2945: How to Actually Build Your Glutes: The Exact Diet and Training Blueprint

18:14Adam Schafer:You got to close that gap first.

18:16Sal Di Stefano:I got to close that gap and push that client more. Then you have the other client who's like, cool, I'm on a calorie surplus. You're giving me the green light to eat more calories. And they're more likely to overeat. or they're the ones that go at nighttime and they snack on more foods or high calorie foods. And instead of just adding it about 250 calories, they'll push 700 to 1 ,000 calories more because they're being told they're bulk. And so that person I'm telling to pull back a little bit and be more modest. So you have to really have that self-awareness.

18:42Adam Schafer:And the order makes a big difference. Build first and then reveal. Don't do it the other way around. Building helps you reveal easier, okay? So we boost metabolic rate, makes fat loss easier later on. Now, trying to cut first and build later is a backwards order and makes things much more difficult. Another key to all of this is to hit what's considered optimal protein intake. Okay, so you'll get a number from the RDA, which is, you know, how much protein you should have every day to not be in a dangerous place with low protein. That's what the RDA would tell you. Optimal protein is way higher than that.

19:17Adam Schafer:We have a lot of data to support this. Now, what is optimal protein for muscle building? about one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Okay, if you're 150 pound female, or if that's your goal body weight, aim for 150 grams of protein a day. By the way, there's lots of data that shows just how great this is. In fact, there was this American Journal of Clinical Nutrition did a study where they took trained people and they put them in a calorie deficit. Okay, so everyone in a calorie deficit. One group went lower protein. The other group went higher protein. They both strength trained. Want to know what the difference was in terms of fat loss and muscle gain?

19:50Adam Schafer:the higher protein group gained muscle and lost fat. The low protein group lost fat and lost a little bit of muscle. That's how big of a difference high protein makes. So don't skip out on that and be consistent on a daily basis with that. So here's the order that you'll kind of want to consider here. Protein first. So make your meals protein centric. Remember one gram of protein per pound of target body weight. Carbs, you need those to fuel your training. You need them for strength, for power, and they are involved in some recovery. So you need those carbohydrates. Then you want the fats to round out your calories and protect your hormones.

20:25Adam Schafer:If your fats are too low, ladies and gentlemen, it's true for both, your hormones will tank and you will not have the anabolic hormones or the healthy hormone profile that you need to build muscle and burn body fat. You want to build in a modest surplus while you train heavy. So for most people, it's between three to 500 calories above what's considered their maintenance calories. That's considered modest when you're doing good strength training with it. And then when you're ready, after you've built some muscle and everything looks good, you reveal with a patient cut. Don't go crash cut. Don't do a crash diet.

20:59Adam Schafer:Go again, 300 or 500 below maintenance now, modest, and then watch what happens. So what it looks like is build, feed, and reveal. So here's an example. Now, this is not exact. If you want something that's a little bit more detailed, you can go to mapsmacro.com and you'll enter some information in there and it'll kind of spit it out for you. But here's what it generally looks like for most people. About a gram of protein per pound of target body weight. Your fat intake is typically around 0.4 grams per pound. And make sure you have carbohydrates around your training for at least, right? Have your carbohydrates before and after.

21:37Adam Schafer:That doesn't mean you don't have carbs on the other meals. I think it's a good idea to have it on the other meals, but definitely surround your workouts with carbohydrates. You want to build your plate. You don't want to have these like rigid meal plans. But essentially what you're doing is you're picking a protein, you're picking a carb, you're eating the vegetables, add a little bit of fat if your protein is lean. Otherwise, go with a fatty cut of meat. This is my favorite way to get fats. So I'd have to try to add fats. Like rather than eating a chicken breast, I'm going with thighs. I'm eating ground beef.

22:07Adam Schafer:And then you're kind of set. All right, fellas, let's talk about protein, good choices of protein. I'll name a couple of my favorites. I love 90 % ground beef, and I love chicken thighs. Those two are kind of staples for me.

22:20Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, I like chicken thighs over breasts. A lot of people are going to go the chicken breast route because it's so lean and low calories. I push my clients, especially my clients that want to build their butt, to chicken thighs. I love things like filet mignon. I'll even throw ribeye in there. Yes. These fattier cuts. Instead of eating something lean like chicken breasts or turkey or white fishes and adding oils or adding butters, I'd much rather have a meat that's a fattier cut, like I said, like the ribeye, like the ground beef. Way more enjoyable that way. Yeah, I love doing that, especially like a tri-tip or add something with a little more fat to it.

22:55And then also like for in the morning, have to get those eggs in there and then scramble it with my steak.

23:01Adam Schafer:Yeah, whole eggs. Don't take the yolk out. By the way, they did a study. I'll just mention this study on whole eggs versus egg whites. They controlled for the protein, same amount of protein. but whole eggs had significantly higher effect on muscle protein synthesis. This is how they measure muscle growth. There are nutrients in the yolks that make your body want to build muscle. So eat whole eggs.

23:23Sal Di Stefano:Well, and speaking of nutrients, I'm going to choose things. If I am going to eat like a fish, I'm going to choose fish like salmon, right? So again, people tend like the chicken breast thing. They go to this low calorie thing. People when they do fish, they go white fish and low calorie type fish. You get way more nutrient benefits, it's getting a cut like salmon. And so I'm going to choose a fattier, higher calorie, but better for you type of fish.

23:45Adam Schafer:And then kind of easy protein, right? Just real fast. Like cottage cheese, real easy, high protein. Greek yogurt. Greek yogurt. They now have those protein Greek yogurts. So like the little cup for like 20 grams of protein. I love those.

23:56Sal Di Stefano:Really, really easy, high quality protein. And if you're plant-based and things like tofu or getting a vegan protein powder, totally makes sense. And even whey proteins, if you're somebody who doesn't, that's not lactose intolerant, can handle whey protein and bars. Those things are okay. The goal is, and you notice that that wasn't one of our top lists. I'm going to push my client to get everything they can through all foods. But I also understand that it is really difficult sometimes for a client to hit those grams of protein consistently. And it's important we do it consistently every day. That's where we start to add in those shakes or bars to make sure we do that.

24:30Adam Schafer:All right, let's talk about carbohydrates. I'll mention, in my opinion, the best, most versatile, easiest to date. King of carbohydrates, rice. Yes. White rice, by the way. White rice. White rice. So here's the deal. People think brown rice is better than white rice. It's actually not true. White rice is easier to digest. Brown rice contains something called anti-nutrients that actually reduce the absorption of certain nutrients. There really isn't that much more fiber in brown rice to make a difference. It doesn't taste as good. Just go with white rice.

24:58Sal Di Stefano:I'm going to do one that a lot of people think is bad for some weird reason that is a great one, which is white potatoes.

25:03Adam Schafer:Love potatoes.

25:04Sal Di Stefano:Regular old baked potatoes. Yes. are great. And I don't know if it's kind of bad rap because people put sour cream and cheese and bacon bits on it. And so people don't think of it, but a regular old baked potato, white potatoes, yellow potatoes, all those are, those are all great. Red potatoes is a great source of carbohydrates, stores well, mixes with all different meats and things really easy. And so I'm a big fan of potatoes.

25:30Adam Schafer:And you have things like fruit, all fruit, good sources of good, healthy carbohydrates. I love berries. I love berries because berries are high in fiber naturally. In fact, eating berries in the morning with your protein, it sets you up for really, really good blood sugar control later on in satiety because you have your proteins, your fats, and your fibers. Those three in that order have the best effect on satiety.

25:54Sal Di Stefano:Also huge fan of sweet potato. Sweet potato is one of the few things I can eat straight with nothing on it. It has such good flavor to it. Makes my digestion so good. They taste good. They're easy. Again, mix with all types of meats they go well with. And so, real easy to cook. You can prep them big and mash them up and make them like a mashed potato. You can cook them in the oven like bake. You can slice them and make them in like slice almost like a scallop potato or whatever like that. I've made them all different ways and they go with all different meats.

26:23Adam Schafer:Alright, let's talk about fats. Here's the thing about fats. Rarely have I ever had to have a client add fat to their diet unless they were so afraid of fat that they went super lean with everything. So typically fats you don't need to add if you're eating fatty cuts of meat and fish. That being said, if you're finding yourself struggling with hitting or getting enough fat, avocados are great. Olive oil is great. Butter is perfectly fine. Dairy fat is perfectly fine. But again, one of my favorite that's easy is an avocado. Avocado is also very high in fiber.

26:56Sal Di Stefano:I've always just coached my clients to cook with olive oil, ghee, and butter. I mean, if you are cooking your meats and you're using those as your base, you're probably getting plenty of healthy fats, especially if you're not eating all extremely lean cuts. if you're enjoying your cuts of meat and you're cooking in those sources, avocado oil, olive oil, ghee, or butter, and you pretty much take care of your fats by just preparing it in those things, you're all set. All right.

27:27Adam Schafer:So you follow this. You listen to our advice. What should you expect? Let's say that. What should you expect? Well, here's what you should expect. The scale will climb slowly. Okay. You are building. So you may go up a little bit of weight, duh, we're adding muscle, but the mirror starts to get better. Things start to feel firmer. By the way, your friends or your spouse or your boyfriend will probably comment, you look leaner, even though you're heavier. There's a good sign that you're building muscle. You want to judge your progress by things like the tape measure or body fat tests. But my favorite way to judge progress is how strong you are.

28:03Adam Schafer:Are you getting stronger? If you're getting a lot stronger, you're definitely building muscle. That matters.

28:07Sal Di Stefano:Well, especially on those lifts that build the butt. I want to see that hip thrust. I want to see that squat go up. Those movements are going up and we're in a calorie surplus. We're building the butt. I do want to add something to the scale thing that can be deceiving and throw people off because you made the point that it should be like this slow kind of gradual. Initially, when you take somebody who hovers around a maintenance or a deficit all the time that's afraid to reverse diet or bulk and they bulk for the first time, I made the point earlier. Sometimes there is an initial three to five quick pounds that come on that's a water weight.

28:38Sal Di Stefano:It's water and glycogen. That's right. And, and, and, and stay the course. Cause what, and when you know, it's that what will happen is you'll see the quick rise three to five, and then it'll just stay there. It'll stay there for a while and hover. And you might, then you might see kind of ping pong back and forth one pound up or down, but that's really common. And a lot of times people course correct way too early because they see that jump right away. And, and that jump in the mirror sometimes too, it can make you look fuller or feel clothes a little bit tighter and clients would freak out. and I'd have to break it down.

29:06Sal Di Stefano:Look at, mathematically, it is impossible that we put three pounds of fat on. You did not add 150 to 200 calories a day into your diet and we put three pounds of fat on last week. All that's happening right now is your body is holding some more water and don't worry, you're gonna level off right there.

29:23Adam Schafer:Yeah, 100%. And remember, building muscle is kind of a slow process. So give it months, not weeks, definitely not days. Give it at least a couple months, two to three months. That's how long it should take. for you to be able to see if you're doing things right, some good, genuine muscle being built.

29:39Sal Di Stefano:Well, you say this really well in the podcast a lot. Increase calories, then follows strength, then follows muscle. So that's the order and that's what it looks like. Give it time.

29:49Adam Schafer:All right. So I have some common questions that I think we should answer that I guarantee people are thinking right now. So the first one, common, won't eating more make me fat? We covered this earlier. It depends how much more you're eating and are you strength training? If you're doing it right with a modest surplus and you're heavy lifting and it's high protein, the odds are you're going to be gaining mostly muscle.

30:10Sal Di Stefano:It is crazy how difficult it is. If you're eating all whole foods and you are strength training and lifting heavy weight consistently and hitting your protein and take consistently, it is very difficult to put a bunch of body fat on. It really is. Body fat comes on when people eat way out of bounds and they're not doing anything. That's right. If you're creating an environment for strength uh we're fueling that strength so therefore it's going towards muscle that's exactly how you have to look at it is like when you especially when you're pushing the weight that's going to be a novel stimulus that is going to send a loud signal to the body that oh my god we need more muscle so all those additional calories get partitioned over to building muscle unless you eat and overeating a sloppy amount of calories that yeah some of and by the way even some of those get partitioned over building muscle but you ate so sloppy and over that some of that also goes to the bottom fat.

31:04Sal Di Stefano:But that is what it takes to do that. And it's very difficult to do that, hitting protein intake and eating it through whole foods.

31:11Adam Schafer:Yeah. Another question people have is like, do I need to count my macros forever? No, please don't. Don't count your macros forever. Now, if you have a specific goal, it's a good idea to count. So you're making sure you hit your calories and your protein. But eventually the goal is to not count. You have a relaxed relationship with food and with exercise where it's just consistent, you eat healthy because you love it. And you have a couple rules that you set for yourself, like no heavily processed foods or no junk food or something like that, a rare junk food. Hopefully at this point, you're pretty aware of what works well with your body and then you can navigate appropriately.

31:42Sal Di Stefano:Well, one of the rules that we give or coach to people like this, that we don't actually want to track food like that is to just track protein. That's the only thing. Follow protein and eat whole foods and then actually feed when you're hungry. Because a lot of times if you are eating whole foods you're leading your meals with protein and you're hitting your protein intake and your appetite is increasing and you're hungry that's a signal that your body's trying to build muscle and we want to feed that and so long as you make the choices of whole foods and eating protein first you'll be okay and you'll end up being just where you need to be calorie wise and so we've had a lot of clients that actually don't even track calories and they all they kind of pay attention to is protein and they follow those signals and have plenty of success reverse dieting

32:22Adam Schafer:Yes. Another question people are like, do I need to go like in a straight up surplus or can I try to do something called a recomp where I'm losing fat and building muscle at the same time? I'm going to say this right now. Trying to lose fat and build muscle at the same time is very difficult, almost impossible unless you're a beginner and it's a completely new stimulus. You rarely ever see this happen on a consistent basis. In fact, the only times I've seen this happen with people who have some experience is when people are in a good surplus. This is sometimes when you'll see that happen. But don't try chasing the perfect calorie number so that you do two things simultaneously because that'll just keep you from progressing in any direction.

32:57Sal Di Stefano:I'm not a fan of this because the person who tends to ask this question, going back earlier when I said there's kind of two avatars. They're trying to stay lean. They're trying to stay lean. They're so afraid of putting any sort of weight on that they're like, can I just do a recomp where I'm just barely? And so a lot of times that's the client I was talking about earlier where I've got to push them to, hey, you need to eat 500 more calories. When in reality, I know what the research says. I know what you don't need 500 more calories of a surplus every day to end up building muscle. But the client who thinks that they're eating at maintenance many times is eating in a deficit because they're scared to death to put weight on.

33:28Sal Di Stefano:And normally that's the same person who's afraid to do a bulk or a reverse diet. They'd rather do a recom where they don't put on any weight on the scale. Very difficult to do.

33:37Adam Schafer:Yeah. And then another question is, what about the anabolic window? right? Aren't I supposed to eat at particular times or whatever? Overrated. This is splitting hairs. Just hit your macros, hit your calories, make sure you eat multiple meals a day. Doing it all in one meal makes things very, very difficult. Strength train properly, get stronger and watch what happens to your body. By the way, you know, we were trainers for years. We've had the podcast now for over a decade and we have live callers that call in all the time. And lots of our live callers are asking about stuff like this. And what's cool is we meet with them, we give them advice and then we invite them back on in the show in 30 days or 60 days or 90 days.

34:13Adam Schafer:And it's amazing because first off, it always works. But what I love about it is it always shocks people. They'll come back on and be like, okay. I'm thinking of one woman in particular. She's like, I didn't believe you guys, but I listened to the show. I trust you. So I did what you said and I cannot believe how good I feel. I can't believe how much muscle I've built, how fast my metabolism is. And I didn't even gain a bunch of body fat, even though I was eating way more food. In fact, it's crazy i'm eating all this food and i'm maintaining a lean body fat percentage this

34:42Sal Di Stefano:really does work oh my the callers we get all the time that i love to talk to which are the ones that were so afraid to to do a bulk like this and then they follow the diet they follow the plan and we warn them you know hey it's very normal you're gonna put weight on the scale you might see this we might see body fat go up a little bit the goal is to build muscle right now don't worry we'll get lean and they come back and they got leaner ate more and built and built muscle which is so cool. And they're so blown away that they're, oh my God, I'm eating more than I've ever ate before and I'm leaning out at the same time.

35:16Sal Di Stefano:And it's wild when it happens, but if you trust the process, you'll see this too.

35:19Adam Schafer:That's right. So here's what we have. We have a program called MAPS Abs and Butt. So it's a workout program designed to target those two areas. So it's targeting the core, abs, obliques. It's also targeting the butt, the glutes. Now you do train the whole body, but 90 % of the program is dedicated to butt and abs. So that's what this program is all about. And because it's a brand new program, we're making it 40 % off. And then what we also did is this, we included a butt building diet guide. So it would help you with the reverse diet or bulk part that we're talking about. We also have a supplement guide for women in there.

35:52Adam Schafer:So supplements that women tend to get better results from versus men. So these are specific for women. And what we're doing was we're throwing in an additional workout program. So two of our most popular workout programs, Muscle Mommy 15 and Muscle Mommy. You get one of those, either one of those, your pick for free when you sign up for MAPS Abs and Butt. So it's mapsabsandbutt.com. The code is LAUNCH. That gets you 40 % off and all of the free stuff. 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.

36:33The 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.

37:19We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.

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