2920: How Women Over 30 Can Lose Fat and Build the Body They Actually Want

16:52Adam Schafer:So to put it differently or to put it plainly, if you're listening right now and you're trying to build the body you want, you're trying to get leaner, you want to look fit, here's your goal. Build muscle and get stronger. That's your goal. It will leverage things in a direction that makes it a lot easier. It will boost your metabolic rate. It'll make getting leaner easier. meaning you can eat more food and maintain a leaner body and you look great. And here's the best part. You feel great. Ladies, muscle feels really good on your body. You move better. Your joints feel better. You've got more energy.

17:29Adam Schafer:The testosterone that you currently have becomes more potent because of the androgen receptor density. So your libido goes up. You've got more drive. This is the strategy. And I'm going to tell you right now, if you're listening, you're like, I'm kind of scared. What you're doing isn't working. why not try something totally different yeah i mean you're setting yourself up for sustainability for the longevity through this whole process i think too of course you know not everybody's going to think really long term about you know fitness and training that uh you know into their 80s but what this is setting you you up for is you know you're you're avoiding osteoporosis you're you're setting yourself up for abilities uh later on in life that you're going to benefit from oh Gosh, I'll tell you what.

18:12Adam Schafer:Listen, we managed gyms for years. I'm going to say something. I know you guys know exactly what I'm talking about. The women in the gyms that I managed in their 60s that were cardio fanatics versus the women in their 60s that were strength training fanatics. They were completely different. The difference in the way they looked was radical. Radical. I mean, the lifting fanatics looked younger, had better skin. You can look this up. Strength training stimulates muscle protein synthesis, but it also stimulates whole body protein synthesis. They look different. They felt different. They have better hormones.

18:45Adam Schafer:I mean, both groups were better than people who did nothing. But the strength training, oh boy, did it make a big difference.

18:51Sal Di Stefano:Okay, so you're listening. You've completely sold me on this is the path. What are the actionable steps that I take in the most simple, basic way? Like, what do I do?

19:04Adam Schafer:Number one, you got to feed the gains. and I use the word gains on purpose because that's a scary word, but you need to feed the muscle. We're trying to add active calorie burning tissue to the body and you can't do that if you're eating too little, okay? So this isn't gonna work if you're eating almost nothing every single day. You need to eat your target body weight in protein, in grams of protein, make sure you eat whole natural foods and feed yourself in a way to, what it looks like essentially is this, I'm gonna eat when I'm hungry, not overeat i'm sticking to whole natural foods i'm not trying to under eat and i'm gonna feed the gains i'm gonna feed the muscle gains and and this is i said this is number one because it's the hardest part because i can convince uh people in this category i can convince women in this category to lift weights far easier than i can to get them to feed yeah yeah uh that's the

19:56Sal Di Stefano:harder it sounds counterproductive when i'm hung up on i need to go down that's right when it when when i've come to you and i've hired you and i said sal i'm uncomfortable where i'm at i I don't like this weight. I want to lose 30 or 40 pounds, whatever the number is. And then you did your spiel you just did for the last 10 minutes to me. And I'm like, okay, I'm bought in. I need to get strong. I need to build muscle. What's step one? And you're like, feed the gains. And I'm like, okay, you lost me again. No way. Like, I told you how you heard me. I want to go down again. And then I feel like this is the part where we're having to circle that way.

20:30Adam Schafer:If you feed the gains with garbage food, heavily processed food, junk food, yes, you're going to gain tons of body fat. If you feed the gains with whole natural foods and you hit your target body weight and grams of protein, not only will you be fine, but you will get body composition changed through this process, meaning you'll get leaner as you build muscle.

20:47Sal Di Stefano:And this is a necessary evil because we can lift all the weights we want, but if we live in a caloric deficit and we don't feed the body what it needs to build muscle, you won't build muscle. So you can have the best strength training program, have the best trainer in the world taking you through it, but if you don't fuel the body properly, you don't give it enough calories and you're always under on calories, you're not gonna build muscle.

21:11Adam Schafer:Some of the best results I ever got with my female clients were the female clients that they hired me, I trained them, we're doing the strength training, they're really resistant when it comes to the diet, really resistant with nutrition, really resistant, restricting. God, I don't wanna eat more. Finally, I convinced them, go up 500 calories. Go up 500 calories and watch what happens and within weeks, they're blown away by how they feel. Within months, they look in the mirror and they're like, this is wild. I'm eating more food and I'm leaner. I'm like, yeah, you built muscle. So you need to feed the gains.

21:43Adam Schafer:But again, you will not eat so much food that you gain a bunch of body fat so long as you stick to whole natural foods. Whole natural foods produce a natural satiety that will match what your body generally needs. When you eat a lot of heavily processed foods, junk food, fast food, candy, then yes, you will totally overeat and gain a bunch of body fat, but that's because those foods are designed to make you overeat. So your body's systems of satiety are totally thrown off with those things. But if it's whole natural foods, feed the gains. The next thing is this. Your goal is strength. Your goal is strength.

22:15Adam Schafer:Your goal is not to look different in the mirror. Your goal is not to get leaner. Your goal isn't anything else. It's to get stronger. Now, here's what's crazy about what I'm saying. If you get stronger, you're sticking to whole natural foods and you consistently get stronger. All the stuff that you're looking for, the changes in the way you look, body composition shape sculpt follows it all follows more efficiently as well that's right

22:36Sal Di Stefano:it follows it consistently now would you say um to even simplify that to focus on a handful of lifts to that you want to get stronger yes versus just kind of like trying to do all the

22:46Adam Schafer:things and say yes and here's why so it's okay it's great okay it's great to get stronger at you know hip abduction or a lateral raise or a tricep press down nothing wrong with that getting stronger is always awesome, but getting stronger at certain exercises just means a lot more. It means a lot more in terms of metabolic rate, muscle gain, return on investment. Okay. So getting stronger, for example, at a barbell squat means a lot more than getting stronger at a leg extension. For example, both work the legs. One of them is working a lot more than just the quads, the hamstrings, the glutes, more muscles involved, more of a loud signal.

23:23Yes.

23:24Adam Schafer:And so the typical exercises that really mean the most, and there's a few of these, but the ones that really mean a lot that you get stronger at are things like deadlifts, bench press, squats, overhead presses, rows. You get stronger at those lifts, it means a lot in terms of the visible results that you're looking for. Here's the last one, and this is where it gets crazy. I don't want you to do any cardio. All right? I don't want you to do any cardio. Now, look, this is contentious.

23:52Sal Di Stefano:We get so much pushback.

23:53Adam Schafer:Now, here's the deal. There's nothing wrong with cardio per se. If you want endurance and stamina, this is the way you should exercise. But here's the deal. When we're dealing with adding stress to the body, and we're also dealing with a lifestyle where I've already got lots of compounding stress, I'm going to leave the stress when it comes to exercise to the thing that's moving the needle the most. If we're going to add stress to the body, I'm going to focus on the thing that's going to change the way I look the fastest, which is the strength training. so I don't want to add additional stress from cardio now again if your if your goals are athletic you want stamina you want endurance nothing wrong with it but you got to understand when you add more stress from intense cardio you got to take away from the strength frame you can't just throw stuff on top of stuff because then nothing happens well this is a best uses case it's the the best use for cardio it's a tool at the end of the day is to increase endurance and stamina capacity.

24:46So in that regard, like cardio is amazing for that. And I know people enjoy doing it. So there's nothing wrong with that. However, if we're talking about fat loss and body composition changes, there's a, another tool that's way better than that. And that's strength training. That's right.

24:59Sal Di Stefano:And then we, we also like eventually, like if I had a client that's telling me like, I want to do it or I love to do it, I'd like to do it, which first of all, I would always challenge that too. Like, do you really love doing it? Or is it because again, you've attached that to some sort of like result that you've had before we can use that as a tool later on like it's like okay don't worry that's that's a it can be something that we use in the future but initially right now when we're trying to build the metabolism sculpt the body build muscle and manage stress yeah and manage stress and like right now off this is not the ideal tool for this situation let's use the ideal tool for this situation let's build that metabolism let's drop some body fat.

25:39Sal Di Stefano:Let's get to a place where we have some consistency. We've built some strength and then maybe later on we can start to add that into your routine and you've got this beautiful balance.

25:47Adam Schafer:Yeah. And so again, a lot of this has to do with managing stress on the body. And so when we're adding stress with exercise, I want to be judicious with what exercise I pick. And if the goal is body composition change, then I'm going to place that in the strength training bucket and I'm not going to use cardio. Now here's the deal. Does that mean we want you to be sedator? does that mean you lift weights three days a week and then the rest of the week you do nothing? No. Daily activity is very good for you. It's going to enhance and accelerate these results. We just don't want daily activity that adds to stress.

26:20Adam Schafer:In fact, I would love you to move in a way that's recuperative and rejuvenating and you know what the best form of movement for that is? Walking. Walking. So here's what you're going to do. On every other day you lift weights and then in terms of daily activity try to hit 8 ,000 to 10 ,000 steps a day, which is really no small fee. If you have a desk job, it actually requires you to kind of get up and move quite a bit, but 8 ,000 to 10 ,000 steps day in and day out is a great way to get that extra activity. Combine that with the strength training and you're totally crushing. This reminds me, there's so many client examples I have of this, but my favorite client examples are not women who hired me.

27:00Adam Schafer:I love training all the people that I trained. But the ones that stand out were the ones that were already working out, were already doing everything they thought they were doing right. And then they hired me. And they came to me because they were frustrated. There was one woman I can remember specifically who was running like crazy and strength training. So she was lifting weights four or five days a week, plus she was running about 25 miles a week. Okay. So those two things, plus her calories were in the sub 2000s. The fact that she was able to survive on that is pretty remarkable, but that's what she did.

27:31Adam Schafer:And I remember she hired me because her body fat percentage was stuck in the mid 20s. And she's like, you know, I'm running like crazy. I lift weights all the time. How is it that I'm like at 24 or 25 %? But shouldn't I be like 19 % body fat? She's like, what do I need to do? Do I need to do more working out? Do I need to cut my calories even more? And I'm like, listen, if you cut your calories more, you're going to lose weight, but it's going to be muscle. Your body fat percentage will go up. And if you try to work out more, you're going to overtrain yourself more. And at some point you're going to hit a wall and your hormones are going to crash.

28:00Adam Schafer:and it's gonna be terrible. And she was already telling me, I'm feeling fatigued. I'm already feeling fatigued. I'm feeling burned out. What do I gotta do? So we cut her running way down. Initially, I went from, was it 20 to 25 miles a week all the way down to five because I couldn't cut it all the way out. She was attached to it. So I cut it down to five. Cut her strength training down to two days a week. And I took her calories up by 400 calories. Anyway, over the course of eight months, this woman went to zero running, just walking because she realized she didn't really love running as much as she thought she did.

28:28Adam Schafer:I think she was doing it because she thought it was keeping the weight off. So she cut that out, started hiking and walking. She was still pretty active. Strength training with me between two days a week, one day a week on her own, so three days a week total. Her calories got all the way up to almost 3 ,000 calories a day, and she was walking around at 18 % body fat. And she was just remark on how easy it felt. She was like, this is the weirdest thing. I always thought I had this crazy slow metabolism. I always thought that I was just destined to never get as lean as I thought I should be. she's like this feels genuinely easy it's like we shifted things in a direction to make it easier

29:01Sal Di Stefano:well my i mean my one of my favorite stories to share is katrina um and not just because she's my wife it's also one of the last people that i really helped like this i mean i was on my way out we were already uh in the mind pump and and doing that uh when our building towards this when uh we i finally started to help her we'd already been dating for years at that time three five years we'd been together and she just, she had her own thing. She was always an athlete. So her way of maintaining in shape was she'd allow herself to ebb and flow between 10 to 15 pounds. When she started to push up that 15 extra pounds that she didn't like, she kicked up her running like crazy.

29:41Sal Di Stefano:She, every time she lifted weights, it was plyometric style from the way she trained, like as an athlete. And so her approach towards weightlifting was high intensity, low rest period, circuit type training and lots of running and she'd shed those 15 to 20 pounds whatever it was and i watched her do that through you know years of being together never said anything to her because well i'm not going to tell her what to do you know it's like if that's how you like getting in and out of shape and she had watched me enough times you know control my my body composition and never do any cardio and obviously when i started to get ready uh to compete was when she saw it at an extreme level and she finally looked at me and said okay i'll throw my hands up you take control and i was like okay sorry cut out cardio completely reduce the amount of strength training she does reduce the intensity she does and increased rest periods and increased food and at the end of this the she had the best body she's ever had doing zero cardio eating seven eight hundred more calories than she's ever eaten before and not only that she said we saw all kinds of health maker i don't i talk this that much on the podcast about this but you know she had she had stuff with like acne that always bothered her that riddled her she had all kind of she saw her hormones she saw her skin get better she saw all this other stuff get better uh her hair nails all kinds of things that improved in addition to and i remember her afterwards being like i can't believe i've gone this long that's right and had no idea how much easier it was and she was the same way too where i love to run you should say i used to love to run but it's like again attached to the result of that she used to know that if i trained really hard like this and ran like really crazy i could shed these 15 pounds and that had proven to work for her for so many times that she and then she attached i like until she tried the right way until she tried the right way and realized oh my god this is way more fun to be able to lift weights half as intense as far as the amount of uh you know her circuit type training that she was doing, no running whatsoever and being able to eat more food.

31:46Sal Di Stefano:And then also be able to say, I have the best body I've ever had. Like that was such a cool thing to watch.

31:52Adam Schafer:So here's what we have. So there's, there, we're having a buy one, get one free with maps programs right now. And this is the best combo for what we're talking about right now. So if you're listening to this, you're like, I want to do that. I want to build a muscle. I want to boost my metabolic rate. I want to do it the right way. Here's the combination. We have a program called Muscle Mommy. You do that first, about three months long. Then you follow it up with MAPS Power Lift, which is literally about getting strong with your squat, your deadlift, and your bench, which is another three months.

32:20Adam Schafer:So this is a six-month course with both programs. It's buy one, get one free. By the way, the buy one, get one free applies to our top 10 most popular programs, which includes MAPS Anabolic, Aesthetic, Performance, 15 Minutes Anywhere, Symmetry Starter, Muscle Mommy Power Lift, and 40+. So if you're interested, go to mapsbogo.com. Also, you can find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you then. 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.

32:58The 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. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family.

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