Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1987: How to Burn Fat & Build Muscle at the Same Time

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover ten ways to achieve the "Goldilocks Zone" of building muscle and burning fat at the same time. Why is this so hard to master? (3:01) #1 – Lift weights. (10:02) #2 – Focus on big lifts. (11:04) #3 – Don’t do cardio. (12:54) #4 – Eat in a small deficit. (16:53) #5 - Interrupt with a caloric surplus. (19:21) #6 – Eat HIGH protein. (22:52) #7 – Carb cycle. (24:36) #8 – Prioritize sleep. (27:05) #9 - Supplements that can help (creatine, HMB, BCAA). (31:48) #10 - Test body fat weekly to gauge progress to move levers up and down. (34:41) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! January Promotion: NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS SPECIAL OFFERS! (New to Weightlifting Bundle, Body Transformation Bundle, and New Year Extreme Intensity Bundle) You get massive savings with each offer. Diet, exercise or diet with exercise: comparing the effectiveness of treatment options for weight-loss and changes in fitness for adults (18-65 years old) who are overfat, or obese; systematic review and meta-analysis Cardio Sucks for Fat Loss – Mind Pump Blog Carb Cycling: A Good Way To Lose Fat? – Mind Pump Blog The Benefits Of Carb Cycling – Mind Pump Show Mind Pump #1345: 6 Ways To Optimize Sleep For Faster Muscle Gain And Fat Loss Visit NED for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talk about how to burn fat and build muscle all at the same time. This is the Goldilocks Zone. And although very, very hard, very challenging, it's totally possible. Now, this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, PRX Performance.

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All right, in today's episode, we're gonna talk about the Goldilocks Zone, the very, very difficult and challenging, but possible strategy of building muscle and burning body fat at the same time. Now, again, I want to be very clear, so it's very, very challenging and hard to do, but it is possible if you do it the right way.

Is the Goldilocks zone a real thing? Is that like a real thing for this? Like a term? No, I think? Is that like a general term that you use? Yeah. You know what they use it for? It Like a term? No, I think. Is that like a general term that you use? Yeah. You know what they use it for? It's like the sweet spot.

You know, like they use it for habitable planets. Yeah. For things like that where it's like, you have to have all of the stars aligned perfectly in order to foster this kind of an environment. Yeah, that's like Earth is in the Goldilocks zone. Yeah. So, okay, so do you know the origin of it, Doug? You know the Goldilocks story.

Yeah. Okay. So the three it, Doug? You know the Goldilocks story. Okay. So the three bears, right? Yeah. They had the porch too long. Too cold and just right. The just right is the Goldilocks. Ah, yeah. Learn something you're every day.

You know, there it is, you know what I'm saying? Okay, we're done. That's it. You learn something today. You're not getting it today. Yeah, so, you know, with something like this, like, you know, most people want to build muscle, most people want to burn fat, right? But doing them at the same time,

and by the way, we almost never recommend that people try to do this. It's a, it's a, probably a more winning strategy or consistent winning strategy to focus on one at a time. I used to actually tell people like this, just isn't something you should focus on. Yeah. It's just isn't, I wouldn't say tell people like this just isn't something you should focus on. Yeah, this just isn't I wouldn't say it's like impossible, but it's just so difficult. You'd have to know like they're the right person to even

Approach this. Okay. Now you guys say that and I agree like I especially on this podcast I would not give this general advice to the tons of people that are listening but if you're if you're advanced and you've been doing this for a long time, this is where you want to get. I think you want to get no matter what, right? No matter what if your goal is at the time to build more muscle or to lean out, like when you are, and let's say you fell off the wagon over the holidays and you're getting back, this is this is the ideal way to start to get back in shape because technically It's the fastest way. Oh, yeah, I mean you're doing both the same time you did this when you did your big transformation

Yes, your body weight Stayed this people will know this if you saw your before and after picture, which how long ago was that was that like 10 years ago? Yeah, it's something almost that it's been almost 10 years Yeah, it's close to that if you look at your before and after picture, you look radically different. The same body weight. Same body weight on both of them. And through the whole process, and that was a goal, like when I set out, right, I wanted to show people that you don't need to see the scale really move that much to radically

change your body composition. And I don't think I ever moved more than three to five pounds during that time, like give or take. I only got two, two, two, two, two, two, two. Oh, look, I actually have, I know I have the picture somewhere where I think I even screenshot it the weight and everything on there. It was, I think somewhere between two, 13 and two, 18. So it was under 220.

I was over over 205, two, 10 range. And your body fat percentage was, oh God, I was at 19.7. And I went all the way down to 7%. Right. So obviously radically different. So muscle up, fat down, body weight stays the same. Yep.

And muscle obviously looks very different. But a great experiment because the average person thought I was like, you know, weight wise, radically different. Yes. I mean, if you looked at it, it'd be like, oh, he's got to be way different, body weight wise, but not at all. Yeah, one of the reasons why this is so hard

is because losing fat means that you are in a calorie deficit, meaning that your body is now tapping into its store to energy to make up the difference. So if you're eating, you know, 2,000 calories, but you're burning 2,500 calories, well, you got to find that extra 500 calories from somewhere, so it's coming from fat.

But building muscle, okay, means that you have to have adequate calories to add new tissue. So on the one hand, you have to let low enough to where your body's tapping into tissue. But then on the other hand, you have to eat enough to feed muscle growth. So it sounds almost like they're opposing, and yet in some, they are opposing.

The idea basically is to burn fat for energy and use food for muscle. That's really what you're trying to do. Now it's going to get, it's more complex than that. We'll get into it. But I think it's important to note that this is a slow gradual process. Well, now, like, from a mechanistic point, what is happening? Is it that it's not like both are happening at the same time. It's that in, let's say, a 24 or 48 hour period,

there's moments where you're catabond, there's moments when you're anabolic, is that how you would describe what's probably really going on, like when you are keeping it really close calorie wise of what your body needs, there's moments where you probably dip in, your body's in a deficit, and then there's moments when you dip it,

or you are in a slight surplus. Yeah. And so in those moments, the body's in the surplus, your body's repairing and building and adapting to muscle, the moments and times where it's not, and it's in a deficit, it's catabolic, it's burning, and it's utilizing mainly body fat.

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of how the body works anyway, right? It's never like this same. It's always building and losing. And if you gain weight, it means it's, you're gaining more than you're losing and then, and vice versa. So it's always kind of doing that, but, you know, really this is about signaling.

It's, okay, if I'm burning 2500 calories, but I'm taking in 2000 calories, and part of the burn of the 2500 calories is that I'm utilizing, I'm burning 2,500 calories, but I'm taking in 2,000 calories, and part of the burn of the 2,500 calories is that I'm utilizing, I don't know, let's say 75 calories to add new muscle. Then what I'm hoping is that my body fat is being added to the food that I'm eating to provide these nutrients.

So you're getting this kind of transfer, if you will. And now you're not turning fat into muscle, so I want to be very clear, the two totally separate tissues, but you want to basically fuel yourself enough, but then use the extra fat also as part of that. And then simultaneously, you're building muscle, which then affects your metabolism, which is why one of the steps that we're going to talk about is really tracking what's going on, because if you are gaining muscle and burning body fat, that means your caloric requirements change. So muscle burns more calories,

and so you can't stay the same the whole time. That's the most challenging part about this. It's like, oh, it worked for this two weeks, and ain't gonna work for the next two weeks because now you have more muscle. Your body adapts, yeah, that's why this is such a gradual process because you wanna build, but you wanna build too quickly,

because you wanna be able to distinguish between what type of tissue you're actually building or if you're that spillover becomes storage which becomes fat and then now we have to kind of like account for that. And the reason why you guys would never recommend this to most people is because more than anything else the psychological challenge is so great. Well, it's hard enough just to lose. Right, it's already one of the biggest challenges in your normal fat loss journey or muscle building journey is the psychological game. When you keep it this close, it becomes even more difficult

because you don't get that feedback like you do when you're like, if you're an aggressive bulk, you know, you get the easy feedback right? Get on the scale and like, all right, I'm up another pound. I'm heading the right way, right? Because that's what I'm trying to do or the opposite, right? Someone who wants to lose 50 or 100 pounds and they get on the scale, they're like, all right, I'm down two more pounds. So you get this feedback of, okay, I'm doing really good.

Where in this case, if, you know, either person, right, whether trying to build to build or lose body fat, you are following the steps that we're going to talk about right now, you could get on the scale every day for a month of being perfect. That's right. And that's the anything move. That's almost, yeah, like you can't feed off that momentum that you would get swinging hard one way or swinging hard the other way in terms of like your focus of like what's my intent going into this if I'm just like an aggressive bulk Like I'm smashing weights. I'm eating, you know, and it's like you're kind of fueling this momentum all in one direction instead of likes really just you know staying in the middle and

Realizing we can't go too far to one to the other. Yeah, so the first step This is the most important step here with this goal, is to lift weights. The reason why you wanna lift weights or do strength training is because that is the most effective, loudest muscle building type signal that you can send your body. If you do not lift weights

and you attempt to build muscle and burn body fat, you're not gonna, it's not gonna happen. You may burn some body fat, but you ain't gonna build muscle. Muscle fat, it's not going to happen. You may burn some body fat, but you ain't going to build muscle. Muscle does not appear on your body without a stimulus, without a reason for it, because it is expensive tissue, meaning it costs your body nutrients to build and then maintain muscle. And without a good reason, your body will never add muscle to your body.

And what I mean by a good reason is either a strong outside signal or a hormonal signal or some kind of a signal that says We want extra muscle. Otherwise it ain't gonna happen. So you have to if this is your goal If you don't lift weights it ain't gonna happen. No other form of exercise will allow you and there's more steps But will allow you to build muscle and burn body fat Like lifting weights will absolutely has to happen Well, and then, okay, along those lines, your second point would be the type of lifting you do, I think is really important, too, because a lot of times, especially people that are wanting to reduce body fat, they get caught up in the calorie burn type of training,

and if you have focused more on this like circuit based, high heart rate, constantly moving, constantly sweating. And for what we're trying to accomplish here, I would say that's some of the worst ways you could potentially train, right? Yeah, no, you got to focus on the loudest possible signal for muscle building exclusively. And there's a couple of those lifts, those compound lifts that really provide that kind of stimulus where your whole body is just geared in that direction towards muscle building. Yeah, so like for example, a barbell squat, and it's set to set comparison to like leg extensions

or leg curls or other leg exercises, it just builds more muscle. So it's a louder muscle building signal. And you want as loud of a possible, as loud as louder muscle building signal and you want as loud as possible, as allowed as possible muscle building signal in this process. So those exercises do that, but also there's this problem because my calories are going to be carefully, you know, tracked or I'm cutting calories, I can't waste time and energy doing stuff that's not really going to serve me really well. You got gotta view your workout as the signaling for muscle and the diet as this is the fat burning part of it. Don't look at your workout as the fat burning.

Although the workout does contribute to it, don't view it that way because if you start to train to burn body fat, then you're gonna burn too many calories or send the wrong signal, which is more of a risk actually. And then your body will actually pair muscle down. It's very common for people to go lower calorie, to lose weight, and simultaneously lose muscle as well as body fat.

In fact, that's more common than not. Well, this is also the reason why I, during this process, I did no cardio. Yeah. That's the most controversial part right now. It is controversial, but I mean, I love that you recently brought up that study that they just did. This is an example of that. If you are in a deficit and trying to lean out and you're lifting weights and you're simultaneously also doing, you know, our bouts of cardio in your regimen, it is very difficult for you to lean out and also maintain the most amount of muscle that you can.

And that's why. So it's like, if I know that muscle is going to help me metabolically, I know that ultimately that's the look I also want to have. I want to have a lean muscular look. I don't want to be all just skinny from losing lots of weight. Then it's important that I keep as much muscles possible in this process, and one of the ways of doing that is actually managing your deficit purely through your nutrition and your training and not through cardio.

Cardio does not send a muscle building signal. Cardio sends a build endurance signal, and it also burns a lot of calories during the time that you're spent doing it. So because it doesn't send a muscle building signal and because it burns a lot of calories, the way your body adapts to it is by making you more efficient, giving you more endurance, but also making you more efficient with calorie burn. So you end up losing muscle, you end up pairing muscle down.

Cardio will send a competing signal with the strength training. So could you lose more weight on the scale, total weight by doing cardio plus weights plus a deficit in calories? Yes. Will you lose more fat? No., total weight by doing cardio plus weights plus a deficit in calories? Yes. Will you lose more fat? No, will you build muscle? Definitely not.

So remember the goal here is to build muscle and burn body fat at the same time. And because it's such a tricky, this is such a tricky, Goldilocks zone process, you don't wanna do anything that could potentially get your body to pair muscle down. You wanna do everything in your power

to try to get your body to build muscle while simultaneously eating in a calorie deficit to burn body fat. And if you don't, then your body will adapt metabolically by reducing muscle. And you'll end up in what usually happens, which is I lost fat and I lost some muscle. Now what is it, Sal, about walking that doesn't seem to do this? Right. Now you can walk a lot and do this like tons, but if you just, you know, make sure that you're active throughout the day and taking, you know, eight to 10,000, 12,000 steps a day, you're not really needing to build tons of stamina and endurance.

It's really just about being active and being healthy. Cardio on a cardio machine where you're going for it and you're burning and you're sweating and you're elevating your heart rate. You get to work out. Yeah, now you're looking at, like, or running outside or something working out. Now you're looking at running outside or something like that. Now you're looking at, oh, now my body really wants to become efficient. Now you could do this with walking.

It's just a lot harder. You have to walk miles and miles a day to make that happen. Well, the thing about walking versus running jogging or that, it's more recovery focus. It's good for overall digestion, it's good for overall circulation and that whole circulation process aids really well with recovery, which then helps in the process of building muscle. And is that because it's more recovery,

you manage your heart rate relatively low, is the body not receiving this kind of loud signal of endurance or push? That's right. Whereas I get on a piece of cardio equipment, I mean, the signals are heart rates elevating, starting to sweat, having a hard time breathing. And so I feel like the body reacts.

That's the environment you're presenting it. More aggressively to that versus the count for it. I'm just kind of moving throughout my day, my body's not like freaking out. Like, oh God, how long are we gonna be doing this for? This is so difficult. Oh my God, we need so much more calories. There's a big difference between going on a stroll,

which is what we're talking about, and doing something cardiovascular to where my body needs to improve its endurance. So, I recommend you go on daily walks and strolls to where it's a walk, like you're going out with your friend and having a conversation. Not like I'm out to go do a workout. That's not what we're talking about.

The workout is a strength training. That's what's gonna make us out. It's almost parasympathetic. Yes. You're bringing that heart rate down, controllable. Totally, and it's recovery-based. Totally. Next is, so obviously you have to be in a calorie deficit

to have the fat loss happen, but you don't want to be in too much of a deficit because we need to have enough nutrients and calories to fuel muscle building. So what you want to do is you want to eat in a very small to fuel muscle building. So what you wanna do is you wanna eat in a very small deficit. So I'm gonna ask you Adam, when you were tracking this for yourself,

what was your goal deficit-wise? You know, honestly, Sal, I actually didn't really focus so much on the deficit, as much as I did hitting my targets and not overeating. Got it. Right, so, because I knew through walking and me training and stuff like that, that I was already going to create somewhat of a deficit through that naturally because of the activity that

I was doing and the signal that I'm sending my body that it needs extra calories to build muscle. So I actually wanted to kind of hover around a maintenance more than I wanted a deficit and what would naturally happen is as I built more muscle, my metabolism would speed up, which would then take care of creating a new deficit. So I actually was more focused on actually hitting my macro targets, not actually restricting. I knew that as I built muscle, as I continued to work out in the gym and move, that I would slowly create that.

And then what I was actually more watching was, is my weight starting to drop too fast. Oh, I need to add calories again. So it was actually like, okay, hitting a maintenance, letting the strength training build the muscle to build the metabolism. And then once the metabolism started to build enough to where I actually started to see a dip on the on the scale or see my weight going out, then I would actually increase calories. So I did more of this like staying at maintenance, slight surplus, maintenance, slight surplus process of actually eating, but actually was leaning out.

Yeah, so that's great. So when I say small deficit, what I was gonna say is like, you're aiming for like a hundred calorie deficit, which is probably gonna come out to like maintenance. Which is exactly what's probably happening. Yeah, obviously I was in somewhat of a deficit, but the psychological or the mindset was like,

hit with my body needs. This is what I figured out is my caloric maintenance. This is how much protein and fats my body needs. I'm gonna stay right in that zone or close to that as I possibly can. I know that if I'm just really getting started back into weighting, that I'm gonna start lifting these weights and it's gonna send a signal to build muscle

and I'm gonna need that potential, maybe, even surplus of calories to build. And then what will eventually happen is that I add one, two pounds of muscle, the metabolism will speed up, and then I'll start to see the scale go down or maybe leaning out, and then that was always my indicator of owed time

to add more calories. That's awesome, that's why the next one is to interrupt with some small calories surpluses, exactly what you did, right? Where I would go, I would recommend someone do like five days or six days of a tiny deficit, which almost feels like maintenance, and then a day where you're now in a slight surplus. So 100 below, and then maybe 100 or 200 above for a day, and then back to below. And then of course, reassessing, because as you continue to reassess, if you're doing this right and gaining muscle, because at the end of your journey, your metabolism was

faster. Oh my God. Yeah. No, I think when I started, I was eating around, I think about 2,800 and I don't know, I can't remember exactly what, but I believe it was right around 2,800 to 3,000 calories was about where my maintenance was. And then by the end of this, I was over 4,000. Wow.

And that was just, and very slowly, man, it was almost a year later. I'm so glad you said that because had you stayed at 2,800, it wouldn't happen. Oh, definitely not. I definitely would not have built muscle. I mean, I might have slowly kind of leaned out, but if I did not, if I did not get to a place

where I was eating that many calories, I would not have also added the muscle that I had to speed them into. Was that a psychological challenge because I know a lot of people that go through like that surplus mode and then they interrupt it to, you know, break it up and do like a deficit that come right back. It was, it was such a mind-fuck, but it also was one of the coolest experiences for me for being a better coach, because I was so dialed in on where my macros needed to be

that I knew I was doing the right things, right? But then there would be moments where I would get this feedback of I'd wake up in the morning and I'd look a little bloated, right? It looked like I didn't get leaner. I looked like I got fatter overnight or what seemed to be it felt like overnight. And then I'd actually get on the scale and maybe even see the scale had gone

up a pound or two. And so it really challenged that, oh my god, you know, do I know what I'm doing? Am I eating appropriate to what I'm training like? And oh, should I cut? And what I do is like, no, I have to trust the process. I have to know that I know that I've already calculated all this out. I'm in the right place. And then it would be like two or three days later, all of a sudden you'd see that come out. And what it was was my body just holding on to water.

And that little bit of holding on to water, while you're also trying to lean out, is such a mind-fuck. And so it really opened my eyes for from a coaching perspective of, God, how often does this happen to our people? How often do you abandon it because of those signals? Yes. And you know what, when you're in that position,

this is from the client's perspective, I don't care how smart your trainer is or how much you trust them. There's nothing they can say to you to make you Feel different about what you see because I I knew what I was doing knew it was right But would see it and it's still mess with me because I'm going like no I'm looking at this mirror right now and I know what I look like yesterday and I look worse today Get I train I ate the way I was supposed to but I woke woke up. And so, you know, your body's ability to retain

and hold water and to look a little bit different day to day can be very deceiving for the, I mean, even the experienced person, much less the average person who's going through this. I like that. Yeah, so I'm so glad you said that. So basically you're going for a small deficit most of the time and every once in a while

you do a small surplus. But the key here is it's small. There's nothing massive in either direction. Now, along those lines, you definitely want to eat a very high protein diet, one gram of protein per pound of body weight or even a little more. Studies are pretty clear on this. When people are in a calorie deficit but they're protein and take as high, even if they don't strength train, they lose less muscle. If they strength train, they end up building more muscle. So the protein aspect is going to be very,

very important. So take your body weight and say, okay, that's my goal to hit that many grams of protein per day. And that'll make a huge difference. Of all the macronutrients, that one makes the biggest difference. Well, this is so important, right? So that if I, let's say I'm hitting my calorie goal in order to quote unquote build muscle, but my protein take is so low, my body might not, right? So I could literally, let's say my number is, 2,900 calories is what I need to consume it.

And I hit my 2,900, but my proteins at 30 grams or 50 grams, the likelihood that the extra weight that my body potentially holds onto or adds is not going to be, it's not going to be muscle because I'm not giving it the right macronutrients in order for it to adapt and build muscle, but I am giving it a surplus of calories. So those actual additional calories may end up getting stored as body fat, is that right?

That's it, yeah, muscle, your muscles are made up of amino acids. Now, the fat and carbohydrates play a role because it's more complex than what I'm saying, but this is pretty clear. This is one of those things with diet because diet can be murky, but this is very clear in diet

that a high protein intake in a calorie deficit is phenomenal for muscle. And since we're talking about building muscle while burning body fat, like you absolutely have to do this to really make this a reality again because it's so challenging. The next thing is we're going to talk about our carbs. Carb cycling can be really valuable during this process. Now, it's mainly because when you're looking at your total calories, especially if you're trying to be in a small deficit,

calories are made up of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Well, proteins and fats are essential, meaning you need to have a certain amount of each just to thrive and survive. Carbidrates are not essential. So when you're cutting calories, it's easier to take them from carbs

because you're not gonna take it away from, you're not taking, it's easier to take them from carbs because you're not going to take it away from You're not taking away anything your body absolutely needs like you would from fat and proteins now what is carb cycling? Carb cycling is the process of feeding yourself your carbohydrates around your workouts for example to fuel your work out Useable energy. Yeah, this is how I would like to it, right? I like to eat my carbohydrates a couple hours before my workout. So I have the fuel during the workout to fuel the strength building, muscle building process. And then maybe the rest of the day,

my carbohydrates are lower because my calories are lower overall. That's one of the main ways that. So when I did this, the way it ended up working out was like my medium carb day was basically caloric maintenance. My low carb day was a deficit, and then my high carb day was a slight surplus.

So proteins and fats are almost the same. That's right. Proteins and fats are the same. Carbs is what I manipulated. The carbohydrates also was what had me underlate my calories. And so I found that's another reason why I really liked it. It was an easy way to actually do that and just by following these macros. And I'd have these days where I'd get this, the carb surplus.

I obviously love those days because I'm eating additional calories. That would fuel these great workouts. I also tried and scheduled the big like leg day training stuff that I would do right around that. So I had this extra energy from it. That would put me in the surplus. Hopefully my body is building and adding muscle from the surplus of calories. Then I go back down to a maintenance day

and then I'd have this low. And I actually, and there's different, by the way, there's different ways to carb cycle, I play with all of them. I used to run two low days, a medium day, and then a high day. So that's kind of like what mine ended up looking like. Well, I like this too with manipulating the carbs

specifically because then on the low days too, you're still like satiated when you are high protein. And that for me was like so much more manageable. My hunger sigiled didn't get too loud and I wasn't fighting that as much. Totally. Next up is to prioritize sleep. Here's why. Probably the most effective way to build fat and burn muscle or lose muscle is to have crappy sleep. Losing sleep is a tremendous stress on the body. And evolutionarily speaking, if you weren't getting enough sleep, it was probably because

you had to look for food. It's probably because food was scarce. Otherwise, your body, I mean, we need sleep. We absolutely need sleep. Sleep would have been ruled out a long time ago if it wasn't absolutely necessity because you're unconscious for however many hours of the night making yourself quite vulnerable. So it's something that you need. And if you're not getting it through most of human evolution, it probably meant like we

weren't getting, I wasn't getting enough food. I need to be up trying to find more food. So because of that stress, your body tries to slow it to metabolism down. It's like, okay, well, we can't find food probably. Let's reduce our metabolic rate. And one of the best ways to do that is to pair muscle down. Also, let's hold on to some insurance because body fat is insurance. More body fat means you can survive with less food for longer.

So your body actually what it does when you lose sleep is it modifies its hormone profile to get rid of muscle and to burn, to build body fat. It also will change your cravings to do so. You'll notice after one night of poor sleep, you crave foods, you have more of a sweet tooth, more palatable foods or things that you want, both because they make you feel better,

but also because your body's trying to get you to eat more because of that stress. So poor sleep will kill this 100%. You gotta prioritize it. I can't help but think and refer back to when we were speculating about while these bodybuilders were just getting massive and they would go to that place in the Middle East. And we thought that maybe there's some crazy

mile statin' they're on. But really the kept the feedback was that yes, on anabolic, but really what transcended their physique was the fact they're regimen and with their sleep and they're so regimen with their nutrition and it's like completely scheduled and dialed in there with no interruptions. Is it, would you say it's fair to say that getting good sleep is one of the best ways to naturally, potentially optimize your hormones and getting poor sleep is one of the easiest ways for you to disrupt your hormonal balance. So fast one night of bad sleep will change your hormone.

So when you think about the role that hormones play in building muscle and fat loss and energy and all these things and When you understand that right that plays a key role, right, to you being able to build muscle or lose body fat. And then you understand that sleep is one of the easiest ways to improve that. And one of the easiest ways to disrupt that, you start to realize, like, oh, wow, like if I'm not thinking about that as a one of my key priorities in really balancing this whole diet, lifting, training thing, I'm missing out on one of the biggest things that could impact my results, right?

Completely, 100%. This has got to be a big, when I say it's prioritize, we mean like every day, not like, yeah, Monday through Thursday, and then Friday and I go to bed late, wake up late, Saturday, so I have jet lag and then Sunday, and then, no, no, prioritize means every single night

because even one or two nights of really bad sleep will wreak havoc on this particular goal. So this has to be as prioritized as the consistency that you're lifting weights or the consistency with your diets, literally up there with being just as important. If not more important because bad sleep will affect you negatively, more, no room for air then yeah

Then then then port like you could have one bad day of eating it will not negatively impact you as much as one bad night Well, I think you brought this up right? And I don't remember if you were referring to someone else talking to you about it or your your own research was that when you have Like let's say you have like perfect you go to bed at 9.30 every night Monday through Friday But then Saturday you're out the club till 2 in the morning or without. It's like literally like your jet lag for the next two days trying to get that circadian rhythm back to normal. It is a three or four hour difference when you travel, puts you in jet lag, right?

Two hour difference will put you in a little bit of jet lag. Well, that's what people do every week. Every week, they go to bed at a certain time and then Friday night or Saturday night comes, they go to bed late and they say, well, I'll sleep in the next day to make up for it. Well, you make up for a little bit, but what you're really doing is you're messing with your circadian rhythm. Monday comes around, so everybody hates Monday. Monday comes around, gotta get back on schedule.

Why do I feel like dog shit? Well, it's like you came from a, like you traveling, you came from another country and you're behind by three or four hours and it takes two or three days just to catch up. And that definitely messes with your hormones So this has to be like seven days a week Next up now. This is one of the least important things But this can help a little bit and there are some supplements that can help with this process of building muscle and burning body fat Really with these supplements to you more than the fat burning is just the building muscle fat burning supplements

You can pretty much throw them in the garbage. There really isn't anything out there that burns body fat. Some supplements out there might suppress your appetite for a bit, which can help, but really what you're looking at are muscle building supplements. And the number one muscle building supplement that's out there that's been tested thousands of times is creatine. And studies show when people die it and take creatine versus diet and don't take creatine,

they keep more muscle. Now, the one thing I will add to that though is this, is supplementing for areas where your deficient can be incredibly impactful. Oh, a good point. For example, nutrient efficiency. Magnesium was life changing for me for getting better sleep. Like, and we talk about how important sleep is,

learning that I was deficient in magnesium and then taking the mellow every single night made a huge impact on my sleep. Vitamin D, right? If you're somebody who's very low on vitamin D. So, I think at the point your Sal's making that, all these fat burner muscle building, gimmicky type of performance supplements that are out there are really worth nothing in this pursuit. But what has value is your overall balance of nutrients

that your body actually needs to be functioning. Yeah, that's a great point. I didn't think that. If you get a test to see if you have any nutrient deficiencies and you find any of them, that'll be a game changer because essential nutrients are essential for functions of the body, including hormone production, fat loss, muscle building, health immune system, pretty much everything. So if your vitamin D level is low, if your magnesium is low, if there's an iron is low,

supplementing with those can definitely be a game changer. Now, on top of that, supplements like creatine can help because creatine is very, very pro muscle and indirectly anti-fat because of the muscle building process. Another supplement that helps is hydroxy methylbutyrate known as HMB. This is closely related to lucine. It is a, it's not an amino acid,

but it's resembles an amino acid, and it is pro muscle sparing. In fact, they now put HMB in meal replacement shakes in like those retirement homes to prevent muscle wasting for older people. It's actually quite well studied. It's nothing groundbreaking, and I can take HMB and notice, but it may help you or prevent you from losing muscle if you start to mess up the calorie balance a little bit.

Then branching amino acids can kind of do the same thing. Although I will say this, if your protein is high enough, then the value of branching amino acids in H&B starts to decline. Crating is still valuable, but those two, not so much. Now the last step, this is important because as Adam was explaining, this is like a, this is a constantly changing process. At the beginning of his fat loss, muscle building, stay the same weight journey, his metabolism was 2800 or 2900 calories at the end, it was 4,000 calories.

The only way to know how that's working for you is if you test your body fat percentage weekly, gauge your process on a weekly basis, then you know what levers to pull, right? Then you know if the calories are too high, ooh, I gained muscle, but I also gained body fat. So let me drop the calories a little bit or who I lost body fat, no muscle. In fact, I lost a little muscle. Let me raise the calories a little bit. This is a touchy process every single week because if you are building muscle and burning

body fat, metabolism is changing. I mean, your diet has to change as well. So this was the rule that I came up for myself. It was, I tested every week, I took pictures every week, same time, same day, Friday's, first thing in the morning, always, but I would not adjust anything in my programming until two weeks.

So I, no matter what happened. So I never, whether I, if I didn't like what I was seeing or I thought my progress had stalled, I'd never made a correction to the plan that I had set out until two, a good two weeks. And it was just what I had found. Because you're looking for a trend, right?

That's right. I needed, I need, a week is not quite enough. When you're talking about how slow the body builds muscle and burns body fat. A week isn't quite enough for me to get enough analytics to make a real educated decision on which way I could go. And ease, and you guys know from body fat testing, you know, they can be off a little bit. And so a little bit up or a little bit down and just in seven days could really throw me off on over correcting. So I would always, I would still track every week,

but I wouldn't make corrections and changes in the nutrition and the training until two weeks it. And then I, then I could be a little more objective. Like, okay, here's my pictures two weeks ago. Here's my pictures to now. Here's where my body fat percentage was, two weeks ago here it is now like, okay, now let's make a decision based off of that

versus every single one. Yeah, the part that you said is what important is that you body fat tests aren't, I mean, it's impossible for them to be totally. You're not perfect. No, this could be user error if it's electronic impedance. I mean, then you have even more factors that can make it inaccurate.

So let's say you did a body fat test and it went up a half percent, which is like, I mean, statistically, you could err up to one or two percent, right? You probably shouldn't change anything. Now, if you go the next week, it's up another half percent, well, okay, now I know. But if it's back down, you're like, okay, it was obviously a mistake. Which is why I also like to pair it with the pictures,

because sometimes what might have happened is I didn't see much body fat change, but then I would see my pictures of my, I like the direction I'm going. I can see in that two weeks, like I'm making improvements. Oh, I see my shoulders are coming out of the more, I see my waistlines coming in a little bit. Like, okay, I like what I'm seeing,

and even though the body fat percentage isn't showing me anything super positive, it's not negative. And what I see, I like, I'm seeing and even though the body fat percentage isn't showing me anything super positive, it's not negative. And what I see I like, I'm going to stay the course. So, or vice versa could happen, right? You could be like, oh yeah, I think the pictures look terrible or they look the same from two weeks ago. But then, oh wow, when I do my reading, it says I'm right on course with my body fat percentage.

So, you know, stay the course. So, I think using both of them to make kind of an objective decision around like, you know, so, because I think the biggest mistake that people make when you're trying to do something in the like the Goldilocks zone is to make a decision too soon. That's too drastic. Patience is so important with this. Yeah, you have, and you're, like it's not gonna kill you

if you're kind of stalled And you're not seeing the progress you'd like to see Doing another week or two staying right there. It's not gonna hurt you And what I found more often than not was trusting that process and staying right there for another two weeks The next two weeks I made big leaps kind of weird how the body works like that like it's kind of like how we talk about how Kids grow right when they're when they're little, it's like it's not like they grew three in three inches. Resistance there, your body.

Yeah, well, like sometimes they'll have like no growth, right? You remember the name spurts. Yeah, and then also there's a spurt where I felt the same way about the pursuit of building muscle and losing body fat is like, you know, sometimes I'd have just not a great week, but my eating was perfect. My training was perfect, but then the results were kind of, yeah, but then the next week comes and it was like, you know, sometimes I'd have just not a great week, but my eating was perfect. My training was perfect, but then the results were kind of, yeah, but then the next week comes and it was like,

oh, wow, I felt like I made a big leap. I was like a release, yeah. So I would always err on the side of, hey, I can stick this out for another two weeks to give it a chance to show me the results. But versus, oh man, I didn't move very much this week. Oh, drop calories more. Oh, pick up this.

And I said, when I did that, I felt like I always ended up overcorrecting. So when you're in this process and you feel stalled, don't, you know, test it for another week or two. It's not going to hurt you to stay at those calories, to stay consistent with the way you're training for two more weeks, to give your body the opportunity to take one of those leaps.

Because in what you might find is the next to you. You're on the right track. You're like, oh, wow, this was great. Love it. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over 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, Adam is 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 Mind Pump Media.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

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