How To LOSE WEIGHT & Get In The BEST SHAPE Of Your Life In 2023 | Sal Di Stefano & Lewis Howes

The way that we've been communicated to when it comes to health and fitness has been all wrong. It's good to know workouts and how they affect my body and what works for me. But that's not the main conversation. The main conversation is...

I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness. Really?

Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes.

There's a lot of information out there about how to be in the best shape. To be healthy, to lose weight, and all these different fads and all these different styles. if you could boil it down to a few core components of how to really be the healthiest version of yourself and eliminate all the noise about health and fitness in the world, what would be those core components for you?

Yeah, what a great question. I think I want to start with that the way that we've been communicated to when it comes to health and fitness has been all wrong. What I mean by that is We assume that we're, or at least we act like we're robots, where you can input directions and orders, and it's the mechanistic aspects of diet and exercise that'll get you long-term success. The mechanistic aspects are important, but humans are behavior-based emotional creatures, and nobody talks about that. Nobody focuses on that. It's all about how to cut calories, how to exercise right, the best workouts, the best diet, here's the best supplements. The problem is we're not obese because, I mean we are doing the wrong things but that's not the root of why so many people are suffering from obesity and health issues. The root really has to do with our behaviors. The root has to do with we've built the wrong or at least placed our values in the wrong places. And really if you want to go to the core of it, the core is we tend to enter into the pursuit of health and fitness from a self-hate model, from a self-critical model or self-criticism.

I don't like the way I look or I'm out of shape or I'm obese or I don't look as pretty as this person or as ripped as this person, so something is wrong with me. Let me go get better.

Absolutely. I'll tell you a story where this really was illuminated to me. And by the way, this took me a long time to figure out. I mean, I've been doing this now for over two and a half, almost two and a half decades now. And I'd say the first 10 years, I didn't really fully understand this. It took me a long time. My passion for helping people is what got me to the right places because, you know, although I was effective at helping people lose weight and get in shape, they would get out of shape, they'd gain the weight back, they'd fall off the wagon. And I had to ask myself, am I really doing a good job? I'm failing. Yeah, I could get people to lose weight, but then they gain it back. what's going on here? I mean, and the fact is we don't have a weight loss issue in modern societies. We have a keep weight off issue. Millions of people lose weight every year.

And then they gain it back.

90% or more, this is within a year or two, and if you extend it out longer than that, I'd say probably close to north of 95%, gain it back. So the problem is not losing weight. The problem is why aren't people able to kind of maintain a relationship with exercise and nutrition that allows them to do it for the rest of their lives, right? So I'll tell you a story.

Because when you go extreme, It's you can't sustain extreme. It's very few people, right? Can they sustain like, okay, I'm gonna eat a thousand calories a day and I'm gonna train for four hours or.

Whatever it is to lose the weight. You can't maintain that for life. Yes, and to kind of paint it a little bit differently, right? So, years ago, I was at this dinner and it was a dinner with a it was at a tech company. So, I was really the only fitness, right, quote unquote fitness person at the table and we're all hanging out and introducing ourselves. We were the spouses of employees or whatever. And once I say, oh, I'm a trainer, of course people start making comments like, oh, you know, I'm only having one piece of bread. Or already people are a little self-conscious, but I'm used to that. And so once people got warmed up, we had great conversations. And there was this woman sitting across from me, and after a few drinks, she got a little loose and she said, you, know, Sal, she says, I had a good friend who exercised regularly, who ate right, and then she got breast cancer and died at the age of 50. And she says, you know what? After that happened, I just said to myself, To heck with it, I'm just gonna enjoy my life. I'm just gonna eat what I want and I'm not gonna exercise. And that really struck me because you can't find a single thing that will improve every aspect of life. Okay? Every aspect. How you are at work, how you are as a partner, as a father, or a mother, energy, mood, like this is all proven, okay? There isn't a single thing that can improve your entire life like just becoming more fit and healthy. Yet, here's a woman that's telling me that she wants to enjoy her life so she's not going to do those things. And I thought to myself, that is very strange, but I've heard it so many times. What's going on here? And I thought about that for days. It really stuck with me. And then it dawned on me. People go into exercise and go into trying to change the nutrition from a place of self-hate. So let's break that down for a second, right? You look in the mirror and you say, oh, I'm fat. I don't like the way I look. I'm gross. I'm not sexy. I'm not attractive. I'm inadequate. Whatever. Very powerful short-term motivator, by the way. Very powerful short, terrible long-term motivator. Right, right, right. And here's why. If I'm doing this from a place of self-hate, Exercise becomes a punishment. I now value the pain and the cathartic release of punishing myself when I exercise. What does that mean? That means my exercise and my workouts become inappropriate. I work out too hard. I go too extreme.

I don't recover.

Yeah, and I treat it like a punishment. Oh, yesterday I went out with my friends. I'm gonna go sweat it out today. I'm gonna go beat myself up. Diet becomes restriction. People offer you a cookie and you say, I can't. I can't have that cookie. Very interesting thing to say because of course you can. What do you mean by that? What you've done is you've separated yourself into two separate entities. The child that has no discipline and then the tyrannical parent that needs to say, you need to work out, you need to eat right, whatever. So exercise of punishment, diet is about restriction. It's no wonder people need to stop to enjoy their lives, right? So let's look at the reverse. What if somebody looked in the mirror and said, you, know what? I haven't been treating myself very well. I deserve to be cared for. I deserve to be healthy or to be healthier. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna start taking care of myself like somebody I care about. This is what self-love is, by the way. And when I say self-love, I like to define it because people confuse love with a feeling, that warm, fuzzy feeling. That's part of love, but that's not what love is. Love is an action. When I say self-love, what I mean is taking the actions that will help you in the truest sense and being honest with yourself. So if you do that and you enter into exercise and nutrition from a place of self-care and self-love, well now what does exercise become? Self-care. And it becomes- More approachable. Yes, and it's appropriate. Now I go to the gym, I'm tired, I'm stressed. Rather than trying to beat myself up so I crawl out of the gym because I need to punish myself, I'm gonna go in there and take care of myself so I can feel better. Diet becomes nourishment. It's no longer restrictive. You also develop balance because although most of the time eating cookies is not self-care, sometimes it is. Sometimes you're sitting with friends and you're enjoying your conversation and somebody made cookies and so you say, Hey, you know what? This is fueling or feeding the relationship part of my health. So I think I will have a cookie. You know, by the way, the other way, the self-hate model is why the rebound is so extreme. People typically don't just stop a diet. It's not like they go from strict diet to going back to kind of eating how they did before. They typically go off their diet and then rebound in a massive way. They don't have one cookie or two cookies, they hold the whole box.

Oh man.

Or a whole pizza. I know that feeling. Right, it's rebellion, really what it is. It's rebelling from this self-hate because you can't hate yourself for too long. And if you do, it becomes orthorexia.

Which is unhealthy as well.

So, what's orthorexia? It's a dysfunctional eating pattern where you stress so much about eating perfectly. Everything has to be absolutely perfect. The right macros, the right calories, where eating healthy now becomes unhealthy. and you see that in the fitness fanatic space, quite a bit, right? So you have to enter into it by being honest, 'cause real love is honest, and having the self-care attitude. Now there's more to it, but that's gotta be the root. And if that's the root, then you start to develop a balanced, good relationship with exercise and nutrition. 'Cause the truth is, if you enjoy exercise, if you enjoy eating in a healthy way, you'll always do it. Now, when I say that, people go, well, how's that possible?

Right, right. How can I enjoy it?

How can I enjoy those things?

Something's painful or restrictive or limiting me.

Right. Well, you can do it when exercise becomes self-care by the way, proper exercise. Here's a little tip for people when they say, well, how do I know I'm doing the right workout? There's a lot of different things you want to look at, but a good appropriate workout. By the way, let me define that for a second. In terms of results, in terms of whatever your goal is, fat loss, strength, stamina, fitness, there's a right dose. So it's like a bell curve. So like over here, too little, my body's not gonna change. Over here, too much. And all my body can worry about or be concerned with is healing, right? But I'm not getting any of the beneficial adaptations because it's too much. And this is different from person to person, right? what's appropriate for me, someone who's been working out consistently for two decades, very different than it would be for a beginner or very different than what it might be for a professional athlete. The appropriate dose is going to give you the best results. What does that feel like? You have more energy at the end of your workout than you do at the beginning.

You're not drained and exhausted.

No, you leave your workout feeling invigorated. You feel phenomenal. You should not crawl out of the gym. You should not leave your workout feeling like you just survived a war or a battle.

Unless you're some extreme athlete that's part of your training boot camp for a period of time, but not all the time.

Correct. And usually when that's the case, Louis, what they're training is the mental aspect. So, if you look at high level military service people or athletes, when they push themselves to that limit, first off, they're at such high levels anyway to get the right dose for them is very different. But number two, they're trying to train their mind to withstand whatever. But for the average person, this is don't worry about this unless you get to that level and that's what you want to do. Yeah. But let's not worry about that. You should feel better. And there's a couple reasons why this is important. One is you probably trained with the right inappropriate amount of volume and intensity. So your workout's probably the right length. You probably did the right stuff. But also what that encourages is this.

Wonderful relationship with exercise where you're not like punished by the end of it and drained and you can't do anything the rest of the day, but you.

Feel how like you have more energy. Yeah, I don't dread doing it. I look forward, I remember when I first figured this out as a trainer. When I first became a trainer, again it took me about 10 years to develop this, whatever you want to call it, wisdom or experience. I would have clients that would cancel because they were tired or they got bad sleep or they didn't feel so good, their joints were stiff or whatever, so they'd call me and say, Sal, I can't make my workout because I'm tired, I got bad sleep. Once I figured this out, I would get clients that would call me and say, Hey Sal, I'm not feeling so good right now. Do you have time for me to come in and see you? That's when I knew I had put it together the right way. Okay, now people are seeking this out to feel better when they're not feeling so good. And what we want to understand with this is this is not a short-term pursuit. There's goals that happen along the way. And by the way, if you do this right, the side effects of what I'm talking about are you hit those goals, the side effects. But if you do this the right way, what we're looking at is a relationship with it where this is something that you'll do for the rest of your life because regardless of the context of your life, it improves the quality of your life. Regardless, high stress, low stress, new baby on the way, job changes, hormones are out of whack right now for some reason, my health isn't as good, I got a lot of energy, I feel good. Whatever is going on, this now becomes something that just improves the quality of your life. And if you could get to that point, then your gold. And so the goal is really, can I do the things that encourage the behaviors that lead to balanced, successful long-term relationship with exercise and diet that lead to good health? That's the key.

So what I'm, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing you say, it's not about being disciplined, it's about shifting the behaviors around why you're doing the exercise and the nutrition, so that the discipline becomes more enjoyable and more consistent.

Yes. Now, discipline is a skill, though we do want to define that because I think we often look at discipline and we confuse it with motivation. When you're motivated, you don't need discipline. Motivation is a great feeling. We all fall in love with it. I love it too. But like all feelings, it comes and goes. And if we rely on motivation and we marry motivation, we fall in love with motivation, what happens when the motivation goes away is we don't know how to continue. So discipline is the way that I define it, is a skill that you develop over time and it takes time to develop and it's a step-by-step process. But as you develop the skill of discipline, then your consistency is there no matter what and the things get modified and changed as the context of your life changes. But there is, and I can go over this if you want, there is a very specific effective way to develop the skill of discipline when it comes to exercise and nutrition.

What is that?

So, and what I love about what I'm about to say is this allows.

For.

The differences in each individual. Because one thing that the fitness industry does poorly is communicate the individual aspect of how we react to diets and exercise and what keeps one person consistent and happy may not be what keeps another person consistent and happy. So what I'm about to say really can apply to everybody. So to put it in a nutshell, you want to ask yourself, okay, what's one thing that I can do that is going to improve my health and fitness that is challenging, has to be challenging, otherwise it has no meaning. But it's also, this is the context, Realistic forever. Challenging yet realistic forever. I say forever because usually when people do this, they're in a motivated state of mind.

I'm gonna work out for two hours a day for the whole year.

Yeah, you ever make goals when you're hyper motivated and then the motivation goes away, you're like, oh my god, that's crazy. So you want to ask yourself, what's one step I can take that's realistic forever yet challenging so that it's got some meaning? There's no wrong answers.

What's yours?

So, oh gosh, I can't remember what mine was years ago, but I can tell you what's now. Boy, let me think of something that, okay, so I now have incorporated a spiritual practice into my health and wellness. And it started with five minutes of prayer once a day. And then it moved to prayer before dinner. And then it moved to prayer before bed. And then it moved to now I'm going to attend a service once a week. But I had to do this.

The smaller steps first and build into it.

Yes. There is no wrong answers. I've had clients where the first step was, I'm gonna drink an extra glass of water. Or I'm gonna add a salad. Or I'm gonna walk for five minutes after breakfast or whatever. But what you find when you do this is, well first off, you take that step, do it until it feels like it's something that is a part of your life.

It's not hard anymore.

Yeah, I enjoy doing this.

This is who I am.

Correct. Then you ask yourself that question again. and you take the next step. And what ends up happening is each step tends to become bigger as you build confidence and build discipline, and the space between the steps gets shorter. So you start off kind of slow, but it's definitely this snowball effect. And I've seen this time and time again with clients where somebody would hire me and say, I'm not doing anything with diet. I'm only working out once a week. I'm only, you know, and, you know, the early Me would have been like, no, you gotta work out more than that. You gotta try and motivate and hype them and get them excited. The later version, wiser version would say, perfect, let's start with that. Knowing that once we did that and we were good at it and they enjoyed it and they developed a good relationship around it, that eventually they'd come to me and I'd always like clockwork, they would. They'd come to me and say, Hey, I'd like to do another day a week.

What does that look like? Or, Hey, I'd like to look at my nutrition.

Where should we start? I'm starting to feel good. It's starting to feel like it's not so overwhelming. Can I do a little more? Yes. Absolutely. So when you follow this process, this is how you develop this long-term, forever relationship with exercise and nutrition. And now where does it end? It depends on the individual, but in my experience, the average person, and I say this 'cause I want people to be really, really understand realistically what this looks like because social media has painted just lots of extreme pictures of what this looks like. We look at the extreme fitness, individual or the super successful, whatever, and we think, okay, well if I can't do that, then why do this at all? Or maybe that's what I gotta do. That's not the case. You can go very, very far with a good relationship and balanced relationship with nutrition, which we could talk about, and two or three days a week of exercise. That's it. And that is sustainable. I have found that to be for the average non-fitness fanatic, person. So Fitness Fanatics, different. We love it. But the average person, two or three days a week, along with this kind of balanced self-care model with nutrition, is very sustainable forever. And the results of that are like, what does that look like? Generally fit, generally healthy, a relatively lean body fat percentage. You're not going to get super shredded and ripped. You're not gonna, you know, get on stage and win a trophy, but that's okay. Most people don't care. but you will get a generally fit, generally healthy, generally lean body doing this, and it's very sustainable. And the quality of your life improves, and this is something that you enjoy. You just enjoy and you do it for the rest of your life.

What is the biggest health challenge right now? Is it all the different, is it one specific disease that people have? Is it obesity? Is it, you know, just what is the biggest challenge and risk that we face in general as humans?

Yeah, in modern society, so we'll talk modern because it's different, right? There's two. The first one is confusion around nutrition and what the most impactful changes someone can make are versus what are either inconsequential or unsustainable. And then the second one is strength and muscle. we're seeing this rapid loss in strength and muscle in our general population, which is resulting in some big issues, cognitive issues, insulin sensitivity issues, and then of course it leads to obesity as well. But let's start with diet. There's so much information around diet, a lot of confusing information around diet. But really the big key is, and this is, it's more complex than this, To put it simply, about 95% of our health issues related to diet could be solved by simply not overeating. I know that sounds silly. Right. And very simple, you know, that's kind of a simple explanation. But it's quite true. If you look at the data, high sugar, saturated fat, all these processed foods. If your calories are appropriate, you really get rid of a lot of those negative effects from those.

I'm gonna say something a little bit controversial. Show me your morning routine and I'll show you your future. That's right. I believe the way you start your day has a direct impact on the success of your business, your finances, your relationships, and of course, your wellness and mental health. So today, I'm inviting you to join me in my latest upcoming free webinar, the Five Secrets to the Ultimate Morning Routine. If you want to stop getting tripped up with procrastination, holding on to old fears and self-doubt, and start multiplying your income and impact, then this one is for you. It is possible to break out of the routines that aren't serving you and live more peaceful and purposeful days in the future. But first, you need to commit to taking action and showing up to the webinar. So join me, join Team Greatness in our amazing community and click the link to sign up right now. So the question is, how many calories should we be eating a day, what's like a healthy range?

You know what's funny about this? Your body is actually pretty good at telling you how much to eat. The problem is, we eat, I know your people watching right now are probably like, what are you talking about? That's not true. It is. The problem is we eat foods, about 70% of our diets are made up of foods that have been engineered, carefully engineered to make us overeat. And there's a lot of money and science that goes into doing this. Ultra processed foods are very powerful at making us overeat.

Snack foods with salt and sugar and yeah.

Just a combination of things that, I mean everything from the texture to the mouth feel.

Tastes so good.

Yes, just how it affects your body. So they've done some really good studies on this. They've done studies where they'll take groups of people in not too many controlled studies in diet. So these are really good. They actually put them in a lab. and they say, you guys over here, eat as much as you want. You guys over here, eat as much as you want. This group over here has whole natural foods. This group over here has ultra processed foods. And they even control for the macros, so proteins, fats, and carbs are pretty similar. Then they take the groups and they switch them. On average, and now we have multiple studies to show this, people will eat about 600 more calories a day from eating ultra processed foods. So to give another example, if I were to put five or six plain boiled potatoes, no salt, no butter, nothing. Just plain boiled potatoes in front of you. And I told you to eat them in 30 minutes, it'd be really hard for you. After the second or third potato, you'd be gagging. You'd hit palate fatigue. Potatoes? Yes, just plain, right?

But if they gave you a family-sized.

Bag of potato chips, which has crushed the whole bag with like 2,000 calories or something, which has similar amounts of food in it, actually more calories because the oil, you'd be able to eat them. That's the power of ultra processed foods and how palatable they are. So, I used to do this with my clients, simply telling people the following, eat as much as you want, just avoid ultra processed foods. You would typically see a 10 to 15 pound weight loss. Wow. Just from that.

If you're eating whole foods, there's only so much you can eat.

You hit palate fatigue faster. It's far more satiating. You just eat more appropriately. Our bodies, there's this myth that we're wired to overeat. We're just wired to just eat like crazy and just become obese. That's not true. We're not wired to do that. Overeating was just as bad for us thousands of years ago as it was today. I mean, you could have digestive issues, you could have died from that. Our bodies are pretty good at regulating. This is more complex than what I'm saying, but these particular foods make you overeat. Simply avoiding them and even telling yourself, I'll eat as much as I want, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, meats, foods that have one or two ingredients, right? You'll find that your average calorie intake will probably decrease by about 5 to 600, some people even more.

A day.

A day. On average.

And that's where you lose weight.

You lose it? Yeah, that's it. And then if you want to take it even a step further, if you add to that, here's a couple behavioral things that you could do that make that even more effective. Whole natural foods, I'm not going to limit myself, and I like saying this because When we're in the mindset of limiting ourselves, it plays a lot of tricks on us and it's really hard. So don't limit yourself to see all natural foods. And then here's the second one. Don't eat while distracted. In other words, when you eat, don't be on your phone. Don't watch TV. Just sit down and eat your meal. Why? That results in about 10% reduction in caloric intake just from doing that alone. Why is that?

We're not in tune with our body's signals of satiety. We're not focused and present on the food.

Correct. So we're distracted and we just keep eating and eating and eating. Yes. faster doing it that way as well. So what happens is the signal of satiety doesn't get registered quite as quickly when we're distracted. Also, being distracted could cause emotional changes, stress, anxiety, whatever, which also can create bad relationships with nutrition. One of the worst things you could do is eat while watching stressful news or something like that.

You're gonna eat more, you'll be stressed out.

Absolutely, right? So that's the second one. And they sound so simple, but they make such a huge impact.

On people.

A third one you could do even, and this is another really easy one, is when you eat your meals, eat the protein first. Over the vegetables? Everything.

Just eat the protein first, then eat everything else.

Why is that? Protein is in comparison to carbohydrates and fats, very satiating. So it produces a lot of satiety, right? It satisfies you. And the second reason is, and we now have what are called CGMs, right? Continual glucose monitors. the data on them is coming back and it's pretty clear that if you eat protein first, the spike in blood sugar- yeah, blood sugar. Yeah, it's blunted. Now, why is that important? A spike and then subsequent drop in blood sugar tends to promote cravings. It tends to make us want to eat more to get that blood sugar back up. So eating the protein first tends to result in through satiety and through the blunting effects of blood sugar, tends to produce better satiety and make us eat less. So those are three things right there, Lou, that if people just did those three things and didn't say to themselves, I gotta restrict, I gotta cut, I gotta whatever, they would find over time that they would just start to lose weight and they would eat more appropriately.

Wow. That's not working out more, that's not moving your body more, that's just through nutritional eating.

Yes, and to speak about moving more, The burning calories approach to weight loss is a losing-- Really? Total losing strategy. Oh yeah, the data on that's very clear. Burning calories manually, our bodies do a terrific job of adapting and of-- Storing fat, you're saying? And slowing down its calorie burn. We have a range within our current lean body mass, okay? We have a range of calories our bodies can burn. So there's like more efficient, less efficient. and burning calories manually, at first your body's burning more calories, but eventually your body knows how to make up for that and make you burn less calories. So the studies on tons of exercise for weight loss are pretty clear. It's a terrible approach. Really? Now it's not to say you don't get health benefits from moving more. You still get health benefits, but from a weight loss perspective, it's a terrible strategy. Now there are some forms of exercise, one in particular, that can boost Metabolic rate. What's that? Strength training. Lifting, yeah. Strength training is very effective. There was a study done with modern hunter-gatherers, the Hadza tribe of northern Tanzania. So, they live the way that humans lived thousands of years ago, right? So, they don't have electronics, they hunt, they gather. In comparison to the average Westerner, they're very active. Scientists went and studied them and through some pretty sophisticated testing, tested their metabolic rates. how many calories are they burning every single day? And what they found was they were burning generally the same amount of calories as the average Western couch potato. Really? Yeah. And now you think at first, well, that's crazy. They're moving so much. But actually it makes sense. Our bodies would not have, if we burned 6,000 calories a day as hunter-gatherers, we wouldn't be here. 6,000 calories in a hunter-gatherer society is hard to come by. So our bodies learn to adapt. Now strength training, on the other hand, tends to have a different effect. The main adaptation with strength training is to build muscle, the side effect of which is, and if you fuel it, you have to also feed your body appropriately to do this, but if you feed your body properly and strength train, the tendency is for the metabolism to boost or to go up. So you can see through this process, and I've done this many, many times with people, where they'll come and hire me, we'll lose 30 pounds and we can eat more at the end of this process than we did before the process.

More calories or just more food?

All of it. Yeah. Which...

They lose fat.

Oh yeah, they're leaner. They're leaner. They have a little bit more lean body mass, five to ten pounds, depending on male or female. But they're burning more calories than they went into. Now, why is this important? Well, it's a great buffer. If you have a fast metabolism today, this is a wonderful buffer against the challenges of modern which is sedentary and food everywhere, super accessible. So fast metabolism today is an asset, whereas 10,000 years ago it might have been a liability. So strength training does that. Now strength training doesn't burn as many calories as running, but remember I said that really doesn't make a big difference because your body learns to adapt to that anyway. But the strength training does contribute to a faster metabolism over time, or at the very least help prevent or mitigate the metabolic adaptation or slow down that tends to happen when we reduce calories to lose weight. And then there's more to that. Because of the muscle building process, you see the balancing of hormones that we're all kind of looking for, like in men you see more testosterone, higher androgen receptor density, this is what testosterone attaches to. You see more appropriate levels of cortisol, balancing of estrogen and progesterone in women, growth hormone tends to be more youthful because when I tell my body to build muscle, my body organizes its hormones in a way to do so. And the hormone profile that contributes to muscle building just so happens to be the youthful hormone profile that we're looking for. Interesting. So I tend to, when I recommend exercise to people, average person who I know, like, okay, maybe we'll get them to do this two days a week, you know, if we do a good job, I tell them, if you're gonna pick just one form, do strength training. That's gonna be the most effective one. And then if you add something else, then it'd be great if you added some cardiovascular and some mobility or flexibility training. Wow.

So if you can only choose one, strength training or cardio, you're saying strength training all day.

100%. 100%. Building muscle. Yeah. Yeah. It's far more protective. It's going to boost your metabolism, which will make being obese harder. It balances out your hormones better. Muscle sticks around longer than the calorie burning effects of whatever you're getting from the form of exercise. Once you stop, your workout, there's the calorie burn, which like I said earlier, your body adapts to anyway. But when you build muscle, it sticks around for a little while before you start to lose it. And you develop something called muscle memory, which I know you understand as an athlete, right? If you, have you ever broken a bone or anything like that? Okay. You know, you take the cast off, muscle super or your arms, but very quickly it bounces back. There's something called muscle memory. So if you build muscle and let's say you stop for whatever reason exercising and then you go back to working out, you'll gain that muscle back in a small fraction of the time. So it's a more, for lack of a better term, because there's no permanence when it comes to this, but it's a more permanent form of results or fitness, which just so happens to fit perfectly with the challenges of modern life. When you look at the average person and you're saying, okay, what are the challenges that are preventing them from being healthier? It's, okay, I'm surrounded by tons of food. I'm inactive. Is there something that can protect me against inactivity, which muscle does very well. Hormone imbalances now are rampant. and there's going to be times when even the most consistent average person, not Fitness fanatic, is going to not work out for a month or two. Is there something that'll help them bounce back faster? Strength training. Just, it just tends to do that. What about training where it's half strength.

Training and half cardio? It's like, you know, like an orange Theory or something like this, where you're doing like 20, 30 minutes of lifting, kind of like in between different sets, maybe not to failure of fatigue, but. intense, you know, lifting and then some two or three miles of running with intervals. What does that do for the body, for weight loss, for metabolism?

Yeah.

So I want to be clear.

All forms of exercise, so long as they're applied appropriately, are going to benefit you. So all forms of exercise have benefit so long as they're not overdone or inappropriate for the individual. So that being said, strength training needs to be, in order to reap the real benefits of strength training, it has to be applied in a particular way. Otherwise it ends up becoming cardio with weights. Mm-. So if I did it like a bunch of circuits, even though I'm doing curls and presses and rows, really what I'm doing is just a lot of cardio. I'm just using weights. Okay. So if you really want to reap the benefits of strength training, you want to train in the way that builds strength and muscle. Now, I do want to be careful because I'm probably invoking images of bodybuilders with veins coming out of their neck. And they're, you mentioned it, right? Intensity, failure, lifting, whatever. That's not. what most people need to do. Okay? Most people would derive tremendous benefits if they went to the gym and strength trained, and they did traditional do a set, rest for a minute, do a set, rest for a minute. But the way that they did their set was practice. So the exercise as a skill, that's what we're gonna look at. So rather than I'm gonna go in here to beat up my legs, I'm gonna go practice squats. Rather than I'm gonna go hammer my shoulders, I'm gonna practice overhead presses. This tends to lead to more appropriate applications of exercise and you see a more consistent, you know, strength gains, more consistent muscle gains and far less risk injury. So intensity, although it's an important factor to manipulate, people over apply it. They think that- you- got a failure on everything.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, that's not the case.

Like I said earlier, you need to have more energy at the end of your workout. and you probably shouldn't feel sore or if you do feel a little sore the day after. And so for most people that's just like go in and get really good and practice these exercises that we know to be very effective. Squatting, you're deadlifting, you're rowing, you're pressing, you know, maybe some kind of a split stance exercise like a lunge, some kind of rotation, and just practice them and get good at them. And naturally over time, people will apply more intensity, add more load, and they'll see the results that come from that. But that's a very, very, it's a much more effective long-term approach versus the go to the gym, beat myself up attitude.

Yeah. What about, I'm sure you've answered this, I don't know, a thousand times, but belly fat seems to be the thing a lot of people want to eliminate, right? Is there a formula for eliminating belly fat?

Yeah, so, or can you do it.

Lots of different ways or what's the best approach to doing it?

Yeah, so for the most part, where we store or lose body fat is determined by our genetics. So a good rule of thumb is the first place that I store it is probably going to be the last place that I lose it. Now that being said, hormonal changes can change the distribution of body fat on your body. So if you see like women with very, very high cortisol, estrogen, progesterone imbalances, they'll start to notice more belly fat than they normally would. Men who's let's say testosterone is low, estrogen levels may be too high, they'll see more body fat storage and maybe the upper body, back of the arms, maybe in the lower body. So you'll start to see different patterns. But that's really a small percentage of where we tend to store body fat. It's largely determined by genetics. So the question is, how do I get rid of body fat? It's the same way that you get rid of any body fat. you have to create an energy imbalance, which to put it simply, and again, it's more complex than this, but to put it simply, you have to be able to burn more calories than you take in. And there's, and we already talked about some of the effective ways of that, but if you can burn more than you take in, then you'll see body fat loss as a result. And building muscle is a great way to make that formula work for you. Because if you don't, what ends up happening is you cut calories, you do tons and tons of cardio, you cut calories, you lose 15 pounds, you're stuck. Okay, I guess I cut calories more.

And you lose muscle too.

Well, that's what happens, right? Your body's adapting, so you end up losing some muscle. So now you got to cut even more to lose that next 10 pounds. And then at the end of it, it's like, okay, I'm eating 1,300 calories a day to maintain this 25-pound weight loss. This is unsustainable. And then you gain it back. what you want to do is you want to say, okay, I definitely want to eat healthier, but not so little that I can't fuel muscle growth. And I want to strength train so that I can get my metabolism to learn how to burn more calories on its own. And then the process looks more like a snowball effect rather than this quick plat, you know, weight loss with plateau. So you start to see the scale move a little bit, and then it happens faster and faster and faster, and then you feel better. And, you know, I like to communicate this as well, which is especially to women. muscle is a lot more dense than body fat. So don't get too obsessed with the scale. You know, if I could have everybody watching this lose 10 pounds of body fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle, their weight on the scale wouldn't change, but everybody would be smaller and their.

Body composition would look a lot better, too.

Oh, you're gonna look different, but you're gonna be. You're gonna be smaller because body fat just takes up more space. I used to have this trainer that worked for me. I used to love. This is a great sales technique. when I was a general manager, I'd have, if I had a new member, especially a woman who was apprehensive to lifting weights, I would invite this trainer that worked for me. And I'd say, if you could guess her body weight within 10 pounds, I'll give you a free membership for a month. Wow. And she was very petite, she was like 5'1 or whatever. And they would always guess like, oh, she's 100 pounds, she's 110 pounds. And I'd get her on the scale and she was 130 pounds. and it would prove my point. She has a lot of muscle, but she's small because muscle is very dense. And then I'd have her explain to the potential member, tell them what you ate for breakfast. And they'd be, oh my God, you eat so much. She's burning it off because she's got that muscle and it's far more sustainable. You want to be able to enjoy those weekends and you want to have that buffer to where if you do eat the occasional meal out or you eat a large meal, it's not going to kill you because your body burns it off.

Yeah. So how do we build like this, I don't know, furnace burning machine inside of us? Is that a consistent weight training and nutrition practice? Is it weight training five days a week? Is it, you know, it's not doing to fatigue or failure, it's more like 70% weight training. What is that machine look like?

So, the muscle building process is an adaptation process. So to use another example, it would be like, okay, so I'm going out in the sun and then your skin darkening to adapt to the UV rays. So it's very similar to what's happening when your body builds muscle. You go to the gym, you create a stress on the body, maybe a little bit of damage. Right. The body heals the damage, and then what it does is it tries to adapt so that the same insult. no longer creates damage. So this is how you get stronger incrementally over time. This is how, this is why you can work out harder over time because your body slowly adapts. So the question is, what does it take to get my body to adapt? A little more than you're doing now. That's it. So if you're doing nothing right now, literally 10 body weight squats, five pushups, and maybe a couple band rows. is enough to get the body to start the adaptation process. And again, you want to do the right dose, meaning doing more than is appropriate will only get your body to prioritize healing over adaptation. Your body can't adapt because it's only trying to heal this damage that you cause. So the appropriate amount is literally a little more than you're doing now. So for the average person watching this with strength training, if they did 30 minutes of strength training once a week. They would get strength gains. And then when that felt easy, they could do an hour of strength training once a week. And then when that got easy, they could do a little harder. Right. They could add a little more load, and then eventually it could add an extra day. And there's a lot you could do with two days a week with strength training. There's a lot. There's a lot of room to go when it comes to load, exercises, intensity. There's so much room to go with two days a week that the average person I can get them to. what they want realistically, which is two days a week. Now, more than that, then we're talking about, well, I want my biceps to bulge, or I want, you know, my glutes to sit real high, or I want more definition in my delts to really pop out. Now we're looking at more, more days a week. But two to three days a week, I mean, you can get really, really far. I mean, the old time strength athletes, you know, in the 1930s and 40s, they worked out full body three days a week. And those guys, you know, people like Steve Reeves, they had phenomenal physiques. just working out through. So you can go real far and you don't want to look at the extreme fitness fanatics as, well, that's what I need to do. That's not what you need to do. That's not what you need to do.

Strength training is the core. It's the key. That's what it sounds like. It is. That'll burn body fat if you're doing strength training of legs and chest.

You don't have to do abs all day long.

No.

That's a good question. You're kind of alluding to maybe spot reduction. I want to burn body fat from an area, so I'll train that area. It doesn't work that way. But what you do do is you develop and sculpt and strengthen the muscles underneath. It's important to train the whole body. The best exercise is to choose, first off, you want to choose the ones with most bang for your buck, right? So if I'm only going to spend 45 minutes exercising, I want to do the exercises that have the most carryover and have the biggest impact. Essentially, you want to do compound lifts or big gross motor movements. so rather than doing like a curl, which is a very simple, you know, single joint exercise, I would do a row, which also involves the biceps. But now I'm working the back and, and the whole upper body. Yeah, pull up. Right. Like, oh, yeah, that's great. One dips and, and squats and deadlifts. Those exercises do the work of, like, five exercises combined. So you want to do those big gross motor movements because they give you the most bang for your buck and. For the average person, and I talk about this in my book, go to the gym and pick three or four gross motor movements and just practice them. So today I'm gonna go squat, press, and row. I'll do three sets of each. I'll rest for a minute and a half in between, and then I'll leave.

That's it. That's it. Three sets of each, what, 80%.

Yeah, you wanna train again more than you're used to, not beyond that. You wanna feel good at the end of your workout. It's okay to feel a little sore the day after, but if you're sore.

To the touch or you're sore for.

Two days, you went too hard. Really?

So you shouldn't feel too sore.

No, soreness is a terrible indicator of.

You push too hard.

It's actually a good indicator that you did too much. It's not an indicator of, wow, I had a great workout. Really? Yeah, yeah. In fact, high level, you know, strength athletes, they rarely get sore. They'll get sore, maybe if they change something up, but they rarely get sore. You want a little bit of soreness is okay. So, you know, when I first became a trainer, I would ask my clients, how'd you feel? after your workout, oh, I was so sore and I'd be so proud. Yeah, I got a real sore. Later, when I really figured this out, I'd say, how did you feel after your workout? Oh, I got so sore. I said, okay, we went too hard, let's scale it back. Really? Yeah, and what you'll get through, and trust me, try this out. When you approach it this way, you're gonna see more consistent results. Otherwise, what ends up happening is you end up getting stuck on this hamster wheel of breakdown and recovery. So I hammer my body, break it down, my body heals, oh, I'm back to my workout, break it down, my body heal, and you just end up in the same place all the time, breakdown recovery, breakdown recovery. What you want is a little breakdown recovery, adaptation, breakdown, little bit of recovery, adaptation. So you want to end up better than you were before, and you will see consistent strength gains and consistent progress, especially within the first year or two of exercise. if you approach it this way. After a couple of years of exercise, it gets a little more challenging. But those first couple of years, you should see some pretty consistent gains.

Has anything evolved or changed for you in the last four years as you continue to get older, you have kids, you have family, all these different things, you're running a business, all this stuff, or do you keep the lifestyle, the diet, or the nutrition and the training pretty much the same? from four years ago?

No, it has to change. It has to. The key with exercise and nutrition is understanding that it's this very powerful, valuable tool, it's mostly multifaceted, that can improve the quality of your life regardless of the context of your life in that moment. So my workouts and my nutrition look different when I'm not getting good sleep because I have an infant at home. or when something stressful is happening in my business, or I have lots of energy and I feel great, I'm getting good sleep, now it changes. Or hey, I'm gonna come be on Lewis Howes' show, I want my mental acuity to be really good, I wanna be sharp, my diet will change and my workouts will change around that as well. Or I'm going on vacation, or so I mold it and change it all the time. and really the idea is can I improve the quality of my life right now? And so that's what I ask myself when I go work out. How do I feel right now? What's gonna make me feel better? You know, what's going on in my life? What's gonna improve that? I can't, if I apply the same intensity, same training all the time as my life changes, that means I'm either gonna underdo it or overdo it, hurt myself or not get anything out of my workouts. It's like I'm never, it's gonna be very hard to do the right amount. So you have to change it and mold it as things change in your life. So sometimes that means you're going after it and you're having these great intense workouts and you're seeing these new gains in strength or whatever. And sometimes that means I'm gonna just relieve some stress right now.

Sure.

And I'm gonna feel better.

Yeah. I think it was about 10 years ago. And I remember hearing the stat that a third of Americans were obese. I think it was 10 years ago. And now I just heard recently, I think it's either 40% or 50% in that range of Americans are obese. I'm not sure if that's what you've heard or.

We're almost there. We're almost half.

Almost at 50%, right? What do you see happening over the next five to 10 years in kind of our society, in our world, to look out for in terms of the health, nutrition, and fitness space, and how can we start shifting the obesity, you know, epidemic?

We need to change the conversation. This has been my motivation since starting my podcast and my channel. The motivation has been to shift the direction, the conversation, the fitness space so that it becomes truly effective. We need to move from the mechanistic aspects of diet and exercise. Now, those are important to understand, so I want to be clear. It's good to know proteins, fats and carbs. It's good to know calories. It's good to know workouts and how they affect my body and what works for me. But that's not the main conversation. The main conversation is how can I develop a relationship with exercise and nutrition that lasts forever? What are the behaviors that lead to success within that? How can I move through the four stages of learning so I can make this an unconscious action to where it becomes like breathing, which it can be. I know people sometimes balk at that and think, oh, that's not possible. Yes, it is. It's totally possible. You just have to move from where a lot of people are right now, which is unconscious incompetence, to becoming consciously incompetent, to becoming consciously competent, which is, okay, I got to pay attention to eventually becoming unconsciously competent, where Now this is kind of what I do. And it's a process. And the health and fitness space is doing the world a disservice if it doesn't communicate to people in this way. If we keep staying on this whole, it's carbs, it's fats, it's sugars, it's this diet food, it's this superfood, this is the new workout, this is the new fad. If we keep doing that, we're gonna end up worse and worse and worse. We're not gonna solve anything. If we talk to people and say, hey, here's the deal. Let's understand the true value of food so that we can start to develop a relationship with food where you enjoy eating in a way where you're taking care of yourself. All right, what does that look like? Well, most people understand food value from a very narrow perspective. What is going to give me the most hedonistic value? What tastes the best? You go out to eat lunch with your friends. Hey, what do you guys want to have for lunch? oh, I'm Chinese or Mexican or let's get Italian or whatever. The value that we've placed on food is around that. We don't understand all the other values. So you've got to start with, let's start to pay attention to all the values of food. How does this food affect me emotionally? How does it affect my digestion, my skin? How does this affect my hair? When do I crave certain foods? Is it when I'm stressed? Is it when I'm anxious? Do I eat differently when I'm in a restaurant versus when I'm with friends versus when I'm on my own? You have to kind of bring awareness first. Then start to point out the positives and the negatives. Hey, that thing that I like eating so much because it tastes so good, that's the thing that keeps giving me heartburn. Pay attention to that. Or, you know that one dish that I don't like the taste so much. My God, when I eat that though, I feel so good. my digestion is really good. Pay attention to that. And here's what happens. Over time, you start to develop a relationship with food where the value of food now is much more complete. Then what happens is you actually start to crave or want foods that actually benefit you in the truest sense. You start to develop balance, right? So, hey, my digestion's off. I know, you know what? I want these particular foods because they make me feel really good. Or, my energy's low. I know these foods are gonna make me feel real good. Or, Hey, I'm going out with my friends. We're gonna have a good time and drink some beers. Let me get that food that has that hedonistic value so we can all connect, have some fun and have some laughs. Because that's a value too, right? Yes. But you have to have this. By the way, the food industry knows this. So this is not, I'm not like, you know, discovering anything here. I'm just communicating what they've known for a long time. This is how they sell their products. They sell you food with excitement and, you know, beer commercials and they show you the girls and the beach and, you know, eat this. Look, we crave popcorn when we go to the movies. They've already created that association. We probably already have foods that we have emotional connections to because of maybe something in childhood or because it reminds us of somebody that, you know. So you can do this with yourself. You just have to become aware around it. You also have to interrupt impulsive behaviors around food to bring that awareness. So A good example would be like for me, there's definitely certain foods that I can become very impulsive around. So like potato chips for me is the worst.

Yeah, I know.

That and pizza. Oh, pizza is another one, right? So what I'll do is I won't have potato chips in my house. Right. But I don't say I can't have them. If I want them, I'll drive a.

Mile to the grocery store and I'll get them.

Right. But it's more resistance to get there. I have a barrier. Yes. The barrier is, you know, getting my shoes on, getting in the car, driving the grocery store. and you know it usually I'm like, eh, I don't really want it that much. Right, right, right. So you can do that with yourself and create those barriers and create that awareness and then identify what is making me feel the way that I feel when I crave these particular foods. And this is, again, this is a bit of a process, but once you identify these types of things, you stop using food as a drug. And you start, again, you start valuing food for its It's total value. Because when you talk to people, I love talking to people who've done this for decades, people in their 70s, who really, they just live a good healthy lifestyle. Ask them, do you enjoy eating healthy? Oh, I love it. Like, do you really love it or do you just do it because you like the results? No, no, I enjoy eating healthy. What they've done is they've built that relation. So it's totally possible. You just have to... And this is what the industry needs to start to communicate. We need to start to talk to people in this way versus the cut your carbs out or only eat these foods or eat this specific diet. This is gonna solve it for you. Not gonna work because you're not solving the root issue.

The behaviors.

That's right. And eventually it'll lead back to where you're at right now. Especially if you're again, you're doing it from place of self hate.

Right. That's powerful stuff, Sal. I appreciate it, man. You've got an amazing show, Mind Pump, where it's you and a group of guys talking about all these things every single week. you know, you make it entertaining and fun and you go through all the myths and the debunking of everything and you really talk about how to stay consistent with this over at Mind Pump. So I want people to make sure to follow you guys there, subscribe, check out the podcast. You're blowing up on YouTube now as well and over on Instagram and everything else. You've also got a book, the Resistance Training Revolution. Again, the Resistance Training, there's so many key benefits to resistance training. What we say are the top three or four key benefits to that type of training.

Metabolism boosting, improved mobility, improved hormone profile. It's the only form of exercise that's been shown to consistently improve hormone profile in adults, especially in men. You'll see testosterone levels become more optimized from strength training, and cognitive benefits. It's the best form of exercise for your brain because there's a few different reasons. One is it improves insulin sensitivity. Muscles are another place we store glycogen, which comes from carbohydrates. So, you know, they do studies on severely obese people and they won't have them lose any weight. They just build a little muscle and you see these huge improvements in insulin sensitivity. And that's a big issue these days, which leads to cognitive impairment. I mean, some people will even call Alzheimer's and dementia type 3 diabetes, right? So those are the biggest takeaways from strength training. And I like to communicate it because strength training We are now getting lots of data showing that strength training is this profoundly health-promoting, longevity-promoting form of exercise. 20 years ago, these studies didn't exist.

20 years ago.

So, it helps you live longer? Yes, much longer. In fact, one of the best single metrics that'll predict all-cause mortality is a simple grip strength test.

If you can hold grip for what, like hanging out a bar or holding it onto a barbell?

So, there's a metric that they use, but literally you squeeze to squeeze a device that measures your grip strength. And it's a good way to measure overall body strength. So it's not specifically because you have a strong grip. It just, it can show us, hey, it's like a proxy for the whole body, right? And it's a phenomenal predictor of all cause mortality. It's better than almost any other single metric. Interesting. So what you're probably going to see in the future, and the medical establishment now is kind of talking about this is, this is a great way to test somebody's all cause mortality. Squeeze this gripper. We'll look at your strength and then we can tell with a very simple test whether or not you're gonna live or die over the next 10 years.

Come on.

Oh, true. 100%.

Wow.

Yeah, look at the data on it. It's very, very clear. And why? Because it tells us a lot about a person. Muscle, insulin sensitivity, hormone balance, mobility, all the things that tell us quite a bit about somebody's longevity.

And if you could only do, again, this is a hypothetical, but if you could only do four, lifts for the rest of your life. And that would give you the maximum benefit. What would those four lifts be?

So some type of a squatting movement. Yeah.

So it could be split or it could be. Yeah, so it could be front squat, back squat.

Exactly. It could be a back squat, front squat, bodyweight squat. It could be a split stance, would be like a lunge. Some kind of a horizontal press. So like a bench press or a push up, some kind of an overhead press. So something where you're lifting something overhead. So it could be dumbbells, it could be bands, it could be handstands, something in that direction. Some kind of a row where I'm pulling back, right? Or pulling, some kind of a pull, a pull-up will even suffice. And then some kind of a hip hinging movement. So a hip hinge would be like a, you could do like a single leg toe touch, you could do a deadlift, you could do a remaining deadlift, you could just bend over, touch your toes, stand back up. And that covers most of it. Now, ideally we'd want to incorporate some rotation, but that covers a lot of it. And those are like fundamental human movements. So, if you train them and you strengthen them, you won't lose them. And if you keep them, then you're probably going to maintain a decent amount of health. Where can we go and get the.

Book and everything else? Be a part of the show and all that stuff? So, Mind Pump, you can find us anywhere.

Anywhere you'll find podcasts. The book, the Resistance Training Revolution, could be found anywhere you can find a book. So, Amazon, Barnes & Noble anywhere. And that's pretty much it. But the podcast is where you'll get all the free information. You talked about my co-host and I, all of us have two decades of just training everyday regular people. So when we communicate health and fitness, it's from that standpoint. It's like what we found that really works and we take the data and we say, Is this applicable or not? And let's see and let's talk about it.

We have great conversations over it. That's beautiful, man. I love it. A couple final questions for you. This is called the Three Truths. So imagine hypothetical scenario, it's your last day on earth. As long as you want to live, you get to live it. And you get to accomplish all your wildest dreams. For whatever reason, you got to take all of your information with you. The book, the podcast, it's all gone. This interview is gone. It goes with you to some other place. So we no longer have access to your information. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. Three things you know to be true from all your experiences in life. that you would want the world to have as lessons to live by. What would be those three truths for you?

That's great. Growth comes from being uncomfortable. Treat yourself like somebody you care about. And treat others like you want to be treated. I know that's the golden rule, but I think that's such a powerful one. That's beautiful, man.

I want to acknowledge yourself for the way you continually show up, you know, for yourself as a father, in your business and for your own health. You're a fit guy. I want to look like you, man. I'm going to be as fit and healthy as you. I'm not doing too badly, I appreciate it. But the way you keep showing up and serving your community and your audience with information, with knowledge, with entertainment, with wisdom on how to heal. A lot of people are sick. A lot of people don't have the right tools. And so you guys provide that. And I really want to acknowledge you for how you show up on a consistent basis.

I know it's not easy to do it every week, but you guys do it. So I acknowledge it. I really appreciate it, Louis. what I've done since I was 18 years old. I've worked with people and it's my greatest passion and it's a huge blessing that I get to do this on a much larger scale. And I appreciate you having me on, allowing me to talk to your audience.

Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

Gosh, for me personally, it's being a great father. I can't think of anything more important to me than raising really, really good humans that can do good things for society and for the world.

That's beautiful.

My man. Thank you. Appreciate it, bro. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Amazing, man.

One of the things that protein does is it's very satiating. And I always tell patients not to worry about their strengths, but to plan for their weaknesses. And when you augment willpower by leveraging dietary protein, you plan for it. You're much less likely to overeat.