2772: Go from 30% to 10% Body Fat (Follow These 4 Steps!)

0:00If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, Mind Pump with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, how to go from 30 % to 10 % body fat, four steps. Follow these steps and you'll get there. By the way, we have a program that's perfect for this. It's called Maps Transform. You can find it at mapsjanuary.com. The code NEWYEAR50 will give you 50 % off. Now, this episode is brought to you by Z-Biotics. This is the world's first genetically modified probiotic pre-alcohol drink that was designed by a PhD to tackle those rough mornings after drinking.

0:48Here's how it works. You drink your pre-alcohol Z-Biotics, and it produces an enzyme that breaks down one of the negative byproducts of alcohol consumption. This means you feel way better. By the way, this is perfect for Super Bowl Sunday. Take this. Give it to your friends. Drink it at the beginning of the night. Enjoy yourself. You wake up the next day feeling much, much better. Nobody else has this. It is patent pending. Again, it's a probiotic that's been modified to break down some of those negative byproducts that are released in the gut from alcohol. So no more rough mornings. Nobody else does this.

1:25Again, it's ZBiotics. Go to zbiotics.com. That's Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S.com forward slash MindPump26. Use the code MindPump26. get 15 % off for first-time purchasers. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, we're going to give you the blueprint step by step. If you're a guy, how to go from 30 % to 10 % body fat. if you're a woman, how to go from 40 % to 20 % body fat.

2:07In other words, overweight to lean and athletic with definition. Step by step, four steps, you guys, four steps. Follow these, be consistent. That's key. And this can happen for most of you. Here we go. I like this because this has been a conversation. Of course, it's the new year. And so I'm sure you guys are probably - Stop in mind for sure. Yeah, I'm sure you guys probably get this every year at this time more than usual. I mean, we always get it. But I think right now it's more than – and for me, because I've been doing this for such a long time, it comes in this kind of form of my family members are just like, hey, I don't want to bother you.

2:46I could pay you. It's like, listen, I – It's the season of tips. Yeah. And so when I – and this is where we're about to go right now, these four steps is literally how I lay it out to them. this simple, this straightforward. And I tell them, I say, this is all I want you to focus on. Don't think about anything else yet. And I know if you just do these four things and you do them consistently for the next 30 to 60 days, I know what you'll report back to me. And then I can give you deeper layers and add complexity and change things up. But this will move the needle more than anything else. These simple things, simple in the fact that the advice seems basic but difficult to do consistently it's all difficult to do right yeah any any big behavior change is always difficult but you can make it a lot more difficult and what we're what we've done what we've learned over the years remember before we started this podcast 10 years ago we all trained people for you know 15 to 20 years um and then you know we started the show and we currently now have many trainers and coaches that work under us and what you learn over time is really how to make things effective.

3:59And now effective is measured like this. Does it produce results? Of course, if I say effective, everybody knows that. But here's the second part. Does it produce long lasting, consistent results? Because that's the big challenge. Getting in shape is hard. I'm not going to lie. Staying in shape is even harder, far harder. And so the things we're going to communicate are the things that we found to be the most effective in that context. And there's a step process. Now, when you get through this episode, and it's not going to be a very long episode, because we're going to break it down and sell it to you and explain why you should do these steps.

4:32But when you hear this and you're done, there's a couple of ways you can approach this. One, you could do them all at the same time. Yes, you could do that. But I'm going to recommend that you follow each step in order. Follow the first one, wait till it becomes a consistent habit, then move to the second one. When that feels like a consistent habit, move to the third one, and so on. That approach leads to better long-term results. In fact, this is how I coach my, this is how I train my clients. And it always, it actually almost always followed this order. Now the clients dictated how quickly we moved to the next step because some of these are harder for some people than others.

5:10But once you find yourself consistent with this, with the step that you're embarking on and it feels like, yeah, I can, I'm doing this and it's, I'm consistent and It's not a problem. Then you add the next thing. And just to hammer this home, that doesn't mean you're not getting results. Each step produces results. And also, they're in order for a reason. We're going to explain why they're in the order that they are. But we start with the first one and we move the second, third, and fourth because in the order we're saying is the most effective way to apply them. Because you could reverse these steps.

5:44You could mix them up. And they're going to be good. They're still going to produce good results. but there's a reason why we did them in the order that we did. And it's because again, it produces the best consistent long-term results. So if you just want to get in shape and get out of shape, then don't listen to us. But if you want to get in shape and stay in shape, if you don't want to be a part of the statistics that occur every January, then heed our advice, follow it. It will work. You guys, 85 % of the people listening and watching this, this will work incredibly well so long as you do them consistently okay so that's the vast vast majority and i'm not going to lie and say it's everybody but a good 85 percent of you you do this you probably don't need to do anything else yeah i feel really strongly about that percentage or higher um in fact conservative yeah in fact i know that we're positioning this from you know 30 to 10 percent for men 40 to 20 percent from women and so maybe the listener who isn't exactly in that range or need to lose that much body fat who just maybe fell off for the the winter break or something thinks this isn't speaking to them but this is the exact formula i still to this day follow for myself exactly and so you off air you're you're making jokes about you know that i'm you can see already what all the change.

7:06And of course my wife gives me the same comment right away. It's just like, I can't just, every time I see you fall out of shape and get back in shape, it's crazy how quick you change. And it is not because I do all the things at one time. It's at every, and for me, it's, I can, I can tweak each one of these things each week. I think when I think back to all the clients I've trained, I wanted to see each one of these steps for about two or three weeks before I really got the next one. Right. I want to see a little more consistency for them, but for myself, I've been doing this for so long that it's like I do step one and that's it.

7:37That's just to get back in the room. Then step two. So after a month, which is where I'm at right now, it's literally about 30 days in, I'm cranking on all these. All these things are now dialed in. And then now the next 30 days, you'll see even more results. Now, to be clear, it doesn't have to happen that quickly. For some people, you may follow the first step and it may take you three months to find that consistency. That's right. and then move to the next one and the next one and the next one. And there's really no right or wrong way to do it. In fact, I'll correct that. There is a wrong way to do this, and that is to move too quickly.

8:11Yes. Do all of them at once when you haven't even proven you can do the first step. Yeah, so do this slowly, get consistent with one, move to the next one, and each one adds to the prior one and gets the body to work the way you want. Now, the body fat percent, for people who aren't familiar, the body fat percentages that we're mentioning, 30 % on a man is overweight. 10 % on a man, I mean, you can see his abs. He's not shredded, but you can see the outline of his abs. He's healthy and true. For a woman, 40 % overweight, 20 % fit and athletic. You know, lean, sculpted, or maybe a woman would say I'm toned.

8:43So just to give you that difference of how you would look between the 30 % to 10 % or 40 % to 20%. Another way to say that is the, you know, the 30, 40 % male and female undoubtedly looks out of shape, right? And then the 10 % and 20 % male and female undoubtedly looks like they work out and they're in shape. That's right. You don't walk in a room. No questioning it. Yeah, nobody questions like does he or she work out. It's like, oh, they take care of themselves. That's right. Now notice we said body fat percentage and not weight, okay? We're talking about body composition. I really don't care what the scale says except for the super extremes.

9:26It's about body composition. A six-foot-tall man who's 200 pounds at 30 % body fat looks very different than a 200-pound six-foot man who's at 10 % body fat. A 150-pound female at 40 % body fat looks very different than a 150-pound female at 20%. So body fat percentage matters the most when it comes to how you look and its relationship to things like health and performance. And it's also in relationship to muscle because leaner body fat percentage in combination with the steps we're talking about, you're going to have some muscle and some strength and some function along with it. I want to highlight that.

10:05I'm going to use myself as an example, even though I was at different ranges, but the difference in percentage was almost the same. So when I first started Instagram, I documented my journey. And I was just at the edge of 20 % body fat. and I documented the entire thing until I did my first test at 7 % body fat that went all the way down to sub-5 for competing. My weight was exactly the same when I started that journey. The 20 % version of me. What that means is you gain muscle, lost body fat. That's right. And you looked very different. And so that's how irrelevant the weight part can be for someone.

10:39Somebody who is 40 % body fat or 30 % body fat that's telling you, oh, I know I need to lose like 30 pounds. I was like, I'm telling you that the scale could actually stay the same. And over the next year or two, you could literally get rid of all the body fat and add that much muscle back and the scale stay the same. And you're much smaller. Yes. Much tighter. Radically different. Clothes fit differently. You look the way you want. That's how irrelevant the scale is. Right. Regardless of what you hear or what somebody else may tell you or you feel because you're connected to some weight you had in college or high school that you liked.

11:15And just to communicate it differently, you could lose weight and go up in body fat percentage. So everybody listening right now, if I snap my fingers and had you lose 10 pounds of muscle, your body fat percentage goes up because your current body fat is now a higher percentage of your total body weight. Okay, so body composition is what matters. That's what we're communicating to. Which also, to that point, happens a lot at this time of year when everybody throws the kitchen sink at their diet and their exercise. What they do, they're highly motivated. New Year's here. It's number one, number two, New Year's resolution.

11:48And they go, I'm going to start running. I'm going to start strength training. I'm going to cut out all the fast food and start dieting and eating salads. And they do all the things. And they lose a little bit of weight on the scale, but they lose as much or more in muscle. And they can't understand how this is possible if their body fat percentage stayed the same or went up doing all these things that they're doing. Right. So let's start with step one. Okay. So step one is to do strength training three days a week, full body. Now, why are we starting with strength training? Notice this is not a diet tip.

12:24This is not a tip on cardio. This is not a tip on working out every single day. You're going to do strength training three days a week, full body. Why are we starting here? I'll tell you why. Number one, we're going to preserve and or build muscle. Now, that contributes to fat loss in an incredible way. It boosts your metabolism. It makes fat loss a lot easier. You look different and you feel different. Your hormones tend to get more balanced. It feels good. If you do this right, it feels good. Now, I said if you do this right. So just because you're using weights does not mean your strength training.

13:03There's a lot of classes out there. There's a lot of circuit training. There's a lot of stuff out there that uses dumbbells and would call themselves resistance training, but they're not. We're talking about traditional strength training, which looks like this. You do an exercise for 10 reps at a relatively high intensity. It's hard. Then you stop. You wait about two minutes. And then you do it again. And you're not resting because you have to rest. You rest because you're using an energy system in the body that contributes to strength and boosts metabolic rate. So it's not about have to rest.

13:34It's because this is what I'm training right now. And so what does this look like full body? One exercise per body part. focus on what are known as the compound lifts. So an example of a workout would be squats, some kind of a press, some kind of a row, some kind of an overhead press, and that's it. That's four exercises, you guys. And you just covered the whole body, three sets each. You've got yourself about a 45-minute workout. You're out of the gym. So that's a good example. Do that three days a week. That's step one. Be consistent there. You will see and feel changes from that alone. Now, the question that you're going to get from people, because the way we're laying this out, is before I add the second step, what are some of the things you want to see or you want to feel or you as a coach are looking for from your client before you go, okay, we're ready for step two?

14:26So, well, there's two things that you'll notice. The two things you'll notice are, one, the exercises will get easier and you'll get stronger. So that's what you'll notice when you do this. What I'm looking for as a coach is consistency with this before I move to the next step. So that's me. And this is why. Can you do this consistently? How many times have you done this throughout the week? Without missing a bunch of workouts. Without missing a day. I'm not going to add a bunch of stuff if you can. And you gave the example that for some people this could take months because they have a really hard time.

14:55I would say that most of my clients, especially if they hired me, they invested in. They're showing up. two to four weeks i i i noticed that okay we're in a rhythm they haven't missed anything they're excited about this they're seeing strength go up and i'm ready to add the second step and so i know that's a generic number and there's always exceptions to the rule and absolutely you're right that there's some people that man they stay in this phase right here for a long time because they have a very hard time just being consistent with three days a week but then there's some people they're like they're on it they're gonna make this change they're motivated they don't miss a day.

15:29They're consistent. They're getting stronger. They're loving the workouts. I would say on average, my clients like that are somewhere between two weeks and four weeks. I'm adding step two. Yeah. So, and now there's a bias there because you're a trainer. So I do want to say this, like you work with a trainer, your odds of consistency go through the roof in comparison to doing it on your own. But you want to start with the strength training and what you want to see are strength gains. That's what you're looking for. Don't worry about the scale. Don't worry about how you look in the mirror uh am i able to add reps or add weight to the bar each time i work out especially if you're just getting started you should see pretty consistent strength gains right out the gates and this is what i'm looking for as a trainer when i have my clients come in especially when first getting started like are we getting stronger if we are boom we're moving well i like um focusing on this first because you know to be able to build strength we have to add this specifically to make sure that the focal point is building muscle.

16:27And the focal point is not about just losing weight on the scale. And so a lot of times people approach this with the fact, I got to change my whole diet and I got to do all this first. When I found it to be a lot more effective, when we get the body dialed in, we're working on our strength, and this is the priority, number one, to then build upon. Build muscle, you speed up the metabolism. it makes fat loss so much easier. Okay, you've done step one, your strength training three days a week, you're doing full body, typically four or five exercises per workout. You're seeing yourself get stronger.

17:02You're like, you know what? I'm consistent. This is working great. I like this. What's the next step? Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna increase your overall activity, okay? Now, in my experience, the best way to do this, it's very simple, just track your daily steps. So I'm not necessarily looking for you to go on another machine, or on a treadmill or an elliptical. I mean, you could do that if you want to. But in my experience, it's a much better approach in terms of consistency when I'm just watching your daily activity. And you can just really easily, you can get a pedometer, you can buy one for 20 bucks on Amazon.

17:35Your phone probably has an app that does this for you. And you just look at your daily steps and aim for about eight to 10 ,000 every single day. So what this looks like is, I'm gonna get up and move more throughout the day. I'm watching it. Every few hours I look at it. Oh, I'm only at 3 ,000 steps. Let me go for a 10-minute walk. Let me go for a 20-minute walk. Let me walk to the far bathroom. Let me go up the stairs instead of the elevator. You do that kind of stuff, 8 ,000 to 10 ,000 steps a day. That kind of activity in the data shows that you'll get about 80 % of all the possible results you can get from being active.

18:06It's incredibly protective. And it increases calorie burn. It makes it easier for you to start to provide it. And you're more productive the more active you are. And I love that it's not structured cardio, which is another misconception. You know, people want to make sure that they get that one block of like an hour of just rigorous cardio when, in fact, you know, just adding like increasing that opportunity of movement all throughout the day. Totally. You don't like get hung up on it as much. To that point, I have a little twist to this step or tip, the way I handled this, just because I saw such a large variance of activity levels between people.

18:43In fact, I think that the national average is sub 4 ,000 steps a day. is what the average person is. I had some people that were already hitting that because they had jobs that required them moving around. And so when I get to this step, I would actually just like over the course of the next month, I would each week try and increase by 2 ,000 steps. And the goal was to not use the treadmill, elliptical, stairmaster tool until we had to in order to hit those goals. In other words - To make up for it. Doesn't matter if you're starting at 4 ,000 or you're starting at 8 ,000 already, i'm gonna bump you 2 000 steps and every week i'm gonna try and increase that a little bit and my goal is like hey try and just go for an extra walk in the morning or do this like create activity in their lifestyle until that got to a point where they're like adam hitting 14 000 steps without getting on the treadmill for at least 30 minutes to an hour really tough for me to okay then we would incorporate something like that but my goal was to get it through regular activity first and that gives everybody a starting point regardless of where they are because there was such a large variance of people at their levels.

19:47But to be 100%, unless you're a mail carrier, blue-collar worker, you work in a warehouse, you're not moving. No, you're going to fall on that national average. You're asking those people to pretty much double their activity level. That's right. Most people are sedentary. Vast majority of people watching and listening to this right now, you're not doing 8 ,000 to 10 ,000 steps every single day. Make that step two. You're doing your strength training, an hour every day, 8 ,000 to 10 ,000 steps. What you'll notice is better fitness, and you'll start to see some fat loss. And it shouldn't take away from your strength training.

20:17You're still going to see some strength gains. Then we move to step three. Now we're going to start to talk about diet. Now, you may be wondering why we didn't go diet right out the gates. I'll tell you why. Diet's way harder to tackle than exercise. As hard as it is to be consistent with exercise, multiply it times 100, diet is far more difficult. I touch diet later with my clients. It was never the first thing that I talked to you about because it's very difficult. Now, with diet, boy, it can get complicated. There's so many things you should do. So here's what we do. We looked at the simple steps that had the biggest carryover, that had the biggest effects.

20:53And so that's step number three. One of the biggest steps you could take is to simply avoid processed foods. That's it. So now, step three, eat as much as you want. Just make sure that they're whole, natural foods, right? Foods with one ingredient. It doesn't come in a box or in a wrapper. That's it. Now, why this? Why this step right here? You will naturally eat less calories with the same level of satiety. In other words, you're going to eat until you're satisfied like you did before, except now, without realizing it, you don't have to track anything, by the way, your calories are going to drop naturally.

21:26The studies on processed foods are some of the best studies you'll ever find with diets. Diet studies in general are difficult because most of them or many of them are survey-based. So it's like, you know, how many tomatoes did you eat last week? Or, you know, those studies are highly inaccurate. The processed food diet studies are incredible because they actually had them controlled. They actually took groups of people, put them in rooms, gave them, you know, unlimited access to food. This room has processed foods, you know, boxes, wrappers, that kind of stuff. This room over here, whole natural foods.

21:58They even controlled the macro, similar proteins, fats, and carbs. And they said, just eat until you're satisfied. And they watched the people. Then they took those groups and they switched rooms. They actually take the same group in room one, move them to room two, and vice versa. Here's what they found. There's about a 600-calorie difference. You're going to eat as much as you want, and you'll naturally eat less calories, which will result in fat loss. So that's step number three, and you'll start to see some real fat loss just from that alone. So this, of all the steps, I find where a lot of people get hung up, or this takes the longest to be consistent with and to be good at, right?

22:34and so i want to talk about some strategies to getting there so the way i used to frame this when we get to this place is this is the ultimate goal the ultimate goal is that we get to a place where you only eat whole foods and i and i know how challenging that can be with time and busy and oh you didn't go to the grocery store today and so you had to order and so that's the ultimate place that's when we know we're really humming and some of my clients took time to hear so what it looks like is reversing out sometimes somebody who's got mostly processed, mostly eating out foods, eliminating that until we get to a place of whole foods.

23:12In other words, even myself, when I'm at this phase of like, okay, really tightening the diet up to whole foods, it's like, okay, where are my greatest offenders that I can get rid of that's processed that I can exchange out with a whole food choice and change that in the diet until the diet that was comprised of 80 % processed foods now becomes 50%, then becomes 25%, and then becomes 100 % whole natural foods. So this phase seems to, or this step, seems to take the longest for the majority. Now, some clients, you can give them the science and the studies, and they go, oh my God, you're telling me I can eat as much as I want.

23:51I just got to eat whole foods. I love whole foods. This is not a problem. I like to cook too. Great. Easy. I don't find that's the normal person. The normal person has most of their diet comprised of processed foods has a struggle with doing that. And so it looks like reversing out until they can get to this place. Instead of a cold turkey, sort of rip the bandaid. Yeah. I mean, I'd love for you to do cold turkey if you can. Diet changes are always the most difficult. Yes. But I'll tell you this much. This is the easiest diet change you'll make versus all the other ones you're probably told. They're just all difficult.

24:22But I will say, look, I'll add this. In my experience, my average client from this alone, no other dietary changes would lose between 10 to 20 pounds. Average would be closer to 15. Oh, huge. By itself, nothing else. And they're eating as much as they wanted. So that's step number three. Once this feels consistent and you're like, yeah, dude, my diet's pretty much all whole natural foods, what's step number four? Now you're going to hit your target body weight in grams of protein and you're going to eat it first in your meals. Okay, so if you're a guy and your target body weight is 180 pounds, you're now going to eat 180 grams of protein every single day from whole natural foods.

25:02Eat it first. If you're a woman and it's 130 or 140, same thing. Do that. Do that consistently. And I'm going to say this again. If you do all four steps consistently, okay, this is what you do on a consistent basis. You will watch your body fat percentage drop, drop, drop, drop. nice and consistently while avoiding any major plateaus while also simultaneously building muscle, getting stronger. In other words, you're going to get the body you want with just these four steps and nothing else. I mean, you hit this, and to me, this last step, you start doing this, and you do this consistently, and you just start humming.

25:39This is when it really takes the peeling process. The results start piling on. The strength gains start going up. The muscle, the shape of your body. And it's perfect because you've been following all these steps, and you've been getting in better shape along this process. So as you've been doing all the other steps before, we've been moving on that body fabric. We've been moving from that 30 % or that 40 % in the right direction. And then you hit this right here. And those other things, you've already stacked consistency and habits around, and now you add this. And it's just – It's a snowball effect.