Women, You Will Never Lose Belly Fat Unless You Do These 5 Things | Mind Pump 2445

if you're a woman with belly fat you will never lose it unless you do the following five things all right first let's get into the causes of belly fat because now there's excessive body fat that you gain on your body that comes from to put it simply of course it's more complex in this but to put it simply you're you're you're not burning as many calories as you're taking in or you're taking in more calories and your burning your body stores body fat but what happens to some women is they start to notice that their body fat distribution changes a bit and they start to accumulate more body fat in their belly region uh or more visceral belly fat which they might not have had in the past like the classic way that women gain you know store body fat tends to be in the hip and thighs MH uh area whereas men tend to store in the belly but a lot of women will experience this especially as they get older or during like a life uh change like all of a sudden like I'm gaining weight but I'm not gaining like I used to it's right now around my belly and I've had a lot of clients talk to me about this and as a young trainer I just said oh you just got to get leaner I think it's you know I used to think well I think it's in your imagination you just store body fat where where you store it right but now we have a lot of data showing that this actually happens and there's some causes yeah this is actually and not just uh common in in women it's also common in men for the same reason I I mean they whenever this I didn't know this early just like you early on uh you know my clients would say that and i' be like oh I would say it was unique to the individual not something particularly going on in your life right like oh yeah like some people store body fat around their hips or some people store it more there some people have low back fat more like and they'd say no no no it's not the same yeah they'd be like that's how I used to be too I used to go right to here but what's weird is that it's now seems to be here and I just I didn't have the answer because I didn't understand this until later on and again it it this happens both to men so if you're somebody male or female that is suffering from this or realize that my body is just storing body fat different than ever has it's almost always a clear indication that something is off with your horor profile hormones yes so hormones can drive uh they influence how body fat gets stored in the body so with women in particular uh you start to see this imbalance between estrogen and progesterone and then both men and women you see more insulin resistance in connection to belly fat so uh having or developing insulin resistance so insulin resistance is when your body isn't reacting or um it's it's not being signaled by the insulin you're producing like it used to so your body has to produce more insulin to give the same effect so let's say you eat a meal classic example you eat a meal containing carbohydrates or sugar that gets digested released into bloodstream body you know releases insulin insulin tells that that sugar or those carbohydrates to get shuttled into the the body or into the muscle or the liver and if your in if your body's not reacting to insulin like it used to you need to produce more insulin in order to make this happen and then of course over time this turns into diabetes but even before it becomes diabetes if your body's becoming insulin resistant this is um this this this is metabolic illness in essence your your your cells just aren't reacting responding the way they need to and they they found this correlation for a long time more belly fat means more insulin resistance but more insulin resistance also means more body fat so that's one of the main causes is there's a change in your hormones and there's always a root as to why the hormones are changing yeah I mean is this directly connected also to the stress uh that can cause that also right so you it's not just uh somebody's age uh at what point of their life but also they can actually be causing some of this hormonal change based off of all the outside stress or intern stress that they're perceiving right yeah because uh so stress causes um a rise in cortisol now cortisol you know weer we often hear that referred to as the stress hormone um and it's like this bad thing cortisol is not bad it's an it's a hormone we need it um but the pro the a nice healthy cortisol profile looks something like this you see a spike in the morning when you need to wake up and it slowly drops and it's low in the evening so you can go to sleep when you're under this kind of constant level of stress uh lowlevel stress or moderate stress um over time what you tend to see is this inverted uh cortisol release where cortisol is low in the morning need lots of caffeine to get up and wake up and then it starts to rise midday and stay high in the evening and now you can't sleep even though you're exhausted and then overall cortisol is just higher for longer periods of time and cortisol also changes fat storage uh profile it actually changes distribution as well it's also connected to more in particular visceral body fat and then even if you if you boil it down even more visceral body fat in the abdomen area so that's one of the pieces of that hormone uh profile that's off is your cortisol is a little messed up because your stress isn't being managed uh properly well okay so in this category of stress would you also place like an event like you're having a child and then going through that whole process like in terms of it just being a uh you know quite a quite a traumatic uh stress on the body like physically like and how that would change and shape profile cuz I mean in terms of that kind of changing the whole chemistry and then you know obviously changing and shifting like uh location job all these other things like being stressors um you know that all that kind of stuff is going to play into this it can it's mostly connected to chronic stress so we're supposed to experience for lack of better terms supposed to right uh you know periods of stress yeah stress but what what tends to be damaging is this long like like years of stress or six months or a year of just this kind of Li this this this you know higher than normal amount of stress or just my ability to manage stress may be may be different right M where let's say before you had some quiet time in your schedule or you were able to do things for yourself and now your schedule doesn't allow it so now your normal life is is not you can't manage the stress like used to right so the normal stress now becomes more than you can manage and then that causes that cortisol dysfunction yeah I was just going to say I'm trying to think of a scenario where I've seen these independent of each other like most times they come they almost come in pairs almost always like normally if I have a client that has hormone imbalances that we're trying to get to the bottom of they normally also have some sort of excessive stress chronic chronic stress going on also rarely I'm trying to think of an example where I've seen these uh independent of each other can you do youall having a lot of clients like that where like you didn't have both in that scenario no it's almost always the case uh except for cases of like param menopause or menopause where you start to see hormone changes um happen anyway which is the inevitable right like that's that's the there there's an example okay that's a good example I've had healthy clients totally fine good good management of stress most of life and then they hit that age and then that that happens and that happens these days uh Sometimes women in their as young in as in their mid3 usually 40s where you start to see this and then you'll hear them say like oh my body is just storing body fat differently now there's a lot you could do and we'll get to the solutions by the way there's a lot you could do that mitigates this uh quite a bit but again hormone changes uh right cortisol you know estrogen progesterone low testosterone uh this is another one insulin resistance and low testosterone go hand inand and this is by the way I'm talking about women so testosterone is is you know commonly known as the male hormone but it's just as important for women as is for men now there's a difference in how much testosterone is optimal for women and men obviously women it's much lower but if a woman's testosterone is too low she gets the same symptoms that a man with low testosterone gets low energy low libido uh higher rates of depression brain fog and loss of muscle and increased rates uh of storage of body fat and then insulin resistance tends to follow because of some of those Downstream effects of the low testosterone call so we just had a call last night with our glp1 group and uh Dr Lauren was in there talking and she went through the list of almost every one of her female clients once they get to a certain age she almost recommends almost there was thyroid pest thyroid progesterone and testosterone uh and DHEA those the four right tend to be the ones that CC works with the most yeah so um next another one of the causes of this is just loss of muscle so here's an interesting statistic uh after the the age of 30 the average woman will lose four to six pounds of muscle per decade so if she does nothing if she does no strength training if she's not trying to offset this every 10 years she's losing between four to six pounds of muscle and this doesn't account for the loss of muscle quality so although the scale may show you lost five pounds of muscle M the muscle that you kept isn't the same quality cuz one pound of muscle is not equal to one pound of muscle you see a pound of muscle on an athlete versus a pound of muscle on a seditary individual they are not the same metabolically they're not the same when it comes to insulin sensitivity they're they're you know they don't have the same fatty deposits their one pound of healthy muscle is not the same as one pound of unhealthy muscle so aside from the muscle loss you also see this degrading of the muscle Health every single 10 years I can't help but think though that that statistic is exacerbated because the previous two oh yeah it's all they all in fact feeds into that yeah I would say the loss of muscle plays a bigger role into those two and then you see that like positive feedback yeah cuz I the one thing I've never liked about studies like that that show that is the average person hears that and goes like oh [ __ ] this just getting older sucks or just this is the inevitable that's going to happen to me as I age I'm supposed to lose all this muscle so I never like that because I feel like that sends the wrong the wrong message it's really like okay what that is is Decades of not strength training not hitting your protein intake not mitigating your stress getting good sleep doing all the the big rocks right therefore because of that what statistics show is as you age you're going to lose four to six pounds of that so I just think it's so important to to talk about how connected those all are and it's not just because you're getting older you're going to lose that kind of muscle it's because of those things you're not doing causes a whole host of things hey sorry to interrupt look I have a free guide that teaches you how to lose fat in three steps just three steps that will burn the most amount of body fat help keep it off this guide is totally free we're giving it to everybody right now if you want it click on the link at the top of the description below all right back to the show 100% we'll get more into this when we get into the solutions here but um you know losing muscle means you're losing insulin sensitivity because muscles are extremely insulin sensitive losing muscle means that your body is changing its hormone profile to pair muscle down right building muscle you need a youthful hormone profile well you're losing all your extra gas tanks right like I mean that's kind of the simpler way to look at it is muscle is this great storage for all the excess carbohydrates that you consume and so if you lose four or five pounds of muscle off your body that was an additional x amount of calories your body could actually healthily store that it would Store and put to work and use you now lose that so what happens now that you you over well if you overc consume now that gets stored as body fat where in the past if you had that 5 pounds of musle mus it would shuttle over into the muscles and fill the muscle bellies up that's a huge difference having those 5 PBS of muscle that gets shuttled over there you actually look better better you feel better you can use that you lose that the same calorie intake don't change anything else now that same calorie intake ends up being over spillage and gets stored as body fat that's right and you and muscle is also a a stress absorbing tissue on the body we know this with data if you go into a stressful situation A surgery an injury an illness the more muscle you have the the the the the higher the odds of of definitely of survival much more resilient but of coming yes so much more resilient uh with more muscles so loss of muscle is a big one um the next one is undereating and overtraining so and these go hand in hand um unfortunately the message that has been told to pretty much everybody but especially to women is that in order for you to be healthy you need to eat less less less and less and less so as your metabolism is slowing down as you're losing muscle oh you got to keep eating less got to keep eating less and then to be fit and healthy you need to beat the crap out of yourself by ex by over applying the stress of exercise and so you get these underfed overtrained flabby individuals with hormone imbalances who don't understand why they're losing a little bit of weight but really it's just their arms and legs that are getting skinny they still have a you know belly fat they don't feel good they they eat one weekend they go out and eat and they gain all this weight they can't figure out the hell's going on even though they're trying to do the right things because they're beating themselves up in the gym it's because they're over applying intensity with exercise it's not appropriate they're not training themselves properly typically overtraining and they underfeed themselves in particular protein oh yeah this is the classic Karen at Orange Theory or f45 I mean this is the they eat two salads a day and uh you know a frappuccino is like all the calories they consume and then they run through these like circuit based types of class and burn trying and burn all their calories off and they just get stuck in this awful cycle of maybe they're not gaining any more body fat but they're not losing any and they're kind of staying the same place just with all this hard work and no food yeah and and then and so addicted to the uh adrenaline and endorphins and cortisol dump that they get from the class thinking that they're doing something good for their body because man after they get done beating themselves up for that that feels I feel so good and so accomplished afterwards not realizing that you're they're addicted to that feeling because their body is starving of having a good healthy balance of hormones and so this is a vicious cycle that um I I I tend to train a lot of clients like this that that that ran into this and then and you apply the right things and say everything changes like magic 100% 100% next up is the metabolic adaptation that happens from all the things that we listed metabolic adaptation literally means your metabolism is adapting now in this case your metabolism is slowing down what you used to be able to eat you no longer can now you eat it now you gain body fat now your body reacts you can't figure out why you're eating so little and yet you're still you know x amount of pounds overweight you can't figure it out and it's because your metabolism is slowed down to a snail's pace and but and this is real this is a real thing we see this with clients all the time women that are coming in that are tracking their calories consuming a, to 12200 calories a day who still have 20 pounds to lose who are doing cardio step classes five you know days a week or Orange Theory or whatever five days a week can't figure out what the hell's going on definitely don't want to eat less because I'm barely eating anything to begin with and just feel like garbage there's just no room for them to go no they're so low calorie and it's this is really where they might eat a cookie and it they will fill the impact of that you know it's just like that excess amount a couple hundred more calories and you know it's going to change their their physique uh at that point because they're so again they're they're overtrain they're low calorie and this is just like something they they' just gradually adapted to this really um you know inefficient uh way to metabolize everything meanwhile all our peers this is one of those things that we find ourselves arguing debating over when people use words like oh your your metabolism is broken and then you have the professionals come out that's not what your metabolism broken and then they make people think that oh okay well then my metabolism is fine when really what's going on is that your metabolism is doing exactly what it's supposed to do you're starving it you're pushing it like crazy and you're telling it to survive off of what you're doing and so it becomes efficient learns how to do that yeah so you know and it's unfortunate because again it turns into one of these things where all the science nerds want to try and argue over the terminology that's used to explain what's going on but this it's a true phenomenon that happens a lot and a lot of coaches and trainers don't know what to do when they all they their only tool the only tool that they use in their tool belt is the move more burn you know or burn more eat less strategy and this person has got themsel in this situation where that strategy no longer serves them they are now at such a low calorie to the example you gave and I've seen this countless times where they are tracking they are weighing they are measuring they are eating 1,200 calories and they are doing stuff activity every every single day yet they can't lose that last 20 pounds no what it tends to look like is they lost an initial whatever and then plateaued hard and then they have nowhere else to go they don't know where else to go and now just to maintain the weight loss that they did create they have to maintain this crazy schedule of eating very little and moving like crazy and it's your metabolism has adapted by the way there's a way to get your metabolism to to adapt the other way right there are things you can do and if you do them right you can also speed up your metabolism in effective way just like it slowed down uh you know in which case you did that on accident well we can on purpose speed it up so here's the fix let's start with the first thing number one lift weights there is nothing you can do exercise-- wise that is more effective at reducing belly fat in particular visceral body fat in particular like strength training now why is that well strength training directly builds muscle now before I hear you you know yelling at the screen or or or saying to yourself well you know I I feel my muscles burn in my orange theory and you know I feel my legs burning when I'm going for runs no no no they don't build muscle those forms of exercise do not build muscle you'll get a little bit of strength but mostly what you're getting is endurance which is fine if that's what you want but they are not directly affecting your muscles in a build sense in a gain muscle sense in a speed up your metabolism sense only traditional strength training will do this what does that look like that looks like you do 10 reps of something with something heavy good form good technique right rest and then you rest you rest for 2 minutes 3 minutes then you do another set it is not going from exercise to exercise to exercise to exercise with no rest it is not running on a treadmill non-stop or doing a class Non-Stop and and sweating your butt you know whatever it's not that that does not send a signal to the body that says build muscle only traditional strength training will do that and when you build that muscle here's the beauty of this right building muscle dramatically improves insulin sensitivity it also tells your body to organize its hormones in a way to build muscle so if you're trying to get your body to build muscle and you do so with a nice with good appropriate strength training the first thing your body does is it changes its hormone profile to do so and it does this through a few different ways one is it actually changes your hormone profile but two it changes receptor density for example strength training directly increases what what what is known as Androgen receptor density all right what are Androgen receptors these are the receptors that testosterone attaches to so if you had good testosterone as a woman remember testosterone is important for women too if you have good testosterone your in your system but there are no receptors to attach to it does nothing it just just swims around your system and it's like might as well not be there the only way it can work is if it attaches to a receptor well when you build muscle you increase the number of these receptors so even if your testosterone levels stay the same for example if your testosterone stayed the same but you doubled your Androgen receptor density you've essentially double your testosterone that's how effective it is and building muscle does it it also speeds up your metabolism you gain muscle and you move in that direction your body burns more calories muscle is active tissue that requires more calories to maintain than other tissues so building muscle we talked about metabolic adaptation you can also get your metabolism adapt in the other way by simply building muscle I think it's so important to talk you know even further you mentioned it but further with the mindset that goes into how you lift because when I would get this the same client that's that we're kind of describing right the Avatar and then can you you you drop all the science knowledge that you just did and you say hey let's we're going to we're going to lift weights to to build muscle and they okay I you've sold me on that I'm going to start doing that they still do it with the wrong mindset they do it with the idea of still beating themselves up still trying to accomplish more in the workout still trying to get good at the work work out to where it becomes easy versus going into it with the idea of like I need to get stronger my goal is week over week I want to be able to add more weight to the bar and lift more weight and the truth is it may it may never get easier for me it's just I'm going to be constantly challenging myself and challenging my body to lift more weight to get start that is going to send the loudest signal to your body to build muscle not this doing weights okay I'm ready I can do it again doing weights again okay I'm ready I can do it again and this circuit based type of training that I think so many of them are addicted to so how you go into the lifting weights I think is so important because many times this client is attracted to the type of weight training that is not benefiting them very much no no and I'll take it a step further if you look at the data and by the way we've we we know this through anecdote through training all the clients that we we have over the last two and a half decades but you look at the data on weight loss uh when the ways that the people lose weight is through cardio plus calorie deficit in other words people drop their calories and they did cardio a significant percentage of the weight that they lose is muscle they will lose 10 lbs but 4 pounds or 40% of it comes from muscle now why does this happen by the way this doesn't happen with strength training in those studies where they use strength training it's almost all body fat or sometimes it's all body fat and they gain a little bit of muscle so in other words you lose 10 pounds it's 10 PBS of body fat not six lbs of fat four PBS of muscle all right why does cardio cause us to lose muscle in that scenario it's because cardio is asking your body to improve its endurance not strength endurance doesn't require bigger stronger muscles it requires efficient muscles also cardio on its own does burn a lot of calories which your body adapts to but it does burn a lot of calories so your body learns how to do that activity better more efficiently by burning less calories how does it do that it pairs muscle down the best example I can give you a visual example of the difference between strength training and cardio is a long-distance Runner versus a sprinter sprinters are essentially doing strength training when they run they're sprinting for short distances they are they are muscular and lean versus low muscle uh marathon runners so if you want to lose muscle cardio is the way to go if you want to keep your muscle speed up your metabolism while getting leaner improve insulin sensitivity all of the above then you will lift weights and you will lift weights like somebody who's trying to get stronger and build muscle not like somebody who's just trying to burn a lot of calories hey sorry to interrupt look this episode is brought to you by eight sleep the most advanced Sleep System you'll find anywhere goes over your bed warms cools your bed and it adjusts temperature based off of how you move in bed and sleep go check them out go to eight sleep.com mind pump use the code mind pump get $350 off their pod 4 ultra all right back to the show I feel like I have to reorder this because with that it's so important that you pair it with eating an calorie Surplus and eating high protein because this Al even this alone if you're still trapped in that eating two salads in a you know coffee a day is your you're you're you're because you're afraid you're going to put more body fat on and which is totally understandable to this client this client has been eating a th000 calories doing all this High activity and you say I'm going to cut this activity out from you and now I want you to slow down your workouts and strength train and take rest periods and then then you try and tell that client oh and by the way I'm also going to have you increase calories and bump your protein intake them out you scare the [ __ ] out of that person but it's absolutely necessary because what happens when we go to the gym and we lift properly the way we're supposed to we send the loud signal for us hey to go tell the body to go build muscle but if you don't give it what it needs to actually go do that then all you're doing is sending a loud signal and the body isn't adapting it isn't growing it isn't building muscle and so it's imperative that not only do we train a certain way but then we also feed the body appropriately in order to reap the real benefits of building muscle it's like sending a bunch of blueprints to construction workers to build a house no tools no no tools no wood no sheetrock no nothing it's exactly like that you can't build anything like it's great it's great you have all the plans you got all the plans and you have all the direction but you don't give them the tools you have to feed your body the nutrients it needs to build muscle all right what does that look like let's get specific eat one gram of protein per pound of Target body weight okay so whatever the weight is that you want to weigh it's 120 lb 150 lb whatever that's how many grams of protein you need to eat on an ready for this every single day basis not sometimes but every single day and not an average two cell I want you know somebody brought that up recently and I was like you know we haven't talked a lot about that on the show and we should talk about that more often because you talk about calorie average is okay right is about how undulating your calories and the average when it comes to weight loss or weight gain is so important but you can't do that with protein no protein needs to be consistent because we don't really have an effect effective way of storing protein like we do fat or carbohydrates right carbohydrates get stored as glycogen fat obviously can get stored in body fat but protein needs to be consistent that in other words you can't have a super high protein day and then a bunch of low protein days and average it out and say it's it's all the same doesn't really work that way you want to have it on a consistent basis so if your go if if your target body weighs 150 pounds and you're eating breakfast lunch and dinner guess what you're eating 50 grams of protein for breakfast 50 grams of protein for lunch 50 grams of protein for dinner now a lot of people don't know what that looks like a lot of people listening to this right now was like okay I'll eat a high protein breakfast I'll have n 10 o meat yeah I'll have two scrambled eggs no no no 50 grams of protein of eggs is what is that eight eggs something like that it's like around eight eggs so it's a decent size so you need to have like 8 ounces of meat uh or 8 ounces of some kind of protein for breakfast you need to do same thing with lunch same thing with dinner eat it first prioritize it that's going to give you most of the nutrients that you need now of course you can't just eat protein you have some fats and some carbohydrates but I'm not worried so much about that because when people tend to prioritize the protein especially if they get it from whole food sources comes the other stuff tends to come so do that and if you don't you can lift all the weights in the world you can train perfectly uh with strength training if your protein's low you're going to build very little muscle if it's too low you'll build no muscle doesn't even matter at all all right next up uh is to have some kind of a spiritual practice for stress now this could be meditation it could be obviously prayer but when you look at the data now here's why here's why we put this in there for Stress Management when you look at the data on managing stress there are two very powerful ways that you can manage stress one is to change your lifestyle okay so you got a stressful job you got a mortgage you got three kids uh you know you you you got a spouse or whatever you could change all that and in hope in hopes that it'll completely change your stress although you might switch jobs find a job that's just a stressful probably don't want to get rid of your kids I think if you did you'd probably be more stressed out than you were before so sometime the reason why I'm saying this is sometimes our lives we can change to make less stressful but often times it's just life like it's just this a season of life it's stressful so the data shows us very clearly either you change your life your lifestyle but if that's not really uh something something that is is is possible for you in a big way incorporating some kind of a spiritual practice especially starting the day out with it has significant impact on how your body manages the normal stress of your life I mean there's there's a there's studies that show that people who wake up in the morning and engage in 10 to 15 minutes of prayer or meditation that's it the amount the the type of stress that they or at least the way that they perceive the stress throughout the day their normal stress is reduced significantly so for most people my experience training people when I did this with clients it was easier for them to do this than it was for them to do this overhaul of their life now sometimes it was something they could do like you're you're dating somebody that's that's toxic let's break up with them and then boom stress is gone but other times it's like I look I got kids I got a job like I can't change it these are important things for me incorporating some kind of a spiritual practice tends to give us a sense of purpose takes us out of those stressful things and starting the day out that way it tends it it the the the theory is that it primes the central nervous system to receive the stress differently throughout the rest of the day that's why it's so important to do this first thing in the morning if you're going to incorporate this and and the data shows as little as 5 to 10 to 15 minutes why should it be any different than the body we do it for workouts you know this is for our mind and our our mental uh ability and I think too like really acknowledging the fact that there's like we're like control animals like we just want to figure out how to uh predict things in our environment how to manage all these things but there are factors there's a lot going on here that we have no control over and to acknowledge that right away and to just stay with what you can control it relieves this excess amount of uh stress and and things that can accumulate really fast that really are unnecessary for you to carry around with you that adds to uh this this dysfunctional stress that you're going to carry I find this conversation really interesting because this has been this has been in societies and and a part of many many cultures for a very very long time thousand of years yeah thousands of years and uh but it does feel like uh it is more important today than it's ever been and I think it's just because people need to be reminded you know we we've created so many things in just the last few decades that causes this like us distracting and taking us from being present like you just so much of life just a hundred years ago forced you to be present I mean just your daily activities feeding yourself like the things that you would have to do to get through your day required so many moments of being present in yourself in your body right there at that time and today it's so different I mean we can't even go to the bathroom or wait in a line or have downtime between something at work without this this appendage that we grab right to and and distract ourselves with that's so addicting and it's like and I don't think that we understand fully what that's doing to our bodies and so these these practices whether you believe in a higher power or not I think are it's going to be have to be adopted by everybody so you can deny the the the higher power part and the maybe the spiritual side but the practice of you know not being distracted being hyper presentes um and what that does is it takes away like when we stress out that's because we're either dwelling on the past or the future and being present gets eliminates that if I'm 100% in this moment I'm not worried about all the [ __ ] that's going to happen in the future I'm not stressed out about what happened yesterday or last year I'm in the moment and so that practice of getting you to do that whether you do that from a a spiritual standpoint or you have some sort of way of doing that it's just it's going to become necessary for everybody it's it's it's always been NE necessary but what's happened is we've created all these timesaving devices and tools and what's ended up happening is we've actually given ourselves less and less time made ourselves more and more busy by the way this isn't just I mean we're not just this isn't our opinion the data shows uh anxiety um not forget depression but anxiety which is you know stress causes anxiety right could also cause depression but anxiety is at Peak levels like what is going on we have more stuff than ever we have more entertainment than ever and uh a lot of experts believe it's loss of this this this we're not taking this 10,000 foot view of things anymore whereas this was a regular practice this was a part of society it's no longer part of society and again the data on this is clear it's like you could try changing the things in your life to dramatically reduce your stress but if a lot of your stress is from stuff that you can't change because it's life and life is hard then changing your outlook and changing yourself will do that and the spiritual practice will do it does doesn't take much again the data that I've seen shows 5 10 15 minutes a day that's it in the morning most of us have that in the morning and what we tend to do with that in the morning is scroll through social media 10 minutes social media in the morning by the way that does the opposite that primes the central nervous system for alarm because social media is all alarm it's all about what the other person is doing it's all about crazy news political news scary stuff now you've primed your central nervous system for worry and anxiety and stress versus priming your central nervous system for purpose and mean and larger thought and then that sets you up for the rest of the day and then something stressful happens and it's not as stressful now your perception is has totally changed all right next up is to get good sleep so we talked about the morning let's talk about the night sleep is the most recuperative reju rejuvenating thing you can do for your body good sleep has a profound effect on balancing hormones bad sleep or inadequate sleep has also an equal profound negative effect on your hormones I mean you could you could you could lower your testosterone dramatically with two nights of bad sleep or you could throw your estrogen progesterone way off with one or two nights of poor sleep so what is good sleep it's about 78 hours of good solid sleep every single night not 6 hours or 6 and a half hours it's 7 to8 of good quality sleep and and the way that this happens the way that you can get this and now we could give you the steps and what to do and we we'll talk about that but really it boils down to prioritizing it I'm going to prioritize good sleep meaning I'm going to make sure I'm in bed by this time which gives me8 and a half hours before I need to wake up because you know it's going to take you about 20 30 minutes to fall asleep so I'm going to go to bed at this time and I'm going to wake up at this time I'm going to keep the go to bed and wake up times the same every single day so I don't jetl myself Monday morning cuz I slept in Saturday you know and Sunday cuz I went to bed so late and then I'm going to set myself up what does that mean an hour before I'm getting ready for bed what does that look like I'm calming things down I'm dimming the lights or turning them down or going by candle light I'm not watching things that are alarming I'm not reading the news I'm calming myself down maybe reading a book getting myself into that state where now I'm ready to go to bed versus what we tend to do which is go go go go go and then time for bed hit the pillow expect to have quality sleep doesn't work that way you know my favorite part about Happ helping clients with this hack of like focusing on sleep is that when you look at like trying to be healthier version of yourself we look at exercise we look at diet we look at sleep hydration all these things and you know sometimes days get away from us where you get so busy and you didn't eat the perfect meal or you missed a meal or whatever or you didn't get a chance to make it to the gym and so what I love about teaching clients the importance of prioritizing sleep is that it's the thing at the end of the night that it's like hey I didn't do this I didn't do that I this but I can at least do this and so and that such a big rock in the grand scheme of things when you're trying to get a healthier version of your spells especially when we're talking about hormone profiles and belly fat and trying to solve that it's like hey you know what tomorrow we'll get up we'll try and hit the diet better tomorrow we'll try and be better about the gym but you still have tonight you still have got that so it's like and to me it's like if if you're a client of mine and you you you missed out on those first two things you still have this opportunity to go hey you know what like I'm still going to make today like somewhat of a success by practicing some of these other things and this I think they feed into each other when you talk about a spiritual practice doing something like that before you go to bed since you're prioritizing it's like hey I didn't do those other things but you know what I'm going to do is I I had such an overwhelming day I'm going to make sure two three hours before I shut everything down I'm actually going to either do prayer meditation yoga whatever that is to be hyper presentes in the moment and then I'm going to make sure that I go to bed and get a good night's rest there set me up for Success on the next day I just think if people went into their day with that attitude of knowing that they can still win the day by setting their night up and having a good night's rest to set up the tone for the next day I think maybe they wouldn't beat themselves up so much about maybe the the one bad meal they had or missing the workout for the day because that's such a big piece is to get good sleep and if you if you screwed up on the other things it's just going to get compounded by also just riding off the sleep too still save that there was a there was a study that showed that I've quoted this one many times that they had two groups of people both going to C deficit so both eat low calories both lost the same amount of weight but one group that had them have terrible sleep so they limited them to I think five and half hours six hours of sleep the other group they prioritize good sleep they both lost the same amount of weight but one group lost twice as much muscle and half as much body fat so they both lost I don't remember how many pounds it was but the group with the bad sleep lost twice as much muscle and half as much body fat and that was the only difference was the bad sleep all right lastly get your hormones checked now you don't want to get your hormones check by your general practitioner no because they tend to base it off of certain ranges they don't look at symptoms you want to go to somebody who works with hormone replacement therapy this can be a godsend if indeed this is something that you need um and that works for you um you know I uh now after having spoken to many many experts uh in this are in this Arena many of them say oh hormone replacement therapy is a godsend if somebody's exercising and they're trying to eat right and they're leading a healthy lifestyle and they're you know 43 years old and we do these tests and we see thyroid is low your your testosterone's a bit low and we start to supplement with bioidentical hormones profound difference in the way that people feel profound Improvement in quality of life and those and hormone replacement therapy in the context of a healthy person it it's it improves longevity now in the context of somebody who's very unhealthy and inflamed then you don't waste your time but if you're doing all the stuff that we're talking about and you get your hormones checked and you're going to you know let's say a functional medicine practitioner or somebody in a longevity clinic and they're like yeah we could give you some progesterone a little bit of estrogen some testosterone thyroid really balance things out you will notice a profound difference uh in your results in terms of fat loss muscle gain libido energy sleep all of the above so that would be the last thing that I would say I mean I don't even know if it's a lasting for me I think almost towards the back half of my career anytime time I was training anybody over the age of 40 if they haven't had a checked I almost especially if they they were struggling yeah especially if they were struggling right like they're like Adam I eat good I train I do these things and they're like still frustrated I've seen result when did you get your blood work done when have you had somebody besides the general practitioner look at your blood panels and go over that with you if you hadn't I would almost always send my clients first to that so at least give us some insight because what's tough as a trainer is if their if their hormones are really out of whack and and really imbalanced and I'm I'm pulling all these levers with diet and sleep and exercise man A lot of times you'll see minimal minimal like results from all that great effort because the because the hormone profiles simply just getting that healthy in an optimal place all of a sudden all that effort and it starts to really pay itself off so almost always do I recommend somebody that has struggled with weight loss and feels like they have ate or eating well they've trained they've done the things and they're not seeing the results go a specialist and all these things directly impact your body's ability to burn body fat but in particular the distribution of where you store body fat like we said earlier with belly fat versus the other uh areas hey sorry to interrupt it's October Maps muscle mommy is 50% off half off if you're interested click on the link below all right back to the show all right I think we have some questions Doug in regard we do the first one is how long should I reverse Diet before going back to a calorie deficit for fat loss so let's define a reverse diet first so reverse diet say let's say you're somebody who you know we defined earlier you're eating 1,200 calories a day you've been working out like crazy you just listen to this episode you're like okay what do I do well one of the things you do is you start strength training cut out all the other workouts get good sleep the whole thing but also we're going to do a reverse diet because your calories are too low the calories are too low for us to lose body fat width because where we going to go from 1,200 down to 800 700 calories it's not going to happen so what you do is you slowly increase your calories over time while strength training build muscles speed up your metabolism until you get to a point where you can then cut from and then burn body fits the question is how long do you reverse Diet before going to a calorie deficit I like the way you've explained this before Adam if you don't mind I actually have an a kind of so I was waiting for it to say something because I actually kind of have a new way to say this that it's because of where I'm at currently right now so my goal of my whole process right now is to reduce body fat like I was at 15% I want to get into single digits but I'm coming from a place obviously not as broken maybe as somebody who's been eating only a th000 calories and is a mess hormonally but I'm definitely coming from a place where my body is adapted to low calorie and so the first strategy was okay go and hit the protein intake right send a loud signal to build muscle go hit the protein intake what I have found was as I was slowly increasing protein because I was so low on that in order for me to hit my 200 grams of protein cell I've got to be around 2,800 calories so I was only at like 2,000 then I was at 2500 and at 2800 I barely get to my 200 so here I am I've been creeping up I'm finally hitting my protein intake I'm building a little muscle I'm stronger I feel good it's like but I still want to get shredded so should I cut right now well the reason why I don't want to cut from 2800 if I go down to 2400 now I'm going to start missing my protein and take again so I my goal now is to be comp continue to reverse diet until I'm more like a place like 3500 calories so that I can pull back to 3,000 or 2800 lower without lowering my protein and I'm eating in in a place place where I feel satisfied so I think this is a a missing piece or conversation that I haven't added to talking about how I reverse diet somebody then cut them back it's like I want to get them high enough now typically what I'd say before is I would always push a client like I'm going to keep pushing them reverse dying them until they look back at me and they go Adam this is just so much food I can't eat I don't want to eat anymore this is too much for me and then I go great we're at a good place now let's go the other direction that was kind of my generic way of saying it before but now I have an even I think more precise way to communicate this and it's like wherever you we've told you your your your protein so let's let's use probably more of a a female number of like protein intake probably 140 150 right if a if a woman wants to be around 140 150 pounds let's just say okay that's a healthy weight let's say so 140 is her number well if I tell you I just want you to eat and and prioritize pro protein you have to ask yourself about how many calories do you land at to in order to hit that one 40 and that probably is going to be somewhere in the 2,22 2300 range at least so if you need 22 2300 calories just to hit your minimum protein intake that I want you to hit well I want to keep pushing your calories up higher and so that when I cut you I can cut you down to a number that is sustainable calorie-wise and also realistic that you can still hit your protein intake yeah so I I love that and again and to add to that like you want to go up to a place with your calories and what you should notice by the way while you're doing this is you're just getting stronger you're building muscle you're getting stronger you're feeling good when you get to a place that you can drop calories from and feel comfortable that's the other thing to consider it's like okay I'm at 2,000 calories I can go down to, 1500 and be good or I'm at 2200 calories I can go down to 1,700 calories and be okay then you know you can start to cut but if you're at a place where you're like if I drop calories from here I'm going to feel terrible you got to keep reverse dieting next question how can I tell if I'm overtraining and what are the signs to watch for excessive fatigue stiffness soreness insomnia uh you're not getting stronger in the gym uh you feel you just don't feel good hot cold intolerance you feel run down the these are the signs of overtrain insomnia being the first one by the way once you start overtraining you'll notice your sleep is just off um and it just means you just need to cut down on the volume and the intensity yeah I mean I feel like one of the first is chronic soreness I feel like that's normally the first one I notice is just like I'm sore all the I'm going into a workout and still yeah I'm still sore from the previous one it's like okay to me that's the way I look at my training nowadays is that I want I want to feel the workout that I did the the day before but that's it I just want to feel that I train that muscle I don't want to feel to where I'm so sore it's time to go work out again that and I still feel like I'm really sore otherwise I have to really scale back on the intensity in that workout coming forward so to me that's always like the first sign of probably overtraining is that but definitely disrupted sleep definitely insomnia those are classic signs of that happening but even just chronic soreness like people tend to chase soreness as this metric of you had a good workout and I don't believe that at all I think it's actually normally a sign of you overreached and you did more than you needed to do and so that to me is one of the first signs you see before you start to see the other ones that are really debilitating next question what's the difference between muscle loss and fat loss and how do I ensure I'm losing fat not muscle all right so the the difference on the scale you can't tell right you lose 10 pounds on the scale of muscle pounds of body fat looks the same so how do I know if it's muscle or body fat what two things strength yeah yeah one is that exactly like are you losing strength then you're losing muscle are you gaining strength and you lost some weight on the scale you probably didn't lose muscle the second way is a body fat percentage test and you want to do these on a semi-regular basis maybe every two weeks doing them at the same time of the day same amount of food and Waters keep things consistent and then pay attention to the trends and that'll tell you if you're losing muscle or body fat that's one way to decipher it yeah another thing is this is like so this is why the first point I made about getting your protein intake up and making sure that even when you're in a cut you're still hitting your protein right cuz chances are if you're lifting if you're if you're strength training you're hitting your protein intake and you're losing weight in the scale you're probably losing fat I mean if you're if you're doing those things hitting your unless you're doing especially if you're maintaining strength yeah especially if you're M even if you're not gaining strength cuz it's it's normal to lose a little bit of strength sometimes when you're in a deficit so it's not totally like the just because you lost a little bit of strength means you definitely lost muscle but typically if you're hitting that protein intake that your body needs you're strength training at least three times a week and the scale weight's going down slowly that's normally a pretty good sign but I think another way is when the when the scale moves fast scale just you you don't lose body fat fast you do not lose five six pounds of fat at a time it just doesn't happen our bodies don't work that way so normally if you see fast weight loss on the scale you're not only losing fat you're also pairing down muscle because that's just how it works you're not I don't want to see that scale move more than about one to two pounds a week with a client that's doing perfect any more than that aside from the initial water weight loss or the beginning of diet because that's of course there's that's factor in right away yeah for very first week you could see a major fluctuation up or down of changing a diet for sure because of water but I mean after you've been training for a while if all a sudden you I see a five seven pound drop in a week I'm adjusting my client's calories I'm like oh [ __ ] that would too much we got to go back up because you're certainly not losing s pounds of fat in a week that's just not happening next question is how does sleep impact fat loss what practical steps can I take to improve my Sleep Quality well I mentioned that study earlier uh it could it could cut your fat loss efforts in half and double the muscle loss that may potentially happen if your sleep is poor so good sleep dramatically improves uh your your ability to burn body fat and maintain or keep muscle in both directions so if it's good sleep you're going to get great better results you get bad sleep you're going to get far worse results now how do you improve your Sleep Quality black out your room make sure the temperature is very cool make sure you didn't eat any food uh about a couple hours before you're not on electronics about an hour before um and sometimes White Noise can help people out and go to bed at the same time every night those are the big rocks that can and then no caffeine past a certain point for most people it's past noon you know yeah this it's it's so interesting to me because it's like one of the easiest ways to impact Sleep Quality is to treat it the same way you treat getting up yep I mean just like the ritual of it yeah it's like we just we have it's so our culture has no ritual around getting ready for bed but we have definitely a strong ritual around getting up I mean we have there's [ __ ] a thousand books written about how to make millions of dollars by your your morning routine I mean there's all kinds of that [ __ ] but there's like not a lot written around that like just care about it like literally just think about it the way the way you think about getting up to get ready for work to brush your teeth to shower to be out the door by a certain time like you know everybody listening to this right now knows exactly what time that alarm has to go off in order for them to do the things they need to do before they go out the door whether that's getting kids ready or yourself or lunch or whatever it is you have figured that out because you've put enough time thinking about it if you just apply that same attention to the evening of I got to do the XYZ I have to have my dinner by this time I turn off my television by this time I'm in my bed by this time I like my temperature around here and I do that consistently you're going to get great you're going to start to get that formula is that works best for you the thing you just have to be intentional about it and uh and consistent so that's that's the other part of it is just like once you nail it just ritualize it so that way too you can duplicate it and then this becomes something that you know really uh you know has a massive effect on everything else uh leading forward Perfect all right I know you like that episode if you did check this one out 30% % body fat for men this is way too high this is actually a bit high for women as well so in today's episode we're talk about how you can go from 30 to 10 what is 10% body fat this is when you have a visible six-pack can you go from 30 to 10% yes it's possible but not if he guesss along the way so we're going to talk about how you can do that in today's episode now there's a huge range right of like body types and some people can run uh a little bit heavier uh and or a little bit higher by