2901: Chronic Pain Causes | 5 Common Habits That Make Pain Worse

17:25Adam Schafer:What? No. First off, I can experience this myself very clearly, and I do this with my clients as well, but just speaking from personal experience, if I, so this is for me now, okay? So if I eat a lot of garbage food, especially things that are heavily processed, but especially if I eat gluten, the next day or two, whatever joints I have that tend to be my joints that will hurt a little bit, suddenly now are in a lot of pain. Suddenly left hip pain suddenly a little bit of si joint pain why because i had gluten it's like clockwork it's the perfect recipe and i think that's i could attribute a lot of that because you know

18:01Sal Di Stefano:over fourth of july there was a lot of drinking for me it's alcohol it's like the the way that i'm like dehydrated the way i'm like functioning the next day and lack of sleep you know you get the worst sleep uh if you've been drinking as well too those all contribute uh to whatever pain or discomfort you had already it totally exaggerates it well we haven't talked about this in a really long time. We used to talk about it more when fasting was really popular and it was in vogue to be talking about fasting all the time. And we talked about all the benefits and why we used it. This is one of my favorite things to do with a client is to show them this way.

18:34Sal Di Stefano:Because you mean somebody, a lot of times people don't even realize that they're inflamed from their diet.

18:40Adam Schafer:They just - Because they're always inflamed.

18:41Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, they're always inflamed. They're kind of used to it. That's kind of just how their body looks and feels and moves. And I used to love to put a client on a 24-hour fast and you get the reports like, oh my God, I feel so good.

18:54Adam Schafer:My back pain's crazy.

18:56Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, and they feel chronic pain go down. They would feel so much better the way they move. And then that would enlighten them on, guess what? There's probably something that we're eating that you're intolerable to that is causing, even if it's low-level inflammation, it's enough that causes this chronic pain. And so this is such a sneaky one right here is that a lot of times, because someone doesn't have an autoimmune or they don't have a massive allergic reaction to, say, gluten, they think, oh, it's totally fine. What they're not registering, though, is that they're at this low state of inflammation all the time because they don't have a massive reaction to it, but they have a mild enough one that causes chronic pain

19:33Adam Schafer:because they're always inflamed. Totally. So there's a few ways this will happen. One, well, fatty acid intake, I mean, your body uses fats and fatty acids to make all of your inflammatory markers. And so if your fatty acid profile is off, you potentially would create a pro-inflammatory state in the body. So very commonly in Western societies, like too many omega-6 and omega-9 fatty acids, too little omega-3s, right? So you'll have a inflammatory kind of profile that's pro-inflammatory. You need inflammation, by the way. You need inflammation. It's a signaler. But if it's off, if it's too low, that's not good.

20:11Adam Schafer:But that's rarely ever the case. If it's too high, that's also not good, which is often the case. So fatty acid profile can do that. And then foods that your body has mild immune reactions to. So we're not talking about allergic reaction. I'm not even talking about a serious gut issue because you'll know that. You'll eat something and be like, oh, yeah, that throws me way off. But some foods just your body has this kind of low-level immune reaction to, which causes inflammation. And at the moment, that's me with gluten. Gluten used to really bother my gut. It doesn't anymore. I can eat gluten and I won't have any gastro issues.

20:41Adam Schafer:but I will feel inflamed the day after. I just feel more tight the day after. And I know it's because it's this kind of immune reaction that's happening. Next up, deficiencies. Both macro and micro deficiencies. So what's a macro deficiency? If your protein intake is too low, your recovery is going to suck, which is going to make you have increased amounts of inflammation. I've had several, over the years, I've had many clients where they were either vegan or vegetarians, typically vegan or vegetarian, because they struggled to get enough protein. I had them supplement with protein, and the first thing they noticed was less pain.

21:17Adam Schafer:They just noticed less soreness, less stiffness. Just from having more protein.

21:22Sal Di Stefano:I find this really common when we talk about the macro, really common with people that are trained, like that workout. And this is why I think we talk about protein so much because it's so common that people are not eating optimal amount. I can't tell you how many times I just bumped somebody's protein intake by 30 to 50 grams, and all of a sudden they're not feeling the chronic pain and soreness because they're just over-trained, under-fed for what's going on. And that simple little tweak and fix made a huge difference.

21:48Adam Schafer:That's right. Another macro would be too low of fats. That'll make you hurt for sure. That's common these days, but back in the day, especially my female clients, they'd try to survive on 30 grams of fat a day and just couldn't figure out why they felt terrible. Bumped their fats up and they felt better. And then you have micro deficiencies that cause pain. magnesium, vitamin D, very common. It's very common. So vitamin, especially if you're dark skinned, by the way. So if you're not African American, uh, the last bit of data I saw 70 % would be deficient, not just suboptimal, but actually deficient in vitamin D.

22:25Adam Schafer:One of the side effects or effects of vitamin D deficiency is pain, just chronic pain. So vitamin D is a very common one. Magnesium is another one. If that's too low, you'll start to feel kind of stiffness and achiness. This is an easy one to fix. So if this is you, this is cool. Just go take some vitamin D and some magnesium. And you'll notice within a week, I tell the story of my dad because this one shocked me because my dad is always outside. So I was like, you know, if you're outside all the time, you probably don't have a vitamin D deficiency. And he literally is, you know, he's a retired Sicilian man.

22:58Adam Schafer:His small backyard is like wall to wall plants and fruits and vegetables. And he's always outside. He's always doing things outside. Of course, we're dark skinned, but I didn't piece it together. And he was just, because my dad has lots of pain just from hard labor since he was a kid, but it just kept getting worse. His back pain getting worse, his hip pain. He was complaining about it. But again, you know, my dad, you know, in his sixties, hard labor. So we just couldn't piece it together. And sometimes that help him stretch. It would help a little bit, but it was always there. He did a routine blood test, deficient in vitamin D.

23:29Adam Schafer:Couldn't believe it. Took vitamin D and within a week, like pain was gone. And it was all because

23:35Sal Di Stefano:of that of that deficiency the magnesium one can be huge too because if you're deficient in magnesium many times that also affects the sleep and then poor sleep it's just a cycle you're right all of

23:45Adam Schafer:these affect the others don't they yeah it's not just one so it's like that's such a that could be

23:49Sal Di Stefano:a i mean that was a big unlock for myself was the magnesium in my in my sleep and so if you're you know kind of low level chronic inflammation and you're this you know poor sleeper and then all of it could be connected to low magnesium you have low you fix your magnesium all of a sudden the sleep gets better. Also the inflammation goes down. So all of it's connected.

24:07Adam Schafer:That's right. Next is water intake. This one was an interesting for one for me to figure out later on for my clients. Uh, I, I didn't really talk about water with my clients ever. I knew it for myself, but I only knew it for myself because back in the day, bodybuilders would tell you to drink a gallon of water a day. And so of course, you know, I want to, I want to be jacked. So I'm going to do what the bodybuilders say, uh, within reason. So I would just drink tons of water, Never talked to my clients about water, ever. Then I had this physical therapist that worked in my studio. I've talked about her before because she was so good.

24:38Adam Schafer:And I remember I would hear her, and this happened multiple times. I'd hear her talk to her clients about drinking more water because of their pain. And the first time I heard it, I kind of dismissed it. But I heard it enough times to where the clients would come back in and report back. And they'd say, oh, my God, I feel so much better. I think it's the water. After five or six times hearing this, I was like, could this really be a thing? And sure enough, the clients that I had who kind of dealt with inflammation here and there, it's like, you know, let's track your water. Let's see if we can get you to drink more water.

25:07Adam Schafer:What happens? Pain relief. And it was like within a day. And so this makes a big difference for people who don't drink enough water.

25:16Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. You know, I was onto this one a bit early when I was in football and I was in sports and everything else. Like actually when I was in college was where it was really apparent because the humidity. And so we'd have to get weighed in and make sure, you know, that we are drinking adequate water and like, you know, having electrolytes with that. So that way, too, we didn't like lose too much weight. And so to the point where you get fatigued to the point where you lose energy, you get pain. But for me, it was really like working. I don't know if you guys even I told you, but like I for a minute there, I thought I might do like athletic training.

25:52Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was like working in, you know, in the lab. And I was like, you know, running water and stuff. I was actually working with like the soccer team at first. And then I quit that day after that. I'm not going to deal with a bunch of these babies, dude. Oh, my God. Side note. Thanks, Justin. Right in the middle of World Cup. I know. Oh, dude. All the soccer fans are crazy right now. Oh, it was the worst. Bunch of babies. But so anyways, it was like, dude, there was, yeah, back to water. We were back in the lab and that was the biggest complaint. And most of them were dehydrated.

26:25Sal Di Stefano:And so, yeah, once we started kind of fixing all that, it was like, it resolved the pain. Do you think there's anything more there than the obvious thing? Like, obviously, hydrating ligaments and tendons and bone is lubricating the joints. That's right. That's the obvious one. That's right. Do you think there's other things there, like you flushing nutrients through more?

26:46Adam Schafer:Yes, there's also that. There's also that your muscles operate better when they're very hydrated versus when they're not. They're going to be more pliable, more reactive. What do I mean by that? Getting a muscle to contract quickly and relax quickly is very important to prevent injury and pain. Muscles that don't do that want to stay tight and so you move stiffer. Water intake plays a big role. By the way, this is an easy one. For everybody listening right now, if you start drinking half a gallon to a gallon of water every single day, you play with this. just track it, try it out, watch what happens.

27:20Adam Schafer:You'll know within a day or two, uh, if this makes a big difference. And I, I will, I'll say this, it was a good chunk of my clients made a big difference. Probably 30 % of my clients, I'm embarrassed to say, benefited from something that I didn't even talk about for the first 10 years of my training.

27:35Sal Di Stefano:I wonder too, if a lot of that is just because we have so many choices of fluid that people can drink now instead of water that they end up doing, you know, is it?

27:44Adam Schafer:I think what it is is that nobody's dehydrated to the point where they're like, you know, where you would measure them and be like, uh-oh. Everybody drinks enough, but what's enough and optimal are different. Right. So enough is -

27:56Sal Di Stefano:And what's enough and optimal for the average person than enough and optimal for someone who's training? Even more. Yeah.

28:01Adam Schafer:Even more if you're sweating. Definitely. Lastly is breathing. Breathing will definitely affect pain. Kind of important. And people - Now, let me explain. I'll tell you - You gotta figure that out. I'll give an experience that I had with this. and when this was an unlock for me. So again, years ago, this has got to be at least 20 years ago, I was really into Brazilian jiu-jitsu and I needed to become more flexible. And so I started to do yin yoga. So yin yoga is a form of yoga where you sit in a stretch for like five minutes. So you're not standing. It's literally passive sitting in these long stretches.

28:37Adam Schafer:And so I'm in there and I'm doing it. And I'm the big guy in there, of course, probably only, I was the only dude in there. so the instructor of course singles me out and at one point she comes over to me and she's like stop holding your breath and i was like okay so i started breathing she said when you're holding your breath you're telling your body to stay tight tight yep and i was like of course yeah like when you hold your breath now holding your breath to be tense when i'm doing a max lift that's important it helps yeah it helps you brace but what what i'm telling my body to do when i'm holding my breath is to stay tense.

29:11Adam Schafer:Okay, so you might be listening, you're like, I don't hold my breath all day. No, but you do this, you shallow breathe all day long. There's something called belly breathing and then there's something called shallow breathing. When you're scared or anxious or ready to fight, you take shallow breaths. And in the short term, it gives you more oxygen, can make you perform better. But in the long term, it just tells your body, stay tight. I need to stay tight. I need to be ready. A belly breath is a full diaphragmatic breath where you fill the belly and you're breathing fully. that tells the body we don't need to stay alert and we don't need to stay tight this silly stupid one right here i've had more than a few clients this one right here solved their pain problem

29:47Sal Di Stefano:just having the belly so funny we're really good about uh you know in the fitness space uh and and being a coach of like teaching people how to breathe the brace and how to like create that tightness because you know that's a big battle at first is being able to really get rigid enough to be able to like handle the load but you know as you get into it especially over the years you keep reiterating you keep you know doing the same thing over and over and over you get so tight and it's like we don't have that uh you know that other pathway a lot of times you have to go to like a yoga studio you have to go to like somebody else that's a practitioner that's like really addressing the fact that like also you need to release you know you have to be able to breathe to uh relax so you know it's definitely not something common that's you know pushed i feel like i had this is what i had to learn to do to get the real benefits from even a massage oh yeah so like you hold your breath so people have a tendency uh especially if you're somebody like i remember when i first started like i only like sweetest massage which is like the real soft because i never felt like i got the relief from the like hard like real sports massage because they dig into you and you're like and the whole time you're bracing like that's an awful hour and a half yeah the hour and everyone talks about how this how good this is and i remember when i when i first started dating katrina she would she would coach but she's like you need to breathe you have to breathe through that like you can't tense up and hold it or else i can't i'm not going to work anything it's not going to do anything it's just me drilling my elbow into you and then you're going to be like this sucks you know and so i really had to focus on learning how to breathe through that and boy what a night and day difference of the relief i would get from the sports massage knowing how to breathe properly versus just trying to, you know, and you're trying to, you're quiet, your face is down.

31:28Sal Di Stefano:And so, and you don't know, a lot of times it's a stranger. You don't know who they are. So you're not like, Oh, sorry, don't you're just sitting there. You're just, you're tensing up and you need to relax in order for them to get in there and do the work.

31:37Adam Schafer:I remember this. So I have two instances where this blue, this is, this was one of the paradigm shattering moments of my training career was the breathing right here. For the first time I had a woman belly breathe for the first time with me, cause I had learned how to do it. So we're on the floor. Her hand is on her upper chest, hands on her belly. I'm like breathing deep. rise the hand on your belly first. When that can't go up any higher, then you can rise the upper chin. So she's sitting there breathing and she started crying. And I remember looking around like, uh-oh, what did I do? But that's because she was holding onto so much and her parasympathetic system got activated.

32:09Adam Schafer:She could finally release some emotion. So that was the first one. The second time is I had this guy that I trained and his back pain was really bad when he started with me and we got it better, but it was never like a hundred percent. It was always kind of bothering him we always had to be careful always had to do mobility couldn't figure it out whatever and then i learned about breathing and i'm and i watched him and i said bro i think you're shallow breathing all day long he had a stressful tech job i think you're just shallow breathing all day long at work and that's making everything stay tight i said can you try this he started trying it it was the last thing it was crazy and you're hunched over and i can see that happening so many people just shallow breathing all day long in fact if you shallow breathe all the time and you try belly breathing it's gonna feel really weird it's very difficult it's like this movement pattern you're not used to let his pain totally away anyway i gotta i'm gonna change subject because i gotta tell you guys the number one supplement because you guys know i have a big family and my family occasionally will listen to our podcast or they'll catch me on their algorithm and so they're always asking me questions about the products that we talk about so like the number one product and supplement now that my entire family is like trying and raving about and everybody's talking about is the parasite cleanse from Organifi.

33:22Adam Schafer:Oh, interesting. Everybody's like - Oh, interesting.

33:24Sal Di Stefano:They're on the parasite game.

33:26Adam Schafer:Everybody's like, I got to do this. I have this. Let me try this. And then they're coming back and be like, this is crazy. I feel so good or whatever. I got like six family members. Wow. I feel like it's,

33:35Sal Di Stefano:next time, I wish I would have had you stop and as guests because the whole time we've had this podcast, they've gone through phases, right? Where you talk about something and then all of a sudden they all get on it or one. Is it normally because you talked about it on the podcast or is there somebody who is in the family that influences it besides you because obviously you influence them with health and fitness but is there like a person whether it's your dad your cousin or someone who takes it and they're like dude that thing that sal talked about i took it and then they then there's this trickle down effect how does it normally unfold so usually it's me selling it

34:05Adam Schafer:because i know what they need what they need who needs it but the parasite one i didn't sell so so my sister first sees the ad reports back to me because she gets gut issues and she's like do you think this could be my thing i'm like well let's let's let's figure it out uh you have a million animals you're always outside in the dirt i said well you like sushi you've never done it before maybe let's give it a shot so she started it she started talking about my brother started talking about it and the next thing you know i got other people the crazy part is we do this with our pets

34:35Sal Di Stefano:anyways like every year systematically yeah you're like it's like quarterly or whatever it is like because it it just happens all the time they just pick them up and uh you know and then you're having to deal with it and it's like we're animals too it's just weird that we don't associate that uh with humans i always think of that study they talk about though that we take care of our pets better than we take care of ourselves like the the consistency that you'll give your your pet the medication then give yourself the medication well what's cool about the about uh organifies

35:03Adam Schafer:is it's all natural yeah it's not it's not so it's not like you're taking an antibiotic to kill a lot of the ones that you would go to like a doctor make no mistake uh the the the drugs are like bombs. You're going to kill everything. Make no mistake. But the natural stuff is really good. The natural stuff is very efficacious. It doesn't hurt you to take it a couple times. That's right. Do it every year. Do it every year. I would do one of these parasite cleanses. You're not going to be worried about any potential.

35:30Sal Di Stefano:And you always recommend to run back to back, right? I'd say do one

35:34Adam Schafer:cycle, wait like 15 days, do another one just in case there's eggs that don't get touched. It's so gross when we talk about this. You've got eggs and bugs and stuff in your gut. I mean, it's gross, but a lot of people suffer from it. I know. So it's real. He's inside you right now. Oh, so crazy. Subject switch. I got a guy to bring up for you, Justin. So do you know who Arthur Saxon was? Yes. Okay, so old time. Old time. Old time strongman guy. So I have an article. Dude, I love reading about these old time feats of strength. But then also like they're training in diet.

36:07Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Because you got to keep in mind, this is a long time ago.

36:12Adam Schafer:So he was born -

36:13Sal Di Stefano:Like heavy cream?

36:13Adam Schafer:Like what was he - Yeah, heavy whipping cream and steak and eggs. So first of all, this guy was born in - And cigarettes. He was born in 1878. So he was doing these feats of strength in the early 1900s. And I'll tell you his one lift that was a world record for 120 years. So remember, he did - God, it held for 120 years?

36:35Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

36:35Adam Schafer:I don't even know who broke it.

36:36Sal Di Stefano:How often does like a lifting or any record last 100 years?

36:40Adam Schafer:That's wild. Is that him right there? Okay, that's him. Okay, so he's a German wrestler, also a weightlifter. He was 5 '10", 200 pounds, okay? So obviously built, right? Just for people listening, this is before steroids existed. This is before creatine. There's no protein powder. You're just the dude lifting weights and you got a job still because you have to support your family, okay? Here's the lift that he did that was a world record for 120 years. In 1905, he did a bent press. This is a one-hand press, okay? Above your body, 370 pounds.

37:20Sal Di Stefano:That's so insane. On a barbell. You know what's so crazy about that? A long barbell. Is balance that.

37:32Sal Di Stefano:Balance a quarter of that.

37:34Adam Schafer:Put a 100-pound dumbbell, try to hold it.

37:36Sal Di Stefano:A dumbbell, not a barbell. No, a barbell. Try to hold just a barbell balanced above your head. that already you're in a fixed position. Well, everybody has tried our old-time strength. It's like you have to start just by balancing that overhead. Yeah. In itself is a challenge. Yes. Like crazy.

37:50Adam Schafer:He also did. God, almost 400 pounds. He also did something called the two hands anyhow. So he would do a bent press. This is all, by the way, recorded because he would do it in front of audience. I tried this lift. He did a bent press with 260 pounds. Then while he had it above his head, he would squat down and pick up a 110-pound kettlebell with his left hand. then he would stand up with 448 pounds and he'd have them both up over his head yeah what anyway crazy it's crazy he's a badass here's his diet some of it's awesome some of it's like what's going on here breakfast 24 eggs three pounds of smoked bacon oh porridge with cream so that was breakfast we were pretty close yeah yeah definitely had a cigar how many how many calories is 20 how 20 calories is 24 eggs.

38:39Adam Schafer:It's like the Babe Ruth diet, dude. Doug, look up the macros and calories on 24 eggs. That's insane. About 1 ,500 calories. I've done 10. That's the most I've ever done. 1 ,500 calories. Then dinner. So then that was it. Then he had dinner. Dinner was 10 pounds of meat. 10 pounds? 10 pounds of meat. Wow. That's what it says here. 10 pounds of meat. No, wait. Come on. There's got to be exaggeration. And then during the day. Come on, Sal. I mean, listen. Come on. This is. I mean, you train yourself to eat that much meat. There's got to be some exaggeration here.

39:05Sal Di Stefano:You know, here's the problem. That sounds crazy. For a guy who's only 5 '10", 200-some pounds? He also did a one-armed band press. Well, I mean, that's why. It's all crazy. That's how they get you because you're like, well, maybe.

39:18Adam Schafer:Look up Arthur Saxon diet and confirm. So here's the problem. You're right because a lot of this, some of this was witnessed by people. Right.

39:26Sal Di Stefano:And some of it is like. Yeah, that's like legend stuff. Like he probably told people, I eat 24 eggs a day because maybe one time he did. Because he knows nobody can do it. I eat 10 pounds of meat in a day because he did it one time.

39:37Adam Schafer:I mean, let me see what it says. It was famous for, yeah, it says he ate, like, ridiculous amounts of eating. So he was known for this. I don't know how accurate it is, but he was known for it.

39:45Sal Di Stefano:You wonder how many people tried to do this that lived, you know, in his era. You know what's up? Arthur Saxon's doing it. Right there. 10 pounds of meat.

39:52Adam Schafer:Yeah. A massive centerpiece. So they say. It's of 10 pounds of meat, dude. Dude. There's no way, bro. I don't know.

39:59Sal Di Stefano:I mean, that right there in calories. What's 10 pounds of meat, dude? That's over 10 ,000 calories by itself. It doesn't sound right. There's no way. Doesn't sound right. Yeah, 10 pounds. And he's 5 '10". No way. It's not like he was a giant. It would be different if he was a marathon swimmer. There's more, too, by the way.

40:17Adam Schafer:He would drink beer all day long.

40:18Sal Di Stefano:Yes. Apparently. This is legend shit, Don. Get out of here with this. Don't tell our audience this stuff. Hey. Someone's like, I'm going to do the bent press.

40:27Adam Schafer:Listen, everything I said, don't try. Don't try a bent press with 370 pounds. Don't eat 24 eggs for breakfast. Don't eat 10 pounds. Yeah, that ain't real. There's no way. No, it's 6 ,000 calories, 10 pounds of beef. 971 grams of protein. Yeah, that's insane.

40:42Sal Di Stefano:He's also, by the way, he's putting in super lean meat, 5 % fat. That's not normal. Most meat is 80-20. Did they even have 95-5 back then?

40:51Adam Schafer:Here's 80-20 here. It's 11 ,500.

40:54Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, that's more like it. So here's the thing with all of this. As I said, 10 ,000 calories. You're talking about 10 ,000 calories just in meat. Yeah, I know. And then the eggs was another. Sounds crazy.

41:02Adam Schafer:Here's the thing, though, I will say. that these strong men, these bronze era kind of athletes, I think where you want to find the truth is in the similarities. Like, what do they have in common? They all ate a lot of eggs. They all had a lot of cream. They all ate a lot of meat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

41:17Sal Di Stefano:All of them. I mean, to me, that's a takeaway. High fat, you know, eggs, meat. Milk, cream.

41:24Adam Schafer:Yeah.

41:24Sal Di Stefano:Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's all believable and I 100 % agree. And that is common. But his bent press was,

41:30Adam Schafer:I mean, he had an audience and they recorded it. Legendary. He did say. That's it. 370 pounds. That's insane.

41:35Sal Di Stefano:I mean, even if that was half that, it's still insane. Arthur Saxton used to also,

41:39Adam Schafer:so back in those days, the way that they would make money is they would do exhibitions. So they would ask audience members to, oh, come lift this. Can you pick it up? Okay, you can't. Here, let me show you. No, no. And then they'd have challenges. But then they'd also, some of them would wrestle. And Arthur Saxton was one of those guys. He would challenge people to a match and make everybody say uncle.

41:58Sal Di Stefano:He looks built for that. Did we ever ask did Robert Obers do a big bent press for us? Who do we know that can do it? He's one of the best pressers in general. He does log presses, his main one. Yeah. But yeah, he could probably crush a bent press. Yeah, I don't think I ever asked him. It would be interesting. He's the first person that comes to mind. Like, you got one person to do the heaviest bent press you know. Robert's got to be one of the guys. His overhead press is insane.

42:24Adam Schafer:It's so funny. I was just talking about him this weekend. I was with a bunch of friends for the 4th of July. We had a bunch of friends over. I haven't caught up with him in a long time. And we were all talking about like what kind of results you can expect from strength training and what's the difference between some people that get great results or not, how big of a role, do steroids play? We were having this conversation. I was trying to explain to them genetics. Yeah. And they're like, people get it when you talk about other things like height. Like if I say seven foot tall, right? Like that's so rare.

42:54Adam Schafer:Yeah. It's crazy. But I'm like, you guys got to understand like people that, these people that do these crazy feats of strength, like these athletes or whatever, they have genetics that are so rare. So I was telling them about Robert Oberst and how we were hanging out with him and how he's just, if aliens came on earth and found us, they'd be like, this is a different species than other people. Like there's humans here and then there's whatever this is over here. Yeah, yeah. Some kind of giant. Yeah, yeah. That's how big.

43:21Sal Di Stefano:This was the same conversation. I was having the same conversation. So this is where this conversation led that I talked about with the athletes and injuries. I was explaining that to them too because they were again asking questions like why didn't you ask the trainer this question and that question and I was talking about Kula and stuff like that that's how this all came up and I'm like dude their number one job is to just not let them get hurt you are not taking a Christian McCaffrey and making him that much better he is already genetically keep him from getting hurt and when he was probably 13 you saw it on the field when you the people who got to watch him run around and flag football you see clips of him in high school yes saying is you just you all of them are like that if you were that tier right obviously it's a we're talking about a different example of someone who just barely made the league but if we're talking about the top echelon of nfl nba players right the elite elite they were elite elite when they were little kids they were they they just they and that's the genetic piece And that's not to take anything away from their hard work and what they built on that and the way they've expressed that over years.

44:33Sal Di Stefano:That needs to be said, though, to a lot of parents out there. I think they're unrealistic. You guys need to calm down. Yeah, yeah. A kid and then putting them in all these, like, travel teams and, you know, putting all these ideas in their head that they're going to go. Like, if you know what that looks like for real, it's like it's pretty deflating once you get there and you're told the whole time. like yeah you got skill i don't know again this is one of those things it's like controversial because it's like you know you want to you want to promote like these ideas and like hard work will be talent all day it's gonna get there but like reality sets in dude let me just tell you from experience you get to a point where genetics do play a factor the hard work got you there now all of a sudden you got a guy that's like you know three four inches taller than you and he's like faster, insanely faster.

45:21Sal Di Stefano:And he's like insanely bigger and stronger. And you're like, all right.

45:25Adam Schafer:Well, so when I was talking to this group of buddies, so I was talking to this group of friends and one of them played a college basketball. I don't think he was D one though, but maybe two, but he's six, seven. Okay. And so I'm like, this is perfect. I'll use him as example. So I said, let me ask you this. I said, maybe you've experienced this where you play a sport and you're the best in your high school. And you're like, man, I'm awesome. But then you play another high school that's really good and suddenly you're like, oh my god, there's other good players. Then you make it to college and suddenly it's a whole other level.

45:54Adam Schafer:You're like, whoa, these people are way better than me. Then you go pro and you're like, okay, forget it. This is a whole other level of human performance.

46:03Sal Di Stefano:It's crazy how many tiers that is. It just shows the gap between someone who's just good versus someone who's super athletic.

46:11Adam Schafer:Now, that's not to say that hard work is a wonderful skill to develop.

46:16Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Period. It's going to translate to all kinds of other things. I just, yeah, I guess my caution is to like not put all the identity there, right? Like the hard work of it is the crux of like what you want. I think what you're saying is so good and it needs to be said for a lot of parents. A lot of parents think what it is is I just need to get my kid in the best. And they put them in all these camps, the old stuff. And it's just like, I mean, Katrina and I have this debate all the time when I see my son. It's like, my son's not going to be here. She's just like, you don't know. So it's like bullshit.

46:47Sal Di Stefano:I absolutely know. You can see, I can see, and then you all be around other kids. Like I told that story about the, what was it last summer or whatever? Actually, it was less than that. It was not that long ago when I told you Max got hit with the soccer ball. Yeah. I mean, this kid is like half his size, but you could just see it. You know what I'm saying? He's got it. You know, he's just good. He's, he's a year or two younger. Yeah. He's got crazy footwork. I mean, it's like, I don't care. You can't convince me that his dad stayed up every night with him, you know, teaching about it's like no he picked up a ball i mean your son's got it your son you know you know nothing about baseball for the sports but all of a sudden your son could just hit a ball like i mean some kids have just they have got it and again not to take anything away because you still have to develop that and to keep doing it they gotta have a passion for it to want to excel at it but there is definitely a genetics play a massive role in in that elite it's funny i just

47:42Adam Schafer:pulled up an article that they did this large study of 200. Let me see if I can find it. There were, it was a six month fitness study. And they, I mean, it was relatively controlled, right? So same routine, same diet, supposedly 287 people. Here's the difference in between those that were considered fast gainers and those that were, that were considered average. The hyper responders gained about 30 % more muscle. So they gained three times as much, two to three times as much muscle as the people in the middle. Average responders, five to 10%. Low responders, very little in six months. So most people fit in that average.

48:25Adam Schafer:There's like 90 % of us are in the middle. 5 % of us are low 5 % versus high and then of that 5 % 1 % of that 5 % are what we would consider let's say elite or crazy but most of us are in the middle and that's what you can kind of expect from you know from your strength training from your workout so anyway I was this makes me think of just what I'm trying to do right now with my training because it's so different I don't know if you told did I tell you guys over the last 3 or 4 weeks I've only lifted weights like

48:52Sal Di Stefano:3 times I know I was actually over the holiday I was going to call you and be like hey did you make sure to take today off Yeah.

49:00Adam Schafer:I've only lifted a few times because I'm doing jujitsu and I'm trying to get back into it. And oh, by the way, so when you first start doing jujitsu and you don't move well, you get a lot of mat burns. I talked about this last episode. Like you rub too quickly on the mat. Yeah. And you get like, they suck. And I got them on my elbows and my knees. And you know what I'm going to put on them? Manukura. Really? I'm going to put Manukura on them. I mean, it has healing properties. Healing properties for burns, for skin. Oh, that'll be interesting. For skin. If I did that, my dog would lick it off.

49:28Adam Schafer:So I'll take a shower afterwards. I imagine. I'm going to put it on, throw a band-aid on, and let you guys know how fast it is.

49:32Sal Di Stefano:I mean, if we're talking like tribal days, right? Like it would be honey and olivera. What would you use in nature?

49:40Adam Schafer:So there's a compound in Manukura honey. So Manukura is a type of Manuka honey. That's the highest amount of what this compound is. I can't remember it. Maybe, Doug, you can find it. There's a compound in there that's antimicrobial, promotes healing. and the studies on injury healing are ridiculous. Yeah. So you have an injury? What is it, MGL? Yeah, well, that's the rating. The compound in there. Yeah, let me double check on that. And it's a very, very high percentage. You put it on burns or like skin abrasions, it'll heal way faster.

50:10Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, so back to my question. So in nature, what would be the thing that they probably used 100? I don't know, that's a good question. Like aloe and honey is the only thing that comes to mind. Like what else is kind of found in nature in enough abundance you could put it on like burn and scrapes and and cuts i don't know yeah sunlight water was it no that's you would put some sort of horse glue whatever like they would put to um to close it close up yeah your wound

50:36Adam Schafer:but that was yeah that was about it yeah i don't know yeah i was also looking at by the way because i just started so i'm not going to do this everybody calm down but i was like you know i'm starting to get into it totally changing uh how i am around uh my workouts by the way now which is exactly what i was hoping for which is pretty cool so i'm not even interested in trying to build muscle right now. My workouts are looking a lot like making me feel better. More functional. Yeah, which is cool. It's exactly, it's funny, I was talking to my wife about this because I ate a bunch of garbage over the weekend because of the holiday, and today was a gym day, so it's like the once a week I'll actually lift, and I just felt so stiff.

51:12Adam Schafer:Now, normally, and you know this, Adam, if you're holding water because you ate garbage and you go lift weights, you get crazy pumps. Yeah. And so even though you're a little stiff, you kind of like the pumps. yeah i don't care about i don't want the pump yeah i don't want the pump and i don't want that in jujitsu i just want to feel better yeah and so it's like this new motivation to like

51:30Sal Di Stefano:change all of those things which is pretty cool i gotta i gotta give you a cool since you're on this kick right now so i took something from our um our our good friend joe defranco uh he did you see he did this uh isometric lunge challenge thing that he did no yeah so i actually i was like so curious after i was like man can i do that i'm like i can't do that where you hold for a minute the basically a lunge position where your knee is just hovering you sit there for a minute yeah and it actually got me thinking i'm like because we talk about the benefits of uh isometrics and even it incorporated with primings for that so i'm like you know what i'm gonna do something uh one of my favorite things to do uh also is i love um walking lunges especially when i'm very strides.

52:17Sal Di Stefano:I'll even throw a little balance in between there. And it just I feel like it warms everything. And I'm like I'm going to throw an isometric into every lunge. Yeah, I've been hearing a lot more about this too and I'm wondering if it's Jay Schroeder. I don't know if you guys know this. Okay, he's like he's into like neural training and he does a lot of that stuff. But he uses isometrics quite a bit and that's like one of the struggles is like the really long lunge. Okay, so I've been doing this now for about two weeks and I have never felt so good getting into my squats and my deads. Oh, wow. So this is what I've been doing.

52:50Sal Di Stefano:You're getting into the lunge, you're holding the body. I do walking lunges for 20 with 10 second holds. So hold. So I go a stride, knees hovering so it's just above the ground. And you hold it for 10. Hold it for 10 seconds, which is difficult in itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then lunge again to the other side, hold for 10 seconds. And so I walk.

53:08Adam Schafer:So that split stance, that back leg stability, front leg stability, the torsion on the pelvis. is really good.

53:15Sal Di Stefano:And then I'm holding an isometric for 10 solid seconds.

53:19Adam Schafer:I got to do that.

53:20Sal Di Stefano:And then, so I started like just, the way this all evolved was, I was actually just trying to see if I could do what Joe was doing. And I'm about 30 seconds in, I'm like shaking like a leaf, like, oh wow, I want to see if I can build this up. So it started as that. And then I was like, oh, you know, I felt so good after I did that. I felt like my hips and everything were all just woke up from that quick isometric. I'm like, you know what? I already love to do these walking lunges. I'm going to throw like a little bit of an isometric hold in the my priming to get ready for my and i went oh my god i felt so good going into my squat and it normally takes me i used to do a lot of 90 90s and i gotta do a lot of miguel planes i do all this shit to warm up for my squats and deadlifts and uh yeah that has just got me right into it i'm gonna try that yeah it feels really good i was looking at uh just

54:05Adam Schafer:because i'm you know i'm getting into it and i was not because i'm gonna do this but just i was looking into it and I'm like if I were to compete again what category would I be in with my age like master category no it's master's four oh there's a higher level than master well because yeah master's is 30 by the way oh it is yeah well you're talking about jiu-jitsu bro we're not talking

54:23Sal Di Stefano:about silver hair well body bodybuilding master's is uh 35 actually I think master's is 35 so

54:30Adam Schafer:master's four is 47 I think to 51 so immediate first I'm like you know I'm not going to compete you know my cousins like you go to compete i'm not going to compete and then inside the back of my head i'm like maybe that would be fun a little bit i don't know let me look and then i'm like you know what i don't want to get hurt like wait a minute i'm going to compete what am i going to compete in so i looked it up and i'm immediately picturing the average 48 year old right oh yeah i'll crush this then i remembered wait wait the average in your own self-selection bias yeah yeah yeah the average 48 year old that signs up for a jiu-jitsu tournament He's been doing jujitsu.

55:03Adam Schafer:Yeah, this is a TRT, dude. This guy's going to be all jacked and super fit. It's not going to be easy. But there was a split second where I just thought of the average 48-year-old guy. I'm like, oh, yeah, dude. I'm totally going to compete.

55:15Sal Di Stefano:Wait a minute.

55:16Adam Schafer:No, thanks.

55:17Sal Di Stefano:What is – I think bodybuilding is 35. It's 35 or 40. It might be 40. It might. I can't remember. I know that – no, I think it's 35 because I think I remember when I was on my way out, I knew like one more year and I could do masters. I think if I recall, I could be wrong though. I could 35 or 40. Yeah. 35 is what it is. Yeah. Okay.

55:38Adam Schafer:Yeah. So anyway, there's that, but I got, dude, I got to tell you back to the inflammation thing. The reason why it inspired me to talk about this at the beginning of the episode, uh, I was weighing two 15. So I had dropped another five pounds. I was feeling good. Body was moving good. I probably will fall around 205 to 10. That's probably where my body weight's going to end up falling. but then I had this week where we're having alcohol I'm eating gluten I was 215 last week we're eating gluten I'm having some alcohol I'm not eating a ton and today like I said I went to the gym everything hurts 222 7 pound swing 7 pound swing in inflammation and water retention holy cow

56:28Sal Di Stefano:Probably, dude. That sucks. I feel like that's your, I mean, we're so in the similar weight class right now, so I feel like I could totally, I know what that does. I'm like, yeah, it's about right there. I can feel it everywhere. Yeah, I'm going to be bald in flames.

56:41Adam Schafer:With Justin's weight. Don't do that to me, bro. Come on. We can move on. This chair's straining right now. What do you think is?

56:52Sal Di Stefano:You're not, are you, you're nowhere near your heaviest right now, are you? No. No, yeah, you're not. I feel like I've. Yeah, you've been way heavier before. I don't think you're a lot of my eyes. You're a lot fatter before.

57:03Adam Schafer:When you get inflamed, Justin, this is how I feel. So besides pangs, I just feel stiff. That's like number one sign. Then the second sign, my eyes, dude. I feel like my eyes. Yeah, dude, I feel like my eyes are puffy. Do you get like watery? I don't know. They just feel weird, dude. You know when you wake up in the morning and your eyes are kind of puffy? It feels like that all day. Like what's happening right now?

57:21Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

57:21Adam Schafer:Do you have that too or not? Every day. My new one is my knuckles.

57:24Sal Di Stefano:Never had that before. That's like brand new. This is the last six months. like knuckles pain. Yeah. If I, my, if I get little, like never, I've always noticed my inflammation. I have like, like, like, like what holy water, my kind of stomach carrier, my puffy face. I always talk about all of a sudden knuckle stuff. Like, like it's because, because I take the aura ring on and off to charge all the time. And so there's times when it's like comes off right away. And there's other times it was like, Oh, it's not coming off today. We're not charging it. It's not even coming. So this,

57:55Adam Schafer:this just makes me realize, like not realize, but I think it's important to talk about. For people who work out consistently, the number one consideration for good results, if you're already consistent, this is the number one consideration, is recovery. That's the number one consideration. That's the thing right there that'll get you the best results is if you consider recovery and adaptation as the primary thing that you consider when it comes to workout intensity, frequency, diet. That right there will get you the best results. The problem is everybody who's consistent makes the workout the number one.

58:27Sal Di Stefano:I think this is why all our MAPS 15 programs have done so well with our audience. Because our average audience, obviously we have the whole gamut of age and range. A big portion is our age group or right close to. And I think a lot, that consideration isn't taken in a lot. A lot of it's focused on how hard of a workout can I do? And honestly, the 15 range just fits so much better. It's more appropriate. and I think people are seeing the same thing that I think we all noticed when we did it ourselves. We're like, oh my God, dude. I must have been overdoing it. Yeah, I was way overdoing it. Way overdoing it.

59:02Sal Di Stefano:It takes way less. And again, granted, been lifting for 20 plus years. So it doesn't take that much to maintain that. And I think I was constantly, and I really noticed it in the 40s, like constantly nagging pain and hurting myself because always overdoing it. And I've had way better results the last few years of a more minimalist approach to my training and focus more on the recovery and sleep and rest and fuel. 100%.

59:31Adam Schafer:Look, sleep is easily the most under-optimized variable for people who train hard. Here's the truth, and the data supports this. If your sleep is off, your gains are way off. Poor sleep dramatically increases risk of injury. It throws off your hormones so that your stress hormones go up and your muscle-building, fat-burning hormones go down, it boosts cravings. That makes it harder to eat healthy and you just can't work out like you used to. You don't recover like you could. Well, check it out. There's a company called Eat Sleep. They make the most advanced sleep system in the world. This is a smart cover that fits over your existing mattress and it cools or heats each side independently as cold as 55 degrees or as warm as 110 degrees.

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1:01:05Adam Schafer:Back to the show. Our first caller is Candy from California. Hi, Candy. Hi, Candy.

1:01:11Sal Di Stefano:Hi. Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited to meet you guys. I just found you a few months ago. And so I'm all current, but I've went back and I noticed the old ones. There's a lot more cussing going on. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Those are nerves. Those are nerves when we first started right there. Well, I'm feeling it right now. We had to get out of our system.

1:01:30Adam Schafer:Sorry, we didn't scare you away. So how can we help you? Okay, so I'm going to read. So I've hit everything. I'm 59 years old and I've been doing boot camp workouts and running for years. The end of last year, I realized I was lifting the same amount of weights and was not getting any stronger, I realized that my body looked the exact same for the last 20 years. No matter what I did, I wasn't getting any different results. So January 2nd of 2026, I decided to start weight training. So I'm very new to just lifting. Both my daughters are engaged to be married and it's important for me to look lean at their weddings.

1:02:06So, the first wedding's in September. So, I felt like nine months would be plenty of time to lean out. It's not like I had any, really, a lot of weight to lose. I just wanted to lean out. So, I reverse dieted myself from my, you know, 12 to 1400 calories to 1800. And I had already been eating 125 grams of protein and taking five grams of creatine every day. So on January 22nd, I was 125 pounds. My body fat was tested just with a pinch test, but I was at 34 % body fat. So I retested on April 17th after I'd been lifting, and my weight stayed the same, but I was at 28 % body fat. Wow. Incredible.

1:02:48So I was getting some difference. And I feel like my workouts are great. I do three full-body workouts on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. on Tuesday, Thursday, I walk four miles and then I play about eight to 10 hours of pickleball throughout the week. Um, but here's where I'm stuck around late April. I started feeling really puffy, especially around my waist, which is a place I'd never have carried my weight before. And it happened suddenly. Um, then I gained a few pounds, which I'm only five, two. So like three or four pounds is a full pant size for me. Um, so I dropped my calories cause I was freaking out to 1650 in May.

1:03:28And then I just had my body fat tested and it's at 29%. So it creeped up a little. I track everything meticulously. I stick to an AIP diet most of the time. I just struggle with what my calories should be. I know I'm getting stronger, but I'm not looking the lean look I want for my daughter's wedding in September. So what am I missing? What advice, next steps for really calm at my age and my activity level like i'm just i'm stuck i don't

1:03:56Sal Di Stefano:know what to do you uh first of all you were killing it you were absolutely to go from 34 to 28 is that what i heard that's like a six percent body fat drop and your weight stay the same which that's an incredible body composition change and your weight stay the same which means you built muscle and what happened what i don't know yet and maybe we can ask some questions to get the bottom of where the inflammation came from or the water retention or the few pounds on the scale, but it did what it does to so many people. And what did to you is you overcorrected and you cut. And what happened was you didn't get, you didn't put body fat on from that cut, you lost muscle.

1:04:34Sal Di Stefano:And so that's why your body fat percentage went up because you cut. So you didn't, that cutting calories didn't add body fat to you because it looks like that sometimes to people, because they're like, Oh my God, my body fat percentage went up and I was reducing calories. This doesn't make sense. But body fat percentage is the ratio of muscle to fat to your overall weight. And so what happened with it tells me right away is you were at a really good calorie place, actually, and we probably should have stayed there and looked other places on why are we holding water? Why do we have inflammation going on?

1:05:04Sal Di Stefano:Is it stress? Am I eating something that's causing some sort of inflammation? Am I doing a lot right now, maybe between pickleball and I'll train like there could have been a lot going on that was causing that kind of systemic inflammation and water retention. And instead, Instead, you overcorrected, dropped the calories, and the result was we lost that muscle that you did a good job. Some of it, not all of it, but some of that muscle that you did a good job of building. So just to explain what probably happened there. Do you know if when that weight did come on, was there anything going on in your life at that time that was out of the ordinary?

1:05:38I've tried to think of it. I feel like there was nothing different going on. My life is pretty regimented. regimented. I'm pretty routine. I go to bed at 8 p.m. every night. I wake up at 4 a.m. every morning. Like I'm very, even on the weekends, even on my days off, I still get up and go to the gym in the morning. So I don't know what was different, but it's just was weird because I don't carry my weight in my stomach ever. And it's just in my stomach. Like I feel like my pants and stuff fit me in the thighs and everywhere. Okay. But it's just in my stomach. It's really odd.

1:06:15Adam Schafer:Yeah. So, So just to back up, Adam, yeah, you were doing everything right, and you freaked out because you went up three or four pounds. And weight fluctuations are not super out of the ordinary, especially for women. But what tends to happen, what makes this process difficult is people will start moving in the right direction, get some confirmation. Something goes in a direction they don't want to go, and they revert back to what they were doing before. your calories are way too low for the amount of exercise and activity uh that you're doing and they're also too low to cut anyway so like typically you know the standard you know approach to lose body fat is you take someone's total calories and you drop them and that causes fat loss yours are too low to do that with so like right now you're at 1650 you know where would i take you 1200 you know what'll happen at 1200 calories you're just gonna lose muscle yeah body fat percentage won't change and you'll feel worse uh so you were moving in the right direction

1:07:15Sal Di Stefano:like really good too yeah six percent swing is crazy that's really this is why we don't this is

1:07:21Adam Schafer:why i don't uh i don't let people weigh themselves um if they've never done this before because it could be kind of scary even if let's say you gained four pounds and a lot of it was body fat you were still better off than you were before and your calories are still high and you're feeling strong and you're still moving in the right direction, I would not have cut your calories. So what you need to do is you need to go back in the reverse and try to build into the body that you're looking for. You don't have room to cut anyway. So I would go back to 18, then I'd go up to 19, then I'd go up to 2 ,000.

1:07:54Adam Schafer:If you get to the point where you can get up to like 2 ,400 calories and you're feeling good and strong, then you'll have some room to cut. but if you try to cut from 1600 you're going to end up just kind of less muscle not feeling as

1:08:08Sal Di Stefano:good someone who's as consistent as you are sleep balance like you are strength training three times a week and doing as much pickleball as you are we should be north of 2400 calories before we cut even being just five foot two tall yeah because you're you're an act you're active you're moving a lot you're doing yeah you're doing a lot i mean eight to nine eight to nine hours a week

1:08:28Adam Schafer:of pickleball plus strength training is a lot of activity.

1:08:32Sal Di Stefano:Very active. You're a very active person, which is awesome. That's great. But we need to fuel that. And you were. You were starting to fuel it for the first time, and your body was responding great.

1:08:43Adam Schafer:You know what would help direct you, Candy? That might be a good kind of compass for you? Because you play pickleball and you work out, if your performance is improving in those, you're moving in the right direction. Like if your pickleball is getting better and you feel faster and you got more energy and your strength training is going great and you're getting stronger, don't question what's happening. You're moving in the right direction. The body you want will come from your improvements in performance. Okay. But like studying the mirror and the scale is going to keep moving. It's going to keep you in this kind of maintenance place where you kind of maintain.

1:09:18Yeah. Yeah. It's the calories that I just don't know what to do with. Like I struggle with where they should be.

1:09:24Adam Schafer:Yeah. Yeah. Move them back up. Yeah. I'd go right back up to 1800. keep strength training when everything settles go back and go up to 1900 and work your way here's what will probably happen your your weight on the scale may go up but you'll get leaner body composition is what is really what matters the scale doesn't tell us much and i know we have

1:09:45Sal Di Stefano:kind of like a date in mind right so we're trying to for the weddings and stuff like that have you because it's not a stressful thing it's okay you're doing you're you were in a really good place you really just had a an auto you just over corrected which is super common yeah it's great that we're talking and we caught you now and not six, seven months later or whatever. Have you considered having a coach take you through that process? So when you have those, I would love that. I just like, and I was waiting to talk to you guys because I just, there's so many coaches out there, but I just don't, I don't want to give my hard earned money to people that don't know what they're doing.

1:10:19Adam Schafer:You know, we have good coaches that we coach and train ourselves. Let me have someone call you and then you can see if that's something you want to do so they can kind of walk you through the process. And it's really helpful. Well, for those, because those things happen, right?

1:10:34Sal Di Stefano:We have those, and having somebody who's kind of watching that and letting you know, Kenny, we're doing great. Don't worry. Stay the course. Stay the course. Or, hey, let me adjust your calories a little bit. Just like allowing to kind of them to get you there. That'll help out so much. So. Yeah. That's what I need. Because I weigh myself every single day, every morning. So I like, if I start going up a couple pounds, then it does freak me out. Yeah.

1:10:59Adam Schafer:Well, probably the coach. Well, we'll see what the coach does, but if I was coaching, I'd probably have you take your scale and take it out or less frequently.

1:11:06Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Let's not weigh yourself.

1:11:07Adam Schafer:Cause that's, that's a, yeah.

1:11:08Sal Di Stefano:Don't worry though. They'll take, they'll take good care of you though. So that's their job. Their job is to, to work with you.

1:11:13Adam Schafer:Just to encourage you, your body was responding really well. Really well.

1:11:17Sal Di Stefano:Really well. I know. It's so weird that it just stopped.

1:11:20Adam Schafer:It's not weird. That's just how it happens. Everything was great. Yeah, everything was moving great. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And then I have never purchased one of your plans because before I found you, I just bought something. What would you guys recommend would be the best for me?

1:11:37Sal Di Stefano:Your coach is going to give it to you for free. Yeah. So part of the coaching is they'll take you through. They'll actually not only put you on one of our MAPS programs, they'll customize it specifically for your needs. It'll be MAPS. Especially since you're doing pickleball and other things, they'll take that into consideration. And they'll adjust your programming based off of that. So part of the coaching, that's all included. Okay. Yep. Okay, great. I have a couple more questions. Can I ask them? Go ahead. Okay. And I'm sure the coach, I guess, now would help me with this too. But how quickly should I be progressively increasing my weight?

1:12:13Because, you know, I kind of started from, like, doing the same dumbbells in boot camps for years.

1:12:19Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, yeah. And so I feel like every week I want to do more. And then sometimes I can, but then sometimes I'm like, I noticed my form's bad, so now I have to go back down. And so how do I know when I'm not being lazy and I should do more weight?

1:12:35Adam Schafer:You do more if you can with good form. So anytime you can do more with good form, you can gauge for that.

1:12:40Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, so I think you're on point with that. That's a great gauge for that. And you're going to notice it's totally normal. And again, this will be stuff that, this is some of the great parts of having a coach because you'll talk back and forth about this. Like, hey, I had my workout yesterday, and for some reason I just didn't feel strong, and so I had to go back away. Totally normal. And then you'll have other times where you're like, man, I just felt so recovered and so rested. And a lot of this could – there might be interplay going on with a correlation between when you do pickleball, when you strength train, how our calories are, how you feel when you go and lift weights.

1:13:13Sal Di Stefano:That will tell the coach a lot. It would tell me a lot if I knew, oh, you did pickleball on Tuesday. we just did our full body workout on Wednesday your feedback from me was hey this is how I felt I didn't feel very strong I'm like okay well we might have needed to bump our calories on a day that you played pickleball because we need to fuel all that activity so I might actually adjust your calories different on different days so I might go hey on days that we play pickleball candy I want you to push your calories to here because we need to fuel that so that when you go to do your workout the next day it's not hindered because you're so low and depleted so this is this is stuff that they'll teach you on how to modify your nutrition and your training and your rest recovery all those things with your lifestyle that's part of what they and then when you walk away from all this you'll be able to take that and go like oh because you love pickleball probably and you'll be able to know how to maintain and doing things you love and enjoy and also building the body that you want okay perfect um and then i like i said probably the trainer will tell me all this but i had questions on how often I should change my workout because I'm doing like a four-week, three-day plan and I'm like on the third or fourth session of it.

1:14:22So I've been doing it for 12 to 16 months. Is it okay to just keep doing the same stuff?

1:14:27Adam Schafer:Yeah. So there's certain exercises that you'll be practicing for most of your lifting career, but the programming will probably, you'll probably want to change it every few months.

1:14:38Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, some of the acute variables, they might shift up in terms of rep count or rest periods or things like that. But that's your coach is going to work with you a lot on that. And we kind of tailor that into our programs already just to kind of get ahead of it. But they'll teach you a lot of that kind of stuff when you work with them.

1:14:55Adam Schafer:Yeah, but it's typically every three to four months, you're going to have kind of a different direction. But you'll be doing a lot of similar exercises because there's some exercises you just don't want to stop, things like squats, for example. Okay. and so it's it's early july so there's no chance that i would be at a point where i could cut before uh into september wedding at this point don't think like this look at exactly what

1:15:19Sal Di Stefano:happened to you you increased calorie strength train and your body fat percentage went down sal said it earlier it's my my favorite thing to say right now to i feel like to so many callers is don't think about cutting into the body you want think about building into the body you want you you're you're at a healthy weight you're you're for your height weight i don't need to change your weight i need to just put some muscle replace the body yeah and so if we do a good if we do a good job we should build muscle and simultaneously be losing a little bit of fat even though those so i don't want your scale to change that much but i can change your i can keep going in the direction you were going where you went from 34 to 28 then to 26 then to 24 percent body fat and you can never change on the scale whatsoever.

1:16:00Sal Di Stefano:But at 24%, I'll tell you right now, you will look radically different. So think about building into the body that you want. So we don't necessarily need to cut before September at all. We could build into the physique that you want. Okay. Okay, that's fair. All right. Well, thank you so much for all your help. I really appreciate it. And I really appreciate you being great role models for other dads out there. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you, Katie. We're excited. it we're excited for you thank you great hands all right thank you see you bye-bye there's a very

1:16:32Adam Schafer:very common uh situation everything's going great the scale says something i don't like you know over correct that's why it can be uh so such a such a doozy on on the mind is the you know just taking that scale out just to recap uh she bumped her calories uh 400 or 500 calories lost like 6 % body fat? 6%. Yeah. Yeah. So while with eating more. Which is a huge accomplishment. Are you kidding me?

1:16:59Sal Di Stefano:Which, I mean, we didn't do the math real quick, but we could sit down and - How much muscle she gained? Yeah.

1:17:03Adam Schafer:Yeah.

1:17:04Sal Di Stefano:That's a significant amount of muscle.

1:17:05Adam Schafer:She probably lost 10 pounds of fat and gained 10, but now I would say like eight and eight or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Or seven and seven. Smaller. Smaller. Yeah.

1:17:11Sal Di Stefano:But that's radically different. Amazing and exciting. And then, you know, and to your point, you know, and again, we could sit here all day and try and guess what it was, But it easily could have been a week where she overdid pickleball, didn't get as optimal sleep as she normally does. That's right. Stressed out about something. Yeah, stressed out about something going on, wedding's getting closer. It could have been something she ate that was off the menu that wasn't normal. Like a million things could happen to retain three pounds on the scale. A million things. And then she corrected by cutting calories.

1:17:46Sal Di Stefano:And then I know how many clients I've had that go, this doesn't make sense. I was up on my scale. I cut my calories dramatically and then my body fat percentage went up. He lost muscle. Yeah. You lost muscle. That's what happened. You were doing really good. Our next caller is Jessica from Massachusetts. Hi, Jessica.

1:18:01Adam Schafer:Hi, Jessica. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming. How can we help you? Well, okay. So first, sorry, I'm probably going to get nervous because I'm not. I talk to five-year-olds all day, not.

1:18:15Sal Di Stefano:You talk to us that way. Yeah, I was going to say it's probably the same. It's not too different. I just wanted to say thanks so much. I have been an avid listener since my son was, my first son was three weeks old. I found you guys. And I credit all of my births, pregnancies, postpartums to your programming. Thank you. Awesome. It's been like the most, the biggest blessing. So I really appreciate it. but I wanted to ask you guys because I feel like right now the buzzword is reverse dieting and I'm not sure like everybody's talking about it and how they attribute it to their body recomp success and I'm not sure how to figure out if I need to reverse diet or if what I'm doing every day both physically and nutritionally is working um and if I should just stay like status quo if I'm like, if that makes sense.

1:19:12And then how do you reverse diet? And like, how do you pick that number?

1:19:17Sal Di Stefano:Let's, let's, let's hear where you're at. And then also your goal too, because you look very healthy and fit already. So I'm just curious, like what your, what your goal may be. And then where, tell us where you're kind of currently at working out wise and nutrition wise. Okay. I'm nine months postpartum with baby number three. And I am, I use the program. So currently I just started again doing anabolic and I'm doing it three days a week. And I do three days a week of conditioning training, um, which is kind of probably like your hit program ish with a little bit of extra cardio worked in, if that makes sense.

1:19:58Um, I kind of do my own thing, I guess it's like my time to veg out, not listen to my kids and just kind of do cardio, but not like intense cardio, if that makes sense. So I do that. Nutritionally, I eat 1 ,742 calories. I aim for 132 grams of protein per day. I aim for 56 grams of fat per day, and I aim for 177 grams of carbs. I hit 12 ,000 to 15 ,000 steps per day. It really depends upon honestly how much I'm chauffeuring my kids around and like kind of that the day but like 12 is my daily goal and then anything other than that is just kind of gravy um I'm very active I'm a stay-at-home mom to three kids five and under and two of them are boys so we are on the go quite a lot.

1:20:56And my goal, honestly, is just to be the strongest that I can be for my kids. I want to feel really good every day. And I do, don't get me wrong. I do. Like for being nine months postpartum with a third, especially, I feel good. But if I'm being really honest, my husband was asking me this last night. I want to be slightly leaner. I know it shouldn't be all aesthetic based, but I want to be slightly leaner for as much as I lift and as heavy as I lift. I want to see it sometimes a little bit more, if that makes sense, the definition. But I don't feel like I can go lower than I currently am without, I don't know.

1:21:41Sal Di Stefano:You're right. You're right. You're right. You can't. You're right. You can't.

1:21:45Adam Schafer:Jessica, do you mind if I dig a little deeper? Sure. So there's a couple of things. There's a few things. This is just based off of training people for years and years. And so whenever I ask somebody what their calories are, when someone gives me really specific numbers for calories and macros, then I typically want to ask a little bit more questions. What tends to tell me oftentimes is that this person really has their hands wrapped around their diet and is really a source of control. Oh, yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, so right out the gates without even asking your, your information on exercise, although I know all that, I'd say we need to eat more.

1:22:25Adam Schafer:And I say, you're probably afraid of eating more. And I know this because you tell me you eat 1 ,742 calories. Exactly. And 177 grams of carbs. Exactly. And all that. I will say I have a hard time. Sal, you are completely correct. Yes. I have an eating disorder background. ed and i have definitely had a past um and i think that's part of why reverse dieting is intriguing to me yeah if that makes sense yeah yeah yeah that's okay so so the idea around reverse dieting really is just we used to call it a bulk back in the day but we changed the name because nobody wants to do a bowl more inviting so but basically what you do is you're giving yourself more energy and nutrients with the intent of improving athletic performance, strength, and building muscle.

1:23:13Okay.

1:23:14Adam Schafer:Now, the side effect of doing that is typically a faster metabolism. Yeah. And that helps with getting leaner. Okay. The other side effects of that are more energy, more vitality. More strength. More strength. What you're doing right now with all the activity that you're doing and the calories that you're consuming and probably the consistency of the calories that you're consuming is your, your kind of redlining. I feel that. Yes. So increasing your calories, you would notice a really nice improvement in energy and in just being able to do everything in life. And you would build muscle just from bumping your calories.

1:23:52Adam Schafer:But there's an underlying thing here, which is a reverse diet can also be very controlled or we can loosen it up a little bit. And that's just something for you to think about later on, uh, is, you know, you want to ask yourself, do you want to have a relationship with this where it's, where you always have to watch it or do you want it to feel more relaxed? Like this is just how I live. Uh, and the only way to do that is to get away from the really super meticulous tracking. So not logging every meal I eat. No, that would be the, that would be the long play. That would not be the next step though.

1:24:29Adam Schafer:So the next step for someone like you is I would have you go up to 2 ,100 calories right out the gates. Uh, and I would stay there and enjoy your workouts and your strength gains. And when you're there for three, four weeks and you're feeling good, then I'd bump them up again, your activity level and your, and everything that you're doing, you, you probably could sit around 24, 2 ,500 calories. Okay.

1:24:53Sal Di Stefano:Oh, definitely.

1:24:53Adam Schafer:Yeah. And you probably could sit there and you probably get leaner with more muscle. I don't know what the weight on the scale would do. If you're going to gain more muscle than you lose in terms of body fat, might go up a little bit, but you would be leaner and you'd be stronger. I don't have more energy.

1:25:09Sal Di Stefano:I'd also want to peer into the, the three days of hit cardio style training slash cardio and probably make some adjustments there. How long are those workouts? Probably an hour, 30 minutes. Okay. I don't have an hour to work out really. like in a chunk anymore. That's good. That's good. Yeah. I can only work out for so long before they all come. Is it weights and cardio then that you're doing in those three days? So, well, this is my type A personality on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I do just cardio 30 minutes. Yeah. On Saturdays, I do a combination. Okay. So I'd probably get rid of the Saturday. I'm okay with like the 30 minutes of like, like what we call low intensity, steady state cardio.

1:25:55Sal Di Stefano:So like cruising on elliptical or whatever, like that's running. Yeah. Like a moderate jog probably. I wouldn't want you like pushing really hard on the cardio, but like moving cardio, that's good. But I'd probably want your weight training to be the, just your traditional maps. I don't want any extra weight training on top of that. Unless, yeah, you're open to doing more of the trigger sessions with the rubber bands or mobility in between as well. That would be a good option for you. Okay. So like on Saturdays, just sticking to my normal walks. Yes. Yes. That would be much better. This will allow us to focus on the strength days of really pushing strength.

1:26:33Sal Di Stefano:Just so you build yourself up. If you do what Sal's saying by bumping the calories, we pull back a little bit on the extra weight training, and we focus on the three days that you're lifting the weight training and really try and push the weight and get strong in those. You should see strength increase just from that alone, just from pulling back a little bit on the extra strength training that you're doing, bumping the calories. Right away, we should start to move in the right direction. I had a side question because I really plateaued. Like I just did all my PRs last week before I started anabolic.

1:27:04So I could kind of see where I was at. And I realized that like my,

1:27:09Sal Di Stefano:I've plateaued very much. So yeah, you're red lighting like salsa.

1:27:13Adam Schafer:You're red lighting. You're doing the most you could tolerate. Uh, and you're eating the least amount you can get away with, with all of that. A 300 bump is not even as a conservative, like getting up to 2100 calories, that's three, 400 calories. That's still conservative. Yep. If you did that right away and you were consistent with it and you did what adam said with the workouts by week two you're going to see strength gains yeah and you'll feel good should i be keeping my protein then at like a certain number like that 130 range or should that be mostly bulk from like you can go up in fat your fats were low too yeah i would i would

1:27:47Sal Di Stefano:push you and so easy because it's the 300 calories uh a fattier cut of meat is what i'd want you to do easy easy way to bump those calories so i'm gonna love that okay yeah yeah so like i don't know if what your typical meats are that you have if you're a chicken breast person a fish person okay so or if you're a filet mignon i don't know like so if you're a filet mignon i'd go ribeye like that like an easy just i would i would want you to get fattier cut meats if you do chicken i go chicken thighs like you or have some a tablespoon of olive oil or enjoy some butter on that thing i would increase you through fats and protein uh based off of what you kind of told me

1:28:21Adam Schafer:where you're at what were your fats at again she was 50 56 oh yeah oh bump your fats you're gonna I feel so much better with more fats. Even for like a woman that's like. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I know that sounds so cringy, but like. Yes.

1:28:34Sal Di Stefano:That's why I went that direction right away to you.

1:28:36Adam Schafer:I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to have you back on in 60 days because if you do what we say, you're going to blow your mind. I don't think you realize. You don't realize it until you get out of it. Once you bump those fats and those calories and cut the activity down a little bit, energy, hair, skin, libido, sleep, strength, everything's going to get better. mood because right now you're eating like the bare minimum and 56 grams of fat is I never let my female clients go below 65 yeah yeah never yeah yeah you need fats fats are essential yeah

1:29:06Sal Di Stefano:okay and it's such an easy thing for us to get it that way too just just that'll get I'll take care of your calories just simply getting eating a little bit more fat and I like going through the meat direction if you're already a meat eater yeah just eat a healthier fattier cut and or Or add a little bit of butter, olive oil while you're making it. So that'll help bump those extra 300 calories.

1:29:30Adam Schafer:Now, the steps later, which later you're going to have to get to this place, is to move away from so much control around everything. But that's later on. Let's have you do a successful bump in your calories and let you feel what that feels like.

1:29:45Sal Di Stefano:What this looks like in the end is less having to move, okay? more strength so much more calories that you don't ever have to track anymore because you eating more or less three or 400 calories in a day does nothing to your body healthy but you're just not watching you get up to a place where you're eating 2600 calories and oh on some days you might land at 22 on some days you land at 28 without tracking you can swing that much in calories and you'll be able to maintain your body relaxed that's what i would that would be my goal I have a daughter and my goal is just to show her that. That's a good goal.

1:30:21Sal Di Stefano:I don't know. That's a very strong and healthy women should look and feel and act. Yes. Yes. I need to get there. It's a great, great motivation.

1:30:29Adam Schafer:Yeah. It's just literally what it'll look like. Jessica, and you can get there is you're just going to eat and you, for the most part you eat healthy because you know, the foods that you, that are good for you and you eat when you're hungry and you don't have to count everything and you work out cause you enjoy it. Uh, and you just feel great.

1:30:44Sal Di Stefano:I want you to promise me something though. Okay. if this does get really difficult, because you seem very self-aware and honest, is reach out and invest in outsourcing this to a coach if it gets hard, because this is one of the more difficult things. Of all the clients - That was actually something I wanted to ask about as well, if that was okay. A hundred percent. Okay. How does that work? Is it all on virtual online phone calls?

1:31:13Adam Schafer:So it's virtual. You also use text and message, and they meet with you and they individualize everything through the process. Yes. Everything through this process. And then they change it as you go along, depending on, of course, what you're experiencing with results, but also how you feel. And the more honest you are with your coach, the better they can coach you. So you're like, hey, I know you told me to bump calories, but this sucks. I don't want to do it. You know, whatever. You just talk with them and they'll coach you through the whole process. But we handpick our coaches, so they're all really good.

1:31:42Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, these are all trained by us, so it's an extension of us. So the philosophy of how we reverse diet and the psychological piece and all that stuff is factored in when they're doing this. And they're adjusting it on a weekly basis based off of the feedback that you're giving them. And that includes how you feel and what's going on with performance and if things are changing or if there's new stressors. New goals, whatever. All those things, they're adjusting on the fly for you as you're going through that process. and so incredibly valuable, especially for my female clients that are reverse dieting, especially if we've been challenged in that area before because this is not, with someone like you, it's not a discipline or consistency issue, which is most people's problem.

1:32:24Sal Di Stefano:Most people can't be disciplined, can't be consistent and so that's a huge struggle for why a majority of people fail at getting in shape. That's not yours. Yours is getting out of your own way and that's really hard to do sometimes because you can't like logically make your way through that. And so having that support. So just make that promise to me that if you feel that way to reach out and allow us to support and help you through that.

1:32:47Adam Schafer:Well, but I want you back on in 60 days, Jessica, we'll follow up with you. Okay. All right. That sounds great. And is anabolic okay for me to like, that's a good. Love it. Yeah. Love it. Okay. Yep. It's my favorite one. Good. Thanks, Jessica. All right. Can't wait to hear. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. See you in 60. All right. Bye. Yeah. Just, I mean, for the coaches listening, when you ask somebody their macros and calories, when the numbers come back, super specific, you know that she's counting every single calorie. A lot of attention. And there's probably some stuff connected to it, which is the control.

1:33:24Adam Schafer:But also, big picture, 1 ,700 calories with that much exercise is she's doing exactly the most she could do with that amount of calories. She's easing it out. And that's why she's plateauing and feeling burnt out. Our next caller is Ruth from New Jersey. Hi, Ruth. How you doing, Ruth? Hello. Hey, guys. How can we help you? I'm trying not to be nervous. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate the time and the advice in advance. Thanks. So I'll just jump in. So I'm 55 years old, and I have been chronic dieting for at least 15 years. which always worked until it didn't. So around three to four years ago, all the things that I used to be able to do to keep my weight stable stopped working.

1:34:15And I just gradually found myself like three to four pounds above where I'm comfortable. So around a year and a half ago, I started meticulously tracking my food, even more meticulously and being more regimented with my lifting and progressive overload, which didn't do anything other than bring my intake down to around 1300 calories a day which I knew at some point I needed to reverse diet and I also knew that I needed somebody to guide me through that because otherwise I would chicken out so I last September I started working with a coach and we increased my calories really slowly gradually getting me up to around 1800 a day And he dialed in my training so that I was doing longer rest periods and pushing much heavier weight.

1:35:09And he really encouraged me to go to failure, which I don't think I ever really had done before. So everything was going pretty well in that my weight was stable and I felt like my strength was increasing and I was getting, you know, some more definition. But then this past March, I started having a ton of gut health issues and my weight started creeping up. It's gone up steadily a half a pound a month since March, even though I dialed back my intake a little bit to around 1700 calories to try to manage some of the gut health stuff. so at this point I'm just feeling super uncomfortable in my clothes and with how I feel but it's kind of hard to distinguish what of that is the gut health issues and what's weight gain and you guys always talk about building into the body that you want and so I was trying to do that and was hoping that by reverse dieting and lifting heavier I would get to the point where that increase in muscle would result in better body comp and ability to eat more.

1:36:21But I just feel like I've kind of hit the ceiling on that. So I guess what I'm wondering is, how do I know if I just hit the limit of my reverse diet and maybe, you know, this is more than my body can handle? And also, I don't know, anything else you would recommend on how to try to improve my recomp, body recomp, maximize body recomp without triggering more GI issues. Yeah.

1:36:48Adam Schafer:That's the issue right there, Ruth. So you moved in the right direction. You're going in the right direction, but the gut health stuff is getting in the way. And if we don't figure that out or solve that, it's going to be very difficult to do any kind of a reverse diet because as you eat more, the GI issues get worse, right? Is that, that's what you experienced? Okay. Now you've had, you've dealt with this before because you said it doesn't feel like SIBO. You know what that feels like? Yeah, I definitely, I did have SIBO, I guess two years ago, I worked with a functional medicine doctor to treat the SIBO.

1:37:20I did the, um, the herbals and the, this biphasic diet. Um, and that did address SIBO. This feels totally different than SIBO.

1:37:31Adam Schafer:Okay. And then in the past, how often, or how many times did you deal with gut issues? Was that the only time? That was really it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So I would look at, you can get tested for SIBO or you can just treat yourself for it because the herbal stuff is still quite effective. Have you ever been tested for parasite? No. And I know you've talked about that. I got a little scared away of the parasite treatment because I didn't know. I take other medication and it says you have to separate taking the parasite cleanse from that medication. I just couldn't figure out how to manage that. But my doctor also, my like regular doctor had suggested that there, it might be like H.

1:38:15Adam Schafer:pylori, um, could be much about easy tests. Okay. H. pylori is an easy test. So I would get that test done. And if you do have that, you want to get rid of that because H. pylori can cause a lot of problems and it's an easy to solve as well. but we need to get to the root of the gut issues because we can't reverse diet. We can't go into trying to build, um, because of the gut issues. And the harder you push in the gym, the probably the worst that they'll get. And you can cut your calories and you'll have a reduction in symptoms from the gut issues because you're, you're obviously not, you're feeding yourself less, but that's not going to benefit the goals that you have, uh, fitness wise.

1:38:54Adam Schafer:So we need to get to the root of the gut. If it's H. pylori, that's an easy fix. How would I know if it's parasites? Can you test for that or do you just do the - You can test for parasites. There's a few tests you can do. Sometimes they don't show up, but oftentimes they do. That being said, Organifi has got a good parasite cleanse kit that's pretty efficacious. It's not like a pharmaceutical, but it's pretty efficacious. and that was the one that I looked at based on hearing you talk about it but then I couldn't figure I I take thyroid medication and HRT and I have to take the thyroid on an empty stomach first thing in the morning that's right but you have to separate the parasite stuff yes from your medicine yeah about 30 minutes figure that out yeah yeah take your thyroid 30 minutes later you could take whatever uh and you're going to be okay yeah because otherwise it messes with the absorption of thyroid.

1:39:54Adam Schafer:So it's like you drink thyroid with like, even if you drink it with electrolytes, it would influence its absorption. So thyroid 30 minutes later, you could take whatever. But you could try it. So you could test for parasites to know for sure. Or you could do the parasite cleanse, which because it's not a pharmaceutical, I'm okay with people just taking it. It's not going to hurt you. But the symptoms of parasites are repeated gut issues. It could be bloating, it could be diarrhea, it could be constipation, irregularity it could also be inflammation it could also be just feeling a little general malaise so the only way to know for sure would be to do a parasite test but you could try the parasite cleanse without doing it to see if you notice an improvement but my whole point is Ruth, we have to get to the root of the gut issues before we push anything with nutrition in any direction uh and so in the meantime i would just eat in a way that feels okay and continue strength training but reverse dieting is going to cause more gut issues yeah and that's yeah that's not going to help so can i in your opinion can i continue to gain um and i really like my goal was with gaining muscle is partly to get more definition and look better who doesn't want that but It's more just about longevity and aging well and all of that.

1:41:20So can I, do you think I can continue to gain strength even without being in a surplus?

1:41:29Adam Schafer:Well, without being in a surplus, technically you have to be in somewhat of a surplus to gain anything. Yeah. But, you know, 1 ,700, 1 ,800 calories while strength training intelligently, I think you'll be okay for a while. But I would, regardless, you want to get to it. While I figure out the gut health stuff. That's right. That's right.

1:41:47Sal Di Stefano:Just out of curiosity, have you tested body fat? Because I'm looking at your shoulders and arms and you look very lean. You look fit. Thank you. I did get like a DEXA, which said I was 23%. I quite honestly thought that I would be like maybe low 20s.

1:42:07Adam Schafer:You are low 20s. But I also didn't believe it because it said that I had like really low visceral fat. It said all my fat was in my arms and my legs. And like, if I look in the mirror, the opposite is true. Like I have lean arms and legs and all my weight is in my middle. So I kind of don't believe it.

1:42:24Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Well, I'm telling you, cause I could tell this from the video that I figured I had a feeling that you had just a little bit of a disordered view of yourself because you look really good. You look really good. And if your goal is what you say it is, which is longevity and health, you're doing fine. You're doing fine, and the gut health is the main priority. Yeah, there may be a lot of inflammation in the gut, too. You've got good muscle. Trust me. At 55, post-menopausal, you've got great muscle on you. You've got a great physique. And 23 % body fat is a place I'd want you to be. It's a good place.

1:42:58Sal Di Stefano:20 to 23. You don't want to get leaner than that. Yeah, 20 to 23 is about as low as I would want you to get.

1:43:02Adam Schafer:Ideally, Ruth, what we do, just to paint a picture for you, is you would kind of get to the bottom of the gut issues, solve that, then you feel good, you start reverse dieting again, your body fat percentage stays at 23, and you gain some muscle. Yep. And that's about it. And how do I, so, and I promise, I'm not, it's not that I'm super obsessed with the scale, but I'm feeling like, my clothes are tight, I'm feeling uncomfortable, and I think the thing that was triggering me was that it was steady, like steady half a pound every month. Like that can't be muscle. There's no way I'm gaining half a pound of muscle every month, right?

1:43:43Sal Di Stefano:Ruth, half a pound a month is nothing. You can totally do that. Especially if you switch from group strength training to traditional strength training. You could shift in a night three to five pounds.

1:43:53Adam Schafer:No, she's talking about half a pound of muscle.

1:43:55Sal Di Stefano:No, no, no, I know, but she's saying on the scale she's seen a half a pound go up a month. That's nothing. That's nothing. I mean, and especially somebody who's dealing with gut issues and has systemic inflammation going on. I mean, one day of extra water weight will fluctuate.

1:44:09Adam Schafer:Ruth, stop paying attention so closely. What are you doing? Half a pound? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, you know what it reminds me of? It's like, I have family members. But it's each month, it's not just half a pound. I have family members that work in investments and they're like, Sal, stop watching the stock market in five seconds. It's driving you crazy. Yeah, you're too meticulous. Take your eyes off of it a little bit. But honestly, figure out the gut stuff and then start going back on a slow reverse and just building muscle. You're fine. You're in a good position.

1:44:39Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let that be your North Star, though, is the gut thing. Like, base it off of how you feel. Yeah, fix that first. Solve that. That's it for now. Yeah, just solve that because then the rest will come. You're in a good place.

1:44:50Adam Schafer:Yeah, it'll be hard to try to build while you're dealing with gut issues. That's a really hard barrier. Okay. All right.

1:44:58Sal Di Stefano:All right, Ruth. Thanks, guys. Let us know, though. I'd like to hear if you do find out if it's parasite or H. pylori, I would like to know. So let us know. Reach back. All right.

1:45:07Adam Schafer:Thanks. All right. Bye. You got it. Doug, why don't you send her that link to the Organifi so she knows which one it is. Dude,

1:45:13Sal Di Stefano:I knew something was up. I know. I was like, I'm looking at her shoulders and arms and I'm like, post-menopausal, 55. She's got, she's got separate. She's got separate,

1:45:22Adam Schafer:huh? She looked 45. I know.

1:45:23Sal Di Stefano:She's got separation in her delts. I'm like, where's your body?

1:45:26Adam Schafer:I tell you what, you know, I know. But, you know, just for people listening, if you have gut issues, trying to accomplish a body composition goal with gut issues, very hard. Almost impossible. You've got to solve that first.

1:45:40Sal Di Stefano:What I'm curious too, Sal, is she right on that cusp, right? And what's causing this stuff is she's pushing it. Is that she's, I mean, she's trying.

1:45:49Adam Schafer:I think what happened is, I'm guessing, everybody, I could totally be wrong, but if she had SIBO before and maybe some gut issues before, there might've been a parasite that she did not address, solve the SIBO because parasites can cause SIBO. And as she increased her calories, she only got up to 18 or calories. All the weird symptoms came back. So there may, there's something else that's happening. I could totally be wrong. But nonetheless, like, you know, she should be able to eat 18 or calories without feeling gut issues. That's not tons of calories. No, no, no. She should be able to eat 500 more calories than that.

1:46:25Adam Schafer:Yeah. I feel okay. Yep. Our next caller is Angela from Washington.

1:46:29Sal Di Stefano:How you doing, Angela? Hi. Hi, Angela. Hello. You guys, thanks for taking my call. I've been following you guys for a few years and you've been a tremendous help to me as like professionally and personally. So through you guys have helped a lot of people and I just really appreciate you guys so much. Thank you. How can we help you? Yes. So I'm just going to read my little write up here. I'm going to start with some background information about myself. So in 2021, I changed careers and became a personal trainer, which inspired me to set a goal of getting into an athletic body fat percentage range for women.

1:47:07So between strength training five days a week, eating high protein and intermittent fasting, I went from 25 to 15 % body fat within a year. However, I now believe that in-body machine was probably a little bit off. So it was probably more like 28 to 18%, give or take. So I followed the NASM OPT model of progressive overload, taking myself through all five phases. And I progressed pretty quickly. And then I got to my lowest body fat percentage, but I felt like it was too low. So I upped my calories, averaging about 2 ,500 daily, and hit at least 150 grams of protein every day. But I got stuck at 64 pounds of muscle mass.

1:47:47I'm 46 years old. I weigh 145 and I'm 5 '6". And in April of 2024, I started testosterone. I was actually pretty low. And then I only put on a whopping one pound of muscle before plateauing. So in November of 24, I started HGH and I put on three more pounds of muscle. I've stopped food tracking, but I would guess I'm eating about 2 ,800 calories now. And I only do a 12-hour fasting window. I eat tons of protein. I sleep well. I've cut my workouts back to four days. So a four day split, one day of cardio, and then mobility and core every day. I average about eight hours of sleep and try to manage my stress.

1:48:31And but about stress, I started my own business. I offer Pilates corrective exercise and soft tissue work. So because of that, I've had to scale back my workouts in order to not obliterate my health and wellness. Because that'd be horrible for business. anyways I'm struggling with what my goal should even be right now I've been in this progressive overload mindset for a while and I'm not sure if I've peaked maybe I should just maintain right now which I have no problem with setting other types of goals like mobility goals and things like that but I have to say I do feel a little bit disappointed that this is like the best I ever got.

1:49:09I never deadlifted over 200 pounds and I never got a full body weight pull up. So maybe just have to let those goals go. Um, anyway, right now I'm sitting at about 20 % body fat. So I'm not in that athletic range anymore, but you know, at the same time, I'm grateful to God for my health and also for the privilege of being able to help others in my profession. I am truly a blessed person, but I could use advice about what kind of fitness goals I should be setting what is realistic for where I'm at right now. And then I'd also like recommendations for cycling HGH. I've pretty much just been on it and I've only taken like a week off here or there.

1:49:46And then maybe there's like a peptide I could use instead. It's really important to me to keep the muscle that I've already put on. And I'm also looking for, you know, anti-aging stuff. So that's, those are my kind of my two questions, like what my goal should be. And then what do I do about this HH?

1:50:03Adam Schafer:Yeah, good. Good question. Goal-wise, you're there. You're there. You've arrived. You're good. You've arrived. When did you start your business? My business started in January of 25. Oh, good. Good. How's it going? It's good. It's slow because I'm the only one doing, like I have some other instructors that teach Pilates, but as far as the corrective program and the software work, that's all me and all the advertising, which is almost none, all that other stuff. And the stuff that I'm really not that good at, right? I never actually planned to start a business. Like I was a stay-at-home mom most of my life.

1:50:38Like I had no plans to do this. It's just that when I found this, like I just made me come alive and I love helping people.

1:50:44Sal Di Stefano:Oh, that's so awesome. It was great. Yeah, that's awesome. Brandy was awesome. Did you go through our course? Did you go through our trainer course? I did not. Oh my goodness. I went through, I took several NASM certifications, but like right now I'm not doing the personal training anymore. Yeah, but you're totally different. So what we did was fill the gap that NASM didn't do. NASM does a great job of the, the actually hands-on personal training and coaching aspect. Ours is all about business. Ah, so like right up your alley. That's why, that's why I brought it up. I'm like, you are like the perfect fit for really reaping the benefits of what we do is that we, we looked at the, I mean, we weren't trying to compete with all the great national search out there.

1:51:26Sal Di Stefano:There's tons of great national certifications. What we saw was, man, you know what they do is they educate all these trainers and then they just don't really focus talking about now how do you go build, take all that knowledge and apply it and become very successful as a trainer. And that's where we filled that gap.

1:51:41Adam Schafer:So you love it. Angela, I got to tell you though, you're doing a phenomenal job. And so you're at a place, and this is a place that fitness fanatics or those of us that work in the fitness industry eventually will reach. And I say that because a lot of people struggle with just getting to this place. So typically, typical person, we're chasing goals, fitness goals, strength goals, body fat goals, mobility goals. And this just gets the person to continue to progress and move forward and they have something to aim for. But if they stay consistent long enough, okay, if they do it long enough and they've figured it out, meaning they've figured out like this is something I'm going to do for the rest of my life.

1:52:19Adam Schafer:Well, you can't keep chasing goals forever. if that were the case, I'd be bench pressing 5 ,000 pounds by now. Like at some point, squeezing for more goals isn't giving you more value or return. You're not getting more quality of life value. You're a business owner. You coach and train other people. You obviously look like you work out and you're very fit. So you've gone very far. So the next phase, which is a very difficult one to switch into is to do it because you just enjoy it. You do it because you love it. While you're like, I'm going to get better at this exercise or I'm going to get my deadlift up or, you know, I'm going to practice my pull-ups, but it's not life.

1:52:58Adam Schafer:Your life is your business. Your life is your family. And so how can that compliment what you're doing rather than making that this big goal? And so I know what it's like to build a business. I've owned businesses for years and years. It takes a lot of energy, a lot of mental energy, a lot of hours. You pour your heart into your clients. You're in a similar space. So you put a lot into the people you probably work with. And so I would say your goals, I'm not worried about your consistency. I'm not worried about your diet. You're eating good. You're eating, you're fueling your body, which is great.

1:53:29Adam Schafer:You're not under eating. I would say, have fun with it. What do you enjoy doing? And what that means is like, man, I'm stressed. What's going to make me feel good today? Or I feel like doing something that's different. Or I'm going to go do the thing I love that I love to do all the time, which is this thing. just go and enjoy it and have fun with it uh and i think that's the next phase for you now we can try to chase goals uh i can say hey you know you want to get strong fellow maps power lift and we're going to bump your calories and but and we can do that but i'm just gonna let you know that that's that's running it's uh it's running out in terms of how positive it's affecting you so you're getting kind of this place where you're like what do i do i have a goal for you my goal would be this if i

1:54:14Sal Di Stefano:with you would be, how do I do as little as possible to maintain what I've done? In other words, I love where your calorie intake is. I love where your body fat percentage is. So my thought is what's the least I have to do in the gym, working out and all those things to maintain this healthy fit body that I built.

1:54:35Adam Schafer:You would be surprised at how little you need to do.

1:54:36Sal Di Stefano:And so that's what I would be playing with. And then my training would look like, one way is to say it the way Sal did enjoy is I'm training to optimize my business life and the other priorities I have in my life so whatever else you got going on relationship wise business wise things like that my workouts are to complement that it's like I'm going to train to make sure it's like I'm the sharpest I can at business I'm I'm able to spend time with those that I love like that's what my workouts are to fuel that because I think on the from the calorie body fat percentage aesthetic play strength but you figured you found it you got it like you're in such a good place on all those levels and you've got this amazing business that you're working on building which i know what that takes to build and scale that takes a lot and so i'm looking at my workouts this is how i look at my workouts today because this monster is a big priority to to me and all of us is i'm doing as little as i can in the gym to may be a fit healthy strong dad i'm not chasing trophies anymore and trying to prove I can get down to 3 % body fat or trying to hit chase Sal on deadlift for 500.

1:55:43Sal Di Stefano:Like none of that stuff is a priority right now. Like it's just do it as little as I have to do in there to maintain what I worked so hard to get at while I go focus on other goals in my life that are as important or more important right now. And I feel like you're kind of there.

1:55:56Adam Schafer:What do you have the most fun doing with your workouts? What's the most fun for you? So as you say that, I'm thinking if I'm being honest, I will, you know, head out of here, out of my studio and go to the gym and then think of extra things to do at the gym to avoid coming back to dealing with the details and the running. Like I hate it. And I would I love the gym. Like I have friends. I'm happiest there. So I will gladly find, even if I'm just doing like, you know, I've already finished my workout and I'm just looking for extra little things because I really love it and it makes me really happy.

1:56:32So if, I mean, I don't mind reducing intensity on things, but I actually really like being there.

1:56:38Adam Schafer:Oh, good. Then go there and have fun. And can I give you a little business advice? Yes. So the stuff you hate to do, right? Because this is what entrepreneurship is all about. You do a lot of the stuff you hate to do so you can do the stuff you love. I would find somebody to do that for you. You need to get in our course. You need to get that.

1:56:55Sal Di Stefano:You just need to get it. I don't even know how to delegate things. Like even if I hadn't. Yeah. This is all the stuff we talk about. This is everything we talk about, right? Stuff that we talk about scaling a business. Big unlock. It is. And I can tell just by what you've, you becoming a good trainer, right? Getting fit, getting healthy, getting educated and teaching others is a skill in itself that very few can get to. You've reached that. then being able to take that and scale beyond yourself is another skill set and then to scale that beyond that is another skill set and and they all require different things this is all the stuff that we we talk about in the mentorship and coaching is helping people through whatever phase they're at in business and this is what you you for sure need to get in the course and you need to get a part of the community because it's there's a support coaching there's other coaches that are all trying to build a business like you that are all at different stages and so we've cultivated a community like that of other entrepreneurs that are all helping each other out um you would benefit from that a lot get in there i'll have i'll have i'll have i'll have someone call you and talk to you all about it and get you set up in the meantime angela do you have uh

1:58:07Adam Schafer:because there's programs i know that we have that are beneficial to trainers do you have prime pro and prime and I did anabolic. Um, it was hard. I think it was anabolic. It was a little hard for me to do full body. Okay. Uh, I just love doing splits. Yeah. How many days a week are you in the gym? Well, every day, but like I said, a lot of days I'm just doing, I'm on the foam roller and I'm doing stretches and I'm doing my customized corrective pain. So I do a lot of stuff where I like, I do pay attention if I'm over training. Okay. Can I give you a three day split? Uh, that's not a, not a full body.

1:58:45As long as I can hit legs twice a week, I will do whatever you do.

1:58:48Adam Schafer:Okay, then I'll give you the other split that we have. We have a new program. Yeah, give her up or lower. I'm going to send you maps up or lower, but I'm also going to send you Prime Pro because that's going to be very valuable to you as a trainer. Okay. You like correctional exercise stuff? There's great movements in there that I think you can pull from. Okay. And then I'm going to have somebody call you about just our community of coaches to help you build it. Because seriously, if you find a way to have somebody do the stuff that you hate, and the way I did it as a trainer was I had a client that I would trade.

1:59:14Adam Schafer:that I trusted and be like, cool, I'll train you. All I need to do is do my books for me because I hate doing that. Yeah. And it was like such a, such an unlock, but what, but our, our course has so much coaching in there for that kind of stuff. Okay. Yep. Okay. Yeah. And then tips on the HGH. Oh yeah. I'm so afraid to let go of it because not only did it give me that three pounds of extra muscle, but I noticed, I felt like I healed faster. I looked better overall. I'm afraid to go off this little fountain of youth, but I know you shouldn't stay on it forever. Yeah. Well, no, you don't have to go off.

1:59:49Adam Schafer:You don't have to go off HCH. Love HCH. No people. Yeah. You know, look again, I'm going to disclaimer. We're not doctors, but we interview doctors. No, if you're on hormone therapy, you don't, you don't need to go off. You just stay on it. Uh, with HGH, I'm on the lowest amount. With HGH, the lowest that you can get away with is better because higher starts to produce symptoms and, and all that stuff. And so if you're on the lowest dose and you're working with a doctor, you just stay on it.

2:00:16Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yeah. And it's better than the peptides that are like the precursors to that. So if you have a direct line to HGH, you have the best already. Okay. Yeah. Because I did start taking the NAD also. NAD is different. And NAD is fine. If you feel energy from it, go for it. The biggest difference I notice on NAD is actually when I'm down. I notice a difference when I'm like, when I just came off of being really sick or something. Then I really feel NAD. Otherwise, I don't feel NAD as much. Okay. Okay. And for the HGH, people generally do cycling and stuff like that.

2:00:52Adam Schafer:Bodybuilders do, but that's not for longevity.

2:00:55Sal Di Stefano:Longevity, you can stay on it forever.

2:00:56Adam Schafer:Yeah. So typically, it's like you take whatever your dose is. You take it daily. You might take a day or two off a week, depending on what your doctor tells you. But you just stay on it.

2:01:05Sal Di Stefano:Okay. Okay.

2:01:06Adam Schafer:Yep. Are you getting it from a doctor? Yeah. Okay, good. I'm like, wait a minute. I need to ask questions. She got someone telling her to cycle this. So who's giving it to her? It's probably some bodybuilder. Thanks, Angela. Well, I do have bodybuilder friends that give me advice. So. Yeah. They're going to give you bodybuilder advice. Just be careful. Yeah. Take that. Take that salt.

2:01:26Sal Di Stefano:Thank you. All right, Angela. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you. Bye-bye. Take care.

2:01:32Adam Schafer:Yeah. She's doing great, dude. But the whole chasing goals thing at some point, it's like, you can't. Yeah.

2:01:37Sal Di Stefano:Did she tell us her age? I don't know.

2:01:39Adam Schafer:46 or 47. She looks incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She looks incredible. Yeah, she's doing great. But, you know, it's like, I've got a new goal, but I also have a business. But I'm also – and it's like, whoa.

2:01:49Sal Di Stefano:Well, you know what I heard? We didn't dig into it, but I heard the stress of the business and the exercise of distraction from the stuff that – and business can be that way. You know what I'm saying? For sure. And you could tell she's actually – I mean, her branding looks beautiful. I mean, you just tell – like, I could see all her certifications. Like, she's put a lot of effort into getting to where she's at now and then trying to break through this next level. Very hard. Very hard. It can be very stressful. And when you love exercise, it can become a nice distraction from the things that we need to do.

2:02:20Sal Di Stefano:But if you want to be successful in business, you got to face that. You got to face it.

2:02:24Adam Schafer:Look, if you like Mind Pump, come find us on Instagram. It's 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 mindpumpmedia.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.

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