being the oldest, I should kind of have similar, I would think, traits with you, but it's different and I don't know why it is. I know that in my late teens to early twenties, I do remember connecting the dots pretty early. The power and value of strong relationships. And I leaned into that. So I know, I know that at some point I made that connection of like, man, when you. When you build and I. And I teach this to my. My younger siblings, my kids that I mentor and cousins that are younger than me and stuff like that. In fact, I just had this conversation, my cousin was. My younger cousin, who's in his early 20s, about just how valuable it is to. To be good to others, to find ways to add value to their life and foster those relationships. Because right now, you may not see the value of it at 22 years old. But I said, if you practice that for 20 years, you'll look back and you'll have this Rolodex of 30, 40 people that you can call a friend, that you could pick a phone up at any time and be like, hey, I need help, or I don't have a job. And like I said, and that really adds up in life. And so don't underestimate the value of that, of spinning those. That. So I don't know where that.
Sal Destefano
I don't know.
Justin Andrews
Yeah, yeah. If I could speculate, it's probably more the upfront, like, radical honesty piece. So when you present that with people, it's probably, like, it opens an opportunity for more of a deeper relationship with people, because otherwise they're going to be turned off. They don't want to get that deep right away, or they don't want to, like, accept, you know, the feedback, and so they're going to move on. And then whoever kind of stays around, I would imagine you probably have deeper conversations with them.
Adam Schafer
That's. That's an interesting.
Sal Destefano
How do you guys feel about being taken care of? Like, if you were really sick or, like, you were incapacitated for, like, years, how would you feel about people just doing everything for you? Yeah, I could see that being a challenge.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, it's tough.
Justin Andrews
I mean, I'm kind of in between both. Probably more on Sal in the terms of, like, the independence of it, and, like, I've tried to be better about, and it's helped. The reason I brought that up is because that's what I've been working on a lot since I've been hanging out with you guys, was just like, tell it like it is. You know, like, first off, instead of, like, you try to, you know, be nice and. And allow, you know, people to talk and have their opinions and all this not really contribute to it. It's like, well, I'm gonna say what I'm about to, and then we just kind of meet there. And it's. It has helped with, like, the types of relationships I have now. But, you know, for me, I still. I struggle with. I want, like, all mainly because of where I'm. What I. The chip that I had, you know, that kind of led me into, like, my own independent work in my drive of, like, trying to get successful, because it wasn't there. Like, the. The expectation wasn't there. And so I wanted to prove to everybody. It was like a proving thing, which I've outgrown. And. And I don't, you know, I don't need that. Like, but at the same time, like, I have this fierce independence, you know, and so it is. It's a struggle. I don't. I don't want somebody to wipe my ass.
Sal Destefano
I don't think anybody does.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, no, I don't think so either. But I think you're onto something, Justin. I hadn't thought about from that perspective, from the radical honesty perspective, because you're probably right. I mean, I guess you guys are better to even what your experience when we all first met or the first time we met. It's probably disarming when someone you like, you know this person's going to tell you the truth. You might not like it or not, but you're just like, well, at least I know. Yeah, it's honest and it's the truth. And. And starting a relationship off right out the gates with, like, radical honesty, like, that tends to probably disarm or open the other person up.
Justin Andrews
Some people aren't ready for it.
Adam Schafer
Right, right. Like, exactly. Most people probably are guarded. And then if. If I start a relationship where I can be like that earlier than the average person, maybe that opens up that possibility of relationship and connecting faster or more often. That's a. I think that's an interesting thought.
Sal Destefano
I think. I think too, it's like, with, like, real deep, close, consistent friendships, there's a lot of sacrifice in the sense that you sacrifice privacy, you sacrifice time. Yeah. You know, like, imagine people just coming over, like, they're not calling you, telling you they're just gonna open, hey, I'm here. What's going on? Yeah, like, I'm in the middle of something. You know, my kids and I are struggling. You don't want them in the house,
Justin Andrews
you know, or, yeah, your house is dirty. Whatever.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, there's a lot of sacrifice. There's like, anxiety. So especially if you're a kid, like, go make those kind of friends. Like, you can get rejected. You probably will. You probably will get rejected a bunch of times. And so it's easier to just not. It's easier just to have that surface. The extreme example that is, like, social media friends. People are so afraid to have, like, real friendships, but they'll talk through social media or post on social media, which Is really just a. Yeah.
Adam Schafer
When you. When you guys went to. When you both were in, like, elementary, middle, and high school, was it like the same group of people you grew up with, or did you guys move around a lot?
Sal Destefano
See, I had. I had close cousins, so I never felt the need to have those kinds of friends. So I grew up with cousins.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
One cousin in particular, my cousin SAP. We're so close that I never felt, like, attached to or like I needed to have. I mean, I had friends in high school, but it was not like my family. So I think if I didn't have that, I probably would have invested more in my school friends. But for me, it was like, if I didn't have friends, I couldn't care because I had my.
Adam Schafer
Yes, he's. That we're really different there.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Because I didn't have the closeness. I didn't have that. They were your family, and we moved a lot. So I was like, I just. As I started to meet new friends in a friend group, I had to start over again and do it again. And so I'm sure it exercised that muscle at an early age, subconsciously, you know, I'm saying, because at a survival new area, I have no family. I have no. I'm no friends yet. So I have to make friends.
Sal Destefano
It takes work.
Adam Schafer
Oh, and it is.
Sal Destefano
It is. You got to actually go out to try to make friends. My friend Chuck was telling me this, like, and guys are terrible, especially when you get older. He's like, hey. He goes, if you want to make friends, you got to go, like, make friends. It's not going to happen by accident. He's like, you actually have to make it a goal.
Justin Andrews
Put an effort there.
Sal Destefano
I'm going to go. He actually tells a story. When he went to college, he's like, there was this one guy, and he explains him as, like, this guy. He's like, I really want to get to know this guy. I think I could learn a lot from him. He seems so. He's like, I pursued him. I literally pursued him as a friend. It sounds funny. It sounds like somebody you pursue is like, you're going to date. But he's like, no, you got to actually, like, pursue friendships. It takes a lot of work. Yeah. And then, you know, you get older, you have kids, a wife, a job. If you just wait. No, nothing. No, it's gonna happen. You gotta actually go out and kind of make it, you know, Kind of make it happen. Yeah. You know, so it's true. Yeah. So. And that. That's very Strong contributed to happiness. Loneliness is exploding. If you look at the data on loneliness, it's crazy how lonely people are getting. You know we're more connected.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. You know I saw something interesting I thought I wanted to bring up to you guys here what your thoughts, what's your thoughts on it? So Walmart just came out and said they're going to discontinue self checkout lines.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Because revamping 650 you think it's, you think it's theft?
Sal Destefano
Dude, they had so much theft bro.
Adam Schafer
Is it really high?
Sal Destefano
Yes, they had a lot of theft.
Adam Schafer
Oh, I didn't know that.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, yeah, people were just going crazy with it and the, you got to
Adam Schafer
think if that's happening at that rate and that high at Walmart it's probably happening happening at a lot of of these self checkout prices and everything depends on the store. Yeah, interesting.
Sal Destefano
Walmart attracts certain types of customer and so their theft was high.
Adam Schafer
You know that's a really interesting.
Sal Destefano
Target doesn't probably have that kind, that kind of problem.
Adam Schafer
That'd be such an interesting thing to look at.
Doug
Whole Foods maybe Target, not sure.
Sal Destefano
But Walmart's Walmart dude. Like Walmart.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, it's high.
Sal Destefano
Walmart.
Adam Schafer
Walmart is different than Target. I mean there's a reason why Target's nickname is Target.
Sal Destefano
Yeah,
Adam Schafer
it's a fancy, fancy Walmart Doug. It's true, that's true. Don't you know that?
Justin Andrews
Well yeah, Walmart is like the place like some, I've been some places here in the US where it's like the only store you know that provides anything
Adam Schafer
Now I went in there the other day and I did notice and it was, it was interesting because it was right around the time I read this, this article and I, I did notice that the way their self checkout line first of all they have a bunch of them and it's in this like kind of pit area and there was like I want to say like 10, 12 of those and Target the way they have their structured is there's only I want to say six and then there's a person stationed facing the four things and that's not how Walmart is structured. It's not set up that way.
Sal Destefano
And so Walmart's incentive is all this is always an incentive but Walmart has a huge incentive to be the lowest price. This is what makes Walmart Walmart. They are brilliant at cutting cost like with efficiency, with product accuracy. Knowing how much they need to order like Walmart literally is whether you like them or not. They're genius at figuring out how to make products as inexpensive as possible. So when it comes to like self checkout, that was another way to make things way less expensive. So they probably like as little people as possible. But the theft, you can look it up, Doug. Look at Walmart. Yeah. Walmart's theft was self checkout.
Adam Schafer
Well, it makes sense. But what I find fascinating about that, why I wanted to bring that up, is because I was will other stores follow suit. And so based off of what your theory is right now, this might just be a Walmart problem and not like a, like a self checkout problem. Which is interesting. Like that's really interesting that it's only there. Are you looking it up, Doug?
Justin Andrews
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
So shrink high.
Doug
Shrink.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Doug
It's up to 16 times higher than cashier staff lanes.
Sal Destefano
Yep. Increased theft, including skip scanning and fraudulent activity has prompted the retailer to bring back cashier monitor lanes, implement AI powered cameras and increase receptor receipt audits.
Adam Schafer
Now I'd love to see how that compares to say at Target. Like how is that compared to other.
Sal Destefano
So put Walmart versus Target. Shrink theft.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Justin Andrews
Shrink cash back glitches.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Justin Andrews
Like what?
Sal Destefano
They just.
Justin Andrews
How does that work, bro?
Sal Destefano
There's social media clips where people explain how you could take get your stuff for free at Walmart.
Justin Andrews
Oh, really?
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
Dude, you know what? Skip checking it or skip checking is.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, that's what, you know, I scan
Sal Destefano
one thing, pretend to scan another thing, put it back. Yeah. Yep.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. Wow.
Doug
So Target as well, estimating 1.2 billion dollar profit hit between 2022.
Adam Schafer
Okay, so that's got to be high. That's got to be Sue. That's super high too.
Sal Destefano
So it is, but I don't think that they're. Okay, compare, go down. Compare their, their shrinkage. It's hard to compare because Walmart's bigger. So I don't know if the number is.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, well, yeah, you can't compare a dollar amount. But I mean as a percentage that's got to be high.
Sal Destefano
1.2 million.
Adam Schafer
That's nothing to sneeze at.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. Target heavily emphasizes the impact of organized retail. Crime is a major contributor to safety issues. While both blame theft, analysts suggest Target's inventory management issues may have exacerbated the issue. Yeah, so it's different, but I would guess that you're gonna get, depending on the location of the store, you'll get more theft.
Adam Schafer
I mean that's, that's not like a crazy theory at all. Yeah, obviously both Walmart or Target.
Sal Destefano
I remember my brother Better areas are
Adam Schafer
probably going to do.
Sal Destefano
I remember my brother telling me in San Francisco, remember they passed those laws? I was like, oh, you had to steal. I remember what it was like.
Adam Schafer
People were coming in with. With garbage bags and just.
Sal Destefano
He saw it. It was right in front of his face. Because they had a law in San Francisco.
Adam Schafer
It was like, if it was under a thousand dollars. Was it under a thousand dollars? They wouldn't. Yeah, they wouldn't prosecute you.
Justin Andrews
Five hundred. Yeah.
Adam Schafer
A thousand. It was a thousand. Under a thousand.
Sal Destefano
It was some number. Right. Like if it was under this number, then you're. Then you're okay.
Adam Schafer
They were literally clearing the shelf off worth $900 worth of product and then turning around the corner and then selling it on the street.
Sal Destefano
He saw it with his own eyes. He goes, dude, a guy, you guys walked in with garbage bags, filled them up, walked out, went around the corner, laid it out on the street and started selling it. Dude.
Justin Andrews
There's literally no policy here that's worked.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
If you think about it, that's wild, right?
Sal Destefano
Yeah, that's super crazy. There is no legal dollar amount that allow.
Doug
Okay, this may be new.
Sal Destefano
I think they changed.
Doug
Oh, so, yeah, so before it was like 950.
Sal Destefano
950 or less is misdemeanor. Which meant that people. And what literally happened is they would put you. They, they'd bring you to the. The cops would take you in and you go right back out.
Adam Schafer
Right. And on top of that, what they were, what the people that worked for the stores would be told is like, it's a misdemeanor. It's not worth stopping.
Justin Andrews
They charge everything $950 until they bring it up to the cashier.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, that's a. That was a brilliant strategy. Some stores did y ticket said like
Justin Andrews
a th then they'd mark. They give you a Markoff and then so that way you get arrested.
Sal Destefano
I know. Isn't that funny? Oh, wow. It's so funny. Hell yeah. I got to say this. So. So I don't know if you guys know this. So Vita Bella, our partners@mphormones.com is giving people. This is so smart. 10 minute consultations free.
Adam Schafer
So people, that's great because of all the questions around Peptides.
Sal Destefano
You have questions on peptides, hormones, all the peptides. What does it do? Which one will help me? Whatever you can get on the phone with an expert and it's free and they'll help you and they'll answer any of your questions. You don't have to do anything. You have to sign up with them. You don't have to do anything.
Adam Schafer
They can handle that volume.
Sal Destefano
Wow.
Justin Andrews
People got a lot of questions.
Sal Destefano
That's what they're recommending. So. And Doug, is there a specific link for that or do they just go to mphormones.com?
Doug
yeah, let me pull that up. I believe it's mphormones.com and then I
Adam Schafer
thought I saw too, that the people that do this also have, like a chance to win free. A free membership.
Justin Andrews
And three. Three people. I think.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. Three people will get a free membership and ten will get labs paid for.
Adam Schafer
So I'm assuming this is just for the. This month.
Sal Destefano
I believe so.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. That makes sense. This can't be something they can do on going. That. That's a. That's.
Sal Destefano
That's a lot of.
Justin Andrews
Yeah, yeah, we're gonna get a lot of calls.
Sal Destefano
It's good though, because people have a lot of. Dude, peptides are exploding.
Justin Andrews
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
They're mainstream.
Justin Andrews
Well, there's so many questions.
Sal Destefano
Mainstream. Yeah. And they're going all over the place and everybody's interested. And it's like, you know, get your information from experts. Don't get it from social media. Because I've seen some stuff on social media.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. And also consider, you know, even though I know so long as they're coming from the right place, they're really safe. But getting your blood work and your labs done and seeing what. What will really benefit you, I think is so important. I know that. I know they don't require that. And so I know that that that's a reason why. So a lot of people are bypassing that. But it's like, if you're gonna go take the step to do that and inject something, you probably should do that.
Sal Destefano
We did our blood work with. With our partners and they sent the person here to do it.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
So it was easier for us just. Just telling our audience. It's so. Dude, how many times do they miss your vein?
Adam Schafer
Oh, bro, the crazy part is obvious.
Justin Andrews
Veins too. I don't get it.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, dude, you're veiny.
Adam Schafer
I. I do not like doing that, man. This is my.
Sal Destefano
I know. That's why it's funny. Because you hate it anyway.
Adam Schafer
I know. And it's like you have to look away. I do. Yeah. Especially if they're like that. Like if they're missing and fumbling around with it and I can feel the veins, they just like ro.
Caller Jake
Yes.
Adam Schafer
That's what they say. So. So somebody who obviously missed a bunch of times explained to me why? Supposedly? Because it's. It's hit and miss. Some nurses, they see my veins and they get all excited like, oh, this is easy. Yeah, dodge veins, bro. And then others will say things like, oh, yeah, there's. There's perks to someone who's very vascular. And then there's also drawbacks. And the drawback is those big veins can roll on you really easy. I guess so. But, I mean, I've had such a. We've done this so many times for so long now that I've had so many different experiences. I've had some. Some people that I've gone in and done blood work, and it's like. But I look away and I. I.
Sal Destefano
You start feeling them?
Adam Schafer
Well, no. Or I'll come back and it's already done. And I'm like, whoa, that was crazy impressive. And then I had other ones where I'm just like, I'm sweating because I can feel them, feel them searching. I can feel it missing. We haven't even started the first little.
Sal Destefano
Oh, I hate that.
Justin Andrews
That's why after you, it was like, my turn. I'll come back to you.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Justin Andrews
Like,
Sal Destefano
you was brilliant at, like, getting blood pediatric. Yes.
Justin Andrews
Courtney was like, because they had to
Sal Destefano
be little children, you have to do an infant.
Justin Andrews
She just had to do it on their head. Oh, like, oh, my goodness. So she actually got recruited a lot, like, in the hospital to go all different floors when they couldn't get, like, somebody and she would get it first.
Adam Schafer
I feel like that's like. Okay, there's all these professions for, like. Yeah, that. There's an art form to that, and you should get paid.
Sal Destefano
Okay.
Adam Schafer
I'm gonna advocate. I'm advocating for nurses that are good at this.
Sal Destefano
Yes, you should get.
Adam Schafer
Exactly. I would totally tip that. I would.
Sal Destefano
I didn't even feel that.
Adam Schafer
I hate doing that.
Justin Andrews
We tip baristas, and we don't tip.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, I would tip my nurse.
Sal Destefano
There should be a rating. Like, how many stars? One.
Justin Andrews
Yeah, you have to bruise than a foamy heart.
Adam Schafer
I can't be alone in this either. There's. There's got to be. What percentage of people don'. Like getting their blood taken?
Doug
I would say, like, 100.
Adam Schafer
No, really?
Sal Destefano
You think people pass out? That's so. Okay.
Adam Schafer
Okay. So you get dizzy. Well, sometimes there's.
Justin Andrews
There's got to be some psychos that, like, look forward to it.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. There's got to be some weird people, so. But I mean, if it's more than 50 of the people don't, like getting their blood Taken. I. I imagine they appreciate when they get somebody who is really good. We should be allowed to tip them.
Sal Destefano
You should take ex heroin addicts like that are sober and make them nurses. They'd be brilliant at the. This
Adam Schafer
78 of people experience some sort of anxiety.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
That's great. Eight out of ten people.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Justin Andrews
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
And we're not tipping these people.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, I know.
Justin Andrews
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Doug
You can start.
Adam Schafer
What would. What would happen if a nurse just also get an app or something? They should. If I walked into a place and there was one of those little Venmo QR codes that if I do a good job, tip me. I 100 if you. If you did. I would do that on the way out. 100 I would.
Sal Destefano
100 so if you're a nurse and
Adam Schafer
you do that you should start doing. I wonder if they get in trouble for that. What if they got in trouble for that? Would you get in trouble for that? You think?
Doug
I don't know.
Sal Destefano
Sucking.
Justin Andrews
I don't think.
Adam Schafer
No, no, no. For getting tips for starting. For starting a tip jar.
Sal Destefano
Of course. Dude. You imagine you walk into the doctor's office. There's a tip jar.
Adam Schafer
There should be. There's. If 80% of the people have anxiety doing the thing. I know that that means you have to appreciate when you get somebody who is really good at it. And there is it and let me tell you, there is a huge difference between really good and terrible. I mean the, the feeling that you get if you're somebody in that 8 out 80, they get anxiety. And you get a person who is top tier versus somebody five star like
Justin Andrews
rating system for the nurse that got it like every single time. Like I'm using that. Yes.
Adam Schafer
I pay extra for that person.
Sal Destefano
I have a family. I have a family member. Big dude. He like he. He will not, he will not do it. It's only if it's a death like an emergency. And even then he'll like.
Justin Andrews
It's always the biggest guys.
Adam Schafer
I'm a. I'm a baby about it for sure. I'm a total baby. I do not like doing it and I have to like psych myself up. I get distracted. Like look over here. And like I do all these things but I've had bad experiences. The one right before her, I missed three times and left a bruise the size of a softball on my, on my arm like that. And it hurt for like a week. Dude.
Justin Andrews
I, I told you. My big friend, you know C6 8 this huge guy, he had to get an MRI and he had to go to the zoo.
Adam Schafer
No, he did it. You never said that I did it. No, I.
Justin Andrews
Of course, me. You know, I was concerned because, like, he had, you know, passed. He had, like, a stroke, and it was, like, a serious, like, issue, and he was very scared about it. I'm trying to, like, you know, be consoling, empathetic and all this. And then he kind of told me that. I'm like, like, so did you have to wait after, like, the baboons,
Adam Schafer
dude, that's crazy.
Justin Andrews
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they couldn't, like, fit them, you know, in the regular one.
Adam Schafer
I mean, that makes sense. Those things are pretty.
Sal Destefano
You remember?
Adam Schafer
Yeah. We just did ours. They're pretty narrow.
Sal Destefano
I hit both ends of my shoulders, and I was. Yeah, I'm not huge.
Justin Andrews
You're almost zoo level, dude.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, you're wider than I am, bro.
Adam Schafer
A couple more peptides, I'm gonna use that with you for sure. Hey, bro, you're.
Sal Destefano
You're.
Adam Schafer
You're one peptide away from zoo mri, bro. It's gonna be a new thing. We're gonna see.
Sal Destefano
I would not be offended if they're
Adam Schafer
like, listen, I know exactly. That's what I told him.
Sal Destefano
Like, dude, I should be zoo to get this MRI don't fit in the machine. You would be the guy. You would be the guy to tell everybody what happened. Can you. Can you say it on camera so I can show how enormous I am?
Adam Schafer
Yeah, that's hilarious.
Sal Destefano
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Doug
Our next caller is Christian from California.
Sal Destefano
Hey, what's up, man?
Adam Schafer
How you doing, Christian?
Justin Andrews
What's happening?
Sal Destefano
See you again, dude.
Caller Christian
Yes. It's good to see you guys again.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. How you doing? What's going on?
Caller Christian
I'm doing all right, I think. Last time we chatted, I had our second baby girl on the way.
Sal Destefano
You Did.
Caller Christian
And now I have a baby boy on the way.
Sal Destefano
What? How many kids you got now, dude?
Caller Christian
This will be number three for me.
Sal Destefano
God bless you, bro. Good for you, man. Look at you all peaceful and stuff. You got tired.
Caller Christian
For now I'm being relaxed now because I know it's going to be crazy later.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, dude. So what's going on? How can we help you?
Caller Christian
Yeah, a couple questions for you. I've been running. The last couple times I ran anabolic anesthetic, actually performance. Also. I cut the foundational workouts in half and split them over two days because it just kind of worked better for my lifestyle. I was in the gym most days of the week and it kept me more active. I found that the days that I don't go to the gym, I'm just. I get so many less steps and just generally less active. And so my question for that, or actually, now I think about it, two questions. One, I hope the answer is no. Am I ruining the programming by splitting it into two days?
Adam Schafer
No.
Sal Destefano
No.
Justin Andrews
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Not at all.
Caller Jake
Okay, great.
Justin Andrews
It's a valid.
Caller Christian
And then two, should I still do, like the trigger sessions, mobility sessions, focus sessions, if I'm already in the gym like six days a week?
Sal Destefano
Nah, I mean, mobility is more important than the trigger. With that, it's important to work on mobility. The thing is, if you're following performance, the program itself is pretty good for mobility. But if you're not following, if it's anabolic, if it's aesthetic, you're definitely going to want to inject some mobility because those are so like bodybuilding or, you know, sagittal plane focus. Yeah. So I would say yes with mobility, but trigger, not so much. I mean, you're in the gym so much or so frequently, then it would be like another session. Plus, you're having a kid. Like, that's a lot, dude, that you're. You're having another kid and you've got young ones already. So you also might want to consider, you know, adjusting it for something like that.
Caller Christian
Yeah, for sure. So if I. So if I add mobility sessions, I usually lift in the morning. Should I do the mobility sessions in the afternoon, at night, or during tacking work?
Adam Schafer
Tack them onto the workout. Yeah, you can do it before or after the workout.
Justin Andrews
Never.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sal Destefano
Or at night. I mean, anytime you have time. Yeah.
Caller Christian
Cool. So it doesn't matter too much.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
Nope.
Adam Schafer
Yep. I mean, you're splitting the workouts. I'd probably tack them onto my workout and just be at the gym for an hour. Right.
Sal Destefano
That's what I would probably do.
Adam Schafer
Unless it's more convenient to split it up.
Sal Destefano
Here's the thing, too with mobility is, you know, I don't know what your routine looks like, but I would just focus on the areas you need to focus on. You could also just do that.
Caller Christian
Sure, sure.
Adam Schafer
Cool.
Caller Christian
That's helpful. My second question, I want to give a little context to it because I think it'll help I get good sleep. Ever since I started listening to you guys, I've really prioritized it. And last year, I listened to you guys all the time. So my wife hears your guys voices all the time. And whenever you started talking about the eight sleep, I would pause it and I would wait until my wife was in the room or in the car with me. So I'm now a proud owner of innate sleep.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Caller Christian
So generally I get good sleep, but on the. On the off nights that I don't, one of my kids wakes up or whatever, I'm sick. I know I need to adjust the volume of my training the next day if I'm lacking sleep. Do you guys have any general.
Adam Schafer
Cut the weights in half? Just cut the weights in half?
Sal Destefano
Yeah. So two things. If you're sick, you're better off not working out. So working out in the acute stage reduces the effectiveness, I guess, for lack of a better term, of your immune system. So exercise generally strengthens your immune system, but in the acute stage, like while you're working out, right after you're working out, maybe a day after, your immune system is depressed. So if you're sick, working out, it's a great way to potentially cause a secondary infection or make you feel worse. Now, if you're tired, there's a few variables that you can adjust. The most important one to adjust is the one that Adam is kind of implying, which is intensity. Yeah. So more important than cutting the. The volume is making the workout easy.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
I mean, I did this yesterday. I had really bad sleep the night before I woke up. I couldn't sleep in for whatever reason. It's one of those nights where you just wake up early and then for whatever reason, can't go back to sleep. So I went to the gym and I just worked out really easy. And that's the most important thing. The second thing would be volume. The third thing would be skipping the gym. So depending on how bad the sleep was, you might want to skip the gym altogether. But if it's just like, instead of getting eight hours, I got six hours and I'm kind of groggy. Then you just go to the gym, and you just go, wheezy.
Caller Christian
Gotcha. So it would be.
Adam Schafer
So we would keep the same exercises. Just really reduce the weight. You know what you do when you squat, when you bench, when you overhead press, when you do those movements, reduce it by at least 25 to 50.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
And just go. Go. I mean, what I do in those days is those are, like, my machine pump days.
Sal Destefano
Exactly.
Adam Schafer
Those are the days I like to go over to the machines, and I'm just like, I know what muscle groups I'm supposed to hit. Today. I'm gonna go over and, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna leg press today. I'm gonna shoulder machine press today. I'm gonna, like. I'm gonna. I'm gonna use the machines.
Sal Destefano
That's exactly what I did.
Adam Schafer
And I'm gonna get a little bit of a pump and in. In all those muscle groups and call it. And you're.
Sal Destefano
You're.
Adam Schafer
You are not gonna go backwards that way.
Sal Destefano
No, no, no. I'm. I'm just going easy, dude. I'm just feeling it going easy and just moving through.
Caller Christian
Gotcha. So keep the sets and reps the same. Just cut the weight.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, just cut the weight.
Sal Destefano
Cut the intensity.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, the intensity.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. Because you could also cut the weight and still go hard. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. So it's about the intensity. Go easy.
Caller Christian
Gotcha. Cool. Sorry. Back to my first question. So I was looking at maps strong, and then there's maps 15 strong. Is there any. Would I lose or gain anything if I. If I got Map strong, The full one, and then cut those in half, or should I just get maps 15 strong?
Sal Destefano
That's a more difficult program to do what you're doing with anabolic anesthetic because the work sessions are programmed differently.
Adam Schafer
Okay. It's more straightforward with anabolic anesthetic. It gets a little more complicated. It's not like it's impossible. You just may be better off getting 15.
Justin Andrews
15 is.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Justin Andrews
Less of the work sessions and more of just. Yeah. The foundation.
Sal Destefano
In other words, cutting workouts in half doesn't mess up the programming of Maps Anabolic or Maps aesthetic. Cutting the workouts in half has a stronger effect on messing up the programming with Strong.
Caller Christian
Interesting.
Sal Destefano
So this is it. This is a programming thing. Yeah. But maps 15 strong is perfect. Yeah. For what you're looking for.
Caller Christian
Sounds great. That's what I'll look into then.
Adam Schafer
All right. Christian, you got.
Sal Destefano
Hey. Hey. Congratulations.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. Yeah, dude.
Sal Destefano
Good for you, man.
Caller Christian
We're excited.
Adam Schafer
Playoffs tonight, bro.
Caller Christian
I Know. Are they gonna do it?
Adam Schafer
I don't know, dude. I don't know.
Sal Destefano
I don't know. Cincinnati Bumblebees.
Adam Schafer
All right, Christian, always good catching up with you, brother. Take it easy, man. Take it easy, dude. Yeah.
Sal Destefano
Sports, you know. Hey, you know what's. I love that he asked about strong because someone listening may have gotten the impression that they could cut workouts in half for all the programs. Yeah. No, but it will mess up programming.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, yeah.
Sal Destefano
Depending on what program.
Adam Schafer
Some of them live well to do that.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. And strong is not one of the.
Adam Schafer
Anabolic is perfect.
Sal Destefano
Anabolic's fine.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
Cut them in half, Go for it. But strong, not so good. But then you have maps, 15 store.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. Even aesthetic is a little more complicated because we have focus sessions.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. You have to cut them out.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, yeah. So. Exactly. So that changes a little bit there. Where Anabolic is very straightforward. Cut the workouts in half. Now you go six days a week.
Sal Destefano
Fine.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, totally fine.
Doug
Our next caller is Jessica from Alberta.
Sal Destefano
Jessica, what's happening? Hello.
Caller Jessica
Hello. Nice to meet you guys.
Sal Destefano
Same. How can we help you?
Caller Jessica
Let me read my question. Okay. Okay. About two years ago, I was at my heaviest, about over 250 pounds. At that point, I focused more on being consistent with workouts and eating less overall, and in the first year, I lost about £40. Since then, though, progress has really stalled. Like last year, I only lost another five to ten pounds. And then this year, my weight stayed about the same. Despite feeling like I'm doing all of the same things, if not more the confusing parts, I'm really consistent and pretty strong. I strength train four times a week. I also mix in running and occasional spin and Pilates classes, and I'm averaging about 10 to 10 to 12,000 steps per day. My nutrition is pretty structured. On average, I sit around 21 to 2400 calories per day. It probably goes up to 2800 or so on social days, maybe once or twice a week. And my protein is probably around 130 to 150 grams. I do struggle more so in the past, but with periods of overeating and binging. And I do feel like my hunger and food noise have increased over time since I started this two, two and a bit years ago. My goal is fat loss while maintaining muscle. I still have, like, a pretty lofty goal of weight loss that I'm looking to achieve, but I feel stuck in this phase where I'm strong, I'm active, I'm consistent, but I'm not really seeing any meaningful change on the scale. So my question is, am I likely under eating and adapted, or is this more of like a consistency adherence issue with nutrition? And I was just hoping for some recommendations to break through the plateau without sacrificing muscle or performance.
Adam Schafer
It's both. But I have a question you, when you emailed in, it says 1800-2100 calories or 2000 calories. Has this changed because you said 20?
Caller Jessica
I think that was my first estimate. And then when I was accepted to do this call, I started just tracking a little bit more closely leading up to this. And I feel like that's what I just said is more accurate.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Okay.
Sal Destefano
This is easy. This is actually pretty. You're in a great place because the fix is easy. So here's. So here's what's going on. So you feel like you're consistent with what you're doing, but your metabolic rate is never consistent. Its goal is to adapt, and it's going to adapt to a deficit by reducing metabolic output. There's a lot of different ways it does this, but to put it simply, your metabolism slowed down to match your intake. And so then what this feels like on your end is, I'm doing all this work and nothing's happening. And it used to work, but now it's not what is going on. And it feels like you're like in a car and you're hitting the gas, but your wheels are spinning. Okay. So the fix is to get your metabolism to adapt in a way we want it to adapt. And that's going to come. Generally speaking, it's going to look like a reverse diet and probably a reduction in some of the cardio activity that you're doing. So maybe a cut down in some of the spin classes. And running the strength training is perfectly fine. Walking is perfectly fine. And let's reverse diet. You build a little bit of muscle, but speed up the metabolism and set us up for a more effective and more sustainable cut down the line.
Caller Jessica
Okay.
Sal Destefano
Otherwise, the other approach is to keep doing what you're doing and feel real frustrated. And then what's gonna happen is your appetite's gonna keep climbing, which you're probably already feeling right now. You're probably already feeling like your appetite's kind of starting to increase. And that's your body fighting kind of what you're doing right now. What it'll feel like if you do this right is the reverse diet. You're gonna eat more, get stronger, see some performance gains. Everything's working great. Not seeing any weight loss, but that's okay. Maybe a couple pounds weight gain. No big deal. Probably water. And then when you're ready, you go back on a cut, and then, boom, you start seeing fat loss again. And your metabolism is faster and you're in a place that you're. It's easier to maintain.
Caller Jessica
Okay, that makes sense. So how. What would your recommendation be for, like, how much I reverse diet and for how long?
Sal Destefano
So I can give you a general idea. Yeah, but ideally, you'd want a coach to work with you through this process, because a lot of it's going to be how you're responding and how you feel. Reverse dieting is way harder than it sounds, especially if you've lost weight already. It's a bit scary. And if you start to feel like I'm getting bigger or I'm holding a little water, it's like, oh, what's going on here? And so a coach will adjust on the fly, but generally speaking, what it typically looks like is 100 to 200 calorie bumps. And then we maintain there for a little while, and then we do it again, and then we maintain there for a little while, and then we do it again until we get to a point that we want to cut from. And for someone like you, it's probably going to be around 2600 calories eventually that then we can bring back down to 2100 calories and start seeing fat loss again.
Adam Schafer
Well, that's where she's at right now.
Sal Destefano
It's 24 to 26. She just. She just got there?
Adam Schafer
No, no, she's been there.
Sal Destefano
How long have you been.
Adam Schafer
She just started tracking to double say this. So she thought she was eating 1800-2000 calories a day.
Sal Destefano
How long have you been around 2500?
Caller Jessica
I'm. I would say I'm 21 to 2400. And I. I think I've been there consistently for a couple months.
Sal Destefano
Okay. Yeah, no, we would. Yeah, we would get you. We would get you a little higher then.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, I'd say we get you much higher.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, much higher.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, you go. You need. And. And also.
Sal Destefano
And we consistently get you at, like, 25, 26, 27.
Adam Schafer
How often. How often are we doing the spin and the runs per week?
Caller Jessica
Um, so in the winter, I mean, it. I've. I've just kind of switched things up now that it's nice out. I was trying to do about three runs a week.
Sal Destefano
Um, how long?
Caller Jessica
They're not. Not too, too long. And so I've cut back. And then in the winter, I was Doing less. I wasn't really running and I was doing. Yeah, maybe two or three spins a week.
Adam Schafer
So how long's the run for
Caller Jessica
it typically? From like 30 to 45 minutes.
Adam Schafer
Okay. So I'd immediately switch that to walks or hikes. So it's not. It's not running. You can keep doing that if you like it. I'd immediately switch to that. I'd bump calories by 200 calories right away. And then the strength training. Are you following one of our programs or you just. What do you had? What do you got? How'd you put it together? How'd you put it together?
Caller Jessica
Yeah, I had just finished Anabolic and then I had moved up to. I was trying to do four times a day just because I liked it being like a little bit shorter.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Caller Jessica
And now that I had just kind finish that, I'm looking to go back to because I was doing three times a week running. Go down to three times a day.
Sal Destefano
You mean a week? Yeah, yeah.
Caller Jessica
Oh, sorry. Yes, a week.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, yeah, I would, I would. Because we're not. Because there's nothing wrong with running, but we're trying to move your metabolism in a. In a. In a direction we want it to go. And I would cut the running like Adam said, because the goal right now is metabolic adaptation in the direction we want, which is building.
Adam Schafer
Building muscle, speeding your metabolism up.
Sal Destefano
That's right.
Adam Schafer
And that's not going to help the cause. I totally don't mind you still walking, which is great. So if you like the routine of
Sal Destefano
getting out there, treadmill or whatever.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, yeah, go ahead and walk. Do your thing. Especially if you like being outside and you appreciate that and it's nice weather. Like, I totally encourage that. I like Anabolic.
Sal Destefano
I like Muscle Mommy. Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Or Muscle Mommy. Either one of those routines would be a great routine while we reverse diet. But the real focus is just really paying attention to increased strength. Sounds like you've done a good job already. I think if. If that's true, then when we add 2,200plus calories and we reduce the running, you should see strength continue to go back up again too. And that would be a good indicator that we're moving the right direction.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. When you said you were averaging 21 to 24, if you were to add it all up, what would the average be around?
Caller Jessica
Do you mean daily?
Sal Destefano
Yeah, yeah. So if you took all your tracking, added it up, divided by the days, do you know where you would fall?
Caller Jessica
Yeah, I think it's. I think it's more around like Probably. Yeah, probably around like 23, 24.
Sal Destefano
So we would go up from there then? Yeah, yeah. And this is probably going to be a six month or process, maybe longer of reversing and then cutting. If you want to work with a coach, we can have someone call you and then they'll coach you through the process.
Caller Jessica
Sure, yeah, I'd be interested in that, I guess. I have one other question kind of related to the strength training. So I feel like I'm pretty injury prone. I've had multiple surgeries on one of my knees. And so when it comes to the lower body stuff, like squats and, you know, other lower body stuff, I get kind of nervous maxing out my weight. Like, I feel like it's. I don't think I'm necessarily lifting my heaviest when I'm doing a squat or a deadlift or something like that, but it's kind of. I feel like I'm maxing out my. My range of motion and how comfortable I am with. With pushing. So that's. That's like one. I feel like that's a limitation when I'm strength training, that I'm.
Adam Schafer
One of the things that you can do. I mean, obviously having someone there to help you, that'd be great, but, like, it's okay if you. So let's say you're in a part of Anabolic or Muscle Mommy that calls for five reps. Put a weight on the bar that you've haven't done before that would. Is going to challenge that. That might be a little scary. That is like, I don't know if I can do this. And it's okay if you stop at three?
Caller Jessica
Yeah, okay.
Adam Schafer
It's okay. Like, so if you. If you feel it as you're going through it, like, oh, I don't know if I'm gonna get five or. This is so, like, I'm always gonna encourage especially my female clients to. To kind of push that. If I'm afraid of the weight, I'm not sure. I feel uncomfortable. It's okay. We'll cut it off at 2 or 3. Like, get under there. Do what? Like. And there's lots of benefits to putting that kind of weight on there and doing two or three reps that you've never done before. Like, there's a lot of value to that. And so give yourself that. Okay. And permission that you. You don't have to get to five just because the program says get to five. That's the. That's a. That's guidelines for you. But really, I want you to try and challenge the weight. That's a weight you've never done before. Put it on there. And then if you get a little nervous when you get to rep 3, just cut it off. That's okay.
Sal Destefano
You can also, Jessica, there's other ways to progressively overload besides adding weight on the bar.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
So if you're doing a weight that, you know you can do 10 reps with and you're like, man, I should add weight. You could just slow the reps, pause at the bottom, pause halfway up or at the bottom. Just make it harder. Yeah. Is another way to do that. Yeah.
Caller Jessica
And you think this is better than, like, I don't know, subbing things out for, like, a leg press or a machine?
Adam Schafer
Oh, definitely.
Sal Destefano
I mean, yes, yes. But that's okay to do that, too. Occasionally, depending on how you feel and what the injury is like, you know, if you're like, really, like, ooh, my knee's a little iffy today. Because here's the thing, there's two things. Number one, you might feel like it's iffy because it is. Or here's the second part. This is actually more common, and this is not something to sneeze at. Your fear can actually increase risk of injury. And I've seen this. I've seen people have previous injuries, they go to exercise, their fear actually changes how they connect to the exercise and their technique, and this actually increases risk of injury. And so if you're in that state, you're like, look, I just feel safer switching to this one exercise that feels
Caller Jessica
safer for whatever reason, like my physiotherapist,
Sal Destefano
because it's actually true. It's because it's real. So you can. You. It's totally fine to do that as well.
Justin Andrews
I'll.
Adam Schafer
I'll add to this, too. And by the way, if you, if you end up doing the coaching, this is all stuff that your coach is going to want to see. Like a video of you doing a squat. Things like that. They're going to get to be. They're going to be able to break.
Sal Destefano
I.
Adam Schafer
If I saw you squatting, I might notice other things too, that I could give you mobility work to do, like 90 90s and ankle. You cutting or you running is not helping this either. Like that, like, almost everybody that runs that have, you know, quote unquote knee issues, I mean, it ends up tightening up the hips and it. And that pulls on the patella and that bothers them.
Sal Destefano
Running is more, more technical than squatting is. And running is typically done to fatigue. Yep. In a way that squatting isn't. And when you see people injure their knees who run and strength train, they'll hurt their knee when they're strength training. But it came from the running.
Adam Schafer
Yep.
Caller Jessica
Yeah. So I know you're right. I feel like because I have had all these knee traumas, the running was like a. A goal to. To try to do it pain free and, you know, like, give myself that check mark.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Caller Jessica
But I know that you're right.
Adam Schafer
I mean, I would love to see you continue on the day. The days that you were running. It's still. Let's go out and go get some good. A walk or hike outside. Right. Before you do it, I'd love for you to spend 10 minutes doing 90 combat stretch. So really do some hip and ankle mobility and then go for your walk. I would love to see that.
Sal Destefano
By the way, that's not a bad goal. Like, I love that goal. I love that you want to run pain free because that for you is a personal, like, victory. Yeah. But if that's really important to you, what you don't do is go out and run. What you do is you hire a running coach and have them work on your technique. That is the most effective, best way to. For you to ever be able to run without pain. It is very technical. We. We think of running like you just go out and run, but when you have a coach and they'll break your technique down and have you go slow and work like three, four months of working with a running coach like, does miracles on people.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. That combined with you doing your hip and ankle work. Because a lot of times you feel stress in the knee because there's instability and weakness in the ankles and the hips.
Caller Jessica
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
And if you have instability in your ankles and hips and you don't address it and you just go run, you absolutely.
Sal Destefano
You can't even have good technique.
Adam Schafer
You're going to feel. Exactly. You're going to feel knee pain. And so. So that's why I say, like, a great place to start would be keep doing the hikes, but before you go out, get down, do your 90 90s, do your combat stretch. Be consistent with that. I bet you will feel a difference right away from that. It'll improve your squatting and how you feel there. And then use what Sal said. If you feel nervous about the weight, just keep the lighter weight on there. But then pause the bottom and make those five reps really difficult by slowing the tempo down.
Sal Destefano
And I'm gonna have a coach call you and we're going to talk to you about six to nine months of a reverse diet cut. That's what I estimate you're probably gonna have to do.
Caller Jessica
Okay, and then should I give. Now that I'm done. Anabolic. Do you think I should give the muscle mommy a try?
Sal Destefano
Yes. So if you work with our coach
Caller Jessica
three or four days a week, it's.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, it's. Yes. If you work with our coach, they'll set you up with any program that they.
Adam Schafer
That they'll also modify it for you,
Sal Destefano
too, and they'll individualize it, which is even better.
Adam Schafer
Yes.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. So we'll have someone call you, but I'll let them know six to nine months is probably what you're looking at for what we just talked about.
Caller Jessica
Okay, that sounds good.
Sal Destefano
You got it.
Adam Schafer
All right, Jessica.
Caller Jessica
Awesome. Thanks, guys.
Sal Destefano
Thanks for calling in.
Caller Jessica
Thank you.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, she's actually in a. In a good place because the solution is simple and she sounds open, which is good. Like she's not afraid necessarily. But she reversed diets, Right? This is going to feel easy.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, she's just, she's.
Sal Destefano
Because she already lost 40 pounds. Yeah. But she's at that place where you plateau and then you're like, I'm doing all kinds of stuff and what is going on? It's like, well, your body adapted.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Justin Andrews
You gotta build.
Sal Destefano
That's it.
Doug
Our next caller is Regina from Maryland.
Sal Destefano
Hi, Regina.
Adam Schafer
How you doing?
Caller Regina
Hi, guys. How are you?
Sal Destefano
Good. How can we help you?
Caller Regina
Okay, So I am 39. I've been on tirzepatide for about 13 months now. I've lost 65 lb.
Caller Jessica
Ish.
Caller Regina
So losing about a pound a week, which I'm happy with. I have been doing Orange Theory Fitness for that year, so about three or four classes a week, one of which is always a strength class. I know Orange Theory comes with its issues, as I've learned from your show, but it is the first thing in a long time that's gotten me to the gym consistently. So I've tried to incorporate your advice. Lifting heavy, lifting slow, not worrying too much about how fast I can get through the routine. I also walk on an incline instead of running, and I just frankly, don't worry too much about that part because I am not trying to elevate my cortisol more than life already does does. It has been a winning combination for me, though, an expensive one. I'm paying for my medication out of out of pocket. So it's been a pricey year and I'm looking forward and I wanted to write in Because I am trying to plan for my off ramp. So both of the GLP and potentially otf. I don't want to be on the shot forever. I'm thinking about transitioning to one of your programs, but stopping OrangeTheory and stopping the GLP feels very risky and a little bit scary because they both work worked so well. For me. The combination of the two has been a game changer in that it's allowed me to prioritize protein, fiber, eating a calorie deficit while still building muscle. I'm really proud of myself because I've lost weight, but I've held on to my muscle for the most part. With my age and the glp, I just want to continue getting stronger. It makes me feel confident and I know it will continue powering my metabolism as I, you know, end up or perimenopause and all of that fun adventure. I know that so much of this is psychological, so I wanted to share what about this I think is working for me. What I love about Orange theory is that I can walk into the gym without pre planning. I have a pretty intense job that requires a lot of decision making. So it's helpful to not have to plan my workouts. There's also that added motivation of the no show fee that gets me definitely to my pre booked classes. So any advice on the transition would be greatly appreciated. I shared my body composition results. I'm mostly just nervous. It's been such an interesting year and I just want to keep going in the right direction.
Adam Schafer
So I'm having Doug pull up the body composition because I'm super curious to see. You said you kept most of your muscle.
Caller Regina
I mean, pretty much. I can pull up my numbers.
Adam Schafer
Doug, can you break it down to me? It's hard for me to tell.
Doug
So it says March 27th this year.
Sal Destefano
Right.
Doug
So you're 28 this year? Yeah, 28.8 body fat, skeletal muscle, 78.3 pounds.
Sal Destefano
Oh, so it went from 84 to 78 while losing. Yeah, like a lot of weight.
Doug
And then back last year, June 26th. 35%.
Adam Schafer
That's it. That's incredible. 84 pounds. That's a great job, Regina.
Sal Destefano
Great job.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. By the. By the way, and I mean it's obvious that you, you took the advice at Orange theory because that wouldn't have happened if you would have taken the class the way they, they, you know, pushed the red zone and, and everybody's moving through. So I can tell just by your results. And so that being said, you don't have to Quit otf.
Caller Jake
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
If you really, if you, I mean, if you, if, if you are applying what you've heard from us, talking about it, like, if you really are that, that client that, you know, ignores the, the fast paced circuit and, and takes your rest periods, pushes the weight of the, when you get to the treadmill section, you do incline walking instead of the sprinting all out. Like, it's not a bad, it's not bad at all. But most people fall into the competitive trap and they, they get into a circuit training where if it's, it's obvious to me that you've done a good job in that you've, you've held most of your muscle, which is really hard to do in a GLP1 and running a class like that. So where are your calories at?
Caller Regina
I, So I track really well for about 75% of the day and then by the end I kind of am winging it, but I'm usually around 2,000.
Adam Schafer
That's not.
Sal Destefano
So, Regina, I'm assuming you're using tirzepatite from a compound pharmacy.
Caller Regina
No, I'm getting it right from Eli Lilly.
Sal Destefano
Okay. Okay. So here's what would happen.
Adam Schafer
We have a cheaper way for you to get that, by the way.
Sal Destefano
Yes. But here's what would happen if you stopped the GLP and stopped otf, you, you would, you would gain everything right back. But I think you know that, right?
Caller Regina
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
And so your, your question. I love that you're coming to us with this question because you have the right idea.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
What's the off ramp look like? Because when you look at the data, the data shows that when people stop at glp, they gain the weight back. Now, there's a reason why this happens. Part of it is you lose this strong GLP signal that reduces our appetite, kind of changes our, you know, how food affects us in a hedonistic way, so we don't crave it as much, blah, blah, blah. But the other part of it is that through that process, people don't work on the behaviors that stick or the good behaviors that can stick after the glp. And they also don't focus on exercise in a way that's the most effective. Because what we want to do post GLP with you is we want to focus on building your metabolism. Now, Orange theory is, okay, traditional strength training is in another universe for that. Now, if you told me that you went to orangetheory because you love the community, if, like your friends are there, you want to connect with them, then I would push you to stay there. But if you're like, look, I just go, because it's set up for me, which is what you said, then I would say let's set you up so that you have a routine, but one that's more effective for what we're looking for. Then with the glp, here's what it looks like. And this is the protocol that we're getting from some of our friends who are experts at this is they scale people's doses down while working with a coach on behavior modification.
Caller Regina
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
Okay. So to give you an example, someone may be an overeater because when they're anxious or when they're sad, and it's a way to self medicate, for example, those are two common ones. Right. Then what we're going to do is we're going to try to replace what you might have done with food with other behaviors. Now, there's a silver lining here, and that is that the neural networks that were so strong before the GLP1 with how you use food, have actually weakened because you haven't used that like you did before. So we're actually in a really great place to develop new neural networks, new behaviors. So your success rate is actually really good if you coach your way through this and you scale down on the medication and don't just drop it off. Now, you can't do that with the Eli Lilly because it's preloaded, but you can with a compound pharmacy.
Adam Schafer
So.
Sal Destefano
Compound pharmacy, same medication. It's like ibuprofen and Advil. It's the same. Same thing with the compound pharmacy. You get a vial and then you can scale the dose down yourself. And then you work with the doctor and you're like, okay, I was on this dose. Let's go on this week on this dose. And then what they can do is you can be like, hey, listen, man, I went on the lower dose this week. And for the last two weeks, like, it's uncontrollable. I feel the appetite and I'm having a tough time. Like, all right, let's scale you up for again and let's, let's step down a little slower. And so you can kind of do this up, down, scale down, process with
Caller Regina
baby, step it down.
Sal Destefano
That's right.
Adam Schafer
Yes.
Sal Destefano
And if you're already paying out of pocket, you'll actually save money.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Sal Destefano
With a compound pharmacy. Anyway, it's going to be cheaper anyway. So what I would suggest to you, if you really want to make this stick, you want the best, best, best possible approach would be to work with a coach through this process and then be able to work with a. Get your GOP from a compound pharmacy and work with a doctor that scales it down. And then that process would probably look like, I don't know, three or six months of off ramping. And then you got the GLP in your back pocket. If four months later you're like, oh my God, this is good. And then you go back on and then kind of. And so we've. I've seen people do that. Well, they'll jump on two or three times and then finally get off and then they're all good. So there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah.
Caller Regina
Great for this. The other two things about Orange Theory that have kind of informed this thought process are that there's only so high. You can go with weights. Right. Like there's a limit to those dumbbells. And then with the. I don't want to say it's random because I know there's a structure, but with my schedule, you know, I might be hitting the two same. Two of the same body parts two days in a row and then three days later doing something else. And I. It feels a little inconsistent.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. No, it's not, it's not ideal. You honestly, you did, you did the best you could do with it. You did, you did a great job. You really did.
Justin Andrews
I'm really proud of what mainly what you did.
Adam Schafer
You applied to this because you did a hell of a job.
Sal Destefano
I'll give you the ideal. So the ideal would be you work with one of our coaches, have them individualize your workout program. Whatever results you're getting from Orange Theory, you're going to get way better results with individualized strength training. And they'll coach you through the nutrition behavior part. And then I'll send you a link to our people who work with a compound pharmacy and you can compare the prices and do the whole thing. You'll probably end up saving money.
Adam Schafer
Not probably. I know she will. I see. It's significantly cheaper.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. And, and then through that process, you tell them, hey, my goal with this is. I'm already taking it. My goal is to scale it down. And then they'll, they'll do that. They'll work through a scale down process and then they'll individualize it and you'll be in contact with them through this process. You could always message them. You'll have a dashboard. You'll be able to message them, hey, I think that dose was too low. Is it okay if I bump it up again? Type of deal. And they'll work with you, and then you'll work with your coach simultaneously. And I think this is probably. You're probably looking at a three or six month process.
Adam Schafer
Okay.
Caller Regina
And then one last question for you. So you see my weight there. I'm 5 foot 9, and I honestly never thought, like, this kind of success would be available to me. So I'm like, okay, now where does this go? Like, if I'm going into perimenopause at the healthiest weight, body fat percentage, I can be like, I'm not. Not super worried. I mean, I obviously want to look good, but, like, where is that body fat percentage you know, best for success?
Adam Schafer
Mid 20s.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, you're probably. Yeah, mid mid 20s is a nice target. You're not far from there.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, you're not. You're doing. You're doing great.
Sal Destefano
And on. Okay. So honestly, here's the other thing, too. So the way that usually we work with a GLP1 patient as they're scaling down is we time it with a reverse diet. It just works out better. Your appetite's going up anyway. Let's build some muscle. Let's boost your metabolism. We do a reverse diet. Then we set you up for a nice cut, and then that's when the 5% body fat drops off your body.
Caller Regina
Okay.
Sal Destefano
So that's the strategy.
Caller Christian
Cool.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Doing good.
Caller Jake
Awesome.
Adam Schafer
Doing really good.
Sal Destefano
So I'll send you the link. You can talk to the doctors there. And then I'm gonna have a coach call you and talk to the coach about this, and then it'll be great if we see you in there. I'll pop in.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, I'd love to hear back from you in about three to six months, too. It'd be cool to catch back up,
Sal Destefano
but you've done really well on your own.
Adam Schafer
Yes.
Sal Destefano
Like, really good job. Yep.
Caller Regina
Thank you, guys. Thank you. I really appreciate your time.
Sal Destefano
Thank you.
Caller Regina
Have a great rest of your day.
Sal Destefano
She's gonna crush.
Adam Schafer
I know.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, she's totally gonna replace her now she's 100.
Adam Schafer
I couldn't wait for Doug to pull up the. Because obviously we're listening to the OTF and the GLP 1 and 1. Oh, this is gonna be nice.
Justin Andrews
I know.
Adam Schafer
And I saw that she had posted her results, and I'm like, let's see. Because it'll tell the whole story.
Sal Destefano
She crushed.
Adam Schafer
Absolutely. I mean, that is. That is an example of how you can use that class.
Sal Destefano
In fact, her lean body mass was lower in the second measurement than it was the last. She Actually built muscle at the end.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Justin Andrews
The only way they have is she deliberately did her own rest periods.
Adam Schafer
Oh, yeah, I know that.
Sal Destefano
And she hit her protein targets.
Justin Andrews
Yeah, and proteins.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. She did a good job because usually what you see.
Sal Destefano
Because what is that? That's 30, I think almost 40 pounds of weight loss.
Adam Schafer
Half and half.
Sal Destefano
Usually you would see £40 and a good 15 of it.
Adam Schafer
Oh, yeah, at least. At least.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, it's almost half. Especially on a GLP1.
Sal Destefano
It's half.
Adam Schafer
Great time for her to transition, for sure.
Doug
Our next caller is Jake from Wisconsin.
Sal Destefano
What's up, Jake?
Adam Schafer
How you doing, Jake?
Justin Andrews
What's happening?
Adam Schafer
Hey.
Caller Jake
Hey, guys. Great to talk with you. Thanks for taking your time with me.
Sal Destefano
You got it, dude. How can we help you?
Caller Jake
Yeah, I just want to start off by, you know, saying thank you for all you guys do for us out here, you know, just living our lives in the world and whatnot. My wife has been a listener since 2018, and she got me on the train 2019, so a while.
Adam Schafer
Thanks.
Caller Jake
So in February, she started training with one of your trainers and kind of got my butt kicked a little bit. So I was like, hey, let's do a little challenge here, right? Let's see who can get in the best shape by the end of August. So our anniversary is beginning of September, so.
Adam Schafer
And she get. And she gets one of our coaches.
Caller Jake
It gets worse, bro.
Adam Schafer
You're fucked, Jake. You're so fucked. That's why I'm on here, right? Oh, okay. We'll help you out as much as we can right here.
Caller Jake
So we're just doing eye test, you know, whoever looks better.
Adam Schafer
Okay.
Caller Jake
So obviously she's going to win, like, all the stuff, you know.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. I'm like, what are you talking about?
Doug
For sure.
Sal Destefano
Tell her she won. Crazy.
Justin Andrews
You just got to concede that.
Adam Schafer
I'm not.
Caller Jake
I'm not stupid. We're all right.
Adam Schafer
He still wins.
Sal Destefano
He still wins. Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, smart guy.
Caller Jake
Yeah. She was also in, like, the top 1% of listeners on Spotify last year, so.
Caller Christian
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
Oh, okay.
Caller Jake
Um, yeah, so started off in February. I'm just about to finish up Anabolic for the first time. I've kind of been a yo, yo, worker, outer person for the last, you know, eight years or so. Started off, calories were 2600. I bumped up to 29 right now where I'm kind of stabil stabilized at 188 to 190 for my. My weight, eating 180 grams of protein a day. My lifts are going up Pretty good. I just got my, my 1 rep max incline up to 190. Squats about 270. I'm still a little bit away from my goal on where I want to be with that so especially the, the incline. I got like indents where I should have pecs. Right. So it's like I really want that chest to blow up. Other information, I'm 34, work a desk job. I work in IT. Got four kids under 10. Winter's over here so gonna start getting my activity up up. So looking forward to that. I currently have anabolic performance in Maps 15. So I guess what I, what the question is is what should I be doing for the next four months so I win quote unquote win.
Sal Destefano
Yeah.
Caller Jake
And just wondering what I should do for my nutrition. How much should I should go up to for my calories and all that stuff. So yeah, please help me beat my wife.
Sal Destefano
You got four months static goal.
Justin Andrews
Yeah. Okay.
Caller Jake
Yeah, four more months. Yeah. We started in February so it's kind of like a seven month time.
Adam Schafer
It sounds like we're trying to build though, right? That's it sounds like you're more interested in building than you are.
Sal Destefano
Here's what you do, dude. You take her favorite candy bow and you hide them throughout the house and you sabotage sprinkling her morning wife, dude. And you win.
Caller Jake
She's been baking all sorts of stuff, dude. I'm done for.
Sal Destefano
You know you gotta reverse diet followed by a cut and focus on getting stronger at the end. When you're cutting a phase 1 style anabolic program is good because you want low volume.
Adam Schafer
When you're cutting, do you need to cut? You look like you're pretty lean.
Caller Jake
I've always been skinny guys, so this is the most I've ever weighed is 190.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. He quite bulk all the way through.
Justin Andrews
I know he could.
Sal Destefano
Yeah, you might as well just build.
Adam Schafer
Just keep building. You'll probably look the best you ever looked. Yeah, just keep going. Yeah, it sounds like you're actually doing a good job. And it sounds more than anything else is just consistently keep doing that heavy lifting. Like keep, keep getting stronger, keep hitting your protein consistently. Don't, don't miss your workouts, revert and keep bumping the calories. If I was coaching you, I'd be trying to keep, push those calories. 200 calories every couple weeks. So we go up 200. I'd be hearing your feedback. How do you feel, how your workouts, how your lifts and then hey, let's go up another 200. I would just keep inching you up like 200 calories every other week or so and keep pushing, pushing that and pushing weight and strength and consistency. And I think you'll build right into this, this competition and hopefully we'll probably look and feel the best you've ever felt.
Caller Jake
Cool. Yeah. So that last month I would kind of do a cut then.
Adam Schafer
Or if you wanted to. If you wanted to. If you're already a pretty lean guy,
Sal Destefano
you know what your percentage body fat sits at yet?
Caller Jake
Yeah, about 19, 19 to 20.
Sal Destefano
Oh, yeah. No. Okay, so if we're at 19 to 20. Yeah. Then what I would do is reverse diet for about two, two and a half months the last eight weeks or so. Then you go into a cut. But when you go into the cut, don't dramatically increase your volume of training.
Adam Schafer
No, no, no.
Sal Destefano
Everybody does that. They go into cut and they start doing crazy cardio and stuff. You go into cut, you actually drop the volume a little bit. And the low rep phases tend to be better because the volume's lower.
Caller Jake
Okay.
Sal Destefano
So it'd probably be like an eight week reverse diet followed by like an eight week mild, kind of nice cut.
Adam Schafer
I'll give you some generic advice that should work pretty well knowing where your numbers are, what he just gave you. So do exactly what he said. If we do that right, your calorie should be upwards of 3, 500 calories by the time it comes time to cut. Okay.
Caller Jake
Okay.
Adam Schafer
So literally take your 3, 500 calories, drop it down to like 29 to 3,000 calories every week for those eight weeks, try and get 2,000 more steps per week, per day. So in other words, like, let's say you average 8,000 steps a day or 6,000 steps a day. So week one of that cut, get up to 8,000. Week two of the cut, get up to 10,000. Do that through just activity and walking until you have to get on a treadmill or you have to get on elliptical to get those steps up. Literally do that in that, that deficit for 600 calories you'll get. And don't change anything else. Just do that all the way. Drop a good.
Sal Destefano
You'll drop close to a percent body or something like that.
Adam Schafer
Yes, that'll be a perfect, like if you ramp up, goal should be to get up to 35,3600 calories. Just slowly inching your way up, getting stronger. Final eight weeks, getting ready for is, is the cut. The cut looks like drop about 600 calories. And every week at about 2,000 steps, that should lean you out nicely. Right into that and don't change anything else.
Caller Jake
All right, sounds good.
Adam Schafer
That's a pretty good map.
Caller Jake
One last question. So can you guys just encourage my wife? She's kind of one of these people who, like, worries about the weight. Right. So just encourage her. Stick with the plan.
Justin Andrews
Yeah.
Caller Jake
You know, just don't do it.
Adam Schafer
Do you know who her coach is? Because maybe we could peek in on one of her calls.
Caller Jake
Mary, she just shouted from the other
Sal Destefano
side of the wall.
Adam Schafer
Okay, okay, okay. No good.
Sal Destefano
She's working with a coach. She's doing great.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sal Destefano
We actually. I just like to just tell her we appreciate the support.
Adam Schafer
Yep.
Sal Destefano
Thank you so much for listening to the show for as long as she has.
Adam Schafer
Yeah. Even if it only. Even if it took Jake three years to finally get on board.
Caller Jake
Yeah. I can only listen to you guys so much.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Caller Jake
Right on.
Adam Schafer
Well, I. Yeah, I love. I'd love a pick of the two of you guys before you guys hit your vacation. It'd be cool.
Sal Destefano
That'd be awesome to see.
Adam Schafer
Kind of the before and after and everything like that.
Sal Destefano
We'll pick the winner.
Adam Schafer
Yeah.
Caller Jake
Yeah, yeah.
Sal Destefano
That's what I said.
Caller Jake
She said no on that, but I think I'm just gonna do it anyway.
Adam Schafer
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Justin Andrews
Love it.
Sal Destefano
Yeah. Love it, dude. You guys keep it up, dude.
Adam Schafer
All right, Jake.
Justin Andrews
All right, man.
Caller Jake
Thanks.
Sal Destefano
Take it easy. Yeah, that sounds like a trap. Right at the end of this.
Adam Schafer
Oh, yeah.
Sal Destefano
We'll just look at each other. Yeah. And say, who won?
Justin Andrews
Like, bro, like where you get your friends, judge or what?
Sal Destefano
Yeah. Dud. That's a trap, dude.
Justin Andrews
Yeah.
Adam Schafer
I mean, I. I think he knows what he's doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Justin Andrews
He's. Yeah.
Adam Schafer
I feel like he knows what he's doing. I think he's. I think he. I think he has every intention to lose.
Sal Destefano
Exactly.
Justin Andrews
I would, too.
Sal Destefano
I don't know. I get real competitive.
Justin Andrews
Yeah, let's do this.
Sal Destefano
I'm crushing. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Look, if you like Mind Pump, come find us on Instagram. Mind Pump Media.
Doug
Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatic, improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super bundle@mindpumpmedia.com 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@mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star our rating and review on itunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.
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Podcast: Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth
Episode: 2856 – BIGGEST HEALTH LIES! Stop Following This Advice, It's Been Wrong for 40 Years
Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, Doug Egge
Release Date: May 13, 2026
This episode of Mind Pump is a deep-dive critique of some of the most pernicious and persistent health and nutrition myths of the past 40 years. The hosts, leveraging decades of combined experience, break down five major health “lies” promoted by both government and industry. They dispel myths regarding dietary cholesterol, fat and carbs, sodium intake, sun exposure, and strength training. The episode features direct, practical advice, engaging personal anecdotes, and trademark Mind Pump wit. Several live callers present real-world fitness questions, providing opportunities for personalized coaching and further illustration of key themes.
(Segment begins: 03:20)
“It’s never too late to stop doing the wrong thing—and start doing the right thing, even if it’s not sexy advice.” – Mind Pump Team (Paraphrased attitude)
For more, follow @mindpumpmedia on Instagram or visit mindpumppodcast.com