Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1830: Five Steps to Determine Your ideal Caloric Intake

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover five steps to take to determine the ideal number of calories to consume each day. One of the MOST important steps when it comes to fat loss and muscle gain, is figuring out how many calories your body needs every single day to maintain. (2:24) Understanding your metabolism, tracking, and the extreme variance of macro calculators. (4:00) Beware of inaccurate food labeling. (9:00) Five Steps to Determine Your ideal Caloric Intake. #1 - Track calories & macros for two weeks. (12:19) #2 - Track body weight & measure. (18:42) #3 - Adjust calories according to your goal. (23:41) #4 - Don’t radically change activity. (30:39) #5 - Hone it in. (34:47) Ways to eat to achieve a healthy balance that doesn’t involve calorie counting or macro tracking. (40:49) #1 – Avoid heavily processed foods. (43:04) #2 – Aim for a high-protein diet. (48:04) #3 – Drink ½ to 1 gallon of water a day. (50:04) #4 - Don’t eat while distracted. (52:03) #5 – Don't drink fluids while you eat. (53:05) #6 – Eat mindfully. (56:35) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit ZBiotics for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! June Promotion: Shredded Summer Bundle or MAPS HIIT 50% off! **Promo code JUNE50 at checkout** MAPS Macro Calculator Calorie labels are often wildly inaccurate. Here's how to prevent extra calories from derailing your diet. Food Labeling Modernization Act of 2021 Fact Sheet FatSecret - Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker for Weight Loss Why The Scale Is Not Always The Best Way To Measure Progress – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1220: The 4 Best Sources Of Protein How Much Protein You REALLY Need to Build Muscle & Maximize Health – Mind Pump TV NIH study finds heavily processed foods cause overeating and weight gain Processed foods make up 70 percent of the U.S. diet The Myth of Optimal Protein Intake – Mind Pump Blog 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, pop, mind, pop 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 teach you how to determine

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All right, here comes a show. One of the most important steps when it comes to fat loss or muscle gain is figuring out how many calories your body needs every single day just to maintain. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, this can be a lot of guesswork can be quite challenging. We're due for an episode like this.

It's been a while since we talked about some of those steps. And I know you said something before we started that I think it's important to let some people know that are listening to this right now. I actually was, I don't know if the reason why you said that was you read some of the questions on our call or not, but there's a handful of people that, you know, feel like they, if they track, it triggers

their old behavior, it's been changing. So although we're gonna lay out some steps that we would start most our clients on to get them started when it comes to tracking your calories and figure out your macros, hang in till the end because I know that we'll address people that tracking is a kind of a trigger for them to binge and like how would we coach someone like that.

So both, how I would coach someone that has no past history of binging and you know, how do we dial in the diet for whatever their goal is. We'll cover that first and then at the end go to like, okay, what would we do if you have someone who can't track, right? Right. And also, I mean, we've got a lot of questions too about like how to get that accurate, like maintenance calories. And there's lots of formulas out there and lots of macro calculators and ways to get there. However, simple always wins the beginning.

And so we'll kind of go over that in terms of how to just get started and really figure that out. Well, it's super important to understand that metabolism is very complex. And it's not stationary. In other words, you know, how many calories your burning today can change and adapt within a day or two just by your behaviors and your activity level, hormone, sleep, and all that stuff. So it is something that that moves and flexes and it's important to understand that because when you figure

out your calories, it's important to understand that it can change. It can change just because you're working out in particular way or cutting calories or increasing calories. There are a lot of macro calculators out there. We have one, right? We have one at maps macro.com. And so what you do is you go in there, you enter general activity level, body weight, and whether you're male or female,

it'll spit out a number. But it's important to understand that these are all general rough estimates. Generalizations. And there's a very, there can be a very wide variance from person to person. I mean, I've had, you know, I've had 130 pound female clients that burn more calories.

Naturally, I'm not talking about just three activity, but just their bodies burn more calories. Then, you know, 220 pound male clients who have gone through a process of extreme dieting and all that stuff. So it can be quite radical. So you can use these calculators as a general idea, but you'll never be able to get accurate that way. And there really is no machine or anything at least that's not pragmatic because you can go to like a university and get really complicated testing in which case you'll get a snapshot. This is what your metabolism is doing right now.

Right. You know, which again, the value of that would be I'd have to do that every single day. So not very pragmatic. So nothing's going to be as accurate as what we're about to talk about. It is a bit of a process, but if you do it, and you don't suffer from the behavioral negatives that can come from tracking, it can be very effective way of getting your body where you want. Well, ironically, we have a calculator and I don't use it. Right.

And the only time I really recommend it to somebody is if they feel Absolutely clueless on to what they've ever consumed. They have no idea they've never tracked before I don't know if I eat 5000 calories. I don't know if I eat 15 hours organizer thoughts Right, I have no idea where I'm at in that range because I've never tracked before I have no idea what I should probably start at so I think those tools and all of them are I, I would put in this, even those like, you know, tests that you can go take and they kick off, you know, where your, your kind of calorie should be. Um, they're, they're all flawed. And, but yet if you have no direction, it's better than nothing.

Yeah, it's better than just blindly guessing a number. Oh, I'm just going to do 2000 because that sounds like a number I should do if you have no idea. But most people have somewhat of an idea or by the time I get ahold of them as a trainer or coach, they've tried tracking or they've paid attention a little bit and so for them or they can, or they can relate to me.

This is how I've ate in the last couple weeks or how I normally eat. And then I can go, okay, I can estimate, okay, that's about this many calories. And then I normally will go put them at a number that I feel is pretty close to where I think they're currently at. And then monitor.

And then monitor. And really, it doesn't matter if I'm off by five or seven hundred calories because I'm going to adjust if I need to. It really is, let's just agree on, this is a good starting point. And that starting point, when I decide that, I'm not looking to, even if the person's goal is to lose a bunch of weight or gain a bunch of weight, I don't initially want to do that.

Initially, I'm trying to figure out where is their metabolism at, currently right now, based off of their normal act. Yeah, well, that's where I would see a little bit of a flaw with that. Somebody that's just going to the macro little bit of a flaw with that. Somebody that's just going to the macro calculator is trying to figure out how much they need to lose right away. That's right. Or gain right away.

And they're not putting the work in in terms of what your actual maintenance level looks like. And so I think that's like the perfect place to start. Usually that takes a couple of weeks to figure out. Yeah, and I do want to be clear too. This is true for fitness experts too. If you look at the studies on people when they try to estimate their calories,

even well-informed people, you take me or Adam or Justin and we know what has proteins, we know fats, carbs, we know calories, we've worked with people for very long. And if I haven't tracked for a long time and you tell me to estimate my calories, I'm gonna be off. Always.

Always. Always, nobody is ever. Now, nobody is, unless you know about calories and proteins and fats and carbs, the more off you're gonna be. And you would be surprised how many people are so, it's like, I remember at one point, being like, I need to eat, you know, 40 grams of protein.

And I'm like, oh, this is a chicken breast. This is probably about 40 grams of protein. And then I remember weighing that chicken breast and going, oh, that's like 70 grams of protein. That's way more than I thought that it was. And I supposedly, you know, know what I'm talking about. So. Well, they've done research on this, right?

Yeah. People that just simply tracking, not even trying to change macros or do anything just by simply tracking the amount of people that lose weight just from becoming aware. Well, how much, and you always bring this up, like even just on the back of labels of food, like how much they're off and are just serving size or whatever they're promoting. What is it? Ten to twenty percent? Twenty five percent. Yeah, up to twenty five percent they can be off. So I mean, yeah, you got a factor that in two. By the way, and that's measured packaged food. You go to the you go to a restaurant. Yeah, that that you know,

I'm going to get that chicken bowl. Oh, it's got 546 calories. The kid who scooped the chicken to the rice in there today, it's going to be off 20% versus the kid that did it before. Or you get a bit of a hairyated. Yeah, let's go. Or you go buy some fruit. Like, you know, back in the day, we didn't have these great apps that you could enter food in and whatever. And before you people even weighed, I would say,

oh, medium banana, this many calories. And then I remember one time I was like, let me weigh this banana. See if it's an actually medium. Super jumbo banana. Yeah, I'm like, whoa, this is way off from what I thought. So, let's get, let's get, make sure there's clarity on that. Doug, I believe it's 25% I want to be, I want to be accurate on, on that I'm pretty sure

that's what the FDA allows food labels to be off. But if, to your point, Sal, about eating out, if you factor in that the FDA allows you 25, 20 to 25% room north or south on it, and then you add in human air. Because that, so when you go to a restaurant and they have to label the calories, you know, let's just say like is 20%. So it's 20%. Right.

So you, yes. This burrito bowl, that's 400K. It fits a 2000 calorie diet. That could be 400 calories. Well, okay. So this burrito bowl has this, this has one cup of rice, six ounces of this of this whatever and it has to be this many calories FDA Says that they have to be within 20% of that the problem is then you have somebody who's serving it Who potentially can go over by 10 or 15% on the rice or over on the meat or whatever sauces or guacamole or whatever else

You're doing and that doesn't that's not held accountable the same way that the recipe is. So you could literally be off by 30 to 50%, very easily by the room that the FDA allows with the labels. And then in addition to that, the heavy hand that a lot of these servers will do because they want you to be satisfied and happy with your service. But they have a little extra oil. Yeah. So man, that, and that's what makes eating out so difficult when you're trying to do it. So, part of, and I don't even think we actually listed this in our steps, but I think this is

another good point since we brought this up. When I'm asking a client to let's figure your metabolism out, let's track, this is the time when I'm asking if I could ever get you to be as disciplined as possible to make your food yourself. This is the time. Because we're trying to get as accurate a number of times. Yes, right.

We're trying to be really accurate. And if you are eating at, which, that doesn't mean you can't eat out in the future, I will figure out how to adjust for that. It doesn't mean I'm asking you forever, you can't eat out. But for this next week to two weeks that we are going to be tracking to figure out where your current metabolism is at right now, you limiting how much you're eating out

does a wonder for me as far as trying to get precise on where you're at. Or at the very least, or to put it differently, I would say. So step one is what you're talking about, which is track calories and macros for two weeks. And what you don't want to do is change your diet or change your activity. We wanna see where you're normally at. Now, to what Adam's saying, if you eat the same thing every day and you're tracking it, what I would have a client do is then weigh that.

Okay, so they're saying, I'm eating this, I'm eating that. Well, can you weigh that for me so I know exactly how many calories you're taking in. And the goal of this is not to live like this, by the way. I don't think it's reasonable to ask somebody to track food for the rest of lives. I also don't think it's unreasonable to ask when to do that for only two weeks to learn.

Yes, you know what I'm saying? We just want to know. We just want to know right now what a good starting point is and get as accurate as possible. And this is one of the best ways to do it. And so what you do is, for two weeks, everything that goes in your mouth, you weigh it and you track it and you know, that way we know.

And there's apps that are amazing for this now. Fat secret, very easy to use, enter the food in. Once you weigh it, you can plug it in, it does all the calculations for it. I mean, we used to have to do this out of a book. I remember I had a... Yeah, what was that called? Calorie King.

Yeah, there's a book and then it became a website, but yeah, we didn't have this crazy resource. Yeah, so and you wanna keep your diet like it's been because I don't wanna see how, you know, how you can change it into weeks. That's such a good point, Sel, like that's, and I always have to reiterate that to a client when I'm explaining to them is like,

I know you're got your coach or your trainer sitting across the table from you, telling you, we're gonna start tracking Payant Tension, but what I don't want you to do is to try and impress me. This week, I want you to be consistent. I want you to do what you normally do so I can get in your Instagram food. Yeah, no, this is not, this is not trying

to impress coach because he's paying attention. If you, every day, you just snickers bar at noon, I actually want you to do that right now. I mean, you just see what you're cat way by. I was burning. I want to be to do that right now. Yeah, and you just see what you're catwalking by. I was burning. I want to be able to track everything and go like, okay, this is what they, this is a normal diet. Because it's going to tell me not just where your calories are,

it's also going to let me know how and balanced your macronutrients are. Is this person not getting enough healthy fats? Are they under-consuming on the protein? Are they getting enough fiber? You're dieting. You could be with this first step the better. The less accurate you are with this step,

the more it's gonna be challenging for you moving ahead. Yeah, and accurate means being consistent with how you normally would be. That's what I'm not accurate to following. Oh, I've had clients who were like, oh, I need at least 40 pounds, and they'd bring me their tracking for the first five days, and I'd look at it and be like,

yeah. You look like you're following a diet, all of a sudden. Like for breakfast, you have like three ounces of chicken breast. And I'm only drinking water. I'm like no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no we're gonna base it off of an accurate number. You know, it's like doing math. When you do a math problem, it's got 15 steps. If the first step is off, that's it. You're screwed. In the more it's off, the more the whole number's gonna be off. So you have to be super accurate because this first step of tracking

is gonna affect the rest of what we're gonna do. It reminds me of this foundation that was laying for the shed and I had a guy helping me. And it was just off. It was off like maybe like a half inch on one side. That was it. Roond, everything was wonky after that. It's just like, it's gotta be right.

This also sets the table for easy coaching steps. And what I mean by that is when I was talking about how when you track like this, many times we find out as you're over consuming sugar, underdoing protein, like not getting up fiber, there's like a ton of things where you're missing and instead of like taking you from that's how you normally eat to like, okay, here's the diet the trainer gives you,

I'm actually gonna look at that and go like, hey, let's just, let's improve one or two things here. That's it. And just focus on that. Like I'm not gonna coach anywhere else from that. And if you- But you wouldn't know where to go if it wasn't accurate. That's right.

If it's inaccurate, then whatever, and what everybody thinks they want is, okay, I'm on my fitness routine. Okay, coach, give me the diet. I'm gonna follow the diet. It's like, why would we do that? If you were coming from this extreme of under-consuming on fiber, over-consuming on sugar,

under-consuming on protein, not getting enough healthy fats, like there's so many little things that I can start to make tweaks that won't make these radical changes in your lifestyle that are so hard to follow. It's just like, oh wow, we're that low on fiber. I'm simply going to add this, you know,

spinach salad into your diet or a cup of blueberries. And I'm not gonna mess with anything else. Let's just see what that does. You're gonna put it down in the water. Yeah, like just, so that is the idea of this is to get a really good baseline of where you're currently at, so we can make these micro adjustments that eventually lead to this huge change in your life.

Yeah, so what's the key here? Patience for the first two weeks. Just track, Tri-Instate is accurate, and is normal as possible, this includes activity. Yes. This also means you don't all of a sudden do a bunch more activity because you know that you're tracking.

Be normal and patient for the next two weeks because this is going to be the base for everything that we do. If you do want to as well, like this is where we do recommend like Fitbits or Apple Watch or whatever. So you do just get a little bit of an idea of like how many steps per day because that does kind of at least you can see the trends that way. You know, it's something that I make mandatory. So I know that we talked about it

as a potential option in these steps. I think it gives me so much insight. It also again sets the table for micro adjustments. So if I get a client and I say, listen, don't do any extra activity. If you, this is the day, this is what you do at work. This is when you go grocery shopping.

This is the day you clean house. Keep all normal stuff the same. If you rarely go to the gym, I actually still want you to do rarely go to the gym. I don't want you to all of a sudden, because we're getting ready to start our routine to go to the gym five or seven days a week, because if you don't normally do that,

you're gonna throw off my calculation. So I wanna see a normal week of activity or the lack of. So then I can let, and I love using steps as an easy way to kind of measure that. So then I look at a week and I go, oh, look, we only average 4,000 steps. Now I have another subtle thing that I can do to this client that will show improvement in their overall health by just telling them, okay, for this week, we're going to shoot, try and shoot for 6,000 steps a day. Yes. A basic, small, easy goal with, shoot, try and shoot for 6,000 steps a day. A basic, small, easy go, by the way, and extra 2,000 steps is literally you going for a

walk for 20 minutes outside and you'll achieve that. So it's not a big ask to get my client to start moving in the right direction. And because I know where their baseline is, I can do this little micro adjustment. Totally. Now, step two is kind of an extension to step one. And that is to track your body weight and circumference measurements or body fat percentage if you want, because what we want to do, the goal is after two weeks, you didn't go up and you didn't go down.

Okay. So everything should stay the same if you did this right. Now if you didn't do this right, don't worry. If it went up or down, that'll help us get a better estimate of your color or context. So if somebody's tracking for two weeks and they're like, okay, I tracked everything, but I dropped three pounds or four pounds

over the last couple of weeks. And I, you know, I, let's say I rule out water retention and that kind of stuff. It's okay, well, you probably ate less than your body's burning within that period of time. Probably a few hundred calories less. So I'm gonna readjust your maintenance by that. Or let's say you lost weight and lost strength

and lost performance and that kind of stuff. Then I'll do the same thing and say, well, you probably under eight and sometimes that happens. By the way, that's more often than not. That's what happens when people track. Even if they try and stay normal that actually because they're aware, like Adam said, they tend to naturally eat a little less.

So if I see some weight loss, which I don't want, but let's say I see that, then I'll know, okay, you're probably a few hundred calories above what this number is that we're tracking. Now, if you weigh yourself, if you take measurements, if you do body fat tests, it's very important that you do all of it same time of the day, same food intake, same water, same everything. Because what we don't want to do is, oh, I gained four pounds, but really it's because

you weighed yourself at night versus the morning. Or I took a body fat test. Well, yeah, last time John tested me this time, it was Susan and they both have different ways of pinching my skin full, you know, what the calipers and all that stuff. So you're gonna be as consistent as possible. If it's just weighing yourself on the scale or like doing, like I don't know, Doug, a lot of times we'll do just like the waist measurement.

In the morning, it's just great because nothing interrupts that yet. Like you haven't had any food. Like it doesn't vary at all. It's always pretty much the same that you're like situation that you're gonna deal with in the morning, so I always like try for that, but again, it really just has to be consistently the same time, the same exact protocol every time. Now during this two week period,

I'm actually not making any adjustments unless I see something very dramatic happen. And I like to take the one week snapshot, so like I'm having them get you know, get on the scale or tracks or conference or whatever, maybe on a morning or daily basis for the time period. But it's- You're looking at the track.

I'm looking at a week at a time, right? So I, because you could easily, especially my female clients, fluctuate, you know, water retention up and down of, you know, two to four pounds. And what you don't want to do is go, oh, I'm way under eating because I drop two pounds and then you increase your calories

and then when you would have leveled back out the next day. So I'm paying attention because I don't want to see anything dramatically happen. Like what I don't want to see is day one of deciding to do this, we drop two pounds, day two, we drop two pounds again, day three, we drop two, I'm going to quick adjustment at that point. If I see two to two, right away,

okay, we're under eating, We need to increase our calories. But if I see two pounds go down one day and then you come back up one pound the next day and then like, we're probably in a pretty close area. I'm going to pay attention to. I would say depending on the individual at the end of the two week period, the buffer that I tend to give people is about three or four pounds. Yeah. Above that, or, you know, then I start to say, okay, the calories that you were tracking were off

from what you normally, like I remember once I had a client who had a lot of weight to lose, you had 80 pounds to lose we did this and I said the same thing. I just said now I said, you know, make sure you're accurate don't change anything it was insane at the end of 10 at the end of two weeks he lost eight pounds and I know what happened is that just because he's aware two weeks he lost eight pounds. And I know what happened is that just because he's aware, instead of eating five cookies, the eight three cookies or whatever, instead of eating, you know, 10 ounces of meat, the eight, you know,

seven ounces or whatever. So I said, okay, I know you said you were accurate, but it looks like you were actually below what your maintenance is, so I know we have a little bit room to go up. So that's why this is very important. But if you do this right, you should have no change. That's the goal.

The goal is that two weeks I see no change. And the things I always have to make clear to my client is that just because we don't see a movement on the scale, it doesn't mean we're not already seeing progress. So especially if they start working. Yeah. So you come to me, you want to lose 30 pounds. I tell you, okay, the next couple weeks we're going to be tracking, figuring it all this out. I actually don't want to see anything go on the scale. Right away, they get discouraged. Right away, they think like, oh, figuring all this out. I actually don't wanna see anything go on the scale. Right away they get discouraged. Right away they think like, oh, you mean to tell me I'm gonna be doing stuff and tracking

and working towards my goal, but yet in two weeks, I'm not gonna see results. And it's like, no, no, no, we are. I mean, if we are weight training and we are tightening up the diet, figuring out what you're consuming, I promise we're moving in the right direction. What I just don't wanna see is this dramatic drop

on the scale, like you think you want to see. No, we need an accurate number. No, yeah, we want it. And absolutely, if you stay the same and you've weight train for two weeks and you're starting to track your food, I promise we're moving in the right direction. Yeah, and that's exactly it. Then you got a good starting point, right? All right, so step three is now that you have a accurate-ish number that your body's burning

on a regular basis, in other words, your maintenance. So we figured out how many calories you need to eat every single day to stay the same, okay, to stay the same body weight. Now we can adjust according to your goal. So now I can look at this and say, okay, you're averaging 2500 calories a day. We didn't gain or lose any weight. Looks like you were pretty accurate with your calories. I know you want to lose weight.

Now I can drop you down to 2000 to start the weight loss. Or, okay, you want to gain muscle. You know, you're eating 2,000 calories a day, that keeps you the same. I can bump you up 500 calories. Or, which is more common, people want to lose weight. I look at their calories and go,

they're too low to cut from. Yes. We're going to do a slow reverse diet. That's almost built. That's almost every time. Right. So that's important to make this clear, right? It's like 80% of the time I was.

Every once in a while, very rare. But every once in a while, you will get somebody who will track for two weeks, they'll come back. And this has happened to me, but it's one out of every 25 or 50, it's very low. We'll come back and be like, well, Adam, looks like I'm eating 50, 500 calories in junk food. I'm only moving 2,000 steps.

And it's like, oh, cool. And for a trainer, by the way, this is like heaven. Yeah. Getting somebody who is eight like shit, 5,000 plus calories, they're not moving whatsoever. It's like, oh my god, this can be such a big climb. What a couple small small adjustments to die. Like, yes, let's skip the McDonald's. Let's have this instead. And then like, we're going to start weight training. Oh, and start moving

4,000 steps a day. And this person is just going to have the right to they are rare that you get that most people have tried to die in lose weight on their own so many times that their metabolism has slowed and adapted to this, like what Sal was alluding to, this really low calorie intake. So even though you came in to see me and you go, Adam, I wanna lose 50 pounds,

we track and see where you're currently at. So let's just say you weigh 250 pounds and you wanna drop down the 200, and we track your pounds and you want to drop down the 200 and we track your calories and your averaging 2100 calories and your email and your 250 pounds, I'm not going to cut you from there. Even though your goal is to lose, yes, I could drop you to 1500 calories, show you initial drop, but I'm going to convince you here that actually what our goal is going to be now

is to slowly increase calories and do our best to keep the scale about the same. Kind of how we've decided to start those first two weeks, we're gonna extend that. But now I'm gonna start introducing a little bit more calories based off of what I see now. And normally I have a direction. That's either fiber or that's protein, right?

There's different things that I can look at and go, okay, we're not getting our healthy fats. I'm not getting enough of that. So I'm gonna bump you like with an avocado now in your diet. Yeah, now without getting too much in the weeds, because this episode's more about how to figure out your calories, usually what it looks like is,

okay, your calories are too low to cut from, because remember consider this, okay? You're losing weight, we're gonna cut your calories to lose weight, we don't wanna end up in a place that's not sustainable, like I gonna cut your calories to lose weight, we don't wanna end up in a place that's not sustainable. I don't want you to end up at a thousand calories a day to maintain your 30 pound weight loss. It's just not gonna be sustainable.

I know you'll gain the weight back eventually. You live in a country where food is all over the place and nobody wants to live that way, right? So usually the calories are too low to start to cut from. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna slowly increase your calories at step one, Definitely do strength training, because strength training sends a signal to the body that says build muscle.

Simultaneous, they say speed up the metabolism. So we're gonna boost the metabolism that way. And Adam said your body weight doesn't change because what ends up happening with you at the right way is your metabolism speeds up. You lose some fat, you gain some muscle. Weight stays at the same level of scale, faster metabolism, but you're smaller overall

because fat takes up more space. muscle, weight stays in the same scale, fast metabolism, but you're smaller overall because fat takes up more space. The third thing I usually do is I increase your protein intake. Most people are not eating the amount of protein that can maximize the results from protein. Proteins also are satiating, we've done lots of episodes on this. So that's the other thing that I'm typical of that. Sometimes, essential fats are not high enough. And I've seen this more in my female clientele.

It seems like this is less and less of an issue, but back when I was training people, fat was so demonized that I'd get female clients but like you ate 20 grams of fat today. Like we need to bump your essential fats up. You need or your fatty acid and take up. You need more fat. So usually those are the steps that we'll take.

And then once we get the calories to a point where I feel like we can cut from, then we'll start to cut. If you want a bulk, we typically just go from there and start your strength training. And again, like Adam said, in the rare occasion that I get somebody who's overweight because there are eating so many calories,

it's a really easy place to start from where I can do the thing. And I think, so, I mean, I'd like to hear what you guys do. I have my way of like, how do I decide, you know, when I've been adding calories, how do I decide I want to come back the other direction? What's that number look like?

Because obviously everybody's going to be different weights and, you know, male, female, activity level. So there's all these different variables that would decide this person, oh, I start to cut a 2500 this person at 35. So how do I determine that? And what I'm looking for for a client is I want to take a client and I want to slowly increase calories until the feedback I get is out of the car. Yeah. Like I'm eating so much food. Yeah, I want to take a client who needs to lose weight. And I want to take a client who needs to lose weight

and I want to be able to change their diet and their macros and start feeding them the nutrient dense foods that they need and focus on strength, I saw, saying, and slowly keep increasing calories until the pushback I get is, Adam, I'm having a hard time hitting my calorie intake. That, and that could be different for everybody. Maybe 3,000 is a lot for you.

Maybe I got you all the way up to 4,000, 4,500 before I come down. It's going to be different for each client, but that's what I'm seeking. I'm looking to get you to a place where it's like hard to get your calories in because then it's very natural for you to go, okay, hey, don't worry about that. Fourth meal I had you eating. Just skip it. Now, this is a relatively slow process. And I say relatively because in the context

of how fast people want results, it's slow. People want results tomorrow. But I mean, I remember one person in particular, young lady that I trained, she competed in figure competitions. She also ran a lot. So she was running about 25 miles a week, working out five days a week.

She was competing in figure competitions. When she came to me, she was consuming roughly 1,300 calories just to maintain. We slowly got to the point where she was only lifting away three days a week and only running five miles a week. So that's a huge reduction. This is over a course of a year. We did a reverse diet, I got up to 2,600 calories.

And her body fat percentage maintained at a very low percentage. So from 20, not, which did a reverse diet, I got up to 2600 calories. And her body fat percentage maintained at a very low percentage. So from 20, not, which ones easier to maintain, right? So that's why this is such an important thing. Don't think short-term, think, don't think how I'm gonna lose a weight, think how I'm gonna keep it off. That's the place that you wanna be when you're doing this.

All right, next step, don't radically change your activity yet. Let's not, don't get to this point and be like, okay, cool, I know where I need to go. Five days a week of tons of activity. This is a lot harder than most people think. It's because of the motivation and the hype. You know, it's, you're doing these things

and you're starting to really kind of dial it in. The next thing you want to do is just go for it and go ham. You know what the activity, because I mean, basically adding the kitchen sink, it just means like you're gonna get to your goal faster. Yeah, that's where everybody thinks. Everybody thinks more work, more effort, you know, more results and it just doesn't work that way.

I mean, I treated the same way I did when I was competing as I do with my clients, which is all the, if you tell me as a client, like Adam, I could come in two more days a week and lift. I can't, I got the time, I'm committed, I'll wait, or hey, I could go on my lunch break and I could go for an hour walk and they're telling me they can do all these things

or on the weekends, I could go for these big hikes. It's like, cool. We got all that, and that's great that we have those as a possible. Yeah, we'll get there. And I want to use all those things for plateau breakers. If we are seeing results by increasing calories and focusing on strength and moving at your minimal amount, three days a week, you're training in the gym, that's it.

And we are changing your body composition week over week. I don't want to fuck with that. I want to keep that going until we start to stall because it's inevitable. The body will adapt eventually to all those things and you will start to stall a little bit. And then now we can use all those things to kickstart the plateau. Here, let me use an analogy because I think some people watch and are like, but why? Like, wouldn't it just be better? And what if they really want to move more? Okay, so here's an analogy. Imagine if I had like 10 workers and I came out and I said, here's some plans. We're going to build a very sophisticated building.

Here's step one, we're just going to build the foundation and they do that really well. And then I say, okay, here's another 200 workers. I have no more plans. Keep building. And they're like, what do you mean keep building? Just just build, just build. After a year of them building like crazy, I show up with the plans and say, it's all wrong. Tare down, let's put this through, do this.

That's what ends up happening. You throw a bunch of activity at yourself, inevitably what happens, you do something unsustainable, you push your metabolism in the wrong direction because the activity people tend to choose, tons of cardio, which can make your metabolism want to go in the opposite direction and prevent the muscle building signaling.

And then you end up in a position where all the stuff we're talking about, it just went in the opposite direction. So you did all this activity to lose the next 10 pounds. Now you're stuck and it's unsustainable. Why is it my body working for me? I can't possibly work out more. I can't possibly cut my calories more.

Oh great, I give up. I gain all the way back. So patience, don't radically change or increase your activity. Here's the way that I think you can radically change your activity. Focus on building strength. That's positive. So if you're not doing strength training, we're going to do that. What we're referring to is, you know, kind of what we said earlier, which is, cool. Now I'm ready to go.

I'm going to go from zero days of tons of activity to every day. It's really the calorie burn mindset. Yes, you're just trying to do anything and everything you can to promote movement and activity. Totally. And I'm not against that when we get to the final parts of your goal, to shred that last bit or to take you to a level you've never been, but at the beginning, and I say this all the time on the show, our goal is to, and this goes for both building muscle and

for burning body fat. My goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. And that should be the mindset when we're doing this. That is not the mindset for health and becoming athletic and stuff like that, but when the pursuit is I wanna lose the most fat as possible, I wanna build as much muscle as possible.

If either one of those two is your main goal, then the mindset should be doing as little as possible to elicit them a lot of time. It's not being lazy. No, it's not a lazy one. It's systematic and disciplined. No. And that's the thing.

You've got to look at the plan and stick with the plan. Yeah, well, let me ask you guys is, how important in terms of sustainable progress results is how you start, right? It's everything. How you start is everything in terms of sustainability. All right, so step five. Now this is when you start, you hone it in.

And remember, I started the podcast by talking about how metabolism is changing. It flows, it can move up, it can move down. Whatever your number was that you started with was accurate for that period of time. It's not gonna to remain accurate. Your metabolism is going to speed up or maybe at some point it'll slow down because life gets stressful.

You're maybe you're not eating as much. Maybe you're not getting good sleep or you got sick and you know you couldn't work out or whatever. This is where you slowly hone it in. You pay attention to the signals because what you don't want to do, and I've seen people do this before, is they do the first four steps beautifully, and then that's it, they stay there.

Even though stuff is changing, even though the body's telling them, that's not enough calories anymore, or that's too much now, they stay doing it. I don't know, this is how many calories it burns. This is how many calories you burned, but now we gotta pay attention. So what are those signals?

Well, body weight, body fat percentage, circumference measurements. Performance is my favorite goal. That's my favorite metric. If you're working out of the gym and your energy is dropping, your strength is going down, you're feeling sore, you're feeling stiff, that sometimes can tell you you're not feeding yourself properly. It could also tell you to adjust your workouts. Maybe you're working out too hard.

Your energy levels, like throughout the day, sleep. All these things, pay attention to all these, because then you can, and this is the beauty of fitness. It's a tool that improves the quality of your life, regardless of the context of your life. But that means you have to change it. That means if I'm really stressed out, stuff's going on and I can't beat myself up in the gym like I do when everything's going perfect.

I can't feed myself the same when everything's perfect. So every single week, you pay attention to these things and you move things up, you move things down. This is how you start to learn to read your body. And that's actually a movie in the direction of never having to really go crazy with tracking. Again, that that you'll never go back and revisit it, but you can move to a position where you just need to hone your hone all the time and you can maintain this. Well, we listed this as the fifth step, but this really does belong at the beginning

too. And the reason why this is so important to understand this even right out the gates is because you come in and you hire me and you want to lose 50 pounds on the scale That I mean that you've that's what drove you to come to me right and to invest into hiring a coach or a trainer It's it's really hard to Stay the course if you don't learn to attach your success to all these other things Yeah, you're your energy your sex skin, you're mood, you're productivity, like all of your strength and performance.

Yeah, pay attention, all of it. It's so important to reframe your goal. You come in, you know the big goal is to lose that 50 pounds and we're going to get there. But right away, I want to already start being, I already want my client to start paying attention to those things so they can see those small wins because we may not get those big wins on the scale for a while.

It may be months before I start to really show you that scale dropping in the direction that you came in and originally that's all you wanted. So this is so important that when you're at this place of I have this big goal, I want to lose all this weight, that okay, that's fine and that's the big goal. But initially when we are trying to do this correctly, figure out your macros, figure out your calories, work with your metabolism, not against it, we want to start to attach all the other things to it, right? Like I just listed off the

mood, the sex drive, the hair, the performance. You ever watch on YouTube, they'll have these videos where someone's building something or sculpting or doing like a piece of art? And for the first three quarters of the video, you can't even tell what it is. Until after about three quarters, you go, oh wow, that's gonna be a gorgeous painting.

Oh my God. You're like, like paints, upside down portraits, and it's just like throwing paint on there, and you're like, what is he doing? And then at the very end, the reveal is this amazing. Well, it's kind of what people do, is they don't pay attention to the progress. Like you watch someone building something,

I always, I watch people building things on these videos all the time, and I know what the title says, so I kind of know what to look for, but I can't even tell until about three quarters through. That doesn't mean they weren't moving towards that the whole time, even though I couldn't tell. So it's important to pay attention to all these other things.

And by the way, that's what's going to drive you for the rest of your life. Because there's things you're going to be able to tweak and modify based off of your energy level, based off not getting enough sleep based off of sex drive, whatever it is. You get a better understanding of your body and that feedback, that signal, and you're listening to your body in terms of how things are going. So you'll be able to adjust down the road. Yeah, and often those signals,

for lack of a better term, predate weight gain or weight loss. So before the scale goes in the wrong direction, you'll notice your performance changed a little bit. You'll notice your sleep is a little off or whatever. So these are really, really good signals to kind of pay attention to. Well, anytime you're building anything of any significance, this is important. I mean, think about trying to build a business. And if all we thought about was the dollar amount that we needed to make, how quickly did

you get up? Yeah, you give up. Like, we would give, we would invest just to make the next level. Yeah, we would give, we would give it up on this business years ago if all we were measuring was the amount of money it's producing for us or making, which is similar to going in and saying, hey, I have this big weight loss call. And the only way I'm going to measure my success

is the scale weight going up or down. It's like, no, you know, wonder so many people quit. There's so many other aspects that are so important to laying a solid foundation that you have to learn to pay attention to, just like in business. It's like, okay, yeah, we're not making any money yet, but we've now built this, and we've now created this, and we've now built this community, and there's more people, it's like, you have to think the same way when you're going towards a massive goal, when it comes to sculpting

or building a body, is like, there are so many other markers that you can already be moving, or moving in the right direction, even though maybe the ultimate scale, making money, whatever isn't happening yet. Yeah, great analogy. Okay, so let's say you're somebody that's like, man, when I pay that close attention to my food, when I start to weigh things, when I start to count things,

it messes with me mentally. It's not good for my behaviors around food, not good for my relationships around food, or maybe you're just like, I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna live that way. Is there another way to do this? And there is. Now, I am gonna be quite clear

if you wanna get to your goal faster, or you wanna get shredded, or you want extreme performance, what I'm about to say is not great. So what I'm about to say doesn't apply to somebody to a guy who wants to get, you know, below 10% body fat, right? Or a woman who wants to get some little bit of strations and her obliques or whatever.

But what I am about to say, will get most people to a pretty balanced state, meaning you're gonna get relatively lean, relatively fit, relatively healthy, which is cool because most people, that's all they want. Most of the clients ever trained did not want to get 6% body fat, or at least didn't want to live the lifestyle that required to get 6% fat.

I would make the case that you're going to get more than just relatively fat. I think the steps that you're about to give right now would get most people very healthy in fit. Well, that's very healthy. I say relatively because someone wants to get on stage. You're not going to get shredded that way. No, but you're going to have flat midsection.

Yeah, you're going to have to be a little bit more. Look and feel great, which is what most people want to do. And it's fair. Now, what you're about to list too, though, is it's inevitably going to take longer because you're not sure very precise about it. We're also working on behaviors. That's right.

And I think this, even if you did the first five steps, this in combination with the first five steps. this incommunation with the first five, where you want to end up. Oh, this is beautiful. Okay, so what we want to do is we want to hone in, and this is true, on our body's natural ability to want to be healthy. Now, that sounds crazy, because we think,

oh, our body's natural tendencies, the want to be obese and inactive and all that stuff. No, it's not. The problem is, is that we've modified our environments to the point where our bodies, our primitive bodies, don't match the environment and we're paying the consequences. So, how do we get our bodies to want to be, to be able to read the signals properly, to live in this modern life so that it's healthy, natto-beasts, and unhealthy. Well, number one, and this is a big one, and I used to love messing with my clients with this one, because they would all lose weight. Usually, I would see no joke, 10 to 15 pound weight loss

for clients, sometimes as low as seven, but usually around 10 to 15 pounds, just by doing this, avoid heavily processed foods. And I love doing it because I would always follow up by saying, but eat as much as you want. And my clients would always trip out. What do you mean eat as much as you want? Well, don't eat like, try to avoid foods

that come in boxes or wrappers or pre-prepared food. Just eat whole natural foods, eat until you're full. And that's it, we'll see what happens. And they would always lose weight and they would always think there was something magical about the food and somehow my god, the chemicals and heavily processed foods. I didn't know they made me fat.

And what do they do? And no, this is really what it boils down to. It's quite simple. Heavy processed food are engineered. There's a lot of money that goes into the right combination of salty, sweet, fat, crunch, appearance, how it feels, and your mouth feel like I can't even list all the things that they pay attention.

And this has been over the decades. They've really made this a ridiculous science to the point where you will overeat. Studies now shows very clearly 600 calories of overeating on a regular basis happens from eating heavily processed foods. Well, too, this kind of behaviorally forces people to slow down and to address this. You're going to have to make something out of this whole food. You've got to actually do some work to cook it. You've got to go grab all the items and put them together.

You actually know what is in there in terms of like, I mean, you have a better sense of the actual calories that you're gonna consume. So, I mean, there's a lot of other factors that go into this, but it's definitely one of those, like the quickness. Like it's easier to get the processed food because it's like ready, already, versus, you know, I have to actually plan the salad.

There's also a very important psychological game that Sal is playing too, is he's not telling the client that they have to eat this certain way or they can't have something. That they get, that's taking anything away necessarily. I'm saying you should eat yourself. And that may be one of the most powerful things. Aside from that, the food's hyper-palatable

when it's processed and it makes you want to eat more food, just simply the psychology of, oh wow, my coach is saying that, hyper-palatable when it's processed and it makes you want to eat more food. Just simply the psychology of, oh wow, my coach is saying that, if I'm hungry to eat, I don't have to fight that. I don't have to fight that. Just make choices as whole food choices. It gives them this freedom and it doesn't make them feel like they're restricting, which is a very dangerous place for these type of people.

We're talking to you right now, people have a tendency of binging. So giving them the freedom to eat when they want, so long as they choose from whole natural foods, really unlocks that, and I think that's one of the most powerful parts. So let me illustrate just how big of a deal these heavily processed foods are, or how it affects us, okay?

Imagine if I took all of the ingredients for a, let's say a small pizza, okay? And I took them separately. You had your cup of flour, you had your water, you had your oil, you had your pepperonis, you had your tomato sauce, all separately. And I said, eat all this, right? Eat all of this in the next 30 minutes. Nobody would be able to eat just a cup of flour and it would be gross. But if I put them together and organize them into a small pizza, well now it's hyper-palatable and I can eat the hell of it.

Here's another example, right? A family-sized bag of potato chips is like five potatoes. I could eat a whole bag of potato chips, no problem. I could not, even if I tried to force myself to eat five plain potatoes with nothing on them. Be very hard, right? That's how powerful these foods are, simply avoiding them and they do really good studies on this.

So literally take, this is, there's very few totally controlled nutrition studies. Most of them are based off surveys, which is why nutrition and diet advice is so wonky. But they done really good control studies where they take groups of people and they put them in a lab. Literally scientists are watching everything and they say, you over here, this group over here, you have access to heavily processed food and then you over here, you have access to a whole natural foods. By the way, they control for macros in there.

So very similar macro breakdown for people who are like, oh, one group is eating more protein or whatever. No, no, it's very similar. Then they watch them and say, eat as much as you want. They don't say anything else. Then they watch them and then they take those groups and they switch them. They switch rooms, okay? You can't make a study better than this.

Consistently, 600 more calories a day from heavily processed foods. And you want to talk about what's contributed to the obesity epidemic. It's not carbs, it's not fats. If you look, the instance of heavily processed foods in our diet, how much that goes up or obesity goes up. So I think now it's something like 70, something percent or 80 percent of our diets

are heavily processed. So that's just one step right there that tends to bring you a little bit more in balance. All right, the next step is to aim for a high protein diet. Okay? If you track anything, make a protein. So take your body weight and divide it by half or aim for your body weight. So if you weigh 200 pounds, try to eat 100 or 200 grams of protein on the higher end is probably better. And each meal break that up and say, okay, every meal need to have 40

grams of protein and eat that first. Yeah, that's, I was going to add that. Yeah. That's, I think that's the next key to that is like first figure out how many grams of protein you need, target that, make sure you eat that first. And if you're sticking to whole foods, tell you what, sticking to whole foods and leading with a protein, your calories drop. It's hard, it's hard to over consume with that. That's, and that's the key. A lot of people don't realize that. It's hard to over eat when you do those two things. Yes.

It's, it's, you know, it took me a long time to figure this one out that even as a coach and trainer, understanding all this stuff like that, like just my own behaviors around, like, because the way we serve, like, what, at any restaurant you go to, a carb comes out for us. For dinner chips.

Yeah, bread and chips and breadsticks and dips and like, that's what you get at almost every restaurant. And then by the time you get your nice steak that you ordered 30 minutes later, you've munched on everything else. And then you also have the temptation of the mashed potatoes and gravy or what else is on the plate. And so a lot of times I would watch myself leave

some of them protein on there because I got so full eating. There's stuff or stuff myself on the meat because I feel guilty because I'm like, God, I have this expensive steak that I ate and I'm full right now, but I don't want to leave any of that. But even then, you would eat less if you ate the steak first. Yeah, if I would just ate the steak first. It's naturally.

And that, and again, playing with the psychology again, telling clients, no, it's not that you can't have these carbs or that you know, just eat that first, and then afterwards indulge in that, and what ends up happening is you just, you eat less. Now, it's more high-approaching diet contributes to more muscle growth, which contributes to your faster metabolism. It also produces the most satiety.

So just eat your protein first and try and eat high protein. Yeah, that's essential. The next one is to drink a lot of water, half a gallon to a gallon a day. Now, is this because water has this incredible ability to melt fat off your body? No, doesn't do that. It doesn't flush fat out of your body. I've seen people actually say that, drink a lot of water. Flush is fat out of your body.

It doesn't work that way. What it does do though, is it makes you not drink anything else, and it keeps you hydrated, which also helps with appetite. And that's it, those two things right there make a really big difference. Like if you aim for that water intake, you're far less likely to consume calories from other fluids, and it actually reduces cravings.

Sometimes cravings occur because you need water. You've actually seen that study. Yeah, it occur because you need water. It actually affects studies. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, energy levels was a big one for me. I noticed when I was properly hydrated, I was just more active just as a result of feeling energetic because I was fueling my body with the proper hydration. I needed.

Again, you're playing the psychology game. Totally, right? These are all behavior. I'm not telling my, and you know, this is, and I can't stand when there's fitness professionals that like to take something like this, like the drinking a gallon of water thing, debunk it, shit on it.

Oh, it's, we don't need that much water. We don't need that much water. The reason why this thing is so valuable is that if you give a client a goal like that, if someone's never drank a gallon in a day, or a half gallon a day even, and you give them a half gallon goal, well, they ultimately always come back, like, wow, there's so much water. I don't know, it's have a hard a day or a half gallon a day even and you give them a half gallon goal. Well they ultimately always come back like, wow, that is so much water.

I don't know, it's half a heart all day long. I'm trying to get to that gallon. They're so focused on drinking enough water in the day. Their mouth isn't busy snacking on bullshit or drinking liquid calories. So that's one of the most beneficial parts about this. Yes, water is important. Yes, we need water, but there isn't this like arbitrary number that everybody needs exactly this month.

No, it's just like when I give a client a goal of a half gallon or a gallon, what I have found is they're so focused on taking in versus saying that I can't have these other things. And I think that's another great strategy when you're doing it. Totally. Here's the next one.

Don't eat while distracted. In other words, don't be on your phone while you eat, don't watch TV while you eat, just focus on your food. Now why say this? Studies are consistent, they show about 10, 10% less calories you consume. Literally because you're distracting yourself with your phone, first off, A, you could be, you know, invoking anxiety or fear or sadness or whatever

from being on social media, which they do very well. They do invoke those feelings very well, which tends to make people want more comfort from food. But even if we remove that, being distracted means you're not as in tune with the signals that your body is telling you. And so studies will show when people eat with their phone or in front of the TV, they eat about 10, 15% more calories. So if you're eating 2000 calories a day, not eating distracted, we'll cut your calories on average by about 200. Without even trying, that's the beauty of this.

It's not even something you have to count. And again, speaking to behavior, I'm not telling you to eat less. I'm just saying, don't eat while you're distracted. And then let's watch what happens. Here's another one. This one actually I posted on Twitter and people didn't understand. They thought it was some, you know, magic digestive thing. Don't drink fluids while you eat. Has nothing to do with the combination of fluids and food and digestive enzymes and all that stuff has nothing to do with that. It just slows you down. Yeah.

When you drink while you eat, you tend to eat faster, which means you tend to eat more, which your body doesn't pick up the signals of satiety as quickly. This was a huge one for me. You can get away with bigger bites, like bigger quantities at once because you can wash it down.

And that's something I had to train myself to be able to eat and slow my pace down and actually get all the chewing in, which helps with the digestive process as well. So there's lots of like benefits to that and it just seems like common sense, but for the most part, if anybody's like me, which I think a lot of people are out there,

like end up like finding yourself just consuming and washing down to get it in. Yeah, people, studies show that when people eat things that are really palatable or tasty and they have fluid with them, they'll eat the food, I think 20% faster. So think about this for yourself, if you're watching listening to this,

think about when you eat something that's like really palatable, like pizza or lasagna or something that you really, really like and it's like really fun to eat. Think of how you eat that. You probably have a drink in your hand and you're probably bite, chew, chew, chew, wash it down with a soda or something like that. But and it's because it's just part of the behavior when something's hyper palatable, you want, you're not even thinking about the food that's in your mouth. It's about the next bite. And the fluid allows you to do this faster. Take that away and just say, okay, I can't drink any fluids.

You're gonna chew and slow down way more. And slowing down, again, cuts calories by like 10%. Just doing that alone cuts your calories by 10%. This is another one that blew my mind because I didn't do this until later in my career, just as a task, because I didn't realize so much. And I think some of that comes from, and you're probably the same,

so when being the skinny kid who was trying to bulk, like I had trained myself so well to like shovel flu because I couldn't get enough calories in to build, like I wanted to when I was younger, that I didn't realize how much that behavior had stuck with me all the way into later in an adulthood. And I remember the first time that I tried to eat a meal without any fluid, how weird I felt to later in an adulthood. And I remember the first time that I tried to eat a meal without

any fluid, how weird I felt, because I didn't realize, man, I literally have my left hand on the drink. You know, subconsciously, not even really thinking about it. And the right hand is like shovel food in. You take one or two bites to absorb the taste. I'm already shoveling the next. I'm washing washing down and it's like, whoa. And when you don't have that drink there and you have to completely chew your food, it really makes you aware of, I had no idea how bad it was that I was doing that. This was the worst for me when I was always the same thing. I was always trying to put on size, skinny kid, and then I was a trainer

and I would train eight people in a day, plus I was trying to eat six meals in a day. So it was like, I had seven minutes between clients to eat this meal and wolf it down. I would stand, I'd have my water, I'd have my food, and it was just like that. It was like I was taking supplements. I'll chew, chew, swallow, chew, chew, swallow. And I went nuts.

And now for me, I developed digestive issues. This was a big deal for me. When I took out the fluid while I was chewing, it made me chew my food more. But nonetheless, against studies show that this slows people down and results in about 10% reduction in calories. Finally, just eat mindfully.

What does that mean? Just take note of how you feel. How you feel before, how you feel during, and how you feel after. That's all. You don't have to do anything else. Now, what does this lead to? Eventually, what it leads to is connecting

your feelings to cravings. Your feelings to how you may self-medicate with food. Now, the only reason why this one's hard for some people, is some people don't realize this, but when you try this, you might start to realize this. They don't want to be mindful. If it's your drug, which it is for most people, so don't feel bad if this is you,

if food is a way that you medicate, one of the last things that you may wanna do is be mindful of that fact that you're medicating. Give me an example, it's lunchtime, and normally distract their way, okay, South said on the podcast, be mindful, so how do I feel right now? Well, I feel anxious.

And then you're in line to get yourself a slice of pizza and a cookie. And they go, oh, I'm getting a slice of pizza and a cookie. And I'm anxious. Is this how I, do I crave these foods when I'm anxious? So there's some work that's done with this mindful practice. But if you do this and don't judge yourself, if you do this, what'll happen is you'll start to make more mindful practice. But if you do this and don't judge yourself, if you do this, what'll happen is

you'll start to make more mindful choices. And slowly over time, you start to make choices that are better for you overall. So that's basically what it means. You're not gonna go crazy with it. All you gotta do is be mindful, don't judge yourself, and that tends to move you in the right direction. Well, if you also follow the steps of four

of eating whole foods and slower, and you start to pick up on the right direction. Well, if you also follow the steps of four of eating whole foods and slower and not you start to pick up on the body's natural signals of telling you it's full, that you've completely suppressed for so long. Like so many people who shovel food so fast are eating these hyper-palatable foods that they're so attuned that you have these natural signals that say, hey, you're good. And so by being mindful, slowing down, doing all the steps that we, hey, you're good. And so by being mindful, slowing down, doing all the steps that we said before, you'll be surprised how many times you're eating and you go, and you might have this big plate in front of you, and you're, you're done. You're, you go like,

oh, wow, I'm pretty full. Whereas in the past, you would have just kept shoveling, or you would have ate something that would have hijacked that, that feeling, and you would have kept going anyway. So being mindful and aware of when your body starts to give you that natural signal of, oh, I thought enough to stop. I thought I don't know. You know, there's a saying, and I think it's in Japanese maybe Doug

could help me here, but I think there's a saying in Japanese that says eat until you're 80% full. Is that there is something. Let me see what that is exactly. But I think that, and I love that. I love that because we have connected eating until you're full to eating until you're stuffed, right? Oh, I'm full.

Like you're filling up a like a tinkle water. And I, oh, that's about it. We can't fit anymore. I love that saying. So you're an agony. I love that saying. It's like, eat until you're 80% full because then you eat more appropriately versus the like,

oh, I think I can't fit anymore food in my mouth. Did you find it? Yeah. How do I haki boo? Okay, and that literally what it means? Yeah, 80%. Beautiful, I love that. Look, with that, if you love our information,

head over to minepumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at my pump Justin. Adam is on Instagram at my pump Adam, and you can only find me on Twitter at my pump cell. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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