Build Muscle First, Lose Fat Later: A Proven Plan for Menopause | The Men of Mind Pump

Sal Di Stefano (0:00)

Here's a little insight into a coach who has a lot of experience. This is what it looks like. My goal, number one goal, is to make you be able to do this for the rest of your life.

Dr. Tyna Moore (0:08)

I gotta figure this out.

Justin Andrews (0:09)

Adherence and consistency.

Sal Di Stefano (0:10)

That's it. The real problem isn't the challenge of losing weight. That's actually not the issue, okay? The issue is keeping it up. How can I create a situation? How can I coach you in a way to where this is something you never stop?

Dr. Tyna Moore (0:25)

All right, guys, I'm in your studio, but this is The Dr. Tyna Show, so welcome to The Dr. Tyna Show. Thank you for having us.

Adam Schafer (0:31)

I'm glad to be here.

Dr. Tyna Moore (0:32)

I am with the Mind Pump guys. I'm so excited. I wanted to have you all come to Carefree and be on my show, but we'll get there. So thank you for letting me film in your studio.

Sal Di Stefano (0:41)

Yeah, for sure.

Dr. Tyna Moore (0:41)

Okay, so we got Mind Pump Adam, Mind Pump Sal, Mind Pump Justin, and Doug. Mind Pump Doug, he's the master. I think you're the master creator over here.

Adam Schafer (0:54)

Sal used to say he's great at herding cats. That's what he's the master of.

Dr. Tyna Moore (0:58)

You guys are the cats, right?

Sal Di Stefano (1:00)

For sure.

Dr. Tyna Moore (1:00)

All right, so I have predominantly a middle-aged female audience, and I have a community called the Menopause Rebellion, and I asked them to give me some questions to ask you guys.

Sal Di Stefano (1:12)

Oh, cool.

Dr. Tyna Moore (1:13)

Yeah, so we're going to do that, and we're going to find out because I'm big in there on getting these women's strength training, like first and foremost. I want to kind of ask you about how I strategize things and if I'm correct and what your thoughts are on it, and then ask you some of their questions, if that's okay? No, that's perfect. That's wonderful. Okay, good. So we'll start out with this. I am a big believer, and this is what I tell all my patients when they come to me, no matter what's going on, the first step is to get their strength and conditioning plan checked in and dialed in, and get themselves connected with a good strength and conditioning coach.

My reasoning for that is that I believe the process of building muscle, the whole process of strength training and building muscle goes well beyond just the physical and far into the mental, emotional, just learning to do hard things, learning what their body can do. There's a lot of benefits. We could get into that. But I want to know what your guys' thoughts are. When you have a middle-aged woman come to you, most women in my age cohort think they need to lose the 40 pounds or the 50 pounds first, and then they're going to start strength training. I want to hear what you guys think.

Sal Di Stefano (2:18)

By the way, majority of the clients that we worked with when we were trainers were middle-aged women.

Justin Andrews (2:22)

This was our demographic, actually.

Sal Di Stefano (2:24)

Yeah, so we have a lot of experience working with that age group.

Adam Schafer (2:26)

Which is funny when people see us and they're like, you know, we like a woman's respect. I'm more confident helping a female client out than I am a male client just because of how many people that we've helped in that category.

Sal Di Stefano (2:37)

No, I think it always works out better to build some strength and build some muscle because you can leverage that for fat loss later. So losing body fat in the beginning, even if you do everything right, you tend to see a little bit of muscle loss or at best you preserve muscle.

When we build muscle first, it leverages hormones, metabolic rate, and it sets us up for fat loss later on. Not to mention, when I like to work with people, I like to get them to connect their fitness routine to things that have nothing to do with the scale in the beginning anyway. And this is more of a psychological thing. I want you to feel good about getting strong. I want you to notice your energy. I want you to notice less pain and mobility because the scale obsession can actually become a real problem. And that's something that coaches have to contend with quite often. So when I would train somebody, it was like, we're going to worry about the weight loss, but we're going to get you strong, and I'm going to show you some strength gains, and then the weight loss will start happening. It's more of a snowball effect.