Modern Wisdom - #793 - Menno Henselmans - The New Science Of Using Protein To Build Muscle

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Menno Henselmans is a fitness coach, researcher and an author. The evidence-based nutrition movement is taking off right now. Gone are the days when you trawl random bro forums looking for the special blueberry extract which will improve your protein synthesis. We're using science now baby! So let's speak to a scientist about how to eat for gains. Expect to learn if your body can actually absorb more than 20g of protein per meal, if flexible dieting or IIFYM is a sustainable approach for weight loss, whether caffeine is an effective fat burner, which foods are best for sleep and recovery, the most underrated bodybuilding foods you should probably eat more of and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 10% off all Legendary Foods purchases at https://EatLegendary.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://www.shopify.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://gymshark.com (use code MW10) Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: http://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: http://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: http://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Menno Henselmans. He's a fitness coach, researcher and an author. The evidence-based nutrition movement is taking off right now. Gone are the days that you trawl random bro forums looking for the special blueberry extract, which will improve your protein synthesis. We're using science now. So let's speak to a scientist about how to eat for gains.

Expect to learn if your body can actually absorb more than 20 grams of protein per meal, if flexible dieting or if it fits your macros is a sustainable approach for weight loss, whether caffeine is an effective fat burner, which foods are best for sleep and recovery, the most underrated bodybuilding foods you should be probably eating more of and much more.

Mano is a beast. I love this evidence-based movement at the moment. I love the fact that we are getting to real hard science when it comes to diet, training, nutrition, sleep recovery, all that stuff. And he's one of the underground heroes of it. So there is an awful lot to take away from today. I've been absolutely obsessed with legendary foods lately.

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and using the code modern wisdom at checkout. So if you've got a sweet tooth and you want to keep your gains, head to eatlegendary.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage to

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all lowercase, that's Shopify.com slash modern wisdom to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. This episode is brought to you by Gymshark, the best gym wear on the planet is from Gymshark. So no matter what you are looking for, if you are spending more time in the gym, you will feel better if you've got cool new clothing and Gymshark make the best men's shorts on the planet.

Their studio shorts in dusty maroon, willow green, onyx grey and navy were what I wore throughout all of my trip to LA which you may have seen on YouTube recently. Their crest hoodie is what I am flying in whenever I'm on a flight and their Geo seamless t-shirt is also what I train in every single day. All of their kit is unbelievably lightweight, sweat wicking, it's easy to wash and dry. I mean love, and the fit and quality of their fabrics are phenomenal. Plus, there is a 30 day free returns internationally and you can get 10% off everything site-wide and worldwide. If you go to Gymshark.com and use the code MW10 at checkout. That's Gymshark.com and MW10 at checkout. That's Gymshark.com and MW10. A checkout. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Menno Henselmans.

How much truth is there that your body can only absorb 20 grams of protein per meal? Because this is something that's been floating around for a very long time. So this myth has a kernel of truth behind it, but the idea that the body can literally only absorb 20 grams of protein in a meal is outright ludicrous. The body can easily digest and absorb basically infinite amounts of protein in a meal. There is no practical limit. You'd have to be doing like massive food challenge, hot dog eating contest stuff. Even then it's probably not really a limit. So the problem is that after the digestion and absorption of the protein comes the metabolism stage and there is a limit to how much

muscle protein synthesis the body can stimulate with a single meal. That's called the muscle full effect. Now it seems that if you ingest something like whey protein, which is very rapidly absorbed, a very high quality protein, in resting conditions when you are fed, 20 grams of protein seems to pretty much maximize muscle protein synthesis over the span of a few hours. However, when we start looking at mixed meals, when we start looking at post-workout conditions, protein sources that are not super high quality, not whey protein, things that are matched with fiber, meat for example, which is much more slowly absorbed. Then we see that the absorption limit changes or that the maximum productive amount of protein that we consume in a meal goes more up to 80 grams, at least 40 grams, and in a recent study, seemingly even

100 grams, at least if that's pretty much your only meal for the day. So it seems that the body is quite flexible in how it handles protein. If you fasted beforehand, if you had a workout beforehand, the body can use more protein because it wants to build more muscle. So in that sense, the body has adapted, evolutionary speaking, well to using the protein when there is indeed a demand for muscle protein synthesis, like you can't just eat your way to the Olympia. You have to actually stimulate muscle growth and then the protein will

be used for muscle protein synthesis. Right. So when people were saying you can only absorb 20 grams of protein per meal, what they meant was that was what your body can utilize for muscle protein synthesis. And that seems to have a ceiling, which is raised through exercise through a scarcity of protein over the last period, 24 hours, 20, whatever, 30 hours, something like that. Uh, and also presumably androgens,

whether or not you're on testosterone. Yes. So we have this thing called mTOR, which is a master enzyme and it integrates all of the signals for protein synthesis. Essentially it looks at all the factors that govern whether this person needs to get very jacked or whether we are okay with minimal jackness. And if this person is on a boatload of testosterone,

there are lots of amino acids floating around in the blood and you have thoroughly trashed your muscles with a workout beforehand, then mTOR is maximum effort. If, on the other hand, you are rested, well fed, you have not worked out, then mTOR is like, eh, we're gonna keep it at this level. Right. What is the takeaway for people who are probably training moderately hard, not doing aggressive,

intermittent fasts once per day? What do you think is an acceptable protein target to hit per meal? I think as long as you distribute it roughly equally over at least three meals per day, and you are sandwiching your workouts within a five hour inter meal window, meaning that your workout has to be sandwiched between two workouts within that five hour period so you can shift them. Your workout has to be sandwiched within two workouts, workouts to be sandwiched in two meals. Two meals, right.

Yes. Sorry. So you can have a pre-workout meal, workout five hours after another meal, or you can have five hours before the workout, four hours, say, if your workout is one hour, you have the meal. And then right after you have another meal that counts in terms of the sandwiching requirements and then one other meal somewhat removed from these two other meals, you're probably going to be okay. And at least those meals

should all have at least 20 grams of high quality protein or 0.3 grams protein per kilogram body weight. So that's usually going to be to 40 grams, depending on your size. You're probably fine. If you want to really optimize muscle growth, maybe you want that fourth meal and to distribute your protein more equally and some protein, more protein after the workout versus before, not just right after, but in the periods between the workout and sleep.

That seems to be the most important period, then there are some optimisation there. But for the average gym goer that's not counting every gram of food, three roughly square meals per day, you're pretty good. Okay, how much protein do you actually need? Because this seems to have been thrown up in the air. Is it 0.3 grams per kilo? Should we get up to two grams per kilo? It's all over the place. I conducted the last big math analysis on this together with a true All-Star team in evidence-based circles.

As far as that niche goes, and we have started, we found that in line with pretty much every study that's been done, and we have a lot of research on this, that the ceiling, the maximum effect seems to occur at about 1.6 gram per kilogram per day. That's total protein intake per total body weight, which is in freedom units, 0.7 grams per pounds. That's pretty much the point at which research no longer finds increases in lean body mass if you increase protein intake further, holding meal frequency and the like constant. A recent meta-analysis also verified that for strength development, that is also sufficient.

They came at 1.5, so almost exactly the same number. I reviewed all of the data on this as one of my very first articles, which actually ranked number one on Google for a long time because I was one of the first in evidence-based fitness that just looked at the data and threw out everything that we thought we knew about how much protein you need. Most of the recommendations came from supplement companies and the like and I concluded actually the number doesn't seem nearly as high as almost everyone recommends like one gram per pound was kind of the minimum that was being thrown around to recommend it

and it seems that quite a bit less is also going to maximize your gains now I typically recommend for maximum gains 1.8 gram per kilogram, which is 0.82 grams per pound. That will surely maximize muscle growth. Assuming again, you have those three meals, roughly square meals, and you are not training fast that you have a post-workout meal within at least a few hours after the workout, they're pretty much going to maximize muscle growth. What happens if you eat over that for protein?

Does it just get excreted away or are you risking maybe gaining unnecessary weight that you don't want? Most of it gets oxidized. The body doesn't store protein directly as fat, but protein can still contribute to fat gain in the best controlled research. Metabolic ward studies by Bray et al. for example, find that if you increase protein intake far above requirements, it's simply the calories that counts, not the protein per se, but the protein does contribute towards

fat gain. There have been some studies that contest this, but they are in free living settings rather than a controlled metabolic ward. So I put a lot more stock into the most controlled data. It's just practically difficult though to really overeat on protein because if you go up to like four gram per kilogram, you get people around you do not like it. It's just impractical. Did no one has ever accidentally fallen into doing more than a gram per pound.

No one accidentally does that unless this is the one day where you go to a Brazilian steakhouse, one of those things with the fucking ping pong paddles that's green and they just keep bringing you meat. No one does that by accident. Like you have to work hard to think, you know, you just don't tumble into that much meat. So, okay. Well, I mean, that's, I guess, kind of a stress alleviating for a lot of people that were, I'm probably pretty average weight for most of the guys that are watching like 84 kilos, which I think is like maybe 180, 185,

something like that in terms of, but for me to think, okay, I need to get at least one gram per pound of body weight, like 180 grams of protein per day is to be honest, unreasonable to expect that you're going to get it from food, which means that you then, okay, well, I'll put a shake in. Oh, maybe I'll do a double scoop share. Okay, well, that's 40, but that's still 140.

Am I right? Okay. So I have three meals of 40 grams, which is a lot. That's a ton of meat each time, three times throughout the day, which means I've got a big breakfast and I'm still under. I'm like, okay, well, I better have, and then you start looking at stuff that should I really be using this as like the basis for my nutrition, protein bars and stuff like that. So, uh, reassuring for those of us trying to hit our protein goals.

It's interesting that you say that. I fully agree with that. Funny enough, when you mentioned this to most people that are, that I would consider serious lifters, they're like, it's super easy. But it's only super easy because we as serious lifters have pretty much revolved our whole lives around getting that protein. We've gaslit ourselves into believing that 180 grams of protein per day is an acceptable way to live a dietary life. Yeah, that's a normal regular amount. But only indeed when you have set your whole life around

a meal being protein. Like we think, oh, we need a meal. And the first thing you think about is, oh, how do we get protein? And with that mindset, it's not so difficult. And the difference between, you know, 0.82 grand per pound or one grand per pound is not massive, but I find in practice for a lot of people, especially people that are not super hardcore about going to the gym, it makes a substantial difference. And also it introduces some fattier foods, maybe even cheese as potential protein sources.

Yeah. So it actually makes a significant difference in terms of what you can eat instantly and it doesn't just have to be tilapia filet. I think about, he was a study that keep people keep on bringing up to me about how, um, participants are given a shake of some kind and they're told that it's either high calorie or low calorie and their expectation of the caloric amount contained within this shake has a effect on how they metabolize it, how their body uses it. How much truth was in that study?

It has a significant effect on the satiety or the satiation of the shake. It can also influence energy levels, but depending on how motivated and serious you are as a lifter, it has minimal effect on actual exercise performance and those more objective measures. So the reason that I was thinking about that was if bodybuilders, every bro listening for the last decade has been thinking, oh, another day not hitting my protein goals.

I only managed to get 160 grams of protein in per day. I have to presume that there's a little bit of cortisol that's gonna get released from that. If nothing else, just the texture of your own sort of phenomenological existence is going to be like, oh God, I don't feel like I did the thing today. I didn't take the box. I'm not feeling like as satisfied as I should be because you have this potentially, according

to science, wildly fucking unreasonable goal of one gram per pound of body weight. It's like, no. I think the most interesting study of placebo and nocebo effects, which is most effects that you're touching on here, right, is when they give people fake steroids. And this is a mind-blowing study, probably wouldn't pass ethics committees anymore. It's quite old, but they gave a bunch of already well-trained lifters essentially fake Dianabol. So they told them it was steroids, like androgenic anabolic steroids were in there. In reality, it was a placebo and the gains they got were massive. So these were well-trained lifters and they got very serious additional gains

in a span of eight weeks. Essentially the level of what you would expect from low dose actual steroids. Wow. So the mindset and the effect of believing that you can make greater gains. Or any other. It's all in your mind. Yeah, that's huge. Stop lifting these weights.

Stop going into the gym and sweating and spending all your time around men. Just believe that you can gain and that's what you need. Now it's there's a book called the expectation effect by David Robs gain and that's what you need. Now there's a book called The Expectation Effect by David Robson and it's outstanding. My two favorite ones from that, gluten intolerances have 10x'd in the last sort of 30 years. Unbelievable increase. And you know, maybe there's more gluten in food.

I'm open to that as a potential explanation. Uh, maybe the type of metabolic sort of environment that people are in means that gluten, they're more susceptible to gluttony problems, something like that. I don't know. Maybe it's degradation of a microbiome or maybe it's all of the news articles telling you how bad the gluten is for you. So the researchers brought participants into the room, sit them all down, feed everybody the same meal. They tell everybody in the room

that this meal's got gluten in it. There isn't gluten in the entire building. Five minutes later, people are breaking out in hives, they're running to the toilet with diarrhea, they're vomiting, they've got inflammation, they've got headaches, they're unbalanced, they've got vertigo, no gluten in the entire building. So that was the first one.

The second one, this is the best one, and it relates to, I guess what you do. Participants were split into two groups. 50% of each group had an equal proportion of people who do and don't have a particular genetic mutation that allows them to blow off CO2 more effectively. Apparently, this is not that uncommon in the population that people are, they tend to be more efficient breathers basically, which is also correlated with their ability to be good at cardio. Group A, half and half do and don't have the genetic mutation. And they're told you do have the genetic mutation. You should be really good at this. Group B, half and half do and don't have it. They're told you don't have the genetic mutation. This might be really good at this. Group B, half and half do and don't have it. They're told you don't have the genetic mutation. This might be a

little bit tough. Shock Horror, the group that was told that they did have the genetic mutation, they outperformed. Interestingly, the people who didn't have the mutation, but were told that they did outperformed on average the people who did have the genetic mutation, but were told that they didn't. So David coined this term, which was your expectations are even more powerful than your genes in some instances. Yes, there's similar research actually on caffeine, where the effects of believing you are on caffeine

is stronger than the objective effects of being on caffeine without knowing it. God, that's so funny. The Diana ball one's wild. of being on caffeine without knowing it. God, that's so funny. The Diana Ball one's wild. Well, I mean, there's also, um, there's a justification, I think, for why you should always buy the name brand painkillers. Because even though you know that the literal makeup of the drug is the same, the expectation of it being Neurofen

as opposed to CVS own brand is so great that it's actually worth buying it because the pain killing effect will be increased. Yeah, I personally actually drink Red Bull or energy drink in general, even though research quite clearly shows that it works no better than just anhydrous caffeine, just caffeine powder. In fact, it might work a little bit worse, according to some research.

But I for one prefer the taste and subjectively I do feel, which is most likely a placebo effect, but I do feel more. And it's very persistent. So I'm sticking with the energy drinks. Rory Sutherland has this idea about Red Bull. And he says that they purposefully dialed the taste back of Red Bull to make it taste a little bit worse than it needed to, because humans associate poor tasting liquids with medicinal properties. properties. Like there's no medicine that you were used to having that tasted like strawberry dreamsicle unicorn dust or whatever, you know, new bang flavor gets released. And the fact that Red Bull does, it's kind of, it is kind of herbal. It's a little bit bitter. It probably could be a little bit sweeter. Like it's, you know, you get to know the taste of it, but it's, you wouldn't go as far as to

say from first principles, oh, this is like an optimal human fucking palate tasting drink. And yet he thinks that, and I think he's probably right, the oddness of the taste kind of played into the magical, we don't know why it's working, but we think it's working properties when it first got released. It could be. I personally wouldn't say it about Red Bull, but I know that there are products where that is actually being done. For example, Pyrodontax toothpaste is horrible,

absolutely horrible and they made a big deal out of it being, uh, I think it's also natural and whatever. Um, some other stuff that doesn't really matter for your teeth, but mainly it's disgusting. It's, it's absolutely horrible. Uh, but they had a doctor saying it's better than the others and the others are chemical and so whatever. And this is how natural toothpaste tastes like. And it was a wild success for some time.

I think eventually people realized that it just wasn't worth it. Yeah, like the enjoyment, dude, of having minty fresh breath. Yeah. Okay, so something else that I guess during mine and your, uh, trajectory of bro lifting on the internet has come and gone. And I wonder whether or not it's going to come back is flexible dieting or if it fits your macros.

What is your post-mortem on if it fits your macros as a diet methodology? If it fits your macros, which is the idea that only the macronutrients you eat count, it doesn't matter where they come from, whether it's McDonald's or protein shake or super healthy whole foods paleo meal. In the end, all that matters for at least your gains like fat loss and the like is your micronutrient intakes like the amount of protein in particular and the amount of total calories in particular. That has largely been validated in the sense that those are by far the most important factors and there have been numerous studies and individuals showing that even on a

absolutely terrible super unhealthy diet you can still lose fat. At least theoretically speaking, as long as you get that low energy intake. It's just a whole lot harder to do it with junk foods because it's so easy to overeat on them. You want a high fiber intake and the like for satiety normally to make it long-term sustainable. And in general, I think that has been a very, very positive development. It ended for at least some parts of fitness, the debate between high carb, low carb, all these things. They are not nearly as important as total energy intake. Whether you consume super blueberry, superfood,

or whether you're eating Twinkies, your total energy intake is by far the most important factor that influences whether you lose fat or not. If you are in energy deficit, regardless of your diet quality, you are most likely going to lose fat. So in that sense, I think if it fits your macros and what later became flexible dieting has been a godsend for the fitness community as a whole. But a lot of people certainly took it to extremes. And it is not the case that the effect is exactly the same. Fiber does have some firmic advantage, protein does also have a firmic advantage. The type of carbohydrate, it seems that there are some effects.

There was a recent study that probiotics, prebiotics and the like may also have a few percent effect. But even if you add all of that together, you're getting maybe 5%, 10% total difference in fat loss. So for most intensive purposes, it's just how much protein are you consuming, what's your total energy intake across the week even, not even across the day or whatever, and that determines your fat loss. So that's the positive legacy of if it fits your macros. What about the negative legacy of it?

I think it's scared or it drove a lot of people away from healthy eating. And when you look not short-term, but long-term, most people, like in decades, not, you know, months or years, which is long-term for a lot of people in fitness, but really in what we are interested in as individuals, or at least that what I try to teach clients and students is, how are you going to live for the next 20, 30 years, the next decades of your life? How are you going to age? And if you look at it that way, even calorie tracking in general is not the most sustainable strategy for most individuals. It is great to develop calorie awareness, but long-term you probably want to transition away from that

and actually start thinking of food choices that allow you to eat a libertine as much as you want without having to track every single gram of food that you're eating and making sure that, oh yes, I can be super flexible now because my macros are correct, but you are being exceedingly inflexible in the sense that you are literally weighing every gram of food that you're eating. And that has, I think, done

some damage. And it's also why things like paleo do work quite well for a lot of individuals, even though in the end, yes, it's all about calories and protein. It does work when you instruct people, you give them relatedness and a frame of mindset, certain foods that are better than others. These are satiating foods that they can eat as much as they want out of. Of course, people also take that to extremes and start making paleo cookies and stuff, but that aside, it gives a frame of reference, some foods that are better than others. And most people long-term do well on that and it's quite sustainable.

So I think we have to strike a bit of a balance between what is theoretically the answer and what works in practice long-term. Yeah, I mean, all of me and my friends when we found out, oh, you mean I can get shredded on Haribo? We were like, this is... Haribo it is. This is magic. You mean I can eat like, I get to eat cheesecake and I can get leaner. But practically, you know, it's one of those things, fantastic works in theory, but does it work in practice?

And I just struggle with it. You know, you're playing with fire. It's like dicking about with nuclear grade weapons, uranium, because like, all right. If you're going to use Haribo as part of your carb source for the day, that's fine. But it's really hard to stop eating once you've started and you only need to go over by three Haribo and that's like an non insignificant amount of fucking sugar that you've gone over your very tight amount of calories for the day. So yes, I think, uh, it was fun.

It was a fun period to be involved in where I would have birthday cake on an evening you've gone over your very tight amount of calories for the day. So yes, I think, uh, it was fun. It was a fun period to be involved in where I would have birthday cake on an evening time, dude, car backloading, car backloading. Another one when I thought that was skip loading. You remember that you remember skip loading every Sunday I'd go to wait for, Oh dude, skip loading was crazy. So skip loading was basically like carb night, but once per week. And the goal on the Sunday was to maximize as many, like half a kilo of carbs. If you could do it on a Sunday and it was like a metabolic reset, you know,

it was so that your metabolic base rate didn't drop too low because you were going to keep on, yeah, like, but like just a single really fucking aggressive refeed once per week. Um, so much like horse shit experimentation in my background. Um, okay. You mentioned caffeine earlier on. What have you learned recently about caffeine? I think that most of the effects of caffeine in light of that earlier study that we talked about

and most research in general, suggest that caffeine is by and large a psychological aid. It does very little long-term if you look at studies where people are given caffeine for a period of weeks and you look at how much muscle they're gaining, how much fat are they losing, much strength are they gaining. In the vast majority of research, there is no effect on those measures. Even if acutely, if you give people a boatload of caffeine, they do perform a little bit better in certain conditions. And it also seems that if you narrow it down to which individuals respond better, it works better when you are sleep deprived, it works better in the morning,

it works better in individuals that are not as well trained, which all shows that, or trends in the direction of, if you are well rested and you are super motivated, then the effect is probably not really there. Maybe you can use a little bit of a kick in the ass, but for most individuals, it's gonna be a marginal effect. In long-term, it's pretty trivial. So I think people should use it that way

as a psychological aid. And it's very easy to overdo it on caffeine. The main problem for a lot of individuals is that caffeine seems like magic, and therefore you can solve a lot of individuals is that caffeine seems like magic and therefore you can solve a lot of life's problems, including the ones created by caffeine with more caffeine or so it seems. And you run into this negative spiral where caffeine starts interfering with sleep quality. And the effect of that in the latest math analysis is present for 13 hours for the average individual, if it's a good dose, some 7 hours, even at a low dose.

And some research even finds that a strong double espresso in the morning, like 200 mg caffeine, still affects objective measures of sleep quality at night, which is long after the subjective effects have waned off. And then you enter into this spiral where you consume more caffeine, worse sleep, more caffeine, worse sleep, and in the end you're just consuming a lot of caffeine and it feels like you're functioning better than you were before, but in reality the caffeine is simply keeping you at baseline. So you are not improving your cognitive functions, your life, or anything. You are simply using the caffeine to be. You would be if you were well rested and not using any caffeine.

I'm not saying don't use any caffeine. I'm just saying it's a drug. Most people don't even realize it's a drug. Use it as a drug, not as a supplement or not as food where you just like use it just to use it. Actually see whether you get an effect out of it. Monitor if you're still getting a similar effect or if you're not getting massive tolerance. Can you function after one day without caffeine or do you get massive headaches and are you intolerable? Those are indications, maybe dial it back. And the good news is only a few days will resensitize your receptors to almost 100%.

It's nine days after massive tolerance. So just a few days for most individuals that have massive... Nine days. Nine days for someone who is completely dependent on caffeine will reset them back to baseline. So why is that so fast? Is that that it's just acting so directly on the adenosine receptors and they seem to be quite robust at kind of going back to baseline. Yeah. It is a relatively safe drug in that sense compared to say heroin. That's the, that's what I want all drugs to be compared to. It's a relatively safe drug dot, dot, dot compared to heroin.

Yeah. It just, it's still easy to abuse, but the abuse effects are not nearly as bad as that of the drugs that are commonly banned because people would abuse them. Right. Yes. What about, um, the difference between caffeine and pre-workouts? I haven't used pre-workout for quite a while, probably five or six years. Uh, did for a long time, the world of Jack 3D and NOXPLODE and stuff, and then dipped out.

Presumably the technology, whatever that means, behind pre-workouts has continued to get complex. I know there's no stim pre-workouts now. I don't even know what that means. Talk to me, what's the science say about pre-workouts for improving performance, that versus caffeine, if you are using a pre-workout, what should you look for, et cetera, et cetera. We never advanced past Jacked. All right, we peaked, we peaked in 2011. Jacked was peaked pre-workout. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, Jacked was not so safe actually, but

caffeine is pretty much as good as it gets. And funny enough, most comparisons involving caffeine with pre-workouts find that anhydrous caffeine, which is caffeine powder or pills, works a little bit better. It also works a little bit better in at least a few studies than coffee. And it works better in at least some research than pre-workout formulations. It seems that there are some negative interactions there. and it works better in at least some research than pre-workout formulations. It seems that there are some negative interactions there. They're small and if you like your pre-workout, it's fine because in the end it's almost a psychological effect anyway.

But there is some negative interaction, it seems, between at least caffeine and creatine and possibly between caffeine and citrulline or beta-alanine, one of the more popular pre-workouts that are at least somewhat promising in terms of supplements. So by and large, I would say just consume what you feel best or what you like best. But you don't have to spend a lot of money on fancy pre-workouts. They're absolutely not essential. In fact, they are pretty much useless for the vast majority of products. So if you like your coffee, if you like your Red Bull, or if you want the theoretically best, just an hydrous caffeine, I don't care about the bitterness.

And, uh, uh, I care about my wallets, then, you know, just use caffeine powder. You can dose it super accurately. Uh, so that is the theoretically optimal solution, I suppose. But yeah, no pre-workouts, I have very little regard for their efficacy. What about fat burners? Do fat burners work? No, uh, there have been a couple reviews, uh, which all essentially concluded that fat burners don't actually burn fat. At best they increase energy expenditure a little bit and maybe decrease your appetite. The best ones are illegal though and they are decidedly

worse than, for example, fiber supplements. And even those are not great because of the digestive side effects, you're better getting it from foods. But for example, fiber supplements somewhat reliably result in fat loss because when people supplement fiber, it decreases their appetite, it makes them fuller, they eat less and therefore they lose fat. Fat burners maybe increase energy expenditure a few percent over a few hours until you become tolerant to them. And that goes for caffeine and pretty much everything else that works and is now illegal

like Jack. God damn it. In FDA ruining the party as per usual. Isn't it interesting that so many of the things that we've spoken about so far today are to do with satiety, that there's this, you know, it's such a. Like. Principle, such an underlying fundamental principle of you have a degree of hunger. How much is that going to make you eat? And then what are the foods that you're choosing?

How calorie dense are they? How palatable are they? How sick do you get of eating them? I had a conversation with Johan Hari about his new book, uh, magic pill, uh, about was Zempik. about his new book, Magic Pill, about Ozempic. And it's crazy just how much of modern human weight gain, downstream health problems, heart disease, stroke, all of that stuff is just, food is way easier to over-consume because of how palatable it is and way more calorie dense

than it was typically and designed so. And like what pretty much everything that we're doing now is to try and like, oh, wait, if we eat more fiber, fiber actually takes up room and real estate in your stomach. And that means that you can't take it up with Pringles or whatever. Like so much of what we're doing is just basically trying to compensate for this evolutionarily mismatched diet environment. Yes. A good frame of mind that I like to use is that you have a certain amount of appetite units every day and you have to fill those up because realistically speaking long-term, you're not just going to be hungry every day, right?

Nobody is six pack lean and they're like, yeah, I've been hungry for 10 years, bro, but look at these abs. Nobody wants that. So in the end, not being hungry, at least up to a certain point is essentially a long-term requirement to be sustainable and happy. So you want to fill up those appetite units. And there are different foods that have a certain different number of units that they fill up. So if you have Haribo, it fills up very few units,

but it has a lot of calories. And then there are other foods that fill up a lot of those units, vegetables in particular, for very few calories. And that in itself, or that by and large, is it the puzzle that we have to solve for fat loss. Like you want to get your protein in, and you want to fill up those appetite units.

And I like to have the frame of reference that most meals should have a protein source and a filler, something that fills you up without having a lot of calories. And you want to get your protein in protein also helps itself as a filler, but usually you want something like vegetables, potatoes, depending on preparation, something with fiber and some more volume to fill you up. With that mindset, I think for most individuals, you can have very good fat loss diets that are long-term sustainable without even necessarily tracking your calorie intake and weighing

every gram of food that you eat. Yeah. Well, I suppose what you're trying to do by weighing the food is to reverse engineer the environment that you would get into if you did what you're talking about do by weighing the food is to reverse engineer the environment that you would get into if you did what you're talking about in any case. Yes. And it is exceptionally beneficial to count your macros, to weigh your foods for at least a few weeks if you've never done it, to develop calorie awareness.

And it will blow your mind. And when you have that calorie awareness, then eventually when you have created a sustainable meal plan, which is also extremely beneficial, one of the most important predictors of long-term diet success, people having a meal plan that they created that they like, which is satiating and satisfying. And when they have that, then transitioning away from counting is essentially as simple as not doing it anymore, because when you have a fixed meal plan and you know that what you're eating, then you don't

have to track it anymore because you're eating the same things anyway. Now then you can change the portion sizes and the like a little bit, but by and large, when you found that with calorie tracking, these foods fill you up without resulting in overeating, then you don't actually have to track anymore. So tracking is a great first step to allow you long-term to transition away

from tracking, because I think most individuals will not want to track their macros over the next decades of their life. Yeah. I feel like two other areas that you need to pay the price upfront at some point is time blocking or some kind of sort of calendar tracking Pomodoro technique. I need to learn the physics of how productivity works thing. I think that's important.

Even if you end up coming full circle around to, I just do what feels good, bro on, on each day, but you actually understand what deep work is. And you kind of understand that time times intensity equals work done and so on and so forth, but you need to, what are the constitu and you kind of understand that time times intensity equals work done and so on and so forth. Like you need to, what are the constituent parts kind of. And the other one is I'm a huge fan of sleep trackers. If for nothing else than to red pill you on, Hey, you're not getting as much sleep as you thought you were.

And it's like 70% as much sleep as you thought you were. It's way less. It's the same as you thought you were in a surplus. No, you're not. You thought you thought you were in a deficit. No, you're not. You're in a huge surplus, like 500 calories off because you forget about that banana that you had and that little bag of chocolate and you got some crisps from the drawer earlier on. Um, but yeah, with sleep, it's exactly the same thing.

Well, I was in bed for eight hours. No, you weren't. You were in bed for seven hours, 15 and seven hours 15 you were asleep for six hours 20 so you've got six hours 20 and you told yourself you got eight and that's just Like a like a sniper looking down the scope of his rifle it's an adjustment that you need to kind of really only make maybe once every couple of years to just remind yourself of oh Yeah, that thing about I don't sleep anywhere near as much as I thought, oh yeah, that thing about I eat 500 calories more

than my brain tells me that I did. Sleep is another one of those things where we have kind of come full circle with sleep tracking technology, where now we have all of these smartwatches and a lot of tracking devices. And before that, we just had gold standard polysomnography, which measures your brain waves and heart rhythm

and a lot of different things. That's the gold standard. And when you really look at what the validity of all those devices is, then in the end, it aligns up pretty well with, do you wake up naturally and do you feel refreshed? If you wake up naturally and you feel refreshed, you can do this with the Pittsburgh sleep quality index or anything less informal, literally,

don't just ask yourself those questions. And if the answer is yes, then your sleep quality is probably good. And if you wake up with an alarm indeed after six and a half hours of sleep, and you're like, Oh my God, no. And you're like, yeah, I had enough sleep. Um, no, you didn't. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a really great study that was done where they paid people to fall asleep faster and the control group was people who weren't paid to fall asleep. And the control group that weren't paid fell asleep more quickly than the group that were. Yes. Happiness, sleep and productivity to an extent are extremely deceptive areas to optimize

because the process of optimization itself, the turrush from attaining the end goal. Yes, yes, yes, very odd. There needs to be a name for that. Like, like it's inversely, inversely productive or something like that, because it is, it is the harder that you try to achieve these things. Often the more difficult it is. And in some ways, there's very little that benefits from more cortisol. There's not much stuff where you think, oh yeah, my outcome in X domain would be improved if I was more stressed. And the very act of applying pressure to yourself to achieve the thing induces the stress, which

probably makes the achievement of almost anything harder. Definitely. Okay. Talk to me, given that we're on sleep, talk to me about the relationship between sleep, fat loss, muscle gain, beyond I want to wake up feeling rested and not like I want to shoot myself in the head. What happens to our bodies based on the amount of sleep that we get? So the traditional kind of bro mindset to that, which is also how I used to think

about it, is that sleep is somewhere quite low on the hierarchy where we know it's important, but not nearly as important as how many sets of biceps curls do I do and how much protein am I consuming at lunchtime? Right. In reality, that hierarchy is completely upside down. Sleep has massive effects on, well, everything, but also fat loss and muscle growth. So there have been at least four studies, to my knowledge,

that have found very significant effects of sleep restriction in particular on reduced fat loss, reduced muscle growth, reduced strength development, and the effects in multiple of those studies are over 50%. So there was one study where they contrasted, I believe, seven and a half and five and a half hours of sleep, and the group with just two hours of sleep deprivation, essentially lost essentially half the amount of fat and double the amount of muscle. So the effects on your body composition during a fat loss diet, which is how most people or how most of the studies have looked at it, is massive. It's not on the scale of how

many grams of carb do I have at lunch. It's on the scale of am I even going to the gym? So sleep is right up there with just the big effects like high protein diet, resistance training, decent number, total volume or decent total volume of resistance training. Sleep is pretty much right up there with the pillars, the fundamentals. It's not something to optimize. It's one of the pillars. It is the thing. Yeah. Wow. Sleeping five hours instead of seven and a half hours reduces fat loss and increases muscle loss by over 50%. What it's so that's in a fat loss phase.

Presumably the effect is exactly the same. Like that, that doesn't matter whether you're in calorie deficit or calorie surplus, your muscle, would it reduce muscle gain by, I'm trying to, I'm trying to work out what the converse of this would be. I think during a bulking phase, like an energy surplus, the effect would be less. And the most drastic effects are found in the studies where they have weight loss diets. It might be the interaction that sleep deprivation and stress have a very negative interaction effect.

Like if you have a certain amount of stress that you experience and you're well rested, you can tolerate it. But when you're also sleep deprived, it has a very negative interaction effect where the stress interferes further with your sleep quality. And because you are not well rested, you also respond a lot more adversely to the stress. And it's probably the same in this sense, but we don't have a lot of research on that. So that's largely speculative on my part.

I would suspect that the effects are in significant part mediated by diet adherence. And no matter how well you try to control it in research, there's always a limit to how people actually follow the programs. Yeah. Because someone who sleeps for five or five and a half hours a night are more likely to overeat the next day. They're going to have a preference for salty and sugary foods. They're going to lean into more highly, their willpower is going to be decreased.

Maybe it's because the fact that they're trying to get into the gym and even just like for like you want five hours sleep versus you want seven and a half hours sleep, what's your training look like? Your training is going to suck. So we don't need to get into the cortisol, sympathetic arousal state of your body throughout the day. It's like, Hey, just your training sucks on five hours of sleep. Yeah.

If you don't give it maximum effort, then all the optimization in the world, it's not going to matter. What about artificial sweeteners? Has anything new come out recently? In my view, artificial sweeteners and low calorie sweeteners in general are by and large safe and very effective for fat loss. There have been multiple studies where they found that it can even help with diet adherence and at worst they're equal to water.

So they don't stimulate blood sugar response. They don't affect your insulin. And this is not just me saying it's actually pretty much all the big scientific institutions that agree with this, just not the media headlines, which are very keen to take a rat study where they have those that just are the equivalent of consuming like 200 cans of diet coke per day. And then if you do that for the equivalent of a lifetime, then there is an increase in the number of tumors that are found in these, in this group versus the other group, right?

So there have been numerous organizations, the European Union, FDA that have looked at pretty much all of the popular sweeteners, especially aspartame sucralose and concluded that they are safe. Gut microbiome also in most well controlled studies, not an effect. Now are they 100% perfectly safe for your whole life, regardless of dosage? No, definitely not regardless of dosage. And when you consume them for decades, is there potential for harm? Sure.

It's still something that we have not fully researched like we don't have randomized control trials spanning 50 years. But you also have to weigh the pros with the cons. So there are potential negative health effects, maybe not really in the best controlled research, but at least in animal research with super high dosages and stuff. You have to weigh that with the more, or the better diet adherence that you might get with the higher satisfaction from your diets, with just the enjoyment of consuming foods that you like to eat more when

they are sweeter, with the fact that maybe now you're eating vegetables instead of something with a lot more sugar, because you can sweeten the vegetables and it's now okay for you. So you have to weigh all of these positives with any potential negatives. And in that sense, I think for most individuals on practical basis, sweeteners are a net positive. If you don't want to use sweeteners, fine. But if it helps you with fat loss and that in itself is probably going to affect your, then that in itself is probably going to more positively affect your health than any negatives of their consumption.

Yes. That if the choice is between high calorie drink containing a shit load of sugar and you getting a trace amount of fucking ACE K or something, uh, we probably take that this was the, the, I found it really interesting takeaway from Johan on that book about Ozempic. And he kind of created a, kind of like a taxonomy or like he's stratified out people into BMIs and said anybody under BMI 27,

he thinks there's no real benefit. This is largely for aesthetic reasons. And there's all of these downstream health risks that may be worrying. 27 to 35 is the gray area in which where he said, ah, you know, it really depends on kind of what you're trying to achieve. Cause you're gonna discriminate,

it seems more muscle loss than fat loss by using Ozempic. You get Ozempic face, which is this sort of new trend that's going on. Said over 35 consult your doctor, blah, blah, blah, blah, but I think that the risks of Ozempic seem to be less than the risk of you being a BMI of 37 or something like that. And I think that looking at, you know, this sort of cost benefit analysis, even when it comes to artificial sweetness, like what, what's the alternative if you

are someone with a sweet tooth and you need to put something away to satiate that desire on a regular basis, the choice between, I mean, how many is that 250 calories, probably 40 grams of sugar in a diet in a normal Coke, something like that? It's usually like 50 calories per hundred milliliters, most soft drink products. Okay. Yeah. So not far off. Um, what about what, how effective are artificial sweeteners at satiating our desire for sweet stuff, because there's an argument to be made that you're

conditioning your palate to like sweet things and by having your Zevia during the day, you're then, you know, going to relapse with cheesecake on a nighttime. Have you, is there anything to do with that? There is something there, but it's not different between sweeteners and any other sweet food. So sweeteners don't hijack any of the systems in your brain or anything like that. They can be very sweet, of course. And in general, humans learn

to like what they eat. It's funny, people think that they don't eat things because they don't like them, but research actually shows that we learn to like the foods we eat. So we like foods because we eat them in part. Of course, we also eat food because we like them. But you can actually retrain your brain and even your reward pathways in your brain to like vegetables, for example. You can see that when you do brain scans with people that have eaten vegetables for a long time, the reward pathways actually light up more in their brain when they're used to vegetables.

Now, a similar thing can occur with salty food, sweet food, anything. So if you eat a lot of sweet foods, you might like sweet food more and it might increase your what level of sweetness you find agreeable, but it's very context specific. It's limited. And as long as you can satisfy that with your sweeteners, there is not really a problem there. So I don't think that, um, there's anything malicious there in terms of sweeteners having

these negative effects. I can't believe that you suggested somebody putting sweeteners on vegetables. That seems like a, like, I don't know. I've never even, I've never even considered it. Who knew that I could just sprinkle some splendor across broccoli and it would taste nice. It's amazing. Broccoli, maybe not, but I add sweetener to almost everything. I put sweetener in my soy sauce. Yeah.

So my God, what is wrong with you? It works super well. If you eat, for example, pasta or tomato soup and what is the difference between like a super good, high quality tomato soup and a really average one? It's the level of sweetness by and large. So, and I've actually tested this with individuals. If you give them like canned tomatoes with a little bit of sucralose, they'll be like, that is good. And then you can tell them like, yeah, fresh from Italy, best tomato quality.

I doubt many people will tell the difference between higher quality tomato that are naturally sweeter versus cheaper ones with a little bit of sucralose in it. I didn't realize everybody that comes around to your house for dinner is now going to know that they're being cooked by Splenda. You're just secretly lining up Splenda in the kitchen and they don't know. Okay. One of the other areas that I've been pretty interested in recently is high protein versus low protein for longevity.

You know, there's a whole bunch of people, many of whom have been on the show, Brian Johnson, Rich Roll, Peter Diamandis, all of whom are concerned about mTOR activation and the amount of protein that you're having. And how definitively, in your opinion, can the science tell us the outcomes of high protein versus low protein diets when it comes to, let's say health span. I'm personally not very concerned about that. And again, it's a consideration of pros and cons because we know that there are decisive health benefits of high protein diets in fighting sarcopenia and reducing

diabetes and a lot of positive effects. So these have to be weighed against any potential negative effects. And I think that the concerns with mTOR and the like are generally overblown. Most of the best controlled long-term trials and cross-sectional studies, so epidemiological research, they do not find that protein intake has a significant relationship with all-cause mortality and there are health benefits. So that would suggest that there's also no effect on longevity. The research on mTOR and the like is somewhat concerning in the lab, but we have to weigh that against the tissue specific effects that we get in real life.

So just like muscle tissue, just like you cannot eat your way to the Olympia with more protein, the same is true for mTOR activation and other tissues. You cannot just eat more protein and enlarge your heart, for example. Right. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. So it's also not the case that just eating more protein, everything's just going to get bigger and you're going to get tumors everywhere. You're going to get cancer.

Right. So the fact that you get mTOR activation in muscle tissue, nobody gets muscle cancer. So that's by and large, not a concern. Bicep cancer, which not everyone's worried about. Yeah. So in general, I think the rationale, the mechanisms there, there is cause for concern, but the current research does not point towards negative effects. In the longest randomized controlled trials, we don't see negative health effects. And in the associative longterm research, we don't see effects on all-cause mortality.

There was actually also in that study where they looked at protein attacks up to 100 gram and if that still contributes to protein synthesis, they also looked at autophagy and it was not affected actually by high protein attacks. That's also tissue specific. And by and large, I think in particular, if protein helps you stay lean, that is going to be worth more than any negative effects of protein attack. Because we know that if there's one thing that will extend your lifespan, it's probably caloric restriction, which translates into being and staying lean long term.

I think those positive effects will be much more important. On the scales of time. When you say staying lean, how can someone normal, what's the adjudication, the metric that they, I'm staying lean, this I am within a healthy whatever. What's that mean? At least not overweight by conventional standards. So based on what BMI? Yeah. If you're not, if you're not doing a strength training, then BMI is probably fine. Uh, if you are, if you have some estimate of your body fat percentage, then you

want to be below about 21% for men and below 33%, 41% for women. Just to interject that everyone that listens to this podcast is jacked. Everyone trains. So, um, given that BMI becomes a more, a less useful metric, I suppose, because it can't account for where is this weight being held and muscle is pretty dense. How should someone. Balance off. Okay.

I'm not at 21%. I walk around at 17% body fat or something like that. Is there still a consideration? Would you still have a particular consideration when it comes to BMI? I just, the total amount of stress on your system from a holding weight. I don't know how many people are going to be high BMI,

17% at like getting into this realm, but there may be some mass monsters listening that would be interested. That's a very good question. For body fat, it seems pretty much that lower is better for most health markers up to the levels where people don't go anyway because it's unsustainable. For muscle growth, most of the research is only positive.

So in that sense, you would think bodybuilders are going to be insanely healthy, at least the natural ones, research is only positive. So in that sense, you would think bodybuilders are going to be insanely healthy, at least the natural ones, because they're, they're jacked and they're super lean. However, there is something to be said about having very high body mass, putting stress on the heart, there is ventricular hypertrophy.

You are lugging around a lot of meat and it does put strain on the tissue. So maybe the engine burns up quicker, but it also adapts. Like we know with loading of the engine burns up quicker, but it also adapts like we know with loading of the spine, for example, that powerlifters lift loads that untrained individuals would not be able to without basically shattering their whole spine apart.

And the spine adapts, it can learn to tolerate those loads and the heart is also very adaptive. And that's the most, that's the driver of the cardiovascular health. So in that sense, I'm also not super concerned, especially not when we're talking about natural ranges. Right. So you're saying that your natty limit will probably cap out the leanness plus BMI equation that we're trying to come up with here. Because let's face it, you're just not going to get that big.

Right. You're not going to be a Ronnie Coleman. So that's good. And in one way, that's kind of, I know it's sad for those of us that just want linear growth across our time in terms of lean body mass, but it is nice that there's this kind of like a built in fail safe, um, that presumably Ancestraly would have been pretty rare to have tapped. Like I don't know how many nomadic hunter gatherers 50,000 years ago were dying soon because they were just too jacked and lean, but that given that we now have all of this luxury time to go and lift things and put them down in the same place in an air conditioned room, that we still, presuming again, that you stay natural, we still do have this kind of ceiling.

And maybe that is the thing around about that where you go, Hmm, but like until the time that I start taking androgens, I'm probably going to be fine. And this just gain as much muscle as possible. You're probably going to be fine. You don't need to really worry about lugging around all of that extra weight. Yes. In particular, because I would again go back to the cost benefit analysis. We know that muscle growth is very effective at lowering blood sugar levels and increasing insulin sensitivity.

It's like you have a huge sponge where they could always absorb a lot of blood sugar. So being jacked is actually insanely effective at preventing type 2 diabetes. It's almost impossible to get type two diabetes without a huge genetic propensity if you are lean and jacked. And indeed in research, we see that people that lose a lot of fat and build muscle, they can effectively cure or reduce all the symptoms of type two diabetes sometimes in a matter of eight weeks.

There have been some studies. No way. Yes, massive effects. Because again, it's both of those things, fat loss and muscle growth are both exceptionally effective at reducing fasting blood sugar levels and improving insulin sensitivity. That is not just a concern for diabetes because it's also why diabetes is such a big problem. Blood sugar levels or your average blood sugar exposure and your insulin sensitivity are quite strongly associated with your chronic or systemic level of inflammation.

And that in turn is associated with pretty much every health predicament there is. So everything that the path for you is pretty much associated with systemic inflammation, all the leading causes of death. And because of that positive effect on insulin sensitivity and thereby on reducing your systemic inflammation level, I think that the effects of muscle mass, again, in line with most of the research that we have are positive up to the natty max. Now, maybe there is research, you know, we don't have a lot of research on super jack guys, but again, sticking with what we know, it's probably positive. That is an area that I'm not really too sure why, but continuous glucose monitors,

talk of reducing insulin sensitivity, blood sugar levels, glucose monitoring, all of this stuff. That's like a new wave, I think, that I wasn't really hearing too much about. I would say the first time I heard about it was car backloading, skip loading, a carbonite that stuff, because that was the way that you portion off carbs and your instance sensitivity is decreased later in the day, which you know, you can like partition it more effective to some bullshit. I can't remember.

But this is now, you know, like it's a big deal. You've got like Karen mother of two and a half golden retrievers wearing a CGM. What is, how legit is using that kind of technology to inform us and what should people that are using that take away from it? What's real and what's rubbish? Well, I think the biggest factor are simply being jacked and lean.

So all comes back. I love the fact that it just comes back to being jacked and lean. That's my favorite thing. Yeah. Body composition is simply a huge factor. So just like with when we talk about where sleep ranks on the hierarchy of like factors that influence muscle growth and fat loss, your body composition itself has huge effects on your health.

That's also why we see in research, for example, to illustrate how effective fat loss is for health improvements, people that lose fat in research almost invariably get healthier, regardless of diet quality, regardless of whether they crash diet. There's even been a case of some professor that did a Twinkie diet or something and he just took some multivitamins and ate some Twinkies and lost a lot of fat over the course of a year or something. Pretty much all his blood work was better despite essentially living on Twinkies. So the effects of being lean, especially if you add being muscular to that, are massive. Indeed, in research, we see with very few exceptions that people that lose fat,

their cholesterol levels go down, their blood sugar levels go down, their heart rate goes down, blood pressure can go down, not as consistent as the other factors, but almost any metric you look at as a health biomarker, it improves the leaner you get. And there's not even a very clear limit. Like at some point we know that hormone levels, anabolic hormone levels, they start tanking when you get super lean. But it's even debatable if that is really bad for your health. So by and large, for most people up to the point where they wouldn't go anyway,

because it's not sustainable to be 5% body fat year round or whatever, being leaner probably is better. And realistically, I guess people are probably going to struggle to hold. What's the leanest that you've ever been actually? Probably four or 5%. Wow. What does that feel like? Crap.

Feels like crap. Wow. Yeah. I think maybe the lowest I've ever been, I probably got down to maybe like eight, eight and a half, something like that. And I didn't actually feel that bad day to day, but just the process of getting there to me was so miserable. My body seems to want to sit at maybe like between 12 and 15 and it's just, it's sweet

doing that. And I can be training or not. I can be active or not. I can be eating well or not. And it's just, it's sweet doing that. And I can be training or not. I can be active or not. I can be eating well or not. And it kind of just fluctuates around about there. What, what are the things that you wish when it comes to diet, body composition, and the modalities as well, that people are looking at, what are

the things that you wish people would pay less attention to? What are the things where people are kind of very unnecessarily manic and focused on that you think, I know this sounds sexy or this is something that you're really bothered about or it's trendy or whatever, but I really don't think that it's worth the effort. A lot of things. I think carbohydrate intake is massively overemphasized. In my latest systematic review of the literature, we found minimal effects of carbohydrate intake on strength training performance.

Now if you are a tennis player or a soccer player, it's a whole different ball game, no pun intended. But if you are just doing strength training, you go to the gym, you lift weights, your carbohydrate intake has minimal effects on your performance. Most of those effects are psychological. There are no SIBO effects. And there's even direct research showing that people that believe they need carbs, they respond more positively to carbs than people that don't have that essential constraint. So carbohydrate intake, definitely very overrated. Supplements are massively overrated in general.

Branches chain amino acids are still super popular, like pre-workouts we talked about. Most supplements in general are just there to fine tuning, right? At best. Other than that, for training, I think exercise order is actually something that is, it's not negative that people pay a lot of attention to it, but the people are wasting a lot of time and they're being needlessly inflexible with their exercise order. Most research finds that you can be quite flexible and you can, what I do, what I call combo sets with a lot of exercises that stimulate non-overlapping muscle groups.

For example, squats, chin ups, overhead press, you can combine all of those, but you don't have to super set them. So you can take a minute of rest after squats, then do your chin ups in the same rack and then take a minute of rest, reduce some of the weight, then do barbell overhead press in the same rack. And it's super time effective and it's just as effective for your gains as doing your set of squats, five minutes rest,

set of squats, five minute rest, and you're just spending a whole lot more time in the gym. Dude, I can't remember when it was. I think it was probably about six years ago when I saw that every leg extension and hamstring curl in the gym is next to each other. They're like brother and sister, you know, our next door neighbors, every single one of them.

And I had this like the sky opened and Moses came down and I realized why the fuck have I not just been using these two and you actually can super set these two things because you're not cardiovascularly, you're just not that. Yes. Drilled. And I, I honestly don't think that there's been any difference other than I've saved myself 15 minutes a session, every leg workout for the last like half decade, just by moving between those two. And that's one of those things where it's, it is kind of like bro science in that this is

like, it's a procedural sort of structural thing that you do when you're training and you just get into this rhythm of like, oh, okay. Like, I know that that's like when you realize that for you, because of the articulation of your shoulders, that actually overhand pull-ups are better than underhand chin-ups, and you've always wondered why your forearm hurts after this. And so I just struggled to get into that position or whatever it might be, or you go neutral and you're like, oh wow, all my shoulder pain goes away. Just accumulating little bits of personal wisdom like that,

that's what training age I think is really, beyond the I have good set point muscle activation, neural drives good, that's like one of the other best things that you compound by getting older in the gym. Specifically about the superset of leg curls and leg extensions, there is actually a difference, but it's positive. So it's called an antagonist superset of leg curls and leg extensions, there is actually a difference, but it's positive. So it's called an antagonist superset

because you are basically training the exact opposite muscle functions. And if you do the leg curls first, this has been directly researched, you get a better effect. So if you do leg curls and then leg extensions, then your leg extensions actually have higher levels of muscle activity. It's a

marginal effect, but you also have higher total performance. So you can actually do more reps. And that's probably just more mechanical tension, which should lead to more muscle growth. So you're not only do you save time, you actually increase your performance. That's why they put them next to each other in the gym. One of the things that I've been sort of considering today, as we talk about artificial sweeteners and continuous glucose monitors and the timing of your pre-workout shake and whether it's grass fed or whatever, how do people that are super obsessed with the small details of training and diet usually pan out as far as getting fitness results goes?

You mean how effective obsession is for yes. Yeah. Like the focusing on the small details of cause you know, a lot of people want to, I want to optimize. I want to see all of the things under a really close up microscope and I want to get it all right. Have you got any idea whether or not the people that like the guy on the left of

the midwit meme, like the dude with the Neanderthal brow that's like, I just lift heavy weight and eat meat. Is it like the dude on the left or the dude in the middle or the right? Who does best? It's hard to say on average because you would have to disentangle motivation and obsession. So there are certainly a lot of people that are massive over analyzers. Like they're not going to the gym, but they are worrying about how many grams of carbs to eat. Or they're not tracking their calories, but at the same time,

or they are tracking their calories, but at the same time still going to McDonald's and always in our overeating. People have just their priorities completely mixed up. That's definitely a real thing. On the other hand, generally, people that are more obsessed are probably also more motivated and motivation is huge. More motivated people just get better results for sure. So it probably depends on kind of where you fall on the, are you overanalyzer obsessive type or are you just super motivated?

Like I want to know every single detail because I will take advantage of every single advantage I can get. Yeah. This is, that's such a good point to say that the type of mentality that someone has that would cause them to be very obsessive and pay attention to the details probably has more upstream effects, which means that they are going to be more consistent with their training and they are going to be X, Y, and Z. The problem, the, the, if this is a matrix of like how obsessive you are versus how much you pay attention to details, the worst one to be in is someone who pays attention

to lots of details, but isn't obsessive because that's the person who is going to be bothered about where their continuous glucose monitor is, but hasn't trained twice this week and that's stepping over dollars to pick up cents, so to speak. Talking about motivation to train. What have you come to realize through your own experimentation personally and the literature and stuff like that? How can people keep their motivation to train nice and high? You can keep your motivation to do anything nice and high, basically by cultivating intrinsic

motivation, which means you need relatedness, competence and autonomy. Those are pretty much the driving forces of both happiness and intrinsic motivation to do anything in life, which means that specifically for training, you need to have a certain degree of freedom to make your own training program, do things the way you like it, so that you're not in some rigid program that you don't understand why it works

and you just have to follow it and you don't like the rules, but this is the diet. So that's the autonomy aspect that you want. And if you can combine it with competence that you also know why you're doing what you're doing and you have some basic understanding of human physiology, you can create your own training program, your diet, that is very beneficial.

And then you also need some degree of relatedness with the activity. So whether that's being a gym bro or whether that's just having a strong relatedness with being jacked. Like, oh, the identity of this kind of, you wear the clothes, like you enjoy wearing Gymshark or whatever. Uh, right. Okay. That's interesting.

I thought when you said relatedness, I thought, um, a community of people, but I suppose this would be a part of that. Like if, if, if you're someone who considers your identity to be wrapped up in your fitness and training, you're likely to hang around with people whose identity is also wrapped up in it, which presumably is a positive flywheel. CrossFit does it exceptionally well, cultivating relatedness to training. Because it's not just that you go to the gym and you exchange your time and effort for muscle growth.

No, you are part of a community. You are also following a certain type of diet. You are part of a tribe. You are not just doing your workouts, you are doing their special workouts. You have a language, you have a way to dress. Yeah. Yeah, that's funny.

What was that study posted about talking to yourself, making you stronger? So there are a lot of ways to motivate yourself and most of them are effective, including talking to yourself. So you can do it internally or you can actually do it out loud depending on what your personal preference is. But if you kind of hype yourself up, then and you tell yourself like, I can do this or you visualize that you are actually doing it, that's also very effective. Those things do actually increase motivation and can help you set that PR or give it maximum effort for your next set, especially exercise like squats, which have a high kind of anxiety component if you want to perform well. So pretty much whatever flows your boat is by conclusion,

in terms of getting yourself riled up is effective and can therefore be good to implement. Have you ever applied that motivation formula to other areas of your life? Uh, wanting to become smarter or wanting to learn something or become more proficient at a hobby or a job or get a partner or anything like that. Have you ever tried to use that same formula effectively in different domains of your life? I'm personally very bad at that. I consider myself a reasonably rational individual,

which means I have great difficulty with all of these positive psychology tricks. I always feel like I'm just fooling myself and like it doesn't work, but I know from research that it does work and it doesn't actually depend that much on your personality. So I'm in this difficult spot where I'm not doing things that I know work because I just feel weird doing them.

Yeah, there's a level of sort of rationality that you get to where you realize that you've made yourself less effective by being more rational. I mean, you know, like maybe a perfect example of this would be religion, that people that are religious, they live longer, they have better life satisfaction and happiness, they have all of this other stuff. And you know, Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins or someone can come in and go, well, that's stupid. Like, you can't all be right.

And we mean that Mohammed flew to the moon on a winged horse or whatever it might be. But then you go, look, what are we, what are we, what's the outcome that we're trying to get here? Are we trying to live a effective, happy, fulfilled, flourishing, arete life? Or are we trying to be truthful and ultimately rational? And really what is the reason for being truthful and ultimately rational? Presumably it's to improve the tiny sliver of existence that you've got while you're on this planet.

And you kind of like sacrificed the thing that you wanted for this outcome that is supposed to be able to get it, but actually doesn't when you look at it in the cold, harsh light of day. Yeah. So I struggle with the same thing, what you have with religion. I think you talked about it in your Q and A where you want to reap the benefits of religion without actually being religious. And I try to reap the benefits of positive psychology without feeling like I'm tricking myself. But it's hard. It's hard. It's a tough life. Yeah. Okay. What are the most underrated

bodybuilding foods? We've got a panoply of different things that we can throw on our plate. What's the most underrated ones for someone that wants to get jacked? Olives? I am... No way. Yes. Shut up. There is some, olives are just a generally, a generally super healthy,

quite satiating foods with great fat sources. There is actually some research suggesting that the fats in, or some of the phytochemicals in olives have also anabolic properties for your muscle, but I wouldn't get your hopes up on that being very significant. But it's just a food that you almost never see in fitness circles, but it's super healthy, it has fiber, it's quite satiating, great fat source. And so I put that one up there. And other than that, berries, probably berries are also exceptionally satiating for how few calories they

have. And you don't hear that much about them in health circles. Yes. If it the circles less so. And then I would probably list Pagasius fillet as also very underrated. What is that? It's a white fish that is actually flavorful. Pangasius filet is also very underrated. What is that? It's a white fish that is actually flavorful. So unlike tilapia or cod or whatever, which just tastes like nothing, like seawater, Pangasius is only marginally more fatty

with three to 5% fat per 100 grams, or three to five grams per 100 grams. 20 plus gram protein. So super good protein source as most fish and just much more flavorful and to good types of fat too, like omega-3 fatty acids. So it, again, all of these things just fall under practical considerations and health things. Because if it fits your macros is largely correct in terms of muscle growth and fat loss that there are no magic muscle building foods and there are no magic fat loss foods

It's just foods that you like that fit into your diet that are satiating and satisfying for you and are also healthy What about eggs are eggs healthy Eggs are not healthy, but they are also not unhealthy So eggs in most studies score essentially neutral They have no relationship with all-cause mortality in the best research for example but they're also not unhealthy. So, eggs in most studies score essentially neutral. They have no relationship with all-cause mortality in the best research, for example. Effects on cholesterol are also super modest,

much more modest than you would think based on their cholesterol content. Their fatty acid balance is quite good, especially if they're omega-free eggs or flaxseed fat eggs, then the ratio is a little bit better between the fatty acids. So generally a very nutritious food, high protein, decent ratio of fatty acids.

But in terms of health, like are you going to be healthier when you eat them? Which is the case for say avocado or olives. Like you can give that to people in a study and eight weeks later you can see that their biomarkers are better than they were before. That's not the case for eggs. And some people are hyper responders, They might experience a more significant increase in cholesterol levels, in LDL cholesterol levels in particular, or Applebee, which is the better marker than LDL cholesterol. In that sense, I would say they're definitely wrongfully demonized

because they're a very nutritious food and it has a lot of utility, but they're not healthy in the sense of health promoting. I would say that mostly as neutral. Okay. What about red meat? Similar ballpark. The latest meta review of meta reviews found essentially no effects. There's a lot of research on red meat. It dwarfs the whole exercise science field.

It makes me very envious when I look at research on eggs on red meat. It dwarfs the whole exercise science field. It makes me very envious when I look at research on eggs or red meat. And I'm like, I wish we had like 10% of this for exercise science. No, just study after study after study. Unfortunately, most of them are really poor, but still. Mostly neutral effects. Again, very nutritious food. So it's healthy in the sense of having a lot of good nutrients, a lot of protein, but not healthy in the sense of when I eat this, I can see that my blood biomarkers improve in the span of weeks, but also not unhealthy and definitely wrongfully demonized in that sense, especially when you consume it in

moderation and it's not processed red meat. How much magic is in liver? Very nutritious, very, very nutritious. So in the sense of nutrient indices, liver scores off the charts on a lot of indices, not just liver, also kidney. Most organ meats score very well. But again, I don't think that you will see

objective improvements in your longevity or any health biomarkers where you consume a lot of it, unless you were, for example, iron deficient and liver is a particularly convenient and rapid way to correct that deficiency. It's so interesting, Amanda, looking from the outside as someone that I don't really care about what camp I'm a part of.

I've like been non-monogamous with my diet approach. And even within my non-monogamy, I'm non-monogamous. Like I don't even stick to diets all that much. But the level of vehement, tribal adherence and how aggressive people get, have you got any idea or theory as to why diet is such a, and nutrition is such a battleground for like this semi-religious existential war

between different tribes? I do. I believe that as a society, we have become less materialistic due to the digitalization of our society and further increased welfare levels, making it less important whether you wear Prada. I don't even know what they make shoes or bracelets or whatever. But whatever,

if you have Gucci or just generic type clothing. That used to be a big driver of socioeconomic status, but these days it's more about what you say because you also don't have to do things anymore because it's mostly online now. So it's just what you post and what it seems like that you may be doing in life. So things that signal your identity in some way which you can display on especially social media are a lot more important indicators of your identity now than they were before because it's less about material goods, it's less about what you actually do, it's more about social media, what you portray. That's why what we are currently, you know, whether you consume Starbucks, now is all about whether they support Israel or not. And just like it's not so important anymore

whether the diet is right for you, whether it's healthy, now it's about, you know, am I a carnivore or am I a vegan because, you know, do you care about the environment and do you care about animal welfare? And these things have suddenly become very intertwined with fitness, making it kind of confusing at first glance that a lot of people are now suddenly extremely invested in how many grams of carbs they eat or whether the diet is ketogenic or not. Whereas before that was simply a utilitarian consideration, like what diet suits my needs for dietary purposes.

Suddenly these days, it has become a lot more of an identity indicator, which is far more important for our emotional welfare than, you know, what type of... Like for, it's the equivalent of, for our training, for example, is nobody cares whether you use a dumbbell or a barbell for your identity, but maybe we'll get to the point that even that matters. Oh, I mean, there was, there was a, there was a period for a while of free weight versus machine that was kind of an equivalent, right? Yeah.

Yeah. There is, but that's niche, you know, that, because if you tell that to the average individual on the street, they're just like, yeah, exactly. Yeah. But within the niche of strength training individuals and evidence-based fitness, it's like you have the natural lifters, the enhanced lifters, the people that are free weights and people that are strong versus people that just lift for aesthetic purposes, there's that, but diet is definitely on a whole different level these days.

Yeah. I think that that's probably a pretty good reason for it that you self brand through your diet. It says something to the world about who you are or what you are or what people should expect of you. I think another element of it, this is my neuroscience example was your diet is in some way supposed to be upstream from your longevity. And by attacking somebody else's diet, what you're basically doing is reminding them of their impending death.

That, you know, it's death denialism. To say that I'm going vegan or going keto or going carnivore or whatever, focusing on protein or whatever muscle centric medicine, uh, all of these things are, I am going to live longer because of this thing that I do. And implicit in the, not all religions can be right because they contradict each other. Not all diets can be right, right, whatever that even means, uh, because they contradict each other and implicit in me saying that my diet is optimal is me saying that your diet is suboptimal. And the downstream effect of that is you're going to die sooner.

I'm going to still be here. Hmm. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, there's a lot of psychology about mortality and how that affects a lot of the things we do are our thoughts about mortality, um, but I'm not up to date on that literature. Yeah. It's an interesting one.

Mano Hanselman's ladies and gentlemen, I know I've been really looking forward to this for a long time. There's like a million more things that we need to get into, but we can bring this one into land today. Where should people go? They need to follow your Instagram. They need to check out all the other stuff you do. Why should you send them? For your listeners, probably best is my Spotify and YouTube. I'm very active there these days. And yeah, my Instagram is also doing quite well at menno.henselmans.com.

And you can also go to my website mennohenselmans.com and my newsletter will provide you with like a tour of my most popular contents for those that are new to my contents. Hell yeah, dude. I appreciate you. Thank you. Likewise.