- Don Saladino has trained Hollywood A-listers including Blake Lively, Anne Hathaway, and Emily Blunt.
- His approach is to boost the metabolism by eating enough, sleeping well, and strength training.
- Building muscle creates the "toned" physiques most A-list women want, Saladino told Insider.
Don Saladino is a personal trainer whose clients include Blake Lively, Anne Hathaway, and Emily Blunt, as well as Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, Jake Gyllenhaal, and more.
Saladino told Insider he gets his clients in shape by building up their metabolisms. He prescribes three techniques to achieve that: feeding their body enough, resistance training, and getting adequate sleep.
Then, to create the "toned" physiques many Hollywood women want, Saladino focuses on building muscle.
There is plenty of research that the more muscle you have on your body, the higher your basal metabolic rate.
"If we lose muscle, the ability to burn calories at rest diminishes," Saladino said. "If we build muscle, the ability to burn calories at rest increases."
'Training the metabolism' is key
When he starts working with new clients, many don't realize that their metabolism "needs to be trained," Saladino said.
He tells them that a key part in that is not starving yourself and consuming enough calories: "We always look at calories as some negative thing, but the definition of calories is energy. That's a pretty positive word, right?"
Ryan Reynolds, for example, ensures his metabolism works efficiently by giving himself ample nutrients, Saladino said.
"It's tough to improve your metabolism if you're just diminishing energy, taking calories away, which is what most people assume they need to do if they want to drop weight," Saladino said.
By eating enough, you give yourself energy, which means your "non-exercise activity thermogenesis" (all the movement you do outside of formal exercise) will increase, which means your sleep will improve, which in turn means you'll have even more energy for exercise and will be more likely to make good food choices, Saladino said.
Sleep is one of the best fat-burners available, and it's free, he said. It's when we're asleep that our body repairs too.
"The better quality we can get when we sleep, the more things are going to get fixed, then we're going to wake up, the body's going to be more efficient, and then we're going to be raring to go," Saladino said.
Muscle boosts metabolism
Saladino said he has seen from his own clients' progress that muscle plays a large part in metabolism.
If you are in a calorie deficit without strength training and eating enough protein, you are likely to lose muscle, which will contribute to a drop in your metabolism, Saladino said.
He understands some people worry that training to build muscle will make you look like a bodybuilder but he assures his clients, especially women, that this isn't the case — trying to build muscle will boost your metabolism and create a "toned" physique, Saladino said.
While you cannot "tone" a muscle, the "toned" physique comes from having some muscle on the body, and low enough body fat to see it.
"When I work with some of the biggest females in Hollywood, I just try and get them stronger and build muscle, and they'll end up probably getting the physique that they want and they dream of," Saladino said.