2950: How to Lose Belly Fat (Why Eating Less Isn't Working)

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, with your hosts, Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

Sal Di Stefano (0:13)

You just stumbled into the most downloaded health fitness and entertainment podcast in the history of the world. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about how to lose belly fat and why eating less isn't working. By the way, we have a new program, MAPS, ABS and BUTT. Now it is a full body workout program, but the emphasis is on giving you incredible abs and a nice round butt. The program is 40% off, plus we're gonna throw in another free program, if you get it, Muscle Mommy 15 or Muscle Mommy, and we're gonna throw in some free guides, the Butt Building Diet Guide, so you know how to fuel those muscle gains, speed up that metabolism, and a women's supplement guide. Go to mapsabsandbutt.com, use the code LAUNCH for 40% off.

Here's something that's crazy. This number should stop you in your tracks. They did a controlled study. Cutting sleep to four hours a night for two weeks raised belly fat by 9% and the deep visceral fat around the organs by 11%.

Look, for a lot of women, belly fat is not a calorie problem. And here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna break it all down for you right now. It's super frustrating. What's going on? Why isn't anything happening? And this is unfortunately more common than you would think. Again, we have callers like this all the time. And when they call them, they're desperate because they don't know what lever to pull.

Adam Schafer (1:35)

I think this is so common. And I think there's two groups that get split that this happens to.

Group one, who's been doing that, who's just frustrated and trying and ready to give up because it is just so much, they're so low calorie. And then we have the other group, which we call cortisol junkies, where are fooled into thinking that this is working or it's a good idea. Even though they're not seeing the results from it, they get this feeling of euphoria or this cortisol spike after their workout, and it feels good. And so trying to convince that person that this approach is not a good strategy and it's the reason why you haven't reached your goals. And so I find that there's two different clients that I'm speaking to that are stuck in this spot, either the one that is ready to give up because they've been doing this for a long time, or the two, the one has been doing it for a while, but is addicted to the feeling they get, because they get this huge cortisol dump that makes them feel, in the immediate, after a workout, feel good, but still not seeing results.

Sal Di Stefano (2:35)

Cortisol is an energy hormone, so people don't realize that, and it does give you energy in the short term. I'm glad you brought up cortisol, because that gets blamed for so many different things, including belly fat, and it definitely plays a role, but here's what happens.

Women who are doing this, who are under eating, overtraining, beating themselves up, it must be cortisol, so they go buy a supplement. This supplement promises to reduce cortisol, and it does nothing for them, and so they spend money on thing after thing to try to reduce cortisol or work with their cortisol. Meanwhile, they're doing everything else to cause these problems, under eating, overtraining.

Justin Andrews (3:12)

Yeah, they're working so hard, and the frustration is real, because usually for everything else, if you're going to work this hard, you're going to see some results from that, but there's nowhere to go when you're that low calorie.

Sal Di Stefano (3:22)

One of the things that you'll see people do with this is they'll buy a waist trainer, which I cannot hate these things more. I actually cannot. First off, waist trainers, you're essentially wearing a girdle around your waist, and it atrophies, in other words, weakens the muscles around your core. And so, whatever decrease in waist size you get from a waist trainer is because you've made the muscles around your lumbar spine, around your trunk, around your core, smaller and weaker. Setting yourself up for potential injury, back problems, weakening yourself, it's a terrible, in fact, I know a young lady who developed an obstruction because of the tight waist trainer that she was wearing and had to go get surgery because of it. And then lastly, you know, I'm doing all this stuff, it's not working. I know what I'll add. I'll add ab training circuits.