Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - A Beginner's Guide to Flexible Dieting

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

In this podcast, I’m sharing an excerpt from the audiobook version of my new book, Muscle For Life, which is releasing January 11th. Muscle For Life is currently on pre-order, and if you go to www.muscleforlifebook.com, you can learn about the big book launch bonanza that’s underway, where you can enter to win over $13,000 of awesome stuff. In this episode, I’m sharing chapter 7, which is the ultimate beginner’s guide to flexible dieting. It teaches you how to determine how many calories to eat based on your goals, how to turn those calories into macros for improving your body composition, and how to make meal plans (without using a scale!). Let’s get to it! Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from MUSCLE FOR LIFE by Michael Matthews, read by Chris Henry Coffey with the author. Copyright © 2022 by Waterbury Publications, Inc. Used with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Timestamps: 0:00 - Pre-order my new fitness book now for a chance to win over $13,000 in splendid swag: https://www.muscleforlifebook.com/ 3:07 - Chapter 7, Welcome to the Easiest Diet in the World Mentioned on the Show: Pre-order my new fitness book now for a chance to win over $13,000 in splendid swag: https://www.muscleforlifebook.com/

Hey, I'm Mike Matthews, and this is Muscle for Life. Welcome, welcome, and happy new year. Thank you for joining me today. And if you haven't already, please do take a moment to subscribe to the show, because then you won't miss any new episodes, and it'll help boost the ranking of the show in the various charts, and that helps me. Now, today's episode is a bit different. It is from the audiobook of my new book, Muscle for Life, which is releasing

on January 11th and which is currently on pre-order. And if you go to muscleforlifebook.com, muscleforlifebook.com, you can learn all about the big book launch bonanza that is underway and will continue for a couple of more weeks where you can enter to win over $13,000 of awesome stuff that I have collected up from many different companies to give away. Real stuff too, not PDFs that I say are worth $97. I'm talking about $1,000 exercise bikes, $500, $600, $700 sets of adjustable dumbbells, $100 kitchen appliances, and a lot more real stuff like that stuff that many people buy every day. And that's muscleforlifebook.com. And so today's episode is a chapter in the book called Welcome to the Easiest Diet in the World.

And it is really an ultimate beginner's guide to flexible dieting. It teaches you how to figure out how many calories you should eat every day based on your body composition goals. And then it talks about your macros, how to turn those calories into protein, carbs, and fat, which is vital for improving body composition. If you just want to improve your body weight, if you just want to lose weight, for example, you really only have to care about your calories. But if you want to improve your body composition, if you don't just want to lose weight, but you want to lose fat and not muscle, and if you want to gain weight, you probably want to gain muscle and not fat. If those are your goals, then you need to go beyond calories because not all calories are

equal when we are talking about body composition. And so that's why macros are important. And then this chapter gets into creating meal plans. And that means working out proper portions of food. And unlike my other books, unlike Bigger, Leaner, Stronger and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, the method taught in Muscle for Life in this chapter does not require any measuring equipment. You do not need a scale. You do not need measuring cups and spoons. All you need is your hand. Now, that's not to say that you shouldn't use a scale or that you can't use measuring utensils, but most people, they don't need to. To reach their goals, it's really just not necessary. They can use the simpler, more low-tech approach taught in this chapter. So let's get into it, shall we?

7. Welcome to the Easiest Diet in the World A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the laborers of a spasmodic Hercules. Anthony Trollope If you dread dieting, I understand. It often feels more like self-sacrifice than self-improvement. If you want to lose fat and build lean muscle, most diets say, you can kiss just about everything you like to eat goodbye. Grains, gluten, sugar, refined carbs, blow them all out of the airlock. Maybe I'm not up to this, you've probably thought as you contemplated starting such a program,

and which you may be feeling again now. I'm here to tell you that, yes, you are up to it. With the four pillars of flexible dieting you learned in the last chapter, you can transform your body eating foods you want to eat every day and turn healthy eating habits into an enduring lifestyle. And in this chapter, you'll learn how, how to turn my prescription for flexible dieting into exact numbers and inclusive food menus. There's a catch, however. It'll require some math. menus. There's a catch, however. It'll require some math. Nothing more than basic arithmetic,

mind you, and every step will be carefully explained and illustrated. But if your brain fogs at the sight of figures, take your time with the rest of this section of the book. I've worked with enough people to know you're more than capable of mastering the numbers. I've yet to have anyone flunk this class. And you can also breathe easy knowing that we have a fail-safe fallback. Pre-made meal plans in the accompanying PDF for losing fat and building muscle. You won't want to follow my ready-made plans forever, but they're great guides for finding your feet. To give you a foretaste of the muscle-for-life method of flexible dieting, let's walk through what a typical day may look like.

As you'll see, no utensils or gadgets will be required. Your hand is all you'll need for portioning your meals. You wake up and mix a scoop of protein powder with some water, milk, or a milk substitute, and you eat a banana. That holds you over until the middle of the morning, when you enjoy a fist-sized portion of low-fat Greek yogurt and a couple of thumb-sized portions of nuts. Next is lunch, when you have a palm-sized portion of chicken or fish on a homemade salad topped with tomato, carrot, and your favorite dressing. A couple of hours later, it's mid-afternoon snack time,

and you eat a fist-sized portion of low-fat cottage cheese on a buttered English muffin. Then at dinner, you cook up a palm-sized portion of chicken or fish and fist-sized portions of rice and a vegetable medley. Finally, to end on a sugar-high note, you snack on your favorite dark chocolate. Your actual mileage will vary, of course, but this example gives you a flavor of the streamlined and stress-free nature of the regimen.

So let's begin with nailing down the first element of flexible dieting, calories. How many calories should you eat every day? Imagine that someone told you they want to drive across the country without paying attention to the gas tank. Their plan is to stop whenever they feel like stopping and pump as much or as little gas as they feel like pumping. How would you respond? You'd think they're nuttier than a five-pound fruitcake, wouldn't you? What if they picked up on that and snapped back with something like,

I hate feeling like a slave to the oppressive fuel meter. I should be able to drive as far as I want before refueling. What would you do then? Gather up your toys and go play with someone else, right? The point is, when someone says they want to lose or gain weight without paying attention to their calories, or says that energy balance has little to do with body weight, they're being just as gonzo. If you're going to upgrade your body composition, you must know how many calories to eat every day. And fortunately, you don't need a degree in Excel to find that out, just the calculator in your phone.

The first step in working out your calories is deciding what you want to do with your physique. Here are your basic options. Cutting. Whenever you want to get leaner, you want to enter a cutting phase and consistently eat fewer calories than you're burning. Lean gaining. If you're relatively lean and you want to maximize muscle and strength gain and minimize fat gain, you want to start a lean gaining phase and consistently eat slightly more calories than you're burning. Maintaining. When you're happy

with your body composition and you want to prevent fat gain while slowly adding muscle and strength, you should begin a maintenance phase and consistently eat more or less how many calories you're burning. Essentially, the path to a toned athletic body alternates between lean gaining and cutting phases, between focusing on gaining muscle with some fat and then losing fat while retaining muscle until you love what you see in the mirror. A powerful I've made it moment that'll make every calorie counted and workout wrapped worth it. Think of it like farming, where you first grow and harvest crops, lean gaining, and then separate the grain from the chaff, cutting, retaining the former muscle and discarding the latter, fat,

cutting, retaining the former muscle and discarding the latter, fat, and then do it all over again. The value of this cyclical approach to improving body composition is vitally important, but understood by few. When you start out with strength training, your body is hyper-responsive to it, and you can easily gain muscle and lose fat at the same time when cutting, the bodybuilding equivalent of alchemy. This honeymoon period only lasts 6 to 8 months for most people, however, and then the only reliable way to continue gaining muscle and strength is lean gaining, and fat loss still requires cutting. Many people don't know that and try to keep cutting for far too long or settle into eating maintenance calories and err on the side of under-eating and not over-eating to prevent fat gain,

and they eventually stall in the gym no matter how hard they train. Stick to the strategies and techniques I'm sharing with you, and you'll avoid those shoals of stagnation. Your efforts will pay much larger dividends over time, too, because the fitter you get, the more you can focus on enjoying the rewards of your labor rather than the work of producing them. It takes a lot more time and effort to build your best body than to maintain it. So once you have your body for life, you'll have even more leeway in how you eat and exercise. You'll be able to pay less attention to calories and

macronutrients and eat more intuitively, according to your body's natural cues, and mix up your training with other activities that interest you like yoga, calisthenics, boot camps, cross training, high-intensity interval training, or something else. Keep that in mind as you progress on the Muscle for Life program because if you stick with it, you will get there. It's only a matter of when. How many calories you should eat when cutting. We've established that you must be in a calorie deficit to lose fat, but how large should that deficit be? 10%? 20%? Larger? Some authorities advocate slow cutting, which involves mild calorie restriction and moderate, at most, exercise, to whittle down fat stores over many months. The advantages of this are supposedly less muscle loss,

more enjoyable workouts, and fewer issues related to hunger and cravings. There's some truth here. Slow cutting can feel easier than a more ambitious approach, but the upsides aren't significant in most people and come at a steep price—duration. Slow cutting is, well, slow, and for many dieters, this causes more trouble than eating less food every day. For instance, by reducing your calorie deficit from 20 to 10 percent, you're halving the amount of fat you lose each week and doubling the time it'll take to reach your goal. This is a problem for most people because the longer they remain in a calorie deficit of any size, the more likely they are to backslide through life commotion, dietary slip-ups, scheduling snafus, and so on. Furthermore, when you know what you're doing,

you can maintain a calorie deficit large enough to produce rapid fat loss without losing muscle, suffering in the gym, or facing metabolic challenges. This means faster results and less time spent restricting calories, and thus more time doing the fun stuff, maintaining and lean gaining. Therefore, my recommendation is an aggressive but not reckless calorie deficit of 20-25% when cutting, eating 75-80% of the calories you're burning every day. Why this number? to 80% of the calories you're burning every day. Why this number? Research shows that it works well for both losing fat and preserving muscle when combined with resistance training and a high protein diet. A study conducted by scientists at Finland's University of Jyväskylä split

athletes with low levels of body fat, at or below 10%, into two groups. 1. Group 1 maintained a 300-calorie deficit, about 12% below their total daily energy expenditure. 2. Group 2 maintained a 750-calorie deficit, about 25% below daily expenditure. After four weeks, the first group lost very little fat and muscle, and the second group lost, on average, about four pounds of fat and very little muscle, and neither group experienced any negative side effects to speak of.

This is an outstanding result, and particularly in lean athletes because the less body fat you have, the more susceptible you are to losing muscle when cutting. Other studies on calorie restriction have echoed this finding, and so has my own experience working with thousands of people. When combined with a high-protein diet and reasonable workout schedule, a calorie deficit of 20-25% allows for speedy fat loss with no significant side effects. How many calories is that for you, though? This is normally where an evidence-based fitness guy like me would begin talking about formulas

for calculating how much energy your body burns at rest and during different types of physical activity. This approach has advantages, especially with experienced weightlifters, but we can take a shortcut. In most people, eating between 8 and 12 calories per pound of body weight per day creates a 20 to 25% calorie deficit. to lose fat rapidly, she should eat between 1,300, 160 times 8, and 1,900, 160 times 12, calories per day. And if a man weighs 220 pounds and wants to see his abs, he should eat between 1,800, 220 times 8, and 2,600, 220 times 12, calories per day. Physical activity level mostly determines whether you should choose the low or high end of the range. If you're sedentary, little or no exercise or vigorous physical activity,

you'd have to choose the lowest number, 8, to maintain an effective calorie deficit. This can work, but it isn't optimal because it'll mean subsisting on a meager meal plan, poverty calories, as bodybuilders like to say. If you remained sedentary and just ate slightly more every day, this becomes the slow-cutting approach we just discussed, doable but suboptimal. This is one of the many reasons I recommend that underactive folk who want to cut fat figure out a way to exercise regularly. It makes the process more sustainable and rewarding. In Muscle for Life, I'll ask you to do at least a couple of workouts per week when cutting so you can eat at least 9 or 10 calories per pound of body weight per day,

which is appropriate for 1 to 3 hours of exercise or vigorous physical activity per week. And if you're moderately active, 5 or more hours of exercise or vigorous physical activity per week, you should choose the highest number, 12. How can so simple a method work? Most of the energy you burn is driven by your basic metabolic needs for survival, not physical activity. For instance, in an average adult at rest, the brain alone consumes about 20% of the body's energy, and the other major organs, excluding muscle, account for another 60%. Thus, scientists realized long ago that with the right data, they could produce formulas for estimating how many calories

people burned every day if they didn't move around much. That was an interesting start, but as the additional energy expenditure from physical activity wasn't reflected in these new metabolic calculations, there was more work to do. So researchers set out to discover how to compute and include these extra calories in their reckonings. As they learned about the energy costs of various types of activities, their models became more accurate and useful, and eventually all that was needed to roughly predict total daily energy expenditure in most people was their gender, body weight, and total hours of light, moderate, and heavy activity per week. This line of work caught on among bodybuilders who were keen to use it to hone their dietary protocols for losing fat and gaining muscle.

Then astute practitioners developed shorthands based on patterns they observed, like the one I've shared with you, 8 to 12 calories per pound of body weight per day for cutting. So don't mistake this simple method as simplistic. Also, remember that all you're looking to achieve with any system of determining how many calories to eat is a reasonable starting place. You can easily adjust your numbers up or down

based on how your body responds, something we'll discuss later in this book. So there's no reason to make the process more complicated than it needs to be. How many calories you should eat when lean gaining Since a calorie surplus boosts muscle growth, the easiest way to maximize muscle building is to purposely eat more calories than you're burning every day. You don't want too large of a calorie surplus, however, because after a point, eating more no longer increases muscle growth, but just fat gain instead.

Research suggests that this point of diminishing returns is somewhere around 110% of your total daily energy expenditure. By eating 10% more calories than you burn every day, you'll gain just as much muscle as you would eating 20-30% more, but a lot less fat. And so that's my recommendation for lean gaining. Eat about 10% more calories than you burn every day. For most people, this comes out to 16 to 18 calories per pound of body weight. As with cutting, physical activity level mostly determines whether you should choose the low or high end of the range. If you're sedentary, no exercise or vigorous activity, you shouldn't be lean gaining. Lean gaining only makes sense if you're doing at least two strength training workouts per week, which are what drive the muscle growth, not the extra

calories. If you're lightly active, one to three hours of exercise or vigorous activity per week, choose the lowest number and work out more if possible. If you're moderately active, five or more hours of exercise or vigorous activity per week, start with the middle number, and then if you aren't gaining weight and strength steadily, move up to the highest number. How many calories you should eat when maintaining? Remember that this usually comes into play after you've completed several cycles of cutting and lean gaining and more or less have the body you want. When you're maintaining, not much changes in your body composition. You don't lose any fat to speak of or gain much muscle. It's like putting

your physique on cruise control. As for how many calories you should eat when maintaining, 12 to 16 calories per pound of body weight per day is the range for most people. If you're sedentary, little or no exercise or vigorous physical activity, choose the lowest number. If you're lightly active, 1 to 3 hours of exercise or vigorous physical activity per week, a middle number. And if you're moderately active, 5 or more hours of exercise or vigorous physical activity per week, a middle number. And if you're moderately active, five or more hours of exercise or vigorous physical activity per week, the highest number. And that's it for calories. Easy enough, right? Next, you need to understand how to translate your daily calorie target into grams of protein, carbohydrate, and fat, macros. Because just as calories are the simplest way of measuring your energy intake, grams per day is the easiest way to track macros. It's also a useful meal planning shortcut because,

as you'll see, if you set up your macros correctly, your calories will also be correct. How much protein you should eat. You've probably heard a lot of conflicting advice on protein intake. Some people, bodybuilders in particular, recommend sky-high amounts, up to 2 grams per pound of body weight per day. Others advocate a much lower amount, claiming that anything above 0.8 grams per pound of body weight per day is unnecessary. A significant amount of research has been done on the protein needs of people who are physically active, and a fantastic summary of the literature was co-authored by my friend Dr. Eric Helms. In his paper, he explains that 0.55 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, or 25 to 40% of daily calories, is adequate when calories aren't restricted for fat loss, and when they are, about 1 gram

per pound of body weight per day works well for most people. I prefer the top of this range when cutting, lean gaining, and maintaining, because the drawbacks of not eating enough protein, less muscle growth, less satiety, and less bone density, among others, are far greater than the downsides of eating a little more protein than you need, fewer calories for carbs and fat mostly. Thus, I recommend getting 30% of your daily calories from protein when lean gaining or maintaining, and 40% when cutting. For most people, this is around 0.8 to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day, and for people who are very overweight, it may be closer to 0.6 grams of protein per pound per day.

To put ideal protein intake into perspective, here's the protein content of popular high-protein foods. A palm-sized piece of chicken, pork, fish, or beef, around 20 grams of protein. A fist-sized portion of low-fat Greek or Icelandic, my favorite, yogurt, around 15 grams of protein. A thumb-sized portion of Parmesan cheese, 11 grams of protein. An egg, 6 grams of protein. A fist-sized portion of pinto, mung, or fava beans, around 14 grams of protein. A fist-sized portion of green peas, 8 grams of protein. A fist-sized portion of cooked rice or quinoa, around 7 grams of protein.

A scoop of whey protein powder, around 20 grams of protein. As you can see, high-protein eating is easy enough. For most people, it entails a serving or two of meat per day supplemented with some dairy, legumes, or whole grains, and a scoop or two of protein powder in between sit-down meals. That said, this is probably more protein than you're used to eating, and if you're not big on meat and dairy, the richest whole food sources of protein, protein powder and bars will be especially helpful because of how convenient they are. Let's now learn how to turn percent of daily calories

into grams of protein per day. Say you're a 160-pound woman starting a cutting phase, and you've just determined your daily calorie target is 1,600 calories. As you're cutting, 40% of those calories should come from protein, so you multiply 1,600 by 0.4 to get 640. Then, since each gram of protein contains about 4 calories, you only need to divide the daily calories in protein by 4 to determine how many grams of protein to eat every day.

So you divide 640 by 4, which comes to 160 grams of protein per day. And that's it for figuring out how much protein to eat. How much carbohydrate you should eat While a high-carbohydrate diet works best for most physically active people, some prefer fewer carbs, and that's perfectly fine. If you're not sure what's best for you, start here. Get 30 to 40% of your daily calories from carbohydrate

regardless of whether you're cutting, lean gaining, or maintaining. This works out to about 0.75 to 2 grams of carbs per pound of body weight per day for most people. One gram of carbohydrate also contains about four calories. So to calculate your carbohydrate intake, multiply your total daily calories by 0.3 to 0.4 and then divide the result by 4.

Continuing with our example above, if you're planning to eat 1,600 calories per day, multiplying by 0.3 produces 480 and dividing by 4 gives 120 grams of carbohydrate per day. And if you wanted to increase your carbs to 40% of your daily calories, you'd wind up with 160 grams per day, 1600 times 0.4 divided by 4. If you know you prefer a lower-carb diet, you can adjust that number downward. For many people I've worked with over the years who enjoyed low-carb living,

15-20% of daily calories from carbs worked well because it allowed them to eat a healthy amount of fruits and vegetables. Keep in mind, however, that if you reduce your carbohydrate intake from 30% of daily calories to less, you'll need to increase either your protein or your fat intake to hit 100% of your daily calorie target and ensure you don't eat too little every day. While an argument could be made for the benefits of increasing just your protein intake, you'll likely want to trade your carbs for more fat, not protein, and that's okay so long as you keep your saturated fat intake in

a healthy range. At any rate, to successfully make the low-carb adjustment, you only need to allot the calories you're missing to reach the assignment of 100% of daily calories by reducing your carbohydrate intake to protein or fat using the methods you're learning here. On the other hand, if you know you prefer a very high-carb diet, especially when lean-gaining, many people do, you can adjust your carb intake up to 50 or even 60% of daily calories. Remember, though, that you need to ensure that most of those carbs are nutritious, and you must also eat enough protein, 30% of daily calories, and ensure your fat intake doesn't drop below 20% of daily calories, too low for optimal health.

How much fat you should eat If you're not following a low-carb diet, 20-30% of daily calories from fat works well for most people. This is usually between 0.2 and 0.4 grams of fat per pound of body weight per day. If you're following a low-carb diet, however, fat intake can rise as high as 55% of daily calories depending on your preferences. One gram of fat contains about 9 calories, which means you can determine how many grams of fat to eat every day by multiplying your total daily calories by 0.2 to 0.55 and then dividing the result by 9.

Thus, if your daily calories are set at 1600, the math looks like this for 30% of calories from fat. 1600 times 0.3 equals 480, and then 480 divided by 9 equals 53 grams of fat per day, which you could round down to 50 or up to 55 for simplicity. And just like that, we've figured out the macros for someone on a cutting phase aiming to eat 1,600 calories per day. 160 grams of protein, around 40% of daily calories. 120 grams of carbs, around 30% of daily calories. 50 grams of fat, around 30% of daily calories.

Note how the percentages add up to 100, a simple test for verifying that we didn't make an obvious mistake. Now, if our volunteer would rather eat low carb and fill in the missing calories with dietary fat, 160 grams of protein, around 40% of daily calories, 60 grams of carbohydrate, around 15% of daily calories, 80 grams of fat, around 45% of daily calories. To help you further understand all of this in action, refer to the chart in the PDF for some examples of calorie and macronutrient targets with varying ratios of carbs and fat for different weights, goals, and activity levels. Also, if you run the numbers yourself, you'll notice I'm rounding up and down.

62 grams of fat becomes 60, for instance. 278 grams of carbs becomes 280, and so forth. So much for the arithmetic of dieting. Now, let's discuss food choices. What kinds of foods you should eat It's nice to imagine that eating a few special foods every day could supercharge your body composition, metabolism, and physical performance. But there are no individual foods that can single-handedly transform your health and fitness.

Only an overall lifestyle can do that, one that revolves around eating nutritious food, exercising regularly, maintaining good sleep hygiene, and balancing stress and relaxation. Marketers won't let a pesky fact like that thwart their designs on our paychecks, though. So we have the superfood phenomenon, and spinach, quinoa, kale, berries, and tea are in their heyday. This development has encouraged many people to eat better, but it has also confused many about how their body functions and how to make it look and work better. Here's the heart of the matter. To get adequate

nutrition, including vitamins, minerals, and fiber, you'll need to eat several portions of fruit and vegetables every day. Just as energy balance is a non-negotiable aspect of weight management and high-protein dieting is vital to gaining muscle and strength, eating an abundance of fruits and vegetables is essential to staying healthy. It's also smart to eat a variety of fruits and veggies, especially colorful ones, because some are richer in certain nutrients than others. Here's a list of much of the good stuff. Apple, arugula, asparagus, avocado, banana, blackberry, blueberry, bok choy, and other Asian greens, broccoli, brussel sprout, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, cherry, cranberry, cucumber, eggplant, garlic, grape, grapefruit, green bean, kale, leek, lemon, lettuce, mango, mushroom, onion, orange, pineapple, radish, spinach, strawberry, Swiss chard, zucchini.

It would be disingenuous to call any of these options superfoods in the way the term is normally used, but collectively, they're a superb category of chow. used, but collectively, they're a superb category of chow. As for your protein, if you're not going to eat a high-fat diet, most of it should come from lean sources like meat, fish, eggs, high-protein dairy products, soy, whey, casein, and plant-based protein powders. And most of your remaining calories should come from wholesome sources of carbohydrate and fat, like whole grains, brown rice, corn, oats, quinoa, barley, etc., legumes, beans and peas, tubers, potatoes and other root vegetables, oils, nuts, seeds, and avocados. You may have noticed I haven't endorsed caloric beverages. While they can have some nutritional value, fruit juice, milk, and sports drinks, for instance, they're usually less wholesome then and don't trigger

satiety as effectively as food, making them an inferior source of calories. You can drink 500 calories of a sugar-sweetened beverage and be hungry an hour later, for instance, whereas eating 500 calories of protein and fiber-rich food will keep you full for hours. Hence, it's not surprising that studies show that people who drink calories are much more likely to overeat than those who don't. There's also a clear association between a greater intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain in both adults and children. That said, you don't have to completely abstain from all caloric beverages. Except in the case of whole milk, for which we'll make an

exception and label it a source of healthy fat, because it is, you just have to regard them as treats, the next and final element of muscle-for-life meal planning we'll discuss. What should you mostly drink, then? You guessed it, water. In fact, drinking enough water is one of the simplest ways to immediately enhance many aspects of your health and performance. Research shows that dehydration impairs cognition and endurance, depresses mood, causes constipation, and may even increase the risk of heart disease. Thus, the National Academy of Medicine, formerly the Institute of Medicine, recommends a baseline intake of about three-quarters of a gallon, about 12 cups or

three liters of water per day for adult men and women, with additional drinking to replace fluids lost through significant amounts of sweating. Down an additional 1 to 1.5 liters of water per hour of sweaty physical activity, and you'll stay well hydrated. While we're on the topic, let's also address the common myth that caffeinated beverages like coffee and tea are dehydrating. While it's true that caffeine has a slight diuretic effect, studies show that it's minimal even at high doses, up to 500 mg per day, and doesn't meaningfully reduce hydration status. So, good news, you can count your jitter juice toward your water intake. What about treats? One of the many perks of flexible dieting is that no foods are off-limits,

regardless of how unhealthy they supposedly are, because no individual food can harm your health, only your diet on the whole can. That's why, with flexible dieting, you can allot up to 20% of your daily calories to your favorite indulgences when cutting, lean-gaining, or maintaining, and use them on whatever combination of protein, carbs, and fat you'd like. For instance, my favorite choices are often dark chocolate, ice cream, and restaurant meals, and at other times, pancakes, pastries, and pasta.

Let's see how this might work with our 1,600-calorie cutting plan. In this case, we'd have 320 calories to give over to goodies, which provides plenty of options. Nearly a pint of some brands of low-calorie ice cream, half of a bar of chocolate, three Reese's cups, a small bag of chips,

or a few Oreos, for example. And yes, when you're eating more calories, lean gaining or maintaining, that means more room for delicious additions. So what will you reward yourself with every day? Start making your mental list now, because soon one or more will be in your meal plan. Every so often, another headline pops up and proclaims that diets don't work. According to one expert or another, no matter what people do,

if it qualifies as dieting, it won't result in significant and long-term weight loss. You may have concluded this yourself based on your own experiences. The real problem isn't that dieting doesn't work, but that most diets suck. They restrict calories too heavily, leaving you feeling miserable, feed you too little protein, boosting hunger and muscle loss, prohibit too many foods, making them impractical and irritating, and provide no exit ramp to help you return to normal eating, increasing the likelihood of regaining some, much, or even all of the fat lost. That's why a new approach to dieting is needed, one that sets you up for a physical, psychological, and emotional victory.

The solution is flexible dieting. It truly is the easiest diet in the world because it's effective and enjoyable no matter your goals, circumstances, and inclinations. You're about to see for yourself, too, because in the next chapter, you'll turn your calories, macros, and food choices into a muscle-for-life eating plan that you can implement right away. Key Takeaways Whenever you want to get leaner, you want to enter a cutting phase and consistently eat fewer calories than you're burning.

If you're relatively lean and you want to maximize muscle and strength gain and minimize fat gain, you want to start a lean-gaining phase and consistently eat slightly more calories than you're burning. When you're happy with your body composition and you want to prevent fat gain while slowly adding muscle and strength, you should begin a maintenance phase and consistently eat more or less how many calories you're burning. To achieve a toned, athletic body,

alternate between lean gaining and cutting phases where you focus on gaining muscle with some fat gain and then losing fat while retaining your muscle, until you love what you see in the mirror. Use an aggressive but not reckless calorie deficit of 20-25% when cutting. Eat 75-80% of the calories you're burning every day when cutting.

In most people, eating between 8 and 12 calories per pound of body weight per day creates a 20 to 25% calorie deficit. For lean gaining, eat about 10% more calories than you burn every day. For most people, this is 16 to 18 calories per pound of body weight per day. As for how many calories you should eat when maintaining, 12 to 16 calories per pound of body weight per day works well for most people. Get 30% of your daily calories from protein when lean gaining or maintaining and 40% when cutting.

This is usually around 0.8 to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. And for people who are very overweight, it may be closer to 0.6 grams of protein per pound per day, and for people who are very overweight, it may be closer to 0.6 grams of protein per pound per day. Get 30 to 40 percent of your daily calories from carbohydrate, regardless of whether you're cutting, lean gaining, or maintaining. This works out to about 0.75 to 2 grams of carbs per pound of body weight per day for most people. If you're not following a low-carb diet, 20 to 30 percent of daily calories from fat works well. This is typically between 0.2 and 0.4 grams

of fat per pound of body weight per day. To get adequate nutrition, including vitamins, minerals, and fiber, you'll need to eat several portions of fruit and vegetables every day. Unless you're eating a high-fat diet, most of your protein should come from lean sources like meat, fish, eggs, high-protein dairy products, soy, whey, casein, and plant-based protein powders. With flexible dieting, you can allot up to 20% of your daily calories to your favorite indulgences when cutting, lean-gaining, or maintaining, and use them on whatever combination of protein, carbs, and fat you'd like.

Well, that is it for today's episode. And if you are still listening and you liked it, you will probably like the rest of the book, Muscle for Life. Again, go to muscleforlifebook.com and learn all about the giveaway, pre-order the book, enter the giveaway, and you can do other things to get additional entries into the giveaway. You can help spread the word about the book launch. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel, to my other social media accounts and other things. Again, all of the details are over at muscleforlifebook.com. And if Muscle for Life is not for you, maybe it's for somebody you know. If you know somebody who is looking for an enjoyable and a sustainable fitness regimen that's going to help them lose fat and build lean muscle, eating foods they love,

and doing just a few challenging but not grueling workouts per week. And especially if these people are in the 40 plus demographic, if they have a lot of weight to lose, if they've never done any weightlifting or maybe even any resistance training before. Muscle for Life is a better book and the programs are better for them, men and women, than my Bigger, Leaner, Stronger or Thinner, Leaner, Stronger programs or books. Because Bigger, Leaner, Stronger and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger are written for a younger demographic, are written for people who are

ready to start squatting, deadlifting, bench pressing, overhead pressing, and who are ready to get serious about meal planning. And those books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and helped tens of thousands of people that I know of lose fat, build muscle, get healthy. So great information. It works. Great programs. They work. But there are a lot of people out there who, if I were training them personally, I would not start them on bigger, leaner, stronger, or thinner, leaner, stronger. We would have to work up to that. And that is what muscle for life is for. So again, go to muscleforlifebook.com to learn more. And if you

are interested in the book for yourself or for somebody else, I would recommend going now because the giveaway is ending in a couple of weeks. And if you put it off, you might forget and then it might be too late.