2805: How To Know When It's The Right Time To Cut

0:00Justin Andrews:If 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 Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

0:13Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, how do you know when it's a good time to start a cut? When you start the fat loss process. So we break that all down in today's episode. By the way, we offer coaching, online coaching with a Mind Pump certified personal trainer who could take you through this entire process, diet, exercise, the whole deal. You meet with them once a month, virtually. It's mindpumpconcierge.com. So mindpumpconcierge.com is where you go. As long as there's spots available, you can sign up. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors.

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1:46Adam Schafer:cutting it's the process of getting leaner but it's very difficult oftentimes to determine when it's the right time in fact most people make a big mistake they start cutting at the wrong time and this is what really screws them up so we're going to talk about that how do you know when it's the right time to go on a cut i think this is actually one of those things that isn't talked

2:06Sal Di Stefano:about um enough agreed assumed that as soon as you get back into exercising or back into your routine that you start right off on a cut and even though this is a little bit different uh talking about competitors bikini competitors men's physique bodybuilders but i wouldn't take a client on that was trying to compete that had already determined their show until i had a chance to train them in the off season first before we determine the show for the reasons that we'll probably get into right now because where you're at um calorie maintenance wise metabolically uh before you go into cut is so important to the success of that cut it's it's one of the biggest

2:57Adam Schafer:yes so here's the deal everybody goes on a cut when they work out or should i say most people like most people work out because they want to get leaner it's the number one uh fitness goal So it's super common. Everybody tries it. Everybody fails. Like everybody fails. If you look at the data on weight loss, this is some of the best data we have around fitness. We don't have a lot of good data on building muscle or improving athletic performance. We have some, but not a lot. But the one that's measured the most is weight loss because it's the most common goal. And what we see is within a year, almost 90 % of the people that lose weight gain it back.

3:32Adam Schafer:And if you extend it out, I've always made this argument. If they extend those studies out by three, four years, I bet you it's closer to 95%, which means you have a point, you know, you have a 5 % chance of long-term over a few years success with weight loss. And one of the reasons why people consistently fail while you're going to fail is because you do this at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. And this is almost always going to lead to failure. So I think we should back up first for people who aren't familiar with the word cut. Like, what does that mean? It means you're pursuing your diet or looking at your diet and trying to change it in a ways to lose body fat.

4:16Adam Schafer:That's what a cut is. A cut is I'm trying to lose body fat. And the terminology that we're using is cut. Now, I like to extend this. This is the way I would communicate this to my clients. and I'd say the goal of a cut is to lose body fat, but to keep it off forever. So people don't ever add that second part. It's like, I want to lose body fat. Well, do you want to gain it back? Of course not.

4:39Sal Di Stefano:Oh, I would add one more to that. Our goal is to lose body fat and maintain as much lean body mass as possible. Of course. Which I think is very important to add to that. That doesn't get added to that many times. Many times it's, I just need to lose weight. You know, the client comes to you and they say they want to lose 50 pounds and I don't care. I just need to get this 50 pounds off me. And they're obsessed with the number on the scale. And they're not coming to you saying like, hey, I would like to lose 50 pounds of just body fat. I just want to lose 50 pounds on the scale. And why it's so important to understand the difference of that is because somebody could theoretically go down 50 pounds on the scale.

5:25Sal Di Stefano:and actually see their body fat percentage go up or stay the same. If they've lost a ton of muscle, yeah.

5:31Adam Schafer:Yeah. Yeah, body fat percentage is what matters. If you had someone who was 100 pounds with 10 pounds of body fat on them, and then they suddenly weighed 200 pounds, they gained 100 pounds of muscle. I'm using crazy numbers here. With the same 10 pounds of body fat, they're much leaner, okay? If you lose a bunch of muscle with your body fat, you become a smaller, same or relatively same body fat percentage version of yourself. You've actually just lost strength and function by losing weight on the scale and losing muscle. Not to mention muscle is so metabolically active that you've made it so much more difficult to maintain that weight loss because you've in essence slowed down your metabolism.

6:16Adam Schafer:You essentially reduce the amount of calories your body can run on because you've lost so much muscle. and so now you're in this crazy position which a lot of people have experienced i'm sure many no runway there's nowhere to go yeah a lot of people i'm sure have experienced this it's like oh yeah i was really restricted calorie diet uh i started running i lost a lot of weight on the scale and then to keep it off it's like i had to eat like just keep eating very little and then when i went to try to eat more or i went off on a vacation where i suddenly i gained all this body fat it's like well yeah you met a bottle you put yourself in a metabolic disadvantage because of the muscle that you lost.

6:49Adam Schafer:So, so I'm glad you added that, Adam. The def cut is the attempt to lose only body fat, keep or build muscle and keep that body fat off forever. I think that would be a great definition for a successful cut. Right. And I'm sure anybody listening right now would be like, yes, that's exactly what I want. So I want to start with the reasons why you should not go on a cut, not necessarily why you should go on a cut. And I'll start with the first one where people are going to hear this and go, what are you talking about? I thought that was the goal. Don't go on a cut because you feel you're too fat.

7:23Adam Schafer:Now, yes, the goal is to lose body fat, but if it's just because you think you're too fat and you don't look at everything else with what's going on, you oftentimes will put yourself in a bad position. We have to set you up properly. So in other words, to put it differently, the reason you go on a cut isn't just because you have too much body fat. There's lots of other things you have to look at before you go on the cut. It's not just you have too much body fat.

7:47Sal Di Stefano:You know, this also reminds me of how much I love Dr. Gabriel Lyon's message. And I think that we need to change the conversation around this. In fact, if we stopped looking at somebody who looks like they're 50 pounds or 100 pounds overweight and said, oh, that person's overweight or fat and said things like, oh, they're under muscle. And we thought from that perspective, which is very true, this person who's got all this weight because it's –

8:16Adam Schafer:Sarcopenia is more common in the obese. Sarcopenia is low muscle mass. There's this myth or this thinking, oh, if someone's overweight, they actually have more muscle. They actually don't. When they do body scans, what you find is people who are obese have less muscle and their muscle is less healthy. Yeah.

8:33Justin Andrews:Well, it's crazy because it's so contradictory. Bariatric treatments like SlimFast, like a lot of these programs for weight loss, they immediately jump into low calorie situations without considering like what, how much lean mass do they even have to begin with? And, you know, to build that is going to benefit them so much better long term.

8:56Sal Di Stefano:Well, this is why I want to change that conversation, because I feel like if people who are listening right now who think they are, they have 50 pounds of fat or they're 100 pounds overweight, thought to themselves, oh, no, what I am, I'm really under muscled. and you said that instead, your approach towards how you approach exercise and fitness might look different. Because if you go to the gym -

9:18Adam Schafer:Your cut would look different.

9:19Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. And you said, hey, I don't have a problem with 50 pounds of being overweight. I have a problem with being under-muscled. Then the whole mindset and the approach looks completely different, which will serve that person who initially wants to lose that.

9:34Adam Schafer:And we'll get to that. So if you're listening right now and you're confused over that, don't worry, we're going to get to exactly what that means. here's another not great reason to go on a cut. You want to get ready for an event. I got to get in shape for Vegas. I'm going to the beach. I'm getting married. I know this is a very popular reason to go on a diet, but when you give yourself this timeframe, this event, the odds of failure, which were already dismal are now zero. Uh, sorry, excuse me, are now a hundred percent. So your odds of failure, which were already at 90 % now, a hundred percent because you worked so hard for this one event, what almost always happens is when the event is over and the pressure of the event is off, you're out of there.

10:15Adam Schafer:Not to mention the means by which you try to get in shape, quote unquote, for the event. You completely disregard any potential sustainability because you're thinking, I just got to get in shape for that event and then I'll figure it out afterwards. And that never leads to good success.

10:31Sal Di Stefano:Well, I mean, this goes back to my point, how we opened this is why if someone came to me and they had a date in mind already, they wanted to get on stage and I hadn't worked with them and they said, hey, I want to do the show in July 13th. Will you train me for that show? And I know that's only a few months away. I would say no, no matter what I was looking at, because I don't know where they're at. And that doesn't give me a lot of options if I have a timeframe on what I think is the most appropriate way to get them in shape. It only leaves you one option, which is to cut calories, increase activity and cut and reduce, reduce, reduce, reduce.

11:08Sal Di Stefano:And that may not be the most ideal situation where depending on where somebody is at metabolically, where they're at lean body mass wise, where they're at activity wise, all those things come into play before I decide to put somebody into a cut. And so giving me a timeframe, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even take the client. And so this is why this is a terrible strategy for someone to go, Hey, I want to get ready for that run or, Oh, I got the beach in two months. And they use that external motivator as the reason why they start a cut and that sets them up for at the very least even if they have some mild success of reducing some weight or body fat in that short period of time you're almost guaranteed to put it back on because of the approach that you want about doing

11:48Adam Schafer:it totally all right so let's talk about good a good time to start a cut and then we'll talk about how to get to the place where it's a good time to start the cut so number one you're healthy uh what do i people are like wait i thought cutting was the way to get healthy no listen uh if your hormones are off your sleep is off uh you don't have good fitness uh don't sit and try to suddenly reduce your calories and suddenly dramatically increase your activity in other words make sure you're you're you're healthy enough to go in a calorie deficit now this might sound crazy to somebody who's like i thought the point of cutting my calories was to get healthy but here's what ends up happening oftentimes is people go into these severe uh restrictions of calories they were already not very healthy to begin with they throw exercise on top of it and then they wonder why they burn out they wonder why their hormones go out of whack i've had so many people in the gyms that i've run women who start losing their hair because of this uh you know guys whose testosterone goes in the floor can't figure out why their libidos and you know they might have started out strong by the way in the first month but then afterwards aren't feeling great.

12:56So we want to get fit and healthy first before we start the cut.

13:02Adam Schafer:This is one of the things that helps lead to sustainability and success long-term.

13:07Sal Di Stefano:This reminds me so much of being a personal trainer because many times we would get the client in an unhealthy state because they had already exhausted all the other ways to get in shape themselves before they come hire you. At the point they come to you, they've already beat themselves to death. They've already starved themselves calorie-wise. They've already destroyed their hormone profile and getting terrible sleep.

13:31Justin Andrews:And then they come to you and they're like, I need your help.

13:35Sal Di Stefano:And so the first thing I have to do, even though this person may be sitting across from me saying, hey, I want to lose 50 pounds. I've tried all these things. This is where I'm at right now. It's like, well, listen, I know that's your goal right now. But actually, our first goal needs to be to get healthy. That's right. The focus needs to be on we need to get your hormones balanced. We need to get you sleeping correctly. We need to get your calories somewhere where you're not in such a deficit. You're deficient in so many macronutrients. That has to be our number one priority or else you'll never obtain that goal that you want.

14:05Adam Schafer:That's right. So we're aiming for health. And then once we're in that kind of healthy fit place, then we start to cut. Obviously, success improves dramatically. Next up, this one's one of the most important. you want to make sure that your maintenance calories are high enough to cut from. All right, what do I mean by that? Well, I'm going to work on, for lack of a better term, speeding up your metabolism through the process of building muscle, the process of increasing protein intake, oftentimes a process of doing what's called a reverse diet through whole natural foods, where I'm actually having you eat a little more over time to gain the muscle so that we have a place to cut from.

14:42Adam Schafer:There's this huge kind of belief that, okay, if someone needs to lose 50 pounds, they're probably eating 4 ,000 calories a day, and so we're just going to bring them down to 2 ,000 and lose weight. That's actually true. A lot of times people are very sedentary, 50 pounds overweight. I have them track their food. They're not eating a lot to begin with. We may be playing with 2 ,100 calories, but it's not good food. They're not active. They don't have a lot of muscle. And so where am I going to go? 1 ,500 calories? Okay, we'll get some weight loss, but then we're going to go from there. versus let me see if I could build things up through the process of building muscle, through the process of a slow reverse diet, through whole natural foods, improving your health, get your metabolic rate up to 3 ,000 calories, which is very possible in this particular scenario.

15:23Adam Schafer:Now I can go from 3 ,000 to 2 ,500, then to 2 ,000 eventually and get you that body fat, get that body fat off your body. I have runway and I need runway with a cut because if your metabolic rate is already low, cutting from there, you're going to fail. It's going to be very difficult.

15:40Sal Di Stefano:This is the most frustrating and difficult one for me to talk about because there's a lot of controversy in our space around the science on this. And there are a bunch of talking heads on Instagram and YouTube that want to make the argument that, you know, a pound of muscle only burns a handful of more calories a day than a pound of fat. And so this idea of you adding 10 pounds of muscle on your body, speeding your metabolism up radically is false and it's not true. And I think it's a terrible, terrible thing to tell people because I have seen what happens when you put 10 pounds of muscle on somebody and the amount of calories they then have to eat.

16:28Adam Schafer:and well here why don't you give the example of the person you're working with now who's actually one of our coaches how much lean body mass has she gained and how different are her calories

16:37Sal Di Stefano:well we're and her activities down well well i won't be able to give you the lean body mass gain yet until we do the body fat test and i will update the the listeners when we we get the results back when we're out but i will tell you uh where we're at like uh she was weighing 98 pounds when we started and she was eating 2 ,000 calories. We weigh in right now at 106 and we're eating 2 ,800 calories.

17:00Adam Schafer:2 ,800 calories. Yeah. By the way, she's eating PRs in the gym with her lifts so you know she's gaining muscle.

17:07Sal Di Stefano:And I just increased her to 28 because we were holding steady at 106 at 2 ,700 calories. I mean, we were not gaining any more weight, but we were holding at that. And so I've continued to do that, right? So what I've done is I've bumped her about 100 to 150 calories at a time. I wait till I see her weight level off for a while, then we bump again. And so based off of what we think, and also reduced her volume, by the way. So reduced her volume of training and moderated her steps. So I told her I don't want her stepping more than 10 ,000 steps a day. So reduced activity. So based off of what the talking heads on social media would tell you and the math of you know one pounder of muscle is only a handful more calories even if

17:54Adam Schafer:every pound she gained was lean body mass which it could very well be you know what is she in seven pounds right it should only be an additional what according to the numbers right 100 calories 150