2877: The Best Workout Strategy If You Want to Lose Weight (Step by Step)

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1:07Adam Schafer:You just found the top downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in the world. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about the best workout for people who want to lose weight. We break it down very simple. A few steps. Follow what we say. It will work. Now, this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Element. This is an electrolyte powder that you add to your water. There's no artificial sweeteners. There's no sugar. And it's got the right amount of sodium. Most electrolyte powders are too low in sodium to really make a difference. This is 1 ,000 milligrams per serving.

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2:46Adam Schafer:All right, we're going to talk about the best workout strategies for those of you that want to lose body fat. If you're overweight and you need some help, listen up. We're going to fix it for you. Let's go.

2:56Sal Di Stefano:You shared a study earlier. I did. New. Was that new?

3:01Adam Schafer:It was done in 2026. I can pull it up. Okay. So it is a new study. Published, I should say, in 2026. And what they did in the study, and this just backs up what we've seen in other studies, comparing fitness strategies for weight loss, for fat loss. And here's what they found in the study. So I'm going to pull it up here. and you can get this on PubMed. So you can actually find this. So what they did is they took 304 adults, okay? And there were three categories. All of them followed a low calorie diet. So they're all eating in a way that would induce weight loss, right? They're all eating in what's called a calorie deficit.

3:40Adam Schafer:Some of them did strength training. Some of them did just cardiovascular exercise. And then some of them did no exercise, okay? So you had strength training group, cardio group, no exercise group. Yeah. The weight loss, now obviously, we would expect the exercise group to do the best or the two exercise groups to do better than the group that did no exercise. I don't think that's a shock or a surprise to anybody. So the real interesting part here is to look at which form of exercise was more effective. The strength training group and the cardio group both lost roughly the same amount of weight.

4:18Adam Schafer:Okay? So weight on the scale went down roughly the same but that's not where it gets interesting when they looked at the kind of weight that they lost the strength training group lost the most body fat and they gained a little bit of muscle the group that did the cardio lost the same amount of weight but they lost some muscle along with it so they didn't build muscle they lost some muscle so when it comes to pure body fat loss strength training is the best form of exercise which is we have been touting this for

4:49Sal Di Stefano:long time that's right it's always great for when these studies come out just to back up what we've been saying for a long time did the study break down the exact protocol of each nope it didn't just said these people did cardio yeah too i mean sometimes when they put those together you see how cardio like burns more calories versus like you know training and then yeah and they try to like

5:11Adam Schafer:use that angle it does so so if you're not familiar with this um you know this is kind of widely known that cardio burns a lot of calories it really does like running for an hour on a treadmill will always burn more calories than a traditional strength training workout okay it just

5:30Sal Di Stefano:burns more calories you know what it does though sal because i like to talk about this also um but it doesn't burn that much more it burns more and it's what the one of the highest ways you can burn calories in an hour would be to go for a run running right in a session but it's not like you don't burn anything lifting weights no so a good example is you're probably on a normal run we're not having crazy intensity five maybe 600 calories in that hour running uh strength training is 300 yeah so so it sounds like a lot when you say double right yeah but it's like 300 calories is not

6:06Adam Schafer:a huge number no it's not i mean you could you could drink a soda um or two and cover that yeah that's there's that point uh here's the other point uh the other point is it's not the calorie burn that we want to look at when we're looking at exercise, we want to look at what adaptations it induces. Now, the adaptations from cardio are to improve your stamina and your endurance. The adaptations for strength training are to make you stronger. Everybody knows that, right? If you lift weights and you do it in a traditional way, right? You do a set, you rest, you do a set, you rest, you get stronger.

6:41Adam Schafer:If you get an elliptical or a treadmill or a rower and you do your workout, over time you build more stamina and endurance. And you do burn a little bit more calories. Well, why is it then that the strength training causes more fat loss? Well, here's why. Anytime you cut your calories below what you're burning, this is what a calorie deficit is, your body will always try to learn to burn the amount of calories you're taking in. It's called metabolic adaptation. In other words, your metabolic rate, for lack of a better term, it's more complex than this, slows down. So if you're burning 3 ,000 calories a day and you're eating 2 ,000 calories a day, your body is really trying to figure out how to burn only 2 ,000 calories a day because if you're in a perpetual calorie deficit, you'll die.

7:23Adam Schafer:So your body's always trying to adapt. One of the ways that it can do this is by paring muscle down because muscle burns just more calories through movement, at rest. It's much more calorically expensive. Strength training sends a signal that says, keep the muscle. We need the muscle. We need the strength. Cardiovascular exercise, although it uses your muscles, you don't need lots of muscle. You don't need lots of muscle to have lots of endurance. You just need good energy systems. You just need stamina. Strength requires larger, thicker muscle fibers. And so what you see with strength training when this is the focus is fat loss.

8:04Adam Schafer:When the focus of your workout is cardio, you see fat and muscle loss. as a result so for pure that's right now if someone may be listening so i don't really care if i lose some muscle i just need to lose a bunch of weight there's some negative effects that come from losing muscle well yes slowing the metabolism that's right so now further weight loss aside from getting weaker yeah yes besides the fact that besides the fact that you may get weaker more fragile and that kind of stuff even if that's not necessarily a concern for you um it makes future weight loss more difficult because you have a metabolic rate now that is slower.

8:41Adam Schafer:And to maintain your new weight loss will be more difficult. So more body fat is lost with strength training. You might even build a little bit of muscle like in this group. It was a tiny bit, but in comparison to the group that did cardio, it was significant because they lost muscle. But you've also maintained a metabolic rate that's a bit higher because of the muscle. So it just sets you up for something that's far more sustainable.

9:05Sal Di Stefano:What's your guess on the protocol? Like you think they did three hours a week of cardio, three hours of strength training or something like that, and then compared it after six to 12 weeks or whatever?

9:13Adam Schafer:I don't know, but that's a good question. But I will say this, when you're doing cardiovascular training versus strength training, if you're looking at the adaptation, one build endurance, one build strength, the time required to gain a great adaptation from strength training is less than the time that is required to gain great adaptation from cardio.

9:35Sal Di Stefano:That's why I think they did the same amount of time though. Yeah. Because the strength training still lost weight also. Yeah. Right?

9:42Adam Schafer:Well, they're all in a calorie deficit. That's the thing. Their diet. So that was controlled. Yes. So diet was controlled. Everybody was in a calorie deficit. It wasn't like they were just working out. Everybody was in, the study says hypocaloric intake. So everybody was in a deficit. it. It was just which form of exercise is going to produce a better result. And it was strength training, hands down. And we know this, we know this as coaches and trainers, we've been communicating this forever, that if your goal is to lose body fat and your goal is to not get your metabolism to slow down as much, and your goal is to sustain that weight loss, then your focus should be strength training.

10:17Adam Schafer:Now, what I would like to see, what I would have loved to see in a study like this, but you've seen other studies, is the weight loss looks different in terms of how quickly you experience weight loss or fat loss in strength training versus cardio. It's more of a snowball effect with strength training, whereas with cardio, it happens a little faster than it plateaus. Almost immediate. A little bit faster because of the metabolic adaptation.

10:37Sal Di Stefano:It's the opposite of each other. I mean, that's what like, and which is why I think so many people get stuck in the trap of doing cardio because cardio seems to send the quicker message on the scale. That's right. So if I'm obsessed with just getting my scale weight down, putting myself in a calorie deficit and burning as much as I can every day will send that scale down faster than strength training will three days a week.

10:59Adam Schafer:In other words, and this is just an example. So this is not like, you know, this is not what would happen. But I'm just to illustrate a point. If you had two groups of people both trying to lose 20 pounds, the cardio group, and both of them being a calorie deficit, the cardio group would lose 10 pounds on the scale faster. than the strength training group. But that's because they would lose muscle. But the group to lose the 20 pounds from body fat only, strength training. So the form of exercise that you should focus on is strength training if your goal is to lose weight or lose body fat. That's the one way to do it.

11:32Sal Di Stefano:I think, I mean, the point that I made too about the calories, I think we just, we overestimate how valuable a couple extra hundred calories of burning is to do weight loss goal too. It's just not that huge of a difference because we act as if cardio is the one that's burning and when you lift weights, you're not burning. It's like, well, you're still burning calories too. In fact, you're burning quite a bit of calories. I mean, I'd argue that the weightlifting is probably 300, 400, and the cardio is 500, 600. That's phenomenal.

12:01Adam Schafer:Even if it was double or triple. Exactly.

12:03Sal Di Stefano:Even if it was double, which was the original number I said, which I think was totally conservative for strength training being only 300, and on the high end, 600 calories burned on a treadmill.

12:12Adam Schafer:An additional 200 or 300 calories burned a day is great when it's your metabolism that's doing the work. Yeah. When it's you doing the work to burn the calories, it's a lot of work, you guys. It takes a lot of movement and a lot of work. A manual effort. That's right. And your body learns how to burn less calories with movement over time.

12:26Sal Di Stefano:Which means you've got to continually ramp that up or continually cut. That's right. And then you end up in this place where, let's say you disciplined yourself to drop that 30 pounds on the scale. but what it ends up looking like is more activity less food more activity less food all the way to that 30 pounds and then you're like well i'll just figure out what to do afterwards but then you're at a place where you're only eating 1500 calories and you're running every single day for an hour and it's like how sustainable is that right it's not sustainable and then what inevitably happens to so many people is this massive rebound it's the throwing up the hands of f this because what happens is we need to lose, say, 50 or 60.

13:06Sal Di Stefano:We drop the 30, let's say, and then the hard plateau comes. And then the - You feel like, what a waste of time. Yeah. Then you go, what a effort. I am miserable. I am sweating my balls off every single day. I'm starving myself. All did not reach my goal. I was happier, heavier. That's right. And I think that's where what happens to a lot of clients is they get to a place where they're like, you know what? I'll be overweight. I'd rather be overweight and eating whatever I want than struggling to get to half my whole.

13:36Adam Schafer:Right, and here's what that study didn't show because they were hypocaloric the whole time, is through strength training, you can positively induce metabolic adaptation, meaning you can cause your metabolism to burn more calories through the addition of strength training, which induces muscle gain.

13:54Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

13:55Adam Schafer:So it actually sets you up a little bit. And we see this all the time with clients that we have here at Mind Pump. Yeah. So let's get a little deeper. strength trains the focus. Well, what does that workout look like then? Do I just go in the gym and just do a bunch of exercises? Do I follow a bodybuilding routine that I find online? No. Here's what gets people the best results typically, especially people in this category. So when we say people who want to lose weight, it's like 30 pounds or more. This is your goal. There's two really effective ways to approach strength training. One is to do what's called a full body split.

14:28Adam Schafer:What that means is two days a week, maybe three, but not necessary. Two is plenty. You're in the gym and you're training your whole body. Meaning you're doing an exercise per major muscle group. So I have a leg exercise, a chest, the back, a shoulders, arms, and some core, and then I'm done. This is more effective on a long-term basis than what are called body part split type routines where today I'm going in chest, tomorrow I'm doing back, next day I'm doing shoulders, that type of deal. So that's option one, option one, two days a week, full body. Here's option two. And I love option two. I love this one the most.

15:03Adam Schafer:You do one or two exercises a day. So instead of going to the gym or working out two days a week for 45 minutes each time, you're doing one or two exercises every single day and you're doing it for maybe three sets and then you're done. Now, both of them are similar in terms of total volume, the same exercises same reps all that stuff it's just uh in my experience that every a little bit every day seems to result in better results for people because if you miss a workout you only miss

15:33Sal Di Stefano:one or two exercises barriers in the way of that and i think that's right a lot of the times you know the pushback is really like it's the timing of it or i can't fit that in the schedule for today and to account for that two exercise workout routine is pretty consistently an easy thing to handle for people now the key to the one to two lifts per day is that these are big gross motor movements so it's important to note that because if you did uh you know two lifts a day every day and the lifts were lateral raises and bicep curls tricep push downs and uh rear delt fly and like you know calf raises like if those are your choices uh we're not going to move the needle very much yes you're doing these big you know squat deadlift overhead press you know Hips press, rows, pull up.

16:22Sal Di Stefano:These movements, big bang for your buck movements, and you will really move the needle. Having this conversation today, this came across my feed. I meant to bring it up in our quad. I asked you guys if you guys had seen it. You guys, I think we all follow him. Young man, he used to weigh almost 500 pounds. I know what you're talking about. and uh he's been on a weight loss journey yep i know exactly um okay red hair yep why can't i think of his name people reached out to help yes dylan you know his name don't you know it's his red hair red hair guy maybe i'll come find him yeah um good good kid and i've kind of followed his journey along the way and um he's recently hired an online or somebody who's famous online I didn't know who they were.

17:11Sal Di Stefano:They have a pretty big following. And so I just kind of was curious to the strategy and super disappointed in the way they're going about helping this guy out, dude, because they are still playing like the biggest loser game of just hard workouts, lots of burn and hard calorie deficits. And his body is just not responding. Yeah. Ethan Bernard? Yes. Thank you. Shout out to Ethan Bernard. Great kid. Super great attitude, positive. Got to commend him too for putting himself out there online. I know how difficult that is to do that. So a lot of vulnerability. And I think what he's doing is awesome with sharing the journey with so many people.