Sal Di Stefano | The Secrets to Achieving True Health From a Fitness Expert

Written By Kristel Bauer

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If you want to improve your relationship with food and start working out regularly, you don’t want to miss this episode! Fitness expert Sal Di Stefano shares why you should approach nutrition and exercise from a place of self-care and the negative effects of excessive resistance training as the only form of exercise.

Key Takeaways From This Episode

  • Is setting goals the solution to health and fitness problems?

  • How to achieve a long-term fitness lifestyle

  • Why you shouldn't chase after a perfect diet or workout

  • The impact of different food choices on your body

  • Is cardio the best way to achieve sustainable weight loss?

Disclaimer: All information and views shared on the Live Greatly podcast & the Live greatly website are purely the opinions of the authors, and are not intended to provide medical advice or treatment recommendations. The contents of this podcast & website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician or other qualified health professional when you have any questions regarding your specific health, changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

 

About Sal Di Stefano

Sal Di Stefano is a fitness expert and host of Mind Pump. Sal picked up his first weight at the age of 14. 4 years later Sal walked into his local 24 Hour Fitness gym and applied to be a personal trainer. He quickly became a top performer and, at the age of 19 was promoted to the position of general manager with as many as 40 employees working under him. 

At the age of 22, Sal became an entrepreneur. He opened a wellness and personal trainer facility that offered one on one training, massage therapy, nutritional counseling, hormone testing and acupuncture. At the age of 28 Sals health took a bad turn. The years of training his own personal body with excessive amounts of intensity in the pursuit of more muscle combined with the abuse of supplements caused his body to rebel. This forced Sal to change his personal approach to fitness. He healed his body and changed how he communicates fitness and health and was re-invigorated with a new sense of purpose. 

At 33 years old Sal met Doug Egge who became his client. They formed a close friendship and together they created the first Maps program. Sal was the designer of the workout plan and Doug created the marketing material behind it. Their goal was to shatter the failed muscle building workout ideas that Sal had personally witnessed as entirely ineffective. 2 years later Sal met Adam and Justin and together with Doug they started Mind Pump. The goal with Mind Pump is simple...bring quality fitness and health information to the masses with integrity and honesty.

Connect with Sal

 

About Vegamour

Vegamour is the sponsor of this podcast episode. Vegamour is a holistic approach to hair wellness that incorporates clinically tested plant-based ingredients that work in tandem to promote healthy, beautiful hair naturally, without using harmful chemicals or short-term ‘fixes’ that can lead to long-term problems. They study the power of nature through the lens of science to bring you the ultimate in total hair wellness & beauty for a lifetime of happiness.

Vegamour simply models nature’s holistic approach to healthy growth & function by combining bioavailable plant-based actives, enzymes, and proteins in a 360, inside/out approach to create the optimal ecosystem for hair wellness.

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To obtain 20% off from Vegamour, visit their website at www.vegamour.com and use promo code GREATLY20.

 

Kristel Bauer, the Founder of Live Greatly, is on a mission to help people thrive personally and professionally. She is a corporate wellness expert, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Keynote Speaker, TEDx speaker & Physician Assistant experienced in Integrative Psychiatry and Functional Medicine. 

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To Book Kristel as a speaker for your next event, click here.

Episode Transcript

Sal (Teaser)

The messaging has to be very clear and very good, and it has to come from a positive self-care self-love place. It's the difference between saying, I can't have that slice of pizza. And you know what? I don't want that slice of pizza.

Kristel (Guest Intro)

If you're interested in health and fitness, you are going to love today's episode with Sal Di Stefano.

Sal is a top mind in the fitness industry. He's one of the hosts of Mind Pump podcast, which is a t0p fitness podcast in the world. They're getting 2 million downloads per month, which is incredible. He's also the author of the resistance training revolution. Sal and I are going to chat about his journey with fitness, how he had an unhealthy relationship with fitness back in the day and how after his health took a turn he developed some changes with his relationship, with his body and fitness to get to where he is today. 

And now he's educating people on how to have a healthy relationship with fitness. I'm super pumped about this episode. We're going to be talking about the importance of resistance training for hormonal health, for stress, for all sorts of stuff.

And we're going to be diving deeper into a relationship with food, how fitness and lots of other really interesting topics. I can't wait to share this with you. Let's jump into it and welcome Sal Di Stefano to the show. 

Sal:

I appreciate you having me on. Thank you very much.

Kristel:

For sure. So to start, I would love for you to share a little bit about your background, what you're currently up to, and just a little bit of a tidbit so that everyone can get to know you a little bit.

Sal:

Awesome. Well, currently I'm one of the founders and co-hosts of the Mind Pump podcast and the Mind Pump media company that puts out. We put out a lot of fitness and health content through YouTube and podcasts and blogs. We reach a few million people every single month with that. But prior to that. I was a trainer, a gym manager, I mean a fitness professional.

And I did that for over two decades. So I've been a professional in fitness industry for a very long time. It's the really, the only career I've ever had. I've had a deep passion for it ever since I started it. And what I do now really is just an extension of that. I'm still coaching and training people just much larger scale.

And the goal is, uh, what it always has been, which is to really help people improve their health and their fitness the right way. I think the fitness industry has the right tools. Unfortunately, the popular side of the fitness and health industry doesn't promote the right message or the right tools tends to prey on people's insecurities and tends to promote, uh, methods that don't have sustainability that tend to cause more issues and problems.

And so the goal is to change that change that tide. 

Kristel:

That's such an incredibly important topic and. I think the trap that a lot of people fall into is they're setting the wrong goals for themselves. It's based more perhaps on like, I want to lose X number of pounds or, you know, I want to look this way which I think that can be really just, it's like a cycle of not enough and not feeling fulfilled. And you're kind of chasing after the wrong things versus setting the goals of perhaps being stronger or having the energy to be able to like, keep up with your kids or to travel or to do those things that you want to do with their life.

So I would love just to kind of start with that topic. Like, what do you think is wrong with the fitness industry and where would you like to see it go?

Sal:

Yeah. Um, boy, we could do, uh, 10 podcasts on what's wrong, but let's start with kind of what you talked about. Right? I like to go to the root. So as a trainer, as a coach, my job was to work with everyday regular people and then help them improve their health and their fitness.

And I had a deep passion for it. And if you do it long enough and you're sincere with what you're trying to do, you start to figure some things out. So at one point in my career, probably five to seven years into it. So I had been training for a long time or working with people for a long time. I had a bit of a self-reflection and ask myself, am I really helping people?

I mean, sure. I could help people lose 30 pounds and look better for their wedding or for the beach. But when people stop working with me. They fall into that statistic of 90%, almost 90% fail rate. They go right back to where they were before. And so I had to have that kind of hard conversation with myself and I realized I really wasn't helping anyone.

And I had to figure out what was it that I was doing wrong. And initially I thought the way to help people was just to tell them what to do. Just follow what I tell you, follow the instructions and you'll get there. Right. You just do what I say and you'll get there. And really it's a matter of motivation and not being lazy and prioritizing your time and all this other stuff.

And that's really what it's all about. And the problem was that I came at it from a fitness fanatic perspective. I am a fitness fanatic. I realized that at best, if we do a really good job and we'll get into, you know, what that looks like, but if we do a really good job, We can realistically expect that we'll get the average person to on a forever basis or long-term basis do some form of structured exercise about two or three days a week.

More than that really is an unrealistic expectation of the average person who doesn't have this fanatical passion for fitness. Like I do. It's not their favorite thing in the world, like it was for me. And so that was one kind of realization. The other realization was that motivation and goals were things that we were focusing too much on, or should I say, convincing people that that was the solution to their fitness and health problems, like, okay, you just need a goal and you just need to be motivated to get to that goal.

Well, that's really a failing strategy for a couple of different reasons. One, if you fall in love with the goal and you worship hitting the goal, you never really fall in love with the process of getting to that goal. And what happens when you get to a goal. And by the way, this has been observed for a long time and professional athletes or people who have hit lofty goals as they, they visualize and romanticize what it's going to be like to lose those 30 pounds.

Or even if we talk about other areas of life, I'll make that million dollars or get that job. Or if I just get that car. And they work hard and they're focused on the goal and the process is just something they have to endure until they get to that goal. Then they get there and they realize it wasn't the answer to what they were looking for.

And it's very sad and people fall off. So that's one problem. The other problem i the obsession with motivation. Now I understand it because the feeling of motivation is amazing. I've never had to convince a client eat, right, or to show up for the workouts when they were really motivated. You know, when they're in that state of mind, people are productive.

They do all this stuff that they're “supposed to do” when they're motivated. That's never the issue. Motivation's never the issue. The issue is what happens with the feeling or that state of mind goes away, which inevitably does. We are humans and humans are very complex. 

We can't be happy all the time. We can't be motivated all the time. We can't be in a particular state constantly, or at least we can't rely upon that. And if you fall in love with or worship this kind of state of mind known as motivation, then when you're out of it and you're not motivated at which again, will happen. Now you stop now, you stop what you're doing, you're inconsistent.

And oftentimes you go in the opposite direction. So I had to learn how to focus on something that would stick longer than motivation and what I fell on or what I landed on was discipline. All right. But what is discipline? I think a lot of us get confused with what discipline means like, oh, discipline means you're just, you do everything you're supposed to do all the time.

And I mean, loosely. Sure. That could mean discipline, but I think it's more important to understand that discipline is a skill. And like any skill you can work on it and develop it. And like any skill you start in one point and you eventually move your way up to a more disciplined, or at least you're better at that skill type point.

And that takes time. So what does that look like? Well, it's no different than developing any other skill, right? So if I didn't know how to swim. I would not start by jumping in the ocean and swimming a mile. Doesn't make any sense. Right. I would start really slow and with a few techniques and pieces of that skill that I could master before moving onto the next one.

So what does that look like for a fitness in health? You know, kind of based lifestyle, I guess, or long-term, I should say relationship with those things. Well, we need to pick a direction. Or an action that is realistic. So it needs to be a realistic in the context of a long-term or forever. So you need to ask yourself, what's one thing that I can do or change that moves in this direction.

That is also realistic for me forever. And you have to be very honest with yourself and put yourself outside of that motivated state of mind. That's another one, because I think when you're in that motivated state of mind, we tend to overestimate what's realistic. Right? So what does that look like? Well, that's different from person to person, but usually if I was working with somebody who had never exercise consistently and never really got a grip on healthy nutrition, It looked like a very small step.

So if I'm working with someone and I talk to them and we're starting with the first goal and, or the first step I should say, and I say, okay, you know, how many days a week do you exercise now? And zero. Okay. And when was the last time you exercised consistently? For more than six months. Oh, geez. Uh, never.

Okay. Do you think you could do one day a week of exercise? Start with that. And do you think that's realistic for you on a long-term or forever basis? Yes, I think so. Okay. Do you think it'll pose a little bit of challenge to you? Sure, but it's also realistic. Perfect. Because what you want is you want something realistic, but that also is a bit challenging.

Not too challenging. You don't want to fail too often cause that's very, that'll throw you off track, but something that is a little bit challenging. So at least it has some meaning, but it needs to be a realistic end. You start there and that's it. And then when that feels like habit or second nature or routine to you, then you can take the next step and this process, although it sounds really slow, like if somebody's watching or listening to this and like, I just want to lose 30 pounds right now.

Like I just want to, you know what you're talking about? Sounds great, but that's gonna take too long. Right? Look, this is really the only way that you'll have a shot at long-term permanent type results or success. Also, it's not as slow as you think, it's actually a lot faster than you may expect. It's not going to happen in 30 days or 60 days, but you would be surprised at if you utilize this kind of process, how quickly you can get to a place where you're in this kind of long-term sustainable space with your workouts and your nutrition.

There's one more thing I'd like to add. And I really think this is probably the most important piece of all of this. It's also the most challenging, but it's the most important if you go into your workouts or your nutrition strategy, if you go into these changes and I do want to be very clear when your goal is to exercise on somewhat of a consistent basis forever.

And your goal is to change nutrition in a way that nourishes your body and improves your health. We're not talking about little changes. These are big life fundamental changes, especially in nutrition. Food is boy, there's so much more of our psychology tied to food than there is just its utility. Right. We eat because we're happy or sad or anxious or because we're at an event and there's particular foods at an event and it's breakfast foods and lunch foods.

So it's a very tough thing  to change. So these are big changes. Okay. You have to go into them with the right mentality. Here's the wrong mentality. The wrong mentality is, you know what? I need to work out because I'm fat. I am disgusting. I don't look good or I need to change my diet because I'm not attractive.

I look lazy. I don't feel good. Oh, I don't like the way my body looks. So you're going into one of the most effective unassuming forms of self-improvement with this negative, I'm doing this cause I hate myself mentality. And what that does, is it transforms without you realizing it, your workouts into forms of punishment? Self-flagellation oh, I ate that pizza last night. I'm going to go to the gym and sweat it out and beat myself up. Right. Or. Your new nutrition plan or strategy becomes restriction. No, I can't eat that. I have to eat this. And why? Because I'm fat. I need to eat this. You know, someone offers you a glass of wine to enjoy your friends.

No, I can't do that. And so you essentially are, tyrannizing this person that you believe deserves this kind of punishment. It's no wonder that when you talk to people and I'm sure you've seen this many times, you talk to people who had started exercising and had started changing nutrition. When you talk to them six months later or whatever, and you say, Hey, how was that workout going for you?

And they'll say, you know what? I stopped because I just had to, I just, you know, I just wanna enjoy my life. How many times have you heard that? Ah, what a pain in the butt. I like food too much. I enjoy it. And workouts suck. And I just, you know, I just want to enjoy life. What a strange way of looking at things that literally take care of you and improve the quality of her life.

Now, it makes sense when you understand that. And treated it as punishment and restriction versus going into it and saying, you know, I haven't really taken care of this very important person for a little while. I deserve to be taken care of. I deserve to feel healthier and have more energy. I deserve to feel stronger.

Right. I'm going to the gym today. This is my hour to take care of me. I'm eating these foods because like taking care of your child, you love your kid. These are good for you and they nourish you and the improve your quality of life. Now, when you go into it that way, you also do, you also stumble upon this, the balance that everybody always talks about in order to have, I'm sure you've heard this before, right?

In order to have a long term success with fitness and nutrition, you need to have balance. You can't just be super extreme, right? In one direction. How the heck do I accomplish. If you go into it with this strategy of self-care, the balance starts to naturally happen because for the most part, you'll be eating foods that are healthy for your physical body.

You'll be eating foods that will feed and nourish your physical fitness and your prevent you from overeating and abusing food or whatever. But there's those occasional times where you're out with your friends. Haven't seen them in a while. I'm going to enjoy a glass of wine because taking care of myself right now means connecting with my friends or it's Christmas.

And man, my aunt makes this pie that she only makes every Christmas. I'm going to enjoy a piece. Where's the balance come from? You don't do this. You don't eat a whole pie. How many times have we gone off our diets? Only to binge or eat in a way that's uncomfortable. You ever get yourself in that situation?

Where like, man, I went off my diet and I didn't have one cookie ate the whole box and I was in pain afterwards and oh, I felt so terrible. That's because you rebelled against your, your self hating self. Like when you were a bell, like a kid, you go in the way opposite direction. But when there's balance and bald, now I'm gonna enjoy this one glass of wine or this one slice of pizza or this one piece of pie, because right now this is feeding and nourishing me, maybe not physically as much, but maybe emotionally and spiritually or whatever, or just even for the enjoyment of the palatability of these things I'm eating. 

So I think those three things that I just mentioned are probably the most important things. Here's the challenge. The challenge is, and this is what we do at Mind Pump is we need to figure out how to sell those ideas than those wrong ideas, like, you know, I'm competing with the guy or girl that says, take this pill and lose 30 pounds in 30 days. 

And my message is, it'll take you about a year to lose 30 pounds. And it's a long process and there's a lot of fundamental changes. Like how do I beat that message? And so that's the strap, that's the challenge.

And really the way that  I've accomplished or try, at least in some respect that we've accomplished that is by explaining to people that, if you try to lose weight or improve your fitness or your appearance or your aesthetics, if that's your main goal is to change how you look, what you'll eventually do is sacrifice your health and then as your health declines, so, well, your aesthetics, okay. 

The way you look or even the reason why we consider aesthetics aesthetic to begin with is because, uh, evolutionarily speaking, they reflect good health. Now we can fake it for a while. But after a certain period of time, you can't fake it anymore. Your health decline now your aesthetics are gone right now.

You don't look good anymore. On the other side, if my goal is to improve my health, my well-being, my quality of life to nourish and take care of myself. I will accomplish a great deal of those goals and the side effects will be I'll look better. Healthy looks good. So the option that I'm talking about.

The way that I sell it is just like that. Look, if you want to look good and you want to look good long term, then you gotta be, you gotta chase health, you have to chase self care and you gotta do it in these ways and you'll get health. And then the side effect will be you'll look really good, but I I'd be lying if I didn't say that it's an uphill battle.

Very hard to bat to beat the other message

Kristel:

That's so true. I mean, that quick fix is what sells unfortunately, even though if people are educated, they hopefully can understand that that's not the answer. So it might need to be for some people the experience of, okay, that's not the answer. Now, what is the answer or people who are able to educate themselves or meet with people like you to realize that the yo-yoing and the back and forth and all that, isn't good for you, you know?

And, and, um, all these different, like quick diets, they, they are not going to be sustainable. Uh, one thing that you were chatting about, which definitely resonates is this whole idea of being extremely strict and restrictive. And then it leading to like overindulging. And I think that's something a lot of people struggle with.

I saw that a lot when I was in practice. And when I actually was learning about all this stuff, I was getting trained in functional medicine. When I started to pay attention to diet, I felt this overwhelming need to be perfect because I had, was learning about like all the negative things that could happen from these foods.

And it scared me to the point where I was like too diligent. And it scared me to the point where I was like too diligent and too over the top with my kids, like you are not allowed to eat anything. Foods with food coloring, you know, stuff like that, where, yeah, the majority of the time sure. Let's avoid it.

But I was so afraid for that period because I was learning all this like scary information. And I, it took me a little while just to integrate it and to kind of find my rhythm with it's okay once in a while, you don't have to be perfect all the time. That's just not life. 

So for me, the big transition was going from fear to, okay I want to eat to make myself feel really good. I want to make it fun. I don't want to stress about it cause the stress about it. Isn't good either. You know? So I think it's like finding this, like you said, the balance of eating in a way that nourishes you without all of the fear and the anxiety around.

Sal:

Yeah. So, you know, it's funny, I'll tell you what, you won't find a space with more dysfunctional or pathological relationships with food than the fitness and health industries that only include the wellness industry. You find  people who their jobs are to help people with nutrition. They themselves have a very high rate of dysfunctional relationships and nutrition.

I remember realizing this as a trainer and going holy cow like this, you know, orthorexia is very common in our space, which is similar to what you describe it to an extreme extent, right? Where this everything has to be perfect and it can look like it has to be the perfect macros and calories, or it can look like all the foods have to be perfectly organic and sourced and nothing artificial or whatever. 

And we forget that health is a fear and it doesn't just encompass the physiological effects that food has on our body. There's so much more that it encompasses. And we'll look, we started this podcast. I had mentioned that food is so much more than just that.

I mean, if it was just that. We would have no health and obesity issues. It would be as easy as just plugging the right nutrition, do it. And nobody cares, but we have entire cultures and rituals and traditions and emotions, and just tied to food. If we ignore that, we're going to fail miserably. You know, there was an interesting study.

I want to say it was done out of Stanford. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it was a study that showed that having poor relationships in your. Was this bad for your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day was right. So now think of the people in our space who is chew good relationships with people, for the pursuit of perfection, with diet and exercise like, oh, I know my kid has a baseball game, but sorry.

That's chest day. I got to go to the gym or no, I'm not going to that event because they're not going to have the. That's perfect that I want to eat, or the stress involved with all of this. So you think you're pursuing this perfect health, but in reality, you're actually hurting yourself. So health is a very broad sphere and it includes enjoyment of the moment.

Hedonistic pleasure from food. Is there value to that? Yeah, there is. Can it be abused? Absolutely. Just like eating perfectly healthy can be abused. Right. Connecting with people over food. What about workouts? Yeah. Consistency is great, is it also healthy to miss some workouts? Yeah. You better believe it. My kid has a recital and I'm going to miss my workout for that recital.

Is that a worthwhile trade? Yeah, absolutely. I'm not feeling very good today. Should I go to the gym? No, probably not. It's better to take care of myself, but in this moment, by not going to the gym. Right. So this is the message that I think that we need to communicate and we need to do it in a very effective way because it's the only way otherwise.

Look, here's the deal. We don't have a weight loss problem. We have a keep weight off problem. I mean, tens of millions of Americans lose weight every single year. All. I mean, people are losing weight all the time. The vast majority of them gain it back within few years. Right. So we need to stop looking at this, like, Hey, we need to get people to lose weight.

Oh no, that's actually not the problem. The problem is much deeper than that. How do we live in this? You know, it's interesting, right? Very unique problems that we're being presented with. I mean, if we go back 50,000 years, the people that thrived were the ones that could find a neat, the most food and find ways to conserve the most energy, because life was very difficult.

It was injury prone. It was dangerous. Food was hard to come by. So that was a big problem. Right? Well, today in modern society, especially modern wealthy society. It's the opposite. It's learning how to abstain. It's learning balance. It's learning structure and discipline. Like, you know, 50,000 years ago, you didn't have to not eat certain things for your health.

That was a bad strategy. Hey, it's a different strategy. So the messaging has to be very clear and very good. And it has to come from a positive self-care self-love place. It's the difference between saying I can't have that slice of pizza and you know what? I don't want that slice of pizza. Like very different feeling.

Isn't it? One's empowering. One feels restrictive, right? One feels tyrannical. One leads to a rebellion at some point. And the other doesn't because I don't want it. No, I actually don't want it right now. And by the way, I think people confuse not wanting with, with meaning they don't think they'll enjoy something because I'll tell people that and I'll say, well, We want to get to a place where most of the time, you'll not want to eat these foods that don't serve you and see, but I do want to eat them.

You can recognize that you'll enjoy the hedonistic value of eating that food. So we're not denying that like a bowl of broccoli is never gonna match a slice of pizza when it comes to the hedonistic value, but really the key is identifying the entire value of that food and then realizing that, yeah, although that's going to be taste incredible. It's not worth the way I'm going to feel afterwards. It's not worth how it's gonna affect my digestion. This really isn't a special event. It's frozen pizza. Who cares. Like, I think I don't want it right now. It's very different. Right? So different than, I mean, it's like, like a married man recognizing an attractive woman in deciding not to pursue her because he's married, really no different than that in the sense that again, you can identify certain aspects of that food that you may enjoy, you don't want it because it doesn't serve you very different approach. 

And I think if you approach things that way, and by the way, it's not easy, it's a practice. But once you kind of get the hang of it, then the balance tends to show up. 

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Kristel:

Right. And I, the more that you make those choices that are going to help you feel better, the more you're going to crave feeling good. And I know that was something that I noticed when I tweaked my diet a bit was like, I didn't want to have those things because I knew I would be a little bit more sluggish after.

I recognized by paying attention like, oh, after if I do have that, the next morning I wake up and I make a little bit more foggy headed. I'm not, I don't have as much energy. So I think a lot of it too starts with the awareness of how do you feel when you eat those foods? Because some people may not even recognize there's a correlation between low energy or feeling a certain way and what they're eating.

And once you make that connection, then you know, then you're empowered to make those choices for yourself. 

Sal:

Totally. It's funny because the, we think someone may be listening to what you're saying and say, well, you know, I'll never really wanna eat a bowl of vegetables there. I'll never really want it. You know, I'll never really want to choose piece of salmon over lasagna.

Okay. The food industry already figured this out. So it is very possible. You can create associations. That will then lead to desires or wants for particular foods. There's no secret to this. Now of course, one way to do this is to make something hyper palatable and dare I say addicting in that sense.

Right? Okay. So that's a very easy way to do it, but there's other ways to do it, right? You look at a beer commercial, they don't just show the beer. Right. They show that he's gotten to having a great time. I'm at the beach or, you know, I'm hanging out, you know, they've done studies where they've served food and different types of containers and they've shown that people will eat more or less based on them. Like they, there was one hilarious study where they served ice cream out of clean toilet bowls and people, they barely ate me. Right. Because that association, there are foods that we, how about this, everybody can relate to this there's foods that we grew up eating that might've been comfort foods for some reason.

That really, if you really think about it or they don't really taste good, they're kind of gross, but for whatever reason, I enjoy eating it because I had that positive association with the McDonald's cheeseburger, which really is a crappy cheeseburger, if you compare it to other, whatever. Right. So, okay.

So what does this mean for us? That means if you practice this type of awareness that you're talking about, that you'll start to develop these relationships yourself. So I'll give you an example, right? So I had a client who just suffer from digestive issues, bloating, and particular. Also wanted to lose weight and have the typical goals and through the process of what we're talking about.

She started to identify that when she ate well cooked vegetables with her meals, her digestion was just much better. She's like, man, when I eat that spinach or that broccoli or that asparagus, I, my digestion so much better, I don't have constipation or bloating. Like it really makes a big difference. Now this woman was an executive and when she would travel.

And when traveling was very hard for her to come by these types of foods, when she would come back after a week or two of travel, she, and she was shocked at this. She was, I remember when the first conversation she came back from a trip and she goes, you know, Sal I didn't believe you when you said that.

I've been gone for two weeks and I crave a big bowl of well cooked vegetables. And she said, because it made me feel so good and I literally want to eat it. She's like, I never thought that could be possible. And the reason why this sounds so foreign to people is first off, it happens on accident or they market to us in a way that does this.

And so we don't realize it. And the second reason is we tend to value food or at least our awareness around how we value. Tends to be around its palatability. So, you know, Hey, what do you want to eat for lunch? I don't know. You know, let me Mexican. Well, that doesn't sound good. What about Chinese? Oh, that know, so it's like, we value food over pleasure.

How much pleasure we derive from meeting it. And we don't really bring awareness to the other values, that foods and to the point where, and I'm sure you've worked with people like this, where it doesn't even occur to them that their morning bagel or whatever they could be causing their indigestion later in the day, like, wait a minute.

I never thought it would, I've been eating that for five years. I had no idea, right? It's like, well, because we're not aware, we're not bringing awareness to these things. So through this practice of doing this, you do develop this desires for foods based on things other than just it's hyper palatability. And it's a real thing and it works and it just takes a little bit of  awareness and a little practice, but what a great place to be, right where maybe a year from now of doing this, being aware and practicing where you find yourself wanting to see if you want to, if you enjoy the process, if you want to eat those healthy foods or those foods that serve you well, you're no longer dieting.

This is just how I live now. Right? So that's the process that after years of being a trainer or a coach, I started to work on and work with clients. And the success rate went through the roof. I went from your typical. If they're with me, they lose weight. If they're not, they gain it back type of deal to having a tremendous success rate, getting people who never worked out, never really focused on nutrition to developing to this day.

I think in contact with a lot of these people, I don't train them. Obviously I do something else now. They're almost all relatively consistent with these things because of this strategy, this process, the success rate is just so much. Yeah, that's incredible. 

Kristel:

And you Sal, I'm thinking at this point, we're coming towards the end of the show, but I would love for you to share just a little bit about a couple of things.

One, I know that according to your bio, when you were young, you were skinny and that's kind of what sparked this interest in resistance training and bulking up. And then you kind of went down a path where it didn't serve you and you had some health issues with it.So I would love for you just to share briefly on that.

And then also about your new book, The resistance training revolution, and then we're going to jump to a quick wellness lightning round before we close. 

Sal:

Sure. No problem. Okay. So yes, I went into fitness for the same reason most people do, insecurities, self hate, you know, as a young kid, skinny wanted to build muscle.

And that's what motivated my personal fitness for a long time. I was a better trainer to other clients than I was to myself. I think this is quite common by the way, in my space. You tend to be more aware with your clients than you are with yourself, but that's how I pursued fitness and my body rebelled at the age of 30, I developed kind of some auto-immune issues with digestion and I was losing muscle and strength.

Couldn't figure out what's going on. And none of my fitness and performance knowledge could help. And so I was forced to change my approach completely. Luckily I had a wellness studio and in my wellness studio,I have a nutrition expert who understood, you know, food sensitivity testing and the emotional component of nutrition and that kind of stuff.

I worked with a meditation expert that was also in my facility and a massage therapist. That was also very good in this. And I moved from an aesthetic based, I guess, focus to one of health. And it took me about a year. At the end of that year, I had a massive realization. What I did part of my strategy was I avoided mirrors and I didn't weigh myself.

I had to do that in order to get out of that mindset. Well, at the end of that year, I felt good and whatever. And I saw myself in a reflection and I was at a pool party. So I had my shirt off and I said, oh my gosh, I look better now than I did before when that was my goal. And that's when I really realized like, man, I really it's about being healthy if that's what I want to do.

So I had learned quite a bit at that point, it kind of changed my philosophy, at least for myself. Whereas I applied that philosophy, my clients, before I did try. myself. Okay. So let's talk about The resistance training revolution. I wrote that book because the exercise prescription that we're giving the average person or the one that's often promoted as the best form of exercise for the number one goal, which typically is tied to fat loss. Right? So obesity is the main, I guess, umbrella health issue. I say umbrella because it contributes to alll kinds of other issues, right? 

Auto immune issues and cancer and heart disease and diabetes. Right? So that's kind of the big issue and our exercise prescription for that has been totally wrong. Now, you remember earlier when I said the most, we could ever hope for when it comes to consistency for the average non fitness fanatic person is about maybe two or three days a week of structured exercise.

So we have to understand that. So that's number one. We also have to understand the context and this all applies to just modeling life. That people are surrounded by hyper palatable, easily accessible food. So there's a lot of food around us. And then the third thing is that our lives are constructed and designed to be sedentary.

That's just the way it is. Okay. You have to go out of your way to be active. Whereas thousands of years ago, you had to go out of way out of your way to not be active. So it's very, very different. So we have to understand those things. And then one more time. We're not going to get people to do three or four different forms of exercise.

It's not going to happen. I would love that, but we have to be realistic. So what we have to do is recommend the form of exercise that is the most effective in that context that I just explained to you. Now, the one form of exercise that we're always told to do when we're trying to lose weight is cardio.  Lots of cardio.

Why? Well, cardio burns more calories per hour than any other form of exercise. And this is true. So cardiovascular activity is gonna burn more calories and Pilates or yoga or weight training in an hour. And because weight loss is a much more complicated than this, but ultimately it’s energy and balance thing, right?

I got to burn more calories and they take in or taking less calories. I burn. So why don't I pay? So let's value exercise on how many calories are burned. The problem with that is it, that's the least important aspect of exercise. The most important is how does this form of exercise get my body to adapt.

And then what does that mean? Cardiovascular activity gets your body to adapt in a way that is not helpful for the weight loss goals that we have in the context that I just painted. Okay. As my body gets better at cardiovascular activity, which requires lots of endurance, very little strength, you know, stamina, very little strength.

That's what you need to do. Long distance running or long distance cycling or swimming or whatever. And you burn a lot of calories while you do it the way your body adapts is it says we need to be efficient with our calorie burn and the best way to do that since we don't need much strength is to pair of muscles.

And effectively your metabolism adapts, and you actually start to burn less calories throughout the day to balance it out. This has been shown in study after study. So normally when you see 10 pounds of weight loss, when cardio is the only form of exercise and it's combined with calorie restriction, we see a, roughly four to five pound loss and lean body mass.

So 10 pounds loss. Half of it is muscle. We'll follow that as a slower metabolism Will follow that is a hormone profile that is geared around pairing muscle down. So we see in studies, men who do lots of cardio tend to have lower testosterone. For example, cortisol levels tend to be higher in men and women that do lots of cardio.

So it's a, the adaptation. Don't benefit us in the context that I painted earlier. Now I do want to be clear. All exercise done appropriately has health benefits. So I'm not saying don't do this form of exercise. Whatever what I'm saying is if that's the cornerstone of your workout and your goal is sustainable weight loss, it's one of the worst approaches.

By the way, I actually talk about this study in the book. There was a phenomenal study done on modern hunter gatherers in Northern Tanzania, the Hadza tribe. And so they live the way we lived 50,000 years ago. And scientists went down to calculate their metabolic rate. How many calories are they burning every single day?

And what they found at the end of the study was they didn't burn very many more calories in the average Western couch potato, because our bodies adapted that way. It would make no sense for a hunter gatherer to burn 7,000 calories a day. When finding 7,000 calories a day is impossible without modern agriculture and grocery stores and stuff like that.

So that form of exercise produces a very efficient calorie burning machine, not unlike a electric car or hybrid car. Right. What about resistance training? Okay. It doesn't burn as many calories while you do. So what, what resistance training does the main adaptation is? It tells your body we need strength.

We need a little bit more muscle. What is the side effect of having more muscle and more strength, a faster metabolism, a metabolism that burns more calories. Now the initial weight loss effect, aren't nearly as quick as the cardio based approach, but it's more of a snowball effect. As the metabolism kicks in, the fat loss really starts to accelerate.

By the way, you don't lose any lean body mass. If anything, you gain lean body mass. So for the average person listening, who thinks they just need to lose a lot of weight, body composition. Is really what matters. I weigh 200 pounds and my body fat is relatively lean. If I were 200 pounds with 20% body fat, I would look very different.

This is true for women as well. If you gain five pounds, a muscle, you probably wouldn't look any bigger. You would just feel a lot tighter. If I had to lose five pounds of body fat and gain five pounds of muscle, you'd be much smaller, even though you, your weight would be the same because body fat takes up much more space.

Plus you have a faster metabolism, also building muscle requires a hormone profile that is conducive to building muscle. What does that look like in men? Higher testosterone, a greater density of androgen receptors. And you see this as proven in studies may, in other words, making your testosterone more effective growth tends to go up. 

Cortisol is much more balanced and women, you see a balance in estrogen and progesterone. You see insulin sensitivity, dramatically improve, building muscles one of the best ways to improve insulin sensitivity. In fact, you could have somebody severely obese, simply gain a little bit of muscle, and you'd see this improvement in insulin sensitivity.

Doesn't require a lot of time. Two days a week of good, effective, appropriate resistance training will do all that. The results tend to be more permanent as well. There's no such thing as permanent results, but when you build muscle, You also start to build what's called muscle memory. Gaining five pounds of muscle might take you a year of consistent exercise and you've got a faster metabolism, all that stuff.

You could lose it in a month or two of non-activity when you're ready to train again, you gain it back in a month. It comes back much faster. The second time around this is very, very well-documented. It's called muscle memory. It's a pretty cool effect. You also don't lose the effects of resistance training so quickly.

If the main effect of my form of exercise is how many calories I'm burning while I'm doing it. The minute I stop, there's the value it's gone. If the main value of exercise is strength, muscle metabolism, boosting hormone profile, improving of course the side effects of that are leaner and less stuff. And let's say I stopped for a couple of weeks.

I don't lose those effects. They, in fact, there's a study that shows there's actually several studies that show. You need about one ninth of the volume and training that you're doing now to keep what you've accomplished with resistance track. In other words, if I had to train four days a week to accomplish a certain level of strength and muscle gain one or two days a week would be able to maintain it. I wouldn't be able to progress past that, but I can maintain it with much less. So it's a form of exercise that's been stigmatized. 

It's you know, women are afraid of it. Oh my God. I'm gonna look like a bodybuilder. I'm gonna look masculine people think it's not a health or longevity approach to exercise.

Also in the book I highlight new studies. No, study's really existed 30 years ago in resistance training and health, but now we have them and we show that it's profoundly effective for longevity and health, including heart health and brain health. And there was a study out of Sydney, Australia that showed that resistance training actually stop the progression of Alzheimer's.

I think it was one of the first nonmedical interventions to show that, and they think it has to do with the insulin sensitizing effects. So it's a, it's a phenomenal form of extra that the average person, not the bodybuilder, not the whatever. Yeah. That's great for them too. But for the average person to engage in, and if you're looking to improve your health and get leaner and, you know, realistically it's going to be maybe two or three days a week.

I don't need, I don't want to spend tons of time in the gym. I just want to get a lot for the time that I spend in there. And I want all these amazing health benefits pick resistance training. There's nothing that comes close to it in that particular context. 

Kristel:

Okay, so this is so incredibly fascinating.

I'm thinking personally I'm a cardio person in the sense of, I like the way I feel and I'm a runner and I like, I just, I like the endorphin release. I like the, um, the clarity I feel, um, and I'll do classes maybe once every two weeks where it's more resistance training and like bar classes and playing and weights and stuff.

But I never feel that like as good after as I do with cardio, but I'm going to make a commitment to start doing resistance training twice a week. So if you're listening, I challenge you to make a commitment for yourself to add resistance training to your workout, ideally twice a week, and obviously talk to your healthcare provider about any restrictions, recommendations specific to you, but I am motivated.

So thank you. 

Sal:

And I want to say one thing about just using resistance. Does it make it resistance training? I can use dumbbells and barbells and machines in a way that makes it cardiovascular activity, resistance training. The way that I'm talking about it is any way to promote strength and muscle gain.

So it's traditional. Do a set 10 repetitions rest for a minute or two, do another set. Now in the book I do provide workouts and some of them require no equipment at all, because you can use your body, weight and bands to do resistance rate. And then I have the dumbbell based workouts and then workout with barbells and dumbbells.

But yeah, two days a week of traditional resistance training done appropriately. You're not going to the gym to beat yourself up. You're going there to train. Challenge yourself a little bit, have good form, good technique. And your goal is to build strength and muscle, and you will be blown away at how much it compliments your cardio.

Because what I don't want to do is tell people don't do the thing that you love. That's not what I'm saying at all. And in fact, in your case, if you're doing your cardio workouts, four or five days a week, one day a week would probably be appropriate for your resistance training. One day a week of traditional resistance training would give you all the benefits that you're looking for from the resistance training.

Kristel:

I don't even think you need to do. Awesome. Great. Done. This has been fantastic. Sal let's do a quick, uh, wellness lightening round. Before we do that though, I am going to put all the links to your show, to your book, to your social. So if you want to learn more, please check that out. So you can get sales book and check out their podcasts, check them out on social, all that good stuff.

Yeah, for sure. Okay. Are you ready? A few quick questions, just first things that come to mind. All right. So first question, you are on a deserted desert island and you have to bring your own food. You can only bring three foods. What would they be? 

Sal:

Oh three foods. It would be a beef, eggs and I think I would bring spinach.

And I think that would be it right there. Beef and eggs will cover all basic nutritional needs. I don't think I'll get into any new, any deficiencies by eating those two things, spinach, because I need the roughage. 

Kristel:

Perfect. And then second question. What's a book that you've read recently that you would recommend? 

Sal: 

The last book that I read that really had a profound effect on me was Eckhart.

Kristel:

Totally a new earth. And then last question, knowing what you know today, what is advice you would have given to yourself from 10 years ago? Oh boy. Easy. Treat your workouts. Like practice. In other words, don't go to the gym and think I'm going to hammer my legs, or I'm going to blast my shoulders. Think I'm going to get good at the squat.

I'm going to get good at the overhead press. Those are exercises are all skills. And if you practice them like their skills and try to get good at them, you reduce your risk of injury and you increase your rate of progression and. Amazing sale. This has been so fun. Thank you so much. I've learned a ton, so I'm super excited.

Yeah, this has been great. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Kristel Bauer
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