Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 271: How to Eat to Build Muscle & Burn Fat

Episode Date: April 11, 2016

Is there a best way to eat to build muscle? Is there a best way to eat to burn body fat? Is there an optimal eating formula that will make or break your muscle gain and fat loss? If you feel that you may be failing to reach your genetic potential because you are eating incorrectly or haven't learned the eating secrets of the pros, then you will want to listen to this episode where Sal, Adam & Justin reveal the RAW TRUTH about diet for muscle gain and fat loss. Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week the best reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Learn more about Mind Pump at www.mindpumpmedia.com.

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. Just start recording, Doug. Just hit the record button. We are recording right now. Hit the button. Let's test, test, test.

Let's record this forever. Quick walk, quick walk. We're not doing that today. Oh. We're not doing that today. Oh, we're not doing that. I just I would just like to to just mention this that it did become a thing. So fuck every time. We we didn't doubt that, dude. We that's why we had to make fun of it.

Did it did it really become a thing? It was it wasn't going to become a thing, but then you guys made fun of it, which then we challenged them to make it a thing. You realize that by saying that. Yeah, we did. It just goes, it just goes to show what's to his collective effort. Well, the real true test will see if it carries, carries. You know, I'm saying, like everybody do, see if it makes it on a t-shirt, then it's a thing.

There you go. How about that? Quick, quick, quick, quick. Yeah, it should. I don't see how that can happen. I don't either, because you know why I can do it too long. Even if you do even so things, that's funny. They're like, I don't know. that could happen. I don't even know why it's so long. Even though things that's funny, they're like, I don't know, I wear a shirt and I don't want to explain to everyone. You're willing to wear that shit.

It's a thing. I just, you know what I mean? It's not. It's funny how shit just how shit. Motherfucking-quaw. No, we get a shirt that says that. It's funny to me how it just evolves. We started off by saying, you know,

okay, and welcome to the Mind Pup drill. We're going to do the Q just evolves. We started off by saying, okay and welcome to the Mind Pup drill, we're gonna do the Q&A. Question and answer. Yeah, question and answer. Q&A. And then I think it was Adam. No.

It was a him that's a cloth. Justin did it first, because to be honest with you the very first time he did, I was like, what the fuck did he just say? Yeah, wait. And I had to think about it for a second that he put Q&A and he sounded, I was like, oh, this clever motherfucker over there.

I always have to make things happen. I never heard nobody call Q&A. And then it turned into an equal. And then it turned into an equal. Yeah. And then the was like, oh, this clever motherfucker. I always have to make things. I never heard nobody call it a Quobble. It turned into an eagle. Yeah, and then the last one done. That's obvious. That freaking't be a nice, yeah. No, no, no. Not literally an asshole. Well, you know, okay, I know, I do know. So you wanted to do that.

It's a little puckered bird. Whoa, it's the starfish from hell. You know, we call him balloon knot. All right, go ahead. No, I know we have, we have planned to do a quality there with that, but I'd actually, can I detour us? Because I think this would be really good to talk about. And if we can get Doug to share maybe a little bit,

Doug asked a question to the other day or was expressing to us, because we've had a lot of people need help with like the nutrition guide, the macro counter and understanding how that works. And it's a very thorough macro counter in comparison to any other one that I've ever seen. And I remember when Justin chose that, and I was like, I really liked it because that's

how it should be. It should be detailed about all the different things your movement and the different food. You wanted to be as individualized as possible. Exactly, because we... That was really the goal of it, was putting that together. It's like, how can I make this a little bit more specific? And I think, you know, somewhat to my demise with that, it created a little bit more specific? And I think somewhat to my demise with that, it created a little bit more confusion,

but really the goal of it was to try to be able to to be as precise as we can. Yeah, as much as that precise information. So. Well, so that's why I wanted to bring that up because that had been going on, and I think led Doug into talking about, like, there's a lot of people that just have a misconception of understanding how to eat properly, whether it be to gain muscle or burn fat or, you know,

there's so many that goes along with those myths. And I feel like we haven't really addressed that in a really long time. And I have had a few people that have inboxed me recently about questions about the guide and what, you know, how it was comprised and why we did what we did and stuff. And, you know, Doug, you share with everybody what you were telling me. That was a question that you were gonna ask. No, he was talking about how his views used to be. You know, he first.

Well, it said that diet is such an important part of building muscle. And as Sal well knows, when I came to him, I thought I was a hard gainer. And so I tried all these different workouts, I tried all these different diets, and I just thought, well, maybe I'm just doing the wrong things with the workout and with my diet. And so I had this preconceived idea that there was some special muscle building diet, and if I didn't do that diet, I wouldn't see the gains.

And part of that, of course, was the belief that a ton of protein was necessary in order to build muscle. But I also thought, well, maybe I just don't know the formula. I'm just not taking the right percentages of this or that. Maybe I'm not eating enough calories and up my calories and the next thing I know, I was getting fat. And so I was under this impression that there was this magical diet that I needed to be on, a muscle-building diet.

And what I've learned basically is there isn't such a thing. And I think a lot of people who buy the nutrition survival guide, they say, oh, I want a meal plan. Right. Because I want to be told exactly what to eat. And so I can build muscle or lose fat. And there are principles over arching principles that people can follow that will feed your muscle.

But again, as we've said here over and over again, it's the workout you need to be looking at. The way you're eating is supporting that. And you have to have the nutrition. And so it's about eating healthy and worrying about that. And then the muscle muscle take care of itself So that's really where I wanted to kind of put that out there is like this preconceived idea that there's this magic way to eat That's gonna build the muscle and tell me what to do. I don't think it's as clear cut as that

I'll tell you what's a great point Doug. I'm getting I'm getting emotional watching Doug talk like this He was getting passionate over there. I am a very passionate model. He was going to head up the sales team over here. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's just, you know, at the evolution of your, your understanding of things, Doug. Right. I mean, that was, you're 100%. You hit the nail right on the head. Here's a deal. Can you eat in a way that will prevent you from building muscle or prevent you from losing body fat? Yes, 100%.

Once you meet your, those certain requirements though, there isn't no, there isn't a magic formula. And the differences between people can be pretty dramatic and like Doug was saying, there's these general principles that you want to kind of follow, but I'll tell you something. Can you build muscle on a lower protein, higher carbohydrate, lower fat diet? Yes. Can you build muscle on a higher protein, high fat, low carb diet?

Yes. Can you build muscle on a moderate protein? You know, high fat diet. Yes. If the signal exists for your body to build muscle, it doesn't take that much protein, for example, to build that muscle, it just doesn't. There's vegans that eat a relatively low protein diet

that build plenty of muscle, and I know guys that eat shit tons of protein that also build muscle. It's really, you gotta send the right signal. This always reminds me. Every time we talk about this, it always reminds me of how doctors for a long time, and now they're kind of changing their views and their stance, but for a long time,

they was recommended that people supplement with calcium. You know, take calcium, drink lots of milk, eat lots of dairy because people are getting rates of higher rates of osteophenia and osteoporosis. But here's a deal, if the signal to build or to strengthen bone isn't there, all that calcium isn't gonna do shit for you.

If anything, it's gonna do you harm. And the same holds true with diet. If you have a good signal being sent to the body and you meet those general, you know, principles of eating whole natural foods, you're not eating way too much or way too little, you're gonna build muscle, it doesn't require you to go crazy with your diet.

I think health should be the ultimate, when it comes to diet, health should be the priority. What makes me healthy, what makes me feel good, again, that can vary from individual to individual, and then send the right signal to build muscle and increase my fitness. I think that you've got the formula.

Yeah, that's the overarching theme of the guide is really to provide you with information that you have a solid understanding of what is healthy and beneficial to your body. And if you don't really have an understanding of that first and you just want to formula for, like, this day, I eat this, this type of meal, I want to make sure I'm balanced and I have this type of protein ratio to go with this type of carbohydrate ratio. You know, you're thinking about it all wrong. And I'm just going to put it out there because, like, you know, this is a very common theme when, you know, mentioned nutrition plans and each one of us in our own career have gone

through this with clients. And, you know, there's a certain expectation of, well, you know, what has worked with your clients, how they've lost fat and gained muscle, there must be some kind of meal plan that you put them on, and then it was super successful. Well, yeah, well, that was basically determined by them in their own habits. So first things first, you really have to determine what it is that you're doing.

And I think that people don't want that. They want the answer first before they go through the process of figuring out what the answer is. Well, any trainer with minimal experience. Oh, I wouldn't say minimal. I know where you're going. Well, it was about halfway through my career where this transition happened.

No, no, no, no, no. I'm not talking about this transition. I'm talking about any trainer with minimal experience can put together a macrodow meal plan where this transition happened. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Here's what you need for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you're gonna hit your 1300 calories. Here's your percentages of proteins, fats, and carbs. In fact, the tools are available online for free right now. Anybody can go on there, enter a food, figure out the percentages, but, but, but,

there's your meal plan. That is not long-term success. Right. You have to consider this, okay. There are very few things that are more, that are bigger parts of your life on a regular basis than the food that you eat Okay, it is Obviously it is crucial to your just survival. We are hard wired to eat of course. We are you have to eat

So how can anybody think that having a specific meal plan on a daily basis, either can possibly be anything that's resulting in any type of long-term success, or let's say you do stick to it forever, that that's not some kind of borderline eating disorder. It is, it's not long-term, it's not teaching you to have the right relationship with food, it's not teaching you and showing you and guiding you

on how to do it for yourself. Think of this, if you're listening right now, and like most people, you have particular goals, you wanna get leaner, you wanna look better, you wanna build muscle. Imagine this, imagine having the training and the guide that took you to the point where you could now live your daily life, stress-free,

understanding what you need and when you need it, and being able to mold to your environment. I'm eating over this person's house, or I'm gonna do this tomorrow, and it's like, it's not that stressful. I know what I need to do. I know how my body works. I understand how food works.

That's an amazing feeling. That's something that will stick to you forever. The other side, you know, having a meal plan specifically structured out for you on a daily basis, that is not long-term. That is a fucked up way to live. And I did that shit. And I'm a hardcore fitness fanatic.

I'm in the industry. And let me tell you, when I broke free from that, it was like leaving a cult. You ever see interviews with people that leave a cult, and then they're like, man, I don't know, I'm a cult toilette. That's why you got to remember too, if you even did that, we did that, we all did.

Shit, we gave, that's why I said a halfway where I was interrupting you was, shit, I did that for half of my career, gave a client, you know, here's your meal plan. You know, here, you can eat this. Even the company we work for, I used to just print off a meal plan, and that's what you do, you put it on the macros, it calculates out and this is what you eat.

And here's the thing, you got to remember as a consumer, if you're somebody who is a fitness guy, we see it, we understand it, we finally got it now years later of understanding the importance of teaching people balance and teaching them truly how to create a plan for themselves versus just writing out something. But you gotta remember as a consumer, they don't have the same passion as we do for what we're talking about. So to them, I don't give a shit, bro. Just tell me.

Just tell me. Just write it out for me. Let me follow it. And it sucks because that's what happens to a lot of trainers is they get that pressure from the client. I just have something coming up in six months. I don't think about it. I don't want to think about it.

I don't want it. That's why I'm hiring you. That's why I'm paying you this money. And so that makes it very challenging. And it took me a long time in my career before I had the ability to be able to say like, well, no, this is part of how, how I do this. And if you, you want to hire me, this is how it's going to happen. It's, I'm not, because what I know,

and just like what you said, is what I would find, if I, I could give someone a meal plan, get them in great shape for the next six weeks and say eat exactly this, whatever. But what happened is that, in their mind, I would be really setting them up for long term failure,

because now they're, they're going to make this relationship with that meal plan, that that's how they have to eat if they ever want to get in shape. And that's not getting a real understanding. Exactly. And that's the association that they're going to always place into when I got in that shape.

It's as opposed to like, you know, I'm healthy and this is something that I'm always going to be doing from here on out. It's the same parallel that athletes that were or people in their teens and early 20s were in the best shapes of their life. And they always relate that and what they were doing with getting in shape. And they feel that they had to work at that intensity or you know, that's the reason why, and they either won, they give up because they're older

and they don't understand how to program design for themselves and they don't have to really beat themselves up like that. They just don't know that they don't know. You know, and I feel like nutrition is the same way. And you know, when we created this guide, it was so important that it was, it was just like, it is with maps. I mean, maps is not a one single program.

The idea is that it evolves at change and the idea is to teach people how to program design themselves as they go through a program. Not just, here's your program, follow this, and you're gonna get in shape. No, it's learn about why we're doing phases like this, learn about how you can modify and change things

and how you would do that. Same thing goes for the nutrition guide. That's the way it was developed was understand that, yeah, you're gonna be told, okay, this is for your body, this is what you need to do, but you need to understand why you're being told that and then you need to also learn how to make choices. And then we always talk about this,

how much we encourage that you are rotating foods and the importance of that. And that's new or science that we're learning of that, you know, understanding that rotating of the foods is just like the way you rotate and move and phase through your workout. So, you know, that's why it would be really bad for us to just hand someone a meal plan.

So it always hurts. It pains me when someone does that virtually now because when we're in person and you're sitting across the table and you give me that bullshit, I got a half hour to an hour to sit there to explain you otherwise and after you listen to me, you're going to understand. But right now, now that we're in this virtual world, it's tough because all you get is like a message, an email or an inbox saying that, oh, I thought I was going to get this with the nutrition guy and I thought someone was going to write me a meal plan and it's

like, oh shit, like, God, I wish we could explain this to this person. Yeah. And obviously they've missed some episodes where we've talked about the importance of you don't want that, you know, there's, there's a lot of parallels you brought up the maps program. Like this, I would consider our foundational nutrition guide. Like it's, it's, it's the place you want to start to sort of get a good understanding of like what this all means. Like how, how do I even go into a grocery store and start such a good point, you know, benefiting, basically like replacing foods that I'm, that I'm choosing right now, you know, with a better education level.

So there's stuff in there that like people will me, like, well, you guys talk all about keto or you talk about fasting or you talk, like, I'm like, yeah, of course we do because this is outside of the foundation. The foundation is, you have to think about like your average person. Say it's just your uncle or your friend or your mom or somebody like that that's barely even into fitness. Could you actually like refer them to this guide and have them start from it and understand it? So that's how we had to address it. It's not just for fitness people.

And so like what we do from there is we build off of that. And so we have a fasting guide that's you know, it's a little more specific to somebody that has a very good understanding of a food in a good relationship with it. Very good point. I mean, just getting a fasting guide and starting to fast without understanding how to eat properly, how to balance out your foods,

it wouldn't do well. You wouldn't do well doing that. Simply fasting wouldn't do much, much good if you're not eating in a certain way. And you have to understand something. We live in a modern world where you're navigating constantly on a daily basis, in a measurable amount of options when it comes to

what you can eat, when you can eat it, I can literally pick a flavor, and within 15 minutes I can have that flavor. I can pick within 15 minutes, I can have that flavor. I can pick a texture and I can have that texture. I can decide to eat something obscure and I could probably find it at a grocery store within 10 miles of here. I could get food made for me and within five minutes, I can consume salty, sweet, you know, you know, fattening or non-fattening foods. So because of this, the modern lifestyle that we live in,

you have to understand how to navigate properly and that's why a nutrition guide is so important and why you don't want a meal plan. Look, if it was as simple as knowing what to eat every single day and that's what you're gonna eat every single day, then why don't we just take it a step further and why don't you just have meal replacements? Why don't you just cut out the food and have breakfast lunch and dinner be a shake and there you go

You never have to worry about it again. Let's look at the success of programs like that Horrible success. Well having a meal plan with specific foods every single day the success rate of that is Maybe a tad better, but it's not that much better. No, it's not. It's horrible. And so it's funny because I was having this conversation with a new trainer the other day. I was talking to somebody who's a brand new trainer, and he asked me how long I've been in fitness and I told him, it's been a long time, almost 20 years now, it's been 18 or 19 years.

And he says, well, how long has your average client been with you? And I thought about it for a second. And honestly, my average client's been with me for like five or six years at least. I have very little clients that have been with me for less than that, and I have a lot of clients that have been with for more than 10 years.

And he asked me, well, how is that possible? Like, what is your secret to doing that with your clients? Because the reality is in personal training, the average client will be with you for six months. If you can keep a client for longer than a year or two, you're kicking ass. You're among the best trainers that exist in America, because most people don't pay a trainer 50 to 150 dollars an hour for a session for longer than six months or a year. One of the reasons why I succeed with my clients among others is that I teach them how to do things on their own. I may start training a client a three days a week

when I first start training them. But after I'm training them for all the clients I have that have been with me for 10 years, I train them once a week. Some of them I train once every week, and I have clients that train once a month. Because my goal was to guide them to the point where they could make it a part of their life.

Now they continue to see me once a week, once every the week or once a month, because I continue to be that guide for them. And there are moments when I need you to guide them in the right direction. But I have given them the skills to make this a part of their life. And as a result, I have taken people who had never exercised consistently, who had never had a passion for fitness. I train very average regular people. You guys know my clientele. I've trained athletes in the past, but the kind of people I like to train are everyday average people.

I also do very well with advanced age populations and people with injuries. So these are people that aren't like super fanatical about fitness. These people were not consistent before they met me. And here we go, 10, 12, 13 years later, they have been consistent that entire time. And it's because I was guiding them

and they've understood how to make it a part of their life understand. I do that. And the way I didn't do that was by telling them specifically what to do every single time they worked out and every single time they, because if I did that, they'd be gone. I maybe get great results for six months

and they'd never see them again. And not only would I never see them again, but they would not have a relationship with fitness and nutrition that would last them their entire life. Well, I know it would be it's anecdotal for me to say this, but every client that I ever had that I wrote a meal plan like that that got got in a great shape always fell out of it. Oh, every 100%. You know, every time.

And it was it was the ones that took the other process where it was, let me teach you that you no longer saw anymore that you see now three, four years later down the road and they're in still a good shape. You know, I have a client also, a minor hungry for knowledge. Yeah, you know, a big mind pump fan and it was a client of mine back when I was early 20s and still connected with them. He lives down in Southern California and he's a listener.

And I probably talked to him sometimes only once every three to four months. And it's just how you're doing, how you work out. And now he, what he does is run things off me. Hey, I was thinking about this. You know, I'm gonna add this and start to do this. I wanna focus on this a little bit. What's your thoughts?

You're a facilitator. Exactly. That's all. The guy knows exactly what he's doing. Rarely ever do I tell him, no, I don't think you should do that. And Roman's like, oh, that's not a bad idea. Is this what you're trying to do? Maybe you might think about this or add this. And little subtle adjustments, maybe like that. But nine times at a 10, what he's sharing with me

is already something he's researched on his own. He's thought all the way through and it's a very smart approach to whatever he's trying to do. already something he's researched on his own. He's thought all the way through and is a very smart approach to whatever he's trying to do. Well, here's a thing. When people look at the average American who may be overweight, you know, chronic inflammation, maybe some kind of chronic disease and healthy, it's easy to point the finger and say, lazy, you know, you're lazy, you just give in, you don't have any willpower. It's easy to say that,

but I will take this approach. If I could take one-tenth of the knowledge and information that I have about how food affects the body, how I feel and the choices I can make, how I feel with activity. If I could take that and simply transplant it, I could do some kind of weird, you know, surgery and boom, they have one-tenth of that information and understanding in transplant it. I could do some kind of weird surgery and boom, they have one tenth of that information and understanding in their brain. I will guarantee you the success rate will be high. I think I don't think it's full because they're lazy. I don't think it's four because they have poor willpower.

I literally think they simply do not understand. And yes, the information's out there, but it's a lot of fucking information. It's information out there. There's a lot of information to navigate and look, I'll tell you what right now, go on if you're listening to the podcast, you could, if you're on your phone,

you could easily switch over the internet and just enter in, what's the best way to eat for weight loss? What's the best way to eat for building muscle? What's the best way to eat for feeling better? And I guarantee you, you're gonna get a million different, you know, opinions and programs and, you know, things you gotta buy into in order to get the secret access code for the formula.

And it's just like, it's all big hustle. That's the frustration is like, I can totally identify with your average person that's like, well, shit, so and so said this way. And then the guy that I followed forever, who's, he's a doctor, whatever he told me this. And it's just a bunch of people out there with agendas and there's different information that some of it's good and some of it's total garbage. And it's so like clients that come to me,

it's like first things first, we got a filter. We're gonna filter all this bullshit that you've been, you know, taught or like the, that you've been watching on TV, that you've been watching biggest loser. We've friends told you about it. The biggest loser all of a sudden, well, they lost 100 pounds and you know, it's like, there's just so many things that people will just, they want it, it's visual,

they want to see this equate to this. That's right. And, you know, they want to like internalize a lot of the process of that, that it takes to really do that, but do it to where it's going to stick. It's going to become a lifestyle. Well, it was something too that we were very, very adamant about not, I don't ever want to be labeled like that.

Like the, oh, I tried the mind pump diet, or I tried the, we don't have anything like that. Well, I know, and I think that's why we are so adamant about making things guides, is so people understand that our true intentions is to educate you on this, is to understand this topic.

That is so polluted. You talk about nutrition or diet or, you know, whatever for gaining muscle or losing fat. And just like you said, you Google it, and you're getting a million different things. Well, why is that? Why is there a million different things? Because there's a million different ways that you can go about that. I promise we're trying to help you understand and help you guide you in that direction. And, you know, some people may think that they want it the other way but no you really don't. You really don't just want someone to hand you that way because then you're just you're

really setting you maybe you're setting yourself up for a short term goal that you achieve but it's not long-term success. I promise you right now if there was one specific way to eat that was it and it worked for everybody I promise you mind pump mind pump, we would, that would be it. We would talk about it. We would post it and that's all we would promote. But it just doesn't work that way. Now rule number one, you have to eat to nourish your body. You have to eat to feel good.

And a lot of people don't understand what that means. What does it mean to feel good? This is why when I get a client, I start with the most basic rudimentary steps. They'll come to me and I'll say, okay, you know, Sal, what should I eat? They'll always everybody ask that. What should I? I'll say, okay, rule number one, don't drink anything except for water, coffee, and tea. There's nothing else. I want you to eliminate anything else that you're gonna drink. And we'll start with just that. And that starts to make

an impact. And then the next thing I'll say is, okay, I want you to have one to three servings of vegetables every single day. That's the second thing that I'll say to them. And then I'll start doing that. And then I start moving into the more difficult stuff. I want you to eliminate anything that's packaged or comes in a box. And we move through the steps and I start to guide them. And then they start to understand, do I have clients track?

I sure, of course I have people track. But only so they can reveal to themselves the truth behind what they're eating and what they're doing, because I will tell you this. You take the vast majority of people and ask them to give you an estimate of what they think they're eating. And they're off.

Way off, always. Everybody's off. Everybody thinks they eat less than they do. 100% of the time, everybody thinks, they just have no idea. How many calories you think you're eating? Oh, I'm probably around 2,400. Guaranteed, it's closer to, it's 500 calories,

at least over that, if not 1,000 over. People don't realize. So I have them track only because I'm taking them from the stage of unconscious incompetence. In other words, these people just don't know that they don't know. And most of you listening have no idea that you don't know. You don't know something that you don't know because you haven't been showing it yet.

Once you see it, like, oh shit, there it is. But that's not enough. Now we have to take it to the point where you kind of have to pay attention. But eventually, and it doesn't take long, I'm going to tell you right now, this isn't some crazy daunting task, I promise you. If you were to do something like get, you know, a nutrition guide and figure these things out, start to track, start to pay attention. I'm talking months. It's not years. It takes months. Now, the part that takes years is that

relationship that you build with food, but that's anything you do. It's a long process. And you'll find yourself one year, two years, three years, four years later, feeling so much better about it and so much more confident about it about going anywhere and be able to eat the way that your body wants to be fed. But it's only in terms of knowing where you need to go. We're talking a matter of months. It's not that much. It really isn't. It's just you want to have a guide to kind of point you in the right direction and then continue to refer to that and start to listen to your body and pay attention to things like, you know, I think these are things that people don't even consider what they're diet. Like I get a headache.

I always get headache, so I just take ibuprofen. It's a part of my life now. Nobody considers looking at their diet or their nutrition or their water intake. Nobody considers that. But let me tell you something. Your food intake and what you drink probably plays a bigger role in how you feel than almost anything else you do.

I have these chronic skin rash that I've had for 10 years. Might be your food. I don't sleep very well. Might be your food. Look at those types of things to start paying attention to the signs that have nothing to do with fat loss. The middle of the day. Yeah, exactly.

All my energy. Oh, interesting. We're eating for breakfast. Exactly. You know, pay attention to the things other than fat loss and muscle gain. First of all, when it comes to muscle gain, I can make people build muscle on a lot of different fucking diets. If the workout is good and you got good workout programming, I can make somebody who's obese and just continues to eat that particular way, I can get them stronger almost every single

time regardless. Now will they get stronger and do better if they eat right? Of course, but you can build muscle on a lot of different diets. Fat loss takes a little bit more planning because of course if you're in a calorie surplus, your workout could be excellent. You're just not going gonna lose any body fat. But pay attention to things other than the fat loss and the muscle gain and add those into the equation and once you have a guide that kind of points you in that direction and you start to

add those things up what'll end up happening is within a matter of months you will understand your body at a at of such a higher level than you did before and then it'll get to the point where nobody will be able to help you with nutrition better than you are than you can. I know this. I know I could go to the best, you know, sports nutrition scientists in the world and without my input, they won't be able to do anything better than I can for myself. It just won't happen. Well, you know, there's a reason why too that you know, Justin touched on this a little bit that we released the nutrition guide in that order too, that it's not that, and we follow

currently a ketogenic type of diet right now, or at least, you're full blown. I have a modification of that. But what happens is, if you start, and people wanted us to do guides for that, and I carb cycle also for my show There's lots of different ways of eating that I utilize this tools in my everyday lifestyle But I strongly infirmly believe that nobody should be doing any of that until they learn the basics first

Like until they understand that because see when I when people started asking me about and this is where it's a Red flag to me that a lot of people still don't have this understanding correctly, and Sal, this goes into what you're saying right now, is people will ask me, hey, how's that ketogenic diet working? I know you're trying to build muscle on it, how's that working? Are you building muscle? They're more concerned about that.

I'm more concerned on my ability to rotate foods and how I feel eating that much food and having to do that. And is it something that I can consistently do for a long, sustainable time? And these are the things that I'm finding out that I don't like. I don't like that it's very difficult for me to rotate foods. I find that I have to think more about what I need to get because I'm missing fruit stuff like that in my diet that I get as a good source of fiber. So I have to go out of my way to make sure

that I'm getting enough of that. So I have to track things that I didn't have to track before when I was eating a more balanced type of diet. Now does that mean that it's not beneficial? Absolutely. I believe in all the great things about it, but I think of the other things. I don't think is this gonna build me a bunch of muscle,

burn me a bunch of fat. Well, yeah, I could do that either or with that diet. I'm thinking about is it something that I can follow and still follow and find a fall in the guidelines of how I should be fueling my body? Well, we got that's that's where the guy, that's where understanding what the guy is about is understanding what, you know, these are the things that your body needs. This is balanced. These are what all eating with this color like this. This is how you're gonna get all these,

you know, micro and macro nutrients in your diet. All this stuff is essential and important. Now that you get that and you understand that, okay, now we can talk about how maybe you would implement a carb cycle or how maybe you would, you know, do intermittent fasting or how you might implement ketogenic like all these other tools.

Now that's the problem with everybody else out there is what they do is they take the ketogenic diet, they take the IFYM, they take the carb cycle, and they break out the science to show you how it's superior than something else. Well, yeah, I could fucking do that with every diet. You can do that with every diet. You can take every diet that's out there

that's ever been, a book has been made about, and you can back up science. What about South Beach diet? Right, you can show benefits of all. There's easy ways to manipulate science to show the benefits of all that stuff. The problem is everybody that's buying into it has no real understanding of food

and doesn't have a good relationship with food yet, yet they're buying into a diet like that. Learn that first, then we guide you to the next phases, and that's why there was an order to this, and there's not to be said that we won't do other guides on other types of diets out there because quite frankly, all of us utilize different diets all the time and love to pay to it. But what we're looking for is different than what everybody keeps asking. Everybody keeps asking, how are you building muscle? How are you burning fat on those things? Well, that's easy. If, to me, that's the easiest part of the diet.

Look, I want to be very clear because, yes, I do eat ketogenic. I'm probably the most staunch supporter of it for myself. Now, let me explain the circumstances of why. I have chronic autoimmune type issues when it comes to food. I have, you know, I could get irritable bowel syndrome, which I suffered very badly from years ago. I could get, you know, very, very stiff in my joints. I can get inflammation. I'm very, you know, people might say sensitive

to food. I find that eating ketogenic, for me, really solves those issues the most. Now, on a side note, do I build more muscle and get stronger eating ketogenic? Yes. Why? Because I've controlled those other factors. Because when I have irritable bowel syndrome, when I have inflammation,

when I feel my autoimmune issues start to build up, I ain't build a muscle. I ain't getting stronger in the gym. It's not the magic of some potion or some mix in my ketogenic diet. It's because for me, it makes me feel the best. Now I have a friend who, and we talked about, he's a client of mine, actually,

he's also a good friend of mine, he is a vegan, okay? How did he become vegan? Well, he went on this, he's a surgeon and he volunteers for doctors without borders. And this is where doctors go into third world countries and provide help or procedures for people who can't afford to do these types of things. It's a great guy.

So he went off somewhere, I don't remember where it was, but it was somewhere at high altitude, and he was getting so fatigued all the time. And he started adopting the type of diet of the locals, which was vegan-based, so he stopped eating meat. And he started noticing, he started adopting the type of diet of the locals, which was vegan based. So he stopped eating meat and he started noticing, he started feeling really good. He came back to the States and continued that way. And he feels amazing eating a vegan diet.

And anytime he tries to eat meat, for him, he doesn't feel good. Now his body's telling him something, his body is telling him, he should probably continue eating a vegan diet. And now he's very smart about it. He understands how to combine foods, he understands what the best way to eat in a vegan way is for people and for himself.

But my point is, there isn't one specific diet that's going to be great for everybody. And you got to look at all those different factors. This is the thing that I always trip out on. I've been talking about keto now for the last 10 episodes or whatever on and off. Inevitably, I get a message from someone's like, hey, Sal, every once in a while, hey, Sal, I've been trying that keto diet and I'm getting headaches and I can't sleep real well and it's been two and a half weeks

and how long is this gonna last? I can't stop it. Right? Exactly. I tell them to listen, it's not working for you. How do you feel when you eat this way? Well, I kind of feel better that way. Then let's go back to that.

Let's go back to it. Of course, there's general rules when you look in nutrition. I don't give a shit what you eat. If you're eating way too many calories, you're gonna have some bad side effects. I don't care what you eat. If it's not balanced and you're lacking nutrients, you're gonna feel shit.

But it's not just math. And I think that's where people need to make a clear distinction. Like it's not math. And that's why we couldn't just say, like, hey, these calculators are gonna equate to your situation so awesomely. When, in fact, if I was just to do that

and say, like, blanket it across, you're gonna wanna stick with like a 2000 calorie diet and that's going to keep you in a deficit and this and that. And when, in fact, you may have, you may be teetering on metabolic damage or, you know, we may be needing to address something a lot bigger because of what else you've been doing in your lifestyle and what kind of stress you're under and, you know, there's just variables. And so when there's variables, it's idiotic for me to prescribe something that's very like standard

and trying to present it in a way that it's specific. It's not specific. You have to find out what's specific. That's the point of why we're very like calculated about how we present information to you guys because it's a process for you to understand your own body. It's fucking challenging too.

Let me tell you. It's hard. We're still learning about ourselves. Well, look, I'll tell you what, when someone comes to one of us and says, roughly how many calories should I be consuming? Here's the first thing they'll hear from us. If we're working one on one, someone.

Write down what you've been eating and write it down for the next week. Don't change anything, just write it down. First thing you got it. And let me look at what you've been eating. Why? Because calculating someone's calorie burn is pretty much impossible until you start to see that.

Because even the best measuring devices, even the best wearables that you can wear, have a between 10 to 30% is just your arm movement. Yeah, well, there's 10 to 30% off. So let's just say it's 10, let's say it's super accurate and it's 10% off. Well, that's the difference between 2,000 calories and 2,200 calories. Well, that 200 calories over the course of a month is how many pounds of fat on, you know, on or off.

That's actually a big, you know, margin of error. So it's important to know what you've been eating, what your activity level is, at normal. Okay, great. Now I see you've been consuming on average, 32 hundred calories a day, and this is what your activity level is, and you've been averaging one pound of, you know, fat gain

a month, or you've been maintaining for the last year. Now I know I can take that as my baseline, and we can start working from there. But that's not all. It takes time to work and continue to guide as we progress and eventually we find. Pay attention to all these signals and things that are going on.

Like Adam brings up neat quite a bit like on the podcast and what a perfect pairing between understanding You know through the nutrition guide and then also like figuring out that Neat is the one that's gonna take you to you know more of the fat burning Situation because once you can crack that code as far as like how much activity you're producing All day not your workout all day every day consistently seven days month. So look at those days where you're sitting on your ass and you don't even realize like, oh my god, two hours just went by. I've been sitting

the whole time. You know, that is a humongous contributor to, you know, what, you know, how you're going to burn fat, how you're going to utilize your energy properly. And, you know, in conjunction with eating the right types of food. We also need to consider this. Your body is not going to be the same next year. It's not going to be the same next month. It's definitely not going to be the same 10 years from now. So if you don't learn how to read and understand your body, then even if you find a meal plan that works perfectly for you right now, you're fucked five years from now when things start to change.

You start to get screwed. Talk to anybody. Talk to anybody over the age of 30 and ask them, hey, where do foods used to be able to eat when you're a kid that now you can't even digest anymore? And they'll have a whole list of foods. Those you listening right now, I guarantee, can think of that yourself. I used to be able to eat a bolicereal with milk. If I drink milk now, it destroys me. I used to be able to eat a bolicereal with milk. If I drink milk now, it destroys me. I used to be able to have certain foods that didn't bother me. I used to have energy, no problem if I would eat high carbohydrate meals throughout the day and now they make me tired. But that's my own personal body. So understanding how your body works and listening to it and kind of learning

how to read it is what's going gonna give you that success today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life. And it's gonna also look, if for those of you who have a family and have kids or wanna start a family in the future, this is invaluable information. It's gonna help you plan and read the way you feed your family. Look, my daughter, my daughter was getting

a little bit of real mild kind of look like psoriasis almost on her elbows. Okay. And of course, you take him to doctor and the doctor says, oh, we can put this, you know, steroid cream on or whatever. And I'm said, no, let's pay attention to her diet. Let's see what causes it to flare up and what causes it to go away. And I discovered that when my daughter ate too much yogurt or too much dairy from certain sources, she would get the psoriasis. I eliminated that thing. A lot of parents have zero clue.

They have zero idea to even look there. It becomes this thing that my kid just has this. Therefore, we're going to have to treat this. They just have this thing that I'm now going to give them this. So this kind of information is invaluable to help other people. I could clearly see how foods affect my kids in terms of their energy levels, in terms of, you know, I'll notice that the color of their skin, you know, they have dark circles under their eyes.

I can tell when, you know, one of tell when one of my kids had a bread meal because I'll see that they kind of look pale and there's a little bit of darkness dark circles under their eyes. And of course, they're my kids. They probably have some of my genes. So I'm sure gluten affects them not as well as other children.

And of course, there's other kids that have no problem with eating gluten-containing foods. But my point is understanding how your body works and learning to read it is literally invaluable. It is literally invaluable. And having a specific meal plan is worthless. A meal plan that is very specific is worth shit. It's worth garbage.

It isn't going to do anything for you at all. And if you want to go in the middle, get yourself an app and enter your foods in and just start paying attention to what you're eating. That's 10 times better than a meal plan. And knowing what you got that going. Well, I didn't, I didn't mean for this episode to turn into like a sales pitch for our nutrition guy.

Like I feel like it kind of did, but I feel like we've had a lot of people that have been asking stuff like that lately, Doug brought that up too, just recently about the misconception that he had, and I'm like, man, people really are just misunderstood when it comes to learning how to eat correctly. They are, and they're even asking the wrong questions.

And I think that's, I'm glad we did talk about it. The intentions was not to try and sell our nutrition guide. It's to push and motivate people to seek knowledge and to research for yourself about yourself and to not just take whatever someone tells you to do, but to pay attention, pay attention like sales at how you feel, how your kids look, or how they act, and learn to look into these things,

and understand that it's a journey and it takes time. It's not something that you should expect to, you know, all I'm gonna get on this new meal plan, and I should, you know, hopefully it works well, and I'm gonna feel like this, I'm gonna feel like that. And if I don't, then piss on it, no, you have to pay attention to things and be aware of all the stuff that's around you,

your stress levels, your sleep, and you know, how all these things affect your mood. And, you know, be aware of that stuff and seek out that knowledge, because like Sal said, that's invaluable. You know, once you have an understanding and concept of what your body needs, that's something that you can take with forever.

And then you can take that knowledge and you can start to apply different diets or concepts or ideas. And you'll have a better understanding of why you feel a certain way. I mean, how many people do we know that started off trying the keto thing and they just, they felt like crap,

but part of the reason why they felt like crap is because their ratios were all off for the foods that they were choosing to have. They may have put the work in to actually understand portions and how that fits into the mold of, well, now that balance is completely off, you need more fats, what does that look like? It's work to get to that spot where you can even figure out what that looks like throughout your day.

So you have to be willing to put in some work. I'm sorry, there's no pill of like, here you go, this is going to totally work for you. Because that's just, I mean, that's like us not valuing you at all by just giving you some stupid plan like that. Look, we could easily create a program that gives people specific foods and I bet you we'd sell a million of them. But we won't. We just, that's not our, that's not our character. So instead we have a nutrition survival guide, which is mindpumpmedia.com. You can check it out and see for yourself.

And like all of our programs, they have a guarantee on them. So if you don't like it, you can return it. But if you're looking for a specific meal plan, you're listening to the wrong podcast. Yeah. We're not gonna do that for you. I mean, I'll tell you what, when Doug first came to me and we started training together

and we would talk nutrition, it was, it was never was it about eat these muscle building foods and these are fat, but it was never, the conversation was always, how do you feel when you eat this? And these will make you feel better if you're lacking these particular nutrients and dug. Did you try eating that chicken liver the other day?

How have you been feeling since you've been eating your chicken? I like it, did it work, you know what I'm saying? That's exactly the kind of conversations we would have. It's an ongoing conversation. It's an ongoing conversation. And so that's the direction you want to go. And I would say step number one is look at the way the foods make you feel, look how they

affect your health. Step number two, then look to see about eating, whether to help fuel muscle growth, or fat loss. But if you don't have that health component down first, that you're not gonna have long-term success with the second. Well, and that makes me, before you sign off and go, I do wanna revisit the ketogenic real briefly,

because right away, I always think, if I have concerns, or if I have a challenge doing something with that, I always right away think, okay, there's gotta be tons of clients, or the average person, who doesn't have the experience that I have in fitness and nutrition knowledge that I have that have to be challenged to. And maybe they don't even know their challenge. So I challenge you right now if you're following the ketogenic diet because you heard us talk

about it or say the great things, but pay attention closely to your food choices because quite frankly, getting, if your daily intake is 2,500 calories, 2,500 calories of olive oil and avocado is not what all your body needs. You know, so just so that would fit in the ketogenic diet and that would be considered keto and you would be following it and you could still technically lose weight off of doing something like that. It doesn't necessarily mean you're healthy and you're balanced. So, you know, there's a lot of nutrients there.

Yes, and I've, and one of the things I did not like about the ketogenic was it, it did take more work for me. Now mind you, I haven't been following it for a long period of time in my life. So of course, it's new. It's going to be challenging. But this is the same beef that we had with the vegan, the vegan page. And when we got into it with the, the veganism people, right, is the same thing is they like to preach about this thing about how great it is all that, and they put all their science and their studies out of all the health benefits Well, like I said, you could do that all fucking day with anything, but guess what? Eating vegan is very challenging You take a whole part of if you take all these foods also now like all the meats all sent out

There's a lot of things that we get from meat that are essential to the body that you now You're gonna get non-GMO versions and unprocessed versions. That's a very challenge. So exactly. So now you've created, yeah, you might have created this new way of eating that you like, or you notice it's fun because you get to eat this fat now or with that, but now you might have created

a new challenge for yourself of getting these nutrients that your body was lacking. So, you know, don't just take even our word for it because we like it or we say it's awesome or that, but learn to dig into it and pay attention to how you feel and ask yourself. And that's what the guide was there for. So most of you that hopefully have that can reference back and say like, oh shit, well, yeah, I do like this keto thing.

But I realize, man, I haven't even ate anything on this in this category whatsoever. Dude, I still, even now, I still have vegan days, which are not very keto, I still have a whole days where I don't eat a single animal product, and I still eat lots of fats just because it makes me feel good, but I also have more carbohydrates because I'll throw another things because I know there's valuable nutrients

and phytonutrients and things that I'm not gonna get unless I do that every once in a while. And so I throw that in and I also have days where I have very low protein and days where I throw in fermented foods. And these are all important factors. We give out lots of, so I give out lots of specific information

on Instagram too on some of the stuff. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal. You can find Adam at Mind Pump Adam. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. This is all on Instagram. And you can find the Mind Pump show at Mind Pump Radio. Of course, Mind Pump Media.com is where you can find the Nutrition Survival Guide. You can also read a bunch of testimonials from real people who have done follow-up some

of our guides and see for yourself. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. For more information about this show and to get valuable free resources from Sal, Adam, and Justin, visit us at www.minepompradio.com. Until next time, this is Mind Pump.