Dhru Purohit Show
Biggest Weight Loss and Nutrition Myths Sabotaging Your Health and The Top Hacks That Actually Work In 2025
Wed, 01 Jan 2025
This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Bioptimizers, and Our Place. Did you know most people fall short on their New Year’s resolutions? Too often, these resolutions are based on unrealistic expectations and lack a clear plan for success. Today’s guest is here to help you break the cycle with a practical guide to making 2025 the year you master consistent, sustainable habits and achieve meaningful progress that transforms how you feel every day. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with personal trainer and Mind Pump Media co-founder Sal Di Stefano to explore the biggest pitfalls that sabotage fitness goals and prevent people from having their fittest year yet. Sal shares his top tips for incorporating underrated activities, implementing movement throughout the day, and staying consistent for sustainable results. He also discusses the unrealistic goals that often hold people back, such as lack of specificity and overreliance on trendy supplements. If you’re seeking inspiration to make 2025 the year of consistent, long-term progress, this episode is for you! Sal Di Stefano began his fitness journey at just 18, quickly rising to prominence as a trainer and opening some of the largest big-box gyms in the California Bay Area. By 24, he launched a wellness-focused fitness studio that combined expertise in hormones, nutrition, gut health, and fitness training. It was during this time that Sal developed his unique, behavior-focused approach to achieving lasting health and fitness success. Today, Sal is a highly sought-after expert known for his practical, easy-to-apply insights. As co-host of the Mind Pump Podcast—the world’s top fitness and health podcast—he’s appeared on hundreds of leading shows and frequently speaks at events for trainers and health practitioners. In this episode, Dhru and Sal dive into: The most underrated form of activity (00:00:42) Why movement results in better choices throughout the day (4:38) Getting results versus keeping results (9:30) Unrealistic approach to calorie cutting and how to build a proper foundation (14:32) Nutritional advice or myths we can leave behind (19:22) Insights into the fitness and wellness industry (32:12) The one supplement Sal recommends and the research behind its effectiveness (34:47) How to use caffeine appropriately (40:22) Being specific with your goals and focusing on one at a time (45:32) Prioritizing simple whole foods and fiber (51:37) The risks of sitting too much and how to counteract it (56:47) How to get started with a sustainable routine (1:02:47) Over-exercising and finding balance (1:06:04) Also mentioned in this episode: MAPS 15 Fitness Programs Why You Need A Coffee Break and How to Do It For more on Sal and Mind Pump, follow them on Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, Apple Podcast, TikTok, YouTube, and their Website. This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Bioptimizers, and Our Place. Ready to enhance relaxation and muscle recovery? Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Make Magnesium Breakthrough part of your daily routine this year. Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU10 to get 10% off any order and free gifts when you subscribe. Start your New Year off right by reducing your toxic load and upgrading your cookware! Go to fromourplace.com today and use promo code DHRU at checkout to receive 10% off any order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the biggest pitfalls in achieving fitness goals?
Sal, welcome back to the podcast. Pleasure to have you here. You know, you recently made a pretty mind-blowing video, in my opinion, about the things that sabotage people the most when it comes to getting fit, losing and burning fat, and really having their fittest year ever. And one of the top things you listed on there was having unrealistic goals and expectations. You try to do too much. Yeah.
So I wanted to bring you back on the podcast to talk about the realistic things that we can do that actually significantly move the needle forward. And I want to start off with one of your number one tips, and it's on the topic of something that's so underrated, and that's walking.
Yes, yes. Walking is very powerful exercise. as a tool to improve insulin sensitivity, to improve overall health. And it's a form of activity that most people can perform with good technique and form with low risk of injury. This is a big deal because a lot of people will pick up exercise. They'll lace up their shoes and go running. I mean, the injury risk is through the roof with it. Why?
Chapter 2: How can walking improve your health?
Well, it's because people stop running when they're 13 and they decide to pick it back up when they're 30 something. And it's a skill. And if you don't do it right, your biomechanics are off and injury risk is quite high. Walking still, luckily, we don't live in WALL-E world, like the animated film where everybody was on those hovering chairs. People can still walk with good technique.
So walking is a great way to move. Now, I don't want to look at this, and I encourage people not to look at forms of exercise as ways to burn calories. That's oversold quite often. The body adapts quite easily and quite quickly to calorie burn from activity. You want to look at it as a form of activity to improve your health, but more importantly, as a way to improve your insulin sensitivity.
So where am I going with this? Walking post-meal, so after you eat a meal, if you walk for 10 minutes, it has profound effects on insulin sensitivity. To put it differently, if you walked for 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which would be a combined total of 30 minutes a day,
you would get better insulin sensitizing effects from doing that than you would from walking an hour at any of the time during the day. Okay, so right after you eat, go for a 10 minute walk. This has huge impacts on insulin sensitivity. Now, why is that important? Well, if you remain sensitive to insulin, You have better metabolic health and your body's more primed to do things like build muscle.
A lot of people don't realize that insulin is actually one of the most anabolic or muscle building hormones. It also balances out. There's this cascading effect on other hormones. For example, in women, insulin sensitivity is very important for balancing out things like estrogen and progesterone. And again, it's easy. Most of us don't need to put on workout clothes to go for a walk.
We could just do it outside. And if you tie it to something that you do every day, which is eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, You're likely to be consistent. Now, a lot of people may wonder, why does walking after you eat have such big impacts on insulin sensitivity? Well, if you think of your muscles like sponges, this is a real terrible analogy, but imagine they're like sponges.
And you eat a meal and those carbohydrates and those sugars or even some of these unused proteins go into the bloodstream as glucose. Contracting and relaxing muscles helps suck them up. Muscles are a storage vessel for carbohydrates in the form of glycogen. Now, your liver stores glycogen, but so do your muscles.
And moving them postprandial, right after eating, gets them to become sensitive to insulin so they can suck up this glucose. In fact, I had Dr. Seeds on the podcast not that long ago. He's one of the leading researchers on peptide therapies and the like. And he made a statement to me.
He said, if people just walked for 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we would probably solve most people's type two diabetes issues. Very simple, very easy. When I've had my clients do this, they tend to be consistent with it. It's not this big ask. And again, you have these really amazing, profound impacts on your overall health. And it's a great place to start.
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Chapter 3: What is the impact of unrealistic calorie cutting?
That's great advice. You know, you talked about calories. What about the food side of the equation? One of the most searched things for our content, and I'm sure your guys' content even way more than us, people wanna know what to eat. What is some of the most unrealistic advice that people are following, some of these trends or maybe even myths that are out there?
And what's the realistic antidote when it comes to, again, living your fittest year ever?
Radical changes in diet where you're eliminating entire categories of like a macronutrient, like I'm not gonna eat carbohydrates anymore. or extreme elimination diet, carnivore diet, or I'm going to go from omnivore to vegan. These just, again, the data shows have the lowest success rate because they just change everything so radically. I believe this is a good approach.
What I'm about to say is a good approach for a couple of reasons. One, it has lots of downstream effects, but two, psychologically and behaviorally speaking, it works really well with natural human behavior. Okay.
So if I were to tell you, you came to me and you want to lose 40 pounds and I told you to stop eating all this stuff over here, that's going to be harder than if I said to you, don't worry about what not to eat. Instead, I want you to eat this over here. So add this to your diet. Psychologically speaking, one of them seems more appealing and I don't feel so restricted.
Now there is a way to do that. That'll accomplish both. One of those is to hit your target body weight and protein. It's got a very powerful satiety producing effect. Eat that first and you will naturally reduce your caloric intake, especially if you also include fiber in that. So a high protein, high fiber diet results in lower caloric intake. Okay.
And then if you want to add a third step to that, Really try to stay away from ultra processed foods, which are designed and engineered to make you overeat. If you just did those three things right there, you would naturally be on a fat loss diet without making massive big changes and everything.
You're literally eating protein, trying to chase that, making sure you get a good amount of fiber in your diet as well. And you're just staying away from foods that come in boxes and wrappers. But eat as much as you want. And you don't feel so restricted. And what that does is your systems of satiety become more accurate.
Your body actually stops you from overeating unlike it normally would when you eat a lower protein diet, lower fiber diet, one that's high in ultra processed foods. those extra proteins are great for building that metabolism with strength training. And they're not these crazy, like cut out entire categories of food type of steps.
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Chapter 4: What nutritional myths should we leave behind?
Now, a lot of people are like, oh, I don't want to gain weight. No, no, no. It's lean body mass. It's intracellular fluid. It is not bloat. Bloat is fluid under the skin. It's the puffiness that you get. The increased hydration you get from creatine is in the cells, meaning you might be a pound to four pounds heavier on the scale, but your muscles are firmer. tighter, rounder skin, more hydrated.
By the way, creatine also improves the collagen matrices in the skin, also hydrates the skin. It's good for the liver. It's good for the heart. It's good for your bones. It helps with osteopenia. It's this incredible supplement that is the best wellness slash performance enhancing slash fat burning supplement. Now let me pause right there for a second before everybody gets excited.
There is no profound, crazy fat-burning supplement. There's nothing you're going to take that's going to just make fat melt off your body that doesn't exist. But through the muscle-building effect of creatine, because of the cell-volumizing effect, the increased ATP, you will see what's known as muscle protein synthesis spike increase. more on creatine than you will off creatine.
Protein synthesis, the building of muscle, let's say. It's other tissues that can do this, but muscle in the context of this conversation. So you'll build more muscle. You'll build it a little faster and you'll be a little stronger, which means you'll get that positive metabolic boost that we talked about earlier in this episode faster or more effectively. Does that contribute to better fat loss?
You better believe it. So you will get a faster metabolism better or more effectively by supplementing with creatine. Creatine is one of the only supplements that I tell everybody to take, especially if you're older, especially if you're older. Cognitive benefits alone. Even if you don't strength train, you don't work out, take creatine. It's definitely good for you.
And then I remember when it first came out, by the way, in the early 90s, it was the fears of Is it going to stress the kidneys because it gets filtered? No. There's been so many studies on this. It causes no issues to kidneys, just like a high-protein diet causes no issues to kidneys. There are cases where you shouldn't supplement with creatine, but you know if that's you.
You have a nephrologist, you have kidney disease or something like that, and your doctor says don't supplement with pretty much anything. Don't supplement with creatine. But if you're otherwise healthy... you should probably, you definitely take creatine, even if your goal isn't fat loss and muscle gain, it's just good for you.
But even with creatine, with all those profound effects, it is not life-changing. So it's not like you're going to take it and it's going to be like, oh my God, this is a panacea. It's just going to give you five more percent, probably, if you're lucky.
Well, there was two others that you had in the honorable mention that would be a way better spend than all the fat loss supplements that are marketed out there, which you've already said don't work. And one of those was caffeine.
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Chapter 5: Which supplement is most effective for fitness?
Chapter 6: How can you build a sustainable fitness routine?
I'm going to divide that up over my three meals or whatever, or three meals and a shake, let's say. and I'm going to start strength training. Let's start there. What I'll do is I'll start to build my metabolic rate. I'll start to build my metabolism. Now, what that does is that sets me up for a much more sustainable approach when I do finally cut my calories.
Did you give you a different outlook at this or a different way to say this? What sounds more sustainable? A metabolism that's running on 1,800 calories where I need to eat 1,300 calories to lose weight or a metabolism that's running on 2,800 calories, right? 2,000 calories or 2,500 calories to accomplish that. Obviously the one where my metabolic rate is higher.
So rather than trying to cut calories right out the gates, build your metabolism first, then start the cut. And by the way, once you start cutting calories, your metabolism does try to adapt in the opposite direction, but that's why we build the muscle. That's why we strength train. That offsets that that negative metabolic adaptation or that slowdown of metabolism.
So build muscle, build strength, eat a high protein diet. Once that gets up to a certain point and you feel strong, you're seeing progress in the gym, give yourself a few months of this, of doing this, set yourself up really well. It's like building the foundation of the house before you build the house itself.
That's great advice. You know, you talked about calories. What about the food side of the equation? One of the most searched things for our content, and I'm sure your guys' content even way more than us, people wanna know what to eat. What is some of the most unrealistic advice that people are following, some of these trends or maybe even myths that are out there?
And what's the realistic antidote when it comes to, again, living your fittest year ever?
Radical changes in diet where you're eliminating entire categories of like a macronutrient, like I'm not gonna eat carbohydrates anymore. or extreme elimination diet, carnivore diet, or I'm going to go from omnivore to vegan. These just, again, the data shows have the lowest success rate because they just change everything so radically. I believe this is a good approach.
What I'm about to say is a good approach for a couple of reasons. One, it has lots of downstream effects, but two, psychologically and behaviorally speaking, it works really well with natural human behavior. Okay.
So if I were to tell you, you came to me and you want to lose 40 pounds and I told you to stop eating all this stuff over here, that's going to be harder than if I said to you, don't worry about what not to eat. Instead, I want you to eat this over here. So add this to your diet. Psychologically speaking, one of them seems more appealing and I don't feel so restricted.
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Chapter 7: What role do ultra-processed foods play in health?
You're more likely to lose weight, build muscle, get fit with that than you are by saying my goal is to lose 30 pounds and build muscle. You're more likely to be successful with hitting the, I'm going to just make it to the gym a few days a week.
Speaking of which, a big mistake people make, especially when they first get started, is they have this all or nothing approach when they do make it to the gym. Well, I don't have the energy to do my full workout, so I'm just going to skip. No, go and go easy. Or go and do a little bit or half. You're far more likely to be consistent.
You're far more likely to accomplish your goals by doing that than you are by skipping entirely. There's definitely a place and a time for not going. to the gym or not making it to your workout, but you can modify your workout. You could drop the intensity way down. You can go just walk a little bit on the treadmill. You can go lift half as much weight as you normally do.
Just go through the motions. But just that consistent behavior. You know, I found this a long time ago. It's funny too, because it's our most popular selling workout program. you're more likely to be successful doing 15 minutes a day than you are working out twice a week for 45 minutes each time, which I believe adds up to the same amount of time.
So if you just did like, here, I'm going to do two exercises a day. That's it. Every day I'm doing two exercises. I'm going to do some bodyweight squats. And I'm going to do some step ups or I'm going to do some push ups. I'm going to do some body weight rows or something like that. Right.
If you just have 15 minutes every single day, you're far more likely to be successful than trying to make it to the gym for, you know, 45 minutes to an hour, two days a week.
That's great advice. One on this list, and it kind of covers a topic we've already talked about a little bit, but it double downs on something that's super important. So it's on the topic of food. And you said, focus on simple foods. Use protein and shakes to hit protein goals. Let's start off with that first piece. Focus on simple foods. What's the opposite of that that you see people doing?
Like if you had to paint a picture.
Well, simple in the sense that there's a hierarchy of importance and priorities when it comes to nutrition. Now, there's definitely value in what a lot of wellness channels and individuals communicate when it comes to food.
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