2855: 4 Simple Steps to Lose Weight After 30 (What Actually Works for Women)

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0:41Justin Andrews:Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.

0:48Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we're going to teach you Four simple steps, very easy steps to losing weight if you're over 30. Also, we have trainers and coaches here that work at Mind Pump now. We have Mind Pump certified trainers and coaches, and they offer a lot of services. One of the services they offer is a 45-minute call where they can give you individualized nutrition advice. They can break things down for you specifically and give you a plan of nutrition. And what we're doing right now for Mother's Day is making that 50 % off.

1:24Adam Schafer:Okay, so 50 % off a 45-minute call with a Mind Pump trainer. Go to mindpumpnutrition.com. Use the code MothersDay for the 50 % off. Now, this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Roe Nutrition. So they use liposomal technology to deliver supplements in far more effective ways. Creatine is a good example. Some people, when they take a big dose of creatine, get gastric distress. Well, in liposomal form, a lot of people say, it doesn't bother me. They have other products too, like NAD and glutathione, both of which are improved bioavailability, significantly improved with liposomal technology.

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2:50Adam Schafer:enjoy the rest of the show nutrition for weight loss after 30 we're going to talk about what actually works what we're going to do is we're going to give you four steps this is four steps

3:00Sal Di Stefano:for weight loss after 30 for women let's go now before we get into it explain um what's unique to this at 30 versus say versus 20 or so much because you would think that a lot of the same rules apply i mean it's macros are macros calories burn or calories burn there's there's certain laws that don't change just because you're 30 right um but there are i'm sure there's some considerations that you thought about when you think about like because i do know that even though the the same rules apply to everybody men women 15 years old 40 years old there's there's certain things that you tend to focus on based off of certain things like that?

3:44Adam Schafer:100%. So great, great way to intro this. So fat loss works the same regardless of your age. And the science of weight loss or how the body loses weight or loses fat is pretty well established. But when you coach people for a long time, so the three of us have coached people for decades, we also employ a lot of coaches. We have a lot of trainers and coaches that work for us. and the effective coaches, the ones who are able to get people to their goal and then who are able to stay at their goal. So that's success for a trainer, right? A trainer, getting someone to lose weight, it's kind of hard.

4:19Adam Schafer:What's really hard though is can I get this person to get there and then stay there? That's the real challenge. And we've really nailed it down to what really works in that context. Because you can lose weight by just cutting your calories and moving a lot. But we know the fail rate on that is like 95%. So what actually works in the real world? What actually has the highest success rate? So there's a few things to consider, especially when you're dealing with someone over 30 and especially when you're dealing with women over the age of 30. And number one, it needs to be simple. So if I give you 15 diet steps, even if they're great diet steps, that's 15 steps.

5:00Adam Schafer:That's a lot of things to consider when you have a busy life, when you're trying to change your lifestyle, You're trying to lose weight. You've got lots of things going on. It needs to be simple, but it also needs to be effective, right? So it's got to be simple yet effective. So what we want to do is we want to implement steps that have a huge payback.

5:19Justin Andrews:Yeah.

5:20Adam Schafer:Like what is a simple step that's going to give me all kinds of return versus all these little steps that give me little returns? Do those even exist? And the answer is yes. So simplicity needs to be a part of this.

5:32Justin Andrews:And make sure it's not too drastically different from what they're already doing. So that way, too, it's not like, you know, the adherence of it isn't too overwhelming and something that's like, you know, they could just shift something and focus in on something they're already kind of aware of. But now, you know, this has a lot more payback.

5:53Sal Di Stefano:Now, this took a long time to get to this place because we originally, we took what we learned from our certifications, what the studies and research said. There are ways to get somebody to lose weight or get in shape that sometimes as a coach and a trainer, you might throw out. And I think that it took a long time for me to understand that. In fact, we still, I feel like, battle this online sometimes when a clip drops of us talking about something, whether it be cardio for fat loss, which is a common one that we still argue about, or a recent one that we just did about advocating for free weights for building muscle over machines or cables, right?

6:43Sal Di Stefano:and there's so much more that goes into being a good coach and your client having long-term success than just what a 12-week study says that's right and that took a long time to figure that out because it wasn't just uh you know you didn't make that mistake just one time you had to probably apply that to clients before you finally realized like oh like i know what the research says that X, Y, and Z is optimal or ideal for their getting these results. But what I found after training, you know, 30 of these ladies that are over 30, this doesn't seem to work very well. And, or they have a really hard time sticking to that.

7:20Sal Di Stefano:And so what if I focus on these things? I think that's the part that is tough when we communicate something like this, because we, we always get some sort of a pushback from, you know, some fresh out of college, kid or fresh out of a certification kid that is like, well, that's not what the research says. It says that this X, Y, and Z, but you also have to factor in behavioral psychology. Arguably, that's as important or more important than what the research might say as far as calories in, calories out, or what's ideal for progressive overload for this client. You have to factor in, are they going to do it consistently?

7:57Adam Schafer:I don't care what something says in theory. I care about how it looks in real life. Theory is great. How it plays out. Now play it out of what actually works. And simplicity is definitely an important factor. It wins. When it comes to diet. It's a very important factor that contributes to it working in real life. Another one is convenience. We have to create strategies to make this somewhat convenient. One of the big challenges with eating healthy isn't necessarily that people don't want to eat healthy. is that they feel they don't have the time to plan. They don't feel like they have the time.

8:34Adam Schafer:And so a lot of the foods that people eat are really just convenient and fast and easy. So we have to come up with strategies that can help somebody with this convenience issue because when you're hungry and you don't have food that's there and things are inconvenient, it's very easy to grab the thing that's fast. It's very easy to door dash or eat fast food. It's very, very easy. So we have to come up with strategies to combat that to make this much more convenient.

9:02Sal Di Stefano:Well, when I think of convenience when it comes to nutrition, I don't think just of convenient meals they go to. I also think of the convenience of not changing them so much from what they already currently did. This reminds me of when I threw out meal plans. We used to have great software. I plugged in. A 30-year-old woman wants to lose 15 pounds. This much days they can work out. This is their height, their weight. and it would spit off the perfect diet. But the problem with that is it was so radically different

9:31Adam Schafer:from what they were currently doing.

9:35Sal Di Stefano:Nobody ever stuck with it more than a few months before they fell off of it. And I remember, again, doing this for a long time before I realized, well, this is worthless. What's a better strategy was, let me have the client track what they're doing currently and then I understand where we need to go as far as getting the nutrition. And instead of going like, oh, here's the meals I want you to eat and I'm changing.

9:56Justin Andrews:Add more of the good stuff. Exactly. It's like, oh, let me look at your breakfast right here.

10:00Sal Di Stefano:Instead of this, let's add one more thing here or let's add four ounces of this meat to this meal and let's have less of this. So it's not so different from what they're doing. It's just making these, and even then, it may not be in a perfect controlled study, the answer to them getting to their final destination yet, but it's getting them to shift uh just a little bit from where they currently are that's what i think of when i think of like convenience or realistic or the ability for them to do it it's like that's convenient they can start to make these little adjust adjustments that aren't so

10:34Justin Andrews:radical that they're more than like here and it's not like they had that minimal success and then they moved on it's like they continually improve again it works right um the next consideration is

10:45Adam Schafer:it needs to be a pro-muscle type of diet. So anytime you're losing weight or eating to lose weight, by rule, it is necessary that you eat less calories than you burn. Now, there's a lot that goes into that. But whenever you're eating less calories than you're burning, your body tries to learn how to burn or adapt to burn less calories to meet the new intake. This is how your body adapts. And one of the ways it does this is it makes you lose muscle. So weight loss diets, a hallmark of a weight loss diet, or should I say one of the challenges, the biggest challenge with a weight loss diet, if the weight loss is successful, is muscle loss.

11:25Adam Schafer:And you don't want to lose muscle. Number one, losing muscle doesn't look good. Part of the reason why you want to lose weight is you want to look good. Muscle looks good. Muscle is what gives you shape. It's what gives you sculpt. It's what gives you the tone. Number two, losing muscle is a fantastic way to slow your metabolism down. So if you want to make something unsustainable, slow your metabolism, weigh the hell down because you lost a bunch of muscle. Now, if you eat anything over 1800 calories, you gain weight back. We don't want that. So we need to eat a diet or that promotes muscle preservation.

11:56Adam Schafer:Now, strength training is a part of this, but this is a episode about diet. So strength training has to be part of that, but diet plays a role too. Cause if you go on the wrong kind of weight loss diet, even with strength training, you're going to lose muscle. Now with nothing at all, just cutting your calories, muscle loss accounts for sometimes half of the weight that you lose. It's pretty consistent around 40%. So you lost 20 pounds, eight pounds, 10 pounds was muscle. Oops. So one of the strong considerations of an effective weight loss diet is one that promotes muscle preservation. It maintains your metabolism and you look better when you lose the weight.

12:32Adam Schafer:So that's a strong consideration.

12:33Sal Di Stefano:Would you say that this is one of the more difficult ones of all the points because a lot of times when this is a client that wants to lose weight and the point you made you we have to be in some sort of a calorie deficit in order to eventually lose body fat but you know that it's important to be pro muscle which then requires a lot of time this time to go after food and telling telling somebody who come who came in and goes hey so i need to lose 30 pounds uh and then you go like okay i need you to eat more of this macronutrient or eat more of that a lot of times they find that a massive uh barrier hurdle because it's like man i i this doesn't feel right i'm having to eat i came to you to lose weight right i came i came here to lose weight and you it feels like you're making me eat more that's

13:18Adam Schafer:right no that's 100 and also people get so um tied up with the number on the scale that uh like i don't care if i lose muscle i just want the weight to go down but i'll say this look a woman who's 5 '6 and 160 pounds at 35 % body fat looks very different than a woman who's 5 '6, 160 pounds, 25 % body fat. They'll weigh the same on the scale. They'll both step on the scale. Still says 160 pounds. They will look radically different. 25 % looks sculpted and tight, flat midsection, round glutes, 160 pounds, 35%. You're 160 pounds of flab in comparison when you look at them head to head. So you got to get over the scale on the weight.

13:59Adam Schafer:Don't worry about that. What we want is less body fat and we want to keep or build muscle. That's what gives you the look that you want. It also maintains metabolic rate. And of course it maintains function. You want to be strong. You want to be mobile. You don't want to have osteopenia or start to lose your ability to do things because you're trying to just lose weight, which again, it's crazy.

14:19Justin Andrews:Really like the big point of not having any flexibility. It's like, yeah, you can achieve less weight. Let's just say, and of course you're going to inevitably lose some muscle along the way. Maybe their desired outcome is to lose weight. You have no flexibility. There's nowhere to go. You're almost in a prison of low calories. So it's just the opposite is just so much better. You're strong, you're energetic, and you look better.

14:46Sal Di Stefano:I feel like this has been a common theme on the podcast with quite a few of our female live callers that are calling us and want to get down to a body fat percentage. And I find myself saying the same thing to most of them, which is instead of thinking about this body fat percentage or fat you have to lose, think about building into the body that you want to build to the point you're making. Because a lot of times it is, it's somebody who's sitting at like 23, 24%. And they're like, I just want to get down to that last few percent and get down to - Getting four pounds of muscle. Yeah, get down to 20 % body fat.

15:20Sal Di Stefano:And we're trying to make the case like, listen, who cares? Your body fat percentage could stay the same or it may even go up 1%. But if I add 5 to 10 pounds of muscle to your body, I bet you get the look that you're going after that you think is attached to this arbitrary number.

15:37Adam Schafer:That's right. That's right, 100%. Last consideration is hormone health. So women are generally more – now both men and women are sensitive to being a calorie deficit. Both men and women's hormones can respond negatively to being in a calorie deficit, especially if it's prolonged. But women in particular tend to be sensitive to this. And what you don't want to do is go on a diet and work out and then crash your hormones. You'll feel like garbage. Your body will stop progressing. You'll have fatigue. And you just won't lose your libido. You just won't feel good. So that's another consideration. So the four considerations that we're going to address right now are we want it to be simple, convenient, it needs to be pro-muscle, and we also want to maintain good hormone health while we go on this diet to lose weight.

16:26Adam Schafer:So let's start with simplicity. Very simple step, okay, everybody? This is very easy. One step. Don't eat processed foods. That's it. Now, not eating processed foods will almost always result in a calorie deficit for most people without you even trying or thinking about it. Okay. And studies on food and diet can be a bit dodgy sometimes because many of them are what are called observational studies. So these are people that come in and fill out surveys. So it's like, how many tomatoes did you eat last week? And okay, we're going to send you off for 12 weeks. Try eating this way. But nobody's really watching them.

17:03Adam Schafer:Nothing's controlled because it's extremely expensive and extremely inconvenient or difficult to get a bunch of people together and have them live in a lab for 16 weeks. But the studies on processed foods are very controlled and very reliable. They've duplicated these studies. And here's what they do with these studies. And they're amazing. They'll take groups of people. They'll put them in two rooms for a certain period of time. Both rooms have similar macro breakdowns of foods, meaning proteins, fats, and carbs is a percentage of calories, okay? But one room is heavily processed foods. These are foods that are in boxes or wrappers, foods with a high shelf life.

17:43Adam Schafer:And the other room is just whole natural foods. It's just foods with one ingredient, fruits, vegetables, rice, potato, meats, those kinds of things. And then they let the people eat. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. So they're not giving them any instruction that says anything like, Like don't eat too much or stuff yourself. Just eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. Then they watch them for a long period of time. Then they take the same group of people, the two groups, and then they switch them and put this group over here in the other room and this group in the other room.

18:10Adam Schafer:So now it's like super controlled. Consistently what we find is when people eat until they're satisfied, which is what we all tend to do, you're going to consume about 600 to 700 calories more with heavily processed foods. Just from that, because these foods are engineered to make you eat more. In other words, the signal that you get from your body that says I'm satisfied takes much longer to kick in with processed foods. When I figured this out with my clients, this was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, dietary breakthrough that I ever experienced with my clients. It was wild. It was just like, you know, diet's always something you struggle with with your clients.