Follower Q&A: Debunking The Biggest Myths in Fitness | The HigherUp Podcast Ep. 42

Welcome back to another episode of the hro podcast I'm your host Michael smoke and it's been a while it's been a while since I've sat in front of the camera by myself and talked on a microphone for 20 minutes at a time so forgive me if I'm a little bit Rusty I'll admit it feels a little bit clunkier than it did when I was doing it every week and I apologize for the lack of consistency and Cadence in putting out the episodes recently but I appreciate your patience a ton as I've been building and investing

more time and effort into the coaching community and working with my clients who are crushing it I love you guys if you're listening to this you're doing a great job the transformation even two months in have been insane I have stepped away a little bit from the podcast and I apologize for that I've got a couple of episodes cute up that I'm going to be recording in Austin Texas this coming Week some exciting guests and solo episodes I've got a guest episode coming out with Dylan here shortly that'll be edited and probably up next week

but this will be the week of March 10's episode and in this episode we are going to be doing a fitness myth debunking until well maybe my frontal lobe shuts down I don't know I'm just going to go and go and go to make sure I have covered all my bases the best I could my goal by the end of This episode is to not leave a single Fitness myth stone unturned and I did that through posting on my story about a week ago put your biggest Fitness myths into this question submission box and I

will Hammer through them on the podcast and tell you if they're worth doing absolute [ __ ] or somewhere in between and boy did you guys come through for those of you watching on the screen I don't know if you can see this this is how many we have I don't know if All of them are worth answering but it's got to be at least oh my gosh it just keeps going oh my gosh I'm definitely not oh my gosh I'm still scrolling it's probably 300 submissions so needless to say I think I'll go into

a coma simply from brain exhaustion if I try to do all of this so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pick through these live with you guys on the podcast today and just dispel these as they come about and give my organic Off-the-cuff opinion on these in no particular order I think they're just submitted on in order of the last person to put them into the question box and I had to pull the story after like six hours because too many people were submitting so without further Ado let's just start to dispel

some of the biggest Fitness myths or some of the submissions that might be true and worth considering so we'll start with fantavision unfortunately you cannot spot reduce fat Now a lot of what I'm going to say I imagine based on some of these myths is going to come back to energy balance or calories in calories out that is was and will always be the only way to reduce increase or keep your body weight how many calories you eat will determine how large you are and how much you weigh no matter what those calories come from

if you eat too much you will gain if you eat too little you will lose if you're right in the middle you will stay the Same calories in calories out food quality matters protein and macros matter it's not what we're talking about right now the the concept of ciso calories in calories out has been proven thousand of times and is isolated in every study that contains facets of nutrition or studying nutrition dietary patterns or habits calories are always the main part of the equation for changing your body weight and in terms of spot reduction of

Fat that is unfortunately something that is not possible a lot of you ladies who want to spot reducing your midsection or your arms or your thigh eyes you're not going to like hearing that the way we lose body fat is largely based on genetics and survival everybody lose body loses body fat in different places based on their genetic predisposition I'll give you an example when I start a cut my arms lean out very quickly I lose fat in my arms almost immediately while My midsection still might look a little bit fluffy and even when I'm

very lean like I am right now I have visible vasculature in my stomach and abdomen I still carry a fair amount of fat at my low back and in my legs and and that's just because that's what my body is predisposed to holding on to last I have to get very very lean to lose that body fat and that's the case for most men most men hold fat in their low back and legs some in their upper midsection a Lot of women tend to hold fat in the hips and waist um and that's just the

way it is now there's the genetic component and there's a survivability component think about this logically what is the fat that is probably the most important to keeping us alive and warm maybe or protecting us from injur bodily injury is the fat in the midsection the fat closest to the organs remember our body doesn't know we live in this modern society with air Conditioners and heaters and we're living in climate controlled spaces 365 days a year unless you go camping it knows I need to keep this part of the body the safest because it's the

most critical so keep the fat here burn it everywhere else first so the fat closest to your vital organs is typically where we're going to hold on to body fat uh and we have to stay the most patient in our caloric deficit that is the only way to beat the fat that you don't want is To stay in that caloric deficit and continue to get leaner know it's frustrating I know it's not sexy advice and that's why nobody talks about it because they can't sell you a supplement or a fad diet to combat that so

your body is going to hang on to the fat closest to your organs for warmth and safety and it's probably going to burn fat furthest away from your midsection first and work its way in that might not be the case for everybody but for most Of us that is in fact the case so you cannot spot reduce fat I'm going to try to give a balance between an adequate explanation and Rapid firing the because there are hundreds of them Ben Wilcox another great content creator friend of mine said the concept of doing more reps with

a lighter weight if you want to quote tone a muscle we've all heard this some Jim Bros and broette still talk about it oh I want to get toner and leaner for the summer so I'm Going to do High Reps low weight because low weight or low reps High weight makes me bulky no that's not true you either grow muscle tissue or you don't grow muscle tissue the word toning does not exist it is a totally arbitrary term if you looking to have a more toned tricep you want a bigger tricep or you want a

tricep with less body fat around it preferably both you can only either grow the muscle tissue or not you can't tone it based on the rep range the thing that Changes the tone or appearance of a muscle is the progressive overload you put on it over time whether you do that whether you get stronger in the rep range of 5 to eight reps on a tricep push down or 15 to 20 reps so long as the weight is going up and you're staying at a high intensity of training in close proximity to failure you are

going to see growth in that muscle you're not going to see toning it does not matter the rep range you choose I Like to lift heavy because I can get the stimulus quicker I don't have to stay under a bar for 20 reps I hate that [ __ ] it's boring you might like it that's fine just make sure you're progressively overloading in that range it seems to be based on Research that anywhere between five and I think 30 reps so long as you achieve Progressive overload over time meaning adding weight to the bar over

time or increasing repeti I or intensity you increase the demand of the muscle Within that rep range you can grow it toning is not a real thing great submission Ben Ben has another one that's worth talking about and this one's running rampant right now your body can only digest x amount of protein per hour or per day or per meal the one you're all probably used to hearing is I thought my body could only digest 30 grams of protein in one meal no no no no no that's not how it works so let me explain

protein Synthesis quickly and simply it it is true that your body can only synthesize a certain amount of protein per hour it just has a limited capacity for how much it can take and utilize the amino acids for muscle tissue organ repair skin repair cellular repair whatever it needs however if you can only digest 30 grams of protein or synthesize create and use your utilize rather not create we eat it we don't create it we create some of them Anyway you may only be able to synthesize 30 grams of protein an hour and or utilize

30 grams of protein an hour but if you have 90 grams of protein in a meal your body is not going to see that and go oh just dispose of that other 60 grams it's useless to us we can't use it that's ridiculous think about this incredibly complex machine that has survived for thousands of years without readily available food tens of thousands of years we went through Periods of feast and famine do you really think that again our body doesn't know we exist in this modern food Rich Society it doesn't know when or where our

next calorie is coming from so you really think in early human times if we got 100 grams of protein in a meal and we needed 100 grams to adequately rebuild the muscle tissue we've broken down or lost or the organ tissue we've turned over I mean our body turns over billions of cells is it a day or is it Millions of cells either way cells are constantly being repaired or eaten or turned over and we need new amino acids you really think that it would make sense for this incredibly complex machine that has survived through

incredible hardships through extreme climates to say nah we we we can't synthesize that right now throw it away no it will simply if you you have that 90 G protein meal will synthesize 30 grams of protein an hour for 3 hours or Whatever its needs are in the day what matters the most is that at the end of every day and this is the consensus of all research that you hit your necessary total protein Target for me that's 200 grams now might it be more optimal or a little easier on my stomach or digestion if

I got 50 grams four times as opposed to 200 grams once maybe but I'm not trying to step on the Olympia stage if I get it 200 grams at once or 50 grams four times or 10 grams 20 times that Would be ridiculous your body is going to utilize what it needs to utilize as it is given the food so don't over complicate that don't limit your protein intake if you want to eat 60 or 90 grams in a meal I do that often do it it's fine there is no necessary cap on how much

you should consume in a given window that was a great submission through Ben Ben's on fire here's a third one soreness equals a good workout I had some clients in my coaching Community Recently say like oh my soreness is dissipating these workouts am I no longer seeing progress no you're getting in better shape you're becoming better conditioned to the stimulus I'm in great shape right now physically from a cardiorespiratory and muscular standpoint but if I do a new workout and I add a bunch of volume and I'm not used to a bunch of volume I'll

just get sore soreness is actually indicative of muscle damage not muscle growth what Drives growth is adquate stimulus two to three hard working sets close to failure more weight than you did last week that's going to drive growth soreness does not mean growth and it does not mean good workout it actually can be uh negative to a good workout because it can impair your ability to recover if you are sore after every workout you're probably not recovering or you're doing too much junk volume I grew my physique on two to three working sets in a

Workout three times a week really hard sets and I was sore sometimes but you should not leave every workout feeling crushed and sore you should leave every workout feeling like you pushed yourself and it was hard and you broke a sweat you should be able to go about your day and feel good you should not be cripplingly sore so typically if you're sore it's because you applied a novel stimulus something you've never done before when I re when I introduced Deficit push-ups I was sore as [ __ ] but I think they're a great movement

for chest I had just never done them I'd only done barbell and dumbbell work so when I Incorporated that deep stretch and a lot of reps I was very sore because it was a novel or new stimulus once I got used to it in better condition I stopped getting sore but I kept growing so soreness does not mean growth and it does not mean a good workout if you progressed in that Workout is your indicator of a good workout I'm just going to keep rolling through bins he submitted so much the anabolic window you need

protein within 30 minutes of your workout or the workout was pointless again guys the body is an incredibly complex machine that Physicians and researchers don't even know that much about okay we know a lot about the human body but we don't know everything about the human body why would it make sense that you have this Great workout and your body goes ah he didn't eat protein in time nothing's going to happen now just doesn't a lot of these these myths if you just run them through a filter of common sense you go oh that's doesn't

really make a lot of logical sense why would my body do that so why would your body just scrap a workout that you applied stimulus to your body with if you didn't eat within 30 minutes now the anabolic window may be real but it actually lends Itself to maybe existing more like four to six hours after the workout so as long as you eat at some point after your workout you're fine as long as you have some protein after your workout at some Point you're fine you don't need to crack a protein shake as soon

as you finish your last set I've been there it's Bro Science it's all [ __ ] it's even less important for the research if you eat a protein dense meal prior to training you'll still have those amino Acids free circulating in your blood so don't worry so much about the timing of protein I saw some Meathead going viral on Tik Tok saying if you don't have fast digesting carbs the workouts a waste that's [ __ ] that's Bro Science from the 80s it's all [ __ ] it just just get your protein in when you

can and focus more on your endof day calories and protein rather than anything else we'll take a quick sip of water as you can see this is going to be Maybe a little bit longer of an episode and I'm going to need to Wet My Whistle a little bit because this is a lot of talking and I'm trying to move really fast Terry Wilson a good friend I met at the AR funnel lead conference submitted a few good ones I'm going to roll through here myth crunches will give you ABS this is something I see

a lot I see a lot of [ __ ] workouts on Instagram like if you want toned arms do these curls if you want toned ABS do these Crunches yes and no you want to show a muscle if you want to reveal a muscle like ABS biceps you want to see more vasculature you have to reduce your body fat okay you have to reduce your body fat so the the muscle can be revealed because right now it's probably hidden under a layer of fat now training those muscles training your abs your legs your arms your

chest will thicken them and grow them making them more prominent when you do get leaner so you should Train them like any other muscle I was anti-ab training for a while and then I realized when I got shredded my abs looked like [ __ ] because they were underdeveloped so I'm working on thickening them now in shocker I'm lean again and they look better they're more cut they're more defined you can see them more easily they have deeper uh ridges that's what muscle is like if you want a more prominent tricep grow the tricep and

then get leaner burn some Body fat and the muscle will be revealed through that through your nutrition and your caloric deficit so yes abs are not made just in the gym let's see what's next here here's another good one from Terry you need to work out for hours in the gym to see results this is indeed false and I think this is the the message I try to preach overarching of all of my fitness messages is I think a lot of people are put off from the idea of getting in the Best shape of their

life because they think to get in the best shape of my life I need to do some sort of extraordinary remarkable effort actually no you need to do the obvious thing for an extraordinary period of time just like anything that's worth being successful at I just think a lot of people assume bodybuilder Meatheads who are in the gym 5 days a week for two to three hours and doing an hour of cardio and their gym is basically their gym Time is a part-time job they think that that's what it takes the truth is like I

said you only need about eight to 15 sets a week of hard training on a muscle to grow it and that for me looked like three full body workouts per week two to three hard working sets really hard working sets on a full body split that is how I built my physique that is how I've built 40 pounds of muscle in the last eight years could it have been more optimal could I have done it faster yeah I spent way too much time in a deficit I was scared to bulk don't be scared to bulk

that's a whole other conversation the point is you can get a killer workout and hit that Progressive overload and strengthening Mark in 45 to 60 minutes that's what every one of my clients is doing in the coaching Community three hours a week in the gym 10,000 steps a day every day minimum and they're all seeing results it is not how much work you do it is the quality of The work that is done in the gym if you push the muscle hard for a few sets you can get the out of there and grow a

lot of muscle tissue especially if you're a beginner it takes like nothing the research shows us it only takes two working sets per week to maintain tissue so you get into two heavy sets of bench press and maintain the existing musculature two sets per week in your chest so anything beyond that could technically in theory trigger growth it Is far less work than you think so if you are put off from the gym or getting in the best shape of your life because you think it's too much of a time commitment it's not you need

three good hours per week in the gym and 60 Minutes of brisk walking a day and your body will transform that's just I'm living proof of that and the research backs it Daddy Wellness my boy Richie carbs after a certain time of day will lead to Fat gain or late night eating I'll add To that will contribute to Fat gain that is a Croc of [ __ ] he knows it because he put the laughing emoji after it late night eating does not cause fat gain back to what I said earlier too many calories causes

fat gain when I I was at my most shredded I was eating about 2300 calories a day and my last meal was around 9:30 p.m. because I wanted to eat close to bed because I was hungry all the time I was too lean not fun don't recommend was back in the dark ages of My fitness journey first couple years and I would eat that close to bed so I could go to bed full now going to bed full can compromise your sleep it can prevent melatonin release so it is best recommended to at least give

yourself 90 minutes before bed for your last meal uh that's that's just cuz you'll get better Rim sleep and deep sleep that is not because you'll gain fat if you eat all 2,000 calories of your day at 9:00 p.m. and you burn 2500 calories at day you Will lose weight our body our calorie intake does not work on some sort of exact clock hell our body doesn't even know clocks exist we just invented time as a construct to keep us organized for things the sun's going to rise and set no [ __ ] matter what

so whenever you get your calories is inconsequential to your weight gain or loss it may just help with sleep to eat earlier in the day and stop eating earlier in the day day but it is not carbs or calories After a certain time that late night eating causing fat gain that's not true that's just simply not true oh my boy Pearson the myth red meat is bad for you I get a lot of flak in my comments for eating a ton of red meat and people like oh it causes colon cancer it's carcinogenic yes grilled

meat has carcinogenic effects or it can be car not not effects but it can be considered a carcinogen because of the smoking and the the crust that's forming Around the meat however all of those studies that correlate red meat consumption to cancer colon cancer risk specifically I want somebody to find me a study where they followed a healthy individual who exercises doesn't smoke isn't obese doesn't drink and the red meat they got was steak and vegetables a lot of these studies are observational studies or epidemiology studies where you can CL easily say correlation does not

equal causation just because someone Ate red meat and cancer that does not mean that that was the cause it might be correlated but it is not the cause a lot of the red meat in question in these studies is a McDonald's cheeseburger sandwich between two hyper processed buns oh and by the way the person was sedentary oh and by the way they didn't account for the fact that they were a smoker or that they were 50 pounds overweight their whole life or they drank alcohol or they didn't eat enough Fiber with their red meat that's

hugely important for colal health eating roughly 10 grams of fiber per thousand calories you consume they don't account for those things because it's very hard to control for that many VAR variables so I have yet to see a study that tightly follows healthy active people who eat enough vegetables and a diverse diet and are also active and lead a healthy lifestyle that ends up with coloral cancer I just don't I don't even Think it exists I don't think that study exists so Peter AA once said that the link between red meat and cancer the correlation

is so weak he doesn't even deem it worth conversation and that is a medical doctor one of the authorities in the space it is such a straw man argument it is a Rock of [ __ ] you're not going to get sick eating steak and vegetables and fruits and eggs that's just not it's just not going to happen red meat is not bad for you it is Incredibly dense in micronutrients and I feel better Fuller and more energized when I'm eating more red meat another one from Pearson the demonization of high fat food being automatically

unhealthy I do think a lot of people correlate fat with fat if I eat dietary fat I'm going to get fat no that's not true you need dietary fat dietary fat makes up the myelin sheath of our cellular makeup our cells are made of a myin sheath that is made of The fat that we consume our brain is 60% saturated fat did you know that fun fact the fats that we eat make us up on a cellular level they are also saturated fat fats specifically are precursors to male and female sex hormone production you know

that little thing you guys are all obsessed with raising your testosterone fellas that comes from eating enough dietary fat healthy Omega fats Omega-3s a balance of Omega-3s and Omega 6es polyunsaturated and Monounsaturated fats saturated fats you need all of them I eat a ton of eggs a ton of steak ton of butter i al also eat olive oil avocados a few nuts a diverse fish a diverse array of fats is critical for your health and hormone production I see a lot of people on bro diets out here eating 30 to 40 grams of fat a

day and wondering why they have no libido and no energy I personally feel the best eating 80 to 120 grams of fat a day which is a Little bit higher than a conventional diet I feel the best I just got my Bloods done my male hormone Health panel especially considering my training volume and all the running I do because running can actually lower testosterone my male hormone panels are perfect for a natural lifter my testosterone was 730 my free test was 13.7 which is a great ratio of free to Total uh my shgb or my

shbg my estrogen estrad everything was pretty much perfect right in the middle Range and I eat an abundance of fat you need fat to be healthy and you especially need fat to be healthy as a woman with your hormonal cycle same for women and red meat because of your menstrual cycles and the fact that you ministrate you lose blood you lose minerals you need tons of red meat iron zinc copper need to put that stuff back into your body because you're losing it every month we're not so I hope that clears up the fat Myth

let's see Josh gets gains my boy Josh carbs are bad when losing weight oh boy I need a sip of water before this and guys I know I'm moving fast I'm just trying to hammer through these I'm talking an alarming speed rate right now but I want to get through as many of these as possible and try to really answer every possible question I have because every time I do a video like this another myth pops up I have gotten shredded on a keto diet I have gotten Shredded on a carnivore diet I've have gotten

shredded somewhere in between and I've gotten shredded eating 400 grams of carbs a day back at my lanest I was eating half a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch before bed don't recommend not very satiating but because I was within my calorie needs I hit my deficit I got shredded okay this whole insulin hypothesis this that's [ __ ] that's all [ __ ] that is a theory the insulin carbohydrate model is a theory The law of thermodynamics is a law the difference between scientific theory and scientific law is that theory hasn't necessarily been proven but

the law of thermodynamics is concrete and the law of ther thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but only transferred however what I'm getting at is you can get shredded eating all of the macronutrients eating a balanced diet if someone got shredded on Carnivore it's Because they were in a deficit if someone got shredded on vegan it's because they were in a deficit that's all that matters don't fear rice don't fear potatoes sometimes potatoes can be more filling than rice so that's why they're a great diet food but you can eat rice

you can eat cereal you can eat bread you can drink juice not filling but as long as you're within your caloric parameters you're eating mostly Whole Foods and enough protein your Strength training you will get leaner and you will look better I promise Al Alpa Elm submitted the question of strength training making women bulky or the myth this is untrue it is false it can also be true for genetic outliers I've had women who are like well I Strength trained and I got bulky okay well maybe you have genetic predisposition to build a little more

muscle or maybe your definition of bulky isn't really an Objective definition of bulky you see bulky women maybe sometimes those women have better genetics for muscle building maybe they're a little bit higher testosterone but generally speaking straight I mean you you you guys should all know now you see female fitness influencers who lift heavy weights and barbell Squat and they deadlift and they look great they look athletic they look fit they look healthy but then you see some CrossFit Women who have like big traps or big ABS or they just look more developed than maybe

you would like keep in mind some of them might be on steroids just saying and keep in mind also they have different genetics than you if you were in the gym strength training hard a couple times a week as a woman you generally do not have enough testosterone to build a bulky or masculine look it will only accentuate your feminine features you want to Develop which in this day and age women want a bigger butt better legs uh more defined shoulders that creat sort of that feminine physique the the psychologically perceived feminine physique fun fact

there are like evolutionary standouts that men and women look for at a potential partner for example uh for women seeking men subconsciously they look for sort of that Vaper wide shoulder ERS and lats into a more narrow waist it indicates Fertility and health and also the ability to protect and provide and then men look for subconsciously through our reptilian brains more of that hourglass figure because it can also represent fertility so little human biology or evolutionary biology biology lesson there for you lifting is not going to make a woman look bulky or masculine you cannot

lift hard enough to do that I promise most men aren't even training hard enough to look ma masculine or Bulky respectfully great sub Mission there let's see what's next already covered eating before bed makes you fat that's not true um let's see oh the debloating or greens powders of the girlies on the internet drink Ali alpam submitted this as well yeah that's all [ __ ] too if you want to debloat take a look at the foods you're eating you might be eating foods that are Bloating you for example broccoli is considered healthy but when

I eat broccoli I bloat up and I get GI pain and discomfort so I don't eat much of it I don't eat a lot of cruciferous vegetables for whatever reason they don't agree with me now digestive enzymes might be able to help you probiotics might be able to help you but the best thing you can do for not feeling bloated after meals is eating the diet that fits your digestion the Best for me that's mostly meat potatoes some fruits some grains but a little bit lower on the fiber side and I don't feel bloated after

meals so if you and if the best thing you can do for your bloating if you are feeling bloated is taking a walk after your meals that's going to promote gastric emptying and digestion and it's why in my Instagram stories I promote postmeal walks so often you will feel so good it's going to regulate your insulin sensitivity it's going to or Increase your insulin sensitivity which is good for keeping you lean it's going to improve digestion improve blood flow that's the best de bloing tool not these [ __ ] powders all these [ __ ]

on the internet are promoting and pedaling it's all crap I didn't mean to call them [ __ ] that was abrasive I apologize let's see um sorry for the pause here some of these are really not worth Uh getting into okay Chris Mina submitted one this is pretty good running destroys muscle growth or if you do too much cardio you can't grow muscle I built a ton of muscle on marathon and ultramarathon prep if you're going to be in this what they call hybrid athlete space I think that terms a little bit cringe personally I'm

just a person who runs but also lifts weights I the stretch calling me an athlete anyway running and lifting are counterintuitive Stimuli absolutely and our body's job is to make us as efficient as possible for the task at hand that's why you see marathoners who are built like sticks and sprinters who are built like brick [ __ ] houses those long endurance efforts no it's not conducive for the body to carry a bunch of tissue like I would be a better Runner if I was 170 and not 200 pounds I'm not 200 pounds be so

generous I'm 190 pounds I wish I was 200 pounds um However got off track there since they are counterintuitive stimuli if you were to only run your body would say hey we don't need all this extra muscle mass let's taper that down let's make him leaner and lighter so he can move more efficiently because for all it knows you're running from a lion it doesn't know you're just hitting a jog on the belt line or wherever you are uh so you need to apply hard strength training intense strength training in close Proximity to failure to

counteract that and grow muscle tissue is it a little bit harder to do both yeah will you get in the best muscular development shape of your life while also being a marathoner probably not especially as a natural you can kind of Be Jack of all trades master of none and if you want to prioritize one you should focus on it more if you want the best physique you could possibly get muscularly maybe running isn't the best distance running Specifically you should absolutely do cardio for your heart health but to say it destroys muscle growth is

not true I think the hybrid athlete movement that the bpin guys have started is a testament to that let's see resistance training stunts growth this is for the parents out there this is a myth if you're younger it's okay and safe to strength train there is no research that indicates that picking up Weights and putting them down is going to stop you from growing in fact it might actually be conducive to the production of hum hormones during puberty we know that squats and deadlifts can actually secrete growth hormone following the lift so it might even

be dare I say productive for children to strength train safely and with good form let them learn how to do it safely don't let a kid get in there and start busting out deadlifts and snap His [ __ ] up but strength training is not going to stunt a child's growth there's no research to indicate that I think even the research shows the opposite oh boy here we go deep breath this is the thing that's getting me in trouble on the internet right now if you saw my beef beef is a stretch I personally don't

I feel like two people have to actually care for it to be a beef and I don't really care but the PCOS Community is coming for me because I said that your high cortisol isn't keeping you from losing weight okay I actually I'll say exactly what I said in the video that's getting so much negative attention uh I said something to the effect of it's not your hormones it's not your insulin it's not your cortisol that's causing you to gain weight it's your elbow every time your elbow bends your [ __ ] mouth opens it's

just a joke I heard an old guy say it once made me laugh real hard it was Meant to be hyperbolic and inflammatory and joking was not taken as a joke but the truth is this whole wave of people on the internet saying you have high cortisol and that's why you're fat you've all seen the Tik Tok shop ads it's [ __ ] it's not true our cortisol Rises and Falls naturally with the Circadian rhythm that we establish through morning sunlight and proper sleep and rest now some people may struggle with higher cortisol and that

Can bring on other symptoms but fat gain is not necessarily one of them if you have high cortisol and you don't eat for five days you're you're gonna you're going to lose weight you're going to lose a lot of weight if High cortisol is what kept people fat they would not be people starving in other countries starving to death it is just not true these people let's say it's their cortisol or the PCOS it absolutely can make it harder I want to be I want to be Empathetic to the fact that these conditions mess with

your appetite they mess with your energy levels can cause you to reach for hyper palatable calorically dense foods they can lower your energy your desire to move all which can contribute to weight gain it's why I said in that video also they have an impact on the rules of the game but they do not change the rules of the game which is that you need to be in a caloric deficit to lose weight your high Cortisol is not keeping you fat track your calories be honest with yourself and be active and you will lose body

fat every time for every one PCOS girlly who tells me I'm an insensitive women hater it's crazy so many people tell me I hate women what I have a mother who I love dearly I don't hate women crazy ass uh for every one of those there's another one who says I have PCOS and high cortisol and all that [ __ ] and I lost 30 pounds in a choric deficit You're right I know I'm right but thank you for the reinforcement they need to see it so your cortisol is not an issue your elbow is

let's see oh this is a good one right here from TK 320 fasted cardio is more efficient for weight loss they have done research on this and here's the consensus yes you do you do move into a quote fat burning State more quickly when you are doing fasted cardio because Your body has no stored glycogen if you haven't eaten in 12 16 18 hours your body May tap into fat cells as energy if you're doing a run or steady state cardio or training whatever however if you turn back around and go into a caloric Surplus

that day it doesn't matter so they've done done studies on fasted during fed and fed cardio and when calories are held equal it's all coming back to that ceso thing I mentioned earlier I told you this would Happen there was no difference in fat loss so if you feel better doing fasted cardio I I feel a little bit nauseous when I eat a lot before a run do it fine whatever compliance is the science you're going to see the best results in what you like and can stick to however if you want to do fed

cardio and you hit your calorie goals at the end of the day you're going to be fine you're not going to burn any more fat in a fasted State okay so if you do an hour fasted cardio And then you hit your calories you'll be good if you do an hour of fed cardio and you hit your calories you'll be good conversely if you do an hour of fasted cardio and you eat too [ __ ] much you're going to gain weight it's that simple you put the fat back you burn on the treadmill stop

over complicating this [ __ ] Hardy covered the KN the uh lifting heavy makes you bulky not true cardio kills gains we covered that diet drinks Will kill you diet drinks will not kill you okay the research shows us that in order for artificial sweeteners which are classified as I think like a class C car carcinogen the dose makes the poison they can be possibly carcinogenic if you consume the equivalent of what was I think it was 32 Diet Cokes a day now if you're doing that seek Jesus or a therapist something because that is

abnormal drink more water for the love Of God but if you're having one to two Diet Cokes a day in fact they've actually done research where they followed subjects who drank diet soda and subjects who drank water shout out Dylan for this study they tracked them both and they found that the diet soda subjects actually lost more weight and kept that weight off because they were able to use the diet or sugar-free Alternatives that were zero or low calories for their sugary or caloric Filled beverages as a substitute so on average diet soda drinkers were

actually leaner and healthier than non-diet soda drinkers now there's some evidence to suggest that artificial sweeteners change our gut microbiome but we don't necessarily know if that's good or bad we don't really know [ __ ] about our microbiome yet there are more active gut bacteria in your stomach than there are observed Stars in the sky how [ __ ] how crazy is that just that has nothing to Do with what I'm saying but that's just a I heard that once and I was just my mind was blown so diet sodas are not going to

make you fat they're not going to make you sick they're not going to give you cancer if you would reach for a Diet Coke instead of a Coke you would probably be better off there are a lot of people who are obese who just cut soda out of their diet and lose weight because they were having seven to eight Cokes or Mountain Dews a day and that's A thousand calories the real thing that is going to make you sick that is going to give you cancer that is going to kill you early is smoking drinking

not sleeping and carrying around an exorbitant amount of body fat for your entire life those are the things that are going to kill you early a Diet Coke I'm one right here a Diet Coke or the artificial sweeteners in this creatine in this water bottle I'm drinking are not the problem focus on The big rocks the big rocks are your training your nutrition your rest recovery and hydration the small rocks all that other [ __ ] so that's my take on diet soda okay a lot of these are repeats so I'm trying not to be

too redundant a lot of about the protein synthesis oh this is actually a good one from Eric Spencer myth walking is useless I'm actually going to convert this into a question I Get a lot which is what's the best form of cardio for fat loss because for whatever reason get this water bottle out of the shot whatever reason there's a lot of buzz on the internet about oh walking at a 3.5 in on 3.5 speed is the best thing for body fat loss actually just moving is the best thing for body fat loss your calorie

intake is most important for body fat loss if you run 10 miles and then eat 5,000 calories you only burn 4,000 you're getting fatter Janet sorry but the best form of cardio is the one that you will do and I do hear like just a normal walk outside is sort of demonized compared to a hit workout or a run or a stair master or elliptical actually walking might be more conducive for fat loss because a lot of these high-intensity high effort cardio bouts are very glycolytic they burn through carbs and they also make you sweat

and lose sodium which can cause you to feel hungrier after the Workout reaching for salty calorie and carbohydrate dense foods when you burn through your carbs your glycogen stored carbohydrate your body wants to replace that and replenish it and so walking has actually been shown to have a neutral impact on appetite because it's very non-glycolytic so when I'm walking 20,000 steps a day and I'm eating I can eat a lot cuz I'm burning a lot I can eat like 2600 calories and I'm not starving I'm I get shredded if I'm doing A lot of these

like High Rock style workouts like I am right now I am ravenous and I hate it uh so I have to counteract that with more protein and more fiber and more high volume foods but a lot of people are just underestimating the power of stepping outside of your front door and just going for a walk so when you ask me should I do StairMaster should I do elliptical should I run do the one that you like and can stick to and for a lot Of you walk Walking is going to one of the most powerful

fat loss tools you can incorporate I have a lot of people in my community my coaching Community who were just walking 3,000 steps a day and we upped at 10,000 and the weight it just started falling off because every 10,000 steps you take Burns somewhere between three and 600 additional calories to your total daily energy expenditure that's huge it's a massive it's a massive Improvement for some people when The US national average of steps is like I think 3,200 a day so walking is a powerful tool for fat loss that should not be understated let's

see a lot of carbs are bad a lot of don't eat before beds uh don't eat before beds don't eat before bed let's see oh running with a sweat jacket sweatsuit or waist trainer not going to spend a lot of time on this your effort the amount you sweat is not conducive to the amount of fat you're Going to lose your caloric intake is I see a lot of guys and gals running with waist trainers on hoodies freaking boxing sweatsuits doing the sauna because I think they're going to lose fat no you're just going to

sweat and lose water which will make you lighter on the scale but once you drink your water you're just going to weigh the same what's that's water weight that's not body fat so again it comes back to your Nutrition someone said LeBron is better than Jordan I don't even know enough about basketball to speak on that uh cardio ruin gains let's see wow a lot of these are very very redundant which is good it means everyone's focused on the a lot of the hearing a lot of the same [ __ ] protein powder being bad

versus protein and food this is actually what I'm seeing is it bad to have protein if I can't hit my protein goal from eating food alone because I'm too full protein powder is food it is a processed powder but it is calories and protein and amino acids it is food for the body so a lot of you are going to follow this with well what's the best protein powder to to to drink Michael the one that you like the one that's within your budget that doesn't hurt your stomach if you like whey great you like

pea protein okay you like beef protein whatever you Like a fair life Shake go for it I do see a lot of that whole food should always be at the Forefront of your consumption but if you are 50 grams short and you're stuffed and you're 50 grams short of protein have a shake it's totally fine in fact it's encouraged couraged encouraged o Lauren Lauren said diet sodas are better better than you for regular sodas LOL trying to imply that that was a myth Lauren I'm going to hold your hand When I say this no I'm

not diet sodas actually probably are better for you sorry I said it please refer to my earlier question that I answered I hate I hate that I hate when someone so confidently says something I'm like oh you were so wrong and you said that with so much confidence starvation mode oo this might be a good one to close on because we're 40 minutes in and I'm getting tired okay let's talk about starvation Mode or metabolic adaptation I'm seeing a lot of people who are like oh I went to my personal trainer and he told me

I wasn't eating enough no no baby no no no no metabolic adaptation or the process of your metabolism slowing things down in response to a decrease in caloric intake or a reduction in body weight is real metabolic adaptation is real but it is grossly overe exaggerated I hear a lot of a lot of mainly women in my comments Saying well I was eating 12200 calories a day and I wasn't losing weight and then I upped it to 2,000 and suddenly the weight's falling off no that's not what happened one of two things happened number one

you weren't eating 1,200 calories you were mistracking you were ballparking you were lying to yourself it's the truth it's the hard truth you don't want to face a lot of us take little bites of things here and there and don't track it oh no that bite of Skittles doesn't count yes the [ __ ] it does Katherine and the average person in a research study they found the average person under reports their caloric intake by get this 50% 5% not 15 50% so a lot of you were thinking what's the math on that if you

think you're eating 2,000 calories a day 50% a th000 so you're actually eating 3,000 is that right someone check me in the comments so the underestimation of food is gross in the average person they Don't know calories they don't understand them that's why I encourage people to weigh your food and track it for a little while that's the first option second option is that a few days out of the week you're eating 1,200 calories and you felt so deprived that three days out of the week you binge and over consume and eat 5,000 and that

puts your 7day caloric average way higher so let's just do a quick example I'm going to walk you guys through this if my Calorie maintenance is 3,000 calories let's just easy example so over the course of seven days if I eat 3,000 calories my weight will stay the same that's 21,000 calories a week so in order for me to be in a deficit 500 calorie daily deficit I need to eat 2500 calories right 500 time 7 is 3500 that's roughly a pound of body fat in store energy so 2500 calories time 7 is a weekly

caloric budget this is a great way to view calories and why calorie Cycling works for some people higher days lower days over the course of seven days to stay in my deficit I need to consume 17,500 calories so let's say for five days in a row I eat 2500 calories so that's 2500 Time 5 is that right 2500 * 5 yeah so 5 days I eat 2500 calories I nail my deficit that leaves me with 5,000 calories for the weekend Saturday and Sunday again two days at5 200 calories I'd nail my deficit so that Leavs

me with 5,000 calories in my weekly budget but let's say over those next two days I have 4,000 calories so I'm well over 2,000 calories in in out of my deficit I had 5,000 budgeted for the weekend I consumed eight so I am at a net positive of ,000 calories so over the weeks I will gain weight taking that approach that's what a lot of people do they restrict all week and then they blow it the [ __ ] out on the weekends they drink they eat out They just grossly over consume and then they're

baffled and they continue this vicious cycle of restricting binging and overc consuming I've been there so the first thing is either be honest with yourself track every freaking bite you put in your mouth weit on a food scale understand what calories really look like and what portions really look like and then be honest you'll see the weight come off or find the inconsistencies in your nutrition I had clients who were eating and drinking a lot on the weekends and wondering why they weren't losing weight and I said I want you to track well actually shout

out Olivia my coaching client she popped up on a call with another woman and said I want you to track everything and be honest with yourself every drink you have every white claw every vodka soda every bite and see how much that actually adds up to and it was well over a thousand Calories total so it really comes out of just being honest with yourself I got off on a tangent there a little bit starvation mode doesn't exist to the degree that people think it does now your metabolism will slow down a little bit when

you get lighter so generally for every 20 to 25 pounds you lose we look at we observe maybe like a 10% reduction in your basil metabolic rate so you have your basil metabolic rate which is the amount of calories it takes To keep you alive meaning if you were laying in bed in a coma your body still burns calories me sitting right here talking I'm burning calories your brain alone Burns about 20% of your daily calories wild right this needs a lot of food um so my BMR you can calculate this pretty easily oh no

I lost my questions where's the stand by we don't do these edited these are raw and unfiltered um I'll just finish the statement first your BMR my BMR for example is About 2,000 calories if I were to lose 25 to 30 pounds it might drop by about 10% which is about 200 calories so drop to about 1800 calories but your total daily energy expenditure includes your BMR plus everything else your neat or non-exercise activity thermogenesis tapping pacing flinching uh fun fact you can actually burn some subjects in a study burned up to an additional thousand

calories through just fidgeting tapping their foot twitching flicking a Pin those naturally skinnier people tend to be very fidgety and that neat non- exercise activity thermogenesis burns calories you have eat exercise activity thermogenesis walking jogging running gym you have the TEF the thermic effect of food which is the digestion of food food protein Burns about 20% of every calorie to be digested fats or carbs is like 5 to 8% and fats is like 0 to 3% so for every 100 calories you consume of protein you burn about 20 calories just Digesting the protein so all

of those things make up your total daily energy expenditure so as you get progressively lighter your BMR may go down but that's simply because it just takes less energy to run a machine that is lighter there's less of you to move through time and space so when I was 240 235 it I might have burned more calories than I did at 170 because I'm just a lighter human but you can easily combat that with upping your activity a little Bit getting a few more steps walking for an extra 10 minutes 20 minutes will burn that

extra 100 calories so yes metabolic adaptation technically exists but it does not exist to the degree in which we think it does which is oh if I eat 1,200 calories for a week my body's going to slow things down because it thinks I'm dying that's not true my friend Dylan who you saw me shoot a lot of content with just did a six- we cut he's 200 lb he was 200 lb no he was 211 he ate 1,500 Calories a day and as a result got down to 198 in like six weeks so that whole

starvation mode [ __ ] it's all a load of crap see if I can find a good one another good one to finish on um I think that might be a good one to roll on because we're at 47 minutes this is long and I'm getting pretty fatigued mentally a lot of these are pretty redundant uh yeah so I guess we'll close There and I can absolutely do a part two but this episode's getting really long so guys let me know what you thought of this episode I apologize sort of the unfiltered chaotic and fast-paced

nature these are just there's a lot here I think I covered all of the big ones um and if I didn't please drop in the comments what you'd like to see next if you're listening on Spotify please rate the show and follow it it does help get to message to more people if you're Watching on YouTube or apple let's start with YouTube if you're watching on YouTube you please subscribe like the video drop a comment let me know what you thought if you're on Apple rate the show and follow it as well now let's do

a step check drop your step check in the comments it's 3:42 Eastern Standard and I'm I'm at 3,699 steps the time change got me I'm going to get out here and get some serious steppage in on the back half of The day because it doesn't get dark and till 7:40 at night let's [ __ ] go my mental health is climbing and if you're interested in joining the community go ahead and hit the link in my bio and my Instagram if you want to get results you want sustainable results you want access to hours of

exclusive modules and content one of which I release every single month around Fitness Nutrition mindset and even public speaking and career development and you want to be on Our live coaching group calls two to three times a week in the coaching Community hit the link in my bio on Instagram and Tik Tok or Tik Tok and enter your information you'll receive a video on exactly what my coaching consists so you can determine if it is right for you or not and if it is I look forward to seeing you there and if not I look

forward to seeing you in the podcasts in the comment sections and at my various other social media Outlets Thanks for being here thank you for your patience and I'll see you in the next episode