2872: Why Going Off Your Diet Can Actually Help You Lose More Fat

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Mind Pump — Episode 2872

"Why Going Off Your Diet Can Actually Help You Lose More Fat"

Date: June 4, 2026
Hosts: Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, Justin Andrews, Doug Egge

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the Mind Pump crew tackles the science and practical use of diet breaks—planned increases in calorie intake during a fat loss journey. They break down how these breaks can boost results, preserve muscle, fight metabolic adaptation, and support mental resilience. Drawing from years of coaching experience and current research, Sal, Adam, and Justin explain why strategic pauses in dieting might be the key to more successful, sustainable fat loss.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is a Diet Break? (Starts ~01:45)

• Definition:
  • NOT permission to binge, but a carefully planned, temporary increase in calories.
  • Often used by physique athletes and recommended for anyone seeking sustainable fat loss.
• Structure:
  • Can last a day, a week, or more; may involve specific increases in macros.
  • Used strategically—not just “cheat days/weeks.”
• Justin: "A diet break is a planned, scheduled either meal or day or week or weeks where you intentionally get off the diet that you were on, increase your energy intake…with the idea to have a better result through this process." (03:01)

2. Misconceptions about Diet Breaks (03:35)

• "Cheat Meal" vs. "Diet Break":
  • Cheat meals are often uncontrolled indulgence; diet breaks are calculated and structured.
• Adam: "I like the term 'diet break' over 'cheat meal' or 'cheat day,' because I think that insinuates that you're going off the rails…when we would do strategic diet breaks with clients, it wasn't that. It was very strategic math. It was very methodical." (03:41)

3. The Science: Metabolic Adaptation (04:18)

• What is Metabolic Adaptation?
  • The body reduces calorie burn to match lower intake (slowing weight loss or causing plateaus).
• Diet Breaks & Adaptation:
  • Studies show that scheduled calorie increases reduce the slowing of metabolic rate.
• Justin: "Your metabolism adapted. Here’s what the studies show on diet breaks for metabolic adaptation: it seems to reduce this effect." (06:46)
• Popular Strategy in Studies:
  • Example: Four to six weeks at a deficit, followed by one week at maintenance calories.
• Justin: "Your metabolism doesn’t slow down as much…because your body gets more energy intake at planned periods of time. And this is a good thing." (07:35)

4. Improving Recovery & Performance (09:51)

• Deficit Drawbacks:
  • Lower energy, worse workout recovery, loss of workout motivation.
• Diet Break Benefits:
  • Better energy and gym performance; helps maintain strength; more effective fat loss.
• Adam: "If I could get a high calorie day for that client, it would not only sustain them for that day, but…the next day for their workout." (11:01)
• Justin: "When your energy is up, your recovery is better, you actually work out harder, and you actually burn more calories." (11:33)

5. Preserving Muscle Mass (12:33)

• Data shows:
  • Diet breaks help retain more muscle—even if they don’t accelerate total weight lost.
• Sal: "Losing muscle is metabolic suicide...Diet breaks don't necessarily cause more weight loss, but they cause less muscle loss." (12:53)
• Mechanism:
  • Body pares down muscle to be more energy-efficient; giving it more energy periodically tells it to hold onto muscle.
• Adam: "It gives the body an excuse to keep that muscle a little bit longer. Hey, we’re gonna be okay." (14:38)

6. The #1 Reason: Psychological Relief & Long-Term Consistency (14:50)

• Mental Fatigue in Dieting:
  • Hunger, irritability, temptation—diet breaks alleviate “grind fatigue.”
• Key Point:
  • Helps people stick to their diet longer, improving both short & long-term results.
• Justin: "The big challenge is consistency. Can we maintain this afterwards? Because that's where everybody fails." (14:56)
• Adam: "Lifts your spirit. Otherwise you're walking around cranky all the time." (16:03)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Metabolic Adaptation Clarity:
  • "Your body closes that deficit by slowing its metabolism down. That’s what metabolic adaptation is." — Justin (09:51)
• Muscle Preservation Explained:
  • "To actually burn muscle for energy really takes you to starve a long time...So what's really happening is your body's...reducing your muscle mass. It's expensive tissue." — Justin (13:53)
• On Human Psychology:
  • "People are very…tend to be very black and white when it comes to a diet…It's like, I'm either on the diet or I'm off the diet." — Justin (18:00)
• Benefits of Planning:
  • "This is where planning it is so important…part of the success of a diet is that it's planned and scheduled, and there's some structure. This also has to happen for the diet break." — Justin (18:23)
• Individualization:
  • "Every client I ever had would determine a different time frame…because…I can feel from my client that they're fatigued from doing this and they're frustrated. I'll pull them out. Even though I wanted to keep going for another week." — Adam (16:16–17:28)

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Practical Application & Coaching Insights

• Diet Break Timing is Individual:
  • There’s no universal schedule; frequency and duration should be tailored to the individual's physical and psychological response.
• Coaching Helps:
  • Coaches provide objectivity, help read signals (like lagging strength or energy), and structure both deficits and breaks for best results.
• Sal: "What a coach will do is take you through this process...looking at the cues…planned and scheduled." (22:32)
• Dangers of DIY & Unplanned Breaks:
  • Without planning, many overdo breaks—binging rather than increasing calories smartly.
• Adam: "The hardest part of this is if you, as the average person…tend to make the decision to make this diet break at maybe not the best or the right time." (19:29)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:45 — Introduction to Diet Breaks
• 03:01 — Defining Diet Breaks vs. Cheat Meals/Days
• 04:18 — Metabolic Adaptation Explained
• 06:46 — Research Supporting Diet Breaks
• 09:51 — Recovery, Energy, and Gym Performance
• 12:33 — Keeping Muscle vs. Losing Weight
• 14:50 — Psychological Benefit; Long-Term Sustainability
• 16:00–18:30 — Individualizing and Planning Diet Breaks
• 19:29 — Dangers of Unplanned Breaks; Importance of Coaching
• 22:32 — Role of Coaches in Diet Breaks

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Final Thoughts

Key Takeaways:

• Diet breaks are planned, strategic increases in calories that play a crucial role in beating metabolic slowdowns, retaining muscle, boosting energy, and helping you mentally stay the course.
• Success depends on individualization, planning, and in many cases, having a knowledgeable coach to guide the process.
• The biggest mistake is viewing diet breaks as “going off the rails”—structure and intention are key.

The episode provides actionable knowledge and motivational insights for anyone seeking lasting, healthy fat loss.

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Transcript

[Sal Destefano]

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

[Justin Andrews]

Mind Pump.

[Sal Destefano]

Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal Destefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews, you just found the

[Justin Andrews]

most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about diet breaks, the science, how they work, and why everybody should do these if they're on a fat loss plan. Also, we have coaches here that can organize this for you. They can put it all together, set you up with your macros, your calories, which includes reverse dieting, which includes diet breaks. It's 50% off right now. Go to mindpumpnutrition.com, use the code POD50POD50 for the discount. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Seed. This is literally the world's best probiotics. So the benefits of probiotics, as shown by data, of course, improve gut health, reduced inflammation, better skin health, more energy, less anxiety. There's even studies now that show enhanced fat loss because you have a healthier microbiome. If you want to take a probiotic because of all those proven Benefits, go with seed. Go to seed.commindpump Use the code 25. Mindpump, get 25% off. Also right now, every Maps workout program, every maps bundle, everything, 40% off. It's the summer sale. 40% off. Go to maps fitnessproducts.com use the code summer40 for the 40% off discount. All right, real quick.

[Adam Schafer]

If you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear [e-mail] I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to my pumpstore.com.

that's it.

Enjoy the rest of the show.

[Justin Andrews]

Diet breaks. This is a process by which you increase your calories or your food intake to take a short break and then get back to your normal diet. Are they beneficial? Do they help with fat loss? Do they help preserve muscle? Should you have diet breaks or should you just stay consistent on your diet? We're gonna break down the science and the reasons why. We think it's probably a good idea. Let's get to it.

[Adam Schafer]

This is a really good topic. We, I mean, we. I think we get this pretty frequent. We just had this recently on one of our questions in one of our quas about, you know, should is. Is three months on a diet too long, and obviously context matters, and it's a bit nuanced. And I think we will talk about all the nuance. But generally speaking, I think we all agree that we wouldn't keep most people on a straight three month diet.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. So just, just kind of break it

[Adam Schafer]

down a little bit.

[Justin Andrews]

So a diet break, just to explain it, is not when you go off your diet and then in the sense that I'm trying to eat in a particular way to lose weight. So that's what we're referring to with a diet. And I just go off and then do whatever and then come back to it. That's not what a diet break is. A diet break is a planned scheduled either meal or day or week or weeks where you intentionally get off the diet that you were on, increase your energy intake. So increase your calories and fats, carbs, proteins, whatever, in order to have a better result. Like the idea is to have a better result through this process. And this is a popular strategy with coaches, trainers, especially stage presentation athletes like bodybuilders and physique competitors and bikini competitors. They use this quite often. Sometimes referred to as cheat meals.

[Adam Schafer]

It's been a bit, I'm glad you went that way because it's been a bit bastardized into cheat weeks, cheat days, cheat meals, indulgence. And, and I don't. I think that what we're trying to communicate and articulate here looks different than that. And that's why I like the term diet break over cheat meal or cheat day, because I think that insinuates that you're going off the rails. We could have whatever you want. And when we would do, you know, strategic diet breaks with clients. It wasn't that. It wasn't, I told my client, like, oh, here's a diet break. Go eat whatever the hell you wanted. It was very strategic math. It was very methodical. Was like, okay, for these days, I want you to increase these calories or add this to your diet.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, no. And there's a few benefits to doing this. And by the way, these are backed by studies. There's actual studies on diet breaks versus continual dieting. And does it actually make a difference? Okay. Does it help with more fat loss? Does it help with any of the parameters that we try to measure with these studies? So we'll start one first with what's called metabolic adaptation. So metabolic adaptation is just your, for lack of a better term, it's very complex. It's a term that describes how your metabolism adapts to the new energy intake. Okay. So if my body is burning 3,000 calories a day through both exercise activity and just my resting metabolic rate, the amount of calories that I need and energy I need just to maintain myself. If it's 3,000 calories a day, and I intake 2,000 calories a day, so I'm not eating as many calories as my body is burning. Obviously the goal here is to lose body fat. So my body would find and make up the difference by burning body fat. But what ends up happening over time, and not a long period of time, by the way, is that my body learns how to survive off of 2,000 calories. This is called metabolic adaptation. This is a good thing, by the way. This is. We need this, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Humans wouldn't have survived if our metabolic rates didn't adapt. Now, it's quite complex how this happens, but one of the ways it does this is by paring muscle down. There's also just improving energy efficiency, maybe encouraging less movement. You know, they see this in studies as well. And so metabolic adaptation sucks. You know, you've experienced this. If you've ever been on a diet to lose a certain amount of weight, typically over 10 pounds, you'll see this. So you want to lose 20 pounds, 30 pounds or more. You've probably experienced this where you went on a diet, you increased your activity, you saw some initial weight loss, and then suddenly what you're doing stops working. Now it's like, okay, I want to lose £30, I've lost 15. I've got 15 more to go. I haven't changed my diet. I'm eating the same amount that I ate to lose the first 15 pounds. But now it stopped working. What happened? Your metabolism adapted. Here's what the studies show on diet breaks for metabolic adaptation. It seems to reduce this effect. So if I'm on a continual caloric deficit, I have more of a metabolic adaptation where it's going downwards than if I interrupted that period of time. Let's say it was two months or three months with the occasional week of increased calories. And we see this in the data that the metabolic rate stays higher because your body gets more energy intake at planned periods of time. And this is a good thing. This was, for me, not the number one reason why I did diet breaks. We'll get to my number one reason, but this was probably my number two reason. This was one of the top reasons why I did this with clients, is because it helped prevent those plateaus.

[Adam Schafer]

Now it. Aren't there studies to support too, that one of the most beneficial ways, too, is to actually undulate them throughout even the week, right, where it's like One day you might have a maintenance or surplus day. Another day you have a stronger deficit. Like, so we've seen studies on that also.

Right, but your weekly average is always on a deficit.

Right.

[Justin Andrews]

We've. There's not a ton of studies on that. More studies are done on, you know, people being on 16 weeks, and every few weeks they'll have like a week at maintenance. So let's say somebody's eating 1500 calories, which has them lose weight, and they do that for four, five, six weeks. Then they'll do a week of bringing up to what would be called maintenance, let's say 2,000 calories. That's typically what the studies look like. And in those studies, now, I agree with you, Adam, because that's how I did it with my clients. I did it where I would have more diet breaks or undulating calories throughout the week. But in the studies were they're doing it the way I just described, you have less metabolic adaptation. In other words, to put it plainly, your metabolism doesn't slow down as much. Yeah, that's a big thing because metabolic adaptation is a, a really difficult thing to contend with when you're trying to lose especially a substantial amount of weight because it really sucks. It sucks to be in a position to eat so low calories, move a lot and still have £20 to go. And then you're left with this, like, where do I go from here?

[Adam Schafer]

Do I double down from here? Do I get intensify the amount of calories I burn? Yeah, it's pretty tough place to be.

Well, anybody who's watched a full season of Biggest Loser has seen multiple examples

[Justin Andrews]

of this many times, all the studies afterwards.

[Adam Schafer]

Many times you would see some of these competitors show up to their weigh in and have lost no weight, sometimes even a little bit of fluctuation up, you know, yet they're in a very strict calorie deficit and exercise routine.

[Justin Andrews]

Tons of activity.

[Adam Schafer]

And so, you know, when we think about like, well, wait a second, I thought we just need to be in this calorie deficit deficit to lose weight. There's more to it than just that. And I think this is an example of that is like, where their body is adapting to all the stress that's happened that they're putting them through. It's like, you're training me so hard, you're only giving me 1500 calories. Maybe the first week or two, I saw great results from that. But sooner than later, the body starts to stall out and go like, okay, this is too much. I'm gonna hold on to everything I can, which is that metabolic adaptation happening. And if, again, if you've watched the show, you've seen this happen to people. Anybody who's trained enough clients long enough has also seen this firsthand. When you're training a client, you will

[Justin Andrews]

always lose weight in a deficit. But here's the problem. Your body closes that deficit by slowing its metabolism down, okay? So that's what metabolic adaptation is. And the studies support our experience as coaches, which is when you introduce diet breaks, you get less of that metabolic adaptation. Another reason why diet breaks are beneficial is because they contribute to better workout recovery and energy. Here's what sucks when you're in a calorie deficit. Your workouts, you're not as strong, you don't have as much energy, and you have less nutrients, okay? Both macro and micro, but mostly macronutrients, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins to recover from your workouts. So a workout that might be appropriate suddenly becomes one that over trains you. Because your calories are so low and it sucks, it doesn't feel good. So this was, for me, another reason why I like diet breaks is I would see my clients in a deficit four or five weeks in. Their energy isn't great. When we're working out, I'm like, all right, here's what we're gonna do for the next two weeks. I'm gonna bump your calories. And like clockwork, within days, their strength goes up, they feel better, workouts are fun again, and everything's moving in a better direction from that standpoint.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, I think this. This point and another one you have to come to come are the reasons that led us to doing the undulating the calories, even within the week, totally, is because we found that, like, if I could get a high calorie day for that client, like, it would not only sustain them for that day, but 10, even the next day for their workout. And it'd be the next two or three days that we went low. They might have it. So at least every week, we'd get a couple really good workouts, versus if I was in a deficit with a client for five weeks, we were just dragging ass. We felt weak, we felt tired, we felt unmotivated to come to the gym. We felt really tough to, like, power through that 100%.

[Justin Andrews]

And. And here's the other side of it is that when your energy is up, your recovery is better, you actually work out harder, and you actually burn more calories, and you're. And again, combined with the Less of the metabolic adaptation. This is a wonderful place to be in comparison to where you could be if you were just in this continual calorie deficit without a break. Third, you keep more muscle. So here's what the data shows, okay? Diet breaks don't necessarily cause more. More weight loss, but they cause less muscle loss. That's a great thing. Like, if you could lose more pure body fat and keep more muscle, that's a big win. Losing muscle is metabolic suicide. Like this. Are losing muscles a great way to get your metabolism to move in a direction that you're not going to want or like? So, okay, so this is like the big struggle. This is one of the big struggles. Right. One of the big challenges with going on a diet is, can I do this and lose just fat? Or probably more accurately, can I lose as little muscle as possible? Because it's very difficult not to lose muscle in a calorie deficit, but can I lose almost no muscle or as little muscle as possible? Now, in my experience, if you do this right, you lose no muscle. If you're a beginner or new, sometimes we build a little muscle, which is kind of interesting. We had a gentleman that we had on the show recently who was actually a listener who lost a ton of weight, lost very little muscle, because he was smart with this and his strength training. We had another gentleman who called in once who used the GLP to lose weight and lost very little muscle. And the data will show a GLP, which really kills your appetite, oftentimes 35 to 40% of the weight, lost his muscle. And I don't know if you guys remember that guy. I do, but he lost no muscle.

[Adam Schafer]

How could I forget? His before and after pictures were crazy.

[Justin Andrews]

Yes.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, he looked phenomenal.

[Justin Andrews]

So diet breaks in the data help quite a bit with muscle preservation.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, you have to. You have to explain that a little bit deeper, too. So what's going on when we are in a sustained deficit over time? Because the. The old theory or myth that we believed was, oh, your. Your body's eating muscle, it's burning muscle.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, for energy.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah, for energy. And it's like, that wasn't the case. What's happening is. What's happening is your body's actually paring it down because it needs to be more efficient, and that's a really expensive tissue.

[Justin Andrews]

That's right. So. So it's actually to actually burn muscle for energy really takes you to starve a long time. So what's really happening is your body's. This is through the first point which is metabolic adaptation. An effective way your body slows its own metabolic rate down is by reducing your muscle mass. It's expensive tissue. It burns a lot of calories at movement, requires more nutrients than body fat does. So, hey, let's pare this down so that we can become more efficient. We can become a more efficient calorie storing machine. And so you end up losing muscle. Diet breaks tell your body, hey, I know we were in a deficit for a little while, but here's some more calories.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And you pair that with greater workout recovery and better workouts, because now you feel better and you see better muscle.

[Adam Schafer]

It's almost like it gives the body an excuse to keep that muscle for a little bit longer. Hey, we're gonna be okay.

Like, it's necessary.

Yeah, yeah. Here's some, here's some extra calories. We're not gonna stay in this crazy deficit forever. Okay? I don't have to worry.

[Justin Andrews]

Totally. Now the fourth point, which is my, this is the number one reason why I used it. Because when you're looking at a long term diet for weight loss, definitely fat loss is the challenge. Like, okay, we're doing this to lose body fat, but the big challenge is consistency. Can we maintain this afterwards? Because that's where everybody fails. So losing weight's hard. Keeping it off is way harder. And you can see this in the data. So a certain percentage of people lose weight, almost everybody gains it back afterwards. So what's going on here? Well, what's going on is that people have a tough time staying consistent for a lot of different reasons. And one of the reasons why I like diet breaks is it helps with the mental fatigue of being in a deficit. Being in a deficit means necessarily you're hungrier. Like your body's gonna send you a hunger signal. Like, by the way, when people say, oh, have no, don't have any increase in hunger when you go on a diet, like, they're lying. Part of being in a deficit is going to be that your appetite's probably going to go up a little bit because your body's sensing it needs more calories. So it's trying to get you motivated to eat more. Diet breaks are great. Mental fatigue. I mean, if you've been on a calorie deficit for two weeks and then, you know, oh, I got a couple days coming up or I can bump my calories by 800. It feels good.

[Adam Schafer]

Lifts your spirit. Yeah. Because I mean, otherwise you're walking around cranky all the time. And it's frustrating too, because, like, it changes the way that you're motivated to get up and move and do things, especially your workout suffer for sure.

The hardest part about talking about this one, because I agree, too, this is probably the number one reason why I would do it, is how individualized this is. This is where coaching becomes so unique and special to the client, is because every client I ever had would determine a different time frame. Because I'm sure the listener right now is like, okay, cool. Diet break. Well, so at what week do you do that? Do you do that week? Three weeks in a diet, and then you do this, or do you do.

On their tolerance?

Yeah, when is it? And it really determines the. The client and what. How they feel. The what, the feedback that I'm getting, the results that we're seeing. I mean, most clients, when they're seeing a difference in the mirror or the scale or strength in the gym, they're very motivated to stay the course of what you're doing. But a lot of times we have weeks where we have this kind of stalled progress, where.

[Justin Andrews]

And then the mental fatigue really, like, why am I doing this?

[Adam Schafer]

Exactly. Then the mental fatigue will kick in. And even if, you know, because, like, there's times where, like, I want to stay in the deficit, and I know we just had a rough week, either not the best of sleep or the body kind of stalled a little bit. It's like, I'd like to push another week of staying in this deficit. But my. I can feel from my client that they're fatigued from doing this and they're frustrated. I'll. I'll pull them out. Even though I wanted to keep going for another week. And so. And the opposite is true. Also in a reverse diet, like, you know, I'm reverse dieting somebody right now. I want to keep going. Like, come on, let's keep pushing the calories. If I get this, oh, I feel stuffed and bloated, and I don't feel good all the time. It's like, ah, there's a part you

[Justin Andrews]

give them a diet breaking the other way.

[Adam Schafer]

That's right. And I really want to keep going because I'm like, we got to keep going. We're doing good. But I can hear in their voice, or the way they're responding to me, like, their fatigue from pushing the calories so much. I'll go, hey, okay, let's. This week, let's go back down to a maintenance or let's go to a minor cut, and then we'll go back the other direction.

[Justin Andrews]

Yes. And so. So here's the, the challenge with diet breaks, people are very. Tend to be very black and white when it comes to a diet. This is part of the problem with diets, but this is just part of human psychology. It's like, I'm either on the diet or I'm off the diet. And so when people attempt to do a diet break on their own, what it. What tends to happen is they just go off.

[Adam Schafer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So it's like, cool, I've been avoiding pizza, or I've been avoiding cookies, or I've been avoiding drinking wine. And next week I'm off. You know, next week's my diet break. And what it turns into is this crazy bulk of crazy calories. This is. Look, look, you know, this. You've probably experienced this where you know you're going to go off your diet, or you go off your diet and you don't have a slice of pizza, you end up eating a whole pizza or you have a sleeve of Oreos instead of a couple Oreo cookies. And so this is where planning it is so important. Just like the diet, you know, diets are better. This isn't everything, but part of the success of a diet is that it's planned and scheduled, and there's some structure. This also has to happen for the diet break. Otherwise it's on off versus a diet break is still on. I'm still on this plan. This is just a scheduled break. But what really it is is a schedule increase in calories. And I have it planned, and I'm not going off the rails. I know I'm eating 600 more calories or whatever, and it's planned out and I have it structured, and there's way more success in doing it this way.

[Adam Schafer]

Well, the, the other reason why I think the plan strategy is a much better strategy, too, is the average person doesn't do a really good job of reading the signals of whether they should or they shouldn't like their idea of, oh, I mean, I'm too hungry or I'm not hungry enough, or, oh, I look like I'm. I'm gaining weight or it's not looking right. Like, a lot of times people course correct when things are actually going really well. For example, I could have somebody in that Goldilocks zone, and it's perfect. And I see what I want to see as a coach. I'm like, oh, this is right where we want to be. And they're like, this is not working. And I'm like, oh, no, it's working. We're. I see strength gains happening right now. We're not seeing a lot of movement on the scale right now, but that's okay. We're actually in this really sweet spot where I don't have you in a major deficit, so we're still seeing strength gains in the gym, and yet you're losing. You're leaning out. And so that's the. The. The hardest part of this is if you, as the average person who's trying to figure this out on your own, is like, going through this and reading the mirror or the scale or what's happening, you tend to make the decision to make this diet break at maybe not the best or the right time. And so having it planned or organized is so important.

[Justin Andrews]

On the other side of that coin, Adam, oftentimes I would have to convince a client to go on a diet break because they're losing weight on the scale. They think they're moving in the right direction, and as far as they're concerned, they are. But I'm training them, and I see their energy and I see their movement, and I see what's going on, and I'm talking to them about their day in their life, and I'm like, this person needs. We need to bump their calories. And I'd have to convince them, listen, I know you're losing weight. I know you're really motivated right now, but you're £20 less on your squat. You're not as strong on your presses. I'm noticing we have to rest longer in between sets. You were just telling me about how your energy was really low this last week. This tells me we need to go. We need to increase your calories for a week or two. No, I don't want to. I'm losing weight on the scale. Like, listen, trust me, you're going to feel so much better. And sure enough, if I did a good job and convinced them we'd put a scheduled diet break where we increase their calories, they'd come back, feel much better, much more energy, go back to what we were doing before, much better results. But oftentimes I have to convince them to do it, because for them, if they see the scale moving down, they don't care. Or maybe they don't even notice necessarily. They feel like, well, no, that's.

[Adam Schafer]

That goes right back to my point of, like, this is where I think so many people are such bad judges. Like, they see the scales down 10, 15 pounds, and so they're like, oh, my God, we're going the right way. Forget that my strength is tanking right now my energy, I don't look good. It's like that number is going down. So I think this is going great. When you as a coach are going like, I think we need to course correct for a little bit. Let's increase calories. I've been in the same boat. We're trying to convince that person that we need to and tell them when they're like, no, we're heading the right direction, it's like, yeah, but we're heading too fast in that direction.

It's so important, though, because, yeah, you can get in that position where you're just. You have your blinders on. It's easy at a certain point where you've convinced yourself, okay, I'm going to go in this deficit and I'm all in. But in order to then, you know, step out of that and then come back, you know, that, that, that sort of ripping off and coming back in is really hard for people.

[Justin Andrews]

It is. And I mean, a lot. We have coaches that work here that do a phenomenal job. But one of the things that they do is they help coach people through this process of knowing when to go up, when to go down, when to switch things up. They hear and listen to the client, they look at the cues, they know what to look for, and then they have it. And it's planned and scheduled. And it doesn't look like I'm going way up, I'm going way down, you know, I'm falling, going way off the. Jumping off the wagon or whatever. And so what a coach will do is take you through this process of deficit increasing calories for a short period of time. Maybe a reverse diet, which is even more. This is actually putting you in a surplus to boost metabolic rate, build a little muscle so we can get back in the fat loss process. Look, if you want a coach to walk you through this, we offer coaching. And because of this episode, it's 50% off. Right now, you get 50% off a nutrition call with a coach where they can kind of schedule this out and map it out for you. So if you're interested, you want a coach to map the whole thing out for you, go to mindpumpnutrition.com, use the code POD50. That's POD50 for the 50% off. You can also find us on Instagram, it's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you then.

[Sal Destefano]

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