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Go check them out go to maps fitness products calm Just use the code may special with no space for the discount I was actually talking to Justin about this today this morning. We came in to work out So we came up with this great idea for a topic for a podcast. It's always a great idea. What is your idea? No, no actually Justin actually came up with this idea. Justin you did now. I'm a little nervous. Yeah, no We were happy should be white cheese is the only food The cheese diet now we know here's what happens. So I've really starting to reduce my calories with my food intake And for a couple different reasons one is you know going through a process trying to get real lean to I I'm trying to improve my gut health and the way I do that for my body right like completely eliminate carbohydrates Because I tend to react to them sometimes this because you were saying now your hips were looking bulky Yeah, that's what it was But this morning we're working out and you know, I'm like 30 minutes in he shows up He starts doing his thing and I'm like, oh man. It's such a it's such a mind game for me To to cut calories and stuff because I notice I get weaker obviously you're gonna get weaker, right? When you drop your calories and I said it's so hard and he goes. Oh, yeah, me too You know, he's doing kind of something similar and and so we're like totally lying. Just try to make you feel better. Yeah, right I mean, there's there's there's challenges depending on the kind of person you are, right? Right, so we're talking about this and Justin thought it would be a great idea to talk about Why women in particular should bulk why they should go on a calorie surplus I just feel like nobody talks about that, you know That's something that I just don't see that in mainstream media at all any magazines and any of these like, you know Shape magazines or anything else that's that's out there Really addressing the like the benefits to that for women totally and ironically It's like the number one thing that I'd have to do with almost all of my female clients Right totally totally and the reason for this by the way It's not that women are different than men and so we're saying women should bulk and you know because it's special to them No, no, no, it's because women almost never Try to purposely gain anything at all because they're they're in this blaming this on Media blame this on standards. I blame part of the part partly the fitness industry. That's called always Talking about getting small or getting small or losing weight never talking about the benefits of eating and a calorie surplus So every time I would get a female client I would talk to them. Hey, have you ever tried to you know, eat in a way to gain to gain strength gain muscle Oh my god. No, I'm always ever trying to lose And that's exactly why I would do what I would do Adam is because I would put them on a bulk to try to get Get them to gain muscle and strength and we can talk about all the reasons and the benefits for that But the vast majority of female clients that I ever worked with anytime. They were conscious about their nutrition under eight They under a it was never okay. Let me see if I can speed up my metabolism. Let's see if I can build muscle It was always I'm just gonna eat as little as possible to try and get smaller Well, I think between between the three of us were always trying to kind of pick out those Avatars of like a common client that we just would see all the time And you know, this was just one of those things where I just would always have a female client that the first thing I knew right away is I don't remember the time that they weren't you know They were eating in a surplus let alone like maintenance and not always just trying their best to try and Cut down and then do cardio and just we're consciously Trying to lose weight or maintain what they got. Yeah, you know, you know, it's funny by the way if because I'm such a Supplement fanatic. I love I'm a historian with this kind of stuff. I love looking at old ads and stuff like that Did you guys know that some of the the original supplements that were ever sold to women and we're talking back in the 40s 50s and maybe 60s They actually would advertise to women to gain weight you guys know this no There were weight gain like a pregnancy or something. No to add curves. Don't be a skinny mini or whatever. Oh really? Yes to add curves We can pull it up I've never seen that these are some of the first ones now after that those decades That's it. It never it was always about weight loss. It was always about being skinny It was always about getting small anything you can connect that to why I think part of it had to do with the this obesity epidemic and this kind of awareness around it and It became this whole thing about getting smaller all about getting small wasn't about curve. There you go Look at that 1954 1936. Oh, wow. Yeah, you can see I mean read some of those titles pretty interesting Give me a title. Yeah, I don't know game more weight and tend it Wow Yes crash weight gain and they were advertising to women now back in those days I think the issue if you go back in the 1930s 40s and 50s You know it was a little more scarce It was it was an obesity epidemic, right? And so and a lot of women wanted to look like They had more curves and so it was like you got to eat more or that's very challenging So let's create some supplements around that but it totally changed the result of this And but yes, of course there is an obesity epidemic girls don't have isn't that funny? By the way, if you look at a lot of these old ads, they were definitely not You know politically correct in any way Even for men that were terrible like the subtitle says it takes those extra pounds of solid fresh flesh to bring out your natural curve I didn't know this. Oh, yeah, did you know this Justin? Yeah? I mean, I'd seen like a 1930s ad or something. I just thought it was like a one-off though You know, I didn't know it's like a campaign. Yeah. No, I did not I did not know this was ever a thing for women But then since probably the I'd say the the late 60s on It was all about smaller smaller smaller every magazine was about being skinny as possible Yeah, of course it kind of reached a it's peak in the 80s and 90s with the heroin chic You know that they had for the for these models that were just they were very very stick thin and in and so women when we would get Them as clients They almost always anytime they ever tried to do anything with their nutrition So anytime they became conscious of their diet It was about I just need to eat as little as possible And then there was like variations of that right cut all your carbs or cut all the fat That was the first one or have two shakes a day and then a meal that was slim fast That was kind of popular in the in the 80s and 90s But there's a lot of consequences that that happened as a result of this right one of them being women under eight protein like crazy and you would see very little muscle mass and this is a big problem because Muscle is Metabolically active it balances your hormones It makes you feel good and it gives you those curves that you're looking for right But because every time you diet you you go so extreme you end up with very little muscle and a slower metabolism Which makes any kind of being lean unsustainable and exercising low calorie low protein is like the Perfect formula for like slowing the metabolism down totally. I mean it doesn't get it doesn't get worse than that And it's the and it was a completely out of balance and it was the most common thing In fact, one of the most common things that I would hear from the client sent across for me And you know we say we're just first meeting and she would say you know out of I don't really eat bad And they would you know ride out and they're like I swear I only eat you know 1,400 1,500 calories and look at my food choices and let but it's Years and years of low calorie low protein and you're just over a lean body. Yeah over Exercising like crazy and they've just slowed their metabolism down and I tell you one of the hardest things too was you know Here they are saying that and they want to lose maybe 10 15 pounds They're coming to me or whatever or more and then telling them that okay We don't want to lose any weight, you know what they're like. No, that's actually why I'm paying you I'm paying you to lose weight and you're telling me you're not like I'll go hire somebody else That was a major hurdle to try and overcome as a trainer. No, I remember I've told the story many times I love it because it was so effective for me, right? So this was when I managed the 24 hour on Santa Teresa So that's a club that we've all worked in and I used to have a trainer that worked for me a female trainer She was like five one Very fit right? She lifted weights. She wasn't you know muscular, but she looked very fit very sculpted Great shape tone the whole thing and she worked for me And any any time I would get a potential member that would come in that was a woman that would you know I'd give him a tour of the gym, right and I'd show them the cardio I'd show them the classes that show them the weights and they'd say things like I'm not interested in the weights I don't want that. I'm just trying to lose weight. I don't want to touch that whatever Then I'd take him on my office I'd talk about the benefits of building muscle speeding up your metabolism and then I would do this challenge And it was so effective it was like one of the most effective sales techniques of all time because it really proved in if Incredible point and I would say to the person. Okay. Look I'm gonna call in one of my trainers right now and I want you to gain guess her weight And if you can come within five to ten pounds of her weight, I'll give you a free month membership Okay, so I call attention staff so-and-so come to Sal's office in would walk in my female trainer And I'd say how much do you think she weighs now? They have the idea of getting a free month membership, so they're not lying right So they'd say something like she weighs a hundred pounds a hundred and five pounds a hundred and ten pounds at most Then I'd say okay, you know and I'd have my trainer stand on the scale And it'd be like 135 or 140 pounds and there would be their mind would be blown And I'd say okay the reason why you guessed that she was so light was because she's small But she's small because she doesn't have a lot of body fat Muscle is very dense So if you lost ten pounds right now of weight, but it was body fat and you replaced it with ten pounds of muscle Your weight on the scale wouldn't change, but you would be much smaller But then there's more things that come along with it and then I would end up asking the trainer Tell this person what you eat on a regular basis and then they go through their food And then their mind really would be blown like how can this little girl eat so much food again? She's burning it off. Well, you know what's really interesting about that story that you share is that I found that this was actually Just as common within my female trainers So and I don't know I think I've heard you guys tell your stories about your wives But you know we all have wives that were in health and fitness or sports, right? So very you know athletic or health-minded all of us and I know that even when Katrina and I got together I had to increase her calories I mean that was one of the one of the biggest things that we changed about her diet and training and I remember she used to Run all the time that was her method of staying in shape was running long distance and doing the you know Plyometrics and high intensity type of training reducing calories and then when she was off the wagon She'd put on a little bit of body fat and she was just on this cycle all the time But she never ate more than about twenty two hundred calories twenty three hundred calories And I said well, have you ever tried to bulk and she's like bulk? I mean, why would I go she goes I unintentionally do it when I stop training and I eat pizza and I don't pay attention So yeah, yes, but no no no no like intentionally trained yourself to build muscle to speed up your metabolism and it took years into our Relationship before I convinced her to even trust me to do this with her and it blew her mind because she's like I This is crazy to me on how many calories I now eat with zero cardio whatsoever And I'm in the best shape of my life and that's the result of actually bulking and building your metabolism Oh, yeah same story. I mean it was the high intensity interval training. It was the cardio kickboxing It was everything, you know, typically that I would have from clients like like my wife was in that same Kind of rat race where it was just like I always constantly have to burn burn burn calories You know in order to keep it or lose weight and to shed down this body fat And so to take her through a program like anabolic first thing and then put her on a bulk It was a complete shell shock But it was it was so massively beneficial then you know what that produced and in what kind of strength She got as a result of that and then her body actually composition started to change and then Momentum of that really carried her on in a healthy place. Oh, Jessica. She went from eating 1200 calories a day Doing miles of running every single week lots of circuits would gain weight If she any more than that and she used to say like she told me when we first met like oh I'm my body's just wants to gain weight. I have to be very careful. I'm like, let's let's try doing a bulk Let's do a slow bulk and have you lift weights. Well now we're at the point where she's just trips out She's like, this is crazy south. She's like I can eat like crazy. Yeah Katrina eats with me Yeah, and I stay lean and she had to go on a bulk to do that, you know Here's the other problem that you run into when you're on this constant Deficit when you're always trying to eat little calories. This is very common for women Your hormones get really thrown off in a negative way. I Have had countless female clients work with me and if I used to work very closely with a Functional medicine practitioner when I used to have my studio and we would work with clients together And I can't tell you how many it's countless female clients who their cycles were Irregular or they would have all these these symptoms of hormone imbalances where they're cold intolerance or heat intolerance Their sleep was off. They would notice things about their hair and I I would put them on a higher calorie diet Higher protein diet higher fat diet oftentimes proteins and fats were too low and their diets And then I would have them lift weights and then slowly but surely Things would start to balance out and I'm gonna tell you something right now your hormones make a very big difference Your hormones can tell your body to build muscle or to gain body fat or to keep fat off or to get rid of muscle Of course it controls your libido your energy your moods if you're constantly in a calorie deficit You are telling your body Don't be fertile don't be motivated to be fertile because calories are scarce You're in this kind of stress response. You notice it in your skin your nails your hair again I know I mentioned things like libido energy and so on and that's what I would see with this constant cutting all the time Once you reverse that put someone on a Responsible and appropriate bulk along with a form of exercise. That's pro tissue which is traditional resistance training You would see this miraculous changes in their bodies and you know They've done such a great job of aggressively marketing the opposite. Yeah, totally You talk about these three women right now, right all all very educated all in the fields health personal trainer collegiate level athlete Like very smart women. They never received this information married to trainers and still had this challenge So you have to think like and then of course I can't why we're sitting here talking such a great idea Just to go this direction because I cannot remember a single client that this was not an issue It was it would just became common practice with all female clients that no matter what your goal was the first thing That I was going to do with you was to put you on a caloric surplus and build some muscle, right now And by the way, I get this Because I was like this but in the opposite so I was a skinny kid I was a very skinny kid The whole reason why I picked up a weight when I was 14 years old in the first place was because I wanted to build and gain weight so I was the opposite now because of this insecurity and fear of the scale moving in the wrong direction Which for me was down. I was constantly in a bulk always in a bulk I ate everything I possibly could every all calories were good for me and any time I I tried to get a little leaner I had this fear as soon as I saw the scale move one pound down Oh my god, I'm losing muscle. What's going on and I would get this from female clients They would freak out if the scale moved in the other direction even though it was positive weight Or if they felt the shape change like why are my jeans tighter here? I'm like well your quads are growing or your butts growing and they would freak out It's the mind games that you get from that because what you want to see as a woman often times is I don't care I just want to see the scale move down. I've had this happens. This has happened many times This is a reality by the way you can lose weight and have your body fat percentage go go up And this sometimes it's hard for people to understand because they're like, how's that possible? I lost weight body fat percentage is a it's your butt That means your body fat as a percentage of your overall body weight That's what matters not the total weight on the scale So if you took a 200 pound man with you know, 10% body fat, right? And you took that same total amount of body fat and put it on a 100 pound man The body fat percentage now is 5% right half see what I'm saying So if you lose weight and you lose muscle, let's say you lost 10 pounds Eight of it is muscle two of it is body fat. You're you're 10 pounds lighter on the scale Your body fat just went up you're smaller but flabbier and you have a slower metabolism So some of the benefit so I want to go into some of the benefits That bulks provide and why they're so important especially for people who almost never do them or never intentionally do them I'm so glad you brought up to though how similar this is to your own insecurity because I was the same way and I was a trainer and have I mean That's my profession yet I was just as guilty of allowing my insecurity to drive drive my my bad behaviors when it came to nutrition and exercise It was just like you I was afraid of the scale going the opposite direction of what most these girls are afraid of But the truth is my the best thing and what my body needed more than anything else was to go into a cut And I should go the other direction and so a lot of this is fuel for that I think a big piece is the marketing and the advertising because that's what people do and again marketing always does feed into the insecurities And then it's ourselves being insecure about that, you know, we everybody has one right everyone has a direction They don't want to go. I don't want to get bigger I don't want to get smaller and so that it just seems Counterproductive if you are wanting to get smaller to add calories because inevitably you might see things Right, you might see inches and certain areas go up You might right you might see your arms because you certain also in lifting muscles or you might see your quads get more developed But the shape right you're gonna you're gonna lose body fat and build muscle. It's a total different body composition right there are benefits to gaining Muscle in certain circumstances and there are benefits to losing body fat in certain circumstances and by the way they both oftentimes can Be synergistic so in other words for someone always trying to gain like me What I what helped me a lot later on when I finally figured this out was learning how to get lean Actually helped me build more lean body mass, right? And if you're always trying to get lean, but you never focus on gaining Positive tissue like muscle you're making it very challenging for yourself In fact, if you're listening right now, and this is you this is what your experience has probably been You've probably lost weight many times and gained it back and here's what you're finding each time you try to lose it It's harder than it was the time and hard for it's much harder than it was the time before and this is Because you're probably losing the wrong kind of weight and then when you gain it back it comes back as body fat Yeah, I mean you're less effective in the gym like there's there's something to it that which is something I noticed too by putting so my female clients on a bulk was just their overall attitude energy strength and You know just just enjoyment of being there and going through these workouts was was tremendously different And I just you know to be able to to feel what that is supposed to feel like and to be able to nourish your body when it needs You know the calories You know it is a completely different animal and it's something that I just hope you know that they trust they can go through That it's also super empowering to go into this thing that you might be fearing and then you stick with it And you like okay Let me trust the process and then you see it start to work like I'm not afraid of this anymore Now I can utilize this as a way to get myself healthier and more fit now the obvious first Benefit of doing a bulk okay a bulk by the way is when you're eating more calories than you're burning And we're not talking about just eating a ton of food Obviously, this is that you're eating the right kinds of foods. You're not going crazy with it But you are eating more than you're burning this and you're training in a particular way This fuels muscle growth now. Why is muscle growth such an important thing? Boy, does it make getting lean and staying lean easy if you have by the way most women listening right now if you were to gain 10 pounds of muscle that's a lot of muscle by the way I'm gonna be honest with you most of you won't gain 10 pounds of muscle most of you won't gain 10 pounds of muscle in The year but if you did gain 10 pounds instantly right now if you're listening to podcast and I snap my fingers You can 10 pounds you wouldn't be that much bigger You wouldn't even notice that much with size what you would feel is a lot tighter So you touch yourself and be like man, I'm a lot tighter and then what you'd notice is oh my gosh I'm just getting leaner automatically. Well, it's way faster. That was especially if you did it clean and slow Yes, because if you did it with just a slight surplus like we're not going crazy and just saying I'm gonna eat everything in sight Right, right. You're not gonna just you're not gonna gain 10 pounds necessarily on the scale because what might happen is you might add 5 pounds of muscle along the way and lose 3 pounds of fat That's usually what happens, right? That's usually what happens and that more muscle Obviously speeds up the metabolism. We said that it also feels and looks very good oftentimes when we refer to Like sexy curves what we're talking about is is the sculpt that comes from muscle, right? If you build the muscles of your butt, right, you're you're a hamstring muscle group in the body Yeah, you're you're yeah, and that is that's a good point like when you're doing when we talk on the podcast about the The big bang for your buck exercises your squats and your deadlifts for example the prime movers there are the glutes, right? So that's that's the one of the biggest muscles of the body So if you were to gain 10 pounds of muscle on your body a good chunk of it would go to your butt Your hamstrings some quads maybe some back a little bit of shoulders and what you would notice is you just look More firm you look more sculpted things feel tighter Of course you're stronger you feel more stable and then you have this metabolism now that is roaring It's not it was not You know crazy or it wasn't out of the ordinary for me to take a female client go through this process and Boost their metabolism by 500 calories. Yeah, you might think that's not a lot That's like doing an hour and a half of cardio every day, but you're not yeah Imagine that imagine if you burn 500 more automatic Kelly burn just waking up. Oh, I just burned 500 more calories That's like adding an extra meal in your day now eat the same amount of calories and what ends up happening You're in a fat 500 calorie deficit. You're getting leaner Easier it's much more easy to maintain It's easier to get lean and then when you're there you can eat more food because you have more of this Metabolically active tissue now Why do you have to get in a bolt to do this you have to fuel the muscle that you're trying to build? So if I'm lifting weights can't build from thin air No, it's like it's like giving the the the building plans to a house to a bunch of workers, but no wood Yeah, there's no materials like you have to feed the body once you send the signal such your body has things to work with It's got amino acids and fats and carbohydrates to build this incredible, you know lean body mass That's so desirable that speeds up your metabolism now. This leads to the next point Which is it balances out your hormones now? What do you know people like what does that mean balance out the hormones? Okay, your hormones tend to match your lifestyle because your body's receiving signals from your lifestyle The things that you do and so your hormones will kind of match in a way to adapt to what you're doing So if I'm not getting good sleep if I'm not feeding myself very well, or if I'm eating very little I'm doing tons and tons of cardio lots of stress lots of stress on the body So my stress hormones go up. Why do stress hormones go up like cortisol? They give you energy if I inject you with cortisol right now, you'll notice this boost of energy So cortisol goes up right but because also I'm under this kind of stress my anabolic hormones My pro fertility hormones start to get out of whack and men It's testosterone starts to lower and women you notice a change in Progesterone and estrogen you also notice growth hormone starts to go down a little bit, right now What if I tell my body to build muscle? What if I lift weights or do resistance training and I feed my body? My body's getting a signal that says there's plenty There's plenty out in the world obviously i'm eating more than i'm burning Oh, and i'm sending a signal that says any more muscle We better ramp up the pro muscle hormones and we better balance out those hormones because Now we want to be fertile by the way, that's youth. That's what youthful hormones are like So you notice estrogen Balanced out you notice even in women you'll see a slight rise in testosterone This is a good thing testosterone is important for women like it is in men for women It's obviously much lower, but testosterone is connected to confidence drive libido connected to building muscle and building Growth hormones starts to become uh, you know much more youthful So the process of building muscle with a calorie surplus Balances out hormones often time fact if you go to a functional medicine practitioner And your hormones are all over the place Besides looking at things like sleep and stress and those kinds of things They will almost always have you eat in a slight surplus along with some kind of resistance training to balance it out Well, and another one that you know comes to mind right away that I would always notice as soon as I would Increase their calories is it's amazing like how quick the body respond and says thank you. I needed all that It's so hard. Okay. It's not it's impossible to hit your nutrient targets when you're eating 1300 calories You're not you're going to be missing so many micro and macro nutrients that your body needs And simply putting that client into a surplus All of a sudden the body starts getting all these things that it wasn't getting before And it thanks you immediately and you feel that in your energy levels Yeah, that's a good point because we do have calorie and macro nutrient requirements So calorie obviously one of those are macro nutrient requirements proteins fats Those are essential carbohydrates make up the the difference But then there's a micro nutrient requirements and the easy ones are like your vitamins and minerals for example That b12 iron all those things protein goes up cal all these things that you were lacking in right So if your calories are really low all the time the odds are you're not also getting the micro nutrients You need and I know some people think I'll just take a multivitamin It's not the same now multivitamins can make a difference, but studies will show getting it from food It's way more bioavailable. It makes way more of a difference In the body to get your vitamins and minerals from food Then it because it comes along with these like co-factors and you know food digest in a particular way Your body's evolved to get nutrients from food So you're absolutely right because so the first thing that they tend to notice is like I've got more energy Yeah, I'm not a sleepy or I don't feel as moody or I don't feel as irritable later on in the day or tired later on in the day I feel more hyped and energized which is by the way, this is great when you're when you're working out You're stronger. You feel more stable. Um, it just feels good I used to love getting you know telling having women comment on that They would do this slight bulk and they'd come in and be like I feel great. Yeah, you know, I feel really good One and also I mean, it's an attitude thing too Like it's you don't really notice it because it's something that you probably got adjusted to and you just Have have lived this way for so long and this is sort of your routine And and when you change it up like that you understand that like now I'm feeding my body Everything's getting more close to balance that what that feeling feels like and what that energy level is and it's just all of a sudden There's like a whole new door that just open It's like I can feel like this too And there's ways to cycle that in more To benefit you and then you see the carryover in all aspects of life. You're better at work You're a better wife. You're a better mother and all of a sudden like you're more productive. You get you get better sleep Yeah, all those things start compounding in your day. Yeah, um increased strength is my favorite You notice more performance in the gym and I'll tell you what Uh, obviously guys when I would train guys, of course, we're generalizing by the way But guys are always like I want to get stronger Women would be like, oh, I just want to you know lose weight and getting stronger You know, I guess that's kind of that is changing though. I will say that I've heard more women ask me about getting So I you know why because they're finally experiencing what it feels like like when I would get a female client to get stronger All of a sudden she's like I like this feeling of grabbing and feelings, you know grabbing items It's empowering. I had one client ever forget this this younger woman She was very very slim chronic diet or whatever And I trained her for a little while and never forget she wanted a business trip. She came back She was almost in tears when she told me this because she was petite And she says for the first for the first time in a long time I didn't have to ask somebody to help me put my luggage in the overhead compartment You know when you're getting the plane you put your thing in there and she's short So she had to really reach up tall. She's like I did it myself. So you know, I say how crazy that feels She said she and I told I said, you know, I never thought of that and she goes, do you know I don't I you know, I don't really think about it too much She goes, but to have to always ask somebody to do that for me I don't realize what a big deal it was until I did it myself. I had a client that would open her own jar Like I don't ask my husband anymore Being strong the little things man. Yeah, it's little things being strong is very it feels very good and secure Incapable and when you bump your calories and do resistance training proper resistance training with it It feels amazing to feel this new sense of strength this physical strength That you have in your body This one is an easy one to sell To women, which is that you'll have sustainable fat loss You know, let me paint the picture of the traditional way that people lose weight and why it's so unsustainable, right? What they do is they're typically They'll do lots of cardio because they're looking at exercise Mainly for its calorie burn. It's like a math equation. Yes. Yes Which form of exercise burns the most calories? Well, it's easy running, right? So okay, so I run And then I'm also going to cut my calories now Here's what happens because you're doing lots of running you don't require lots of strength to do it Your body is trying to get better at running It's actually trying to become a more efficient running machine Which means it needs less muscle and it also needs to burn less calories So that causes you to lose some muscle and it's true studies will show Cardio with diet tends to result in about half the weight lost being muscle half of it being body fat So 10 pounds comes down Five pounds is body fat five pounds is muscle. So now they're smaller same body fat percentage because remember They lost fat and muscle, but now their metabolism is slower. So then they get to this place was like, okay I lost the first 10 pounds Nothing's moving anymore. I've totally plateaued So now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add another two days of running and then they do it again Now I got to cut my calories any more then they reached their target I lost 30 pounds on the scale not realizing that but I'm eating 800 calories and I'm running on the treadmill seven days I'm doing five days a week of running. I mean a thousand calories a day like that is not sustainable It's impossible to sustain for most people for many reasons too It's not just not sustainable because it's a miserable way to live But I mean every life happens for everybody You're gonna go out to dinner with your spouse And want to have a glass of wine somebody's birthday is gonna come around the corner And there's nothing and how many times have you heard this before too where it's like man adam I eat so good. I mean every once in a while I have a glass of wine or every once in a while we eat out dinner But I feel like anytime I do that it sticks to me. I don't understand Why is it why does it feel like I can't I can't slightly eat outside of my Chicken and salad type of you know meal plan all the time without feeling like I put on fat every single time Totally true and muscle is a much more resilient way to maintain fat loss because If you work out and you're eating in a way to build muscle and you do build muscle Let's say you gain, you know four pounds of muscle and then you stop working out for a couple weeks Muscle sticks around now, of course if you stop long enough you'll lose that muscle But it actually sticks around for a while that metabolism boost that you have It sticks around now if the way that I'm burning calories is this manual cardio The second I stop it's gone the benefits gone My body is no longer burning those extra calories and that's why they'll see that is they'll go off a little bit Then they'll they'll gain body fat like nothing whereas if you did it through Building muscle and you stop for a little bit You might notice a little bit of strength loss or whatever you go back to the gym Remember there was that study that uh, I think lane norton shared Where they compared three on one off. Yeah, they had groups They had two groups of men one group lifted weights or worked out with weights Every single week consistently the other group did three weeks on one week off And I think it was like three or six months It was like it was like a 16 week study or something like that And what they found first off in within the study very predictable the guys that took the week off During the week off They would say a little dip in performance a little dip in strength But at the end of the study at the end of the 16 weeks, I think it was 16 weeks They found that they were pretty similar with the game. That's because muscle is very resilient So building it sets you up for much more sustainable fat loss because Let's be real the average person is not gonna not miss a week working out Their whole life, right? They're gonna miss time They're gonna have those times when they go to birthdays and stuff and what what's gonna buffer against that is muscle That doesn't get off your body too quickly. That's what happens when you lift weights But also a faster metabolism. You have this buffer against eating, you know, some of these extra calories In fact, when I when clients have decent muscle and strength and they eat extra calories Sometimes they throw in the extra high calorie day because they went out You know what they often notice a little extra strength in the gym It actually goes to a little more muscle definition right because they have that signal that says I want to build muscle now the the last one which is I think one of my favorite things that would Help my female clients is it would help them break away from the scale number Yeah, it no longer like that is like one of the hardest things now How often did you hear this too? Someone hires you and they say adam. I want to get down to 125 Or I want to get down to 115 or 130. They have a number And you know, I always chuckle because it's like that doesn't matter I said it really doesn't and like no, no, I try it does matter because I remember what I look like At 135 and there's there's so there's such a slave to the scale that they have this idea of their their body image with A number and once you show them that you can completely change their body composition at their current weight Where they're currently at right now or not really moving weight or maybe even going up a little bit It completely shatters that paradise even just gaining healthy weight That's why I love this so much because you know There's there's a lot that like we may criticize in terms of like some of the market marketing tactics Based off of like what the current culture is kind of promoting So we've seen this drastic shift of you know, the the models that were basically starving themselves to now You know, we're looking at other models that are you know, maybe in an unhealthy weight situation But they're loving themselves and so that's sort of the underlying message Well, you know what we need to start looking for are Healthy ways to increase weight and and in what that looks like and what it what it looks like building muscle And something that's actually beneficial to you that actually is going to give you really good body composition But you may you may keep the same way or you may actually gain a little bit of weight and that's really healthy Yeah, and in the main ways I used to I used to love seeing this because you would see their body image improved dramatically because They start to get over their fear of the scale may be going up Right, or they like you said adam they've now broken the chains to the scale In fact, there were some there were oftentimes there's something I would have to do I'd say probably One fourth of the time at least Is I would tell a female client because we they would struggle with this and we'd go back and forth and I'd train for a Well, are you sure Sal like at the scale? I'm up a pound or I saw go up two pounds or whatever And I'd say okay. Here's what we're gonna do. I want you to take your scale and put it in the closet And you're not gonna weigh yourself anymore anymore We're gonna completely ignore the scale for three months at the end of three months We're gonna test your body fat and see where you're at and they would do it and then I'd test their body fat And it'd be like guess what you went down 4% body fat or five and I would do the math from that means you've lost this many pounds of body fat You've gained a little bit of muscle Oh and by the way if you haven't noticed with your diet you're eating more and you're doing okay And that would be such a great thing for their body image because now they're they're not fearful Of eating a little extra and by the way this actually would contribute to more balance in their diet anyway because Here's where the whole like binge comes from when you go off of a diet. It's the whole I hate my body I hate my body. I hate my body. That's it. I'm off the diet and then they you know Instead of having a one cookie or a slice of pizza it goes in the opposite direction Well, when you have this more bought this positive body image where you don't really fear the extra calories or whatever You're not in that position then when you do go out with your friends you enjoy a slice of pizza But you don't find yourself going in the opposite direction because you're rebelling against this You know tyrannical version of yourself that was always having you Eat in this calorie deficit all the time So it makes a very very positive impact on your body image If you're fearful of ever eating in a calorie surplus if you do it and you build muscle with it You'll start to develop this better in this better connection to it And I want to share this I used to share this story with my clients And I feel like somebody needs to hear this that's that's listening or watching this right now So if you're somebody who uh needs to or wants to lose weight So you know whatever number 30 40 50 pounds or even 15 pounds doesn't matter And you're getting ready to start your your weight loss or fat loss journey And you're just getting really started and let's take two two two scenarios same Basically same goals same way this person needs to lose 30 pounds These two people need to lose 30 pounds and we have two different scenarios right here as far as a client That's listening to me or not client one At the end of the month has lost 10 pounds Okay, they maybe they've reduced their calories or they ate consistently and then they've they've lost 10 pounds Then I have the other client who hasn't lost any weight Now a lot of times the client would go. Oh my god the client that lost 10 pounds has had more success And the opposite is true when you first start off training No matter how big know how big big the number is 30 50 100 pounds You need to lose that initial month I do not want to see weight come off the scale if you have not been strength training at all And we start to follow a meal plan and we start strength training I do not want to see the scale to go down And if you were my client and I saw that after week one that we dropped two or three pounds You're bumping the colors. I'm bumping your calories And then if the following week you drop another pound or so I'm bumping the calories again I actually want to find a place where I know you're not losing yet because the main goal when we first start Is to build this metabolism up I want to build a roaring metabolism because I know whether it's 15 pounds or 100 pounds that we need to lose I want that metabolism working for us and I don't want the whole process working against the metabolism So keep that in mind because that's really hard for it was really hard for my clients to wrap their brain around that When they hire me Tell me they want to lose a bunch of weight And then I'm telling them that I don't want to see any weight loss at the beginning And if we do see weight loss that's a signal to me as a coach that I need to increase calories You know, it's funny is that I never worked With you guys specifically in gyms, right? We knew of each other We don't but we all came to the same conclusion I would I would tell my clients the exact same thing towards it And it took me a while to figure that out, by the way For the first half of my career was about just getting the scale to move down But then later on I realized exactly what you did. It's like, okay Here's what's happening with people. They're losing weight and then they all gain it back And we're in this crappy situation. And so I figured out the same thing Let's keep you from losing weight initially Boost your metabolism Create this fat burning machinery to get hotter in your body And then later and then when we start to lose weight, it's much more easy to sustain Well, and that's really a shift in in the confidence in who you are as a trainer because What used to cause me to do the same thing too was wanting to keep my client That's right. Give them what they what they think they want Yeah, I'm afraid that I'm going to lose them and I knew and I'd tell you what I guarantee anybody who hires me that needs to lose any amount of weight I can get you to lose weight in the first 30 days. That's simple I just need to find out where you're currently at calorie-wise restrict calories Get you moving more than what you were for done and you will lose weight. That's a fact The problem is I know that 99.9% of those people that go on that path are going to fail eventually Whether they get to their goal initially because they have the discipline to keep starting themselves and moving like crazy Ultimately long term that client will fail The one that will succeed long term and forever may take a little bit longer Because we take the time to build the metabolism focus on strength focus on increasing calories But that is the client that has the most chance for long term success Totally. Okay. So adam, I want to I want you to go through kind of how you would typically have a woman bulk You know how you would have her bumper calories now for me It was the range was between 100 to depending on the client 400 calories over what they were eating to what they were eating when they saw me So they would track their food I'd see their calories and then I'd bump it Let's say 200 calories of course in combination with traditional resistance training And that would be how I would do a bulk was how was yours? So that would so that would normally be it I want to I would no cardio. So that's I wouldn't let them do cardio yet. So walking's fine, right? So if we want to create movement I'm on they're on a three day a week type of strength but a strength training program And you're right the numbers somewhere in there, but really the way we our eye would focus on it would be We are monitoring weight. I want to see it and that and I would say don't listen I want you to to check in on the scale for me because I'm what I'm watching is I don't want to see it Dramatically go any direction. I kind of want to hover right where you're at because I know if you weren't strength training before We weren't following what you were eating and now I am paying attention what you're eating and we now are including extra strength training I know that your body is sending a signal to build muscle And if we are dropping in calories, we may not be building muscle We may just be burning calories and losing weight and that's not the goal of a strength training right now My goal is to build muscle on you So I'm watching week by week and I'm adjusting calories up or down based off of the way the scale moves And typically it fell in that range 100 to 400 calories Yeah, now the next thing would be that would be important was hit your protein targets, right? You got a increasing protein. Yeah, and and I would always aim for about, you know anywhere between 60 percent Or 100 percent of their body weight and protein what I mean by that is if you're 120 pounds I'm looking at, you know 75 grams of protein at the minimum up as high as 120 grams protein And with all so long as it falls within those calories I I love targeting one to one and the reason why I like targeting one to one is I know that sometimes they're going to miss And if they miss and they're a little lower, that's a good point It's not a big deal, right? And and so I just and it's also easy to calculate you tell a client Six, you know 0.6 or 0.8 grams per pound of body weight They're going uh, what's the math on that or if they have to if you do the real formula Like all of our books would it would be based off a lean body mass Which now they got to do all this crazy math. I'd be like listen, we weigh this much This is a goal try and target one to one if you fall a little short not a big deal That's kind of the number we want to be at we don't need to go anything beyond that We're not getting any extra benefits and just focusing on that Honestly, I really didn't put a lot of energy and focus on the other foods yet at the very beginning It was like let's hit your calories and protein. That's right calories and protein Let's not let the scale move up or down too much And let's strength train and like no cardio walking is fine and moving. That's good That's all a drastic shift for for a lot of people. Oh, yeah. Yeah And then here's the signs that you're looking for Strength in the gym. That's got to be the biggest one. Like am I stronger? Do I have more energy? Do I feel more vibrant sleeping better all the benefits? You've been talking about that's right I mean, that's what you're looking for you're looking for all the benefits that we've been talking about You're asking those questions. How does your hair feel? How's your skin feel? How's your sleep been? How's your mood? How's your libido like all these energy strength in the gym performance like How are all these things going mood like you touched on all these things? I'm asking because I know those are all the benefits of being in a caloric surplus and strength training And as long as we're checking those boxes off We're hovering about the same way now the hardest part and where the coaching comes in or where your job Where you really got paid the big bucks for is to help them get past that mental hurt Totally a hundred percent. That's it a hundred percent because you don't want to see this You want to see the scale move down or you don't you want to see this You don't want to see the scale move up a little bit or whatever So that's a hundred percent. So when you're doing this, you got to trust the process Pay attention to the fact that you feel all those amazing benefits Pay attention to the fact that you're stronger in the gym Pay attention to the fact that you can now start to eat more and the scale isn't moving at all That's really cool and I'm eating three or more calories a day But I didn't gain any weight like this is and I'm stronger This is pretty cool like pay attention to those things trust the process And I would say, you know on average most women should probably go through a bulk at least once a year If not at least two or three times a year, you know for like at least a month or two months Just to get these these incredible benefits and hiring a good coach that understands these concepts You know is just another good thing for accountability and just because to Reiterate that you're doing the right thing. I think there just needs to be a lot of conversations It takes a lot of times for for for people to feel comfortable with this approach So the next thing that I think that somebody who's listening right now that's okay. You sold me you sold me I'm gonna try and do this But where do I start I have no idea where my calories and that's why we have the macro calculator That's right And what I want the person that goes to this the website to go to use the macro Do not get married to that either. It's just a good. It's an estimate. That's right Is it was it maps macro.com? I think yes So that you go there you you put in your goals you put in your weight You put in all your stuff and then it's going to kick you off That is not that that's not the freaking end all be all it's just a good idea of probably where you need to be The real thing you should be watching is what I said before Is now that you got a number you're like, okay, this is what my body needs I'm gonna do what sal was saying I'm gonna give a give myself a couple hundred maybe a hundred to 200 more calories a day And then you're monitoring and then you're watching and just because your goal is weight loss If you start seeing the scale drop down and you're falling those numbers those numbers aren't perfect add Increase the calories the goal should be for you to kind of hover the same on the scale If you are training you're being consistent three days a week strength training and you're making good choices You're hitting your protein targets. I promise you are changing your body composition I would say the best workout programs that we have specifically for this maps anabolic is Got to be up there map strong would probably be a good another good program. Yeah map strong is who I would Okay, if you are relatively new either relatively new or you've been off your gym consistently I'm putting you in maps anabolic if you're actually very consistent with your lifting and you're listening to this message But you've never really gone on a bulk. I would love to transition you into something like strong with the same advice Perfect. So there you go. That's why you should bulk Especially if you're a woman and you fall in the categories of the things that we talked about Look, if you like our content, you got to head over to mind pump free.com We have so many free things that you can download and get from us great information Again mind pump free.com. You can also find all of us on instagram So you can find Justin at mind pump Justin me at mind pump sal and adam at mind pump adam Self image is am I a person worthy of being taken care of? Am I human worthy of some dignity some respect? I have some good qualities to me I'm not a bad person body image is Just objective. I look in the mirror. I'm short. I'm tall I'm hairy bald or I'm fat or I'm overweight