Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1840: Eleven Steps to a Single-Digit Body Fat Percentage

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin discuss how to drop to a single-digit body fat percentage. The difference between being in “shape” and being “shredded.” (2:24) Why Mind Pump doesn’t recommend this for MOST people. (8:38) Eleven Steps to a Single Digit Body Fat Percentage. #1 - Recognize it’s temporary (or suffer the consequences/have a back-out plan). (10:19) #2 - Become obsessively consistent (1% gain from 5% is obvious versus from 12%) tracking. (17:45) #3 - Cycle carbs (non-essential). (22:37) #4 - Protein must stay high. (26:35) #5 - Lift weights for strength not “burning.” (31:24) #6 - Avoid cardio until it’s necessary. (39:43) #7 - Learn to live with hunger. (43:53) #8 - Sleep and stress must be perfect. (46:18) #9 - Don’t let water changes freak you out. (49:44) #10 - The scale lies. (53:12)  #11 - Supplements become more important. (55:55) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code MINDPUMP at checkout** Father’s Day Special: Free Shipping on all apparel and equipment for $150.00 or more 6/10-6/24 June Promotion: Shredded Summer Bundle or MAPS HIIT 50% off! **Promo code JUNE50 at checkout** Mind Pump #785: Dr. Layne Norton On Taking Charge Of Your Diet, Metabolism & Relationship With Food Carb Cycling: A Good Way To Lose Fat? - Mind Pump Blog The Benefits Of Carb Cycling – Mind Pump Show Visit NutriSense for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout** Mind Pump #1815: Improving Fat Loss, Muscle Gain And Fitness With Continuous Glucose Monitors Mind Pump #1757: The Truth About The Anabolic Window & Protein Timing MAPS Fitness Products Cardio Sucks for Fat Loss – Mind Pump Blog How Much Cardio Should I be Doing if I Want to Get Shredded? - Mind Pump Blog Why The Scale Is Not Always The Best Way To Measure Progress – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Layne Norton, PhD (@biolayne)  Instagram Dr. Stephen Cabral (@stephencabral)  Instagram

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? Today's episode, this one's a fun one, a crazy one. We talk about how to get to single digit body fat percentages. So not necessarily healthy, but I know a lot of you like to experience what that's like.

Maybe you think you have the discipline. Maybe you're a competitor. So we talk about all the tricks and psychological situations and issues with, you know, not just getting lean, but getting really, really shredded. Now, this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Legion. So in this episode, we talk about protein powders and supplements. Well, Legion is the best high performance supplement company you'll find anywhere, like the best way protein powders.

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It's a great company. Again, it's one of our favorites. Go check them out if you want to include supplements in your regime. Go to buylegion.com. That's B-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com forward slash Mind Pump. Then use the code Mind Pump and get yourself 20% off or double rewards points if you're a returning customer. Also, all month long, we're running a sale on a workout program bundle and on an individual

workout program. All right. So here's what's going on. We have something called the Shredded Summer Bundle. This is the bundle that includes maps aesthetic, maps hit, maps prime, and the intuitive nutrition guy. So that's all in the bundle and it's always discounted, but we took an additional 50% off. Now the individual program that's on sale,

if you just wanna try one, is maps hit. Hit of course is high-intensity interval training. That program by itself is also 50% off. So if you're interested, go to mapsfitinistproducts.com, find the program you want, add the code June 50. So June 50 with no space for that discount. All right, here comes the show. Sal, you were doing something we were getting ready, um, to start

podcasting the other day. And I saw you eating in the front. And I've watched you over the last like few months, you know, some of the best shape you've ever been and you're getting ready to get shredded right now because you're getting ready to shoot, uh, some video. And I got to thinking, you know what? Like, you know, you were, you were you were talking about the level that you're at right now as far as where you're at in the diet. And I'm like, you know what, this would be a really, I hope, cool episode or people will appreciate because there is a difference with kind of getting in shape

and being healthy and even losing some body fat and then taking it to an extreme level of single-digit body fat. Yes. So there's some different rules that apply, and I think there's just a different mindset that you have to have to take it to where you're kind of going right now. It's very different.

It's very different. Like being lean is healthy. Being shredded is not. So it's a different mindset. It's a different approach. Of course, there's a genetic variance. Some people could be much leaner than other people and still maintain good health. But what you have to do, at least for me, and I can be very specific because as an individual, I can give you more, more exact numbers. But

what you have to do to get lean and what you have to do to get shredded or get down to single digit body fat for a man and for women, it's typically the low teens or maybe 10% even. It's a, it's a, it's a, so psychologically different and it feels so different that it warrants an episode, I think. I think you're right. Well, you've been going now for a while now, really consistent, that's probably the most consistent I've seen you on diet and training for a while.

You've been in great shape. At what point did that, did you start to know? It's like, obviously, like again, you're in good shape right now, but I know you made the mental switch like, okay, I'm gonna get really shredded for this video shoot that we're gonna do. When did that kind of tip you, like, oh man, I forgot. Like what it's like to go here.

Yeah, I've been below like 7% body fat a couple times before, and each time I remember, it's like for me, once I hit about, I wanna say 8% then it starts to feel kind of different and I noticed that my hot and cold tolerance change so like I'll sweat you know sometimes sometimes I'm cold so kind of throws it off my sleep is a little different the cravings are a whole nother level so and and I remember this from before like the leaner I get like the closer I get down to five or four percent even, I'll start to have dreams about food. It's like really weird, right?

You remember those? I do, I did. I have never in my life. Yeah, when you dream about food until I die at a that hard. And it's like I'm dreaming about like fruit. Yeah, you know what I mean? Anything.

Yeah, like just so weird, right? It's unhealthy psychologically and physically, especially for long periods of time because it's, there's, you know, consistency is great. Obsession not so much, but when you get to this, when you're getting to this type of level, you have to be obsessive about it because it's so. We don't talk about this a lot because I think that we highlight that it's, it's not a healthy place for most people to be. That being said, do you recognize

that there are some positive healthy benefits from pushing yourself to that extreme? Yeah, I mean, if you go into it, the right mindset, because I don't think it's great for everybody, but I think when you do it, and you've talked about this too, you really figure things out. You really, you become more in tune with your body, you know how it reacts to certain things.

And when you do a certain level of, of hard or challenge, then the easier levels feel much easier, right? So like maintaining 10% body fat, which is good lean for a man. I mean, you have kind of visible abs and you can maintain that in a healthy way with good consistency. That becomes a lot easier when you've played the game of getting down to 5% body fat, which is like a whole other ball.

What do you think that, is it like, is it almost like you're muscles and your receptors? Like they're just so oversaturated with food and calories and the overconsumption that most of us do, and you're just ring everything out. And so you're like ultra sensitive. What is it that you think that makes us become so in tune when you get down that low?

Yeah, that's a good question. You know what it is. I remember when you were competing, you would talk about this too. If you go from like, if you're a guy, and let's say you're sitting at 12% body fat, which is a good athletic body fat percentage, like you're not shredded, you're lean, you're fit,

you probably have good strength, good performance. Like 12 to 15% is a good athletic body fat percentage. Some people can carry leaner, but that's pretty good. If you go from 12 to 13%, you can't tell. Like you can't tell in the mirror, right? You go from five to 6% is a big difference because that 1% is 5% of your body fat, right? So I think the changes are so visible.

Like I can tell from day to day, if I do one thing that's a little different, just by the way I look and feel versus before, where I know if I have a burger, that's not gonna show up, doesn't make that bigger. Now if I go off a little bit, I can tell. And so it just makes you very sensitive, I think. Yeah, I think it makes you sensitive to the things

that you can see visually. And then also how you feel. And how you feel. That was something that surprised me that I wasn't anticipating going into it, is that once you're sort of getting down to the low single digits, I would eat a meal. And I could see the difference.

We had a body, I could feel the way my body responded to the food, like it was really, really weird. What was your line, like, you know, once you got down, when did it start to feel like, okay, here we go, like what percentage? 67% right around there. Yeah, and obviously becomes more dramatic as I got lower, right?

So, you know, the lowest I ever dunked or checked my body fat percentage was two weeks before a show. It was going into the national show. I was 3.2%. That's crazy. With two weeks to go and the final two weeks is a pretty hard cut. So I imagine I got another percent down or so, maybe more, the final two weeks. So everything is, you feel every little thing that you do,

drink, eat, all that when you get that low, but I started it already. Yeah, oh yeah. Even you miss a little sleep and you're like, oh, that's great. It looks like I get into the half percent body fat. What you can tell when you're that lean, it's really weird.

I think it's important to you before we get into this, that this isn't like something you should pursue if you're still dealing with, and most people are relationship issues with food, relationship issues with exercise, because you'll create a crazy rebound. Even if you do accomplish this and you don't have those things dialed in, you're going to rebound in a very narrow way. Well, this is why we don't recommend competing for most people. I mean, I get so many people that ask me questions. I should form as driven. Totally. I just, it's, you, you need to have that. I mean, I'm, I'm lucky that I got into this, the, the sport of, you know, bodybuilding when I was 30. And

I'd already been a trainer for 10 years. Oh, good point. And so I, I had already worked through a lot of my insecurities around food and exercise and the way I look, my body image issues. Like, around food and exercise and the way I look, my body image issues. I think that's so important that you've worked through all that stuff before you go do something at the competitive level. Even if you're not getting on stage, I think dieting to this level is competitive. Yes. So I know there's a lot of controversy around it. And in the following bodybuilding, a sport or not.

But as a sport, I think of just the competitive nature of what you're doing. You're pushing your body beyond healthy limits, which is kind of all sports, right? Yes. You are always, you're pushing those boundaries of what can my, what can my body do when I push it to the ultimate level? Totally. Healthy is balanced. Extreme is never balanced. I don't care what category that you come up with, extreme anything, you're trading in longevity and health and balance for extreme performance. And I think there's value in that in many cases,

but you've had to identify if it's right for you and if it's gonna result in way worse outcomes. You know, one of the first things I think that's important to understand when you do this is that you have to go into it recognizing that it's temporary. Now, why is this important? Because if you don't, because I've seen this many times, people get shredded and then they're obsessively shredded forever or they try to stay there forever. If that's you, you will suffer the consequences. The negative health

consequences can be quite nasty in men and women from hormonal issues to immune issues. You can start to see some really, really bad health issues from trying to maintain a shredded physique. So you have to go into it saying, my goal is to get this lean, but it's gonna be temporary. And then what that does is also allows you to come up with a back out plan. How do I back out of that?

That's the part that I think is, so that is something I learned the hard way. So I was so obsessed with the competitive side at getting lean and the show and everything that I actually wasn't thinking about A backup plan like okay when the show is over like I wasn't even thinking about that yet and even I When I got out of the show knowing better Benjed the first time the first first time, like, you know, because I did it, right?

I made the show and I'm like, oh, I got down. I'm just celebrating it. Yeah, I was celebrating and I was so low calorie. I was so lean, it was easy to justify all the junk and all the calories that I was taking on. And it can be deceiving because, I mean, I mean, garbage, the next 24 to 48 hours and I'm looking better by the hour because I was, I mean, garbage the next 24 to 48 hours,

and I'm looking better by the hour because I was so depleted. And so you start to kind of play this game like, oh, I can get away with this. Like it's okay. And then before you know it, you've done a week or two of eating like this and the body fat.

We did an episode with Lane Norton a couple of years ago where we talked about when you do this, this is when your body adds fat cells at like a rapid rate. There's really dangerous to do that. This is very important point to make. So, and by the way, I've witnessed female competitors gain 20 pounds in under a month.

These are tiny girls. I've seen guys gain 30 pounds in a month from this rebound. So your body doesn't add the number of fat cells, except for a few times in your life. Puberty, I believe the third trimester of pregnancy can do this, but otherwise generally you get this number of fat cells and then they stick around and then what happens is the fat cells you grow or shrink depending on if we eat more calories in your burn or you eat less calories in your burn. However, it's been observed, and this is the way you're referring to, when people do extreme dieting, where their body is like, because make no mistake, you get down to single-digibody fat, it's starving. Your body is like, we're starving right now, okay?

You get down that lean, your body turns into something different, and then when you refeed so much with excessive calories, your body has to, it daps by improving its ability to capture calories. And the way it does so, and we've observed this now in studies, is it adds the number of fat cells. What does that mean? That means the next time you try to get lean, it's harder. So in the only community I think we could point to, where we can see this happening,

is the extreme bodybuilding and physique, competitor category of athletes, where you'll see them competing and then they'll talk about how it's harder for them to get sharp. Like, I can't get sharp like I used to and you know, I used to be able to get, you know, this worked for me before, but it's not working again and why is my body not responding the way it used to? Your body's literally learning had to capture energy more efficiently and by adding fat cells. So you can cause yourself a lot of problems by doing this, not to mention just the health issues,

because the first time I did that where I got down to like 4% I think it was, and then I did the same thing. Oh, it wrecked me. My gut, it wrecked my gut. I went in a bunch of food. And I was like sick. And I imagine the same thing. Oh, it wrecked me. My gut. It really wrecked my gut. I went in a bunch of food. And I was like, sick for it. And I imagine the same thing happened to you just

instead of it being on the physical or visual side, you probably felt okay. You probably were so depleted that you probably were eating foods that normally would bother you. And you're like, oh, I'm okay right now. After my gut healed, I was like, oh, I think I'm and I kept pushing it. And then it just, it's not good.

So you have to have that back out plan, but part of that is recognizing this is temporary. So, you know, for me, I like to walk around, if I'm gonna stay leaning around 10%, okay? So if I get down to 4%, then what I'll do is I'll give myself a month or two to allow myself to creep back up to 10%. So it's kind of a slow crawl,

instead of being like, let's see how fast I can get this way back on my body now Knowing you guys have both kind of gone through this process. I know this isn't on the list or anything But in terms of like getting down as low as you possibly can like have the first attempt that you did Did you notice that? I mean you lost a good amount of muscle with it. Like, you just were just dieting as hard as possible, just mentally, like you're trying your best to just like really cut calories,

but maybe didn't do as good a job at preserving muscle. The name of the game is keeping muscle. It's not burning body fat. Cause you know what happens a lot of people? Is they'll get down to, like you'll get a female, that'll get down to 18 or 17% successfully. A guy gets down to 9%. But then they keep pushing.

They lose weight on the scale, but their body fat percentage doesn't budge anymore. They're like, what's going on? I've lost another 5 pounds. It's because you lost muscle and fat. Because right now what you're happening is you're just making yourself smaller. You see this happen at higher body fat percentage as two. But when you get lean, the leaner you get, the more your body is trying to figure out a way to survive off these fewer calories. And what the way that does is to find the energy. Yeah, and what the way it does is it pairs muscle down. So the name of the game is,

can I, I got to keep this muscle at all costs. Otherwise, it's a, forget it. That's a really good question, Justin, because I'm guilty of that, even though I knew better. Right, so I was so, going into my very first show, I was so nervous to show up with extra body fat that I was like willing to sacrifice potentially the muscle, which I'm sure some people get that in their head also. I wanted to be so lean that, and I didn't want the day to come

or the even the week leading up and go, oh my god, I haven't leaned out enough. And everybody was telling me up to that point that when you get on stage like that, what will be more important than me having five or 10 more pounds of muscle that is that I am 2% to 3% lower in body fat. So I probably took that and went too obsessive in the cutting, the very first show. Which I mean, I did okay. I placed in the top five,

but that wasn't my first show that I won. It wasn't until I started to kind of calm down a little bit. And it took that first time of really dieting. I streamed to know what I could do. I mean, I had never, I'd never dieted like that. And so part of this too is like learning the timing and like, oh, when I move these levers, my body does this or it takes this long to react. And so that was a bit challenging for me the very first time.

But I think after that first show, I learned a lot of lessons. One was the reversing out one, two, what you're saying right now with like pushing that hard when I really didn't need to and probably sacrificing muscle when I didn't need to, you're saying right now with like pushing that hard when I really didn't need to and probably sacrificing muscle when I didn't need to, you know, so, which probably fed into the bad rebound so bad too. I mean, I cut so hard that I pushed calories lower than I would need to, I probably lost some muscle, so I inevitably slowed my metabolism down

and then I went the reverse and went, you know, gangbusters on food afterwards and then put on a lot of body fat. I would say one of the biggest differences, and here's one of the ways that this can be unhealthy long term is when you're getting to single-digibodifat, you're not just consistent, you're obsessively consistent. So most guys can get down to 10% body fat,

and most women can get down to 18% body fat, which both are lean, both look great, by the way. Most people want to look that way. And that's still very lean. But most people can do that by being consistent, I don't know, 85% of time, right? 85% of time, you're consistent. The other 15% of time, you're not going away off the rails,

but you have some balance in your life, okay? To get down to single-digit body fat, you got to be consistent 100% of the time. Yeah. Like, not one meal, full-time commitment. Not one bag of chips, not two cookies. Like, I mean, and yes, you could try to make up for it with other things, but good luck trying to play that game.

You have to be obsessively ridiculously consistent. And I remember this the first time I did this where I was trying to get below 6% and I couldn't I couldn't figure I was going on and really it was just oh I have to do I have to be perfect all the time and then the extra one two percent no flexibility All none it's psychologically not a great place Well think of it like a like an you know archery target and the outside is like 15 plus percent body fat then it goes to 10% body fat and then it goes to 10% body fat, and then it goes to, you know,

sub-7% body fat, then sub-5% body fat, and then 3% or lower, the bullseye. And then think of you trying to shoot at that. You know, if you just needed to be, you land your body fat percentage around 15 to 20, you could be a little off, and still land somewhere on the target, but if you're trying to hit that single digit bodyfire

or low, the detainious bit you being off, and that's what it's like, diving for that, is you have to be so down, which is, I always have that conversation with clients that say they want this look, and it's like, do you really, because the sacrifice, the relentless commitment that it's going to take to get to that, and it really, because the sacrifice, the relentless commitment that it's going to take

to get to that, and it's unfortunate because we use this for advertising and we celebrate these bodies. And so, like you said, this would glorify this unhealthy, unbalanced, shredded. And it is unfortunate, and it's appealing, right? It looks amazing, it looks cool, right? So many people think they want that,

but they don't recognize the obsessiveness that it takes to kind of get to that level and the amount of sacrifice that you have to do to get there. Yeah, and really if you do the math, to go from 5% to 6% body fat is less body fat than to go from 10% to 11%, okay? It's less pounds of body fat. So to go from 5% to 6%, it's just a little bit.

It's just a little bit off, a little bit of a surplus that you didn't have. Ooh, I went up a percent. You can get away with way more higher body fat percentages with that. And in the reverse too, you get a man at 20% body fat. He goes to 19% body fat. You can't tell. You go from 5 to 4 and it looks really different, you know, so you have to be obsessively, obsessively consistent and that is just not healthy long-term. You don't want to live there, but in the short term, understand that. All right, this is my goal. I want to do this. I have to, and I think there's benefit, again, for the right people, to learn to have that kind of discipline, regardless of whether it's business or fitness

or sports, to be able to be, you know, that kind of doggy consistency. Well, that's, I mean, that's another one of my favorite parts about doing that is I think that there's a lot of parallels and other aspects of your life. And I think a lot of reasons why people fail at business. I think a lot of reasons why people fail at reaching certain goals is they just don't have the tenacity and consistency in what they do. A lot of people attempting almost anything that's hard, do it for a while, fall down a couple

times and then that's it. And this is one of those examples of, you just have to be just relentless and consistent and just most people don't have the gumption to stick with it. Now, I know there's people out there, the IIFYM crowd, right? If it fits your macros crowd, it says, no, no, no, you don't have to be obsessive. You can be flexible with your diet. No, no, no, no, you're still obsessive with your calories, your proteins, fats, and carbs, even in that.

So if you're getting down to the single-digit body fat, even if you do an IIFYM approach, which I don't encourage, even for this, I don't encourage, because good luck swinging and having these different foods and not messing with your hunger and your messy, your craving, your ramping, everything else. I'll forget it. If I could fit a pop tart into my diet

and make the macros count, I still wouldn't, because that pop tart would literally screw me up for two days, and that's another thing too. If I eat something that is palatable in that way, my cravings are ramped up for 24 hours at least and it makes it much more challenging. But even that crowd, you still have to be obsessively consistent. They still have to hit their perfect numbers of macros every single day. All right, here's the next one. You'll notice a lot of bodybuilders and competitors will do carb cycling with their diet. Now, on its face, if your calories are the same and your protein is good and consistent,

do you need to cycle carbs? No, you don't, necessary. But here's why it works psychologically. First off, proteins and fats are essential, meaning you have to consume them in order to survive. And because your calories are so low, I don't like cutting the ones out that are essential. I like to cut the ones out that are non-essential

because I can get away with being too low on them. I can't get away with being too low on approaching a fat. Then my health really starts to decline and then forget everything, right? So that's why I like cycling carbs. Also, psychologically, when you get really lean, carb cycling allows you to have periods of more energy and better pumps because otherwise you just feel like crap

all the time. So I give myself, and I'll balance out the calories with this, but I give myself some days when my carbohydrates are higher and that gives me those better workouts and he keeps me in the game. Otherwise, it's like this grueling, why am I doing this and my workouts, you know, kind of suck. I never carb cycle until it came time to get ready for a show.

That was the first time I ever even mess with that. And I actually fell in love with the process of utilizing that as a tool. I think for a couple of reasons. One, the energy going into a workout, right? I can manipulate, like, oh, I've got a leg day tomorrow. So I'm going to try and time it with loading my carbs up. Also, the psychological part of not every day being exactly the same. It's like, I have some days where, oh, wow, I get to. You start to look

forward to that. Yeah. Just based on your movement for the most part with your carbon take. Well, you know, I more like on a calorie, really all you're really manipulating is calories, like South Sains, like you said. So over the course of a week, I let's say my goal is to have my calories at 2200 calories. But I'm going to have some days where I am having 2700 calories. So I'm 19. Yeah, so so and really the way I'm manipulating those calories is through carbohydrate intake. And the other reason why I really like it is because when you when you get really consistent with

figuring out what your body needs protein and fat wise, like it's a little bit harder to come by and to get after that than it is carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are so easy to come by and find. It's also really easily to manipulate up and down. So I like being very consistent with my fat and protein sources and staying dialed in on that, making sure, okay, this meal's got this many ounces, okay, I'm good there.

And then the only thing that I'm really messing with and a lot of times it's okay. So it's either white rice, sweet potato, yams, quinoa, these are like the go-to staple carbs that I'm using. And all I'm doing is going like, oh, on these days, I'm getting every meal is getting a cup of rice. On these other deals, other days,

I'm getting two cups of rice. On other days, I'm skipping every meal and getting a no-carb in that meal. So I can easily keep it very consistent and just play with something that's very measurable, like rice or sweet potato. And it just made the dieting aspect really consistent and easy for me.

And then also not so laborious of the same thing. And it's all psychological. It really is because it does that for me too. And then I go into my work, like I find out, okay, tomorrow I'm going to, I want to try and hit it a little harder. I've been feeling kind of flat. Let me have a higher carb day today so that tomorrow I go into it and have a better workout psychologically.

That helps me out. Carbs also for me at least. Well, actually studies show this for most people. They're just the least satiety inducing macronutrient, meaning proteins and fats will make you feel more satisfied for longer than carbohydrates well. So, you know, bumping my carbs, even though my calories go up, I noticed my appetite goes up. Even though it's a higher calorie day, I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm starting to go hungry. And going low calorie all the time, you know, or being consistent, like you said, feels laborious.

It's psychologically laborious. Having these ups and downs, like you said, feels laborious. It's psychologically laborious. Having these ups and downs, like, oh, today's a low-calorie day. I could deal with that, knowing that in two days. I have a higher calorie day with more carbohydrates. The next one is, you gotta keep your protein intake high. High protein is important for most goals. That helps with fat loss, that helps with muscle building. It's great for satiety.

This becomes really important when you're playing this game because the game is, don't lose muscle, and studies will show this. It will muscle as much as possible. Oh, when the control calories, protein intakes high, even though the calories are the same, you lose less muscle. It also helps a lot with satiety, a lot.

Like if my protein intake, if I eat 2,000 calories on this day, and 2,000 calories on this day, but this day is 220 grams of protein, this day is 120 grams of protein. I guarantee you, even though the calories are the same, the 120 gram protein damn way hungrier. Well, the extreme version being the carnivore diet experience that in terms of like the calories being so much lower and it was easy for me to maintain for the most part.

So, you know, that strategy of like intaking a lot more protein will help. I'm assuming in this big direction. Well, I just think to that in general, like most clients under consume protein, not talking about the body builders and the people that like over consume, which is a very small percentage of people, most people don't consume enough protein as is. And then they're going into a diet where they're trying to get shredded and they're just cutting calories.

What ends up happening is they go super low on protein also. I imagine we just had this conversation last night, Katrina and I, I told you guys she's kind of dialing everything in. The very first thing I told her to do was to pick up her intensity on her training and make sure you are tracking your protein or any protein. We're sitting there. Okay, last night we're watching a movie. She decided to have a have one of those like,

you know, 100 calorie popcorn snacks or whatever, and she's snacking on it, and she's inputting her food. And she's like, shit, she's like, I miss my protein intake by 20 grams. So what you should have done is not had that bowl of that popcorn, you should have got one of our protein bars that we have in the closet that has 20 grams of protein, and that should have been your snack and choice.

Now, from a calorie perspective, she's okay. She's not gonna put on body fat from there, and it may help her drop a little bit on the scale still, but then she also missed her protein. She starts to string enough of those days together, and your body will start to pare down muscle because it's not being fed what it needs to sustain it. This is very common when people are cutting.

Yeah, so is making this mistake of not being dialed in and tracking their protein while they're also in a deficit. And then at the end of their, oh, I lost my 20 pounds and they find out that 10 of it was muscle and 10 of it was fat. They're like, what the fuck? Well, that's why because you were so concentrated on cutting that you weren't paying attention to your protein.

Yeah, I mean, along those lines, like I just had breakfast right now, what did I have? Steak and eggs and nothing else, right? Why? Because that keeps me satisfied. Otherwise, I'm sitting here podcasting and I'm thinking about food and miserable. Yeah, so it really is satiating.

Now, if I had the same amount of calories, but less protein and I had sourdough bread and fruit. Well, no, I love that you brought that up because what most people would do right there is, okay, so, and that was probably, I don't know, a 400, 500 calories for you, okay. Somebody, and you're big, so it's just not a good example, but let's say you have half of that for a female, right?

200 something calories, but it's all coming from eggs and steak, the common choice for somebody at breakfast is like a thing of oatmeal, which is, you know, lean and it's got lots of fiber, and so we talk about all the benefits of it, but it's all carbohydrate. And then now the rest of the day you're trying to play ketchup on the protein. So that's why I love a meal like that. One of my favorite things to recommend to people for, you know, especially in this case where we're dieting and we're is saving the, because everybody seems to do fine with making

a meat as a primary part of your dinner, is saving that to carry over into breakfast. And I don't know if that's who you got yours or not, but that's like a staple move for me. Throw them in your scramble. Yeah, so like last night we had bison and Brussels sprouts, like I'm not dieting right now. If I was dieting though, that would be the start breakfast.

It would be like bison and eggs. Yeah. I would just take some of the bison and then I would have one or two eggs with it. And now that becomes my breakfast. Now I kickstart my day with 40 grams of protein the start breakfast, it would be like bison and eggs. I would just take some of the bison and then I would have one or two eggs with it. And now that becomes my breakfast, now I kickstart my day with 40 grams of protein right out the gates and it's low carbohydrate, I'm not a lot of calories, so I'm in my, you know, staying low on my calories, but I'm also being mindful of making sure my protein is exactly the same.

Yes, also working with neutresense, right? So this is a, a, a, a, a continual glucose monitor company, you, you wear this device, it measures your glucose levels throughout the day, you work with nutrition, it's the whole deal, a, a, a, a continual glucose monitor company. You, you wear this device. It measures your glucose levels throughout the day. You work with nutrition. It's the whole deal. See how your body responds. The number one way that you control your blood glucose from spiking and dropping, and you don't want that, right?

Because when it spikes and then drops, that typically triggers hunger right away. Because your body's like, Oh, glute blood sugars low. Get hungry. One of the number one ways that they see in all people helping to flatten that out triggers hunger right away, because your body's like, oh, glute blood sugars low, get hungry. One of the number one ways that they see in all people helping to flatten that out is to eat your protein. First, you're gonna have your meal fine, eat your protein, wait 10 minutes, and then eat something else.

It flattens it out. So a high protein meal controls hunger through many different mechanisms. One of them is controlling that glucose, this ups and downs. All right, so the next one, this one I think is really important because when people get into this like, I gotta get shredded face, they start to turn all their workouts into calorie burning workout, or at least that's the mentality.

Yeah, they want to burn everything now on top of also like cutting down instead of like, you know, really preserving what muscle they have by strength training, which is a completely different protocol. Yeah, lift weights and your goal is still to try to build muscle. Now, are you gonna build muscle going from 9% to 6% body fat? No, you're probably not gonna go get stronger

and build muscle. But the better you train in that direction, the less likely you are to lose muscle, which again, that's the name of the game. So you want to lift weights for strength and for muscle. That's the goal. And remember, weights are phenomenal at doing that. Now, you use weights. You can do conditioning, you can do performance. That's totally fine. But we're talking about getting shredded. You want that muscle building signal to be effective because the more your body believes

that it needs the muscle, the less likely it is to pair it down. Cause right now what your body's doing is it's weighing things out. Like energy intake is very low. We're running out of fat stores. That's your body's insurance. Okay, we need, imagine if your brain,

your body had like these, you know, workers in there. Like all right, everybody, you're having a meeting there, like, all right, guys, everybody, you're having a meeting, look, energy's low, stores are low, just like if you lose your job and you have very little money in your savings account, what do you do? We need to spend less money. So your body's like, we need to pair muscle down. We need to make sure that we're not burning as many calories.

But then someone speaks up and says, hey, hold on a second, but we need this muscle, really bad. Just like if you're cutting your bills down, and you're like, listen, you tell your wife, listen, we gotta cut our expenses and your wife goes, these are Tommy's medical bills. Like, we can't cut these right now, we need this really bad.

You're like, okay, well, let's keep going. So, you have to send that signal effectively, so you have to lift weights and tell your body, build muscle, build strength. It takes a lot of mental discipline, though. This is something Katrina and I were also having a conversation about. I said, you know, we want to diet like we're trying to lose, but I want you to lift as if we were trying to gain, right?

So I want the intensity there. I want us to be focused on strength. You're trying to get stronger, but the reality is I know that I have you in a caloric deficit and you're probably not going to get stronger. In fact, you may see your strength decrease. So here's where the mental challenge is, is that you know you're going into the workouts with the attitude of I'm trying to get stronger. So the lifting intensity is there.

You're trying to push the way you're trying to be strong. But I also know that I'm not fueling my body, you know, adequate calories to gain. So then what ends up happening a long time is you see the bench press decrease, you see the deadlift go down, you see the squat go down. And that tends to fuck with people mentally, but you just gotta know that and accept it. It's okay, it's okay that I'm not gonna be

at my peak strength, but this is what's good for optimal results from it. This, sending that signal to your point cell is going to hang on to all that muscle that I work so hard to build, but I don't want to get caught in the trap of expecting that. Oh, I'm lifting this way, therefore I should feel like I'm getting or get stronger every now. Yeah, so I'll give you a little bit of my strategy just because I think this will help,

right? So what I try to do is I try to time all my best muscle building, you know, techniques right when I'm hitting this point with my diet and nutrition, because I'm really trying to be as effective as possible at preventing muscle loss. So what do I do? This is when I change the phase of my training,

because I know that that novelty sends a better muscle building signal. Also, I time it so that the phase that I go into, the changing of my workout signaling, also coincides with the kind, the phase of training that I know my body tends to respond to best anyway. So for me personally, if you have any of our maps programs, maps and a ball like phase one, okay, that's a strength, low rep, you know, you're doing fewer exercises, lots of

sets per exercise, you're really focusing on these gross motor movements. For me, if all things being equal, okay, all phases being novel, all that stuff, I build the most in that phase. Now for you, it may be eight to 12 reps, it may be super sets, whatever. Save that phase for when you go into this. For me, I literally waited.

And now, what am I doing right now? Three full body workouts, I'm going, my reps are five, four, six, longer rest periods, because that's my best phase and I saved it. I saved it to keep it novel to maximize muscle or to minimize muscle loss. So that's one tip you could do. So that's part of what I'm saying when I say lift weights for strength and muscle. Change your phase so that you have something novel and save that style of training, the one that you respond best to for this period.

I love that and I'll take it a step further, right? So I typically train like a maps aesthetic, maps anabolic, maps, PED, all the bodybuilders, right? That's what I fall in love with the most. Like on the op, Justin's more functional performance, that direction, I'm gonna go the body sculpting type of direction, I know that's my MO. So when I switch to like a diet where I know this is I'm playing this mental game,

not only do I like to change the phase, I'll change the whole programming like to something like strong, which is something that is super novel. It's very different for me, or even performance, right? These, it's got so many different exercises, like the reverse lunge to a mind press.

Like, I have no, I don't have a PR in that because I never did it long enough consistently to like get really, really strong in it. So I don't have this preconceived number in my head that, oh, I'm weaker here. I don't know. Like, I have no idea what my reverse lunge to a press on a land mine is.

I have no idea what my max Zurcher squat is I have no idea what my max Circus presses so I love switching to a a program that is so different than has so many exercises that I just normally don't really do That when so when I'm doing it and I'm probably weak because I'm low calorie. I don't recognize it. I don't go Oh, man, man my circus press is normally 120 dumbbells and now I'm doing weak because I'm low calorie, I don't recognize it. I don't go, oh man, my circus press is normally 120 dumbbells and now I'm doing 60s this up. It's like, I don't even know what my best circus press is. So I love to not only change the phase,

but I love to even switch the programming up when I go into a really strict diet because then I don't have all these numbers. What you'll notice is a theme here, which is we're managing the psychological effects of this more than anything, because that's the part that'll screw you up. To me, that's what inspired this episode was that,

yes, when we are trying to lose 50 pounds of body fat, there's a lot of mental games involved, but there's a lot of fundamental macros and strength training and make sure you do this, make sure you do that. When you start to get really, really shredded, I think that like 90% of it becomes mental. Well, do you think that that's probably why your typical person when they're cutting down is drawn more towards doing weights, like a cardio version of weights, like a more circuit

style training because it's like you get in sort of these rhythms when you're doing cardio where you're a lot is you're doing a lot of wraps but you're just having to get through it and sweat and so it's like it's less mentally taxing as you're going through. I think that's not what draws people to that. I think what draws most people to that is that we are still so hung up on the calorie burns. Yes. Well, yeah, maximizing everything at once.

They think sweating equals fat loss. Yeah, and I think that what most people do is they, they, okay, I've made this shift. I'm cutting calories. I want to burn and move. And so they take that mindset into their weight training. And so all of a sudden the pace picks up and they want to do circuits and they're, I don't think they're thinking that logical, like what you're alluding to,

I think it's just straight up, I'm gonna try and burn as much as I can. And now they're doing longer workouts, they're adding things afterwards, they're doing the battle ropes. I'm melting fat. Yeah, no, I think that's something that we get. And we promote that stuff through all these fitness tools

and trackers and, you know, orange theories, we get, you know, bonus points for hitting the zone and like, I just think that that's we've we've we've we've ingrained that in most people's minds that like, oh, you got a burn, eat less burn more. You know, the irony is that that those kind of workouts are effective for like two or three weeks. That's it. Right.

Yeah. Two or three way. In fact, that takes us to the next one, which is avoid cardio until it's necessary. There you go. Save that tool. First of all, it's a short-lived tool. Okay, lots of cardio to get really shredded, doesn't work very. In fact, a lot of people get shredded in spite of the fact

that doing just tons of cardio for 12 weeks or whatever. Save it, do everything with diet and strength training. And then the last couple of weeks, if you want to throw it in, you can, and you can squeeze off a little bit of body fat. But if you make this part of your long-term routine, what you're doing is you're countering that muscle building signal that we're trying to do

with strength training through this, I need endurance type of a signal, which really only encourages the muscle breakdown process. So what you wanna do is you wanna save it until absolute. And I remember you Adam, when you competed, I think you did the last two weeks, was it? The longest I've ever done cardio is four weeks. And most often it was two.

So it's, if you have a coach and they have you doing cardio for 12 weeks leading into a show, you should fire coach. And that's going to piss off a lot of people. Oh boy, there's some negative. Well, most coaches, most coaches do that. And it's just a terrible. Yeah, they typically go from 30 minutes a day to 60 minutes a day to 90 minutes a day.

Yeah, they just keep ramping it up and ramping it up, and by the way, it goes all the way back to the very first point that you made about having a plan when you come out of it. Talk about fucking your person completely. Oh my God. You've now got this person adapted to doing five to seven hours of this cardio on the stair master every single day and start your body to 1500 calories,

they're not going to maintain that. Unless you absolutely love the stair master. They'll take you three months to back out of the cardio. Yeah, no, not to mention the calories. Exactly. And not only that too, like, I want to teach my client. So if we're getting shredded, right? And I want to teach them how can we manipulate your calories

to lean out without us messing with any additional calorie burn like cardio first. That doesn't mean we won't use it, but let's first figure that out. Can we manipulate that? And here's the thing, if you're at a place, metabolism-wise, where reducing your calories by 200 to 500 calories, it puts you

in an unhealthy place calorie wise. You have no business trying to get started. Oh, what a great point. What a great point. No business. Yeah, I will not. So, right now, right now, way about, I don't know, 210 maybe, I wouldn't do this if my calories ended up below, you know, 2300 calories, 2400 calories.

I wouldn't do this. That's going to be way too low for me. I've seen women at 800 calories on top of all the training that they're doing. I've seen guys at 1500 hours. And the reason why that is is because they make this decision whether beginning or the first show or they just wanna get shredded for the summer

that they wanna get shredded and they haven't first built a healthy metabolism. And their metabolism is at a place where 1800 calories maintains where they're at and then they wanna get shredded. And the move for that person is not start cutting ad cardio right there. It's we need to build the metabolism up

so that when we do start to calorie restrict, you're still in a healthy place, halfway through this cut. So that, I mean, and I get these DMs all the time for people that you know, wanna, oh, this is whats all the time for people that, you know, wanted, oh, this is what my coach has got me doing. And it's like, man, if you're, if you're 12 weeks out from your show, and you're already sub 2000 calories already,

you have no business doing a show. You should first work on building a healthy metabolism before you even, and show our body fat. I know I keep saying show because I know there's a lot of people who are listening that don't care about a show, or get shredded. You have no business trying to get shredded, single-digit body fat, or I know I keep saying show because I know there's a lot of people who are listening that don't care about a show or get shredded. You have no business trying to get shredded, single-digit body fat or get ready for a show if you're in a place where

your 12 weeks are more out and you're already having to cut less than 2,800 pounds. That's way too fucking well. You're going to get here. You're setting yourself up for some really bad failure later on. Yeah, a nasty rebound at the best you could hope for is a nasty rebound, but you could end up fucking home, fucking you up hormonally or really slowing the metabolism down and screwing yourself long term. Yeah, I've worked with people where it's taken us six months a year to get them to recover from this process.

Like, you know, you don't want to put yourself in that situation so you could look shredded for a week, right? It's not worth it. And that's if you can get to that point of looking shredded, a lot of people end up doing this and end up just getting smaller, losing muscle along the process. So, all right, here's the next one.

And this one is an interesting one because all of us deal with cravings, okay? So cravings are usually motivated or driven by emotion or context. You know, I'm out in my friends or I'm happy or I'm anxious or I'm sad. So I crave or I'm bored, right? So I have these cravings.

And then there's hunger. Hunger is totally different. And hunger feels, it's much more, it's with you all the time. It's much stronger. It's a more primitive driving feeling. And if you've ever done a fast for like 48 or 72 hours, you know what that feels like.

It's very different from cravings. Like, here's a difference. Cravings is this. Justin and I are about to go to lunch. Justin's like, hey, what do you want to have for lunch? Uh, you know, Mexican food. No, I'm not really in the mood for it. Oh, what about pizza?

Yeah, let's get pizza. Here's what hunger feels. You know, hunger looks like celery sticks. I don't get it. I don't care. I'm serious. in the mood for me. Oh, what about pizza? Yeah, let's get pizza. Here's what hunger feels. If you want a hunger, it looks like celery sticks. I don't get it. I don't care. I'm serious. There's food on the table. That's how I describe it.

So like, you're not hungry if you want a certain food. Oh, yeah. When you're hungry, everything sounds good. Anything. Anything that's working. I know you most people have never experienced. I agree. I'm real hungry.

And it's just because of that point, like if you haven't gone 48 hours, 72 hours without food, it's really hard to compare the things. If you say, I'm hungry, I really want this. It's like, no, if you're hungry, you'll take anything. Anything. Anything.

Even foods you don't traditionally like. Yes, that's so true. So here's what I'm about to say. When you start to get down to single-digit body fat, you gotta learn to accept that you're gonna live with hunger. It's gonna be, it's literally this thing that's with you all day long to the point where, you know, and I'm not quite there, I can feel it right now,

but I know in the next couple weeks I'm gonna feel it, where you gotta leave the room when there's certain kinds of foods, or you get mad at your partner. Why did you open that in front of me? Don't eat that next to me, like it's really weird, and it's very, again, it's an unhealthy place to be. That's why you don't want to live in this space. But you have to accept that you're going to kind of feel uncomfortable. Most of the time, like when you're sleeping,

I don't, okay, cravings, well, maybe people have cravings like this. I never happened to me where I wake up in the middle of the bathroom. I don't think, oh man, I want to go downstairs and get, it never happens to me until I get down to like seven, six percent body fat, I'll literally wake up, go to the bathroom and be like, man, I want to eat an apple. Right now, I don't know how to go downstairs to go eat an apple right now, but you have to kind of learn to live with it. And there's a mental switch that has to occur. Well, talking about hunger or and or cravings, one of the things that I didn't realize until pushing myself to this level

was how much my sleep impacted this. Oh yeah. So I never drew that conclusion of, oh wow, it's fueled in the fire. Anytime I have a really bad night's rest, whether it be restless all night, or this would happen early on in my pump, because I was competing during my pump times,

and then we were also doing stuff. We do a live event or we, like this would happen early on in my pump because I was competing during my pump times and then we were also doing stuff like, we do like a live event or something and my freaking energy was like on fire all day. I couldn't sleep. So two, three in the morning, before I finally fall asleep and then back of the day, so terrible sleep. Man, the next day, oh, I just wanted everything bad.

Like junk food, just sounded so good to me and it took a few times of having those nights that were really bad sleep followed by those days. And what made me realize is because I was being so consistent during those times, this is again, another one of the benefits of being so dialed and so consistent, you start to pick up on these things that if my diet was like this all the time,

it would be really hard to measure that and be like, oh, was it because of my bad night sleep or am I just wanting the ice cream? Because I had ice cream yesterday and now I'm craving it again or it's like, oh, was it because of my bad night's sleep? Or am I just wanting the ice cream because I had ice cream yesterday and now I'm craving it again? Or is it because I have some sort of correlation with what I'm doing? And so it's really tough when you're inconsistent,

but when you're so consistent with your diet, you start to pick up on these little subtle things. This was something that I had never noticed in my life until I got really consistent with the diet. And I was like, all of of a sudden have a night like that I'm like that's so weird. I've had no problem eating these same meals for the last month But now all of a sudden I want all this bad stuff. I was like, oh shit. It was the night's rest and again You know you're you're you're living with hunger all the time and these things will just ramp it up

And so now you got a really white knuckle it, you know even more, but here's the other part of that When you're getting to this, when you're getting this lean, you are stressing your body out. This is another level of stress. And so if your sleep is off, and your stress levels are high, your body, you can very easily reach a point where your body can't deal with it. And then it'll backfire. And this is where you see people on their quest to getting shredded

for either a competition or a photo shoot, maybe they're going to Vegas, who knows? people on their quest to getting shredded for either competition or a photo shoot, maybe they're going to Vegas, who knows? And on their, and they get sick. Yeah. It's like, oh my God, I always get sick once I start to get lean. In fact, it's so common for people when they start to get to this point where they, they get a cold or they get whatever. So you have to have your sleep and your stress levels also be very well managed and consistent because you already are at that line. You don't have any room for any additional stress to tip your body over.

It's way better to be anti-social at this point and just really consider all those factors that you need to be as low stress as possible. You need to get that sleep. So if this is your priority, you're gonna have to create almost as bubble that you have to just stay in for. And this is why I'm like, don't, you don't want to live here. I don't understand how people can do it. I don't know, I don't get it.

It's such a dysfunctional way of living all the time. And it's just, you literally have no room. You know, who wants to live their life without having any room for any additional stress? Life doesn't work that way, right? So unless you structure and plan your life to this bubble, like you said, in which case now, what are you doing?

You're cutting out social events, you're cutting out conversations you need to have with your spouse and you disconnect your room. That's what it takes. Yeah, so to get there. But yeah, you need to keep stress and sleep totally consistent and in check. All right, here's the next one.

And I remember the first time I got down to really lean body fat percentage, just used to muscle me, which was water retention. Like if you hold a couple pounds of water and you're 11% body fat, nobody can tell. You get out of 5% body fat, you hold two or three pounds of water, it looks like you gained one, two percent of body fat, and that can really mess with your head.

I'm gonna even challenge that, what you said about being 11 or 15% and hold it. I, this is the single, I love this point, of all the points we've made so far. This one, I think, made me a better coach from competing to, took me to another level that I didn't see coming either. And that was being able to communicate this to my clients that are even 25, 30% off that. Because of the scale.

Because of the scale and even the mirror, right? Like you get, you know, bloated from a meal that your body reacts to or you intake, you know, X amount more sodium or, you know, X amount more carbohydrates for every three ounces of carbohydrates you take in your body holds three ounces of water. So if you had a day where you're higher carb and you had a couple of extra glasses of water, I mean you could really look different in the mirror, your scale could go up one or two pounds and yet be perfect. I mean you could be literally dialed the way I want you to be eating and training,

but yet see this go in the opposite direction than you think you wanted to. And what happens is you pivot and you change. You're over-correct. And the only reason why I figured this all out and can communicate was because I was so dialed, I was tracking it, I was doing the math. So I like, I know, I'm sitting here going like,

okay, I'm moving this water. Yeah, so do I. Yeah, I'm tracking everything. So I know, I know I'm sitting here going like, okay, I'm moving this water. Yeah, sodium. Yeah, I'm tracking everything. So I know that like I should be getting better and better and better every single day. Yeah, sure you have some slow down and a little bit of patoes, but I definitely shouldn't go worse

to go the other direction. It just mathematically is impossible. I know what I'm doing. And I would actually have this days where all of a sudden I go up and then I'd be like, what? Scratch in my head. And the only thing that made sense was like, and that's how I learned like how many,

how much water pairs with carbohydrates and sodium, like I started like going in and like figuring out like, why is this, why is this happening to me? I'm dialed, this shouldn't be happening to me. But then it opened my eyes like, oh my God, how often did this happen? I wish I had this information when I was a trainer in my 20s because how many times did I put a client on a diet and then them following it supposedly to a tee and then come back to

me and they freak out because the scale went up a couple pounds. And then me going even as a trainer going, oh shit, it shouldn't be going up. Okay, well then let's cut this out then or let's let's pick up some cardio 30 minutes and actually being a bad coach and adjusting because I see this a little bit of a water fluctuation, not knowing better. So this of all the things that I learned going through competing, like this was one of my favorite things that I took away from it because it has given me

the tools to communicate that to clients. Even at a higher body fat percentage that may not, to your point, I know what you're making, it's not a huge difference. It's a huge difference of five percent. You have a five percent body fat and you hold a pound or two. Well, I mean, that's the reason why you look so different. Yeah, you look different.

I mean, you could lose a show because of that. Yeah. If I don't go in or just the right amount of water in my body, right, enough to fill the muscle belly's up, but not enough to like get in the subcutaneous and the making me look all puffy looking like that will lose a show. I'll lose places in a show. So it's that, it'd be that dial, But somebody at 13, 14%, maybe not so much. But even them, we'll see a little bit of a difference

or see the scale. Yes. And speaking of scale, remember that the scale lies. Because when you're trying to get leaner, obviously the goal is to get the scale number to go down. But I've gotten leaner with the scale number going up in the past, like where I was over dieting over training I changed things a little bit. I saw myself go up two or three pounds on the scale over the course of three four weeks

Do my I look in the mirror. I'm like man. I look way leaner. How the hell am I heavier? Get a body fat test and I'm like I did get leaner. Why? Because I gained a couple pounds of muscle. You know gaining muscle and keeping The total pounds of body fat on your, gaining muscle and keeping the total pounds of body fat on your body the same means your body fat percentage went down, right? If you gain 10 pounds of muscle and on your body you always had 30 pounds of body fat.

And that didn't change, that stayed 30 pounds of body fat. But you gained 10 pounds of muscle. That 30 pounds of body fat is a smaller percentage of your total body weight. I also think it's one of the healthiest and best places you can be metabolically when you're trying to lose body fat. If I can, which is always the goal for me

for somebody who's trying to lose weight, whether we're trying to lose 30 to 40 pounds or just trying to shred down the last five or 10, I would love to see us kind of stay the same on the scale for as long as we can. So obviously, yeah, somebody has to lose 50, 100 pounds. The scale's eventually gonna come down. But to be honest, I actually don't wanna see that initially.

I want to see us kinda hover around the scale weight, but I know that if we're feeding ourselves properly, we're strength training, we're a little bit in a caloric deficit. Hopefully I'm having this beautiful exchange, right? Your body's got this new stimulus, so maybe it is stimulating a little bit of muscle growth, and then we're also in a calorie deficit, so I know we're losing body fat, so we have

this nice little even exchange. It's a really good place to be, metabolic versus cutting the calories at crazy, moving the movement like crazy, and then also the scale does down 10 pounds. You think because your ultimate goal is to lose 30, that's a good sign, but metabolic ly it's not a good sign. Yeah, so the scale is a tool, but you have to combine it with all the other metrics. So scale, performance, strength, photos, by the way, we didn't include this, but I like photos because,

if, well, for me personally, because the reason why I'm doing this is because I'm gonna be on camera. So it really doesn't matter what the numbers say, if I look better, I look better. And when you do that, make sure you take your pictures the same place, same lighting, same food, same time of day, whatever.

Same thing in the mirror, so you can see these subtle differences. I mean, this wasn't on the list, but I think that's an important, you know, one way to track kind of how you're doing so you can put things kind of side to side. So conference, you know, that'd be another one, but you wanna add all the stuff

to give yourself more of a complete picture. The scale by itself just tells you body weight, and you know, if you got your leg amputated, you're waiting down, but that's not the kind of weight you'd wanna lose, right? Yeah. All right, lastly, here's where supplements, supplements are not super important,

depending on the context or situation. They're never really that important. Whole natural foods will do everything that you need. However, when you reduce your calories, you're also reducing your nutrient intake. When you're increasing your strength, you may actually be increasing your nutrient requirements. How do we make that work?

I'm eating less calories, which means I'm getting less nutrients, but my nutrient requirements may be going up because I'm training more and I have a higher stress on my body, supplements. This is where supplements can come and play a vital role, right? If I'm not getting enough of my B vitamins and my minerals because my food intake is so low and it's hard for me to manage everything

on top of those micronutrients, well now I could take a supplement and make up the difference. Crayotein, love Crayotein all the time. I really love it when my calories are down. Cause when my calories down, my meat intake is down too. Even though my protein's high, it's the lower than it is when I'm eating more calories,

which means I'm getting less Crayotein from food. So then I introduce that Crayotein. So this is where supplements I think can play an important role. And this is where I like to supplement with micronutrients. Well, yeah, this is where I like to supplement with, you know, micro-new transmission. Well, yeah, this is, I mean, on the most consistent with,

you talked to their dad, I don't know if those off-air or on air or not, but I was joking about how, like, I have to, I have to, the pill bottle right that I have to have now just to do all the Dr. Cabral supplements and everything. I'm really, I'm actually really bad about being consistent about taking supplements. The most consistent I am is when I'm on like a really dramatic cut like this because I just know I'm

like obviously I'm cutting a ton of stuff out of my diet. The likelihood that I'm hitting all my micro nutrient targets is probably not likely and that's just one more thing that I think can benefit me and help me. And then the other thing that we just don't talk about as a supplement but it is a supplement is a protein powder. Protein batter bars like this is where. Convenient. Yeah, I mean I was just talking about how Katrina like this is is an example of where, I mean, of course, it would be great for her to go cook, you know, four and a half ounces of steak. But at 10 o'clock a night, we're watching TV and stuff like that.

She's under on her protein intake. She's snacking on a hundred calorie popcorn. Instead of that, you should have had the protein bar or should have had a quick way shake or something. So here's where I use, that's where I really start to use that is when I'm cutting calories, I notice, I already have a hard time hitting start to use that, is when I'm cutting calories, I notice, I already have a hard time hitting protein intake as it is when I'm cutting calories, it's even harder.

I look at the end of my day and that's kind of what decides what I'm gonna do is my final meal, slash snack, whatever you wanna call that last thing that I consume before I go to bed, is me adding up everything and going, oh wow, you know, today either today I hit everything, so I'm cool, I don't have to eat anything or I maybe I'll snack on some nuts

to give me a little bit of satiety and feel better before I go to bed. Or, oh shit, I'm low on protein here, I'm gonna blend up a shake. Yeah, because with whole natural foods, it's hard to get just protein without other macronutrients. I mean, you can do with egg whites and chicken breasts, but then the convenience becomes an issue. And also, maybe it's not palatable. Protein shakes canents. I mean, you can do with egg whites and chicken breast, but then the convenience becomes an issue.

And also, maybe it's not palatable. Protein shakes can be, I mean, they can be pretty, at this point, they're tasty. When you're dieting like this, at this point, a shake is like a treat. Very easy protein. So I totally agree with you. I like what I like to do is I like to have lean sources of protein saved in the fridge. So like, chicken breast shredded in the fridge. And what I do, I can throw salsa on it, which adds negligible amount of calories, and I can snack on that.

But a shake is like, exactly, at the end of the day, it's for me too. It's like, okay, it's eight o'clock a night. I'm not gonna go, I don't wanna eat anything before bed. That's gonna take more time to digest. I'll just throw on a shake and there's my extra 20 grams of protein. It's got almost no carbohydrates and no fats.

Now, I know we didn't go into specifics about how many calories the cup would have. The rules that apply to somebody who is going from, a man who's going from 20% body fat to 15%, so 20% is kinda high, 15% is pretty healthy. The rules that apply to that person are the same as the rules. That go from 10% to 5%.

The difference is everything that we talked about. No, the reason why I think we did this episode, it was to highlight that the real thing that happens that's different right here is the mental game. Yes. The mental game gets way tougher, in my opinion, because there's a lot of things that are deceiving. There's a lot of things that take a lot more consistency,

a discipline, sacrifice. That's really the only difference between getting to 10% and then getting down to like 3%. The same, like you said, all the same rule apply for the person who is morbidly obese, trying to get down as the person who is 10% getting down, like the only difference is the psychological discipline. And the ridiculous, unhealthy, obsessive consistency

with the whole thing. Look, if you like MindP, go to Mind Pump Free.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 Mind Pump. Justin, you can find Adam on Instagram at Mind Pump

Adam and you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having

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