Why You're Not LOSING FAT (5 Mistakes You Don't Realize You're Making) | Mind Pump 1847

If you're a female and you can't lose body fat on 1,400 calories, or you're a man and you can't lose body fat on like 1,800 calories, you probably should focus on boosting metabolism. When you are in a calorie deficit that's really big for too long, yes, you'll lose weight, but your body really, your body's always trying to match the calories that you're bringing in by modifying and manipulating or adapting its metabolism. So if your calories are too low for too long, you'll plateau because your body will learn to burn less calories. How does it do this? It pairs muscle down. What's up, everybody? Oh, it's new MAPS program time. We have a new MAPS program launch, MAPS Cardio. This is a cardio-based workout program for those of you like stamina, endurance, who like to do the weekend warrior, fun stuff. If you like to do cardio, but don't like to lose muscle, want to keep the muscle fast metabolism, this is the program for you. Because it's a launch, it's on sale, but I'm going to give one away for free to one of you. So here's how you can win MAPS Cardio for free. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel. Also subscribe to the Mind Pump Clips channel and turn on notifications. Do all those things. If we like your comment, we'll notify you. You'll get free access to MAPS Cardio. Okay, so here's the launch. Check this out. MAPS Cardio is going to retail for $117, but right now, because it's a launch, it's only $77. That's not all. We're also going to include two free eBooks that later on will be sold for $47 a piece. Here's what they are. The first one is how to boost your VO2 max for maximum endurance and stamina. The second book is how to eat for performance. So if you sign up for MAPS Cardio right now, until July 3rd for the sale price at $77, you will also get free eBooks, the VO2 Boosting eBook and the Eat for Performance eBook for free. Here's how you can get all that. Go to mapscardio.com, get yourself signed up, and then use the code CardioSpecial for the discount and the free eBooks. All right, here comes the show. Weight loss and fat loss plateaus are somewhat normal, but they don't have to stick around forever. Oftentimes, there's a few things you need to do, simple things, that'll get the fat loss and weight loss to start moving in the right direction again. All right, so I want to talk about that in today's episode because this is a very common question. I lost 10 pounds, now nothing else is happening, or I was getting results for the first few months. Everything just stalled. It just stalled. What the hell is going on here? But I do want to, like I said earlier, I do want to be clear that progress when it comes to fat loss, weight loss, fitness in general, is not this consistent linear line. It doesn't work that way. It'd be so much easier and awesome if it was. I wish it was that way. Predictable, and you didn't have to consider all these variables. It's extra frustrating when you're putting a ton of work into it as well, and you're not seeing that kind of result. Super frustrating. But normal progress, and the reason why I want to say this is because a lot of people overreact initially when they see some kind of a plateau, like, oh, I've been losing one pound a week. Every week for the first 10 weeks now. Now they have to go extreme. Yeah, I lost no pounds. Oh, my God. Like, expect it to kind of be this step ladder where you progress and then pause for a second, progress and then pause for a second. And the reason why I'm communicating that is because you want to make sure it's a real plateau and not the expected pauses that happen from continual, consistent attempts at fat loss and improving your fitness. Yeah, I would make the case that, I don't know, at least half the time that people think they're in a plateau, they're actually not even in a plateau. Yeah. Because I think we have this expectation, right, for things to come so fast, right? And I think this expectation is getting worse, right? More and more people are expecting so quick, and this is not a quick thing. You know, losing body fat and building muscle is a slow process. And so when you start tweaking things, making better food choices, exercising, lifting weights, and the results aren't coming on fast enough, or you don't see the scale moving quick enough, or you think the mirror looks the same after a week or two, you all of a sudden make these crazy adjustments because you think you're in a plateau, but you're actually, stuff is happening. And the crazy adjustments, the overcorrections, can push you into a situation where now you're hitting a permanent plateau. Right, it can be damaging. Right, right. You know, it's funny, there was this, God, I think we talked about this a long time ago. There was this woman that followed around and studied babies, and she measured their head circumference, and their height, and their weight, and very, very meticulous, detailed record-keeping. And because her theory was that babies and children do not grow at this kind of consistent pace, that they go through growth spurts, where they're the same for a while, and then boom, you know, they go through this like, and because parents have been observing this forever, right? You talk to any parent, it's like, my kid overnight. It's like overnight, yeah, it's the trippiest thing. And she proved that, she actually showed that, that that's how it works, that they go through these periods of like this. Now, I noticed this with fitness as well, like when I'm building strength or muscle, it tends to be like this kind of like, everything's staying the same, and then boom, I'll get this like boost, and then it kind of maintains again. And I noticed that with clients with fat loss, where everything's moving in the right direction, everything's moving in the right direction, they get a little bit like, Sal, you know what's gonna happen? I'll be like, just wait, we're gonna see what happens. And then boom, you see this kind of like- Stars align, and all of a sudden, things really click into a new gear they've never had before. It happens all the time. And what makes it even more cloudy with weight loss is what makes up your weight isn't just body fat, it's muscle and hydration and water and bloat and that kind of stuff. That can definitely cloudy the waters because you could get leaner and gain weight on the scale if you're holding water. Or you could build muscle and lose body fat and have the scale not move at all. And then you think, oh my gosh, nothing is happening. Yeah, nothing's moving. Yeah, so you have to be very careful with that. I know I share this story on the podcast, so if you've listened enough times, you're probably annoyed to hear me talk about it. But it was such a profound moment for me when I was tracking my water. I never had done that as a trainer until getting ready for shows, competing. And it really highlighted that for me. Because I was so diligent about tracking everything, I knew, okay, I had figured out before I had started the getting lean journey, like, okay, these are my maintenance calories. This is about what I burn on a daily basis. Like that had all been figured out. So here I am deep into it, say five, six weeks into a cut. And I'd have these situations where it felt like, or I thought was a plateau or even worse, I got on the scale and I saw the weight go up. And I know I'm like, I'm in a deficit. I've been in a deficit. I'm training hard. I haven't cheated on the diet. What the ****? My scale went up one or two pounds. But I was also, luckily, I was tracking so diligently that I could go over, I can look at the sodium intake. I can look at my carbohydrate intake and I can look at the water intake. And when I started to piece together was, oh, wow, just a few more grams of carbohydrates with a few more glasses of water and my body, or even just a poor night's sleep or coming off of being sick and cold. All these different things would have my body hold on to more water, which would not only manipulate the scale, but even like the way I looked, I would look softer. I would look a little bloated or something. And I'd be like, what the ****? And right away, like this light bulb went off in my head. Like, oh my God, like this, here I am at this super high level. I'm tracking, I know exactly what's going on. And I'm having this challenge, this mental game I'm playing in my head. Imagine if you didn't have all those metrics. Imagine all my clients. That's where it went through my head right away. Like, oh my God, imagine the hundreds of people I've already trained in my previous decade of training clients that came to me and were frustrated because they felt they were doing such a good job. And they're like, Adam, I'm getting fatter. I can tell, I see it. Or my scale went up. And you as a trainer back then would go like, oh, they're probably cheating. They're not really doing what I'm telling them to do. And so you would discount what they said. And I didn't have the words at that place in my career to communicate to them what potentially could be happening to them to keep their mind right. And so, man, after I went through that, it completely changed those conversations for me when I would talk to a client now because I too understood that feeling of, man, I'm putting the work in. I'm training consistently. I'm not cheating on the diet. Why is the scale and the mirror not giving me what I think? Yes, or you have someone gain weight and get leaner in body fat percentage or lose weight and get fatter in body fat percentage. I remember having to explain this to clients because it never made sense to them. If you gain some muscle and keep the same pounds of body fat on your body, that same amount of body fat is now a smaller percentage of your all body weight. Or if you lost muscle and your body fat pounds stayed the same, that now is a larger percentage of your body. So percentage is what really matters. Now, what's the point with all this? The point is don't overreact and really make sure that it's a real plateau and that normal fluctuations in water or a normal pause that may happen because obviously you don't consistently respond week over week or day after day. So make sure that because what we're about to go over are reasons why you're in a real plateau. So what you don't wanna do, and this is a big, again, this is a big problem is people overreact, overcorrect, and then that can cause problems. So make sure it's a real plateau. Well, and before you go into it, this is where I think it, why it's so important, at least at one point in your training career or your fitness journey, to have tracked diligently. Even if you just commit for a short period of your life and you say, hey, I've never really been really disciplined to enter my food in and just see what's happening. I'm not saying like hold yourself to some extreme diet or get crazy about weighing and measuring it, but just track so you have a really good understanding of what you are consuming and what you're not consuming on a daily basis so that you can make this evaluate what we're gonna go, the five things you're gonna go over right now. If you're not doing that first, it makes these things really difficult to evaluate. Well, that speaks very, very well to the first point, which is this is the first place you would look, it's the most obvious, which is that your calories are too high. Now, a lot of people are like, well, duh, if my weight loss is stalled and my fat loss is stalled and it's a real plateau, then yeah, my calories are high. No, no, no, it's not. I know it sounds easy and simple. No, it's- But here's where it gets- Not that cut and dry all the time. And here's where it gets real challenging is that people will do really well. And what I mean by well is they'll plan their meals, they know what they're eating Monday through Friday. This is very common. Monday through Friday, or even Monday through Saturday, everything is planned and they're eating the same foods. And then they get that day or two, typically the weekend, where in their words, they go off a little. I went off a little. We went out to dinner once, but it wasn't that big of a deal. So they don't really consider it as something that can really impact their progress. But the truth is, if you're at a, let's say you're at a 500 calorie deficit Monday through Friday, meaning you're eating 500 less calories than you're burning Monday through Friday, that puts you at a 2,500 calorie deficit for the week. Now, Saturday comes and Sunday comes and you eat a thousand calories over, which is easy to do. A thousand calories over is not hard to do when you're eating out or enjoying the occasional burger or pizza or whatever. It doesn't take a ton. It's not like you're stuffing yourself. You're just eating a little more and you think to yourself, not that big of a deal. Well, guess what? Now you've ended up the whole week with a 500 calorie deficit. That means it's going to take you months before you see a pound of fat loss, right? Because you've almost erased, and many times you have erased, the calorie deficit that you had Monday through Friday. The weekend thing that you just gave as an example happens so often and people don't realize it because what sometimes happens is not a huge dramatic swing in the overconsumption of calories, but yet a lack of movement. On top of it. This was a big aha moment for me also when the body bug first came on the scene, right? The little tracking device, which is like your Fitbits today. And I had never done that before and really paid attention diligently to my movement. And just like you're saying, Monday through Friday, I was dialed. Absolutely dialed on my eating, dialed on my training, and working eight to 12 hours a day training clients on the floor. And working out. Yeah. And I still worked on Saturdays, but it was a half day of training clients on Saturdays. I also didn't start work until later in the morning. I normally rolled in around nine or 10 on Saturday mornings and I worked a half day on Saturdays and then Sunday was off. And what I found, and then I didn't really eat way crazy. Yes, I would allow, that would be maybe if I would have like a couple slices of pizza or a beer, I would allow it on that. But I'm doing the math on that. That's not a crazy amount of calories that I'm over consuming or what I thought I wasn't over consuming. It wasn't until I realized the swing in activity level was so dramatically different. Monday through Friday, when I was dialed on eating and training and moving around training clients, I'm burning 4,500 to 5,000 calories a day. Saturday, when I actually still train a half day, I'm burning like 2,800. Then on a Sunday, when I don't do hardly anything, 2,300 to 2,500. So I can't even eat what I would consider a healthy diet that looks the same as Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It's a surplus. Because it's a surplus by 1,500 to 2,000 calories. And so this is what blew my mind. Add the two pieces of pizza and the beer, and now you're at a huge surplus. And this kept me at a plateau for years, scratching my head, not being able to go, I cannot figure out why my body is stalled and I'm not able to get to that next level because I had never realized what a dramatic swing in both movement and then the overconsumption of calories. This is where you said earlier tracking. This is the value of tracking for like a few weeks. Like, you know, if you could just be meticulous for a few weeks, track activity, which by the way, the technology now is so incredible. It's really easy to do this. Back when I was training, you had to like write things down and estimate, and I'd have to calorie king book and all that stuff. Now it's like super easy. Track and then see for yourself because there's nothing worse than the mystery of what the hell is going on. Well, that's the thing. It's like you said in the beginning, it's not as straightforward as you would hope it would be. And this is something I found a lot of my clients that had tendencies to eat out a lot or just order things at work or bring things in that they were thought that in their mind, they're making healthier choices, right? So if I'm making a healthier choice and I'm not having something that looks like a burger, it looks like a pizza, it looks like an obvious thing like that, but still is very calorie dense. And this happened a lot of times too, like when you, especially when you go out to eat and there's this big bowl of salad, now I'm just doing this big bowl of salad, but yet I have cheese, I have bacon, I have croutons, I have like dressing like, and the calorie amount in total is actually exceeds a lot of times like some of these other foods that you may deem. This is more of a junk food item. Have you ever noticed that, do you know that like a jack in a box salad is higher calorie than like their ultimate bacon cheeseburger meal? There you go. Go to the Cheesecake Factory. Their salads are like 2000 calories. Yeah, yeah. More than, or how about this? People still think salad though, like I got to eat healthier than salad. Or I mean, this is what happened to me. I would order the salad with the meat and then I'd have some chips, because they give you the tortilla chips before and I didn't really count that. And then you end up counting, I'm like, I could have got a burrito for everything that I ate. Doug and I were in Utah about a month ago and we went to a Mexican restaurant that Brooke took us to and they served, instead of chips, they served like fried tortillas. And then you break it with your finger and then you use it like a chip. And Doug said something that I thought was really interesting. I'm like, oh man, you're ******* right, right? So we're sitting there. So they send it like a stack like this. And so you get this corn tortilla that's fried and then you break it, then you eat it like a chip. And what he said was, it's like, boy, it really highlights how many full tortillas you actually eat. Because when you're eating some, when you're just sitting there snacking on chips, because I must say- You ate like four tortillas. Oh no, I ate like 12. I mean, it was way more than that. And that didn't feel like a lot of chips. But when you got it served that way, you just, it didn't, you're not used to seeing it. Then you would break it, then you'd use it as a dip. And I thought, oh wow, that really did highlight how much that you're having. Which is another reason why I think people come in so high is just they underestimate what it is they're consuming. And sometimes it's not all their fault either, right? So this is one of the bad parts about all the menus that have the calories on it now. So you go somewhere, and I'll use, I'll pick on Chipotle, but this applies to anywhere. You go somewhere and it says that the chicken burrito bowl is 480 calories. Well, first of all, I've talked about before that FDA allows Chipotle to be off by 20%. And by the way, if a restaurant considers himself a health restaurant like Chipotle does, they are going to always lean on the light side of calories. They're not going to overestimate their calories. It's not a selling point to be like, we have higher calories. No, it's a selling point that it's low calorie and tastes amazing. So they're always going to hang on the low side. Now, FDA only requires that they're within 20% of what the recipe calls for. What we know is that it's some 17-year-old kid who's scooping in the line, and he's, some kids got a heavy hand, some kids don't. So the inconsistency of what exactly, and they don't have to account for that error. So you're already off by at least probably 20%. And then depending on how heavy handed the server is, you could be off another 20 to 30%. No restaurant is sitting there forming the food and plating it with calories in mind. No. Nowhere. And none of them are using measuring cups to do it either. They just wanted to look good and actually like more is better because then their customer is more satisfied. Yeah. So the bottom line is, you don't want to be in this state of mystery where you feel like, what's wrong? Like it's not working. What's happening? Track, figure it out. Then you'll know where you need to go. And oftentimes, that's why it's the first one, is that your calories are just too high and you don't even realize it. You feel like they might not be, but when you do the math, you see that it's too high. All right. The second one is going to sound kind of crazy because it's the opposite of what I just said, which is that your calories are too low. Yeah. Now you might be thinking, how the heck can too low of calories be making me plateau? Make me keep shaving away at it. When you are in a calorie deficit that's really big for too long, yes, you'll lose weight, but your body really, your body's always trying to match the calories that you're bringing in by modifying and manipulating or adapting its metabolism. So if your calories are too low for too long, you'll plateau because your body will learn to burn less calories. How does it do this? It pairs muscle down. And I've seen this with clients many times where their calories are so low, energy drops, your body actually makes you move less. They've done studies on this where the calories are so low, they'll track a person's movement and find, oh, you're naturally just moving less, not realizing it, and you lose muscle. I've had clients do this and I bump their calories. Doesn't initially get them to lose more weight, but then we start to build a little muscle, speeds up the metabolism, and then we start to see- It's an interesting dynamic. I definitely have noticed that as well too with exerting effort, even in the workouts. When there's a little bit of a surplus versus like staying in a deficit for so long, it's like I have to keep drumming up that momentum and energy and really try to help depress them on that. But it's just so much different when you're fed. Like you just have that natural energy. So I've found this to be most common in my really heavy set clients that have done extreme dieting and yo-yo dieted for five, 10 plus years, and then I got them. So they had tried to do this on their own. They've tried every diet in the book. They come to me and they're like, I've done the vegan thing. I've done the zone thing. I've done the paleo thing. They've done like every diet known and they've tried to do it themselves, and they're really overweight. And I remember this like when this all came together for me because I remember thinking again, this client's got to be lying to me, sitting across from me and they're saying, Adam, this is what I eat. In the morning, I have a half a bagel with a little bit of cream cheese. And then for lunch, I have a chicken salad with vinaigrette. And then for dinner, I have two boiled eggs and 20 almonds. And you're like, you're lying. Yeah, and you're sitting across and they're over 100 pounds overweight and you're like, get the **** out of here. There's no way you're eating that, right? But they've extreme dieted so many times that their body has now adapted to such a low amount of calories that that is all they eat and it actually maintains the weight they're having. And the worst part about it is if they go off a little bit, they'll have a couple of glasses of wine or that one night. It blows right back up. Yo, then they add so much weight because they've slowed the metabolism. Yeah, I personally don't like to put people on more than a 500 to 1000 calorie deficit. Now I'm going to do this. This is a caveat. The 1000 calorie deficit that I can put people on, I only do that when their metabolism is really high. If your metabolism is low, I'm going to go more towards the 500 or even less. So if you're putting yourself at a deficit that's greater than that, you can get away with it for a short period of time. But if you maintain that, you're going to find your body start to pair muscle down and adapt. And if you're a female and you can't lose body fat on 1400 calories, or you're a man and you can't lose body fat on like 1800 calories, you probably should focus on boosting metabolism. And I know what the dieticians say, oh, 1200 calories, 1000 calories. We don't like to go below that. I think that's too low. I don't know anybody that can maintain weight loss with 1200 calories, man or woman. So especially, you know, even women. So I go, like I said, 1400 or so for women. That's about as low as I like to go. And for a guy, I typically don't like to go below 1800. Well, didn't this happen to you guys? Or I mean, this happened to me at one point. I had so much success with people who wanted to lose weight, increasing their calories and building muscle and speed their metabolism up that even if they weren't in a really like detrimental place, I still went that route, right? So like, so let's say like we, 2800 calories is a healthy amount of calories. So let's say I get a guy who sits across from me and he's, you know, 280 pounds and he wants to lose 100 pounds with me and he's eating 2800 calories. That's not bad. I mean, he's not starving, right, at all. And I could technically restrict him 500 calories and show him some weight loss, but I wouldn't. I would actually still increase calories on someone like that and actually focus on building muscle first because I know that 2800 calories is not like scary low, but for a 280 pound man, that's not very many calories. No, and at the end of that journey, you may end up, you know, 1900 calories. That's right. I know we have a long way to go. He's not 280 saying, hey, I don't want to lose 10 pounds. Right. He's like 280 and he said, I just need to get down 10 pounds. Then, okay, we could go from 28 down to 2300 for a little while and maybe get down there and then reverse out afterwards. But someone who is at 2800 calories and wants to lose 80 to 100 pounds with me, I'm actually still going to start that person in a caloric surplus to speed their metabolism up because I know that we have a long journey ahead of us. Yeah, and that's, of course, combined with good strength training, right? Because you want to give them more of that fat burning machinery. But I've seen this many times where a client comes to me, they plateau really hard and they're really good about tracking and they show me and I go, well, you're eating 1000 calories a day. Like we have nowhere to go. Your calories are too low. And they're like, what do you mean too low? I thought low calories made you lose weight. Like, yeah, I did, but your body's adapted to the point now where you've got nowhere to go. Of course, you're going to plateau. What are you going to do? Work out even more than you are now, which is already a lot and eat even less than you're eating now, which is already a little. We need to make, we need to get that metabolism to boost so we have some room. So I know the first one was calories are too high, which is more common than this one. But this one is not uncommon. No. You still see this one. Very common. You still see this one. It's a spectrum, right? Like to me, it's just as common, but maybe it's not as extreme. Like you gave an extreme analogy of somebody only eating a thousand calories. I think what's really common is example I gave. 280 pound, man. Like, I mean, okay, how many calories? How much do you weigh? 210 right now? Yeah. Okay, you weigh 210. How many calories are you eating? Yeah, probably over three easily. Yeah. Well, you're dieting right now. Right, right, right. You're dieting at three. You were just maintaining it 4,000 something. So put that into perspective. You're 200 something pounds able to eat 4,000. Now, of course, you have a bunch of muscle you've built in your body. But the point is that somebody with that big of a frame that has got 280 pounds on them, 2,800 calories is very, very low for that person. So, I mean, I think it's actually just as common as the eating too much is that somebody who has done this up and down for so long and their body has slowly, slowly slowed this metabolism down. There's a lot of people right now, this is resonating where they're like, oh my God, I'm only, I'm having two. I know this is extreme, but I'm having two shakes a day and a salad for dinner. And I lost the first 10 pounds, but I got 20 more pounds to go. Like what the hell is going on? Well, here's another thing that will probably resonate with a lot of people that I've said to clients too. Many times you may be this person where you feel like, man, I eat pretty damn good, but damn, anytime I just have one bad day of eating or I eat, it just feels like it sticks to me. And so what you have to understand is when you have a metabolism, it's only burning. So I'm going to keep using the 280 pound guy at 2,800 calories. You know, that guy, obviously the big dude like that could probably easily crush, you know, four to six slices of pizza, like no problem. That is such a major percentage of his total calorie intake because he's only at 2,800. You, on the other hand, could actually, aside from your gut issues, could eat that many slices of pizza and wake up with abs still. And so you get somebody who's in that situation, they feel so discouraged because I'm sure they all have that friend too. They're like, **** Sal. We both ate the same thing. He woke up looking better the next day. I woke up feeling like it all stuck to my gut. Well, that's because of where your metabolism is currently at right now and where your metabolism is currently at. It allows way more. So it actually gets easier as you put in more time. You build more muscle. You actually can get away with more of these off days or having cheap meals, as they would say, like, and not do so much damage. All right. So this next one, this next one's actually one of my favorite ways, depending on the person, but oftentimes one of my favorite ways to get someone's fat loss to break out of a plateau. And that was to change their workout. Okay. Now here's the problem. A lot of trainers, when they do this and they say, oh, fat loss stalled. When you change your workout, what they do is they ramp up the intensity of the volume to the roof because they think calorie burn. Right. Wrong. Cut out all the rest periods and turn everything into a circuit. Yeah. No, no, wrong. The most valuable aspect of a workout or training is not the calorie burn, but rather the adaptations. So my adaptations, meaning how is this going to get the body to change, to improve? And then of course, what does that mean? So when I would look at someone's workout, I would say, all right, how can I change this workout to get their body to start adapting in a positive way again? So oftentimes what this meant was changing out of this phase into a new phase. We're going to go into a heavier weight phase with lower reps, or I'm going to change the exercises a little bit. Let's see if we can get you improving strength in some of these other exercises, or I'll reduce your volume. Sometimes that's what I would need to do because I would see the strength improve from reducing the volume. Now, why is this so impactful? Because the adaptations I'm looking for are the ones that contribute to a faster metabolism. So when you do this, don't think of it as, I got to burn more calories, but rather how can I change my workout so that my body starts progressing performance-wise again? Because as your performance improves, fat loss becomes- I think that's the most common thought is that we have to add intensity and we have to now ramp in some kind of cardiovascular training, which if you're an individual that has only been powerlifting or has only lived in that kind of strength phase forever, this would totally make sense. However, I just don't think that's as common and why we point to the fact that if you want to strategize and make this a little bit more effective in terms of fat loss, but also really focusing on the muscle-preserving aspects of training and what would promote that the most to be able to kind of shift your training in that direction, but also then manipulate your calories nutritionally, you're going to be able to get more of that desired physique that you're going after. As we're going through these, I'm trying to decide what I think is the most common and just when I think, oh yeah, that's the most common, I go, oh, I don't know, that's actually really common too. And we get to this one right now with the changing your workout routine. This is extremely common too, not only for people that are kind of just early in their journey into their first year, but even people that have been doing it for a really long time. That what happens to us, and I was guilty of this, I think we've all admitted this on the show before, we were all guilty of this, is you think you get a little bit of knowledge, you learn about exercise, you hear what we're saying, okay, you got a strength training program, okay, you understand nutrition and training and diet, get an idea, right? You see great results. You've got this routine that you've put together or you bought or you're following from somebody and you've seen great results. That's the routine now. Yes, and you marry that. Like this happened to me at least five times in my lifting career where I changed something up and then all of a sudden I saw a change in my body and then I fell in love with that and then did it for a whole year. Yeah, you did it for too long. Yeah, and then I stuck with it because it showed me such great results and it took me like five times going through that going like, oh, it's not the routine as much as it is I'm doing a different routine than what I was before, the novelty of that training routine. And I feel like I see that a lot in like comments on our YouTube channel and on Instagram with our listeners, like because we talk about programming so much that they go, you know, you inspired me to change it up. I've been doing this for a year or two years and it's like, this is another reason or another reason why we get these hard plateaus. And a lot of times it's a blend of some of these things, right? So not only are you stuck in the same routine you've been in for a year, you're also extremely low on calories or you're stuck on the same routine and then you're eating a little bit over on it and it's just, it's compounding. It's only making it more difficult to break through that plateau. I'll tell you why this was my favorite one to change because it was the easiest. So when I would get a client, diet is always a tough one, right? Because it's there, it's with them every day, all day. Yeah, it's lifestyle. I can't follow them around and do that stuff. So when I would get a client and they'd be like, oh my God, I've been plateaued at the same weight or whatever. And we would address nutrition, but this one I could do right away, right? Because they hired me to train them, I'd change their workout and without changing their diet, we would see another fat, you know, five pounds of fat loss just from changing the routine up. So this is important. If your routine has been the same this entire time and you've hit a plateau, one thing you can do is change the workout routine to something that is going to show you more strength gains, going to show you some muscle. That's positive, right? That boosts your metabolism. That'll make the fat loss easier, not only to happen, but easier to maintain as well. All right, here's another one. And then again, this is also quite common. I know we're saying that about all of these, but that's why we picked them. And that is that you might need a break for recovery. You might be pushing so hard that your body's holding on so hard to every pound of body fat. Now, why does this happen? Fat on your body is an insurance policy. Think of it this way, right? We all have bank accounts. So you have a bank account, you store money in the bank account, you start reading the news, you know, like what's happening right now. Inflation's going up, gas prices going up. Oh my God, economy's going to crash. A lot of people are like having conversations with their spouses. Honey, we got to cut this expense. We're not going to go on this vacation. We're going to sit because everything's getting real scary out there. And you know, I heard some talk at work about maybe some layoffs. So we need to stop and just save our money as much. This is what your body will do if the stress is too high because fat is an insurance policy. Remember, we, our bodies adapted where food was very scarce. And one of the number one causes of death was starvation or malnutrition. So if you lacked a lot of sleep or scary stuff happened all the time or whatever, your body's like stored as body fat because at the very least we'll have this energy on us that we could tap into. And your hormones will organize themselves. This way, you'll see stress hormones go up. You'll see calorie burning hormones like growth hormone and testosterone go down. And your body will organize itself in a way to protect body fat as much as possible. In fact, what it can do and what it often does in this case is when you see weight loss with too much stress, muscle loss, what you're seeing is muscle loss because your body's okay with getting rid of muscle because that just costs a lot of energy. But we got to hold on to this body fat. There's all the stress going on. So sometimes, and I remember the first time this happened to me, I had a person that I was helping. They were doing so much workout, so much training, so cutting calories, whatever. And I literally had her switch. I think it was two or three of her workouts from these high intense kind of aerobic class workouts to yin yoga, which you burn no calories. Like yin yoga is you hold a pose for like three minutes and you breathe and you're burning no calories. She was so afraid that stopping those calorie burning workouts and moving to yin yoga was going to cause her to gain all this weight. Well, at first, nothing happened. She just started feeling better. And then I remember the day she came to me. She goes, I'm losing weight. What the hell is going on? I thought I was burning less calories. I'm like, I think your body needed a break. Your body just needed the reassurance that it didn't need to hold on to this body fat. I find this most common in fitness people or people that love to train and work out because they just assume that the more work and effort they put into it, the more results they're going to get. And so, you know. Yeah, if you're working out once a week, this isn't a plan. Yeah, that's right. So of all the things we've gone over, I would say, I mean, I still think this is really common, right? So they're all very common, but this I find more common with my trainers, my fitness fanatics, the people that love to work out borderline, maybe even addicted to it. They don't realize they're addicted to it. The training aspect of it, right? They're so into that and they've told themselves that, okay, or really your type A personalities, right? Your go-getters, like, you know, they just want it. They want to work through the plateau and so they just ramp up intensity. They ramp up this. I'm guilty of this, you know? I for sure, I mean, we started this podcast off talking about that. When I was younger, I was training seven days a week, plus basketball, plus snowboarding, plus wakeboarding. And like my body was not moving and changing, simply just cutting back dramatically. I'm like cutting my workouts in half, like half the amount of training volume I was doing. Also in my body, I put on like 10 pounds of muscle that summer. So I do think that if you are a very active person or you're a fitness enthusiast, this is where you normally have to kind of go look. It's like, you know what? Maybe you are hammering the body so hard that it's just trying to recover. You're not allowing it to adapt. Yeah, and I've seen this a lot. The majority of my clients that had really good success and they've been able to get to a place where like, oh wow, yeah, I had a great amount of weight that I lost and I feel good, but I'm really trying to kind of press further. And it's just the go-to button for them had been like doing the workouts, but then also doing the cardio and doing all the excess stuff, you know, adjacent to the actual workout plans. And then they just more and more and more it to a point where the body just, yeah, like it was in that state of stress. It's just like holding on and they just can't figure out why the needle just completely stopped. So it is at that point now where like rest is, your body is just like, we need this rest to be able to now, you know, provide you with that transition, that change in your physique. Yeah, this is when you're fighting your body. It's like when you're in this position, oh, I plateaued, push harder. Oh no, it's not working, push harder. If you fight your body, your body will win. You're not going to be, I promise you, you won't win. At some point, it's not only going to plateau, but you're going to start to get sick. You're going to start to get injured and you're going to run into some big problems. So if you feel like you're fighting your body to get results, then pause for a second because it should feel like you're working together. If it feels like it's working together, then you're on the right track. Well, that leads to the last point, right? That really well, because I think that after I've kind of checked off all the other boxes, okay, all the things we just talked about, if we, and let's say they're fine on all those, everything's aligned, it's like, damn, what's going on? Why is this person still on a plateau? Many times they're internally still fighting their body. They've got some sort of like, and you, Sal, can probably speak to this the best because with the gut issues that you've had, it'd be, you could be all dialed on diet. You could be training super consistent, balanced on all those things like that. But because internally, your body is trying to survive and adapt. It's not allowing yourself to build muscle and burn body fat because it's prioritizing your, I mean, you've said it earlier, like the body is just wants to survive and it's going to do, it's going to allocate resources in that direction. And if you're being attacked inside more than anywhere else, all that other ----, it's like, I'll worry about it. It's more stress. Yeah, it's more stress. I'll worry about that. I don't take care. I got to prioritize this. And so if you are checking all these boxes and you're still in a hard plateau, this is where now I would recommend doing like a blood work and get a panel done and see what else is potentially going. Good luck building muscle or burning body fat when you have poor health. It ain't going to happen if your gut health is poor or you have a nutrient deficiency or your hormones are totally out of whack. It's a big one. Or you have crappy sleep. A lot of people, everything's fine, but their sleep is so bad that their health is bad. You ain't going to lose body fat and you ain't going to build muscle if your sleep is off or really bad. Studies have showed very clear on that. So if you have poor health and I think besides people who fool themselves, I think, you know, like I've had people tell me this, like, hey, Sal, I want to lose weight, but I've got really bad gut issues. Which one should I focus on first? You got to be healthy first, right? Or, hey, I have insomnia, but I want to, you know, I want to get stronger and do other stuff. You don't want to get shredded though. Yeah, but I want to get shredded. What should I do? You got to solve that first. So if your health is good, your body will adapt in very favorable ways. What I mean by favorable, the ways that you want it to. If your health is poor, it's in protection mode and good luck with progressing in any meaningful direction. I mean, look, it's like, have you ever tried to work out when you feel sick? Like how much weaker are you and how much is your performance? How much progress are you really making? Yeah, you're not making at all. So if your health isn't great, all the other stuff we just said really doesn't matter. So you got to make sure that's good. Yeah, if you've checked all the boxes and you may fall in this category and you're lost and you don't know where to go, this is part of the motivation behind the forum that we created, the MP Holistic Health. That's absolutely free. It's on Facebook. So if you're listening to this and you're going like, I'm stuck in this plateau, I feel like those first four, I'm checking all those boxes, but I don't know where to start looking if I have something internally going on with me or if I do potentially have poor health, get inside that forum. It's absolutely free. Dr. Cabral's in there with his team and they're phenomenal. Yeah, and then if you want, you can work with them and they do very comprehensive testing so they can start to kind of narrow it down because that can be very frustrating, not knowing the root cause of some of your poor health. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at mindpumpjustin, Adam is on Instagram at mindpumpadam, and you can find me on Twitter at mindpumpsal. How do I incorporate cardio and not lose muscle? I've seen people do this before where they'll start to lose the sharpness of their muscles or they'll start to lose the sculpt a little bit, and that's disheartening. But if you do it right, then you minimize that muscle loss or that metabolism slowdown. In fact, if you do it right, you can actually speed up your metabolism at the same time that you build stamina and endurance. You just have to be able to kind of program it properly. And the way to program it improperly is just to go do as much cardio as you can for as long as you can.