2652: How Undereating is Making You Fat & Unhealthy

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1:10Adam Schafer:Adam Schafer And Justin Andrews You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast This is Mind Pump Today we're talking about under eating and how it's completely destroying your progress You won't want to miss this episode Now, this episode is brought to you by Manukura. This is Manuka honey. This is the definition of a superfood. Antimicrobial, good for gut health, anti-inflammatory. It tastes great. This is the ultimate post-workout carbohydrate. It is a superfood. Look it up yourself. Manukura is the best source of Manuka honey you'll find anywhere in the world.

1:48Adam Schafer:I take one or two packets post-workout, and I get better results. Check them out. Go to Manukura.com. That's M-A-N-U-K-O-R-A.com forward slash Mind Pump. Use the code Mind Pump. Save up to 31 % plus$25 worth of free gifts with the starter kit. Also, one day left for the July special. MAPS split and the anabolic metabolism bundle of workout programs. All of that is 50 % off. Head over to MAPSFitnessProducts.com. Use the code July50 for that discount. Back to the show. Look, we all know that overeating causes problems. Duh, everybody knows this. But a lot of people don't know that under eating causes a lot of problems as well.

2:29In fact, under eating may be the reason

2:32Adam Schafer:why you're struggling. Today, we're going to talk about how under eating can make you fat and unhealthy and unfit. Again, this is backed by data and experience. We're going to get into it. I like this topic. I think, skinny fat.

2:46Sal Di Stefano:Anytime we talk about this or anything related to this, it reminds me, and I want to say it's probably year two or three in my training career. And at this time, I am almost certain a large percentage of my clients lie to me because I have them tracking food and I'm the one who's training them. So I know how hard we're working when they, and back then was when I used to like crush my clients. So I know we're sweating, and we're burning calories, you know? And it's just, it's not mathing. It's just, there's no, they have to be lying. And we see all the research. By the way, this research has been around for a long time that the average client under reports by X amount.

3:30Sal Di Stefano:So this is the data I'm pulling from that there's no other option. They have to be lying to me or just grossly. You have to be sneaking candy bars. Yeah, grossly under reporting and they have no idea because this can't be possible that they're eating what they're telling me they're eating, and yet we're not losing any weight. It wasn't until much later did I realize or learn what is happening to them metabolically and hormonally that was impacting them, and then this huge light bulb and awareness. Same.

4:02Adam Schafer:What this looked like for me is I would, early trainer, right? So I know you need to eat less calories, you need to burn to lose weight. That's a fact, right? Still a fact. And so I'd get a client and I'd put them on a calorie cut. And we would see some initial weight loss and then we'd plateau real hard. But their calories would be low, you know, 1 ,500 calories, 1 ,800 calories. And I thought the same thing, Adam. They must not be telling me the truth. How could we have plateaued? We have 40 pounds to lose. We lost 10 pounds. We're working out. They never worked out before. They're doing cardio.

4:33Adam Schafer:What is happening here? Now, one thing you need to understand is that your metabolism adapts. It does adapt. and under eating or eating too little for too long causes your metabolism to adapt in a way that makes it so that you plateau. Because your body's goal is to meet your energy intake. Your energy demands will start to meet the intake and it can slow its metabolism down pretty remarkably. Now, one of the hallmarks of this is, well, you do lose weight, but the data will show this, by the way. Lots of studies show this. Half the weight you lose is muscle. So what ends up happening is you're smaller, but you're weaker, and you're just as high a body fat percentage.

5:14Adam Schafer:Body fat percentage is what matters, everybody. It's not necessarily your weight, but rather the percentage of body fat you have on your body. A 6-foot, 200-pound man at 10 % body fat looks and feels way different than a 200-pound man who's 6-foot at 20 % body fat. They look radically different. One guy looks chiseled. The other guy looks squishy. So this is what happens. When you eat too little, you lose muscle, and you end up getting smaller and weaker. And although the scale reflects a lighter body weight, you're actually the same body fat percentage, and you're actually not as healthy potentially as you were before.

5:51Sal Di Stefano:There's also a massive difference metabolically to the client who lost 20 pounds on the scale, and 10 of it was muscle, 10 of it was fat, where their metabolism is compared to the client that didn't move on the scale because they lost five pounds of fat and gained five pounds of muscle, but they're discouraged because their scale didn't move. But metabolically, that person is in such a better place. So wrap your brain around that for a client. You're hiring a trainer. Your goal, your original goal is because you don't know or understand this thoroughly. You just want the scale to go down. I want 20 pounds off.

6:29Sal Di Stefano:Everybody tends to just ask something like that. I want 20 pounds off. and so you have client A who just cuts calories does cardio like crazy and drops the 20 pounds in 30 days and we come back we do the body fat test and their body fat percentage went up because half of that weight was actually muscle half of it was fat and that and metabolically where they're at eating calories wise I bet is significantly lower than where it was when they started client B gets on the scale and the scale didn't move and it was because they lost five pounds of fat and gained five pounds of muscle. So it was a net zero loss on the scale.

7:08Sal Di Stefano:But they're eating probably 500 more calories than when they first started that journey 30 days before. But that client - And they feel different. Whoa, cute. They look different. They feel different. They're eating more. But the psychological part is interesting because many times client B, who's actually in an incredible place, is still discouraged. That's right. Because they think they didn't move any closer to that arbitrary number on the scale that doesn't matter. And they aren't in a better position. They're actually in a much better position than client A.

7:41Adam Schafer:Yeah, because if you keep this going, what ends up happening is you plateau. And in order to lose more weight on the scale, you have to keep dropping your calories. And this keeps going until it gets to an unrealistic, unsustainable place. Suddenly, I'm eating very little. I still have some weight to lose. and if I eat anything over what I'm eating, I gain the weight back. Immediately. That's right. Feel the effects. Also, one thing people need to understand is that muscle looks very different on the body and it takes up less space. Yeah. If somebody lost 20 pounds of pure body fat versus someone who lost 10 pounds of muscle, 10 pounds of body fat, they might lose the same amount on the scale, but they look radically different.

8:17Adam Schafer:Body fat takes up more space. Muscle takes up a little over, maybe three quarters of the space of body fat. So 10 pounds of body fat versus 10 pounds of muscle, you look much smaller. Plus muscle is sculpted and shapely. Your butt looks different. Your arms look different. Your shoulders look different. Your core looks different. And then the functionality that comes from muscle. I mean, if you don't have strength, it's not even comparable, like the energy difference with that. Like in what you're motivated to do, like you're just, your activity levels are going to drop. Your overall drive is going to drop.

8:53Your overall happiness is going to diminish on some degree because, you know, to be able to have that kind of strength ability provides you with so many more options.

9:02Adam Schafer:Muscle is an organ of health. So muscle improves insulin sensitivity. It does produce, every time you move or flex a muscle, it does produce chemicals that do things like improve your mood and make you feel better. You don't want to lose muscle. In fact, if you look at the data, which is very fascinating data, a college-aged male today has the grip strength of a 60-year-old in 1980. Crazy. So we talk about the obesity epidemic being this epidemic, but what nobody's talking about is a silent epidemic that's just as bad, which is the under-muscled epidemic. So under-eating can make your health get worse even though you've lost weight on the scale because you've lost this healthy tissue.

9:43Adam Schafer:The next point is that you just don't recover from your workouts. You don't have enough nutrients. So you're working out in the gym. Now, why is this important? Well, what you want from the workout isn't the workout. What you want from the workout are the adaptations that the workout induces, right? Working out is a stress on the body. Yeah, it's a stimulus. The results that you get from the workout are the adaptations. What do those adaptations look like? More strength, more endurance, more muscle, better function. None of those things can happen if you're not taking in adequate nutrients and calories.

10:17Adam Schafer:You take any athlete. I don't care who the athlete is. Keep their workouts the same. Keep their training the same. You let me give them as little food as I want and I'll crush their performance. Kill their performance because they're not eating enough calories to recover and adapt from the workouts. And what this feels like for somebody, and oftentimes we lie to ourselves because we see the scale moving down. We're losing muscle, but we don't even know that. We just see the scale moving down. is our workouts feel worse. I'm going to the gym and I got less energy. I'm more tired. I'm more sore.

10:47Adam Schafer:Not only am I not getting stronger, I actually feel like I'm getting weaker, but I'm lying to myself because the scale is going down. You need to fuel the recovery and adaptations from your workouts to benefit from the workouts. In other words, if you're not feeding yourself, the workouts are not just a waste of time. They become excessive stress on the body. Yeah, and a lot of times this is what demotivates people to continue. That's right. It's like it, if you're not having fun and getting energized from your workouts and seeing the progression of, of, uh, your work that you're, you're putting forth, that's super demotivating.

11:22Sal Di Stefano:Well, it's, uh, you're trying to build a house without the tools and the lumber. I don't care how talented of a carpenter you are. If you don't have the tools, you don't have the lumber. You're not going to do that. When you go to the gym, you lift weights. You're trying to build your metabolism, sculpt and build your body. And if you don't give the body the proper nutrients in order to do that, then you're wasting your time. You're just, then literally the movements become really irrelevant because you could have just done anything. You could have just moved and swung your arms around for an hour to burn calories because that's all you really did.

11:52Sal Di Stefano:You didn't do anything that built good lean tissue.

11:55Adam Schafer:In fact, if I were to, if I were given two magic wands with two options, option one, I wave it and everybody in America loses 30 pounds on the scale. Option two, everybody dramatically improves their fitness, strength, and endurance. I would choose that one because that one would have far better results in terms of their health. Any more benefits. By the way, it would also result in the fat loss that we're looking for. Which brings us to the third point. Your performance sucks when your calories and your nutrient level is too low. And I don't just mean exercise performance. I mean work performance.

12:25Adam Schafer:I mean performance at home. Your cognitive performance declines. Things like anxiety and depression start to go up. You just don't feel great. And you see people struggling with this. more common than not, these are women who will stick in this low calorie space for so long. And they just can't figure out why their libido is low, their energy is low. I just don't feel the motivation. So what your body is figuring out how to run on 1200 calories a day, which you've done for a super long period of time. And so your quality of life dramatically goes down from a performance standpoint.

13:00Sal Di Stefano:This is one of the reasons why I think a lot of people end up throwing their hands up is because one they're eating so low their metabolism has slowed down they're working so hard they're starving themselves nutrition their their performance their energy levels are so low and then and you're not seeing the results i mean i wouldn't either you yeah you just what's the point of that yeah at that point and i've literally heard so many clients say this like why why should i come to this gym five days a week and sacrifice all this food when going back to where I was is the difference of five pounds on the scale or whatever.

13:33Sal Di Stefano:Like I'd rather have five pounds back on the scale, but the life that I had before where I didn't have to do all that activity and I didn't have to starve my body. And that's where a lot of people give up. I think that's what happens is you get, you, you do too much too fast. You don't feed the body properly and it doesn't respond the way I used to explain to my clients, like our goal is to work with your body, not against your body. And when you are cutting really hard on calories and eating so little and not feeding your body properly, you are absolutely working against your body. You're not working with it.

14:07Sal Di Stefano:It doesn't want to perform the way you think it wants to perform when you're starving of nutrients.

14:11Adam Schafer:That's right. Which brings us to the next point. Your sleep is affected negatively. What this typically looks like is tiredness. Tired and wired. Yes, tired and wired. You're tired throughout the day, you're, you're, you're dragging. Maybe you want to take naps. You're like, Oh man, I need to take a nap. Or what you probably do is you overstimulate with things like caffeine. Then it comes to bedtime and you've got this weird restless sleep. And then when you try to get up in the morning, it's like, you're a zombie. I, I took, I took a nap yesterday. I went to bed. I woke up four times in the middle of the night, tossing and turning kind of, but I'm so tired.

14:43Adam Schafer:Then when I try to get up for, for work, I feel terrible. Uh, one of the hallmarks of taking in too little nutrients is that kind of low energy and terrible sleep patterns sleep during the day can't sleep at night what's going on here by the way as your sleep starts to get affected negatively everything else starts to get it just makes all the other things we're talking about exacerbates

15:03Sal Di Stefano:it that's right it's like this vicious cycle and this is why it gets so difficult is you have this it starts with just uh not eating enough and having a few of these bad days and then they just start to compound and it just gets worse and worse and worse into where it's just like this is awful. I feel terrible all day long. I'm not seeing the results I am. I'm pushing my buddy so hard. No wonder they give up.

15:26Adam Schafer:That's right. And you're also more likely to be depressed than anxious. So this is an interesting one. A lot of people don't realize this, but if your calories have been really low for a long time, too low, simply increasing your nutrient intake oftentimes reduces your depressive symptoms. You start to feel better, more awake, more alive. Anxiety starts to feel a little less. Now, why are you depressed? Well, your body is trying to keep you from moving. It's trying to keep you from doing anything because you're running so low on calories and in nutrients. And so your mental state starts to suffer as a result.

16:03Adam Schafer:Like literally, if you're watching this and you're this person who's throughout most of your life, you've struggled with weight. And what you've done now is you've gotten yourself conditioned to the point where you eat very little and you're still kind of overweight and you try to work out and you just don't feel good, the remedy may be, besides changing your workout, focusing more on strength training, is just to eat a little bit more. In fact, when we talk to people on the podcast who call in and ask us questions around this, I'd say a good 30 to 40 % of the time, that's our advice. It's to like, well, you got to eat more.

16:35Adam Schafer:You got to feed yourself a little more to make this work. And then when they come back on in two or three months, they all say the same thing. I didn't think it would work. And I can't believe I feel as good as I do. I feel so much better. My energy is so much better. I don't feel as low. Like, this is absolutely incredible. I mean, you're under eating. You're frail. You're not quite as muscled as you'd like to be. Like, all these things. You're not getting enough sleep. Like, all of that is a big recipe for injury. Like, that's just something that you got to consider. You're susceptible, a lot more vulnerable towards.

17:05If you're going to do a regular workout even, then now I'm going to have to deal with the potential. I could injure myself and now have to recover from the pain.

17:12Sal Di Stefano:Do you think that's depression and anxiety that they're feeling? Or do you think that's this, this loud signal from their body of this? Like, we're not supposed to be here.

17:20Adam Schafer:They're one in the same.

17:21Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

17:21Adam Schafer:Yeah. They're one in the same. Depression can be, can come from a lot of different things, inflammation, but oftentimes it comes from, or sometimes it comes from, I'm just not eating enough and I'm working too hard. Yeah. And that's what you end up feeling like. Yeah.

17:34Sal Di Stefano:Cause it's definitely, I mean, how you, how you label it. I'm not sure, but your body will definitely try and tell you.