82. Weight Loss Hacks with Stu Schaefer

Stu Schaefer 0:03

their entire philosophy is calorie and calorie out and that's what weight loss is. And that's not true at all.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:12

Welcome to the your longevity blueprint podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Stephanie gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life. Today you get to hear from Stu Schaefer. We're going to jam packed this episode with tips to help you lose weight, examine what repressed metabolic syndrome is and examine the number one most overlooked health and weight loss killer and how to avoid its toxic effects on the body. Let's get rolling.

Welcome to another episode of The your longevity blueprint podcast today. My guest is do Schaefer. He's a 20 year award winning weight loss coach. He specializes in helping people reset their body so they can lose weight like they did in their 20s Stu struggled with anorexia in his teens. And when he overcame his eating disorder, he realized he wanted to help people create their perfect body in a healthy, sustainable way. Since then, Stu has helped 1000s of people transform their body and empower themselves to create massive success in their life. Welcome to the show, Stu.

Stu Schaefer 1:19

I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. This is gonna be awesome.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 1:24

I already told Steve, before we started, he has this, this little graph behind him that I'm already curious what it means. And we're gonna get to that if you're watching in a moment. But first, let's go back to your story. So So tell us how you kind of transformed your body in a healthy way. It sounds like your teen years were a little challenging there. So kind of tell us how you got to your healthy body and then how you have become this weight loss? Coach?

Stu Schaefer 1:46

That's a great question. So you know, I'm 13 years old. It's like literally on my birthday, and a couple friends and I ended up breaking into a house of a person we went to school with we knew this person and their dad and ended up pressing charges. So I'm sitting there one night, I totally forgot all about a couple weeks have passed watching Vegas vacation on VHS with my parents and the doorbell rings. You know those moments you have that you just remember him so clear. Oh, yeah. And I noticed that my parents are gone a really long time. So I'm kind of curious, I get up, peek around the corner to see what's going on. And there's two cops and in the front room, I go, Oh my god, I'm gonna do exactly what it happened. Everything came flooding back. And yeah, so what it was just such a traumatic experience that as a result, I developed some pretty severe self hatred, total, you know, self conscious, low self esteem.

And I ended up becoming anorexic. And I think part of it was like, a self imposed punishment, too. Yeah. For about two years, I struggled with that. And there were days and this was a transitioning into high school. So there was a lot of things going on in my life is a very, very tough time. And there were days where I would eat just an apple all day long, you know. And finally, one day I literally had a mental breakdown, I the stress of school and not eating and my body issues and everything just got to me and I cracked and I just couldn't stop crying. And and that was kind of the turning point. I remember my mom and I actually after that they I don't think they knew I was anorexic. But we packed a lunch together. And we put like some walnuts and some carrots and a sandwich. And I remember kind of laughing like this weight had lifted off me like I and I even said I can eat all this. And my mom was like, yes, it wasn't long after that I actually started doing a program, I was still in ninth grade at the time. And for 30 days, I had nonstop anxiety because every time I ate, I had this voice in this image that I was gonna get fat. And this was terrible, and all this stuff.

And so I was eating five times a day. So all day every day for 30 days straight. I had anxiety. And it wasn't until about 30 days that I actually realized I wasn't going to get fat. And that helped me take the next step. Now, unfortunately, after that I struggled with sugar addiction and compulsive exercise. And it took me about five years to really kind of understand how the body works and how to have that balanced life where you look in the mirror and you love your body, even though you may be excited to make it even better. But you don't hear all the negative self talk. You have your mental and mindset right, so that you can control your body and control your health without it controlling you. And I remember though, back in high school when I first came out of that anorexia, that was the moment I decided and I told people, I'm going to be a health coach. And this was like back in when I was in my early teens and they're like, Well, how are you gonna do that? I don't know. But I am and I did. I ended up becoming a health coach and I've been doing it for 20 years.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 4:55

I love that. I love that story. I love what you said. You'll have to repeat it but you He says something like, you want individuals to be able to love their body, but be excited to even make it better?

Stu Schaefer 5:05

Yes. So my mission statement for my my career in my life is to empower as many people as possible through transformation, so that they create success in other areas of their life and really create a life worth living. And that goes, exactly what I said is love who you are, and at the same time, be excited to create something even better.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 5:28

I love that. I love that. Okay, so this entire episode, of course, talking to a health coach, we're going to talk about his strategies for healthy weight loss. And so if we're going to talk about weight loss, I want to talk about metabolic syndrome, because that can obviously play a role. And you specifically talk about something called repressed metabolic syndrome. So what is this? And why does it cause you to gain weight and age faster?

Stu Schaefer 5:50

That's a great question. So over the last 20 years, I would see clients over and over and over again. And what had happened was they would develop this thing called repressed metabolic syndrome. And essentially what that means is they did certain things that would virtually repress and put to sleep their metabolism so that they couldn't lose weight, and their body was storing fat and no matter what they'd seem to do, no matter how much they exercised, or how many calories they restricted, it wouldn't work. In fact, I remember I had this client named Ashley, okay, Ashley, and in 2010, Ashley came to see me and for six years, this is when I discovered what repressed metabolic syndrome or RMS is. She for six years, tried to lose weight. And she tried everything. And even when I took her on, this was towards the beginning of my career. We tried the Atkins diet, because that was she wanted to try that. I tried the calorie restriction increase exercise. We tried even the Paleo was just coming on.

We tried that. We tried everything. Nothing worked. She was in tears. I was like, Oh, my gosh, I should just give up this profession right now. I was like, devastated because nothing worked. And so I told her, I said, Ashley, listen, let me do this. I will work with you for free until we get this thing figured out. And I went on like a two week deep dive research quest to figure out what the heck was going on. And I found some studies and some reports, that was so contradictory to everything that the diet industry says. And so I went back to Ashley said, listen, Ashley, I think I understand what's going on your metabolism is virtually just dead right now. And in order to speed it up, and reset your body, I actually need you to start eating more and working out less. She was out working out between an hour and an hour and a half every day. And she was eating 1200 to 1500 calories every day. And I said, Look, we're actually going to need to eat more workout less. And she looked at me your eyes, right? Vegas sausage.

She's like, No, wait. She's like, I struggled to lose three pounds, there's no way I'm going to do this, because she would inevitably always lose a little weight, put it back on. So we did it the first two weeks, she lost three pounds. She wasn't very excited. Because this happened to her in the past. She's like, Okay, this is probably the same three pounds, I always lose. But then the next two weeks, she lost another two pounds. And then the next week, another one and a half. And every week for the next 12 weeks, she lost between one and a half and two pounds for a net loss of almost 30 pounds in 12 weeks. And she just looked at me like what how did this work? Yeah. How is this possible? And I said, Well, the thing is, when you diet too long, and you over exercise too long, and you cut out entire food groups like carbohydrates or proteins or fat, you cut out a whole food macronutrient group, right? You literally shut your body down. And I call it repressed metabolic syndrome because you're repressing your metabolism. And how

Dr. Stephanie Gray 8:46

do you know if someone has that just based on kind of diet recall and exercise? Report like how do you how do you know

Stu Schaefer 8:53

here are the main symptoms if you're trying to lose weight, and no matter how much you restrict calories, or add exercise, nothing happens, or you've been trying to lose weight and you lose maybe three pounds and it just stops. And then you gain it back really easily. And you kind of hit this little fluctuation. Or if your past has included multiple diets, where you've had calorie restriction or really extreme diets, like some of the diets today, you've done that for a while. Yeah, the odds are you're gonna have this this repressed metabolic syndrome. And, in fact, I just talked with a girl yesterday who some coach that she had talked to, you know, she weighs over 200 pounds, and she's trying to lose weight and they told her she needs to eat 1200 calories. And I'd said that so don't go with that coach, even if you don't go with me, don't go with that coach, because that's the worst advice I've ever heard.

That will literally wreck your body. And so these super low calorie diets and a lot of coaches online who shouldn't be coaching because they just don't understand the body. Their entire philosophy is calorie and calorie out and that's what weight loss is. And that's not true at all. We learned in like the 80s but it's way more than just the calories. You know. And I always tell people look, if you ate 1500 calories of nothing but bread versus 1500 calories of nothing but chicken breasts versus 15 calories of nothing but nuts. Even though they're the same calories, your body is going to look insanely Different. Different. Yep. And so the whole thing about calories is just, it's old. It's just not it's that's not what it is. So it's way more than that.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 10:26

So for this condition, repressed metabolic syndrome, do you advise individuals work with a health coach like you then to strategize how much they're cutting back on exercise or increasing in calories? There's, I assume there's a strategy to that. There is,

Stu Schaefer 10:39

and this takes us to the board that you're so right. Okay. Anytime you're doing any sort of program for weight loss or health, and you know, this, we've talked about this, there's four components. And the first and most important is mindset. We were talking yesterday or recently about the gut health. And it really is an attitude that has to start a person in the right direction of wanting to learn and discover how the body works and, and wanting to do something that's sustainable. But then you have the three other components, which are nutrition, weight training, and cardio. Now, within the nutrition, this is the graph that's behind me. And this is why 99% of diets fall short. If you look on this graph behind me, you can see that on the left hand side, this I call it the food quadrant, there's four pieces to it. The first is what you eat. The second is how much you eat. All right now, this is where 99% of diets start and stop. And so people, they're restricting calories, and they're eating, you know, chicken and broccoli and just doing nothing but that and they wonder why they can't lose weight. Well, on the other side, is the timing of foods, not when you should eat, period, but when during the day, you should eat certain foods, and when during the day, you should avoid certain foods.

And then there's the combination of foods at each meal, how you combine the foods. Let me give you an example of the combination women more than men, because I've been doing this for 20 years, this this is a trap women fall into, probably because men love meat, you know, I just men seem to like me, but women will come to me. And they'll say In fact, I had a client in 2012. And this was the exact thing. She I just it's funny. I just finished lunch. I was in the gym I was working at at the time, she knocked on my door and I'd seen her around and she's like, Hey, I've seen all your clients. Yeah. And they all seem to lose a lot of weight. Yeah, well, there's 15 other trainers here. And none of their clients have changed. Okay, what's the difference? And I said, okay, and I was explaining this concept to her, and she fell into this trap, she could not lose weight. And what she had done was she had started restricting their calories. And she was eating tons of fruits and vegetables. And I said, there's your problem. She was how can that be a problem? I said, Well, if you eat fruit at the wrong time of day, and on its own, without combining it correctly, it has the same impact on your body as eating a cookie.

And she's like, what I said, yes, the sugar in the fruit, even though it's natural still forces your body, the blood sugar to go up, your body has to release insulin, the effect on the body is the same as the cookie. The difference is, one has more vitamins and minerals. And the other is more process. But the effect, the fat gaining effect is the same. So she was eating tons and tons and tons and tons of fruit. And so she she and I ended up working together. And the first month she lost 10 pounds. Just from making a couple of these tweaks, she learned how to combine the right foods at each meal, when not to eat certain when to stop eating like certain carbohydrates and other foods during the day so that she could balance out her blood sugar better. And then she learned exactly how much should she be eating and what types of foods and the best part was we created for her. So she actually enjoyed the foods that she got to eat. And she was like, Oh my gosh, she said, I can't believe if I had known it was this simple. I would have done this like five years ago, I can't believe how fast this worked. And I've been, you know, struggling for so long. As Yeah, it's just one of those myths, you know.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 14:11

So now that makes me want to ask because I know the listeners want to know, well, when do we eat fruit? What do we combine with fruit? Do you want to, you know, in short answer that or does the answer vary?

Stu Schaefer 14:21

You know, no, it's all personal. So I can give some guidelines, but I want to throw this out there. You really if you really want to do this right? You want someone who can build something around you. And let me give you an example if someone came to me and they're only eating one time a day because they're doing this fasting thing and whatever. Well to change them drastically would be careless and it wouldn't probably have a good effects. You want to make slow changes, but let me give you some guidelines. Sure. The first basic rule that will help anyone lose weight is to include a protein with every single meal. A protein, in my opinion, would come from an animal source The reason is the plant based proteins don't have a very high amino acid profile is what it's called. So your body doesn't act. When we eat protein, it's not the protein our body needs, it's the amino acids.

That's what goes to doing all the good stuff in the body. And so vegetable, if you look on a label of saying nuts, and it says, oh, it's got eight grams of protein, well, the body doesn't actually get eight grams of protein from nuts, and it's incomplete. So the body can't really utilize it. And so nuts really aren't a protein. So animal stuff. So chicken, turkey, you know, poultry items, fish items, beef items, I stand tend to stay away from pork, certain people can do eggs, and very, not very many people, but a select few of people might be able to do things like a Greek yogurt, or cottage cheese, you and I are talking about dairy the other day and how probably one in 10 can do dairy these days, you know, eight, nine out of 10 probably have an issue. So I wouldn't make that my first choice. But the point is, those are all things that come from animals. And sometimes the goat yogurt or goat cheese and stuff can be okay, because the molecular makeup is very different than the cow stuff. So that's an option too. So anyway, you want to include a protein at every meal, the protein does a couple things.

One, it keeps you full, longer. Okay, so you don't get cravings to Yeah, it replenishes your body and you need it for building the muscle and regenerating the tissue in your body and helping to regulate some of your hormones and your blood sugar. Which brings me to my next point number three, when you have carbohydrates, but you also have a protein, it almost creates a time release absorption of the carbohydrates, so you don't get a spike in your blood sugar. Now, this is interesting. I had a client one time her name's Jane. This is many years ago, she was type one had type one diabetes. Okay, so genetic version of it. It wasn't type two, it wasn't, she couldn't get rid of it. But the doctors had told her eat cheese with every meal. And she was wondering why she couldn't gain weight. Well, what the doctors didn't realize is cheese is a fat and the fat can also help control your blood sugar, but it was preventing her from losing weight. So when we change the fat with a for for a protein, she lost weight very quickly and felt way better if she was eating like cheddar cheeses and all these other process cheeses. So you don't want to do that the protein is perfect.

That's the best combination. So that when you have a fruit vegetable or or some sort of a carbohydrate, like maybe some beans, which also are not a complete protein, by the way, or rice or whatever the carbohydrate is it like time releases it, so you don't get that fat storing or fat creating effect. And that's vitally important. Now, the carbs are also important. I gotta tell you with today's diets, they're actually a little bit dangerous. And people aren't aware. There's two studies that have been done for the last 30 years. Okay. And both studies, I was unaware of one of them. I knew about one. And the first one I knew about was there's something called diet induced hypothyroidism. Okay. And that occurs when you don't get enough carbohydrates for a long time. But what I didn't know about is you can also get hypothyroidism if your fat intake is too high for a long enough amount of time. Okay, I didn't know that.

And so right now, one of the most popular diets is the keto diet, which is virtually zero carbs, and almost all fat. And I gotta tell you, Stephanie, I have had more women coming to me with hypothyroidism than I have ever seen before in my 20 year career, and I'm certain that there's a link there, okay. Sure. Sure. So the carbohydrates, the reason they're so important are because they're protein sparing. So what happens is, when you blend it right, the right amount of protein, right amount of carbs and certain meals, the carbohydrates will help fuel the body, so that the body then can take the amino acids in the protein and use it to rebuild the body. This helps your body get into something called thermogenic state. And a thermogenic state means your body is burning fat all

Dr. Stephanie Gray 19:04

the time. That's what we want. Yeah, that's what the listeners want. Yeah.

Stu Schaefer 19:07

Yes, exactly. That's what everyone wants. And that's why when people look at what I eat and what my clients eat, they're like, How can you eat so much and lose weight? It's because their body's in this thermogenic states burning fat burning fat burning fat. The opposite is something called a catabolic state. And when you're in a catabolic state, and that results from too much exercise, too much dieting, not eating enough of the right foods, what happens is the body uses muscle as its fuel. So it burns your muscle and stores fat. And it does this for multiple reasons. But there's actually a process. There's a name for that process where the body burns off your muscle and converts it into carbohydrate or glucose or glycogen. And it's called gluconeogenesis. And it's like people wonder like, when they die it what ends up happening is they lose weight, but what they don't realize is that they lose muscle and that wrecks their body. And that's why then when they look at a piece of bread, boom, they gain more weight back. They've repressed their metabolism. Yikes. Yes. All making sense.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 20:10

Yes, this is good. This is really, really good. Let's talk about exercise, since you just kind of mentioned that and over exercising. So you kind of already got to this. But how do you know if you're over exercising? And why can too much exercise, prevent weight loss and hurt our bodies?

Stu Schaefer 20:25

There's a few reasons. And this is so counterintuitive. There was a study done in the late 90s. And it was done over the period of a period of 100 days with 54,000 participants, I don't know that there's ever been a study as large as this. And what they were looking for is kind of the sweet spot of some diet and exercise mostly exercise on what would help cause a real physical esthetic transformation with the body without going the opposite way. And they found a sweet spot. Okay, the sweet spot was this with the weight training. What they found was that three days a week of weight training was the sweet spot. Okay, they looked at brain weight

Dr. Stephanie Gray 21:03

training, too. So the listeners know like exactly what that is. Or maybe you're going to get to that

Stu Schaefer 21:07

weight training. Weight training is when you go, let's say, into the gym, you don't have to, but most people are familiar, you go into the gym, and you're doing weight exercises like like a bench press or a bicep curl, or leg extensions or leg press, you're working out with weights, as opposed to cardio, which is like running on a treadmill or something like that. So they found that weight training, one time a week, didn't get as good of results as two times a week, and two times a week didn't get as good results as three times a week. But once you hit three times a week, if you did four times a week, there was no noticeable improvement. And then if you did five days a week or six days a week, it actually hurt your results, it was too much the muscles didn't have time to recover. Now on the three different days, they weren't training the same muscle groups all three days, they were splitting them into different groups.

Now with the cardio, what they found was that the sweet spot combined with this three days a week of weights, was to do cardiovascular exercise between 30 and 40 minutes on the other three days a week. That was the sweet spot. You didn't need much more than that. In a few cases, they found some improvement by doing some cardio on all five days. But in no case did they find that it was beneficial to do more than 45 minutes of cardio every single day that actually hindered progress as well. And there's a few reasons this happens.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 22:30

I was gonna guess some things I did that get rid of muscle, you know, when you see like marathon runners, they're skinny like they, I mean, yes, they're muscular, but they've lost a lot of muscle also. So is that to their detriment? Like you were just kind of alluding to?

Stu Schaefer 22:41

Well, that's part of it. There's there's multiple reasons. And if you look at marathon runners, a lot of them don't have much muscle tone. They're kind of flat, even though they're thin. They're what some people might refer to as skinny fat, they just don't have a lot of tone to them. So what happened was this one reason that it was detrimental is because the too much exercise can create too deep of a calorie deficit. Okay? Although calories aren't the end all be all, there's much more important. If your calorie deficit is too large. That turret puts the body into this survival mode where it literally locks down. And it goes, oh my gosh, I'm under attack, I need to hold on to everything that comes in because I need to store things. So it ends up storing fat and going into that catabolic state. And you wouldn't assume that would happen. But that's essentially what happens with too much exercise. That's one thing that can happen, I should say is the calorie deficit becomes too great.

Now what most people do is they try to reduce calories and exercise. So they create a massive calorie deficit and this just shuts off their metabolism. Okay. The second reason that too much aerobics especially is detrimental is because there's a real priority, I guess, for women, especially to overstressed their adrenal glands, and it causes adrenal fatigue. And I'm sure you're well aware of this. I was just talking with another doctor on my podcast, and what we talked about was when you have adrenal fatigue and you do too much exercise, and your cortisol levels go up, essentially what happens is cortisol is like this hormone that the body has to make when it's stressed and it shuts the production of all your other hormones off temporarily. It's like the cortisol takes precedence. It's like, okay, well, we need to survive. So let's fuel our cortisol. And what happens now is so many people are stressed mentally and emotionally, and they go, Well, I got to work out to get rid of the stress, and even though it feels good mentally and emotionally, it's still stress.

And so they're adding stress to their body and if they do too much, their body goes up. The cortisol kicks in the adrenal glands get overworked and all their blood sugar. Regulation hormones stop getting produced, their thyroid hormones can stop being pretty Is there estrogen progesterone, all this there? It just it short circuits their body is a simple way of saying, and then they go, why am I not losing weight anymore? I had a I had a client, Liz like this was in 2011. She was just doing so perfect. And then one day her weight loss just stopped. And I said, Okay, what did you change? And she goes nothing. And I looked at what she was eating, that was the same her and I were working out three days a week with weights that hadn't changed. I said, What are you doing different with your cardio, she's like, nothing. I go, Well, she was taking all these classes, Kickboxing spin classes that were an hour long, she's doing at least an hour heart rate was like up in the 180s. And I said, Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I go, what were you doing before? And she was going on walks around the neighborhood with my husband. I said, you need to keep doing that. Why? Why would you change it? She was well, I wanted to lose weight faster.

So I started doing more intense cardio go, No, it's messing with your body. So she went back to walking and stopped doing the intense classes. And she lost the first week she did it, she lost three pounds. She's just like, Why? Why? And I told her look, you're over stressing the body. So that's a huge reason that too much exercise can cause that. Now, if you're feeling fatigued, jittery, having trouble sleeping, if you're dreading your workouts, those are all signs of overtraining. And you want to really be cautious, I would tell you that the baseline to start at would be three days a week of weights three days a week of cardio, 30 minutes on the weight training 30 to 40 on the cardio. And then what you want to do is if you get the food quadrant, right, like we just talked about, you'll see results. And then you want to adjust every couple of weeks. And you want to make small adjustments every couple of weeks and what will happen. When you do that, then you can get dialed into what your body likes. And you're going to see the weight to start coming off, boom, boom, boom, two to three pounds a week very consistently. And then getting into some sort of a maintenance plan where you just kind of hold and you feel good and you don't feel dead and you're not starving yourself. And it's just amazing.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 27:06

couple comments there. So I totally agree with what you've said obviously, I have a hormone clinic and stress I tell patients is the number one hormone hijacker so I have been there and I've told the story before where at a very stressful time in my life where my heart I talked about this in my book where my heart was literally racing. I had severe tachycardia. I was doing CrossFit. Oh, which was the worst and I was raised as it as a gymnast. My whole family like both sides, right? Everyone was gymnasts. So we were used to this intense intense I wouldn't even say cardio, just intense physical activity. And CrossFit seemed like a good fit. For me. It was way too much way too stressful. I did enjoy it, and nothing against people who do CrossFit. But there's a time and a place. And that was not the right time or place for me to be doing CrossFit. I was already you know, jacked up, I was already stressed out, my adrenaline was already rushing. And yeah, that really could push push me over the edge. And so I needed to adapt more calming activities like yoga, and walking like you're referring to and into my life. I hear you on that. And I totally agree. I do want to ask about with cardio, though. What should one's heart rate be?

Stu Schaefer 28:07

I use a special formula, okay. And the formula is based on age, gender, resting heart rate, and the desired results. And if they're on any medications, because some medications impact your heart rate, right, I've had clients where I told them to go too late, let's say 120. They're running and their heart rates at like 99, because they're on some sort of statin that's artificially keeping their blood, their heart rate down. So it's a variety of that, I will tell you this, it's lower than you think. Okay, most of my clients, their primary cardiovascular activity is walking, okay, rarely do they do any sort of hit, running anything like that. And they get the best progress from walking. Now, I want to just also add a note to this. To some extent, the best cardio is going to be what you like doing just because then you'll actually do it. But let's say you're the type of person who's a little bit more extreme, and you really enjoy hits.

And the harder the better for you. For some reason, there are people I know like that. Well, I would suggest maybe backing off a little bit, still doing it if that's what you really like. But just back off the throttle a little bit if you're having trouble losing weight, and just easing off can make all the difference. Personally, if I say to myself, I gotta go for a run today. odds of me doing it are very low, but but at least I can always no matter what state of mind I am or what's going on or how hot or cold it is. I know I can go for a walk. And I'm always going to be able to do that and it works just as well. It's much easier on your joints. It's good for your mind, and it's good de stressor on the mind as well. And all this contributes to how quickly you can lose weight.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 29:51

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Stu Schaefer 31:32

Stephanie, there's let me just bust a myth here. You can sweat without sprinting, you don't have to go all in intensity to sweat. I can go outside on a nice, let's say a 60 degree day 65 degree day where it's relatively cool. Yeah. And if I'm walking at a heart rate that's probably lower than people think. But it's still effective, I still sweat, I still sweat, I can feel the evaporation, my skin gets really cold from the sweat coming off. I mean, if it's a 75 degree day or higher, I'm sweating like crazy. And so it's not to say that you have to go for a leisurely walk. That's not what I'm saying at all. You asked about the heart rate, I can't unfortunately can't give you an example. But I would say, you know, for someone like you who has a higher risk of adrenal fatigue, who's had some stuff in the past, my guess is if you were in the mid to high 120s, you'd be safe. But you'd still be breathing hard and sweating. Okay, enough that you would get the desired outcome of the fat burning effect, the detoxing effect and the cardiovascular improvement effect. So it's a win win win for everything.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 32:39

I'll take it good answer. Okay. I want to go back to females for a minute, because a large majority of my listeners are women. And maybe we've covered this, but why do many women blame their hormones on their weight, which there is a hormone component, of course, but today, we're not talking about hormones as much. So why I think you say up to eight out of 10 times. There's something else going on. So So what is this something else? And Why are women blaming their hormones?

Stu Schaefer 33:04

That's a good question. So most women, they come to me, they've been doing this for 20 years. And they say no matter what I do, they're over 50 most most of the time, and definitely all of them have been over 40. But without Without question, they must hear something or read something and they go, my hormones must be off because I can't lose weight no matter what I do. And I go, Okay, well, what are you doing? Nine times out of 10 it's that they're eating wrong, okay, they're eating tons of fruit, that's a big problem. Or they're not getting the protein or they're doing something like a paleo or a Keto or a fasting diet, and they're slowing down their metabolism. And typically what's happened is they'll lose weight in the beginning, their weight loss comes to a screeching halt. And then they're like, Oh, well, my hormones must be off. No, you have repressed metabolic syndrome, you've, you've totally wrecked your body.

The good news is when you start eating with the food quadrant, and you do the right exercise, like we talked about, you can speed your metabolism back up, it definitely balances out your blood sugar can in most cases, help balance out thyroid issues that are diet induced, and even your hormones. And it happens within a month, six weeks, sometimes at the most. I had a client, she could not lose weight. She had done the keto diet and fasting for about eight years. She had done it to start with because it helped her with something she had that was causing seizures, but then she just couldn't lose weight. She was very short. And it was like I didn't really need to lose weight. She was having trouble seeing like where her feet were and she kept stepping on her pets and stuff. And she goes I've seen my friends. I don't want to look like that. The first four weeks she lost two pounds and she was like, okay, she goes, I believe you do. I believe this works. I feel better. I'm not seeing much going on with the weight. I said just hang with me. I said you've done a lot of damage to your body.

We've got to just be patient on Week, five and a half, she lost another two pounds. And she went, Hey, this is interesting. And every week thereafter, for the next 6788 weeks, she lost two pounds every single week like clockwork. And she made the comment, she sent me a message. She goes, Oh, I'm actually excited to get on the scale now, because every time I get on, it's going down. And I was like, ah, if we I said, you can tell she switched her body into a thermogenic state. Now, here's a way you can tell if you're not in a thermogenic state. If you're in a catabolic state, if you don't get hungry, you can go a whole day and not eat and not not notice it. You're not in a thermogenic state. That was where one of the things that she was she she had no appetite. And then as soon as it shifted on that week five, she goes, I woke up, and I was hungry today. Oh, that's a good sign. That means your body's starting to burn now. And she was like, gosh, yeah, every time I eat, I'm getting hungry. Now. I'm getting hungrier. I said, that's awesome, because now your body's actually digesting more efficiently burning. And she did she lost, she ended up losing 26 or 27 pounds. So it was awesome.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 36:05

Good recall, you're remembering 2011 2012 these years and these will teasers.

Stu Schaefer 36:10

Yeah, no, I have. I do have a good memory. But these clients, these these clients, were some of the pivotal moments in my life. Yeah. You were learning as well. Yes, exactly.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 36:20

Yeah, I and I should say I remember those two, when I have those pivotal cases, you're like, Yes, I love this. I learned this now, you know, then you can apply that to the next next case in the next. Exactly. So to be clear, I want to go back for a moment because we do recommend short term, modified fast like we use prolonged here, liver detox programs, whatnot. So I'm fine with those in the short term, but someone wouldn't want to be doing this long term just for the listeners. I don't want them to think I'm giving them conflicting information here. I'm for you know those tools in the short term, but I'll let you respond to that

Stu Schaefer 36:53

you made the best point ever is that we always have fads. Okay. So like in the 50s and 60s, if you wanted to lose weight, you starved yourself or you smoked. That was pretty much it right? Is like that's what you did to lose weight. And then in the 70s and 80s. We were like, Oh, we figured it out. We got to go low fat. The fat is what makes you fat. So all of a sudden, we were in this low fat fad. Well, then that didn't work. And what's funny is in every single fad, both doctors and scientists are certain they've got it figured out every time. We're certain it's the fat, okay? It's not the fat, okay, well, it's carbohydrates. That's the real culprit. So then we went low carb, and then that didn't work. And then like, Okay, well, then we went high protein in like the in like the late 90s. And then we went gluten free. And then we went paleo, we went ancestor. And now we're in this high fat fad and the fad that's coming right around the corner, which this is going to be an interesting one is the plant based fad, right? And so but what happens is in every one of these fads, everyone is certain they figured it out. Everyone is certain, this is the way to do it.

And there's hundreds of 1000s of people who are in this industry coaches, nutritionists, people that get into the industry to make a quick buck. I was in a business accelerator one time and the guy looked at me and he said, You're a trainer. I said, Yeah, he goes anything. If you put keto on anything right now, you'll make millions of dollars keto brownies, keto cookbook, whatever. Oh, yeah. But I don't believe in keto as well. You can either stick to your you know, guns, or you can make landway Yeah, and so all these people jump on now. Fasting has gotten really popular too. Yeah, the fasting and the Keto are two things that should never be done long term. And this is where your point is perfect. The keto is the body's survival mechanism. Okay, it's the body goes into survive starts burning fat as its last source of fuel, and the body was never designed to live in ketosis. Nor was it designed to live in a fasted state.

Generally, the healthiest people I've learned from and been around and the overall general consensus from people that really know what the body's like. They generally won't fast more than four times a year. Sometimes if they're trying to detox, they may go up to six, but it's not something they recommend doing every single month. So fasting for a certain reason, during a colon detox a KIDNEY LIVER, trying to clean your system on an elimination diet to figure out what you're allergic to. You're looking at doing it for maybe three weeks tops, once or twice a year. That's all that was designed for not to be a lifestyle. Yeah. And so yeah, to your point. That is a huge misconception. I'm really glad you brought that up.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 39:46

Glad we mentioned that too. Okay, I have one last question. Well, I lied. There's going to be more than one question. When I ask these questions, I wonder maybe you already answered that. But what's the number one most overlooked health and weight loss killer and how do we avoid With its toxic effects on the body,

Stu Schaefer 40:01

that's a good question. Now, this is interesting because you and I recently talked about leaky gut syndrome, okay. And leaky gut is when your stomach lining is not as you put it, it's not super solid like it should be. So different foods permeate through the stomach into the bloodstream, and cause autoimmune disorders and other things. Okay, well, there's one weight loss killer that everyone overlooks, and it's called alcohol. And I want to explain why. And then I want to explain how to manage it because an expectation of not drinking is unrealistic. But what you want to know is what is the effect on your body and how to lessen or mitigate the effects of alcohol. The body takes it in like a food, but it's absorbed like a poison, it goes straight into the bloodstream, it goes straight into the bloodstream, and it turns instantly, to triglycerides and sugar. So what ends up happening is this no matter what alcohol doesn't matter if it's beer, wine, low carb, straight alcohol, Hartog, it doesn't matter. When you consume it, it goes straight into the bloodstream. And I don't care if you're doing keto, I don't care if you're, you're the healthiest person in the world.

As soon as that alcohol hits your bloodstream, the body has to use it as its first source of fuel because it turns into a simple sugar. And the way the body is designed, it will always use a the simplest sugar in the body for fuel Period, end of story doesn't matter what you're doing. So if you're on keto, and you have a glass of wine, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're no longer in ketosis, it will instantly throw you out of ketosis, regardless of what someone tells you, it cannot do anything but that because of how it's absorbed. So knowing that if you have anything diabetes, or you're trying to manage your blood sugar levels, or if you have hormone imbalances, alcohol will accentuate it three, four, or five times fivefold, because of that specific reason. It spikes your blood sugar faster than anything. It's worse than sugar because at least when you eat sugar, it goes through the stomach. In his process, the alcohol goes right into your bloodstream, your blood sugar goes skyrockets, and there's no way to avoid it. Now, there is maybe a way to mitigate it, or at least shorten the toxic effects of the alcohol,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 42:21

eat it with protein, like you're saying to eat fruit without,

Stu Schaefer 42:23

there's three, this a three step process. Okay? First, and this is the worst part. Remember, we talked about timing, I wonder most people drink most people drink at night. And that's when your body is trying to slow down. So if you spike your blood sugar, as your body's trying to slow down to get ready for bed, and it has nothing to use that for it stores it as fat period and a story. So there's a three step process because I know the listeners are going to drink most people drink. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't ever drink again. Number one is you want to look at how much you're drinking at a time. Is it one glass of wine? One glass of wine is very different than two glasses of wine. Is it a whole bottle is it three or four glasses want you want to look at this. If you if you're drinking two glasses of wine, and you have no problem scaling it down to one, that's going to be a huge game changer. Huge, huge, huge, huge.

Number two is if you can drink eight to 16 ounces of water before you consume the alcohol and eight to 16 ounces of water. After you consume the alcohol. It will help flush it faster and dilute the effects in a small way but still helps dilute the effects. And number three is what you said absolutely. Have the alcohol with a full complete meal. Don't have it on an empty stomach and don't wait a couple hours after you eat. Most people don't eat dinner and they're like, Well, I'm going to let it digest and then have the alcohol. Well, that's worse because then you have nothing else in the system and right it makes things worse. So if you have it with a complete meal, you have it with water, and you limit the amount or cut back on the amount that can mitigate the negative impact on your body.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 44:05

You've probably heard a lot about fish oil. It's one of the most common supplements available after all, but have you wondered if you should be taking it and why you might want to think about it. The simple answer is yes. If you don't have access to fresh fish several times per week, you can likely benefit from supplementation and may even need to. I tested many of my patients fatty acid levels and found that the overwhelming majority of my patients are low in omega threes. omega three fatty acids are essential cornerstones of human nutrition. They are deemed essential because we need them for proper health much like certain vitamins and minerals, but unfortunately we can't produce them on our own. As a result, our only option is to consume these fats either through our diet or through supplementation. omega three fatty acids are known to benefit cardiovascular health, support healthy brain function and cognition and have been proven to maintain a healthy inflammatory response.

For all these reasons. Achieving the proper balance of omega threes is an important health strategy one for which most people require supplementation simplified fish oil can help improve your cholesterol glucose help your memory reduce pain, even headaches and menstrual cramps. I typically start my patients with one to two grams or 1000 to 2000 milligrams per day of combined Ecosa bentonite acid which is EPA and docosahexaenoic acid which is DHA daily. Our your longevity blueprint Omegas are stabilized in vitamin E oil and rosemary extract is used to ensure maximum purity and freshness. This exclusive fish oil is purified vacuum distilled and independently tested to ensure heavy metals pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls PCBs are removed to undetectable levels. Plus, our official has the shortest see to shelf time meaning from fish to bottle or capsule of only three to six months as compared to the industry average of 18 to 36 months. Seriously.

That means most of the fish oil you buy over the counter is old, oxidized, rancid and not helpful. That fish oil purchased over the counter could be three years old already before you ingest it. Yuck. With over 10,000 published studies in the last three decades, EPA and DHA from fish oil are among the most researched natural ingredients available and have a long history of safety and efficacy. Check out more product information on our website, your longevity blueprint.com and use code omega threes for 10% off. Now let's get back to the show. Love it, love it. Good tips. Good tips. So tell me so you work as a health coach. So I assume then you use this food quadrant. So you personalize that approach with the patient right to facilitate their weight loss. So So tell us how listeners can connect with you how can they become a client? I know you have amazing free gift for our listeners. So tell me what those are?

Stu Schaefer 46:39

Yes. So first of all, I'm going to give all your listeners a real special gift. And that is they're going to get access to my masterclass which explains these concepts in more much more detail. They're going to get my fat loss blueprint, which explains how I set people up and what they can start doing on their own to lose, you know, five to seven pounds of fat. And then they can take the thermogenic quiz to see if they're putting their body in this catabolic state or if they're putting it into the thermogenic state. And they can find that at Stu shaffer.com/longevity. Okay, Sue shaffer.com/longevity. And this way you spell Stu Schaefers s t u s ch AEFER Stu shaffer.com/longevity, you can find me if you do a Google search of Stu Shaffer, I'm everywhere.

But I'm on Instagram at I think it's Stu underscore Shaffer, I'm on Facebook, they can find me there. I'm still on Twitter. You know, I tweet out my Podcasts and stuff like that. But yeah, that's the best way they can. If they're interested in learning more, and they're like, geez, I want to learn more. I have a couple of specific questions, feel free to go to my website, you can book a free strategy call with me. We can look at where you're at where you want to go. And maybe the fastest way to get there. So I'm happy to help. Like I said, I really want to empower as many people as possible to transform and create an amazing life.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 48:02

Love it. Love it. Love it. Very generous, free gift. So thank you for offering that. I end every podcast asking my guests their top longevity tips. So what's your absolute top longevity tip,

Stu Schaefer 48:12

if you follow the food quadrant, and you stop dieting, and over exercising, that's going to help balance your body out, it's going to help de stress your body and not only you're going to be able to lose weight, it's going to help with the anti aging as well. So you're going to have weight loss and anti aging. And that gets your body functioning optimal. And that is longevity right there. That is longevity.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 48:35

Mike drop. Yeah. Great. Thank you for coming on this show today to do and sharing with our audience, healthy weight loss strategies, introducing us to this food quadrant that I had not heard about before, and really just providing the healthy exercise and eating tips. So your wealth of knowledge today. I hope our listeners connect with you. Thanks for coming on the show.

Stu Schaefer 48:52

Thank you so much, Stephanie.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 48:57

Well, that was super insightful. I had never heard of this food quadrant. But what he said certainly made sense. I hope you agree that he provided so many helpful tips like not to eat fruit alone. Minimize alcohol alone at night have protein with each meal, and I was excited to hear that a brisk walk is suitable cardio. If you want to connect further with Stu, check out the link to his generous free gifts in the show notes and schedule an intro call with him for your transformation. And be sure to listen to episode 13 Where I interviewed Todd White about the dirty Dark Secrets of the wine industry. I think after listening to that episode, you'll be scared to ever buy commercial wine again. However good news healthy wines do exist. I'll post a link to dry farm wines where you can get your first bottle for a penny also in the shownotes Be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint. And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck.

You can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book plus for a limited time the course is 50% off. Check this offer out at your longevity blueprint.com and click the Course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show. Leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen, I do read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics, guests and for how you're applying what you learn on the show to create your own longevity blueprint. The podcast is produced by the team at counterweight creative as always, thank you so much for listening and remember, wellness is waiting

the information provided in this podcast is educational. No information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority

Transcribed by https://otter.ai