Habits and Hustle - Episode 348: Ebenezer Samuel Shares No-Nonsense Advice on Building Muscle, Burning Fat, and Healthy Eating for Life

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Want to build muscle and lose fat effectively?  In my Fitness Friday episode, Ebenezer Samuel, the Fitness Director of Men’s Health and Head of Training Innovation at FlexIt Fitness, discusses the myth of toning and getting shredded. We also discuss the concept of "calories in; calories out" and what it gets right and wrong. Tune in for actionable diet and muscle-building tips!  Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., is the fitness director of Men's Health and a certified trainer with more than 10 years of training experience. He's logged training time with NFL athletes and track athletes and his current training regimen includes weight training, HIIT conditioning, and yoga. Before joining Men's Health in 2017, he served as a sports columnist and tech columnist for the New York Daily News. What we discuss:  Intermittent fasting  Calories in vs calories out  Society needs more fiber Brown rice vs white rice How to build muscle as we age Toning isn’t a real thing Thank you to our sponsor: Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off To learn more about Ebenezer Samuel:  Ebenezer’s Instagram -  @ebenezersamuel23   Ebenezer’s Articles - https://www.menshealth.com/author/217...   Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it! Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up. Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, Therisage. Their Tri-Lite panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go and I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations and places in my body where honestly I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps,

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BeBold for 15% off any of their products. It's not about what quote unquote diet you're following. It's about, again, what I said, and that's why I was sitting where you were and you were interviewing me, I would say that it does make a difference about the amount you eat. Yeah. Not so much and what you eat is what I would say. Not exactly,

not necessarily the time you're eating it and all that other stuff that goes with it. Yeah. Like all of the, the, the time you're eating it has like, I think bodybuilders do, bodybuilders do multiple meals. Right. Well, I'm saying the time, like if you don eating it has like, I think bodybuilders do, bodybuilders do multiple meals. Right, when I'm saying the time, like, if you don't eat until noon or whatever I'm saying. That I think the more that those are also based on

your body can't break down food. Like we overeat and therefore we're stuck with all this food in us because we're not, we're not digesting it because we're eating so much of it. So like having enough time to digest your food is really good for your system. Yeah, it's interesting because to bring the conversation full circle that's like intermittent fasting is part of where you get the whole calories and calories out idea because it's like, oh, I'm going to take my calorie,

I'm going to take all my calories in like two in like two meals based in whatever it is, four hours, right? Yeah, four. I think eight is a beginning. I think eight for beginners. Yeah. Or most people. Yeah. I believe it's eight, you're right. And so that gets reduced to calories in. I think calories in, calories out was a very meat, it's like a well-meaning idea. And it was basically the way people are telling you to eat is so complicated. So it's like, let's just reduce it to this. But then we get so reductive with it that it kind of, it becomes counterproductive in

this own way. How about like, what's the best, how about, not about this, what's the best way to eat? If we want to build muscle and lose fat, and just, you know, feel better and look better? What would be in your opinion? Um, how I would say I would say you want to have like, like four meals a day, right? And each meal that you want to aim for 20 grams of protein, okay, which is and try to get this from a natural source Make sure you get something green on your plate, right and then get you know Three to four ounces of a carb and if you do that, right?

You and then you want to have you want to ideally have some kind of water on the side And if you do that, um, not some kind of water on the side. And if you do that- Not some kind of water, I have this water. BLK water. BLK water, and BLK water is actually perfect, right? So I think you want to, I think if you do that, it checks a lot of boxes. And then, and again, there's a variety in there, right?

Because your 20 grams of protein can be eggs or chicken or fish, right? And your green vegetable can be something different every time. You're checking a lot of boxes in terms of getting fiber in your system, which is really good. You're checking a lot of boxes with the protein, which your body needs. We're not eating enough fiber though, as a society. So, and how do we, mean we should up that for sure yeah I think it's interesting because I think we've come I think we've come a long way in the fiber conversation just and it's funny because I love white rice which is I can't I know you've had you've had it like five times since we've been here I

mean to be fair I don't know if they have brown they probably have brown rice I probably could ask for it I've kind of enjoyed just getting away from brown rice. But I think we- By the way, white rice supposed to be better than brown rice. Did you know that? I haven't heard this. Oh, it's a new, you should Google it.

You should do a story on it. I heard that there's a whole myth about brown rice versus white rice. I don't remember what the myth exactly is. If I would, I can Google it right now. But I had someone on here recently who talked, who told me about this and it's pretty amazing. Actually, I'm going to, I'm going to Google it white rice versus brown rice. I was a brown rice person too. I've heard I've heard I have heard the thing that brown rice is overrated compared to white rice like

it's not markedly better. It's not markedly better it's not. Yeah white rice tastes so much better too. I'm also Asian so I'm kind of like. I know well I was gonna say I mean you're naturally gonna probably live to 177 because of just all the rice you're eating. But hold on brown rice versus white rice. Okay, if you look at the if you look at the breakdown, it's actually the fiber content and bright brown rice is like, minuscule the higher. But yeah, it's basically a little bit higher, like between one gram and two grams more fiber. And then I'm not finding it properly right now. I'm

gonna I'm gonna look it up and then get back to you on that. But from what I heard, it's not that much different white races. See, again, there's another I think what happens is something gets traction and then everyone just follows the You know follows that and this could be happening right now with the bro. I heard something about white rice And now i'm following that whole thing So don't take my word for it. I think I I could have sworn I heard someone mention that to me and they were like a leading nutritionist. So I'll try to find that information. But that's again why I'm big into like,

it's like if you kind of loosely follow, if everybody loosely followed what I'm saying, right, they're covered. But choose your own carb. Don't let the internet choose it for you, right? Yeah. Choose your own mixed vegetable. Like a sweet potato versus a white potato. Like a russet potato. Yeah. It's like at a high level if you're like planning to try out for like, you know, Or like a competition or something. Exactly. But then that matters. Right. So for the average person who wants to like look a little bit more lean and Healthy and fit have white rice or brown rice. It's not gonna make it so nominally different. It doesn't make a difference

okay, let's talk about aging and Muscle like keeping how do we do this and do it? Well because we do break down more muscle as we age and do it well because we do break down more muscle as we age. So how do we... So that's interesting because the older we get, the more precise we have to get with all with all this stuff, like the healthier we have to eat. And yeah, I mean, so isn't building muscle or older like I believe after 40, especially for men, sarcopenia becomes like a major issue. I think the two things we want to do, or there are three things we want to do. First off, and this is kind of one of those things we're told by modern fitness, is you've got to do the kind of big exercises. You have to lift heavy, okay? And older people should definitely try to

lift heavy. I think every human on the planet should work up to being able to deadlift like their body weight plus at least 50 pounds. And that's not unattainable, right. And you have to take your time to work up there. So I think older, older people shouldn't be afraid to lift heavy, they should do that at least twice a week. When you say heavy though, right? Like the other fear is that, especially as you get older, like you're gonna put your back out or you're gonna hurt, you're gonna injure yourself for like injury prevention. Yeah. So you're saying that shouldn't be something that we focus on. Yeah. I, I think, um, I think two things.

One, I think for a lot of challenging stuff, but go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's mainly like challenge yourself, like get working up to that heavy part. We're working at working up to say your, your body weight plus 50 pounds on a deadlift. You, you might want to train her for that.

Right. Um, you want somebody around who can kind of help you master your form or you want to like watch like a clinic I'll give on the deadlift online with you in like three weeks, right? But I just think don't be afraid of heavier weights, right? And the key is like, is the rep scheme, right? It's like you learn with legger weights how to kind of get your form down. But then you've got like at some point you want to challenge yourself, right? And you're gonna keep the reps low,

you're gonna do like one or two reps and that's fine. I think a lot of people get caught up in, again, more work, right? So it's like, oh, I'm gonna do sets of like 12 and 15 reps, I'm gonna tone, you know? Except toning really know, except toning really doesn't, it's kind of, toning doesn't really exist, right? And it's like, again, Don't talk about that. I think people don't really, you and I may think that, but most people don't

realize that. So why don't you talk about that? I told toning myth. That's a myth. Yeah, I honestly don't even, I barely even know what the word means, right? It's not, it's not. It's funny because when you read,'s magazines do women's magazines say it I don't read it's all they say is like you know tone your you know upper body to toning your arms the word tone or toning is like synonymous with you know abs you know you mean like it's a very common word it's interesting because we because synonymous with, you know, abs. You know what I mean? Like it's a very common word. It's interesting, because we literally,

I'm actually trying to think back to the last time I used it in men's health. I've been in men's health for four and a half years now, and the answer is never. Like, yeah. Because women use the word toning. I don't think men ever use the word toning. Yeah, I think it's almost like

I feel like it got caught up in societal kind of, because of that whole, oh well, we can't say build muscle to women, right? And bulking feeds them out, right? So here, we're going to get them lifting weights because it's going to tone them, whatever. I honestly don't know what the word means. I've been lifting weights because it's going to tone them. I honestly don't know what the word means. It means like, it's like, again, the opposite of flabby would be toned, I guess. I don't know. These are all like, this is exactly my point. And that's why I wanted to talk to you and have you on is because I think so much of

everything is all marketing and branding. And it's not necessarily accurate or true. It's just what we've been conditioned to think because we see it and hear about it all the time. And especially with social media and every ding dong now on social media is a fitness expert, which is a problem. Because most people are getting paid for everything that they're doing or

they have no clue what they're doing. So either option is terrible. So having someone who's a trusted resource like you, who actually takes it super seriously and like learns about this constantly is, I think, a really important thing to talk about. Because you get like analysis paralysis and overwhelmed at all the different information that's out there. Yeah, and I think that is what it is. Yeah, you're right. It is so much kind of like marketing and spin and it gets confusing for people. That's why I'm confused. And this is what I do

for a living practically, you know what I mean? I don't even know anymore. I'm like, I don't know, maybe that maybe I'm like the brown rice, white rice thing. I'm even confused because I'm like, okay, well, I mean, this trusted resource told me and then I look and now I can't find it. But then I'm sure if I don't have the time right this second, but if you dig around long enough for anything, you can back up that resource, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because the internet is a treasure trove of confirmation bias, which is really cool. Exactly. Yeah. But I think toning is like the woman way. And don't take that the wrong way. But it's kind of- How rude. Get off my podcast.

I'm just joking. I mean it sounds like it's in all the women's magazines. It is. Because I feel like guys cut, rip, shred. It's basically the equivalent to that. It is, cut, ripped. So for guys it's cut, rip, shred, build. Yeah.

Women it's tone. What else? Chisel maybe. It's mostly just tone, isn't it? Tone. What else? Chisel, maybe. It's mostly just tone, isn't it? Tone. Yeah. Tone or burn. Yeah.

Burn's a big one. Yeah, yeah. Like burn fat, tone your midsection. Yeah, so they're like, it's like, yeah. And yeah, the guy terms, if you will, are just edgier versions. Yes. Yeah, but it's in, yeah, and yeah, the guy terms, if you will, are just edgier versions. Yes. Yeah. But the men's magazines do have way better workouts that are more effective. I will say that. That's why, you know, I have you here today because it is a truth that matters.

I do know enough to know that lift women are kind of like kind of shown and taught to be lifting lightweight, very lightweight and they actually or no weight and they believe that's actually going to get them to their goal when the truth of the matter is you do need to lift heavy and heavier and challenge yourself get results.