2953: 7 Easy Food Swaps That Lower Your Calories Without Changing How Much You Eat

12:44Sal Di Stefano:yeah that was another recipe of yours yeah that's uh oatmeal peanut butter and honey all like... With protein powder? Yeah, with protein powder. And then you roll them up and make them in and you freeze them. No, you don't freeze them. You just put them in the refrigerator. They'll harden in the refrigerator. And then make those little balls like that.

13:04Adam Schafer:Alright, here's another one. First off, nuts. They are technically a whole food, but it's one of the few whole foods that acts more like a processed food, especially if the nuts are already shelled and roasted. Like you will hit calories very quickly. with nuts. Yeah, too quickly. Like really, really quickly. And so one of the things you could do to reduce, whatever, the damage, I guess, for lack of a better term, that nuts can do is rather than buying nuts that are shelled already, like a bag of peanuts or a bag of, you know, pecans or whatever, is to buy them in the shell. That process of you having to break them open, cracking them.

13:41Adam Schafer:I'm going to tell you right now, you sit down for 20 minutes and you eat peanuts where you have to crush the shell and eat them. You'll eat a third or a fourth of the amount of peanuts you would eat if they were already shelled.

13:51Justin Andrews:There's still that reward from it.

13:52Adam Schafer:That's right. And in fact, this is what I used to do with my clients who love nuts. And I say, go ahead and eat them. Get them with the shell and break them open. And they end up eating way less. Well, you get two things working for you right there.

14:02Sal Di Stefano:You've got the shell, obviously, slows down that process. And then they're also raw, so they're not roasted or salted. And so that's slightly less palatable. That would be my advice, even with almonds. Because if you do the roasted and the flavored type almonds, I could crush those. Yeah. you know those wasabi ones and bar i mean those ones i could eat those all day long but give me some raw ones and like after a handful of those i'm pretty good yeah so it's a good strategy

14:27Adam Schafer:makes a big difference so i used to do this so i would have i would have a bag uh in the bag i always had my studio and they were in the shell and so i'd have to go back there and break them open and in between clients i'd have like five or six now you give me a bag of nuts and it's a

14:40Justin Andrews:handful which is way different you know calorie wise yeah i i used to actually take like seeds so I could go through phases of chewing sesame seeds. Not sesame seeds. Sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just because it's something to do, keep the mouth occupied. But yeah, that was always a strategy.

15:02Sal Di Stefano:I used sunflower seeds and gum. Those were the two during competing days. In the shell. Yeah, oh yeah. Because like you said, you take a small handful and suck on them for a long time and just keeping your mouth busy. Not a lot of calories.

15:14Adam Schafer:That's a bodybuilder favorite right there. All right, here's another one. This one's really cool, everybody. So you like your cut of meat. I don't care what it is, ribeye, tri-tip, whatever. You don't even have to change the amount of meat that you eat. If you switch from grain-fed to grass-fed, your calories substantially drop because grass-fed meat is naturally leaner and higher in protein. In other words, six ounces or eight ounces of a typical ribeye versus six to eight ounces of a grass-fed ribeye is going to cut your calories and bump your protein. What was that?

15:47Sal Di Stefano:Doug looked that up. We talked about this like months ago. I remember you looked at it. I was surprised by what a difference it was. It was a pretty significant.

15:54Adam Schafer:It was a couple hundred calories.

15:56Sal Di Stefano:Did you do like an eight ounce cut ribeye grass fed versus grain fed?

15:59Justin Andrews:Actually, the information I had was for ground beef. Ground beef is different. Yeah.

16:03Adam Schafer:Because ground beef is automatically controlled for fat content. Oh, for fat content. Yeah. So if you go grain fed, grass fed, ground beef, it's 20 % or 80%, it's 80%. It's the cuts of meat where you see the difference. So you could go like an eight ounce ribeye.

16:14Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, because ground beef will tell you 93. Yeah, so they control for that.

16:18Adam Schafer:So you're going to get the same. But if you go 10-ounce ribeye grain-fed versus a 10-ounce ribeye grass-fed, it's a significant difference in calories. It's less fat and more protein. More protein. What you got over there, guy?

16:32Justin Andrews:Yeah, I'm looking it up right now. He'll get that number first.

16:35Sal Di Stefano:Google camel there, so it's helpful.

16:37Adam Schafer:It's a picture of the back.

16:39Sal Di Stefano:It's not helpful, Doug, at all.

16:41Adam Schafer:Speaking of what, you know people eat camel meat in other places? No, they don't. Yes, they do. Camel meat, kangaroo meat.

16:46Justin Andrews:that's another meat you can eat those sound terrible don't sign me up for that yeah i know

16:49Adam Schafer:i think kangaroo meets like uh i think that's relatively common in australia or i'm making this up yeah i wonder i feel like i'm making this up i feel like you are too somebody in australia

17:01Sal Di Stefano:that sounds gamey it does right right yeah it does pretty muscular they look really muscular right i don't think that would be good at all yeah remember the video the one that fought that

17:11Justin Andrews:dude yeah so they get like i don't know seven feet tall or whatever when they're standing up

17:16Adam Schafer:right like that it looks like old-timey boxers yeah by the way they stand all right here's another one uh if you like burgers you're better off eating two lettuce wrap burgers than you are the burger and fries oh yeah yeah this is all the time this is a big one this is like a really easy

17:29Sal Di Stefano:big one it's super filling so i i did this the entire time um that i was competing this was uh a part of the diet was we still ate out at five guys. It was like, uh, you know, my, my way of still connecting with my wife since I had to eat all this boring food all the time was Friday, Friday, you out to dinner. Well, no Fridays, Fridays, we'd order, we'd order five guys and I, I have two lettuce wraps. I, I just throw it all in a bowl and then I, I cut it up with a knife. I turn it into like a salad. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it's like, I mean, you can eat it like this. Um, but I think, uh, there's plenty of lettuce on like just one of those suckers.

18:07Sal Di Stefano:So I literally would just, I would actually take one off and then just throw the extra meat in there. And then I'd cut it all up, dice it all up and make it into this big salad.

18:16Justin Andrews:They haven't figured out how to not get all that grease on your hands. With the lettuce? Yeah. Which is why I like turning it into like a bowl. That makes sense.

18:23Adam Schafer:When I go to, so, you know, in and out, obviously a California, you know, chain or whatever. But when I go with my family, if I get the burger and fries, I eat way, fries, way more. Oh, yeah. It's just way more.

18:37Sal Di Stefano:You can crush 700 plus calories in fries. And I just can keep going.

18:41Adam Schafer:If I eat two lettuce wrapped burgers, I'm good.

18:43Sal Di Stefano:Which, Arnie, by the way, one double is not even a 700 calorie. What you got there, Doug, for the grass-fed versus grain-fed?

18:48Adam Schafer:What is that?

18:49Justin Andrews:Let's see here. 70 extra calories. So yeah, this is for 100 grams, 120 calories for the grass-fed, 196 for the grain-fed.

18:57Sal Di Stefano:For only 120, yeah. So 80 calories less, two grams of protein higher. And way less fat. And way less fat.

19:04Adam Schafer:And way less fat. And that's for a small piece. What is that? 100 grams? What is that? 100 grams. I'm not sure exactly what that is. So what you would typically do, Doug, when you would Google this, is you would say 10-ounce grain-fed ribeye versus 10-ounce. Here's the challenge I'm having with this, Sal,

19:18Justin Andrews:is that nothing's coming up exactly as you say. So I don't even know if this is a ribeye. The Googler's not working. We don't even know what kind of meat that is. The Googler's not working very well. Sometimes you have some very specific requests that are... I feel like the internet's good at that, though.

19:36Adam Schafer:We all have our strengths. That's fine.

19:39Justin Andrews:I think we should just give Sal a little laptop so he can do Google. I feel like that too.

19:43Sal Di Stefano:I think he's pretty good. He's pretty fast at it. All right, all right. There is no doubt he's the best Googler out of her here for sure. Yeah, he must sit here.

19:50Adam Schafer:By the way, that's a whole skill, man, with AI, which we'll talk about a little bit later. All right, so pizza, traditional pizza versus crust-free pizza. Adam, this is another one that you do.

19:59Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, no, you can actually put this in a iron skillet. All the stuff that you like. So I like to make it heavy on the meat. So if you do like sausage or beef or chicken or something like that, and then the cheese and. So what do you do? You put the cheese first? You put, yeah, you put the cheese, the cheese ends up being like a cross. So if you lay the cheese, like it's a cross and then you layer all the other things. And then I do a lot of meat. So like a layer of a lot of everything. Yeah. And then, yeah. And then you can do sauce, all the other things like that. And then you just like bake it in the oven and then it'll, it'll,

20:27Adam Schafer:how do you take it? You just, you literally take it off.

20:29Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. Cause it'll, yeah, it'll end up like the, the crusted. Yeah. The cheese will harden and crust on an iron skillet. Put it in there like that. And then you've got this. Because the worst part of the pizza a lot is the gluten-loaded bread that you get on there. It's the highest calories. Disrupts most people's guts. And so long as you can handle cheese.

20:52Adam Schafer:So just a side note. So I can't do dairy. You're making me hungry. I'm the weird guy that orders a pizza without cheese. You should always. You guys got to see the list of people. You mean you have bread? It's literally bread, sauce, and like. Can you call it meat? It's there without cheese? What do you want? You want bread? You want soft bread?

21:05Justin Andrews:This is just holding your marinara sauce. That's it. That's basically it. Your reservoir.

21:09Adam Schafer:All right. Here's another one. I've done this before. It's actually pretty good. It's swapping out your spaghetti for spaghetti squash. Oh, yeah. We live off of this. Do you really? Yeah. You guys do this a lot? Oh, yeah. A lot. I think you made your meat sauce with it, and spaghetti squash is like no calories.

21:23Sal Di Stefano:It's super good. I think it's a go-to thing that we did for a really long time. In fact, it's been a while since I had it. Didn't you just grow some squash, too? I did. How'd that turn out?

21:32Justin Andrews:Not spaghetti squash. Zucchini. You can actually do it with zucchini as well. You can do it with zucchini too. What do you do?

21:36Adam Schafer:Do you get one of those tools that could just use a fork?

21:39Justin Andrews:Yeah. I'm kind of lazy. I just go buy it at Trader Joe's. It's already done.

21:44Adam Schafer:Oh. Yeah.

21:45Justin Andrews:That's the way to do it. Yeah.

21:46Adam Schafer:Yeah. Good.

21:47Sal Di Stefano:What kind of sauce do you guys do? You guys do a meat sauce? Yeah. Yeah. I wish I had somebody who was Italian that canned sauce. I know, right? I would probably use that. Yeah, probably. We just 13 years of working with this guy and haven't got a can of sauce yet.

21:59Adam Schafer:over here i gotta remember to do that i've never brought you guys sauce not one can dog not one can it's a little salty about it it's in a jar all right i'll bring it i'll bring you some haggis all right anyways those are good those are all good swaps and i mean literally again it's like you know it's one of those things you're living your life and there's definitely eating healthy um and and i think that's most important but there's also an enjoyment factor which we can't deny and these swap outs allow you to kind of joy i'm super curious about like watching my

22:30Sal Di Stefano:my son grow up as he gets older like uh so this is all stuff that he's like eight he's grown up with he's he grew up with it right and so i know that i battle with the sweet tooth because i did not grow up this way and so i've learned to like train myself but he actually prefers this so it'll be interesting if that changes over time i mean we're at seven right now and it's been really consistent that like he would choose this over the alternative on on foods and so i'm wondering if like his palate will be formed like that for good and so that he'll always do it i remember i dated this girl that was like that where her her family was really really strict about processed foods her whole life she competed also and i remember like even after post-comp where i was like i wanted ice cream and pizza and like every dessert bad thing that i hadn't had for so long she was just It's like, man, I just want a steak and a baked potato.

23:23Sal Di Stefano:Sounds, you know, just something that I don't have to count the calories and I'll just eat a big old meal. I was like, man, that's so crazy to me that you don't crave any of these other things. But she didn't grow up on that. So I'm curious to see if I'll notice a difference with that. You will.

23:34Adam Schafer:The data shows that. Data shows that your palate gets formed as early as in utero. But as your brain develops, it develops around, you know, some of these experiences, including experiences around entertainment, stuff like that. Does that, does that? It's the molding of the brain.

23:49Sal Di Stefano:I know. And I believe it, isn't it? Isn't it ages three to seven is when the, when the most of that is getting done around that? I'm not sure. From a, from a neurological, from the brain. Like, I don't know. Possibly.

24:01Adam Schafer:I don't know what the ages are, but I'll tell you, I'll give you an example. Uh, if you like different cultures, uh, we're, we all grew up here in America. So if you have, if you smell a fishy smell in a market, you automatically are like, ew, that's not, that's gross. But in other countries that is not perceived that way because they grew up around those types of smells and it meant, you know, fresh fish and food. So it's just an example. And there's foods that people will eat from other cultures that we could not, you know, we would look at and be like, that's not really good. Tarantulas. Yeah.

24:27Adam Schafer:That's an extreme one, but sure. Yeah. I think Doug ate a tarantula.

24:30Justin Andrews:No, I did not.

24:31Adam Schafer:Oh, you didn't do it.

24:32Justin Andrews:I saw a guy do it, but I didn't. Oh, I thought you tried it. No, I have limits. Yeah.

24:36Adam Schafer:So, Hey, by the way, we got it. We got the number up 12 ounce ribeye, uh, grass fed versus grain fret. The difference is about 200 calories. Wow. 200. 200 calories. That's a big difference, everybody. And you're eating 12, you're eating a big old steak either way. Right. Isn't that cool? Yeah, it is.

24:53Sal Di Stefano:And higher protein, yeah?

24:54Adam Schafer:Totally. Yeah. All right. So I wanted to bring something up. So today, this morning, I was in a text thread with my cousins and we were, you know, talking about a few different things. My brother brought up a study showing the benefits of video games. And there's still, what yeah so there's studies that show that video games can improve things like hand eye coordination and there's some things they can measure yeah yeah around video games and i'm like right off the gates you know i'm like this is so dumb and so we're going having this conversation back and forth and so what it did is it prompted me to look up the actual data uh on uh the impacts of certain things on people but especially young men because that got me thinking about young men when you think about video games you typically think guys guys get affected more sure by you know by playing video games.

25:42Adam Schafer:And so I was looking up some data and, you know, AI is, uh, many things, but among all those things, it's incredible at synthesizing data. So rather than having to go find data, compile it, combine it, you know, stuff that I would have to do in the past, which would take me hours. I can just ask questions, cite the resources and where it got the studies and put it together for me. It's like, how much of an impact do these things actually make. And, uh, and, and then I remembered I had recently had, uh, Mike Malagy's on the called to his kingdom series. And he's this young Gen Z Christian influencer.

26:16Adam Schafer:Okay. And so one of the questions I asked him was, you know, in regards to young men, you know, Gen Z, like, what are, what are some of the pieces of advice you have for young men? And one thing he said to me blew me away. He said, don't be bored. I was like, huh? And he goes, do things. Cause when you're sitting around bored, you have access to your phone. Idle hands. And that's when all this kind of crazy stuff pops up. And I'm like, that is fascinating. That actually makes a lot of sense. So I looked up some data and here's what's interesting. Number one, which is, I think we've talked about this before, young Gen Z, for the first time in history, this generation, this younger generation is doing worse than people in midlife.

27:01Adam Schafer:So typically when you look at the data, depression and anxiety peak at midlife.

27:07Sal Di Stefano:Is that how we're measuring doing better?

27:08Adam Schafer:Yeah. So typically midlife crisis, you know, this is like why, well, this is when you have young kids. This is when you have a mortgage. Divorce happens at this time. Throughout all the time we've measured depression and anxiety, this is the highest time for depression and anxiety. Youth has always been low. Like that's not when you're supposed to be the most anxious and depressed. For the first time ever, we've seen the younger generation do worse in loneliness, anxiety, and depression than people in midlife. So it's not good. It's looking really bad. And then I was thinking to myself, like, what is going on?

27:41Adam Schafer:We've measured this as far back as the great depression. And our kids today are worse with depression and anxiety and mental health than people who grew up in the great depression and the world wars. Like what the hell is going on? And so I compiled some data and I'm looking at it and it's pretty wild. Loneliness is high. 25 % of US men aged 15 to 34 said they felt lonely a lot. This is way higher than in the past. So I'm like, what's going on and what can we do to fix this? So rather than point out we're sad, we're anxious, what I did is I said, hey, here's what I want from you. What are the things that these young men can do that have the greatest impact on their depression, anxiety, and loneliness?

28:29Adam Schafer:Like, give me some things that the data shows has the greatest impact. What are the greatest things that they can do? Like, because here's the thing with young men, I know this about young men, they don't respond as well to talking as young women do. They respond much better to doing. Right, challenge, purpose.

28:46Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, so instead of being like, hey, let's talk about your feelings. This is why they're drawn to video games. It's because they're accomplishing levels and beating bosses and leveling up and becoming, you know, whatever.

28:55Adam Schafer:And what you find in the data is, you know, with young women, you can sit down and process things out. And there's some benefit too with young men, but young men tend to do better when instead of that, you go, okay, we're going to go do this. And then you go accomplish this thing and they tend to do a lot better with that. So I'm like, what can they do? And immediately I thought to myself, like, what are two things that young men struggle with today that we didn't necessarily and that previous generations didn't necessarily struggle with? and the two that came to mind were pornography and video games.

29:26Adam Schafer:And I think both of those neuter young men in the sense that, you know, like when we were kids in that age group, you have a strong desire to be with girls. But in order to be with girls, you had to go out in the real world. You had to clean yourself up. You had to figure out how to be funny, present yourself. You had to get, you know.

29:45Justin Andrews:Rejected.

29:46Adam Schafer:Rejected and you got to figure it out. You got to do the scary thing. Pornography will zap that right off the gates. You know, if I was a 15 year old boy working up the courage to go talk to a girl, like, you know, give me 30 minutes on, on Pornhub. And I'm like, cool. I think I'll stay home, you know, type of deal. So there's that. And then video games, you hit the nail on the head at them. That desire that young man, that they have inherently to like do the hard thing, struggle, accomplish something, which we did by going out with our friends, you know, climbing the hill, jumping the thing. They just play, you know, and beat level 37, you know, type of deal.

30:19Adam Schafer:so i'm like okay what can we do rather than telling them don't do this don't do that what are the things they can do that have the biggest impact on anxiety and depression i don't

30:28Sal Di Stefano:even think that's number one and number two it isn't i think social media is number one dude i think social media it's so interesting you bring this up right now i literally just had somebody dm me uh did you see the post i did yesterday i shared that guy did a post on um what percentage of people actually uh um net or no excuse me gross not even net a million dollars a year in a business and income. Did you see that? It was a really good post. And he just talked about like, it's like the percentage is extremely low. And the idea of why he was sharing that was like, social media will have you believe that everybody out there that's a millionaire at 17 or 25 years old, they're driving around these Lambos and they're flaunting this and showing that.

31:13Sal Di Stefano:And I actually had two different DMs from young men that reached out to me after I had post that saying like, you know, I've, and I know I've talked to them before in DM. I don't know them personally, but I've talked to them in DMs before and know what they, they do for work. They make good money. Like they were like good money trying to, they're built. One of them's building their family, like just started their family and stuff like that. And he goes, man, this really, uh, he thanked me for posting it. And he goes, because I really was feeling like, uh, like such a loser. Like I'm not doing anything with my life.

31:44Sal Di Stefano:Cause I'm so far beyond everything that I'm looking at on social media. It's like, it makes me feel like everybody else is way ahead. And here I am, you know, entering my thirties and I'm still not that rich or making that much. And so I think that, and I think a lot of guys don't openly share that, but you can't help, but think that they are, I mean, competitive at spirit, comparing themselves to other end. We talk a lot about how women do this on social media and they're comparing their bodies and stuff like that. I think a lot of men do that with success and provide, pre-enal to provide. And you see all these young kids that are flaunting their cars and their things and you think that shit everybody's a millionaire i'm only getting by making 80 or 100 grand a year i must be a loser so i looked up

32:26Adam Schafer:the data on that and social media has a much greater negative impact on young girls than it does on young men it has a negative impact on both yeah but as a great do you think that's because that's reported more uh in comparison to previous generation women have always reported more they've always come forth and said i feel this way i feel that way when they when they try to control for that and say okay are people just report it still doesn't cover because i feel like some dudes that

32:53Sal Di Stefano:like i was actually really surprised that two guys felt and they would say that i'm still a stranger though right we're not like tight friends and they're not like confiding it like but they were willing to share that man i feel like i'm a loser because i'm not doing these things so it's I have this feeling that that data is skewed a little bit because there's probably a lot of men that aren't going to admit that they feel that way.

33:16Adam Schafer:So it's always been that way.

33:17Sal Di Stefano:It'll manifest in other ways, like suicide and depression.

33:20Adam Schafer:So I looked it up and I tried to control for that. And they said it does not cover the growth. It's like that is not covering the growth of what we're seeing. It's more reported. So they try to control for that. They're like, it's still grow. It has grown so much and it's anxiety and depression and lonely, loneliness that are through the roof. And so what I did, look, we know as coaches, it's much more effective to tell a client to do something rather than just to tell them to not. Yeah.

33:46Sal Di Stefano:But don't you think those two things are exacerbated by, by that? Yes. So let me, yeah.

33:50Adam Schafer:So let me get to what, let me get to what this did. So what I did is I literally said, what are the things that they can do that have the greatest impact?

33:56Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

33:56Adam Schafer:That the data shows, do we have data? What does it show? What has the greatest impact? Number one.

34:01Justin Andrews:Learn a skill, do a trade.

34:02Adam Schafer:Number one, working out.

34:04Justin Andrews:Yeah.

34:05Adam Schafer:Number one is working out. And you know what? There's a joke on social media about, hey, dude, you're depressed, go lift weights. There's some truth to it. Here's what the data shows. 50 % lower depression and anxiety symptoms. Just go lift weights, dude. Yeah. Like if you're listening right now and you're like crapped out and you feel like, what's the point? Go work out. Get on a schedule, go lift weights. That's number one. 50 % decrease in those feelings. Number one, you're doing something hard. You're getting up and getting out of the house. Then you're also building muscle. You got the struggle.

34:33Adam Schafer:You got the challenge. I say lifting weights. It's actually exercise in general. But I think lifting weights, obviously I'm partial to it. But I think for young men in particular, the feeling of strength, the feeling of power.

34:43Justin Andrews:Self-improvement. Self-improvement.

34:45Adam Schafer:50 % reduction. You want to know what the second one was? Attend church regularly. By the way, I'm not telling it what to tell me. I'm saying show me. 33 % lower odds of developing depression. so if you're a young guy listening right now and you're struggling go lift weights go to church

35:02Sal Di Stefano:yeah start right there probably the easiest uh organic way to build community for a young man right because and it's bigger than you yeah men are men are really challenged with this as it is right going on and building relationships we tend to like isolate ourselves or have our core friend group that's it and say that we don't need anybody or have no friends at all and so going to a built-in community like that i think is probably where everybody's uh pointing to something bigger you know here's the next one getting a job do you know how unemployed gen z is compared to

35:33Adam Schafer:previous generations it's wild yeah it makes a big difference you take a 17 year old kid who's at home and again this is what mike was telling me he's like what are you doing like if you're at work you're lifting weights you're going to church you got way less time to be on your phone scrolling all this crap or on social media busy enough or playing video games they're not working like real busy they're not working because it's the culture has changed i don't think parents are making their kids work i think it's a different like uh i see a huge difference in my kid when she got a job and my niece when she got all she did was get a job and it's like totally changed she suddenly started making friends she's out i mean i'm sure what falls in that category too

36:13Sal Di Stefano:is that because what's the the number one uh job now by kids where they say they want to be a YouTuber or an influencer, which is like also another way of saying unemployed. So, I mean, I think like, you know, a lot of them are aspiring YouTubers or influencers.

36:30Adam Schafer:Look at this. 95 % higher risk of mental health problems when you're unemployed. Young men out of work, 50, 60 % higher frequent mental distress. Dude, go get a job. I don't care what job you got. Go do it. Be proud of your job. Do a good job. I don't care if you flip burgers. I don't care if you're shoveling do something hard go get a job uh and watch what that does for how you feel first of all you can't think about being sad when you're working because you're doing something then you're accomplishing something you're getting a paycheck you got to deal with people you got to deal with

37:02Sal Di Stefano:difficult so you think like the the pornography and the video games what's more detrimental about it is less about the pornography and the video games it's more so that it's replacing all those

37:11Adam Schafer:things dude let me put it this way mike made this as a point think about you got you got your typical 16 year old or 17 year old or 18 year old kid all they do is go to school and then they come home and they're probably like playing video games maybe they hang out with their friends a little bit but that's their life right homework school that's it now imagine that same kids like i'm going to the gym four days a week to lift weights i'm going to church once a week and i'm going to go work three days a week how much less time is he going to have i mean it's it's it's no different

37:36Sal Di Stefano:it's no different than how we coach somebody on how to diet 100 what do we do we look at somebody's diet they're eating fast food candy ice cream sodas alcohol all the things totally and what we don't do is go get rid of that get rid of this stop doing that we go bump your protein bump exactly i want you to add this meal to every day i want you and what inevitably happens is that pushes out all those other things uh and the psychology of telling them they can't do those things and so it's the same coaching it's like instead of telling the kids stop playing videos or this is like, I want you to go do these things.

38:09Adam Schafer:Let me ask you guys this. Put yourself in your shoes of when you were a teenage boy. Imagine if you didn't play sports or I didn't work out, none of us had jobs and we had access to video games, social media, pornography. What are the odds that we would have been sad and anxious? You know? I think pretty damn high. So it's like, and by the way, again, this is effective for young men.

38:33Sal Di Stefano:Well, it's gotta be, you know, it's gotta be difficult just having a little bit of empathy for all the parents out there is like i never felt like my parents had to tell me that i just wanted to do that where it does feel like parents are having to tell their kids that it's like kids kids just automatically did that like did your did your parents ever have to tell you you have to go outside and play no but you know why you have to go do that you know why it sucked

38:56Adam Schafer:to be at home yeah i didn't have a million and one options of entertainment yeah like what did you guys do at home when you were at home yeah there was nothing to do watch the wall hang out my parents all day long like let's go get me out of there so that's the problem is well again i

39:08Sal Di Stefano:think that just i think that highlights just how detrimental tech has been to totally just the access and a more testament to if you have a young kid that you're raising right now is how long can

39:20Justin Andrews:you delay the tech digital anything's been detrimental in my opinion dude again let me put

39:26Adam Schafer:it to you this way 16 year old kid he wants to go meet a girl he's got porn in his pocket or he's go out and talk to some girl he doesn't know and probably get rejected nine out of 10 times or 10 out of 10 times he's staying in his room getting rid of that feeling and he's going to just stay in there yeah not you know 10 9 out of 10 times at least so my point is and again young men respond well to uh direction do this so if there's a guy listening right now and you're like man i feel crappy here's what you do go lift weights go to church get a job that's it just do those things the rest starts to take care of itself based on the data when you combine those things 50 % reduction here 30 % reduction there you got a 95 % reduction I bet you a majority of kids listening right now if they did that after 60 days be like cured yeah I feel amazing well at least one right

40:15Sal Di Stefano:because maybe it's a lot to ask them to do all of it right but you check one of those boxes consistently and watch what happens that's right yeah that's right yeah I mean again it's it's no different than how um we would we would do that with a client you would just you would choose one thing and you just add it until they get consistent with that then we add another thing that's right

40:32Justin Andrews:up your pain tolerance listen to metal tell me about that dude there was like a jackie sent over i saw that yes more confirmation well actually it wasn't because it was like they controlled and it was like um you know it was pre-concert so they had like a group that was like going to go to this festival there's another group that you know wasn't and they were all like kind of tested out as like their their pain tolerance and uh didn't really happen until the actual event so the event when they're there like there's a spike in oxytocin and like they all like had this shared experience where it's like they didn't notice like you know the bumps and the bruises and all that like quite as substantially but i think it what it's pointing to is like when you're working out and you're listening to heavy metal, it really kind of masks a lot of that.

41:22Justin Andrews:It's how you interpret pain is a lot different.

41:24Adam Schafer:A hundred percent. Music does that.

41:26Justin Andrews:A hundred percent.

41:27Adam Schafer:It's always done that for me. Listen, bro. If I listen to anything from Rocky while I'm working out, I'm probably going to hurt myself. Rocky IV, the montage, there were times when I was training hard and I'd turn that on and it was like a new year appeared and I could just keep going.

41:42Sal Di Stefano:I mean, through all of my competing, I had very like -

41:45Adam Schafer:What's your song?

41:46Sal Di Stefano:Well, no, it wasn't songs as much as it was whatever phase of training I am or what I was doing changed the type of job.

41:52Adam Schafer:Yeah, but do you have a song? Let's say you're stuck under a car, we can't help you, and all we can do is put on a song to help you get out from under the car. What song?

41:59Sal Di Stefano:Metallica, House of Jack Built. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And that'll make you - Yeah, or Inner Sandman. Okay. Yeah, those two are like, yeah, are probably - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:07Justin Andrews:What's yours, Justin? Oh, man. It would have to be like - Give me a song. Or some rage. Yeah, I have to think about it. because it's my PR song a lot of times, it's Norma Jean. Oh. And it's - Did you listen to that when you did your 315 split press

42:26Adam Schafer:or whatever?

42:26Justin Andrews:I tried, but like when I was at Jordan's gym, like we could only get like the radio playing. And so they had like a metal channel and I think I had like -

42:37Sal Di Stefano:Oh, you weren't headphoned out or anything when you did that? No. Is that because you were listening to cues from him? Is that why? What's that? Was that because you were listening to cues from him? Would you normally lift like that? You normally live with headphones, don't you?

42:46Justin Andrews:I normally do with headphones, but I think because I was, yeah, I was in that setting and he was kind of giving me coaching cues and also like just, I was trying to really focus. I think it, it was different when, when I was doing something that's a little more technical like that, I needed to like have a little more coaching cues, coaching, you want to hear feedback. Like, Oh, that was too fast. You, you,

43:07Sal Di Stefano:you rush this or yeah. Triffids.

43:09Justin Andrews:Yeah. Triffids is my, my jam. You guys never heard of it. It's, It's from Norma Jean, but it's very aggressive.

43:18Adam Schafer:Just know that. I told you guys this story. I've told this story before, but I used to love doing this. Back in the day, so in the late 90s, the music was controlled by the general manager's office, and we had satellite stations, but you could also put a CD in there to play. I didn't remember we had the CD. So this was like 98, I think it was. You could actually put... This was just before. So I would be in the GM's office. So I was, I'd be a fitness manager at this point. And I also did this as a GM. And you had one way, it was like glass tinted, what was it, mirror tinted windows. So you couldn't see in the office, but I could see out.

43:53Adam Schafer:And I'd have fun with this. And so it'd be getting close to prime time. And you'd see all these people on treadmills and ellipticals. And I could see the cardio from my office. So I'd call my staff into my office. So like six people, I'd get over here, come here, watch this. So I'd watch everybody on the treadmills. And I'd put Eye of the Tiger on. and it would take about 25 to 30 seconds. Watch everybody speed go higher. Everybody's hitting the button. Of course. Everybody is hitting the button. Yeah. It's speeding up.

44:20Sal Di Stefano:You know, they have, I think Spotify. I'm pretty sure iTunes does this too, where there's music that's designed. It tells you how many beats per second.

44:28Adam Schafer:Yeah.

44:29Sal Di Stefano:And so if you want, to me, that's what I was always, if I was doing something like intense cardio, then I would have something that was like house or something crazy like that. If I was doing something that was like steady state, then I'd be listening to like classical or easy, something easy listening for it. If I'm - Two-step metal. Yeah, if I'm like PR chasing, then I'm going to do something like angry, you know, rage or something in that direction.

44:51Adam Schafer:My music has changed so much. I suggest I don't ask. Hey, you couldn't, you can't even come up with a more radical change. I used to work out to angry, angry metal and I was pissed. I'd be working out, like nobody want to talk to me when I'm working out because I look like I'm angry. Now I listen to worship music and it's like popular. where it's not even like rap or metal christian metal it's like the stuff that we'll play at church and i'm smiling throughout my workout i don't know how you do it totally dude it's the

45:21Sal Di Stefano:weirdest thing ever dude you and justin couldn't be more extreme because i feel like i'm not like i listen to more like typically right so on a normal lift days like def leopard or acdc so

45:33Adam Schafer:it's like it's rock but it's not like you don't go with you know and it's definitely not like

45:38Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, they're not as talented.

45:41Adam Schafer:Justin listens to that music to relax. I know. It's so weird.

45:45Sal Di Stefano:I don't remember where we were going. We were going somewhere one time, and it was early, man. It was back in the day. It's pretty tricky. And Justin's driving. I know I normally drive, so I would definitely -

45:55Adam Schafer:You can't even understand the lyrics. They're just screaming.

45:57Sal Di Stefano:And it's like first thing in the morning. There's still like dew outside, sun's coming up, and Justin is starting. I'm like, bro, I cannot let my coffee hit first. because i'm not like anti that music but i'm like i need to like be up a little bit you guys

46:11Justin Andrews:gotta understand it's like uh it i play it too so it's like yeah i get that yeah it's a little difference there i get a lot of inspiration from but it's i know it's weird because it like it escalated to that in college like i was like very punk in like i was very ska and like you know reggae and like all that because you know i grew up in like a surf town and so that's like all i I would listen to a lot of Sublime, and I still do. That's, like, pretty much what I listen to more than anything else. But, like, there was just something. I don't know. When I was in the cold and, like, Chicago was, like, I didn't have any friends.

46:46Justin Andrews:And it was just, like, that was, like, my blanket.

46:50Sal Di Stefano:Courtney and I have the same music taste. She does. Her playlist is exactly like mine. Oh, yeah, yeah. Anytime we, like, we get around each other.

46:57Adam Schafer:Who made this?

46:58Sal Di Stefano:Like, Adam's playlist.

46:59Adam Schafer:I'm like, oh, she totally listens to the exact same music. Like, exactly the same music. If we were stuck in the wilderness, Justin would be the first one to go feral. You know how they take like, if you take like a hog. What? You know how if you take like a farm pig and you put it in the woods and it becomes like I'm going to grow tusks. Yeah. Like you would for sure. Run away. If everything hit the fan. True. Within a week, Justin would be like blood on his face. That's true. Well, he's also the one that would survive the longest for sure.

47:22Sal Di Stefano:For 100%.

47:23Adam Schafer:I would just, I'd find Justin and cling to him. Hey man, can you, can I be your friend? Yeah. I'll be surprised. I'll just go kill mode. All right. I'm going to change the subject. So we got a message. We've had a couple callers say this. And this doesn't happen often. It's enough to where I think we should address this, where we talk a lot about hitting optimal protein. And the data shows it's much higher than what the RDA will recommend. So RDA recommends essential protein, meaning don't eat below that and you're okay. But the data shows much higher than that will typically give you better performance results, muscle gain, fat loss, satiety, all that stuff.

48:01Adam Schafer:So it's a lot higher. And we typically tell people one gram of protein per pound of target body weight, which is hard to do. Yeah. And occasionally we'll get the message, and it's usually a female that says this and goes, it gives me digestion issues. Yeah. Like I try to eat that much protein and it doesn't feel good. It feels like a brick in my stomach or I feel constipated or whatever. Gassy, yeah. Yeah. And typically what we'll do is try to narrow down the protein sources and maybe change it.

48:28Sal Di Stefano:Because many times that makes a big difference.

48:29Adam Schafer:It does. But sometimes just the fact that it's a lot of protein. Okay, so what do I do? And usually what I would say is like, well, then you eat less. It doesn't work with you. But lately, what I've been doing is pointing people towards Paleo Valley's bone broth protein. Oh, yeah. Because it's so easy to digest. You can really ramp it up. You could ramp. Bro, I've had 80-gram protein shakes from bone broth. Yeah. And it sits just fine. No, it's like I drank water. Yeah. So I've been pushing that to people who are messaging us, and they're coming back and be like, no problem. And by the way, bone broth is often recommended for gut health issues.

49:04Adam Schafer:So the protein itself is high in certain amino acids that seem to help with gut health. So if you're listening and you're like, man, I tried the high protein route. I've even bumped my fiber. I've tried to isolate which protein it is. It still bothers me. Like you can slam grams of protein from their bone broth protein.

49:22Justin Andrews:I mean, who doesn't have gut problems?

49:24Adam Schafer:I know. Let's be honest.

49:26Justin Andrews:If you're in denial, I feel like at this point. makes you feel better just i just say that because we all do right i'm suffering we all do we all do

49:35Adam Schafer:everybody you guys all peel the paint off the walls right yeah i saw i saw that video you did

49:39Sal Di Stefano:uh the there's a there's a girl that has an instagram page like dedicated to like being anti-protein that's crazy yeah by the way you didn't see it yeah it's you guys remember what

49:48Adam Schafer:i said yeah you said it does everybody remember what i said 10 years ago we would demonize protein so this is what the fitness industry does swinging back they go through cycles of demonizing a macronutrient or whatever and it was fat and it was carbs and i'm like at some point it's gonna be protein and sure enough you've got influencers now which it makes total sense because we've gone

50:07Sal Di Stefano:so ridiculous the other way too it's like even as much as we promote and push people that most people need to increase their protein but now you can get you know protein doritos yeah you know you can get protein oreo cookies you get protein everything now and so everything's becoming infused with protein and so of course you're going to have some sort of a backlash or pushback But then, I mean, when you have people like that, I'm just not a fan of because -

50:30Adam Schafer:No, what she said, because I know what you're talking about. I think I did a reaction video. You did.

50:33Sal Di Stefano:It just went up on our Instagram today. Yeah, I just saw it. I didn't see it until then.

50:37Adam Schafer:Bro, it literally sounded like 1992 RDA, like a representative from the RDA, like what she was saying. Yeah. It was like, carbs are the ones that we need. Our bodies run on carbs. I'm like, okay, I'm not saying carbs -

50:48Justin Andrews:Referring back to the old pyramid.

50:50Adam Schafer:Yeah, I'm like, I'm not saying carbs are bad. They're not. They're great for performance. I'm not an anti-carb person, but they're actually not essential. So what she's saying is actually of the macronutrients, that's the one you could never eat and be okay.

51:01Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. And then the essential protein is only like 0.3, which is like so minimal. That is not for somebody doing any sort of athletic endeavors. That's not for anybody who's lifting weights. That's definitely nowhere near optimal. And then all the other benefits that you get from a higher protein diet. So I just think, so I think it's a terrible message just because I'm just telling like,

51:20Adam Schafer:if that's you paleo valleys, bone broth protein, you're like, try it out. It's like literally like drinking water. You'll probably digest it very, very well. So do you guys know that a myostatin-inhibiting drug just passed? No. Yeah, it's not just FDA approved. Maybe Doug can look it up. Oh, they approved it? Yeah, I think it just passed. Let me double check here. I think it just passed phase three trials. So it will be available here. Will it be considered like a peptide? Yeah. Say what? Will it be considered a peptide? No, it's a drug.

51:52Sal Di Stefano:It is a drug. So where would they, like somebody who has severe muscle loss, like some sort of like a Lou Gehrig's disease or something like that. So there it is right there. Crazy side effects. I don't even know how to say that.

52:04Adam Schafer:How do you say that? A pedagromab? A pedagromab, I think it is. It just got FDA approval, and so it blocks myostatin activation. So it's great for people with like muscular atrophy. Yeah, so that's where you would use it.

52:20Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, like muscle wasting disease. That's the only way that they would do that, right? That's what it's - Doesn't Lou Gehrig's phone on that or no? Was I off on that? I think you're right. Yeah, I think you're right.

52:28Adam Schafer:Here's what I think they're going to do. I think they're going to just combine it with GLPs. I think this is the stack. Oh my God. That they're going to find a way - Never have to work out again. That's right. And they did a study on, with this myostatin inhibiting drug with a GLP, and they just dropped their calories. They weren't lifting weights or anything like that. And they lost half as much muscle. So actually, it's quite effective at what it does.

52:50Sal Di Stefano:I mean, they thought that about Red Hat, too, when they first started doing trials with Red Hat. No, no, no.

52:54Adam Schafer:This is because they combined it with this.

52:56Justin Andrews:Then the next thing we'll talk about is muscle quality at that point with everybody.

53:00Adam Schafer:You know who's going to get their hands on this and get wild with it? Bodybuilders. Of course. I am curious to see. Because bodybuilders don't care. The pharmanauts. They don't care. I mean, even Israel Tell said he would. Of course. He'd be all over. He'll do anything science. Bro, if they combine this with their crazy genetics, with their start, like, what's going to happen? Are they going to grow, like, muscle out of their ears? Like what's going to happen? And they'll be the first ones to show us how dangerous it is. Cause you know, they're going to not take what you're supposed to. Take it to the limits.

53:28Justin Andrews:Yeah, exactly. They're going to keep pushing it to see.

53:29Adam Schafer:Past the threshold. This is going to be weird, dude. What's interesting about this is from what I've read and from talking to people in the field, it doesn't produce performance benefits necessarily. So you might just like mass. Now I, yes, but I don't know if that's true. If the person trains. Which is what most people would care about anyways.

53:51Justin Andrews:I would think, yeah, yeah, if you're training in this, would complement that. But if you're somebody that's not even interested in that, you're just going to have a better-looking physique that's not functional.

54:01Adam Schafer:Well, you could get big muscles and be more like an obese person.

54:04Sal Di Stefano:I think it's pretty obvious where we'll go with it. I mean, we put silicone in our bodies to enhance things. When you really think about it, that's more absurd than taking a drug that just shuts off something that allows you to fill more muscles.

54:18Justin Andrews:or something.

54:19Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, we do way crazier stuff.

54:23Adam Schafer:This is for sure going to be the stack, for sure. I don't know how they're going to get there, but at some point it's going to be like, here's your GLP and here's your myostatin inhibitor and we got to take these both. Wow, that's wild. It just passed. Yeah, we can't do that though, Sal,

54:35Sal Di Stefano:because then the big thing about the natural limiter or regulator of the GLP-1 with muscle loss is that, okay, if I eat too low a calorie, too low a protein - Yeah, you lose muscle. I lose muscle. If I take a drug that counters that, then I'm still going to, I would think you're still going to lose - Here's what the study showed.

54:59Adam Schafer:How's this going to affect the organs? Here's what the study showed. They did still lose muscle, half as much. They did nothing else but take this with the GLP. Yeah, but what about bone?

55:09Sal Di Stefano:What about other things? Because now you're extending how long, yeah, like how long is the study? Three months, six months long? What happens when somebody is not hitting their essential macronutrients? Probably nothing good. Of course not. I mean, so you keep your muscle, but you lose your hair and your nails start falling out. Your body starts to have burning resources. Yeah, you look white as a ghost. Yeah, and your liver and kidneys start shutting down and you get all these other things going on. But hey, you kept half of your muscle this time.

55:38Adam Schafer:I have no idea. You look great.

55:41Sal Di Stefano:i feel like right now uh even though it's not a healthy even though it's not a good thing it's the wake-up call that the glp1 users need right it's like you take this and then if you did a dexa before and you go oh wow i lost 50 pounds but 25 of that was muscle then most any any doctors with half a brain are going hey we need to slow down this this dosage or we need to go on a focus on building muscle reverse diet whatever the things are where if now if you just take that out then we just extend the period of like being malnutrition i don't know i don't know dude can't be i don't know and and then the next thing is will they even because it's not because it's a drug and not a peptide will they allow it to be prescribed for a lot of like i wouldn't think for now highly regulated to just those types of diseases yeah i think that's how it's

56:30Adam Schafer:it got i think it got approved for specific reasons if i haven't looked into it but i'm pretty sure but i'm very interested in seeing what the black market does because you know for a fact here's what's gonna happen somebody will here's what's gonna happen the drug gets approved it's controlled here in the u.s some other country is gonna make it and then you can buy it from them or china or whatever and you're gonna have or somebody will make it in their house and the two categories of people that are gonna play with this are celebrities but for sure bodybuilders for sure bodybuilders like we're tank we're five years away from bodybuilders going ham with this combining with all the other stuff that they take.

57:06Adam Schafer:And so we'll know, by the way, we'll know. Cause you can see, it's funny. If you, and just for people who aren't into bodybuilding, you don't need to be into bodybuilding. But what's interesting is when you look at the decades of bodybuilding, you can see these massive jumps, these sudden jumps in physiques. And you're like, well, what happened? And it was the drugs. It was the dose and it was what they combined. Yeah. So like you go from the seventies to the eighties, there was a massive jump. Eighties to nineties was a massive jump. yeah uh and since the late 90s we haven't really had a huge jump because that's when they figured out super high doses of everything so i don't know there's a few guys you've seen that are

57:42Sal Di Stefano:crazy looking like what's his name uh yeah but they don't like they're not like bigger than like

57:46Adam Schafer:coleman or you know cutler who yes they are what's what's his uh uh big rami yeah look at pull up big rami right now yeah his last one of his yeah but i mean i could show you bodybuilders from the 90s that didn't win, but were just as big. Really? Yeah, for sure. As big Robbie? They're not doing anything different than the bodybuilders of the 90s. No, I know. He looks crazy. Yeah, for sure. Whoa. For sure. But like put up, yeah, like I said.

58:12Sal Di Stefano:I don't think that's a crazy picture of him. He's seen way crazier pictures of him.

58:15Adam Schafer:But dude, here's what I think. I think in five to 10 years, there's going to be another jump. I don't even know what the hell you're going to look like after that. What are you going to look like after that, dude? You're going to go horse. I know. It's wild. Yeah, it is crazy. Let's see what happens. Yeah. All right, so I'm excited to share with you something really cool. Fatty 15. Now, it uses this fatty acid called C15. It's a fatty acid found in dairy. Now, I know what you're thinking. What does dairy have to do with my health? Well, this particular fatty acid, there's so much studies right now, so much data emerging showing that this fatty acid is phenomenal for inflammation, cell membrane health, mitochondrial health.

58:55Adam Schafer:All right, what does that mean? Well, since I started using Fatty 15, I feel less inflammation in my joints and better energy. It's the next fatty acid that I've added to my supplement regimen. So I got my omega-3s. That's a staple. Now I also add C15 from Fatty 15. Go check it out. Get 15 % off. Go to fatty15.com slash mindpump. The code mindpump gets you that massive discount. Back to the show.

59:23Justin Andrews:First question is from Hook Line and Senior. How do you figure out your average calorie burn a day when trying to decide on calorie intake for muscle building? I feel like that's like Doug's dating website right there.

59:38Adam Schafer:Calling me out. Gotcha. Hook, line, and senior. That's Doug's handle. His farmer only page. Sorry, Doug. All right. I had to say that. All right. So the best. So here's the deal. There's a really expensive way to figure out your calorie burn, but it'll just tell you that day. yeah but how do we do it oh this is the best the best way that i've only i've been able to do this is you literally track uh for a week or two uh and if you don't lose weight didn't gain weight

1:00:05Sal Di Stefano:that's your maintenance the key the key to this is uh you have to understand uh like what a what a normal week looks like for you that that's the only coaching i have to do to this like if someone like say someone hired me i have to remind them like hey this isn't like uh let's go impress your coach the next two weeks and go be doing all kinds of extra steps and cardio and workouts. It's like doing, I need an average of a week or two of what like your normal life looks like. If you normally drove to work and then you came home and then you watch TV and you did the thing, like just do the thing for a week or two.

1:00:37Sal Di Stefano:A lot of times I can get it in a week. A week is if, if you're consistent with like, you can tell me like that was a normal week of my life for the last year, both eating behaviors, which is including like, Hey, if you would skip that meal and then you'd have that one snack or you order that type. I want my client to do all the normal things so I can see how their body kind of maintains, which most people will probably maintain in that week. And then I have an idea of like, okay, that's caloric maintenance. And then before we actually even start to cut, I actually want to change what they're probably doing.

1:01:12Sal Di Stefano:So we talked about this earlier in the episode. It's like, so let's just say you track like that. Let's say your goal is fat loss. You want to lose weight. And we track and we see you're averaging 2 ,800 calories. But when I look at the foods you're eating, I see when the most things that are most egregious are low protein, higher on sugars, higher on saturated fats, not enough fiber. And so there's like four levers right away I can decide to move. And so before I start going, oh, cut your calories from 2 ,800 or 2 ,500 down to 2 ,000, I'm going to actually make adjustments to like, hey, let's add this meal, a high fibrous meal every single day and actually stay at maintenance and just start to tweak the macros and or put them in a reverse diet before cutting.

1:01:59Adam Schafer:No, 100%. And by the way, you can get a general idea at mapsmacro.com, but it will not give you nearly as specific as what Adam said. So that's really the only way to get that real good number. But if you need a general idea, you can go to maps macro, it's free. You can enter in some information. It'll give you kind of a general idea of what, where your probably maintenance is. Next question is from darn two.

1:02:21Justin Andrews:How long should I be in maintenance before I cut? This is the first time I've figured out my maintenance. I went from 1900 calories to 2600 calories.

1:02:29Adam Schafer:So that seems like a good place to cut, especially if you're a female. Typically when I reverse diet someone, I'll stabilize them for about three weeks before I do a cut. So if I jump to you, I'll keep you there for maybe three weeks and then we'll decide to do a cut. So it's, I mean, and you can jump and then cut right out the gates, but then you don't really give your body a chance to kind of work with that new maintenance. So I'd say probably three weeks.

1:02:53Sal Di Stefano:No, I'd a hundred percent agree. The only thing I would probably add to that is if I had somebody at this and they were telling me they're still hungry, I'd still lean in. So let's, so if you're still getting stronger and you still have an appetite and we've reversed diet this far, then I would say, let's go to 2 ,800 or let's go to 2 ,900. So the further we go, the more runway we're going to have. And if you still feel like you have time, my goal always with my clients that I reverse diet was to get to a place where they're like, man, I'm eating so much food, almost to where it starts to become inconvenient to eat that much food because then it becomes really convenient for me to go, all right, I just want you to eliminate that meal or cut back on this.

1:03:30Sal Di Stefano:And then it'd be, then it's easy for them because they were already working so hard to hit that many calories that now coming back down, say three to 400 calories becomes really comfortable for them to be at. And now we're in a caloric deficit. So that's kind of the two ways I'd look at it. You are high enough. Now I'd stabilize like Sal saying before I start to reduce, or if you're like, I'm still hungry, I'm still getting stronger. Like keep going.

1:03:52Adam Schafer:That's a good sign. If it's whole natural foods and you're hungry, keep going.

1:03:55Justin Andrews:Next question is from Mick Daniel 95 steroids versus peptides. What's the difference? Please break it down for me like I'm a five-year-old.

1:04:05Adam Schafer:Huge difference. Yeah. Generally speaking, steroids are exogenous hormones. Peptides are chains of amino acids that tell the body to make something or release a hormone itself. Now, here's where it gets a little tricky is human growth hormone is a peptide hormone. So a human growth hormone is considered a peptide, but it's also a hormone. HCH is considered a peptide? It is. It's a peptide, but it's a peptide hormone. Really? Yeah. So by the way it's made, it's - HGH is considered a peptide. Yeah. So it's a long chain of amino acids. I didn't know that. Yeah.

1:04:39Sal Di Stefano:I know that teslamorin and all those are peptides that are supposed to signal growth hormone, but I didn't know actual HGH is considered a peptide. Yeah.

1:04:49Adam Schafer:See, Doug pulled it up. It's a large single chain polypeptide comprised of 191 amino acids.

1:04:56Sal Di Stefano:Is that the only example of a hormone? Is insulin? Let me double check. Yeah, insulin is too. Is insulin a peptide? Yeah, insulin is a peptide. Is it a peptide? Yeah, yeah. So it's another - And it's another hormone. So you're right. So that's two right there. Yeah.

1:05:05Adam Schafer:And they're both kind of lumped in, right? Especially growth hormone because they would say it's a performance enhancing. Yeah, see, it's another peptide.

1:05:12Sal Di Stefano:Both, by the way, could be very dangerous if you took too much.

1:05:16Adam Schafer:Growth hormone, not as much. Yeah, what? Yeah, no, you could take a big old dose of growth hormone. You just feel like crap. Insulin will kill you for sure.

1:05:23Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, for sure. But even HGH - I mean, over time.

1:05:27Adam Schafer:But if I gave you a giant shot - Just one time? Right now. Yeah. You might get low blood sugar. It would take a lot. You might hold a lot of water. But if I give you a big-ass shot of insulin, I could kill you.

1:05:39Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

1:05:39Adam Schafer:For sure. Testosterone, I could give you a big-ass shot of testosterone and you're -

1:05:42Sal Di Stefano:You're fine.

1:05:43Adam Schafer:Yeah, you're totally fine. But steroids are hormones. They're either the hormones you make or they are based off of the hormones you make. So anabolic steroids take typically testosterone or DHT. and what they'll do is they'll tweak it a little bit to make it have different, a little bit more anabolic or longer acting in the body, but it's based off of the androgen hormones.

1:06:06Sal Di Stefano:Now let's push HGH and insulin aside because I feel like they're the only ones that are rare. All other peptides, there's no side effects of taking it for a certain period of time and shutting anything off in your body, where you could do that with exogenous hormones.

1:06:21Adam Schafer:So that's another tricky one, right? So typically when you take a hormone, you get a negative feedback loop. So if I take testosterone, my body will stop its own production of testosterone. Growth hormone will do it in the moment. Peptides, maybe. And what they might do is downregulate receptors. So taking like high doses of peptides might make the body less sensitive to the peptides. So I know there's some peptides I recommend that you cycle. So it's not like a straightforward, I'm like, tell me like I'm five years old. Well, I don't know if I can. Like you're five years old. But basically, it's a hormone versus something that tells your body to make some serious.

1:06:59Sal Di Stefano:I feel like somebody that would ask the question and frame it this way is, I don't want to take, I'm super anti-steroids. I wouldn't want to take that. That sounds dangerous, bad, or a drug. I'm curious about peptides because I've heard all these great benefits of it. And so is it like that? Am I taking something that's dangerous like that or bad? Well, here, I'll give you the difference.

1:07:19Adam Schafer:Even though growth hormone is a peptide hormone, let's just call it a hormone, right? I could take growth hormone or I could take a peptide that tells my body to make more growth hormone. Right. And so that would be kind of the difference, right? I could take testosterone. Exogenous.

1:07:32Justin Andrews:Would you consider that endogenous or if it's like working with your body's systems or?

1:07:37Adam Schafer:No, it's still from outside the body.

1:07:39Justin Andrews:It's still exogenous because it's coming in. Yeah. Yeah.

1:07:40Adam Schafer:So I could either take testosterone or maybe I could use a peptide that makes my body make more testosterone. So that would be kind of, but I don't think it's very clear cut. Like, you know. So next question is from Finish Flash.

1:07:54Justin Andrews:For me, progressive overload is difficult. I get stronger, go up in weight, and then injure myself and go back to square one. How do I avoid the yo-yo of trying to get stronger? Another thing is that if I don't injure myself, I get so sore that it takes me days to get better. And by then I never have progressed.

1:08:15Adam Schafer:So at some point, no matter what, when you get super strong, and I don't know if this is your case. You need to reinforce. That, you know, there comes a point when the risk versus reward just isn't worth it. I'll use myself as an example. So the high, and this for me is very heavy. I know those guys that lift way more than this. But for me, I'll use the deadlift because that's my favorite exercise to brag about. The most I've ever deadlifted was 605 pounds. Now, could I at this point try to chase a, let's say 650 pound deadlift? And could I potentially get there? Maybe, I think I could. Is it worth it?

1:08:48Adam Schafer:No, because at that point, it's just the risk versus, I'm not going to get anything from going up to 650 except for a dramatic increase of risk of injury. Now, that's for some people, but usually it's not that. Usually it's this. It's you need to do different exercises. You need to move in different planes of motion.

1:09:05Justin Andrews:You're thinking too linearly, which I think is, you know, it works in the setting of like, this is my goal. This is my one lift. I'm really trying to, you know, maximize. And so the specificity of that matters. However, if you're getting into this same kind of conundrum, I get to this point, my body's fighting back. I end up facing injury, but maybe I'm not incorporating rotation. Maybe I'm not incorporating these other types of movements that would reinforce the joint. So it creates more of that joint integrity and strength and stability. So now I could produce more force, which then is going to give me over that plateau hump that I keep experiencing doing the same progressive, repetitive playbook.

1:09:48Justin Andrews:So I think that like you need to start thinking outside of that, how we can like come around, reinforce the joints more, you know, change your training up, come back and then go through that same progress.

1:09:59Sal Di Stefano:You know, we don't talk about this very much because we used to hammer it, you know, 10, 13 years ago when we first started all this. but you know we wrote uh maps anabolic maps performance and maps aesthetic in in that order for a reason uh and it's for exactly this like uh in if if you've never ran through those three programs in that order in a year you really should especially if this is one of the things that you're being challenged with is because we wrote them uh considering trying to consider like all types of clients like somebody who would want to build muscle people that wanted to lose body fat people that want to develop certain muscle groups and then people that don't want to get injured and like pursue training for longevity for a long time and if you cycle through all those programs you kind of check all those boxes and so you know and the other thing that we talk about we do talk about more recently is at the bare minimum whatever your goal is no matter what it is every year you should cycle through either one round of performance or one round of symmetry

1:10:57Adam Schafer:that's it that's what i'll tell this person whoever wrote this in like go and do a cycle or two of symmetry, performance, and then come back and see how you feel. Make a big difference. And I bet it'll make a huge difference. I'll bet you'll hit PRs and not hurt yourself because this is typically the result of doing the same kind of movements, pushing the same kind of movements. That's right. Not bolstering the ability to stabilize, not bolstering your ability to support yourself with these weights. And so you just, once you get past a certain, one of my favorite examples of this was Justin and his 405 pound bench press he did years ago.

1:11:30Adam Schafer:and what did you do you actually I remember you said you would get up to a certain number yeah you would always get hurt and then what did you do to finally get past it I finally like I

1:11:39Justin Andrews:started that's what introduced me to Indian clubs and I started to started to go through those those external rotational patterns and which is something that's like alien you know I just thought like stretching or like you know that was just for warm-up and dynamic warm-ups but then you start loading it and there's a progressive way to actually load those types of movements and so I started to kind of go progressively from like one pound to, you know, three pounds to five pounds to 10 pounds and like, you know, just start working my way through that. Then there's like mace bells. And so that's another way to kind of, you know, add a little bit more weight to that.

1:12:14Justin Andrews:The strength stability that created was like substantial. So now when I go to bench, now I'm locked in and I didn't have that same fail point. Like it just went right through. What was the number you got stuck at before you were able to finally hit 405? To get 405 was, uh. When would you start hurting yourself? It was like about 350.

1:12:32Adam Schafer:So 350, and it always happened.

1:12:33Justin Andrews:Always happened.

1:12:34Adam Schafer:And then boom, you went up 50 pounds just from stabilizing your shoulder joints. Yeah. Yep. That's the one right there. Look, if you like the show, come 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

1:12:46Justin Andrews: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. 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.

1:13:34Justin Andrews: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. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.

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