Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1725: Focus on These 6 Things to Crush Your 2022 Fitness & Health Goals

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover 6 foundational steps to reaching your fitness & health goals in 2022. The biggest mistakes people make going into their New Year’s fitness & health goals. (2:11) Focus on These 6 Things to Crush Your 2022 Fitness & Health Goals. (5:02) #1 – Mainly eat whole-natural foods. (7:03) #2 – Focus on hitting your protein intake. (13:40) #3 – Drink a half-gallon to a gallon of water a day. (18:17) #4 – Lift weights, for your whole body, 2-3 days a week. (23:05) #5 – Walk 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (26:52) #6 – Have a sleep routine. (33:38) Related Links/Products Mentioned January Promotion (#1): NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS SPECIAL BUNDLE OFFERS January Promotion (#2): MAPS Anabolic 50% off **Code “JANUARY50” at checkout** Visit Drink LMNT for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! NIH study finds heavily processed foods cause overeating and weight gain Mind Pump #1527: The 3 Step Solution To The Obesity Epidemic Mind Pump #1557: How Food Is Engineered To Make You Addicted & Fat With Michael Moss The Myth of Optimal Protein Intake – Mind Pump Blog Why do we Need Protein? - Mind Pump Blog Why Resistance Training is the Best Form of Exercise to Fight Weight Gain – Mind Pump Blog Why Resistance Training is the Best Form of Exercise – Mind Pump Blog 5 Best Tips to Help Increase Your Movement Throughout the Day – Mind Pump Blog The Most Overlooked Muscle Building Principle – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1345: 6 Ways To Optimize Sleep For Faster Muscle Gain And Fat Loss Visit Felix Gray for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Visit Chili Sleep for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talk about the six things that you can focus on. Very simple things you can focus on to crush your 2022 fitness and health goals. So this is a great episode. Now this episode is brought to you by one of our

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Maps and a ballac is 50% off, so just one program, half off. You get that one at mapsred.com and then use the code January 50, this January 5-0, no space for that discount. All right guys, so here's a deal, right? We're beginning of the year, everybody's getting started with their fitness

or a lot of people have been working out but now they're getting real serious. I wanna do an episode where we give people like very plain plain simple tips that are effective like just do these things. Yeah. And you'll get a lot of the way there. The bare bones approach. Yes. I love this idea, Mon. I seriously think that's really good. It's really nail it. It's really. No, actually, I think this is actually a really good idea for an episode because one of probably,

and I hear it like to hear your guys' opinion, but I think one of the biggest mistakes that I would see with clients in the new year is coming in and overthinking this process. Totally. overthinking it, overdoing it, and inevitably burning themselves out. Even the ones that saw temporary or good results immediately end up not sticking to it.

Anybody who's getting started right now, right, New Year's resolution, I would imagine that their goal is not just to lose the 20 pounds or just to get in shape right now and then to put it all back on or fall out of shape. I think the idea is that you make changes for the rest of your life. Giving people very practical, realistic, and easy, simple steps to follow, and that could make the greatest impact. I think it's a great episode. It all starts with the solid foundation. What does that foundation look like that you

can build upon? I think that's the part that gets looked over the most and how can we get as quickly to our goal as possible. Yeah. I remember as a trainer, you really start to learn how like what single steps produce the biggest impacts and when they're as measured by the impact it makes in the short term but also in the long term and how easy is it for people to adhere to. Those are the three most important factors. And you really start to piece this together when you train people day and day out, year

after year, after a couple of decades, you start to say, okay, you know, this advice, although it would work, it doesn't work because people have a tough time sticking to it or it's too complicated or it's asking too much of them. So let me put it this way. And you know, this is the advice that I've seen be the most successful. So, and I know we have those things, right? We have the things that we know.

Just move the needle the most. Like, for example, if you're trying to make a cargo faster in the quarter mile and you have a regular card that you bought, like, there's a lot of things you could do, but a turbo probably does more than an exhaust, than an headers, and all these other parts and whatever. It's just one thing that makes the biggest impact, right? So, and I know there's steps that just have the biggest impact,

they're the easiest to stick to, things that we've seen through experience to be the most effective. You know what I also like about this is, we narrowed it down to six things, but when I look at the list, I admittedly got at least five of these six things wrong as an early trainer. Like, when we look, if you look at that list right now and think about the advice that you

gave around that topic, that specific topic or thing that we're going to address, I think I gave bad advice. Even as a trainer, not just like a young kid trying to work out and figure this thing out from self, but even as a certified experienced trainer, I was wrong on a lot of these things. And so I think that's why this episode will have tremendous value for a lot of people.

I think all of us went through that. You know what reminds me of, what's that quote from Bruce Lee says, don't fear the man who practices a thousand kicks once, a thousand different kicks once but practice the man who practices one specific type of kick a thousand times Right, it's like those basics and you learn this in lots of different practices like the you when you initially learn how to play a Spore or do something you want to learn all the fancy moves and all the crazy techniques But then when you do it long enough you go way way back and you say, oh, it's these fundamental basics that you have to master. It's these fundamental basics that you master that makes you really

good. It's not all these complexities. So the steps that we're about to talk to require the least amount of tracking, the least amount of record keeping. At least amount of work. At least amount of work. At least amount of work. Because that's such a huge stumbling block for people. It's such a huge, you know, it's a wall. They get seen people's way because when I tell people to track and keep records and do all these different things,

although it would be great if they did, the reality is it's just adding more samples. Well, it's getting more simple, but they have massive effect on behavioral changes. And I think that's what we learned in our careers was like, what are those few things that have that kind of impact where you can see that change within your clients that they really grab onto versus trying to inundate them with so many different techniques and so many things to incorporate.

Yes. Now, the first one, man, when this finally clicked for me as a trainer, it was like magic. I was so excited because it was so simple and so silly and yet so effective that when I would have clients do this, we would see results on the scale in the mirror, they would feel better, and their response was really what sold me on this. Their response, they'd come back to me and say, what's happening into my body? As if it was like this mysterious magic that was happening.

And that it was to tell my clients when it comes to diet, don't worry about almost anything else. All I want you to do right now is only eat whole natural foods. Stay away from heavily processed foods, foods that come in boxes and wrappers, foods with long shelf lives, only eat or mainly eat whole natural foods, and then let's see what happens. And here's what would always happen. Naturally, and we have, there's studies that support all of this and we'll get into it, right? They

would naturally reduce their calories. They would naturally increase their nutrient intake. They would naturally increase their protein intake from doing this. And we would see people lose weight and feel better. And they wouldn't feel like they were restricting. Yeah, you're not being restricted with this mindset at all with your clients. It's more seeking out and finding these whole foods to incorporate, which then actually changes your palate. It starts to sort of do its work on you without being so obvious. Well, yeah, subconsciously, I think that they naturally start to make better choices for themself, and they don't feel like they're being restricted or told they can't do anything, and they just kind of start to follow better steps to make them healthier.

But I also want to address the things that we did wrong in these categories too, right? So like, one of the things that I would do that I thought was right at the time was right out of diet, for sure. So when I come in, they hire me, I wanna lose 20, 30 pounds. And it was all about the calories. That's right, let's weigh you out,

let's get very mathematical about this and figure out what you need to do precisely to get to that. But it was the math, was just the answer is none of the math. That's right. It was just the answers to the test and what it was up happening, even if there's somebody who can stick to it. So I would get this false signal that this is the way to do this because some clients would,

right? One in every four or five would stay locked in, would follow the steps, follow the meal plan, get great results, and hey, I'm a good trainer. But the truth is, they still don't know how to do that on their own, and inevitably, even those people end up putting that weight back on their own. And you're still talking about 25% or less of your clients actually do anything. Now, here's what's interesting about whole natural foods. Process foods, most of the money and the innovation and the research that goes into processed foods

goes into making them hyper palatable. And so they make you overeat. These foods naturally make you overeat. And studies are very clear on this now that people will eat about five to six hundred more calories a day just for me eating heavily processed foods. In other words, if they stopped eating heavily processed foods and just ate until they were satisfied but made it only whole natural foods, they would get this natural, okay, without trying. That's the important thing here. Without really trying to reduce their caloric intake, they would naturally eat 500 to 600 less calories.

Now, we've heard throughout the decades that fat was the culprit. This is why we have an obesity epidemic. Then it was carbohydrates or sugars. The truth is it's heavily processed foods. If you look at the rise in obesity in modern societies, you look at America, for example, and as it goes up, you can put a graph of the percentage of our diets that was heavily processed foods and you'll notice that they match almost perfectly.

As our diets became more and more predominantly dominated by heavily processed foods, obesity, grew and grew and grew. And again, think of it this way. Eating a family bag, you know, size chips, a bag of chips is not that hard to do, but eating that many potatoes, plain potatoes, which is typically about five or six potatoes, would be very difficult to do. That's the power of heavily processed foods. And so if you just avoid those foods, you don't even have to consciously try to restrict

your naturally eat less. Well, and you can't really blame a lot of these companies that have produced these products because the consumers are the one driving the drugs make money. Demands, of course. They're the ones that want everything to taste better, to be crunchier, to have these bright colors and flavors. And so it really is our responsibility to bring back the association with what these healthy,

whole natural foods provide your body and focus on that aspect and not specifically just on the flavor of. And by the way, keyboard warriors can save their energy and fingers here that you don't need to get on here. Cause I know someone's gonna jump all over you for saying that it's processed foods that cause the obesity epidemic.

And like it's not the only reason why it's in our experience of all the people that we've helped out that it's one of the biggest reasons why people struggle with that. It's not the only one. There's other factors with transportation and higher calorie meals that people are eating and more people are sedentary.

And there's a lot of other things that play a role in that, but I agree with you. It's a major contributor involved. It's the main scene as a common factor in our clients. It's the main one, and they've done studies to show that it's not, yes, we're less active, that definitely contributes to worse health outcomes But it's not the calorie burn side of the formula

It's the calories inside of the formula where things have changed. I mean the average person just eats a lot more now Did our appetites increase? No, we're now eating foods that that make us not full as fast or satisfied as fast like I said I could eat a whole bag of potato chips and not a problem. I could not eat that many plain potatoes. And this is true for, I mean, try to eat a thousand calories with the apples versus a thousand calories versus apple flavored candy, right?

It's a big, there's a big difference. And so when it comes to diet, if you just cut out heavily processed food and don't even worry about calorie tracking and restricting or whatever, I used to tell my clients this, eat until you're satisfied, just see the whole thing.

And they used to look at me like I was crazy. What do you mean? Yeah, I don't care. Eat as much steak and chicken and potato and rice and fruits and vegetables you want and just eat until you're satisfied and then we'll see what happens. And all of them, all of them, if they did that would come back to me and be shocked

that they were actually getting leaner and they were shocked because they didn't feel like they were stricken because their natural systems of satiety were allowed to work with foods that we evolved eating. I would say the next step is the only thing that I would add to that conversation, right? Is that if I 100% of the people that I gave that advice to saw a tremendous success, the few people that didn't see as good of results, it always came back to this step right here, which was they were, yes, eating all whole foods, but they weren't paying attention to how much protein they were intaking. Right.

And so we were doing the strength training, and we were under grossly under consuming protein. Even though our calories were fine, we weren't putting on any bad weight, we also weren't building any muscle, which wasn't helping or supporting their metabolism or helping their body composition. So simply by giving them the advice of, listen, just hit your body weight,

like your grams of protein in your body weight. So what if you weigh 150 pounds? Try to hit 150 grams of protein. And by the way, that's not the, the science is 0.6 to 0.8, but like you tell a client, 0.6 to 0.8, and they're not gonna bust a calculator out every time. So them eating one gram to one pound of body weight

is a great place for. It's a good target. Yeah, it's an easy target for them to focus on and figure out if they're under or over. And I think that right there in itself between that and the no-process foods. I mean if you got a hundred percent compliance on that those people saw tremendous results. That's it would be I would say those two things are 85 to 90% of the way there when it comes to nutrition. Now I do want to be clear you're not going to

get 5% body fat like that. You're not going to look shredded on stage or look like your favorite. Instagram fitness influencer, that requires really crazy weighing of food and counting calories on. I'm talking about taking your body from overweight to relatively lean, 13% body fat for a man, 12% body fat for a man, for a woman in the low 20s, maybe even below 20% someone will get just by doing these things. Now, why protein, right? Why are we saying eat that much protein?

Well, here's why. There's a few different reasons why. One, is it's very strongly positively connected to muscle growth, okay? So if you eat more protein, you build more muscle, you're stronger, and that increases your metabolic rate. So now you get a faster metabolism, faster than you would had you not eaten as much protein. So that works in your favor. The second reason

is protein is very satiety inducing of all the of the three main of the three macronutrients right proteins fats and carbs. Prote proteins make you full the fastest. So if you've ever talked to anybody who's done the crazy carnivore diet, ask them about that and they'll tell you, oh my God, I could not eat anymore. It's insanely difficult to get the amount of calories that you're probably eating before going on a crazy diet

like that, just because of that fact alone. It's just, it just makes you so full, almost within a few meals. I would argue that it's impossible unless you're at least getting some fatty proteins, like steak and like... Even like that, you know what I mean? I know, even like that, it's just like saying,

it's supposed to be impossible. If you're eating chicken breast fish and turkey, good luck, good luck, chicken of calories, unless you're deep frying it or something else, but if you're eating it, just whole natural chicken, turkey, fish, meat like that, you gotta find ways to add the fat in there, so you get some calories.

That's what I like to do. So what I like to do is focussing on it first, is like the main part of the meal is you go through that. And then, especially if you're trying to kind of cut back a bit on calories, and it's kind of a natural limiter that you put in place. Yes.

Now, and protein, another thing about protein is it's got a thermogenic effect in comparison to the other macronutrients, meaning protein actually gets your body to burn more calories per gram than fats or carbohydrates. So, you know, at risk of being a little too, you know, silly with this, it's somewhat of a fat burning macronutrient in comparison. In fact, there's studies where they'll overfeed people by about 400 calories, proteins, fats, or carbs, And when people are overfed calories and proteins,

it's actually quite resistant to fat storage. It's actually harder to store body fat when you're eating more calories and proteins than fats or carbohydrates. And that just highlights the effect that proteins have on the body. So if you're eating just whole natural foods and you're aiming for

your body weight in protein, the high odds are you're going to eat in a calorie deficit, which is going to make you lean, and you're going to be eating enough protein to also simultaneously help you build strength and build muscle. Now this next one was contested. In fact, I was somebody that would contest this in the past, until it really started to understand the behavioral effects of this next step. So this next one is a little bit of a bro, sciencey piece of advice, bodybuilders have set up for a long time, but there's a reason why they've set it for a long time and we'll get into that. And the advice is to drink a gallon of water a day.

Now, a gallon is a lot, so we could even say a half a gallon to a gallon of water, so if you're small or half a gallon, if you're a bigger person, a gallon of water a day. Now, the way that it was sold before was, well, the protein flushes things out of the body and your body holds on to less water and it's hydrating and it's anti-inflammatory and not stuff, which is true when you compare being hydrated to not being so hydrated. But here's the real value, I think. If you're drinking a gallon of water a day, you're probably not drinking other stuff that's got calories.

And a very big percentage of people's calories or a percentage that makes a difference comes from liquid calories. Wine, beer, it's a stave's off soda. A lot of the cravings you'll experience. I've noticed that too. And if I'm a little bit hydrated, my body gets to signal like I need to feed myself with something that's sweet or, you know, I get more

tendencies towards wanting to eat these processed-type foods. Along those lines, that was some generic advice I heard a long time ago that I've actually applied and think it's extremely valuable is, like before going into dinner, or if you started to have cravings, is to go pound like a glass or two of water. Totally. Many times that'll completely like... Is it weird?

Yeah, it'll eliminate it, or then when you go into eating the meal, you don't eat nearly as much. So, I agree with you. You could add in this too, as stupid as it may sound, but you're peeing all day long. So you've got to get up and go to the restroom,

get up and go to the restroom, because if you're a guy like me, he's got a small bladder, so I end up peeing like day long. So you gotta get up and go to the restroom, get up, go to the restroom, because if you're a guy like me, he's got a small bladder, so I end up peeing like 15 times in the day. So all those extra steps and movement, and I'm thinking about something, like I'm not thinking about cravings or other stuff, I'm thinking about getting my water down, like,

I love that, and I didn't experience that until I got into competing and had to hit those targets because I was manipulating water in my body and attracting and paying attention. And I was like, wow, this has helped me stay eating good versus me sitting there. The other thing, Justin, I heard Justin say this to a client years ago when we worked together

that was complaining of low energy. And I was guilty of this, of starting my day off and not really having any water right at first. And so all from all night long, so I was a little dehydrated. And then I feel a little slow in the morning. And starting a day off with like a glass or two of water, I would feel like kind of kick up my energy. And I thought that was really interesting because I was like,

what mechanism is happening here where my body feels energetic from this. It didn't make sense to me. Your body's going to want to conserve energy to prevent you from losing more water. So if you're water, if you're in that slightly dehydrated state, it's natural that your body's energy levels are gonna dip a little bit. Well, you're able to, I know that a lot of my clients experienced brain fog.

Yeah. And this was another factor to that when they're dehydrated, where that was a contributor that they didn't realize and also joint pain was another one that's, I've noticed like, you know, it had an effect in terms of like, I noticed that for myself. Yeah, I get more joint pain if I don't drink it. I start to notice I'm stiff and I'm like,

oh yeah, I haven't been drinking, you know, my normal amount of water. Yeah. The biggest thing though is like, I would, it was funny too, I would have clients that would drink soda and I'd say, it's a to me, do you want me to cut the soda out? And I'd say, no, just drink the gallon water. Just make sure you drink the gallon of water.

And then what they would do is they would bring a gallon of water to work. And I would advise them to do this, is say, how do I know if I have a gallon? I said, let's get you a gallon container, bring it to work so you can see where you're at. And then they'd come and, you know, they'd talk to me after a couple of weeks of this

and they'd say, I'm not drinking the Pepsi anymore. I'm like, well, how come? I don't have any room for the Pepsi because I got to finish on the water. And I would laugh because that was the goal the whole time. So it does, it does reduce, think about that. If you're listening right now and you do drink some of your calories,

you're probably not gonna drink as many of your calories as you normally do because you're worried about drinking more water. So it's almost like a sneaky way of cutting those calories. But it also does on its own reduce appetite, help with inflammation and improve your energy level. So well, along those lines, it's very similar to the protein thing. That's why I love the focusing on protein

because a lot of people don't hit protein targets. And having them just focused on protein ends up naturally eliminating all the other foods. I think water works the same way too. It's like if you've never really focused on targeting a gallon of water, simply doing that starts to eliminate all this other bullshit that you're having.

Same thing goes for the protein. You know, just not telling a client you can't have this, you can't do that. Hey, just hit your protein and take every single day. Just them focusing on that, they naturally eliminate all the other starchy type of cars. Now this next one has to do with exercise.

Resist is training in particular, but it's very simple advice. And that is to lift weights for your whole body three days a week. Now, yes, you can also do about two days a week, depending on how experienced you are. But so I'll say two to three days a week, but if you lift weights three days a week, that's, I mean, that's for most people whose goals are just general fitness, you're gonna get, you can get so far with that. And it's so funny, it took me so many years to figure this out. I mean, I was, I've been working out since I was 14 and obsessed with it, and I looked at all the routines, the workout, and at one point, you know, my career, I started to read about the training routines of the lifters in the early 1900s.

These were people that had incredible feats of strength, incredible physics. This was before supplements even existed, let alone anabolic steroids and all that stuff. I'm like, man, I wonder how they worked out. I wonder if they wrote the workouts. I had no idea that they had written books. I actually found a website and I found all these old books that were written by these old strong men and strength athletes. And I was shocked to see that they all trained their whole body three days a week. They would lift three days a week. I thought, I wonder what happened if I do that. And this is coming from someone who's a six day

a week body part split type routine. I did this and I got the best results my entire life. Until this day, I kind of trained in a similar way. In fact, maps at a ballpark, part of it is modeled after what I'm talking about right now. That's it. I mean, if you go to the gym and do one exercise for body part a few days a week, you can get very far doing that. Well, since this episode is about the,

basically giving people the most basic, least amount of work that they have to do to get the most amount of results, I'm going to go out on a limit, even say, one time to three times a week, because if you do all these other things that we're listing right now, and you only strength train full body one day a week, you would actually get in very good shape. You'd be fine. Three times a week, you can build an incredible body.

Right. You know, so if you're talking about somebody who has goals of like, you know, putting themselves on the best shape of their life and looking ripped, like You absolutely can do that three times a week with all the piece of advice But it let's say say you're not a, you know, you know, barbell dumbbell person and you don't really care about Building lots of muscle and I just want to be healthier than I was in 2021 And I know that strength training is important. So what's the least amount I need to do? You're doing a full body routine once a week

incorporating the other things we're talking about. You can be pretty guided in healthy. I trained at least half of my clients like that. At least half, these are people that were with me for seven years, eight years, 10 years, would come see me one day a week. Now that doesn't mean they weren't active the rest of the week, you know,

they made sure to stay active the rest of the week, but structured resistance training, they'd live with me once a week and we do full body. Doug, when he hired me, Doug came to me and he had lots of experience with resistance training and I had him lift twice a week, full body, two days a week and he hit PRs and strength and muscle that he'd never hit before and that's because it's a very effective way of training. You train your body, your whole body means you're not going to skip a body part, you focus on compound lifts,

you get stronger, you send that signal to your body, it says we need muscle, which speeds up the metabolism, at the very least, prevents you from losing muscle as you get leaner, and you get great results, and it doesn't require a lot of time. People spend so much time working out because it's so ineffective and inefficient. So they spend all this time working out to get a little bit of time, people spend so much time working out because it's so ineffective and inefficient. So they spend all this time working out

to get a little bit of results. When in reality, if it was an effective routine that was smart, you could spend far less time and get far better results. And that's what these full body workouts do. And again, our flagship program, AppSendabolic is based off of this because it's so effective.

And I say flagship, it's the most popular program that we have by far. So it's not, it doesn't have to be super complicated. Just a few days a week in the gym, go in each body part one exercise and, uh, and you're golden. Now this next one has more to do with cardio and this, this was another one that was a, a such a big game changer for my clients. This one, it took me a long time to figure out. I would say it's torn towards the end of my career. Did I really piece this together? Because when I a long time to figure out. I would say it's towards the end of my career that I really piece this together

because when I would recommend activity to people, I would say things, and before this, I would say things to people like, do 30 minutes of cardio upon waking or we get a stationary bike, put it in your bedroom or go to the gym or go to the track or whatever and make sure you do your 30 minutes of activity. And it was hard to keep people consistent.

I thought, oh, it's a discipline issue or these people are lazy or what's going on. And it wasn't until I realized, wait a minute, there's no reason to do all 30 minutes of activity all at once. What if they divided it up and then the second part was, what if I just attached it to like, things that they're gonna do anyway? So what if I had them walk for 10 minutes

after breakfast, lunch, and dinner? And the adherence exploded. People were way more consistent and there was there 30 minutes of activity every single day. So many other factors to that too, in terms of benefits that you can foresee from that. So digestion was a big one for me

and just the natural process of your body kind of moving things along and then being out in nature, or if you can do it instead of indoors, you get the benefits of the sun and by and d. Also if you have significant other that you bring with you, now you have conversations with them that we've had meaningful conversations or the kids come with, you know, you get the dogs out. So yeah, I'm a big fan of doing things like that attached to rituals or processes during your day

that you're already gonna do anyways. Now you're just adding one little step that, you know, really sticks. I vividly remember when this light bulb went off, the conversation I was having with a client, this was when 24-offis introduced the body bug. And up into this point, I was like, you sell 30 minutes of cardio and I would specifically, 30 minutes on stairmaster and this day we're going to do hit. I'd have all these things that

when they come in and train with me, I would prescribe very specific pieces of cardio that I'd have them do. And then I would, at the following week, I would assess and look at their body bug, which this is basically a step in calorie burn tracker, metabolism tracker. And I'm looking to see what our activity level looks like. And I remember looking up with this client of mine, and she had on Friday, when she didn't see me, or Friday or Saturday, no matter what it was, it mine and she had on Friday when she didn't

see me or Friday or Saturday, I don't remember what it was. It was one of those days where she didn't see me and she had the highest calorie burn by a month. And I said, I saw the same thing. What did you do? Did you, did you, did you train? Did you go back? No, I didn't even work out that day.

And I'm like, what do you mean? I made her like walk me through a day. It's, well, you know, I did this and I went, I had to go grocery shopping and then I got home for a little bit, did some really kids and then I had a clean house and I was just, I was blown away by how much more calories that she burned by just kind of going through her day, walking around, doing normal activities and comparison to the hour that I was crushing her

and the half hour of cardio that I had prescribed to her. And I was crushing her and the half hour hour of cardio that I had prescribed to her. And I was fascinated by that. And this light bulb went off like, man, if I can just, if I can get my clients to add in activity and make it very basic and simple. And easy, boy, can I really make up the calorie difference

just from simply doing that without having to tell them to do this rigorous half hour to an hour on a stair master or treadmill. I did the same thing. I remember the body bug used to have this graph that you could see with activity. And so you'd see like, you would spike up and come back down and spike up.

And so you could see, oh, that you were, oh, at 8 a.m. looks like you were real active. What were you doing and all that stuff? Same experience. They brought it in. I looked at the graph and I noticed like, you were real active, what were you doing? And you know, that's tough. Same experience. They brought it in, I looked at their graph, and I noticed Saturday, they burned tons of calories. And I saw the graph, and it was funny, because on the weeks that they would see me,

they would come in the morning. I'd see the spike of activity when they'd see me, and then the rest of the day it was flat, because why, they go to work, sit at their desk, and then after they were done, we'll work drive home, and then, you know, sit on the couch or whatever. And so, but on Saturday, sit at their desk, and then after they were done, we'll work drive home and then, you know, sit on the couch or whatever. But on Saturday was like up, I'm like,

what happened, like, oh, we went to the mall, we went shopping, we were out there for like six hours. Yeah. I'm like, what, yeah. So you weren't working out, you were just walking and moving and you burn more calories than the day, than the days you work out with me, because you work out with me for an hour,

and then you do nothing all the day. So this 10 minute break up three times a day, number one, it's 30 minutes of activity. It does help with insulin sensitivity. It does help with digestion because it's post what they call post-prandial, right? So it's right after you eat. It does break up the day.

And also there are studies that show that activity that's broken up actually is more effective at fat burning than the same amount of activity all done at once. We've actually done some studies to show that and they kind of lean in that direction that instead of doing 30 minutes all at once, doing 3-10 minutes sessions actually is a little bit more effective. But most effective thing about it is it's attached to what you already do and it doesn't

sound so hard. Oh, walk 10 minutes after I eat. No problem. Well, there's a simple explanation for that too, though. I can anybody who's done this is felt this. You ever notice how, you know, if you had a day where you're just, you know, it's raining, you feel tired of the thargic and you could just, I don't feel like doing anything. And you could sit for five, six hours with moving very little. Take a day like that. And you interrupt it at the, you know the two hour mark and you just go do a trigger session or go do a 10 minute walk and then pay attention to your activity level after that. You naturally just move more. You're more active. Yeah. When you're when you're when those energy

levels and you get in that sedentary place, like even just your your your your ticks and your behaviors are all low and slow and you're not moving around. You go and that's why you used to love about the trigger sessions. I remember when you put those in anabolic and the first time that I applied that, one of the things that I loved was, oh, I gotta do these trigger sessions

three days or three times in a day, just for like five to 10 minutes, but it wasn't those trigger sessions that I thought I got the most value from from the actual trigger sessions. It was how I felt afterwards. It would energize me. And then I was like, oh, I was so lethargic on actual church. It was how I felt afterwards. It would energize me. And then I'll sit down, I was like,

oh, I was so lethargic on the couch, I didn't want to do anything. And I was like, oh, I gotta do that trigger session. I'm committing to that right now. So I get up, I do it. And then I didn't want to sit back there on the couch. Like, oh, now I'm up. I'm moving blood flow, heart rate got up a little bit.

Then I'll sit it would make me want to go do things that were more physical and active. So I think there's tremendous value in that. And you talk about the fat burning effects. I think more of it comes from what it promotes you to do afterwards because you've now increased that energy, blood flow oxygen, and now you want to go and do stuff for sure. I would agree. I definitely noticed that as well. So this next one has to do with sleep. Now you've probably, if you've listened to podcasts, you know, how important sleep is and sleep quality is for your body's ability to burn body fat and adapt and build muscle and...

For hormones out. Youthful hormone levels, all that stuff, right? But just saying that, I think you get a little, people a little confused, what does that look like, what are the things I need to do? Here's something you can do that is the singles, in my opinion, though, the single step that can ensure good quality sleep more than almost any other single step.

Now, sleep can be complex and there's a lot of moving factors, but if you just do this, you're more guaranteed a good night's sleep than almost any other single step. And that is to have a sleep routine. So what is a sleep routine? A sleep routine is literally an hour before bed. You're getting ready for bed. What does that look like? You dim the lights, you stop your turn off your electronics or you wear blue light blocking glasses. You don't read or talk about or do

anything that's stressful. And you allow your body to settle. I like to drink chamomile tea at this time. And you allow your body to settle. I like to drink Camel and Bilti at this time, and you allow your body to settle and get ready to go to sleep. I think we often, you know, we either forget or we think it's not a big deal to just, we're watching TV, action movie, it's loud, lights are on, shut everything off, go hit the pillow,

and I'm gonna go right into sleep. It doesn't work that way. It's gonna take your brain an hour just to get to that point. Well, what if I got my brain there faster by having a sleep routine? And I've done this with clients where I said, I don't want to do anything else. Just an hour before, put on your blue light blocking glasses or turn off your electronics and turn the lights way down and kind of get everything settled, and then see how your

sleep improves. And eight at a 10 times, you see dramatic improvements. It took me a long time to figure this one out. I don't know if that's like a you thing or what? Like, maybe when you're young, you're just so resilient or you don't give a shit, you're not paying attention to these things. You care quite as much.

Yeah, because I could make the case that, even at 17, 20 years old, this is still valuable information. I think you just don't realize at that know, I think you just kind of power through it and you are full of piss and vinegar. And so you don't realize how valuable can be until you start to get a little bit older. And then it's because it's very clear to me now. I'm sure all of us in this room have had times where you're thinking about going to do something and you go, you choose not to because you know it's going to disrupt your sleep. Oh, yeah, we love to go out there. Oh, that's going to be from and you go choose not to because you know it's gonna disrupt your sleep

Oh, yeah, we'd love to go out there Oh, that's gonna be from nine and I got this tomorrow. I got to be up at this I mean you we kind of subconsciously start to do that as we get older and it's funny that we put all this energy and effort Into our morning routines everybody has these these crazy. There's books all around these morning routines Pre-workout routine. Yeah, I we around these morning routines. We're even a pre workout routine. Yeah. We have these routines. And yet, I could probably make the case. I'm sure you guys could too, that the sleep, the nighttime, is more valuable than any of those.

Getting ready for your workout or getting ready for your day. Sure, there's some value to that, absolutely. But I don't think there's more value to that than there is preparing yourself for bed where all this recovery recoup happens. And I think going into it, getting prepared for it and treating it the same way that you treat that pre-workout or treat the start of your day, that in itself,

I think is the way to step. It's so funny that it's just been an afterthought forever. And it does make so much impact on everything you're doing throughout the day that you're trying to adapt towards. And so to put some attention there and be really mindful about, you know, really gearing yourself, winding yourself down, allowing yourself to be in that parasympathetic state, like sourcing, kind of dim the lights, like remove the electronics and whatnot. Like, I mean, I took it to the next level where every little bit,

I've noticed makes a big difference, like not having lights any light on in my bedroom making it just dark blacking it out, made a huge difference. Like having a cool temperature makes a huge difference. And it's just interesting when you really put more of your thoughts around that,

what that does when you wake up and how much more refreshed you feel. Yeah, what we did is we bought these like night light salt lamps. So I like salt lamps because they glow kind of this amber color, which is, you know, kind of simulates flames. So it's a little less, you know, telling your brain less so that the sun is out, unlike really bright, like light. Well, it's no blue light, right?

Yeah, there's no blue light. And it's not like these bright overhead lights, right? That these are the most damaging. So we bought these little salt night lights and we put them throughout the house. And when it reaches a certain time, we turn all lights off and we turn those on. And it's enough light for you to get around

and do stuff if you need to, but it really does set the mood. And what's funny is that I did that for myself and my wife And I noticed profound effects on my children Because my kids were around it. They all went to bed earlier Yeah, I went to sleep earlier and then blue light blocking glasses I love you know, I like to watch TV at night sometimes if I put on really strong blue light blocking glasses And I watch a movie an hour before I want to go to sleep. I'm usually almost asleep 45 minutes in.

Like I find myself drifting off. If I take those off, the light is bright enough to stimulate me to keep me awake much longer. And then it's harder to fall asleep. So a sleep routine just literally means an hour before you want to be in bed, what your target time is, you just have your little routine that you do, just like Adam said,

but pre-workout or your before morning routine or your morning routine, just having before. And the first step to that is just giving a fuck. It's care. It's actually, because I mean, honestly, that was what kept me away from this for so long was I just didn't care, I just didn't, oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Like, oh, I don't need sleep as overrated. You know, I had all this stupid mantras that I used to say. It was just so silly. And it's like, just by putting a little bit of effort, and I'm with you, I've continued to build upon that, like Justin was saying. It's like, it started off with, oh, I just dim the lights. And then it was like, oh, now I've gotten so routine that as soon as the sun goes down,

the blue light blocking glasses come on, regardless if I'm on the computer or watching TV. I mean, that's naturally suns down, those go on. That way, if in case I walk in the bathroom and flip a light on or do anything, I'm not disrupting that. And then the uler being able to use that at nighttime to cool my temperature down. That's been like game changing for me. And then the other one that you mentioned, it's out lightly that I think is important

that a lot of people don't do Katrina knows this for sure. It's like, you cannot talk to me about work or business, like after 7 p.m. I'm a little finance, is it? Yeah, if we get into anything. No, you get a stressful conversation before bed for coming. And I love work, right? So this is actually a challenge for me.

And so maybe it doesn't, maybe it doesn't look like stress to you, right? Because you're like, you love your passion about it, but you gotta be careful, because it winds the brain up. And it gets your brain wide awake. And so I love business, and I love to talk about that.

So I don't really think of it like, oh, this is stressful, I can't talk about it. Like maybe finance, this can be stressful for people. But it just, it winds me up. Like it gets me going and I can't stop thinking and like when I'm trying to settle my brain down, it's like the worst thing. So becoming aware of all this stuff,

I think is the first step and then figuring out those little hacks because somebody listening right now, maybe the blue light thing's not a big deal to you, but maybe like the temperature in your bed, or the lights in your room, like you said, Justin, or just simply not talking about stuff, like starting to become aware of those things and start to get better and better at that process, and you improve that, and you'll see it bleeding to every other aspect of your life. Perfect. So there you have it. Six very very easy simple steps to help you get the best body of your life in the new year in 2022.

Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all the guides that we have. We have guides that can help you with almost any fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. I'm at Mind Pump Sal and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam.

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