Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth
2594: Six Easy Steps to Good Health & More (Listener Live Coaching)
Sat, 10 May 2025
In This Episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin Coach Four Pump Heads via Zoom. Mind Pump Fit Tip: 6 EASY steps to good health. (1:43) Seek out being bored. (26:25) Adam and Doug’s driving experience. (36:32) The Paleovalley protein diet. (42:27) Negative motivation. (45:11) When your wife doesn’t get it. (47:57) Porsche experience. (49:50) Probiotics and muscle strength. (54:36) #ListenerLive question #1 – What’s the best weight training approach to getting my speed back? (57:52) #ListenerLive question #2 – Any advice on boosting my appetite? I find food repulsive. (1:11:11) #ListenerLive question #3 – How long can you stay in a cut without losing the progress I made on a reverse diet (1:19:55) Related Links/Products Mentioned Ask a question to Mind Pump, live! Email: [email protected] Visit Paleovalley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Discount is now automatically applied at checkout 15% off your first order! ** Visit Seed for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code 25MINDPUMP at checkout for 25% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic** May Special: MAPS 15 Performance or RGB Bundle 50% off! ** Code MAY50 at checkout ** What is NEAT and Why Should You Care About it? – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #2402: The 5 Reasons Why Walking is King for Fat Loss (Burn More Fat than Running & How to Do it Correctly) Mind Pump #2437: What Happens to Your Body When You Quit Ultra-Processed Foods for 30 Days Mind Pump #2377: The 4 Most Valuable Supplements Everyone Should Take Adventure as Lasting Happiness | Dr. Arthur Brooks | EP 528 Jordan B. Peterson Podcast People would rather be electrically shocked than left alone with their thoughts Justin’s Road to 315 Push Press Porsche Experience Center Los Angeles Impact of probiotics on muscle mass, muscle strength and lean mass: a systematic review and meta‐analysis of randomized controlled trials Visit Jolie for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Try it out for yourself with FREE shipping. And if you don’t like it— you can return your Jolie for a full refund within 60 days, no questions asked. ** Mind Pump #2567: Women Who Lift: Breaking Myths and Building Muscle Intuitive Nutrition Guide | MAPS Fitness Products Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned James Smith (@jamessmithpt) Instagram Jordan B. Peterson (@JordanBPeterson) X/Twitter Arthur Brooks (@arthurcbrooks) Instagram ATHLEAN-X™ | Jeff Cavaliere MSPT, CSCS (@athleanx) Instagram
Chapter 1: What are the six easy steps to good health?
There's only six things you need to do, and they're not that hard to do, to improve your health in dramatic ways. We're going to talk about them today. Let's go.
Six sounds like a lot, though.
They're easy steps. It sounds like a lot. I know, it sounds like a ton. There's 60 steps. No big deal. There's only 72 steps you got to do. Now, as we get into these- They're pretty basic. Now, here's the deal, okay? So we're talking about just overall good health, overall decent body composition, mobility, longevity.
Now, what this is going to highlight, by the way, because as I go through these, they're going to sound like, that's not that much. What this highlights isn't that these are magical so much as it's that our normal modern lifestyle is so bad, the bar is real low. So you don't have to do that much to dramatically improve your health. And this is all backed by data.
And the data on what I'm about to say shows that doing these things will give you like 80% of the max results you can get for longevity. In other words, the other 20% is all the details. So 80% is going to be –
Do you think it's because the bar is so low or is it just it really doesn't take that much to be healthy? I don't I mean, I don't think it's necessarily that the bar is so low. I think that sometimes we overcomplicate what it takes to stay. Yeah. And or we're always using extreme. Yes. Fitness as the. That's right.
And so when people look at that, it's like, I mean, but that's not that's not an example.
We always stray away from the basics.
No.
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Chapter 2: Why is walking 8,000 steps a day beneficial?
I just feel like that's part of the culture.
No. So again, so I'll go with the first step, which is to walk 8,000 steps a day. So now why 8,000? What they find, and this is true for all the steps we're going to talk about, If you were to look at like you at your worst health versus you at your absolute best optimal performance and health, 80% of that can be accomplished by doing the following.
So in other words, 80% of the benefits of walking will get accomplished with 8,000 steps a day. Now more than that, you'll start to squeeze out more and more benefits, but you can get 80% of the benefits from just 8,000 steps a day. That's it.
Not only that, but the last 20%, you risk tipping over the other direction too. So it's like you could do 20% or you could do more, potentially squeeze out another 20%, but then you also flirt with the, Oh, that's too much. Now I'm going the other way.
Right, right, right. And it's also about the consistency. Uh, 8,000 steps a day is, for most people, realistic. For most people, you can do that realistically. If I said 12,000 steps or 15,000 steps, okay, you might get a 15% benefit, but now you're almost doubling or 50% or more than what I had just said.
And the sustainability of that, 8,000 steps a day is, I mean, how much would you need to walk, Adam, time-wise for that? Because you tracked steps quite a bit. Did you get 8,000 steps? Yeah. Yeah. Total in the day? Like if I went on an hour walk, what would I get?
That's not enough.
No, not enough to get eight, but what would I get in an hour walk?
Like 45 or something.
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Chapter 3: Is strength training once a week enough?
No.
I don't. You don't see a lot of that. You see a lot of creatures, but no. Yeah, you see a lot of different stuff for sure. But really, really overweight people, you don't see as much. So I'm curious to where they rank, Doug. Are you done searching other stuff over there?
You know, what are you looking at?
I'm typing about San Francisco.
All right, now, as he looks that up, you mentioned strength training. Here's the data on strength training, everyone. Most of the results you'll get from strength training, like 75% to 80% of the results, is from one day a week. One day a week of strength training. Now, the other 20% would be two, three days a week, four days a week, but...
If the average person consistently did a full-body workout once a week, they would get most of the results you could get. Healthy city, yeah.
Healthiest in America, according to this. Wow.
Okay, yeah. I mean, I've never really thought about it until you brought this up right now, but you were talking about it, and I'm like, you know what? When I think of somewhere like, it wasn't that long ago, I was in Florida, and I went to Disney World, and I was like, holy, I have never seen... so many scooters and people like really, really overweight.
And I remember being there going like, God, when was the last time I seen this many? And the opposite is true in San Francisco. I think back of all the, I was just not there that long ago and walking around. I'm like, you know what? I can't picture a really obese person that I saw.
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Chapter 4: How can diet and processed foods impact health?
Oh, I had clients straight up hire me and tell me that. I'm not changing my diet. Yeah. I'm going to drink. I'm going to eat. I'm going to do those things like that. I know that I could be in better shape, but that's not why I'm here. I'm here for you to teach me how to lift weights, and I know the benefits of being strong and having muscle. And that's all I care about them. I'm like, okay.
No, it's better than not. Yeah. It's funny when you look at the studies on strength training, one day a week, it gives you a bulk of the results. Two days a week gives you a little more. And then every successive, you know, each successive increase in frequency gives you even less and less and less in terms of results.
So like two days a week is definitely better than one day a week, but one day a week gives you most of the results. Add a third day a week, you get a little bit more. Four days a week, eh, a tiny bit more. Five days a week, eh, you're squeezing out another 2%. So it's really a one day a week for most people is going to give them, again, most of the results we're looking for with strain training.
It doesn't take us much.
It goes a lot further than people realize.
That's right.
We continually learn.
And especially, too, if you keep that statistic in mind and go – Man, I just, okay, just don't fall off for longer than, you know, as long as I come back and get at least a workout in, it's not a huge failure. Because I know that as a younger lifter, I would do that to myself. Oh, well, I've got this coming up and that coming up.
At best, I'll be able to get one workout in over the next week or two where I just, I'll forget it then versus, oh, go get it. Maybe I don't work out for another week or so, but that's okay because you get tremendous.
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Chapter 5: What role does boredom play in creativity?
Chapter 6: How does sleep affect testosterone and health?
So we have to kind of abandon it. A little side note, by the way, which is funny. We have all this time-saving stuff that we've done over time, and yet we have less time to ourselves than ever before. Isn't that interesting? We're shortening our lifespan.
Well, we shove more things in there now. I mean, they've done studies on that before. Oh, huge studies. The amount of things that you add in.
Oh, later I'll tell you guys about this great podcast I listened to that talked just about that. So next up, drink only water. That sounds silly, but don't drink anything else. Don't drink anything else. Now, a cup of coffee is fine, but don't have sodas, juices. I don't like the taste of water. Just water. By the way, if that's you. You've heard that, right? That's bad.
That means you've been drinking a lot of shit, bro.
I was like, what? If water tastes bad to you, you know. Something's, yeah, that's not a good sign. Ew. My wife, so she explained this to me because she grew up this way and she won't mind me talking about this. She grew up with, and their diet at home was not great at all. And she's like, all I drank was soda. That was what I drank. I didn't drink water. Yikes.
And she said, I used to hate, I hated the taste of water. I had to actually acclimate to it. And I had clients like that that would tell me that. Oh.
I've hung out with plenty of people, especially when I was in the Midwest. Mountain Dew was a big thing. Literally all they drank was Mountain Dew. I was like, this is not good.
All right, next up, eight hours of sleep a night. Just target being in bed eight hours before you need to wake up. This has profound impacts on health, hormones, and behaviors. So lack of sleep, poor sleep, you're far more likely to overeat. You're far less likely to be active. If you are active, you're not going to adapt as well to it.
In other words, you're not going to build muscle as well, burn body fat as well. And the hormonal effects. Men alone, you can lower, by the way, guys listening, if you want to slam your testosterone down by over 25%, one night of bad sleep will do that. One night of bad sleep will crush testosterone.
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Chapter 7: What are the benefits of supplements like creatine?
Yeah.
And being bored. We're not expressing that anymore. No. And being bored is very painful. It sucks. Nobody likes being bored. And they've done studies on this. And I looked these studies up. They're fascinating. They took people and they had them sit in a room for 15 minutes with nothing except for a button that would shock you. So you could push this button and shock yourself. What?
Most people would rather shock themselves than sit there and do nothing. Shut up. Animal studies show the same thing. People hate being just still and quiet. And they were going, and I didn't get into the depth of it. That can't be true, Sal.
Somebody sits in a room for 15 minutes. Now, do I know that button shocks me or is it more like it?
No, they tell you. If you push this, you'll get a little shock.
There's got to be a curiosity factor to that.
Oh, yeah, of course. It's more than once. It's not just, oh, I'll do it again. And you can't talk. Really?
Yes. I mean, come on. Think about how interesting that is. It's fascinating. It's way fascinating. The fact that you know that it's not like you're going to get candy or you're going to get a positive feedback thing. You're going to get shocked, which is, I would think, mostly negative.
Also shows that we seek out negative things. Sure.
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Chapter 8: What was the Porsche driving experience like?
That's really bad news.
But what happens with that is because I've dealt with gut health issues for so long, it's like what I would use to gauge how I should eat. And when it feels okay, I'm like, yay, I'm going to eat everything. And so I've been eating. You're blasting out your wife? I just have too much. That's YouTube. I know, I'm projecting it.
She's not happy with me.
Yeah. So I've been eating like too many foods. I have intolerances to, they're not affecting my gut, but that doesn't mean they're not affecting me. And one of the effects that I get is I hold water. I just get kind of bloated. So I've been eating like gluten here and there and dairy here and there. And so like last night, my wife never comments. on the way I look.
In fact, all she ever tells me is you always look good, which I'm like, you're full of crap. There's times I look better in something. She's like, no, you always look good. I'm like, okay, whatever. But last night I go to sit down, she looks at me, she's got a funny look on her face. She's like, your face looks puffy. Like, why is your face puffy? And I'm like, thanks. I'm like, oh, man.
So yeah, so I'm going to do... I'm essentially going to fast most of the day for a whole week. Not because it's a great diet, everybody. I was just kidding. But because it just gets rid of water and it's allowed me to reset my gut. And I like their bone broth protein because it's super easy to digest. I have no reaction to it whatsoever. I can do a lot of it.
And also bone broth is really healthy. At least the amino acids in it are, or the high amino acid content for certain amino acids are good for gut health. So I'm going to be doing that twice a day.
Now I'm assuming, I'm assuming your, your idea of doing this for a week is more like a discipline thing because if you know, just to get, just to reset, but you would get that from a two day fast.
I would, I would, but I don't want to do pure fast. I want to have the protein.
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