How to Actually Build Your Glutes: The Exact Diet and Training Blueprint | Mind Pump 2945

Key Takeaway

If you want to build your glutes, stop trying to diet, do excessive cardio, and grow muscle at the same time. Starting today, center each meal on protein, aim for roughly 1 gram per pound of target body weight, add a modest calorie surplus, and prioritize progressively heavier squats, hip thrusts, and deadlifts. Rest 3–5 minutes between hard sets so you can lift more. Track strength progress—not daily scale fluctuations—and commit to the process for 2–3 months.

Episode Overview

Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews explain how to build glutes through adequate nutrition, heavy strength training, recovery, and patience. They challenge the common approach of chronic dieting, high-rep “burn” workouts, and excessive cardio, arguing that muscle growth requires a consistent calorie surplus, high protein intake, and progressive loading.

Full Transcript

Transcript of How to Actually Build Your Glutes: The Exact Diet and Training Blueprint | Mind Pump 2945 from Mind Pump Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

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So this entire episode's gonna break down what you need to do if you want nice, round glutes. Now check this out. Because of this episode, we've launched a brand new workout program called MAPS Abs and Butt. So it's a full workout program, but the emphasis is on developing incredible midsection, tight and sculpted, and big, round, firm glutes. And because it's a brand new program, when you go to mapsabsandbutt.com, if you use the code LAUNCH, you get it for 40% off. Plus, we're gonna throw in, for free, another workout program.

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Go to mapsabsandbutt.com, use the code LAUNCH, and get yourself set up. Here comes the show. All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mypumpstore.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mypumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, let's get right to the facts. Your glutes are one of the biggest muscles on your body. If you feed them right and strength train right, they grow.

That's just how it works. We've helped tens of thousands of women get over their fear of food, to eat right, to eat enough, to strength train properly, to build their butts. It works, everybody. So I got some examples of, you know, when this goes wrong, right? Here's a common one. Here's a common avatar. This is a woman. She wants to build her glutes. She wants to be more round and bigger and fuller, but she's eating like 1,200 calories and 40 grams of protein. And that's not going to work.

You just don't have enough energy and definitely not enough protein to build that muscle if you strength train it. It just doesn't have the building block. Well, I think there's a reason for this and why this is so common is because most people, I think this is men and women, but want a small, tight waist, right? Or feel like they could lose some body fat. And then in addition to that, we have specific body parts that we want to build or we want to develop. And so you have these kind of conflicting goals that you're trying to achieve.

You want to get this tiny, small waist, but then you also want to have this round butt to basically build your butt. And so you're afraid to eat more calories in fear of, I'm going to grow my waist again. And so even though, meaning logically, you may have heard that you need to reverse diet or add calories or eat more, you still find your way into eating these 1,200 to 1,500 calorie diets. Or even if you're eating more, you're eating not enough to what it takes to build.

Yeah, you can send the signal through strength training. You can give your body the blueprints and say, hey, this is what I want to happen. But if you don't have the building blocks, nothing happens. In fact, eat too little in strength training, not only will you not build muscle, but if it's too low, you may actually lose muscle even though you're strength training. The other problem that's paired with this is that the same person who is afraid of their waist growing or wants to shrink it while building the butt is also doing things that are counterproductive to growing your butt, which is doing tons of cardio.

So doing all this cardio to burn in fear of, I don't want to put any body fat on, which again is working against our ability to build your butt. Yeah, you can get strong, but in order to grow, you really need to feed it. And that's the thing that a lot of people are holding on to that body fat and they're stuck with the fact that they might have to go up a bit in weight, but they need the materials, they need to build, and then we can get to the point where we can reveal everything.

Yeah, and then to the cardio point, cardio, it builds endurance, it does. This is one of the best ways to build endurance, but it does not, build muscle. In fact, when I'm telling my body that I need lots of endurance, big muscles is counter to that. So what you see in the data, and this is in our experience as well, when people are on a calorie deficit and they do cardio on top of it, they actually lose more muscle across the board. And cardio in general is not pro muscle building.

It sends a counter signal. Not saying you should run from cardio, but if you're strong enough but if you're strength training and doing a lot of cardio, you're not going to build as much muscle in your glutes as you would like to. You know, there's a lot of times I can tell this avatar by the foods they eat. So a lot of times when I'm asking about diet or what have you done in the past to build your body or do these things, I hear a lot of things like chicken breasts and tilapia.

Really lean cuts. Egg whites. The food choices that the client is choosing that have been told that they're healthy and they're healthy because they're low calorie are really common. So you hear meals like that and it's like, oh no, we need to eat higher fats a cut of meat. You can eat the whole egg. We don't need to be eating these white fishes that have hardly any calories. We'd rather have things like salmon. So a lot of times when I peer into a diet of a client that is wanting to build this body, I can tell a lot by the foods that they're choosing.

Well, they're afraid of fat and they're afraid of carbohydrates because they think that both of them just gain body fat. So you look at their diets and low calorie, mostly protein or sometimes low calorie and very low fat. Here's the deal. Yes, you need protein to build. Protein is the main building block. Fat is essential. You can eat a high calorie diet. If fat is too low, you actually starve your body. You actually won't build any muscle or shape or sculpt any part of your body if fat is too low.

And then carbohydrates, although they're not essential, meaning you can eat no carbs and you're going to be okay, it's not ideal for muscle building. A very low carbohydrate or no carbohydrate diet is not great for strength. It's not great for force production. And it does reduce your ability to load your body properly with weights to build that muscle. The better you perform in the gym, the better the outcome and so to have a bit of carbs to pull in that immediate energy helps a lot. Yeah, and then another mistake is the like I eat really well Monday through Friday, then the weekend comes and I under eat or I eat garbage or I miss my protein targets.

Like when it comes to diet, diet has to be remarkably consistent. Like if you're going to be in a calorie surplus, it needs to be a calorie surplus all the way across the board. What happens oftentimes with people or women that are afraid of gaining weight is they'll put themselves in a surplus, but then there's a couple days that are such a deficit, it all evens out. This is sometimes true for people who want to lose weight is that they'll be in a surplus for more days than they are in a deficit.

So my point with this is you need to be consistent. If you want to build, be in a surplus. Don't be afraid of fat and carbs. Eat whole foods, right? Eat healthy. Hit high protein. Do it consistently with good strength training, but feed your body the calories that it needs, which means more calories in your burning. The goal is to gain some weight, right? You're trying to build. So some of the ways that people mess up, that everybody messes up, the common ways that people mess up, you know, chronically under eating and or under eating protein or trying to build and cut at the same time.

Trying to build and cut at the same time is like a car trying to go forward and backward at the same time. It goes nowhere. You move, you go nowhere. Here's another one. They live on strength training routines that focus on things like kickbacks, bands, high rep burns, avoiding the heavy compound difficult lifts like squats, barbell thrusts, deadlifts. Those are the ones that build the muscle. The exercise I listed previously, there might be some correctional exercise benefits, but you're not going to build great glutes with kickbacks.

You're not going to build great glutes with 50 reps of a burning exercise. It doesn't work that way. This common client loves the class type of setting, circuit training. They have a really hard time when you coach them and tell them, I want you to rest for three minutes in between sets. That feels like a lifetime. So if that's you, if you're somebody who when you lift weights, and if I were to tell you, I want you to rest for three minutes between sets and you go, oh my God, after a minute and a half, a lot of times you're that type of person that's drawn to the not ideal workout for building the glutes.

We're building muscle. We're not just trying to feel the burn. That's a totally different mentality. So yes, you do need to focus on intentively how much can I load the bar, and then I need to rest adequately. This might help somebody with what it feels like to strength train properly. So a typical hard workout that this kind of avatar would follow, like a class, right? Let's talk about a class. The whole thing is hard. The whole time it's hard. The whole time I'm moving and I'm exhausted and I'm sweating.

Okay. When it comes to strength training, the hard part is the set. So it's when I'm doing the set that it's difficult. Everything else is easy in strength training. The rest period is a rest period. I'm sitting there. I'm not dying in between the sets. It's the set that's hard. It's the set that's heavy. That's where you put your effort. Then you rest for a while until you're ready to put out max effort again. That's the reason right there. You hit it on the head at the end.

Max effort for each set. See what happens when you go right back at it because you feel like, oh, I'm good. I can do it again. Sure, you can do it again. But as time goes on, so when you go from one minute to two minute to three minute, your ability to put out more increases. When you're resting longer. The same person who says, I'm fine. I can do the set again. They feel okay because their heart's not racing anymore. They're not tired. So they feel like they go right back to the set.

That same person, they add one minute to that rest period. They'll be able to lift more weight. They add another minute to that rest period. They're going to be able to lift more weight. That's what all the science and the study shows. It peaks around three to five minutes. Beyond five, you're not getting any extra benefits of resting. You get max benefits by resting from three to five minutes you could put max effort towards it. Max effort towards lifting heavy is a huge way for you to build muscle.

Here's another one. The quad dominance that can happen with some people when they're strength training to build their glutes. Typically with barbell squats. They'll do squats. It's like all they ever notice is their quads growing and developing. This is really a technique thing and a connection thing. This can be corrected with good exercise programming. It's very frustrating because this person's actually doing a good exercise, but they notice their quads get all the development. Their glutes lag behind. That's a programming issue and a technique issue that we can always address.

Another issue is eating well and then cheating on the weekend type of deal. I talked about that earlier. You talked about that on the under-eating side. There's also the other side of that too on the over-eating side. This tends to be somebody who has tried to reverse diet or bulk in the past and felt like it failed. I've seen this example. You nailed one example before where somebody eats really, really clean and they're dialed. They're hitting their macros all week long. The weekend comes along and then they under-eat.

They skip a meal. They don't hit their protein intake. They're not getting enough adequate macros and calories in order to build. That's one case. The other case is the person that's listening right now and they're like, I've tried to bulk before and I swear I just put body fat on or I know I put body fat on. A lot of times what that is an indicator of is they have so many days in a row where they eat really good and then they have a day or two where they over-eat and they over-eat food that they shouldn't over-eat and that puts them in such a surplus they do put body fat on.

That's a good point. Lastly, I'll say this. If you're somebody that is afraid of building in the sense that you're afraid of eating in a calorie surplus, you're afraid of gaining too much weight but you want to build your glutes, take your scale and throw it away because as the scale moves up, which it will if you do this right, even if it's just muscle, it will go up, that can sometimes freak people out and they can over-correct. They can over-correct by cutting their calories suddenly and then they destroy all chances for building.

So take your scale, throw it away, just look at how much weight you're lifting on the bar. And there's a reason for that. When you increase calories, a lot of times comes carbohydrates, a lot of times comes water. More carbohydrates, more water, more calories, your muscle bellies are going to fill up more, you're going to be holding more of that and so many times when you look at the scale and you see three pounds or five pounds go up and you freak out or you look in the mirror and you look fuller or you look bigger because your body's holding more water.

It's not even body fat and a lot of times that will send somebody the opposite direction when they're actually right on the right course. By the way, when it comes to building the glutes, this is actually universal in the sense that it's considered attractive universally. When they do studies on what is considered attractive for men and women across the board, there are differences in what men in some countries deem attractive in terms of size. So you see size differences. But there's this ratio that seems consistent across the board, and it's a hip-to-waist ratio.

Now, why is that considered attractive? Well, here's what we find in the data. When a woman has well-developed glutes and she doesn't have a huge waist, she's more fertile, has more healthier children, childbirth is easier, and also the glutes in general. This is both true for men and for women, and I'd like to say this as well. When women are polled, what body parts they find most attractive in men, the glutes, okay, actually rank pretty high. Even though we don't talk about this often, women identify men with strong glutes as attractive as well.

Why? The glutes are very involved in locomotion and athleticism. They give us power. It's one of the biggest muscles on the human body. In comparison to other primates, it's massive because we stand on two legs. Strong hips make you a strong person. It also is a sign of vitality. So, there's a reason why well-developed glutes and a tight waist are universally attractive. It's a very obvious signal of health and your physical ability, and like you said, power, and just having those glutes centered. They're very centered to almost any kind of physical pursuit.

So, this is definitely one of those that signals an immediate health. So, one of the fears that people have is, you know, they'll say, well, won't eating more just make me fat? Why don't I gain just a bunch of body fat? It depends. It really does depend. If you have a modest surplus, you're not eating thousands of calories above what you're burning. Let's say you're eating 500 calories above what you're burning, and it's high-protein, whole food-based diet, and the reason why we say whole foods is whole food-based diets prevent you from eating way too much, okay?

So, heavily processed foods are engineered to make you overeat. So, what happens if you eat a surplus with heavily processed foods is that surplus very easily goes up to 1,000, 2,000 calories above what you burn. So, 500 calories above what you burn, it's considered a moderate surplus, high-protein, and then heavy strength training. What you end up gaining is muscle, mostly. You mostly gain muscle. In fact, in some cases, you see body fat percentage go down a little bit because although you gain a little bit of body fat, you gain more muscle than body fat, and your body fat percentage as a percentage of your body weight goes down, which is really, really interesting.

Building muscle also boosts metabolic rate, making it easier to get leaner later on. Now, the reverse is a problem. Somebody who goes in too high of a deficit or is chronically in a deficit, the body tries to adapt to this deficit by reducing its calorie output, and one of the ways it does this is it gets rid of muscle. So, you can actually lose weight on the scale and actually go up in body fat percentage because you lost muscle, not to mention it slows down your metabolism, making any future fat loss very, very difficult.

This is one of the harder ones or points to coach on a podcast with because it really, who I'm, who's listening or who I'm talking to dictates how I communicate this message on, because you can't help but think that people are going like, okay, well then, how much do I bulk with and, you know, can you say something like modest? Yeah, what's the right amount? But it really depends on who I'm talking to. So, I'll paint the picture of like the two different scenarios of somebody that I would be communicating this to.

Scenario one is the client I've had and she has kept her body weight low for her most of her life. She stays pretty lean. She's incredibly afraid to add any weight on the scale. As soon as she goes one or two pounds up on the scale, she instantly goes into a cut. Also, the same type of person, the person who was really overweight most of their life, finally lost weight and got in shape, is terrified of ever getting weight again. Those people tend to be almost too modest on their calorie surplus.

They're afraid to add enough calories to build muscle. And so, for that person, I'm encouraging them to push, push more calories. We could do probably 250 to 500 easy more calories and you need to do that in order for us to build. Now, we know what all the research says. You need about a Greek yogurt more of a calorie surplus to build muscle. That's only like 150 to 175 calories. But the client that's scared to death to add calories is always actually in maintenance or deficit a lot of times.

And so, we need more than 175. You got to get a close gap. I got to close that gap and push that client more. Then you have the other client who's like, cool, I'm on a calorie surplus. You're giving me the green light to eat more calories. And they're more likely to overeat or they're the ones that go at nighttime and they snack on more foods or high calorie foods. And instead of just adding it about 250 calories, they'll push 700 to 1,000 calories more because they're being totally bulk.

And so, that person I'm telling to pull back a little bit and be more modest. You have to really have that self-awareness. And the order makes a big difference. Build first and then reveal. Don't do it the other way around. Building helps you reveal easier, okay? So, we boost metabolic rate, makes fat loss easier later on. Now, trying to cut first and build later is a backwards order, makes things much more difficult. Another key to all of this is to hit what's considered optimal protein intake.

So, you'll get a number from the RDA, which is how much protein you should have every day to not be in a dangerous place with low protein. That's what the RDA would tell you. Optimal protein is way higher than that. We have a lot of data to support this. Now, what is optimal protein for muscle building? About one gram of protein per pound of body weight, okay? If you're a 150-pound female or if that's your goal body weight, aim for 150 grams of protein a day.

By the way, there's lots of data that shows just how great this is. In fact, there was this American Journal of Clinical Nutrition did a study where they took trained people and they put them in a calorie deficit, okay? So, everyone in a calorie deficit. One group went lower protein. The other group went higher protein. They both strength trained. Want to know what the difference was in terms of fat loss and muscle gain? The higher protein group gained muscle and lost fat. The low protein group lost fat and lost a little bit of muscle.

That's how big of a difference high protein makes. So, don't skip out on that and be consistent on a daily basis with that. So, here's the order that you'll kind of want to consider here. Protein first. So, make your meals protein-centric. Remember, one gram of protein per pound of target body weight. Carbs, you need those to fuel your training. You need them for strength, for power, and they are involved in some recovery. So, you need those carbohydrates. Then you want the fats to round out your calories and protect your hormones.

If your fats are too low, ladies and gentlemen, it's true for both, your hormones will tank and you will not have the anabolic hormones or the healthy hormone profile that you need to build muscle and burn body fat. You want to build in a modest surplus while you train heavy. So, for most people, it's between 300 to 500 calories above what's considered their maintenance calories. That's considered modest when you're doing good strength training with it. And then when you're ready, after you've built some muscle and everything looks good, you reveal with a patient cut.

Don't go crash cut. Don't do a crash diet. Go, again, 300 or 500 below maintenance now, modest, and then watch what happens. So, what it looks like is build, feed, and reveal. So, here's an example. Now, this is not exact. If you want something that's a little bit more detailed, you can go to mapsmacro.com and you'll enter some information in there and it'll kind of spit it out for you. But here's what it generally looks like for most people. About a gram of protein per pound of target body weight.

Your fat intake is typically around 0.4 grams per pound. And make sure you have carbohydrates around your training, at least, right? Have your carbohydrates before and after. That doesn't mean you don't have carbs on the other meals. I think it's a good idea to have it on the other meals, but definitely surround your workouts with carbohydrates. You want to build your plate. You don't want to have these, like, rigid meal plans. But essentially what you're doing is you're picking a protein, you're picking a carb, you're eating the vegetables, add a little bit of fat if your protein is lean.

Otherwise, go with a fatty cut of meat. This is my favorite way to get fats. So, I'd have to try to add fats. Like, rather than eating a chicken breast, I'm going with thighs. I'm eating ground beef. And then you're kind of set. All right, fellas, let's talk about protein. Good choices of protein. I'll name a couple of my favorites. I love 90% ground beef, and I love chicken thighs. Those two are kind of staples for me. Yeah, I like chicken thighs over breast. A lot of people are going to go the chicken breast route because it's so lean and low calories.

I push my clients, especially my clients that want to build their butt, to chicken thighs. I love things like filet mignon. I'll even throw ribeye in there. Yes. These fattier cuts. Instead of eating something lean, like chicken breast or turkey or white fishes, and adding oils or adding butters, I'd much rather have a meat that's a fattier cut. Like I said, like the ribeye, like the ground beef. Way more enjoyable that way. Yeah, I love doing that, especially like a tri-tip or add something with a little more fat to it.

And then also, in the morning, have to get those eggs in there and then scramble it with my steak. Yeah, whole eggs. Don't take the yolk out. By the way, they did a study, I'll just mention this study, on whole eggs versus egg whites. They controlled for the protein, same amount of protein. But whole eggs had significantly higher effect on muscle protein synthesis. This is how they measure muscle growth. There are nutrients in the yolks that make your body want to build muscle, so eat whole eggs.

Well, and speaking of nutrients, I'm going to choose things, if I am going to eat like a fish, I'm going to choose fish like salmon, right? So again, people tend, like the chicken breast thing, they go to this low calorie thing. People when they do fish, they go white fish and low calorie type fish. You get way more nutrient benefits getting a cut like salmon. And so I'm going to choose a fattier, higher calorie, but better for you type of fish. And then kind of easy protein, right?

Just real fast, like cottage cheese, real easy high protein. Greek yogurt. Greek yogurt. They now have those protein Greek yogurts, so like the little cup for like 20 grams of protein. I love those. Really, really easy, high quality protein. And if you're plant-based and things like tofu or getting a vegan protein powder totally makes sense. And even whey proteins, if you're somebody who doesn't, that's not lactose intolerant, can handle whey protein and bars, those things are okay. The goal is, and you notice that that wasn't one of our top list, like I'm going to push my client to get everything they can through whole foods, but I also understand that it is really difficult sometimes for a client to hit those grams of protein consistently, and it's important we do it consistently every day.

That's where we start to add in those shakes or bars to make sure we do that. All right. Let's talk about carbohydrates. I'll mention, in my opinion, the best, most versatile, easiest to digest king of carbohydrates, rice. Yes. White rice, by the way. White rice. White rice. So here's the deal. People think brown rice is better than white rice. It's actually not true. White rice is easier to digest. Brown rice contains something called anti-nutrients that actually reduce the absorption of certain nutrients. There really isn't that much more fiber in brown rice to make a difference.

It doesn't taste as good. Just go with white rice. I'm going to do one that a lot of people think is bad for some weird reason that is a great one, which is white potatoes. Love potatoes. Regular old baked potatoes are great, and I don't know if it's kind of bad rap because people put sour cream and cheese and bacon bits on it. It's probably the extra stuff. And so people don't think of it, but a regular old baked potato, white potatoes, yellow potatoes, those are all great.

Red potatoes is a great source of carbohydrates. Stores well. Mixes with all different meats and things really easy. And so I'm a big fan of potatoes. And you have things like fruit, all fruit, good sources of good, healthy carbohydrates. I love berries. I love berries because berries are high in fiber naturally. In fact, eating berries in the morning with your protein really sets you up for really, really good blood sugar control later on and satiety because you have your proteins, your fats, and your fibers. Those three in that order have the best effect on satiety.

Also huge fan of sweet potato. Sweet potato is one of the few things I can eat straight with nothing on it. It has such good flavor to it. It makes my digestion so good. They taste good. They're easy. Again, mix with all types of meats they go well with. And so real easy to cook. You can prep them big and mash them up and make them like a mashed potato. You can cook them in the oven like bake. You could slice them and make them in like slice almost like a scallop potato or what like that.

I've made them all different ways and they go with all different meats. All right, let's talk about fats. Now here's the thing about fats. Rarely have I ever had to have a client add fat to their diet unless they were so afraid of fat that they went super lean with everything. So typically fats you don't need to add if you're eating fatty cuts of meat and fish. That being said, if you're finding yourself struggling with hitting or getting enough fat, avocados are great. Olive oil is great.

Butter is perfectly fine. Dairy fat is perfectly fine. But again, one of my favorite that's easy is an avocado. Avocado is also very high in fiber. I've always just coached my clients to cook with olive oil, ghee, and butter. I mean, if you are cooking your meats and you're using those as your base, you're probably getting plenty of healthy fats, especially if you're not eating all extremely lean cuts. If you're enjoying your cuts of meat and you're cooking in those sources, avocado oil, olive oil, ghee, or butter, and you pretty much take care of your fats by just preparing it in those things, you're all set.

All right, so you follow this. You listen to our advice. What should you expect? Let's say that. What should you expect? Well, here's what you should expect. The scale will climb slowly, okay? You are building, so you may go up a little bit of weight. Duh. We're adding muscle. But the mirror starts to get better. Things start to feel firmer. By the way, your friends or your spouse or your boyfriend will probably comment you look leaner even though you're heavier. There's a good sign that you're building muscle.

You want to judge your progress by things like the tape measure or body fat test, but my favorite way to judge progress is how strong you are. Are you getting stronger? If you're getting a lot stronger, you're definitely building muscle. That matters. Well, especially on those lifts that build the butt. I want to see that hip thrust. I want to see that squat go up. Those movements are going up and we're in a calorie surplus. We're building, but I do want to add something to the scale thing that can be deceiving and throw people off because you made the point that it should be like this slow kind of gradual.

Initially, when you take somebody who hovers around a maintenance or deficit all the time that's afraid to reverse diet or bulk and they bulk for the first time, I made the point earlier, sometimes there is an initial three to five quick pounds that come on that's a water weight. It's water and glycogen. That's right. And stay the course because when you know it's that, what will happen is you'll see the quick rise three to five and then it'll just stay there. It'll stay there for a while and hover and then you might see kind of ping pong back and forth one pound up or down, but that's really common and a lot of times people course correct way too early because they see that jump right away.

And that jump in the mirror sometimes too, it can make you look fuller or feel closed a bit tighter and clients would freak out. And I'd have to break it down, look at it. Mathematically, it is impossible that we put three pounds of fat on. You do not add 150 to 200 calories a day into your diet and we put three pounds of fat on last week. All that's happening right now is your body is holding some more water and don't worry, you're gonna level off right there.

Yeah, 100%. And remember, building muscle is kind of a slow process. So give it months, not weeks, definitely not days. Give it at least a couple months, two to three months. That's how long it should take for you to be able to see if you're doing things right, some good genuine muscle being built. Well, you say this really well in the podcast a lot. Increase calories, then follows strength, then follows muscle. That's right. So that's the order and that's what it looks like. Give it time.

All right, so I have some common questions that I think we should answer that I guarantee people are thinking right now. So the first one, common, won't eating more make me fat? We covered this earlier. It depends how much more you're eating and are you strength training? If you're doing it right with a modest surplus and you're heavy lifting and it's high protein, the odds are you're gonna be gaining mostly muscle. It is crazy how difficult it is if you're eating all whole foods and you are strength training and lifting heavy weight consistently and hitting your protein intake consistently.

It is very difficult to put a bunch of body fat on. It really is. Body fat comes on when people eat way out of bounds. And process things like that. And they're not doing anything. That's right. If you're creating an environment for strength, we're fueling that strength, so therefore it's going towards muscle. That's exactly how you have to look at it. Especially when you're pushing the weight, that's gonna be a novel stimulus. That is gonna send a loud signal to the body that oh my God, we need more muscle.

So all those additional calories get partitioned over to building muscle. Unless you're overeating a sloppy amount of calories. And by the way, even some of those get partitioned over building muscle. But you ate so sloppy and over that some of that also goes to body fat. But that is what it takes to do that. And it's very difficult to do that, hitting protein intake and eating it through whole foods. Yeah, another question people have is like do I need to count my macros forever? No, please don't.

Don't count your macros forever. Now if you have a specific goal, it's a good idea to count. So you're making sure you hit your calories and your protein. But eventually the goal is to not count. You have a relaxed relationship with food and with exercise where it's just consistent. You eat healthy because you love it. And you have a couple rules that you set for yourself. Like no heavily processed foods or no junk food or something like that, or rare junk food. Hopefully at this point you're pretty aware of what works well with your body and then you can navigate appropriately.

Well one of the rules that we give or coach to people like this that we don't actually want to track food like that is to just track protein. That's the only thing. Follow protein and eat whole foods. And then actually feed when you're hungry. Because a lot of times if you are eating whole foods, you're leading your meals with protein and you're hitting your protein intake and your appetite is increasing and you're hungry, that's a signal that your body's trying to build muscle and we want to feed that.

And so long as you make the choices of whole foods and eating protein first, you'll be okay. And you'll end up being just where you need to be calorie-wise and so we've had a lot of clients that actually don't even track calories and all they kind of pay attention to is protein and they follow those signals and have plenty of success reverse dieting. Yes, another question people like, do I need to go like in a straight up surplus or can I try to do something called a re-comp where I'm losing fat and building muscle at the same time?

I'm gonna say this right now, trying to lose fat and build muscle at the same time is very difficult, almost impossible, unless you're a beginner and it's a completely new stimulus. You rarely ever see this happen on a consistent basis. In fact, the only times I've seen this happen with people who have some experience is when people are in a good surplus. This is sometimes when you'll see that happen but don't try chasing the perfect calorie number so that you do two things simultaneously because that'll just keep you from progressing in any direction.

I'm not a fan of this because the person who tends to ask this question, going back earlier when I said there's kind of two avatars. They're trying to stay lean. They're so afraid of putting any sort of weight on that they're like, can I just do a re-comp where I'm just barely, and so a lot of times that's the client I was talking about earlier where I've gotta push them to, hey, you need to eat 500 more calories when in reality, I know what the research says.

I know what you don't need 500 more calories of a surplus every day to end up building muscle but the client who thinks that they're eating at maintenance many times is eating in a deficit because they're scared to death to put weight on and normally that's the same person who's afraid to do a bulk or a reverse diet. They'd rather do a re-comp where they don't put on any weight on the scale. Very difficult to do. Yeah, and then another question is like, what about the anabolic window, right?

Aren't I supposed to eat at particular times or whatever? Overrated. This is splitting hairs. Just hit your macros, hit your calories. Make sure you eat multiple meals a day. Doing it all in one meal makes things very, very difficult. Strength train properly, get stronger and watch what happens to your body. By the way, we were trainers for years. We've had the podcast now for over a decade and we have live callers that call in all the time and lots of our live callers are asking about stuff like this and what's cool is we meet with them, we give them advice and then we invite them back on in the show in 30 days or 60 days or 90 days and it's amazing because first off, it always works but what I love about it is it always shocks people.

They'll come back on and be like, okay, I'm thinking of one woman in particular, she's like, I didn't believe you guys but I listened to the show, I trust you, so I did what you said and I cannot believe how good I feel, I can't believe how much muscle I've built, how fast my metabolism is and I didn't even gain a bunch of body fat even though I was eating way more food. In fact, it's crazy, I'm eating all this food and I'm maintaining a lean body fat percentage.

This really does work. The callers we get all the time that I love to talk to which are the ones that were so afraid to do a bulk like this and then they follow the diet, they follow the plan and we warn them, hey, it's very normal, you're gonna put weight on the scale, you might see this, we might see body fat go up a little bit, the goal is to build muscle right now, don't worry, we'll get lean and they come back and they got leaner, ate more and built muscle which is so cool and they're so blown away that they're, oh my God, I'm eating more than I've ever ate before and I'm leaning out at the same time and it's wild when it happens but if you trust the process, you'll see this too.

That's right, so here's what we have. We have a program called MAPS Abs and Butt. So it's a workout program designed to target those two areas. So it's targeting the core, abs, obliques, it's also targeting the butt, the glutes. Now you do train the whole body but 90% of the program is dedicated to butt and abs. So that's what this program's all about and because it's a brand new program, we're making it 40% off and then what we also did is this, we included a butt building diet guide so it would help you with the reverse diet or bulk part that we're talking about.

We also have a supplement guide for women in there so supplements that women tend to get better results from versus men so these are specific for women and what we're doing is we're throwing in an additional workout program. So two of our most popular workout programs, Muscle Mommy 15 and Muscle Mommy, you get one of those, either one of those, your pick for free when you sign up for MAPS Abs and Butt. So it's mapsabsandbutt.com, the code is LAUNCH, that gets you 40% off and all of the free stuff.

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price.

The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump. Drive into summer during the Woodhouse Ford Summer Sales event. From family road trips to tackling the toughest jobs, a new Ford is ready for every mile ahead.

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