2659: Eight Ways to Build a Crushing Grip & Strong Forearms & More (Listener Live Coaching)

15:26Adam Schafer:All right, what does a routine look like for something like this? Monday, and I'll give you a good three-day-a-week routine. Monday, you would do three sets with a heavy gripper at a relatively high intensity. Wednesday, you would do where you would hold heavy dumbbells for 30 seconds in both hands. For three sets, Friday, you do some wrist curls for one set, reverse curls for a set. And then in between on the days off, you mess around with your gripper at a low intensity. In 30 to 60 days, you will dramatically increase the strength of your grip and the way your forearms look. They do respond.

16:02Adam Schafer:They are muscles, like the muscles in the rest of your body. And they definitely will respond.

16:06Sal Di Stefano:So I got to get to the elephant or the horse in the room. You call me an elephant? I know everybody's wondering, like, dude, Justin just got way more handsome. And young. And young.

16:21Adam Schafer:We gave him too many peptides.

16:24Sal Di Stefano:This is a commercial. Longevity peptides? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. We got to back down. No, so we fired Justin. That's not what happened.

16:32Adam Schafer:Justin had to leave for emergency. Everything's OK. Yeah. But Kyle is our head trainer.

16:38Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, this would be a fun time to, you know, typically we would reschedule or cancel, you know, for something like this. And we could have, we thought, you know, this would be a fun time to bring Kyle in. Those of you that have seen him on the Elite Trainer Academy podcast that we recently started. He's the host of that new podcast that we launched. And he's also our head trainer who runs everything over here, that whole entire department. So all the trainers that we have underneath and what we're building and growing right now. And so.

17:04Adam Schafer:How nervous are you, by the way, to get on this show? I'm pretty nervous. It's a, you know, I'm telling you guys like, man, get in front of the cameras, all the lights and everything is like pretty nerve wracking for even just the, you know, the little podcast that we're starting now, which is like, you know, it gets maybe a thousand, 2000 beats, which is a lot, dude. Yeah. It is. You're telling me, I know, but this is millions of people.

17:26Sal Di Stefano:This is a way bigger deal. If you fuck it up. No, I'm just kidding. No, no, no. Hey, you had this, you know, I, you have to, talk about that because I, one of the things that drives me crazy that I always have to respond to is that everybody is like, bring the wives on everyone. And Katrina is just like, fuck no. She's like, I, and she just knows, like, I don't want anything to do with that. And I remember how long it took me to ignore all the cameras, lights and all the stuff while you do this and just pretend like you're not talking to a bunch of people. It's weird. And it's weird how quickly that can change from just walking in the door and then sitting here.

18:06Sal Di Stefano:And it's a different feeling.

18:07Adam Schafer:Let's talk about your history a little bit, Kyle. When were you born? No, I'm just kidding. How long have you, you started with us, how long ago? How long has it been now? I think it's been three and a half or so. About three and a half years. And you started, now you were a fan of the show. Yep. Started here and you did not start in fitness.

18:26Sal Di Stefano:No. Yeah, he was working, before us though, he worked in gym. You were a trainer before. Yeah, well, so I've worked in gym since I was like 16. second job I ever had. I had one job in a restaurant and I was like, I'm never doing that. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. I bus tables. Oh, bus tables. You didn't even make it to waiter. No, I didn't. Literally like three months. It was like three months and I was looking for a different job. I had a buddy that was working in a big box gym and he's like, you know, I can talk to the manager, get you a spot, see if we're hiring. And I was in the middle of a workout one day, manager comes up to me, asks if I want a job.

19:01I went and interviewed her with her in the middle of the workout and uh yeah been in gyms ever since that's awesome did you start as a trainer you do like front desk first no i mean when you're 16 you i don't i don't think you can be a trainer at that age yeah so i did front desk stuff for a while actually worked like overnight shifts for a really long time oh wow don't recommend that at 16 years old um and then you know as soon as i could i got my certification started training people so you started here

19:24Adam Schafer:but you essentially were an intern and you did you did like editing for us and stuff video editing so you know all the all the edits on the youtube all that stuff that was me for a little while um not my favorite thing not my forte definitely you did well you remember what you said in the

19:41Sal Di Stefano:interview though i remember uh you know just to get a job you were willing to do anything yeah yeah i mean it was super random like it wasn't even i don't even think you guys were like officially hiring or anything i just i was working as a trainer i was in a spot where i was trying to figure out what direction i wanted to go uh you know all my friends were in school i I was trying to decide if I wanted to go to school or not. I was enrolled in some classes and actually shot Doug a DM one day, just said like, you know, I, you know, I love the show. I've been a fan for years. It's, you know, influenced the direction that I, you know, that I've gone.

20:10And I want to keep going in this direction, I think. And so then I asked if you guys had any spots opening and Doug said, well, we have, you know, we're looking for a video editing apprentice. And I said, I don't know anything about video editing, but I can learn. And then literally like, you know, a week or two later, I was out here interning.

20:27Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, that's awesome. My favorite part of that story for the young people that are listening to this podcast is just that, at least I think good leaders, good owners, will know to look for character in somebody opposed of technically a skill set like that. Character is the most important. Took me a long time to figure that out. I hired incorrectly for a long time. Same. I mean, early 20s when I was thrusted. Resume hiring. Yeah, resume. I was like, oh, my God, he's got six national certs and this and that, and hired. You know, didn't have to do the interview. you hired and just like terrible right versus uh the the young kid who's like i'll i'll do whatever it takes you you teach me i'll learn i'll work i'll work long hours i'll take the crap like that attitude that character um i can almost do anything with and i think uh you know you exemplify that and you know came over with this attitude of and also moving over states so it's not like you're up the road.

21:23Sal Di Stefano:Like you completely uprooted your life. We didn't pay you. You weren't making any money. You figured in the Bay area to do that. It's expensive to do that. You didn't complain and say, I need this. I need that. It was like, I'm going to come over here and see where this opportunity takes me. And it was pretty early. I remember the things I'll tell you what I'll tell the audience. What I noticed early on was, you know, here's this young kid at this time. We have, I don't know how many editors and stuff we have working for us, probably five or so. Give or take. I think it was just Andrew and Gio at the time, actually.

21:53Andrew, Gio, you? Yeah.

21:54Sal Di Stefano:And that was it. Why did I feel like there was another intern? We added more after that. No, after. It came shortly after. Okay, so shortly after was that. But at one point, there was like five editors or so that you were working with. And we have them all on – we have different threads for different departments we have in our text message. And I quickly saw how much respect that he got from his peers, Even though he had the least experience in the area, you could tell that the other people that work with him gave him a lot of respect. And then I started catching him doing things where I knew there was something that he did, and then I would ask the group, and he would always defer.

22:32Sal Di Stefano:He'd give the credit to someone else. He'd give the credit to someone else. And right away, I remember telling the guys, hey, this kid's going to be good. He's going to be a leader. Because it's not natural to do that. No, it's natural and not a bad thing to want the credit for something that you deserve as you should. But I remember seeing that early on. And then I remember telling the guys that we need to make room for him to take a leadership role. So this is before we even started really building a training department. And I said, we have to give him this opportunity because he's the type of person that if he's going to keep growing, whether we like it or not, if we don't create an opportunity for him to grow within this company, he will seek it somewhere else.

23:15Sal Di Stefano:Someone like that needs that. And so we really shook up a lot of positions, let go of some people, move people around, and just said, okay, I think you could start helping us build this department.

23:26Adam Schafer:Now we've got this training department. What's the goal? Do you have like a big vision for the training department that you want? Yeah, I mean, of course. you know, it's shifted in the last, you know, 10 months or however, you know, however long we've been doing it. I remember I had a conversation with Cole at the beginning of the year. Cole's one of our other trainers here at the time. I think it was just him. I can't remember if Marcella had been here at this point or not, but we had a conversation and it was like, Hey, this year, like let's shoot for, I think it was, I think it was 200 or 250 clients, like people that we're going to just change your lives like 250 people that we're just going to come in and have a positive influence on their lives and then like i mean that happened quick very fast yeah very fast i mean now we've got uh four full-time trainers you know three on the way you know a couple more like down the pipe pipeline right now um and you know we've got hundreds of clients one thing i like is that the the they're trying to set the standard yeah there is there really is no like ultimate standard of what like a great trainer or training department looks like.

24:35Adam Schafer:And so the idea is to really set that standard. What does it look like for trainers? You know, cause I, I know as a trainer coming up, like who do you look to and where do you look to build this career? And hopefully we create that, which I think. Yeah. And that's, that's a really, you know, it's a, it's a really tough thing to take on. Like, it sounds good, you know, like we're going to set the standard. Um, but that's, that's a daily conversation, you know, with me and the trainers, like what does it actually look like? You know, what does it actually look like to set the standard because obviously there is no standard.

25:02So we don't have anything to look to, to, to say like, you know, to gauge how well we're doing with that. But I think we're doing a pretty good job.

25:09Adam Schafer:Yeah, we are. We're not doing bad. You're doing pretty good. When you were listening to the show before you worked here, who was your favorite host? You know, it actually, I went through phases and I, I think that this is probably similar to a lot of people that start out listening to Mind pump at first it's always adam's the asshole that's always what i think most people out the gates are sal fans yeah and then i'm the asshole what's going on here it's something with no i and you guys just see this in the comments all the time too i'm sure like everyone gets so mad that you guys interrupt each other and so it's almost always what it is if someone picks picks a side it usually starts with sal and then people like okay adam's not that bad i guess um justin i think everybody loves Justin always he makes us likable dude yeah he totally makes us like without him we'd be totally screwed with that so that's awesome there's there's a uh a thing that I love

26:02Sal Di Stefano:I think I've commented one time on here I know off air we've talked about it that that when people when they think Sal's interrupting me or vice versa it's not um I the best way I describe it is uh you know my sport analogies of being on a basketball court and like knowing where you're like when you play with a team long enough you know this you played sports you get this flow state of where you just know where everybody's at and i can feel sal and justin's energy when they're coming to an end of a thought or they're running out of stuff to talk about and they can too with me yeah and and you can just feel that energy and so you insert yourself to keep the flow going and everybody else interprets that as you know interrupting and it's like no it's a it's a very for me like and i'm sure sal is the same way too love it yeah it's a i love it because it reminds me i used to love playing the game and that was one of my favorite things is playing with my buddies that i've played with for a long time and it's a beautiful pass and it's just like oh that and and only you and him probably really felt it and saw it because it was so fast in the game nobody else really understood or saw it completely it's like that um because of the all the pressures you first talked about and what this feels like in here and it's just

27:16Adam Schafer:I have so many examples of that, but one of my favorites is actually a funny story. Adam and I, we went to, I don't remember where we went to do this podcast.

27:24Sal Di Stefano:It was Luke Story.

27:24Adam Schafer:Was it his?

27:25Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, Luke Story.

27:26Adam Schafer:And Adam gets asked the question and he's on this great thought. And then he starts to cough a little bit. He's like coughing. And I just take over the thought. Now, at the end of it, I knew what happened. And I look at Adam like, you lost your train of thought, didn't you? He's like, yeah. He started coughing, let me take over the rest of it. But you can't tell. You couldn't tell when you listened to it. Yeah, I mean, it's so funny because people will defend you guys. People are like, let Sal finish the thought. It's so funny. The thought's done around.

27:55Sal Di Stefano:Okay, so since he asked you that, I'm more curious about since you've worked here, your relationship with everyone else. Am I still in the head? No, that is actually a really good question. And people ask me this all the time too. It's kind of funny. I'm developing my own little fan club. Are you ready? Someone recognized you the other day.

28:14Adam Schafer:Who was it that told me? I think it was Cole. since someone came up to you and said someone yeah that has happened to me which was really really weird i was out i was pretty close to here um so i don't know maybe they knew kind of where the studio was at so they knew like you know they were already thinking mind pump maybe but yeah someone recognized me out here a few weeks ago super strange well um but yeah so people ask me this all the time and like it's it's really i i'm in a really unique cool position because i get to learn things from each of you. And I get to pick up on like the strengths from each of you, which is like of all the things that I've gotten out of working here, like that's my favorite.

28:50Like that's the coolest thing for me is you each have strengths. And so I get to learn and like, just, you know, I get to pick your brain and I get to like develop those things in myself that I see as like your guys' strengths. So that's, that's by far one of the coolest things here.

29:01Adam Schafer:That's awesome. All right. You had, you, I asked you to, we asked you last minute. what you're saying. How to be an asshole. I was trying to get, I was trying to get, I was trying to get into transition.

29:12Sal Di Stefano:I was like, you know, Adam was originally this, but not so much. Nope. No.

29:16Adam Schafer:So, uh, no, I asked, we asked you last minute to pop on and I said, Hey, do you have any topics or anything? You brought food labels. What did you learn about food labels that you wanted? Oh, I just thought this was really interesting. This was a new, uh, you know, new study that came out and it's nothing that we don't already know. Um, obviously, you know, you guys talk about on the podcast all the time of like food labels being inaccurate, But there was a recent study that showed specifically protein on food labels to be inaccurate. Really? Yeah. I think it was somewhere in the range of like 5 % to 20 % or something.

29:46That's a big range.

29:47Sal Di Stefano:It's exaggerated, right? Exaggerated. Okay. So why this is so interesting to me is that we've known for a long time that they give them the leeway of 20 % off, right? FDA gives them that leeway. And I've said for the longest time, it's in their best interest because people know that most people are trying to choose choices if you're paying attention to calories. A food that says it's a lower calorie and tastes good is appealing to you. So it's going to be in the company's best interest to exaggerate that. To underestimate calories. To underestimate that. But because we know protein is becoming so popular.

30:25Sal Di Stefano:So this is what is interesting to me. Is they're probably low-balling the calories but high-balling the protein. So you're probably eating way more calories than you think and less of the good thing that you think you're getting after it on most of these labels, which makes it even worse.

30:39Adam Schafer:What they would do because people are a little apprehensive with fat and maybe carbs is they'll under-report those and over-report the protein, which this is another plus for whole foods. You weigh a potato or a chicken breast, that's what it has. You buy a packaged meal and the calories are off by 20%. Like do the math. If your goal is to hit 2 ,000 calories a day, that means you could be off by - 200 calories. Or 400 calories. 400 calories. 400 calories. So 200 calories puts you at a deficit. Meanwhile, you're eating 2 ,400 calories, which puts you at no deficit. And then you're wondering what the hell's going on.

31:19Adam Schafer:Why am I not losing any body fat?

31:21Sal Di Stefano:And then to add injury to insult there, it's hard for most people to even hit their protein intake. And so you're eating a lot of this stuff that's packaged or processed that tells you, oh, this is 20 grams, oh, this is 40 grams. And it's off and it's overestimated. So then you're missing your protein intake. I mean, it's just. It's so funny, too. Like most of the protein bars you see at like a gas station and stuff, it's like they're already borderline even being considered a protein supplement with the protein they claim is in there. Yeah. So now it's even less. I know it'd be interesting to see, I'd have to look at the study, like what kind of foods they pulled from and if that included shakes and bars and stuff in there.

32:00Adam Schafer:Some of the worst offenders that I've seen studies on are supplements. Because they're in the business.

32:04Sal Di Stefano:I mean, they're really in the business. If you're buying a protein bar shake, it is a person who is reading the label.

32:10Adam Schafer:Well, you remember the whole controversy around amino acid spiking. So when a company is getting tested for protein content, what they don't do is test all the amino acids. What they'll do is they'll test key amino acids because we know if we get two grams of leucine, then that correlates to 20 grams of protein or something like that. So what companies were doing, there was a protein powder company that did this. It wasn't even a bar. It was just pure protein powder is they'd spike it with amino acids, which is way cheaper. So when it got tested, they're like, oh yeah, it's 40 grams of protein per serving.

32:41Adam Schafer:Somebody went back, tested it again and said, uh-uh, it's like 20 or 15. And people were getting totally screwed. Yeah, so what they mentioned in this study is that most of these food labels supposedly are using, I think, nitrogen content. That's how they're measuring it. So I think the recommendation was actually measuring the full amino acid profile. Wow. Speaking of supplements, I pulled up, and I saved them, some studies on shilajit, which is still blowing up. Shilajit is still blowing up. And I brought up specifically shilajit for health for men. really interesting. Check this out. Male reproductive health.

33:21Adam Schafer:There was a 2010 study of 60 infertile men. So these are men with low, like low enough sperm counts where they're considered infertile. They gave them a hundred milligrams of Shilajit twice a day for 90 days in 60 % of them. There was a dramatic increase in sperm count and sperm motility in 12%. So Shilajit, a hundred milligrams a day, just a hundred milligrams twice a day, 200 milligrams a day. So 200 milligrams.

33:43Sal Di Stefano:Doug, how much is in a serving of the, You got Shilajit right in front of you. What's the - Yeah, the Organifi gummies.

33:48Adam Schafer:What is that? 250 milligrams. Oh, there you go. And that's Prima V. That's like the high quality Shilajit. Here's another one. A 2019 study of 63 men found that eight weeks of Shilajit supplementation reduced fatigue-induced declines in muscular strength and lowered levels of a marker of collagen breakdown. In other words, it helps with recovery. There was also an animal study that showed it reduced chronic fatigue syndrome. And then there's others that show increases in testosterone. There was a 2016 randomized double-blind study. So this is like gold standard of healthy men between the ages of 45 to 55, 250 milligrams of purified Chalaget, like the one that's in Organifi, same dose, for 90 days, significantly increased total testosterone, free testosterone, and DHEA levels with no significant changes in gonadotropic hormones like LH and FSH.

34:42Adam Schafer:So it's one of the few testosterone boosters that works on healthy men. Most of them only work if you're testosterone.

34:50Sal Di Stefano:Buyer beware, though. I mean, this is like, you're seeing it. They're popping up everywhere.

34:55Adam Schafer:Look, PrimaVie, that's the one that you can trust. Or shop Organifi. Well, Organifi uses PrimaVie. Yeah. They source them from the real Himalayan Shilajit that's standardized. Have you guys ever tried other brands of Shilajit? It's disgusting. It tastes terrible. Yeah. Oh, it's terrible.

35:09Sal Di Stefano:I mean, Organifi has always been so good, like about i mean let's be honest that's one of the things that how we got connected was i none of us have ever liked the taste of a vegan protein powder ever vegan protein powders are normally dog shit it's like and organifies at first i was like this is actually really good for that bad yeah especially you can't compare it to way i think that like when you're comparing a vegan protein powder you have to compare it to other vegan protein powders nobody compares organify as far as the taste goes and they've been that way with all they've done such a good job drew's done such a good job with all their products actually tasting.

35:41Adam Schafer:So you've tried straight. Are you like a supplement guy? Have you tried a lot of weird supplements? I'd say I'm a supplement guy. I'm not on your level, but I'll try things that you give me. That's one of my favorite games to play. Sal just hands me a couple of pills and says, take these.

35:58Sal Di Stefano:He's got that power over all of us, bro. I trust him. He gave it to me. He's like, it must be okay.

36:04Adam Schafer:Oh God, back in the day, I was just talking. we were joking with Doug because we were teasing Doug about stuff you could buy in the back of comic books back in the day when he was a kid like x-ray glasses which were fake or whatever I used to I remember muscle magazines and in the back of muscle magazines they would always have these ads for like weird exotic supplements and they would always position them like oh yeah oh this is some secret Soviet stuff

36:27Sal Di Stefano:or put like a needle on it oh they have all these names that rhyme with like real testosterone stuff yeah dude

36:32Adam Schafer:I tried so many

36:34Sal Di Stefano:bad bad from so many states like you would have all kinds of stuff like that one time i spent

36:39Adam Schafer:of my own money and this is a night this has to be let's see if i'm i'm 16 so i think it's 1995 or 96 this is my own money this is not adjusted for inflation so this is the money i spent back then i spent 250 dollars okay which today is worth something like 10 million if you count inflation 250 dollars on a supplement stack now there was an it was a hard gainer stack and of course i'm think I'm the biggest hard gainer. And it was this before and after picture of this guy that looked like he was skinny and then became a pro bodybuilder. That's how crazy that before and after was. And I thought this is going to work because there's 15 bottles.

37:14Adam Schafer:Like this is for sure going to work. And I got this stack of 15 supplements and nothing. I got nothing from it. I didn't get anything at all.

37:23Sal Di Stefano:Do you remember the Ergogen stack at the Apex had the muscle building one where you took you took uh oxybolic creatine uh essential amino acids i mean i must have been taking 50 pills you did the same thing i need to take the creatine was 10 of those horse pills bro they were huge so i mean it was like a meal to get all those supplements they were like biscuits and i had the same thought too of man if i get if it's all of this it must work it's for

37:49Adam Schafer:sure gonna work nothing stupid logic got nothing from it whatsoever you know you're talking about

37:54Sal Di Stefano:uh old stuff i dug down did you i don't know if you heard me talking about this maybe you can look this up i wanted to to get the numbers on i was just fascinated i heard it was i think on a podcast this guy was breaking down just the just the deterioration of our dollar and it was like 1974 1975 look at what the minimum wage was and then look up the price of gold was and then take the take that ratio to today's minimum wage to what gold compressible yeah and it was so our money our money has lost so much value so what it so basically the math on it was uh you know what minimum wage was i don't know what it was but it was really really low right it was a couple bucks i don't remember what it was exactly uh in the mid 70s but it was a couple bucks and in relation to gold okay so for our minimum if our minimum wage would have just kept pace to the gold standard of what it was back then you should be minimum wage should be roughly around 320 000 a year

38:49Adam Schafer:salary for somebody now that's not that by the way for people who are like yeah that's what that doesn't mean that minimum wage should cost that much what that's pointing to yeah is how much our money has been devalued yes it's been devalued so much that a gold to dollar ratio uh has just completely become totally distorted i mean i knew it was bad but that's like that

39:12Sal Di Stefano:puts it in a whole nother perspective and also makes it like no no wonder it's so difficult whole you i mean you think about this you have two little ones that are coming up i mean you have two that are entering in the workforce real soon here and then you have two really young ones like i'm i'm under the belief that the the what it's going to look like you're going to have to as a parent have a house that you already bought or put a down payment for your kid in order to probably guarantee that your kid could even have a house i had this good conversation so

39:44Adam Schafer:So I had this debate with my cousins the other day. So there's a lot of things that have countered the devaluing of the dollar, like increased efficiency and how we create things. So that's actually offset it quite a bit. But with houses, because my cousin was like, oh my God, when Nonno came to this country, it only cost him this much to buy a house and he only did this job and he supported a family. I'm like, okay, let's compare apples to apples. In 1960, the average American home that was being built was, I think, 1 ,000 square feet. Today, the average American home is something like 2 ,300 square feet.

40:19Adam Schafer:Back then, the average American home didn't have air conditioning. It didn't have the appliances. Didn't have three TVs. Today, we have all this. So if you go apples to apples and you compare what people were making back then to now and you compare actual price per square foot, it's actually pretty close. The problem is here where we live, you can't, I mean, my grandfather, when my grandfather came to San Jose, San Jose was... Orchards still. It was farmland.

40:46Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, still orchards.

40:47Adam Schafer:This was not an expensive place to live. This was actually an inexpensive place to live. Yeah. Now it's Silicon Valley. But when you compare apples to apples, and it's funny, people are like, oh my God, it's so expensive to raise a family now. It's like, well, how many cars do you have? Do you have internet? Do you have all these appliances? How many TVs? TVs. Do you go on vacations every year? What's your square footage?

41:09Sal Di Stefano:How often do you eat out? Is it really? that's an interesting thought. Like, I never thought to look at it like that as like, okay, you're right. So is that true that about a thousand something square feet? So like,

41:19Adam Schafer:what's the average size of a home in 1960? Did you do the math? I did do the math. Okay. So I use 1971, which is when we went off the gold standard.

41:26Sal Di Stefano:Okay. So it was$35 an ounce back then. And, uh, it's now 3270 an ounce, $3 ,270 an ounce for gold. The minimum wage back then was$1.60 an hour. Okay. So that's$149.50 per hour is what we should be making. If it was tied to gold. If it was tied to gold, yeah. So then what would that be? So let me figure that out. That for 52 weeks, that'd be$310 ,930. Wow. Exactly what I said. I know. $320. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. That's wild. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so go back to you. Okay, so you and Doug, maybe you can look this up too, because he said I wanted to fact check him, because I didn't know this is true.

42:05Adam Schafer:The average size of an American home in 1960 and then average size of an American home today. It's more than doubled. Really?

42:14Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. I mean, it's a really fair point to make because obviously we say that. We expect way more. Yeah.

42:22Adam Schafer:Now, my grandfather, I was trying to tell my cousins this. How often do you think my grandmother and grandfather went out to dinner? Never. Right. How often do they go on vacation? Never. How many cars do they have? One. One. Did they have internet, cell phone? Like, no, they had none of those stuff. So it's - What you got? So the average in 1960, it was 1 ,200 square feet. 1 ,200 square feet. Now it's 2 ,200. That's a median, though. That's a mid-range. So almost double. Mid-range, yeah. Uh-huh. So - Yeah, that's fair. People expect a lot more. Just like cars. Like, cars are so much more expensive now, but cars, base car now has stuff that didn't even exist 50 years ago.

42:59Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

42:59Adam Schafer:I remember, I was telling my daughter this.

43:00Sal Di Stefano:And you technically could buy a really, I mean, a 10-year-old car that's rolled down windows. I mean, you pay hardly anything for that.

43:10Adam Schafer:Dude, I was just talking to my daughter. So my daughter's got her driver's permit. She's doing drivers. It's terrifying, by the way, as a father. It's like most terrifying things when your kid gets a driver's license. But she's like, tell me about the first car you bought. What was it? And I was like, it was a Toyota pickup. It was four-cylinder. I bought it myself. $10 ,000 cash out the door is what I paid. it had no power windows no power steering if you ever drove a car with no power steering it's hilarious trying to turn while you're parked no no air conditioning like yeah it was stick shift

43:39Sal Di Stefano:another great point doug just brought up right there too your average tv one tv you had was a 21 inch rca black and white by the way black and white 21 inch yeah 268 what's your smallest tv you have at your house. Not 21 inches. Yeah. You have probably multiple. I won't admit how many I have. And you definitely have the smallest ones probably triple that size.

44:04Adam Schafer:No, what's happened, Arthur Brooks talks about this, is our wants, what we think our needs are, has grown so much that now, in fact, this brings me to a point of our dropping fertility rate. Our fertility rate is plummeting. And a lot of people are like, oh, it's because it's so expensive to live. And that's the reason why. That's not the reason why. Not the reason why at all. I don't think anybody would trade living today versus living in 1950. Way more difficult back then. It has nothing to do with the cost of living. We think we need all this other stuff, which we don't. It has everything to do with people are becoming more and more self-centered and self-focused.

44:44Adam Schafer:You know, in 1950, people expected to raise a family and they expected to sacrifice their time. And I'm a dad and I'm a mom. Now it's like, I don't got time for myself and I'm so busy. And how can I do all these other things that I want to do? I have all these, you know, I have these kids and it's like, it's just different. Okay.

45:00Sal Di Stefano:So challenge, challenging question for you then back to what I was kind of alluding to, which is, you know, are we going to have to put a down payment or pay for our kid's house? and do you do that or do you teach the lesson you're talking about right now that, honey, you need to want less? Yeah. What do you say?

45:16Adam Schafer:Yeah, no, the want less is going to give them way more returns for their whole life rather than me buying and setting them up. Now, I'm not going to say I'm not going to leave them with something or help them out. I'm way better off than my parents were. My dad was a poor immigrant, so God bless them. They couldn't pay for my college. I had to buy my own car. So I'll help them out. But yeah, if you raise your kids to not feel like they need so much, I think that's a great lesson. I think it's a great lesson for everybody to learn.

45:46Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, I can't help but think right now. I mean, even as crazy as it is right here, if you just went to Gilroy, which is 30 minutes south, and bought a 1 ,000-square-foot apartment, it's probably not that crazy.

45:58Adam Schafer:No, no. But there's places in the country where it's still pretty damn inexpensive. We live in an expensive-ass area.

46:05Sal Di Stefano:So I'm just defending your point even more that we have, yes, we've devalued the dollar. Yes, all those things are true and it's gotten crazy. But it seems so much crazier because our expectations have grown so much more too. Totally. Yeah, it's true.

46:22Adam Schafer:All right, I got another question for you guys. And I already know the answer. But let's say there's this guy, Stephen Meyer. I think I'm saying his name right. He's a PhD, very smart guy. he makes an argument for intelligent design or theism, right? That there's a God, right? And he goes through and breaks down the odds of things. And he gives this example, I think is so great. If we all somehow flew to Mars and we landed there and we saw a computer on Mars, would you think to yourself, wow, look at that. This happened by chance. Or would you think somebody made this computer? That's kind of a cool way to do it.

47:00Adam Schafer:Yeah. That's a cool way to do it. I mean,

47:01Sal Di Stefano:I've always thought this way, especially the more, uh, and I don't know if I, does this harken back because of, uh, I was, was raised in learning a lot of this stuff early on, or would this have been my, my core beliefs before? I, I, I questioned that of course, my bias, but it does seem to me like the, the more you understand just even about nature and I'm not even a big nature guy, like where I know that much, but just how synergistic everything is and almost magical how it all works. It's just like the chance of it all just kind of working like that.

47:39Adam Schafer:You can get the odds. So he actually broke this down. And if somebody showed this to me when I was an atheist, I think it would have gotten me to really open my mind. So trip off this, right? A minimally functioning biological system or a simple self-replicating molecule. Do you know what the odds are? Because you can calculate this. Actually, AI will do this for you. So not you, but like literally a molecule that can self-replicate. Super, super basic. What are the odds that that would happen through the mutation process by chance? The number is a one followed by 60 zeros. In other words, one in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion that this would happen.

48:17Adam Schafer:You want to know what the odds are that complex life would come out of all that? A one followed by a thousand zeros. AI literally says impossible. It would be impossible. Isn't that wild? And I like how AI is teaching me that.

48:33Sal Di Stefano:That's fascinating. It's crazy.

48:35Adam Schafer:It's like a tornado flying through a junkyard and assembling a supercomputer.

48:39Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

48:39Adam Schafer:It's not going to happen. It just doesn't happen.

48:41Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, the idea of the landing on Mars and finding a computer and then thinking about that.

48:44Adam Schafer:Yeah, none of us would do it. No scientists. Every scientist would be like, there's aliens. Someone made this. There's no way this happened by chance.

48:49Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, that is kind of it. And that's nowhere near as complex as the human. Not even close. Not even close. Yeah, I know. I love that kind of stuff Speaking of Mars Did you guys I don't know how real this is So maybe fact check me on this But I saw That they're sending A young girl To Mars What? And that she's not expected To return No I don't know This can't be real I don't know

49:13Adam Schafer:This sounds like a movie No You're taking Justin's position Really seriously Right now That's something he would say Here's a good conspiracy Let's go Damn bro Let's go I love this Let's see She's 12 years old She was young I mean I think she was in her early 20s or something, and she's not expected to come back. Young girl to Mars. That's space, Doug. That's a big difference. Doug's a Google champion.

49:40Adam Schafer:Google champion. I'm going to put a computer right over there so you can do it yourself. No, there are no current plans to send young children. Well, you look up young child. Just put woman. She's not a child, yeah. Yeah. Are we sending a woman to Mars? Don't put young either. I don't know why you said young. It's your age, bro. You're the same age as that girl you just said. While no woman has been sent to Mars yet, several women are actively training and preparing for future Mars missions. One such woman is, who is that, who has dedicated her life. NASA Blueberry. To becoming, so she's actually going to try and go.

50:17I think that might be what I saw. I don't know. So it sounds like there's not any official plans yet, but.

50:25Adam Schafer:dude you know what's crazy about this like she's trying to go if we send someone over there they won't come back yeah the time it takes and how much you and how would you get them back how would you get them back you don't have the fuel you can't yeah would that be okay so here's so with her so so you go with her she is kind of cute so here's you'd be so bored dude oh my god You'd be so bored. You get an argument? Yeah. Ah, nowhere to go. So the US rebelled from England, right? England comes over here, sets up these colonies. Eventually, we're like, we don't need to tell us what to do. Like, is that what's going to happen on Mars?

51:02Adam Schafer:We're going to send people over there and send them instructions from Earth. And eventually, they're going to be like, today's our Independence Day. We're our own planet. What are you going to do? What do you do about it? I think they'll be pretty dependent on the Earth. That's a good point. Until they weren't.

51:14Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

51:15Adam Schafer:Yeah. Just like the colonies here. That's a good point. That's exactly how it'll go.

51:20Sal Di Stefano:So long as they're dependent and we're sending them food and whatever.

51:24Adam Schafer:But eventually, why are you telling me what to do? We're independent now. Have you guys seen, I think it's on Apple. I think it's called For All Mankind. No. Great TV show. Really? Highly recommend.

51:33Sal Di Stefano:I started to get into it for a little while. So good. So it's basically like the way that it starts is it starts with the space race with Russia. Yeah. But then what happens is it's obviously hypothetical. what happens is Russia beats the US to space and then it like plays out how that would look. That's right. So then the next thing is like who can establish a base on Mars or on the moon. And then the next thing is who can get to Mars first. Great TV show.

51:57Adam Schafer:You guys know there's an international treaty, right? For the moon. No country is allowed to put a base on the moon. Wow. Yeah. The Soviets and America signed up. I mean, no one's been there anyways. Huh? No one's been there. Gotta get there first before you build a base. Well, you know what? Hey, think about it though. Think about the strategic advantage a country would have putting a base on the moon to launch nukes from. That would be really good, dramatic show. Oh, I want to watch that.

52:25Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, I started to watch it. I can't remember why I fell off of it. You know why? Because it's science fiction and Katrina's not into science fiction. Oh, yeah. You got to listen to your wife. Yeah. I do have to share the TV with her, or at least one of the TVs.

52:36Adam Schafer:One of the TVs, dude. Oh, man. so hey how do you feel about uh our trainers wearing uh viore i love it i love it um it's uh it's like this perfect like it's exactly what i want for our trainers because a lot of trainers are like super underdressed which i just can't stand you walk into a big box gym and it's like you just got like crappy like basketball short i love this kid yeah yeah i agree so it's it's more professional i like it so you so you're two super pro trainers wearing a uniform i love it yeah like we so obviously viory has like you know we have like the regular t-shirts and stuff that they'll wear but we also have the polos too yeah it looks great i i 100 agree when i used to own my studio i made myself uniform shirt i don't have i own the place but i always wore uniform shirts i think it presents you have to something i don't care what you say and even if this is a small

53:34Sal Di Stefano:percentage it's still a percentage of people that are going to judge you by your appearance and if you're put together sloppy if you're i should tell my trainers this your hair is all disheveled and your shirt's all untucked or you don't have you just i mean you i don't i don't care about take your job i don't care about your client that you've had for three years who doesn't care that you look like you rolled out of bed but you're also meeting with tim who you've never met before and you have no idea if he's going to find that disrespectful or think you're and then if you look that way you're already and it's not to say you can't talk your way out of that hole and still find a way but like why why start there why not start with a this professional that you know for sure nobody's going to judge you negatively for looking sharp and it's just like why put yourself at a disadvantage of a job that's already really hard for people to have a lot of success in like no they look good start with that especially i mean in this studio it's like we have a really nice high-end looking studio like it's got to match 100 all right i got i got another interesting

54:30Adam Schafer:take on supplements uh dr ronda patrick did a post oh and for the first and she made a really good case she made a really really good case on why it's maybe better or possibly better or probably better that instead of eating fish to get your omega-3s it might be better to take the

54:50Sal Di Stefano:supplement no way i don't buy that trip off so listen to this is it just because how bad like all of our fish yard shit oh okay omega-3 supplements not you can't not compare it to

55:02Adam Schafer:wild fish yeah well you're right but so listen what she says okay omega-3 supplements may be a safer way to obtain essential fats compared to fish due to environmental contamination most fish contain microplastics and heavy metals that enter our bodies when consumed high quality omega-3 supplements address this issue they're purified how wild is this interesting because they find that a lot of these fish you find or buy, it's got microplastics. Look, you get omega-3 is great, but now you got microplastics.

55:36Sal Di Stefano:Now, that's got to be in the farm. The worst. Yeah. That's the worst. If you're out in Alaska fishing and getting fish - Did you see the color difference in the two? Oh, yeah. Like the farmed fresh. Oh, yeah. They look different. They taste different.

55:49Adam Schafer:Do you know they add to farmed salmon? They add pink dye. So they look more like that. Really?

55:53Sal Di Stefano:And they still look -

55:54Adam Schafer:Yeah.

55:54Sal Di Stefano:that's how bad they are they're so bad they're so bad they're dying it to look that way it's still

55:58Adam Schafer:you know i ate uh i i always i didn't know this but i always ate farm salmon and the first time i ate wild caught salmon i didn't realize it was salmon i'm like what is this because it wasn't much better it just wasn't the same farmed salmon is like it's like half fat it's like this fatty super hyper fatty fish wild salmon is actually lean in comparison yeah again uh another argument for going that route, the same size of a serving, leaner with more protein. Six ounces of farmed, six ounces of wild caught, more protein and less calories.

56:35Sal Di Stefano:Do you think in our future, even with all the technology and advances of that, do you think we're going to get more? So funny you brought this up too because this was on my conversation with Katrina. I just told her yesterday or the day before that I want to make a conscious effort of going down the farmer's market and starting to, one, not only support our local farmers but also get better about like buying stuff like that that it's grown in someone's little private farm where it's all all organic all better and i know there's a lot of uh i just watched um the guy that actually josh's was just been talking about the kid that's viral he was interviewed with jordan syatt and jordan syatt was talking about some of these pesticides that organics use yeah that are they're as bad if not worse he named

57:20Adam Schafer:Heavy metals can be high in organic. Not even that.

57:23Sal Di Stefano:He named a pesticide that was banned. But they use it in organic?

57:27Adam Schafer:But they use it in organic. You know what's crazy about wild? Here's a challenge with wild fish. Name a meat, aside from wild fish, that we still go get in the wild. Like we don't because the demand is so high. Yeah. And can we meet the demand by just going out and fishing in the ocean? The actual truth is farmed fish might be the future because how can we meet the demand?

57:53Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. You're talking about fish. You can still get wild deer and elk. When was the last time we ate that?

57:59Adam Schafer:Well, no. I mean, it's been a while since I had it. When I lived in Colorado, my neighbor used to hunt and bring it. But imagine if we didn't have any cattle or things that we raised that way. Yeah. It would be difficult. So they just have to, I think farming, farmed fish, they have to really look at the practices and change them because I don't know how we can keep, I mean, you could still get wild caught fish and you could still get it decent. But if everybody went in that direction, I don't think they'd be able to support the consumer.

58:23Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

58:24Adam Schafer:Because you got to go out in the ocean and get it all. I don't think it's enough.

58:27Sal Di Stefano:You think that would be that big of a demand? Huge, huge. Yeah, I mean, right now with price is how you segment that to where it's just like it's more expensive. You're going to pay for those types of things. So I don't know. I just feel like I have a little setup to where I can do a garden in my backyard, and I haven't started it yet. My goal is next spring is to start.

58:50Adam Schafer:Are you going to start gardening?

58:51Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

58:52Adam Schafer:You're going to grow vegetables and stuff? A couple things. Really? Yeah, yeah. Like what?

58:55Sal Di Stefano:Well, I mean, tomatoes are identical to growing marijuana, so I should be able to take care of some tomatoes. I should be able to take care of some. I forgot.

59:04Adam Schafer:You're probably a hella good farmer.

59:05Sal Di Stefano:Actually, it's identical, actually. A lot of people don't know that. So all your ratios of NPK and everything like that is identical to - I forgot, bro.

59:14Adam Schafer:You're a total farmer nerd because of weed.

59:16Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, yeah. No, and let me tell you, the art of doing that is - Katrina always busts my chops because I'm always asking her to tend to all the plants. She's like, you're the one who has a green thumb in the family. I'm like, come on, you're the chick. You're supposed to take care of our flowers. I was like, when we grow food, I'll take care of it. I'm like, when we grow food, I'll take care of it. I said, but the flowers, come on. You can keep some flowers alive.

59:38Adam Schafer:So tomatoes, what else would you want to grow?

59:40Sal Di Stefano:Green onions, tomatoes. What else did I tell you? I only want to do a few things. Just for fun? Yeah, well, yeah, and I don't want to bite off more than I can chew.

59:48Adam Schafer:Dude, you got to go to my parents' house. My parents, they have a typical San Jose backyard. It's not a huge backyard. It's like a typical small. But my dad, every square inch. It's a full-on garden. Oh, bro, he grows. He loves it. He goes out there. He grows green beans. They're just so good. And tomatoes.

1:00:02Sal Di Stefano:We have a peach tree and a lemon tree this year that was just, it was so cool to be able to get them off the tree and stuff like that this year. And it's like, it really inspired me to do that. I'm like, you know, and our neighbors came over and brought their tomatoes from their garden. Then our other neighbors brought over their eggs. And I'm just like, oh man, if I grow a few things here, I can really kind of have, eat a lot of our stuff locally and homegrown. And I want to try my best to kind of do that as much as I can. I think chickens are a great idea. I would love to have chickens. Ask Justin about that.

1:00:34Sal Di Stefano:He said it's not. Well, here's why. When they're close to the house, they bring rats. A killer rat. Because of all the feed.

1:00:41Adam Schafer:He had to kill a chicken, too. It was traumatizing. Really? Yeah, dude. I forgot why he had to kill a chicken, but it was very - I mean, I've killed a lot of - Well, you've done it forever, but he's like, he's - He's seen it when he says, I had to go dark, bro. I had to go into killer mode to kill it because it was too hard.

1:00:56Sal Di Stefano:Well, you know that saying, running around with a chicken with their head cut off, too? That's a real thing. You cut a chicken's head off, it'll run around still. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, yeah, it's a trip. But yeah, you can, I mean, if you have some cats or some things to keep it at bay, you'd be all right. But if you just, you're inviting some other rodents to probably come around. So you'd want to have it a decent distance from the house. And I think Justin's was pretty close to his house. And he already lives kind of out in the country and probably didn't think about that. You ever work on a farm?

1:01:25Not an animal farm. I worked on a blueberry farm. I knew it.

1:01:28Adam Schafer:I don't know why. A blueberry farm. I did, yeah. You guys ever heard this story? No. This was like mid-COVID. I had nothing else to do. Me and my buddy, he has like some guy he knew that was like some investor in this farm in North Carolina. And we were just kind of sitting around, couldn't work, couldn't do anything. And so we're like, I go fly out to North Carolina and work on this blueberry farm. I did not know that. That's the most random thing ever. That is the most random thing. You actually flew to another state to tend to blueberries? We lived in this like crappy little motel. It was like, you know, I don't know, a couple hundred dollars a week or something like that.

1:02:00And the pay was terrible. It was not at all worth it for pay. Like it was like 14 an hour or something like that. Yeah, it was terrible. It's intense. Like working on a blueberry farm, intense. What do you mean?

1:02:11Adam Schafer:So you have to like pick them? No, so we didn't pick them by hand. They have like these machines and tractors that kind of like, you know, kind of shake them off the bush and puts on like a conveyor belt kind of thing. But it's intense because if it was going to rain, you had to get as many of the blueberries off the bush as you could because the rain would like knock them off into the ground. They'd be bad. So if there was a storm coming, it's like we were out there sometimes till like 2 a.m. Like trying to get all these blueberries off the bushes. What? It was intense. So it's like 2 a.m. It's raining.

1:02:43I'm running through the mud. Like crazy. How long did you do this for? It was like probably a month and a half, two months. So you're the teenage kid. How did you find that? It was a crazy list. No, my friend, he just knew some guy that I think was like an investor in the farm or something. Okay. He's like two young kids. And you're bored. Let's go.

1:03:02Adam Schafer:It's COVID. Yeah. That's the last thing I would have done to fells board. That's cool. It was an interesting experience. That's wild.

1:03:08Sal Di Stefano:I'm trying to think how old I was when I did the bees. That's what that reminds me of. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Did it one go down your butt crack? Yes, bro. I was, I've never, that's actually the only, technically the only thing I've ever. It's a big bee suit, right? It is the only thing I've ever quit in my life. I've never quit a job or anything like that in my life. out of it a bee suit dude i mean i didn't it didn't it didn't bother me into and what what it was the irony of it was there wasn't even a bee in in the suit that was doing this was the sweat i was sweating it was so hot and the sweat was running down my back and then down my butt crack and i thought it was a bee climbing in my in my butt and i freaked out ran away from the stripped everything off stripped my clothes off i was like i can't do this like just the because you have to just get used to them crawling all over you and it's like you the and two i remember when i got suited up in it like the suit i had was from fucking the 80s you know it was like holes in it and stuff like that you put duct tape on all these holes and i'm on and they they find a way they they they finagle away into your suit no matter how taped up you were at least the one i was in they find and it's just normal you you all of a sudden they'll be flying inside your veil and you're like there's a bee inside with you and you do this you just lift your helmet up you wait for to fly you smash them on your head you keep going about your business that's just that's the game and you just do that so you already know they're getting in there and then all of a sudden you i and i'm getting hot from doing all this and i can feel so it feels like crawling like you know sweat almost feels like a bug is crawling on you and i can't tell the difference and so and that was it was bothering me so much and i'm sweating so much it's like i couldn't i couldn't handle it and the fact that it's going in my butt crack was just like that was enough that was it that's my line I'm like, I'm out.

1:04:52Sal Di Stefano:I'm like, keep the money. I was like, keep the money for my night tonight. You got a few hours out of me for free. I can't do this anymore. That was it, dude. It was a hell of it. But similar experience. I can't even remember how I took the job. I was like you, a young kid who was just looking to make money and willing to do almost anything. I had a family friend. It was better than sitting around. Yeah. Yeah. It was summer, and I was at school, wasn't working at somewhere else, and someone had a beehive job moving. We basically show up in the middle of the night, too, because that's when they sleep.

1:05:24Sal Di Stefano:So you show up at 2 in the morning, and we have a big diesel truck, and I'm loading up just box after box after box, hours of loading up these bees. You smoke them out to calm them down, and they're crawling all over you and stuff. That was fun. Never. Yeah. I'd never do that.

1:05:41Adam Schafer:Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, I won't ever again.

1:05:46Adam Schafer:Element is an electrolyte powder you add to your water with the right amount of sodium. No artificial sweeteners, no sugar, and it's got enough sodium. Most of them don't have enough sodium to make a difference. This one does. 1 ,000 milligrams per serving. Why is that important? You get better pumps, better performance. You feel better. If you need electrolytes, you should use Element. Go check them out. Go to drinkelemente.com forward slash mind pump. On that link, you can get a free sample pack of their most popular drink mixed flavors with any purchase. Here comes the show. Our first caller is Allison from Pennsylvania.

1:06:23Adam Schafer:Hi, Allison. Hi, Allison. Hi, guys. How's it going? Good. We're great. How are you? Hello. I am good. It's really nice to meet you, and thank you so much for having me on your show. You got it. How can we help you? Yeah, so let me give you a little back story here. Throughout the majority of my childhood and adolescent years, I struggled really bad with obesity. um I finally got to a point where I got sick of feeling the way that I was and I started walking exercising eating healthy um and the weight started to drop that eventually kind of transitioned into me taking on running which I fell in love with um and I still love running but it didn't really like my physique did not look the way that I wanted it to so from there I started incorporating weight training and I saw a huge difference.

1:07:17Um, but now I'm to a point where I'm like stuck and I'm not really progressing in either one of those categories. And I've never had any type of structured training and I don't know where to go. Okay.

1:07:33Sal Di Stefano:Have you, I first place I'd want to know is kind of what, what we've been doing eating wise, because normally when we stall out in the strength training spot, it's because we're not quite feeding our bodies enough in order to continue to build muscle. So have you tracked calories before and macros? Yes. But to touch on that just a little bit, I have some issues with tracking calories and weighing and things like that. I start to develop unhealthy eating habits when I start to do that. So there's so many different factors that I feel like are kind of working against each other.

1:08:12Adam Schafer:Yeah, no, that's good. That's fine. It's normal. That's perfectly fine. Um, I would say just chase protein, eat it first. That would be the only thing I'd worry about. 120 pounds. If you ate 30 to 45 grams of protein per meal, you'd be totally fine. You said you don't have a structured strength training program. No, I've never, everything that I've done, it's just kind of been on a whim and it's worked to a certain extent, but like I need help and some direction on what I do. That's an easy fix. Oh, look at you. Phenomenal progress. Allison, you just pulled up your picture there. Okay, if I just put you on one of our programs, you're going to blow your mind.

1:08:50Adam Schafer:Just that alone is going to be

1:08:51Sal Di Stefano:wonderful. You do that and you chase the protein like Sal's saying, you're going to see a world of a difference.

1:08:55Adam Schafer:And I saw on there you wanted to get your deadlift up. Alright, MAPS anabolic. Done deal. That's it. Follow MAPS anabolic. And you know what? Let me have you back on in three months because uh i can't wait to hear about the progress if that's okay don't

1:09:07Sal Di Stefano:neglect don't neglect though really trying to get after protein because typically what ends up the reason why i brought the calorie thing right up is what happens for someone who's lost a lot of weight like that ran a lot you're burning a lot and you're not consuming a lot and in order for us to build muscle we need to be in a slight surplus doesn't have to be a lot but a slight surplus and so go after that protein and that protein is essentially you know along those lines are you still running i am and i so i can i do that with running anabolic depends how much so i am running right now roughly three days a week sometimes four and i have one day that i dedicate to like long distance running where i don't do any type of weight training like i cut everything else

1:09:52Adam Schafer:out um how many okay what does your whole workout routine look like you run three days a week yep and i generally lift four days a week oh god you're gonna blow your mind when you follow a program follow maps atabolic yeah uh you can go ahead and follow the three-day week version there's two options in there go ahead and follow three-day week version how long are you running when you run three days a week how many miles so one day i'll run a 5k um one day i'll run literally like as long as i can and sometimes that's between 15 and 17 miles which is kind of crazy um and then And generally the other day, it's about like six to eight miles.

1:10:32Adam Schafer:Okay. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to not do that long run anymore. Okay. You're just going to run two days a week. You're going to run 5K on both of them. That's it. That's it. That's it. Two 5K runs just so you can keep some of your endurance and stamina because you love it. And then lift three days a week, perhaps anabolic. You're going to blow your mind.

1:10:50Sal Di Stefano:And for sanity reasons, if that feels like you're cutting so much out of your running, go for nice walks. put the podcast in your ear and go the same distance you would run. You can walk the same time. Yeah. The same time that you would run for, you can walk, walk for and listen to the podcast. That's right. That's your, that's your homework. Okay. Okay. You do that. You do that. You go after protein. Don't need to get crazy with counting. Just go after your protein, follow maps in a blog. We're going to blow your mind.

1:11:16Adam Schafer:Yeah. And I'm going to tell you something. You got good genetics is if you, if you're building the physique that you are doing that kind of running, yeah, that's you're going to, You're going to get real good progress if you do what I tell you. Yeah.

1:11:27Sal Di Stefano:You're going to be fun to help. You're going to be fun to help. I heard it. You guys are the experts, so that's why I came to you.

1:11:32Adam Schafer:No, let's do it. MAPS anabolic, two days a week. Okay. You do your 5K run. If you want to do more stuff, you can walk, and that's it. Hit your protein targets, and you're going to blow your mind. Yep. All right. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate everything you do.

1:11:45Sal Di Stefano:You got it. Yeah, check back with us in at least three months. I want to hear from you. We'll see you then. Okay. All right. Sounds good.

1:11:51Adam Schafer:thank you guys thank you that that just for people listening right now that would be uh like that's the kind of client that i would like yes yeah hire me because i'm gonna blow your mind right now yeah yeah it's gonna be huge because she looks like she knows how to lift uh and she's actually just mostly running and and she's beating herself up uh so she's got some muscle building genetics there yeah yeah she's gonna she's gonna do well very well reducing that amount of running and following

1:12:16Sal Di Stefano:good programming yeah yeah the one thing that'll be important that i know we didn't get into calories and i know we don't like you don't want to take somebody like that who isn't but what can happen is like and we'll just use hypothetical numbers you know she went from eating 25 or 3 000 calories all the way down to like 1500 goes too low yeah and she's really low and she's doing a lot and then that'll stall that'll stall a physique out real quick and so if she just kind of focuses on on getting after protein more than what she was before hopefully that gives enough of a little bit of a boost in calories uh and what the nutrient that she needs uh and she'll build our next caller is stella from illinois stella how you doing how are you what's happening i'm doing great how are you guys thanks for having me yeah how can we help you uh i'll read off my email um and just get straight to it so a mom of four i'm 42 years old i have a 14 year old nine year old six year old and almost nine month old um so i i don't even know there's like so much to kind of talk about.

1:13:17So I stopped drinking caffeine in the past three, four months. And so in the meantime, um, that was giving me a lot of, uh, calorie intake. Cause I had a lot of cravings with the coffee and it sounds crazy, but, um, plus energy drinks, plus pre-workout and all that stuff. So I cut it all out, kept going to the gym four or five times a week, felt really fatigued, really terrible. So with the calorie intake, because I was tracking my calories, I just decided that I was reverse dieting. I was like, you know what? I'm going to call it reverse dieting. It is what it is. And so now my big question is because the baby still doesn't sleep great.

1:13:57She's a good baby, but I'm still waking up. I'm not getting any more than three to five hours of like a good shut eye at the end of the night. So I'm up early with her between like 5.30, 6.30, 7 o 'clock, we get up and I'm up for the day. The only thing that's consistent throughout my day is my nine o 'clock class that I take. I go to the gym at 9 a.m. And after that, I come home, do whatever at the house. Then I go to work between two and three, and then I get home around nine or 10. And whenever I get to bed, I get to bed. So that's like my big question now. So my concern is I want to start like a calorie deficit because I do want to lose some weight now that I feel much better, more like myself.

1:14:41I'm seeing really a lot of more improvement at the gym. I felt like my nervous system was shot because of all the caffeine intake. So that's good. I feel stronger. I feel better at the gym. So I feel like now I'm ready for that calorie deficit. So I feel like I want to go on a deficit. I've been in a deficit before. Before the baby, I was probably in the best shape ever, like ever in my life. So then I got pregnant and kind of back to where I started. So I want to start my calorie deficit. I slowly have decreased my calories just a little bit because I need to maintain that energy. I stand all day for work.

1:15:13I'm a salon owner. problem is I just don't know my time frame for like eating because I want to maintain a calorie deficit obviously keep my energy but it's hard for me to kind of guesstimate that window because I'm up so early and then I'm kind of up kind of late it's just it is what it is so that's like my biggest concern right now yeah are you are you uh are you still breastfeeding or

1:15:43Adam Schafer:know no i stopped that i gotta say this too by the way uh you mind if i talk about how much caffeine you were taking at your peak because you wrote it no i don't mind at all so by the way i've trained a lot of people like you stella uh you're a what you would what we would call a cortisol junkie yeah uh so so this is like you fit in an avatar salon owner lots of caffeine little sleep go go go savage you're burning everything you're burning the candle at both ends oh yeah like that midday crash is like another level of awful yeah but you yeah so uh the what you what you shouldn't do is go on a calorie deficit you're going to throw another piece of stress at your body and yeah you'll crash i want to crash out hard you'll probably get some hormone issues if you haven't already i want to know more about the 9 a.m class also yeah and then that's the other thing i was gonna say uh it's probably great that you get away for a little bit of time for yourself but i don't i don't i'm gonna guess let me just guess that the 9 a.m class is like a crazy workout class.

1:16:41Adam Schafer:I'm going to assume it's not like theory or what is it? Yeah. What are you doing? Absolutely not. No, I'm not into that stuff. I mean, I loved, you know, once in a while I was, um, at like a big gym where, um, I like taking all kinds of classes, but, um, I really love strength training. I love conditioning. That's what my gym is. My coaches are phenomenal. So it's all geared toward and it's, it's all programmed out every month we got a program. Um, it's amazing. So like today was deadlift day. We did deadlifting. We did a little bit mobility, you know, stuff like that. So it's traditional strength training.

1:17:13So I, yeah. And I love strength training. I'm not into like that crazy cardio and all that nonsense. I love going in lifting heavy. Cause you know, I have a back issue. I have degenerative disc disease. So I feel like ever since I've been strength training for the past, like eight years on and off, it's, it's really helped me stay strong for work too. Like I stand on my feet. I, my back does not hurt. My shoulders don't hurt. None of that stuff. Oh, good. So me being strong, that like helps me, you know?

1:17:39Adam Schafer:So Stella, you're doing like, so the class is like traditional strength training. You do a set, you rest, you do a set, you rest, or is it like circuit? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. Great. Yeah. You're good. Don't go into calorie deficit. That'll, that'll, that'll be a mistake right now. I would keep you, I would keep you at maintenance or I'd even continue to slowly bump things up, keep your protein intake high. And I wouldn't overdo anything. I mean, how many, how often are you taking the class in the morning? How many days a week? At least four to five for sure. Yeah, you're probably better off going three and maybe just walking the rest of that and then just letting your body heal a little bit.

1:18:13Adam Schafer:Because part of the reason why you're getting that crash is you're just doing too much. Poor sleep, plus the stress, plus the work that you do. You're on your feet all the time. You know, you just got off the caffeine not that long ago. I think it would be, and you just had a baby nine months ago. It takes about two years for a woman's body to get back to normal. You look really great. Yeah, you're resilient as hell. Thank you.

1:18:35Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Yeah. So, and, and, and I, I, I get the temptation of you're starting to feel good. And then that makes you want to go push, but I don't know if that's the right move right now. I think I would really want to hear like, as we're going to these 9am classes that are strength-based, which I love is like, are we getting stronger? Like, that's what I'm like, you know, is the deadlift going up? Is this, is the shoulder press going up? Like, well, how are we doing with stuff like that? So my deadlifting, yes, a hundred percent. Like it really affected the caffeine was really affecting, I'm very in tune with my body.

1:19:05Cause I feel like I just have to be, um, it was really affecting my nervous system, like working weight for deadlifting. I could do like between one 65, one 85, depending on how I'm feeling. And I couldn't push before the caffeine cut, like more than one 25. And I'm like, there's something wrong, you know? And so when I cut that out, I'm like, all right, let's see how it is. And after about a month, I was able to start pushing heavier weight. My squats were a little bit better. Everything started going up, you know? So that being said, I feel stronger. We do a lot of kettlebell work. Um, I was able to do a PR with my Turkish getup.

1:19:40So that made me feel good. So I'm like, all right, I'm doing everything the same, no sleep, whatever. The only thing that was huge for me in difference was the caffeine intake, you know? So I used to do before the baby, I used to get up and do a 6am class. So I would just get up, grab a shake and just go and then come home. And then, you know, at the end of my night, I would come home and just go to bed because the kids are older they could just you know i don't have to worry about a baby and then after the baby everything's kind of shooken up a little bit

1:20:08Adam Schafer:yeah yeah you got to take it easy for a little while and you'll actually progress faster if you take it easy three days here's my question though um because we do have a program right so like every day is this every day is different every week is the same example like mondays are full body conditioning you know strength training tuesdays we deadlift wednesdays we do um benching thursday the squatting fridays are full body just like monday um i'm not sure which day to kind of eliminate you drop you drop the one full body drop you drop one of the full monday drop monday the conditioning day yep stick to the strength yeah stick to the strength training just yeah just do this the squat the deadlift the squat day the full body day but drop the conditioning day don't cut your don't cut your calories you'll get you'll progress faster that way yeah for sure and by the way caffeine for sure was frying your central nervous system especially at that dose unbelievable i've never felt like that before in my life but it was just like yep you just become robotic after a time i mean people chain smoke i was like chain making coffees i'm greek so i'm just waking up just making coffee not my eyes are still shut just you know like going to work making a coffee stopping by my husband's restaurant grabbing a coffee it's like there's no reason for it it's just and i love the way it tastes it's not like it was giving me energy, obviously.

1:21:28Sal Di Stefano:You know what? Good for you, though. I mean, coming off of that is a lot. Not a lot of people can make it off of that. So good for you. Ashwagandha would be a good supplement for you.

1:21:36Adam Schafer:So would crepe. I started taking it. Good. Oh, good. Ashwagandha. The red juice. Red juice bio-organifies incredible. Yeah, creatine would be good. And I would also do - I take creatine, too. Good. And I would also look at magnesium, vitamin D as well. So you probably eat meat, so you're probably okay with your B vitamins. You're Greek, so I haven't met too many vegan Greeks. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So, but yeah, magnesium would probably be another supplement.

1:22:01Sal Di Stefano:You're, you're, you're, you're doing really good. I think I would just be encouraging you to like, let's, you know, let's wait a little bit longer. Let's wait till the baby's a little bit older before we start to get a little crazy. And if I can get you stronger and eating a little bit more calories, that's the main goal right now. I feel like, can we keep going up? Can we keep going up on calories? Can we keep getting stronger? And then as, as the baby starts to give you a little bit more sleep, then we can say, okay, maybe pick up that class again, or let's, let's, let's cut now. but right now I think you're just starting to feel really good and I still think there's more good for you ahead I hope so because I love it I mean it's like the gym is the only thing that is consistent for me so if I don't go I'm literally at home like all right what am I doing

1:22:40Adam Schafer:you know go for it's you can go for a while so Monday instead of doing the conditioning class if you found uh something like a yin yoga you could do that that'd be good something recuperative or even walking would be good. And then diet wise, you know, just eat healthy. You know, you could avoid things like processed foods and gluten, which oftentimes are inflammatory for people. But yeah, and you said your husband's restaurant and you're Greek. So you probably, you've got great access to good meat, good rice, good vegetables. I think if you stick to that, some fruit, I think you'll be, you'll do great.

1:23:14All right. What time, what, what window frame would you suggest considering my, and I don't want to call it fasting because I don't like that word at all. I just, I just need like a, that window where it's like, all right, you're up at 6am and then you're going to go to bed at like 10 a at 10pm, 11pm. Um, when do you think a good cutoff would be for that?

1:23:37Adam Schafer:Now, why do you want to cut off? Is it because of the structure? Um, I feel, yeah. And I, I just don't want to go to bed eating at like 9pm. You know what I mean? unless you don't think that's a problem. I think if you don't eat an hour or two before bed, typically in the morning though, in the morning, you should start with some little bit of protein and fat in the morning. That helps stabilize blood sugar for the whole day. So you don't think it's a big deal, like for me to stop eating after a certain point. No, no, no, no. But you know, in a couple hours before bed, so it doesn't affect sleep.

1:24:07Adam Schafer:But in the morning, like even if you eat like just a couple eggs, just give you some fats and some proteins that tends to stabilize blood sugar.

1:24:14Sal Di Stefano:Especially if what you're eating later too, is balanced and good. I mean, if you're making good choices, I actually don't even really care how late you're going really, especially if you give a little break before bed. Like my husband cooks every night. He has the kids at night while I'm at work. So like yesterday he grilled, so he'll grill some steaks, vegetables, or I just come home and just like have just a steak, you know? Yeah, there you go.

1:24:34Adam Schafer:Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I eat good, but yeah, perfect. That's it. That's it. That's awesome. I did get a few programs too. Like in the beginning when I was home with the baby. I got, uh, there was like a, she was born in October. So there was like a holiday bundle. So I picked it up. That was, those are awesome. Um, well you got a very, you're very resilient. Did you say you're 42? You look, uh, you look a good seven years younger than that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It was the baby planned by the way. Not really. I mean, I listen, you know, God has other plans. I was in the best shape ever. And I was like, man, I feel so good.

1:25:09I I've never felt better in my life. And I know I'm standing in front of a mirror all day and like, my clients were like man you look awesome and i'm like yeah dude i'm walking my steps you know i'm telling them everything i hear about i'm like you guys don't listen to podcasts i'm always like there's literally this podcast there are a bunch of dudes i've told their brothers so i feel like literally listening to you guys is hysterical i'm like i feel like i'm with all the boys and it's so fun like i crave it i get in my car and i drive to work and i'm like all right 10

1:25:35Sal Di Stefano:minutes of this and i'm like ready to go you know also i just throw you guys on no matter what um The fact that you went into this pregnancy in the best shape of your life, you're going to be so grateful you did that. I mean, to me, all the clients I trained that had babies, the women that went in in their best shape of their life, man, you come out great. You rebound great. And you're very common where I have to tell them like, hey, hold on, hold on. I know you're ready. I know you're ready to go get after it again. But it's still going to keep getting better by taking it easy. And don't worry.

1:26:08Sal Di Stefano:There's going to come a time. I have to like, if it's okay to give a shout out to my coaches and my gym, I would, I would love to, because they're phenomenal. I mean, it's not a gym. They're two amazing trainers and they're, it's a privately owned gym. And there's so much like work and effort and patience that they put into all of it. And I bring the baby with me. It started off with like, all right, I'm going to slowly come back like two days a week. And I'm like, of course, bring the baby, you know? So she would sleep half the time and then somebody would pick her up. And like, now she comes all the time and she just hangs out.

1:26:38And if it wasn't for that, I don't, like, I don't even know what gym I would be able to go to, you know?

1:26:42Sal Di Stefano:So give them a shout out. Yeah. Who are they? Yeah. So it's Ray and Robin and they're in Park Ridge at adaptable PT. They're just phenomenal. I mean, I love the structure. I love the fact that the way, the way, the way the classes are structured, if I was going to do a class, that's how I would build it. It's like that. We talk, we talk about that all the time. We're like, if you were to do a class, it would be focused on the lift and then you have a full, I love, I love what they're doing. So yeah, they're amazing. and it's, um, I've like, I constantly tell people all the time, like, you gotta like work out and just be functional.

1:27:13Like you, you, like I have kids, I have to be able to like move and function and do stuff, pick them up, all the good things. But, um, a lot of people are scared of it because it's like, so do you guys do cardio? That's like the number one question. I'm like, what does that even matter? Like who cares about cardio? Yeah. You're sweating. Are you going to sweat? Yeah. You're going to sweat.

1:27:32Sal Di Stefano:So good job. But yeah, they're great. Good. Good. Good job. They're doing good. Keep it up. Stella. Thank you. thank you guys you guys are doing amazing it's just incredible to just listen

1:27:41Adam Schafer:appreciate it thank you so much yeah I love that they let her breed the baby I used to do that with my clients I'd let them bring their kids

1:27:48Sal Di Stefano:I was so worried about she said so was I because she fits the avatar

1:27:55Adam Schafer:orange theory the hair salon owner you know exactly what I'm talking about caffeine

1:28:01Sal Di Stefano:but you know what I mean she looks phenomenal four kids 42, like just came off of what, nine months ago? She said, yeah, she's doing great. She looks already amazing, but that's a testament to her lifting going into it. That's right. You know, I mean, the fact that she's pumped out four kids, that work in. Yes. It looks great. And you know, and again, just hammer this home. When someone's done as well as she's done and where she's at, there is that temptation. As soon as you start feeling better to like get after it. And it's like, I mean, I remember Katrina, Katrina went into having Max in the best shape of her life.

1:28:33Sal Di Stefano:and when she came out, she was so stubborn. I was trying to get her to run a map starter. She was like, I want it. And I'm like, you don't need anything else yet. You progress faster. Yes, and she was so antsy to get out of it because she was feeling good. I'm like, it doesn't matter that you're feeling good. You don't need anymore. Your body will respond from this. And so let's reap the benefits of this while we can. There'll come a time down the road when you plateau from this and then we'll ramp up intensity. So yeah, stay the course.

1:29:00Adam Schafer:I got to say this too. Greek food is bodybuilder food. It's like the closest to how a bodybuilder would be. That's good.

1:29:06Sal Di Stefano:Our next caller is Morgan from Idaho. Hi, Morgan. Hey, how are you? Good. How are you doing? Good, good. Thanks for taking my question here. So my question for you guys is kind of two parts. One, if you've got any advice for kind of how to structure nutrition for children. Um, and then the other part of my question is, um, being parents yourselves, you kind of know sometimes you plan to, to cook food for your kids and they just don't want to eat it. So, um, kind of for me, uh, you know, some of my fallbacks are really heavily dairy based. So cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt. Um, I guess if you guys have any advice for, um, you know, other ways to make sure that my child's eating well.

1:29:58Adam Schafer:That's great. Full fat dairy is a, is a great nutrient dense food for children. It's really good. So you're doing good with that. Uh, eggs, meat, these are all very nutrient dense foods, uh, that have a lot of the stuff that they need for a growing brain. So you're doing great there as far as like cooking or making a meal for your kid, uh, that they don't want to eat. I mean, you know, a couple strategies with that one is this what we're eating. So, and if you're not hungry, you're not hungry. What you don't want to do, and you're young. So maybe your generation experienced this, but mine did where it was like, you better eat all your food.

1:30:32Adam Schafer:And what it did is it promoted this dysfunctional eating pattern and all of us were, we eat everything all the time. But the truth is we live in a modern Western society. And it's not like when my grandparents in Sicily, where it's like, you got to eat all this. Cause I don't know if we're going to get another meal, uh, soon. So you have to eat this all because otherwise you're gonna be malnourished. So when they don't want to eat, it's like, okay, that's fine. One thing that my wife does is she has an area that the kids can reach that have what we call anytime foods. And these are foods that they like, but that we also are okay with.

1:31:04Adam Schafer:So it typically has like blueberries, raspberries, apples. It's got some nuts in there. The kids like it. And if they're ever hungry and they want to eat, it gives them a little freedom. and those are called anytime foods. So it's like, oh, you're hungry? Go in the anytime food fridge and grab whatever you want. And that's, I think, pretty much it. I think one of the challenges, the things that we tend to do sometimes as parents is we put so much pressure, especially if you're a fitness fanatic, so much pressure around food that you end up causing more problems than solving them. So just that's what we do at my house.

1:31:38Sal Di Stefano:Mine was just what we had to eat. We all ate together. This is a tough one for me because I haven't had a lot of challenges with Max eating. And I don't know if that's just because I got lucky with a kid or was it really due to the consistency that Katrina and I, when we sat down and ate, we all ate the same. Even when he was really, really little, it was just we chopped it up really, really small or smashed up the potatoes to where he ate. But it was like we all ate the same thing every single day and that was what was to eat. But what I did do that I think a lot of our parents' generation did wrong was Sal's point.

1:32:12Sal Di Stefano:It's like, if my son wasn't hungry, he didn't have to eat the whole plate. He didn't have to finish. It's like, he's done. He's done. And then he'll be hungry again. And then there'll be that, I'll put that in the refrigerator, put in his little cup thing. And then if he's hungry again, I bring it back out, we warm it up and then we have that. I mean, that's what we eat. That's what we all eat together. I find my friends that have a lot of options or eat out a lot. And then the kids get opportunities to try McDonald's or try the fast. Then all of a sudden they go, oh my God, I want French fries every night or I want pizza every night because so max didn't have any of that we didn't introduce any of those foods to him at a young age at all and so he only had what we had and when he was hungry he would eat so i'm sometimes not the best person to talk to with this advice because i didn't struggle with this as much what happens

1:32:56Adam Schafer:with this too morgan is uh sometimes as parents we think but they have to eat right now so then what we do is we will make the nuggets or the food that we know that they like because we're afraid that they're not going to eat, but the odds that your kid's going to starve is like, it doesn't exist. Kids don't starve. There's all this anxiety around it, but yeah, they're going to be hungry and they're going to eat.

1:33:17Sal Di Stefano:And it's, it's the thing is, and my youngest was really, you know, our toughest with this. And we had to just discipline ourselves to know that, you know, he's going to come around. Like right now he's kind of, you know, being stubborn and just doesn't want to eat. But later on he'd get hungry and he'd just eat it inevitably. And so So to Sal's kind of point with that too, like what we did was we had it so it's like almost like buffet style a lot of times where they could just pick their own foods and put it on their plate just to give them a choice. And I think giving them a choice and helping in that direction, that was somewhat of a win for us.

1:33:57Sal Di Stefano:And then the other one, I mean, my wife did a really good job of incorporating and blending in a lot of greens and things like in, you know, these type of waffle blends where she'd use like, you know, better flour options for that. And, um, you know, in, in, in ways of incorporating protein, uh, you know, in, in, in smoothies and blends, this kind of thing. And so she got real creative and there's books out there for all that kind of stuff. So if you feel like, you know, you want to get creative with that, that, that helps. But, uh, yeah, I think, you know, just do your best because it's, It's a battle, and at the end of the day, they're going to be fine, and they're going to be hungry, and they're going to eat.

1:34:36Adam Schafer:Yeah. The thing that you want to consider is what are the modern challenges with children, which are different than they were historically? And so what's most important with a child, there's two things. One is that you give them a little bit of autonomy, so that means you give them choices. Now, you approve of the choices, but you also want them to feel like they have a little bit of autonomy. you want them to, when they say they're not hungry, to not eat. And when they're hungry, okay, here's your choices you could choose from. Because what you're trying to develop is a good relationship with food, because that's what's going to serve your child in America.

1:35:13Adam Schafer:In America, in a modern society, a good relationship with food is what's going to keep them healthy. Not that he has to eat everything or eat when we're supposed to eat. That actually can serve in the wrong direction. As far as like macro splits and stuff like that, I think we get a little too.

1:35:29Sal Di Stefano:I don't even worry about that. Even though I say Max is this great eater, I'm also not measuring his grams. I don't care. Here's the things we eat. Here's a portion of meat. I'm not really weighing it, tracking it, wondering what his, as long as he's every meal, we're getting a little bit of protein, a little bit of carb.

1:35:47Adam Schafer:And then one way with helping them develop their palate is what you would do. So what my wife does is she puts a plate forward with different options, kind of like what Justin said. and she'll put like one or two things that she knows they like, one thing that maybe they'll eat that we want them to eat and then we'll put a new food on there and we'll give them the option. And oftentimes they don't touch the new food but sometimes they'll taste it and what she'll do is she'll introduce sometimes she'll put like sugar-free ultra dark chocolate. Why? Because it's going to introduce bitterness to their palate or she'll put an olive or like broccoli or asparagus, kind of these stronger flavors.

1:36:29Adam Schafer:And then little by little, what you see, you know, is that they'll taste a little bit of it and then they'll start to develop more of a palate. But it's really about these kinds of choices. And this was hard for me, man, because I was raised where like we put a, like if my kids don't eat, there's this internal freak out that I have. They're not eating enough. We got to feed them. You know, let me make something else. I know they'll eat this. And my wife was really helpful with this. she's like they're not going to starve you're going to be okay so it's like you know if you're not hungry okay you don't have to eat um and then when they're hungry they'll eat it's not a big deal

1:37:04yeah cool i think that's my question thank you yeah you got it thank you so much

1:37:10Adam Schafer:have a good day yeah this was this was uh man i was raised so different oh completely oh my god

1:37:18Sal Di Stefano:I had to eat it the next morning, you know, and then put it in the refrigerator. If I didn't finish my plate. Just begrudgingly.

1:37:26Adam Schafer:We used to have meals with like our families. All the cousins would get together, aunts and uncles. And my grandma would literally, I swear to God she did this. She would come out, love her, wonderful woman, but she was raised totally different time. She had a timer. She'd set the timer. That's crazy. And she'd say, let's see who finishes their plate first. They'll get a dollar. It's crazy that shoveling it is.

1:37:46Sal Di Stefano:What's crazy is that the whole family didn't turn obese from that. We have a lot of obesity in my family, bro. Or bulimic.

1:37:52Adam Schafer:There are people in my family that struggle with obesity. Thankfully, we ate whole natural foods because everybody was home cooked. Yeah, yeah. But let me tell you, bro, in my family, a lot of us struggle with overeating because it's like you put it in front of me. I feel like if I leave it, it's a sin. So I didn't ask.

1:38:09Sal Di Stefano:I see she put up there some of the pouches and things like that. I wonder sometimes, too, like I always feel like what ends up happening is people introduce foods that these kids end up loving so much that then that becomes the only thing that they want to eat. And keeping it bland and plain for as long as you can serves you. So like we we blended up the sweet potatoes instead of using the Gerber sugar fucking infused stuff that they have that the kids love. We blended the sweet potato. We blended his meat up like when he was really, really little. So he was so used to this bland taste that he didn't have these sensors going off.

1:38:47Adam Schafer:One thing, too, I'll add with the blended food, we stay away from pouches because, again, thank God my wife looked into this. Your child's jaw and teeth develop from chewing. And so when you're blending food all the time, they're actually not developing a good, strong, broad jaw that fits their teeth. Because you're giving them this blended.

1:39:07Sal Di Stefano:Well, that was part of Max's speech was delayed because we blended too much too long. Yeah, it affects, exactly. And Katrina was so worried about him choking that it was like, even when he was ready to be chewing, we were still making it too easy for him, and that delayed his speech. And so, I mean, so obviously it was not perfect with the food at all, but when it comes to the cravings and the stuff that I feel like a lot of people introduce these processed treats and things, and then the kids' brains go, oh, I want that. Yeah, yeah. That's all I want now. And this bland steak, chicken, and sweet potato tastes like, But I think if you delay that for as long as you can, they don't know that doesn't taste good.

1:39:47Adam Schafer:And it is so hard to fight. I still find myself, like I'll get called out all the time because my kids, well, I'm not hungry. They'll leave the table and then I'll finish eating. And then you know what I do? I take their plate and I follow them around while they're playing. And I put the fork in front of their mouth while they're playing so they mindlessly will take a bite.

1:40:02Sal Di Stefano:You used to call that drive-by fruity.

1:40:03Adam Schafer:And my wife is like, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? I'm like, they're eating all the food. It's like, so what? What are you doing? I'm like, oh, God, I can't stop doing this. Yeah, I know.

1:40:12Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:40:12Adam Schafer:Our next caller is Sean from Iowa. What's up, Sean? What's up, Sean? Hey, guys. I've actually written a script because I've been nervous to actually talk to you guys because I listen to you guys every single day. I idolize you guys. Not sure if you guys remember me, but I'm the guy that asked about the baking soda, the bigger pumps, and the bigger dumps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, I like the visuals. Yes. Um, so I'll kind of read my script that way. I don't ramble on. Um, so good morning. Uh, thank you for having me on the show. Um, I found you guys through a searching for fitness, a podcast and I started listening to you guys and you guys start talking like dad talk, which was awesome because I found out I was going to be a dad in 2023.

1:40:56Um, and that kind of led to my fitness journey. Um, and how much I listened to you guys. My wife actually gets annoyed now when I make my daughter's puree, I'm like, I'm going to grab the earth candy and, uh, Gary up, uh, some strawberries for, um, she gets annoyed with it. So anyways, um, my, my daughter's 10 months old. She sleeps throughout the night. She's perfect. Um, you know, and I want to be a good example for her, which is why I've really gotten back into weightlifting. Um, I did orange theory. Uh, I, I think I may have overtrained a little bit with that. Um, so I, uh, just started lifting weights.

1:41:34I was always into it. Um, uh, so my story kind of is my, my parents both passed away young. My dad was 43 and my mom was 51. Um, I'm 37. And now that I'm kind of getting closer to those ages, um, I don't want my daughter to lose me at a young age. Um, and I hear you guys talk about longevity with weightlifting and, and all that stuff. Um, uh, but anyways, um, after my mom passed away. I buried myself in war, kind of stopped lifting weights. And I did orange theory. Now that I'm lifting weights, I feel better. Adam, your YouTube series inspired me. Your playlist was fire. So I tried to create the same playlist.

1:42:15I changed my diet and approach. Now I'm doing a whole body workout three days a week. I walk between 15 ,000 steps and 20 ,000 steps daily. I saw you did a DEXA scan. I didn't know what that was. So I looked into it. And I did one on July 7. So my question, I was kind of disappointed with my DEXA scan. I went to cut fat and build muscle at the same time. And according, I did in-body scans, which is kind of why I was disappointed with the DEXA. But my first in-body scan was in December 2024. I weighed 196 pounds. My body fat was 20%. Skeletal muscle was 90.6. In June, my weight was 188. Body fat was 15.4.

1:43:00And then my skeletal muscle was 91.9. When I did my DEXA on July 7th, my body weight was 186 pounds. My body fat was 21.8%. My lean muscle mass was 147 pounds. So I was a little confused because my waist went down from January of 2025 from 37 inches down to about 32 inches. So then I got into my own head and I started asking chat GPT questions. And chat GPT is super nice. I'll never let you jump off the ledge. So what I did was I did a reverse diet, kind of just listening to you guys and doing a little bit of research. I may not have done it correctly, but I cut from 3 ,000 down to 2 ,000 for just a couple of weeks, mainly just cutting carbs out.

1:43:50And then I slowly each week introduce 100 calories of carbs back into my diet. For some reason, my body seems to operate better with low carbs. I don't know why because I was seeing strength still coming through. So currently my maintenance is roughly about 3 ,400. I do track my, um, my calories through fat secret. Again, thanks Adam. Um, my body, uh, you know, operate better with carbs or without carbs. Um, and I never have a problem hitting my protein targets. I do it through mainly whole foods. I mean, I will kind of cheat a little bit and have Greek yogurt with whey protein or my Ninja creamy with whey protein.

1:44:32Um, so I'm, I'm just like kind of confused. Um, I don't think I look like I'm 21 % body fat. Um, I do want to look ripped, um, you know, for my daughter, um, just so any boy born between the years of 2021 and 2025 fear me later on in the future. Um, so I don't know what I should do next. Um, I've never had a problem losing weight. It was gaining like weight. Now it's kind of like reverse since I'm a little bit older. Yeah. Yeah.

1:45:03Sal Di Stefano:Well, let's, let me, let me address a few things. First of all, you look really good, bro. You're doing great. Okay. So that's, let's start with that. We're looking at your before and after right now, and you already look like a dad that can kick most dad's ass already. So you're on the right path. If that's, that's your main goal. Mistake number one, you don't ever want to compare an in-body to a Texas cam. The, the most of all body fat testing, the most important thing about all of it is to, is to use the same thing consistently if you're going to judge it. So, so you just kind of let go of that.

1:45:33Sal Di Stefano:Cause, uh, I bet if you did the DEX scan, when you actually did the in-body scan, it was probably seven, 8 % higher and you actually did probably really good. So that's first and foremost, don't cross, cross those over. That's so, so don't fear that. Um, if you lost weight and when you, when you leaned out, what might've happened and which is really common. And I think I even shared this in my, my series. If you watched all of it, I had one of my tests come back that I wasn't really happy with because I lost some muscle. I cut too much and that's not what my body wanted to do. It still needed to be fed calories and it still wanted to build.

1:46:08Sal Di Stefano:And so even though the scale went down a little bit, I lost almost as much body fat as I did muscle. And so it didn't give me the body fat percentage change that I wanted. And so that's really common when people do that. When people go into these cuts, they cut too aggressively and then their waist comes down, the scale goes down a little bit but they also lose muscle and so then the body fat percentage doesn't show up the way they'd they'd want to show up and so i would tell you caution you of those things and then i'd also tell you probably not to trip on it too much dude well it's very obvious from your pictures that you're overall you're doing good you're yeah and i don't i don't

1:46:45Adam Schafer:think you're at 21 your picture looks like 15 16 at the most yeah yeah so that's weird that it measured you at 21%. Now, let me ask you this. Are you stronger now than you were before? Are you getting stronger? Oh, yeah. Every workout. I mean, I'm trying to do a 400-pound deadlift raw, and I did 355 on my deadlift, and before I was only doing about 285 for reps. If you lost weight and got stronger, you didn't lose muscle. You gained muscle, yeah. The odds are you gained muscle. and strength is about as objective as it gets. There's more, the weight is consistent. Body fat tests are interesting.

1:47:25Adam Schafer:They're really fascinating to me sometimes. Like I would no way think you're at 21 % by that picture. You look good 15, 16%. You're at a healthy body fat percentage. You look great. You really do.

1:47:35Sal Di Stefano:And you said you're eating 3 ,400 calories right now? Yep. Good amount of calories. Yeah, you're good, bro. You got a great, and at this point, it's literally keep feeding yourself the way, you've already learned something too about the way your body responds to carbohydrates. You do better on a lower carb. So manage more of a lower carb diet. Keep focusing on getting strong. I wouldn't really try and cut or really try and bulk. I'd kind of hover around there and really focus on getting strong. And over time, you get leaner and stronger. And a better gauge actually is to take the most recent picture.

1:48:06Sal Di Stefano:Don't look at it. Don't worry about nothing for the next month or two and then take another one and then put those suckers side by side.

1:48:11Adam Schafer:But make sure it's the same lighting, same time of day. Same everything.

1:48:14Sal Di Stefano:And then look at that and tell me if you're happy. And then I don't give a shit what InBody or Dexa says if you look at those two comparisons and you're like, hell yeah, I'm definitely changing and I'm happy with the way I'm changing. You're on the right path. I think you're in a good place. 3 ,400 calories, where you're at already. I mean, you're in a solid place. You don't need to do anything. Keep getting strong.

1:48:36Adam Schafer:And just so you know, we used to call 15, 16%, which is what do you look like? That's the athletic body fat percentage. So six-pack shredded 9%. That's not really athletic, although you see athletes at the pro level who are shredded, but that's a completely different animal. Right. But 15%, 16%, great body fat.

1:48:54Sal Di Stefano:I mean, where I feel the best personally is hovering right around 13 to 16, that range. Like 13 is what I consider my lower lean, and I'm a little bit leaner, but I still feel good. Even as high as 16, I still – like that's the range that my body likes to be. I feel good. I still look like I work out. I don't look like bodybuilder Adam, you know, but it's okay. You feel better? Yeah, the best version of me doesn't walk around like bodybuilder, Adam. It walks around 13 % to 16%. And you also have nice flexibility with diet, meaning I can still have a nice burger and fries every now and then. And to me, that's a way better life in maintaining that.

1:49:31Sal Di Stefano:And you will be able to kick most dad's asses looking the way you are.

1:49:33Adam Schafer:And strength is the metric. If your strength's going up, you're doing good. Okay, awesome. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm going to do a DEXA here in about 10 weeks anyways, just because I know I was the first one and I just want to see how I'm progressing. But yeah, I'm going to take your guys' advice.

1:49:52Sal Di Stefano:Make sure, Sean, you replicate what the morning and stuff look. You want the diet and water intake to look almost identical. So I don't know if you remembered what time of day you took the DEXA scan last time and what you had consumed food or water-wise. Ideally, first thing in the morning when you wake up because that's the easiest to be consistent with. but that's another thing that okay comparing dexa to embody already makes it huge drastic difference and then also water intake and food intake and carb intake leading into those things will different because what happens is you fill up those muscles with water and carbohydrates glycogen and then it's going to read as more lean mass or less and if you went in more loaded on say the first test it's going to think you had more pounds of muscle and you didn't really lose any you just they weren't filled out and so they weren't weighing more on the scale so you can get Those things all matter.

1:50:42Sal Di Stefano:And that's where people get fucked up in their head when they read these and they feel like they're doing good. But then they read like you lost four pounds of muscle. But all it was is you were depleted. You weren't eating as much carbs. It didn't have as much water as you did on the first test. And so that can throw it off too. So go into it knowing that. Okay. Yeah. No, I was just like, am I getting fat dad strong? Like this doesn't make any sense. I'm getting strong. No, you're not. I'm losing weight. But like 21%.

1:51:08Adam Schafer:No, 32-inch waist is not fat dad strong. You're doing good, bro.

1:51:13Sal Di Stefano:You're doing good. Okay, awesome. Can I do a quick shout out to two buddies I got onto you guys? Yeah, do it. Ephraim Yoder from Pittsburgh and Miles Mule from Long Island, New York. They're big into you guys. And Justin, they're big into your one-liners. Yeah, he's always a fan of people. And Sal, I'll compliment you too. I love your knowledge on supplements. I always appreciate it. and you guys never steer me the wrong way with what you guys talk about. So I do appreciate you guys. Thanks, man. Appreciate it, brother.

1:51:44Adam Schafer:Thank you, Sean. Yep. Thank you. Body fat percentage, like those machines, I got to go do one. It's really weird. He doesn't look 21. No way. No, no, he's teens. I know what 20 % looks like. He's definitely teens,

1:51:56Sal Di Stefano:whether he's 15, 16. He's a teen. He's not 20-something. He's in the mid-teens. You can, I mean, try to explain this to people. You can really manipulate those things. Yeah. They are great tools, though, if you know how to use them. Even if you're following the trend. Yes. You look at the trend. Exactly. That's all I care about. The number doesn't matter to me. It's like, but I'm very meticulous about how I go into it. I'm like, I think about what I ate the night before, the whole day leading up. You're trying to control all the control. Exactly. So that it is as accurate as I can make it. But if you just kind of go willy-nilly and the time of day is different, the amount of water and carbs, I mean, you could throw those things off five, seven pounds.

1:52:32Sal Di Stefano:and five to seven pounds of muscle on or off your body makes a big difference on body fat percent, especially the leaner you get. And so easily can skew those things. Just got to be careful with getting hung up on the numbers too much.

1:52:44Adam Schafer:Look, if you like Mind Pump, you got to check us out on Instagram. We're at Mind Pump Media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super bundle at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price.

1:53:31The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes,

1:53:47Adam Schafer:and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.