Three Easy Steps to Spark Thermogenic Weight Loss

This transcript is via otter.ai

David Jackson  
All right. Well, Stu, thanks for coming on the show, buddy.

Stu Schaefer  
My pleasure, man, I am so excited to be here.

David Jackson  
And I was kind of browsing your website. And I saw something. And I was like, we have to dive into what in the heck is the thermogenic state that sounds like something out of like Star Trek or something we, you know, he's in a thermogenic states, and we have to get him out. So what the heck is a third? I know it helps you lose weight. And your whole thing is like, you don't have to do anything. It's like you can get your body in the state and you actually burn like calories as you're sleeping or even fat while you're sleeping. So what the heck is a thermogenic? state?

Stu Schaefer  
Yeah, so Okay, yeah, definitely not something that Spock's doing, although he probably would, I mean, if anyone was doing it, it'd be Spock. But that's really what it is, is this. The body has two main states that it can be in one is called the catabolic state. And unfortunately, this is where most people aren't. Most people put their body in, especially when you do any sort of diet, calorie restricting that kind of a thing. And the catabolic state means that the body is burning muscle and storing fat, it's, it's kind of eating itself away, it's not functioning optimally. And this is why a lot of people find it so difficult to lose weight. Now, the thermogenic state, on the other hand, is when you you trigger your body to start burning fat. And you do that actually, by eating more and working out less. But But I mean, don't let that fool you. It's not like you're gorging yourself, it's like you're eating the right foods in the right combination at the right times of day. And when you do that, what happens it signals to the body, hey, we've got an abundance of stuff coming in, and it fires up your metabolism, I always tell my clients, it's like taking your metabolism and turning it from like a Volkswagen bug or a Pinto into a Ferrari engine. And what happens then, is when you combine that with the right kind of exercise, at the right time at the right intensity, you optimize your body, so you do what it's it starts doing what it's designed to do. And it starts burning fat, like crazy. And when you do it right, and you do it long enough, you start burning fat all the time. 24 seven, whether you're sitting, standing, awake, sleeping, whatever. And that's what really flips the switch and makes it so much easier to burn fat and stay lean and stay and keep your results.

David Jackson  
Now Okay, so how do you go, you mentioned you've got to eat this, right? Obviously, I'm pretty sure it's not Twinkies, ice cream and coke, that's probably not the combination you're looking for. So how do you go about doing that?

Stu Schaefer  
Right? So this is what's really funny. Well, not funny, I don't know. It's funny to me. I've been I've been doing this for about 20 years, and I've been interested in fitness for about 25 years. And so you have to understand, I've been through almost every diet out there every diet. So I've seen, I remember when the zone diet came. And it was like all the people in the show friends were doing the zone diet. And then the Atkins was was there. And then they had South Beach and Mediterranean. And now and that was like, and that was probably the late 90s, early 2000s. Before that, it was ultra low fat diets. And before that, all anyone really need to do is starve yourself. You know, you just start with this. I mean, and but now we're in this weird fad and i and i really call it a fad because have been around long enough to see for what it is. And the fad right now is high fat. So we went from starvation to low fat to low carb to high protein to now high fat. And it's just we're going to look back on this decade. And we're going to just shake our heads and go, what were we thinking? And so going back to your question about what to eat to really put this body in the right state? Well, you really shouldn't cut out any food groups. Okay. And that's the problem with diets like keto, they're really trendy but you cut out so much that the body it cannot function how it's supposed to. And I gotta tell you, I have worked with more women now than ever, ever, who all of a sudden are having weird thyroid or hormone issues, and I am.

Stu Schaefer  
I can't say I'm certain but I am seeing a trend with these really high fat and restricted diets where it's causing and wreaking havoc. Okay. And so again, to go back to your main question, what do you eat? Well, it's a blend. And I'm going to give you a couple tips straight away, that if you just follow these two or three tips that I'm about to tell you, you'd probably lose, you know, one to two pounds a week for the next two weeks. So the first thing is and this is where most Americans go wrong, is you got to have breakfast. The fasting thing is it just it's driving me nuts because Let me let me give you an example. This is going to kind of drive this home. There's two athletes that are on the opposite end of the spectrum. On one end, you have like fitness competitors. Now, I'm not saying David that you want to be a fitness competitor, or even that the listeners want to be a fitness competitor. But I, the reason I use this particular athlete is because they are some of the leanest people on the planet. And of all the types of athletes out there, they have the most knowledge and ability to manipulate their their body and get it to do whatever they want physically, aesthetically, I should say. Now, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have sumo wrestlers, okay? There they are athletes and but they're huge, they're massive. And they do have a lot of muscle, but they also have a lot of fat. Okay. Now the, the fitness competitors, who are some of the leanest people will eat six to eight meals per day, because they know that that's part of putting that body into a thermogenic state. Now, the sumo wrestlers, they will eat one meal per day, one meal per day, because they know when they do that, it allows them to put on weight faster than any other form of eating. Okay, you tracking with me? Mm hmm. So when you do this, all of a sudden, fasting becomes popular. We've known for years, that that is counterproductive for the body. But what happens is someone does a study. And they last for two weeks, with 15 participants. And they take one little shred of finding. And then they come up with this thing that this is this amazing. And they list out all these things. So yeah, your testosterone levels are higher when you fast. So it's going to help you add muscle Well, you can get the same boost in testosterone, if you just don't eat for three hours, if you work out and you wait three hours after you eat. So you know, it's not a big thing yet. You don't have to fast for, you know, 16 hours or whatever. And then they have all these things that are flawed, they're flawed, but people jump on the bandwagon you see. So you want to eat breakfast, that's the first mistake that people make is they skip breakfast, and then they have a moderate lunch and a massive dinner. And this is why Americans are getting so fat, because you know what a bell curve looks like, right, David? Sure. So if you're listening right now, a bell curve, it's like kind of a big hump. Alright. And that's how our body's metabolism works, because we're mammals. And so when when the sun starts setting, our circadian rhythm, our melatonin all that starts kicking in and our body has to slow down. It's, it's designed to slow down, because otherwise we'd be getting up every hour to to eat or to drink water or to go to the bathroom at night, and we wouldn't be able to sleep. So because it slows down at night, that's the worst time to put in a bunch of food, aka energy. And it's even worse, to put in carbohydrates, because those are like raw energy. And so what most Americans do at night, well, they have pasta, or they have alcohol, and they have a big meal, and then they have dessert to top it off. So they're loading their body with all this energy. And the body has nothing to do with it. So it ends up storing it as fat. If all if all that people did was switch that around where they ate in the morning, and through the middle of the day, and and they were even if they were fasting, and they cut it off in the afternoon and evening, they'd lose way more weight. I'm not recommending that because you're you're not putting your body in the optimal state. But I'm just saying, if you eat breakfast, and you go light on dinner, you're gonna start dropping weight pretty quick, and it's gonna feel much more effortlessly because now you're starting to work with your body. Does that make sense? Absolutely.

David Jackson  
And for me, if I am eating in the evening, it's not stuff I should be eating. That's where you're like, Okay, I'm gonna, oh, I shouldn't be eating but you know what, I'm just gonna look there's there's peanut butter and jelly. Let's do that or, or chips or whatever. All the snack foods start screaming your name? And it's like, yeah, that's not. Yeah.

Stu Schaefer  
So when you know, that's an interesting point day because that's when people slow down. You know. And so, when you're keeping yourself busy, and especially when you're keeping your mind busy, it's kind of easier to stay on track. And I know a lot of my clients struggle at night and I think the majority of people do because you kick back, you all of a sudden you relax. And now now you can kind of start hearing your own thoughts and then a lot of people either they either want to keep themselves busy so they do that with food or they sit there and they go, huh kind of bored. What should I do? Oh, maybe I kind of want to eat something now. And they like have this this hunger that starts. But it's usually like you said it's they want something sweet, they want something salty. They don't reach for the celery or you know the bell peppers they reach for like what you said some peanut butter, maybe some some sugar, some some potato chips, chips and salsa, those types of things. And what I will tell you is this, if if there is a time of day, that was more important than any other in regards to weight loss and fat loss, that evening is the critical time. Because whatever you do in the evening is going to have the biggest effect on your body. Does that make sense?

David Jackson  
Absolutely. And that's it's funny you say that because that's when the voice in my head says you probably shouldn't do this right now. That's not a good, this is not a good decision. And you're like, oh, it can't hurt that much. It's only and then you just lie to yourself, whatever it is. And then you wake up in the morning, you're like, ah, I should listen that voice in my head. So yeah, that totally makes sense.

Stu Schaefer  
So you know, really quick, just another little tidbit that might help with this. What I found to be very helpful is because people don't they have this weird thing where especially in America, you know, us Americans, right? We don't like to be told that we cannot do something. Oh, absolutely. So what I found is that even me like when I was growing up, I struggled with sugar addiction, I went from being anorexic in my early teens to then having this sugar addiction, I could eat a whole quart of ice cream in it for breakfast. And it just it was terrible. And so I really struggle with that for a long time. But one of the things that really helped was that when I wanted something, but I knew it was a bad time to have it, I would write it down. And I would just tell myself, okay, I if I still want it tomorrow, I'll have it with lunch. Because that's when your metabolism is the highest. Remember that bell curve. And so if you were going to cheat, if you were to cheat at lunch, that's going to have a significantly smaller or lower impact than if you were going to cheat at night or at dinner. Okay. So even that alone, where you're like, Okay, cool, I can have it, I just gonna have it tomorrow. And then odds are you're not going to want it tomorrow anyway. But if you do you give yourself permission to have it in moderation.

David Jackson  
Man, that makes so much sense. Because I know for me, even sometimes I'll say, Alright, we're gonna put this on pause for like, even if it's just 10 minutes, 1020 minutes. And we'll see if I still and half the time, I will even forget to look at my watch. Because I yeah, I'm, I'm probably bored. Or I think a lot of times, I will now go and grab a glass of water. And I'm not really hungry, I'm dehydrated, or something or I'm just a lot of times I just need to get my mind on something else. And the minute I start working on something else. Well, lo and behold 20 minutes goes by and I totally forgot about the fact that I'm waiting 20 minutes to eat something and it's not till I go to bed. I'm like, Oh yeah, I didn't I didn't need the thing. I'm like, Oh, I guess I didn't want it. So

Stu Schaefer  
yeah, that's a good point. So I mean, I know. So I said I was gonna give you three tips. And the first one is to eat breakfast and be careful what you're doing at night. And I'll get to the other two, but you brought up something that's super important. I want to deviate and focus on that. And that's the craving piece where you're like, gosh, sometimes I'm dehydrated. The biggest reason that people get cravings in the first place is they're lacking some sort of a nutrient or a vitamin or mineral, especially because now the foods just don't have what they once had. And so the best way to cut cravings is to take a legitimate like high quality multivitamin. I recommend it be in a powder a powder form because then it actually gets absorbed. And I also recommend that it's something called a whole food supplement. And I'm not sure if you know what that is David but when it's a whole food supplement you actually get the vitamins and nutrients Do you know the difference?

David Jackson  
I don't and that's when you said a high quality vitamin I was like so this isn't you know one a day

Stu Schaefer  
or so this does so yeah, this is interesting. So when something says whole food supplement on it is really cool. What they do in essence is they'll take the foods and they'll freeze dry them and grind them up. I'm sure you've seen the commercials like I have for that beetroot powder, the super beets or whatever. Yeah, so that's what that is right? So what they do is they freeze dry beats and they grind them up into this powder. So you get this really concentrated form of beats and one tablespoon of that powder is the equivalent of eating I think eight beats. Okay, so it's a way to get the vitamins without having to eat all that food well it's the same thing with a good multivitamin. They take all the the fruits or vegetables or whatever, and they freeze dry them and grind them up into this powder so that you're getting the vitamins and minerals from Whole Foods source hence the name Whole Foods supplement.

Stu Schaefer  
Now that's different because the vitamins that you mentioned like the one a day, those are called manufactured vitamins and that's where they're actually cooking them up in a lab. And the body just doesn't absorb them the same. And so yeah, there's still benefit and taking those but to take a whole food powdered vitamin gives you like 10 times the benefit to the point where you can actually feel a difference when you take it.

David Jackson  
Nice I will definitely check that is this usually green? Because I have so I bought something at Walmart once it as some sort of, you know, magic green powder, you put it in it's got 8 million vitamins in it and it tastes like grass. You're like, Huh, Mama whipped me up another glass of grass. I can't drink wait to wash that down. So yeah, I

Stu Schaefer  
you know, I don't know about that. So I the one I take it tastes actually the one I take I recommend to my clients and they sometimes will tell me it's it's too sweet. They use a little fructose, but I like it. And it tastes kind of like if you were to mix it in water. I mean, it tastes like a Gatorade or something like that. The guy who makes it as super cool. Anytime I get on the phone with him, he ends up talking to me for like an hour. Tell me all about it. I'm like, dude, I love it already. You don't have to tell me about it. I already. I love it. So, but so that would that would be the first thing to cut cravings. And then another thing that you can do is go brush your teeth, you know, and that flavor will kind of like make things taste bad. So at least you won't want it like just get the toothbrush, go get the toothpaste, put it in and brush your teeth. And that in itself will save you from like 90% of your cravings.

David Jackson  
And your breath of smell a whole lot bad.

Stu Schaefer  
Yeah, and probably probably prevented ginger vitus and cabinets and all that stuff. So

David Jackson  
your teeth will be happy. Exactly. Alright, so

Stu Schaefer  
do you want to get you want me to keep going with the other tips?

David Jackson  
Let's go with the other two tips. And well, first thing I want to ask you mentioned the, the the whole boy I have written down your whole food supplement. Is that available at your website?

Stu Schaefer  
Yeah, so I don't sell one. But so I'm kind of you know, kind of like Pat Flynn. I'm like a crash test dummy. But for health and fitness. So there's a there's a page on my website. So resource page, it's Stu shaffer.com, slash resources. And that's everything that I personally use, and that I recommend for my clients and nice. So there's, there's a couple things, I'm not a huge supplement guy. So if I, if I recommend something, it must be good because some some of the trainers out there they're like supplement fiends you know, like they're taking like 20 things for breakfast. And I've always tried to do everything naturally so that if you get results, you keep the results, you don't have to rely on something else. But when it comes to like something like the vitamin that most of us are deficient in. I arguably that's something that I think everybody should probably be be taking, you know.

David Jackson  
Awesome. Well, we'll have links to everything out at logical loss comm slash 432 including Steve's website, which he said again, Steve Shaffer Comm. What are the other two tips here to get us into that? thermogenic state?

Stu Schaefer  
Okay, so breakfast was one and making sure that you're careful at dinner. The second thing that that you really got to do is you got to eat a protein at every meal. All right. But it can't just be any protein. And this is where a lot of people get mistaken. So let me give you an example. The most common mistake that I that I hear people make even my clients I sometimes I'm like, I think I taught you better than this, what are you doing is nuts are not a protein, okay, nuts are not a protein nuts are a fat. And so let me explain why they're not a protein. And why the only sources of protein that you should really consider protein are animal sources, alright. And if you're a vegetarian, or you're a vegan listening, I get that maybe you're going to do things a little bit differently. But this could also be if you're if you're struggling a little bit, like maybe you're you're thin, but you just don't have much muscle tone. This could be the culprit. So you have animal proteins, and that would be things like fish, poultry, meats, you know, eggs, cottage cheese, those types of things, and seafood. And then you have incomplete proteins, which would be like the protein and nuts or the protein in legumes or beans or something like that. And the difference is what's called the amino acid profile. And that's just a fancy term to say like some proteins have what's called a complete protein, which means they have all the amino acids in the right combinations for the body to actually absorb them and use them. And an incomplete protein doesn't have all those things. So you have to try to combine them And the body doesn't really absorb incomplete proteins that well, so you don't absorb 100%. Let me just clarify that because maybe that came out a little confusing. Let's say you had some fish salmon, and you look on the package, and it says 20 grams of protein, your body is going to take the ultimate, all 20 of those grams of protein and actually be able to utilize them and absorb them. And that's going to go to recovering your muscles speeding up your metabolism and other great functions. Okay. Now, let's say you looked at nuts, you're like, Oh, I'm gonna have some almonds, and they have eight grams of protein, great, let's just use 1010 grams of protein, okay, cool. Your body may only absorb and be able to utilize with a combination of other things to try to get that to complete. It might only utilize like six or five grams. So you're, you're not getting much. Instead, you're the nuts are primarily fats. So you just have to, you have to know what things really are. Beans, for example, are really a carbohydrate. Alright, the protein source really isn't going to act like a protein. So for all intensive purposes, you really should consider it a carp. Okay, is that kind of makes sense?

David Jackson  
Absolutely. I just know, for me, I've, I've, I've fallen down that rabbit hole with nuts. And it's like, oh, yeah, blah, blah, blah. And, and then it's always like, Oh, just take a hit. When was the last time you ate a single handful of nuts? Cuz it's like potato chips. You're like, Oh, those are good. And then you just start shoveling in that the, you know, another another handful? another handful. And it's one of the things that like, if I leave if I bring a house in the nuts house in the nuts, let's try that. Again. If I bring nuts into the house, I know the scale is gonna go up, because that's it's just Yeah, they don't come in my house anymore. Because I same thing. Oh, it's protein. And it's a good fat in some cases, it might. Not really so awesome. So yeah, get some protein in with your meal. And the last tip.

Stu Schaefer  
Yes, so we talked about the eat, making sure you eat breakfast, getting a protein at each meal. And then the last thing is, you just want to have you want to have multiple meals a day you want to I would say, you know, if you're asking me like the minimum you should have is really four. I mean, theoretically, it's it's five, but I get that a lot of people that might intimidate but if you could shoot for a goal of having five small meals a day, that that is like that is crucial to getting your body into this thermogenic state and think of it this way. And this is why the fasting just bothers me just irritates me, you know, that David just irritates me is everyone's always for the last 40 years, for the last 40 years, they've always used the same analogy, because it's been proven. Every time you eat, it's like throwing a log on a fire, okay. And so if you don't eat it, so you put a bunch of logs on the fire all at once in the morning, well, that fire is going to burn, it's going to rage for a little bit, and then it's going to end up burning them all out. But if you kind of pace it, and you and you constantly feed the fire through the day, what you're going to have is you're going to have a much larger, longer burning fire. And that fire is your metabolism, and the logs are your meals. And so not only does eating smaller, more frequent meals, put your body into this fat burning state. But it does so much more. It makes digestion way easier. It prevents you from having hunger pains and cravings due to hunger, it balances out and regulates your blood sugar. It gives you a ton of energy keeps you focused and helps with your thyroid and hormones and everything. Okay, especially if you're drinking water with every meal helps keep you hydrated. And so what we've we've we've just gone off the rails my friend, and I just it's just so it's just odd to me that we're like, okay, yeah, let's just, let's just go to bed at like 10 o'clock at night. And our last meal will be at eight, and then we're going to get up and we're not going to eat till like 12 or one o'clock in the afternoon. And it's like this is sheer madness, because all you're doing is you're going to slow the body down. And so these these folks who do the fasting, they'll see progress in the beginning, you will on any diet, you just will, but then they hit a plateau really quick. And then what happens is they're slowing down their body. They're losing muscle. And they're they're setting themselves up to fail. And it's not good. It's not good.

David Jackson  
Yeah, I know when I tried the fasting thing, and I was there's all these different things I was like So in a nutshell, if you boil it down, it was skip breakfast. And I was like and like you said I'm trying to make it to, you know, 12 o'clock, one o'clock and I was like, now I'm starving to death. And then I would have this giant lunch. And just, it was like, once you start eating that it's like, and then they're like, oh, but you're in your when it was just so dumb. And I know right now, the window. So and it was kind of a fun gamification, because you'd add an app and you like it started like, okay, and you can see who I'm up to. I'm up to nine hours, you know, and it was just like, you can you can eat in six hours, you're like, Okay, but yeah, that wasn't, was not my favorite thing. I quit doing that after a while. So in for me, it just, it just is the thing that I learned from it was, which is what we're talking about earlier, like, Hey, you know what I did? I quit snacking at night, and I skipped breakfast. So I'll tell you what, let's put the difference. Let quit snacking at night, and I'll eat breakfast, and you end up with a better solution that way. So that is the some of the secrets to the thermogenic state. You can find all this stuff. And I understand you've brought a fun gift for us. Absolutely, man. So

Stu Schaefer  
yeah, to all the listeners, what we're going to do is I'm going to kind of bundle all my freebies. So if you're, if you're like, confused, which most people are and honestly, I don't blame you sometimes even I've gotten confused. And I do this for a living because of the crazy misinformation out there. I'm going to give all your listeners my free masterclass my fat loss blueprint, which is the same formula I use and that all my clients use, because it just it works. And so if someone's trying to get started, and they want to know, like for sure, like what do you what do I do? It goes through everything. And you can take the thermogenic quiz to see if you're putting your body into that thermogenic state or if you're in that catabolic state. And so I'm gonna give all those to your listeners for free. And they can find that at a special link that I made just for you, Steve schaefer.com, slash logical, logical. That's right, Steve shaffer.com slash logical. And yeah, you just go over there and you'll get, you'll be able to get instant access to all those resources.

David Jackson  
I appreciate that. And again, I'll have links to that if you if you can't remember Steve shaffer.com slash logical remember logical loss comm slash 432 that'll take you to the show notes. And everything we mentioned today will be there soon, man. Thank you for coming. That was some some you got me thinking. And I'm happy that I now get to eat breakfast, and I don't have to starve myself till to some

Stu Schaefer  
Gladman The worst thing. So I noticed, you know, you had said that your window was like 1900 calories. And yeah, you know, like, you could probably if you did, if you kind of mixed everything right, like we're talking about, I would really wait I'd put a lot of money on on saying that you could probably really boost that up and lose weight faster, because you'd be working with your body. Calories is like the old school thing. And we got to shift our focus off of calories and more on what's called nutrients, which is actual foods that you're eating. And the worst thing that anyone could do to try to lose weight is do a calorie restriction. Because what that'll do is it'll actually cause you to lose muscle slowed down your body, and it'll set you up to then gain the weight because you're you won't burn as much as you used to. Okay.

David Jackson  
Yeah, especially when you're getting older than you're you're losing muscle. Just do that lovely thing called age. Yeah. Yay. So you got to keep those going because more muscle means more, you know, calories are getting burned and the whole nine yards. So yeah, it's one of the things I'm definitely looking into. I've actually got a couple things I pulled out that I'm starting to now do a little more weight training than cardio on and that's another pet peeve of yours. cardio cardio cardio you like Well, hold on now that week. We can talk about that in a another episode. So definitely would you like to come back sometime man, cuz this was fun.

Stu Schaefer  
Oh, I'd love to Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Stop doing so much cardio people. All right.

David Jackson  
Awesome. Well check him out. Stu Shaffer, calm, Stu, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Stu Schaefer  
It's my pleasure. Thank you so much, David. Beautiful. That was cool. Good stuff. Good. Good.