2950: How to Lose Belly Fat (Why Eating Less Isn't Working)

0:00Hi, I'm Katie Duke, and I've been a nurse for over 20 years. Listen, I used to think that I was my most stylish in my 20s, but honestly, style and confidence only get better with age. And that is why I love figs. These scrubs are beautiful, comfortable, and they are built to last. They're not those boxy, scratchy uniforms that we all started out in. No, no, no. These fit perfectly. They feel amazing, and the quality is just wow! Wow! My favorite color? Burgundy. It's chic, it's timeless, and it's even the same color as my apartment, because I'm kind of obsessed with it. And I love adding custom embroidery to make my scrubs as personal as my style.

0:41And since I work in telehealth, my embroidered figs even double as my ID badge. It's never too late to reinvent yourself or your scrubs. Get 15 % off your first order at wearfigs.com with the code FIGSRX. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX for 15 % off your first order. Hey, Chicagoland, the Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Finally, you can feel the fabric, sit on the sectionals, and even open the refrigerators. Plus, our in-store designers will help you bring it all together with free one-on-one design support for any project on any budget. Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe?

1:20So what are you waiting for. Come see all that's in store. Visit the Wayfair store today at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Wayfair, every style, every home. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump with your hosts Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just stumbled into the most downloaded health, fitness, and entertainment podcast in the history of the world. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, We talk about how to lose belly fat and why eating less isn't working. By the way, we have a new program, MAPS, Abs, and Butt. Now, it is a full-body workout program, but the emphasis is on giving you incredible abs and a nice round butt.

2:06The program is 40 % off, plus we're going to throw in another free program if you get it, Muscle Mommy 15 or Muscle Mommy, and we're going to throw in some free guides, the Butt Building Diet Guide, so you know how to fuel those muscle gains, speed up that metabolism. and a women's supplement guide. Go to mapsabsandbutt.com. Use the code LAUNCH for 40 % off. Here's something that's crazy. This number should stop you in your tracks. They did a controlled study. Cutting sleep to four hours a night for two weeks, raised belly fat by 9 % and the deep visceral fat around the organs by 11%. Look, for a lot of women, belly fat is not a calorie problem.

2:48And here's what we're gonna do. We're going to break it all down for you right now. It's super frustrating. What's going on? Why isn't anything happening? And this is unfortunately more common than you would think. Again, we have callers like this all the time. And when they call in, they're desperate because they don't know what lever to pull. I think this is so common. And I think there's two groups that get split that this happens to. Group one, who's been doing that, who's just frustrated and trying and ready to give up because it is just so much. They're so low calorie. And then we have the other group, which we call cortisol junkies, where are fooled into thinking that this is working or it's a good idea.

3:29Even though they're not seeing the results from it, they get this feeling of euphoria or this cortisol spike after their workout, and it feels good. And so trying to convince that person that this approach is not a good strategy, and it's the reason why you haven't reached your goals. and so I find that there's two different um clients that I'm speaking to that are stuck in this this spot either the one that is ready to give up because they've been doing this for a long time no results or two the one has been doing it for a while but is addicted to the feeling they get because they get this this huge quarter of a cortisol dump that makes them feel in the in the immediate uh after a workout feel good but still not seeing cortisol is an energy hormone so people don't realize that and it does give you energy in the short term I'm glad you brought up cortisol because that gets blamed for so many different things, including belly fat.

4:15And it definitely plays a role, but here's what happens. Uh, women, uh, who are doing this, uh, who are under eating, over-training, beating themselves up, it must be cortisol. So they go buy a supplement. This supplement promises to reduce cortisol and it does nothing for them. Uh, and so they spend money on thing after thing to try to reduce, uh, cortisol or work with their cortisol. Meanwhile, they're doing everything else to cause these problems, under eating, over trained. Yeah. They're working so hard. And the frustration is real because I mean, usually for everything else, if you're going to work this hard, you're going to see some results from that, but there's nowhere to go when you're that low caliphate.

4:52The other things that you'll see people do with this is they'll buy a waist trainer, which I cannot hate these things more. I absolutely cannot. First off, waist trainers, you're essentially wearing a girdle around your waist and it atrophies. In other words, weakens the muscles around your core. And so whatever decrease in waist size you get from a waist trainer is because you've made the muscles around your lumbar spine, around your trunk, around your core, smaller and weaker. Setting yourself up for potential injury. Back problems. Back problems, weakening yourself. It's a terrible, in fact, I know a young lady who developed an obstruction because of the tight waist trainer that she was wearing and had to go get surgery because of it.

5:36And then lastly, you know, I'm doing all this stuff. It's not working. I know what I'll add. I'll add ab training circuits. Oh, of course. I'll do a bunch of ab exercises thinking that I'm a spot on top of it. That's right. And it's super frustrating because it not only does nothing, but the more you do, the worse things get. So like, well, I'm doing all this work and I'm taking in all these very little calories. Why isn't this working? And what's happened is your body has adapted and learned how to burn very little calories, both through activity and at rest. And so you continue to try to cut calories and your body continues to learn how to burn less calories through hormones, through reduced activity outside of exercise and other mechanisms that are still not clear, but we see this all the time.

6:17Well, I really blame the fitness industry for this one because we have touted the law of thermodynamics so much and we've got people to just focus on that where it's like it's calories in versus calories out. So in other words, eat less, burn more. This is the strategy to lose weight, to lose belly fat. And so they get obsessed with that. And that strategy is just a losing strategy, especially considering that so many of my clients when they first start are not in a place, in a good place, protein wise, calorie wise in the first place. And it doesn't benefit us when we're trying to strength train and build muscle and build your metabolism.

6:52And so this idea of when I'm not seeing results, I just add more cardio, cut calories, and you just keep going. that eventually you run out of runway. There's two things that are happening there. So first off, a lot of thermodynamics is real. So I want to be clear with that. So what we're not saying is that that doesn't exist, but here's what we forget that your body's metabolism adapts. Your body learns how to burn more or less calories. And what influences that are the activities that you do and what the adaptations are that those activities promote. In other words, Are you trying to build muscle, build a metabolic rate?

7:28Are you sending a signal that says, hey, let's slow this down? And so that makes one of the biggest differences. And also how you fuel that. Building a metabolic rate through eating very little is almost impossible. Now, there are times when eating less will help, obviously. Metabolic rate, it's healthier. But there are also times when eating more helps metabolic rate. And in this case, in these scenarios that we're talking about, if this is you and you're listening, you're the person that needs to build the body you want. You're not the person that needs to cut and reduce and do more. And you're probably already there.

8:03You're adding more activity and getting nothing for it. And so you probably feel like, why am I wasting my time? This also leads to poor sleep. And when you stress the body like this, where you just keep cutting calories and adding activity, that signal is so loud, throws the cortisol off and makes it really difficult for someone to get good rest, good REM, which also impacts the belly fat. Yeah, and I do think, I mean, obviously it's a law, a law of thermodynamics, but at the same time to Adam's earlier point, it's not everybody starting in the same place health-wise. Not everybody starting with, you know, a good healthy metabolism, a good amount of lean muscle mass to work with.

8:42And so therefore, like the strategy may change based upon how you're getting into this. An overstressed body, and I want to be very clear with this, stress is not bad. Exercise is a stress, okay? But when it's overstressed, an overstressed body wants to store body fat, and it does not want muscle. Muscle is expensive, metabolically active tissue. Body fat is like savings in the bank. It is calories that I'm walking around with in case I need those calories. And so when I have a lot of stress, sleep deprivation or not great sleep, when I'm over-trained, under-eating, plus all the other stresses of life, what I'm telling my body is, hey, it's not safe.

9:26Hold on to body fat as much as you possibly can. And don't you dare build muscle because this is a time when we need to conserve energy. And so this is the hamster wheel people get stuck on. I think it's really important that we define what has been marketed to, to so many women, which is lean tone. Cause I think everybody has this, this visual of what that is, but doesn't fully understand what the definition of that is. Cause a lot of times when I get a client that say they want to tone or they want to lean, they'd also say in the same sentence, but I don't want to build a bunch of muscle. And it's like, that's literally exactly what you want.

9:58That's literally the definition of a lean body and a tone body is a body that has more muscle mass and reduced body fat. And that's what you are looking for. And so I think because those terms have been thrown around in marketing and we're so scared of what bulky muscle looks like that this idea of building muscle to sculpt the body sounds scary, but I want to be leaner tone, which is the same thing. Yes. A hundred percent. Muscle helps with fat loss, everybody. It is what makes you, or one of the factors that improves metabolic and hormone health in a body that has good metabolic health, good hormone health is one that is not scared of getting leaner.

10:38And so when people are in this position, oftentimes what they tell me is, okay, I'm eating very little. I'm doing a lot of exercise. I got another 10 pounds to lose. I got another little bit of this belly fat to lose. Do I got to eat even less? Because they already know how hard it is to eat as little as they currently are. And my answer to them is no. No. In fact, it's the opposite. it. We got to feed you more. We got to get in quality calories. And I want to make sure I say quality because whole natural foods are different than processed foods in a lot of different ways. But one of the main ways is that heavily processed foods promote overeating above and beyond what we need to build.

11:15Whole natural foods naturally produce satiety that kind of keeps things in check. So feed yourself back way off on the training so that we're not overstressing the body. apply stress appropriately, strength train appropriately, chase strength. And then that makes the big difference. I mean, I want to be clear. You eventually do create this caloric deficit, but what it looks like is it looks like we first fuel the body what it needs through whole foods. We first focus on getting strong and building muscle and building metabolism. And then over time, what ends up happening is you've now raised your metabolic rate.

11:51You've built your muscle mass, your body then needs more calories in order just to sustain that muscle mass, which then naturally kind of puts you in this nice deficit. And then in that place, we are in this deficit and your body starts to lean out and lose body fat. But what it looks like and the way you have to communicate it many times to a client is, hey, we're going to reverse diet or we're going to feed your body what it needs to build. And then yes, eventually we will lean out. But it looks like this actually giving the body what it wants and needs versus this idea of always having to cut and restrict?

12:21I want to cover a couple studies just to kind of dispel a big myth and also to kind of support what we're talking about when it comes to stress. So let's start with the myth, right? Spot reduction. So spot reduction is the idea that if I train a particular part of my body, I will get leaner in that part of my body. Now you can spot build, which is very different. So I can spot build. I can build my quads. I can build the muscles of my abs. I can build my glutes. but what I can't do is target body fat loss through exercise. In other words, I can't burn belly fat by doing tons and tons of crushes.

12:56There was a study, medicine and science in sports and exercise. That's the place that did the study. Studied whether or not you could spot reduce and they found no. By the way, this echoes many, many studies that have been done on this topic. Then there was a study done in the Journal of American College of Cardiology. And what they looked at was, and I mentioned this at the beginning here, is they cut people's sleep way down. They sleep deprived them, four hours. And here's what they found, an increase in body fat, in particular visceral body fat. Now that backs up what we're saying about stress.

13:26Too much stress on the, and one of the easiest ways to add a lot of stress on your body is have crappy sleep. Like very easy. If you want to study stress's effects on the body, one of the easiest ways to do this, kind of just point blank is let's just sleep deprive people because we know what that does. And it increased visceral body fat significantly in a very short period of time. All right, let's talk about the order of how you would attack this. Uh, number one, let's build strength and build muscle, feed the body so that it can build eat adequate protein, the upper limit of benefit. You're going to get about a gram of protein per pound of target body weight.

14:02So if your goal body weight's 130 pounds, this is kind of the target. You can be a little less than that, but that's the target. What that target says in the data, uh, is that this is the upper limit of benefit you're going to get from protein. This is where you get the best recovery, the best muscle growth, that kind of stuff. Don't eat too little. Make sure you feed your body. Stick to whole natural foods. We don't want to go crazy with overeating, but feed yourself. You want to have carbohydrates, fats, and definitely protein. Then you want, after that, you want a moderate fat loss approach.

14:30So once you build some strength, build some muscle, you're eating more food, you feel good eating more food, then you can cut from there. And a small deficit is all you need. A very small deficit. It doesn't take that much that you have to reduce on the calorie side. And then in fact, my favorite way to create that deficit is just increasing activity throughout the day, not scheduled cardio, not getting over on a treadmill and running for an hour, but just increasing your daily steps and activity. Whether that means you become consistent with a 10 to 15 minute walk after every single meal, or you become the person that first thing when you wake up, you start your day with a little half hour walk, or you end your day with a nice half hour, hour walk, whatever it is, you just start to become more active through steps and like movement, that plus a small calorie reduction creates this nice calorie deficit with that new lean body mass that we built and leans you right out.

15:21And let's not forget, of course, you want to train appropriately, follow a traditional strength training program. For most people listening right now, it's three days a week, maybe even two. More than that is typically not just not necessary, but tends to push people over the limit, especially if you're training with appropriate intensity. But let's talk about the number one thing that helps with stress management, which is sleep. Okay, aim for a nice seven to nine hours of sleep every single night. Make sure you go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time. This right here, the sleep part right here, it literally improves the resilience of your body to stress dramatically, just that one piece right there.

16:01This is where you build everything. This is where you're gonna build that lean muscle tissue. the point earlier to that with your strength training, make sure you don't skip your rest periods because this is all strength focused right now. We're building. And so to build muscle, we need to go through that process. We need to feed it adequately. And then we need to recover. And recovery is where all the magic happens. Yeah. And you talked about rest periods and building. Like I said, you can't spot reduce, but you can spot build. Yeah. If you want a midsection where you could see the outline of some of your muscles, where when you look at your midsection, It's not just flat, but you've got some - It's defined.

16:35Got a little bit of definition. Build those muscles. Train your abs and obliques like you're trying to build them. This is with sufficient resistance. The reps are 12. They're hard. You're not doing 50, 60, 100 reps. Those rep ranges tend to not build muscle, but the 10, 12, 15 rep range, even as low as six reps, that builds muscle. So train your core with the intention of building the muscles that are there. I can't stress the sleep thing that you guys are mentioning because it's the thing that will dictate whether this is a success or not. I don't care how good your programming is. I don't care how good your diet is.

17:10If your sleep is trash, your body just does not respond the way it is. And like Justin said, you're not building the muscle when you lift weights, when you train your abs. You're not doing it there. That's just another stress signal that tells the body to adapt and build the muscle. If you don't let it recover, rest, and fuel properly, it's not going to do that. It's not happening. And so with so many of my clients, like we have to put a focus on the sleep, no different than you would with your morning routine. You have to have a routine. And different people have different things that work really well for them, whether that be sitting down and having your chamomile tea before you go to bed or making sure you shut off all technology by 6 o 'clock or having an earlier dinner than you usually would.

17:48Whatever it is, you've got to have some sort of consistency and routine, going to bed at the same time, getting up, especially as we get older. I think it's important no matter what your age is, but man, as we age, this becomes paramount. Gotta be intentional. Paramount in the success that you'll have on this. All right. So when you look at the studies on things like belly fat, visceral belly fat, and of course the belly fat that's outside of the muscle, here's what the studies show. It's a combination of appropriate exercise, a whole food-based diet tend to work best, high protein tends to work even better, and get good sleep.

18:24Okay. Make sure you get good sleep and you manage that stress. When you combine those things, over time, you get leaner, in particular with visceral fat and belly fat. Remember, more muscle or stronger muscle handles blood sugar better. It tends to improve or increase androgen receptor density. This means the testosterone that you have in your body. And yes, ladies, you have testosterone in your body, just like men do, just lower. You need that testosterone just like guys do. More androgen receptors means that your testosterone becomes more effective. So now you're more in a building state, in a burning state.

18:57Testosterone tends to do those two things. So by building muscle, you kind of cause this like positive feedback loop. I'm building muscle, burn more body fat, build muscle. The fat loss becomes easier. Hormones start to balance. I feel amazing. Make sure your protein intake is high. Do what's called a reverse diet. In other words, fuel the muscle growth. Don't go into a deficit right out the gates. Eat a little more, stick to whole natural foods so you can get stronger, build that muscle. Once that starts to build up, you go in a small deficit, just enough to cause some fat loss, but to preserve muscle.

19:29Make sure your daily activity is high. Monitoring steps is the best way to do it, right? Eight to 10 ,000 steps a day. Get seven to nine hours of sleep. Make that consistent. And then train your muscles to get stronger. And that's really the recipe. Yeah, train all muscles. Give you a little bit more advice around the reverse diet piece. because I feel like that's where most people have questions of how many calories and what does that look like? It's like a general rule that's worked so well for so many of our clients is if you are sticking to whole foods and you're eating the protein first, then if you are hungry, feed.

20:03I tell my clients, we are strength training, like we're talking about. If you are eating whole foods and you're eating your protein first and you still find yourself hungry, that is a great sign. That means our body is telling us it wants to build muscle. The metabolism is speeding up. I don't want to deprive that yet. I want to fuel that. And if you fuel it with those types of meals, you'll be fine. Where you'll have a hard time is two things. Either one, you resist that feeling and you hold back and you don't. So then we don't allow our body to get the nutrients it needs to build the muscle it needs.

20:36Or you make bad choices and you go eat something that's out of bounds. Or you binge because maybe you resist that for a day or two and then it gets so ravenous. you go out of control and use it. And that's typically what happens to somebody is they feel that feeling and they feel the guilt of, oh, I can't eat. I'm not supposed to eat anymore. And so they don't. And then they allow that to build up and then it gets uncontrollable. And then they go way over the top of that versus that's your body trying to tell you it needs more nutrients, more fuel, feed it, but feed it properly. That's right. Okay.

21:04So here's what this looks like. Now, number one, and this is very important for people watching and listening to understand Visual changes take time, okay? Changes that you can see in the mirror, you gotta give it at least 12 weeks. Give it at least 12 weeks. That being said, there are things that show up sooner that tell you you're moving in the right direction. In other words, there's signs that'll tell you you're going the right direction, keep moving this direction. And here's what they look like. If you're managing your sleep properly and you're stressed properly and you're doing proper strength training and feeding yourself properly, right out the gates, you'll feel better.

21:37So pretty quickly, you'll start to feel good. and strength will go up. Strength takes about a week or two to show up. So by week two, you'll notice the weight on the bar is going up. You're doing more reps. You're moving in the right direction. If you continue to feel better, you continue to get stronger. Give it 12 weeks, it'll show up in the mirror. Don't ignore these signals. We get so caught up in the mirror and the scale, yet we see things like energy, mood, sleep, libido, skin, hair, Like all these things are improving, but because we haven't seen enough movement on the scale or enough movement in the mirror, we think it's not working.

22:13We think it's not working yet. All these other signs are pointing us in the direction that our body is getting healthier. Our body is getting stronger. Lean into that. It does take time. It takes a little bit of time for it to really start to accelerate and speed up and show you those results. Stick with the process. All right. So there's two questions that we always tend to get. Like number one is, can you lose belly fat without cardio? The answer is yes, yes, yes. In fact, one of the most effective ways to lose belly fat is through strength training. Strength training preserves muscle and helps you burn body fat.

22:45Cardiovascular activity is actually less effective than strength training for this. Now, that's not to say cardio doesn't play a role or doesn't have a role in any of this or that it's bad. But yes, you could definitely burn body fat without cardio. We do it all the time. Another question we ask, okay, well, how long is this going to take? How long is it going to take for me to see my belly fat go down? You got to give it at least 12 weeks, everybody. 12 weeks of consistency before you see something in the mirror and you really notice. Stay patient. Pay attention to all the signs that Adam said.

23:13I feel better. I've got more energy. I'm getting stronger. Libido's going up. That means you're moving in the right direction. It's a snowball effect. It starts off very small, but it starts to build and it builds momentum, but it takes time. And don't correct, course correct early like so many people do because they're not seeing fast enough results. Keep paying attention to those signs. Stick with it. I want to talk about one of our most recent live callers. We have a lot of callers that fit this avatar, but we just had one recently. This was a woman who was working out five to six days a week.

23:46She was also doing cardio on top of her workouts. She was limiting carbohydrates. She was eating very, very low carbohydrates and very low calories. Circuit training. Circuit training like crazy. And she was stuck. One of the first episodes that I listened to, you spoke to a listener who was trying to get her cycle back. You spoke with her about the importance of reducing training volume and eating more calories so that her body could feel safe again. I felt like I had nothing to lose, so I gave up my daily cardio and intermittent fasting and purchased MAPS Anabolic and focused on daily steps, taking rest breaks between sets.