Eat More, Exercise Less And Lose Weight – The Unheard Truth!

Sharon Stills, ND

Hello. Welcome to Mastering The Menopause Transition 2.0. Save your hair, your figure, and your mind. Today we are going to be focusing on the figure and the holy guacamole. In this interview, you want to be here; you want to be listening, because if you are thinking that you need to lose weight or that you are not happy with your figure, we are going to have the answers here for you. This is exciting. I am so excited to share this information with you.

My guest is Stu Schaefer. He is a 20-year award-winning celebrity weight loss coach. When he said yes, he would come out, and I was like, Thank you. Specializes in helping people put their bodies into a thermogenic state so they burn fat 24 hours a day and lose weight like they did in their 20s. He struggled with anorexia in his teens, and when he overcame his eating disorder, he realized he wanted to help people create their perfect bodies in a healthy, sustainable way. Since then, Stu has helped thousands of people transform their bodies and empower themselves to create massive success in their lives. I have friends and colleagues who have done his program, and I have seen the results, so that is why I brought him here to share with you today. Welcome, Stu. It is amazing to have you here.

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Awesome. I am glad to be here. We are really going to dive into some great information, I am sure.

Sharon Stills, ND

I love that. I did not know you had your own. We talk about weight and we always think about women, but men have issues too. It is beautiful that you took your struggle and turned it into a passion, you are helping so many people now, and I love that.

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Thank you. Yes.

Sharon Stills, ND

I was telling Stu before we came live that a lot of times my guests give me lists of questions, and I am like,Yes, maybe we will talk about them, and we just have a conversation. But his questions, I am like, I do not know. We have to go through all of these because they are going to be so pertinent to what you want to know. Where do we start? I mean, there are so many fallacies about weight loss. What would you just like to open up with to tell the ladies listening before I start throwing bullet points and questions at you?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Yes. Look, 99.9% of people try to lose weight incorrectly, okay? They do that from a young age. If you are listening or watching this right now, the thought has probably crossed your mind: Hey, why does all this stuff that I used to do that worked not work anymore? There is a real easy answer for that, okay? You have probably always done it wrong, like most people. In your 20s and 30s, the body is very resilient, so even if you are doing it wrong, you can still get results. When you hit midlife, your body gets sensitive enough, and we all get more sensitive as we get older. Think of a 90-year-old, and this is the turning point where all the stuff that you were doing wrong you cannot get away with anymore, and all you who think, Well, this always worked; it might not have been good, but you lost weight in spite of it, and now you cannot get away with it. That is really one of the keys to what we are talking about, as things change a little bit, and it is not always hormones.

Sharon Stills, ND

Alright. What are the things that change? Because typically, what have women done? We have gone to the gym, exercised our faces off, done cardio for three hours, counted our calories, and existed on barely nothing. What should we be doing?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Okay, good question. First of all, there is a big lie in the fitness and health world, and even doctors perpetuate the lie unknowingly. This is what we are taught; it is what I was taught; it is what everyone is taught; and the big lie is that the only way to lose weight is a calorie deficit. That is a lie. Here is the truth: every different food that you put in your body has a different chemical reaction in your body, and that affects your hormones differently. The secret is that you have to put the right foods at the right time and in the right combination into your body to create the correct chemical reaction. Now, like I said, I did not know this. If you line up a thousand experts, including doctors, 997, and I think three out of a thousand are probably aware of what I am talking about, 997 will tell you you will have to be in a calorie deficit, and this is what every nutritional diet is predicated on, and it is what every exercise program is predicated on. They are all trying to get you to burn as many calories as possible and consume as few calories as possible, and this wrecks your body. It causes something called repressed metabolic syndrome, and all that means is that now your body stores fat. It cannot burn fat. Instead, you burn muscle. You slow your body down and wreck it; this is why so many people fail.

Sharon Stills, ND

How do you come out of the repressed metabolic?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Repressed metabolic syndrome.

Sharon Stills, ND

Syndrome.

Stu Schaefer, CPT

The only way to reverse it is to put your body into what is called a thermogenic state. Now, this is a fancy Harvard term too. Okay. All this means is that now you are causing your body to burn fat 24/7, and when you eat, it does not go to the fat cells. As I said, you burn fat, you reset your metabolism, and you activate or reactively state your body’s fat-burning mechanism. These are two separate things. We are all born with a fat-burning mechanism, but when we do this typical weight loss, we shut it down and deactivate it. When you put your body in a thermogenic state, you reactivate it and reset your metabolism. Actually, five things happen, and this is what I do with all my clients; it is amazing. In any age—okay, if you are listening now, I am just going to tell you—you can do this at any age in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s; I have even had clients in their 80s. Your energy goes through the roof; you start burning fat all the time, even if you are sleeping; your appetite normalizes; your cravings vanish; and your hormones normalize naturally. That is what is so exciting, and this is how you reverse it by repressing metabolic syndrome. Okay. That is the thermogenic state.

Sharon Stills, ND

I just want to go back to your program. There is no counting calories, and if women are eating, how many calories a day are they eating? Because not all calories are equal. Can you explain that a little?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Yes. Let me explain really quickly how I figured this out because I do not see it anywhere; it is not in any of the books, and nobody teaches this. Okay. I got the same education everyone else does. I learned this through 20 years of trial and error. Okay. 20 years ago, I had a client named Ashley, and Ashley was your typical overweight woman, she was 37, a little bit younger, and sometimes women’s bodies can change as early as their late 30s, sometimes it hits in their 40s, sometimes in their 50s, well, Ashley comes in, I am in my office finishing my lunch, I stuff food in my mouth, okay, and she is sweating and she says, “Yes, I need to lose 40 pounds,” I said, Okay, in my mind I am thinking, Okay, she is probably eating too much and she is probably eating sugary snacks and all this stuff and okay and she goes, “Well, I have noticed all your clients get results,” okay, this is 20 years ago, I am a little bit ashamed of this but I was a little arrogant at the time, I am not arrogant anymore, but it is 20 years ago, okay, and I am thinking, okay, I can help you, I know what I am doing, she said, “I have tried everything, I can not lose weight, my body will not lose weight,” I said, “Yes, right, okay, I can help you,” she signed up with me and nothing worked, okay, I am beating her up in the gym for an hour a day, nothing is working, we are cutting calories, nothing is working. We do the, at the time it was not keto it was Atkins, nothing is working, we tried grapefruits, okay, nothing is working, we tried 200 ounces of water, nothing is working, she is sitting there crying in my office, I am thinking I am a total failure, everything I thought I knew I do not know, and it was like this totaled moment where I thought I should just give up the profession, I said, “Look, Ashley, I am not going to quit until we figure this out because I am just like that”, I just do not accept failure, I knew there was a way she could lose weight, I just did not know what it was, I said, “Ashley, I will work with you for free till we figure this out,” 

I went on a long research quest. I am talking months and months and months, and she is still sitting with me, sticking with me. We are trying everything, but nothing is working. Finally, I stumbled on this rude thing called repressed metabolic syndrome. Well, to put your body in the thermogenic state, you have to eat more and exercise less. It is the opposite of everything we are taught. I go back to Ashley, and I am all excited. I tell her she is like, No, you are crazy, I am not going to do that, I can not even lose weight working out, she is up to 90 minutes a day working out, eating less than 1200 calories, about a thousand calories a day, nothing’s budging, not even a pound, I said, “Please, trust me, let us try it for a week, if you gain any weight we will stop, I promise, I think this is the answer. Okay, 12 weeks later she lost 37 pounds, okay,and she would never have to restrict calories, she was eating more than ever, she was exercising only 30 minutes a day and she is gone, like, what is going on? I said, “This is it; we figured it out.” It was a simple three-step system; anyone can do it. I am thinking to myself, Gosh, I wonder if this would work with my normal clients who are already losing weight.  I asked, Do you want to try this? They said, Sure, then they start losing weight faster than they were before, with no hunger or cravings, eating more, and exercising less. This is how I figured this whole system out, and it is really incredible.

Sharon Stills, ND

Basically, you are telling me we can work out less and eat more. I am assuming we have to eat specific foods or the right kind of foods to lose weight, rather than the total opposite of what we are taught and what we think.

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Yes and no. Yes, it is the opposite of what we think. However, there are four pieces of nutrition; it is called the food quadrant. Number one is what you eat; number two is how much you eat; and number three is the timing of foods throughout the day. I am not talking about a fasting window; I do not recommend fasting, actually, and number four is the combination of foods at each meal. Alright. Well, the combination of foods at each meal is by far the most important, and if you get that one right, you can fudge some of the other ones. You and I both have our mutual friend Betsy, okay, and you can ask Betsy about this; she will laugh and tell you, Yes. When she worked with me, she started losing weight, and she had to go visit her parents up in Maine. Okay, and she is going, Stu, I am blowing it; I am having hot dogs. I am eating ribs, and now she goes, but I am still losing weight. How is this possible? is because she was getting the right combinations; even though she was fudging some of the other things, her body was still able to lose weight. Okay.  That is why you do not necessarily have to eat certain things, as many people might think, like only eat organic or not have carbs. My clients eat rice, they eat potatoes, they eat tortillas, they eat corn—I mean, all the stuff we are told you cannot have to lose weight, they are eating it, but they know how to time it and combine it correctly. Okay.

Sharon Stills, ND

Well, I am like, I hope you have room for a lot more clients.

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Well, here is the thing: they are women over 50. This is not something that you, and I am not working with women in their 20s, do where you just cut out alcohol and you lose weight. I mean, these are folks that have not been able to lose weight, and the reason is because you do not know this, but well, you probably know this, but many people do not know this. Okay, when some diet tells you not to eat carbs, that is just crazy. When a diet tells you to eat more fat or protein, that is just crazy. Okay. Well, there are three kinds of protein, 16 different kinds of carbs, and nine different types of fat, and they all impact the body very differently, and no one specifies this. Most people have a life; okay, they are busy; they do not have time to sit down and research for hours and hours every day. If you are listening to this or watching this and you are like, Yes, I do not know that; it is not your fault; you should not know this; it has taken me 20 years to figure this out, and this is my profession,

Sharon Stills, ND

Let us go back, because I am still kind of stuck on the exercise. Can you walk us through why cardio is not the most useful way to lose weight at this point? Because that is so drilled into my brain, you’ve got to move it to lose it.

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Good question. There are multiple types of exercise; obviously, there is resistance training and there is aerobics; those would be the two main types, okay, and within that, you have three variables of exercise: the intensity, which is how hard it is; the duration, which is how long it is; and the frequency, which is how often you do it. Okay, all these play vital parts and vital roles. Now, here is something you should write down: Okay, this is a nugget right here: exercise should be viewed as a prescription. It is not that less is necessarily better, and it is definitely not that more is better; the exact right amount for your body is going to get you the fastest results and be sustainable. What happens? Well, let me give you three pitfalls that typically happen, especially with women. For whatever reason, women are a little bit more sensitive than men, especially women in midlife, perimenopause, menopause, and even some post-menopause. When you do cardio, all that does, especially if you have repressed metabolic syndrome, and we can go into what that looks like if you would like, but when you have that and instead of burning fat, you burn muscle and store fat, the more cardio you do, the more muscle you will burn off. This is called the vicious cycle.

What happens is this: let us see, if I have someone who is 150 pounds and they want to lose 10 pounds and go to 140, what do they do? They cut calories, they exercised more, and they got to 140, but those 10 pounds that they lost because they did it incorrectly were partially fat and partially muscle. Now they have slowed their body down, and eventually they will generally gain the weight back to 150, but this time at 150, they look different; they do not look as good; they look softer, a little flabbier, and they are eating a lot less just to maintain the 150 pounds. Okay, they go to lose weight again; they do the same thing, and every time they lose weight, they make their body worse and worse and worse over time. That is the first problem, and that is why. Because cardio essentially eats away at your muscle, which is one of the ways to boost your metabolism, now you are killing your metabolism slowly, to a painful death. The second problem with doing too much cardio is that it is stressful on the body. Okay. All exercise is stressful; if you increase the intensity, it is more stressful; if you increase the duration, it is more stressful; if you increase the frequency, it is more stressful. Now, stress is the weight-loss killer. Okay. We are all stressed to the max. If you are thinking, Gosh, I do not feel that stress, You are, okay? We are all stressed, all of us; you have to just assume you are stressed.

As you get older, as I mentioned at the very beginning, the body becomes more sensitive as we get older, and stress is one of those things that the body becomes more sensitive to. Too much stress will trip the adrenals and the cortisol, and that will prevent you from burning fat. It can also cause insulin resistance and throw your other hormones out of whack. That is number two. Number three is if you do too much activity and are not eating enough, which most people do not because we are programmed to reduce calories. This happens to a lot of my clients. I had a client a year and a half ago named Robyn. Okay, Robyn was 54, and she ended up losing 28 pounds or something like that when she first started with me. The very first month she lost 9 pounds, which was amazing. Then she stopped, she just plateaued, and she was like, Yes, this is the way they can never breakthrough. I think it is 174. It is the way they can never break through. I said, “Robyn, you are using your mindset against yourself, by the way, mindset. But nonetheless, you are walking and doing cardio an hour a day; I did not tell you to do that. I said, “Robyn, do you want to lose weight or do you want to do the cardio? ” She was like, I really want to lose the weight, I said, “Okay, then we need to go to 30 minutes three times a week,” she said, “No, no way, I had to settle on 45 minutes, three days,” she just could not comprehend it, okay, she loses a pound the very next week, she gets to a weight she has not seen in ten years then she goes to California for Thanksgiving for two weeks comes back another 2 pounds lighter, now she lost 3 pounds and I say, “Robyn, that is not even the best part, you just flew, you are holding the water, you are probably going to lose another 2 pounds by the end of the week,” and she did, now she is 5 pounds down below the weight that she is never been able to get for ten years by reducing the exercise and the first thing she says to me is, “Great, should I add back in the cardio? “I say, “No, these are the three pitfalls because when you do too much and you do not eat enough, the body thinks it is going to be starving and everything downgrades and it goes into this lockdown mode. This is why you have to be so cautious.

Sharon Stills, ND

I am laughing because I think I am like Robyn. Because I love hiking. I could hike an hour and a half every day, but I have cut it back, and I was thinking, I was going to ask you, and then you just said, When you are at a great weight now, like, can I start hiking more, or is that not allowed?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Here is really the crux of everything. Yes, you can do more activity, but you need to support it with the correct nutrition as well. Here is the problem my clients run into: They cannot eat enough; I am telling them to eat more, and they are telling me I cannot eat anymore; I am full; this is too much food; I physically cannot eat anymore; and my answer is, then, do not do the extra physical activity. There is stuff in their faces all day long; they are eating and eating and eating and eating, losing weight, losing weight, losing weight, losing weight, but if they wanted to do more activity, you could do that, but you would have to eat more, and they are stuffed to the brim, and it is a fine balance.

Sharon Stills, ND

I just want everyone to. This sounds too good to be true. I know, Stu, I have seen his work; this is vetted. This is like a dream coming true. It is like, My God, eat more and exercise less; this is the best solution we have ever been looking for. I mean, it is so profound, and it is so outside the box that we are used to. I want to go back because you said the repressed metabolic syndrome. For someone listening, how do we know if that is us?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Okay. Let me kind of explain this on a little bit of a scientific level, and I will not get too technical. There are certain enzymes and hormones in the body that need to be produced to burn fat. Okay. I will just list some of these. Obviously, there is some insulin; people have heard of that; you need something called glucagon; there is something called hormone-sensitive lipase; there is something called lipoprotein lipase; and there are two hormones called leptin and adiponectin. Okay, all these work together. You see, the body is really designed to stay in balance. Well, when you are eating incorrectly whether you eat too much, you eat the wrong thing, you do not combine the foods correctly, you are not eating enough, you are starving the body, you are over-exercising, you are causing stress or in some cases, you may have a gut issue, an autoimmune or a thyroid issue that can start throwing these normal hormones and enzymes out of whack and then you go into this repressed metabolic syndrome where now you are producing the wrong hormones in the wrong ratio at the wrong time and now this causes your body to store fat very easily, it puts protective barriers around your fat cells making it almost impossible to burn fat and now when you eat instead of fueling the muscles like you are supposed to everything goes straight to the fat cells and it kind of deprives the muscles, okay, this is repressed metabolic syndrome, how do you know? Well, sometimes you are cold, and sometimes there is fatigue. If you are trying to do everything under the sun and you cannot lose weight, you have repressed metabolic syndrome. If you are one of those people who has done a ton of diets over time, it is very likely you have repressed metabolic syndrome. If you are not eating very much and you still cannot lose weight and you are not hungry, if you have no appetite, you probably have repressed metabolic syndrome. These are the telltale signs.

Sharon Stills, ND

Which is probably a lot of women who are listening. Because those are very common signs and symptoms that I see in my office all the time. What would be an example? Can you kind of give us an example? Do you work? Is it the same program for everyone, or are there different programs depending upon what your personal issues are? Or does everyone eat the same food, the same combinations?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Good question. Well, as you know, there are certain consistencies or universal kinds of things with the human body. Okay, this is why we are able to treat diabetes. Now, there are certain intricacies or uniquenesses about people, like food intolerances, how their gut digests certain foods, whether they have an autoimmune disease, or things like this. There are certain principles that are universal, and then there are certain ones that are nuanced per person based on how their body responds. Now, let me tell you the difference really quickly between a good coach and a bad coach. A good coach will say, Just do this and you will be good, or I am sorry, a bad coach will say that, My mistake, a bad coach will say, Just do this and you will be good. It does not work like that, okay? Any good coach out there has a good idea; they should understand the physiology, and they will be able to give you a good prescription, but then they all have to see how your body responds, and based on how it responds, make tweaks and adjustments. I will give you an example. I have had clients over the years who could not lose weight. There are a couple that popped into my mind: one gal was in Texas, and I cannot remember her name off the top of my head. I have a gal right now named Ronda, similar; she is also from Texas, but it was not Ronda. 

This gal had migraines and she wanted to lose weight and she wanted to do a surgery to lose weight but the doctors would not do the surgery because she had migraines and they thought she would react poorly to the medication, okay, for the surgery and I said, “Yes, I know what is going on, you are eating certain foods that are triggering your body that may not be showing up on a food sensitivity test and if you cut these foods not only will your migraines go away you will lose weight faster and easier than ever before too,” she said, well, this was a minister’s wife, okay, they owned a church, she said, “I am not sure,” it is like you just said, sounds too good to be true let me give it a shot, well, the first four weeks she lost four pounds which was more than she would been able to lose in five or six years, migraines completely went away, she added in a food and within a day the migraines came back and that food was brussel sprouts, okay, brussel sprouts.  What I found is that there are a lot of healthy foods that a lot of women in midlife should not be having. I will give you the top four foods that tend to interact poorly with women in their 50s. I do not know why; I cannot find this in any literature; I know this from failing for 20 years and trial and error and a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of tears shed, but the top four that I see stop women from losing weight more often than anything are tomatoes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and kale. Those are the top four foods I see that make it harder for women to lose weight, and I cannot explain why. Now, there are about 30 foods that I found over the years that if someone has a thyroid issue, a gut issue, or an autoimmune disease,  these 30 foods should be tested and, in some cases, avoided. It happens every time; they always show up, and again, I do not know why; I just learned this through experience.

Sharon Stills, ND

I am so sad. I love broccoli.

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Well, look, most people do. Here is the sad part: all these people are saying, Eat this, take this. What is the thing that has all the cruciferous vegetables and is like a supplement? Take this, Yes, exactly; Take that; Eat all these foods, and all these women start doing it, and then they gain weight, and they do not know why, and then I come in and say, “Cut all that out,” and they go, Really? “I was told to eat this, and then they cut it out and they lose weight, and they go, What? Okay, well, then we figure out that it may be one or two of the foods, not all of them. The reason, again, that this is prevalent is because a lot of women have had these issues their whole lives, but the body in youth has a strong enough immune system; it has not developed any antibodies or anything like that, and you can get away with it. It is a very strange phenomenon. I see it all the time now.

Sharon Stills, ND

Gotcha. Okay. I have a couple of questions that just popped up. I am writing them down so I do not forget. The first one is that you mentioned you do not like fasting. I have to go back to that because so many people promote intermittent fasting and fasting and fasting. I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Stu Schaefer, CPT

I may not make a lot of friends on this, but I am just going to be honest because all I care about is that people get results. First of all, the only professional athletes that do intermittent fasting on a regular basis are sumo wrestlers. I call fasting the sumo wrestler diet. Okay. Sumo wrestlers only eat once per day because they know that is the fastest way to gain weight. Now, let us see: there are four reasons why this happens. Reason number one is that when you are intermittent fasting, it is very stressful on the body. When you are in a fasted state, it raises your cortisol levels. Now, we already talked about why that is the enemy, especially if you are in menopause, perimenopause, or midlife. Your body cannot handle the stress. Anywhere you can cut stress, cut the stress, so when you fast, you are stressed, and you are stressing your body. That is number one. Number two, when you are fasting, it makes your blood sugar very unstable. The first step to weight loss is to stabilize your blood sugar. Okay. What happens is that when you are fasted, the blood sugar goes really low. Okay, great, but then when you eat anything, it causes a blood sugar spike and an insulin spike. This is terrible; it is one of the fastest ways to gain weight, which is not good. The third piece is that when you are only eating a couple times a day, to get enough food, you have to eat big meals. Okay, well, look, we all have something called the nutrition threshold, and if you eat too big of a meal, you go over your nutrition threshold. Now, all that means is that your body can only absorb a certain amount of stuff at one time, and it is no different than vitamin C. Most people know that if you take too much vitamin C at once, your body absorbs whatever it can. You pee out the rest. Okay, well, if you eat too much fat at once, too many carbs at once, and too much protein at once, your body will absorb whatever it can, but you do not pee out the rest; you store it as body fat, okay? The fourth thing is that if you eat too big of a meal, even if it was the most perfect meal on the face of the planet, because it is so big, it is still going to cause an insulin spike, which is one of the fastest ways to put on body fat. This is why I do not agree with intermittent fasting. It can also damage the metabolism; it does it very often, and it is a slippery slope.

Sharon Stills, ND

Wow. Very fascinating. I love hearing the other side of the coin. You make a lot of sense. You lose the weight; how do you keep it off? How do you avoid the yo-yo? What do you do? Are your clients, your clients for life, always on a program, or is there a way that they just learn in their bodies to keep the weight off forever?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Okay. Good question. When we started this off, I said 99.9% of people lose weight incorrectly; they go into a calorie deficit. This is why so many people gain the weight back; we talked about the vicious cycle. When you put your body in a thermogenic state and you are eating more and exercising less, something really interesting happens because the body is designed this way and it likes it. Actually, your progress speeds up the longer you do it. Okay. I have a client right now named Melinda, she had every problem under the sun and she is been with me for five months and she is lost 50 pounds, now she lost 10 pounds before she saw me, it is a total of 60 pounds and she said one day we were doing a group call and I said, “Does anyone have any observations or a question?” She says, “I have an observation,” she says, “I have been doing this now for three months. and I was convinced that my progress would slow down but it has not, in fact, it is speeding up, what is going on?” Well, when you put your body in the thermogenic state and you are fueling it with the right food, you are flooding the nutrients and you are not starving it anymore and you reactivate your fat-burning mechanism and reset your metabolism now your body, the longer you do it the faster you get the easier it is to keep the weight off and you have way more flexibility so you can cheat, you can have all these things. 

I have clients that go out once or twice a week; they get a full dinner; they get the appetizer; they get the entree; they get dessert; they have a glass of wine; and they are still losing weight. Okay. I have clients that eat; all my clients love the wine; one is over 50; they are drinking wine; they are having chips and salsa; these types of things; but once they get their body going, it is so easy to maintain. Are they clients for life? Well, I have clients that stay plugged into my system because they love the support, but I have other clients that got it in 12 weeks; they have lost all the weight they wanted to lose—20 or 30 pounds—and it is easy to keep it off because they have learned what affects their body, and since they have never starved themselves and they are already eating foods they like, there is nothing to go back to; they are already doing what they want.

Sharon Stills, ND

They are drinking wine, or are they eating dessert?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

All of them, Yes. We try to find the thresholds. Look, if you are going to lose weight, I have had clients in the past that would say, Well, I am just not going to drink any wine to lose weight, and I go, Well, are you never going to drink wine again? Well, no, well, then we need to figure out how much you can have and how often you can have it and still lose weight. What is your threshold before you stop losing weight or gain weight? Okay.  What I do with clients is so different than a lot of other coaches. My goal is to try to educate and empower clients to learn: what their body can tolerate, how much, and how often, so that if they gain a little weight, they do not do some knee-jerk reaction and go, It is time to fast or it is time to cut calories. They go, Let me just pull a little bit of the wine out, or Yes, I have been having dessert every night. I have been having that bowl of ice cream; let me just cut that down a little bit. Okay, that is control; that is empowerment.

Sharon Stills, ND

You mentioned something in, when you wrote me a list of questions about label reading. I would love to, and I am writing down my other questions. I have other things to ask you, but let’s do the labels first. Like, why have I got you for the ladies. So let us do labels first: how do you read them the right way? Why are they deceiving?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Yes. Okay. There is a lot of deception with labels; I do not even know where to begin. Okay. Let’s say everyone can relate to what I am about to say. Let us say you are going to buy some ground beef and it says 93% lean, okay? Well, Sharon, how much fat does that have in it?

Sharon Stills, ND

7%.

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Well, that would be a reasonable answer. In fact, it is 45% fat, okay? Now, how do they get away with doing that? Well, because on the label, 93% lean is based on weight, not calories. Well, if you look at food, a gram of protein has four calories, a gram of carbs has four calories, and a gram of fat has nine, so it has two and a half times more calories per weight. On the label, they say 93% lean, but if you were to turn that label over and look at the percent of calories coming from fat, it would be 45%. Okay. This is the same with some of these beef sticks versus beef jerky. A lot of people are eating too much fat. I am just going to tell you that fat is not bad. Okay. You should not eliminate fat, and you should not go super low-fat. But earlier, I said there are nine different types of fats. Well, two out of the nine will help the body; they will help your hormones; they will help your hair, skin, and nails; they will help you become more insulin resistant; and they can help you lose weight. The other seven out of nine do not help you; they have no fat-burning effect on the body, and saturated fat, which is the fat found in animal products consumed at too high levels, will do two things to the body. One, it will cause you to become insulin resistant; it does this by doling the muscles’ insulin receptors, so the insulin cannot put stuff into your muscles like we talked about earlier; it puts it in the fat cells. The second is too much of that fat. Actually, too much fat in general will actually downgrade your thyroid; it will lower your T4 levels, and there is a scientific or medical term for this called diet-induced hypothyroidism, which all that means is that you cause hypothyroidism from your diet. Okay. That is one misconception about the labels. Now the other is if you pick up a sauce, maybe, I do not know, crackers or cooking spray, and you read the nutrition facts and it says fat, zero grams, and then you look at the ingredients and the first ingredient is oil, and oil is 100% fat, how can they put zero fat on the label? Because on the label they put such a tiny serving size. By law, if the amount of fat per serving is under a certain number, they can put zero on the food label. Okay. They might say a quarter of a teaspoon, serving size, a quarter of a teaspoon fat, or zero grams. Well, if you are like a normal person and you use a tablespoon, trust me, it has fat in it, and it is probably 90% or higher fat content. This is how they deceive us.

The other thing is ingredients. A lot of people by now know that high fructose corn syrup is very bad for the body; it causes fatty liver, and it also prevents those two fat-burning hormones that I mentioned earlier, leptin and adiponectin, from sending a signal to the brain to burn fat and increase your metabolism. If you like, I could tell you how that works too; it is very fascinating. People are wise to this thing about high fructose corn syrup, okay, so then labels switched and manufacturers started using something called agave nectar, okay, and people thought, well, that sounds healthy, no, it is just as bad as high fructose corn syrup, well, then they said, okay, the consumer is getting wise to this, so then they changed on the label and they would say maize syrup, M A I Z E, which is Spanish for corn, they started labeling it in Spanish, okay, maize syrup, this, these types of things. Okay.  Why do they do that? Are the food manufacturers out to hurt us? No, but they are out to make a profit. Okay. When you are producing food, the margins are slim, so you have two options: you can increase the price or you can make the food more cheaply. Well, since it is a commodity, it is very hard to raise the price. What manufacturers do is try to find cheaper ways to make it, and they will use ingredients that are not very good and hurt the consumer, and then the consumer gets wise, and then they try to change the ingredient to something else that is really cheap, and on and on it goes, which is unfortunate, but that is just the world we live in. This is why you have to be extra careful. Does that make sense?

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes. Wow. You got me on the lean meat. I mean, I know all these things, but it is like there are only so many levels to how we are deceived. Before we finish up, I have to get your viewpoint if you have one on Semaglutide because that is the biggest thing now and it is in your industry, and you definitely have your own stands and do not go along with the crowd. Have you thought about that?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Yes, I have. As a matter of fact, it is one of the worst things you can do to your body, and let me explain why. I am working with a client right now who was on Semaglutide; she was on Ozempic. Okay. Now here is what happens if they do not tell you about it: as soon as you get off of it, this happens with hormones too, in some cases. I will give you an extreme example. Bodybuilders take steroids; most people have heard of steroids. Well, what steroids do is they are like an androgen; okay, they pump in tons and tons and tons of testosterone into the body. Any time you produce something from the outside, your body stops producing it from the inside because otherwise it will produce too much and it would not do that. What happens is that when a person goes off steroids, a man produces no testosterone. Okay. I have a point here. This is terrible. Now, with Ozempic and Semaglutide, what they do is artificially control your insulin and your glucagon; these are both hormones that are produced from the pancreas. As soon as you stop taking them, you gain weight faster than you ever have before, you have massive sugar cravings, you develop insulin resistance, and your body for one to three years tries to balance itself out. Okay, it is also dangerous for the liver. Yes, is it appropriate? Well, I do not know if it is appropriate. The only people that should really consider taking it are people that actually have a disorder like diabetes because that is what it is designed for, but trying to take it to lose weight will only damage your body in a significant way, and it is a one- to three-year road to recovery.

I have a client right now named Tiffany who just stopped taking it, and all of a sudden the doctor told her, By the way, it is going to take your body between one and three years to recalibrate, and in the meantime, you are probably going to gain the weight back, you are going to have insulin resistance, and you are going to have a lot of sugar cravings. She is working with me because we are trying to combat that and get her body to recover more quickly so that she does not gain all the weight back and so that her insulin can balance out a lot quicker than one to three years. Be careful; it is a trend, it popped up overnight, it is on fire, and it is going to burn out as quickly as it started when everyone started realizing the side effects.

Sharon Stills, ND

Now I have another question. What do you think about keto?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Keto is one of the worst things that a person can do, okay, and there are two reasons for this. Okay. Remember, I mentioned diet-induced hypothyroidism? Okay, one way to trigger that is to eat too many fats; the other way is to not eat enough carbohydrates. Okay. If you do not eat carbs, you get hypothyroidism; if you eat too much fat, you get hypothyroidism; and keto does both. I have seen more women in the last three years with hypothyroidism than I had in the 17 years of my career before that combined. One of the top natural medications that naturopathic doctors are prescribing is Armour. Armour is a thyroid medication because all their clients are struggling with thyroid problems because they are all doing keto. In addition, keto will make you insulin resistant because eating so much fat, it dulls the muscles’ insulin receptors. That is why when someone does it, they do not know they are insulin resistant because they are not eating any carbs, and then when they eat normal again, they blow up like a balloon because now their bodies are insulin resistant and they cannot handle carbs, and that is not good either.

Sharon Stills, ND

Wow. Is there anything else I should ask you? We are just debunking everything here.

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Well, look, this is 20 years of experience in the trenches. Here is the sad fact: A lot of experts do not ever have case studies, and they do not work with a lot of clients personally. What they do is go online, look at a bunch of research studies, and then write a book based on those studies, cite the studies, and this is all in a bubble. Well, here is the problem with the studies: Most of the time they only have 20 to 30 people; that is not a big sample size at all; it is not enough; most of the time those people have never exercised before; most of the time the people are all men; and most of the time the study is only done for three to four weeks; that does not give you good data; in fact, in statistics, what it will tell you is that it may actually give you data that is opposite to what is real; okay, now you are getting not only bad data, you are getting the opposite data, and now people are making all these recommendations that are actually bad because the studies are not good and they do not work with people in real life. You always want to make sure that you have someone who is working with real people, has case studies, has proven it, it is not theory, it is actually a system that works, these are traps, we are online, there is so much information, these are traps you have to avoid. I get a little passion; we are fired up about this because it is sad and a lot of people are struggling.

Sharon Stills, ND

You took the words out of my mouth; I say that all the time. I am a doctor who has been in the trenches for 21 years, and I could not agree more. Thank you for saying that. Wow. I told you guys at the beginning that this was going to be the bomb diggity interview. I did not lead you astray. Is there anything last things that you want to share with the audience—any tips—I mean, you have shared so much already, but anything I missed or you want to talk about before we wrap it up?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Yes. Let me just leave everyone with a couple of keys here. Well, first of all, there is always hope; you are never too old, and your body will never be in too bad of shape for you to be able to repair it and move forward. Okay, that is number one. You are like, Gosh, I am hopeless. No, you are not hopeless. Anyone can do this. I have worked with the hardest of the hard, and you can do this. Okay, that is number one. Number two, I am just going to give you a couple of things to stop eating if you are eating them right now because these are trendy. Number one, do not eat nut butter and fruit; that is a fat-gaining combination; do not eat avocado toast; that is a fat-gaining combination; and do not eat nut butter and bread either. Yes, let me just say that nuts are not a protein; they are a fat. That is one of the biggest misconceptions as well. Yes, I guess we will just leave it at that because otherwise, I will talk for another hour.

Sharon Stills, ND

That is great. Those are things I am thinking about. I feed those to my granddaughter because I am trying to get her to gain some weight because she is in the I do not want to eat stage. That makes total sense to me. What is the best website where women can learn more about you?

Stu Schaefer, CPT

Great. Head over to my website; you will find a lot of great free resources there. It is stuschaefer.com. I will Spell that for you. It is S T U S C H A E F E R dot com, stuschaefer.com. I would love to hear from you; it would be great.

Sharon Stills, ND

Awesome. I am sure they are going to be marching over there really quickly. Thank you so much for sharing such amazing information and really making a wonderful contribution to the summit. I mean, this is why I spend all this time and energy putting on these summits because it is my passion to get information out to the ladies so that they know that there is hope and that they can change their bodies, be healthy, and age gracefully in the body that feels comfortable to them. Thanks, everyone, for being here. You are going to want to listen to this one again and just kind of download it, take notes, and digest it. We will be back with another great interview. Until then. Stay well.