How to Build Discipline for Fitness, With Sal Di Stefano

Sal: Nobody likes to hate themselves forever. You can't live that way. That's an abusive state of mind.

Nikkiey: What is up, you guys? What is up to our fitness people, to our lifelong learners, and everyone in between? Today we have someone truly special with us. If you've ever found yourself going into a deep, deep rabbit hole of fitness podcasts, then our guest needs no introduction. His voice is one that resonates in earbuds across the world, challenging myths, enlightening minds, and empowering countless individuals on their wellness journeys, fitness journeys, and all of the things that have to do with the fitness space. From the powerhouse podcast Mind Pump, we have the insightful, the candid, the ever curious Sal Di Stefano with us today. Sal, welcome to The WarriorBabe Show.

Sal: Thank you so much for having me on. That was a really nice introduction. I feel very humbled, so thank you for saying those wonderful things.

Nikkiey: You're welcome. So let's dive into the world of fitness, right? The myths, the trends, and so much more. But first, before we do that, how do you personally define fitness, Sal?

Sal: Wow, what a great question. So there's fitness, health, wellness, athletic performance. These are all categories, I would say, that are under the health umbrella or within the health sphere. When most people think fitness, they think physical fitness and how they look and how they're able to perform. But I trained everyday people, not fitness fanatics, just regular people trying to become healthier and improve their lives, for over two and a half decades. And I managed regular gyms, the ones where I would say the average person works out or starts training. I trained lots of trainers. So my bias is towards the average person and their struggles around health and mobility and pain and those kinds of things.

So fitness for me definitely encompasses the physical aspect, but really it just means being healthy overall. Mental health, physical health, emotional health, spiritual health, you could put that in there. That's the way I like to define it and the way I like to communicate it. Because besides fitness fanatics, which you would probably fall in this category, obviously you have a popular fitness podcast, fitness fanatics live to work out. The average person works out to live, right? If they exercise or if they modify their diet, it's really to improve their life. It is not their life.

So that's how I like to talk about fitness. And my co-hosts are very similar in this. We're always trying to reach the people that haven't been reached, or who haven't been able to develop a lifelong relationship with fitness that works for them. So when you hear me talk about these things, that's always who I have in mind. Those are the people I care most about. I'm not trying to get fitness fanatics more fit. I think it's cool to talk with them, and I can get into fun conversations, but I'm talking to the average person. How can we improve the quality of your life, and how can we use this incredible tool called fitness to do so?

Nikkiey: I love that. Most importantly, to unpack everything you just said there: meeting the individual where they're at and then being able to take them along whatever's going to best suit their journey to be successful in fitness.

Sal: Yes. The way that the fitness space tends to communicate fitness is so ineffective, and there's a million and one different reasons why. But one of the reasons is that they communicate fitness as if it's a light switch. Look, the truth is, and this is the big challenge, the default in modern life, where you will naturally fall if you just live your life like everybody else, the way you're supposed to in modern societies, the default is poor health. I don't think I have to argue that. The data is very clear that that's far more common than great health. So that's the default.

We're trying to change that a little bit and move people in the right direction. And you can't go from the default to all of a sudden, I'm working out five days a week, I'm eating perfectly, throw in whatever you want, organic, high protein, I don't eat a few hours before bed. I literally can make a list.

Nikkiey: You're going to the farm, getting the grass-fed beef from the farm.

Sal: Yeah. Like, I only eat cheese from cows that are blessed by a monk, or whatever. So we do a terrible job, because we communicate it in such a way that it either turns people off completely, because they look at it and go, that's insane, I would have to change absolutely everything about my life, how could I do that? I have kids, a job, it's not my favorite thing to work out, this is impossible. Or you catch people in this state of motivation, which tends to come initially from a little bout of self-hate. Maybe you see yourself in the mirror, or somebody makes a comment, or you get winded playing with your kids. So you get this little burst of self-hate motivation. Then the fitness industry captures you, and you try to do everything all at once, which is completely unsustainable. The fail rate is north of 90%. Again, the data shows all that.

So the key, like anything, if you want to make changes in a positive direction or in any direction, and you want those changes to last forever, because I'm pretty sure nobody wants to get fit and get healthy and then go back, right? Everybody's trying to do this forever. The only way to do it is through a step-by-step process. It's a learning process. It's a journey. And then there's another myth, which is that this journey has a destination. There is no destination. I myself, who love this and have been doing this for a long time, get older, things happen with my health. I have four kids. I have a business. Life circumstances happen. So there is no, I'm here. It's, how do I continue to use this tool that's very effective to continue to improve the quality of my life? And how do I mold it and shape it to do so? These are the skills that I like to communicate and teach people.

And if you do it right, it's effective. And I define effectiveness not by, congratulations, you lost 20 pounds, but rather, congratulations, you never gained that 20 pounds back and you're doing this forever. It's something now that you've made part of your life, and it doesn't cause stress. It doesn't cause anxiety. This is just how you live now. That may sound unreachable to a lot of people who may be watching or listening right now, but it's very reachable. There is a way to do it, and it's not the way that it's communicated in my space, the fitness and health space. So number one, I want to apologize for that, because I communicated it wrong for a long time. And number two, if you listen in, we'll let you know some of the ways that you can make this an effective journey, something that you enjoy.

Nikkiey: That's why I think you're so respected in this space, obviously with Mind Pump being as successful as it is. You are so open and honest about the growth you've made for yourself, from when you were training clients, to your methodologies, to just being real, raw and honest about the evolution of you and the guys on the team. And you're sharing that outwardly with others. When you're a really good coach or a good person in the space, you just want good for other people, and you exude that outwardly. It becomes a part of the development and your honesty, and then you make sure other people are receiving that so they can embark on the right things that will get them where they want to be in their journey.

Sal: Yeah, I really appreciate you saying that. And I do want to be very clear: I am not the exception in the trainer and coaching space. You have the fitness industry, and it's a lot of stuff, but when you talk to trainers and coaches who've done this for a while and do it for a living, I'm not the exception. I'm the rule in terms of my attitude. Trainers and coaches who want to do this as a career, who stick to it, do it because they really care. They have found this amazing thing called fitness and nutrition and health and wellness, it's transformed their life, and they really want to help others through it.

And look, fitness is not a great industry to make money. If you want to be rich, you probably shouldn't become a personal trainer. So the people who do it and stick to it really love it. When I coach trainers, you can feel the passion. So really what it is, I'm trying to be as effective as possible. That's all it is. Anybody who's been doing this for a long time will tell you they have these moments where they look back and go, man, I'm not being effective. What am I doing wrong? How can I communicate differently? Why isn't this working? Why are my clients struggling the way they are? Or why do they get to a certain level but then slide back? That's the question I asked myself for years and years.

And you touched on something that I think is really important. When the average person is hearing fitness or nutrition advice from a quote-unquote fitness expert or a professional, what can often happen is this halo effect. This person looks good, they work out, they do everything perfectly, this is so easy for them, they never had any struggles. And then either you kind of tear them down a little bit, like, well, yeah, you may be good with nutrition, but you're not there. And all of a sudden you're not relating to them, or you feel like they don't understand you, because you look at them and go, well, yeah, you love doing this, or you're only 23 years old, of course you can do this. Just wait till you get to my age, or wait till you have my challenges.

I learned this by accident, actually. I had a client who had gone through therapy for an eating disorder and was on the road to recovery, and her parents were my clients. So they hired me, and I talked to this individual's therapist. I always tried to do that, to ask, okay, what are the things I should avoid? And I got great advice from this therapist on things I shouldn't do, like weigh her, test her body fat, or talk about her body. I had to focus on performance and strength, because the other routes would be really triggering.

So I heard all that, and I remember, maybe the third or fourth session training her, I thought, I'm going to tell her about my struggles with body image, because I had some big ones when I started. So I told her, when I first started working out, it was the opposite. You had anorexia. I always thought I was too skinny, and I did a lot of dangerous and harmful things to myself to try to remedy this really distorted view of myself. And I went through and told her about all the things I did and the challenges. And it was like a light switch. She related to me. She felt like my advice now was legit and real.

From that day forth, I realized a lot of trainers and coaches, I think sometimes we're afraid to tell people how imperfect we are. But first off, we're human. Second, you are more effective as a coach or a trainer when you're a hundred percent honest, which includes letting your client know when you don't know something. You don't know everything. You don't have all the answers, and everything's not easy for you. And your people will relate with you more. Because as a trainer, the number one thing you need to work on and focus on, among other things, is: can I get this person to trust me?

Because I'm telling them to make these big changes. Do they trust me that it's possible? Do they trust me that it's going to benefit them? Do they trust my process? Because it's going to be really hard at first. They may not see or feel the benefits at first. Can they trust me? I'm leading this person through this dark cave and I'm telling them where to step. And if they don't trust me, they're not going to move forward. And sometimes they're going to step into holes, and I'm going to have to tell them, you're stepping into a hole, and that's okay. So the best way to do that is to be yourself. By the way, this was not natural at first, but now it's very natural. And luckily I have co-hosts that are super good in that sense, so we can communicate in very real ways, and it's a good time. But I appreciate you saying that, because that's very important to myself and to my co-hosts.

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Nikkiey: Absolutely. And like we just said, relatability and story are so important for your client to trust you and understand that you can take them along their journey because of the experiences you've been through as well. They see that you'll help them along the way. So I thought that was very important. I want to put a pin in what you just talked about, because I want to circle back to the client-coach relationship later in the podcast. But I want to dive into something that you guys do so well at Mind Pump, which is challenging commonly held beliefs in the fitness industry. You use science, you use research, you use your own personal experiences. You're just so good at it. So throughout your career, what would you say is the fitness myth that you've found to be the most persistent? And why do you feel like it's so hard to debunk those specific myths?

Sal: What a great question, by the way. There are too many myths out there to count, but I think I have one that is most impactful. First, though, we should unpack why these myths exist in the first place. The fitness industry is a market, just like any market, meaning that it has to sell ideas and products and services in order to thrive, and in order to create more products and services, or just to exist. And consumers drive the market. This is both good and bad. It's good because you're always trying to deliver services and products that are working, and the way you know they're working is people are buying them, or at least they're working to an extent. The bad part is that in markets, consumers know what they want, but they don't always know what they need.

If you go to the grocery store, for example, 80% of the food in the grocery store is heavily processed. You could loosely place it in the unhealthy category. That's because the average consumer of food really values things like convenience and palatability, how good it tastes and the experience. So the market delivers. You get lots of money and innovation in that direction. That's an example of consumers wanting something, but not necessarily knowing what they need. The fitness industry does the same thing.

Now, there's also a responsibility for the people delivering the information in the fitness space. And it's skewed, because the people that tend to get the most attention, the most views or clicks, or back when I was an early trainer, the people on the covers of the magazines, tend to be the ones that look the best, right? They're the most attractive. They have the best-looking bodies, or they have the most charisma, or they can deliver quotes and comments that spread very quickly. So they're not necessarily the smartest. They're not necessarily communicating the right information. They just do a good job of getting attention.

And what that does is create this bias towards fitness fanatics, who tend to not be very balanced in their lives, tend to not quite understand what the average person is going through, and don't have much empathy. It's a lot of people who, through their own insecurities, became obsessed with exercise and diet. So at the top of their list of priorities is how they look and how they present themselves to the world. And we think, oh, these are the people I should listen to. The result is bad information.

So here's probably the most impactful myth, I would say. It's the myth of motivation. And to go a little deeper, how we get to that motivation is also a myth that we perpetuate and capitalize on. So let me talk about that for a second. Motivation is this wonderful feeling. All of us love it. Nobody doesn't like feeling motivated. It's like happy. It's a feeling you don't want to go away. When you're motivated, nobody needs to tell you to go to the gym. Nobody needs to tell you to eat healthier or go for a walk. Nobody needs to tell you anything. You have this driver, this feeling that makes you want to do all these things you know you should do or that are good for you. Now, that's great, and there's nothing wrong with it.

The problem is it's a feeling that goes away, like any other feeling. And when it goes away, that's where the challenge lies. As a trainer, I was never challenged with getting motivated clients to do anything. That was easy. It was when that feeling went away, which it does, that the challenges would arise. So motivation is not something we need to focus on or concentrate on. And everything in the fitness industry is around it. All the speeches and talks and products focus on this.

And the reason they focus on it is that when you're in a motivated state of mind, you're more impulsive with your consumption habits. You get somebody who's never worked out, or hasn't worked out for a long time, and all of a sudden they're like, I'm going to do this. Maybe it's January. Then they go online and they're ready to buy a new diet book, supplements. They're ready to pay for a gym membership. So the fitness industry capitalizes on that state of mind and talks to it. What we need to talk about more is the skill of discipline.

Now, I want to be very clear: I'm not saying that if you don't exercise regularly or if you don't eat right, you're not a disciplined person. There are lots of extremely disciplined people who are disciplined in other areas of their life. They just haven't been able to develop the skill of discipline in this particular segment. There are lots of successful executives, or parents who are very involved, or people who are very disciplined in many aspects of their life. They just haven't built the discipline around the skill of consistency with nutrition and exercise.

Part of the reason they likely haven't is that, A, we love that feeling of motivation, so we wait for it or try to create it. And B, what usually comes before it is this self-hate state of mind. It looks something like this. Oh God, I saw that picture of myself on Facebook someone tagged me in. I do not look good. I need to do something about this. Or somebody makes a comment, or you try on a pair of clothes you haven't worn for a few months and they don't fit. All of a sudden you're aware: I've got to do something. My God, I hate the way I look, or I'm fat, or I'm inadequate, whatever word you want to use. I'm hating myself right now. And that puts you into motivation. I hate myself. I've got to get out of this body. I need to be different.

Now, that is a very powerful short-term motivator. When you hate yourself, it will motivate you in a short period of time to do a lot of different things. The problem is, A, motivation goes away because it's a feeling, but also nobody likes to hate themselves forever. You can't live that way. That's an abusive state of mind. So at some point, and here's where it's going to resonate with a lot of your listeners and viewers, you're on this path. You hate yourself. I hate the way I look. I'm gross. I'm going to do this diet. I'm going to cut these things out. I'm going to work out. And then eventually, I'm sure people have said this to themselves or to other people, you know what? I just want to enjoy my life. This diet sucks. Or, I just want to enjoy my life, the gym sucks. I just want to be happy. I want to be with my friends. I want to have some wine. I want to eat some pizza. I don't want to go to the gym. It makes me unhappy. I don't like it.

And I'm sure people listening are like, oh yeah, that's exactly what happens to me. I go off my diet because I want to enjoy my life. Now, here's why that's crazy to think about. Almost nothing will improve the quality of your life, and I mean everything in your life, you name it, your relationships, your libido, your sleep, your skin, your health, your mobility, your energy, almost nothing will improve all of those things like just getting more healthy. Even your bad moods will get better if you're healthier. And yet here we are. We reach a point where we're like, I just want to enjoy my life, so I'm going to stop doing these things.

Really what's happening is you're saying, I don't want to hate myself anymore. This sucks. Why does it suck so bad? Well, when you work out because you hate yourself, guess what your workout is? It's a punishment. The pain initially is cathartic. If you've ever done this, this is what it feels like. You get into that state of mind of self-hate. You get that initial motivation. You beat yourself up. You get super sore or super sweaty. You almost throw up. And then what do you say? Wow, that was a great workout. Oh man, I had a great workout yesterday. What do you mean? Oh my God, I barely made it. I crawled back to my car. I can barely walk. What a great workout. Now, why are you saying that? When you hate yourself, you get temporary relief from pain. It's like self-flagellation. It is cathartic initially. That's why you feel that way. And again, eventually, who the hell wants to keep punishing themselves?

Diet in that state of mind is restrictive. It's not nourishing. You're in that state of mind, self-hate, motivation. You're a week into it, two weeks into it, and you go to your friend's house. Your friend says, hey, do you want a slice of pie? No, no, no, I can't. I can't have that slice of pie. What do you mean you can't? You can, or you don't want to. There isn't a can't. Who is saying you can't? It's the person within you saying you can't do this because you're fat, inadequate, out of shape, you don't look good. You are tyrannizing yourself or punishing yourself.

This is why, in that initial period when you go off a diet, you don't just go back to how you were eating before. You initially go worse, and then you go back. I'm on this diet. I hate myself. This diet's restrictive. This diet's restrictive. Damn it, I just want to enjoy myself. Or maybe a leak breaks in the dam. You have one cookie. Ah, that's it, I'm eating the whole box. And then you eat until you're uncomfortable, or way beyond, because what you're actually doing is rebelling. You're rebelling against this feeling of self-hate.

And the fitness industry pushes, perpetuates and capitalizes on this. It's no wonder that every year, millions of Americans lose weight, and every year, almost every single one of them gains the weight back. And they go through this cycle until, and this is the sad part, this is the part I'm trying to avoid, we lose these people forever. After about three or four cycles of this, the average person gives up. That's not for me. And they accept, for lack of a better term, this terrible state of being. It becomes their normal. Oh yeah, I've lost weight three or four times, and I've done workouts, and it's just not for me.

So instead, we need to communicate differently. We need to communicate that exercise is self-care. That diet is caring for yourself. That caring for yourself is not a feeling, like, I feel caring. It's an action. And when you do it that way, it changes everything. It completely changes everything. Now it's, no thanks, I don't want that slice of pie. I know it'll taste good. I know I'm going to enjoy it. But I'm taking care of myself right now. What an empowering feeling, right, instead of the other one.

Nikkiey: Love that. Because if you think about it, our fitness space is huge, right? But the obesity factor is just getting worse and worse. So something needs to change in that sense. And to what you were saying about motivation, I love it, because I've preached this in and out to our followers and our community, that you have to develop the discipline muscle. So can you speak a little to what that means to you? Motivation ebbs and flows, like you said. It's a feeling. It comes, it goes. But how can somebody learn to develop that discipline muscle, so when they're in that moment, when there's a pie, they choose to say no, I know I'm going to feel like shit the next day if I eat that? What does that discipline muscle look like, and how can it serve them for the next years of their life to stay consistent, not always feeling motivated, but knowing that despite the temptation to give up, I'm going to tap into my discipline because it's going to serve me for the long term?

Sal: Super great question. This is where we talk about how to make this happen. First off, we have general discipline. The more you practice this skill in different aspects of your life, the easier it becomes to apply it to other parts of your life. However, discipline is also always very specific. I want to say that because I don't want people to get the wrong idea and think I'm saying you're an undisciplined person. I lack discipline in areas that other people are exceptionally good at, and I'm constantly trying to learn from them how to develop the skill of discipline in other aspects of my life. I just happen to speak to the fitness one.

But all discipline is developed the same way, to put it loosely. It's a slow, step-by-step process. But let's get specific. With any skill, there are four general stages of learning. If you're a parent, you've seen this in your children. As I go through it, picture your kid growing up and it'll become very obvious what I'm talking about.

The first stage of learning is unconscious incompetence. You literally don't know that you don't know. You're unconsciously incompetent about whatever skill is out there. Then you quickly move into the next stage, which is conscious incompetence. Oh, I don't know that skill. Now I'm aware of what I don't know. Then you move to the third stage, and this is where people can get to, but where they often get stuck, and where the challenge comes in. The third stage is conscious competence. Now I'm consciously making choices or taking actions to move in this direction, and I have to consciously think about it.

Think of a child that goes from crawling to walking. All of a sudden they're like, oh, there's this thing called walking, let me try it. When a little kid first starts to walk, you can see they have to consciously pay attention to every step. They have to think about what's happening as they walk. If they try to walk and do something else at the same time, they lose their balance. I have two little kids, and it's great to watch this. But eventually, through practice and repetition of the skill of walking, the child moves into the fourth stage, which is unconscious competence. Everybody watching and listening to this right now, and I'm pretty sure you don't have any toddlers watching and listening, walks now and doesn't think about it. I don't think about taking steps or my balance. I can eat a sandwich, talk on my phone, or read something all while walking. It's now become an unconsciously competent skill.

So you have to move through those four stages to get to the point where this discipline, this skill of staying consistent with your workouts and your diet, is just an unconscious thing. This is just how I live. And it's great, because this is where you take the stress and anxiety out of it all. What happens is, first you're unconsciously incompetent. Maybe you watch a podcast like this and you're like, oh my God, there's all this stuff I didn't realize. Now that I'm aware of what I don't know, that's stage two. Now I'm going to try to apply it. Sal said I'm going to do this. And then I have to think about it. Okay, make sure I drink a glass of water with every meal, or something like that. I've got to eat protein first. I've got to walk after my meals, or whatever. Maybe you heard me say something somewhere. So now you're consciously thinking about it, and then you do it long enough, and both consciously and subconsciously you start to make connections. I feel better when I do this. This is great. I actually enjoy doing this more than not. And then it becomes this unconscious thing that you do that is easy.

And I want to be very empathetic to people and want them to understand that the conscious competence stage is the stressful, challenging part of fitness. This is where it's, okay, yes, I've got to eat healthy. It's kind of challenging. I've got to think about it. I have these cravings. Maybe when I'm stressed out I really want to eat these things over here, so I've got to become aware of that. That's the hard, challenging stage. But once you start to move out of it, you will get to this place where it's a natural thing.

And what you do is apply one skill at a time to that formula, not 50 skills at a time. So the next question is always, where do I start? It literally doesn't matter where you start, and it also matters. It doesn't matter in the sense that one step forward is exactly what you want to do. It doesn't matter what that step is, because every single person watching right now is going to have a different first step. And it matters because you have to take a step.

So how do I find that step? Fine, you sold me on this idea. How do I know what to do first? Here's what you do. It's very simple. Ask yourself the following question: what is one step I can take that is challenging? It needs to have some challenge, otherwise it's not going to mean anything to you. And then here's the most important part: yet realistic. And here's the context: forever. Don't say to yourself, what's a challenging step I can take for the next two months? Anybody can do anything for two months. That's silly. You're not being fair to yourself, and you're definitely not being fair to the process. You have to be very honest and say to yourself, I'm in a motivated state of mind now. Will I be able to do this when the motivation goes away? So what's one step I can take now that is a little challenging, but also realistic for me for the rest of my life? Start there.

I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's a five-minute walk twice a week. I don't care if it's an extra glass of water. I don't care if it's one piece of broccoli. I don't care if it's one exercise. I don't care if it's reading a page out of a fitness book. I actually had a client like that once, where we went all the way back, and her first step for nutrition, because that was really hard for her, was literally, can you read a paragraph out of this book once a week? That's where we started. Eventually we got really, really far, but that's where we started.

Then it'll move through those stages I talked about. If you choose a good step, it'll move through relatively smoothly. You'll get to unconscious competence, and then you ask yourself that question again: what's the next step I can take that's challenging, yet realistic forever?

And I'm going to tell everybody right now what to expect if you do this right. I'm going to sound like a wizard when you go through this, but I'm not. This is just human behavior. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to take that first step. It's going to be somewhat challenging. If you chose right, it'll move into the unconscious competence stage and become part of your habits. Then you'll ask that question again. And each step tends to get bigger as you go along. You might start off with something that feels inconsequential to you. Do not judge it. That's your first step. Like I said, it could be a five-minute walk once a week. It doesn't matter what that step is. And you may say to yourself, what's the point? Don't ask. Don't judge it. Just take that little step.

The next step tends to be a little bigger, because we've built confidence. We're starting to develop discipline around this thing called fitness and health. We're starting to feel something from it. So the next step tends to be bigger, and the gaps in between steps start to get smaller. What tends to happen, which is the opposite of what people usually experience when they do this the wrong way, is a snowball effect of progress. Nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. Oh my God, I'm starting to feel better. Whoa. Fat loss. This is happening really fast, and I don't know how, and I feel great. Versus what people typically experience, which is, wow, I lost 10 pounds. Oh my God, this is impossible. I've got to do even more. I lost another three pounds. Ah, forget it. And then they gain it back. So instead of fast, then nothing, it's going to be slow and then snowball.

For trainers and coaches, this is how you know you're on the right path with your client. I love the word weird. I loved when my clients would say this. I know you've heard the same thing. This is really weird. I'm losing weight and I'm feeling really good, and I don't feel like I'm trying super hard. What's happening? My body just wants to, I don't understand. This is really weird. When you hear that, you're on the right track. You know you're doing this the right way. If you're like, ah, I'm clawing at every little thing, I plateaued after 10 pounds, and now I'm barely eating and doing all this stuff and I feel terrible, I guess you're doing it wrong.

Nikkiey: I love that. Clients and coaches need to rewind the last five minutes and listen to that over again, and just be okay with saying this is weird. I always joke with everybody that everyone expects to put their body into a microwave and out pops a toned body in 30 seconds. I'm like, oh my God. It's just not going to happen that way. Let's focus step by step, like you're saying, one habit at a time, and make this something for the long term so you can live a healthy life.

Sal: Yes. And I'm going to try to use analogies, because I'm loosely familiar with your demographic of people who watch and listen to your podcast, which is roughly the demographic I trained most as a trainer. So let me use this example. People like to use the word sacrifice. You've got to sacrifice this in order to accomplish that. You've got to sacrifice eating hyper-palatable desserts and sweets in order to look this way. Or I've got to sacrifice time to go to the gym. Yes, that's true. However, real sacrifices, and you know this if you're a mom. I like this analogy because parents, and moms in particular, put this together very quickly. You sacrifice a lot for the betterment of your children, and you recognize the sacrifice.

By the way, the sacrifices you're going to make for fitness pale in comparison. So I don't want people to freak out and be like, oh my God, it's going to be that hard. No. Raising kids is a billion times harder. But you make those sacrifices for your kids, for them to be better humans, to have better health, to have a better experience. And you know it's hard, but if you went back in time, you would do it all over again. There's no question why you're doing it. It's hard, but I'll do it all day long because it's totally worth it. It's the same thing with what I'm talking about, except it's way easier.

If you do this right, ask somebody who's figured this out, who does this forever now. I'm not talking about fitness fanatics. I'm talking about the average person who didn't do anything, and now, all of a sudden, three days a week, they're consistent. They eat generally healthy. It's not stressful to them. Something realistic. If you ask them, wow, it must be a terrible sacrifice, they'll say, I guess, but not really. I really enjoy it. And by the way, that doesn't resonate with people when they're first getting started, because they think, oh, that person must have loved it right out of the gate. No. That's the place you end up getting to if you do this the right way. There's light at the end of the tunnel is what I'm trying to communicate here.

Nikkiey: Love it. So good. Again, everybody needs to rewind and listen to everything Sal's saying. This podcast better be put on repeat a couple of times. So I want to talk about the demographic of women that we serve. We speak to women who are 45, 50, pre-menopause, post-menopause, that phase of life. And we know during this phase of life that women can experience issues with decreasing bone density. I want you to speak on how crucial and critical strength training is in this context for the longevity of their life. A lot of these women come to us saying, I'm doing cardio. They feel like cardio is the means to the end, that it's going to get them the results and build a strong body. But they're afraid to step into the world of strength training for many reasons, and we try to debunk those things with them. I want you to share your perspective on why strength training is so important to longevity for women going through this phase of life.

Sal: Well, first off, when you talk about bone density in particular, there is nothing that comes close. Not even in the same universe, in terms of its positive effect on bone density, like strength training. Second place is so far away from first place in terms of things that positively affect bone density that it's almost a waste of time to compare. Strength training directly sends a signal to the body to build stronger bones. You're literally telling your body very clearly and directly, we need, above all else, stronger bones.

People ask, how does that happen? It's not controversial to say that strength training directly tells your body to build stronger muscles. Everybody knows that. You lift weights or do some kind of strength or resistance training, and you get stronger muscles. That's the whole point. Muscles anchor on bones. Bones are part of that building process. So you're literally giving your body direct instruction to build stronger bones. And the data is crystal clear on this. If you want stronger bones, lift weights or do strength training.

By the way, strength training is body weight, bands, machines. I say lift weights, but it's anything. It's any type of exercise where you use resistance in pursuit of building strength. And I want to make sure I say that last part, because you can use resistance but just make it cardio. I could go do circuit training, or do 50 different exercises all at once. That's not strength training. Strength training is specifically to build strength. So it looks more like, I do a set, then I rest for three minutes, then I do another set, then I rest for three minutes, in pursuit of getting stronger. That tells the body very clearly, I need stronger bones.

We've been communicating bone density wrong for so long. We've been saying things like, you need calcium, you need vitamin D, here's what you need to do with your diet. And it is true that if you have a deficiency in things like magnesium, calcium or vitamin D, you won't have many of the building blocks required to build bone. Just like if you don't eat adequate protein, you won't have some of the building blocks to build muscle. But if you just eat a bunch of protein and don't send the signal to build muscle, nothing happens. If I take a bunch of calcium and magnesium and vitamin D, or even change my hormones, I may be providing the building blocks, and hormones do give somewhat of a signal, but I'm not really giving the directions. It's like having a bunch of bricks and plywood and two-by-fours and a bunch of workers there, but no instructions. So they just sit there looking at the bricks, not knowing what to do. You've got to do strength training to make that happen.

Cardio does not do that. There's a small bone building effect from cardio, and it's typically very localized to the lower body. In fact, data shows that it may cause bone loss in the upper body. We could get into that, but strength training does it.

Now here's something else strength training does, because you mentioned longevity. When you do strength training, the direct result, what your body hears, if you do it right and you feed yourself right, I've got to say that too, is build strength, build muscle. There are lots of side effects along with that. Faster metabolism. Your body's more shapely. We can go down the list. But part of that process is that when your body gets the signal to build muscle or get stronger, one of the first things it does is organize its hormones in a way to do so, because hormones are part of the signaling process.

What does that mean? In women, what you'll find very consistently, if it's done properly, and again, this is in another universe in comparison to other forms of exercise, is a balancing out of estrogen and progesterone. You could be estrogen dominant or progesterone dominant, and you'll find that balance starts to happen, because a balanced profile is what your body wants to use to build strength. You'll notice your testosterone levels start to become optimized.

Now you may be listening and thinking, what does testosterone have to do with me? I'm a woman. Testosterone is a vital hormone for women, just like estrogen is for men. If you were to take estrogen out of a man, he would become depressed. He would lose strength. He would have joint pain. His health would decline. If you took testosterone out of a woman, she'd have low motivation, low libido, her muscle tone would be gone, she'd have anxiety and depression. The difference is the ratio. There's an optimal amount of testosterone for women and an optimal amount for men.

So strength training optimizes testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. It optimizes cortisol. That's a buzzword, the stress hormone. Cortisol is necessary, but there's an optimal way we should have it. It should be high in the morning to wake you up, and then slowly come down at night. It should not be elevated all day long, or low in the morning where you feel like crap and need tons of coffee, and then high at night so you can't go to sleep and you need to take Xanax or drink a glass of wine to sleep. So it balances out cortisol. It also raises growth hormone, the youth hormone.

And this one's very important: you become far more sensitive to insulin. Insulin is a very important hormone to pay attention to. Insulin resistance doesn't just cause diabetes. It also causes cognitive decline and dysfunction. It causes anxiety and depression. It can cause lethargy. It causes fat gain, especially in the midsection. So if you notice as you're getting older that you don't gain body fat like you used to, there's a combination of cortisol and insulin happening right there, where you're not responsive to insulin. It's probably one of the main drivers of poor health as we get older, this resistance to insulin. And there's a long way before you get to diabetes, or even before you get to the range where the doctor starts to pay attention. You've probably started to develop insulin resistance-type symptoms a decade before you ever develop what would clinically be called insulin resistance. And a lot of problems that plague women, endometriosis, issues with their period, the ups and downs, cravings, those can be tied to insulin resistance as well.

So why is building muscle and strength so effective for insulin? First off, muscle is extremely insulin sensitive. It's one of the most insulin-sensitive tissues in the body. Part of the reason is that it's one place where we store processed sugar as energy. If you want to take floating sugar out of your blood, you want to increase your body's capacity to store sugar in the form of glycogen. Glycogen is the energy. Building muscle does that. In fact, there are studies on severely obese individuals who lose no weight, and I'm talking about people who are a hundred pounds overweight. They have them build a little bit of muscle, like three pounds of lean body mass, and you see significant improvements in their blood sugar and insulin sensitivity. And there are so many other reasons. Gosh.

Nikkiey: I love that you're going down this rabbit hole with all of that. I love it. Thank you. Because a lot of women come back and say, I got my blood work back from my doctor, why is this so much better? And then we go into explaining these things and help them understand that it's not just the physical attributes that come from strength training, or what these women are going through post-menopause. It's also the internal aspects, everything recalibrating to help you live longer. We're talking about longevity in the long run, being around for your kids, being around for your grandkids. It's not just a physical thing. It's an internal thing.

Sal: Yes. And there's also this, and it's a selling point I like to communicate. Those of us in the fitness space have known this for a long time. By the way, all activity, if done appropriately, is good for you. I want to be very clear. Any activity you do, if you're consistent, it's appropriate, you're not overtraining and not hurting yourself, it's great. You're going in the right direction. But we're talking specifically about strength training. Those of us in the fitness space have known for a long time that people who do lots of cardio, say lots of running, as their form of exercise, and have done it for decades, are far better off than their peers as they get older. But when you compare them to somebody who's put a focus on strength training, they age a lot faster.

We now have data to support why. First, the hormone balance is better with strength training because, again, the body has to organize. A muscle-building, strength-supporting hormone profile is a youthful hormone profile. A hormone profile for endurance isn't necessarily a youthful one. But here's the second thing, and we now have a study to support it. It's really crazy. All exercise improves the quality of your skin, but only strength training has been shown to improve the building process. There's a building process in the skin, the collagen matrix, that gives your skin the thickness you tend to have when you're younger and tend to lose as you get older. As you get older, you notice your skin starts to get a little bit...

Nikkiey: Less elastic, yeah.

Sal: Yeah. It doesn't feel as plump. It's more papery and thin. There's a collagen matrix in there that starts to break down as you get older. Well, there's a great study that just came out specifically showing this, and they compared strength training to cardio head to head. Strength training sends a build signal throughout the whole body. First off, there's a localized effect. If I work out my bicep, most of the signal goes to my bicep. But I also get a systemic effect. In fact, they've done studies where a person works out one arm and doesn't work out the other. Most of the strength gains go to the trained arm, but they get a little bit of strength and muscle gain in the arm that wasn't trained. There's this systemic effect in the body. Well, it appears that telling your body to build, and feeding your body appropriately, also tells your skin to build. It's strengthening and thickening your skin.

And I love this as a selling point, because I know most people like the cosmetic effects of exercise. So I'm just hammering this home. If you want to appear more youthful and healthy from a skin perspective, we now have conclusive evidence of what those of us in the space have seen for decades, which is that strength training makes your skin literally younger. It builds your skin just like it builds your bones.

Nikkiey: That's a great selling point. I'm going to be like, all right, I'm going to lift weights now. Sal told me it's going to make my skin look better. Studies show it.

Sal: Yes, yes. That's awesome.

Nikkiey: So good. You gave me chills with many of those points, especially about how cardio affects the body compared with strength training. And then the skin. Every woman is so concerned about their skin, skin products, doing that whole jam. But if you tie in strength training, it can help that aspect.

Sal: It does. And here's one more thing, just to hammer this home. Strength training is unique in the sense that it's very effective in a small dose. Other forms of exercise all provide some benefit. Like I said, doing something is better than nothing, so long as it's appropriate. Always. So I really hope I'm not discouraging anybody. If you've found something you're doing now, and it's more than you were doing before, and it's appropriate, don't let me talk you out of it. Continue doing it. We're just talking about the benefits of strength training, so I'm getting very specific here.

One other thing that's unique about strength training is that it's very effective in low doses, in terms of its effects on the body cosmetically and health-wise. If you did strength training appropriately twice a week for 45 minutes, you would have profound strength gains, profound metabolism-boosting effects and the side effect of fat loss with that, and profound hormonal effects, with two days a week. With other forms of exercise you'd get benefit, but not nearly as profound.

Why is that a selling point? Because I know what modern life looks like. I'm sedentary, but I'm busy. My schedule's packed with everything. I've got work, and then I've got the kids, and I've got to take them here, and then there's this play date, and I've got this thing going on. So an hour a day, every day, which is what they recommend, is not going to happen. I can only do two days a week. Okay, what can I do that's going to give me the most bang for my buck? I've got to dig this hole. Do I want to use a spoon or a shovel? If you don't have many days a week and you want big bang for your buck, strength train. Nothing's going to compete.

Nikkiey: Thank you. I appreciate that answer so much. I totally agree with other forms of activity and exercise. Doing something is better than doing nothing. But strength training, in terms of overall strength for your bones, muscle, mind, skin, all of the things. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon says muscle is the organ of longevity.

Sal: Yes.

Nikkiey: And I firmly believe that. I know we have limited time left, and I appreciate your time today. I want to touch on one question about the client perspective that we pulled from the top of the podcast. From your perspective, what are some key benefits that clients gain from working with a professional fitness coach?

Sal: Oh, gosh. Okay, a little context here. Our podcast has been on air for eight years. We're approaching, I don't know how many hundreds of millions of downloads. So we reach a lot of people at this point, and I feel very blessed to be able to do so. But we do not fool ourselves at all. In fact, we say this on the show all the time. We are not making the big impact. The trainers and coaches make it. We were trainers and coaches for decades before we ever did this. I am not impacting everyday people like I was when I was a trainer. I may be reaching more people, but I am not going to change somebody's life like their trainer will. So we try to communicate to trainers and coaches more than anything. Those are the real soldiers in this battle. Our biggest point of influence, what we focus on, is talking to coaches and trainers, because we know that if we can influence them and explain what worked really well for us, they're going to make some big changes.

So a good coach and a good trainer is the most valuable thing you can invest in if your goal is to accomplish lifelong changes in a positive direction with fitness and health. Nothing's guaranteed. There is no 100%. But nothing is more guaranteed than that. Period, end of story. There's no podcast, no YouTube video, no book, no class, nothing else that will come close to having a good guide who's with you, who can help you along the way, who can predict what's going to happen. That's very important. A good coach will tell you, you're going to feel this. Then when you do, you don't feel alone or lost. You're also prepared. This is a person who's going to lead you up the mountain. They're going to tell you, if you step there, you're going to fall. If you step here, it's a little easier. And if you do fall, which you will, they reach down and give you a hand, you grab onto them, and you get back up. And a good coach or trainer is going to teach you or guide you on how to develop this skill and this discipline so you can then do it for the rest of your life on your own. You can't get that anywhere else.

Now, of course there are bad trainers and bad coaches out there, and I understand that. But there isn't a segment in the space that is going to be more successful at helping you do this for the rest of your life. And I know it's expensive in comparison to a gym membership. There's a reason why a gym membership is so cheap. There's a reason it costs $20 a month. The gym has figured out a formula, and the formula is this: let's charge a price that's so low that everybody signs up, and they won't cancel if they don't show up. That's the model.

Gyms, I managed them for a long time. This is when I left gyms, when I started to learn this data. I remember they had statisticians come in and show us data, and they said the members that cost us money, the ones we don't profit from, are our heavy users. I remember hearing that and going, what an upside-down business. I'm here to help people, and the people losing us money are the ones that show up. Why are they costing us money? They use the equipment. They wear things down. They pay their $20, and that's it. The most profitable members were the ones that paid and didn't come. And I thought, this is crazy. So don't compare the cost of a trainer to the rest of the fitness industry, because that's all designed for you to not use it, or to use it and then stop. It doesn't make any sense. If you want something that has the best chance of working, nothing holds a candle to hiring a good trainer or coach.

Now, in terms of cost, I'm going to give people some advice right here. There are a lot of different ways you can do this. If it's very expensive for you, or not feasible to work with a trainer on a regular basis, you can work with a trainer once a week. You can work with a trainer once a month. You could do it virtually, where you just do text and phone calls. And of course, it's more effective the more you can see the person, so working with them three days a week or two days a week. But any type of support and advice you can get from a good coach or trainer is so much better than anything else. I cannot speak to that enough.

I just did this with my dad. I've been trying my whole life to get my parents to be consistent with this, and I've had some success. Luckily I'm in a position financially where I can afford to hire somebody for my parents, and my dad has been consistent for six months with his workouts because he's got a good coach. I know this. There's nothing more effective.

Nikkiey: I love that. I'm doing the same thing with my parents right now, and they're finally making some headway. It feels so good.

Sal: Isn't it great?

Nikkiey: It feels amazing. Okay, one last question, because I know we're wrapping up here. I appreciate your time on this podcast again, and I'm excited for it to get to the listeners so everyone can dive into all the amazing insights you gave today. If someone's looking to make a genuine shift in their fitness journey, what are some fundamental pieces of advice you'd offer that person?

Sal: All right. Here's one piece of dietary advice that is simple and will yield tremendous effects. Just one step. All you have to do is, for the most part, avoid heavily processed foods. That's it. What are heavily processed foods? Foods that are in wrappers and boxes, with lots of ingredients. These foods have been engineered to be so palatable that they will actually make you overeat. The data is very clear on this. This is what they do. If you simply do that, and then eat as much as you want, eat until you're satisfied, eat until you're full, but only stick to whole natural foods, so one or two ingredients, or foods you cook yourself, you're going to get leaner, you're going to get healthier, and it's going to feel like you're not dieting. You're going to be like, but I'm eating a lot, and I feel full. Yeah, this is weird. So that's one step.

Here's the next step. If you're going to approach strength training, just do this. Pick three good exercises. And when you work out, whether it's at home or at the gym, once a week, three days a week, whatever, approach them like you're learning a new skill. Practice them. Don't work out with them. Don't think to yourself, I'm going to get my legs sore, I'm going to get my shoulders sore, I'm going to get my abs sore, this is all about the sweat. Don't do that. Just say to yourself, I want to get really good at this exercise, and this one, and that one. That will get you far better results than, I'm going to work out and make myself sweaty and sore. You're going to be much more appropriate with your intensity. You're going to get way more benefit from the exercise, because you're going to learn how to do it really well. And it's going to be much more enjoyable that way than, I need to beat myself up. So literally just go to the gym and say, okay, I'm going to practice squatting, I'm going to practice overhead pressing, I'm going to practice rowing, whatever. I don't care what they are. Three movements, and practice them to get good at them. That's it.

Those two things are very big impact drivers. Literally, if everybody watching and listening right now just did those two things consistently, you would feel and see significant results relatively rapidly.

Nikkiey: You're missing number three. What's number three?

Sal: Oh, one more thing. I forgot. Last thing right here, and this is a big one. Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every morning. That's it.

Nikkiey: Oh man, Sal, you just opened up a whole can of worms for another podcast.

Sal: You know why? Here's why everybody hates Mondays. I've got to go back to work, I feel like crap. We give ourselves jet lag every weekend. We go to bed at the same time Monday through Thursday because we have to wake up for work. Friday comes along, and we go to bed late because we can sleep in. But what we're really doing is changing our circadian rhythm every weekend. And then every week we have to go through the process of correcting that jet lag. That has profound negative effects on hormones, cravings, appetite, mood, et cetera. So just go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. That by itself makes a huge difference in how you feel. Same time, every time. Those are the three things right there.

Nikkiey: Amazing. Sal, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Your insight, your advice, the new studies you shared with us. Super dope. Thank you again. Appreciate you being here.

Sal: Thank you so much for having me.

Nikkiey: Hey guys, real quick. If you're interested in taking your body to the next level, losing body fat, building more muscle, and feeling more confident, do it alongside one of our 30-plus professional coaches. Work one-on-one with her to eliminate all of the guesswork you may have. All you need to do is the work she tells you to do to get to those goals of yours. To learn more, click the link below this podcast and apply to our VIP program right now.