Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Ben Coomber On "Diet Wars," Under-Recovering, and More...

Episode Date: September 18, 2015

In this episode I interview nutritionist, trainer, and podcaster Ben Coomber and we talk about the pros and cons of various diet fads (5:59), the importance of recovery (19:33), being objective with your results (33:03), and more! BEN'S WEBSITE: http://bencoomber.com/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you're going to like my books. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger If You're a Guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger If You're a Girl. I mean, these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live

in the gym grinding through workouts that you hate. Now you can find these books everywhere. You can buy them online, you know, Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audio books like me, you can actually get one of them for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audio books and you can see how to do that there. I make my living primarily as a writer, so as you can imagine, every book sold helps. So please do check out my books if you haven't already. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I think you're going to really like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion. As you may know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted who knows how much money over the

years on worthless junk supplements and have always had trouble finding products that I actually liked and felt were worth buying. And that's why I finally decided to just make my own. Now, a few of the things that make my supplements unique are, one, they're 100% naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we cite all supporting studies on our website,

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overdue. And ultimately, if you like what you see and you want to buy something, then you can use the coupon code podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you'll save 10% on your first order. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get Hey, it's Mike. I just want to say thanks, as usual, for checking out another episode of the podcast. In this episode, I interview Ben Coomber, who is a popular nutritionist and trainer and coach. He does a lot of seminars, actually. He has a very popular podcast. I think he's

actually number one in the UK for health and fitness on iTunes. He also has a rather extensive kind of advanced learning program called Body Type Nutrition Academy, which I didn't actually know. I knew that he had it. I just didn't know that he has programs ranging from two months to two years. He's also an author and coming out with a line of supplements that I don't know too much about yet, but I'm curious to see what he's going to be doing on that front because I like Ben. He's a good guy. He's science-based. He gets good results.

He's worked with hundreds and hundreds of people personally. He probably actually worked with a thousand. I don't even know. He's been around for a while, and knows he knows his stuff and it's always fun to talk to him plus he's a Brit and British people are just they're just cool I just like talking to them they're always so chill and so nice and I don't know I like British people so that's Ben and let's get to the interview hey Ben thanks for coming on my show I was on your show last time

and I got, hopefully your people liked it. I got some good feedback. I've gotten emails from guys. Hey, I heard you on Ben's show. I like what you had to say. Seems like you have a pretty cool crowd. We do, we do. And I try and get a lot of feedback from people.

I try and say, look, tell us what you think, what you like, tag us on Twitter, start a conversation because ultimately, if you don't get to talk you like, tag us on Twitter, start a conversation, because ultimately, if you don't get to talk about this stuff with the people that are sharing the knowledge, then it kind of feels like you're not engaged in the process. And the podcast could be a bit of a one way street sometimes. Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, it's kind of, if I understood you correctly on that, where like, you know, a lot of people that you're saying that, that are, I mean, I don't

even, I don't hold myself up as any sort of guru or even much of an expert. I mean, what I'm talking about, the majority of this stuff is very basic, very simple. I'm not somebody like, you know, uh, you have guys like Eric Cressy and gentle core and Contreras, and those guys are on another level for sure. But, um, where even, even these basics, the stuff that we talked about and that I'm constantly talking about and writing about, a lot of people are not talking about them because they're just kind of doing their thing. And you find that, is that what you're saying? Did I understand you correctly?

Well, yeah. The majority of the books, the best-selling books, are talking about the fat-burning principles of fat-burning foods and all that bullshit, you know what i mean it's just like a podcast is you know we're standing here talking to people and people are just listening and sometimes people just don't go do you know i'd really like to go and engage with these people they almost feel like they can't sometimes so i just i'm so active reminding people look come and talk to us we'll talk back on twitter let's get a

conversation going because otherwise you don't want to otherwise you do pitch yourself as this kind of expert guy and after all we're just people you know we're just people trying to help other people and engage in conversation yeah i totally agree so i misunderstood you but i agree with that no it's very true that's also why, I've myself intentionally kept that very open in terms of emails and still responding to people's emails. And I intend on, on always allotting time for that just because I think it's the right thing to do. I don't know. I think like it would have been helpful for me back when I didn't, I was just like reading bodybuilding magazines and doing stupid workouts and trying all these dumb diets and shit it would have been nice to be able to just email somebody and been like hey so i've been reading

these magazines what do you think about this and have that person respond and be like nah it's all bullshit here go read these few things go read this book and you're good that would have been nice oh definitely i think if we put ourselves out there as people that others can learn from we need to accept that people want to ask us questions we need to kind of be available for that you know there's a limit to that of course but sure it's kind of our duty in a way i agree i agree you know that um i think i got this from there was like this book that talked about the habits and routines of all different types of people throughout history creatives and ranging from like artists to business people to inventors

to whatever and it was uh charles darwin throughout his entire life would spend a large portion of every night answering letters from, uh, from, you know, just readers and just people, not, not, not peers necessarily, just random people out there. That was something that was something he did consistently throughout his life though. Like when he was Charles Darwin and, and now he was so he didn't, he didn't like once he made it quote unquote, be i don't give a shit what people say anymore i don't i'm not gonna waste my time with these people he uh made a point of of and that was like handwriting letters of course for a few hours i believe it was every night for his entire life he kept that up wow if he can do that we can do a couple of i tell myself that sometimes i'm like

where i have a lot of emails and i'm like, hey, fucking Charles Darwin did it. And Neil Gaiman, the famous writer, he also – I was listening to the interview with him where he was saying that he always does that as well, right? So he's always like answering emails and on social media engaging with his fans and his readers and stuff. stuff. And, uh, but it got bad where he was saying like he was spending, you know, he felt like he was a, a, almost like a full-time email answer and part-time writer where he was spending like five, six hours a day doing email. And then by the time he would like, okay, he needs to write, he needs to get that next book done. He would feel like, I mean, it's, it can be kind of mentally draining to answer emails for six hours, you know, but again, he still did it though. And he had to, he actually had to tell himself like, all right, I still did it though. And he had to, he actually

had to tell himself like, all right, I need to chill out. I need to cut this back or I'm just like not going to get my work done. You know what I mean? So anyways, I think that's pretty cool when I hear stuff like that. So let's get onto the point of why you're here. So first, uh, you know, we'd come up with a couple of topics that I thought would be cool to talk about. And one is, um, you have, you know, we could say it's not really a war. It's just you have these different schools of thought in terms of dieting. So you have paleo, primal type stuff, very, very popular right now. Gluten-free, very popular right now.

If it fits your macros or flexible dieting is popular in the fitness world and it's gaining a little bit of mainstream popularity. I don't know if you saw, I cbs or some someone do you see that came out on flexible dieting and it got it made the rounds and you know i i think they were talking with lane norton in it so norton was just talking about flexible dieting um and etc etc and you know what's your take on on these you could say they're fad diets i mean they kind of are although some are seem to be here to stay but well uh i think lane's done a brilliant job of flying the flag for flexible dieting especially in the population that he kind of works in bodybuilding people can easily get very

orthorexic about that style of eating both on a healthy and unhealthy level. Orthorexia is just an obsession of essentially the details of what you perceive as healthy. We all package nutrition in different ways as healthy. If you ask one guy what is healthy, the next guy will say something slightly different. It's all our own interpretation. How would you define healthy food? What does that mean to you? I think straight off the bat, I describe as a healthy food is something that was grown or swam or was reared. It's essentially one single ingredient food. All that food was closely made from those ingredients. So minimally processed.

Yeah, yeah. And it has all the constituents that it's meant to you know if you if you look at a piece of steak it's all still there it has the protein and everything it hasn't been screwed up by someone in a lab now i suppose the thing with all these diets is that people you know can become cult-like and really invest themselves heavily in these diets. While I appreciate that people want to really believe and follow and buy into something, I think every diet has its pros and its cons. People just need to be aware and critically stand back and go, right, logically, what are the pros from this diet? We'll look at the paleo diet. There is some incredibly valuable information from the paleo diet and there is some incredibly valuable information from the paleo world single ingredient

foods look at inflammatory foods etc high protein dieting exactly we've breached the whole gluten free thing with them dairy um but there's limitations to that right there's people that have taken that to the extreme and gone no one should eat gluten no one should eat dairy no one should eat a baked bean and Well, hang on a second. Or potato or something like that. What are you talking about? Exactly. So people have taken it to the extreme, but people haven't been critical enough to stand back and go, well, does that sound rational? Does it sound logical? So they'll read an article, they'll think, oh my God, this guy says baked beans are bad,

I'm never going to eat baked beans on toast again because it's got gluten and beans. baked beans are bad. I'm never going to eat baked beans on toast again because it's got gluten and beans. So I don't mind people following a certain setup, but they still have to see where the diet's limitations are and be critical for themselves. It's going to be hard though because sometimes you can read an article or read the books on, let's say, paleo or primal that through, it's very easy to take, uh, if you have a half of a brain to make a pseudoscientific argument for anything, you know, you can, you can misinterpret research. You can talk about, you can cite studies that got disproven later that you don't talk about, you know, there's a lot of ways to do that. So just to stand up,

it can, it can be hard for, for people if, if that's their first entry, you know what I mean? If they're like, Hmm, I've heard about paleo, let me read this. And it can be real convincing. Like you could read a guy like Mark Sisson, whose work I do like, I mean, Mark is a super smart dude, really good writer. Like I admire him just as a person, but, um, you know, and his primal thing is kind of like paleo light. So I can appreciate that, but you know, you could read certain things that he writes and, and, and come away convinced like, Oh shit, this is the way, like there's no other, like why would I do anything else? Oh, definitely. And I think, you know, we're in a gifted position now because you and me know a lot. We've kind of been there. We've been

like, especially even more with you, the training, like you've been through all these different workouts, systems, that kind of stuff. Me with the nutrition, you know, I've followed paleo, followed fasting, I've followed all sorts of stuff. And at the the nutrition you know i've followed paleo i've followed fasting i've followed all sorts of stuff and at the time you know i bought into it to a degree because you know the the writers that were saying this stuff was so convincing um and i but i still think i wasn't being critical enough i wasn't standing back and viewing it with a bigger picture because i was just interested in my end goal and i got this diet and attached it to my goal and go, well, if I want to achieve this goal, I have to do this diet. And I had my blinkers on. I had tunnel vision because all I was focusing on was my goal.

But I didn't stand back and go, you know, look at the variables. So I understand people's frustrations. We live in a world of information and misinformation. But for people, I just want to say, look, take five minutes, stand back, put your thinking cap on, and don't just jump straight back to the news feed on Facebook and look at the next cat falling off a wall in between articles. It's just being aware. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think also there's something to be said for, this is something at least I try to do when I get into anything, really, if I'm going to, whether it be a hobby or whatever, is try to first establish the most important information in terms of principles and try not to, try to go to the original source of, you know, so in this case, it would be, it's risky to just rely on someone else's presentation of research or interpretation of research. If you just read a book, I mean, that person has a, they're going to, they have something they're trying to, usually a philosophy

or agenda of some kind to sell you. And then it's very easy to mold that as opposed to going and looking at the research yourself. So like in terms of energy balance, for example, if we're talking about diet, that was one of the first things when I was like, decided to actually educate myself on dieting. One of the first things that I, that made sense to me, like this is a fundamental principle of dieting. This is, you know, we have a hundred plus years of metabolic research here. I can go read these papers for myself and I trust, uh, you know, a review of 70 years of metabolic research and what that paper has to say on, on energy balance more than I trust some random dude who says that, you know, I don't care about his supposed

credentials. He has stuff to sell and he says energy balance is a hoax. Uh, you know what I mean? So that at least I was that, that, that was kind of when i first started looking into it like it's more work that way and it's tougher but i feel that i i it pointed me in the right direction i was able to then go all right these are the things that are most important these are the things that are less important um and judge things accordingly but as as we've become uh good practitioners though we've been able to do that and for a layman to read research man that stuff's tough you know i still struggle with a lot of research i'm like i just don't know what those numbers mean so it can be tough so you have to rely on people's interpretation um i think you know the industry has been gifted a little bit

by the work of examine i think I think Examine works fantastic. Examine.com, just so the listeners know. Great resource. Yeah. It's something we actually provide to all our students. We pay for the UK license. All our students get that so that they can keep up with the research. But these guys are going, but this is what creatine is, what it means,

and this is what the research actually says. And to have that in our industry right now with zero bias is a gift. I totally agree. Yeah, huge resource. I check things on it all the time myself. And yeah, I'm a big fan of examining all the guys behind it and what they're doing. So that's paleo. That's what I would say.

What would you say are the upside and downside of something like flexible dieting, which is, you know, a lot of people think that is, like you said, they can – well, I'll let you take it. So let's talk about that. So, well, flexible dieting for me is a massive pro. It allows people to understand whether they can bring in quote-unquote bad foods into their diet. So, you know, we've classically, especially in the paleo, primal, eat natural environment, been almost scared to eat some foods. It's like you need to eat this and only this.

And if you slip up, you're a bad person. And then, you know, you're a bad person. And then, you know, that's when these binge cycles come in because people feel that I've screwed up. Yeah. Well, I've eaten a donut now, so I might as well spend all weekend eating donuts and I'll maybe get back on my diet on Monday. So, you know, the kind of science, as you mentioned,

of energy in, energy out, is largely going to control body composition. So we need to take faith in that and say right i need to get my calories right if i'm concerned about body composition or a goal of losing or gaining weight and within that calorie amount there is a certain amount that i'm willing to forego for processed foods and i usually say that should be 10 i know a lot of people will say 20 i think that's a little bit high because i'm a big fan of uh micronutrition and really getting as much in you as possible yeah um especially if calorie intake like someone's in a calorie deficit and if let's say it's like it's a girl that you

know she's not very big to start out with and if she's going to be getting 20 of her daily calories from shit food that can actually be quite a bit exactly um you know so it allows people to go all right okay i'm going out on a friday night i'm eating 3 000 calories i want a thousand of those calories to be on pizza it's not ideal but i'm still going to be able to stick towards my goals and it allows people to go right yeah cool i can do that and tomorrow i'm going to wake up and look the same you know so there's a certain amount of rules that keep you know in track or on track when you want to break the rules quote unquote so i think the perfect diet for a lot of people that are just want to

be healthy live longer look good is probably a whole foods diet where you probably don't need to track your calories and macronutrients eat a decent amount of protein get loads of fruits and veggies balance your carbs and fats how it makes you feel good. Now, as soon as you're an individual that is concerned about body composition, you want muscles, you want abs, you want to be lean, then you need to understand the numbers. You can't get the cover model physique, or it's rare to, without understanding the numbers. And it's at that point where you need to go, right, well, I need to eat a whole foods diet, but I need to understand my calories my proteins my fats my fiber and hopefully my micronutrients as well so it definitely depends on the severity of the goal and how geeky you get with your nutrition and the numbers yeah yeah i totally agree uh just on that point even of like with cheat meals quote

unquote or whatever uh it's very easy. Just this simple tip just for listeners. I've talked about this before, but if you're going to, if you're going to go out and you need a bunch of food and you know what, what I do personally is I just save up a lot of those days calories. So like, I'll just kind of eat protein throughout the day, perhaps some vegetables at lunch or whatever, but I'm saving the majority of my, of my carbs and fat for, for my dinner. So I can go eat, you know, two or 3000 calories and really enjoy myself. That's what I want to do. And, um, and really have no difference in terms of, of not that you can even store over it. You know, it's, it's hard to,

if you're going to, let's say to gain a pound of fat in a day, it's hard to eat 35 ish, a hundred calories over expenditure. And a lot of that's going to have to be from fat is, you know, it's hard to do that as it is, but just as a tip for people that, especially if you're dieting and you don't, and you're lean and you don't want to set yourself back at all, it's an easy way to, you know, you can just save those calories. I do that, you know, depending on what I'm going to do. It's exactly the same as what I do. We have Nando's in the UK. I like a Nando's i went there last night my girlfriend for dinner i knew that a full platter with chips and stuff was going to be

1800 calories i just saved it i ate late lighter i ate two light meals during the day high protein low fat low carb and then i just nailed it at night yeah i actually and i've come to i tend to do i like to eat larger meals at night anyway so I tend to do that as it is. I like it for working as well. I like not having a lot of food in me because you're probably the same way, I'm sure, because we have to think and do – you know what I mean? I like that when I'm not – you eat those large meals, and there's definitely some lethargy that comes with it, I think. Definitely. And you want to carry on working.

Yeah. Eating a big meal takes a lot of time true actually you can't cook it as well yeah so if i can graze during the day and then feed at night it helped it definitely helps my work pattern for sure yeah yeah and obviously i mean i think most people listening are going to know this but there's no downside to eating i don't care how much how many carbs i don't care what you eat when you eat it there's no downside to that i eat on average just for the listeners my i'll eat maybe about 250 to 300 grams of carbs at like 10 p.m at night because i like i'm doing these baked oatmeal dishes which i'm like basically obsessed with at this point because they're so good but you know that's that's just because that's how i like

to eat so in sure it's not like you're going to gain fat by doing that as long as your numbers are right, like what Ben's saying. Definitely. Cool. I think that's good on that. Let's move on to this next point here, which is people that are under-recovering and hitting their training and life at 80% all of the time. What are your insights on that? Sure. I do an awful lot of public speaking seminars. I do a lot of seminars for trainers. And I always sit in the room. These are people that have come to listen to me to learn more

about nutrition, training, lifestyle, etc. And I'll look into the eyes of people. And most people, I'd say 80% of the room, usually usually you can just see that they're just not quite well slept they're not quite recovering enough they haven't got the vitality they want you can just see it in their eyes and because we're individuals that are always chasing a goal we're always trying to think about the next training program the next day's training nutrition our goals and while that's fantastic sometimes we don't stand back and think about the rest of our life and how this is affecting the quality of our life as well. Because after all, we get fit, stay fit, look good to enhance our life.

Outside of fitness, bodybuilding, whatever you want to call it, we all have a life. We're only in the gym five or six hours a week, et cetera. So I'm always questioning people i'm saying are you going into your training pro um are you going into the gym at 80 90 and there's so many people that are going into the gym and it's just not quite fresh they're not 100 there they're trying to take a really strong pre-workout just to feel with it and put the reps in the time in um so for me it's again it's about people stepping back and going well maybe you're actually in the gym too much you actually recover from it is your sleep consistent do you get a lot of bad night's sleeps

do you wake up during the night are you at your desk at work or on the site if you're a physical laborer or whatever are you there just not quite with it and it's probably because we're just doing all too much and i really appreciate that people are pushing towards their goal they're trying to do the next thing but you've got to look after your health because when when that's in order that's when you can push hard with your training like i've just taken a week off i went away for a long weekend with my girlfriend got you know got my shit together monday i was absolutely chomping at the bit monday i was just so ready for the gym whereas 10 days ago i wasn't i was like you know i've got to get this workout done you know i'm looking forward to and i pushed it a bit too hard so i just want people to stand back because i hate those days where i go into the gym at 80%, 90%. It's just not as fun.

You can't feel your muscles as well. You can't drive as well. You can't hit that PR. It's all affected. And it's because I think we're just not paying attention to the kind of lifestyle and recovery factors outside the nuts and bolts of training and nutrition. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I've experienced that myself. Um, I usually, depending on how heavy I'm training and depending on what I'm doing, uh, have to take, I usually don't take a full week off. I usually, what I'll do is like, I'm, I'm normally training Monday

through Friday. So every, like it comes down to four to eight weeks, depending on what I'm doing. If I'm doing a lot of really heavy stuff, it's probably closer to four, but I'll take off. Um, I'll probably get in there on Wednesday or Thursday and I'll do a two or three day lighter, kind of just a deload, like, uh, maybe push pull legs or, you know, uh, an upper lower if it's just two days, but it's, it's not super heavy weight. It's just practicing, working on the movements. And, and, uh, as much as I kind of don't like doing it, like something that's fun, like I'm driving to the gym to do this little weak ass workout that is just whatever. I like training hard and training heavy. I found it super necessary though. Cause if I don't, it, I just like, like what you're saying,

it just, the workouts become harder and harder and I don't like them. You know, my dislike for them gets grows larger and larger. And, uh, so, because i hear from people that have that mentality like i don't want to take a week off i haven't taken a week off in five months why do i feel like shit and they're in a calorie deficit i'm like that's why yeah i i i'm a big fan of a deload and i get you know i i do it sometimes but a lot of the time i just say to people you know because most people like to go in the gym they just like to push it's very hard to go in the gym and train at 70 80 percent if you have that kind of mindset so a lot of the time i just say to people look just take a week off and the reason why i do it myself is i usually tie it into like a break away um maybe i'll take some time out to like

you know go do some gardening because i haven't done that for four months or this new book and I want to spend more time reading it so it allows me to flex to my other interests and go out and kind of do some other stuff because you know in a normal day once you've worked you've been to the gym you've spent an hour or two with your other half you know you've done some jobs that's kind of your day and a lot of the time it doesn't actually leave that much time for your hobbies and I have a lot of hobbies and kind of that break allows me to go do you know i'm going to spend a whole week doing my hobby um you know whatever that might be yeah i think that's a good point people in yeah yeah no i agree i mean i know how that is too where i'll just get working so much sometimes i'll look and i'll be like i don't do anything i don't i don't have any like i have i play a

little golf on the weekend but, but that's kind of around working. So sometimes I'll realize that, like, I don't, I take, I take time to read. So that's good. But that speaks to me. All right. So let's move on to the next point here. And this is overconsumption of caffeine and relying on it, which is what we were just talking about this before the podcast. So I'm curious in your take on this yeah i think i love caffeine okay who doesn't like caffeine come on um but it you know it's it's a modern social drug you know it's got and even more so in america more so than the uk i think you know everywhere you go you've got like refillable coffee cups coffee's just like the thing you do you have it at breakfast yeah exactly it's all day and we're putting an an excitory agent in our bloodstream for literally 16 hours a day and people are sitting there wondering why they can't sleep while when they

take their pre-workout it doesn't work as well as they thought it would you know all this stuff and i'll hear from people like that sometimes. Cause with my stuff, it'd be like, I didn't feel like, and then to find out their normal caffeine intake, caffeine intake is like a gram a day. I'm like, well, that's probably why you didn't feel the caffeine in that pre-workout. Exactly.

All right. And apart from, you know, my original comments, we're all performance minded individuals. When I go in the gym, I want to kill it and i want that caffeine you know pre-workout bolus to work really well for me so the more sensitive i am to caffeine the less i have in my blood when i take that pre-workout bam you know it's going to really really work but it's not going to work if i've already got 200 milligrams

constantly circulating in my bloodstream most people don't sleep properly they're never quite mentally on the ball so I'm a real big proponent of a kind of minimum caffeine lifestyle a lot of people have their mental energy as a result of their caffeine they don't actually know how food makes them feel like if they ate breakfast how does actually make you feel all the way to lunch well most people don't know because that energy has been driven by caffeine right um so it's kind of a modern modern drug and i'm a big fan of getting people to just realize how other factors in their lifestyle make them feel you know especially sleep like if you know we're we all know how we feel on a bad night's

sleep the next day just sucks so what you do you get a bad night's sleep you wake up the next day shit i've slept crap i need more caffeine you take more on board and then you sleep shitty again because and you just get into this massive cycle of never feeling yourself and that sucks yeah yeah no i i you, I, I, you know, personally, I don't have much experience with that because like I was talking before we recorded my body processes caffeine very quickly. Um, so I'll have a couple hundred milligrams and it'll, it'll get me going. I'll notice a difference for maybe about an hour and then I just feel normal again. And I, and I can go a day without caffeine

or with caffeine because of the effects are, are, are just so trans transient. I don't, it, it doesn't really make a difference for my, for my day. It's more like for that hour that I'm working out, I feel something. And by the time I'm at the office, I just feel the same as I would have if I didn't work out in terms of caffeine. You know what I mean? But, um, you know, when, didn't work out in terms of caffeine. You know what I mean? But, um, you know, when, when I see intake, I, I, uh, I wrote an article about this a bit ago, so I did a bit of research on it and from what seemed to be sensible to me and just reviewing a lot of literature on caffeine, um, that the, the general kind of, uh, ever just, uh, across the board, if you keep your intake at or below 400 milligrams a day, and it's also, I believe it was recommended that you take, you reduce that occasionally as well.

And ideally reduced to nothing. Then there are no health risks associated with that. Whereas you start getting in some people, they, I know that there are definitely instances where some people go as high as six to 800 milligrams a day with no uh at least negative effects observed in in the research but you know that's those were that was not the average person the average person that's you know over six eight hundred plus milligrams a day um it's it's not healthy and in time it could become a problem good leads it excites uh blood pressure heart rate you know so if you're predisposed to all this kind of stuff, it's not going to lead to a positive outcome. The funny thing is, yes, coffee drinkers do live longer, usually about five to six years longer, but it's nothing to do with the caffeine.

It's everything to do with the antioxidants that are found in coffee. So you could get the same from a good organic decaf um it actually pains me to talk about american coffee because i know how bad the coffee is that you drink and that's why i hate coffee i actually wish i liked it i hate the taste it's disgusting really i fucking hate it i'm actually kind of jealous when i hear coffee drinkers like talk about their deep love for coffee and how enjoyable it is like i don't i i don't get that experience from any like i'd have to eat you know like a couple donuts or something to to get that type of like oh my god see i have people around my house people come around you know for a coffee drink and i say

to people you know what do you usually drink coffee wise i'm like and they we start talking about caffeine i'm like right let me make you amazing decaf and you won't want to put sugar in it. You won't want to put milk in it. And every time people are like, oh my God, this is really nice. I'm like, yeah, that's because you drink shit coffee. I wish I could like coffee.

I've tried it. But even like tiramisu, I don't like. Just the hint of coffee taste is gross to me. My stupid palate. But I like dark chocolate. Why does that make any sense? They're similar in terms of taste yeah true oh i love dark chocolate i know anyways um yeah so you know all in all i think i agree and i think we're speaking to people that are there are a lot of caffeine abusers that are listening no question oh yes so you know again

going back to like i and if you keep your intake i know ben you said you do what uh 100 200 milligrams like that's for your training and then otherwise yeah i'll have none in my diet and then i'll take about 200 milligrams pre-training yeah that's me a treat uh and then i'm good and then on the days you don't train no caffeine usually no caffeine if you know for some reason. You know, sometimes you're like, I just want a little bit. I'm going to do it. I rarely do it.

The only time I usually do it is if I'm doing a load of writing and I lock myself away. I'll take caffeine at a low dose, probably about 80 to 120 milligrams. And that gives me a real gentle, real clean focus if I don't have that already. Yeah. Yeah. Same. I like it for writing as well. Do you pair it with theanine by the way? Have you tried that? Yes, I do. Yeah. It's great. Theanine is fantastic. This is one reason why I like people drinking things like white tea. It's got a great combo of caffeine and theanine. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan of theanine. It makes a big difference for the, for the listeners. If you try, uh, you know, if you just go one-to-one in ratio. So if it's a hundred milligrams caffeine, uh, pair it with a hundred milligrams of theanine. And

I remember the first time, cause I have it in my pre-workout matched with the caffeine where the first time I tried that, I was like, Holy shit. I almost felt euphoric. I don't necessarily get that euphoria now but it's definitely a mood booster and it gives it a smooth i think for me it smooths out the like i get a like the caffeine rush or whatever it's just smoother no crash and it totally agrees move totally agree and this is for me one reason you get the jitters from a strong coffee there's no thinning. You have to, and it's great that it's in your pre-workout.

I 100% recommend that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm a fan. I like tea as well. One thing I will just say before people go, oh, actually, I might think about dropping my caffeine intake. Whatever you do, just don't go cold turkey. You know, if you're drinking five, six, seven cups of coffee a day, if you go cold turkey, you're going to feel like a junkie. Withdrawal, I mean, yeah. Yeah, big withdrawal, big headaches, big low mood. Cut it down slowly. Otherwise,

you'll feel like you're literally dying. Good point, yeah. All right, great. So let's move on to the next point, which is, so this is a note from you. So why your results are predicated on your input and reflection on what is going well and what's not. So this kind of topic is probably answering a lot of the kind of questions that we will get on a regular basis as kind of practitioners in the field. People will say to us, why am I not getting results? I followed this. I did that.

results i followed this i did that and again it's a critical point of are people standing back and looking at everything they're doing rather than you know because some people focus so much on like you know let's say they bought one of your workouts they're focusing so much on the workout and the result of the workout they're not looking at the input from everything else lifestyle recovery diet supplements etc um and and most people focus on that their expectation is predicated just on that and they're not looking and tracking at the other variables um so people's input of what they're doing will directly uh have a result on their output 100 so if you're putting a lot of effort in one or two areas and you're not happy with stuff then you need to match that input with all the other factors that contribute

to the results that we promote all the time as coaches um and and you know we talk so much about real simple things like balance protein you know getting all these basics right but you know and people are bored of listening to it, but people are still not doing it. I'm going to keep telling you to do it until you do it because you're still complaining that you haven't got the results that you expect, but you're not doing the fundamentals. You're not getting a good night's sleep. You're not busting your ass in the gym when you do it. You haven't got your protein intake consistent, your carbs and fats all over the place you're cheating too much on you know the main bulk of your foods all this kind of stuff if you don't get it don't complain about your results yep and don't think that some

random weird little new thing is gonna is gonna uh preempt that or allow you to you know ignore the fundamentals and still get the results that you want, which goes back to some of that fad dieting stuff. Like if you're not, if you do not understand energy balance and you don't want to and whatever, then there's a, it doesn't really matter what diet you do. The only really, it'll only work for maybe work for a bit if it, you know, just means like trying to lose weight. And if that, if the diet you try restricts the foods that you like to eat, that you overeat on, yeah, it'll work to a point. But, uh, yeah, I mean, that's a, that's just, that's a very good point. I think it applies to anything really is like anything. I don't know that I've gotten into that I've gotten good at and had any success with is

it's always come back to the fundamentals. The vast majority of being good, whether it be a sport or weightlifting or writing or anything is just doing a small handful of things really well. And then, you know, then you have that, that brings you above the majority of people in terms of skill and results. And then of course, if you want to, you know, okay, you want to become super at something, then that's where a lot of the other little random things can come into play, but you have to have those fundamentals or the stuff the more quote-unquote advanced stuff just doesn't matter oh definitely i think it comes back to being critical again as well as people looking at the stuff they're doing because the the human mind is always going to look for an easier route an easier option and something

a shinier widget yeah a shinier widget and you and me are both still looking for that but we have a massive bullshit radar and other people have a very small bullshit radar we've developed our minds to be more critical so it's not to say that we won't accept a great new theory a great new product great new technology but we will do our due due diligence on whatever comes out and make sure it's backed and rational and i just want other people to do more of that rather than looking at the shiny objects because the shiny objects are literally five ten percenters there's nothing that is going to be more than five or ten percent yeah and that's probably high i mean a lot of them

are very very small uh yeah Uh, yeah, I think, I think that, you know, and also just looking at, this is my experience with speaking with thousands of people that are kind of in my orbit where the majority of, of, of the people that read my books and follow my websites and whatever, they're not trying to make fitness their life. They're not trying to be a fitness. They're not trying to be a professional bodybuilder. They're not trying to be a professional physique competitor. Um, and really like in there, in a lot of these people's cases, they don't even need to know more than, you know, they could read a book of mine and maybe 10 or 15 articles and for their goals to build muscle, they want to get into a good body fat range. You know, they want to look good. They want to feel

good, but they don't want to obsess over it. You don't need to know, like you could learn everything you need to know in two days. Really? Yeah. In terms of diet and training and literally never read another thing ever again. And just go do that stuff. Understand how to set your diet up. Understand how to set your weightlifting programs up.

And so you don't kill yourself. And so you, you know, you, you get a good return on your time in the gym and just do that. And within a year you have more or less the body you want, and you know, you can still enjoy it and work at it. But I think there's something to be said for not, it doesn't matter if it's my stuff, it could be your stuff, but you understand what I'm saying that it could be a couple of days of studying and you go apply that. And if you never knew another thing, you could be that person in the gym at some point where people come up to you and they're like, how do you have that body?

How did you do that? And you're like, well, I don't know. I read like a few hundred pages of stuff and I've just been doing it for like five years and that's about it. 100%. I've got a podcast episode 117 on my show. And I say, look, if you want to know how to set up a diet for life, just follow this hour's worth of nutrition

information and you could be done. That's it. If your goals are just be happy, be healthy, look pretty decent. And sometimes that's all it takes. And again, it's just the fundamentals, man. It's just fundamentals. Totally. Yeah, that's great. All right. So last point here is sleep. Why, which you had already touched on earlier, but the importance of sleep and importance of bedtimes and why not enough sleep sucks. Because, again, like caffeine, a lot of listeners, and I'm guilty of it as anybody else, abuse caffeine or can. I mean, I actually try not to. I tend to be pretty good on that.

But sleep, I don't know. I tend to wake up after about six hours. I But, uh, sleep, uh, you know, I don't know. I tend to wake up after about six hours. I just don't like sleep more than that period. So, you know, that's just the way it's been for, for years and years now. But I know that's not, and I don't like, that's fine for me. I don't know, but I know it's not normal and that wouldn't be necessarily the, the, the normal, that wouldn't be the general recommendation. Maybe I have, you see that research account recently, the genetic polymorphism that, uh,

some people have where they like some people sleep two hours a night and they've done it their entire life and it has no negative effects on them. There's a genetic thing in play. I don't know. Maybe I don't, I can't say that that would kill me, but that is a minimal amount of people. Um,

I'm similar. I'll sleep six and a half hours and my body just wakes up. I'm done. That's wakes up i'm done that's all i need and that's kind of great because if i've slept nine hours well i'd get a hell of a less shit done i'd be so mad if i had to sleep a lot yeah um you know the thing that people just need to understand is that sleep does literally affect everything like physiologically like people and this is a big thing people that struggle with cravings you know if you don't sleep enough it plays havoc with your blood glucose levels your hunger signals you know when i've had a bad night's sleep it's the only time i crave something

sweet and usually i don't have a sweet tooth at all but your body will just look to try and get more energy it also messes with leptin and ghrelin. It makes your body say, give me food now. Oh, exactly. And I could just literally eat all day when I sleep. And it doesn't help that I've got an ex-fat man living inside me. I used to be an obese man. So he wants to eat cake, trust me. Sleep's then going to affect your workout.

If you don't get enough sleep, you're not going to feel as good in your work life. And this is something that I think people don't take enough time to appreciate is how much it affects your family and your loved one's environment. Like if you're tired, you're agitated with each other, you're short with each other, you don't enjoy your relationships, you don't spend time, you might go out for dinner and you want to go home early like this factors into your relationships so much and I know that um you know when I go around you know my family's for dinner if I'm not on the on my ball I'm not as enjoyable to be around and no one wants to be that guy you know

this is why we live life right to get the best out of what we do family love that kind of stuff so it's really really important so I'm really dogmatic about sleep like 10 o'clock on the clock i'm like to my girlfriend i'm like right i'm up to bed you can stay and watch tv if you want but i'm kind of gone we'll wind down we'll always be asleep by half 10 at the latest kind of thing because i know how much it affects the next day if i stay up late that means i'm going to get up late means i'm not going to get as much work done. I don't want to work late because I want to go and enjoy myself. I want to go to the gym. I want to enjoy myself later. It all rumbles into one. A lot of the time, there isn't anything, unless you're going out, there's nothing good happening past 10 o'clock

at night and nothing that can't be recorded on TV now. We've all got recordable box sets. and nothing that can't be recorded on TV now. You know, we've all got recordable box sets, put it on record, watch it at the weekend, but be in bed for 10, please. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that, I agree on all points. It's one of those things that's easy,

just how it's easy to consume too much caffeine. It's just easy. It's, I have another coffee, I have another. So it's easy to cut back on sleep. It seems, you know, hey, I'll just stay up 30 minutes later, 30 minutes later, 30 minutes later. But, but yeah, the effects are cumulative. Um, and for me, I start to feel that like if I sleep five hours, which I don't intentionally do rarely ever, but sometimes I just don't, you know, I don't know if you've had that. I'll get to bed and I'm just like, not very tired. And I'm like, fuck, this is not going to be a good night's sleep. I can just feel it. You know what I mean? I just feel it. I was just like, something's off.

And then, and then I wake up in the middle of the night or whatever. But, uh, yeah, it's, it's just, if I, if I were feeling like that every day, and I know a lot of people do, I mean, you look at the research on sleep, it's like ridiculous. It's like 30 something percent of people, at least here in the United States, this was like, as of 2010, I think reported, um, falling asleep, like in the middle of the day, just like like as of 2010, I think, reported falling asleep like in the middle of the day, just like sitting at their desk, falling asleep or falling asleep while driving, which is obviously dangerous as shit. That's bad. I don't even get that tired. If I sleep five hours, I've done that several days in a row. I don't get to the point where I'm falling asleep.

I just don't feel so great throughout the day like that's a severe sleep deprivation yeah that's chronic adrenal fatigue and if you're in that place that's not a good place to be in it means your body is in you know and that will lead to chronic fatigue chronic fatigue as well you know people that can just literally fall asleep anyway anywhere and i've known people i remember coaching my first guy who could did this and he fell asleep in the consultation shit i'm like you know i just put him he was in that much of a relaxed state or as a relaxed as he's ever going to get and just fell asleep and he's like yeah i do it all the time i'll get to lunch time and i'll have to pull over in a lay-by and go to sleep and i'm like dude that's not normal yeah that's this is why i value sleep so much like if i sleep well my productivity the next

day is literally double yeah just it's just astronomically different and there's someone who's self-employed like my income is related to what i put in yeah and no one's there to tell you you got to get up you got to get in front of that computer and no one's going to tell you like it's easy just to be like oh well today exactly yeah yeah so everything to me yeah same same i was just driving home the other day and there was a dude like light's green he's not going uh i'm next to him so i'm driving by i look over and it's an old guy either passed out like or something right i i was like is this guy asleep and i so i slowed down and someone's honking behind him and nothing's happening i'm like dude this guy have a heart attack. So I,

so I turn around cause I'm going to go and see like, is this guy fucking dead? Like what is going on? He was pretty old. And someone ran up to the car and was like tapping on his window and he was asleep, but he was the guy, not even a horn blasting woke him up.

Like somebody had to go and like bang on his window. Like is this guy, do I need to call 911? What is going on? Wow. Jeez. That's that florida that's bad florida drivers are so bad it's just a known thing here gee hope the guy made it home yeah no he woke up and he drove off i'm like holy that guy's on the road dude he's like yeah what the fuck all right right. So cool.

That's everything we had on the agenda. I think it's a good length too. So yeah, I appreciate you. It's always fun talking with you. I appreciate people that like you, that you're fun to talk to and you know what you're talking about. So I appreciate you coming on the show. Where can people find you and your work? Sure. Well, firstly, thanks for getting me on after you came on my show which was really cool my name is Ben Coomber C-O-O-M-B-E-R people can find me all over the internet if they search Ben

Coomber and my show on iTunes is number one in the UK health and fitness we've done 155 episodes so far so if you put in Ben Kumba radio into iTunes or whatever podcast doodah you use then you will find me download me listen to one of the shows hey maybe even download the show that me and Mike did and get that as your first listen and then otherwise on Facebook Twitter YouTube, YouTube, I am Ben Coomba. But if that bedazzles you, if you hit bencoomba.com, you will find everything that will link to my stuff there. Cool. Awesome. And what do you have coming up? Like what are your projects you have on your plate right now?

My big project that keeps revolving is I run an online education course. We have an intake every six months. We take a big group of people. We take them through a year to two years worth of learning on nutrition. It's a full-blown certification. So I do a lot of education. I didn't even know that. Dude, catch up.

Yeah, I mean, I've looked through your stuff, but I didn't realize it's that long, actually. That's what I didn't know. Yeah, the first bit's two months, which is our foundation level then there's a year's learning which is very practical very hands-on very in-depth and then there's a 10 month advanced level for the true geek but that's really tough stuff you got to be ready for that um and then i've just brought out a couple of books and stuff but if people head on over to bencouba.com it will link everywhere so if you want to geek out on my work um please do head on over and have a look and you know again after this show hit me and mike up on twitter start a conversation tell us what you thought of the

show i'd love to hear about people yeah yeah all right man thanks again for taking the time and we'll have to do it again we'll come up with a reason to do another one sure all right man reason to run